Inspirational Readings

Mike Connell, Shane Willard

Sermon Audio Transcripts

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Mike Connell Ministries

http://mikeconnellministries.com

Sermon Sets

1. Activating the Gifts of the Spirit (manual+5 sermons)

2. Deliverance and Healing (manual+5 sermons)

3. Exercising Spiritual Authority (manual+6 sermons)

4. Basic Deliverance Training (8 sermons)

5. First Principles (7 sermons)

6. Healing from Abortion, Miscarriage & Adoption (7 sermons)

7. Freedom Evangelistic Messages (12 sermons)

8. Slumber of Jezebel (3 sermons)

9. The Signs of the End Times (3 sermons)

10. Rest of Faith (4 sermons)

11. Finance Seminar (Shane Willard 2011) (2 sermons)

12. Comfort in Times of Trouble (3 sermons)

13. Forces that Work in You (5 sermons)

14. Ten Commandments (Shane Willard 2009) (6 sermons)

15. Leadership Seminar (Shane Willard 2008) (6 sermons)

16. The Spirit of Mammon (4 sermons)

17. Eternal Rewards (12 sermons)

18. Sonship Series (4 sermons)

19. Who is Jesus (4 sermons)

20. Taming the Tongue (12 sermons)

21. Deliverance Training (Special Topics) (3 sermons)

22. The Blood of Jesus (4 sermons)

23. Five Seconds After You Die (1 sermon)

24. Hearing the Voice of God (6 sermons)

25. Fig Leaves and Other Coverings (4 sermons)

26. Wilderness Wisdom (4 sermons)

27. Purpose & Destiny (2011) (7 sermons)

28. Breaking Free from Victim Mentality (2 sermons)

29. Freedom Conference (4 sermons)

30. Authority in the Family (5 sermons)

31. Burnt Stones (4 sermons)

32. The Prayer of Kings (2 sermons)

33. Unashamed (6 sermons)

34. Extravagant Love (7 sermons)

35. Hosting Shane Willard (2013) (5 sermons)

36. Hosting Shane Willard (2011) (2 sermons)

37. Hosting Shane Willard (2010) (7 sermons)

38. Hosting Shane Willard 2008 - Hell/Ghena (4 sermons)

39. Hosting Shane Willard (2008) (4 sermons)

40. Hosting Shane Willard (2007) (4 sermons)

41. Legacy (4 sermons)

42. Blame Game (3 sermons)

43. Let the Kings Arise (4 sermons)

44. Standing in the Storms of Life (2 sermons)

45. Imagination (4 sermons)

46. Identity (4 sermons)

47. The Making of a King (5 sermons)

48. Priority of the Kingdom (4 sermons)

49. Destiny Decisions (2 sermons)

Sunday Sermons

1. Gods Mandate to Parents

Controversial "anti-smacking" legislation has recently been passed here in NZ. I just want to give some help and some biblical perspective to it, so I want to talk about this whole issue of the smacking issue, of whether to smack or not to smack but it's a lot deeper than that. What does God have to say about this matter?

2. Twilight

A Christian perspective is offered on the hugely popular fictional Twilight series, discussing its roots in both the Occult and also the Mormon religion, and the potential effects that this type of "chick-porn" can have on real world relationships.

3. The Orphan Spirit

The plight of humanity is: we are spiritually orphaned. We have not God as our Father. John 14:18, Jesus said: shortly I'm going to leave. I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever - the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, nor that sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He dwells in you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. Notice this statement: I will not leave you orphans.

4. Relationship or Rights

Would you rather be Right, or would you rather have Relationship? Hurt people hurt others, without even realising. We have no power really to stop painful things happening in our life. We do have the choice how we respond. Relationship conflicts reveal our heart attitude.

5. Witchcraft in Relationships

Witchcraft is imposing your will upon another, against their will. You've been given a free will to make decisions with your life, but someone can bring pressure or push you to change and accommodate them and what they want. Its within that context that witchcraft operates. They try to pressure you from within. Dont isolate yourself or withdraw; instead Identify, Pray, Confront, set Boundaries

6. Lessons to Learn in a Prison

At the age of 17 Joseph had a prophetic dream. That prophetic dream was a glimpse or an insight to what his future could be and there are ways you can position yourself to get prophetic dreams. Joseph learned how to operate in the gifts of the spirit in prison. Learn to hold onto God, remain faithful to Him in spite of what it feels like and what circumstance. Learn to love the people around you.

7. Training your heart to see

8. Breaking Free (1 of 2)

I want you to get in your heart: it's time for ME to break out this year, break out of the limitations, the restraints, to break free of the things held me back, and begin to start to have a greater impact with my life. Mica 2:13: The one who breaks open will come up before them; They will break out, pass through the gate, and go out by it; Their king will pass before them, the Lord at their head.

9. Break Through (2 of 2)

All the Philistines went up to search for David to kill him. David enquired of the Lord, saying shall I go up against the Philistines? Will You deliver them into my hand? The Lord said to David go up, doubtless I will deliver them into your hands. What would you take on this year if you heard God saying to you go for it, you can't lose?

10. War a Good Warfare

How many know that you're involved in struggle and conflict in life? Life isn't that easy. Everyone is fighting in the same battle. For you to get forward and to progress in your life, for you to get somewhere, you've got to learn how to stand up & fight. You've got to learn what you're fighting against and how to fight. The only fight that is any good is the one you win! So to fight a good fight.

11. Wise and Faithful Servant

Jesus has been asked some very important questions. The disciples asked Him tell us about the future of Jerusalem, what's going to happen, when are these things going to happen. They said tell us when you will come. We want to know about the end of the age. For a believer our hope is not the things that happen in our life now. Our hope is set in eternity, and life is an apprenticeship.

12. Filling Your Lamp

Jesus will come again, and there's things that He wants us to be busy doing. It's not come to Jesus, fill in my life, and then go to heaven. This is so far from the plan of God as to be quite a deception. God wants your life to be powerfully engaged in advancing His kingdom. He wants you to be filled with the Holy Ghost & moving! So we share with you 3 parables, each one has something to tell us.

13. Having a Full Lamp

How will we know the end of the age? How will we know your second coming? One of the great things for us as believers is to know that not only Jesus came once, He will come again. There are massive issues related to His second coming that affect how you live your life. So Jesus spoke some parables and He had three parables and each parable brings out a different aspect of His coming.

14. Easter Service (2012)

Great Power was released at Jesus Death & Resurrection. The veil in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, the rocks (hard places) were split in two. The graves were opened. There was another greater (megas) earthquake. The stone was rolled back. Jesus arose from the dead, and many saints arose from the dead also.

15. Pursuing Greatness and Eternal Rewards

Most people live just in the pressures and problems of their immediate day to day life and can't rise up above it. You need to be gripped by a vision of where your life is going and what you're called to be and to do. If we have no concepts about what God has prepared for us we just fritter away our days and meaningless activities consume our life. Your life is precious.You've only got one to live

16. Zealous for Good Works

Your life is short when you compare it to the times, seasons and ages that are ahead. The Bible tells us clearly there's a millennial age when Christ will come, our life here is our stewardship for that age. The work to get saved has been done by Jesus, but after that He calls us to do something with our life. All the hardship now is nothing compared to what God has prepared for those who love him

17. Foundations for Fruit Bearing

This is about people who are walking with God, moving in the supernatural, but there's something really missing in what they do and how they do it. It's not that they aren't seeing results - they're seeing people healed, delivered, touched by the presence or power of God, but there's something missing at the core of their being. Notice what He says: 1) I didn't know you; 2) you did your own thing

18. Vision to See

Proverbs 29 tells us that without a Vision, people are naked, or dwell naked, or dwell carelessly. One of the most important senses you've got in your life is vision, the ability to see. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world with darkness. This is the world that Jesus came into, a world with spiritual darkness, to help people. God wants you to have vision for your life, wants you to see

19. Five Loaves and Two Fish: Keys for Miracles

God wants you to experience the supernatural. Look beyond yourself at the needs of others. Miracles require you to take initiative in faith. Miracles require you to do what you can. Miracles require you to speak and act. Application: Do you see the needs around you? Are you moved? Not my problem? What's your response? compassion? What do you have that God could use? What will you do?

21. Samson - Man of Faith

Keys from the story of Sampson, about the grace of god, how he loves us even in the midst of defeat and disgrace. This story is about the goodness of God to someone who's fallen over, fallen down. You are not beyond the reach of God no matter where you are today. The best days of our life are ahead of us if we're in the hands of God.

22. Withered Hand

God wants you to have a vibrant purpose. He wants you connected to Him, to understand your purpose, and fully engage with Him. If for some reason that you have been injured in life, hurt in life or disconnected from God, it's inevitable your life will not demonstrate all it could. Your life will be like this man with the withered hand, not just a physical thing but emotional, with tremendous shame

23. Discover your Assignment

Jesus didn't just save you to get into heaven. He saved you to fulfil the original purpose which is to restore the earth, to restore people, to restore our community one soul at a time. God wants all of us to be at work, one person at a time, changing our community. Don't quit your job to do something great for God, your job is where your place of calling is. Get energised by the Holy Ghost!

24. Handling Life's Difficult Experiences

Life is a mixture of experiences - some sweet and some bitter. The Bible abounds in examples and stories of people, and it tells us that without faith we can never please God. We must learn how to trust Him, and trust is developed in private, but it's always shown up in difficult experiences we have in life. So difficulties are an opportunity for us to grow because they reveal our heart condition.

25. Fathers Day 2012 - Valiant Men

To be valiant is to be bold, to be courageous, to hold fast to the commitments in the face of adversity, to face your fear and wrestle with it and still deal with it anyway. God always sees what you could be. He sees what he's designed you to be. Paul said that at the end of his life. I've finished my course. I've run my race and a crown is laid up for me.

26. Two Principles that Release the Best in People

People are a gift from God, so right now in this room there could be someone who's a gift from God for you and you wouldn't even know it, but there is a way you can unlock it. Whatever you disrespect will move away from you, whatever you respect will attract towards you. We can become offended when people don't meet our expectations, and start to dishonour and disrespect them. Prejudice can stop you receiving people, pride is a terrible thing, causes us to judge, find fault, see the worst, and build a wall that stops you receiving. Discerning? No, you just didn't have enough love to celebrate them and receive them.

27. Arise and Stretch

The Bible describes a withered condition where joy has withered away. Man, we need plenty of joy in our life, need to laugh more, have more fun and connect with people. Enjoy the life of God. It's not a hard life, it's a great life walking with God - but what has withered it up? Has fear withered it up? Fear will shrink the gifts of God in our life. Jesus said My joy I give to you, let no man take it from you. You never see the power of God in your comfort zone. You never see the power of God in the life you've been used to living, you only see it when you go out and start to take some risks and start to move beyond your comfort area. That's when you start to see it.

28. Resolving Offences

Offences will come. They are part of life. There's no way of escaping it. It's impossible that you're going to miss out on your opportunity to face some very offensive behavior; or some things happening that upset you. The first thing is to focus on yourself, and your personal response. Jesus said: take heed to yourself. Carefully guard your condition of heart. It's a choice.

29. Pentecost - Fresh Filling of the Holy Ghost

Pentecost is about meeting with God. Mount Sinai was completely covered in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Then the blast of the trumpet sounded long, and came louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. Now that's the first Pentecost. It's about engaging in intimacy with God. It was no work, no labour, no striving, no struggling, and they gave to the poor.

Activating the Gifts of the Spirit

God has created every person to be a supernatural spiritual being, with the capacity to function not only in a natural world, but also to access the realm of the spirit, access where God is, and to bring heaven to earth.

God's desire is that you be a channel for heaven coming to earth, for His presence and goodness and healing and love and peace and prosperity to flow through you, and to manifest in the world around you.

So in the course we'll be teaching about that supernatural dimension. We'll teach about how miracles are activated, what the keys are around that. We'll teach you what the foundational key is, is out of intimacy with God and hearing the voice of God, and we'll give you practical steps, practical keys, how to start from wherever you are right now, and step by step grow your faith, so you can be starting to operate successfully, and regularly and confidently in the gifts of the spirit.

So in the course we'll teach on the gifts of the spirit, we'll give you a little bit about each. We'll also give you some foundational understanding about the spirit man, and how God works in and through us. Also if you're watching this by DVD you'll see demonstrations of the power of God touching people, you'll see demonstrations of how to move in words of knowledge, hearing the voice of God, minister to people. You'll see all of that in this course, and it will inspire you and help you. God's given me ability to make it extremely clear, and I know that you're going to really enjoy this.

Put in the effort. Invest in yourself. Do the course, and put into practice the things you learn, and you'll just be overjoyed when you see God is far more willing to work through you, than you really realise. His plan is that the kingdom come into the earth through you. All you've got to do is learn how to do it.

In 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verse 1, Paul says I don't want you to be ignorant of spiritual gifts, and this course is to help solve that problem. God bless you. Have a great time on the course and may you extend the kingdom of God boldly.

Gifts of the Spirit / Hearing From God (1 of 5)

2 Sessions:

a) The Gifts of the Spirit: Understand 9 operations of the spirit and how to position yourself to flow in them. We are designed to be a supernatural being, to connect with heaven and earth. You are designed to flow with the Holy Spirit. God wants us to add understanding how to do it. He promises He'll give the gifts to every believer. He desires to work through you, and its not about maturity, its about faith.

b) Hearing the Voice of God: How to recognise the Voice of God. It comes from within, and its possible to exercise or "spirit man" by positioning ourselves to hear, and knowing how it comes. We can be trained to recognise spirit impressions and hear God's voice - for ourselves and others (demonstrations)

Prophesy (2 of 5)

The Bible says all believers can prophecy; and some function in the 'office of a prophet' with a strong revelatory gift. It is a great gift to build in other people, and we should be passionate to stir up this gift. There however definite boundaries, guidelines, do's and don't's that we should be aware of, and definite steps to follow to get us going.

Tongues and Interpretation / Words of Knowledge (3 of 5)

Explanation of how we can be immersed into the spiritual dimension, and be "clothed with power from on high". This is a gift, available to all who desire it.

Receiving the Holy Spirit (Born Again) versus receiving the Total Immersion (Baptism of the Holy Spirit). To express ourselves in this new culture we need a language which bubbles up from within - energising our inner life, speaking out 'mysteries' and more.

Finally, learn how to operate the Word of Knowledge - a powerful revelation gift to open up a person's life.

Discerning of Sprits / Words of Wisdom (4 of 5)

A supernatural gift, a revelation, which enables us to see the source or root of the problem. This is not a natural discernment (working things out), but a spiritual impression that we can name e.g. spirit of infirmity, divination. We can discern the activity of the Holy Spirit, demonic activity, or angelic activity. We don't sit as judge, but look as an observer, and ask God how we should deal with it. Words of Knowledge; Prophecy; and Discerning of Spirits all need to be accompanied with a Word of Wisdom - know what to do with what we receive.

Faith, Miracles and Healing (5 of 5)

To pursue growth in this area takes courage, effort; and a willingness to deal with blocks in our own heart!

The gifts of Faith; Healing; and Working of Miracles are defined, with examples.

The Gift of Healing is distinguished from praying by faith for healing.

Find out how to prepare yourself to grow in these gifts. Your community needs it.

Manual

- Activating the Gifts (Manual)

Paperback

- Paperback #1

- Paperback #2

Audio

- Gifts of the Spirit / Hearing From God (1 of 5).mp3

- Prophesy (2 of 5).mp3

- Tongues and Interpretation / Words of Knowledge (3 of 5).mp3

- Discerning of Sprits / Words of Wisdom (4 of 5) .mp3

- Faith, Miracles and Healing (5 of 5).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- Gifts of the Spirit / Hearing From God (1 of 5).mp4

- Prophesy (2 of 5).mp4

- Tongues and Interpretation / Words of Knowledge (3 of 5).mp4

- Discerning of Sprits / Words of Wisdom (4 of 5) .mp4

- Faith, Miracles and Healing (5 of 5).mp4

Vimeo

- Vimeo Channel »

- Gifts of the Spirit / Hearing From God (1 of 5).mp4

- Prophesy (2 of 5).mp4

- Tongues and Interpretation / Words of Knowledge (3 of 5).mp4

- Discerning of Sprits / Words of Wisdom (4 of 5) .mp4

- Faith, Miracles and Healing (5 of 5).mp4

Gifts of the Spirit / Hearing From God (1 of 5)

Tue 17 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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2 Sessions:

a) The Gifts of the Spirit: Understand 9 operations of the spirit and how to position yourself to flow in them. We are designed to be a supernatural being, to connect with heaven and earth. You are designed to flow with the Holy Spirit. God wants us to add understanding how to do it. He promises He'll give the gifts to every believer. He desires to work through you, and its not about maturity, its about faith.

b) Hearing the Voice of God: How to recognise the Voice of God. It comes from within, and its possible to exercise or "spirit man" by positioning ourselves to hear, and knowing how it comes. We can be trained to recognise spirit impressions and hear God's voice - for ourselves and others (demonstrations)

Introduction

Welcome to our seminar on Activating the Gifts of the Spirit. I trust that you'll download off the internet the manual you'll need, and you can just follow it through with us. I encourage you, if you're in a group, that you just practice with the people are in the group. Remember, it's just a practice; so as you practice, you'll get feedback from the person, and you'll be able to explore what it is to hear the voice of God, and to flow with the gifts of the spirit.

Main Message

In this first session (Section #2 in your notes) we're going to look at the Gifts of the Spirit; and we're going to read from 1 Corinthians 12:1.

“Now concerning spiritual gifts, or concerning operations of the spirit, brothers, I would not have you to be ignorant”.

Paul is writing to the church... Notice the first thing: God wants you to move in the supernatural. You are designed to be a supernatural being. You are a spirit being living inside a body.

With your body you can communicate with the external world; with your spirit you can communicate with the realm of God, the realm of the spirit.

You are designed to flow and access with the supernatural realm of God; you don't have to become a spiritual person - you already are spiritual. You already have a spirit dimension to you.

Your natural body has five senses: you can see, you can hear, you can taste, touch, smell. Your spirit man also has spiritual senses. With your physical senses you can interact with the physical world. You receive signals, and from that you can begin to identify certain things. It's the same in your spirit; but many people haven't developed their spiritual capacity.

1) The first thing is: you are a spirit being - and God wants you to operate supernaturally. That's His plan; and so Paul writes: “I don't want you to be ignorant of the supernatural realm, or how to work with the Holy Spirit”.

The word ‘ignorant’ means: having no practical experience or understanding of this; so the reason things are hard, is because we don't know how. Over this seminar, we want to take away the mystery of how hard it is, and make it so it's actually really simple. Everything that God does is incredibly simple, and it requires just an open heart to receive.

You don't have to be highly educated to move in the supernatural. You don't have to be highly educated to flow with the Holy Spirit. He will use anyone that will just open their life up and say: God, here I am, I'm available, work through me - so God will work through you.

God wants us to be empowered, and equipped to bring His power to people. The church has long lost the flow of power; but now, in these days, God is restoring power back to the church. We'll see that part of the great commission is that you be anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit, and you are able to lay hands on the sick, you are able to minister to people - you are able to flow with the Holy Spirit.

That makes sense, because the world isn't going to come into a church building; the church has to go to the world, and bring God to the world. We want to show you how to do this; and we want to teach you how to work with the Holy Spirit, in an environment where you're just practising and learning; then your journey is to develop what you learn and grow it. Don't wait for some revival, and don't wait for some big experience; take what we give you and teach you, and begin to apply it and practice it, and you'll get better and better and better. God is more willing to use you than you realise!

2) The second thing is: we're going talk a little bit about the gifts of the spirit themselves.

1 Corinthians 12:7 – “Now the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man, to profit with all”

It uses the word 'manifestation’, it means: something that's visible, tangible, that people can see. He's saying: God wants to operate through you, in a way that's tangible, that people can experience Him.

I prophesied over someone the other day. I brought a word from God to them, and I shared with them things God showed me, things which were so personal, and so connected to that person, that when I asked them: how did this affect you; they said: I felt like my whole life was open before God, and He was here, talking to me personally.

The gifts of the spirit are manifestations of a person - the Holy Spirit; so it's not like you have some kind of gift. You have a person; and you work with Him to bring His life forth. It's all about a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

It says: “the manifestation of the spirit is given to everyone” - so who is left out of the word ‘everyone’? There's no one left out - this is for you! Everyone includes you.

1 Corinthians 12:11 – “Now these work the same self spirit, dividing to every man severally, as He wills”.

God is very clear in the word - He wants every person to be able to flow in the spirit.

He gives the gifts of the spirit to everyone; so if you haven't functioned in them, or flowed in them, or received them yet - it's mostly because you don't know how to. If we show you how to, and you extend your faith, God will work through you. It says: He gives them to everyone.

3) It is a gift. The gifts of the spirit are something God gives you - so you don't have to earn it.

You don't have to stay in church a long time for this to happen. As soon as the Holy Spirit empowers you, or comes on you (and you're baptised in the spirit) - you are able to operate in the gifts of the spirit immediately - if you will learn how to recognise and work with the Holy Spirit. It's very, very simple. It's never hard. It's just we have to grow this dimension in our life.

I remember my wife - we had a whole group of babies in a crèche crying, and she said: oh my one's crying. I said: really? I could just hear babies crying; but she could hear: that's my child crying, because her ear was tuned, in the midst of the noise, to pick up the sound of someone she recognised.

There is a lot of noise that we have going on in our head and in our lives. We need to learn how to calm down and quiet down, and just recognise when God is talking to you - we want to help you with that, and demonstrate that.

“The gifts of the spirit are given to everyone, to profit all” - notice here: it's not an indication you're mature.

God will give the gifts of the spirit to any person. It does not make them spiritual. It means: they're just listening and responding to God, that's all.

So a person can flow in the gifts of the spirit; but have perhaps other areas of their life where they're very immature. It does not make you a very ‘spiritual person’, being able to flow in the gifts of the spirit or the power of God. It just means you've learned how to operate by faith in that dimension - but the rest of your life you may have many issues, and many problems.

We tend to put people that can move in the gifts of the spirit on this pedestal, as though they're something special and unusual, because we've got this idea that only special people will God use.

We also have this wrong idea that: you have to get your life together, and get your act together, before God can use you. I challenge you to find that anywhere in the Bible - it's just a religious concept. If you think: I've got to get my life together before God can use me, then you'll spend all your life focussed on trying to make your life better; rather than focussing on walking with God, enjoying Him, and letting Him work through you.

4) God wants to work through everyone; and the gifts are given to profit others.

When God gives you a gift - it's not for you; it's for someone else - you're just the delivery boy!

It's like I'm connected to God, so I can receive something from Him, and then I pass it on to someone else. That's what the gifts of the spirit are, and I'm just the channel through which this flows. I'm the gate through which God interacts with the person.

You are described in the Bible as: you are a temple, or a house, in which God dwells; and you are a gate for the supernatural to come into the earth.

5) Now let's have a look at the different categories of gifts. It's in your notes under Section 2.3, and it says:

“In the manifestation of spirits, given to each one, for the profit of all; for to one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same spirit, to another working in miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues and interpretation of tongues. The one and the same spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.”

There are 9 distinct operations of the spirit there; but it helps if we list them under 3 headings.

First of all, 3 of the gifts are ‘gifts of revelation’. That means: God reveals to you something you didn't know.

If I talk to someone, and they tell me, then I've learned it from them. If I've read it in a book, then I've studied it and learned it; but if someone just tells me a secret, it reveals something to me.

So in 3 of the gifts of the spirit, God just reveals something, which you couldn't have worked it out. You just couldn't have known.

For example, I prophesied over a woman the other night, and said that at the age of between 10 and 14 she'd gone through these particular crises in her life, and this is how it affected her, and God now wanted to set her free from what had happened. We had some ministry for her. Afterwards she told me that there were two crises in her family: one when she was 10; and one when she was 14. There's no way I could have known that. All I'm doing is sharing what God is showing me; but for her, it was like her whole life was opened up to God.

Remember the woman at the well (in John 4) - when Jesus spoke to her, Jesus asked her a little bit, interacted with her, and then He said: why don't you bring your husband? She said: I haven't got a husband; and He said to her: that's true, you've had 5 husbands - and now you're living with a man.

When she went away, she said: I met someone who told me everything about my whole life. Now why did she say ‘everything about her whole life’, when actually He'd only said one thing about her life? The impact of that supernatural revelation was to cause her to experience the sensation that: all of her life was suddenly opened - and God could see everything.

So when you bring a word of knowledge, or move prophetically, it may not seem much to you. It's very little to you - because it's not for you; but when it goes to the person - oh, the person can be deeply impacted! How could you know that? It's like suddenly their whole world is opened up; but for you it was just a little tentative step. For them it's like oh! This is a big deal, because now you've opened up something in their life.

This is so powerful, to flow in the gifts of the spirit. It's wonderful to be able to operate in them.

So there are three gifts.

1) Words of knowledge - word of knowledge, just a little bit of knowledge about a person, some fact about their past or present.

2) A word of wisdom is a supernatural insight about what to do, or how a person needs to act, or what they should do at this time.

3) Discerning of spirits - the ability to see right into the root of what is behind things that are happening. It enables us to see the motivations of people; it enables us to see what the Holy Spirit is doing; it also enables us to discern demonic spirits.

Then there are 3 gifts of utterance - where something is spoken.

1) The word of prophesy, an inspired something, words from God.

2) Diverse tongues

3) Interpretation of tongues - where the person speaks in a tongue; and someone interprets,

Finally, gifts of power - when something supernatural is done, i.e. something is 1) revealed; 2) spoken; 3) done.

By faith, miracles are done; the working of miracles, and gifts of healing, all fall under those power miracles.

6) Believers can operate in all of the gifts (section #4 in the notes). Every one of you is able to operate in all of the gifts.

Mark 16:17-18, notice what Jesus said, and this is associated with the great commission...

“These signs follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they'll speak in new tongues, take up serpents, drink anything deadly, it will not hurt them, and they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.”

Jesus is giving the great commission. He's sending us into the harvest field.

He's sending people into cultures where the supernatural is well established. Now in a western culture, often people are very dull to things of the spirit or supernatural, but in other cultures, the majority of cultures in the world, there's a high level of awareness of the supernatural realm. In Asia, Africa, South America, idolatry is practiced openly. Sorcery and witchcraft are practiced openly, and they have tremendous and very real power.

Jesus was sending His disciples into cultures that experience supernatural power. What they needed was something stronger, more powerful, to deal with and confront the demonic realm.

In a western culture it's not so obvious, but in Asian cultures, and other cultures of the world, these things are practiced very openly. You go to some villages, they all live in fear of the witch doctor, and his power is real. They live in fear of the supernatural realm; and so idolatry is practised. In our culture the supernatural's more hidden. It's not so ‘out there’ - but it is still there.

Jesus was sending them into cultures that are supernatural. He wanted them empowered spiritually, to be able to do this; so notice what He said: “These signs will follow those who believe”.

It doesn't say: these signs will follow pastors. It doesn't say: these signs will follow ‘special people’. It doesn't say: these signs will follow just greatly anointed people. It just says: “these signs will follow those who believe”

For these signs to follow, God wants you to be a believer. You need to believe, for God to work through you.

We believe God will work supernaturally. We believe He'll do it… in another country. We believe He'll do it… through Benny Hinn; but what we struggle with, is to believe: He would do it through me - but that's what He said: the signs follow… believing. We're going to inform you of the how-to. If you grow the ‘believing for it to happen’, and start to stretch out, you'll be quite surprised!

Several things are listed there: casting out of demons, which is: discerning of spirits; and also working of miracles (and faith is involved in that); speaking in new tongues, and maybe interpretations. Taking up serpents has to do with wrestling with the demonic; gifts of revelation and prophesy; drinking any deadly thing (again, supernatural miracles); and laying hands on the sick; gifts of faith and healing.

Paul made some instructions, in 1 Corinthians 12. He said: “it is given to everyone”.

The manifestation of the spirit is given to everyone. His desire was that every believer could flow in the gifts of the spirit - and that's my desire too. God wants you to; and we'll show you how to, and it'll be great for you to step out and try to.

In Acts 9, there's a man called Ananias. Saul had been persecuting the church; and as he was going to Damascus, he had an encounter, a supernatural encounter. He was knocked off his horse, and he was struck blind. He went and fasted and prayed for three days.

Acts 9:10 – “There was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias, and to him the Lord said in a vision…” - notice that he saw something; and in this seeing, God spoke to him.

The Lord said to him: ‘arise’. First, He called him by name; and he said: “here I am, Lord”.

The Lord said to him: “arise, go into the street called Straight” (He told him exactly which street to go to)

He said: “inquire in the house of Judas…” (he's told which house to go to - find the house that Judas owns).

He said: “and then there's someone in there by the name of Saul” - so there's another word of knowledge; and he is praying.

Notice the revelation that's coming: he's being told things he couldn't know; and Saul has seen in a vision a man called Ananias coming to him - so God is downloading to him words of knowledge and revelation.

Then He said: “I want you to go him and lay your hands on him, and he'll receive his sight”. This is a freaky thing, because he knows that Saul's been murdering all the Christians; and now God's telling him go to this place in this street, inquire; the guy is in there, and he's blind; and he's praying. I've shown him that you're going to come, and you're going to pray over him.

Now that takes courage - remember this guy's life is on the line. Can you understand that all moving in the spirit, there's a point where you have to take a risk? This was a big risk; He has to go to the house of a murderer of Christians - that's a step of faith. He probably said ‘goodbye’ to everyone before he went… just in case!

Notice he says: “Ananias, I've heard a lot about this man, he does much evil to Your saints” - so he started to reason with God about it. The Lord said: “go, he's chosen unto Me, and I will show him great things he must suffer for My name's sake”.

So Ananias went his way, entered the house, and laid his hands on him. He said: “Brother Saul, Jesus that appeared to you in the way as you came, sent me that you might receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Immediately he was healed; and filled with the Holy Ghost, spoke in tongues.

Isn't that a great story! There's an example of: words of knowledge; works of wisdom (knowing what to do); prophetic utterance (speaking over him); gifts of healing; and faith flowing - it's great! That's a great story, of many of the gifts all flowing together, with one man.

We see now that: you are designed to be supernatural. God wants you to operate in the supernatural. He is willing to do this for you.

What is your part? What is the bit you've got to play? There are some responsibilities we have concerning the gifts of the spirit, so let me give you what they are. I'll lay them out for you, and then we'll finish this session, then we'll give you something to do - give you a little activation. This will be quite an easy one as well. Everything will be easy; you've just got to step out and do something - it's really simple.

Gifts of the spirit are given to everyone; so if God gives it to me, what does He expect me to do? What's my part?

There's a number of things that we're called to do, so I'm going to identify them. I'm referring to the Bible all the time, because I want you to get a base from the word of God, for how to operate in the spirit. If you have lots of spiritual experiences without having a word-of-God base, you can go all over the place. You'll find we'll continually draw you back to the written word of God as the judge of your spiritual experiences.

So here are several things that God requires of us:

1) He wants you to learn how to flow with the Holy Spirit. He wants you to learn it. Your responsibility is to be a learner; and learning starts tonight, and goes on for the rest of your life.

1 Corinthians 12:1 – “Concerning spiritual gifts, I don't want you to be ignorant”.

God expects you to put in the effort to learn. Nothing comes easily; you have to put in some effort. You have to do something. We'll show you what kinds of things you do.

He wants us to learn how to work with the Holy Spirit… to build others. Here's an interesting thing: God wants you to be a builder of people.

Many people have got the wrong paradigm - they have very much a paradigm where you come to church, and you get blessed and ministered to - and church is all about you having your needs met. That's only a part of the truth; actually the real truth is higher than that.

God wants to meet your needs or bless you - so you can become a blessing to others. Flowing in the spirit is about discovering how to fulfil my destiny with God… in the workplace, in the marketplace, wherever I am. So God expects me to learn; and learning is a lifetime thing.

2) We're expected to passionately desire the gifts of the spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:31 – “earnestly, passionately”, oh! “Love with the gifts of the spirit!”

Why? Because when you flow in them, it answers all arguments. If you have a miracle… no one can argue with the miracle. I remember being in a meeting, and there was a lady there and she was born deaf. I prayed for her, and both her ears opened up, and she could hear for the first time. You could just - like the whole meeting all stopped for this woman; and I watched in a moment as, first of all there was shock, because she could hear, then she started to cry, then she started to laugh. Then she was just bewildered about what was going on. It was quite extraordinary, and no one could deny that God had touched the woman. There was just no answer for it! So in particularly spiritual cultures, people just throng to get a miracle; so when I go into Asia, they'll have meetings, and they'll expect the power of God to flow. People just get saved - all kinds of people get saved, because you can't argue with the power of God. You just can't argue with the power of God. You get deaf ears opened, blind eyes opened, people get healed and things happen. That's God - and people want the God who does that.

In Pakistan, in the meetings there that Dave was at (Pastor David, my son), all kinds of miracles were happening, and people just flock to come in and receive Christ. Muslims come in from all over to receive Christ, because they're seeing the power of God. There's something about the power of God that just stops everyone in their tracks.

I had one guy, we did the seminar here, and he learned how to pray for the sick; went back to his workplace, and he was working on one of the machines there, and one of his friends walked by. He was obviously in pain in his back, so he said: hey, what's happening? He said: I've got a lot of pain in my back. He said: well I've got two answers for you; 1) you come to church on Sunday, and we pray for you there; or 2) I pray for you now. Which will it be? Now that's pretty bold to do that; and so he said: oh, okay, pray for me now. So he just left the machine for the moment, laid hands on him and began to pray. He said: how do you feel? He said: well it's a little bit better - prayed again; the guy was totally healed - and everyone's watching.

So the whole of the workplace was affected, because of one miracle that took place. Now of course they didn't all come to Christ, but that guy came to Christ; and favour came on them to start a prayer meeting in the business, to pray for the business and for the workers. Isn't that great?

God wants you to be passionate for this, to really yearn for it. The Bible instructs us: earnestly desire the gifts.

3) In 2 Timothy 1:6, it tells us: “I remind you to stir up the gifts of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”

The word stir-up means ‘to kindle a fire’ - to get something activated and happening; so we're called to stir up the gifts. This is completely contrary to a passive, ‘waiting around’ and ‘praying for a revival’, or hoping that ‘one day’ God will do something. This says: you - stir yourself up. I'll show you exactly how to stir yourself up - what you do that gets yourself stirred up, and stay stirred up, so you begin to find God working through you. So stir up there.

4) 1 Thessalonians 5:19 – “Don't quench the Holy Ghost”.

Quench means to put out a fire that God started; so it says: don't quench the Holy Spirit.

Control, and fear, in your life - they go together, and they quench God working. Unbelief - oh, I don't think God could do this - that will quench God working in your life.

There are things that facilitate the spirit of God working; and some things quench His working in your life - reasonings in your mind will quench the flow of the Holy Spirit. Negative, critical talk will grieve and quench the Holy Spirit; so we're called not to quench Him but to learn how to co-operate with Him.

5) Finally: don't neglect the gifts of the spirit.

1 Timothy 4:14 – “don't neglect the gift that's in you”.

Don't take it lightly - don't just waste what God has given you; don't despise the little beginnings that you start with. Even if you start with a little, and it doesn't seem much, it can grow. It can grow until it becomes a great flow through your life.

Those are some of the first things that we see, concerning the gifts of the spirit:

1) There are supernatural operations; you're designed to be a supernatural being, to connect with heaven and earth, you're designed to move and flow with the Holy Spirit.

2) God wants us to add understanding how to do it.

3) He promises He'll give the gifts to every believer, every person. He desires to work through you, and it's not about maturity, it's about faith, believing for Him to do it, so you will have to extend your faith.

Faith means something like this: I am convinced in my heart God is willing to do this, and so I will step out, and start to put myself in a place where God can work through me. Always there's this threshold you've got to cross, where no matter what you've been taught, you have to actually step out and just do something. That's the point where you start to grow and develop in the things of the spirit - and you'll find God will always come with you. He won't let you down. He'll always be there.

There are many different realms that we can flow within the spirit. There's different ways we can operate in the spirit. You don't have to copy the way someone does it. God wants to work through you naturally and easily, in a very natural way, and as I demonstrate it you'll see it's very natural. There's not any contriving or striving or anything, it's very natural.

Activation

So we're going to stop now; and I want you to do an activation. So what would that activation be? Well again I want it to be very simple so the first one, who was successful at hugging someone? Okay, great, you all hugged someone or two people so that wasn't that hard was it aye? Had to put your arms out and just hold on. [Laughs] Okay, so here's the next one I want you to do. I want you to find someone you don't know, and find something that you don't know about them, find something about them.

Now how would you go about finding something about someone that you didn't know? You'll have to ask. Now this is quite important when you're going to move in the spirit, you'll need to start asking questions. You ask questions of the Holy Spirit and He shows you things. Okay, so here's a good way to start. Go up and just meet someone that you don't know and find out something you didn't know about them. We'll do that for about five minutes, okay? So you can leave your seat.

Okay, are we ready for this session? Welcome to the next session. Second session we want to talk about hearing the voice of God tonight and I want to show you how you go about hearing the voice of God, how we recognise the voice of God, and I want to first of all give you a context for it. We're going to look in Galatians, Chapter 3 and Verse 2. The reason we want to focus on hearing the voice of God is because this is a major key to the supernatural being released, a major key for the supernatural being released. I want you to read with me if you've got a Bible or the notes - if it's an even page you may not have it, except in the ones you get tomorrow. So this is Paul writing, so just if it's not there that's okay, just focus on listening rather than searching.

In Galatians 3, Verse 2, Paul is writing to the Galatians Church. They started off as a very vibrant Holy Ghost church and now they had lost it altogether, so he's writing and he's bringing adjustment to them. One of the issues he addresses is their loss of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. One of the key reasons they've lost the manifestation of the spirit was legalism. They came back under laws and rules, do this, don't do that, and they lost completely the flow of the spirit, so he begins to challenge them and he asks them two questions. Now what you've got to see is when he asks these two questions he's actually - each one is to bring about an insight of where they're missing the mark, and the problem he's addressing is that they thought you become mature by obeying the laws. What he's saying is no, you need the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. So notice the question he asks. I want to learn this from you, I want you to tell me this; did you receive the Holy Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

He asked them a question, how did you receive the Holy Ghost into your life? How did you get born again? How did you get baptised in the spirit? How did you get a supernatural change in your life? Did you get it by working hard, or did you get it by the hearing of faith? Very simple. What is the answer? The hearing of faith. How do you get saved? You hear the word of God, and you believe and respond, and the power of God is activated by your response, see? That's how a person gets saved, so he appeals to the foundation of their Christian experience. How did you get saved? Did you get saved and supernaturally changed, and the spirit come into your life, because you worked hard and went to church and did good things - or did you get it because you heard the word of God and believed, and when you responded the spirit of God came? The answer's really clear. It was never by the works of the law. They were supernaturally transformed when the spirit of God came into their life.

He wants them to get that answer, because now he's going to ask them the real question. So he asks them the first question to get their head clear - how did you start in this game? Did you start by working hard to be a better person, or did you start by believing God? Well believing God. Great! He's asking now the real question he wants to ask, so then he goes on and he said: are you so foolish? You began in the spirit, and you think you'll become mature by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain? He says now, He that supplies the spirit to you, and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or the hearing of faith?

So you notice he's asking almost the same question, but he's applying it to something else. So the first one was like this: how did you get saved? How did you get your initial experience with God - work hard, or believe God? Which was it? Believe God.

Now he does it a different way, he asks the same thing. This time he says how does God supply the spirit to you? How does God do miracles among you? So in other words he's saying, how do the gifts of the spirit flow? How do miracles happen? Work hard, or hear God and respond? The answer's really clear isn't it? Now he's framed it up that way by appealing to how they started as a believer. They heard God's voice, heard God speaking to them and they chose to believe and respond, and they were into a flow of the spirit. It was supernatural. He said the moving in the spirit's the same way, it's exactly the same way. It's not by working hard. It's not by trying hard. It's by extending your faith to believe and listen to God, so here is why, if we want to move in the supernatural, we must practice hearing and identifying the voice of God. This is the significant key to operating in the spirit. It is the hearing of faith. I extend my faith to believe God will speak to me, I extend my faith to believe God wants to use me.

Now for some of you that may be a challenge, because it's easier to believe He'll use someone else, than use you, and the core challenge is: will you believe in your heart, actually there's no reason at all why God would not use me. There's no reason at all why He would not want to do this. God loves me, He's justified me, I'm accepted. He wants to work through me. He's designed me to work this way. Of course I believe, and I'll extend now to listen and hear His voice, expect to hear His voice - and I'm going to apply this when it comes to working with one another in the exercises. I'll get you starting to stir your faith to believe, and listen, and then stretch out to see what God does. That's how the activations will work, so for example - so always it involves faith, I must extend out and believe that God will work through me.

Secondly, I need to tune in to hear God speaking to me; and three, I need to step out and actually act on what God gives me. Think about how you got saved. You heard the word of God, faith rose to believe it to be true, and then you stepped out and acted by speaking out, or confessing Christ in some way, so the flowing in the spirit actually works the same way. It all works the same way, and so we just need to practice hearing the voice of God. In John 5, 19 to 20, Jesus answered and said: I tell you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but whatever He sees the Father do, that's what He does. So He says the Father tells him, or shows Him, everything He's doing, so Jesus' miracles were done by what He saw the Father doing. He just spoke out and did that. Notice He didn't heal every person. Sometimes He healed everyone, but you know there's a guy by the door of the temple, He walked past him every time He went into the temple and never did anything. Why was that? Because He never saw the Father healing on that day, but when Peter went by, after being baptised in the spirit, Peter looked at him and he worked a miracle and the guy was healed.

So was it the will of God for him to be healed? It certainly was, but there was a flow of the spirit that Jesus listened to. So He went to one place by the well, by the Bethsaida [a place reputed for its healing properties] and the porters there, and there's a whole heap of crippled people and one He heals. So why one? That's not very fair. I don't know. I don't understand all the ways God works. All we know is, He saw what the Father was doing, and did that. He avoided or resisted pressure to try and meet every need. He learned how to listen to the Holy Spirit and work with the Holy Spirit, so we're not called to fix all problems. We're not called to solve everything. We are called to learn how to yield, extend our faith, listen to God, and obey Him, and it's in the little things you get the miracles. Let me give you an example.

Before I was a Christian I was raised a Catholic. When I became a Christian I stopped going to the Catholic Church and started to attend another church, a spiritual church. It was a great offence to my grandmother, and she was deeply offended by it. We had some significant issues over that and anyway her birthday was coming up. I thought I need to get her something and my thinking in those days was you better make it up somehow, thought I'd get her a nice gift, so I went downtown. The day came and went and I got so busy I missed it. I thought oh no, double banger. [Laughter] I missed the birthday, and I didn't go to church and I'm going to hell, you know? This is not good [Laughter] so I thought then what I need to do then - my reasoning, which is not a good reasoning, was I need to buy a nice gift to make it up. Actually that would never make it up. You just couldn't appease the thing like that, but I did want to buy a gift anyway so I went to the shops and I was looking and I couldn't work out what to get.

I went past this shop and I felt the Holy Spirit say go in there. It was a religious shop, books and things, and I went in there and I looked around and there was stuff I didn't really like there. It was full of all kinds of stuff, and I was wrestling with God over it. I saw a little picture there and it was the shepherd with the sheep - you know the picture, I'm the good shepherd and there's a picture of a lovely shepherd, robes and Jesus [laughs] and he probably doesn't look anything like that, but that was the picture. Anyway I felt the Holy Spirit say I want you to buy that and I just resisted. I just really - I thought no, no, no, I don't even like those things. So I walked up the street, came back and I thought no, I can't see anything, I'll go back to the shop. So I went back, I thought I've got nothing to lose. I feel God's telling me, I'll just get it, I'm just going to get the picture.

So I bought the picture, and I bought some dried flower arrangement, and I put it all together, bundled it off with a note, sorry I missed your birthday, here's a little gift and blah blah blah. Anyway I met my grandmother a little later and I said to her did you get the birthday gift? She said yes, thank you very much, I really enjoyed the little dried flower arrangement. It was very, very pretty and smelled nice and so on. Oh good. I said what about the picture? She said oh, she said that did bring back some memories, and she said when I was at school in boarding school at the age of 12, a girlfriend and me got into trouble with one of the teachers. We wanted to try and put it right with the teacher, and so we decided we would buy a gift, and we bought that picture for her. [Laughter]

Now only God could come up with something like that. We're talking something like 60 years prior, and God knew what she did, and when she saw the picture it triggered the memory of trying to put something right in a relationship that was wrong, and she associated with my gift a desire to put right with her something that was wrong. Now only God could come up with stuff like that aye, so this is the blessing of being able to listen to the Holy Spirit on different situations. Okay, getting the idea? So we need to hear what God is saying. Alright then, so another example is found in Acts 14, Verses 8 to 10. Paul is in Lystra and a certain man without strength in his feet was sitting, a cripple from his mother's womb, he'd never walked, and the man heard Paul speaking. Paul - now notice what it says - Paul observed him intently, and saw he had faith to be healed. Now that's an interesting statement.

Paul fixed his eyes on the man - in other words he stared at him, and as he stared at him he perceived, that's in his spirit, that the man had faith to be healed. What does it look like if you've got faith to be healed? What would you be looking for? What would you be looking for? He perceived. In other words there was an inner knowing that this man had faith. He went to him and prayed and immediately the man rose up and was healed, so this is he saw something. So in flowing with the Holy Spirit, or hearing the voice of God, we begin to hear that sometimes we see things, sometimes we hear things, sometimes we will just perceive or sense something in our spirit. So let's now have a look, as we've seen how Paul operated, and we see how Jesus operated, and we see that it's by the hearing of faith that we can work in miracles. Now we want to look at how to hear the voice of God.

What does the voice of God sound like? So the first thing I want to do is to point out this, is that when you hear the voice of God, you will hear from within, not from without. God put His Holy Spirit within you. 1 Corinthians 6 and Verse 17 says he that's joined to the Lord is one spirit, so that's like a husband and wife being married. So being born again, your spirit is joined to the Lord, so if you're going to hear the voice of God you will hear Him in your spirit. You won't necessarily hear Him with your audible ears. You won't necessarily see anything with your natural eyes. You will have to develop your spiritual sense. Getting the idea? Okay then, now what I want to do is I'm just going to get three people up, and I want to just do a visual illustration for you to give you an idea of something - I want to put something visual in front of you, to help you understand something spiritual. So I won't refer to all the notes as I do it, but what I've got in the notes I will teach it by doing a visual demonstration for you. That okay?

Okay, so why don't we get three guys to come up. Can we get three guys? There we are, there's one there, Brian, two guys over here. Won't you guys come on up on the stage and just help me out here okay, help me out here. Alright then, so you don't have to do anything, you've just got to stand there, okay, so here we go. See, stand there and face over here, this is perfect. Come over and stand over here, face over here and you face over there. There we are, it's perfect, alright then, you can see everyone. Now God has designed us and we are body, soul and spirit. We're a spirit man; with a soul; living inside a body, so your body has five senses: see, taste, touch, we can interact with the physical world so we have physical senses and they will all feed into the soul.

Okay, I want you to just turn around this way here like this now, put your hand on his shoulders, and you put your hand on his shoulders. That's right - so if I'm interacting with Brian and connecting with Brian I see his physical body, and if I look into eyes I can see there's a person in there, but what is in there is the hidden man of the heart. The hidden man of the heart is found here. It's the soul, the mind, will, emotions, memories, personality and it's the spirit man. Okay. Now his spirit man, and everyone has a spirit dimension - you have a spirit being, a part of you which is spirit - the spirit man also has spiritual senses. So we just all turn around, face this way again. Okay, now the spirit man has spiritual senses. Just stand there, that's right. So his spirit man, dwelling inside him, energises his body. Your spirit is incredibly important.

The Bible says that if the spirit is absent from the body, a person's dead, so this is how important your spirit is. Your spirit energises and gives life to your soul and your body. Your spirit is a vital part of you, but your spirit has many functions, so one function of your spirit is to energise your soul and body. Your spirit quickens your body, because if your spirit is withdrawn from your body, the body dies, so your spirit's very important. If you spirit is wounded or damaged or hurt or injured you tend to get sick much more readily, and the Bible tells that. It says a broken spirit dries the bones, so if your spirit is damaged in some way, then it will affect your body and your body's health. Another aspect of your spirit is that your spirit illuminates your mind. See, it says the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, lighting up all the inner parts, so your spirit will illuminate your soul with ideas and thoughts. How many have ever had a hunch that turned out to be right? Where did the hunch come from? Oh, that's sixth sense. No it isn't, it's your spirit. The sixth sense is actually your spirit.

So when we get a hunch or an intuition, actually there's an idea come from our spirit that's come into our mind, that's what we're picking up and if you act on it then you start to find things happen, for example so we now see that we are designed to operate, we're quite unique. The soul area here is mind, will and emotions, and so your soul retains memories, memories of various experiences, so when you have a new experience you reference the old ones and come up with the conclusion. For example - we'll just turn all around this way again, face all this way. Now I went to Singapore one time and when I went to Singapore there was this dreadful smell, and I couldn't work out what the smell was. I had no reference point for it whatsoever, so I could smell, but there was no experience to attach it to. I couldn't recognise it. It was just an unknown horrible smell, then someone said oh - I said what's that smell? They said oh, that's Durian and they brought out this big fruit, and it's Durian, and it smelt! Some people love it, some people hate it and mostly you can't eat it in a building, it smells everything out.

Now prior to that I had no reference point. Next time I came around [sniffing sound] oh, Durian, you see because I could smell and the sense would then register and the mind and memory would raise up them something and I was aware that's what that means. That means Durian. That means a fruit. I had a picture, a smell and an experience to relate this to and so next time round, no trouble, Durian! Now just turn around and face this way again. Your spirit man will also pick up spiritual sensations, and they will go to the same place that the physical sensations went to. They go into your brain, into your memory, inside you, and your mind processes what you get, so as a unique person you can receive from the physical world and recognise things from a memory bank, but you can also receive from the realm of the spirit, and also build up experience so you quickly recognise different things. You quickly recognise a different kind of spirit. You quickly recognise various sorts of things. Why? Because you have developed your spiritual senses and built experience. Get the idea?

Paul writes in (or the Hebrew writer in) Hebrews 5:14 says: you remain immature, because you haven't exercised your spiritual senses to discern. You've got to practice to discern. Do you get it right every time? No. Why do we not get it right every time? Because our mind argues all the time, you know and I'll talk about that in a moment. Okay then, so if you just put your hand on his shoulder now and your hand on his shoulder over here. Right, that's right. So when you are born again the Holy Spirit comes in and becomes joined one spirit with the Lord, so we see in 1 Corinthians 6:17 very clearly, he that's joined to the Lord is one spirit. That's how close you are to Him all the time, so everywhere you go you carry the presence of God, and God knows all things, so in your spirit you know a lot, and you have access to the source of lots of things all the time, all the time. He's never going to leave you, never going to turn away from you. You have access all the time to the presence of God, all the time.

How do you get in tune with that access? You've got to silence all the noise that goes on in your head and tune in to your spirit. So now how am I going to hear the voice of God? Well the first thing it's helpful to think of is where am I going to hear Him? The first thing to recognise is you're not going to hear Him out here saying 'Hello, this is God." [Laughter] You're not going to get that and - just all turn and face this way - so if you go looking for signs and fleeces and all that kind of stuff, you're acting immaturely. That's not where we're to be looking for God outside us. It's not where He's to be found. He can be found inside you, so if you're going to grow in the things of the spirit, you have to develop what's inside you. Getting the idea? So you find many immature Christians are constantly looking for something outside them, looking for something shaking or moving or this or that or a feeling or anything, but they're looking in the wrong place, because the devil can manipulate circumstances, and manipulate everything around you. He can make storms happen. He can do all kinds of things.

So we don't look outside ourselves. We look to our spirit man, because that spirit man is joined to the Holy Spirit, and therefore has access to heaven. Put your hands all on one another like that. Okay now, here we go. So the physical man accesses the physical world, but through my spirit I can access the realm of heaven all the time, free to access the presence of God. I've just got to learn how that happens. Okay, so turn around now. We're going to show you how it happens. Turn around, put your arms on one another's shoulder like that. Okay, so if God is wanting to communicate to me, how will He do it? Very simply, the Holy Spirit will communicate with my spirit. How does He do it? Usually in one of three ways. Now He can do it many ways but there's usually one of three ways that there's direct spirit-to-spirit communication.

Here it is; number one, you see something. You don't see it with your natural eyes. The Holy Spirit puts a picture into your spirit, and that picture in your spirit rises up into your mind, or the Holy Spirit will speak a word into your spirit, and that word will rise up in your mind, or the Holy Spirit will just put an impression. You don't know how you know, but you just somehow know something. If I say: do you know you're saved? You say yes, of course I know I'm saved. How do you know? I don't know, I just know. Well the Bible tells me, but I know. I know. You know because there's an inward knowing. How do you inward know? Inward knowing is the witness of the Holy Spirit with your spirit, you're a child of God. It's an inner knowing. That's how you know you're saved.

Okay, so the Holy Spirit will do this, so if I'm going to be tuning into the voice of God here's the first thing. The first thing is, I have to quiet the noise. You have got noise all the time in your head. That's why I hate having headphones on, just noise in the head. Some people love it, and I don't mind listening to a certain amount of music, but I don't want my head to be full of noise of something else. So what kind of noise is in your head? All kinds of memories, all kinds of pictures, all kinds of experiences, things that have happened, all kinds of things in there. You have demonic voices talking to you, they fill your mind with accusation, condemnation, not good enough, who do you think you are? All that kind of stuff is noise, and the noise is a block to hearing God, so if I'm going to hear God I need to number one, know I'm going to hear from my spirit so I should activate my spirit by prayer, praying in tongues; secondly, I need to quiet my soul so that my mind is not busy and all over the place. Thirdly, I need to tune in to what will be spontaneous.

Now the language of your heart is different to the language of your head. The language of your head is logical, structured, line upon line, and it's thought through carefully. That's how the language of the mind works. Its logic, so for example if you're working out some mathematics you're logical - one, two, three, four. You're trying to work out where to put something, one, two, three, four. If you're trying to create something, now it's intuitive and you start to flow, so the way we're designed is like this. Amazing design God has given to us. We're designed to be supernatural, it's amazing. Your brain is divided into two hemispheres or two parts. With the left side it's the logic side, so if we got him doing some maths I suppose he can - do you do maths or something? Okay, suppose he can do maths, or he's trying to figure something out, and we put a brain scan on him and try to find out what part of his brain is busy, all the left side will be busy. If he's dreaming and imagining or creating it'll be the right side of his brain, so you're designed so that one part of you is logical and process oriented, one, two, three, four, blah, blah, blah, like that. The other part of you is intuitive. It gets ideas, there's flashes and ideas and things like that and it's creative, so if you're a creative person you'll be very active in this part. If you're a logical person you'll be very active in that part of your brain, but both sides exist for every person.

Now when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us what happens is, He imparts into our spirit, and which side of the brain do you reckon it comes up into? It comes up into the right, so what do you get? You just get spontaneous thought. You get a picture just pops into your mind, or you get a word just suddenly comes into your mind. So what happens immediately after that comes in, the other part of your brain takes over and starts to argue it down and dismiss it. Men are often quite bad at that, and their wives are often quite intuitive, so some of you may recognise - and we won't ask for any show of hands - of a decision making process where the husband felt this was the right thing to do and his wife said I don't know, I don't feel very happy about that. He says well why not? It's logical, it all works out and she says no, no, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. Well I can't work with that, you know, that's just unreasonable. You're right, it is unreasonable - it's intuitive. Then later on you go ahead and do it, and you find actually it was the wrong thing to do, because your wife had this intuitive impression, and it was of greater value in discerning what something was than your (my) mind was.

I'll give you another example. How many have met someone and they look good, sounded good but you just felt something was not right about this person? Something's creepy. That's the kind of language a woman would use - creepy [Laughter] you know, don't like that guy. I don't like him. You know, they say I don't like him, and the man may say what's wrong? There's nothing wrong with him. You know, he can't figure it out, but he's operating out of logic, what he can see, what he can hear and he's working on a reasoning basis. She's picking up intuitively from her spirit there's something not right about this person or situation, I don't feel right about it. Now you think about this in Colossians 3:15 it says let the peace of God be the umpire of your heart, so if you feel troubled and no peace in your spirit, then no matter what it looks like, you know it's going to be a problem. Initially you don't know that but you find out after you've had a number of experiences where you overruled your spirit, did something and then it didn't work out too good. You learn then actually listen to the voice of your heart more carefully.

Now we do need to work things out. We've got a capacity to do that. We should develop our mind and intelligence, but we need to also develop the intuitive side of us, so when God speaks to us it's very simple. I just calm down and quiet my soul to listen. I stir up my spirit through praying and focussing on the Lord, and as He speaks, spontaneous thoughts, pictures or impressions come into my soul, and I pick them up as an impression. Now you don't just do away with your brain and shoot your brain. You actually then enquire, so I'll give you an example of someone. I was talking to one person, and I had a word of knowledge they were extremely lonely and so I said I just feel an impression that actually you're struggling with a lot of loneliness. No, no, no, no, I'm not lonely. It came again, so I said it again. No, no, no, I'm not lonely. Now that's two denials, but it came again, and so I said in the end I actually feel you're quite lonely. I feel God's laying on my heart you're struggling with relationships and friendships, and you're lonely. God added me a little bit more. She broke down and began to weep, so I was right the first time, but the person tried to pretend that wasn't so, and just the impression kept coming and coming and coming.

So remember it was just an impression that came that I couldn't shake off, so when I gave voice to it then God was able to move. So the impressions that you get, your mind will always argue them. Your mind will act like that can't be so, it couldn't be true. Like you see a person smiling and God says they've got grief in their heart, and you look at them and you think no, sorry, got that one wrong. [Laughter] You see your mind tries to reason the flow of the spirit, so we need to learn how to train our mind to ask the right questions, so my spirit can receive information from the Holy Spirit that my mind would never know. The role of your natural mind then is to enquire, Holy Spirit, what does that mean? How do I work with that? What do You want me to do about that? So you enquire of God, rather than reason it all away. So there it is, it's not quite so difficult.

So why is it some people have trouble hearing the voice of God? Now the trouble that people have with hearing the voice of God falls it seems to me into two categories. It falls firstly into the people who are Dr Spock on Star Trek. They are totally head, and they just reason everything, everything's structured. Usually with a person like that, there's strong spirits sit around their mind, and they're disconnected from their heart. Often there's issues been in their life that have disconnected them. They many times need healing or deliverance or setting free, or training in how to engage with their heart, because they've lived out of their head and logic all their life, and they haven't developed their spiritual side. So very often there's spirits of rationalism and unbelief, rejection and all kinds of things sit around that person, but they can be set free, and they can develop the capacity of tuning in to spontaneity, to spontaneous ideas, to thoughts, to feelings, to impressions, and learning to recognise and identify and name them.

The other extreme is where you get someone who's often quite broken relationally, and everything is God, God told me this, God told me that, God told me this. Now it's like there's this flow where everything God told them. When you hear that, you know two or three things; number one, God isn't saying all those things. Number two, they're very broken people, and three, they've got major problems relationally, and so they're putting it all out there of God to portray some spiritual hotline. The reality is we don't hear God talking all the time that clearly. We have impressions and we learn to be led by... God gives you wisdom to run your life without Him having to tell you what to do. He doesn't tell you what to put on your shopping list. It's your job to figure that one out. He doesn't tell you what colour you should paint something. He gives you room to be creative. He doesn't tell us everything to do in our life, or we're like a puppet being told what to do. He actually works with us in a relationship where we work with Him, He's the senior partner and He guides us, but He gives us room to participate in life, so you've got to learn to find the things that you yourself have and own them, rather than say it's all God.

When I hear people saying God told me this, God told me that, I know one, God isn't telling them all those things; two, there's just a big show, and I'm not meeting the real person; three, there's brokenness inside. They really need help. A person like that usually is unstructured in their life, and create havoc in a church where you're trying to flow and develop things in the spirit. You have to actually bring them into discipline where they have to learn to structure their life and stop just listening to every impression that comes, because they've got turmoil in the soul, and haven't learnt to filter out what's God and what isn't. So both extremes happen, but none of you are in that extreme. You're all here in that happy group who will just be opened up to listen to God, aren't we wonderful? Okay then, so again just summarising it again: when God speaks He speaks into our spirit, get the idea? And it'll come up as an impression which comes into your mind, and then you just focus on that, and then begin to speak and act on what God gives you.

As you speak and act on it, then the spirit of God moves, and that's when people get touched. Okay? Well let's give them a clap and thank them for helping out. [Applause] Good stuff, thank you. Okay, so are you getting an idea now about how all of this works, because I want you to understand it clearly and [laughs] there, we'll see. Now I want to just give you two or three examples out of the Bible just to support what I've been saying, then we'll get you to do an activation, how about that? [Silence] Oh, there was a lot of enthusiasm there, that's right! [Laughter] Okay, so again this is not in your notes today but it will be there tomorrow, so let me just give you a few examples. You might want to just jot them down if you wish to, but let me just give them.

The first one is found in Habakkuk, Chapter 2, Verse 1. He said I will stand on my watch, and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what the Lord will say to me. Notice this word, I will watch to see what God will say. So he did a couple of things. Number one, he positioned himself to be quiet. This is important to hearing the voice of God, you've got to quiet yourself down, so when I get to do activations with you we'll get you to do a couple of things. One of the things we'll get you to do is to pray in tongues so your spirit becomes energised, alive with the flow of the Holy Spirit. The second thing we'll get you to do, is just be quiet and focus your attention to just listen for a flow of spontaneous thoughts that come, then the third thing is we'll get you to then identify what you're thinking or feeling or what's happening, and speak it out.

Okay, so Habakkuk positioned himself to hear God, quietened himself, and then he focussed on intuitive flow of seeing, hearing. That's how he got it, and he was able to discern it. God spoke to him by a picture. In 1 Samuel 3:10, you remember the story of Samuel, and Samuel was lying down, and the Lord came and spoke to him and said Samuel! Samuel! And he jumped up and ran to Eli. Why did he jump up and run to Eli? Very simply, he heard something so strongly he thought it was Eli. He didn't recognise that it was God's voice, so it takes time to recognise the voice of God speaking to you. You've got to practice until you get used to oh, that is the voice of God, I'm recognising Him speaking to me. I know that's God speaking - and there are a number of ways we can get that. A third example there is in Mark 2, Verse 8, it says Jesus perceived in His spirit that they were reasoning. He perceived in His spirit they were reasoning, so it was He knew something. Now what was going on, get the picture, Jesus is speaking - now get this - He worked out what they were thinking. How did He figure out what they were thinking? He felt it in His spirit what they were thinking.

Now you've probably had an experience like that, where you were talking with someone, or they were talking, and then suddenly you felt something about that person, a thought rose up. You just perceive it in your spirit. You can't shake it off, you just know you can feel it's there. So the third example is the one we saw at Acts 14:9, where Paul looked at the man intently and saw he had faith to be healed. How did he see it? He perceived it in his spirit. There was a knowing inside, so you'll discover then that all of the moving in the spirit, moving in the supernatural, comes out of intimacy or connection with the Holy Spirit, where we learn to recognise His voice and act on it. The more you act on it, the easier it is to recognise. The more you practice walking with God and listening and responding to His impressions, the more easily it comes to you. It's like Jesus said, if you have ears to hear, more will be given. If you don't have ears to hear, even the little you have you lose, so it's like you have to use it or lose it. You've got to continually develop listening to God in your personal private life, so it flows out of devotion.

Okay then, so the last thing I'll finish this session with, and then we'll get you to do something. There are other ways that people receive revelation of course, but what I want to show is just some things about the revelations God gives. There are a couple of checks that you want to run by anything that you think God has given you, and here's what they are. Number one - so these are tests of revelation. If you think you've got something from God - you'll find this on Page 19 in your notes - number one, does it agree with the Bible? If it doesn't agree with the written word of God, the Holy Spirit wrote the written word of God; will He who wrote that Bible tell you something different to what He wrote? Not going to happen, so if you come up with a revelation, and you say that God has spoken to you this thing, but it's contrary to what the written word of God says, you got it wrong. You've actually just got it wrong, and it's come either just as a random thought, it's come out of your own desires or thoughts and perhaps that's how you got it - but you got it wrong.

If it disagrees with the Bible it didn't come from God. You've got to have the Bible as your standard for testing all revelation, so you know, if you find that you've got something, and you think God's told you to do this and you find it's completely the opposite to what the word of God says, you got it wrong. If you keep getting it wrong, you should go and get some counsel to sort out if something's going on inside you. Getting the idea? So if people come to you and say: God told me to do this and it's very clear, you know, God told me it was okay, we're in love, we can sleep together, you know, hello, give me a break! [Laughter] You're not married, you know? The Bible says those that commit fornication shan't inherit the kingdom of God, so He's not going to tell you that it's going to go good for you, personally, if He's told you in the written word something different. Use the Bible. You've got to become familiar with the Bible, load yourself up, read the Bible, get familiar with the Bible and automatically you'll be filled with thoughts of God that are useful in ministering to people - very helpful.

Okay, the second thing is does it line up with the character of God? Is that something that God would be likely to do, you know, like the devil took Jesus up into a high mountain and said come on, the word of God says cast yourself down, there's angels will take care of you, you want to jump. In other words, I'll put it another way - he was standing on a high place and said go on, jump, it'll be okay, you'll just float to the ground. You see this is contrary - it may have been what the words said, but actually it was a misrepresentation of the nature of God. Interesting thing, God seldom takes someone and suddenly moves them from here up to some big thing. God grows you step by step, so it's not the nature of God to want you to suddenly show yourself off in some big way or public exhibition, or to make a big scene of any kind, or to do something spectacular. He just grows you little by little by little, so if it doesn't seem like it's the nature of God, it probably isn't.

Then finally - or two other things - does it produce good fruit? So one way of testing a revelation is if the fruit of it is good. That's why we'll teach you to ask after you've prayed or ministered to someone hey, how did that go? What did you sense as a result of me sharing with you these things? In other words just get a bit of feedback. The person says well that was great man, it really helped me, touched me - you get feedback. If there's fruit from God it's always good. Fruit from heaven is gentle and reasonable, open to reason. If for example you get someone who says well just God told me, and you can't reason with them, that is definitely not God, because the Bible says in James, the wisdom that comes from heaven is quite easily entreated. You can appeal and talk and interact, so we'll teach you when it comes to ministering a word from God that, just do it gently, don't say well God told me like you're the authority in the earth. Just hey listen, I just sense this or I just felt this or I had an impression, maybe God, about this. In other words just do it much more low key. It's easier for you to interact with the person, easier for them to receive as well, not so dogmatic, okay?

The final one is, if it comes from God it will bear witness with your spirit. When something is right your own spirit bears witness to it. How many have had someone tell you something - I taught Michelle what to do but Michelle had some guy come up to her, said oh God's told me that I'm going to marry you. Now what does she feel straight away? Now this is the dilemma when some guy carries on like that. A good Christian girl wants to please the Lord, now he's saying God's told me this thing and she doesn't feel it in her heart, but she wants to please God. You throw people into turmoil with that kind of stuff. It's very manipulative. I said to her tell him just straight, God didn't tell me that, so goodbye. [Laughter] In other words own your own life. I said he can think what he thinks, and he can say what he says, but actually if it doesn't witness with your spirit, don't go with it.

I've seen many people trapped into relationships, into business deals, if they'd listened to their spirit, they'd have never been happy about it, but they kind of got impressed that someone was very prophetic or very spiritual. How did they get impressed? Because they projected it out that they were, but the wisdom from God is easily entreated. It's gentle and pure, and it produces good fruit. One of the things it'll witness with your spirit, so if something doesn't register as being right, then just say well thank you very much, but no thanks, I'm not going to go with that. You can thank the person, be polite, you don't have to be rude, but we don't need to receive things that aren't right, so let your own spirit bear witness with that, whether this bears witness of good fruit or not. Okay now, why don't we just stop now and I'll get you to stand up and turn around and sit down and we're going to give you an activation.

Okay then, now what I want to do in this session, first of all I want to get you all to do an activation. I'll just show you what it is in just a moment, and then I'll introduce you to activations and how they work. After that we're going to talk about how to activate the gifts of the spirit in your life, so I'll do the teaching session how to activate the gifts, after we've actually got you to step out and have a try, so we'll get started first of all and then we'll talk about the specific things. Then we'll have a chance for some questions and hopefully just finish around about 9.30. So I want to just do a simple activation. Now this is a very, very simple one, and in this one here what we're going to do is we want to just pray an inspired prayer so I could just - Henrietta, just come on up here please. Can I just practice on you? There we go, so Henrietta comes up, there we go and so this is the kind of process.

Now with all of these activations, the thing to remember is now we're just practising. Practising means we're stepping out to have a turn. We're getting on the bike to see if we can ride it, and even if we wobble eventually we'll get going and we'll be riding the bike, so we're just having a practice. The first thing I'd like you to do in any activation is to ask with a smile, hey, can I practice on you? Great, that's right, so you get a very positive response, yeah, great, go, do it! Great job, you know, I want, because hunger and expectancy from a person can draw from you, can help you when you're learning how to flow in the spirit, see? Always remember this, that God wants to speak to them and bless them and help them because He loves them - so it's not about you. It's actually about God being loving and the person needing to be touched by God. It's not about you at all. You're just actually the channel through which it happens, so what we're going to do, I could ask her something like well what would you like me to pray for and ask what her need is and get her to tell me her need. That's one way we can pray. You're used to doing that, well what's your need and so forth.

Or what I could do is just ask the Lord to drop into my heart a simple thought that will be the basis of what I will pray. It could be a picture, could be a word, could be just an impression to pray about a certain area, okay? So I need to do, so the steps that we'll take is number one, we just say hey, can I practice on you? Yeah, a very positive response, that's great. Now I'd like to take the persons hand, just make a connection with them. So the first thing it's helpful to do is just if you begin to exercise or stir up your spirit. The key in this remember is listening, just listening to your heart, so I'm going to break it down very, very slowly because if I do it slowly then you can see what's going on inside me. I'll explain it and then you'll see me doing it, okay, so we'll try and pull it apart for you.

So the first thing I would do is just, at this stage, I'll just begin to pray in tongues, and as I'm praying in tongues my inner man is starting to come alive, so I'm becoming stirred up. I become aware of God see, because when you pray in the spirit your spirit comes alive. Your spirit is praying. Your spirit is being built, so if I was to just - so I need to now close off my mind to busyness. I've got to stop thinking you're all looking at me and what if I get it wrong stuff, you know, all that sort of stuff, the what ifs. You've got to shut down what-if messages in your head. They stop you receiving God. The way to shut them down is to just redirect your focus. If I focus on myself then I'll start to fill with fear and my spirit will close, and now I'm not going to get anything, because I need to get it from my spirit, but if my spirit's closed because of fear I'll get nothing. I need to stay relaxed, and the best way to stay relaxed is not to focus on me, but to focus on how much God loves this person.

I might just begin to meditate on how much God just loves her, how important she is. I'm sure that God who loves her, really does want to talk with her, so I just keep my attention fixed, and I'm expecting God to give me something, see? So ask for permission, calm yourself down, stir up your spirit man with expectation, then begin to reach out for God to give you something, and you're looking for a spontaneous word or thought or impression. Then you're going to turn that into a simple prayer, so you have to start at some point - so right now I'm still trying to get something. [Laughter] But it's okay because I'm very aware and I totally believe God knows all about her, God knows exactly what she needs right now. I'm convinced God wants to do this. I just have to relax and wait on Him. Now I'm slowing the whole process down, so you can see it taking place see, then in a moment I'll just get an impression will just come, and just as I was talking an impression came just then. One word just dropped into my mind; I'm talking to you, suddenly a word just drops into my mind like that.

That word is a seed. When God gives you something, He only gives you the seed. You have to actually step out with what you've got and start the journey, trusting God that as you share what you've got that He will give you more, and a flow of the spirit will take place. That's the risky bit isn't it aye? That's the bit, but if you've got nothing to lose, it's only a practice, so I can focus instead of worrying about whether I pass/fail I can just focus on being kind and praying for her, see? So now because I've got a word God expects me to use a measure of intelligence. He doesn't want me to be a puppet, so therefore He expects me now having given me an insight what to pray for, that I would pray with some sense about that, so I'll have to start praying, well just I'll pray generally, and then I'll start to pray about what God has given me, okay? So I'm just going to start, you know, so you start to say something - you've just got to start a flow, and as you start the flow and remain just fixed on the Lord, you'll get the words will start to come.

Alright then, so I have in the moment just one word so I'll just put my attention on that word, and I'm starting to feel things now, so I'm just going to pray for her. I could prophesy this but I'll actually just turn it into prayer, because I want it to be really simple, because every one of us can pray, and mostly if you ask people if you can pray for them they'll say yes. Okay, so here we go. Father, I just thank You for Henrietta. That's a good way to just get started, see, quite easy to start the flow, something simple like that. Then I'll start to move to what I felt God give me, and as I stay focussed on that and relax and let my heart flow to her, there'll be a language just come forth. Don't try and work it out in the head, just let my heart flow to her. Alright then, so just again just focus - I can see the word again. Father, I just thank You for Henrietta, thank You Lord You love her, and that Lord, You will never leave her to be on her own and alone. Lord, I ask that You will just touch her in the depths of her being, and heal the loneliness that she's been experiencing and feeling for some time. Pray Lord she'll feel Your presence loving her, comforting her, and reassuring her, that You are always with her. Lord, let Your presence and love just flow over her right now, in Jesus' name. Oops, have to hold on to you, you'll be going over. Alright then, now did anyone work out what the word was that the Lord gave me? Loneliness, okay, so you see how I just started generally, and as I began to meditate in that word I could just feel all this grief around her, grief of loneliness and that's been something around her life, and God is wanting to heal the loneliness and just have her reassured He's there. [Laughs] What are you feeling? Just tell us what you're experiencing just as a result of doing this.

[Henrietta] [Laughs]

[Pastor Mike] Okay, just take your time, its okay. It's alright to cry, because God is touching her in a real area of her life. What did you feel or sense?

[Henrietta] That God is with me - and that's what I needed.

[Pastor Mike] Right. You needed to know tonight God is with you.

[Henrietta] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Isn't that wonderful. Has there been loneliness or struggle, a sense of being on your own?

[Henrietta] There's been a sense of it and in it though I have - I'm aware that He's there. I just needed more of an awareness of that, a deeper, greater level.

[Pastor Mike] Right, you need a deeper, greater level that...

[Henrietta] Of knowing that He is...

[Pastor Mike] ...He is there, alright then.

[Henrietta] ...right in the middle of it all.

[Pastor Mike] Okay then, well why don't we just help you with that now? Peter, get ready to catch her in a moment, because I could feel the spirit of God coming on you. As you close your eyes, I want you to just use your imagination to see that Jesus is just there, right in front of you. He's there with you right now, and His presence is going to come and just touch you, just in a moment. Thank You Lord, You're just coming on her life right now, Your presence just touching her. Lord, just fill her with love. Let Your peace just come on her now. Receive - there it is, very simple, whoa, wonderful presence of God just over her. Just enjoy the Lord.

So when we move this way, people start to experience God. Nice to feel that isn't it aye? [Laughter] Nice to do. That's why we come along. It doesn't matter about all the teaching, we just want to feel God. [Laughter] Okay then, so I pulled it apart, and kind of broke it down into bit by bit by bit so you can sort of see it, but actually when you work and operate it's altogether like that, and it's just relaxed and natural. So the biggest problem in flowing in the spirit is becoming focussed on yourself, and on yourself failing. If your mind goes there, I can tell you now, your spirit will close, and it's very difficult to function, so part of the discipline is to realise the gifts of the spirit are given to us to profit others, so if your attention is on the giver, and the other, and away from yourself, the flow takes place more easily.

So here's what we will do. We'll get you all to pair up with someone you don't know that well, take their hand and smile, can I practice on you? They will say yes! [Laughter] Yes, do your best! [Laughter] Make it a very positive encouraging experience, okay, then what we'll do is we'll just pray in tongues quietly together, then go quiet and you just focus. You're just waiting to receive something, an idea, a thought, a picture, an impression - no big thing, just something simple. Then when you've got that something, just focus on it, then launch out and start praying for the person around what God has shown you, right? I'll just do it one more time. Come on Brian, come on up. Could I practice on you Brian?

[Brian] Sure can.

[Pastor Mike] Awesome, that's fantastic, great, so let me take your hand then. Again I just begin to reach out, and begin to start to focus on the Lord, let my attention be set on Him. [Prays in tongues] Begin to pray in tongues and become conscious of the presence of God, then I'm looking for something, and immediately a word came to me just like that, just a word just dropped into my mind. So now that I know the word's come, now how do I use that? What does God want me to do with that? So I'll start generally, and as I start talking, just relax and lead into what God gave me expecting it to grow and get more - Father, I thank You for Brian. I thank You love him and Your hand is upon his life. That's the general bit see? It's getting started. [Laughter] Father, I just thank You love him, I thank You Your presence is with him. Father, I just pray for an increase in confidence in his life, confidence in hearing Your voice, confidence in flowing with You. I pray Lord in his walk with You, he will greatly grow in his ability to hear Your voice, grow in the confidence of Your power and presence with him, that Lord, he will become bold in moving and ministering in the things of the spirit. Father, let that boldness and confidence just begin to come over his life right now. In Jesus' Mighty name, touch him Lord.

Notice the presence of God just coming on him now - ooh! [Laughs] Because once you speak, the presence of God comes upon your speaking, in Genesis it says the spirit of God brooded over creation, then when the word came, then the spirit of God began to move, so you've got to learn to speak with confidence. Father, I just thank You for him right now - just lift your hands up to the Lord and [laughs] the power of God is here tonight! POWER of God touch his life right now, and there it is. Alright then, so we can teach you how to do that too [Laughter] tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. All of these things can be learnt. I would not have you be ignorant, or just not know. God's plan is that we know what to do, and we'll help you over these two days, tonight and tomorrow, how to do it, but I need you just to step out and have a practice. Now whether you get it right or wrong is not important at all. There's no right and wrong, or worrying about it.

What I want you to do is have the experience of reaching out to pray and minister to someone, and you're leaning on listening to God to get what to say. He will only give you a bit of it, and you've got to actually take the step and put some language with what you've got - so what was the word that God gave me? Confidence, so what is it about that? Did he lack it? Did he need it? That's what I was asking God. Well he lacked it, and he needed it, and God wanted to grow him in confidence; what area? Around the operations of the spirit. Okay, so how was that for you? Was that okay? It was right on? Isn't that good aye, thank You Jesus. [Laughter] Like I say, we're all practising. [Laughter]

So there's no pass/fail in this, there's just try, try and try again and we'll practice. So remember the first and most important thing is to say: can I practice on you? And we do want a smiley face you know. [Laughter] Yeah, come on, encourage me, I'll do the best - and then we'll pray together, I'll lead you through it step by step, and then you go for it. Okay, are we ready? So let's get someone ready to go, come on, get someone to practice on. [Background chat] Have you got someone to practice on? If you haven't got someone to practice on raise your hand and then look for someone who's got their hand raised. Down there, two people. Okay, we all ready? Okay then.

Alright, now I want you all just to listen and walk with me step by step okay? So the first thing is smile at the person and say this: do you mind if I practice on you? Give a nice smiley response. Okay. Anyone missing someone to pray for them? You could - mm? You can go in threes or you can pray for me. [Laughs] That'll be great. I'll come down. Okay then, so are we ready? Everyone's asked if you can practice? Alright, now take their hand, just make the personal contact, take their hand and then when you've taken their hand then we close our eyes and begin to just pray in the spirit, pray in tongues or pray whatever way you're able to. Set your attention towards the Lord. Keep your eyes open so you can see. Okay, praying in tongues, [Prays in tongues] yeah, you pray for me.

So what you do is you then focus your attention on the Lord. He loves this person so much, He just loves them. They're very precious to Him. He wants to give you something, make you aware of a need or something to pray for, so listen now, expecting Him to give you something, a word, a picture, just a thought, an impression. Don't try and work it out, what does this person need. Just God, You speak to me. As soon as you get something lock on it, just focus on it. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Then when you're ready, just one person starts out first in a short prayer, no big long prayers, just use what God gave you to pray a simple short prayer, then change over. Okay?

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] I just thank You for Mikes willingness to serve You and to give his life to help to strengthen us in the Lord. Lord, I just thank You that You have given him this passion in this teaching, and I just pray that You'll bless him mightily, that You'll continue to work through him Lord, and show him new ways and revelations of how he can strengthen the church in the Lord, how he can strengthen all of us in You Lord and that You may empower him and enable him in his ministry Lord, to do even greater works than he's ever done before, that You Lord will be glorified through him. Lord, we just pray that You'll continue to strengthen him in the Lord, Lord and through that he can strengthen us and we thank You in Jesus' name.

[Pastor Mike] Amen, thank you, wonderful. Very good.

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] Ok, all I got was 'strengthen us in the Lord'...

[Pastor Mike] That's right.

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] ...oh gosh, that's new.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, but it's all you needed to do, is just you take what you feel, and always start to work with that. Did you notice once you started it started to flow?

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah, so just relax. You don't have to be so fast. You can just relax in it all, and feel the flow, okay?

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] My mind usually goes quite fast...

[Pastor Mike] I know, yeah.

[Person praying for Pastor Mike] ...and I speak fast then...

[Pastor Mike] Okay and then you speak fast, okay. Well if you just keep your mind relaxed and centred on Him, and you'll get the flow quite easily, but that was good. That was good. Thank you very much. Now let me pray for you. Can I practice on you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, you'll want to watch then.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] I pray with my eyes open, yes.

[Pastor Mike] [Laughs] Good, good, good. Okay. Thank You Lord, thank You Jesus, [Prays in tongues] I'm praying in tongues. [Laughs]

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] I don't know if I recognise the language or not [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] You're brilliant. Thank You Lord. Father, I thank You for my sister. I thank You Lord for her humility, and her desire and hunger to learn, and You see her heart and You know the desire she has to be effective for You. I pray Lord You would unusually gift her with revelation, so she would accurately and precisely get insights and words of knowledge about people, and words of encouragement to pray for them. Father, I release Your presence around her life to do this, in Jesus' name, Holy Ghost, amen.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Thank you. Wonderful aye?

[Pastor Mike] Yes. Okay...

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] We had an odd number...

[Pastor Mike] Yes, sometimes that happens, maybe an extra one tonight or tomorrow. Okay, have you all had a turn now, all practised? Ask the person how did that feel to you? Get some feedback how it went. How did it go? It was good.

[Female participant 1] She did good. She's a very new Christian.

[Pastor Mike] Oh right, excellent.

[Female participant 1] but she did really well.

[Pastor Mike] That's okay, you did well. Well done.

[Female participant 2] Really when you did what you did it really touched me. I found it hard but a word came to me there that I hope was right for her.

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful. Well, it was?

[Female participant 1] Yes, yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Very good. Isn't that good?

[Female participant 2] Can I tell him what the word was?

[Female participant 1] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Yes?

[Female participant 2] It was Love.

[Pastor Mike] Oh good.

[Female participant 2] I don't know what the reason was but...

[Pastor Mike] Very good.

[Female participant 2] I'm just touched by it all, quite emotional.

[Pastor Mike] Yes. Yes, well you're feeling the presence of God touching you, and we feel it's not in the head, it's in your heart. You'll feel His love, and so when you feel that, you begin to start to weep. It's not uncommon for people when they start to feel God to start to weep, and they don't know why they're weeping, it could be many reasons, just because we feel loved. Most people go through life struggling to be loved, to be good enough to be loved, but when it suddenly comes without anything, it's just undeserved, you're just given, it actually can just cause you just to weep and weep and weep and not be able to stop, not know why. So don't try and work it out in your head. Just enjoy that you're feeling God touching you, see?

[Female participant 2] I've prayed the last 18 months - because I'm a new Christian, I've prayed the last 18 months to feel and hear the voice of God and it's been in my heart...

[Pastor Mike] And here you are. How wonderful. Why don't you come over here and let me just pray for you. Okay, just stand behind her, that's right. I want you just to close your eyes and as I pray for you you will start to feel the presence of God come on you. Lord, I just thank You. I thank You for my sister's love for You, and her desire for You. Lord, let heaven open over her tonight, and day after day in this next season ahead, let her begin to feel the presence of Your wonderful love. Touch her Lord right now, in Jesus' name. Fill her with that love, in Jesus' Mighty name. Let it overwhelm her - and I feel the Lord showing me that growing up you had to work so hard to be good enough. It was like it was a constant struggle ever to be good enough, and I see words being spoken over you, and the words seem to be no matter how hard you try, the words were so critical of you. It's like someone's finding fault in every little thing, and it was heartbreaking, because no matter how hard you tried it was just as though, I'm never going to be good enough, and you've struggled and wrestled with this for years. So the way you've worked to deal with that is by serving people and doing things for people, but no matter how much you've done, it feels like it's still never enough. God wants you to know He loves you. He loves you, He embraces you and celebrates you. He cares about you. Amen.

[Female participant 2] Thank you. Gosh, you are so right.

[Pastor Mike] [Laughs]

[Female participant 2] Now I know it's God.

[Pastor Mike] Yes, see?

[Female participant 2] That's incredible.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah, this is actually word of knowledge, and then prophetic word flowing together, so God showed me the pictures and I could see you as a younger girl, and someone going like this and speaking words, and how difficult and painful it was. Then as you've grown I can see how you've struggled in this area, and God wants you to have it freely that He loves you. I'm so glad you came. [Laughs] Okay, let's just draw everyone in. Alright then, so if we could just get you all just to be seated again, just gets out of the camera line. Great, okay then.

Now how many experienced that the prayer that was prayed for you, was just so right for you, it was just the right thing? How many had that experience? Whoa! Look at all those hands. Come on, let's give you all a clap. [Applause] That's really wonderful. Okay, how many felt emotions as the person prayed for you, that really touched your heart? How many felt that? Whoa! Look at all those hands! Come on [Applause] that's fantastic, wonderful. Okay then. So how many, when you stepped out to pray, you were thinking, it just seems like it's just me but I'll do it anyway? [Laughs] How many had that happen? Come on, be honest about that, that's right. Okay and there's a part in which it was you, because you've had to give expression to something God was giving you, so it was a thought in your head, so you identified it as your thought, and you had to speak it. That's why you think it's just your thoughts, but we can receive thoughts from our heart, we can receive thoughts from the Holy Spirit, we can receive thoughts which are demonic - but we're in an atmosphere of faith and expectancy, and so even though you may have doubted that it was God, and didn't recognise it was God, I got everyone to put their hands up to say that they were touched by what you shared. So you know that even though it felt like it was just you, for the person receiving, they got a touch from God, through your prayer.

So you come to realise God could be speaking through me and I don't recognise it, because I didn't sort of feel anything big. Remember, it wasn't for you. It was for them, so that's where there's this faith element in it, where we're trusting God because God is good, God loves people, God wants to help and encourage people, God is willing to use any person to do that. We believe that, therefore without us feeling any great emotions, God can work through us, and we don't necessarily feel anything except maybe later on, oh, I wish I hadn't done that [Laughs] But actually God touched someone in spite of that, and after a while you'll learn to work with the Holy Spirit without needing to feel any great feelings or experiences. We operate by faith. Getting the idea? Okay.

How many enjoyed that as good starter exercise? It wasn't to hard was it aye? See, so what we'll do is we'll gradually grow the experiences you have, but it all works off the same thing; activating your spirit, settling your mind, listening for the spontaneous, identifying it, and then sharing what you have, and allowing if there's more comes to let the more come, and then when you feel it stops flowing just stop. We'll get you to do more and more of that. You might be quite surprised how easily you'll receive. Remember, you're made for this. This is not foreign. This is only a little unusual because you haven't done it, but it's actually how you are designed - that's why we laid the Bible foundation, you're designed for this, okay? I had the privilege of praying for a dear lady here tonight, and you got quite touched too didn't you? Yeah, felt the presence of God. Why don't you come up and just share with everyone what happened? Come on, just come on up here where everyone can see you, that's right. You were telling me how you're a new Christian, is that right?

[Female participant 2] Yes, I am, yes. I did an alpha course at the Village Baptist in Havelock North, and I was brought up a Catholic.

[Pastor Mike] Wow.

[Female participant 2] I had a faith that never really grew. I believed in God from being born...

[Pastor Mike] Right, yes.

[Female participant 2] ...being a little girl, and I was in a strict family, and never quite good enough. I was married and again, in that relationship, I could never quite match up to what I was expected to be. As a new Christian I've now got a faith that's a living faith, and it's within me, rather than fear of hell and damnation and it's alright...

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful.

[Female participant 2] ...if you give to charities and live a good life, but that's not what it's all about. It's a warm contented feeling now...

[Pastor Mike] With God, yeah. So she was sharing with me how she's a Christian for 18 months and had been praying to hear the voice of God and experience Him, for 18 months. She's come tonight wanting to hear the voice of God and experience His love, and she was feeling emotional after I prayed for someone else, so I offered to pray for her, and when I prayed for her God began to give me some words of knowledge.

[Female participant 2] I'm getting very hot. [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] Hot is good. [Laughter and applause] Hot is good, hot is the spirit of God resting on you, yeah. Okay - and the word that the Lord gave me, was that she struggled to be good enough, and that from when she was very young she was criticised and was never found to be good enough and had struggled all her life to be good enough. God wanted her to know He accepted her and loved her. Isn't that wonderful? Now only God could know those sorts of things, and of course as I spoke then she began to be quite touched - and you're still being touched at the moment...

[Female participant 2] I am, yes.

[Pastor Mike] ...yeah.

[Female participant 2] Apart from the fact that I've got the most beautiful and caring and loving husband now that's helped me find the Lord, given me peace and contentment which I've never known, and he has helped the Lord...

[Pastor Mike] Let's give him a clap shall we? That's fantastic. [Applause] Good on you. I'm so glad you came - so undoubtedly over tomorrow there'll be a lot more of this happen, and that's what we came for. We came to hear the voice of God, and to be able to flow with the Holy Spirit, and you see the tremendous blessing you can be, if you can interact with people and get something from God, that only God knows, that can touch their heart. I'll practice with you tomorrow and whatever I ask you to do I'll do it for you first, so you can see it operating, then you practice and have a turn at it, okay?

Well we're getting near the end of the evening, so perhaps rather than do any more, perhaps we'll just give an opportunity if any of you had some questions you wanted to ask. We may cover it tomorrow of course, but some of it we may be able to cover just right now, so if you have any questions you wanted to ask - I think one or two had some. In the break they came up to me, so if you had a question to ask and if you could stand and speak it out, and I'll repeat it so that the camera picks it all up, and do my best to answer it. There's no bad questions, but there can be inadequate answers, so I will do the best I can to answer well, as best I can. So anyone who had some questions they wanted to ask before we finish this session? Yes, okay then, thank you.

[Male participant 1] My question is about the soul.

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Male participant 1] When you were talking, you interchange the words soul and mind...

[Pastor Mike] Mm-hm.

[Male participant 1] ...and memory. Now to me mind means brain...

[Pastor Mike] Right, yes.

[Male participant 1] ...which is where memories are stored.

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Male participant 1] But when you die and your brain dies and goes into the ground, that means your memory's gone, but according to scripture it persists.

[Pastor Mike] Exactly.

[Male participant 1] So presumably then the memory is somehow bound up in spirit.

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Male participant 1] So that means soul is spirit, so that man has to...

[Pastor Mike] No, no. No, the Bible - yeah...

[Male participant 1] ...so could you explain what happens to memories when a person dies? Is it material, or is it spirit? If it's material that's gone forever, if it's spirit and those memories are in your soul, then a spirit is soul and its like two spirits. Can you explain a bit more about that?

[Pastor Mike] Sure. Firstly although it's useful to consider spirit, soul and body as three separate things, they are actually quite integrated together. In other words you separate your spirit and soul from your body, then your body dies. The Bible talks that it requires the word of God to separate your soul and spirit, Hebrews 4, so clearly the soul and the spirit are quite closely bound together. When Jesus talked about the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man died and was buried, and the Bible says he awoke in hell virtually. Now in hell he had memories. He remembered his family, he remembered his brothers, he remembered Lazarus, he remembered the experiences. There's no indication it was a parable, so it's quite likely it was a real person, so the insight that we would get from that, is that when a person dies, their soul which is separate but connected to their spirit, carries with it the memories of their life.

Your spirit and soul use your body to interact with the physical world, so my understanding of memories, is that experiences that we have are imprinted chemically in the brain, and so there's a chemical imprint left from experiences. In fact actually your memories are made up of the chemical imprints that go into the brain, but there must be a retaining of them. There must be a mind of the spirit, there must be some way that all of these things are retained in such a way that when you die, even though your brain now ceases to function and returns to dust, the person still has all their consciousness. So it would appear to me as though, according to scripture, your soul and spirit are separate but strongly connected, requiring the word of God to separate and work out the difference. It seems to me as though the soul, when you enter the spirit life, your spirit man, the soul is the person residing therein there, the body seems to be used by spirit and soul as a way of engaging and living in the physical world - quite interesting that demonic spirits, when they enter a person will enter in and get involved in the body part of the person, or around the soul in some kind of way, seems to affect both areas.

So the Bible isn't clear on all aspects of how it works, but it does seem to indicate that spirit, soul and body are quite distinct, yet they are integrated to work together. They will separate at your death, but be reunited in resurrection. How God does it all I really can't answer, I can only give as much as I have learnt from the Bible, or learnt through some of the stuff we've looked at in the science field. Science has been able to identify that your memories for example, form like physical trees inside your brain, and that actually memories, when they shift the shape and formation of those neuron trees will change. Really interesting research has been done lately on that, but beyond that, there's a lot that God doesn't say and I don't know either. So I think, you know, we need to research and look into those areas a bit further - but that's about where my understanding of it is, so see spirit, soul and body quite separate.

The bible refers to each one - you may be sanctified spirit, soul and body. It seems to refer to each one as a separate thing, but I don't think soul and spirit are easily separated.

So my understanding is when a person dies and goes into eternity, their form as their spirit man is identical to the form of their physical body and the soul somehow is directly connected into that so the person's like a living person, except they're not living in a physical body. They have their existence in the spirit world now. That's the best I can explain it I think - hope it helps. [Laughs] Okay, anyone else like to ask some things just about what we've covered tonight? Okay then, we've got time for one more practice, otherwise if anyone else has got a question we'll go for the question or we'll get another practice? Okay, you're all going to have another practice? [unclear 01.55.27]

The thing is you're going to get good if you practice, and keeping on practising, so basically you want to take this position: every time I get a chance to pray for someone I will, and I'll look for the chances. When I get an opportunity to pray, if I know the need the person has - just because they tell me their need doesn't mean that's their real need, or all that God wants to say. I'll listen to God for something for them. We should make it our practice that we're going to do it. Now the thing that seems to be the trouble for everyone is something like this. [Just come on up here] This is where the crunch point comes for almost every person, and so it helps if you can be aware of it. It helps you to realise it's normal to go through this. If I - come here. Can I practice on you? Wonderful. Can I take your hand? Thank you. Alright then, now at this point now, the dilemma is, am I conscious of God or not? If I'm conscious of my failures, I suddenly feel terribly distant from God right now, and I've got to do something, and so now I feel under pressure to perform.

Now when a person's under pressure to perform, they don't flow from their spirit. They will just try to perform, and there's no life in it, so what I'll do is I'll be religious: oh God, just bless her. Father, you know her needs Lord. You just help her tonight and touch her. Now it sounds nice, but there's no life in it whatsoever. I'm actually not engaging her, and I will talk about that tomorrow in one of the sessions, about engaging with people as you minister to them. So what I need to do is just direct my attention to the Lord. Now if you build a devotional life, and you maintain your intimacy with the Lord, and increase your awareness of Him in day to day life, what happens when you come to minister is, it's only a short thing to just relax, just drop into your inner man, into your spirit - oh, thank You Lord, You're there. Now Lord, You know her needs right now. Well just pour out Your spirit upon her. Holy Spirit, just come on her right now, Jesus' Mighty name - become conscious of God, and the presence of God comes on her, and she's starting to feel the presence of the Lord.

Now I could reach in - just come back a little and let's do it again. So now I'll just become conscious of the Lord. All I've got to do is just to stop and begin to think well Lord, You know where she is, You know her need, just show me how to help her. What do You want to say to her Lord? So I'm enquiring of the Lord. I'm in a place not of struggling, but of listening and enquiring. Holy Spirit, I know You love her and You know all about her. What would it be that You'd want to say to her? How would You want to help her? Oh - then immediately a word came to mind, so now I've sort of got one word, I know that God is - if you've got the seed you've got the tree. It's just growing it that's the thing, okay? So I've got one seed, so I'll turn it into - I'll begin to pray, and as I pray I'm not struggling to make anything happen. I'm just allowing my heart to flow to her, towards her with love, allowing myself to just be aware God loves her very deeply.

Well thank You Lord that You love her, very precious to You, and You know the struggle that she's been having recently, and I'm asking Lord, that You would bring around her life a refreshing awareness of Your presence, that You'd bring Your peace around her life, and that she would rest from the struggles of trying to do so many things. She'll begin to learn the things that You want her to do, and learn how to say no. Lord, today I just release Your peace into her life. Let the peace of God flow like a river to her now, in Jesus' name. [Laughter] Okay. I know what you think the word was that the Lord gave me. [Peace?] Peace was one word, yes. That didn't come first. The first one was? [Struggle?] Struggle, okay. Can we talk about that? Okay, so what impact did that prayer have on you? Was it relevant for you?

[Female participant 3] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, has there been a struggle going on?

[Female participant 3] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] There has been a struggle. I asked the Lord because all I got was one word, struggle, and then I thought I've got to do better than that. What is the struggle about? So I asked the question - as I'm talking I got the word so I'm asking the Lord what is that struggle about? So many things to do and so many pressures, so many things to be done, and of course it leaves you then drained and strained see? So then the flow came out that way, yeah, then with the word from God came the presence of God which you started to feel and get touched. You're still feeling it, is that right?

[Female participant 3] Yes.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah. [Laughter] Do you want some more?

[Female participant 3] No. Yeah okay, why not.

[Pastor Mike] See, that was a silly answer wasn't it aye? [Laughs] No, no, it's alright. [Laughter] I want you to lift your hands up to the Lord. There it is - so again in ministering to people we are ministers of the spirit, so what we're doing is we're receiving from God, reaching into God, reaching to inner man and just - power of God just touch your life. So we're receiving from God and releasing to someone. We are a channel. We stand on earth between earth and heaven to bring heaven into earth. How about that? Jesus said pray Your kingdom come, that Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, so what we see in the spirit or hear or feel God doing, we release it to the person. What I've done is I've tried to put it in ways which are visual so you can literally see it happening, but you do need to understand even if you don't see that, the same thing happens. Even she never fell over this is what's going on, so I've asked the Lord to help me have demonstrations which help you see it, so you sort of - almost like you could see something just flow like a river like that, whoa, it's amazing isn't it? But what really is going on is, it's just from being joined to the Holy Spirit, His presence comes out to touch people.

Okay, ready to practice on someone? Come on, you've just got another three minutes, just about time to fit in one more practice. Come on, let's do it. Find a different person - can I practice on you?

Alright, can we just get some feedback from you now? How many people were quite touched by what was prayed, it was just right for you? Just raise your hands if that was you. Well that's fantastic, absolutely wonderful. Let's give you all a big clap then.

Prophesy (2 of 5)

Tue 17 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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The Bible says all believers can prophecy; and some function in the 'office of a prophet' with a strong revelatory gift. It is a great gift to build in other people, and we should be passionate to stir up this gift. There however definite boundaries, guidelines, do's and don't's that we should be aware of, and definite steps to follow to get us going.

Good morning to those who are watching on the internet or looking at it through a DVD. We're so glad you could be a part of what we're doing, and I encourage you as we do activations that if you're with a group watching this in a room, you practice these same activations and interact with one another to see how it went. So let's get started.

Today we'll look at the gift of prophecy and we're going to pick up in a section in your notes under 12, so first of all what is prophecy, the gifts of the spirit? Remember we saw different gifts of the spirit? Go back to it and look at it in 1 Corinthians 12 and Verse 7. See if we can find it in our Bible, 1 Corinthians 12 and Verse 7. It says this - let's go back to where we were yesterday - the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit others. So God's desire is you build other people, and the gifts are given to help you do it, so it's God's plan we all build up people, and the gifts of the spirit are a help to do that. So we saw a list of the gifts of the spirit, to one by the spirit, the word of wisdom, another word of knowledge by the same spirit, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, prophesy, discerning spirits, diverse tongues and interpretations. In all these works the one and self same spirit dividing to everyone severally, so God's willing not only to let you operate in one gift. He will let you operate in any of the gifts. It's quite amazing.

Severally means several, it means more than one, so all of us, it's God's plan we operate in more than one gift. We saw the gifts were divided up into or could be grouped as gifts of revelation, God shows you something; gifts of utterance where you speak something, gifts of power where the power of God flows forth. We shared with you the key on how to flow in that. We'll come back to that shortly, so first of all we're going to look at the gift of prophecy and in 2 Peter 1 and Verse 21 it says: now prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men spoke of God, spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Moved means that they were inspired, there was something stirred inside them. So when we speak of prophecy it's not necessarily telling the future. It is an inspired utterance. We read it in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verse 3, means literally whoever prophesies speaks for edification, exhortation and comfort to men.

So prophetic or the gift of prophecy, God gives you a small inspired thought. He gives you a thought that bubbles up from inside you, and it is inspired. In other words you're not trying to work it out with your mind. It is something God is giving to you, and it flows through and expresses through you, so you receive an inspired thought, picture, impression. You begin to speak, and as you speak there is a flow of God's words through you, and when God flows through you, it sounds just like you. It's not sort of something artificial or weird. It's just like you're talking, and there's a flow of thoughts coming through. It'll also take on something of who you are, and how you would speak, so God works through people. He is happy to work through people. There's no perfect way of prophesying or perfect way of doing it. God just is willing to use you and flow through you.

So notice that it tells us then, that the purpose of the gift of prophecy is three-fold, so number one is edification. That means if you're going to bring a prophetic word it is to build someone, it is to encourage them, to lift them up. The second purpose of the gift of prophecy is the word exhortation, to come alongside them and strengthen them, or stir the person, so the first person is to build them up. So if someone gives a prophetic word, it should build the person up. A second thing is, it could exhort them or comes alongside them, and after the person's had a word of prophecy, they feel like God came alongside them and strengthened them. The thirdly, it is for comfort so when the word of prophecy comes sometimes it will bring such a presence of God to the person that they begin to weep, and they feel God touching them and loving them and comforting them.

I remember last night as I prophesied over one person, that they began to feel touched, and began to feel the love of God, began to feel tears, and unexplainable sensations that can only be interpreted that God has actually touched their life. So when you bring an authentic word of prophecy or flow in a gift of the spirit like this, the impact on the person is to feel like God came really near them and touched them, and God - I knew God loved the world, now I know He loves me. That's the sensation often that people have, and so it can affect people in very many different ways. So when you prophesy, often when there's a release of the Holy Spirit to touch the person, and spiritual atmosphere can shift, so prophetic words are amazing. Just you can speak to people, and God touches them, and they often say how did you know that, or how could you possibly have known that? It's a wonderful, wonderful gift.

I want to show you several things about the gift of prophecy. One of them first of all is all believers are encouraged to prophesy, so 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 1; follow charity (or love), and desire or passionately hunger after spiritual gifts, and rather than you may prophesy. In other words God highlights prophecy, highlights prophecy. All believers are able to prophesy. Verse 39, 1 Corinthians 14, it says this: brethren, covet to prophesy, and don't forbid speaking in tongues. So the Bible says passionate, be passionate to prophesy. Why? Because we're called to build people up and this is one of the best gifts for building people up, so whenever you have been filled with the Holy Spirit you can prophesy, so all believers can prophesy. Now tell someone next to you you can prophesy you know.

The response probably then is well, really? How? [Laughs] Well we'll get to that. I'm glad you asked that. We'll get to that in a moment, so there are some guidelines around prophesying which I want to share with you, because prophecy like all the gifts can be a great blessing, but also it can be misused, and create a lot of problems, so the misuse of the gifts, or immaturity in operating in the gifts, can create a lot of problems for people, so we need to have a few guidelines around it. So the first thing I want to point out is we're going to read in Verse 29 of 1 Corinthians 14, notice what it says there; let the prophet speak, two or three, and let others judge. So here's an interesting thing about prophesying. It says in Verse 33, God is not the author of confusion but of peace, so when there's confusion there is something else at work other than God. If God is ministering to you, I notice this; He doesn't use lots of words, and He's incredibly sharp and clear, so when something is confusing they may have got an idea right, but something is filtered through it, and it's actually not right.

God does not bring confusion to you, so if someone speaks something to you, and it leaves you confused or feeling flat, the chances are highly likely it did not come from God at all, and the person has just got it wrong, or injected in their own thoughts and ideas into what they're saying. So with prophesying it's okay to judge it, and when you say judge it, it's not judging the person. We're just checking to see whether this really - how much or what of this comes from God, so that means what is the content? Does that feel right? What's the spirit of it? If someone prophesies harsh and judgemental, immediately you can pick the spirit of that's not right. That doesn't come in the attitude that Jesus would come, that's one of love and building people up. So we can assess then a prophetic message in a number of ways. Here's some key things, if someone brings a word of prophesy, you could ask. Firstly, does it agree with scripture? If it's not in agreement with scripture it's wrong, just don't even receive it. No, I can't receive that, it violates scripture.

The second thing is what does it do to your spirit? Does it witness in your spirit? Remember if it comes from God, it will energise or lift up your spirit. You'll feel strengthened or aware of the presence of God, so inside your heart, you must ask, what did you really feel about that? Please be honest, and if you're honest you'll have a witness in your heart about that message, all of it or some of it. So does it lift you up, or bring you heavy after the person's ministered? So if someone's spoken something to you, and you feel a lot of heaviness around you something's not right in it, just say well Lord, I just let it go to You and I don't receive anything didn't come from You, just receive what You have for me. So does it agree with the character of God? So those are some kinds of questions. I tend to work off the content; does that sound right? Does it sound like it's line with the word of God? Does it lift my spirit and bring life? Those are the kind of key things I use on it.

Now there are some guidelines around prophesying I want to give to you, and these come from years of experience, where I've seen the gift misused, so please notice these very carefully, and bear them in mind also when you hear someone else prophesying. So here's some cautions about it and then there's a few do's, and some things that don't - so here's some don'ts about prophecy. Number one, don't use it for Christian fortune telling. [Laughter] People all want to know their future, and you can't believe the number of people that come up to me at various times, and what they want is for me to bring a prophecy about what God's telling them to do. You are responsible for listening to God. You are responsible for your life. If you come to me to tell you what to do, you're letting go responsibility for direction in your life, and for choices in your life. God calls all of us to the journey of faith, relating to Him, trusting Him and planning our way.

Trust the Lord with all your heart, don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him. He will direct your paths, so all of us are called to a faith walk. Don't lean on someone to prophesy what you should do. Don't lean on prophesy as fortune telling for you, waiting for God to tell you from someone else what you ought to do with your life. You are failing to be responsible when you do that - a very, very important one that. Better this way, that you make your decisions and then let God confirm, them and the prophetic word will often speak confirmation about what you already knew in your heart God was saying to you. That's a better way of dealing with it. Now can prophecy tell the future? Yes, it can, but not generally the operation of this gift. It's more the person operating in the prophet situation or prophet office, so we're talking here just about the gift of the spirit that all believers can function in.

When a person gets very good flowing in the gift of prophesy, they have a resident mantel over their life, and often they flow effectively prophetically wherever they are. Then God can establish them in an office in the church, which is for the equipping of people for operating in prophecy, and the person operating in an office of a prophet will often be able to bring quite directional words, quite specific words about things that will come and things God is wanting to do, and quite completely unravel what will happen in the future, so that's a strong revelatory gift over the office of a prophet. Now we're not talking about - we're just talking about believers functioning in the gift, so I encourage you to avoid seeking either to tell someone where to go and what to do, or to seek for someone to prophesy then over you. It becomes manipulative.

In the world of the occult people want to have their fortune told. There's a whole realm of the spirit with spirits of divination that operate to try and then impress their thoughts on people, so if you're going to move into that realm, take responsibility for your own personal direction. Let personal prophecy confirm it. That a good idea? That's pretty sound stuff. Here's the second one. Don't use prophecy to scold people. If you're getting a prophetic word that's telling you off, there's something wrong. Don't inject your own disapproval of someone. If we're prophesying, we prophesy love to build them. If it's not going to exhort them and build them, keep quiet. Okay, don't use the gift of prophecy to try to correct leaders, because you've got an issue in your heart about them. Don't use prophecy to bring out your pet ideas. [Laughter] It's not about us, it's actually about listening to God, and building up the other person. That's what the whole flow of the spirit is.

Now here are three other areas which are really important so note these ones. Don't prophesy and give direction over business dealings. There has been immense harm caused when people have wanted someone to prophesy about a business deal. Again this falls in the category of letting go responsibility for decision making, and this time trying to put it into God's hands, when He says you must take responsibility for your life. So in business you don't wait for someone to prophesy what you do. You have to work out a business plan, you have to pray over what you do, you listen to wise counsel, you follow practical wisdom and at times God can confirm things. If there's going to be prophetic words around business let them confirm what you'd already decided to do, or planned to do, or thinking of doing, rather than tell you some new thing you should do. It will inevitably end with loss, financial loss and problems, because it's operating outside the sphere God gave to operate in.

Okay, here's another that's a very important one. Do not prophesy over personal male/female relationships. Well I believe God's going to get you to marry this one, or going to get you to marry that one. [Laughter] This is a no no. Don't do this. Again it violates personal responsibility. If two people feel that God has joined them into relationship, they must take responsibility for their decisions in it, not look to someone to prophesy. Prophecy can confirm it, but don't look to someone to kind of give a direction that way. There's a normal process if a couple - they should find out, or should look out for someone who has similar values, that they feel there's a chemistry between them, they are flowing in harmony with God together, similar kind of direction in their life, and there's a witness from either parents or those around them who love them, that they see the fruit of God on the relationship, but prophesying that you should marry this one, this is well and truly outside the boundaries, and can only end up in harm.

As I shared with you last night, one of my daughters had I guy tell her they were going to get married, and of course that's what people use - God told me. Great, he didn't tell me! So I just told her if anyone tries that on you, just say well He didn't tell me so forget it. [Laughter] The guy was very persistent, God told me you're going to marry me, and she was also quite persistent, and in the end he just wasn't listening, so I rang the Pastor and said would you have a talk to him? He's totally out of order. He's manipulating with the gift of prophecy, trying to bring emotional spiritual pressure on my daughter. This is wrong. Please confront him, so they did that, and that was the end of that. Okay, so [laughs] alright then, so here's another one; don't prophesy that God is going to heal someone. I've seen so many problems over this one, of people prophesying that God is going to heal another person.

Does God heal? Yes, He does. Can God heal? Yes, He can. Will God heal? Well that's always the uncertain bit, and when you prophesy that God is going to heal someone, if you have not heard from God, you have produced a false hope. Now what happens in this situation, is people feel compassion when someone's not well, and they confuse the feeling of compassion, with the direction of the Holy Spirit. So then they prophesy the person's going to get well, and what happens is it brings a tremendous spiritual confusion when the person doesn't get healed. I'll give you an example of it and look, I've had this several times and I believe that people who prophesied this, should be confronted about the misuse of gift, because it produces a false hope. It's like saying what everyone wants to hear. It's not what the gift's about.

The gift is about encouraging people with real hope, so I had a situation where I had a friend in another nation who's a senior business leader, a very important person in the nation, a leading Christian in the nation. His wife also is quite a leading person, and his wife got cancer. I went to visit him, and all these intercessors and prophetic people, everyone without fail, had prophesied that God was going to heal her. Spiritual battle, and all the kind of stuff that goes with it. I felt in my heart she's got six months and she's going to die, so it's very difficult to know how to manage that, when all the popular prophetic thing is all saying she's going to be healed. I feel in my heart that she's going to die, so I put it to him that he had six months, and then there would be a major tsunami, a storm in his life, and he needed to be preparing for it. It was clearly his wife's death, and so the six month - now here's the thing. He himself didn't want to believe she would die - of course you don't, and so he wanted to believe these other words.

Six months went, she died almost to the day, six months later, and so this was a huge problem. Here's why it was a problem. It was a problem because everything had been built around the hope that she would live, and now she died, so you've got tremendous confusion took place, and no one's talking about it. So I went to him and I said that there are two problems you face. I said number one, your wife has died, and this happens in life, that when people come to the end of their life, we've got no power over that. People die, and sometimes they die of cancer, and so you've got about two years to recover from this tragic loss, and it will take a little bit of time. I gave him some practical advice. I said the deeper thing is this; your wife has died but the rest of your future depends on your relationship with God, and right now that's breached seriously because you think God has let you down, so you've lost your trust in God because you listened to all the wrong prophecy.

He was very open to me now because he remembered out of all the people who had prophesied, I was the only one who said she was going to die, so he was very open and I counselled him how to restore his faith, and how to rebuild his life over the next two years. Then we were very, very glad a little later on to be able to see him massively restored, and then ultimately introduced us to a lady and asked what we felt about this lady. Everyone else said she's not the right one. [Laughter] I said she's exactly what you need, and here's why. He was asking for help in making that decision, but you've got to be so very, very careful. Do not take over someone's responsibility that God has given them. Everyone is responsible for the decisions in their own life. Do not let anyone take that over, and make that decision for you by prophesying something around your life. You've got to recognise, it's just immaturity or ignorance of how the prophetic gift functions.

If you've got those safety measures around you you'll be fine. You can just function, stay within the boundaries, comfort, exhortation, edification, building people up. Getting the idea? So when you are prophesying, here's a few practical things to do, and then we'll get to speak on activating your spirit, you'll get an exercise to do together. So here's a few practical things. If you're going to speak on behalf of God and that's what you're doing, speaking to encourage, speak clearly, don't mumble. Speak clearly, speak naturally. Don't put on a spiritual voice. Oh, Oh, OOOHHH! [Laughter]

If you read in the Book of Genesis, when God wanted to connect with Adam, He said Adam, where are you, you know? Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten the fruit of the tree? Very simple language. There's no whoo-ho-ho. [Laughter] That's just people's way of just putting stuff together [Laughter] It's an unnecessary distraction from listening to God. It focuses you on the person, rather than on where we should be focussed, on what does God have to say. So just keep a normal tone of voice, and speak in simple language, you don't have to use King James language. [Laughter]

It turns out that God is a 21st century god [Laughter], and people will hear God speak to them in their own language, or their own way, or their own style, so if you're a highly educated person you'll hear God speak to you in a way that you would recognise. A person that's not well educated, they would hear God speak in a different way through them, so every person will hear God speak in a way which is appropriate to them. So when you speak and share, just speak naturally. I just sense this, or I felt this, or I had an impression of this. Don't go in sort of adding 'God told me'! [Laughter] God told me! Because what you're doing is you're positioning yourself out of accountability, and into some kind of thing where you've got this hotline with God, and now you're an authority over what's about to be said, and no one can challenge it, whereas actually we are to judge the gift. So if someone said God told, they're kind of just stopping you even well no, now wait a minute, wait a minute, God told? You know, I don't feel so right about that - so don't go saying God told me this! Just speak naturally; I just felt this as I was praying for you, or I had this impression while I was praying for you.

It leaves you more transparent and open. It leaves it easier for there to be dialogue about what was said, and if it's God, God can stand up for Himself. He doesn't need us to help Him, so if something came from God it will bear witness in the person's spirit, and if it doesn't, it doesn't mean it was wrong. It just means perhaps they weren't listening. If they were wrong they'll register actually that was God speaking to me at that time, so just share. That's all your job is, to just have a heart to love people, listen to God and share what you sense God giving you and showing you, then stop when you feel the flow stop. Don't keep going. If you're in a meeting then please be sensitive to the flow of the meeting, and also be yielded to the leader in the meeting where he gives permission to flow and to operate, so in a meeting like a church meeting, which is mostly in a house group or something like that, small group, cell group, in a thing like that, then just be aware that you're functioning under authority, and don't kind of take over from the leader because you've got this hotline to God.

This violates chain of command. It just violates what God's set in place, and it puts you right out on a limb, and unable to be connected, and it's spiritually completely out of order, so no good fruit comes from that. Even if you've got it right, it produces a problem - so always the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet. It tells us that in 1 Corinthians 14; the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet, so how you deliver, when you deliver, and what you say is subject to your spirit. You don't have to feel any great thing. You don't have to wait until you're [inhales] you know, wound up. Initially as we move in the gifts we can be a little nervous and get a little wound up. Oh, I'll give you that right now - 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14. I don't think it's in there so let's see if I can find it - 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Sprit of the prophet, Verse 32. The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet, so in other words whatever you can manage yourself, it's under obedience. That word means literally to be properly positioned under your own spirit, so you don't ever have to get out of control prophesying.

Verse 32, the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet, so if you have something that violently interrupts a meeting and then you try and tell the person, hey, that really disrupted the whole meeting. Oh, well God told me! This is being unaccountable, and it's violating that scripture which actually, the way you deliver, and how you deliver, when you deliver, actually is your responsibility, so it puts it back on the person actually you can learn when and how to flow. You can approach a leader and say actually, I feel I've got something from God for the group, can I share it? That would be a good way of doing it, or they may just open it up and say it's okay for everyone to share something that God has given you, but you always stay subject to order. God always operates with order, and although at times it can look chaotic what God is doing, it is always in a divine order. So again, getting the gift of prophecy, how are we going to get flowing in the gift of prophecy? How can we activate the gifts?

Now remember I shared with you, that you can stir up the gifts of God? I'm going to just go back and just show you how you stir up the gifts of God, then we're going to get you just - I'll give you the practical keys, then we'll get you started doing activation again together. How about that, okay? So just go back in your notes, how to activate the gifts of the spirit. You can literally stir up the flow of God in your life, and so 2 Timothy 1, Verses 6 and 7, I remind you, stir up the gift of God which is in you, by the laying on of hands. So that word stir up [found in Number 10, item Number 10, 10.1] Gifts of the spirit getting activated, stir up the gifts of the spirit, right? So that means rekindle or fire them, so there's something you can do that fires up or energises you, and there's many examples of people activating the gifts of the spirit.

Elijah in 2 Kings 3:15 got a musician, so music can cause your spirit and soul to be stirred, so you can flow in the gifts of the spirit. In Judges 16, Verse 20, Samson would shake himself, and as he shook himself, the Holy Ghost would come on him and he had tremendous strength, so he did it that way but we've got a different way that we can do it. We can pray in tongues, stir the gift up that way. God gave us the Holy Ghost. We can speak in tongues, and activate and stir our spirit man, so there are reasons why gifts can become dormant. Often it's because of fear or because of unbelief, we just don't believe God would work through us, or because we're under control, there's a lot of control, no freedom to flow. Passivity can cause gifts to shut down, or just straight out neglect, where we just don't do it, so gifts can become dormant, but you can activate them again if you begin to re-energise your personal spiritual life, so there's a number of ways we can do that.

I want to give you some practical keys on what I've found is a big help to stirring your spirit man up, so you can begin to flow in the gifts of the spirit. A key part of it of course is your personal devotional life. Building a life where you're in the word of God, reading the word of God, praying the word of God, spending time with the Lord, worshipping Him, sharing with Him, building your spirit man, praying in tongues, all of this is the normal devotional life of a believer, so we need to be feeding our inner life, feeding your spirit man, so you've got something to give. If you don't feed your life spiritually there's not much to give, so we can make it a practice that we feed our spiritual life, hungry for God, hunger - God, use me today God, today I just wait on You. Lord, today give me something for someone or bring someone into my life that I can minister to and share with. That kind of praying, you're stretching out for God to do something.

Now here's some simple things you can do in our environment, and this is a way of breaking it down so it's very easy to do. Number one, free up your spirit. You can't prophesy and flow in the gifts if your spirit is all uptight with tension, so free up your spirit, relax, laugh more and pray in tongues, because praying in tongues actually energises your spirit. When you pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is speaking through you. He's speaking language to your spirit, and your spirit is expressing, you are flowing with Him. It's a great way, pray in tongues, stir your spirit man and it starts to energise you, and we'll do some exercises on that a little later. The second thing is expect faith, expect God to speak with you. You've got to reach out expectedly. See if I'm going to pray for someone and I'm full of doubt, not that much happens when there's doubt, but when you come, you say God, I just expect You to give me something for this person. I'm believing that when I get myself in that place, You will give me something I need.

It sounds a little risky, but actually what faith does is it steps out trusting God. What am I trusting, that I'm good enough? No, I'm trusting that God is good, God loves them, and God's willing to help them. I'm just here available, so it's a faith that God is willing to do something. The third thing is, so we stir up our spirit, reach out our faith, then just focus your attention. One of the things that people find very difficult to do, is to just focus their attention to listen. You know if you want to hear someone, you've got to stop and listen. There's too much distraction, you can't hear, so the key thing we saw in flowing with the gifts of the spirit is hearing, being able to pick up the small impressions of the Holy Spirit - and they're very small, so I've got to get the noise out of my head. Now for some people that's a problem, because there's a lot of noise, and the noise comes from unresolved personal conflicts, spiritual, emotional conflicts. The noise comes from the voice of demonic spirits speaking into our mind, condemning, judging, accusing, belittling, pressuring, confusing. That's one aspect.

They also come from your own beliefs in your heart; I'm no good, God wouldn't work through me, or I've just blown it, or I'm not - you know, all of those sorts of beliefs of the heart, which are contrary to the word of God, demonic spirits use to stir up and energise confusion and turmoil inside you. It's normal for us to be at peace and rest. In the kingdom of heaven there's righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, so turmoil inside your emotions have to do with what you believe in your heart, and that in turn is activated on by spirits to keep you in a state of turmoil so you can't be useful to God. Getting the idea? So we need to be committed to the journey of growing, growing inside and in our freedom and peace on the inside. He's promised to give us peace, so one of the things I have found - there's a lot of things can help in that, but one thing I've found I've learned to meditate, to take the scripture and to picture it, and hold it in my mind and begin to pray, and just keep my imagination fixed on that picture, locking in around that. I've learned, I've trained my mind to stay focussed and you can do the same.

When you have your mind all over the place, sometimes it can be hard to pick up the voice of the spirit, so quietness and peace. I don't like lots of noise in my head or around me, I like quietness, because I've found in quietness it's easier to pick up the voice of the spirit of God. It's a very still, quiet voice. If you're hurried or agitated for example - I don't have time for prayer - your mind's going all over all the things to do. You're not at rest and in a place to hear. You have to do something about that; write it all down, get it out of your head, relax and just be in the presence of God. So number one, free up your spirit and start praying in tongues quietly in an even spirit; faith, expect God to give you something; focus, begin to just give your attention to listen to the spontaneous impressions, then feel, identify what God gives you. Just try and identify the thought, word, picture He gives you, and then when you've got that, focus on it, then step out and speak. That's how it all works and all the gifts of flowing in the spirit all work out the same way. They work on your spirit being alive, you are focussed to receive something from God, you identify what it is and you begin to act on what God gives you.We saw that God gives it to you in a little picture, a word or a thought or some kind of thing like that.

Okay, so what we need to do now is we'll just stop the session now and we're going to now look at giving you an activation to do. How about that? Well that was really exciting. [Laughter] Great, I know you want to stretch out. There's only so much - I can teach you all the stuff but at the end you've got to stretch out and do, so if you don't stretch out and do, then nothing's going to happen. So would you like to come up here? Can I pray for you? So what we'll do first of all is we'll look at the activation we did yesterday, and keep going back into that again alright? So the first thing we did - can I pray for some of you? Great! He's so positive. That's really good. Okay, can I take your hand then? Alright then, so what we're going to do is just going to pray an inspired prayer, then from that, we'll move to bringing an inspired thought. I'm not going to call it a prophecy because then you'll freak out and think I've got to do something hard. [Laughter] Just an inspired thought, I think everyone could have an inspired thought couldn't they? Could you have an inspired thought? [Yes] How many had one last night, God used you? Great! There you are. Okay, we can do it again today.

So what we're going to do now, I'm just going to ask the Lord to give me something that I can just use as a basis for praying for her. Remember that as you do this, you just free up your spirit and relax. If I focus on trying to do something, what's going to happen is I'll stress out, and then I'll get uptight. My spirit will shut, and what I feared will happen - [Inhales sharply] nothing! So just relax. Take time, just pray quietly in the spirit, [prays in tongues]. Just allow your spirit to relax and just come to a place where I'm open to now extend my faith and believe that God will give me something. So immediately I did that I got one word just came. I don't know what all that means, but I've just got one word to start with, and I'm expecting though that if I will just stay here focussed on that, God will help me understand what that's about, and then I'll begin to pray. As I pray, I will use that word or what God's showing me in that prayer, and there'll be a flow of the spirit of God to touch you. Alright, so now another word's just dropped into my mind, so how did that happen? Just a word just dropped in spontaneously while I'm in the middle of talking, and I've learned to recognise that's most likely the Holy Spirit.

Okay, so I'll just wait again, pray and stir your spirit, relax, extend your faith, ask the Lord to give you something. Now you're listening to your heart, not your head. If you're listing to your head, you'll look and try to figure out now what possible needs could she have, you know? You'll try and figure it out, so that's the language of the head. The language of the heart is spontaneous, it's a flow, it just is a thought or a picture just comes to mind. Okay, so go back there again to check I got it, and thank You Lord, just thank You Lord, You love her. Thank You Lord that You really care about her. Lord, I just thank you to give something just to help her. Alright, so that same word just is sitting there, so I'll just now begin praying. Father, I just thank You for my sister. Thank You, You love her. Thank You Lord that You are working in her life to stir up passion to reach people for Christ. I thank You there's a fire burning in her heart, to win people to You. There's a fire burning in her heart for the lost and the broken. There's passion, that You are igniting, to bring Your power to people who are broken and damaged.

I thank You Lord, You're going to help her to enlarge in her spiritual capacity to minister to people. I pray Lord that Your Almighty power would come around her life today, filling her to do that work in Jesus' Mighty name. Thank You Lord. Holy Spirit, come over her now. Amen.

Alright, now - so the word I got was Passion. Now I had no idea what that referred to. It could refer to lots of things, but what I felt as I said it, it referred to a passion for people, and a great desire to reach out to people, and see people saved. Would that be right?

[Person Pastor Mike prayed for] Bingo. [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] ...and I also felt, so as I was praying I'm also listening to what's coming out, because it's a flow from the spirit, not from my head, so my head can just be quiet and listen to what's being said. As I'm listening I get to know her, and as I was praying I could feel this passion for the lost, a desire to be able to reach them, a desire to be able to bring the power of God to them, to touch them. That's what I could feel was there and God wanting to do that through you. Amen.

[Person Pastor Mike prayed for] Amen.

[Pastor Mike] Awesome. Okay, well there we go, so praise the Lord. Give her a clap. [Applause] Right, now it's your turn, it's your turn, so remember, this is just a practice. It's very important just to ask the person: can I practice on you? The person - give a very positive response - yes, do your best, see? That's it. It's nice to be encouraged. It's good to have an environment which is easier to learn and practice in, but after that we can go into any environment and do it. So then take their hand, quietly pray in the spirit, if you can pray in the spirit. If you can't, just reach out and meditate on the Lord, asking Him to give you something. Now that's the point, if you're going to go through turmoil, you'll be feeling the turmoil. Calm yourself. This is not a win/lose. This is not right/wrong. This is just we try to ride the bike [laughter] okay? I'm behind holding on a little bit to give you a bit of guidance to make sure you don't get too many wobbles and fall off.

So what you would do, if you feel tension rising, you are centring your attention on performing to make something happen. It will only get worse if you keep in that frame of thinking. Just shut that thinking down, and just begin to meditate. Just allow yourself to see, the Lord Jesus, You're there, You're my friend and source. Focus on the source, not the problem or the fear. Focus on the source, see and as you focus on the source, just relax beforehand. Just a firm thank You Lord, You love her. You love her. You're just so glad to work through me, so I just wait on You. Maybe You will speak to me. That's the language you use in your head. It's an affirming faith kind of language. If you allow your mind to drift, and go on and think you're having to get something, immediately you'll disconnect from the Lord and shut down with anxiety and fear and tension. Then the more you focus on that, the harder it gets, then you'll just try and make something up to get the heat off, and think I wonder if I can slip away at morning tea time. [Laughter]

[Female participant 1] [unclear] [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] The doors are locked. [Laughter] So there's no way you can explore flowing with the Holy Spirit unless you do something, so these exercises are to get you doing something to explore what it feels like, and it'll feel great, and there's also some turmoils around it. It's all part of the journey of working with the Holy Spirit. The turmoils are inner and outer conflicts. The joy is when the spirit of God flows through you and you see the person - you open your eyes up to what you thought was just you, and there's tears coming down, and God has touched them - and you thought it was just you. Remember, it will be your thoughts in your head, and it'll be your voice. It'll feel just like you because it's God working through you now. So you wait for a picture, thought, impression, and then just turn it into a prayer. Start generally, and then pray. Let's do it. We can do that, and then we'll graduate, and we'll do something just another level up after you've done that, okay? Last night everyone did it okay, so come on, you can do this. You know you can do it. Find someone, break into a pair, and then stand up wherever you'd like to. Let's do it.

[Background chat] Right, pray quietly. Focus your attention. Reach out expectantly, expecting God to give you something. Receive what you've got, then begin to turn it into a prayer. [Background chat] Alright, let's just stop right where we are now, and let's just get some feedback. How many people, the prayer that was prayed was just right for you? Great, that's wonderful, okay. How many of you felt touched by the Holy Spirit when that person prayed the prayer? Wonderful! Come on, give yourselves a great clap. [Applause] How many of you felt it just seemed like it was just me, I'm kind of thinking maybe it's just me, I'll just do it anyway? How many had that experience? There's a few like that, okay. How many of you, it was really a struggle? How many felt tense and uptight when that magic moment came when you're sort of waiting for God to give you something? How many felt a little bit uptight then? Okay. Was there anyone unable to overcome that? You got stuck at that point and just froze? Anyone freeze? No-one, that's great. Okay, very good. You've done very well.

Right then, what we're going to do now is we're just going to extend that exercise a little more. If you just sit down for a moment, and I'll show you how you can extend that exercise now a little bit more, then we'll just take it a little further. So first thing is, we should just - why don't we just give a clap, everyone did so well. [Applause] A number of you were quite touched by what happened, because when someone speaks an inspired thought from God, there is a flow of anointing, a flow of the person of the Holy Spirit and it just touches your heart. For some people they feel inspired, some people weep because they feel God is near me. That's why it's so powerful.

Now what we did was we made it a prayer, because a lot of people, the majority of people, if you say can I pray for you will say yes, and if you would just stop for a moment, and listen quietly, God will give you what to pray for, and it can deeply touch their heart. I remember I was out and I saw two old ladies by a garden and I stopped and I thought I've got to go over to them. I said I just felt to help them with the garden, and then I said I'm a Pastor. Can I pray with you? They said yeah, that's fine, so I put my arm on both their shoulder and thought God, You've got to show me what to pray, and then I got an idea and I began to pray. When I opened my eyes one of the ladies is just weeping. The other lady moved away. I thought that's fine, you know? Just what is God doing? God's not working on her, He's working on this lady. I said tell me what's the trouble, what's happening? Just asked her to talk about what's happening. She said oh, my husband died only two weeks ago, and so we were able to talk. I got her to talk about her husband, then I was able to lead her to the Lord. So just the prophetic prayer opened the door, when loving care was expressed, for her to come to Christ. She just was at a point and the prayer opened her heart and brought God into her life, then she opened up her life to come to Christ, so there it is. How about that? Just a simple thing, just oh, I should go and help these ladies and that's how the gifts flow, very, very easily, very natural.

Right, then now what we're going to do as we move from prophetic or an inspired prayer, we're going to go to an inspired thought, an inspired thought. We don't call it a prophecy because otherwise you'll think it's too hard. [Laughter] Okay, so we'll just call it an inspired thought, and so what we're going to do is we're going to follow exactly the same kind of format. Ask the person to come up, can I practice on you? Yes, do your best. Just pray in tongues quietly, wait expecting God to give you, and look for something, just a thought from God for that person. We're not going to foretell the future or anything like that. There's nobody prophesying like that, it's just something that God gave to you, just an inspired thought that would do these things: encourage them, exhort them or stir them, or comfort the person okay? So I'll need a volunteer for that again. I'll have to stretch out and do it for you, then you'll see what it looks like okay, so I need someone, so who do I get? Someone over here, one of these ladies over here. [Laughter] You were pointing to someone - why don't you come on up here, come on, that's right. Never point to anyone else. [Laughter] Okay, so first thing, can I practice on you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah!

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful, that's great. Okay, so we're all ready to go. Can I take your hand? Okay, so it's not necessary to do this, but it can create a sense of connection, so it can be quite a positive thing to do this. It's helpful if you ask the person's permission. It just respects them, and some may not want you to do that, so it's helpful to show respect for a person when you minister to them, by not trying to do something that they don't want you to do. Okay, so I've been at meetings, had a word to someone, and they didn't want to come up. So I said do you mind if I come to you? I went down and then didn't touch them, just shared what I felt God giving me, so it didn't highlight or make it too embarrassing, you've got to respect people's dignity. Alright, so we begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] So I'm just reaching out, I'm just reaching in my spirit, focussing my attention for God to give me a thought. Now it's up to Him what kind of thought He gives. One of the things that we could start - since all of you are Christians, one place that you can start practising in this, is looking for a thought from the Bible, just a story from the Bible, a person from the Bible, some act, a thing that happened in the Bible.

Is it Old Testament or New? Just reach out, and if you've read your Bible, God's able to drop many things into your heart, so what I'll look for is a person or a situation in the Bible. Then I'll say well, in what way does that relate to her? What aspect of that do You want me to bring out? Okay, so we'll just see what happens. So of course there's that initial tense thing; oh God, I haven't got anything, what do I do? So you've got to overcome all of that. [Laughter] Remember, that's normal so just stay relaxed, just breathe gently and relax. Thank You Holy Ghost. Thank You Lord that You love her, You know all about her. I thank You Lord, You have something to inspire and to encourage her with, something Lord that You just want to speak into her life. Thank You Lord.

Now immediately I saw, or it came to mind, a story in the Bible, so I need to now just focus on that story. I just saw a picture, and I saw a picture of two men, and Jesus with them, and they're on the road to Ammaus. I knew exactly it was the story of the two on the road to Ammaus. That's all I got, a path, two people, and Jesus with them, and I knew immediately it's the road to Ammaus. Now what possible way could I share that with her? I could just share it like I've done that. I want to now minister, so this is what I will do now. I will just close my eyes and just go back, just become aware of God again, and aware of that story. Now what aspect of that story, so I just look at the story and then I can see it, so now I'll just begin to share. So while I was praying with you I sensed - I'm not saying 'God told Me'. I just felt while I was praying, this is what I felt. I saw a picture of the disciples on the road to Ammaus, and Jesus was with them, but they were unaware He was with them. They were so caught up in their own issues, and their own disappointments, and their own struggles and problems, and He was right there alongside them, walking with them, and they didn't even realise that their eyes were closed to Him being with them.

This is like you in your journey at this point, that you're so caught up in the things that are happening in your own life, that you're not realising God is with you. He's been walking with you quite a long way. He's with you. He cares about you, and His plan when He talked with those disciples, was to turn them around and get them filled with vision and direction and fresh passion, so He walked with them. He let them share their heart, their struggles and their pains. He fellowshipped them, and then He began to put faith into their heart again, began to put vision into their heart, and they realised it was Him. They were restored and went back to their whole faith journey again. What I see is God's doing this in your life. You've been walking with the Lord, but you haven't felt Him. You're caught up in the things that are going on in your life, and can't see that He's with you and loves you, that He's with you and He's wanting to help you engage your heart, like He got them to engage their heart. He was quite happy for them to share their disappointments, and as they did that, He then put faith in their heart again. That's what God's doing with your life right now, and the journey was an uncomfortable one for them, because all they could see was disappointment, but they ended up seeing Him, and being passionate again, and that's what's happening in your life. You're on that phase of the journey at the moment. But there's a great end in that story. [Laughs] There we are. Now how did that go? Does that sound like you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah. [Laughs]

[Pastor Mike] That's good and I can see the tears in your eyes as well. It just fitted you like a glove.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah, perfect.

[Pastor Mike] So thank you very much for being part of it. [Applause] So it helps if you've read the Bible and know some of the Bible. [Laughter] You've got something to draw from. If you haven't then you have to find another thing, so we'll forgive you there. We'll try it another way a little later in the day, but why don't we just try this to see if God will give me something, just something, a person. If it's a person, what is there about that person? Is it an event? What is there about that event? That's all you've got to ask. I mean we're just here to hear, and then to pass on what we saw, or felt, or sensed. Now it doesn't need to be as substantial as what I had, it can just be quite simple. Okay, you all okay to have a go? All ready to have a go? It could be fun.

Remember, just relax, Lord, where is it, the Old Testament, the New Testament? Usually there's a person - who? What person? And a name comes to mind or what event comes to mind? Let it come to your mind and then focus on it. Well God, what is it about that you want me to bring? This is a great place for Christians to start because you can work with another Christian, they've probably read the Bible, know a little bit about it. But you find the Bible is full of events and people and situations that would be really helpful. It's a good place to start. Okay, let's get someone, break into pairs and then start. Lets start with: can I practice on you? [Background chat

Okay, let's just get your feedback. How many people today were really blessed by what was shared, you felt touched by God? How many were really blessed? That is very good. Give you a clap then. [Applause] How many of you felt as the person shared with you wow, how did they know that? Wow, that's great, look at that. Wonderful! Okay then, so it surprised you that they would know that, or be that relevant to you. That's because it's come from the Holy Spirit, see? Okay then, how many of you were quite touched by the Lord, with what was shared, actually touched you and you felt affected by it? That's wonderful, look, it's the majority of people, wonderful - so that means all of us are picking up the flow of the spirit and speaking in a way that's encouraging or exhorting or comforting. It was just inspired thought by the way, it wasn't prophesy [laughter] and how many of you experienced a block or a struggle at that crucial point where you were reaching out to God? How many felt struggles then? Okay, that's several of you there. Right, was there anyone unable to overcome that struggle, it was just overwhelming? Okay, so you all overcame. That's interesting, so there is a point of faith conflict, where you're stretching out for God to give you something and all kinds of turmoils start to go on around you.

That's quite normal but if you will stay focussed and committed you can break through all of that, so it's just great. I want to commend you there for pushing through. Let's give them a clap the ones who pushed through that. [Applause] So you've had an inspired thought and that's how God works with us. With prophecy we just get an inspired thought or picture. How many got a picture that was a person, a story about a person in the Bible? Okay. How many it was an event, something that happened in the Bible? So some got that. Usually most people get a person. It's quite easy because you've read the Bible, read the person. How many of you, when you started to focus on that person, there was one aspect stood out to you about them? That was the bit you knew you had to talk about? How many had that happen. That's wonderful.

Now you see what happened in the process is you just reached out expecting. God gave you something, and as you enquired, you got more. That's how the prophetic goes. Have you ever seen a newsreader on TV, they only have a couple of lines that they're reading, and as they read the second line it changes, and then there's another line. There's another line drops in and that's how it works prophetically, so the newsreader has only got two lines at a time, but if he will read them then more will come. If you have a tissue box and you don't know how many tissues are in there but if you take one out, you think if I take that one out that's it. But no, low and behold there's another one turns up! [Laughter] And you take that - whoa! There's another one - and so it goes on. So the prophetic flows like that. You will take the first two lines and read them, then God will give you some more if you stay looking. If you pull the tissue out, another tissue is there if you'll stay looking, so if you stay focussed, looking and expecting, it begins to flow like a river from inside you and it's just all these thoughts, one after the other.

Okay, now how many of you found that you were listening to what you were saying, just kind of like, I know I'm talking but I'm actually listening to what I'm saying as well? How many had that happen to you? That's quite interesting. How many of you found that you were quite interested to hear what God had to say to the person? [Laughter] That's awesome. Okay, alright then. Now Sargin, have we got a morning tea break sometime around about now?

[Sargin] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Alright then, I wonder if we could just fit in one more of those in, just before we go for a break aye, if I keep squeezing it in? Alright then, so I'll get one more volunteer, just one more to come up. No one's pointing at any more. Hands coming up [Laughter] After a while you learn it's quite a good move to volunteer. [Laughter] Okay, we'll try it again. This time I won't look for a Bible passage, let's look for something else and just let God speak in any way He wants to. Can I practice on you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, great opportunity to practice, this is fantastic. Of course every day's a chance to practice. Okay, now let's take your hand. Thank You Lord. Now just again breaking it down into steps, in reality you've just got to flow into that quite quickly but we'll just break it into steps. The first part is just energising the spirit. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord - again just worship the Lord and set your mind and heart on Him, so begin to set your attention on Him. If I focus on myself I shut down. If I focus on Him I shut down. If I focus on the source, I'm connecting what I need - so thank You Lord that You know him, and You care about him. Father, I'm just asking if You would give something that would be encouragement and a blessing. Thank You Lord. Alright then, now I just got something just dropped in like that. Okay, now I've got to focus on it, and then I'll have to at some point begin to start to share it. Thank You Lord. So go back there. If the thoughts come from the Lord, the moment you just drop back into focussing on the Lord, or into the spirit again, what'll happen is you'll start to pick it up again, so you don't have to worry about trying to remember it all.

If God gave you lots, you get to the end of it and say, now how did that start again? So if He only gives you a couple of lines or a little bit of a picture - okay, so here we go, that'll be it. So now this is what I sensed as I was just reaching out the Lord for you. I saw a picture of a man running a race, and the way he's running it's like a sprint, and I could see him run and he would run and then he would lose breath, stop for a little while, then he'd run again, lose breath, stop for a little while because he's running the race like a sprint. I felt the impression I had was that the race you're running is a marathon, not a sprint, and the temptation or the tendency that you seem to have is that you will run at things for a while, and then you lose energy and motivation and have to take a break. Then a new thing will inspire you, you'll run at that for a little while, and then you've run out of steam, and then you'll run at the next thing again. The Lord wants you to know it's a marathon, and you need to learn how to pace yourself, and just keep a steady journey, progressing through this walk with Him. It's more about the marathon, setting the long term in sight, and starting to work your way, and just steadily move towards it, rather than short bursts of energy, followed by sort of quietness and not doing anything. So how does that relate to you?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah. There's some personal experience there, with the aspects of running...

[Pastor Mike] Yes - oh, so you've done both? You've done a marathon and you've done sprinting?

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Oh wow, so this is a very good picture. [Laughter] I'd never have known you'd done both of those. [Laughs] So you'd understand with a sprint you've got to put in high energy but if you run out of puff...

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah, verifying you've got to plan, you've got to strategise

[Pastor Mike] And that's what God's saying about your life, your walk with Him.

[Person Pastor Mike's praying for] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] How about that? Awesome. [Applause] Alright then, so would you all like to have another go? Come on, before you go to break, before morning tea, alright. So find someone, can I practice on you? Let's go.

Tongues and Interpretation / Words of Knowledge (3 of 5)

Tue 17 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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Explanation of how we can be immersed into the spiritual dimension, and be "clothed with power from on high". This is a gift, available to all who desire it.

Receiving the Holy Spirit (Born Again) versus receiving the Total Immersion (Baptism of the Holy Spirit). To express ourselves in this new culture we need a language which bubbles up from within - energising our inner life, speaking out 'mysteries' and more.

Finally, learn how to operate the Word of Knowledge - a powerful revelation gift to open up a person's life.

There are two dimensions that God wants us to understand. One is personal prayer, and the other is the operation of the gifts, so what I'm going to do is first of all talk about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and Speaking in Tongues. I'll be focussing on the personal devotional gift every believer can receive. Then we will move, and we will look at the ministry gift or the manifestation of speaking in tongues with interpretation.

We saw that list in 1 Corinthians 12:7, and one on the list of the Gifts of the Spirit was: Speaking in diverse tongues with interpretation.

But what I want to do, because some people aren't baptised in the spirit, I want to help you in this session. Anyone at the end of this session who is not baptised in the spirit, we want to pray with you so you get filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues, and have the devotional tongue. Then we'll do some exercises speaking in tongues, but also I want to help you understand about Tongues and Interpretations which go together.

So this first part we will talk just about being baptised in the Holy Spirit, filled with spirit, speaking in tongues - what it is and how to get it.

Firstly I want to share with you something that Jesus did and taught; I won't teach you all the scriptures on it, just enough for you to get an outline.

Jesus made it very clear, when He was about to depart from this earth, that He would leave another comforter, the Holy Spirit. He made it very clear He was going to give them a person. The Holy Spirit would be released to them.

He said in John 14: “You've seen Him with you. Soon He will be in you”. So Jesus made a promise, before His death on the cross, that the disciples would receive the Holy Spirit. He's the spirit of truth, He's the comforter; He will guide them into truth, He will reveal things to come, He'll reveal Jesus. He said: “I'm not going to leave you alone”.

So in John 14, He tells us: “I will not leave you alone, I will send you another comforter, the Holy Spirit. He's been with you, but now He will be in you” - very, very important. Now following from there, we know Jesus died and rose from the dead, and then He appeared to His disciples. We're going to read and pick it up from there and we're going to look at some things Jesus did and said. So in John 20:21-22. He said, as He appeared to the disciples, “He said: Peace to you! As my Father sent Me, even I send you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said: receive the Holy Ghost”.

He breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Ghost”.

Now I want you to understand that He didn't just blow on them - He actually imparted. Just as God breathed into Adam the breath of life, Jesus imparted into the disciples His Holy Spirit.

He released into them the spirit of God - at that point they were born again. He breathed on them, and said: “Receive (or ‘take into yourself’) the Holy Spirit”.

What He did was, He imparted from His spirit. It's from His spirit - from the depths of His being = He released what He was unauthorised to release.

He released the Holy Spirit to come into people, so He went [releases one long breath] like that, and then something happened - there was impartation; they received an impartation - the Holy Spirit came into them.

That's what impartation is - something is imparted. Something, that someone has - they release it to someone else.

Jesus said in John 7:37, He said: “out of your belly will flow rivers of living water” - and He was speaking about the Holy Spirit. So God wants you to have a flow from your spirit, but first you've got to be born again. So at this point the disciples were born again.

Now I want to share with you two other scriptures. One is found in Luke 24:49, and Jesus again appears to the disciples and He said: “Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you”.

Notice that He's already breathed into them the Holy Spirit. Now He says something else: “the promise of the Father”.

He said: “I send to you the promise of the Father upon you. Wait in Jerusalem until you be clothed with power from on high”.

So He's already breathed into them, and they're born again. Now He's saying: “wait until you be clothed with power from on high”.

Acts 1:4 – “Being assembled together with them, He commanded them they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father”.

Now they're born again, He's saying: there's something else to wait for - for John baptised you with water, but you will be baptised in the Holy Ghost, not many days hence.

When they were come together they asked: “when will this happen”? When will you restore the kingdom to Israel? And in Verse 8 He says this: “You shall receive power, after the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the utmost parts of the earth”.

So notice He has breathed, and imparted into them the Holy Spirit - they're born again; now He's talking about a second experience, where the Holy Spirit comes on them, and He uses words like ‘baptised’. When a ship sinks, it's baptised, it's totally immersed. It's immersed in water.

If you had a garment, and you put it into a tub of water, it's baptised - It's immersed or soaked or saturated.

So He's saying: “you'll be baptised in the spirit”. You will be immersed into another dimension of the spirit. He also uses another word, He said: “you'll be clothed with power”.

He said: there's something will come on you, you'll have the Holy Spirit come on you, and your life will be clothed. Before it's like you were unclothed. You were trying to do the job without the power. He said: when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you'll be clothed with power. You'll be wearing something. You'll be equipped for something, see? So notice He's quite clear what He's talking about.

Now let's have a look when it happens, what actually happened. Acts 2:1 – “When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were in one accord in one place, there came a sound from heaven like a rushing mighty wind. It filled all the house where they were sitting, and there appeared cloven tongues like fire sat on each of them. And they were filled with the Holy Ghost - notice this - and began to speak with other tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance”. Isn't that amazing?

Verse 12 - “Everyone was amazed; and some were in doubt, saying to one another: what does this mean? And some mocked, saying: they're full of wine, full of new wine.

He said in Verse 15 – “you're not drunk, as you suppose”. This is that spoken of by the prophet Joel. It will come to pass in the last days, said God, “I will pour out My spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, young men see visions, old men dream dreams”.

So what has happened is, the spirit has come upon them; and the first thing that happened is, they were filled up with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak or express from inside; because what you speak, your words flow from your heart – ‘out of the heart, the mouth speaks’.

So being filled with the Holy Ghost, they gave voice to a language they had not learnt. It was a language given to them by the Holy Spirit, and they were so overwhelmed by it, some of them were staggering around laughing, and they were obviously like they were drunk.

If they look drunk, then they're behaving a certain way. So we see now that He's imparted in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost's now come onto them in power; and the first sign is: they began to speak in tongues.

In Acts 10:44, the Holy Ghost came on the Gentiles. They also began to speak in tongues - quite a common thing to find happening.

In Acts 10, the Holy Ghost came on the house of Cornelius, and we find they began to speak in tongues.

Verse 44 – “While Peter spoke these words, the Holy Ghost fell on them which heard the word; and the Jews which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the Gentiles were - also the Holy Ghost was poured out on them, for they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God”.

So there's at least two instances in the Bible (there are others), where the Holy Ghost came on people, they were filled, they began to speak in tongues, and they began to magnify God with that expression, or experience, they had.

So what is this ‘Speaking in Tongues’ (because this is a gift that they all received)?

It was something that God gave to them, as part of being ‘clothed with power’. If God has a gift to give you, then it must be important, and we need to understand a little bit about it; so what is this ‘speaking in tongues’?

Have a look in 1 Corinthians 14 to get a little bit of understanding about speaking in tongues.

Verse 2 – “He that speaks in an unknown tongue speaks not to men but to God” (no one understands him). In the spirit, he's speaking mysteries, or things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

Verse 4 – “He that speaks in an unknown tongue builds up himself; but the person who prophesies builds up the church”.

Verse 14 – “If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful, so I'll pray with the spirit, and pray with my understanding as well”.

Now let's just look at the Gift of Tongues. The gift of tongues is a language. In order to communicate, you need language. Our ability to communicate depends on the language we have to communicate with; so if you don't know many words - like I went to Taiwan, and apart from 'Ni Hao' I knew very, very little language. I could not express myself in that culture without an interpreter - someone who could give me language.

So in interacting in a new culture, I needed another language, to enter into it - into that dimension. So God gives you a gift, because you are about to be immersed into another culture, into another realm - the realm of the spirit, and you need greater expression. It's hard to just keep telling Jesus you love Him: I love You, I love You - you run out of words; so God gives you a language that never runs out of expression.

So the gift of tongues is the Holy Spirit. They spoke, as the spirit gave them the utterance; so your Holy Spirit imparts into your spirit the language, and then you let go and surrender, and allow that flow to come out.

You are speaking in that language, so notice what it says in Verse 14 – “when you speak in tongues, your spirit is praying” - so your spirit has a voice. Remember we talked about the different aspects of your spirit? Your spirit has a voice. Your spirit has a mind. Your spirit can speak.

When you're speaking in tongues, you're not working it out with your head; you are letting your spirit yield to the Holy Spirit, and speaking out a language - it's a real language.

Notice what happens - there's a whole number of benefits with that real language. Verse 4 – “When you speak in an unknown tongue, you are building up yourself, like a house being constructed”. So praying in tongues strengthens and builds and develops your spirit man.

When you pray in tongues, you are co-operating with the Holy Ghost directly, and your whole spirit man starts to energise with life.

It's a wonderful gift, wonderful gift; it's very neglected - speaking in tongues devotionally.

You can pray anytime in the spirit, because the flow of the language just never stops. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of prayer. He's always willing to pray through you; so you can pray in tongues anywhere, everywhere, any time of day or night, wherever you're going. Keep your eyes open if you're driving - but you can pray in tongues!

When you're doing this, you are ‘building up yourself’, is one thing it tells us. It tells us another thing: you are ‘energising your inner life with the Holy Ghost’.

So when you pray in tongues strongly for a while, you'll feel your whole body start to energise up, because you’re expressing the life of your spirit. Remember that one of the functions of your spirit is to give life to your body? So start to pray in the Holy Ghost, you come alive with spirit life! It's fantastic.

Notice that when you're speaking in ‘unknown tongues’, it says in Verse 2 – “you are speaking mysteries”. It's a mystery because YOU don't know what it is; but when the Bible refers to ‘mysteries’, it's referring to the things of God's kingdom that He's wanting to bring into clarity for us.

So one purpose of praying in tongues, with your devotional tongue, is: to magnify God, to praise Him; another is to build yourself up; another is to speak out what God has for your life. So praying in tongues is a very powerful gift, a wonderful, powerful gift.

In Romans 8:26, it says that “we don't know what to pray; or how to pray as we ought”. How many know that experience?

But the Holy Ghost helps us, and that word help means, He comes in and begins to join in with us as we make the effort. He energises, takes over, and empowers all our praying. We don't know what to pray as we ought, nor how to pray, but the Holy Ghost helps us making intercession on our behalf or for us - so this is a work of the Holy Spirit.

So there's a level of praying in tongues where I can pray quietly. I can pray strongly, and ‘stir my spirit man up’; or as I yield to the Holy Spirit He may take over, and then there's a whole different language of groaning in the spirit, of travailing in prayer.

There are whole dimensions of prayer available, so when you get baptised in the spirit... Baptism in water was meaning: the end of your old life, the beginning of a new life - so you bury the old, because he's died, there's a new person begun.

Baptism in the spirit is immersion into the realm of spiritual things, of spiritual experiences, of prophesying, of having dreams, of flowing in the supernatural - that's why God wants to have people baptised in the Holy Spirit.

The reality is, many people, having had an experience, just peter-out; and don't persevere to get more, to reach into more. There's a contending for these things, because there's no way the devil wants you to operate in the supernatural - so there is the gift of praying in tongues.

So how could I receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit? There are some very simple keys found in Mark 11. Everything you get, you get pretty well the same way.

Mark 11:24 - “Whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe you receive them, and you shall have them”. What could be clearer than that? Jesus' own words: “Whatsoever things you desire” - so notice now, the keys in here.

Number one, ‘desire’: I must want. I must want something. When someone is hungry and thirsty, and wanting something, there is a draw - a pull into their life. Even when you're ministering to one another, if the person is hungry for you to help them, it draws out of you. It draws the life of God from you. So first thing is, if I come to God, I must come wanting to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Number two, ‘when you pray’, whatsoever things you desire when you pray. You've got to ask Him. Now you don't ask Him like this: “Oh God, if it be Your will then give me this.” You know what will happen? He'll just say (without you hearing it): you really don't know what My will is, so how can you really expect to get anything?

You actually need to know: it's the will of God for you to be filled with the spirit. So I need to know that, so I don't come to God saying: “well, if You want me to have it, I'll have it” - that is passive; it's religious. It's not how you receive anything from God.

If you're going to receive anything from God, I have to extend my faith, and believe it's for now; it's for me, now. See? Now that's a decision to push aside all the things: ‘I'm not good enough’, whatever.

Listen, that's all your history talking to you. That's the demons talking to you. That's your brokenness talking to you. What is God saying? He's saying: I love you; I've accepted you; I want to fill you with the Holy Ghost. The gift is here. Will you believe?

That's how He works! “Oh, I don't know, Lord, if you want me to have it”. I can see you're double-minded, and a double-minded man doesn't get anything; so when you ask, you've got to ask believing - and our believing is based on what we know God's word says.

So Jesus said: “wait, you'll receive the promise of the Father.” Peter stood up and said: “this promise is for you, for your children, and all who are far off”.

So this Baptism in the Holy Spirit is for every person; and the gift of tongues is for every person. Why? It's to empower us internally, to help us in our spirit dimensions in our life.

So here are the keys then: whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, you've got to ask - desire, ask.

Number three, believe you receive it. Believe that when you reach out, God will respond to you, He WILL give me this gift. Believe you receive it, and then He says: you shall have it.

So don't ask, ask, ask; just say: God, I believe Your word says that I can be filled with the Holy Ghost; I can have the gift of tongues - I choose to believe it. I believe You'll give it, and You'll give it to me because You want me to have it. You want me to be a strong believer.

The gift is to build you up. Now to approach it: “oh well, I just think I'd rather have one of the greater gifts”. Well this is nonsense - it's just nonsense.

God has got a gift to help you. I don't care how little the gift is, I'll have the littlest one, and then I'll have more; but if I ignore the little things He's giving me, it'll probably be very difficult to get more.

So one of the things about praying in tongues is: God gets a hold of your tongue; so instead of your tongue being turned to all kinds of things, it's turned to magnifying God, and turned to speaking a spiritual language - very, very powerful.

So Desire; Ask; Believe; and then Receive. I've got to consciously do it – “Lord I just receive; and now Lord, I just begin to speak in that new language” - and I've got to take a step.

Now when you step out to speak, you don't stop to try and think: now what could I say? I'll make a sound like this... That's your head talking to you.

No, praying in tongues, you've got to tell your head: ‘stop arguing with me’. You've been running my life, all my life. I'm flowing in the spirit now, and the proper balance is to live from your spirit; with your head co-operating with your spirit, but not ruling your spirit.

When your mind talks to you, it argues. It's like a lawyer: who do you think you are? Why do you think that? So when your mind is talking it dominates, it argues, it reasons, it belittles, it judges.

You've got to put your mind in its right place, which is: thank you, I see the word of God says that, so I'll receive that, and I won't try and evaluate it, because it's from my spirit. I'll just let my mind focus on the Lord, and I'll just begin to worship Him.

This would be a great time to get filled with the Holy Spirit. Why wait any longer? Well I need to pray about it... No, you don't need to pray about it - you've read the scriptures. We've read them; you just need to receive, okay? Aah, some reasoning is going on...

See, here's an interesting thing that Jesus said: “Except you be converted, and become like a little child, you don't enter the kingdom of heaven”. Now what He's saying is very simply this: that to enter the kingdom, is to experience the benefits of what God has. To enter those benefits, He said: you need to be converted, or to have a change, so you become more childlike; not childish, but child-like.

A child is trusting; so for a child, if they're up on the bench, and daddy says: jump, I'll catch you, they say: YAY! But when you're an adult, you don't approach it like that. If you're an adult, and someone says ‘jump, I'll catch you’, you say: ooh I doubt it! No, I don't think so.

That’s because we've had a lot of experiences, which flavour what we think, and we've lost simplicity and trust. Everything in the kingdom is about simplicity and trust; so coming into this, is just a simplicity and trust - I'm going to do this.

In a moment, I'm going to lead everyone through a prayer to receive the Holy Ghost, and we’re going to follow through some simple steps. It doesn't matter if you already received or not, you can still all help us. We'll all work together on this, and if you're watching it online, wherever you are, then you can all just do exactly what we do, and the Holy Ghost is going to come to you, you'll get filled with the spirit and speak in tongues - wherever you are. It'll be fantastic, because God's not limited.

This is what we're going to do. In a moment we'll stand, and then we'll close our eyes. Forget about yourself, and forget about the people around you. They're not looking at you; they've got their eyes closed too.

Then you can focus your attention on the Lord, who is the giver of a good gift for you. Just set your attention on the Lord. He's a generous, loving, good giver.

Now remember: how do you receive, or minister things, of the spirit? By the ‘Hearing of Faith’. If you'll just believe what we've read and shared from the word is true, then it can happen to you.

So I'll lead you through a prayer, and it'll go like this. We will ask the Lord for the Holy Ghost, we'll ask Him for the Gift of Tongues; then we will receive by faith, and thank Him. Then we'll all begin to speak in tongues together.

So practically, I'll lead you in the prayer, you follow, we'll get to the end of the prayer, then just take a deep breath like you're receiving. It's kind of like a physical action, like a faith action that you're doing - something physical, but the reality is a spiritual thing - I'm receiving from God now, and I'm going to just speak in tongues. I'm going to just tell Him how much I love Him. I'm going to let that language of love just flow, and flow, and flow.

Now if your mind steps in, it'll argue and shut the flow. You've just got to tell your mind: no, no, be quiet - just be quiet! Shut up! Just don't talk to me. Just, I want to flow with the Holy Spirit and worship God.

So why don't we close our eyes, and let's lift our hands up to the Lord. If you're watching online, you can lift your hands up to the Lord, and all stand together as well.

I want you just to follow me in this prayer, and when we get to the end of the prayer take a deep breath, and then receive the Holy Ghost, receive a fresh anointing, and lets all begin to speak in tongues, okay? Just follow me in this prayer...

“Jesus, I come to you now. I want to receive the Holy Ghost. I want to be baptised in the spirit. I want to receive the gift of tongues, so today by faith, I receive the Holy Ghost. I receive the gift of tongues - thank You Lord, for this gift to praise and thank You. Amen.”

Take a deep breath – and receive the Holy Ghost! Let's begin to pray, let the gift rise up inside.

Okay, just stop. Just stop. We're going to start again in a moment. You can turn this gift on and off as you will - this one goes on and off at will. If you decide to pray, you can pray straight away.

Now it requires - the Bible says 'they' pray, 'they' spoke; so it's no use waiting for God to make your mouth go. He won't make your mouth work - you make your mouth work. You yield; you speak.

You say: well I feel a bit funny doing that. Well, no one is listening except God, just be funny in front of God, don't worry about it. Just let go, and just stop being uptight and in control. Just let go, and love on Him.

I remember when I first started to pray in tongues, my mind was arguing saying: you're an educated man, and you're babbling like an idiot - stop! And my spirit was saying: YES! Oh joy! Glory!

I could feel this battle going on inside, so I was walking around a block in Mount Eden. I remember stopping, and saying: mind - be quiet! This is doing me good. I haven't felt so much joy in a long time - not without a glass of wine anyway. It was a different kind of joy. It's a joy that bubbled up from inside, not a joy where you had to tank-up, and then you got a hangover.

This is great stuff - so are we ready? So all again, on the count of three, we're all going to pray in tongues strongly, loudly. You choose - come on, pray, let's pray strongly, loudly. Give yourself a voice. Let yourself be heard. After all these years of put down, and being held down; come on, let's have a voice to speak out in the gift of tongues!

You can sing in the spirit as well; and start to give expression as much as you can to that language, and you'll find it becomes a flow, like a river. When you're in that flow, your spirit comes alive, you come alive.

Don't let heaviness, or any kind of inferiority, shut you down. Whatever you do in God, do it strongly and boldly.

I'll just show you what I mean. Let's just give the Lord a clap shall we? [Applause] Okay, now that's the base level.

Now the Bible says: “Clap your hands all you people, shout unto God with a voice of triumph”. So this time, I want you to put everything into it, not a polite clap, an English clap; let's give a great shout of victory and triumph, and clap the Lord who CONQUERED SIN AND DEATH, and ROSE MIGHTILY FROM THE GRAVE. COME ON, LET'S APPLAUD THIS KING OF KINGS! [Applause and victorious noise] Halleluiah! YES LORD, Halleluiah! Okay, whoa, okay, that's much better.

Now you notice that the whole atmosphere changes, when everyone, united, begins to express the life of God - everything changes.

Anything that's done half-heartedly never has any life on it; it's always got a death on it. You know when people sing Happy Birthday, and they all sing it, but they don't sing it really strongly? You feel almost embarrassed for the person. One, they're singing to them; and two, they're singing so badly, you think: oh God, this is shocking. Anything done half-hearted, no one is pleased by it, not even God, see?

So when you do it with a whole heart, passionate and you're just under Him, there's a life comes in it. You can sing songs for 45 minutes or an hour and have no release. You just do this for 30 seconds, with all your heart, and the whole atmosphere changes, because our body and our soul hold back our spirit flowing; so when you start to clap and shout, and shake, and start to let go and start to GIVE to God, then your spirit just rises and flows.

So most people in New Zealand live under passivity, and apathy, and heaviness; so when they get into any kind of group, you can feel it in the group; but you can break it easily.

Let's keep on doing what we did now, shout! This time: shout, and pray in tongues as well; do all you can, just make a big noise. Stamp your feet, you can stamp your feet as well. Shake your head! Just go wild, for just 30 seconds. Ready? One, two, three - HALLELUIAH! Yes Lord! Yes Lord! Halleluiah!

How many feel the energy level has just shifted in your body, straight away? If you're half asleep, you wake up, just like that see, because it's really quite simple. Just work your body so it yields, let your soul focus on the Lord; just let your spirit flow, speak in tongues.

Fantastic, because what happens is, the power of God starts to flow in you. Your life becomes energised. You practice doing that in your prayer times, instead of just head down and mumbling. Go on! Get alive! Speak strongly, and pray strongly, passionately!

You don't have to do it very long, and you come alive. You can pray in other ways as well, but this will get you alive, and get you going; and not only that, the power of God starts to flow in and through you. Your whole life becomes energised.

The atmosphere begins to change. If the whole church does that, the whole atmosphere's completely different; but if they're all passive and shut down, it's just dreadful. I just scream inside, can't stand it, that heaviness and shut down religiosity - and you know the Bible abounds with noise and celebration.

David ushered in a whole new dimension of expressive praise and worship and dancing and rejoicing and celebrating. In the New Testament, James prophesied that God would do that again; but sometimes we just bring our cultural baggage in, and we think that because that's our culture, that's normal. But heaven is full of shouts and trumpets and noise and rejoicing and celebrating. There's joy unspeakable. It's expressive, full of life; so just practice praying in tongues, and giving more expression to your life with God.

Okay, so we've done: Baptism in the Spirit; and speaking in tongues. Now you can pray in tongues all the time. That's your personal devotional language, and it builds you up.

So we're going to go back into 1 Corinthians 12:7, diverse kind of tongues and interpretation. It talks about these – “the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit with all: word of wisdom; word of knowledge; faith; healing; working of miracles; prophecy; discerning of spirits; diverse kinds of tongues; and to another, interpretation of tongues”.

Now this is not your devotional language. This is a gift, an operation of the Holy Spirit, like the other gifts, for a specific a person or specific group; so not all may flow in Tongues & Interpretations, as a gift.

Everyone has a devotional language; but not all might flow in it as a gift; and tongues with interpretations comes as a package usually, so if there's one there should be the other - otherwise you haven't got a clue what's going on.

So if someone prophesies, you know God is building the church. But if there are tongues, you can't understand it, unless it's interpreted; and so this is not your prayer language. This is actually a manifestation of the Holy Ghost - diverse tongues, as the Holy Ghost wills.

1 Corinthians 13 – “Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels” - isn't that interesting? So when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you manifest the gift of speaking in tongues with an interpretation - it is a language of men; or it's a language of angels.

So it's a language you're given. For example, Doug had prayed among a group of Chinese. There was someone there who knew Hebrew, and he said: you have spoken in fluent Hebrew. He knew exactly what he was praying; so this is a specific demonstration of the power of God.

In the Book of Acts, they began to pray in tongues, and as they prayed in tongues, for some of them they were manifesting the ‘sign’ gift of tongues - and people could hear and understand them in their own language.

So the gift of tongues - it is a language. It is a real language, and it has expressions; so don't pray in tongues, or any gift operation, in a monotone, boring, way you know? Language needs to be interesting, and be alive and have expression; have you in it, not just (monotone) we're talking like this... and there's no expression. Let life and vibrancy flow - put yourself into it!

So the ‘tongues of men and angels’; so tongues means a different kind of language. It's a distinct language. Sometimes with the gift of Tongues with Interpretation, the tongues may be a language someone can understand.

Sometimes the tongues may be a language understood by angels, so clearly He said: “If I speak with the tongues of men or angels”, so quite possibly He spoke with the tongues of angels at times. I'll give you a couple of examples of this.

In Acts 2, they began to speak in other tongues, and everyone heard them speak in their own language. Now you had people from all over the world, and everyone who came there understood something that someone was praying, then how did that happen? That is supernatural.

They've never learnt the language, yet they're speaking, and they're speaking from their spirit a language they didn't know - and someone understood the language. A most amazing gift really isn't it? We don't see much of that. We need to believe for more of that - just to be able to pray and speak, and if someone from another language is there, they say “whoa, you were speaking something I understood! Do you know my language”? “No, don't have a clue, I just spoke in the Holy Ghost.”

So people in different cultures did understand Him. It's quite an amazing gift, and I've heard of people going into places, overseas particularly, and having prayed in tongues, and actually someone understood what they were saying. It was their language. They recognised it, and were quite astonished they'd never learnt the language.

So the gift of speaking in tongues with interpretation is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, which comes on you at a certain time. It's for a purpose: to build the church.

It could possibly also be a language of angels, and there are a number of things in scripture that talk about angels being activated. In Psalm 103:19, it says: “the Lord has established His throne in the heaven, His kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, you angels who excel in strength, who do His word, harkening to the voice of His word”.

So when God's word is spoken on the earth, angels can respond to that voice. I don't think we can command angels. I think that's an area where there's not a lot in the Bible on it, so people have different views; but I do believe that there can be a ministration of speaking in tongues, where angels understand what it is, and can be activated because of it. So speaking in tongues can be a very, very powerful gift of the spirit.

So what is the purpose of speaking in tongues? In 1 Corinthians 14:22 it says: “it's a sign gift to the unbeliever”. So a person who has no understanding of anything spiritual, and you speak in a language, and they understand it, boy, they know that's God! That's definitely a supernatural sign.

I think it can also be for prophetic proclamations - we can begin to speak out in the spirit; and decree and declare things. I think angels are released many times, by the speaking in tongues, and activating that gift. It can cross language barriers; so again, for that gift to come on you, you'd need to desire to operate in that gift, and then practice. I'd practice at home, letting the Holy Ghost come on you, then begin to speak out, and so on.

So we should ask the Holy Spirit to give us the interpretation. In 1 Corinthians 14:27, it says: “if any man speaks in an unknown tongue (they're talking about in a church meeting, or in a group meeting) let it be by two or at the most three, one after the other, and let one interpret. If there's no interpreter, let him keep silence, and let him speak to himself and to God”.

So that's quite an interesting verse; so you notice there He's talking about two different things. He's talking about the gift of tongues, in a group setting, needs to have interpretation for it to build and benefit everyone.

So we can all speak in tongues, and just worship God together; but when there's a sign gift of tongues, like prophecy, there's a gift; when we have that gift, someone needs to interpret it, or it doesn't have any meaning for anyone.

“So if a man speaks in an unknown tongue, let it be by two or three” - so don't have everyone doing this, just one, two or three; and there needs to be an interpretation. If there's no interpreter - then that's the interesting thing - if you've spoke out, you should pray you get the interpretation; and you interpret it - so how about that?

He said: “if there's no interpreter, keep silence, and speak to himself and to God”. So clearly, when you are speaking in your normal language of tongues, you're speaking to yourself, and you're speaking to God - very, very clearly.

So what about the interpretation of tongues? It's a gift that God gives you, it just comes on you. Do you translate what was said? No, you don't translate it. Translating is when you listen, and phrase by phrase, you make sense of it.

This is actually: God gives you the inspiration, you just get the message, and you just share what God has given you - so it's not a translation. It just catches the spirit of what God is saying; and so a person may give a tongues message, but the interpretation's quite short; or the tongues message could be quite short, the interpretation could be a little longer.

It's got nothing to do with translation. It's actually: God is saying something (by the spirit), and here's what it means (by the spirit). Together the two build up the church, and they can activate things in the realm of the spirit.

So it's quite an interesting thing, because when you flow in those gifts, it energises and activates, and creates atmosphere, because God is released through the moving in those gifts. It’s a great gift to desire, and great gift to begin to flow in.

Not so many flow in it, and for a whole number of reasons; so what I want us to do is, were going to just do some activations together. We'll just get you back on your feet for a moment, and I'm going to get you to do two or three activations and praying in tongues. I want you to experiment with what you sense and feel as you do this. I want you to feel the flow inside.

On the count of three we'll pray. We won't pray for more than 30 seconds - just 30 seconds; and when you're praying in tongues, I want you to put your hand on your belly, and then pray strongly in tongues, building up your own spirit man. And as you pray in tongues and speak strongly to yourself, I want you to sense what happens inside you - what you feel in your body, as you do that. Are we ready? Okay, one, two, three.

Okay stop, just stop now. What did you experience? What did you sense as you prayed? What did you feel? Lots of energy? Something rising up inside you? How many did you feel like you were expanding, like you're sort of growing larger on the inside? That's quite a common experience to have that one.

Now this time, I want us to all pray strongly in tongues, and we just focus your thoughts on the Lord; and while we're worshipping Him, we're just honouring Him and thanking Him, I want you to see what happens in the atmosphere in the place; as with one mind, we set our minds on the Lord, just fix on Him, hold Him in your mind.

Okay, stop. What did you sense or notice as we did that? Breaking through? What were we breaking through? The atmosphere that's present; or spiritual atmosphere that sits over our nation, over our areas, over our region.

When you begin to give expression to the life of God, suddenly you feel release, and you've actually broken through an invisible, but real, resistance.

For many people, something sits around them, that just holds them down. It's working on the beliefs of the heart, and it's usually demonically operated around those beliefs of the heart. It just holds you down, and gets you in turmoil. When you decide to pray in tongues, it's like it all breaks off you.

Lasting freedom usually requires: Deliverance; and change in the heart beliefs, and freedom from bondages; but if you will pray in tongues, you can stir your spirit man up and become full of life.

When you become full of life, there's real power. If I was just to begin to pray strongly in tongues, I can feel my spirit rise up; and instead of being conscious of myself, I become conscious that God is within me. So if I just put my hand on her head and touch her; and I believe that I am charged and full with the Holy Ghost, I let go something from inside me, and you can see it visibly. You could see something is coming out of this person. There is a life of God, the hidden life of the spirit, which is designed to flow out of us.

Now it can be strong, it can be gentle. I've done it in a dramatic way, so you get something visual that gets you thinking about we connect with the realm of the spirit; and we bring from within us, from the gateway of our heart, we release the life of God.

Many times when people pray, or we minister to someone, it's like because of inferiority and rejection and the lies of the devil we tend to: oh, we'll just leave it all up to God. God, just You do it all.

Now God wants to work through you; so you have to give yourself, as you are joined one spirit to the Lord. So if you withhold yourself from loving the person, and releasing what you have to the person, nothing will happen, because I'm deliberately choosing to withhold me.

But if I begin to think how wonderful this person is, how God loves her, how God's heart is filling me with that love [blows once deeply] and something happened that time that was different. There was a flow of the spirit.

There was just a flow from within my spirit; or we could do another way. I get her to look to the Lord, not to me, which takes the pressure off me. Then I look to the Lord, who's the source, so we're both looking to the Lord. We'd expect something to happen, so the Bible says: have the faith of God, and if you'll speak to the mountain, be removed and cast into the sea and not doubt what you say will come to pass, then you'll have what you say.

So notice it says: “you speak”, so the power of God can be released by speaking; so if we're going to minister in healing and deliverance, we will have to speak.

So power flows when I am connected to God, and I hear what He's saying or doing, and then I speak.

Now this is exciting. We are ministers of the spirit. You have something to give. Whatever God has given to you, you can give to someone else. Think about that - so the more you can receive from God, the more you have to give. If you experience His love, you can release His love. If you experience His joy, you can release His joy.

We need to engage God regularly so we have something to overflow, to give. We're not trying to make things happen. We're taking what we have, and I've taken a long time to gain these things. It's taken me time and effort to work on my mind, and deal with fears and things - but you have something to give because of that. Isn't that exciting?

When you work with God, He's always willing to work with you. What happens is, you become aware of blocks and barriers and things in you, that you need to address in your journey with Him.

We don't have to have it all now, it's a journey with God, so on the journey we're learning stuff. On the journey you find there are blocks, and so you work to remove the blocks.

Notice I've avoided touching him. We're just calling on the spirit of God to come, just decreeing it. You've got to learn to exercise your faith, not try to make things happen. So I ask him to connect with God, and reach out expecting; and I myself reach out expecting, and make God my focus. It's quite surprising what can happen, what will happen - you might like to try it.

Now remember that, for the anointing of the spirit to flow, the anointing flows from within the person's spirit, through their soul and body, out to touch a person. So if your soul is in turmoil, and blocks and argues, there's no flow from your spirit. Bible says “out of your belly flows...”, so your soul, your mind and thoughts have got to co-operate. I've got to choose to set my heart to believe, and to resist the distractions. If I do that, then the spirit of God can flow quite easy. He wants to do it.

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Word of Knowledge is a Gift of the Spirit. A word of knowledge is a manifesting of God.

This is what a word of knowledge is: it's just a little piece of information. It's not that you know everything. If you have a word of knowledge, you don't know everything, you only know a little bit.

So a word of knowledge, it just comes as an impression, a thought; it comes as a mental picture; a still voice; and you become aware of something about a person, that you had no natural way of working it out.

So it is given to you, it's a revelation. You don't work it out; so you don't look at the person, and try and figure this thing out. You listen, and God just shares the secret with you.

Oh really? I didn't know that! So it's like a thought that comes to you; so it's not accumulated knowledge. It's actually revealed knowledge; God reveals something to you.

So what is the purpose of the gift? There's a whole range of purposes; but when you have a word of knowledge, it helps you see what in a person's life, what God wants to work on.

So for example, in counselling, words of knowledge are just so important, because you'll just get something about a person, and it's related to their past or their current situation. It's like their whole life starts to open up, and you have access to minister into them.

So a word of knowledge can uncover some details about a person's situation, and it enables you to minister and help them very, very clearly. It's just such a huge asset to get words of knowledge, because you know things that you couldn't have known naturally - and the person is so surprised, and it opens the way to minister to them, help them, and so on. Words of knowledge are just wonderful.

There are a few Bible examples... Elijah, the king, the enemy of Israel, kept making these plans to invade Israel; but every time he got there, he would find that the Israeli army was there already.

In the end the king got very angry. He said: who's selling me out? Who's telling our secrets? They said: no one's telling your secrets, but God is telling the prophet. Get this - he said: well let's go get the prophet then. Hello! If God's telling secrets about army battles, then He's going to tell the prophet about what your plans are too - so it didn't work out very well at all.

So in 1 Samuel 9:15-20, Samuel received about 16 pieces of information about Saul - what he was doing; where was going; his father; his donkeys; and what God had planned for him. It's one of the most accurate words of knowledge in the Bible. There are about 16 specific facts that God gave him, he could not possibly have known. It's extraordinary.

John 4:18, the woman with the marriage failure, and she's just there talking to him; and he said: go and get your husband. She said: oh, I haven't got a husband. He said: yes, you've been married five times, and you're living with a man right now. That is a word of knowledge.

Words of knowledge can really - they actually scare people. I remember the first time I was in a meeting where words... I had no idea what words of knowledge were. All I knew was that man there was calling out secrets of people in the congregation - and I was overcome with a horrendous fear.

I remember - now this is how smart I was in those days - I remember hiding behind someone bigger than me, just going down in the seat so that he couldn't look at me; because I thought if he looked at me, he would be able to see what was going on in my life, or where I was at. It didn't occur to me actually God was telling him; and he could say: there's a guy over there hiding behind that guy there... Ha!

I remember one of the most outstanding words of knowledge I heard of, was with Frank Houston; and they'd been having trouble in their church, with someone breaking into their church and stealing sound equipment, and quite a bit of sound equipment had gone.

Frank's a Holy-Ghost-man, and he was overseas, and he rang back the church - he's ringing in the middle of a service, and he's talking to his son Brian. He said: Brian, God's been speaking to me. I've just been to a place of prayer, and he said if you look down the back there, you'll see right down to the back on the right side - you looking right the back side? He said: now go three rows forward, on the right side there. Now he says: a guy, two in, who's got long white hair - is he there? He said: yes. He said: that's the man who's been taking stuff from the church.

The guy leapt and ran - he literally ran away, but he had been the thief. He was the one seen. He'd come into the church meeting to case out what was there, then later on come and steal stuff; and so eventually he was caught, and returned the things. Isn't that extraordinary? Scary, isn't it aye?

So the supernatural realm, when it operates well, is scary. It scares, because everyone has this illusion that you're secret, and you can cover everything from everyone else. When you suddenly realise, from God's perspective - it's all open, so He can see it all - and He can tell someone; that's a little scary isn't it aye?

I remember we were in Nigeria, and I had another one of the most accurate prophetic words of knowledge. There was a whole row of people lined up there, and the prophet had this first lady there, and she was pregnant. He stood in front of her for a little while looking at her, didn't say a word, but he was listening to God.

He said to her: the child you're carrying is not your husbands. She was shocked of course; then he said: actually, when you got married, you didn't realise that your husband had a low sperm count; and so when you couldn't conceive, you went to the witch doctor to get a potion for your husband; but he deceived you, and gave you a potion that would turn your heart from your husband, and bring you to him.

This child is the witch doctor's child - and she just broke down, and wept and wept and wept, because it was true. It was all true; so she repented, she was forgiven, and God touched her. Then she had the baby quite soon afterwards, because the baby was well overdue, there was a problem.

So these are the sorts of things that words of knowledge can do. Words of knowledge are stunning, because they actually open up people's lives, in a way nothing else can. When you know something about someone, and no one but God would have known - they just actually know God is really opening up their life.

It's dramatic - I love it. Words of knowledge are great; so words of knowledge are great in areas of counselling, when you can't sort out the root of a problem, and then you just get a word of knowledge. I had someone come up to me, and they were describing a certain problem, and I just had the word 'occult' come to mind.

I said: have you been involved in the occult? We talked and interacted; yes, there was heavy involvement with the occult, and there was heavy involvement in the background with it as well. I said: well this is the root cause of your problem, why you're having this particular struggle; so that was able to be ministered to.

Ananias received words of knowledge about Paul. Remember, we read that in Acts 9:10-16; and God told Ananias go there, and go to that place, this street, that house, this man; and he's blind, and he's been praying.

I want you to lay hands on him, he'll be filled with the spirit, and he'll be healed, and I've got a message for him. So there it is - the prophetic word, the whole area of words of knowledge, all flowing in together. Isn't it wonderful?

Now this is in the Bible. Start to look for it, where Jesus did words of knowledge; for example: He's going into town, there's a man up a tree. How did He know his name was Zacchaeus? It's a strange town, strange people, there's a guy up a tree. Whoa! Who's that? He said: Zacchaeus, come on down, I'm going to your place for tea.

How did He know his name was Zacchaeus? So words of knowledge can even get: names of people; dates; events; specific things that have happened. God knows everything about your life. Now that means it's a good incentive to get your life right.

I remember when we went to this prophet, I remember thinking: oh, I was in the terror of the Lord. I think: dear Lord, I don't want to have him say all my secrets out in front of everyone - I’ve got to make sure my life is right before God! So the fear of God comes in that kind of situation.

One of the meetings we were in there, I remember there was a whole group of us from the west had gone to this country; and there was one man there, the guy said: you're a businessman, aren't you? He said: that's right. He said: you're a leader in your church aren't you? He said: that's correct.

He said: no one knows that on your last trip, you were involved with a prostitute over in this country, and he specified the country. He was just shocked - but it was true, absolutely true; and so he repented right on the spot, and got his life right.

So we tend to think that no one sees what we do, and no one knows what we do; but God sees it all, and when the words of knowledge start to flow, it brings to the light pieces of information; not to shame or hurt someone, but rather to actually help the person.

So I would probably have done it a little bit differently than that, but in this particular situation, the guy came into a meeting where this was happening, and he came in with a sin hidden in his heart, so it was outed in the meeting.

Scary, so my first introduction to Pentecostal meetings was ‘scary meetings’. They were scary meetings alright - I was scared anyway. So when the supernatural operates, you hear people use the term: it 'freaked me out', you know, because they can't understand how this sort of knowledge would happen; but its words of knowledge, words (or a piece) of information.

So how does a word of knowledge come to you? Well it may come to you just as a picture. You just get a picture just come. You may just sort of see something. It may come just as a spontaneous thought - you just have a thought turn up in your mind; just suddenly you have this thought.

It may come as you feel, or you have an impression inside you, about someone or something; so words of knowledge are wonderful when they come, but they come as: a picture; a thought; they might come just as something very, very little - very, very small.

So when you get a word of knowledge, it helps if you ask for details, just enquire for a little more; so instead of it just being general, it becomes more specific. Then we find that the more specific it is, the more risk you take; but the more specific it is, the greater the release, and the blessing, for the person concerned.

So words of knowledge, mostly it comes as a very little impression. You have to ask God to give you words of knowledge; and when you get the word of knowledge, you'll still actually go through the wrestling: man, I wonder how to say that, and how can I share that?

Now most of the words of knowledge you'll get will be of quite a gentle nature, a simple nature. The ones I've described were people operating in a prophet office, so it was at a different level altogether. For example: Peter, operating in an apostolic office; and a man (Ananias) comes up to give.

He said: did you sell the property? We did. Is all the money from the property? It is. He said: how come you and your wife have conspired in your heart to lie, not to men, but to the Holy Ghost?

While you sold the property, and had the money, it was yours to choose what to do; but you have tried to lie to the Holy Ghost? With that, he fell down dead. Isn't that interesting? His wife came in, the same thing. How did Peter know that? He knew it by word of knowledge.

Peter was not worried about the amount of money; that was not the issue. The issue was hypocrisy.

The issue was: it was his property. If he wanted to sell it, he could sell it. If he wanted to give it, he could give as much or as little as he liked; but he gave, pretending it was ALL that he'd sold.

In other words he, was trying to create an impression, or an illusion, of a generosity that wasn't there. He was trying to lie; and he said: you're lying to the Holy Ghost, and so it had huge consequences for him. So many times in the Bible, there are examples of words of knowledge.

Anyone who flowed prophetically moved in a mixture of: prophecy; and word of knowledge - right through the Bible.

I'll give you an example of this operating with Peter, when Simon the sorcerer got converted, got baptised; and then he saw that when they laid hands on people, that power came. He wanted that power; and Peter looked at him and said: “I see that you are in the gall of bitterness, and the bondage of inequity”.

He said: underneath, driving that request is bitterness, and there's a whole crookedness in your life around the area; of wanting power, so you look good in front of people. So he was able to, with a word of knowledge, go right to the very root issue that was there, and help the man face and see what his motive was for doing things.

So that's actually like a revelation knowledge; and it could be described as a word of knowledge, or it could be described as discerning of spirits - picking the motivation of the man's heart.

It's a very powerful thing. Words of knowledge are great. One of my daughters served as a responsible adult, RA, in a hostel; and she had responsibility for the whole of the second floor. She had to look after all the students, make sure that there's no one in the rooms, and that kind of deal.

She would lie down, and the Holy Ghost would speak to her. If there was a guy had come onto her floor, and had gone into one of the rooms. He would just speak to her and tell her; and she'd go down, knock on the door, ask to come in; and so you've got a young man in the room - and they would be shocked. How could she possibly know? But God told her, so she just took it, and acted on it, and it opened up, and the whole thing came out in the open. It's exciting isn't it?

You think you could hide from God - it's a bit scary isn't it? But this is normal in the Bible - that the supernatural realm would operate. It's a normal kind of thing, so it could operate around a whole lot of areas; around causes of problems in people's lives, circumstances, family situations, and so on and so forth.

God can open up these things by revelation, can reveal; so when you're working with people, it's a great help if God gives you words of knowledge, and prophetic words for them, because you start to see things you couldn't see before, and it helps bring God to the person.

It's a wonderful gift, a great gift and it comes very gently. It comes very gently. It's just like the slightest, least impression; so in a group like this, there are bound to be many, many needs; and so we could reach out and say: well Lord, is there someone here who has a need? Suppose if we just, for example, we look at the area of healing. We're going to look at how could I move in words of knowledge, around the area of healing?

So I'll just show you a simple way of approaching it. There's many different ways of approaching it, then we'll just step out and see what God does.

So the first thing is we look at: how am I going to get a word of knowledge? A word of knowledge will come as just an impression, a thought, a picture, or some kind of thing; and be very gentle, very light.

So if I was to begin to just picture the outline of a person's body, and I would just ask the question: I wonder is that a man or a woman? Now when you ask God things, ask always: is it this or that, this or that? You'll feel drawn to one or the other - oh, I think it's this, see?

So ask the Lord; Lord, is there someone here that you want to minister to; and is it a man or is it a woman? Man or woman? Which way they were drawn, I sense a woman.

Alright then Lord, well where would she be? Would she be on the right side of this room, or on the left side of this room, where would she be? Is it the right side, or the left side?

Now just listen for the gentlest impression; so is it a man or woman? Is it on the right side, or the left side - it's on the right side. Alright then, so therefore, we know it's probably in this area. So I need to know, what is the area?

So if I just look at a person's body, and start to look just at the head, and is there any part of the body I'm drawn to? So I'll just look at the head, maybe the ears, the eyes, I just begin to just slowly, just mentally, just walk down through her body. Is there any place that I'm drawn to, any place that stands out, any place I feel oh, there could be a problem there?

So what I sense is this: I sense that someone has a lower back problem, a woman on the right side of this room. Is there any woman here, around this area here, that's got a back problem, in the lower back there's pain, and we will just pray for you right now and you're healed. Who's that?

And there's another woman here, and you've got a problem in your hip, in this right hip. There's a pain in the joint. Who's the person who has that problem? Who's the one has the back problem?

Okay, God bless you. So how long have you had the problem? About 8yrs. What happened eight years ago? It just deteriorated? Did the doctor tell you what the problem is? Yeah, I go to the chiropractor every week. Every week you go to the chiro - for nearly eight? On and off, yeah.

The reason I'm asking that is to try and identify: where the problem lies; how long it's been there; and then what it's painful to do - because I was going to get you to do something that would be difficult to do, see?

So look to Jesus. He's the source of healing. He is the healer. Now we know that because of word of knowledge, God does want to heal her. This is a long-standing problem that requires expensive treatments with a chiropractor. It'd be great if God healed her, so now we need to pray.

So we've got a word of knowledge on the healing situation, now we need to get to believe God for a miracle of healing. So you believe for the word of knowledge; then you believe for the miracle of healing - two things, okay.

So I need to believe for healing, so I need to start to pray in the spirit, and look to the source. If I focus on the need for her to be healed, I'll feel stressed I've got to do something; but if I look at Jesus, the healer, then I can become aware, and filled with awareness: there's nothing too difficult for Him; and I can then, at the right time, just release healing.

So I just begin to thank You Lord. I thank You Lord, You are the healer. There's nothing too difficult for You. You're the Lord, our healer. I just love You. Thank You Lord that you desire to heal this young lady right now, right now I thank You for Your power touching her.

“In the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, I speak into the spirit of infirmity, I command You release her spine, release her back right now. I break all witchcraft that's come around your life, to hold you back. I speak and break all generational witchcraft. I speak and command that spirit of infirmity, loose her right now, in Jesus' Mighty name. Now Lord, we just pray for Your healing power to just flow into her, and restore her completely, in Jesus' name.”

Now you notice as I began to pray, I started first of all to focus on the fact there could be infirmity, and I started to not just pray for healing, but consider the possibility there could be a spirit.

Then as I began to pray into that area, I began to realise there's occult, and there's witchcraft, there's something has been around her life, got on her spine, and attached to her; so when I rebuked it, you notice the power flow was immediate.

How are you feeling? You feel a bit of a shock, wasn't it aye? Did you get surprised how suddenly... Yeah! What did you feel? What did you experience? You felt release?

Okay, how are you feeling? Just move around; just see how you feel now. Okay, look for a chance to lift someone. You feel different? Okay, come on - let's give the Lord a great clap now. Praise the Lord. Isn't that wonderful isn't it?

Notice we are now moving from the simple - you know, just ask someone about something; to listening for inspired thought. We're coming up to starting to get inspired thoughts, words of knowledge; and starting to look then at being able to minister to needs in people's lives.

It's just a slow journey, but it all works on the same thing: getting something from God. So remember what I did was: well Lord, is it that side or that side? Oh, maybe that side. That's all I got.

Is it a man or a woman? Man or woman? I think maybe it's a woman. That's all I got. Then I began to look at the outline of a body, and suddenly I could see - I saw almost like there's like a glow, or attention was drawn, right to the lower back.

So then I've just got to step out: actually there's a woman here on this side, and you have a problem in your lower spine. Now if there's no response, I'd have to then get more information.

Now who was the other lady that's got problems in her hip joints? Okay, now tell me a little bit about the problem you've had. You've had a fall? She had a fall and injured her shoulder; and she was prayed for, and the shoulder was healed; but since then she's had this pain right across the back, and so - stiffness inside. So it's painful to bend or anything like that. It catches me. You believe Jesus could heal you? Too right! Good on you, that's the spirit.

Well look up to Him, He's the healer, not me. You look to Him, and focus on Him. God, I just thank You that You're a great God. Thank You Jesus, You're the healer - so again I just centre my attention on the Lord, and should I be praying against an infirmity, or just praying for healing?

So I'm reaching out for the healing power of God to flow. If I focus on the source, that God is the great healer.

“I thank You Lord for Your mighty healing power. In Jesus' name, I command this infirmity to loose your spine right now. Father, let Your mighty healing power flow. Let the POWER of God just come right through her body, in Jesus' name. Lord, fill every part of her body, just restore completely this spine, this back, in Jesus' Mighty name. Thank You Lord.”

Why don't you just begin to move your back, just see how you are, and see how it feels. Has it improved at all? Is there any shift or change? Not at the moment? Well, we'll pray again - never quit after the first time.

Jesus prayed for a man, and said: “do you see”? He said: “no, I see men like trees”; and so He said: “look up, and He prayed again another time”. So we'll pray again one more time; so just look up to the Lord. We thank You, You're a mighty God, a healing God.

Now it's quite important that you don't get pressured to perform, quite important you just keep your eyes - it's God who heals, so it's His healing power we need.

So as you're reaching out now, you're asking: is there anything that would block, anything that would hinder?

“Lord, I thank You, the mighty God who heals. Let Your anointing just flow right now, just speak into the spine, command every part of your spine to come into divine order. I command this infirmity, to release your spine in Jesus' name. Father, let Your power flow, TOUCH her Holy Ghost right now, in Jesus' Mighty name. Fill her, fill her, LOOSE her now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord.”

Whoa! Feel the power of God now? Okay, now just begin to move around now. Okay, now what I want you to do is, I want you just to begin to move and walk towards me, begin to move like this.

Just do the best you can. In other words, instead of focussing on what hasn't happened, just begin to take steps of faith, okay? Thank You Lord, thank You Lord, thank You Lord. Okay, thank You Lord.

Okay, now just begin to move around more - stretch. Sometimes miracles are immediate, and the change is immediate. Many times they're like a seed - you get a little bit of a shift, and then as the person just stretches and exercises faith, thanks God - then it frees up completely.

So you never know which it's going to be, and you have to consider both are possible. Most of us just want it all to happen at once. I've found many times, nothing happens; but overnight they're healed, or sometimes they get a little improvement; so I ask the question: has there been any change? Did it get worse? If it got worse - I know it's a spirit. If it gets better, a little bit better - I know the healing has started, and we persevere in the praying.

I remember praying for one lady with a severe back problem, and it was in a group of Pastors. I prayed for her, and she got worse - she started to actually physically be in pain; and you could see the gasp of disapproval from all these Pastors.

You have ruined her! You've hurt this poor lady by your praying. Now she hadn't fallen over, or anything like that - but they just thought I'd hurt her. Now it just shows the level of understanding.

I said: better or worse? Oh, a lot worse. I said: okay, that's good - we know what the problem is. It's a demonic spirit, and it's now manifesting, and resisting the healing. I'll pray again, you will be healed - and she walked away completely free. But see, people don't understand that.

Okay now let's just move around a little bit. It's a little bit freer isn't it? We'll just keep thanking God, and just keep moving now - keep moving and enjoying your freedom.

See, most people focus on what didn't happen, rather than what did happen. Focus on what did happen, and thank God, and let it grow in your life; rather than focusing on what didn't happen.

When I was trained, I trained in physics and science and maths, so my whole orientation was what didn't happen, so I couldn't move in these kinds of things at all, until I changed and said: well what has happened?

Has anything happened? If there was a little improvement - something has started. Thank God, and keep moving, and believe God for the full healing to take place.

Discerning of Sprits / Words of Wisdom (4 of 5)

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A supernatural gift, a revelation, which enables us to see the source or root of the problem. This is not a natural discernment (working things out), but a spiritual impression that we can name e.g. spirit of infirmity, divination. We can discern the activity of the Holy Spirit, demonic activity, or angelic activity. We don't sit as judge, but look as an observer, and ask God how we should deal with it. Words of Knowledge; Prophecy; and Discerning of Spirits all need to be accompanied with a Word of Wisdom - know what to do with what we receive.

So in this session we're going to start, I'm going to do some teaching in discerning of spirits, and then we're going to do some activations for a little while just to get you busy. So if you open up your notes there in Section 17, you'll see the section on discerning of spirits. I'll just read to you a scripture passage, then we'll go into explaining it. This is out of Book of Acts, Chapter 16, Verse 16 and Luke is writing. He's writing about his adventures with Paul: and it came to pass, when we went to prayer, a certain young woman who was possessed with a spirit of divination met us, and brought her masters much gain by fortune-telling. The same followed Paul and us and cried out, saying these men are servants of the Most High God, they show us the way of salvation. And she did this many days, but Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit: I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her. And he came out that very hour.

So this is an interesting story in the New Testament, of Paul is going to a prayer meeting, and as he goes to a prayer meeting, the place that they were in was the centre of occult activities. It was a centre of spiritism, divination, that kind of thing, and so what happens is there's a young woman there. Notice her message; her message is: these are the servants of the Most High God. Is that correct? Yes, it was. They're showing us the way of salvation. Is that correct? Yes, it was. What she was saying was correct, but the motivating power behind it was a demonic spirit, because she herself was involved in divination. It said: there's a young woman, who was possessed with a spirit of divination, met us. The word possessed is a very bad translation because it actually means literally to have a spirit, not to be totally controlled. You use the word possessed, you think totally controlled. She's not totally controlled. She had a familiar spirit, because she was involved in fortune-telling.

It says she had a spirit of divination. The word divination is the word python, literally she had a python spirit wrapped around her, speaking into her ear, talking into her. It was invisible to the natural eye, but it was very real in the spirit world, so constantly, because of her involvement in divination, in the occult, she had this spirit familiar to her, attached to her, joined to her, would talk to her and give information about people. So people would come, they'd pay money to have their fortune told, and the spirit, because of that access to the spirit realm and spiritual network, spirit internet, it could share facts about people that would stun them. Then as a result of that, they would open up their heart to receive direction, and their lives would come into agreement with the spirit and into bondage.

Now when you look at it, the woman is saying all the right things, but Paul discerns that behind it there's a spirit operating, and he discerned exactly what it was. Luke said it's a spirit of a python, and it brought the masters - so she was a servant girl - a lot of money because of her fortune-telling. So the whole of that area was given over to fortune-telling, was given over to divination, given over to the demonic realm, and this girl came with a spirit. Now Paul, it says an interesting thing. It said Paul - although she followed us and cried out so and so, she did this many days - so Paul didn't address it immediately, but he became irritated by it. It says Paul being grieved, or feeling oppressed. The exact meaning of that word I'll just get for you. Let me just find it here - the exact word there means literally to toil, or to struggle to break through, or to feel worried or pressured, or to feel grief. Isn't that interesting?

So when a spirit is operating against us, then you can feel all kinds of feelings or sensations, like difficulty breaking through, there's no freedom or flow. You can feel turmoil around you, you can feel perhaps stressed trying to achieve what you're trying to achieve, or you may even feel grief. Those are the kinds of meanings associated with that word, and so he was experiencing the sensations, what she said was okay, but what was behind it, at the root of it, was demonic, and eventually when the Holy Ghost led him, he turned around, spoke and directly commanded the spirit: come out of her. Immediately the woman, or over the next hour, she was delivered of that spirit, and of course if you read on, you find then that there was a massive reaction, and Paul was then put into jail and beaten up. But there was again further miracles took place.

So this is a region full of demonic activity, and this is the gift of discerning of spirits operating. He discerned, or looked right through and found what was at the cause, or what was the source of the problem, so discerning of spirits, this is what it is; it is knowledge God gives you, so it's a revelation God gives you. God reveals something to you. What does He reveal? He reveals what spirit is operating right behind some activity or action. It's a supernatural gift of revelation. It means to see right through to what is the root, or what is behind this matter, so the gift of discerning of spirits gives you information, or insight, or revelation about three areas; one, the activity of the Holy Spirit. We need to discern the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus consistently discerned what the Holy Spirit was doing, and did it, so one aspect of discerning of spirits is the realm of being able to see right through what the Holy Spirit is doing.

Another aspect of it is to be able to identify demonic activity. When there are spirits in a place, spirits in a person, or spirit behind someone's actions, we need to be able to discern, or see what is operating there, otherwise we come under the influence of it. Many times, on some of the big moves of God, they lacked experience in discerning of spirits, and a lot of things they said were the Holy Spirit, were actually demonic manifestations. I can remember being in a meeting one time, and they were just saying: this is all just a Holy Spirit working and so on, and I looked at the person who was next to me, or just in front of me. I could see clearly there was a spirit operating, so I just quietly went up and just commanded the spirit to go. The person dropped to the ground, it was all over, and she was set free. I found it impossible to just focus while there's all this demonic stuff just going on around me, so that sort of dealt to that.

So you have to understand one of the things it's not; it's not natural discernment. It's not working things out. You know some people train in body language, so they can work out things from body language, look at the person, figure them out, you know? It's not natural. It's not, you've developed some skill at being able to work out some things going on in people. It's actually, revelation just comes to you, God just speaks and reveals it to you, and so that's how you know. So He can reveal the activity, or nature, or name of spirits that are in a person, so this morning when I was praying, you notice I spoke against a spirit of infirmity. Now you notice that the moment I stood against that spirit of infirmity, there was quite a quick reaction or response, so that tells me that it was exactly what the problem was. There was a spirit was causing the pain in the person's body, for example I had a young man - I was speaking in City Harvest and I had a word of knowledge, it was a young man with a shoulder condition.

He had pain in his shoulders, so the young guy came up, and as he began to speak to me, interact with me, I felt the Lord say he has a major root of bitterness against his father. So I asked him how do you get on with your father? He said I love my dad, so it seemed like his initial response contradicted what God had shown me. I said to him well, isn't it true that your father travels a lot, and is not there for you, and actually you've got quite a lot of feelings about that? He said that's right. I said: the Lord shows me that you've been quite angry, and actually become resentful and bitter that your dad has not been available for you when you needed him, and he said that's true. I said: well the Lord's shown me that the reason you have this pain in your shoulder, it's actually a spirit of infirmity, and it's come because of the unforgiveness in your heart towards your father - now you see, so some of that was word of knowledge, and some of that is discerning of spirits. The cause of the sickness is a demonic spirit - that's discerning of spirit. The nature of the problem, the issue with his father, that's word of knowledge, see?

So I asked him if he's willing to forgive his father, which he was. I led him in a simple prayer, forgave his father, then as soon as I commanded the spirit to come out of him, it manifested quite strongly, he fell on the ground. He got up after that, and he then testified. He said actually, I didn't just have pain in my shoulder, I had pain everywhere, all over my body I've had these pains. The doctor has told me my back is stiffening, and by the age of 40 I would not be able to bend or move or twist at all, but he said I now am completely free. So the spirit of infirmity had created pains in his body, and they were associated with an issue in his life of unforgiveness with someone.

So you see how gifts work together, and we'll get onto the word of wisdom shortly - so the gift of word of knowledge, and discerning of spirits, they work very closely together. One gives you some information you couldn't have known, the other gives you discernment to see right through to the problem. So discerning of spirits is not natural figuring things out by studying a person's body or body language and so on. It's not a natural gift, it's supernatural, where God just reveals to you: that's what the problem is. So again, with all of these gifts, we need to learn how to listen and receive from God. Another thing that it is not, so it's not natural, but there's another thing it's not. It's not judging. I want to show you another scripture in Matthew, Chapter 7 - it's not mentioned in there, I don't think, but in Matthew, Chapter 7 and the first few verses. Discerning of spirits is not the same as judging, in the worst sense of judging. Let's read a few verses.

In Verse 1, judge not, that you be not judged. For with the same judgement you judge, you will be judged; and whatever measure you measure to others, it will be measured back to you again. So why do you look at the small speck that's in your brother's eye, and you do not consider the beam is in your own eye? How will you say to your brother: let me pull out the speck from your eye, and behold, there's a beam in your own? Hypocrite! First cast the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly to cast the speck out of your brother's eye. Don't give that which is holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and render you.

Right then, now let me just go into that scripture. Jesus is speaking about a principle that's very important. He's talking about a principle of judging. This word judge means literally, to make a decision against someone, because of what you see, or think you see, or whatever, and virtually to pass a sentence on them. You are guilty according to the way I've judged you, therefore you need to pay the price. So He's talking about having a judgemental attitude, and what He's saying is that if you judge others, you unlock against yourself a spirit of judgement. The very thing you've judged will come back to you. Okay, let me just give you an example of that. I had to pray for a woman one time last year in Taiwan, and they sent her in for ministry. I asked what the problem is, and she said well, I've got this young man interested in marrying me. I said okay, so what's the deal? She said well, we were going out before, and then our relationship broke up, and I got involved with someone else, had a baby to him, and now I've got the baby, now this guy's come back, and he wants to marry me, so what do you think?

Now people only give you the sanitised version. It makes them look really good, you know? So I said is he Christian? No, he's not a Christian. I said well, alarm bells go off for her straight away, and I say, what about this other guy? She said well, he really would like to marry me too, he's the father of the child. I said what do you feel in your heart? No, not for that person. I said well, now tell me then, why did your relationship break up? She said well, while I was going out with him, he was unfaithful to me, he had other girls on the side. So I said well, is there any evidence that that has changed in his life? Is there any reason why he would be different - and he hasn't become a Christian, he hasn't changed in his heart. You're in for more of the same, and so why would you want to marry him? She said, I really feel he's right for me.

I said tell me about your father - so why would I ask about the father, when it's an issue of marriage? Because the Lord dropped in there's an issue with her dad - so she said oh, well I don't talk to my dad. I said why is that? She said well mum and dad broke up. They divorced when I was in early teens. I said really? Do you have any contact with him? No, no, almost no contact whatsoever, and I said is that right? I said tell me what was the reason that the marriage broke up, and she said very simply, he was unfaithful to my mother. I said how many times? Three times he was unfaithful to my mother. I said isn't this extraordinary. You've got a conflict in your heart with your dad, and you have judged him. Now it's replaying in your life again. You actually - the judgement you gave out about him, now it's being replayed back in your life again. Do you not see the connection that what you're struggling with currently, actually is an overflow of what's been going on in your path? She couldn't see it. I said I don't think I can help you then, because you're going to go down that route, and play this thing right out until you've actually experienced all the consequences of what you've got in your heart towards your father.

Now you understand she had judged her father, and found him lacking, and now unlocked against herself a real cycle of issues that would then go through the rest of her life, so that's what judging is about. Discerning has more to do with being an observer than a judge, for example, a judge will stand up, or a judge will usually be seated in an elevated position. You go into a court, the judge is in the high position, so when the Bible talks about judging, it's speaking about elevating yourself up, as though you know everything and why people do things, and then passing a judgement on someone against them. You've found them guilty, see? And now you've condemned them. Right, now this is different to discerning. Discerning, you're not coming from the high ground of pride, and being above everyone else. You're coming down from, you're actually a human being yourself, understanding that people do have issues and make mistakes, and you're looking as an observer, to see what God says about the situation. So God shows you the root of this is a spirit, the root of this is bitterness, the root of this is this. It's informational. It's not judgemental. It's to inform you of the nature of the problem, not step up on the high ground and look down, and find the person guilty and condemn them. That's the difference.

Now many people think that Christians shouldn't judge, but the Bible says the spiritual man judges all things. Notice what Jesus just said in those verses. Notice He said: don't give what's holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn on you. Clearly He's saying you need to know what to share, and who to share it with, because some people, if you share it with them, it's like casting something out before pigs. They'll trample it underfoot and turn on you. He's not being judgemental. He's just saying that you have to look at people, and look at situations, and be understanding of where they're at, and how they receive things. He said: you don't give everything you have to everyone, so the Bible's very clear. A spiritual man judges all things, but that means he looks right through to what the real issue is and identifies it, not as one sitting up high looking down, condemning, but as a fellow traveller, looking and observing and seeing that something is like this. You getting the idea?

Okay then, so for example - and the more you have examples the easier it is to see it, so discerning then is to be able to look through, and see what is behind this matter. I know what they're all saying, or I know what I can see, but what lies behind it - that's the driving factor? We need discernment, because in the world, and in the church, people have all kinds of agendas, and it shouldn't be that way, but that's how people are. People have usually hidden agendas, and the agendas are not so obvious, but if you are discerning of spirits, you can pick what lies behind it, so there are a number of Bible examples of that. We shared with one of you in the last session, and that was found in Acts, Chapter 8, where Peter discerned the motives of Simon the sorcerer, so everyone was coming up and saying: we want the power of God, we want the power of God, we want the power of God. He came up and said listen, I'll give you some money, just give me the power of God. He was able to look in and say no, you have got an issue. He said underneath this desire for the power of God, is a deep rooted bitterness and a crookedness, that makes you seek power so you can promote yourself. You've got a deep rooted issue of insecurity in your life.

Peter discerned it. He saw right to the root of it, and confronted the man about it. Getting the idea? So discernment enables you to see what is really there. As you'll see shortly, we'll need a word of wisdom to know what to do with it, so in Luke, Chapter 13 - I'll just find another example in Luke, Chapter 13, Verse 10. Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and behold there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years, was bowed down and could not lift herself up. Jesus saw her, called her to Him, and said to her: woman, be loosed of your infirmity. He laid hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. Now Jesus is in a synagogue, a place of prayer and there's a woman who has an incredibly serious back problem. She's bent and crippled right over. Now to everyone who looked, it's a back problem, and she has a back problem, that's true. But He saw the root source is a demonic spirit. There's a spirit attached to her spine, and when she was delivered, immediately she was set free.

I had a situation in Fiji. I was invited by one of the members of our church to go up with him to his property up in Yasawa, which is beautiful, a most beautiful area of Fiji but it's very remote. It's right at the outer end of the Fiji area, and right up in the outer islands, so in order to get there we had to catch a boat, and then we had to kind of catch a little boat ashore, all of that kind of thing. Then we were invited to a meeting for me to speak, at a meeting in the village, so to get there we waded out into the surf, got into a boat, travelled around through the reefs and landed on another beach. Someone met us with a lamp, and we went in, and we were in a building. I was the first white man to speak there apparently - and there was a gathering of people there. The men had fled the place. They heard I was coming and they fled, and there was a problem with spiritism and witchcraft going on in that area, so I went into the meeting.

At the end of the meeting there was a lady came up, and she - when I say came up, she crawled up. She crawled herself up, and she came up there, and I could see that she was in trouble from her waist down, that she actually could not walk. She had come with two crutches, she was unable to walk, and so I looked at her and I asked some questions, first of all: how long have you been like this? She said 10 years. Then the Lord just dropped into my heart exactly what the problem was. So how did I get it? I got one, discerning of spirits and two, word of knowledge. The first word of knowledge was, it had to do with her husband. The second was discerning it was actually a spirit of infirmity, associated with the occult, so I asked her the question then - and this is how you can bring out revelation, just ask questions - I said: what happened 10 years ago? I said did someone near you, close to you die? She said my husband died. I said: is it not true that he was involved in the occult and witchcraft? She said yes.

Now this was very significant, because this is a religious community, everyone's supposedly Christians, but actually many of them were not, and many of them were practicing witchcraft, and this was why the guy had got me to come over, because the conditions he described, I could tell were witchcraft operating. Everyone was denying it, including the local Minister. This brought it right out into the light, so now the woman's saying yes, my husband was involved in witchcraft, he was involved in spiritism. I said the Lord shows me, because the two of you will become one through marriage, that when he died, that spirit has come into you. You have a spirit of infirmity, associated with your husband and the witchcraft, so now everyone's absolutely stunned. So I broke the curse, I broke the soul ties to her husband, I broke the curses that had been upon her through her husband's activities, commanded the spirit of infirmity to go, helped her to her feet and she stood up, and she walked without crutches, she walked home.

So you see again that the discerning of spirits helps you know what the issue is, and you get a revelation, you get it from God. Getting the idea? So we've seen a number, a number, so the gift of discerning of spirits enables you one, to discern the activity of the Holy Spirit; two, to discern what the motives of people are; three, to discern the activity of demonic spirits and identify what they are. Now it would help if I just shared a little bit about your senses and how they work. We touched on it before. You have natural senses and you have spiritual senses, so your natural senses - after a little while you gain a memory bank of experiences, so you smell food, [sniffs] ooh, curry, Sargin's in the building. [Laughter] So you identify with a physical sensation, you have a memory you attach to it, and you identify it like that. So after a little while you can pick up lots of things. You can recognise voices. If someone rings up and they don't tell you who they are, oh, I know that voice, I recognise that voice.

So we attach associations to the experiences we have naturally. Now spiritually the same thing happens. You are a spirit being, and do have spiritual senses, and you do pick up stuff. People often call it a sixth sense, but it's actually your spirit man, for example, how many of you have had some decision you had to make, but you felt this terrible uneasiness, and lack of peace about that? How many have known that experience like that? Okay, very good, and of course if you went against that and did it, you ended up in trouble. We won't ask about that. [Laughter] You put that down to wisdom, okay, so that's one thing. How many of you have met a person - most of the women have met a person, and that person, a male, was incredibly creepy? There's something about them - don't go near me, I feel defiled just being near you, okay. So how many women would identify that experience? Quite a lot of women, okay.

So probably the second thought that came into your mind was, I shouldn't think like that, but actually you are right. What's happening is, you're discerning an unclean spirit or intention around the person, and you are feeling the impressions of it, and you're identifying it as a yuck, I don't like this, I don't trust that man, I'll stay away. Understand? That's actually discernment. Your spirit is sensing things. You've got to learn how to recognise what it is, and how to work with it, and I'll show you what to do in a moment. Okay, and men have a similar kind of thing. You may find yourself in situations, or have you ever been into a house for example, and you go in there to meet some couple, and as you go in there everyone's being polite and nice, but you can feel like the whole atmosphere is full of tension, as though there's been a big row or something go on there. How many - now let me ask you this then. How on earth did you feel tension? What part of you felt that? Your spirit felt it.

So all of us have a human spirit, and all of us can sense things, but we can develop that so we become sharper at it, and become more used to dealing with it. Getting the idea? Okay then, so you have ability then to sense things spiritually, and when we're born again of course, that whole - it's brought to a different realm altogether. We now have the Holy Spirit with us. He can actually identify for us, what the things are that we're dealing with, so here's a thing. Remember in almost all of the moving in the spirit, what you get seems to be a thought, or impression, or picture comes into your mind. It's not strong necessarily, or very big. You could easily sweep it aside if you didn't stop and focus on it, so the way to deal with it is simply this, is - I think there's a couple of practical things. Number one, I think we need to ask the Lord to help us to deal with having a judgemental attitude. You can never discern properly if you have a judging attitude.

You notice what Jesus said in Matthew 7? He said: if you judge, you'll be judged. The measure you give to others is how it'll come back to you. Then He said an interesting thing. He said: why do you say, I want to get the speck out of your eye, when you've got a big beam in your own? Notice then what He said. In other words He's saying - I'll put it to you a different way; if you had a little speck in your eye, you wouldn't ask someone to help you dig it out, who had this huge log covering most of their vision. You'd say, no way do you get near my eye, you can't see clearly, you'll mess this up. You'll damage me and hurt me, see? Now so what Jesus then said was, take the beam out of your own eye - speaking of judgement - and then you'll see clearly. So putting it another way, He's saying if you have a judgement in your heart against any person, or you hold judgements about certain matters, it will affect how you see and interpret what's in front of you in life. So in the journey of growing in the things of the spirit, we need to deal with bitterness and judgements and unforgivenesses in our heart, because it will colour how we see people, it'll colour how we interpret life, it will affect our ability to discern. We will tend to judge rather than discern, and think we're completely right and justified. That make sense to you? Very, very important.

So if I was to allow the Lord to help me deal with any judging attitude in my heart, against myself or against people, and to begin to meditate on the love of God, and His great love for me, and grow in that love, I will see clearly, because when you love people, you see clearly. When you have judgement in your heart, you can't see clearly, and you mess it up every time, so this is an important thing. I need to cultivate purity of heart in my motives towards people, or I can't see very clearly, so that's a very, very important thing. I'll just stop from that point, and then just move on to, so how can you work in this area? I'll give you an example of it.

A person - I used this illustration recently because I've had this experience. There's two people standing in the entrance of a church, and one of them has got a deep rejection in his life, or a judgement that there's something wrong with me, people don't like me. He learnt that years ago. The other one hasn't got that at all, he's quite free. Suppose the Pastor walks in and he's very, very busy, preoccupied and he walks past and both say hello Pastor, and he just doesn't hear. He didn't hear it, he was preoccupied, so there's no willing rejection of them. He just didn't hear, and carried on. Now each of them has had an experience, an identical experience. Each of them will interpret it. Now the one who's got the rejection and judgement in his heart will pass judgement on what it means. He'll say: this means he doesn't like me, and he'll get angry, won't enjoy the service at all. He'll be angry all through the service - Pastor doesn't like me, and it'll stir up all his anger over this, but the judgement was in his own heart. The other person looks and says: oh, he can't have noticed me, he must have been busy, I'll catch up with him later.

Two people, same experience, but responded completely different. One just observed it, and worked out a different strategy. The other judged it, and ended up in turmoil. Getting the idea? So if you've got judgements in your heart, it'll filter all discernment, so discernment - practice ridding your heart of judgements about people, and learn to be an observer. To be an observer, you ask the question: I wonder what this means, rather than: this means that. See? You ask the question, what does this mean? What am I feeling? What am I sensing? What does this mean? You let God help you see His perspective on it. Jesus said: I don't judge as the world judges. He said I judge righteously. I don't judge what I see, I judge by what my Father says to me, so He judged things on what He heard from God.

So how can I develop the area of discerning of spirits? Very, very simply. One, I need to deal with the issue of judging in my heart that will cloud my ability to sense; two, I can develop my sensitivity through fasting. Fasting and prayer helps me develop sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, and then what you need to do is, learn how to identify what you feel when you're in different situations, identify impressions you have when you're talking with someone, when you are meeting someone, when you come into a meeting, when you come into a room. When you go to different places, look for chances to identify what your first impression is. The first impression is usually the one that impacts you as you engage something, then you just move out of that, and start to reason everything out, and interact with it differently. But when you're a spiritual person which you are, you tend to be more sensitive, so you can feel things or sense things quite easily, and so try to, when you sense something, ask this question: what do I sense? What impression do I have? What am I feeling? Try to just get a name for it. Don't dismiss it. Just enquire, Holy Spirit, what is that? Then the next question; what do you want me to do with that? What does this mean?

If you judge, it must mean this, you've then lost your discernment. If you just say Lord, what does this mean, and how do you want me to deal with this, you'll start to then develop a lifestyle of being able to discern things, so there's heaps of places that you can pick it up. One of the places to pick it up, is when you meet people. When you meet people, just come with an open heart and shake their hand and look them right in the eyes, and just let them interact with you. As they interact with you, you'll have an impression come. Try to identify what the impression is. Listen for the things the Holy Spirit drops in your heart. You walk into someone's house, what impression do you get? What does the atmosphere feel like? You walk into a church meeting, what does it feel like? What does the atmosphere feel like? When everyone's worshipping, or things are happening, what does it feel like? What does it sense, is there? Develop, practice discerning, or exercising your senses, to listen and identify impressions you have about situations, and then act as an observer, not a judge; oh, that's interesting, I'm feeling this. I wonder how I should respond? I wonder what God wants me to do? So you don't move into judging mode, you stay in discerning/working with the Holy Spirit mode.

Now notice Paul went for several days before he turned around to the woman and rebuked the spirit. In other words, he waited until he had actual wisdom from God what he should do. You notice this, if he had stopped and reacted on the first day, he'd have been in jail straight away, and had no chance to do any ministry at all, so he didn't immediately address what he could see was the problem, until he felt the Holy Spirit show him: this is what you need to do, do it today. A lot of people can't handle that. They pick something up, they want to deal with it straight away. That isn't always how God works, because dealing with it straight away can create more problems than what - you may solve one, but you've actually created something bigger, and different. So if Paul for example, had turned and rebuked the spirit that same day, all those days that he was able to preach and minister would have been cut out and cancelled short like that, so he knew there was a spirit, but waited until the right time, and then turned and dealt with it, and that triggered off a reaction in the whole city towards him. Shortly after he exited the city.

So we need to know and be able to discern what God is saying, or what God is wanting us to learn, and we need to be able to identify those sensations and impressions we have, so all you do is just identify, what did you feel?. You're on a phone to someone - we used to teach this when people were doing phone ministry to people. After you get off the phone, just quieten down, and just worship the Lord, and just sense - what are you feeling in your spirit? I'll give you an example. I had someone that I spoke to, and they were incredibly angry, and they were angry with me. I thought that's interesting, I wonder why they're angry with me, so we checked it out, and this is what had happened. They had been talking with someone else who had an unresolved offence, and was angry at me and after being with them, they came away angry at me as well. So what had happened was, they had not discerned this person has an offence, and the biblical way of dealing with the offence is to put it right with the person. They came under the influence of the spirit of anger and bitterness over the person. It affected them, and they were then operating with that thing around their life - so I always ask people, after you've been in an interaction, how did you feel? What did you sense? What are you sensing in your spirit? Just practice doing it, try to identify the sensations, identify the feelings.

Then we need wisdom from God, what to do, so in the next session we will look at the word of wisdom, and where to go with that, and how to respond to that, but I'll get you now to just do some interaction, we're going to do activations. I think you need to do something now, otherwise you'll fall asleep. [Laughter.] Okay then, so we've got heaps of things that we could do, but I'm going to give you one that's an interesting one, and this one will challenge you a bit, so you'll need a pen and paper to do this one, because you're going to write something. You'll need a bit of space. If you need a bit of space, you can move your chair out, and this is what we're going to do. This activation is called inspired writing, so you've had an inspired picture, an inspired thought, inspired prayer. This is inspired writing, so if you haven't a piece of paper, write it on the cover at the back of the manual will be fine.

I want you to write up this question, and you're going to listen, to let God speak to you about you, okay, so here's the question you write up: Lord, how do You see me? Lord, how do You see me? Write it down exactly as I said it, Lord, how do You see me? This is your prayer or question to the Lord, and what we're going to do is we're just going to pray for a little while. We're going to do this just like you are ministering to someone, except you're just coming into a place where you're listening to let God speak to yourself. If you can get into a flow of this, this will be one of the greatest assets to you over the course of your life, to help you hear from God, and develop hearing from God. It's called journaling, and journaling's got a number of aspects, but this aspect of journaling, one aspect of journaling, is just writing your thoughts and feelings, experiences. This aspect is journaling what God is saying to you, so you ask the question; God, or Lord, how do You see me?

Now, I know how some of you see yourselves, and you may not see yourself too good. You come to all kinds of conclusions about yourself. Wouldn't it be good if you stopped listening to all of that junk and instead, Lord, how do You see me? You might find it a little hard to take how He sees you, because it's very loving, and very kind, and it's not like others who you may have experienced, so He can be incredibly kind and loving. So what I want you to do is we're going to do very simply like we did the others. We would say hey, can I practice on you? Well this is just a practice. You're practising on yourself, okay then and a very positive response, yes, this is going to be great. Then we're just going to pray in tongues for a little bit, and I want you just to pray in tongues, and then begin to focus, just begin to think about the Lord, think about His goodness to you. Then you may start to get Him, just some thought come to mind, start to write.

Now don't try and work out what you're going to write next - aah, ooh, you're a loser. [Laughter] Don't work it out you know? You may get terrible things if you try and work it out, and you certainly won't hear God on that, so what you do is just relax, listening to Him until you sort of start to get a thought or an idea, then start to write. Now just relax as you write, and just let it flow, let it flow out of your writing, flow and flow and flow. If you find the flow stops just rest again; thank You Lord. Lord, just speak to me, give me more Lord. Just stay focussed on Him, and then just continue writing, begin to write again. What will happen is, write from the flow that comes from your spirit, don't try and figure this out with your head. If you try and figure it out with your head you'll be completely limited, you won't have revelation. God actually wants to speak to you.

Now it's like prophesying over yourself virtually, and here's the interesting thing. When you learn how to do this, you can do this any day you like, all the rest of your life. You can ask the Lord questions, and begin to journal what He has to say to you. For some it may be lots of things to say, some it may be just a few lines. Hey, we're just practising. Ready? Okay then - and some may have a blank paper, that's okay too. If you find you have a blank that's interesting - I have a blank. I wonder why I can speak to others about what God sees about them. I'm finding it hard to speak to myself. What's going on here? Why is there that block? Can you see, it's like instead of being a judge, you just be the observer, and the listener, and the one who shares what you're observing and hearing. It's a very, very important positioning in your heart to take, where you don't become a judge anymore in life. You become an observer; oh, that's interesting, I wonder what that means? Lord, how would You have me respond?

So this one, Lord, how do You see me? How do You see me Lord? How do You see me? Lord, I just reach out to you now - so come on, let's just begin to pray in tongues, and then we'll give you just a few minutes to write. If you're looking at this on the Internet you could sit down with a piece of paper, and you could do this too. Write down the question: Lord, how do You see me? Just begin to pray, pray in tongues, just worship God for a little while, and then as a thought comes to you, begin to write. You're writing a letter to yourself, like you're writing from God to you. You're putting words to what God's saying. Let's do it together shall we? Thank You Lord. Lord, release a spirit of revelation right now. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Lord, begin to speak to individuals here, reveal the tremendous, amazing love, the wonderful heart that You have for each of us. Let it just flow out of their hearts onto paper. Thank You Lord. We just bind every distracting influence, everything that would hinder us, stop us and we just release that life and vitality now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord.

As soon as you feel free and start to get an idea, just begin to write. You're not trying to work it, you're just writing out of the flow of what's in your heart like you're listening to someone dictate to you, and you're writing it. You're actually writing it to yourself. It's this flow of the spirit, coming up from within. If you get stuck, just pray in tongues, relax and re-focus on the Lord again. [5mins]

Alright then, how are we doing? I see a lot of people are writing, and all got to different levels. Let me just ask for a little bit of feedback. How many had a flow of writing, you had some thoughts come to you, that came from the Lord? You obviously felt a flow of things start to come? Alright then. Did anyone get stuck, you just went blank? No one got completely stuck. Did some find they just had a little bit, but there wasn't much flow in it? Some had that. There would be always some like that, and sometimes that can reflect we're not good writers, we're better talkers and we talk better than we write. But again, relax and let the flow come. How many of you found that what God spoke to you was very personal, actually was extremely specific for you? How many found that? Wow, that's great! How many were quite encouraged by what God said? Oh, that's really good too. Well this is very, very good.

How many of you, God told you how much He loved you? [Laughs] He often starts with that, and talks with that. How many of you, did God give you some kind of direction, or insight to what you need to be doing at this time in your life? Isn't that good? Wow, that's great isn't it? That's helpful isn't it? So it's quite good for you to come to the Lord, and to learn how to journal daily with Him, and keep a track record of what God is speaking to you, because you can go back and look at it again. If you have a journal, and you're keeping a journal that God is talking to you, it still helps if you've got someone else who you can run your thoughts around, and run your thoughts with before you make any major decisions, just so you've got the wisdom. The Bible says: in the wisdom of many counsellors there's safety, so this is a great way - it also has limits on it, and so it's helpful if we stay having counsel about any major decision.

So there's many questions you could start to ask the Lord now, so if we just asked you, how does He see you, and He would talk about the goodness and the good things He sees in you, the possibilities in you. You could ask about, how He sees your church. You could ask about various aspects, and then wait on the Lord, just let Him talk with you about life, and about things. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that great? Thank You Lord. How many people were quite surprised by what God shared with them, gave you a bit of a surprise? Oh, that's interesting. What was it surprised you? [What was it that surprised me? I just get that He talked about seeing me as I am now and just how precious I am to Him, about how He has a greater plan and...] Wow. [...and just yeah, He actually showed me I'm like a precious stone, you know, like inside the rock...] Right. [...rocks on the outside, but He sees the raw, unfinished product but that He's got such greater plans that will take me out of that...] Wow. [...clarity will increase.] Wow, so it's very specific and it's... [...precious as I am.] ...even as you are you're precious. That's... [And He's got the plan] ...wonderful, so God assured He had a plan. She's precious as she is, but that plan will bring enlargement and greatness. It's wonderful, don't you love that? Such a wonderful thing. So you're in a good space now to be able to minister to someone else.

So what we'll do now is get you to break into pairs, and what I'd like you to do is to bring a word of encouragement. Now we're not going to prophesy, that would be too spiritual for us. [Laughter] What we'll just do is, we'll bring an inspired word for someone, so again we'll get with someone that - preferably someone you have not prayed with before, someone that's different and remember, ask permission; can I practice on you? Get a good, positive response, then we pray in tongues, pray in the spirit for a little bit, then listen and then share something that you feel God shows them that would encourage them. You've just done it for yourself, now do it for the other person. So you're looking for a thought, and an idea. Remember, pray, relax and focus on the source, listening, just waiting and just let thoughts just come. Something drops into your mind, focus on it until it comes a little clearer, then start to share; well I just sensed this as I was praying for you. Keep it simple and easy and light. Okay? Let's see how we do. Find someone and let's have a practice. If you're watching this on the Internet, why don't you find someone to practice on, especially someone you don't know so well?

Okay, let's just come back, close up what you're doing. Let's get some feedback on how it's going. How many of you were really touched by what the person shared with you, it was very appropriate for you? Wow, that's wonderful, great. How many sort of felt God as they shared with you - oh my, that's God speaking to me? How many felt that? Very good, wonderful. Okay then, anyone got blocks in this? How many struggled to get something? Okay, we've all moved quite a long way now, that's fantastic. How many of you, it still just feels like it's you doing it? You kind of think this so much, seems like me, I don't sort of feel much of God in it? How many found that? Actually that's quite normal. To tell the truth, some of the best ministries I've had for people, I didn't feel a thing, but I have learnt to just relax, and understand I am a spirit being, God is in me, and if I will yield, He will speak through me. Whether I feel anything much, or experience anything, is irrelevant. It's not about me, it's for the other person. I'm just the servant, to bring about the work.

Once you get that idea we're just here to serve people, it's not about your feelings or experiences at all. It's actually what God does in their life. It's about them, and God, and of course as you do it, you just grow so immensely. Amen, okay, so you've found that's been a good challenge for you? Okay then. Would you like to stretch out a little further, and try a little something harder? Little bit harder? NO! Please don't make it any harder. [Laughter] Okay, alright then, well this is - I just need someone to help me, just need a volunteer really, someone that can help me? Okay, you're going to help me? Alright then, so just come on up here. Now this is what I want us to do this time. We're going to get you to do two things. The first thing I want you to do is, see if you can get a word of knowledge about the person, in other words a little piece of information, that we wouldn't have known naturally.

Now I do know Caroline, so I've got to then dismiss from my mind everything I know about her. I have to just literally push aside, and listen to my heart, not listen to my mind. If I go anywhere towards what I know, then I won't hear my spirit at all. I've got to just push aside anything I may know about her, and then actually just identify what I'm feeling in my spirit. Alright then, and I want to show you just simply how you can. Remember, we shared with you for getting words of knowledge about the body? Just begin to think about a person's body, and you may just find is the right side, the left side? Is it, you know and just go through the parts of the body, and you may feel drawn to a part, just only the slightest draw - that can be what a word of knowledge is, just a slightest little impression. So what we're going to do is, we're going to look for an area where the person is facing a struggle, asking this question; Lord, is there any area of this person's life where they're facing a struggle? Okay, and we'll show you just how to do that in just a moment.

Then the second part will be now Lord, how do You want to speak to them, to encourage them? Okay, so first is the word of knowledge, the second's the prophetic. The word of knowledge: is there an area where there is a struggle going on? Second part, is there something God wants to say, to help the person in that part of their life? So if God identifies the struggle, He certainly will want to do something to help them, and there could be many ways they could be helped, but at this point, the level of help we'll give is, we'll look for a word of comfort and inspiration, encouragement for them, okay? That keeps it quite an even level. We're not trying to prophesy. We're actually just - see if we can find out a little piece of information. Now remember, when we asked you in the second activation of this series, go to someone and ask them a question, find out something about them? So now we're going to ask the Lord the questions, so you've already done it for yourself: Lord, how do You see me? You know you can ask God a question and He will answer, so now we've got to, in love, say Lord, is there any area this person's struggling? There may well be there's none, and if there's none, then there's none. Don't make one up. [Laughter] Don't put on them, your struggle. [Laughter]

Is there a struggle? And if there is a struggle, see if you can frame what it might be, and then lay out then,, just we need to look to God for a word for the person, okay? Alright then, so just come and stand in front of me there. So if I have to pray and minister to a person, there's a number of ways - you can just say well God, just show me, and just wait for something to happen. That's one way, or you can use your imagination a little bit, and just reach in to different areas. Now for most people in their life, there's not a lot of areas that they would have a struggle. If you think about it, if I was to just say, look back through Caroline to her family background; she could have a struggle with her father or mother or in the family, so if I was just to mentally just look, has there been a struggle there? Yes or no? No, I don't feel anything. Okay, alright then, well that's alright then.

So if she's a married person, then I might look is there someone on the right, the person standing next to them, is there a struggle there? No. Alright, that's okay. Alright, are there children? I look down because there's offspring, so is there some issue there that there's a trouble? No. Alright then, so what other areas are left? Well is there trouble in her body? Look at her - is there an area of sickness or struggle going on? No. Alright then, so then we look then what other areas are there? Well, is it work related, or is it finance related, relationship related, or ministry? It's not so many areas, we've covered most areas of the person's life now. So if I just mentally just stop and look, and while I'm listening, I'm just mentally going around is there any one of those I'm drawn to? Then I may just find a draw to one of them, so I'll just stop for a moment and if I feel a draw there, then there's something going on there, that I need to be able to get a word from God for, okay?

So it's not such a hard thing, so if I just - can I practice on you? Great stuff, and so bearing in mind I've got to dismiss anything I might know, and now just begin to look into the Lord. So Holy Spirit, You just know everything about Caroline. You know Lord where her life is at this point and Lord, You can just reveal things that You want to help her, and encourage her. So Lord, I'm just asking You, well just show me where there's any area of struggle, so I'll just start to mentally now do what I'm going to do, just go looking in each area, mentally reaching in to see if God will show me something, so I reach in the background. I don't feel God quickening. There could be an issue or something, but God's not wanting to do that today, so I don't have to worry. I'm not trying to make something happen. I'm just looking and enquiring, I'm just an observer, listening for God, see? So I could reach in there, is there anything there? No, reaching in then, marriage, no, there's nothing there. Reaching then to any children? No, there's nothing there, so then what other areas?

Oh, and I just become conscious of her hand, and I'm thinking finance. Now I could look around all the other areas, but I might just stop there. So I'll just stop, thank You Lord. I sense that's a struggle area, so I could say Lord, what is the struggle, and what do You want to say, to help her in this area? There could be other areas of struggle, so we can pray for two or three people, and you may pick up - people pick up all kinds of different things, but this is not about knowing a problem. It's about loving a person. It's not about being nosey. It's about finding a way to bring God to them in their struggle, because when you have a struggle, you get preoccupied with it, it overwhelms you, it gets out of perspective, and you feel alone. So if you identify a struggle a person has, even if you don't go into all the details of it, and you bring something from God, it can bring tremendous comfort. Alright then, so Father, I just thank You.

What I sensed was, there's a struggle around finance, as though there's not enough. It seems like there's never been enough, and it's been quite a difficult situation for you to manage, because in your heart you don't feel there's enough for you. God wants you to know that He is your source and supply, that you can trust in Him. Have you ever gone without? Have you ever gone in lack or need? Have you ever suffered? The Lord says, I've always been there to provide for you, and I know the pressure and difficulty you're feeling right now, but the Lord says, I will help you. I will give you victory in this area that's been a struggle for you. I will help you come from the place of struggle into the place of rest, and the place of abundance. The Lord says: in Me, there is always more than enough. Right, now I'm going to go a little further, because I feel God wants to help her, wants to minister to her.

So you notice we've just touched an area. I didn't go and expose all kinds of details or anything, but there's enough has come for me to be aware, God wants to comfort and help her in the midst of the struggle. Now you notice what I said, with struggles there's also a lot of emotion and pain in it, but with this particular struggle, I feel a spirit has come against her to continually tell her there's not enough. There's something has rested on her, so even in good times, and when there was enough, there's never been enough. See, it doesn't matter how wealthy you are, if there's a spirit sits on you, and your heart believes there's not enough, there's not enough, because you can't see there's enough. You just can't see it. You're in torment all the time, and there's a wrestling goes on, so what God's given you, you can't enjoy, because of the torment. So I've found that people enter into peace, not because of how much they have, but because they find contentment in their heart, and learn to live within the framework God has given them. Godliness and contentment's tremendous gain.

Let me just pray. Thank You Lord, so this has come over you a long time ago. This came over you when you were a young girl. It came over you in the midst of turmoil. It's come around your life through your mother. God wants to help you today, wants to break the belief there's not enough for me. He wants you to see that He's a God of abundance, and will help you in every situation. Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break the ungodly belief that there's not enough for me. I break the ungodly belief of financial failure and poverty. I come against fear, and the spirit of poverty, loose right now, in Jesus' name. Let your presence and peace just come over her life. Thank You Lord. There it is, God just touching you now, just bringing rest around your life, in Jesus' Mighty name. Thank You Lord. [Laughs] Holy Ghost. Just stay there and just enjoy Him.

Now, did you notice, all I did was just start to just look, waiting, listening on God to give me something. If He doesn't give anything, that's okay. I'm not going to nose. It's just I have a heart to love the person and help them, and so because of that, we're willing to just look, and reach into God for something for the person. Now sometimes God can just drop it in, and you didn't even do any of that, but I'm trying to provide for you an approach that you can grow in this gift area. You understand that actively pursuing is always a vital part of it, and so I just look, the background, the parents, spouse, children, finance, work, relationships, ministry, is there any of those areas? And that pretty well covers everything, so in the midst of looking like that, God can just cause you to be drawn to something, feel a struggle around a relationship. I wonder what the struggle is, or what the relationship is? You don't have to get all the details, but if you can get a little bit of detail, then now you've opened up the person, and what does God want to do to help them? Amen.

Bless you. How was that for you? [Can I just share something?] Sure. [I don't know whether it's connected, but when you said about finance, but I felt all the time I've been a Christian, I don't know whether it's connected with what you've said...] Yes. [...that [unclear 01.07.54] other people that it's like you feel sometimes your need is so deep and so great and the whole thing is so big in your life...] Yes. [...that there's not enough of God.] [Laughter] [I don't know whether that's connected...] Yeah, they are connected, yes. [...with that too?] Yeah. [Because He's sort of brought me to a place recently of being - well I thought I'd been okay with what I've got and...] Right. [...that probably there's areas of need for discipline...] Right, yes. [...in my finances too.] Yes, of course. [So that's - I don't know whether that's relevant.] Mm, I didn't say anything about that area. [Laughter] [No, well actually I haven't been - like He's sort of told me to stay away from shops...] Yeah. [...and actually I feel I've been - the spirit of materialism has almost sort of been broken...] Yeah. [...in my life because of that...] Yeah, right, that's great. [...because I've been obedient, but - so yeah.] Right, so this is obviously what's shared is in line with what God is speaking to you about this area in your life right now. [Oh definitely.] Yeah, that is why... [Not to be impulsive and...] No, great. [But I failed yesterday.] [Laughter] And hence today! [Laughter] Well thank you for your honesty. Let's give her a clap and just appreciate her. [Applause]

Remember, the ministry of the spirit is always gentle and loving, so when Paul is writing about the gifts of the spirit in Romans 12 and Romans 14, in the middle of it he stops and he said: you have to be loving. Of all things be loving, or this is very empty, and doesn't represent what Christ is like. So the power of ministry is wonderful, but we have to be loving of people, honouring of people, valuing of people in the flow of the ministry, so we don't do things that would embarrass them. You can word things in ways that are not embarrassing. I could just say well, you know, do you have a struggle, or is there a difficulty in your life in this area? Is there something going on, and just put it in the form of a question, or if God spoke to you more clearly, you may just put it, I feel this. So God has got to show you, and we'll talk about that when we get to words of wisdom - so why don't you all have a try, and have a practice aye, how about that? Oh, that's a very excited response isn't it aye?

So what we'll do for this one here, what we're going to do is this. We'd like you just in this time, instead of all of you just going at your own pace and let it free run, I'd like us just to do it as a step by step, so what I'll do is, I'll encourage you where to look, otherwise you just get then you can't remember everything, and where to go. So what I'll do is, we're just going to do it step by step, and I'll guide you, and all I want you to do is just be open to the Lord, and if you feel a draw around something, just identify it, and that's it. That's all you need, that's my one. There may be others, but you won't worry about those. The one you feel that, that's the draw on, or that's the, you know, I feel something draws me other that one, that's the one, you just hold in your mind, and then we'll ask the Lord for what to say, okay? Alright then, so get in pairs, especially with someone you don't know.

Okay, let's get in pairs. You can come out the front here, over the sides. Okay, alright, now I want you just to do this. If you're watching this on the internet, you can just follow it through step by step, just leave the volume on, and the picture on, and you can walk through it step by step, then later on, turn it all off, and just try it without me guiding you in it. For this session, we're going to just guide you step by step, okay, so the first thing is of course, what we've done, smile and look at the person, can I practice on you? Give a very positive response. Okay, alright then. Now you may know a little bit about the person. Please just push aside all you know, because if you look in that area of what you know, you'll just have turmoil. You've got to be listening for God. You're listening for the impression of the Holy Spirit, so let's just begin to pray quietly and just worship God just for a little moment there, just begin to worship the Lord. [Prays in tongues]

Thank You Lord. We thank You Lord. We love You Lord. We thank You, You know everything about this person. You love them deeply, and You're so willing to help them, right where they are right now. Okay, now just go quiet. I want you to look with me, there's the person standing in front of you. Look like you were looking behind them, and in the background behind them are their parents, the father, the mother. Is there a problem there between the parents, or with a father, with a mother? Do you sense something there? Alright then, now just look to the left of that person. Maybe there's a spouse. Maybe there's an issue in a relationship. Is there a difficulty or a challenge there? Yes or no? Do you feel a draw there? What is that problem? Then look like you're looking down at their children. Is there a problem in family, a challenge, something that's creating difficulty? Now look over to the right of the person, their workplace, what they do. Is there a challenge they're experiencing?

Just look at the person again. Is there a problem in their body? Is there some struggle that they're having internally? Is there a difficulty in a relationship? Then look upward; are they having a struggle in their walk with God? Perhaps you've felt something there - I'll just go back through them again, and as I go through them, if you feel a draw on one of these, just stop and enquire what is the struggle Lord? What do You want to say to them, to share with them? Is it a problem in their background with their father or their mother, their family? Is there a problem with a spouse? Is there a problem in the family? Is there a struggle in some relationship? Is there a struggle at work, financially? Is there a struggle in their ministry? Is there a struggle inside themselves? What is the struggle?

Now Lord, give me something to encourage them, so just begin very simply, well I just felt an impression that there's a struggle going on in this part of your life. Maybe it's this. Just be quite gentle and easily entreated over it and then share what God has given you, share what God is saying to encourage the person. Let's just do it and see what God does. Okay, first one begin to share. [Background conversation] Okay, change over so the other one's shared. [Background conversation] Okay, let's close our sharing, and let's get some feedback how it went. [Background conversation]

Alright then, okay, just sit down for a moment, let's just see how people got on. How many people had this experience, they identified exactly an area of struggle that you had. How many had that experience, the person identified very clearly? That was very good. How many of you found it was a struggle to get that one? [Laughs] Because it's a bit more specific, you're reaching into an area. That's okay. Okay, how many of you were deeply touched by what was shared with you, it really helped you? Well that's wonderful. Come on, give yourselves a clap then, very, very good. [Applause] [Laughs] Well done, well done. Okay, so you can see that you approach it where focus is on Jesus, and we are listening and observing and seeking to find something. That's the spirit that you work in. It's one of enquiry, and observing, and then sharing what God is giving you. It's not over the top, or way out there, it's quite a gentle flow of the spirit. Everyone can practice these things.

I'm going to share with you - we'll have a coffee break shortly. I want to share with you a little bit on the word of wisdom, and then we'll have a break for afternoon tea, so you've done very, very well. So the word of wisdom, that's Section 15 in your notes. Wisdom is a great gift. Wisdom is knowing what to do. Wisdom is knowing what to do, and when to do it, and how to do it. [Laughs] Wisdom is knowing what to do, when to do it, how to do it, so we face many challenges in life, and in ministry, when you're working to minister to someone, if God gives you a word of knowledge, you need wisdom to know what to do with it. If God gives you prophecy, you need wisdom to know what to do with it; God gives you discernment, you need wisdom to know what to do with it, so wisdom is a very important gift to get, and to get a word of wisdom does not make you a wise person. You are wise for five minutes, that's it. [Laughter] I'm sorry - and it doesn't stick, because five minutes later you can be very foolish [laughter] so the word of wisdom does not make you a wise person.

It does not make you a spiritual person. It means someone smarter than you, shared with you, something very smart. [Laughter] That's really what it is, that's all it is. Someone who is very wise, shared with you, something that was surprisingly wise and appropriate, so the word of wisdom is just a revelation from the Lord, what to do in a certain situation, when to do it, and how to do it. Remember I shared with you a story about buying a gift for my grandmother? Only God could have known what to get, and what would do the trick. Only He knew, so listening to Him, I was able to get wisdom, and get an outcome that far surpassed anything I could naturally do, so we need words of wisdom.

So one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit. It's the first one mentioned in the list of the gifts of the spirit, is the word of wisdom. It is a great gift to pursue. God, give me wisdom to know what to do. In James 1 it says: if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives freely to all men, but let him ask in faith, not doubting, for he that doubts is like the waves, just tossed this way and that way. So if you're going to ask God for wisdom, expect Him to give it to you. Then you've got to step out, that what He's given to you, is the right thing to do, and the right way to do it, and the right time to do it. Okay then, so that's the word of wisdom. So wisdom works on how to do - it shows you what God wants you to do, how He wants you to go about doing, how to resolve a situation. Sometimes problems you know, are really messy. Sometimes you try, and you can't seem to fix it. You've got to ask God for a word of wisdom; God, what do You want me to do? Then be happy to trust that that's actually the right thing to do, and leave it at that.

Sometimes we can be in so much turmoil ourselves, we just want to get everything right so we feel better, and God will just say no, I want you just to leave it be for the moment. I'll work on it myself, and then I'll show you when you need to step and do something. So I've found some situations I haven't known what to do, and haven't been able to do it, and actually attempts to do it have made it worse. I've just left it to the Lord, and said God, show me what to do, and when to do it, then He'll suddenly just now, move now, act now, speak now, this is the time to say something. When that happens don't miss it. Don't miss that moment. That's the important moment - so how to pray for a person. Someone tells there are problems, you think oh my goodness, what do I do? Lord, I need wisdom what to do. Show me how to pray, because what they ask for, may not be what you really need to be praying about. That's the dilemma. People come, and if you tell them what's your need, or what is your problem, they'll spill you with so much stuff. They already have lost their way, and they're trying to get you to also lose your way, by telling you all the problems. [Laughter]

What you really need is - I've learnt now when people come for prayer, say: don't tell me all your problems, just what is it you're believing God for? What do you need from God? That forces people out of, I'm full of problems, to looking for solutions, so for example, if you go to McDonalds and line up at McDonalds and they say what do you want, you just stand there saying oh, I don't know, you know, whatever you feel to give me. It's sort of nonsense isn't it really, so - and suppose you go to McDonalds and stand in line up there, and they say what do you want, and you begin to talk about how hungry you are, and how long it is since you've had your last meal, and you start to - you know, they're going to get bored with all that, so just tell me what you need, you know? So when you come to an altar call, or someone's come up for prayer, and you ask: what do you want, and they say oh, whatever God wants for me.

I say, well He wants lots of things for you, but if you don't know them specifically, you probably won't get any of them. People don't like that answer, but it's actually very true. It sounds very spiritual, oh whatever God wants. Actually, if we know what God wants for us, we can ask specifically, and believe to receive it. If we have that kind of attitude, whatever He wants to give, it's passivity and full of unbelief. It'll produce nothing. You've got to realise that, so that's why Jesus many times in the Gospels asked people, what do you want? The blind man comes up. Now hello, what's up with Jesus? You know, there's a blind man, and He said: what do you want? Hello! [Laughter] I know, I can't see. [Laughter] But can you get the idea? But Jesus was wanting him to verbalise what He was looking for, so many times Jesus asked the person: what do you want, so He made them express their need, or their faith. He made them give voice to what they were wanting from Him, so when you're ministering to people, it's helpful if they tell you what they want, what they're believing God for, or looking to God to do.

You may not have all the answers, but at least you're focussed on the solution, not on all the problems. Having said that, there are some counselling issues that people need help to pull their problem apart, and find out what it's rooted in, and sort that out. Without knowing that, you can't deal with it, but it just helps if you can keep people in a faith mode. So the word of wisdom is, what do we do? In 2 Samuel 5:22 to 25 David was anointed king, and immediately he was anointed king, the Philistines rose up to go out to battle, and they wanted to kill him. His immediate response was this; he put on his armour, put on his sword, got the army together, went out to fight. Then when he slowed down a bit, he said Lord, do You want me to fight? [Laughter] Should I go into this battle - two questions: Lord - now notice they're simple, and they both actually have a yes/no answer. Lord, should I fight this battle? Yes or no? God says yes. The second question, will I win the battle? Yes.

So he said: then how do You want me to do it, and He showed him how to do it. That is a word of wisdom - what to do, when to do it. Next time he comes back, they come back again, he defeats them, routes them out, gets rid of their idols, they come back a little while later, back into a new battle. So now the tendency is to think like this: oh, the Philistines, I know how to deal with them. I've already one victory. I'll do it this way, leaning on your experience, rather than leaning on the Holy Spirit. He was not like that. He went God, what do you want me to do? God said don't do it the same way, this is how you do it this way. You wait, go around behind the trees and ambush them from behind, when I set it up for you - so that is a word of wisdom, what to do, when to do it, how to do it. You'll find many situations in marriage, family, ministry, work, you don't know what to do, you need a word of wisdom - what to do, when to do it and how to do it.

Noah got a word of wisdom. God showed him to build an ark. God revealed what's about to come, gave him a prophetic word: there's going to be rain. What's rain, Lord? They hadn't any rain. He said okay, let me put it to you this way, there'll be no ground to stand on. [Laughs] The whole place is going to be covered in water. He said well, what do I do? Build an ark, so He showed him what to do, gave him the pattern and how to do it. That's wisdom, wisdom from God. Think about this. Jesus was out with a group of the religious leaders. They brought a woman caught in adultery, she's caught in the very act. Now she's caught in the act - where's the man? They caught them in the act, I mean if they're caught in the act, there's got to be two of them. Where's the guy? So there's a hypocrisy here, where they're judging the woman, and they're trying to set Jesus up, so they bring in the woman to Jesus, and say Jesus, Moses Law said she's been caught in adultery, we caught her in the act, there's no doubt about the crime. Moses Law said she should be stoned to death, what do you say?

Now it was a set up from the beginning because if He said - or Moses Law said, stone her to death, then they say whoa, what kind of loving creature's this? Man, He's hard. We don't even do that. You know, we let them off from time to time too, so they'd do that. If He said oh, let them off, they'd say oh well, He's against Moses' Law. Moses' Law is very clear this is what needs to happen, hear Jesus against the law, He's eroding the law. We need to put Him away and kill Him. You see the trap? Religious spirits will always try to set up this or that, right or wrong, yes or no. God has got 100 ways through it, and so when you're trapped in a right and wrong, yes or no, Jesus never, never went either way. He found a different way through it - word of wisdom. So Jesus, in this case, didn't even answer them. He just carried on writing in the sand, and while He's writing in the sand He's thinking Father, what do You want Me to say? What do I say? A word of wisdom drops in. He said okay guys, yeah, you're right. That's what the law says. Whoever's got no sin, cast the first stone, and He just carried on writing. Now He stunned them, because now they're trapped.

Sure, that's what the law says - stone her, okay. If you've got no sin, you go and throw the stone. Really, no sin? [Laughter] They walk away. Their own conscience convicted them. They knew what they were up to, and there's no way - if they came out and did that, someone would expose them. There's no way they're going to go - so they set up the trap, and He snapped them, then He turned to the woman. He said: where are your accusers? I don't see anyone. He said I don't accuse you either, go your way, don't sin any more - so He didn't minimise the issue of sin. It's just He didn't judge it. Son of man's not come to judge, come to save, so He didn't judge her. He just said: this is destructive in your life, don't do this, you know? You need to change your lifestyle, change what you do, don't sin anymore.

So that's a word of wisdom, so there are many situations we need a word of wisdom, and so let me give a few practical things just on the word of wisdom. The first one is, don't be impulsive in making decisions. Don't be impulsive in making decisions. Impulsiveness inevitably ends up with a disaster or some kind of problem. The second thing is don't act under pressure of people or circumstances. Don't react because people are pressuring you, or circumstances are pressuring you. Saul did that in 1 Samuel 13, it cost him his whole leadership, because he so blew it by responding to pressure. So ask the Lord for wisdom. Lord, what should I do? Or we talked to you about experiencing things of the kingdom, how you need to have the attitude of a child; Father, what do I do? I don't know what to do. Help me to know what to do. Give me an insight how I should respond, and what should I do, and when should I do it - so we just have a simple thing.

You may just suddenly see a picture of what you need to do. It can drop in like a picture, drop in as a thought, drop in as an idea, and you suddenly - you don't know how you know, you just know exactly what you need to do. When you know what to do peace comes. The problem isn't solved, but you are at peace because now you have wisdom, you know what to do. So a word of wisdom is an important gift to seek after, because in every situation where you're ministering, you have needs or whatever, it gives you direction from the Holy Spirit what to do. It comes as a picture, an impression, a thought, inspired idea, and you might just be reading and suddenly something leaps out and you've got it - a word of wisdom from God, just exactly what to do. You might even be listening to someone speak ,and they're speaking on one thing, and in the middle of it you just hear, I know exactly what to do.

You might even be having a shower, and in the middle of the shower, [whoop] I know exactly what to do. You might just be lying down resting, as you're going to sleep. More often it happens when you wake up. You go to bed asking the Lord what to do, wake up, oh, I know what to do, because your spirit stayed working through the night. So that's all it is, it's just what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, and it comes as a picture, an impression, and it makes a huge difference. The biggest issue is, we tend to react to circumstances and people rather than waiting and leaning on God for wisdom what to do. Here's a simple, typical example. Jesus had a very close friend called Lazarus - John, Chapter 11 - and Lazarus was sick. They said your friend is dying. He did nothing. They said excuse me Jesus, your friend is dying. Did you hear the word DYING? And nothing. Then a third time, you know, Jesus, he is nearly dead - so there's pressure. In other words, the implication is, you're his friend, some kind of friend you are. You could heal him, and you won't. So you see the pressure that brings?

But Jesus refused to respond, and then He got a freedom - He saw what the Father was doing. This is not going to end with death, it's going to end with glory. There's a resurrection coming, so when He got there, already the family were offended, because they expected Him to come straight away. This is their friend Jesus, and He didn't help. What is that about! But He had a word of wisdom, and He was able to bring a much greater miracle into that situation, a resurrection. So pressures of people and circumstances can lean you into having to operate in the flesh, rather than just lean into God and say, I can wait until God speaks to me what to do. It's so important to really desire of all things seek wisdom, wisdom, knowing the right thing to do, the right time. This is one of the biggest and best gifts to have. Solomon, when he was given an opportunity for everything, riches and whatever, he said I have one thing. Give me a heart that hears, and wisdom to know what to do. God said boy, you asked an important - that was a great request. I'll give you that and I'm going to give you everything else that you didn't ask for as well, because if you have a hearing heart and wisdom you can handle all the other things.

Faith, Miracles and Healing (5 of 5)

Thu 19 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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To pursue growth in this area takes courage, effort; and a willingness to deal with blocks in our own heart!

The gifts of Faith; Healing; and Working of Miracles are defined, with examples.

The Gift of Healing is distinguished from praying by faith for healing.

Find out how to prepare yourself to grow in these gifts. Your community needs it.

We've talked about: the gifts of the spirit being for everyone, the flow of the spirit, hearing the voice of God; how God speaks to you; and how the gifts all work out of hearing God. It's not religious or outrageous, it's just actually quite simple and very natural.

Then we saw then how to get: words of knowledge, prophetic words; how to actually pick up a thought, pick up an idea, and begin to move.

Then you have to then learn how to minister to people as well, so we'll give you practical things on that; then we'll look at the area of healing; then faith and miracles; then the practical aspects of ministering to people (and pray with you).

Now whatever you get, you've got just the seeds of it. Everything that you grow into your future, you have to grow by diligently working with God in this area. So you can just have a one-off seminar - get some experience, see God work, have Him work through you - and then go no further; or you can make a decision that: I want to grow in these things.

All of us have to make growth in this area, a pursuit. It just does not happen. It's a pursuit to stay alive in the spirit; and to deal with issues in your life. It's a pursuit to keep stretching out looking for opportunities, and letting God work with you. It takes courage and effort to ‘put yourself out’ into the risk zone. It's easier to just be comfortable and not do it - but it's so exciting when you do. It's so exciting when you do!

It's God's plan in this hour that the church be filled with power, and it go out in the community, and that most of your ministry's done outside the church walls; so we've provided an easy and safe setting, and I've tried to break the teaching down so you could see it easily; and then begin to just have a chance to practice.

All of you have really broken through beyond where you started, and some have discovered you've got some internal blocks. That just is where you are, in your stage of your journey.

Most of those internal blocks have to do with yourself. They have to do with fear, they have to do with what you believe about yourself, about God, and about circumstances of life. So when there's a block, it means you're not connecting with your heart - because your heart has been trained to shut off, when it's in certain conditions or situations.

Proverbs 4:23 – “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of your heart flows the issues of your life”.

So your life, what you live out, actually comes out of not all that you think - it comes out of the issues that are in your heart; and those issues, you learn over the course of your life.

Some of the things, that are blocks in the heart, are what I'd call ‘generational curses’ and ‘generational spirits’. They're generational in origin. You were born into life with them, and you can be delivered of those blocks.

Unless you're delivered of those blocks, of the inequity, and the spirits around it, you tend to repeat the patterns of your parents; although you fight against it all the way, and don't want to be that way.

A second area that is a cause of problems, are where we actually have ‘bondages in the heart’ - where there's been painful situations, trauma or abusive or hurtful situations, betrayal in relationships; and as a consequence of that, you have defended yourself by building walls and barriers in the heart.

It could be inner vows, death wishes, it could be control, it could be statements that you've spoken into yourself, that now build a wall around your heart to keep you safe - and that's what now you're dealing with, because you're trying to access your heart.

So when you were young you defended yourself, because you had no other way of coping. Now you're older, you've got Jesus to defend you and to help you; but now you find you can't break out, because you've got these things inside you, so this is the journey of walking with the Lord, and we run various things in the church to help with that. It helps open these areas up, so whenever you see something advertised - enrol and get into it, so that you can address opening up your heart, and growing in freedom of heart.

Another thing that happens in life is: we come to believe certain things. Whether they're right or wrong is not the point, at this moment. If you believe it, then it's true for you; so if you believe that: ‘no one likes you’; ‘everyone is against you’; ‘I'm not good enough’, ‘I'll always fail’ - then that's actually what you'll begin to experience in life. It's like a negative expectancy pulls things into your life

For example, if you had in your heart these firmly rooted beliefs, that have been there for years: ‘I'm not good enough’; ‘I'm a failure’, or ‘I fail’; ‘I never get anything right’; or ‘people will laugh at me if I make a mistake’ - if you've got those beliefs in your heart, then the moment you're put in a situation like this, where you're in front of someone, and vulnerable, and you're wanting to reach into your heart to get something - all of that stuff bubbles up; it comes up and creates turmoil around you.

If you've had turmoil, those are like flows of energy, destructive energy - that frustrate you moving to do what you really want to do. Now the first thing is, just face that that's what it is, and explore it - that's where I'm at right now. Don't condemn yourself - that's just where I happen to be.

If a person's got a broken leg and they're hobbling along, you don't mock them, ridicule them, or push them, because they're hobbling along. They're just hobbling along, they're doing the best they can you know - it's hard to walk along if you’ve got a broken leg. If you have got a broken leg in your soul, your emotions or somewhere, and you're hobbling along - that's just where you happen to be right now - but it doesn't mean you have to stay there. You could engage the journey with God, of resolving those conflicts and shifting your belief systems. This would then change and bring freedom - and you're no longer hobbling along, you're a lot freer on the inside.

The ministry of Jesus, Luke 4:18:

1) I've come to preach the gospel to the poor. I come to reconcile people, and build relationship with the Father;

2) To heal the broken-hearted. He came to restore intimacy, and the capacity to be intimate, which is damaged in life's relationships, when we have trauma.

3) He's come to proclaim deliverance to the captives; or, deliverance to set you free of the things that restrict you from intimacy, connection, relationship, and connection specifically with God.

4) To open the eyes of the blind; or literally: to ‘put vision in your life’ - so that you can see what you're called to do, and escape from the prison of having no dreams, visions or future. To lift off us, the crushing loads of: guilt and blame and burdens - all this stuff that we've carried like junk, that stop us going forward. That's the ministry of Jesus - to bring us into the destiny He has for us.

So wherever you are right now, it's okay - but don't stay there. Determine to grow, so if there are blocks that come to the surface during these times, of these opportunities to do activations - take note of what they were; and what you think they've originated in.

Start to pray into them, that God would bring them to the surface, help you see them; and then explore getting some help - whether it be counselling, or a course, or something that will help shift the blocks. They're only there if you let them stay there. It just happened that that's where you are.

There were some choices you've made; but you know when someone's hurt, and they've got no one to turn to, they just do what they can to save themselves. Now that you're an adult, you don't need to save yourself - you can let Jesus save you, by opening that part of your life, surrendering control, and letting Him help you in the inner journey.

Unfortunately, many people won't do it, because there's pain in it - it's uncomfortable. But you've got to see: the other side of it is: the victory; a changed life; flowing with the Holy Ghost. It is worth it to get your future back again.

If you're operating at this level - you could operate at that level. What would it take to shift you up there? What would you have to grow in? What would need to shift in your life? That's what you're going to work on.

Now for me, I was challenged by a message someone spoke one day, Pastor Clark Taylor; and he said: “if you knew that there was one issue in your life that was hindering your life, wouldn't it be worthwhile investing, even if it was six months, in dealing with that issue, knowing that all the rest of your life, you would live life at a different level?”

I thought: that's me! So I went home, and I recognised that what I was wrestling with was: rejection, and fear of rejection, self pity and unbelief. These things were sitting around my life - and they were spirits pushing on me, working in the brokenness in my heart.

I made a decision that I'm going to fight this thing. I got into prayer and fasting, and every day decreed victory over these spirits, every day declared to the spirit world that I was broken out of this thing - it had no power any more, I'm free of it. Then I would spend the rest of the time releasing forgiveness where I felt I needed to, blessing people that had hurt me; then most of the rest of the time in: meditating that ‘God is with me’.

I meditated Psalm 23 – in the presence of God being with me. I took time to picture it, imagine it - to imagine what it would feel like to have Jesus, my friend. I would picture it - it felt ridiculous; it felt unreal - because my heart was saying: you haven’t got any friends; you're alone; nobody likes you.

My heart was lying all the time, and I had to reject the lie and meditate in the truth; until it began, eventually, one day, the truth become real in my heart. The day it became real, I suddenly felt the spirit world around me change. No longer were those things pressing on me; and I was just overwhelmed with the reality of the love of God.

I then practised daily for a while after that - just remaining and coming into His presence to enjoy Him; because what I got by revelation, I can give to you. What I got then, I've carried all over the world. It was worth the couple of months - it was worth it, to carry something that could change lives.

It may take you longer. It doesn't really matter how long, but it is your life, and your journey. Why not just decide whatever blocks your heart, you'll address it - meditation; and fixing, learning how to train your mind, to fix on the presence of God - so you become conscious of Him.

Now I can just stop at a moment’s notice - even just driving the car - just stopping at the lights for a moment, I just go down into my spirit, become aware that God is with me - and His presence starts to come. I didn't used to be able to do that.

I used to feel, in the middle of a party with alcohol and drink, I'd suddenly have this overwhelming “I'm alone”. It's an unreal thing, like you're there in the middle of it - but you're not there, not connected at all; but now I can feel the presence of God, and that means you've got something to bring to people.

You are a minister of the spirit. It is worthwhile doing that, not just being filled with information, but letting the heart be transformed, so we have reality of God. Wouldn't that be great? Just think if you could do that.

So I've given you keys, and tried to make the teaching simple, but the real journey is outside here, what you do. The real journey is the journey of resolving things in your heart, so you begin to become more conscious of God, and then able to bring what you have to other people. It's well worth it, well worth it. I mean wouldn't it be worth it just to be able to pray and things happen? Isn't that great? Ooh yes, it's well worth it alright, see so I can have a confidence that if I just go - look, for example I'll just show you. I wonder if I could just pray with you? That's right, just come, that's right, this one here come, yeah, just come, yeah, that's fine. I'll pray with you later if you like? I saw you - why don't you come too? Come too, come on, come too. No, both of you come. Alright, just come and stand up here, that's right, okay then, wonderful, thank you. Can I practice on you? See, good, I'm still practising see, and great to have people, happy people, ready to let me practice on them, isn't that good. Now what I want to do is, I want to just talk to you, just for a moment, about just this power of meditation to change the spiritual realm that you live, and flow in.

So all I want you to do is, very, very simple, you don't have to do anything at all. You just have to relax, and close your eyes, and I want you just to become aware what you feel of the presence of God, okay? So just close your eyes now, and I'm holding your hand so we're connected to one another, and what I'm going to do now is, I'm just going to begin to meditate in the 23rd Psalm, so how do you do that? Well first of all I memorised it, so it's no strain trying to remember, because if your head's trying to remember, your heart just can't engage at all. Your head's too busy, so I've learnt the 23rd Psalm, so I then make it very personal. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You all know that bit, but what perhaps you don't know is, this is the greatest king of Israel, is saying how he's made God Almighty his personal friend, so if you were to pray it slightly differently, and to pray it and let your whole imagination enter into the experience, so let me show you how you'd do it.

So the Lord, Almighty God, who made all heaven and earth, is my personal friend and companion, and so if He's my friend and companion, how would He look? Well, He would be smiling at me, because He's my friend. If I meditate as much as I can, and try to see the smile that Jesus would have, the joy that's on His countenance, the wonderful happiness He has at seeing me. He's so glad to see me, His eyes absolutely no condemnation, no judgement whatsoever, full of love and fire, absolutely wonderful. His countenance, full of life, and His hands reaching out, He's so glad to see me. This is my friend that I love, and He loves me - so I reach out and I just imagine, thank You Lord, You're my friend, You're with me. I have everything I need. I receive your love into my life right now. There it is, it's the presence of God just starting to touch me right now, see? Now she's getting the overflow. I'm not actually ministering, but as soon as I started to connect with Him through meditation, now she's starting to feel the overflow of it right now, see?

So meditation, when coupled with faith, links you into the spirit world, and the reality of God. It's one of the great things in the Bible, it's a great truth. If you're too busy, you can't do this. If you hurry, you can't do this, and if you've got lots of clutter in your head, it's not easy to do it either. You've got to de-clutter, slow down and reflect, so television and internet get you busy. You've got to find a way to find space to just slow down, and just for a few moments allow yourself to dwell in the presence of God, and become conscious of Him. Like to come - now, so she will have felt the presence of God. That's good, praise the Lord, okay. It'd be good for you too, wouldn't it aye? [Laughs] So just close your eyes, and so I'm not trying to make too much happen. At the moment all I'm trying to do is just encounter the presence of God, so I just again thank You Lord, You're my shepherd.

I went through every line of that verse. Sometimes I prayed the whole thing, then I'd go back and pray one verse, two verse, three verse, meditate on one verse, then another verse, try to meditate on any of the verses, until I could feel the reality of it see? So thank You Lord, You're my shepherd and friend. I love that. Often I'd never get past that, just that first oh, He's my friend, and He's there with me! I begin to see Him, and feel His presence, and then thank You Lord, my cup runs over. Oh the joy, of just full of the presence of God. Thank You Lord for Your wonderful presence just flooding me right now. I just begin to enjoy it, so I learnt to just stand by the bed, and just fall on the bed and yield and see, just - no bed here now, so I'll just stand on my feet. I just learnt to receive from God, and so what would happen is, you start to feel His presence. Thank You Lord, just touch her now Lord. [Releases one long breath] Let your presence flow all over her life right now. There we are, and you're starting to sense something there, the presence of God is on you just like that.

So learn to yield rather than wrestle, so I practised just yielding to God, yielding to His presence. I'd just put the bed behind me and just stand there and just yield, and I'd be childlike, and just let myself fall [like whoa!] at the presence of God. Then I'd lie there and enjoy Him, and get up again and do it again, and again, and again, until it was easy to just open up and oh, thank You Lord. There's His presence and POWER of God just come over her life right now. Don't you feel the touch of God? You start to experience like a peace comes around you see? What else did you feel? Calm, isn't that great. It's good isn't it aye? Praise the Lord. What did you sense and experience? Yeah. Yeah, huge love, so as I was meditating, meditation opens up the spirit world, or your connectedness to God, and there's an overflow of life through you, and around you. It's great to understand that, isn't it aye? Otherwise you're going to be a performer, trying to perform, rather than a relater, have a relationship, and abiding, and receiving, and being able to give things to people. Isn't that good?

Okay then, well I'll just show you how I did something here. We'll just take a look on this gift of faith, and let me share on that, then I'll get back. I'm going to minister to some, and just pray for a few people shortly, because I want to just put together these areas of moving in the spirit, words of knowledge, prophecy, discerning, and I'll just put it altogether for you, and start to pray for a few people, and explain which gifts are operating as they're operating, okay? So we'll do that shortly. So we'll just have a quick look here, and I won't take too long on this one. I want to look at faith, gift of faith, the gift of faith. Okay, there it is, 18, alright then. So a gift of faith - now a gift of faith is not the same as walking by faith. It's not the same as your daily faith life. It is not the same as getting saved, although when you are saved, you receive a gift at that point to believe, so in a sense, getting saved is a gift of faith at that point. You got faith, and you believed immediately that you're saved, okay.

So what the gift of faith is; it's not a fruit of the spirit, and it's not just daily walking trusting God. A gift of faith is an ability to believe at a moment in time, you know something is going to happen, you absolutely know it. You say: how do you know it? I don't know how you know it, you just know inside what God is going to do, and that it will happen. You have an assurance it's going to take place, absolute assurance it'll take place, and so when you have that deep assurance, then you absolutely know something's going to happen. I want to tell you one, this is a classic one for me, and then we'll give you a few examples about it, but the best thing is if I just share a personal story, and you'll see how it can operate. I go to Taiwan and minister up there reasonably regularly, and they set up various meetings, and the Chinese have got their own way of doing stuff you see, so anyway I went up there into this particular meeting, and as I came out, I stepped straight into the meeting out of the lift, into this room where there's meeting, and then right in front of me there's a wheelchair, and a guy sitting in the wheelchair like this. I think oh no, a wheelchair! I know we'll have a great meeting - this is all what went through my mind - have a great meeting, and then at the end nothing's going to happen over this wheelchair.

I was just a bit put out, and so anyway I went over to my seat, and as soon as I got to my seat and began to worship the Lord, He said you've got a bad attitude. [Laughter] I rebuke the devil! [Laughter] No, that was you! He said you've got a bad attitude, and I just went quiet and listened, so while everyone's worshipping, I'm listening. He said your attitude is wrong to this man. It's filled with disappointments, where you've prayed and nothing happened. He said: I want you to meditate on this man being healed, really. So while everyone else is worshipping, I was just in my mind seeing the wheelchair, and seeing the man stand up, seeing the wheelchair, seeing the man stand up, seeing the wheelchair, seeing the man stand up. I was looking, just imagine, just praying, just an attitude of worship, not struggling or striving, meditating, watching, and suddenly oh! It's going to happen, I know it!

So before I was imaging it, and then suddenly there was a point where faith came. I thought oh, he's going to get healed. I was so excited - a bit nervous too, because I didn't know what to do you see, whether to go over and pray for him straight away, or whether - I just think I better warm up first you see, so [laughter] pray for the easy ones. [Laughs] So anyway, we sort of shared, and then I began to move in the spirit, began to pray for various people, and some different people got healed. The Pastor came up to me, he said: well what are you going to do now? I said: see that guy in the wheelchair, I'm going to grab his hands, and pull him out of the wheelchair! He said [inhales sharply] you're freaking me out, you can't do that. I said: you watch! [Laughter] So anyway we prayed for a few more people, and then we got there, and by the time we got there to this guy in the wheelchair, there was a second wheelchair there. I don't know where that one came from. [Laughter]

There was a lady in a wheelchair, so she's sitting in the wheelchair. I thought no, he's going last. I felt in my heart this is where I'm going to go, finish the meeting on that, so anyway I prayed for the lady in the wheelchair. She'd been in the wheelchair for three years, she'd had tremendous pain, a whole number of things happening in her life, and she hadn't walked for three years. Normally the muscles all shrivel and everything goes. Even if you get them on their feet, they don't easily walk, so I prayed for her, helped her out of the wheelchair, and she stood up and blow me down, she began to walk a few steps. I thought whoa, look at that! This is great. I'm feeling very encouraged now, ready to get this guy. So I went over to the guy, and I asked him the question: how long have you been here? Ten years, and he'd been having operations on his back, and he's just sick of the operations, he's had enough, and he's just - there's no more operations, there's no more hope.

So I said to him: wow, so I just knelt down and just prayed, said thank You Lord for healing this man. There was no big prayer, no great issue, no nothing. I said: now can I help you to your feet? I took his hand, helped him. He stood up just next to the wheelchair, and then I'm thinking I'll just help him walk, you know, don't want him to fall over [laughs] so I'll help him walk. He made me let go of his hand, and then he began to just walk like this [laughter] right across the room. I'm terrified he's going to fall over and hurt himself [laughter] and he walked across the room and back again, and he's totally healed! Now what amazed me was this - the caregivers immediately wanted him back into the wheelchair. Now notice this. He hadn't walked for 10 years, but they want him back in the wheelchair, because that's where their paradigm is, still locked in, that he's crippled. They could not quickly catch up he's now walking, and I didn't feel a thing. I absolutely didn't feel a thing when that happened, not one little feel, not an ounce of God, not an ounce of emotion, nothing. It's just, it just happened, so that was a gift of faith.

You just know. Now does that mean everyone I pray for? No, I knew that guy, that day, that time, would come out, and I could act boldly in that situation. Later, he came up in the altar call, gave his heart to the Lord. They were still trying to get him into the wheelchair, so now I've learnt that if they get out of the wheelchair, fold up the wheelchair as quickly as you can, get them walking - same with walking sticks. So again, that's how faith just came. It says faith comes by hearing the word of God, so as I meditated, I heard from God in that sense. Faith rose. Now I'm not saying that I can turn that on or off for any situation. All I'm saying is, that it is a gift, comes in a moment of time, and some people operate in it so much, and so frequently, it's like around their life, the gift of faith, and many miracles happen around their life, and around their ministry.

I know one particular person who's a friend of mine up in Malaysia, tremendous miracles he has happen everywhere he goes, just stunning gift of faith. There's a resident gift lives in his life, and he just operates in a whole faith dimension. It's very inspiring. There's a gift of faith comes just in a moment, and then you can grow in that whole dimension, until you actually seem to have a residing gift, or mantel of faith over your life. It is astounding when that happens, to see these things, so I've seen that happen a couple of times. I had one, a lady that was totally deaf, and born deaf. I prayed for her, nothing happened, and then I felt something in me rise up. I cannot describe it, it had to be faith. I just refused to give up. I prayed not once, I prayed four times. On the fourth time, her ears popped, and she could hear. Imagine if I just quit, and had given up after the first time, she'd still be deaf.

What about the other guy in the wheelchair? Imagine if I'd allowed myself to stay in that cranky, unbelieving attitude. He would still be in the wheelchair. People need someone to break through on their behalf. Why not you? Now you don't necessarily quickly get to that. You grow your faith level by level, so don't matter how many times you pray and nothing seems to happen. Just keep meditating in the word of God, expecting God to work in your life, and believing that you'll break through, and come into different dimensions. Amen. Praise the Lord. Why don't we get you to step out in faith for something in a moment aye? Would that be good? Step out in faith and pray for someone, that'd be really, really good. Then we'll just look at the gift of healings and working in miracles, then just some practical keys, so why don't we just get you to do something with one another, how about that?

So I tell you what, this'll be quite a good thing to do, and this is, we'll get you now into groups of about four or five, and this is what I want you to do. I want you to put one person in the middle, and the others all get some word of encouragement for them, so instead of it being one to one, you maybe have at least three people ministering to one person, no more than three, so no bigger groups than four, or it just takes too long to do it. So you get one person in the middle, and then you all pray, then one by one, you share a word of encouragement for them, to bless them, encourage them, and help them. How about that, can we do that? Okay, let's do that.

Okay, let's be seated, I want to get on with the next session, and then we want to just minister and pray for you. Let's be seated, and this time look at Section 19, Gifts of Healings. In 1 Corinthians 12, Verse 7, the Bible talks about: to another is given gifts of Healings, by the same spirit. Notice He used the word 'gifts' of Healings, and so a gift of healing is a gift given to you, at a time where you just have faith for someone to be healed. Now what I have noticed happens, is that when a person has a gift of healing, there is always a result take place, so we can pray by faith, or if we get a gift, God gives a gift at a moment of time - you can call it faith, call it a gift of healing - the person gets a breakthrough straight away at that time. So notice it says: gifts of healing, not gift, so what I have observed is, some people get very good in praying for backs. They'll just get freedom every time they pray for a back. They've got faith for backs, they've got like a gift of healing around their life. Some have got it for ears; some will have it for other areas, so people can develop and focus in a particular area of healing.

Some are very good in getting deaf ears opened, some are very good at getting backs and joints healed and freed, and you get them to pray, they get 90 to 100 per cent success rate. They've got a gift around their life of healing, that's faith for that area. I was reading just concerning Todd Bentley and some of his ministry, and he teaches on how you grow from level to level in this area, and he had a point where I think one of his family members, his mother was deaf. He began to contend in prayer for breakthroughs with deaf people, and he prayed for hundreds and hundreds of people, nothing happened. He just began to contend, and eventually got a breakthrough. Once he got one, it just kept growing, until now wherever he goes, he will pray for the deaf, and get something like 80, 90 per cent of people with deaf ears will open up, so that's a gift of faith, or a gift of healing in that area. So we're all on a journey, so don't compare with someone else, just settle in your heart how God wants to work with you, and start to believe to grow in that area. So let's just give a couple of examples of it.

In Mark, Chapter 16, and we read here at the Great Commission. We're commissioned to go into the world, which is full of sickness and demonic oppression, and it says we're to preach the Gospel about how people can come to Christ, come to God, come to know the Lord, and walk in His kingdom, but it says - notice this - it says in Verse 17, these signs shall follow them that believe. In My name, they'll cast out devils, so if you can believe for it, when you pray, demons will come out of people. You have to believe it'll happen, not doubt, or wonder whether it'll happen. It says in the last one, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. They will lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover, and that means gradually, or progressively, come to a state of wholeness. So when we think of praying for healing, we tend to think of it all being instantaneous. That was kind of like a mentality I had, probably seen it in one of the movies or something, I had this idea you pray, there's this immediate miracle, everything's just exactly back to normal. I realised actually in real life, God does not seem to operate that way. He operates in different ways around the healing area.

So for a gift of healing, at a moment of time, you just know in your heart when I pray something's going to happen. That's a gift of healing. The rest of the time, we just pray by faith. In other words, we follow the scripture: you lay hands on the sick and they shall recover, so sometimes you get a miracle, the healing is immediate. The transformation takes place immediately, like if deaf ears open it is immediate, they hear or they don't hear, but it can come in a couple of stages, where they hear a little, then it comes complete, and they hear the whole. Same with the eyes; the eyes are either not seeing, or seeing, and if they're not seeing, you pray and they start to see a little, then pray again, and believe for it to be progressive. So I have noticed that sometimes, the majority of times I've prayed, I've had to persevere in prayer, and believe that this would work, and then they break through, and they get the miracle. Sometimes I've seen cataracts healed, just gone. People couldn't see, and then suddenly they see, but it took praying a couple of times to push through the barrier and resistance that was there, same with hearing of ears.

I began to grow faith for walking sticks, for people on walking sticks to be healed. Initially I just hated praying for people with walking sticks. I'd want to run the other way, because I never got any results. [Laughs] I just didn't like that, but I made a decision I'd persevere, and believe God I could get breakthroughs, and so I started. So now most of the time when I'm in Asia, if I've got any evangelism meetings, I will look for people with walking sticks when they come in. I'll look for them, and I'll ask for them to come up, and give it a go. I had one meeting, I had about 45 people get off their walking sticks and walk, but that - faith is grown for that area. I found sometimes I'm getting better results in some areas than I've done before, but you can grow in this area, so notice what it says: They'll lay hands on the sick, so God called 'laying hands' is to identify with a person, so we lay hands on the sick person and pray for them. They may get a miracle immediately. It may be progressive, and they recover over a day, two days, three days, four days, so you need to take into account you may not see anything immediately happen. It doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

I found when I first started to pray, it used to so put me off, because I'd pray and nothing would happen, I'd feel discouraged, and not even enquire later on whether anything happened. I've found since then, you can't believe the number of people I've prayed for them on Sunday and Monday they were well, that when they walked away they weren't well. It didn't seem like it anyway, but actually something had been imparted to them, and it began to manifest. The healing gift manifested, so instead of thinking of it cut and dry, yes it happened or not, learn to just persist in prayer, and sow in prayer, and believe in prayer. A gift of healing, you just know it, and when it comes the person's going to be healed straight away - but the rest of the time, we pray by faith. So here's a few simple things. The first one is, it's helpful to lay hands on the person, lay hands, identify, connect with the person, and let the Holy Spirit show you where to lay hands.

He may show you to lay hands on the head, may get you to put your hand on the part that's - if it's appropriate - on the part that's sick or not well, or He'll put your hand on top of a person's hand, whatever seems appropriate. The second thing you need to consider is, maybe you need to cast out a spirit of infirmity. If you have a look in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 13 and Verse 10, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and there's was a woman had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years, and was bowed down and could not lift herself up. She had a back condition that was caused by a spirit. It was a demonic spirit that caused the problem. Medicines could not fix it. It required deliverance, so if there's a spirit of infirmity, praying for the sick person won't set them free. You have to cast the evil spirit out. You've got to speak to the spirit, and command it to go, so you notice when the girl was standing there, I spoke to the spirit, commanded it to go, and as soon as it left her, she just fell over straight away, and then there's a change in her condition in her back.

So when you're praying in this area for people who are sick, think in two dimensions; think one, it could be a spirit that needs to be cast out; two, it could be just a weakness in the system, a virus in the system, a degeneration in the system, or it could be some kind of thing that needs healing to take place. If it's degenerative, it needs a creative miracle for God to restore. If it's just something damaged or broken or whatever, it needs God to heal, so keep thinking in terms of: one, I may need to cast a spirit out; two, I may need to pray and release God's healing power into their life. A third thing you need to learn to do, is to command, to speak to things, like they are living. In our western culture, we're not used to doing that, but if you look in Acts, Chapter 3, Peter and John went up to the temple - Verse 1 - about the ninth hour, and a certain man, lame from his mother's womb, was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple called Beautiful, to ask alms. He saw Peter and John going into the temple, and asked for alms. Peter fixed his eyes on him. He must have got a gift of faith for the healing, must have got a gift of healing then, because he knew something was going to happen, so notice what he did.

Silver and gold have I none, but what I have - so what did he have? The gift of healing - such as I have I give you. Now notice how he did it. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. That's not namby-pamby stuff. You've got to learn to speak with authority. These things resist. They resist wellness, they resist health, so learn to speak firmly - not loudly. Shouting doesn't do it - with authority from your spirit, fully believing what you say would happen. Notice how he's prayed: In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. See? So he didn't even go talking about the curse, or the spirit, or whatever it was, just said rise and walk. Now notice what else he did. He took him by his right hand, and he helped him up. Now notice this, when the miracle happened, immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. When did they receive strength? When he got on his feet, see?

So if he had stayed on the ground, he would not have walked. He had to be helped up onto his feet, and when he got him onto his feet, that's when the miracle happened, so it doesn't always happen immediately when you pray. Sometimes you've got to take an action of faith, that precipitates the miracle happening. If you study Jesus' miracles, many times miracles happen when the person did something, or when He did something, so for example, remember he told the guy - the blind guy to put a mud pack on his eyes, and said walk through the town and go to this pool, and wash and you'll come back seeing. So the guy walked from when Jesus spoke to him to the pool, and he was blind all the way, until he washed his eyes. When he washed his eyes, he could see, so Jesus required a faith action of him. The lepers, He said: go show yourself to the priest. Now they were still lepers when they walked away from Him, but as they walked, they were healed, so when they did what was physically impossible, when they did what they could do, God did the rest.

There's another guy standing there, and he's got a crippled hand, and Jesus is getting him to stand up in the synagogue - not very nice to make a handicapped man stand up in front of everyone, but he gets him to stand up. He says: now stretch out your hand. Now that's physically impossible, but when he began to stretch, suddenly the power of God came. Now it's helpful for you to understand, sometimes you've got to get people to do things, so I had one person for example, a lady had a shoulder, and her shoulder was a lot of pain, so I prayed for her. I said any improvement? She said just a little. I said: well then, why don't you move your hand. She said: oh, it's a pain, it's hurting, it's hurting, it's - oh, it's gone! [Laughter] So it was as she ignored the pain, and took the faith action, that's when the healing power began to flow, and she got free, and got the miracle. If she hadn't taken a faith action, nothing would happen, so many times when you pray, don't just think God will do it all. Often you need to get the person to give some feedback to you, what's happened, and then get them to take a faith action. So if I pray for someone and there's no immediate result, I will pray again, and try to get them to do something they haven't done before, and it's often in that that you get the breakthrough.

Now one caution, one word of caution: do not encourage a person, or tell them to stop taking medication. You're not a doctor, you're not a prescriber of medication, therefore, you're not authorised to tell them not to take it. Not taking medication has legal consequences, and physical consequences potentially, so what is important is we understand, if a doctor has prescribed medicine, let the person go show themself to the doctor, and let the doctor release them from the medicine, or let them take responsibility. Don't you go diagnosing someone doesn't need medicine anymore, okay then? So don't encourage them to no longer see a doctor, if they're going to a doctor, just pray for them. Don't be something you're not - you're not a doctor, so our role is to pray for people. We just pray for them, and see how they are, and check them out afterwards, and just encourage them then to continue to thank God for what's happened to them - so that is the gift of healing.

So the 'gift of healing' is different to 'praying by faith for healing'. We pray by faith for healing, we just believe, according to the word of God, that if we pray for the person, they can be healed. Are some people not healed? Yes, sometimes unforgiveness will block their healing, sometimes unbelief will block their healing, sometimes there can be control or occult powers will block their healing. You've got to ask the Lord to show you, what blocks the healing. When you get a gift of healing, you just know the person's going to be healed, and when you pray, it does happen, and it happens pretty well straight away. The rest of time, pray, check the person out, break the power of a spirit over their life, and encourage them to take an action that they haven't taken before - so there's ministry of the healing gift again.

Now gifts of healing are wonderful. Pray for gifts of healing - there are so many sick people. They go to chiropractors and doctors, and it costs them thousands of dollars, and here one prayer could set that person free. What a great thing, if you could begin to flow in gifts of healing - in your workplace, wherever you are. People can be stunned in the community, they just get a healing in the workplace, get a healing wherever you happen to see them. They get so shifted, it's quite astonishing the effect it has on their life. Wouldn't that be great? Now related to gifts of healing are the working of miracles. We won't spend a lot of time related to that area, but a miracle involves the breaking of a natural, or it means that the natural laws are overridden by the realm of the spirit. God brings a superior power into play, so there are heaps of miracles in the Bible where God has invaded the natural realm, and a miracle took place.

I'll give you some examples of Peter walking on the water. You can't walk on water. You all know you can't walk on water, so what kept him up? The power of God. Now I guess, how did he know? I guess he never knew he could walk on the water, until he stepped out of the boat, and got his foot in the water, and who knows how far down it went before it was solid? You don't know. There's been examples of people doing this in Indonesia during revival, crossing rivers that you couldn't cross, and the people came after them, went in the river and they were swept away it was that deep. So there are many examples; the feeding of the 5000. You notice that what Jesus did was He took the bread, He blessed it, He spoke over the bread. He spoke words over the bread, He looked up to heaven to the source, spoke words over the bread, then broke it, and gave it to the disciples. Now at that point, it still hasn't multiplied. It was when they distributed it, it began to multiply, so they give out a piece, and there's another piece taken its place, and so on, and so forth.

We heard from Heidi Baker in Mozambique, and they had a huge number of people to feed, a large number of people to feed, and they looked at the food they had, and it wasn't enough, so they just began to pray over it. Well, they fed everyone, and had food left over. No one knows how they did it. So I've heard a whole number of stories like that, in modern times, of the food just being multiplied. How did it happen? They asked God what to do, just prayed over it and distributed it out, and God did the rest. It was a miracle, a working miracle, so some aspects of miracles are overriding natural laws. Another aspect of miracles is deliverance. Deliverance is the working of miracles, because in deliverance, God displaces a demonic power by the working of miracles, so deliverance is also a working of miracles. There are many examples of these in the Bible. How do we move in it? I think you've got to desire miracles, you've got to hunger for them, and pray for them, reach out to God for them, and I've noticed that most of the miracles take place where there are needs that are being met, by people serving people. I've noticed that's where most miracles take place.

Most common miracles are not necessarily in a church meeting, they're actually out where people are doing something, to help someone. It's in those environments that God works the greatest miracles. It's where the unsaved are. I've looked at the meetings I've taken overseas in Asia, because I've seen heaps of miracles, heaps of healing, heaps of deliverance, and I noticed that the best miracles, the best miracles, were with people who were unsaved. Time and time again, I'd have a word of knowledge on people that were unsaved - I didn't know whether they were saved or unsaved, they're just Chinese people to me. But they'd come up and we'd pray for them to get healed, and then later on they're in the altar call to get saved. The miracle power opened their hearts to get saved. They saw the reality of the power of God, so it's fantastic.

How many enjoyed that, liked that? Is it good fun? We should pray for a few people shouldn't we aye, should reach out and pray for a few people? Alright then, so what I'll do now, is just start to pray and minister to some. Then what I want to do is to lay hands and pray, and just release an empowerment in your lives, and I want you to go out, and just give it a go. Never give up, just practice. Ask God to give you words. Ask God to bring people into your heart life that are ready to receive something, and then give it a go. What have you got to lose? Learn on the way. Don't wait until you've got your head full of theory, just learn on the way. If someone's sick, offer to pray for them, and there's a few practical things in offering to pray for them. We've given you some of those, we'll get to that in just a moment.

So what I'll do then is, I'll just show you what I mean. I'll just put some of the gifts together, and just begin to flow with the Holy Spirit, and I'll identify the different gifts as we're flowing, then you'll see how they just operate. Now most of us, are not going to be in a meeting, doing something in a meeting, so for most people, it's as you interact with people, and they identify a need; you step up and say: I'd just love to pray for you, or you may just sense something about a person. Go over and relationally interact with them, and then share with them what you feel God showing you, and do it in a non-religious way, so it's very, very simple, and someone can easily receive it. So for most people, it's quite a simple sort of process - and expect that as you're doing, God will give you things. Now clearly, no one wants to step into that unless you've had time with the Lord, and are building a personal relationship with Him, but if you are, then let's go for it.

So what you could do simply in your personal preparation, is go through the Gospels reading the stories of Jesus, and healing, and meditate on those stories of people healing, meditate, see it, thank You Lord, when I lay hands on the sick, they shall recover. I thank You Lord, when I lay hands on blind eyes, they open. Begin to picture it, and see it, and hold it, that this is what's true in your life, even before it happens. Don't wait to see it, then I'll believe it. Believe for it to be seen in your life in ministry, see? So thank You Lord, that when I pray, that deaf ears will open. I thank You Lord, that as I minister to people, Your presence touches them powerfully. Today Lord I surrender my hands, I yield all the works of my hands today Lord. My hands are blessed. All I put my hands to Lord, are blessed. Lord, when I lay hands on people, the power of God will touch them.

Start to decree and declare over your life, the things you're believing God to do. We talked about removing some of the blocks in your heart, but arise expectantly day by day. Today Lord, bring someone into my life who is in need of prayer or help, and show him to me in a way I can see it. Then enjoy looking out for people. Give it a go, you know, and if nothing works, or nothing happens, well you've got nothing to lose, just - well, you were giving it a go, and it's in the giving it a go, you grow. I've never seen anyone, get anywhere, by just filling up on books, information and meetings. It's actually, at the end, you've just got to get down and pray for someone, and see what will happen. You might be surprised what happens, and there's an element where, you don't know until you're engaging with them, what God will do, so for example if I was just to pick this girl out here - would you like to come up? Yes, that's right, why not, come up here, that's it.

Now you see what you've got to do is - I've got no idea. I'm just going to just take an opportunity to just, reach out, and just see what God will do - so can you tell me your name? [Wooty] Wooty, that's a great name, great. I'm so glad you came. Have you been enjoying yourself? That's awesome, that's great. Okay now, the moment I started to interact with her like that, then immediately I got a word from the Lord. I'm expecting it you see? I don't want it to be something that's very hard, and very difficult. I want it to be something that's very, very easy, so I just interact with her like that, and just try to make it as relaxed as possible, and I really am glad that you've come, and you've been enjoying it, but this is what I felt. I just felt the Lord show me, that you struggle with fear, that you've got real desire in your life to actually do a whole number of things, but often fear will lock you back, as though I'm afraid to step out, or afraid - and so now I'm going to reach out to see, I wonder where that fear's come from, see?

So what I'll do is - what I feel the fear has come, it's from people around - it's from around family, it's like, it's tried to push you down into a box, that that's where you belong, and would you be younger in the family? Yeah [laughs], you're pushed down, like the young one in the family, and so it's like there's an order, and you're at the bottom, or way down here. That be right? See, words of knowledge. Now can you see it's sort of natural? It just flows naturally, I'm just talking with her, see, and so what I'm seeing is this, is that God's wanting you to - you're not in a box any longer, and you're not subject to that any longer. You can actually rise up. You have got a wonderful gift in your life, and so I wonder what the gift is. See? Well, I see - what I feel is, I feel you're a very creative person, you've got a very soft spirit, you love to worship God, and you're very creative on the inside. In fact actually, you have been restricted so long, but you long to break out, you've got lots inside you to come out, and the thing that's been holding you back, is just the words that were spoken, that have put you down, and the fear of doing anything to break out of where you feel you're assigned to be - and God will help you with that today.

He wants you to know, you're not what they say you are, you're who He says you are. He says you're a mighty woman of faith. He says you've got a ministry to touch many, many people, you've got a heart for young people, you've got a heart to reach out and help them, and God says that you have got greatness inside you. You are not the youngest in His eyes, you're not the least in His eyes. He sees you as great, because you've got a real desire to love people, a capacity to work with people, and you're in training for this, aye? [Laughs] Can you see it's quite natural? I can see you're already being touched, because you know I could not have known any of these things. I don't think I've met you before today. [No.] So how could I read her mail like that? So what you're experiencing then, it's something like, first of all you're a bit frightened - is that right? That's because the spirit knows I'm onto it, because I'm about to pray for that spirit in a moment. [Laughter] So that fear you were feeling, actually was the spirit being afraid. That's why you suddenly felt the fear, see? And like it gripped you suddenly. That's because the demon knew I'm onto it, he knew what's going to happen, and so you suddenly feel his fear. It's not your fear, it's his fear. He's the one afraid. You've got nothing to be afraid of.

God loves you. I love you. The people here love you. There's nothing to be afraid of, see? But the fear you're feeling, is actually not your fear, it's the demonic fear, but it's gripped your life for years. It's been like a part of your life, see, and you don't have to live that way anymore, okay? You don't have to. Today's change day for you. You're not going to go back into that box, go back into that way, alright then, so we want to pray for you now. Alright then? Okay.

So your heart's been touched, that's right. That's great. We need tissues. [Laughter] Okay then, can I take your hand? Just come forward a little bit now. Alright, I want you to close your eyes. Just close your eyes. Now this is - I'm not going to do this in front of everyone, but there's some specific people who've deeply hurt you. I want you just in your heart, to picture them, and then release forgiveness. Lord, I just forgive them. I forgive them for what they said, I forgive them for what they did, I forgive them for how they've treated me. I forgive them for boxing me in, like they did. Just let it go. God sees your heart. He knows why that's there, and not forgiving will block the deliverance you see? [Mm.] So now I thank You Lord, You love her. Thank You Lord that Your presence is coming on her life right now, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break abusive words spoken over your life. I take authority over word curses spoken over you. I break them in Jesus' name. I come against words of death, I come against words of hatred, I come against words of despising, I break their power over your life today, in Jesus' name. You spirit of fear, you tormenting spirit, loose her in Jesus' name. Right now, let her go, let her go, let her go, NOW in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord, thank You.

Father, I just pray peace into her now. Father, I thank You for the anointing of the Holy Spirit flowing right now. I break the generational curses of hatred, and abusive women, I break them in Jesus' name. I release you from the grip of those things. I break the negative words spoken over you. Spirit of death, I command you: loose her, in Jesus' name. I break all agreements wanting to die, loose her in Jesus' name. Now Lord, let Your peace just come around her now. I just call forth creativity, life, freedom, in Jesus' Mighty name. Father, bring her complete peace.

Now you notice then, the gifts of words of knowledge, then prophetic flow mingled in, and then discerning of spirits, what actual spirits were there, that need to be broken off her life, and then ministry. See how it all just flows together, just like that? I got her to interact with us, so you can see one, how natural the flow is. It's not a forced or difficult or hard thing, it's just remaining relaxed, and just interacting, and listening to the flow from your heart. You can see as she talked and interacted back, you could see how deeply she's been touched by, suddenly, God knows me, He knows my difficult journey and my struggles, and He cares about me, He wants to help me. This is a most wonderful experience, absolutely blessed experience. Praise the Lord. How are you doing now? How are you feeling now? [I feel really good.] You feel really good, isn't that fantastic?

Now when we prayed to command that fear to go what happened, what did you sense? [unclear] Something came out of you? [Yeah.] You felt something leave you, and go out of you. You won't feel the same again. You'll feel quite different. [Not heavy.] No, not heavy, no. It's gone, it's gone, [Thank you.] [Applause.]

So now, so you see we taught you just foundations of this. All you've got to do is grow in it, and who knows what you could do. There's no limits. There's no limits really, with what you could do, because God has got an area of people for you, to be with, and interact with, that I'll never meet, so He wants to work through you to touch them, and not in a church meeting, but outside, wherever you are. Isn't that exciting possibility that God would use you in such ways? Isn't that great? So praise the Lord. There's someone here who has trouble at night times, and its a woman and you wake up with severe nightmares, you have these tormenting nightmares, you wake up and they're quite a trouble for you. They occur quite regularly, they disturb you at night, and you wake up and you're quite frightened. Who's the woman that has that problem, if you could just come right now we'll pray for you? Woman, young woman, you've had this problem for quite some time and God wants to set you free. Who's the woman that has these nightmares, you wake up and these tormenting thoughts and dreams - I'd love to pray for you right now. Who's that person? If you think that's you, just come quickly, come quickly. God bless you, there you are there [Thank you.] Come on up, that's okay. It doesn't matter if you're the only one comes up, I'm still happy to pray for you, praise the lord. [Laughs]

Okay. You're special today, God bless. God loves you. You're special to me, we've been able to practice... [laughter] And you're special to God, He loves you, and today's your day. You know, He's been wanting so much just to have some change, why would it not be you? Why not you? [unclear] Exactly, why not you and you begin thinking that way, instead of why me, rather why not me, aye? Praise the Lord, okay, and you've had this for quite some time. Now, okay, so since you were a child? [A child.] Since you were a child, okay then, and about age six, somewhere around about that? [Oh, probably four.] Four? Quite young, okay, and you'd wake up at night quite afraid? [Yeah.] Okay... [Definitely.] ...you'd feel the presence of something around you? [Absolutely.] Okay, when's the last time that happened? [Probably last night.] Last night, okay. [It's constant.] It's constant torment? [Yeah.] Okay, alright then, so what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to help you - tonight isn't all the ministry you need, but we can just help you with this part of it, okay? Alright then, so now there's clearly occult background in your family? [Yes.] Whereabouts is it located, parents or grandparents? [Great grandfather.] Great grandfather, what was he? [I think he was a warlock.] Oh, he was a warlock, oh that's... [Or something like...] ...a big deal. [Yeah.] That's a big deal, yeah. [He was seriously into...] He was seriously into it... [...satanic...] ...satanic stuff, okay then.

Because he was seriously into those kinds of things, he would have committed his family, for generations, to occult powers, and the spirit world would recognise that, and it would lay claim to everyone of the descendants, and particularly the girls. So unusual things would happen to all the girls in the family, they're unexplainable it seems, and you'd end up thinking why me, why has it always been, why is this stuff happening? [Mm-hm.] That be right? Okay and that's because of a curse running down through the family. Now Jesus died for our curses, and so what we need to do, is reach out to Him. We become accursed, so that the blessing of Abraham would come on us, so here's two things that we need to get you to do. We need to get you to follow me in a prayer, just to confess Christ and what He's done, okay and secondly, to release forgiveness to your ancestors that have opened the door for this problem. You need to forgive. Hello, we've got a problem. [Laughter]

[I've tried before...] Okay, you've tried before? [Yeah.] It's hard, it's hard, okay. Why not believe today, that you can let it go? I'll just help you with that in a moment, then we need to renounce, or speak off your life, speak words, to break that curse, in other words get hold of your life again. We're going to put the cross of Christ between you and your background, you've got a new start in life, okay? [Okay.] So forgiving, is not a favour you do someone else. Forgiving is for you, to move forward. It's releasing the debt that they owe, so when you look back - you did this, you hurt me, you've messed my life up. You know you've got to let it go, and say hey, that's not my business, that's God's business. I'm just releasing it, so I can walk on. [Yeah.] So unforgiveness will lock you to your past. It just keeps you frozen in time, and you can't move on, so that's why it's so important. [Yeah.] Not only that, God forgives us so much. Has God forgiven you much? [Big time.] Big time! [Laughter] Well that's called grace. We don't deserve it, but He gives it, and so to stay in grace, we release forgiveness to others, not because they deserve it, by the way... [Yeah.] ...but just because that's what we do. If we want to stay in grace, we let grace go to others.

So letting go, is letting go... [Yeah.] ...okay? We're alright, now I needed to do this, because it's no use me ministering, without your understanding a little bit about the part she has to play. See I can't just fix all her problems. What I need to do, is lead her to the One who does, and there may sometimes be a part she has to play. Notice I talked about letting forgiveness go in the heart. It was quite important to do that, so from a heart level, she let go, then she's free to get out of that stuff, and the spirit left straight away, so something will happen this time. So I may get the names of certain spirits and things to break, it'll be discerning of spirits, and operating in revelation knowledge to do that, okay? So we're on the way now.

How are you feeling? You look like you're getting agitated? [Yeah.] Okay, tell me what you're feeling. [Pretty exposed.] You're pretty exposed? [Yeah.] Close your eyes and turn everyone off, and focus, just let your heart reach out with love to give. This is a very vulnerable position to be in, especially in front of everyone like that. I just appreciate your honesty, but anyway it's over in a few minutes aye, and that's the great thing. I just thank you for just being willing to just respond, and being so open. It really is of God do that, and we can all learn, and we all witness, so you may be watching - what I'd like you to do is to be praying, praying quietly in tongues, and lets all join together. She's part of our family, the family of God, and when one suffers, all suffer, so let your heart flow with compassion. We don't know all she's faced, and gone through, but what we're looking for, is God to bring release, is that right? Okay, so just close your eyes, just make everyone vanish for a moment, there's just you and me and the Lord here.

Thank You Lord. I want you to just follow me in this prayer. Father, I come to You in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse. I belong to You Jesus. I renounce now every generational curse, every generational agreement with evil spirits, for all my family members, I renounce it. I put the cross of Christ between me and that curse, and I break it. I release forgiveness for family members who opened the door to spirits by their actions. I forgive them. I let them go, and I turn to You Lord Jesus, and I ask You to set me free. Thank You Lord. It's going to be real easy now. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break all agreements formed by your great grandfather with evil spirits. I break the curses that came through his life, and his actions. I break the agreements he made with evil spirits. I break the power of agreements made through blood on altars. I break all blood covenants that he formed with evil spirits. I break written agreements he made in blood, that enabled family members, generation after generation, to be afflicted by evil spirits. I cancel the right of all evil spirits from your grandfather, to enter, or to remain in your life, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now I just speak now, in the name of the Lord Jesus I command this tormenting spirit, that's tormented you since a young age, of four, with nightmares and dreams, I speak to you now and all related spirits, spirits of torment, I command you now GO in Jesus' name right now, release her now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord, thank You Lord. Just rest there, that's right. Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, we just pray for your healing anointing and flow of your blessing upon her now, in Jesus' name. I just take authority and break every ungodly belief that you had, there's something wrong with me. I break your agreement with that lie right now in Jesus' name. I break every desire, every death wish you've spoken over your life, just wanting to die, I break it in Jesus' name. Now Lord, I just ask for Your loving presence to come around her life. Thank You Lord, You love her. Fill her, in Jesus' name. There you go, how about that? [Applause.]

You feel awesome aye? [Yeah.] Isn't that great? You'll enjoy some happy nights now aye? [Yeah.] Peaceful nights, instead of being tormented, isn't that fantastic? Thank you for coming back - we had someone else who was tormented, but he didn't come back. [Laughter] So I want to thank you for your courage in coming tonight. Let's just give her a great clap. [Applause.]

Someone else here, you've twisted your right shoulder, and you're in pain in your right shoulder. Who's that person? This one, yeah, here we go, come on, come now. Okay, so how long ago did you do this? [...in January.] Right, so all since January you've had problems with that shoulder? [Yeah, I've been trying to cast it out myself] [Laughter] Okay, well that's - today God knows about that, so what is it, it looks like it's stiff, you can't move it or raise it? [Very sharp pain.] Very sharp pain in your shoulder. It just came on you suddenly? [Yeah, suddenly.] No reason at all? [Yeah I feel like it's just not going away, so I was praying that you would call me today.] [Laughter] Well there you go. See what happens? When there's hunger and desire that's when these kinds of things happen, okay, right. [The pain is terrible.] The pain is so terrible, so since January she's been in tremendous pain in her shoulder, she's been asking the Lord to help and came in pain today, believing God to do something.

When did you come back from Malaysia? [In January.] Isn't that interesting? [Yeah.] Okay, so what I'm... [I have this in February]. So I'm just looking to how to pray, so here's the options. One is we just pray for healing, one is we pray into the realm of the spirit, that there may be a spirit causing the affliction, and I've noticed that she has been trying to cast it out herself, so it's almost like, in her heart, she's aware there's a spirit there. [Yes.] See? Okay, now so then the question is, if she's been doing that, and hasn't had any result, I wonder why that is so. I kind of ask questions. I don't just quickly, just jump in. You just start to ask questions, and how long were you over in Malaysia for? [Four months.] And you were sharing about Jesus for lost people? [Yes.] Were they all happy about you sharing Jesus? [Yes, really.] Yeah? That's good. okay. [A lot of restoration.] A lot of restoration? That's good, okay. Was there anyone that was unhappy with you doing that? [Not really, although when I went back, there was a spiritual warfare, but then that - I mean my sister, she really know Christ, came to Christ...] Oh good. [Yeah.] Listen, just give me your hand then. Thank You Lord. Father, I just thank You that you're a God that reveals, and that there's nothing too difficult for You. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I take authority over witchcraft. I come against every word curse spoken against you. I come against every spirit of witchcraft assigned against you. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break that spirit of witchcraft off your life. Infirmity, I command you to let her go now, loose her now in Jesus' name, loose her now, loose that shoulder in Jesus' name. We just break your power, and command healing to flow in the joint, and the nerves, we command this shoulder to be released now, in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Whoa! [unclear] Okay, so it's leaving your shoulder? [Yeah.] Do you feel better now? Okay then, just begin to move around, just see how it feels. [It feels better.] It feels better? I can see you doing things you couldn't do before. Isn't that wonderful? [So stiff!] See it was very stiff, it was visibly stiff, and the pain - how's the pain? [Yeah, it's better.] It's better now? [Yeah.] Isn't that wonderful? Lets pray for her one more time. Thank You Lord. Just look up to the Lord. Holy Ghost, just come upon her, fill her Holy Spirit right now, in Jesus' name, wow! User her in healing.

Now - so what, how do we pray? So I listened. Don't jump into conclusions, just stay long enough to listen. Listening is the big deal, then act boldly on what you see. So I listened, and I felt that feeling, and that's why I was asking the questions, I just felt someone actually was very upset with her, and had cursed her, so that's why I broke that witchcraft curse, and spoke against the spirit of infirmity, then immediately she just freed up, just like that. Isn't that wonderful aye? Oh, how glorious is our God.

Well, we're just running out of time now. How many other people here are sick today, anyone here sick? Why don't you just stand where you are, if you're sick in your body, got a sickness that needs healing? Why don't you just stand right where you are, because the table's going to gather around you, and pray for you. That'll be great, won't it? You'll have a chance to do something, to pray for a sick person. Okay, we've got a very sick table down there have we, three people? [Laughter] Okay, move around, and go to one of the other tables, and let some people there pray. Gather around the ones who have got a sickness. When they come to you, tell what the problem is, what you're believing God for, and the team will pray for you, and lets just see what God does. Afterwards try doing something you...

Alright then, okay, let's just be seated. We'll just finish up, tidy up now. Wonderful. Well, I wonder if we had some healings here? I'd like to just identify if anyone got healed through prayer? One, two, three, four - great, what happened to you? You can bend right down? Awesome, wonderful! [Applause.] Okay, someone else have a healing they'd like to just testify to? Yes, what happened? Right shoulder, it loosened up? Boy, she got up quick, didn't she, ahead of you aye? [Laughter] You could have said it was right shoulder as well. What happened to you? Your shoulder got healed, and freed up. Show us what you can do. [unclear] Yeah. [unclear] Yeah. [unclear] Yeah, great. Alright, okay, wow. [unclear] Wow, so praise the Lord, God's touched you today. Wonderful. Come on, let's give Him a clap. [Applause.] Amen. Alright then, praise the Lord.

Why don't we just pray? I'd love to just pray for people, just to get an impartation, just so you can go away fired up, so why don't you come up, just make rows here, we'll quickly pray for you. Front row stand here; second row, eyes open, catching. [Laughter] Okay, and where's - Pastor Lyn, would you like to come up and help us with praying for people? Joy, like to come up, and help with praying? If you can get away from there, you can come up and help pray. That'll leave Horowai with the cameras. Okay, just lift your hands up. You know what it is you've come for, you're wanting God to touch you. Just close your eyes, lift your hands up. Now, we won't pray for you if there's no one behind you to catch you, I don't want you to fall over. There's no one there, that's right. Okay, are we ready? Okay, let's begin to pray in tongues, just pray in the spirit now.

Thank You Lord for Your goodness, thank You for Your presence, thank You for Your power. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come, thank You Lord, thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Father, we just pray release, increase, of the flowing of the gifts of the spirit. We pray an impartation of faith, that from this day forward, each one would be empowered in a new way, to bring Your presence to others. Holy Spirit, come mightily, come powerfully in Jesus' name. Power of God, just touch her right now, in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. We'll just speak to these ears, we'll just command them right now, OPEN in Jesus' name, release her right now. Thank You Lord.

Deliverance and Healing

Mike's complete notes on Deliverance & Healing, accompanied by 5 supplementary videos (audio transcripts included)

Contents of the Training Manual include:

1. Apostolic anointing and ministry

2. How demons enter and oppress people

3. Curses and how to deal with them

4. Breaking bondages

5. Casting out spirits

6. Healing the wounded heart

7. Ungodly beliefs

8. Ministering to people

9. House cleansing

Appendix: Discerning of spirits

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5)

The apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending, empowerment to impact lives for the kingdom of God. Jesus first sent 12, then 70, and finally all believers. We're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence, and god wants us to be used in this ministry - not only of sharing the gospel, but of healing the sick, and delivering people from evil spirits.

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5)

Examples of Jesus' ministry of deliverance, how He worked, how He operated, and then some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are and how they operate. How spirits get into people's lives and the ways they operate, leading into a closer examination of the scriptures around deliverance, and what they reveal about demons, and the spirit world. Some basics of the deliverance ministry, leading into a practice exercise (activation).

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5)

Demons need a 'legal doorway' to enter a persons life. In this session, a check-list of 9 common doorways are explained; and what kinds of things would happen inside a person, as a result of demonic bondage.

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5)

For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and cursing are a great reality. Blessing means there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually. This session will help you identify when a curse is operating, and how to go about addressing it. This includes a range of heart issues that give legal rights to demons. Jesus came to set us free!

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5)

Simple dynamics of how to lead someone through deliverance, including dealing with some issues of the heart where demons are attached. Beautiful examples of healing encounters.

Manual

- Deliverance and Healing (Manual)

Paperback

- Paperback #1

- Paperback #2

Audio

- Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5).mp3

- Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5).mp3

- Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5).mp3

- Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5).mp3

- Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5).mp4

- Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5).mp4

- Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5).mp4

- Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5).mp4

- Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5).mp4

Vimeo

- Vimeo Channel »

- Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5).mp4

- Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5).mp4

- Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5).mp4

- Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5).mp4

- Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5).mp4

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5)

Fri 6 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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The apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending, empowerment to impact lives for the kingdom of God. Jesus first sent 12, then 70, and finally all believers. We're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence, and god wants us to be used in this ministry - not only of sharing the gospel, but of healing the sick, and delivering people from evil spirits.

So I want to just honour you and appreciate you've come back continuing on the training. It'll be like what we've done before. There'll be teaching, then there'll be an opportunity to just practice ministering to one another. Now I don't want to scare you all out to cast out demons. I want to just [laughter] - the biggest thing in this area is to just be able to learn how to flow with the Holy Spirit, so we'll outline for you some foundational teaching related to deliverance and healing, and then particularly focus on activations, on learning to flow with the Holy Spirit, because this is the key. So no matter what you learn, listening to the Holy Spirit, working with Him, is foundationally the most important part of this area of ministry.

So in the first session what I want to do is look at apostolic anointing and ministry. The other two seminars we didn't do the session on that. I just left you with the notes on it, but I do want to touch on the area of apostolic anointing and ministry. We're going to go through some brief, just some foundational concepts on this and I want you to just open your heart to let God shift you in your own thinking about ministry and your role in ministry.

So Father in heaven, we just honour You. We thank You You're with us tonight. We thank You it's in Your heart that we be equipped and prepared. We thank You for all that Jesus did for us on the cross, and we are convinced that we can honour You most if we take what was done on the cross for us individually, and we apply it to our lives, then learn how to minister to others and bring them into the freedom that Jesus earned for us. We just thank you for each one that's here tonight, the sacrifice, the commitment, the time that they've set aside for this training, and we ask Lord that You would come, Your anointing would be here, all the teaching would be very clear, and there would be a flow of Your presence to help us in this time that we're here. Lord, we give You all the honour and glory - and everyone said... [Amen.] Amen.

Okay, this first session we're going to look at the area of Apostolic Anointing and Ministry. The first thing I want to look at, is that God is raising up apostolic people. Now let me just describe what we mean by that. Let's have a look at a verse here in Mark, Chapter 3, Verses 14 and 15. It says - read it at Verse 13 - Jesus went up the mountain, and called to Him those He Himself wanted to come, and they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve. Notice what it says - He appointed, He positioned them, or set them in place, for a purpose, so from the beginning of Jesus' ministry, He had a purpose in mind that involved multiplying His ministry, raising up other people. Sometimes we can get the idea that some of this work in ministry is just for a few selected people. This is not true, and I'll show you progressively how Jesus started with the 12, and then expanded His ministry to include you and me.

So it says in Mark 3, He appointed the twelve, one, that they would be with Him. The first and foundation for all ministry is learning how to be in the presence of Jesus, learning how to build intimacy with Him. All ministry flows out of your relationship with Him; secondly, that He might send them out to preach, so the word send is the word Apostallar. It's the word which is hard to translate into English, so they translate it: apostolic. It's almost like they've taken the word, oh it's too hard to do anything with, let's just Anglicise it, and make it apostolic, so when you here the word apostolic you may think of the church down the road as the Apostolic Church, or you may think of apostolic movement, or you look and you think, that must mean the 12 apostles. Often there's a lot of confusion around apostolic. Now the Bible is clear that God has set in the church a number of ministries, and it says: He has set - in 1 Corinthians 12, He's set first apostles, then prophets, then teachers, then working of miracles, and then a range of other gifts.

Every part of the body has a function, and one of the functions that each ministry has, they're anointed for what they're called to do, so when we look at say for example someone who's called to be an evangelist, they're called to connect with God's people, with unsaved people, and draw or bring them to Christ, and then raise up others with an evangelistic gifting. A person who's a teacher is called to teach and establish people, and they have an anointing, a way of thinking, a flow of God's presence to enable them to do that. It involves establishing people. Then the prophetic ministry is to do with connecting people into the realm of the spirit, so a prophet will bring revelation and insight into the spirit world, and will activate people to get closer to the Lord. So in a prophetic ministry, you become very aware of the spirit world, the spiritual realm, but also you become challenged to get your life nearer to God, and to deal with sin issues and so on. So a prophet will then bring people near to God, and address issues which have got spiritual dimensions around them, and raise up other people to flow that way.

An apostle catches what God has got in His heart for the church, so while say an evangelist or a Pastor will be concerned about people and their needs, an apostle will be concerned about what God wants the church to accomplish, so an apostle it says: is first in rank. Why is that? Not because they're more important, but because their thinking is addressing what God wants the church to be. Now everyone has got their own idea what they want the church to be; well I'd like it to be a place where I can come and be loved, and people can be nice to me. That's very nice. That's wonderful. That's pastoral thinking, and it's got a fair bit of self-centredness in it, but God's plan for the church, from the apostolic point of view, has to do with governance, of actually bringing things into kingdom order and alignment, the governance of God over our finances.

So the apostolic ministry is very concerned about the kingdom of God advancing in the world, and so when a church has got apostolic leadership, it will increasingly have spiritual power dimensions, and a movement of the church to engage community, and to advance the gospel into the world. So it says He appointed the twelve that He might send them out, so the apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending empowerment. In other words God doesn't want us just to sit around, He wants to send us into the community, so for you to have an apostolic anointing over you, is to have the empowerment to go into wherever you are in the community and start to impact it, and impact lives for the kingdom of God - that He might send them out to preach, and have power over sicknesses, and to heal sicknesses, and to cast out demons.

So you notice that the apostolic ministry has with it the gospel of the kingdom, and the power dimension. What we're wanting you to do, is to actually understand you yourself may never be an apostle, but you can be apostolic. You can embrace I have a mission from God. You know I love that movie the Blues Brothers, we're on a mission from God, and they're on a mission from God! [Laughs] It's a very funny movie. Well, you're on a mission from God. The question is whether you know your mission, and whether you embrace the assignment God gave you, and learn how to bring His spirit where you're going. So it says here, notice that word - in the original language an apostle, that name or Apostolos, was used in the Roman empire, so for example, when the Romans sent an ambassador out or a general out, to go out to a new territory and conquer it and bring it under Rome, that was apostolic. We would never think of the Roman army being apostolic, but that's what the use and understanding of the word was.

So in the day in which that word was used, an apostle, or someone who was apostolic, or was sent, was commissioned to go and advance the kingdom of Rome in a new territory, and establish it's government in that area. So the people who were listening to this, when it says send you out, it has in mind they would immediately think of the Roman general going out conquering new territory, establishing the kingdom of Rome, or the laws of Rome and the governance of Rome, so when the Bible talks about you being apostolic or sent, it has in mind this; that in your own life, and in the community where you are, you would see yourself as advancing the kingdom of God, and bringing lives into order. Now obviously, that requires confrontation of the demonic realm, so if a Roman army went out to conquer territory, there was always someone occupied it, and were willing to fight to stop them getting in there.

When they sent out an army, they sent an army because it required power to displace the other armies and to conquer the territory, and then to establish governance in it, and the Romans were remarkable at it. They governed the whole world at the time of Jesus, the whole known world, and had built roads so that they can actually quickly move their troops everywhere. So in the day that Jesus first came, or when He came into this world, the whole area had be apostolic-ally shifted by the Roman army and the Roman governments, so now you've got Roman governance right through from the Middle East right through up into England. So that's the environment within which this happened, and that's what the thinking is; when they hear the word apostolic, they're not thinking of some highly anointed minister. They're thinking of: conquering territory, gaining ground for the kingdom of God.

So if someone's got demons, Jesus said: if I cast out demons, the kingdom is advanced. If someone's got sickness, and you heal the sick, the kingdom has advanced. If someone doesn't know Jesus, and you share with them the gospe,l and they come to Christ, the kingdom is advancing. If someone's got their finances in bondage, and they need to be healed and restored and realigned to get their finances right, the kingdom is advancing - so we need to understand when we're thinking about apostolic anointing in ministry, we're thinking about advancing the kingdom, bringing people, not just to receive Jesus as a saviour, but to move their lives, so they're now living out of kingdom principles. So that's the bigger picture. We're going to get right down to the deliverance or the practical side of it as we go through the next couple of days.

So apostolic people are sent by God on a mission, a unique assignment. It's helpful for you to understand this, is that every believer has an assignment from God, and that assignment is your own life. It also includes the place you live, where you work, your neighbourhood. That's your territory. That's the place God calls You to go. Now I may never go there and win people to Christ or pray for them or get them healed, but you can. The thing is to believe you can, and know what to do. That's what this is about, is helping you to know what to do. So you notice here He took twelve disciples with Him. Now if we have a look in Luke, Chapter 10: and so after these things, after He'd sent out the twelve - Verse 1 - after these things the Lord appointed another 70 also, and He sent them two by two before His face into every city and place He Himself was about to come. So the gospel never advances without someone going, and wherever you go, Jesus wants to come with you into that place, His presence touching lives by your life, and your ministry, and your witness for Him.

So you notice here He's expanded it from twelve being sent or commissioned. Now He's got 70 extra, so now He's got 82 people sent out there, and they have the same commission. They're also anointed, and we know they cast out demons, because they came back very excited about that in Verse 17. They returned with joy, saying: even demons are subject to us in Your name. So first you have the 12, then you have the 70, and then if we look at the end of the gospel of Mark it says, Verse 15, the commission to the church, the great commission, go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature - Verse 17 - these signs will follow all who believe - in My name they will cast out demons, speak with new tongues, take up serpents, lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. So you notice Jesus progressed. He started with 12, expanded it to 70, and then expanded it to everyone who believes, so you are commissioned to advance the gospel, and God wants you to understand how to work in deliverance and in healing, even if it's at a simple level.

There's so many people need help, and many of them just don't realise the problems are demonic. They don't want to talk about it, in case you think they're crazy, and we find over and over and over, people who are troubled with demonic spirits, demonic visitations, nightmares, dreams, troubling things in their life, but they don't want to talk about it, in case you laugh at them, or in case you think boy, you're nutty, you're crazy. The reality is, they just need to know this is normal, and to be listened to, and to receive help - and you can give them that help at a level you feel able to, and are led by the spirit to. So the first thing then we see is that apostles are sent out, we're all called to be apostolic.

The Holy Spirit also is apostolic. You notice the Holy Spirit is a sending spirit, so in Luke 24:49, Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you. Wait in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. So the Holy Spirit comes on you, to send you. Have a think about that. A lot of people think, the Holy Spirit's main purpose in coming in power in my life is so I can speak in tongues and have a happy life, but this is not true. In Acts 1:8 it's very clear; you shall receive power from on high, and shall be witnesses unto Me. In other words, the power of the Holy Ghost is to empower us to live a life, and to witness, so other people are able to experience God. So what you'll find of course is, whenever you seek to advance the kingdom of God, that there is always opposition, so we're going to have a look at just some of the opposition that was encountered in the New Testament.

When we start to talk about opposition, people get a bit wavery and they say ooh, ooh I didn't know about that, and I just want an easy life. I want to be blessed, and just don't bug me, and just leave me alone. Of course as we'll see a little bit later, that's the demon's prayer, leave us alone! You know, leave me alone. Don't bother me - and that is definitely the demon's prayer, apparently in the Bible. So I want us to have a look in a New Testament scripture. The first one we're going to have a look at, is in Luke, Chapter 10. Then we're going to look at where the apostles face some confrontation. Luke, Chapter 10 and Verse 17 again, the 70 returned with joy saying: even the demons are subject to us in Your name. Now you notice they weren't heavy, they weren't serious, they weren't ooh, ooh demons, ooh. They weren't like that. They were WOW! God, what a wicked day, we see people set free! There's great joy. They came back joyful, they were laughing, they were celebrating, see? So joy is always associated with the work of the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom of God.

Now this is what Jesus said. He said: I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing, nothing, nothing shall by any means, harm you. I give you authority. That word authority is the word to delegate the legal right to represent Jesus, and speak and act on His behalf. I give you authority - and that authority is to trample on serpents and scorpions. Those are pictures of the devil with his nasty bites and poison, and over all the dunamis, the power, the supernatural dimension of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way harm you. If you've got a Bible underline nothing shall in any way harm you. You may get harassed, you may have some difficulties, you may have a few setbacks, but nothing shall harm you. There it is, Luke, Chapter 10 and Verse 19.

Now let's have a look at the apostles, and what happened to them. There's several examples, I'll just pick up one, in Acts, Chapter 13. We're looking at the apostles, and having a look at some of the difficulties they faced, so apostles always face spiritual opposition of some kind. When we seek to advance the kingdom, there's always challenges. That's part of the deal, so - Verse 4 - they were sent out by the Holy Ghost. There's the word Apostolos. They were commissioned and sent forth by the Holy Spirit and they went to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. Then they went down to Salamis, and they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and had John as their assistant. That place there that they were, that's the place that they had visited in Salamis, there was the site of a temple to the god Estarta, which is a New Testament version of Jezebel. It's a controlling, witchcraft spirit, so it was the centre of a temple.

When they'd gone through the island of to Paphos, this is where the site of the temple was, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, son of Jesus. Of course Jesus was a popular name in those days - and he was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. This man called for Barnabas and Saul, and sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer, for that was his name, withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. So let's have an understanding. We have a Roman proconsul. That means he's the ruler over the island, and wherever you get governance of any kind, witchcraft spirits will always seek to attach to them, to try and control that person, so whether it's in the home or the family, whether it's in governance in the community, there'll always be people who have controlling spirits seek to get around that area, to try and gain control.

So the sorcerer was working alongside the Roman proconsul, and trying to influence him so he could get control over the whole island, and notice here it sought to turn him away from the faith, and Saul, who is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, looked intently on him. He's full of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost's inspiring him, and he rebukes him, and the man immediately gets struck blind. So you notice now, this is a power confrontation. Paul is advancing the gospel, and the consequence of that are demons surface, and he has to confront them - and he was not afraid to do so. Whenever we seek to advance the kingdom, whether it's in our own life, or in the lives of others, there is always some forms of resistance. You have to understand that, and learn to recognise it, and learn to stand up and assert the authority God gave you. You have authority over all the power of the enemy, so whatever lies in front of you, in your mission for the Lord, you have authority, God gives you power to deal with it. It's your choice whether you believe that, or whether you're intimidated, it's too big and too hard.

Of course, when we face demonic opposition, or demonic spirits, or demonic resistance in advancing the kingdom, we find it usually comes in the form of accusations, of pressures and difficulties, or of overwhelming accusing spirits, that tell you you're not good enough, and who do you think you are anyway. So if you have those voices going through you're head it'd be lovely, we'd love to pray for you later - time to break your agreement with the voices from hell, and learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. He says: you can do it, I'm with you, you've got what it takes, we're on a great journey together. God is a great encourager. The Holy Spirit is a great encouraging spirit, and when you are sent on a journey, remember, the one who sent you is with you always. So if God has sent you to do something, He said I'm with you, we're going to do this together. I didn't send you there to do it on your own. You can't do it without me, and I'm not going to do it without you, we're on a journey together, so don't be agitated or surprised or frightened if any difficulties come.

So what about Philippi? Well there also was opposition came at Philippi. Let's have a look at it in Acts, Chapter 16. So the point we're trying to make, is that if you seek to advance the kingdom of God, you will experience, at times, seasons of pressure. Now you think oh, well it's alright for you, you're the Pastor. Let me tell you - and if you go and ask Pastor Lyn afterwards, ask my wife Joy, have you faced struggles and difficulties with demons, and pressure from the spirit world, and the answer is: regularly! And does it affect you? Yes! But we always rise above it and win. It's just you've got to watch that you don't come under anything and allow it to dominate your life. Okay, let's move on a little further, so let's have a look what happened in Philippi.

Now they went out and they went to prayer, and a certain young woman who was possessed or controlled with the spirit of divination, a python spirit, met us, and she brought her masters much profit by fortune telling. The girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying: these men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. But she's got a demon, and this is false flattery. What she's saying is true, but the spirit motivating it was a demonic spirit, trying to gain attention, and gain the credit, for the work of ministry of Paul and Silas. So she did this many days and Paul, greatly annoyed or greatly irritated, or feeling under pressure from the spirit, finally turned around, spoke to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ: come out, and it came out that very hour. So here we have another example of the apostles encountering spiritual resistance as they seek to advance the kingdom.

If you're in the business world, you will face spiritual resistance. If you're in education you'll face spirit resistance. Wherever you seek to advance the kingdom, there will be spiritual resistance. It will come in the form of reactions of people to you, of frustrations, of misunderstandings, communication breakdowns. It will come in the form of accusations, false accusations. There are many ways it comes, and it all has this in common; it's designed to intimidate you, and get you to draw back, and be contained, or overcome. You just have to be able to stand up, and this is why in our last one, we talked about building a strong spirit man, so when pressure comes on you, you've got what it takes to stand up. You're drawing on the Holy Ghost.

So you notice Paul encountered the woman, the woman was hanging around. Now, you couldn't see the spirit, but he could feel the influence. It was making it very hard going. Do you ever notice some church services, how hard it can be? Ever ask the question I wonder why it's hard? This is the house of God, we come to worship God, God's here - why is it so hard? Because there is spiritual pressure and resistance, and you have to overcome it. Where does that come from? It comes because people come under demonic influence through the week, and they come to church, and they're still living under it, and they haven't broken out of it, so we have to stand up. You have to stand up, and believe what God says, and learn how to walk in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We'll share with you things a bit more about that. So this man, Paul confronted the demon, and overcame it.

Okay then, so the last thing we want to share on this, is that the apostolic anointing is a breakthrough anointing, so that's a wonderful thing to know, it's a breakthrough anointing. Let's have a look in Micah, Chapter 2, Verse 13. Here's what the verse reads. It says: the one who breaks open will come up before them; They will break out, they will pass through the gate, they'll go out by it, and their king will pass before them, with the Lord at their head. Wow, isn't that a fantastic scripture? That word breaker, the word that refers to breaker means literally, the one who bursts out, who breaks through limitations, breaks through obstacles, and the one who is the greatest breaker of all is Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter where He went, He always broke through, always got a freedom, always got release in people's lives.

He said: the one who breaks open will come before them, or the breaker will come before them, and then they will break out. So you notice Jesus Himself, there's nothing the devil sent against Him that He didn't overcome - overcame it all. Pressure, misunderstandings, confusion, opposition, resistance, betrayal, people lying, people trying to catch Him and accuse Him, all that. He overcame everything, and it says: if we align and follow Him, we also will overcome, we'll also break out, and we just need to learn how to do that. So it says: they will pass out through the gate, and go out by it. In other words we will carry authority and dominion in our life, provided our lives are under the headship of Jesus Christ. To be under His headship means, I intentionally align my life to be in agreement with God and His word, so in the whole area of deliverance you'll find, probably the foundational aspect of it is, we have to get people back into alignment with Jesus Christ and His word, and break their agreements with other things that have given legal rights to demons to enter them. Then they can break through, and we'll show you a little bit about what's required to do that.

So the breaker anointing, is an anointing that enables people to break out of spiritual resistance, spiritual limitations, and to get breakthroughs, not only our own life, but in the lives of others. Now of course the first place, if you're going to minister to anyone, is to get a breakthrough in your own life. How many could identify there's things in your life, you feel man, I need to break through? I need to get a breakthrough in that area of my life. It could be an area in the way you think, could be a reaction you have in life, it could be some habit you have in your life. There could be something that is containing you, or restricting you. How many can identify there's something I need to break through? How man? There's a whole heap of people here. That's fantastic.

Why don't we just now, why don't we just stand up and why don't we just lift our hands and our voice and pray in tongues, and let's begin to ask the Lord for a breakthrough, that a breakthrough will start this weekend, and we'll carry on. Shall we do that? Then we'll just take a little break together and come back for second session. Are we ready? Okay, let's just start to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Halleluiah Lord, we lift our voice, we pray for breakthrough, break out, release from limitations, release from hidden bondages, hidden fears. Lord, we ask for Your spirit to move powerfully and mightily upon us over this weekend as we come to worship You and honour You. Come mighty spirit of the Lord, come and flow in us and through us, in Jesus' Mighty name. [Amen.] Amen, amen.

Why don't we do this on the count of three, just give a clap offering to thank the Lord in anticipation of that breakthrough? Amen. One, two, three [applause] thank You Lord, halleluiah. Wonderful Jesus.

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5)

Fri 6 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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Examples of Jesus' ministry of deliverance, how He worked, how He operated, and then some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are and how they operate. How spirits get into people's lives and the ways they operate, leading into a closer examination of the scriptures around deliverance, and what they reveal about demons, and the spirit world. Some basics of the deliverance ministry, leading into a practice exercise (activation).

What we want to start to look at now is, we want to look at how demons enter people, how do spirits get into people's lives and if a spirit got into someone's life, what ways would it operate? What would it do? How would you know that a demon was in a person's life? We'll find there are a number of ways you can establish that there's an evil spirit present, so we want to look first of all at how evil spirits enter, and before we get into how they enter, it's a help to understand what they are. So if you're going to be doing deliverance, you will engaging or commanding an evil spirit to come out, it helps if you understand firstly what Jesus taught about it, and what happened in His ministry related to it, and secondly, how actually they gain entry into a person's life. Then we'll look at the foundations for a person being set free.

So the first thing we'll do is, we're just going to look at the way demons enter in and oppress people. The first verse we'll look at is in Acts, Chapter 10 and Verse 38. It tells us in this verse: God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power, and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. So Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit. That's the same anointing you carry. He had a different level of it, a different portion of it, the anointing flowing on His life, but it's not a different anointing. It's the work of the Holy Spirit, flowing in your life - and it said: He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. Now the word oppressed means literally to exercise dominion or spiritual force and hold someone down, to exercise spiritual force and to hold a person down, so it tells us very clearly in this verse, that evil spirits, whatever they are, exercise a spiritual force on people, so that they feel held back, held down, held imprisoned, like I can't break out, even though I want to. I can't seem to change, even though I want to change.

But behind it is a spiritual force. That's why people struggle to get free of things. They want to get free, they know what's right and what they should do, but there's often anchored to the problem in their life, a spirit being which literally holds them down. In Ephesians, Chapter 2 and Verse 2 it says that spirit that works or energises within the children of disobedience, so when we our life is out of alignment with God, when we disobey or break His laws, and a spirit gains entrance, it'll do one of two things. It'll either hold you down so you're held imprisoned and can't break free, or/and it will energise problems in your life so they stay alive, and keep working, and you can't ever seem to get over them. Say for example a spirit of unforgiveness, or a spirit of bitterness, they often work together these spirits, then what the person would do, they would find that they're constantly feeling offended and hurt by things that people are doing to them. They can't ever seem to get out of thinking about the injuries that have been done to them by other people. It's like it just goes on and on and on. A new hurt comes, suddenly they're preoccupied, and they can't get out of their mind the injustice they've got and what's happened.

Now they may not be thinking that consciously but they get reactionary, so you'll find a person who's got a demonic spirit say working in that area, they get very reactionary over something quite small. The response, or reaction, is out of proportion to the injury that was done. A little misunderstanding and someone can flare up, and they didn't do the most obvious thing which was just, calm down, think about it, ask what's happened, enquire for information, try to establish and work out what's going on. It doesn't happen. It's just this fire suddenly comes alive inside, of anger or resentment or whatever, or reaction or a wall of offence comes, and it feels like there's little control or management. Even though the person knows I ought to, they just can't, and so the demonic spirit will either bring a cap and a pressure and a binding, or it'll energise problems, so they just flare up, and they're hard to manage, like a fire that's suddenly gone out of control. The word the Bible uses is the word energise, to energise or flame something in, so it becomes quite big.

So you notice that many people you know, have you noticed how little is much for them, and how it doesn't take much to get them really upset, a little wee thing? What are you - off they go. They've got an area of their life out of control, they're in bondage, and demonic spirits are energising a root problem. Now it's not just a matter of getting the demon out. You need to address the root problem that gives it a right to be there. We'll come to that later. So the second thing we notice is - we going to have a look at an example of Jesus doing deliverance, so it says: He was anointed with the Holy Ghost. That's a crucial thing. You cannot do deliverance without the Holy Ghost, and usually He doesn't do it without you, so you'll see a little later, it's a working together with the Holy Spirit.

So we'll have a look in Luke, Chapter 4, and we'll go down, read it there in Verse 32. They were astonished at His teaching, for His word was with authority. Now in the synagogue, there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. So the environment they're in, is in church. The guy's a believer, and he's sitting in church, and as he's sitting in church, Jesus gets up and begins to minister, and He's preaching, sharing the word of God. The spirit of God starts to fill the place, and as the spirit of God fills the place, there's a man in there, now he's come to church to worship, to give, and to listen to the word of God. Instead he's becoming agitated, and he's firing up inside, and suddenly he just bursts out in the middle of the meeting, and starts yelling out. What does he yell out? Leave us alone! Ever prayed that prayer? Leave me alone. [Laughs] It's a male prayer I think. [Laughter] Leave us alone! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come here to destroy us? I know who You are - the Holy One of God!

Now let's just have a look at what the demon said, and see if we can gain a bit of insight. The man is now no longer in control. A spirit is speaking through him. The spirit has now got a hold of his voice, and it's now the spirit that's talking, so what happens to the guy? Here's what would happen to the guy. He would be aware that someone is talking through him, but he'd have no control over it whatsoever. The spirit being is now speaking, and expressing itself, and talking directly at Jesus, and reacting to Jesus very, very strongly. He would be aware of what is happening, but he has no power to deal with it. The hidden spirit that tormented him is now in a full manifestation - so that's what it means, the spirit is manifesting through him. It's expressing its life in a way which it can't be hid. Now one of the things about evil spirits is, they seek to conceal that there's a spirit there.

They want you to think you've just got a problem, so if we look at this man - the Bible says it was - notice another thing we notice, it was an unclean spirit, so it's almost certain that the man had problems of a sexual nature, meaning his mind was tormented with lust, or tormented with unclean pictures. There's an unclean spirit is operating in his life, so he would be pressured into sexual sin. He would find himself falling and failing regularly, he'd be troubled in his mind with pictures, he would be under pressure, or there's like a fire burning inside him, that he can't seem to get the power over. He's forever saying sorry, and asking God to forgive him, but can't break free into wholeness. Why? It's empowered by an evil spirit, and not only that, we notice here it says, the demon said: leave us alone, what have WE to do with you? So it's almost certain there's more than one spirit there.

So we gain insight, that not only can a demon come into a person's life and torment them, but it will try to bring others in, so they get a cluster of them, and that makes the problem worse. So for example, if this say was a sexual demon, how would it have come into his life? It could have come in a number of ways. It could have come in generationally. It maybe was in the family, it's a family spirit. I remember praying for one girl, age of four, tormented with unclean pictures. It was a demon that came in, because of the conduct of the father and the mother, which we established when we talked with them, so it could have come in and been in his life all his life. It could have come in if he'd been molested at some point in his life, and from that point on, there's got this defilement, and this burning lust thing going on in his life - never wanted it, but can't stop it because it's a spirit that's empowering it. The third thing it could have been, he may have been involved in idolatry, or some form of spiritism.

When people are involved in idolatry, much of the idolatry in those days was connected with temple prostitutes and sexual sin, because the part of our mind that's engaged when we love God or worship, or when are loving or expressing love, is the same part that's involved in the sexual area, so worship and the sexual area of your mind are very similar areas. They touch the same part of your brain, so we don't know then whether he was involved in idolatry and that's how the spirit entered into him. My experience has been, that when people have been involved in idolatry or spiritism, they usually have spirits of lust go with it - or he may have been involved in sexual sin, had a relationship or engaged a prostitute, or been involved in sexual sin of various kinds. We just don't know. The Bible leaves that part out, but those are some possible ways.

What we do know, is he had more than one spirit, and the main one was an unclean spirit. In the presence of a strong anointing, it began to flush up and manifest in a way which was visible. I was in Singapore a couple of years ago and we were just speaking in one of the meetings [laughs], and I just got up and started to talk; well the Holy Spirit's going to come and start to touch people. I'd talked less than five minutes and this cleaner lady suddenly appears up the top there and she's holding a broom, and she must have been just outside the room cleaning. She just burst in, held up this broom and began to shake it, and she's shaking it at me, and yelling at me: why you come here? Why you do this to me? And it's obviously a demon, so I began to walk down towards her, but as I did I saw other people start to manifest and I thought if I do that, we're going to have it all go off right now, and I want to preach the gospel and get some people saved, so I'm not going to let demons take over. I just re-managed the meeting a bit, and then we had all the full scale deliverance at the end of the meeting.

So you see here, the evil spirit cries out: leave us alone, what have we to do with You? We know who You are, so evil spirits recognise the person of Jesus. A lot of people don't know who Jesus is, but the spirit world does know. The spirit world sees things as they are. We see things as they appear to be, so people can appear to have their life together, but in the spirit world you're seen for who you are, and what you are. Everything is seen, so if we were to look at one another now, we'd just see the temple, the body, the external, but the real man is the hidden man of the heart, the spirit and the soul. Now we look, and the body looks as though it's got substance, the soul and spirit looks a bit, sort of way out there. I can't kind of see that or understand that, but from the spirit world if you looked, they would look at the spirit man and soul, and say that's the substance, the other is temporary. It's like a cloud of water vapour that conceals the person.

So in the spirit world, it's your spirit man and soul that are eternal, and therefore substantial. So the spirit world, demons, can look at people and see their condition. We'll come across that a little bit later. Now that's a bit scary isn't it? God can see your condition too. It's just we've lived so long thinking no one knows what's going on, that we can hide, and we do try and hide like Adam and Eve like hiding from God, rather than actually being and living a full life and an open life before Him. So the demon said: what have we got to do with You? We know who You are. Now see how Jesus handled it; Jesus rebuked him, or rebuked the spirit - Be quiet. Come out! So you notice how Jesus dealt with in the area of deliverance. He asserted His authority, He spoke a verbal command, and He had faith that the demon would come out. That's how it operates, just straight verbal commands, to deal with the demonic spirit - and the demon came out.

It says when the demon had thrown him on the ground, it came out of him, and didn't hurt him, so you notice that the demon manifested as it came out. It threw the guy on the ground, and I have see some extraordinary things of demons throwing people on the ground, or doing different things, and it looks spectacular, but at the end what really counts, is actually that the spirit came out. So the key thing is not that he manifested, not that he fell on the ground, it's that the spirit came out, and so the man got mightily delivered, and the demon - notice it didn't hurt him at all. It just looked like it was going to, but it couldn't. Jesus was in firm control. The demon didn't hurt Jesus. The demon didn't hurt the man. The demon just left the scene. I've spoken to one or two who have had spiritual visions or pictures of demons leaving. I said tell me what did it look like? Both of them said to me a similar thing. They said: they went so fast, we could hardly even see them. They said they're just like [whoosh] They just were out of that place as quick as they could. They just left the place, couldn't wait to get away.

Also, you can see that implied in the story; the demon is now reacting very strongly, leave us alone, what have You to do with us, I know who You are, the Holy One of God. And Jesus shut him down, because He didn't want a demon announcing that He's the Son of God. Stop, and then out, and the guy's set free - so that's an example of a person being set free, and they said, notice this, what kind of word is this! With authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they go out of him. So you notice they ascribed to Jesus two things; He had authority, and He had power. Now let me just explain what the two are, so you understand the difference. The word authority, authority is a legal right to speak and act on behalf of someone else, so Jesus had a legal right to speak and act on behalf of His Father. That makes sense, because remember He says: whatever I see the Father doing, that's what I do; what I hear Him say, that's what I say. So you notice that He had authority. He had authority, a legal right. The demons had to yield.

Now you also have authority over demons. God has given you that authority. That's part of being joined to the conqueror of demons. It's part of being joined to Jesus Christ. Where is He? In heavenly places. Where are you? Joined, one spirit, with Him. You also have a right to represent Him, and of course the right to represent Him is also conditional on you listening to His instructions what to do, so if we're going to move in deliverance, you have to understand this; I am delegated the right to represent Jesus. So when you are doing deliverance, it's not about you. Sometimes in deliverance a demon might challenge you, and say: who are you? Who are you? You know... Don't tell him your name, you know? No, no, no, no. No, what the demon is doing is challenging your authority to actually confront him and push him out, and the response is always the same; I come against you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I represent Him, who defeated you at Calvary. You will yield. You understand, we're representing the government of God.

Okay, the second thing He had, was power. Power is the word dunamis, it's a different word. It has to do with the level of anointing, or activity of the Holy Spirit on your life. So authority means I'm delegated the right to represent Jesus. Power means, I actually am connected to the Holy Spirit, and am empowered by Him to do the job, so that comes out of your personal life, and your walking with God and so on. Let's have a look then what Jesus taught about that. I love that story, it's a great story, and I've seen that, and I've heard demons talk. It's quite interesting how they talk at times. I've had one of my daughters was in Indonesia, and she was praying for this woman, and a man's voice spoke out of the woman: I will kill you. She got a bit of a surprise when that happened, just kept praying and the demon came out. She asked the lady later, do you know any English, and she didn't understand her at all. She knew NO English, but the demon understood the words. It doesn't matter what culture I go to, if I address the demon in my own language, it understands it.

Okay, now let's have a look what Jesus spoke on deliverance. In Matthew Chapter 12, He's just done a deliverance - Verse 22 - and He's cast a demon out of a man who had problems with his vision and his speaking. Then of course there's a huge reaction. Now notice what He says in Verse 28, and here's the first thing about Jesus' teaching that's important to grasp. Deliverance is the kingdom of God manifesting. It is a manifestation of the kingdom of God. It said, Verse 28: if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. So let's go through that scripture and have a little look at it. The word cast out, means literally to violently displace something, so He said: if I violently displace evil spirits, by the Spirit of God, it is the kingdom of God manifesting. So whenever you do a deliverance, or command spirits and they leave, the kingdom of God has become established. You've represented Jesus, and now the devil is displaced.

Probably a way of picturing it is like this; if you wanted to become a policeman, police officer, you'd have to do training. Then you have an oath of allegiance to the government, that you will represent the government. Then they give you a uniform, and if you're in another country they give you a gun. Now the uniform, you represent the government. That's why you're driving down the road, and you're going a bit fast, and you see a police car or a policeman standing there, the immediate thing is you become conscious of your sin and failure, and conscious of the authority. Now it's not the authority of the man. It is the government that is actually confronting you, and you become immediately aware of it. In other words when you see the uniform, you become aware of authority, and aware of your condition straight away, so this is one of the things. So the policeman's just an ordinary person. He gets up and goes to work like everyone else goes to work. Now he's wearing the uniform, has the gun, now he's got the power to stop someone - stop, or I shoot you! So he has authority, a legal right, so long as - notice this - he has to stay within his jurisdiction.

If I'm a policeman here, it doesn't mean I'm recognised in Australia, or anywhere else. I'm a policeman here, I'm representative of the government, I've got to stay within the law, and I've got to operate out of my own instructions that have been given to me. So I have the law book, and I have direct instructions, and I have to heed both of them. You have the word of God, and the instruction of the Holy Spirit, and you've got to listen to both of them - and you have the power to carry it out. Now what did Jesus say? He said: if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come among you. Now who does the casting out? A person must cast out the demon. Someone has to make the demon leave. It will not leave unless it's made to, so that word is to hurl it out, so in deliverance, a person has to represent God and confront the demon. You've actually got to hurl it out. That means you engage it.

You can't just pray some little prayer; oh God, just set this person free. It's not like that at all. It's like with word commands, you are violently displacing a spirit. It requires asserting your spirit. It requires being aggressive. It requires - you know, like it says, the kingdom of heaven, violent men enter and possess it, so it requires you be strong and forceful. You can't be passive in this matter. Now that doesn't mean loud or shouty or losing your voice. It's you must speak strongly, with conviction and authority from your voice. Okay, so I cast them out by the Spirit of God, so the work of deliverance requires the Holy Spirit to engage with me, so therefore I need to believe that something will happen when I pray. I need to believe God is in me, God is with me, that when I pray, something's going to happen. Now if you go and you think, well I wonder what will happen, then maybe something, maybe not, but most times nothing much happens. But if you go there, I know that when I speak, that spirit is going to go, when there's a confidence in your heart that faith gives, something will happen.

Demons, often in deliverance, will just deliberately resist you, to see if you'll persist and give up. They check out whether you really do believe you have the right to deal with them, and sometimes they just play up and just resist you, or just pretend there's nothing happening, and just make you - oh, maybe nothing going on, I knew I couldn't pray very well anyway, it's not my thing, you know? Your mind starts to fill with thoughts that would take you out of casting the demon out. So if I, by the Spirit of God, cast them out - so in order to cast out demons, you need the Spirit of God working with you. Now one of the exercises we're going to get you to do is we're going to get you to pray in tongues, and activate the flow of God inside you, then learn to minister and release the power of God to another person by voice command. Now you've all got excited about that. We'll do that, I'll show you how to do it shortly, and I'm going to get each of you to start to practice, believing, that if I speak, then something will happen. Isn't that a good thing?

If you have no confidence that God is in you, or God is with you, then nothing much will happen. If you are absolutely confident that God is in me, God is with me, I'm a minister of God, when I speak, something is going to happen; then you'll find things will start to happen. So how do I move from where I am, to that kind of place? Well you develop confidence, the more you are willing to step out, and learn to work with the Holy Spirit in this area. So what we will do shortly, I want to just do a little bit more of this, and then we'll have a break before we go onto gateways, I'm going to get you ministering to one another in just a moment. But before we do that, let's have a look a little further down, we'll finish in Verse 43 through to 45, and we'll look a little more on Jesus' teaching on demons.

When an unclean spirit goes out of a man - Verse 43 - what happens? Where do they go? Well, he goes through a dry place seeking rest, but finds none. Then he says: I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and all in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Alright then, so notice now, Jesus is giving a tremendous insight in this passage to the spirit world. He's talking about what happens when someone gets delivered, what actually goes on. Now He says: when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, so He's talking about deliverance. The whole context is deliverance, so when you speak and command the spirit it goes out of the man, what happens and where does it go? It says here it goes through dry places seeking rest, so let's just talk a little bit about this.

Firstly, it's referring to the demon as a spirit being. It is a spirit being. You're a human being. You're a spirit living in a body, you're in one place at one time. A demon is a spirit being, so it can only be in one place at one time. It's either in the person, or it's gone from the person - it's a spirit being. Now just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not real, like for example, I can look and I can see the outline of a body, I can't see your spirit, I can't see your soul, but it doesn't mean they're not there. If they weren't there, you would be quite different. You'd be gone. There'd just be the shell see, so just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. It is there, and it's a spirit being. Now notice it says a number of things; spirit beings have a name, just like you've got a name. You have a name - if I say Brian, so you notice Brian just turned around straight away, the moment I called him by name, and then everyone else looked. Now in deliverance, if you name the spirit and challenge it by name, it'll immediately respond, and all the other demons will wake up and get concerned. I've had that many times. I start to challenge demons, other demons start to stir up, and very soon you can actually trigger off lots of things happening in the room - then it's a big problem then. [Laughter] You've just got a lot of things to do then.

So demons have a name. Now generally the name of a demon, really it describes the work it does, for example, a spirit of lust, what does it do? It stirs up passion, lust, unlawful hunger for something inside a person. A spirit of fear torments their mind with fear, causes them to believe evil is going to come upon them, fill them with dread and sick feelings in the stomach, so that's what a spirit of fear does. A spirit of bitterness will cause a person continually to resist forgiving, and to become sour and angry, and to speak critically and negatively. You notice the spirit of bitterness, the name describes the kind of work it does. A spirit of death, what would a spirit of death do? It will come around a person, and will cause them to become feeling separate, or unable to bond and connect in relationships, and quite numbed in the emotions, so when people have had trauma or abuse, generally they have a spirit of death around them, and they're numbed in their emotions. They can connect properly. There's that spirit keeps them isolated.

So we could think of lots of various kinds of spirits, so the Holy Ghost will guide you what the spirit is. In almost every situation He'll show you what it is, so it could be a spirit of idolatry, which is a spirit that bonds a person in, and connects them in, so they continually are drawn back to worship something, or to stay connected to something in place of God, so there are various - spirit of hatred. A spirit of hatred will eventually erupt with violent anger in a person, and so you find if you go visit the prisons, you find people in there who were involved in violent crime or in murder, and they say something like: I don't know what came over me. They don't know what came over them. I'll tell you what came over them, a spirit of hatred, and hatred's the root of murder, so a spirit of hate and murder came over the person, and what happened is, it caused rage and hate to become destructive against the other person.

So mostly you can just describe a demon, or the name of a demon describes what kind of work it does. In the case of occult spirits they do have names, and it requires revelation to get those names. God would have to tell you what it was. In almost all of these things, if we'll listen the spirit of God will help us identify what the particular spirit is, so spirits are real. They're a spirit being. They have a name and a nature. They're only one place at one time. They can enter and leave people, and notice there that demons have a personality. You notice the demon says: I will, it's got a will of its own. Notice it remembers where it came from, so it's got a memory, it can remember where it was, so demons have a personality. They have emotions. They can get fearful. They have desires and plans, so they actually have a personality, evil personality. So it says: when it goes out, it seeks to find rest; now when it says find rest, that does not mean the demon is wanting to have a lie down, it's exhausted. What it means is that the demon is wanting to find a place where it can live, and be in harmony with the environment, so a spirit of bitterness will want to enter a person who's got bitterness sins in their life. A spirit of hatred will want to enter into a person who's got hate in their life, and then dwell there and inflame it, so it becomes an out of control issue.

A spirit of anger will want to come in where a person's got unresolved sin or anger issues, or unresolved grief in their life, and inhabit that person, and stir it up so it becomes out of control. Getting the idea? So it says then: the demon's seeking rest, so where would a demon go? Well demons could inhabit a number of things. Spirits can go in and live in a building, so you could find perhaps in a house - one of the most obvious things is a temple. If you've ever been to a temple, there is a feel of oppression, because of the presence of multitudes of demonic spirits, or spiritual power, sitting over the building. I don't encourage you to go into those places, because sometimes the spirits transfer. It's just not a smart thing to do. Sometimes in a house, if there's been a trauma, like a murder - have you ever noticed the thing like maybe a multiple murder or something horrendous happened in a house, often they burn the house down? Someone gets there and burns it down. You ask yourself - why do they do that? Really simple, it just comes out of superstition and fear, there must be something bad or evil in the place. The only answer for it is to burn it.

Now people may not know what they're doing, but they're actually thinking demons need to be consigned to hell, but people don't understand. They just try and destroy it. What's really needed, is for the house to be cleansed of the demons, and to be sanctified and set apart for the Lord, and the presence of God to come back again. So demons can live inside a house or a building. If you've ever ministered to cleanse, or to do house cleaning, sometimes you'll find one room can be unusually cold. It doesn't matter what you do, you can't warm it up. I've been to some places where you go into one room and whoa, some weird or oppressive - so demons can enter a house. Demons can live inside objects, particularly things used with idolatry, carvings and things like that. Many times with carvings of idols, they lay hands and invoke the spirit into it, or dedicate it to the spirit that it represents, and that allows the demon to come in, so when the person's worshipping an idol, they're actually engaging the evil spirit that lives in the idol.

What that means is, if you pick up items that have been used for idolatry, or used in various places, and hands have been laid on to impart a spirit, and you bring it into your home, you've welcomed a demon to come into your home, and generally you have some consequences of that. Now one of the consequences is oppression enters the place, so you can have a heavy or a dark atmosphere come. I had one man ask me to come to his place and pray because he said - here's what he said; we have constant sickness, and constant conflicts in the home. This is a Christian, and I prayed before I went, and the Lord showed me that he had some carvings that came from Fiji. I said do you have these faces, face masks at all in your house on the wall, that come from Fiji? He said yes, we do. I said well hands have been laid on those, to impart a demon into them, and I said: when did this start? Did it start following your trip to Fiji? He said yeah - but he hadn't connected, just what he thought was a work of art, actually it was representing a demonic deity, and he'd opened the way for the spirit to come in, and create the turmoil in the home that he was now experiencing.

There's a chapter in the back of the notes on house cleansing, how to go about doing it. This would apply to objects specifically which are involved with the occult or idolatry. Most objects are quite neutral. Sometimes if you're uncertain, just pray and ask the Holy Ghost what to do. So this man, I said: why don't you get rid of those masks, why keep them? So he took them outside, and I said why don't you just take them out and burn them? So now they're wooden masks, so he took them outside, and I said: how did you get on? He said: I couldn't burn them. I said why is that? He said they would not burn. I said they're wood aren't they? He said yeah. He said I lit a fire and the fire went out, so I poured petrol on them and the fire still went out. They did not burn! I said really? I said that's a new one, I haven't heard of that one. I said why don't you stand and next time just pour some more petrol on them, light the fire, before you light the fire, bind the spirits, and forbid them operating in Jesus' name. He did it, and he said I'm glad I stepped back, because the thing nearly exploded, they just burnt, and there was nothing but ashes left, just burnt completely, so he'd encountered a real demonic power around these objects.

So when the demons seek rest, they look for a building, they look for an object, or preferably they look for a person. Demons want a person, to get into a person. Why are they so obsessed with getting into people? Very, very simple, because God made man for dominion in the earth, and what demons want to go, is they want to go in, number one, they want to hurt God's heart by injuring His children, and number two, they want to defy God, by expressing their own life, through His representative on the earth. That's why they do it, so they can't hurt God in any way. God's in control totally. The devil has very limited spheres of power. God is totally in control. It's not a touch and go battle whether God wins or not, not at all. God is totally in control, and the demons have a specific realm they can operate in, outside the laws of God. However, we can find we have our challenges in dealing with them - so there it is.

Let's read on a little bit further. It says he goes and finds... and then he says: I'll return to my house from which he came out. So notice the person - this is a bit disturbing - that after a demon's gone out, it can come back and find you. That's a bit disturbing isn't it? So the demon's cast out, it can relocate to you. In other words you can't hide. The demon comes back, and notice this, the demon calls you - it says: you're my house. Now that's a legal term. If I say: this is MY house, I'm claiming ownership, I'm claiming a legal right. So if you were to say, concerning a building: this is my house, you're saying that because it's your house, you know? If it's a flat, well this is a rental place, it's not my house. I live here, but it's a rental place, I don't own it. So demons look for legal rights, for a legal ground to occupy a person's life. What do we mean by that? Well for example, outside here we've got I think a 50 kilometre/hour zone, and so there's a sign up there somewhere saying 50 kilometres per hour. That is a legal requirement, that if you're going to drive down the road outside this building, 50 kilometres per hour, so that's a law. It's written in red, got the number, it's all legally gazetted. It is the law, outside there, 50kph.

So if you break the law, if you go in excess of the law, you go 70k, now you may not see the sign. You may just be out there, and you've come from the country, you're zooming along, and you didn't even see the sign that says the speed has changed. Now you zoom down there, and you're doing 70 not 50, and the policeman sees you, he can then pull you over and say: you broke the law. You say: I didn't know. He says: there was a sign, you were responsible to know, so not knowing is never counted as an excuse. You broke the law, you pay the fine. You notice now there is a consequence for the broken law. In other words, he has the legal right to impose a fine, because you broke the law. Now there are also spiritual laws, the laws of God. People break the laws - whether they knew or not, it still creates a legal ground for evil spirits to enter people's life. That's what the cross was about. The cross was about removing the legal rights.

Notice this scripture, you may remember it but not really thought too much about it, because often you read scriptures, don't really understand what it means. In Colossians 2:14 it says that Jesus took away the list of ordinances, the writing that was contrary to us, and against us, took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross, and disarmed spiritual powers, principalities and powers, and triumphed over them. What is that scripture all about? Very simple. The list of every possible transgression, broken law that you and I have committed, Jesus took it all in Himself on the cross, and by taking it to the cross He broke the legal rights of the demons to gain access to our life. He disarmed them. He took away their weapon. The weapon demons use is sin, so when sin happens, they have a right of access, so a demon will tempt a person to sin. Once they've sinned the legal ground, or the broken law, is now established. They have the right to enter. Getting the idea?

So if we're going to set people free, we have to understand what the cross has done, and bring sin issues to the light, and to the cross. There's no deliverance without dealing with sin. We have to be willing to address sin issues. If we don't address sin issues, the way the Bible tells us to, confess them to Him, if we confess our transgression, we confess to Him our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us all our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So what Jesus has done, by the power of our confession, He can wipe away the legal rights the demon has, and also make us clean on the inside - but I've got to do my part, bring my sin to the light. Now many people just want to get free of demons, but they don't want to address the root cause the demons are in there. Generally the root cause is legal rights, or issues of trauma and brokenness in the person's life. Got the idea?

So notice the demon will say: my house. Now to just illustrate this, I have had many deliverances where the demon suddenly erupted and began to argue and said something like this: she belongs to me, he belongs to me. I will not leave. In other words, the demon claimed legal ownership, so we'll see when it comes to preparing people for deliverance, it is quite important to get them to confess that they belong to Jesus Christ, their faith in Christ, that Jesus, I belong to Jesus, spirit, soul and body. Why? It's a profession of faith. Why? Because we want to counteract what the demon's about to say: no, I won't go, they belong to me. So we get the person into a confession, or profession of their faith, to remove the legal grounds that the demon has, so when they profess their faith in Christ, they're in the kingdom of God, they belong to Jesus. When they repent of their sin, the legal rights for the demon to enter are now dismissed. Now we are able to command the demon, it cannot stay, it must go. Getting the idea?

So the work of Jesus on the cross is extraordinary. There's so much you can continue to learn about what our loving saviour has done for us. Okay then, let's keep going then. So demons, what else can they do? They can come back, they find the person, and find it's empty, swept and put in order, so notice that demons can recognise your condition, so if you've just tidied up your place, and you're empty - that word empty means on holiday, not active and not business, not going and you're just looking good, but you've never established your life with God, the demons can come back and enter again. So it's important that people are discipled, not just delivered. We have to help them establish their life with God again, so he goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than himself. So obviously there are levels of wickedness among evil demons, and some are more wicked than others, and create more harm than others. It's also obvious from this, that demons talk to one another, and strategise how to work together to get into a person's life.

So we see that we need, not just to cast the demons out, but to help the person rebuild their life with God, so now there's no doorway, no gateway. There's a resistance, and the person is now on the alert. Amen. That's fantastic isn't it aye? Alright then, why don't we just stop now, and I'm going to - the next session we're going to look on spiritual gateways, how demons enter people's lives. We're going to go into that shortly, and then we'll look finally at what demons do when they get inside people. But what I want to do, is to just give you a bit of a break, and we're going to get you to do something, so we'll just have a break and we'll have the next 10 minutes we're going to do some exercise. It's going to be fantastic. You'll all have a chance to do something. That be good? Okay then, so what will we do? Now don't get nervous. It's just going to be a lot of fun. It's always a lot of fun.

Okay, here's what we're going to do. How many are filled with the Holy Ghost, can speak in tongues? Okay, alright, great, so we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we can speak in tongues and build our spirit man, so in a moment we're going to get up, and begin to start to pray, and exercise the gift. When you speak in tongues, your spirit is speaking, the Holy Ghost is arising in you, giving you the language, you're building your spirit man. Let's just do that for a little bit, and just energise ourselves and come alive. I encourage you, when you're praying in tongues like that, begin to move your body, allow your whole body to yield and get excited, God is in me! God is in me!

A lot of people think God's so far away, isn't he? He's just right inside me, but you don't always believe that. Your mind often thinks that God seems like He's a long way off from me, so begin as you pray in tongues strongly, and move your body and physically shift your body, begin to think as you're praying God is in me, God is filling me! Let your mind and heart grasp, God is filling me. Amen. Let's just do that together first of all, and see what you experience as you do that strong praying, strong building up your spirit man. Are we ready? So make yourself a little bit of room where you can do that, there we go, are we ready? We're going to all pray in tongues, going to bless God. Amen, so here's the first thing we'll do. On the count of three, we're all going to give the loudest clap, and the biggest shout we can give, then we'll pray in tongues. Ready? One, two, three. [Applause, shouts of praise] Halleluiah Lord, we love You Lord! Wonderful Jesus! We love You Lord! Halleluiah! That's good, alright, now let's begin to just pray in tongues. We'll go about 30 seconds. Are we ready? One, two, three. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord, Holy Ghost, how we love You.

Right, how many of you felt the energy just start to come up, just speaking in tongues like that, start to lift you up? Alright, how many you consciously were thinking God is in me, how many were doing that, just starting to think God in me? How many of you sort of felt you became aware of the spirit of God filling you? How many kind of had that awareness? We don't necessarily feel a lot, but usually what happens is your mind clears and your energy rises, you just are more alive on the inside. Amen.

Okay, now I want to just demonstrate for you what I want you to do, and why I want you to do this, okay? Now what I'm wanting you to do, is I'm wanting to lead you to a point - you can just sit down, that'll be easier for you to see then. I want to lead you to a point where, you start to have confidence that if I speak, God is with me. Remember, if I cast out demons BY the spirit of God - notice it's BY the spirit of God. I need the Holy Spirit to move. If He doesn't move, nothing's going to happen, but I've got to do something, so I work, believing that as I minister, the spirit of God will work with me. Now the problem of course is, that the moment your mind starts, I wonder if God is with me? Then immediately you've got a gap between you and the Holy Ghost. See, He loves us to just love Him, and honour Him, and thank Him that He's with us, He loves us to delight in Him. It doesn't take much to grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's like a dove. He rests where there's peace. The moment there's turmoil, His presence lifts, so you know that's why it tells us in Colossians 3: let the peace of God be the ruler of your heart, because the moment you lose peace, and get in agitation or fear or anxiety, the spirit lifts, until you come and set your mind right again, then He comes back and rests again. It feels like that. Does that make sense?

He's a dove. Doves get frightened off easily. They get frightened away, so doves lift off, and it's very easy for us to grieve the Holy Spirit with a heart attitude that's wrong, with holding things in our life that aren't right, but it's easy to welcome Him if I just begin to just talk how much I love You Holy Spirit, I thank You, I'm just dependent on You. Now Lord work with me as I begin to minister - and as I begin to become conscious of Him, see the spirit of God is living in you all the time, but often we forget that, and we say and do things. We just forget He's there, and we dishonour Him, and He's grieved and He draws back, and there's no power around our life. So what I want to do is, I'm just going to show you an exercise, a very simple exercise to do, and the purpose of the exercise - it's not to see whether you can do it, or whether you can't do it. The purpose of the exercise is to get you to start to expect that if I begin to speak, God will work through me, and touch people. That's the purpose of it, okay? That actually God will work though me, alright?

So you're here nearest Brian. We'll start with you, then I'll pick two or three others and go around the room and just pick some different people, so Brian, like to come up? Can I practice on you? I need someone to stand behind him, someone stand behind him just to catch him. Okay then, we'll just move this back here so - alright then. So Brian, I want you just to close your eyes and look up to the Lord, expecting for God to touch you. So notice I've directed his attention towards the Lord, not to me, because it's the Lord who must minister, not me - but I've got a vital part. So now what I'll do, is just take his hand. Now I'll speak out loud what's going on. Now what I could do is begin to pray in tongues. Now just praying in tongues itself isn't all the picture. Praying in tongues stirs your spirit, [prays in tongues] but what I'll do with my mind and heart, is just begin to reach out; Holy Spirit, You're with me. You are with me, and so I'm just expecting Lord, for You to flow through me and to touch Brian right now. So as I release POWER, I expect the Holy Ghost to touch him.

Now - that's good, he's had a whole touch of God on him, that's great. We'll get someone else up too. We'll get a few more people, and we'll just do the same thing. Like to come up? Can I pray with you dear? Okay, just come on over. We just need someone to be there to catch her. Come on up on the top there, alright then. Can I practice on you? [Yeah.] Great, just close your eyes, and just reach up to the Lord, expecting God to do something good in your life. Now I'm not trying to do any deliverance. This is not the point of this exercise. The point of this exercise is to become aware of the Holy Spirit, become of God in you, so pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] As you're praying in tongues, your spirit is becoming alive with the Holy Spirit. Now I need to centre my attention and focus - what do I focus on? I just think well, Holy Spirit, You're there. I so need You Lord. Just come and touch her. I know she wants the touch of God. Holy Spirit, as I speak now, just flow through me and touch her. POWER - now, you feel the power of God just touch her. Yeah, could you feel it while I was talking? Could you feel Him starting to come on you, and touch you? Yeah, I could feel that too, sense Him coming.

Now the point of this is to help you become confident - you are a minister of God, God is with you. Now I've just done it in a very slow and very low key way, so you can see it's nothing about striving or struggling. It's all about a relationship with a person who loves you, He's committed to you, He lives inside you, and there it is - so just close your eyes and look up again. Let me take your hand. Taking a person's hand's quite an easy thing to do. Holy Ghost, come. Holy Ghost, come. Now I'm going to speak the word power - POWER! - and she gets touched by the power of God. Alright then, great, we're all getting ready. I'll do one more, and you can feel the atmosphere already starting to change, because the spirit of God is here.

Josie, can I just pray with you? Okay then, now I'll just do it again. I'll explain what we're going to do, okay, we right? Need someone to catch - okay, you right? Can I practice on you? [Yes.] Great stuff. Okay, close your eyes. Look up to the Lord in your heart. So remember again, we're going to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now already, I can feel the spirit of God just coming on her right now, just straight away, presence of God. Now you notice, it's like God was wanting to do it, and got ahead of me. I'm sort of trying to get through my thing [laughter] and He's just already going ahead of me. [vroom] Holy Ghost! [Laughs] Just stay there and enjoy the presence of God, see?

Now can you see that God is more willing to use us than we realise? He just needs someone to co-operate with Him, so a lot of this, it's not about trying to make God do something. It's actually about you just resting in your heart, that I am a minister of the spirit, God is with me, and that He will work through me. The key issue is one of just believing that God can work through me. Can I pray for you too? Come on - I can see you looking, wanting something to happen. [Laughter] Why not? Exactly, that's the spirit, why not me? Amen. Alright then. Now you notice that there's an anointing flows from within, but there's also the spirit of God will come on people as well, and so I always yield to Him moving, coming on people, but I can always stir what's within me - there it is, He's already starting to happen... [Yes.] ...right now, so you could feel it straight away couldn't you? See, so I'll just again pray. [Prays in tongues]

Now what I'm wanting you to do is to get used to doing this, stirring up your spirit through praying in tongues, expecting God to do something, and being willing to just speak. POWER! Release the power of God into the person's life. Believe that as you say - thank you Brian, well done, catching all the ladies tonight. It's a grand thing to do. [Laughs] So I'm wanting you to get used to, that as you will just arise in your spirit, and speak, that God will work through your words, to touch the other person. Amen. Okay then, so we're going to get you all into threes, one catches, one receives, one prays and ministers. Follow the same process, because it'll just make it easier. Ask the person, can I practice on you? Why? Because it is just a practice, to just do what we can. Secondly, ask them to close their eyes, and lift their heart, or look up to the Lord, not to you so the pressure's not on you to perform - unless it's inside you to perform.

Then you close your eyes and take their hand, and just begin to ponder and meditate that God is in me, and begin to pray in tongues. Allow your heart to become conscious of God, then POWER! Okay? [mumble mumble] Come on, you can do it! [Laughter] Let's do it! Let's do it!

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5)

Sat 7 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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Demons need a 'legal doorway' to enter a persons life. In this session, a check-list of 9 common doorways are explained; and what kinds of things would happen inside a person, as a result of demonic bondage.

I want to welcome you this morning again, we're looking at the ministry of deliverance, and there are many approaches that people have to this whole area of deliverance, so this is one approach. There are other ways that people approach it, and other ways they look at it and resolve some of the issues, but what we want to do is to give you understanding of the ministry of Jesus and deliverance, and we want to give you understanding of what demons are, how they operate and how they access people's lives, and some of the foundational keys to getting people free, and ministering to people. We also want to give you an opportunity to just practice praying for, and ministering to one another, and I expect that God will do some great things today.

Yesterday we looked at Jesus' ministry. We looked first of all at the apostolic ministry, that we're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence and God wants us to be used in this ministry, not only of sharing the gospel but of healing the sick and delivering people from evil spirits. We looked at Jesus' ministry of deliverance. We saw an example of His ministry, we saw how He worked and how He operated, and then we looked at some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are, and how they operate.

So today, we're looking now in your notes on Page 4, Section 2.4, we're looking at how demons enter people, and when they get into people, what kinds of things would happen inside the person as a result of that. There are a number of ways of approaching this particular aspect, and I've used a way which has been quite helpful for people to get an overview, and so you know what to look for, you know the places to look. Then there are a number of ways that we can approach the actual ministry.

So first thing we need to realise is that demons cannot access a person's life unless they have a ground or a reason to be able to do so. We saw that demons will occupy buildings, they'll occupy objects, they can occupy animals, and they definitely seek to occupy people, but they need in a way in. They can't automatically just get access into you, so they need a way in, and if we read in Ephesians 4, Verse 18, Paul is writing. He's writing to believers, and he's talking about being angry but don't sin, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Then in Verse 27: give no place to the devil. Give no place to the devil. He's writing to believers, and he's telling them do not give a place to the devil. The word place is a - many times these words if you don't understand the original, they lose their meaning in translation, so the original word, it's the word topos. It means something like this; it means a foothold, don't let the devil get a foothold. A foothold is where you put your foot in the door, and you stop the door shutting, so you can get your way in.

Another translation of that word is a beachhead. In the Second World War, the allies sought to establish a beachhead, that's a small area that they occupy, from which they can launch a greater assault, a beachhead. But one of the most important meanings of the word means, a legal right, a legal right, a lawful right to do something, a legal right. We talked a little bit about that last night, how legal rights are very, very crucial in the operation of demonic spirits getting into people's lives. If they can find a place where the law of God is broken, they have a room to operate against people, and so when we bring our life under the kingdom of God, under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and begin to flow in His principles, then legal grounds and rights are diminished. But when we violate the laws of God, we come outside the kingdom of God, then the grounds have been established for demonic spirits to enter.

So they can enter when you break the laws of God. Now you say well, what if I didn't know? Well ignorance does not matter. You know, the fact you didn't know doesn't mean the demon can't use it. They will use every ground possible, and the nature of the demonic kingdom is one of darkness and deception, so you may be sitting here today, and already there are areas of your life which are in bondage to evil spirits, and you're not even aware of it; accept that's just me, I've got this struggle I have, and it's just me, I've always been like that. So we can have areas of bondage and we're not even aware of it, and we're going to just identify some of the doorways now that evil spirits use.

In Nehemiah 9, Verse 37, Nehemiah is praying, and what he does is he says: You have set kings over us, because of our sins. So from a spiritual perspective he's saying that we are under bondage because of sin, and so let's have a look then, at some of these doorways or gateways that demons use. Let me do one more verse before we go to look and identify the gateways, and it's found - it's not in your notes - in 2 Timothy, Chapter 2, so if you've got a Bible you could look at it. It's talking about ministering to people, and it says in Verse 24: the servant of the Lord must not quarrel or argue or strive, but must be gentle to all men, able to teach and patient. So it's saying if you're going to minister to people, then don't argue with people, it's not going to work, get any results - but be gentle, able to teach and patient, in humility instructing those who oppose themselves, and perhaps God will give them repentance, that they may acknowledge the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, who have been taken captive by him to do his will.

So in those three verses there it says there are some people, and the devil takes them captive. Any time he wants to he can manipulate their life so that they end up doing what he wants, rather than doing what God wants. They are taken captive. That word captive means a prisoner, taken in a battle, so it says the devil takes people captive. He captures people, holds them in prison, and then manipulates them so they do things they don't necessarily want to do, or they do things which are destructive. It says that he captures them by getting them in a snare, and that word snare is like a trap, like a baited trap, like a bird trap. You have the bait, and the person goes in, takes the bait, and then they're in the trap, and then they're manipulated because they're now imprisoned. So it says that if we are to get people free, we as the servants of God, need to not quarrel with people or argue, but just have a gentle, humble attitude. It says we need to instruct people on some of the foundation reasons why they've got their life into bondage, and it says perhaps God will give them repentance to acknowledge the truth, then they come to their senses, and get out of this area of the devil.

So there's a part we play. We must instruct people, work with people, and help people see why they're in trouble. Secondly, they have to make a response. They need to actually acknowledge where they have opened their life to the demonic powers, and come to a place of repentance and acknowledging the truth. Then they come to their senses, or they stop being drunk and under the influence of a spirit, and we can set them free from the demonic bondages. So there's a process of instructing the person, helping them understand how their life got into bondage, working with the Holy Ghost to identify some of the areas of bondage and the roots of it. Then they must come to a place of co-operation, so sometimes you'll have people come and they want help and want ministry, but they want it their way. They want you to pray and fix them up. You can't fix anyone up. What you can do is work with the Holy Spirit to get them realigned with Jesus, and then you can minister on His behalf, and freedom comes.

So the process of deliverance is not all about casting out demons. That's actually the easy part. The bigger part is actually discovering how they got established in the person's life, and bringing the person to place of co-operation with the Holy Spirit, so that you can then minister and get them free. So it really helps to understand it, because many people will come, and they just want to be free, or to feel better, or to get over the problem, whereas our role is to help them realign with God, and take responsibility for their life. So if someone's blaming the demons for their problem, help them understand the demon is not the problem, the demon is the consequence of something. The demon's not the problem, the demon is the consequence of something else that happened; deal with the root issue, and the demons are quite easy to deal with. That make sense? It's quite important you get that, because otherwise you'll be looking to blame demons for all the problems that people have, and of course demons do create huge problems. We'll identify what some of them are shortly.

A demon can be at the root of the problem, and creating all kinds of issues in a person's life, but underneath that, there's some legal ground, some foothold it has. Remove the foothold, and the demon's got nothing to hold onto to let go, so you can imagine a person coming to you, and what you can't see, but there's all these handles on them, and demons have got a hold of the handles. Unless you get the handles broken and off their life, then the demons will just keep coming back and latch onto the person again. That's perhaps a way of looking at it. Okay, so what are some of the doorways or gateways that evil spirits enter? Remember, we are called to be a gateway for the spirit of God to flow through. Demons want to come in, and they come in because they've got a ground. Now here's the first one. I'm going to give you a list of a number of them, they're not necessarily in order of importance, but they're common ones that I have come across in working with people.

Number one, generational inequity, the sins of family members of previous generations. In the Bible, as in practically - let's look at it first of all from a practical level. When you go to the doctor they will ask your family medical history. They know there's connection in your medical history and your family background. You go to the insurance company, they'll also ask your medical history, because they know there's a connection between medical history, and the current problems, or the problems you may have in the future. So from a spiritual perspective, the generations are connected by genetics. We're also connected spiritually. God sees generations as being a continual line, interconnected with one another, so God's plan is that if you walk with God, that all the generations after you will be blessed, they're all connected. But if you walk against God, then you open a gateway for evil spirits to come in, and everyone connected after you, is subject to what you have done. They come under. They're not responsible for what you did, but they are subject to the consequences of what you've done, so if a person is involved for example - well let's just have a look at it, in Exodus, Chapter 20. You'll see it very clearly laid out.

Exodus, Chapter 20 - there are many other verses like this; You shall have no other Gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or the likeness of anything in heaven above or the earth beneath, that's in the water or in the earth; you'll not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord you God am a jealous God, and I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but show mercy to thousands who love Me and keep My commandments. Notice it says: visiting the iniquity. The iniquity is the root of sin, it's the tendency to go crooked. It's the twistedness in a person's life, so when idolatry gets into a family, or spiritism, or sexual perversions, or things like that, a legal right is established for spirits to come in, and the consequences go generationally, from one generation to another. So the sins of your parents and grandparents will create a legal ground for evil spirits to come into your own life. When did the spirits transfer? Well they may transfer while the child is in the womb, they may transfer at birth, they may transfer sometime during their early stage of their life, or they may not even manifest until teenage years, or a little later - but they will always show up. They always show up.

Once a legal ground is established, they then start to occupy generation after generation, so we are not at all responsible for what our parents did. We're responsible for our own actions, but it may well be that already, without us doing anything, we are subject to demonic oppression and pressure. Remember we said demons hold people down, and energise sin? You could be born into this world already having demonic spirits, that make you subject - that you become subject to the pressure they bring. I've had a whole heap of them. I had one couple I prayed for, their child would wake up very early in the morning - the child was two - and would become very destructive. We couldn't work out why, and they couldn't do anything. If they didn't wake up early, the child would destroy things in the house, so we checked their background, and he had a background of anger and violence and drugs, and she had a background of the occult. We prayed over the child, stood with the parents and prayed over the child. The child just sighed, spirits left, and then there was no behaviour problem. It just changed as dramatically as that, because the origins were demonic.

I had another lady I prayed for, and she said I'm a Christian, I've been a Christian almost all of my life. I've served the Lord faithfully, but I am tormented with unclean images in my mind. They just are there all the time. I come to worship, they're there. I don't understand why I have such a problem, so I asked the obvious; have you been involved in sexual sin? No, I haven't, I've kept my life. Right, I asked the next obvious one; did anyone ever sexually abuse you? No, I've never been sexually abused. Oh, okay, I'll ask another one. Have you ever had any bad sexual experience of any kind? No, I have not, I've kept myself in God - so that left it back, it could only have a generational origin. Can you tell me about your family background? When she told me about the family background I was quite amazed, because what happened was this. Her grandparents were missionaries in China, and they had two children, a boy and a girl, and they had put the boy and the girl in a boarding school, and the missionaries were in another area.

The Japanese invaded China - this was in the '30s. They invaded China, and they took over the province that the boarding school was in. They took the young boy and the girl, and they sexually abused the girl - this is another generation back see? Okay, so then eventually the children were rescued, the place was set free, the children restored to their parents, but damage had been done, and through the sexual abuse, a demonic spirit had been imparted. So the young girl grew up and eventually married, but the marriage didn't last. Because of the trauma she'd gone through she was unable to stay intimate in any relationship; the marriage broke up, but she had this daughter, and this was the daughter that we were speaking with and talking with. So we realised then, that even though she had done nothing herself, the consequence of an abuse two generations ago had opened the doorway for the demonic spirit to come in, and she was now all her life under this demonic pressure in her mind and emotions, that brought torment and guilt to her, because as a Christian she wants to please the Lord.

She can't understand why she's got this stuff in her head, and we prayed for her, and I got her to acknowledge this generational iniquity, to forgive the Japanese soldiers who'd abused the grandmother, and the moment we did that, the demonic spirits manifested, and she was completely set free. So it's a very, very powerful story of this generational issue. Now, there are a whole number of areas from the generational background. One of the common ones in the west is freemasonry. Freemasonry will always open the door for demonic spirits. They're spirits of infirmity, they usually produce coldness in the emotions of men, lack of love and intimacy in the relationship, in the family, and they produce all kinds of spiritual blocks for people coming into the things of the spirit and going on with God - so generational iniquity and the curses that this brings.

The Bible's very clear, in the days of Nehemiah, he confessed not only his own sins, but the sins of the parents which had brought them into this place of bondage. So generational iniquity can open the doorway for spirits, particularly around the area of the occult, so you find sometimes children struggle from when they're very young with occult experiences. There is a generational factor involved there. The parents or grandparents or someone in the family line has made an agreement, they've worshipped an idol, or made offerings to an idol and come into agreement with it, or perhaps they have opened their life to divination, fortune-telling and spiritism, or perhaps they've engaged in some form of occult practice, or some sexual perversion. They've broken laws of God, and it's opened a door through which the demons now have legal access, so it's like leaving the door open, and there's wild wolves outside. They just keep coming in while the door stays open. The door has to be shut.

So when you're checking out, or working with someone, one of the questions I always ask, is when did this problem first begin? Many times you'll find, well it's been there all my life, it's been there since I was very, very young. So you have good indication then, that the likely cause or origin, is a generational iniquity or sin of some kind. When people pray, often God will uncover things in the family, and you become aware of issues that no one had talked about. In our generation no one talked about anything, but the stuff went on, and so it was all secret. The Holy Ghost was able to bring it out by word of knowledge and by revelation. That's why you can't do deliverance ministry without the Holy Ghost. He's the only one who can help unlock the generational iniquities and the bondages, and He'll do that by a picture, a vision or something will come to the person. He'll just bring it to mind what is the problem, when we ask Him to help. So for generational iniquity it is important that they be acknowledged, and repented of, and confessed, and the curses renounced, so the person can be set free.

The second thing there is patterns of sin or habits of sin. Sin always opens the doorways for spirits, so sin - what we do, not what someone else did, they are what we do - and so a range of areas to look for, that open doorways for spirits, are: hatred; a spirit of hatred. In 1 John 2:11, the person who hates his brother is a murderer. Unforgiveness; Matthew 18:35, Jesus said if you harbour unforgiveness in your heart you will be delivered to the tormenters, so unforgiveness is a crucial one. You would be amazed how many people do not feel hate for someone, and do not feel unforgiveness, but it's there, sitting in their life, and the Holy Spirit can bring it to the surface. Unforgiveness is a huge issue, it's a demand that someone pays me back. It's a demand for justice, and we need to let that go, and release it to the cross, and forgive and release others, as we have been forgiven.

Bitterness is another major root of sin, where people harbour resentment, and anger, and hostility against someone. It eventually becomes a deep root of bitterness. Hebrews 12:15, a root of bitterness will defile. Bitterness is a big problem that opens the door for demons. Anger is another one. Now remember, behind all of these sins there's usually events, there's something that's happened, that caused the person to feel hurt and grief and pain, then they've chosen to react by holding unforgiveness, rather than forgiving and so on. Rebellion is another one. In Proverbs 17:11, the person who rebels, a cruel messenger will be sent against him, so rebellion - often people rebel when they're rejected, so a young person who's rejected, one may become compliant, and another one may rebel, and be the black sheep of the family, because they just feel so rejected, and they're saying I'm not going to tolerate that, so they react in many kinds of different ways. Rebellion is a major one. Rebellion is seeking to impose your will over another, so it says it's like witchcraft.

Many times when there's roots of rebellion in a person's life, you'll have spirits of witchcraft operating as well, so rebellion is wilful resistance, and in New Zealand one of the most common forms of rebellion is what you call passive rebellion. Passive rebellion is not so easy to spot. Passive rebellion is the person resists, but they're not showing it outwardly, they show it in different other ways. They show it by, I'll do it my way, I'll do it on my time, I'll do it when I feel like it, and so they may comply, but actually there's no heart in it. There is a rebelling and imposing their own will around it, and so you'll find you can't get things done, you can't get them done on time. There's actually a wilful resisting of you, and you can feel the lack of flow, the pressure that it seems to bring around. So rebellion, they'll just nod and smile and say yes, but then not do it. You see the pattern, you know there's rebellion underneath, in the heart - but the person doesn't feel rebellious. That's their behaviour they've gotten used to.

Another area is the area of lying. Lying brings people directly into agreement with an evil spirit. In Isaiah 28 it tells us that when we lie, we come into agreement with demonic spirits, the spirit of death. We've made a covenant with death, with hell we're in agreement, because we made lies our refuge. Isn't that amazing? We're in a covenant with death, and with hell we're in agreement, because we made lies our refuge, so lying opens the door immediately then, for demonic spirits to come in and torment a person's life. So those are some of the patterns of sin that you'll find. There are others which I've mentioned here, because I want to identify them specifically, so remember patterns of sin, usually there's a trigger cause. It helps to find out when this thing started, what lies behind it, because often there's grief and pain, or an injustice. When you talk that out, then the person comes to a place of resting, and releasing forgiveness, and repenting of their sin.

A third area, which is a significant area, is the area of occult involvement. Deuteronomy 18, God wants us to be connected to Him. God is a spirit, and we are made for spiritual experience, we're made and designed to live and operate and move in the realm of the spirit. It's not to be a complicated thing, it's actually a natural part of our life that we would engage with God who is a spirit, and learn how to activate, walk and operate in the flow of the spirit. But people who do not know God, get drawn into the demonic realm, so when we talk about occult - the word occult means to be concealed, or covered, or hidden, or to be covered over - so when we refer the occult, it's any practice where the source of the power is concealed. So when you get involved in the kingdom of God, it's a kingdom of light. Everything is in the open. What we see, is what we get. There's no big surprises in that. Jesus is the king of that kingdom, the kingdom has His nature, the power behind anything that happens is the Holy Spirit, and when we open our life to Jesus the king, we open our life up to the Holy Spirit. The source of power is always identifiable.

When you get in the kingdom of darkness, you have no idea who the king is, but the king is Satan himself. He's a king over a kingdom, and it takes on his nature, cruel, deceptive, treacherous, murderous and dark. The second thing is, the source of power in the occult practices, is concealed. You don't know where the power comes from, so you'll find in the occult realm, when people get involved and drawn into these things, they have no idea what the power is. They just know that there's power there, and many times people are drawn to the occult because of deep rejection or rebellion in their heart, and they look for power to try and compensate, and they find they're drawn. It's quite addictive, it's like a drug, that once people start down that track they get drawn further and further and further into it. So when we talk about the occult of course, we're aware that recently there's been just a huge interest in these things, like all the Harry Potter movies. They're all about the occult. They're about two kinds of occult; about divination, which is telling the future, various ways of finding the future, or trying to find out what will happen ahead of us; and the second is sorcery, which is the dimension of power, gaining power from hidden spirits, and of course Hollywood dresses it all up, so it all looks wonderful, and they say it's good against evil. But really in all of it, the power is never identified, and so occult areas will always open the realm of the spirit. People come into direct agreement with evil spirits.

Common ones are pendulum swinging, Ouija boards, just putting the Ouija board out. When a person puts the board out, and puts the letters down there, and starts to move the glass, they actually connect with a spirit, and it's the spirit gives the thing power. Now they're communicating with an evil spirit. God says this is detestable to Him, because He's made us for intimacy with Himself. It's like someone that you love going off and having another lover, and God grieves in His heart over this, and there are very serious consequences for occult involvement. So let's read in Deuteronomy 18, Verse 9; When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, don't learn the abominations of the nations. Then He lists them: there'll be not found among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire. The modern equivalent of that, passing a child through the fire was offering your children up to Molech, God of brass that was - they filled it up with fire and they put their children, living children, into this idol to kill them. The modern equivalent of that would be abortion.

There will not be found any among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, anyone who practices witchcraft, a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, one who conjures spells, a medium, a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead, holds a séance, calls up the spirits of the dead, acts as a medium or a channel for the dead. We would call them today psychics, and you find again very commonly psychic hotlines and so on, so all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. Nothing could be clearer. This is evil to do these things, and when you do it, you end up engaging evil spirits. Now when you get into different nations you'll find the further you get away from civilisation, the more occultism becomes very powerful. So in the areas of Indonesia we've come across major stuff with people who practice this demonic realm, and their power is very real, for example in the Bible the sorcerers in Egypt could change a stick into a snake, just like Moses did. Now that's scary. Have a think about that - someone throws a stick down, it turns into a snake. That's a major power dimension.

One of the challenges the church is facing, is the ability to arise without fear in the face of all of this, and learn how to move in the spirit, and bring heaven to earth, and confront the demonic realm. See, people are drawn there, because they see the church has no power. No matter how you dress it up, no matter how well it looks, or how well it's managed, people need the substance of God. They need to experience God's power in their life, and in the absence of that, they turn and turn into all these kinds of things, so there are whole ranges of aspects to this of course. All forms of fortune-telling bring people into connection with demons. Divination is seeking for hidden knowledge, hidden information, secret information. All forms of sorcery - sorcery's trying to gain power over people, cursing them, doing spells, magic, those kinds of things.

Idolatry is a significant part of this. Idolatry is the bowing down, and coming into, yielding into, spirits that lie behind the idol. In 1 Corinthians it tells us, the idol is nothing, but when you bow down and make offerings to it, you are coming into agreement to an evil spirit occupying the idol, and so wherever there is idolatry openly practised, you'll notice one, they bow down, a sign of reverence and yielding to the demon that's in that place, in that idol; secondly, they make an offering, which is a form of trading, I give you this offering in return for protection, or power, or provision of some kind. So always there's a form of trading goes on; I give you this, you give me something back, but when you deal with the devil, you always end up the loser. You always end up the loser. I remember a person that we ministered to up in Malaysia, and she'd got involved with demonic spirits to bless her business, and for a season her business prospered and she became immensely wealthy.

Then one day the demon manifested to her, and said it's time to pay. She said what do you want? He said I want your eldest son, and she could not believe - I mean she was just grief stricken. She tried every way that she could bargain, but she'd already received - she'd traded. She'd received the benefits, financially, of trading with the demon, and now she had to pay the price, so there was a tragic car accident. Her son was lost, and this happened to both her sons, so she was devastated and you can imagine that all the financial gain, through trading with the demon, was overtaken completely by the shock and the grief that she had lost her children, because she'd given her life into trading with a spirit. So there's always a price to pay, always a price to pay, and it's more than you think, always more than you think. Yeah, okay? So idolatry opens the doorway for demons. In the west of course, freemasonry's a big problem in that area, so when you look in the New Testament, you'll find there were encounters with people with sorcery and divination recorded in the Bible.

So in the area of occult involvement, the person has an agreement with an evil spirit. When you talk with anyone who has an agreement with an evil spirit, they must actually recognise what they've done, and renounce the agreement. To renounce means to speak words to cancel something, so wherever there's been an agreement with an idol, with a spirit of divination, any kind of demonic spirit, the person must renounce what they have done; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I renounce every agreement I have made, every word that I have entered into agreement, I cancel it, every covenant I've made through sacrifice, I renounce and cancel it. The person needs to cancel, speak words to break what they have done, and renounce and speak off their life what they've done. Sometimes children when they're young, are dedicated to idols and so the child had no choice in it, they were dedicated to an idol, or dedicated to a temple. We would bring children in and dedicate them to the Lord. People dedicate them to the idol.

Now when a parent dedicates their child to an idol, or a temple, it gives a legal ground for the spirit to enter the child's life, because the parent is the legal guardian, so we have prayed for many people, and they were demonised from childhood because they were dedicated to an idol, a temple, or some false god. In the same way then, we should realise that infant dedication or child dedication in the church is a powerful spiritual transaction. It's not just a nice little thing you do in church. The reality is, you are invoking someone to come upon your child, you're calling for God to move, as you dedicate your child to Him. In the same way, the demonic realm recognises and seeks to gain the children, so there's always a battle for the minds and hearts of the children. Now just before we get off the occult involvement one, there are some other areas that you need to be aware of.

One area that's becoming an increasing problem now, is the area of role play fantasy games, and the internet, and this is becoming a huge issue. I was up in Singapore, and God spoke to me about this, and I had a young man come up for prayer. He was addicted to playing a role playing game called the World of Warcraft, and he played in that game a sorcerer. The deal was, he would get on the internet and he would go and begin to compete, and he would take on and use his powers that he had on the internet to destroy his enemies and grow in power until he become bigger and more powerful. So this is the nature of that thing, they all compete with one another. Now what happened was, because of imagination, he opened his life up to the demonic spirit, and it now entered his life and he'd become addicted to the game, and his whole identity started to change as he started to get more and more addicted to the game.

So when we recognised that, I said you will need to renounce the game, and to renounce the identity that you took on in that game, so he told me what the game was and the identity of the sorcerer, and I led him in a prayer to acknowledge Christ as his Lord, acknowledge ownership by Christ and then to renounce in Jesus' name, I renounce all playing of this game. I renounce all escaping from real life into this fantasy world, because that's what the root of the problem was. I renounce this identity, which is a false identity, which I took on, and he named it. The moment he did the demon manifested on his face, he fell on the ground, and there was a full manifestation of that spirit. Now this shocked the students. This is a student in a Bible College, so while he's given his life, and sacrificed to come and learn how to serve God, in his private life, he's engaging the occult realm, but didn't know it.

Now what happened then was we had more than 200 students come up, and there was a massive flow of deliverance, young Asian students addicted to these online games, becoming a growing problem in the next generation. It's deceptive. People don't understand what lies behind it. They think it's just harmless game playing. Now don't go in a big reaction, and then forbid all game playing. There's a discernment needed as to what kinds of things would actually become a problem, and I think that any game which is of a role playing nature, that also includes the occult, will eventually lead to the person opening their life, and being in agreement with, a demonic power. So rather than legalism, some wisdom and some management and boundaries are needed around that area, and if you've - because what you find is, often the behaviour of the children starts to change because of the occult and the violence in the games, it starts to affect them. What's happened is they've opened their life to a demon.

One of the scriptures the Lord spoke to me about was this, as I was thinking about it and sharing it with the students, I was just sharing what God was showing me about it. He said there's a scripture there, it says: if you look on a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery with her. Now just think about that. He said if you look, or if you start to look, or use your imagination, and you look and begin to long after someone that's not your wife, then you've already committed adultery. So the sin of adultery is conceived in the heart, when the imagination and the heart are activated together, so He said in these games, people enter in with their imagination into the fantasy world, and then begin to long after the power. What happens is they conceive in their heart the whole thing of sorcery, and the demon then can get in, so these are areas to become very aware of.

There are other games that people get addicted to, and I don't even want to go there at all, but there's a whole range of games, and people who are in pain emotionally, substitute real relationships for a vast imaginary role playing game world, and often they can become addicted to that realm. They can't do without it, and so you know spirits are involved as well as soulish and addictive processes, so I needed to spend a bit on that because that is quite an issue. Other areas of the occult involve martial arts, and yoga, and some, some alternative medicine things. We just need to be aware that you can open your life to the demonic realm through these things.

Okay, next one, number four is sexual sin. We just look in - there's a whole number of scriptures on this of course. Remember in Luke, Chapter 4, we saw the man who had an unclean spirit - Verses 43, 44 - we found that there was a man there who had an unclean spirit. In Chapter 4 of Luke, Verses 33 to 36, he had an unclean demon, which is almost certainly a sexual demon that had come into his life. We discussed that last night. So God has set a law in place; when two people become intimate sexually, the two become one flesh. Remember, it's established in Genesis. They join together in sexual intimacy, the two become one. Now get this: if you become one with another person, one flesh, then whatever demons they've got, they belong to you as well. Think about that. Like if a person has got a sexual disease, and you have a sexual relationship with them, you are likely to receive what they have, and the consequences will go on and possibly affect children. The child maybe innocent, no guilt, yet affected.

So in the realm of sexual sin, God has created a law that two become one, so when people are sexually involved with one another, heavy petting right through to penetration and sexual relationship, then there is a soul tie formed between them. The two become one. That's the law that God set in place, and the way the law works is there is a bonding forms between them. Now that soul tie, or that bonding between the two people formed through sexual intimacy, it can either be Godly, or ungodly. A Godly one is where it's within the boundaries of a healthy relationship, and God's principles; an ungodly one is a sexual intimacy outside marriage, where we break God's laws, violate God's laws, are involved sexually outside marriage, then there is an ungodly soul tie or bonding. Now there are two impacts of that ungodly soul tie that I'm aware of. One impact is this, is that because it's an ungodly tie, demonic spirits can use it as a gateway into your life, spirits of lust, and all kinds of other spirits can enter your life through a legal gateway, a joining to another person.

It's like no matter how far you go through your life you're still joined to them, so if you have a number of sexual partners, now you've got all this baggage, these cords of sin, that go back to these relationships - it's like an invisible spiritual cord linking you to the person. The demonic realm can see it, and use it to gain access so that's one area, demonic spirits can enter. The second is this. I've observed in praying for people that - particularly with men but also with women - that the mental and emotional impact of the sexual relationship remains with them. The memories remain alive and it's like they cannot, even years later, get the memories to diminish. They are energised and alive, and so a couple can be having sexual intimacy as husband and wife, and then these powerful images are there of previous encounters, or the memories of previous encounters arise up when a person tries to worship.

In other words, there's some defilement is taking place, which seems to keep - there's an energising. Remember we talked how demons either hold people down, or energise sin inside them? Then this is what happens around this area; the person's got this energy around this that keeps tormenting, and won't ever seem to go away. They can't come to peace, and I've prayed for multitudes of people, and when we broke the soul tie, like it was an invisible cord, when we just cut the soul tie in the spirit, pictured taking the sword of the spirit, and just cutting that soul tie joining the person to someone else, then almost immediately there was a diminishing of the energy and power of these things in the person's soul, and they just started to find it quite manageable after that. So sexual intimacy was established by God as a way of two people being bonded together, and getting to know one another, becoming intimate with one another. God's purpose in forming the covenant of marriage is to protect your capacity to be intimate, so when people are intimate without a commitment for life, and then they break up, there are all kinds of hurts take place.

There's a rending apart of that soul tie, both men and women are affected. No matter what people say it's like, it isn't like that. It always ends up with pain, and grief, and sorrow, and so you find then there are reactions that people form; I'll never let any man near me like that again, or I wish I was dead, death wishes and inner vows start to - so sexual sin and sexual abuse create these huge problems inside people's lives, of soul ties, of inward reactions, of inner vows, that create an energy centre for demonic spirits to torment the person's life. So if a person has had a number of sexual relationships through their life, what they need is to actually become cleansed by Jesus Christ. We need to come to Him - He's willing to cleanse us, but we need to just front up, this is what it's been like, this is what I've done, this is what I've been involved in, this is what I've been exposed to, and then to just renounce all the agreements, renounce all the relationships, cut the soul ties, renounce the soul ties, and release forgiveness. Let go, where there's grief and pain and hurt.

Many young men that we're aware of have attempted suicide, or committed suicide, because of a break up in a relationship with a girl; many young women have been devastated because a relationship turned sexual, and they never really wanted it to be. They were looking for love and intimacy, so this is a whole area of challenge today, where people have lost God's boundaries and values. God's principle, related to marriage, is to protect intimacy, so you can become a whole person. It's not to stop you enjoying life, it's to protect you from destructive things. So people need to be delivered, and you'll find that many of people that you will work with, you'll find if you will check out where the problem is, often it's in this area; there's been sexual sin, it could go back many, many years, could have been a teenage thing, or even a younger thing that that, and the impact of it's so great, that it just leaves this energy going on inside them. So you're dealing then with soul ties, you're dealing with reactions, inner vows and bitter judgements against men or women, and often you're dealing with quite emotional trauma of what they've gone through.

We'll talk a little bit more about just ministering to that area. It is a major one. God wants people to be free, and we saw Jesus set the man free who'd been bound in that kind of sin. So I've put a list in your notes of various things that the Bible speaks explicitly about; fornication, homosexuality, pornography is not referred to directly, but it comes under the issue of lusting in your heart; habitual masturbation is not mentioned specifically in the Bible, so we should not place weight on it as a problem beyond what the Bible does say, and the Bible doesn't say much about it all. So one of the things I have noticed in praying and ministering to people, is that when people are involved in habitual masturbation, usually there are deep roots of rejection, and what they're doing is trying to comfort themselves, but it becomes addictive and connected with fantasy, and that's where the problems lie. So I never try to bring anyone under the law in this area, but we talk to them about the impact it has on them, and how to then get free. Sometimes you just need to break the soul tie the person's got to them self, and they often need to be set free of roots of rejection inside them, that are feeding and driving this area, then be taught how to actually stay clean, stay pure.

Another particular one that is referred to specifically, is the area of anal sex or sodomy. That is specifically referred to as an abomination to the Lord, and yet you'll find that there'll be some couples will practice sodomy in their marriage. You need to understand that God forbids this practice. It's unclean, it's a shameful practice associated with homosexuals, and it's not part - it's got no place in a Christian marriage, none whatsoever. If any of you are aware, if it's happening in your life, or happening in your situation, or you come across it, a woman needs to be free from any sense she needs to submit to her husband over this specific issue. The area of oral sex is not stated specifically in the Bible, so therefore we have to be careful what we say about something the Bible doesn't say anything about. The two general principles you use are one, that it's natural and doesn't violate natural law and two, that it doesn't violate the conscience of the person.

The area of prostitution isn't referred to in the Bible as being evil. Sexual molesting or rape, fantasy, incest, bestiality and adultery, all of these are referred to as creating major problems. Now here's an interesting thing, that all of those sins carried a death penalty. Get that - capital punishment. Capital punishment. Now we wrestle with capital punishment, even multiple murders, but capital punishment. Now I've looked at that, and thought about it, and I've come to the conclusion that since the law of God doesn't pass away, that wherever people are involved with that, they open the way for spirits of death to come around them. That means they become isolated, and disconnected, and shut down or numbed out emotionally, through these kinds of experiences in various degrees.

So lets just carry on and then we'll finish the list, then we'll take a break. Rejection is another area. If you're looking and dealing with a person's life, you'll find very often they have suffered deep rejection. In 2 Samuel 6, Verse 16, Michal, Saul's daughter, was deeply rejected by her father, and she becomes very bitter. In the day that should have been a day of celebration for her, she in fact was in great grief, and really reactionary against her husband, because there was bitterness against men in her heart, so bitterness comes out of being deeply rejected. You notice also that rejection - let me just make this clear - rejection is an experience people have, where they're not wanted, or they perceive they're not wanted. Rejection is an emotional trauma or pain that people experience, so it's an emotional trauma. Rejection is also a spirit that torments people, and rejection is also a belief, or a judgement formed in the heart, that no one's going to want me.

So when you're dealing with rejection you have to be aware of each of those aspects; is there a demonic spirit involved? Is there a judgement, and a bitter expectancy, that I'll be rejected? Is there some painful experience I need to face, and forgive the people involved? Of course there's a whole number of ways the spirit of rejection will come around people. When people have got rejection in their life, usually there's a deep mind set that they're unacceptable, they fear rejection, and they tend to reject themselves. So where does it come? Very simply, rejection in the womb, child's unwanted, unwanted pregnancy, or perhaps there was an attempt at abortion. I've noticed this, when there's been attempted abortion and the child survives, they will not bond with their mother. They actually won't breastfeed, they won't bond with their mother, they're called 'problem' children because, in their heart, they know already this woman tried to murder me. That's why you get the lack of bonding.

The contemporary culture tends to pass off a lie, this is not a person in the womb. Now if a woman believes this is not a person, the next step is to be able to get rid of it quite easily. The reality is, it is a person, and what we have found is that, in ministering to people who've had an abortion, we have found one of the things that's very crucial, is first to acknowledge that this is actually I've tried to, or attempted to, or have successfully destroyed a life, an eternal spirit being. That's the first thing to acknowledge. The second thing is to forgive the people that have been involved, including forgiving yourself, usually the man involved and the people who were involved as well. The third thing is, we've found it really helpful to ask the person to listen to their heart, and let God show them whether their child was a boy or a girl. Now at that point, it's like I've watched a person move from being almost unemotional, then suddenly when God showed them, this was a boy, it's now no longer a thing. The revelation is there, this is a real person, and often they break and weep quite deeply. You can cast out spirits of murder and abortion and death and so on, so it's a very, very powerful area.

Many times we've found that people have been deeply healed as they've seen the child in the Lord's hands, and they've realised that God has forgiven them, and they're free now to move on. It's a very, very powerful thing - so attempted abortion. A child is an unwanted female; in many places fathers expected the child to be a boy, and it's a girl, and the child feels rejected, and often strives to be - they become male-like and competitive. Early childhood experiences can lead to rejection, a child who's got some learning difficulties, a child who's got some physical co-ordination difficulties, can be very, very simple experiences they have. A family breaks up, that is a huge trauma for a child, and often that trauma leaves a child feeling deeply rejected and to blame. Family relational conflict or breakdown, emotional coldness or hardness or blocks in the family, the child interprets it as being rejected; unfavourable comparisons where one parent's continually why aren't you like your brother, why aren't you like your sister, why can't you do this? The child feels rejected. They are not like their brother and sister, they are them, so many times parents can create huge problems of rejection in a child by comparison.

Divorce or broken relationships; this creates a problem. A child interprets it through a child's eyes, and thinks they're to blame, and feels rejected. School experiences can create huge rejection, as well as - another thing that creates deep rejection in people is the experiences of broken relationship, where there was quite a deep intimacy, and then it breaks up. This is a huge issue that the person feels rejected, and often struggles with spirits of rejection. Another one, related to that which we'll touch on next, are when there's controlling relationships. When there's controlling relationships, the one who's under control always carries a spirit of rejection, always. Why? Because their needs, their longings, their desires, their person-hood was rejected by the controller, who just wanted to impose their will on them.

Okay, so there's a whole range of things there. Number six, controlling relationships, we just referred to those. Whenever there are controlling relationships, one person is imposing their will on another. Now we're not talking about Godly control, or management of a child, where you need to restrain them for their own safety. We're talking now ungodly control where one imposes their will, their wishes, their desires, and there's no hearing, or there's no connection to the heart, or who the person is, and what they want to do. The person is dominated. They can be dominated by verbal violence, by physical violence, by sexual violence, by emotional violence, whatever it is, the person's dominated or controlled by the other person. There's a deep root of rejection takes place, so control brings rejection and trauma, and usually deep fear into the person's life. When you are working with people, do look at the issue of trauma, particularly those associated with a controlling relationship, so when a person is under a controlling relationship, they lose all confidence, they have no sense of identity established, and demonic spirits come around and continually work against them: spirits of hate, spirits of witchcraft, spirits of rejection.

A seventh area or gateway of demons is this, it's trauma and accidents, or sustained stress. When a person goes through a trauma, if it's a physical trauma and you hit a person or they can be cut and bleed, but if it's an emotional trauma there's a bleeding within, in the sense the soul is impacted and shattered. We'll talk a bit more about dealing with that a little later - then what happens is, evil spirits use trauma as a gateway in. I was praying for a woman just a little while ago, and she had pains right through her hand and her wrist, and she couldn't move her hand properly. I said what's happened? She said I was involved in a motor vehicle accident. I said what happened? She said well they did the best they could, but I'm left numbed out, and I can't move my hand properly, so what I did was pray, and in Jesus' name, I break the soul tie, or bonding in connection to the trauma, and command the spirit of trauma and infirmity to go. The moment I did that, her hand freed up, and she started to feel again, and she started to have full use of it.

So she was soul tied to the traumatic experience, we broke that, and then commanded the spirit that was in her through that effect to go out, and immediately she was set free, immediately she's set free. So just be aware that if a person has a traumatic experience, one, that they are soul tied to it; two, that they have often extremely painful memories and pictures around it, and three, that there are spirits often have entered in to create a problem. Spirits of infirmity are the ones I've found most commonly associated with a traumatic experience. Another woman had had a car accident, she had pains right through her body, and we broke the spirit of trauma off her life, cut the soul tie to the experience, and she began to actually shake, as she started to remember it. Then the whole thing left her, and her back was healed and she was completely free straight away.

Another area of demonic oppression or doorways or gateways is ungodly beliefs. Satan is the father of lies. When you believe a lie, whether you have good reason to or not, you'll find that it'll open up and bring demonic spirits in. Now ungodly beliefs are always, or almost inevitably associated with, some painful experience, so a child growing up, well we've never got enough money. Perhaps the parents were going through financial difficulty, and the child learns we're poor, and there's never enough for me. So a child who gets a belief in their heart, there's not enough for me, it doesn't matter how much they have, you know what they'll believe? There's still not enough for me. They're often then driven to work hard, they can't find rest in their soul. Why? Because no matter how much they have, there's not enough for me, is the message that's played in the heart.

So an ungodly belief, is a belief of the heart that's not true. It's actually a lie, but it operates and drives the person's life. Ungodly beliefs, when we can identify them, usually are attached to some painful experience. We need to let Jesus come, and bring healing to that experience, and we need to break or renounce the agreement with the lie, and start to meditate and build the truth in our life.

Curses are another source of demonic spirits coming in. These are a consequence of breaking the laws of God. They can be word curses, or curses by authority figures. They could be self cursing where people speak words, negative words over themselves. Sometimes even there's witchcraft cursing, where particularly we've found people go into foreign lands, if they're not aware of the demonic realm, they can become subject to witchcraft cursing, and demonic spirits there. So again, if there is a curse, there's always a reason for it, and we need to track the reason, renounce it, cancel it, and release forgiveness, and believe God for freedom.

The last one I'll just mention to you here, is transference. Spirits can transfer. There are a whole number of ways they can transfer. They can transfer through soul ties. I've even known one person to get demonised watching a movie - had a woman ring me up one night. I said: what's the problem because it was quite late, said what's the problem? She said: something has happened to me. I said what's happened? She said: my husband made me look at a pornographic movie. I said what happened? She said: I suddenly felt someone, something come into my eyes. I said: how did it affect you? She said I feel numbed out, and I feel like I'm a piece of meat. I said: watching this thing, you've opened yourself to a demonic spirit. I said: I think it's a spirit of death, and so we broke the soul tie attaching her to this experience, we commanded the spirit of death to come out, and immediately she felt something leave her, just over the phone.

So certain movies, or things full of lust and violence, can open the door for spirits. Alcohol and drugs can do the same thing, touching dead bodies. I've known people to actually get demonised by touching a dead body, hoarding occult objects, and sometimes there are some things associated with culture as well. So these are some of the doorways that demons use. It helps if you are aware of them. I've known some people group them into two groups, some people group them into four groups. There's a whole lot of ways of looking at it, so some people deal with it as being either - if you deal it with four - there's a couple called - his name is Chester Kylstra I think it is, and they categorise all of these doorways in four groups; one, generational; two, sin patterns; three, trauma; and four, ungodly beliefs. They've found that's a helpful way of just thinking about the whole area of grouping these demonic doorways. Demonic doorways are opened through generational, through sin, through trauma, and through ungodly beliefs, so they deal with it like that.

Virkler runs a course called "Prayers That Heal the Heart", and they look at it - he handles it a little bit differently. He just looks at it straight from the heart condition, starting off with the generational curses, then the soul ties, the bitter expectancies or judgements that form in the heart, inner vows that form, sin patterns, and then the demonic spirits. Sargin and Jessie run a brilliant course on this, and it's extremely helpful. If you were thinking about going through a course I'd recommend that course for you to do, so that's another way of doing it. Other people deal with it just straight as legal rights, and trauma, and deal with it in two things, what are all the legal rights, and what are the trauma or painful experiences. So the general agreement around almost everyone who's operating around the deliverance area, is that the area of legal rights, and painful experiences, and the impacts they have in your heart, with reactions in the heart, these seem to be the things that create the doorways for demons to come in.

Different deliverance ministers have different ways of doing it. There's no one right way, there's lots of ways. But if you can understand the basics, and the principles, and have a plan of how you would approach it, then you can start to minister reasonably successfully to people. I do not think that we can set people free without dealing with the heart. My experience over years now, is whatever's in the heart will show up in the life. You can cast out the demons, but if you don't shift the heart, what people believe and how they function in their heart, then they don't have lasting change. So of all the materials that I have seen around, probably the course by Mark Virkler, Prayers That Heal the Heart, would be the one that I would recommend, as containing good insight and good process for the deliverance ministry.

Perhaps I'll just finish with one last thing and then we'll get on and have a break. How would you know what demons do, or how do demons oppress people? Let's just finish with that for this session. How do demons oppress people? In Luke 13, Verse 11, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years and could not raise herself up, so here's a woman, has a spirit, and it's affecting her body. A spirit of infirmity for example, the word infirmity means weakness or without strength - a spirit of infirmity, when it comes into a body, you have aches and pains. They just move around, or they're located in the back, the neck, the shoulders and whatever. You can't seem to get of them. Spirits of infirmity can create problems with deafness, spirits of infirmity can be the cause of many sicknesses, spirits of infirmity can also create learning difficulties as well.

When demons come into people's lives - I've listed some of the things they do. Number one, they hinder the person coming to Christ. They just create blocks around the thinking, so the person doesn't understand. Two, they afflict and torment people, they remind them, and bring them into torment and pain; three, they bring people into bondage, particularly addictions; four, they bring drive into people's lives, and compel them to do things, so they feel like they can't stop; six, they deceive, or create a deception around a person's mind. They don't realise what's really happening; seven, they accuse and speak condemning words, and number eight, they obstruct us. They create difficulties, for example when we try to do these seminars we often have trouble with mechanical gear, issues and difficulties and problems. It's always the week we do the seminar, so we've just got used to it all.

So when spirits come in they'll affect a person's body with sicknesses, pains, unexpected pains. When I went to Taiwan for example, every day I had to have a new interpreter, because they would get sick. They just got sick day after day after day after day. The first three visits I made to Taiwan, I got sick every time, then afterwards I broke through it, and I've never been sick since. It was just witchcraft spirits trying to impart this thing onto me, and I had to learn how to step up, and make sure I didn't come under it. So demonic spirits can affect your body, they can affect the soul by tormenting thoughts, emotions and desires. They can afflict a person's will, so they become very passive, and they can create experiences in people's life that torment them.

So how are we going to find out? Well let's go look at the next session. We're going to talk about curses, and what they are, and how to deal with them, then we're going to look at some aspects of how to minister to people. Let's have a break.

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5)

Sat 7 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and cursing are a great reality. Blessing means there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually. This session will help you identify when a curse is operating, and how to go about addressing it. This includes a range of heart issues that give legal rights to demons. Jesus came to set us free!

Welcome Back. So how many in the last session, you had a list of a few things that you realised oh,that's me there, that's me there? How many found some things came to mind, thought that's quite good. Good to just ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you; Lord, show me where I'm needing to be set free, where do I first need to break out, and what's there. So as things come up, jot them down, things the Holy Spirit speaks to you about. As things come up, or you have a question, jot that down so you can remember later on, say well I need to get some information about that.

Okay, we want to just look in the next session, I just want to look at the area of curses, and what they are and how to deal with them, recognising curses. For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and curses are a great reality. Blessing means, there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means, there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually, and so we want to identify what curses are, and just look at how we would recognise them, what we would look for, and then how you would actually go about addressing it.

So in Deuteronomy 28 the Bible talks about blessings and cursings. Now there's a huge difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, how God has dealt with us. Now we are blessed. We are a blessed people. However, there may be evidences of old things still operating, which have legal rights that need to be cancelled and addressed, so in Deuteronomy 28 it lists out the blessings of obedience, it lists out cursings that come from disobedience, so moreover all these curses shall come upon you, pursue you, and overtake you, until you're destroyed. Now notice about curses, they're spoken of as though they're something living. Notice it uses the words: they will come on you, and so we you don't expect it but there it is, they'll pursue you. It's like you can't run away from it, and they'll overtake you. So when God is describing the nature of a curse, there is clearly a spiritual force, a demonic power operating behind, that comes on you and pursues you, overtakes you, and has negative or destructive forces.

So 'curses come on people' means they just turn up. You've got no idea where they came from, there's no apparent reason, but there is always a reason. Curses tend to pursue people, so wherever you go, you are, you're there, so therefore, that's where the curse will be, where you are. It's attached to you, so that's why it runs after you. Curses overtake people, and tend to overcome them, so key aspects of a curse is that the curse can impact not only an individual, but also a family itself generationally, and also a larger group like a whole tribe can have a particular cursing operating around them. Groups, organisations can have a curse running around them. I recently had the opportunity to speak into a movement of churches in New Zealand, and the Lord gave me insight that enabled us to establish a pattern, that was destructive within the movement, that had gone on and pursued it all these years.

When I shared with them what I could see and what I knew, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they began to break down and weep. Since that time they've worked systematically to address all those issues, and now God's just suddenly brought a blessing, an increase, and what they've tried to do for years has now started to come about, started to come into existence - to the extent where I'm astonished really. I don't want to identify what movement it is, but it's a movement of churches in our own nation, and within the roots of it, there was a pattern that had continued and persisted. They said after I'd shared with them, they looked into it even further, and they found it pervaded every aspect of their churches. Isn't that extraordinary? Once they brought it to the Lord, as a leadership, and dealt with it and then addressed it and put everything right, it's immediately everything has started to come into place for them. Quite extraordinary - I'm still stunned and trying to get a hold of the significance of all of that.

So curses can affect whole groups of people, and a curse, when it's operating, allows demons to operate. The power behind a curse is a demonic spirit, so we tend to think of cursing as someone swearing, but those who have a spiritual world view, what they're looking at is the demonic realm having a legal access, a legal right to come, and create havoc and destruction. So how would you know if some kind of curse, or some demonic power was operating? What would you look for? You'd be looking for something that shows up in lifestyles, it shows up in behaviours, you're looking at something that would show up in repeated patterns, so the keys to finding these are found in Deuteronomy 28. It starts off there of course, in Verse 45; all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes.

Now if you go through there in Deuteronomy 28, and the verses in Deuteronomy 28 from Verse 15 through almost to Verse 45, it lists in detail what curses look like when they're operating, and so I've broken them down into a number of headings so you could identify them, and I've put the scripture reference there. They're pretty well all found in Deuteronomy 28. So firstly there's mental and emotional breakdown, so if there's a pattern in your family of mental or emotional breakdowns, there's almost certainly some spiritual power at work. If there's just one person, well there'd be something in that one person, but if there's several in the same family line, then there's obviously something has got an inroad in, so repeated patterns of mental or emotional breakdown. A second one is chronic disease or sickness. By chronic I mean it keeps repeating, it keeps repeating. The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until He's consumed you. He'll bring back to you all the sicknesses of Egypt, which you're afraid of, and they shall cling to you - so repeated cycles of sickness or disease, family sickness that can't be healed.

So we found in our family that, for example, one of my daughters had a particular skin condition that wouldn't go away, and it just persisted. We prayed and prayed and prayed, couldn't get rid of it, then she was just listening to the Lord, and He showed her how that one, it was rooted in anxiety, which is a family generational spirit, and also how she'd taken on responsibility for the rest of the family, when they were quite young. When she let all of that go, overnight the eczema all vanished. It was quite sudden, so there was clearly a spirit that was behind the sickness and infirmity.

Another one is history of women with problems with their womb, barrenness, they can't conceive at all; or miscarriages, they continually miscarry, have several miscarriages; or fertility problems or bleeding problems. These are often indication that there's some form of cursing is operating, and so it says cursed is the fruit of your body. Hosea talks in Hosea 9:14, that idolatry results in miscarriages, you've just cast off the fruit of your womb, so if you have a family, and you know that there's some form of regular and repeated problems that women have, there's almost certainly some form of cursing operating, and there can be many causes of the curse. We've got to find the root cause.

A fourth one is marriage and family breakdowns. If there's repeated patterns of marriage or family breakdowns, so they can never build marriage, it's like something is destroying marriage, something is destroying families, that often indicates that there's a curse operating - constant quarrelling and fighting, breakdowns - but it's the pattern of it. It's not just confined to one, it's actually in a family line. That's how we can see that it's generational, and it's a cursing of some kind. Another one is financial setbacks, where constantly there are setbacks, so the person's managing money the best they can, but no matter what they do, they keep getting these setbacks just when they should prosper. It could be constant lay-offs at work, harassment in the workplace, constant problems with housing, foreclosure on housing, problems with landlords. It's almost like everything around the provisional area of their life just keeps going wrong and toxic. Often there's a cursing around there.

Accident proneness - have you ever noticed some people are accident prone? If there's a history of it in your family then it's generational, and also there's an element or an area of it which is related to some curse, some demonic power. Freak accidents, regular car accidents, lots of broken limbs; these can indicate there's some hidden kind of curse operating, some spirit is operating. Remember the power of a curse is a spirit, the power of blessing is the Holy Spirit. A history of suicides or premature violent death, so if you look into your family background ,and you start to notice then that there are premature deaths or suicides, if there's more than one there's some kind of curses operating in the family, there's some kind of demonic power. Patterns of mistreatment and abuse, they also indicate that physical abuse, abusive relationships, those patterns are in the family, it would indicate: one, there's a cursing operating that needs to be broken; two, there are family patterns and habits that need to be changed.

Another one which I noticed in Genesis 4:11 was the inability to settle down, like being a gypsy. The person can never form roots, they're there for just a little while and then they just up, and for some reason when they've just been there long enough to start to prosper, suddenly they're up and we're shifting. There's no apparent reason, there's no work reason, it's just the person has got restless and feel like I need to move on, I need to move on.

That can be - remember that Cain was cursed that he would be a fugitive and a vagabond. He would never settle. He would just continually move and travel around, so that's evidence of a cursing too. I have come across people, and it's like they could never settle anywhere. They'd just be there for a while and then, I've got to go. Now it could be it's in the family pattern, that their own pattern in their background was one of shifting from one place to another, and everyone learned not to make friends - but always look for some spiritual roots before trying to just solve problems. Look for some spiritual roots behind it. So there's always a cause for a curse. If there's a curse operating in a family, or in a personal life, there's always a reason for it. Think that, there's always a reason. That's what it says in Proverbs 26, Verse 2; Like a flying sparrow or a flying swallow, so a curse without a cause shall not fall. What he's saying is: if there's a curse, there's a cause. If something bad is there, there's a reason it's there. Find out the reason, and then you can deal with the curse.

So let's have a look what some of the possible causes of a curse. Now first, before we go there, how many of you can recognise maybe even in your own family that you've got one of those patterns operating? Whoa, look at that. Wow, we may have to have a ministry time, could be exciting. [Laughter] Could be very exciting. We'll save it up for after lunch. You've had the demons a long time now, so a little bit longer won't matter. [Laughter] We'll deal with them soon, so that'll be fun won't it. So how many recognise more than one pattern that's running through your family line? Wow, that's a whole number of you, okay, great. Well it'll be great for us to get into it after lunch then aye? It'll be good to do that.

So what are some of the causes for it? Well I've tried to find, and actually there seems like there's a variety of causes, and the Holy Spirit's got to bring them to the surface, so one of the most obvious ones is Idolatry. Everywhere there's practising idolatry, curses are inevitable, so what you'll often find when you're in a culture of idolatry, sickness abounds. Sickness abounds, idolatry, sickness abounds everywhere there's idolatry. The second thing is a cause, or root cause, is occult practices. You get involved with the occult, you're involved with demons, sickness and cursing is inevitable. Now here's one I found is people don't recognise; dishonouring your parents. Dishonouring your parents opens the door for cursing, for example in Ephesians, Chapter 6; honour your father and mother, that you may live long, it may go well with you. Now notice the consequence of honour is health, and prospering in your life, so that implies that the consequence of dishonour is sickness, and problems with health, short life, premature death, and problems throughout your life.

I have discovered of one of the biggest keys, for things working right in your life, is to ensure that you come to a place of resolving issues with your parents, and you come to a place of peace in your hearth with their weaknesses, and their failures, and their lacks. You come to freedom to honour them, and be appreciative of who they are. Now all parents make mistakes, all parents have their flaws and their issues, but God doesn't worry too much about that. He says: how you respond is really important - so honour, that it may go well with you. Throughout the Bible, I can show you many scriptures, it's very, very clear that when the dishonour of parents, there are demonic problems comes up. It says the one that dishonours his father and despises his mother, it says: the ravens of the valley shall pick his eyes out. The ravens of the valley speak of demonic spirits, and to pick the eyes out means to cause you to become blind or in darkness so you can't see.

So a key cause of cursing is this impact of dishonouring your parents. If you want to prosper in life, bring resolution to the home conflicts, the home issues, the home things. That will require forgiveness and repentance, and a decision to bless instead of remaining bitter, so have a think about that one. If you find that you're avoiding parents, or your attention isn't around when you're with them, the chances are you've got something going on inside you that needs to be resolved. Another one, in Deuteronomy 27, is mistreating the people who are weak, or oppressing or treating people who are weak or sick in some kind of way, or handicapped in some kind of way. We don't like to use that word. We use the word disabled, but if a person's disabled and you mistreat them, the Bible says a curse comes on you. God is very concerned about justice, and the treatment of people who are poor, or who are afflicted in some kind of way. The Bible is full of that. It says he that disregards the cry of the poor, shall himself cry and not be heard, so God is very concerned about how our attitude towards justice, towards people who are handicapped, disabled, or in any kind of way impaired. We should watch that we don't dishonour, disrespect them, but treat them properly.

Unlawful sexual relationships we've already looked at. Violence and abuse brings a curse. You notice that families where there's violence, it is a generational thing, it just keeps on going. The pattern of violence just continues, one generation of cursing. It's alarmed me how abusive, verbally abusive, many of our native culture, the Maori people are to one another. The way I've heard some speaking to one another, they're actually literally cursing each other. No white person could say that without getting a huge severe reaction, but many seem to feel it's okay to speak that way to one another, and cursing one another is always going to end up with problems. So violence and abuse always brings cycles of cursing and demonic powers. Another one, which is very clearly outlined in Genesis 12 Verse 3, is anti-Semitism, or being anti the Jews, or acting in a way hostile or contrary to the Jewish people. The Bible says: those that bless Abraham and his family, those who bless him, will be blessed, those who curse him, will be cursed. So that's still in application that still is there. That's why we have to guard that we don't have an attitude or a negative thing towards the Jews in any kind of way.

Stealing and lying opens the way for a curse. Lying and stealing always go together; if you steal you'll cover, and you'll have to lie. In Zachariah 5, Verses 3 to 4, it tells that a curse will enter the house of the person who steals. It actually says a curse will enter in, it will fly into the house, so when there's stealing and lying going on, there's nothing you do prospers. Now it appears as though you prosper, but what you don't see, is what really goes on in the true riches, which are the relationships and the family building. Where there's stealing and lying going on, there's massive destruction and erosion, and sure, there may be some short term material advantage, but somehow it all turns to dust. There is a curse where there is stealing. That's why we want to operate in integrity in all our finances. We don't need cursing coming into our life. We don't want to break the laws that will involve demonic powers coming in, and plundering what God wants to bless us with.

Word curses are an evident one of course. Word curses are words spoken by authority figures, spoken by yourself, over yourself: well I'll never get anywhere, I'm a failure, I'll never get anywhere. Curses spoken by parents over their children can create huge problems because they activate demonic spirits. Sometimes, in some cultures, you'll have people arise to curse you, if you're working in missionary areas particularly. Sometimes people who operate in the occult will endeavour to curse you. The curse always has to have a reason to rest. I remember I was in a meeting in Indonesia, a fantastic meeting, and there were about 2000 people there, and three witch doctors came to have a confrontation. They wanted to stand up and strip the power off me, whatever power it was, and so they came in there all wound up to do it. I never even saw them, I just had a great meeting and people got delivered.

Then it turns out later that three of them had stood up to do their stuff, and the moment they stood to their feet, boom! The power of God hit them, they were just thrown on the ground and could not get up. They actually had to crawl out of the meeting [laughter], so the cursing did not rest, because there's flowing in the power of the spirit. Dave was able to whip round and catch one of them and confront them, and cast the demons out, one of them got saved. So cursed objects can create problems in your home, and we talked about that before. Deuteronomy 7, 34 to 35, says don't even bring them into your home, so we need to guard our home from having idols and focal points for demonic spirits, otherwise it can introduce sickness, turmoil, conflicts into the home. Of course the last one we have is generational iniquities.

So I've given a list that I've found. It's probably not an exhaustive list, there are probably others, but these are ones commonly that I have seen, or have come up when I've ministered to people, those various kinds of areas. So if you know that something is going wrong, and it keeps going wrong, there's got to be a reason, so what is the reason? When did it first start? Was it very young, was it in the family line? Has there been a pattern in the family line? Is it generational? Where has this thing come from? Let's track it down to its root; what is the potential cause? Was it idolatry, spiritism, whatever? The Holy Spirit, if we ask Him, can bring it to the surface, bring a memory, a picture, bring something up to the surface that brings to mind, this is what we think it might be. So how can people be set free from curses? It's not as difficult as it looks. Remember many of the curses are generational, but not all.

I remember talking to one young man, and he was in conflict with one of our leaders in our church, so I went to sit and talk with him to try and work it all out, and try to find out. Of course he had his whole reason for why he was in conflict with this leader and oh, it's okay. I said well, tell me about how you're getting on at the workplace? He said I've just shifted job. I said why did you shift job? He said I had a conflict with the boss. Oh really, what about your last work? Oh no, same thing happened there, and I said oh really? I said did you ever have a good job you liked? He said oh yeah and he told me the job he liked, so that was great. I said how did you get on with the boss there? Oh, well not too good actually, I fell out with him. Oh really, I said. Tell me, how did you get on at school? Oh, didn't do so good at school. I said what about the teachers, how did you get on with the teachers? No, I didn't get on with the teachers at all. Oh really? Now he's starting to see a pattern starting to develop now.

I said okay then, how about your dad, how did you get on with your dad and your mum? Oh, I didn't like my dad, kicked me out of home. I said really? He said well, it wasn't my real dad, he was my step-dad, I was adopted. I said oh really, how interesting, and I could see straight away that there is a common pattern in it all. There is a pattern of conflict and reaction to authority figures all the way through his life, and the root goes right back to him being rejected, and having bitterness and resentment against his father and mother for rejecting him. It projected against the adoptive parents, and then every authority figure in life, so whatever he put his hand to was cursed, it just would not prosper and go ahead. I've watched him make plan after plan after plan, and it would not prosper. It's like it was a great plan, yes, it should succeed, couldn't quite pull it off, something went wrong at the last minute. It was like there's no reason for it, but it happened, and in this case, the cursing went right back to the whole thing of being adopted, and the bitterness in the heart, the judgements against the father, and the spirits that had access to work while he didn't deal with the heart issue. Getting the idea?

Okay then, so how are we going to deal with freedom from cursing? We have to first identify - we have to find out what the curse is, and try to identify where it came from. Then I've found a very simple process is to take it step by step, it's very, very simple. You are dealing, when you're dealing with a curse, with a legal right. The demon as a right to be there. Remove the right, and the demon will go quite quickly. Remove the legal right. Now that's a crucial part of dealing with all of this stuff, is removing legal rights, removing the grounds the spirit claims it has, to be in the person's life. Now in Galatians 3, Verses 13 and 14, Christ has redeemed us from the curse. That means He's paid the full price for us to be free of cursings, He become a curse for us, for what? So we could be blessed. The blessing of Abraham come on us and on the gentiles through faith in Christ. There it is, Galatians 3, 13 and 14. Now God's intention is this, is that when you come to Christ, you are repositioned in a place of blessing.

In Ephesians 1, it tells us Verse 3, He has blessed us with every blessing in spiritual places, in heavenly places, so already you are blessed. You are in a place of blessing. You don't have to do something in order to get blessed, you are already, in identifying with Christ, blessed. What we do need to do though, many times, is to break legal rights that evil spirits have, which they still cling onto to afflict us, so how do we do that? I think number one, the person needs to recognise what the issue is. They need to recognise, this is what my problem is. They need to repent of any sin that they have done, that's opened the door to that, so repentance is a crucial part. If there's a cursing, we should speak it off our life; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I renounce that curse, I cancel that curse, I cancel all agreements made with evil spirits. I renounce it in Jesus' name. It's not a hard thing to do, speak, and break this off your life. Make a stand, I belong to Christ, I cancel this thing over my life.

So our keys to freedom are: recognising there's a problem, standing up and identifying with Christ, repenting of the sin, renouncing the bondage, forgiving those who've hurt us, and claiming freedom in Christ. It's always the same pretty well for all areas of deliverance; recognise the problem, repent of any sin, renounce any cursings, release forgiveness, and receive forgiveness for what we've done, and then make a stand to resist. Later on we'll lead you through a prayer to make a stand around that area, and let's see what God will do. Remember what it is again; I need to recognise the problem and own responsibility, it's my problem. It won't go until I own it. Secondly, I need to come to the Lord, and acknowledge who He is and what He's done, and repent of any sin that gives this thing right to be there. Third, I need to release forgiveness to any who have hurt me, or opened the way for this cursing to come; four, to renounce the spirit, to renounce the bondage, in Jesus' name I renounce and cancel any bondage caused by this, any legal right, any legal ground established by this sin, and then resist the spirits; in Jesus' name, go from my life, I resist you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I'll lead you in a prayer a little later to do that. It's quite simple.

So that's the foundation. It's always the same foundations for freedom. You can move them around, change them a little, but it always seems to me to come down to the same thing; I need to identify with Christ, recognise the problem, identify with Christ, I need to come to a place of repentance, releasing forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, renouncing sin, renouncing the curses, and then resisting. It's always the same, and I've put it down in some words which are quite easy to remember: recognise, repent, renounce, release, receive and resist, quite simple things. Recognise the problem and take responsibility, repent of the sin that opened the door, renounce any cursing, release forgiveness and receive forgiveness, then resist all spirits that were involved - so that's how we do it. It's not very hard and in dealing with a person, or helping a person, you would just do a simple thing like that, lead them through a prayer to acknowledge Christ, confess the sin, renounce the sin, renounce the curse, release forgiveness and then claim freedom.

Our part is break the curse. It's not hard - in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break that curse, I command that spirit to go in Jesus' name. It's not very hard that part of it, that's the easy part. The harder part is finding out what the root cause, what the root bondage is. Okay then, so sometimes there's a little bit of - we'll talk about how to do the process of deliverance this afternoon, the session after lunch, but it's helpful if you just understand, that for setting people free, I always see that there are several things are needed for it, so I'll just go through them again - to set a person free. Number one, they must recognise and take responsibility for their problem. They have to own it. If a person's blaming someone else, trying to find a reason someone else is to blame, they're never going to be free. You only have the power over what you own, and what you're responsible for, so the first place is recognition. If you recognise that you have a problem operating in your life now, don't be blaming anyone else. Say God, what is my part in this? What do I need to do to get free?

Sometimes people want to blame a parent. Well maybe a parent was a terrible parent - that doesn't mean we shouldn't honour them. God will hold them responsible for what they do. Your part is to create honour, and to have a right attitude, so number one, I get them to face and own responsibility for what they have done; number two, I get the person - almost always I've found it helpful if they acknowledge their relationship with Christ and what He's done, a very, very simple thing like: I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, and all the power of sin. It's helpful to acknowledge that. Just even doing that, you position yourself for a battle. It's just saying: I'm on the Lord's side. It's putting words to: I'm on the Lord's side, and I belong to Him, and it's quite helpful always to do that. I come to You Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I am redeemed. I belong to Jesus Christ. It's really helpful to make that kind of profession of faith. Now Lord, I confess this cursing, or I confess this sin that's upon my life right now, I ask you to forgive me. It's really good to just be quite honest and straight forward about that.

The next part I will vary a little bit, depending on how the Holy Ghost leads, but it's always both are there. Lord, I release forgiveness to those who have hurt me, and I receive Your forgiveness for my sins. I release forgiveness, I release forgiveness. I give forgiveness. Lord, You've forgiven me, I forgive them. It is important from the heart to let go forgiveness. If we don't, bondages stay there. Then the next thing is: now I renounce this curse, I renounce that curse of poverty, I renounce that curse that's come, that occultism, that spirit that's come down our family line. I renounce it in Jesus' name. I cancel its power. All agreements my family have made with evil spirits, or all actions they've done that open the way for the curse, I just renounce them now. I speak them off my life. Now Lord, I ask You to set me free. Satan, go from my life in Jesus' name.

I've found that a very simple process to work through. You don't have to remember lots. I find it hard, if I have lots of written prayers, to be able to feel the flow of the spirit in it. I like to be able to flow out of a revelation in the spirit, rather than trying to have it a routine. Some like a routine, have it all written down. I've found it helpful if you can just remember the key parts, and stay in the flow of listening to God as you speak and pray. So the first part - we'll just go back over it again - the person has to own responsibility, it is my problem. I'm not blaming anyone, I've just come to own my part, and get set free. This is a crucial one, and most of your preparation is around that. The second thing is then, I lead them to profess their faith in Christ; Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I come to You in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, from every curse, every evil spirit, every sin. It's all broken, in Jesus' name. I belong to Jesus Christ wholly.

Now that's like making a profession of faith. Now I repent of the sin, I turn to You and confess Lord, I'm asking for Your forgiveness, and I choose to release forgiveness. I hold nothing in my heart, no judgement, no bitterness. I renounce all bitter judgements and all inner vows that I have made, anything that's locked my life up to this thing. Lord, I renounce the cursings that are over my life. I speak them off, I cancel their power, any agreements - and think back that there may be someone's made agreements with the demons, someone has actually entered into covenant with the demon. We don't know what people have done, as the Holy Spirit leaves. Some people cut themselves, and have blood lettings to demons. That's very powerful, and so we need to just renounce them all, because the blood of Jesus is more powerful than that. Then finally resist, I take a stand to resist.

So in ministering to people that part, if you can get the heart prepared then the ministry of deliverance is quite easy. It's just breaking the curses: in Jesus' name I just break that curse, I command that spirit to go in Jesus' name. Okay, so how are we doing? Why don't we just stand up and move around, have a break for five minutes.

Great, okay. One of the things you'll realise as we look at the work of deliverance, we need the Holy Ghost. There is just too much that's covered that you wouldn't know. You can't do it without the presence of the Holy Spirit. That's why I got you in your first exercise, it was just getting used to flowing with the Holy Spirit. We'll do another one of those before we finish this morning, and then this afternoon we want to look at the whole area of just actually deliverance, what it would involve. Okay, how many have already become aware, I've got some issues that I would like to have sorted out? Okay, that's great, so we'll have some time to minister and pray today, but some of these things, there's a journey on them, and there are two approaches; one is we just believe God together, we lead you through prayer, and have a time of ministry. That will bring a certain measure of release. There's another way of dealing with it, which is by process, taking one problem in your life and step by step dealing with everything that contributes to it, then removing the demonic spirits out of it.

This is where the course Prayers the Heal the Heart help with that. They take one issue and you walk your way down all the possible contributing factors, then deal with the demons around it. So there's no one way of doing things, and we're wanting to teach you about how to flow and to work with the Holy Spirit, how to work in deliverance, so I won't go into every aspect. We'll just keep you in just what I consider the basics. I want to have a look just at the issue of breaking bondages, bondages. Bondage, you think of someone tied up, as in bondage. In Luke 13, Verse 16, Jesus said ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bondage on the Sabbath? You've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but received the spirit that places you into sonship, by which we call out Abba, Father. So people can have bondages. Now there are a whole range of different bondages, but almost always they end up with issues in your heart, and what I want to do is I want to identify a number of issues of the heart.

The Bible says in Proverbs 4 and Verse 23, it says: guard your heart, because out of your heart flow all the issues of your life. Keep your heart, for out of your heart will flow the issues of your life. So in my work with deliverance over a number of years, I've found that the majority of problems were caused by legal rights, but the legal rights were formed not just by sin, but also by, in many instances, reactions people made to being hurt, so I've listed some that I have worked with. I want to just identify them for you so you become aware that these things are a bondage. It's not hard to break them, but you've got to recognise that it exists. When you recognise it exists, and exercise authority over it, it will break, and then if there's any demon attached to it, you can get it out. So it's only the anointing of the Holy Spirit can break the yokes of bondage, only God can do it, but He requires that we engage with Him in that journey. Let's go through and have a little look at some of the different kinds of bondages.

I've already referred to some of these. Let's just explain what each one is. Number one, an ungodly soul tie or soul attachment, see? A soul tie or a soul attachment, now a soul tie is a bonding between two people. God has designed us to be joined. We can join to the Lord, and be spiritually bonded to Him. We can join with people, and be bonded to people. It says this guy in the Old Testament, Genesis 34, Verse 3, he abused Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and his soul cleaved, or joined to her. So soul ties can be good, they can be Godly, a husband and wife are bonded together, parents and children there's a bonding together. Those are good bondings. Bonding is very, very important. When we become part of a church, there's a bonding. We get connected, we feel bonded, so a bonding is a crucial part of human development, the attachment. You find a baby that does not attach or bond properly to a parent, never forms good intimate relationships, so God has designed us for bonding and the first process or task any person has in life is to bond, so a child that doesn't bond will have huge issues later in life.

Then we need to separate and have our own identity, so if you can't separate and be your own person, you've also got problems. But soul ties have to do with bonding, a Godly bonding or joining together, husband and wife, parent and child, members of a church, good friends. For example, Jonathan and David were great friends. The heart of Jonathan knit, or was bonded, to David. They were great friends. We sometimes use the world soul mates, there's a feeling of connectedness, and to be separated would create distress - but soul ties can also be ungodly, and they can be demonic in origin, out of God's order, and when they're out of God's order, then stress, demonic activity, and pain and troubles start to take place. If a soul tie is ungodly, it's not in God's order, it's out of order, so for example, sexual relationships outside marriage, the two are bound or bonded together. That's an ungodly joining, and demon spirits can use it to harass people. A person can even be bound, or soul tied, to images. That's one of the deep problems with pornography, is the person gets bonded to sexual images, and there's a tie to an image that they see, a fantasy realm, or fantasising, and that whole realm, there's like a chord that's between them needs to be broken.

A person can be soul tied to a controlling person, so you get perhaps a father who's very abusive, controlling. There's a love/hate relationship goes on with that person. They're bonded, and the child often can't break away; or it could be a controlling mother, an insecure mother who just fusses over, and fills the child so much with anxiety, they can't seem to do anything for themselves. The result is the child is soul tied in an unhealthy way to the mother, and unable to break free. We call a person like that co-dependent, they're dependent on the approval of someone and they can't live their life out. They're soul tied to the one they're dependent on. Another one is if someone is abusive, sexually abusive, physically abusive or verbally abusive, the most extraordinary thing is to find how many women cannot break free of an abusive man. There has to be a reason apart from logical - I mean logic, you think why would you stay there? They just say I don't know. They just can't seem to break free, because there is a soul tie and a demonic power operating, and often a person who's in an abusive relationship needs quite some support to break free. Without the support of friends they just keep feeling obliged, or guilty, or duty-bound to go back.

People can even be soul tied to a dead person. What do I mean by that? Suppose someone has not bonded well to their parents, got a strong attachment with a grandmother or grandfather, and they die, and they never let go or grieve properly. Now one of the first phases of grief is shock and denial, so many times when a person comes into a grieving process, instead of journeying through grief, they actually stop and lock up at the first phase, denial, or the second phase, anger. They're just stuck in being angry, and denying the whole thing, so they don't journey through grief, through it's stages, to get to release, and they remain locked to the person they've lost. I have known of people who were soul tied to a dead child that they lost, to a dead spouse, to a dead parent or grandparent, even to a dead animal. They got so attached, and then the grief was immense, and then somehow their life just fell apart afterwards. So soul ties are very, very powerful, and if they're ungodly or out of order or distorted in some way, then demonic spirits can harass the person.

People can also be soul tied to an idol, so if someone's been involved in idolatry often a huge fear is of letting go of that idol, what will happen to me if I let go? People can be soul tied to a trauma, a traumatic experience, like an accident or an abuse. They can be soul tied to pornographic images. People can be soul tied through blood covenants they've made, they're soul tied to a demonic spirit or someone else, another person they've made a blood covenant with. Sometimes people can be soul tied through tattoos to the person who shed blood in the making of the tattoo. Tattoos can open the door for evil spirits. I'm not saying every person who's got a tattoo has got demons, but I have prayed for people, and when we broke the soul tie to the tattooist, and came against the spirits entering in through the tattoo, there was massive deliverance. Often it's because underneath it, there was a deep rejection or rebellion that was mobilising the person to get the tattoo in the first place.

Some of you here may have tattoos, or you've got them cleverly hidden. We're not condemning you, you have what you have. It's just helpful to be aware that all of these things can be doorways through which spirits can afflict people. So whenever there's a soul tie, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we just break that soul tie now, we hold the cross of Christ between those two people, and release you from it. It's quite a simple thing to do, just as simple as that. Imagine a cord between the two people - in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just cut that soul tie right now. I break it in Jesus' name, and as you're breaking it, begin to look in the spirit, look and allow God to show you what's happening. Often you'll find there'll be just a sudden release, command the spirit using that soul tie, to go.

Another one which is a very common one which I've found is a death wish. When people are in a lot of pain or trauma, they make a death wish, they wish I just wish I was dead. So when a person does that, and there's examples in the Bible; Moses did it, Elijah did it, in various times of stress. When a person makes a death wish, they can open the door to agreement with a spirit of death. I just wish I was dead, spirit comes around them and then they get numbed out, and disconnected, so often death wishes are made when a person's experienced sexual abuse, painful failure, I just wish I could die. A long period of extended stress and pressure, a controlling relationship and the emotional turmoil, they can't see a way out. They just I just wish I was dead, so when a person has a death wish, that thing opens the door to a spirit of death, and often subsequently in times of stress, they suddenly feel they want to die.

Then spirits of suicide will come around and say: oh well, it's the best thing, do yourself a favour, do everyone else a favour, just kill yourself. The person is tormented by demonic spirits of suicide, and despair, and deep self-rejection, so when a person makes a death wish, they've given up hope that God has a great future, and they could walk their way through, and they've rejected their own selves and they're saying: I just wish I was dead. A lot of teenagers get locked in this kind of thing, and that becomes a major problem for them, so when a person does this they become in agreement with a spiritual power, the spirit of death that numbs and isolates them. Maybe some of you have been through a time of stress like that, and in that time of stress and pain have started to say those things. You would have found that subsequently in life, when you're in stress, you'll easily tend towards become full of despair and hopelessness, and rejecting yourself, and then wanting to die.

If that's been the case, should just open it out, bring it out to the Lord, and let God help you with it. In dealing with a death wish, usually there's a pain that goes with it. It's helpful to talk about the pain and what happened, release forgiveness into the situation, and then renounce the death wish; in Jesus' name, I just renounce that death wish. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I cancel its power right now. I choose life. God is with me, life is good, God has a great plan for my life. So God is a God of hope, so when people lose hope, that's when they start to make these death wishes, and they're far more common that you realise. When people make them, they don't realise the agreement they've made with a spirit of death, and what it can open up in their life, so just be aware of that one. I just wish I was dead, I just want to die - so inevitably it has on-going impact in relational closeness, and the ability to form close bonds. The person will isolate, withdraw, and shut down, and just want to die.

Okay, we've gone all quiet on that one. I assume there's one or two have made those death wishes, so it may well be that that's something you just need to put a tick beside, or a cross beside, or a circle around, and say I need to, before the day is out, resolve that issue. Amen? Okay then, and you resolve it by acknowledging it, and repenting of that desire to die, and choosing life. I renounce that death wish. Okay, here's another one, a third one. The third one, which is a very common one too, is an inner vow, an inner vow. A vow, is a word you speak, which binds you to a commitment, like if people make a wedding vow, they speak the words out, and they make commitments to one another. An inner vow is words spoken into yourself, and an inner vow usually goes something like this. It usually starts with I'll never do this, I'll never do that, I'll never trust a man, I'll never trust a woman, I'll never go out, I'll never do this and do that. For example, one of the things I did as an inner vow, when I was a teenager about 14, I can remember it clearly, absolutely clearly, and we had to do this performing at school and stuff like that. I made an inner vow, I'll never sing anywhere in front of people. [Laughter]

So of course I had these problems inside me all the time, I couldn't worship, couldn't let go, I wasn't free until I dealt with the inner vow. You would never think now of course that, but on the other hand, that was what was there. There was just a deep shame and a struggle I was facing in early teenage years, and singing just exemplified for me, just being on display and exposed. I just did not want to have that kind of exposure. I made an inner vow not to do it. I remember praying with another woman, and she'd had a number of miscarriages, and she'd asked me to come and pray for her. I remember going there thinking God, this is so distressing, what do we do? I don't know what to do. The Lord said, the child she's losing is a boy, all of them have been boys. Tell her to ask her father to pray for her. That's all He told me, so I got there to the place, and we tried to comfort the couple. They were losing a child again, and there's a number of miscarriages. I said, what do you think the child is? She said I think it's a boy. Oh really, that's interesting. I said what about the other one? Actually I think they were all boys. I said well I tell you what, your father's a Christian. I said how do you get on with your father? She said oh fine, I love my dad and he loves me, actually I'm his favourite, and so I'm thinking, and I said: why don't you get your dad to pray for you then? No, I wouldn't do that! I said really, there's a lot of reaction there, what's going on in there?

So we began to talk, and then it turns out the family was incredibly dysfunctional, and the marriage was in problem, and the father had connected in an unhealthy way to one daughter, and the mother to the other daughter, and both daughters were messed up in different ways; one, because of the parents had transferred what should have been the intimacy of marriage, and put it on the child, and shared things they should never have shared, so the child felt controlled. I said did you ever, at any time, make an inner vow, I'll never carry a male child? She stopped and looked, she said yes, I did, I remember it clearly. She had made an inner vow, I'll never carry a male child, and so each child that she had, she just miscarried. Her body literally outworked the vow, and I believe behind it was a demonic spirit - so of course there are many other examples of things like that. But inner vows, vows spoken and made within, they're usually made in a time of pressure, stress, emotional pain, and/or loss, or tragedy in a relationship, and they often begin I'll never do that, I'll never do that.

Can anyone think of doing that, can anyone think that? Isn't it amazing. Can you remember what you said? Now just stop for a moment, and think back to when you made that inner vow. Were you in pain and stress at that time? See, well if you haven't actually come and addressed that, it's still operative, and so you'll have a block in your life to flowing into that area, because a demonic spirit will lock onto it, and hold you in bondage in that area. You'll try, later on you'll put it aside. It's like something you remember from way back. Now let me ask you this question: when you think about that area you made the inner vow, how many of you really have broken through to freedom in that area now? See, you may find not so many are free. It's like, I've got a struggle - how many would struggle still in that area? It's like I've got to really work at that. The fact you've got to work at it, and it doesn't flow naturally indicates a block. Things that we're free in, should flow in our life. When they're blocked, and the flow is blocked you know, or there's a resistance, there's something causing the resistance. What is it? If it's the inner vow why don't you just deal with it and address it, come and open your heart and acknowledge God, these things have happened to me. Lord, I was in such pain and grief, I just renounce that inner vow right now. I choose life. Amen.

So when we come back after lunch we'll start to go through some areas, and have a time of just some ministry, and see what God does. It'll be an interesting time to see what the Lord does. Amen - nothing like learning it through experience yourself and then you think ooh wow! [Laughs] Okay then, so there's another bondage of the heart which is a very common one too, and that is a bitter judgement, bitter-root judgements, or bitter expectations. It's like a negative belief that things are going to happen, and so in Hebrews 12, Verses 14 and 15, it says don't let bitterness get in your heart. It says something like this: let no man fall from the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring up. Now whenever you're in conflict you can either act in judgement, or grace. You can either bless people, and let it go, or you can judge people, and become bitter. That's really the options, so if you are in a conflict situation and you begin to judge, you often open the way then for things to happen, or a cycle to take place in your life.

In Matthew 7, Verses 1 and 2, it says do not judge, lest you will be judged. The judgement you judge, that's how it'll come back to you. The measure you give it out, it'll be measured back. So when you judge someone, you set in cycle, or you set in place, a cycle of sowing and reaping. Remember what it says: if you judge, it comes back to you, the same way. In other words, the very thing you judged, now you find you're experiencing the very same thing, it's the law of sowing and reaping. So when a person makes a bitter judgement it's like they expect that this is what's going to happen. It's like a negative faith. It will attract into your life the very thing that you actually have judged, so for example, you can never trust men, men will always let you down. So you notice most bitter judgements have the word 'never' or 'always' in it, never or always. When you hear the word always - well you 'alway's do that - that then tells you there's a judgement there. Well you 'never' do that - that tells you there's a judgement there, because you're not dealing any more with a single issue, you're dealing with a judgement.

If someone says you never do that, that's a judgement. If someone says you always do that, that's a judgement. How could it be true I never do that? How could it be true I always do that? It's just not true - so you know, you can never trust men, they will always let you down. You can see the two words of judgement in there, never and always. Now do you know what a person who comes to that - now usually a person who comes to that judgement, has had a bad experience, or some bad experiences, with a person, a man - so a woman would make a statement like that. She may have had some bad deals with her father, or with some person she's in a relationship with, and she gets very hurt, and out of all her hurt and resentment, she comes to the place, well never trust men, they'll always let you down. Now what happens is now is, now there's a judgement in the heart, and the Bible says if there's a judgement in the heart, you can't see clearly any more. You can't see the good, you can only see that, so for a person who makes a judgement, for a person who for example, who's got a spirit of rejection over their life, and they believe something like this: I'll never be good enough, nothing I ever do is good enough. Now you know what'll happen? No matter what they do, every time they look at it, they themselves will see the fault. They can't see the good, they just see the fault. Why? Because their heart resonates, it's not good enough.

It already is decided what the outcome is, it's not going to be good enough. A person who's, I'll never be accepted, or no one could ever love me, you know what'll happen? They'll enter relationship expecting to be rejected, and then whatever happens, they'll interpret it immediately through the judgement. I'll give you another example, it's quite an easy one to pick, and this is it. Suppose we have a person who's got a deep rejection in their heart, they have a spirit of rejection, but they've also got a bitter judgement in the heart. The bitter judgement is, no one accepts me or wants me. Then suppose two men are standing there talking, and I happen to walk in, I'm very busy, preoccupied, I walk by, go past them both. I'm on my way, and both of them say: morning Pastor, how are you this morning? And I just didn't hear, I just got preoccupied as I sometimes do and away I go and didn't hear. I didn't say anything to either of them, I just missed it, because I was focussing on something else. Alright then, now one of them will look and say: oh he's obviously preoccupied and busy, I'll catch him later. The other one will look at it and say: he doesn't like me.

Now one of them is seeing out of a pure heart that just sees, oh, he must be busy, he didn't hear what I said. Just there's no judgement whatsoever, it's just an observation - oh, he's missed me, I'll catch him later. The other one has re-read it through the eyes of a judgement, and has interpreted it completely different. You would be amazed how many conflicts in relationships come about because we judge, rather than observe. When you judge, you cannot see clearly. When I judge, I'm ascribing some motivation to you, which I have really no way of telling whether it's there. It's my judgement I'm putting on you, and I'll be tormented, so the two men saw the same event; one read it one way, one read it the other way, but it was the same event. How could it be both? It can't be. It was just something happened. It's how they judged it, is what made the pain and the torment for one, and the freedom for another. One said: it doesn't mean anything; the other said: it means this, it means he doesn't like me.

The one who says, it means he doesn't like me, is now tormented and demons keep tormenting him, and it just racks around in his day and day and day. I've had people come to me after two years and say you know, two years ago you did this. I'm thinking two years ago? I don't remember two minutes ago! [Laughter] You know, two years ago! How can you remember two years ago? They'd been in torment for two years. [Laughter] I'm thinking whoa! I remember a person who'd been in our church for many years and came and did that, and I was stunned you know, to think you've been tormented and sitting there angry at me for two years! I didn't have a clue, but the problem was they misinterpreted something. They actually put a judgement on it. Now the dilemma with judgements is, when you have judgements in your life, they are a conclusion you yourself formed, and you will live out of your judgements.

Here's one of the things about bitter judgements is they're like the opposite to faith. Faith brings in the good things of God, bitter judgements bring in the very bad things you expected, now are drawn like a magnet into your life. So even if the person is a good person, so suppose you get a young woman marries a man, and her belief is: you can never trust a man, they'll always let you down, then you know what'll happen? That man's going to let her down, and before he lets her down in reality, she'll accuse him of letting her down many times, when he didn't let her down at all. In other words, she will defile it. I'll give you an example. I was asked to counsel one person in Taiwan and I don't know why they asked me. They asked me to counsel them, so I asked what's the problem? She said well I've got this guy wants to marry me. I said well that's interesting. She said well, I've got a child. I said oh, that's interesting, how old's your child? She told me how old the child is. I said who's the father of the child? Oh, it's another guy. Okay, so tell me more.

Anyway she told the story and here's the story. She'd had a relationship with this guy that's now wanting to marry her, and the relationship broke up, she had a fling with someone else as a reaction, got pregnant, had the child, and now she's got the baby, and the other guy, the first guy is now interested in her, and now she's weighing up whether she should marry him. I said is he Christian? No. Oh okay then, why would you go ahead and want to do that? I said really, tell me why did the relationship break up? She said well, while we were going out together, he was unfaithful to me three times. I said really? Well is he Christian yet? No, no. I said well he's not changed then has he? He's the same person he was, he was unfaithful then, he's unfaithful again, so you're just asking for trouble. Do not do this. Then I said, tell me about your father, how's your father doing? How do you get on with your father? I don't see my father much. I said why is that? Well the parents broke up when I was a teenager. I said oh, isn't that interesting, you don't see him anymore? She said no, we don't get on too well. I said really, that's interesting - so tell me why did the marriage break up? She said he was unfaithful to my mother. I said how many times? Three times.

I said, can you not see, that you are having a re-run of the bitter judgement of your father? It's literally replaying in your life again, just like it originally happened. Your father was unfaithful with your mother, he betrayed your mother, betrayed you, the marriage broke up, and he has caused huge grief and pain to your life - and you have judged him. Now, you're drawing into someone who'd done exactly the same to you, and having broken free once, now you're drawing back in again to the same thing. You've got the conflict with your father, and this is defiling how you see this relationship. You know what she said? I don't see that. I said I'm sorry, I can't help you, because this is actually how it is. You have a bitter judgement against your father, and it's going to defile your relationships with men the rest of your life, until you actually address it. This is what the problem is. I said my counsel is very simple: do not marry the man. You've got a problem in your heart with all men, and you need to resolve that first. But she didn't see it, so I've no doubt she's carried on - quite a shame really, but you know, people - I was reminded again afterwards - I don't judge her for that. That's how life works, you know?

We make our choices - but how Jesus said: judge not lest you be judged, the same measure you judge, it'll come back to you. Then He said - notice this - He said hypocrite, first remove the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly, to get the speck out of the other. So what He's saying is, when you've got judgement, it's like a big beam in your eye and you can't see clearly, so if you want to see clearly in relationship, you have to remove judgement. Judgements are demonic doorways for spirits to come in, because Satan's the great accuser, so if you have a bitter judgement in your heart, it's a huge open doorway for an evil spirit to come in, so any time - so if it's a woman's got an issue with men, she's going to have trouble with men all her life, because every time they do something, the accusing spirits will accuse and wind it up, and next thing you know, it's in high drive and high emotions, emotions beyond what the incident called for. So if you ever see someone who's in a high overdrive in their emotions, well above what the situation called for, they have got bitter judgements in their heart, there's unresolved conflict in their heart, and demons have got a hold of their life.

The problem is not the demons. They're just energising what's already there, and making it worse. The problems are the bitter judgements, and the person needs to repent, release forgiveness, let go, and start to have grace, and extend grace to people. I'd really ask the Lord to help me to be a gracious person, to extend grace, and to walk in grace. It's not always the easiest thing to do.

Here's another bondage in the heart, that's the area of word curses, word curses. Word curses are words which are spoken with strength or feeling behind it, and if the person agrees with the words, then they agree with the demon that's behind it. In Proverbs 18:21 it says death and life are in the power of the tongue, so when you speak words, you have power to release things. Get this: the first use of words in the Bible was to bring something from the spirit world into the earth, into reality, so words, their first use, is to bring something from heaven into the earth, or from hell into the earth. So cursing, cursing words will always have an impact on people. One of the things that is a common form of cursing are words, names, calling people by names, abusive words, you know, you're a dummy, you're stupid. You'd be amazed how many people have got this thing going on in their mind, I'm stupid, I'm stupid - and here they are, capable, intelligent people - but I'm stupid, I can't do that. For example, one of the most common places we find it is this, when we run the Bible School. When we run the Bible School, do you know what probably half if not more of the people have a struggle with? I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I can't do study.

Where did they learn that? Who told you you can't do that? You're a Holy Ghost person now, you can do all kinds of things you couldn't do before - but no, there's a lock of words spoken over them, or words they've spoken in, or agreed with in their heart, I can't do this, I'm a dummy or I'm stupid or whatever and they've come into agreement with it. So word curses, particularly words spoken by a father, by a mother, by a teacher, by a Pastor, can have great power in behind them, and can carry on devastation in a person's life. I remember laying hands on one lady, and I put my hands on her head. The moment I put my hands on her head, I heard the words that were spoken over her, and I spoke them out. She broke down and wept and wept and wept, and we broke the power of those words, and she got delivered straight away of the curse that come on her life, so word curses, or judgements, or accusations that are made by people - especially in a family, sometimes one person gets scapegoated; it's your fault, your fault, and you know what? They get this thing in their mind, it's my fault, and so they've come into agreement with it, it's my fault, it's my fault. You know what happens every time a problem comes up? It must be my fault, it's always my fault. Then a despair, and a hopelessness, they're unable to resolve problems, demons are working around their life.

Okay then, then the last one I want to just bring out, is the area of burdens or expectations placed by others upon people. A burden is like a cargo, it's like a weight you carry, and it brings stress and pressure around your life. They can be a real thing that's on you, or it can be just something you perceive. For example Jesus accused the religious leaders, you put all these expectations or burdens on people, and it just weighs them down. Now some people have burdens placed on them by their family, and they can be around a simple thing like, you have to be here on a Sunday for lunch. Now having family times together are wonderful, but when it actually becomes something that's on you so hard, you dare not even break that, you've got a problem there. Of course the burdens can be quite intense and unrealistic, for example a person can have such - like the eldest child, there can be huge expectation on the eldest child, to carry the other kids. They can shudder under that, and become burdened under that, and it creates problems for them, then they feel responsible for everyone in life, and have no proper boundaries in their life.

Another kind of burden that's put on is, it's your fault. I mentioned that before, where someone's scapegoated or blamed all the time: it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault. Sometimes a mother who's got trouble with her husband, and she sees in one of the children the boy that looks like the husband, or carries on like the husband, often he'll be the butt of her resentment and bitterness, and the grief and frustration will be poured out there. The child grows up with an unreasonable burden, I'm responsible, when anything goes wrong, it's my fault. I struggled with that for many years, and had to wrestle, try and break that one off. Particularly if you're from a Catholic background, you can carry this immense sense of guilt and expectation, you're not good enough somehow, and it can be a very, very strong thing.

Another cause of burdens on people, is where a parent fails, and becomes the child, and puts the weight or transfers the parenting to the child. It's called parental inversion, so for example a mother's an alcoholic, or a father's an alcoholic, and one of the children has to arise, and in every kind of respect they carry the parent's duties, except in the bed. Then there's what's called parental inversion.

Now what happens then is, the child loses their joy of childhood, and there's this burden placed on them, so I have found it helpful just to break that burden of responsibility, and lead them in a confession to release the burden, and then we just break that weight of expectation off them. The last one under that list there, is a code of silence or secrecy, which often happens in a family where there's been abuse of some kind, or there's dysfunction, and we don't talk, we don't tell anyone about our issues, or we don't talk outside family. What happens is, the person becomes burdened. It can happen in church, where someone makes someone be secret about the counsel, or secret about things. This is all a burden, so for example - and if you're a leader you can be trapped in it - someone comes to you and says I've got something terrible I've got to share with you, and I just want to know I can trust you, that you won't share it. Will you promise you won't tell anyone?

Now my alarm bells go off when someone says will you promise you won't tell anyone, because it's likely what they're going to tell me is going to be a problem for me, so I have to usually try and say - it's not the same since I'm a senior leader, but when I was working in church in a leadership level, I'd have to say listen, I will respect your confidentiality. However if it's a serious matter, and I felt it necessary to refer it to someone above me, I will do that, and you have to trust that I'll use good judgement over that. If you can't accept that, don't share it with me. Now sometimes the desire to be in the know, can cause you to lack discretion and protect yourself, so if that person had said to me: well promise me you won't tell the Pastor what I've done - okay, I promise. Now they tell me, and I think oh my God, they're the worship leader, or this or that, or the youth leader, and they're sleeping with this person, and they've just told me. What on earth am I going to do? So next time I see the Pastor I'm in trouble, because I've got this burden inside me, and I'm tormented by spirits, because now my relationship is fractured, I can't be open and transparent.

Now I'm not talking about good sensible confidentiality in counsel. We're talking about being put a burden of secrecy you can't keep. It just burdens you and I have some people come to me, said I've been sitting on this for six months, and it's just weighed me down. They tell me what happened, and they were caught in a situation like that, and we break the power of that agreement they made, release them from the bondage, command the spirit of death - because there's always a spirit of death around it - to leave it. Sometimes if someone's been abused, the abuser will tell them: you mustn't tell anyone, if you tell someone you'll be responsible for the family breaking up. [Inhales sharply] and so they're caught. I want to tell someone, I don't want the family to break up, ooh - and they're burdened, tormented by spirits, and it's a huge relief to be able to get that veil of silence. It's a very simple thing, in setting people free we need to recognise what the bondage is, let the person renounce the bondage, speak it off their life, and then we pray and break the power of the bondage; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just break this bondage.

Okay, I've got a list of some details on that for you in the notes, on the How to Break Bondages. This afternoon we'll get into it and do some of it. How many of you, having gone through that teaching, would recognise that there are some areas of bondage that are sitting on your life? A soul tie? Just hand up and down - soul tie, ungodly soul tie, alright. A death wish, how many have got that sitting there around their life? Okay, some have got that. An inner vow of some kind? Okay, some have got that. Some bitter judgements against someone, against men, women, church, Government, authorities... let's go through it. It can go through against Maori, it can go through Pakeha, it can be racial in orientation, it's a judgement. It will always reproduce something. How many realise there's a judgement in their life around that area? Okay, quite a few. Alright then, what about words spoken, curses put over you, spoken over you, you're in agreement with? Okay, there's a few of them there, alright then.

How many of you have got burdens that someone else put on you, either blame or expectations or secrecy? How many have got something in those areas? Oh, okay, we've got hands going up all over the place, alright then. So after lunch we need to come in, and have a time to minister and pray for some of these areas, and in the praying and ministry we want to be aware of the Holy Spirit, sensitive to the Holy Spirit and we want you to learn. It's not a Freedom Retreat or a Restoration Restoration Retreat where the focus is on the ministry. The focus here is on helping you get understanding about how to minister, so that's the key is, how to minister, and one of the best ways is to get some experience of it yourself, okay?

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5)

Sun 8 Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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Simple dynamics of how to lead someone through deliverance, including dealing with some issues of the heart where demons are attached. Beautiful examples of healing encounters.

Okay, let's just come back to we'll have a look on Page 15, Section 5. We're obviously not going to get through the whole manual but we'll just do what we can in the time that we have. Sometimes it's better to see some things, than it is to just teach a lot about them, so I'll try and contain the teaching a little bit, because you've already seen some of the things we're about to talk about. You've already seen it take place, so we talked about Jesus' ministry, we talked about the whole work of the Holy Spirit in deliverance. We looked at Jesus' teaching on deliverance, we looked at an example of Him delivering someone, then we went on to look at how demons get into people's lives. We found some of the main doors of entry. We also looked at particular bondages of the heart that create avenues or ways people can be kept in bondage, and what it takes to break those.

Now we just want to look at a couple of things, want to look at the area of the casting out of spirits, just the simple dynamics of what to do, and then we'll look at just the area of the heart, and just dealing with some of the issues of the heart, how you would - just a way of going about doing it. Remember there's no one way of doing anything - this is THE way. THE way is to depend on the Holy Spirit, and be led by Him. All the rest is people's opinions on how it could be done, so different people have different ways of doing it, and there are a variety of ways, like for example we have most years an Encounter Retreat. We have what's called a Freedom Retreat, and we have a Restoration Retreat, which Pastor Lynne runs. These are encounters, so they are set up for spiritual encounters, so over the space of a Friday night, Saturday, and maybe into Sunday, every meeting is geared for an encounter experience. In those experiences where faith is lifted up, often there's a great atmosphere where God moves, and a lot of things happen that sometimes you didn't even teach about or anything. It's just God is moving, so encounters are great ways of getting freedom.

However it's also true that process is important, and once we're free we still need to stay free, so another way of doing it, is the process that Pastor Sargin and his wife Jess have been running, and that involves systematically going through some teaching, getting insight around the various blocks of the heart, leading up to identifying main root causes, and then ministry. And of course when you have that, you learn the process then of how to identify and track your problems to the roots. That's also a very powerful way, and various other people have different ways of doing it, so I just think we just take what we share with you, and then begin to explore opportunities to pray and minister to people. None of us at this level are experts. We're all just - we can handle just the basic things, and that's good - so we want to cast out spirits. So what is involved in casting out spirits?

I think probably the first thing is you've got to diagnose the problem. You have to find the problem first of all. Without diagnosing it - to diagnose something, is to try and find out what are the roots, what are the doors of entry that create the problems, so how do we do that? These are the kinds of questions you could ask. You might like to jot them down. What is the problem? [Laughs] That's the first thing: what is your problem? What is the struggle or difficulty you're having? You notice every person that came up, I asked them well what is the problem? The second question to ask is how long have you had this problem, how long have you had it, because if it's a lifelong problem, then you know it's possibly generational root cause. You notice when I asked Megan how long is the problem? Six months - we were then able to say what happened about six months ago? Oh, my mother died. Often we don't connect an event in our life, or something that we did, with the problems we're subsequently having. We just don't connect it, because it doesn't look like it's connected - so always ask: what is the problem? How is it affecting you? How long have you had it? Those are good questions. What's the fruit and the symptoms? How is it affecting you?

It's also helpful if you ask: have you been to anyone else? [Laughs] Are you currently going to anyone else - because I've found that someone may already have done a lot of work with them, then they wanted them to repent of a sin, and they didn't repent, and now they've come to you for a different story. So it always helps to find out if anyone else has been dealing with the problem, and I hate it when they come and say: I've been to 20 counsellors, now I'm coming to you. [Laughter] I tell them: I can't solve your problem. Only Jesus can, and you've got to meet His conditions, so let's get you talking about Jesus, and the meeting his conditions. [Laughs] So the next thing is, what possible doors of entry, what possible doors of entry? Now we've given you a list of possible doors of entry. It's helpful to keep those in mind; generational curses and iniquities, things in the family that are family origin. We looked at the area of sin, habits or patterns of sin. We looked at a range of other areas; sexual sin, occultic areas and some of the various kinds of trauma and so on, so we looked at a number of ways that evil spirits can get into a person's life. We looked at quite a few of those.

The last one is, what possible heart bondages are there, because this I have learned over the years, I used to just confront the demons and deal with the legal rights, but we need to not only deal with the legal rights. We need to look at the issues of the heart, where demons are attached, because when I used to go to Asia in my initial days, I found that we had a tremendous number of people delivered of spirits because of idolatry and generational curses, and the whole immersion of the culture in idolatrous roots. But what I've observed in the last 10 years, is an increasing number of people with major problems that come out of relationships in the family, and so I've realised that it's not just the legal rights issues around generational spirits, and so on. It's also the things that have gone on in the heart, in terms of reacting to how people are being treated, and so I identified a little while ago some of these bondages of the heart, which you need to be aware of, and need to address.

We've just gone and prayed for a few people, so you can actually see that it is real, that there is freedom comes afterwards, that there's deliverance involved in it, and there's also some kind of bondage you have to break. So there it is - what is the problem? How long have you had this problem? How is it affecting you? Then what possible doors of entry, and we begin to explore their background and so on, then what possible heart bondages? So you'd keep a piece of paper and identify those things. I don't always pray for people after the first time I've met with them. I say well look, I've observed a few things here, and these are the things I've observed. Won't it be good for you to just go away and pray and prepare your heart for ministry, so in other words, give God room, now that we've talked about the things, to work on the person's heart and life. So I've found it very helpful to do that. Sometimes I pray straight away, but often I don't. Often I say: why don't you just have a little bit of time to pray and ask the Lord and prepare your heart, because maybe there's people to forgive, maybe there's some issues of grieving, so I give them a bit of homework, to go and spend some time before the Lord every day, and maybe do some journaling, and ask them to prepare themselves for ministry. Then when they come, then we're ready to go.

Now when the person arrives, probably one of the first things I will ask is: what has God been saying to you? What is in your mind? What is it that's on the top of your mind at the moment? Often the very thing that they will talk about, is the key to get into their life. It's quite extraordinary, the one thing that's just at the top of their mind, the Holy Spirit has put there, so always we depend on the Holy Spirit. How would we do the ministry session? I would just usually explain to them look - I want to explain to them how to co-operate; I need you to co-operate with me. This is not about just me setting you free. This is about us working with the Holy Spirit, so we'd talk to them about how you can co-operate, and what their part is in it. I say the first thing is, you have to take ownership, this is your problem, and even if there are demons, it is your issue to bring to the Lord, with faith in your heart, believing for Him to help you. It's Jesus that can set you free.

We'd explain the grounds to be set free, that there's got to be repentance, you've got to bring sin - sin creates the legal grounds, so I'd explain to them you need to confess sin to the Lord. It has to come to the cross, otherwise the legal grounds remain there. I'd tell them about the need to release forgiveness, that unforgiveness will keep the person in bondage; the need to renounce or speak words, to cancel bondages or agreements with demons, and then to be quite proactive in resisting, quite proactive in resisting. So I'll tell them then, as we begin our ministry time, I'm going to lead you in a prayer, to acknowledge who Christ is, what He's done for you, and to dismantle the demonic legal rights. Afterwards I will pray for you. At that point stop praying, centre your thoughts on the Lord, and just co-operate in the process of deliverance. I've found it quite helpful if people cough, often just the act of [exhales sharply/coughs] it often can trigger off deliverance. Coughing does not deliver you. Many people cough, and they're not delivered - but coughing can mean act of faith in that kind of environment, that I'm resisting this spirit. So I tell them just to co-operate, not be passive, waiting, and letting me do something to them.

Always faith in the Bible always had a dynamic active element to it. They always did something - so then we begin and we start the ministry prayer, so commit our time to the Holy Ghost, ask Him to release His gifts and anointing, and we're ready to go. Holy Ghost, we just welcome You here, we need You, we depend on You. We just invite You to come with power, with revelation, to help us uncover and see the things we need to see. Anoint us so we can minister freedom - quite simple, and not a very hard thing. Then I'll lead the person in prayer. Now you notice each time, I got the person to pray something first of all, so if I was just going through a deliverance process with someone, the prayer I lead you through is the kind of prayer I'd use. It's broken up into these parts, quite easy to remember, first of all acknowledgement of Christ: Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus Christ. Now that's far more important than you realise. It's a confession, or profession of your faith. It's a standing up inside and saying: I'm in the kingdom of God, Jesus is my king, I'm into His dominion, I belong to Him. Everything around my life belongs to Him. I believe that what He did is enough to set me free - so it's a statement to the spirit world of where you are.

I have found it many times when I've ministered to people, they manifested right at that point, so it was just at that point the stuff started to come up. So number one, I get them to acknowledge Christ, and acknowledge what He has done. Number two, I get them to speak and just confess - Father, I just ask You to forgive me for this, this and this and this. I just repent of this sin, I ask Your forgiveness, and I receive forgiveness now. A person needs to not only ask for forgiveness, they need to receive. I thank You Lord for Your forgiveness, I receive Your forgiveness, I forgive those who've hurt me - maybe a father or a mother or someone who's hurt them. I release forgiveness to them, and I forgive myself where I've been involved. Sometimes with sexual sin people need to forgive themselves - so number one, the confession of faith; two, their sin issue; three, forgiveness issues, and then four, renouncing. I renounce every generational curse, I renounce agreements I have made, my family have made with evil spirits. I renounce them. I cancel them. I put the cross of Christ between me and the family line - and it's quite helpful to do that. That makes clear statements, if there's any agreements, I'm cancelling them right now. Those words are very important. Demons listen to the words, and they react sometimes angrily.

Then I get them to say now Lord, I call on You to set me free. I resist the devil. Satan, go from my life in Jesus' name. I've just found that helpful. Other people do it different ways. There's no one way, but that's quite an easy way to remember. It keeps in mind the foundations, repentance, release forgiveness, renounce, resist, and reach out to Jesus. Okay, so how when it comes to ministering to the person, what are you going to do? Where do you lay hands? Well, ask the Holy Ghost to show you where to lay hands. You can lay hands around the head like that. You could lay hands on the belly, often demons are around the belly area or around the head area, or maybe just on the back. But if you're going to lay hands on someone, just tell them what you're going to do: I'm just going to lay hands on you as I begin to pray. Ask people, treat people with respect, got to ask their permission. Then the first thing I tend to do, is to break the agreements. I tend to break the areas of where there's agreements, so many times I'm praying for people, there's agreements with freemasonry, there's agreements with idols, there's agreements with dedications. They may have had curses spoken over them, there may be soul ties over their life; in Jesus name, I just break that agreement, I break that soul tie, I break those inner vows. Speak and break things.

As you're breaking it, remember what I talked to you, that as you imagine, you open your inner man to what you're imagining, so I just see in the spirit, I see like there's these cords around them, and I'm just cutting them with the Holy Ghost. I'm cutting them with the sword of the spirit. I'm breaking them as I speak that word, so I sort of see it. This is what I'm doing; I'm doing that, I'm breaking that thing, and so we break those, and it's done very simply. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just break, I break soul ties, I break them. I break - it doesn't matter if you repeat yourself - I break them, I break them. Now you don't have to speak loud, you'll just lose your voice if you yell out. Demons don't care about loud, what they care about is authority. That's why I was talking to you about putting yourself into your words. You've got to believe that what you say will take place.

Okay then, so we break the bondages, generational curses, and whatever it is that we're dealing with at that time. Then you must command the spirits to go, so you can do it with your eyes open or eyes shut, it's just a matter of preference. If your eyes are open, you can see if anything's going on and observe it - so in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you come out. Now just raise the tone and energy of your voice, and speak right into the person. What I'll do is, I'll just get a few people up here, just so I can show you what I mean. I just need a group of people to come up, if just a group of you could just come up for a moment just so I can show you what I'm meaning. Just come and stand. You don't have to do anything except stand. Okay, you're the first up, here we go, come and stand right in front of me there. You just stand in front of me there. The others just come round, put your hand on her shoulder. You're the demons - come on, we need another demon, that's right. Come on, another one there, another lady come on over, that's right, okay.

Alright then. Now it just helps to understand, I want to just create a visual picture of what you're doing. What we're doing now is, we are praying and ministering to our sister. However, she has invisible spirit beings that have got a grip and a hold on her life, and the hold they have is through the legal rights or the traumatic experiences and reactions that go with it, and that's how they're attached. So what we're doing now is this, when we are leading her through the prayer to release forgiveness, what we're doing is we're breaking the holds of the demons one at a time. We're breaking the parts that they could grip the person's life, so now instead of actually being able to hold her and grip her and move her around, now we've broken those things off her. Now I've got to speak to the spirits. What you'll see with your natural eyes is just the person standing there. What you've got to be able to see with the eyes of your heart, or your imagination, is that there is an invisible spirit being, I'm about to address now.

So when you're talking with the person - I'm just talking with you, but when I come to ministering and dealing with the demon, now I will talk differently, and I'm in confrontation mode of a spirit, something inside her, so I will speak like I'm speaking to a specific person, speaking to a specific person, speaking to them - and in Jesus' name, I command you to go. So it looks like you're just talking to this person here, but actually inside, you believe firmly you are talking to a demon being, and you are engaging it. Now shaking her, hitting her, doing anything like that, is not going to do anything to the demon. [Laughter] There's a lot of abuse of deliverance. That's why it's created such a bad name, because people shake them, and they think by shaking them or whatever, it's going to make the difference to the demon. There is only one thing that will deal with the demon, and that is the anointing of the Holy Ghost, so Jesus said the words I speak, they are spirit, and they are life. So Jesus spoke words He meant, and the life of the Holy Ghost was in them.

Now you have to speak words, and you must mean what you say, so you speak to the demon: in Jesus' name. come out. So maybe a spirit of idolatry and you command that demon to come out - loose, come out in Jesus' name. Quite simple, no long words or anything like that - come out! Come out. OUT in Jesus' name. Don't just add Jesus' name. To say 'in Jesus' name' means, I am His representative, so I don't have to tack it onto everything I say, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name you know, the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. It's like superstitious, you understand, I'm just actually representing Jesus. I am in His name, and nature, representing Him, and so I don't have to keep using that. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ come out! Speak strongly. Now initially nothing may happen. Just keep reinforcing, just speak your command over more than once, and sometimes demons may actually start to manifest. Now if a demon manifests, it will show up in the behaviour of the person. Some people shut down all manifestation so nothing's seen, and it's all very quiet, that's okay. I just notice that when Jesus did it, lots of stuff happened. Maybe He had a reason for that, I don't know.

However I don't mind if there's a bit of manifestation, it doesn't worry me too much, but I manage it. I don't let it get out of control. So when we start to speak to the demons, it says in one case, in Luke 4, that the demon threw the person to the ground, and then came out. It looked like he was dead, and in fact in one case the child was thrown to the ground, thought he was dead, everyone said: he's dead! Then he just got up again like that - so it often looks like something dramatic has happened, whereas in fact all that's happened is the spirit's just protesting. When you're speaking keep speaking strongly, forcefully to the demon; come out, out, out! Arise inside, and you're being pushy. Understand what I'm saying? You're being pushy. You're pushing against something that's hostile. Probably the best way to describe it, is like this. If you saw a child, and there's a dog biting the child, you would feel very angry and upset by that, and you'd run in almost without regard for yourself, and grab that dog and begin to beat it, because your concern is for the child. Your concern for the child is so great, it overcomes your fear of the dog, and before you know it you're in there beating up on the dog, or hitting the thing and trying to get it off. Then afterwards you think, oh my God, what did I just do, you know?

So in a way we're beating up the demons. You're speaking the word of God to them, commanding them to go, so just keep it up. Go, go in Jesus' name. Now, expect that as you speak, that God will give you the names of the spirits, and you'll already have an idea because of what you've asked the questions on; spirit of death, spirit of this and that. Listen, be willing to have a go. What if you got it wrong? Don't worry about getting it wrong. You'll probably get more right, than you'll get wrong, just be better to have a turn, and ask the person afterwards how it went. So speak. Now if the demons start to manifest that can be a bit of a problem. When demons manifest, what that means is, what was invisible becomes visible. The demon actually begins to express itself through the person, so - if you just put your hands back on her again, that's right, you've got a hold of her, alright then. So if a demon began to manifest its presence - I've got them all, they're all shaking her there like that, that's it, there you go. Okay, now what would happen is, if you keep your eyes open, you can observe things, so these are what you're observing.

You're looking at the eyes. Now when a demon manifests through the eyes, there's some things you can have happen. One is, they get full of hate. Suddenly you look - ooh! That was a nice lady, what happened, you know? [Laughter] There's somebody else in there! The nice lady went, and suddenly there's something that's got cold hate, like a wild animal. That's the devil. That's an evil spirit, and that's what it looks like - cold and furious, and full of hate, or alternatively, suddenly the eyes fill with tremendous fear, so it can be fear or hate. Those are the most common ones that I see, or sometimes, the eyes will just flick up, and all you can see are the whites of the eyes, the demons trying to hide, does not want to look at you, because remember, you are representing Jesus Christ. Now you may think you're just you, but the demon sees Christ. You are dead, and your life is with Christ in God, so when you stand to minister in His name, and the anointing is on you, the demon just sees a blazing white light.

You read in the Book of Revelation, John saw Jesus, and His eyes were like a flaming fire, so great to pray Lord, I thank You, Your presence is in me, and my eyes like a flaming fire! Why not? They are. I was talking to one person, she said: I can't see you. She's standing there, that close, with her eyes open - she says I can't see you! I can't see you! I said what do you see? She said I see a blazing white light, and I can't see anything else. Isn't that amazing? So, you may think you're just you, but when you're standing in ministry, you're representing Jesus, and the demons see something different. They see Him in you, Christ in you, the hope that His glory will appear. Even if the world hasn't seen it yet, the demons can see it, and they hate it, they're scared of Him. Okay, so sometimes you see it in the eyes.

Alright, the next place to look for it, is in the hands. Now what you'll find happens is that your hands are just relaxed like that, but when the demons start to manifest, you'll see a couple of things that might happen. One is the hands go like a claw shape. When they're like that, that inevitably is witchcraft or some occultic power. It can go quite like a claw, or sometimes you'll find they'll clench up, and you see them closing up, like they're about to just break out in rage and fury - which they are - and you know then, there is hate and anger and rage. It's just all starting to manifest in the person at that time. Don't be frightened of it. You may find that their body starts to stiffen up like that, or you may find something in the mouth. Now what can happen in the mouth is that, sometimes I've seen a tongue go in a - you ever seen those snakes? I've seen exactly that with a human tongue more than once, more than once, and it's manifesting. You know when it's like that you know it's occultic of some kind, it's occultic, so often the way the spirit manifests reveals a little bit about what kind of spirit it is.

Sometimes it'll be like that, or sometimes the person may begin to roar - [roar] like there was a crazy roar - to try and intimidate you or they may scream, or they may threaten you, or they may speak to you. So all kinds of things can happen through the mouth like that. Another thing that they may try to do with their hands, clench up - the person may try and choke themself. It's like the demon's trying to stop the thing happening, trying to - I will kill her. I've heard them say that, I'll kill her. I've also said I'll kill you [laughter] more than once. Now just don't take any notice of what demons say, just persevere, continue. Be quiet in Jesus' name. Continue your work of deliverance. Don't be distracted by any manifestations. Just if need be, command them to be still, and carry on with the job of commanding the demon out. Once a demon manifests, you know you've got it beat already, and so I'll find sometimes they'll be incredibly defiant, and you'll almost be like, I've got it, you're in one another's face just looking at that demon, and then if you will just hold your ground - you have to arise inside, and hold your ground, you'll find suddenly the demon will look like this this way and that way, then they're gone. GO! [Laughs] Got you!

I've just many times, when it comes to that point, you feel like there's two people having done all, you're just standing, and then suddenly it begins to waver and then I'll push a bit harder it's gone, just like that. You've got to see it to actually experience it, the only other way to see it is you've got to experience it, to see some of these things happening. So the person may try and choke themselves so just restrain them, pull their hand away from themselves. I've had them also try and rip their clothes off, which is a bit unfortunate [laughter] and so it helps if you have someone with you, because it's hard to explain what happened. [Laughter] So ministry is best done in pairs, and there's a safety comes if you operate as a team, rather than trying to do it alone because one, you have a joint witness about what happened, and what didn't happen; two, it's safer for the person concerned because there's another person involved; three, you have joint strength, as we're two or three in agreement, there am I in the midst of you, and four, you have the anointing flow increases when you're working together in unity like that.

Of course if you're working in a team, one is praying and interceding and helping and assisting, the other is taking the lead. You can't have two people leading. If you have two people giving instructions, the demon just shuts down, and nothing will happen, so one must lead, the other supports. You can change roles if you need to, but at one time, one person leading. I've found many times, everyone's having a go, and it's just useless. Tell them be quiet all of you, just one person speak, the others just intercede. Getting the idea? So another thing that the person may do, they may begin to shake. Sometimes if a person has an unclean spirit, you may find that they just go like this, like they're trying to shake the demon out. Sometimes the person will just fall over on the ground - gosh, they've dropped to the ground. It does not mean they're delivered. It can mean the demon's just trying to get away from you, so you just go back down on the ground, and you lay hands on the person, continue to pray until you feel the Holy Spirit showing you. Okay? There we go. Well thank you, you've been very helpful. [Laughs] Thank you for the demons, give them a big clap, they did a great job, yeah. [Applause and laughter]

Okay then, so sometimes there are significant resistance, particularly if there's occult. The key thing is, if you can remove the legal grounds, the deliverance proceeds reasonably easily, without too much happening. So those are some of the manifestations that can take place, and I've had people jump, I've had them slither like snakes, I've had all kinds of things happen - had them jump around, had them even try and jump out of a window, so lots of things can happen. I quite actually enjoy it when things happen, great. However some people just speak and shut down, all forms of manifestation whatsoever, and I don't think there's a right way and a wrong way of doing it, but of all the things, preserve people's dignity, preserve people's dignity. Treat people with value, don't get caught up in the power kick of deliverance.

So how could you know if the spirits have gone? What would you do to know the spirits have gone? It isn't always easy to know, but there are several things. First of all, deliverance can be progressive, in other words, you may have more than one session or one time, like peeling layers of an onion off; two, think in terms of groups of spirits, rather than just one spirit, that you're dealing with at one time. There's often a group of them; three, how you can tell if they're gone, there's three ways I know of. One is ask the person, has it gone, and they'll tell you, yeah or no. The second way that you can try is, you feel the release. It's like you're pushing against something, and it suddenly quits on you, it's gone, then you know it's a release. The third way is the Holy Spirit just gives you a witness that the demon is gone. You have a sense inside of peace comes, and that turmoil's all gone.

Now in any situation what I encourage you to do, just keep praying in tongues, put your hand on her head, keep praying in tongues. One of the things I've done sometimes is just look them in the eye, say look at me, look at my eyes. I look in their eyes, and I rise up, and if there's any demons still in there it'll immediately manifest, so I think this comes with experience being able to work that out. Now it isn't always easy to tell the difference between an evil spirit, and emotional pain. It's not always easy to see which is which. All I can say is they look a little similar, however when it's demonic, it's got an ugly edge on it. It just looks something not right, it looks something really out of sorts, and it will yield if you speak to it. If a person's just manifesting emotions, and their grief and anger or rage or whatever, then it's an emotional expression. It doesn't yield to commands. It yields to the person's will, so if someone gets very emotional, or gets very upset, just calm the person down, deal with the roots again, some of the heart issues, and deliverance should be quite easy to do.

How come some people don't get delivered? There's always some, there's some don't get delivered, don't get healed, and the areas fall into two groups; one is problems with the person who's receiving ministry, and the other one is problems with the person ministering. So remember, we're not perfect at all of these things. No one's perfect at all these ministries - we've got to grow into these areas, and if you wait until you're perfect, you'll never do a thing. Some of the difficulties that arise from the person ministering; remember Jesus, the disciples came and said: we couldn't cast that demon out, how come? He said: because of your unbelief, so clearly preparation of the heart of the minister is quite important before you minister. Sometimes it's just lack of experience, you just didn't know what to do, and that's okay. Learn as much as you can from it, ask someone for some input and advice, and learn from there. Sometimes it can be just lack of faith. There just isn't the faith in your heart, and prayer and fasting, Jesus said, is the remedy for that, spending time with God. That's why the period preceding ministry it's quite good to precede it with prayer and fasting, because the person connects with God, and you connect with God. When you come together, everyone's anticipating God working.

Sometimes it's an unresolved legal right or sin issue in the person's life. Sometimes there's just something they didn't tell you, and you've got to ask God to show you what it is that's hindering that process, or ask the person, is the Holy Spirit showing them something, because God can reveal in the process, the issue quite simply. I remember when I was praying with one person here, they suddenly remembered something, it came to their mind. The Holy Spirit can just - it's His job to bring things back to mind. Sometimes, the reason the person doesn't get free, is because the foundations haven't been laid; lack of forgiveness, lack of repentance. Those are the big ones; sins still there, unforgiveness still there, the person doesn't get set free.

Okay then, so the second is the area of the person themselves. Now I have found I guess when dealing with people, the prime reason I've seen people not get set free is they just didn't front up and deal with sin, or they didn't forgive. Those are the big ones. However sometimes the person is quite passive, shut down, and they just come up - okay, I've been to 20 people, now you do your thing. This is not going to get anything from God. There's just a lack of faith and expectation. Sometimes we have not dealt with the foundational issues in their life, and that's why if we haven't dealt with the root system, so sometimes that's why it's there. Sometimes the person's just too passive. They stand there and they're passive. You know what? I can tell when people are hungry and drawing - faith has a draw. Faith draws something from God; passivity, the person's will is not engaged, they're just oh well here we are, just see what happens. Sometimes God will surprise them, but most times nothing happens, because God works where there's faith expectation. Getting the idea? Okay then, so those are some of the reasons.

After deliverance you need to just recognise you will be a bit tired, your body gets a bit sweaty and whatever. You get tired, so have a good shower and have a good meal, have some protein so you replenish. Deliverance takes energy out of your body. Have some good protein, and have some good rest. Your spirit, if you do a lot of deliverance, I've found sometimes I'd get so defiled, I'd pray for so many hundreds of people, I just get sick of it. I just feel dirty and grubby and horrible, and I think I never want to pray for anyone again. It's true, I just feel like that and it's just because your spirit is shocked by the engagement with the unclean, and the violence, and all the stuff that goes with it, the grief, the turmoils that go in deliverance ministry. I've found it's very helpful if you're like that, to just spend time in worship, time with the Lord, rest and refresh - but of all the areas perhaps the one that's the difficult one that people forget is the area of your soul, your emotions.

Now when you get involved in ministering to people, it's not only draining you spiritually and physically, it's actually draining in your emotions, and so I find often after ministry, I'm quite vulnerable and quite drained. I don't really want to talk too much to people, I want to actually recover. Everyone has got to learn how to recover your soul. You know He restores my soul? It's not just deep kinds of issues we've had, it's also just being refreshed in your soul, and I have found that to go near nature, or to go to the sea, deeply refreshes my soul. I can move in the spirit better after a good day's sleep, and a time out in a boat, better than if I spend the whole day in prayer. Now it doesn't sound right does it, but actually, if you understand the flow of the spirit comes through your soul, if your soul is in turmoil, then the flow of the spirit is affected by that, so I have found it's important to properly restore your soul, or you become vulnerable to temptations, vulnerable to oppression. You feel often quite down, and sometimes quite rejected after ministry time. It's quite an unusual experience. Once you've had a time when you've prayed for someone extensively, you'll understand what I mean.

So it's important get your body to have a good sleep, get some good food inside you, and then restore your soul, get something you enjoy doing - nature, craft, something you just relax doing, for some it may just be sitting in a hot pool, some it may be just do some shopping, whatever it is that restores your soul. I've found movies seldom restore you soul, unless it's comedy. Comedy gets you laughing, and that can restore your soul, but dramatic movies just distract you, but don't restore you, and so often after ministry I find I'm just so out there I may just watch television, but it does not restore my soul. It just helps me come down a bit, so Joy will say what are you watching? I say I don't know. [Laughter] I don't know, just flicking channels I think. I'm just coming out of where I've been, because I've been ministering for too long, and been in that realm for too long. I just find I just need a way. Now everyone's got to learn how to manage their body, soul and spirit.

The last thing I'll touch on there is, what about demonic attack? Do you get attacked by demons? Do we get attacked by demons? Of course! You're in a war, you're attacked by demons whether you like it or not. You're living in a war zone, so doing deliverance am I likely to get a bit more? Yes, of course you get a bit more. So what would it look like? Well, if you're going to get pressure from evil spirits, you'll get it three places, or three different timings; one is before ministry, one is during ministry, and one is after ministry, so how about that. [Laughter] However, it's just because they don't like you doing this. They take offence, that you would dare to invade their ground, so in getting involved in deliverance you're declaring war on demons. Of course they're going to fight back. They're not going to walk way. They're going to push on you to see what you've got, what are you made of. Let's test you out a little bit. Here's the thing: God says you'll never be pressured or tempted beyond what you are able, so there are some things that you need to just aware of, so let me just give you a few of those things. Let's see if I've got them written down. Oh well, I haven't got them written down but that's okay, I can just explain them to you.

So before ministry, this is what often happens before ministry; high levels of agitation, high levels of agitation. So what do I mean by that? Your spirit gets on edge. You get edgy, and you get irritable. How many know that you can have different sensations in your spirit? How many of you have woken up, and you were singing a song? That's a worship sensation. You've been engaging God in your sleep, in your spirit, and now you're in a place of worship, you wake up singing, alright? Okay. How many of you have had a situation where you're on high alert inside, and agitated or slightly anxious, but not sure why? That's spiritual conflict. You're in a war. The fact you're not too sure what it is, or where it is, doesn't mean you aren't in one. It means demons have come near to you, and they're about to push on you, or are pushing on you, and the feeling you have in your sense is to be agitated inside, and on edge, edgy. So whenever we have anything of significance, spiritual things happening in the church, I'll find times when the prophetic is moving, edgy, or get a little - there's a sort of a stir inside, and you're on edge and you don't know why, like something is about to happen, but you've no idea what's about to happen.

You can get a little tense and a bit short with people, so when you get like that you need to be aware you're under spiritual attack, and the remedy is just to pray in tongues, and rest in the Lord. You've got to learn to just speak in the spirit, and rest in the Lord, speak strongly, subdue whatever's there, and rest in the Lord. The other thing that can come up is, you can have this overwhelming sense I don't want to get involved in ministry, why did I ever think I should say yes to that person? I should never have done that. You just don't want to be involved, so all of that is the kind of stuff you can have, and then things go wrong, like for example the last two seminars - I think it went alright this time, you must have got the breakthrough then - but the last two seminars the machines broke down. We run hundreds of things through the machine and nothing goes wrong. You put one of my manuals in, and produces half of it and the rest is blank. Now what is that all about? You can't get it to come right - until Sargin prayed and then it came right.

We had a problem in the sound gear. Sound people do well in the world. They learn their stuff and they do their stuff, you come into the church and it's just got something else to it that no one told me about. It's called demons [laughter] and something can go well, then you don't even touch it and it's suddenly changed. How did that happen? There's a spiritual influence around what we do, and so often when we have meetings like this, I'll have unusual pressure come on me through the week. Lyn would know this, Sargin knows that, Joy knows it, we all know. We've been around a while, we just know oh ho, yeah, we've got a meeting coming up, demons are getting agitated, must be going to be good. [Laughter] You know, just go for it, so the tough get up and get going. So during ministry you can have some demonic pressure come on you as well. This is all it amounts to; in the middle of ministering, you can just have this overwhelming feeling, I just want to quit and go home, I've had enough, I'm out of here. Now you'd be surprised, it's so simple, but it can just overwhelm you, just like that. I don't want to do it anymore, I've had enough.

I've been amazed, very often when I've been in ministry calls, almost the whole ministry team quit on me, just gave up, just left me to it. You'd be surprised how many - have you had that Lyn, they all give up? They all give up, and you find you've got hundreds of people to pray for, and the ministry team pray for a few and then they quit, they gradually walk away and they're all gone. You think what happened? And I'm just left there with all these people, because they came under spiritual pressure, and just quit - so quitting is one thing.

A second thing that can happen is, you can get an immense block in your mind, so you can go up to someone and say hello, I'm so and so, what's your name? They'll tell you, well I'm Jeff. Then about 30 seconds later you cannot remember who you're talking to, and you can't remember what they said they came for. It's like blank. Your mind goes totally blank, and you think whoa, then you feel a bit dumb. [Laughter] I might have to ask again, I've forgotten. How could I have forgotten, they only just told me. But what it is, it's witchcraft operating, and the witchcraft freezes your mind. The witchcraft pressures on you, and you just get confusion in your mind, so sometimes when you come to pray for people, you'll feel all this confusion come around your mind. It is just witchcraft, and all you've got to do is very simply, just step back from the person, pray in tongues, [prays in tongues] You don't have to pray loud, just stir your spirit up praying in tongues and reaching out to the Lord again, just consciously resisting that demon. Let the flow of the spirit come, and then suddenly your head will clear - or you might just do this. You might say in Jesus' name, I take authority over witchcraft and unbelief. That's the other one, they're what you call blocking spirits. They block the flow, and I've found sometimes just that, was enough to unlock something to happen. Interesting isn't it?

The another thing that can happen, is you can have the most outrageous sexual temptations while you're in ministry, right in the middle of praying for people. You're supposed to be the holy person praying and bringing deliverance, and suddenly this ghastly stuff comes into your mind. You think where did that come from! Straight after it of course comes condemnation, and the reason is very simple, that many of the people are carrying unclean spirits, and so you get there, and you're starting to engage them, and the way they engage you is they fill your mind with pictures, then straight after condemn you, to try and get you to lose confidence, so you'll either be distracted, and give in to the temptation in some kind of way, or you'll just get condemned, and lose your authority in ministry. Most people don't talk about it, but that's what goes on, it's what happens, and it's outrageous. I mean you'd be surprised how many times people are worshiping in church, and suddenly unclean sexual things come into their mind. In one church I got them to put their hands up, and I had about three-quarters, almost all the church put their hands up. They were all astonished, because everyone thought I'm the only one who's got that problem, I'm really bad.

Can you understand, it's just the demonic realm. They just work in a predictable way, so those are some of the things you have during ministry, and the pressures that come upon you just during the flow of ministry. All you do is step back, pray in tongues, rise up in your spirit and go back again and continue to pray. Then the last thing is after ministry, so pressure can come on you after ministry, and the pressures that come on you after ministry are very simply, because one, you're physically depleted; two, you're emotionally depleted; three, although your spirit may be stirred up, you do need to recover, and come before the Lord. So the kind of things that happen after ministry, is that you can - here's what you can feel, now get this: you can feel immensely rejected. You can feel a total loser [laughs], and totally rejected, and of no value to anyone or anything, and you just think that's it, I've had enough, I'm not even going back to church.

Now you'd say: how could it be possible? Yesterday you were casting out demons and oh, there's this mighty thing happening! Today you're about to cut your throat, what's going on? [Laughter] Well there's Biblical precedent, have a think of Elijah. One day he's up there, calling fire from heaven and he's killed all the prophets, next day he's under a tree depressed and wanting to take his life. This is demonic attack, and so demonic attack after ministry can affect you, because you become more vulnerable. You become vulnerable then, you're emotionally depleted, and so what happens is, you may feel overwhelmed with feelings of rejection. That's very simply - it's actually quite simple, and the remedy is very simple. The problem is you're just emotionally depleted. Just go do something that refreshes your soul, and have a good sleep, and you'll feel much better. That's all it takes, it's nothing really deep, just something simple like that.

When you are emotionally depleted, old issues come up much more easily. You feel of no value, and you've just got to restore your value again, so shout yourself out, do something nice, do something that makes your soul restored, and step back up again, and you'll come right, so that's one way. Another way is you can become vulnerable to temptation, because you've just come on a high of having good experiences, the next thing the devil's on you, and before you know it you've fallen into some old temptation. Then you think oh oh! Then he condemns and oh! You think what's the use of me trying to... but this is the war that goes with ministry, so once you've been in it a little while you just learn; okay, going to do some ministry. Before you go there you're going to have a bit of pressure, during it you may have some stuff; afterwards you may have some stuff. Wake up, it's a war, this is what it means to be in ministry, and this is what Paul wrote to Timothy: endure hardness as a good soldier of the Lord.

So those are some of the things that come upon you in ministry. Now you think you're the only one who has this? We have them all the time, it never stops. I can get sick, I can have things happen, I have things go wrong, I have stuff happens just on my way into ministry. You'd be surprised how many times just before I get to minister, I've just prayed up in the right place, and suddenly some terrible thing will happen, and I'm just torn apart with this conflict between wanting to do something for God and this personal thing I've got to face, now that's very difficult. This is ministry. In ministry you can be having God moving wonderfully in one part of your life and the other part is a total disaster and you don't know what to do. You think how can it be like that? Listen - and the temptation is to be preoccupied with yourself, and stop doing what God called you to do. This is why so many Christians get defeated by that. The devil just puts a bit of pressure on them, they have a bit of misery at home, something goes wrong, there's a conflict, upheaval, and then they quit. They don't understand, you didn't quit, you just got knocked out and KO'd by a devil, and you didn't get back up. Why don't you get back up? Oh, I didn't feel I was good enough. Who told you that? The devil. And you believed him? [Laughter] Get up! Just get up again.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, though he fall, he'll not be utterly cast down, the Lord will lift him back up again. Righteous falls seven times, and the Lord lifts him back up again. God just wants you to get back up again. Don't worry if you have some mistake, failure, whatever, they're all dealt with at the cross. Just get quickly in before God, put it right, and get back up again. What honours God is you getting back up, and getting in the fight again. You've got to remember this. He left the demons for us to clean up, he left them for us to clean up. He said I'm authorising the church, go clean them up, sort them out, so if we don't do that, then we're missing out the privilege. This honour have all the saints, it says in Psalm 149. This is an honour. This is an honour, that Jesus won the victory, and we would now go out and enforce the victory, and make demons yield to us. No wonder they come back saying WHOA! Demons are subject to us in Jesus' name. He said well don't get excited about that, get excited your name is written in heaven, you're part of a great and a coming kingdom that's going to fill the whole world. Amen. Great stuff. Why don't we give the Lord a clap? Don't you - I feel excited already. [Applause] Halleluiah! We love You Lord. Glory! Yes, Lord, oh my.

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Okay, right, just before we just finish our last session, firstly I want to just express appreciation to Horowai, who has set up and organised the sound [applause] and the videos. He doesn't just do the work here, he brings them together afterwards, and tries to make sense of them and clip them and puts headings and tails on it and makes it into something you can get hold of, a DVD later on. So for one hour here, there's about 12 hours goes into getting it all ready, so there's a lot of work goes into that, so really appreciate you Horowai for what you're doing in that area. We trust the resource will all be available for people eventually. [Laughs] I won't put a time - four hours is it? What? [Laughter] [Years!] Four years? [Laughter] I'm going to talk to your wife. [Laughter] I think we can shorten that quite a lot. [Laughter]

We also want to thank Pastor Sargin for setting up all the room, making sure everything was all ready, and arranging all the [applause] things that happen, and for getting something printed off. [Laughs] All the battles he's had to face getting the things printed off and all ready to go, appreciate it very much you made all that happen. You've just made it so I can walk in, and the seminar's all here ready to go. Thank you for everything and getting all that done and for the team that you've had - who have you had working with you with the afternoon teas and... Josie and Jerial, Okay, Dot's gone is she? Okay, well thank you each of those who were named then, want to give them a clap and [applause] just appreciate them, thank you very much.

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Okay, now you can see we've only really scratched the surface around all of this area, but you've got enough to get started. You've got enough to get going. If you wait until you learn it all you'll never do anything. Learning is a constant journey of experience, so I would be praying God bring some people into my life that are ready for me to pray for them, in other words they're at the level that I need. Now I've observed over the years, God just brought them into my life and every one that came in, difficult or not difficult, was exactly what I needed to learn some lessons. I just learnt, I just considered the Holy Ghost is the teacher, He wants me to learn. If I'm open, and will respond and serve people He brings into my life, I can learn, and wherever you are you can learn and take another step. You know enough now to even talk about this stuff. You'd be amazed how many people have spirit experiences and don't know what to do with it, so we've tried to focus primarily in this one around deliverance area and touch - because you have to deal with heart issues, we've had to touch into some of the heart issues.

I'm going to get you all just to pray and minister to one another shortly. Before I do I want to just pray - I'm going to minister to Sharon so Sharon, like to come up here? Sharon was sharing an experience with me over the afternoon cup of coffee, so what we'll do is we'll get Sharon to share the experience, and then we'll just pray and see what God will do. We can use her experience in this opportunity to minister, we can use it just as a way of learning together. You happy about that?

[Sharon] Yes, I'm happy.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, you'd like to tell me - you were telling me about something happened when you were young.

[Sharon] When I was very little just before I was born, my dad was driving his truck and he went around a roundabout, and I was intra womb and my mum flew out and landed on her back on the road, because they didn't have seatbelts in those days, and I was born a couple of days later premature. I wouldn't nurse very well because I was tongue tied, and my mum reckoned I screamed until she put me a bottle two weeks later. When we were reading some of the stuff going through one thing this morning, I was looking at the trauma stuff and I just started to cry, and I didn't know why.

[Pastor Mike] Mm-hm, okay.

[Sharon] That'll do?

[Pastor Mike] That'll do, that's plenty. That's enough, that's enough, alright. Bruce, like to come up and just be the catcher? Okay, so I thought that, with Sharon's permission, we'll just pray and ask the Lord to touch her, because clearly this is not a trauma that she had when she was outside the womb. This is actually a trauma within the womb, and yet clearly the signs of something of wrong are there, the fact that she didn't bond, that there was tremendous conflict between her and her mother over the bonding issue, and that of course will have had issues for you all your life. Yeah, and her mother must have got a horrendous shock, in falling out of the vehicle, being that late stage of pregnancy, so there would have been a tremendous shock and fear come into the mother; child would have known about it, and then Sharon will have carried the impact of that all her life. But often we think that's just how I am, and so we don't think well maybe actually something's happened that affected me, so we need the Holy Spirit to come.

Now I don't know all the damage that's been done, I don't know all that's been done but the Holy Spirit does. He brings things back to memory, and you notice that Sharon had no conscious recollection of this event - I've never heard her talk about it in all the years I've known you - and yet in looking at the materials, suddenly it came up, and she felt tears. That means God is speaking to her, tears are the language of the heart, so she felt the tears, and she was honest enough to share it with me. So what we'll do is we'll just ask the Holy Spirit to come, and just help with the situation and it's a great opportunity for us all to learn. Can I just take your hand? Thank you. Just close your eyes now. Holy Spirit, we really need You. We're aware that there's been a great shock and a trauma take place in Sharon's life, right back there at this point of an accident Lord, where her mother just came out of the car and fell on the ground. Lord, we don't know all that's happened but we're asking You to come Holy Spirit and to come upon her now, right to that point of trauma and to begin to start to touch her life, make Jesus very real to her. Lord, we just ask You and invite You to come right now, Holy Spirit come. [Prays in tongues]

Now just allow yourself to enter it, it doesn't matter if there's tears, let the tears come, let the tears come. What's happening? Can you tell us what's happening?

[Sharon] I feel scared.

[Pastor Mike] You feel very scared, so there's a spirit of fear has come into your life at that point. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I break all soul ties to that trauma, I break them, I break them, I break them. I command that the fear of death, spirit of fear, I command you right now come out of her, out of her now! Come out now, out now, out, OUT in Jesus' name. Release her in Jesus' name right now. That's right, out, out, out. Fear, tormenting spirits of fear, come out now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. We speak to every spirit that used that opportunity of trauma to enter your life, I speak to each of you now, I bind your operation in her life, and I command you to let her go and release her now in Jesus' name. Let her go. I break every lie it's not safe. I break every lie it's not safe for me. I break it over your life right now in Jesus' name. Now Holy Spirit, just come, come and bring healing and restoration into her life. Come Holy Spirit, come into that situation.

Just keep looking for the Lord, see what He's doing now. What are you becoming aware of? What are you seeing?

[Sharon] Jesus is reaching His hand out to me.

[Pastor Mike] Where are you?

[Sharon] I don't know.

[Pastor Mike] You don't know, but Jesus is reaching out to you?

[Sharon] I'm trying to get to Him.

[Pastor Mike] You're trying to get to Him. Why don't you just let Him get to you? Just let Him come to you, let Him come to you. [Pauses] What's He saying to you?

[Sharon] He's holding me.

[Pastor Mike] He's holding you, He's holding you in His arms.

[Sharon] I'm just a little baby.

[Pastor Mike] You're just a little baby, He's holding you in His arms, so what are you feeling?

[Sharon] It's safe.

[Pastor Mike] It's safe.

[Sharon] Secure.

[Pastor Mike] And secure.

[Sharon] And protected.

[Pastor Mike] You're protected. Enjoy that feeling.

[Sharon] It's just too beautiful

[Pastor Mike] Thank You Lord. Now just listen for Him to speak to you. [Pauses] Thank You Holy Ghost. [Pauses]

[Sharon] He said it's going to be okay.

[Pastor Mike] It's going to be okay, that's what He's saying to you.

[Sharon] It's fine.

[Pastor Mike] It's fine.

[Sharon] And I'm going to sing you a lullaby.

[Pastor Mike] He's going to sing to you, going to sing to you a lullaby. Isn't it interesting, He's interacting with you like you're a child? Thank You Lord. Just let Him minister to you, let Him minister, here it is, oh Holy Ghost just come, more and more and more and more in Jesus' name. It's alright, there we go. Isn't it interesting? Very powerful. How many could feel the presence of God starting to come and engage? So whenever we have a traumatic experience, it's retained within our soul and experiences which we have, we remember the experience, we have the memory, we have the feelings, we remember the feelings. Notice she had feelings of fear? We remember how we reacted, and we also remember what kind of response we make, so all of those things are recorded in our memory. The more powerful the memory is, the more powerful the event is, the greater the impression it makes on a person's life, so when it's a major trauma it makes a deep impression, and often the soul becomes shattered, and parts of the memory go all over, so the person - I don't remember a thing.

The Holy Ghost just brings it all back together, and suddenly they're there, they're in the event and the feelings of fear, everything related to the event starts to come back again. At that point God overrides. Now He never takes away our memories. What He does do is helps us to see a different perspective, so when you're in a shocking event, you see it from a perspective. You just see what you see, like Elijah's servant came out and he saw all of the armies of the Syrians surrounding them, and he says oh, we're overwhelmed, we're overwhelmed, we're overwhelmed, what are we going to do? We're going to be killed. Elijah prayed and said Lord, open his eyes so he can see that there's more for us, than be against us. The Syrian Army wasn't taken away, but God opened his eyes, and he saw the angels and chariots of fire, and so now his perception of it is changed. Now yes, the armies are still there, but now fear and concern about what's going to happen is all taken away, because he's seen from the spiritual realm God's amazing provision, and it's going to be all okay, so he came to a place of rest.

Notice the circumstances haven't changed, the perspective changed. The vision he saw shifted how he interacted with the problem, and that's how God does a lot of healing work. He will return us back to the picture that we had, no matter how frightening it was, and we'll begin to feel the feelings and emotions of it, then He comes into it. The Lord comes into it, and we see it differently. We see it with Jesus there, and usually He speaks something, and what He speaks is a rhema, it's a living word, and this brings healing and restoration and shifts us. Often of course there are emotions come, sometimes there are demonic spirits attached around it, so you notice I started to speak to some of the spirits at one point, but then it was God engaging her, and that's how it is. Now you notice it was not a lot of praying or heavy work, it was actually the work of the Holy Spirit, and just facilitating it. She's quite prophetic, quite visual, so she easily was able to enter into the picture of it, and already we know God was on it, because He was causing feelings stirred in her heart at that time anyway.

So when you go through a course, often God can stir things that you'd forgotten about, because it's your time to deal with it. Then you bring it to Him, and allow Him to come in. Now what people generally or often do is they remain stuck, and they get stuck in trauma, stuck in the grief, stuck in the pain of the situation, and stuck in their reactions, often tormented by spirits, and then they just get stuck there. Then all through their life, anything that reminds them of that, immediately triggers off reactions, until we allow the Lord to help us. Now to allow the Lord to help us we've got to be willing to go into the trauma again, this time not alone, but this time with the Lord. I didn't try and tell what was going to happen, or how it would happen, we just invited the Holy Spirit to come, and let Him do the work, and she just talked to me about what He was doing, so you could all almost feel and see what God was doing.

You notice that when the way Jesus interacted with her, He interacted with her as though she was a little baby still, because her emotions were frozen at the baby stage. That's where the trauma is, so when Jesus was dealing with her, He was dealing with her at the point she had the trauma, at the age she had the trauma. That's why it looks like it's someone just handling a baby, and holding the baby, and the baby's going to be okay, and the reassurance. Why? Because that's where the trauma was, that's where the memory was retained, and so now there'll be a freedom come, and a shift inside her. Okay so how - oh, she's out to it still. How are we doing? Are you with us again or not?

[Sharon] I'm great.

[Pastor Mike] You're great. [Laughter] We'll settle for great. [Laughter] We'll settle for great, so since we're running short on time now, we have a whole section in the notes which helps understand a little bit about that area. The key point - oh there we go, you're back again with us. Whoa a daisy! Hello, hello. Okay, so how are you - anyway, just tell us was there any further experiences with the Lord?

[Sharon] Yeah, He danced with me in His arms.

[Pastor Mike] He danced with you in His arms? How wonderful. What are you feeling inside now about that whole event?

[Sharon] Incredibly light.

[Pastor Mike] Incredibly light. That's one of the things that people say, when they've been set free, is: I feel much lighter, the burden has gone, the demons have gone. Listen, just why don't we give the Lord a clap and just thank Him shall we? [Applause] So when you look into the notes, you'll see in the notes, we just lay out some teaching around it, but you can read all the notes and still not get it. It's better that you have an experience of seeing God just doing something for someone, and then you can see it happening, and there was no big stress. You notice in all of it, we depend on the Holy Spirit. Tell someone we depend on the Holy Spirit. [We depend on the Holy Spirit.] We depend on the Holy Spirit, okay and just always keep remembering,Holy Spirit I depend on You. Keep your accounts short with Him. Now of course, the thing is when you come to minister to someone, the temptation is to depend on yourself. [Laughs] Oh, I've got to do something. No, depend on the Holy Spirit.

So what we're going to do now as we finish up, it will be great to get you just to pray and to minister to one another, and I suggest you get in pairs. Just why don't you share something you'd like the person to pray into, or to pray for you for, it can be any area, anything you'd like, whatever - you may feel that God has just opened up something you'd like prayer for. Why don't you just invite the person to just pray for you in that area, and if someone asks you to pray in that area, just do what you can and depend on... [The Holy Spirit.] ...the Holy Spirit, right, okay. Depend on the Holy Spirit, and just be responsive to things He puts into your mind to do. So here's what, we'll get into pairs and we'll just pray in tongues together, and each of you share one area you'd like the other person to pray for. Then you minister to them whatever you feel comfortable at the level you're able to do. Maybe you just bring some encouragement, maybe you feel like you can pray for the Holy Spirit to touch them, maybe you feel there's something that needs to be broken. Just have a go. We're going to practice, okay? If we don't do something, we'll never know what we can do, will we, so we've got to step out somewhere.

Remember, in all of it we must depend on... [The Holy Spirit.] ... the Holy Spirit, exactly, so why don't you get up and depend on the Holy Spirit, a great chance to do that.

Exercising Spiritual Authority

The original mandate given to man in Genesis 1v28 was to "subdue and have dominion". Unfortunately when Adam & Eve sinned against god, they lost their connection with God, and lost their spiritual authority.

Jesus came to give us back our relationship with God,and our assignment of dominion again. Jesus demonstrated the message, He lived out the message of bring heaven to earth where ever he was. He first called 12, then 70, and finally entrusted all believers with the assignment to go, as ambassadors of the Kingdom, to proclaim the gospel, to make disciples, to heal the sick, to cast out demons, raise the dead - to minister in power and signs and wonders.

Gods purpose in creating man has never changed, He has something for us to accomplish, to bring our lives and community into harmony with heaven. We need to understand our mission in life, and learn how to fulfil it, how to exercise spiritual authority over all spiritual resistance.

Contents of the manual include:

1. The Apostolic mandate

2. Understanding your spiritual 'metron'

3. How you exercise spiritual authority

4. Exercising authority in your personal life

5. Your authority to minister to people

6. Strengthening your spirit man

Appendix

A. Keys to ministering in the spirit

B. Practical guidelines

C. House cleaning

The Apostolic Mandate (1 of 6)

Jesus authority to do miracles came from the Father, who SENT him. We are also 'apostolic' because we are SENT, as as ambassadors of heaven, to fulfil our task with kingly authority. It is important we discover for ourselves what God has called us to do, and passionately pursue the mission that God has wired into our heart. It requires we take ownership of it; see people as God sees them, and execute on earth the judgements of heaven.

Identifying Your Spiritual Territory (2 of 6)

This session begins with some activations to develop spiritual strength & sensitivity. Every believer has a spiritual territory (or 'metron') entrusted to us, a sphere of influence which is ours to govern - some permanent, some temporary. Adam (in Gen. 2:15) was instructed to 'tend', cultivate, develop his territory and to 'keep' or protect it from the enemy. Learn valuable keys to on how to govern, what to govern, and the consequences of failure to govern.

How to Exercise Spiritual Authority (3 of 6)

Further activations to stir and awaken you inner man quickly, give voice to faith decrees, and release a spirit flow. Understand the real meaning of 'authority', 'power', 'legal rights', and what Jesus accomplished at the cross to disarm spiritual powers. Know what we have delegated power to do, and foundations which have to be built in our life to ensure success. Finally, how to forbid troubling spirits and release blessing. Plenty of practical examples in workplace, marriage, family life etc.

Exercising Authority in your Personal Life (4 of 6)

The first place to gain dominion is with yourself. Eph. 4:27 shows us we can give the devil a foothold, or legal doorway to access our life, creating negative energies. This session gives a check-list of common doorways, and practical steps on how we can take responsibility for our life and close down these gateways. There is clear instruction on how to recognise and deal with spiritual attacks - spiritual problems need spiritual solutions. We can identify our own 'personal enemies' and deal with them ourselves. "deliver ourself from the had of the hunter". Many Q&A in this session cover a large range of situations.

Strengthening Your Spiritual Life (5 of 6)

This session starts off with clear instructions on how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the Gift of Tongues. Mike then describes the functions of our spirit - our life source, able to energise and illuminate our whole body, illuminate our mind, release creativity, bring insights, commune with God, and flow out to others. Learn how to cultivate and strengthen your spirit dimensions, including meditating on scripture to encounter God.

House-Cleansing - Ministering to one another (6 of 6)

Find out how to go about cleansing a house/building (or object) from demonic manifestation, and shift atmospheres. You've only truly learnt when you can do, so be led as a group or individual in exercises showing you how to release the spirit of God within you into another - power, spirit, joy, healing. What you think and what you say is important, and we all need to practise.

Manual

- Exercising Spiritual Authority (Manual)

Paperback

- Paperback #1

- Paperback #2

Audio

- The Apostolic Mandate (1 of 6).mp3

- Identifying Your Spiritual Territory (2 of 6).mp3

- How to Exercise Spiritual Authority (3 of 6).mp3

- Exercising Authority in your Personal Life (4 of 6).mp3

- Strengthening Your Spiritual Life (5 of 6).mp3

- House-Cleansing - Ministering to one another (6 of 6).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- The Apostolic Mandate (1 of 6).mp4

- Identifying Your Spiritual Territory (2 of 6).mp4

- How to Exercise Spiritual Authority (3 of 6).mp4

- Exercising Authority in your Personal Life (4 of 6).mp4

- Strengthening Your Spiritual Life (5 of 6).mp4

- House-Cleansing - Ministering to one another (6 of 6).mp4

Vimeo

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- The Apostolic Mandate (1 of 6).mp4

- Identifying Your Spiritual Territory (2 of 6).mp4

- How to Exercise Spiritual Authority (3 of 6).mp4

- Exercising Authority in your Personal Life (4 of 6).mp4

- Strengthening Your Spiritual Life (5 of 6).mp4

- House-Cleansing - Ministering to one another (6 of 6).mp4

The Apostolic Mandate (1 of 6)

Mon 11 Feb 2013  « Back to Top

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Jesus authority to do miracles came from the Father, who SENT him. We are also 'apostolic' because we are SENT, as as ambassadors of heaven, to fulfil our task with kingly authority. It is important we discover for ourselves what God has called us to do, and passionately pursue the mission that God has wired into our heart. It requires we take ownership of it; see people as God sees them, and execute on earth the judgements of heaven.

As in the other seminar we'll have some activations for you to do, and the activations are to develop and to build your inner life, so let's start with Session One. You see the sessions, we've outlined there various things, one of them I'll break into two. Number one is on the apostolic mandate; number two is on spiritual territory and number three, on how you exercise spiritual authority, then four, how you exercise it in your own life. Then we want to speak about your authority to minister to people, and then give you some practical things on how to build your spirit man, build the inner man, because everything you do that flows in the realm of the spirit, requires you strengthen your inner man. If we have some time we'll share with you some practical things just on ministering the spirit and how to flow with the Holy Ghost.

We will have some activations, things for you to do, because that will help you just get your spirit alive, and we'll give you some practical things of what you can do to raise the spiritual energy in your life, and also how you actually go about releasing spiritual authority. Okay then, so let's look on 1.1 and everything's got pages to it, so they're all numbered so we can find them very easily. So firstly the apostolic mandate, and let me ask you this question: if you knew that where you live in the community, God had sent you there, because He had something for you to accomplish, how would that affect the way you relate to the people and how you lived your life? If you believe that the workplace that you are working in, God actually sent you there with an assignment, how would that affect the way you relate to all the other workers, and the way you treat people, and the way you respond to problems and difficulties?

If you believe that wherever you go, you are a person on assignment, how would that affect the way you would relate to people, and to struggles and pressures and difficulties that come? I believe that if we thought that way it would change totally how we live our life. It's just we don't see we're on assignment, we don't see that at all. We just get busy with our life and so what I want to do in this first session is just look at the area of the apostolic mandate. We have a tendency to think that to become a Christian means that you come to Jesus, you're connected to Him, the spirit of God is in you, and then you're going to go to heaven. This is only a half of the story, and if you've only got a half of the story, then you haven't really got it all at all, so the full story is this: that when we receive Jesus into our life, the spirit of God comes in, we are connected to the spirit of God. We're connected to heaven, but we are given a mandate to restore the community we live in, or to change and bring what is around us into harmony with heaven. We're called to bring heaven into the earth.

Now this is the missional aspect of the church that is every believer's calling. We tend to think well missionaries are just people you send out overseas but no, the reality is the church is called to be missional in mind. In other words every person is a missionary, a sent person. Every person is called to embrace the missional aspect of what God has called them to do, so notice what it says here. Just have a look in first of all understanding the apostolic mandate. After these things - after what things? After Jesus had sent 12 disciples out, and the ministered in the power of the Holy Ghost and delivered people and healed people, it says He appointed another 70 and sent them out two by two before His face into every city and place He Himself was about to go, Luke 10:1. So Jesus had already deployed 12 apostles, but the Bible says He looked and He saw the harvest was so great, so He then got another 70 and launched them out in two by two. So He commissioned them, and they had the same commissioning that the apostles had. They were called to do exactly the same, bring the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, bring heaven to earth wherever they went. It says they weren't apostles, they were just followers of Christ, but they had the same mission that the apostles had.

Now that word meant - it's He sent them, means literally it's the word apostello in Greek and it means something like this. The word apostello we kind of thing apostolic and you wonder what it means, but if we were to go back to what it meant in the day it was written, then you understand it. So the word apostolic - we call it apostolic now - is a Greek word apostello. What it means literally is this: if the Romans wanted to send a general into an area to overcome resistance and occupy it and bring it into the kingdom of Rome or under the dominion of Rome, they would say apostello. They sent him on a mission to do this. That's the word they'd use. If they wanted to in the Hebrew culture, if they wanted to plant another synagogue in another place, in other words to go to another area, an unknown area and plant a synagogue or we'd call it a church plant now, the word that was used was the word apostello or apostolic. They were sent on a mission.

So we tend to sort of get unusual ideas around these words and we kind of don't find them easy to take, but if you would just take that the word apostolic means, you're sent on a mission to advance the kingdom of God wherever you've been assigned, so notice that all 70 are apostolic. They're all sent on a mission, and wherever they were sent they were called to advance the kingdom of God. We want to look at practically how that might take place - so an apostle in the early language, they understood it, it was someone who was an ambassador sent on a military mission to conquer an area, and bring it in line, or bring it under the kingdom. So we think then that the church right at its origins is apostolic, not pastoral. The church tends to want to be pastoral. People want to have their needs met, they want to have someone to care for them, someone to teach them, look after them, and this is a valid part of the ministry of Christ, part of His pastoral ministry. But His primary ministry was apostolic.

Hebrews 3:1 He's called the apostle and high priest of our calling, so one of the primary identifiers of Jesus was His apostolic - He was sent. He said the Father sent Me, and He said as Father sent Me, I send you, so around Jesus' thinking all the time was this aspect of sending, so a believer may not be an apostle but they can be sent, they can be apostolic. So I believe that we're living in an hour when God is wanting every believer to be apostolic. Now that doesn't mean a title, it means I'm missional in nature. What that means is: I'm a person with a mission, I'm an ambassador for heaven. I've got a work that is unique to me, only I can do it. How would your life be different if you believed that you are quite unique, and that you have something unique to give to the people who meet you? That would change how you related to people. It's all in the paradigm and in the thinking, so if we think of church as the gathering where we come and sing songs and worship God, and we don't think of it as a missional body, people sent to do something, we totally reduce Jesus' thinking and His planning and His dreams towards the church.

So all believers are sent. Notice Jesus has given a mandate, and the mandate's very clear. It is a command. It's an authorisation to do something; proclaim the gospel, make disciples, and minister in power and signs and wonders. So let's have a look at the first apostolic mandate, and then I want to just show you just a couple of things related to this, but I want you to understand that you are designed to have dominion spiritually. You're actually wired for that. Let's have a look at the first apostolic mandate in Genesis 1:28. God blessed them, and said to them: be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the sea, the birds of the air, and everything that moves on the earth. Now notice that man and woman were both given the same mandate. Man and woman are equal in this, we're equally mandated by God to be fruitful, to multiply or increase, to fill the earth, or subdue and have dominion. That means that there must be something you've got to conquer.

If you're called to subdue, there must be some thing you have to subdue or - and it's not a person, it's usually a spiritual issue. So we see that the first - here's the interesting thing. Which came first, the people or the assignment? See, think about that one. Which came first, the people or the assignment? I believe the assignment came, because man was created to fulfil the assignment. Think about that. See, in Ephesians 2:10 it tells us that we are His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God foreordained we would walk in them. In other words before we turned up on the earth and were born, God had prepared something for us to accomplish with our life. That means the assignment came before the people did.

Notice which came first, the garden or the people? The garden, so the assignment came first. Now it doesn't mean that the assignment is more important. What I'm saying is, that God produced people to fulfil a purpose, so think about this. If you are a manufacturer and you design a toaster, now which came first, the toaster or the purpose? The purpose. You started to think, I need to create a machine that you can put slices of bread in and it'll heat them up and make them nice and we can put jam and marmalade and stuff on it - so you have a thing in mind to which you design the machine, and then the machine fulfils the purpose. So you think about how God created us; He created us with something for us to do. If you can get this in your heart, you realise how important it is to discover what you're uniquely wired and called to do. Most people unfortunately live their life from someone else's script. In other words, we're acting out what someone else said was what we should do, rather than discovering for ourself what God called us to do, and passionately pursuing the mission that God has wired into our heart. Quite challenging isn't it?

I was talking to one young man recently and he'd been seeking direction from me, and I actually refused to give him the direction he should go. What I directed him to do was to find what he was wired in his heart to do, and he said well I don't know. I said well actually I know you know. The thing that's blocking you is you're trying to please everyone. You've lived under control for so much of your life, you've not actually taken ownership of what God put in your own heart. I said if I tell you what to do, I'll always be the one who told you what to do. You actually have to own your life yourself, and own your future yourself, and discover what God wired in you for you to fulfil. I showed him how to do that, starting to begin to journal and to write down and discover the dreams of his heart. Recently he came to me and he said: this is what I believe I should do. I said great, you've got it, I'll help you do it. Do you understand? If I'd told him, which is what he wanted me to do, it would have taken away from him the journey of discovering, and taking ownership of his own assignment, that God wrote into his heart.

Unfortunately many people live and they've been in abusive situations and strongholds and things form around the mind and what happens is we live out of what someone else said we should do, rather than discovering what God called us to do. How many are thinking about that one, see? So God had an assignment for us, and he created you to fulfil an assignment, so where you were born, the circumstances of your birth, the kind of nation you were born in, the locality you were born in, the education you had, the background you had, all contributes to forming who you are. Even if some of it was bad, when God redeems it, what is redeemed then becomes the powerful testimony that God can use to touch people's lives, so you are a person with a mission. Even if you don't know what your mission is, it doesn't change. You were sent, you didn't just arrive.

Now that changes our thinking. See evolution will teach: we just arrived and it was by chance. It is a horrendous thing because it takes away the truth of divine destiny and purpose. You didn't just arrive. No matter how you came into this world, whether people wanted you or not, you didn't just arrive. God preordained you would come. He knew you were coming, and had an assignment for you to complete. The part you have to play is to connect with God, and discover what you're called to do, and arise and break free of the things that tell you you can't do it. That is where learning to stand up, take responsibility and assert spiritual authority starts to have its first place in your own life, so you'll see getting free in your own life as a crucial part to being able to actually then have influence beyond yourself. Okay, we getting it? You're all getting quiet now. [Laughs] How many are starting to feel already that's starting to affect your thinking? How many could feel your thinking starting to shake on that? It's powerful isn't it aye?

It's changing, and it changes our concept because we tend to live out of paradigms and ways of thinking, and we need our way of thinking changed, so for example, we tend to talk about all the problems that are around rather than actually - problems? We're here to solve problems. We're not to complain about them. Complaining about problems make us part of the problem. We're called to actually go to our assignment, and change it. Isn't that great? Isn't that a great thing? I want to share with you how to actually bring about some of that change, so that you start to realise you're not a victim; you are a person who has power to bring difference, but there's always going to be a fight for that. [Laughs] Freedom always costs you something.

Okay, so the apostolic commission: in Matthew, Chapter 9, Verse 35 to 10:1. Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in all their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. So He preached, and His message was: the kingdom of heaven with it's blessings in life is really close. What is required is you repent, or change how you think. That was His message and He demonstrated the kingdom, healing every sickness, every disease among the people. When He saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion, because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. So He said to His disciples: the harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into His harvest. And when He called His 12 disciples, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness, all kinds of disease.

So we see that Jesus came to restore the original mandate. The original mandate was to subdue and have dominion, so in other words, there was something that was going to oppose them, that they had to arise and overcome. We know, we've read the story how Adam and Eve sinned against God, and the Bible tells us the authority they had they yielded up, they lost their spiritual authority, they lost their garments of glory, they lost their connection with God. They lost relationship and dominion, so when Jesus came back, He came to give us back relationship and an assignment or dominion again, so notice He demonstrated He actually had authority when He healed sickness, disease, commanded nature, cast out demons. All of these He demonstrated that He lived out the message. Notice then that He came to actually restore us, so we have again this ability to bring heaven to earth. We just need to learn some of the practical ways of going about doing doing that.

Jesus identified that the greatest need, the greatest need He saw, was for labourers, for people who would give themselves to fulfilling their mission. When Jesus looked He saw the multitudes. He didn't just see a crowd of people. He was actually deeply moved, because they needed help. One of the things that is a practical thing that you could do very easily, is to walk through the streets or walk through a crowd of people and just praying in your spirit, and then begin to look into them. Just as you walk through people just look at people and smile at them - otherwise you stare at them, and they start to get what's up with you! But look at people and smile at them, and as you look at them look into their eyes and look into their countenance. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to see them, as He sees them. Now you know what will happen if you start to do that for a while? You're not going to try and gauge anyone, you're just starting to open your eyes to see people like Jesus does.

We tend to see people as problems. We tend to see people as divided into those who we need their help for something, or we don't really want to be too connected with them, or they're an interruption to our life. When I first came here, I found one of the things that really helped me was I began to walk through the street looking at people, until I began to feel tremendous compassion, and you could see the problems written on their faces. You could see the burden on them. You become awakened to see people like God can see them. Even at church on a Sunday you can go in and you just get into a routine, but if you go in there and realise listen, I'm here not because I'm come to church. I'm here because God sent me here. I'm here to be a blessing, and there's someone here needs what I have to do today - so you go in, you start to look around and talk with people and if you will start to look differently, you will see the needs. It doesn't take you very long. That's the first phase is to get the heart for people; ask Jesus to give you a heart to have compassion, because your mission is always to people.

Now we may be a technical person, we may be this or may be that, but the bottom line is whatever our mission is, it will always ultimately involve people, so we need to get the heart of God for people. I encourage you, it's just such a simple thing. The first exercise you can write down that you could do, is just to begin to walk through crowds of people, and as you walk through them smile at them, look into their eyes, look into their face and just reach out towards them from your heart. Ask God to show you how He sees them. You will be amazed how your view changes.

The second thing you can do, is make a decision that you're going to start to engage people, and ask them about themselves, just take an interest in them. Ask questions. Don't try and talk about yourself in any way, don't try and convert them. Just ask questions, and show kindness and an interest in the person. Now you will find a second thing. The first thing you'll find is, how you begin to feel and see people - you feel about people and see people as Jesus sees them; second thing, when you start to ask questions and listen, what you'll find is you'll begin to discover what's really going on in people's lives. I'm amazed how people will open up and talk. If you just begin to ask questions, don't get defensive, just reflect back what you think you've heard, and they will begin - if they find you'll listen to them, they'll tell you stuff, and they'll tell you things that you never would have realised. You begin to realise this person's opened their life because they're lonely and disconnected. They want to find someone who will listen to them. Then we'll share with you some other things you can do about how to bring the presence of God.

So you are called. So notice He gave them an apostolic commission, so first He gave it to the 12, now He's given it to the 70, and as we'll see shortly in Mark, Chapter 16, He gives it to everyone. Everyone has got the apostolic commission. Everyone is a missionary, everyone is sent, so turn to someone and say well, hello missionary! Come on. [Laughter] See, it's a funny thing isn't it, that you're - it's a sort of a word you use for someone else, you don't think of it as related to yourself, but you're a person on a mission. The moment you walk out of this building, you're on a mission. Okay then, so let's go to 1.4, you're designed for dominion. In Psalm 8, Verses 5 and 6, notice the psalmist is speaking and acknowledging: you have made him a little lower than the angels. You've made man a little lower than the angels. Now that word angels is literally the original word, the word elohim, meaning God, so You have made man just a little beneath God. You have created him in Your own image and likeness. Notice, You have crowned him with glory and honour. You've made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands. You've put all things, all things, under his feet.

Now of course we don't see that. We see the consequences of sin, but this is the original design, so notice now that God designed us for dominion over His creation. That word crowned means: an ornamental headgear that a sovereign state would wear, so notice he said: You have made man just a little lower in rank than God, and You have crowned him or put a sovereign headgear over him of glory and honour, given him glory and honour, and you've made him for the purpose of having dominion over the works of Your hands, and put everything under his feet. Now you can't get it clearer. That's one of the best verses in the Bible to describe that you are royalty, called on assignment to represent Jesus in the earth. You're called to represent the King. Now many times when we speak and pray, we don't see ourselves that way, we don't think of ourselves that way. We tend to think about ourself out of what our old self esteem is.

Imagine if you were to wake up every day and think: I am royalty. I am crowned with glory and honour. I am called to represent the king of kings today, everywhere I go, I will give my very best. It gives you a different perspective on your day, totally different. It's a truth to get into your heart, that is who you are. You're called for this, and now notice in the next verse we'll look at there, around dominion, Psalm 149, Verses 5 through to 9, it says this: Let the saints be joyful in glory; Let them sing aloud on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth - so it's talking about the whole area of opening our life to engage with God. So when its saying be joyful, singing aloud, high praises, what it's really talking about is us opening up the realm of heaven for God to move. That's how you open heaven for yourself; you exalt the Lord. He says He inhabits the praises of His people, so when I give myself to vocal and expressive praise, I am opening up the realms of heaven for the presence of God to flow through me into the earth.

Now notice what it says next. It says: and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute on them the judgement written - This honour have all His saints. Now that word all His saints, God has placed a tremendous honour on you. He could just wipe the devil out just like that. In fact there'll come a day when He'll send some angels, and they'll assign them all into hell, and they'll be there for 1,000 years. He can do it today, could do it tomorrow, He could have done it already, but the Bible says He's given us a particular honour, and this is what the honour is. He's given us an honour of dealing the judgements of heaven, the judgements of the word of God against evil spirits. He's given us the honour of executing that in the earth. He's given us the honour of addressing and dealing with evil spirits in the earth. It's an honour, it's not an unusual ministry. It's actually a privilege to represent God, and get rid of the ravening wolves out of people's lives. It's an honour and a privilege. Have you thought of that?

See a lot of people use the word deliverance or spiritual warfare. They think it's some weird thing and it's just for a few people... They don't realise actually this honour of bringing judgement against evil spirits, is actually an honour given to all the saints, and it requires that we worshippers knowing how to access God, and that we know how to use the word of God quite simply, and we'll show you how to do that a little bit later in one of the sessions. What a great privilege for you to bring the presence of God to wherever you are, and to change the spiritual atmosphere. I was talking to one man, and he was complaining to me about a situation at work, and I said to him well, what's the problem? He told me, well all the language and the cursing and the atmosphere, it was a horrendous place. I said is that right, what are you going to do about it? He said, well I'm going to leave. I said really? Tell me that one again - I said how many other Christians are there? He said no one. I said so - let me say this again, you're the only Christian there, and because it's all so bad, you're about to leave and resign your post? He said, well I hadn't thought of it like that but yeah, [laughter] that's it, you know? I said why don't you do something about it? He said: what on earth could I do?

I said: well the people there are under the influence of wicked spirits. They have access to their lives because their lives are unsurrendered and they run independently, but you on the contrary, you have access to heaven, to bring heaven into the earth. You could change that whole environment. I said you're thinking of it as a problem and you're wanting to get away so you can have an easier life. You're not thinking of yourself as a missionary, in a workplace, called to shift the spiritual atmosphere - and he wasn't thinking that way at all. He was thinking how can I get out where it'll be nicer - but we're not called to retreat to where it's nicer. We're called to advance, and change what's there. Can you see it's a different thinking isn't it? So what I did then was I said I'll go down with you, so we went down into his workplace, and I said I can feel it's pretty oppressive here. There's obviously spirits here. Our business is to drive them out, because God has given us authority. I said you don't have to be the boss to do that. He doesn't get to drive demons out because he's the boss. You get to drive them out because Jesus is your boss, and you represent him.

So what we did was we prayed strongly in tongues, then we began to walk around the workplace and began to address the spirits that were there. We named these particular manifestations that were happening, the various difficulties that they were facing over and over and over again; we began to speak to the spirits behind them, commanded them to go, forbade them to operate, commanded them to go out of the place, and invited the Holy Spirit to come in, and increase the productivity, and change the atmosphere in that workplace. About a week later he came back and he ran up, he was really excited, and he said we've had the best week we've ever had. I have never enjoyed work so much as I have this week. I said wow, isn't that wonderful, I wonder why [laughter], because often people don't connect the blessing and the flow of what they're experiencing, back with the things that brought it about. I said about a week ago you were about to leave this place because it was so bad; now you're saying how much you like it. I said you have had to change, in the way you approach this whole thing, you have had to deal with the spirits in the atmosphere.

I had another young man and he was complaining about his workplace and it was very, very difficult and the place he was working in, they were having breakdowns, there were all kinds and there was bad morale, there were a whole number of things there, and I said what are you going to do about it? He said well I can't do anything about it, I'm not the boss. I said hey listen, how many other Christians there? He said - would you believe it - none. I said well there you go, don't you realise that the problems are not just outward things, they actually have got a spiritual root, and a spiritual source. I said you are a believer, you can do something about that. I said now tell me, when did the problem start? He said when the new supervisor came on our line, that's when the problems started. I said what do you know about that man? He said well he's a pretty dark heavy person. I said do you think he might have been involved in the occult? He said probably is, I think he might be actually. I said really, is that right? Well we can deal with that, can't we, and so I showed him what to do.

I showed him to stand up every day, begin to pray in tongues, and to stand as an ambassador of heaven, speak into the spiritual atmosphere, take dominion and subdue every spirit that was using that man as a gateway into the workplace, and to subdue them, forbid their operation, and to release blessing into that place. I said you'll find it'll be a little challenging for you for the next few days, but if you'll just keep it up, things will change. About 10 days later he came to me, and he said I want to tell you what's happened. He said the guy's been taken off the role, and he said I've been promoted into the role [laughter], and actually the whole of the work environment has changed, the problems have decreased, and productivity has started to increase.

I could continually tell you stories just like that. We don't seem to realise just how much spiritual forces impact what goes on, and how we as believers have authority to shut them down. If we don't, who is going to? I'll tell you what happens. Most believers just forget that there is a real spiritual world, they just forget it, so we're trying to, in this series, help you understand it. It's very real, it is very present, and when you step up to engage it, then you will find that there is a real fight goes on, and if you'll persist and learn how to walk and win the battle, you'll change things immensely. Okay then, so there we go. Section 1.5, you've been commissioned, in Matthew 28, Verse 18, Jesus spoke to them saying: all authority has been given to Me in heaven and earth. So therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things I've commanded you; and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.

So Jesus has given us a command, and it involves nations. Now nations involves government, it involves business, it involves media, it involves sports, arts, science, education. Now one of the things is, we tend to forget that the Great Commission means transformation within the community, transformation one soul at a time, and in this particular hour God is emphasising ordinary believers arising in the different areas of the community, and starting to make the presence of God, and their presence, felt. In Taiwan where we have the privilege to minister they're making tremendous inroads into the media, and in one church alone that we've been to there are now over 100 people from the media, from the arts and entertainment and TV industry are in just one church - over 100 that have been saved in the last four years. They are using their gifts to bring the gospel into the nation.

Now there are about three significant churches in Taiwan that are having an influence, and between them they have something between 200 and 250 celebrities covering the pop area, the high class quality entertainment area, and then various areas of media and television. I have prayed for them, in fact I had the privilege of praying for and prophesying over the leading actor and singer in Asia, the one who's the most famous of them all, who when he turns out the crowds just come screaming. These people are responding; the gospel is going into these areas, and we need to arise and believe it's possible to do that. So the whole church has got a commission, a mandate, not just to go and win souls, but actually get them aligned and start to shift the whole culture. It's a most exciting possibility, and so we saw how the original commission was given to Adam and Adam lost it, Jesus came to restore it. He commissioned the 12, He commissioned the 70, and then He's commissioned the whole church, and then before they started He said, Acts 1:8, wait until you receive the power of the Holy Ghost to do the work. You have to be anointed and filled with the spirit to be able to do this kind of work.

You can't engage in the realm of the spirit significantly unless you're baptised in the Holy Ghost, and released in the Holy Ghost. Jesus promised that we'd be anointed with the Holy Ghost, and this was necessary for the completion of our assignment. That's why just giftings are not enough, talent is not enough, we need to be filled with the Holy Ghost, need to be filled with the spirit of God. He told us go fulfil the assignment, make Christ known, make disciples, heal the sick, cast out demons, bring the presence of God wherever you go - and we want to help you in these next sessions to understand your assignment, and then how to arise and begin to assert authority. Amen.

Identifying Your Spiritual Territory (2 of 6)

Tue 12 Feb 2013  « Back to Top

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This session begins with some activations to develop spiritual strength & sensitivity. Every believer has a spiritual territory (or 'metron') entrusted to us, a sphere of influence which is ours to govern - some permanent, some temporary. Adam (in Gen. 2:15) was instructed to 'tend', cultivate, develop his territory and to 'keep' or protect it from the enemy. Learn valuable keys to on how to govern, what to govern, and the consequences of failure to govern.

I'm going to get you to do something in a moment. It's really quite important that we actually activate and stir our spirit because it's no use just having information. In the end the only knowledge you really have is what comes experiential, and so you're going to need to experience things before these things start to come alive inside you. So I will lay out some very simple, clear teaching around these areas, but we also need to experience the life of the spirit, the life of the spirit, and the flow of the spirit as well. If you don't experience anything much, then you just have a lot of theory and knowledge.

I remember I taught one man how to stand up in his spiritual leadership in the home, and I showed him how to pray, and he stood up and prayed. The next day he rang me, he said I'm sick today. I said, don't be surprised. I've called you to stand up, and to your place that God positioned you, to speak and govern the spiritual atmosphere of your marriage and home, so clearly there's been a problem there, and it was only when you stepped up that you found it. So I said persevere, and he persevered, then the problems flushed to the surface, and then there was able to be ministry, deliverance and a whole shift in the dynamic of that relationship. So people don't know it's real until they start to operate in it, so we do have to experience the things of the spirit.

I'll show you just quite simply how you do this as we go, but what I want us to do is I want us to constantly over the whole of this seminar, I want us to be strengthening and developing internally in our spirit dimension, because if we don't do that, we don't have the strength. We need both the spirit of God, and the word of God, and we need to let God help us to grow. There's a great scripture where Paul prays in Ephesians 3, that you would be strengthened with might, or dunamis - the power of God in your inner man. I'll show you in one of the last sessions some simple things you can do, that will help build your spirit man, and change the whole atmosphere which you carry around your life.

Most people live under what's around them. Most people live under the spiritual prevailing environment, which in New Zealand is passivity, and apathy, and rejection, and passive rebellion, so those are the common things that you find in the Kiwi culture. Wherever you're in it, you'll feel that, and so what happens is, until we learn how to stand up and alter the spiritual atmosphere around us, we don't even realise what we've accepted as normal. So I can tell you now, most people accept as normal something that actually is a place of bondage and lack of freedom, so if you would just accept the challenge to experiment over tonight and tomorrow, and see what happens as you do certain things to unlock and free up your spirit and the flow of your spirit; I would expect by the end of tomorrow, that you're flowing and the spirit of God is moving freely through you touching lives. It doesn't mean it's the end of the journey, but what it does mean is that you're starting to explore what it is to flow in the spirit.

When you got baptised in the spirit it was an entrance to the realm of the spirit. It was just a gateway experience, but we have to learn to go on in those areas. Amen - okay, so what we're going to do is this. In a moment we'll get people praying in tongues, and I'm going to just get you to do it in different ways. I want you to explore some various aspects of praying in tongues. The Bible says: when a man prays in tongues - 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 14 - when I pray in tongues, my spirit is praying. In other words, when you're praying in tongues, your spirit is now being stirred, being active and giving expression in the earth. Not only that, you are praying in a language the Holy Spirit is giving you, so when you're praying in tongues, the spirit of God enjoined to your spirit, is expressing His life through you. So there is always an outworking of that, so one of the most powerful gifts entering us into the realm of the spirit is the gift of tongues - one of the most neglected gifts, and I have to keep stirring believers all the time, and continually to arise, and begin to explore what that gift can do, so we want to do some of that while we're here over the weekend.

Okay, so the first thing we'll do, and I'm not going to get anything more than about a minute, so what we're going to get you to do is just stand up, and I want you to pray in tongues for 30 seconds, see what it feels like and see what it feels like in the atmosphere. So let's just do that - are you ready? On the count of three, one, two, three, let's begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Okay, just stop now. Okay, just stop. That's our start point. You've got to have a start point, so that's just the start point. Now what I feel when I'm in an atmosphere where people are praying, I open my heart to feel what is present there, and what I feel is people are expressing but it's relatively - it's measured. It's just measured. You can feel it, like it's measured. You just give it so much, but that's it. I want us to actually break out of that, because your spirit must find expression through your soul and your body, and it's your body resists, and your soul resists, so we want to just get you to shift your body.

This time what we're going to do is, we're going to pray again, and I want you to pray as loudly as you can, give voice to your tongues, and I want you just to shake your body, make your body be obedient, because our body just wants to sleep and it wants to eat, and it doesn't want to do stuff. Our spirit always wants to pray. Our flesh, which is our body and our soul, just resists it. So what I want you to do, I want you to shake your body as if you were making your body just come into alignment, because inside your spirit is rising up to pray, and speak out in this heavenly language! So let's do it now, and I want you to as strongly as you can, and notice what happens in terms of the flow of energy in the room and in your personal body as you do this. Ready? About 30 seconds - one, two, three. [Prays in tongues]

Okay, just stop now. Alright, now what change did you notice that time? How many noticed a change, you just - okay, what did you notice? More vibrations, yeah, you're right, yeah, okay. Yeah? More freedom? More freedom, you found freedom. Now isn't it interesting, how many found more freedom that time as you were praying? Now all I got you to do, it's the silliest of things really, was just shake your body, to get your body to do what your spirit wants to do, express strongly. We have to understand that our body resists our spirit, and so you have to take dominion. One of the first places to get dominion is over just your own body, and you need to learn how to discipline your body. So I've found one of the simplest things is just shake your body, and make it wake up, just make it WAKE UP! Learn to command your body. Just speak to your body from your spirit.

So you'll find, that if you will arise in your spirit and develop your spirit life, your body and your soul will respond, and then you'll find there's a lot of energy inside you. It's spiritual energy. It's not just a natural thing. What I was doing with getting the shaking, was to get you just to make your body do what it needs to do, just to yield up, and be involved and engaged in praying, okay? Now the other thing to do is get your soul involved in that as well, so we're going to get body and stuff. So what we're going to do is first of all we'll just get your body involved again. The Bible says: clap your hands all you people, shout unto God with a voice of? [Triumph.] Triumph all you people, so I want you just for a moment now, just close your eyes and get your soul, start to get your soul - now the way you get your soul in line, you see your soul is connected to your spirit, and your soul is connected to your body.

So your soul and body form the flesh; your soul and spirit form the inner man, and our soul has to be renewed, so what I want you to do is just to focus your mind and your thoughts on this. We're going to focus our thoughts. We're going to go back in 2000 years of history, going to go right back to the day that Jesus rose from the grave, and there it is, I can stand, I can see with my imagination, I can see that mighty rock that's in front of the tomb. I see the Roman soldiers there, but there's something is happening in that tomb. The spirit of God has entered into Jesus, and the rock rolls away, and Jesus rises victorious! Come on, let's clap and shout to him [Shouts and applause] and give him the shout of victory! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Halleluiah! [Prays in tongues] Wonderful Jesus! Thank You Lord.

Now what did you find that time? [Joy.] Tremendous joy isn't it? So how was that time different to the time before? It came from something that rose up from inside as we actually engaged our mind with spiritual truth, and your spirit - if you'll engage your mind with spiritual truth and picture it, imagine it and give yourself to it, your spirit will immediately arise inside. So your spirit will respond to your body; your spirit will respond to your soul, so we've got to bring our body and our soul into agreement with where we want to go, otherwise they resist the flow of the spirit. So it's quite simple, I just learn to shake my body, make it wake up, and did you realise that Samson shook himself to activate the anointing? How about that? He just physically shook himself, and the power of God would come on him. Isn't that something? Elijah used some music, and we get the gift of... tongues. See, we activate the anointing and the flow of the Holy Spirit just praying in tongues, isn't that right? Okay then.

Now I want you to find a bit of space, and this is what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to just walk up and down and start to move, just pace a little. Just pace, pace in a bit of an area, and begin to focus on praying in tongues strongly. Come on, let's just do it. [Prays in tongues] Okay, let's just stop. Alright, now first of all what did you experience, what happened? See, some things may be positive, some things may be negative. You may find that your mind and your soul argues with you - I don't want to do it, why do you make me do it, I don't want to do this, just sit down, teach some more. You get into an argument going on inside of yourself. That is all the flesh coming against the spirit, so when you walked, how many found that the energy flowed more easily, just as you were walking as you prayed? It is, because if you sit down too long your spirit begins to shut down, because your body's inactive, so you'll find if you get your body moving it will actually free yourself up, and your spirit flows more easily. It's a very, very simple thing, but people just overlook the simple things.

Hence that's why in worship, the first songs we sing are strong clapping ones, and why are they doing that? They're to get our body awake, but you know, I can tell you this: you don't have to sing three of those songs. If everyone for 30 seconds would clap and shout for all they're worth, you'd have the same effect. That's the thing, isn't it interesting? Yet we can take so long, because it takes a wholehearted engagement to break the apathy and the heaviness off you, and all it takes is 30 seconds of wholehearted and it breaks. But people go for a long time heavy and passive and shut down, because they just didn't give themselves to something. Okay, here's another one you can try now, and that is by speaking scripture aloud.

Now I'm going to give you a scripture out of one of the Psalms, Psalm 103 and it goes like this. I'll quote it to you, but it's something you can all pray, and I want you to pray it. If you don't know where it is, you can look it up in Psalm 103, Verse 1. Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, heals all your diseases and so on. Okay, now let me ask you this: what part is he speaking to? [Soul.] He's speaking to his soul, so where's he speaking from? His spirit, so you see his spirit is speaking to his soul, and what is he telling his soul to do? Bless the Lord! In other words, he's saying wake up! Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name!

See he's stirring himself, and he didn't have tongues, but he did find that by speaking to his soul he could command his soul, to what? To bless the Lord, so why did he have to do that? Because he didn't feel like doing that. You read through the psalms and you find how often David was miserable. He said I began to think and I pondered, and as I pondered on my distress my soul became overwhelmed, then I meditated on the works of the Lord. I remembered the great and mighty works He did, and then everything changes you see, so you read Psalm 77, first half of the psalm he's in depression as he thinks about all his problems. Then immediately he makes a change, and he starts to meditate on the works of God, and his whole spirit comes back up again, and faith arises - so why don't we just try that aye?

Now remember, don't just say empty words. Speak to your soul, like you're telling something that's rebellious in you to come into line. Now you know what it's like when the kids are rebellious - don't want to do that. Straighten up boy, you know! [Laughter] See, so this is kind of military warfare, so you've got to speak into your own soul, so if you haven't got it you can get the Bible and open it up, bless the Lord o my soul. Bless the Lord o my soul and forget not, and all that is within me bless His holy name. Aye? Bless the Lord, O my soul. You know, come on, let's hear it on the count of three, just get your Bible out, open it up. It's a great one. I pray this, it wakes me up immensely. I love it - then you find there's other things you can do, and we'll talk about that, taking authority over your day, commanding your day to come into order.

Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all His benefits - so we'll just do that part. Are we ready? [Laughs] Okay, on the count of three: one, two, three. Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all His benefits. Halleluiah, okay - no, you can carry on - forgives all your iniquities, heals all your diseases. Amen - redeems my life and so on, come on. Okay, try it again from the top. Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, hey, come on, there we go - your diseases, yes, exactly. Redeems your life, Halleluiah, glory to God! Okay, now just stop for a moment.

Now what I want you to do is to identify what you felt as you started to do that, what happens inside you when you spoke to your soul. How many felt yourself arising on the inside? How many felt a change on the inside? What did you feel? [There was a change in the atmosphere.] The change in the atmosphere here wasn't there, when we gave voice to the word of God the whole atmosphere began to shift - so let's have a look what we've noticed. We've noticed that the spirit of God inside us can be awakened and aroused and stirred. The one that causes that is me, by my choice. I can pray in tongues any time I want, so the second thing we saw was, our body tends to resist the flow of the spirit. We can make our body be subdued by just shaking it, and once you've learned how to stir your spirit you could just shake yourself like that and be alive, just like that, once you've learned to have dominion over your body and what it does to you.

The next thing we learnt was that we could stir our soul and we stirred our soul by meditating and focussing and we stirred our soul by confessing the word of God and speaking directly to our soul. Now I want you to remember that experience, that you woke up your body, woke up your soul and stirred up the anointing within you and it only took you a few minutes - and you did it. You can do that every time and any time, wherever you are and the more you practice the quicker and easier it is to slip into that. You break out of passivity, you break out of heaviness and you notice that we found not only did the energy begin to flow in us, but the atmosphere around us shifted as well. So what happened? Suddenly there's something different there. How many can feel there's a presence of God here now? See, quite different.

Now you have to shift what's around, in order to be able to bring the presence of God in, so it's like this. It's like if my spirit is already connected to heaven, the problem with heaven coming to earth is in my soul and my body - so if I just take dominion over my soul and body, and in my heart believe the spirit of God will flow, I can give voice and God comes into the room. We're not having to wait for anything to happen. We actually bring God into the place, otherwise you're thinking like here I am on earth trying to make my way up into heaven to get near to God, rather than say I'm already connected to God; I've just got to let what is within me find expression in the earth, so the spirit of God can flow - not trying to break through to God, I'm trying to break through the resistance in my body and soul, and the spiritual atmosphere, to express what I already have.

We are already seated in heavenly places. We are already joined to the Lord, one spirit to the Lord. We're already connected into heaven. You don't have to fight your way to get there. Jesus got you there. What you've got to do is find a way to break the resistance for that truth expressing through your life. How many found that helpful? Remember, it's about your thinking, so when you stand to think, if you think oh here I am - you see when your spirit gets shut down by your body and soul, you become very self-conscious and not God-conscious. Your soul and body are causing it. Now if I would just change my thinking and set it on the word of God, set it on the truth, I'm actually in heavenly - I'm in the spirit world already, I'm already connected to God, I'm already ONE SPIRIT WITH THE LORD! [Prays in tongues] Bless the Lord, O my soul - now you see immediately it comes alive. But you have to practice until it becomes natural and normal and it's easy, see? Shall we do it one more time?

So we're just going to quote that verse again - you can go on quoting if you like, then we'll pray in tongues for a bit and let's notice what we find in the atmosphere and around. Then I'll show you something else you can do in tongues straight after that and you'll find it'll be quite different again. Ready? Okay then, so what are we going to do? We'll just quote the verse - ready, Psalm 103, Verse 1 - Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His Holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all my diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with glory and honour, oh Halleluiah. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Okay, just stop now.

Now I want you to just do something a little bit different now. Now we know when we pray in tongues the spirit of God is praying through us. What I want you to do now is, just use your language in tongues as a language of devotion and adoration. Now we're not going to pray strongly, assertively, forcefully. We're going to pray tenderly, and fix your mind that Jesus Christ is right there before you, you're in His presence, and so you're just flowing from your heart to just love Him. Feel as you do that what happens, and what happens in the atmosphere. Let's just pray for about 30 seconds and just give yourself to loving Him, and expressing through this heavenly language how precious, how special, how wonderful He is for all He has done, the privilege of walking with Him, the privilege of being His representative, the privilege of serving Him. Let's just honour Him just as we speak in our language now. [Prays in tongues] Yes Lord, oh we love You Lord. We love You Lord. We love You Lord. We honour You Lord. We worship You Lord, yes, halleluiah.

Alright, just stop right now. Okay, now how do you sense the atmosphere now? What are you experiencing now? What are you finding has happened? How many feel a real sense of God being very close to you? How many can feel that right now? How many felt like you'd like to break into song? [Laughs] Great isn't it? You just feel like there's a song is rising up, He is Lord, you know? You just want to honour Him. See, now that's a different flow again isn't it? That's just worshipping, so we enjoy His presence. Now you notice we deliberately didn't have musicians here. Musicians are wonderful. They're a great help, but what I've wanted to do is to get you to see what's possible for you to do because most of the time you don't have a musician, it's just you. But you can do things, you can make your body, command your body. You can command your body to wake up and stop being so resistant and stubborn and tired. You can command your soul, and focus your soul, where your soul begins to engage God instead of feeling sorry for himself, and your spirit can arise and we feel the presence of God very quickly.

As you feel His presence you reach out and just love on Him, reaching out to just enjoy Him, find natural language and find the language of the spirit, just to honour Him and value Him or speak tenderly to Him. You can feel His presence here very strongly - so this is about the first person, the first realm you have to assert your authority is over yourself, over your body which plays hard and difficult at times, over your soul which is very self-centred and sorry for itself and self-directed. If we can take dominion and begin to cause our soul to flow towards God and cause our body to respond and yield and co-operate, we can begin to enjoy the presence of God. We feel His presence very easily. Of course when you feel His presence then the anointing begins to flow, so it's not hard now. I just need a catcher around me now - if I was just to lay hands now, just hold her, oh! Presence of God just touch her Lord, let Your anointing fall upon her right now. There's a presence here, the presence of God.

Now you and I are called to bring this presence wherever we go, but you've got to practice it on your own first of all, until it's natural for you to be able to just engage and feel the presence of God. Now some of us may have blocks. For some it'll be a lot easier than others; some may have blocks. Those blocks - we'll touch on those tomorrow and we'll look at how to deal with some of those things and how to break through some of those things. Amen. Give someone a hug and we'll go into Session Two.

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I want you to open up then on Page 4, and second session, and we're looking at identifying your spiritual territory. This is very important for you because it's important to know what God has entrusted me with, and what's my territory is mine, and we'll look at some things in this. So the first one, 2.1, every believer has the privilege of moving supernaturally. Not all do, but we do have the privilege. Notice what it says in 1 Corinthians 12, Verse 7: But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man, or each one, for the profit of all. So how many people is God willing to give a manifestation of His spirit to? Every person. So notice - is given to every person. So it's written as a reality. This is a spiritual reality: the presence of God, or the manifestation of the spirit of God, is given to every man, so no one is left outside.

So notice it's not something I have to do to work up, it's something that's given to me. I just need to learn how to receive, so every believer is given the privilege of bringing the supernatural dimension of God into the earth. Every believer, not just some - so is that for me? Well your experience may not be that, but why don't we start with what the word of God says, and see if we can believe that our experience would come up, rather than dropping the word of God down to our experience. So every believer is given something to advance the kingdom of God. Every believer is called to bring the life of God to other people, everyone, everyone. It's our opportunity to do that, and so to do that we need to learn how to. We'll perhaps touch on some of that tomorrow, how to just flow with the Holy Spirit and release the anointing of the spirit of God to touch people.

But the first thing we want to establish is, every believer has the potential to flow in the supernatural, and bring the realm of the spirit of God or the realm of heaven into the earth, every believer. Imagine if every believer in every church, when they went into the community, wherever they live, started to pray and act in a way that brought the presence of God there. That would have to make a difference. It would have to make a difference. The trouble is that we just don't do it, we just get busy and overlook it. So the first thing then is every believer can bring something of heaven into the earth. We can bring the reality of God into wherever we are - that's every believer's privilege. Second thing is that every believer has a spiritual territory. I'll use the word territory, but we will look at the original language and see there's particular words they use, but we'll just call it territory because it's something that's easy to remember.

You have a spiritual territory. It would be good if you were to consider this: what is that territory? What specifically is my territory? What does God require of me to do in that territory? And if I don't do it, what happens? Those are good questions to ask aren't they? What is my territory, what am I supposed to do in that territory, and if I don't do it, what are some of the things that happen as a result of that? Those are good kinds of questions to ask isn't it aye? Alright then, so the first thing is we'll read in 2 Corinthians 10, Verse 13 and Paul is writing. He says we, however, will not boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere God has appointed to us - a sphere which especially includes you. For we are not overextending ourselves, as though our authority did not extend to you, for it was to you that we came with the gospel, not boasting of things beyond what God gave to us or our measure, not boasting of other men's labours, but having hope that as your faith is increased, we shall be enlarged by you in our sphere, to preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and we not boast in another man's sphere of accomplishment.

Now it's not easy language to get to understand, so we're just going to identify a couple of words that he uses there, and then explain what he's saying. Now he uses the word measure, will not boast beyond our measure. That word measure is a word in the original language called metron, from which we get the word metre, a metre rule. The word metron is like a measure, it's like if you want to measure our something to someone, you would just stick the cup in and you'd measure it up, and then you had an idea this is the bit that I measure out to you. So you can imagine I might have several different cups, so there's a glass over there and this glass can hold a measure of water - but if I had a jug, a-ha, now I've got a bigger measure of water. So the measure then - what he's saying, the word metron there means a measure, something that's apportioned by God to a person.

So God measures out to you, something for you, so your measure is different to mine. It's unique to each person, and he says we won't boast beyond our measure, but within the limits of the sphere God has appointed to us. That word sphere is the word canon, and it means a bounded area that God has measured out for you to operate in - so Paul's saying something like this: I have been given by God an area or territory. It's been measured to me by God, for me to operate in. That's my responsibility. He says: so my measure reaches and includes you, but he says I won't go beyond what God has given me. I'll stay within the sphere God has given me. Getting the idea? So he's saying God has measured to me an area of influence, and that territory or area of influence includes you, and we've brought you the gospel. We're praying that your faith will grow, and if your faith grows then the influence will grow, and my territory will increase.

So he's saying: I didn't go into anyone else's territory. I've actually pioneered, and this is my own territory, so he's identifying I have a territory God measured out for me to minister in, and bring God's life into, and I don't go past that. Jesus Himself, you notice when the woman, the Phoenician woman came to Him and said, could you heal my daughter, and He said I'm not sent to the Gentiles, I'm sent to the house of Israel. So in other words He's saying my sphere of operation in this period of history is for Israel, but her faith was so strong she literally pulled Him out, and He ministered anyway, and she got the miracle because of her faith. So faith was what enabled her to pull a miracle out of the sphere of influence into where she was, but Jesus defined His sphere of influence: it was Israel. Now after He rose from the dead, He's now sent the gospel to go everywhere through every believer, so you have a territory, a sphere of influence.

So you have a particular territory God has measured to you. Now this would help Christians stop being competitive with one another, if they recognised actually I have my own territory that God's given me, I have my own area I'm responsible for, I should mind my business and not be worried about someone else's business, or even envious of what God has given them. So what God has measured to Bryan, He's measured to Bryan, not to me, so why should I be envious of that? Am I going to get angry with God because God did that? No, God knows what Bryan is capable of, and God has given him giftings and a sphere of influence and that's his to operate in. I should rejoice in it and encourage him in it, see? Otherwise we look at what others have, their giftings and their influence, and we get jealous of it - oh, how come they've got that and blah blah blah. We get into that negative thinking.

Why don't we say, actually God has given me giftings, He's given me the capacity to move supernaturally, and He has given me a territory to operate in. It's my job to discover what He's given me, and the territory He's given me, and to learn how to do what He wants me to do in that area. This would save a lot of frustration, because a lot of people sit in church and they're waiting for some ministry, waiting for some great thing and the most of the rest of their life is in the community. They haven't recognised that is their sphere of influence, that is their territory - for example, just using Bryan, there's no one I know in our church lives where Bryan lives - yeah, apart from you, yeah, that's right. [Laughter] Well the two are one, so I've just got to do it like that. In the workplace of course he works in a partnership, but there are people that he connects with that probably Bill doesn't connect with, the clients he has.

So he gets to meet people that I don't get to meet most of the time, and he gets to meet some people I do meet, so our territories overlap, so where they overlap is what's the church, the rest of it is his territory which is unique to him. So your job is to discover your territory, and find what God gave you to do in your territory, and then do it. Now that releases everyone to ministry, and most people are waiting for someone to get them going into some thing, in other words set it up for me so I can do it. That's okay when you're younger, but as you grow, you should actually start to say well God, what have you gifted me and what territory have you given me? How can I do something in that area? Okay, so let's have a look at our territory.

So your metron is your territory God measured you, gave you responsibility for. Your metron is your ministry assignment, so whatever your ministry assignment is, that's your responsibility, that's where you are, that's where you have an influence, and it's usually a specific location or a group of people, or a position of responsibility. It's usually a specific place, location; it involves people, and it involves a responsibility - place, people, responsibility. So my metron is not just here, it goes right up into Asia, primarily into Asia. That's where I have huge influence, far more influence there than here, so I've a stronger metron and a bigger metron in Asia than I have here. Here it's a few hundred, there it's multi-thousands. You say how did you get to do that? I don't know. Someone invited me just to go there, and then God told me to connect with someone, and then it's just gone from there.

It grows as you actually fill out and fulfil what God gave you to do, so if you realise that you have a territory that God has given you, and you discover it and then begin to think what can I do to fill that out, and bring forth fruit, and subdue whatever's in it that's negative and against the kingdom of God, you're busy all the rest of your life. It wouldn't matter if you had no position, you still have a territory. You still have something that God's called you to do, so you see whether I'm the Pastor of this church or not, I still have a territory God's given me, and so I want to try and identify that. So how would you identify your territory?

Notice what Paul says in Verse 15 of 2 Corinthians 10. I don't boast of things beyond measure or another man's labours, but have hope that as your faith is increased we shall be greatly enlarged in our own sphere. So he's talking about his own labours and someone else's labours, so he recognised his own territory that God had given to him. He said: I'm called to the Gentiles. That's an amazing thing. He's full of the gospel, he's full of the Bible, and he's sent to the Gentiles, so Paul was very careful not to go beyond his territory. Now it is important that you don't invade someone else's responsibility. When you do that, it becomes controlling, and it becomes witchcraft.

I was counselling one person, and it was about direction for this person's life, and the biggest challenge that they faced was that everyone in their life had told them what to do. What they needed to be encouraged was to identify what God had wired in them and then to step up and own it, then start to fulfil that assignment, you understand? Your territory's not what someone told you it was, it's something God put in your heart to do. That's why all ministry must flow out of our heart. Our heart has to be in it, or we're just fulfilling a duty and it's a dead thing. So Paul was careful not to go beyond his territory because there are two problems; one, if you go beyond your territory, you're into someone else's area that you're not responsible for, and meddling with their business, then you open the door for spirits of witchcraft to operate. Likewise if you don't occupy and take responsibility for your area, then again spirits come in and invade, as we'll see in a moment.

So your territory includes everything that God wants you to be responsible for. I'll say it again: your territory is everything God has given you specific responsibility for, so let's try and identify it really simply. The first thing is yourself, you're responsible for yourself. Now that seems sort of an obvious thing, but actually people forget it. You're responsible for your body, to have dominion over your body and to care for your body. If your body breaks down because of ill health you cannot fulfil your other parts of your assignment, so you need to bring your body and discipline your body and learn how to keep your body healthy so you can fulfil your assignment. Your soul is your territory. Your soul includes your mind, your thought life, your imagination. It includes your emotions, it includes your will. They are all your territory. You must govern that territory, so if you've got an anger problem your territory is out of control. Your territory's been invaded by something, so your soul is a vital part of your territory.

Your skills, the skills you have are part of your territory. You're responsible for them, and so if God has given you say a musical ability, develop it and cultivate it and grow it and have dominion over that area until it becomes productive and fruitful. Do training. A lot of people get this thing that you've come to the Lord now, and so everything natural is lost. No, actually God uses all your natural skills. They're not just natural, they're part of you, and you're a spirit being. They're spiritual. No, don't sort of try to minimise natural abilities we have, because that's what God gave you to earn a living, it's what God gave you to make a mark with your life. He just enhances it by the power of His spirit so it's more productive, but you need to develop it. So your metron firstly then is your own spirit, mind, your body and so on.

Another area is your relationship with your spouse, now that is your metron, that is your territory where the two become one. Now that doesn't mean you have the right to command, or boss, or have dominion over your spouse. What it does mean is that what's happening in your spouse's life is part of the territory God wants you to care for, so therefore you are responsible for that whole realm, the realm of what's going on in that relationship. Another area is your family. Now we're not responsible for the choices our children make, that's their territory, but we are responsible for the culture, the values, the training that goes on in the home. That's our territory. You can't delegate that to the church. You may let the church do a little bit on Sunday, but actually the primary training is in the home. You can't let the schools take over that - the primary place of training is the home. Your children are your children, not the church's children or the school's children. They are your children.

Now once you see that, you'll make it your business to know what's going on, and if something's going wrong you'll speak up, because it's your territory, and you're going to have a voice in your territory. Often in the education system it can be intimidating to parents. My experience over many years, both as a teacher and a parent, is the parents know what's going on in their kids, and then they should speak up if they're not happy about what's happening. We need to have a voice into those areas. Sometimes people in education can treat you as though you don't know anything, but I've found parents do know a lot, and they know a lot about what's going on in their kids, and what's right for their kids, and what isn't right for them. So you understand, these are your areas?

Now we're going to talk a little bit about what it means to take ownership, and so let's keep going on - so your finances are your territory. It's not just a matter of something casual. Your finances need to be cultivated and grown and developed and managed and so on. Your home is your territory, so your home has an atmosphere in it. The atmosphere's created by how you develop your relationships, what you permit in the home. There's a whole realm there where your home can be a place where the presence and peace of God is, and where people can come, and it's a ministry centre. So your home is your territory, and God gave you a home. We've always believed and bought houses that could be a place where people could come and find hospitality and ministry. Sometimes it gets a bit busy and I have to get a break, but on the other hand it is a place of ministry. It is our territory, within which we are called to use what God gave us to advance His kingdom.

Can you see we haven't even talked about anything in the church yet? We're just identifying aspects of your territory. Imagine if you were to identify each one, and begin to think what you could do to build, cultivate, develop this area. Be amazing wouldn't it? Okay then, your possessions, your possessions need maintenance and management and they're part of your territory. Your job and your workplace, now you have a great responsibility in the workplace. Why? Because if you're a believer, you are responsible to do something about the spiritual atmosphere of the place. If there is demonic activity there, you do have authority to address it, and deal with it as a representative of the kingdom of heaven. You can speak in it. We'll show you how to do that tomorrow. You can address it and change it and I've proven it. I proved it when I was a very young Christian. It's not difficult to shift a spiritual atmosphere in a place, because you have the right and the authority, and you are delegated authority to do it. Getting the idea?

Okay, what else? Your ministry, well that's an area of serving in the church or gifting and skill that God gives you that takes you outside the church, so your ministry - let's get away from the spiritualising too much - your ministry, another word, a better way to say it would be your service for the kingdom, your service for the kingdom. When you use the word ministry it sounds very important and special, but actually the word minister means servant. Actually if I can make it even clearer, it's the one who comes around and does something like this: it says I see your cup, it's just empty. Can I just - excuse me a minute - can I just help you and there you go, there you go. I'm sure that'll be much better now - see? Now that's what ministry is. People get the wrong idea, but ministry means - it's the word daikano, to wait on the tables, to meet the needs of people.

When you're waiting on the table, who's important, you or them? The person who's sitting at the table's, the important one. [Laughs] You're just the one waiting on the table. They're the one having the feed, they're the one that's being looked after.

So ministry, the word used to describe ministry is to wait on tables. It's to have a servant, or heart of a servant, to look after the needs of other people. It's nothing to do about how important you are. Insecure people with no identity get a big head about having some big ministry - I'm a this, I'm a that. Oh great, ministry means wait on tables you know, and Jesus modelled it. He washed people's feet. That's ministry, so you can do miracles and wash feet, you can do them all. No one's too important, so your ministry, what God called you to do is the territory that God wants you to grow and develop, and this is your metron, so for example with Graham and Jessie, God's put it in their heart to go out on the streets and to meet people in the streets, so God has given them a whole territory to begin to invade and to go into. That requires they do certain things.

Now everyone here can have a ministry. Within the church of course there's some areas of serving that we need to fulfil in order just to keep the family functioning properly, basics of children and youth and young adults, and sound and technical gear, and serving in the kitchen - all these serving areas, but they're all part of just keeping the household going. But beyond that we also have service within the community, and where God called you to serve, whether it's a place in the house, or a place in the community or both, that is your territory. You're responsible then to govern your territory. You say well, I'm not in charge of the ministry - but that doesn't mean to say you don't actually have a sense of responsibility for it. You see you're called to be a king, not a slave. A slave waits to be told what to do, a king designs how things could be better. See their whole attitude around this area? So you have a territory.

So you start to identify your territory, and then of course the reality is that you also have a territory or an engagement in the community. I've discovered wherever I am, God has an assignment for me there. Now that's a hard one to keep in mind because you just get busy doing stuff, but if you can imagine - have you ever seen an embassy, like the American Embassy or the French Embassy? If you go to an embassy it's an interesting thing, but the piece of land actually is foreign territory, so you can't go in there without permission because you're going into another country essentially. You're going to the embassy, the representation or the representatives of the Government of the United States, so when you go in there that's actually foreign territory. Now have a think about this. You have the spirit of God in you, and you are an ambassador, a representative of the kingdom of heaven, so wherever you are - think about this - wherever you are, then this is my territory.

So therefore I can minister and have influence wherever I go. I'm authorised, wherever I am is part of my territory, so I may be just here and then there's a group, so this is my territory, a temporary assignment. So you'll have permanent assignments which we've talked about - your own body, soul and spirit, your home, your family, your marriage. Then you have temporary ones wherever you are, so you go to a certain place, meet some people and for a short time you're on assignment; God, what do you want me to do? Have a think about this. Jesus stopped at the well, but His assignment hadn't stopped. He stopped at the well, a woman came by, and the disciples had walked past her because they were caught up with what they were doing. He saw someone in need, and in a few moments had a conversation with her that turned her into an evangelist, changed her life. Why is that? Because He had a sense of being on assignment all the time.

We tend to divide our life up, church life, rest of life, rather than saying actually, kingdom life 24/7, wherever I am I'm called to actually bring God there. I'm called to engage with it, and this is my territory for the moment, and so you'll have some assignments are permanent ones, but the majority are temporary. Some last only a little while. I meet a group of people and I have an opportunity to produce something that will bring blessing to them, or I may have a group of people and I'm with them for a longer period of time. Getting the idea? Once you start to see that you think what have you called me to do Lord? What do you want me to do here, what's my assignment here? And Jesus said I do all the things I see the Father doing. It's great isn't it aye?

So now what are your key responsibilities in your assignment? So you have a territory, so the first place to look is to go back into the Garden of Eden, and we'll have a look at what God told Adam to do. Let's get it here at Genesis 2:15. Got it? Then the Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it. So they were given a territory. It's a garden. They were given two primary responsibilities: number one, tend it. Now here's what that means. That means literally to serve. It means to work as an act of worship, so work - there's no such thing as spiritual work and other work, it's all service to God. So when you consider you have a career, or whatever job you're doing, that's an act of worship to God when you give it to Him, and keep Him involved with it - that's your active worship. It means to cultivate or develop, so you have the idea of a piece of land that needs some turning over and some seeds planted in it and watering and it'll produce something.

The second thing he was called to keep it, to guard or watch over it or protect it from an enemy, so that implies that the territory, even the territory Adam had, one, it needed cultivating and developing, and required his creativity; two, there was an enemy which was real and present, and he had to protect his area or his territory from what that enemy could do. So have a think about that. He was given responsibility to cultivate, he's given responsibility to protect, so he failed in his governing when he did these things: he became silent and passive. That's how he failed, and then he eventually disobeyed, listened to the wrong voice - but he was silent. When the devil was doing all the talking to Eve he remained silent, so one of the big problems men have is, they remain silent and passive in the face of the enemy, and end up with huge problems in their lives and their families.

So what were the consequences of a failure to govern his territory? Number one, broken relationship. He damaged his relationship with God, and with his wife; secondly, loss of spiritual authority. The authority he did have that God gave him was now lost, it was yielded up to the devil who claimed and wielded it against Jesus later on. Now here's the thing you need to understand about it: if you give up your spiritual authority, the devil will use it against you, and so a person who does not stand up and lead in the area God called them to lead, will be oppressed in the area he's called to lead. There's never neutral. You arise and stand up in it, or it works and pushes down on you. You have to learn how to stand up, and to govern that area - and so he lost his spiritual authority, it become used against him.

The third thing was oppression and sickness, so once Satan had usurped the authority, then the next thing he used it too and so death entered in, sickness entered in and so on, and finally generational problems. Now we're looking at Adam. Now how about thinking about this; what would you think if I said this: that in your territory you are called to do two primary things - cultivate it to be fruitful; and guard it from demonic invasion? If you fail to guard it from demonic invasion then the consequences are, in your territory, there will exist broken and damaged relationships. You will have a loss of authority and a sense of powerlessness and oppression in that situation, and the problems that come could be generational. In other words your children for generations could be affected by your failure to govern.

This is an incredible responsibility on men, in terms of spiritual leadership in the home, to govern the home environment, the spiritual environment, and not to let their wife take up the responsibility because they gave it up. Men need to actually learn how to lead their homes, and it's the failure to lead creates the problems that we see in our culture now - so think about that. And of course Jesus reinforced this. I won't read the whole story there, but you're aware of the parable of the pounds, where the nobleman went to a far country and he entrusted his goods to his servants, and when he came back he called them to account. We saw in that parable how the servants that had been productive were given more; the servant which just only conserved, actually lost what he had. Jesus reinforced again, if you don't become productive and govern your area of responsibility, it does go away from you. You lose and diminish your authority and capacity to serve and minister, so He reinforced the same kind of principle.

So putting it again this way: if you don't guard and govern your territory, there will be damage in it. There will be oppression in it. The consequences could be generational, and they could result in heaviness, oppression and sickness. Think about this. If you don't govern your body you'll suffer ill health, then your life with be shortened. If you don't govern your soul, you'll end up with torments and troubles and pressures and anxieties and fears and all kinds of things going on in your soul. If you don't govern your finances and protect it from the enemy that'll come against you, you'll have financial problems that can affect all other areas of your life. So each one of these areas, if you fail in your metron to govern it and cultivate it, the consequences spread, but if you arise in that area, then blessing comes and great positive impact comes.

So let's go through here. What does it take then to govern your spiritual territory? Governing your spiritual territory - I want to give you about five keys. They may not apply in each and every one situation, but these are what I'd call important keys. Now the first one is probably one of the most important, although people wouldn't know this. The first one is you need to hold your territory in your heart in prayer. I want to read you something in Philippians 1, Verse 3. Paul's writing the Philippians, he said this: I thank my God in every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you with all joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now - now look at this - being confident of this very thing, that he who begun a good work in you - that's God, that's the Holy Spirit - will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now why could he be so confident that the work that he had begun would continue? Look what he says in the next one: It is right for me to think this way because I hold you in my heart, inasmuch in my chains and defence of the gospel, you are all partakers of my grace. For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you with all affection in Christ. Now what he's saying is this. He said: I came to you. You were the territory God sent me into. He said I sowed the gospel, and the spirit of God moved and touched your life, and I'm confident God will keep working in you. Why is this? He said because I am holding you in my heart in prayer, and you receive the grace that's on my life flows to you. Now he's writing as an apostle with apostolic grace and he's saying because I hold you in my heart, I can be confident that my prayer will release something in your life.

Now what does it mean to hold in your heart? Well you can see it through the language he uses. He says I hold you in my heart with affection. He says I hold you in my heart with great joy as I think about you, I pray for you. So what does it mean to hold in your heart? To hold in your heart means that from within your heart you welcome, embrace and love that person, that responsibility you have. Let me just explain to you what that would mean if you didn't do that. It's very easy for a parent to get offended with one of their teenagers, and if you get an offence, you build a wall, and you wall the person out of your heart, then you expose your teenager - they're now no longer under your governing and protection. They're now exposed to spiritual oppression.

The moment you let go of someone out of your heart, what happens is, the spiritual dynamic in the relationship changes. If I hold you in my heart with love and affection and bless you, the grace on my life will be released to you. If I get offended or distracted or refocused somewhere else, and let you go out of my heart, then you feel let go. You actually feel it. I'll give you another example of it. How many of you have had the experience of a father coming home, and he's arrived home from work, but for about an hour he's not emotionally present in the house? He's there, but preoccupied - you know what that's like? Now what do you experience when someone is there with you, but they're preoccupied? You do not feel their heart, you don't feel the flow of their spirit. They are disconnected from you. There's no flow from them to you.

Now why is it a man would come home to his wife and children, and then not be really there? Very simply he's focussed his heart somewhere else; spent hours and hours and hours focussed on work, comes home, he's still engaged in work. It's not hard to shift it. Ever heard the words of that song: I've Left My Heart in San Francisco? It means I've shifted, but my heart is still back there, because I now have not really let go of where I was. My heart is still there.

So what you focus your heart on, that's what your heart will open to, so I just taught men very simply, on your way home, instead of rushing home drive home slowly, consciously let go every worry, every care, everything you've got going on in your life, and begin to then picture your wife, picture your children and begin to hold that in your heart and thank God for them. Begin to imagine what it'll be like to go into the home and be with them all. Your heart will redirect and engage, so our heart turns. It quite moves, and we can embrace or we can let go. A woman who's got an unsaved husband, very easy to let your husband go out of your heart because you see what's wrong, and it constantly becomes a source of irritation, so instead of your heart embracing him and holding him in your heart and releasing the grace of God, instead of that there's a wall which he can feel, and there's no flow into your territory of the grace of God.

The biggest things that cause these blocks in relationships are offences, and then distractions. The life just gets re-focussed somewhere else - oh, we're getting real quiet now. [Laughter] Because it's very true, so I'll give you another example. When you pray for an unsaved husband or family member or whatever, if you are angry with them and disturbed about them and only see what's wrong with them, when you pray for them you won't be holding them in your heart. You'll be holding an offence and judgement in your heart. There'll be no grace released into that territory. You have to actually see them saved, see them before God, see them with the hand of God on their life, see them by faith, and then you can release the life of God into the territory.

So this is a big problem for many people, because offences and judgements call the heart to block out, and then when you pray you're just going through the motions, because your heart is not there loving and embracing them. You can feel it when it's like that. You feel the wall, you feel the block, so what he's saying is very simply - so the thing about your territory is take ownership of it, and welcome it, and welcome it like a friend, not reluctantly I've got to do this. I was talking to one person, and they were having major troubles with their money, and we couldn't work out why because the person knew finances, knew how to manage finances but just couldn't manage his own finances. Then we found out what the real reason was. Now here's the real reason. I could not believe this, and almost it was just amazing, and the person trained in finance and yet when we came to deal with the issue of finances this is what they said, this is what they came out with: my father put all his life into making money, and we never had time with him. I came to the conclusion money is evil, and creates problems for you - and so what he did then, he had no heart to actually operate money, and had no power over it.

So money just went from him like that, until the day he recognised what he'd believed in his heart, he came to a judgement. The problem was not the money, the problem was his father's preoccupation with the money at the expense of the family, and his judgement of his father. When he dealt with that, he was able to get a grip around money, and start to manage and start to have dominion over his money. You have to have it in your heart. You've got to celebrate and welcome the responsibility, before you can do anything much to change it. So think about it; until you actually take responsibility and celebrate whatever is your territory into your heart, you won't do the other things needed. You won't have the power to do it. It's got to be in your heart.

It's the same thing with reaching unsaved people. If they don't get in our heart, then we won't have any effect with them. You've actually got to have your territory in your heart. Jesus held His disciples in His heart. He still holds us in His heart. I've written you on my hand, how can I forget you? God has us in His heart, and so one of the first things is to get something in your heart. Now to get something in your heart, sometimes you've actually got to face that you've got resistance or reaction or judgements or offences, and repent of them and say God, forgive me for not taking responsibility. I repent of that. I come now, I put my arms around and just welcome that responsibility into my life. I thank You, it's something You've given me to cultivate and to govern and I purpose now to do it. I have been irresponsible, I repent and I decide to do it.

I remember counselling one man, and there was a major control and witchcraft operating in his marriage, and this was the thing that I counselled him. I said, whatever is in your marriage, you have allowed to be there, and so it's not whether there's something operating in your wife that's the problem. The real problem is you have not stood up and embraced what God called you to take responsibility for. You need to repent of your failure, step up inside, take responsibility, embrace your wife and the responsible leadership in your heart, then begin to pray as if you are in a role of leadership, and it will produce some results. Whew - very quiet now isn't it aye? [Laughter] So if you've absconded or given up responsibility or abdicated, then your territory will be over run, and you have only yourself - you can pray all you like. Until you own up and take responsibility for what God called you to be responsible for, that's why you've got to know what you're responsible for. I'm not responsible for other's decisions, but I am responsible for how I deal with them and interact with them.

Here's the second thing is, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us. See, whatever territory God has given you, He can give you the ideas of what you need to do. Jesus said: I'm doing all the things I see the Father do, Holy Spirit constantly spoke with Him, so ask the Holy Ghost for wisdom what to do: Holy Ghost, I don't know what to do, help me. Just show me, drop it in my heart something that I can do to help in this situation. Thirdly, develop a vision. Look and work out a picture of what's possible in that area. I think without any kind of imagination about what it could be, or envisaging what it could be, we won't properly cultivate that territory, so begin to picture what it could be. Get ideas, write some things down. Your territory's unique to you, your neighbourhood's unique to you, wherever you are is unique to you. Ask the Holy Ghost to give you some ideas about what you could do, start to write them down, start to think of the things that you could do. The goals will focus your attention and give your prayers substance, and your faith something to work with.

A fourth thing you can do is to learn - and we'll show you more of this - is arise in your spirit, and begin to use your voice to speak into the spirit world. Now there's two areas we need to speak; one is whatever spirits occupy your territory that oppose you, just speak and subdue them, and we'll show you how to do it. The second thing is, we need to learn how to release the word of God over the territory we're in. Now this is one of the most powerful things. I don't want us to get focussed on demons, although we were going to touch on them quite a lot more tomorrow. What you need to do is, suppose this is all my territory here, and I've got this ground to cultivate, and God opens my eyes and I see: oh my goodness, the whole of my territory is full of wicked spirits. Look at that, everywhere. They're just all looking and glaring at me. Okay then, now there's two things I need to do.

I should not be focussed on the spirits. I just need to dispossess them, and put into this territory what God wants me to put in, so it always has two things to it. One is, I need to address the spirits and drive them out and two, I need to declare God's word over my situation, and this is what's called building in the spirit, taking the word of God. Remember that God created this whole world by speaking. Christians continually forget the power of speaking the word of God, but tonight when I got you all to speak strongly: bless the Lord, O my soul, everything within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Don't forget any of His benefits. See - something happens in the atmosphere. We release the word of God. Now you'll find all the miracles in the Bible someone spoke, just over and over and over and over again we'll see. I'll show you the pattern. There's revelation comes, in other words you get the mind of God. You speak out with faith in your heart, and things begin to happen.

Now one of the most neglected areas in our Christian or spiritual walk is this area of arising with authority and commanding our day, commanding demonic assignments to be diminished, and commanding or release the word of God into our circumstances and environment. It is the most powerful way to shift things. I guarantee if you start to do it, things will shift around your life. It's like most Christians pray and hope that somehow their prayers will be answered, hope that somehow God will come through, instead of standing up and saying: I'm seeded in heavenly places in Christ, and I speak now and drive every spirit out of that place, and I release the word of God into my situation! You have to do that day by day, start to take dominion over your day, and I'll show you how to pray, and we'll give you some keys on how you would pray, and what you would do. I tell you, things will change around you. It won't always be pleasant at the beginning. Demons don't always leave easily, and they often create a fuss before they depart, but they will depart.

You notice in the Old Testament they had to possess the land, so God said: I've given it to you. You have to enter it, and drive out what's already in there, and then plant and sow and reap the land. So tomorrow we'll share with you some aspects of that, look at areas where there is resistance, what to do about it, and get you some more activations in the spirit to get you going. Amen. [Amen.]

This is one of the greatest privileges we've got. I tell you, God showed me this stuff when I was a very young Christian, and I saw my whole career just go up like that, and everything around me just become incredibly blessed. I know it works, and I know if you'll engage, it will work, and don't be like one of the guys I told him how to pray, and came back a week later and he said it didn't work. I said really, it didn't work? Okay, well why didn't it work? He said well, after I started praying things got really worse. [Laughter] I said really? I said don't you realise you stepped up, and started to engage the battle, and at the first blow on the nose you retreated and gave up. I said that's all that's happened. Just stay the battle, you must win. You will win. God's decreed you will win, you've just got to step up into it. Amen. [Amen.]

Father, we just thank You for tonight, thank You for Your presence here. Thank You for these mighty men and women who will arise and learn how to assert authority in the spirit world and see things change, in Jesus' mighty name. Everyone said [Amen!] Amen. Come on, let's give the Lord a clap shall we? [Applause] Thank You Lord.

How to Exercise Spiritual Authority (3 of 6)

Wed 13 Feb 2013  « Back to Top

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Further activations to stir and awaken you inner man quickly, give voice to faith decrees, and release a spirit flow. Understand the real meaning of 'authority', 'power', 'legal rights', and what Jesus accomplished at the cross to disarm spiritual powers. Know what we have delegated power to do, and foundations which have to be built in our life to ensure success. Finally, how to forbid troubling spirits and release blessing. Plenty of practical examples in workplace, marriage, family life etc.

Come on, let's come on out, we're going to begin to start off with an activation. That's right, we want to start with an activation. Alright, I wonder how many noticed what happened, what change took place, when I just got you up to go around and hug people. [Yeah!] Did you notice actually the whole atmosphere shifts, because people - the walls that disconnect us, just break down as you start to connect like that? You find that the things of the spirit are very, very simple. There's nothing really complex about it, and we find that often there's things that we have to do just naturally and practically, things which you can do which involve your soul, and things which involve of course your rising in your spirit.

So we want to get our spirit to arise today, so why don't we make our body move, and let's begin to pray strongly in the spirit, strongly in the language God has given us. [Prays in tongues] Okay, let's do one more: Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits. Okay, now this time we do it, ready, from the beginning, on the count of three. Now as you're doing it, don't just repeat something and speak something. One of the things that you'll find, if we're engaging in a conversation but in my mind I disconnect, the person that I'm relating with will feel the disconnection. Have you ever been talking with someone, and suddenly you just felt something change, their eyes have got that glazed look, their mind has gone somewhere else? What happens in the flow of your spirit is there's a disconnected, and you actually feel it.

I remember talking to my daughter and it was going fine, then I thought hello, we're disconnected. I turned around and she'd zipped off in some shop and she'd gone. [Laughter] I was actually just talking to myself, but I could feel the difference, and you feel the difference if you're talking to someone and their mind goes somewhere else, they disconnect. So one of the things when you're praying in tongues is to engage your mind as well and engage your soul. So when we're speaking - now we're going to just speak. I want you to be speaking arising in your spirit, see yourself rising up, and you're speaking to your soul, and you're telling your soul to come into line and bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Let your body and soul respond see to the voice of your spirit. Your spirit always wants to praise God - let's do it. Okay then, ready? One, two, three: Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases, halleluiah! Oh halleluiah. Come on, let's give Him a clap right now. [Applause]. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord.

Okay, while we're on it, we'll give you one more exercise to do, because your spirit will respond to you giving voice to the word of God, see so I want you to just declare: I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. See, now that's a declaration from the word of God but it's personalised, so we take scripture and make it personal: I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Now of course what happens is, you may not feel that way. Actually today you might be feeling incredibly frail, and you've got all kinds of issues going on, so you think I can't say that because that's not true. But actually if you were to arise by faith and say in the spirit, this is where I stand, that I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might, and I will declare what I believe in my heart; then you'll find everything around you and in you will start to shift to align with what your spirit is saying, when you declare the word of God.

So I want you to do it. We're going to just - I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. We'll say it three or four times and I want you to see what happens when you make it a declaration, you're declaring it to your spirit, to your soul, your body and you're declaring it into the atmosphere around you. I want you to see what happens when you speak, and give voice to the word of God like that. Ready? I'm strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Ready? One, two, three. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. Okay, that'll do. Right, okay, now the more you do it, the more your inner man begins to agree with the truth. Initially there's a wrestling, because a lot of you doesn't really agree with that, but as you learn to speak the word of God, and you make it a strong declaration from inside, you'll find your spirit will arise very quickly, and everything in you starts to shift, because you're declaring what God says is true about you.

See, the spirit of God is in you. Isn't that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead? How can you be weak if the spirit of God is joined to you? Are you not joined and seeded with Christ in the realm of eternity, and seeded in heaven itself in your spirit - is that not true? How can you be weak? I cannot be weak. It's not true that I'm weak. My circumstances and things around me may press in, and cause me to feel weak, but He says that when I'm weak then the grace even more abounds see? So I'm even stronger when I'm weak, because I lean in and depend on the Lord - so let's do it one more time, three or four times, I'm strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Ready? One, two, three. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might.

Now how many of you found something shifted inside you just doing that? How many felt something? Okay, what did you feel? [Different thinking, a different atmosphere, just the way you - the more you say it the more you start to believe it.] That's exactly right, so we can believe and speak or we can speak to believe. ] Whatever you are feeling begins to shift as you declare the word of God, exactly. So we have the word and the spirit. We've got to learn to take what God has given us, and work with it, see? The word of God is a sword of the spirit, it actually is a sword, so this stuff starts to sweep away. So you can sweep the air right around you real quick, it doesn't take you long. Ready? So once again we'll get praying in tongues. Now this time as you're praying in tongues, the Bible says a person who prays in tongues their spirit is praying, they're praying as the Holy Ghost gives them utterance, and it says also that you build up yourself.

So what I want you to do as you're praying in tongues, begin to speak, and just see that your whole spirit, your inner man, is starting to arise and become full of the life of God. Let your focus just be on that. Sometimes it helps to just put your hand on your belly, and as you're praying in tongues you're praying consciously to build your spirit man, so your spirit man arises. We'll see later your spirit can flow right outside your body, or it fills an atmosphere beyond you. Your spirit flows, so let's begin to arise, just filling the room with our presence in the spirit of God. Amen - you ready? One, two, three. [Prays in tongues] Okay, stop.

Alright, what did you experience as you prayed that way? How many of you felt something flowing in your life? Release, release inside, that's good. So we can stir and awaken our spirit man and we do it, we have to use our voice. You have to use your voice and your mind; use your voice to give utterance to the words of God, whether it be speaking in tongues or the written word of God, and to use your mind to meditate and to embrace and welcome the truth, so that there's no part of you is not holding on to that - and it works just very quickly. You'll be quite surprised. Now the more you practice it, the easier it is for your spirit to arise. You train your spirit to arise quickly, and you train your body and your soul to surrender quickly. Most people don't know how to do that, so they live with their spirit flat and under a heaviness, and don't realise that it's actually something you can break out of real quick. So we gave you that thing to shake your body, gave you the things of just speaking the word of God, speaking in tongues.

Here's another confession you could make: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. See? I can, I can, yes I can. Yes, I can - that's a good thing, yes, yes! Come on, why don't you just say it now? Yes! [Yes! Yes! Yes!] [Laughs] See? Now when you start to do that, you start to strengthen your will, because growing in your spirit, you've got to learn to develop the power to say yes! Okay and the other word you've got to learn to say is no. [Laughter] Some people can't say no, but you see in the realm of the spirit, I've got to be saying yes to some things, and no to other things. That's the binding and the loosing, yes to some, no to others. Okay? I just wanted you to begin to say that, then we're just speaking now, why don't you just begin to make declarations and you're saying no to the devil, and no to sin, so begin to speak it like you really mean it. Are you ready? We'll do it half a dozen times, ready, one, two, three. No! [No! No! No! No! No! No!] See - okay, now see isn't it interesting what happens inside you? How many found suddenly you feel - [ooh!] Yeah, you lift up inside, even just saying no, isn't that right? But a lot of people can't say no, and a lot of people say yes to things they should be saying no to, so learning to say strong yes's, strong no's!

In the spirit I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me - ready? One, two, three. [I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!] That's quite a good statement to make, everything God has called you to do, you can do it, you can do it, yes, I can, yes I can - see? Can. Can. Can - it's a good word can. [Laughs] Okay then, I wonder if we've got another one there, okay, here's a good one. This is one I use quite regularly: The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells within me and quickens my mortal body. Now have a think about that. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead - that's the resurrection power of God, where is it? It's within you, and it says He will what? Quicken or make alive your body. Now you think about that, so as we're just going to speak it over, I'll say it again - The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, see? Same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells in me, and shall quicken my mortal body.

Now begin to as you declare it, make it your declaration that your body shall arise with life as you decree the word of God, and what you'll find is you'll come alive in your body. Then I'll often follow that by just yielding different parts of my body, firstly my spirit man, my mind, imagination, your hearing, seeing, mouth, heart and affections, will, hands and works, and feet, my walk before God, consciously yielding. Then what happens as you do that, is you begin to develop awareness of your body and your soul and what's going on in it, because you consciously learn to present each part to the Lord, then you become aware, more aware when things are going on in those different parts of you, and you can quickly shake them up, see? See, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in me, and quickens my mortal body. [The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells within me, and quickens my mortal body. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells within me, and quickens my mortal body. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells within me and quickens my mortal body.]

Now you'll begin to find - how many found your body started to get stronger as you started to say it? You come alive with energy. Now you'll notice it's very simple, it's the spirit and the word, and being willing to actually use what God has given me, and I've got to give voice to it. You'll find everything in the spirit you have to give voice, you have to give voice to things, and if you listen to people giving voice, you'll tell whether their spirit is shut down and overwhelmed by their mind, or you'll tell whether their spirit arises and is in their words. You've just got to listen. Listen when people pray, and listen to yourself as you're speaking; am I really fully in those words, or am I just sort of saying it because this is what we have to do in this class? You'll feel the difference see, and so again, doing it wholeheartedly will get the results; half-heartedly, no results. No matter how long you do it, half-heartedly no results. What you're looking for is the release in your spirit to arise, so you start to then be free to flow from within, instead of just getting stuck in your head or your emotions or soul. Getting the idea?

Okay, why don't we just pray again, we'll just pray for a couple more minutes and just pray. As we pray let's begin to lift our hands and our hearts, we're exalting God with His heavenly language which enables us oh! to thank Him and bless Him! [Prays in tongues] - come on, let your voice rise! [Prays in tongues] Holy Ghost, we love You! We welcome You today. We honour You today. [Prays in tongues] Halleluiah. Whoa, let's give the Lord a clap. [Applause] At all times you can develop your inner man. As you do that, you'll find you'll feel another presence - you'll feel the presence of God start to manifest over your life. There's an anointing arising from within, and there's another one comes upon, and so it's very important to understand the difference. We can always activate what's within us, but we don't have control or power over God coming upon us. That's something He does when we connect properly, see?

So Jill, would you like to just come, just stand up here and just - there we are. I need someone behind her. Now I just shared with you about learning to give voice, so - I need someone to stand behind her, that's right. Okay, ready Jill? Now I want you to just lift your eyes up to the Lord, let your heart be on the Lord, and you see now that we're full of the Holy Ghost, power! And just in the release of the word, power flows and it's quite simple, see? We'll do that a little bit more later, just wanting you to get to see it and get used to it. So now we've arisen in spirit and something comes from within us that can be released, and we can release it with words. I'm wanting you to really get the understanding that your words, when they are full of faith, actually bring about some results, and so we'll see how to get them full of faith a little bit later. Okay, so if I in my heart am completely convinced that God is in me, same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is within me, oh the anointing of the Holy Ghost flows like a mighty river, power! And I can believe that the power of God will just flow through her and touch her there. There we go - isn't that nice to be caught by your husband like that? [Laughter] Ready, just come - and of course now that we're starting to move that way, if you'll just open your heart to the Lord, you'll feel His presence start to come on you. It's like a [blows once gently] like something just comes down from heaven, just like that.

Now you notice we haven't done a lot. What we have done is just stirred what we do have. We have the word, we have the Holy Spirit, we must deploy what God has given us. Just open your eyes and heart to the Lord and just [blows once gently] receive from Him right now - and so we're in a place you could just pray for - why don't you pray for one another? That'd be a great thing to do right now, just pray for one another right now. Just pray. Just release the blessing of God, okay but make sure you've got someone to catch. Just try that right now. That's right. [Background chat] No catcher? Put a chair right behind her and she can sit in the chair. [Background chat] [Blows once gently] Spirit of God come, Holy Ghost come. Alright. [Laughs] Wonderful. [Background chat] Alright then, do you want to just - just come here, just take his hand. Are you ready? Okay, now close your eyes, and I want you just to begin to imagine that God is as close to me, as I am to you right now. The presence of God is here, so don't try and make something happen, just become aware God is here. Now we're going to release what God has given you - [Blows once gently] there we are, just like that. See and he begins to feel the presence of God, see? It's not empty words. It's words that are full of a heart, so you get your heart focussed first, otherwise you'll try to say something and do something and nothing happens. Alright then?

Okay then, let's just take a seat now. We'll come back to that one later on. Great stuff. How many feel wide awake now? [Laughs] You do, you get wide awake. You just become wide awake. Remember, you can pray any time, that's the gift God's given you. You can speak the word of God any time, and you can develop your heart, your meditation in the word of God, any time you wish. These are great. They're simple, we can do it any time. So here's the thing - you determine how much you grow and develop your inner man. Okay, we want to look on how to exercise spiritual authority. We went yesterday and we looked at spiritual authority and what it was, and we saw also about God has called us to go on a mission, everyone's got assignment from God. We saw also how we have a territory that we're responsible for. We saw about governing our territory; if we fail to govern then what happens is something else sits in there, and that's why many people are oppressed, because they've failed to govern their territory.

Okay then, so what we want to do this time - and we finished up with how governing your spiritual territory meant you had to hold it in your heart. I can't overemphasise how important it is to hold what God has given you in your heart. If anything takes it out of your heart, your ability to spiritually assert authority over it seems to diminish, so we need to hold in our heart what God has given us. We saw also we needed to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and seek direction, how and what He wants us to do. Thirdly, we saw in our metron, or our area of territory, we needed to begin to get vision, or get some kind of direction, and layout some kind of steps for what we wanted to build, then use our voice to speak. This is the area that I want to focus a bit more on this time, is learning how to arise in your spirit, and to speak into your territory. This is a very, very important part - and then finally of course, things are not just spiritual, they're also natural. Whatever territory God has given you, you've got to be engaged in and active in it, so for example - we'll go into this session this time, and we want to look at how you exercise spiritual authority. Then I'll give you some examples of it at the end, firstly from personal testimony, and then just some ways that you could do this.

The problem of writing down prayers is they tend to become mechanical. They can help, but they tend to become mechanical. I've always felt if you can get the dynamics sorted out, it's not hard to get a flow, which you grow in your own life. We'll give you some practical keys. Alright then, so we read in Luke, Chapter 4, Jesus was in a synagogue, and a man manifested an evil spirit. Of course everyone was astonished because the evil spirit was yelling out through the man. We've got to imagine in a nice quiet church service how disruptive that is; someone's yelling out LEAVE US ALONE! You know, you can imagine all the people looking around, and all eyes are on this man, and he's crazy in that sense. He's sort of doing something unpredictable, but a demon is manifesting, and so the Bible says he yelled out: What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? We know who You are. You're the Holy one of God - so this guy's yelling and ranting. He's manifesting a spirit, and what happened was - and I've seen this kind of thing happen on many different times. I was in a meeting in Singapore and I just started talking and a lady cleaner came into the room at the top and started yelling, holding a broom up and waving a broom, yelling why you come here? Why you do this to me? I'm thinking - and everyone's sort of looking, what's going on here? But actually it was just a spirit manifesting.

So this is what Jesus did. He directly confronted the spirit. He said: be quiet, come out of him. The demon struggled violently, threw the man on the ground, and came out of him. Now you can imagine that's actually quite a dramatic thing to happen in a normally quiet church service, very dramatic. So of course the atmosphere is just electric with the presence and power of God. This was an example of Jesus' deliverance, and the people commented, and they said they were amazed, and spoke among themselves, saying: what a word is this, for with authority and power He commands the spirits and they come out. Now this was astonishing. In a country like Israel, the problem of demonisation is widespread. You go through Asia, Africa, through South America, you go through many countries, the problem of demonisation is widespread, well-known, and they don't know what to do, so they seek out all kinds of remedies for it. But we have the answer. We have been given authority to address them.

The church must arise in this area. Now in the west, the problems are still there, it's just they're covered over, they're a little more hidden than you would expect, but the same problems are essentially in people in the west as well. It's just they think it's just me, and so in the west we tend to rationalise spiritual things, and to say it's just me, or try and find a natural cause for it, and don't realise it could be demonic. Now you notice here what they said: He said with authority and with power. The word authority means the rule of government, it's the rule of government. The word is in the original language is the word exousía, so when you read your Bible, sometimes it'll mis-translate it, and it'll use the word power, but they're actually two different words. I want to explain them so you understand completely what they are. The word exousía means a right has been delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of someone else - exousía a right, a legal right has been delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of someone else, in this case Jesus Christ.

So if you have authority you have a legal right. It's a legal right. It's got nothing to do with how you feel. It is a legal right, so for example if a family - if the parents die, and there's only one son, unless there is a legal Will that gives the property elsewhere, he has the legal right as the only heir to inherit the property. If you've purchased a building, you have the legal right to own and occupy the building, so if someone else is there, they are a squatter. They have no legal right to be there. You are the person who has the legal right. So in the case of spiritual authority, spiritual authority God delegates to you a legal right which is recognised in the spirit world, to speak and to act on His behalf. Now when the Bible says that the husband is the head of the wife, there many emotional things that go through people's mind thinking about that, but I want to just make it really simple and clear. From the point of view of the spirit world, God has made a declaration that the husband legally has authority in the spirit world, to speak and act on behalf of Jesus Christ in relationship to his marriage and family. It's a delegated right given to him.

Now it's nothing to do with whether the wife is of more value or more spiritual than the husband, it's just an order God has set in place. The demonic world will recognise the order, and do all it can to sabotage it, so a husband may not be as good a prayer as his wife. He may not know the Bible as well as his wife, but nevertheless, from a spiritual perspective, God has delegated to him a positioning in the spirit world. It's not a positioning of ruling over his wife, because the Bible says actually spiritual authority is exercised through loving service, but in terms of the spiritual world, he has a right to speak and to give directions and act, and he can address spirit powers. Now this is something people don't really understand. I'll give you an example of when I saw it most vividly. I had a couple who formerly had been Pastors, and his wife had been deeply involved as a young woman in the occult. She was trapped into it, and I won't go into the details of it, but it was a very horrendous experience, both as a young girl about six, and then again as a teenager about 16. The things she described were horrendous. I had trouble believing it all, because it was so horrendous what happened.

Anyway, she moved out of that whole thing, moved on with her life, married. They got called into ministry and later on it was very clear there were problems that were going on, and there was a strong control sat around his wife, so I got him as the husband to stand up, and I'll show you how to do that a little later - how to stand up and to pray and address the spirit world, and exercise his authority as husband, to position himself as the husband, to make a declaration I am her lawful husband, and to speak into the spirit world. He did it, and what happened was some of the issues around her life came up to the surface, but what I didn't realise was, he kept praying that way. So he kept praying day after day, asserting his authority in the spirit world, and commanding all controlling spirits to release his wife, and what happened was initially the first problems came up, then this whole layer of all this occult surfaced. We had some massive difficulties because of all of these issues.

We had all kinds of accidents started to happen; the occult group made connection with her again. It was quite a messy thing, for quite a while, and so I was puzzled as how to deal with it, and the Lord spoke to me. He said: I want you to stand as the Pastor, and I want you to speak and take authority in the spirit world, and totally forbid the operation of this occult group against this woman. He said: I want you to bring judgement against it. So I said oh okay, how do I do that? So I just rose up and prayed and decreed that no weapon formed against us would prosper, that every tongue that rose against us speaking judgement and curses, we totally cancel it's power, and defeat it in Jesus' name. I asked the Lord, called on the Lord, to act on our behalf and to deal with it.

Now what happened was within the space of a week, two people in that covenant had motor accidents and died, just like that, and all contact with that coven and this woman stopped just like that. Now we still had the problem within her, so we began to pray, and I tried to get her delivered. It was very hard, very difficult to get her delivered, and then the Lord spoke to me. He said: I want you to get the husband involved, and she was a little reluctant about that because of issues in her heart about men, so what I did was, I said to her husband: I wonder if you just pray in the other room, and I'll call you in. When I call you in, when the demon's in full manifestation, I want you to do - and I described to him what I wanted him to do. So anyway we prayed. Now what happened was the woman had fallen down on the floor. Her feet were facing the door so there's no way she could see anything that was happening, she was face down. Another woman was with her, praying for her, and I just left the room quickly, went in and her husband came in, and together we laid hands.

He put his hand on his wife's head, I put my hand on his, and he spoke these words. He said as her lawful husband, I break all covenants formed with this spirit, and command you to go now. Now as he walked in - now she can't see him - she yells out: what's he doing here? The demon recognised the authority the husband carried, and that he was determined to assert it in the spirit. He put his hand on and prayed as the husband, I put my hand on him and prayed as the Pastor, and immediately the spirit was gone, just like that. That was one of the most vivid examples I ever had in all my ministry life, of how the spirit world recognises the authority that's delegated to the people of God, and specifically in the situation of marriage; if God has called the husband the head, he is what God calls him. Now he may not be doing a good job at it, but it doesn't change who he is. The spirit world recognises it.

So when a husband stands up as the head of the home in the role he's got, and addresses the spirit world, it will respond to him, because he is the legal representative of God, authorised to speak on behalf of his family. Now it doesn't minimise in any way the prayers of his wife. What I'm trying to establish here is the recognition the spirit world has on lawful authority. Now just take it another step further. You and I are children of God. We've been raised into a realm where we are positioned, we are seated with Him, far above every principality and power. Now you as a child of God also are authorised, if you will arise and stand within that role. Father, I come before you today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I arise and I come boldly to the throne of Your grace. The Bible tells us to do that. So you see yourself, there you are standing, you're worshipping God. Now you can speak from that position of victory and authority; as a representative of Jesus Christ I speak now to that demonic spirit. I forbid your operation. I break your assignment.

Now demons will respond to that, because they recognise you are lawfully and rightfully delegated that kind of authority, but it's all to do with your positioning in your heart and faith. You've got to believe what God says about you. Ooh, you're getting quiet now. [Laughter] So authority means it's the legal right delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of Jesus Christ, and we'll show you exactly what you're authorised to do. I've given you hints on it already right now - so you have the right to speak and to act. Now because you've been given that right, it is a responsibility to dismiss demons, and to speak and ordain and speak the word of God. You've actually got a responsibility to do this, so we may neglect our responsibility. If we neglect our responsibility, then as we saw, the territory becomes invaded, problems start to come relationally and oppression-wise and all sorts of things.

Okay, the other word is the word power. Now the word power is the word dunamis; you shall receive power from on high. That's a different word altogether. That is the anointing. That is the presence of God to enable you to get this to happen, so Jesus received authority as part of His commission, but it's intimacy and obedience that maintains the flow of anointing. So what we were doing today was getting you to arise inside in your spirit, and as you arose and built your spirit life and developed the flow from within, you can feel the anointing flowing. So to describe the difference between authority and power we use an illustration. If a person trains to become a policeman, he eventually comes to a point after his training where he makes an oath of allegiance to the Government. That means I will act on behalf of the Government to fulfil its mandate, okay? Then they give him a uniform and they give him a gun - if you're in some of the countries they give him a gun, even in our country they give him a gun.

Now the authority is seen in the uniform, because when you meet that person, you're not meeting the man, you're meeting the authority of the Government. If you saw him on the road and he put his hand up you probably wouldn't say a thing, but you see him in his uniform and suddenly, if you're speeding, fear grips your heart [laughter] because you become aware of authority, and the call to account for your life. There's nothing like an exposure with authority to suddenly show what's in your heart. If you're speeding down the road, and you see a policeman step out in a black uniform, hold his hand up, suddenly you'll have all kinds of emotional things go on inside you. Now if you try to push past him, you are now up against the whole of the Government. He's not acting on his own behalf. When he's fulfilling his assignment, he's acting as a representative of Government; you take him on, you're taking the Government on.

The second thing is they have a gun, so if you don't stop, they can force you to stop - start shooting. They don't have so much of that here, but it's common overseas, and so we need authority, and to know what our authority is, and we also need power, the flow of the spirit that accomplishes what we want. These are two separate and quite distinct things. Got the idea? Okay then, now so what I want to do is, I want to look at the authority that we've been given, and to just briefly look at what Jesus accomplished on the cross. In Colossians 2, Verses 12 through to 15, is a very important verse. Demons hate this verse, because it describes something very important that Jesus did. Now you being dead in your trespasses and sins and uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with Him. So when Jesus died, we died with Him. When He was buried, we were buried with Him, and when He rose, we rose with Him, see? So we are risen, and he says notice, having forgiven you, some of your trespasses. Hmm? All. All. This is a crucial thing - all of your trespasses, having absolutely wiped away the handwriting of requirements that was against us, that was contrary to us, He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross; having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Now in Jesus' walk on the earth, He was obedient in every aspect of His life, but when He went to the cross and died on the cross, He acted as our representative, and accomplished something for us at the cross. The Bible says He disarmed spirit powers, stripped off their clothes and weapons, totally took away from them the weapon, or the power of the weapons they had, and He triumphed. He completely won a great and mighty victory over them. Now what happened is this. The original Adam was given authority in the earth. He was created to have dominion. The Bible tells us that when Adam disobeyed and sinned, there was a transference. He lost his right to rule. It was taken over by the devil, so realms of the spirit that Adam and his descendants were supposed to occupy, then became occupied by demonic spirits, as far as I can understand.

So the devil, when he came to Jesus, said: all of this power has been delivered or surrendered to me, so he said: I've got a legal right to rule the earth. I conquered your ruler. Got the idea? That's how it works. We understand that, you know, you go in and conquer someone, you rule their territory. It's as simple as that. The old rules of war - so the devil conquered Adam, and as a result of conquering Adam, then he now had authority and rights, legal rights. So when Jesus came, He came as a representative, totally obedient to the Father all His life, obedient right to the point of death on the cross. But when He died on the cross, what He did was He legally broke the power of the devil to hold people in bondage. He broke the power of death, and so this is a legal thing that has happened. Now what does the devil use primarily against you? He uses sin, iniquity, trespasses. He uses the breaking of the laws of God.

Now if you were to think of your past life, and think every thing that you had ever done wrong, and the things that were right that you should have done and failed to do, to know what to do and not do it, to know to do good and not do it is sin; so if you took a list of that, that is going to be one big list. If we put it on the computer we'd probably fill up the memory, have to stick in another card and put more in. [Laughter] Okay, now imagine all of that, and then take that all the way through the rest of your life, so we've got the whole of your life from when you're born right through to when you die, we've got the lot. Those are all your sins - that's the list that is contrary to you. That is what the devil manipulates to give legal right to your life. So for example, in a person's background if there's been idolatry or freemasonry in the background, there is now a legal right established for demonic spirits to use that as an entrance point to the successive generations.

So in order to deal with the demonic realm, the legal rights issue has to be resolved, and so when Jesus died on the cross He literally paid full price to cancel everything against us. It's the most amazing truth. Now what that means very simply is this: the word redeem means to pay the full price, to get back the person who's in prison and can't free themselves. It's to go to the kidnapper and to pay the price and to get the person kidnapped free, so what Jesus accomplished at the cross was to deal with the legal right. So when He rose from the dead, He was able to say all authority in heaven in earth is now given to Me. Now get this - when He came from heaven, He left all authority behind. He now gained all authority because of this act of obedience in His life, even to the point of death, so legally everything belongs to Jesus. Nothing belongs to the devil.

The nations belong to Him, the earth belongs to Him, all of creation belongs to Him. He has redeemed it, paid the full price to now legally be entitled to rule it. So the Bible tells us one day He'll come back, and He'll assert that with great power. In the meantime we are delegated as representatives of Him, and whenever the devil has a legal right to something, we can go to the cross and say that's the place it was cancelled. So every sin that you bring to the cross, its power to hold you in bondage and create a legal right for demons is broken, so the issue of legal rights is an incredibly important one in the spirit world. That is how the whole thing operates, under law. If we walk in the laws of God, the devil can't touch us. If we break the laws of God, he has legal rights to access us. It's as simple as that, so there's a remedy for the broken law, and that is to bring sin to the cross. That's why you cannot operate successfully in the spirit world without a revelation of the cross, and the blood, and the authority given to us as a believer, to represent the Lord. Okay, so there we are.

So at the cross Jesus legally broke the power of a number of things; the power of sin, the power of curses. Galatians 3:13, He has redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us. Redeemed, paid the full price. Griefs and trauma, Isaiah 53 and Verse 4, He carried our sorrows, He carried our griefs. In Isaiah 53, Verse 5, by His stripes we are healed, so sicknesses He dealt with; Isaiah 53, Verse 5 and He took away our our iniquities - so everything the devil could use as a weapon, at the cross Jesus legally broke its power. However it's one thing to have something legally done, it's another thing to have the reality of it in your life, and so we need to understand what Jesus has done, so we can bring it into reality here. So this issue of the law, and of sin, and dealing with sin is a crucial one in addressing the spirit world. That's why any person who works in the realm of deliverance has a great awareness of what sin does in terms of establishing legal rights for demons to operate, and it is incredibly difficult to get any person free, or any demonic spirit to shift, if you don't address the legal rights it has to be there.

In fact many times a demon will actually argue with you that it owns this place; I've been here a long time, I have a right to be here. So they'll actually argue with you. When Jesus taught about deliverance, He said that the demon, after it's cast out, will go back, and says: I will return to my house. See, it claims legal right to live in the person's life, so demons look for every legal ground. They are great manipulators to try and use any legal ground to access your life, so removing legal rights is a crucial part of freedom, and we need to understand that if I have broken the law, I don't have much authority, because I'm a transgressor, to be able to set others free. I need to actually bring my own life into alignment.

So Jesus has done a tremendous work on the cross, but there's one thing to know what He's done, it's another thing to bring it into reality in our life, and that is where we have to grow and develop our faith. It's by faith these things come into being, so for example God has given every one of you legal right to deal with demons, but probably the majority of you either don't do it, or are not very successful at it. Now that doesn't mean the legal right to do it isn't there, it just means you have to grow into, and obtain possession of, what Jesus won for you. In the Old Testament Joshua had to - God said: I've given you the land, and I've given the people until you. Now arise and go in and battle, so you have to possess what Jesus has made available for you, and that's the work of faith. So Jesus done these things on our behalf, and He has now given us authority.

Notice what it says in Luke 10, Verse 19: Behold, I give you the authority - that's exousia - delegated right, to tread serpents and scorpions under foot, and to tread over all the power of the enemy. Now that's an amazing thing that Jesus said. Do you realise as a believer, that you can tread demons under foot, that you have no need to fear them? Now it's not that they don't have power. They do have real power, and they do exert that real power, and in some places it's quite terrifying. However, if you will stay in the realm God's called you to operate in, you have the right to deal with the things. You can tread them under foot, and you have authority over all their power. You don't need to be alarmed at the kind of power they have.

I was in a meeting in Indonesia and it was one of my first meetings there in Indonesia, had a very big meeting and three witch doctors came because they heard that the power of God would be there to deal with demons. So they came to the meeting to disrupt the meeting. In other words they wanted to work together to hurl curses against me, so that they could take away whatever power I had, and it would become their power. To tell the truth I didn't even actually see - I didn't even know what happened, because there was a big crowd there, two thousand and they stood up to do their stuff and they'd no sooner stood up than the power of God hit them. They fell on the ground just like that and they were thrown, they were literally hurled to the ground, and they could not get up. They crawled out. They literally had to crawl out on their faces out of the meeting. Now I wish I could claim something for it - I couldn't. Actually I never even saw it happen. I only heard about it afterwards.

Dave was with me, and they called to Dave; hey, something's happening. He went around the back and he dealt with one face to face, and got them totally delivered, and the guy came up and got saved afterwards. He recognised the power of God was greater than the power they operated. He understood spiritual power. He said this power is greater than that. We were in another meeting, Pastor Kong Hee's church in City Harvest, and some demons were starting to yell and to scream. Pastor Kong Hees mother and father were there, and she sort of got concerned with all this screaming and yelling going on, but the father was an interesting person, because they were involved in idolatry. He said I see that there is a greater power here than the power these spirits have, and they came up and got saved because of that. They recognised the greater power see - so I give you authority.

Now this is a personal verse for you; I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. So you could make it your declaration, today I have authority over serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way hurt me. It'd be good to build the truth of that into your heart, so Jesus was responding to the testimonies of believers that He'd sent out - this is the 70. He said they have authority, I give you authority to tread over demons. So our spiritual authority, you have authority, it's just whether you use it and develop it or not. It comes one, out of our standing with God. We've got to know where we stand. That's why when you come to minister, the first thing that you'll be aware of is where you stand with God, whether you're conscious that I am in right standing with God, I have access to Him, I can live and be in His presence right now. If you are conscious of that in your heart, then it's very easy to assert authority.

The second thing, it depends on your on-going relationship. I need to keep listening to God, so it's all very well to say I have authority, but actually it's for a purpose, so I need to know what God wants me to do. Finally, we need to yield to the Holy Spirit. So here's the thing. The authority Jesus gives you, and I'll list some areas He's given you authority in - we don't own it. It's actually, we're acting on behalf of someone else - so all authority that Jesus gives you, spiritual authority, you're acting on behalf of Him. You're representing Him, and so that means you don't own it, you've got to use it rightly or it creates many problems, and not presume or make any presumptions about just because I have all this authority, I can do what I want. No, we need to listen to the Holy Ghost, and learn to be led by the spirit of God - not a very hard thing to do.

So what do you have authority to do? What has Jesus entrusted to you some authority to do? He's given you a whole number of things, for example we'll just take this first one here. He's given us authority to preach the gospel. We think well that's a pretty obvious one. Actually it's not so, because there's many countries where, if you preach the gospel they'll throw you in jail. Think of the conflict here; I read in the Bible go and preach the gospel, and yet the authorities say: if you preach the gospel we'll put you in jail. What will I do? There's two authorities in conflict here; one is the authority of God, who says to do this, and that's the highest authority; two, there's the authority of the Government, which says don't do it, or we'll put you jail - so how do I address that? How do I address this apparent conflict in authorities? Very simply.

Firstly, all authority comes from God, so therefore is subject to Him ultimately. Secondly, I should give way and yield to the ultimate authority, the authority of God who's given a clear mandate in scripture, preach the gospel; thirdly, I need to show respect for civil authorities who are His representatives, but nevertheless I can be submitted to them, but not obedient to them, so I can have a right attitude to local authorities, but not do what they tell me to do. A classic example is in the Book of Acts, where the authorities gathered the disciples together, and they threatened them that you must not preach the gospel. If you preach the gospel then we'll have you thrown into prison and beaten up, and they said we must listen to God and do what God has said, so they went out and preached the gospel. Then - notice this - they got thrown into prison and beaten up, and they just rejoiced. They didn't make a big deal of it, they just accepted they had gone contrary to the authorities, and this was what was going to happen, they said for the honour of God. So they had a good attitude, but they were disobedient.

Now you have to understand that, so for example a person who is in a work situation, and in the work situation they tell you to do something which is quite clearly contrary to the law, and to your conscience. You can have a submitted heart, but still say no, I can't do that, because you have to live out of the authority of God, not just what people tell you to do. So these are some of the interesting things. Anyway let's just carry on through the list here: Giving you an authority to act as a representative of Jesus, to preach the gospel, make disciples - Matthew 20:8. He's told us to go do it, so we're authorised to do it. If someone says: why are you doing this, or who do you think you are, very simply, Jesus told me to do it, make disciples. We're also authorised to bless. In Matthew, Chapter 10, He says whatever house you go into, say peace be unto the house. Now what a stupid thing to say. That's an unusual thing to say - go into a house and say peace. Now we don't do that kind of thing do we, because we don't understand what He was saying to them. He was saying: you have power to speak, and release blessing into a house. You can actually release the peace of God in a tangible way into the house, and you are authorised when you go into a home that makes you welcome, to speak and release the blessing of God.

So just extending that out now, wherever you go, God has authorised you to speak words that release blessing over people, to speak and call upon the Holy Ghost to touch their life, to call upon the presence of God to come into that place, to call upon or invite the Holy Spirit to come. You are authorised to do that. We don't have to ask whether this is what God wants, He always wants that. You're also authorised to break bondages. Isaiah 10:27, the yoke is broken because of the anointing, so we're authorised to break bondages, and I'll describe that a little bit further. To break curses - Matthew 16:19 - curses are words spoken, that activate demonic powers. You are authorised to break curses. God has given you authority to break them. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. So to break curses means to loose something that is holding a person in bondage.

You're authorised to cast out demons, you're authorised to heal the sick, you're authorised to raise the dead. Now here's the interesting thing. We're authorised to raise the dead, we just don't see so much of it here, but in other countries, particularly Pastor Anwar, his ministry, they have raised a number of people from the dead; David Hogan, I think overall I think they've raised nearly 300 people from the dead in their ministry. So it is authorised, it just doesn't always happen, and I've tried once but it didn't work. I just need to grow in my faith. [Laughter] Okay, we're authorised to bind and loose, that means to restrain spirits or things operating, or to release things to happen. We're also authorised to forgive, to speak and release forgiveness. So here's authority that you're given to do some things.

Now the key thing is, it's great to know what they are, but how do I actually go about this? How do you operate or exercise spiritual authority, and there's several things that are a part of it, so I want to just identify what they are, because some people speak and there's nothing happens at all. Others speak and something really happens - what's the difference? The difference inevitably is in the heart. Now let me give you some simple foundations on this exercise of authority. The first thing is, you need to know your standing with God. You need to be quite convinced of where you stand with God, because if you're not sure where you stand or your righteousness before God, if you're not sure of that when you speak, you'll doubt that anything's going to happen. You've got to not doubt in your heart, when you speak something will happen, so first of all I need to know the authority or the standing that God has given me, for example in ministering right now, if I could just use an example here. Could I just use you for an example?

So just come, I'll just take your hand, alright, just take your hand. I need someone to stand behind her just in case something happens. So now suppose I've come to minister, and I need to release the power of God or something like that. Now the first thing, she's come forward for prayer, for some reason and I'm needing to minister or to bring God to her, so ministering is not praying little prayers. It's about bringing God to the person. Now the first thing that you become conscious of, is where your standing is with God, so she's looking to me to give her some answer, so I tell her well, why don't you just close your eyes, and look up to the Lord, so I direct her attention away from me and onto the Lord. It's always good to get people to look to the Lord. Why? Because it stops the operation of witchcraft around you, to try and manipulate you to do something they want. You get them looking to God rather than looking to you. He is the source. Keep Jesus being honoured all the time.

Then the second thing that I become aware of is, my goodness, what am I going to do, and what will happen, and what if nothing happens? All that sort of stuff goes on inside. Now that is all to do with your standing with God, so if - oh man, I didn't pray, oh no. Now you see that's all to do with your standing with God, it's about accusations coming to erode you, so if you're going to move in authority, and move with power, you must be completely convinced in your heart that you are deeply connected to God, and I've taken a lot of time to practice that. We use the word righteousness, but for most people it doesn't mean anything. They don't know how does this work in my life. It just means that I am able to stand innocent before God, and be welcomed and embraced by Him, absolutely free of any charges against me.

So if I was just to meditate now and to allow my mind and heart to just become fixed, that God, I am near to Him right now. I can stand near to Him. I can honour Him and love Him and His presence is here and because of that I can release the power of God, because of positioning, because of being conscious of the presence of God. Many people are conscious of sin, conscious of being alone, conscious of being not good enough. That is a spiritual pressure around you that stops you flowing with authority. You have to silence all of that, and you silence it by the truth, that my sins are all forgiven, every one of them. I can boldly come into the presence of God. I took quite a bit of time to meditate until in a moment I can meditate and become just aware of God. It just took time for that truth to be built in, but once it's built in it makes it very easy to work with the Holy Spirit. If it's not built in to your life, your standing with God, then flowing with the Holy Spirit is immediately you get full of condemnation and full of wrestles and accusations and struggles. All sorts of doubts go on in your mind, so you have to recognise that's just what they are, attacks on your mind.

We are to have the breastplate of righteousness that protects our heart from being condemned, so to operate in authority, the first foundation of that is that I am clearly established in my standing with God. If I'm not, how will I know whether He's going to back me up?

If I'm not sure He's with me, and that we're working together, if I've got doubts about my standing because of being accused or condemned, how will I move competently and boldly? Very difficult, very difficult. So the first thing, foundational thing is, faith righteousness: I am connected to God, and I am favoured by Him. I am blessed by Him. I am blessed today. I am blessed by His love and presence. See, you build these things into your life, and your authority grows as this becomes established, so all things in the spirit, you have to know exactly where you stand with God. Now I'm not saying have it as a head knowledge. It needs to be more than just a head knowledge. In your heart, you need to know I'm completely innocent in His sight, see? Now that is what gives you boldness then to speak on His behalf, but if you are not convinced in your heart, if there are doubts in your heart about your standing with God, there will be doubts that will undermine your authority to minister.

So this is the most important thing to establish is faith righteousness, I am right with God by faith in the work of another, not in my works, not whether I prayed, not whether I did well or didn't do well. I am right by faith in the work of Christ, so you become conscious of a fault quickly repent of it: I am right now with God by faith in what Jesus Christ did. This is the foundation for all faith ministry, is the righteousness that Jesus gave to me, by my believing in Him. Getting the idea? So if your heart condemns you, God is bigger than your heart, so there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, except their heart on the spirit. This is foundational to all operation in the things of the spirit. You must know I'm established, and I can boldly, quickly come into the presence of God without being condemned. Have I done something wrong? That's okay, because He's made provision. Lord, I'm so sorry, I put it right really quickly, it's over, it's out of His mind, and it needs to be out of mine. This is so foundational to all faith operation, is that I'm right by trusting what Jesus did, and that needs to be established in your life. If you've lived under condemnation all your life, and blame, there maybe a stronghold to break, so that the truth gets established in your heart. Okay, getting the idea? Rightio, alright, so that's number one.

Thank you very much. How did you do? What did you feel happen? Immediately felt the presence of God. About the time when I actually just set my heart to meditate and be in the presence of God, the moment I set my heart on that, and started to connect with Him, immediately she felt the presence of God. I'll do it one more time, you'll just see it happen. It'll just be like that. I'll describe what's happening in me, and then you watch what happens to her, alright? So just again look up to the Lord, so you direct your attention to Him. I'm holding her hands, so whatever's going on in me will be an impartation. So if I was to just begin to meditate, and to see myself standing right before the throne of God, begin to meditate and fix my heart on Jesus, and as I set my heart - there He is, and I can feel His presence right now, see? And so does she.

See, so faith righteousness. It's not just a heady word. It's a spiritual reality, and when it's established in your life, the flow of God is never ending, and you know what? Every attack of the devil on you, will be to get that off you. It'll be to get you out of that place of confidence, and to get you into a place of doubt, about where God is in relationship to you. This is foundational to all moving in the spirit. To get it, you need to establish this in your life [laughs] okay? Alright then.

So the second one is humility. If I'm going to move in authority, I must develop humility. God gives grace to the humble, and in James 4:7, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. The word submit means to place yourself under, or align yourself with someone who is over you, so together you can get a great result. So it has the idea of a military victory, of being properly positioned, so humility is a crucial part, and submission is an attitude of humility that recognises the authority of God, and those that God has delegated authority to, so that's - we're on now Page 10 in our notes. So submit is a crucial issue. I have found many people, because of pride, have a trouble of submitting to anyone. I have learned as soon as I meet anyone with authority, I immediately adopt an attitude of recognising and aligning properly with an attitude of honour to that person, because this is how I can walk in the spirit, and stay in the spirit. Getting the idea?

You notice the centurion, the moment when he saw Jesus Christ, he said: you don't need to go to my house, I understand authority. Just say a command, and my child will be healed, if you just say be healed. Jesus said whoa, that's real faith. The understanding of spiritual authority requires faith, because we have got defiled in our thinking about authority by bad experiences.

The fifth thing is revelation. We do need to listen to the Holy Ghost. Jesus said in John, Chapter 5, Verse 19, He said the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; He does, the Son does the same, for the Father loves the Son, and shows Him everything He Himself does; and will show Him greater works than these. So Jesus' authority flowed not just out of knowing who He was, but out of also listening for direction. So many times He could have prayed, but He didn't, so that's interesting. He could have delivered, but He didn't, so why is that? Because personal sensitivity to what God was doing was more important than legal rights to Him, so although He legally could have prayed for everyone and healed them, prayed for everyone and delivered them, He placed listening to the Father, and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, the highest thing in His life. So sometimes people said: why don't You pray for him, why don't You go and see Lazarus, what's wrong, he's sick. Why don't You go and see him? He said no, there's something greater God has in mind, let's wait and we'll see something greater. So you see, we have to just constantly be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and get revelation on what to do.

And finally, the last two things are, you have to use your voice, so you'll notice whenever you read in the Bible of people exercising spiritual authority there were always strong verbal commands: rise up! See, He didn't speak to the dead man in a soft voice: Lazarus, come forth! Spoke to the wind, spoke to the waves. He spoke strongly to sicknesses and demons, He spoke to the winds, spoke to trees, spoke to dead people. He spoke and gave a command, expecting something to happen, see?

You notice in the way He spoke, He spoke with great boldness. Now one of the things you'll find when you're moving in the spirit, you've got to speak with boldness. Now that's not loud, it just is confidence that God is going to do something. So you think well, I don't feel confident. Boldness has got nothing to do with what you feel - you speak that way: In Jesus' name come out! I speak to that sickness, be gone in Jesus' name! You've got to speak strongly as a representative of God, and the last part is act of faith. I must expect that when I speak, something will happen. Now you'd be amazed how many times when you pray, nothing happens initially. You have to expect something to happen, and so in Mark 11:24, Jesus said: have the faith of God, for I tell you truthfully, whoever speaks to this mountain - be removed, be cast into the sea, does not doubt in his heart, but believes the things will come to pass, he will have whatever he says. So I say to you, when you pray, believe you receive them, and you'll have them.

So you notice that spiritual kingdoms are enforced by spirits that ride on them, so the kingdom of God, it's the Holy Spirit that advances that; demonic kingdoms, it's demonic spirits, and I must believe when I speak that something will happen, not doubt in my heart. Now if I have no confident expectation of God doing something, there will be a difficulty. There'll be nothing much happen. I have noticed when you start to pray for deliverance, many times nothing happens. You've just got to be persevering and persistent. I've found in praying to alter spiritual atmospheres, nothing seems to shift initially, so I keep my voice speaking into that situation, and eventually it yields. You've got to believe that your voice, and what you say, will come about. Notice what He says, how many times it says what you say, whoever says and doesn't doubt in his heart, whatever he says will happen, he will have what he says. So I've got to speak words, believing that this is the will of God, I insist that this command be carried out, and it's a challenge, because I've observed in working in deliverance, that demons resist people, and the tendency is when nothing happens the first time you do something is, to quit and give up, so in operating in the spirit, perseverance is a must.

Okay then, so summing it up then. In exercising spiritual authority, it has to do with positioning, knowing where I am in God, listening, having revelation, and then giving voice or speaking. This is what I want to share with you, some things I've done that have been a big help, and then show you what you could do, perhaps to be like that. God spoke to me when I was a young Christian. I had a classroom, a physics classroom. It was a very old classroom, and everything was a bit tatty in it, and the Lord spoke to me. He said every child that comes in here is under spiritual pressure, they're unsaved. He said what you can do is, you can go through the classroom every day, praying in tongues and lay hands on every seat. I want you to do this, I want you to forbid the operation of demonic spirits over every child, and I want you to decree blessing over them. See, resist the devil, and call forth the things of God.

Now that was a pretty unusual thing to get to do because, you know, it didn't make any sense to me, but I was in the early days of just listening and learning and doing. So day after day, I would walk into the classroom, and I would just speak, [prays in tongues] I stand in charge of this classroom. I stand as one responsible for every student who comes in here today. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I forbid the operation of demons against every student that'll sit in this seat - because the classes flow through the day. So I'd go around, and I didn't pray the same prayer all the time. I'd pray it once, and then just lay hands - in Jesus' name I bind every spirit operating, I release blessing, I release learning, I release understanding. I release a great atmosphere in to this classroom. I release the presence of God into this place.

Now I spoke as one believing totally it would happen. Now I wasn't sure, because I'd never seen anything like this happen before, but I did it anyway, and it took about - I wasn't sure, or didn't feel initial changes of it, but others noticed it. Now what happened was this, there were several things happened. The first thing that happened was, one of the teachers noticed the difference, and she came and spoke to me, she said: what's up with your room? I said: what do you mean? She said: well I noticed every time I have a study class in your room, it's very quiet, and they're peaceful, and I get a lot of work done too, because they're so quiet. I said: is that so? She said yes, it's the only room in the school it's like this. What's different about your room? I said: I don't think you'll want to know the answer [laughter] and she said no, tell me. I said: I'm sure you won't want to know the answer, and she said: no, tell me.

I said: well you tell me again what is it like in there? She said well, it's very peaceful, and the students really work, and I get a lot done. I said well here's what I do - I take authority over the spirits that trouble children, and release peace and the blessing of God to learn into this classroom. I could tell she didn't want to hear, but [laughter] - that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. Nevertheless here's the thing: I didn't feel any change, but someone coming in did. The next thing I saw two girls that lined up outside and they said sir, something's weird about your classroom. I said what's weird? She said every time I come by we shake. I said well that sounds interesting, I've never seen - come in and show me shaking. So they came in and [laughter] their shaking got worse in the classroom. I'm thinking wow, this is amazing! I'm only six months, eight months a Christian - this is great to see something like this, and sure enough they're shaking.

So I realised then that they were involved in the occult, they were involved in the spirit world, and what was in them was reacting to the classroom. I enquired and sure, that's what was happening. We prayed, and immediately it went, it just stopped, and so I was aware then that without me knowing that something had happened, the whole atmosphere had begun to change. So then I began to pray, not only for the demons to be still and quiet, and prayed for the presence of God to come, I prayed then for the productivity, for the work to grow and increase. In the course of a period of time, probably about three or four years, my classes just went like that in terms of numbers, and in terms of outcomes of people passing exams.

I asked the Lord to give me creativity, because remember what I said? You have to be present, and you have to engage in a creative way in whatever you're doing, so you can't just leave it all up to God. We shift the spiritual atmosphere, then you front up, and you look for whatever creative ways you can do things. God gave me some creative ideas for the teaching, and so just to give you an idea, when I started I had 10 Form 7 students - 10, that was it in the whole school - and I had 20 Form 6 students. After we'd got into this flow of praying and releasing the presence of God and bringing creativity into the school, by the time I had left I had two 7th Form classes of 20-plus, say 25 each, which was almost the entire upper school, and I had four 6th Form classes of 25-plus each, nearly the whole of the upper school. I had nearly the whole upper school in my physics classes, and almost all of them had high accomplishment in their results. I think out of 100 university entrants, I got all but four through, year after year, and they were only because they were put in, and they didn't have the maths from 5th Form level to cope with the work. It was just an administrative muck up.

So I saw the reality of it. I taught people how to pray in their workplace, the same thing; to speak, take authority over troubling spirits, command the spirit to go, command peace to come into the place, productivity to increase, relationships to change, and the atmosphere has shifted. Now remember you can't just sort of do it by remote. This has got to be your metron, not someone else's. You have the right to do it. I've got many to pray into their workplace, and things have shifted in their workplace; one, because they started to arise in their spirit, and stop acting like a victim, and release the presence of God and subdue demons; secondly, they turned up with a different attitude, and the combination brought a tremendous shift and a change. We have to understand, this is really important stuff. We are called for dominion like this. We're called to bring the kingdom of heaven into the earth, and to do that you've got to confront the spirits that are there, and then release by words of faith blessing, specific blessing into your household, into your family, into your workplace, into your neighbourhood, into wherever you go.

We can do that. We're authorised to do that, and so you can pray over your marriage. I had one man, and I coached him how to pray. He stood up and he stood as the head of his home, repented for his failure to lead, and asked God to forgive him, and re-establish him in his positioning as the head of the home. Day after day he spoke in the spirit, broke the power of control that was operating, and within a very short time issues in the marriage came right out into the open. They had to work on it. There was deliverance and healing, and there was a shift took place in the dynamics in the marriage. His wife became much more secure and the whole marriage started to shift and change. These are realities. I could give you story after story after story where people have done it. Now is it easy? No, it isn't, because the moment you step up and start to push back the spirit world, it fights back at you, and your initial response may be it gets worse rather than better.

If it gets worse, then you can say yay - we're into the scrap! [Laughter] I've only got to hang on and it'll get better. That's the thing, you've got to be able to do that. You've got to hold your ground, and not give ground. In other words, perseverance is a crucial part of shifting spiritual atmosphere. Now sometimes it shifts really quickly, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't shift very quickly, it's because something's been established for a long time, and you've just got to hold your ground and be a bit gutsy and not quit. If you just stick with it, you'll find stuff will happen, it'll shift and change. We're authorised to do this you realise. Wherever you go, you're authorised to bring the presence of God, but most of us think only in terms of talking to people, and don't consider the possibility that I could just stand and just in a few moments of time, thank You Lord, I just invite Your presence to come into this room right now. Lord, just begin to fill this room with Your presence, let Your anointing just come over everyone right now - begin to feel the peace of God.

I just begin to put my spirit right over the whole room, and the peace of God will start to come, see? Feel it. He can fill a whole room. This is amazing stuff isn't it? [Laughter] [Yes.] See, I mean I need to actually get more proactive at this, because I often find that even though I know it, I'm not always diligent in holding it out and continuing to operate in this. So in other words, can you pray from another place and have a result, alright? [Yes.] We'll give you a couple of examples. The first obvious example is found in the Bible where the woman came to Jesus, and immediately after she reached out to Him, her daughter in another place was delivered, same with the centurions. Say only the word and be fixed. okay, now I have gone in prayer at one particular time, and someone over the other side of the world got healed right at that exact time, so I do not believe in the realm of the spirit there is any such thing as - there's no limitations of the physical world.

What you do then is this: first you begin to pray and stir your spirit, so get your spirit wound up and stirred up and energised so you're alive on the inside and your mind becomes clear, so you can hear the voice of God. Then you stand in your positioning before the Lord, looking for how to pray or ask Him to - just look for Him. He may give you directions, He may not. If He does, then follow them, if He doesn't, then you know what to do. So then what I would do from that place being near Him, I'd just begin to imagine the person, the situation and I'd speak as if I was standing right in that room - in Jesus' name right now, in Jesus' name I take authority, I forbid the operation of those spirits. I release the presence of God into that place. I release this, this, this, this, this - and now what happens is eventually you'll have some things happen. There will be things happen. You can do this, but you've got to be persistent in it.

Remember if this is say, a family member, and it's in their home, and they are responsible for their own lives, you cannot overrule them or override their free will. What you can do, is contain spiritual operations, and release or lawfully invite the spirit of God into that place, to do the work. They still have to respond, and usually I've found from the moment when you start praying until when you get something shifting, it can vary, but it'll often take time for God to set up the changes in their life that are needed, so we are called to intercede. We're called also to assert dominion, so just because I speak doesn't bring it all about. What I'm doing is I'm acting as a representative of heaven, to allow something to happen. Now because you are family, and connected to family, you can speak into family, because you can stand and put the cross of Christ between you and your family, hereditary background. You can command demons to shut down, to stop operating. You can release God's presence to work, and it does have effect on people.

I remember praying for one person. Apparently - I went through a hard time, because it felt like I was just getting nowhere, and then [laughs] they just - about three weeks later, they came up to me, and they just [laughs] said: I've been tormented for three weeks, I have to come and talk, and I didn't know from the day I started, it shifted. I just wasn't aware of it, because I saw nothing outward initially, so you have to persist, you know? Yeah, but you certainly can pray from a distance. But mostly the places we would want to operate is where we are physically present, where it's obviously where we have room to move.

Yes, sorry, yes? [Question] If you're a widow, you're the head of the home. [Yes, so that does mean...] In fact actually husband and wife, because they're one, God sees them as one, however God gives a status, or a standing in the spirit world to the husband, so when they stand together as a couple of course that's the best place to be. But I was only really trying to make the point about the particular role - but for a widow, well a widow, you have everything that is your home, is your realm, so now - it's the same for a single person of course. A single person, it's their realm. If a child is living in the home of parents, then the parents are the head of the home, so therefore they've got limited authority what they can do there. You've got to then know what God said you could do.

I know one girl, and she had been delivered from a demonic spirit, went home to her home. She said what do I do? We've got a big altar in our home. I said: well that's your parent's decision, not yours. Don't go in there and speak against them, or criticise them. Go into the home as a carrier of heaven to that home, so I said: first start with your own room. Dedicate your own room to the Lord, invite the presence of God into your own room. Then as you walk through the house, every time you see the idol, just speak to it, and make a decree. I said to her: pray in tongues, speak to it. Jesus shall increase, Sai-Baba shall decrease. Just say it - so she did that, and within a year when I came back Sai-Baba had decreased. They'd shifted out of their flat, they got a smaller flat, and they couldn't have the big altar, so the altar was gone, there was just a picture. She did it - I told her again, said how's Sai-Baba? Not doing to good. So I said well, keep doing it, so she did it next year. The picture had fallen down, they now had a little wee picture. [Laughter] He was diminishing. He was just diminishing. [Laughter]

You have to understand the power of decrees, tremendous power to speak as a representative of heaven, and to declare things, and to call things into being. Now when it involves other people, you've got to give them free will to make their decisions, and let God work this out in His own timing and rate. Our role is just to speak as His representative.

Exercising Authority in your Personal Life (4 of 6)

Thu 14 Feb 2013  « Back to Top

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The first place to gain dominion is with yourself. Eph. 4:27 shows us we can give the devil a foothold, or legal doorway to access our life, creating negative energies. This session gives a check-list of common doorways, and practical steps on how we can take responsibility for our life and close down these gateways. There is clear instruction on how to recognise and deal with spiritual attacks - spiritual problems need spiritual solutions. We can identify our own 'personal enemies' and deal with them ourselves. "deliver ourself from the had of the hunter". Many Q&A in this session cover a large range of situations.

So let's have a look now in Section Four on exercising authority in your personal life, and there's quite a lot to be said around this area, so I've focussed on some aspects of it, but let's look at it. The first place to gain dominion is yourself. In Ephesians 4, Verse 27, it says in Verse 26: be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger, neither give place to the devil. So it's talking firstly to believers, and it's clearly possible for believers to get angry, and sinfully angry, just as well it's also possible for a believer to give place to the devil. Now the word place is a Greek word, topos meaning an opportunity, a foothold or a legal ground or right. So He's saying to believers, don't give the devil legal footholds into your life, don't give them a ground on which they can access your life.

So the first place, you've got to get the victories in your own life, and it helps if you can recognise some of the strategies that demonic spirits use to manipulate and close your life, and to identify any gates or doors. Now some of this material starts to move towards the area of deliverance, and I don't want to make this a ministry session on deliverance, or a whole major teaching around deliverance, but I have observed in the past that when you start to stand up and speak into the spirit world, if there are footholds in your life, they quickly begin to manifest. [Laughs] So I have noticed that if you have legal areas or doorways open in your life, where spirits are operative, that when you start to engage speaking into the spirit world it pushes back on you temporarily, just temporarily, to see whether you really actually will stand up or not.

So I have observed at times, so for example I got up, and for a season there I was regularly, every day, beginning to command my day. So I'd rise and speak in the spirit, and begin to speak, now I command every aspect of my day to come into alignment with God's will for my life. I speak over every aspect of my day, to fully align with what God has purposed for me. I take authority over every assignment - I'd begin to speak and break things, and I found when I did that for about three days, and then I had a lot of trouble. I found that there was a lot of pressure around my mind and emotions, and it was like a discouragement to stop praying that way. So I've observed with working in exercising your spiritual authority, that the most common experiences people have initially are that there's a little bit of turmoil, pressure comes around you, or conflicts come in that area you're praying into.

So because this was a personal area, the pressure came around me personally in prayer, and I kind of felt like quitting. After three days at it, I felt like giving up, and I thought whoa, this is getting hard - but it was actually just a spiritual pressure I had to keep working against, and I had to look to see if there were any grounds or reasons that that pressure had a right to stay there, and put that right. I have found when people have prayed into marriages, sometimes the initial thing that happens is turmoil takes place, but then problems come out to the open, and you can then talk things through. Healing, resolution, and new ways of living together can take place. In the workplace, sometimes the initial outcome of praying is greater turmoil than ever, but again if you'll just keep up the pressure, it shifts and aligns with the word of God.

Remember it says: by faith we understand the world that we see was framed, or set in place, or ordered and created by the words that God spoke, so we have power to speak and frame up our world to align with what God wants. It doesn't absolve us from engaging and doing things, but this is an incredible important part, is speaking the word of God - so in 4.2, spirits try to make you ineffective. In 2 Corinthians 2, Verse 11, Paul said: lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices. So although at the cross Jesus legally or took the legal rights of Satan away, for practical operating purposes, he still operates unhindered, because people don't know that. Once you know what Jesus has accomplished, and believe and stand on it, then the devil loses ground immediately before you.

But he does have his devices, he does have his ways, and he does work on people's lives. It's when you start to pray, you start to see it. He said: lest Satan should take advantage - the word advantage means to defraud, take what belongs to another by deceit. So he's saying demonic spirits will try to take what God has planned for you, by manipulating your thoughts, your mind, your emotions, so you don't realise what's going on. That's why we do need relationships, so people can talk into our life, and say hey listen, I'm a bit concerned about what's happening, I can see this. We all need that and not go it alone.

We're not ignorant, or without any kind of knowledge or information about the devices of the devil, so here's an interesting verse here in Ephesians, Chapter 2, Verse 2. Jesus says: He made you alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, who once walked in the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. So He's saying: this is what your life was, and He's saying that when we were in the world and lived without Christ, it said evil spirits could work in our life. The word work there is the word energayo, from which we get energetic or energy, and it means to be operative, to energise, or put it this way: the way spirits operate is they creative negative spiritual energy in your life. They energise things that are already there, so they become difficult to overcome, or they bring pressure on you, and it's a very real pressure, a very real energy.

In Acts 10:38 it tells us that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Ghost, and it says to heal all who were oppressed, or held down by the devil. So if evil spirits are operating, you feel pressure, or you feel strong energy inside, trying to move you or manipulate you, so for example if you're in the grip of temptation, it's like your whole inner being is energised. It's like your mind and thoughts get captured by this thing. If anger is starting to flood your soul, it's like a huge amount of energy inside you that rises up, and demons manipulate that. So the word that's commonly used to describe the activity of demons, is that they energise problems in your life, or they bring to life and give power to things inside you. Likewise it tells us that God also does that. He energises, but He energises us to do good, and the Bible also tells us the word of God works mightily in you who believe, so God's word energises us.

The spirit of God energises us, but also demons energise us, so we see that our inner life can be energised, either negatively by demonic spirits, or positively by the spirit and word of God, so there are common areas that demons attack. It helps if you're just aware of it; in the body with addictions and sicknesses or weaknesses or weariness, in the soul with conflicts and emotional turmoil, feelings that rage out of control, accusations or condemnation in the mind, pressures of temptation that seem so real and powerful, and when you're in the grip of temptation God seems so far away, and the temptation seems so very real. But once you've resisted it, the energy of it dies down, so some of you may have - can you remember a time when you were going through an immense spiritual conflict, how much energy it took inside to overcome it? It's like it's real energy that's there, and then after it's subsided, it's like you're back at peace and at rest again, so there was a real energy almost took over, and took all your thinking and emotional and spiritual effort to get over it.

Spirits can come around and bring heaviness, and bring oppression, passivity. These are common sorts of things that spirits bring, so if you notice some of those things happening, you can identify perhaps there is a spiritual pressure around me. They come on finances. There was a season when we were establishing the church here where we had accident after accident after accident. We had financial difficulties and pressures and setbacks one after the other, and it become really distressing, until God spoke to me what it was about, and I was able to stand up and assert spiritual authority against it. From that point on it changed, and then it just subsided. We went without any insurance claim for years, but prior to that I'd been turned down from a company because we had so many. It was just in the season when there was spiritual conflict I had all of these problems happen.

Difficulties in your circumstances - Sargin was sharing with you last night how just even trying to get the notes out, the machine violently resisted printing. You put anything else in it prints it; you put this in, it won't print it. Last time we were [laughs] last seminar we did I remembered after we'd talked, he put it in and we got the notes out, and it's printed only the odd pages, every even page had not printed. Now it's never done that before, it just did that on that seminar. It's never done it before, never done it since. It just did it for that seminar - so these are the kinds of things. You get setbacks, and they create irritations. You've got to learn how to rest in God, and just find a place of peace in the middle of it, and assert your authority.

So demonic spirits can bring these pressures around. When I go to Asia I have all kinds of things happen over there. One of the churches tries to look after me very well, but they know from experience that things tend to go wrong when I go there [laughter] and so they had a car. [Laughs] They put this lovely car outside to pick me up from the hotel. When we got to the car it wouldn't start, so they've got this nice car, and it's just shut down and won't work outside - and we're talking about nice hotel, and it's on the main street of Singapore, and the church car is broken down right there at the gates. That was really embarrassing for them, they really got so embarrassed so they rang up for the spare car - the spare car's got a flat tyre. [Laughter] So it's like they were oh, so sorry, so sorry.

So next year they remembered the experience, going to really do this right, so they got an Audi, and they had it all serviced the week before I went there. I get there and their head's hanging down [laughter] and they said we're so sorry about the air con. I said what about the air con? He said well something happened with the window of the car, it's just dropped down. We've never seen it, we've no idea why [laughter] and now there's no air con. They took it to the firm, and the firm says we've never ever in all our cars in all the world had that trouble. They said it doesn't happen to this kind of car, so they fixed it for nothing. But it's just we had lots of things like that, all kinds of stuff, so the spirit world is very real, and if you start to come alive in spiritual things, you will experience things that you had not perhaps experienced before, which are not so explainable by natural means, but they can be explained if there's energy, and something reacting from the spirit world against you.

So you've got to learn to step up against it and halleluiah, [prays in tongues] you know? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and arise inside, and let us speak the word of God over your circumstances! Make it back down, see? Got to learn to do that, get some toughness inside you. [Laughs] However it also helps if you close down some of the gates of your past and again, this is not a deliverance conference but it doesn't hurt that we talk about these things, because we will teach on deliverance at a later time in the year at another seminar. So to close the spiritual gates, very simply a gate is a portal through which something goes. A gate gives you entrance from one place to another, one room to another, and there are spiritual gates, places where demons can move from the spirit world and manifest in the natural world. So we can have gates - I don't know whether you realise it, but you are a gate.

You're a gate for God to enter this world. Think about that. The first revelation that Jacob had was: this is the house of God, this is the gate to heaven, so the house of God is a gate, so you are a gate through which the blessing of God can reach people.

But also there can be gates in our life through which demonic spirits enter and access, and of course you wouldn't necessarily be aware of it. You would just think that this is me, I've always been like this, and when you get into fellowship with spirit-filled people, then pretty soon you start to become aware of those areas that you've got some problems. So there are a number of them, I'm not going to teach on all of them. I just want to just highlight them, but there are a number of common gates that spirits use to come in and to oppress people. Wherever there's a legal ground or right exists, spirits can come in and operate against you, and bring pressure on your life. Here are some of the common gates that spirits deploy or use. Now remember, it's a legal ground, so it's something that someone has said or done, that created a right or an opportunity for a spirit to use it, to come in and out. Jesus taught that demons come in and out of people because they have a right or an access to do so.

So here they are, some of you will be very aware of these, some of you these may be some new things, but they're listed there with a little bit of explanation. They're not entirely a full list, but there are some major ones; number one, generational sins and curses. Some of the gateways to spirits and problems in our life began in our family with our parents or grandparents, great-grandparents or beyond that, and this is a major source of problems. So you can be born into this life already with demonic access points into your life, and they may start from very young, or they may manifest as you grow or come into adulthood. Some curses can be passed down three to four generations; some can be passed down - sexual sins - over 10 generations, so every one of us is connected in our DNA to the generation that went before, and spiritually we're also connected to the generation that went before. Anything that gained access say through idolatry, or spiritism, or sexual sin, or various things that people have done, if it's gained access into the family line, it will come down generation after generation.

Some family lines are terribly weakened because of a pattern of sin that's been there over years, patterns of alcoholism or gambling or lust or sexual perversion. These things, once they get into a family can affect - one of the most dramatic cases that - and I've seen lots of them over the years, but I'll just tell you this one. I prayed for a lady in a city in New Zealand, and she's a Christian worker. She said I am tormented with these problems of unclean images and pictures. I'm tormented in my mind all the time. I said how long has it been like that, and she said all my life. I said to her well have you been molested or exposed to anything that would have created a trauma in your life? No, she said none of those. So I thought well it has to be generational, so I said what's in your life has come obviously from the previous generation, so I asked about the background.

Her grandparents were missionaries in China in the '30s and they had a son and a daughter and they'd taken their family to live in China. They were missionaries in a particular province of China, and the son and the daughter went to school in another province of China. The girl and the boy were somewhere around about 10, 11, 12, about that age group as far as I remember, but the Japanese invaded China, that part of China and took over and conquered that province, and took the kids into custody. Over a period of time the girl was quite badly sexually abused by Japanese soldiers. Eventually the kids were released and went back to their parents, but already the damage had been done, and so the family I think maybe returned back to New Zealand. The young girl and her brother grew up; the girl married, and the girl who married was this woman's mother, and the marriage didn't last. The marriage broke up, and so eventually this girl who'd been born, grew up and served the Lord, and she'd come to me for this help.

So what we did was we just acknowledged that it's most likely that the reason she was tormented was because of a generational curse into the family through this sexual abuse, so we got her on behalf of her family to forgive the Japanese soldiers for what they had done, to hold the cross of Christ between her and the family line, and just to cancel all the things that had taken place. We did that and prayed, she had a massive deliverance, and she was completely freed. She to this day, as far as I'm aware, has never had a problem with those tormenting things coming into her mind. They were of a spiritual nature, and by asserting authority and dealing with the legal rights, she was able to be set free of this tormenting spirit - very, very powerful. Very powerful, and so there are lots of stories like that.

So you have authority to renounce and to cancel every generational curse operating around your life. You have the authority to act as a representative of the family, and to stop those things happening. Sometimes we need ministry from others, but there's an amazing amount you can do yourself, and so this seminar is about you being empowered rather than being dependent. However there are issues in our life sometimes we just need to open up to someone else and have them pray for us, so dealing with a generational sin really does involve acting as a representative of the family. Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess the sins of my family. We have been involved in this, and this, and this, and also I have done these things too, so we bring it to the cross. You've got to come to the cross, and when we bring it to the cross, now Lord I ask for Your forgiveness, and I receive that forgiveness - so has to be addressed.

We've got to bring it the cross through confession. We confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us, it's quite simply done. Now in Jesus' name, I renounce every generational curse. I break the power of all agreements and attachments that have been formed in my family line. I hold the cross of Christ between me and my family line. I forgive those who have been involved in these things, and now I claim freedom. I'll show you just simply, in a later part of this study, just how you can simply deliver yourself - not very hard, might like to try it some time. Quite convenient, quite easy to be able to deliver yourself. Just a matter of rising in your spirit, take authority, and deal with the sin and command the things to go - so another area related to generational sins and curses is the issue of dedications. Baby dedications are very common in cultures which have idolatry, so they'll dedicate the child to an idol, dedicate the child to a temple, and when doing so, the parents because they have authority over the child, give authority to a demon to enter their child. So that right, that legal right has to be broken and cancelled; in Jesus' name, I renounce every word spoken over me that dedicated my life to an idol or a temple. I cancel that dedication. I break the agreement with that idol and temple, I break the soul tie attaching me. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you Satan go from my life.

So these things are not very hard. It's actually quite a simple thing to break them, but you just need to be aware that they're there. I was in one meeting one night in Singapore. A lady came in and she had a massive deliverance, and she came up afterwards and told Joy I was prayed for and dedicated to a temple when I was a little girl, and I've been tormented all my life. She said: I've been crying out to God to set me free, and the Lord spoke to her and said: go to this particular church, City Harvest; go to this particular meeting, because there'll be someone there who can help you, and she came in, and we were teaching on this stuff. She came and got set free that night, so she spoke to Joy, and Joy I think might have prayed for her and got her set free. So dedications give a legal right for spirits to enter, ungodly soul ties - a soul tie is an attachment or bonding between people. People can be bonded together, and it can be a very positive thing.

God decreed that Adam and Eve through sexual intercourse, two would become one. So soul ties can be formed through sexual relationship, and bringing the two so they become one, they become one in flesh. In this particular scripture here, it says in Genesis 34:3, it says that the daughter of Jacob, Dinah, she was raped by this guy, and his soul tie - he was bonded or became bonded to this girl, so a soul tie is a bonding. It can be very good, it can be a husband and wife, a bonding in marriage, parents and children, very good. It can be also in church, but they can also be quite negative, so when a person has sexual sin, they're bonded to each sexual partner. A person involved in idolatry is soul tied to the idol; a person who's had a traumatic experience, often they're soul tied to the trauma. A person is in a controlling relationship, often they're soul tied to the controller; someone abuses them, violently, physically or verbally or emotionally, often the person becomes soul tied and bonded to the controller, the abusive person.

So soul ties, also these bonding create a ground through which spirits come in and manipulate. We have had many people become free of terrible tormenting unclean thoughts when soul ties to sexual partners were broken. The power of the thing seemed to dissipate and yes, they could remember, but it's not the driving energy tormenting their mind and emotions, so demonic spirits use these. They also use ungodly beliefs. What you believe the Bible says: as man thinks in his heart, or believes in his heart, that's how he is. If you believe a lie, you are in agreement with the demon already, if you believe a lie. The Bible says: the devil's the father of lies, so if I believe a lie, for example I believe a lie that I'm a failure, everything I do will fail, then now I have got an expectation in my heart that whatever I do is not going to work out. The more I fail, the more hurt I get and bitter I get, until my whole life is surrounded by an atmosphere of expectation, I will fail or be rejected.

Let me give you an example of that. Have you ever had an experience where someone's talked with you, and there's something about them you just can't wait to get away? You just don't want to be there, and you just kind of want to get away. It can even be a small child, and there's something about them, they're so demanding or something, and it's almost like you just want to get away from the child. Usually what's happening there is there's a spirit around the child's life of rejection, and a deep expectation they'll be rejected, and it's almost like they project it out. You feel, you get defiled by that thing, and so ungodly beliefs or lies in our heart create a great platform for spirits to affect our relationships immensely. Okay, another one is vows, whether they be external or inner vows. A vow, you make a commitment or a pledge or a promise, it can be ancestral vows of course that people make. Personal vows open up the door for demons. Many times they take the form of an inner vow.

Inner vows are vows formed in the times of pain or very difficult experiences, like a person who's abused by a man, she may say: well I'll never let any man near me, or I'll never let any person or any male get near me and have access to me like that. So an inner vow creates - it's a vow rooted in bitterness and judgement. Now that creates a legal ground for a spirit to enter. I prayed for one woman who continually miscarried baby boys, and she had made an inner vow I'll never carry a male child, and it outworked in her body, and her body rejected every child that she had that was a male. So inner vows are very, very powerful things, and people form them when they're hurt, or a person who goes through for example their family is very financially hard up, so they perhaps are having to wear second hand clothes, and they don't have the things at school that everyone else has. They go through a humiliating experience at school. They can often make a different kind of inner vow: well when I grow up I'll always have enough money. So their life becomes driven by this bitterness inside, and this inner vow, and it's driven, but there's never enough, because at the same time they believe in their heart there's never enough for me.

So they're driven by the believe there's never enough for me, and driven by an inner vow, I'll make sure I've got enough, and their whole life gets into a pressure to get money, and it can never be solved because no matter what they've got, it's never enough. I can remember one particular couple now, eventually their marriage broke up, but he was worth millions, but he was still driven, totally driven. His heart was shut down, and it went right back to his childhood where he'd suffered a great loss and made these inner vows, well I'll never lack, and I will do this. Of course those inner vows become demonically energised, and the person becomes driven. A rational person will look and say: you've got everything you need, why are you still working like that 24/7? Why are you doing that? They can't explain it, and their explanation's not rational, it's spiritual. A spirit has gained access, and has authority in their life, and is driving the behaviour, so you need to be aware of this in your own life as well as in the area of ministering to others. These things, in order for the person to be healed, they've got to actually go back and remember, and let the Holy Spirit show them where these vows were formed, and renounce the vow, because it will control your life through demonic empowerment.

Another area that is common for demonic spirits to afflict people are word curses. A curse is words spoken over a person's life, for example words spoken by a father have great potential to empower a child, or to curse them. I can remember one girl we prayed for - it was heartbreaking. I got so upset when I heard it - but her father, she was a teenager, and she was just experimenting with dress, and trying to get attention and stuff, so she'd dress a little bit promiscuously. Her father called her a slut, and he literally labelled her that more than once, and she thought well if that's what I am, I'll go be that. Now she had actually no intention of being promiscuous whatsoever, but the father's words over her became like a cursing on her, when she accepted them, and then she acted out or lived out what had been spoken over her. So I have found many people have had curses put over them, either cursed themselves: I'm a failure, I'll never get anywhere in life, those kinds of things, or a common kind of cursing is a death wish: I just wish I was dead. I just hate my life, I wish I was dead. Those kinds of things can be spoken out in an emotional time as a teenager, and then open the way for a spirit to come in and bring bondage.

Then finally, the last one there is the area of sin habits, where people just get locked into patterns of repeated sin, so it could be anger, it could be unforgiveness or bitterness, it could be hatred, jealousy. People get locked into patterns of sin, and spirits then will enter and energise it, so it becomes quite a problem to get free of. Now here's the deal: you've got authority to break any of those bondages. You can do it. You can minister to others and set them free. You can minister even in your own life to set yourself free, which we'll share in just a moment. So how do you need to deal with these gates? How do we shut the gates down? Now suppose these are gates in your own life; be open to the possibility you may need someone to help you. It's not always just about praying for yourself. Sometimes we need to submit, and just let someone else pray for us - but here it is.

Pray strongly in tongues. The first thing is get energised, let the life of God begin to flow in you like a river. This is a big start. Now listen for the Holy Ghost to show you what you need to be praying for, and then you need to speak words from your spirit, so these are the kinds of things. Now speaking strongly doesn't mean speaking loud. See, I can speak strongly from my spirit because I'm purposefully speaking strong words. I command you in Jesus' name - and speak strongly. It doesn't have to be loud, so people think, and what they do is they substitute speaking from your heart with authority, for speaking loudly. They make a lot of noise, but it's like empty words with no substance in them, so speaking with authority in Jesus' name. So here's some things that you could do that would break the power of holds over your life. One would be just to repent: Lord, forgive me, I just confess to You Lord that I have done this, I have said this, I've acted in this way. Always we need to just confess sin and deal with sin. We've got to get it to the cross.

If there are people have hurt us, or we have unforgiveness, we have to let that go. Unforgiveness locks our life up. It's a doorway for demons, Jesus said in Matthew 18: then renounce, or speak, or cancel any curses. So if I wanted to cancel a curse over my life generationally: Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I'm redeemed by His blood. I'm redeemed body, soul and spirit. I belong to You. Now that's positioning yourself. I've found in all moving in authority, just get positioned right: Father, I come to You, and I stand before You. Standing before God, and opening the heart, and declaring who we are, is a great way to start. Then well Father, I just confess to You the sin of our family. We have been involved in freemasonry, we've made agreements and covenants with idols and demons, and grieved Your heart. Lord, I renounce this curse, and all agreements made with freemasonry, at every level of freemasonry. I renounce the curses made, my father's side of the family and my mother's side of the family. I cancel them now, and I hold the cross of Christ between my family line and those things. I refuse them today.

Now - in fact, actually in my family line there has been freemasonry. I had to get rid of some of the regalia, and discover some of the effects of freemasonry, emotional difficulties, difficulties in loving women, all kinds of difficulties that were in the freemasonry background, spiritual turmoils, and conflicts, and sickness. So renouncing those things now in Jesus' name, I release forgiveness to every family member who has opened the doorway for these things, now in Jesus' name, I command you to go from my life. So some things I've had to just deliver myself - wasn't that hard, just pray and energise your spirit, go through the step by step process of dealing with the legal right, and commanding the spirit to go. Then just cough and begin to just allow the thing to come out. You'll be quite surprised when you do it, all sorts of things begin to happen. [Laughs] It can start off with a little cough by faith, and end up with a coughing fit. [Laughter] Whoa! What just left? I don't care, just it's gone, that's the main thing, begin to worship God. [Laughs]

So you can deliver yourself. It's not so hard, and I've got a section there, just a little bit on the whole area of self-deliverance. We'll touch that in a moment, so why don't we just stop at that point, and perhaps some of you may want to ask some things just about where we're at on that point. Then we'll go on and just look at two sections in this, the final two sections in this part, which are on recognising spiritual attacks, and just how to deliver yourself. So why don't we just stop for a moment, and some of you may just have a few questions you wanted to ask, either about the last session on spiritual authority, or on this session just related to just some of these gateways and doorways.

Yes, okay? [I was just wondering is it possible to break dedications that were made to evil spirits, like if you're aware that they were maybe dedicated, a parent or someone in the family line was dedicated?] Well we are responsible, can do something for our own life, then those who are after us. We have no rights over our parents and see, we have no rights there. All we can do is pray, and stand against the influence, and pray and rebuke that whole spiritual area, and ask the Holy Ghost to release light into them, so open their eyes to see. So if you have been dedicated, or your children have been dedicated, you have rights there to be able to exercise authority. When it comes to your parents, the relationship is one of parents to child, so you have no authority over their life, except one of influence, so you can speak and command the dis-empowering of generational spirits, but you've also got to pray that God will open their eyes to see. They have to choose for themselves to do that. I think we can stand as an ambassador on behalf, and speak into those things, but let the Holy Spirit help you in that.

Okay, someone else, yes? [Can we place the cross between us for our children and the generational influences without actually knowing that particular generational sin?] Sure, yes. I think the more specific we can be, the better that is, and so to locate the generational sin, have a look at patterns that appear in the family. So you would ask first of all, you just begin to pray in the spirit, and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the thing to you, have a look at patterns in your family. One of the first places you see is patterns in the family, but sometimes it only comes by revelation, and the Holy Spirit can reveal the thing to us. Some people pray and command the demons to reveal it, and thoughts come up to the mind, but it's better that there be specific prayer, rather than general prayer. Specific prayer has specific results. General prayer often is ineffective, so I think it's a good place to start, but I think it's better that we actually ask the Holy Ghost to help us identify what the specific issue is. That would be better, okay?

Yes? [What about in your workplace, if you're not allowed to talk about God or Jesus and it's quite tempting to defy that, and there are times when I know Jesus is the solution, but you cannot speak about it.] Right. [So how do you reconcile that, what do you do, because you know you can help by talking about God, but you're not allowed to.] [Laughs] Okay, so that's the classic thing that we said before, you know, that you have to - we know Jesus calls us to reveal Himself, so we're called to preach the gospel, yet you have an employment situation where, if not explicitly, then at least implicitly, you're not to speak about Jesus. It's to be secular education, so you would break the employment contract if you start to preach the gospel in your classroom, so that's the dilemma.

God says to do this, the authorities say to do this: where do I stand? I think number one is, your heart attitude is not to be in rebellion against authorities, but to be co-operative with the intention of it all. I think number two, you can speak, and take authority over the spiritual atmosphere in the classroom, and release things. I had many kids come to Christ in my classroom, but I didn't necessarily talk to them about Jesus in the classroom - but many came. We had many kids come to Christ, a whole heap of them, because the Holy Ghost so shifted the atmosphere they just wanted to come and talk, wanted to connect, wanted to hang out. Then hanging out, they wanted to ask things, so you'd talk about stuff then, and you can talk - so I don't think often I spoke openly about Jesus in the classroom. But what I did do, when it came to the area of teaching around sexuality, I was quite blunt about the Christian perspective on it, and that was quite an interesting thing for them all.

I thought well, they're getting junk. I'm going to give another point of view because this is education, and at least they should be exposed to another point of view which is biblical, and Christian, and gets results - so I did, unashamedly, you wouldn't have worried about that. But I think today the environment's become much more difficult, so therefore I think great wisdom is needed, or you lose your credibility, and then eventually lose your job, and lose your ability to influence. But if someone comes and inquires, or someone comes and asks, I think there's a lot we can do without speaking the name of Jesus. You can talk biblical values, you can talk about values, you can talk about the conflict of values, you can talk about the values which are specific for you. I think there's much we can do, and I determined I would do as much as I could, because everyone else was blatant about what they were doing [laughter] so I thought if someone comes and says: you can't do that, I'm sorry, I didn't realise that, thank you very much for pointing that out. Then I'd be a little wiser in the future. [Laughter]

You know, I think you don't want to live under fear and intimidation, and if someone makes a complaint, you've got to say: well I'm so sorry, we were talking about values - I think to blatantly preach Jesus is a misuse of your authority as a teacher. People understand they're coming to a secular classroom to receive education; they're not expecting the teacher to talk their own personal views. However the reality is that the life of the teacher shows up in their teaching, so whatever the person is living will show up in how they teach. So I've got no shame in saying well, this is who I am actually, I'm a Christian, I do this, and I believe these things. I've found the kids would ask questions. Well if they ask questions, I'll answer the questions. [and pray] Yes, exactly, yeah, so we prayed at home.

So I used to take the line this is my room, everything that comes in here is coming into my territory, and the presence of God is in my territory. That's how I took it and released the presence, prayed for the presence of God to fill the place, and for them all to be successful, because for a parent to come to - they want their kids to succeed. They don't necessarily want religion, they want to succeed, they just don't know how to get success, so I worked: one, creatively to create an environment where learning was very relational, and they got success; two, to work the spiritual atmosphere, so it was quite open and accepting in there. Yeah, seemed to get good results. We just went like that, and they were very sorry to see me go. [Laughter] And I got the same results when I started up a school, same thing happened, again spiritual environment, and also enabling them and empowering them to learn properly.

Yes? [Can I just ask, in my marriage were my prayers ineffective because I was not actually - even though he wasn't walking in the authority that God's given him, my prayers weren't effective because he was not a christian] Alright, okay, that's a good question, so there's a struggle in a marriage that eventually broke down, and so the question is, were my prayers ineffective? I think that God is the only one who can answer whether prayers are effective or not. I think we tend to look at them all as being effective only in terms of getting what we expect or hope. The reality in relationships, God gives everyone a free will, and if people continually resist God there are devastating consequences that take place, no matter how faithful the Christian or the believer can be. So the Bible says that the unsaved spouse, whether it be husband or wife, is sanctified by the faith of the saved person, so I believe God looks at them, and sees them as being one.

Now how do you then deal with the situation with the unsaved or the back-slidden husband? I believe you stand in their place, since they have failed in spiritual headship, you step up, and without usurping their role, step up in prayer, praying to break those things around them, release the blessing of God. But we have no guarantee what the outcome will be, because the outcome rests on a person's decision, and so all we can do is make the chances of it happening far greater. In other words, by removing some of the spiritual pressure and releasing the atmosphere of God, but people still reject God, so Adam and Eve walked in the most perfect environment, but still made their own choice, which had consequences. God let them make the choice, but made them accountable for the consequences, so in a marriage situation, I believe the first thing is your own heart attitude; secondly is that you stay faithful in prayer, and do the part that you can, but then sometimes marriages break down because someone just is resistant, and they make decisions and choices that lead to destruction.

You're not responsible for those decisions or choices, and if you have prayed faithfully, and stood in the gap and believed God, and done the best you could, then you've done the best you could. You know, you read the men of faith, it said some got great victories, and others died in faith, you know? So we forget the last group. We just want the great heroes stories of seeing it all work out, but there are many people, and they just stood in faith, they didn't see the answer, but they refused to doubt. They held on to the very end, even at the loss of their life, and God calls them men of faith, so I believe if you stay in a place of faith, believing, trusting God and do all that you can, then however the outcome is, at least you can walk away honourably, saying I did all that I could. Yeah and that's how you would feel of course, yeah. Sometimes when you engage in this kind of prayer, issues surface which actually the whole foundations of the marriage become bare. Then the challenge is, will we work to sort this out and build a better relationship, or will we not? So prayer, like I was sharing of opening up the spirit world, can expose stuff that formerly was hidden. People still make their decisions though, and sometimes they make bad decisions, you know?

Yes? [When you have a Christian marriage, and one of the partners is oppressed by the enemy, and no matter how much ministry is offered they resist it and the marriage breaks up, is that affecting their salvation?] I think that's a totally separate issue. A person's salvation rests on the work Christ did, and their trust in it, and it should have an outworking, that their life begins to show it, so true faith actually has some outworking of a walk with God of some kind.

If a person's oppressed, it means a part of their life is under the control of the enemy, which is usually in this case the soul, so the mind and emotions, and what you don't know is, what trauma the person has gone through, that gave access to the spirits into their life. [I know the trauma, but they would not bow to any ministry. They were...] I understand that. [...it meant that they were burdened, but they were convinced there was nothing wrong.] Of course and that happens, so I think the issue of a person's salvation lies ultimately in the hands of God, and God alone. I don't think we could ever know where people stand, and just because a person refuses to acknowledge a problem, and won't receive ministry, I don't think that means they're not saved. I think it just means they're refusing to acknowledge a problem, and there are many reasons people refuse to acknowledge a problem.

Some, they actually intuitively know that to acknowledge it, I'm going to have to go through some terribly painful stuff to deal with it, I'd rather not acknowledge it. Some people have actually built - it's almost like they dissociate inside, and put the pain in a box, and carry on just like nothing has ever happened. But the pain is still there, and they don't want to go there because of the pain, what it would mean to them. In such a situation, when a person stays in that kind of denial, you can't do anything until they come out of the denial, so sometimes - my experience with working with people has led me to conclude that even if you can see what's wrong, until they recognise a need, they don't make a change. So the first aspects of prayer is that God would awaken their heart to see their need.

Usually we try to tell a person what their need is, and they just vehemently resist, so I've sometimes changed the praying: God, open their eyes so they can see. Whatever it is that's holding them back, we just stand against that - and it can be just immense grief, because the first phase of grief is shock, and the inability to come to grips with what it is. So no one really knows all of those things, but trauma and grief, denial, and just sometimes just stubborn resistance: I won't admit I've got a need, that can come out of inner vows. I think that prayer can increase the opportunity and the likelihood they would open up, but it doesn't guarantee it. We still have - everyone is given a free will, so you can't override someone's free will. When we override... [Can God?] Well can God - that's a good question. Firstly, he can. Well Paul's determined to go down the road and kill Christians. and He just goes pow, and zaps him off, but He never overrode his will. He just gave an encounter that opened his eyes up, and he suddenly realised he was making a big mistake.

God has given man a free will. If He takes it away by overriding it, the core of being human is taken away, so God - it seldom overrides a person's free will. Free will is what makes me a human being. If I don't have free will, or my free will is taken away, I'm a slave, so that's one of the dilemmas. God has created man for dominion and given him free will, but not choice over consequences, so God doesn't override free will, and He has set in place consequences. That's how He has set up the world to operate, so only by faith can we access something coming in from heaven to earth, but God doesn't override free will. So I think it's extraordinary that you are given free will to the extent you can choose a destiny that's eternally lost, it's incredible that God would give so much, but taking it away would so enslave you, you wouldn't be human. So it's the dilemma God faced; He gave man free will, but with it the potential he could just misuse it, or use it to rebel, and therefore all this destruction.

So we have to be very careful we do not override the will of another person who's an adult, and a responsible adult. To do that involves witchcraft, because witchcraft is the usurping the authority that someone else legally has, which is what their response - so responsibility and authority go together, so what you're responsible for, you have authority over to do certain things. If I move and take up your responsibility, and minimise your authority and take over, I'm now operating outside what God has called me to do, and I've taken over. I'm operating in witchcraft, which is an unlawful authority, so I didn't put a section but I'm thinking about it, that perhaps I should put a section in related to this, because unlawful spiritual authority, or unlawful authority, is a problem everywhere, where someone has taken over and controls another person's life, and the person lets them do it, because it's easier for them to give up responsibility and let someone else run it. This creates a spiritual dynamic where witchcraft operates, and sits over the whole marriage or relationship, and it creates huge problems. Sickness, infirmities, all kinds of things come in.

Many families and marriages and churches are full of this, so when you arise and start to operate in spiritual authority, the one thing you become intensely aware of, is the issue of witchcraft and the whole Jezebellic operation. I haven't included it in this, but that's a whole sort of area of its own. It's got major issues around it. It can never operate unless someone gave permission for it to operate, so for example God held Ahab responsible for the corruption in the nation, and He judged Ahab because Ahab gave up responsibility, and allowed him to be usurped by his wife. So we tend to get into this anti-woman thing and blame Jezebel for this and that, which is actually totally unfair, because men and women are both capable of controlling behaviours, and the spirit is totally impartial who it works through. The issue is whether we take up responsibility, or abscond or abdicate. Everywhere you abdicate something will come in and take over. That's just the reality.

So that's why I have discovered in this area, if you have abdicated responsibility over an area of your life or responsibility, something will sit in there, and when you arise, repent, ask God to forgive you, take up your responsibility, start to pray, you will engage and have some conflict. You'll find then something sitting there. Most people aren't aware something's sitting there until you step up and try actually change your life. Then you find it's there, and then you find it pushes back against you, and you have some problems.

I want to have a look at Section 4.7, how to recognise and deal with spiritual attacks, and then just the issue of self-deliverance. I think these are quite - everyone is going to go through issues of spiritual attack at some point. Now we don't want to over-dramatise it, and kind of be looking for demons everywhere, but there are times when pressure comes on you. It's helpful if you know what it is, and know what to do about it. If you don't, you'll just try to push on. Spiritual problems need a spiritual solution, but don't spiritualise everything. Some things are very natural, very practical, so the dilemma you have is, where people look for a devil everywhere. You'll see what you want to see, so let the focus of our eyes be on God and His goodness, not on the problems. But having said that, we do recognise there are times when you come under immense spiritual pressure, and it is very real, and it can be stressing if you don't know what to do with it.

So we'll just read a verse in Revelations 12:10-11. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying: now salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives unto death. So notice here it says: the pressure against believers is unrelenting, day and night. Isn't that interesting? So notice that they are accusations, so one of the things the devil wishes to do is to accuse you continually of lacks, failures, faults, flaws, to heighten your awareness of what's wrong, rather than your awareness of what God has done for you, and where you stand.

Essentially he wants to erode your standing, so you don't feel near to God. You feel just not good enough, feel bad: I'm not good enough, nothing's good enough. So spiritual attacks come in the form of accusations or condemnation, where you feel pressured in your mind, that you're not good enough. Now the devil doesn't say you're not good enough, he'll fill your mind with: I'm not good enough, I'll never be good enough, nothing I do is good enough, there's something wrong with me. Now when there's a flow of thoughts like that, they will energise any strongholds you have in your heart, but they are a flow of spiritual energy that comes in. It can be just heaviness, it can be feelings of dread, particularly when you're facing situations where there's a lot of control in those relationships. You can come under tremendous spiritual pressure, and feel almost like fear and anxiety, and it's totally out of proportion to what you're facing.

Temptations, confusion, oppression, so some people just have a heaviness come. Now I've shown you how to lift the heaviness off quite easy, but we must actually conquer these things. So you are always responsible for the state of your life. Don't go blaming anyone else, don't be the victim. We're responsible, so if something's not right, we've let it not be right, or we're on the journey of sorting it out. So to overcome means to conquer, subdue and come out victoriously, so the first place you've got to conquer and subdue is around your own life. Notice it says: they overcame the accuser, they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb. That's what Jesus did on our behalf; the word of their testimony, confessing to what Jesus has done, and then persevering and holding on to it, and backing up the devil on it. So whatever comes against you, you've got authority to defeat it. You can defeat it, and it will back up. I've learned this with demons: they will always back up, once you've determined that you know what you're doing, and you're going to keep on resisting them. They back up, and then the atmosphere changes, and you're free again.

So how can you deal with it? In James 4:7, notice these wonderful scriptures: Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will? [Flee from you.] Flee from you, and that word means to seek safety, by running away from the danger that you present. Now that's a good word to know, that the devil will flee. Of course the devil's not interested in you personally. He's got really low level evil spirits interested in you. They just do his work, so you're dealing now with just low level spirits, and here's the deal. If you will align yourself with God, and make a stand to resist, he will flee away in panic and terror, because you've really got to him, so that's the promise. So the outcome of the demons fleeing away is a result of two things; one, of you're actually aligning yourself with God, and two, making a stand against the devil. The two words are quite interesting words. One is the word hupotasso, hupo to be beneath, and to stand or position yourself beneath, meaning literally position yourself right with God, and then the other one is anti-tasso, position yourself anti whatever the devil's doing.

So it's all about positioning yourself in your attitude, your thinking and in your words. So how would you go about dealing with a spiritual attack? It's helpful if you ask these kinds of questions: What am I feeling? If you can put a name on what you're feeling, you bring it out to the light. Many times we have lots of feelings swirl on, and then we think some new thoughts. Then there's more feelings, and then there's more thoughts, and before you know it, you're in a swirl of thoughts and feelings and turmoil, and all in emotion. If you get like that, get up and pray in tongues! [Prays in tongues] Shake the thing back, and then stop and evaluate what you're feeling; what is it I am feeling? Try to get a name on it. Is it fear? Is it anger, is it irritation of some kind? Anxiety? What am I feeling?

Then ask the question, well what triggered that? Was something said, something someone did, or didn't do? What triggered this? I wasn't feeling like that when I got up - why am I feeling like that now? When did that change? Now if you can just get your spirit free first of all, and just go through this little process of asking these questions, what am I feeling? What emotions or feelings or things are going on inside me? Then what happened that has triggered that off? Then evaluate, well what happened, what actually happened that caused that to take place? Have I made some assumption, had some expectation that wasn't met? Try to evaluate what's happened. You'll find the most common reason people get in a mess, is they made an assumption: oh, I thought you were going to do that. You didn't [mutter mutter], and now you're in a turmoil about it all, and it's all building up inside, and the devil's just having a hey day in your life.

Just stop! Well what is it that's gone on, and try to evaluate what happened, because if you can evaluate, then you'll look at what your part was in it, and you can deal with your part in it. Then here's things you can easily do: pray in tongues very strongly, because praying in tongues as we've already found energises your spirit. I understand there are a couple of people not free to pray in tongues. We'd like to pray for you after lunch, and just activate that part in your life - so listen. Listen for promptings of the Holy Ghost, because He may show you things to pray for, and then learn to speak directly. I can remember there was a time in my life, I remember I was teaching Christian school. I was having these problems, these unclean thoughts coming into my mind, and I was thinking oh, I was feeling down, because I was struggling with these thoughts. I was thinking well, what am I teaching in a Christian school, and I'm struggling with these thoughts, what's going on.

The Lord dropped in, and He said: it's a spirit invading your mind, just rebuke it. Oh really? I never thought of that - and so I did. I just got praying in tongues, and just spoke directly: in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I take authority over that unclean spirit. I forbid you to come around my life now. I thank You Lord for Your presence here inside me, the spirit of holiness inside me. I began to pray and focus my mind on the Lord. Immediately the whole thing all just left, and it stopped - it was so quickly it stopped, I couldn't believe it. I thought I've been putting up with that stuff around my head for half the morning, and here it is now, just suddenly went, when I knew what to do. It was a spiritual attack which comes, sometimes in the way of heaviness. Often heaviness is an indication something's about to happen, or is happening around you, but also invading thoughts, invading emotions, and so learn to speak.

Speak God's word over your situation. Speak and reject the operation of that spirit, and then begin to declare God's word over your situation, quite easy. Then re-engage and do something else. It's not hard. What am I feeling? What triggered off that feeling? Have I done anything or has anything happened, were there assumptions I made, or someone's disappointed me? Try to get an evaluation what's happened. Is there anything I need to put right with God? Okay, get it right and now in Jesus' name, so we pray in tongues [Prays in tongues] stir up your spirit. In Jesus' name I speak to that spirit. Now here's one of the things I've found, and I found this by experience. If you'd like to both just stand up, just come and stand up near me. When we tend to think of these things - just stand here just like that - when we tend to think of the spirit world, because we live so much in the physical world, we tend to just not be very aware or conscious how it might work.

So what would happen was, I would have these thoughts coming in around me, and bombarding me you see? For a season I had these terrible thoughts of rejection, I just don't belong, I'm not loved, and all that kind of stuff. Then it took me a little while to realise they were my thoughts, and I had an issue in the heart, but actually it was a spirit of rejection was pushing against me. Just hold your hands out like that, just push against me, see? So I couldn't see the spirit, but I was overloaded in my mind and emotions with thoughts. Then I'd start to feel sorry for myself, and so there's another spirit - so put your hands up, both of you keep your hands up there - so now I'm not even aware or conscious that there are spirits at that stage. All I know is that all the time I've got this pressure pushing on me, feeling sorry for myself, and this pressure, putting on a feeling I'm not good, not valuable, not acceptable. I couldn't work out what it was, I just struggled with it.

It was so common I just thought it was me, and when it would come it would come every now and then, I'd have an event, and these demons would just immediately just trigger off, come in and start pushing on me, and I'd go down sometimes for three days into a heaviness, into a dark hole. I had no idea what it was. It never occurred to me it might be a spirit. It never occurred to me that I actually might have personal enemies. I never thought of that. [Laughter] It just never occurred to me. You know, the devil's sort of out there somewhere kind of thing, you know? It wasn't reality. You read in the Bible, you know, submit to God, resist the devil. It's all sort of out there, too far for me, and then I realised - keep your hands up, hold your hands up - [laughter] I realised that I'd go through life, and next thing boom, I'd run into these things, and I'm in depression for two or three days. I didn't realise there was something there.

I had no idea there was a spirit that was involved, none whatsoever - until the day the Lord showed me, you need to stand up and take dominion of this part of your life. If you'll get the victory, then all your life will change, so what I did was, I would start off by beginning to pray really strongly in tongues, get fired up in the spirit, energised in the spirit, and then in my imagination I'd picture and see there's a spirit there, the name - self-pity. I'd see that there was another one there, the name - rejection. I would speak to them: in Jesus' name I take dominion over you. I decree your power is broken over my life. I reject you, and refuse to yield to you - and same with the spirit of rejection: I hold the blood of Jesus over you right now. I had no idea what the blood of Jesus did to the demons, but it seemed a good idea to do it. [Laughter] It turns out they really don't like it. [Laughter] I didn't know that. I found that out since.

The other thing they don't like, is you praying in tongues. They absolutely hate it. I've heard them scream at me when I've prayed in tongues, and so now get this. I'd pray in the spirit, get energised in the spirit, turn to this one, push against it, push against it, and then turn around and then just begin to meditate on the truth, and open my heart to embrace the truth, and reject the lies. Now what I found was, now this was the first stage of doing this, and I did this for something like three weeks; I'd get up, begin to pray in the spirit, turn to the spirit go in Jesus' name, I have authority over you in Jesus' name. Now of course they would think the next day hey, we've been around a long time, we're not going that easy. So I'd wake up the next day, they're still there, and I never felt any change. I just did it by faith, and then I would meditate that God is with me. I declare the truth, I'm accepted in the beloved, meditate in the truth, and I'd search my heart for any experience of rejection, so I could forgive and release blessing to those people.

I'd meditate, primarily meditate in the truth. Then one day I stood up, got into praying [Prays in tongues] just like every other day. [Prays in tongues] Prayed in tongues, and I pushed [whoosh] like that, and I pushed [whoosh] like that against them in the spirit using words. Suddenly I felt the atmosphere change. I thought I've actually just hit these things, and engaged. I've actually got the victory over them, they've gone. They've backed up finally, and then when I began to meditate in God's presence and love for me, I just fell over, because I was just so touched by God - but for three weeks it had been just a journey of faith, and then the actual experience of recognising I could feel these spirits back up, because after three weeks they realised I was not quitting. They backed up, and they were gone, and I had a great space of freedom in my life for a long time - until the next stuff came up. [Laughter] Getting the idea? It's not so hard to do.

Now if I was to ask you now, to identify what are the things that most commonly press in on you, and trouble your thoughts and emotions, so that you would say actually, these are besetting things. They seem to sit around me all the time, and push against me. If you could write them down, what would they be? There's usually not many. I wrote down these ones; I wrote down rejection, because I felt that I always felt not good enough, then self-rejection, because I actually rejected myself. Then fear of rejection, because I actually did fear that this would happen to me, then unbelief, because I realised unbelief was under-girding all of those, and finally self-pity, because I'd get in a pity party, down, depressed. So I realised there was a cluster of them, just like that, and I just pushed against them and pushed against them, stood and decreed they were subject to me, their powers broken, and I'd turn, meditate in the word of God, and arise in my spirit, and it shifted. I wonder what sits around your life, that you could say: I refuse to tolerate this any more.

Now there may be root systems in your heart, but I'm sure if you'll identify first of all what the problem is, and you start to pray and resist it, and declare the truth over your life, that many things will shift pretty quickly. Other things you may need to actually identify when it first started, how it got in there, and be willing to acknowledge sin, or acknowledge unforgiveness, and let it go. That'd be great. It'd be easy to get rid of these things now. Every time they come around, oh, that's just you, in Jesus' name be gone! This is who I am. Now you'd be surprised how effective it is, because we declare, we make confession of what God says. How about that?

Okay, now suppose there was some stuff there, so that's how you deal with some spiritual attacks, and you just end up praising the Lord and redirect your attention, and there you are. Now I learned that if I didn't rise and fight, I could go down into a pit quite quickly, and stay there for quite some time, and be quite depressed. You know sometimes all it takes, is for someone to just say: come on, you're not yourself, stand up again. Okay [Prays in tongues] and suddenly it's all gone, it's all gone away. You've just stood up inside and pushed the stuff back, so spiritual pressure comes and goes. It'll try and lock in where there are strongholds in your heart. Jesus said: the devil comes, he's got nothing in me, got no hold in me. So let's just have a look if you needed to get delivered, and I want to teach just a little bit on how you could deliver yourself, so then I don't have to do it all. [Laughter] It gives you empowerment to deliver yourself, and many of us, rather than wait a whole week in torment, it would be better if you just rose up in prayer, and pushed the stuff away from you.

So in Proverbs 6, Verses 4 and 5: give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. In other words, this is a very important matter - deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler. So of course the fowler is a reference to Satan who hunts and traps and destroys wild birds, captures us, and wild animals of course in a snare struggle violently to get free. So God says - notice the command - deliver yourself. In other words, He says: seek your own deliverance. I've found I'm surprised how many people want someone to do it all for them, but actually this is your life, and you have authority over it, you do something for yourself. So what would I do? The Bible tells us that freedom is my responsibility, not someone else's. Your freedom is your freedom, it's about you. It's about what you have in your life, so I have to co-operate with God, and here's the key verse. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you, so how can I deal with some of these things, and get myself free?

So I have found sometimes prayer and fasting is an important part of it, so if you've got an area of your life that's resistant, then - it's in Page 16 - why don't you just have a season of fasting to break through? Have a season of prayer and fasting, and become aware of the presence of God. If there's sin in your life, or there's something you've done that's wrong, you do have to confess it, because that's the legal ground, and so you may find there's a pressure around a sexual area, because you've yielded in your mind and emotions, or embraced, or allowed your mind to wander, and in your heart there's a sin taken place, even if nothing externally has taken place. So repent it; Lord, forgive me, cleanse my heart of all of these things, and if there's areas where you need to forgive; sometimes we're feeling rejected because someone hurt us, and instead of forgiving we sat on it, stewed on it, had actually unforgiveness sitting in our heart, and the rejection just got deeper and deeper. So whatever it is, you need to repent of it. Then here's how you actually get the demons to go, quite simply, and I've done it a number of times myself, because I've found being in the role I am, and doing what I do, spirits come around and harass me from time to time. I go through conflicts of various kinds, and it affects me emotionally and spiritually, and I need to be set free sometimes.

So I have people that I can just go to, and when we get together we'll pray, and they'll pray, if they see anything they'll pray for me, and I'll pray for them. But other times. and I don't have to do it, often these days, but I would actually deliver myself. So how would you go about delivering yourself? Well the first part is just to recognise you've got a problem, there's something sitting there that may be not right. Then you've got to actually address the issue of sin, so I begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now if you can imagine spirit, soul and body - perhaps I'll just get three people up here. It'll just help me if I get three people, just the first three here. It'll just help you visualise this alright? Okay then, come on up, just stand forward here, alright, then there. Just have to stand, just stand there. You don't have to do anything - come and stand here in the middle, that's right, okay, there we go and here we are, spirits.

So spirit, soul, body, just got you like that, spirit, soul and body. Now demonic oppression is always through the body and the soul. Here's the gateway here. The life of God always comes through the spirit, and here is where the place of conflict is, right there at the centre of your will. Whose will will prevail? So this part of you here, the soul and the spirit, is called the inner man, the hidden man of the heart, so sometimes when the Bible's talking about your inner man, it's talking about your spirit, or it's talking about your soul and spirit. When you die, your soul and spirit together go into glory. Okay then, now the flesh refers to your body, and also aspects of your soul that are unredeemed, and so when the Bible talks about your flesh, demon spirits access your flesh, your soul, your mind, thoughts and emotions and your body. So when you're doing self-deliverance, what you must do is arise in your spirit. You have to arise in your spirit. You have to arise inside and flow in your spirit, no matter what you're feeling.

Now you understand now, if she arises in her spirit by praying in tongues and energising her spirit, and makes a decision inside in the deepest part of her being, I am going to resist, and I'm going to take authority over this thing, then what she can do is just speak into her soul, to any demon there, or into her body, to any demon there, and command it to be expelled. It just requires a decision on the inside, so what you do then is very simply stir yourself up praying in tongues. Father, I come to You, and I stand in Your very presence right now. I repent of the sin that's allowed that demon to come into my life. I thank You for forgiveness, I receive Your forgiveness right now. Now spirit, I speak to you now - GO in Jesus' name. Just command it just to go like that. What you can do then is just breathe out [Coughs] and what you may find is, as you start to cough, it becomes a major thing, and you're now in a manifestation mode, and something's going out, or it can be they just go simply like that.

But I know that two important foundational parts of it are: any sin is repented of; and two, you arise in your spirit, and command the thing to go. You might be very surprised when you arise inside, and command things to go, just what happens. You may have manifestations in your body, you may find yourself coughing, you may find yourself heaving. I've even known people when they've done this to actually just immediately start to throw up. I'm not into all of that kind of stuff. I think that the demons can go real quickly, real easy, but I have noticed sometimes with me, when I've prayed that way, there's been quite a coughing take place. I think oh, that's a lot of coughing. [Laughter] A lot of coughing. I don't worry about it. I'm not going to be condemned by it. I'm just taking authority and cleaning out the system, just very simply. Sometimes just because of the trials of life, stuff sits on you, and it weighs you down, and you can arise in your spirit, and command those things to go, and they will go. Then as soon as you've done that, just begin to praise God, thank Him for your liberty again, just worship Him, get your mind redirected.

Alright, so it's not such a hard thing to do. Now there are some things that you would need perhaps to get ministry for. If you can't get yourself free, certainly go see someone, and ask them to help you get set free - so there it is, self-deliverance. You can deliver yourself, and you can push away spirits that come against you. Now not everything is a spirit. They just exploit what's already there, so if you've got thoughts and patterns of thinking, beliefs in the heart, you've got issues of sin, they will just exploit them. Put your heart right with God, resist the devil, the demons will flee. Amen.

Alright, perhaps we'll just finish there. In the afternoon we want to have a look at a session, and talk to you about how to build your spirit man and develop that inner life and secondly, we want to look at just ministering to other people, how to go about ministering, and it's quite a simple process. Remember that in all of the situations of ministering where you're exercising spiritual authority, it always has these ingredients: one, you are arising to be in the position God's calling you to be; two, you stir your spirit, so you're alive in your spirit; three, you speak with expectation that something's going to happen. So I'll give you some things to do a little later this afternoon, and you can have a try and see what happens when you do it, and see how things go. This is something you grow into. You grow from level to level to level, so we'll get you doing some activations and do two, maybe three sessions in the afternoon, and I'm sure you'll go away mightily empowered for new things that God has for you.

Horowai, you had one question, perhaps we've got time for that. You mentioned before in the break - would you like to just raise that question again now? It was a very good question. [Horowai] [Had to do with last time you talked about how territories, we cross over into each other's metron...

[Pastor Mike] Right, okay.

[Horowai] ...and you also brought up that question about witchcraft...

[Pastor Mike] Okay and your question was making that clear, how to make that clear? Alright then, in working relationships, whether it be at work, whether it be in a church ministry, or whether it be in family, or wherever you are, the issue of boundaries defines what I'm responsible for, what you're responsible for, and in all work situations and relational situations, boundaries come up to one another like that, and often overlap. In other words, people start to move into someone else's area of responsibility. Now when there is good communication, and when there's a loving serving heart, it's very easy to flow like that, and we help one another, and we work with one another, and there's a natural flow. But it can become ungodly, and it becomes ungodly when this happens: when someone deliberately picks up the responsibilities of others, and they consciously let them go, so you get someone who's got a great heart - they're an enabler. They actually find their identity in doing things to help everyone: oh I can do that, let me do that, I'll do that.

Basically they're driven by this need to do things to get approval, so what'll happen is, they'll take it all on, then they'll get angry and react because they're doing so much, and you've got a conflict because boundaries got blurred, and the person's operating outside their area. But this is normal. This happens in life all the time, so when one person yields up their responsibility, and someone takes it up, this is called blurred boundaries, and when that happens conflicts will happen inevitably, because now the territories are not being properly governed. Now it's a very simple way around it. You just talk to one another, and just clarify who's responsible for what, and how you're going to talk and work together, it's so simple. But if people fail to do that, then one can feel resentful, because they feel they're losing power and someone else is taking over, and that is definitely unlawful, and they've actually got to step up, and there's a confrontation needed to bring out to the open what is happening.

It doesn't need to be angry, but it can be. It doesn't need to turn that way, but it sometimes does, so if you have yielded up responsibility, someone's taken it over, you've got to talk and say hey, we need to talk about our boundaries again, they've become blurred. I need to be clear what I'm responsible for, what you're responsible for, and how we're going to communicate together over those areas. It also happens if someone deliberately invades someone else's area. That becomes a problem as well, so you've got to talk and negotiate that stuff, but what happens is spirits use the blurred boundaries to invade and oppress. That's where the problem comes. Remember, don't blame the spirits on everything. They know where they had work. It's actually human beings that create the problems. We create the environment within which they seize an advantage to come in to oppress. Okay, someone else had a hand up, yes?

[Female participant] [What happens if boundaries that are blurred because of incompetence, and so other people will come to you, to try and get things done?

[Pastor Mike] Okay, so you've got two people working side by side; one person's skills or attitude or whatever means they're not capable of functioning properly in the job, and so now the other person, everyone's bypassing them and coming to this one. Now that's a problem.

[Female participant] If you don't do it, everything will collapse, so someone has to do it or it all goes to pieces.

[Pastor Mike] Now you see therein lies the problem. The person who thinks they've got to do it, is the one who's now become the problem. They weren't the problem originally, but they've become the problem, because they are empowering the incompetence of the other. What needs to be addressed is the incompetence of the other person. It has to be addressed, so it requires love and truth, talking, and an outworking of a better way of working the responsibilities. Once you bypass the system, then what you do is create problems, so if we've got two people, and one's incompetent, the other's highly competent, and people bypass and come to the competent one, then that creates a malfunction, and a discretion in the whole flow of the relationship. And of course don't think that the one who's incompetent doesn't know what's going on either, and they will be going through all kinds of stuff. They will feel something shift, they may not know what.

They'll feel resentful and angry, they will feel they're being eroded, they'll go through all kinds of things, and it's not sometimes because they're incompetent. It can be because they're difficult people to deal with relationally, and that also causes the transfer; people bypass them to go to where they can work relationally, and that creates problems as well. So the only way to deal with it is, you've actually got to talk face to face about what is happening, bring it to the light. It doesn't need to be an angry thing, you'd just be simply hey, I noticed this is something that people are bypassing and going here. The effect is to undermine the situation and overload this situation. We need to have a talk about why this is happening, and we need to come up with a strategy we agree on, to sort it out. If this is a skill lacking, let's talk about what skills: can we upgrade the skills? Can we talk about it and work it out? If this is a relationship thing, can we talk about it and work it out?

Now the easier thing is for the person who's competent to stay silent, and fill in, and take it all over. Now they have become a participant in the whole deal. Before they were just willing. Now they're actually empowering. It stays and works because they're doing that, and there's many situations like that. Usually I've found no one is happy in it, no one. No one is happy. Everyone knows what's going on, and no one is happy, and they're not happy because it's not out in the open, in the light. There's nothing like having things in the light. It's so freeing to have everything in the light, even if it's terribly painful: listen, the job you're doing, you're not doing well, you're missing this and this and this, and this is creating these problems. It's better to have it out in the open, than it is to have it hidden away. When it's hidden away, that's when spirits work, that's when you have your mind tormented, that's when all kinds of stuff goes on in the spirit world, because of the blurring of boundaries.

Remember that these invasions of territories make room for demonic spirits to operate, so where there is a situation where say, a family will collapse because one person is not doing their job, or something in an organisation will collapse because someone's not doing their job, it's better to face it. Long term, it's better to face it, and better to do it more quickly than keep a long time, so we're better to face the situations rather than continue in an unhappy situation, because the one who keeps doing everything will feel burdened eventually. They will become resentful about that, and the one who's not doing it will feel rejected in some kind of way, and they will in the end react at some point.

[Female participant] Oh yeah, I've seen it.

[Pastor Mike] So you find that marriages, where the man retreats and the woman takes - because she's got a great sense of heart for the home and responsibility, she'll rise up and take responsibility. Then she's burdened, and he's guilty because he's not doing anything, and feels she's taken over - but actually he was to blame. He was responsible. He should have actually initiated and worked these things out, so sometimes there are conflicts come around blurred boundaries and you can fix them easily or the hard way. [Laughs]

Okay, well praise the Lord. Father, we thank You for what You're teaching us, help us to learn how to walk in the spirit, move in the spirit, keep everything in the light and to disempower demons. Help us to learn how to bring Your presence in Jesus' name. Amen.

Strengthening Your Spiritual Life (5 of 6)

Fri 15 Feb 2013  « Back to Top

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This session starts off with clear instructions on how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the Gift of Tongues. Mike then describes the functions of our spirit - our life source, able to energise and illuminate our whole body, illuminate our mind, release creativity, bring insights, commune with God, and flow out to others. Learn how to cultivate and strengthen your spirit dimensions, including meditating on scripture to encounter God.

How many have been challenged in your thinking during the morning, just starting to think - that's great, wonderful. It takes a little time for these concepts to get in, because they shift how you view your life, and your responsibilities, and how you interact with them. I had some very good feedback in between times, very good. Okay, so before we go any further, I just want to, just for the sake of several who are not baptised in the spirit, or not released in tongues, I want to just speak about being filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues, so I want to speak about it a little bit, just so faith lifts up. I want to show you how you can receive, and then what we'll do is get those who don't speak in tongues, we'll get you to come towards the front. We'll get everyone else to gather around, one big crowd, and then we'll just pray all together, and that takes it away from being sort of self-conscious, that maybe you just haven't got the breakthrough yet.

So let me just give several scriptures related to being filled with the Holy Ghost. Firstly, very clear Jesus' ministry, He began His ministry with an encounter with the Holy Spirit. The Bible says the spirit of God came on Him, and the heavens opened up, and He heard the voice of God. From that point on in His life, He encountered an open heaven, an open spirit world. He encountered His Father's voice, and the leading of the spirit of God, so before He left, in Luke 24 He says this, in Verse 49: He says behold, I send the Promise of My Father on you; wait in the city of Jerusalem until you be clothed with power from on high. Now He's not talking here about being born again. He's talking about an empowerment, or a clothing.

In John, Chapter 20, He talks about sending them, so in John 20 He says this, Verse 21: As the Father sent Me, so I send you. So He's commissioning them again, and He said when He had done this, He breathed on them, and said: receive the Holy Spirit. So what happened was, He imparted to them the Holy Spirit. They were born again at that point in time. The parallel of course, when God created man, He breathed into him the breath of life, and man become a living soul. Now Jesus the last Adam, breathes into His followers, and they are born again, and He imparted through breathing the flow of the spirit of God. But He did say again, Acts 1 and Verse 4, He said being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the Promise of the Father, for He said: John baptised you in water, but you will be baptised in the Holy Spirit.

So now He's saying, even though they're born again, before they begin their ministry assignment, He wants them one, to be clothed with power - He uses different language to describe the same thing. He calls it the Promise of the Father; He calls it being clothed, or being endued from on high with power. He also calls it being baptised, or immersed into the spirit realm, and so what He's referring to when He uses the word baptised in the spirit, He's referring to us being immersed into the realm of the spirit. So the baptism in the spirit, being baptised in the spirit, is an entry experience into engaging the spiritual world, but it's only an entry experience. It's a great entry experience, it's a powerful entry experience, but the expectation is there'd be other things happen once we'd had that experience.

Then we read of course in Acts, Chapter 2, how the Holy Ghost came upon them, and suddenly the sound came from heaven like a rushing mighty wind. It filled the whole house were they were sitting. There appeared to them divided tongues like fire, set on every one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost - and they began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So we see here in Acts 2, the first experience of being baptised in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost came on them. The power of God literally broke out of heaven upon them, and the first consequence of being filled was to overflow vocally. It says they spoke as the Holy Spirit gave them, so you have to speak. It's the Holy Spirit who gives the language, so the language of tongues is not a language that we learn. It's an imparted flow of the Holy Spirit into our spirit, so the spirit of God clothes our spirit and we choose to speak, so you can't expect God to open your mouth and talk. You've actually got to speak, you've got to actually do the speaking.

They spoke as the Holy Ghost gave them utterance, and it says people could understand some of them speaking. They spoke in our tongues the wonderful works of God, so clearly it was a dramatic experience, because people said hey, it looks like they've been drinking wine. Oh, they're full of joy and laughing, and filled with the Holy Ghost. There are other examples in the Bible of the same thing. Acts, Chapter 10, the Holy Ghost falls upon the Gentiles, first sign, they began to speak in tongues. Acts, Chapter 19, Paul goes to a group of believers that have been baptised in the Holy Spirit, haven't even heard. So he taught them, laid hands on them, they were filled with the spirit, began to speak in tongues, and to move in the gifts of the spirit - so clearly in scripture we see this encounter with the Holy Spirit, the filling up, the overflow with tongues.

So what about the gift of tongues? Let me give you a couple of things on it, then we'll talk about receiving quickly, and get you a chance to receive. So in reading in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verse 14: If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit is praying, my understanding is unfruitful, but my spirit is praying. So there is a part of you, your spirit man that can feel, sense, smell, experience, see, hear, also speak. Your spirit is speaking, and you're speaking the language that God gives you, so it's not coming from your mind, where you're thinking what you're saying. It's a flow from inside. It says when we speak in tongues, it says that we are speaking, and it builds up our spirit man - so I don't want to go into a long teaching on tongues. It's a whole teaching around itself, but the gift of tongues primarily is a communication flow with the Holy Spirit, to enable you to pray, to praise, to pray when you don't know what to pray, and it builds your spirit man.

Have a think about this. When I went to Asia, whenever I go to Asia I'm in a totally new culture, and one of the things about the culture, it has it's own language. If I don't know the language of the culture, it's difficult to operate in that culture. Everything is unfamiliar, so one of the first things they give me when I get there is an interpreter, someone to help me with the language. The language is important to living and experiencing the culture properly. In fact if I've got no one who helps with the language, I can't even do anything there, so just taking it from a natural level, flowing in another culture is highly difficult and ineffective if you have no one to help you with the language. So the same thing, the realm of the spirit is not the same as the natural realm. The real of the spirit is much more intense, and so we need a language to express in that realm.

When God speaks to you - most of you know computers I suppose - when God speaks to you, it's like if you've ever in your computer received a zip file. A zip file, you just download it, there it is, you've got a zip file. Now when you unzip it, there's just all this information in the zip file, so when you receive from God you can receive a download really quickly, but as it takes time, and when it opens up there's so much in it. Praying in tongues is a vital part of helping us engage in the realm of the spirit, so how do we receive? We receive very, very simply. The Bible says in Mark 11, when you stand praying for whatever you desire, you must really want to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Number two, when you desire, when you pray, you've got to ask God - we've got to come specifically saying God, this is what I want. Three, we must believe that we receive it: whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe you receive it, and then following that, you will have it.

So when you pray, there has to be the believing I will receive it. If I come saying well let's just give it a go and see what it'll do, that's not believing. That's waiting until you see, then you believe. So I need to know from the Bible, and from hunger in my heart, this is for me, and I come to Him saying: God, I just want to be filled with the Holy Ghost. I'm yielding and surrendering to you. Now what would stop you flowing in the spirit, and flowing in that expression of tongues? There's probably several things. One would be if you're locked up in the occult, or if there are occult bondages that have never been freed. That is a problem and a block for flowing in the things of the spirit. We assume that that is not true for most of you here today if not all, so then there are two other things that come to mind immediately.

One of them is, if you've ever had teaching that was anti the Holy Spirit. That creates a blockage around your life from receiving, because the words that have come sit in your life, and the moment you come to receive, they come back to life and they actually stop you. So it's important if we've ever been exposed to teaching where people taught against the baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, that you actually renounce that, because it creates a barrier to receiving. Getting the idea? So I know that people that have been in those situations, they often have a block, because the moment they come to pray their old teaching comes up and argues against receiving, so there's no flow from their spirit to respond to faith.

Another or a third common factor that people have in not letting go to flow into the language of tongues is strong cognitive control over their life. So when a person has shut down the emotional dimension of their life, and shut down that right-brain aspect, the creative aspect, and just lives out of logic, and lives out of reasoning, and lives in their mind and thoughts and is disconnected from the heart, then this often is a major block to flowing with the spirit, because the moment you come to pray, you're back in your brain trying to work out what to say, and analysing everything that's happening, instead of actually letting go control, which is effectively what's happening, and just saying: God, I just surrender. I let my heart, my inner man just express it's love for You through this new language. It's literally the control of your mind has to let go, and allow the flow from your heart and spirit to just emerge.

I've found for me it was a little bit of a difficulty. I got filled with the spirit dramatically and quickly, but then my mind would actually consciously argue. It would reason. I'd be praying in tongues, and I could feel the joy rising up, and then the mind arguing, arguing, arguing. It's like a lawyer [laughter] argues, reasons everything away. So strong cognitive control in your life, or blocks to the emotional area, can stop the flow from within your heart, because the language of the tongues is a flow of the Holy Spirit, in your spirit, flowing up outwards through your life. So if you can just surrender control and let go of that area and relax - sometimes people find that when they're in the shower they relax more, and they're able to get going into flow in the gift of tongues, but everyone's got his own way I guess.

But we want to just pray for people to be filled with the spirit and just get a breakthrough today. We'll just see what the Lord will do, but if you could just approach it really simply in harmony, God, I don't want to be held back any longer. I don't want any blocks. I'm just coming to You right now and I'm letting go what any wrong teaching, any control over my thoughts, I'm just letting it go to You. I'm just going to worship You in all Your beauty, and I'm going to let my mouth speak this new language which You give me. Amen - so we'll do that then. So what we'll do is we'll just make it a little easier for everyone, rather than everyone being conscious of themselves, so we'll get those who would like to be specially released in this area, why don't you come and just stand around me just in the front. The rest of us all come around and stand around you, so just firstly those who haven't got a breakthrough in their life, if you'd like to just quickly come, just come up to the front here.

So if you just make room for people to come through, just come and stand facing me. You're not facing the camera, that's the one, there we go. [Laughs] Okay, there we go, good stuff. Okay, come on now, that's right. We got everyone here? Righto then, now what I want is for everyone else to come around, surround them. We're going to just love them, and be together and believing God for this release today. Okay, just bring everyone else up, that's right, that's the way. Close your eyes and make everyone vanish. That's the simplest thing, make everyone vanish. If you're thinking about other people, or about yourself, you won't let go. Alright then, now Lord, I'm just asking right now that You would just help. We need Your help. Some Lord have been prayed for before, and they haven't had a breakthrough, and we don't know why, so we ask Lord if there's any reason for there being a blockage, that almost immediately You will bring it to their mind right now.

If there's any form of blockage that would stop the flow of Your spirit, I'm asking that just right now You would bring the thoughts to their minds, they would begin to see just in a moment what the blockage really is. Lord, if it's pride, unwillingness to let go, well just make it just be clear so they can see that. Lord, if it's a block in the emotions, Lord just help identify what that is. Lord, if it's wrong teaching, or teaching that's been contrary to the Holy Spirit, Lord I ask You to bring that up to the surface. Whatever it is that may have caused a block, let it go, whether it's disappointments and then fear that I'm not good enough to receive anything from God. That's another thing that would stop people, I'm not good enough, and my life is such a mess. That would stop you, that would stop you receiving, but there's no reason. See, God has already made you good enough. You are totally acceptable to Him. He loves you very deeply, very dearly. You're very precious. Jesus said these words: if someone asked the Holy Spirit, will God give him a stone, you know? The Father, if a child asks for bread you know, will He give him a stone or will He give him a serpent. I mean how much more will the Father give you, the Holy Ghost.

So this is what we're going to do, we're going to just lead you through a prayer. We're going to come and gather around you if you're comfortable with that, and just lay hands on you to pray for you. Every one of us is just going to worship God together. What I'd like us to do is in a moment after we've prayed through the prayer together, I'd like all of us to begin to speak in their language, and speak and honour God together. Amen. Do that together, and the thing is just relax. Don't try and make something happen. Just say God, I know You're there. I know the Holy Spirit, I know You're there inside me. Rise up inside me. I just yield my tongue to speak right now. Are we ready? Okay, I'll lead you in a simple prayer.

[Repeated by congregation] Jesus, I open my heart to You now. I so much want to be filled with Your spirit. I want to have the language of tongues to worship You, to pray effectively, so by faith now, I receive the Holy Ghost. I receive the gift of tongues. I thank You for giving this to me, and I open my heart to honour You now, and to speak in this new language, in Jesus' name.

Let's take a deep breath in, let's all pray together. [All pray in tongues] Holy Spirit, come and fall upon him right now. Let the power of God just come around his life today. Father, in Jesus' name just break the controls around his mind and emotions. I release Your anointing to flow right now. Let it go, that's right, let go. [Prays in tongues] I break every spirit of fear, not being good enough. I break it off your life now. I release the flow of the Holy Ghost. Lord, touch Steve right now. [Prays in tongues] Let the power of God just come around his life right now. [Prays in tongues] That's right, proactively speak and pray, that's right. [Prays in tongues] Holy Spirit, come upon him, that's right. Let's hear it now, speak those words. [Prays in tongues] That's right, you've got it, that's right, you've got it, flow - that's right, thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord for Your power coming on him right now. [Prays in tongues] Loose him right now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come. Thank You Lord.

That's right, now just relax. Just relax. Don't try too hard, just relax. Inside you just now begin to just see Jesus, and you love Him so much. You love Him so much, He's been so good to you, so faithful to you, and everything in you wants to just love on Him with this new language now. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Let Your anointing flow right now over her life. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Father, in Jesus' name I come against control. I break the power of controlling words, controlling spirits that have crushed and broken her heart. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I release you from those things right now. Father, pour Your spirit into her life today, in Jesus' mighty name. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord, thank You for filling her right now. Thank You Lord for the overflow of Your love. Thank You Lord for the overflow of Your Love. Thank You Lord for Your anointing just flowing right now. Come on, Holy Spirit we thank You.

We thank You for Your presence. [Prays in tongues] That's right, let that language rise up now. Thank You spirit of God. [Prays in tongues] I break every lie that I'm not good enough. I break words spoken over you that wounded and broke your spirit. I break those words right now. Thank You Lord for Your anointing just flowing. That's right, now just begin to allow your spirit to rise up and just express love. [Prays in tongues] Let's all pray together a little stronger now. [All pray in tongues] Thank You Lord. Thank You Holy Ghost, fill him right now. Thank You Lord, we break control. I come against all control. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I break it's hold over your life right now. Thank You Lord. Loose him right now. Father, release Your anointing into his life right now. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Holy Spirit come over him right now, thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues]

How are we doing?[Laughter] Holy Ghost, fill him! Fill him Lord! [Laughter] Long overdue. [Lots of laughter] Holy Ghost, fill him! [Laughter, praying in tongues] Holy Ghost, fill him right now with the power of God. Thank You Lord, fill him. [Prays in tongues] That's right, that's right. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost, come on him right now Lord. Thank You Lord, thank You for Your love flowing around his life right now. [Prays in tongues] Holy Ghost, come. Thank You Lord, pour Your anointing into his life right now, fill him oh God, fill him. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Father, right now just speak, take authority over grief and disappointment. In the name of the Lord Jesus' Christ, I come against the spirit of grief and disappointment. I break it's power in your life right now. I command you to release him in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord, thank You Jesus. Thank You Lord, thank You Lord. Son, I love you. God loves you very deeply. Thank You Lord. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come, praise the Lord, hallelujah. Thank You Lord. Praise the Lord.

Okay, hallelujah. [Laughs] Give me more Lord! [Laughter] Holy Ghost, praise the Lord. Amen, amen. Amen, praise the Lord. Come on, let's give the Lord a great clap shall we. [Applause, laughter] Holy Ghost, fill her Lord, fill her. [Laughter] Joy of the Lord, let it come around her life. [Laughter] Wow, we've had some really good results. Any got a freedom, got a release? That's fantastic. Did you get released today? That's awesome, that's [laughter] - don't even go there. [Laughter] Okay, how are we doing? How are you doing? [Laughter] How are you doing? Well, interesting when you come to that kind of point, suddenly all the stuff you've got in your heart starts to choke up aye? [That's true, yeah.] Now you see you'll have had a lot of pain and grief and stuff you've pushed right down and when you push it down - it's just there near the surface now. [Laughs] Holy Ghost. Well it's great fun. Can we just get the air con on a bit? It's really hot in here. Man I got hot suddenly. It's off? Maybe you could cool the place a little, just getting so warm. Wow, got hot all of a sudden here.

[Laughs] Well that's great. Don't you love the Holy Ghost? [Yes! Yeah!] [Applause] I just love the Holy Ghost. He is so wonderful. He is so wonderful. Man, we better keep going so we can get things finished. [Laughs] There's a great presence of God here now. Thank You Lord. Well there we go. Okay, we're just going to look at strengthening your spirit man or building your inner man. I want to share with you a few keys on that, then we'll look at ministering to people. So we're looking at Page 19 in the notes and we're just going to jump one section and we'll come back in a moment, just strengthening or building your spirit man. First of all I want you - we'll just have a look at divine design and see how God has designed us to function, because many times we kind of - spiritual things have an appearance as though they're very difficult, whereas in fact they're not difficult. It's just when you don't understand it, it seems like it's just another world or something, but in Genesis 2:7 God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

So man is made in the image of God. God is a spirit; we have a spirit dimension to us, so we are a spirit being. You're a human being, you live in a body but you are more than just your body. Your body's called the house you live in, so we have a body we live in. We have a soul where our personality, will, mind, emotions and memories exist. We also have a spirit, and the spirit part of us enables us to communicate and connect with the whole realm of the spirit, so living and operating as a believer is about living and operating from the flow within our spirit. When man sinned and fell, he lost the spiritual connection and had to live out of his mind and soul, so your spirit has a number of functions. Let me just identify for you some of the functions of your spirit, so we can understand them. Number one, your spirit sustains your life. That's something people don't really understand. We kind of think of life as being a fairly natural sort of thing, but notice what it says: the body without the spirit is dead, even so faith without works is dead also.

So very clearly the body without the spirit is dead, so your spirit is what provides the energy that sustains your body. I'm sure there's also biochemical processes and so on, biological processes which are in place as well - but the Bible's very clear. Without your spirit, your body dies. Your spirit is therefore essential to the functioning of your body. If I chopped off a finger I could continue to live; chopped off a couple of legs, still continue to live. So there's a lot you could lose and still live, but you can't live without your spirit, so your spirit is vital to the life that you live on the earth, so if the person's spirit is withdrawn they die. Now the Bible tells us your spirit can be broken. It can be crushed, it can be wounded, so your spirit is quite vulnerable. Your spirit can sense and respond and be affected by what goes on around it, so a person's spirit can be crushed, and when your spirit is broken it affects your health, for example the Bible says that a broken spirit dries the bones. In other words, when your spirit is damaged through trauma, through words, through control, through abuse, then what happens is it doesn't generate the energy that would allow you to live a very vibrant life.

Similarly, if your life is dominated by demonic spirits, your spirit is restricted from flowing, and so again, you don't live the free life and the abundant life that God has intended for us to have. So the second thing we notice is that your spirit energises and inspires your thoughts. Now here's something - remember we got everyone praying in tongues, and we asked you what was the effect of strong praying in tongues, what did you feel happen to you? We come up with actually your body came alive, you felt quite energised. How many felt that? Some of you said this, an interesting thing; you said that your mind cleared. How many had that experience, your mind cleared? Very good. Now notice this scripture here. It says in Proverbs 20, Verse 27, the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. Now that's an interesting thing. The lamp is something that illuminates, so the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord; it illuminates, or it searches all the deep places of his heart.

Here's another scripture, 1 Corinthians 2:11. What man knows the things of man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except the Spirit of God. Now your spirit, we try to describe it in different ways, but your spirit is like an energy source inside you. Your spirit fits into your body like a hand fits inside a glove, so if I was to look at a person, I see through their eyes into the soul and spirit, you're seeing the living person. If the spirit leaves, you look into those same eyes; they're dead and lifeless. Now your spirit provides life on the inside. It also illuminates your mind, so if God wants to drop things into your mind, He will do it through your spirit. The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, so when your spirit is flowing you think clearly. You notice when we got our spirits moving, our heads started to clear? You sit down for a long time, become passive and your body's inactive, your spirit will start to shut down as well. Stand up, shake your body, move, speak in tongues, and your head clears just like that. It's just a very simple thing to understand.

So how many have known this experience, that you had a problem you faced, and you didn't know what to do about it, so we went to bed on it, and in the morning woke up, and you knew what to do? What part of you was figuring out that problem? It was your spirit, so even though your body is at rest, your spirit through the evening or night is not at rest. It's just alive, it doesn't sleep, so your spirit can commune with God while you're asleep. Your spirit can illuminate your mind with ideas, so imagine your spirit being like a lamp that can just flash an idea into your mind. Where does creativity come? It comes up out of the spirit of a man, so when a person's under control they can't release creative thoughts, because their spirit is crushed down. So the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, so your spirit's like a flash-light. It will light things up, and it will give insights to yourself, so if you're going to gain insight to your own life, you have to be able to reach into your spirit, into the deep parts of you, and draw from within and tune in to the flow from your spirit. We'll identify that in a moment.

You notice when someone's spirit is alive and energised, their whole countenance seems full of life. Ever seen singers on a stage, we say they have what's called charisma. Actually charisma is just the life of their spirit flowing unhindered through them, and you notice the freedom is incredibly attractive? When someone's really free, you can see it on their - it's like their face is lit up. Have you ever noticed when you've seen people in say, the Indian culture, who got saved, and you see them standing alongside people who are unsaved, they look like they're lit up on the inside. It shows on the countenance. If someone is under oppression of an evil spirit they look black or dark, so clearly the activity of the human spirit, and the spirit of God, illuminates and brings life, and it brings ideas to us. The Holy Spirit can give you many ideas, but He always does it by illuminating your spirit.

The third thing about your spirit is this, is your spirit flows out. Your spirit can flow to touch people. In Proverbs 4:23, keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it shall flow the issues of your life - so your spirits movement is a flowing movement like water, like a river, like some form of energy. Jesus said in John 7:38, He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now notice again the flowing nature of your spirit, so your spirit flows from you, and your spirit actually can fill a whole room, so for example, I'll give you a few examples. How many of you have closed your eyes, but as you've walked near a wall, you can suddenly be aware there is a wall there? As yourself I wonder what part of me knew there was a wall there? Now of course if you've moving too quick and don't take notice you just bump straight into it [laughter] but if you were in a perfectly black room and you started to walk, and just walked quietly towards it, knowing there's a wall there, it's almost certain you'll feel the presence of the wall before you actually hit it, especially if your spirit is energised and alive.

Have you ever had the experience of someone sneaking up behind you, and you suddenly become aware someone is there? How do you become aware? Your spirit is aware. Have you ever been in a room, and someone extremely important came into the room, or with a lot of authority came in the room, you feel the whole room change. See, so authority is actually tangibly felt. When you get in the person, someone with immense authority, you feel it engage the whole room, the atmosphere changes. It's the spirit dimension around people's life, okay. So for example a person who is showing up emotions in a very strong way, the influence actually affects the atmosphere; for example if a person is very angry, you can feel the anger, even if they're not saying anything. Ever meet someone who's seething with anger? You can feel it. How do you fee it? Something is emanating out from them.

A person who's peaceful - have you ever met someone who's incredibly peaceful, they carry a spirit of peace. When you come near them, you become very calm. It's actually quite nice being in their presence, because you feel the peace. Have you ever met someone who had self-pity governing their life? You can literally feel the emanating self-pity, and you feel like it's drawing you in, and you have to do something or say something and help them in some kind of way. Have you ever been near an arrogant person? An arrogant person, they put out into the atmosphere that they are superior to you, so you feel put down, even if nothing much is said - so whatever's inside us flows out of us, and the spiritual part of you can pick it up. It's helpful for you to be aware of that dynamic flow. I'll just give an example here - don't mind using you as an example again? Can I use you as an example? There we go.

Just come and stand there. I need someone to stand behind her. Now, so we know that the Holy Spirit lives within us, and so He fills us up. So we pray in tongues, [prays in tongues] then our whole spirit can become filled, until the whole atmosphere around me starts to be filled with the presence of God. Now if I was to lay hands on her, then there can be a release of what's in me, just through the contact of laying on of hands, so I could just go: power of God, and the power of God starts to touch her. But the power of God can touch her also without me connecting. If I was just to allow my heart to be filled with the presence of God, just release the power of God touch you now - now she'll start to feel the power of God just come around her life touching her. Now see I didn't touch her that time, but something flowed. Your spirit substance flows. The things of the spirit flow beyond you. It's helpful to realise that, so therefore, just your presence in a place can affect what's going on around you.

If you're conscious that God is inside you, you're filled with the presence of God, you begin to release the peace of God. We saw it come into the meeting just before, so your spirit is vital to your life. Your spirit can affect the quality of your life. Your spirit can gain thoughts and ideas, your spirit can flow out of you. That's the most wonderful thing, to think that something can flow out of you through your words, or just being there, that touches people. Healing can flow, life can flow, so we want to minister to one another shortly. We want to get that flow going, want to give you an exercise to try. So those are some of the things our spirit can do. Here's another vital thing, and that is your spirit can be strengthened. In other words you can become really strong in your spirit - or you can be very weak.

So Ephesians 3, Verse 16, I pray that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man - so the inner man is your spirit being, joined to the Holy Ghost. Strengthen means increased in dominion, and with might, supernatural ability, dunamis see? So here's the thing, that the Holy Ghost can strengthen you. Now how is that going to happen? Well I'm glad you asked that [laughter] because we want to see exactly how that happens. I always ask the question, how does that happen? If I don't know how it happens - well it's wonderful, it sounds very, very good but how does that happen? I still feel weak like I was yesterday. See, we need to know what we can do that will engage the Holy Spirit working with us. How can I become strong on the inside?

Now if I wanted to gain physical strength like my son-in-law [laughter], then I'd have to do a number of things, but the most important - I could eat the right food, drink the right drink, but here's the most important thing of all: you'd have to exercise. All exercise involves the same kind of thing, various forms of it but essentially, you have to exert your muscles against something that is resisting. You have to actually overcome the resistance, and in overcoming the resistance, you begin to build strength inside yourself. So we can pray that we'll be physically strong, and you know it doesn't work. You can pray you'll be physically fit - you know it doesn't work. You actually have to do something to get physically fit. You can pray that God will strengthen you, and there's nothing wrong with doing that. We should pray that God would strengthen us, but there are ways you can co-operate with the Holy Ghost for that to happen, so let's have a look at some.

Here are some keys to growing your spirit, or strengthening your spirit. One of them we've already seen. Number one, probably the first one everyone could do is praying in tongues. He that speaks in an unknown tongue - 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 4 - strengthens himself, builds himself. So when you speak in the Holy Ghost, your own spirit can start to rise and become very strong. See, that's one of the ways you strengthen your spirit, so that's why praying fluently, praying forcefully, praying strongly, strengthens and builds your spirit. It's not the only way, but you could do that any time you want - pray in tongues [prays in tongues] and as you pray in tongues let your spirit rise up inside you. Allow yourself to be aware I am growing and increasing in my spirit, and you come alive very, very quickly, so that's one important way. You can pray that way all the time, so we'll get you to do a few of these things in a moment.

The second thing you can do, one of the most important things that your spirit responds to, is the word of God. I can't emphasise enough how the word of God will strengthen your spirit, but it doesn't strengthen your spirit just by reading it. You've got to get it in you, so one way that the word of God can strengthen our spirit, is when we learn to speak God's word, pray God's word, declare God's word. This is a way - Jesus said: the words I speak, they are spirit, and they are life, and so notice in Hebrews 3, Verse 1, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, or profession - so spoken words have power. They can release something, see? So if the word of God, spoken with a heart that believes it, releases power, I can release power and strength into my own spirit by speaking to myself. Now one of the things secular people understand is the importance of self-talk, of what you say to yourself. Most people are talking to themselves all the time: oh, I couldn't do that, it'd be hard, I don't know what's going to happen next, that's not going to work out. You've got a lot of endless, relentless, negative chatter going on.

But if you were to start speaking the word of God over your life, speaking the word of God into your heart wholeheartedly, it would have an effect on you: I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might! Your soul says no you're not, you're just a sissy boy. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might! Begin to confess the word of God, let the word of God grow in your life. Speak it upon your life. Say what God says about you: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Everything God called me to do, I can do it through Christ who strengthens me! Now see these are strong affirmations of God's word over your life, so praying the word of God, speaking the word of God over your life, will strengthen your spirit. Try it a few times. We've already done a few exercises on it. It affects you. It affects you.

Here's another thing. Worship is another way of strengthening your spirit man. Your spirit responds to the presence of God in worship. Now in 2 Corinthians 3:18 it says we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed or totally changed. So what it's saying then is worship, when I engage God properly, changes me. You say well I don't feel changed, I just sung some songs and lifted my hands up, didn't feel changed one little bit. Well it's because worship is not just about singing songs and lifting your hands. It's about your heart engaging with God and experiencing God, so I have to actually do more than the externals. It's about my heart, and the focus of my heart, and as we allow our heart - see your spirit will easily engage God. It's your body and soul that are the resistant parts, so that's why I encourage you to do this. I encourage you to clap your hands [All clap hands] make your body wake up: WAKE UP BODY! I know it's after lunch - WAKE UP and come alive just like that. Pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues]

Now I can get my spirit alive very quickly. I've learnt to do that very easily, but then the next part is actually the worshipping part. Now worshipping is much more tender, and I have found it most helpful, the problem you find as you worship is your mind wanders, starts to think oh, that'd be nice, sit down and watch television - [prays in tongues] - [laughter] yes, that'd be lovely. I wonder what match is on right now - [prays in tongues]. You see? We're not going to engage in worship much that way, see? So worship is consciously and intentionally letting your heart reach out, and affirm the love and value you have for Him, so if I just get my mind distracted I'm not really worshipping. I'm going through the motions. They draw near with the lips, but the heart is not there, because the mind has gone somewhere else, but if I was to just ponder that Jesus is with me and I just begin to say oh, I love You. Thank You Lord for Your goodness to me. I just worship You, I just give You everything. I just love You Lord and thank You for Your presence - and I can start to begin to feel and become conscious that He's there, feel the atmosphere starting to change.

Now that took a moment or two - but you say well, that doesn't happen for me. Well it didn't happen for me either until I practised. I practised worshipping. I practised giving myself to Him, lift my hands up and dance and praise the Lord and just give - I learnt to just give myself to Him. I found sometimes for me initially I was so hung up, I found it helpful just to just give myself physically, and dance before the Lord, celebrate His presence and just give myself, then yield to Him and say: I love You Lord, just come and fill me and overflow and just crash on the bed and let Him just come all over me. I learnt to explore what it is to just stand in the presence of God and enjoy Him. Sometimes it can be just so delightful, you just want to just stay there admiring Him. Worship engages Him, and you just begin to feel His presence. Other things just seem to change. You come out of a time of worship, where you've engaged the presence of God, other things seem to not have so much importance any more. The difficult part is getting rid of the baggage so you can engage Him personally.

So it's helpful to picture, to use your mind - that brings us to the next one of growing in our spirit man, is to develop our spiritual imagination. Now people sometimes get trouble with this, and notice what Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:15; Meditate on these things; give yourself totally to them, so that your progress or profiting might appear to all. To meditate means to revolve around in your mind, to picture, to use your imagination to see spiritual truth. It's true that whatever you set your heart on, your heart will open up to, so you set your heart on problems you'll open up to problems. Set your heart on the Lord and meditate, so you may not feel anything much about the presence of God, you may not feel that He's there at all. You may think He's a long way off. I lived with God a long way off for a long part of my life, but then I learnt that if I would meditate and picture truth, just imagine the truth, in other words use your imagination. The Bible says: love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength - that would include my imagination.

So if I was to just imagine what it is to stand in the presence of God who loves me, and hold the picture that Bible says of what He's like, His countenance, His eyes, His face, His beauty, all that He is, and just meditate: now what does that feel like to be welcomed by Him like that? Just imagine seeing the scripture. I have found an interesting thing happens, that as you do that, you begin to write into your heart the truth. If I was to say: what is the sum of this multiplication problem, three times four? Three fours are? [Twelve.] Now you didn't have to stop and think about it because you'd learnt it by heart. How did you learn it by heart? By repetition, so repetition of seeing the same thing, welcoming the same thing, affirming the same thing, it begins to grow in our heart as a spiritual reality, and so it doesn't really take long. Once you've started to meditate and hold your mind, fixed - I've meditated in Psalm 23 on Jesus being my shepherd. I've meditated in Revelations about Him being the great and glorious coming king, and each time you meditate, you begin to see Him differently.

Initially you have to allow your mind - then I just read the scripture, try to get the picture, and then I imagine what that would be like and just stay there imagining it, trying to feel it and then the Holy Spirit takes over and a flow comes. I'll just show you again - you can be my helper again Mary, that'll be a great idea. Come and be my helper again. We'll pray for lots of people shortly, but I want you to just help me in this one. Now I want you just to close your eyes, and I want you just to be open for how God might touch you. I'm not going to try to minister to you, or pray for you in any way. What I want to do instead is just holding your hand just to stay joined to you. What I want to do is to just meditate that Jesus is my friend, my wonderful friend, my shepherd. Thank You Lord, You're my shepherd and friend. So I begin to meditate and see Him there, standing just in front of me. I begin to see everything, see His eyes so full of love and life, countenance so joyful, just reach out to receive His love.

You see the moment I locked in, she started to feel the overflow. Meditation enables you to open your spirit and heart to the truth of the Bible. That's why we're to not only read the Bible, write the Bible, memorise the Bible, but meditate, allow our mind to reflect on it. There's at least three different ways of meditating I'm aware of now, but one way of meditating is to meditate into encounter with God. You don't hear much about that. You can meditate over a truth of scripture, and begin to look at it, and begin to gain insights and see how it might apply to your life. That's one way of looking at scripture. You can meditate on scripture also to enter in and experience God, that's another way of meditating. You can meditate on scripture just to build it into your heart, by repeating it over and over, so there's at least three things I'm aware that we could do with scripture: one for insight, one for impartation, and the other to open up the realm where God is.

So Mary, could you come up and describe for us what you experienced? Well [laughs] that's pretty quick, so I'll just take this off so you've got access to talk - here we go. There we go, just talk into that.

[Mary] I just felt just overwhelmed by His love, by His presence. It just - I couldn't stand, yeah...

[Pastor Mike] Still can hardly stand.

[Mary] ...I can still feel it, just... [laughter] yeah. I can't stop it.

[Pastor Mike] Now you see where it's - yeah, you can't stop, yeah. [Laughter]

[Mary] I can't. It's just overwhelming, His presence.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah, so see how it got opened, meditation opened the way for that to happen. There's a strong presence of God.

[Mary] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] There it is - oh! Holy Ghost, come now. Praise the Lord. She's feeling the presence now. [Laughter] Be really good for us to just do a couple of things then shall we? Why don't we just do that? We'll just put into practice at least a couple of the exercises we've learnt now shall we? Now, you're going to need a help for this, so what you're going to need is you're going to need a chair to fall back on so - we can't catch everyone, and so we're not going to catch anyone. [Laughter] You have to catch yourself [laughter] so I'll give you three things that we're going to do. We're going to do the three things that we just learnt which strengthen your spirit man. One of them was that we would speak strongly in tongues; two, we'll confess the word of God, and each time we do something, again notice what it does for you. Then the third thing we'll do is we'll meditate, and I'll just help you with the meditating in just focussing your mind.

Now some people their mind doesn't focus easily. It's like a butterfly, it goes everywhere. That's just a matter of reigning in your mind, training your mind to stay in one place and not go everywhere else. Once you've trained your mind you can stay there, and you can lock in and stay there a long, long time. Now we realise then our mind can be trained to serve our spirit. Now initially you may find it a little bit difficult. Everyone's experience will be a bit different, but just see what God does anyway aye? Why not try, okay? Come on then, stand up then where you are, and then position yourself so you've got a seat, so should you fall over unexpectedly you don't fall on anyone else. [Laughter] If you are a very, very big person you may want your chair backed up to the wall so you don't just go clean head over heels, straight over into someone else. There we go Tim, straight up against the wall. [Laughter]

Okay, are we ready? So why don't you just shake your body, just loosen your body up. We've just had lunch and so we're a little bit all getting tired and no energy, ha ha! Holy Ghost! Alright then, now let's begin to pray in tongues as strongly as we can, and let's stir our spirit up! [Prays in tongues] Praise the Lord. Okay, next one. We're going to make this declaration: I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. [I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might! I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might. I am strong in the Lord and the power of His might.] Well that's good. How many felt - some falling over already. [Laughs] Okay then, now you should find that the energy level has shifted considerably in you, and as you meditate on those scriptures and decree them more and more, they start to become alive, lift your spirit the moment you speak them.

Now I want you just to meditate, just reach your hands out just in front of you like that, just like your hands are upturned and open. Have your eyes closed and your legs resting just against the seat, see because if you fall over you'll just want to sit down. Otherwise you'll tumble and take three or four people with you and we try to avoid that if we can. Okay, now we're going to meditate, so just pray quietly in tongues for a little, just let your spirit flow. [Prays in tongues] Now to meditate means I'll fix my mind and begin to focus my attention on scripture, on the Lord, so just stop praying now. I want you with your eyes closed, I want you to take this scripture. The Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd see? Now that means He is my friend, so use your imagination to extend out and see Jesus standing just before you, about one foot away and He's your friend.

Try to imagine what a friend would be like - eyes glazing, full of glory and purity, and full of joy to see you. That's what a friend is, they're always happy to see you. See Him like that, His countenance, very happy to see you. Friends are always happy to see one another. They smile and their face lights up - see Him like that. The Lord is my friend. Look at Him a little harder - there it is. He is the Lord God Almighty, just full of life, full of light and amazing love. Meditate on that, just think about that. His hands are reaching out to you. That's what friends do, they open their hands wide, oh, it's so good to see you. Now as you reach out to Him - just reach out. He does love you. Imagine what that love would feel like, if He just reached out and hugged you, and His love just flowed into your life, and you just received it now. Just receive it [exhales once quickly] just receive it right now. [Exhales once strongly] Receive the love of God right now - its come. Thank You Lord. Oh whoa, hard to stand up if you stay meditating on that.

Now just stay relaxed so you can receive. Some people are not used to receiving, they're used to doing. You've got to give up doing and just Lord, I just receive. [Exhales once strongly] Holy Spirit come, make Jesus real right now. Whoa! See, keep your mind just fixed on Him. Now begin to worship Him; oh Jesus, I surrender to You. I give myself to You. I just receive Your love now, receive Your goodness into my life. He is overwhelming. Imagine that God of heaven and He's your friend, how amazing - so love on Him. Allow your heart and spirit to just reach around, Jesus, I just so love You. I receive Your love into my heart. [Exhales once strongly] Come on, touch people. Touch people who are watching, let them experience Your love and Your presence flowing. Now as you're reaching out to Him, what do you think He would want to say to you? Listen for Him. Let His thoughts just rise in your mind. They'll be quite personal - I love you. Let Him talk with you. Enjoy Him.

Your spirit is made for encounters with God. Your spirit is made to experience Him. We can have many levels of encounter, but we can always pray in tongues and meditate, and always become conscious of His presence. Sometimes it can really overwhelm, and you can have visions and hear things or see things. It can begin to open up, and it's like you enter into heaven itself - come on. So it does our spirit good to be in the presence of God like this. It builds your spirit when you pray in tongues, it builds your spirit when you confess the word of God and meditate in the word of God. These things build your spirit. You worship Him, it builds your spirit. Wonderful Jesus, we just thank You for Your presence here right now, touching lives. [Exhales once strongly] Come Lord upon people right now. Thank You Lord.

Now some of you will be very, very engaging in the presence of God, and others, your mind will be going all over and thinking oh my, what am I supposed to feel? What's supposed to happen? This will take you away from where you need to be. Don't try and analyse things. Just Jesus is my friend, I believe the scripture He's my shepherd and friend, so what does that look like, and what does that feel like? Just dwell in that, and just embrace that truth into your heart. There are many truths in the Bible we can meditate in that will bring us near Him. This one's my favourite. We can meditate on the cross, become deeply aware of what He's done for us, so meditation will help you in your spirit man. It'll help you grow and become sensitive, help you become conscious of God. It's just so few people really do it, but once you've learned how to do this and engage God, then your life begins to change. Alright then, so let's just - well everyone wants to stay meditating. [Silence]

Alright then, so we'll just open our eyes again, and just come back out. You can go there anytime of course. How many people just really felt God connect with them, or they connected with God, who really felt the presence of God? Wow, look at that, so many people. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't that wonderful, so these are keys you can build your spirit man, and of course the last one I've put down there is obedience. We've got to learn to obey what God speaks to us about, and so using - your spiritual senses are developed as you exercise, so every time you say yes to God, your spirit strengthens. Every time you say no to the devil, your spirit strengthens. When you are slow and resist responding to God, your spirit is weakened, so we want to be strong in our spirit man. How many found that helped you, you've kind of got touched by God? Some of you are quite weepy because you've experienced God. Like to tell us about your experience? Can you? Some people may not be able to, that's right.

[Female speaker] I felt it in here and here and I was bending over, but I started looking up but then I felt it in here and I just wanted to bend over and then yeah...

[Pastor Mike] Wow.

[Female speaker] ...I just - God's love for me I guess, just...

[Pastor Mike] God's love for you.

[Female speaker] Yeah, just makes me cry.

[Pastor Mike] Exactly. Yes, very good, very good. So you started by lifting up, because your consciousness is God is up there, and that's okay, lift up your hands and so on, but then as the weight of His presence started to come around you, that's what caused you to bend over. It's called the weight of glory, yeah. What happened to you Mary, what did you experience?

[Mary] Similar.

[Pastor Mike] A similar kind of thing?

[Mary] Yes, similar, just experiencing a wave of His love...

[Pastor Mike] Very good.

[Mary] ...and peace and just overwhelming, I just...

[Pastor Mike] Wow.

[Mary] ...couldn't stand and that.

[Pastor Mike] Wasn't so hard either?

[Mary] No.

[Pastor Mike] Anyone else like to tell what they experienced? Yes?

[Female speaker 2] He said to just to hear what the Lord says to us, and He didn't tell me He loved me or anything, just said we should do this more often [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] Nice one! [Laughter] We meaning you and Him. [Laughter] Awesome, that's great. Bryan, what about you?

[Bryan] I actually felt there was something in there, its unexplainable, but you want to cough from the anointing [Laughter]

[Pastor Mike] You needed to get delivered. That was supposed to be the last session. [Laughter] So you felt like you wanted to cough like something in you obstructing you?

[Bryan] It's kind of like breathlessness...

[Pastor Mike] Right.

[Bryan] Manifests

[Pastor Mike] Right, to gain breath.

[Bryan] But I think the thing is that the physical presence was absolutely tangible

[Pastor Mike] Tangible presence you really strongly felt, okay. Someone else felt something like that, yes Jill?

[Jill] Yeah, I felt it was like a warmth...

[Pastor Mike] Like a warmth.

[Jill] ...like a blanket around me - not a blanket but something with life, like arms around me

[Pastor Mike] Wow, feel His arms around you, isn't that wonderful. Yes?

[Jill] I just felt Him cuddling me.

[Pastor Mike] Ah wonderful, that's good, we all want that, yeah. Anyone else had a different experience, yes?

[Male speaker] I felt the amazingness of Him giving ministry to just me

[Pastor Mike] Just you, isn't that good?

[Male speaker] Giving ministry

[Pastor Mike] Isn't that great? And that's accessible all the time. Yes, what did you experience?

[Female speaker 3] I was here and enjoying that part of the service, but then there was all this really deep deep stuff [unclear]

[Pastor Mike] So you gained perspective on your life when you come into the presence of God, it refocuses you, your life. Oh, that's wonderful. Anyone, one other want to share? Well it was a great time together wasn't it aye, just enjoying the presence of God and so moving in authority, it's not just about all strength and shouts and ra. It's actually about the substance of your connection with God, and expressing that through words and actions in the earth, and this is the thing; we can grow in these areas, and our whole life in ministry, everything changes. Amen.

House-Cleansing - Ministering to one another (6 of 6)

Sat 16 Feb 2013  « Back to Top

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Find out how to go about cleansing a house/building (or object) from demonic manifestation, and shift atmospheres. You've only truly learnt when you can do, so be led as a group or individual in exercises showing you how to release the spirit of God within you into another - power, spirit, joy, healing. What you think and what you say is important, and we all need to practise.

In this session I want to just speak on house cleansing. I haven't done this one before, and I want to put this one in and speak on it, because this is a problem for many, many people. If you just look in your notes, Page 24, I want to just talk about house cleansing. Now increasingly we're finding that not only people coming to us who are troubled with evil spirits in their personal life, but many of them have troubles in their house. Some of the problems they have are in the house. I had someone ring me up in a panic a while ago, can you please come urgently to our house, there's a ghost in the house?

Anyway I couldn't come immediately, I did come as soon as I could, went there and sure enough there were some problems, and this particular woman had gone back to her mother's house. When I sat there talking with them, sure enough, you could hear the noises in the house and they said whoa, can you hear it? Can you hear it? You could hear banging and noises going on in the other part of the house, so I thought ooh, this is interesting. They were absolutely freaked out to say the least and I said look, its okay. We can deal with this very quickly, it's only a spirit and it will go. Shortly I'll command it to leave, but I really do want to know how it got here, so let's just talk a little bit about the house. They said who was actually renting this apartment, and it was the girl's mother. I said were there troubles in here when you first arrived? No, there weren't.

That's interesting - when did the problems begin? She said well when my daughter and her friend came to stay. Now we've narrowed it down, they came in with these new people, and so I spoke to the daughter and friend. I said well when did you first have these problems? Oh, they had it in the previous place they were in. I said well, what we're trying to do is isolate and work out whether the problem was in the house, and you've come into the house and now you have the problem, or whether you brought the problem into the house, and now people in the house have the problem. So I asked again and the girl said - I said well it's either the young man or the young woman; one of you has been responsible for this happening and I said were either of you involved in the occult? They said no. I said well was one of you involved in a sexual relationship with someone in the occult, and the girl said yes.

I said did it end in a bad way? She said yes. I said did he curse you? She said yes. I said well it's not surprising you've got these problems with spirits; you're not connected to God, you've opened your life through this relationship for two to become one, he's spoken cursing over you - you now have a spirit that's going to follow you wherever you go. I said you need help to deal with it, and the first place to find help, you need to come to the one who can help you, which is Jesus Christ. They're looking for a simple answer, I'm wanting to get them to the foundational answer, which is the Lord Himself. So we prayed, led them to Christ and then commanded the spirits to go, and the place just went calm, and peace came into the place.

So it's quite common these days for people to report that there are problems and difficulties in their house, and you have authority to deal with it. You have authority to minister to people in various ways and areas, we've looked at that, but you also have authority to deal with issues related to houses and properties where there are problems, where people are being spooked by spirits. So just for your equipping, we'll share with you just how you go about doing it. It's not very hard at all, but let's just look at a verse on this. Deuteronomy 7, Verses 25 to 26: You will burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that's on them for yourselves, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it, or be cursed. You shall utterly detest it, and utterly hate it or abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.

Notice here he's saying specifically to the Hebrews, when they go into the Promised Land, not to bring into their home objects which have been used in idolatry. The reason they would bring them into their home was because often these things were quite valuable, they were carved with silver and gold or porcelain, and they were quite expensive objects. I prayed for a businessman in Taiwan not so long ago, and he had over a million dollars worth of objects. When he became a Christian he destroyed all of them, the whole lot. That's a lot of money isn't it - because he didn't want to have hooks into these things. So you notice it said: lest you be snared, or be caught in a trap. Now let me just give you a couple of examples, just from our own ministry experience.

When we first went to Dannevirke, I'd got filled with the Holy Ghost, we went and stayed in a school house, and we'd been there only a matter of a week I think it was. I'd gone and we'd talked with the Pastor of the local church, made a great connection there. We now felt like we had a home to go to, to talk about spiritual things. That night Joy went to bed and went to sleep, and I just stayed and watched a bit of television and went back to bed, and no sooner lay down in the bed, I was just lying there, just thinking about things, and this tall, about seven foot tall dark figure walked into the room, and freaked me out is the only way I can describe it. I could not speak. I was frozen in fear. I was absolutely terrified - it was a spirit being, a demonic spirit. So this thing absolutely terrified me. I felt every hair on every part of me just rise up - aaah! I felt like I couldn't even breathe, the fear was that much.

Then Joy woke up praying, and the thing seemed to divert it's attention onto what she was doing, and I felt free, and I could get up, so I got up, turned the light on, got the Bible out. Oh! [Laughter] Where do we start! I'm too young a Christian to know what to do so one, I got the light on. That was a big help! [Laughter] I'm a bit scared of the dark. [Laughter] And then I read Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures... I was pretty - didn't know much to do then, but anyway that was enough for the night, and we were okay for that. [Laughter] But we had to actually realise there was a spirit in the house, and we needed to cleanse the house, and get the spirit out of it. I then discovered that there were heaps of them in the school as well, and so once I'd learned what to do, then I began to go over - sometimes I'd go over at night to the school, and I'd walk through it in the dark [Oooh!], and pray in tongues, and decree the authority I had over all of those demons, and I overcame totally all fear of the things of the dark. [Laughter]

I used to be terrified to go and put the things out at night, and want to run back to the house. [Laughter] It was bad - so anyway we had that spirit in that house, and that was a bit of problem later on. One of our babysitters, we came home and she was weeping because she was absolutely petrified, because she'd heard footsteps walk up and down in the hall. Anyway we prayed, and got rid of this thing out of the house.

When I came first to Hastings we had some neighbours not far from us, and they said can you come and help us, we've got major problems of oppression and sickness in our house? I said I'll come over tomorrow. I prayed and I felt the Lord say to me: they've got some masks from Fiji, so I went over and I said: have you got any masks from Fiji? They said yeah, we have, we brought some back. I said don't you realise they pray over those things, and impart spirits into them? Your problems began when you got the masks in the house, so we prayed. I told them to destroy the masks, but then he came over the next day, he said: I tried. I poured petrol on them but they would not burn - and they were wooden. Isn't that interesting? I said okay, well next time put some petrol on them, and I said that's a good start, then pray and bind the spirits, and decree destruction on that object. Well he came back the next day, and he said whoa! [Laughter] It went off with such a big bang we nearly all got burnt [laughter], and they just burnt to cinders, just burnt right out like that.

So those were early experiences we had, just related to these things. We had another experience at one time where we had a whole group of young people, and they brought some of the music that they were listening to, really heavy bad stuff, and when a couple in our church burnt them, they took a photo of the fire burning, and you could literally see faces in the fire, a quite extraordinary picture. You can see things in the fire as they burnt these things - so demonic spirits get access to buildings, to objects and to people, occasionally to animals. We need to just know what to do. It's not hard, it's really easy. Any person could do it, you just need to know what to do, that's all. So sometimes evil spirits will get into an object because it's been invoked, someone laid hands on it, they carved the idol, laid hands on it, so any object which has been used in idolatry almost certainly will have a spirit attached to it.

If something's been hand carved and is the representation of some God, almost certainly it'll have a spirit has been imparted to it, through the laying on of hands. You've just got to be aware of that. Now wherever a person brings such an object into the house, the demonic spirit can then come and operate against the people in the house. Sometimes people have been involved in the occult in the house, or there's been a trauma, or maybe a murder in the house. Have you ever noticed if there's a murder, often people will just go and burn the house down? Have you ever wondered why on earth would you do that? I mean why would you do that? It's a waste of money, but it's because of an old superstitious fear, that if there's something like that has happened the place is demonised, and the only way to deal with it is to burn it to the ground, put it to judgement by fire. Isn't that an interesting thing?

Now we don't need to do that. We can actually pray and see the house cleansed quite easily, so God warned them not to bring things into the house that were of an occult nature, and He said: if you do it, you'll bring a snare on yourself, so we need to look at how to deal with the house. Common indications that a house needs cleansing are these kinds of things. Here's a few of them. There may be others, but these are the most obvious ones: unexplained noises at night, or sounds at night, voices, someone walking, doors opening and shutting, objects moving, rattling of chains - I haven't heard that one, but I understand that's another one, yeah. Objects moving spontaneously without anyone touching them, spirit beings appearing at night, unexplained areas of coldness in a house, and we're not talking about lack of insulation. We're talking in an area that should be warm, and it's actually quite funny cold, strange atmosphere. I've seen that in some houses.

Constant sickness in a house, once they moved in the house they became constantly sick; constant oppression or heaviness, or even strife and conflicts in the relationships that began when they moved into the house; recurring nightmares, constant turmoil in relationships or children terrified of unseen beings. When we first came here we had major spiritual warfare to break through and see God move, and on more than one occasion our youngest daughter woke up absolutely terrified and obviously seeing spirits, so they would come, and they would enter the house and try and torment the family, and try to wreak havoc in the home. I remember one night I could tell, you hear the sound of her cry. After a while you know your children's cry, and this one, this was a terrified cry. Got out of the bed, straight around in there, grabbed her and put her in bed with us and she was in the bed, and she would look out, then she would suddenly bury herself down, so she could see the spirit. I couldn't see it, but I became immensely aware that the thing was there.

So this was a demonic defilement as a result of engaging in the work of God, and there probably being occult curses directed against us, who knows. Whatever it was, there was a spirit in the house, needed to get him out, and so we had to learn how to pray and how to deal with it. Let's have a look then at how you can deal with it, and I'll show you some things which are obvious things, then some things which are perhaps not so obvious. Deuteronomy 7, Verse 2: When the Lord your God delivers them into your hand, you shall conquer them, utterly destroy them, make no covenant with them nor show mercy. So God delivered His enemies into the hands of Israel, and He required they totally conquer them, so if you ever encounter this, it's your responsibility to totally conquer it, and deal with any defilement. Now the principle causes of defilement are - as far as I'm aware - ungodly objects inside the building; defilement that's been caused by previous occupants of the building, so they were involved in idolatry, had a little altar there or spiritism of some kind; or there's been curses put on the building or the land, often by indigenous people.

Sometimes the land may have been built on, that had a lot of blood shed on it, so there's all these kinds of issues in the land. We had a neighbour of ours and he came over and said you're a minister aren't you? I said yes. He said can you help me? I said why? He said I'm having tormenting spirits in my house, so we went over and prayed through the house, and he had temporary relief, but they were back the next day. I said that's interesting, and so we had a talk with him about it. I went and prayed around the land, and when we prayed around the land, then they left completely. He was completely at peace, so clearly whatever it was, there was something on the land, associated with the land. Sometimes it could be just occult things, sometimes it could be a murder. Have you ever noticed that some areas of highway, which are straight, have unusually high accidents, and no one can explain it? Possibly it would be explained if people could look into the history of it, and see if there was blood shed or fights or battles, or occult practices in that area. That would give explanation for why, on a straight stretch of road, there's an unduly high number of accidents that cause death.

In fact some parts of New Zealand they say are high accident areas, slow right down. They drop the speed level down, but still they have the accidents. We had one area that we prayed - there was a whole section of a road, and the people that lived there said look, could you help us do something about this? We're having accidents here all the time. We went into that area and prayed, and that was the end of it, they didn't have accidents after that. So there's a spiritual reality here, that actions of people on the earth open gateways for spirits to come and create problems, so objects, there can be some specific objects that cause defilement. Obviously pagan objects of art, where there's statues or false Gods, they're the most obvious ones. Many objects are obvious; any objects used in spiritism, occult jewellery, Masonic regalia items, occult books, Ouija boards, occult toys, some music items, some video games, some pornography can create that problems, pictures and magazines and drugs. All of these can create it. You've got to let the Holy Ghost show you what the problem is, and we'll show you the simple steps.

Now here's an important practical point. You have to exercise wisdom about destroying the property that's in the house [laughs], particularly if it belongs to someone else. You have responsibility over your own possessions, but someone else's possessions are theirs, so that creates a difficulty. You need wisdom in handling objects that have been owned by a child, or by teens. You can totally destroy your relationship with a teen, or any hope of them coming to Christ, by going in and taking some object in a religious fervour and crusade, burn it because it's "of the devil", you know? Now this is not going to help build relationship and help that child come to the Lord. They will alienate you completely.

So some objects are obvious occultic and defiled, get rid of them. Some objects are completely not, don't worry about them. Some objects, you just may not be sure about. The ones you're not sure about, just ask the Lord, what do you say? Maybe all you need to do is just bless them, so for example, you buy some jewellery second hand. Now you have no idea what on earth went on behind that piece of jewellery, so it helps, it just pays to take the jewellery, lay hands on it, say Father, whatever has been on this before, we just break it now, and we dedicate this to You, and wear it in Your honour and glory - just a simple little prayer just like that. It just helps to do that - so how do you go about doing the house cleansing? It's not very hard. We just go into a house, just begin to pray in tongues, speak in the spirit, start to worship God and open our heart to the Holy Ghost. You need revelation from the Holy Ghost.

I'll enquire of the people in the home, try and find out what is the problem, which room is it in, when did it first start, because when it first started gives you a clue many times to what the source of the problem is. So listen to the Holy Spirit; Lord, show us are there any legal things that we need to address? Are there any issues we need to renounce or speak over? Ask Him to guide you, so if we discover some objects, we say well you need to destroy those, and so we pray over them if we're not certain about them. So what we do is just exalt Jesus and confess His Lordship; Father, we just come to You in Jesus' name, we confess Jesus Christ is Lord and saviour today. There's nothing like acknowledging and standing strong in the spirit. Then the second thing we do is, we break all agreements that were made to invite evil spirits in; Father, in Jesus' name I speak in this room now, I break every invocation, invitation, every covenant made with an evil spirit, inviting it into this place. I break those invitations. We cancel their power now.

If there was a trauma; Father, in Jesus' name, we come against every spirit associated with traumatic accident or death. We break the power of that cursing on this building, in this room, now in Jesus' name. So speak quite simply to break agreements, break curses, and command the spirits then to go from the house; In Jesus' name, I command each spirit, go now. You'd be quite surprised. We were in one building, and actually the [laughs] team that was with us got freaked out, because they felt this whoosh! Something just flew past them like that, and they got such a shock - woohoo! What was that? You know, but it was something had been there really in the room, they just sent it out - so we have authority to deal with this, you see? The person who's asked you into their house is a Christian, this is their house now. There's no right for demons there, got to get the demons out, and then just invite the Holy Spirit; Holy Spirit, we welcome You to come. We dedicate this room, we dedicate this part of the house completely to You. We invite You to come, and to bring peace, and to bring Your presence as we make You welcome today - very, very simple.

Sometimes we've anointed places with oil where there are real major issues, but only if the Holy Ghost led. You'd be quite surprised then what happens. We have been in some places, and you could feel the whole atmosphere just shift like that. Now I'll give you an example. This is a really good one. I was called to do a funeral, take a funeral. It was a tragic funeral, because a woman had committed suicide, gone into the bathroom, filled up a bath and cut her wrists and died. That's tragic, absolutely tragic, and so I was asked to take the funeral. The funeral was down the road here, just down Orchard Road. It was at the crematorium, and they've got a little chapel there. So we went in there, and I went in there with two musicians from our church to set up a keyboard there, and to just create a bit of atmosphere for worship. As I got in there - now the Holy Ghost must be just on me over this one, and I came in there. As I walked in, the oppression was immense. You could feel heaviness and death, and grief and despair. It was horrific.

I could feel it, and I just walk in there praying in tongues, and suddenly I said: in Jesus' name, every spirit of grief, death and despair, out now! I did it just about that quick. I caught the two others by surprise, and they nearly fell over because they suddenly felt this rush out of the room, and the peace of God just came in like that. It just descended into the place just like that. Now when it came to the funeral, the presence of God was so strong there, that people - now this is a suicide. You'd expect everyone to be overwhelmed with grief, but the presence of God came so strongly, that people just sat there, just enjoying His presence. It was amazing. It was like a total turnaround, and we were able to preach the gospel and share, bring a message of hope, and open the way for people to come to respond to Christ. It was amazing - but that is taking authority over the spiritual atmosphere. There's something there that causes the problem - take authority over it.

So if you're ever in some atmosphere, or some place where it's clear there are spirits there, now it may not be appropriate to do what I just did then. What you can do is just get in a corner, just away from everyone, and when you get in the corner and just out of sight, just out of obvious connection with everyone, just begin to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now I just speak in the spirit now. I speak to every spirit here. I command you to go now in Jesus' name, just be gone out of this place right now. I assert my authority over you in Jesus' name. I just release Your peace and presence Lord, let Your peace just come into this room right now, begin to fill it, invade it. We invite Your Holy Ghost to come, and bring peace just now - and you can change an atmosphere just like that, if you know your authority. Otherwise you'll look at it, and it'll overwhelm you, and you'll back up, so that's why practicing praying and practicing speaking and practicing in this area, you become more familiar with it, and it becomes nothing for you to just oh, there's something here. Alright, we'll just speak into it now: In Jesus' name, go. I've done that in a number of situations and you feel a change straight away. People don't know what - they haven't got a clue what you did because they weren't seeing, and you didn't make a big noise of it. You just brought the presence of God with you into that place, and isn't that what we're supposed to do, bring the presence of God? Heaven to earth. Isn't that fantastic?

Okay then, now let's just talk a little about ministering to one another. How many would know what to do now? If someone's got a haunted house you could go to it and pray right now, wouldn't that be great? So ask God to give you some opportunities and keep your ears open, anyone's got a haunted house say great, I'll come and help you! [Laughter] Remember, if there's a demon in there, it's not a ghost, it's not a person, it's not Uncle Fred. They're long gone you know. It isn't one of them. It's actually a demonic spirit, and there's always a reason it got there. Ask a few questions. Ask the Holy Ghost to help you, but ask the questions: find out, was it in the house before they came, or did they bring it into the house with them. That'll give you the clue.

If it's in the house before they came, someone else has brought it in. You can address it quite easily by breaking the covenants, agreements, whatever traumas been there and just releasing the presence of God to come, or if it came in with them, you've got to talk to the person and say hey, let's work out how come this thing is here. Was this in the last house you were in? Oh, it was, then you have brought it with you, which makes an interesting thing. How keen are you to get rid of it? You know, most people are really keen to get rid of. Then you can talk and say well, the spirit world is very, very real, and what you're experiencing is an evil spirit, but there's also a spirit called the Spirit of God who's a very good spirit, very kind and loving spirit. He comes to us when we receive Jesus Christ - and you can just quickly, easily share the gospel, lead people to the Lord, and then pray and bring peace to the home. It's quite simple, and there's a lot of people have got this problem right now.

They pay exorcists and people to come in and pray prayers and do stuff, but we've got the answers. We can make it happen, quite simply, quite easy, and if you pray in the house and there's no lasting freedom, consider praying around the grounds as well, just inside and outside the house. Sometimes it's both, and if there's still no freedom then it's in one of the people, and they're inviting them back in. Now this guy over the road said could you come back, my house has got spirits again? I said well I cleaned them out, how come they come back in? [Laughter] He said oh, I had a friend over here, and he's a psychic guy, and he downloaded in the house. [Ooh!] I said well, what are you thinking, you know? You've got to stop him doing that kind of stuff. You've got to protect your house from this happening. I said this guy has brought the spirits in. He's not a friend, he's actually brought problems to your house. Consider that next time you invite him in, and tell him not to do it. So we prayed and again the house got cleared out. Amen.

Okay, alrighty then, well we could spend a lot more time but I think - I've written out quite a few things just on ministering, but what I want to do is, I want to give you a chance to pray and minister to one another. So we're going to give you just two or three exercises for you to do, okay, so the first one, I want you to get used to speaking with power, speaking with authority. So we've got a very simple exercise that we can do, and we'll just need a couple of volunteers. I'll show you exactly what I want to do - two of you will do fine, here we go, come on up, right in front of me. [Laughter] Then I'll try some others as well. Okay then, so we'll get one third person - like to come on up? That's the way. There we are, okay then, come and stand behind her, that's right. Now you are the catcher, okay and you are the receiver and you're the one who's going to minister the power of God. Isn't that right? What did you say, oh no? Why did you say oh no? [Laughter] Tell me what you're thinking when you said oh no?

[Female speaker 1] Oh, I don't have the confidence.

[Pastor Mike] You don't have the confidence?

[Female speaker 1] Yeah.

[Pastor Mike] What if I showed you step by step?

[Female speaker 1] Okay, I'll give it a go.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, alright, so first of all I want to just get a couple of things. Do you have the Holy Spirit inside you?

[Female speaker 1] I hope so.

[Pastor Mike] You hope so, you're not sure? [Laughter] Okay, alright then. Well these are what's called foundational for ministering to people, is to know where I am, and what I have inside me, you see? So when we get born again we receive the Holy Ghost, so what I'll do is I'll just approach it a little differently, and I'll help you with it, there we go. Here we are, alright then, so the first thing you can just ask is, can I practice on you?

[Female speaker 1] Can I practice on you?

[Pastor Mike] Awesome! Great! Great, positive response. That's the way. Okay then, so you just keep your eyes open, you're the catcher, and if she falls over, going to need to make sure you've got your eyes open to catch her, alright? She has a tendency to fall. [Laughter] Okay then, now just lift your hands up, that's right and look towards the Lord, that's right. Now what I want you to do is put your hand on her shoulder, that's right, okay then. Now we're going to pray in tongues together. Now I'm with you here to help, you see, and this is how close God is, He's even closer than I am to you, and so let's pray in tongues together shall we? Come on, let's pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now as you're praying in tongues, the Holy Spirit's inside you, see? He's arising and flowing through you. That's right, rise up a little more strongly, [prays in tongues]. Alright then, now this is what we're going to do next.

I want you to, with your eyes closed, to just begin to meditate that God is in me. His spirit is filling me up. I'm being filled with the spirit of God. Just set your mind, not on trying to do something, but on God being in you. Then on the count of three I want you to just speak the words strongly and release power, speak the word 'power' okay? Ready, power, so we meditate, just consciously be aware God is in you. Thank You Lord, Your presence is here...

[Female speaker 1] Power.

[Pastor Mike] No, one more time - one, two, three, POWER! (whispered)

[Female speaker 1] POWER!

[Pastor Mike] There you go, that was a bit better now you see? She's been touched by the - you've been touched by the presence of God. [Laughter] Okay, that's alright. Thank You Lord. Just release Your anointing, touch her right now, just minister and flow, there it is, it's the presence of God. Okay, now so when you started to speak out, what did you feel inside yourself? See it helps to reflect, and to think what you experience. Whether it was good or bad, whether there was struggles or not, all of it is a learning opportunity, so when you were first asked to do something your first feelings were what, I can't do this?

[Female speaker 1] Mm.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, alright then. Now you can either reject that, or you can embrace that. If you embrace it, you will have trouble. If you reject it and say no, I refuse that, God is in me, God can work through me, then you'll be ready to start to minister. If you let the thought stand, it will hold you captive, see? So we reject that thought. Now when you come to actually speak out to her, what did you feel happen as you spoke?

[Female speaker 1] Don't remember

[Pastor Mike] You can't recall? That's okay, that's alright because most people - you're probably caught up with being in front of everyone and it's overwhelming. That's alright. It's okay, don't worry about that. I'd be overwhelmed if I was there too. [Laughter] Okay then, we ready? Just one more time now, we'll just quietly pray in tongues. Thank You Lord, [prays in tongues] Now what we're going to do is, just going to together, on the count of three - I'll go one, two, three - then we'll just speak and release the power of the God with the word power. [Prays in tongues] Now become conscious, God is with us, we're working as a team, hand in hand with the Holy Ghost, who's going to release His power - three, two, one - POWER! Now that's more like it. Now you've got it see? Okay, now that was great, that was great.

Now you see, between you doing it the first time, and that time, something changed inside you, and it's what changed in you that enabled you to release power into her, so what changed in you was your confidence shifted, from being overwhelmed by perhaps being self-conscious initially, and I can't do this. You moved progressively to where actually you arose - in the way you responded, I felt you stood up and went for it, and that's what got the result. [Laughs] Come on, good on you, let's give her a clap. That was fantastic. [Applause] So remember, everything we can learn from. Whether it works or doesn't work, we can still learn, and the key to learning, is evaluating what was going on in your thoughts, and in the feelings that you had, as you sought to minister. So I just asked the questions, just asked the questions to try and work out what's going on. If you have doubts, remember doubts and unbelief stop the flow of power. Bryan, come on over here, let me just pray for you. Can I practice on you?

[Bryan] Sure can.

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful, that's good. Close your eyes and look up the Lord. Now this is what I want to do [laughter] I want to just pray in tongues. Got someone there behind him, he's - okay. Okay [laughs] he's used to this, so he'll be [laughter], so I begin to just pray. Father, I just thank You for Your presence here right now. I become conscious of God. Thank You Lord, that You are wanting to impart to him right now, in Jesus' name, the POWER of God release into him now. [Laughter] I tried a bit hard. [Laughter] Okay then, now you remember it's about being God conscious, and releasing what God has given. Amen - so why don't we get into groups of three, and practice on one another. Remember, you get into a group of three; one has eyes open, and is the catcher, one has their eyes closed, looking up to God to touch them, one of them is the one who's ministering. The one who's ministering say, can I practice on you? Say yeah! Come on, give us your best shot! Come on, be open and then we work through it together. Are we ready? Come on, let's try it. Let's all try it.

We're releasing the power, with the word 'power', so get into groups of three. Come on up the front, there's room up here. There's room up here. Okay, room up here. Find someone that's got - are we ready? Who's catching Lyn? I want to know who's catching Lyn? Steve, I'm relying on you to do a good job. No dropping her. Okay, are we all ready? Now to do this exercise, what I'd like you to do is this. You'll all be lined up in a row of three. One is the catcher, make sure the catcher knows they're catching. Who is catching? Okay, tap the person you're going to catch on their shoulder, so they know you're there, okay, alright then - and keep your eyes open. Alright then, person receiving, who are the people receiving, put hands up? Oh glory to God! Okay, who's the person praying? Awesome. Now ask the person receiving can I practice on you? [Can I practice on you?] Yes, great. Okay then, tell them now look up to the Lord, He's going to minister to you.

Now let's do it together, okay? Put one hand on the top of their shoulder, now begin to pray in tongues. [All pray in tongues] Thank You Lord, Your presence is inside me. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Okay, now on the count of three we will release the power of God, by speaking the word 'power' - three, two, one - [POWER!] Oh, look at that, wow, whoa! Goodness me. We'll do it again, we'll practice together. Thank You Lord. Holy Ghost, come upon her and touch her. We thank You Lord for Your anointing here now - three, two, one - POWER of God! You just held back. [Oh, okay.] You held back inside. You need to give yourself. [Oh okay.] Yeah, okay, awesome. Change over. [Laughs] Okay, alright, are we ready? Okay then, the person who's catching, wave your hands, let's find out who's catching - great. Tap the person so they know you're catching them, okay. Alright then, person receiving, wave your hands. Okay, good on you. Alright then, and the person who's praying? Okay, good stuff. Okay, ask them can I practice on you? [Can I practice on you?] Yes, do your best.

Okay then, the person receiving prayer, lift your hands up, turn your eyes towards the Lord just to receive from Him. It's not important who's ministering to you, it is important your heart is open to the Lord to receive from Him. Now the person doing the praying, remember what Jesus said: if you will say to the mountain, be removed, and not doubt in your heart that what you say will come about, you will have what you say. You are going to say 'power'. You are going to speak a word of power into this person's life, so I want you just to pray quietly in tongues. [All pray in tongues] Let your mind settle that God is inside you, the mighty God that created heaven and earth lives inside you. [Prays in tongues] On the count of three - three, two, one - [POWER!] Whoa! That was a good idea, a chair, well done! Good thinking. [Laughter] Well done. Need to do that more - do it at home with the bed. [Laughter] Whoa - over you go! [Laughter]

Okay, change around. Change over. [Laughter] Okay, whoa, glory to God! [Laughter] Yes, indeed. [Laughs] Alright, now remember, when you're doing this, you're extending your faith to believe that God will flow through you, like a mighty river. Are we ready? So person catching, put your hands up and wave, tap the person on the shoulder so they know you're catching, okay. Person receiving prayer, lift your hands up and wave - good on you. Look up and close your eyes - whoa, you be careful with Leon - His sister will be on to you. [Laughter] Okay, are we ready? So those who are ministering, put your hand lightly on them or touch them somewhere, begin to pray in tongues, and you are believing that as I speak the word, this power of God will flow through me. They will be touched. They will be touched, because the power of God will flow. I have confidence God will work through me. Thank You Lord. [All pray in tongues] Three, two, one - [POWER!] [Laughter]

Awesome, well done! Woops - how are you doing? [Laughs] Careful with these fellas. [Laughter] Okay, wonderful.

[Female speaker 1] I was just going to say that it's - what I thought was, it's not really hard believing that Christ is in me, and realising that the words are what releases it. You know what I mean?

[Pastor Mike] Yes, it's Jesus' words, yes.

[Female speaker 1] So forget about you...

[Pastor Mike] Yes.

[Female speaker 1] ...and just realise that the power...

[Pastor Mike] Is of God.

[Female speaker 1] ...is of God.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, great, you've got it. You've got it. Alright then, we'll stop for a moment. Okay, remember we have this treasure, Christ in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power may be of Him, and not of us, so you've got to remember, it's not about you trying to make something happen. The moment you think I've got to make something happen, you now are trying in your own strength. There's no flow of anointing. You have to realise, I'm just a channel of the Holy Spirit; it's the glory, it's the goodness of God flowing through me, and He comes through me, one, when I believe; two, when I speak. It's Him, and His power. It's not you, and your words. That's just an expression externally for it to happen, but He won't work except He works through you, so your part is crucial. I hope you would see, even from our examples before, how even just the thinking in your mind going off just a little bit can shut the power down.

The moment you think I'm not good enough, it's over, there's no power going to flow, because see that thought, if you hold it and agree with it, means I'm not connected to God. It's all about me. Do you see what I mean when I said that the devil will try to get you disconnected, so you're out of positioning? That's why taking scriptures, meditate on my positioning with God, is crucial for moving in the spirit. I've got to know where I stand, and the moment it comes up as a problem is when you try to pray for someone, because you think it's about you, you centre on you, and your spirit closes down, and the anointing stops. Alright then, we're going to try it one more time. I want you just to listen again. We're going to do it a little bit differently this time, and I want you this time, instead of saying the word 'power' - I was just getting you used to speaking strongly. This time I want you to realise, it isn't actually about your words. Your words are one way of expressing.

It's actually releasing by faith, so this time we'll try it, and this time I want you to do it, and do it quite simply, just by breathing, blowing [exhales gently once] releasing the spirit of God, releasing the anointing. [Laughter] Of course if you've been eating pickled onions or garlic then don't do this at all. [Laughter] They will wither and fall, but not because of the Holy Ghost. [Laughter] Okay, so ask: can I practice on you - get in threes again. Hands up who's catching. Okay, hands up who's receiving - okay, close your eyes, look up. Hands up who's ministering. Okay, now this is what I want you to do, just listen carefully now. Listen carefully. I want you just to put your hand on them now, just one hand on their hand, or on their shoulder. I want you just to quietly pray in tongues, and I want you just to meditate, to picture in your mind, that Almighty God Himself is inside you. The word spirit is the word breath, so it's not about me just blowing or breathing out. It's actually about me letting go my heart to this person. It's releasing all that God is in me, I'm letting God flow through me.

You are joined to the spirit of the Lord, one spirit, so if you let your heart flow to them, the spirit of God will flow with you - so pray in tongues now quietly, become just mentally aware God is inside me, amazing, great, Almighty God is inside me, and I'm just going to release what He has given me into this person - three, two, one - [Exhales gently once] release. Look at that, see? Oops! Adden, last man falling. Catchers aren't supposed to fall. [Laughter] Adden's greedy for the Holy Ghost, he wants everything everyone can give him. [Laughter] Aah, too much! [Laughter] Awesome. Okay, how many got something happen? There was a flow of power? That's wonderful, that's some, not as many as this time, okay. Alright then, now just stop and listen again. It was easier, when I said speak a strong word, for you to believe something would happen, than just breathing, because you're depending on what you do, rather than depending on the Holy Spirit.

In a moment I'll show you how to do it, and you're not even going to say anything or do anything much. We're going to believe that God will come on them as we pray, okay? Alright, so this time we're going to try it again - oh that's great, that's really a help, so it'll make you look good when you blow. [Laughter] Okay, are we ready? Can I practice on you? Begin to pray in tongues. Pray in tongues. Pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now begin to meditate that God is in me. Focus on the source, not on what you've got called to do. Thank You Holy Ghost, thank You Lord You are in me, dwelling inside me. I just see Your presence, Your power filling me right now, and Lord, I thank You. We love this person, we're going to release You to them. Now ready? Three, two, one - [Exhales gently once]. Wow, there we go, look at that. Awesome. You caught him that time, that's good. I was getting a bit worried, he's falling over all the time, don't want him to break anything. [Laughter] Praise the Lord, he's quite touched. Feeling warm? Yeah, that's very good.

Okay, how are we getting on? [Laughter] Now remember, it's all just practicing, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't come off 100 percent every time, we're just all practicing. We're just practicing. Are we ready - woops! Someone practiced very hard, they fell over. Who was that? Was that Gary? That was Sargin behind the camera. [Laughter] He was giving a bit of a help. Okay, are we ready this time? Can I practice on you? Thank you, do your best. Okay then, put your hand on them lightly, begin to pray in tongues. [All pray in tongues Begin to meditate God is inside me, thank You Lord. Holy Ghost come, spirit of the Lord come - three, two, one - [Exhales once quickly] Very good, very good. Very good. Okay - hey! And of course some people are like the Rock of Gibraltar. Tom, it's okay, he's never fallen over for me either. [Laughter] We could try together some time.

Alright then, okay, don't give up. Alright, are we ready? We'll do one more. Like to come over? Just come over, yeah, come over. Okay, this time just watch this way. Bryan, I need you to catch your wife. [Laughter] You can come and catch him. Alright then, okay, now I want you to listen. Now we are called Ministers of the Spirit, okay? Ministers of the Spirit, and so we are called to minister what God has, and bring what God has to people, so I will just begin to meditate that - you know the Bible says the kingdom of heaven is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost? Okay then, I'm just going to meditate on how joyful God is, and I'm just going to release - through the word 'joy' I'm going to release the joy of the Lord, see?

Ready? Okay, so I just begin to meditate, and when you meditate, don't be all serious, you know? I'm meditating in the joy! Let the joy rise up, thank You Lord, You are so full of joy. Thank You Lord for Your wonderful joy - three, two, [laughs] one - JOY! [Laughter] It's a great thing to be able to laugh and enjoy God. Jill, just come and stand over here. Yeah, just if you can, just come and just stand - just be where people can see. Need someone - Bryan, need someone strong who can help her. Oh, Bryan's not stable, that's right. Just take a step. [Laughs] Just get you up there, that's right, just because - the camera can see you, otherwise it can't see you see? [I don't care.] Just focus on the top of the head. [Laughter]

So I just begin to meditate again, just in the joy of the Lord. Thank You Lord, I just see His abundant joy. I just allow it to affect me, and JOY! [Laughter] We are ministering God to people. You're bringing who God is to people. It's not about trying to do some big thing; it's actually about being a gateway for God to flow, and how that happens, see? [Laughter] Alright then, so you got that? Want to do another one? [Yeah!] One more, okay. [Laughter] Jill's sort of had it. She's out to it now. [Laughter] Kath, come on over here. There we are - get to the stage you need all the joy you can, isn't that right? [Laughter] Okay, just relax and look up to the Lord. Again I just begin to meditate the joy that God has. He is full of joy. [Laughs] I begin to see it, and let it just come and affect me, and if I'm yielding to that joy I can [laughs] release it - three, two, one - JOY! [Laughter]

Ministers of the spirit, ministers of God. There's many ways and aspects we can minister, so why don't we try that. That'd be great fun. Some of you look like you could do with a laugh. [Laughter] So let's just try. Now the person who's receiving, now what you're receiving is, you're going to receive an impartation of joy. Now joy is not to be contained deep inside me, so deep it can't be seen. When you're receiving joy, just laugh, just let go, yield to it. [Laughter] Oops, put her on a chair. Okay, find some people to connect with. Start with a reasonably happy person, it'll be a little easier. [Laughter] We may need you to give them a help Sargin. [Laughter] Okay, can I practice on you? Hands up those who are catching - good, tap them on the shoulder. Okay, ready? Those who are receiving? Great, okay. Those who are ministering the joy?

Now if you're ministering joy, allow yourself to feel a bit of it before you give it away. [Laughter] There you are, just pray quietly in tongues and begin to fix your mind that Jesus is there, full of joy. He's the most joyful person. The Bible says He's anointed Him with the oil of joy above everyone, so He's a very [laughs] happy person. Three, two, one - [JOY!] [Lots of laughter] Hey, good one. Okay, come on then, change over and try it with someone else. There you go. Okay, who's catching? Okay, great, touch them on the shoulder. Who's receiving? That's it, good on you. Okay, get ready for a good laugh. Who's praying? [Laughter] Okay, put your hand on them, begin to pray in tongues. Now just begin to give yourself to the joy. Thank You Lord, You are so full of joy. [Laughs] Thank You Lord for your joy, filling my soul, filling my spirit - three, two, one - [JOY!] [Lots of laughter] Joy! Holy Ghost come! [Laughter] Joy of the Lord touch her right now. [Laughter] Joy in the Holy Ghost! [Lots of laughter] More! More! [Laughter] Holy Ghost come on her! [Laughter] Thank You Lord. Fill her Lord, fill her right now. Thank You Lord. Come Holy Spirit, thank You Lord. That's right, just let go like you're relaxing, letting everything go just to receive.

[Laughter] Holy Spirit, come on her right now. [Laughter] Ooh, what's happening over here? Did he not catch him right? Did you not catch him? [Still working on Peter.] Oh Peter, okay, good, good, good. Okay, great, great. Alrighty then, that's good. [Laughter] Holy Ghost come on her right now and fill her! Touch her Lord, fill her, fill her. [Laughter] Fill, fill, fill, fill, fill, get her drunk Lord, drunk in the Holy Ghost! Totally drunk and full of the spirit, thank You Lord. Alright then. Now while you're in groups of three just combine with another group of three. Just get with another group of three, so you've got now groups of six, five or six. Five or six - or two. [Laughs] Okay, you're in a group of five, somewhere round about that, okay then. Now this is what I want you to do.

I want you to enquire in the group, is there anyone with a physical sickness in their body, they're in pain in their body, and if there is, one by one, bring them into the centre and pray for them. So I want you to pray for them to be healed. Now to pray for them to be healed, what we're going to do is we'll pray in tongues, then we'll speak and command the infirmity to go, speak directly to the infirmity, exert your authority, command it to go, and release healing: in Jesus' name I command this infirmity to go! [Laughter] The spirit of insanity has finally left. [Laughter] Okay, so just check out if anyone in the group has a physical sickness, and if they have - put your hand up if you've got a physical sickness in your body. Right, look at that, there's heaps of people around, okay, that's good. Alright then, so put one in the centre, gather around them and pray for them. After you've been prayed for, check and move your body, see if anything's happened.

[Female speaker] Should we check her heart out?

[Pastor Mike] I don't know. Listen, if it goes boompity-boompity-boomp you know. [Laughter] Just pray now, just go for it, pray now.

Don't pray long prayers. Command the infirmity to go, release the power of God. Then move around, pray for the next person. Find out what the problem is, lay hands, pray in tongues, command the infirmity to go, release the power of God. When you've finished praying, move on to the next one.

Alright then, thank You Lord. Thank You for Your healing presence, healing power coming right now. Dot, you look like you've been wasted. [Laughter] [Exhales once quickly] More, more. [Laughs] Thank You Lord.

Okay, let's just draw into a close now. How many people experienced the healing, something happened in your body, you were healed? Over here - who else? How many experienced the healing of your body - God bless, over there, there - two, three. Anyone else? You've just got to move and check. Sometimes it takes a little time to check whether it's free, but check straight away on how you are. Okay, I think we should just finish up now, we're on a great note and let's just - half past four, it's quite late enough I think, but why don't we just thank the Lord for what He's done, and for the things we've learned today.

Father in heaven, we just give You the honour and the glory. We thank You Lord we've learnt so much. Lord, help us to take in what we've learned and to apply it into our life, and to begin to arise. Father, we pray for an arising, and a whole new level of authority and power, and an ability to see things in the spirit world shift and displaced around us. Lord, we give You all the honour and all the glory, in Jesus' name. Everyone said [Amen.] Praise the Lord.

Basic Deliverance Training

基本驱邪术训练

基本驅邪術訓練

Following Jesus includes progressively walking into freedom; and the empowerment to advance the Kingdom of God.

Understand what demons are, and how they enter people and work to destroy lives; and then what Jesus has done to purchase freedom from oppression for us.

Learn about the important part we have to play in positioning ourselves to experience freedom.

Understand the anointing upon Jesus, and the impact of that anointing in our lives.

Learn about the basic doorways that demons use to enter people, and the issues of the heart that give them access.

This powerful series of teachings will give you insight to Spiritual Freedom.

跟随耶稣包括逐步走入自由和权力来推进神的国度。

了解什么是妖，以及他们如何进入人们的工作和摧毁生命;然后耶稣已经完成，从压迫自由购买我们。

了解我们有自己的定位，体验自由发挥的重要组成部分。

认识耶稣后的恩膏，那恩膏在我们生活的影响。

了解了恶魔可以用它来进入人们的门道，和心脏这给他们访问的问题。

这种强大的系列教诲会给你的洞察力与精神自由。

跟隨耶穌包括逐步走入自由和權力來推進神的國度。

了解什么是妖，以及他们如何进入人们的工作和摧毁生命;然后耶稣已经完成，从压迫自由购买我们。

了解我們有自己的定位，體驗自由發揮的重要組成部分。

認識耶穌後的恩膏，那恩膏在我們生活的影響。

了解了惡魔可以用它來進入人們的門道，和心臟這給他們訪問的問題。

這種強大的系列教誨會給你的洞察力與精神自由。

Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8)

To advance the Kingdom, we must overcome an inferior one, that currently has dominion over people’s lives. This doesn't happen by our will power or hope, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we depend on Him and grow in God. To be free we need to remove the armour, or belief system, from our lives that have bound us up, so the demon or strongman can be easily cast out. Demonic strongholds creates an energy, but the Holy Spirit can energise us, to get great victory and freedom over any area of our life.

如何到部长驱邪（领导人） (1 of 8)

如何到部長驅邪（領導人） (1 of 8)

Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8)

Explore the different doors of entry into a person’s life, from generational curses to inner vows. We get freedom through the Power of the Holy Spirit, by what Jesus has won on the Cross for us. He won the total victory, which was utterly complete, covering all intentional and un-intentional sin. As you open your heart, and take ownership for your sin, rather than blame others, and then repent and release forgiveness, healing and freedom will flow into our lives.

自由的基础 (2 of 8)

自由的基礎 (2 of 8)

Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8)

Explore the issues in the heart that can hold us in bondage. Discover that ungodly soul ties, inner vows and word curses are three entry points into our lives, where we can open ourselves to bitterness, jealousy, anger, complaining, addictions, etc, which then become strongholds in our lives, that the enemy can come in and take hold of. This includes other peoples words and actions towards us. As we recognise these traits in our lives, we can take ownership of them, renouncing and releasing them from our lives in Jesus Name.

心的牢笼 (3 of 8)

心的牢籠 (3 of 8)

Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8)

Explains three main legal grounds, upon which demons can gain access to your life: generational curses; the occult; and sexual sin. The issues and bondages that come into our lives through these door ways can be broken and cast out by the power of the Holy Spirit, because we are redeemed and set free by the Cross of Jesus Christ. We need to acknowledge and identify these areas of sin; then renounce and release forgiveness as necessary; then call upon the name of Jesus, who will set your free!

法律有权进入 (4 of 8)

法律有權進入 (4 of 8)

The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8)

Humans are very unique - not only living in the natural world, but can also connect to the spiritual world. Jesus came to tell us about the Kingdom of God, which is full of light, peace and joy; but there is another Kingdom which we are all born into - the Kingdom of Darkness - which rules by tormenting people, and using sin to control them. Jesus came to set us free, by shedding his blood on the Cross. When we accept what Christ has done for us, we need to continue and allow the Holy Spirit to change our thinking, by the renewing of our mind - that we would be kind, tender hearted and loving to one another, and set free in our hearts.

两个王国 (5 of 8)

兩個王國 (5 of 8)

Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8)

Many problems we have in life come from traumatic experiences, which have often happened in early childhood: in the womb; early childhood; or during school years. These experiences tend to shut us down, and control the memory of the trauma. We do not realise that these experiences are actually controlling you: relationships; reactions; and approach to life. The effect of these traumatic experiences can only be overcome and healed through prayer; by exchanging old memory pictures with scripture memorisation; and by inviting the Holy Spirit and the truth into the situation - for total restoration in Jesus name!

创伤性经历 (6 of 8)

創傷性經歷 (6 of 8)

Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8)

We are called to pray for people, and to be a minister of the Spirit of God. Come spiritually prepared, and believe that God is with you - guide people’s attention to the Lord, not the prayer! There will be conflict before, during, and after ministry, and the battles will be within you. Believe God is with you, take risks, and reach out in prayer. Keeping your eyes on Jesus, and listening to the Holy Spirit, you will be able to minister healing and freedom, in Jesus name, to people.

我们被邀请成为圣灵部长 (7 of 8)

我們被邀請成為聖靈部長 (7 of 8)

Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8)

We learn that Jesus came to touch people's hearts, by bringing revelation of the Power of God, for: salvation; healing; deliverance. Jesus made it clear we would have difficulties and problems, but He has overcome all evil with good - on the Cross, and through His ministry to us. As we face the reality that we are hurting and suffering, and allow the Lord to help us repent and forgive, He will always respond. God is committed to our character and growth, not our comfort.

耶稣的部 (8 of 8)

耶穌的部 (8 of 8)

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- Paperback

Audio

- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp3

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp3

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp3

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp3

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp3

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp3

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp3

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp3

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- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp4

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp4

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp4

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp4

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp4

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp4

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp4

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp4

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- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp4

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- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp4

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Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8)

Tue 10 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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To advance the Kingdom, we must overcome an inferior one, that currently has dominion over people’s lives. This doesn't happen by our will power or hope, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we depend on Him and grow in God. To be free we need to remove the armour, or belief system, from our lives that have bound us up, so the demon or strongman can be easily cast out. Demonic strongholds creates an energy, but the Holy Spirit can energise us, to get great victory and freedom over any area of our life.

Introduction:

I have with me one of my daughters, her name is Joanna. My wife sends her love - she’s at home looking after Jo’s children. She’s being a good Nana with the three little boys. For those of you who don’t know us, we have 7 children and 20 grandchildren - very big family, very blessed!

It’s so wonderful to be with you; to have a chance to share with you, to pray with you, and to minister to you. We really love coming to this church. For us, this has been the doorway to Taiwan. It’s been the connection with Pastor Jonathan and Euan, and made the way for us to come to Taiwan. We’ve been coming two or three times a year now, for probably ten years; and seen thousands upon thousands of lives transformed. So, I really want to honour Euan and Jonathan for making room for us to come to this nation, because it was their invitation that made it possible for us to build a connection and some wonderful relationships in this nation.

God has given us incredible favour and we’ve been able to minister to pastors and leaders across the nation, to minister to churches, and privately, to some of the most influential people in your nation. I’ve been able to go to people that others would have no access to; and see God move in their private homes and touch them. We just love Taiwan. I love coming here, and feel a great affinity with Chinese people.

When we first came here, we had the most enormous spiritual conflicts that I have faced in ministry. Every day, the interpreter would get sick; day after day, a new interpreter. I’d say: “Hey, what happened to the last one?” “Oh, sick.” I never see them again. Finally at the end of the first week, I got very sick. It’s quite embarrassing when you come to bring the power of God to people, and you’re sick - I just had to push through what was actually just demonic resistance. I think about the first three or four visits, I would get sick each time, and so would the people around me. Then we just broke through it completely; and there has never been any trouble ever since.

Sometimes in our ministry, the resistance we face, we find, is very real. We just have to have the courage to stand up and face it, and push through, so I just determined that I would not back down. In my first week of ministry here, I think about day 4 or 5, I got so sick I couldn’t even speak. I remember waking up with no voice; and saying: “God, I did not come here to be sick. I came here to help.” So, I just kept quiet all day, and when it came to the meeting at night, immediately I had my voice. I finished speaking - no voice; and then there’s hundreds of people to pray for. I said: “Lord, I will not back down. Help me.” He showed me a key to releasing the power of God without me having to speak. So, we’re always learning all the time; and I hope to be able to share with you things that will really help you.

Main Message:

Our theme then, is deliverance and ministering deliverance. Since all of you have had some foundations in this area, I want to do more focus on removing demonic houses. I want to go past just the casting the demons out, to looking at the structures demons live in.

Just as a way of leading into that, we’ll just look at something Jesus taught on deliverance. We’ll look at Matthew 12:28. In verse 28, Jesus said: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

Jesus is teaching about deliverance; and He brings out several things.

1.) Deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom. So, it’s the kingdom of heaven coming into the Earth. It’s the authority of Jesus establishing itself in someone’s life. It’s an advancement of God’s kingdom, by overthrowing the demonic kingdoms. So, deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom of God. Jesus said to pray for the kingdom to come. So, when you are doing deliverance, it is really kingdoms in conflict. It is a superior kingdom, and King, displacing an inferior one.

2.) Secondly, the power to make this happen is the Spirit of God. You can’t do this work except by the Spirit of God. It requires the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit; and for that to happen, it requires a person to exercise faith. So, one of the things I want to do with you, is to share about working with the Holy Spirit; because deliverance is not about methods. It’s helpful to have a process, or a way of approaching deliverance, but we should not depend on it. We should depend on the Holy Spirit to help us. You can’t do the deliverance work without the Holy Spirit, so your own relationship with the Holy Spirit is vital. “If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out the demons”, so the power that you need working through you, is the anointing of the Holy Spirit; and that comes by faith. We need to learn how to listen to, and respond to, and work with, the Holy Spirit. So, constantly in your ministry, you need to be listening to the Holy Spirit. We’ll talk a little more about that later on.

3.) You notice the next thing He teaches here, “If I cast out demons”. So, deliverance requires a person to confront the spirit. You can’t just pray for God to do it. You yourself need to confront the spirit. “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you”. So, we see now, in the dynamic of doing deliverance, it requires the person to work with the Holy Spirit, to exercise faith, speak and directly confront the demon; and when the Spirit of God works with them, then the kingdom of God becomes established. So, when we’re doing deliverance, we need to be sensitive to, and working with, the Holy Spirit. We’ll talk a little more about that in another session. We’re just giving some foundations now.

Now, look over to verse 43-45, Jesus said: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, but finds none. Then he says: ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

Notice some things that Jesus speaks here. What He is sharing is extremely important, because He’s helping us to understand the invisible spirit world; and He also identifies a problem with deliverance. The issue that He identifies is the one we want to focus on: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through the dry places”, or: “he walks through dry places”. Jesus is describing what happens after the person is delivered; and this is of concern for you as a small group leader or a cell group leader: what happens to the person after they’ve been set free. We need to understand that there’s a spiritual dynamic happens after deliverance; and the problem is: so many people focus on doing deliverance, that they miss the bigger picture.

Casting out the demons is only a part of the work; our main work is to disciple people to follow Christ. Deliverance is about removing the spiritual forces that hinder the person; but we have to do more than just remove the demon, and here’s why. Jesus said: “When the unclean spirit goes out of a man”. So, in other words, after deliverance, the spirit is forced out of the person. The question is raised, well what happens to the demon?

Firstly, we notice that it walks. Demons are low-level spiritual beings. They’re quite limited and confined in their activities. When someone exercises deliverance, the demons are literally forced out. Then, they walk through dry places, or in other words: they move to where there is no anointing of the Holy Spirit. They rapidly exit; but they seek rest. Evil spirits constantly seek somewhere to live. They seek a dwelling place. They’re not looking to lie down; they want to gain access to some place they feel at home in. So, the demon is looking for another spiritual home. Evil spirits constantly seek to find a person to get into, so they can express their nature - that is their goal. They want to enter; and then once they’ve entered, to increase their hold and destruction in the person’s life.

You notice it’s seeking someone to get into. When it can’t find someone to get into, it plans to return. You notice an evil spirit has personality. It’s a spirit being, with a mind to think, and an ability to make decisions. It has the ability to speak and communicate. So it’s an invisible spirit being, with an ability to think, to plan, to speak. It’s like you’re dealing with a hostile spirit being. Notice what he says: I will return to my house, out of which I’ve come. The spirit can remember the person they came out of; and the demon is a legalist – notice what he says – ‘my house’. He claims the person, to have a right to enter them - so evil spirits look for a legal right to establish entry to a person. We’ll come back to that and develop that shortly.

So, the demon looks at this man, and said: “This is my house.” Now, the Bible tells us that: our body is the temple of the Spirit. We are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, we belong to Him. So your body is the house you live in; and you invite the Holy Spirit to come in. So your house becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit. Evil spirits look at people and say: ‘that’s my house.’ In other words, they claim legal grounds to enter.

Notice what it says: “When he comes, he finds it swept and put in order”. So, an evil spirit can locate the person they came out of. You can imagine from the realm of the spirit, that they can identify people. If I cast a demon out of him, and the demon moves a long way, it remembers who it came out of, and can relocate him again.

You say, ‘well, why can’t we just cast him into hell?’ There’s absolutely no scripture that indicates we are able to do that. In fact, there are many demons that are bound in hell, and they will be released in the last days. The Bible also tells us, that at the end time, Jesus will confine the demons into hell. Until then, they are Earth-bound spirits that look for people to gain access and destroy.

Notice the next thing: the demon can assess your spiritual condition. He finds it empty, swept, put in order. The word ‘empty’ means on holiday, loitering, not productive. The word ‘ordered’ means literally, to look good on the outside. Here’s a disturbing thing to realise: when we look at people, we only see the house they live in. It’s like a veil that covers the person. The Bible tells us that he is a spirit being, with a soul, living in this house.

So, the spirit sees us differently. When we look at a person, we just see the outside; when a demon looks at the person, he sees the inner man. When we look at a person, the body seems solid; when a demon looks at a person, this is just water vapour, and he sees the real person inside - and your spiritual condition is visible! From the spirit-world point of view, the real man is visible; and the evil spirit can assess the person’s condition.

I was doing deliverance one time, and I had a man come with me. It was quite a difficult deliverance, and the demon manifested strongly, and began to threaten me. I stood up against it, and then it did an unusual thing. The man turned or backed away from me, and he turned and looked at the man who’d come with me; and I saw him look, and then he laughed; and then he began to talk about the things happening in this man’s life. He uncovered what he could see! The man got very embarrassed, went very red in the face; and I said: “You’re not able to do this ministry. You haven’t established your authority properly.”

It was quite a shock for me to realise that the demon could recognise the person’s condition. If we’re going to maintain deliverance, and move the person into freedom, we must ensure that the root issues are dealt with, and the demon has no grounds to re-enter.

You notice it says in verse 45: “He goes and brings with him seven other spirits more wicked, they enter in, and the man’s state is worse than when he began.” In other words, evil spirits can communicate with one another, and they work together to increase the bondage in the person’s life.

So, here is a conclusion we reach, when we look at that passage: it’s not enough just to cast the demon out; we must deal with the root issues in the person’s life, and they must become established in their walk with God. In other words, they can’t remain just passive, idle; they need to be now active in their spiritual life.

There’s an interesting scripture, where Jesus poses a question; and it says in Ephesians 4:28 – “Let him who stole, steal no longer; but rather let him labour, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.” So, this is what Jesus is saying: it’s not enough for the thief to stop stealing; he needs to have a change, where he becomes willing to work, and to give. “Let him that stole, stop stealing; rather, work and give.” You notice for the thief, his freedom comes not when he stops stealing; but when he’s giving. Stop lying; but rather, speak the truth and love to one another.

So, it’s not enough to just deal with or confront the negative, the person must move their life to starting to embrace kingdom life. Another way of putting it: there’s no neutral position. We know we’ve passed from death to life, when we love. A clear teaching in this is: once we’ve cast the demons out, the person needs to be established so they’re walking with the Holy Spirit - that there’s real change in their life.

Let’s have a look in Luke 11, and Jesus is again talking about deliverance. Luke 11:20 – “But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Now, notice what he says in verse 21-22: “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armour in which he trusted, and divides his spoils.”

So, in this, the context is deliverance. Jesus identifies some things: 1.) A strong man. 2.) Armour. He says : if you want a person to be free, remove the armour. The strong man is a demonic spirit, who prevails over an area of a person’s life. It could be, for example, a stronghold of rejection. The person’s life is dominated by feelings and thoughts of rejection. At some point in their life, a stronghold was established. A stronghold is a mind-set. It’s a way of thinking, and it’s resistant to truth. So, when a person, for example, has got a deep root of rejection in their life, it is a stronghold. It’s a way of thinking about life; and every interaction with life, the person interprets it through the stronghold.

I’ll give you an example – suppose two people are standing talking, and the pastor walks into the church. He’s very busy, preoccupied, thinking about the next thing he must do. The two people say – “Hello pastor”; but he doesn’t hear them, and he just carries on. One of them thinks: “Oh, he’s busy, I’ll catch him later.” The other one thinks: “He doesn’t like me. This man doesn’t like me. I knew it! He doesn’t like me. He’s got something against me.” All through the service, they’re all stewed-up. The more they think about it, the angrier they get; and the whole worship service is ruined for them, because they can’t get it out of their mind – “the pastor rejected me today.”

Now, you notice that both men had the same experience, but each interpreted their experience differently. One had no root of rejection – “He obviously didn’t hear me, he’s busy. It’s ok, I’ll catch him again.” The other one – “He didn’t want to hear me.” The other one, same experience, but when you ask the question: “what does that mean?”, “It means he doesn’t like me. I knew he didn’t like me!” So, the person’s emotions get stirred up, the stronghold gets stirred up; and the demon constantly torments them.

What Jesus is saying, is that the spirit of rejection is the “strong man” exerting influence on his life. The “armour” is what conceals him, or protects him from being cast out. The armour is the root systems of bondage in the person’s life. The key way that demons gain access, is through deception. The person believes the lie, and the demon hides behind the lie.

So, if the person has a root of rejection, there may be a spirit of rejection, but there’s also a lie; and there’s also some emotional pain; and there may be some experience they had where it has come in. What Jesus essentially is saying is this: remove the structures that the demon lives in, and you can easily get it out. Remove the armour, or the defence system of the demon, and it’s easy to deal with it.

So in our ministry, we should not just focus on casting the demon out; but work with the person to find out the structures that the demon lives in. Remove the demonic house, and there’s nowhere for the demon to take hold. Remove the demonic house, and there’s nowhere for the demon to grip on, and so it has no place to come back in again. So, if you cast out a demon of rejection, but the person still believes the lie (I’m unloved and unwanted), then after a few negative experiences, soon the demon will come back in again. So, deliverance is not just casting out demons; it involves us ministering to the person, and dealing with the strongholds that allow the demon to sit there.

To do that, we need to identify what they are, and how they work. So, in ministering to people, we want to find out what are some of the structures the demon used, to occupy and hold them in bondage. That raises the question then: “how do demons gain entrance to people’s lives?” Now different deliverance ministries approach this in different ways. Some don’t even look at the root systems, but I think this is a mistake, because once the demon has gone out, it will come back in again. So, different ministries have different ways of looking at it; but in the end, it will come down to the same things.

So, number one group is legal rights. Legal rights mean sin. I’ll just list these 3 things, and then we’ll come back to them later. 1.) Legal rights. A legal right means the demon has a right, under spiritual law, to occupy the person. It has authority to be able to go there; and that authority has been given to them because the person sinned. For example, in Ephesians 4:27 “Give no door or room for the devil. Give no foothold to the demon.” The word ‘door’ or ‘foothold’ is the Greek word ‘topos’ meaning: a legal ground. So, don’t give a legal ground for an evil spirit to enter. We’ll explain what some of those are later. A major door that demons use, are legal rights.

When we walk in God’s order or guidelines, or when we walk in the law of God, we live under blessing. When we break the law of God, there are consequences. We reap what we’ve sown, and demonic spirits have legal right to access. A little later we’ll demonstrate that Jesus, at the cross, dealt with legal rights; and when you are ministering to people, you need to deal with the legal rights, and remove all grounds for the demon to be there - it’s quite simple to do.

A second major doorway is the area of traumatic experiences - trauma, or traumatic experiences. A trauma is an emotionally painful or shocking experience. It could be an accident, it could be a frightening experience, or it could be a long period of stress. So, a trauma has an emotional and physical impact in a person’s life; and demons use it to ride into the person’s life. Sometimes when you are trying to help a person, you’ll find there’s a traumatic experience with pictures and memories, and the demon is locked in on that.

Then a third major area is personal reactions to trauma and pain. When a person is hurt, they usually react, and try to control the pain. They try to control their life; and in attempting to control their life, often they create legal grounds for demons to come in.

So my experience in working with people indicates that all of these are connected. Legal rights, trauma, reactions. When we’re working with a person, working with a problem in their life, we need to be thinking of: the legal rights; the traumatic experiences; and the internal reactions. We’ll talk a bit more about these, and then I’ll give you a step-by-step way you’d look at a person’s problem, to try and analyse what the issues are.

Now, when demons get into a person, they create a number of problems inside them; and they tend to affect different areas of a person’s life. These are the areas that get affected:

1.) They may experience spiritual manifestations. So, if a person has got, for example, bad dreams, tormenting nightmares, spiritual manifestations that are obviously wrong, you know it’s occultic, or there’s a spiritual root.

2.) Evil spirits also affect the mind, the thought life, with thoughts that keep prevailing.

3.) Evil spirits affect the emotions, with emotions that rise up, that can’t seem to be managed.

4.) Evil spirits affect the body, with sicknesses that don’t seem to be able to respond.

5.) Evil spirits affect a person’s life, with cycles or patterns of failure.

Now, how does this work in a person’s life? I want to just explain, and help you understand the dynamic of it. We’ll just look at just a few scriptures; and we’ll start off first of all with Ephesians 3:20. The working or operation of demonic spirits in strongholds creates energy inside people; but the Holy Spirit also creates energy in us.

Let me just give an example – here’s an example. When a person gets angry, you feel angry. It’s like this enormous energy inside you; and it’s a negative energy. When a person is depressed, they feel this pressure and energy around their life which is quite negative. When a person is being tempted to sexual sin, they feel this passion of energy inside them. I want to show you just two sides of the coin here.

The first one, we find in Ephesians 2:1-2. It says: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience”. Notice what it says here – spirits work in people. The word ‘work’ is the greek word ‘energaio’, from which we get the word ‘energise’. So, when a demonic spirit is inside a person, it releases strong negative energy into them; strong spiritual pressure. Demonic spirits release a strong energy into people. It pressures them. It pushes on them; pushes on their mind, pushes on their emotions, pushes on their will. So, when a demonic spirit is operating, there’s literally a flow of energy.

Now, have a look in Romans 7:5 – “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.” Notice how it says ‘something at work inside us’. Sin works in people. The word ‘work’ means ‘energise’. So, evil spirits energise people. Bring pressure, negative energy into their life; but sin also does the same thing. So, sin, when sin is working in a person, it creates negative energy in them. You notice, in trying to describe the spiritual effect of sin and demons, it uses the word ‘energise’.

When demons are operating, or sin is operating, the person experiences strong pressure and energy flow inside them that’s very negative. You can’t overcome it by willpower, because it’s a spiritual energy. Sin releases spiritual energy in us. It’s something living inside a person. It’s something that works in you, constantly demanding more and more. Demonic spirits release negative energy, it works in people. When a person is under the influence of sin, and demonic spirits, there’s this massive spiritual energy pressuring their life. So, if we’re going to deal with the demonic, we need to remove the sin, and remove all of that negative energy.

Now, look back in Ephesians 3 again, and we’ll read down to verse 20 – “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us”. Now its saying: for a believer, there is a power also, that works in us for good. It’s the same word – ‘energise’. The power that works in us is the power of the Holy Ghost. In other words, one work of the Holy Spirit is: to energise our life; to impart in us strength to overcome.

Notice what Paul’s prayer is, in verse 16 – “to be strengthened with might in the inner man through His Spirit”. So, it must be possible there, for us to be strengthened with might, in the inner man, by the Holy Ghost. The word ‘strength’ means: ‘greatly increase in vigour’. Strengthen with might - that’s the word ‘dunamis’ – ‘miracle power’. So, what he’s saying in here is this: that even though sin creates negative energy that leads to isolation from God; and even though demons create negative energy; we have something else that energises us for good! It’s the power of the Holy Spirit! So the Spirit of God can energise us, to get great victory over any area in our life.

Look what it says in 1 Thessalonians 2, we read in verse 13: “For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.” There’s that word again – ‘work’. The word of God can energise your life! The word of God can greatly energise your life. We see now, that there are sources of negative energy – sin and demonic spirits; and there are sources of energy for victory – it’s the power of the Holy Spirit and the word of God.

So if I’m going to help someone come into freedom, I need to remove the sources of negative energy, deal with the issues of sin and the trauma, remove the demonic spirits; but willpower alone is not enough to walk in victory. It’s not enough just to exercise willpower. So often, what we tend to try and do, is we try to get people: “oh, stop doing that. Do this, do this, do this.”

What is needed is: the person needs to be energised with life. They need to know how to activate, and be strengthened, in their inner man; and they need to know how to be energised by the word of God. So whereas their lives were characterised by defeat; now their lives become characterised by the power of God, and the word of God. I always ask this kind of question: “How do you get the word of God to energise you?” The Bible says that’s what it does; but how can my life be energised by the word of God? How can my life be energised by the Holy Ghost?

So it’s not a matter of just dealing with the negatives; you want to bring people into life. Don’t think just of deliverance as: ‘we cast out the demon’. Think of it as: ‘we move them out of a place of negative life flow, into a place of life in God’. The casting out of the demon is just one part of that. In bringing the person into freedom, my goal is to uncover what is creating negative energy in it, and confront it; and then lead them into a life where the power of God is flowing, where they are energised with the life of God; and we want to know how to do that. How to identify and remove the roots; and then how to bring people into a place of life?

When people are in a place where they are energised by the Holy Spirit; this is what the Bible says: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ sets me free from the law of sin and death”. In other words, I need to be in a life flow in God; not just trying to cast my demons out. I need to transition out of being in bondage and darkness, and come into a place of life and strength. So, this is the process called discipleship – moving people into a place where their life is vibrant in God.

You’ll find when you’re working with people, usually they just want you to take away the pain, to fix them up; but our goal is to bring them into life in Christ. When there’s life in Christ, there’s a flow of the power of God.

[Student is invited to come forward for a prayer demonstration]

“Come, come.” We’ll just finish with this. “Look this way. I want you to just put your hand out, towards me. That’s right. Take my hand. I need someone behind her right now.” Now, God wants us to be able to bring his life to others. It should not be hard. It should be very easy. “You just close your eyes right now, and just in a moment the presence of God will come on you. Thank you Lord, for your presence coming right now, the Presence of God.”

In other words, don’t just try to fix a problem; bring them to the source of life. Don’t just try and get rid of demons, bring people into a place of life in Christ; and we’ll show you some ways of doing that.

“Just come. Come. Just take my hand. Close your eyes. Just open your heart to receive; and let the presence of God just touch you like that.” So, we believe for God’s presence to come. We’re called to carry the presence of God. So, have a vision for people carrying the presence of God, rather than living under demons. We’re often so negative in the way we think about things. So, we think – “oh, demons. Got to fix them up”; but think that people are made for God’s Spirit. So, we want them to be carriers of the presence of God; to have a life that God fills. So where before they were under demonic influence, now they’re under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The presence of God is touching them.

“Come. Close your eyes. Holy Spirit come on her; come on her right now; and we can just open ourselves to the presence of God.” I always want to know how does this happen? How do you build then, a life that God lives strongly in? It can’t be hard, it must be easy. I want to help you in that part of it as well. So, what are the things we look for that we need to confront? How do we deal with them? How do we begin to build people’s life in God, so they move from being demonised to being filled in Spirit and power?

If you only think of deliverance as casting out the demons, you’ll be happy to chase the demons; but if we think that God’s heart is concerned about getting people filled with the Spirit, then our desire is not just to confront the demons. It’s to move people in their life in what they experience. Amen.

Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8)

Tue 10 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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Explore the different doors of entry into a person’s life, from generational curses to inner vows. We get freedom through the Power of the Holy Spirit, by what Jesus has won on the Cross for us. He won the total victory, which was utterly complete, covering all intentional and un-intentional sin. As you open your heart, and take ownership for your sin, rather than blame others, and then repent and release forgiveness, healing and freedom will flow into our lives.

We want to look now at some of the doors of entry for evil spirits; common ways that spirits enter people; and what to do about dealing with them. If we just try to confront spirits, and we don’t deal with the root issues, you’ll find that it’s very difficult to get them free, and then they tend not to stay free. So, we want to look then at just some of the ways that spirits would enter a person’s life. Some of these, you will be aware of; there may be some new ones. We’ll look at each one, and then look at what you would need to do to deal with that specific issue.

We looked at three main areas: 1.) Legal rights – we’re going to look at legal rights. So, we want to understand: what does this mean; what are some examples of doorways that spirits use; and then how do we demolish that legal right.

Before I go into the list of that, I want to look at what Jesus did for us on the cross. We’re just going to look at 3 areas of scripture, and we’ll see the extent of Jesus’ work on the cross, and realise that He addressed every area that we need to deal with. Then, when we look at each specific area of ministry, we will look at how you would address the problem. Before we go to the doorways, we’re looking at foundations for freedom.

First of all, we look in Colossians 2:13-15: “ And you, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”

We see here what Jesus has done on the cross. It says: He forgave us ALL our trespasses. A trespass is an intentional breaking the law of God. So, Jesus has forgiven ALL our trespasses; and it says: “He wiped out the list of requirements against us, contrary to us, took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” Jesus completely removed something that was written against us. In other words, every law of God that you broke - whether you knew it or didn’t know it, every possible violation of God’s law that has been listed and recorded against you. Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand that everything is recorded.

In the Old Testament, deliberate breaking of the law had an offering required. Also, if we sin through ignorance, there was still an offering required. Can you imagine someone and they’re watching your life; and the angel has a big role in recording every breaking of the law. For some of you, he’s writing very fast, it’s a very big roll! It’s a hard-working angel writing down all these things. The Bible says: Jesus took the whole roll. It says: He took it to the cross.

So, everything the devil could say to you: ‘Hey, you did this. Oh, you did that’. Every kind of accusation he could make, he just points to the scroll – “See. On this day, at this time you did this.” Every possible error, mistake you’ve made. Jesus took it all to the cross. Notice what it says: when He took it to the cross, He forgave all the trespasses. Forgive means: release the debt. The devil says: you sinned, you must pay. Jesus took it to the cross - release! Every person released!

Then it says: “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them”. So, when Jesus took our sin to the cross, He’s removing the weapons the devil has against you. He’s removing, and taking away, all his weapons. We see in Colossians 2 - every possible sin, every possible legal right the devil has for you, Jesus took it to the cross, shed His blood, in order that that can be broken.

Remember we saw the scripture in Luke 11 – “Remove the armour. Remove the sin.” We must confront the sin issues. God has a remedy for sin. If you say: “Oh, it’s just my weakness, you know.” Oh, ok - it’s not sin then, it’s not going to go to the cross. However, if we acknowledge sin, we bring it to the cross. 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We notice what Jesus has done. At the cross He took all our trespasses. So, if a person is demonised, and the cause is sin - take the sin to the cross. People just want you to pray for them. We must bring the truth to them, and point them to God’s solution.

The second scripture’s found in Galatians 3:13-14 – “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” You notice now that the issue of curses are addressed. These two verses talks about blessings and cursings.

Let’s have a look at blessing. “The blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ, we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. A blessing are: words spoken that bring power. Notice that blessing means: receiving the Holy Spirit. To be blessed, is to receive an impartation of the Holy Spirit, enables us to go forward in life. So, the blessed life is empowered by the Holy Spirit. A blessed life is living in the flow of God’s spirit.

It says in verse 13 – “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law”. Cursings are words spoken that have spiritual power behind them, spiritual power that’s destructive. The power behind a curse is an evil spirit. So, it says that Jesus became a curse for us. There is a little known verse in the Old Testament that says that everyone who goes to death on a tree is a cursed person. This was written hundreds of years before the Romans invented crucifixion. So, when the Romans put Jesus to death by crucifixion, the very method of death that they chose meant all curses of humanity fell on Him – all generational curses, the curses of God’s laws being broken, all the curses of Deuteronomy 27, all of those curses were broken at the cross. Christ redeemed us. In other words, He paid the full price. It is a legal price. He paid the price to ransom us away from the captor.

So, when you are dealing with people, if there’re cursings resting on their life, whether they are generational or other kinds of cursing, the blood of Jesus shed at Calvary is the remedy. We must bring curses to the cross, where their power is broken. So, every time you face someone who has a cursing around their life, there is a process of bringing that cursing to the cross, where its power is broken, and release of the Holy Spirit and blessing comes. When we are ministering in the area of cursings, we would expect deliverance from evil spirits, and a release of the presence of the Holy Spirit. We’ll show you what to do with those a little later.

Let’s have a look at Isaiah 53. These are good scriptures to know and to memorise. There is a legal ground for us to be set free. If evil spirits use legal grounds to enter us, then God removes the legal grounds to free us. So, when you are ministering to someone, remove the legal grounds; and the evil spirit has no room to remain there. Let’s have a look in Isaiah 53:3, and I want you to notice as we read these 3 verses, I want you to read the scope of Jesus’ work on the cross.

“He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” Here it is – “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. Grief means to be weak, sick, diseased, to be afflicted. Sorrow means mental and emotional pain. So, He bore our griefs and our sorrows. Verse 5 – “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities”. Transgression is an intentional breaking of God’s law. Iniquity is the crookedness inside us that bends us towards sin. Iniquity is the twist towards sin. So, He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity. “The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

So, we see here, in the 3 scriptures we’ve read, at the cross, Jesus dealt with our sins and transgressions. He dealt with all curses that are against us, He dealt with our griefs and sorrows, our traumas and painful experiences we’ve had, and He dealt with our iniquities, the crookedness in us that leads us away from God. So, Jesus made full reconciliation for us.

Our part is then: how do we apply this? You remember in the Old Testament they had to apply the blood. It wasn’t enough that the blood was shed; the blood had to be applied (to the door). So, always, we have to apply what God has done. In other words, there’s a faith action people must take, to apply the work of Christ to their life. So, when you are working with people, there is a part you play; and a part they play. They have a part in their own freedom.

For example, when you consider salvation - Jesus died on the cross for people to be saved, for every person to be saved. So legally, every person can be saved; but for salvation to manifest in their life, there’s something they must do - they must repent and believe. So, there’s always something people must do, to position themselves for God to work. Our role is to work with people to bring them to a place where they apply what Jesus has done to their life - first to get free; second to stay free. They need to apply what God has done for them. It requires faith. So, there’s always the foundation you must lay in a person’s life for them to be free.

I found the most common reasons people are not freed, or don’t stay free, is that the roots have never been pulled out of their life, or the person hasn’t cooperated in the process. So, we will now look then at the foundations for freedom; and we looked at what Jesus has done. However, every person also has a part to play. They have something that they must do.

I will give you a list of the things that people must do. Number 1, a person must recognise and take responsibility for their life and their failures. It’s very common for people to want to blame someone. It’s common for people to want to make excuses; but a core part of a person getting set free, is taking responsibility for their own sin, and their own failure.

For example, in Proverbs 28:13 – “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” So, if we conceal our responsibility for our life - usually people do that by blaming someone else, or minimising it, or just denying there’s a problem. So, if we deny or minimise or blame someone else, this is frustrating the work of God to set them free. If you’re working with someone, and they won’t own up and take responsibility, you can’t go any further. If a person doesn’t recognise what their part in this is, they won’t actually get free. I find this very common; the biggest challenge is to help people see the truth, because often people cover it or bury it or pretend it isn’t as bad as it seems.

I had one woman I was praying for recently, and she was struggling because she could not get pregnant. She wanted a family, and I talked with her and listened to her story. I said to her: “You have a family already. You have 4 children, but you took the life of each of your children. The children are in heaven now. They’re real people. They have a name. What you have done, is created the problem you have now, where you can’t conceive.” So, it was quite difficult for her to come to face the reality, that her inability to have children now, is because she’d had 4 abortions.

I said: “If we’re going to pray for you to be healed and have children, you have to face the reason why you’re in this condition. You have 4 children in heaven, whose lives were cut short by your hand; and Jesus knows them all. You need to come to Him, He has forgiven you, you need to reach out to Him and receive that forgiveness. Then, we can pray for you, that the results of the sin can be healed.” She preferred to be healed without dealing with the reason why she was like this. So, I said “You need to come to forgiveness, first of all, and to acknowledge the children you have, and what you did.” So, God touched her very deeply, and she named each of her children. So, the first challenge in working with people is to find out what the roots of the problem, and bring people to the place of recognising and being responsible.

You’ll see this in 2 Timothy 2. It says in 2 Timothy 2:24 – “And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.” You notice in this verse, you see a person who is taken captive. In other words, there’s someone who has gotten influence over their life, and they’re acting against their will, they’re doing things according to what the devil wants them to do. There’s a need to get out of that snare, or out of that trap.

You notice that the key to getting out is the person has a truth encounter. You share with them the truth. If they acknowledge the truth and come to repentance, then they can escape the snare of the devil. Notice it says in verse 26 “they may come to their senses”. The word literally means “to sober up again”. So, when you share the truth with the person, often there’s a conflict for the person to come to admit that’s what’s happened; that’s when they can come free. As you are working with people, you may find that there’s almost like a conflict going on, like confusion in their mind, until they acknowledge the truth. You notice that acknowledging the truth and repenting, precedes getting out of the snare.

In our process of working with people, we will ask questions to diagnose the problem, present people with the truth, and then show them the journey out of their problem; then confront them with power. Does it make sense? We spend time asking the questions, diagnose the problem to its roots, and help them see the truth. If they’ll acknowledge the truth, and come to the place of repentance, you can set them free. If they don’t acknowledge the truth, or are unwilling to repent, they don’t get free; or if you get them free, they don’t stay free. So, always in our ministry, it’s a ministry of the truth, and then the power.

As I was talking with this woman, and she was a leader of some years, she was very distressed at not being able to have a child. When I said ‘You have 4 children’, you could almost feel like this fog of confusion around her. I had to be quite slow and clear in trying to help her see the truth, because she had believed a lie: this is just something I got rid of, it’s solved a problem in my life; but I had to get her to understand ‘Actually, you have 4 children. They live in heaven’. The reason you have the problem, is because you’ve taken their lives. Of course, she had all the reasons why she had to do this, and how she buried all of the pain related to it.

I said: “We can’t proceed for freedom, until you face the reality. This is what the Bible says about this situation.” You could feel the confusion around her mind, and then suddenly you could see it come clear, and she realised what she’d done. Then, she began to grieve over what she had done; and then we’re in a place to pray and minister to her, because she’d acknowledged the truth and come to a place of repentance. So, always in our ministry, it follows kind of like a process of diagnosing the problem, find the roots, and bring the person to be responsible for what they’ve done. At first she was very bitterly blaming people. I said to her: “While you blame people, you remain a victim. You can’t be free, if you blame someone else. If you blame someone else, then you are giving them the power for the situation. If you take responsibility, you are now becoming empowered.”

So, the first area that you will strike or work with people is, they must recognise and be responsible for their sin. Once a person has recognised and taken ownership, then something can happen. I had one woman that I prayed for, well I was going to pray for, I was asked to pray for her; and she said: “I’ve got this man who wants to marry me. What should I do?” That’s always a trick question! So I said: “Tell me about your situation.” She said: “Oh, well I was going with him for quite a while, about 3 or 4 years, and then we broke up. I went with another man, I had a child to him and now we’re broken up too. So, now this man wants to marry me.” I said: “Can you tell me why you broke up?” She said: “He was unfaithful to me 3 times.” I said: “Sounds like a good reason to break up. Maybe after number 1 would be better. Is he a Christian?” “No he’s not a Christian.”

I said: “I don’t think we should keep talking. The answer’s very obvious. He’s been unfaithful 3 times, he’s had no change in his heart - he’s going to keep doing the same.” But I could tell she wasn’t listening, because what she wanted is to marry this man. I said: “By the way, tell me about your own family. Tell me about your father.” “Oh, I don’t see my father.” “Why is that?” “Well, our family broke up when I was 13; and he lives somewhere else now.” I said: “Out of interest, why did it break up?” “Oh, he was unfaithful.” “Just out of interest, how many times?” “Oh, 3 times.”

Now, it was quite unusual that that came out like that. I said: “You have bitter roots against your father, and judgements against him, you have never dealt with. This is why you are attracted to the same kind of man, and are blind to what he’s really like. So, this relationship is a disaster. You need to deal with the bitter roots in your heart against your father.” To my surprise, she said that she couldn’t see it. Actually, she didn’t want to see it. She just wanted to marry this man. So, I said: “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. You won’t face the truth, that you have deep bitterness and demonic spirits inside you.”

So, when working with people, the first part is the diagnosis and establishing what the problems are. Help the person to see their part in it. Then there are some steps out of it.

1.) Recognise and take responsibility.

2.) Repentance and confession of sin. It’s crucial if a person’s to come free, that the sin issue is dealt with. If sin creates the legal rights, sin has to be removed; and it’s removed by repentance and confession. 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So, we need to deal with sin. People need to repent and deal with this issue of sin. Repent means turning away from it. Sin leads to death. Turning away from it leads to life. Many times, if you find deliverance difficult, it’s because the person has not really repented.

3.) The person must release forgiveness. Mark 11:25 – “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him; that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.” Forgiveness is another major reason why people are not free.

Unforgiveness keeps the person’s soul bound to the demonic spirits, and whatever’s been done against them. When a person is holding unforgiveness, they usually have resentment and anger in their heart because some injustice has been done, something’s been taken from them. It may be real or it may be imagined, but unforgiveness is a debt they must pay. It’s a demand: you owe me! It could be against a father – you broke up our family, I’ve suffered these years - you owe me. So, it’s a demand that there be a repayment of some kind.

Forgiveness is: we’re letting go of that demand. “I release you. You don’t have to say sorry. You don’t have to pay me back. You don’t have to do anything. I have let go my demand.” So, if we’re going to get people set free, we need to understand the importance of forgiveness. In Matthew 18:34-35, Jesus said: “If you do not forgive every person, his brother, from their heart, then you’ll be delivered to tormentors.” In other words, evil spirits have a legal right; they can access your life, if unforgiveness remains in your heart.

Now, I have found increasingly, this is a problem. It’s not enough just to tell the person – “Hey, you need to forgive.” The person must let go from the heart. It has to be a heart decision: to move from death to life. “I let go the unforgiveness, I release forgiveness, and I’m willing to bless the person.” Jesus said: “Bless those who curse you, forgive those who despitefully use you. Pray for them.” So, forgiveness is letting go and blessing. So, I have found, rather than just mechanically say: “You have to forgive”; and then the person prays a prayer, but their heart isn’t in it - they generally don’t get free. Forgiveness is a decision. It is a choice; but it needs to involve the heart. It needs to be a heartfelt letting go.

So I found often, people pray a simple prayer to forgive, but in their heart they have not let go, because they’ve buried the hurt and buried the anger. So, if you’re working with people, I’ve found this is a helpful approach. Sometimes you may be aware a person’s been deeply hurt by someone. Now, let me help you understand this.

If Jonathan comes to me saying: “Pastor Mike, can you forgive me. I’ve caused some damage. Will you forgive me?” I say: “Yeah. Yeah. No problem.” Now, the question is, he didn’t tell me what he did; and I didn’t ask. Was this a dollar; or was this a million dollars? How much have I been affected by what he did? If it’s a dollar, I say “Hey, nothing.” If it’s a million dollars... “Ahh. You ruined my life! All these years I save and you’ve taken it all away! You want me to forgive you?! I’m so angry.”

You notice now, there’s a difference - I have got connected to my loss. Now when I forgive, I understand what I’m letting go. Many times when people forgive, they just say a prayer from the head, but the heart isn’t really in it. So it helps, when you’re working with people, to address the pain of the heart. What did this person do? How did it affect you? How do you feel about this? Now, a lot of people just deny how they really feel. It’s very common in Asia. They endure, with a knife in the heart; but bitter, very bitter inside. When people are bitter, it shows up – sharp words, the bitterness flows like a river, and it defiles.

So sometimes before I pray for a person for deliverance, I get them to talk or to write, how this thing has affected them. How do you feel about this? Are you angry? How angry are you? Because often people have pushed it down; and I found it very helpful, I just interact with the person through questions, because the moment the person acknowledges the feelings, they start to connect with the heart. When you think about this person, what do you feel? “Oh, I don’t think about them at all!” Yeah, because you want to avoid! But when you think, what do you feel? Afraid, angry, hurt. So, let the person bring these things out.

Sometimes I get people to write an “anger letter”. It’s never to be seen by anyone but them and God. It’s to take out of the heart, and put the feelings in front of themselves. Sometimes with the father, sometimes with the mother, sometimes with other people; I tell them: “When you write the letter, write the good things first. Then start to say a bit... because if they don’t write the good things first, they’ll go through this process. They start to talk about the bad – “oh he’s so mean to me”. “Oh but he wasn’t that bad”. “Oh, I feel so angry about this.” “Oh, but he wasn’t that bad. He was kind.” So they can’t connect with the heart.

If the issue is with your father, write down all the good things, and say ‘thank you for the good things’. Then, write down the things that have caused hurt and pain; and write how you feel, and allow the feelings to come out, and then grieve over them and weep over them. Now release forgiveness - you know what it is you’re letting go of. “I release them, I forgive them, I bless them.” Forgiveness is very important for being free. God calls me, not to live in this place that demands on people, but to live in a place of blessing on people.

So sometimes I’ll just stop ministry, and get the person to journey through the process of facing their feelings, and expressing them, and forgiving - especially if the person has been abused or traumatised. So release forgiveness. “I forgive them, I bless them.” I encourage a person, if this has been a deep longstanding pain with a family member, for the next 3 weeks or so, each time you worship God, think about that person, put your arms around them and bless them and pray for them; because you can’t do that, and have anger and hurt in your heart. These are foundations for people to get free. Failure to recognise sin stops the whole process. Failure to repent of sin stops the process. Failure to forgive stops the process.

The next thing is that people need to renounce or cancel bondages in their life. I’ll explain what these are, and how you do it. Bondage can be as simple as a generational curse. It could be an inner vow a person made. Like for example, I was praying with a person recently, and she was trying to get pregnant. As I spoke with her, I asked her: “Have you been pregnant before?” She said: “Yes. We have one child; and I want another child, but I’ve had 3 miscarriages.” I said: “Tell me about the first child, and the process of pregnancy.” It was extremely painful, extremely difficult for her. I said: “Did you ever make an inner vow – I will never have another child again.” She said: “Yes I did.” I said: “That’s what’s happening. Your body is reacting. It is rejecting each new child. You’ve made an inner vow – I will never have another child. You need to renounce and break that curse over your life.”

So I’ll identify the specific things to renounce shortly. There it is: Recognise; take responsibility; repent and confess sin; release forgiveness; renounce any bondages, speak words to cancel them; and then reach out for God to set you free. So, we see now, the foundations for freedom. Notice the last one I had – you reach out to Jesus to set you free, because otherwise, people make an idol out of you in ministry. They want you to fix them up. They put the responsibility on you, rather than being responsible to reach Jesus for the help.

[Demonstration and Exercises]

I’ll just show you what I mean. I’ll just demonstrate something with you. I just need one volunteer. Just please stand here. Can I take your hand? So when it comes to ministering to people, if the person looks to you, to come-through for them, there is a pressure that comes from them. You are under pressure to perform. You’re under pressure to do something; and pressure from people can lead to quite strong witchcraft. Jesus never allowed Himself to be pressured by people over ministry. He always did what He saw the Father doing, or was moved with compassion.

I have found a very simple thing you can do. It’s something like this: “I want you to close your eyes now, and I want you to look towards Jesus. From within, look towards Him, expecting for Him to touch you.” Now, I’ve directed her attention away from me. So immediately, pressure comes off. I’ve directed her towards the Lord, expecting to receive; and even as she does that, the presence of God will start to come on her. There’s a flow of God’s presence. Now, if I was to do the same thing, not focus on her, or trying to fix her, I just set my attention, focus my attention on Jesus, the source. His presence starts to come, and she starts to feel the anointing come on. Ministry flow needs to be Holy-Spirit-directed. So, we work with the person’s heart, to open up to the Holy Spirit; and then we listen for him [Whoosh] and it’s very easy to minister his power.

So, always turn the person towards Jesus for their help, because people tend to want you to fix them; which makes them a victim, and you’re the rescuer. That’s not empowering, because here’s what happens: if I’m the victim, and you have to rescue me, then if I don’t get free, it’s your fault. ‘I need someone more anointed. I come for someone more anointed.’ Same thing, “you have to get me free. It’s your responsibility”. See, I’m still thinking like a victim, rather than being empowered; but if it’s my decision to receive and respond in faith, then my faith will release the power of God.

“Just come stand. Just come and stand there. Can I take your hand? Close your eyes and just in your heart, look up to the Lord; and as you look up to the Lord, the presence of God will come on you.” See? Just like that. Now, ministry should flow out of rest. You notice, I really didn’t do a lot. I just directed him to the answer, and He could feel the presence of God come on him. So, I have noticed in ministry, it’s the anointing that flows from within us, the energising power of the Holy Spirit; and there’s an anointing that rests on people when they open their heart to the Lord. I can release the power of God very strongly, because we’ve created an environment for ministry.

So, don’t think about having to perform, and fix people. When you think: “I’ve got to fix you up”, then you are the rescuer, they are the victim; and you have to play Jesus to them, and if nothing happens, you’ll feel very bad. Next thing, you feel you’re the victim. “God, why are you not doing this?” That’s a problem - you all know that. So, it’s important that you get right alignment for power to flow. I always direct the person’s attention to the Lord, away from me, so we are working with the Holy Spirit to administer freedom; and you’ll find the flow of anointing comes much more easily.

“Ok. Come? You know you want to be prayed for. That’s right. So, just stand there. How’re you doing? Alright? Praise the Lord.” So, in working with the person now, I need to realise I cannot rescue her. I cannot fix her, and it’s not my job. It helps if you realise that. I’m here to represent Christ. I’m here to bring Christ to her; and help her come to Christ. So, my ministry is about bringing her to the one who can rescue her. So if I keep thinking “I’ve got to fix her”, I’m under pressure now to get the right answers. But if I’m just a minister, to bring God to her, and her to the Lord, I can just relax; and ministry always flows best when you are at rest inside. The dove doesn’t rest where there’s agitation. So, if you are at rest inside, the anointing flows easily. Ok.

So I’ll just take her hand, touch her like this. “Now, I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to look up to the Lord, just expecting Him to touch you, expecting His presence to come on you.” So, I’m in a place now, I’m just directing her towards the Lord. Now, I can just reach out to the Lord too. “Thank you Lord for Your presence.” So, when you’re reaching out to the Lord, what do you do? What I do is, I just begin to picture Him standing there; and He’s very close to me, and I just fix my eyes upon Him. Jesus said: “What I see the Father doing, that’s what I do.” So ministry flows easily that way. Connect the person to the Lord, you connect to the Lord, and then it’s like it just flows. [Whoosh] Holy Spirit just come. Very easy, and it’ll flow very easily.

Now, we haven’t gotten into deliverance yet; I just want to show you about positioning people for ministry. So when we’re preparing a person, we’re preparing their heart to reach out to Jesus for their miracle. You’re taking it away from: I fix you up; to: this is your problem, and I’m working with you to find God’s solution. Is that clear? Then that keeps a lot of pressure off you and it keeps everyone’s thinking right. It has something you’ll notice, that when the person’s heart is prepared and right, you literally can feel the Spirit of God come on them. When the person’s heart is not right, or there’s something missing, it’s like the Holy Spirit stays away. Notice that. Notice it.

“Just come. We’ll just see if we can do this over here. Can I take your hand? You don’t have to do anything. Just close your eyes. I want you to just open your heart to the Lord, like you’re opening up doors to let Him in.” What I’m looking for now, is just for the presence of God touching her. Every time I do this, I can feel how open a person is to the Lord. You can feel it, because you either feel the Spirit of God settle on them; or you feel like hesitancy, like a lack of flow. Now, the Spirit of God has started to settle on her now. She’s just relaxing now. So it becomes easy to minister.

Sometimes you feel like almost an invisible wall. You feel these things. You either feel a flow, or you feel resistance; and you’ve got to learn to notice those things. Notice the flow. Remember it says in John 7:38 – “Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” So the Spirit of God moves in flows. What I’ve done is given you some of the foundations of how you prepare the person; some things they do, and then your part is to work with the Holy Spirit, and direct the flow of ministry. Amen?

“Just come again. Ok. That’s right.” The flow, we’re looking at the flow. So I just take his hands, and see, I’m not trying to make anything happen. Just open your eyes and your heart up to the Lord; and I can literally feel the flow of power from heaven coming. Notice all I did was direct him to the source; and watch the flow come; and then I am open to the flow as well. That makes ministry a lot easier for you. Instead of trying to make things happen, become more sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit, sensitive to His flow. Sensitive to His moving, listening for Him all the time. Once you move in your thinking that way, instead of just trying to fix someone; we’re working with the Holy Spirit. “If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out the demons”. Now, we haven’t got into casting out yet, we’re just getting you to think about working with the Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen.

Alright then, rather than teach some more, I’ll get you doing something. That would be probably quite a good move. Perhaps you could put away your books. We’ve got about 10 minutes to go. I’ll get you to do some things. Just remain seated for the moment. I’ll show you what I want you to do. Books away... Now, we’re all ministers of the Spirit. In other words, God has put an anointing upon us, and we can stir up that anointing. We can stir the flow of the Spirit. This is what I’m going to get you to do. In a moment, we’re going to pray strongly in tongues, and stir up our Spirit man. Then I want you to get into groups of 3. You can go anywhere in the auditorium to be in a group of 3, and this is what we’re going to do.

I’ll just get a couple of people here. 1,2, 3. Ok. Come. Come on up here. This is just a lot of fun. “You’re going to be a catcher. Always have your eyes open.” Ok. “You’re going to be the one who receives; you can close your eyes.” “You’re going to minister. Yes? You’re going to release the power of God.” This is what we do. We’re going to follow it step by step. This is how we do it. First step, “Can I practise on you?” “Yeah, do your best”. OK then. “Your close your eyes”. Take her hand. That’s right. Now, I want you to pray in tongues, because praying in tongues, your spirit stirs up. Don’t try to do anything yet. Just pray in tongues. I’m just asking her to stir up her spirit. Even while you’re doing it, without even trying, the Holy Ghost is coming on her. Ok. Can you feel the anointing on her now? Yeah. It’s strong isn’t it? Well you just release the power of God from within you, on the count of 3 just blow on her. Holy Ghost come. There you go. Look at that.

“Now, what did you feel?” I’ll ask again. “As you began to pray in tongues, did you feel yourself rising up inside? As you prayed in tongues, what did you notice happening to her?” “I felt the Holy Spirit just begin to fill her.” “You start to feel like a flow, like something has come on her. It seems like she was then having trouble standing. As you were praying, and she was looking to the Lord, the Spirit of God starts to come on her, and you recognised that. That’s great. It’s important to recognise the movements of the Holy Spirit. Then you can just quite easily release the power of God.” [Whoosh] “Like that. Just from within you. It’s not the external things; it’s what happens within, by faith.”

“Now you notice, I’ve positioned you so you couldn’t push her over. Some people want to push people over - as soon as you do that, you are leaning into your flesh, and not drawing from the Spirit. Yeah? That’s exactly what’s happening; and the Holy Ghost will lift off you like that. You’ll have to push more? Don’t do that! People don’t like it! If you start to push, they’ll push back. Don’t like it. No one wants to be pushed. I’ve seen them go like that. That’s not ministry. That’s pushing. Good. So you didn’t have to do that.” “Stand up again.” Right, so we’re going to get you all to do this. Get into groups of 3. “Can I practise on you?” “Yes please. Smile.” Take a hand. Pray in tongues. Just relax as you pray in tongues. You are stirring the flow of the Spirit; then release the power of God. 1, 2, 3 - power of God. Look at that. That wasn’t hard was it? That was easy wasn’t it? Was that easy? No problem. Give her a clap.

Ok. Now, you notice, “Can I just take your hand?”, if I am praying like this, there’s no way I can push her - absolutely no way. Now you can lay hands like this if you like. It’s fine to do that; but train yourself to minister to people without pushing, so you learn to release the power of God. “Cough it out. Out in Jesus’ name! Let it go. Now, now, now. Loose in Jesus’ name. Thank you Lord.” Now, we didn’t expect that to happen. I wasn’t even looking for that to happen. It just started to happen, because we’re in the flow of the Spirit. “Thank you Lord. Touch her. Touch. Right now. In Jesus’ name. Thank you Lord.” Now, what’s happened is, the anointing flowed, and then spirits started to manifest. I didn’t even want to do that, but it happened anyway. “Thank you Lord. Touch her. Touch her.”

Now, we haven’t had a chance to look at the root systems, things just started to flush up. So, I’ll just listen to God. We’ll just pray. “In Jesus’ name. Fear.,Spirit of fear: Go. Let her go now. Now, in Jesus’ name, release! Release her now, In Jesus’ name, let her go. Thank you Lord. Touch her. There we are. There you go. Feel a bit better now? Lord touch her. Just let your power flow out of heaven.”

So, when you are in the flow of the Spirit, that’s when things happen; so rather than trying to make things happen, learn to flow with the Spirit. You just never know what will happen. So, I’m not asking you to do deliverance; I’m just asking you to get in the flow of the Spirit. There’s plenty of time for doing the deliverance later. I just want you to understand the flow of the Spirit. So here it is, we get into groups of 3: one catching, one receiving, one praying. Then just follow me, quickly. Groups of 3. Anywhere you want to go. Find a space.

Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8)

Wed 11 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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Explore the issues in the heart that can hold us in bondage. Discover that ungodly soul ties, inner vows and word curses are three entry points into our lives, where we can open ourselves to bitterness, jealousy, anger, complaining, addictions, etc, which then become strongholds in our lives, that the enemy can come in and take hold of. This includes other peoples words and actions towards us. As we recognise these traits in our lives, we can take ownership of them, renouncing and releasing them from our lives in Jesus Name.

Introduction

Let’s welcome the Holy Spirit this morning. Lord we open ourselves to You, we want You to touch us, we welcome You. May the kingdom of heaven come into this place. May we see your presence established, your kingdom established. We reach out to You Lord today, we thank You for all You’ve done so far, and all You will do today. In the meeting this morning, in the meeting tonight, we thank You. We treasure Your presence. We love what You do. Most of all, we set our heart on You. We give You the honour Jesus, and we thank You for what You’re doing. Amen.

That was very exciting last night wasn’t it? I always love it when God moves, just surprises us. I didn’t expect that demon to manifest so quickly. Let’s just this morning, continue where we were; and as I teach, I’m changing the flow which I normally teach in.

Summary of Last Session

What I want to do this session, is I want to look at heart bondages. We’ll just quickly look at where we were yesterday. We looked at Jesus was anointed to set people free. We looked at Jesus teaching on deliverance, and how deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom of God. We saw that Jesus taught that once demons were cast out, they will try to come back and re-enter the person. This has brought deliverance into a lot of discredit over the years, because people have focused on the demons, rather than focused on the issues the person has.

Jesus said that after a person’s delivered, and the evil spirit’s gone out, they will seek to re-establish their hold in the person’s life. So we saw as a result of that, the need to deal with underlying root issues. In other words, our role is not just to cast out demons, but it’s to bring the person out of darkness and into light. It’s to help them journey in their life so they’re walking with God. We saw one of the scriptures in Ephesians 4 – when is a thief, not a thief? It’s not when he stops stealing; it’s when he works and gives.

We identified different avenues, or ways, evil spirits get in. We saw number one, they come in through legal rights. This is where a person has broken the law of God, and the demon claims a right to access. Remember in Jesus’ teaching, how the demon says “I will return to my house”. If you were listening yesterday, when I began to pray for that girl at the beginning of the meeting, the demon began to speak to me and say “She belongs to me”. In other words, the demon is claiming “this is my house”; or that I have a right to ownership. So, it’s important, if we’re going to set people free, that we remove all rights to ownership. We’ll show you how that’s done quite simply.

Now, for a Christian, Jesus Christ is their owner. Demons can never own a believer. When the Bible says: “we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus”, that means we are purchased, a price has been paid to set us free. A person is saved when they believe in their heart, and confess with their mouth, that Jesus Christ is my new owner, my new lord; and we are moved by the Spirit of God into a new kingdom, with new rights and privileges.

You remember when I was inviting people to come to Christ, I quoted John 1:12; and it says – “To whomever who received Him, even those who believed in His name, He gave the right, the legal right, to become a child of God.” So, when we put our trust in Christ, there is a legal standing, we shift in our legal standing, and we are now privileged to be sons of God and heirs. So, a demon can’t own a Christian, they can just oppress a part of their life.

You may have noticed at the beginning of the corporate prayer, I led people in a confession of faith. “Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, and all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus Christ.” This profession of faith helps position the person for deliverance. When the demon says: “she belongs to me”, it’s absolute nonsense, because the person has already confessed: “I belong to Jesus Christ”. Sometimes I will remind them: “she belongs to Jesus Christ”. So, we saw a major doorway of entry is through legal rights.

A second major doorway is through traumatic experiences, where a person has a painful experience, and it affects them emotionally, and hurts them deeply. Similar experiences can affect different people in different ways. We’ll come back to the trauma area a little later; but let us say this: that when a person has a traumatic experience, the shock can open the door for a spirit to come in. For example, during teenage years, many people have some extremely distressing experiences at school; and the mental pictures and the beliefs that formed often are open doors for demons to affect them.

Then we saw the third area was how people react to painful or traumatic experiences. We’ll come back to each of these a little later.

How is it then that people are set free? What is the basis for setting people free?

We saw first of all, we must know what Jesus has done. We looked at the work on the cross; and what Jesus has done legally for us. You need to know these things; able to quote them, able to speak to demons the Word of God.

Secondly, we looked at what the person’s responsibility is. We found they need to recognise, and take responsibility for their problem. They needed to repent and confess sin, they needed to release forgiveness, and usually to renounce any bondages or agreements that they’ve entered into with evil spirits; and then actually make a stand to resist the devil.

In James 4:7 it says – “Submit to God, or position your life in alignment with heaven. Resist the devil and he will flee from you”. Very clearly from that scripture, we are to position ourselves aligned with God. The word ‘submit yourself’ is the Greek word hupotasso. The word tasso is to position yourself. Hupo is the word beneath. So, hupotasso means literally ‘position yourself and the leadership of Jesus, so together you can get a victory. The word ‘hupotasso’ is a military term. It’s an alignment in God’s order, so that great victory can be won. It would be used of troops aligning for battle. You understand it? It’s not a subservient; it’s actually a functional word.

When it says for example, ‘wives submit to your husbands’, this is not a controlling, superior kind of thing. It’s about alignment for victory. ‘Submit to God’ means: align your life with God’s order. If there’s sin, repent. If there’s unforgiveness, forgive. If there’s bondage, renounce. So, submit. Position yourself you can get the victory.

The second word is the word ‘resist the devil’. That’s the word antitasso. ‘Anti’ means against; ‘Tasso’ means position yourself. You notice the use of the language is ‘position yourself under God, so you’re aligned for victory’; ‘position yourself against the devil, and he must flee or run away from you’. Now, when you look at that scripture, it’s quite clearly puts a responsibility for the person to align themselves and take a position in the battle. Remember that scripture - it’s a very powerful one to remember, when you’re preparing people for ministry. Your role is to help them align with God, and make a stand against the devil.

You can see then, if a person loves their sin, and doesn’t really want to let go of the sin; they’re not submitting to God, and they’re not resisting the devil. If a person is unwilling to forgive, they’re not submitting to God, they’re not submitting to His order, they’re staying on the side of the devil.

In James 4:7 –Submit to God, or position your life in divine order or in align with the kingdom; resist the devil; then it says draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. You see the person is able to move from being oppressed by a spirit, into enjoying the presence of God.

The key point is the issue of change. When we’re ministering to people, we want to help them see what their part is in getting free. Otherwise, we have this kind of ‘victim culture’; or ‘you come to me, I come and fix you’; which keeps the person a victim, and makes you the rescuer. We need to build in people faith for their breakthrough. We need to look at how to do this.

Main Message

What I want to do now, is I want to look at some of the bondages that come in the heart. I want to identify what the bondages are in the heart, and how you could break these bondages. Then, we’ll go back to the doors of entry, identify each one, and show what you do to help a person get free. What we’re going to do now is look at heart bondages.

You remember we saw in Luke 11, the need to remove the armour, so we can then set the person free. I want us to look at a verse in Proverbs 4:23. It says – “Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it, flow the issues of life.” In other words, be a watchman over your heart. The Bible says: there’s a reason you need to guard, or watch, over your heart carefully; because it’s out of your heart that the borders or limitations of your life are established. What is happening in your heart will always find a way to manifest in the world around you.

Jesus said: when people speak, they speak what is in their heart. In Proverbs 4, it says – ‘out of your heart flow the issues of life’. In other words, we don’t just live from our head and our thoughts; we actually live out of the flow of what’s in our heart. If there’s a root of bitterness if your heart, it will just flow like a river of poison, into every relationship you’re in. It will be demonically empowered; and it will just show up in your life. It will defile all your relationships. So, we need to be able to recognise these things, and to deal with the root.

Inevitably, what’s in the heart will find its way out through the words, or the countenance will be seen by its fruit. For example, if someone is bitter, if you ask them “Are you bitter?” They say “No, of course not.” “Are you harbouring deep anger and unforgiveness?” “No. No. Why do you think that?” If you know what to look for, you will find so many people are very bitter. Let me just share what you look for. These are some signs of bitterness flowing. We’re just going off course now, but I may touch it again another time.

Bitterness shows up in a number of ways.

1.) First of all, it shows on the face – there’s no joy. A bitter person cannot be joyful. Their joy doesn’t last, because their heart is bitter.

2.) Secondly, if a person’s got bitterness, often you can see it on them on their face. It looks sour. It just shows on some people. The older they get, the more it shows - it can’t be hidden. You find some people, when they’re older, they’re sweet and loving; other people when they’re older… You can feel it.

3.) Another way it shows is in sharp words. Sharp, cutting words. The word ‘bitter’ means literally ‘to be sharp’. When you hear sharp, cutting words, bitterness underlies it.

4.) It’s also seen by anger that’s suppressed. When a person’s bitter, they often hold anger underneath. You can literally feel their disapproval, but they’re not saying anything.

5.) Another way bitterness shows, is complaining. Complain this, complain that, and complain about something else. They can never rejoice and be thankful.

6.) So, another sign of bitterness is ingratitude; because underlying bitterness is anger and unforgiveness; unforgiveness is a demand. So, when a person is bitter, they can’t be grateful for what they have, there’s still a demand for what they don’t have.

7.) Another evidence of bitterness is blaming. It’s all you. You, you, you. That constant blaming, accusing people, is evidence of bitterness, and resentment, and anger.

8.) Another symptom of bitterness is the inability to congratulate other people on their success. So he gets promoted, “Oh, why did he get promoted. He doesn’t deserve it.” There’s an ability to celebrate the victories of other people.

You ask the person “I think you’re bitter.” “No. Why are you saying this to me?” So, I used that just as an example, to show you that: what is in the heart, will find a way out. These are some of the evidence of bitterness, which is like a root that defiles. So, I just use it to illustrate that if things are in your heart, they find their way out. No matter how much you try to pretend and make your life look good, it flows out; and if you’re spiritually sensitive, you can often feel it. It’s like there’s a tension around the person.

We’ve established then, that whatever’s in your heart will flow out into life. I want to just share with you then, some typical bondages of the heart; and then what do you do to deal with each one of them, because demons will attach to these bondages of the heart and intensify them. It’s very helpful, when you’re ministering people, to be aware you have to deal with heart issues. Here’s a list of some of the ones I have commonly found – bondages that affect the heart of people, and affect their lives. Later on we’ll talk about trauma as something specifically separate.

Number one: Ungodly Soul-Ties. A soul-tie is a bonding between one person and another. It holds them in close connection. It is a bonding between people. God intends that we be connected, and bond to other people. So, bonding is a very important aspect in life. For example, a child needs to bond with its mother, or it never forms secure relationships. So, bonding is the very first skill a child must learn. Bond with the mother; and of course later, it leads to learn to separate.

When they’re up to about 15 months, they cling to mum; and they breast-feed, they’re looked after. Then, about 2 years old, they become independent. “No, no. I want me.” All these kinds of things; but this is normal development. If the child doesn’t bond with the mother - and sometimes happens if the mother attempted an abortion, or didn’t want the child - then the child has difficulties all through its life, and forms ungodly attachments to try to meet this insecurity. A soul tie then, is a bonding between two people; and the bonding can be very positive and helpful, or it can be ungodly.

Examples that are healthy include: the mother and the child; husband and a wife; members of a church; friends, close friends. So, the bonding is good; it’s an attachment that enables you to have close connections. So, we can be bonded. We’re made to be bonded and have relationships.

Now, the devil doesn’t create anything new. He just perverts what God has set in place. So, a soul tie can be ungodly. An ungodly soul tie is a bonding that is destructive, or brings negative energy into the person’s life. They are attached, but it’s not healthy. They are attached, and it’s an ungodly attachment. They’re attached, and demonic spirits use it to defile them. This is far more common than you realise – a soul attachment that is ungodly, and creates a doorway for demonic spirits.

Let me give you some examples of some ungodly attachments. The first one, if people have sexual relationship or intimacy without being married, they bond together; and that is an ungodly soul tie. Sexual relationships before marriage lead to a number of soul ties to the different partners – it’s like an invisible cord, attaching the person back to the other person; and their heart wants to return to that person, and it can’t fully enter into marriage. They keep remembering the sexual images, and the things they’ve done together, and demonic spirits torment their soul. So you need to be aware, if you’re dealing with sexual sin, it’s not enough to cast out the demons; you need to deal with the soul tie. Break the soul tie.

Proverbs says: a man shall be held by the cords of his sin. I used to think that, like sin wrap cords all around you. I now understand that they’re like invisible cords, which take you back to where you sinned, and hold you back in time with that experience. People can be soul-tied to a controlling person. The person is so much under the control of another, it’s like there’s an attachment to that person; they can’t break free and form their own life. A soul tie needs to be broken, because it’s like a co-dependant relationship. A person can be soul-tied to an abusive person. Even though they’ve been hurt, it’s like ‘I can’t seem to break free of the person.’

A person can be soul-tied to someone they have an infatuation with. This is where the danger comes in counselling. If a man counsels a woman, there can be an unhealthy soul-tie formed between them. Maybe one to the other; or it may be just the other way around. Sometimes people get soul-tied to a dead person. In other words, maybe a grandmother – they were very close to the grandmother, because there was a conflict in the family. Even though the person has died, it’s like they haven’t let go, they’re still attached.

People can be soul-tied to pornographic images and websites. So, when men look at a woman, look at pornographic sites and the images, their soul can be attached to those things, and then a spirit comes through that soul tie. One of the worst aspects of pornography is, it actually physically alters the brain; and repeated exposure forms neuron paths in the brain like tracks. So, the slightest trigger, and the man or woman’s thinking go down this track towards perverse things.

So there are soul ties that need to be broken. Attachments to images, attachments to websites; because a person becomes addicted to a website, and they may have paid money to go on the website, now they’re trading with a spirit of perversion; trading with a spirit of prostitution. So there’s a soul tie to the images and to the sites that they’ve gone to.

With women, it’s often like a romantic fantasy. So, they may become soul-tied to some character in a soap opera; or they begin to fantasise about some pastor, some spiritual leader, and have all of these fantasies in their mind – they’re soul-tied to them.

People who worship idols can become soul-tied to the idol. So, these are some of the areas where people can become bonded in an unnatural way. It can be that a certain kind of sexual fantasies, the person becomes bonded. So, whenever there’s an ungodly attachment, demonic spirits use the attachment as a way accessing the person’s life to torment them, and energise that problem.

So, how do you deal with a soul tie? Very simple, there’re just two steps to it. First, the person needs to renounce the soul tie. That means to speak words that cancel it. So, they must recognise the attachment, and then renounce it. They must want to turn away from it, not just continue to entertain it. The person then would just say: “In Jesus’ name, I renounce this soul tie, I renounce this attachment in my soul to the sexual relationship, to this image, to this idol, to this fantasy, to this website, I renounce the soul tie.”

That’s the first step. The second step – when you’re ministering to the person, speak as though you’re cutting something. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break that soul tie, I cut that attachment, I break it in Jesus’ name”. See yourself like you’re taking the sword of the Spirit and cutting it. What’ll happen is, sometimes demons manifest, even the moment you do that. So, if there’re sexual soul-ties to various people, I just picture these long cords going back, and say: “Jesus, I break them, I break them, I break them.” When you picture something, it tends to put faith or confidence that what you’re doing has effect.

One area I forgot to mention, an important area related to soul ties, is that people can be soul-tied to a trauma. When you minister to trauma, one thing that’s important to do is, to break the soul tie to the trauma. It’s like the person is frozen in time, and in their memory, they’re attached back to something that happened years ago.

The second heart bondage is the area of bitter root judgements. A bitter judgement is a judgement that’s made out of feelings of bitterness and resentment. It causes a cycle of reaping to take place in the person’s life. For example, “You can never trust a man; they’ll always let you down.” “You can never trust a woman, they’ll always try and control you.” “Don’t trust authorities, they’ll always abuse you.” “Never trust anyone; people will always let you down.” Now, those are judgements. Bitter judgements often have the word ‘always’ or ‘never’ in them. “Never trust a man. They’ll always let you down.” There are so many different kinds of judgements: “I’ll never succeed. I always fail. Nothing I do ever works out.”

You notice there’s a common thread of negative bitterness in there. When there is bitterness in our heart, and we make a judgement, it’s like negative faith. We begin to attract into our life, the very judgement we’ve made. Notice what it says in Hebrews 12: 14 – 15, it says “Pursue peace with all people, in holiness without which no one will see the Lord, looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness spring up, cause trouble, and by this, many become defiled.” A bitter root judgement is a reaction to being hurt. You may have been hurt by one or two men, and then you judge “all men are like this”.

Jesus said in Matthews 7:1-2, “Don’t judge, or you will be judged. For whatever judgement you judge with, you will be judged. In the measure you judge, it’ll be measured back to you.” So, when we face difficult or painful circumstances in life, we choose whether we release grace into it, or judgement. If you release judgement, you set in place a cycle of reaping the very thing you judged. For example, a woman who judges her father bitterly will usually attract a person into their life who’s just like their father. It’s like a belief that that’s what will happen. It literally attracts and draws into the person the very thing that they’ve judged. You would be amazed how frequently the problem a person has, is a reflection of something they walked away from in their home life.

I prayed for one woman who was deeply bitter that her mother had adopted her. Her whole life had been negatively affected. Then I found to my amazement, she did the very same thing. It’s like what she was reaping in her life was the very thing she had judged. So, when you judge something or someone, you set in process of reaping the same thing somewhere in your own life. So, a woman who judges her father will most likely end up attracting a man just like him. A woman who judges her mother will turn out exactly like her. All the time hating it; and not even seeing that she’s just like her mother.

So, bitter root judgements are important to cancel. A bitter root judgement is a reaction, judging someone because of a painful experience. Here’s the problem: people often forget they made the judgement. Once they make a judgement, it becomes demonically empowered, and then they begin to reap the same thing over and over in their life.

How does the person get out of the judgement? Firstly, they need to recognise there’s judgement taking place. Acknowledge the pain, it’s important to acknowledge the pain; forgive the person they’re angry with; and then cancel the judgement. Renounce it. “In Jesus’ name, I renounce each bitter judgement I made against my father. I renounce each bitter judgement I made against men. I cancel that judgement; and I bless and forgive.” Then, once that has happened, you can “In Jesus’ name, I break that judgement over your life. I break that cycle over your life. Spirits of bitterness - go.” Because inevitably, there’ll be spirits associated with it.

Another heart bondage is the area of Inner Vows. A vow is a promise you make. An inner is a vow you make into yourself. It’s a promise you make as a reaction to being hurt. Usually, an inner vow consists of the words: “I will never”, or: “I will”. It’s an inward vow that’s made, and once you make the inner vow, it locks into place in your life, and becomes demonically empowered. Often the person forgets they’ve made the vow. Whenever there’s an inner vow, there’ll also be roots of bitterness that are just growing deeper and deeper in the person’s soul.

I’ll give you an example. I had a woman that came to a Bible school I was speaking at, and she brought her husband and her baby with her. She said: “I want to thank you for your teaching on inner vows.” I said: “Tell me what’s happened.” She said: “Well, I have two children. The first child, the pregnancy was so difficult, that I vowed I would never have another child. I was so sick, and so distressed, I vowed I’ll never have another child. After the child was born, I forgot all about that; and I wanted another child; and we tried and we had three miscarriages. I finally decided to come to Bible school. When I heard about inner vows, I renounced the inner vow, I cancelled the vow I had made, and by the end of the year, I was pregnant and we have had another child. We would not have had this child unless we had dealt with the inner vow.”

She had vowed to herself: ‘I will never carry another child’; and her body responded, and rejected all other children. So, when a woman has miscarried, and it happens several times, you have to consider the possibility that there may be inner vows; or in the case of miscarriages, maybe idolatry.

So, how do you deal with an inner vow? The person needs to acknowledge the pain of the situation; if necessary, release forgiveness; and then renounce the inner vow. Renounce and cancel the inner vow. Then, you can just say: “In Jesus’ name, I break that inner vow. I release you from it.” It’s just as simple as that. It may be there are spirits attached to it, there could be spirits of bitterness and fear; but the inner vow itself is very easy to break. The person renounces the vow, and you just say: “In Jesus’ name, I break that inner vow now. I release you.” Sometimes deliverance happens immediately.

I remember one man I prayed for, and he was extremely wealthy, but he was extremely driven. There was no rest inside him. When we talk with him and interacted with him, we found that he had grown up in a family that was very poor; and he had been embarrassed by the clothes they used to wear to school. So, he made an inner vow: “I will never be poor. I will work and have money.” Now he had money, he couldn’t stop working; and he couldn’t enjoy what he had, because in his own heart he believed he was poor, and he was driven by this inner vow. No matter how much he had, it was never enough. He just had to keep working to get more. So, his family was deeply hurt by this drive in his life. He needed to renounce that inner vow, and release or acknowledge the grief and pain he’d experienced as a child.

Here’s another one – word curses. A word curse is a negative pronouncement over a person. In Proverbs 18:21 – “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”. So, there are two forms of word curses. Firstly, self-cursing; a person speaks words that literally curse themselves. They speak into their own heart words which are negative, destructive. For example, a death-wish: “I just wish I was dead.” Often when people are in pain, they make a death wish. “I wish I was dead. I’d be better off dead.” They come into an agreement with a spirit of death, and it affects their life, and numbs their heart. So, this is an important area to deal with.

You’ll find often when people have been sexually abused, or abandoned in a relationship, or abused in a relationship, they just wish they were dead. So, in a prolonged period of stress and pain, the person may make a death wish. “I wish I was dead.” They may forget they made it, but find that their heart is numbed, and they can’t seem to experience God, or experience relationships.

The person may have just spoken words of failure into their own life. “I’m useless. I’m stupid. I’m never good enough.” Those words become an ungodly belief system in their heart. They’re like bitter judgments. “No one will ever want me. No one would ever accept me. I’m unwanted.” Almost all of these things are quite short, but they form a belief structure in the heart, that demons inhabit and use to torment them. When you believe a lie, spirits of death and hell are able to enter and torment.

Word curses can come from other people, for example, words spoken by your parents or authority figures; school teachers; spiritual leaders. Spiritual leaders have to be quite careful, because you can very easily curse people, by speaking words of failure or negative words over them. So, words of failure, name calling. These kinds of things can be like fiery darts, which go into the person.

Sometimes people grow up and they have humiliating experiences at school. Teacher says: “You’re stupid. You’ll never come to anything. You’ll never pass that. You’re a failure.” Those words, if the person agrees with them, they sit in the heart as a negative belief; and then that belief begins to control their life. So you find when you’re dealing with people, or working with people, you just need to be aware of these kinds of word-curses, or failure-statements, that the person believes.

I prayed for one church leader recently, and her father was part of a big family, and they could only afford to educate one son. He was very smart, but the family could not afford to send him to university. So, he became very bitter because of this. He felt, all his life, that he’d been cheated and robbed. He had one child – a daughter. So, he put a pressure on her to live out his expectations. He wanted her to fulfil his dreams, and so he pressured her all the time academically. No matter what she did, it’s never good enough. Constantly he pressured her. Every time she did anything, he would find fault, and he would scold her, and tell her she could do better. So she grew up lacking love and affirmation; and believed in her heart: “I’ll never be good enough”; and she formed bitter judgements against her father.

Then when I checked out her leadership, I asked about her leadership in the church. Guess what she was doing? She was putting huge pressure on her members, trying to get them to perform, just like her father had done to her; and she’s constantly finding fault in them. Nothing they do is good enough. In other words, there was an outflow of bitterness in her life, and it didn’t matter what she did, it was never good enough. So, demonic spirits were tormenting her through these belief systems she had in her heart. These are some of the heart bondages that form, that people need release from.

Another kind of curse that comes over a person is a curse of secrecy, where a person has been sexually abused by someone, and the person says: “you mustn’t tell anyone. If you tell someone, you’ll be responsible for our family breaking down. You’ll kill your father/ mother.” So, this vow of secrecy creates a huge problem over people’s lives. You’ll be surprised, when you’re praying for people who have been sexually abused, how frequently there is this vow of secrecy over them. The result is they live tormented by spirits of death and hell. They are angry, because they want to tell someone about what’s happened, but they’re fearful if they speak, their family will blow up. So, terrible despair and torment comes around people like that.

It’s very easy to deal with these things. Where there are word curses spoken by the person, spoken by someone else, or even vows of secrecy, you just need to: acknowledge this is what it is; the person needs to release forgiveness to those who hurt them; and renounce the words. “I renounce the vow of secrecy. I renounce the vow. I renounce those words I spoke. I renounce that curse I spoke over me. I refuse those words I listened to.” Once the person has renounced it, you just say: “In Jesus’ name, I break the cursing.” Command all spirits associated with the curse to go.

So these are some of the burdens that come on people. You can see then, that bondages that get in the heart affect the person’s life. We’ll in another session on the area of trauma, and how trauma affects people’s heart. So with these bondages of the heart, if you can just be aware of them – soul ties, bitter judgements, inner vows, cursing, self-cursing, and these kinds of things spoken over a person’s life. If we’re aware of those things, we can cancel them and break them, and set the person free. Amen.

It’s quite simple. All you need to do is uncover it, get the person to renounce it, and then cancel its power. Command any spirits associated with it to come out; but if you don’t know those things are there, you’ll try and do deliverance, and there’d be all these areas of bondage, that the demons use to resist. If we remove the structures in the person’s life, the demons must come out. You see, the process of deliverance is not just casting the demons out. It’s looking at the life and heart of the person, tearing down the demonic house, and then confronting the spirits.

In one of the sessions, I will just give you a list of things to look for as you are working with people, so when someone comes to you with an issue, if you just mentally have this list of things, you can just know where to look. Often the problem is that we don’t know where to look. So we try to deal with exterior things, rather than heart things. “Out of the heart flow the issues of life.” If the person’s soul-tied, break the soul tie. If there are bitter judgements and expectations, break those. If there are inner vows, break the inner vows. If there are word curses, break the word curses. If there are traumatic pictures, break the attachment to the trauma. Then we’re able to get the person free quite easily. Amen.

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Explains three main legal grounds, upon which demons can gain access to your life: generational curses; the occult; and sexual sin. The issues and bondages that come into our lives through these door ways can be broken and cast out by the power of the Holy Spirit, because we are redeemed and set free by the Cross of Jesus Christ. We need to acknowledge and identify these areas of sin; then renounce and release forgiveness as necessary; then call upon the name of Jesus, who will set your free!

Review

Welcome back. We were looking last time, the last session, at the issues of the heart, dealing with root issues in the heart. We explained what some of them were, and how, when people go through difficult experiences, they react, and this forms bondages within their heart. If we don’t deal with what lies in the heart, you won’t in the end, get the person free.

So, what we’ve done is to show you some of the bondages that the heart can be gripped by: ungodly soul ties; bitter root judgements and expectations; negative expectations of the future; inward vows; traumatic experiences; word curses. All of these things bring bondages to the heart, and when we’re thinking of setting people free, we need to be aware of those bondages, and how simple it is to break them. The challenging part is rebuilding the life forward.

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We want to just look at the area of legal rights. The most common doors of entry are: legal rights that are given up by the person through sin. Again, the key to dealing with each one is usually quite simple. Once you have these keys, and a strategy of working with people, you’ll find a huge improvement in the results you get with people when you’re ministering to them. So, we looked at some of the heart bondages.

Now let’s have a look at some of the legal rights. A legal right is a ground or area, that the evil spirit claims a right to have a hold on the person. It’s always a sin base - either someone’s broken the law intentionally, or accidently. So demons really have no power over people, but they try to deceive people, and draw them to break the law of God.

Let’s just identify some of the common ones; and with each legal ground, we’ll just show you simply how you deal with it.

1.) Generational Curses and Iniquity. A curse is a spiritual power that operates until it’s stopped. An Iniquity is crookedness, or twist, or a bent towards a certain kind of problem or failure. So, a generational iniquity or curse is a problem that passes down from one generation to another. From a natural perspective, when you go to the doctor, he’ll ask your family medical history; when you go to the insurance company, they’ll also ask your family medical history; because they recognise that some weaknesses or illnesses come down genetically through the family line.

God considers us connected generationally, so spiritual influences can run from one generation to another. If you violate the laws of God, and open the door for an evil spirit, then generations after you can experience the effect of that.

For example, in Exodus 20, God speaks to His people about idolatry. In verses 3 – 6: “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

So God is speaking here about the generational consequences of idolatry. To “visit the iniquity” means the crookedness, or tendency to sin, spreads from one generation to another. If you think 4 generations, you’re thinking – you, your father, grandfather, great-grandfather- there’s a lot of people in that family grouping. In one part I think Deuteronomy 23, it says – illegitimacy brings a curse from to 10 generations. In Deuteronomy 23 it also says that incest will bring a curse for 10 generations. So just to summarise: the sins of one generation can have consequences that go on for generations.

So what happens is, a demonic spirit that enters the family line; and because you are legally and genetically connected to that family line, the evil spirit has a right of access to your life. So many times when we’re praying for people, we find that the source (or the root) where this problem began was beyond them, but was in their family line. So when families have been involved in idolatry, or with forms of spiritism, divination, sorcery, there’s an open door created in the family line.

Now, we are not responsible for what our parents did; we are only responsible for what we do. However, the consequences of what they do, we can experience. How is it that these problems keep repeating one generation to another? Some of it may be in the DNA. Scientists don’t yet know enough about DNA to know how it could be corrupted by sin, so some can be genetic. Some are spirits, evil spirits that are in the family line. Some behaviour is just learnt – people copy their parents. We need to understand that Jesus has made room for this power of iniquity and cursing to be broken.

Let me give you an example of a generational curse. I was asked by a woman in New Zealand to pray for her. I said: “What is your problem?” She told me the problem, and what I always ask is: when did this problem begin; because it can give a clue if a situation is generational. This is the problem she had: she was tormented in her mind by sexual images. They were sexual images of a perverse nature; and she was single, and she was a Christian worker. I said: “Have you ever been involved in sexual sin?” “No.” “Have you ever been sexually abused?” The answer was no. “How long have you had this problem?” “Pretty well most of my life.”

So when a person says: “Most of my life”, or “It began when I was young”, this is a clue it could be generational. So I asked about her family background, and it was very interesting what she told me. Her grandparents had been missionaries in China, and they had a son and a daughter. They sent the children to school in another province, and when the Japanese invaded China in the 30s, they took over the province that these kids were at school; the children were taken prisoner by the Japanese, and the girl was sexually abused by Japanese soldiers. She was about 12 or 13. Eventually the children were rescued, and the parents left the mission field. This woman grew up, she got married, and she had one child - the girl who I was praying for - and the marriage broke up.

Now it’s not surprising the marriage broke up, because she carried the trauma of sexual abuse by these Japanese soldiers; and in those days, you just didn’t talk about anything, you just buried it. So when she was sexually abused, demonic spirits entered the family line; and these were the cause of this young girl, who’s now grown up, being traumatised. The problems this woman was facing, did not originate with anything she had done. They originated in what had happened to her mother, and so the spirits had come down the family line, and were affecting her. We led her to pray and forgive the Japanese soldiers, to stand on behalf of the family and break the cursing that’s over them, and then she was delivered, and her mind cleared.

I’ve prayed for many people that the cause of their problem has been generational. Young men, young women, tormented with demons, and it’s not their fault. It came down the family line. This is particularly so if there’s: idolatry; any form of spiritism; any form of sexual perversion; a door is opened for these cursings to come.

When you’re working with people, and you’re trying to solve a problem in their life, inquire to search for when this problem began. The person is responsible for their own life, just like this woman’s problem was her problem. It was her battle. It was her demons. But the root where this thing had got established was generational. So when you’re working with people, try to assess whether the problem has got a generational root that’s energising the problem.

I remember coming across this first in a Christian school; and we observed an interesting thing. We had all these children, they all had to learn or memorise Bible verses; and there were 3 children in the school, they could remember anything except the Bible. There were 2 from one family, 3 from another family. None of them could remember scripture. They’d learn it; then it’s gone! They could not hold scripture in their mind; but they could learn other things. I really prayed to find out why it is these children cannot learn scripture.

Then I came across it one day. The parents, the father in both families, had been involved with freemasonry. They’d been involved as a freemason. They’d made these curses, or these oaths of allegiance to freemasonry, and it had opened the door for evil spirits to come into the family. Even though the children had done nothing, there were demonic spirits that tormented and stopped them from retaining spiritual things. So when we broke the curses of freemasonry, they were able to memorise scripture. It’s like there was a confusion that left. There were no big manifestations; just they were able to learn scripture. That was one of my first experiences of how curses can come down family lines.

I’ve prayed for very many people where the origin of the problem was in their family background. If you check the family tree, the problems are quite easy to pick up. If you start to pray for them to be exposed, it’s quite surprising how they just suddenly come out to the open. Now there are usually indications that a spirit is operating, or a curse is operating. I’ll give you some examples of a curse operating; what sorts of things you’d be looking for. If you look into the family tree, these are the kinds of things you’d look for, and these are all located in Deuteronomy 28.

Here they are, just quickly and simply. So if there are curses operating in a family - there may be a pattern of mental or emotional breakdowns; there may a chronic sickness and disease that won’t go away; there may be patterns of barrenness or miscarriages, bleeding problems; there may be marriage and family breakdowns; there can be financial setbacks and losses; you could have problems with being accident prone; there could be a history of suicides or violent deaths; there could be a pattern of mistreatment or abuse; there could be patterns of inability to settle – the person’s constantly moving around; or the person may just find that there’s constant spiritual problems.

So, when you’re working with someone, try to track the problems to the root, because often they’re in the family line. How do you deal then, with a demonic curse, or curse operating in the family line? It’s actually really quite simple. I’ll give you the steps.

First, it has to be recognised of course. So, we would identify – “Look, this began in your family line, and it’s continued with you.” So this is what you do... This is what the person needs to do: Firstly, the person needs to renounce the curse in the family line, as a representative of the family. They need to stand up, representing the family, and renounce the curse. If they have sinned themselves in the same way, they need to ask forgiveness for being a part of this. Thirdly, they need to release forgiveness to family members who opened the door for the curse. Release forgiveness. Finally, place the cross of Jesus between them and their family line, and ask Jesus to set them free.

So if you are praying for someone, and there’s a generational curse, you lead them in a prayer, something like this. 1) Confession of faith: “Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, all iniquity. I belong to Jesus.” That’s called a profession of faith.

“I stand as a representative of this family. I renounce this curse. I cancel its power. I break all agreements made with evil spirits in my family line. I break all dedications of children to idols and temples - in Jesus’ name.” You see, we’ve dismantled the things that have been done, by speaking words. So first, the profession of faith, position yourself. Second, stand and speak to break the curses. Third, release forgiveness. Then get the person reach out to Jesus to get them free.

I’ll go through it again now and pray a prayer. Firstly, the confession of faith: “Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse; every evil spirit; all iniquity. I stand now as a representative of my family. I renounce every curse, every generational curse, all agreements my family have made with evil spirits, every dedication of children to evil spirits. I cancel all of those agreements now. I hold the cross of Christ between me and my family line. Lord I ask You to forgive me for where I’ve participated in this sin; and I forgive my family members who opened the door to this spirit. Now Lord, I ask that You set me free. Satan, go from my life now.”

Notice in making up that prayer, it consists of those things which I shared with you were foundations for freedom. Confession of faith; recognising and being responsible for the sin; repenting of it; releasing forgiveness; and then renouncing and resisting the devil. The exact order you pray these things, and the exact wording, is not important. Catch the process and the way of handling it. I’ll just go through it again.

“Father, I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, all iniquity, and every evil spirit. I belong to Jesus Christ. I stand as a representative of my family. I renounce every generational curse, all agreements my family have made with evil spirits, all dedications of children idols and temples. I renounce and cancel all of these agreements. I hold the blood of Jesus Christ, and the cross of Christ, between me and my family line. Lord I ask You to forgive me, where I have participated in these sins; and I release forgiveness to my family members who opened the door to that sin. Lord, I reach out to You to set me free. Satan, go from my life now.”

Ok. Now that’s a simple prayer. Then, often as you lead them in that prayer, the demons start to manifest. So then all you have to do is very simply this: “In Jesus’ name, I break the family curses... break them in Jesus’ name.” See it like something attached to the person - and speak to it. Speak with authority; not loud, but firm. “I break that curse. I break all agreements with evil spirits. I break dedications to idols and temples. I break this curse in Jesus’ name. I break soul ties to idols. Now I command these spirits to come out. Out, in Jesus’ name.”

It’s not hard, once you get the understanding of the flow of ministry. When a person sins, they enter into legal agreements with the demon; so by confession, they are reversing it all. Confessing their faith in Christ; bringing sin to the light; cancelling its consequences; and then reaching out to Jesus to set them free. It’s quite easy to do it. How many reckon you can do that? That’s not so hard, quite simple!

Now remember, depend on the Holy Spirit to guide you. Don’t worry about trying to get the exact wording right, or you’ll focus on methods rather than the flow of the Spirit. So that’s one major doorway of entry, and it’s a very common one.

2.) Another common one is occult involvement. In Deuteronomy 18: 9 – 13, ““When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations, the LORD your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God.”

People have a fascination, or a fear, of the spirit world. Today, the media are invading the generation of young people, with supernatural videos and movies and all kinds of things like that. There is a generation arising hungry for the supernatural, and there’s a generation existing, that’s afraid of the supernatural.

In every culture you go, people are aware of a hidden spirit world; and people reach out into that spirit world, hoping for usually one of three things, or more. They reach out for protection, because they’re afraid of the evil spirits; they make offerings to them, not realising that when they make the offering, they’re now submitting and trading with the demon. So when a person makes any offering to an idol, or any kind of sacrifice to an evil spirit, it is now trading with a demon, and the demon has legal access to their life. They have done a trade. Trading is an agreement. The moment a person bows to an idol, or makes an offering, it has come into agreement with an evil spirit.

Usually it’s for protection; or it can be for provision – blessing on life and finances; or it’s to get power over their enemies. It doesn’t matter what culture you go into, you will find people involved in the spirit world.

The major branches of the occult are twofold. 1) Divination. Divination is another word for fortune telling. Chinese love fortune telling, they love it! When they become Christians, they want to have a Christian fortune-teller: “Please come and prophesy for me.”

So fortune-telling is reaching to the spirit world for guidance. How accurate is that guidance? The reality is that the spirit world is very highly connected - it’s like there’s a demonic internet. They can connect and communicate. So when you reach into the spirit world, you do not connect with a ghost of an uncle, or father, or mother. The Bible says it is appointed to man once to die; after that, judgement.

So people connect with a familiar spirit -a spirit which can give information about the family which is accurate. Because spirits observe people, they’re aware of what they do; and if you consult someone who’s connected to an evil spirit, you can receive information about your family which may be quite accurate; but in doing so, you come under the influence of the spirit. You’ve invited it now to speak into your life.

Evil spirits do not know your future - it is hidden from them. Some aspects of your life are open to them, but they see things God is bringing to you, and they try to disrupt that. If a person goes to a fortune-teller, and listen to the words, literally what they’re doing is agreeing with a demon, and it then becomes empowered to manipulate their circumstances. It becomes addictive, to the point where people can’t make major decisions without consulting the fortune-teller. Today they call those people ‘psychics’, and they have these psychic hotlines, but it’s actually a familiar spirit working with the person.

The other branch of the occult is sorcery. Another word for sorcery is magic; or spiritual power. So people get involved with sorcery, usually because they’re rejected and bitter, and they want power. It becomes extremely addictive, because once the person connects with evil spirits, they feel they want more and more power. Every culture you go to, you’ll find sorcerers; and the more primitive the culture, the more you’ll find it holds, literally, whole villages under its power.

For example, in the days of Marco Polo, Marco Polo visited a man by the name of Kublai Khan; and he witnessed to him. Kublai Khan, Mongolian, father of Genghis Khan. Kublai Khan said this to him: “I observe your Christianity would be good for my nation. I am willing to embrace Christianity.” Now that’s a key point in history. But he said: “However, if you look around me, you see I’m surrounded by sorcerers; and they have real power. They can make a cup lift off the ground and travel across the room and come down in front of me. They can change the weather; and I fear they have power to kill me. So go back to where you’ve come from, and return with a hundred men, who know how to move in the power of God, and can overcome these sorcerers; and I and my nation will turn to Christ.”

This is a strategic moment in history; but when Marco Polo went back, it was 25 years before anyone came; they sent 2 people, not a hundred, and one died on the way there. The nation did not turn to Christ; and subsequently, Genghis Khan literally invaded all of Asia. It would have been under the gospel centuries ago, except for the hold of sorcerers on this king’s life.

Now this is quite a growing problem again. I was in a Bible school, and I had a word of knowledge on a young man addicted to playing an online game called World of Warcraft. It’s one of many games very popular among young people; but in this game, they role-play. They act out, in their imagination, the part. This young man had taken on the role of a sorcerer; and so he would use powers to defeat his enemies and increase in power; but he could become addicted to playing the game. Now he was in the hold of a demonic spirit.

I said to him: “This is what Jesus’ words are. ‘If you look on a woman to lust after her, in your heart, you’ve already committed adultery.’” In other words, Jesus is saying: what is birthed in the heart becomes real in the spirit world. So a person can have adultery already living in their heart, but they’ve not actually committed the physical act. They’ve opened their life to a spirit of adultery. I said: “Your imagination is a doorway to the spirit world; and by giving yourself to this game, you have given yourself to this demonic spirit; and a spirit of sorcery has come into your life.”

So I got him to renounce the game, renounce the identity he was playing. The moment he did, the demon manifested on his face, and he fell on the ground, began to yell; and we got him delivered. So even though he hadn’t actually been involved in sorcery at a practical level, he had engaged on it through the internet, and become demonised.

We had an alter call and over 200 students came up and they got delivered of the same kind of thing. These are people who come to study in Bible school, to learn how to be a leader; but in their personal life, they’re engaging in sorcery. So we need to understand, sorcery is a significant problem to this next generation. The media is full of it; the movies are full of it; and young people are drawn to these things.

What I shared about the addiction to the video games of sorcery, also applies to games of violence. In a recent interview on Discovery channel, with a man who murdered his parents, it turns out he was very bitter against them because he was adopted. Even though the parents tried to care for him, he was bitter against them; and in his teen years, he immersed himself in his room, watching TV and programs over and over again. In his imagination, he saw him living out one of the characters in ‘The Matrix’. One day, he just shot his parents in cold blood.

Now the murder shocked everyone; but it was already building in his heart before it got there. It was very clear, as I watched him on the television, he had a generational illegitimacy - bitter roots against his parents who adopted him; spirits of abandonment; bitter roots against the adoptive parents; hatred that had been nurtured over a period of time; and then through the fantasy realm, had just activated a spirit of murder in his life.

He could’ve been helped if someone knew what to do; if someone knew to deal with the generational roots, and deal with the fantasy that had come into his mind. So how do we deal with occult roots? Very simply: the person needs to acknowledge they’ve been involved in these things; they need to confess and repent of them; and then renounce all agreements they made with the evil spirits. They must cancel all agreements made with evil spirits. If they cut themselves, or invited the spirits in; whatever thing they were involved in, they need to renounce it; and then reach out to Jesus to set them free.

If I was leading someone through a prayer like that, I would first start with a confession of faith. “Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, from every evil spirit, from the power of sin. Lord I confess to You now, that I have been involved in the occult in these ways; and I ask You to forgive me. I renounce now, I cancel all agreements I have made with evil spirits. I cancel them, I reject them, and I reject the spirits. Lord, I release forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me, and I ask You to set me free. Satan, go from my life now, in Jesus’ name.”

You see its similar process. It’s made up with the same bricks that we shared on the foundations for freedom. Once you’ve got that process, it’s quite easy to apply it in each place. You may vary it a little, in its order or its wording, depending on what the Holy Spirit says. So then, how do you minister? First, break the agreements. Second, command the spirits. Break the agreements, command the spirits. “In Jesus’ name, I break every tie to this evil spirit. I break the agreements you made.” Or maybe: “I break the soul-tie to that fantasy game. I break the attachments to that spirit.” Now sometimes, even as you break those attachments, or break the agreements, sometimes even at that point, the demon starts manifesting. “Now, come out! Out!” Command the spirits to come out.

So it’s quite straightforward. Using those foundational blocks for freedom, the person will: acknowledge their sin; confess it to the Lord; renounce the agreements; release forgiveness to others; ask the Lord to set them free, resist the demon. You break the curses, break any attachments, break any agreements, and command the demons to come out. Straightforward isn’t it?

3.) There’s another third area. The third area is sexual sin. Sexual sin opens the door for spirits to enter people’s lives. The reason is this: God has set a law in place, that two become one flesh through sexual union. So when a person is involved sexually with another person, there is a joining or a bonding of their lives together. In 1 Corinthians 6, it tells us that: ‘he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit; but if you’re joined to a prostitute, you’re one flesh’. In 1 Corinthians 6:18, it warns us that every sin is outside your body; but sexual sin, something is imparted into you. Luke 4:33-36, there’s a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit.

Sexual sin affects people in different ways. 1) There is a soul tie formed to that person. 2) There are memories, pictures of what they did, and what they experienced. 3) There are reactions in the heart when the relationship breaks up. So when a person has been involved with someone sexually, and the relationship breaks up, there’s always grief. Often because of the pain, people make bitter judgements about men or women; they make inner vows; or even death wishes to try and shut down the pain. 4) Demonic spirits that can enter the person’s life.

Sexual sin affects people deeply. God wants us to be clean, so we can love and worship. It’s very common for people who’ve been involved in sexual sin, to find it hard to worship without unclean pictures coming into their mind. So one of the unfortunate consequences of sexual sin, is there are imprints into your mind as a result of these experiences. The journey of freedom can take a little bit of time.

When we are dealing with sexual sin, we are dealing: 1) with the spiritual issues – which is sin being confessed and repented of, and demonic spirits being cast out; 2) we’re dealing with the soul ties, the attachments to other people. 3) We’re dealing with the defilement in the soul – reactions to being hurt; and lasting impressions, or toxic memories, that are there. People can be forgiven in a moment, just by confessing the sin. They can be delivered in a short time; but the mind then, needs to be renewed, so they begin to pursue holiness and purity, and overcome the invading sexual temptations.

In the area of sexual sin, we need to understand that the Bible teaches very strongly and clearly about its dangers. The reason the Bible speaks so strongly about it, is not because it’s worse than any other sin. Sexual sins are sins; it’s because the impact on people’s ability to be intimate with God, and with one another, is deeply affected. God made us for relationships. He gave the power to be able to express love in an intimate way. So, when we’re involved in sexual sin, it affects people’s ability to be intimate, to be close and feel loved. It affects people’s ability to form relationships. It’s like a constant polluting of the mind.

The kinds of areas that you need to be able to identify are the following kind of sins. Now the church needs to be able to speak really clean, clearly into this area. It’s a far bigger problem than you realise; and because there’s a shame and secrecy over it, these problems go underground, and people live tormented with these unclean things going on in their life. They conceal it, and then become isolated because of it.

Some examples of sexual sin: Fornication – that’s sexual sin, you’re not married; Homosexuality, Lesbianism; Pornography. I believe habitual masturbation is a major problem; Sodomy, or anal sex; Prostitution; Rape, or sexually molesting someone; Incest (sexual relationships between people in the same family); Adultery; and Bestiality (sexual connection with animals); then just the whole realm of fantasy and perversion.

We need to understand that the Bible has got a lot to say about these things. We need to learn how to minister to people to set them free. This can be a whole area of addiction in a person’s life, and they may need to go through a course, to help reprogram their lives to be free. But at a very simple level of ministering to people, this is what they would need to do.

1.) Acknowledge the sin. Acknowledge specifically what it is; and confess it to the Lord. Repent of it. Remember that’s our first step, so lead the person to confess their sin. “Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess these sins of fornication, of pornography. I bring them to the cross, and ask You to forgive me.” Assure people of the promise: if we confess, then we are forgiven. So, number 1, people need to confess the sin.

2.) They need to renounce ungodly sexual soul-ties: “In Jesus’ name, I cancel ungodly sexual soul ties to each person I’ve been involved sexually with; each image I’ve been attached to; each fantasy I’ve allowed to live in my mind. I renounce the soul ties to it now.” Little by little, you just dismantle this thing.

3.) Now we deal with reactions. “Lord, I renounce now, bitter judgements I made against the opposite sex. I renounce any inner vow I made to protect my heart. I renounce any death wish I made. Now Lord, I release forgiveness. I forgive those people who used me and hurt me. I forgive them and bless them.” You notice it’s like, just one step at a time, you’re: dismantling the structures the demons live in; pulling down the house the demons live in - the sin, the soul ties, the reactions, the bitter reactions, and releasing forgiveness.

I’ll go through it again. “Father, I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess my sin to You now. I ask for Your forgiveness. I renounce now, every ungodly soul tie, every joining in sexual intimacy, every attachment to an image, whatever it is you’ve uncovered in counsel. I renounce it and cancel it now.”

Now the reactions: “I renounce death wishes – wanting to die because I was hurt. I renounce it and choose life. I renounce every inner vow I made, that I would never let anyone near me again. I renounce it now. I renounce every bitter judgement. I renounce it and cancel it now. Lord, I release forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me. Now Lord, I ask You to set me free.”

You see how we’ve just systematically pulled down the demonic house. Then you can start to minister to them. How would you minister? Start with breaking things: “In Jesus’ name, I break the ungodly soul tie. I break it. I break it.” You speak what you’re breaking. “I break the attachment to images. I break the attachment to websites. I break those things now. In Jesus’ name I break them, and break the other bondages. I break that inner vow. I break that death wish.” Once you’ve assessed what it is, you just break it.

Now you command the spirits. You command unclean spirits; and usually there’ll be spirits of bitterness; spirits of death; spirits of rejection; spirits of grief. Let the Holy Spirit guide you what to pray for. If you could just imagine for a moment what that person went through, you’ll begin to be able to name quite clearly the things they’ve gone through: Spirits of rejection; Spirits of bitterness; Hatred of men; Self-hate; and Shame.

You begin to start to lock-in to a flow. Often people carry over their life a deep shame. “Father, in Jesus’ name, I break the shame. I command the spirit of shame to come out.” Wherever there’s shame, there would be self-hate, and maybe death wishes. So let the spirit of God guide you how to make that flow a prayer.

There are a couple of other areas I also pray for people. So I pray like this – “Father, I ask that you remove out of this person, every defiling influence that was imparted. Lord, remove it out of their body and soul.” Sometimes people feel like there’s something, the person’s leaving them. “Lord, we pray healing into their spirit and soul. Lord I just pray for Your cleansing to flow right through this person.”

Now you get the idea how to minister. It’s not very hard. When we have an alter call, and we call up people and their sexual sin; break the soul ties, speak into and command shame, and bitterness, and unclean spirits, and death to go. What you’ll find as you are looking into the person, are: reactions against the person who hurt them - bitterness, hatred; and then reactions against themselves – Shame; Self-hate. Self-rejection. Bitterness. Grief.

So it doesn’t take much to think about this: that when people have got into this kind of turmoil, they have issues with God, issues with another person, issues with themselves. So you just speak into each of these areas.

So there we are. Those are some of the major areas that we need to learn to minister into; and there’ll be also the area of trauma. We’ll talk about that tomorrow briefly. Now, the last one on that list that I didn’t mention, I’ll just mention it briefly now, are just patterns or habits of sin. You just need to identify these. I’ll just give them to you quickly: Unforgiveness; Bitterness; Hatred; and Rebellion. Those are common sins in people’s lives; reactions to others, jealousy. So those are common heart sins; Rebellion. Every one of these, the Bible makes it clear, opens the doorway to evil spirits. Unforgiveness; Bitterness; Hatred; and Rebellion - all of those things open the door to evil spirits. When a person is rejected, they usually rebel.

So it just helps you to understand that those issues of the heart need to be dealt with too. Unforgiveness, Bitterness, Hatred. The person needs to just repent and release forgiveness. Then we command the spirits to come out.

So, we see then, we’ve got many many keys now of how to minister to people. We’ve started to see now that evil spirits use doorways into lives. Dismantle the doorways, and then you command the spirits out. Dismantle the doorways, dismantle the demonic houses, and it’s quite easy to get the person set free.

So tomorrow we’ll look briefly at the issue of trauma, and various kinds of how trauma affects people. Then we’ll look at how to work with people to build freedom in their life, because it’s not enough just to cast the demons out; we need to get the person to walk in new life. That will involve growing in their spirit, and renewing their mind, and handling the pressure of temptations and the old things coming back. It’s quite simple – humble yourself under the hand of God; submit to God, resist the devil, he will flee from you.

There are some practical things I’ll share with you that’ll help a person rebuild their life. Mostly people just want you to fix them; but we need to encourage people to journey with God, and take responsibility for building a Godly life. It’s easier to cast out demons than to build a Godly life, because building a Godly life requires discipline, and developing good habits in your life.

Tomorrow we’ll have a chance to minister to people as well. So we’ll use the first session tomorrow to just finish the teaching, and the second session to be able to have a flow of ministry. Amen. God bless you.

The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8)

Wed 11 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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Humans are very unique - not only living in the natural world, but can also connect to the spiritual world. Jesus came to tell us about the Kingdom of God, which is full of light, peace and joy; but there is another Kingdom which we are all born into - the Kingdom of Darkness - which rules by tormenting people, and using sin to control them. Jesus came to set us free, by shedding his blood on the Cross. When we accept what Christ has done for us, we need to continue and allow the Holy Spirit to change our thinking, by the renewing of our mind - that we would be kind, tender hearted and loving to one another, and set free in our hearts.

Tonight we’re going to pray for people to be set free of tormenting spirits. I’m sure many of you have come, and that’s what you’re wanting - a breakthrough in your life. Breakthroughs can be dramatic and sudden, or we breakthrough progressively.

So at the end of the meeting, we’re going to have an opportunity to pray for people. At the end of the meeting, any person who wishes prayer can make their way up and we will pray for you. We want to bless you. We want to help you. That’s the heart of God. He loves you and desires you help you. We’ll also extend an invitation tonight. If you’ve come here and you’re not a Christian, at the end of the meeting we’ll extend an invitation; an invitation for you to receive Jesus Christ, to become a follower of Jesus. So we’re going to share tonight about God’s goodness. We’re going to pray and minister to people; and then give you an opportunity to make a decision if you would like to receive Jesus Christ.

When we’re born into this life, we’re born separate from God. Every person that’s born into this world is separated from God by sin. The problem is not God’s; the problem is ours. God loves people; His heart is to help us all the time. The nature of God is loving; His heart is always towards us. His heart is towards you; but sin blinds us to what is real. We become self-centred, and we want to live our life without God. We violate God’s laws, and troubles and problems come into our life. God always desires to come in and to help you.

So we’re going to share a story from the Bible tonight; and I’ll mix it with some real life stories. We want to show you how you can be set free tonight. God always desires to help us, we just have to open our heart and be willing to let Him. The first step towards God is to become aware of our need. So when we’re born into this world, we lack a sense of purpose; we wonder why we’re here, we long to find some meaning in our life, and we find ourselves with problems we can’t solve. This is called sin - living a life without God. Jesus Christ came into this world to address the area of sin, and to make it possible for us to receive new life.

At the end of the meeting, when we pray for people, we’ll be praying for the power of God to touch people. We’ll be praying a deliverance prayer. A deliverance prayer is a prayer to release you from evil spirits. It’s a prayer to break areas of your life that have been in bondage, to set you free. Jesus said: “I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly”; but He said: “The devil has come to steal, kill and destroy.” So there are very real evil spirits. They seek to enter people’s lives, and to bring destruction.

Tonight, we want to challenge those spirits. Tonight, we want to confront them. We want them to know Jesus Christ is stronger than every evil spirit. So evil spirits seek to enter people’s lives, and they always do it by deception. The majority of times, people don’t know they have an evil spirit; and it continues to work in their life, creating problems for them. Jesus came to: confront evil spirits; to deal with the issues of sin which allow the demons in; and to reconnect us with God, so that the Spirit of God could come in us. No person is made to live with evil spirits. We’re made for the presence of God. We’re designed to bring heaven to earth.

So at the end of the meeting, we’ll have an opportunity for people who are struggling and tormented by evil spirits to be set free. I will tonight, preach on one area; but I encourage you to be open if you have a problem to come forward. When the anointing or power of the Spirit of God begins to flow, there comes a sudden change in the atmosphere. We can’t see God, because He’s a spirit; but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. His presence can be seen touching lives.

When the presence of God comes into a meeting, sometimes demonic spirits begin to manifest. When Jesus spoke in some meetings, demons began to cry out. So it’s possible that during the course of the meeting, before we get to the end, that demonic spirits may begin to manifest their presence. If they do, people may shake, cry, yell, or fall on the floor. Don’t be distracted by that. We will keep our focus on what God is doing.

So tonight, during the meeting, if you start to become agitated, it’s possibly an evil spirit. If you start to feel deep fear inside - it’s not you, it’s the spirit. It’s afraid, because it knows what’s happening. If you start to feel very angry inside - it’s not you, it’s the spirit, very angry, because it sees what’s happening. If you suddenly feel: “I don’t like that man, I want to kill him”- that’s definitely a spirit. We don’t worry about that. We believe that Jesus will set people free. So if you become agitated during the meeting, then you come up to the front; and we will minister and pray for you. Amen? Amen.

So Lord we welcome You to come tonight. We welcome You to come in power tonight. Holy Spirit we invite You to come into this meeting. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I speak to every evil spirit present here tonight: you are subject to my authority, in Jesus’ name. When I command you, you will manifest your presence, and come out of people. Lord we thank You tonight for Your presence to touch people. Amen.

Let’s just pray for a few people, and I want us to just enjoy the presence of God. Don’t put your hand up for me to pray for you. Just let me point you out and pray for you. I just want to listen to the Holy Spirit, and as I listen to the Holy Spirit, He will show me who or what to pray for. Ok?

Let’s have a look around and pray for someone. Can I just pray for this girl just here? Just come. Thank you Lord. God knows all about our lives, and His presence is here tonight. Praise the Lord. Thank you Lord. Lord touch her tonight. Just close your eyes. Now, God’s presence is very near, and when we open our heart to Him, even though we can’t see Him, His presence can just come on us. Just touch us like that. Presence of God is here.

So people just suddenly feel God’s presence come - it’s a good feeling. Sometimes people laugh, sometimes they weep. God touches people in different ways. “Come and touch her Lord. Release Your joy into her life. Don’t block it. Laughter is good for you. It’s good for all of us. What did you suddenly feel?” “She’s really happy.” “Did you really feel happy? You want more?” “Yeah.” “Spirit touch you.” “Come. Touch you even more.”

“You want what she had? Close your eyes, and it’s like you just open your heart. Presence of God just comes.” The spirit world is very easy for us to reach into. It’s very easy for us to connect with God. God is not a long way off. God is very close; and when we open our heart, His presence comes to touch us.

So, we can’t see God, but His presence is here. This is a great church. This is a church that worships, a church that prays, and the presence of God is here. The Bible says that the kingdom of heaven, that’s the realm where Jesus Christ is King, is a kingdom with peace and joy. A kingdom where there’s joy, where people are free. “

So, it’s wonderful to know that we have an open heaven where God can help us. Some of you tonight have very deep problems. You have some things that are really troubling you. God wants to help you tonight. He’s willing to help you. All we have to do is extend faith towards Him. Jesus said: according to what you believe, it will be done to you. So when you come for prayer, always come expecting God to touch you. Come expecting something to happen. Expect God to minister to you. Amen.

So when we pray for people, you’ll feel the power of God come on you, and if there’re spirits inside, they may manifest. They may stir. So, at the end of the evening when we pray for people, I’ll lead you in a corporate prayer to reach out to the Lord. Extend your faith for Jesus to touch you. It’s not about me, it’s about Jesus. When you extend your faith towards Him, He will reach out to touch you.

Now, there’s someone, a woman down here; and the Lord shows me that you have been having nightmares almost all of your life. You have these recurring nightmares that wake you up, and you feel fear when you wake up. In fact, many times you have a light on, because you don’t like it in the dark. Who’s that woman that has that problem? That’s a spirit causing that problem. There’s a woman somewhere in front of me here, and you have this problem. God bless. Just please come.

So you say – how could you know this? Well I don’t, but Jesus knows, and He wants to help her. So isn’t it wonderful? Jesus knows. He knows about you. It’s alright. He loves you. He wants to help you. You’ve been having these problems most of your life. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s a family spirit, and God wants to set you free tonight. You don’t have to live with that fear. Jesus wants to help you. So, in just a moment, I will command the spirit to go. In just a moment, it will leave you, and you won’t be tormented anymore.

“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break generational curses of idolatry. I break them. I break them. I break them in Jesus’ name. I break the agreements with idols, I break sacrifices to idols, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command this tormenting spirit: Come out of her now. Loose her now in Jesus’ name. I break words of dedication, where you were dedicated to the idol. I break that dedication now. I loose you from the words of dedication. I cut the soul ties to the idol and temple.

In Jesus’ name, loose her now! Loose! Loose! Come out of her now. Come on. Out. Out. In Jesus’ name, release her now. Release! Loose! The blood of Jesus has broken your power. You will loose her and come out of her now. Spirits of fear. Spirits of terror. Spirits of idolatry. Spirits of death. Spirit of witchcraft. Loose her now! Come out. Out. Let her go. Thank You Lord for Your anointing coming on her now. Thank You Jesus. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, come out of her. Come out. Come out. Just cough it out. Out! You will release her. You will release her now. Release! Let her go. Let her go. Out. Thank You Lord. Thank You Jesus.

“Lord just come upon her now. Thank You Lord. Peace. Peace. Father, we just thank You for Your presence. Look at me. Look at my eyes. Tell me what’s happening in you now. Tell me what you’re feeling. Just talk. Just tell me what you’re feeling. Some things left you.” “It’s hurting her.” “Where’s it hurting? In your stomach? Ok. Just put your hand on your stomach now. Church, I’d like you to reach your hands out to her now. Just pray in tongues now. Thank You Lord. Just touch her.

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you now to come out of her. Come out. That’s right. Cough. Out. Out. Out. Spirits of bitterness. Spirits of hate. Spirits of fear. Go. Go. Go. Go in Jesus’ name. I break generational witchcraft. I break generational agreements with evil spirits. I break it, I break it, I break it. In Jesus’ name, I command you now, spirits of divination, go. Spirits of witchcraft, go. In Jesus’ name, release her, release her. I break the generational curses over your life. I break them. I break them. Thank you Lord. Touch her. Touch. Touch. Holy Spirit come. Thank you Lord.

Alright then, just to help you explain what’s happened. The Lord gave me what’s called a “word of knowledge”. It’s a little bit of knowledge, about one person at one time. He showed me a problem she had all her life; and she showed courage. She came forward. It’s not always easy to do that. What happened is, as I began to speak and command the spirits, they began to manifest and come up out of her. First, there were screams. Then there were tears. Then she began to cough; and the spirits started to come out of her.

So, God has touched her very deeply. It’s quite traumatic to be tormented by spirits all your life. She was troubled with the nightmares from when she was very young. So we know the spirits came in through her family. Night after night she would be tormented by the spirits. It’s very hard to explain that to people. Usually people feel quite ashamed, and they don’t want to tell people they have such a problem. But these were tormenting spirits. Jesus said: the thief comes just to steal, kill and destroy; but He came to give us life.

So tonight, God has started the work of delivering. There’s been a huge degree of freedom, so there is of course grief with this; but she’ll be free from those nightmares. She won’t have to go to sleep with the light on. She won’t have to go to sleep afraid of the dark, because Jesus has conquered the darkness, and brought peace to her. Now, there are other areas that God wants to touch her. So we just allow God’s spirit to continue to work in her life.

There’ll be other people here tonight, also troubled with the same issue; and God wants to set you free as well. Some of you will be troubled with nightmares. Some of you troubled with, like you wake up, and someone’s grabbing you. This is a spirit. This is a demonic spirit. Some of you at night-time will feel like someone’s touching you or molesting you, but there’s no one there. That’s an evil spirit.

God wants to set you free of these things. That’s why Jesus came – to deal with the issue of sin, and then to set us free of tormenting spirits. He wants you to be filled with His spirit. Where His spirit is present, there is peace and joy. You notice when I was praying for some of the other people, that there was a joy came on them. There was a peace came on them, kind of happy. God’s spirit brings great things to our life.

The fruit of God’s spirit in us is: love and joy and peace. Demonic spirits bring turmoil and agitation. God wants us to be free of that. That’s what tonight’s about. It’s about people being set free of spirits. So later on tonight we’ll extend the invitation: that God will set you free also. Amen. Come on let’s give Lord a clap shall we?

[Teaching]

We’re going to have a look at a passage in the Old Testament. We’re going to go to the book of Exodus. We’re going to just look in a couple of places. We’ll first of all look in Exodus 1:13 – 14. Then we’ll look in the book of Exodus 15.

The Bible is a revelation of the unseen spirit world. The Bible helps us to understand there’s an invisible spirit world. That there was a real physical world; and human beings are quite unique. We can live in the physical world; and we can connect with the spiritual world. Jesus came to talk about the kingdom of God. Jesus came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.

In the kingdom of heaven, there are no evil spirits. The kingdom of heaven takes on the nature of the king. Jesus is King over the kingdom of heaven, and His kingdom is: full of light; full of life; full of creativity; full of peace; full of joy. It’s an amazing kingdom, and He wants to bring that kingdom to you.

The problem is, there is another kingdom - the kingdom of darkness. When Adam and Eve sinned and rebelled against God, demonic spirits began to manipulate, and govern, and rule over people’s lives; tormenting them with burdens, and problems, and pressures; bringing sickness and affliction to people.

Jesus came to set people free. He said: the Spirit of the Lord anointed Him, and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. So Jesus ministered to people, and set them free of tormenting spirits, and introduced them to the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, there is no sickness, there’s no disease, no torments. Where Jesus rules, His life prevails.

Now we’re going to have a look at a story in the Old Testament. These stories in the Old Testament are pictures of the invisible spiritual world. We can learn from these stories, we can learn about Jesus Christ. We can learn about the hidden spirit world. So we’re going to look at a story of Israel, and we’re going to first of all, look in Egypt, where they were in bondage.

The people of Israel were held as slaves in the land of Egypt. They wanted freedom. They yearned for freedom, but they were dominated by a foreign military power. They were slaves that served taskmasters. They wanted to be free, but they could not be free. They needed someone to deliver them.

This is just like us. Before we come to Christ, we may think we’re free; but we are living in sin, manipulated by evil spirits, and our life is very hard. Our life is served with bondage. Look what it says in verse 13. “So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service, in which they made them serve, was with rigor.”

So we see a group of people who long to be free; but they are ruled over by cruel taskmasters; and they made every part of their life hard and difficult. It says: they made their lives bitter. In other words, the people were hurt. They were abused, they suffered; and they had no way to escape. They were literally slaves in a foreign country; and their heart became very bitter.

When people are in pain, when people suffer in life, and get hurt by others, often they hold resentment and anger and their heart becomes bitter. When our heart becomes bitter, it opens the door for evil spirits to enter, and to cause sickness and diseases.

I prayed for one young man, and he was deeply bitter against his father. He was angry. He was resentful; and he let it go down into his heart. So his life was bitter. He could not appreciate or enjoy the good things, because he had such bitterness in his heart. The result was, a spirit of infirmity came into him; and it began to steal his health. He developed pain in all his joints, his back began to stiffen, and his life gradually came under threat that he would be paralysed. The bitterness in his heart had opened a doorway for evil spirits.

Whenever people are involved in idolatry, or there’s bitterness in the heart, demonic spirits will enter. I have also found wherever there’s idolatry, people serve under those idols, serve under the demons, their lives become bitter. Idols do not offer us any solution. Rather, they make our life harsher. So these people were made very, very, bitter.

God heard their cries, and He sent Moses to them. Moses is a picture of Jesus Christ. A prophetic picture of a deliverer. Moses delivered the people of God out of Egypt. God sent plagues on the Egyptians. Each plague was an attack against the gods they worshipped. The last plague of all, the people of God shed the blood of a lamb; they put the blood on the doors of their house, and a destroyer went through the nation, and everywhere the blood had been applied, the people were spared.

This is a great prophetic picture, that one day Jesus Christ would shed His blood on the cross, would die and give up His life on a cross, that every person who would believe that Jesus shedding His blood was enough to break the power of sin. Every person who by faith receive Christ, the blood Jesus shed would break the power of the devil, break the power of sin, and set them free. So, there came a great day, when the people of Israel left Egypt. They were saved! The Egyptians had been destroyed; and the people of God journeyed full of hope. But God didn’t want to just save them. He wanted to bring them into a place of great blessing; but in order to go into that place of blessing, God needed to change them.

I want you to look with me in Exodus 15; and we’ll read from verse 22. “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.” Verse 27 – “Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters.”

So when we give our life to Jesus Christ, and we begin to follow Christ, not everything is easy. There are often challenges on the way. God is leading us in a journey to blessing; but He wants to change you. He wants to free you of bitterness in your heart. So God saw all of these people come out of Egypt; and they were rejoicing and celebrating; but God knew they still had a slave mentality. They still thought like slaves. They still fought like a victim. So God wanted to change them. He wanted to free them from slave thinking. He wanted them to become sons and children, and enter in an inheritance; but in order to enter their inheritance, they needed to change.

God has many things planned for you; but you need to grow. You need to let God work in your life. Sometimes there are hindrances in our hearts, hindrances in our life. Sometimes there are bondages in our life. We had them before we were saved; and after we got saved, God says: I want to change you. I want to free you. I want you to experience the kingdom of heaven now. So how am I going to do that?

Notice what happened here. The people just had a great experience, a victory. They’ve had 3 days with no water. It’s hard to walk in the desert with no water. They were thirsty. They suffered temporary lack. You see, God could see something they couldn’t see. God saw them come free, and God had planned the journey for them. God knew there were some sweet water, wells, and palm trees. God had already provided for them. It’s just they couldn’t see it. So when they experienced 3 days with no water, they became very distressed; and what was in their heart came up. The waters they drank were quite bitter, and so what did they do?

Difficulties are opportunities to grow. Notice what happened. It says: the people complained. They were bitter after years of slavery. So as soon as difficulty came, what was in their heart came up. God wanted to change their heart; but before you can change, you must see the need for change. Sometimes we experience some difficulties in life, and then an opportunity to see what is in our heart, an opportunity to grow and change. The people were bitter; they saw themselves as a victim. God wanted them to be healed; He wanted to release the bitterness they held.

When people come to know Jesus Christ, often they’ve had years of painful experiences, that have caused their heart to become bitter: Family experiences; broken marriages; broken relationships; disappointments. Now, if you ask a person: are you bitter? “Not me. Oh no. I go to church. I read the Bible. No, no, no. I wouldn’t be bitter. Why do you ask that?” So people can be bitter, and not be aware of it; but pressure and difficulties cause what’s in our heart to come up.

There are several ways you can recognise bitterness. The first one is seen here – complaining. If you hear someone complaining, they’re bitter. Do you know anyone that complains? “Oh, it’s that person next to you isn’t it? It’s not me! I would never complain.”

You notice the second thing they did is: they blamed. Bitter people want to blame someone. Bitter people are always looking for someone to blame. If I blame you, you are the reason that I’m so angry. You make me so angry! It’s all your fault, you know. It’s not my fault. Hello - it’s my anger! If you’re angry - it’s your anger. No one makes you angry - you get angry all by yourself!

You can tell when people are bitter - there are a number of evidences of bitterness. Let me just share with you what they are. You notice here, they complained against Moses. Let me share with you some of the evidence of bitterness. 1.) Complaining. 2.) Blaming others. 3.) Lack of joy.

Bitter people can’t laugh, you know. They’re very bitter and sour. It shows on their face. You look at the face, lots of frowns. Their lips, it looks like they’re sucking a lemon. As they get older, it gets worse. It shows on the face more. All that frowning, all that bitterness, lack of ability to laugh, to have joy.

Here’s another sign: a lack of gratitude. People who are bitter aren’t thankful. They focus on what they don’t have; rather than what they do have. A person who is free of bitterness, is thankful: “I’m so blessed. I have so many wonderful blessings.”

But these people couldn’t be joyful, and couldn’t be thankful. Instead of saying: “Oh, thank you for getting us out of Egypt. Thank You Jesus”; it was: “Hey, why no water? It’s all your fault. You led us here. How come you lead us here? I think you want to kill us. We should go back.” See - lack of gratitude. Here’s what happens: lack of gratitude; and often there’s judgements.

People who’re bitter make a lot of judgements. They’re very critical, finding fault. These are evidences of bitterness. Bitter people can’t enter and experience God’s blessing unless they deal with the bitterness.

Israel was bitter. Their bitterness caused them continued cycles of failure and defeat. When you’re bitter, you usually can’t see it, but the fruit shows up: blame; no joy, can’t celebrate; lack of gratitude; judging. Always wanting more; never satisfied.

There are sharp, cutting words. Oh yeah - when someone is bitter, there’s a sharpness in their words. You can feel the sword go through you. There’s an example in the Bible of a woman and a man, the man’s name was David. His wife’s name was Michal. Michal was Saul’s daughter. David was Saul’s son-in-law.

Both of them were deeply hurt by King Saul. So what King Saul did was this – King Saul was envious of David, so he chased him away. He put a reward on him – kill on sight; dangerous fugitive - shoot to kill; chased him through the land. If David made any friends, he’d kill the friends. He chased him right out of the country.

Then, he did something else: he took David’s wife, and gave her to another man. She’s still got a husband, she loves her husband, but he drags her away, gives her to another man. It breaks her heart - she’s forced to sleep with a man she doesn’t love. Forced to go through a marriage she should never have gone through.

So David went on that way, and she went on this way; but God had a destiny for them, that together they would rule Israel. Eventually, God brought them back together. Eventually, God made way for David to be restored and become king.

Now David has been badly treated. He’s been hurt very deeply. He’s been rejected. He’s been falsely accused. His friends have been killed. He’s been hunted down. But his heart was free of bitterness. How was his heart free of bitterness? He forgave. He reached out for the goodness of God. He said: God is good to me; I will show grace and forgive.

So when the opportunity came to kill Saul, he would not. He says: God can deal with Saul. I put my life in the Lord’s hand. Mostly when people are hurt, they want to get revenge. Someone was telling me, for the Chinese, ten years not too long to wait for revenge. So he had his ten years, but there’s no revenge in his heart. When the time comes for him to be king, he brings the ark of God, and he is full of joy. He’s celebrating, he’s rejoicing, his heart is free; and he wants to bless King Saul’s family. He’s grateful to God for blessing. There’s no bitterness in him - his spirit is free.

But his wife was very bitter. She did not reach out to God and bring grace into her situation. So the Bible says in 2 Samuel 6: She looked out the window. What’s this? She was unable to experience the blessing of God. The greatest revival in Israel’s history, and she is looking through the window, not being part of it. Bitterness will keep you out of the presence of God. Bitterness will leave you tormented.

Second thing, she looked, and she sees her husband; and she despised him in her heart. She looked down on him, because bitterness is in her heart. When David came home, he’s full of joy, full of gratitude, full of thankfulness to the Lord. He came home to bless his household; but his wife says: “Oh, you’re the king, and you carry on like this! Why you do this? You make a fool of yourself.” Bitter! “Geh geh geh” like that. You know what I’m talking about? You heard someone do that? Sometimes I’ll hear people do that. “Geh geh geh!” It’s like a sword. Stab. Stab. Stab. Words have power of life and death.

So one is sweet; one is bitter. One is enjoying God’s blessing; one is outside God’s blessing. Each had a choice as to how they would respond to difficulties. One forgave, and came into blessing. The other, it says of Michal, because she was so bitter, she remained barren all her life. She was never able to produce any fruit in her life. Bitterness will leave you unfruitful, and it will defile your relationship. Her marriage became empty. Her life became empty, and she died in bitterness, with her dreams unfulfilled, because she never dealt with bitterness in her heart.

Unfortunately, this is true of many Christians. We let the hurts of our past remain in our heart. We stay bitter against parents – father, mother, people who’ve hurt us – rather than choosing to release and forgive. The Bible says in Ephesians 4 – don’t grieve the Spirit of God; don’t let any bitterness, or anger, or wrath, or malice get into your heart; but rather, be kind, be tender-hearted, forgiving one another.

One of the greatest problems I have seen among Christians is bitterness - roots of bitterness. It shows up with: complaining and blaming; inability to celebrate, lack of joy; unable to celebrate someone else’s victory. When someone else gets promoted, if your heart is free – you say: “Hey, wonderful. I’m so glad you’re promoted. Oh, you buy that new Mercedes? Wonderful, I’m so glad.” But when bitterness is in the heart: “Oh, how come he is promoted? How come he has a Mercedes, and I have no Mercedes.”

Bitterness stops you celebrating with others. Bitterness focuses your heart on injustice, rather than on the goodness of God. Over and over and over again, God wanted them to deal with bitterness, with the deep resentment that comes out of years of living in bondage. You can’t afford to be bitter. You can’t afford to let anger stay in your heart. You can’t afford to harbour resentments. You can’t afford to harbour unforgiveness. Jesus taught this in Matthew 18:35, He said that when people are unforgiving, demonic spirits have a right to enter and torment them.

So, what did God do in this situation? Look at this. Just watch this now. God already planned the waterfall. God was not holding out on them. He already had a water plan. But before they got to God’s water plan, there was just a little dry period; and up came the bitterness. Look what happens. It says: Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and when he cast the tree in the water, the bitter waters become sweet.

God knew that they would face the hardship. He knew they would face difficulty; but He’s already made a provision. It’s just they couldn’t see it. God had to open their eyes, that He had a tree. That tree is a picture of the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, He took injustice, He took sin, and He said – “Father, forgive them.” When you and I suffer injustices, suffer hurts and disappointments, we need to come to the cross and say: “Jesus, as You forgave me, I forgive them. I bring Your cross into this situation to make my bitterness sweet.

Joseph had every reason to be bitter; but he found Christ in the middle of it. He was betrayed, thrown in prison, he was falsely accused, he was jailed, he was ignored; and when he came out and saw his brothers, he said: “Don’t be hard on yourselves - it wasn’t you who sent me here - it’s God who had a plan for my life. It was God who sent me here - I needed these experiences to prepare me for my destiny.” His heart was free of bitterness. His heart was free of unforgiveness. He saw that God had a purpose in the difficulty - to prepare him for greatness.

Now, listen to me. God wants to change you; but to change, you have to recognise what the issue is, that God wants to deal with. Some of you are harbouring unforgiveness and bitterness – against a husband, against a wife, against a father, against a mother, against an older brother or sister, against an uncle, against some teacher, some spiritual leader.

As you go to pray, you keep being troubled by this person, tormented by spirits; and you notice when pressure comes on you, instead of turning to God - you complain. You blame. You can’t laugh and enjoy life. You don’t seem to be able to celebrate others’ success, because there’s bitterness in your heart. When it comes to the presence of God, it seems somehow you’re not able to access. It seems in your spiritual life you’re not very productive. Your relationships are full of conflict.

Maybe the problem is not the other people. Maybe the problem is in your own heart, and God wants to hear you. In order to be set free, it’s very very simple. I need to come to Jesus Christ. I need to repent of holding these deep attitudes in my heart, and release forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me; and as I release forgiveness, God’s power is released to deliver me. I have found one of the most common reasons people are sick and why they’re depressed, and why they don’t get delivered – it’s bitterness.

God wants you to be freed. You just have to make a decision tonight, if you will come to the cross of Christ and release forgiveness. “But well it’s so not fair”. It isn’t fair. Forgiveness means: I release the debt, because God has forgiven me much, I will forgive others and bless them. Jesus said: “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who despitefully use you.”

If you have someone who’s been cursing you, forgive them and bless you. “I don’t want to.” No. That’s bitterness that’s saying that. If someone has used you, and hurt you, and manipulated you, and damaged you, then pray for them. “I don’t want to do that.” That’s because of bitterness, so you’re the one who’s tormented.

Tonight you can be free of that. God wants to set many, many people free tonight of bitterness; resentment; unforgiveness. You’ve just got to make a decision: “It’s time for change. I will come tonight to the cross. I will let go of my hurt, and my heartache. I will let go of my sorrows. I will release forgiveness. I will start of bless instead of curse.” Will that change the other person? Not at all; but it will change you, and you can be free.

As we pray for people, many people will be set free of all kinds of tormenting spirits. Listen, I have found that whenever people are involved in idolatry, there is bitterness. Whenever people are involved with evil spirits, there is bitterness. Whenever people have been involved in sexual relationships, there is bitterness. Whenever people have suffered at the hands of others, there is bitterness. But Jesus can make the bitter waters sweet. He can turn your life around, and you can be a blessing for others.

Here’s the most interesting scripture: Now, the God of all comfort, comforts you in your distress, so you can comfort others, in the same way God comforted you.

Let’s just close our eyes right now. Firstly, I want to extend an invitation to any person here tonight who’s not yet a Christian – you have not yet received Jesus. I’m inviting you tonight to come to Jesus Christ. Jesus said: Everyone who received Him, everyone who believed on Him, He gave the right to become a child of God.

So tonight if you’re here, and you’re not a Christian, there’s a spiritual vacuum in your life. It can only be filled by relationship with God. Jesus invites you into relationship with Him, and to become a partner with Him, in changing the lives of others. He said: “Come, follow Me. I’ll make you to become a fisher of men. Come, follow Me. I’ll change you, and your life will be sweet to people. Come follow Me, you won’t walk in darkness. I will have the light of God’s life. Come follow Me.”

That’s Jesus’ invitation tonight. The Bible says: “God so loved the world (loved you), that He sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for your sins, that whoever would believe in Him, would not perish but have eternal life.

This is what I want you to do – you’ve been here in the meeting tonight, you’ve felt the presence of God, you’ve seen the Spirit of God touch people, you’ve see joy come into people’s lives like an invisible river from heaven. You’ve also seen a young woman set free of tormenting spirits. God is real. It’s not my power. It’s the Spirit of God; and that same Spirit that brought joy to people, that set that young woman free, is here for you.

Here’s what I want you to do now – every person wishing to receive Jesus Christ, please raise your hand tonight. Raise your hand and let me know. “I want to receive Jesus.” Just put your hand up. Put your hand up wherever you are. This is an important decision, to receive Jesus, to become a Christian.

This is what we’re going to do now: in a moment everyone will stand; and we will begin to clap and celebrate; and every person who put their hand up, and even those who didn’t put their hand up, if you’re wanting to receive Jesus tonight, to open your life for God to forgive you, this is what I want you to do. Make your way up to the front, make a row facing me, and I will lead you in a simple prayer. If you brought someone, and they don’t know Jesus, ask them if they’d like you to come up with them.

Praise the Lord. I’m so glad you came tonight. Jesus knows each one of you. He knows you by name. Each one of you is a person he knows. He knows your struggles. He knows the difficulties you’ve faced. He knows what challenges are in your life. He knows where you’ve failed, and He loves you. He loves you. He gave His life on the cross for you. The Bible says: in heaven, there’s great rejoicing when the sinner comes and responds to Christ. So right now in heaven, there is rejoicing.

I’m going to lead you now in a prayer, and when we pray this prayer, the prayer’s just talking to God. God will hear and respond. I want you to just close your eyes. Close your eyes. When you close your eyes, you can just be aware God is near us. When you speak, He will hear you. He will forgive you. His peace will come in your heart. He will take away the shame of failures, of things you’ve done, of things that were done to you. He loves you. Church, would you help us with this prayer? Let’s pray together. I want you to listen and speak these words out.

“Father in Heaven, I come to You in Jesus’ name. Thank You for loving me. Thank You for accepting me. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins, and to rise again from the dead. I turn away from sin. I turn away from false gods. Jesus I receive You as my Saviour. Please forgive all of my sins. I receive forgiveness now. I receive Your Spirit into my heart, and I give You my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.”

Thank You Lord. Just keep your eyes closed. Shortly after this, we’re going to pray for people to be set free, pray for people to be healed, but this is a special moment. God loves you. Touch her Lord. Pour Your love upon her life.

[Ministry]

I break the hold of this spirit. I command it in Jesus’ name. Lord touch this dear lady. In the name of the Lord Jesus, I break the power of cancer in your body. I curse every trace of cancer. I command healing to flow, in Jesus’ name. Touch her Lord. Touch. Touch her Lord right now. Release.

Praise the Lord. Let’s just worship the Lord. Worship the Lord together. It’s a great joy to see people get saved, to give their life to Jesus Christ. We want to pray for people to be delivered of spirits. We want to pray a deliverance prayer. Some of you here tonight have come for healing. Some of you have come for deliverance. I want you to listen how the ministry will happen...

We will get you to line, in a row facing the front. Then what we will do is this: if you have sickness in your body, please put your hand on the part where there’s sickness, so we recognise you’re sick. After we’ve prayed for you, check whether there’s any change in your body. So if you need prayer for sickness, put your hand on your body. Otherwise just come into the row. If we see you with your hand on your body, we’ll know the prayer is for sickness, for healing. If you don’t have your hand on your body, we will know it’s deliverance you need. Let’s just worship the Lord while people start to get their place.

While you are waiting, worship the Lord. Don’t be passive. Look to Jesus for your healing or deliverance. Look to Him for your miracle. Keep your eyes closed. Focus your attention on Jesus. Before I lead you in a prayer, this is a deliverance prayer. If there’s any bitterness in your heart; if there’s sin; or there’s things you know you’ve done wrong - ask Jesus to forgive you right now. Just confess it to Him. Is there someone you need to forgive? Release forgiveness right now. Maybe there’s sickness because you’re unforgiving?

So just while we’re just worshipping quietly, “Jesus please forgive me”. Talk to Him, tell Him what’s happened. Bitterness, anger; hate; jealousy; unforgiveness; rebellion; addiction; idolatry; spiritism. Whatever it is, “Jesus forgive me”. It’s very important you do this. Is there anyone who has hurt you, and you’re holding something in your heart against them? Forgive them. Release them. Just release them right now. “Father I forgive. I forgive.”

This is what we will do. I will lead you in the miracle prayer. At the end of that prayer, you begin to worship the Lord. When we come and lay hands on you, stop praying. Stop praying. Just receive the miracle. Receive healing in your body. Then, check your body. See what change has happened. If it’s deliverance you’re needing, then just breathe out heavily. God will set you free. Are we ready now? Just follow me in this prayer.

“Father in heaven I come to you in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, every sickness, all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus Christ. I renounce all curses over my life. I cancel them now in Jesus’ name. I ask You Lord to forgive me. I ask You Lord to make me clean. I ask You Lord to heal me, to deliver me. From my heart I forgive those who’ve hurt me. I forgive them and release them. Lord set me free now. Satan go from my life in Jesus’ name.”

Let us begin to worship the Lord. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I speak to every demonic spirit – spirits of witchcraft, spirits of idolatry, spirits of death, spirits of bitterness and hate, spirits of infirmity. I command you to go. I command you to loose people today. Lord we release Your power. Lord touch people tonight. Delivering, healing, releasing people. In Jesus’ mighty name.”

Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8)

Thu 12 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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Many problems we have in life come from traumatic experiences, which have often happened in early childhood: in the womb; early childhood; or during school years. These experiences tend to shut us down, and control the memory of the trauma. We do not realise that these experiences are actually controlling you: relationships; reactions; and approach to life. The effect of these traumatic experiences can only be overcome and healed through prayer; by exchanging old memory pictures with scripture memorisation; and by inviting the Holy Spirit and the truth into the situation - for total restoration in Jesus name!

[Intro/Review]

Great to see what God is doing. I want to try to conclude with a teaching part in this first session, so we have room to work with the Holy Spirit in the second session. So, if we just go back again and just quickly outline what we did – we looked at Jesus’ teaching on deliverance; how deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom; and that in order to minister deliverance, a person has to work with the Holy Spirit, and it requires faith to do that - you must believe that when you come to pray for someone, something will happen. Then we looked at Jesus teaching on what happens after a person is delivered, and we saw that demons, once they’re cast out, will try to re-establish a hold again.

So, we concluded from that, that it’s important a person make changes in their life, so that there’s no structure for the demon to come back to. That meant we need to think beyond just casting out demons, to demolishing demonic structures in the person’s life. We identified 3 major roots that demons use – legal rights, traumatic experiences, and then reactions to traumatic experiences. We saw that there are certain foundations; the bases upon which someone gets free.

The first is the work Jesus did for us - Jesus at the cross, redeemed us. So, you’ll find sometimes the demon will argue – the person belongs to them; so we have to be able to contend, and hold the word of God – this person belongs to Jesus. We saw that there are also personal foundations - we must prepare the person for deliverance; and failure to get a person delivered usually is because we haven’t prepared them very well.

We saw that the person must first recognise what the problem is, and take responsibility for their part in it. If a person won’t recognise what the problem is, and take ownership, you can’t move them any further. All personal change starts when we recognise the need for the change, and take responsibility for our part in it; and we saw so many times that people will come and want you to fix them, but they don’t want to take ownership of why they’re in this mess in the first place. As a minister of deliverance, we need to help them see how they got where they are, and what their part is in getting free.

We saw that: one, the person needs to repent of sin, and confess it. They must turn from sin, and bring it to the cross. Two, they must release forgiveness, and also receive forgiveness. Sometimes people have difficulty forgiving themselves. So forgiveness – firstly receiving forgiveness for themselves; and then release it to others who have hurt them. If a person won’t release forgiveness, they tend to remain in bondage, and you can’t easily set them free.

We saw also, the importance of people renouncing bondages in their life. To renounce means to speak words to cancel something that’s been constructed. So for example, if a person has worshipped an idol, and served an idol, and come into an agreement with a demon, they need to speak words that cancel this agreement. If a person has been dedicated to an idol or a demon, they need to speak words to cancel it. Jesus said: “The words I speak are spirit and life”. So, words are very important.

We saw also, the need for people to actively resist. They can’t be passive (oh, just do something to me). There’s a spiritual warfare that goes on around deliverance; and people must be willing to resist – to make a stand against the devil, and on the side of reaching out to Jesus for freedom.

So, we looked then at some of the structures in the heart; some of the bondages that get established in people’s lives; just so we could identify them, so we would know what needs to be dealt with.

We talked about soul ties – attachments in the soul to people, images, and things. We talked about bitter root judgements, or beliefs in the heart. We talked about inner vows, word curses, where people curse themselves, or they receive cursings from others.

We also shared that when people have trauma, this affects them as well, and traumas have to be dealt with. So, we saw some of the bondages in the heart – soul ties, bitter judgements and expectations, inner vows, traumatic pictures, and word curses. Sometimes people put burdens or expectations on people.

Then we started to look at how you address the doors of entry; and we looked at several specific doors. Generational curses – it’s established over a family when someone does something; it’s dismantled when someone deals with it. We saw that the curse is dismantled when someone, as a representative of the family, owns up to the sin, brings it to the cross, and holds the cross of Christ between them and this problem. We suggested that if you’re going to diagnose problems, always identify where it began, because that’ll be a clue to generational curses.

We shared that occultic practises and idolatry open the way for demons. We saw that sexual sin opens the way for evil spirits. We saw patterns (or habits) of sin: anger, bitterness, hatred, unforgiveness, rebellion, bitter judgements. All of these create doorways for spirits to enter a person’s life.

[Main Content]

So, now what I want to do is I want to look just briefly at the area of traumatic experiences. Then I want to show you some steps to how to find if a person’s got the root of the problem; and then how we focus on freedom or helping the person walk out of it.

So, we need to look at the area of trauma. It’s a big area, and I’m learning my way into that right now, because I have found that many of the problems people have began when they were very young; and often it began with a traumatic or painful experience.

So, a trauma is an overwhelming emotional experience. It’s an experience that overwhelms the emotions and soul; and it leaves an indelible imprint in the person’s memory.

Now, there can be many traumatic experiences ranging from mild to quite severe; and different people react in different ways. You need to understand this – people don’t forget what happened to them - the more painful the experience, the more deeply it’s imbedded in their memory. So if an experience is of a major one, and extremely painful, or it’s a prolonged one, then it imbeds in the memory.

For example, the person has a motor accident. The shock sometimes is so great, that the whole of the mind shuts down, and it’s like it doesn’t remember what happened. So you talk to someone who’s had maybe a motor accident, and they remember before and after, but they don’t remember the accident. Actually, they do have memory of the accident, it’s just they’re not conscious of it. It was such a trauma, that the memory gets dispersed through their body.

When a person has a traumatic experience, they have a memory imprinted in them; and the memory consists of these things: it’s chemically imprinted into the body; and demonic spirits use it as a doorway of entry. When a person has a traumatic experience, there is first of all, a memory or a picture. The memory of the trauma is made up of these things.

1.) There’s a picture. There is an image. There is something they remember vividly. If you were to think back into your life, can you remember a very embarrassing situation at school or a very embarrassing or painful situation in your life? Most can remember something. What happens is, a picture comes up. So your memory retains the trauma first as a picture.

2.) Firstly there’s the memory of the experience; and secondly: how the person interpreted the experience. What did this mean to them? For example, for a person who was sexually abused, there’s the picture of the experience, the memory of all the smells and sights and sounds and feelings of it; and there’s how they interpret it - what did this mean? I’m powerless. I’m worthless. Men will hurt me. There’s the reaction that the person makes; like an inner vow. I’ll never trust anyone.

So, within the memory of the trauma, there’s: a picture, a belief they formed about it; and a reaction to it. The picture, feelings, what they believed; and how they responded. All of it is contained in the trauma.

So, for example, when you have a person who is sexually abused, they have a picture of the abuser and what happened; there’s the feelings and sounds and smells and sights - all of that is remembered. Then what they believed about this thing: “I’m powerless. I’m useless. I’m worthless. It’s my fault.” Then, how they reacted – “I must never tell anyone. I’ll never let men get near me. You can never trust men.” So, those heart reactions we talked about. So when a person has a trauma, all of those are in the trauma. Particularly powerful is the picture, and what they interpreted that picture to mean.

Now, later on a person can control it all, and bury it all. Later on they may see something, or hear something, or smell something, and it triggers the memory; and all the emotions come back up to the surface, flooding up. I’ll give you just a simple example. Late last year, one of my daughters who lives in Indonesia, miscarried after 5 months. I left and went immediately to be with them, to comfort them, and also to take a service, and to walk them through the process. So after a long trip on the plane – I get off, a little bit of time, then we have a service and a few days, very busy days. I had to keep all my own feelings managed, because I’m there to serve people. Then I came home, it’s Christmas, I’ve got lots of things to do.

About 4 weeks later, I was sitting watching a television, and a song came up – Amazing Grace; and I just began to weep and weep and weep, because the last time I heard that, was in the service we held in my daughter’s home. So I had pushed down all the grief of the experience, but hearing the song again triggered off the memory, and up came all the grief that I had buried; and I could vividly picture being in the room, seeing her singing, and my grandchild dead in the box. It was time for me to grieve and to let go. So, it’ll be just as simple as something like that.

Now, my daughter who went through a huge grief over this situation, and particularly the way they do the cremations, there was quite a traumatic experience for her. So, she was left almost in shock; and I said: “It is important for you, that you see this from God’s point of view. It’s important you have a different picture, because the last picture you had was deeply distressing for you.” I said: “You need God to put a different picture inside you. You can’t remove the memories people have. What you can do is open the way for God to show them a different picture.”

So when we go through a painful experience, we have a limited perspective – what we see is very around our own pain. So, one of the ways you approach a trauma, is to invite the Holy Spirit to take the person back into the experience, and to show them Jesus in the middle of it. This takes some willingness on the part of the person, to be willing to let the Holy Spirit go there. Most people just try to bury the memory and the pain. It’s like locking it up in a room, and then just not letting anyone in. They just try to control the pain.

So I encourage them, if you’ll just let Jesus into that room of that memory, if you’ll let Him come into that room, and be willing to go there again and feel the pain, He will speak to you and comfort you, and He’ll change that situation for you. So, with my daughter, I asked her to close her eyes and to look into that picture of what she saw, and to invite Jesus to come into it. She saw immediately. She saw Jesus standing there, and she saw Him grieving, and she saw Him pick up her child, and hold her child in His arms. He smiled at her and spoke to her; and immediately the grief all subsided, because instead of the memory of a casket going into flames, she had a memory of Jesus taking her child. It brought a deep release for her.

So, when a person has a traumatic experience, they need the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus in that experience. If you think of in the Old Testament, I think its 2 Kings 6 - Elijah’s servant looked out, and they were surrounded by the Syrian army, and he was terrified. So when he looked at his experience, it was overwhelming, and he was filled with fear; and he cried out in fear to his master. He didn’t know what to do; and Elijah prayed this way: “Lord open his eyes, so he can see what he hasn’t seen. Open his eyes, so he can just see there’s more for us, than against us.” The Holy Spirit opened his eyes, and he saw in the spiritual realm from God’s perspective, he saw the presence of all the angels. He still could see the army, but now he could see something else. He could see the overwhelming power of God on his side, and he came to peace.

This is how, one of the major ways, that God heals traumatic pictures. I usually explain to the person that they’ve just put this memory in a room and locked it up. I explain they’ve tried to save themselves. I ask them to be willing to go back to remember what they didn’t want to remember; and invite Jesus to come in. So, often the person will start to weep as they remember; and then I ask them: “Look and see where Jesus is. What is He doing? What is His face like? What is He saying?” I get the person just to talk to me, what they’re seeing. What happens is, a different picture comes in; and it overwhelms and changes the memory. It shifts it, and puts something in that wasn’t there, and that’s the last thing they remember.

For example, I had one girl, and she had been adopted when she was 5. She shared her testimony to the church that she’d been adopted, and how when she heard our testimony and she came to Christ. When I heard her testimony, I said: “Look, I feel the Lord put on my heart to pray for you. He wants to heal you. Can you remember the day your mother gave you up?” This is what she said: “I remember it vividly.” In other words, it’s a picture in her mind; and in that picture is a lot of grief. In that memory is a picture of her mother handing her over to a stranger. A huge amount of grief; and she questions: why she do this? What’s wrong with me? I must be bad, because I’m being given away. All kinds of things were in her mind.

So I said: “I’d like you to do this. Just to close your eyes, and to allow yourself to remember that experience” and she began to cry. She remembered the experience, and she began to just weep in front of us all. Then I said: “Look and see if you can see Jesus.” She said: “I can see Him.” I said: “What does He look like?” She said: “He’s weeping. He’s very sad about what’s happening.” I said: “Why don’t you just reach out to Him?” Now, I didn’t expect her to literally reach out. It’s like she reached out like that, and then she froze; and she remained there like that for an hour and a half, standing in a meeting just like this. Just down on the ground like that, frozen for an hour and a half.

You just can’t do that. It’s impossible to do that, and hold your hand out like that. She was literally caught up in a vision, and then I just preached; held an alter-call for salvation; we got people to stand around her, so she didn’t get bumped. Then suddenly she just came out of it like that; and I said: “What happened?” She had been in an encounter with Jesus. I said: “What did He say to you?” “He said to me: it’s not my fault.” All these years she had believed the lie: ‘it’s my fault’, and she was tormented by spirits. When Jesus spoke to her the truth –“it’s not your fault. You’re not a bad person. I love you. I’ll never leave you.” Jesus spoke with her. I saw her the next day, and I actually didn’t recognise her, she looked so different. There was a joy and a life in her.

I remember praying for another girl who’d been sexually abused and I asked: “Are you willing to go and remember what happened?” She began to weep, described the scene, and described her father coming into the room. I said: “Now look for Jesus”; and she saw Him, she began to weep. She said: “He’s full of compassion. He’s weeping, because He sees what’s happening, and He’s very sad.” I said: “Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, looking for what He does and says.” She just interacted. She said: “He’s coming towards me. He’s standing between me and my father, and I can’t see my father now. Jesus says He’ll protect me.”

So, she was totally transformed. Within a space of about 3 weeks, she was greatly reconciled with her father. So, she got healed from the trauma. The picture of the trauma was replaced with a picture of something different. Now, sometimes there are demons inside the trauma, there are soul ties to the trauma. So when you feel the Holy Spirit lead, break the soul tie to the trauma, and command spirits to come out; but let the Holy Spirit do the work of revealing Jesus.

Often people are incredibly angry, very bitter, and they need to be lead through prayers of forgiveness. So, the core of the trauma is a picture, feelings that go with the picture, the way the person interprets it, and what they believed, and then their reaction. So the reaction – people repent of that. The lie is replaced by them seeing the truth and hearing the truth; and sometimes they just need to re-live it, and the soul tie broken.

I encourage you to try this sometime. I encourage you, if someone has gone through a painful experience, to ask them to invite Jesus to come into the experience and heal them. You might be surprised how easy it is, and how very quickly people can be set free. I prayed for one woman who was grieving over an abortion; and she saw Jesus standing, holding her baby. Tears began to come down, and Jesus spoke these words to her: “You need to forgive yourself.” He’s already forgiven her, but she wouldn’t forgive herself.

So, these areas you’ll find many people have got all kinds of experiences; and it’s always got a picture, feelings that go with the picture, beliefs that go with the picture, and a reaction. The belief is changed by seeing and hearing the truth; the reaction is changed by repentance; and demons are just cast out.

Let me give you just some situations of trauma, just so you’ve got some ideas what you may be looking for. If I give you a list of some typical trauma experiences that people have, when you are working with people, you’ll know something to look for. So, remember, a trauma is a negative picture that’s imprinted into the person’s memory because of some painful experience. What is a trauma for one person may mean nothing to another.

So, I’ll just give you some of the typical ones, or ones that we have experienced in ministry. Firstly, pre-natal experiences... Prenatal means the child’s in the womb. So a child in the womb that’s rejected can become quite traumatised, and have memories that last all of their life. For the last hundred years or so, people have believed that all of the experience, or memory and identity of the child, is in the brain; so if the brain hasn’t been formed, then they have no awareness. The last 4 or 5 years, experiences or research with ultrasonic scanning of the child realises that’s not true. When a child is in the womb, it is deeply aware of the mother and the environment.

A child unwanted in the womb, experiences deep rejection. A girl in the womb who comes to realise both parents want a boy, experiences deep rejection in the womb, and can be demonised from that point. A child in the womb is deeply aware of the mother’s emotional state, and so it can be traumatised if the mother has deep anxiety or fear, or there are conflicts in the home. So a child in the womb is aware when the mother’s speaking to it; when the mother’s speaking to the husband; when the father’s speaking to it; and when the father’s speaking to the mother. The child is aware of these things.

So, if the pregnancy has complications, for example the mother gets toxaemia, the baby is traumatised by the fear of death. If there’s an attempted abortion, the child is aware of it, and remembers it. If there’s been a previous abortion, the child is aware of it, and is affected even while it’s in the womb. So only the Holy Spirit can reveal if the issues go right to the prenatal experience.

Sometimes birth traumas can leave an imprint on the child. Premature birth, the cord wrapped around the child’s neck, sometimes the force of delivery can be very difficult, and traumatises the child. If there’s no bonding with the mother, the child can be quite traumatised.

People tend to think because the baby can’t speak, it doesn’t know. The reality is, children are very vulnerable, and demonic spirits can enter them, and they can be traumatised. There can be childhood traumas e.g. a child is adopted, or abandoned, or rejected. If there’s turmoil in the family; physical or verbal abuse; frightening experiences. A divorce can traumatise a child. Serious sickness, or long sickness; surgery; accidents. The death of someone in the family or a close friend. School experiences. When we talk with people we find most remember very painful experiences from school. Broken relationships. Accidents. A miscarriage can be a trauma. An abortion is always a trauma.

So, there is all kinds of ways that people can experience a shock to their system. Demons use that to come in and then torment the person. So, when you are working with people, look for the possibility there may be a trauma of some kind in their life, a powerful negative picture. So, we have to ask the Holy Spirit to bring these things to the surface as we talk with people. I’ll just show you some steps to follow in this. So, traumatic experiences create these problems. 1.) The picture, the memories, the feelings, the reactions, the beliefs. 2.) Sometimes the person is soul tied to the trauma and you just need to break the soul tie. 3.) Sometimes there are demons attached into the trauma, and once you minister into the person, then you can cast the demon out.

So we’ve now looked at a range of doorways for demons to come in. So, if you are trying now, or sitting with a person, and trying to work out what is the person’s problem, so let me give you some steps for diagnosis. Usually when someone comes to you they’ve got a problem. “Please help me.” So, you have to ask questions and listen. If someone comes with a problem, you begin to inquire, like you’re searching for contributing roots to the problem. So, whatever problem the person has, we begin to ask a number of questions.

We are looking for several things, and so we’re looking for root systems that support the problem, and allow the evils to be in there. Our approach in ministry is: tear down the demonic house - remove the demonic house; then cast out the demons. So remember what the demonic house is made up of: it could be generational curses; it could be patterns of sin; it could be reactions, like soul-ties and bitter inner judgements; or it could be made up of traumatic experiences.

So, this is how we would approach it. “Tell me what the problem is. How is it affecting you? How long have you had this problem?” When you ask the question ‘how long’, you can begin to find whether this was a generational problem. Here’s what we would look for in diagnosing the problem.

1.) Is this a generational issue? In other words, is there a generational curse operating? Do members of the family have the same problem? So when you’re talking to the person about their problem, did other members of the family have the same problem? How long have you had this? Often the clue to where to look is found in when the problem started. So it’s like we’re searching. We’re trying to gather information, and we’re listening to the Holy Spirit. He may prompt you to ask random questions. So, number 1: is this a generational problem?

2.) Are you soul-tied to some person or event? Is there someone who contributed to this problem, and you are attached to them? So the problem may be a soul-tie to someone sexually; a soul tie to someone who abused them; or a soul tie to someone who abandoned them. So are there any soul ties? Are there any bitter roots – unforgiveness? Are there any bitter roots present; or bitter judgements against someone? “I can never trust men. Men will always let you down.” Are there any bitter expectations? So you’ve got to ask the questions, and try and find these problems. Has the person made any inner vows? “I’ll never do this, I’ll never do that.” Did you make any inner vows?

Maybe it comes up with nothing, but you just mentally have some things you’re looking for. Are there any word curses in the person’s life? They cursed themselves; or a death wish of some kind? Are there things they’ve been saying to themselves? Are there words others spoke over them? You’re looking for that, it may contribute to the problem. Are there any habits of sin - patterns of destructive sin? Are there any of those? Are there any traumas? Are there any pictures in their mind that are creating negative memories, negative pain. Then, what kind of demons are in there? So, if you begin to think about the person’s life that way, then you systematically can deconstruct the demonic house.

Use the tools of: repentance and confession; release forgiveness; receive forgiveness; renounce the bondages. If we don’t look to the heart issues, we’ll just try and change their behaviour, and it won’t last. You have to deal with what’s in the heart. So when a person comes to you with a problem, don’t be in a hurry to pray for them. Search it out. Ask questions. Listen. Notice if you see emotions come as you talk to the person. So, if I’m talking with a person, and I see tears come in their eyes, I just stop. “What’s happening now? What are you feeling? What triggered that feeling?” It tells me something is going on in their heart.

So, you notice that this is not just a 1, 2, 3, 4 step to fix everyone. It requires we be sensitive to the Holy Spirit; and He will show you where to go. So I start, I relax the person, ask questions, begin to find my way to the root of the problem, and then I look for all the contributing issues: Generational issues; Soul-ties; Inner vows; Bitter judgements; Death wishes; Word curses; Sin. Everything has got a way you deconstruct it; and then when you deconstruct it, deliverance is very quick. So always think: deconstruct the demonic houses; remove the armour. Take away the armour the demons trust in, then deliverance is straightforward.

Now, is this always easy? No it isn’t; but often you’ll find if you’ve got a process, it’s much easier. You may like to share, without identifying it, just the situation we had last night. You share about that. Well you were there...

I’ll backtrack. I’ll start with your visions. Is it ok if I start with your visions? I won’t do the vision. I just shared that last picture.

So, in this situation that we had, we had to establish very clearly, responsibility; so the person understood what they had done. She was grieving and in tremendous pain. She was tormented by what she had done. So I had to put it very clearly, but also in love, and gently. “You chose between yourself and your child, and you chose yourself; and you have taken the life of your child.” I shared a vision God had given me of children in heaven, and how God cares for them. So I said: “When you chose the abortion, you chose what seemed like a simple path; but you didn’t realise you would have other problems after it.

So initially, you feel relief, because you’ve solved a problem. Now you have different new problems which are even worse. So we took her through the journey step-by-step, to help her out of her situation. First come to the Lord and confess the sin. If you confess, God will forgive you. So we dealt with the issue firstly of confession of sin. Then we dealt with the issue of grieving over the child, and prayed that God will give her a vision; and she opened up her heart, God began to reveal himself to her, and Jesus spoke to her. She saw Jesus with her child, and Jesus said: “You need to forgive yourself.”

Then I got her to listen and find out what this child is. Is it a boy? Is it a girl? Immediately there was a witness straightaway - we knew exactly what it was. I said: “Now give your child a name, and release your child to the Lord.” She did that; and that’s when she saw Jesus holding her child, and smiling at her, and speaking to her words of comfort.

So step-by-step, this is a process. We dealt with the sin, I commanded the demons, we led her into an encounter with the Lord, and got her to take full ownership of the name of the child, and it brought great closure. You could see her countenance visibly changed afterwards. We had systematically deconstructed what the devil had built over her life. It started with a lie: “this is nothing. You can get rid of it without any problem.” It ended with her acknowledging the truth: “it was her son. This is his name, and she took his life.” But Jesus has forgiven her, and He’s now caring for the child. So it’s a journey through the process; and it was just step-by-step-by-step.

With the young man, I had to take him through similar steps to own his sin and failure; to come to and open his heart to the Lord and to be healed. It’s amazing what God will do. You’ve just got to deconstruct the demonic houses. Our tools: taking responsibility; repentance and confession; renouncing bondages; releasing forgiveness; and receiving God’s healing. So, use these tools to help deconstruct the houses. Once you’ve got in your mind what you’re looking for, you’ll find it’ll come up over and over again, the same things: Generational problems; Soul-ties; Bitter judgements; Inner vows; Death wishes; Word curses; Sin patterns; Trauma pictures; Demonic spirits. Each part has got a way of solving it.

Now, the only way you can get competent at this is: you have to just experiment. You’ve got to just be willing to work with people. Don’t become the person – “I’ve got to fix you.” Instead - “this is your problem. Jesus has the answer for you. I’m here to help you find Jesus, and His answer. I’m here to help you face the truth, even if the truth is unpleasant.”

So when we’re ministering to people, the responsibility for their problem is always theirs. Jesus is the one who has the answer, and we need the Holy Spirit to help us show what the real problem is, and to make the answer real. So we come to the person in an attitude of humility and love, and help them see the truth; and when they acknowledge the truth, we can lead them out of the problem. That makes deliverance a lot easier.

So in ministering to a person, if you’re struggling to get them free, then there’s something you’ve missed that God sees, and can help you with. It may be sin, it may be unforgiveness, it may be some bondage to be renounced; but if you deconstruct these houses, then the demons go out quite quickly.

[Ministering to People]

Now I’ve got a few more minutes, and I want to just share just what you do with a person afterwards. I want to just open up some scriptures for you. I want to share with you just some scriptures, just so you see the principle, and then I want to show you just some specific things you can do with people.

The first scripture we look at is James 4:7. Now, notice these scriptures – they have to do with freedom. “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” So you can see there very clearly that God requires that we resist. To resist something is to actively stand against it. It also requires that we align ourselves with the Lord. Submit. Resist.

Now look at another scripture which is quite similar to it. It’s found in Ephesians 4:22-24. Notice it says in verses 22 – 24: “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, who was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” So you notice then a process of resisting – putting off the old, and renewing. Renewal in the mind, and in the way you respond.

So, change needs to be intentional. In other words, people often are happy for you to pray for them, but they don’t see their need to intentionally grow in this area. There is no neutral position in the kingdom of God. Jesus said: the devil, the spirits will come back; they will be outside trying to gain entrance again. So, the person needs to be active in pursuing their freedom. There’s always a price for freedom; but when you are free, and enjoying freedom, you never want to go back into bondage again. You never want to go back where you used to be; but you have to hold the freedom you’ve been given.

You’re very well aware that a nation can break free of oppressors, but then they have to maintain their freedom. So, how do you do that? It needs to be quite intentional. For example, a person has a problem with pornography. “Oh pastor, pray for me. Fix me up.” It’s not going to work, because already by that language, they’ve put the responsibility to solve the problem in someone else’s hands.

So I begin to talk to them. Firstly there’s the sin. You are sinning, and you’re sinning as a habit in your life. Habits take time to change. I said: “You have two problems: 1) a deep rejection in your life; and 2) when you’re in pain, you’re finding comfort by looking and comforting yourself by these perverse things.” So first, there’s a deep spiritual problem; secondly, there’s an emotional problem; and thirdly, because you’ve been doing this a while, there are now tracts in your brain, that the moment you get a trigger, you’ll think down that line. You can’t expect one prayer to fix up months, if not years, of damage.

Becoming free requires some steps. There is a process you need to follow. There is a journey out of this sin. It starts by bringing it to the light, and dealing with the sin issue; but in order to stay free, there’s some things you have to do. So, what kinds of things? Now, this is fairly general, but it will apply in most situations. So, I will give you 5 steps of a process. This is not the only way of approaching this, but I’ve found this is quite helpful.

1.) Build or strengthen your spiritual life. We need to energise our inner man, our spiritual man; because we overcome sin by a greater power, not by just trying harder. So, energise or build up your spiritual life. The Bible tells us in Jude 1:20 – “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.” I encourage people to pray strongly in tongues every day, and build the amount of time they’re praying in tongues, because when you’re praying in tongues, you are building and strengthening your spirit man. So I think it really helps if a person energises their spiritual life.

2.) The person needs to renew their imagination, or their mind. This is the biggest one of all. It’s one that people don’t really do very frequently. The word ‘renew your mind’ means to literally ‘renovate’. You renovate your mind by meditation. Notice what it said in Ephesians 4: “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” Romans 12:2 says the same thing: “Be transformed by the renewing or renovation of your mind.”

So how do I do that? Meditation is how you do that. Meditation is picturing or imagining God’s truth. You need to see the truth of God. So your imagination is a very powerful way of accessing the realm of God. In 1 Timothy 4:15, Paul writes to Timothy and he says: “Meditate in these things, and give yourself to them, and you will profit.” Now, your mind cannot take hold of anything abstract. If I say to you for example, God loves you. That is abstract. Yeah, I get it with my head, but I don’t feel anything in my heart about that.

So if I ask Christians – Do you believe God loves you? They’ll all say: yes, God is love. God so loved the world. Quote all the verses. But if I ask a different question – Do you feel loved by God? Do you experience Him loving you? Then people go quiet, because they don’t experience it, except when they come to a meeting. It’s not really what happens in their life. In their life, they pray, but don’t feel God at all. Coming to a meeting, they’ll start to feel God, starts to get touched, weep. It’s a long time between Sunday and Sunday. So meditation is using your imagination to picture the truth of God. Constantly repeating every day, it gets into your heart that this is what the truth is.

So, let’s take this, suppose the person’s struggling with rejection. So they believe – “No one loves me. I’m not accepted.” Now, that is a lie that gives room for a demon to torment them; and while the lie stays in the heart, it will keep affecting the way the person sees everything. Lies can only be displaced if you reject the lie and embrace the truth; but if you’ve believed all your life that you are not accepted, that you are rejected, then when I tell you that God loves you, you won’t believe it. Meditation is the biblical way of bringing truth into our heart. So I need to not just say the scripture “God loves me”, I need to picture it. What would that look like? What would that feel like?

If I will imagine the truth, repeatedly imagine the truth, and embrace the truth, it will start to form in my heart as a belief. Because this takes time and discipline, most people don’t bother to do it, they just have repeated problems. So if you want to get a truth in your heart, you need to take the scripture, memorise the scripture, and then imagine the scripture being true. Every day, use your imagination to see it, to reach out and embrace – this is the truth. Hold it in your heart as long as you can. Then go back there again, and again, and again, until that truth rests in you, and it comes alive in you. Pictures are how your inner person works.

If I asked you this question, tell me what is the most comfortable place in your house, where you love to go and rest? Then, if you were to close your eyes – “Oh, yes I’m there right now. I can see it.” It’s a picture that comes to mind. So you have a picture, and that picture is always associated with the same thing – with rest. So, if I’m going to change my inner belief system, I have to change the pictures.

Now, I’ll just show you. I just need someone to help me. “Would you like to help? You don’t have to do anything. Just come on over here where people can see. Can I just take your hand? What I want you to do is just this: I want you just to close your eyes for a moment. Just make everyone vanish. I just want you to be open to what you may feel and experience in the next few minutes. Now, I’m not going to pray for you and minister to you; what I’m going to do is I’m going to meditate, and I’m going to talk to people as I meditate. As I mediate, what I’m meditating on will become real for me, and there’ll be a flow of God’s love in my life that will touch you. So you just remain standing there...”

So in order to put the truth of God’s love into my heart, I began to meditate on Psalm 23 – the Lord is my shepherd. The word shepherd is a friend. So, I just begin to picture Jesus, and He’s standing in front of me. I use my imagination to see Him, as He’s described in the Bible in many places.

His eyes blazing fire, compassion and love, looking straight into every part of me, reaching out of me, no condemnation. I can see His eyes looking at me, loving me. I look on His countenance and I see Him smiling. Someone who loves you, smiles at you. I see Him smiling. I see the brilliance of who He is. His hands – kind of like they’re reaching out for me. He’s my friend; He’s welcoming me into His world. I look at that, and see this is the Jesus, who loves me. So I open my heart and allow that love to just flow into my life, allow my heart to become filled with that, filled with the Spirit. See, it’s very real. I feel His presence right now. It’s flowing. “Oh, Jesus.”

Now, while I was meditating, it started with me creating a picture, but I’ve done it so often that immediately I could connect with Him straight away. It’s like, I’ve done it so often, that each time I do it now, I can go straight to where He is. Meditation creates tracks in your mind; a pathway for you to come into the presence of God. So, the moment I stop and go into Psalm 23, oh my friend, there He is – my friend; and I can step into His presence.

Now, I’ve done that so often, it just now is a habit of coming into His presence, to be aware that Jesus is with me. Now, was it like that at the beginning? No it wasn’t. I just thought I was imagining things. I didn’t feel God at all. I didn’t feel anything. I felt silly. I just felt like I’m making it up, because what was in my mind, my heart was fighting against it. So meditation is imagining the truth over and over and over, and embracing it until your heart receives it. Amen.

“Come. Come.” “What did you feel? Oh, you’re crying. Why are you crying? What did you feel?” “I felt like Jesus holding me, embracing me.” Now, I don’t recall saying that, but meditation opened the way to experience the reality, and then the Holy Spirit moves, and it’s now got a life of its own. So in meditation, you take Biblical truth, you begin to picture it, you hold it in your heart and embrace – ‘this is true. This is true’; and then the Holy Spirit begins to make it real in your life.

I just did that for several weeks. I thought: if I can experience God’s love, each day, like this, my life will change. So instead of doing lots of things, I built one thing into my life. Sometimes we’re so busy, and we have so much information, we don’t build anything into our life. It’s not enough to know all the knowledge; it has to be worked into your life. So, for the person who’s struggling with sexual sin, they need to picture every day, yielding their body; and just speak into their mind, reject all the thought trees. Begin to picture Jesus accepting them. Picture Jesus’ holiness flowing into them. You need to change the pictures. Beholding Him, we are changed.

“So, can I just practise with you? Close your eyes. I’ll just hold your hand. Just imagine now, Psalm 23. The Lord is my friend, and I look at Him, and I see His countenance – eyes loving me, countenance smiling, hands reaching out; like I feel I want to just take a step towards Him and be in His presence. You notice as soon as I took a step towards Him, there was a flow of His presence start to touch.

Meditation is one of the most powerful keys to changing people’s lives, and yet so few people do it, because it takes effort. It takes time to reprogram your inner being; but imagine this – imagine if you were to work on this area in your life, and you found it easy to experience God. Wouldn’t that be great? So it’s worth it. So I just took time until one day, I just suddenly felt God there. Every day for 3 weeks I didn’t feel God - every day for 3 weeks! It felt like I was making it up; and then when the truth got in my heart, I suddenly felt Him, and began to just cry and cry and cry.

So meditation - you use your imagination to picture truth. Try to imagine what it looks like, what it feels like. So, when we come to the area of holiness, people don’t know what it means. So we try hard to be holy. It doesn’t really easily work, because you’re always making mistakes; but what if I was to meditate on holiness, to look at Jesus and see how pure He is; and to stand there imagining what it would feel like, if there’s absolutely nothing in my life, how clean I would feel, how clean in His presence. See, meditating on His holiness, we’re changed into the same thing. Then you get to like it. You don’t like the other things. You’ve changed. It’s a daily spending time with God to build that in our life.

So, just to close this up now... If a person’s going to journey forward in their life, they need to invest in building their spirit, so the life of God is flowing. 1) Praying in tongues is one way of doing that. 2.) Renew the mind by meditation, confessing God’s word.

3.) We need to capture old thoughts quickly. If you find you’re starting to think negatively, stop it quickly. Capture the thought and reject it. We need to change how we respond. So, very simply, in Romans 12:21, we overcome good with evil. So you just respond differently. If someone hurts you, you start to feel angry, “oh Lord I just let go that anger to you. Lord I forgive them and I bless them and I show then kindness.”

4.) It’s quite intentional changing of your life way. One of the things I think is of huge help is to be open with others. We need others to help us in our journey. 1 John 1:7 – if we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Christ cleanses us.

So, in sharing these things, we’re really looking at the process of discipleship, walking with Jesus. Don’t think of deliverance in isolation, think of deliverance as a part of the discipling process, pulling down demonic strongholds, casting demons out, and helping the person journey to become what God wanted them to be. There’s no neutral position, there’s no passive position. It’s the pursuit of God. Amen. God bless you.

Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8)

Thu 12 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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We are called to pray for people, and to be a minister of the Spirit of God. Come spiritually prepared, and believe that God is with you - guide people’s attention to the Lord, not the prayer! There will be conflict before, during, and after ministry, and the battles will be within you. Believe God is with you, take risks, and reach out in prayer. Keeping your eyes on Jesus, and listening to the Holy Spirit, you will be able to minister healing and freedom, in Jesus name, to people.

I just want to just talk about ministering to people. Now, I notice I’m doing a lot of praying for people at night time. Partly that’s because people have this huge expectation some man of God will pray for them; and I understand that, you know; but the problem is if we continue to give in to that, then it minimises what you can do. So, I want to talk about a couple of things in ministry that can be of help for you.

There is always a spiritual warfare around ministry. It’s just recognising what it is, and then learning how to deal with it as it comes up. The first conflict is before you pray for the person. The second conflict is while you’re praying for them. The third conflict is after you’ve prayed for them. Get the picture? You’re ministering the Holy Spirit, there’s going to be some conflicts; and the battles are all inside you.

I want to just show you quickly how you can deal with them. If you want to become good at ministering the Spirit, you just have to practise. No practice, never become good. You’ve got to practise. You want to play the piano? Practise! If you look at the piano, ‘Ah I might get it wrong!’ You never play. You have to practise. So, it’s a humbling thing that we have people to practise with. We have to be willing to stretch out and take risks.

I’ll just show what I mean. I just need one person to volunteer. Here’s the first part. What if nothing happens? What to do? “Just stand there. Face me.” So, the first conflict is the willingness to position yourself to minister to people. So I’ve put myself in a place of being vulnerable now. I’m taking a risk. So, many people, the battle is just to get to that place. So, you have to make a decision. I’m called to be a minister of the Spirit, God is with me and I will step up and take risks. To take risk means: I’ll step out, looking for God to do something. So, every time I step out, I feel a little bit nervous. It never stops, because you’re becoming vulnerable each time you do it.

So, what can you do about that? You just make a decision, “I’m called to be a minister of the Spirit, and the way God teaches me, is by engaging with real people, with real problems. I will make myself available. Yes, I’ll do it.” You’ve just got to make that decision. If you don’t make the decision to put yourself where ministry is happening, you can read all the books but you never really learn. If you want to ride a bike, first, get on the bike. “Oh, I read so many books about how to ride a bike. I have so much information. I know all about the bike.” “Hey, did you ever get on one?” “No.” “Then you can’t ride a bike.” See, knowledge is different from experience. There are some things you can only learn it with experience.

So the first battle is to say: ‘yeah I’ll come and pray.’ Now, here’s the thing some of you are missing. When I take a meeting, there is an anointing released, and anyone who prays gets to tap in on that anointing. One of the best times to learn is when we have a big meeting, there’s a flow of power. That’s the easiest time to get to learn, because there’s an anointing present; and the only way, see I can lay hands on you, and I can release an impartation to you. This is what happens - 95% of the time, within 3 weeks it’s gone. You have to hold things on your life. You have to make it your own; and you make it your own by practice, you make it your own by meditation. You have to give yourself to ministering. So the first battle is this.

The second battle is, when I come to pray, I start to think “Oh”, all the pressure now to try and solve her problem. So what I’ll do is, I’ll just direct. “I want you to close your eyes, and just open your heart to Jesus. I want you to look to Him.” What I’ve done is I’ve got her attention on the Lord, not on me; and that just stops so much pressure. Now, if I focus on “Oh, what to do?” I become afraid, and I start to close up my spirit. So you have to set your attention towards the Lord. I just, as I close my eyes, I just begin to think about Jesus being very near to me. Of course, I’ve done that every day. I did it this morning. So when I close my eyes, I become very aware of Jesus near me and His presence is here. I can feel His presence straight away.

So, you have to do your homework in your personal life with God. Ministry is about bringing the life of God to people; and before I come to pray, there’s apprehension – what if nothing happens; what if I have feelings of inadequacy. Make a decision – I’m going to step up and trust God. When you come to pray, you may feel somewhat concerned, ‘maybe nothing will happen’. Push it aside and focus on the Lord. “Thank you Lord for Your presence is here; and I see You touching her right now.” What I did was I began to picture Jesus standing there, and life is flowing through me to touch her; and that’s exactly what happened.

Of course, after you’ve ministered, then sometimes doubts can come. You wonder about ‘was it good enough’. Just stop. Stop it. Don’t go analysing. You just did what you could; you just ask the person: ‘was this helpful?’ What can we learn, and learn next time, new things. It’s a journey of learning.

“Just come. She’s asleep. Here we go. Just come. Alright then. So, just close your eyes.” You must centre people’s attention on Jesus. Otherwise they put a demand on you, and you’ll start to feel manipulated to try and make something happen, rather than leaning on the Holy Spirit. Now, when you’re praying for people (you’ve done your counsel), when it comes to praying, depend on the Holy Spirit. Always depend on Him. So, I just set my mind listening for Him, what He wants to do; and I become conscious on whether the anointing is settling on her. If I feel a wall and a block, you’ll feel like no flow, there’s something happening I don’t know about. So, I just need to ask the Lord – “What is it Lord?” Then, power of God.

Sometimes there are blocks in ministering to people. If there’s a block, sometimes I can just overcome it with just a power surge, but most times, you need to stop and ask the Lord what the problem is. It could be a control spirit over the person. It could be unbelief. “In Jesus’ name, I bind that control spirit, I bind the unbelief. Loose her now.” Often then, power will start to flow. Or, there may be an issue in the heart that you have not yet addressed. You just need to say “Hey, I don’t feel the flow of the Spirit, let’s talk about that. Is there something that we’ve missed? Let’s ask the Lord to show us what’s missing” You close your eyes, and you get them to close their eyes – “Let’s ask the Lord: Lord, show us what it is we need to deal with.” Interact with the person.

[Practise Exercises]

We need to just have a chance to pray with people now, and I’ve run out of time so much, I’ve got so many things I want to do. I would love to get you praying for one another. Then we’ll have an alter call at the end, and we’ll just have to believe for God to touch you, wherever you need to be touched. This is what we’ll do. I’ll get you into groups of 3, and I want you just to get the feel of ministering power to one another. We just need say, 3 people – 1, 2, 3, just come. Stand there. Ok.

So, it’s very simple – just step-by-step. This is the purpose of this. I want you to get used to releasing power. Now, we release power usually with a word of command. It’s from within. The steps we’ll take are very simple. “You’re the catcher. Eyes open. Be ready to catch.” Sometimes people fall over “Ahh”. Sometimes they go “Oh!” So, be alert. So, you have your eyes closed. Just ask now – ‘Can I practise on you?’ ‘Yes please’. Be encouraging! Just stop here.

Jesus cultivated an environment for ministry. When the people were not responsive, little power flowed. If that happened with Jesus, then it will happen with you. In some places, He took the person out of the town to pray for them, because the atmosphere of unbelief was so strong. Sometimes He put people out of the room, because the atmosphere of faith was not there. It is important to set up the ministry; to create expectation for God to do something.

Alright, so again now, you are going to minister the power of the Spirit to this lady. We ask again. ‘Can I practise on you?’ ‘Yes.’ I like a big smile. Ok then.” So, the lady receiving, just close your eyes and focus on the Lord. In a moment, the power of God will touch your life. I want you to close your eyes, and I want you just to begin to picture Jesus standing, and He’s just where I’m standing, just with you now. God is with you. Begin to pray in tongues. Activate the flow of the Spirit. Become aware that God is with you. God is with you. Then on the count of 3, we’re just going to release the power of God. So when we come to 3, rise up inside, and release the power of God. Just speak the word “Power!” 1, 2, 3, “Power”.

Alright then, I just want to change around. You catch; and you be here. That’s right. What I want you to do, ask her again, same question: ‘Can I practise on you?’ “Yeah you can’. Close your eyes, and just begin to pray. Pray in tongues. When you’re praying in tongues, God’s spirit is flowing in you; as you begin to feel his presence in you now. That’s right. Don’t focus on praying, just focus on… There it is.

Now, same person praying - two different experiences. Don’t worry about that. It’s ok. Now, there was somewhat of a difference in the ability of the people being prayed for to receive. That’s what makes the difference - it’s the person receiving. So always, there has to be faith. Ministry has nothing passive in it. You’ve got to be 'believing God actively for something to happen. Amen.

“Come up again. Just come. I need a catcher. ‘Can I take your hand? Can I practise on you?’ Ok. That’s good.” Remember – creating a positive environment is crucial. You’re the leaders. You need to be expecting God to do something. So, when you’re ministering, build expectation. In a few moments, God is going to touch your life. The power of God will come on you. I can see already the anointing’s coming on her. Holy Spirit come, touch, now. I rose up inside, and released the power of God.

“Come. You come too. Give me your hand. Stand behind her. Thank You Lord. There we go. Close your eyes. I want you to look up. God wants to touch you. God wants to pour His Spirit out on you. There. Now, you notice: I was speaking something. I was declaring something.

“Come. Just come. There we go. Isn’t that nice? Amen. Praise the Lord. Give me your hand. Close your eyes and look up to the Lord. God wants to touch you, wants to touch you like He touched the others, wants to touch you with His power. I want you, just for a moment now, just see your heart like two big doors just opening up. “Now!” Touch her right now.

Now, I was preparing her to receive. How did I prepare her to receive? I wonder if any of you noticed what I did. I’ll show you what I did. First, I got two experiences, where she saw God moving. Testimonies will do the same thing – share stories of God moving. Secondly, I got her to open her heart. I used a picture to help her open her heart. Then, I just prayed more strongly. Then something happened. So always, we have to learn how to build faith for things happen!

“Just come along here. 1, 2, 3. You’re the minister, you’re receiving, you’re catching. Ready? ‘Can I practise on you?’ That’s good. You can almost tell this is going to work. I want you to just imagine God is just as near as I am. The Spirit of God is filling you, just release the power of God right now. There it is. 1, 2, 3. Ok. Very good. You feel the power flow?” Don’t be timid. Don’t be shy. Come on, get bold! “Thank you Lord. Close your eyes, look up to the Lord; thank You Lord for Your presence. Touch her right now in Jesus’ mighty name.”

Ok it’s your turn. I want to get you into groups of 3. I want you all of have an opportunity to pray for someone. Ok? So, find an area or space you can practise. Get into groups of 3. If you haven’t got 3, put your hand up. Ok. We’re ready. One person catching – eyes open, one person receiving the prayer. Ok, person ministering – we want to do it just step-by-step.

Step 1 – “Can I practise on you?” “Yes yes yes”

Step 2 – Person receiving – close your eyes, open up your heart. God is going to touch you. Person ministering – begin to pray in tongues, quietly praying, begin to picture God’s power flowing. On the count of 3, release the power of God. Just blow on the person, or speak the word ‘power’.

Ready? 1, 2, 3. “Power!” Oh. That’s good. Very good. Try again. This time, take their hand – “Can I practise on you?” “Oh, yes. Do your best.” Are you ready? Person receiving – close their eyes. Person praying – listen to me. I want you to see this. As you begin to pray in tongues, begin to imagine Jesus. He’s full of joy; smiling; very happy; and we’re going to release that joy. The joy you can see, you’re going to release it into people.

Ready? 1, 2, 3. “Joy!” Woah. Very good. Change around; or try again. Ok. “Can I practise on you?” “Yes, yes, yes. Do your best.” Ok. Close your eyes if you’re receiving. Person praying, begin to meditate on Jesus. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Begin to see Him. He’s full of joy. That joy is inside you. You’re going to release it. 1, 2, 3. “Joy!” Wow. Very good. Alright.

Now, listen again. Jesus said: “Out of your inner-most being, from within you, will flow rivers of living water.” Now, here’s the question: where does the flow come from? From in you. You must let go your heart to the person. You must let go of what God’s given you. You can’t sort of just stand like this: “Blah blah blah”. What’s happening is this –you’re saying ‘keep away from me. I’m going to pray from a distance.’ You can’t minister from a distance. You have to release what you have.

Just hold her. Ready. So you arise in your spirit, “hoo”, release the power of God. It’s like what God has given you, you give to them. The word ‘spirit’ is the word ‘breath’. That’s why I was getting you to breathe, or to speak. Hold her. That’s right. Come stand here. Lift your hands up. “Ooh power of God touch her”. Now, you notice I let something go from inside. There’s a power flow from within. There’s nothing passive about ministry. Got her? Ready? Just lift your hands up.

So, you rise in your spirit, and it’s going to release the power. “Power. Touch her Lord right now.” Oh. It’s alright. God’s touching her. It’s just sometimes it’s more visible than others. So if I was just to come a little closer. “Thank you Lord. The power of touching Lord, right now”. Now, the problem is one of receiving. It’s not one of giving, because if I just go like this: “Power - touch her right now.” You see the whole group goes down. So this is an issue of receiving. I just need to help her receive.

“I want you to just close your eyes and relax. God loves you. He does love you so very much. I want you to just see it’s like you’ve got two big doors on your heart, and I want you to just open them up so you can receive. So you’re used to giving to everyone else, but not used to receiving. Jesus wants you to receive as well. Just in a moment now, I want you to open up your heart, like you’re opening a door”. “Whooh - touch her”.

Now, what was the difference? The difference was the heart positioning to receive; and as I started to pray I was asking: “Lord what is the problem”. I felt the Lord drop into my heart: “She gives out to everyone else, but doesn’t find it easy to receive for herself”. So then what I encouraged her to do, was to picture her heart like it had two big doors on it, and opening them up. As she began to do that, the Spirit of God began to move into her. It’s all to do with preparation; and some people just never fall over anyway, so don’t worry about it - it’s not about falling over. I’m just trying to teach you the dynamics of flowing with the Spirit.

“Did you feel the difference that time? Yeah. You felt God start to touch you? And it’s true - you work and serve a lot, and give out to everyone else. When you give out to everyone else, it’s often that after a while, you don’t think there’s anything for you. God does love you. Close your eyes again. He loves you. See Him just standing before you; and He loves you. Father, in Jesus’ name, I break the spirit of rejection. I break every ungodly belief: that I’m of no value, and my life doesn’t count. I break it now in Jesus’ name. Lord, release Your presence. Touch her Lord.”

So the root problem was rejection. Even when nothing happened, I was still asking God: what’s happening? Get the idea? Learning? Alright then, so let’s do it again. Let’s pray one more time. Are we ready? Find someone to practise on. “Power! Power!” Ok we’re ready. “Can I practise on you?” “Ok. Yes. Do your best.” Just listen to me very carefully. Listen to me.

Now, I’m speaking to the people receiving. If you believe in your heart that there’s nothing for you, nothing will happen. If you look at the person praying for you, and think they’re not very anointed, nothing will happen for you. You have to realise this – that even if the person is not highly anointed, it doesn’t matter - your faith can release the gifting in their life. Jesus said: “If they receive you, they’ll receive Me.” So if you’re standing there right now, and someone has got hold of your hands, just as you close your eyes, imagine that’s Jesus there; and open your heart to receive. That’s right. See Him, smiling, loving you.

Now, if you’re ministering. Just release the power of God right now. 1, 2, 3. Power. It’s all about the heart begin aware. Try again. She’s unconscious - try someone else. Change around. Person receiving, close your eyes. What’s happening over there? That’s a spirit. One person pray in tongues, the other person command it out. Speak straight into the spirit. Ok. We’re ready. Person receiving, close your eyes. Jesus is about to minister to you. Person ministering, begin to see Jesus reaching out to this person. On the count of 3, rise up and release joy. 1, 2, 3. Joy!

See? It worked. Try once more. Just change around. Power! “Can I practise? Can I practise on you?” Person receiving, close your eyes. Woah. Catch her. Careful. We’re ready. Person ministering, begin to pray in tongues. See God’s Spirit working through you, then release the power of God. 1, 2, 3. Power! Alright then.

“Now, just stop. You’re trying to do it from your head, not your heart. Try one more time. I want you to close your eyes and open your heart; and see Jesus is with you. His power is flowing through you. Just see it. Focus on Him, not on the girl. Focus on Him. Now we’re going to release the power that’s inside you. 1, 2, 3. Power! See what happened that time? See? Quite different - from inside; before, it was up here. You were looking at her, and you were outside, not inside.”

Ok. Turn around then. Change over. Ready? Ok here we go. Look at that. Come. So now, I showed you a method – 1, 2, 3; but the anointing of the Spirit is like a river. So, don’t be strained or artificial. Try to be very natural.

Now, you notice this – I encourage you to pray without putting your hand on them, so you would resist the tendency or temptation to push them. If you put your hand like that, you’ll start to think “I need to help God. I push.”

I’m trying to teach you to arise from your spirit and to flow from your spirit. When you are flowing from your spirit, you won’t need to push; you just touch, and the presence of God just comes. So, it’s not the method, it’s the flow.

Someone else come. When you’re speaking to demons, you don’t flick them off like you’re swatting a fly. That’s not how you get rid of a demon. You have to use words. The words we speak are spirit. You need to speak to the demon.

Where is the demon located? In here, or around there? Ask the Lord to show you where. He may want you to put your hand on them. You must speak with force from inside. You must believe what you say will come to pass. Jesus said “Have the faith of God, speak to the mountain: be removed.” You must believe what you say will happen. So, we need to speak words we mean. So, it’ll be: “Loose!”, and you can see power flow. If we were doing deliverance, the demon would feel that. “Loose!”

Speaking those commands, the demon is forced up to the surface. They can tell whether you believe in what you’re saying. It’s not just saying empty words; its saying words filled with faith. “I believe that as I speak, something will happen; and if I take care I believe that when I speak ‘Power!’ that power will flow.” So, you need to believe when you speak, something will happen. Now, we just want to have a chance just to pray for people; and we covered so many areas, we just have to believe that God will do something.

So, if you had areas of generational curse, idolatry, spiritism, or sexual sin, some traumas, say: “God I need You to touch me. I know I need to be set free.” Please make your way to the front. Just make rows. First row receive, second row catch.

Let just worship the Lord. So, I look and I see lots of people. I can think one or two ways: “Oh, so many people - sigh”; or I can think like this: “every time I pray, I get stronger, because I’m exercising my authority.” So, you could get stronger too, if some of you helped in the praying. So if you’re not receiving prayer, maybe you’d like to come up, and be involved in just in doing some of the praying.

Now, remember what we said. Just prepare the environment. Now, what you didn’t realise, when I was getting you praying for one another, I was also preparing the environment; getting you to open up, getting you to relax, getting you to open to the Holy Spirit.

There’s no way that we can pray in detail for any person. I just have to believe that when I lay hands on you, the power of God will come on you; and you need to believe that too. Even though I don’t know everything that’s happening in your life, that God’s power will come on you. So, prepare your heart. Talk to Jesus now, about the issue you want the breakthrough. Be specific. Don’t come up saying: ‘well, whatever God wants to do, He can do.’ It’s just religious - it doesn’t work. Jesus asked the blind man: “what do you want?”

You need to tell Jesus what you want; where you want your breakthrough. Is it a generational thing? Is it something to do with spiritism? Is it some torment in your mind? Is it some traumatic experience? Is it some sexual sin? Is it some heart attitude? What is it that’s the problem? Just bring it before the Lord right now. Is it a fear? Is it some area that holds you back? Is it shame? Is it rejection? Have you been under the control of people so long, you feel deeply angry and rejected? Is there some picture that comes to mind? Talk to the Lord right now.

If there’s sin, ask Him to forgive you. If there’s someone you need to forgive, speak words of forgiveness. Come on. Let’s do that right now. Just speak with the Lord. Speak with Him. “Jesus, I’m so sorry. There’s been this sin in my life. I just come to You. I ask You to forgive me.” Talk to Him about what it is. Some addiction; some bondage. Talk to Him. He loves you. He forgives you. So you release forgiveness. Just release forgiveness to people who have hurt you, betrayed you. Release forgiveness.

Now what I’m going to do is this. I’ll lead you in a prayer. It’s a fairly general prayer, but you’ll know the part that works for you. After we’ve finished praying the prayer, just reach out and worship Jesus. The moment someone lays hands on you, stop praying. Just, if there’re spirits inside, cough them out. Just let go of what’s inside. Let go of what’s bottled up inside. Are we ready now?

“Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus. I renounce generational curses. I renounce agreements with evil spirits. I renounce ungodly soul ties. Lord I ask You to set me free. I forgive those who’ve hurt me; and I reach out to You Jesus, to set me free now. Satan go from my life. Now! In Jesus’ name.” Ok. Let’s begin to worship the Lord. Thank you Lord.

“In the name of Lord Jesus Christ, I take authority now. I break generational curses. I command spirits of idolatry, witchcraft, spirits of divination, bitterness, hatred, sexual spirits, unclean spirits, I command you to go. I come against spirits of shock and trauma. Go! Go! Go!”

Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8)

Thu 12 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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We learn that Jesus came to touch people's hearts, by bringing revelation of the Power of God, for: salvation; healing; deliverance. Jesus made it clear we would have difficulties and problems, but He has overcome all evil with good - on the Cross, and through His ministry to us. As we face the reality that we are hurting and suffering, and allow the Lord to help us repent and forgive, He will always respond. God is committed to our character and growth, not our comfort.

I want to share with you two verses now; and we’re going to go into Psalm 84.

The Bible tells us that the ministry of Jesus was to touch people. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit, the power of God was upon Him; and He set people free who were oppressed by evil spirits.

When Jesus described His ministry, He said: the Holy Spirit was upon Him to preach the gospel, to explain to people how they could be reconciled to God. Jesus said: Repent, change your mind, for the kingdom of God is near you. But Jesus also came to heal the broken-hearted, and to set people free who were imprisoned by evil spirits.

Psalm 84:5 – “Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage or a journey. As they pass through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring; the rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.”

Now, Jesus made it very clear that in the world we live, we will suffer difficulties, problems; and he said: but have courage, because I’ve overcome everything that could come your way. Jesus understood family pressures. He understood betrayal. He understood what it was like to be rejected. He understood what it was like to experience people criticising Him. He understood what it was like to face injustice; but He always manifested the life of God. He always overcame evil with good.

These few verses here describe how we can become free. He talks about the valley of Baca. The name Baca means ‘sorrows’ or ‘weeping’. So the Bible uses a picture to describe a painful experience in our life. A valley is a low place. The mountains are the high places. So when a person is in a valley, they’re in a place of challenge and difficulty. There are many valleys mentioned in the Bible. There’s the valley of the shadow of death. There’s the valley of trouble. There’s a valley of sorrows or weeping.

So in this passage, God describes a valley – a difficult place in life. Valleys happen to every person. Difficult experiences, experiences that produce sorrow. It can be a marriage; a family; finances; ministry; in the workplace; or with our friends. Sorrows come in life. So when a person is in the valley of sorrow, there’s grief and pain in their heart.

The Bible tells us in this verse, it says: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, who passes through the valley of sorrow.”

So valleys are inevitable. They happen to everyone. Valleys are painful, but valleys can be profitable –we can grow in them. Whatever experience you are facing, God intends you to grow through it. He wants to come to you in your valley; He wants to show you how much He loves you; and He wants to help you walk out of your valley. God does not intend us to stay in the valley. He intends us to pass out of the valley.

So blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, who passes through the valley; and makes his valley-experience a well that refreshes other people. Whatever painful experience you’ve gone through in life, you can remain stuck in it – being angry and resentful and sad all of your life; or you can choose to reach out to the Lord and change, and make your valley a well. A well, for the people who were reading this, was a place of refreshing and life.

The Bible uses pictures to describe spiritual experiences: a valley of sorrow, for a time of weeping and difficulty; becoming a well of blessing, with God’s spirit moving in that situation. Valley of sorrow; well of blessing. It says: they make the valley of sorrow into a well.

So you can’t stop difficult things happening to you. You can’t stop life happening to you. But when painful experiences happen, you can choose what you do with it. You can become bitter; or you can become better. You can become sour and hurt and resentful; or you can grow in the grace of God. You can be angry and blaming others; or you can reach out to God to help you. You can become twisted and distorted by this experience; or you become sweeter, and more gracious.

You choose - it’s your choice. We have no choice, sometimes, over what other people do to us; but we can choose how we respond. So, the Bible says: “blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, who passes through the valley, makes it into a well, and God begins to pour rains of blessing on him, and that person goes from strength to strength”.

That’s from one level of strength to another level of strength. You want to be strong? Handle adversity well. You want to become a bigger person? Handle your difficult situations well. So we see, God’s plan is never to leave us in a valley of sorrow. In fact, the Bible tells us in Isaiah 53 – Jesus carried our grief and sorrows, so we don’t have to carry them.

I want to ask two questions. First one: why did people get stuck in a valley? Why do they get stuck? The second question: how do you get out? How do you make your valley into a well? So you come out stronger, not weaker and bitter.

So firstly, why do people get stuck in the valley? Over the years I’ve met many Christians, and many non-Christians, and their lives are full of grief; they’re in pain. There is a part of their heart where there’s a valley of sorrow. So I’ve tried to find out why people stay there, when they don’t really want to be there. Every now and then, someone will say something or do something, and it triggers off their anger, and triggers off their reaction.

So here are some of the reasons I’ve discovered why people remain in a valley; why they carry sorrows in their heart; why they have a place in their heart where they’re stuck. There are several reasons - let me just give you a few of the reasons.

The first one is when a person denies or minimises that they’ve been hurt. If you get hurt by someone, or some situation; and you deny that you’ve been hurt, or you sweep it away and say – “It’s nothing really”; then you are embracing a lie. The pain is buried, and you’ve covered it with a lie.

I have found many, many women suffer - women who’ve had abortions for example. Deep in their heart of hearts, they know what happened; but they’ve covered it and minimised it, and denied what it really was. So there’s a part of their heart where they’re sad. Until we face the truth about our situation, we can’t get free. I’ll show you the steps out in a moment. So when people deny or minimise there’s a problem... I’ve found often in Asia, people won’t talk about the things that hurt them. They’ll bury them in the heart, and hold them down in the heart; trying to get on with life, and not face the thing and deal with it.

Another way that people stay in the valley is through unforgiveness. Unforgiveness means: you’ve hurt me, and you owe me, and I refuse to release the debt. When we hold unforgiveness in our heart, the Bible says we open the door to tormenting evil spirits; and they torment you. They keep reminding you: it’s not fair. They keep stirring up hurt, stirring up injustice. They keep stirring the fire inside you; and each new experience adds to the previous one. I find some people are angry, and they’re just about angry at everything. But really what’s happened is: they were hurt, and got angry, and they never forgave.

Anger is like a debt, similar to unforgiveness. When a person is angry, they believe something was taken from them, something they were entitled to was stolen. “You owe me. You need to apologise. You need to put it right.” So anger and unforgiveness are like a demand – you pay me back. But you may never pay me back, and what you did may be so serious, and so bad, you can’t pay me back.

So, if I remain angry and harbour unforgiveness in my heart, I am trapped in the valley. I’m stuck in the place of sorrow. Trapped in there by my own unforgiveness; and God is saying – “Hey, I want to help you. I want the valley to become a well, but you are holding onto your unforgiveness and anger. You won’t let go, so you’re staying in this difficult place. I want to get you out of there.”

There’s another reason that people may stay in the valley – is they make Inner Vows. They harden their hearts; they speak “I’ll never let any man near me again.” “I’ll never trust a woman.” “I’ll never be in that position again.” So when we make an inward vow, it’s rooted in anger and bitterness – we stay in the valley. “I’ll never be like my father.” “I’ll never be like my mother.” These kinds of statements are rooted in anger and bitterness; and they’ll keep you in the valley.

So there are many reasons that people stay in a valley: Denial; Minimising; Unforgiveness; Anger; Inner vows; Judgements. People just get their lives all messed up. Now, we can choose how we handle difficult situations. So notice what the Bible says – “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord.” Blessed! That means God’s favour rests on them. Notice why the person was stuck in the valley – was because they were trying to control all the pain, and control their own life. They were trying to manage their own world. When we control our own life, we don’t make room for God.

So here are the steps out of this – “Blessed is the man.” In other words, God’s blessing flows on this person. Here’s number 1 – “whose strength is in the Lord”. That word strength means: ability to get victory is found in the Lord. So blessed is the man who comes to the Lord for victory over the situation. Instead of just trying to control it, instead of trying to bury it, they come to the Lord and bring it to the light. It says –that person, makes the valley of sorrows into a well.

How do they make it into a well? They make choices. They make choices that give God room to move; choices that allow the Holy Spirit to come into their life; choices that let God change their heart; choices to open this pain to the Lord to heal.

God doesn’t want you to walk through life suffering alone. This is what it says in 2 Corinthians 1 – “Now today, the God of comfort; God who comforts people, comfort you in all your tribulation.” So God is a God who comforts people. Every difficult, precious situation, God wants to come and comfort you. Now the God of all comfort, comfort you in all your tribulation.

Now listen to this: “...so that you may be able to comfort others, with the comfort you have received.” So if you’ve been through a painful situation, God wants to come and comfort you, and heal you; and if you are a living testimony of the power of God to change people’s lives, you can help others, because you understand them, you’ve experienced the same pain.

So what are some of the steps out of the valley? They’re usually far easier than you think. The difficulty is just doing it, but the steps are easy.

Number 1 – I need to face the reality of my plan. I need to be honest - I’m hurting. What happened to me, really hurt me, and I’m suffering. The first step to any freedom is just honesty. Instead of pretending, and covering, and saying: it’s not much; say what it is – I’m hurt.

Number 2 - I need to be honest. I need to face the situation – what happened to me, how did it affect me, how did I react. When you ask those questions, you start to really face the problem. Now I need to reach out to the Lord –“Lord I need Your grace to help me now.”

So number 1, I need to face the problems with honesty. Number 2, I need to ask the questions – what happened, how did it affect me, how have I tried to react and solve this problem.

Number 3, I need to ask the Lord to help me now and make a decision – I will forgive. I will grieve over what happened, and I’ll forgive. Sometimes we just need to grieve before we can forgive properly. Tears are the language of the heart. Issues of the heart, you have to process from the heart. Jesus said – When you forgive, forgive from the heart. Usually what happens – tears come, and that’s a sign or language that we’re sad.

When I work with people and we’re counselling them or talking with them, I always watch their face. I found the moment you touch the heart, the place where the person is in pain, the windows to the soul – the eyes start to flood with water. You can just tell the person’s really hurting; and I usually focus on that, because that is the place God wants to heal them.

So, face the situation. Ask the questions – what happened, how did it affect me, how have I tried to protect myself. Then come to the Lord with these things, grieve over the problem, release forgiveness. Start to bless the people who hurt you. If there’s any inner vows or judgements, renounce them; and expect God to help you, to give you grace to come through it. Expect God to speak to you because His words bring comfort.

I remember I was facing an incredible situation – one of my daughters had been sexually assaulted, and I was broken-hearted by this; and I was in a valley of sorrow. I could not be fixed by anyone. People didn’t even understand how sad I was. Deep at the core of my inner-most being, I was struggling with whether I could trust God again. So I had it all bottled up in my heart. I just tried to carry on life, tried to be a good Christian, tried to overcome.

Someone said to me –they were trying to help me – they said: if you could say anything to God, what would you say? So I was alone one day with God, and I began to weep. I began to face the sorrow. Then I spoke out my heart, and I said: “God, I feel You’ve let me down. I expected You to care for me, and look after me, and now I don’t trust you. I’ve prayed, and I pray for my family. My family is hurting, and You have allowed this thing to happen, so I’m struggling to pray anymore.”

I was just honest with God, and began to weep as I shared my heart, and shared the real struggle. There was a silence for a moment, and I could feel God coming on me to help me. When you are honest, God always responds. It’s just sometimes we try and pretend it’s better than it is. I felt the Lord begin to speak to me, tell me how much He loved me. He said – “I’m not committed to your comfort, I’m committed to your character.” He said – “I want you to grow. I know this is a sad experience for you, but in the midst of it, you will grow, and your family will grow, and I will come and help. Then you will be able to help many others.”

I began to weep. He said – “When you pray, you’re just praying for everything to go right in your life; and I’m not committed to your comfort, I’m committed to your character. Then He said to me this: “You know how you feel about your daughter. I feel that about My people too, when sin defiles their lives.” I just began to weep and weep as I felt the heart of God, and I let go. I said: “God, I thank you that You’re going to help us.” Within a space of 3 months, my daughter had an amazing encounter with angels, and her life changed. God supernaturally came to help, and the situation turned around.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord. He turns to the Lord in the midst of sorrows and troubles, instead of trying to control it all and bury it in the heart. Blessed is the man who turns to the Lord, and makes choices that turn the valley into a well. You can choose to trust God. You can choose to follow His way. It says in that scripture, we’ll read it again now: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.” In other words, whose heart is willing to go through a process. We just want someone to pray and fix us, but God wants you to journey with Him and trust Him. So I went from strength to strength to strength.

When I think about that situation now, there’s no pain in my heart. I’m sad that it happened, but God has given great victory; and we have prayed for hundreds of people to be set free, who were grieving over a similar trauma. “Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, whose heart embraces God’s process. They go through the valley of sorrow and make it a well, and the rain fills them, and they go from strength to strength, and they experience God.” That’s what the Psalm is saying.

Blessed is the man or woman whose strength is in God, who turns to the Lord in the midst of their trouble and says: ‘God, I’ll go through the journey and the process with You.’ They pass through the valley, they don’t stay in the place of being bitter and angry and sad and resentful - they turn it into something sweet. Instead of being angry, they forgive; instead of cursing, they bless; instead of being bitter, they do good, show kindness. That person goes from strength to strength, blessed by God, enjoying the presence of God.

You can’t enjoy the presence of God when you let bitterness in your heart. When Paul wrote, he said: don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Don’t let there be bitterness and anger and fury in your hearts. Don’t let there be malice, payback. Rather, be kind, tender-hearted. Forgive. Enjoy the presence of God. I love the Holy Spirit. I love the presence of God. I want my life to be free. So whenever sorrows come, you must make a choice whether to stay in the valley, or turn it into a well.

Please just close your eyes right now. Tonight there’d be people here who don’t know Jesus. You were born into this world separate from God; but God loves you, He has a destiny for your life. Jesus came and died on the cross for your sins, and rose from the dead after 3 days. This is what He said: to everyone who received, to everyone to believed on Him, He gave power to be a child of God.

If you’re here tonight and don’t know Jesus, I want you to make that decision tonight. “I will receive Jesus Christ. I will turn to Him – the God who loves me. I’ll trust my life to Him and receive Him into my heart.”

[Sinner’s Prayer]

“Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus’ name. Thank You for loving me. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins, and to rise again from the dead. Tonight I turn away from sin. Tonight I turn to You. Jesus, I receive You as my Saviour. I ask You to forgive all my sins. By faith now, I receive forgiveness. I receive Your Spirit into my heart, and I give You my life tonight. Before heaven and earth I declare, Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.”

First Principles

The Doctrine of Christ (or Foundational Principles), from Hebrews 6:1-3.

Jesus is saying: we need to get off foundations and move into maturity, not laying again the foundation. Then he begins to describe the foundations, which are explained in depth through this seven-part teaching.

Hebrews 6:1-3 “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of: repentance from dead works; and of faith toward God; of the doctrine of baptisms; and of laying on of hands; and of resurrection of the dead; and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit.”

Hebrews 5:12 “Now by this time you've been Christians for many years, you ought to be teachers. You need someone again teaches you the First Principles of the Doctrine of God; you need milk and not solid food. For everyone who takes milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. He is a babe...

Repentance from Dead Works (1 of 7)

This is not talking about repentance from sin, but from living a self-centred life at the core of our being, a life lived out of duty, obligation, legalism, my efforts to be loved, needed, valued, feel good. The life of God flows out of a vital love relationship with God. He is the centre, not us. Our identity is with him. His life flows through a life that's yielded and open, and in love with God as a father.

Faith towards God (2 of 7)

What is Faith? How would I know if I had it? How do I get it? Can it be grown and developed? How can I grow and develop it? Turn towards God to receive his love, receive identity in Him, receive positioning in Him, so you can bring forth good works, living works.

Baptised into Christ, Baptism in Water (3 of 7)

A foundation of believing that causes you to step up to the reality of who Jesus says you are. I am immersed into something that I was not in before. I am a totally new person, connected to God vitally, and connected to the body of Christ. Water Baptism is my testimony to the world that to the spiritual powers, that old person died, I'm joined to the living God, the power of sin is broken. I'm a free man, there's a new person risen up, born again.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit (4 of 7)

Immersion into the person, and power and presence of the Holy Spirit, so it lives around you, and is on you, and flows freely from within you. The entrance into a supernatural living.

Laying on of Hands (5 of 7)

In the laying on of hands, in the spirit, there is a flow from one person to another. God has called you not just to experience Him, but to connect to people tangibly, and release what He has given you.

Resurrection of the Dead (6 of 7)

Jesus was the first-fruits, the first-born to be resurrected from the dead, and appear to many in a resurrection body - immortal, incorruptible, able to vanish in and out, no longer constrained by the physical world. He was a pattern for all that is to follow. This teaching covers the first resurrection, 1000 year reign of Christ on earth, and the second resurrection. Which one will you be in?

Eternal Judgment (7 of 7)

Sometimes we focus a lot on the grace of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God we forget or overlook that there is another side, that God is also holy and He's just. His justice requires that He deal with how we've governed our life and what we've done in our life. All of you have an appointment to keep with this. There is no exception. Matt 16:27 I come and my reward is with me, to give to every man according to his work.

Paperback

- Paperback #1

- Paperback #2

Audio

- Repentance from Dead Works (1 of 7).mp3

- Faith towards God (2 of 7).mp3

- Baptised into Christ, Baptism in Water (3 of 7).mp3

- Baptism in the Holy Spirit (4 of 7).mp3

- Laying on of Hands (5 of 7).mp3

- Resurrection of the Dead (6 of 7).mp3

- Eternal Judgment (7 of 7).mp3

Notes

- Repentance from Dead Works (1 of 7)

- Faith towards God (2 of 7)

- Baptised into Christ, Baptism in Water (3 of 7)

- Baptism in the Holy Spirit (4 of 7)

- Laying on of Hands (5 of 7)

- Resurrection of the Dead (6 of 7)

- Eternal Judgment (7 of 7)

Repentance from Dead Works (1 of 7)

Sun 13 Feb 2011 PM  « Back to Top

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This is not talking about repentance from sin, but from living a self-centred life at the core of our being, a life lived out of duty, obligation, legalism, my efforts to be loved, needed, valued, feel good. The life of God flows out of a vital love relationship with God. He is the centre, not us. Our identity is with him. His life flows through a life that's yielded and open, and in love with God as a father.

Prelude: Open your Bibles with me in Hebrews 5:12, I want to begin a new series. Last week we shared with you about the parable of the unforgiving servant, and we saw how a person experienced the grace of God, came into what you'd call salvation type experience of the grace, the forgiveness, the blessing of God and then did not stay in that place of grace. By being unloving and judgemental to fellow believers in the house, he shifted himself out of being under the flow of grace, and ended in his own life under judgement and demonic torment. There's a tremendous principle to understand of the need for us to remain in the grace and the light of Jesus Christ, so we're going to do a series in this coming seven weeks called First Principles, or the foundational doctrine of Christ.

Message

Hebrews 5:7 - “Jesus, who in the days of His flesh, when He lived on the earth, He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear. Though He was a Son (the Son of God), He learned obedience by the things He suffered, and having been made perfect, He became the author (or the originator or the one who brings a flow of salvation) of eternal salvation, to all them who obey Him. Called by God as a High Priest, according to the order of Melchizedek (so Jesus is a High Priest within a particular supernatural order called the order of Melchizedek), of whom we've a lot to say but hard to explain, since you've become dull of hearing.”

In other words, Paul is saying: Jesus Himself was ushered into a priesthood of supernatural life and power. We want to talk to you more about that, but because of your immaturity, you can't handle the truth! That's virtually what he's saying: you're dull of hearing.

Now he starts to talk about Spiritual Immaturity. Hebrews 5:12 “Now by this time you've been Christians for many years, you ought to be teachers. You need someone again teaches you the first principles of the doctrine of God; you need milk and not solid food. For everyone who takes milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. He is a babe...” (and that's not kind of “babe” babe - this is a “baby” baby)

“...and solid food belongs to those who are of full age; that is, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore leaving the discussion of the doctrine or the first principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection”. Jesus was made perfect. Jesus grew into that maturity.

He's saying: “we need to get off foundations and move into maturity, not laying again the foundation” - then he begins to describe the foundation: “repentance from dead works; faith towards God; the doctrine of baptisms; laying on of hands; of resurrection of the dead; of eternal judgement - and this we will do if God permits.” What we will do: we will go on to maturity - IF God permits. Its possible God will not permit you to come to the fullness of what you're called to, unless the foundations are properly laid, so let's open our heart on this.

The key in this particular passage is the challenge of the apostle for us not to remain childish or baby, but to actually grow to maturity; and so this is about the first principles of Christ - the foundation of Christ. It's not just about Jesus Christ and what He's done, it's the foundations for us to become what God wants us to become. If these foundations are not laid properly in our lives, we will wrestle, struggle, we do the best we can; but never get to where God wants us to get to. This is why this is called “foundations”.

So there are many things that are basic in the Christian life, so I might ask you what's basic to the Christian life? What would you say? Well you'd say: prayer; read your Bible; come to church; get fellowship - you'd say a whole lot of things. You notice none of them are mentioned there? So this is nothing to do with that - these are the foundations for building. It's about how your life is built, and you becoming all that God wants you to become. These must be put in there. These are not just a set of teachings. It's not just six steps and now I'm away. It's not that at all. It actually is a foundation.

You notice when a building is first being constructed, they lay a foundation. You don't see the foundation, but it carries the whole weight of the building. Now you never remove the foundation. It always remains there, and the stability of the building depends on the foundations being present, being strong, and being able to support what you're building. So what he's saying is: this doctrine of Christ, or the first principles of Christ, is a body of teaching on how to live your life in such a way, we can corporately become what God wants us to become. Christian life is never a single or alone life; it's always lived in community. It is what you call a “living foundation”, so each part of this is something to be living inside you. It's something you live out in your daily life. It's not something - I heard that tape, I'll pass it on. This is something that needs to be operative continually in your life if you want to progress.

If any of these areas are not operative in your life, you can't progress. You'll be around a long time, but there's a huge difference between: being a 10 year old Christian; and a Christian who's had one year's experience 10 times - just repeated the same stuff. So you notice then, the first things are these are the foundations to Christ, the anointed life, the anointed one; and we know there is Jesus Christ who is the pattern, but it also refers to the body of Christ of which you and I are a part. That's the first thing.

Second thing is, it's foundation to your identity, and how you do your life with Jesus. It's foundational - the foundational substructure. Notice he calls it the First Principles. The word first comes from the word arché, from which we get principality. It's something which is the beginning. If this isn't there, you don't go any further. You just keep busy, but you don't go further.

Notice these first principles - the word ‘principle’ means: a foundation on which, or the beginning of something from which, everything else springs. Or putting it simply like this, it's your ABCs. If you don't learn your ABCs, then you remain illiterate. It doesn't matter how hard you try - and I'm sure you try real hard - but if you haven't learnt your ABCs, you experience a sequence of failures. You can't put your finger on what's wrong - it's not because you aren't trying; it's the foundations aren't there.

It’s like learning your times tables. You know, one of the things we had to learn was our times tables. You just had to learn it. If it wasn't learnt, and it wasn't in you, then you could not proceed in maths. You'd get so far, you'd try the best, and you struggle as much as you can. No matter how well intentioned you are, no matter how much effort you put in, you just don't get anywhere. You just have a sequence of failures. Why? The foundations essential to going forward are just not there.

Now this happens with believers as well - if the foundations are not there, the consequence is immaturity. Notice what he says: “you are dull of hearing”. You're not actually spiritually sensitive to the things God is saying. In fact, the Bible tells us that in the last days, people will want to hear teachings that tickles their ears, and makes them feel good - not teaching that forms Christ in them. God's plan is not you just get saved and go to heaven. God's plan is that His Son, and the nature of His Son, and His loving life, is formed in you. So the foundations are absolutely essential.

Notice it says that a person who hasn't got the foundations in them - the Bible calls them a babe. That word babe means: one who's so young, they can't talk properly - a spiritual babe. It doesn't mean they don't make sounds; it's just actually there's not a maturity, spiritually, around them. To be of full age means you lack nothing; you've actually been completed in the things God wants to build into your life.

Maturity has to do with being able to exercise your senses to discern good and evil; so a person who is growing in their Christian life - this is what they can do. They have developed their spiritual sensitivity, because their foundations are laid, and they can discern good and evil. Now of course you'll be thinking straight away: well I know good and evil... If someone gets drunk, that's evil; if someone gets sober, that's good. If someone steals, that's evil; if someone gives out, that's good. That's very true, all that's true, but that's not what it's referring to here. It's referring to something different to that.

What was the name of the tree that Adam and Eve ate from, that led them to substitute their relationship with God for something else? It was the tree of good and evil - so you need to compare this with the original - Paul's referring to that. What did they do? They substituted a relationship - a love relationship with God as a Father and provider; they substituted that, with knowledge about what is right and wrong. I'll show you exactly the nature of the fall, because if you don't understand what the fall is, you won't understand why this needs to be laid so strongly.

So to discern good and evil is very simply this: it's the spiritual capacity to tell what is the motivation of something; whether it flows with the life of the spirit, or whether it's just someone putting on a good. Is this real, and the life of God is in it; or is there something at the core of this, you can tell this is just someone really trying hard? In other words, it's the ability to discern what is religious, from what is the flow of the spirit. Many people come into a meeting, they can't even tell the flow of the spirit. Many people don't know how to live the life of the spirit.

If you don't know how to live the Life of the Spirit, you will be living out of the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. God wants us, in this coming season, to grow inside - by putting foundations in us, and then learning how to engage, live in, and bring the life of the Holy Spirit into our daily life - but there has to be some foundational things put in.

Notice now it describes the foundations - it gives an overview, and it describes six of them. The first one is repentance from dead works. Notice it doesn't say there: repentance from sin. Most people when they read it read that - repentance from sin. They think: that's for a sinner; that's someone who's just come into Jesus. No, this is a foundation to be a believer. It's something you have to live in. Repentance from Dead Works - we're going to look at that today; and then: Faith towards God.

So repentance from dead works is, turning away from a life which is: I will do it; it's my way; I will do this - it's out of the will, it's out of the flesh. It actually doesn't have the life of God in it. It's a life lived just out of yourself, trying to do the best you can; and you turn to God - faith towards God is to turn towards God, to receive His love, receive identity in Him, receive positioning in Him, so you can bring forth good works, living works. So it's not stopping doing things, it's actually repenting from the inner motivation of wrong things.

The third is Doctrine of Baptism, which is about separating your life from worldly value systems, a world system governed by the devil, a life of sin and independence of God; and being a part of - connected to God vitally, and connected to the body of Christ; and flowing in a new life, community life, where you love people and you share your life with people.

The fourth one is the Laying on of Hands, which is the impartation by people who are anointed - five-fold ministry, elders - into your life, to active and impart giftings, to get you up and going, to help you go where you need to go. That's part of body life.

The next one is the Resurrection of the Dead – there are many aspects to it, but we'll just keep it at this level - It's about how to flow in resurrection power. You notice the testimony Graham gave today, the feeling of resurrection power coming into his body, caused death to be restrained; and he lived when he should have died - Resurrection power.

Finally, Eternal Judgements, which means a number of things, but one thing it includes is judging the things which are not originated in the spirit of God; and that brings us back to Repentance from Dead Works.

So this is a living foundation. There's a lot in it, but I want to try and keep it down to something you can apply in your life. So the first thing then is to recognise that this is about setting you up to: live and flow in the life of the spirit; to become connected to God and to people; and to show what God is like. That's what Jesus came to do - to reveal God, reveal His love, reveal His nature, reveal His power. So it's about walking in a new identity.

If you don't get established in who you are in Jesus Christ, what you'll do is you'll just try hard to be a good Christian, and you'll find it's incredibly frustrating because the power isn't there, so this is foundational. Before we move on, I want you to have a look just at the fall of man, Genesis 3, and see why Repentance from Dead Works is so necessary.

Genesis 3:1 – “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field the Lord God had made.” Serpent is an embodiment, a physical embodiment of Satan. “And he said to the woman: Has God said you shall not eat every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: we can eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but not the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, which God said: you shall not eat it, you shall not touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman: you shall not surely die. God knows in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened. You'll be like God. You'll know good and evil.”

Notice – “You will be like God”. He didn't tell them that there was a down side to all of that. “so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasing to the eyes, desirable to make one wise, she took the fruit and ate, and gave it to her husband with her; then the eyes of them were opened, and they knew they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, made coverings, and when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

God said to Adam and Eve, He called them and said: “where are you?” “I heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Now before Adam and Even fell, you have to understand this: they walked in love and in unity with God, and in love and in unity with one another. That's how it all started - it started with love and connection - God was joined to them. The spirit of God was joined to them, they were clothed in the glory of God. Whatever they did, they enjoyed absolute peace and security, unbroken fellowship with God. What they chose to do was this: they rejected their Father's love. The rejected the love God has; because if we love Him, we'll do what He says.

They rejected God's love; they rejected Him. They sinned against love, and against relationship.

Here's something people don't think. We think of sin: you do something bad. Actually when we sin, we sin against love, we sin against relationship. Someone is always affected by our sin - and so they rejected the Father's love. Now what happened as a consequence of this, they lost a number of things - the Bible says they “fell”. What does that mean, they fell? Here's what they lost: they lost something they walked in.

The first thing is, they lost their relationship with their Father. In other words, they had no relationship with the Father. That left them disconnected from a Father, without identity; without a Father to father them, they had to father themselves - they became spiritual orphans in the world. That's the first thing that happened - they were cut off from the love of God. Now if you're cut off from the love of God, guess what? You've got to find it somewhere else, because you're designed for love. People will always find love, and value, and identity somewhere.

Second thing is, they lost their identity. They're no longer a child of God - He is not owning-up to them, He's no longer their Father. They're separated from their Father. Now they have no identity, and when a person's got no identity, you know what happens? They feel insecure; they feel threatened; they feel defensive; they feel afraid; they feel ashamed.

You know what the question is: who am I? The question people ask everywhere - Who am I? People don't know who they are, because they define their identity out of what's around them, and who they're connected to, rather than what God says we are.

So he lost his identity; and the next thing they lost was the supernatural life of God that kept them alive. So eventually they were going to get sick, they're going to grow old and die. What a tremendous loss - embracing the knowledge of good and evil, but letting go their Father, their relationship with God as Father. Their lives were dramatically transformed; so what happened inside them? A number of things happened...

The first thing you notice is: emotional turmoil - fear, grief, guilt, shame, pain. You notice they were so emotionally-numbed that God actually had to push them out of the garden.

What happened then? What came into the heart of man is: I need to be someone; and if I need to be someone, I'm going to have to do something, to be someone. I want to be someone - you know what - I'll get a lot of money, then I'll be someone. No matter how much money you get, you're still not someone, because you're separated from your source, where you came from.

I know what I'll do, I'll get a lot of possessions, and I'll get cars and boats and houses - and I'll get all these things - so there's an ambition to get more and more things, but people still aren't happy. Why? They still don't know who they are, because you're not defined by your money, and you're not defined by your possessions.

Ok, I need to get a position. I'll work hard, and I'll get to the top of this or the top of that or top of the school, top of the community, top of the government or I'll get to the top of the church. But all the same, right inside, there's still a desire that can't be quenched, because even if you get all those things, it still doesn't give you the answer.

Well then, I'll try hard to be accepted in love. I'll really work on my relationships. I'll do all I can - well it's still not going to solve the problem, the problem's far deeper than that.

Well I know what - I'll work out what's good for me - and so hence man began to live this way. This is how we define life: if it's good for me, it's good. If it's not good for me, it's not good. That's how far we've fallen. That's how self-centred we are; and so we come to church: if it's good for me, I like it. If it's not good for me, and I don't like it, then I won't accept it. We're living from a totally wrong centre.

Man became his own centre, not God; so this issue of Turning from Dead Works is an issue of shifting your centre.

So what happens if you become a Christian? Well, you give your life to Jesus Christ; and the spirit of God comes into you. Now the dilemma is this: you have to leave the old centre. You have to leave the old self-centred life. Why do you have to leave that? Because it doesn't work! The spirit of God, and the life of God, does not flow through a life that is self-centred; it flows through a life that's yielded and open and in love with God as a father.

A classic example of this is the Prodigal Son. Remember the Prodigal Son left the home, and he abandoned the Father's love, and went out and he got broken, he got attached to all kinds of things; but here's the thing: he repented of his lifestyle, came back, and received a gift! He didn't have to do anything - just he turned, he repented; and the Father just shouts, he embraced him and hugged him, restored him, gave him what he never deserved. That's grace operating! This is the life of God.

How did he get it? He just repented; and he could hardly even believe all the things that God had for him, when he let go the substitutes, and attached back to his father.

The older son is representative of religious people - people who become religious. What do we mean by religion? Religion is your efforts to get yourself right with God, your efforts to become righteous, and better than others. So what was going on in the elder son's life was something like this: he was a hard worker. He tried to live a perfect life, but you know what? You can't be perfect trying to live a perfect life, because you always blow it somewhere! So he tried so hard, trying so hard to please his father, trying so hard to get approval, so hard to get acceptance - but it's all about him working.

The father said to him: this was always available as a gift to you - you didn't have to do all the work; but he just got working so hard, trying to be good; and the result was this happened inside him: he then looked down on the brother and judged him. He despised someone who was less than him. He worked to be superior, he tried to be better than the other, he tried to present himself as being good; but actually it was all his own works, his own rights, his own struggling and driving. He was a driven man. He was striving to get acceptance and love - and it never came to him. Then, when he saw what grace looks like, instead of saying: I want some of that; he refused to repent. Now you've got to remember this: this is a reference to the Pharisees of Jesus day, who: tithed, went to church, did well, kept laws, looked scrupulous on the outside - but it didn't change the heart.

They were watching Jesus. You know what they did? They were the ones who complained when they saw grace. Why did they complain when they saw grace? They did not have the foundations of Christ in them. They were religious. It is very easy to become an elder brother, very easy to become religious; and so what they did, they needed to be seen. Why? Because it's no good doing something like praying; unless you're seen. They used to give - they'd be seen. Why? There's no use giving, unless someone sees you; because I mean, that's what it's all about. They fast - well we've got to let people know we're fasting - and so the whole lifestyle was: what will people think of me? It was governed by the fear of man, and pride, which is at its root.

This is what religion looks like. Religion can't help people. It doesn't matter how strict the religious life is, it's a life of bondage. Why? Because this is not how the supernatural life comes. That is what you've got to repent of. That is what needs to be removed out of life.

What did he end up like? He ended up resentful, judgemental, rejected, critical of his father, critical of his brother, refusing to enter in, and actually quite angry at his father's graciousness.

The life of a religious person is in conflict and contention with the life of Christ. Wherever people flow in the life of Christ, there will be contention, and arguments, and opposition from people who do not have the life of Christ, who are in a place of religion, and separated from the revelation of God's love.

So we see here in that story of the Prodigal Son, the elder brother was totally opposed to the spirit of grace. I tell you what shows up in your heart. What's shown in our heart is when God shows goodness to someone else - someone else gets the promotion, someone else gets blessed, someone else gets something happen good to them - what's in our heart flushes up to the surface. Churches are so struggling with people like the elder brother, thinking: if I'm just good enough, or I just get this next key, I'll get my breakthrough. If I just fast enough, God will be impressed, and He'll move on my behalf; and so we get into a do, do, do, work, strive, struggle - no rest, no peace, and no flow of life.

Now this is not what Jesus came to give us. You see, this is the consequence of being out of connection, out of relationship - so what has Jesus done for us? Let me just give it quickly, and then you'll see what you've got to break free of. This is what Jesus did. It tells us very clearly in Colossians, Chapter 2, it says: He took away every failure, every fault, the list of everything tipped against us, everything that we failed, and everything we could fail, and He removed it, took it to the cross, declared it cancelled, and broke the power of the devil. Every curse you could be under, He took it to the cross. Galatians 3:13, He broke the power of cursings. Why? So you could be blessed. How do you get blessed? Definitely not by working hard; definitely not by trying to do something else.

Ephesians 2:6 says: “Now we are seated with Him” - already in a spirit dimension, already in the place of blessing.” I hear people pray: “God bless me.” No, He has already blessed you - it says in Ephesians 1. God has blessed us already, with all the blessings. How did you get blessed, and where are the blessings, and how can I get them? “You are blessed with every blessing in heavenly places that's in the realm of the spirit, in union with Christ.”

The key is this: that when you came and repented of struggling, striving, pain, all kinds of issues, when you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him, His spirit comes into you.

Now this is what happens: you become a new person. You are not someone who has to try to be better - you are already better. You don't have to try to find God as your Father, He already now is your Father. You don't have to try to be blessed, you are blessed, because of your position and your union. So what Jesus came for, was to offer us His spirit in us, united with Him. We are already in the place of blessing - it's just a matter of flowing in that life, so it is released.

So now why do I pray? Why? Because I'm already blessed, and I want fellowship with my Father, to birth His things into the earth.

Why do I fast? Why? Not to get something from God, but because I want to be sensitive to my Father, so His life can flow unhindered, and I can hear clearly from Him.

Why do I enter into spiritual warfare? Because my Father has obtained freedom for me now, and I will stand in that place of victory, not fighting the devil for the victory, but standing decreeing where I am in Christ, who I am in Christ, what I have in Christ. I will step into that position with faith in my heart!

What an amazing thing. We already have acceptance, we have forgiveness, we have redemption - we have all these things. How do we have them? Here's how we have them: they're all in Christ. They're all in Jesus, the anointed one - I must abandon trying to work hard to get it. This is the problem before I become a Christian. Now when I become a Christian, this is what happens: the spirit of God comes into me, and I am - 2 Corinthians it tells us - one spirit with the Lord. Wherever I go, the spirit of the Lord is there. Now I don't have to bring anything down from heaven - I'm already in heaven. I don't have to try to make God bless me, I am already blessed.

How am I blessed? Well, the blessings come here with Him, with Christ, the anointed one. The anointing of Christ within me, the presence of Christ within me, His spirit within me, is what brings me into a life of blessing. What I need is not to try and now behave, and perform, and do more; try to look good for your sake - not at all.

I need to remain connected here, because if I separate, and I try now to work hard, I come under the law. If I'm under the law, the grace and anointing doesn't work for me anymore. If you're under law, you have fallen from grace. Grace no longer works and empowers your life. Now you are under guilt, self-centredness, and struggle. You've got to cover-up; you've got to pretend you're something you're not; you've got to try hard - and that's where many people end up; but if I stay in Christ, and the key to my life on the earth is being in Him, now everywhere I go, Christ is with me.

I need to meditate, dwell in, and live out of who I am in Him. I am a blessed person. I'm a loved person. I'm an accepted person. I'm a redeemed person. I'm a forgiven person in Him, connected to Him.

Now here's where the Dead Works issue comes up. Dead works are works which flow out of my own efforts, and my own struggles, to be: loved, needed, valued, feel good. Whenever I feel a bit ashamed, or blamed, any kind of thing like that, and I start to try and cover up, and do good works, and try harder, then I remove myself from the life of grace. So how do I abide in Christ? How can I get His life to flow through me? How can I live in the flow of blessing? How can I live in the flow of the anointing? I’m glad you asked!

Here's the first thing you need to do: you need to repent of dead works. That word ‘dead’ is the word ‘necron’ - a lifeless corpse, something that's got absolutely no life in it. Dead works means doing things out of guilt, obligation, duty, fear, shame, all kinds of stuff; trying desperately to be loved. You notice when you do that, you have moved yourself from Christ, and you're now self-centred, trying hard. What you need to do is repent, which means turn your - switch it off! Turn away from it; I'm not going to try to make myself any better.

Now if I will abandon trying to do all that stuff, trying to be noticed, trying to be important, trying to get people to love me, trying to get position in the church, trying to get some kind of title, role, rank, some kind of anointing, some kind of special deal - if I would just stop all that nonsense called Dead Works, and just rest, that everything I need in my life right now, where I'm at is in Christ, I can relax and start to enjoy my life, and enter the Rest of Faith, where I can live my life at peace, instead of being anxious, worried, stressed.

Worried about what will they think? It doesn't matter what they think - it's what He thinks. It's what Christ thinks. It's about being connected to Him; so Repentance from Dead Works is the first step in separating from that old self-centred life - where it's all up to you, and you've got to try harder.

When people come into a church, this is what happens: they learn keys and principles. If you'll do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - you'll be blessed! I know what I need to do, but I'm stuck on #1, so couldn't remember the other four - I wasn't quick enough, didn't get them down. So what happens is: if we don't watch, we move from grace - the undeserved flow of God's life - and end up under the law.

Now how does this really show up? It shows up in how you relate to other people! It shows up in how, particularly, you relate to the body of Christ. If you realise that all your life is in Him, in Christ, then you begin to catch His heart, and you realise He's in others as well. If I'm going to walk with Jesus, the anointed one, and let His life flow in me, I've got to respect and honour and value those in His body who also carry the same anointing - I've got to learn how to love people. I've got to learn how to value people. I've got to learn how to let His life flow through me; and the first step is just repenting, turning from your dead works, so then you can get into a place of faith. Now I'll talk about faith in the next session.

For most, faith means: also trying hard, trying hard to believe. What they're really saying is: I'm still stuck here in my dead works, trying hard to be a better person, hoping God will do something. Unfortunately, He doesn't do it for me - He does it for Ian, or someone else like that. Do you understand?

It's actually about a divine life flow, a divine life flow. Repentance from dead works has to be established as a way of life. It is the first foundational keys to making it possible for you to engage the life of Christ.

Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you're living out of duty, obligation, legalism; where you do things out of a wrong motive, a wrong attitude, resentful, guilty, shame-based, fear-based, all that kind of stuff. Ask God to show you where that is; and why don't you say: God, at the centre of that activity, it's all about me, and what I get out of it. Lord, I open my heart to the cross, to change - it's the cross, and what Jesus did.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank you for the wonderful grace that is extended to us in Jesus Christ. How amazing is that grace - that accepts us, that loves us, that redeems us. Oh Father, what a great heart of love. It is hard for us, who work so hard, to comprehend how much you love us; but we see in the Prodigal Son who deserved nothing, but when he came with a repentant heart to be reconnected with his father, he didn't have to do any great thing. You just reached your arms around him, and loved him and welcomed him, celebrated him, wept over him, dressed him in fine clothes, restored him to sonship and authority - and he didn't deserve it.

Oh my, we don't deserve grace, but You're empowerment to live is what enables us to change. Father, right now in these next few moments, speak into our hearts. Is there any area where we're walking in dead works - self-centred, worried about what people think, looking after ourselves, covering up who we really are, concealing the reality of an inner life that isn't going so well; desperately trying to look good, struggling with guilt and shame - all these things. Lord, today show us, so we can repent and turn from them. Father, Father, thank you for your love.

Is there any person here who's never made the first step of a changed life, which is to receive Jesus Christ? You can feel the love of God just touching you, you can feel the spirit of God moving around your heart. God is reaching out to you, to bring you back to Himself. You're a child without Father, and He wants to bring you back into His family. The answer to that is found very simply, and Jesus said: “whoever received Him, whoever believed on Him, whoever opened their life to make Him welcome, He gave the right and privilege to become a child of God.”

It's something happens in a moment - when you receive Christ, the Spirit of God enters your heart. I'd love you to pray with me right now this simple prayer, a prayer to change your heart and change your life. I'd like you to follow me this prayer...

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. Today I turn away from sin and dead works, struggling to be good enough. I turn to you the living God. Jesus, I receive you into my heart and life. I ask you to forgive me. I ask you to be my saviour. By faith today I receive you as my saviour. I give my life to you, and I thank you for your spirit coming into my heart right now, making me clean, making me different. Today Lord Jesus Christ I belong to You. Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Heb. 5:12 – 6:3 “Let us go on to perfection” to maturity, to the fullness of God’s purpose.

Context of this passage = going on to perfection, following the example of Jesus Christ.

First principles = foundation of “Christ” – The Anointed One.

Many things that are basic to Christian life not mentioned here e.g. prayer, fasting and giving.

List of 6x principles – these are a foundation for building not just set of teachings.

- not just a set of steps to take – six living foundations.

Called 1st Principles of Christ because they establish and form Life of Christ within us.

They are foundational to the new way of being and living.

Foundation = NT 2310 = substructure that supports a building.

First = NT 746 = Arche = 1st in a series, principal.

Principles = NT 4747 The first thing from which others in a series arise;

e.g. military rank.

= The fundamentals, the ABC’s, the “Times Tables”.

Without the Foundations – consequence is spiritual immaturity

Vs 12 “… you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the doctrine of God”

Babe = NT 3516 = Nepios = babe without the power of speech – one needing milk.

Full age = NT 5046 = Teleios = full grown son, lacking nothing for completion.

Maturity = have constantly exercised their spiritual senses and growing.

Discern good and evil = able to see through to the root (love)

= identify what flows from Spirit of God and what flows from law.

= Identify what is Holy Spirit directed and what is self centred.

2. Overview of First Principles

Heb 6:1 – 3 “…. Not laying again the foundation”

(i) Repentance from Dead Works - Turning from self centred life, efforts to be righteous.

(ii) Faith towards God – Turning to God, receive His love and righteousness, and identity.

(iii) Doctrine of Baptisms – separation from sin and immersion to Life in the Spirit.

(iv) Laying on of hands – impartation of grace, gifts, callings to fulfil destiny.

(v) Resurrection of the dead – flowing in the life of the Spirit.

(vi) Eternal Judgement – judging all that is not of the Life of the Spirit.

This is about receiving and flowing in the love and life of the Holy Spirit.

It is about the exchange of our life for His supernatural life.

It is about walking in our new identity and position as a child of God.

It is foundational – it under girds and supports the Kingdom Life of the Holy Spirit.

It is a way of life not a series of steps.

3. The Fall of Man

Gen 3:1-10 “You shall be as God” – knowing good and evil.

Adam and Even walked in love and unity with God and with one another.

They rejected the Father’s Love – sinned against love and relationship.

What was Lost in the Fall

They fell from a relationship and life where God was the Centre.

(i) They lost their love relationship with God as their Father and with one another. Eph. 4:18.

- Cut off from the life and love of God – man was now orphaned, self centred.

(ii) They lost their identity as a child of God who clothed and gave identity.

- Adam was naked, ashamed, self conscious, self centred, insecure.

- Lost! Who am I?

(iii) They lost the supernatural life of God that sustained them, Life of the Spirit.

What they experienced as a result of the Fall

Emotional turmoil – guilt, shame, fear.

Ambition to be someone by doing, to clothe nakedness.

Constant identity crisis – concealing true identity (fig leaves).

Trying to be accepted, loved, and approved of by doing.

Struggling to control their personal life and circumstances.

Defining good and evil from self centre – what is good for me, not good for me.

Under law - trying hard to be good enough, be righteous.

Religious – doing good works to try and establish own righteousness.

4. Example of Older Brother

Lk.15:25 – 3 “He was angry and would not go in”

Seeing the younger brother experience grace exposed his fallen condition.

Elder brother: Loyal, faithful, hardworking, good – profess to love his father.

Hidden Motivation

Serve to find identity in works.

Need to be seen and recognised.

Bitterly disappointed and striving.

Looking for love, identity in works.

Hidden Sins of his heart

Striving Resentment/Anger

Pride Striving for superiority

Jealousy Cold and unloving

Self rights Rather be right than have relationships

Judgemental Opposed to Christ to spirit of grace

He needed to repent of Dead Works.

5. What Christ Has Done for Us

(i) Removed the list of failures and disempowered evil spirits. (Col. 2:14-15)

(ii) Broke the power of cursing to release blessing of Holy Spirit. (Gal 3:13-14)

(iii) Raised us up to be united with Him in Heaven. (Eph.2:5-6)

(iv) Blessed us, made us without blame, accepted, redeemed, forever.(Eph.1:3-5)

All of this is a free gift – cannot be earned – by grace through faith.

Gal 5:4 If we do not rely on grace – its power is made to vanish.

Repent of Dead Works before faith can become effective.

Repent = total change of mind and heart.

Dead = 3498 = Nekros = a corpse, lacking in vitality, life, power.

Activities which are not moved with love and power of the Holy Spirit.

Activities filled with self centred agenda.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What are the “first” or “elementary” principles of Christ in Hebrews 6: 1-3?

Why is an understanding of these essential? Hebrews 5: 12-13

(They are foundational to a new way of being and living and they establish and form the Life of Christ within us)

Maturity = full grown son; lacking nothing for completion.

= have constantly exercised their spiritual senses and growing.

= discerns good and evil. i.e

1. able to see through to the root.

2. able to identify what flows from the Spirit of God and what flows from law.

3. able to identify what is Holy Spirit directed and what is self directed.

How can we discern what flows from the Spirit of God and what flows from law?

e.g. in our thought life, attitudes, beliefs, impressions, feelings, inner reactions or responses, behaviours.

How can we identify what is Holy Spirit directed and what is self directed?

What would be the fruit or effect that each would produce in our lives and the lives of those we influence?

Can you share from your own experience a time where you were able to discern that you were Holy Spirit directed and a time where you were directed by law or self?

What did you experience internally?(Law/self = condemnation, shame, insecurity, fear, striving, dryness, depression, jealousy, judgemental/critical attitude, anger, resentment, cold and unloving, control, focused on your rights, feeling that you’ve got to meet certain standards to be right with God and to attain His blessings and provision.)

(Holy Spirit = flow of love, peace, joy, energy and life, enthusiasm, inner security and strength, rest, assurance, confidence (it’s going to be ok) trust, sense of intimacy with the Lord, vitality and power.)

What was the outcome?

What was the impact on those around you?

Do your motivations and actions flow more often out of a fear - base or a faith / love – base?

Review in the notes “What Christ Has Done For Us.”

THE FINISHED WORK OF JESUS CHRIST AT CALVARY IS THE BASIS UPON WHICH YOU RECEIVE FROM GOD NOT YOUR PERFORMANCE OR HOW GOOD YOU ARE!

What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to about in this session?

Has He helped you identify dead works within your life?

Where do you need to repent ( change your way of thinking ) in order to believe God?

Faith towards God (2 of 7)

Sun 20 Feb 2011 PM  « Back to Top

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What is Faith? How would I know if I had it? How do I get it? Can it be grown and developed? How can I grow and develop it? Turn towards God to receive his love, receive identity in Him, receive positioning in Him, so you can bring forth good works, living works.

Review

We're going to just open up our Bible at Hebrews 6. We looked at this whole area of the foundational principles, and we saw that for any building, you have to have a foundation. If the foundation is weak, the building will not be strong.

Hebrews 6:1 "Now leaving the discussion of the foundational principles of Christ, let us go onto maturity (or to the fullness of God's plan), not laying again the foundation of: repentance from dead works; faith towards God; the doctrine of baptisms; of laying on of hands; of resurrection of the dead; and of eternal judgement - this we will do if God permits"

So Paul (or the author) is talking about us going on in the purpose of God: "let us go on"; but he also says: it's impossible to do it, if you haven't got a strong foundation built in your life. So he said: the result of not going on is - people remain immature. They remain babies, when God wants us actually to grow. So as we start this, I want to first of all just give the big picture of what this about.

The Bible tells us Jesus came with a particular mission: He came to reveal what God is like; He came to reveal the Father, and the heart of God as a Father. Throughout history, people have never known God as a Father. They had various ideas about God, revelations of God, but this was the first time anyone had brought a message that God is a Father, and we can be born again into His family. We can be joined into Him, and have His life come into us. We can have a relationship with God as a loving Father. So the Bible says: Jesus was the express image of the invisible God.

He said to His disciples: "If you've seen Me, you have seen the Father". So if we want to see what God is like, as a Father, it's all wrapped up in Jesus Christ, and how He connected with people, how He loved people, and in His day He totally upturned the religious works of the day. So Jesus came to invite you and me into a similar relationship.

In one part He said that where I am, the relationship that I have with my Father, I want you to be there also. Now just think about that for a moment. Right through Jesus' ministry He said: I do the things that the Father has shown me to do; I do the things I see the Father doing. He said: the words I speak are what the Father has given me. When everyone was about to leave Him, He said: I'm not alone - the Father is with me.

Jesus lived His life out of an intimate love relationship with God, His Father; and He said in John 14:1 "Now I go to prepare a place for you". So just before Jesus left the earth, He said: I'm going to prepare for you a place of relationship, identical to mine; that where I am, the relationship I have, you can have that also. Now people know the words of that, but seldom experience the reality of what it is to walk day by day feeling, sensing the love of God as your Father, embracing you, encouraging you, valuing you, guiding you, revealing His love to you. It's out of this source that we can have a secure life.

We saw last session that if we don't find our centre in God, we'll find something else as a substitute. We'll find money, but money will never satisfy. We'll look for properties and possessions, but they never satisfy. We look for position and power, but they never satisfy; and people who seek those things are really seeking something that cannot be found there. Sometimes people seek to find fulfilment of these needs in their life through religion. Religion is just trying hard to gain acceptance with God, and acceptance by people. It cannot change a person, in fact it's just a heavy burden.

So Jesus made it very clear: He's called us to come into relationship - not into doing lots of things, but into experiencing a love relationship with God, out of which our life is transformed. That's what He offers, so these foundations are the foundations of that relationship.

Notice it doesn't talk about prayer, doesn't talk about fasting, doesn't talk about Bible reading. It's talking about foundations in your belief system. The Bible says that what you believe in your heart, that's the way your life will go. So out of the abundance of your heart, that's where your life flows. Your life flows out of what you really believe; so if you come to church, but in your heart you still believe there's something desperately wrong with you, you will never enjoy intimacy with God; because as soon as you try to become intimate with God, the message of your heart, there is something wrong with me, something not acceptable about me, will come up. The shame of your past activities will come up, and there will be a wall between you, and being intimate with God.

So the tendency for church people is to try to work harder, to be good enough to experience the love of God. We cover over, that we have no real relationship with God, by just trying to do the right things - this is what Jesus did not call us to. Notice this: we're called not only to experience that; we're also called to grow.

Now, in the Bible it talks about this. It says in 1 John, it talks about children, while God has forgiven your sins. Then it talks about spiritual young men, you're strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you've overcome the devil. That means they're in a place now they've grown, matured. They're not having struggles with temptations. They've grown - and then He says: Fathers, you know Him, who's from the beginning.

So the Bible lays out stages or phases of growth. We could be a spiritual child, and it doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. You could be a spiritual child, childish, continually wrestling with failures, wrestling with shame, wrestling with guilt, wrestling with unforgiveness, wrestling with tormenting thoughts. That is child stuff.

If you're a young man, then you've learned how to confront those with the word of God. You become established in who you are in God, you become strong in the word of God, strong in spirit. Now the devil's not a problem for you. You're not worried about attacks from the devil. You've actually learned how to recognise them and subdue them.

Then you're called to grow from there to become a father. A father is one who knows what God is like, as a Father, and is able to reveal that love to people in such a way their lives are attracted, and they are blessed, and benefit from it. Jesus was a spiritual father to the disciples. Why was He like that? Because He could reveal the love of God, and the nature of God to them.

If we're going to grow to maturity, it's not going to be automatic. We have to lay foundations, and the first foundation we saw was Repenting, or turning from lifeless activities driven by guilt, fear, shame, desire to please, desire to impress, desire to be something. All of those kinds of things - and church is full of it. Society's full of people struggling with lifeless activities. When you get into some situations, you'll notice how dead the atmosphere is - there's no life in it. People are being polite and correct, but you don't feel authentic love flowing - you feel there's something missing there.

You go to some families, and they might be polite and everything's nice together, but you feel there's no bonding of love. There's something missing in the middle of it. It is the love of God flowing, it's the life of the spirit of God, so we're called to repent from dead works. In Hebrews 9, Verse 14, it says: "Now the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you". You need to be clean from dead works. Cleanse your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.

Notice this: the first thing is, God wants us to be cleaned up from all the dead, lifeless, barren activities, the frustrating things, that never caused us to feel love, or to have an identity; and to instead connect with God, and the overflow is such that now we're serving God, our life is an abundance of activity and vitality.

It's not we just stop doing stuff. There's a change on the inside, in the core motivation of why we're doing it. If we're not secure in who we are, that: I am my Father's child, I'm a child of God, I've come from God and I'm going to God, I have an eternity with Him, I have a destiny on the earth - if we are not secure that we're loved by God, we will then do things to try and meet the insecurity.

We will try to act or do things that cause us to feel good; so some people are very generous people, and they give and they give and they give and they do all kinds of things, all sorts of things. But the Bible says: if you do lots of things, but don't have love, what profit is it all? It's actually driven out of a motivation to feel good about yourself. What God is wanting is to change us on the inside, so we experience love, and love flows naturally.

When people are living in dead works, they tend to relate to people on the basis of: if you can help me get what I want to get, then you can be my friend. I see you're quite a wealthy person - you can help me get what I want - I'll be your friend. But you - well no not you. No, no. You come from Flaxmere - but this is the kind of thinking that goes on - you know that! That's called partiality, where we divide the world up - people that can help us get somewhere; and people that can't help us get anywhere - now that is full of dead works.

What God is looking for is to so change us, so that His love and His nature flows out, and it's natural to love people. That's why one of the first things He does - and you'll see this in the progression of these - is after we become connected to God and experience His love, He wants us to put us in a family, where we can be immersed in a family, and learn how to grow up in love, and learn how to represent Him properly - which is the remainder of the teachings in this.

So God wants us to then serve Him, but it's a serving that's a joy! That's not something that's a burden. It's something joyful - it flows out because you're in love with Him, and you get up and you talk with Him, and you begin to experience His love, and out of that there's an overflow in your life.

So we're called to turn from Dead Works, and turn instead and replace them with something called Faith towards God. We turn away from activities which are dependent on our own effort and energy, which tire you out, get you drained, frustrated; and we become like the older brother, resentful because we're not getting what we think we should get. A lot of people burn out. Burn outs are often because of a lot of dead works, wrong motivations; but if we repent of those, and now we come into Faith in the living God, our life will begin to flourish, and something flows out of it. It's called the life of the Holy Ghost.

Main Message

Now let's have a look in Hebrews 11. Let's see what faith is, a little bit about faith. Some of this for some of you will be elementary, but for others it might be quite an eye-opener. So faith, Chapter 11 verse 1:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen, for by it the elders obtained good testimony. By faith we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen, were not made of things which are visible.”

So let me just outline a few simple things, so we can understand faith. I need to know: what is faith; how would I know if I had it? How do I get it; and can it be grown and developed? How could I grow and develop it? These are quite important things; so the first thing is: Faith is different to Hope.

Notice: Faith is the substance of something you hope for. Hope has to do with the future, so many people confuse faith and hope. Hope is about the future. Hope is something in my mind. It is thinking about, and optimistic and expectant of, something really good in the future; but faith is now. Faith is something I have now. It's a conviction and assurance I have - so I know now it's present. So hope has to do with the future; faith with now. Many people confuse faith and hope. They say: “I'm believing God for this”, but actually what they're doing is: they're hoping God will do something. Faith - you know it, it's a conviction.

So the second thing is: Faith established in the Heart; not the Head. With the heart man believes; so you can know lots of the Bible, and have no faith at all. You can know many scripture verses, and still have no faith, because it's all in the head. Faith is an issue of your heart - with the heart you believe.

Now let me tell you this - all of us believe some things. Every person here believes something. You believe something about yourself, many things. You believe things about God, you believe things about people, you believe things about life. You possibly haven't stopped to evaluate what you really do believe, but your core beliefs are what move you to live the life you live. Coming to church isn't what does it. It's actually what you believe in your heart - so if you believe in your heart, because you had painful experiences when you were younger, that I'm not of any value... Perhaps you grew up in a very strong, controlling family. Your opinion or feelings or desires were never consulted, and you have established in your heart an angry, hurt, firm belief: nothing I do is ever good enough; I'll never get anywhere; or no one really cares about me.

Now those are three distinct beliefs. If those beliefs don't shift, what will happen is, your life will run through those beliefs. It will filter how you run your life. It'll bring into your life: exactly what you believe is what you'll have. So faith has to be established in the heart. I must then reform my belief system to believe what God says is true. Most of the struggles you have as a younger believer is to shift your belief system, and become established in what God says is true about you. God says: you're accepted; but I don't feel accepted - then you've got a struggle in your heart with your belief system. God says: you're forgiven; but I don't feel forgiven - you've got a struggle in your heart with your belief system. God says: you're a child of His, and He's near you all the time; but I don't feel He's near me all the time - well then, you've got a struggle in your belief system.

So we live our life out of the beliefs we have in our heart, so faith is important to get established in our heart. Faith deals with the things which are not seen, so I don't see it, but nevertheless (says faith), the things which are not seen are very real. So for example, the love of God is very real - it's incredibly real; and when you experience the love of God, it just touches your heart. You often begin to weep. You feel God loving you, and you feel His presence; so it is real, but not seen. It comes from the realm of the spirit, into the natural realm, by faith; so everything you and I will receive from God must have faith in it. I must believe what God says about this, for it to manifest in my life. You may have grown up rejected, and believe that you're not acceptable to anyone. Well faith will shift that, and acceptance will be established in your heart; and then no matter what anyone does, you are secure. You're not dependent on what people and circumstance is doing any more. You are secure inside because faith - you have it now!

People say: how do you know you're accepted? I know! I know! I know! I know! How do you know your sins are forgiven? Oh, I know! I know! How could you possibly know? What's the evidence? The evidence is in here - I know it, because it's come into my life as I believe what God said; and it brings liberty. It brings tremendous liberty - so faith needs to be established in our heart.

So faith is also expressed through the words we speak. In Romans 4:17, God calls the things to be, not as though they are. So faith comes into our heart. Faith comes, we hold the word of God, because whatever you believe in your heart, you'll speak with your mouth; so when there's faith in our heart, we will confess what God says. We will speak what God says. God said to Abraham - changed his name from ‘Abram’ to ‘Abraham, Father of Nations’. So for years, Abraham was saying, when they asked him “who are you?” – “I am Father of Nations”. Excuse me, you don't have any kids? I am Father of Nations. I don't like to put this out, but you're wife is nearly 100 years old. I am Father of Nations - and you're not looking too good yourself. I am Father of Nations.

He chose to believe God, and he professed his faith. He did not stagger, though his body and her body were old, and the result of holding in faith was: a miracle took place; and guess who the Father of Nations is? Abraham - but there was a walk of faith to establish it. The Bible says: we walk not by sight, but we walk by faith. We don't walk by the things we see. We walk because we, by faith, can see what God has said is true - and we hold onto it. We've got to see the healing in prayer before you'll experience the healing. You have to see what God has planned for you, before you'll hear it, and see it in life.

So faith always reaches to what God says in the invisible realm, and causes it to manifest now. Sometimes there's a delay between my knowing I have it, and seeing it happen in life - so that's faith. So let's just talk about faith in relationship with God. Have a look in Verse 6. Now without faith, it's impossible to please Him – impossible! If something is that important, I should make it my life's study to know about Faith. Why should I? Because without it - I can't please Him.

Now just coming to church doesn't mean you're in a place of faith. It means you came to church. It could mean you're in a place of faith. It could mean, like me, you just come to church. When I was a Catholic, I used to come to church - it's what you did Sundays. It wasn't a matter of faith, it was a matter of fear - I'd go to hell if I didn't. I had to come to church. Even when Joy took me to her church, I'd still go to my church. I had this belief: I'll go to hell if I don't go to church! I'd go to church; but you understand there's no life in that. It's kind of: God, a whole hour, you know? You understand? I'm not going to meet God. It's just doing a religious activity - there's no faith in that. Faith comes when I'm here because I want to be - I want to be in the presence of God. I want the atmosphere of God! I want God to speak to me! I'm here because I want to be - the presence of God.

So notice, it says: without faith, it's impossible, impossible, to please Him - impossible. So notice it says: “he that comes to God must believe He exists, and also that He rewards those who diligently seek Him”. So 1) He exists; 2) He's a rewarder; and the key ingredient is my faith - that shows up by diligently persisting in seeking Him.

So He's a rewarder - God blesses us. Sometimes we look around and we say: how come they're blessed, and I'm not so blessed? Well maybe there's a reason. Maybe they diligently sought God, and changed their beliefs. So you notice then, faith is foundational to the relationship with God. Let me just put it to you this way: without faith or a trust in God, you can't walk with Him. You can't build any relationship without trust. You can't build a marriage without trust. You can't build a business relationship without trust - so without faith, without trust in God's character and words, I can't walk with Him at all.

If I'm going to argue with Him; and doubt what He says; and reason what He says; and continually take what He says, and put it through my mind, and filter; and I've got my own opinions about what works - if I'm going to walk like that, I can't walk with God. It's as simple as that. Walking with God means I develop a relationship of trusting Him, because I continually am experiencing being loved.

Now this is the stumbling point for so many people, they have unresolved issues of the heart, and they stop trusting, or won't trust God. When you won't trust God, this is what you've got to do: you have to take control of your own world and life, and be God yourself. So we're made to bond to God who is a Father, a loving Father and spirit being. We're created to bond to Him, to trust Him, to have a relationship with Him, and faith is what makes the connection, so by faith we enter relationship with God. By faith we maintain it.

Now let's just talk about entering relationship with God. How do you enter into a relationship with God? What is the key thing?

In Ephesians 2:8 , the entrance into relationship with God has got nothing to do with where you've come from, what education you have; its got nothing to do with your family background, got nothing to do with anything natural at all. It's actually like this - verse 4 –God, who is rich in his mercy, rich, rich in mercy... Most people, when they think of God, think He's angry and judging them - ooh oh, got a big stick, gonna catch you out! But the Bible says: He's rich, wealthy, abundant in mercy and - look at this! - and His great love - great, abundant, extravagant love! He absolutely loves you! So it says: “When we were dead in sin, He made us alive together in Christ; by grace you're saved, and raised us up together, made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ, in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness, kindness towards us.”

Notice these words: grace, mercy, kindness, love - that's what God is. So how do I enter relationship with God? Very simply: by grace. By grace are you saved through faith, and even that's not of your own - not of works, lest you boast. Now you know the verse, but the tendency is to forget what it really means. Grace is an empowerment by God that changes our lives. It's something we don't work for, or we don't earn. If you work for it, it isn't grace, it's your reward. If you didn't work for it, and it's a gift, then it's grace; and grace is the power of God to shift you on the inside.

You can't work for it, you can just receive it; so either you get given grace to change, or you're working hard to change - there can't be any in-between. I either get God's power to help me change, and so I do change, and it's real change, and its change on the inside; or I got none of that, I'm just working hard trying to be a good person, to overcome that temper. You'll notice when you do that, you're under law; so by grace you're saved through faith, not of works. So it's a gift.

Anything you do to try and earn your standing with God - so let me show you how it shows up subtly in many people. Well I had a bad day yesterday, didn't pray - I feel distant from God; or I prayed today, I'm real near to God! Now all of this about your nearness to God is dependent on your works. He doesn't change at all. It does not depend on your works - prayed two hours today and 15 minutes tomorrow, doesn't make any difference to your standing with God. Your standing with God, your identity, is given to you as a gift. When you receive Jesus Christ as your saviour here's what happens; you become a new person. He puts His spirit into you. You are now joined to Jesus Christ. You're joined to the spirit of God. You are joined to the spirit of God. He doesn't break that joining. You are joined now to the spirit of God, and so God's life, His own very life is engrafted into you. You're what's called “born again”. Now you are not what you used to be - you are a child, a son or daughter of God. Who am I? I'm a son of God! God is my Father!

You see, this is who you are now; but the trouble is, if it's not established strongly in your life, you'll live out of who you used to be - a reject, or fearful, or afraid, or ashamed, or embarrassed, or broke, or whatever. See, this is the new identity, so I don't have to work to get that, I am now, by the grace of God, a child of God. Now I've just got to learn how to live and walk with Him. So faith got me started, and faith is how I continue. It's all going to be grace, not trying hard. The harder you try, the more condemned you'll feel about your condition - that's the terrible thing about it. Have you noticed that? The harder you try, the more difficult it gets, and how you get bogged down and just want to quit and give up. Why? Because when you do that, you move away from grace and come under law.

If I am right with God, in any area of my life, by trying to work at it, then I've shifted and I've come under law. Paul said: don't frustrate the grace of God. Don't cause God's grace - which is freely and generously given, to help you grow and live your life - don't frustrate it and stop it, by then trying to perform to be good to get it.

Don't frustrate the grace of God, by struggling hard and working to be a better person. Learn to believe what God says is true about you.

This is what he said: “This is the work of God: that you believe”. The problem is learning to believe. Why? Because immediately, when you try and believe what God says, the strongholds in your mind and heart rise up and argue; they argue against, and they reason against, the life of God. The Christian life is much easier than you think - it's about grace. I can see when I said that, that some of you don't agree; and the reason you're not agreeing is because you're looking at your experience and saying: my experience is hard, and therefore, the Christian life can't be easy.

Jesus said: “My yoke is easy, my burden is light”. It's easy; it's light. If it's getting heavy, you've moved out of grace, you moved out of faith, you're trusting in yourself again. The moment it gets heavy, you're out of faith. You're struggling in your own efforts.

Jesus said: there's a Rest of Faith; so when faith is in your heart, you know what happens? There will be two ways you'll tell... One is you'll come to rest. You just actually become at rest inside. You're not struggling, striving, and uptight; you're at rest. You're quite confident and calm. There is a rest of faith. The second thing that happens is: the way you talk. You talk out of that place of rest, out of the position of rest. Our struggle is not to try and do things, or make God do anything. Our struggle is one of struggling to overcome unbelief, doubts, negative thinking; and just believe what God says is true, and come to rest in that, so there's no more struggling. When you're resting in what God says, you're in a place of faith. Faith - it's not your feelings. Your feelings will come into a bit.

So we walk with God by faith. Notice in this last scripture, we'll look at, Galatians 5. Now he's talking to the Galatians Church, which started off believing, and then got into trying doing.

“Stand fast in the liberty with Christ has made free, don't be entangled again in the yoke of bondage”.

In other words, don't go back under laws, regulations: you've got to do this, you've got to do that, you must do this, you've got to dress like that, you've got to have this hair cut, and I can't have that hair cut, you've got to behave like this, behave like that, you've got to go here, not there. All of that kind of stuff is a yoke of bondage. God wants us to grow like Him, and get to know Him, and to get to know His nature, where we can love people without having them to be monkeys and perform for us.

So notice what he says. He says here, for in Christ Jesus - Verse 4 – “you become estranged from Christ, if you attempt to make yourselves right with God by the law... (By doing things; if you try that way) ...you have fallen from grace.”

How many have had a situation like this, where you had someone that really hurt you, and you found it really difficult to forgive. So now you struggle trying to be nice to that person? Why are you struggling trying to be nice to that person, when actually you want to slap their face? Or worse even! Why are you struggling to be nice? Because behind it all, you're thinking something like this: I'm a Christian, I've got to be nice; and you know deep in your heart, is war and vengeance and murder! And when you're not trying to be nice, you're thinking of how you could pay them back, and what you'd really like to say. What is all of that about? That's not the Rest of Faith! You've come under the law: I need to be nice.

Why not stop coming under the law? When you come under the law, the thing that happens is, there's no power of God to help you; and it's real hard to love some of these people - it's really hard! Christian life is so hard, I've got to love people, but I don't like them; some I even hate them. Some have ripped me off. I know what I'll do: I'll just subtly avoid them; I'll just cut them out. It's all a manifestation of hate. The problem is in the heart. If you're not in the Rest of Faith; you just come under the law. You're struggling now, trying to be a good person.

Actually the reality is this: you already are a loving person. Why not just admit the war in your heart, and come and repent from that Dead Work of trying to love them; trying to manufacture the life of God? Instead just: repent of the dead works; surrender to the Lord, ask Him: Lord, help me to see this person like you see them; help me to love them. Let your love flow through me. As you begin to meditate on the love of God for yourself, and for people, and very soon you start to find it coming naturally rather than forced, add-on. When it's an add-on, it doesn't last. Somehow you'll definitely blow it. You've tried so hard to be nice - nine times you were nice! Oh, I'm nearly there, but the tenth you blew it; and all the nine just didn't count for anything, because the tenth you really blew it! So you're back now to do what you need to do: humble yourself, just repent and change.

Notice it says: “don't get in the yoke of bondage”. Learn to live a life out of the new identity: I am a loving person; I love people because that's who I am. It's not because: well they don't deserve it! Oh come on, you got back under the law again. Grace has got nothing to do with whether you deserve. Grace comes, not because you deserve it, but because it's free; because God is good. God loves you, so He wants you to love others. He can love people through you; so you notice there: faith works by love; so the life of faith is cultivated by spending time with God, beginning to experience His love, listening to hear His voice; because by hearing His voice, faith suddenly comes into your heart.

It's cultivated by meditating in the word of God, and allowing our mind and heart to be renewed. When faith is there, there's works flow out that are very real. You don't have to try to love people - I've got to go out and love the sinners! It's what we have to do - love the sinners.

Now you can see a person in the grip of bitterness in the law. If you have to do it, then it's not flowing naturally; you've got a love deficit in your heart. When you're full of love, it just flows out. Have you ever seen a drunk man, when they're full of booze, and they start to love - and they've got love for everyone, you know? I love the world - you know, something changed, they were overflowing.

When we get filled with the spirit of God, which is a spirit of love - it flows to touch the world. So foundation 1) to walk and repent of all of that legalistic striving, struggling, dead empty work. Repent of the motivations. Instead start to turn to the Lord, and allow His word to shift your heart, so you begin to discover who you really are; you're a loving person. Why? Because you're in the image of Christ. You're a forgiving person. Why? Because you're in the image of Christ. You're a generous person. Why? Because you're made in the image of Christ. You already have those things in you. They just need to flow - not try to make them happen. They're already there. That's who you are; and when we start to live a life like that, we become at rest inside. That's actually who I really am. I love being generous. I just love it. It's who I am.

Live out of the identity. I love being gracious. Why? Because it's who I am - it's what my Father is like - I'm like Him.

I love forgiving. Why? Because my Father's forgiven me, and I'm so grateful, I just love to forgive. I don't want people under the law.

The life of faith, it's a life where grace flows out and touches people. What a great life.

Closing Prayer

Father in heaven, what a loving Father You are. I feel overwhelmed by the wonderful love that You have. I thank you for that love.. The presence of God is here; and the presence of God is also where you are right now. God is a loving Father. He really does love you, and He wants you just to turn away from trying hard in life, and trying hard to be a good person, and to believe.

Believe that God loves you so much, that He sent His only son Jesus Christ who gave His life on the cross, so all the sin could be broken and it's power broken, every curse taken away; so you could be ushered in to the family of God, and become a child of God, just by believing in Jesus Christ.

Maybe some here today, and perhaps you are struggling in your life, struggling with all kinds of issues. What a great day to say I'm going to repent of those things, and begin to open my heart to my Father that loves me. I'd like you just to follow me in this prayer...

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I thank you for loving me, thank you for accepting me, thank you for sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Lord, I've struggled so hard to make my life work. I turn away from those struggles. I turn away from sin. I turn away from a life without you. Jesus, I receive you as my saviour today. Please forgive my sin, forgive all my struggles to try and look good. Lord, forgive me. I give you my life today. I receive forgiveness. I receive your spirit into my heart. I belong to you. Before heaven and earth today, I declare Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. Amen.

Father, I just thank you for each person that prayed that prayer for the first time. Let the spirit and love of God just flow into their heart. God loves you so much - more than you realise. You have so much to discover about this God, who wants to make Himself known to you.

Perhaps today there's ones who are struggling. You've lived under legalism, under the law and you've wrestled with that. Today would be a great day for that yoke - Paul calls it a yoke - a yoke of duty; a yoke of having to; a yoke of lots of little things you have to do to be good enough, to be acceptable. God wants you free of all of that. I'd love you today, if you've been struggling under that kind of yoke; those that are present - I'd love you just to come forward. We want to lay hands on you, and want you just to let go of the struggling, repent of the trying and the efforts, and open your heart for God to reveal His love to you. As people lay hands on you, I know you're going to experience something of the love of God.

It's a terrible thing trying hard, trying hard to be good enough. I did that for many years growing up, lacking a revelation of love, I struggled feeling I was never good enough, struggled so hard to be good enough; did so many things in order to get acceptance. What I needed was a revelation of God's love. It comes by faith - after you stop and repent of your dead works.

If there's people struggling, and you're caught in the bondage of legalism, of works, heaviness, oppression. People here who are struggling with oppression over your lives, some are struggling with failure and the fear of failure; other ones struggling here with the fear you'll be rejected. Some of you have come - there's about three people come today, and you've had real troubles in your life with God, real troubles in your walk with God, and your biggest fear is whether you'll be accepted, because of the things you've done. God loves you. He wants to help you today.

You know, the problem with the law is you have to keep the whole lot of it. Jesus came to set us free of the law of obligations and duties; have to do this, have to do that. He wanted us to come into a relationship of love and grace; wonderful grace of God, that frees us up to be ourselves. How great to be yourself in Christ.

I came up with a religious background, a Catholic background. It took me quite a bit of time to realise I'd brought with it a lot of the baggage into my Christian life. I just needed to let it all go, needed to let go striving, struggling to be good enough, struggling to meet God's needs, struggling to get my sins forgiven, all of that kind of stuff; and just: God, I thank you I already have it. I am blessed with every blessing in heavenly places in Jesus Christ. I have forgiveness. I have redemption. I have acceptance. I have it now - that's what I have being a child of God, so now I'm going to meditate in it and dwell in it.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection (maturity), not laying again the foundations …”

(a) Jesus came to reveal His Father – reveal what God is really like, a loving Father

Heb. 1:3 “… bring the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person”

Jn. 14:9 “… He who has seen me has seen the Father…”

Jn. 10:30 “I and my Father are one”.

(b) Jesus came to call us into relationship with the Father – sons and daughters

Jn 14:3 “I go to prepare a place for you – that where I am you may be also”.

Jn 1:18 “…the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father has declared Him”.

(c) God calls each of us to be born again into His Family and then to grow up”

Rom 8:29 “… He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son …”

1 Jn. 2:12-13 Children (precious infants) - Young men – Fathers.

Spiritual fathers – one who represent God the Father and reproduce His Life.

(d) Growth to maturity is not automatic – requires foundation to be laid

The First Principles of Christ are foundational for growth. (Heb. 6:1-3)

Heb. 9:14 Blood of Jesus Christ … cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Dead Works = activities that have no life or love of God.

Works activated out of guilt, fear, duty, personal gain.

Called to Repent = totally turn from dead activities and selfish motivation.

Blood of Jesus Christ has power to cleanse the conscience so free.

“Serve Living God” = activities that flow from love and trusting obedience.

Jn. 6:29 – “This is the work of God that you believe on Him whom He has sent”.

2. Faith – What is It?

Heb 11:3 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for …”

(a) Faith is not the same as Hope

Hope is directed to the future – an attitude of expectancy concerning things to be.

Faith is established in the present – now!

It is a confidence, something real and definite within us here and now.

Substance = 5287 NT = to set in place under, confidence, assurance.

Evidence = 1650 NT = connection, proof, assurance.

(b) Faith is established in Heart not Head

Hope is anchored in the head. (1 Thes.5:8 .. helmet, hope of salvation)

Faith is established in the heart.

Rom 10:10 with the heart man believes unto righteousness.

Faith is not a mental acceptance of bible facts – produce no change.

Heart faith produces genuine change in the life of person who has it.

Believe is always associated with a change or motion – “into”.

(c) Faith deals with things “Not Seen”

Heb 11:1 “…evidence of things not seen”

Not seen = not exist = they are invisible to physical senses.

Faith deals with the real spiritual realities of God’s Word (2 Cor. 5:7).

(d) Faith produces a rest from struggle, uncertainty, doubt

Heb 11:3 “We who have believed do enter that rest …”

When faith is present in the heart – there is also a rest from struggle.

Often there is a conflict between what we see and what God’s Word says.

Faith produces a deep confidence that what God says is true in spiritual sense.

Rom 4:17 “… call the things that do not exist as though they did”.

(e) Faith expresses itself in confession – speaking in agreement with God.

Rom. 10:10 “with the heart man believes, with the mouth confession is made to salvation”.

Whatever the heart is full of overflows in our life.

Confession = Gk homologia = to say the same thing as.

When there is faith in our heart we speak out what God says (2 Cor. 4:13)

Heb 3:1 Christ is the high priest of our confession.

He represents us in heaven using the words we have spoken.

3. Faith and Relationship with God

Heb. 11:6 “without faith it is impossible to please God…”

(a) Faith is foundational to our relationship with God

Faith is basis for entering relationship and for continuing relationship.

(b) By Faith we enter into relationship with God

Eph. 2:8 “By grace have you been saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves it is a gift of God, not of works …”

Grace = the supernatural enabling power of God given to us.

Grace = Gift, nothing that we have done except believed.

(c) “By Faith” we continue in relationship with God

Faith in Jesus Christ positions us as Children of God – Our New Identity.

Eph 1:3-1 He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ”.

- We have a new nature, identity, acceptance, forgiveness, redemption.

- We already have these things we don’t have to work for them.

Gal. 5:1-6 Stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

- We must not fall back into trying to please God by doing.

- Learn to receive the Love of Father – it energises our faith.

(d) Faith can be cultivated and grown

Faith is cultivated through intimacy and hearing God’s voice (Rom. 10:17)

Faith can be “little” or “great” or “dead”.

Faith is cultivated by meditating in Word of God.

Faith that is real has works that can be seen (Ja 2;17.

Baptised into Christ, Baptism in Water (3 of 7)

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A foundation of believing that causes you to step up to the reality of who Jesus says you are. I am immersed into something that I was not in before. I am a totally new person, connected to God vitally, and connected to the body of Christ. Water Baptism is my testimony to the world that to the spiritual powers, that old person died, I'm joined to the living God, the power of sin is broken. I'm a free man, there's a new person risen up, born again.

Welcome to our next session in this series, a series of Foundational Principles. It's found in Hebrews 6, and this session today we're going to be looking at the Doctrine of Baptisms.

I encourage you to have a Bible, to read your Bible, to follow along the scriptures that we share, and open you heart to let the spirit of God touch you and change you right where you are. We will pray for you right at the end of this session, and we'll believe for the spirit of God to come into the room where you're watching, and to touch your life very, very powerfully.

Let's just open our Bible in Hebrews 6. The author is saying:

“Leaving the discussions of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection or maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from: dead works; of faith towards God; of the doctrine of baptisms; of the laying on of hands; of resurrection of the dead; and of eternal judgement -and this we will do if God permits.”

So the author is speaking first of all about the challenges - that if these Christian believers were very mature, they actually should be teaching the word of God. They should have enough in them now to be able to instruct others, to help others; and yet they remained immature. They remained spiritually like infants, and so he says: we want all of us - let us all go on to maturity.

In other words, God's goal for every one of us, as a believer, is to grow into maturity; but for that to happen he says there are two things need to happen:

1) You must have a foundation in your life. If the foundation is not laid, you cannot become all that God intended you to become. It is impossible.

2) You can't go on to maturity unless God permits; so God has a vital part in your growth and development, to fulfil your course and your destiny. If you wish to remain a child, well that's fine; but it's not what God has planned for you, and you're selling yourself short of all that God intends.

So you notice he says here: “laying a foundation”. The foundation of any building is unseen - it's under the building, supports the building; and we saw in Christchurch during the earthquake, if the foundations aren't secure, and the ground it stands on is not secure, then the whole building can collapse very, very easily. So there is a foundation to be built into your life. It is a spiritual foundation.

It is something real and substantial. When it's there, you can build your life. When it isn't there, your life just goes in what seems to be a cycle of the same kinds of things, and you never grow up, and never mature. That's not God's plan. God's plan is for us to grow and to represent Him, and to advance His kingdom everywhere that He positions us.

So we saw the first two of these foundations: #1 was Repentance from Dead Works - the turning away and abandoning of activities and things that we do, trying to somehow gain favour with God - dead works that have no life in them, that are full of duty and guilt-obligation, motivated by fear, and the wrong kinds of motivations. Any work and activity you're not motivated by love, and a response from God, becomes a dead work.

The second one was Faith - Trust in the Living God; and we shared some aspects: that without faith, it's impossible to please God. We must learn how to lean on Him, and to trust in Him, and it's not just something you start your journey with. It's something you continue walking in; and the biggest challenge in all of that, is the challenge to let go control, and to learn how to trust.

So then we come to the next one. You notice it says that the foundation here is: the Doctrine of Baptisms; so in other words, the teaching concerning baptisms is the thing that becomes the foundation in your life.

The word ‘doctrine’ just means literally ‘to teach’ or ‘to instruct’; but when we think of that, we think from a Western viewpoint. We think like this: I've got something to learn, and so I've read the book, I've got some information, that's it. But from a Hebrew point of view: doctrine was something you believed, and put into daily practice. There was no such thing, in the Hebrew culture, that doctrine and lifestyle were separated; that is a Greek concept. So when it says about the doctrine, it's talking about beliefs which you live out in your life. So the beliefs, the teaching, the insight concerning baptism, is something for you to live out daily in your life; and as you live it out, a foundation for building, a life with God, is established.

When most people read that, they overlook the word doctrine straight away; and they just think: baptism - oh I've been baptised. But when you look at their life, it's evident that they're not living with the foundation properly established. They've had an experience; but the foundation has not been properly put in their life - that's why they can't stand. So the foundation here is the teaching that surrounds baptisms - plural, more than one baptism.

So God wants us, if we're going to grow and mature and have insight, to understand: what is the teaching associated with baptism; and then embrace that insight, and begin to live that out.

Let's have a look at the word baptism first of all. Mark 4:20, and the word baptism of course is a word, when you read it, you think: baptism, oh, I don't know. I'm from the Anglicans or from the Catholics, well you take the child and you sprinkle on them - that's what baptism meant for me, when I was growing up. If you've been to Pentecostal Church, maybe you're like me, and you went down the river, and got baptised in a river, so that's what it means to you.

The word baptism is - this is what happened: King James, when he got it translated, didn't want to offend the local church of his day, so he said: don't do anything that'll upset them. So what they did was, they just translated the word Baptidso and made it Baptism - so they never really translated it. If you really want to understand what the word is, you've got to see how they used it; so in Mark 14:20 it tells us that Jesus said: “ one of the 12 who dips his finger in the water with me”. That word ‘to dip into the water’ is the word bapto, the word baptism, so “to dip into the water”. So bapto is the root from which baptism comes, It means you dip into something. It's never a sprinkling on - it's always an immersion into something.

In another scripture, Luke 16:24, the man in hell cries out: “Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and give it to me to drink, because I'm tormented”. So notice “dip the finger into water” - so it's an immersion. If a boat sank, it was bapto, it was baptised - it sank into the water. If you dye a garment, you bapto it - you put it into the dye, and it comes out changed.

So always the thinking and understanding, to a Hebrew reading, this is very, very simple: to baptise someone, is to immerse them completely into something. You are always baptised into something. So as we look at the word, and what these different baptisms are, I want you to think that you are placed into something – bapto. If you put your hand in the water, you're immersed and surrounded by water; the water has an effect on you - you get wet.

So when we're looking at the word ‘Baptisms’, and the teaching of Baptisms - the teaching of baptisms is about you being immersed into something you were not in before. It's about being placed into something; and it always concerns change. So when we look at these different baptisms, every one of them represents a change in your lifestyle, in some kind of way.

So what are the different baptisms? 1 Corinthians 12:13 says: “By one spirit, we are baptised into one body”. The Bible talks about us being baptised into Christ. That word Christ means ‘the anointed one’. It can represent: Jesus Christ, who was Jesus of Nazareth - the anointed one. It can represent the body of Christ, which is also called God's Christ, the body of Jesus Christ on this earth - His representation. So one of the baptisms is a baptism into Christ: into Him, Jesus Christ; and into His body.

The second baptism is referred to in Romans 6:3 - “as many of us were baptised into Jesus Christ, were baptised into His death”. So a second baptism is a baptism of water; so we are baptised by a person, and we're dipped into water. I was put into a river - it wasn't a river in flood, but it was a great river. I've tried to baptise people in rivers in flood - it's quite fun really, you've got to hold them real tight! So there's a baptism in water; and we sometimes have quite a separation in time between a person receiving Christ, and being baptised in water. We'll see in the Bible that was not so - they just baptised them as soon as they believe.

In some cultures, you can believe in Jesus Christ - to them, He's just another God; but the day you get baptised - you have sent a clear message to everyone: I'm a Christian. So in some cultures, the day you are baptised, is the day that it's clear to everyone: who you are, and where you stand. So water baptism, for some, in some cultures, means the difference between life and death. The day they get baptised, they're shut off from their family, shut off from their relatives, shut off from the culture - and now they are really living a different life. They've entered a new way of life.

So the third baptism in Luke 3:16 – “Jesus will baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” - so there's a baptism in the Holy Ghost.

So each of these baptisms is an entrance; it's an entrance into something that has changed. So the baptism in the Holy Ghost is an entrance for you, into the supernatural realm. Some people never go past that. They never go past the entrance, or the doorway; but the baptism in the Holy Spirit enables you to enter the realm of supernatural living - because of what the other two baptisms mean.

Finally, a Baptism in Fire – “He'll baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire”. So the baptism in fire, basically that represents a change taking place in your soul. As you go through difficult experiences of life, which the Lord allows you to go through, and it's like a fire begins to hit your life.

How many have been through a fiery experience recently, or the last year? The purpose of it was very simple - it was to bring change in your soul. It's to help you to see the need to let go control, and to learn how to surrender and yield to the Lord, and let His life flow through you.

So even though we put our hand up, and said: Jesus Christ is my Lord; we find as we walk with God, many areas are unsurrendered, and fiery experiences can being dramatic change internally in our life. From that, we begin to grow further and further into the purpose of God.

So there we have it, so we've got four baptisms mentioned there: the first one, the baptism into Christ, is a change in Identity - it’s a change in who you are. The second one is a change in your Positioning, in relationship to the spiritual powers - you are now out of the kingdom of darkness and in the kingdom of light. The third one is a change from being powerless to having Power; and the fourth one is a change in your Soul - so you can walk with the Holy Ghost, and live a life that's incredibly productive. Each one is a change.

Now I'm just going to go briefly through two of these baptisms: Baptism into Christ; and Baptism in Water. I want you just to allow the spirit of God, to just help open your understanding, to what the instruction concerning this baptism is; because as you get a hold of it, and embrace it, and live in it - it shifts you, you change.

One of the most common struggles that believers have is this: they keep thinking and remembering how they used to be, and live condemned, because old problems seem to be there. The devil seems to continue to condemn them. Let's just have a look at two or three scriptures related to this.

First John 20:21. We're going to look about what it means to be baptised into Christ - there are some distinct meanings, and distinct parts to it. Now this is talking about the operation or work of the Holy Spirit: where you are born again, and become changed in who you are. Jesus had received, and had the disciples there in front of Him, after He had died, and then He said: “As the Father sent Me, I send you”. So He's sending them into the world, He's sending them on a mission of advancing a kingdom; but they cannot advance the kingdom of God, unless they themselves have a foundational experience of being placed into the kingdom of God, of being placed into Christ, of being placed into His kingdom.

When He had said this to them, He breathed on them, and said: “Receive the Holy Ghost”. So at that moment in time, as Jesus breathed upon them, the spirit of God flowed from Him, came into them - and a change took place inside them. A change took place. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6: 7 – “when we receive Jesus Christ, we become joined to Christ”. That's a marriage term - you are in covenant, connection. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

So first thing that happens is: God puts His spirit into your spirit, and you are now one with God. You are one with Jesus Christ. You are one with the spirit of God. You are joined, the spirit of God is fused with your spirit - you are one. You have now had something dramatic take place inside you.

The old nature, which used to live in sin, now is declared to be dead. Now you're born, and you're a new person in God's eyes. You're a totally new creation, it says. So the first thing is, the spirit of God comes in. Second is, now the spirit of God is inside me, and I'm born again, now I am joined to the Lord. I cannot be ‘not joined to the Lord’; I am joined, and one spirit with Him.

The third thing that happens is: now I'm a new creation. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, it tells us: “now you become a new creation. The old has passed away”. You say: I don't feel like the old has passed away. Nevertheless, it's a spirit reality. Your experience may be that you still wrestle with old things; but the teaching of baptism in relationship to this is: you have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness; you're in the kingdom of light - you are a new person.

It teaches very, very clearly, that the power of sin has been broken. You are placed into Christ; so when God looks at you now, He sees His Son in you. Before, He saw Adam in you, He saw the fallen man. Now He sees His Son in you. He sees you as a place, or as a part of body of people, called the body of Christ. Notice what it tells us in 1 Corinthians 12: 13. It says “By one spirit, we were all immersed into one body”.

Now there may be lots of different churches around with different names - it makes no difference. There's only one body of Christ. Those different names are historic names, representing different waves of reviving in God, but they often become divided. The body of Christ consists of: those people who are joined to Jesus Christ, and have embraced their identity in Him.

You are now a new creation! You are no longer a sinner! Do you sin? Yes, you do from time to time, but from God's eyes, from God's point of view - you are now in His Son. When He looks at you, He sees His anointed Son Jesus Christ. When He looks at you, He has placed and hidden in you, His Son. He sees the life of His Son in you. You are a totally new person.

Not only that, that same spirit that placed you and joined you to Jesus Christ, has now placed you into a body, where you have a new identity and a destiny. Before, your eternal destiny was one separated from God. Now, being baptised into Christ means: I'm a totally new person! Completely new! Old things have passed away.

Now I have to believe that, hold onto that, and then outwork that in my life. I don't have to make myself more spiritual. I do not have to make myself a better person. I already have changed. That old me has died. That old me has been crucified when I identified with Jesus Christ, so now there's a new creation; and not only that, you're not only born into the family of God - now you're part of a body of people.

This is an aspect of the truth that people struggle with: Christianity is not to be lived alone. You are part of a body, a body with many members. Notice what it says down in Verse 27. It says: “now you are the body of Christ”. You are the physical representation of Jesus Christ on the earth now. You are joined to Him, one spirit; and so therefore, when you and I walk the earth, Jesus Christ is walking the earth again; through individuals who are connected as part of one body, with Him as the head.

It's very important to understand that. If you don't listen to the commands of your head, your body is going all over the place, you've got major problems in your life. If your head does a lot of thinking, but there's no connection to the limbs and your body, then you're confined to a wheelchair. It's important that every one of us is joined at the head, getting instructions from the head; but God also connects us to a body - that's why the local church is important. The local church is just one part of the body of Christ. It's a place, usually has the unique DNA, unique flow of life, of God, according to the men of God that have been raised up in there; and so it has the capacity to prepare people in a certain way - so different local churches are quite different in many ways, yet we are all one body of Christ.

That's why we bless the other churches, and do not speak against them. It is wrong to speak against them. Why? Because in doing so, you're speaking against the body of Christ. We're one body. It is right and godly to bless the churches of our city, pray for the Pastors, pray for the success of churches. Why? Because from God's point of view, there's only one body of Christ.

So the first thing that happens then is: the spirit of God comes into us; and the first foundation of baptism is this: your old person's gone, you're a new person now. You're a totally new person, and you're part of a body which is found in every nation of the earth. You're part of a group of people called the Church of the Living God; the body of Jesus Christ, called to represent Him, and make a difference advancing His kingdom! You're called to do something! Know Him and do something, advance His kingdom! Fantastic!

So we're part of a body - embracing that truth enables you to understand this. If I embrace the truth: I'm baptised into Christ; He's in me, and I'm in Him; and I'm part of a body. Now I begin to think differently - I need other people. They have something that they can give to me, to help me grow as a believer; and I have something to give to them. I have a destiny that's worked out in a local church, but also in the community. You and I now are different people.

If you don't embrace that truth, you'll live like just nothing much has happened - you just come to church. Christianity's never been about coming to church; it's about being church. It's about being someone, connected vitally to God, who has an overflow of kingdom life to give to others. You need to see: I am a gift to this community! We are a gift to this community! We are a gateway into heaven, because we're joined to Christ! His life is able to flow through me!

You can understand why this is called: the Principles of Christ, the anointed body. Jesus Christ is in heaven; He also has a body anointed by Him, and representing Him in the earth; not just Pastors and leaders and ministers represent Him - you represent Him, because you're part of the body of Christ.

Now you start to take that truth into you, and think about: every day I go out, I'm joined to Almighty God, God is in me, I'm in Jesus Christ, He's in me, and I represent Him in the earth. Now that'll affect the way you live - it'll affect how you do stuff. You go into your business, and it doesn't matter what you're doing seven days of the week, you're still who you are. If you're one thing on Sunday, and something different on Monday - that's called a hypocrite; but you are what? You are a believer. You're born again! The spirit of God is in you! You now represent and carry the life the King inside you! Now that is a foundational part of baptism. I'm no longer who I used to be - I'm a new person now. I think differently, live differently, I have a destiny to outwork! It's found within a body.

So let's go to the second one then, Baptism of water. In Matthew 3:13-15 we see - even Jesus got baptised. John was baptising, and Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptised by him. John tried to stop Him. He recognised who Jesus was - Son of God. I need to be baptised by You, and You're coming to me? Jesus said - now notice this: “Permit it to be so, for it is fitting for us, to fulfil all righteousness.”

Now John's baptism was a baptism in repentance. He required that men repent of their sin, believe in God, and then He would baptise them. Always repenting of sin and believing in God comes before baptising them. When the Pharisees came to him, he couldn't baptise them. He said: your life doesn't show up that you have repented and believed. You're just turning up because you want to be a part of the crowd, and don't want to miss out on anything. Your motives aren't right.

So John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. It was only a partial thing, to prepare the way for Jesus Christ coming. Now Jesus committed no sin; He had no need to be water baptised. Nevertheless, He said: “It's right that I do this”. It is right that I do this. So notice this, that Jesus had committed no sin - He was baptised to establish a pattern, an example for us. He went down and submitted to the ministry of His day; submitted to the anointed man of God, who had the word of God in that hour - the prophetic anointed prophet of God.

In other words, He submitted to what God was saying in that hour. He went down into the water baptism, came up. Notice what it says, the experience He had: “Immediately the heavens were opened. He saw the spirit of God came on Him like a dove alighting on Him, then suddenly a voice from heaven came saying: this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.”

So He encountered God at His water baptism. He was also baptised in the Holy Ghost. Now you and I are called to be water baptised. There are two conditions to be water baptised. The first condition is very simply, repentance. Repentance, in Acts 2:37-38, Peter had preached. After he preached they said: what must we do to be saved? He said: repent and be baptised; in other words: turn away from a life that's not Christ-centred, a life that's not God-centred, a life that is self-centred; and turn to the living God. So the first thing is Repentance.

Then in the Book of Mark, in Mark 16:15-16, Jesus said: “Go preach the gospel, and he that believes and is baptised will be saved”. Now you notice: Repenting, Believing, and Baptism are all connected. It is important you are water baptised. If you were sprinkled as an infant, you were not water baptised, according to what the Bible says. You need to be baptised - after repentance and faith. There's no evidence anywhere in the Bible, that there wasn't repentance and faith - these were the conditions before baptism. It doesn't say how old a person is, but they must be old enough to be aware of sin, to have turned from sin, and have trusted Jesus Christ. Then they get water baptised.

So notice this, that water baptism itself is built on the foundation of: Repentance; Faith in Christ - the spirit of God's come in, you've been brought into Christ, into the body of Christ. Now the obvious thing to do is to bury, in a symbolic way, in a representative way, to make a statement outwardly, of the change that's taken place inwardly.

So when you get water baptised, it's not that you go down and we sing a few songs, you go down the water and come up and you get wet and maybe raise your hands. It's much, much more than that. There's a teaching connected with it; and it's the teaching of it, associated with the doing of it, that brings about the change.

It is possible for you to experience massive deliverance when you get water baptised. I've seen people get massively delivered. I've seen people go down in that water, come up and many, many aspects of their old life just disappeared in a moment. Why? Because they held onto the truth associated with water baptism.

Let's have a quick look at it in Romans 6, and then we'll just finish up. We'll read from Verse 1, and Paul is talking about sin reigning over people; and now the possibility of the power of God living in our life, and reigning in our life.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, so grace can abound? Certainly not! How shall we - notice what he said - who have died to sin”. Not will die, but have died to sin - that's what the Bible says. This is part of the teaching of baptism - water baptism. When you came to Christ, you identified with Him. What did you identify? He was our representative; He went to the cross representing us; He died as our representative; He was buried as our representative; He rose by faith in the power of God, and is alive, and full of resurrection life.

Here's what baptism is: Baptism - we identify with what He has done.

Notice what it says here: “Shall we, who have died to sin” - you've already died to sin. You're dead to sin. Before you were Christians, sin had power over you. You had no power over sin. You could discipline your life, you could try real hard, but sin always was there, waiting to conquer you. When a person comes to Christ, this is what it says: “we have died to sin”. “Don't you realise, as many of us were baptised into Christ, were baptised into His death”. We were immersed into His death - I'll explain this in a moment, and it says: “therefore we are buried with Him, through baptism into death; that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we would now walk or live with a different lifestyle.

So it's not just the water baptism - it's the lifestyle. It's the difference between: living a life where you live in sin and self-centredness, doing your own thing; and a life where the spirit of God is in you, and you're starting to live by the power of the Holy Ghost, and the life of God; the resurrection life shining through you, changing you, giving you victory, giving you power in your life.

In verse 5 it says: “knowing this, if we've been united with Him in the likeness of His death, so shall we be in His resurrection. Knowing this, our old man was crucified with Him...” - now that's not your father there. Your old man is your old nature – “...was crucified with Him - that the body of sin might be done away with; no longer slaves to sin, for he who has died is now free from sin. So if we died with Christ, we believe we shall live with Him”. Verse 11 - now reckon yourselves (now here's the key of baptism) – “reckon yourself: I'm dead to sin, it has no power”.

Now let me just give it to you in just a few simple things. The first thing is: our old nature that caused us continually to sin, had no help of reforming and changing. When Jesus Christ died, when you put your trust in Him, His death was your death. When you trust in Him, the spiritual reality is this: that the power of sin in your life has been broken. Not only when He died, you also legally died with Him. Now if you're legally dead, the devil's got nothing to accuse you with. You can't accuse a dead man of anything.

If a person's got a problem with alcohol and cigarettes and all that kind of stuff, and they continually can't get over it; but if they're dead, you can put a bottle in front of them, they're not going to touch it. Why won't they touch it? They're dead. There's nothing in there alive anymore that goes for those things, so what he's saying is this: that when Christ died on the cross, if you put your trust in Christ, then God considers a legal reality that you died then. You literally died. Your old nature, it's power's completely broken, and was taken to the cross and died with you.

The only thing you could do with a person who's dead is bury them, so you bury them underground. So not only were you crucified with Christ; when He was buried, we were buried with Him; and what happened then, the power of God raised Him up to live with resurrection life.

So these are the realities now, that you are free from the power of sin; so how do you get free from the power of sin? Well here's the thing most people try and do: they just try harder; and when you try hard, you're always condemned.

When I got water baptised, I was declaring to spirit powers: the old Mike Connell died. It's right and fitting today we bury him, and he's out of your sight legally. A new person has risen up, who is joined to Jesus Christ; the spirit of God is in him, he's part of a body of people, and the resurrection life of Christ is in him. He will live to advance the kingdom of God, and destroy the works of the devil! Sin - I'm dead to sin.

If you will take the position you're dead to sin, then the reality is: sin doesn't have its power any more over you. So the teaching of baptism is: sin’s power is broken, you are free - you're a free man. After the Second World War, the war was over, and it was declared that the Japanese had been defeated, but there were still many people in a prison camp. They were in a prison camp, because they didn't know the truth; and when they did find the truth, they were still too scared to actually do what they needed to do: just to stand up and take over the camp and walk out. Many people today live like a prisoner in a prisoner of war camp. Already the battle has been won at Calvary. Already God has established a spirit reality: that you are free from the powers of darkness, you are free from the power of sin; but if you don't wrap yourself in your heart, and embrace that foundational truth, you'll live like you're in a prisoner of war camp - still bound by old sins and old ways.

But if I get the truth - I'm free! I can arise in my spirit, and decree into the spirit powers: power of sin is broken, the life of God is in me; and the law of life, of the spirit in me, overcomes the law of sin and death! Are there struggles? Yes, but you don't win them by struggling trying to overcome sin. You get them by taking your position in the spirit: the work is done, I'm already free, its power is broken. I'll acknowledge that and hold to that!

Water baptism is your declaration to spirit powers, and to the world around you: my old life, living in sin, is over! I am a dead man! Dead men get buried. Now, when I rise up, there's a new person, a new creation full of the Holy Ghost, full of the life of God, ready to advance the kingdom of God; part of a body of people, called the body of Christ, called to advance the kingdom of God in every nation of the earth! What a great truth. What an exciting truth. What an exciting truth!

First two foundational things in the teaching of baptisms: 1) I'm a new person. I'm joined to the living God. 2) The power of sin is broken. I'm a free man, and if I'm free, do I need to be condemned? No! No condemnation to those who are in Christ! Walk after the spirit of life. Why? The old man died. Now he's condemned, not me. I've risen again. I'm part of the body of Christ. I'm joined to Jesus Christ. No condemnation to me, now I'm in Christ! Oh, there might be immaturity; there might be the occasional lapses, and falls, and difficulties, but there's no condemnation! Why? Because I've escaped that in Christ, I now have a new life in Him. What an amazing thing! Well, you do need to embrace those truths - you're a new person. Live like a new person. Think like a new person.

When you get up tomorrow: I'm a new creation in Christ! I'm born again! Spirit of God lives within me, that same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, is quickening my body today - giving me energy and life; quickening my mind, quickening my thoughts, quickening my spirit. I'm joined to the living God, and I'm part of a great body of people, spread throughout the world! It's going to take over the world! The Bible says in the Book of Revelation: “now the kingdoms of this world, have become the kingdoms of our Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ - and His Christ, His anointed body, walking under His kingdom”. What a great day we live in! No wonder I need to get water baptised! I need to make it right, smart, clear: I'm out of that old scheme, I'm a new person, I'm getting up new!

See, so water baptism's so powerful - being baptised, placed into Christ, into a body and a family; and buried, the old thing buried so I can step up into the new. I can't wait until next week - to get filled with the Holy Ghost! So next week you want to come along, get filled with the Holy Ghost? We'll pray and lead people through to get filled with the Holy Ghost. Why? It's only the entrance; it's a baptism into a new realm! It's a baptism into a new dimension! It's a baptism into a supernatural life of the kingdom; a life of miracles, where the kingdom of God is advanced through people who believe!

No wonder it says: “all in the body of Christ can prophesy, all of you can move in the gifts”. Why aren't you doing it? Well, probably you've forgotten the truth of baptism - about who you really are. Oh, well I'm just me, and I'm condemned. Listen - that's not who you are. You're an anointed person! You're a person called to carry the life of God! You need to know who you are in Jesus Christ! He says: “child of God”. He says: “born again”. He says: “an ambassador”. He says: “you are blessed with every blessing” - you've got to just start to agree with what He says. That's what this baptism thing's all about. It's about being immersed into the realities of the new creation, and staying there because you believe the truth.

So many people just get baptised, and their life doesn't change, because they didn't get a hold of the foundation in their life: I'm a different person, a new person; and that new person is a loving person, a generous person. If I read the Bible, I can find what the new person is like. The old one - well I used to be mean and selfish and fearful; but the new creation man is a quite different person - so that's who I am. That's me, I identify with that. Oh well that's the old things just trying to come back - but that's not who I am. This is who I am: loving, and I'm generous, full of God. You see who are you? You'll live out of who you believe you are; and if you still believe you're that poor wretch, lost in sin, and condemned and struggling and in bondage, you will live that way.

So the doctrine of baptisms is a foundation of believing, that causes you to step up to the reality of who Jesus says you are. Water Baptism demonstrates your Belief in that. Holy Ghost Baptism launches you into a reality of it, in terms of Power. Baptism is suffering the experiences, which we welcome and rejoice over, because they enable Christ to be seen more clearly. What a great foundation! If you don't have that foundation in your life, you'll just live out of the old.

Closing Prayer

Perhaps there's someone here who's never taken the first step to receive Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus said: “To as many as believed in Him, He gave power to become a child of God”. This is a day for you to become a child of God. This is a day for you to open your life, to receive the spirit of God, and the moment you receive the spirit of God - as you turn away from sin and put your trust in Jesus Christ - trust that He died as your representative. He took all the punishment of sin, and has made a way for you to be changed. As you believe and embrace that in your heart, I'll tell you something - you are changed. You are changed. You're going to be a new person, different person. The old will have passed away, and straight away after that, you'll just want to get water baptised - find a bath and full it up, or go to a river if it's a clean one - whatever, but get baptised real quick.

Let me just lead you in a simple prayer. I wonder if we could just pray the prayer together:

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I thank you for loving me, for sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Lord Jesus, I turn away from sin today. I receive you as my saviour. I give you my life today. I ask you to forgive me, to make me clean inside. By faith I receive forgiveness now. I receive your spirit into my heart and I give you my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare: Jesus Christ is my saviour, and Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.

If you’ve prayed that prayer for the first time: welcome to the family of God! God's spirit has just come upon you, and touched you. Next thing you'll want to do is get water baptised. Someone who's there as a believer can take you to get water baptised. Otherwise fill the bath up, and do it there - but get water baptised; make a declaration to the spirit powers of your identification with Jesus Christ, and that you are truly rising up to be a new person.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundations …”

The foundation of any building is unseen, but it determines the size and capacity of the building.

Our life and relationship with God must also have solid foundations for us to grow and mature.

In order to grow and ‘go on’ there are two conditions (i) Hope foundations (ii) Permission of God.

Heb. 6:1-3 Lists foundations essential to build our relationship and life with God.

(i) Repentance from dead works - turn away from activities that have not the

life or love of God.

(ii) Faith towards God - trust in the word and character of God, expressed in words and obedience.

2. Doctrine of Baptisms

The Doctrine of baptisms forms the next part of the foundation.

Doctrine = NT1322 = teaching or instruction (about the meaning of baptisms)

Western thinking “doctrine” is about knowledge or information.

Hebrew thinking “doctrine” is about teaching that is lived out experientially (Act 1:1)

Baptisms = NT909 = Baptismos Greek It is a Greek word written in English and not translated.

Mk 14:20 “…it is one of the 12 who dips with me in the dish” Dip = bapto = to immerse.

Lk 16:24 “..send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water …” Dip = bapto = to immerse.

Baptize = to dip or totally immerse one object into something.

Bapt = NT9:11 = to overwhelm, cover wholly with a fluid, to stain with a dye.

Baptism is the immersion of one thing into another so that it becomes changed.

Baptism is meant to impart to you a foundation of change.

3. Different Baptisms (4x)

Baptisms – is plural, there is more than one baptism – each one is to bring change.

(i) Baptism by Holy Spirit into Christ

1 Cor 12:13 “For by one Spirit we were all baptised into one Body…”

The Holy Spirit brings about a change in identity and destiny when we receive Jesus Christ.

We become joined to Jesus Christ and become part of a Body of people representing Him.

(ii) Baptism in Water

Rom. 6:3 “…as many of us were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his

death.”

Water Baptism is a declaration of our change in identity to spiritual powers. The old life of Adam no longer rules, we are no longer a sinner but have died to that old life and been replaced by a new person joined to Jesus Christ.

(iii) Baptism in Holy Ghost

Lk. 3:16 “…He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”

Baptism in the Holy Ghost is a change from being powerless to being powerful. It is an entrance experience into a realm of supernatural living and power.

(iv) Baptism in Fire

Lk. 3:16 “…He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”

Baptism in fire is an experience that changes our soul so we let go control and learn how to flow with the leading and directing of the Holy Spirit.

4. Baptized into Christ

To be baptized into Christ means to have a change in identity and destiny.

It means the following becomes a spiritual reality.

(i) The Spirit of Christ Himself is imparted into you. (Jn 20:21)

(ii) You become ‘joined’, one spirit with Jesus Christ (1 Cor 6:17)

(iii) You become a new creation, no longer a sinner but a child of God (2Cor.5:17)

(iv) You are placed by the Spirit of God into a Body of People (1Cor 12:13-18,27)

· Instead of living your life independent, alone, your own way, you are connected to Jesus Christ and placed in a Body of People with a destiny to fulfil.

· God has made you in a unique way so He can live His life through you and extend His Kingdom through you in a unique way.

· Embracing and living out these truths lays a foundation for growth.

· Embracing this truth you become connected to a local church or expression of Body of Christ.

5. Baptism in Water

(1) The example of Jesus

Mt. 3:13-15 “Jesus came from Galilee to John and the Jordan to be baptised by him”

John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance into remission of sins (Mk.1:4)

John made 2x requirements (i) Repentance (ii) Confession of sins (Mk1:3-5)

Jesus had committed no sins. He was baptized to “fulfil all righteousness” i.e. He established an example and pattern for all believers to follow.

(2) The Conditions for Water Baptism

There are two conditions to be met before people are baptized in water.

(i) Repent Act. 2:37-38 Repent and let everyone of you be baptized in the

name of Jesus Christ.

(ii) Believe Mk 16:15-16 He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.

Water Baptism is built upon the foundation of repenting and believing.

Water Baptism is the public response to an inner change (Act. 8:12/35-39)

(3) The Spiritual Significance of Water Baptism

Baptism is the immersion of one thing into another so that it is changed.

Baptism is meant to result in change – not just something you do – go into water.

Baptism is meant to impart to you a foundation of change:

(i) The old corrupt sinful nature has been crucified and is dead (Rom. 6:6)

(ii) You have died with Christ when He died on the Cross (Rom. 6:6)

(iii) You are freed from the power of sin (Rom. 6:7)

(iv) Sin has no more dominion over your life (old you is dead) (Rom. 6:11,14)

(v) The resurrection power of the Holy Spirit is within you giving you spiritual life (Rom. 8:10)

(vi) You are stating and declaring by water baptism that reality to spiritual powers.

· Old Life under power of sin is dead and buried (Col.2:12)

· New resurrection life of power and victory has begun.

· Embracing and living these truths lays a foundation for growth.

· Embracing these truths – you refuse condemnation and embrace grace and life of God.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit (4 of 7)

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Immersion into the person, and power and presence of the Holy Spirit, so it lives around you, and is on you, and flows freely from within you. The entrance into a supernatural living.

Introduction

Foundational Principles, Hebrews 6:1. These are the principles that you can build a great life walking with God. This is the fourth in the series, we're doing the teaching on baptisms.

"Now leaving the discussion of the elementary principles or doctrines of Christ, let us go on to perfection or maturity, not laying again the foundation of: Repentance from Dead Works; and Faith Towards God; of the Doctrine of Baptisms; of Laying on of Hands; of Resurrection of the Dead; and of Eternal Judgement. And this we will do if God permits".

God wants us to go forward, to grow; not to remain static, but to grow. To grow forward requires two things: 1) that you have spiritual foundations strongly established in your life. The foundations of a building are unseen, but the whole building depends on the strength of the foundations. It would be unwise to build something on weak or incomplete foundations. 2) it requires that God permits us to go on.

So God requires: 1) that we embrace, and open our life, to the foundations being set in place; 2) that we walk with him.

So we've been sharing with you some of these teachings. The one we're on now is: Doctrine of Baptisms. The word doctrine means: 'the teaching' or 'instruction'. There are some experiences we can have, and there's a teaching related to them. The teaching and the experience form the foundation.

Main Message

In the Western culture people tend to think of teaching just as information; we don't relate it to life. From a biblical point of view, teaching and life went together. In other words: what you knew was what you were living out. So you notice it talks about the doctrine, or teaching, of baptisms (plural); there are more than one baptism referred to in the Bible, last week we saw a reference to four of them.

You are Baptised into Christ; so when we receive Jesus Christ as our saviour, the Holy Spirit comes into our life. We are born again. We become joined, and become one, or we become ‘in’ Jesus Christ. Not only that, we are put by that same spirit into a body of people. We become part of a church, a body of people called the body of Christ, God's family universal. We outwork our conviction of that belief, by committing to a local church, and being involved in it.

The next baptism we saw was a Baptism in Water. The teaching or the instruction behind that is that, when we came to Christ, we identified with Him, and received Him as our representative; then our old life, literally its power of sin, was broken.

The Bible says very clearly, the power of sin was broken when we came to Christ. You don't need to live in sin any more - and so our old nature died, and we have become in Jesus Christ a totally new person.So if someone dies, the natural thing to do is to bury them; so baptism in water is literally a public acknowledgement of an inward reality: my old life, living for myself, living independently has finished - it's out of sight. That old nature, that old life, lived under the power of sin, living as everyone else lived, has now ended; a new life has begun.

Water baptism is your testimony to the world, and to the spiritual powers, that old person died. There's a new person risen up, born again! He's a child of the living God! It's a great change - but that's not all! Now God wants to immerse us into a different life, and so we come to the Baptism in the Holy Ghost...

Baptism in the Holy Ghost - the word ‘baptise’ is to ‘dip into’ or ‘immerse you into something’; so baptism in the Holy Ghost is immersion into the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The presence and power of the spirit of God lives around you, and is on you, and flows freely from within you. It is literally the entrance into a supernatural living.

You can understand then, that the whole process: Baptised into Christ, and Water Baptism, deals with our old life. Now Baptism in the Holy Ghost, and the Baptism in Fire, refers to the whole new realm of the way you're going to live. So being baptised in the Holy Ghost is just, literally going through the door, into the first of a whole realm of supernatural life.

The original man that God created, Adam and Eve, were connected to God, and lived in the supernatural dimension. They carried the power of God. They carried the creative life of God. When they fell and were disconnected from God, sin ruled over their lives; so when we come to Christ, the power of sin is broken - we're water baptised, declaring now: I've got a new life. It's in Christ. I'm joined to Him. I'm one with Him, I'm part of a body in the world, and now I'm going to immerse into a whole new dimension - oh! An interesting life, and journey, that's supernatural! That's why the church not living in the supernatural is totally short of what Jesus created us for. So let's just have a look at a few scriptures...

The first thing, we're going to have a look at the Baptism in the Holy Ghost. Luke 3:16 – “John the Baptist answered, saying to everyone there: I'm baptising you in water, but One who is mightier than I is coming (that's Jesus Christ) his sandal strap I'm not worthy to loose. He will baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with Fire.”

Isn't that fantastic! He will baptise you with the Holy Ghost and Fire. In other words, He will put you into a dimension where the spirit of God clothes you, and you are immersed in the life and flow and power of God. That's what he's talking about here. You say: oh, that's not like my experience. Well, we need to bring our experience up to what the word of God says; not bring the word of God down to what we experience.

So it's an immersion into the person, and power, and presence, of the Holy Spirit. Suppose you went into a river, and the river's sort of flowing over, and you stand under a waterfall. As you stand under that waterfall, you are immersed in the water. That's kind of what it's talking about - immersed in something that's coming down from you, and touching every part of you. You are immersed in the waterfall.

So the baptism in the Holy Ghost then, is where your soul, your personality, your life, becomes immersed in a dimension of God – supernaturally; and of course we can live in that, or you can go back to living like you used to live. We have to choose what we're going to live like, so it's an entrance.

Luke 3:21 – “When all the people were baptised, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptised.” So Jesus got water baptised, and following water baptism, as He rose up out of the baptism waters, He immediately was baptised in the spirit. So from a biblical point of view (Jesus being the model), Holy Spirit baptism would normally follow directly after Water Baptism; as you rise, you bury the old life, bury the old nature, declare your old life is over. Now as you come up out of the waters, it's reasonable to expect you'd be filled with the Holy Spirit, so look what happened...

It says: “while He prayed, heaven was opened; the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said: You are My beloved Son, in You I am well pleased."

Jesus is the pattern for us. Note that after His water baptism, He reached out and prayed - He prayed - that's how He entered into this experience, being baptised in the spirit. Notice the things that happened:

1) Heaven was opened. The supernatural realm of the spirit became open. He had free access to intimacy with God, the Father.

2) The spirit of God came on Him, and remained on Him.

3) He started to hear the voice of God. Notice what the voice of God said - He hasn't even begun His ministry, done no great action - and the voice of God says: “This is My beloved Son. I'm pleased in Him.”

So He had the Father confirming His identity. He has moved from being a child, unrecognised, and now He is standing clothed in the spirit of God, ready to engage the world in His ministry. Straight after that - Luke 4:1 - we find Him being led by the Holy Spirit. So that's the example of Jesus.

Now Jesus made a promise. As we look in the life of ministry of Jesus, you have to notice that everywhere He went, there was supernatural manifestation and demonstrations. If you follow Jesus' ministry, you will notice these characteristics:

Firstly, He continually seemed to have access to the Father. He continually seemed to hear from the Father, so much so, that He said: “what I see Him showing me, that's what I do”. What I see Him doing, I do it too. What I hear Him saying, that's how I judge things. So He continually flowed in a flow of the presence of God, speaking to Him.

Second thing you notice is: the supernatural around His life. The two went hand in hand. When you look at the ministry of Jesus relationship with God: access into the realm of heaven; and the flow of the spirit, characterised His life and ministry.

Now what did Jesus promise? I want us to look at a couple of scriptures. First of all look in John 20:21. Jesus has finished His course on the earth. He died for our sins, after three days rose from the dead. Now He's appeared to His disciples, and He's about to commission them, and so this is what He says, in Verse 21 – “As the Father sent Me, I'm sending you. And when He said this, He breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit."

At that point it was like He was replicating what God did with Adam. God breathed into Adam, and Adam became a living soul. Jesus breathed into them, the spirit of God entered into them. They were now born again. They were now children of the living God. Of course some point after that they must have got baptised in water.

So what happened then? They were joined to God. They were now born again, but their experience wasn't complete. Jesus had a mission for them to accomplish. He had a purpose for them to accomplish on this earth, and in order to accomplish His mission, they needed access to the supernatural. Why? Why did they need access to the supernatural?

It's very simple. We live in a Western culture here, but the majority of the world doesn't have a Western world-view. It has a spirit world-view, and in cultures where you go to in the world, some of the things that are evident in every culture I've gone to, is the evidence of witchcraft, of cultism, and strong manifestations of spiritual power originating from evil spirits. Jesus was sending them into such cultures, to change the culture. To change the culture, they needed to have power to overcome evil spirits, and power to heal the sick. They needed power to go with their message. The kingdom of heaven is not just hot air and talk; it's also in power. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2 – “I didn't come preaching in fancy words, but in demonstration of the spirit and power of God”; so it was essential before they went to witness, that they had power in their life.

Now this is not a different power that they got, that we get. It's the same power; the same promise. So if we have a look in a couple of scriptures, say look in Luke 24:49. He says: “behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you; wait in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high”. So now He says that there's something more for you to get. There is a promise for you: it is to be endued; or literally that word ‘endued’ means: ‘to sink into some clothing’; so I am endued with this red shirt and black trousers. In other words, I'm clothed with them - so what He's saying is: you will be clothed with power. That word is supernatural power. God wants you to be clothed with power, wants you to have power available in your life. No power => something's missing.

Many Christians seem to live without any power - and are not disturbed by that - but Jesus said: “wait until you receive the power.” That's what you need to be able to do the work - so He said: “wait until you are clothed with power.” Power will come upon you.

The same thing is repeated in Acts 1:4. He's assembled with them, and He says: “Wait for the promise of the Father, which I've told you about; for John baptised you in water, but you will be baptised in the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.” Verse 8 – “You shall receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you.

So notice He's talking, not about an experience, where the spirit of God enters us. Now He's talking about being baptised, or dipped and immersed, into a dimension where the Holy Spirit operates. He uses different words for it. One word He uses is to be ‘clothed with power’; another one, He says, is for the Holy Ghost to come upon you. Another word He uses is ‘Baptised in the Holy Spirit’. So the Bible uses several words to try and get us to understand what it means. I'll pray for a few people shortly, and try to demonstrate what He is meaning by this...

He used ‘baptised’. So what is the baptism in the Holy Spirit? Notice He says: “You'll be baptised in the spirit; the spirit of God will come upon you”. In some other places it says: “the spirit will be poured out on you”. Another place it says: “the Holy Ghost fell on them”, so clearly it's talking about an experience, where the spirit of God comes upon us, and something changes in us.

Now I believe there are two parts, or two aspects of it. The first is the invisible presence and power of the Holy Spirit comes on you, and begins to clothe you. It begins to saturate your life. You become different when the Holy Ghost comes on you - absolutely certain, you're quite different when the Holy Ghost comes on you. Notice it's a sensation where He comes on you; but not only that, what happens is He fills you; and the life that's in your spirit is able to flow through your soul, because your soul now begins to be free, because it's soaked, saturated in the Holy Ghost.

What is it free to do? It's free to express the life of the spirit that's within us. It's free to move in gifts of the spirit. You're free to receive spontaneous impressions, promptings, pictures, images, things from the Holy Spirit. So we experience the spirit of God baptising us: firstly as something coming on us; and then something arising from being saturated in Him, and beginning to flow through us, and express in the world.

So being baptised in the Holy Spirit - you are immersed into a dimension of the spirit of God moving and operating.

Now Brydon and Sharon, won't you just come up and stand over here for a moment. Just come up on the stage, it'll be a lot easier for the camera to see. So the Holy Spirit comes on us, and then His presence arises within, and flows through us.

I want you just to lift your hands up to the Lord. So Sharon, what now we're going to do is, we're just going to pray that the Holy Spirit will clothe you, that the power of God will just come flowing, and just [WHOOO!] touch you life, just like that. It's like something comes out of heaven. It's like heaven opens [whooo] and there's just like a flow of God just begins to come. A person starts to get touched by God.

Right now, he is clothed with the spirit. When you clothe with the spirit, sometimes you feel Him, sometimes you can't stand; so you notice it's like something invisible came over him. It's like something that was heavy, so heavy he couldn't stand. It was like something you couldn't see just came on him.

What's happened now is: the spirit of God is resting on them. We tend to think in terms of concrete things, but the Holy Spirit is able to move and flow; so what's happened now - the spirit of God has come on them. “Spirit of God has come on them” - so Holy Ghost is on them. Now when we get baptised in the Holy Spirit, not only does the power of God come on us, and clothe us; actually it activates, and we become filled inside as well.

When I talk about being clothed, you tend to think of a physical body and physical clothing. When God talks about clothing, He's talking about your whole inner man being saturated, soul and spirit. When your inner man is saturated, soul and spirit, something is going to rise up from within you; and the first expression, as we'll see in a moment is, normally people speak in tongues. Sometimes they just fall over; sometimes they look like they're just drunk, and can't stand up - but always there's a flow from within.

So notice the Bible talks about “the Holy Spirit was poured out on them”? So it's like a pouring out, something from heaven just comes down like that over the person - God's spirit coming on them.

Not only does the spirit of God come on them, the spirit of God fills every part; so our soul now can flow with the Holy Spirit, if we will let it; and now we can actually activate gifts of the spirit; and we can flow, so the spirit of God flows through us.

Now one of the first expressions of the Holy Spirit flowing within us, that happened in the New Testament is - they began to speak in tongues. When the spirit of God came on them (in Acts 2, Acts 8, Acts 10, Acts 19); when the Holy Ghost came on them, they began to do something. Because they were filled, they began to speak in a language they'd never learned - and it's the Holy Spirit that gave them the words. [Speaks in tongues]

Now you see they began to speak in a language of the spirit. There's an entrance into a new dimension. They're so filled, they're starting to talk.

Acts 10:44 – “Spirit came on them, as on us at the beginning, they began to speak in tongues.”

Acts 2 – “spirit came on them, they began to speak in tongues.”

Acts 19:6 – “Paul laid hands on them, they were filled with the spirit, began to speak in tongues.”

Something from within them began to flow out - something from within. So we get charged with the Holy Spirit. So if I just begin to now allow myself to become filled with the Holy Ghost – “Thank you Lord” - I begin to thank God and just - because the Bible tells us: continue to be filled. Don't keep drinking wine, be filled with the Holy Ghost. How do you get filled with the Holy Ghost? Thanking God, praising God, speaking in tongues, wandering, just beginning to just enter His presence, [Speaks in tongues]

Now I'm starting to come alive with the Holy Ghost! So I'm sure, if I'm alive with the Holy Ghost, if I was just to touch her, power of God would just go [bop] like that, straight down into her. So something happens. You get full of the Holy Ghost. [Speaks in tongues] I'm filling up with the Holy Ghost! [Speaks in tongues] and the spirit of God; and when you're praying in tongues, the spirit of God is giving you the language, your spirit is praying, and now you're starting to energise!

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14 – “when you speak in tongues, your spirit is now talking!” Most people didn't even know they got a spirit, let alone how to talk. They're too busy blabbing away, they don't stop. Let your spirit talk, see?

So when you pray in tongues, 1 Corinthians 14:14 – “my spirit is praying”. In 1 Corinthians 14 it says: “when you're praying in tongues, you're speaking to God!” You're speaking in a language He understands. Why? The Holy Ghost is giving you the language.

1 Corinthians 14:2 – “When you're speaking in tongues, you are speaking mysteries.” You're beginning to speak out God's will, God's purposes, a powerful gift. [Speaks in tongues]

1 Corinthians 14:4 – “When you speak in tongues, you are building up yourself. Some people think they don't need to build themselves up. That's why they remain weak. The Bible says: “it's given to build you up” - so why wouldn't you want the gift? It'll build you up - and that word build up means ‘to build a house’, or to ‘structure’ or ‘construct’ something.

What is being constructed, when you pray in tongues? Your spirit becomes mightily energised with the life of God! You begin to build your inward man. That's why many people are weak - they don't build their inner man - spend too much time eating. Build the inner man, you see, and when you begin to pray in tongues, now the power of God starts to fill your body, energise your body. It energises your soul.

You know what's going to happen next? If you pray in tongues, it's like you become so filled with the spirit of God that you begin to start to sense in your soul the thoughts of God. You begin to flow in the Gifts of the Spirit, and your whole body becomes alive and energised.

Something is alive in me, causing that to happen. All I've done is to make visible what the Bible says the Holy Ghost does inside a person. He energises you, fills you with supernatural life! If you want to live a life that's trying hard, that's good, good for you; I'd rather have a life that's got a power boost. It's much easier.

Notice that as you activate that life, very commonly in the New Testament, Joy is associated with the life of the spirit flowing in you. So it's quite common, when you begin to pray for people, that they begin to start to get the joy of the Lord. “Holy Ghost, just come, fill her now Lord, just let that joy just come around her life.” See - joy begins to come on people. Isn't that right? Joy in the Holy Ghost will be flowing over her life! Joy in the Holy Ghost. If you're watching or reading this right now - this life of the Holy Ghost is going right to you!

The Bible says: “Be filled, not with wine, but be filled with the Holy Ghost.” You can feel, as we begin to express His life, how the life begins to flow. The life of the spirit is a flow from your inner man. Look at that - the presence of God - she can't stand up. It looks like she's been drinking. She hasn't been drinking, it's just she's under the influence of the presence of God. How did that happen? I began to stir my spirit and speak in tongues! What a great gift we've got.

Now to Mihi and all those who are watching, if you would just lift your hands right now, God is about to touch you, just where you are. Just watch this: “Holy Ghost, come into Mihi. Come into the room behind her. Touch people right now with joy in Jesus' name!” There it is - she can barely stand - the power of God.

How do you get filled with the Holy Ghost? Of course you want to be filled with the Spirit of God. Why would you live life with only half the experience? Water baptised; but never dipped into the realm of the spirit. Now some people think: well, I got baptised in the spirit - I've done it, tick that one off. No, no, no, no! It's a doorway into a flow of life and power, you've got to stay there.

How do you stay there? By constantly being filled by the spirit; being led by the Holy Ghost.

Why does God fill you up like that? Why - He wants to energise your power, bring power into your life. He'll want to bring your prayer life to a whole new level, to fire you up in the Holy Ghost! How wonderful.

So when you're Baptised in the Spirit, it's your entry into a whole new realm where you can experience spiritual realities. You can learn to flow with the Holy Spirit. You can minister the life of the spirit. You also engage spiritual conflict. You become aware of the demonic realm.

Why do you become aware of it? Because very simply - you're called to conquer it. That's why the power is given. Funny, in the West, they won't even talk about it – strangest thing. Now you and I know it's very real, isn't it? Some of you, right now if you're watching, you'll be a little agitated, because the presence of God here will stir up the presence of any foreign spirits; but right now we can just share with you very simply how you can get filled with the Holy Ghost. It’s great to get people filled with the Holy Spirit, and praying in tongues, and activated.

How do you feel? Good; Wobbly. It's a good feeling though isn't it? What happened to you? It felt like sprinkles of something were coming on you, and you feel fresh inside I guess. Can you stand again? Well not too sure - no. No, we're beyond standing now. Okay, we're going to have an altar call in a moment, get people to come up and get filled with the Holy Ghost.

So the realm of the spirit, what a wonderful realm it is - this is where you and I are called to live. You say: it's hard. No, it isn't hard. Living without the Fire of the Holy Ghost is hard - it is really hard. Living without His vitality, and having to face the burdens of life is very hard; but oh, to be able to get up and praise God, and speak in tongues, enter His presence, and experience Him, and hear Him speaking to you - oh, your life becomes so energised!

How does a person get filled with the Holy Ghost? Well, you need to have given your life to Jesus, first of all. You've got to become a Christian first of all; but then the Bible says in Mark 11:24 – “When you stand praying, whatever things you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” Notice here's what is needed:

1) Desire. I must want to be filled with the spirit. I must desire God to clothe me and fill me.

2) Ask. I need to ask Him. I need to just come and ask Him in faith, believing that He wants to do this. Jesus said: “this promise is for you”. Peter said: “It's for you, and your children, and everyone who's afar off.”

3) Believe

4) Receive.

5) Then you do have to step out, and yield to the Holy Ghost, and let His voice express through you. You speak, and the Holy Ghost gives you the language, and a whole new dimension starts.

Closing Prayer

Why don't we just do that right now? If you're reading this, you could follow me in this prayer; and God, the same God that's here, is there where you are too. He will respond to your prayer.

So I'm going to lead everyone in a prayer. I'd like you all to follow me in the prayer. We're going to reach out, believing, and asking for the Holy Ghost to fill us. You say: well, I've already been filled with the spirit. Good - ask again!

Then we receive: take a deep breath in; and then we stretch out and begin to yield, and let the spirit of God flow through us - begin to speak in tongues. Let's really speak in tongues. I believe there's going to be great joy start to come into the house, come into you wherever you are.

Lord, I'm asking you right now, that as people pray this prayer, that joy will come into that meeting. Let's lift our hands right now, lift your hands up to God, who is there for you. Thank you Lord. I want you to follow me in this prayer...

“Jesus, I confess You as my saviour and Lord. I believe You died on the cross for my sins, and You rose again from the dead. I declare You are my saviour, and I belong to You. Now Lord Jesus, I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I want to be baptised in the Holy Ghost. I want to be clothed with power. I'm asking You now, according to Your word, to fill me with Your spirit, to give me the gift of tongues so by faith now I receive the Holy Ghost. I receive the gift of tongues, and I praise You with my new language.”

Come on, let's praise Him now. [Speaks in tongues] Holy Spirit come, begin to touch people, begin to fall on people, touch people's lives right now. Let the joy of the Lord, Holy Ghost come. Fire, let the fire of God come on people right now. We release joy. We release liberty. We release freedom right now in Jesus' name.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation …”

In order to ‘grow’ or ‘go on’ there are two conditions:

(i) Foundations Laid (ii) Permission of God

Heb 6:1-3 lists foundations that are essential to build our relationship and life with God.

Doctrine = NT1322 = teaching or instruction about the meaning of baptisms.

Note: Western thinking (Greek) - Doctrine is about knowledge or information.

Hebrew thinking - Doctrine is teaching that is lived out experientially.

Baptisms

(i) Baptism into Christ You are joined to Jesus Christ and to the body

of His people (1 Cor. 12-13).

(ii) Baptism in Water Your old life is dead, a new life has begun.

(iii) Baptism in Holy Ghost You enter the supernatural realm of the Holy

Spirit.

(iv) Baptism in Fire Your soul life is purified by fiery experiences

that test your faith.

2. The Baptism in the Holy Spirit

(a) The Promise of Baptism in the Holy Spirit

Lk 5:16 “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”.

Baptise = NT907 = to immerse in, to dip into, with = en = in, into.

Baptise in the Holy Spirit = the whole soul or personality is immersed, surrounded and enveloped in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

= the entrance into the supernatural realm of the spirit.

(b) The Example of Jesus

Lk 3:21-22 “..Jesus also was (water) baptised and while He prayed the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove …”

Following Jesus water baptism He was immediately baptised in the Holy Spirit.

Note what happened:

(i) Heaven opened – access into the supernatural realm of the Father God

(ii) Holy Spirit descended – He was dipped, immersed into the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

(iii) A voice came from heaven – He was affirmed in His relationship and Sonship.

(iv) He was led by the Spirit (Lk4:1)

(c) The Promise of Jesus

Jn 20:21-22 “…and when He had said this He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

- Jesus imparted the person and life of the Holy Spirit into His disciples.

- They became born again, joined to the Spirit of God indwelling them.

(1 Cor. 6:17).

- This was not the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

The Promise of Jesus

(i) Lk 24:49 “Behold, I send the promise of the Father upon you, but tarry in the city

of Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high”.

“Clothed” = NT1746 = Enduo = to sink into a garment, to cover with a

clothing, to put on a garment.

“Power” = NT1411 = Dunamis = supernatural ability.

(ii) Acts 1:4-8 “… wait for the promise of the Father … for John truly baptised with water

but you shall be baptised in the Holy Spirit not many days from now”.

“Baptised” = NT907 = to immerse in, to dip into.

Vs8 “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon and you shall be witness to me…”

The Holy Spirit will come upon and envelop or cloth you with His Presence and Power.

3. What is the Baptism in the Holy Spirit?

(a) The Bible describes this experience several ways:

Acts 1:5 “You shall be baptised in the Holy Spirit..”

Acts 1:8 “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon…”

Acts 2:33 “..He poured out this which you now see and hear …”

Acts 10:44 “..The Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the Word.

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience where:

(i) The invisible presence, and power of the Holy Spirit comes upon a person

and surrounds, envelops and clothes them.

(ii) The invisible presence and power of the Holy Spirit arises from within your

spirit surrounding and sensitising the soul to spontaneous impressions of

the Holy Spirit.

(b) The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the entrance to a supernatural realm of life

New realm of awareness (Acts 2:17-18)

New realm of functioning (1 Cor. 12)

New realm of power (Acts 1:8)

New realm of revelation (1 Cor. 2:9-10)

New realm of guidance (Lk 4:1, Rom. 8:14)

New realm of prayer (Rom 8:26)

New realm of conflict (Lk 4:1,14)

Holy Spirit rests upon and immerses the person!

(c) We need constant daily filling with the Holy Spirit

Eph. 5:18-19 “Be not drunk with wine … but be filled with the Spirit”.

Be filled = continuous, ongoing, something that happens as a result of yielding.

Acts 4:31 “When they had prayed … they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…”

4. Speaking in Tongues

(a) They speak in Tongues!

Acts 2:1-4 “… they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues…”

Acts 10:44-46 “…for they heard them speak with other tongues and magnify God.

Acts 19:6 “…The Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

(b) What is Speaking in Tongues?

It is an overflow from your heart of the Holy Spirit speaking through a yielded soul and voice.

Some Key Features:

- Your spirit is praying (1Cor.14:14)

- The Holy Spirit is giving the language (Acts 2:4)

- It is a real language with meaning (1 Cor. 14)

- You are speaking to God (1 Cor. 14:2)

- It builds, energises, enlarges your spirit (1 Cor. 14:4)

Edify = NT3618 = Oikodameo = to build a house, to construct.

Where is the house built? Within You! Your spirit is enlarged and becomes charged with life.

- It gives voice to God’s will and purpose (1 Cor.14:2)

- It enable your soul to become energised with spontaneous communication of the Holy Spirit.

5. How to be Baptised in the Holy Spirit

Mk 11:24

(i) Desire

(ii) Ask

(iii) Believe – exercise faith

(iv) Receive gratefully

(v) Yield your soul and voice to allow Holy Spirit to speak through you.

N.B.: You speak! He gives the Words!

Laying on of Hands (5 of 7)

Sun 27 Mar 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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In the laying on of hands, in the spirit, there is a flow from one person to another. God has called you not just to experience Him, but to connect to people tangibly, and release what He has given you.

Review

We're carrying on our series on Hebrews 6, the First Principles; and we've talked about: Repentance from Dead Works; Faith towards God; and the Doctrine of Baptisms - baptised into Christ, and into His body; baptised into water; baptised in the Holy Ghost.

Today we want to speak on the Laying on of Hands. I encourage you, if you have a Bible, to follow it through; then at the end of this service, we want you to be touched by the presence of God, so let's read from Hebrews 6:1.

"Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection or maturity, not laying again the foundations of: repentance from dead works; faith towards God; the doctrine or teaching of baptisms; of the laying on of hands; of the resurrection of the dead; and of eternal judgement. And this we will do if God will permit."

And so we see it's talking here about foundations - spiritual foundations. The Bible likens your life to a house - a house needs foundations. The first spiritual foundation to be laid is your relationship with Jesus Christ. So the first of these foundations are: repentance from dead works, empty activities, and trying to gain favour with God; instead coming to a place of faith and trust in the living God. The first part of the foundation takes us out of a life of sin, and puts us into being joined to God, and brings us into a body called the body of Christ.

Then, as a consequence of that, we begin to understand what ‘baptisms’ is. The doctrine of baptisms is the teaching. Baptism is to be ‘immersed’ or ‘dipped’; so because we are now immersed in Christ, our old life has gone away, from God's point of view; and so we are water baptised.

Water baptism - we're buried. The old life is buried out of sight. We arise to walk in a new life with God. Water baptism is about saying goodbye to an old self-centred life, a life which is all about me and what can I get out of life; to a life lived to bring honour to God.

So following the water baptism is: Baptism in the Holy Spirit - the immersion into a new realm of the supernatural. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is usually accompanied by the gift of Speaking in Tongues - a language we've never learned, a language of the spirit; and we are ushered into a dimension of the spirit.

It's your choice whether you stay there, live there, walk there and grow in the supernatural dimensions on your life; but never, never stop short, or at the beginning. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is just the beginning of that life in the spirit.

Main Message

Now we're going to look at the doctrine of Laying on of Hands, and it’s very simple. It's just what it says - it's actually you lay hands on someone. One person lays hands on another person; and as a consequence of that there is a spiritual connection between them. It's not just some empty ceremony - in the Laying on of Hands: as we lay hands on a person, there is a connection of one person to another.

One of the most important things that we need in our life is human touch. God is a personal God. He's not sort of someone remote and far off, and so touch is very vital to human life.

One of the ways that God has ordained that things are transmitted into our life, is through connecting and touching; and particular ways we can touch, lay hands on people is one of them. Notice when Jesus healed people, sometimes He touched them first - many times He laid hands on them; so we'll look at what the laying on of hands is for, but let me get you to understand what is really at the core of it...

The core of Laying on of hands is very simply this: when one person lays hands on another, it is because they have something to give to the other person. There is a connection takes place, between one person and the other; and if he believes and exercises faith... Sometimes we like to think that God will just do it out of the air, or out of the spirit world, that we can just get everything we need just directly from Him - and it's true - God does supply directly to us; but God also works through a body of people, and God uses people, who are filled with His spirit, to carry His life to others.

So the laying on of hands acknowledges that: not only does God want to touch me; He wants to touch me through another person - that God gives something to a person that I can receive.

If you'll just lift your hands to the Lord just right now, and if you will just close your eyes and open your heart expecting to receive. I'll lay hands on you, and then something of what God has given to me, will flow into your life. There's nothing dramatic or mystical about this. It's just that in the Laying on of Hands, in the spirit, there is a flow from one person to another - there is a real tangible impartation. Something flows, from one person, to the other person.

Now I can only give away what I've received. You and I are called to carry the spirit of God. That's why God put His spirit in you - so you could be joined to Him, and walk with Him. That's why you got baptised in the Holy Ghost - so you could enter a dimension where the power of God is in your life. Part of carrying the power of God, is that you share what God has given you. So in the laying on of hands, which can be just as simple as just a touch; or it can be as intentional as me going “Holy Ghost come on him”; or it can be just simply that I just touch. The power of God flows - there's a tangible flow of power; so through the laying on of hands, I make a physical connection with him; and what is in my spirit, connected to God, flows from heaven, and he receives.

Now this is not for ‘special’ people. This is for all who have been connected to Christ, and ushered into the realm of the spirit supernaturally, by being baptised in the spirit. This is something every believer is called to do, because the Bible says “signs shall follow all who believe”. “They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”. You have to understand that God has called you, not just to experience Him, but to connect to people tangibly, and release what He has given you. You and I need to be filled with the spirit every day, carrying the life of God to give to someone else.

Demonstration: Now I want you to consciously lay hands on him. Now I want you to become very conscious the spirit of God is inside you. Just meditate for a few moments: “God is in me. Almighty God is in me. Great joy is in me”.

I want you to intentionally step forward, and just put both your hands on his head - as you do that, expect there will be an impartation from you to him. Are you ready? There you are. You have something to give from God.

That's true of every believer - you have something to give. You have something to give - if you hunger for spiritual experiences, hunger that you might build up people; and then take what God gives you, and give it to someone else. God wants you to have something to give to others; so at the end of the service, pray for someone next to you, and lay hands on them. We all have something to give. Tell someone next to you: you have something to give. Now there is an atmosphere of expectation, and I want you at the end of this service to pray for someone, believing for God to release His power through you. Why not do that?

So people receive an impartation. What are the purposes of the Laying on of Hands? We need to have a look in the Bible; and we'll find that there are five distinct purposes for the Laying on of Hands.

1. Blessing - the first purpose of laying on of hands is for blessing. Blessings in the Bible were prophetic; prophetic impartations to people's life. Genesis 48:13 – “Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand towards Israel's left hand, Manasseh with his left hand towards Israel's right hand, brought near him. And Israel stretched his right hand, laid it on Ephraim's head, who was the younger. Then he blessed Joseph.” Verse 20 –“He blessed them that day, saying: "By you Israel will bless. May God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh!" He set Ephraim before Manasseh.

So you notice here that there is a blessing imparted. It is a prophetic word spoken, and it becomes reality in the person's life through the laying on of hands - it becomes real by the laying on of hands. So in the Old Testament, blessings are not just: “well, God bless you” - it was far more than that. It was God bless you with this; bless you with long health, good health, long life, favour. It was always prophetic of that person's destiny; and so words of blessing imparted life, and when the father laid hands on his son, there was a blessing imparted to them.

In the New Testament, women brought their children to Jesus, and they wanted Jesus to lay hands on their children, because they knew if He lay hands on them, there would be something of the life of God imparted into them. How wonderful to grow in a family where fathers speak words of blessing into their children, who lay hands on them, even while they're in the womb, prophesy over them, and speak into them blessing and health and life. Your words carry power. The laying on of hands is one way that power is released into the life of another; so the first purpose is one of blessing.

There are a number of examples of people being blessed, in Numbers 27:18-20 – “then Moses laid hands on Joshua”. There was a need for leadership transition. There was a need for a leadership shift. God had spoken, and identified; and in this what happens is: God speaks; Moses lays hands on Joshua; and God takes something of what is on Moses' life, and puts it on Joshua. Joshua arises to a new level of authority; so with the laying on of hands, there can be an Impartation of Authority into your life.

Something happens inside you. You need to believe, for it to happen. You need to have faith, for it to happen; and when God has commanded it to happen through the laying of hands, your whole inner life can come up to a new level of authority in what you can do, in how you can operate, in the way God will work through you. This is why the laying on of hands is such a wonderful thing to have happen - particularly when we have anointed men and women of God do that.

The second area of Laying on of Hands is: Impartation of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Let's look in Acts 9. It's also in Acts 8 - so go into the Book of Acts; and the Holy Spirit, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, was often imparted through the Laying on of Hands.

Acts 8:17 – “The apostles laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit”. They knew they'd received the Holy Spirit - they began to speak in tongues.

Acts 9:17 – “Ananias who's just an ordinary believer, a disciple of Jesus Christ, went his way. He entered into the house where Paul was staying, and he laid hands on him; and said: Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road as you came has sent me, that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost”. Notice in verse 17 – “he laid hands on him”.

So two things happen - the first thing is that God has spoken to him, to go to find Saul. Now you've got to understand, that's a scary thing to do. Saul has just been murdering all the Christians; and God speaks to an ordinary believer, and said: this man, in spite of what you've heard, in spite of what you've seen, in spite of the stories, in spite of their bad reputation, I see something in him that others can't see.

He said: I want you to go to his house, find where he is; and then lay hands on him, and speak over him. Often we can only see people through the eyes of their history. We know them in a community for what they are, and what they've been like, but we need to see as God sees.

He sees your destiny. He sees within this murderer, a man who could change a generation. He sees within people who others say are failures, He sees someone who could make a generational difference - and how did it happen?

He listened to the voice of God; he came and laid hands on him. As he laid hands and spoke, the Holy Ghost came on him. Paul was filled with the spirit, and also he was healed. So the Laying on of Hands is used for imparting the Holy Ghost. There is transference; an activation of something can happen, when there is faith for this to happen.

Here's a third use of Laying on of Hands – Romans 1:11. Paul has spoken, and he said: “I really long to come to you, that I might impart to you some spiritual gift”. So impartation of spiritual gifts can happen through the laying on of hands.

Look at these verses very clearly - 1 Timothy 4:14. Paul is writing to Timothy; notice what he says: “Do not neglect the gift that is in you”. So Timothy has a gift, and it's in him. It's a charisma. It's a supernatural operation of God (doesn't tell us what it is).

He says: “don't neglect it”. It was given to you by prophecy, with the laying on of hands of the elder-ship. So notice how he received the gift....

1) He's got a gift. 2) The gift is in him. 3) It was given to him; and it was given to him by a prophetic word spoken, accompanied with the laying on of hands, and something entered his life. He was gifted; and could do things he'd not done before.

Notice what it says in 2 Timothy 1:6. It says: “Here I remind you stir up the gift of God which is in you, through the laying on of my hands. Now notice how it came - by impartation.

So Timothy was clearly known to Paul. He was known to the elders. That meant he was connected into a local church. This is not something that sort of happened by a wayside. He was a part of a community of believers; and there came a time when they laid hands on him, to impart to him, and activate him in the call of God in his life.

This was a young man, and he became a Bishop over thousands and thousands and thousands of people. How did it happen? He had a wonderful gift operating in his life. How did he receive the gift? Someone spoke prophetically the mind of God; and when they laid hands on him, it was imparted into him. Notice Paul says: “It was imparted by the laying on of my hands, accompanied with the words of prophecy”.

Later on Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:18, he says: “now war a good warfare, according to the prophecies that came over you” - so with the impartation of the spiritual gift came an area of conflict. You see, when hands were laid on him, it's because God had a mission for him. To get the mission done, he needed to have spiritual activation, he needed spiritual empowerment.

So when Paul laid hands on him and the gift was imparted to him, he was responsible to keep the gift alive, to keep the gift operating - that was his job; and Paul has to write and say: Timothy, come on, don't be scared. Don't be fearful, don't be intimidated by all those people. Come on, stir up that gift inside you, that gift got dormant. You left that gift that once operated in you, you've let it fall down inside you. Come on, activate it again!

So the laying on of hands will impart the gift, but it's your responsibility to keep whatever God's given you alive, burning and on fire!

How did he lose it? It became dormant. It was never gone. It just became dormant. I wonder how many are sitting here today - and once you moved, and someone laid hands on you, there was an impartation. Someone imparted, and you were activated in a gift; but it is dormant - it's not operating.

What happened? The devil has come to steal away something God put in you, to make you a blessing, to fulfil your destiny. It's your responsibility to keep it alive! What happened? Did you get hurt? Did you get a setback? Did you go through a fiery trial? Did you go through a disappointment? What did you go through - or was it just people intimidated you?

Paul says to Timothy: come on, stir up, activate - get that gift fired up in you again! He said: remember the prophecies that I spoke over you. Begin to use them like a weapon of war! Speak what God says about you, not what people are speaking about you. It doesn't matter what people are speaking about you; it's what God is speaking about you that really counts! You need to be agreeing with what God speaks about you; and if He's prophesied over you through someone, then get that word, use it as a weapon of war - and speak! Declare it into the atmosphere with faith; and I tell you something: heaven will respond to your faith, and there'll be a flow of life through you! Activating the Gifts of the Spirit – fantastic!

So here's another one that it's used for (or two): Deliverance and Healing. So have a look in Luke 13:10 - there's a woman who has a spirit of infirmity. She's sick. She has a serious back problem. Jesus in a synagogue, there's a woman with an evil spirit. For 18 years she was bent over, could not lift herself up. When Jesus saw her, He called her to Himself and said - now notice this. He spoke, and then He laid hands on her. Woman - you are loosed from your infirmity.

He spoke to the woman, and then He laid hands on her; and when He laid hands on her, the words He had spoken immediately was activated. Many times the words of God, once they're spoken, require us to do something. Jesus laid hands on her. He wasn't afraid of the demon, not afraid of any evil spirit in people. He just laid hands on her; and the moment He laid hands on her, there was transference of power - the demon came out, she stood up, and she was healed.

So Deliverance can be done. The Laying on of Hands is a part of the ministry of Deliverance; it's not all of it. Deliverance ministry requires the verbal command - the speaking to demons directly; or speaking and commanding the situation to change. But with it, we also lay hands on people.

So the next area is Mark 16:15 - the Great Commission. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believes, and is baptised, will be saved. He that does not believe, shall be condemned.” Now notice this: “These signs will follow those who believe”. Follow those who believe. Do you believe that you, as a follower of Jesus Christ, can be used by God supernaturally?

It says: these signs will follow those who believe. In other words, as you begin to share the gospel, as you make Christ known to people, as you engage with those who are lost and unsaved and in desperate need - you can expect God to do something. “These signs follow those who believe: In My name, they'll cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they'll take up serpents; if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they will recover”. They will recover!

So “Healing the sick” is associated with the gospel. The gospel is not just words, it's about God moving to endorse His words; and so the Bible calls you to lay hands on the sick people. How many know some sick people? We're called to lay hands on them in faith, believing that they will recover. That word ‘recover’ means ‘become well again’.

Sometimes people recover; it takes time, a gradual process. Sometimes it's immediate; but you know we're called to do our part, which is: pray and lay hands on people. Lay hands on them, and believe for God to flow through and touch them. When you lay hands on people, sometimes they feel the power. Sometimes you feel the power. It can be like warmth, it can be like electricity. Sometimes you feel nothing. Don't look for what you feel - just do what God says to do - lay hands, expecting God to do something.

Faith is always necessary for people to be healed. Without faith, people are not healed. I've noticed an interesting thing. I was in a church in Taiwan, and there was a man there in a wheelchair, and we prayed for him and helped him out of the wheelchair, and he began to walk. He began to walk so quickly, he didn't want me to hold his hand. He just began to walk up and down, and he was incredibly excited about walking; but what I noticed was, people who were with him were almost in a panic.

Notice what they're seeing: they're seeing him walk, for the first time unaided in years; and you know what's the uppermost thing in their minds? Get him back in the wheelchair - he'll hurt himself! In other words, their natural mind had not caught up with what God had done. Their natural mind was saying: oh, oh! It just actually wasn't registering he was healed. The natural mind was saying: he can't be out of a wheelchair - he needs a wheelchair! In other words, they were frozen in time in their thinking, and in their mentality; and God had moved, and they hadn't caught up with the miracle.

I said: no, fold up the wheelchair - because this is what I've learnt, that if you put him back in it, they probably won't get out of it again. I've learnt that when you pray for someone - this is some of the things I've discovered, in praying for people to be healed.

The first thing is, many people wait until they feel something; and if they don't feel anything, they don't think anything's happened. The second thing that many people do is this: they have felt something, and found a little freedom; but they focus on what God hasn't done yet - they focus on their sickness. I ask them this question: did you feel God touch you? Yes, I did. Has the pain gone a little? Are you freer in that limb? Can you move a little more? Yes, I can. Well, then don't focus on what hasn't happened - start praising God, and thanking God for what's happened - and the miracle will continue to go right through your body, until it is complete!

Sometimes miracles are progressive. When you see when blind eyes are opened - it's usually instantaneous. Well, I've had that come in stages too – I prayed for one person, they could see a little. Prayed again, see a little better. By the time I prayed the fourth time, they could see clearly – I just kept praying and believing. So an important thing in this area of faith healing, or healing by faith, is that people keep their faith active.

You keep your faith active - thank you God you've touched me, thank you you're healing is worked through my body right now. By your stripes I am healed - in other words maintaining a position of faith, in spite of some of the symptoms that may still be there. Does that mean that we don't go to doctors? Not at all, doctors have their place. The Bible tells us to: “go first to the Lord”.

James 5:14 it tells us this: “If any be sick...” - this is what it says. It's quite interesting, the revised version of the Bible says: “if any be sick, reach into the medical cabinet and get something to fix you up”. The revised, revised version says: “if any be sick, call the doctor immediately”. It doesn't say that!

The Bible says this: “If anyone be sick, let him call for the elders of the church, and they'll come and anoint him with oil and pray over him, and the prayer of faith will heal him”. Presumably that means Laying on of Hands as well.

So many people make the prayer of leaders in the church the last place... I'm going to you now, to pray, because I've been everywhere else, and nothing else works - now I have to come. Not a lot of faith in that. God says: no, believe Him for health. Believe Him to keep you in health. Believe for healing, when healing is needed. Do we need the doctors? Yes, the doctors are helpful; but just make your first place prayer. Turn to the Lord first, and say: God, touch this sickness, touch this thing.

We had one situation with one of our daughters. She had an eczema condition for years and years and years, and we tried all kinds of things. We prayed for her, and prayed for her; took her to doctors, gave her things; and more recently it's got worse and worse and worse. Nothing we did - even praying - seemed to make any difference. When she was here last, Janice prayed for her actually, and she felt the touch of God.

We just gave her a book, and she went away, and she began to look at the issues of her heart; and look: perhaps there are some blocks to healing taking place. She began to look at some generational things that may have been in her life. She began to look at some areas of attitude in her life; and then she just prayed some prayers to put her heart right before God. She woke up the next morning, and almost all of the eczema had gone. God did something no one else could do, no medicine, nothing else could do it. God could do it! So don't be discouraged if, the first time you pray, nothing happens.

Finally, the last is the area of Commissioning Believers. In Acts 13:1-4, they commissioned people into acts of service by the laying on of hands. So the Holy Ghost spoke to Saul, and spoke to Barnabas - spoke to them, put it in their heart that they had a call of God; and then God spoke to church leaders and said: now's the time of that call - so they laid hands on them after prayer and fasting, and sent them out. God worked through them mightily and powerfully.

Throughout the Bible, the Laying on of Hands was used to set people into roles. In Acts 6, they set deacons into roles. They prayed, and the spirit of wisdom and power came on them, and many of them worked in the supernatural, and did miracles.

The laying on of hands enables you to give what you have to someone else. Don't minimise what God has given you, and don't hold back from reaching out to someone to pray for them; because just making that connection, and believing God can release something into their life - that changes them forever.

Closing Prayer

If you're reading this, or listening to the Audio - you know something could happen to you, in just a moment of time. I'm going to pray a very simple prayer. This is a prayer to open your life to the power of God, to the person of Jesus Christ who died on the cross for your sins. As I pray this prayer, I'd like you to follow this prayer with me. I'd like you to speak this prayer aloud, and as you do this, in this few moments, in the room that you're sitting in, I'll tell you what will happen.

God will hear your prayer, no matter what country in the world you're in. His presence will come into your life. Your sins will be forgiven. You will be joined to the Lord. Let's just pray the prayer together shall we?

Congregation: “Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I thank you for loving me. I thank you for sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Lord Jesus, I believe you died for my sins, and you rose again from the dead. Today I ask you to forgive me. I receive you as my saviour. I give you my life today. I receive your spirit into my heart and before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. Amen. “

Now those of you who're online, God's presence has come into that very room right now. If you have a sickness in your body, or if you have a need in your life right now, I want you to believe for the power of God to flow straight to you, and to touch you right where you are. I'm going to pray for you right now. I want you to believe in a few moments the power of God will come into that room where you're sitting right now.

Pastor: “Father, I thank you for each and every person that is watching right now. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I rebuke every spirit of infirmity. I command you to go from their life now in Jesus' name. I command sicknesses to go in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I release the power of God into that room right now, into each person that is listening or reading. Father, touch them with your mighty power. Now there it is - God's presence in that room with you right now. Check out and move your limb, check out your sickness, and give thanks to God for what He's done for you.”

Church, while we're sitting here right now, before we finish, I want you to do this - we’re going to do two things. We're going to stand up on our feet; and we're all going to pray in tongues. Then I'd like you to turn to someone, and I want you to ask: can I pray for you? Then lay hands on them, and release the blessing of God.

Let's do it right now, let's just pray - 15 seconds praying in tongues, speaking in the heavenly language. [Speaks in tongues] Thank you Lord, you are filling us afresh with your power. Thank you you're filling us afresh with your anointing and your life. We have something to give to those around us, in Jesus Mighty, Mighty, Mighty name. Thank you Lord.

Won't you turn to someone near to you, and offer: you can pray for them, pray and release blessing over their life, healing into their body, if they need it. Let's just minister to one another. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord, for your wonderful presence; thank you Lord for touching people today; thank you Lord, Holy Ghost, come and fall upon people right now. Touch people right now; minister to people right now, wherever they are - let your presence fall. Let the power of God flow through them. Find someone you can pray for, believe for God to touch them with power.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation ….”

The foundation of any building is important, is unseen, but it determines the capacity and stability.

Growth to maturity is not automatic – it requires that the foundations be laid in our lives.

- Repentance and faith – establish our new identity as a believer in Christ – Children of God.

- We are baptised by the Holy Spirit into Christ and into His Body or family.

- We acknowledge we identify with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection by act of Water Baptism.

- We enter a new realm of supernatural living by being baptised in the Spirit.

Laying on of Hands:

Definition: one person places their hands upon another person (usually the head) with a definite spiritual purpose – usually accompanied by prayer/prophetic words.

In the laying on of hands there is a spiritual connection and transference of spirit life and power from one person to another – you cannot give what you do not have.

The person receiving the spiritual impartation exercises faith that God will impart to them through the activity of another person e.g. Mk. 5:27-30 woman; Lk 6:19 Multitude.

2. Purpose of Laying on of Hands

i) Impartation of Blessing

Gen. 48:13-15 “Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it upon Ephraim’s head … and he blessed Joseph …”

Blessings were Prophetic words spoken over a person that became imparted through the laying on of hands.

The blessing was not able to be revoked once it had been imparted. Gen.27:34.

Blessings with laying on of hands acknowledged someone was chosen by God for a purpose.

Other Examples:

Num. 27:18-20 Moses lays hands on Joshua and imparts authority and wisdom.

Mk. 10:13-16 Jesus lays hands on children and blesses them – spoke into them.

ii) Impartation of Baptism of Holy Spirit

Acts 8:17 “Then they laid hands upon them and they received the Holy Spirit”.

Acts 9:17-18 “Ananaias lays hands upon Paul and speaks over him prophetically. Paul receives baptism in Holy Spirit and is healed”.

N.B. Ananaias held no office – he was a disciple of Christ who listened to the Holy Spirit.

Mk. 16:17 “These signs will follow those who believe...they shall lay hands on sick …”

- Laying on of hands is not just a ceremony – it produces a real spiritual effect.

- There is a real spiritual contact between two people and transference takes place.

- This is a ministry for all believers – we carry the life and power of God.

- God works through people making vital faith connection with other people.

iii) Impartation of Spiritual Gifts

· 1 Tim. 4:14 “Do not neglect the gift of God which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of hands of the eldership.

· 2 Tim. 1:6 “Stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

- Timothy had some spiritual gift – supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit.

- That gift was given to Timothy by impartation.

- Timothy was known by Paul and the eldership and in relationship with them.

- Through prophecy the will of God was revealed – by laying on of hands it became effective.

- There was a real impartation and a subsequent spiritual conflict over this gift.

- Paul also urged Timothy to stir up the gift and warfare using the prophetic word 1Tim.1:11-18.

iv) Deliverance and Healing

(a) Deliverance

· Lk. 13:11-13 “Woman you are loosed from your infirmity, and He laid His hands on her…”

· Jesus spoke a word of command and it became effective as He laid hands upon her. The tormenting spirit of infirmity departed from the woman and she was healed.

(b) Healing the Sick

· Mk. 16:15-18

5 supernatural signs are associated with preaching the gospel.

“These signs shall follow those who believe” – this is a faith ministry for all believers.”

“They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover!”

i) Healing the sick is connected to preaching the Gospel and demonstrating its power.

ii) Recover = to become well again.

- It is up to God how the person is made well and how long it takes to recover.

- The healing may be instantaneous (a miracle) or they recover gradually.

iii) Impartation of power

- The person may feel a flow of power through them – warmth, electric.

- The person may feel nothing at all.

iv) Faith is necessary (Mt.9:29 “according to your faith be it done unto you”)

- The persons faith must remain active.

- People tend to wait until they feel better.

- People tend to focus on what has not changed i.e. focus on the sickness.

- People need to focus on what God’s Word says and stay active in faith

(a) Thank God for what He has done.

(b) Continue to confess the Word of God in the face of negative symptoms.

- If the person lets go of active faith the healing may not be fully complete or may be lost.

v) Jam. 5:14-15 “If any among you be sick …”

- God expects believers to be connected with a local church and leaders that minister.

- God expects believers who are sick to seek healing from Him first – call elders.

- OK to receive help from doctors but seek the Lord first – I believe God!

- Oil is symbolic only of the person and power of the Holy Spirit – Faith contact point.

v) Commissioning Believers

(a) Apostolic Commissioning

Act 13:1-4 “Having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them they sent them”

- Holy Spirit had already spoken personally into hearts of Saul and Barnabus.

- Holy Spirit spoke prophetically and publicly confirmed their call and directed their going.

- Laying of hands was done to confirm, commission, and confer authority.

- God had already gone ahead and prepared the way for them. (Act 14:16-17).

(b) Setting in of Leaders

- Acts 6:2-7 “…and when they had prayed they laid hands upon them”

- They publicly acknowledged the choice of these men and committed them to the task.

- They imparted authority and grace for the task.

Resurrection of the Dead (6 of 7)

Sun 3rd Apr 2011  « Back to Top

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Jesus was the first-fruits, the first-born to be resurrected from the dead, and appear to many in a resurrection body - immortal, incorruptible, able to vanish in and out, no longer constrained by the physical world. He was a pattern for all that is to follow. This teaching covers the first resurrection, 1000 year reign of Christ on earth, and the second resurrection. Which one will you be in?

Introduction

Welcome to this series: the First Principles in Christ. We're now on the next principle called ‘The Resurrection of the Dead’. We trust you really listen, and let God speak to your heart, and that you are established and changed because of this.

Hebrews 6:1 - “Now leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation: Repentance from dead works; Faith toward God; the Doctrine (or teaching) of Baptisms (Baptism into Christ, into Water, in the Holy Ghost, Baptism of Fire); of the Laying on of Hands (last session); of Resurrection of the Dead; and of Eternal Judgment. And this we will do if God permits.”

Review

Last week, we looked at the Laying on of Hands. When you touch someone, you make connection with them; and the Laying on of Hands always implies there's relationship. We saw that the Laying on of Hands enabled us to receive from anointed men and women of God, to receive for our needs, to receive impartations; but also that we could lay hands on others, and we can give.

So we're in a position where, if we are connected to the body of Christ, and we are known - we're in a place where we can receive someone laying hands and imparting to us - activating, imparting gifts; but also God wants you to reach out and be part of His mission, and to lay hands on the sick, to lay hands on people, and see them recover.

Main Message

Today we want to look at: Resurrection from the Dead. Now the first four principles dealt mostly with this present world; and what happens in this present world - this realm called Time - the physical realm.

The next two go together: Resurrection from the Dead; and Eternal Judgment. Resurrection from the Dead deals with the next realm, the realm of eternity, the realm where God is. We live in a realm called Time - it's only a small thing compared to the realm of eternity where God lives.

In the Bible, there are quite a number of people who were raised from the dead. Let's have a look at one of them in Mark 5. Jesus ministers to a small girl. Her father had called Him to come and visit, because the girl was very sick; and we read in verse 39 Jesus came in and said to them, "Why are you making all this noise and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping," - but they ridiculed Him.

When He put everyone outside, He took the father and the mother of the child, and those who were with Him, and entered where the child was lying. Then He took the child by the hand, and said: "Talitha, cumi," which is translated, "Little girl, arise." And this girl here, who had been dead - immediately she rose and walked; she was 12 years old, and they were overcome with great amazement. He commanded them strictly that no one should know it, and said that something should be given to her to eat.

Let's have a look at another resurrection from the dead, in John 11. There's a whole number of examples; but this is not what the teaching of Resurrection from the Dead is about. John 11:38 (Lazarus, Jesus' friend, is dead) Then Jesus, again groaning within His spirit, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, "Roll away stone," and Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said "Lord, by this time there'll be a stench. He's been dead four days."

His body has actually started the process of decay. He said: "Did not I say to you, that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?" They took away the stone from the place where the dead man was. Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said: "Father, I thank You that You've heard me. I know You always hear me; but because of the people standing by, I said this, that they may believe You sent me." When He said these things, He cried: "Lazarus, come forth!" And he who had died come out, bound hand and foot with grave clothes, his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said them, "Loose him, and let him go."

So there are stories of people being raised from the dead. In the Old Testament there were Elijah's bones, which were so full of resurrection power, that when a body was dropped on him, immediately the man came back to life again.

In the New Testament, Jesus healed and raised from the dead, a young boy that was dead; this young girl raised-up Lazarus from the dead. We also see in the New Testament, that Peter raised a young girl from the dead; and also Paul raised a young man from the dead. In fact in Matthew 10:7-8, Jesus specifically says - now get this: “raising people from the dead goes with preaching the gospel”. See?

It goes with preaching the gospel; so He told: wherever you go, preach the gospel of the kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and so on. So the ministry of raising people from the dead was entrusted to the church. How far we've slipped from that! How far we've slipped; yet I've heard stories, in the last two or three years, of people that were prayed for here in New Zealand, that rose again from the dead - so God, in these latter days, is restoring great power to the church.

Now here's something you need to understand. All of those people, who were raised from the dead, that we just read about - all died; so when we're teaching the doctrine of Resurrection from the Dead, we're teaching about something that goes much beyond that, and I want us to go there now.

Let's have a look in Matthew 27. We’ll just look at when Jesus rose from the dead. I want you just to stick with me, as we're going to go through a few scriptures, and I want you to understand what this is about, because you'll understand this is the great hope of a Christian believer. In fact it's a foundation to become Christian.

Matthew 27:62 – On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered to Pilate saying, "Sir, while He was alive, the deceiver said 'After three days I will rise from the dead.' So command the tomb be secured until the third day, lest the disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, 'He's risen from the dead.' And the last deception will be worse than the first." Pilate said "You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how." So they went, and made the tomb where Jesus was buried secure, sealing the stone and setting a guard - which is probably four Roman soldiers.

After the Sabbath on the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. Behold, there was a great earthquake, and an angel of the Lord descended from heaven; and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightening, his clothing was white as snow; and the guards shook for fear, and became like dead men. But the angel answered, and said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He is risen, as He said. Come and see the place where he lay." They walked in - in another version it tells: they walked in, and they saw the grave clothes. Now they were wrapped around Him, and they had not been unravelled - they were just empty. He had risen - literally risen, completely out of the grave.

So Jesus was the first to rise from the dead. The Bible calls Him the first born. He is the first man truly resurrected. Acts 26:23. It says "that Christ would suffer, and that He would be the first to rise from the dead". So when we're talking about Resurrection from the Dead, we're talking about a total change of a person's body - going along with their spirit being rejoined to them, so they come alive. We'll show you a little more about this in a moment.

1 Corinthians 15:20 – “Now Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of those who have risen from the dead”. There was something about Jesus' resurrection that distinguished it from all other people who were returned to life. They were returned to life, but ultimately they died again. Jesus' resurrection was completely different; and so from the Bible point of view: He is the first fruits; the first born; the first one to be resurrected from the dead - and a pattern for all that is to follow. So Jesus was the first one.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8 tells us that Jesus was seen by Peter. He was seen by the 12 apostles. He was seen by upward of 500 people. He was seen by James; then He was seen by the apostles again. In fact the Bible makes it very clear, that Jesus, after He rose from the dead, was seen by hundreds of people. Hundreds of people were eye witnesses. They saw Him die on the cross; they saw the Roman soldier put the spear into His side - they knew He was a dead man. They took Him down from the cross, and now here He was - He appeared to them.

Now it's very easy not to understand what that meant - to have someone, that you saw die; and you know that is a dead man; and where they buried Him in the ground; and then suddenly He's there, standing full of life in front of you. That is very, very scary!

So what was His body like? What was He like? In all the other cases of people who rose from the dead, they had been like dead on a slab, and then their spirit came back into them. They woke up, and they were restored to health, and away they went with their life again; but there was something about Jesus' resurrection that was completely different. The Resurrection of the Dead, the Resurrection of Jesus - His whole body, His original body that He had lived in, that He had died on the cross in - was totally changed. The power of God changed that body; so no longer was it a physical body, limited to the physical realm. The body He had was reconstructed, and had unusual capacity. Let's just read a few verses...

Mark 16:12 - After that, Jesus appeared in another form, to two of the disciples - and they didn't recognise Him. So Jesus, in His resurrection body, had the capacity to change into a different shape. He wasn't recognised - think about that. His body was immortal, incorruptible. That meant there was part of it ‘not old’ anymore - no teeth fell out; no hair fell out; there was nothing old anymore. Everything was renewed, and could never corrupt. He would never die, He's absolutely immortal - so He could not be killed or shot.

Luke 24 offers another example, or a situation, of Jesus after He rose from the dead. Luke 24:16 – “and Jesus has been walking with them, and their eyes were restrained, they didn't recognise Him”. Have a think about that - here's someone they have lived with for three years - now He's walking with them, and they can't recognise who He is. He has the capacity to change Himself.

When Mary, who knew Jesus very well, met Him in the garden, she thought He was a gardener - she did not recognise Him. So in the resurrection, the body of a person is able to change shape, able to change form - the word there is ‘morph’.

Notice in Luke 24:30-31, “It came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him - now notice this - and He vanished from their sight”.

So when a person has been resurrected, their body can never be corrupted again. They can never die. There's no way they can be killed. They are beyond that happening to them. Their body can change shape; their body can vanish in and out of the physical realm, and into the realm of heaven; and their body is able to suddenly appear, come through walls and turn up.

Can you image that? Can you imagine how scary that is, to have someone do something like that? How it just defies all thinking? You're talking to someone, and you've touched their hand, they've shared food with you; and then suddenly, in front of your very eyes, they're gone - just like that!

The mind can't comprehend it. You read it, and you've seen it in the scriptures before, but often we don't take time to think about what that must have been like - to be talking with a man; walking with a man; sitting and eating with a man - and suddenly you recognise it's the Lord; and then right there - His dish still there in place, cup of coffee still there in place - He just vanishes in front of your eyes.

In other words, He was no longer constrained by the physical world. He was able to enter into the realm of eternity, and back into the physical world, at ease. That's what it means to have a resurrection body - incorruptible, totally.

Further down, in Luke 24:36 – “Now the disciples were in the upper room and they shut the door. As they said these things, and were talking, Jesus Himself stood in the midst and said ‘Peace’; but they were terrified, frightened, and thought they were seeing a ghost”.

Imagine if you've got the doors locked, and there are just 12 of you in the room, and suddenly - boof! Someone turns up there! They were freaked out. They were scared. They were terrified. This is beyond human reasoning.

In Luke 24:39, they said to Him – “Look, behold My hands and Feet, it's Me”. It's Myself, it's Me. Hey, come and touch Me, handle Me. A spirit doesn't have flesh and bones, like you see I have, and He showed them His hands and His feet.

So you notice it looked just like a human body, but it had unusual power and qualities - no wonder they were terrified. Do you think you'd be any different? Because it's supernatural, the supernatural tends to frighten people. It's indescribable.

So He rose from the dead, and I want you to understand that He wasn't the only one who rose. Have a look back in Matthew 27:51 - This is straight after Jesus died on the cross. “The veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom; the earth quaked, the rocks were split, the graves were opened”.

Notice this: when Jesus died on the cross, the graves broke open. Now for a Jew to have the grave break open, it's very serious. They had to go and guard the grave. They couldn't do anything about it - it was the Sabbath. They had to sit there, and wait, and guard these places; so they would have been waiting outside those graves.

Now this is what happened - it says: “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the graves after His resurrection. They went into the holy city and appeared to many”. So Jesus was the first to rise from the dead; and notice it says: many - not all. Many were raised from the dead after Jesus' resurrection; and not only that, they went into the holy city, and they appeared to many.

So who were some of those people? Well, probably Joseph; was because Joseph knew this was going to happen, and that's why he commanded His bones to be taken from Egypt and buried there near Jerusalem. Probably Abraham knew, because that's why he bought a cave; and his descendants were all buried in the cave with him.

They wanted to be near what they knew would happen one day - Jesus Christ the Messiah would come, He'd come into the earth, die on the cross and rise gloriously from the dead! And at that time, they also would rise with Him - they had a great hope that stretched for centuries.

They looked and saw Jesus day. Jesus said: “Abraham saw my day and rejoiced”. Abraham saw the day of the messiah, saw His resurrection from the dead. He got it by revelation, and it become a great hope. The only thing he purchased in his life, that I'm aware of, was a cave - to be buried near where this was going to happen. His hope was of the resurrection.

So the Bible tells us many - not all - at that time, rose from the dead. They had a resurrection body. They could walk in and out of rooms; walk in and out of heavenly realm; just walk in and out - they were immortal. Just imagine that.

What would you do, be part of that? Imagine if that was to happen today - what wouldn't you give to be part of that? If some were resurrected, and others weren't - what wouldn't you give, to be part of that? Think about that. You'll see that that's the great hope that we have. It's a great hope. That's what motivates us to move forward with God and to grow – it’s very, very important.

So belief in the Resurrection is totally foundational to the Christian faith. Because of this, it tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:13-16 - If Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, then: 1) your sins can't have been forgiven; 2) it's a waste of time believing in Him, because He's dead like everyone else.

So Jesus Christ, being raised from the dead - God proved this was the Son of God. You see, the political leaders, the religious leaders came together saying that He's not the Son of God. They put Him to death; and God raised Him up, and proved He's the Son of God by resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:19 tells us: “and so if there's no resurrection, the Christian faith has no hope for anyone” - but there is a resurrection. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He will come again, and there is a great hope.

In Romans 10:9-10 tells us “If you believe in your heart, and confess with your mouth, if you believe God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.” Foundational to becoming a Christian is belief in the dead and resurrection of Jesus Christ - the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Many other religions have founders. All of them are dead; none rose again from the dead. There's only Jesus Christ, only in Christianity has our founder died on our behalf, and then rose from the dead, seen by hundreds, and will one day come again. You and I need to recognise this is unique to the Christian faith.

The Bible tells us: all will experience resurrection. In Hebrews 9:27, we ask the question: what happens when people die? It's very, very simple, I can't develop it - I'd like to, but just in brief. In Hebrews 9:27 – “It's appointed under man once to die, and after that judgement”. The judgement - final judgement comes, after the resurrection.

“But its appointed a man once to die”. You don't get a second round; so if you think you're coming back again well, you're not coming back again - once to die. Every person has an appointment with death. None of us can shake it - unless the Lord comes, and we are changed, then we will die, and we will have an appointment with God. That appointment with God is going to determine then our destiny; so death is just a separation of your body, and your soul, and spirit.

The Bible says we're a three-part being: spirit, soul, body. We live in a body, but we are a spirit being; so when a person dies, their body just returns, and disintegrates, and just becomes dust in the earth again. God, by His power, is able to reconstitute the entire DNA - every part of who you were, when you were alive on the earth - put it back together again, and resurrect that body that you lived in. So the body you're in now - God is going to resurrect it. Thank God for that! You get more teeth! God will resurrect that body.

So what happens after you die? Well, immediately after you die, if you're a believer, the angels “gather you”. Luke 16 – “the angels gather you into the presence of the Lord”. You're welcomed into heaven, and you're there until the day of resurrection. If you're a person who's rejected Christ, walked anti-God, then the spirit of death takes hold of you, and you can never be in the presence of God. You will always be separated from Him for eternity.

In Luke 16, it describes it, that place of suffering; where people that we know, are now there. They have their memory. They remember who they were when they were on the earth. They remember their loved ones. They have memory of people that they had relationship with on the earth. They remember experiences when they were on the earth.

They also suffer terribly. A rich man, who was in hell, suffered immensely. While he was there, he had memory of his brothers, his family, his experiences in life - he had all of that memory with him. It doesn't tell us if he was aware of what was happening on the earth, so I don't think people in that place are aware what is going on, but they remember their family members.

He saw into the realm where Lazarus was. He saw into the other realm; the realm where people are in rest with God; that realm called Paradise; that realm of heaven now where people go. He saw into that realm, and he was distressed, because he could see there was a great divide, and no one could cross it. After you die, there's no coming back. After you die, there is no chance to have a second chance. After you die, there's a decision made of where you'll spend eternity; and you make that decision on the earth. If you receive Jesus Christ, then it sets the course of our life; now we must walk with Him, and stay in Him, and not abandon Him.

So what happens then, at the moment after you die? Within a split second, immediately your spirit and soul leaves your body, goes into eternity; and your decision of how you responded to Christ will determine what happens to you in that place.

Now the Bible says: “all will rise from the dead”. In John 5:28-29, this is what Jesus said - He taught this: “The time will come when all, all who are in the graves will hear His voice, the voice of Jesus Christ and will come forth; some to a great resurrection, some not to a great resurrection”.

Revelations 20:11 - I want to stick with this, and then we'll come to the end. “Now I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and the books were opened. And another book was opened which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things that were written in the books. The seat gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hell delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Death and Hell were cast into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death. Anyone not written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire.”

So the Bible teaches then, that all will be resurrected from the dead. Jesus said: “all will come forth to be resurrected from the dead” - so every person that's ever lived in history, there will come a day when they will rise from the dead; their body will be changed, their spirit will be reunited with their body. They'll be there again, that person there again. At that time, the books are opened, and then eternal judgement takes place - and there's no one exempt, no one exempt.

Mark 12:24 – “God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living”. So people do not vanish, they do not cease to exist when they die. They go into eternity, and they're either in the presence of God - Paul said to “be absent from the body; present with the Lord” - they're present with the Lord.

Stephen, when he died said: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. So the Bible's very clear - when you die, you're either: in the presence of the Lord; or in your place of torment. There comes a point where there'll be a resurrection of all people; and following that resurrection, a determination is made of your destiny forever – forever- based on what you did.

Revelations 20:4 says: “And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. And I saw the souls of those who'd been beheaded for their witness to Jesus, and for the word of God, and had not worshipped the beast or his image, not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived - notice this - they lived, and they reigned with, Jesus Christ for a thousand years”.

In the beginning of Revelations 20, there will come a point in time when the devil will be bound and imprisoned; so the spiritual powers which have deceived the nations for generations will be bound - their influence will no longer be there. They'll no longer be able to cast their influence upon the nations of the earth; so there will be a period of a thousand years, and in that period of a thousand years, all demonic activity will cease. The devil and his cohorts will be bound for one thousand years. That 1000 years will be a period in earth's history, that has never been seen ever before, but which is prophesied from one end of the Bible to the other.

There will be an unprecedented season of prosperity and peace in the earth - it's a great hope to look forward to. There's no political solution to the dilemmas that we face in the world. The only solution, really, ultimately is the coming of Christ; when what He will do will bind spiritual powers.

Revelations 20:1 – “I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having a key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years; he cast him in the bottomless pit, shut him up, set a seal on him, so he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years were finished.” But then he's released for a little while.

So there will be a period where there's no demonic activity. Can you imagine no demonic activity? A lot of people can't understand the extent to which demonic activity creates the problems in the nations. Much of the church in the West won't even acknowledge it, and deal with it; but for us who understand things of the spirit, we understand there is a very real spirit world. Spiritual powers influence people, and they run, and control, and manipulate the courses of nations. They control what goes on in the earth, through deception, through spiritual power. Can you imagine when they are bound for a thousand years, what it will be like on the earth, without all of that there? An unprecedented season of peace and prosperity in earth history - until the devil is released again.

“Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgement was committed to them”. So now he sees in the spirit - and he sees thrones. A throne is a position of governance, a position of authority and power - authority that the devil has had to give up. A body of believers has taken possession of those; and now have the power and authority representing the Lord, to bring about amazing and substantial changes in the earth.

It says: “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness for Jesus” - clearly they come up. They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years, but the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.

Now notice this - that some people enter the first resurrection; some people do not. The assumption everyone has, is that they would be; that all in the first resurrection would be Christians. It's an assumption, rather than a reality.

Notice what it says: “the rest of the dead”. That's all other dead people - apart from those who the Bible refers to, enter into the first resurrection. Now among those who come into the first resurrection, are people who gave up their life for Christ. Imagine that, this is the kind of people it's talking about - people who live their life for Christ, passionately, fervently; and some of them laid their life down for Christ. They are counted worthy to be in that first resurrection. I don't think someone who's a lukewarm believer, and lives in compromise, and doesn't represent Christ - it's hard to imagine how they could be in that.

Not only that, it says: “I saw thrones, and they sat on them”. You notice, if you read right through the Book of Revelation (first four chapters), that only those who overcame were ever given that kind of authority. So the first resurrection - it says: “blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power. They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.”

I don't think we should assume that we will reign with Christ, if we don't: walk with Him; fellowship with Him; and endure suffering for His sake, in this life. Think about that. The assumption automatically is: everyone just makes it in; but actually, notice what the Bible talks about. The Bible talks about those who live a life that honours God - a life that overcomes the difficulties that are in the current church age, the current age we live in.

Jesus spoke to the Lukewarm Church of Laodicea. He said: “Blessed is the man who overcomes luke-warmness, apathy, and indifference. He shall sit with me in my throne”. So God has reserved rewards for those who walk with Him; so we can all access and come into heaven, but when we're resurrected, and how we're resurrected, and the realm we live in, in resurrection - now that varies; and that depends on what you have done with your life, as a steward of Christ while on the earth. Think about that.

Notice we just already read: “the books were open”; and Jesus said in another part, in Revelation 22 – “I come, and My reward is with Me, to give each man according to his works”. So very clearly what it's talking about here is a resurrection of reward, a resurrection of privilege.

It's spoken of in other parts in the Bible. I'll just give you two references to it; one is found in Hebrews 11:35, and it says: “some had great victories with their life. Some did great things to change nations. Others were put to death - now notice what it says - they were put to death; and what they were believing for was a more powerful, or a stronger, resurrection”. You see they went to death because they believed there was something - a prize to be won.

Paul spoke of the same prize, we'll just look at that, and then finish for today. Philippians 3 - Paul was aware of this too. He begins to talk about his own journey; now Paul was a great apostle - he did amazing things.

Philippians 3:10 – “oh, that I might know Christ, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death - notice this - if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead”.

So he's saying: I'm doing these things - IF I might get to here. When there's always a word 'if', you know there's a possibility that you may not get there. You will catch the bus - 'if' you're on time. If you're not on time - you don't catch the bus.

He's saying: I do these things - I seek to know Him; I seek to discover the power of His resurrection. I seek to walk in the fellowship and friendship, connecting with Him over the rejection that often comes for being a Christian – “being conformed to His death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead” - and the word resurrection here is a word used no other place in the Bible.

It's the word ‘Anastasis’ - resurrection is Anastasis, meaning ‘out from resurrection’ - the resurrection that causes people to stand up, stand out from everyone else that is dead. He's talking about the first resurrection; and notice what he goes on to say, in Philippians 3:13:

“Brethren. I press on, I do not count myself to apprehend, one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, reaching forward to the things which are ahead, I press to the goal for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let any of us who be mature, having that same mind, and if you're thinking differently, God will reveal it to you.”

Notice what he's saying: My whole life is motivated because of what I see is coming in the future. There is a day when there will be a first resurrection. I want to be in that resurrection. I want to be with Christ. I want to be part of that great resurrection.

Can you imagine what it'd be like to be living on the earth for a thousand years? You can never die, never suffer, never be put to death, never be corruptible; and you can now fulfil a mission for God - bringing the earth into the order that He intended it to be brought into.

What this is called is: the Hope of the Believer. This is called: the High Calling of God, in Jesus Christ.

Paul writes in Colossians 1:27 - “It's Christ in you, the hope one day you'll be filled with the glory of God” - your body will be resurrected, and you will walk this earth representing Him, just as He did after He was raised from the dead. What an amazing thing!

Notice what he says in Philippians’ 3:20 – “Our citizenship is in heaven, from where we eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus who will transform our lowly body, that it might be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working whereby He can subdue everything”.

It is not too difficult for God to do this thing. It is very clear, in that first resurrection, not all will rise, but there will be some who have died, who will rise from the dead; there will be some who are alive, who will be changed; and Christ will be seen in His people. What an amazing motivation for you and me to serve Him passionately, and to come into such a wonderful destiny that He has for us.

The Bible tells us that this resurrection life has already begun in you. Romans 8:11 says this: The same spirit, the Holy Spirit, who resurrected Jesus Christ, changed His body, joined Him back together, raised Him from the dead; when you became a Christian, that same spirit of God was put in you, that same Holy Ghost is in you.

Notice what he says: the same spirit, that was able to raise Jesus from the dead, can: quicken, energise, activate, and restore your mortal body. You can be filled with the life of God, because He's put His Holy Spirit in you. It's a resurrection spirit!

That spirit that you've got in you, that Holy Spirit of God, raised Jesus from the dead. It can energise you with life. That's why we encourage you to build a spirit life; because if you don't, you won't have life resurrection power inside, filling you, making you healthy and full of life, energy, vitality, able to release the power of God to people.

It's not just for a handful. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, the resurrection power of God has already started in you. It's your responsibility to cultivate your relationship with God, so you live energised in the Holy Ghost, full of the power of God, flowing in the gifts of the spirit, releasing the life of God to others.

This is the privilege of every believer. Resurrection took place when I received Christ. I come alive, my spirit is joined to the one who's risen from the dead. Now you and I can walk in a new life. When you got baptised in the Holy Ghost, it's the entrance into that realm of life.

It's not so difficult, not so hard - it's a life serving God. It's a life where you meditate. It's a life where you let the word get into you; you learn how to praise strongly, and the life of God begins to fill you. It's for every believer! It's for every believer!

One day, there is a hope, that if I serve God, walk with Him, fellowship with Him, and endure things for His sake - that I will qualify for that great resurrection, the first resurrection. What an amazing challenge we have!

Closing Prayer

Father, God, we thank you for such a great hope that is set before us. If you are reading or listening online, then the best thing you could do, would be to open your life to Jesus Christ. If you're not a Christian today, then you're not walking with God. You have a destiny separated from God, and that destiny will start the moment your heart stops. When your heart stops, time will stop. You'll enter eternity, and you know what I say is true. What a great thing, if we were to just receive Christ right now.

I want us just to pray this prayer together; and then we're going to stand, and just honour Jesus; and clap to Him who rose from the dead.

Father in heaven, I open my heart to you. I thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. I thank you that you raised Him from the dead. Jesus, I believe in you. I receive you as my saviour. I turn from all sin. I turn from all false gods. I receive you as my Saviour, and give you my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and friend forever. Amen! Amen!

Let's give the Lord a clap shall we? [Applause] Halleluiah! We believe in you Jesus, your power rests within us today.

Why don't we stand together, and let's begin to pray in tongues. Let that life of that spirit, that raised Christ from the dead, begin to express inside us right now.

I want you to do this for 15 seconds, pray in tongues as strongly, as loudly as you can and see the difference. [Prays in tongues]

Father, let the resurrection life of Jesus grow and increase in us, manifest through us, touching the people around us; and Lord - to you we give all the honour and all the glory. Jesus - thank you for dying on the cross. Thank you for going into the deepest parts, thank you for rising from the dead. You're our saviour and you've set us FREE! You've set us FREE! Come on, let's celebrate! Free. I'm free!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Heb. 6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundations …”

· The first four of the foundational principles deal with this present world – realm of time; physical realm. The last two of the foundational principles take us into the realm of eternity, realm of God.

2. People Raised from the Dead

· Old Testament:

2 Kings 13:21 A dead man arose from the dead when his body touched Elisha’s bones.

· New Testament:

Lk. 7:14 Jesus raises a boy from the dead.

Mk. 5:35-42 Jesus raises a girl from the dead.

Jn. 11:39-44 Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead – healed restored and raised.

Acts 9:40 Peter raises Dorcas from the dead.

Acts 20:9-12 Paul raises a young man from the dead.

· Mt. 10:7-8 “As you go, preach, saying the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, freely you have received, freely give.”

Raising the dead is part of the commission that Jesus gave his followers. This demonstrates the power of God and the reality of life after death. All these people died – None of this is the resurrection referred to in Heb. 6.

3. The Resurrection of Jesus

(a) What happened?

· Mt. 27:62 – Mt. 28:7 “I know you seek Jesus who was crucified, He is not here; for He is Risen!”

· The Romans sealed his tomb and posted a guard to ensure no-one stole his body.

· When the women entered the tomb they found empty grave clothes – He had vanished.

(b) Jesus was the first to experience resurrection

Act 26:23 “that Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead..”

1 Cor. 15:20 “But now Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

1 Cor. 15:3-8 Jesus seen by Peter, the twelve, over 500, James, all apostles, Paul. They were all eye witnesses to seeing Jesus after His resurrection.

(c) Jesus Body had Changed

Mk. 16:12 After that He appeared in another form to two of them.

Lk. 24:31 He vanished out of their sight.

He stood in their midst – touch my hands and feet!

His body incorruptible, immortal, transformed by the power of God.

He was able to change form, trans-locate, enter in and out of heaven.

(d) Others Rose from the Dead with Jesus

Mt. 27:50 -53 “…the graves were opened, and many of the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and coming out of the graves after His resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

This is why Joseph wanted his bones buried near Jerusalem.

This is why Abraham purchased a cave near Jerusalem – Abraham, Sarah, Isaac buried there.

4. Belief in the Resurrection is Foundational to Christian faith

Rom. 1:3-4 God declared Jesus Christ to be the Son of God by resurrection.

1 Cor. 15:13-16 Resurrection proves our sins are forgiven at the Cross. Without resurrection our faith is empty and without hope.

Rom. 10:9-10 Belief in the resurrection is foundational to being saved.

5. All then will experience Resurrection

(a) What happens when you die?

Heb. 9:27 “It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement.”

Death = separation of spirit/soul from body – your body returns to the earth and decomposes.

Your spirit and soul go into eternity to face Creator God to be judged.

Angels of God gather godly who trust Christ to heaven.

Angel of Death gathers ungodly to place of torment (Lk 16:19-31).

(b) All will rise from the dead to face Eternal Judgement

Jn. 5:28-29 “..all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth …”

Rev. 20:12-15 “..and anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”

God is able to re-assemble every part of our body again by His great power.

All will be raised from the dead and enter eternity of judgement/ suffering or of joy.

Mk. 12:24-27 “God is not the God of the Dead but of the Living.”

6. The First Resurrection

Rev. 20:1-6 “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the First Resurrection”

There are two resurrections – and there are different realms of existence in the Kingdom.

The first Resurrection - Precedes the 1000 year rule of Christ on the earth

- Precedes the general resurrection of all dead

- Brings people into a realm of authority and rulership (thrones).

- Is for those who overcome in this life. (Rev. 3:21)

Mt. 25:1-13 10x virgins.

Heb. 11:35 - stronger, more powerful resurrection.

Phil 3:15 – Paul saw this as something to attain to – a great hope.

Resurrection = exanastasis = the ‘out from’ resurrection = to stand out from the dead.

Phil. 3:20-21 – transform our lowly body that is might be conformed to His glorious body according to the working by which He is able to subdue all things to Himself.

7. Resurrection Life Now

Rom. 8:11 “If the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwell in you, He that rised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you”

- Jesus now dwells in heaven.

- We who have received Jesus are joined spirit to spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17).

- The Holy Spirit within you can quicken and energise spirit, soul and body.

- Quicken = to make you alive with the life of another!

This life of the Spirit begins when you receive Christ as Saviour.

This life of the Spirit is empowered when you are baptised in Holy Ghost.

This life of the Spirit can be developed and expressed through you.

- Prayer – Mediation – Word of God – Serving – Obedience.

This life of the Spirit that dwells within will resurrect our mortal body.

Eternal Judgment (7 of 7)

Sun 10 Apr 2011  « Back to Top

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Sometimes we focus a lot on the grace of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God we forget or overlook that there is another side, that God is also holy and He's just. His justice requires that He deal with how we've governed our life and what we've done in our life. All of you have an appointment to keep with this. There is no exception. Matt 16:27 I come and my reward is with me, to give to every man according to his work.

Introduction

Welcome the last in our series, in Hebrews 6 - First Principles; we're going to look today at Eternal Judgement. We trust you'll just open your heart, to just hear the word of God; and may the spirit of God move where you are, and touch you, and change your life today.

Review

Hebrews 6:1-3, “Therefore leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of: Repentance from Dead Works; and of Faith towards God; of the Doctrine of Baptisms; of Laying on of Hands; of Resurrection of the Dead; and of Eternal Judgement. And this we will do if God permits.

So we see a number of truths, which are foundational to being established in Christ. Every one of these truths is a foundation, so it's not all that we learn. It is the part which has to be laid upon, which everything else builds.

We saw at the beginning, the need for us to turn away from activities and works to try and gain the approval of God - religious activities; to repent of those things which are dead and lifeless, motivated by wrong motives; and to turn towards and have faith in the living God, faith in what Christ has done for us. As we do that, we are immediately born again - the spirit brings us into the realm of the kingdom of God.

Next was the Doctrine of Baptisms; and we discussed being baptised into Christ - being placed by the Holy Spirit into Christ Himself, and into a body of people.

We looked at Water Baptism - the public declaration that our life as we knew it is over; and we're now entering a new life of following Christ.

We talked about Baptism in the Holy Spirit - an experience that opens the door. It's a door experience to the supernatural.

We saw the teaching concerning Laying on of Hands - that God wants to impart into us; so therefore we need to be in a body of people where we're known, where people can lay hands, impart, release, activate gifts into our lives; and we ourselves are authorised by the Lord to lay hands on the sick, and to minister to them.

Then we saw the doctrine and the teaching about Resurrection. We saw that the difference between: a person being raised from the dead; and the teaching of resurrection - the one day when all will be raised from the dead. We shared about the first resurrection and the second resurrection.

Main Message

This last one we want to do is a very, very important teaching, on Eternal Judgement. The word ‘judge’ means ‘to look’, or ‘to distinguish’, or ‘look right through to the source’ of something, the motivation behind it, to see clearly through to what lies behind it; and to evaluate.

So the Bible talks about a foundational principle called Eternal Judgement. There are judgements that God does in history; or in other words, judgements in the present time; and one of the principles is: God's mercy always rejoices over judgement, but God does judge sin. At the cross He judged sin; but also made way for mercy for those who repent.

So there are some ways that God judges and deals with sin now. The most common one is just the principle of sowing and reaping - what you sow, you reap. If you sow sinful actions, sow hate and bitterness; then you will reap a harvest of that, the Bible tells us. Not only that, but demonic spirits use our violations of the law of God as a doorway through, to cause destruction in our lives.

There are some times in history where God has intervened. We can see, as we read the Bible, God directly intervened in histories, in a number of areas, bringing judgements into the earth. We see in the New Testament how Ananias and Sapphira, when they sinned, then they were judged right on the spot - they died on the spot, in church; so there are some judgements that take place in the course of life. However, the primary way that God operates with us, is according to how we respond to His word.

We're going to look now at Eternal judgement - Eternal judgement which is different. Eternal judgement has to do with the judgement that will take place. All of you have an appointment to keep with this; there is no exception.

Hebrews 9:27 says: “It's appointed unto man, once to die. You don't die twice, you don't come back again - once to die; and then after that – judgement; so this is a very important truth.

Because people don't experience judgement, and because justice is often perverted in a nation, people don't have a fear of God; nor understand: we will all have to give account for our life.

Sometimes when we focus a lot on the grace of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God; and we forget or overlook that there is another side - that God is also holy, and He's just. His justice requires that He deal with how we've governed our life, and what we've done in our life.

Ephesians 2:10 says: You are His workmanship. “We are His workmanship, and we are created in Christ Jesus” - notice what we're created for, for what? “For good works, which God has prepared...” When? “...before the foundation of the earth”.

I want you to just note that, because everything we say after this is going to lever off that particular scripture.

God created you - He had you in mind, before you were even thought of, by your family; and He designed you to be born into the earth - whatever situation, circumstance, nation or background - He designed for you to be born into the earth, and He set out a destiny for you. He designed and created you with giftings to accomplish something with your life; to accomplish something not trivial; but purposeful, meaningful, which would impact people.

He has “created you for good works”. In other words, you are designed to do things that extend the Kingdom of God; so having come to Christ - not by any work we did, but solely on what Jesus Christ did on Calvary; having been made right with God, just because we trusted - now we are to spend our life on the earth serving God, and accomplishing something with our life.

What we accomplish, is different for every person. These works, that we're to accomplish, were written by God for you to accomplish - something only you can do. There's something that every believer in the body of Christ is called to accomplish. It's not done in a Sunday meeting. It's not done in any church meeting. It's primarily done when you live your life. You and I are called to accomplish things for God.

You and I are agents of God in the earth. We are an ambassador for the kingdom. We are a gateway for the life of God to flow and express in the earth; and you and I are mandated by God to do good works - to actually accomplish something with your life.

Hebrews 9:27 – “It is appointed for men once to die, and then the judgement". Accountability for our actions is foundational to the Kingdom of God; accountability for our actions is foundational.

Romans 14:10-12 says – “Why do you judge your brother? Why do you look at the person next to you and criticise them and find fault with them? Why do you despise your brother?” Why do you look at other Christians, other believers and criticise them, despise them, find fault with them? Why do you do that?

“For we shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ”. All - that means everyone - no exceptions.

“We all stand before the judgement seat of Christ. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee... (every knee => no person, who has ever lived, shall not fulfil this) ...shall bow to Me, every tongue confess to God, so each of us shall give account of himself to God.”

So people may get away with stuff in life. I don't think they really do, because they reap what they sow; but eventually, all must give account - so we see that it's a principle of the kingdom that no person is exempt. Every one of us, are going to give account; not for the person next to us, but for ourselves.

Think about that moment. This is an appointment you will keep. There'll be a day when you will keep this appointment, and you'll stand before the judgement seat of Christ; and what will be on view is how you've run your life - that's a very sobering thought. It's something to cause us to think about our life, not live week to week, day to day; but to think of the course of our life, and begin to consider how we can be productive with our life - because it will come to an end, and we'll give account.

So you notice there, it's the ‘Judgement Seat of Christ’. That word ‘judgement seat’, is a word in the Greek called ‘Bema’; it means literally, a rostrum. This referred to a rostrum that Caesar stood on, and he would give a verdict about someone. If they were judged to be guilty, they were given a black stone; if they were judged to be innocent, they were given a white stone; but it was a place of judgement, where a person's life was assessed; and the judgement was final, no appeals. You don't get a lawyer, and appeal, and have a second go. The judgement is final - absolutely final; so it's a place of calling to account.

2 Corinthians 5:9-10. “We therefore make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be pleasing to God.” This is our goal - we want our life to be pleasing to God. It doesn't matter what people think in that sense, it's whether our life pleases God.

He says then: for here's why we endeavour to please God, this is why you live your life to please God: because one day you're going to have to stand before Him. “We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

Same truth: Everyone is going to appear before the judgement seat of Christ. The judgement seat of Christ is a place that believers go; this is where believers are judged. People who have not received Christ are judged differently, at a different place in time; so this is a judgement for believers.

Here is the deal: it's according to how you've behaved, or conducted, your life. What we have done, whether it be good or bad; so every action in your life has some value, good or bad; and every action in your life will come before the Lord, without exception.

The purpose of this judgement is reward. What God has in mind is reward - “that we may receive”.

God's purpose is (at this judgement): it's for believers; it's to look at your life - what did you accomplish with the life; the opportunities, giftings, talents, and resources you were entrusted to? How did the world benefit because, and how did the kingdom advance, because of what you did?

On the basis of what you did that's worthwhile, there is reward - it is acknowledged by God. Now this is justice! People, who pour out of their lives in the service of God, will receive from God, a reward that goes on for eternity. People who waste their life doing their own thing will obviously not receive such a reward.

There is a problem in our culture called Egalitarianism - where everyone wants to be just equal. In eternity, we will not be equal at all; in hell, people will not be equal. There are different degrees of punishment in hell; different degrees of reward in heaven - you have to understand that.

When you understand and hold this in your heart - that I've only got a temporary assignment on the earth, which is preparing me for eternity - you begin to look at your life differently, and operate your life differently, because you have an eternal perspective.

The judgement is to receive something. If you are a believer in Christ, you will not be judged, condemned and sent to hell. John 3:18 – “He that believes in Me shall not be condemned”.

So if you're a believer, the purpose of this judgement (at this particular judgement seat), is not to judge whether you go to heaven or not; it's about what you receive in eternity.

Again Jesus tells us in, John 5:24 – “He that hears and believes in Me shall not come into judgement, for he has eternal life”.

So if you are a believer in Christ, this is not about your salvation. It has nothing to do with your salvation; it has to do with your service - what you did with the life God gave you.

So the next thing we see is that believers will either: experience reward for the life that they lived; or they will suffer loss. 1 Corinthians 3:8. “Now he that plants, and he that waters, are one; and each one will receive his own reward, according to his own labour”.

So every person will receive a reward, according to what they did. What are you doing with your life, to follow the Lord, to honour God, and to walk out His destiny for you? That's what is in mind here. It's not the person next to you - it's you, and how you live your life. This is what God has in mind.

So the Bible says Matthew 16:27 “everyone will be rewarded according to what they've done”. In other places, for example in Rev 22:12m Jesus said: “I come, and My reward is with Me, to give to every man according to his work”.

So we are saved without any works; but for eternity, our position, our stewardship in eternity, is governed by what you do with your life now. Our life is just a training ground. It's a preparation for eternity, so we keep that in mind. So salvation is free; but we walk with the Lord.

1 Corinthians 3:11 – “No other foundation can anyone lay, which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”. So the foundation in our life is Faith in Christ.

Now you begin to build: “so if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver and precious stones; wood, hay and straw, each one's work will become clear”. You notice it's talking about a foundation being laid in your life; and then you're building on that foundation. It describes two kinds of materials you can use: gold, silver and precious stones; and wood, hay, straw.

“Each one's work will be made clear or manifest, for the Day will reveal it (that's the day the Lord returns), for it will be revealed by fire”. The fire will test everyone's work, what sort it is. “If the work he has built on it endures, he will receive reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved.”

So you notice now, the people that He's talking to and writing to, are believers. He's saying that every believer is a builder. You build your life; you build and extend the Kingdom of God; and how we build will be examined.

What you build like will be examined, and it says that if God examines what you've built, and discovers it's wood, hay and straw, then there is nothing of value taken with you into eternity. There's no reward for what you have laboured - but you are saved. The image or picture is like someone who escaped out of a smoking house and it was burning down, but they got free and they've escaped. They didn't bring anything with them - but they're saved. So they have an eternal life, a wonderful, joyful life in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the Bible also describes that there are rewards for those who serve faithfully, and we need to understand the nature of those things, and the seriousness of the issue that's at hand for every one of us. Notice that the works that they have done is: their service for Christ, how we've lived our life.

Eternal judgement is a key foundation in the life of a believer, because of this: we understand that one day, every aspect of our life will be scrutinised, with a view to being rewarded. God is not there to judge us; He's there to reward us. All He's going to do is evaluate whether there's anything worth rewarding.

He's not going to condemn us. If we believe in Jesus Christ, we've passed from condemnation to life. That's not the issue any more. The issue for us will be: have you accomplished anything with your life that God could celebrate, and acknowledge, and reward for all eternity? That's the issue. Important issue, isn't it?

If every one of us is a builder; every one of us has come to Christ, is building and extending the Kingdom of God, we're an agent for the Kingdom of God; and we work with people, we impact people, we influence people, we run our life, and fulfil the course God gives us (it's our responsibility to discover that); then there comes a point when our life will be evaluated, and what we've done will be evaluated.

You won't be evaluated on whether you were a preacher or not, or whether you went to the mission field or anything like that. You'll be evaluated as to whether you fulfilled the course God had ordained for you.

It's a terrible thing to put a ladder against a building, and climb to the top of the ladder, and find it's against the wrong building - not very good. In other words, you were busy, but you actually were busy doing all the wrong things, that you were never called to do. This is an issue of discovering what God designed me, and called me, to do - and then doing it, very simple.

God is not going to approach us with anger. He approaches us with love, that we're His children. What He's looking for is, He's saying: is there something I can find and discover, in how you've run your life, that I could highlight, and reward, and acknowledge for eternity? That's what the spirit of this is like.

Let's have a look then, at what kind of principles would God use, to evaluate our life. Many of us would think: I haven't got many talents, and I haven't had much opportunity, and so on. So Jesus, in the Parables of the Kingdom, explains exactly how evaluation will take place. There's no doubt left, if you read the parables Jesus taught. Most of Jesus' teaching was to His disciples, and the issue is the issue of the kingdom, and our entrance into the kingdom, then being stewards of kingdom truth and life to others; so in many places He has recorded exactly the basis.

Number one is: the Quality of what you've built - what sort it is. Notice it says there in 1 Corinthians 3:13 – “Each one's work will be clear, for the Day will declare it. It will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work, what sort it is” - what quality, or character, is around what you have done.

So what God will look for is this: what Motivated you in doing what you did? Were you just trying to get ahead, look good, impress people; or was there genuine love motivating your work? Without love, no matter what you've done, it doesn't count for anything. Prophesying without love is “clashing cymbals”.

Giving your life to be burned, and not having love is quite a waste of time; so what He'll be looking for is the motivation of the heart - have I grown in love; has it been motivated by love? Has it been motivated by obedience?

Have I listened to what God wanted me to do; or I just went and did what I wanted to do, and then asked God to bless it? Come on, a lot of people do that. They just do whatever they want to do, ask God to bless it, and think they've done a great thing for God. Listen, God will evaluate all of these things.

What He's interested in, is your stewardship of His plan for your life. He's already written out the plan. The question is: whether you discover it, and walk with Him in the outworking of it.

In Matthew 7, Jesus spoke over a number of people who had worked miracles, cast out demons, done all these kinds of things. He said: “I didn't know you”. Your work is of inequity. You just basically did your own thing, using my name. The Bible is full of these stories.

So the first thing then is: what is the motivation behind the works we have done? Did we listen and respond to the Lord; and do we depend on Him for His strength in helping us day by day? So clearly prayer and listening to God undergird the kinds of things that He calls us to do.

Here's another one, in Matthew 25. So firstly God looks at the underlying motivation, He looks at what lies under the work, what kind of work it really is. If it's just selfish, advancing yourself, doing your own thing, and feathering your own nest, then it won't last, because it's got no kingdom nature in it. The nature of the kingdom is love.

Now these are Parables of the Kingdom. They all come in response to Jesus being asked: “Tell us about your coming"; and He told them a number of parables. I don't have the time to go into each one of them in depth. I want to just highlight some things. I encourage you to study them, because these are parables that you will one day fulfil in your own life.

Matthew 25:14-30 “There is a day coming, the kingdom of heaven...” - notice it's about the kingdom. So the issue here in hand is not salvation, the issue is your stewardship of the resources God gave. “The kingdom of heaven is like a man went to a far country, who called his servants, delivered his goods to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his own ability”.

You have a king, going to a far country, that's Jesus Christ. The servants of the king, are the servants of God, and everyone is given an entrustment. They have different ability, so one of the principles is our potential. Did you fulfil your potential? One of them had more ability than another; so he was given more talents than the other one was given: one was given five; one given two; one given one - each according to their own ability. So here's the thing.

When making evaluation of your life service, God will take into account your potential. So you don't need to look at someone who's highly gifted, and say: well I wish I was like them. Actually, you're you; and God knows your potential. He's given you an entrustment - just take what you’ve got, and put it to work. So He will evaluate on the potential.

Now you notice the one that had five talents, he went away and got another five, so that's 100 per cent increase. The other who had two, went away and got two talents - he also got 100 per cent increase. So both of them, although they have different ability, have got different results, but they both realised their potential.

They both did the very best they could with what they had, and the commendation to both are identical. The fact one had five, and got another five, and had more ability - that's not taken into account. What's taken into account is: he actually fulfilled his potential; so the commendation to that one there, in Matt 25: 19 - “A long time after, the lord of those servants came, and settled accounts with them”. He that received five came and said: Lord, you delivered to me five talents; I've gained another five. He said: good and faithful servant, well done.

He gets commended - and he's called ‘good’; and he's called ‘faithful’. Faithful means productive, and fulfilling what God has given us. “You were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of the Lord. The one who had received two talents came: Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents beside them; and the Lord said: to him well done you good and faithful servant; you've been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of the Lord.”

Notice just a couple of things in there. The first thing you notice is, they had different ability - but they both fulfilled their potential. Second thing you notice is: they both got the same commendation - well done good and faithful servant.

Now notice what happens - this is in eternity now. “You were entrusted with things in time, now I call you to be a ruler over things in eternity” - and so what's at stake is our inheritance in the Kingdom of God, for eternity. So we see there, in that particular story, that both of them received joy, and they entered into what? [Authority; Eternity].

It delights God, when we fulfil our potential. It delights Him when we're productive. He loves it. He says: I'm really joyful, really happy about this.

But the one who had one talent, he said: oh, you're a hard man. You reap where you didn't sow; and gather where you haven't scattered. “I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground”. So that is a believer, it's a servant of the Lord, who has opportunity, has talent, has gifting, has ability; but refuses to be productive.

Why is he refusing to be productive? Number one: wrong concepts of God. He didn't really take the time to find, and get to know, what God is really like. Secondly: he looked after himself – “I was afraid”, and so I just looked after myself, making sure that I get by.

What the master says to him is this: “You wicked and lazy servant”.

The word wicked means: you have a negative influence in the kingdom. You actually demoralise, and discourage other people, because of your slackness - that's what the word wicked means. It doesn't mean its evil; it just means it's a destructive influence, or harmful influence, or demoralising influence in the kingdom.

And he called him lazy. He said: “you knew that I reaped where I haven't sown, and gather where I haven't scattered. You should have deposited the money in the bank at my coming, and I would have received interest. So he took from him, for everyone who has more will be given, he will have abundance. He who does not have, he will take away what he has, so he cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.

Principle #1 is Quality. What is the kind of motivation in our work?

Principle #2 is Potential.

Now there's another parable that looks the same; but it is not – there’s a vital difference. It's the Parable of the Pounds (Minas), in Luke 19:11 – “Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. Therefore He said: A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return”. That’s: Jesus has gone to heaven, has received His kingdom, and will return.

“He called 10 of His servants, delivered to them 10 pounds, and He said to them: do business (or trade), until I come.”Here that there are 10 servants, and 10 pounds, so everyone gets one each. So this time, all have an equal opportunity. One of them, with his one pound - he has 10 - he produced 10 from the one; and another one produces five from the one; and another one doesn't do anything - like in the first parable - he just buries it, and hides it.

So notice what the master says, when He comes back, in Luke 19:15 – “wanting to find out how much everyone had gained by trading, he came and said: well Lord, Your pound...” - notice he said: Your pound. It belongs to You, it's an entrustment - it's earned 10. Wow! And He says: “well done, you good servant. Because you were faithful over little, have authority over 10 cities”. The second came and said: “master, your pound has earned five”. Wow! Likewise, be over five cities.

Now notice the difference here: they both had an equal start, but one was far more productive than the other. The one who was more productive received a greater reward. Notice the nature of the reward - it isn't clear, all we know is that it has to do with the responsibility of governance in the kingdom; and it's in proportion to how productive he was - in this life. Think about that - How productive are you?

So he was faithful. To be faithful is to be productive. An opportunity in the eternal kingdom was given to each of the two that were productive - the other one lost the opportunity.

So we get down to the last one; and you think: well man, I didn't get to be a Christian until I was very old - sort of been around a few years, you know, and wasted a lot of my life. You feel: man, I've wasted my opportunities; or: my circumstances have not enabled me to do what I really wanted to do. Many people find themselves in that, and they feel a lot of grief over that.

This will help you then, in Matthew, 20:1, there's another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner, who went out in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. When he agreed with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them to his vineyard. When he went out the third hour he saw some others, and he said you go out into the vineyard and whatever is right I will give you. Again he went the sixth and ninth hour, and about the eleventh hour he found some still standing idle. He said why are you standing idle here, and they said no one's hired us. He said okay, go to the vineyard and whatever's right, you will receive it.”

“So when the evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said the steward: call the labourers and bring them their wages, beginning from the last to the first. And those who were hired about the eleventh hour, they got one denarius”. Then the others came - the first came, and they thought: I should get more.

What happened was, they got the same - so they complained against the landowner, saying: “these last have only worked one hour, but you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day”. He answered and said: “Friend, I'm not doing you wrong. Didn't you agree for one? I'm giving you what's just”.

First of all, it's a Parable of the Kingdom; and it's a parable of labourers being put into service in the kingdom, to be productive. Notice the vineyard, which always speaks of people in the kingdom of God; so it's talking about being productive for the Lord in His kingdom.

That one guy, who got in at the beginning of the day, got one denarius for the whole day. Then through the day he employed others; until finally get the last one. It was a 12 hour day, the last one in the eleventh hour just got in, only did one hours' work, but he got rewarded exactly the same. Of course it got them a bit upset, because that's ‘not fair’. God is fair, God is just – “shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”, so the issue here is one of opportunity. What kind of opportunity did you have?

They were all employed to serve. Some had more opportunity than others; and some had less opportunity. God took into account, in dealing with them, how much opportunity they had. So you may serve the Lord all your life - saved at 16, served faithfully all your life; and then someone else, at the age of 40 gets saved, and they look back and think: well I didn't get a chance. They've come in later on in life. They still get the chance, and they still can be completely productive with the opportunity they have.

Some may come in, and they're in the last decade of their life - they can still be completely productive, and completely fruitful, in the last season of their life. God takes into account these four things.

1) Quality, the nature of what you've done; what motivation what was in it; and whether you heard from God, and did what He wanted you to do.

2) Potential - did we fulfil the potential in our life? Did we actually labour, and come to the best that we could accomplish with our life?

3) Productivity - did we actually produce anything? If a person has produced more, they're rewarded more.

4) Opportunity - how much opportunity do we have?

All of those, of course, you could study in detail. I encourage you to do it, encourage you to look at it, read it; and begin to think then, and reflect back to your own life: what am I doing with my life while I'm on the earth?

Many Christians are not established in this truth. Because they're not established in their truth, they just do whatever they want to do - live their life the way they want to live. Their life is very similar to the world; their values are very similar to the world. However, what they're doing is, losing an opportunity to invest in eternity. They're losing an opportunity in life to actually, not only benefit now, but to gain for all eternity.

So we'll just finish with the last scripture. In Revelations 20, there is another judgement called: the Great White Throne Judgement. This is an eternal judgement too.

So after the Judgement Seat of Christ, comes the beginning of a thousand years. The Great White Throne Judgement, as far as I see it, comes at the end of the thousand years.

Revelations 20:11 - “I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God; and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things written in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were delivered in them. Death and hell gave up the dead that were in them, and they were judged, each one according to his works.”

Now I want you to see these two statements; the Book of Life; and ‘books’. They're two different things. The Book of Life, is a book in heaven, a literal book, where is written the name of every person who has come to trust in Jesus Christ to be their saviour.

Their name is written in the Book of Life. They are born again; the Spirit of God has come into them. They are acknowledged; they belong in the Kingdom of God; they're children of the kingdom.

Revelations 20:15 – “Anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire”.

Anyone; everyone; so what is crucial? Number one - crucial thing - is that you and I come to Jesus Christ, come to faith in Jesus Christ, come to trust Him as our Saviour and as our God, to give our life to Him. Why? Because at that time, your name is written in heaven, your name is written in the Book of Life; and when the final day of judgement comes, that will be the only basis upon which you'll be judged - is your name in the Book?

If your name is in the Book, then that judgement's not for you. If your name is not in the Book, then you're in deep trouble, for eternity.

The next one: notice it talks about ‘books’. It says: “the books are opened”; and it says: “everyone is judged according to their works”, by the things written in the books".

Remember I said at the beginning, in Ephesians 2:10, that: “God has prepared works for you to accomplish”? So they're written somewhere. God has a scroll written in heaven; and a scroll is different to a normal book. A book has got pages in it, you just open the pages. A scroll, you have to unwind it; and as you walk into and fulfil what God is giving you now, the scroll unwinds - He gives you a bit more.

He doesn't give you the whole thing. He's written the whole thing; but He's actually gives you opportunity to choose whether you: walk with Him; obey Him; walk and open that scroll; and begin to walk out your life and your destiny.

Now you notice that there are books (plural) - so every person, for every person - there is a book in heaven with your name on it. There must be a room where all the books are kept. It must be a big room; so right now, you know that there is a scroll, or a book, that has a destiny in heaven - God's plan for what you could accomplish with your life on the earth; and there is also a record written, of everything you've ever done.

If you've sinned, then your sins were blotted out of that - no record, it's taken away, it's erased. “Your sins, I'll remember no more” - but what you have done as a servant of God is recorded. It will play back like a video; and in that video, you'll not only see what you did - you'll see the thinking that was behind it; the motivation that was behind it; the actions that you did; and the effect of your actions on others.

It always disturbs me when Christians act and do things, without considering how it will affect others. There is a ripple effect, when you throw a stone in a pool. Whatever we do affects others; so part of the evaluation of our life will be like a video - and I don't know how God does it, like a great hologram, or a video.

You'll just see your life played out very, very quickly; and you'll become aware of your thoughts, of your fears, of your motives, of your intentions, of your feelings, of the actions - and the effect it had on people. You become aware of it, in a very short space of time - and God will evaluate it completely.

What He evaluates will determine what level of reward He'll give you for eternity. So this is an amazing, wonderful, hope that we have. The Bible tells us in Titus – “Every believer should be careful to ensure they're doing good works”. We should be careful to maintain a life where we're actively doing good; and every one of us needs to take into account that one day. We may have fooled people - we can't fool God.

One day, there's an eternity at stake. Can you imagine that great day, when you stand before the Lord, and all those things that nobody noticed, those sacrifices you made, that secret giving, that praying that you did, when your heart was broken but you stood firm before God. No one saw what you were doing, but you stood firm in the midst of difficulty. Others left you, but you remained firm, you remained steadfast. Things went wrong. It seemed like God had let you down, people hurt you in various ways, but you stood firm with the Lord, and you walked out your destiny.

I tell you, on that day - you will rejoice! There is a crown for you! There are opportunities for you in eternity; and He will say: “well done, good and faithful servant”. That's what you and I should have as a motivation (or could have as a motivation), in our life.

It's not what people say: “You have your 15 minutes of fame, it's all over” - there is an eternity! The one person that you want to be saying: oh, I'm so glad to see you, well done you good and faithful servant! Come and enter into the joy! I want you to rule over, I want you extend my kingdom; I want you to be responsible for these things in eternity! What a tremendous hope, what a tremendous joy.

So how will it work out in your life? Well, don't copy me - I've got my own scroll to walk out; but neither hinder me in doing it. Every person has their own distinct and unique call. Together as a family, we build and encourage and strengthen one another.

The ‘giftings’ of ministries are to equip you to do things God called you to do. They're not what I was called to do. They're what you're called to do, and it's our responsibility to discover how God has wired us, and what He has gifted and called us to do; and wherever that is, however that is, whatever form it takes; and then passionately, wholeheartedly just get about doing it. Amen!

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank you today, for the great and mighty truths of the foundational doctrines of Christ. We thank you Lord for all that you have taught us, as we've done this series. Those of you who are listening or reading this online - you're just looking at: maybe you don't know Jesus Christ, but you've already been struck by what I've said. I'd love you just to follow me in a very simple prayer...

“Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I turn away from all sin. I turn to you, the living God. Jesus, I give you my life today. I declare before heaven and earth, you are my saviour and my Lord, and my friend forever. Amen.”

May the Spirit of God just touch you where you're watching, minister His love and peace into your life right now; and may your life become productive in serving God.

Father, we just thank you for this great church. Thank you Lord for the opportunities you've given us over many years, to touch the nations of the earth, to be productive, so productive in so many ways.

Father, I pray that from this people many will rise up, be productive in their homes, their families, their schools and the community, in business - wherever God, you have designed and directed them to serve. Let them be incredibly productive, incredibly fruitful.

Father, I just pray that you'll continue to bless us as a church in every way, that we would be fruitful in extending your kingdom. Lord, we just give you the honour today.

It is incredibly sobering to us, to know: not only do you love us deeply; but that we will also give account for our lives. So Lord, we live our life, and choose today, to turn to you with a humble heart, and ask you to forgive us where we've fallen short, and to empower us to hear, see and do all you've called us to do. And everyone said: Amen. God bless you.

It's been a great series - trust you go over the scriptures I gave you today and have a good think about them. God bless you. Have a fantastic day.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Heb.6:1-3 “Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation …”

Eternal Judgement is a key foundation in the life of believer.

Judge = to separate, to distinguish, to see through.

Current Judgements – these occur in time:

(i) Principle of Sowing and Reaping – Gal.6:7-9

(ii) God brings discipline to our life – Heb.:2:5-11

(iii) God’s direct intervention in History e.g.

Sodom and Gomorrah

Noah

Anananas and Sophirra

Eternal Judgement – judgement awaiting every person in eternity.

- Heb:9:27 It is appointed for men to die once and after this the judgement.

- Eph.2:10 created in Christ unto good works.

2. Accountability for our Actions is Foundational to the Kingdom of God

(i) All of us shall give account of our Lives

Rom.14:10 “We shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ … each of us shall

give account of himself to God”.

No person is exempt - all of us shall give account.

Judgement Seat = “Bema” = rostrum, place a person was sent for trial and called to account.

Place of judgement used by Roman Empire – Acts 25:10

(ii) What will be judged in our works

2 Cor.5:9-10 “We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done whether good or bad”.

The issue to be judged is how we have behaved.

Every act good and bad is brought to the light.

Every act has some value or influence.

Bad = 5337 = phantos = worthless, no value.

(iii) The Purpose of this Judgement is Reward

2 Cor 5:10 “…each one may receive the things done”

The Judgement Seat is to determine what we receive.

The believer in Christ will not be condemned.

- Jn3:18 “He that believe in my …not condemned”

- Jn 5:24 “He that hears and believes – shall not come into judgement”

The believer in Christ is judged for purpose of Reward.

(iv) Believers will be Rewarded or Suffer Loss

1 Cor.3:8 Each one will receive his own reward according to his own labour”

v14 work endures judgement – receive reward.

v15 Work not endure judgement – suffer loss but saved.

The Bible repeatedly teaches that salvation is free but that Servants of God are rewarded for the works they have done – their service for Christ.

(v) Eternal Judgement is a Key Foundation

Since all of us will give an account of our lives we are motivated to:

- Centre our life on eternal values.

- Be productive and fruitful in serving Christ

- Remember our life on earth is a preparation for eternity.

- Continue to grow in our relationship with Christ.

- Love people in every situation.

3. How Will we be Judged?

There are several principles that God will use to evaluate our lives. Jesus message was about the Kingdom of God and entering that Kingdom.

(i) Quality – What sort of work?

1 Cor.3:9-15 “…test each ones work, what sort it is”

2 categories of works described.

Our works are tested by fire to discover the nature of them.

To discover the value of our works

- What was the motivation behind actions - Motives

- Did we listen to and obey the Word of God - Obedience

- Were they done in our own strength and ability - Power

(ii) Potential – did we fulfil our potential?

Mt.25:14-30 Parable of the talents – 1 talent – 15 years wages

Each was given according to ability – potential.

Each had opportunity to serve and be productive.

The 2x talent and 5x talent servant both were 100% productive.

They received the same commendation and reward.

Faithfulness is not assessed by what we have but how we use it – how productive.

(iii) Productivity – what quantity did we produce?

Lk.19:11-27 Parable of the Pounds – 3x months wages

Each was given the same amount to work with.

Each had opportunity to serve and be productive.

The King wanted to know how much every man gained by trade.

Each possessed equal ability.

Each was different in their faithfulness.

Faithful = productive.

The more productive servant received greater reward.

Rewards for serving Christ = extended opportunity in Kingdom.

Failure to make active use of talent/pound entrusted is considered : wicked.

Wicked = 4190 = having a negative, hurtful influence.

By God’s standard of wickedness is not just doing evil but failure to do good.

Mal.3:18 “He will discern between righteous and wicked, the one who serves God and the one who does not serve Him”

Outer Darkness = outside, outside the door

= Shade, shadow

Placed for a season of time outside the door in a shadow e.g.

- Mt.22:11-14 Wedding Feast

- Mt.25:1-13 Parable of Virgins – 5 wise entered supper.

(iv) Opportunity – How much opportunity did you have?

Mt.20-1-16 Labourers in the vineyard.

Labourers were employed to serve in the vineyard.

Each agreed to a reward for their labour.

The ones employed later in the day had less opportunity (time).

They received the same reward as the others.

God takes into account how much opportunity.

4. The Great White Throne Judgement

Rev.20:11-15 “They were judged, each one according to works”

A record of our life is recorded in a book – a scroll. It is written in detail; thoughts, motives, actions. Not just your actions but everything concerned with them:

- emotions, thoughts, motives, all displayed.

- The impact or ripple effect of your actions on others.

Book of Life – those who have received Christ.

- Not in book = eternal punishment

Books – your personal life story in detail.

- every sin repented of is blotted out, erased.

- Every aspect of a believers life is judged.

Kingdom – Levels of reward and levels of punishment.

Ps.139:23 “Search me oh God and know my heart today”

Titus 3:8-14.

Healing from Abortion, Miscarriage & Adoption

从流产/流产/收养愈合

從流產/流產/收養癒合

1. Personal Testimony: Adopted Daughters Wedding

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

2. Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding

Mike and Joy Connell, together with their daughter Josephine, share their story of reconciliation—testifying of how God can turn situations around when we obey Him.

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

个人见证：收养女儿的婚礼

这是一个曲折的爱情故事，有欢笑也有悲伤。就像罗密欧与朱丽叶一样，他们这一对年轻的情侣因各自的家庭背景被迫分开。更糟糕的是，他们将一个婴儿带到了世上，并决定放弃她。但是这个故事，不像其他的故事那样，它因为有神的介入，让悲剧变为欢笑，有了一个开心的结局。

個人見證：收養女兒的婚禮

這是一個曲折的愛情故事，有歡笑也有悲傷。就像羅密歐與朱麗葉一樣，他們這一對年輕的情侶因各自的家庭背景被迫分開。更糟糕的是，他們將一個嬰兒帶到了世上，並決定放棄她。但是這個故事，不像其他的故事那樣，它因為有神的介入，讓悲劇變為歡笑，有了一個開心的結局。

Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

从流产/流产愈合

神的心脏是充满怜悯医治和恢复受损的生命。堕胎是门口的悲伤和恶魔般的束缚，这在很大程度上是在保密和否认隐藏。当真相面对一个孩子的生命已采取的痛苦是巨大的。现实即将来临，有一个儿子或女儿在天堂谁，我们会遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意义的愈合谁失去了一个孩子在子宫内的家庭，使他们免受奴役和折磨。耶稣来不是要谴责 - 他要拯救，医治，拯救，恢复。

從流產/流產癒合

神的心臟是充滿憐憫醫治和恢復受損的生命。墮胎是門口的悲傷和惡魔般的束縛，這在很大程度上是在保密和否認隱藏。當真相面對一個孩子的生命已採取的痛苦是巨大的。現實即將來臨，有一個兒子或女兒在天堂誰，我們會遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意義的癒合誰失去了一個孩子在子宮內的家庭，使他們免受奴役和折磨。耶穌來不是要譴責 - 他要拯救，醫治，拯救，恢復。

Healing From Abortion (1 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (2 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (3 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (4 of 4)

The Silent Scream (Bernard Nathanson)

Dr. Bernard Nathanson's classic video that shocked the world. He explains the procedure of a suction abortion, followed by an actual first trimester abortion as seen through ultrasound. The viewer can see the child's pathetic attempts to escape the suction curette as her heart rate doubles, and a "silent scream" as her body is torn apart.

A great tool to help people see why abortion is murder. The most important video on abortion ever made. This video changed opinion on abortion to many people.

Introduction by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, host. Describes the technology of ultrasound and how, for the first time ever, we can actually see inside the womb. Dr. Nathanson further describes the ultrasound technique and shows examples of babies in the womb. Three-dimensional depiction of the developing fetus, from 4 weeks through 28 weeks. Display and usage of the abortionists' tools, plus video of an abortionist performing a suction abortion.

Dr. Nathanson discusses the abortionist who agreed to allow this abortion to be filmed with ultrasound. The abortionist was quite skilled, having performed more than 10,000 abortions. We discover that the resulting ultrasound of his abortion so appalled him that he never again performed another abortion.

The clip begins with an ultrasound of the fetus (girl) who is about to be aborted. The girl is moving in the womb; displays a heartbeat of 140 per minute; and is at times sucking her thumb. As the abortionist's suction tip begins to invade the womb, the child rears and moves violently in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a "silent scream." The child's heart rate speeds up dramatically (to 200 beats per minute) as she senses aggression. She moves violently away in a pathetic attempt to escape the instrument. The abortionist's suction tip begins to rip the baby's limbs from its body, ultimately leaving only her head in the uterus (too large to be pulled from the uterus in one piece). The abortionist attempts to crush her head with his forceps, allowing it to be removed.

In an effort to "dehumanize" the procedure, the abortionist and anesthesiologist refer to the baby's head as "number 1." The abortionist crushes "number 1" with the forceps and removes it from the uterus. Abortion statistics are revealed, as well as who benefits from the enormously lucrative industry that has developed. Clinics are now franchised, and there is ample evidence that many are controlled by organized crime.

Women are victims, too. They haven't been told about the true nature of the unborn child or the facts about abortion procedures. Their wombs have been perforated, infected, destroyed, and sterilized. All as a result of an operation about which they they have had no true knowledge.

Films like this must be made part of "informed consent." NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood are accused of a conspiracy of silence, of keeping women in the dark about the reality of abortion.

Finally, Dr. Nathanson discusses his credentials. He is a former abortionist, having been the director of the largest clinic in the Western world.

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- Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding.mp3

- Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage.mp3

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- Healing From Abortion (2 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (3 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (4 of 4).mp3

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Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding

Sun 26 Oct 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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Mike and Joy Connell, together with their daughter Josephine, share their story of reconciliation—testifying of how God can turn situations around when we obey Him.

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

I want to share with you two principles; then we're going to share a testimony about the goodness of God, the tremendous goodness of God in our lives - how God has just brought blessing. It's almost like fairytale stuff, you can hardly imagine that it could happen like this.

We want to share with you our testimony; and to highlight what we did that activated these principles - because God just doesn't move. God is always good, but His goodness is released as we position ourselves for things to happen. You actually have to make decisions to position yourself for God's blessing to come.

Positioning means: you take on an attitude; or you say words; or you do the right things; that make room for God to come and to touch your life.

The Bible says very clearly: we must believe that God is a good God; and we must believe that He will come and touch our lives.

We're going to share about is from our background, from our lives. Where we came from, an what happened to get us here; but we want to talk specifically about how God wonderfully came on a wedding that we took, the weekend before last.

The wedding that I took, was that of a daughter we adopted out before we were married; and for me to be able to take the wedding, to shape how the whole wedding service went, how the reception went - is absolutely unbelievable. To have even been there was a miracle; but to have had the ability and the privilege of being able to shape how it went, and make room for God to come, was even greater.

I want to first of all highlight the two principles; and then talk about how we activated these principles at various points in our life; and how God has been so faithful, and has given us a testimony that's just unbelievable.

With children being adopted out, the stories don't usually end as good as this one. This is just one out of the box, but it demonstrates that God is always good, so no matter how the story ends, God's goodness never changes.

For some people, finding their adoptive parents is very painful; and often it increases the pain that they experience. In our situation, it was exactly the opposite, and we want to share some of the background.

So here are the two principles:

1) James 4:6 – “God gives Grace to the Humble.

When the Bible talks about humility, it's talking about a ‘positioning of your heart’ - an attitude you take; and humility is not sort of grovelling stuff.

Humility means: I come up-front and agree with God about life; I agree with Him about my mistakes and failures; and don't try and cover them up or be defensive. It's really important.

Humility enables me to look at my life as God sees it - both the negatives; and the potential.

The Bible tells us: God will give an empowerment to those who humble themselves; so it means positioning yourself to come into agreement with God: 1) about your mistakes and failures - so you're open about them; 2) about what God says about you, and your life (if He says: “you're forgiven”, then you're forgiven). Humility means: I believe it and stand on it; and 3), it's about your positioning - what God has called you to do, and to be.

Humility can manifest itself by boldly and strongly standing up. To some people it looks like pride, but it isn't. It's actually I'm in agreement with God about who I am, and what I'm called to be, and do. So that's humility.

2) The second principle is: the Principle of Honour.

The Bible puts it negatively in Romans 1:21 – “When they knew God, they did not glorify Him, or give Him honour for who He is. Neither were they grateful to Him; then their minds become futile and darkened, and they moved away from God”

Principle: Whatever you respect and appreciate, will come towards you; whatever you disrespect, will move away from you.

Respect and honour and value will attract people into your life. Disrespect will cause them to pull away from you.

If you don't place value on money, it will soon depart from you. When you treat it with respect, and handle it well, it will come towards you. Life operates this way.

To ‘honour someone’ means: to give them appropriate recognition and place and value. It can be in: an attitude to them; our words; what we do. When we honour people, we place value on them, and we position ourselves so they are lifted up.

It's very important, if we're going to walk successfully and enjoy God's blessing, that we learn: the Principle of Humility; and the Principle of Honour.

There's three grounds upon which you honour people:

1) You Honour them because of: what they have done. If someone does something notable, you should honour it, and value it, and appreciate it.

2) You honour a person's character - the kind of person they are. If someone is courageous, they may never stand out from the crowd, but in a moment of pressure they were courageous. You honour that.

3) We're called to recognise the Position and Rank that people have in our life; to value and esteem them, just because they have their position. That's why the Bible says: “Honour your parents - that it may go well with you”. You say: you don't know what my parents were like... It doesn't matter; you honour them because: that's the positioning that God has given them in your life; and if you do it, you'll come into blessing.

Two principles: Humility - coming into agreement with God about life, and what He says about us, and standing up and believing that what He says is true; and Honour - being willing to give value, and appropriate respect, for people. You'll find it will always release the grace of God.

Having said that; we want to talk and share about how these principles were applied in our life - in relationship to: what happened before we were married; and then how God has worked this out in our lives since then.

[Joy Connell] There's a verse I'd like to share, that the Lord drew to my attention this week. It talked about “preparing the way for the Lord, make straight in the desert”. It was a very ‘desert’ place for many years - a highway for our God - because God wants to come in to desert places.

It said: “Every Valley shall be exalted”. It was certainly a very ‘valley’ time for me - having a child in secret, and releasing it for adoption - a very, very low place. But it said: “Every valley shall be Exalted”. To be there on her wedding was a very high place - amazing.

It said: “Every mountain shall be brought down low”. It was a huge mountain for me, to face my parents at the time of pregnancy. It was just a mountain I couldn't cross. To have all my family there last Saturday, standing with us, was huge.

It said: “The crooked places will be made straight, rough places will be made smooth, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed”. We saw the glory of the Lord revealed.

“and all flesh shall see it together”. Everybody there in wedding place saw the glory of the Lord. They didn't know it was the glory of the Lord, but it was.

He said: “The mouth of the Lord has spoken”; because God gave us promises. What He decrees and declares - it does take place.

I believe it's a time for prophetic decrees over many of your mountains. I know many of you are facing mountains, but God can bring them down - and when He does it it's just absolutely amazing.

If you go right back to the beginning of the Bible, when Adam sinned – “through fear he hid himself”. At the time after we'd been dating for about seven years and there was just huge conflicts. The fear - I just took the same response that Adam and Eve did. They just hid themselves with secrecy; and think: this is a way of coping.

I also had inner vows - things you've told yourself in the past, which have become very binding; then, when you face a crisis, you operate out of these things that have been programmed inside you. Even though they're not the best way, it's the way that you do, because of things you've told yourself that you will do.

I was never going to “trap anybody into marrying me”, or go through the shame of the pregnancies and marriages I saw, in the church I was in.

These inner vows I'd made just said: “there’s no way I'm going to go there”; but what happens is: they're strong controls, and they actually build walls around your heart; but that was in place at that time in my life.

Also, my own way of coping with a crisis... Mike was saying humility is “acknowledging God's way”; but if you don't turn to God, you have all sorts of ‘great ways’ of coping with life.

The enemy will also put a few good ideas in too, but when you listen to those, and make your own way of coping - basically there's immediate short-term relief. You protect yourself, but all these ways lead to great isolation and pain, further damage, and huge bondage. But that was what it was like, way back in 1969.

[Mike Connell] Prior to us getting married, I wasn't a Christian, and did not know the Lord. When Joy got pregnant, we made a decision that we'd adopt our girl out - a very bad choice, very bad decision. It was just made in the pressure of: inability to stand up and be courageous.

Having made one mistake, we then coupled it up with a second mistake. When you cover things over, you never, ever prosper (the Bible says); and so for years, we endured tremendous grief and pain.

There wasn't a year went by, that we didn't remember our daughter, and didn't pray for her, and wonder what was happening to her. You just can't get over these things; they're just part of your life.

But the day that we got married, I made a decision to receive Jesus Christ into my life; and asked the Lord to become part of our lives. Then I went before Him and totally repented, and came into agreement with what He said, about what I had done: the failure to be responsible; the failure to actually stand up and be courageous for Joy's sake; the rejection of a child, and all that would come upon her as a result of that.

I made a vow before the Lord that day, coming out of repentance (some vows are very good to make).

I said: “No matter where we are in our lives, I know there is a day that You will bring this daughter back to us, because of who You are. It's got nothing to do with our rights, because we gave our rights up; but because God is good, You will bring her back”.

And I knew in my heart, I had a faith, that she would be restored; so when I repented, I said to the Lord then: “the day You bring her back, no matter what position, what standing I have in life - I will be open and transparent about who she is, and her place in our lives. We will give her the acceptance, and love, and welcome that we withheld from her, when we sinned.

That's what humility looks like. You actually turn around completely, and come into agreement with God about what needs to happen.

Some years later we came here. The Lord was speaking to us about issues in our life, and we ran a wedding renewal or a marriage renewal service.

[Joy Connell] The church was still quite small, but when we got married, the only neutral place we could get married was the nurse's chapel! We had: a Catholic priest; and an Anglican minister (who was married to a Brethren, and understood my side of things). It was just amazing. God came through.

It just seemed totally impossible to get a marriage which both families would accept; but Mike was flatting with some guys who had left the seminary training to be Catholic priests. One of them broke his leg, and was in Wellington Hospital, and fell in love with a Presbyterian nurse - and he created a precedent for us. He got special permission from the bishop (or whoever it was) - and he was able to get married.

So we just followed in his wake, and God made a way, which just seemed totally impossible. But we realised that a lot of things had changed from when we got married. We were very broken, barely saved, finding a way back to God; and we realised that there's others in the church at that time that were like us. They'd come to the Lord, things had totally changed for them; and they were ready to make a fresh renewal of their marriage vows, so we got about 12 couples... We met for about three weeks, and we talked about the foundation of our marriage; and prepared ourselves to go through this ceremony again - which was for me the very first time I actually lifted the cover off my big secret.

I hadn't even told my parents about this daughter; but with this small group, we talked about our background, and we decided: this is the time to bring out our baggage. Maybe we should at that time write to welfare and see if we could reconnect with our daughter we lost?

You know how good God is? Our daughter's mother Carol decided it was our daughter's right to know her heritage, and she wrote, and those letters had landed the same day at welfare. As a result of interest on both sides, they gave us information, and we started to make contact.

For me it was incredibly difficult; when you've covered something, and lived with denial; to face the reality - I couldn't cope with even a photograph of her.

I meant to have something shut away, and behind a big stone; and God says: “roll away the stone” - you don't want to go there. I mean its death there. It's ugly there. It's painful there; but when you actually roll it away, and look at a photograph, and think: actually this is a person.

Her name was Josephine. I thought: that's kind of a bit of a religious name; and the Lord reminded me about how Joseph was: separated from all his brethren; and came back and had a reunion.

It was quite a big thing to actually face reality, when you've been living in denial for 18 years; but we had to really roll away the stone, remove the covering. Then you feel incredibly vulnerable and fragile, and dependent on God.

That's actually just what He wants us to do, when we let go whatever we hid behind. They had fig leaves in Genesis; but they had to actually take those fig leaves off, to receive the covering of skin; and the provision of what Jesus Christ had done on the cross. For me that was quite a vulnerable stage too.

[Mike Connell] So again the issue of humility came in. We had to face the issues in our personal life. We put matters right with one another, and realised that all our lives there'd been this deep hurt. To come and actually admit it... the Lord spoke to me, and clearly He said: you need to put this matter right.

I had to put it right with Joy; I had to go to her father, and put it right with her father. We had to actually come clean about what we had done, which was wrong; and when you do that, when you position yourself the way God says - He provides blessing for you. He provides grace.

[Joy Connell] Yeah, I remember my parents - I invited them up. I said: “there's something I want to talk to you about...” I took the two of them out to the Old Flame, which is the best restaurant I could think of, and sat them down.

I just had to deeply apologise for my secrecy, what I'd hidden from them; and asked their forgiveness for what we had covered at that time, because...

[Mike Connell] That's actually honouring them, by putting right what was wrong. Where there'd been dishonour, there had to be honour restored - and that made such a difference.

[Joy Connell] Then we wrote to Josephine, and we apologised to her. We both apologised for the rejection, and the effect it had on her life; and asked her forgiveness.

Then we decided to make her very welcome. We invited her to come and stay - and that again was a miracle. She was half way through dentistry school. She's a Dentist in Whakatane, and at that stage, she was half way through dentistry training in Dunedin, and she was going back to do a summer school paper; so we invited her to stay after that paper.

Of course, when you pastor a church, and you've got six children that look a bit like you, you can't just turn up with another one the next Sunday...

[Mike Connell] Looks like you...

[Joy Connell] ...without saying something to the church. But this church is amazing. We stood up, the Sunday before she arrived to stay, and shared our testimony. Some of you I know are still here - I remember some of your faces. At the end of the service, God was so good then, He just - I think everybody's closets were opened, and all the skeletons came out. God just moved, and brought quite a wave of tremendous healing. But also as a church family, you were tremendously responsive to us, and we invited her to arrive. She arrived right on Mike's 44th birthday.

[Mike Connell] What are the chances of that?

[Joy Connell] That was the day she said she was going to arrive.

[Mike Connell] She had no idea when my birthday was; but the day she chose to come was my birthday!

That week we had just an unbelievable time; and over the years since then, she's connected to us, come to know and love us. She cries every time she comes home, and has become quite bonded and connected to our family.

It was just amazing when, the young man that's asked her to marry him came, and he honoured me by asking me for permission. I had no right. You understand that when you give a child up for adoption - there are no rights; and in those days, there was also no contact - no way to make contact. It was closed.

When we gave the child up, and God spoke to me - I knew in my heart she was going to come back; but there was no possible way it could happen, because you never had any contact with them.

You couldn't get the contact; and then the law changed, and made this possible. She came back, and we were able to reconnect; and he asked me for permission to marry her - which was a great honour to me.

She also honoured me, and asked me to help with the service. She'd come to the weddings of our family - and had just got blown away; and she said: I don't know what it is - but what you've got I want.

I was in a position then (this is what's so amazing) - to shape a service, in a way that God could come into the service. I was in a position to help shape the reception; so that the things that needed to happen there, for God to come, were in place. We taught her about how to honour her parents, how to actually address them and speak to them - and the things she needed to say, as she exited from their care, and came in to start a new family.

[Joy Connell] That time, even though Mike had a chance to prepare her, for the wedding, and coach her how to honour her parents - which of course, immediately met with a burst of tears. Mike wasn’t as emotionally connected to them; but he listed all the ways in which they had come through for her - and how to honour them.

In the meantime, I was flying to Taiwan, and I was watching a movie on the plane about an adoption story, and I felt quite stirred after watching this movie; so I decided to write Josephine a letter.

It was coming up to her wedding, and I honoured her (in a letter) for her courage; and for the steps she was making; for the choice that I regretted, but the choices that I've made since, which were great choices, like: marrying Mike; giving our hearts to the Lord; building our lives on Him - and just encouraging her in those responses.

But I forgot to post this letter; so when I was in Taiwan, at the hotel, I got some hotel paper, and posted the letter - stuck it in the counter at the hotel.

That letter arrived the day of our women's conference - when she was having a pamper day (ahead of the wedding). She'd invited me to join her for a pamper day, but I couldn't make it (because we had our women's conference), but as she was leaving to go on that pamper day, my letter was in the mail. She felt I was with her.

[Mike Connell] We went to the wedding. The wedding practice was very, very difficult. You have to come to face things.

One of the things about walking with the Lord, is that He never spares us from the consequences of bad choices.

One of the things about growing up, you have to learn that bad choices have bad consequences; and although God will forgive us, there's a ‘walking’ out of those consequences.

Of course for me, one of the biggest challenges was to on the day of the wedding - to have another man walk my daughter down the aisle. That was very, very hard. You'll see it - I'm going to show you a couple of pictures of it just in a moment. [See video attachment]

The night before, I was very distressed. We did the wedding practice, and went to have time with them - but there was no presence of God there! It was very awkward - just so uncomfortable, that after the practice, I just went to the beach - and just wept before the Lord.

I said: God, You've got to come and help us. This is just so difficult!

It looked like there was going to be no real Value and Honour. You know what Kiwis get like - that funny humour, that's kind of a putdown sort of a humour?

I so wanted God's value, and presence, to come into the place; but it just seemed like it was impossible for that to happen - so I went home. I was quite upset, the night we'd met with the family, and did the wedding practice; and I went home saying: God, You've got to help. You've got to show me how I can actually make a difference in this service tomorrow - and so we talked about it.

I would’ve spent probably a couple of hours, just waiting on God, to get something that was appropriate for that situation. It was an incredibly unusual feeling - we'll show photos through as we go, then you'll kind of catch the feel of it, as we do this.

It’s a most unusual feeling to have some ‘other man’ bringing my daughter down the aisle. It was quite challenging to deal with the emotions that went with that; but I had to face the consequences of choices I made years ago.

I knew that the Lord would provide grace; and what He did was: He showed me to speak on honour - to actually demonstrate honour; and to use honour to unlock that service.

So we had Kate and Andrew (our son-in-law, and daughter-in-law) put a song together - and as they began to sing - the atmosphere just began to change. It wasn't even a song they chose; but nevertheless, because of what's in their lives, the atmosphere began to shift and change - and the presence of God came into the place. You could feel the change; and of course everyone's looking at me: what's he going to say? What do you say? How much do you say?

We felt for her parents. Originally we had felt: perhaps just a couple of members of our family come; but Jo wanted everyone there, so we were kind of ‘very sensitive’ about this. But the Lord showed me exactly what to say.

[Joy Connell] The little boy ‘Alex’ is Josephine's little son.

[Mike Connell] That's her father and mother; and that's them giving our daughter in marriage to Steve.

I felt the Lord show me to actually honour the parents - because they would be feeling uncomfortable. And humility is ‘knowing your position’, and adopting the ‘right position’. Sometimes we can be in charge; but sometimes you actually have to be the servant.

You've got to see how God has positioned you; and choose to position yourself in that way. I actually spent time, and honoured them; spoke directly to them, honoured them.

It was a very difficult choice for them, to take home a baby that had...

[Joy Connell] Congenital hip.

Amazing surprise; this mother claimed to be an atheist, but she looked at our baby, and said: I just ‘knew’ she was going to be alright - and at 10 months, she got up and walked!

[Mike Connell] No one wanted her, in the hospital - which we had no idea about.

Her own (adoptive) mother was resistant to her having this baby, because she thought she might be a cripple; but she felt in her heart that she should have the baby. So I honoured her for choosing to welcome Josephine into their lives.

We honoured them for the education, and family life they'd made. We honoured them for encouraging her to seek us out - knowing that this would be quite a difficult thing for them. And we honoured them then for...

[Joy Connell] Opening their home to us.

[Mike Connell] ...welcoming us into their home to meet with them and have time with them.

[Joy Connell] It's funny, the first time they met us (soon after we met Josephine), we went right to the bottom of the South Island; two sets of parents, and Josephine, having a meal together - it was big of them to invite us into their home. But what amused me: half way through the meal, the mother was just pouring out her heart, and her feelings, and emotions... and she suddenly said: hey, but you're complete strangers! I don't know why I'm doing this!

[Mike Connell] So what I did was honour them; honoured her brothers, our own family for coming and being with us, and supporting us. The whole family - everyone turned up - there wasn't anyone left out.

Everyone turned up; and then I honoured Steve, for the way he had conducted himself in approaching me; and Josephine, for her courage in actually being willing to seek us out; and then to make us welcome in her life and heart.

I indicated very clearly: it was not ‘by right’ we were there; it was by privilege - and by her choice, the goodness of her choice.

I shared a message for them that “wisdom builds the house”. By wisdom you build a marriage; by wisdom you build in various ways - you can build relationships; business; and ministries.

But wisdom is making choices from God's perspective - and I acknowledged that we'd made a bad choice. We'd lived to regret it; but now we were glad that God had made a way for this day to happen. It was like a miracle that we could be there, involved like that, on that day.

[Joy Connell] Its one thing, when God restores things - He's got such a big heart; there's just one other thing...

On the journey, before we had the wedding day, Mike and I went to Nigeria to celebrate - I think it was our 25 year wedding anniversary. But the prophet in Nigeria put his bony finger in my face - and read my mail!

One thing he brought out was: in God's eyes, Josephine had been like an orphan. I mean, if I could have selected her home... the home she was great. We were both teachers; they were both teachers. She was brought up in the country - had her own pet lambs and calves, and had a wonderful upbringing!

The only thing missing was the God element. She was totally foreign from the things of God; so in God's eyes she was an ‘orphan’ to His family. I thought: wow - God, You have a heart for people that are orphaned from Your things. It's better to have nothing in the natural, but to have Jesus, who is everything; than to have everything - and not have Jesus.

So that incident really made me feel deeply, and agree with God about orphans, and His heart for orphans - and our own passion for orphans was really birthed out of that. I'm just so excited that many people here support orphans - because God is on their side!

And He was grieved, that she was orphaned from the things of God.

[Mike Connell] When it came time for the reception, we wondered how that would go. When we went in - we noticed that Jo had done an interesting thing.

She sat at the main table; and she'd positioned the table with the two parents right in front of her - so they were given equal positioning. Quite amazing! I mean you can't make that happen. Then she stood up, and honoured her natural family (her adoptive family); and then when she'd honoured them, and appreciated them - she honoured us.

It was incredibly heart-touching; but when you honour people, it unlocks something. Look at a couple more pictures there, very happy couple.

What happened then was, her mother had said: she was ‘not going to say anything’; and then suddenly she said: “I want to say something.”

Understand that honour: opens the way for people to come near; and also brings God near. When you honour people, God's presence somehow, sometimes... it just seems to come in. So she stood up and what she said just stunned us.

[Joy Connell] Yes. The night before it was so awkward! I mean, she didn't kind of even want to look at me, or acknowledge me - she just got busy, busy, busy, busy...

[Mike Connell] It was obviously painful.

[Joy Connell] After she'd been honoured at the service, it just kind of disarms people. After Josephine had honoured her, the mother stood and she - this person who wasn't going to speak, she was so beautiful.

She spoke from her heart; and I don't think Josephine had ever heard her speak from her heart; but she honoured each of her children. Three of them are adopted; and they have one of their own - how precious each of them was.

She honoured Josephine, for the tremendous joy she'd brought into their life, and all the wonderful experiences they had. Then what blew me away... (weeping)

[Mike Connell] She said that each year, when they had Christmas, and had her birthday; that they remembered the family that had lost her, and were deeply grateful that: our loss was their gain.

Of course that's very - you can imagine how we felt about that; because every year we'd remembered: we'd lost a daughter. It was quite heart-touching, for both of us, for her to say that. We both stood and shared; and I just shared that: there hadn't been a year go by that we hadn't thought of our daughter, and prayed for her - and that it was a great loss.

We just appreciated Josephine for her willingness to allow us to come back into her life; so it was quite - it was unbelievably heart-touching. You could hear sobs down the back. I didn't even dare look around to see who's - there are tears everywhere! I didn't even dare look around, and see who's sobbing down the back; because we realised that right through the whole of the group, there were broken marriages. There were adopted people, there were people who'd lost children, there were blended families, there were all kinds of things there; and when people are in the presence of honour, it unlocks their heart.

[Joy Connell] It makes way for the Lord to come in and...

[Mike Connell] It makes way for God to do things.

[Joy Connell] ...it's a powerful thing to experience: that honour does make way for the Lord to come.

Josephine didn't want us to say too much at the reception, if her parents didn't say too much, so we were kind of positioning ourselves. But when both her mother and father spoke quite well, and quite long, she gave us an opportunity to speak; and again, we wouldn't want to say too much, but just wanted to honour her - for how beautiful she looked; and what she'd done to open her heart for our family.

Steve - the most amazing thing about her fiancée; well two things. First of all, the very first time she visited us in our church, she went back to her flat. While she was away, one of her flatmates got baptised in the Holy Ghost. She said: I know what you're on about - I've been to my birth dad's church - and I know what you're on about!

The second thing was, she had a few other relationships... and then when Steve came on the scene, she's like: I knew you'd like this one - because one day, Steve was prayed for by somebody like Mike - planted down on the ground for 20 minutes with a back injury, and came up totally healed! So he had a real awareness of the power of God. She said: I knew you’d like this one!

But the week before the wedding - the Saturday before the wedding - he was 28 metres below the sea, and out of air. He had to shoot up to the surface; he got the bends, and was flown in a decompression unit - and got released two days before the wedding!

I'm just so grateful for Steve - that he was with us, that God had kept him. I wonder if it was a demonic assignment actually, when things like that are so difficult. God's got a great purpose and destiny for people's lives and I believe that's still being unfolded.

But I honoured him for what he'd done; and again said: it was not by rights - it was a significant event to be a part of, but we really had no rights; just that God is so incredibly good, the grace of God, and the goodness of God. So we both just had a chance again just to acknowledge God, and acknowledge and honour which again was part of the process.

[Mike Connell] We'll just finish with a couple of things, but what was amazing was the impact on people. There were lots of things I won't disclose, because they were just very, very precious; I just feel it wouldn't be appropriate to share them.

But there was a couple of things that were really thrilling.... One was that Jo has a son called Alex, who's seven years old; and prior to the wedding, he had been talking to Steven. Steven asked him: “Do you want me to be your step dad?” He said: “No - I've got a dad - I don't need a step dad. I'll just call you Steve”.

But when we'd had this time, and the presence of God was touching people, he said: “why are people crying?” Jo said: when people say words from their heart - they feel something; and he said: “I want to say something”.

So he took the microphone - this is a seven year old - and then he honoured his mother for being so beautiful, and so good for him. Then he honoured Steve; and he said: Steve, I'd like you to be my step-dad. I'd like you to have that place in my life. Well...

[Joy Connell] He sat down and burst into tears.

[Mike Connell] He sat down and burst into tears; and we're thinking (sob) you know - so there were many things that happened like that.

There was one other thing that was notable for me. Although it had been so awkward prior to the wedding; after the wedding, her mother came up and said: thank you for coaching her in how to put on such a great event. I just thanked her for acknowledging it, and so on; but really, what we had done: we'd coached her in the principle of honour.

As she did it, all the way through, the presence of God came, and made this even just an extraordinary event. We are deeply grateful to the Lord - it's something we could never do.

We believed that He would bring her back. We believed that we'd be part of her life; but we never would have guessed that God does is more than enough, that God gave us more than we expected.

I want to encourage you all to consider those issues of: Humility; and Honour - they can unlock so much in our lives.

Closing Prayer

I know some of you will have been really deeply touched. Perhaps it's really touched your heart; and you're not a Christian, you don't know Jesus Christ; you haven't experienced for yourself yet the personal love of God for you.

Jesus said: to everyone who received Him, to everyone who personally invited Christ into their life, He gave them power to become a child of God; to have their sins forgiven, to have a new relationship with God, His Father; and to walk as part of a God family.

What a great thing for you to make that decision today. We made it - I had so many things wrong with my life before I came to Jesus Christ.

The goodness of the Lord is before us. Why don't you make that decision yourself?

If you're here today, and you don't know Jesus Christ; why not become a Christian? Receive the love of God, into your life. It's a personal choice to connect with God.

Perhaps you're disconnected from God. You've once had a relationship with the Lord; but because of disappointments, things not going like you thought - you've drawn back; and today you need to renew your relationship with the Lord. Just be honest, be humble.

Humility is: admitting my condition. You say: God, I need to come back to you today.

______________________________________________________

Related Article written by: Dawn Seow (www.citynews.sg - 16 June 2012)

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

In 1962, Mike and Joy Connell were freshmen at a university when they met in school and fell in love. But because Connell was from a Catholic family and Joy from a strict Brethren background, their families were against their relationship.

“We were both the eldest in the family and we faced a lot of pressure from our families,” Joy recounted. “There was tremendous resistance between the Protestants and Catholics at that time, which caused strong religious opposition in both our families; so we kept breaking up and coming back.”

Six years later, they made a mistake and Joy found herself pregnant.

“I was in shock, fear and shame, thinking to myself: what do I do? We made a silly decision and that was to hide in secrecy and not tell our family. We were living away from home and so I managed to give birth to the baby without anyone knowing,” she said.

While Joy made a decision to bring the baby into the world, she decided not to keep her. “We gave her up for adoption. At that time in New Zealand, the law was such that if we gave up our baby (for adoption), we will never be able to see her again. The law restricted all access between the two families.”

Thankfully, God made a way for the young couple to eventually get married, as their parents felt they had been together for so long. Even though Joy felt like a backslidden Christian, there were people who knew about their problems and were praying for them. “And one day I did feel the Lord said he (Connell) has a heart after God and it was okay to marry,” Joy said. “I felt a release.”

To pacify both families, the couple decided on a joint service by a Catholic priest and an Anglican minister. “On the day I got married I gave my life to Jesus; I realized that we will never make our lives work unless Jesus was there. So I made a commitment to Christ at the service just before we got married,” said Connell.

This is the love story of Mike and Joy Connell, now the senior pastors of Bay City Outreach Center in Hastings, New Zealand. Their names are not unfamiliar at City Harvest Church. Connell is an internationally recognized teacher of the Word who moves powerfully in the prophetic, deliverance and inner healing gifts. His ministry has brought great healing to the hurt and broken-hearted.

While he was at CHC to minister over the weekend of Jun. 2 and 3, his family shared with City News the story of how he and Joy came to reconcile with the firstborn they gave up for adoption.

Reconciliation Begins with Healing

“After coming to the Lord, I realized how wrong I was (to give the baby up for adoption). I believed in my heart that the Lord will make a way for her (the baby girl) to come back, even though the law said otherwise. So I came into deep repentance, and made a commitment that when she came back in our lives, whatever I was doing, I would make it public and be completely open with everyone, because the sin was in the hiding, and repentance meant doing the exact opposite.

Eight years after they were married, the Connells were called to start a Christian school in the same year they started pastoring a church. As life moved on, they never talked about how the trauma of what happened affected both of them.

“We were working with a few married couples at one time and decided to have a marriage renewal service, looking at the foundations and helping these couples make a fresh commitment towards each other,” Joy shared. “And that was the first time we look at the foundations of our own lives and we realized how much damage had been done in terms of the grief and pain because of what happened. We resolved our hurts and shortly after, the laws (that restricts parents from meeting their children after giving them up for adoption) changed! God knew that the laws were changing and He got us ready for the change.”

The Connells wrote a letter to the social welfare. Interestingly, the mother who adopted their baby wrote them a letter as well, almost at the same time, to ask for information.

Josephine Brown, Connell’s daughter, was already 18 at that time, and was finishing her first year at university. Normally, the welfare services would not let them make contact until the child was 21 years old, but because there was interest on both sides, they allowed contact to be made.

“When I was born, I had a splint and had to be in bed for 10 weeks,” Josephine shared. “When my parents came to adopt me, the doctors couldn’t tell if I would develop some kind of disability. When they told their parents they wanted to adopt me, their parents were quite resistant.”

Unlike other adopted children, Josephine had always known that she was adopted. “It was not good or bad, just facts I knew. But as a child I always wondered who I was. In New Zealand, there are people who came from so many backgrounds, it’s like people have traveled here from England, Ireland or Wales so people always discussed if they are Irish-half or English-half and I never knew who I was.”

When Josephine found out that her mother had received a letter from the social welfare that her biological parents have six more children, questions started reeling in her mind: who were they? What do they looked like? Do they look like me? “It’s insane, when you don’t have information, you just fill in with your imagination.”

Eventually, Josephine flew up to meet the Connells after her exams that year. She arrived in town on Connell’s birthday.

“The week before she came, we openly told the church our story and everything came to light. After that, many of those who had problems sharing their past brought their secrets into the light as well,” said Joy.

As Connell came clean with his family’s past, God brought a lesson to his mind. “This was what the Lord asked me after we told the church, ‘You know what would happen if you had not shared with your church?’ I said, ‘No, I haven’t thought about that,’ to which God said, ‘If you had kept this in secret, it would have been a betrayal of trust for all under your leadership once they found out the truth.’”

Humility and Giving Honor

Over the years, the Connell family maintained contact with Josephine. She did not grow up in a Christian family but whenever she visited them, she would go to church with them.

While she felt moved by the presence of God at church, becoming a Christian was a struggle with the issue of loyalty for Josephine. “I grew up always wanting to please my parents, and I didn’t want the decision (to believe in God) to please other people; I wanted it to be for myself. So it took a long time to come to that point of not worrying about what my parents thought as well as what Mike and Joy thought.”

The change came when Josephine met her future husband Steve Brown, who shared his testimony with her about being healed at a church service. “I thought to myself, this is a guy who can help me grow spiritually. It was so important to me because if I got together with the wrong guy, it would be harder (to become a Christian).”

Their wedding in October 2008 was the first time Josephine’s biological and adopted family met. “I wanted my dad to walk me down the aisle and Mike to take the service.”

But things did not turn out as well as everyone hoped. Connell could still remember the tension he felt in the air at the initial meeting. “I said to God, ‘Help! You have to help me solve this!’ And I didn’t actually get an answer until the morning of the wedding day itself. The Lord showed me how to approach it with the principle of honor.

“There was the uncertainty of her siblings and her parents, and everyone was thinking: what’s he going to say, and I’m thinking: what am I going to say?

So the Lord showed me to start by placing honor on Josephine and her parents, because when you humble yourself and honor people, their hearts will be softened. I spoke words of value to her parents, her brothers, and to Josephine and Steve. The presence of God came and I felt the tension just lift. Hearts were softened and you could feel the love in the place. It was what I asked God for: all the walls were broke down and people just cried. It was so good.

At the reception, her mother stood up to speak and people just started to weep. She had faced her own conflicts because of her mother’s objection to her adopting Josephine, but deep down in her heart, she knew that this baby would be ok.”

Josephine and Steve were baptized by Connell at their home on Easter Sunday last year. “We are now putting down our roots and learning how to pray and walk with God,” Josephine said with a smile.

It is inevitable that people make mistakes, but as this story has shown, God is always there to turn mourning into dancing and sorrows into joy.

Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage

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The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

The church needs to have a message of hope. The gospel is a message of hope to people. It's about God's love for us, and his willingness to help us. And so as Christians, no matter what is happening around us, we need to understand we have a message to help people. That Jesus Christ came to help people.

I'm reminded of an important scripture where it says: Jesus did not come to condemn people, but to save them; to rescue people out of the problems created by sin. So Jesus loves people, and he has no condemnation for us. No matter what has happened in your life, the heart of God is to reach into you, and love you, and restore you.

And so as believers, we should not be afraid of the issues in our nation, but should learn and understand them, and learn how to minister to people. We should not have areas we can't talk about. Rather, we should be able to talk about any issue; and come with a spirit of love, a spirit of hope, and with comfort for people.

I want to do this today – I want to share with you something that will be very deeply touching for many people. I haven't shared this message before, but God has spoken into my heart recently about this, and I wrestled somewhat last night and this morning. I really wanted to preach something else! But, I always feel that if you listen to God, he has something in mind for us. And this message may directly affect you, or it may indirectly affect you. And I just hope you will have an open heart and a loving spirit. Because we have prayed for people, and seen God bring tremendous breakthroughs.

Let's just have a look at Psalm 127:3. We've come here many times, and we've shared our story, most of you would know we have a big family with 7 children, and 21 grandchildren, and we've learnt a lot of things on the way. We also have 2 other children, but they're in heaven. So I want to talk today about abortion and miscarriage.

I want to offer hope for you. We want people here who don't know Jesus, to realize God loves you, and desires to help you; wants to break the power of sin in your life. After that I'd like to pray for 3 groups of people together. We'll pray for you together, because we don't want to embarrass you. We just want there to be a spirit of love, and the power of God to help you. I want to pray for people who've had an abortion, or perhaps you've been connected to someone who has. For people who've had a miscarriage; or for people who are barren, and are hoping for a child. We're not going to ask you at all what the nature of your problem is. We just want you to feel free to come and believe that God will help you.

So in Psalm 127:3, it says: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward”. So children are a heritage. It's an inheritance, something God gives to us. There's a part of every person that is a spirit being. The spirit comes from God. The Bible says: God is a Spirit. So when human beings come together, and create a life, they are partnering with God; and God puts a spirit into the child. The child becomes a living being, with an eternal destiny. God's desire is that the child shares his destiny with him. God's desire is for many children. This is the heart of God - many children. So God plans to reach out into this earth to help people - that's God's heart.

So when we're born into this world, we're born separate from God, because of sin. God's desire is to come to us, forgive our sins, put the Spirit in our lives, and give us an eternal destiny with him. This starts by responding to Christ.

I read in the paper just 3 days ago, it's a news story from China. It took place in a province called Weifang city, and there was a young couple. They went to bed one evening, they had one child, and they were expecting a second child. In the early hours of one morning, the police burst into their home. They held down the husband, and they dragged the wife out of the home, and took her to a hospital.

The panic-stricken husband tried every way to find out where his wife had gone. But the authorities refused to tell him. It took him 6 hours to find out where his wife was. They had threatened the wife, because she already 6 months pregnant - threatened to put her husband in prison. Then they injected her, and when he got to his wife, she was in the process of miscarrying.

What touched me very deeply was that both of them suffered great grief. They were grieving over the loss of their child, and there's no one to comfort them. My heart goes out to them, and I'll tell you why in a moment. I feel quite deeply touched by that story. I'll share to you a couple of personal testimonies, and then we'll open up the word of God. I want to offer hope to people today.

Some years ago, my wife went through two miscarriages. As a man, I didn't understand at that time what it meant to a woman, to miscarry. We were involved in ministry; we had many pressures on us - we already had 5 other children. When the two miscarriages came, my wife never complained. She had the miscarriages, went to hospital, and then we carried on with our life, and I didn't think about it much at all.

We had another two children - Peter and Sarah. Some years later, I was in another church ministry, and I was praying for a lady, and asked her: what is the problem? She'd had a miscarriage, and as I prayed, she began to weep; and I felt this incredible grief - I began to cry with her. I thought: that's very strange - I must be feeling the love of God.

Then on the same day, I went to another church; and the second time, the same thing happened. I prayed for a woman who'd suffered a miscarriage, and I had this incredible grief. When you feel something, you need to ask yourself: what am I feeling; and why do I feel it? So I went home and began to pray, and the Lord spoke to me. He said: you are grieving not because of her, but because of your own loss. He said: you've lost two children – a boy and a girl, and you've never stopped to grieve. You've never even admitted you've lost a child.

So I began to grieve, and the Lord showed me what to do. I went home to my wife, and I said to her: God's been speaking to me about our two miscarriages. Joy said: “Well God's been speaking to me too - I've been journaling about this. We had a boy and a girl; and I've given them names: Timothy and Catherine.”

I said: the Lord has shown me something we need to do for our family. So we had a family meal, like we always do, and Joy put two beautiful orchids on the table. Then we had our meal, and we shared with the children. I said: “You know that we have seven children in our family. Well actually, there are nine - there are another two in heaven”.

An interesting thing happened - the two children who came after the miscarriages, both began to weep, and they were really deep sobs. I realised that they had picked up a grief in their spirit; even though in their mind, they did not know we had lost two children. There was grief that my wife carried; and they knew in their spirit that they had lost a brother and a sister, and there was a grief in their heart. The spirit of grief had come around them.

So the grief my wife carried over her loss, was transferred to the next two children. So we laid our hands on them and prayed for them. For the other children, this wasn't an issue at all - it was just the two following the miscarriage. This opened our eyes, that a child in the womb can feel the feelings and the grief of the mother. That when a child is miscarried, and the mother feels the grief - if the grief isn't resolved, then the next children pick up the grief. That was quite a revelation to us.

We did get a tremendous insight: that when you've lost children to a miscarriage, it's important to identify who they are. Not just some ‘thing' we've lost. For me, it was like my wife lost something - like a tooth. Painful; but it's just something that happens. I didn't get a hold in my heart that I've lost a child; that as a father, one of my children had been taken away.

So I realised that when there are miscarriages, and also when there are abortions - there's a real grief left. One of the ways of processing the grief, I'll tell you a bit more about it later, is to identify what each child is; and to give them a name; and to release them to the Lord. Then it's not just some “thing” that happened, some “thing” I lost - some piece of tissue. It's actually a real living spirit being, whose body never developed, whose house did not last, and they had to leave. My wife put it this way, so beautifully: “It's a rose that budded, but never bloomed”. So over the years, we've prayed for many people, and helped them in this area.

Now, here's the second part of the testimony: earlier on this year I was in Singapore, and as I was in Singapore, I was teaching about encounters with God. We had a worship team, and we were ministering just to the worship team, to help them have encounters with God.

Now previously to this, the two children we had who had suffered grief, one day after church, said this to us - each independently. They said: we saw into heaven today in the meeting. We saw our brother and sister - and each of them saw that. It's like God opened heaven for them, and they saw the brother and sister they'd lost. Each of them saw the exact same thing, independently of each other; and they were really excited, and were able to describe them!

I must admit - I was a bit jealous; but this year, I was teaching on how to have encounters with God. So I taught people how to focus on Jesus, allow your imagination to see him as the word of God describes him, and begin to reach out in your heart to him. In other words, I was meditating on Jesus. All these other young people were having encounters with God; and I just felt that instead of leading the meeting, I should press in myself.

So I began to meditate on Jesus - I wasn't thinking about anything else. Suddenly, I became in the Spirit; and instead of seeing Jesus, the Holy Spirit revealed to me two people: a young man, and a young woman. It was a shock to me - I didn't expect to see that. They both spoke to me, and said: “Hello Dad”. I was just shocked! They said: “We've got so many things to tell you, about what happens in heaven”. Then I became aware of Jesus standing next to me - He was carrying a little baby in his arms. I realised that child was the grandchild we miscarried in December. Then suddenly I saw another little child, and he said: “hello Granddad”. I could recognise the facial features, and knew which of my children had lost this child.

My attention came around to my son and daughter, and I began to look at them; Jesus was right next to me. They began to talk to me, and said: we want to show you something. Suddenly my eyes opened up. I could see this huge immense vast area - full of children. They were all of different ages; from babies to a little bit older. There were so many that I couldn't count them – vast numbers. They said: these are children that have been miscarried or aborted; there's a special place in heaven for each of them, where angels look after them, and they're educated and grow up.

I realised then, that the size of my grandchild was about the proper age for the one I'd lost. I realised the age of my children were about the right age for when we lost them. As I looked around, at all of these children who had been miscarried or aborted; I realised that God was showing me something else. The ones He was showing me were all Chinese. I was quite shocked!

Then Jesus spoke to me, He had absolutely no condemnation towards anyone at all, I could just feel His love. This is what He said: “Every one of them has a mother, who is grieving over their child, and I want to bring healing to those mothers.” He didn't say anything about what they'd done. He just said: “I love them, and want to help them, because they're grieving”. He said: I want you to begin to study and prepare in this area. I want you to put some materials on DVD, and speak in China. My heart was deeply touched, not just from seeing all the children, but feeling the grief of the mothers. I could feel the heart of Jesus - His immense grief.

Recently we were up in China, and someone came to me privately. I couldn't believe it - they said they'd had an abortion. “Can you help me”, they said. God dramatically ministered and brought healing to this couple. It was like each place I went to after that, there would always be someone who'd come and ask us if we could pray for them.

So I felt I'd share some things about this here – have to start somewhere. I want to share some things from scripture - some basic keys we've learnt that could help. I want to establish that from God's point of view, a child is a living person, with a destiny - even if they're still in the womb. Sometimes people think that, because the child is in the womb: 1) it doesn't understand anything; and 2) that it's not a person - it's just a ‘thing', and often inconvenient.

I want to show you several scriptures quickly, to show you God's point of view. In Judges 13, you'll find something about Samson. Here is the common thread: that before a child is conceived, God already knows them and their characteristics, and has a destiny for their life. So no matter what stage the child is at in the womb, from God's point of view, it is a living person, with a destiny - a person He knows.

Judges 13:2-5 says: There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had borne no children. Then the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman, saying: “Behold now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. “Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. “For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”

Notice these things: before the child is conceived, God already knows it's a son. Secondly, God has a plan that this son will deliver Israel. Thirdly, it's very important how the mother conducted herself while she's pregnant. In other words, God is concerned about negative influences coming in to the unborn child. So you see, in this passage, that before a child is even conceived, God knows the child, and knows its destiny.

1 Kings 13:1-2 says – By the word of the Lord a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. By the word of the Lord he cried out against the altar: “Altar, altar! This is what the Lord says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.'”

The nation is corrupt and full of idolatry. God sends a prophet to warn them. This is what He said: “I am going to bring a child into this world. His name will be called Josiah, and he is going to be a major mover in bringing restoration to the nation”. Do you know how long after that prophecy was given until Josiah came? 360 years! In other words, 360 years before this man appeared, before he was conceived, before he was born - God named him even! God had a name for him, and had a destiny for him.

360 years later, when these parents had this child, they wouldn't have remembered that prophecy. All they did was have a thought come to them: “Let's name this child Josiah”. They didn't even realise, as they named him Josiah, that they were fulfilling something that God had already planned. God had a destiny for that child. 360 years ago, the parents weren't even alive. God could look through time, and say: in 360 years time, there's going to be a couple. The father would be a very corrupt man, but in spite of that fact - that he's a Satan worshipper - I will bring into that family, a child who will change the nation. His name will be called Josiah. You notice again, God has names for children; has destinies for them; and knows them before they're even conceived.

Let's look at another one in Jeremiah 1:4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” How amazing! God says: He forms the child in the womb. He said: before the embryo or foetus was formed, I knew who was going to be in there. In other words - you're a spirit being, and even though the house you're going to live in isn't formed, I know who you are. I know all about you, and I've already set you apart. I already have a destiny for you. Even before you have formed enough that your mother knows anything, I have formed my spirit into you, and you will be a prophet to the nations.

You notice again that even before the child is properly formed, God knows the child, and has a destiny for them. Isn't this amazing? Isaiah 49:1 tells us the same thing. Isaiah was also known to the Lord before he was formed in the womb.

In Psalm 139:16, David says: “Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed; and in your book were written all the days that were fashioned for me, when yet there are none.” What David is saying is this: when I was a tiniest embryo, just conceived, and I wasn't even formed -You saw me. Not only that, it says: ‘in your book, were written all the days of my life, when I hadn't even begun one of them yet'. In other words, what he's saying is that God saw him as a human being, as a spirit being, as a person with a destiny, and ascribed a course for him, before he was even born.

So these scriptures seem to indicate very strongly that before we're even conceived, God knows we're coming; and at the moment we're conceived, the Spirit of God goes into the child. Even though it's unformed, God loves that child. God has a destiny for that child, even if the child's born into difficult family circumstances.

Josiah was born into a family where the father was a Satanist, but God still had a destiny for him. How amazing that God would see an unborn child like this; see the child in the womb as a living being – with a name, with a destiny, with a life planned out. This is truly amazing.

Over and over in the Bible, we find God speaking about children before they're born. Zachariah and Elizabeth – Elizabeth was barren, and God spoke to Zachariah and said: “You know your wife is barren, she can't have any children”. He said: “I know that”. God said: “You're going to have children. You're going to have a child.” He said: “She's too old for that – how is this going to happen?” He argued with God, but God said “No more arguing. You'll have a child – he is going to be a prophet, and will prepare the way of the Lord”. The Bible is very clear – that God sees people before they're conceived and born, and He has a plan for their life, long before they come out of the womb.

Matthew 1:21 – “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Same thing again - before the child is even conceived, God knows the child, knows the name, has a destiny for that child.

How about you? Have a look in Ephesians 2:10, I want you to notice something – “Now you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for a purpose, for good works, that God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them”. So what it tells us is that each person is a unique work of God. Each of us is a unique manufacture of God. There's no one like you - your fingerprints are unique, your DNA is unique, everything about you is unique. Before you were born, God had a path for you to walk. It says: you were created for something - for good works. Before you were begun, God had a plan, that you'd do something useful in your life. Amen.

Have a look at the second thing, in Luke 1:39-44. The first thing we need to look at, is that God knows us before we're born. He knows our name; knows what we will be like; and He's interested in us while we're in the womb; and has a purpose for our life.

Let's have a look at the child in the womb. I was reading a secular book recently, and they have done a lot of research more recently with ultrasonic scans of infants in the womb. Prior to this, for about 100 years, people believed that the identity was in the brain – personality, understanding, awareness. But they found an interesting thing, once they started to do these experiments. If the personality and identity and feelings are in the brain, the conclusion that they came to, is that if the brain is not developed, then it is not really a person, so you can get rid of it.

But in the Bible, it's quite different. Recent research shows quite clearly, that it's the heart that develops before the brain. The Bible tells us, that out of your heart is where life flows. Also recent research has shown that the child in the womb is very aware of what's happening around it, even before the mind is developed. This was a secular book, and the conclusion he came to after lots of research, was that an unborn child in the womb is totally aware of what's happening around them, even if the brain isn't fully formed.

In other words - it's a person. The guy came to the conclusion, that there must be some sixth sense that enables the child to know things, when their brain isn't developed enough, and neither was their hearing. He was talking about their spirit - that the spirit of the child recognises what is happening around them. He discovers they could recognise the voice of the father and the mother; recognise conflict; and could understand what was happening around them. This is partly the reason for the Hebrew culture, that once the woman is pregnant, she would go into hiding for quite some months in a peaceful location, so the child could be at peace and rest during the formation stages in the womb. So this is modern research.

Now let's read what the Bible says. In Luke 1:39, it says: “At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth.” Now Elizabeth is six months pregnant, and the baby is not yet fully formed. Now look at this - it said: “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” Who says the baby in the womb doesn't know what's going on? See, Elizabeth was very pregnant; door opens up and Mary was there; and Mary begins to prophesise and flow with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth is listening to all the words, and the baby is picking up the prophetic flow! The baby goes: “yay!” and kicks, huge kick - full of joy, because this is his destiny – to be a prophet for the Messiah. This is his destiny - right from in the womb. He knows there's something for him, and as soon as he feels the Holy Ghost, he leaps; massive kicks.

So this is something they've only discovered, recently: that the child in the womb is aware of spiritual influences; but it's written in the Bible 2000 years ago. So children in the womb are aware of the environment around them. They're aware of the presence of God; they're aware of the mother and what she feels; they're aware of the father; they're aware of the environment.

Now the reason I've taken a bit of time to share these things, is because I want to talk about the impact when an abortion takes place. The Bible's very clear, when we look from one end to the other, that the devil is hostile to children. From the book of Genesis (Genesis 3:15) it says the devil is hostile to children, because of a promise God made: that through children being born out of women, a saviour would be born.

So when we look right through Bible history, we find demonic attacks on the child - either in the womb, or just born. In the days of Exodus, just before there was a great deliverance, all the male children under two were killed. In the days after King David, Athaliah killed all the royal children but one. In the days of Jesus, the spirit of murder came through Herod, and murdered all the children under two.

The devil has constantly been against children. The womb is an area of conflict. When miscarriages take place, something God intended for good is suddenly stopped. When abortion takes place, the life of a child is taken. Something wrong has happened, and there is a huge impact. I want to talk a little bit about the impact, because as we've prayed for people, we have realised that many people are suffering, but they cannot understand why they were suffering.

The Bible describes a number of reasons why miscarriages take place. But it does lay out this – that God's plan is no miscarriages and that the womb would be fruitful. So when we look at scriptures, we find that miscarriages came because of idolatry. Sometimes they came because of a curse in the family line. Sometimes it was because of incest in the family. Sometimes it was because people were involved in evil spirits.

I won't go into all the scriptures regarding that, but the Bible is very clear that God's intention is that we be productive. So when miscarriages happen, there can be a spiritual cause, or there can be just a natural, physical cause. When we enquired about the last miscarriage, one of my daughters got a word from God that the brain had not formed properly, and that my daughter and her husband had been spared years of grief. Sometimes there's a physical problem, because we live in a fallen world. Sometimes there's a spiritual problem; and sometimes it can be because the mother has made inner vows never to have a child.

Whatever the cause, the result is grief. When a mother carries a child in her womb, and loses the child, there is a deep grief and sense of loss. Men can't easily understand it - that a woman's life is wrapped up with the child, who is drawing life from her body. So when there's a loss, there's a great grief.

I want to focus on the impact of an abortion. Sometimes when we're counselling people, if you don't get to the root of the problem, you can never solve the problem. As I researched this area, I began to find that everywhere, they came up with the same conclusions – in order for a woman to have an abortion, she must somehow distance herself that this is a real person. Either the doctor informs her: it's nothing, and it's just a medical procedure; or because of fear, or difficulties in the physical situation, she just doesn't want to acknowledge what's happening.

One of the core issues is the denial this is a human being. Once the mother has denied that it is a human being, then it's just a physical operation like having your tooth pulled. However, that is not the truth.

Here are some of the things that are commonly attributed now, to someone having an abortion. These are widely-known symptoms, known as post-abortion trauma syndrome. Let me list them for you; and then we'll show how people can be set free. Surveys done on people indicated these kind of issues. I'll just list them without explaining them too much.

1) Shame – they'll feel shame and secrecy coupled with low personal-esteem.

2) Deep feelings of guilt – just guilt that would not go away.

3) Depression – often bouts of depression, sadness and crying, but no apparent reason. Because remember, if you've concealed the truth with a lie; if you've refused to accept this was a life that was taken; then you won't understand why you're so sad. If it wasn't anything - how could I be sad about it?

4) Suicidal thinking and attempts.

5) Issues with self-hate.

6) Issues with sleep disorders.

7) Flashbacks - the woman suddenly remembers the trauma, and goes back into shock and grief.

8) A strong desire for replacement babies; unconsciously wanting a baby, to make up for the baby that was lost. What's called “anniversary syndrome” - on the date of the abortion or the date the child was to be born, the mother begins to become depressed and weep, but usually doesn't know why.

9) Another thing is trying to atone, by spoiling the other children.

10) Alcohol or drug problems.

11) Self-punishing behaviour – I deserve to be punished, which could be self-harm (cutting), abusive relationships, or promiscuity.

12) It can be physical problems – constant bleeding, or constant miscarriages.

13) Often there's a deep guilt – I survived, but at the cost of my child. These are terrible feelings that people have.

I had a woman come to me for prayer recently, and I said to her: “What is your problem?” She said: “I have been bleeding for about 12 years. We desperately want children but cannot have any”. I said: “Have you ever had an abortion?” She said: “Yes. I had 4”. I said to the lady, in the spirit of love, “You actually have a family of 4 children, but they're all in heaven - and your actions have brought this about. When they told you this was a simple procedure - they lied. Actually, it's caused you this problem you now have. You and your husband are without a child to hold, because the ones you could've held, you've now lost”.

She just began to weep and weep. We shared with her that God loved her, and would forgive her; so she was restored to the Lord, and her heart was healed. I'll show you exactly how, shortly. My prayer is that the next time I'm there, she'll have a baby. I was at City Harvest this year, and a lady came up with a husband and a little baby. She said: “You must see our little baby - it's a miracle baby. It was 12 months since you were last here. We had a very bad first child, very difficult pregnancy, and I made an inner vow that I'd never have another child. So, every time I get pregnant, I lose the child through miscarriage. I realised when I went through your teaching, that I made an inner vow. I renounced the inner vow, and asked God to bless my womb - 3 months later I'm pregnant, and here's our little baby.” Actually it was short of 3 months, it was around 1 month.

So you see again, the spiritual connection to problems in the life. So, one of the issues that we have found, is that many problems women suffer with - they can't trace it back to the abortion, because they've pretended that nothing really happened. I want to share very quickly the path to get free.

Jeremiah 31:15 says: “Rachel, weeping for her children, unable to be comforted, because they are no more.” So how can we get free? For someone who is in this situation, the first step is to turn to Jesus Christ. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” So whatever you're suffering from, Jesus is able to save and heal you.

So we see then, the consequences of abortion are far bigger than we realise. They affect the mother; spirits are imparted to the womb that affect the next children; the family are affected; the man who was the father has lost his child; the grandparents have lost a grandchild; and siblings born after that are affected by the trauma.

I remember one lady brought her child to me. I said: “What's the problem?” She said: “My child will not bond and breast feed. In fact, as soon as I put him on the breast, he begins to scream. What can we do?” I said, “You didn't by any chance, try and abort this child did you?” She said: “Yes.” I said: “Is it surprising that the child is afraid of you? It senses the spirit of murder - it's not going to bond to someone who tried to destroy it”. She was shocked! She asked Jesus to forgive her, I prayed for the mother and child, and the child bonded. As soon as the child was delivered from the spirit of fear and murder, immediately it started to bond - it was a huge impact.

So let's have a look at how to get free. There are three areas: spiritual issues; emotional issues; and relationship issues. The answer is incredibly simple - it's very easy for you to move out of the place of death to life.

1) We need to face the spiritual issues. So the first thing is to face the truth: this is what I did - I took the life of my child. Most mothers only do it because they're under such pressure and stress - pressure from the boyfriend or husband; pressure from the family; pressure from circumstances; but nevertheless - they must take responsibility.

The first key to being set free is to break the lie. Isaiah 28 it tells us that when we cover ourselves up with a lie, we are in covenant with death and hell. So the first step is to face the truth: I had a child, and I've taken the life of my child. Just facing the truth hugely breaks open this problem.

2) You need to repent and confess it to the Lord. You need to actually come with words to the Lord. 1 John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us”. So God has already forgiven us - all you need to do, is position yourself to receive it.

3) The third area is forgiveness. Firstly the person must receive forgiveness - I am forgiven by God; secondly, they must forgive themselves; and thirdly, they must forgive other people. Often, the woman may be very angry at the man; very angry at the father; or very angry at the parents; or very angry at the people who did the procedures; angry at the friends who encouraged her to do it. There can be a lot of anger and grief - and that needs to be faced, and let go of - by forgiveness. Forgiveness is the way we resolve those things; and then deliverance from the demonic spirits.

Confession; release forgiveness; and deliverance from those spirits. And in a moment we'll pray for people to be set free. There's another area that's also needed. This is what we found to be extremely helpful. I have seen people break and weep when we've just taken this step: Ask the Lord - what is this child? Jesus knows, God knows your child - Is this a boy or a girl? Listen to your heart, and God will tell you; just like that.

The next thing to do is to give it a name and an identity. So we're breaking the lie by giving it an identity. We'll ask them, could you name your child. You know how hard it is to name children. You spend days working out a name for a child; but I found that in this kind of process, I've come to the conclusion that God's already named them - I just need to listen to the name. So ask the Lord: what is the name of my child I've lost? Or just rise up and give your child a name.

This lady that had the four abortions, I said: ask the Lord to show you what they were. And she said quite quickly “girl, boy, boy, girl”. I said: now let's give them names. All were named within the space of a couple of minutes. Now, she began to grieve - she started to be aware of her children.

I said, “Now the next step is to release your children to the Lord. See Jesus standing there, and pass your children to Him. Here's what you know: one day you'll see your children again.” So sometimes we pray a little prayer: Jesus, I release my child to You. I release her into your arms. Please tell her I'm so sorry for what I did, and I'm looking forward to meeting her again - a very simple prayer.

But you notice, all it has done is removed all the lie, and bring it down to the truth. Often there's a lot of grief, pain and emotions. Sometimes there are other broken relationships to repair. The path to freedom is very simple.

Of course, if the person's had a miscarriage, there's no sin to confess usually; unless there's some generational cause. But I have found it helpful, every time, to close your eyes and open your heart to the Lord. Ask Him to show you what the child was, and tell you the name. Now, it's not a thing - it's a person; and you'll see your child again. That is the hope of the gospel – the child is in heaven.

So whenever you speak to Jesus, you're speaking to someone who is speaking to your child. Leave your child is Jesus' hands, because one day you'll see them again. I have seen so many people set free, so many broken hearts healed. What a relief to have the secrecy, shame, and lies broken, and a broken heart healed, by faith in Jesus Christ.

A very simple thing to do, and I believe God wants to touch many. Let's close our eyes. I want you to know how much God loves you. Jesus came into this earth, God in the flesh. He showed us what heaven is like, He showed us the kingdom of God, and he invited us to connect with Him. We're all born in sin, separated from God, we can't even find God's way; but Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He rose again from the dead; broke the power of sin. Jesus said these words: to everyone who received Him, made Him welcome, believed in Him, He gave power to become a child of God.

Healing From Abortion (1 of 4)

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Healing From Abortion (2 of 4)

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Healing From Abortion (3 of 4)

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Healing From Abortion (4 of 4)

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The Silent Scream (Bernard Nathanson)

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Dr. Bernard Nathanson's classic video that shocked the world. He explains the procedure of a suction abortion, followed by an actual first trimester abortion as seen through ultrasound. The viewer can see the child's pathetic attempts to escape the suction curette as her heart rate doubles, and a "silent scream" as her body is torn apart.

A great tool to help people see why abortion is murder. The most important video on abortion ever made. This video changed opinion on abortion to many people.

Introduction by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, host. Describes the technology of ultrasound and how, for the first time ever, we can actually see inside the womb. Dr. Nathanson further describes the ultrasound technique and shows examples of babies in the womb. Three-dimensional depiction of the developing fetus, from 4 weeks through 28 weeks. Display and usage of the abortionists' tools, plus video of an abortionist performing a suction abortion.

Dr. Nathanson discusses the abortionist who agreed to allow this abortion to be filmed with ultrasound. The abortionist was quite skilled, having performed more than 10,000 abortions. We discover that the resulting ultrasound of his abortion so appalled him that he never again performed another abortion.

The clip begins with an ultrasound of the fetus (girl) who is about to be aborted. The girl is moving in the womb; displays a heartbeat of 140 per minute; and is at times sucking her thumb. As the abortionist's suction tip begins to invade the womb, the child rears and moves violently in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a "silent scream." The child's heart rate speeds up dramatically (to 200 beats per minute) as she senses aggression. She moves violently away in a pathetic attempt to escape the instrument. The abortionist's suction tip begins to rip the baby's limbs from its body, ultimately leaving only her head in the uterus (too large to be pulled from the uterus in one piece). The abortionist attempts to crush her head with his forceps, allowing it to be removed.

In an effort to "dehumanize" the procedure, the abortionist and anesthesiologist refer to the baby's head as "number 1." The abortionist crushes "number 1" with the forceps and removes it from the uterus. Abortion statistics are revealed, as well as who benefits from the enormously lucrative industry that has developed. Clinics are now franchised, and there is ample evidence that many are controlled by organized crime.

Women are victims, too. They haven't been told about the true nature of the unborn child or the facts about abortion procedures. Their wombs have been perforated, infected, destroyed, and sterilized. All as a result of an operation about which they they have had no true knowledge.

Films like this must be made part of "informed consent." NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood are accused of a conspiracy of silence, of keeping women in the dark about the reality of abortion.

Finally, Dr. Nathanson discusses his credentials. He is a former abortionist, having been the director of the largest clinic in the Western world.

Freedom Evangelistic Messages

自由福音讯息

自由福音訊息

Stand-alone messages on Deliverance & Healing, ending with an opportunity for people to respond to Jesus Christ, and be saved and delivered from tormenting spirits and sicknesses.

The power of God touched many people during these sessions - hundreds gave their lives to Christ and experienced Deliverance/Healing.

Expect the presence and power of God to touch you as you listen to these powerful messages.

一系列的消息：拯救（驱魔）和治疗，有机会为人们应对耶稣基督，并予以保存，并交付从折磨精神和病痛的结局。

神的力量在这些会议上感动了很多人 - 数百人选择了他们的生命服从基督，体验解脱/治疗。

期待神的存在和力量，你听这些强大的邮件碰你。

一系列的消息：拯救（驅魔）和治療，有機會為人們應對耶穌基督，並予以保存，並交付從折磨精神和病痛的結局。

神的力量在這些會議上感動了很多人 - 數百人選擇了他們的生命服從基督，體驗解脫/治療。

期待神的存在和力量，你聽這些強大的郵件碰你。

Spirit of Divination (1 of 12)

Acts 16:16 tells a story about a woman who was tormented by an evil spirit - a python spirit, or spirit of divination. Many people came to her city, a centre of Arts, wanting to know their future, and she made a lot of money for her owners by fortune-telling. What is the source of this power? How does it gain access to our lives? What does the Bible say about our destiny? How can we be set free?

由占卜的灵中得自由

由占卜的靈中得自由

The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12)

In Numbers 21, the children of Israel became bitter in their heart and started complaining against Moses. Their sin released fiery serpents which bit the people and released poison into their system. Their was only one remedy for the bite of the serpent - fixing their eyes, with faith in their heart, on God's provision.The same power is available to you today -the power of the cross for curses.

由蛇咬中得自由

由蛇咬中得自由

Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12)

In Exodus 15, we follow the journey of God's people who came out of the slavery of Egypt to the promised land. When they met difficult circumstances we see what was in their heart - all the "fruit" of bitterness. If the fruit is there, the root is there. Test yourself. Do you think like a slave or a son? We can focus on injustice and choose to be bitter, or respond to God's provision and embrace grace.

由苦毒中得自由

由苦毒中得自由

Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12)

In Malachi 4 God prophetically declared the condition on the earth in our time - breakdown in family relationships, destruction and broken-hearts. The problem lies in our heart. We don't have to live out of disappointment and pain. God wants to heal the broken-hearted and TURN our hearts. We can resolve issues of the heart. King David and his wife Michal both suffered injustice from King Saul, but their heart response determined their destiny. Discover powerful keys for accessing God's promises and blessing. It's not automatic, it requires a response.

尊榮你的父親母親

尊榮你的父親母親

Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12)

Jn 1:29 "Behold - the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world" has little meaning for people today, but for the Israelites who applied the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts (Ex.12) it was tremendously significant. When the destroyer saw the blood, they were protected, and 430 years of slavery finished. Jesus is God's provision for our sinfulness, and His blood still speaks. Get a fresh revelation of the power of the blood of Jesus for your freedom.

門柱旁的血

門柱旁的血

Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12)

In 1 Kings 19 we find Elijah had yielded to fear and intimidation, and drawn back from his God-given assignment. We then get one of those "God Questions". He knows the answer, but wanted Elijah to think about where he was at, to recognize his distorted thinking, and to get back to his assignment, which included raising up others to fulfill the ministry. What are you doing here? Elijah had chosen to yield to fear, withdraw from his assignment, sit down, become passive and isolate at the crucial point when he needed to press forward. Sound familiar? Learn to recognize the signs of pressure.

由洞穴中得自由

由洞穴中得自由

Hope After Loss (7 of 12)

The widow of Nain ( Luke 7 ) was in a place of great grief and without hope for her future, no-one could comfort her. Maybe you too are locked into grief feeling numb and disconnected. Our God is a God of comfort, and a God of all hope. Set-backs are not the end. Let Christ in - He is able to breathe into a place of death, and bring life and fresh vision. Jesus still works miracles, and restores a broken heart.

損失之後的盼望

損失之後的盼望

Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12)

In John 5 , Jesus likens us to sheep - this message gives several ways this is true! One similarity is that sometimes sheep are "cast", lying down, unable to move, unable to function. If we are lying down we may have many excuses, feel a victim, and be waiting for something to happen. However, like the man in this story, who had been waiting 38 years for help, we need to answer this same question Jesus asked: Do you want to be made whole? We have the power of choice - to receive Jesus and have the power of sin broken.

再造全新的我

再造全新的我

Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12)

Sometimes an area of our life has become "withered", or without life, just like the man in Mark 3, who had a withered hand. We tend to conceal, or hide in shame, when we feel like this. To restore the man in the story, Jesus required 2 "action steps": 1) Bring the problem right out into the open 2) A stretch of faith - doing what Jesus asks us to do. The healing is "in the stretch"!

伸出手得醫治

伸出手得醫治

Spiritual Blindness (10 of 12)

The Bible describes 2 kingdoms - the kingdom of "light" (Jesus), and the kingdom of darkness (devil). The Bible also describes several spiritual problems in the heart which cause spiritual blindness - hatred, pride, bitter offences. Blindness speaks of limitations and captivity. In Mark 10, a blind man called Bartimaeus obtained his healing. What did he do that caused Jesus to stop and respond to him? What did he believe about Jesus? How did he demonstrate faith? His encounter can be a doorway to your encounter!

屬靈的眼盲

属灵的眼盲

Freedom from Divination (11 of 12)

God promises to direct our steps, as we trust Him and listen to His voice. Many people, fearful about the future, pay money to a fortune-teller to receive information (divination). They prostitute themselves with evil spirits - they pay money for information and receive a spirit into their body. Lev 20:6 warns of the dangers of this. We are not made for evil spirits. If you have opened your life up, you can be set free - like the girl in Acts 16:16

由占卜中得自由

由占卜中得自由

Healing from Abortion and Miscarriage (12 of 12)

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and demonic bondage which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day! Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

由堕胎流产中得医治

由墮胎流產中得醫治

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Spirit of Divination (1 of 12).mp3

- The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12).mp3

- Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12).mp3

- Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12).mp3

- Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12).mp3

- Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12).mp3

- Hope After Loss (7 of 12).mp3

- Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12).mp3

- Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12).mp3

- Spiritual Blindness (10 of 12).mp3

- Freedom from Divination (11 of 12).mp3

- Healing from Abortion and Miscarriage (12 of 12).mp3

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- Spirit of Divination (1 of 12).mp4

- The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12).mp4

- Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12).mp4

- Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12).mp4

- Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12).mp4

- Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12).mp4

- Hope After Loss (7 of 12).mp4

- Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12).mp4

- Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12).mp4

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- Freedom from Divination (11 of 12).mp4

- Healing from Abortion and Miscarriage (12 of 12).mp4

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- Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12).mp4

- Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12).mp4

- Hope After Loss (7 of 12).mp4

- Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12).mp4

- Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12).mp4

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Spirit of Divination (1 of 12)

Fri 4th Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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Acts 16:16 tells a story about a woman who was tormented by an evil spirit - a python spirit, or spirit of divination. Many people came to her city, a centre of Arts, wanting to know their future, and she made a lot of money for her owners by fortune-telling. What is the source of this power? How does it gain access to our lives? What does the Bible say about our destiny? How can we be set free?

Let’s open the Bible up to Acts 16. We’ll read from verse 16.

”Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” 18 And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour.”

So, the Bible tells us very clearly that Jesus came to set people free. This is a story about a woman tormented by an evil spirit. It was in a particular place in Greece where they worshipped the god Apollo. It was the centre of the creative arts and in that place, there was the practice of divination. Another word for divination means fortune-telling. It means consulting spirits to try and find your future. So, there was a special temple there in this place.

There was what they called the oracle of Delphi. There was a woman who used to prophesy using demonic spiritual power. People would come to her and they would pay money in order to be able to get their fortunes told. This was a very famous city. People came from all around to try and find out what their future held. When there were major decisions to be made in business or in arts or in drama, they would come there. They would pay money in order to discover words about their future.

This is very common today. We want to know what the future holds. We want to know whether our life will be blessed. We want to know about tomorrow. We want to know about things in the future. This hunger for the future, hunger to know what’s ahead is found in all cultures. The Bible tells us our life is in God’s hands.

In Ephesians 2:10 it says: “God has planned works for us to accomplish with our life”. You are not an accident. You were born into this world by God’s design. There may have been difficulties in your family. You may have been born unexpectedly. Maybe you weren’t what your parents expected. The Bible says, God had a destiny, a plan, something for you to do with your life. Long before you were ever thought of, God was thinking of you.

There are many examples in the Bible where God reveals He knew about people before they even turned up in the earth. For example, Jeremiah 1:5 – God says to Jeremiah, “While you were in the womb, I formed you and ordained you to be a prophet to nations.” So while he was still in the womb, barely conceived, God saw a prophet. God had a destiny for him, and called him into that destiny.

In the Old Testament there’s another king by the name of Josiah. Would you realise this, that over 600 years before he was born, a prophet prophesied one day there’ll be a king called Josiah who will be a restorer of the nation and he’ll overcome all of these idols and alters. So, 600 years before he was born, God knew he was coming, knew his name, knew where he’d be born, and had a plan for him.

You go back into Genesis; God prophesied to Adam and Eve that there would be a saviour coming into the world called Jesus Christ. That’s 4000 years before He came. The Bible has many prophesies that were fulfilled in Jesus. In other words, God looks ahead and sees your life. He has a plan for your life and no matter what happens in your life, if you have faith in your heart to Him, He is able to use even the negatives for good in your life.

Now, if we don’t have a relationship with God, then we have no certainty about our future. So, people turn to divination. God hates divination; calls it spiritual prostitution. We are not made to connect with evil spirits, we’re made for relationship with God. So when we go to be involved in divination, we make contact not with God, but with an evil spirit.

That’s what’s happening with this girl. She had a spirit of divination. Today we’d call her a psychic. You would go pay money to have your reading. But, the source of power was an evil spirit. She had a spirit like a python wrapped all around her. Interestingly, the name of the goddess that was the one who prophesied was called Pythia, meaning python. There were lots of people that operated with this spirit. So they would go and pay money to the girl, and she had a spirit wrapped around her.

Evil spirits do not know your future. The devil cannot see ahead and know your future. Only God can do that. Isn’t it much better we trust in God and walk with Him, than we reach out to evil spirits? So, people in the entertainment industry, people in business, people in finance, people in government, would go there before they made any major decisions. When they exchanged money, they were trading with an evil spirit; opening their life for the spirit to now have power over them.

Did the demon know their future? Not at all. But there’s something like a demonic internet. The demons watch people. So, the demon can speak and say things about your life that you already know because they observe people. If you go to a fortune teller, go to a psychic, then you won’t connect just with the person, you’ll connect with an evil spirit. They tell you things about yourself which are true because spirits are watching you. But if you were to begin to believe the words they tell you, you will give them power over your life.

So, this woman, when she saw Paul, begins to follow Him. She began to cry: “These are the servants of the most high God. They’re showing the way of salvation.” She was telling the truth. She was actually speaking what was reality because the demons could see it. But her presence and the spirit around her was incredibly irritating. A python traps people by crushing them. Slowly wrapping itself around people, and then squeezing the life out of them.

So, when people go to be involved in divination, they get addicted to going and they can’t make decisions unless they consult. Steadily, they’re giving up power over their life to an evil spirit. Gradually, it wraps itself around the person and then begins to crush their life, destroy their hopes. This young woman had the spirit and one day, Paul turned, and the Bible says he confronted the spirit. He spoke directly to the spirit, commanded it in the name of Jesus Christ to come out, and the demon unwrapped from the woman, and left her, and she was set free.

Now, notice her life changed. No longer was the spirit wrapped around her squeezing her life. No longer did she have voices speaking into her ears. No longer did she have power to know what was going on in people’s lives. When the presence of the spirit left her, the power to talk to people and tell their fortune went with it. Evil spirits don’t know their future, but if you will consult and listen to them, you’ll open your life up and they’ll begin to influence your future.

God calls us to have relationship with Him. Calls us into a relationship of trust, of walking with God in life. Trusting Him, believing that a loving God who loves us deeply, has only the best plans for us. God doesn’t tell you all His plans, but He does write desires and dreams in your heart. He does speak to you and confirm what He wants, and as you choose to walk by faith, He begins to unravel His plan for your life.

It always starts with the first step – the step to receive Jesus Christ. A step away from sin. A step away from a life without God, and a step towards the living God. God wants some of you here tonight to make that step. A step to respond to God’s kindness. A step to receive His love.

How did this woman come to have the spirit? How do these spirits get into people’s lives? Possibly, it was in her family. Maybe the family worshipped idols. Maybe the family was involved with spiritism. So the spirit came down the family. She was hearing the voices from when she’s very young. Having disturbing dreams. Seeing the spirit at night time.

I was over in a place called Fiji, and we were driving down the road and I saw a group of people in a park. I got interested because I thought I saw snakes. So I said, “Stop the car, let’s have a look.” So we went over, and an area was fenced off, and there were some people there with a mat and they had some snakes. They were playing with the snakes. We don’t have snakes in New Zealand, so this was new to me. I was interested. One of them came up to me and said: “Please don’t pray against us. We just came from Borneo, we want to earn some money. We don’t really want to harm anyone.”

I realised they were not just operating with snakes, they were actually sorcerers. They were diviners. They were using the snakes and they had power over them. They were operating under demonic power. I see them take some water and they got 3 volunteers, and they just threw the water on them and they literally fell down on the ground. Then they put a hood over their head and they did some kind of sorcery. Then, when they took the cover off their head, the person was tremendously frightened because when he looked at the sorcerer, he could see in place of the sorcerer’s head, a serpent. They were absolutely terrified. They had been charmed or come under the influence of an evil spirit. So, these powers are very real.

The Bible says: “It grieves the heart of God when we get involved in those things.” There’ll be some of you and your family have been involved with evil spirits; have been involved with divination or fortune-telling of some kind. They’ve opened the door for spirits to come and torment your lives. There’ll be some of you, and you’ve been involved in fortune-telling yourself. Maybe you’ve had a Ouija board with letters on it and a glass called up spirits. You have connected with the evil spirits. God wants to set you free. Or perhaps you’ve done other forms, or gone to a psychic, or gone to a medium. A medium is a person who has a familiar spirit, and the spirit speaks through them. Maybe in your life, you’ve sought out these fortune-tellers, and it grieves God.

God loves you, has a plan for your life, and it makes Him sad, it breaks His heart when we turn to evil spirits and becomes entangled with them. So, maybe the spirit came down the family line. Maybe she was dedicated to this idol. Or maybe she just opened her life to the spirit, invited it to come in. Perhaps she was involved in spiritism. Whatever it is, she opened her life to the spirit, and Jesus set her free.

The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12)

Sat 5 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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In Numbers 21, the children of Israel became bitter in their heart and started complaining against Moses. Their sin released fiery serpents which bit the people and released poison into their system. Their was only one remedy for the bite of the serpent - fixing their eyes, with faith in their heart, on God's provision.The same power is available to you today -the power of the cross for curses.

I want to read from the gospel of John. So the Bible reveals to us God’s plan to help us. It’s made up of two books – the Old Testament and the New Testament, who would set all people free. Now, we’ll read in verse 14 of John chapter 3, these wonderful verses. It starts with a picture and we’re going to look at the picture in a moment.

It says: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” So Jesus is speaking about a situation that happened hundreds of years before, with Moses in the wilderness with the people of Israel. He says it’s like a prophetic picture of his death on the cross.

So He says: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man – that’s Jesus, be lifted up so whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

You notice the heart of God. God doesn’t want you to perish, He wants you to be saved. The Bible’s very clear – the nature of God is love. God is a loving God. People have many different pictures of God. The picture you have of Him, what you believe about Him, will affect how you relate to Him. So, if you have distorted or wrong pictures of God, you won’t relate to Him properly.

The Bible says God loved the world. He loved the world this much, that He sent His son from heaven to come into the world to reveal what the kingdom of heaven is like, and to invite us to become part of that; to invite us back into relationship with God.

Jesus demonstrated God’s love in a number of ways. One, in His teaching. Two, in how He related to people. Three, in the miracles, the way He helped people overcome problems. But number four, most of all, by dying on the cross and then rising again from the dead. The fundamental problem that people have, is we are separated in our heart from God.

The Bible says – the consequences of that separation is death. So, Jesus came into this world to break the power of sin and to put His spirit or life into us again. We were designed to live in relationship with God. But separated from God, we just live out of our natural senses. God wants to change your life. Change your heart. Put His spirit inside you so you can live a different kind of life. God has no desire to judge you. He desires to set you free.

So whatever problem you have in your life, whatever bondage you have in your life, God does not blame you, does not condemn you. His desire is to help you. Jesus said – “I didn’t come to condemn people. I didn’t come to point out what is wrong. I came to save people.”

I want to show you a story in the Old Testament. The Old Testament contains many stories of people and their encounters with God. Sometimes we don’t understand spiritual matters easily. Sometimes we don’t understand things that are spiritual. So God gives many examples, many pictures in the Old Testament to help us understand spiritual things. So we’re going to look at a picture. We’re going to look at a story. We’re going to look at a real event. We’re going to show God’s love touching people. What God did to help them and what was required of people.

So, we look in Numbers chapter 21. We start in verse 4 and read through to verse 9.

“Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” 6 So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.

7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD that He take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”

Now God’s intention always, is great blessing. The people of Israel had been bondaged for 400 years. They served as slaves and the task masters were very hard on them. As a result of their difficult life, the people became very bitter and very weak. God sent Moses to deliver them. He heard their voice cry and He sent Moses to deliver them. God demonstrated His power in a great way and the people of God left Egypt and began a journey to receive an inheritance in Canaan. They had a season or a journey with some challenges.

This is very like us. Before we come to know Jesus Christ, we live in bondage to sin. We are a slave to sin. We just can’t help sinning. We also live under the influence of evil spirits. They afflict people with fears and torments and sickness. They torment people with addictions. They break people’s hearts. They cause all manner of problems to people.

When we come to receive Jesus Christ, God puts His spirit in our heart and He breaks the power. Breaks the power of sin. Breaks the power of the devil. But then, we have to choose how we will live our life.

In this story we just read, the people of God have had a major victory. God has helped them against their enemies. Every day God provides for them. Every day God protects them. In fact, every day they are living under the blessing of God.

But it said – the people complained. They complained because they were bitter in their heart. Whatever is in your heart will flow out into your life. What happened when the people came under pressure, is they began to complain bitterly. When bitterness gets in your heart, it will always come out under pressure. Complaining, criticising, negative speaking. The people complained against Moses. Moses has only tried to help them. They complained against God. They began to say – well, we’d be better off back there in bondage and we hate what God is providing.

So the people’s hearts were corrupt. The people did not see that God is a loving God. They could not see that God was with them. Their eyes were blinded to the goodness of God because of the bitterness and anger and unforgiveness in their heart. They had been deeply abused and hurt in Egypt.

God was showing them how to depend on Him. God was wanting to change them from being slaves into sons. God was wanting to change them from being victims into conquerors. But when the people bitterly complained, complaining releases demonic spirits. When they complained, serpents came and bit them.

Here’s the thing to understand – the serpents were always there in the wilderness. It’s just they had been protected by God from them. In the Bible, serpents are a picture of evil spirits. Jesus said – “I give you authority over serpents and scorpions and all the power of the earth.” Jesus wants us to have authority over evil spirits.

But when the people complained, when they rebelled, when their heart turned from God, and they began to do things that were wrong, the serpents were no longer restrained. The serpents now began to come into the camp. Suddenly they’d bite people. A person would go to lie down, suddenly a searing pain and he’s bit by a serpent. They go to pick up sticks, suddenly a hand is bitten by a serpent. Many many people, the Bible says, were bitten by serpents, and they died.

When you get bitten by a snake, there are two kinds of venom that they inject. They are different in the way they work. One kind of venom paralyses the system – all the nerves and muscles go into spasm and the person eventually goes into shock and dies. It’s a painful way to die. The other kind of venom begins to eat away the flesh. The body becomes toxic. The person goes into shock and dies. So the serpents bite was always fatal.

In the New Testament, Jesus encountered many people and they had demonic spirits living in their lives because they had broken the laws of God – idolatry and spiritism and sexual sin. Alcoholism, drugs. Demonic spirits were tormenting their lives. Jesus came to set them free.

So, the people had been bitten by the serpents. Then they began to figure it out –“We were doing fine, no serpents. Then we complained against God and Moses. Now we’re all getting bitten. We’ve obviously sinned.” So in this picture in this story here, you see the connection between sin, serpents, and death.

Whenever we sin, we give the devil access to our life, and the consequence of that sin is death. In the long term –physical death. In the short term – isolation, disconnection, problems in our lives. When people are wrestling with anger, it’s like a poison in their heart. When people are wrestling with lust, it’s like a poison in their heart. When people are wrestling with hatred, it’s like a poison inside them. They realise there was no remedy. Can you imagine how frightening it would be to live with serpents surround you, biting you, and there’s no remedy? Can you imagine how scary it would be to know that there are serpents waiting there to bite you and that there’s no remedy whatsoever.

The Bible is very clear – there is only one remedy for sin. There is only one remedy for demonic spirits. But most people don’t realise this. So what happened, is when the people connected, they had sin, and this is why they had a problem. They began to cry out. They said – “Moses help us. Moses, pray God will take the serpents away.” God heard Moses’ prayer.

I think Moses was very gracious. They’re complaining bitterly against him every day – then they come and say “Hey, the serpents are biting us. We’re so sorry. We’re so sorry we complained against you master. The serpent bites.” Moses could’ve said – “Well you got what you deserved.” But he prayed, he interceded. He had God’s heart for people.

God gave him an interesting instruction. He said – “Make a brass serpent, and put it up on a pole very high. Every time anyone’s bitten, this is what you’re going to do. You’ll have to, from wherever you are, you need to know you’re going to die unless you do one thing. You’re going to die. The poison is already working and there’s only one remedy – that’s to locate that brass serpent.

Can you imagine now, the panic someone had when they were bitten? “Ah! Maybe it will go away.” It’s not going to go away. There’s only one thing they can do. They had to find where the brass serpent was and look at it. Now, I want you to understand, it wasn’t kind of – “Oh yeah, there it is.” When the person is bitten, there’s only a short time before he dies. “Ahh! Where’s that serpent. Ah! There it is.” They’d be looking hard! They’d be giving it a good hard look. The Bible says – if you look on it, fix your attention on it with faith in your heart, the power of God will be released to you.

Now, it would’ve taken them no doubt, sometime of standing with their eyes fixed on the serpent, and then the power of God will be released. Now, can you imagine this – if you had been bitten by a serpent, and you’re starting to feel the pain. Now, what would you have done? If you don’t do something, you’re going to die.

There’s only one thing you can do – that’s to locate that serpent on that brass serpent. You would’ve fixed your gaze on that serpent. You would’ve fixed it in your gaze – “Don’t get in my way. Don’t get in my way! Don’t block my view!” I think it was probably up fairly high, so wherever you were, you could see it; and they would stand there looking. Just check and hold my hand up and see if it’s fixed. They would stand looking until they feel all the poison is gone. They feel the pain and the tingling go. “Thank You God. Your power has been released.”

Now, you understand this, the brass serpent had no power. It was just a focal point for their faith. Here’s what God wanted them to understand – that sin came into the world because of the serpent, and one day Jesus would come and He would be put up on a cross. You have to remember – this is hundreds of years before they ever invented crucifixion. The serpent was up on a pole.

God knew ahead of time that one day Jesus would come into this earth, and He would die a death on a cross which no one had ever heard of before, and when He died on the cross, the power of sin would be broken. The power of the serpent would be broken. The power of curses would be broken.

Colossians 2:14-15 – “When Jesus died on that cross, took the list of sins against us, cancelled it all, and disarmed the devil, broke the serpent’s power.” So God wanted them to understand that just as Moses lifted up the brass serpent, one day Jesus would go on a cross; and that every person who understood that sin was causing death in their life, if they looked to Jesus Christ with faith in their heart, the power of God would be released and they would be saved.

God so loved the world, He gave His only Son to die on the cross, that if we would believe in Him, that He died for my sins and rose again and conquered the power of sin, then the power of God would be released. Hallelujah. Come on, let’s give the Lord a clap, shall we? Thank You Lord. Thank You Jesus.

Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12)

Sat 5 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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In Exodus 15, we follow the journey of God's people who came out of the slavery of Egypt to the promised land. When they met difficult circumstances we see what was in their heart - all the "fruit" of bitterness. If the fruit is there, the root is there. Test yourself. Do you think like a slave or a son? We can focus on injustice and choose to be bitter, or respond to God's provision and embrace grace.

We’re going to look in Exodus chapter 15. We did a story out of the Old Testament just last session, it was a different one. A different one, but it’ll point to the same person – Jesus Christ. So, we’re going to read in Exodus 15: 22-26.

“22So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water.” A desert, no water – that’s a big problem.

23 Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them, 26 and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”

So, this story is the story of bitter waters made sweet. I want to speak about the root of bitterness. I was in Singapore one time, and a young man came up on an alter call and he had a very severe pain in one shoulder. He came up on a word of knowledge – God show me a particular pain. As he came up, I felt the Lord showed me he had bitterness in his heart towards his father. The problem was not just a physical pain, it was a spirit of infirmity.

So, I spoke with him – said, “How do you get on with your father?” He said – “Well I love my father.” Then I listened to the Lord again, I said “Isn’t it true that your father is away a lot of the time? He’s been away for all the important events in your life, and that actually, you’ve become angry and bitter at him.” He bowed his head, and said “That’s true.” I said: “What’s happened, is your bitterness has opened a door in your life for a spirit of infirmity. You are sick in your body because you are sick in your heart, and you have power to make a decision over the sickness in your heart. You can choose to forgive. You can bring grace into the situation instead of judgement.”

So, he prayed a simple prayer and forgave his father. I commanded the spirit of infirmity to come out, and immediately, he was set free. Then he told me, “Actually, I had pain not only in my shoulder, I had pain all over my body.” He said: “All of the pain is gone. The doctor had just told me last week my back in stiffening and by the age of 40, I can never bend.” Then he bent over, and he was quite free.

Here was a young man who had a life-threatening disease. The cause was a spirit of infirmity, and what lay at the root of it was bitterness living in his heart. When he dealt with the bitterness, came to the cross of Jesus Christ, and forgave, he himself was delivered and set free.

Now, we’re going to have a look at this story here in Exodus 15. This is a story from the Old Testament, and it’s a picture for us about spiritual truth. Sometimes spiritual things aren’t easy to understand or see. It’s hard to get words for it. So, all through the Old Testament, there are stories of God interacting with people, and when God interacts with people, there’s something we can learn from the interaction.

So, this is a story of the people of Israel, and they had been in bondage in Egypt for 400 years. They lived as slaves. Their life was very hard. They were beaten, they were abused. Their young male children at one point were put to death. They were forced into slave labour. They lived a very hard, difficult life, and it had been like that for 400 years. As long as anyone remembered, they had been in bondage, serving the Egyptians. The Egyptians were very hard taskmasters, and they beat them and whipped them, and abused them. So, their life was incredibly difficult until God delivered them.

God had made a promise that He would deliver them out of Egypt, and He delivered them with great power, delivered them out of the bondage of the Egyptians so He could bring them to promises He had for them. He wanted to take them out of the land of Egypt, of slavery, and bring them into a land of promise, of inheritance, of great provision and blessing. There was just this short journey through the wilderness.

Now, this story of God’s people in Egypt is also our story. It’s our life. Before we come to know God, we are born into this world in slavery to sin. We can’t get out of sin. We have no power to stop it. Like a disease working in our life, we have bitterness and anger and resentment. We have lusts burning, we have desires for things that harm us. So, every person born into this world is born separated from God, a slave to sin.

The Bible tells us that these Egyptians are like demonic spirits. Whenever there is sin, there are evil spirits. So, many people here today have lived a life bound in sin, tormented by evil spirits – spirits that torment the mind, the emotions, the life, the body. This was our life before we come to Christ, and if you’re still in that place, God wants to set you free. He wants to forgive your sin, break its power, and loose you from evil spirits. It’s just a simple choice to believe.

Now, I want you to have a look in this story. Here is what the problem was – the people had lived in slavery for so many years that they thought like slaves. When they came out of Egypt, God wanted them to know and be established that they are sons. They’re no longer slaves, but they are a son. They have a loving father, a father who provides. When they were in Egypt, they lived like a slave and thought like a slave.

Now they’ve set free, they are free people, but they have to choose to think like a free person. They have to choose to understand who they now are. They had spent so many years as a slave, they thought they were still a slave. They thought like a slave, they reacted like a slave, even though they’re free. This is true of many Christians. We live in slavery to sin, Jesus comes and sets us free, Spirit of God comes into our life, we become a child of God, but we still think and live like a slave. It all has to do with what goes on in your heart.

Here’s what the problem was – these people were bitter in their heart. They were very bitter; and God wanted to reveal Himself as the God not only who delivers, but also heals. So, if you watch people for long enough, they will reveal how they think. So let’s have a look at these people. Let’s see what they did.

It said – “They went through the wilderness 3 days, and there was no water.” No water. So they were quite thirsty, wondering where their next provision would come from. Now, if you read in verse 27, when all of this is over, they came to Elim where there were 12 wells of water and 70 palm trees and camped by the waters. So let’s have a look at the picture and then we’re going to talk about bitterness.

God has got them delivered out of Egypt, and over here He’s provided for them, and there’s a place where there’s wells, there’s water, there’s palm trees. So, when God is looking, He’s a loving Father, and He’s provided for them. There’s water, there’s wells, there’s trees – wonderful place. But from the people of Israel, they can’t yet see the provision. They can’t see God has promised to provide for them. They can’t see that there is water, and there is a place to rest. They can only see their circumstances.

The journey of walking with God is a journey of faith. It’s a journey of believing God is good. God is good all the time. Always, God is good. No matter what I’m experiencing, God is good. He loves me, He’s provided for me. So as they journey, no water – what to think of this? What does this mean? We’re still slaves. We’re suffering. God doesn’t care about us. Then they get to some water, they taste – “Woah, bitter. It’s horrible water.” So, they’re very disappointed.

Now, they don’t realise God’s provision is just down the road. They’re about to reach God’s provision, but just before they get there, it looks very hard. Looking at the circumstances, it’d look like God had forgotten them. What does this mean? I know what it means – I’m all alone. God’s forgotten us. It’s just like it was in Egypt – we suffer, we die. What happened was, the bitterness in their heart came up.

You don’t see life through your eyes, you see life through your heart. What is it? Whatever that’s in your heart will influence the way you view life. They had 400 years of slavery and they still were bitter in their heart about their slavery. When they were in slavery, they lived in lack, they lived in suffering. They lived in torment. They lived without hope. Now they’ve been set free, they have a loving father who will meet all of their needs.

But he also has a plan – not just to meet their needs, but He also wants to heal them. If they’re going to possess the land, they need to change their thinking. They need to stop thinking like a slave. A slave feels powerless. When a person goes through difficult situations and feels powerless, they get angry. They become resentful, and then they become bitter because they make judgements – it’s no use, I’m powerless. When a person concludes they’re powerless, they become bitter. Angry and bitter in what’s happening to them.

Now, when we’re set free to follow Christ, we have the power of choice. We can choose how we respond to life. Look what they did – how you respond in difficulty reveals what is in your heart. What comes out of your mouth reveals what’s in your heart. So let’s have a look at what came out. Let’s have a look at what they did.

It said – they complained against Moses. They were angry and resentful and bitter and they complained. Now, when people are bitter, when people have got bitterness in their heart, they are bitter because they feel powerless. Bad things have happened – hurt and angry and resentful. They become bitter – which is a sour feeling in the heart because they’re powerless.

When they were in Egypt, they were in slavery. But now they’re following the Lord, they have a power to choose. They can choose to believe God is good and will provide, or they can choose to believe they’re powerless and God is against them. They can choose to believe God is good and generous, they can choose to believe God is mean and causes them to suffer. When faced with a difficult situation, it will bring up to you what is in your heart.

So what does bitterness look like? Let me show you some of the signs of bitterness. Every tree has got some fruit on them. Bitterness is a root that goes into the heart. It feeds off anger and resentment and judgement. It feeds off unbelief.

Here are some of the signs:

1. Complaining. When a person is complaining, they’re speaking that there’s lack. They don’t believe that God is big enough to provide for them. They complain because something is being withheld from them. Or they believe so.

2. Blaming – when people are bitter, they blame others.

3. Bitterness can be seen on the face. Especially as people get older. If there’s joy in the heart, joy on the countenance. Bitterness in the heart, sour countenance. They get frowny and all sort of puckered up in the mouth. You’ve met some people who are like that. It affects the whole body. People who have bitterness kind of shrivel up. We’re not made for bitterness, so bitterness shows up in our life. Shows in the words we speak, shows on our countenance. Here’re some other evidence of bitterness.

4. Lack of gratitude. Instead of saying: “Thank You God. You got us out of here. You can provide!” “Why’s this happening to me?” So, lack of gratitude. A person who’s bitter never says thank you. They demand more. They want more and more.

5. Here’s another thing a bitter person can’t do – they can’t celebrate someone else having a victory. So he comes up to me and says: “Hey, I just go promoted. I got a big bonus. Big wage increase!” So if my heart is free, I’d say: “That’s fantastic!” If my heart is in bitterness, “How come he got that? I don’t like him. Why do they not think about me?” Or he comes and says: “Hey, I just bought a new BMW.” If my heart is free, “Hey, that’s great. Can we go for a drive?” If my heart is not free, “How come he has that car? He doesn’t deserve that car.” That’s what a bitter heart is like. You’ve heard people say that?

You notice in the story of the prodigal son, the elder brother could not come in and celebrate. He was bitter. He was not grateful for what he had. He was bitter. He couldn’t celebrate with his lost brother being saved. He was bitter – it showed on his face. He was angry. Bitter people get angry very easily.

I had one person I spoke with the other day, and I said: “Why have you come up on the alter call?” They said: “I’m angry.” OK. It’s showing. I said: “Who are you angry at?” “Everyone.” Wow. Everyone. I remembered that verse – “Don’t hang out with an angry man or you’ll become angry too.” Angry person has demands on people. So I said: “Who did you start being angry with? You got angry with one person and you never stopped being angry because you didn’t deal with one anger, it’s become a root of bitterness, now it’s spreading against everyone.”

So I asked a few questions. Get this, the Holy Spirit must’ve guided the questions because I didn’t have time to talk with him for a long period of time. I said: “Who’re you angry with?” He said he didn’t know; everyone. I said: “It started somewhere? Are you angry with your parents?” He said: “Yes I am.” I said: “Alright. Are you the eldest in the family?” He said: “Yes I am.” I said: “Were you born out of wedlock?” “Yes I am.”

I said: “Alright then. Now we know what the problem is. You are struggling with a deep rejection because of your birth situation and you’re bitter against your parents. The bitterness has flowed out of your life as anger towards them. A demand on them. Lack of gratitude. Lack of appreciation. This is what has gone on through your life till now, you’ve forgotten who you’re angry at. You’re angry at everyone. You’ll get sick, and your life is going to be a mess.” I said: “You need to repent and deal with the root of bitterness.”

So, bitterness has a fruit in people’s lives. You notice another thing about bitter – is that people make judgements. The prodigal son – he said to his father – “Hey, you never gave me a party.” Bitter people make judgements and this gets into their heart and into their life. Bitter people struggle for power. Bitter people continually go through cycles of defeat. You notice all of these people are bitter, and it shows up in their life. They’re bitter; they’ve been like that for years.

They were saved out of Egypt, but anger and resentment and bitterness lay in their heart. All it took was one setback to bring it up. When they suffered some lack, when they went through difficulty, instead of believing God is good and will help me, instead of choosing to believe God, they chose to be bitter and complain.

This is the same for us. God wants your heart to be free of bitterness. Bitterness grieves the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a gracious person. He is a forgiving person. So the Bible tells us – don’t grieve Him. Don’t cause grief to the Spirit of God by harbouring bitterness and resentment and anger and unforgiveness. Rather, be kind and tender hearted and forgiving. That’s who God has made you to be.

So notice what happened – when the people complained, they revealed their bitterness. Notice this – how to respond when you have a difficult situation. Moses did not try to appeal to them, didn’t try to fix it, he said – “Show me God, what is the answer to this problem of bitterness?” Notice this – God showed him something. God revealed something to him. God wants to reveal things to you. We’re going to ask Him to do that shortly. God had a provision to heal the bitterness. Not only had He provided water and a resting place, He wanted to heal them of the deep roots of bitterness. He had already provided an answer to heal them.

When Moses cried out, God showed him a tree. The tree was always there. The tree had been growing there a long time. What he didn’t know, was that tree could heal bitter waters. When he cast the tree into the waters, the bitter waters becomes sweet. God revealed Himself as a hero. Now listen, this is a picture for us. It’s a picture of the cross of Jesus Christ. Hundreds and Hundreds of years later, Jesus would die on a cross; and on the cross, He didn’t die angry and resentful and bitter. He showed what a man filled with the Holy Spirit does – He forgave.

So, this is what God wants you to understand. When we face difficult situations in our life, when we begin to discover we’re angry and bitter, come to the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross breaks that power of sin. Jesus broke the power of sin on the cross. He broke the curses on the cross. He broke demonic powers’ hold; and when He rose again from the dead, He manifested victory live.

Listen, when you come to Jesus Christ, you come to the same cross. To become a Christian is to trust what Jesus did on the cross is enough for me. That He died in my place, represented me. When He died, I died with Him. When He was buried, I was buried with Him. When He rose, I rose with Him. I need to take my bitterness, resentment, and anger and bring it to death on the cross. Bring it to death on the cross involves these things: Confessing the sin of my heart. Turning from it, and believing God can set me free.

In turning from the bitterness, I need to turn from holding things against people. I need to release grace and forgiveness. When people are bitter, they make a judgement that they are powerless, that they are victims, and they have a demand – you owe me something. God wants us to learn to handle it differently. Bring it to the cross, confess it, release forgiveness. You say: “Wow, this is the cross.” You see, Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but He also modelled how you deal with sin and bitterness. Forgive. Forgive.

So, if something bad happens and you find the feelings coming up, let them go, forgive. You either bring grace or judgement. You either become a sweet person or a bitter person. Your life is sour or sweet. See, sweet people are forgiving and gracious and loving and kind and tender-hearted. Now, that is the new person you are in Christ. Just got to stop living the old way, living out of the old mind-set that when someone upsets me, I get angry and resentful. No, I’m a new person. I bring the cross into this. That means – I let go. I forgive. I bless. I release.

God showed him a tree and when he brought the tree – the cross –into the bitter waters, the bitter waters were made sweet. Listen, every one of us has to make a decision – how we’ll respond to difficult situations in life. Some of you are resentful, angry, and bitter about what has happened to you. It will flow like a river through your life, grieving and limiting the activity of the Holy Spirit, and creating bitter fruit in your relationships.

You can make a choice to believe: “I’m now a new person – I am no longer slave to bitterness. I do not need to have bitterness rule my life. I do not let anger rule my life. I do not let hatred rule my life. I am a new person. I am a forgiving person. I release grace into the situation and I choose to love people rather than hate them; forgive them rather than judge them; show grace rather than bitterness. This is how I’m going to live my life”. Every time you choose to do that, you are bringing the cross into the bitter water.

Listen, all of us are going to have some tough situations in life. All of us will face painful situations. People let you down. People do bad things. Life deals up some difficulties. Happens to everyone. Think about Jesus. He’s the model. He was betrayed, He was rejected, He was despised, and He was abandoned by all His friends. Yet, He never reacted. He brought grace into it rather than bitterness.

Imagine what He could’ve said – He could’ve become angry and bitter. He could’ve said something like this: “Well I’ve had it with all these people on earth. I mean, I’ve given up heaven to come here and be among them. I was just born in a lousy manger. I’ve got animals all around me. My parents are so poor they can’t even have a decent house, and I’ve only got just shepherds and sheep around me. Then the government tries to kill me and we have to run away and live in another country. Then I come back, and all my life, people hate me. They don’t like me at all. I heal the sick, I cast out their demons, and then they yell out they want to crucify me. And my friend – I sleep with him, I share with him, I even trust him with the money, and he steals my money. Steals it! And he sells me out to my enemies. And then my friends all leave me. And then they whip me. I think I’ve had enough of all of this. I think I’ll just leave you all to it.”

But Jesus did not do that. You see, He taught us how to handle injustice. He taught us how to handle betrayal, unkindness, harshness, false accusations. You choose to judge, or release forgiveness? Become bitter? Or become sweet? You have to choose. The choices we make have consequences.

I want you to notice this before I finish. Those people never let go of their bitterness and never embraced grace, and they never received what God intended them to have. Bitterness will steal your future. Bitterness will steal God’s blessing from your life. You don’t have to be bitter. You choose to be. I’ll say that again – you don’t have to be bitter, you choose to be. You don’t have to be bitter – if you’re bitter it’s because you’ve chosen to be. That bitterness will extract a price – it will affect your relationships, your marriage, your children. It will go from generation to generation, it will steal away from you the blessings of God. The Bible says – Don’t fall from God’s grace and allow bitterness to come into your life.

Some of you sitting here, and you have been through some very painful situations. Home situations, abusive situations. You don’t have to remain bitter or angry; tormented by unforgiveness. You can make a decision to forgive and let it go and to show graciousness. You can choose to live as a son of your Father in heaven or live like a powerless slave. A powerless slave is bitter. A child of God is sweet. You choose how you live.

God has already made you one of His children. He’s already provided everything for you but if you don’t believe that, you’ll still think you’re a slave and be bitter. See, it’s how we think – what we believe in our heart. I believe God wants to set many people free today who are struggling with resentment, bitterness, anger, grief, and you’re harbouring it in your heart. God says – Let it go. Let it go. Take the tree and put it into the bitter waters and come out sweet and healed. Come to the cross with the issue, and let the power of God change you. Then you become like Joseph.

Joseph is a man who turned the bitter waters into sweet. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold as a slave, falsely accused, suffered in prison. When he came out the other end, God raised him up. He was like Nelson Mandela.

You know Nelson Mandela? He had 25 years in prison. When he came out, he chose to forgive. All those years. He chose to forgiven. When he came out, he hadn’t done a thing for 25 years except live in a prison. He was raised up to become the leader of the nation. Because of his achievements? No. Because of his character. When it was in his power to be bitter and angry and judge and pay-back his aggressors, he said - we need to walk together; we need to forgive. He set up a process of reconciliation in his nation and he will be recognised as South Africa’s greatest leader because he’s like Joseph.

When Joseph came out of the prison and was in a place of power and he saw his brothers, he said – don’t be angry; don’t blame yourselves. It was not you who sent me here. I see the hand of God making me into a great person. I see God used all of this to make me into a great person. So please don’t be angry with yourselves. I’m not angry with you. God has blessed me.

There’s story after story in the Bible of people who made choices – some became bitter and lost their destiny, some chose to embrace the cross, forgive, and experience God’s favour. I have just one question for you – what would you do with what’s in your heart? Bitter? Sweet? Judge? Forgive? What would you do? Whatever you do will show up in your life.

Want to make a decision tonight? You will remove the root of bitterness; forgive; and let God deliver you. You’re no longer a slave. You’re going to live like a son does – kind to people who don’t deserve it, who loves people and forgives them because their father’s like that. You choose that. Some people choose to give because they want to get something back. Even unsaved people do that.

I like to give because I’m a generous person now. Like my Father. It’s not about getting something back, it’s just who I am. I like to forgive. That’s who I am – living out of the new person and experiencing the blessing. Amen.

Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12)

Sun 6 Oct 2013 PM  « Back to Top

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In Malachi 4 God prophetically declared the condition on the earth in our time - breakdown in family relationships, destruction and broken-hearts. The problem lies in our heart. We don't have to live out of disappointment and pain. God wants to heal the broken-hearted and TURN our hearts. We can resolve issues of the heart. King David and his wife Michal both suffered injustice from King Saul, but their heart response determined their destiny. Discover powerful keys for accessing God's promises and blessing. It's not automatic, it requires a response.

Open your Bible with me to Malachi 4. We’ve just been having a wonderful few days of meetings; God moving and touching so many lives. I was weighing up and praying on what to do today and I want to share with you a message called ‘Honour your father and your mother’.

We’re going to start here in Malachi – which is the very last closing of the Old Testament. There’s about 400 years of silence before God begins to move and Jesus enters this world. So God makes a promise to them – verse 5 and 6: “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers lest they come and strike the earth with a curse.

So God expresses His concern and prophetically, He reveals a condition that will be in the earth in the last days. Prophetically, He reveals – in the last days before Jesus returns, that one of the chief problems in the earth will be the break-down of family relationships. Families are foundational to our society. Society’s built on strong families; strong marriages; strong relationships and God’s intention is that families should be healthy. God’s intention is that our parents will reveal something of the heart of God to the world.

So he describes here, a break-down in families. It doesn’t matter where you go in the world, this is what you find – immense problems in families. Breaches in relationship between husband and wife, and breakdown between parents and children. What should be a place where there’s great joy and love and it’s a wonderful place to be, in many cases, there’s many issues and problems and pain and destruction. This affects the children when they grow, so problems just multiply generationally.

Notice where God reveals the heart of the problem is – the root of the problem is in the heart. The heart determines what happens in your life. We think we run our life from our mind, and many people try to. But the Bible says – out of the heart flow the issues or rivers of your life.

It tells us in Proverbs 4:23 – “Guard your heart or out of it flows the boundaries of your life.” So when it’s talking about the heart, it’s talking about the connection point between your soul and your spirit. It’s not talking about your mind. It’s talking about the belief systems in the inner man. God says that there will be a need to turn the heart. In other words, the heart is directed in the wrong direction and needs to be converted and turned around.

If we don’t turn the hearts, there’s no flow of love and there’s no flow of healing. It becomes awkward and difficult and people try to behave right but there’s no life flow. God is always concerned not about your performance or external appearance, but your heart. So things can look good on the outside, but be wrong in the heart.

Notice what he says that he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and then children to their fathers. So it’s a twofold turning – towards the children and then from the children towards their parents. He said – if this doesn’t happen, the consequence is destruction, cursing in the face of the earth.

When families are broken down, marriage is divorce, children are abused, the hearts and lives are twisted with bitterness and anger, this is not blessing, this is a curse. Wherever there’s a curse, demonic spirits are operating. So, God wants to bring us into blessing and it always begins with the heart. If God can change your heart, He can change what you believe, then your life will change. Out of your heart flow the issues of your life, or literally the boundaries, the borders, and limitations.

In our counselling of people concerning marriage issues and problems, we found that there was a common feature in so many – that is unresolved conflicts with their parents. In other words, in entering into their marriage, they started off with great intentions –eyes full of love and romance. But over a period of time, what they hoped for did not happen because the unresolved conflicts from family are brought into the marriage. So before anyone gets married, they need to resolve issues in their heart concerning their parents. I’ll show you why in a moment.

If we have a look in Ephesians chapter 6 – this is talking about once we’re believers, how we need to live our life. Notice it says in verse 2 and verse 3 – “Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

So we’re going to focus on verse 2 and 3. Notice here, there’s a principle and a promise. God says honour, place honour and value on your parents because there’s a promise goes with that. It says it’s the first commandment with a promise. In other words, it’s so important in God’s eyes that He attaches promises to it.

Here’s what the promise is: if I will honour my father and mother, I will live long and life will go well for me. Or putting it another way: if I honour my parents, it will affect my physical health, and will affect my life and relationships. The opposite is also true. If you dishonour your mother and father, the outworking of that in your life will show up as problems in your health and breakdowns and conflicts and problems in your life. And if you don’t see what the root is, you’ll never understand why you have the problems.

I talked with one young man and prayed for him; he was in great pain in his body – he was in pain in all his joints, his spine was stiffening up, and in a few years, he would be unable to bend. Or in other words, he had a major health issue. I inquired of the Lord and the Lord said he has a spirit of infirmity – a demonic spirit in his life producing sickness, and that the root or the cause of the problem is bitterness against his father.

When the young man repented and forgave his father, we prayed and he was delivered of the evil spirit, and immediately he was healed. He was able to move and free of pain. A demonic spirit was stealing away his health because he held bitterness in his heart towards his father. Did he love his father? Yes he did. The problem is, he had unresolved conflicts. He had developed reaction in his heart to what he perceived or judged was a failure in his father.

I can remember another person and they were having trouble with miscarriages. Each time they had a miscarriage, they prayed that God would heal and the next child would carry right through. Now they were having their fifth miscarriage. They asked me to pray for her. When I inquired, the Lord said – each of the children is a boy. She has an issue with her father. I talk with her and inquire, and sure enough, each child that she’d miscarried was a boy.

This is what I said – “How do you get on with your father?” Initially, she said she loved him. So, in her conscious mind, she’s thinking “I love my dad”. But as we asked a few questions, I found she had a deep bitterness against her father and she’d made an inner vow – “I’ll never carry a male child” and that’s true. She didn’t. There was literally a curse operating in her body and her body would not hold a male child – it rejected it. In other words, what was in her heart was determining the limitations on her life. In her heart was a vow – I will never carry a male child and her body had limitations that were determined by her heart. Quite extraordinary really.

So, God says very clearly in His word – There is blessing attached to honouring, and particularly honouring your parents. So, what does it mean to honour? And what would that look like? And what would be the reasons or consequence of me not honouring? The word honour in the Bible, in the Old Testament, is the word ‘weight’, ‘to place weight upon’. It’s the same word as the word for glory. When we say God has great glory, He has great weight. Or He is substantial – there’s something to Him.

So the word ‘honour’ in the Old Testament means to place value or weight upon your parents. To place value upon them. In the New Testament it’s a different word, and it means to fix a price on someone. It means to choose to put a value on them. So when we put it together, we understand from the Bible perspective what honour might look like. It means to consider your parents as being of great value and to put importance on your relationship with them and your communication with them. To put value on them.

Now, how do we honour or value people? We value people for a number of different reasons. Everywhere in our culture we see honour. So, people are honoured number 1 because of their achievements. Someone does something great, we honour them. Someone has a great achievement, we honour them. We place a high value on them because they’ve had an achievement. In other words, they did something we think was very important. So we honour people because something they did was very valuable.

The second reason we honour people is because of their character. It’s who they are. They’ve demonstrated courage or integrity. So we honour them because that’s a great person, showed great courage, great bravery, great endurance. They’ve earned it. So we honour them because they deserve it.

The third reason we honour people is because of the role they play. The president – we give honour to his office. Because the office is the highest government rank in the nation, we give honour to that office. The Bible says to honour those in authority. In fact, the Bible has got a lot about honouring.

So you notice then, three primary reasons why people give honour. One, because of the achievement – what they did. Two, their character. Three, their position. But God honours people for a different reason. Quite different to all of those reasons. It’s an important reason. God honours people because they are made in His image and likeness. Every person you meet is a value to God. Every person you meet, God places a high value upon them and He demonstrated it.

You see, I have a watch here. Is it valuable or is it not valuable? It really depends what someone will pay for it. They may look and say: “Ooh. $1000”. Put a value on it. Or they may look and say: “Oh. Market. $10”. So they put a value on it depending on what it means. So we place a value on people according to how we see them.

But God sees us as great value. So the price He paid, is He sent His only Son Jesus Christ into the world to give His life for us. Even though we’re in sin, we have all these wrong things going on in our life, even though there’s many bad things going on, God says: “You’re a value to me. I can look past the things that are wrong and I see in the core you are made in my image, and I value you.” So, honour is what God gives to us. It’s a value He placed on us by Jesus coming into the world, walking among people, laying His life down, showing us what real love is like. So, God values people just because they’re people made in His image.

Now, we tend to value people differently. If we think they’ve done good things, we think that’s good. If they disappoint us, we tend to judge them – “I don’t like.” If they fail in their character, we judge them – “I don’t like”. If we think that they’re not fulfilling their office or role well, “I don’t like”. So, we have opinions about people and we judge people according to how they behave.

So let’s have a look then at dishonour. One of the reasons people dishonour their parents is because of familiarity. We’re so close to them, that we see not only the good, we see the bad. We not only see the good qualities, we see their brokenness. We see their impatience or their anger. We see everything. So, because of what we see, we make judgements against our parents. “He didn’t do what I expected. He did what I didn’t expect”. And we become hurt in the heart. When people are hurt, they harbour anger. Anger is a demand – “You owe me.”

Now, in many families, there are real problems. Some of you will come from a family where your father betrayed your mother, betrayed his marriage vows, betrayed all of the family and he left his wife. So, you are left with this huge emotional turmoil and anger because of the break-up of the family.

One of your parents may be very angry – may have beaten you; may have abused you; may have abandoned you; may have rejected you. Many of you will have very painful experiences. Here’s the lesson to learn – you’re not responsible for what someone else did, but you have power to choose how you will respond. You have power to choose what you will do. You can choose to judge and despise and dishonour. Or you can choose to forgive and honour. This is your choice. You have power to make that choice.

All of you have made that choice, and will continue to do so depending on what is in your heart. If there’s anger and grief and bitterness and disappointment, you will despise one or other of your parents, judge them, and then you’ll dishonour them in various ways. Honour is an issue of the heart.

It helps if you understand this – God doesn’t ask you to honour your parents because they’re great parents. He asks you to honour them as a gift to them. They gave you the gift of life, and your response is to give honour and value to them.

So God makes this particular promise – if you give honour to your parents, regardless of how they conduct themselves, regardless whether they were good or not good parents, if you’ll make a decision to keep a heart of honour and honour them, you’ll live long and life will go well. If because you’ve been hurt by them, because they’ve done things that were very hurtful to you, and you harbour anger and resentment and bitterness, you harbour judgements against them, then life will not go well for you.

I have heard many young people say something like this: “I’ll never be like my father.” That tells us they’re bitter and they’ve judged their father. You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve found they’re doing the same thing their father did. They’ve literally become like them. It’s like he’s been recreated again.

Or someone says: “I’ll never be like my mother.” I hear someone say that, I said: “Give it time, you’ll be just like her. One day, you’ll hear yourself shouting like she shouted, yelling and scolding like she scolded, and all the things you hated so much, all the things you said you’d never do that – “When I’m a mother I will never do that!” One day you’ll find yourself doing just that. “How did I get here? How did I get to this place? I remember it hurt me so much, I think “I’ll never do that.” Now, I look in the mirror, I’ve just become like her. How did that happen?” Because you never resolved the issues of the heart. The judgements you formed against your parents led to despising of them, and this has led to a cycle of problems in your life.

I remember one man came and he’s having a conflict with his boss. I said: “Tell me about the last place you worked.” “Oh, I had conflict with him too. I left him.” I said: “How are getting on with your cell leader?” “Oh, that’s why we’re here having this meeting. I’m having conflict with him too.” I said: “Well, did you ever have any job where you were happy?” He said: “Oh, I was really happy in the army.” I said: “How did you get on with the officers?” “Oh, they didn’t like me. They picked on me. No, no, no. I didn’t like them either.”

I said: “Wow, we’re looking at a pattern here. How’d you get on at school?” He said: “Not so good.” I said: “How did you get on with the teachers?” “Oh, they always picked on me. Ah, I didn’t like the teachers.” I said: “Wow. Ok. How did you get on with your parents?” He said: “My father kicked me out of home.” I said: “Really.” He said: “They’re not my real parents, they’re adoptive parents. I said: “Really.”

I said: “Let me tell you what the problem is, and then you tell me about your future because the pattern is very clear. Your problem is this: You felt rejected when you were adopted. You harboured anger and resentment and bitterness towards your natural father and mother. This couple that have laid their lives down to love you and to raise you, you have rejected them and poured your anger out upon them. This dishonouring of both your natural parents and your adoptive parents is showing up with conflicts in your life. These conflicts will pursue you until you deal with what’s in your heart. You need to recognise what’s in your heart and repent.”

Let’s have a look at another story in the Bible just quickly. It’s found in 2 Samuel 6. Problems in life always follow dishonour of the parents. So, 2 Samuel 6 – let me just give you a little bit of background. It’s the story of a great revival. The nation has now got a new king – King David is now being positioned as king, his wife Michal has been restored to him, and now he is bringing the presence of God, the arc of the covenant into the city. It’s a national celebration day. Everyone is there. There’s shouting and music and dancing and partying. It is a wonderful day. God’s presence is wonderfully there. So we read that David is dancing and leaping and rejoicing. He’s so happy – the presence of God is here.

So, verse 14: “David danced before the Lord with all his might.” So David’s dancing. Now let’s have a look at his wife. “And as the arc of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked through the window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord and she despised him in her heart.”

Two people, one event, two different responses. Let’s have a look at why. Michal was very attracted to David when he was a young man. Michal was the daughter of King Saul, and King Saul hated David. He was envious of him, wanted to kill him. So, after they were married, and David now became the son-in-law to the king. Saul’s jealousy got stronger and he began to plan how he can kill David. Finally he sends an assassination squad to kill him in his bed.

Can you imagine that? His own daughter’s husband and he sends a squad in, a hit squad to kill him. But she got word of it and lowered David out the window, he got out of town. Then David became the most wanted man. Saul began to pursue him and if he found anyone making David a friend, he’d kill them. So David was treated like a fugitive. He had years out in the wilderness, suffered greatly, always afraid. He becomes a friend of someone, they might betray him, or they might get killed. So he lived very very troubled.

His wife Michal – her own father gave her away to another man. It’s David who she loves, David’s her hero, David she dreams about, and her father gives her to some other man. So she has to marry someone, live with someone. But her heart is not for him. So both David and Michal were badly treated by the same person. When someone treats you badly, you can either operate in a Godly way and take God’s way of dealing with it – to bring grace into it, to release forgiveness, and to remain in a place of freedom in your heart. Or you can become angry and bitter – despise and dishonour.

Michal – Saul’s daughter – despised her father and as we’ll see, she also despised her husband. David in contrast, was a man who loved God. So he forgave Saul – he never raised his hand against him, he always sought to honour him. Now the day which should’ve been the greatest day in their life – they’ve come together, and now the arc of the covenant is coming in, David is experiencing God, his wife is looking in. “Oh, who are you? What are you doing this? You make a fool of yourself.” So she despised him in her heart.

Then when David came home, verse 20 – He returns to bless his household. So he’s full of joy and love, comes home to his wife, wants to bless his household. This is what she said: “Oh, how glorious is the king of Israel today. You uncover yourself like one of the servants, as one of the base fellas shamelessly uncovers herself.”

In other words, she gave him a real scolding. “How come you carry on like that? Why do you do that? You’re a king. Why do you dance like that? Geh geh geh.” Some of you know that? Yeah, we all know that one. This is what David said: “I did this to the Lord. I’ll do even more.” He refused to be intimidated by her bitterness and dishonour. He refused to let someone put him down. He refused to let someone take away his freedom.

Now look at what happens now. It says in verse 23 – Therefore, because of this, Michal the daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. Now you notice what’s happened here. David chose the path of honour – he honoured God, he honoured Saul, he valued people. Saul did not deserve to be honoured, but David gave him the gift of honour in respect. Michal became bitter, despised her father, despised her husband, and these are the consequences.

1.) She was unable to experience what God was doing. Unable to enter into God’s blessing because of what was in her heart.

2.) Her marriage became barren. There was no joy, no love, no life in that marriage. All the love she had was overcome by the bitterness and judging and dishonour.

3.) She had no children. Notice for a person, or a Hebrew person, that was a huge reproach. It was like she failed in her identity as a woman. Later on in the Bible, in scenes where she picked up and adopted the children of someone else, that those children were put to death.

Notice the consequences. One was a man of honour, one was a woman who dishonoured. Let me just read you a couple of scriptures in Deuteronomy 27:16 – “Cursed is the person who treats his father and mother with contempt.” Here’s another one: Proverbs 30:17 – “The eye that mocks his father and despises to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out.”

So notice what it’s saying: that when there’s dishonour to our parents, demonic spirits are empowered to trouble and strip our lives. Now just in that second verse, when it says the “ravens of the valley” – that means demonic spirits. It says they pick out your eyes. That’s what they used to do to people who had fallen and failed and were defeated in a battle of life. So what he’s saying here is, when there’s dishonour in our heart to our parents, we will lose our capacity to see because demonic spirits will cloud us with blindness. These are quite horrendous scriptures aren’t they?

Here’s another one – Proverbs 20:20 – “Whoever curses his father and mother, his lamp shall be put in obscure darkness.” What it’s meaning is this – when it’s talking about the lamp, it’s talking about your spirit, your inner life. It says: when you’re cursing or speaking evil about your parents, it said ‘there’s a darkness that will fill your life and you won’t be able to see clearly’. These are quite serious scriptures.

So, what can we do about that? Here’s the first thing – God wants you to live differently. He offers you life. God understands the issue of broken families. He understands the pain and the sorrows that people go through and Jesus came with the intention of healing the broken-hearted.

So the first thing God offers is this: He says if you will turn to Him, and recognise the problem is not your parents or your family and all the things that have happened. The problem lies in your heart. He promises – I’ll give you a new heart. I’ll put my spirit inside you. He said: You’ll be born into a new family where God is your Father and you’ll lack nothing.

So God wants us to understand – natural families have limitations. But because people are sinful, pain and destruction is inevitable. Grief and disappointments are part of life. But we don’t have to live that way. You don’t have to live out of disappointment and pain. Jesus offers something better.

He says: Get your eyes off your natural family, get your eyes off your natural circumstances, and lift your eyes up – there is a God who loves you. There is a Father in Heaven who loves you perfectly. There is a God in heaven who will welcome and embrace you and love you. He will provide for you. He will never leave you, and He’s reaching out to you. In fact He’s been reaching out all your life.

Jesus said this: To everyone who receives Him, everyone who believed on Him, that He died on the cross for our sins and rose again victorious. He said: To everyone who believed in Christ, He gives power to become a child of God. In other words, no matter what our family has been like, God wants to put you in His family. He wants to give you a new start. He wants to give you a new identity. A child of the living God.

Yes, we’ll always have come from a natural family, but now we’re part of a bigger family with God as our Father, our needs provided for. He will always love us. He’s always kind. He’s always tender-hearted. He knows how to heal your heart. Our first step is to come into the family of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

Here’s the next thing – God wants you to change how you live. It’s not just about coming to the front and receiving Jesus, it’s more than that. It’s about a changed heart, a changed life. Changed in the way you relate to people. See?

So this is what God says: “Now that I’ve changed you and put my nature in you, you don’t have to live like you used to live – angry, bitter and twisted. Here’s how you live – just be kind because I’m kind. I’m kind to everyone.” “Oh, I thought you were only kind if we were good people and did the right things.” He says: “No, that’s not how it works. That’s the old family. This is the new family. I’m always kind.” “You mean, even if I really do something bad and goofy?” “Yeah. I don’t change. I don’t change because you had a bad day. I’m always kind.”

He says: “Be kind. Be tender-hearted. Tender-hearted, not hard. Why? Because that’s what I’m like. Very tender-hearted.” “You mean if I really goof up and really blow it and do bad, you’re not going to shout at me? You’re not going to scold me? You’re not going to punish me?” He says: “No I’m not into punishment. I’m tender-hearted. I want to find a way to get you back. See? Be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another. I want you to learn to forgive people instead of dishonouring them and judging them. Just like I forgave you.”

He said: “Now, I want you to relook at your family, relook at your mum and your dad. If you’ve got anger and bitterness in your heart because you felt they let you down, you felt they failed you. Or maybe they did fail you, maybe what they did was terrible. It does happen. But you don’t really know how broken they were and why they did that. Anyway, you’re in a new family now; and in the new family, we honour people.” “You mean…? But what they did hurt me.” He said: “I know that, and what you did hurt me too. But I’ve forgiven you; and just as I’ve forgiven you, you need to forgive them.”

So He says: “Now, I want you to have a change of heart. I want you to see them as people and without them, you’d never have had life. Without them, you’d have never entered into this world and have an eternal life ahead of you. So, even if they failed and everything else, I want you to give them honour and value because they brought you into this world. I want you to value them because I value them. They’re special to me as well. I want you to honour them and give them the gift of honour.”

“But they don’t deserve it! My father left me. He did this, he did this. He was unfaithful, he did these things.” God says: “I know that. But you’re a very angry person. You need to forgive like I forgave you because I valued you. What I want you to do, is when you’ve forgiven, would you begin to pray for them? Because when you pray for people, your heart begins to bond with them and you begin to see God’s best for them, and they begin to change. It’s impossible to pray for them and stay angry. So I want you to first of all forgive, let go of all the judgements and start to pray for them. Then, if you have really caused them pain, I think it’d be good to go and apologise.”

“What?! But you don’t understand what my father did. You don’t understand what my mother did.” “Yeah I understand. But I see you’re still so angry and the things you did really hurt them. When you judged them and rejected them, they may have said nothing, but they felt the pain because they’re parents. There’s still a part of them that fears for you.”

“Well, but my parents gave me up. But, my family broke up.” “Nevertheless, this is the new way of living. It’s called loving like I loved you. Forgiving like I forgive you. You remember when you shouted and yelled at your mother and you were very tough and abusive and critical and ignored her? She may have yelled back, you may have had a shouting match, but she was hurt. You hurt her.”

You could go and say something like this: “Mum, God has been talking to me and He’s shown me that I’ve held anger and hurt in my heart for many years. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me? I love you.” You can only do that if you first came to the Lord and did it. Then after you’ve put things right, start to find ways to show kindness. It’s your gift to them. I’ll tell you something, love always wins.

Can I just share with you now a little story. Then I’ll finish up. You’re going to like this one. I’m still amazed. We had many difficulties before I became a Christian. We had a daughter who we adopted out and we were in conflict and ashamed and we hid this thing, and it was a cause of great pain. When I came to Christ, I really repented and believed that God would restore our daughter.

One day, He did. Years later, after we’d built relationship with her, she said: “I want you to take my wedding. I want you to be the one who takes the wedding. I’ve been to the weddings of my sisters, they’re so wonderful. I want to have a wonderful wedding just like that.”

Of course, part of the wonderful wedding was that the presence of God came. It was her and the kids were grown up Christians and the presence of God came. But she didn’t understand any of that – she said: “I just want that for my wedding.”

So, we went to the wedding, and we had the night of the practice. It was very difficult. There was huge tension. Her adoptive father and mother were there, other members of her family were there, each of them were adopted; and there was this tension. There’s 1, 2, 3 families there. It was tense. The father, it was difficult for him I think. It was difficult for the mother.

I remember going out of that and going home thinking “Oh Jesus. This is so difficult.” I remember going to the beach and just weeping and saying: “Jesus, please help. What can I do? What can I say?” The Lord dropped something into my heart the next morning when I woke up. Sometimes God doesn’t answer straight away.

So I woke up in the morning, and God dropped an answer into my heart. We came into the wedding, she came down the aisle, she has her adoptive father with her and other family sitting here, and other family sitting there, and our family scattered in there among them, and you could feel tension in the air.

I can hear things sometimes in the Spirit. This is what I could hear: “What’s he going to say?” I could hear it – “What’s he going to say?” Her parents had tried to discourage her having me to do the service. They were not Christians and they did not really want me to take the service. But part of her journey was to stand up for herself and say what she wanted.

This is what I did – I thought through. They’re right in front of me, it was very tense. This was the day, her special day. So they’re all waiting for me to speak. This is what God said to me – “Honour her parents.”

So before we started the service, I spoke to the parents. I said: “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for Josephine. I want to thank you for the way you’ve cared for her and given her an education and a family. I want to thank you for the way you’ve picked her up and looked after her. I want to honour you for the role you’ve filled in her life. So we have no right to make any claims, but we appreciate that you have made room for us on this day.”

The atmosphere changed immediately. The presence of God came. You see people weeping. Just weeping. God moved in that service is probably the best of all weddings we’ve had. Because when grace is flowing, you feel God the most.

So then, we had the time of the reception and I remember thinking – “I wonder how the reception’s going to go. I wonder where we’ll all be sitting.” You know the tables, where you’re sitting tells you something. We went in there to see where we’re sitting. Now, get this – I had told my daughter – “You need to honour your parents on this day. You need to speak words to appreciate them just like you’ve seen in all the other weddings.”

When we got there, they had the main table where the wedding party were, and they had different tables around the room, and there were two tables right at the front. Not one higher than the other, both in equal places. One for her family, and one for us. I saw immediately what she was doing. She stood up and spoke. She honoured her father and mother for raising her, and then she honoured us.

God came. God always comes on honour. God always comes when there’s honour. And Joy stood up and spoke. She began to express appreciation to Jo’s mother. She was never going to stand up and speak, but she stood up and spoke. Then she told an interesting thing which we’d never known – that her own mother had pressured her not to take Josephine. She’d had to rise up against her own mother’s wishes and choose this child. She said every time she had a birthday, I gave thanks for the mother who brought you into the world.

The presence of God came, and people just began to weep. I’ve never been in a reception like that. It’s amazing. Some just broke out sobbing. The love of God flowed in that place. Here’s the thing I want you to understand – it could never have happened unless we decided to honour. The decision to give honour brings blessing. She chose to honour her mother and father and to honour us. We chose to honour them; and God was able to move freely.

It’s a gift you give people. It’s because that’s who we are now. We’re people of honour. We’re part of a great family – the family of God; and honour is what we give to people.

Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12)

Sun 6 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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Jn 1:29 "Behold - the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world" has little meaning for people today, but for the Israelites who applied the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts (Ex.12) it was tremendously significant. When the destroyer saw the blood, they were protected, and 430 years of slavery finished. Jesus is God's provision for our sinfulness, and His blood still speaks. Get a fresh revelation of the power of the blood of Jesus for your freedom.

I’m going to start first of all on John 1:29. We’re going to look in about two or three places in the Bible. The Bible is God’s word. It explains to us God’s plan. It’s made up into two parts – what’s called the Old Testament and then the New Testament. So, I’m going to read to you just one verse. Then we’re going to look in the Old Testament.

“The next day, John the Baptist saw Jesus Christ coming towards him and said: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”” John was especially prepared and commissioned by God to prepare the nation for the arrival of Jesus Christ. His message was – repent from sin and people came from all over the nation. He was preparing them to receive the blessings that God had for them.

One day as he’s baptising, he saw Jesus Christ walking towards him. God spoke into his heart and spoke and revealed who Jesus is; that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. John, who was a prophet, says this: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Now, to most of us, that has very little meaning whatsoever. But to the people he was speaking to, this had immense significance.

The problem mankind has wrestled with has been the issue of sin. Sin is transgressing or breaking the laws of God. Sin is running our life independent of God. Sin is finding ways to get ourselves ahead without God. Sin is being turned away from God to our own way. Sin brings destruction and death. The Bible says – the wages or consequences of sin is always separation, isolation, death.

God never intended our world to be like it is – with wars and violence and poverty and crime. He created the world a beautiful place. When he created it, he said it was good. But when sin entered the world, when the man God had created turned away from Him, the whole dynamic of this creation changed. Demonic spirits were empowered into the earth. Demonic spirits began to oppress people. When Adam sinned, sickness and death and sorrows entered the world.

But God promised one day, He would send someone who would redeem them. Someone who would deal with the issue of sin. Now in all the religions of the world, the challenge is: how do you deal with sin? In all the religions of the world, are aware of the issue of sin. They all have a similar way of dealing with it – you have to do something. We’ll show you very shortly that Christianity is completely different; that the core foundation for becoming right with God is not what I do, it’s not what you do, it’s what Jesus Christ did for us.

So we’re going to look at the Old Testament – we’ll go into the book of Exodus. So if you’ll just follow me, we won’t look at too many verses. We just want to lay a story for you. So we’ll look in Exodus and we’ll first of all look in Exodus chapter 1, so we get the picture. Exodus 1 –So it’s talking about the people of God and they’re in Egypt.

It says in verse 11: “The Egyptians set taskmasters over them to afflict them with burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was very hard.” They even sent them to kill their firstborn children.

So what is happening is, the people of God are trapped in a foreign nation. They’re living in slavery. None of us is made to be slave to anything. God has made us for freedom. We long for freedom. But these people were in bondage. They were in bondage to the Egyptians and the Egyptians put hard taskmasters over them. They beat them, they abused them, they made them serve. Their life was very bitter, very difficult. They suffered, they were beaten, they were abused, they worked hard, very little return. They had no freedom to run their own life. They were held in slavery. They were trafficked. Their lives were very miserable.

This is a picture for us. It’s a picture of the invisible reality of sin. When people are born into this world, we’re born in slavery to sin. Whatever conquers you, you are subject to it. Sins are bitterness, hatred, anger, fear. Sin afflicts every person. Behind sin and empowering it, are demonic spirits. So people born into this world are born in slavery to sin, and life is hard. There are disappointments, betrayals, difficulties, setbacks.

In the midst of it, people try to find relief of the pain. They become addicted to various things. Then their addiction is a bondage. Addictions to drugs, then the drugs steal their health and their finance. Addicted to pornography. Addicted to alcohol and nicotine. So this is slavery – people were made very bitter. The Bible tells us that behind Egypt, there was an invisible spiritual world. The Egyptians worshipped many different gods. They had gods for all kinds of manners of things.

So the reality is this – the people were in slavery and the power behind that slavery were demonic spirits working through the Egyptians. The people began to cry and ask God to help them. So God sent Moses to help them; and when Moses came in, said to the Pharaoh – “Let my people go. The Lord says – let my people go.” Pharaoh says: “Who is this Lord? He’s not my God. I will not let them go.” So God began to bring plagues on the nation of Israel.

Let’s come and have a look at it now. We’re going come right to the very last one and we’ll look at this in Exodus chapter 12. Here in verse 3 – “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.”

Verse 5 – “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.” He said: “Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.”

Notice here in verse 7: “And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.”

Verse 12: “‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment, for I am the Lord.”

Verse 14: “‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.”

Verse 22 and 23: “And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.”

Verse 29 - 31: “And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead. Then he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. And go, serve the Lord as you have said.”

So the first thing we need to see is that God spoke, He was going to bring judgement on the gods of Egypt. Now, the Egyptians worship many gods. They worship the Nile river, so God brought a plague on the Nile. So, everything that they worshipped, everything that they said was God, God brought a judgement against it.

God demonstrated that His power was greater than these god, that these gods were false gods, and that He was the one true God. Each time He brought a plague, He was showing the powerlessness of their gods. He was demonstrating what they worshipped had no power and that the Lord God of Israel is the real God.

Each time that Moses came to the Pharaoh, the Pharaoh hardened his heart – “I will not let go.” So they brought another plague. “Ok, now you let go?” “No I will not.” Each time they bring another plague. “Will you let the people go?” “I will not! Who is this Lord?” Then, another plague!” “Will you let them go?” “Ok. Maybe just a little bit. But no money, no cattle, no children.” “Ok, you haven’t got the message.” On more plague. “Ok. You can go. But leave the cattle and the children.” Ok, one more plague.

So each time, one more plague came. Pharaoh’s heart became very bitter and hard. Finally it came to the last plague of all. Now you have to understand this – that the Pharaoh was worshipped as the living god. His son was also worshipped as the living god. So from the Egyptian point of view, the Pharaoh was one of the great gods of their nation and so was his son.

So notice what God says - he gives a very careful instruction to the people of Israel. So, Moses gathers all the leaders up, and he said: “Listen carefully. One more plague. God is going to break the power of Egypt. God is going to break the demonic powers. God is going to deliver us as He said. But there’s one more thing that will happen. I want you to listen really carefully. This is very important, what I’m going to tell you. This is what we do – it’s going to happen on the 14th day. What day? 14th day. You better get this one right. It’s not good if you have it on the 13th or 15th. 14thday. On the 14th day, I want you to do this. I want you to choose from your flocks, a lamb.”

The Egyptians despised the shepherds. They despised the sheep. So, God says ‘I want you to take a lamb, and I want you to check it carefully. No spot, no blemish, perfect lamb. Can’t be a blind lamb, limping lamb. Perfect lamb.’

He said: “On the evening of the 14th day – that’s about 3 o’clock – I want you to do this. You gather all your family to your household, and then you slay the lamb, and you get the blood from the lamb in a basin. Then you get some hyssop and you must do this. You must take the blood, put some blood on the lintel, then over on the doorpost, then over on the other doorpost. Then, you go in, and you eat the lamb together. At midnight, you will leave because the destroyer is going to come through the nation. He’s going to kill the firstborn of every family, every animal, unless he sees the blood. If he sees the blood of the lamb, you will be spared. When God sees the blood, He will say – ‘They’re my people. They’re protected by the blood. Nothing shall happen to them. Nothing shall come into their homes.’”

So the days went by, and the 14th day came. Now, if you were the eldest son, you would be very keen to make sure this is done. You’d be hanging out with your father. “Hey dad, let me check the lamb is well. Let’s give it a good look. Oh, maybe that’s a little spot. Get another one. I want to get this right. You know, my life is hanging in the balance here. Ok. Alright. Let’s get the blood in the bowel. Don’t spill any. Ok. That looks like it. Alright then. Now, take the hyssop. Ok, put it on the lintel. More! Just in case the angel doesn’t have good eyesight. Put it all over! Ok. Don’t forget this one. The doorposts. More! Over this one here. More! Let me have a look. Put some more. Just in case. Can I take any chances? There’s only one chance to get this right. You get it wrong, I’m finished.”

So, they put the blood. The Egyptians looked - “What are you doing?” Some of them listened. Some of them said – “What are these Hebrews up to?” So they asked the Hebrews: “Hey what are you doing?” “Oh, secret. But I’ll tell you – there’s one more plague. It’s coming through every house. Only way you can be protected – this is what it is: perfect lamb, check it out – no spots. Then on the 14th day, kill a lamb, take the blood in the basin – lintel, doorposts. Ok. Then, stay inside. Don’t go out for a little walk at night.”

Some Egyptians believed. They said – “Man, we better do what they’re doing because it looks like God’s on their side. You guys are scary guys, your God’s a scary God.” So some of the Egyptians did this as well. Then the night came. 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock. Nothing much, I don’t see anything. Have a look outside. “No. Don’t look, don’t go outside! We don’t know when!” 10 o’clock. No sign of the angel. 11 o’clock. Finally, it’s midnight. They start to hear the crying. They realise something’s happening.

Screams went up in house after house after house. Hundreds and hundreds of households. Demonic spirit went in and killed the children – eldest sons in households. Right down even in the prison. If you’re the eldest son in the prison, you’re in big trouble. You can’t get out! So, everywhere through the land, God brought judgement on the Pharaoh’s gods; and He broke the spiritual power. Notice this – He broke the power behind the nation.

Do you realise, Egypt never recovered after this? It has never recovered to become the nation it once was. It lost everything through this. So, the angel of death went right through the nation, but those who had applied the blood, they were spared. God said to them: “You must eat the lamb, and then be ready to take your journey because you’re coming out of bondage. You’re coming out of bondage! 430 years of slavery finishes tonight! Have your bag packed. Get ready to take the journey because tonight the slavery finishes.”

This is what the Bible says – it says: “Not one of them that came out of Egypt was weak.” That night, when they shed the blood, and they waited in faith, not only did the angel of death come through and kill the Egyptians, God’s spirit moved through the people of God, and their sicknesses were healed, the broken bones were healed. It says – “Not one of them were weak.”

They lived in slavery. They lived in poverty. But not one was weak and feeble. They were all strengthened by the power of God. The Bible says – God’s armies rose and left Egypt that night. Before they left, the Egyptians gave them silver and gold; they plundered Egypt, and they left on their journey to enter the promised land.

God said this – “I want you, every year, on the 14th day of this first month, to remember this. You will offer a Passover lamb, shed the blood, and you will remember what I did for you.” They did that year after year. So when John the Baptist rose up, and said: “Behold, the lamb of God”, they knew exactly what he’s talking about. It’s the Passover lamb. That lamb’s blood saved us, delivered us, healed us. This is the lamb of God. This is God’s choice. God’s choice – Jesus Christ. He takes away the sins of the world, He prophesied. Everything you’ve seen for 1500 years was a picture of this. This is the reality.

Now, I want you to see the crucifixion of Jesus. I want you to notice something. We’re going to look in Matthew chapter 27. We saw before that blood is important because the life is in the blood. So everywhere, in every culture in the world, people understand a little bit about that. In Matthew 27, we’re going to read about the death of Jesus Christ.

Matthew 27:45-46 –“Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice.”

Verse 50-53: “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

Notice from the 6th hour to the 9th hour, Jesus has come to the end of His ministry. His life is not taken from Him, He gives up His life. The 6th hour to the 9th hour is between 12 midday and 3pm in the afternoon. It says – “God brought a great darkness over the land”, just as the Egyptians had darkness over their land.

It says – “The 9th hour, Jesus cried out.” Why does the Bible tells us – “the 9th hour”? The 9th hour is 3pm. At this time, in Israel, it was the feast of Passover. So, people had come from all over the nation for this feast. At the 9th hour, or 3 o’clock, the high priest was taking the Passover lamb and shedding its blood. What no one realised was that God’s Passover lamb was now giving up its life on the cross. “At the 9th hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up His spirit.”

Now, if you’ve ever been around people who are dying, people don’t die with a loud voice. They don’t. They kind of fade away. Gone. They don’t have a loud voice. When Jesus died, the Bible says He gave a triumphant shout. The word ‘loud’ is ‘mega’. A ‘mega’ shout. He gave a triumphant shout. It’s finished. The work of atoning for sin for the world. Finished. He shed His blood.

Now, notice what happens. When God accepts the sacrifice, power is released. I want you to notice some things that happened. The first thing that happened – it say the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom. Now the veil in the temple was a very thick veil. It stopped people going into the holiest part where God was dwelling. But suddenly, angelic hands tore it from top to bottom, and people were shocked. For the first time, they could see and have access right into the presence of God. God was wanting them to know – I have made a way for every person to come into the presence of God.

The second thing that happened was a mighty earthquake. Huge earthquake. A massive earthquake. I don’t know what scale it was, but it must have been very big because notice what it says – it shattered the rocks. Look what else it did – it broke open all the graves. Now that’s a big earthquake to break open the grave. Why did such a thing happen? See? The consequences of sin is death. And God opened up the graves. That is scary stuff! Dead people. Graves opened. Granddad, you just buried him and there he is. Woah. So all the graves open up, bodies in different stages of decay. Woah. Bones and skull. Dreadful. That’s scary!

People couldn’t leave it like that. So they had to go and camp out, look after the graves. But they had to wait till the Passover was over before they could do any work and fill them in. So, this is a traumatic scene. Massive earthquake, graves opened, and Jesus Himself descended into the deepest part of the Earth, declared to the demonic spirits and principalities – I have conquered you.

After 3 days, there was another massive earthquake, and Jesus rose from the dead. Look what it says in Matthew 27. It said: “Many of the bodies of the saints rose, went into Jerusalem, and appeared to many.” People think that death is the end. It’s not the end. Did you realise that when Jesus rose from the dead, many of the people in those graves, God supernaturally reconstructed the bodies, and they rose from the dead, they began to walk through the city of God. Maybe Moses and Abraham, some of the great saints and kings. That is scary.

You know, we have Easter and we have Easter eggs. Celebration, nice meal. They had ghosts walking through the city. Moses, come on! Appearing to many people! This is a traumatic event. This is not some secret event. God is demonstrating to everyone – His power released through the blood of Jesus can forgive your sins, break demonic holds, set you free from the power of sin, and raise you up, and put resurrection life in you. Resurrection life. God was demonstrating that no matter what the devil has brought upon us, by believing and faith in the blood that Jesus shed, God’s power is released to change your life. What an amazing thing.

The Bible tells us in Colossians 2:14-15 that when Jesus died on the cross, when He shed His blood, He said He took away every sin against you, and disarmed principalities and power. He took away the power of the devil to hold you in bondage; and it all comes down to this – it’s not what I have done, it’s what Christ did for me and whether I will believe it. This is what the Bible says – that God has made Jesus to be a mercy seat by faith in His blood. Romans 3:25 – God has made Jesus a mercy seat for us by faith in His blood.

If you have sinned, the blood of Jesus paid the price. If you have failed, the blood of Jesus has paid the price. If you have wrestled with something, the blood of Jesus has redeemed you. The word ‘redeemed’, we say – I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb. Know that song? “I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb, I am redeemed.” That’s the one. It’s a great song. The word ‘redeem’ means to pay the full price to ransom.

When Jesus shed His blood, He did the full price to set you free, to save you, to forgive your sins. He just requires that you turn from things and believe. If you sin and fall, turn and believe. The blood has paid the price already. You may be wrestling with sin, wrestling with struggles in your life, turn and believe that Jesus has died for that sin. Turn away from it. It just brings sorrow and destruction and condemnation. Believe what Jesus has done. What an amazing truth.

In every religion in the world you have to do something. Christianity – Jesus did it all. If I will respond to Jesus, if I will identify with Him by faith in my heart, then, all that He did for me becomes mine. Do you know what the meaning of water baptism is? I don’t know how they do it here, but in the New Testament they would take them down to the river, they put them under the water and bring them back up.

When a person gets water baptised, it’s not some little ritual. It’s a statement of faith in your heart –My old life finished when I came to Christ. When He died on the cross, I died with Him. I identify with Him. My old way of living is dead. Jesus was buried in the ground, we go under in the water of baptism, I believe that my life is now buried. The old sinful life, selfish life, it is finished. Come up out of the water baptism – it represents a new life has begun.

It’s not a matter of the water and getting wet. It’s understanding and believing in your heart – My old life finished, it died with Christ. It’s buried. From God’s point of view now, and I choose to believe it, I’m a new person and I’m now living a new life. It’s the life of a believer, a life following Jesus. Will I fail? Yes I will. That’s because I keep forgetting who I am, go back to thinking I’m that old person and doing those old things. But I don’t have to do them anymore because their power’s broken. So I can just repent quickly, the blood of Jesus will cleanse me, and I can begin to walk with God afresh.

If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us, and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness. Amen. If we walk in the light, it means we’re open with God, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Christ cleanses us. The blood is always available to cleanse you of sin and failure. We just need to believe. We need to believe in our heart that what Jesus did is enough. Enough.

Now, just one last thing. When you come to enter the presence of God, if you believe that what Jesus did is enough, you can come boldly. If you don’t believe it’s enough, you’ll come like this – “Oh, God I’m such a bad person. I’m so sorry.” That’s not how God wants you to come. He wants you to believe that blood is enough to cleanse your sins; and to arise and walk in the power of a new life.

Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12)

Mon 7 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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In 1 Kings 19 we find Elijah had yielded to fear and intimidation, and drawn back from his God-given assignment. We then get one of those "God Questions". He knows the answer, but wanted Elijah to think about where he was at, to recognize his distorted thinking, and to get back to his assignment, which included raising up others to fulfill the ministry. What are you doing here? Elijah had chosen to yield to fear, withdraw from his assignment, sit down, become passive and isolate at the crucial point when he needed to press forward. Sound familiar? Learn to recognize the signs of pressure.

Let’s open our Bible to 1 Kings 19. I just want to share briefly with you, then we want to have a time to pray for you. We want to see God touch your life. Leaders need to be refreshed, need a fresh touch of God on their life. So we need to learn how to step up.

So, I want to take just a couple of verses and I’ll just open it up a little bit. We read in 1 Kings 19:9, and it says: “Elijah went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Verse 13: "Then came a still small voice - when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. The voice came to him again and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

This is a very serious problem for Elijah. Elijah had a call on his life to stand up in the nation that was corrupt to represent and speak on behalf of God and to confront the spiritual powers of his days. He was called to bring revival to his nation. He was anointed to bring revival to his nation and he emerged out of a season where he was hidden – no one saw him.

You remember the story of how he brought a famine on the land, and then how he called fire down from heaven. A fire came on the alter. Then they destroyed the prophets of Baal. So Elijah was in a move of God. The nation was ready for God to move. But all movements of God require leadership. Nothing happens without leadership.

When God wants to make something happen, He needs a man or a woman to stand up. He needs something anointed with the Holy Spirit who will stand up and represent Him. This has always been the challenge God has had – to have a man or a woman who will represent Him. Represent what He’s like and carry His power to pull down the things that intimidate lives.

The nation lived under witchcraft. It lived in a place of idolatry, of temple prostitution, of all kinds of witchcraft in the nation. There was an oppressive atmosphere set over the nation. Most people were intimidated by it. They lived in fear of it. But God looked for a man to raise up who could stand up in that environment, who was not afraid of the spiritual atmosphere, not afraid of the idols, not afraid of the temples, not afraid of the witchcraft, able to stand up and live a life differently.

So, Elijah began very very well. Then, there came a point where he came under spiritual attack. A spiritual counter-attack. He had made great progress – torn down the alters, built an alter to the Lord, destroyed the prophets of Baal. He was having a move of God. If he could’ve just kept the move of God going, it would’ve reached and touched the whole nation.

But there came a strong spiritual backlash. There came a strong spiritual pressure against him. The Bible says that Jezebel rose up, she said – ‘I intend to kill you. I intend to take your life. I’ll take your life like you took the life of the prophets.’ So she began to intimidate him.

This is always one of the big problems in ministry – is it’s easy to start well, but you need to stand in the face of the battle. You need to stand when pressure comes on you. You need to be able to stand when the spirit world pushes back on you. Usually pushes back on you through people –people accusing you; people threatening you; people intimidating you. You have to choose how you’ll respond.

Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:6-7 – He says: “stir up the gift of God which is in you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” So Timothy also had a problem. He had a powerful anointing, a powerful gift in his life, but he became intimidated by older people. He became intimidated by the religious culture. As a result of being intimidated, the gift in his life began to close down.

If you become intimidated, if you let fear get a hold of your life, the gift in your life will begin to shut down. The anointing will stop flowing. You’ll be concerned about how to protect yourself and save yourself rather than advancing the kingdom of God.

Paul wrote 2 letters to Timothy and in both of them he addressed this gift. In 1 Timothy – he said “Don’t neglect the gift.” Now, God has given to each one of us, a powerful gift. He’s given you the gift of the Holy Spirit – same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. That same spirit comes to live in you to empower you, to strengthen you. We all get the same Holy Ghost. We all get that same anointing comes into us.

But we have to choose whether we’ll stir up the gift of God, cause that anointing to flow, or whether we’ll become intimidated and withdraw, and hide in a cave. I wonder how many are hiding in a cave. There’s lots of Christians hiding in a cave, right down in the back of the cave – “I’m not coming out.”

What had happened to Elijah? I want to show you very quickly what happened to him, and I want to show you the mistake he made and how it outworked in his life. I’ll show it to you very simply. It may well be that some of you here tonight recognise you’re also under spiritual pressure and that in the heat of the battle, you’ve made the same mistake Elijah made, and ended up in pretty well the same place he ended up.

I had a pastor ring me up one day. I said: “How are you?” He said: “Can you help me? I am so depressed. I’m almost suicidal, and I don’t really know what to do. I have never been like that in my life before, but since I’ve come to this city, I’ve had these problems come.” I said: “I know exactly what the trouble is, and I know exactly what you need to do. You are under spiritual attack. You are under pressure on your mind and soul. It’s caused you to lose your perspective, to become intimidated, and to draw back inside, just like Elijah did.”

I want you to notice some things Elijah did. What happened was, Jezebel threatened him. In other words, a spiritual attack was launched upon him, threatening to take his life. Now, there is something in all of us that wants to survive, so anything that causes us pain, we draw back from. When you draw back from pain, you are trying to save yourself. If you draw back and try to save yourself, life will get very difficult. There’s no neutral ground when you’re in ministry. You have to stay in a place of strength and fire.

Sometimes it’s very difficult. Sometimes it’s very overwhelming. You see me ministering on the stage, the power of God flowing. There are times I come under immense spiritual pressure. Sometimes it’s like my head is so dark I wonder whether I can see again. I’ve had to learn how to stand up in these things. Every time you stand up, you grow stronger in the Lord.

Look what it says here in verse 3-4: “When Elijah saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba, which is in Judah, and left his servant there. And he went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, Lord, take my life. Please be kind to me. Take me to heaven right now, or kill me.””

So what happened to the mighty man of God, who one day is calling fire from heaven and killing the prophets, the next day is sitting down depressed – “I think I need to die.” How did this great mighty man of God go from there to here? And then end up in a cave? “I’m not coming out. You can’t make me come out. I won’t come out.” He was hiding.

So what happened? The Bible says that he was threatened. It says – “When he saw that, he ran for his life.” Now, if you just read the scripture there, it says – “She spoke to him.” Now, the message is spoke to him. But it says – “He saw something.” What you see will affect what you do. What you see will determine you approach things. Instead of seeing ‘God is with me!’ Instead of seeing the coming revival, he looked and he saw imminent death. He saw himself being attacked.

Whatever fills your mind and heart, whatever you set your eyes on, whatever you make the focus of your life will affect your emotions, will affect your spirit, and will determine what happens to you. You can’t afford to let your focus become negative. You have to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. You have to keep your eyes fixed on what God has said. You have to keep your eyes fixed on God’s power, on His love for you.

How could it be that the God who brought fire from heaven and brought drought and then released rain, would now abandon him? How could it be that the God that commissioned him would then leave him alone? He lost his vision. He lost his view of the future. When the pressure came on him, he took his eyes off his vision. He took his eyes off what he’s called to do, he got his eyes fixed on his circumstances, he got his eyes fixed on himself. He said – “I’m the only prophet left. It’s only me! I can’t handle the pressure.” So he began to run.

When he got his eyes off God and his purpose, when he began to focus on the threats, his heart melted, his faith diminished, fear took over, and he ran as fast as he could. The Bible says – he ran. He literally ran for his life, ran away. What did he run away from? He ran away from his assignment. He drew back from what he was called to do.

It is very easy when pressures come to get your eyes off your vision, off what you’re called to do, to begin to look at the problems, become intimidated, and lose perspective. Instead of seeing it from God’s point of view, you begin to see the problems, the difficulties, and then you draw back from the place God wants you to be. You draw back from the position of faith. You draw back from your boldness. You start to shrink on the inside. Instead of there being strong prayer, now you can barely get up and pray. So he ran. He drew back from his assignment.

When a person draws back, they have no authority in their life. When the person draws back, there’s no anointing flow. God says – “I have no pleasure in him that draws back.” It’s staying in the battle, staying in the place of faith, staying in the place of believing God, that’s what pleases Him. I want to show you a couple of things he did. The first thing is he lost his perspective by focusing on the negatives. The second thing – he drew baack form his assignment.

The third things was – he isolated. He left his servant. He isolated himself. Isolation means you disconnect, means you stop connecting to people, stop connecting to God. Isolation and disconnection is the place of death.

It’s an interesting thing about sheep. You probably don’t see many sheep here, but we see lots in New Zealand. Sheep are very interesting. One night I should preach on sheep, that’d be a good idea. Funny creatures. This is what happens – when they get sick, they isolate. They draw away from the flock. It’s always easier to tell a sick sheep – they draw away from the flock. They draw away from fellowship. They draw back from the cell group. They draw away from the leaders’ meeting. They draw away from connecting.

They don’t want to connect because they don’t want you to ask question because they’re in a cave. “I don’t want you to look at me. So I won’t come near you.” See. There’s a fear that comes. Isn’t it interesting that when Adam and Eve sinned and fell, they felt fear and hid. Every time Israel was defeated, they hid in caves. A cave is a deep dark place with no exit.

What else did he do? The next thing he did was this – he sat down. Instead of standing up in his spirit and fighting, instead of rising in his spirit and beginning to pray, let the gift of tongues flow, he sat down. You can tell people sitting down – they may be standing up on the outside, but they’re sitting down on the inside. They’ve given up in the fight. They become passive. The fight is gone. They’re being knocked down. They need help.

Once he sat down, once he became passive and did nothing, then he became depressed. A terrible depression came over him and all he could think of then – “I just wish I could die.” Now, he didn’t suddenly arrive at that place. He progressed to that place. Firstly, when he got his eyes focused on the problems rather than on the solution, when he shifted his focus from his vision and got his eye on the problems. Secondly, when he let fear distort his thinking and he tried to preserve himself rather than giving himself to the assignment. Then he drew back from his assignment. He isolated himself. Then he sat down, became very depressed and very suicidal, and fell asleep. His last prayer before he fell asleep – “Lord, take me. I don’t want to wake up.”

Now God had mercy on him. God sent an angel to touch him and give him food. When you’re in a battle you need rest and you need food. But then, he carried on running. Another 40 days – that’s a lot of running. 40 days running is a lot of running. Finally, he found a cave and he went and he hid in the cave. “I’m not coming out.” God spoke to him and it’s interesting how God speaks. God asked a question. In the Bible, when God asks a question, He knows the answer.

Like, “What’s going on here?” He knows the answer. Like, the first question in the Bible – “Adam, where are you?” Hello? Like, God didn’t know where he was? “Come on Adam, you’re hiding behind those trees over there. I know where you are.” He said: “Adam, where are you?” That’s a relationship question. God knew where he was. God wanted him to face the question and face where he was and start to talk. There’s no record apart from saying – please kill me, that’s talking to God.

So, God looking at Elijah: “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. What are you doing there? I had this big revival going on and you’re my key player in the revival. Why’re you in the cave? What are you doing here?”

I remember I was out one night with a group of people at a restaurant and as we were coming out of the restaurant, there’s another part of the hotel and it was the bar, and it was packed. People were all drinking and having a great time and there’s a DJ disco thing going, and it was pumping. Just like tonight. Wow. I heard the music and I like music. I thought: “That sounds like good music. I think I’ll go in.” You know the people, the leaders with me, thought: “Oh, pastor going in there. Why’s the pastor going in there?”

I said: “Just come in here and have a look. I guarantee I will find a backslidden Christian here because if you’re not filled with the spirit, you’ll get filled with something else. You don’t let God comfort you, you’ll try and buy a bottle and drink from that instead. You have to fix the pain somehow. So either come to God, or go down to the pub and buy a drink and then you’ll feel better.”

So, we went in there and I stood at the door. I looked around. They had people dancing. They even had the staff dancing on the bar. Oh, it was wild. I thought – “This is great.” I look over, and I see one straight away. So I went over. He went up to the bar, and he’s ordering all the drinks. There was a girl dancing on the bar, and I went and just stood behind him and waited. He turned around, and he was shocked.

He said – “What are you doing here?” I said: “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. This is not what you were called to be. What are you doing here?” He’s got his back to the bar, arm full of drinks. I’m saying: “What are you doing here?” I said to him in a different way: “What happened to you that caused you to lose your confidence in God and come and try and find confidence in a bottle? What happened to you? What went wrong?”

He stood there holding the drinks, all the music’s going around, and he began to weep. He shared how his heart had been broken because a relationship he’d had broke-up. I said: “This is not going to help you. You need to come back to the Lord. You need to come back to the place you were called.”

So when God says: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” He’s really saying, “Elijah, how on earth did you get yourself here? We were having a revival. Where did you go? I turn my head to talk to the angels, and the next minute, you’re in a cave. I’ve been telling the angels about all the work my servant Elijah’s doing. ‘Woah. Did you see him? Fire from heaven! Killed all the prophets! Woah. Got that old ugly queen really worried. Man, look at my servant Elijah!’ What are you doing here in this cave?”

Elijah starts a story – “You don’t understand. I’m the only one faithful and they all want to kill me. I’m only trying to serve you. They just want to kill me, it’s not really fair. You never told me it was going to be this hard.”

“I become a cell leader – I never knew it was going to be this hard, that people would be not nice to me, and after I’m kind to them, then they walk away. They say bad things about me. So, I don’t like.”

“It’s only me who’s been faithful.” How can hiding in a cave be faithful? You see, he’s a very confused man because he let a spiritual pressure confuse him. God says: “Well actually Elijah, there’re 7000 others who haven’t been involved in this stuff.” “Really? I didn’t see that. I didn’t know about that.”

So God spoke to him twice – “Elijah, what are you doing here? Elijah, what are you doing here?” In other words, He’s saying – “You don’t belong here. You need to return to your assignment.” So He spoke to Him – “Go back to your assignment.”

Notice what He tells him to do. Get this – “I want you to raise-up some disciples. I want you to anoint others. I want you to multiply your ministry. I want you to multiply the ministry. You’ve been doing this all alone too long. You need to think strategically. You need to raise-up others who’ll carry the ministry. I’ll even tell you who they are so you don’t have to think – “Oh, there’re no one. Not him. Not him. There’s no one.”

God said: “I’ll tell you who they are. Elisha, and Hazael, and Jehu. You invest in those people. You release what’s in your life on them, and then you watch. The job you couldn’t finish, they’ll finish it up.” God reveals his intention – that he should raise up disciples, that he should multiply his ministry. But it started by returning to his post.

Now in this passage here tonight, you see the result of spiritual pressure. This pastor that called me, he was incredibly discouraged. I said to him – “It’s just spiritual pressure. It’s just a spiritual attack and you’re sitting under the tree like Elijah. I’ll stand with you. I’ll pray for you. But you need to stand up again, come out of that cave, go back to your assignment, go back to praying, go back to ministering, go back to doing what you need to do. You need to rise up again.” I told him how to stand up in prayer, how to recognise it was just a spiritual attack.

I said: “You need to stand up and pray in the Spirit until you feel your spirit raise up. Then you need to begin to speak into the spirit world and declare that enemy defeated. Go back again, begin to minister. If you will do this – pray in tongues, rise in your spirit, speak the word of God over your life, confront the devil, confront the spirits that are troubling you, and speak God’s word over your life, you will break through.”

That man has got a very thriving church in that area now. See? Because he stood up. Now, he didn’t ring me once, he rang me on several occasions. Each time, I told him the same thing – come out of your cave, go back to your assignment, stand up again in prayer, and speak God’s word over your situation. Get your eyes back on the Lord again; and he was a changed person. We’ll finish just at that point.

I’m sharing this with you tonight because I feel there are a number of people, and you are in a cave. Outside, you look like you’re doing everything ok, but in your heart, you’ve been hurt. In your heart, you’ve taken a knock. In your heart, you’ve drawn back, you’ve lost your vision. There’s even some of you here who’ve sat down. You’ve been contemplating giving up. God says – “What are you doing here? You don’t belong in that cave. You’re a mighty man of God. You’re a might woman of God.”

The same Spirit that overcome the devil and raised Christ from the dead is within you to help you. Don’t isolate, don’t draw back, don’t focus on the problem, stand up, refocus your vision, and then begin start to pursue. God says you’ll breakthrough.

You follow the story through, the wicked queen was torn down, her kingdom was overthrown, and God’s kingdom was established. But the key was a change, and the focus on discipling new people.

Hope After Loss (7 of 12)

Wed 9 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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The widow of Nain ( Luke 7 ) was in a place of great grief and without hope for her future, no-one could comfort her. Maybe you too are locked into grief feeling numb and disconnected. Our God is a God of comfort, and a God of all hope. Set-backs are not the end. Let Christ in - He is able to breathe into a place of death, and bring life and fresh vision. Jesus still works miracles, and restores a broken heart.

Once you’ve opened your Bible with me in the book of Luke, and we’re going to look in chapter 7. Just a few verses, and look at the gospel message.

Verse 11-16 from Luke 7: “Now it happened, the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise. So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother. Then fear came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen up among us”.

So, Jesus has a large crowd of disciples with Him. Wherever Jesus went there were people following Him to see what He would do. In another place, Jesus said: “I am the resurrection and the life.” God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with power. Wherever He went, He interacted with people and revealed the kindness and the heart of God to people.

So, in this story, there’s a city called Nain. The name literally means ‘to be a beautiful place, a pleasant place, or a lovely pasture’. So all the appearances of this place was that it was a beautiful place. Or in other words, it looked very very good. It was an attractive place to come to, but hidden within that attractive place, there was great sorrow and there was great distress.

It’s true also with people. They can look very good, very attractive on the outside, but in the heart carry great sorrow, great grief, great disappointment. So, you may be here tonight and on the outside you look very good. The Bible says – God looks on the heart. So He can see the sadness, He can see what is happening in your life.

I want you to see what happened in this particular story. The story opens with a young man who is dead. The young man represents the next generation. The young man represents the future. The young man represents hope. The young man represents a great future for this woman. The Bible said – His mother was a widow. That means she had lost her husband. She’d suffered a tremendous loss. Lost the one who’d protect her. Lost the one who’d provide for her.

But she had one hope left – and that hope was her son. She’s very proud of her son. She looked forward to watching him grow. She had her hopes set that in the future he would protect her, he would provide for her. She had dreams in her heart, dreams of what he would become, dreams of him marrying, dreams of grandchildren. So she was looking forward to the future. This man, this younger generation represented her hope, her future, her legacy, her provision, her protection. Her life was wrapped up in this young man.

One day, the unthinkable happened. It was one thing to lose her husband, but it’s another thing entirely to lose a child, to lose a son. It sounds from the story like he was a grown young man. Something happened to him, something completely unexpected. He grew sick and then he died.

The day came when all her hopes of the future were taken away. She went into shock. “What will happen to me?” There appears to be no future. There appears to be no hope. She will grow old with no one to care for her. Not only has she lost her son, but she lost her dreams of the future. So the woman went into deep grief. No one could console her. She was grieving over her loss.

Grief is a very interesting thing. Grief is the process by which we come to terms with loss. You don’t grieve unless you have an attachment. We don’t grieve over a stranger we don’t know. We don’t grieve over someone we’re not connected to. We grieve when we lose something we’re attached to.

So, grief is quite interesting. It goes through several stages. The first stage is just shock – “I can’t believe this has happened.” The first thing she experienced was tremendous shock. She would look at her boy – “I can’t believe that this is happening.”

Following on after shock, the next sensation or emotion that people feel is great anger. Something’s been taken from me and people often feel very angry. They don’t know who to be angry at. So the next phase of grief often consists of blaming, or bargaining. Trying to find a way through it all.

So when people are in grief, they can be in shock, they can’t really admit something’s happened, or they may be very angry, or they may be blaming someone, or trying to find a way they can work their way out of the situation. The next stage of grief is depression or sadness. A lot of weeping. Finally, the person comes to a place of acceptance, and they adjust their life to the change. So that is the process of grief.

People can feel many of those emotions all in the couple of hours. To some people, they never let go of their grief. They never deal with grief properly. So they get locked into grief. Some of you here tonight are locked into grief. There’s a deep grief sitting in your heart, and it’s caused for different ones, by different things.

Perhaps some of you are grieving because someone you were very close to has died. Maybe a mother or maybe a father. They meant so much to you. So there’s a deep grief because they’re no longer in your life.

People grieve when there’s a divorce. Children who’ve been through a divorce carry immense grief because they’ve literally lost a parent, or lost both parents. They’re caught in a battle between the two. They become very angry, angry at everyone, not realising they’re suffering grief.

When people lose a hope or a dream, something they planned for, and suddenly it’s taken away. They’ve been looking forward to this promotion – suddenly, someone else gets it, and grief comes. They’re looking forward to some dream being fulfilled, and it’s totally taken away.

The grief can be immense. If grief is not dealt with, we can grieve all our life, and remain angry all our life, and continue to blame people all our life. But the real root of the problem is unresolved grief.

I remember I prayed for a woman recently and she was very angry. I said: “Well, what are you angry at?” She really didn’t know. She had no idea what she was angry at, she’s angry at everything. I said: “Well, you started being angry somewhere.” I tracked back, and I found out that her father had abandoned the family when she was quite young. She became deeply attached to her mother and then her mother died unexpectedly.

I said: “You’re still grieving over the loss of your mother. You became deeply attached to your mother, and she literally became an idol in your life – a substitute for God. When what was an idol in your life was taken away, you’re left very angry.” When things we depend on, things which are idols in our life are removed, or they fail, people grieve and become very angry. They grieve because they were attached, and something’s been taken away.

So it could be a person. It could be a dream. It could be someone you were attached to. It could be a loss in an accident or death. Could’ve been a divorce. People grieve when they’ve been abused. One of the problems you find with people who’ve been abused, whether sexually or physically or even verbally and emotionally, is they suffer great grief.

Unless the grief is addressed, the person can remain angry and in a state of shock, and soul-tied to what happened in the past. In other words, death has come. So in a place like that, it’s very easy for evil spirits to gain access to our life.

Spirits of grief – Grief is just an emotion and a process, but when we don’t deal with it, a spirit of grief can sit on our life and we just feel continually sad. Even when you’re in a happy situation, it’s not very happy. It’s like within a moment, sadness comes back again. The spirit of grief is there.

Sometimes, a spirit of death sits on people. When a spirit of death sits on a person, they feel numb, they feel disconnected – disconnected from people, disconnected from themselves. They just feel numbed on the inside. Surrounding that is this deep grief and a sense of hopelessness about the future.

Now the Bible tells us something about God. In 2 Corinthians 1 – it says He’s the God of all comfort. So when we’re in distress, God’s desire is to comfort us. Now the God of all comfort comforts us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort others. So God reveals Himself as a God who comforts people. Comes near to them, walks with them through their distress, walks with them through their sorrows, and says – “You’re not alone”. When people are in grief, loneliness becomes a big problem.

So this dear lady in this story was walking behind the coffin, clothed in black, spirit of grief over her, and even though there was a large crowd, she was the loneliest person in that place. The crowd of friends could not comfort her. No one could comfort her. She needed Jesus to come into her life, into her situation. So the Bible says – God is the God of all comfort. He heals the broken-hearted.

In Romans 15 it tells us in verse 13 that “God is the God of all hope. He fills us with joy and peace through believing that we might abound in hope.” So notice these two things – God comforts us, and God brings hope to us. God comforts us in the current pain. God brings hope for a better future. God comes alongside us in our pain, and God lifts our vision to see the future’s better. God is a God who works miracles.

The testimony tonight, when I first met that young girl, there was deep pain in her heart. I remember when I sitting there listening to her give her testimony, God spoke to me and says “I want to heal her. I want to comfort her.” I asked her to come up on the stage, and I took her hand, and as I prayed for her, the Spirit of God came and brought great healing; and now, great hope. Restored her mother to her.

It’s amazing what God can do. Something that was full of death comes abounding in life when God comes in. This is the great thing about our God. He is a God of resurrection. He can come into a situation and make the dead live, and give hope again. You may have suffered loss. You may have suffered a setback. But it’s not the end of your life.

If you will let Christ come in and walk with you through your grief, and lift your vision again, He can give hope for a great future. Your future looks good when you’re in God. It may look painful now. You may be in a valley of sorrow now, but there’s a miracle waiting for you. There’s a change waiting for you. There’s a better future awaiting you. You don’t have to live in despair.

So Jesus looked at the woman, and this is what the Bible said – “He felt deep compassion.” That’s what God is like. He saw her loneliness, her brokenness, saw the desperation, the grief, and He was moved to do something. See, she never did anything. The young man never did anything. Jesus initiated it all. This is what he did – He went to the woman, this is what He said: “Stop your weeping.”

Notice this, she had no reason to stop her weeping – her son is dead. But Jesus said: “Stop your weeping. Because I’m about to do something.” In other words, He’s saying – the weeping is finished. I’m about to change the situation around. The grieving is ended. I’m about to do a miracle. You don’t need to stay in that place anymore.

Notice He addressed her heart. He addressed her pain. “Stop weeping.” Then He touched the casket. No one touches the dead man’s casket. It would make you defiled. Then He spoke: “Young man, arise.” Then the dead man sat up and was restored to his mother.

You see, what is impossible for man is possible for God. If you can believe, God can turn your valley, and it becomes a well of life. Jesus loves to come into hopeless situations. What could be more hopeless than a dead person? Jesus comes in and restores them to life.

I just have to tell you this story, and then we finish up. My son David went to Pakistan. They had invited me there but I was too busy and I said: “Can I send my son?” He took a team with him twice. The second time he went there, he was on the stage and there was about 15000 people. His interpreter was interpreting. Then he began to cough. He fell down. So they put him back on his feet again, and he began to speak again. The interpreter coughed and fell down, and he was dead! It’s not good if your interpreter dies. It’s very difficult.

So, my son immediately stood over him and commanded the spirit of death to go, and the man woke up and within half an hour, was preaching again. My son thought – “Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he was just lying down.” And his friend who was with him, went with him, and he said: “I’m a policeman. I have seen many dead men. I checked that man. That man was dead, and now he’s alive. God has raised him up.” The hopeless situation. Hallelujah.

God is able to come into your situation and breathe comfort and hope. When Jesus comes into your situation, you’re no longer alone. God is with you. Not only that, He begins to work to give you hope for the future. He doesn’t want you to stay weeping. He wants you to look ahead and say – “It’s a great day tomorrow.”

That day started with grief, it started with sorrow, it was a sorrow that spread over the whole city. The day ended with a party. Everyone celebrating. I guess if I was there, I’d want to say “What did you see when you were dead? Did you see heaven? What did you see?” That young man would have many testimonies of what God had done in his life.

When I heard the testimony tonight, I was just so moved in my heart. That God breathed into a place of death and brought life and hope. Hope to a mother who had given up her child, had lived in pain and regret for years, reunited with her daughter, fearful her daughter wouldn’t forgive her. But God had already met her daughter, and she was no longer dead. She was alive. She was no longer dead. She’s alive.

We know what it’s like to adopt a daughter out. This is something that we did also. All your life you grieve over that decision. No matter what the pain that caused you to do it, there is a grief and a death, and you suffer loss. When this happened to us, I came and opened my heart to Jesus Christ, I believed that one day He could bring her back.

So I was so deeply touched that this mother had given up a child, and Jesus met her child, took away the bitterness, took away the anger, took away the death, made her live. I saw her first before this happened, and then I saw her after Jesus healed her, and I hardly recognised her. She was alive because Jesus dealt with her grief. What a joy for us to meet her mother last Sunday.

The woman, abandoned by her husband, a widow, who had to give up her child; and years later, God visited her and the child is restored. This is exactly like the story we were just sharing. The Bible’s story I’ve read, happened 2000 years ago. It was a real mother, a real son, a real bad situation. The testimony you heard tonight is a real mother, a lost daughter, a dead daughter raised to life, and restored to her mother. Jesus still works miracles, restores people, and heals the broken-hearted.

I want you to close your eyes right now.

Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12)

Thu 10 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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In John 5 , Jesus likens us to sheep - this message gives several ways this is true! One similarity is that sometimes sheep are "cast", lying down, unable to move, unable to function. If we are lying down we may have many excuses, feel a victim, and be waiting for something to happen. However, like the man in this story, who had been waiting 38 years for help, we need to answer this same question Jesus asked: Do you want to be made whole? We have the power of choice - to receive Jesus and have the power of sin broken.

I want you to have a look at this story here – “After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now, there was in Jerusalem a sheep gate”. It’s where the sheep came in and out of the city. Actually, maybe they only came in. For some kind of lamb stew or something like that.

Anyway, “there was a pool which called in Hebrew Bethesda – having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people – blind, lame and paralysed, waiting for moving of the water, for an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water and whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well, whatever disease he had. There was a man who had an infirmity 38 years.” That’s a long time.

“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him: “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered: “Sir, I have no man to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I’m coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him: “Rise, take up your bed, walk.” Immediately, the man was made well, took up his bed and walked, and that was a Sabbath day.”

So here is a story of a man in desperate need. Before we look at the man, I want to just look at the situation there. The Bible describes it – there was a sheep gate at the side of the city where the sheep would come into the city. There were several porches there and it was called Bethesda, the place or house of mercy. There were multitudes of people who were needing healing.

Just in a moment, we’re just going to focus on the sheep gate. The Bible says that Jesus is the shepherd. He said: “I am the good shepherd.” In another part it says “We all like sheep, have gone astray.” So, God uses many natural pictures to help us understand spiritual things. So, God uses many pictures to describe what people are like; and many pictures to describe what He is like.

So the Bible describes people as being like sheep. Of course, if you haven’t’ seen sheep or know much about them, that doesn’t mean anything. If we said they’re like people on a motor scooter, now you know what they’re talking about because you see heaps of those. They’re all wild, all going their own way.

There’s no place like Taiwan for these motor scooters. I’ve never seen so many. You get there, and they’re all at the lights, all crowded around you. Motor scooters everywhere, surrounding you. Where did they come from? They all line up. Lights change, woah they’re gone, weaving in and out of the cars. First couple of visits here, I get quite frightened. All these motor scooters. Then, when it’s wet, there’s this big long coat that they wear. Our daughter had a motor scooter. We thought she’d like one of those. She’s laughed, “I’d never wear anything like that.”

So, the motor scooters. We talk about motor scooters, then you know what I’m talking about. If I talk about sheep, “Bah, I don’t know.” So I’ll tell you a little bit about sheep. Years ago, when we went to a small country town, we were in a place with many farms, lots of sheep. So I decided we would get a pet lamb. So cute. They’re lovely. But they grow to be big sheep. They don’t stay cute very long. I had to learn a lot of things about sheep. So I share with you a few things about sheep. Here are a few characteristics of sheep.

The first thing, sheep have got absolutely no sense of direction. None whatsoever. The moment they get out of sight of the other sheep, they’re lost. They have no sense of direction. You get a cat, you can take it across the city, it’ll come home and find you. You take a sheep, just move it round the corner, it’s lost. That’s why the Bible says in Isaiah 53:6 – “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.” We just got lost. Sheep get lost. Once they’re lost, they’ve no idea where home is. They need a shepherd.

It’s just like people. People who walk in sin are like sheep who are lost. We don’t even know we’re lost, we just don’t know our way. Look for all sorts of things, but cannot find a way. We need a shepherd, someone to show us the way. So, one thing about sheep is they easily get lost.

The second thing about sheep is they get easily scared. They get very easily frightened. So you get a sheep, slightest noise, then they’re off. They run. It’s like that with people. They get so scared so easily. They read the news – “Oh” – they get frightened and scared of all kinds of things. That’s why through the Bible, it keeps saying – “Don’t be afraid.” I think it says that more than anything. “Don’t fear. Don’t be afraid”. Because people get scared. Fear stops us following God. Fear is the opposite to faith. So the moment you startle a sheep, it’s gone, runs away, and then gets lost.

Here’s another thing about sheep – they follow one another. They like to get in a group. Ever seen teenagers all get in a group? Sheep like to be together. But once one goes, it doesn’t matter if they don’t know where they’re going, the other sheep just follow. “Where’s everyone going?” “That way.” “What’s that way?” “I don’t know, we’re all going that way.” “Is there any good way?” “I don’t know, we’re all going that way. Follow quickly.” So they all follow.

It’s like the crowd; like people. Follow the fashion. Fashion goes this way – everyone goes this way. Fashion goes that way, everyone goes that way. You follow the crowd. So, sheep just follow the crowd. So if you startle one and it starts to run, the others all run too. Bible says – Don’t follow the fashion of this world. It’s changing. So, there’s some things about sheep.

Here’s another thing about sheep – when they get sick, they isolate. So you find a sheep on its own, it’s probably sick, got something wrong with it. So, it’s the same with people. When they get sick, when something’s wrong, they stop talking, they stop phoning and texting. They don’t come to church anymore, don’t come to the small group anymore. That’s why you have to keep ringing them up – “Hey where are you? What’s happening?” They’re sheep. They go astray. When they get sick, they just go away on their own.

So, here’s another thing about sheep – they get parasites in them. They get bugs in the ground from what they eat, and they cannot get rid of the parasites. They need the shepherd to come. They get parasites inside them from what they eat. It’s the same with people. We open our lives to many different things and then demonic spirits come in, and we can’t get them out. We need the shepherd to come and get them out.

So, in New Zealand, the shepherd will come and what they do is they drench the sheep. They have something – a chemical – they put in their mouth. So they grab the sheep, the sheep doesn’t like this. They squirt this thing inside, the liquid goes inside them. Then, you know what happens? All night – they’re coughing. Coughing out the bugs which have been killed by the drench.

It’s like that when I come to some meetings. I pray for people, I speak to the demons. Coughing. We were praying for someone just the other day, and they’d been coughing all week. The drench is working. The medicine is working. So, these are some things with sheep.

There’s another thing about sheep. We have a particular fly called a blowfly. It’s quite big. Horrible things really. What they do, is they come out at certain times of the year and they lay eggs on the sheep. On the back or on the head or around the ears. What happens is, the little eggs hatch and they become what’s called maggots - little wriggly things; and they will feed off the sheep. They’ll either eat right through the skin into the flesh, or they’ll go into the ear and into the brain and drive the sheep crazy.

It’s just like the devil - sows his lies into our life, and when you believe the lie, gets into your head. Then you act stupid. Do crazy things. “Why do you do that?” “I don’t know, I just want to do that.” So the sheep need to be helped.

Here’s another thing about sheep. There’re lots of interesting things about sheep. Here’s another thing about sheep – they have no defence against the predator. No defence. They got no sharp horns, they’ve got no sharp teeth. They really don’t have much defence against anything. It’s very like people.

The Bible likens us to sheep, likens the devil to a wolf or a predator – come to steal and destroy. When the predators chase the sheep, the sheep get highly distressed because they’re being hunted and they get into a panic.

So sometimes we have a problem in New Zealand where a dog will begin to chase the sheep, they begin to bite at them, tear at them. It’s incredibly distressful because once the dogs get a taste for the blood, they don’t eat the sheep, they just kill them. Something happens to some dogs when they get the taste of the sheep blood. They become extremely dangerous and they chase the sheep and then they’ll leave the sheep bleeding and dying across the paddock.

This is exactly like the devil – like a wild dog with a taste for blood pursuing people, destroying their lives, and leaving them bleeding, leaving them injured and wounded. Guilt and shame, grief and sorrow, damaged. If you look at a paddock where a wild dog has gone, you’ll see sheep lying on the ground and they’re bleeding, and because there’s no remedy, you have to put them out of their misery and kill them.

So in the same way, if you have spiritual lives to see, you’ll see people with broken hearts, broken lives, hearts full of grief, desperately needing help because they can’t help themselves. So the image of a sheep is an amazingly accurate image of what people are like spiritually, and our need for a shepherd. So Jesus describes Himself as the good shepherd, willing to give His life for the sheep.

If you read Psalm 23, you’ll see what a shepherd does. We haven’t got time to do that, I want to just stay on this story. There’s one more interesting thing about sheep. There’re lots of interesting things, I’ll give you one more thing.

Sometimes, the sheep when they’ve been well-fed and they lie down, if they lie down too long, they get an unusual condition. They become, we use the word ‘cast’. It probably can’t be described here so I’ll describe what they look like. They’re lying on the ground and they can’t get up, and if they get up, they’re all giddy and they fall over again. So when the sheep is cast, when it’s lying down like that, it can’t get up. It actually can’t get up of its own accord. It needs the shepherd to get it back on its feet again, hold it steady until it gets back going again. If it’s like that too long, it affects its whole balance.

See, we’re not made to lie down like that. We’re not made to be cast on the ground, unable to get up, unable to move, unable to serve God. We’re not made for that. Whatever has cast you down, whatever’s caused you to lie down and give up, if you stay there too long, it’ll get harder and harder to stand up. There’re many things that can cause us to lie down, many things that cause us to give up. We get offended, we have a disappointment, someone betrays us, someone hurts us, things we had hoped for don’t happen, and we start to draw back from God.

Instead of being alive and standing spiritually; instead of being in a place of faith and trust; instead of moving forward with God’s plan for our life; we quit and we give up. I see many people like that. They’re not lying on the ground, but they’re lying down inside. The fight is gone. The faith is gone. They’ve drawn back inside.

Last night, we used a different picture. We used the picture of a person hiding in a cave. Today, the picture’s of a sheep cast on the ground, unable to get up, and the shepherd goes to the sheep, never to condemn the sheep. The shepherd doesn’t go like this: “Hey, why’re you lying down? Why’re you lying down like that? Don’t you understand? If you stay like that, you never get anywhere, you’ll never be able to get up again. Stupid sheep. Get up on your feet!” See, they don’t do that. Doesn’t work. Sheep goes: “Bah.” The shepherd helps the sheep get up.

Now let’s have a look in the story – And Jesus came to the pool of Bethesda, which means the place or house of mercy. And there were lots of people there, and they were sick and they were blind and they were lame and paralysed. People who had infirmity – no strength. People with no vision. People unable to walk. People who were crippled, not functioning properly. They were waiting, hoping something would change. There was one man there who had an infirmity for 38 years. He was lying. Everyday someone would carry him to the pool and he was lying there.

38 years is a long time to be sick. That’s more than half of a person’s life. That’s a long time to be sick. Jesus saw the man, just as He sees you, and He asked him an interesting question. Remember the man is on the ground. He’s like the sheep, he cannot get up, he has no power to stand up. What he needs is a miracle. He needs the power of God to change him. Something is wrong.

The Bible says he had an infirmity. The word infirmity means to be without strength. Maybe he had what’s called ‘palsy’ or he’s paralysed. But he had no strength of his own to stand up again. So he’s hoping somehow God will do something. But he has his own idea about what would happen. God has to do it a certain way. God’s got many ways of helping us, getting us back up on our feet.

Jesus saw him and asked him an interesting question – “Do you want to be made whole?” Now that’s a strange question to ask. When God asks a question, it’s not because He doesn’t know the answer, He wants you to think and He wants you to see something about your life.

This man was so used to being like this, he developed a whole lifestyle around being a victim. A whole lifestyle around being powerless. A whole lifestyle around being helpless. When Jesus said – “Do you want to be whole?” You know what the answer to that is? There’s only one answer to that. The answer is – Yes. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t answer that at all. But what came out of this mouth was what God wanted to have out there. God wanted to draw out of him what was really going on in his heart.

“Do you want to be made whole?” “Yes!” So Jesus asked the question – “Do you want to be made whole?” “Oh, I have no one to help me. No one to look after me. There’re so many people here and when the angel comes, by the time I get there, it’s too late. This is so terrible. It’s not my fault. Too many people. No one to help me.”

See, he is thinking as a victim. He is thinking like a victim thinks. Victims blame everyone else. Victims find excuses. “Oh, well my family were very poor you know. My father left us. My parents broke up. Oh, the teachers didn’t like me.” “Do you want to be made whole?” “Oh, you don’t understand. I come from such a poor family.” “Oh, you don’t understand, I don’t have any opportunities.” “Do you want to be made whole?” “Oh well, you know, it’s been a long time that I’ve been like this you know. And I’ve been getting a benefit from the government. You know, I would lose my benefit. What would I do?”

You understand, his whole thinking is like a victim. There’s nothing there except blame and excuse. Jesus said – “Do you want your life to be different? Will you make a choice?” You see, our life, God has given us a free will. He’s given us the power to make choices. And the life you are living now is the result of the choices you’ve made. It’s not all the bad things that happened to you, it’s how you chose to respond. So God gives you the power to choose what you’ll do with your life.

When Jesus died on the cross, He died to break the power of sin. When He rose from the dead, He defeated the devil, He totally broke the power of sin. He made it possible for every person to be free from the power of sin, to be free from evil spirits. “Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be free?”

See, the issue now lies with us. God has done on the cross for us, all that needs to be done. Do you want to be made whole? Will you make a choice? A choice to respond to God. A choice to believe His word. Do you want to be made whole? Do you want it to be different? If you want a different future, you need to start by making different choices.

“Well, I haven’t had much education.” “Well why don’t you choose to get some?” “Well, I was terribly treated. I’m so angry about that.” “Well, would you choose to forgive?” “Well I can’t get over what happened to me.” “Would you choose to let it go? Would you choose to go to counselling? Would you choose to get some help? Do you want to be made whole?! Do you want to be different?!” “Oh well, it’s my husband. You don’t understand what he’s like. He drinks so badly. He’s so bad to me. That’s why I’m always depressed.” “Do you want to be made whole?! It’s a choice whether you let that happen to you. We have the power of choice.”

So when Jesus died on the cross, He broke the power of sin and made it possible for you to make a choice; a choice to receive Him and have the power of sin broken; a choice to follow Him and live a different life. Every day you wake up, you have the power of choice. Every day when you wake up you can choose to walk with God. You choose your attitude for the day. You can choose a positive attitude, a negative attitude. You can choose to believe God, you can choose to remain in defeat.

“Do you want to be made whole?” That’s what Jesus said, and it drew out of him the condition of his heart. Then Jesus spoke to him “Rise and be healed.” The man snapped out of it and stood up. “Woah, I’m standing.” Then He said to him a little later, He said: “Don’t continue sinning or a worse thing will happen.” In other words, Jesus connected the condition of his life to sin in his life, and Jesus came not just to deal with sickness, not just to deal with demons, but to deal with the root issue in our life – the power of sin that separates us from God.

Do you want to be made whole? Wholeness begins with a decision and it’s also a journey. The journey to be made whole in your spirit begins with the decision to receive Christ. God puts the spirit in you, and you become connected and alive to God. The journey to wholeness involves many decisions – decisions daily on giving God access to your life and choosing to agree with Him about life, and to let go of your old ways and old opinions. When you begin to walk with Jesus, it’s a journey of wholeness. As we rise each day and connect with Him, and we begin to let His words get in our heart, we begin to change.

You can stop at any point. You can lie down at any point. So I find many people – some don’t know Christ, and they’re lying down on the inside. Defeated by life. Dependent on others. Living like a victim. A sad thing is to see Christians lying down, who came to Christ and stood up again to walk with God, and something happened – someone offended you, someone let you down, something negative happened. And instead of standing and believing God and asking God to show you how to handle it, you lay down on the inside and then couldn’t get up.

Jesus wants to help you today. He wants to speak into your life and get you back up again into the place of serving and functioning like you ought to be, walking with God again in a place of life.

Why don’t we close our eyes right now.

Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12)

Fri 11 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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Sometimes an area of our life has become "withered", or without life, just like the man in Mark 3, who had a withered hand. We tend to conceal, or hide in shame, when we feel like this. To restore the man in the story, Jesus required 2 "action steps": 1) Bring the problem right out into the open 2) A stretch of faith - doing what Jesus asks us to do. The healing is "in the stretch"!

Transcription 9 of 12

If you have your Bible with you, let’s open our Bible in the book of Mark. Wow, we’ve had so many stories of people’s lives changed. It’s amazing. We’re going to read from Mark chapter 3 – The man with the withered hand.

Verse 1 - “Jesus entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand.” In another part of the Bible, it says it was his right hand.

Verses 2-6: “So they watched Jesus closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Step forward.” Then He asked the religious leaders, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they kept silent. And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Jesus, how they might destroy Him.”

This is a story of a powerful encounter a man had with Jesus Christ. It’s also the only time that you hear in the Bible, Jesus got angry. So it’s good to look into the story, see what we can learn – what makes God angry. It’s not what you think. It’s usually something else.

So in the story, there’s a man who has a problem in his life. This man is a believer, he’s in a church. The Bible says – Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. In other words, God wanted to restore to us, spiritual life and vitality. God designed us for relationship, designed us to be connected to Him so his like would flow through us.

God who is the spirit, desired His spirit would be united to our spirit, and His life would flow through us, His nature flow through us – love and joy and peace, that His life and creativity would flow through us. So Jesus said – I come so that you might have life, and have it much more abundantly. When man sinned, the life of God ceased within him. There was a breach in his relationship with God. Spiritually, he disconnected and so instead of being able to live with the flow of life from his spirit, man had to live out of his soul and body. Sin and sickness entered the earth.

Jesus was speaking in one of the feasts, and He said – out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water. And He was speaking about the Holy Spirit who’d be given to people. So, God’s desire is to put His Spirit in you, to fill you with His life, and that that life will flow out creatively, with love, with the nature of God, that you would extend the kingdom of God in every arena of society.

The church is the group of people God has raised up to empower believers to get us filled with the Holy Spirit and mobilised to serve God. So Jesus came into the synagogue, there’s all these people there worshipping. There’s one man Jesus notices and this man has a withered hand. Something has gone wrong. Possibly he had a brain aneurysm because often that leads to a part of the body drying up. So the problem may have started in his mind – his brain. But it manifested in his hand and it was withered. That words means literally to lose life, to dry up. It means to shrivel up.

Have you ever had a piece of fruit and it slipped under the cupboard or under the bed; and then a long time later you find it. “Oh no. Look at that. All the juice, all the life is gone. It’s all dried up and withered. It’s just horrible. It looks so different when all the life is taken out of it. We use the term ‘withered’. No life. It’s all dried up.

So this man, his hand had withered. Often is the case when a man’s hand withers up, it begins to withdraw and turn inward. So when you find someone like this, often the hand is dried and turned in, and it turns right in – the man tried to hide it. No one wants to walk around like this. That’s awful. If someone’s got a problem like that, there are a number of problems that come with it.

First, is incredible shame. You know, no one wants to hold. You got to hide it. So there’s a shame and a tendency to conceal what is withered. Whatever we’re ashamed of, we have no power with. Whatever we have no power with, we feel ashamed of. When Adam and Eve sinned and they were ashamed, they covered over.

So any area of our life which has become withered, when something has gone wrong, we withdraw and hide it. This is true of people everywhere. When things have gone wrong in our life, when something is not working right, we tend to cover it and hide it. We tend to conceal it. The last thing you want is someone to point it out to you.

So this man had a withered hand and notice first of all, he’s got a physical condition. In the Bible, when the Bible speaks about the right hand, always in the Bible these things are symbolic of something. So, the right hand in the Bible was the hand of blessing. The right hand was the hand of power. The right hand is the hand you work with .

So when it says his right hand was withered, it means no blessing flowing around his life, no power in his life. So the right hand being withered is a picture for a person whose life is withered. If there’s no life, there’s no blessing. It’s actually cursed. Demonic spirits are operating and that person can’t work. He can’t produce in life what he could do. His potential is greatly limited. So when the man had the withered hand, there’s no blessing, no life, and he’s unable to fulfil his potential. There is a limit on what he can accomplish with his life.

When you think of the hand, you think of work. Imagine trying to work with only one hand. How do you manage your computer? It’s very hard if you’ve got a withered hand. It doesn’t operate. So his life was greatly restricted and limited because of the problem he had.

Not only that, the right hand in the Bible is often a picture of ministry – the ministry to people. So this picture of the withered hand is also a picture of people’s ministry withered away. So we see three different aspects:

Firstly a man with a physical problem – he’s in a condition that needs healing and restoration. In the story, we see the heart of God to heal him.

Secondly, it’s a picture of a life that’s not blessed – a life that is withered, a life that is cursed. It’s a picture of a life that’s covered in shame, whose potential is limited.

It’s also a picture of a believer whose ministry has become withered. Once they may have worked very well. Once they served God passionately. Once they were seeing fruit. Once they were accomplishing great things for God. But something happened and now the arm has become withered. No longer are you ministering like you once did. You’ve withdrawn – no life and vibrancy, and have drawn back inside, and is somewhat ashamed of your condition.

Jesus saw this man. His heart went out to him. There are a number of things that can cause our life to become withered. There are many things that cause us to shrivel up and draw back.

Disappointment can cause you to become withered. The Bible says – Sorrow dries the bones. If our heart is broken, there is a withering in our life – no joy, no vibrancy, you tend to draw back. So there are many people from broken homes whose soul is withered. They don’t carry the life and joy. There are problems in their life. So, grief can wither our soul.

Unforgiveness and bitterness can wither your soul. You can become withered and drawn back because you’re angry at what someone has done, angry at some bad treatment – mistreatment by a father, mistreatment by a mother, mistreatment by some other person. When people are angry and hurt and hold unforgiveness and bitterness, it causes the heart to wither. When people begin to hate someone, begin to harbour resentment and hatred, it withers the soul. We’re not made to carry these things in our heart. Our life becomes withered.

You don’t see it in the beginning because it’s concealed but over a period of time, the effect of bitterness, unforgiveness, hatred. It affects the person, causes them to draw back.

Another thing withers the soul is fear. Fear causes people to draw back. When we become afraid, when fear grips our life, we draw back from facing things. We close up on the inside. Like the man with the withered hand, we draw back within ourselves. Remember we saw the story of Elijah when he came under pressure and became afraid, shrivelled up and drew back and hid in the cave. Many people do that. When intimidating circumstances come, if we don’t respond with boldness and faith, we become intimidated and draw back and our ministry becomes withered.

In 2 Timothy 1:6, Paul wrote to Timothy. Timothy’s ministry had become withered. He had a powerful gift in his life. He had a powerful gift of the Spirit that could change lives, that could bring the life of God. But it was dormant, it was withered, it was not operating because of fear. He was intimidated by older people, and fear gripped his heart. Instead of rising boldly, he drew back, began to play it safe. He looked the same, but inside, his ministry was withering. It was drawing back because of fear.

Fear and intimidation will cause you to draw back from bold action – boldly following the Lord, bolding serving the Lord. Disappointment can cause you to wither. Disappointment can cause you to draw back. Listen, this is one of the things I know – that once you start drawing back, you feel ashamed of your condition. You know you’re not doing your best. You know that you’re defeated.

Maybe there’s sexual sin. Something’s going on in your life. You can’t seem to break free of it. The condemnation of it causes you to lose your authority. You begin to draw back in your ministry. There are so many different ways that our ministry can become withered, or our life can become withered.

I met many withered people desperately needing the touch of God – people from broken homes, people who’ve been abused, people who’ve suffered in relationships, whose soul has shattered, and they’ve literally draw back from life, grieving and hurt and lonely; sometimes suicidal, sometimes depressed.

In this situation in this particular meeting, Jesus saw the man and He did something interesting. He identified the man but the last thing the man would have wanted is to be pointed out. Jesus said – “Stand up.” And the man stood up. Now, everyone is looking at him. Tries to conceal his hand. Everyone can see him. The Bible says – Jesus looked around and He became very angry, became stirred inside. Isn’t it interesting, Jesus became angry?

This is the thing that angered Him. It says – He was grieving inside. When we feel grief, it’s because something has been robbed or taken away. We feel something has been lost, and you can feel grief over the loss of a person, grief over the loss of an animal, grief over the loss of a job. But Jesus grieved over something else.

He grieved that the church of the living God had lost its love for people and lost its desire to see people whole. Surrounded by people in need, they then becomes legalistic, judgemental, burdened with laws. Instead of the life of God flowing like a river, people were oppressed – laws to keep, condemned at left, right and centre. Jesus was grieved because the religious system of the day was more concerned about judging and accusing than about loving and healing.

The religious system did not represent God. It claimed to represent God. They said – we see, but they were blind. They were fixed in their opinions. They were of no help to people. God forbid that our life becomes useless for Him, that we become no longer any help because we’ve become rigid, judgemental, finding fault in others rather than seeing a person made in the image of God. The leaders were more interested in finding fault than in healing the broken-hearted, in healing those who were sick. They had lost their way, yet they said – we know the way.

When Jesus looked around, He saw the church, He saw the bondage that was there. He grieved. He was very angry at the religious leaders and He challenged them. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? They wouldn’t answer. The Sabbath was made for man – a place of rest and healing. So He spoke to the man with the withered hand. You notice, there are two things He told him to do.

The first thing He told him to do – stand up, come out of your place of hiding. Come out of your place of concealment. Come out of the place of shame where you cover what’s going on. Bring this problem right out into the open, where everyone can see it. Of course, he was ashamed. Of course he wanted to hide it. Of course he was embarrassed.

But God was embarrassed about the condition of the religious leaders. He said to the man – “Stand up. Don’t hide in the crowd.” I’m sure he wasn’t at the front row – He’s probably somewhere in the back, in the corner. Jesus said – “I see you there with that withered hand. Stand up.” The man stands up.

First step, becoming right again with God – you recognise your condition. Stop hiding. Stop concealing it and stand up, make a decision – you’ll respond to Jesus. Make a decision – you’ll say yes when Jesus speaks to you. He stood up, and he brought into the open this terrible dreadful condition. He did what he could do – he stood up and overcame his fear of people.

Then Jesus asked him to do something else. He gave a command, He said: “Stretch out your hand.” Physically impossible to do. The man made the stretch of faith. He began to respond to what Jesus said. When you obey what Jesus says, you are demonstrating faith. True faith is always seen in obedience.

He began to stretch and the most unusual sensation happens. His hand which should be withered, his hand which should have been dried up, as he began to stretch, he felt life flowing into his hand. The dead hand began to come alive. The flesh started to be restored and he stretched his hand out. It’s alive again! That which was dead has come alive. What was dead and shameful is alive! He’s excited. He’s not hiding anymore. He’s telling everyone.

The power of God had set him free. If your life has become withered, God wants to heal you and put His life back into you. If your life or ministry has become withered, God wants to restore you. But it does require something. You notice in the story 2 things – stand up – don’t hide this condition any longer. Bring it to the light. Bring it to Jesus Christ. Secondly, do what you haven’t been able to do – stretch out. As you stretch out believing, God could work with you. It’s always in the stretch that God moves.

So often in the Bible, Jesus commanded people to do something – told the blind man – “Wash in the pool”, and he could see. He told the lepers – “Go walk back and show yourselves to the priest”, and as they walked, they were healed. Many times, Jesus asks people to do something. Said to the blind man – “Look up, what do you see”, and he could see. God always asks us to do something and I’m going to ask you to do something.

I want you to close your eyes right now.

Spiritual Blindness (10 of 12)

Sat 12 Oct 2013 PM  « Back to Top

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The Bible describes 2 kingdoms - the kingdom of "light" (Jesus), and the kingdom of darkness (devil). The Bible also describes several spiritual problems in the heart which cause spiritual blindness - hatred, pride, bitter offences. Blindness speaks of limitations and captivity. In Mark 10, a blind man called Bartimaeus obtained his healing. What did he do that caused Jesus to stop and respond to him? What did he believe about Jesus? How did he demonstrate faith? His encounter can be a doorway to your encounter!

Transcription 10 of 12 – Spiritual Blindness

Let’s open up our Bible and we’re going to look in the gospel of Mark. We’re going to read in verse 46-52.

Mark 10:46 –

“Now they came to Jericho. As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Then many warned him to be quiet; but he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. Then they called the blind man, saying to him, “Be of good cheer. Rise, He is calling you.” And throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus. So Jesus answered and said to him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” The blind man said to Him, “Rabbi, that I may receive my sight.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you whole.” And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way.”

So the story begins as Jesus comes into Jericho. Jericho was a city that was cursed. Many years before it had been cursed. There was a man in the city, his name was Bartimaeus. That means – son of Timaeus. This man had an unusual problem – he was blind. He was unable to see. So he lived in a world of darkness. The Bible says – he was the son of Timaeus – which means to be secret, or to be covered over. There’s something in that family, there were secrets.

The Bible says – this man was blind, couldn’t see, so he sat on the side of the road, and he would just beg. He would ask for people to help him. The blindness affected his life. The blindness changed what he did. Instead of being able to pursue his dreams, instead of being able to do what he had in his heart to do, he was now sitting by the edge of the road, dependent on other people to help him survive in life. He was a beggar and he had the official garment of a beggar on. The garment he was wearing was the evidence of being a beggar.

This day, he did something that caused Jesus to stand still. So we’re going to look into this story and what caused Jesus to stop. This is Jesus’ last visit through Jericho. He is on His way to Jerusalem; He is on His way to the cross. On this day, the man’s life changed. It changed because he encountered Jesus.

Now, I want us to first of all, have a look at the man’s condition. The man was blind – no vision, no ability to see. This was a natural blindness - blindness caused by some physical problem. But there are other forms of blindness – there can be also a spiritual blindness. The Bible says of Jesus – that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him to bring recovery of sight to the blind. In other words, to help people see what they couldn’t see. The story is more than just a blind man being healed. It’s the story of Jesus opening a man’s eyes, moving him out of a world of darkness into a world of light.

I want you just to close your eyes for a moment. As you close your eyes, mostly you’re in darkness. If you were to put your hand on your eyes, it becomes quite dark. Now, with your hand over your eyes, try to imagine how you’re going to walk out of this place. Consider how you’ll find your way home. You have some memory but you don’t know what lies in the way. You can’t see the obstacles. You can’t see what’s in your way. You can’t see the stairs. You can’t see the dangers.

Can you imagine now, living in that world of darkness, how you will find your way home. Can you imagine now, how you would live your life if that darkness was permanent – no colour, no sun, nothing to see. Just darkness, and no way out of it. Can you imagine what that would be like? Now, open your eyes again. Look around – how beautiful everything looks. Your sight is very important to you.

The Bible tells us that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of light. It’s a kingdom which we can see clearly. It’s a kingdom where its nature is love. The Bible also describes the kingdom of the devil – calls it a ‘kingdom of darkness’. When you’re in that kingdom, you are spiritually blind, you are in a spiritual darkness, and you can’t see. You can’t see where you’re going, you can’t see what is in the way, you can’t see the dangers.

The Bible tells us – Jesus came to bring us out of the kingdom of darkness, a kingdom of spiritual blindness, and into the kingdom of light, into a kingdom where we can see. We see life differently. We see people differently. We understand about eternity. Everything changes as you come into the kingdom of God. You come out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light.

Now, there are many things that cause spiritual blindness. I’m going to just give you a couple of them. If we look in 1 John chapter 2, and it says in verse 9-11: “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

So, you notice the Bible talks about hatred. Hatred is an issue of the heart. When people get hurt, they harbour unforgiveness, it can grow to bitterness and hate. We don’t always feel hate, but hate is a spiritual problem in the heart. You can’t always see hatred, but it will often manifest in a person’s life.

If there’s hatred in a person’s heart, they’re literally unable to be loving. They can pretend to be nice, but the love is never authentic or genuine. Love can never flow from a heart where there is hatred. If there’s hatred in your heart, then love cannot flow to touch people. What is worse, if there’s hatred in your heart, it blinds you. You cannot see your way in relationships. Hatred creates a darkness around your life and it’s not surprising, because hatred comes from the devil and his kingdom is a kingdom of darkness.

So when people have hate in their heart, they literally become blinded by their hate. They can’t see clearly to make good decisions. So they make bad decisions in relationships. Literally because they can’t see clearly.

When you grow up in a family where there’s turmoil and trouble – perhaps the family breaks up, perhaps there’s grief and hurt in the family, you are not responsible for what your parents do. You are responsible for what you let get in your heart. If anger and hatred sit in your heart, this is your responsibility.

What you have to understand is this – that if you leave a family with hatred in your heart, hatred towards your father, hatred towards your mother, or even in some cases, hatred towards yourself, it will blind you. You’ll be unable to form good relationships. You will always see others through the filter of your hate and it will affect you.

The Bible says – He that has hatred in his heart walks in darkness, cannot see, because the hatred blinds the eyes. People who hate their parents will express that hatred towards their children. For some of you, the anger and hate you have experienced is generational – that children growing up hating their parents, express the same thing to their own children. This is a serious problem – that generationally, hatred can flow like a river; and generation after generation is in darkness. There’s a lack of love.

Love touches hearts. Love bonds people together. Love causes us to feel connected. So when there’s a lack of love, then we feel it deeply. Hatred can manifest in more than one way. You may not have realised this. The Bible says that hatred is the cause of murder. So if you read that a murder has taken place, there’s one thing you can be sure of, that underneath it was hatred; and all it took was a provocation. The person becomes provoked, their anger flares up, their hatred flows out and expresses as murder.

Let’s see if I can find the verse on that. In 1 John 3 – it tells us that he that hates his brother is a murderer. What an incredible thing that is. See, we’ve already read that he who hates his brother is in darkness. But the Bible tells us also that the person who hates his brother is a murderer – verse 15 of chapter 3. Let’s read it from verse 14: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

So we need to see here in this passage, a murderer takes life from someone. A murderer takes a person’s life. So, if someone is murdered, the motivation was hatred and the life was taken away. So, the first expression of hatred is violent or angry acts against another person. That can be physical violence, or it can be angry words. That’s why when someone is really angry, you will feel frightened because behind it there’ll be a spirit of murder. You can literally feel afraid because this could get out of control.

We’re not designed to hate people. We’re not designed to live with hate in our heart. We’re designed to be loving. When hatred is in our heart, we can’t see clearly, we react against people and then attempt to hurt them. People can really hurt you with their words and you walk away, and you feel your life has been drained away, end up in pain. It can take you some time to recover.

Another form of hatred – what I’ll call ‘cold love’. The love that God has is alive and warm and vibrant. It touches us. Cold love – the person’s heart is closed up against you. They are polite, they don’t do anything that’s really bad, but there’s no flow of love. It’s like a coldness in their heart. So their behaviour is ok, but you don’t feel the love at all. You look and you think, what’s wrong with this? But the heart is closed up. I have found whenever there’s cold love, underneath there’ll be hate. It’s just the person’s learned to manage it and not to learn how to express the love of God.

So you see, the Bible’s very clear – hatred in your heart causes blindness. You can’t see clearly in relationships; causes you to live in darkness; and it affects your relationships with people. The Bible tells us – demonic spirits can cause blindness. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 – “Now, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe, lest the light of the gospel would shine in.”

So another cause of spiritual blindness is the activity of demonic spirits. The Bible says – the god of this world – it’s talking about evil spirits. It says – it blinds the mind so they can’t see, they can’t understand. You share about Jesus with them, and they don’t understand. They might even say something like this: “I can’t see that.” They’re actually spiritually blind.

This is why we need to pray for the unsaved. All our efforts to reach people, we need to pray for them. We’re praying for the blindness to go. We’re praying for demonic influence to lift off them so that their mind becomes clear and they can see the truth and embrace the truth.

Another thing that causes us to become spiritually blind is pride. Let me give you a verse – Revelations 3:7 – the Bible’s talking about people in church and it says – “You say you have no need, but it says you’re wretched and poor and blind.”

Pride means – I’m excessively interested in myself. Pride has two faces – very arrogant and projecting myself, and I’m so in love with me I can’t see anything about you. Pride causes people to be very self-centred. The person who’s proud has this kind of view – “It’s all about me. Tell me more about me.” So, a person’s who’s proud, when you are with them, you would feel of no value whatsoever because they’re too busy thinking about themselves. When you start to talk with them, you don’t talk much, they do all the talking. It’s all about them. So that’s one face of pride.

The other face of pride is exactly the opposite. “I’m of no value whatsoever.” The person is introverted. They’re focused on themselves. They’re always thinking – what are people thinking about me. I wonder what they’re thinking. I want people to like me. So this again, is the face of pride. All of these things create a spiritual darkness around us. They make us blind – we can’t see.

Here’s another thing that creates blindness – and that is bitter offenses. When people are offended, when they harbour unforgiveness in the heart, it’s very hard to see clearly because you constantly see your offense. The young woman offended with her father, is easily offended by men. Young man offended by his mother, easily offended by women. These things blind us. We can’t see clearly.

You notice with blind Bartimaeus, he was begging. See, he was begging. What does it mean to beg? That means you’re reaching out to someone to come through for you. You’re reaching out to someone to meet your needs. Many people do this.

When you can’t see clearly what God says about you, you will try and get people to affirm who you are. When you can’t see clearly what God says about you – your values, your giftings and your purpose – you will want other people to tell you. So you will use relationships to help you feel better and your relationships will always have a hidden demand. “Please tell me you like me. Please tell me I’m ok.” So, dependent relationships are built, which become very unhealthy.

If we have judgements in our heart, this also blinds us. In Matthews chapter 7 verse 5 – Jesus talked about judging. When you judge people, it says – you can’t see them clearly and we judge people all kinds of different ways. We may judge people according to their gender. “All women are like this.” Or “all men are like this.” We may judge people according to their race. So people who have judgements in the heart can’t see clearly and it affects how we live our life.

Here’s the thing we need to see about this man –this man wanted to be different. He heard that Jesus was passing by and to him, this was significant. He heard that Jesus would soon be there and he’d heard many things about Jesus. He heard Jesus was the coming Saviour, he heard Jesus did miracles, he heard Jesus helped people, he heard Jesus never turned anyone down.

When he heard Jesus helped people – set people free of demons, set people free of sicknesses, faith rose in his heart. He wanted to be different. He wanted the power of God to come into his life to change him. “I don’t want to be blind. I don’t want to sit in darkness.”

In Isaiah 42 – I think about verse 7 or verse 9 – it says that people who are blind, were sitting in darkness in a prison. Spiritual darkness is like a prison limiting your life, stopping you from seeing, holding you captive. If you have pride, it’s holding you captive. Bitterness is holding you captive. Hatred is holding you captive. If you have something spiritually holding you captive, you’re sitting in darkness, in a prison, looking for someone to help you.

This man decided – “I’ve had enough. I want Jesus to change me. I don’t want to stay here in this place.” Most people will stay like they are and will not change until the pain of staying as they are is greater than the pain of change. This man believed Jesus could change him, he believed Jesus could change his life. So when he heard Jesus was coming by, he began to cry out.

You have had enough of living in spiritual darkness, enough of being in a spiritual prison, enough of reaching out to people to try and come through for you. Reach out to Jesus. This is how he did it – he raised his voice – “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” He used the term ‘Son of David’. This was the name given to the coming saviour of the world. So what he’s saying is this – “Jesus I know you save people. I know you can break the power of sin. I know you can break the power of the devil. I know you can change me. Jesus!”

Now, notice what the crowd did – many of them: “Shh be quiet. Don’t do that. Just stay like you are. Be quiet, don’t cause a fuss.” A crowd of people often is not interested in your welfare. They were objecting to being interrupted. They were objecting to the noise. Listen, they were objecting to his faith. There’s no record anyone else was healed. He had faith. Faith is not silent. When you have faith in your heart, it always shows up. It shows up in three ways for this man.

Number 1, he cried out to Jesus. Number 2, he persisted when people resisted. I love this next statement – they said: “Be quiet, stop this noise. This is a national day. Don’t cry out on the national day.” It says – he cried out even louder. When people tried to stop him, he’s more determined. “Wait, Jesus!” They go: “Quiet, quiet. We get the police on you! You’re causing trouble you know.” He cried louder.

Then Jesus stopped. Now, when you have a big crowd of people, there’s a lot of noise. Ever been in a big crowd? There’s a lot of noise. But in the midst of the noise, Jesus heard something that stopped Him. “I hear someone.” “Hey, of course you hear people, there’s hundreds here.” “No, no. I hear someone.” He stopped because He heard the cry of faith. He stopped because there was someone different out there. You see, Jesus didn’t just hear the crowd, His ear singled out one person who believed enough to keep crying out when everyone was against him, resisted him.

Sometimes we don’t get answers straight away from God. There’re a number of stories in the Bible when people didn’t get an answer straight away. Maybe you haven’t gotten an answer straight away when you’ve cried out to God. Maybe if people have tried to discourage you. But faith is never discouraged. Faith never gives up. You cry even louder, even stronger. The more the resistance, the more he cries out!

So number 1, he cried out to Jesus. Number 2, he persisted when everyone resisted him. He was determined! “I will have a miracle today!” Jesus heard him. He said – “Stop, someone’s calling out. Bring him to me.”

Notice how the crowd changes – one moment they said “Quiet. Too noisy. Disturbing us. Be quiet.” Next thing, “Oh, He’s calling for you. Not for me, for you.” Jesus doesn’t call for the person who’s complaining. He reaches out to the person with faith. “Hey, how come He’s calling to you? Why not me? Because I’m complaining and trying to shut down faith.”

So, notice it says – this is what he did – he threw off his garment and he rose and he came to Jesus. Now that garment was very significant. See, it was the official beggar’s garment so you needed that to do the begging. Probably had to pay a license fee for it. So when he threw it off, he’s saying – “my life is about to change.” He said – “I’m as good as got that miracle because Jesus is calling me to Him.”

So what does the garment represent? Number 1, the garment represents his old way of life. When he throws off the garment, he’s saying – I’m changing. The Bible calls that ‘repentance’. My whole life is about to change right now because I’m coming to Jesus; He’s been calling me to Him. So he throws off the garment – “first thing, my life is about to change. The old life in darkness, the old life in poverty, the old life depending on people, it’s all about to change.” So, he throws off the garments.

There’s a second thing about the garments. He’s thrown aside the garment. The garment represents limitations. He was limited in his life, limited because of the darkness, limited because of what he believed. Many people are limited because of what they believe about themselves. Many people are limited – not by God, but because of what you believe in your heart about yourself.

The Bible says – Proverbs 23:7 – “As you think in your heart, so you are.” So if you believe – “I’m of no value”, then you’re living in darkness and limitation. If you believe you can’t, you’re living in limitation. If you believe you can’t get anything right, you’re living in limitation. Whatever’s limiting you, throw it off! Repentance is another word for ‘throwing off’. How I think, how I look at life, it’s changed.

There’s a third thing that garment represents. It represents grief and pain in his life. Every time he puts on the garment, he’s reminded of his hurt: people abusing him and hurting him; making fun of him; ignoring him; sometimes stealing from him. Many people carry hurts, grieves, and sorrows, and they wear them like a garment. You ask them: “how are you doing?” “Oh, not good. You should see what’s happening to me. Oh, so many people hurt me: my father, my mother, my friends, and the teachers; then the pastors. Oh, so hurt.” “Oh, well you’re wearing a beggar’s garment.” “I wear my hurt. Please feel sorry for me. Oh, please feel sorry for me.” Many people are like that. They want someone to feel sorry for them. They’re wearing a garment of hurt, and they’re reaching out, begging – “Please, feel sorry for me.”

See, when the beggar put his hand out, I put some people in. But someone who’s wearing self pity, then they come and tell you how hurt they are. “Oh, so hurt, I’m so sorry to hear that. This is dreadful! Oh, the way they treat you is not good. You’re a good person!” Keep giving to me. Lot’s of people are like that.

So, the garment represented his hurts and pains, the limitations in his life, and his old lifestyle. In coming to Jesus, he’s determined he’s going to make a change. Not only that, the garment is his false security. Just in case. You see, he could’ve kept it, “I’ll go to Jesus, but just in case it doesn’t work, I’ll hold on to it. Just in case Jesus doesn’t work out, I’ll have a second plan.” A lot of people approach Jesus like that – “well, I’ll see, but just in case. I’ll have my escape plan.” But he had no escape plan, throws it off.

He came to Jesus, and Jesus said to him: “Hey, what do you want?” Woah, ask a blind man what he wants. “What do you want?” “I want to see!” He gave the right answer. Remember we saw the other story, the man who’s crippled, and he was asked: “What do you want? Do you want to be healed?” “Oh, you don’t understand, there’re so many problems I have.” He gave the wrong answer.

Jesus asked this man another question: “What do you want?” He knows straight away what he wants. “I want to see! I want to see!” That’s the way to come to Jesus. Don’t come to Him with excuses. Don’t come to Him with: “Oh, whatever you want.” That’s silly nonsense. “I want to see!” Jesus said: “Because of your faith, be healed!” Eyes open, darkness gone. Then he became a disciple of Jesus, he followed Jesus. The man who was in darkness is released out of his prison.

Now he sees. He’s got rid of the beggar’s garment, his life is changed, he’s got rid of the hurts. “I can see!” He got rid of the limitations, “I can see!” He got rid of his old insecurities, “I can see! I see!” What’s the first thing he saw? Jesus. And he followed Jesus. Jesus came to get us out of spiritual darkness. He came to change our life, remove the limitations, heal the broken heart. He came to give us a real security and bring us into a place of life.

In that story there, that was the last time Jesus walked through that city and one man stopped Him and got a miracle. Think about that. Hundreds of people, but one man stopped Jesus. Hundreds of people who were just looking with no faith. One man. One man – “I believe you’ll change me.” He threw off his garment, rose up, and Jesus changed him, just as he believed. I want you to close your eyes right now.

Freedom from Divination (11 of 12)

Sat 12 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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God promises to direct our steps, as we trust Him and listen to His voice. Many people, fearful about the future, pay money to a fortune-teller to receive information (divination). They prostitute themselves with evil spirits - they pay money for information and receive a spirit into their body. Lev 20:6 warns of the dangers of this. We are not made for evil spirits. If you have opened your life up, you can be set free - like the girl in Acts 16:16

Transcription 11 of 12 – Freedom from Divination

I want you to open your Bible with me and we’re going to go into John chapter 9. Thank you again musicians, you are amazing: just play for hours and hours. We must give them a clap and appreciate them. Wonderful.

Ok. We’re going to pick up in the sheepy passage where we were the other day. We’re going to pick up in John chapter 10. We’re going to pick it up at verse 27 and 28. Now, when we were looking in this passage, we saw that Jesus represented Himself as the shepherd, and people are like sheep. So I hope a number of you heard that, and now I’m going to just take up this next part of it.

Jesus said in verse 27: “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me. And I give to them eternal life, they shall never perish neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.”

So notice what Jesus says – 3 things. “My sheep know my voice. They know my voice.” One thing I found when we had a pet sheep, it quickly recognised my voice. Something unique about sheep is they can recognise the voice. So what Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice.” He says: “And I know them.” Notice what He’s saying here about relationship. He says: “I know them, and they follow me.”

Everyone is following something in life. You’re either following the fashion, following the crowd, following the TV, following the media. People are following something. We often don’t even realise it, that there can be pressures on our life that cause us to follow. We tend to want to be with the crowd, just like sheep, they like their social, they like to be together.

Notice what Jesus said: “My sheep can hear my voice.” In other words, He said – if we’re following Christ, one of the keys of following the Lord is the ability to hear His voice. Now, there are many voices in the world, many voices pressing on you, wanting your attention, wanting your money, wanting your heart. Many many voices. God has designed us that we live out of relationship with Him. We are spiritual beings, we have a part of us which is spiritual. We need God to fill that.

So in the absence of that, we’ll find something else. We can listen to the voice of people, or we can be listening to the voice of evil spirits. If you’ve been listening to the voice of people or evil spirits, God wants you today to listen to His voice, and to respond to His voice. He makes a promise that if we follow Him, we won’t live in darkness, we’ll have life, His life in us.

So Jesus extends an invitation to every person to follow Him, to make a decision at some point in their life: that we’ll stop being led by sin, stop being led by the crowd, stop being led by demonic spirits, we’ll make a decision to follow Him. Jesus says: “Follow Me. Whoever follows Me won’t be in darkness, but they’ll have the light of eternal life.”

In many people today, there is a darkness in their life – a darkness of bitterness and hatred; a darkness of anger and unforgiveness; a darkness of sin of all kinds. The Bible says God’s kingdom is a kingdom of light. The kingdom of the devil is the kingdom of darkness. So, Jesus makes this promise – if we follow Him, our lives will become full of light, we begin to shine, we begin to look different, speak different, live different. He says: You won’t walk in darkness.

In other words, God says, as you walk with Him, as you follow His leading, the Spirit of God will help you address and get rid of the darkness in your life. The darkness of hurts and angers, of grief and bitterness and disappointment.

We have to make a decision of who will lead us. People are looking for direction. Unfortunately, we often look in the wrong place. We’re going to look in a story in the Bible of a particular woman and she was being led or spoken to; she was listening to voices. She wasn’t listening to the voice of God, she was listening to the voice of an evil spirit. We’re going to find as we see this story, that many people paid her money to tell their future. So let’s have a look at the story: it’s found in Acts chapter 16 verse 16.

“Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divi nation met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour.”

So Paul was in the city of Philippi, and Philippi was a very famous city. There was a region in Philippi, the region called Putho. There was what’s called an oracle there. It was the centre of fortune-telling. They worshipped the god Apollo, who’s the god of fine arts: music and public speaking, and drama. In legend, he’d conquered a serpent there, a python. So they worshipped this python and it was the centre of divination or fortune-telling.

People would come from all over the world: people are wanting to conduct new business, people wanting to get into some kind of career; people in government. Wherever people had to make decisions, they would come to have their fortune told, and they would pay money. They would pay money to the person, and we’d call that person a ‘psychic’. So, the whole city was full of psychics, and they had one major psychic there.

There was a spirit of fortune-telling or divination sat over the whole region. It was like this oppressive spirit, this demonic power rested over the region. So, there was a lot of fortune-telling going on, much spiritual activity, and like a heaviness over the whole area. People would pay their money, and the psychic would talk to them, the psychic would speak to them about their future, about their life and their future.

But the Bible says of this woman – that she had a spirit wrapped around her. It was in the shape of a python. You couldn’t see the spirit, but it was in the form of a snake, a big python wrapped around her. It’s head was right up by her ear, and it was a demonic spirit, it would speak into her life. She could hear its voice speaking. She would hear a voice from the spirit world speaking to her, and it would talk and give her information. While she had that spirit, it would give her information she couldn’t know any other way.

Divination is reaching into the spirit world to obtain knowledge and information from evil spirits rather than God. God has created us for relationship with Him. God is a Spirit and He’s made us spiritual beings, and God wants to talk to us. The Bible says He has a plan for your life, He has purposes for your life, and He wants to direct your life.

Notice what Jesus said: “I’m the good shepherd. My sheep hear my voice.” That means God talks with us. He says – “They follow me. They follow my leading or direction.” He says: “I lead them into good places.” But there is another voice. The voice of demonic spirits; and the Bible tells us in this story, that the woman made a lot of money from people who wanted to know about their future.

Does the devil know about your future? No he does not. Only the one who created you can see ahead and know what your life is for. Only the one who created you can know your purpose. Only the one who created you fully understands you. So God’s desire is that we would connect with Him and that we would receive revelation or guidance from Him.

The Bible tells us in Proverbs 3, it says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don’t lean on your understanding. In all your ways be intimate with Him, and He will direct your paths.” So, many places God promises to direct us and guide us. Now, people are fearful for their future. They wonder – “What will happen to me? Will I be successful? Will I prosper? Will I get married or have relationships? Will I get money?” These are questions everyone has.

God wants us to join to Him, and live a life of trust, of faith, learning to walk with Him day by day. He doesn’t tell us everything about our life, but He encourages us in a journey with Him, a journey of trust: listening to his voice, and also listening to our heart – what God has written in our heart. So if you begin to walk with God, you’ll be guided by your heart and by the word of God, and by the Spirit of God and you will prosper.

So notice what it says – it says in the verse I read, it talks about trusting the Lord with all your heart, and He will direct your way. So our relationship with God is one of trust. It has to do with the heart – trusting God with your heart, with your life; and not trying to figure it all out or work it all out. God has got your life figured out – He wants us to learn to trust Him, listen to our own heart, and make plans for our future: believing He will walk with us and bless our plan. The promise of God is to direct us. So one of the greatest things that you can do is to become connected to God and learn to hear His voice.

Now, if we don’t have a God who loves us leading us, we’re left rather frightened and uncertain about our future. If I know God is a good shepherd who loves me, who believes in me, who’s created me, has a wonderful plan for me, I can trust my life to follow Him. When I learn that Jesus died on the cross for me, I can trust my life to follow Him because someone who loved me enough to die for me, is someone I can trust.

But if I don’t trust God, then I’m left alone in life, and I’m frightened about my future. Some of you are frightened about your future – you feel anxious, insecure, fearful about what will happen. Of course, when you look in the news media, it fills you with more fear: tsunamis and earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, terrorism and war. The media is full of bad news. People become fearful, and so in this day, people would turn to the fortune-tellers; and this girl as a psychic, earned a lot of money. People would come and they would pay her money. Did the demon know their future? Not at all.

Evil spirits have limited knowledge and limited power. They don’t know your future, but they do know what you’ve been doing. They observe you so they know what’s happening in your life. It’s like a demonic internet. Type up your name, google you – wow, all the information, woah, yeah. All the other demons get on board – “yeah, we’ve been watching, we know this person. Yeah, we know that person. Know their father, mother, grandfather, grandmother. We know the whole family line – we’ve been watching them a long time. We’ve been having a lot of fun messing them up.”

Jesus said that devils come only to steal, kill and destroy. “So, what do you want to know?” And they tell the demon, and the demon whispers in her ear – “This is what about this person.” So, this lady, she’ll go “Ohh”. She’s not that smart, you know. She’s only listening – listening to a devil. “Oh”; and still to say something. The person will say – “That’s true! Very true. Wow this must be right. So what’s my future?” “Oh, I’m glad you asked. Pay some more money.” Ok, they got the money, “Ok, now I tell.”

The demon doesn’t know your future. It just would lay out a path. If you agree with it, then the demon can start to work in your life to gain control. Now, listen what it says in the Old Testament – I want to show you something, something you may not have seen before. It’s in the book of Leviticus – chapter 20 verse 6. It says: “The person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute themselves with them, I will set my face against that person and cut him off from my people.” So, God is warning people about the dangers of engaging with evil spirits.

A medium is a person that an evil spirit works through to speak to people. A psychic is a person who a demon speaks to them, and they talk to you about your life. So, divination then, involves reaching out into the spirit world to make connection with evil spirits, and ask them to give you direction.

There are many ways or many forms this takes. A common one teenagers often play, is they put letters or words on a table in a circle and they put a glass, and they put their fingers on the glass. “Ooh, who is out there. Oh, speak to me. Oh, tell me this question. Wow.” What they don’t realise, is you are connecting with an evil spirit. There is someone out there; there are lots of things out there. But the Bible says, if I want to come to God, Jesus said – “I am the way, I am the truth, no one comes to God but by me.” So when you reach out to the spirit world with any kind of these methods of fortune-telling, you contact evil spirits.

Notice what it says in here – I want you to have a look. “The person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, prostitutes himself with them.” Now, I want you think about this. Just think about this. If you think about what a prostitute is: a prostitute is a person who gives their body in exchange for money. So, a trade takes place. Person receives money, and they give over their body. The person that they receive the money from, uses their body.

Now, what the Bible is saying, is that when you get involved in divination, you are acting like a prostitute. You are receiving information, but you’re giving the demon a right to your body. You receive information, like the prostitute receives the money, and you receive the spirit into your body, like the prostitute opens her life to the man. So the Bible uses certain language, it says: “Don’t prostitute yourself with evil spirits.” Don’t be defiled by evil spirits because it will cut you off from connection with God.

This is an immense source of grief to God. He has designed you, He has a plan for your life, He loves you, He wants to help you, He wants to walk with you, He wants to come into your life, and for you to turn away from and turn instead to His enemies – evil spirits – and open your life and let the spirit come in, in exchange for what? Little bit of information.

You know what would happen with these people that would come to these things? They become addicted. They can’t make any decisions now unless they keep going back. They have to keep going back: pay more money, receive more information, pay more money, receive more information. When it doesn’t work out, they go back again. So their lives become controlled by the evil spirit. Whenever you get involved in divination, you enter agreement with an evil spirit and you give it right of access to your life. Then, you have many problems. You have many many problems.

Now, there are many kinds of different operations people get involved in. The media today are so full of these things – Harry Potter movies, many other different kind of movies; and they glamorise divination. They glamorise magic and sorcery. They make it to look really interesting. But what they never tell you is this, they will never tell you this – what is the source of the power. If there is real spiritual power, there is a real spiritual source. In the kingdom of God, the source of power is always the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ is honoured. In the kingdom of the devil, the source is an evil spirit, but you never know what it comes from, and you never really know that.

Some of you have been experimenting with divination. It seemed like it was harmless – “Well, everyone else is doing it. why don’t we, let’s do this eh?” So people sometimes do this in school, sometimes in their homes, sometimes on the weekend; and there’s a fascination that comes. Did you realise, serpents, the python, when it rears up, looks at the animal, often the animals become paralysed. They become fascinated, they cannot seem to move away from the gaze of the serpent.

When you get involved with evil spirits, there is a fascination because the power is real. There’s an attraction, there’s a spiritual draw; but you are opening your life to increase the bondage of spirits in your life. Some of you, your families have been involved in fortune-telling. This has allowed that kind of spirit to come into your life as well.

Some of you, your families have been involved with sorcery or magic, all kinds and forms of that – reaching out for spiritual power. Idolatry is one form of that. When people are involved in idolatry, they make a sacrifice, they make an exchange – they give the idol something in return for something. What are they getting in return? They’re getting an evil spirit. It’s the same kind of thing – it’s a prostituting.

We are not made for evil spirits. Our life is not made to be demonised. We are made for the loving spirit of God to be in us. God’s desire is His spirit flows out of our heart like a wonderful river. But when we’re involved in idolatry or in divination, fortune-telling of any kind, or in sorcery, magic, when we open our life to those things, we are opening our life to an evil spirit and then the trouble starts; and it’s progressive trouble.

When people are involved in these things, they often have nightmares, they have struggles spiritually, there can be heaviness and depression, they have premonitions, sometimes they have things begin to move in their rooms, or they hear voices speaking to them, they can’t shut the voices out. Sometimes people are tormented at night with nightmares, horrendous nightmares. Or they’re tormented, they wake up and like someone’s trying to kill them. Or they feel themselves being sexually molested but no one is there. Once evil spirits have a doorway, they will seek to increase the bondage. They seek to advance their hold. They seek to bring total defeat in your life. Jesus said: the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Jesus came to give us life.

Let’s go back and have a look at the story again. Let’s look back now, and we read in Acts chapter 16. In Acts 16, we find the girl with the spirit of divination, and it says: “She cried out, she was following Paul and crying out saying – these men are servants of the most high God, who proclaimed to us the way of salvation.” Now what she was saying was absolutely true. A lot of people wouldn’t know that. They’d just see another couple of people. But what she was saying was real. So, these spirits do have knowledge.

When Jesus confronted people with evil spirits, they would cry out, they knew who He was. So evil spirits recognised Jesus, and they recognise those who follow Him. They know who you are.

I can remember I was in Bali and we were driving past this park and I saw some people there and some snakes. I stopped to go and talk and find out what’s going on. New Zealand’s wonderful, we have no snakes. No snakes. Very good. So, you want snakes, you have to stay here. So I haven’t see snakes very close up, so I went over to have a look. They had a big mat on the ground and these people are handling these snakes. Very scary stuff. I think I stay away, I don’t get too close to the snakes.

So I’m standing just watching, and then someone said – I think they’re sorcerers from Borneo. I said: “Oh, interesting.” Then one of them came up to me, and I thought, “Oh this is interesting, what’s going to happen?” See, people who operate demonic spirits, recognise servants of God. How did they recognise me? Because when you follow Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live in you. God’s spirit dwells in you. You are marked by the spirit of God. You literally radiate light. Maybe no one can see it, but it’s evident in the fruit in your life, and in the spirit world, they can recognise these things. I’ll give you a couple of stories on this.

Anyway, one of these guys came up, and he spoke to me. This is what he said. Now, he’s never met me, I’ve never spoken to him, and this is what he said: “Please don’t pray against us to stop us. We’re just here to earn some money. We don’t want to hurt anyone.” Now, what would cause him to say a thing like that? The spirits that were working with them recognised the servant of God and responded by appealing to me not to stop them. In other words, they recognised I had the power to stop it. Jesus said – “I give you authority over serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way harm you.”

So, in the spirit world, they recognise who you are. See, we look at people, we just see people. We can’t see if they’ve got demonic spirits wrapped around them. We can’t see those things unless God shows it to us. We can’t even see who are the Christians, except often you can see the fruit of it in their life. But from the spirit world, they see exactly who you are and what you’re like. They know you and recognise you.

I was in a meeting in Taiwan not so long ago, September last year, and there were many people. There was a great move of the Spirit, there was joy and laughter, a lot of things happening. I felt God speak to me to begin to move in deliverance. So we had an alter call, and then God began to move in many many people were delivered, just like here. I had my youngest daughter with me, and this is what she said.

She said: “Because it was such a powerful meeting, I was having an encounter with the Lord.” She said: “I realise deliverance is taking place. I said: “Lord, show me what’s happening.”” And she said: “I thought I would just get a mental picture, it’s what I normally get.” The Lord said: “Turn around, face the people.” She said: “I don’t want to do that. My eyes, my mascara is running.” The Lord said: “Turn around, face the people. “ And He said: “Now open your eyes.” So she said: “I stood and I looked and opened my eyes.” And she said: “I got a shock. I could see with my eyes open, all of the people.” But she said: “I could see, imposed on it all, the spiritual world.”

In other words, she could see into the two worlds at the same time. You can only do this is God has opened your eyes to see these things. I said: “What did you see?” She said: “Well, I could see the demons.” I said: “What were they like?” And she said: “They were terrified. I could see them all in the meeting, and they were all terrified. They were full of fear and terror.”

I said: “What were they doing?” She said: “They were holding on to people and they were trying to keep hold on people.” I said: “Where were they holding them?” She said: “Well, some of them had their hands over their eyes, trying to stop the people seeing. Some of them had their hands over their ears, trying to stop them listening, stop them hearing. Some of them had their hands over the mouth, trying to stop them speaking, and all of them were trying to hold on desperately.”

I said: “What else did you see?” She said: “Well I couldn’t see you. I heard you speaking. I could just see this person who looks like Jesus, and there’s just light flowing out everywhere, and every demon is looking at this person and they’re terrified. Every time you began to speak, it was like a river of God flowed and the demons were just swept away.” I said: “What else did you see?” She said: “It was all too much for me, I couldn’t manage seeing into two worlds at once. I just closed my eyes again.” I said: “Oh I’d like to know more.”

But there’s the thing – the spirit world sees us as we really are. Demonic spirits recognise Jesus, they know He’s the Son of God; they are terrified of them. He defeated them at Calvary. The Bible says when Jesus died and gave up His life on Calvary, He legally broke the power of the devil over every person. Jesus extends an invitation to us to turn away from sin, turn away from these occult practices, and turn to Him, the living God. He loves us. We’re not made for evil spirits.

There are some of you here who have opened your life up to evil spirits. Maybe it’s come through your family. Maybe you were dedicated to some idol or temple. Maybe your family are involved in idolatry, fortune-telling. Or maybe you have done this: opened your life to spirits through fortune-telling of some kind. Perhaps you’ve opened your eyes to the occult world by invitations to demons. Maybe you’ve opened your life in these ways. God wants to set you free.

One way I’ve noticed some people have come into bondage is through computer games – role-playing computer games; playing the role of a sorcerer. I’ve prayed for a number of people, about 400+, who were involved with computer games, who became addicted and demonised when they used these role-playing imagination games, and began to engage in the spirit world. Others have got demonised through martial arts, from meditation, from various kinds of occult things. Jesus came to set us free.

Let’s finish our story now and see what happened. It says: “She did this for many days, and Paul was greatly annoyed. He was grieved.” The word literally means – he was struggling to break through. When there’s a lot of demonic activity, we can feel spiritual pressure and struggle to break through. He was struggling in getting breakthroughs, and then he began to realise the demonic spirit around this girl.

So he spoke to her, notice what he said – he came in the authority of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the devil conqueror; and when we align our life with Him, we become devil conquerors too. “In the name of Jesus Christ, come out!” Spoke to the spirit, and the spirit manifested, and then came out of her. It was a python. Came out of her, and she was set free.

I remember when I was in Hastings many years ago, and we had our first move of God in deliverance. I remember it very clearly – it was very spectacular. We had a meeting one night, and people came up for ministry, and I laid my hands on one man. He was from the Pacific Islands, and his family are involved in fortune-telling. He fell on the ground. It’s quite common.

But then he did this, and I had never seen this before – He imitated a snake and he slithered all this way under the chairs, all the way to the back of the room. I’d never seen anything like it! How do you do that trick? That’s a good trick to do at a party. The chairs were just popping like this, and he just slithered his way on the ground.

We came and spoke over him, commanded the spirit of divination to go. The spirit left him. It was a spirit in the form of a python, and it manifested just like it. I’ve had that happen on several occasions. People slither, very fast. I’ve seen all kinds of things like that. And here’s the point: they’re all bad. They’re all bad. And they seek to hurt you.

Paul confronted the spirit and the young girl was set free. She was a slave girl to people and she was a slave girl to demons, and that day she came to Christ and became a free person. Free in her heart from sin, free in her heart from the evil spirit. God wants the same to happen to you.

So, we’re going to extend two invitations – the first is for people to become a follower to Jesus. This is what Jesus said: Whoever received Him, made Him welcome, and believed on His name, Jesus is the Saviour who saves us from sin. To any person who received Him and believed on Him, He gave power to become a child of God; to be born into the family of God. This is what God wants to do for you today. He wants to change your life. He wants room in your heart, if you will let Him.

It doesn’t matter what has been happening in your life, how bad your life seems to be. God loves you. He loves you. He understands you. No matter what you’ve been involved in, it can never change that God loves you. Your behaviour, no matter how bad, cannot change that God loves you. While you were in sin, God sent His Son to die on the cross for you.

I want to tell you today, God loves you. God loves you. Jesus said – Those who follow Him, will hear His voice; and He will give them eternal life. I want to invite you today to take the first step. To follow Jesus – it’s to invite Him into your life, to ask Him to forgive your sins, to receive Him into your life.

Later on, we’ll have a second alter call, and I want to specially pray for people who have trouble with evil spirits. If you’ve been involved in divination or fortune-telling, been involved in occult activities to any kind: idolatry or spiritism, or you’re tormented by spirits. Maybe your family’s been involved in spirits. We want to have a second alter call to pray for deliverance, and the power of God will come on you and set you free from those spirits.

You can make a decision today to become connected with God. You can make a decision today to go home without your demons. By asking Jesus Christ to set you free. Let’s just close our eyes right now.

Healing from Abortion and Miscarriage (12 of 12)

Sun 13 Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and demonic bondage which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day! Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

The church needs to have a message of hope. The gospel is a message of hope to people. It's about God's love for us, and his willingness to help us. And so as Christians, no matter what is happening around us, we need to understand we have a message to help people. That Jesus Christ came to help people.

I'm reminded of an important scripture where it says: Jesus did not come to condemn people, but to save them; to rescue people out of the problems created by sin. So Jesus loves people, and he has no condemnation for us. No matter what has happened in your life, the heart of God is to reach into you, and love you, and restore you.

And so as believers, we should not be afraid of the issues in our nation, but should learn and understand them, and learn how to minister to people. We should not have areas we can't talk about. Rather, we should be able to talk about any issue; and come with a spirit of love, a spirit of hope, and with comfort for people.

I want to do this today – I want to share with you something that will be very deeply touching for many people. I haven't shared this message before, but God has spoken into my heart recently about this, and I wrestled somewhat last night and this morning. I really wanted to preach something else! But, I always feel that if you listen to God, he has something in mind for us. And this message may directly affect you, or it may indirectly affect you. And I just hope you will have an open heart and a loving spirit. Because we have prayed for people, and seen God bring tremendous breakthroughs.

Let's just have a look at Psalm 127:3. We've come here many times, and we've shared our story, most of you would know we have a big family with 7 children, and 21 grandchildren, and we've learnt a lot of things on the way. We also have 2 other children, but they're in heaven. So I want to talk today about abortion and miscarriage.

I want to offer hope for you. We want people here who don't know Jesus, to realize God loves you, and desires to help you; wants to break the power of sin in your life. After that I'd like to pray for 3 groups of people together. We'll pray for you together, because we don't want to embarrass you. We just want there to be a spirit of love, and the power of God to help you. I want to pray for people who've had an abortion, or perhaps you've been connected to someone who has. For people who've had a miscarriage; or for people who are barren, and are hoping for a child. We're not going to ask you at all what the nature of your problem is. We just want you to feel free to come and believe that God will help you.

So in Psalm 127:3, it says: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward”. So children are a heritage. It's an inheritance, something God gives to us. There's a part of every person that is a spirit being. The spirit comes from God. The Bible says: God is a Spirit. So when human beings come together, and create a life, they are partnering with God; and God puts a spirit into the child. The child becomes a living being, with an eternal destiny. God's desire is that the child shares his destiny with him. God's desire is for many children. This is the heart of God - many children. So God plans to reach out into this earth to help people - that's God's heart.

So when we're born into this world, we're born separate from God, because of sin. God's desire is to come to us, forgive our sins, put the Spirit in our lives, and give us an eternal destiny with him. This starts by responding to Christ.

I read in the paper just 3 days ago, it's a news story from China. It took place in a province called Weifang city, and there was a young couple. They went to bed one evening, they had one child, and they were expecting a second child. In the early hours of one morning, the police burst into their home. They held down the husband, and they dragged the wife out of the home, and took her to a hospital.

The panic-stricken husband tried every way to find out where his wife had gone. But the authorities refused to tell him. It took him 6 hours to find out where his wife was. They had threatened the wife, because she already 6 months pregnant - threatened to put her husband in prison. Then they injected her, and when he got to his wife, she was in the process of miscarrying.

What touched me very deeply was that both of them suffered great grief. They were grieving over the loss of their child, and there's no one to comfort them. My heart goes out to them, and I'll tell you why in a moment. I feel quite deeply touched by that story. I'll share to you a couple of personal testimonies, and then we'll open up the word of God. I want to offer hope to people today.

Some years ago, my wife went through two miscarriages. As a man, I didn't understand at that time what it meant to a woman, to miscarry. We were involved in ministry; we had many pressures on us - we already had 5 other children. When the two miscarriages came, my wife never complained. She had the miscarriages, went to hospital, and then we carried on with our life, and I didn't think about it much at all.

We had another two children - Peter and Sarah. Some years later, I was in another church ministry, and I was praying for a lady, and asked her: what is the problem? She'd had a miscarriage, and as I prayed, she began to weep; and I felt this incredible grief - I began to cry with her. I thought: that's very strange - I must be feeling the love of God.

Then on the same day, I went to another church; and the second time, the same thing happened. I prayed for a woman who'd suffered a miscarriage, and I had this incredible grief. When you feel something, you need to ask yourself: what am I feeling; and why do I feel it? So I went home and began to pray, and the Lord spoke to me. He said: you are grieving not because of her, but because of your own loss. He said: you've lost two children – a boy and a girl, and you've never stopped to grieve. You've never even admitted you've lost a child.

So I began to grieve, and the Lord showed me what to do. I went home to my wife, and I said to her: God's been speaking to me about our two miscarriages. Joy said: “Well God's been speaking to me too - I've been journaling about this. We had a boy and a girl; and I've given them names: Timothy and Catherine.”

I said: the Lord has shown me something we need to do for our family. So we had a family meal, like we always do, and Joy put two beautiful orchids on the table. Then we had our meal, and we shared with the children. I said: “You know that we have seven children in our family. Well actually, there are nine - there are another two in heaven”.

An interesting thing happened - the two children who came after the miscarriages, both began to weep, and they were really deep sobs. I realised that they had picked up a grief in their spirit; even though in their mind, they did not know we had lost two children. There was grief that my wife carried; and they knew in their spirit that they had lost a brother and a sister, and there was a grief in their heart. The spirit of grief had come around them.

So the grief my wife carried over her loss, was transferred to the next two children. So we laid our hands on them and prayed for them. For the other children, this wasn't an issue at all - it was just the two following the miscarriage. This opened our eyes, that a child in the womb can feel the feelings and the grief of the mother. That when a child is miscarried, and the mother feels the grief - if the grief isn't resolved, then the next children pick up the grief. That was quite a revelation to us.

We did get a tremendous insight: that when you've lost children to a miscarriage, it's important to identify who they are. Not just some ‘thing' we've lost. For me, it was like my wife lost something - like a tooth. Painful; but it's just something that happens. I didn't get a hold in my heart that I've lost a child; that as a father, one of my children had been taken away.

So I realised that when there are miscarriages, and also when there are abortions - there's a real grief left. One of the ways of processing the grief, I'll tell you a bit more about it later, is to identify what each child is; and to give them a name; and to release them to the Lord. Then it's not just some “thing” that happened, some “thing” I lost - some piece of tissue. It's actually a real living spirit being, whose body never developed, whose house did not last, and they had to leave. My wife put it this way, so beautifully: “It's a rose that budded, but never bloomed”. So over the years, we've prayed for many people, and helped them in this area.

Now, here's the second part of the testimony: earlier on this year I was in Singapore, and as I was in Singapore, I was teaching about encounters with God. We had a worship team, and we were ministering just to the worship team, to help them have encounters with God.

Now previously to this, the two children we had who had suffered grief, one day after church, said this to us - each independently. They said: we saw into heaven today in the meeting. We saw our brother and sister - and each of them saw that. It's like God opened heaven for them, and they saw the brother and sister they'd lost. Each of them saw the exact same thing, independently of each other; and they were really excited, and were able to describe them!

I must admit - I was a bit jealous; but this year, I was teaching on how to have encounters with God. So I taught people how to focus on Jesus, allow your imagination to see him as the word of God describes him, and begin to reach out in your heart to him. In other words, I was meditating on Jesus. All these other young people were having encounters with God; and I just felt that instead of leading the meeting, I should press in myself.

So I began to meditate on Jesus - I wasn't thinking about anything else. Suddenly, I became in the Spirit; and instead of seeing Jesus, the Holy Spirit revealed to me two people: a young man, and a young woman. It was a shock to me - I didn't expect to see that. They both spoke to me, and said: “Hello Dad”. I was just shocked! They said: “We've got so many things to tell you, about what happens in heaven”. Then I became aware of Jesus standing next to me - He was carrying a little baby in his arms. I realised that child was the grandchild we miscarried in December. Then suddenly I saw another little child, and he said: “hello Granddad”. I could recognise the facial features, and knew which of my children had lost this child.

My attention came around to my son and daughter, and I began to look at them; Jesus was right next to me. They began to talk to me, and said: we want to show you something. Suddenly my eyes opened up. I could see this huge immense vast area - full of children. They were all of different ages; from babies to a little bit older. There were so many that I couldn't count them – vast numbers. They said: these are children that have been miscarried or aborted; there's a special place in heaven for each of them, where angels look after them, and they're educated and grow up.

I realised then, that the size of my grandchild was about the proper age for the one I'd lost. I realised the age of my children were about the right age for when we lost them. As I looked around, at all of these children who had been miscarried or aborted; I realised that God was showing me something else. The ones He was showing me were all Chinese. I was quite shocked!

Then Jesus spoke to me, He had absolutely no condemnation towards anyone at all, I could just feel His love. This is what He said: “Every one of them has a mother, who is grieving over their child, and I want to bring healing to those mothers.” He didn't say anything about what they'd done. He just said: “I love them, and want to help them, because they're grieving”. He said: I want you to begin to study and prepare in this area. I want you to put some materials on DVD, and speak in China. My heart was deeply touched, not just from seeing all the children, but feeling the grief of the mothers. I could feel the heart of Jesus - His immense grief.

Recently we were up in China, and someone came to me privately. I couldn't believe it - they said they'd had an abortion. “Can you help me”, they said. God dramatically ministered and brought healing to this couple. It was like each place I went to after that, there would always be someone who'd come and ask us if we could pray for them.

So I felt I'd share some things about this here – have to start somewhere. I want to share some things from scripture - some basic keys we've learnt that could help. I want to establish that from God's point of view, a child is a living person, with a destiny - even if they're still in the womb. Sometimes people think that, because the child is in the womb: 1) it doesn't understand anything; and 2) that it's not a person - it's just a ‘thing', and often inconvenient.

I want to show you several scriptures quickly, to show you God's point of view. In Judges 13, you'll find something about Samson. Here is the common thread: that before a child is conceived, God already knows them and their characteristics, and has a destiny for their life. So no matter what stage the child is at in the womb, from God's point of view, it is a living person, with a destiny - a person He knows.

Judges 13:2-5 says: There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had borne no children. Then the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman, saying: “Behold now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. “Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. “For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”

Notice these things: before the child is conceived, God already knows it's a son. Secondly, God has a plan that this son will deliver Israel. Thirdly, it's very important how the mother conducted herself while she's pregnant. In other words, God is concerned about negative influences coming in to the unborn child. So you see, in this passage, that before a child is even conceived, God knows the child, and knows its destiny.

1 Kings 13:1-2 says – By the word of the Lord a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. By the word of the Lord he cried out against the altar: “Altar, altar! This is what the Lord says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.'”

The nation is corrupt and full of idolatry. God sends a prophet to warn them. This is what He said: “I am going to bring a child into this world. His name will be called Josiah, and he is going to be a major mover in bringing restoration to the nation”. Do you know how long after that prophecy was given until Josiah came? 360 years! In other words, 360 years before this man appeared, before he was conceived, before he was born - God named him even! God had a name for him, and had a destiny for him.

360 years later, when these parents had this child, they wouldn't have remembered that prophecy. All they did was have a thought come to them: “Let's name this child Josiah”. They didn't even realise, as they named him Josiah, that they were fulfilling something that God had already planned. God had a destiny for that child. 360 years ago, the parents weren't even alive. God could look through time, and say: in 360 years time, there's going to be a couple. The father would be a very corrupt man, but in spite of that fact - that he's a Satan worshipper - I will bring into that family, a child who will change the nation. His name will be called Josiah. You notice again, God has names for children; has destinies for them; and knows them before they're even conceived.

Let's look at another one in Jeremiah 1:4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” How amazing! God says: He forms the child in the womb. He said: before the embryo or foetus was formed, I knew who was going to be in there. In other words - you're a spirit being, and even though the house you're going to live in isn't formed, I know who you are. I know all about you, and I've already set you apart. I already have a destiny for you. Even before you have formed enough that your mother knows anything, I have formed my spirit into you, and you will be a prophet to the nations.

You notice again that even before the child is properly formed, God knows the child, and has a destiny for them. Isn't this amazing? Isaiah 49:1 tells us the same thing. Isaiah was also known to the Lord before he was formed in the womb.

In Psalm 139:16, David says: “Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed; and in your book were written all the days that were fashioned for me, when yet there are none.” What David is saying is this: when I was a tiniest embryo, just conceived, and I wasn't even formed -You saw me. Not only that, it says: ‘in your book, were written all the days of my life, when I hadn't even begun one of them yet'. In other words, what he's saying is that God saw him as a human being, as a spirit being, as a person with a destiny, and ascribed a course for him, before he was even born.

So these scriptures seem to indicate very strongly that before we're even conceived, God knows we're coming; and at the moment we're conceived, the Spirit of God goes into the child. Even though it's unformed, God loves that child. God has a destiny for that child, even if the child's born into difficult family circumstances.

Josiah was born into a family where the father was a Satanist, but God still had a destiny for him. How amazing that God would see an unborn child like this; see the child in the womb as a living being – with a name, with a destiny, with a life planned out. This is truly amazing.

Over and over in the Bible, we find God speaking about children before they're born. Zachariah and Elizabeth – Elizabeth was barren, and God spoke to Zachariah and said: “You know your wife is barren, she can't have any children”. He said: “I know that”. God said: “You're going to have children. You're going to have a child.” He said: “She's too old for that – how is this going to happen?” He argued with God, but God said “No more arguing. You'll have a child – he is going to be a prophet, and will prepare the way of the Lord”. The Bible is very clear – that God sees people before they're conceived and born, and He has a plan for their life, long before they come out of the womb.

Matthew 1:21 – “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Same thing again - before the child is even conceived, God knows the child, knows the name, has a destiny for that child.

How about you? Have a look in Ephesians 2:10, I want you to notice something – “Now you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for a purpose, for good works, that God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them”. So what it tells us is that each person is a unique work of God. Each of us is a unique manufacture of God. There's no one like you - your fingerprints are unique, your DNA is unique, everything about you is unique. Before you were born, God had a path for you to walk. It says: you were created for something - for good works. Before you were begun, God had a plan, that you'd do something useful in your life. Amen.

Have a look at the second thing, in Luke 1:39-44. The first thing we need to look at, is that God knows us before we're born. He knows our name; knows what we will be like; and He's interested in us while we're in the womb; and has a purpose for our life.

Let's have a look at the child in the womb. I was reading a secular book recently, and they have done a lot of research more recently with ultrasonic scans of infants in the womb. Prior to this, for about 100 years, people believed that the identity was in the brain – personality, understanding, awareness. But they found an interesting thing, once they started to do these experiments. If the personality and identity and feelings are in the brain, the conclusion that they came to, is that if the brain is not developed, then it is not really a person, so you can get rid of it.

But in the Bible, it's quite different. Recent research shows quite clearly, that it's the heart that develops before the brain. The Bible tells us, that out of your heart is where life flows. Also recent research has shown that the child in the womb is very aware of what's happening around it, even before the mind is developed. This was a secular book, and the conclusion he came to after lots of research, was that an unborn child in the womb is totally aware of what's happening around them, even if the brain isn't fully formed.

In other words - it's a person. The guy came to the conclusion, that there must be some sixth sense that enables the child to know things, when their brain isn't developed enough, and neither was their hearing. He was talking about their spirit - that the spirit of the child recognises what is happening around them. He discovers they could recognise the voice of the father and the mother; recognise conflict; and could understand what was happening around them. This is partly the reason for the Hebrew culture, that once the woman is pregnant, she would go into hiding for quite some months in a peaceful location, so the child could be at peace and rest during the formation stages in the womb. So this is modern research.

Now let's read what the Bible says. In Luke 1:39, it says: “At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth.” Now Elizabeth is six months pregnant, and the baby is not yet fully formed. Now look at this - it said: “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” Who says the baby in the womb doesn't know what's going on? See, Elizabeth was very pregnant; door opens up and Mary was there; and Mary begins to prophesise and flow with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth is listening to all the words, and the baby is picking up the prophetic flow! The baby goes: “yay!” and kicks, huge kick - full of joy, because this is his destiny – to be a prophet for the Messiah. This is his destiny - right from in the womb. He knows there's something for him, and as soon as he feels the Holy Ghost, he leaps; massive kicks.

So this is something they've only discovered, recently: that the child in the womb is aware of spiritual influences; but it's written in the Bible 2000 years ago. So children in the womb are aware of the environment around them. They're aware of the presence of God; they're aware of the mother and what she feels; they're aware of the father; they're aware of the environment.

Now the reason I've taken a bit of time to share these things, is because I want to talk about the impact when an abortion takes place. The Bible's very clear, when we look from one end to the other, that the devil is hostile to children. From the book of Genesis (Genesis 3:15) it says the devil is hostile to children, because of a promise God made: that through children being born out of women, a saviour would be born.

So when we look right through Bible history, we find demonic attacks on the child - either in the womb, or just born. In the days of Exodus, just before there was a great deliverance, all the male children under two were killed. In the days after King David, Athaliah killed all the royal children but one. In the days of Jesus, the spirit of murder came through Herod, and murdered all the children under two.

The devil has constantly been against children. The womb is an area of conflict. When miscarriages take place, something God intended for good is suddenly stopped. When abortion takes place, the life of a child is taken. Something wrong has happened, and there is a huge impact. I want to talk a little bit about the impact, because as we've prayed for people, we have realised that many people are suffering, but they cannot understand why they were suffering.

The Bible describes a number of reasons why miscarriages take place. But it does lay out this – that God's plan is no miscarriages and that the womb would be fruitful. So when we look at scriptures, we find that miscarriages came because of idolatry. Sometimes they came because of a curse in the family line. Sometimes it was because of incest in the family. Sometimes it was because people were involved in evil spirits.

I won't go into all the scriptures regarding that, but the Bible is very clear that God's intention is that we be productive. So when miscarriages happen, there can be a spiritual cause, or there can be just a natural, physical cause. When we enquired about the last miscarriage, one of my daughters got a word from God that the brain had not formed properly, and that my daughter and her husband had been spared years of grief. Sometimes there's a physical problem, because we live in a fallen world. Sometimes there's a spiritual problem; and sometimes it can be because the mother has made inner vows never to have a child.

Whatever the cause, the result is grief. When a mother carries a child in her womb, and loses the child, there is a deep grief and sense of loss. Men can't easily understand it - that a woman's life is wrapped up with the child, who is drawing life from her body. So when there's a loss, there's a great grief.

I want to focus on the impact of an abortion. Sometimes when we're counselling people, if you don't get to the root of the problem, you can never solve the problem. As I researched this area, I began to find that everywhere, they came up with the same conclusions – in order for a woman to have an abortion, she must somehow distance herself that this is a real person. Either the doctor informs her: it's nothing, and it's just a medical procedure; or because of fear, or difficulties in the physical situation, she just doesn't want to acknowledge what's happening.

One of the core issues is the denial this is a human being. Once the mother has denied that it is a human being, then it's just a physical operation like having your tooth pulled. However, that is not the truth.

Here are some of the things that are commonly attributed now, to someone having an abortion. These are widely-known symptoms, known as post-abortion trauma syndrome. Let me list them for you; and then we'll show how people can be set free. Surveys done on people indicated these kind of issues. I'll just list them without explaining them too much.

1) Shame – they'll feel shame and secrecy coupled with low personal-esteem.

2) Deep feelings of guilt – just guilt that would not go away.

3) Depression – often bouts of depression, sadness and crying, but no apparent reason. Because remember, if you've concealed the truth with a lie; if you've refused to accept this was a life that was taken; then you won't understand why you're so sad. If it wasn't anything - how could I be sad about it?

4) Suicidal thinking and attempts.

5) Issues with self-hate.

6) Issues with sleep disorders.

7) Flashbacks - the woman suddenly remembers the trauma, and goes back into shock and grief.

8) A strong desire for replacement babies; unconsciously wanting a baby, to make up for the baby that was lost. What's called “anniversary syndrome” - on the date of the abortion or the date the child was to be born, the mother begins to become depressed and weep, but usually doesn't know why.

9) Another thing is trying to atone, by spoiling the other children.

10) Alcohol or drug problems.

11) Self-punishing behaviour – I deserve to be punished, which could be self-harm (cutting), abusive relationships, or promiscuity.

12) It can be physical problems – constant bleeding, or constant miscarriages.

13) Often there's a deep guilt – I survived, but at the cost of my child. These are terrible feelings that people have.

I had a woman come to me for prayer recently, and I said to her: “What is your problem?” She said: “I have been bleeding for about 12 years. We desperately want children but cannot have any”. I said: “Have you ever had an abortion?” She said: “Yes. I had 4”. I said to the lady, in the spirit of love, “You actually have a family of 4 children, but they're all in heaven - and your actions have brought this about. When they told you this was a simple procedure - they lied. Actually, it's caused you this problem you now have. You and your husband are without a child to hold, because the ones you could've held, you've now lost”.

She just began to weep and weep. We shared with her that God loved her, and would forgive her; so she was restored to the Lord, and her heart was healed. I'll show you exactly how, shortly. My prayer is that the next time I'm there, she'll have a baby. I was at City Harvest this year, and a lady came up with a husband and a little baby. She said: “You must see our little baby - it's a miracle baby. It was 12 months since you were last here. We had a very bad first child, very difficult pregnancy, and I made an inner vow that I'd never have another child. So, every time I get pregnant, I lose the child through miscarriage. I realised when I went through your teaching, that I made an inner vow. I renounced the inner vow, and asked God to bless my womb - 3 months later I'm pregnant, and here's our little baby.” Actually it was short of 3 months, it was around 1 month.

So you see again, the spiritual connection to problems in the life. So, one of the issues that we have found, is that many problems women suffer with - they can't trace it back to the abortion, because they've pretended that nothing really happened. I want to share very quickly the path to get free.

Jeremiah 31:15 says: “Rachel, weeping for her children, unable to be comforted, because they are no more.” So how can we get free? For someone who is in this situation, the first step is to turn to Jesus Christ. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” So whatever you're suffering from, Jesus is able to save and heal you.

So we see then, the consequences of abortion are far bigger than we realise. They affect the mother; spirits are imparted to the womb that affect the next children; the family are affected; the man who was the father has lost his child; the grandparents have lost a grandchild; and siblings born after that are affected by the trauma.

I remember one lady brought her child to me. I said: “What's the problem?” She said: “My child will not bond and breast feed. In fact, as soon as I put him on the breast, he begins to scream. What can we do?” I said, “You didn't by any chance, try and abort this child did you?” She said: “Yes.” I said: “Is it surprising that the child is afraid of you? It senses the spirit of murder - it's not going to bond to someone who tried to destroy it”. She was shocked! She asked Jesus to forgive her, I prayed for the mother and child, and the child bonded. As soon as the child was delivered from the spirit of fear and murder, immediately it started to bond - it was a huge impact.

So let's have a look at how to get free. There are three areas: spiritual issues; emotional issues; and relationship issues. The answer is incredibly simple - it's very easy for you to move out of the place of death to life.

1) We need to face the spiritual issues. So the first thing is to face the truth: this is what I did - I took the life of my child. Most mothers only do it because they're under such pressure and stress - pressure from the boyfriend or husband; pressure from the family; pressure from circumstances; but nevertheless - they must take responsibility.

The first key to being set free is to break the lie. Isaiah 28 it tells us that when we cover ourselves up with a lie, we are in covenant with death and hell. So the first step is to face the truth: I had a child, and I've taken the life of my child. Just facing the truth hugely breaks open this problem.

2) You need to repent and confess it to the Lord. You need to actually come with words to the Lord. 1 John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us”. So God has already forgiven us - all you need to do, is position yourself to receive it.

3) The third area is forgiveness. Firstly the person must receive forgiveness - I am forgiven by God; secondly, they must forgive themselves; and thirdly, they must forgive other people. Often, the woman may be very angry at the man; very angry at the father; or very angry at the parents; or very angry at the people who did the procedures; angry at the friends who encouraged her to do it. There can be a lot of anger and grief - and that needs to be faced, and let go of - by forgiveness. Forgiveness is the way we resolve those things; and then deliverance from the demonic spirits.

Confession; release forgiveness; and deliverance from those spirits. And in a moment we'll pray for people to be set free. There's another area that's also needed. This is what we found to be extremely helpful. I have seen people break and weep when we've just taken this step: Ask the Lord - what is this child? Jesus knows, God knows your child - Is this a boy or a girl? Listen to your heart, and God will tell you; just like that.

The next thing to do is to give it a name and an identity. So we're breaking the lie by giving it an identity. We'll ask them, could you name your child. You know how hard it is to name children. You spend days working out a name for a child; but I found that in this kind of process, I've come to the conclusion that God's already named them - I just need to listen to the name. So ask the Lord: what is the name of my child I've lost? Or just rise up and give your child a name.

This lady that had the four abortions, I said: ask the Lord to show you what they were. And she said quite quickly “girl, boy, boy, girl”. I said: now let's give them names. All were named within the space of a couple of minutes. Now, she began to grieve - she started to be aware of her children.

I said, “Now the next step is to release your children to the Lord. See Jesus standing there, and pass your children to Him. Here's what you know: one day you'll see your children again.” So sometimes we pray a little prayer: Jesus, I release my child to You. I release her into your arms. Please tell her I'm so sorry for what I did, and I'm looking forward to meeting her again - a very simple prayer.

But you notice, all it has done is removed all the lie, and bring it down to the truth. Often there's a lot of grief, pain and emotions. Sometimes there are other broken relationships to repair. The path to freedom is very simple.

Of course, if the person's had a miscarriage, there's no sin to confess usually; unless there's some generational cause. But I have found it helpful, every time, to close your eyes and open your heart to the Lord. Ask Him to show you what the child was, and tell you the name. Now, it's not a thing - it's a person; and you'll see your child again. That is the hope of the gospel – the child is in heaven.

So whenever you speak to Jesus, you're speaking to someone who is speaking to your child. Leave your child is Jesus' hands, because one day you'll see them again. I have seen so many people set free, so many broken hearts healed. What a relief to have the secrecy, shame, and lies broken, and a broken heart healed, by faith in Jesus Christ.

A very simple thing to do, and I believe God wants to touch many. Let's close our eyes. I want you to know how much God loves you. Jesus came into this earth, God in the flesh. He showed us what heaven is like, He showed us the kingdom of God, and he invited us to connect with Him. We're all born in sin, separated from God, we can't even find God's way; but Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He rose again from the dead; broke the power of sin. Jesus said these words: to everyone who received Him, made Him welcome, believed in Him, He gave power to become a child of God.

Slumber of Jezebel

Jezebel set out to destroy all messengers of the Lord. She destroyed prophets wherever she could find them; and raised up instead her own prophetic messengers.

They brought a message which they called Prophecy, but it was actually speaking words that were demonically-empowered, and seduced the nation. The nation came under it, literally fell asleep spiritually.

In the Old and New Testament, the same spirit power, the same kind of operation, to lead people astray, so they don't walk in the destiny that God had for them.

Slumber of Jezebel (1 of 3)

The Bible is very clear: there is an invisible spirit world, in which spiritual powers operate (Eph 6:12).

The nation of Israel got into an alliance with another nation, the Sidonians, by marriage. He married Jezebel, and immediately opened his life to the influence of the spirit power behind her. Her father was a priest of Baal, and so she introduced the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth.

Spiritual Slumber (2 of 3)

The church in the West, on the most, is in a state of spiritual slumber - unaware of the powers at work in the nation, to destroy the legacy that's been built over years. God is speaking to us, to 'wake up' out of that spiritual slumber.

Jezebel was a woman in the Old Testament, and also a woman in the New Testament, but I want to get your eyes off 'woman'. I want you to get your eyes on 'spiritual power' - entering and oppressing a nation.

Recognising and Withstanding Jezebel's attack (3 of 3)

This kind of spiritual attack seeks to shut down the prophetic flow; and remove any Godly authority out of their position. You become fearful, isolate, or lose perspective.

God just got Elijah to have a good long sleep and rest, gave him a bit of food, took him into a place of relationship and connection - started to put anointing back into him, re-fired him and commissioned him. Elijah was a loner, and God got him out of being a loner, made him connect, and actually get into a team flow.

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- Slumber of Jezebel (1 of 3)

- Spiritual Slumber (2 of 3)

- Recognising and Withstanding Jezebel's attack (3 of 3)

Slumber of Jezebel (1 of 3)

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The Bible is very clear: there is an invisible spirit world, in which spiritual powers operate (Eph 6:12).

The nation of Israel got into an alliance with another nation, the Sidonians, by marriage. He married Jezebel, and immediately opened his life to the influence of the spirit power behind her. Her father was a priest of Baal, and so she introduced the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth.

I want to share something with you that the Lord has just put on my heart. I've been in a season, Joy and I both are in a season of fasting, can't remember how long it's been now, probably a couple of weeks or something like that. You just lose track after a while, but we're just having a sense it's a new season, new season in our lives, new season in the church.

When it's like that, you have to stir yourself up, you have to get near to God so you're listening to God. The Lord has been downloading a number of things to me. He spoke to me just over a whole number of areas recently, and He spoke to me on one thing particularly, and I want to read this scripture here, then show what He showed me.

Isaiah 52:1: “Awake, awake! Put on your strength, O Zion; Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city! For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall come no longer to you. Shake yourself from the dust, rise up; Sit down, O Jerusalem! Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion!”

God is speaking through the prophet, telling the church of the day: Wake up! Wake up to what's happening. Wake up spiritually, wake up on the inside, wake up - begin to arise back to become the people of God! Shake off the things that have held you down. Arise and begin to take your rightful role and positioning.

God is speaking strongly to a church, which was in a place of defeat, to awaken the church.

I recently received an article showing how the Islamic faith was spreading like wildfire through the world, and how it's emerging in Europe all over the place. The call for the church was: wake up! Wake up! Don't you see what is going on all around you?

God spoke to me, not directly, but through this verse. He spoke a personal word around a whole lot of other things, speaking to me and to the church. He said: “awake, awake from the slumber of Jezebel. Put on your strength O Zion”.

I thought - I know that verse, but that doesn't sound like the way I read it. I remember that many times, Jesus and the apostles quoted verses; and then they would alter them a bit, to actually just expand what was going on, or to give an additional insight. I thought: ‘Slumber of Jezebel’ - I'd never heard of such a term, never read it anywhere. I got my concordance out and looked it up - couldn't find it anywhere! Well, I don't know about that. Where can I find it in the word?

I began to look, and then the Lord just began to open up, just story after story, illustration after illustration. I encourage us to just be open to what God wants to say, particularly if it relates to you.

He's saying: awake, awake, awake! Awake church! Rise up. I believe it's a word to the church in our own nation; it's a word to us as a people - it's time to awaken, and to arise with much greater strength in God, strength in prayer.

I want to open up what this term ‘Slumber of Jezebel’ is, and some Bible examples. I don't want you to get hung up on what you may know about that particular demonic power. Just be open to what I feel the Lord's unravelling to me.

First of all, 1 Kings 16. The word ‘awaken’ means: to open your eyes; wake up out of sleep; rise into your proper place of operation. When the Bible is talking about awakening, it's referring to a sleepy condition, where people are not operating or functioning as they ought to.

In 1 Kings 16:30, you'll find the first reference to this person called ‘Jezebel’. I don't want you to label any woman, or anything like that - I want you think in terms of spirit powers, unseen spirit powers, which operate in the spirit world.

“Ahab, the son of Omri, did more evil in the sight of the Lord than all the kings that came before him. And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took as a wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians; and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which was built in Samaria. And he made a wooden image. Ahab did provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger more than the kings of Israel that came before him.”

So this is the first mention of this name Jezebel, and the name means literally, if you look at the roots of it, it means ‘Baal’, or ‘Baal exalts’. It means: one who has the favour of Baal upon her. It means: one who is un-husbanded; or operates independently. That's the meaning of the name.

The nation of Israel got into an alliance with another nation, the Sidonians - they came into alliance by marriage. The king of Israel, who should have stood up and led the nation of Israel to walk with God, and trusted God for prosperity - instead he entered into an unholy or ungodly alliance. He married this woman Jezebel, and immediately opened his life to the influence of the spirit power behind her. Her father was a priest of Baal, so she introduced the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth.

Baal means literally ‘husband’ or ‘lord’ - so if you said the word ‘Lord’, it's the word ‘Baal’. Baal means: Lord, husband, one who provides.

Baal worship was a problem right through the Bible. Baal was a god of war; and Baal was a god of fertility. Whenever you see the god Baal, there was an introduction of violence, of war, of the slaying of innocent children, of sexual promiscuity, temple worship, temple prostitution. All of those things lay behind that spirit of Baal, so wherever Baal was worshipped or lifted up, the nation became corrupted with the spirit of idolatry, and a spiritual heaviness settled over the nation.

Jezebel was the daughter, and she introduced worship of Baal (worship of Ashtaroth) into the nation. Instead of the nation having an open spiritual heaven, miraculous provision, miracles of God, there was a brass heaven over the nation - no prophetic flow.

Jezebel set out to destroy all messengers of the Lord, so she came against the prophet. She destroyed prophets wherever she could find them, and raised up instead her own prophetic messengers. They brought a message which they called prophecy, but it was actually speaking words that were demonically empowered and seduced the nation. The nation came under it, literally fell asleep spiritually.

In the New Testament, the name Jezebel turns up in Revelations 2:21 - another era in history, another generation, another people - a different person, but the same spirit. It talks in there about that spirit operating prophetically within the church: seducing, causing an influence that drew people away from God, and drew them into sexual sin, and all kinds of independence of God.

God has spoken in the Old Testament, and the New Testament, of same spirit power, the same kind of operation - literally to lead people astray, so they don't walk in the destiny that God had for them. They don't fulfil the plan God had for them. That spirit power is operating, to cause the people of God to be drawn from what they should be doing.

The Bible is very clear - there are spiritual powers. Ephesians 6:2 - there is an invisible spirit world, in which spiritual powers operate. I think anyone who's got any sense or sensitivity, recognises spiritual atmospheres when you go to different places. Some places are very heavy, oppressed, cold; some places you can literally feel the corruption there.

There is a resident atmosphere or spiritual power operating; but they don't just operate from the spirit realm - they find expression through the lives of people. When you look at the woman Jezebel, there was an invisible spiritual power - but it found an expression through a person who had yielded to that.

2 Corinthians 10:4 it tells us that there are ‘strongholds’. Strongholds are positions in our life that allow demonic powers to influence how we think, how we behave, how we act, even how we view life. They gain access if your life is broken and damaged. That's why people need deliverance - to get your life cleaned up of demonic influence. Why do you need restoration and healing? To close the doors in your heart and soul, so they don't operate any more.

Spiritual powers gain their influence by seducing people to believe a lie, and begin to yield to them. In this particular nation, at this time, there was like a spiritual heaviness, a lack of the flow of the prophetic, a lack of the miraculous, a lack of the supernatural. A spiritual power was resident, operating in the nation, through people.

God hates that spirit operating. He hates it because it destroys the identity of His people, it destroys who the people of God are - it shuts down the church from being supernatural. It comes as heaviness, an oppression; that causes loss of destiny, purpose, identity, and strength.

I want to show you three portions of the Bible - three distinct, separate, situations - where this spirit gained access to a man of God, or a group of people, and it shut them down from operating supernaturally, and began to draw them away from what God had called them to do. I want you to learn from it. In each of these situations the same thing happened - there was a different doorway of entry; but in each of these situations, God intervened - to help that person step back up into the place of identity, positioning that God wanted them to flow in.

What a wonderful thing! It may be, as we read this, that you discover – I’ve opened my life, I've opened my inner man; I've allowed control to operate around my life, and shut down the anointing, shut down the flow of the spirit of God. In that case, I've got good news - God gets you out of it, if you respond to Him.

I didn't finish explaining what I meant by the ‘Slumber of Jezebel’, so let me explain it...

Jezebel was a person who introduced a spiritual power into a nation. The word ‘slumber’ means: to be dormant; to be in a state of inactivity; or passive. When you're slumbering, you're sleeping - you're unaware of what's happening around you. You're not doing anything, so a spiritual slumber means spiritually you're just unaware. You haven't got a clue what spiritual influences are operating. You can't see what's happening, you can't hear what is going on, you can't understand. You're living in a state of confusion, and lack of awareness of the spiritual powers afflicting your situation.

Because you're unaware of it, you can't do anything about it. It's like what I'd call living in a trance. You think you're living life, but actually this stuff has shut you down, and you don't even know it. You're not operating like you ought to operate, so ultimately it leads to a loss of hope and destiny. So that's slumber - a spirit of slumber is a spiritual fall.

The ‘Slumber of Jezebel’ is simply a spiritual power of witchcraft operating, that causes you to become unaware of spiritual operations, to shut down prophetically - shut down in the flow of the Holy Ghost - and not see what God is doing, or hear what God is saying. You actually shut down. You're no longer standing where God wanted you to stand, functioning like God wanted you to function. You no longer have strength, you become quite weak.

Now let's have a look at the condition across our nation. Across much of the western world, church is like that. It's like the church is slumbering. It's like something put everyone to sleep, and you sort of feel the apathy, the indifference and passivity, the shut-down-ness.

I find it over groups of pastors, when I go to talk with them. About a decade ago, about 12 or 13 years ago, God spoke to me to go through the nation speaking about this spiritual power, so we arranged meetings in about six different cities. We called men together, and we had something like 300, 400, 500 men in different cities in the nation. One of the things I did was expose this power, and how it operates, and get men to stand up, begin to pray strongly, begin to throw that heavy thing off their lives, begin to arise back into their position. Oh, we had some deliverance! My goodness, we had deliverance like you can hardly believe. There wasn't a single time where there wasn't an outpouring of deliverance, and then a fresh releasing of anointing.

The last city we were going to go into was Auckland, and the year that we were going to go into Auckland, there was a parade in that city. Now our conference was called ‘Heroes of the Nation’. The year we planned to go into Auckland, there was a gay or homosexual parade called ‘Hero Parade’. After that it was in the news, it was everywhere - you just could not run a conference called Heroes of the Nation. It literally shut us down - just like that - just taking, stealing what we wanted to do I've come into this spirit before - anyway, I felt God saying: stir up again - it's time to rise up.

We looked in 1 Kings 16 - now I want you to go with me to Judges. I want to show you three stories of people who come under the influence of that spirit.

1) Judges, Chapter 16:19. You know the story of this man - a mighty deliverer, born supernaturally by the spirit and power of God. In Judges 16, we find this man in a very bad position...

“Delilah lulled him to sleep on her knees (notice: he fell asleep) then she called for a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. She began to torment him - and his strength left him. She said: Samson, the Philistines are upon you! And he awoke from his sleep, I'll go out as before as at other times, I will shake myself free! Be he did not know the Lord had departed from him. So the Philistines took him, put out his eyes, brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters, and he became a grinder in the prison. He became a grinder in the prison”.

Samson forgot his identity. He was born to be a deliverer in the nation. He was called of God, supernaturally, to be a deliverer - to arise as one who would bring deliverance to the nation from the Philistines. His purpose was to break the yoke of the Philistines - to deliver the nation from that wicked bondage, that evil spirit power - and yet here it was, he opened his soul to the demonic power of Jezebel - or that spirit, that witchcraft spirit.

He opened his soul through finding comfort in the arms of Delilah. Her name means the one who ‘empties you out’, the one who ‘creates emptiness in your life’. He exposed his soul. He was drawn into sexual sin. He found comfort apart from the living God, and as he found comfort in her arms, he progressively opened himself to her influence.

Verse 9 - What he didn't realise: there were men lying in wait, staying in her room. What he didn't realise is - the five lords of the Philistines, the demonic power that had ruled the nation - had bribed her, and were waiting there. They were using her to draw him away from his calling, from his identity, from what God called him to do, and she drew him into sin.

When he fell into sin, he fell asleep - and then his strength left him. He was spiritually unaware of the danger in his life that his sin presented to him - so very soon he lost his crown of dominion. He lost his anointing, and strength to rule, he lost his power to destroy the enemy's yokes - and instead ended up in slavery. He lost his vision, he lost his destiny, he lost his hope, his freedom. He ended up enslaved - that is what that spirit power does to people.

When that spirit of witchcraft operates unchecked, it takes away vision, your hope, your destiny, your identity, any kind of strength that God would give you - and you end up in bondage, instead of living the life God called you to live.

Believe me, if you want to fulfil the destiny God has for you, you will have to rise against that spirit; and not let that spirit have access to your life, to shut down the anointing, control how you think, and steal the dreams.

It doesn't just steal your dreams - it steals your inheritance, and the legacy of the next generation. You cannot compromise with that spirit power. There is a war that must be engaged in, if any person's going to win over that.

When control powers come against you, the goal is to control - it's a fight for your freedom. You have to recognise it. It's not people, although it operates in and around people - it can even operate in your own life.

It is a spirit power, and so it requires spiritual weapons. Recognise the enemy, and how it comes.

In this case, it entered the door of his soul (through sexual sin); but here's the very, very positive news... When Samson repented - I guess when he found himself in that ‘low place’, he did the one thing that will get you out of that hole. If that thing's got a grip around you, there's one thing you need to do, and that is: turn to God! Turn to the living God, who's gracious and merciful!

He turned and he said: “oh God, remember me and restore my strength”. He felt the power of God come around him again. His life became to change. The Bible says: “in his last day he took down more than he'd taken in all his life”. Your ‘last days’ can be better than anything that went before, if you can connect with the living God, and His strength gets into your life! Oh Holy Ghost!

Here's the wonderful thing about Samson - in the New Testament, there's no record of his failure. There's just a record he was ‘a mighty man of faith’ - and we may fail, and fall over, but God wipes away the record when we repent. It just says: mighty man of faith, mighty woman of faith - you broke out of it, and finally ended well!

2) Turn to 1 Kings 19:1-5 - we find here another prophet, another mighty man of God.

1 Kings 19:1 - “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how Elijah had executed all the prophets with the sword”.

Oh I wish I could have seen all of that. My mind imagines it sometimes. There's a ruling power in the nation, all hope seems to be gone, but there's some people there who are crying out to God, some people who are in prayer and intimacy - and finally Elijah emerges out of the darkness, out of obscurity. There he is - and he shuts up the heaven, and then hides for three years. Then when they're getting desperate - he comes out, says to the prophets of Baal: come on out, let's see what you guys have got.

They set up an altar, and he sets up an altar. He says: let's see which God is the real God, by calling fire down from heaven - so they had this challenge. At the end of the day, he calls fire down from heaven - what a glorious thing to see.

Then he rises up, and with the sword he slays 450 prophets of Baal. Oh, that's men of God, men of God! Men of God! Using the sword of the spirit to destroy spirit powers, tear down ungodly beliefs, bringing the truth to the nation. What a great day! Then he brings rain. In fact he's had a wonderful time. He went home happy that night - but look what happens the next day...

1 Kings 19:2 – “Then Ahab told Jezebel - and Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah”.

It doesn't really tell us exactly what that was, but it says he “saw it”. Normally if someone sends a message, if they tell you something, you “hear it”. Instead it says he “saw it” - so undoubtedly someone was sent in, but I believe demonic powers and cursings were sent against him. When people curse you, they release spirits against you.

When they falsely accuse you, they release spirits against you - and she still had 450 prophets of her own, who ate at her own table and did what she said, so she sent a messenger. I believe she sent a demonic spirit - a spirit of hate, a spirit of murder, a spirit of death - to destroy the voice of God in the generation; to shut down the only thing that could threaten her kingdom. She sent the messenger.

Now here's the problem - he opened his heart to that message. He got wounded. He received that message of fear - he allowed it to get into his heart.

I believe it was a demonic messenger, and so he felt his heart gripped by fear and panic, his mind froze. He forgot he's the man of God who called fire from heaven. He forgot he's God's man to save the nation; he forgot what he was called to do. His strength sapped out of him, as he came under attack from that spirit.

Some of you may have had a similar kind of thing come - it sits around and over you - and you feel shut down with fear. You can't function, you can't even think clearly. This is what happened to him - and when he saw it, he ran for his life - left his servant, and he ran to Bathsheba, which is he ran right clear out of the nation. I'm getting out of here! He panicked.

Finally it says, he sat down under a broom tree, and he prayed he might die; saying: “that's enough Lord, take my life, I'm no better than my father. Then he lay and he slept”.

Look at the big picture. He stood up against that power - and it retaliated (important to notice that). When you stand up - it pushes back on you.

I talked to one man about how to stand up in his spiritual governance, and prayer in his home. I came in a week later and said: how are you getting on? He said: oh, I've stopped. I said: why is that? He said: well it didn't work. Oh really, it didn't work? What happened? He said: it got worse - everything got far worse when I started to pray - so I stopped praying. I said: everything got worse, because you're stirring up resident spirits, which are controlling what is happening. Keep up the prayer; and get ready to engage the people.

Notice what happened is: attacks come against him – fear. He's listened to words of accusation, murder and death - they get into his heart and shut him down. He comes under the control, filled with fear - and he runs.

Notice that: he forgot who he was, forgot his calling. His strength left him, and he fled from his position, that God had assigned him in the nation. He ran, he got isolated, then he sat down with discouragement, and loss of perspective.

This is what happens when this spirit comes around you. Fear, you withdraw, shut down, want to isolate, want to be on your own, feel hurt, feel discouraged, want to sit down.

Interesting - the tree he sat down under - a juniper tree, means: ‘to bind’, or ‘put under a yoke’. So he's sitting there, and this mighty man of God, who's got a move of God going, is now sitting under a tree, shut down, wanting to die - and he's sleeping. A spirit power had shut him down.

It doesn't finish there, fortunately. He lost his courage in the face of that attack - but his strength returned when God touched him supernaturally. The angel came and touched him, spoke a word to him, gave him nourishment.

When we get the touch of God again around our life, when we get the word of God prophetically flowing into our hearts - the Bible says “he got up, and he ran for 40 days and 40 nights”! He's still hiding though – he hid in a cave until God spoke to him: “Elijah, what are you doing here? You're a man of God! You're a man called to change a nation. Why are you in the cave?”

“Leave me alone!” He was shut down by that power - but God speaks to him, calls him out, and in a gentle voice encourages him, and sends him back. He says: anoint this man, and anoint that man, release them - and they're going to tear that wicked spirit power down.

What a shame that Elijah didn't do that - but he did impart to a next generation - and they did it. They finished what he couldn't finish. God wants a new generation, and Jehu finished the job. He had an apostolic, militant, governing, confronting spirit around his life, and he shut that thing down in the nation.

3) I want you to have a look at another one with me, in Luke 22, and here's the third situation I want to draw your attention to.

Here's the wonderful thing - that even if that spirit has entered in, through compromise, lukewarmness, sexual sin, false comforts or whatever - when we repent, God restores us, and wipes away the record.

We may have drawn back in fear, drawn back and felt pressured, overwhelmed and isolated and alone; but when God touches our life and speaks - our spirit comes again.

Luke 22, these are the apostles, the mighty men of God, called to change a nation – “Come, follow me - I'll make you fishers of men”. “Lord, we're with you right until the end!” That sounds good doesn't it aye, but look what happens when pressure comes on...

Luke 22:40 – “Jesus came to the place (Gethsemane), and he said to them: pray that you enter not into temptation”. This is where we're going to - Prayer.

Luke 22:41-46 – “and He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw. He knelt down and prayed and said: Father, if it's Your will, take this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done. And an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. He rose from prayer, he came to His disciples, and He found them sleeping from sorrow. He said: why do sleep? Rise and pray - lest you enter into temptation.”

These are the mighty men of God, apostles of the Lamb, called to change the world, called to be history makers, called to make a difference. They flowed in the Gifts of the Spirit. They'd seen miracles and healings. They'd boldly declared: “Lord, we're with You” - and now Jesus faces His greatest hour of spiritual pressure and attack.

It's the threat of imminent death - and we know it had to be a spiritual conflict, because it says that “He prayed earnestly, being in agony”. There was a tremendous turmoil, as all the powers of hell unleashed on Him in the garden. He was under immense spiritual pressure, and He stood and prayed.

The pressure was to control Him. The pressure was to shut Him down. The pressure was to knock Him out. The pressure was to get Him off course, and He prayed: “Father, not My will. Father, let Your will be done” - that's what He was wrestling for.

Why was He wrestling for that? Why is that so significant? Because witchcraft attempts to impose a different will. Witchcraft attempts to impose a different governance. Witchcraft tends to impose its own kingdom. Witchcraft tries to shut down the will of God, and impose another will upon you - so you feel rejected, shut down and you feel in despair.

Jesus wrestled against that pressure. He did it in prayer. I'll show you in another session what you have to do, to stand against that demonic power, and ensure you come out the other side on top. He prayed.

I want you to notice what the disciples did. The disciples forgot who they were. They forgot their commitment to the Lord. They forgot their bold statements they'd be “with Him until death”. They forgot their destiny, forgot the purpose. Under the face of that spirit, they lost all strength - and they fell asleep.

It's not a coincidence that in three cases in the Bible, mighty men of God fell asleep. That's what that slumber is. It's actually a sleepy, lethargic, passive state - created by yielding to a spiritual power that you can't see - until the church becomes passive, half-hearted, and lukewarm; instead of having the fiery presence and power of God, a spirit that's alive, hearing from God.

They shut down, and they went to sleep. What was the doorway into their heart? The Bible tells us that too, it says: sorrow, emotional pain, hurt.

We've now seen at least three doorways this spirit uses to get access to people's life: false comforts, turning to things which are not of God, turning to addictive things, turning to things which comfort you, turning to sexual sin, turning to all kinds of things that provide a comfort, apart from the comfort God provides.

We saw that fear - listening to the wrong words, and letting them get into your heart, and allowing fear to arise and not conquering it - allowed this control to come. Whatever you're afraid of will control you.

Finally, the sorrows, hurts that have never been fixed, areas of the soul with: bitterness, grief, disappointments, and setbacks that were never addressed properly. Demons come into there, and use them as an open door. They shut you down when at the very point of time you should be standing strong in prayer.

Jesus words tell it all. He said” rise, pray, ARISE, PRAY, ARISE, PRAY, ARISE, ARISE, ARISE O daughter of Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, O daughter of Jerusalem. Shake the dust off you. Arise, sit down in the realm of the spirit; break off your captivity. Become the mighty people of God.

Here's the thing that rose them out of their sleep - Jesus touched them, spoke to them: rise up and pray!

Every time that people fell asleep, under the influence of a spiritual power - it was a prophetic word from God - a call to change, repent, step up, re-engage.

Sure enough, on the day of Pentecost, we find the disciples there. Jesus said: Peter, I've prayed for you, that your faith won't fail. I've been praying for you, I've been praying for you that your faith won't let go - that whatever you go through, you won't fail in your faith. You'll still believe.

Peter failed massively. He wept over his failure - but Jesus was praying that his faith wouldn't fail - just like He's praying right now, that your faith won't fail when you're under pressure. When we're under pressure, He's our intercessor, He's the apostle of our faith - He's praying that our faith won't fail. He's praying we'll stand up. He's praying for us! He's praying!

A few days later, 50 days later - those same men that had been asleep and fled - spent 10 days in intense prayer, and the mighty power of God was on them, and they broke out, began to change nations, and become history makers. Whoa! They had to break through; in the very same city that thing shut them down and got them to sleep. Elijah had to go back to the very same spirit that had shut him down, and raise up people to confront it. Samson stood up again.

Here's a very simple key: just repentance, leaning on God, and rising up into strong prayer.

I'll share with you other things related to this. I've got such an immense amount of download on it right now, I'll share the other half of this message, because there's at least another three very, very vital situations that I want to draw your attention to, which give keys how this thing has been beaten.

Two of them are in the New Testament church, yet that power comes to shut it down, and it comes under it, but God shows them how to get out of it. Even in the Old Testament when we look in the story of Jehu - go reading about Jehu, find what he did, and look for the keys. Look beyond the story, to the spiritual insights of how he dealt that thing, and you'll see how we can deal with it too. God's calling us to arise.

Closing Prayer

Let's just stand right now, and just lift our hands to worship the Lord. Wonderful Jesus.

Maybe already as I've prayed, and as I've been preaching, perhaps you've felt: whoa, I'm like Samson - I've gone to sleep. I never had much strength, and what I had is gone! I don't want to be like that - I want to finish well. I don't want to finish weak, I want to finish well!

Is that in your heart? Is there compromise, sin? Just repent of it quickly right now. What's been filling your time? What's been filling your heart? What have you been using to just fill yourself up?

There can be all kinds of things that comfort you and make you feel better, but at the end it's all the same. We become asleep and don't realise demons have come into our life - then they ruin us. They ruin our legacy, they ruin our lives. I've seen it over the years, never quite understood why it happened - it's a spirit power.

Stand up. Just come back to the Lord. Why don't you say (like Samson): “oh Lord, remember me - REMEMBER ME!”

God remembered him. Or like Elijah - you go back and face that situation.

Perhaps you've yielded to fear - yielded to words of accusation, murder, hate, death. They've come around your soul and life and shut you down. Lord, you need to break the power of those words, need to cancel those words, need to rise up and forgive those people, get that hurt out of your heart.

Maybe it's more like the disciples - you've had a lot of sadness, and various things have disappointed you, and you've just shut down inside. That thing's have got control of you - you're no longer the person you used to be, because something wounded you.

I've got good news: Jesus died and carried our sorrows on the cross.

Let's just pray together. I believe this is a fresh word. I never read about this anywhere. I felt it's something God just showed to me, and I believe it's spiritually present across our nation, and it's affected us as a church. It definitely affected me, probably for about a decade. I can see it now, and I'm after it. I'm going to rise up - God will help.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Isaiah 52:1-2 - “Awake, awake, put on your strength oh Zion, put on your beautiful garments oh Jerusalem, the Holy City”

- Call to the church to awaken from sleep and to arise into its’ proper place of operation

- Awake = 5782 = to open the eyes, stir self up, arouse from place of sleep

- Prophetic call to the church that requires a faith action – response

- Personal Word: “Awake, awake from your slumber of Jezebel…”

What is the Slumber of Jezebel?

a) Jezebel: 1 Kings 16:31-32

· Jezebel = Baal exalts, under the favour of Baal, not cohabiting with

· The 1st portrayal in the bible as a wicked queen who killed prophets and established idolatry

· Next portrayed in the Bible – Revelation 2:20 – as a person with the same evil character and intent

· Two different eras – same spiritual power exercising a destructive influence on the people of God

· Operates to seduce = 4105 = to wander away from safety, from truth, go astray

· Operates to intimidate and control

i) External Spiritual Pressure – ‘Outer Space’ Ephesians 6:12

ii) Internal Spiritual Pressure – ‘Inner Space’ entering through personal

strongholds 2 Corinthians 10:4

- How we think and behave

- Spiritual powers seducing people, and the people beginning to yield to them

b) Slumber Romans 11:8

· Slumber = to sleep, be in a state of in activity

· Spiritual Slumber

- Spiritual sensitivity dull

- Cannot see or hear spiritually

- Unaware of spiritual influences at work, can’t do anything about it

- Living in a ‘trance’ – unaware what is happening

- Ultimately it leads to a loss of hope and destiny

c) Slumber of Jezebel – spiritual power that shuts you down, no strength, become weak:

· State of spiritual dullness and the lack of awareness brought on by yielding to the invisible activity of the Jezebel power

· One of the major causes of this is spiritual laziness

· Proverbs 19:15 - “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep”

3. Bible Examples:

· There are several examples of people who came under the influence of this invisible activity of the Jezebel power

i) Judges 16:19-21 - Samson: “she made him sleep on her knees”

· Samson forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer

· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through sexual sin, false comforts

· He was spiritually unaware of the danger, focused comfort on Delilah – v 5,9 – 5 lords of the Philistines waiting there

· He lost his crown of dominion, and he did not know it v20

· He lost his vision, his strength, his destiny and was brought into bondage

· The Jezebel spirit strips people of strength, vision, hope => bondage

· When Samson repented his strength was restored. The power of God came around him again

· Arise to this spirit, don’t let it steal your dreams, inheritance and legacy of the next generation

· Spirit power requires spiritual weapons

· If you get connected with the living God you will be stronger than ever

ii) 1 Kings 19:1-5 - Elijah: “he lay and slept under a broom tree”

· A mighty man of faith

· Elijah forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer

· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit when he received Jezebels messenger v2,3

· The messenger (demonic) wounded him, stripped him of confidence and fear entered

· Fear = abandoning position, isolate, discourage, loss of perspective, desire to die

· Juniper tree = to bind or put in a yoke

· He lost his courage that came from the anointing flowing, he forgot who he was, loss of perspective, withdraw, hurt and discourage

· When people curse and accuse you a spirit is send out to destroy you

· v7,15 His strength returned through the touch of God and the prophetic word

iii) Luke 22:45-46 - The Disciples: “…he found them sleeping for sorrow”

· The disciples forgot their identity, forgot their calling as mighty Apostles of God

· They opened their soul to the Jezebel Spirit through sorrow – emotional grief and pain

· Sorrow = grief, heaviness, pain, sadness

· They lost their confidence that came from the anointing flowing

· Matthew 26:40-46 “They were awakened from their sleep by Prophetic Confrontation from Jesus”

iv) Galatians 2:11-13 - Peter: “…he separated himself fearing those who were of circumcision”

· Peter forgot his identity, his calling, he forgot his personal revelation he had received

· He let go the personal revelation he had received from the Lord re the Gentiles Acts 10:15

· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through fear

· Fearing = 5399 = to frighten, put to flight, score away, shrink back, conceal self

· The Jewish Christians kept the law and introduced the pressure of legalism

· Disemble = 4942 = to act a stage player, pretend to act out of one motive when another motive inspired the action

· The church came into great conflict as Peter withdrew, out of fear

· v11 Paul confronted Peter – Apostolic Confrontation with truth

v) Galatians 3:1-2 - Galatian Church: “did you receive the spirit by works of law or hearing by faith”

· The Galatian Church forgot their identity, the calling as Gentiles, they forgot the liberty of the Holy Spirit

· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit through wrong belief and performance beliefs

· Foolish = 453 = lacking spiritual understanding, mind not being exercised

· Bewitched = 940 = to fascinate, charm, cast spell over, captivate, place under power rt = wicca - sorcerer

· The Galatians had opened their soul to spiritual influence of the Jezebel spirit by allowing legalism – religion based on performance not faith

· They began in the spirit with miracles and ended in flesh striving

· Galatians 3:1 - Paul confronted the church – Apostolic Confrontation with the truth

vi) 2 Kings 9:11-13 - Captains of Army: “Jehu is King”

· The Soldiers (captains v5) had forgotten their identity, they forgotten their calling

· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit over the nation by ‘need for security’

· The Spirit of Jezebel had cast influence over the whole nation of Israel

· The King of Israel: Jehoram = ‘The exalted One’ = Pride

· They were spiritually asleep and could not recognize what was happening v11

· v12,13 Apostolic declaration of Prophetic Word broke the demonic influence

4. Awake, Awake!

· Mark 13:33-37 - “Watch … lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping”

· Doorkeeper = watcher, sentry, guardian of door, portal, gate to Kingdom

· Watch = 1127 = to keep awake, rouse from sleep, proactive, diligent attention

· Watching is connected to:

i) Strong Prayer Mark 14:38

ii) Be sober 1 Peter 4:7

iii) Repentance and Strengthening self Revelation 3:3

iv) Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit Habakkuk 2:1

Spiritual Slumber (2 of 3)

Sun 8 Nov 2009 AM  « Back to Top

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The church in the West, on the most, is in a state of spiritual slumber - unaware of the powers at work in the nation, to destroy the legacy that's been built over years. God is speaking to us, to 'wake up' out of that spiritual slumber.

Jezebel was a woman in the Old Testament, and also a woman in the New Testament, but I want to get your eyes off 'woman'. I want you to get your eyes on 'spiritual power' - entering and oppressing a nation.

Review Isaiah 52, the prophet is speaking to the church, speaking to the Israel of his day. He says: wake up, wake up! If he's telling them to wake up they must have been... asleep!

You're not aware what goes on when you're asleep. That's when thieves come into your house, if you've left the door open. When you're asleep, things can be happening, that can be affecting you; but you don't know, because you are asleep.

There's a natural sleep: when you fall asleep naturally, you're unaware of what's going on around you. But you can also fall into a spiritual slumber, and clearly here God is speaking to the church: “Wake up! Wake up!” He's speaking and stirring the church to wake up.

God is speaking to the church of New Zealand: wake up! Wake up! Look what's happening! Look what's going on in the nation! Look what's happening in families - look what's happening to the next generation. Wake up church! I've called you to do something! I've called you to make a difference.

He says: wake up! Wake up! “Put on your strength” - the strength that a believer has is the anointing power and life of the spirit of God. Put on the Holy Ghost! Get fresh anointing around your life. Wake up out of this slumber, and get back into a life flow of God.

Then He says: “Put on your beautiful garments” - garments of praise, garments of righteousness. Jerusalem - you're a holy city, a holy people - that's who you are.

Then He said: “the uncircumcised and unclean shall no longer come to you”. Let purity come round your life. Become focussed - you're called to do something.

Then He challenges them: “Shake yourself out of the dust”. Many times, you want someone to pray for us; but God says: shake yourself - shake yourself out of living at such a low level. Begin to live a life of purpose, passion and commitment to Jesus Christ.

He says: “Sit down, O Jerusalem!”. Take your positioning, that God has given to you - a positioning where you can exercise spiritual authority; and then loose the restrictions that you've lived with.

We read that, and it's as relevant for today as it was 2000 or 3000 years ago when it was first written. God's speaking to us to wake up out of unawareness, to wake up and begin to shake ourselves, begin to rise up in a new strength of God.

This is a great new season. I love this season we're in. It's a challenging season; but God wants us to strengthen the personal foundations of our life. It’s a time to awaken inside, to what is happening around us. Clearly the church there was asleep. Another part of the Bible says: “wake up the mighty men!”. They're mighty men - but they're asleep, unaware.

Spiritual slumber can come on people. How would you know if you were in a spiritual slumber? There'd probably be a number of signs - your disconnection from God, lack of life in the spirit; increasing problems you can't get dominion over or deal with, a lack of revelation, compromise. There'd be a whole number of ways that you could recognise spiritual sleep in your life.

Usually though, you're unaware of it - someone has to wake you up. Ever had someone come and wake you up? Grumble... Ever had your alarm go off in the early, early hours; or someone rang you at a very early hour of the morning - you hang up the phone, grumble... You can hardly even talk straight - waking up; but there's such a thing as a ‘spiritual slumber’.

When spiritual influences push down on your life, you actually stop becoming, or being, what God called you to be. You accept something much less than what God has - and you actually think it's normal.

Church in the west, on the most, is in a state of spiritual slumber - unaware of the powers at work in the nation, to destroy the legacy that's been built over years. God is speaking to us: wake up out of that spiritual slumber.

I talked about the ‘Slumber of Jezebel’. Jezebel was a woman in the Old Testament - also a woman in the New Testament - but I want to get your eyes off 'woman'. I want you to get your eyes on 'spiritual power’ - entering and oppressing a nation.

In the Old Testament, Jezebel was a queen, who worshipped the gods of Baal and Ashtaroth - and she came into an alliance with Ahab, who was a king. You and I are called to be kings, but we have to be careful what alliances we form in our life, and what spiritual influences we allow to come over our life. This man married this woman, and through her, spiritual influences came around his life - the worship of Baal, the worship of Ashtaroth. They were gods of sex and fertility; they were the gods of war.

They introduced new value systems into the nation. They abandoned the ways that God wanted the nation to be built. The whole nation came under that spirit, under that influence: sexual sin; promiscuity; prostitution; pornography. Those kinds of things abounded under the spiritual influences in the nation - and they thought it was quite normal. They didn't realise they were spiritually, and financially, and in every way impoverished, and oppressed. God's word was to wake up out of that sleep.

I began to speak about a spiritual atmosphere that puts people to sleep. When people are spiritually put to sleep, they become very passive. Everywhere I go in New Zealand, I find it: an incredible passivity sits over people.

The Bible says that, to take hold of the promises of God – why the violent press in and take hold - by persistent, energetic, fervent, passionate prayer. That's how you get hold of the things of God; but when there's passivity - we're under a spiritual influence, and there's very little passion, very little fervency.

You can see it at a football match; but when people come into a spiritual environment - suddenly they shut down. There's something sits over them. It's something that you and I have to fight to push off - to push it off! I don't want to be shut down! I don't want to be passive! I don't want to be asleep and unaware - I want to be awake and hearing God and moving in what He's doing!

I shared with you three situations, of people who fell asleep; and what it was in their life, that opened the door for that spiritual power to put him to sleep.

1) Samson had a great call to change a nation, a call to go and to bring deliverance, freedom, salvation - to represent the living God, and to open up the nation, to bring freedom from its enemies. Instead he got sidetracked with sexual sin. He got sidetracked with Delilah, and the result: “he fell asleep on her knees”. While he was asleep, he was unaware of the danger he was in. He lost the anointing on his life, and the strength of God on his life. He lost his eyesight, he lost his freedom, he lost his character and dignity, and he ended up a slave. They took him down there into the Philistine camp, and they just mocked him and belittled him.

That's the condition of many Christians: no vision, no strength in anointing, in bondage, being mocked and ridiculed by the enemy through people, because they're not fulfilling the destiny that God called us to.

But here's the great news... When he repented, God heard his prayer - and that mighty Holy Ghost came on him again. The most wonderful thing, when we repent, is: God does restore us.

2) Elijah was a great prophet of God. We saw in 1 Kings 18 - he'd called fire down from heaven, he challenged the prophets of Baal. There'd been a mighty slaughter of the prophets of Baal. The old religion of Baal was beginning to be challenged and shake. The Fire of God fell out of heaven!

Then Jezebel came against him, sent messengers against him. He became afraid, he ran away. Fear opened his life for this oppression to come around him; he isolated; then he sat down under a tree and just wanted to die. The Bible says “he fell asleep”.

When you come under, and yield, to spiritual oppression because of fear - you go into a state of sleep. You don't really see what's going on - what it costs you to give way to fear, what it costs you to give way to sin. Neither Elijah nor Samson realised what it was costing them.

For Elijah, he lost the momentum of revival. God had to reposition him back again; and entrust revival to the next generation. “A little bit of sleep, a little bit of slumber, a little bit of folding of the hands to the rest - and then poverty comes upon us like an armed man”. Through laziness, spiritual laziness - sleep comes (Proverbs tells us).

If we don't keep ourselves vibrant, alive, energised, vitally connected to God - listening to Him, responding to Him, flowing with Him; then we slumber - can't be bothered, tired, weary.

3) The disciples, in Luke 22. Jesus was facing one of the greatest challenges of His life. He knew He was about to go to the cross; all the powers of death and hell were pushing against Him, and He said to His friends: I am sorrowful - exceedingly sorrowful under death. Please come and pray with me in the garden.

They came into the garden, and that power and that pressure came on Jesus - and He stood firmly in the place of prayer. He broke through, yielding to the will of God. He brought salvation for you and for me; but the disciples fell asleep for sorrow, under the same spiritual pressure. They yielded, and fell asleep. They were unable to be a part of what Jesus was doing, because they fell asleep.

Sin - sexual sin in the case of Samson; fear on the case of Elijah; sorrows and hurts and grief in the case of the disciples - all of them allowed that spiritual power to shut them down and put them to sleep, where they could not be of any use.

It cost them something. Fortunately, Jesus came and restored them. The mighty Holy Ghost came upon them - they woke up; and when they woke up - my, what a difference it made! Timid, fearful men became bold men!

[Main Message]

Peter came back under a spiritual influence again. He didn't literally ‘fall asleep’; he became ‘unaware of what was happening’. He lost something God had given to him.

Galatians 2:11 (Paul opposes Peter) – “Now Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed.”

Galatians 2:12-13 - “For before ‘certain men’ came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came - he withdrew. He separated himself. He feared those who were ‘of the circumcision’. And the rest of the Jews, also played the hypocrite with him - and even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy” (taken in by it, came under the influence of it).

Galatians 2:14-15 - But when I saw they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all...” (He confronts Peter).

Peter was raised in the Jewish culture. They had a paradigm, a mindset, that the Jewish people were ‘the people’ - God has entrusted everything to us. Wisdom starts and ends with us - we're the people of God. They had a mindset: we're the people of God. It was an exclusive mindset, it excluded the Gentiles. They considered the Gentiles to be unclean.

One day Peter is praying, and he receives a personal revelation of the heart of God for lost people. As he's in this time of prayer, he receives a vision - he sees these unclean animals descending from heaven; and he hears God speak to him, saying: rise and eat. He says: no, no, no, no, no. Three times it comes, and the word says “rise”; and he says: no, no, no, no, I don't eat unclean stuff.

Then the word comes to him – “What God has called clean, no man should call unclean”. He realised then, that the vision he had received was the heart of God - to reach all men, not just the Jews. That God's original plan was: the gospel would go every nation of the earth - that the good news of Jesus Christ would go to every person - that there was a breakdown of the war between Jews and the Gentiles, between men and women, Greeks and Jews.

God broke the wall down with the death of Christ, and the gospel was to go to the whole world. He received it by revelation - the heart of God is to go to the Gentiles; but when they invited him to come... When he got there, he made this kind of speech: you know - us Jews aren't supposed to eat with you Gentiles. That's not a very polite way to address people is it?

Just think about it. Cornelius has got the whole household there waiting to hear him: God appeared to us! He said: he's going to send you to us. We've been all waiting for you to come! Then he says: it's not lawful for us Jews to mix with you Gentiles. Can you see how steeped he is, in a paradigm, that causes him to be separate from the Gentiles - unable to connect with them; causing him to avoid them, and distance himself from them?

But as he began to preach the word of God, God just interrupted the preaching. The Holy Spirit fell on them, they spoke in tongues, prophesied, magnified God; and his conclusion: since they got the Holy Spirit, like us - we should water baptise them.

Can you see the reluctance, in his mentality, to shift out of a narrow world-view? It's very true in the church, that there's a problem of shifting out of a narrow world-view – to one that can encompass, and love, and reach people at every level of society - and celebrate them as wonderful, valuable people to God.

The tendency is to separate, to exclude, to keep apart - in case something bad might happen to me; but Jesus never did that. The biggest complaint His enemies had was: He mixed with the sinners and the prostitutes. He mixed with everyone! He mixed with them - He was never defiled by them, He just loved them. He was able to love the unlovely, He was able to open His heart and celebrate people.

Now notice what Peter did.... Peter was now walking with the Gentiles, he was relating with them, fellowshipping, sharing with them; but then these Jews come down from Jerusalem. They are legalists. They have no heart for the Gentiles, they're just legalists - and everyone must keep the laws: you've got to do this, you've got to do this, got to do this, this, can't do that, can't do that, dress like this, go here, do this, do that. They had a whole list of laws, and they came with all of that legalism.

Peter the apostle, it says: “he withdrew and separated himself”. He was afraid of them, because he was still so steeped in that old paradigm, that when they came, he was torn between what God had revealed to him, and the old culture, the old behaviours, the old ways. When they came, he was caught - he became afraid, fearful of them.

He come under spiritual pressure, and instead of holding true to his revelation, he began to yield to the pressure, to please the people who'd come. He began to withdraw from the Gentiles that he'd been fellow-shipping with.

When this controlling spirit comes, it causes people to fragment and separate. We become caught up in what's right and wrong, judgemental, accusing and divisive - that's what that spirit does. He came under its influence. Even Barnabas came under its influence - and there's this whole turmoil going on.

The one thing that broke it was when an apostolic voice rose up and said: “stop, that's wrong!” Peter was confronted before everyone.

A spiritual influence was about to create division, and separation - and he couldn't even see it. He was asleep to what was going on.

Imagine if had continued in that course of action, and separated from the Gentiles. Legalism would have come around the Gentiles. They would‘ve had to submit to the Old Testament laws. Instead of the liberty that Christ had brought them into, they'd have come under religious legalism. They'd come under the shadow of something God was trying to remove, to bring people into freedom.

That's what a spiritual influence can do to people. It causes you to separate from the people God wants you to connect to, to divide from the very people that you should love and be united with. Where God has brought people together in the spirit - that spirit pressure, when it comes, causes you to be unaware. You start to separate and divide, and haven't got a clue why you're dividing. When you sense division taking place, when you sense that separating is taking place - there's no real reason for it, it’s just some spiritual influence at work, but you just can't see it.

God calls us to walk in that unity; so Paul confronted him, to stop that spiritual influence working through his fear, to divide the church.

It was a spiritual influence, but it found root in a man's fear. Fear is a gateway for control in our lives. What you fear, you will surrender to - and it will control you, stealing the liberty that God has.

So he changed. It doesn't say it here, but he must have repented. He must have come to the acknowledgement of the truth; repented - and that whole thing broke when he repented.

Now look at Galatians 3:1 - Paul is writing to the Galatians Church. The whole book is a book of Paul, an apostle - “not of men, nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God our Father - to the churches in Galatia’.

So he's writing, not just to one church, he's writing to a whole lot of churches. They had become ‘shut down’ in the spirit. The New Testament church was birthed in the spirit. It was birthed with a move of God. It was birthed with the Holy Ghost moving; and now he's writing to these Galatians Churches, which once were birthed in the spirit - now something's happened to them. Lovely apostolic writing - it's not at all pastoral, you notice. “Let us come alongside you, and comfort you, with all your hurts” - he didn't say that!

He said: “You foolish Galatians! (means: lacking understanding, being ignorant of what's going on, or virtually spiritually asleep). “Wake up! Wake up!” He said: “Something has bewitched you!”

That word ‘bewitched’ means to ‘cast a spell’ over, to ‘bring sorcery’ over, to bring a ‘spiritual influence’ over. He says: something has come over you, and brought a spiritual influence over you.

He said: Tell me now - how did you get saved? Did you get saved by trying hard to be a good person? Did you get saved by working hard to keep this rule - don't do that; do this? Is that how you got saved? Is that how you get to heaven? Clearly not!

It's by the ‘Hearing of Faith’. You heard the word of God - you believed - and because of your faith in Christ, and resting solely on the work of Jesus, you became acceptable to God, and entitled to the blessings of heaven. Is that not true?

I know lots of Christians - they start off that way; but pretty soon it's all about a struggle to be ‘good enough for God’. That's foolish! That's moved away from the gospel.

Have you moved away from the gospel that: you're made right with God - by faith in Jesus Christ?

Then he placed a second question, in Galatians 3:5 - “How does He work miracles, and how does He minister the spirit among you - by working hard, doing the works of the law?”

In other words: how do miracles happen? Is it because you really work hard at it? Is it because you try - you do this, you don't do that - you keep this law, don't keep that law? Is it that way?

He said: no way – “by the Hearing of Faith. So he said: “You foolish Galatians” - something got over you. There's a spiritual atmosphere got over you. What got over you? Legalism, performing, trying to work hard to get God's pleasure in your life - trying to work hard, do it right, don't do this, don't do that. It's a whole thing about performance.

Religion worldwide is about doing something to please God, and get right with Him.

In Christianity - Jesus did the work, and the Father was pleased. We trust in what He did, and we're free to enjoy the benefits – relationship; and to walk by faith, motivated by love for God – it’s totally different.

How easy it is to move from: that position; to now it becomes: all of these things I have to do - and if you do them, you feel proud; if you don't do them, you're condemned.

When that spirit is operating - liberty, freedom, joy, love, vitality goes out. What comes in is a heaviness and oppression; and mental thoughts of: I’m not good enough, there's something wrong with me. I need to try harder. I'll never make it. That is a demonic accusation!

Romans 8:1 – “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ, and who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.”

Set your mind towards the word of God, and the spirit of God. With legalism, your thoughts are on your behaviours; rather than on the promises - the blessings that God has promised to give us.

Galatians 5:1 - Something came in, so he said: “Stand fast in the liberty, where Christ has set us free”.

Liberty, unrestrained freedom! When you get used to living like a slave - it's hard to know what that freedom is like. You've got to learn to express it - the freedom to laugh, freedom to love, freedom to enjoy life, freedom from condemnation, freedom from the guilt of the past, freedom from demonic powers, freedom to be myself! Freedom to walk with God, freedom to follow the calling of God in my life, freedom to explore what God has called me to do. Free!

He says: “stand fast in that freedom”. There is a spiritual contention, to remain in a place of freedom that God has given you; and not get wrapped up and tangled in “the yoke of bondage”, that rule-keeping gives.

It's an issue everywhere. I go to churches all over the place, and I see in so many places, particularly New Zealand, where heaviness settles over people. Underneath, it's a rejection root - I'm not good enough. If I just do enough things, I'll be good enough - but that's not righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ.

I can “come boldly to the throne of God” - so I watch how people come. I watched a group of men, 200 or 300 men come to get the Holy Ghost, and this is what they did: (solemn, head bowed). I don't know where they got that from - they didn't get that from the Bible.

The Bible says: “Come into His presence with thanksgiving, into His gates with praise!”

It says: “Come boldly to the throne of grace.”

That’s biblical protocol; so where did you get this other stuff? Where did that come from? It didn't come from the Bible, but it looks good. I'm not saying there's any reason we shouldn't put our head down, or bow. The Bible says: after we've entered His gates, after we've praised Him, then we bow and worship – but it’s not some kind of ‘been condemned’, ‘not good enough’, ‘unworthy’ kind of deal.

God has made us worthy! You need to stand on what the word of God says: I am made righteous! That means: I am right with God - I can walk into His presence. The only thing to keep you out is if you've got sin. Quickly repent of it, stand again in righteousness of Christ - rise into that liberty.

Liberty needs to be expressed - the liberty to dance, to be yourself, to break out. Can you see what happens when we accept bondage, as though it's normal, when it isn't?

People go to the pub and drink, so they can get free. They take drugs so they can feel better. It's all about feeling better.

God says: I've put something in you that'll make you buzz - but you have to believe, and express that life. Stand fast in the liberty! What came over you, that took your freedom? Whatever you let take it – that is the issue.

Everyone's responsible for our freedom - and holding our freedom – individually and corporately. We have to maintain our freedom - freedom to express, freedom to be alive; instead of being passive and shut down.

There's nothing in heaven that responds to passivity. Passivity is of the devil. Passivity means: there's a heavy thing has come over you; and now instead of taking ownership and responsibility, persevering and pushing to get what God has said is yours - you shut down, become passive, and actually get soulish and melancholic, and you're not in the spirit. People get so used to living that way, they think it's normal - think it's just ‘good Christian’ - but it isn't!

When David got the Ark of God - he danced and rejoiced before the Lord. There was great joy in the city, in the presence of God. The Bible says: “Rejoice! Rejoice!” That's liberty - you have to be free to do that. What thing has been allowed to take your freedom? That's a spiritual power that’s got a hold of your life.

People go into a spiritual slump - and they don't even know. I was with this group of men, and it was the first night of a men's conference. We got in there, and they did their singing, and the guys got up and did their stuff. I said to the man who was helping me organise it all: I don't know whether the saddest thing is - that they haven't got any freedom; or that they actually don't know it - and they think this is really good. They were as shut-down as you could imagine - I've never seen a group of men so shut-down. I said: that's a spirit power. If we don't address that, and get these men free, so they stand up and be what they're called to be, then this thing is going to be just a fizzer, all weekend. So we revved it up, and had a great deliverance session - got the demons out of them, set people free, and away they went. It was much happier after that!

Mark 13:33 - Jesus is talking to His disciples. He's talking about the end time, the time of His coming, and He says: “now take heed - watch and pray”. Watch, keep awake, keep awake - don't fall asleep! Watch, watch, watch, watch! Keep alive, keep alert. What are the spiritual influences around your life?

“Watch and pray. You don't know when the time is for the man, it's like a man going to a far country”. That's Jesus who left His house (the church), gave authority to his servants - that's us – every believer his work, and commanded the doorkeeper. You and I are doorkeepers of our life - doorkeepers of the spiritual atmosphere we're in - watch!

Mark 13:36 - “Watch - lest, coming suddenly, he finds you sleeping.”

He says: what I say to you disciples, I'm telling everyone who's a follower of Me, Watch! Watch! Don't fall asleep spiritually!

Watching is always connected with being alive, and aware of what spiritual and relational influences are operating. Watching is always connected to being sober. Be sober! Don't let some kind of addictive things get around your life, or you become unaware how much bondage you have. It says to be sober!

1 Thessalonians – “be sober; watch”.

What relationships are confusing me? What compromise is confusing me? What kind of fears am I yielding to, that's causing me to come under bondage? What kinds of things are coming around, that is shutting me down from being what I could be?

If you could do whatever you wanted to do - if you could break free, and fulfil a dream of your heart - what would the dream be? What is it stopping that? Aah - that's what's got you asleep. That's the thing you'll have to face!

Stand fast in the liberty! Liberty doesn't mean you do anything. The Bible says: “by love, serve one another” - we get liberty so we can: serve the Lord; love people; fulfil our destiny.

He says: you've got to watch; you've got to pray; you've got to keep alive - sensitive to the Holy Ghost.

Matthew 25: you know the thief comes - he takes everything out of the man's house, because the man didn't watch. The devil can come and steal what God has entrusted, and given to you - if you don't watch.

Peter had a revelation from God - but he nearly lost it, because he didn't watch what was happening. You can go to a seminar and learn how to flow in the Holy Spirit - and two months later, have lost it. It was stolen from you, because you came under a spiritual influence. They're very real. That's why the Bible says: wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up the mighty men!

In order to wake up, you've got to recognise: I've been asleep! I need to come out of that sleep, begin to pray, fast - begin to push into God. Begin to express hunger and passion towards God. Begin to let the word of God come out of your mouth. Begin to start to let the dreams come alive in your heart again. Begin to stir yourself, so you're energised.

Don't measure yourself by the person next to you; measure yourself by the word of God. Are you in a place of fervent, passionate prayer - or has your life shut down?

Just ask these questions:

1) Do I have a strong and a passionate prayer life?

2) Am I in compromise with some issue in my life?

3) Am I hearing God speak clearly? When did you last hear Him? What did He say? Did you do it?

Think about that, because heaven goes silent when you don't do what God says. You go into a slumber.

4) Is there any negative influence around my life? Is it some fear; some pressure; some relationship; some compromise; some ungodly soul-draw? Is there something pushing me; that if I stop, and listen to God - I'd become aware: actually I don't feel too comfortable about what's happening there.

5) Is there something I'm avoiding? Inevitably there's a fear - and that's bringing control over your life. Is there some person I'm avoiding; some situation I'm avoiding; some situation I don't want to face?

There's a spiritual atmosphere come around you, and you're yielding to the fear. Paul wrote to Timothy: “God hasn't given you a spirit of fear”. It shut down your gift, when you yielded to it. Fear allows control; it shuts your gifts down.

You have to war against those things. You have to break out. That's why God says: awake! Awake! Shake yourself! Rise up out of the dust, and begin to put on the beautiful garments: praise; worship; and the authority Christ has given us.

Are you passionately doing what God told you, or is it a long time since God spoke? Think about that; then ask yourself: I wonder what spirit has pushed against me - and I've allowed it to do so. Like Samson, it's taken my vision and my destiny, and I need to repent.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You Lord that You are challenging us to become spirit people - aware of the spiritual atmosphere around us; sensitive to the Holy Spirit; and strongly rising up to take dominion.

I was just reading an email from Andy Mason this week, and he was talking to me about people we sent out. He said: people have gone out to nations from this house. He went to Bethel, and within a year and a half he's risen up, he's now having influence at a top leadership level at Bethel. We sent someone else, now they're a top influence in IHOP (International House of Prayer). We sent people to Hillsong in Australia, who rose right up the top. I got one of them back, and I said: why is it you rose to the top? What was different about you that caused you to be chosen out from everyone else? They said: I've got some grunt - I've got some horsepower in me. I've got some life inside of me. I said: exactly, how did you get it? He said I got it here. How did you get it?

He said: we had to learn how to stand up and push against heavy atmospheres. Learn how to stand up, and push back what comes around us, to depress, defeat us, and make us negative. We had to learn to STAND UP in the spirit, and stay awake! I said: exactly. That was the training ground God used to launch you, to now where you have great influence.

Always appreciate where God brought you from. Always appreciate how God got you there, and then teach others to do the same; but we're here now, and you and I need to rise and stand up!

Are there any people here today, and you're living under heaviness, living under oppression, living under fear, living under compromise?

Like Samson there's something gone on in your life, and it's blinded your eyes. You need to say: “God, forgive me” - I want out, and I want to get back into my place of strength again.

Perhaps you're like Elijah (and Peter) - fear got around your life; you've yielded to things; and you've let go. You say: “God, I want to get back into that place of freedom again”.

Maybe like the disciples - you're full of sorrow; and you've just fallen asleep. Your prayer life's stopped, you're not even aware that you've entered into that pressure, that you've surrendered to it. Say: “God, I want out - I want to get up out of this thing. I want to rise up, become a man of prayer, woman of prayer.”

Maybe there are others, and for different reasons - there's oppression, heaviness come around you. We can pray with you, and help you, and stand with you. You'll get a momentary and a brief release - but you must decide to fight.

“The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent (those who are assertive - those who know what God's word says), and will hold onto heaven until it comes about”.

There was a woman did that - Jesus ignored her, but she held on and a miracle came. Jesus said: that's what faith looks like!

There was a blind man - he shouted out, and they tried to stop him; but he said: “no way, I'm not stopping”. He shouted louder - He got a miracle! He knew what it was to press into the things of God.

There's a woman who had a flow of blood. Everyone would’ve held her back and rejected her; but she said: “I know what I want” - she pressed in and got a miracle.

Are there any others today, and that heaviness sits over you – you’re feeling the isolation come around your life? Perhaps you're shutting down, and gone down into a hole (like Elijah did); or into a place of weakness (like Samson did); or into a place of sleepiness (like the disciples did); or into a place of confusion (like Peter did) - or perhaps you're just flat as a pancake?

Listen - you don't have to tolerate that; but you do have to decide to be different. Today's choice, will make tomorrow different. Yesterday's choice brought you where you are. Make a choice today. Make a decision today: I will stand, I will not sleep, I will get into God. I will break out of what's around my life!

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Isaiah 52:1-2 - “Awake, awake, put on your strength oh Zion, put on your beautiful garments oh Jerusalem, the Holy City”

- Call to the church to awaken from sleep and to arise into its’ proper place of operation

- Awake = 5782 = to open the eyes, stir self up, arouse from place of sleep

- Prophetic call to the church that requires a faith action – response

- Personal Word: “Awake, awake from your slumber of Jezebel…”

What is the Slumber of Jezebel?

a) Jezebel: 1 Kings 16:31-32

· Jezebel = Baal exalts, under the favour of Baal, not cohabiting with

· The 1st portrayal in the bible as a wicked queen who killed prophets and established idolatry

· Next portrayed in the Bible – Revelation 2:20 – as a person with the same evil character and intent

· Two different eras – same spiritual power exercising a destructive influence on the people of God

· Operates to seduce = 4105 = to wander away from safety, from truth, go astray

· Operates to intimidate and control

i) External Spiritual Pressure – ‘Outer Space’ Ephesians 6:12

ii) Internal Spiritual Pressure – ‘Inner Space’ entering through personal

strongholds 2 Corinthians 10:4

- How we think and behave

- Spiritual powers seducing people, and the people beginning to yield to them

b) Slumber Romans 11:8

· Slumber = to sleep, be in a state of in activity

· Spiritual Slumber

- Spiritual sensitivity dull

- Cannot see or hear spiritually

- Unaware of spiritual influences at work, can’t do anything about it

- Living in a ‘trance’ – unaware what is happening

- Ultimately it leads to a loss of hope and destiny

c) Slumber of Jezebel – spiritual power that shuts you down, no strength, become weak:

· State of spiritual dullness and the lack of awareness brought on by yielding to the invisible activity of the Jezebel power

· One of the major causes of this is spiritual laziness

· Proverbs 19:15 - “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep”

3. Bible Examples:

· There are several examples of people who came under the influence of this invisible activity of the Jezebel power

i) Judges 16:19-21 - Samson: “she made him sleep on her knees”

· Samson forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer

· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through sexual sin, false comforts

· He was spiritually unaware of the danger, focused comfort on Delilah – v 5,9 – 5 lords of the Philistines waiting there

· He lost his crown of dominion, and he did not know it v20

· He lost his vision, his strength, his destiny and was brought into bondage

· The Jezebel spirit strips people of strength, vision, hope => bondage

· When Samson repented his strength was restored. The power of God came around him again

· Arise to this spirit, don’t let it steal your dreams, inheritance and legacy of the next generation

· Spirit power requires spiritual weapons

· If you get connected with the living God you will be stronger than ever

ii) 1 Kings 19:1-5 - Elijah: “he lay and slept under a broom tree”

· A mighty man of faith

· Elijah forgot his identity, forgot his calling as a mighty deliverer

· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit when he received Jezebels messenger v2,3

· The messenger (demonic) wounded him, stripped him of confidence and fear entered

· Fear = abandoning position, isolate, discourage, loss of perspective, desire to die

· Juniper tree = to bind or put in a yoke

· He lost his courage that came from the anointing flowing, he forgot who he was, loss of perspective, withdraw, hurt and discourage

· When people curse and accuse you a spirit is send out to destroy you

· v7,15 His strength returned through the touch of God and the prophetic word

iii) Luke 22:45-46 - The Disciples: “…he found them sleeping for sorrow”

· The disciples forgot their identity, forgot their calling as mighty Apostles of God

· They opened their soul to the Jezebel Spirit through sorrow – emotional grief and pain

· Sorrow = grief, heaviness, pain, sadness

· They lost their confidence that came from the anointing flowing

· Matthew 26:40-46 “They were awakened from their sleep by Prophetic Confrontation from Jesus”

iv) Galatians 2:11-13 - Peter: “…he separated himself fearing those who were of circumcision”

· Peter forgot his identity, his calling, he forgot his personal revelation he had received

· He let go the personal revelation he had received from the Lord re the Gentiles Acts 10:15

· He opened his soul to the Jezebel spirit through fear

· Fearing = 5399 = to frighten, put to flight, score away, shrink back, conceal self

· The Jewish Christians kept the law and introduced the pressure of legalism

· Disemble = 4942 = to act a stage player, pretend to act out of one motive when another motive inspired the action

· The church came into great conflict as Peter withdrew, out of fear

· v11 Paul confronted Peter – Apostolic Confrontation with truth

v) Galatians 3:1-2 - Galatian Church: “did you receive the spirit by works of law or hearing by faith”

· The Galatian Church forgot their identity, the calling as Gentiles, they forgot the liberty of the Holy Spirit

· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit through wrong belief and performance beliefs

· Foolish = 453 = lacking spiritual understanding, mind not being exercised

· Bewitched = 940 = to fascinate, charm, cast spell over, captivate, place under power rt = wicca - sorcerer

· The Galatians had opened their soul to spiritual influence of the Jezebel spirit by allowing legalism – religion based on performance not faith

· They began in the spirit with miracles and ended in flesh striving

· Galatians 3:1 - Paul confronted the church – Apostolic Confrontation with the truth

vi) 2 Kings 9:11-13 - Captains of Army: “Jehu is King”

· The Soldiers (captains v5) had forgotten their identity, they forgotten their calling

· They opened their soul to the Jezebel spirit over the nation by ‘need for security’

· The Spirit of Jezebel had cast influence over the whole nation of Israel

· The King of Israel: Jehoram = ‘The exalted One’ = Pride

· They were spiritually asleep and could not recognize what was happening v11

· v12,13 Apostolic declaration of Prophetic Word broke the demonic influence

4. Awake, Awake!

· Mark 13:33-37 - “Watch … lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping”

· Doorkeeper = watcher, sentry, guardian of door, portal, gate to Kingdom

· Watch = 1127 = to keep awake, rouse from sleep, proactive, diligent attention

· Watching is connected to:

i) Strong Prayer Mark 14:38

ii) Be sober 1 Peter 4:7

iii) Repentance and Strengthening self Revelation 3:3

iv) Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit Habakkuk 2:1

Recognising and Withstanding Jezebel's attack (3 of 3)

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This kind of spiritual attack seeks to shut down the prophetic flow; and remove any Godly authority out of their position. You become fearful, isolate, or lose perspective.

God just got Elijah to have a good long sleep and rest, gave him a bit of food, took him into a place of relationship and connection - started to put anointing back into him, re-fired him and commissioned him. Elijah was a loner, and God got him out of being a loner, made him connect, and actually get into a team flow.

Review We talked about a particular power, a spiritual power, that impacts people, impacts believers, impacts us - by shutting down our gifts and operations. It's a very real power, a very real presence. The Bible says that there are spiritual powers in the atmosphere that are arrayed against the church of Jesus Christ. We'd be silly not to actually realise that's a great reality. The Bible also tells us that there are strongholds, holds inside our life, places of brokenness, sin or other kinds of things - where spiritual powers work through our lives, to manipulate us.

I shared about a particular phenomenon called the ‘Slumber of Jezebel’, where a spiritual power puts people to sleep - they can't see what's going on all around them; they don't see what's really taking place.

Main Message

Ecclesiastes 4 - Today I want to share with you about recognising and withstanding Jezebel's attack.

Jezebel was a woman in the Old Testament, but we need to understand that there was actually a spirit power that operated behind her. So it's not about women; it's about this spiritual power - call it a ‘spirit of witchcraft’.

Witchcraft is a spiritual power that seeks to do a number of things:

1) It attacks your identity - who you are - to try and shut you down, so you become passive. When a person experiences a witchcraft attack over them, they may not see what's going on naturally. You may be uncertain where it's coming from, but inside you feel a number of sensations. You feel knotted in your stomach, with no apparent reason; a feeling of dread; a feeling of pressure coming on you; or feelings and thoughts coming in your mind you don't belong (get out of here – go - you don't belong, you're not wanted).

Those kinds of pressures come out of the spirit realm, and into our mind and heart. We can feel turmoil and confusion, where you can't think clearly. Your mind just doesn't think clearly; or you don't even hear things, or see things - you just become unaware.

When spiritual witchcraft works against us, it has several goals. When we look into the Old Testament, and look at how this particular spirit power operated, there are a number of things it did, which it still does.

The first thing is - it seeks to shut down the prophetic flow - the flow of hearing God, the flow of the spirit in your life. When Jezebel ascended into the throne, she immediately set out to kill all the prophets of the Lord - to actually come against, and shut down, the prophetic gifting. I have seen prophetic gifting shut down on men and women of God; I've seen it shut down in churches; I've seen it shut down even in whole movements - the prophetic flow, literally stripped out, by witchcraft attack. We should have no doubt about it - this is a very real power.

God is calling the church to rise up and become apostolic. That means to take a missionary mindset - the mindset that you and I are called to be kings - to go and bring influence around us: spiritual influence; natural influence; finance/economics; in the family area; in the political area. In every area of the community, God is calling the church: “rise up and go forth”.

You have to be aware, when you do that - all apostolic advance faced spiritual resistance. You find in Acts 13, when the apostles advanced, they ran into sorcerers and witchcraft, all kinds of things. We saw how Paul had to confront a spirit of witchcraft - which had come, not only over the apostles, to actually confuse them - but over whole churches, to shut down the supernatural and miraculous power.

The apostles, or the apostolic movement, will always confront, and end up in conflict with, spiritual power. When witchcraft attacks, it shuts down the prophetic flow of hearing from God; and if you don't hear from God (and see), you become blind spiritually.

2) It seeks to do is to remove any Godly authority out of their position, out of their place of governance - by diminishing their influence. or literally overthrowing and displacing them.

A spirit of witchcraft will try and cause a man to feel inadequate for the role of headship in his home - to withdraw, and become shut down and passive. A spirit of witchcraft operating in a business will disempower the business leader, the boss, and will cause him to feel shut down, unable to operate.

3) Witchcraft operating in your life will seek to disconnect you from God; to shut down the gifts of the spirit; shut down the flow of God - and push you out from what God called you to be in (a spiritual positioning).

That's why we have to recognise it - because when witchcraft comes against us, if you don't understand what it is, and how to stand up and push against it – then it will push back on you, down on you, until in the end you become stripped of the life, the glory, the goodness that God has for you.

When Jezebel ruled in the nation of Israel, when she had influence over it - there was: ungodly authority, confusion, financial turmoil, drought, spiritual poverty – in every kind of way, the nation became stripped. It began to serve other gods; so God raised a man called Elijah.

We're going to look at two people, and both of them came under witchcraft attack. One of them was incredibly sad - he blew it. He made strategic mistakes, which cost him his positioning in the spirit, and nearly cost him his life. The Bible also tells us of someone else, who recognised and understood what he was up against - and actually positioned himself to win!

Ecclesiastes 4:9 – “Two are better than one, they have a good reward for their labour. If one falls (or they fall), one can lift up his companion. Woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up.”

Ecclesiastes 4:12 - “Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not easily broken.”

There is strength in unity - when you stand together with other people; when you have relationships, where you are in agreement, and flow and walk together - there is great power and strength in that. If something happens that knocks you down - if you're in relationship with someone else, they can lift you up - together you get a breakthrough. There is tremendous power in unity.

When God designed us, He designed us to walk in unity. When sin entered, separation and isolation took place. If you're in a place of isolation, sin will be there somewhere.

Proverbs 18:1 – “Whoever isolated himself, is consumed with his own desires” - has his own agendas, his own plans. When people isolate, they become separated - you know that something has come in; there's something going on that's not right.

Look at Elijah, in 1 Kings 19. This is an amazing story, because Elijah was a great prophet from God, a powerfully anointed prophet from God - yet he nearly got totally taken out by this particular spirit.

Elijah was called by God to confront witchcraft in the nation. The nation was full of idolatry and witchcraft, which had been brought in when Jezebel married the king. The king was seduced out of his role and positioning, he came under her influence, and the whole nation fell over. The whole nation became passive, the whole nation became shut down, and confusion was everywhere. A spirit of witchcraft was operating. The characteristics of that spirit are: confusion; passivity; and ungodliness and unlawfulness abounds.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah had stood up to the spirits. He called for a drought on the nation; then after three years, he challenged all the prophets of Baal and Jezebel to come out - as many as he could - 450. He also got all the nation of Israel out; and he said: you sacrificed a sacrifice, and if your god's a real god - call fire from heaven; but if the Lord is the real God - He'll bring fire from heaven.

All day, the prophets of Baal worked hard, and worked up a sweat – they jumped and cut themselves, because Baal is a god of performance; they tried hard, struggled, but nothing happened. At the end of the day, Elijah set up the altar of the Lord; prayed, came to God, confessed the sin of the nation - WOOSH! Fire from heaven! With that, the mind of the people became clear - the Lord is God! Then Elijah killed 450 of prophets of Baal - so from a ministry perspective, that was highly successful! Fire from heaven - a glorious day; but there was a little problem in there...

There was one part that wasn't quite right: the king never really repented. I think Elijah may have got discouraged, but certainly there was an opening in his heart - and then he comes under tremendous retaliation and spiritual attack.

1 Kings 19:1 – Ahab told Jezebel all Elijah had done; how he'd executed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying: “let the gods do to me - and more also - if I don't make your life like one of them, by tomorrow, about this time.”

She said: I'm going to get you! I'm going to kill you - just like you killed those prophets! You're a dead man! You're as good as dead - so she came with a murderous spirit, sent a messenger.

“When he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, went to Beersheba which is Judah, left his servant there and he himself went a day's journey to the wilderness, sat down under a broom tree or a juniper tree, prayed that he might die, saying: it's enough now Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers! Then as he lay he slept, he fell into a deep sleep” - characteristic of people under spiritual pressure - who can't see anything, and are unaware what's going on.

When Jezebel saw that her kingdom was under attack; that God was about to restore the nation; revival was about to take place - she arises immediately, with murderous intent. This spirit - murderous intent - came against him, with hatred and murder. She got her prophets together, and they did some witchcraft - they launched demonic spirits against this man Elijah to terrorise him. He literally had a major spiritual attack, a major challenge - threats of death - quite a big deal really.

She sent a messenger - and there's many ways that messenger comes. It can come through criticism, gossip, people blaming you or falsely accusing you - all kinds of ways; but behind it is a hate spirit - and when that thing came against him, it affected him very deeply. When witchcraft comes against you - you feel things very deeply.

He felt fear, gripping fear. He felt confused. He'd just done this great thing; and now he's in the face of a tremendous attack. He became indecisive about what he should really do. The Bible said: “when our heart is set on the Lord, and we trust in the Lord, then we dwell safe from all evil” - so he became indecisive, overwhelmed, by looking at what was there. He'd done his best, but it looked as though that hadn't worked. He became overwhelmed, he got quite disoriented and disheartened - and very lonely in the middle of it all.

When a major spiritual attack comes, you feel very alone, disheartened, overwhelmed - like it's all too big, and you're afraid of what may happen – a fear of death. It starts off with the fear of death, and threats of death; but it ends up with him agreeing with it, saying: “I want to die”. He was threatened with death - and he ends up in agreement, wanting to die!

The spirit that came against him was a spirit of hatred and murder, wanting to kill him. He came into agreement, and his whole ministry was shut down. He ends up under a tree – suicidal - that is the power of the spirit! Notice the steps of progression, how he behaved - he had many of these feelings.

You can recognise when spiritual attack or witchcraft is operating - you feel these feelings of dread, but there's nothing there to see, or anything that you can come up against, you just feel it. You feel overwhelmed, confused, pressure, loneliness - all these kinds of things. It's a spiritual pressure - something from the spirit realm pushing against you - to reject you out of where God wants you to be.

He actually made some bad choices. The first choice he made was: he yielded to the fear of death. He yielded to that messenger. He gave in to the feelings of fear, to the spirit of fear - and he drew back from the role God had called him into. He drew back from the place of the revival that he was supposed to bring. He drew back from the place of spiritual authority. He began to shut down, under the spirit of fear.

The second thing he did was: he ran for his life. He took flight to save himself. He ran away, avoided the problem, withdrew from the challenge, withdrew from the situation, withdrew from the assignment God had given him. When you're under pressure - never withdraw from what God called you to do; stay in the place God called you to stay, hold your ground - let God clarify what He wants you to do.

The next thing he did was: he isolated. He left his servant (verse 3). Under spiritual pressure, there is a tendency, for us to draw back inside ourselves, to shut down, and begin to isolate. We cut off connection from people, we draw away into a cave. In fact he ends up in a cave. Where he ended up physically, is exactly what was going on emotionally and spiritually inside him - he was in a cave, cut off from God. He'd let go of God in the face of this spiritual attack.

The next thing was: he lost perspective. He couldn't see the big picture. 1 Kings 19:14 –“I've been very zealous. I alone am left. They want to kill me”. He comes up with this thing constantly: I'm the only one left. I'm the only one on the Lord's side; the only one who's serving God; the only one who sees it right. God has to tell him: I've got 7,000 on my side - you're not the only one at all; but his perspective is totally distorted. When you come under spiritual attack, your perspective gets distorted. You think you're the only one, you think you're very alone, and you begin to start to shut down.

Next, he went a day's journey into the wilderness. He actually left the region, the place he was supposed to be - he was trying to flee out of Israel. He fled completely, and he was actually leaving the place of his assignment. Left the land, left Israel altogether, left the country; ran as far away as he could get. Having yielded to fear, yielded to the spirit, yielded to the confusion, losing perspective, becoming isolated... He sat down - sat down under a tree.

The other place you find someone sitting under a tree is Saul, in a place of defeat; sitting down under the tree, a place of defeat. The spirit tends to make people passive - shut down on the inside. A passive person feels they've got no options left except to just: withdraw; sit down; do nothing.

Passivity is a major problem in our nation. Passivity is across many men in our nation. Passivity sits in many churches in our nation. I go around to many places, there's no vibrant energy and life of the Holy Ghost. There's just people that are passive, shut down; not alive, dynamic and forceful in their spirit.

Matthew 11:12 – “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence”. You've got to be fervent in pressing in - fervent in prayer, fervent in praise. You've got to have something inside you; but when this spirit gets around you, you shut down, withdraw, and you're just going through the motions. You look like you're alive, but you're dead. You're shut down inside by the spirit – it’s a horrendous thing when this happens. I've had it happen to me a few times, made some mistakes...

He ‘sat down under the tree’ - one of the major feelings associated with this, is a deep feeling of being rejected - pushed out, rejected, unwanted. It comes against you, and you feel rejected. It says that he's “overwhelmed with hopelessness” - no sense of hope for the future. When he comes to that place, all he wants to do is die. He's now in agreement with the spirit of death.

Isn't that amazing - that a man of God like Elijah, who could: bring fire from heaven; hold the rain; start the rain going; outrun a chariot - a man of prayer, a man who walked with God - now he is sitting under a tree, in agreement with the spirit of death, wanting to die. How on earth did that happen? How did he get there?

A spirit of witchcraft attacked him - and he didn't adopt the right strategy to win the victory over it. I've seen that happen to individual ministers. I've seen some ministers literally driven out of the country, but flourishing in other countries, because witchcraft came against them, to shut their gift down in our own nation.

I've seen churches shut down in our own nation, they once moved in the spirit of God and now... I can think of one major church in our nation - absolutely gone. At one time, it touched the whole nation - then it's gone; no sign of it, nothing left - just a history. I've enquired into it, and I know some of the things that went on: a witchcraft attack divided people up; it separated people that God had covenanted to stand together, and caused the whole thing to collapse. Next thing you know, the whole thing was gone!

I've been working alongside some movements in the nation, and we found that a major supernatural dimension of one whole movement of churches had been stripped out - and we could actually identify what it was, and when it was - and it's a spiritual witchcraft attack, that took out the flow of revelation. This is a very real thing - and it happened to Elijah.

I want to show you the really good news. God never abandoned him because he was under it. God just got him to have a good long sleep and rest; gave him a bit of food; then took him into a place, and started to put anointing back into him, re-fired him and commissioned him.

Notice the interesting thing that He commissioned him to do: Elijah was a loner, and God got him out of being a loner; made him connect, and actually get into a team flow. He raised up Elisha, and he began to flow differently from that point on.

I want to show you how this same pressure came against Jesus, and Jesus handled it completely differently. I've been under that spirit, it’s attacked me on a number of occasions, attacked us both on a number of occasions. It's a horrendous thing when it happens, and I've done exactly what Elijah did. I guess there'd be a few people who've done what Elijah did; felt knocked in the spirit, felt a blow in the spirit; couldn't work out where it came from, struggling to stay out, to stay free; mixed feelings of fear, insecurity and uncertainty, under tremendous pressure. You just begin to withdraw and shut down.

I've had my gift shut down at one season of my life, and it’s a terrible thing when your gift gets shut down. Your gift are shuts down because you are shut down. You are the one who's the subject of the attack; and when you surrender to that thing, you can't flourish and flow.

God is raising the church to become powerful, and to flow in the supernatural, so you've got to be able to withstand this kind of stuff. You've got to get the kind of grunt inside you, to step up, stand up, and be what God has called you to be. We're not to be afraid of this, because Jesus has gone ahead, and shown us how to beat the thing - so we can beat it!

He said: I have overcome! The same spirit that is in me - is in you! Be of good cheer! I've overcome the world, and I can show you what to do - so it pays to have a look...

Matthew 26, and also Luke 22 - we're going to have a look how Jesus handled the same thing.

Matthew 26:36 – “Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples: sit here while I go and pray. And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them: My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me. He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. Then He came to His disciples and found them sleeping, and said what? Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. A second time He prayed; O My Father, if this cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done. Then He came and He found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy.”

They're under a spiritual attack. They slept, when they should have watched and prayed. Then He left them and went away again, prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Jesus faced an immense spiritual attack, by spiritual powers seeking to remove Him. He faced in His mind the prospect of death the following day - the most horrible death that is known or devised by man: death on the cross - a long, lingering pain.

He went to the garden. Luke 22 says it was His habit. He'd formed a habit of prayer; so when He's under pressure, His first response is: go back to the place of prayer. You need a habit of prayer, or you'll never survive spiritual pressure. You'll remain weak and ineffective - loving God, but not being able to bring forth fruit, that abounds to the glory of God. God wants fruit in our lives.

I want you to see how Jesus responded:

1) He refused to draw back from what was in front of Him. He refused to draw back in fear, to yield to fear. You have to face what it is that's there, and not run from it.

2) He refused to isolate. “He called His disciples to come with Him into the place of prayer” - not all of them, but three of them. He refused to isolate.

Elijah isolated, when he needed to have men standing with him.

Jesus knew that these disciples were immature. He knew that they would run away, He knew they would not be ‘up to the task’. Nevertheless, He still drew them in at this moment - He needed them.

That means it's a principle: when under spiritual pressure, under spiritual attack, don't isolate. Engage close relationships to stand with you.

3) He opened His heart. He refused to isolate, and He opened His heart.

Matthew 26:38 – “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. I am troubled”.

My emotions are in turmoil. Death is gripping Me - all the fears of it are around Me. I'm feeling the sorrows and the pains of what I'm about to face; what I'm in the middle of, and starting to engage.

He shared His feelings and emotions. He shared His struggles with them. How difficult it is, for men to share. How difficult it is to open our heart, and tell others the struggles and pains we're having - and to draw them to stand with us.

Men live in a world that's highly competitive. In a man's world, to show any sign of weakness or vulnerability is to be declared weak and unmanly - so men tend to want to go it alone. You can't go it alone in this kind of battle. You have to walk in unity; walk with someone else; you have to walk with friends.

There are some things we stand in (and we've got to grow up in) - and even with friends, there's a limit to what friends can do - as you see in this story. Nevertheless, Jesus is a man of principle; so he brought James, Peter, James and John (his closer disciples), and He invited them to come with Him, and He shared His heart with them.

A major strategy, when you're in a tremendous spiritual attack, is to: refuse to back down with fear, refuse to isolate; but engage your friends (close friends), and then share your heart with them. Let them know you're strong!

4) He didn't just share - He asked for their support and prayer: I want you to be with Me, I want you to watch and pray - and this is the saviour, knowing the disciples will run eventually, knowing they're going to fall asleep. Even though all those things, He drew them in, shared His heart, and then He asked them and invited them to stand with Him. These are key strategies to beat that spirit.

Don't back down! Don't isolate! Don't give in to fear! Engage support from close friends, share your heart, pains, struggles, grief, concerns - and show them how they can stand with you, and be supportive of you. That’s the key strategy that Elijah failed to do - when Elijah isolated, he left himself open to the spirit of death, and came into agreement with it.

Jesus did not isolate - He overcame the spirit of death; and the fear of death. He poured out His heart – it’s a real difficulty for men to pour out their heart, and to open up their lives, because of fear. Fear keeps everything secret. What's secret is in a place of darkness, and the devil can come in around the things which are secret. Pride is a big issue. We want to look good, want to have our appearance. We don't want anyone to see us weak and vulnerable, yet true humility is quite vulnerable, quite open.

Shame - when Adam and Eve felt shame about their condition, they withdrew and hid from God. Shame will cause you to hide and run away as well, but God's remedy is not to do any of those things. It's to say to close people - I need you to help me, and stand with me at this time.

What did Jesus do? He didn't back down, He didn't isolate, He didn't retreat. Instead, He gathered friends, shared His heart, asked them to stand with Him - and showed them how He wanted them to do that.

5) Then He got into prayer. He did not lean totally on the friends - He got into prayer. Everyone else did a little bit of praying; but He went further, because this is His life, and He needed to personally break through, so He went further.

As He prayed, He “was wrestling”, because everything in Him wanted to back off, to quit, to draw back from dying - so it was a wrestle to stand His ground, and do the will of God, to fulfil His destiny.

Luke 22 says that as He prayed, it's like He prayed in agony; or literally, He was contending with a spiritual adversary so strongly, that sweat came off Him - and it was a huge emotional spiritual ordeal. He literally contended with what was against Him - fervent, strong, believing prayer.

Hebrews 5:7 - “With strong crying tears, He pushed into God, to bring an answer to earth”.

In Luke 22, an angel strengthened Him. Then He came to the place: “Father, not My will, but Your will be done”. He broke through to the place of rest, and confidence in the will of God.

6) One last thing He did, which is not mentioned here, but it's mentioned elsewhere in Hebrews 12:2 – “For the joy that was set before Him, He despised not the cross and all the shame it brought”.

He kept His eyes set on what lay the other side of the battle. He kept His eyes set on the victory; on vision; on multitudes of men and women - every nation redeemed.

The divine strategy to beat witchcraft is very simple. Don't back down - like Winston Churchill, never, never quit. Don't back down. Don't back down to your fears. Don't isolate and withdraw. Don't shut down and become passive, but do draw friends into your life and share your heart and struggles with them, and share how they can stand with you. Invite them to stand with you. Even if it's not perfect, and it's not complete - it's still a divine strategy. They may not fully understand; they may not fully help - but at least you've drawn them in, and done what God said to do.

Then stand in prayer. The Bible says: “having done all, stand”. Sometimes you're not going forward, but at least you're not going back. At least you're standing there - that word stand is like a couple of WWF wrestlers, and they're in the ring. They put them in the corners, and then they rush into the centre; then they lock like that, and no one's moving. They're waiting for who's going to get the first hold. That's the kind of thing - stand!

If you're facing pressure, make a decision not to go the path Elijah did by isolating; a decision not to ‘go it alone’. Make the decision: that's not going to be my future.

I've looked and had a great privilege this last two or three months, while I've been fasting. Joy's been standing with me, we've been fasting, and we've seen a lot of things. We’ve had the privilege of being able to see what's happened in our lives (and the church here); seen what's happened in churches around us, and in our nation. It’s been a great privilege, a great insight into what's happening.

I see how spiritual witchcraft in our nation shut down the move of God about a decade ago, so churches are passive and struggling and weak. Now there's some great churches in the nation - ask what supernatural is happening around them, have a look for the miracles, the power, the deliverance, the gifts of the spirit. Have a look for ordinary people flowing in power.

That's what God wants to do - to raise up a great people, strong; but it's no go-it-alone, one-man ministry thing. It's about us; us rising; us standing together, being together, being a family; US agreeing together, being able to be open; US standing up and saying: GOD, WE BELIEVE FOR BREAKTHROUGHS over these kinds of things.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Ecc 4:9-12

“…9 Two are better than one…because they have a good reward for their labor….10 For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. …11 Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? …12 Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord cannot be broken.”

· There is multiplied strength when we stand together

· There is multiplied problems when we isolate and go it alone

· Gods’ blessing and power flows when we walk together

· One consequence of the fall is isolation in relationships

· Prov 18:1 “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire, he rages against all wise judgment”

Elijah in the Face of Spiritual Pressure:

1 Kings 19:1-5 “And when he saw that, he ran for his life”

a) Elijah was poised for national transformation:

· Jezebel ruled and influenced the nation

· Jezebel attacked and killed prophets and replaced them with her own prophets

· There was spiritual and relational drought

· Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal and killed them

· Jezebel reacted against him and attacked him

b) Jezebels’ Messenger:

…v2 “She sent a massager to Elijah saying…”

· Evil massages can come in many forms

· Criticism, murderous words, threats, manipulation

· Behind the massager are evil spirits that attack

· Their goal was to remove Elijah from his position of influence

c) Elijah’s Response to Witchcraft Attacks:

i. Elijah’s Feelings:

· Fear •Indecisiveness •Discouraged •Retaliate

· Confusion •Overwhelmed •Loneliness •Rejection

ii. Elijah’s Responses:

· Fear of death – he yielded to it, gave in to it. He shut down

· Flight - “ran for his live” v3

- self preservation

- withdraw from challenge, issue, and the assignment God

gave him

· Isolation – “left his servant” v3

· Loss of perspective v14 “I alone am left”

· “Sat down” = Passivity v4

· Overcame by rejection

· Despair and hopelessness

· Desire to die – overwhelmed by a spirit of death

· Elijah’s key mistake was yielding to fear and isolating himself

· Prov 18:1 “He that isolates himself seeks his own desire”

3. Jesus Response to Spiritual Pressure:

· Matt 26:36-41

· Jesus faced immense spiritual pressure and attacks upon him

· Jesus faced the immanent prospect of a horrible death, spiritual powers wanted to remove him

· How did Jesus Respond?

i. He refused to draw back in Fear v36

ii. He refused to Isolate, he invited good friends to be with him v36

iii. He opened his heart to the v38

Ø He shared openly his feelings and struggles

Ø He became vulnerable to them

Ø People struggle in this area to be vulnerable

a. Fear: Keeps people from being open, keeps issues in the dark

b. Pride: Keeps a front up, a covering to maintain appearance

c. Shame: causes people to hide and avoid relationships

iv. He asked for their support in prayer v38

Ø Indicated to them how they could help him

v. He poured out his heart to his Father v38

Ø Draw into a place of intimacy

vi. He wrestled in prayer to come to a place of rest v39

Ø Luke 22:44 “pray more earnestly” Heb 5:7 “strong crying and tears”

Ø He contended in prayer to overcome spiritual pressure and the human tendency is to preserve or save self

vii. He draw strength from the Father by faith and persevering in prayer

Ø Luke 22:44 “Angel”

Ø Jesus formed a habit of prayer to survive spiritual pressure

viii. He set his eyes firmly on the hope before him Heb 12:2

Ø He kept his eyes set on the end result, he kept his eyes set on the Victory

· What to do when you are facing pressure?

Ø Don’t isolate and go it alone, include trusted friends

i. Inform them: Let them know what happened or what is happening

ii. Council: Seek council and help

iii. Question: Ask them for input. What you are not seeing?

The Signs of the End Times

In Matthew 24, Jesus reveals clearly the signs of the End Times, and of His Second Coming.

We see many of these signs being manifested in the earth today. We are to recognise the signs, and prepare ourselves for Jesus coming

Signs of the Coming of Jesus (1 of 3)

How many know that there are global shifts are taking place? Something is changing in the nations of the world. People felt they lived in peace and security; but now there was the realisation that sudden change can take place.

We want to be anchored to the word of God, in this time. God is in total control, and nothing can stop His purpose being outworked. God knows the end. He's got the plan - so get connected and listen to the plan!

The Signs of the End Times (2 of 3)

Of all the people, Christians should be the most positive. Man, we're supposed to be filled with hope! Hope has to do with a great, amazing future ahead of us. We have an insight into what's coming. We just need to search the word of God and find it. We're not to be ignorant of the signs, nor to be afraid of them.

Signs of the End Times (3 of 3)

12 Signs (from Matthew 24)

1) Widespread upheaval - wars and natural disasters across the world

2) Widespread persecution of Christians

3) Widespread offences

4) Many false prophets

5) Widespread lawlessness

6) Widespread corruption and violence

7) The coming of the Lord will be unexpected

8) Restoration of the nation of Israel

9) Narcissistic, self-obsessed people.

10) Cosmic upheaval, and global fear.

11) Increase in knowledge

12) Gospel of the kingdom preached globally.

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- Signs of the Coming of Jesus (1 of 3)

- The Signs of the End Times (2 of 3)

- Signs of the End Times (3 of 3)

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Signs of the Coming of Jesus (1 of 3)

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How many know that there are global shifts are taking place? Something is changing in the nations of the world. People felt they lived in peace and security; but now there was the realisation that sudden change can take place.

We want to be anchored to the word of God, in this time. God is in total control, and nothing can stop His purpose being outworked. God knows the end. He's got the plan - so get connected and listen to the plan!

I want you to open your Bible with me; we’re going to look at Matthew 24. I want to share today on the Signs of the Coming of Jesus - the Signs of the End Times.

How many know that there are global shifts are taking place? There's a lot of changes taking place in the world; you can see the massive changes. When 9/11 happened, I remember thinking then: Lord, this is not just about an event that happened in America; this is about a global shift. Something is changing in the nations of the world. People felt they lived in peace and security; but now there was the realisation that sudden change can take place.

Then there's been two waves of pandemic - there was the SARS virus, which perhaps for many didn't have such an impact; but this with latest one, Covid-19, suddenly, within a few days, you find yourself shut up in your home and you can't go out - can't do this; can't do that. Life as you knew it stopped.

These are kind of beginning signs. They're kind of evidence to us, of a time of change in the world; and we want to be anchored to the word of God, in this time. I think the first thing we need to know, if I look on the signs of the times, the first thing I want you to look at, or to just be aware of, is this:

God is in total control, and nothing can stop His purpose being outworked. God is in total control.

That doesn't mean that everything is operating the way He wants. In fact, it's not operating the way He wants, but it will come to a point where it does, and it really helps us to see a Bible perspective.

Isaiah 46:9-10 – “Remember the former things, those of long ago;

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.

I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.

I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’”

God knows the end. He understands exactly how the whole thing ends.

We're just on the journey. We're caught in time. If you're in eternity, then you can see the start, and the end, and what's beyond; but when you're in time, then you only see what you've got now. When you're in time, then you often live out of the moment, or out of the experience you're in now, rather than out of an eternal biblical perspective. God always draws us back to Himself, and to the fact He's got your back. He's got the plan - so get connected and listen to the plan!

For example, in the Book of Daniel, there was a king there. The people of God were in a time and season where they were in bondage. Imagine that all the promises of God have gone; and everything they treasured was gone. They're in captivity; they're in slavery; and there's this false prophet, saying that it's not going to happen; but all kinds of things have been happening. In the middle of it, the king of Babylon, which was the greatest world empire of its day… it would be the ‘America’ of its day - it was the greatest empire.

The king had a vision in that; and in the vision, he sees an image - he sees the head of gold, and various parts of silver and bronze, right down to feet of clay and iron. Then he sees in that picture, that suddenly a rock comes, and the rock smites this image, on its feet. Then the image begins to crumble, and collapse, and fall to the ground - and the rock, that smote the feet of the image, now grows, and becomes a mountain that fills the whole earth!

The king is very troubled by this, very troubled indeed; and he says to all the wise men, the astrologers: I want to know the meaning of the dream; but no one could tell him - so he was going to kill everyone! You guys say you're smart, but you can't interpret my dream? Daniel said: give me a bit of time to seek the Lord - He knows dreams; and then Daniel comes back and says: I've got it!

God has shown him not only the dream, and its details; but also, the meaning.

Daniel 2:34 – “While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them”

He's talking of something supernaturally formed, “without hands” - meaning it's happened from God. It struck the image, on the feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.

Daniel 2:44 – ““In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever”

He said: in as much as you saw the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and broke in pieces - the iron and the bronze and the clay and the silver and the gold – “the great God has made it known to the king what shall come to pass in the future”.

In fact, that prophesy is a prophesy of all the world kingdoms that would come to pass; and it says that in the very End Time, there is a kingdom that will come, and it will be a rock taken out of a mountain, made without hands, that will smash that kingdom down, and then expand and fill the whole earth.

He's talking about the kingdom of God.

Daniel 7:27 – “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him”

He's had a vision of the coming kingdom of God, in all its glory. He's seen what will happen. He's seen the disruption of the powers of heaven; the transformation of the earth; and the kingdom of God established. That kingdom starts in your heart. The kingdom is within you.

When God puts His spirit in you, you are joined to the King. You become part of a kingdom. However, you've got to decide whether you'll grow. You must decide - will you let the spirit of God bring transformation? You must decide whether you'll let the Lord prepare you, so that at the time of His coming…

#1 - You're ready

#2 - You qualify for all the things He has prepared, for those who love Him.

The Bible is God's book - His story; and in His story, there are many prophesies through the Bible. The prophesies in the Bible all refer to, and carry a revelation of, Jesus and His work.

For example, when Jesus was born, in Jesus' life and ministry, there were at least 18 prophesies - specific details about His life, that were prophesied through the Bible, by different prophets - and all of those were fulfilled. Then there's another 16 prophesies about Israel, and what would happen to Israel - and all of those have become true. If you've got prophesies or foretelling of the future - firstly about the coming of Jesus; and secondly, about the nation of Israel - and all those ones have been fulfilled… that's a pretty good record!

So then, what other prophesies are there? There's a whole heap of prophesies about Jesus coming, about His return, of which the church remains ignorant; and if you're ignorant of what is coming, then you live in fear of what is now. Across the world, everyone is scared. I mean, to act rationally, and reasonably, and safely - that's one thing; but to be in fear - that's another. That's another.

God knows the beginning from the end. God has a plan that He's outworking; and the prophesies in the Bible are accurate. The Bible can be relied upon, because God knows the end from the beginning. If we were to read today some prophesies of things to come… you better know they're going to come - they will unravel as certainly as you're sitting here. The only question is whether you recognise them – that they're unravelling before your very eyes. We're living in the hour when these things are unravelling now. What a great hour to be alive! Glory to God!

Let's read in Matthew 24. I'll read about 14 verses, and Jesus brings revelation of the End Times. In other words, He acts as a prophet. Jesus not only was a great apostle, He's also a great prophet. That was prophesied by Moses - another prophet will come. He's the Great Prophet. He's now standing in His office as a prophet, saying: I'm going to tell you things are going to happen at the End Times. I'm going to prophesy for you the next 2000 years.

Matthew 24:1 – “Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple…”.

The buildings were massive. They were a massive sight - it was glorious; one of the wonders of the world really, just tremendous building. And Jesus said…

“…Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone will be left upon another that shall not be thrown down”.

That's a staggering claim to make. He's now prophesying. They're all saying: look at this awesome building, wow! Look, the gold, all the beauty of it – massive! He says: the whole lot is going to be thrown down. There won't be two stones left on top of one another. That's a whole study of its own, to find out what happened in there.

Then He sits down, and so they ask Him some questions. They just admired this big building, but Jesus said: don't put your hopes in the building. That building is coming down, and so of course, once they got alone, they sat and talked, and they asked Him some questions. As they sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. That's what disciples do - they ask questions privately. They said: tell us, when will these things be? What will be the sign of Your coming; and the end of the age?

So, there's two key questions that are asked here. 1) The destruction of the temple - what will indicate it's happening? 2) What will be the signs that indicate Your return is imminent? Jesus then answers that, and His answers are spread, as they often are in the Bible, in more than one place. You've got to read the different places to find them, but Matthew 24 and 25 is a good place to start. You could also go into Mark 13, and Luke 21, but we'll just mostly look in Matthew, and then a little bit in Luke.

Matthew 24:4 - “He answered them and said, take heed that no one deceives you”.

His first thing is to warn them of the possibility of being deceived. To be deceived means that you think something's true, when it's not true. He repeats this warning: Take care, in case you be deceived. That you start to believe things that are not true, as though they were true - and that affects how you live your life.

Matthew 24:5 - “For many will come in My name, saying I'm the Christ, and deceive many. You'll hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you're not troubled.”

Don't be anxious when you hear all these reports or read the news. All these things must come to pass, but that's not the end.

Matthew 24:6 - “For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There'll be famines, pestilences, earthquakes in diverse places. All these are the beginning of sorrows”.

He says: then they'll deliver you up to the tribulation and kill you; and you'll be hated by all nations for My name's sake. Then many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will arise and deceive many.

Notice the “then… then… then”. He's talking about a sequence of steps or actions that will take place, one after the other.

“…but he who endures to the end shall be saved, and this gospel of the kingdom of God will be preached in all the world, as a witness to the nations, then the end will come”.

Now you have an idea of what must come before the end, and we're not waiting for anyone or anything… God is waiting for us. This gospel of the kingdom must be preached throughout the whole world - then the end will come! So, don't wait around for Jesus to come. Pray… and get busy!

He's now asked two questions. The first question (in verse 3) was: what will these things be? They're asking about the temple. What about the temple? Tell us about the temple?

In Luke, it's described a little differently...

Luke 21:20 - “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation is near”.

He's now giving them a sign. He's saying: when you see this, you know. This is what you can absolutely be certain to know, that its desolation, or its total ruin, is very close. That's the sign that He's given them; and this is a consequence - it's about to be destroyed. Then He tells them what to do.

So always in the Bible, God gives a hint, or an indication, of what will come; and then He tells us how to prepare. Next week, I will talk about preparing for the second coming of the Lord, because you need to know how to prepare; but if you don't believe that He's coming soon, then of course you won't want to prepare. You'll just do your own thing.

Luke 21:21 - “Let those who are in Judea flea to the mountains. Let those who are in the midst of her, depart”.

He tells them: get out of the city when you see the sign; and it says:

Luke 21:22 - “Let not those in the country enter her, for these are the days of vengeance, that all the things which are written, may be fulfilled”.

Luke 21:23-24 – “And woe to those who are pregnant, those with babies in those days, for there'll be great distress in the land, great wrath upon the people. They will fall by the edge of the sword, be lead away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the gentiles, until the time of the gentiles are fulfilled”.

Here's the sign: “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies”. Now when I was in Rome, we did a visit to Rome one time, and we went around the Colossium... I loved it - the history is just stunning! We went through what's called the Arch of Titus, it’s a phenomenal structure. It's a memorial arch, that was built in honour of Titus.

Titus was a Roman general, and when you look on the inside of the arch, you see something interesting. You see inscriptions on the sides of the arc. On one side, it has a Roman general in a chariot, and then behind it's got people in chains, who are captive; and then behind that, it's got loads of treasure, and in particular, one item of treasure is the candlestick (or the menorah) from the temple in Jerusalem.

Now Jesus said: when you see this sign, that's what's going to happen. When you go to Rome now, you can see the picture - that it did happen!

There was a rebellion in Judea, around about the period of about 66AD. They began to revolt against the Romans, and so the Romans sent an emperor - a military commander called Vespasian, who surrounded Jerusalem, set up a siege around Jerusalem… the sign! “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies” - There it is, right there!

What do you think the believers, who remembered Jesus' words, all thought, when they saw the armies encamped around them? Jesus told us this would happen! We need to get out! Of course, they can't get out, because they're surrounded. Then suddenly, there's a death of a Roman emperor; and Vespasian is going to replace him. He's going to become the new emperor - so they call him to come back to Rome, to take over his new role as the emperor. He withdraws all his armies from Jerusalem, and goes back for a short period to Rome, in order to receive his positioning as emperor, to take over the running of the empire. Of course, now that he's running the empire, he's not going back to Jerusalem… so he sends Titus. There is a gap! The armies surround the city; then the armies withdraw from the city; then the armies return, and surround the city - so there was a window of time, and in that window of time, everyone who remembered Jesus' words…

“when you see Jerusalem surrounded, flee. Don't come into the city.”

History records that every Christian in that city left the city, and they went to a town, I think it's called Bella, somewhere in East Judea (or West Judea? Somewhere in another place) - so all the Christians left. They just left! It must have been amazing to watch them all leaving the city. Thousands upon thousands of Christians left the city. They're leaving - just leaving everything; giving up their jobs, everything they have built. They leave with whatever they can carry, and just go - because they've heard Jesus' words: when you see this, it's all about to be destroyed.

You can imagine the difficulty that people would have, and the act of faith it requires to let everything go, because you've heard the word of Jesus, and yet everything looks so comfortable. The enemies have all retired... We're doing okay now, we're all right... But very soon, Titus came; he encamped around it, he besieged it, he cut off all supplies to the city. He starved the occupants, and then breached the city; there were 3 million people, and I think he put two million to death.

A lot of people died trying to escape, but no one was able to escape. People tried to get out, but they couldn't escape, because they built literally a wall right around it. There was no escaping! The people that did come out - a rumour went around that they had swallowed jewels and diamonds, so they killed them, and gutted them. There was just no way they could escape - because they weren't ready, and responsive, to the word of God. About a million people were carried away as slaves, which is what was represented on the Arch of Titus in Rome. What you read in history is, there were so many slaves, they just went for almost nothing. They were sold cheaply.

What's called ‘The Time of the Gentiles’ began. The ‘Gentiles’ refers to people outside of Israel, outside the covenant of God. They ruled over, and had dominion over, the land of Israel; and that went on, and on, and on, until…. There's going to be a change, because of the promises of God! Let's read on - this is exciting!

When did all that change? Well, it changed in my lifetime! You see, the Times of the Gentiles ceased 1948. Israel got rid of all the British, and took over that place, which is now a source of conflict.

If I were to ask: what city, in the whole world, is the source of conflict… you know what it is. It's Jerusalem! That's where Jesus is returning again. It's like it's going to be the governmental centre of the earth; so of course, it's the source of all conflict.

So the Jews took over, and then in 1967, for the first time, apart from being a nation, now they took over the temple area, or the area there in the old city; so now they had access to Jerusalem, and of course there has still been a battle, because there's still a mosque there, that the Muslims have, claiming that this is their ground. But it is not their ground. This is the land promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - and Israel will possess the land.

So, you've got to think, when you hear all these arguments about the Middle East - where do you stand? Will you stand on God's side, agreeing with what He says is going to happen; or will you take the world view, or the secular media view, and take the view of all the people who are so critical of what's happening in the Middle East? I'm not saying it's not all right or wrong; it's just you've got to get God's perspective, amen?

Here's another thing... Last year, Donald Trump moved the embassy, and called Jerusalem the capital. That is historic! It's historic! When you see it in the bigger picture of what God is doing, you see that it's totally historic; and we'll see some things on this, that actually in the scripture, He tells about that!

So now… we want to look at just the End Times. What are the signs then, of the End Times? What are the signs that we are approaching the End Times? Jesus made it very clear: you won't know the day, or the hour; so, if anyone says they know the day, and give a date - they've got it wrong. He said: “no man knows the hour, nor the day, only the Father” - even Jesus doesn't know the day.

What you can know, is the seasons; it's the seasons, we've got to know. Jesus warns about it. The first thing He did was He warned about deception.

Mathew 24:4 – “Jesus answered and said: take heed no one deceives you”.

There's only one remedy for deception. It's found in the Book of Thessalonians. Receive a love for the truth, be passionate about truth. Be passionate about the word of God. Learn the word of God, find out what God has to say. If you don't know what God says, then you're a prime candidate to believe something wrong. You just won't know.

We should be students of the word of God. We need to have a love for the word, and even more so in the days we live now. When you turn on the news, or look at social media, you've got to understand that it’s all being manipulated to present a narrative, depending on who's saying the thing; so whatever you read is distorted, with an agenda behind it. That leaves you open to deception, and of course I see people that spend all their time on news media… but where's your Bible? Why aren't you learning the word of God? You're just a prime candidate for deception, because you're going to follow what the world is saying.

You're going to follow people who hate you, who have an agenda, presenting a case that's not true - deliberately presenting a false narrative, that’s not the news. You've got to see these things - that's the hour we're living in. We have never lived in an hour quite like this one; and it's one of the things that Jesus warned about - End Time deception! You will find that most of these things provide a narrative that is contrary, and contradictory, and hostile to, the values of the kingdom of God. So, you need to know the values of the kingdom of God; and God's order for relationships. If you don't know God's kingdom order, then you'll take it all onboard, and just come into agreement with it. Tolerance soon leads to agreement.

The narrative that is presented in the world, is hostile to the kingdom of God. It has another spirit arising, the spirit of antichrist, rising to oppose the kingdom of God, and eternal values. If you're not aware of that, then you will just draw into it, and then tolerate it, and become part of it. You will build that way, and we've already got a whole generation of families that are destroyed, because they bought into all this stuff. So, build your life on the word of God; not on the social media - or even the news.

Here's the second thing… Jesus warned about the “beginning of sorrows”.

Matthew 24:8 – “All these things are the beginning of sorrows”.

The word ‘beginning’ means the commencement of a series of things happening. The word ‘sorrows’ is a word meaning ‘childbirth’. Literally, to bring a child to birth.

Any woman here understands what that's like! Most men haven't got a clue! Oh, a child's born, yay! But women all understand… Once those pains start, you're on the journey to a child being born. There’s no stopping that journey. You can't say: oh, no, I've decided no. I've changed my mind! I don't want to! No, it's going to happen; and every day, you've got a reminder of it. Every day, your body is showing the fatigue, and then the pains start! The pains come, and they come, and they ask: how far apart are the pains? Oh, quite a long way, quite a long way... Then they start getting closer and closer... How close are the pains now? Ooh, you better get in a car and get to hospital, you are about to have a baby!

That's what He's saying. If you understand about babies being born, then you will understand this is what happens in the End Times. There is a painful situation; then it's followed by another painful situation; then another… then another… then another… getting closer and closer together. Then, what God has decided to do, will suddenly birth into the earth - and surprise everyone!

But it won't surprise you, if you know that it's a spiritual childbirth, and that there's a sequence to look for, that will happen. The beginning of sorrows! The beginning of sorrows is simply this… It's worldwide conflicts! He says: what are the birth pains?

Matthew 24:6 – “You will hear of wars, and rumours of wars; but see that you're not upset or troubled. These things will come to pass, but that's not the end yet. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom; and there will be famines and diseases and earthquakes in diverse places”.

So, wars, and natural disasters, are the first sign.

“Kingdom against kingdom” refers to ‘political’ wars. They're wars by one government, against another government, to gain dominion and power; so, World War I & II are political wars. They're wars to expand territory, to take the territory that belongs to someone else; and of course, there's been millions of lives lost.

The second type of war are what you call ‘ethnic’ wars, where it says: “nation against nation”. That word ‘nation’ is the word ‘ethnos’, meaning ‘ethnic’. Ethnic speaks of a certain culture, a certain language often, certain ways of doing things, certain history that they have - that's an ethnic group. The Bible tells us that ethnic groups will rise against ethnic groups.

Let me just have a talk about some of the ethnic wars. In 1913, the Armenians were killed by the Turks. They're still in denial about it - more than a million people, and they were crucified! They were tortured! They were sold into slavery! They were put to death! That was all ethnic and religious. It was radical Islam against Christians.

In 1941 the Nazis and the Jews - millions killed, an ethnic war. In 1947, in Kashmir - Indians, Pakistanis, ethnic war. In 1978 in Afghanistan, ethnic war; 1991 in Somalia, still going on; 1997 Rwanda, some of you would remember the Hutu and the Tutsi, and the millions that were slaughtered. What was it all about? It's tribal ethnic wars. Millions killed, slain. Iraq, 2003. Sudan is still in turmoil right now, in poverty and turmoil, and it's religious and ethnic wars.

In Nigeria, most people don't know what's going on in Nigeria, but you may have heard of Boko Haram? Boko Haram is a word meaning literally, against western education. It's radical Islamists, and they're against Christians. They're against people of other tribes and groups - and they're killing them, every week. Every week, people are being killed. If you get the right access to the right news and find out what's happening in the globe, you'll find out what's going on - and so this is happening.

In North Korea, people were shot just for having a Bible, and so it goes on. China has got the greatest wave of persecution against religious freedom right now, and against ethnic minorities. They've literally got internment camps, with more than a million people, Uighurs from the northern area. They say it's ‘re-education’, but it's a prison camp.

Right now, the persecution against the church has increased, right across China, right now. Even the organised church, the Three-Self Church, even that is suffering right now. They want the 10 Commandments taken down, and they want their doctrine of the Chinese Communist Party up there instead. They want the Chinese Communist Party to be God in the nation, so no other God is acceptable.

This is like in Nebuchadnezzar's day, when they put up the big image, and said: everyone must worship it; but three men stood up and said: “we won't”; and God redeemed them, and saved them, and promoted them.

In Somalia, Libya, Iraq, and right across the Middle East… Look at what's happened there - all the ethnic wars that have been going on, in our time - millions killed and displaced. This is in our day, that this is happening. This is happening now.

In Hebrews 13, it tells us not to ignore the suffering that's going on in other nations, among the family of God. Amen!

Currently, Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the whole world right now. There are more people killed for faith in Christ now, than at any time in history. In China, they are paying people to report the ones they know are Christians. You understand? This is not to just shock you. It's just to make you aware, this is a sign of the times - just one of the signs!

The next sign I want to share is, a worldwide hatred against Christians.

There are ethnic wars, and pandemics. There are earthquakes; and the frequency of earthquakes seems to me, to be bigger, and we're far more aware of earthquakes - major earthquakes now, shaking up nations all over the earth. The issue of the Covid is something we've never seen in our lifetime, of a whole world pretty much being shut down. These are all signs leading to something. They're all the ‘birth pains’, and these are all these natural signs.

Jesus said: that's only the beginning! If you can't handle the footmen, how are you going to handle the horses? If you're upset by little stuff now, how are you going to handle the big stuff, when it comes?

The reason that God brings our attention to all of this, is so we can prepare. It's all to prepare the church. I love it! So, there's a spirit of hatred being released, right across the world, to all who follow Christ - and it's horrendous! If you make a stand for Christ, for Christian values, for godly marriage, for purity - if you build your life around those things, you are now a target. There is a spirit of hatred released, right through the world, against Christians and followers of Christ. It's the rise of an antichrist spirit. I read an article, and it said there were relentless persecutions against Christians, in over 140 countries in the world - imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, raped, sold into slavery, sold into forced marriages, all kinds of things. It's happening now!

What about in the west? Well, in the west, it's a little bit different, but it’s here. In the west, increasing hatred is being shown towards anyone who has either a conservative, or a Christian, or a Bible perspective of life - increasing hatred. If you hold an opinion that is different from the progressive left, you will be vilified. It's not like, oh well, I disagree - I've got my opinion, and you've got yours. No! If you hold a different opinion, there will literally be a whole range of things happening. They will name you, blame you, shame you, and just attack and destroy you, in every way possible.

A person holding a Christian view, in much of the western world now, is likely to be bullied - publicly and privately. Two forces are coming together - religion and politics. You see the political system (the far left particularly), and the religious system (Islam) coming together, and forming friendships. What do they have in common? They've got nothing in common! If you go to any of the countries where there's radical Islam, you'll find they kill homosexuals! They don't promote them; but the left is promoting them - so how can they come together? It's because they have a common enemy.

The common enemy is Christ!

Mark 3:6 – “The Pharisees went out, and plotted with the Herodians, on how they could kill Jesus”.

The Pharisees were religious; Herodians were political. They had nothing to do with one another. What brought them together was a common hatred. This is what's emerging in the world now. Once your eyes are opened, you can see; and Jesus taught people how to respond. He said: when it happens… when you get hated by all men, for My sake - then rejoice, and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.

He said: don't get all ‘oh no, it's all bad’. No! He said: listen, when this comes, they realise you've got something, and that you're a danger, and a threat, and they're pushing back on you - and it's because you identify with Jesus Christ! Man, stand up, hold your ground, rejoice - because God's says He will reward those who will stand their ground, and faithfully serve Him. Hallelujah!

He said: love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you, and spitefully use you, and persecute you.

The next sign will be… offences and hatred - among Christians.

Matthew 24:10 – “Many will be offended, and will betray one another, and hate one another”.

Many! Many! Many Christians are carrying offences in their heart. The question is, are you carrying offences in your heart? Offences inevitably are about relationships with people who are in authority over us. Offences - the word literally means ‘to be scandalised’. It refers to the bait in a trap. Literally, when you set a trap for a bird, you put the bait in, and the thing you attached it to was called the ‘skandalon’ - that's the offence. That's the trap-stick; and the bird would see that, and come and eat the food, and then the trap closes.

It's very easy to want to be offended by people. People get offended everywhere. You know, they happen to have, in some places, a thing called ‘safe-spaces’. Some of you may not have heard of that. A “safe-space” means that I'm not allowed to say certain things, in case I might offend you. It's happening in the American education system now, right through up to tertiary. I've got to be careful about “trigger-words”, in case I upset you, and hurt you with the words I say, because my opinion might be different to yours. That's because people are growing up with an “offended spirit”, so little things offend them.

Little things offend them, and then it becomes “hate speech”, if you've offended them. They've taken having a different opinion to mean that you hate them. How wrong is that? We need a love for the truth; but offence is a horrendous thing. Offences lead to betrayal in relationships, and then to open hatred - and it's far easier to get into this state, than you realise.

Why do people get offended? To be offended means ‘to be tripped up’. So, you're running well, then you trip up, and fall on your face. Splat! A lot of Christians are in that state. They've tripped up and fallen on their face. Maybe you're like that now?

It happens for two reasons; one, you were treated unfairly, some injustice took place. That happens. Welcome to the world! It happens everywhere. Racial things happen everywhere. They've been happening all through history, everywhere. It's just that in the west, you hear about it in the media, because they're making a big show of it right now. It doesn't mean that something didn't happen – something is wrong. There is injustice. But the problem is not that there's injustice - the bigger thing is what does it do to you.

Are you a carrier of injustice, and offence; or are you a carrier of healing, and restoration, in life?

You've got to understand - you can't be both! If you're carrying injustice, and offence, then you will be angry, and hate, and then you'll destroy. We tend to think - oh, that's America! That's not us! No, no, no - it happens here too. Come on!

The two reasons that people get offended… One is, they've been treated badly, or unjustly, or unfairly. They've got a genuine grievance to get over (or they think they have). That's where Christians get stuck. They think - oh, it wasn't fair, I wasn't treated right, and they get upset. Usually it comes out of unmet expectations - I thought you were going to do that, and you didn't! I'm upset! No, you're offended. Get over it. Deal with it.

Address it in a godly way, otherwise it's going to stumble you, and you'll end up breaching the relationship. When people get offended, they get so focussed on themselves, they don't realise they're trapped in a snare.

Their focus is not on Jesus. Their focus is not on being like Him. Their focus is not on being able to love people, and bless people, and restore relationships. Their focus is on me, and my, and mine. Their focus is on the injustice, and the hurt; and while they're focussing on injustice and hurt, they're not aware - I've got an offended heart, and I'm operating under pride. The pride blinds my hearts condition. I can't see, because I'm so full of myself.

Proverbs 18:19 – “A brother offended is harder to win back than a strong city; contentions separate friends like a gate locked with bars”.

An offended person will build a wall around their heart. Now get this... They build a wall around their heart, but they will let in one kind of person. Who will they open their heart to? Oh, another offended person! Oh, you're offended too? Oh, let me tell you about my offence… and they let them in! And now, they're not sharing the life of Christ; they're not sharing blessing… they're sharing offence! The spirit of offence, and bitterness, and hatred, begins to grow. This goes on, all the time! They just want someone who will agree with me!

If I think that you agree with me, I'll share, and I'll welcome you in. The problem is, when people are offended like that, they misinterpret the actions of people. So, if you've got an offence in your heart, you'll misinterpret everything - especially if it's an offence against your father or your mother. You will have issues with authority your whole life.

One of the biggest issues of offences that come is when we have expectations that are not met – oh, but I thought... We maybe didn't even realise there was an expectation, we just get offended; or when pastors or leaders try to help you grow up, and talk into your life something you can't see, because you're blinded by your offence. And then, instead of welcoming the truth, and loving the truth, even though it hurts… people get more offended. The wall goes up.

What Jesus said is: many will become offended, and betray one another, and hate one another. It's going to progress. They're not going to stay static, if the offence is in your heart. You're going to sell the person out to their enemies. You will go to someone who also hates them, and share your story with them, and give them more fuel for the fire. You're betraying the relationship you had.

You will withdraw from a relationship that was important. Maybe God had ordained that relationship, but you've withdrawn, because of your pride and offence, and now you've walked away. Now you've betrayed the relationship. You've sold them out, by sharing confidences; or you've sold them out, by withdrawing, when you were most needed. That goes on all the time. It's evidence of pride, and immaturity. It's time to grow up! We cannot stay in that state. We can't remain like that.

We must have a love for the truth. Who could speak into your life, in a way that you won't get offended and upset, and take a hike? When someone last tried to say something to you, how did you respond? Are you a lover of the truth, and welcome the truth? Or is your pain, and your hurt, so driving you, and preoccupying you, that all you can do is react?

Jesus said: in the last days many will be offended – multitudes; and they will betray one another, and then hate one another. How do you hate people? Lots of ways… It can be active, by hostility coming against them; or it can be just in this way… The word ‘hatred’ in the Bible means ‘to love less’, or ‘withhold love’. You may not think you hate people, but when you withhold love - is something wrong? Yep. Nah. Nothing is wrong. Won't talk about it. Build a wall. Just walk away, further and further...

You're not walking away from that person. You're walking away from God. He's trying to help you, to grow you, because He needs you mature, in the End Times. He needs you to grow, in the End Times. He needs you to be in a good place, spiritually and relationally. He needs you locked into a community of people that can help you grow, and support you, and help you in your journey. He wants you connected, and offences are the main stumbling block of the devil, to take people out of God-given relationships, that were designed to help them, and bless them.

The four things that I notice, comes whenever there's offences...

Number one is distance - relational distance; because now you're preoccupied, not with love and building together - you've now got another agenda: preserving yourself.

Prov. 18:1 – “a man who isolates himself seeks his own desire, and rages against all wise judgement”.

The second one is demons. When you allow offences to get in your heart, you will become demonised. You will. Jesus said that will happen. That's a prophesy!

Matthew 18:34-35 – “If you will not from your heart forgive your brother every one of his trespasses, then you will be handed over to the tormentors”.

Unforgiveness, and offence in our heart, leaves an open door for demonic spirits to wreak havoc; to torment you, with remembering all the things that were done against you, causing you to be angry and upset. They torment you!

Someone shares something, or you read something, or see something on the news, and now you're angry, and you don't even know why you're even angry. Why are you angry? We're just lost in some dots on a screen. No, there was something tapped into the spirit that was there, and it stirred up your anger, stirred up your issue.

The third one is deception. Deception comes when you're offended, because you become blinded, and you can't see why your life's going the way it is. You can't see the truth, when you've got offence in your heart.

1 John 2:11 – “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness”.

When there's hatred in our heart, when we've withdrawn love, because of offence, it says we ‘walk in darkness’, and we can't work out what we're stumbling over.

When you're offended, you have a lot of things go wrong in your life, and you can't work out why these things are happening, because you can't see. If you can't see, then it's like you keep tripping up all the time, and you can't work out why you're having these setbacks. It's because your heart is offended, there's anger and hate in the heart, and now you can't see.

The hatred blinds your eyes. It causes you to be in a spiritual darkness, where you have no perception. Then when the word of God is preached, you don't even pick anything up. These are important things. In the last days, many, many, many will be like that - so deception is another one.

The last one is defilement. Defilement will come.

Hebrews 12:15 - "See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”

Make sure that everyone guards their heart, to keep themselves in the grace of God, lest a root of bitterness spring up and defile many. Injustices, hurts, offences, and anger - they breach all our relationships. They cause you to have walls, become demonically empowered; then they cause an isolation, and then they overflow with defilement. You start to poison your marriage, poison your children, poison your friendships and relationships, and everywhere the bitterness just flows like a river.

That's not what we're called to be. We're called to be in the house of God, where the river of life flows out of, and that river of life can only flow out of a pure heart, a heart that's free of offence. You've got to keep yourself free of offence. If someone offends you, forgive them. Just forgive them! If it's breached the relationship, go have a talk. Pray. Get your heart right, get all the anger out of it, or you'll end up with a bigger row than you had before.

You can't fix a relationship if you're angry. Get over your anger. Get over your injustice. Grow some meekness in your heart, because meekness, in the eyes of God, is very high price! Offences get you out, but meekness gets you in. You could nut-off, but you don't, because you've surrendered to the Lord, and you understand that He permits offences, in order to grow your character of meekness, like He had. He was reviled and offended, but He didn't react.

He could have called down angels, and burned them up, but He didn't do that. It's His meekness, and His humility, that caused Him to be separated to the purpose of God. He had a joy ahead of Him, seeing people like you and me coming out of darkness, coming out of the dark place, coming into a place of life, coming into the things God has for us - free of offence, free of these things! He did it for us!

Luke 21:16 – “You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death”

We must understand then, the signs of the times we're in. Wars, rumours of war, ethnic conflicts, famines in diverse places, pestilences or viruses that no one can do anything about - that's the hour we're living in now. That's the hour you and I are in right now.

And He says: these are just the beginning of all kinds of things that will come on the earth, and they're leading up to the return of Jesus Christ, the overthrow of the kingdoms of the world, and the establishment of His kingdom.

He has got you in a preparation process, so He gives you a heads-up: guys, when you see these things coming, what do you need to do? He says: watch and pray! Watch and pray! He says a whole number of things we're called to do, to prepare ourselves.

If you have a look right now, you can see right now, how difficult the issue of offences is, and how widespread, the opposition and hatred for the things of God are. You see and feel in the world, a gathering momentum of the antichrist spirit, against everything that's good and right. It's not about left versus right. On the right, there's people just as bad as well. On the extreme right, you've got fanatical people. On the extreme left, you've got fanatical people. In religion, you've got fanatical people. God is looking for kingdom people, that are not caught up in political games.

They say: I want to stand for the kingdom of God! I want to be a part of that rock that brings down the kingdoms of the world and fills the whole earth and makes Jesus Christ Lord!

Matthew 24:30 – “when the last sign comes, then they shall see the Son of Man coming in the glory, His own glory and the glory of His Father, and the glory of all the angels”

Rev 22:12 - "Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”

Listen, our greatest day is ahead of us! There is a global revival, there's a global moving of the spirit of God in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ. Right now, we need to in our heart say: God, I see! I've been asleep. My prayer life has been slack. Lord, I've been compromising, I've been offended, I've been in my heart Lord, turned against people.

Today I repent! Today I come back! I want to watch and pray. I want to be and man, a woman of prayer. I want to be a child of God. I want to be right at the forefront of what You're doing. Holy Ghost come upon me, I need a fresh encounter, even today, Holy Spirit. Come on church, let's stand, let's stand right now. Come on, let's begin to worship Him…

Closing Prayer

Lord, we honour You. We worship You. You are coming in majesty. You are coming in glory. You are coming with great power. We honour You Jesus. What a privilege to be a part of Your kingdom. What an honour to be a child of God. What a privilege to have such a destiny and calling.

Father, we love You. Jesus, we love You. We honour You Jesus. Come on, let's worship Him. Lift your hands and worship Him. Perhaps there's some of you today, you're saying God, I need to repent. I've become lukewarm. My prayer life is gone. I'm in the news more than I'm in the word of God. Lord, I've got offences in my heart. Lord, help me today. I see I'm living in an important hour. Lord, put a fresh vision in my heart. I need a fresh encounter with the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, I need You to come. Come. Come. I present my life. I build an altar to Jesus Christ.

I will live my life in these difficult times. I will endure. I will persevere. I will be on the Lord's side. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We will serve that eternal kingdom. Lord, we honour You. Father, we pray Your kingdom come, Your kingdom come, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Let heaven come, let heaven come to earth. Come to me! Cause fire to come in me. Yours is the glory. Yours is the kingdom.

God wants to put a spirit of prayer on you, wants to put a spirit of faith on you. When the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? Will He find persevering prayer? Will He find purity? Will He find people who love Him? Will He find true worshippers? Will He find in you a heart set on the kingdom?

Yours is the kingdom, Yours is the power, Yours is the glory forever! Come Lord, let Your kingdom come, let Your kingdom come, come in power, come in majesty!

Every eye shall see Him. Every knee shall bow to Him. Everyone shall declare He is King of Kings, He is Lord of Lords. God is speaking to us in this hour. Prepare for His coming. Prepare yourself. Grow. Change. Don’t just carry on. Set your heart: God, I need a personal revival. I want to have a deep intimacy with You. I want a deep intimacy with You, opening my heart, hearing Your heart, communing with You.

Lord, I want You to transform my life. Heal the broken places. Come to the places my life is imprisoned with fear and bitterness and disappointment and grief and injustice and defilements. Uncover all those places. I invite You to come. I want to change. I can't do it by myself. I need You to come with healing, deliverance, revelation. I want to become like Jesus Christ. Lord, help me to be faithful, faithful in the small assignment You have given me, have entrusted me.

Let me see every assignment I have as an act of worship and bring Your presence into it, just the little things at home, the little things that are insignificant that You're interested in. Let me do them to You as an act of worship.

Lord, I see the signs of the End Times and I commit to Your word and Your spirit to be changed and ready for Your coming. Just let the spirit of God rest on you right now. He's speaking to some of you. There's things to let go of. They're not necessarily bad things, they're just distractions. There's things He's wanting to build in your life, in your marriage, with your children and your finances. This is an hour of change. Whenever God calls us to change, He will provide the power to do it. He just wants you to be available.

Jesus, You have captured my heart. I hear the cry of the bridegroom. You are coming. I want my lamp to be filled with oil and to burn with a passion for You. I sense the spirit of God is touching many people.

From the first time I heard about things of the spirit, the thing I cried for almost more than any was the spirit of prophesy, the revelation of Jesus. Today Lord, in Jesus' name, I decree new beginnings for the members, the families, the friends of this church. I release now upon your life the spirit of prayer. I release upon your lives a spirit of faith. A door of opportunity is opened to you. If you will step into it, your prayer life will accelerate. The miracles will begin to accelerate. Your life will begin to change.

A new day is coming for the church! When it gets darker and darker in the world, our light shall shine! Today Lord, we arise, we arise, we shine! Our light is coming! Our light is here! The glory of the Lord upon our lives and hearts! Yours is the kingdom, Yours is the power, Yours is the glory forever, amen.

Summary Notes

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Signs of The End Times (Part 1)

I.The Bible Reveals Many Global Events

1.Global Shifts

- We are living in a time of Global upheaval and change…

Many people feel fearful and anxious about the future

- Two events recent have introduced immense change to the world…

The 911 attacks and war on Terror, and Two Pandemics…Sars & Covid-19

- In such short space of time nations have changed

- The coming Economic Impact on the nations of the latest pandemic is yet to be seen `

2.God is in Control…He Knows the Future

- Isaiah Declared God Foresees the Future

Isa 46:9  Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me,

Isa 46:10  Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, 'My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,'

- God knows the end from the beginning…no one can stop His purposes being fulfilled

- His Counsel, His plans shall stand…nothing can stop them.

- Because He knows the end of the plan he is able to reveal what lies ahead and warn us

“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” ( Amos3:7).

- "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”(Deut.29:29)

- God keeps some things secret….other things He reveals, not only for our benefit but also for the next generation

3.Daniel Interprets Nebuchadnezzars Dream of Coming Kingdoms

Dan 2:34  You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.

Dan 2:44  And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.

Dan 2:45  Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure."

- Nebuchadnezzar was King over the greatest world military and economic empire of his day

- God revealed to the King a dream in which each of the successive major World Kingdoms that would come, were revealed in the form of an image

- Daniel interpreted the Kings dream…prophesied of the coming world Kingdoms and the EndTime

- He revealed a Kingdom which would start very small and would overcome and replace all the world Kingdoms, in the end times ( “in the days of these kings”…the final world empire)

- Daniel also himself saw in a vision the Kingdom of Jesus Christ coming in great Power and Glory

- Dan 7:27  Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him.'

4.The Bible is a Reliable Source of Prophecy of World Events

- Jesus First Coming ……at least 18 specific prophecies were accurately fulfilled

There are many more prophecies regarding His Second coming that are yet to be fulfilled

- The Nation of Israel …. At least 16 specific prophecies regarding Israel and its land have been fulfilled

There are more prophecies regarding Jerusalem and Israel yet to be fulfilled

- Because God sees “the end from the beginning” He is able to declare things that are to come

- The Bible has a proven track record of accurately foretelling events affecting nations

- Some things are revealed….somethings are not

- Mat 24:36  "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

5.Jesus Prophesied The End Times

- Jesus was a Prophet…

- Moses foretold hundreds of years earlier of a Prophet like him that would come ….referring to Jesus

- Deu 18:15  "The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear,

- Mat 21:11  So the multitudes said, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee."

- Jesus gave gave revelation of the Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and of the End Times

- His endtime prophetic revelation are found in Matt.24-25, Luke 21, and Mark 13 and other places

II.Jesus Revelation of the End Times

1.Key Passage

Mat 24:1  Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.

Mat 24:2  And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."

Signs of the End of the Age

Mat 24:3  Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"

Mat 24:4  And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you.

Mat 24:5  For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.

Mat 24:6  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Mat 24:7  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.

Mat 24:8  All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Mat 24:9  "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake.

Mat 24:10  And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.

Mat 24:11  Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.

Mat 24:12  And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.

Mat 24:13  But he who endures to the end shall be saved.

Mat 24:14  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

2.Two Questions Came From the Disciples

Mat 24:3  Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"

- The disciples had been overwhelmed by the size and magnificence of the temple built by Herod, and which which compared to some of the seven wonders of the world.

- It seemed impossible that such a great structure could be destroyed as jesus described

- The Disciple privately asked Jesus about the destruction of the Temple and also about His Coming and The EndTimes

III.The Temple: When will it be destroyed?

Luk 21:20  "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.

Luk 21:21  Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her.

Luk 21:22  For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.

Luk 21:23  But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.

Luk 21:24  And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

- Jesus Gave the Key Sign: “ when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies”

- In AD 66-70 Jerusalem was besieged by Roman armies led by Vespasian

- When he received word from Rome that he was being made the new emperor he lifted the siege temporarily and returned to Rome to receive his new position.

- Jewish believers remembered Jesus words and fled Jerusalem to a town of Pella

- Vespasian’s successor Titus returned and laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed it.

- Many people had died from famine, many were killed by the Roman soldiers until blood ran in the streets

- Over one million Jews were killed and a 67,000 taken into captivity

- Titus Gate in Rome…..There remains a Mural display of his triumphant return to Rome

- Jewish Believers escaped because they believed Jesus warning about the destruction of the Temple

- We also are to recognize the signs of our times, believe what Jesus says and respond

- Jesus also gave a Sign of the EndTimes

- “Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”

- Times of the Gentiles refers to Jerusalem being under the control of foreign nations…..2000 years

- 1948: Jews returned to Israel….Israel birthed as a nation

- 1967: Israel regained control of most of the old city, except the Temple Mount ( Mosque still there)

- 2019: Jerusalem is recognized as the Capital City of Israel by America

- Because Jesus will return to Jerusalem and rule from Jerusalem, the city continues to be the centre of conflict and world news.

- No peace plan proposed by nations will work apart from the promise to Abraham being fulfilled

IV.The EndTimes and Return of Christ: What will be the Signs?

1.Jesus Warns about EndTime Deception

Mat 24:4  And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you.

- The only guarantee against deception is having a love for the truth (2Thes.1:10)

- We must have a passionate love for truth and commit to living the Word of God

- Social Media and the News are widely manipulated to promote a narrative, not truth

- Most of what you see and hear in media comes with an agenda …..contrary to Kingdom values

- We must build our lives upon the Word of God …not on current social media or media narratives.

2.Jesus Warns about the Beginning of Sorrows

Mat 24:8  “All these are the beginning of sorrows.“

- Beginning”….the commencement, the emergence the first is a series of events

- “Sorrows”…..birth pains, the pains accompanying childbirth, labor pains

- Once labor pains start they cannot be stopped …they are leading to an event ..the birth of a child

- The nearer the birth the more frequent and intense the birth pains

- What are the Birth Pains Jesus described…….. …The Signs of the End?

Mat 24:6  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Mat 24:7  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.

3.First Sign: Wars and Natural Disasters

- There are two kinds of wars…Political and Ethnic

- Political…. “ Kingdom against Kingdom”

World Wars 1&2 were political wars for domination and control ….Millions of people were killed

- Ethnic…….“Nation against nation”…. Greek.”ethnos”

- The majority of wars now are ethnic wars….millions have been and are being killed currently

- Eg 1913 Armenians, 1941 Jews, 1947 Kashmir, 1978 Afghanistan, 1991 Somalia, 1997 Rwanda, 2001 Iraq, 2003 Sudan, 2009 Nigeria, 2014 Libya,

- Ethnic and Religious differences are the single greatest cause of conflicts today

4.Second Sign: Worldwide Hatred Against Christians

Mat 24:9  "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake.

- “Then”….means there is a progression of events occurring that follow one another

- The persecution of Christians today are at near genocide levels all around the world

- The greatest persecution of Christians currently is from Radical Islam

- Middle East, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, North Korea’s, China, Somalia, Libya, Iraq,

- Relentless persecutions against Christians is occurring in over 140 countries around the world….daily

- Christians are the worlds most persecuted religious group in 21st century

- They are being imprisoned, tortured, assaulted, raped, sold as slaves, crucified, discriminated against

- Eg. China……today…massive persecution of Christians…people paid to dob them in to authorities

- There is a spirit of Hatred being unleashed towards people who follow Christ and stand for Christian principles …eg Marriage, Family, Gender, Purity

- In the West increasing hatred is being openly manifested against any one who holds a view that differs from Progressive Left Ideology

- Hate speech… defined by Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".

Hate Speech has become commonly redefined as having and expressing a different, usually conservative opinion, from the favored left ideology

The common strategy is to …Name, Blame, Shame, and then attack and destroy in every way possible

A person holding a Christian or differing view is labelled and attacked and bullied publicly

- Holding a Christian or Conservative view is considered “hateful”by many because it opposes their views

- Operating together are the Religious (Islam) and Political (Radical Left)

- Mar 3:6  Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.

- The Pharisees were religious legalists, the Herodians were a political lobby group…. They hated each other but were joined as partners in their opposition to Jesus Christ

Jesus taught His Disciples how to Respond…

Luk 6:22  Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man's sake.

Luk 6:23  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

Mat 5:44  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,

- Rejection, reviling, exclusion and even persecution is inevitable for a genuine follower of Christ

- Persecution is a spiritual issue…it is Jesus Himself who is being opposed

- God promises eternal reward for those who endure persecution for His names sake

( Not for stupid religious behavior or attitudes that people reject and react to)

- We are challenged to fix our eyes on the honor and reward and rejoice not be miserable and negative

- We are to Love, Bless, Do good to and Pray for those who treat us badly for the name of Christ

5.Third Sign: Offenses and Hatred among Christians

- Mat 24:10  And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.

- “ Many”…..A major issue and Key sign among Christians of the EndTimes will be offenses!

- “Offended”….to trip or stumble….Root: Skandalon …. The bait in a trap for birds

- There are daily opportunities to become offended by people

- Offenses lead to betrayal and to open hatred

- Why do people become offended?

They have been treated unjustly, wronged against in some way or

They believe they have been treated unjustly

This is usually because of unmet and unspoken Expectations of people

- People who become offended don’t realize that they are trapped in a snare

- They are so focussed on injustice and hurt that they are unaware of having an offended heart

- They are blinded by pride to their true heart condition

Pro 18:19  A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, And contentions are like the bars of a castle.

- Offended people build walls around their heart to protect themselves from further hurt

- They allow in only those who will agree with their hurt and offense…ie. other offended people

- They share their offense over and over and feed on the demonic spirit behind it

- They constantly misinterpret the actions of others because of heart offense, and this becomes a further cause for offense

Responses People Make when Offended

- Distance:………They distance and withdraw from godly relationships that could help them

Pro 18:1  A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; He rages against all wise judgment.

- Demons: ……..They open the doors to demons to torment

And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers (Mat.18:34-35)

- Deception:…. .They become blinded and unable to see why life is going badly

But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eye (1Jn.2:11)

- Defilement:….They become bitter and defile others by criticism, gossip, destructive talk

“Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled” (Heb12:15)

- Betray One Another

“Betray”….to deliver over to enemies, walk away from relationship, give up confidences

Luk 21:16  You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.

- Hate One Another

“Hate”…….miseo….to detest, pursue with hostile intent, love less…withhold love and honor due

- People withdraw from relationships and withhold love and honor

- People actively hate and resent, and attack the person and their reputation

- People who are offended are easily stirred up to anger by any form of injustice they see or hear.

- They join other offended people and feed off their offenses. They defile and become defiled

- Their love for God grows cold and they either become religious or abandon church

V.Response: Prepare for His Coming

- Mat 16:27  For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

- Jesus will return in great Glory and Power and Majesty to establish His Kingdom on earth

- He will reward each man according to his works….how he has lived out his life following Christ

- Today is the time to prepare for His return….signs are clear of His imminent return

Jas 1:12  Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.

For Personal Consideration

1.What has the Holy Spirit spoken to you about through this study?

2.What issues does He want you address and make changes?

3.Are you living in fear and anxiety about issues and challenges you are facing in life ?

4.What could you do to come to a place of peace and joy?

5.How easily are you offended?

6.Can you receive feedback and correction without becoming offended?

7.Are you carrying offenses that you need to address?

The Signs of the End Times (2 of 3)

Sat 27 Jun 2020 AM  « Back to Top

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Of all the people, Christians should be the most positive. Man, we're supposed to be filled with hope! Hope has to do with a great, amazing future ahead of us. We have an insight into what's coming. We just need to search the word of God and find it. We're not to be ignorant of the signs, nor to be afraid of them.

Of all the people, Christians should be the most positive. Man, we're supposed to be filled with hope! Hope has to do with a great, amazing future ahead of us.

If you look at the media, and look at the world, look at all the things going on, you have every reason to feel a bit depressed, discouraged, cynical, or disheartened.

But if you look at the word of God, and what God has to say to us about what lays ahead for us… wow! We should be the most positive people of all, because we have an insight into what's coming. We just need to search the word of God and find it.

Matthew 24:1 – “Jesus went out and departed into the temple, His disciples came to show Him the magnificent buildings of the temple (they were just amazing). And Jesus said to them, do you see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone will be left upon another. Everything will be thrown down”.

He goes on, and He begins to talk… The disciples come to Him, as He sat on the Mouth of Olives.

Matthew 24:3 – “As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. Tell us, they said, when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Two questions: when will the temple be overthrown; and what will be the signs of the End Times?

Matthew 24:4 – “Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you.”

The first thing He warns about, is the possibility of deception.

Matthew 24:5-13 – You will hear of wars, and rumours of wars. See you're not troubled. These things must come to pass, the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There'll be famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places. These are just the beginning of the sorrows. (This is the beginning of like a childbirth). They will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you. You'll be hated of all nations for My name's sake. Many will be offended, and betray one another, and will hate one another. False prophets will rise and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved”.

He's warning about deception; and His encouragement of the need to persevere in our faith, and our journey.

Matthew 24:14 – “For the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, then the end will come”.

As we start, I just want to just go back to a couple of the things that we touched on last week. We talked a little bit about the massive global shifts that are taking place. We're living in a time when there's massive global change is occurring. America has been a massive power in the earth, for as long as I've been alive, and now you find now its power is weakening. All kinds of turmoils are going on, and people get a bit anxious when they see what's happening in the world. We see the impact of the 9/11 attack, that caused a change in the world.

There were other things have happened since then. Now there's Covid, and the SARs that went before it, which have caused an upheaval, that we can't be so sure everything's going to carry on like we expect. Mostly we carry on, and expect everything to be unchanged, and then when something like this comes, your whole world is shaken, and many people become fearful and anxious. There's also an economic issue that’s going to come…

After I preached this message last week, I opened up one of my news feeds to look at, and ‘Rumours of Wars’ was the title, and it talked about what's the looming war between Pakistan and China, and then other wars, in other places, that are happening around the world. So, if you look at the headlines, you'll start to see many of things that we've talked about.

How many read about the, for example, the plague of locusts that's going around, and it's of a size that’s unprecedented. These plagues of locusts are so big, they cover 100 square miles. That's just full of billions of locusts, and they're in Africa, and then also up into some parts of Asia as well. When you have that kind of plague come, then you have after it, famine.

We see those things in Jesus' statements. So anyway, the things we looked at was that:

1) Global shifts taking place - and were more to come.

2) God is in control. God has the beginning, and the end, worked out.

He has all things under control. That doesn't mean events in the earth are under control. It means in the bigger plan, God knows, and nothing is taking Him by surprise.

We saw then that Jesus revealed signs to watch out for. We read in one place for example, how He rebuked the religious leaders. In Matthew 16:1-3, He said: you guys are religious leaders – you’re supposed to know the Bible. You can tell the signs of the weather. You know that ‘red sky in the morning is the shepherd's warning’. It's the same here - we all go by seasons here. You can tell that it's winter; you can read the signs - trees are bare. He said: you can read all these natural seasons, but you can't read the signs of the times. You had the Bible, with all the prophesies of My coming; but when I come… you don't even know where I am! He's giving us a heads-up, that it will also be like that in the last days.

In Luke 9, it tells us that He wept over the city of Jerusalem. He grieved over it. He grieved, because He said: you didn't know the time of your visitation. You didn't recognise in the season of history - what God was just doing in your midst; and because you didn't recognise it, now your enemies will come against you, and will destroy you - which happened about 70 years later.

Notice in those contexts, He's saying: it is important that we be aware of what's happening in the world - and relate it to what the word of God says, not to opinions of people. The first sign was: wars, and natural disasters. There would be wars, and rumours of wars; nation against nation, ethnic wars; kingdom against kingdom, global wars, or conflicts. There would also be famines, pestilences, earthquakes… He said all those things.

Have a look! You will see Covid-19, and you see the riots that are taking place, that are in every nation of the earth - all kinds of issues that are happening, that are kind of almost unprecedented. There's a looming global depression. They're just printing money, like it's just going out of style. You can't print money without a consequence. The consequence is that there's going to be an economic upheaval in the world.

The low interest rates, for example, have affected the ability of pension plans in the United States to be able to provide for the future. A few years ago, they said they'll all expire in 2045; now they're saying 2030. Suddenly it's decreased, because the amount of money they can gain by investing is so low, it's not keeping up with the demand that's coming. So before, it was known that by 2030, the American pension plans will all collapse. What happens then when there's no money to provide for elderly?

We're living in a season of unprecedented change, and we're not to be ignorant of the signs, nor to be afraid of them. The Bible says to ‘look up’ when you see these things coming - fix your eyes on Jesus, not on the circumstances, or carry on like nothing's happening.

He said the second sign would be: widespread hated towards Christians. If you have a look through the world, and start to read some of the material, and watch what's really happening, you'll find there's unprecedented persecution of Christians across the world. Just look up ‘persecution of Christians’ on Google. You can find it - it's very easy to find. Look for statistics - you'll find there's more Christians being killed now, than at any time in history, around the world. Become informed about what's happening - look for the signs.

The third sign that He mentioned was the sign of offences - ‘many would become offended’, many!

Right now, one of the big issues is people get offended. You just have a differing opinion, and now they suddenly get wound up, and angry, and offended, and they walk away. You try to talk to people about issues, and they get offended, and rise up. That's what Jesus said - many will be offended! Many, many!

There's going to be a big problem of people being offended very easily. Are you offended very easily? Wait until your next offence comes… and we'll see! I've found that Christians get very upset, very easily - over little things! Mostly, when you try to give them a bit of feedback, on how they could grow, or how they could change, or how they could do something better. Then they get huffy…

The fourth sign is… many false prophets.

Matthew 24:11 – “Many false prophets will arise and deceive many”.

Three times, in Matthew 24, Jesus warns the disciples about deception. Three times He says: look out, don't be deceived. Here's the thing about being deceived… you don't know you're deceived! You just think - I'm right; they're wrong.

If Jesus tells you something once, it's good to listen to it. Twice, He's really getting your attention. Three times - He's saying this is a big issue. Deception - believing that you're right, when you're wrong.

There will be lots of false prophets; and false prophets essentially draw people to themselves, and not to God. If I just take away the word ‘false prophet’ and instead just use… people that are very spiritual, but draw people to themselves, rather than building them to the kingdom of God, and Jesus - that would be a false prophet, see? They appear very ‘spiritual’, and they have encounters - all kinds of things. But what are they drawing people to?

There are some distinct signs… A false prophet will draw people to themselves, not to God, and His word. The message that they have will lack the essence of the gospel, repentance, and a changed life.

If ‘prophetic’ messages are all about all the great things that will happen, but don't call you to repent, and to transformation, then something is essentially missing, at the core of it. Prophetic messages always have a change - admit you were wrong, and turn to what's right, so God can bless you. That's what repentance means. I was wrong, but I turn around now, because this is what God says - this is right. I'll follow that.

Repentance is called a ‘foundation’ for your faith. It's not something you just do once. You continue to do it, all your life - every time you realise, from the word of God, that you're wrong… “God, I'm wrong. I ask You to forgive me. I turn around and now I embrace Your truth and walk in Your truth”. That's what repentance is - it's a change of heart, a change in your way of thinking.

The false prophet will lack a call to repentance, and to transformation; and often draw people by fancy words, or experiences, or things like that. This is not my opinion - this is exactly what God says in His word, that characterises people, who move in a false prophetic.

Remember, it doesn't mean that they don't talk about God. It just means they draw people to themselves; and they do certain things, it's quite easy to see…

Jeremiah 6:14 – “They dress the wound of my people, as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

They fail to address the real hurts, and issues of people. They ‘heal My people lightly’, meaning that they talk about external things, but don't address the real need for heart change. This is one thing we've been very passionate about - your need (and our need) for heart transformation.

They fail to call people to repentance and transformation. The message is one of: you will be okay, God loves you, God's going to bless you, everything will be fine! Listen, that's a false hope! What you really need, is change!

It also says (in that same verse), that they prophesy peace, when there is no peace. They flatter people, and tell them what they want to hear, instead of warning them what's about to come.

When did you last hear a message on the fear of God? When did you last hear a message on Eternal Judgements? When did you last hear one on standing before the Judgement seat of Christ, and giving account for your life?

The western world has moved from the essence and core of the gospel, which is transformation, walking with God, repentance and acting in faith - to a message which makes you feel good, by promising you blessing after blessing. It's all on the blessings - what God can give to you, and how you can benefit - which is not requiring you to have a transformed life. That's why we've got churches in the west that are full of people who attend, but during the rest of the week, they're not really doing anything to build the kingdom of God.

That's a deceptive message - it's plausible, and it gathers a crowd, because it appeals to people. In other words… tell me how I can get ahead, but don't talk to me about changing my life. That's very widespread - and don't talk to me about deliverance, especially! You'd be amazed how many churches are totally resistant to the deliverance ministry.

Deliverance has to do with transformation of the heart, transformation of your character, transformation of your life - about freedom. If there's no message that Jesus paid the price for you to be delivered from demons, then that means you're going to just continue with them. That's a false peace! It's a false peace!

Here's another way of saying it… Let’s say that I had rust in the car, and I say: we can just sand it a bit, and paint over it. That's what they're talking about here - healing the people's needs lightly, instead of… Everyone knows that if there's rust in a car, you have to cut out the rust, put in some fresh metal, paint it over - and then you've got something that'll last. If you just paint over it, then it does look good, but the rust is continuing, and soon the problem will be severe, to the point the car may be off the road.

Jeremiah 23:16-17 – ““Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts, they say: ‘No harm will come to you.’”

It says that false prophets will “speak visions from their own heart and not from the Lord”.

They're speaking what's come out of their own heart; but they are saying it like “oh, God is saying this, God is saying that, I believe… blah blah blah”. But they're failing to address the real issues of people - that people live a life that says, by the way they live, that they deny or despise God, and despise His word.

If you're a follower of Christ, you follow Him - you keep His commands. You take the word, and you apply it into your life. Simply saying that you're following Jesus means nothing, unless you actually follow Jesus. To follow Jesus means that we're serving Him and letting Him change us – that His word is very important in our life. It's very important to see these things.

He's talking about the false prophetic - a message that promises much, but doesn't end with transformation, and doesn't warn people about things that are to come.

For example, what if you knew that only had 24 hours – that you were going to finish your life on earth, and stand before God; and every detail of your life would be before Him, to see what you qualified for in eternity. What would you go home and change? That tells you where you're living! We are to live with eternity in mind, all the time; and then it's not whether anyone's watching me. I'm always under the eye of the Lord, and I'm always living to please Him.

How I do marriage, family, finances; how I treat people, relate to people, build my life, and priorities has all got one fundamental thing... I've got an audience of One, that I'm trying to please, every day of my life, in every moment. Why am I trying to please Him? Because He's sacrificed so much for me, and I love Him. There's a big outcome for me, for eternity, in this. How I respond to Him will affect me for all eternity - my destination, not just heaven and hell, but the realm that I will live in, for eternity.

False prophets speak a vision of their own heart. In Matthew 7, Jesus said they present as sheep, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. What does that mean?

They present a sheep means - they look like Christians. They come and praise the Lord, brother! They come in with their stuff, but inwardly they have an agenda. A wolf wants to devour, to take something from you.

The true prophetic will have Jesus as the focus, and lead people to experience Him, and they will confront anything that's in the way. That's why deliverance always takes place around the true prophetic ministries, because there's a real need for the demonic to be shifted off your life, in order to encounter they greater atmospheres of God.

2 Peter 2:1 – “They bring teachings that cause disunity and division”.

Whenever you find that people are divided, not by the truth, but by teachings that flatter - that make you feel good about yourself, make you very important… “oh brother, you're going to have a great, wonderful ministry”. Well, here's the thing… God calls everyone to greatness, but there is a path you take, and it's called humility in serving. So, if all the words are always great - wonderful things about the future, then you've got to ask: what are the conditions, entailed in all of this? What's my part?

The tendency that false prophets have is to move, and the agenda is often to make money, exploit people, or to draw a gathering to themselves. There are true prophets, of course, but here's what Paul's warning was… Paul's warning to Timothy: “preach the word, be ready in season and out of season; convince, rebuke, exhort, with all suffering”.

He's saying: this is what the remedy is - preach the word of God. Not a hang a scripture in on your own ideas, but rather, see what God has to say, and proclaim it.

Then it says: convince! Persuade people to follow the truth.

It says: rebuke! Confront people, when they're missing the mark.

You don't get a lot of that these days, because people are too afraid that they will upset someone; but if they're wrong, they're wrong. Tell them they're wrong! You're doing them a favour. You're showing that you love them.

2 Timothy 4:3 – “For the time will come…”

Which time do you think he's talking about? He's talking about the End Times. The time will come, and something is going to happen!

“…when they will not endure sound doctrine”.

A time will come, in the church, where people don't want good, sound teaching. They don't want sound doctrine. Sound doctrine means sound teaching, and it has a purpose. Sound teaching is Bible teaching that establishes you in your faith, and in maturity.

Many young people, when they walk out of church, go into the cities, and they get into an environment where there's another spirit operating, very strongly - and they haven't got sound doctrine. They've had a great experience. “Oh, it was great - someone prophesied, I got a touch from God!” I love all of that, it's wonderful, but you need sound doctrine.

Sound doctrine (teaching) shapes the way you think, and what you believe; so that when someone comes up with some weird thing, you don't believe them, because you know the word of God. You've got a reference to the word of God. If you're not in the word of God, how will you know the truth?

The time will come (the end of the times) when people will want messages that make them feel good. They won't want things that change them. There are some truths, but here's the thing about truth - it's incredibly uncomfortable! We are in an age where there's this thing of ‘tolerance’ - just include everyone; and accept everything. It's fine to include, to accept; but tolerance is another thing. Tolerance is we go along with what they're saying and believing, rather than standing up and saying: that's actually wrong!

Fornication is wrong - it keeps you out of the kingdom of God. Homosexual acts are wrong – they will keep you out of the kingdom of God. Pride is wrong – it will keep you out of the kingdom of God. Gluttony is wrong – it will keep you out of the kingdom of God. There are many things the Bible says will keep you out of the kingdom of God. Do you know what they are? They're in the word. They're spelt out in two or three places, in the word, very clearly.

They won't endure sound doctrine. He says: they will have “itching ears”. He describes a condition where people ears are itching – meaning that you want someone to scratch it. You want people to tell you the messages that you like to hear - you'll be great, marvellous, wonderful, fabulous! Now listen, there's a place for encouragement, and exhortation… but not for flattery!

Having itching ears means you're looking for the things that are nice to hear, but don't challenge you to change. I had a friend of mine, a pastor, who brought a message which was truth, at a very significant world conference; and was told afterwards - don't preach that. It was about the rightful role of men and women, working together, in partnership, under God. How about that!

They will have “itching ears” - so they're looking for messages that make them feel good, but don't require Godly living.

Here's the next thing... It says: “they will turn away their ears from the truth”. If you're not going to incline your ears to the truth, then you will turn your ears away to something else.

The only thing that keeps you from deception, is having a love for truth. I love the truth! If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Tell me the truth. See, that’s what keeps you from being deceived!

You all know people, you look at, and think - you're not in touch with what's going on, you know; someone needs to tell you something. Maybe you're that person? Have you got anyone that can tell you things? That's why we have a body of people, to be part of - because maybe you can hide in a big crowd, but in a small group… you can't pull off your junk in that small group! They all see who you are. They say: “come on, cut that out”! That's why small groups are a great chance to grow. You're connected relationally, and you can't pull the wool over everyone in a small group. If you're dominant and bossy, either you go, or the group just breaks up, because of your bad influence. Someone in leadership needs to tell you: listen, don't do that - it's not all about you!

It says: “they will turn to fables”. Here's the thing… If you haven't got a heart that's turned towards truth - God teach me; God I'm hungry for the truth; I want Your word; I want revelation; I want the spirit of revelation on me; I want sound doctrine; I want to grow; I want to be established; I want to live my life by the word of God - it says you'll be “turned to fables”.

Fables are fiction stories! Christian fiction stories - mythology, all kinds of weird and wonderful things, and there's a huge draw of people, away from serving God, and advancing the kingdom, and attracted to experiential things, that make them feel good, and give a sense of having all this knowledge of great things… but actually, when you look on the ground, it doesn't lead to sacrificial love, serving ministry.

That's why Paul said: “sound doctrine”, and “endure hardship” - endure difficulty! Do the work of an evangelist and fulfil your ministry. He's saying to Timothy, don't just send around any experiences; you've got a work to do, so “endure hardship” - because sometimes, serving God has got a lot of hardship. There are difficulties in it, because it doesn't always go well. You've got demonic opposition; you've got people opposition; you've got setbacks and difficulties.

He said: just endure hardness; toughen up; be a strong believer; not someone who's dropped over quickly. He says: you're called to be an evangelist, so do the work you're called to do. At the end of it, you want to end your life knowing: I did what God called me to do, I fulfilled my ministry. What has God called you to do? What is the ministry that He's called you to? Are you preparing, and developing?

The fifth sign is Lawlessness. The love of many will grow cold, because of lawlessness.

Matthew 24:12 – “Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold”.

Many means many - lots of people. Their love will grow cold. Their passion for God will grow cold. They will be lukewarm, half-hearted believers. They're no longer loving, and serving, people. If you love, you show kindness - you serve people, you have a great attitude to people. You have a focus on making life better, investing in people. And it says what will happen in these days - that the love of many will grow cold, no longer passionate for the Lord. In Revelations 3, the Laodicean Church, Jesus said: you've done lots of things, but there's no passion, no love, no fire. Where's the fire? Where's the love for God?

The love for God is shown by willingness to do what He says. If you love Me, keep My commandments. Keeping your passion for God alive requires that I respond to Him, and not just have great worship experiences. You've got to ask yourself: am I just coming along, and someone else is providing an atmosphere for me to be charged up; or am I living a life where I'm constantly being recharged, because of my own work with God, my personal intimacy with Him? You can't live off someone else's experience. They encourage you, they bless you, they help you, they keep you going - but you can't live off it.

The reason the passion will go is because “iniquity will abound”. What do they mean by iniquity? It comes from the word ‘anomia’ – ‘a’ means ‘without’, and ‘nomia’ means ‘law’. Unrestrained, no boundaries, no restraint of the laws of God - and that expands to having no restraint of the laws of the nation either. It's a deep-seated attitude of wanting to do your own thing, to act independently of any boundaries. So, iniquity means to act without restraint - doing what pleases you, without any respect for boundaries or laws.

Have a look what's going on in America right now. Firstly, there is real, authentic injustice, and deep-seated wounding in the core of the nation, among many people. There's no doubt that there is a very deep and true injustice. However, demonic spirits exploit unresolved injustice, and turn it into iniquity, and lawlessness, so that it becomes destructive. It's one thing to raise a voice, to challenge the system; but it's another thing to enter wanton disruption. It's a spirit! It's a spirit that gets on people, and they don't even know what's going on. They violate the laws of God! They show contempt for the law, and contempt for boundaries.

Where are you at, in all of this? Often the spirit of lawlessness just shows up in the attitude towards authorities, when you encounter them. All authority comes from God, so even if an authority on earth misrepresents Him, and doesn't act well, I still need to keep my heart of respect for God, and His authority; and not try to justify rebelling against what is in front of me.

The Bible says that if you love God, it's demonstrated by how you treat people. His authority, His Lordship - you see it by how you respond, when an authority person comes in front of you. We're not to be afraid of them, and we're not to disrespect, or despise them; we're just to recognise that's what it is.

Commonly, lawlessness is shown by independence; disrespect for authority; abusive names to people in authority - criticising them, running them down. It's shown by passive rebellion, or defiance.

If you have a look at the methods of raising children in the last 50 years, their whole philosophy of parenting is never saying ‘no’ to the child. When the heck will they learn that ‘no’ is a part of life? What they learn is that my will is more important than anyone else. You've trained them in lawlessness.

The End Times spread of lawlessness will be deeply connected to what's happening in families, and the raising of children, so that they get used to living with no restraints. You can't say no to them. You can't point out things that are wrong and get them to change. All of that has a rational thinking behind it, but it endorses the spirit of lawlessness. There are such things as boundaries, and if you teach people healthy boundaries, they learn respect for authority, and a fear of God. If you don't have healthy boundaries, then people learn that nothing can stop me. I will have what I want, when I want, how I want, and I get what I want - so they throw tantrums, and parents give in.

If you're a parent that gives in to your child's tantrums, and lets them have everything they want, when they want it, then you are training them in lawlessness. You are literally ruining them. They won't respect you, when they grow up. You will have problems later on.

We've got a great family. I'm proud of my children. I have seven children, with seven wonderful spouses, and 24 grandchildren - and there's honour and respect that flows through the family. There's a reason for that. It doesn't just happen. There are principles that you put into family life, into raising children, building family culture, and it has to do with the fear of God, and respect.

If there's disrespect in family for those who are older, then you're going to have the spirit of lawlessness unleashed. This is a huge problem, and a lot of parents need to have a re-think of what you're doing. Where did you get these ideas from? Did you get them from the word of God? Some of the stuff that's been current - I've been around long enough to see when they changed it, from this to that; and years later they had to change it back again, because they got it all wrong. I was in confrontation back here, because I said: this is the right way to do it. I thought later, when I went to one of the schools, and they're making this big announcement about the change, I thought: who will stand up and say “we got it wrong, for a whole generation of children, about their reading”?

Spirit of lawlessness - are you getting the idea what lawlessness is? Where does it come from? Lawlessness originated in Lucifer. That's why he got kicked out of heaven! If he got kicked out of heaven for lawlessness, then what's going to happen to your expectation of a great thing ahead of you, if you embrace lawlessness? We can't embrace lawlessness!

Ezekiel 28:15 - why he fell from heaven: iniquity was found in him. Whenever you allow lawlessness to come around you, you become rebellious, and independent. You either actively rebel against authority; or quietly resist it. You say yes, but actually its no! You smile, and say ‘yes; but inside, you’re saying ‘no way’, and what outworks is a passive resistance - their will against someone else's will.

I mean, you've all seen that as a parent, with a child. You tell them to do something, and it's just a fight all the way, because there's no willingness to do it, and it's a passive resisting. Here's the thing… When you don't understand this principle, around the kingdom of God being a kingdom with order, and authority, then you embrace lawlessness - independence, doing my own thing.

Guess what kingdom you become influenced by? The demonic realm of lawlessness starts to come around your life! You can be in church, but under another spirit in all your life, and how you run it; and so, what you're seeing in America now, is a spirit of lawlessness that has come on people, and the end is always the same. It's destructive!

Matthew 7:23 – “In the last days, many (many, many, many) will say to Me ‘Lord, Lord’ (He's talking about Christians) we did miracles in Your name, we cast out demons, we prophesied in Your name. And I will say to them, I didn't know you…”

There's no deep intimacy, and surrender to be transformed, and your work is of iniquity. You did your own thing. You used My name, My gifts, everything I had, in order to advance yourself. The core of iniquity is an independence - I'll do what I want to do. That's why Jesus died for our iniquity.

Isaiah 53:6 – “We all like sheep have gone astray, everyone to his own way, and He laid on Him the iniquity of us all”

Iniquity - going my way. The only way to be free of iniquity, is through repentance, and understanding the principles of the kingdom - of surrender from my way; and we have His way.

Here's a sixth sign… He says: “As it was in the days of Noah”. The sixth sign is seeing in the earth things that were in existence in the days of Noah.

The seventh sign is… seeing things in the earth, that were in existence, in the days of Lot.

Luke 17:26-27 – “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.”

Look in Genesis 6:1-11, to find out what was happening, in the days of Noah. The first thing was, there was a population explosion…

Genesis 6:1 – “It came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth”.

Firstly, people started to multiply, and fill the earth - there was a population explosion. Secondly, there was widespread engagement with the occult.

Genesis 6:4 – “There were giants in the earth, in those days and afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and bore children to them, these were the mighty men of old, men of renown”.

There were some angels, called ‘watchers’, who were given an assignment by God, to watch over men and to progressively instruct them, so that there be revelation of technology, and various other things, so that man would gradually grow in their capacity to fill and take dominion over the earth.

However, the watcher angels saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and it says then they left their position and rank, and they were involved forcibly in having sexual relationships with women, and the offspring of those are what's called Nephilim. The Nephilim were giants. When you read in mythology, of the great giants that they talk about, these are the Nephilim.

Not only that, the giants in the land, these Nephilim (they're also called Fallen Ones) were very brutal, very violent, and they were taking control. Their whole goal was to destroy the seed of the woman, to corrupt mankind. That's why God had to wipe it all out.

Then there was another eruption that took place, and some of the giants ended up in the Land of Canaan, that Abraham went into. When Joshua came, these are the giants they had to overcome. They're not natural. They're a mixture of angelic and human. They're the result of a complete defilement of occult into the earth.

The next thing is, there was widespread corruption of the imagination and thoughts of the heart.

Genesis 6:5 – “The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great, every intent of the thoughts of heart and man was evil continually”.

There was a constant corruption in the heart, and what people wanted. Here's the next one - there was widespread lawlessness and violence.

Some of these things you're seeing in the earth now, are exactly what was in the earth in Noah's day.

Genesis 6:11 – “The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence”

Genesis 6:13 – “God said to Noah, the end of all flesh is come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence. I will destroy them”.

Violence means injustice; use of force to injure people, and abuse people, and kill people.

Proverbs 4:17 – “They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence”

The “wine of violence” speaks of how violence becomes intoxicating, and addictive to people. The earth was filled with violence, injustice. Have a look what's happening in the earth now… Violence is increasing. In the 20th Century, over 200 million people were killed in two World Wars. That's violence on a massive scale. Up to 300 million have been killed in the ethnic, and other armed conflicts – more than the Great Wars! 44 million in a year are killed by abortion - that's violence against a child. New Zealand (per capita) is in the top four in the world, and will grow higher, because of the recent law change, while you weren't looking, during Covid. There are things changing rapidly in the world, and we need to be aware of that, so we're prepared for the coming of the Lord.

Genesis 6:11 – “the earth was corrupt and filled with violence”.

Now one of the most widespread forms of corruption today is sexual slavery. It's estimated that over 40 million people today across the world are in slavery of some kind or another. Forced to do things that they would not do, if they had the choice - forced marriages, and child slavery. The estimate I picked up yesterday was 25 million people, in sexual slavery. Human trafficking is a big, big business today. Violence is filling the earth. It's in every country. It's a global issue.

Violence filled the earth… and the Lord saw it. The things that we're seeing are symptomatic of a movement - birth pains, getting closer and closer, until we get to the end time, to the coming of the Lord.

In the days of Noah, there was widespread resistance to the word of God…

Hebrews 11:7 – “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith."

Noah was warned by God, of things not yet seen. By faith, he built an ark. God spoke to Noah, because Noah was upright, and walked with Him. He spoke to him: prepare!

God said: I'm going to do something you've never seen before. I'm going to cause rain to come, and floods to come. The whole earth will be covered with water. He said: rain? What's rain? He was speaking of something he had never seen before. It had never happened! The Bible says that there was a mist that went up, from the face of the earth, that watered the land. The whole of the earth was covered with a canopy, right around the whole earth.

He said: it's going to rain, and every place you can see will be covered with water, and the only way that you will escape, is if you build an ark. I'll tell you exactly how to build, and what to build, and it will be for the saving of your family. So, for 120 years, He did something very, very crazy. He was the crazy man! He was the real crazy prophet man, who had this idea that life would not continue the way everyone expected - that something was about to go down. He was the crazy man that laid down his life, to build something, so that his family would survive.

He was the crazy man that preached for 120 years about righteousness and getting right with God; and they mocked at him and ridiculed him. In other words, there was no love for truth. There was resistance to the word of God.

His message would have been repentance - if you don't repent, then you can't be saved. Get this. If they had repented, they would have come and joined him, in building the ark. Now no one knew what was coming, until it came; and when it came, what were they doing? It says they were eating, drinking, laughing, working. They were having marriages, giving and receiving in marriage; doing everything normal. Life was just going on, and then suddenly, one day, something came out of the air, that they had never seen before - spots of rain!

It says that the whole of the depths of the earth were opened. Something they'd never seen before, subterranean reservoirs of water, came up out of the earth; and the earth, with the heavy rain, and the subterranean waters, and the gradual, progressive, loss of all of that canopy over the earth… gradually came to a point where the whole earth was flooded, and everything perished - except those who believed God, and prepared the ark. It says: he did it, by faith.

What if we were to tell you there's something coming, you've never seen, that no one has ever seen? It's described in the word of God, in many different places. I've got no time to give it all to you now, but…

“as it was in the days of Noah…” - widespread demonic occult activity, corruption, violence, injustice, slavery, trafficking; resistance to the word of God… That in those days, God had been planning something he would do. He's promised that He will never ever destroy the earth by water, so you don't have to worry about the world being flooded… He's got something different in mind!

Here's the thing... Many Christians, their biggest thing is, we want to judge all the sinners, and we're going to be right. You really want to get out of that mindset! It's not the heart of God that any man perishes, but that all will be saved.

So, one of the signs of the End Times, will be that the gospel, the preaching of the kingdom of God, in power, will spread through the whole earth. God so desires that people not perish. He's longsuffering, waiting, wanting no one to perish. God is not willing any perish, but all be saved; so before the very End Time, when judgements start to come on the earth, there will be the preaching of the gospel throughout the whole earth. The gospel of the kingdom, in the power of God, bringing healing, deliverance, and supernatural transformation.

For that to happen, God must raise up the church, with a passion to spread the gospel, in the power of God. That's going to happen! Why? A lot of people think it's just going to get worse, and worse, and worse, and they will all get what they deserve. No, that's not the heart of God! God paid a huge price for everyone to be saved, but not everyone's saved, if they don't hear the message; and not everyone's saved, because when they hear it, they don't respond.

God wants to raise up a company of people, throughout the earth, like Noah, that believed: yes, something is coming on the earth! Yes, I see the sign of it! Yes, I will give my life to build the kingdom of God! I will lay my life down, because God has given me a vision for what I must do with my life! I have a vision to build!

It could be in teaching, education, finance, somewhere in the community; or could just be your family. What God calls you to build is not so important. It's that you do get into it, and build - build your life, your marriage, your finances, the local church. Build a place where God's presence is. Come, prepare to worship! Come with a heart that desires God! Come with a heart that knows things are uncertain in the earth, but God is our answer! God gives us the breakthrough! Come with a spirit of faith, saying: God, I can't settle for what I have. I want more of You!

Now we're just about to go into another season of fasting again. I need more of God! I want to know Him. I want to touch His power and see people's lives transformed. Noah warned of God, of things that were not yet seen; by faith he committed his whole life to building an ark, and the result was all his family, the next generation, were part of what God did.

The next generation of your family… maybe you've made mistakes, but it's not too late to start to pray for them, and start to put things right, start to sow again, and build. That's in your own natural family, but the family of God is bigger than our natural family. It involves other people. We need to be committed to build the local church. We need to be committed to build small groups, to be built places where God can come because we're praying and believing.

It's not the how of it, it's just the function of it - that we gather, and build up one another, and encourage one another, exhort one another. When you come… come with the truth! Spend time in the word of God, bring something God is speaking to you about. Come, not with an empty life, but a full life.

I'm passionate for God, I'm hungry for His kingdom, I'm seeking the Lord with all my heart! I'm in the word of God! God is speaking to me and changing me, oh I have something to give. That's for everyone. It's for everyone.

Closing Prayer

Why don't we stand to our feet right now... Come on, I want us to give honour to Jesus. He is warning us of things to come. He's saying: lift your eyes - look! You can read the signs of the seasons. Look at the sign of the times, look at the time you're living in. Look at the time we're living in! How exciting to be alive when the greatest things that God has planned will come into the earth! How glorious! God's glory will be seen in the whole earth and we're called to be a part of it. Oh, we want to arise, come on, let's worship Him. Lift your hands to Him right now! Thank You Lord! Thank You Lord! We give You the honour. We give You the glory! Come upon us, glory of God! Come upon our nation. We commit to prayer. We seek revival. Awaken Your people. Awaken our hearts. Awaken the city.

Jesus said: beware, take heed, lest you be deceived, lest you think you're doing okay and you're not. Get a love for the truth, and then as He goes through the parables He says this: I tell you, watch, pray, watch, pray, watch, pray. Build your prayer life. Build your prayer life. Build intimacy with God. Spend time with Him.

He begins to tell of the parables of the Servant and the House, who begins to abuse the other servants - speaking of having a bad attitude to the body of Christ. He talks about the virgins who were prepared, who had paid the price of intimacy with Jesus. He talks about the faithful servants who had served faithfully. God is telling us - wake up, wake up church, wake up! Wake up!

Thank You Lord! Awaken us! Thank You Lord! We honour You Jesus. Come in strength! Come in glory! Come in power! We reach out to You Lord. We hunger for You Lord. Come in revival! Thank You Lord. Come awaken us Lord! We honour You Jesus. We cry out, pour out the spirit of revival. Have mercy on Your people. Let the glory of God be seen upon us. We honour You. We praise You. We bless You. We give You thanks. Our hearts are filled with joy and expectation for the things You're bringing in being. Amen.

I want you to consider your own prayer life, your own walk with God. Take the message, go back over it again, and ask yourself: what is the Holy Spirit speaking to me about. Read Matthew 24 & 25. Start to think about it. The days of Lot, what was going on? What was happening? You will find that it's happening in the world today. Read 2 Timothy 3 - in the last days, perilous times, what will people be like? Look around, you can see it now.

Church, prepare. Prepare. Say God, awaken my heart. I want to be like Noah, who being warned of God, of things not yet seen, built an ark. Amen. There's a great presence of God here. Carry that presence out into the community. Our prayer as a corporate body is for revival in our city, revival in our region, revival in our nation. Amen. God bless you.

Summary Notes

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I. The Signs of the End Times (Part 2)

1. Global Shifts

· We are living in a time of Global upheaval and change

· Many people feel fearful and anxious about the future

· Two events recent have introduced immense change to the world:

· The 911 attacks and war on Terror, and Two Pandemics: Sars & Covid-19

· In such short space of time nations have changed

· The coming Economic Impact on the nations of the latest pandemic is yet to be seen `

2. God is in Control and Know The Future: The End is Glorious

3. Jesus Revealed Signs to Observe Indicating the End Times

· Jesus rebuked the Religious leaders for knowing the weather signs but not knowing the signs that He was the promised Messiah (Mat.16:1-3)

· Jesus grieved and wept over Jerusalem because they did not recognise and respond to the Day of their Visitation (Lk.19:41-44), and the suffering they would experience as a consequence

· Jesus revealed to his Disciples the Signs to look for: The Temple destruction, and the End Times

· When we look at 2020 we can see many events like Jesus describes in Matt. 24

· Eg. COVID-19, Global Riots, Looming Global Economic Depression, Swarms of Locusts (East Africa and Middle East), Rumours of Wars

4. We Need to be Aware of The Signs of The End times and Prepare

· First Sign: Wars and Natural Disasters

Matt 24:6 - "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places".

· Ethnic wars, political wars, famines, contagious diseases, earthquakes

Second Sign: Widespread Hatred towards Christians

· Matt 24:9 - "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake".

Third Sign: Widespread Offences among Christians

· Matt 24:10 - "And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another".

II. Signs of the End Times (Cont)

1. Fourth Sign: Many False Prophets

Matt 24:11 - "Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many".

· Three times Jesus warns His disciples against the danger of deception in (Matt.24:5, 11, 24)

· A False Prophet draws people to themselves and not to God and His Word

· Their message will lack the call to Repentance and transformation

· Frequently they draw people by promises that flatter people and are in fact a false hope

· Characteristics of False Prophets

(i) Fail to address the real hurts and issues of people (Jer.16:14)

“Heal lightly” address only external issues instead of addressing the real issues of the heart

Fail to call people to repentance and transformation

(ii) Prophesy “Peace” when there is no peace (Jer.16:14)

Flatter people giving them what they want to hear instead of warning them what lay ahead

(iii) Speak visions from their own heart and not from the Lord (Jer.23:16-17)

Fail to address the issue of people despising the lord and His Word

Refuse to confront sin, and instead promise false hopes for future peace and prosperity

(iv) They present themselves as sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves (Mat.7:15)

They appear to be genuine believers but have an agenda to take advantage of others

They are identified not by their messages, but by their fruits, & influence on others (Mat.7:19)

(v) They bring in destructive teachings that cause disunity and division (2 Pet.2:1)

Paul’s Warning to Timothy

“Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.

2Ti 4:3 - "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry". (2Tim.4:2-5)

“The time will come” refers to the End Times and the condition of believers and widespread deception

· They will want messages that “feel good” but do not challenge them to change.

· Truth is uncomfortable

(i) “Not endure sound doctrine” - Sound Bible teaching establishes believers in their faith and maturity

(ii) “Have itching ears” - Desiring something pleasant, something that they want to hear, and not something that challenges them to godly living and personal change

(iii) “Turn away their ears from the truth” - Only a having a love for truth keeps us from deception

If we do not cultivate a love for truth, we will turn away from hearing and responding to truth

Itching ears become deaf ears - no transformation

(iv) Turn to fables - Fiction, plausible stories that turn us away from sound Bible truth

· Notice Paul’s Words to Timothy: Watch, Endure, Do the Work, Fulfill your Ministry

2. Fifth Sign: Lawlessness, The Love of Many will Grow Cold

Mat 24:12 - "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold".

· “Many”…… this means a multitude of Christians

· “Love”…..refers to the agape Love for God and selfless love for people

· “Lawlessness”……iniquity….from word anomia….without law or restraint, acting independently of laws

· What is Iniquity?

To act without restraint, doing whatever pleases you with no respect for laws/boundaries

To go your own way, doing whatever seems or feels right to you without restraint

To violate the laws of God, to show contempt for the law and for healthy boundaries

· It expresses itself commonly by independence, disrespect for authority, resistance to boundaries, instruction or correction, active or passive rebellion and defiance

· The recent riots, looting, fighting, and destruction, hatred and anger against authorities in USA are examples of the spirit of lawlessness at work

What is the Root Source of Iniquity?

· The root source of all iniquity was Lucifer himself…this was why he fell from heaven (Ezekiel.28:15)

· Iniquity causes people to come under the influence of the spirit realm of darkness and to be manipulated by demons…it is the nature of that kingdom

· When iniquity abounds, the spiritual atmosphere changes.

· Iniquity, people being self-centered and doing their own thing, causes the love of others to grow cold

· What are The Personal Consequence of Iniquity?

· The Revelation of the Kingdom of God is also a revelation of His Authority and Right to Rule

· Iniquity Excludes believers from The Millennial Kingdom Rewards (Mat.7:23)

Mat 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'

· When people are unrestrained they cannot fulfill their destiny, and authentic love grows cold

3. Sixth Sign: As it was in The Days of Noah

Luk 17:26 - "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man"

Luk 17:27 - "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."

· The account of Noah and his family is found in Gen.6:1-14

What were the conditions that prevailed in the Days of Noah?

(i) Population Explosion

Gen 6:1 - "Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them"

(ii) Widespread Engagement with the Occult realm

Gen 6:4 - "There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

The Watchers, fallen angels left their God given position and had sexual relations with women, to corrupt and destroy humanity

The Nephilim, “fallen ones” were the offspring of these relationships.

They were giants, distorted creatures who became the Giants of Greek Mythology

A second irruption after the flood caused the giants that occupied the land promised to Abraham

(iii) Widespread Corruption of the Imagination and the Thoughts of the Heart

Gen 6:5 - "Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

“Continually” - every day, non stop corruption and desire for evil

The heart is the seat of motivation in life…they were totally corrupt

(iii) Widespread Lawlessness and Violence

Gen 6:11 - "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence."

Gen 6:13 - "And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth."

"Violence" - Injustice, use of force to injure, oppress, abuse, and kill people

Prov.4:17 - "Violence is like wine - it is attractive, intoxicating and removes judgment."

Violence in the earth is increasing….Global Terrorism, Abortion, ethnic and religious wars

Eg. Up to 203 million people killed by wars in 20th Century

Eg. Up to 300 million killed in armed conflicts

Eg. Up to 44 Million Killed by abortion. NZ is one of the 4 top nations in the world per 1000 people

(iv) Widespread Corruption, Sexual Perversion, and Sexual Abuse

Gen 6:11 - "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence."

Eg. Today one of the most widespread forms of corruption is sexual slavery

Eg. The estimated number of people in some form of slavery across the world is over 40 million

About 25 million of these people are in some form of sex slavery

(v) Widespread resistance to the Word of God

Heb 11:7 - "By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith."

2Pe 2:4 - "For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly"

Noah preached righteousness for 120 years but people were resistant to his message of impending judgment and the need to repent and walk with God

Only 8 people believed the Word of God and were saved

Noah was warned by God of things never before seen, and commanded to prepare an Ark

No doubt Noah was subject to ridicule for his building an Ark in obedience to the command to prepare

(vi). Total Unawareness of the Impending Global Crisis

Luk 17:27 - "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."

They continued in their daily activities completely unaware of the impending danger to them

Gen.7:16 - When the rain came it was too late to enter the Ark - The Lord shut him in

4. Seventh Sign: As it was in The Days of Lot

Luk 17:28 - "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

· The account of Lot and his family are found in Gen.19:1-13 and Ezekiel.16:49

· What were the conditions that prevailed in the Days of Lot?

Lot dwelt in the City of Sodom. He was daily troubled by the conditions in the city

(i) Brazen open homosexuality

(ii) Aggressive sexual violence

(iii) Hospitality and covenant relationships ignored

(iv) Intergenerational sexual perversion - Old and Young given over to sexual sin

(v) Pride

(vi) Materialism - Fullness of bread, Self-indulgence

(vii) Lack of concern for the poor and needy

· Jesus mentions 8 common activities that occurred both in the days of Noah and the days of Lot

Luk 17:27 - "They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."

Luk 17:28 - "Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built;"

· They were so immersed in these activities that they failed to recognize what was about to happen

· Materialism and the cares of life blinded them to eternal realities and they suffered consequences

· Jesus Warning:

Luk 21:34 - "But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."

5. Eighth Sign: The Fig Tree and All the Trees

Luk 21:29 - "Then He spoke to them a parable: "Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near."

Luk 21:32 - "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."

· “The Fig Tree” refers to the nation of Israel

· “and all the trees” refers to the other nations of the world

· The change in nations will begin with the fig tree…Israel first and then the other nations

Israel Becomes a Nation

· In 1948 Israel became a nation……” it began to bud and form leaves”

· They became free of rule by the British, and established their own history culture and language

· In 1967 Israel took control of Jerusalem. In 2019 Jerusalem was acknowledged as their Capital

The Rise of Nationalism

Across the globe now the nations are beginning to put for the leaves of their own identity

There is an upsurge of nations wanting to establish their own identity, history and culture

Mat. 24:30-32 - "Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place."

· Jesus specifically taught that these are the signs of the End Times, and His imminent return

· It is near - at the doors - this generation

6. Ninth Sign: Great Change in the Culture - Selfishness

2Ti 3:1 - "But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!"

· “Perilous times” - fierce, dangerous, reducing strength, hard to bear

7. Tenth Sign: Cosmic Upheaval and Great Global Fear

Luk 21:25 - "And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring"

Luk 21:26 - "men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken."

Luk 21:27 - "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory."

· There will be great Fear as a result of increasing upheavals in nature

8. Eleventh Sign: Increase in Travel and Knowledge

· Dan 12:4 - "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase."

9. Twelfth Sign: The Gospel of the Kingdom Preached

· Mat 24:14 - "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."

· End time revival …….the Gospel will be preached in all the world….this is the Key Sign

· Gospel of the Kingdom….The message of the Kingdom of God

· Gospel of the Kingdom…..With demonstration of the Supernatural Power of God (1Cor.4:20)

· 2Pe 3:9 - "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

III. Prepare for Jesus Return!

1. Jesus will return in great Glory and Power and Majesty

· Mat 16:27 - "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works."

· Luk 21:27 - "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory."

2. The Day of the Lord will be a Great and Terrible Day (Joel2:11)

· It will be Great for those who have prepared for Jesus return

· It will be Terrible for those who live unprepared

3. We Must Personally Prepare for the Second Coming of The Lord

· Mar 13:32 - "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

· Mar 13:33 - "Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is."

· Luk 18:7 - "And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?"

· Luk 18:8 - "I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes"

Will He really find faith on the earth?"

Signs of the End Times (3 of 3)

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12 Signs (from Matthew 24)

1) Widespread upheaval - wars and natural disasters across the world

2) Widespread persecution of Christians

3) Widespread offences

4) Many false prophets

5) Widespread lawlessness

6) Widespread corruption and violence

7) The coming of the Lord will be unexpected

8) Restoration of the nation of Israel

9) Narcissistic, self-obsessed people.

10) Cosmic upheaval, and global fear.

11) Increase in knowledge

12) Gospel of the kingdom preached globally.

Open your Bibles with me, into Matthew 24. We're looking at a series, three messages called the Signs of the End Times, and this is the third one. I will go through the 12 signs, and then focus on just one.

Matthew 24:3 – “As he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying: Tell us, when these things will be? What will be the sign of Your coming, and the end of the age?”

He's been in the temple. He's seen how great the temple is - the massive, big walls, it was just an amazing construction, and the disciples are impressed by that - but Jesus said: don't be impressed, because that's all going to fall. Everything will be torn down. There won't be one stone left upon a stone.

They were astonished, so when they got with Him quietly, they said: what will be the sign that this is about to happen? What is the sign of the End Times, when You will come? Two questions - and as you read through Matthew 24, Jesus answers those two questions, but not quite in the order they asked, and He spreads it out over Matthew 24 & 25.

Matthew 24 and 25 are all one series of teachings, and all the parables in Matthew 25 relate back to that one simple question - what will be the signs of the end, of Your coming?

He talks in parables… Then at the End Time, the kingdom be like this… five wise virgins, and five foolish… the kingdom be like the servant… He's trying to get you to understand, and have an insight, to the End Times - what it will be like. We've already shared a little bit about that, and what we found was that Jesus three times warned them about deception. Three times! That means that you will think you're right, but you're wrong! You will be listening to things that are wrong… but think they're right. He warns us three times!

In the context of His second coming, and the turmoil in the End Times in the world, He says: you need to be careful that you're not deceived. In another message, I will talk about how to prepare yourself at the End Times - the kinds of things you need to do. The primary one is to become grounded in truth - in the Bible truth. If you're not grounded in Bible truth, then you won't know where you stand, or what you believe. You will be carried with every wind and doctrine.

The second thing, that He repeatedly said - He repeatedly said these two things, and they're different words but they really refer to the same thing. One of them… He said: prepare; or be ready. He tells us to be ready. He tells to watch and pray - and that's mentioned four times, all together.

Three times, He said there's going to be some tough times in the End Times. It will be difficult. There will be a lot of funny ideas going around, and people will be drawn away; and He said: here's what you need to do… Make sure that you personally prepare yourself - that you're a place of prayer, and spiritual sensitivity, and awakeness. In other words, wake up!

I want to just list for you now, the signs. I've already done six of them. I want to list the remaining six, and then I will pick up one, and just work with the one.

Jesus responded to their question, regarding the signs of times…

1) Widespread upheaval - wars and natural disasters across the world (verses 6 & 7).

2) Widespread persecution of Christians (verse 9). He said, you'll be persecuted, and hated by all men. There will be resistance to Christ, resistance to the word of God.

3) Widespread offences (verse 1)0. Many shall be offended and betray one another. One of the signs of the End Times is how easily people are offended.

4) Many false prophets. People who present themselves as Christians, carrying a ‘word for the season’, or a ‘word from God’… but they're not. They have an agenda to enrich themselves, and they exploit God's people, for their own ends - and by their fruit, you will know them.

5) Widespread lawlessness. A disregard for law and order, for authority - and it would be widespread, across the globe, in the End Times. A consequence of that (verse 12), is that the love of many would grow cold. Love for God, a passion for God, a selfless love that serves people with no agendas – that is what will grow cold. People become very self-centred.

6) Widespread corruption and violence (verse 37) – “as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man”. There will be situations in the earth, like the days of Noah.

7) The seventh sign is not found in Matthew 24, but in Luke 17:28. “As it was in the days of Lot, so it will be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man”.

Luke 17:28 – “As in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built. But on the day Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, destroyed them all. Even so, it will be like that, in the day that the Son of Man is revealed”.

As it was in the days of Lot… As it was in the days of Noah… He's saying that the coming of the Lord will be unexpected. They thought everything was going on like normal, and they were caught out by surprise.

The coming of the Son of Man will catch many people unaware. They will just think the world is carrying on like normal, when in fact it's about to go to cataclysmic change. We are to be ready - to prepare. Live your life as if the Lord is coming today; but plan your life like He's not coming in my lifetime. I need to prepare, and plan, and set out my whole life course - invest in the next generation, invest and build, and so on

8) The next sign is found in Luke 21:29 (and in Matthew 24). The fig tree, and all the trees... We live in an area which is very seasonal, so we can look at the fruit trees, and if you see the blossoms, then you know what season it is, and it's very clear. Suddenly, there's blossoms everywhere. Fruit is coming. Spring is on the way. There will be little lambs everywhere. We know something is about to change.

He said: here is the sign - it's about the fig tree, and all the trees. The ‘fig tree’ refers to the nation of Israel. Israel is constantly referred to as a fig tree, or a vine. All the ‘other trees’ means all the other nations. He said: look at the fig tree - look at Israel. Israel is a key figure nation. Watch what's going on there - it reflects what is going to be happening, spiritually.

Secondly, He says: look at all the other trees. When they're already budding, you know that summer is near. When you see these things happening, know the kingdom of God is near. This generation will by no means pass away, but all these things take place. He says: heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Jesus' words have stability in them.

In 1914, they began to section off an area called Palestine, and it became a place where Jews started to travel. When the Jews were dispersed in AD70, they dispersed to all the nations of the earth. There was no place called Israel, and the people were dispersed. There is never in history, ever, ever, ever recorded, any people that were dispersed into the globe, and lost their land, that survived as a culture and as a language, and then came back together, and found their piece of land again. It just has never happened before - it's impossible. It can never happen, and yet it happened to Israel, and it follows the promise in the Bible… “I will scatter you to the nations, and then I will show mercy, and I will regather you again”.

And so, we see an amazing fulfilment in 1948, when Israel came together as a nation. That is the fig tree budding! That's the sign summer is near! What's happening in Israel is a sign. In 1967, they took control of Jerusalem.

Who would've ever thought, 200 years ago, if you had said that Israel will come back together… it's just impossible! Then suddenly, within our lifetime, it's come back as a nation, and it's now established in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem has been acknowledged as its capital. What's happening with Israel, is a rising tide to their identity as a nation - but that's happening all round the world. People are saying, we want to hold our identity, as a nation. We want to hold on to who we are. You've got other ethnic groups now, who have been displaced, saying: we want our nation back.

That's happening all over the world, and it's just another sign of the season. Nations are now looking to start to build their own identity, have their own culture, their own language, and start to establish themselves. It's a messy thing, very messy. It’s been a reaction to colonialism, a reaction to all kinds of things, and people are trying to find their identity, and stand up. It's a global phenomenon.

9) 2 Timothy 3:1-3 – “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good...”

In the last days, perilous, or incredibly dangerous times will come; and then he lists a whole lot of signs. This is what the cultural condition will be, and he says it's perilous. It's fierce. It's difficult, hard to handle; drains away your energy. This is what will be the widespread cultural condition…

Narcissistic people, self-obsessed people. People will be lovers of themselves, self-centred - it's all about me. Lovers of money - greed will take over, exploitation of people. There will be boasters - empty pretenders, proud, appearing better than others, abusive, disobedient to parents; unthankful or ungrateful (meaning entitled). Abusive. Disobedient to parents; unthankful, unholy, unloving.

That word ‘unloving’ means literally, to be devoid of natural family bonds. No natural family love, families full of a lack of love for one another. They will be unforgiving. They will be truce-breakers; unwilling to enter into covenant, or literally, unwilling to commit into covenantal relationship (like marriage).

They will be unforgiving. They will be slanderous. They gossip; no self-control; savage, cruel; despisers of good, and despisers of those that are good; traitors, or treacherous - betraying one another; headstrong or rash; arrogant; lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God, having (in the religious area), a form of godliness, but resisting, or denying the power. A church which is lukewarm - without the power of God but proclaiming itself to be the true church. So that's one of the signs – do you recognise any of it?

10) Cosmic upheaval, and global fear.

Luke 21:25 – “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.”

There will be signs in the heavens, and signs in the sun, moon and stars. The earth in distress of the nations, perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring. Men's hearts failing them for fear, and the expectation of things coming on the earth, for there will be a shaking of the powers of heaven. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in glory. Across the globe, there will be widespread fear, because of global catastrophe - things that are happening, possibly a reaction to a shift, where the devil is cast out of the realm of the second heaven, and then you start to see widespread demonic manifestations in the earth, including disruption of natural conditions.

I don't think we've seen all this yet. It will be global fear, because it's so unpredictable. Have a look what the movies are all doing - the earth coming through catastrophe, and then the Rock comes and saves them… saves Los Angeles… saves the people! They've got all sorts of those stories - near misses with asteroids… earthquakes… tidal waves. They carry a message of global catastrophe, widespread fear and chaos - everything breaking down.

Hollywood’s gift is to be creative, but it's been distorted, so it's often polluted; but notice the interest in superheroes. Superheroes have become the latest big thing – love or hate them! It's just a matter of personal opinion, but I think that it's all a signal for what God is planning to do - when the Sons of God manifest in the earth. Ooh, how exciting!

11) Daniel 12:4 – “But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge."

Daniel - shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end. Close the book, because what I've revealed to you won't be understood by anyone, until the very end. Then suddenly… oh - that's what it means!

He says in that time (the End Times), many shall “run to and fro”. Travel will be incredibly widespread, with many running to and fro, all over the earth. Knowledge shall increase!

A lot of these things you can just check for yourself - Google them. They're all there - rumours of war, and wars, and how many people have been killed. You can look it all up and find for yourself what's going on. So, what's the story about the increase in knowledge, how has it been going?

In 1900, knowledge doubled every 100 years; but by 1945, it doubled every 25 years. In 1980, it's doubling now, because of computers, every 13 months. IBM has predicted that in 2020, knowledge will double every 12 hours! If knowledge is doubling that fast, you can't keep up with it! We have to learn how to live in a world where knowledge is changing so fast, that you have to build something different inside you.

12) The last sign, and the best one of all, is that the gospel of the kingdom will be preached globally.

Matthew 24:1 – “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world, as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached globally - with signs, and miracles, and wonders! There will be a massive End Time harvest! It's going to be an amazing time! That's why you'll find, increasingly, and globally, there will be an emphasis on the kingdom of God – preaching, of the kingdom of God. Churches have not taught enough on the kingdom of God.

Jesus' whole message was - repent, the kingdom is at hand!

The glory of God's kingdom - His rule, His dominion over nature, His culture, and values. The Sermon on the Mount is about the culture of heaven - what it looks like; and how, when heaven is on earth, how people live. How awesome is that!

So those are the signs, and I want to go back up to the seventh sign – “as it was in the days of Lot”.

Luke 17:28 – “Likewise, as it was in the days of Lot, they ate and drank, and bought and sold, and planted and built - until the day Lot went out of Sodom, and then it rained fire”.

I've never seen it raining fire before; but then with Noah, no one had seen it raining rain either. They hadn't seen it - it was something different. In the last days, there will be things that we've never seen before. The day he left, it rained fire and brimstone - destroyed them all; and so it will be, when the Son of Man is revealed. Now, Lot dwelt in the City of Sodom, and he was troubled all the time by what he saw.

It's quite interesting to watch his journey. He starts off walking with a man of faith, Abraham. He was his nephew. And then, because he's walking with a man of faith, who was in the anointing and purpose of God - he prospers; but when he prospers, he forgets to be grateful, and honour where his source is, so he ends up competing with Abraham. Now Abraham, was very gracious. When you're connected to God, and God is your source, you can be gracious. You don't have to fight over stuff, because God can get you more. He didn't fight. He said: listen, we want peace between us. So, you can choose whatever you want to do.

Abraham had every right to say: listen, I'm in charge here. This is my mission journey. I get the best piece... But instead he said: you choose whatever you want. He looked down - oh that land looks nice and flat. I can see some nice cities there, as well, so I'll choose that bit. What happened next is a gradual progression, where he dishonours the source, and starts to compete, and promote himself. Next, we find him camping outside the city; and then he's living in the city; and then eventually, he's in the gates of the city, meaning that he's now in a place of leadership and influence in the city. He's been submerged in the city, and in the culture; so, in his heart, he's troubled by everything that's going on.

It really vexes his soul, the Bible says. It troubles him. Then, when you follow the story, you find that he loses everything. He literally loses everything! His character was eroded; he lost his wife; he lost all his resources; he lost his other children, their wives, their grandchildren… Everything was taken away. Everything was lost, destroyed; and the two daughters that he had, they got him drunk, and he ended up sleeping with them - had incest with them. The two tribes that descended from them, the Moabites and Ammonites, were incredibly sexually perverse idolaters, who resisted God's work all through history.

It was a little thing at the beginning, but it become a big thing at the end. When you make your decisions, they may seem little at the beginning, but they can have major consequences at the end. You've got to watch then, and see, that the decisions you're making are aligned with the word of God.

Now, when we think of the City of Sodom and Gomorrah, you're going to think straight away of homosexuality; but the Bible identifies what the real sin is. It's very frequently, among Christians, that we judge and condemn people. We show a very deep blind spot to our own issues, but we love to pick on something that we can hammer.

Ezekiel 16:49 – “This was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

He's talking to the church, saying that City of Sodom - it's your sister! You're in the same family. He's trying to rebuke the church for its condition. Then he says: this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. Her and her daughters had pride - fullness of food; abundance of idleness; and neither did they strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. They were haughty; and committed abomination before me. Therefore, I took them away, as I saw fit.

The word ‘abomination’ refers to homosexuality, but notice it's not even named. It's just called ‘abomination’. It's all the other things that God identifies, that lead to that. The condition of it, was haughtiness and pride. The core thing that God identifies is the heart condition, because always, the fruit in our life springs from the heart. So, if you look at the fruit, and get all strong on the fruit, then you're missing the whole thing. You can't change it, by attacking the fruit. You've got to deal with the heart, and the issue with the heart was pride, and haughtiness.

Pride is to elevate yourself. Haughtiness is to look down upon others, and to despise others. He says that firstly, it's the heart condition of pride (rather than humility and gratitude). Secondly, there was “fullness of bread”. They were prospering. They were doing well. They had no need of anything. It sounds like the Church of Laodicea. Thirdly, and here's the real bite… There was a neglect of justice. There was a neglect of the poor and the needy.

I just want to catch what the problem that God has with the church, in His day. He said: there's pride, arrogance, and a looking down and judging people. There's a satisfaction because you're doing well, and a focus on your prosperity; and there's a lack of heart for the people that are suffering injustice, suffering because of poverty, because they're needy. You are indifferent to the plight of those who are suffering, because you're preoccupied with yourselves.

That was the condition of His people, and the best picture I can tell you about Sodom, right before I destroyed it. It's to do with the heart, and the care for people. When the heart is full of pride, and there's brokenness, and wounding… homosexuality is a by-product of those things.

2 Peter 2:7 – “He rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless”.

Lot was distressed by what was going on. God rescued Lot, a righteous man (a believer). He was a good man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless. He was worn down, treated roughly, and was in exceeding anguish. He looked at the news every day, and was really troubled by the things he saw going on in his own city. Some people are not even troubled by what goes on in their own city, not even aware of it; but he was troubled by it - deeply. He was in a distress inside, because he was a good, righteous man, and he saw that what was happening was really wrong.

What was he seeing? Proud, arrogant people, who were full of prosperity, but only looking out for themselves, and didn't care for the poor. He saw the homosexuality as well - that was the outcome of the heart condition, and it was incredibly serious. The Bible is very clear, when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. There's nothing complicated about it. It violates God's order, and God's design.

Leviticus 18:22 – “Do not have sexual relationships with a man, as one does with a woman. That is an abomination (or detestable)”.

Detestable means idolatry, something really disgusting in God's eyes. He's talking about a man having a sexual relationship with another man “as he would lie with a woman”, and the word that is used to describe that, in the dictionary, is ‘sodomy’. The word sodomy refers to sexual intercourse - one man with another, anal intercourse. It also refers to various forms of sexual perversion. The name is given to that sin is identified with the City of Sodom.

I've counselled Christians, and I've found that it’s being practiced in marriages. So don't judge and look down on everyone else, get your own heart right. We need to have a heart that's right before God - and so Jesus reveals very clearly in His teaching, the issue of the conduct - that it's disgusting, and it's an abomination to God. However, He said, the real problem is the heart condition that produces it.

Matthew 11:20 – “He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they wouldn't repent”.

He talks about them - Tyre and Sidon…

Matthew 11:23-24 - “And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven in pride will be brought down into the deepest parts of hell, for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. I tell you, it'll be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgement, than for you”.

A lot of Christians don't get that one… Capernaum was where Jesus was ministering, in Israel - a city of God's people. Jesus ministered there - preached the kingdom, did miracles, did amazing signs. But the problem was religious pride, and judgementalism, and unbelief. They rejected Jesus. They rejected His supernatural. They rejected the one God sent, and they did it because of pride. It says: “you're exalted to heaven”, and that's the very thing that the devil did. He said: there is a pride, and an iniquity in your hearts; so, when the gospel was preached, and the miracles were done, you still wouldn't change.

He's talking about His people again, He says: when it comes to the day of judgement, and I have the whole City of Sodom in front of me, with all its homosexuals - I'll go easier on them, than on you! It will be more tolerable for them, in the day of judgement, than for you; because, if the works I did in your city, and the teaching I gave there… if they had received that, they would have all turned. The city would still be going.

There are insights into how God judges. God judges according to the amount of light you have. He's simply saying - if you've been given so much, then more is expected.

The City of Sodom is given as a sign, that God will judge sin - and will deal with it suddenly, when people are not looking. The sin of that city was the same as the sin of the people of God - it was the sin of pride, of haughtiness, of self-centredness, of lack of care for the poor; and He said: that's the same city! That's why I called you ‘sisters’; you are same family, the same kind of DNA – and it's not a kingdom DNA. It's a DNA of the power of darkness; and of course, they had some homosexuality. It was rife, right through the city; but He said: if that's all you can see, then you're not seeing that the real issue is the same thing you've got.

It's pride in the heart, that leads to these sins of the flesh, and indulgence in all those kinds of things. When people are very poor, all they've got to focus on is surviving; but when people have got a lot, they start to do all sorts of other things.

What were the conditions that prevailed, in the days of Lot? What was it actually like, in the city; and can we find some comparisons, to today? The background to the story is that Lot was living in the City of Sodom, and then he received two angels. Two angels came to the city, because God was wanting to save Lot. God has gone into a discussion with Abraham, and Abraham said: oh man, that's tough - you're going to destroy the city? Can we talk about this? Can I bargain with, You God? God said: okay, say your piece… He said: what if You found 50 people that were righteous, would You spare the city? He said: okay, if I found 50, I will spare it. Then he says: Lord, can we talk about this again? What if we could find a fewer number? Yes, I will do it for the fewer number… but there weren't the fewer number there - that was the problem.

So, the angels come into the city, and they're coming in to rescue Lot. They're coming into the city to warn him that there's imminent destruction, and he must depart from the city.

Genesis 19:1 – “The two angels arrived at Sodom, and Lot was sitting on the gateway of the city, and when he saw them, he got up to meet them, he bowed down his face to the ground”.

Notice that he's in the gateway - the place of leadership, so he's an influential person in the city now, because he's very wealthy. He got up to meet them. “My lords…” - so he recognised that they come from God.

Genesis 19:2-3 – “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.” “No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square. But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate.”

Now he knew why they needed to go into the city… Don't stay out in the city, it will be tough for you out there. The streets aren't safe. You need to come into my home.

Genesis 19:4-5 – “Before they'd gone to bed all the men from every part of the City of Sodom, young and old, surrounded the house. And they called out to Lot - where are the men who came with you tonight? Bring them out to us, so we can have sex with them”.

So, even putting them in his house didn't save them! This is a very dangerous city - lawless, out of control, and there were sexual perversions operating.

Genesis 19:6-7 – “Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing”.

They're all bent on the homosexual rape of his visitors, but he stands up, and pushes back. ‘Brethren’, he says - so he's not being judgemental in any way... Don't do this! This is not right, this is wrong. This is wicked to do such a thing, because they're under my house. In our culture, if someone comes into your house, they come into your protection - so he said: now they're under my protection, so please, this would be a terrible thing to break. What's going to happen in our culture, if people come into your house, but you don't look out for them, and protect them? I'm out here to stand on their behalf, to protect them, because, according to our culture, this is a covenant relationship. They come into my house, come under my name, under my protection - I'm responsible for them.

Genesis 19:9-12 - They said: stand back! They said: (talking about Lot) this one came to stay here, but now he keeps acting as a judge. Then they said: now we'll deal with you worse than them, so they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. Then the angels rescued Lot and blinded the people so they couldn't find the door. Then the angels told him: you need to get out of the city quickly.

Here's the condition of the people...

1) Pride, and arrogance. They were just self-important, and self-centred.

2) Self-indulgence, fullness of bread.

3) Cold-hearted, their lack of concern for the poor, and these are the things that come from a culture whose heart has become broken and hard.

4) Brazen homosexuality was widespread everywhere. It was just out in the open - it was brazen; no one tried to hide it, no one was ashamed of it.

5) Aggressive sexual violence. The city was lawless. There's no restraint, people just did what they wanted, and sexual violence was frequent.

Look what's going on in our nation right now - it's a very big problem! Notice that the sexual perversion was intergenerational, “young and old came”, so it was affecting the younger generation. The older generation have failed to preserve the young, and by their lifestyle, they've now given permission to the young to then get involved in these things.

6) Finally, there was a widespread resistance, and reaction to, truth.

He's saying: listen, it's in our culture, that if someone comes into my home, I've got to look out for them, and protect them - so please, please stay away. Don't come here. This is wicked to do this.

They said: oh, you come and live among us… and you're judging us now. They accused him of being ‘judgemental’. They accused him of being ‘intolerant’, and then they said: we're going to deal to you!

It's a terrible thing - they were resistant to truth. They reacted, and they accused him, when he spoke out honestly. They accused him of being judgemental and intolerant. The Bible is very clear that if we practice sin... I'm not talking about a life where you're struggling with issues, and you're working hard to try and overcome them, and you have occasional drops back, and you're in a journey of growing - that's normal. That's just what everyone walks through, and God provides grace to cover all of that. We're talking about those who practice sin - in other words, they stop resisting it. They just tolerate it in their life.

The Bible describes 10 different categories of sin that will exclude us from the kingdom. Here they are…

1 Corinthians 6:9 – “Don't you know the unrighteous (those who are not living right or practicing sin), shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived: neither fornicators (people involved in sexual sin); idolators (a person who's covetous is an idolator); nor adulterers, nor homosexuals or sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor abusers, nor extortioners (they manipulate people) will inherit the kingdom of God”.

He doesn't single out one thing. He just says: these are all the kinds of things that will stop you entering the fullness of what God has for you, and he includes in there - excessive alcohol, including gluttony. The Church gets wound up about homosexuality, but what about gossip? Homosexuality is mostly ‘out there’, but gossip is right here! Gluttony? You know, people get into these things, that becomes their hobby horse, and what's behind it is a prideful heart - a heart that's haughty and arrogant, and looks down on others, judging what's going on in their life. That's the very thing that God identified was the core character, not only of the City of Sodom, and this is what led to its downfall.

Given enough time, if you have pride, a haughty attitude, and a lack of care for the poor, and you're preoccupied with yourself… given time, any nation will corrupt, and dysfunction, and fall apart. So, he's saying that all the things you saw in that city were the consequence of the rapid deterioration from the core issue - which is a heart issue! It's always a heart issue.

Notice the thing they accused him of... They said: this man came here, we invited him in, he came and stayed in the city… and now he's judging us! Notice that he hasn't judged them. He just said: this is wicked behaviour! He wasn't even talking about the sexual thing. He was saying that to come into my home, and take the people out, that are in my protection - that's wicked behaviour! And they said: oh, you're ‘judgemental’ and ‘intolerant’.

So, I want to talk a little bit about ‘tolerance’, because this is an issue that's a very big problem right now. It's a growing issue today. Tolerance means to have sympathy for the beliefs and practices that are different (and conflicting) with my own. It means to have respect for a differing viewpoint and lifestyle. I'm not hostile to you, because you have a different belief - I actually treat you with respect. It means the willingness to let people express a different opinion without fear of retaliation. It doesn't mean that you agree with them, or approve of them, at all. You can live your own life, but you can still disagree.

Jesus said, the problem will be, that when you say the truth, people may not like it too much! So now, the word ‘tolerance’ has been changed. Some of you may not realise it, but you will come across it. Tolerance has been redefined - so we'll call it the ‘new’ tolerance! If you change what a word means, then you can change how people behave! When I think ‘tolerance’, I think that you can have a different view, a different lifestyle, and that's fine. I'll talk, and debate, and we can share a different point of view - and that's okay. I'll treat you with respect. You're allowed to do that. You're allowed to be different, and diverse. God lets you be diverse.

But, he's very clear about what the truth is. Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me”. Today people would say: that is judgemental, intolerant, and it's hate-speech! That has happened in our lifetime! The new tolerance - tolerance now is redefined! The dictionary hasn't changed, but this is what it means…

It means the acceptance of any idea, any belief… and it doesn't mean just to accept it; it means to endorse and praise it. So now, I’m not allowed to just accept that you believe differently. I must welcome it and embrace it. In other words, I'm not allowed to have a different opinion - that's what's changed. It's not enough to just tolerate a different belief - I must treat it as having the same value.

Now, when I look at a homosexual lifestyle, it does not have the same value, as the value that God placed on a married relationship - they're not equal. Cultures are not equal. A culture of idolatry and animism will have outcomes and consequences that are different to a culture that was built around the principles of God's kingdom. They are different, and they have different outcomes. If they have different outcomes, they're not equal value.

So, what you're finding is, tolerance has been redefined to mean that everyone's ideas, everyone's beliefs, are of equal value. This is not biblical at all. This goes completely contrary. It’s called humanism.

Disagreement is now redefined. Disagreement means I hold a different opinion. Disagreement is now defined as intolerance. That's what we're facing in our culture right now. If you have a differing opinion, you are called intolerant. If you dare to express it, that's hate speech. If you have a different opinion and you begin to declare it… I have a different opinion about homosexuality, but if I begin to express it now, it's called hate speech.

Hate speech is speech that's designed to stir hostility towards any group of people; they've redefined hate speech as well. To express a different opinion is not hate speech. To express a different opinion is just that - to express a different opinion. The ‘new tolerance’ is actually intolerance, because I can't express my opinion without you treating me as being a racist, or homophobic.

Notice that the new way of dealing with people now, and it's incredibly evil, because it won't allow for any discussion. It puts a label on you. If I say that I believe this, the label is put on; and when you put a label on, then you end up abusing the person. They put a label on you first - that's an idiot; and if it's an idiot, we should do what you do to idiots - you understand? If I express a different opinion about homosexuality, immediately the label is: oh, you're homophobic! If I say something about Islam, and the dangers of radical Islam… oh you're Islamophobic! If I talk about God's views on gender… oh you're transphobic! Your ideas are “hate speech”.

If I talk about the role of a man, as defined by the Bible… ooh, that's sexist! You're a misogynist - you hate women. There's no desire to enter discussion. It's… I want to impose my view upon you, so therefore, the first thing I'll do is to shout you down. The second thing I'll do is to put a label on you; and I will stir people up, to label as a person who is hateful and intolerant.

That's what was going on in Lot's day; and it's very, very similar to what's going on today. The core of this, is the rejection of God, and absolute values - right and wrong. Jesus said: I am the truth; but today people say: that's really, really, judgemental - and it's intolerant.

It is, because He said: “I'm the only way into heaven”, but the world of today says: no, there's lots of religions that can lead you to heaven. No, no, sorry, there isn't. You may not like my truth, but it's the truth. That say that I can have my truth, and you have your truth, and every truth is equal truth. That's what they're trying to say; but it's not true! That's absolutely deception!

Something is either true; or it's not true. Something is either a metre long; or it's not a metre long. There's a standard you could put up… that's not a metre long! If I say that's a metre long, but you say no, that's not a metre long, then one of us is not right. If I say one of us is not right… oh you're intolerant! You're a metre-rule hater! Can you understand? This is what's happening now. We don't want metre-rules, because we want to be able to have our own measures.

Isaiah 5:20 – “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter”.

The core of this new tolerance is that all truth is relative. It's a total intolerance of any alternative opinion, and expression of opinion; you either embrace their values, or you're a hater… and we've got to do something about haters! First, lets pass some laws, that will make it legal for us to do something about them. Then when we've got the laws changed… now we'll hunt them down! That's the strategy that's working through the west - to change the legal system, to change this and that. There's a positioning then, where all disagreement can be shut down, and can be dealt with.

That's what happened in Lot’s day - they said: stand back! You came in to stay here, and now you're acting like a judge. We're going to do worse to you than… Notice they're no longer addressing the issue. He said: what you're doing is wicked - and He wasn't talking about the homosexuality. He was talking about breaking the covenant of hospitality - that if you're under my roof, I must protect you, and look after you.

He said: you're about to break what is our commonly accepted ‘good’. This is good! What you're doing is wicked! They said: who are you, to judge us? We're going to do worse to you. In other words, having judged him, now they can attack him, and cause him to suffer. No wonder then, at that point, the angels intervened. They blinded the people, so they couldn't find the door; and they took him out.

Noah was warned, and because he responded to God's warning, he gave his life to preparing something that would result in his family being saved. The wisdom from that is, as God warns us of coming End Times, wise people will hear that, and begin to think about how they can build their family, and prepare them for a changed global life.

Same with Lot, and here's the thing with Lot… Lot and his two daughters had to be dragged out of the city!

Genesis 19:14 – “Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, "Hurry and get out of this place, because the LORD is about to destroy the city!" But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.”

He obviously had more daughters, at least four. But to his sons-in-laws, it was a big joke. The city's going to be destroyed – that’s ridiculous! Your dad has lost it!

The sons-in-laws, and the daughters, and their children, all died in the city! Now, why did they think it was a big joke, what he had to say? Because he hadn't stood up for what was right, all along. He hadn't raised his family to fear the Lord, and in the ways of God, and so they had been corrupted by the city. They just agreed with the values of the city. Any thought, that what they were doing was wrong, and that there would be consequences, just didn't enter their mind.

That’s what lawlessness is! Acting without any sense of consequences. Loss of the fear of God - and it says that he “lingered”. You can imagine - his heart is being torn apart. God has warned him, this is all about to end; but the people that he loved won't listen to him - and they're going to have consequences!

He's torn apart inside, torn apart. It says that he “lingered”; and it says that the angels urged him to hurry! Hurry, hurry, hurry, take your wife, and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city. That word “lingered” means ‘to hesitate’ - be reluctant. He's unwilling to make change’ to let it all go. His life is invested in this - he's got finances, investments, everything is here. He's getting a warning, about salvation. The warning is to be saved and he's… ooh, oh ah… it's a lot to leave!

His heart was tied to the city, to the culture, and so, in the end, the angels grabbed his hand, and they pulled him out of the city. They pulled him out, because Abraham had interceded for his family. That's why he got saved. The Lord was merciful to him. They brought him and set him outside the city.

Genesis 19: 17 – “As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, "Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!"

You know the story... As they escaped, Lot's wife looked back. It's more likely that she turned back, to get some of the things in the city, and she was destroyed with the city.

You look at that, and say: oh, this is an Old Testament story, but here's the thing… Jesus referred to it! He referred to it; and gave these three warnings… Three warnings, three! Not one… there's three!

1) Luke 17:32 – “Remember Lot's wife”. Don’t let your heart be so tied up in the culture in the world that you're not sensitive to the spirit of God, and to His warnings.

2) Luke 21:34 – “He says take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with the same things that were going on in the days of Lot and Noah”.

You need to guard your heart. Watch out that your heart doesn't become burdened with all the weights and cares of life, because it will come like a snare on the earth. Don't have your life so tied up with what's going on around you, that you lack an eternal perspective.

3) The need for sensitivity and prayer.

Luke 21:36 - “Watch and pray, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things…”

So, what do you see, when you see all those things? I've done three sessions… What do you see?

You will either see: “doom and gloom”; or you will see: “our greatest hour is ahead”!

If there's unbelief in your heart, and your life is entangled, then all of this will be upheaving, and upsetting, and you will see the worst; but if you know the word of God, and the promises of God…

He said: look up! Look up in the sky! Look up to God - lift your eyes off what is natural - get your eyes on the kingdom of God!

What do you see? You can see through the eyes of unbelief, and fear; or you can see through the eyes of faith and hope.

If you see through the eyes of faith and hope, you will see our greatest hour is ahead!

If you see through the eyes of unbelief and fear, it's all doom and gloom… Ooh, it's getting bad, getting worse… It's how you see it, and there's examples of that….

In Numbers 13, when the 12 spies went in the land. 2 came back, and they brought fruit and figs and grapes - it was a tremendous harvest! 10 of them said: wonderful, but we saw giants, and in our own eyes, we were like grasshoppers! It's too big! It's too hard! See - you either see ‘giants’, or ‘bread’. They said: “the Lord is with us, don't be afraid - these giants are bread!” God used them to grow us stronger.

Two come back and said: the giants are bread for us! God is for us!

The others said: the giants are big, and we're little, and can't do it!

What did the people say? Well, when they heard the report of the 10 spies, they were full of unbelief, full of doom and gloom - and they put 'like', and 'repost', until everyone got that message. Then they sat down, and they began to weep, and cry, and bewail how bad it all was!

What about the other two spies? What did they do? Well, they gave their report - full of faith! God is with us! These giants are bread! We can do this! We can do this! Don't be afraid, don't draw back!

What did people do? They went to their Facebook, 'unlike'. And what did they post? Fake news, fake news! Everyone looked at the fake news, and it got into their heart. Not only did they post fake news, but they probably posted “giant lives matter” too.

You understand, there's a thinking around all of this. We've got to be God-centred. They had gone 40 years in the wilderness to get there. They'd gone through all this trouble in the wilderness, to get to this point. It's a climactic point - do I enter in; or fall away? Two stood up and said: this is what it is, we believe God is with us, God is for us!

That's why that song, The Blessing is so popular. They keep repeating: God is for you, God is for you, God is for you! Church - God is for you! The community may be intolerant… but God is for you! If God is for you, then the giants must come down!

You must be a person of faith. The church must arise. He tells us: watch, pray, prepare. This is the time to build your prayer life. This is the time to be grounded in the word of God. This is the time to become strong in God. This is the time to become a soul-winner. This is the time for you to break out of passivity and apathy. This is the time for you to break out of compromise. This is the time!

Read the signs! They're all pointing to something great ahead of us! Don't look at how bad it is, look to the Lord. Pray that you're counted worthy to escape all these things, and walk in the power of His glory, in the latter days.

Isaiah 60:1 – “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you”.

When darkness covers the face of the earth, and darkness covers the people, then the glory of God will be seen on you. What are your eyes focussed on? Darkness; or the light has come, the glory has come?

God will turn this, to become the greatest hour for us! Church, this is our greatest hour ahead! Rise up; choose to follow God! Choose to hear God; build an ark of preparation! Choose to listen to God! Choose to build your prayer life, choose to be a man or woman of God. Let's give Him the honour!

Summary Notes

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Signs of The End Times Part 3

I. Key Signs of The EndTimes

- Mat 24:3 Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"

- Mat 24:4 And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you.

- Jesus Response to The question Regarding the Signs of the EndTimes

- First Sign: Widespread Upheaval: “Wars and Natural Disasters(vs.6-7)

- Second Sign: Widespread Persecution Christians: “Hated of all men”(vs.9)

- Third Sign: Widespread Offences: “Many Offended& Betray”(vs.10)

- Fourth Sign: Widespread Deception: “Many False Prophets”(vs.11)

- Fifth Sign: Widespread Lawlessness:“The Love of Many will Grow Cold”(vs.12)

- Sixth Sign: Widespread Corruption & Violence: “As it was in The Days of Noah”(vs37)

II. Key Signs of The End Times (Cont)

1. Seventh Sign: As it was in The Days of Lot

- Luk 17:28 Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

Lot dwelt in the City of Sodom. He was daily troubled by the conditions in the city

- Ezekiel Describes the Root Sins of the City of Sodom

Eze 16:49 Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.

The root heart condition of Sodom was a pride and haughtiness(arrogance)

Haughtiness… blatantly and disdainfully proud, showing an attitude of superiority and contempt for people or things perceived to be inferior (MW)

- Moses Describes God’s Response to Homosexual Actions

Lev 18:22 "'Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.(NIV)

“Detestable”…..idolatry, abomination, something disgusting

- Lot was Daily Deeply Distressed by the Moral and Sexual Corruption in the City of Sodom

2Pe 2:7 and he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless

“distressed”…….to wear down, to be oppressed, to treat roughly, be in great anguish, exceeding pain.

- The name of the city is the root of the word “Sodomy”.. The homosexual action of anal intercourse between males

- What were the conditions that prevailed in the Days of Lot?

Lot received two angelic visitors to the city. He insisted they spend the night in his home because of the danger they would face in the city

The men of Sodom sought to commit homosexual rape against the two angels

The angels struck the men with blindness and rescued Lot and his family

- Gen 19:1 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.

- Gen 19:2 "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning." "No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square."

- Gen 19:3 But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate.

- Gen 19:4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house.

- Gen 19:5 They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."

- Gen 19:9 And they said, "Stand back!" Then they said, "This one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them." So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. (NIV)

The Sins of Sodom

(i). Pride and Arrogance: Self important, despising others

(ii). Self Indulgence: Fulness of bread, gluttony, idleness

(iii). Cold-hearted: Lack of concern for the Poor and Needy

(iv). Brazen Homosexuality: It was widespread and openly practiced, (vs4)

(v). Aggressive Sexual Violence: The city was lawless (vs.5)

(vi). Intergenerational Sexual Perversion: Old and Young given over to sexual sin

(viii). Widespread Resistance to Truth: They accused Lot of being judgmental, intolerant

- Paul Describes this Condition

Rom 1:26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

Rom 1:27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

- The Bible describes 10 different categories of sin that exclude people from inheritance in the Kingdom

1Co 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers (abusers), nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

“Homosexuals”…..effeminate, male prostitute, a catamite…boy who is kept for homosexual relations

“Sodomite”…………males committing anal sexual intercourse

- Tolerance: What “Tolerance” Used to Mean

- Miriam Webster definition:

Sympathy or indulgence for beliefs and practices differing or conflicting with one’s own

It meant having respect for differing viewpoints and lifestyles, and treating people with respect who disagree with us on fundamental concepts or beliefs….(this leads to peace with diversity)

- Tolerance is simply the willingness to allow people to express divergent opinions without fear of retaliation. This does not guarantee acceptance or implementation of such expressions that run contrary to biblical morality

- Christ said, “…Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Mt 5:39-47).

- He never said compromise the truth. He did say do not compromise the truth and this world would hate you (Mt 5:11-12).

- You cannot force people to accept the truth whether through governmental laws or personal coercion.

- Today the word “Tolerance” has been replaced widely by “New Tolerance”

- What Does The “New Tolerance” Mean?

- The “New Tolerance” means not only respect….but also endorsement and praise

- Tolerance now means the acceptance of any idea, belief or goal proposed by anyone

- It means that it is not enough to tolerate different beliefs, lifestyles, but I must treat them as having equal value

- Disagreement now means Intolerance…

This results in being labelled..Racist, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Transphobic, Sexist,

Any attempt to reason, argue, deny or defend yourself is called “Proof of Guilt”

- Eg. In practice it is no longer sufficient to tolerate the homosexual lifestyle, I must endorse and praise it

If I do not endorse and praise, or if I question it, or hold another view…I am labeled a Homophobic, a bigot, intolerant

- If I speak an opinion that differs I am accused of “Hate Speech”

- Hate speech… defined by Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".

=> Hate Speech has now been Redefined: Having and Expressing a different, usually a Biblical or conservative opinion, from the favored popular ideology

- At the core of this New Tolerance is the rejection of God, and objective standards, and the belief that all lifestyles, values and beliefs are equally validity

- Jesus Statement: “I am the Way, I am the Truth”….would be labeled “Intolerant”, and “Hate Speech”

- Isa 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

- What are The Characteristics of “The New Tolerance”?

(i). The belief: “ All truth is Relative”…denying reality of objective truth

(ii). Intolerance. “ Rejection of any Alternative or Biblical perspective.

(iii). Insistence of Conformity … Embrace the homosexual values, and lifestyle

(iv). Demand for Abandonment of Convictions and indifference to evil

(v). Fuels Hatred for Christians……… It turns people and nations against Biblical Christianity

(vi). Teaches it is wrong to `Criticize Homosexuals, but it is Ok to bash Christians

- Gen 19:9 And they said, "Stand back!" Then they said, "This one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them." So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. (NIV)

- Mat 24:9 "Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.

- Jesus Mentions 8 Common Activities that Occurred Both in the Days of Noah and the Days of Lot

Luk 17:27 They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Luk 17:28 Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built;

They were so immersed in these activities that they failed to recognize what was about to happen

Materialism and preoccupation with the cares of life blinded them to eternal realities and they suffered the consequences

- Noah was Warned by God of the coming Judgment….and built an Ark

Heb 11:7 By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household,

- Lot and his wife and two daughters had to be dragged out of the city

Gen 19:14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said, "Get up, get out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city!" But to his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking.

Gen 19:15 When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, "Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city."

Gen 19:16 And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

Gen 19:17 So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said, "Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed."

“Lingered”….to hesitate, question, be reluctant, delay, showing unwillingness to take action and leave

- Jesus Warnings:

- (i). The Example of Lot’s Wife

Luk 17:32 Remember Lot's wife.

Although she was dragged almost by force out of the city her heart remained attached to Sodom, and the lifestyle she had in the city

- (ii). The Need to Guard your Heart

Luk 21:34 "But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.

For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth.

- (iii). The Need For Spiritual Sensitivity and Prayer

Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."

This offers a promise of a supernatural escape from the End Time Global turmoil, conditional upon our personal walk with God today

2. Eighth Sign: The Fig Tree and All the Trees

- Luk 21:29 Then He spoke to them a parable: "Look at the fig tree, and all the trees.

When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near.

So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near.

Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.

- “The Fig Tree” refers to the nation of Israel

“and all the trees” refers to the other nations of the world

The change in nations will begin with the fig tree…Israel first and then the other nations

- Israel Becomes a Nation

In 1948 Israel came together as a nation……” it began to bud and form leaves”

They became free of rule by the British, and established their own history culture and language

In 1967 Israel took control of Jerusalem.

In 2019 Jerusalem was acknowledged as their Capital

- The Rise of Nationalism

Across the globe now the nations are beginning to put forth the leaves of their own identity

There is an upsurge of nations wanting to establish their own identity, history and culture

- "Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. (Mat24:30-32)

Jesus specifically taught that these are the signs of the EndTimes and His imminent return

It is near…at the doors….this generation

3. Ninth Sign: Great Change in the Culture…Selfishness

2Ti 3:1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:

- “Perilous times”….fierce, dangerous, reducing strength, hard to bear

- Widespread Cultural Conditions:

Lovers of themselves (narcissistic, self-centered),

Lovers of money (greed),

Boasters (empty pretenders)

Proud (appearing better than others, despising and looking down on others)

Blasphemers (abusive),

Disobedient to parents, (unable to be persuaded, unwilling to listen)

Unthankful (entitled),

Unholy (defiled),

Unloving (devoid of natural family affection),

Unforgiving (truce breakers…unwilling to enter covenant),

Slanderers (malicious gossips),

Without self-control,

Brutal (savage, cruel)

Despisers of good (and those that are good)

Traitors (treacherous),

Headstrong (rash)

Haughty (arrogant)

Lovers of pleasure (lust) rather than lovers of God,

Having a form of godliness (outward appearance but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

4. Tenth Sign: Cosmic Upheaval and Great Global Fear

Luk 21:25 "And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring;

Luk 21:26 "men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken."

Luk 21:27 "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory."

- Widespread Great Fear: Result of upheavals in nature becoming more frequent and intense

5. Eleventh Sign: Increase in Travel and Knowledge

- Dan 12:4 "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase."

- There is a sealing of the book of Daniel so it cannot be understood until the End Times

- In The End Times….. A great increase of Travel and of Knowledge

- Knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate

- Eg. The time take for Knowledge to Double

1900-every 100 years; 1945-every 25years; 1980-every 13months, 2020- IBM predicts every 12 hours

6. Twelfth Sign: The Gospel of the Kingdom Preached

- Mat 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

- End time revival …….the Gospel will be preached in all the world….this is the Key Sign

- Gospel of the Kingdom……….The message of the Kingdom of God

- Gospel of the Kingdom………..With demonstration of the Supernatural Power of God (1Cor.4:20)

- 2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

III. Doom and Gloom or Greatest Hour?

1. What do You See?

- The condition of your heart will determine your perspective, how you see the signs of the End Times

(i). You can see it through the Eyes of Unbelief and Fear………….impending judgment and catastrophe

So many so called prophetic voices proclaim impending judgments that do not come to pass

(ii). You can see it through the Eyes of Faith and Hope…..………..our greatest opportunity

- You will see Doom and Gloom…..or Our Greatest Hour

2. Do you See Giants or Bread?

Num 14:6 But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes;

Num 14:7 and they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying: "The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land.

Num 14:8 If the LORD delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, 'a land which flows with milk and honey.'

Num 14:9 Only do not rebel against the LORD, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them."

Num 14:10 And all the congregation said to stone them with stones. Now the glory of the LORD appeared in the tabernacle of meeting before all the children of Israel.

- God brought them out of Egypt to bring them into a Promised Land, a Divine Destiny

- Twelve spies searched the land and brought fruit (of the age to come) Grapes, pomegranates and figs

- They also brought back a report…how they saw the land…thorough Eyes of Unbelief or Eyes of Faith

- (i). Ten Spies….Saw Giants

“There are Giants, we were like grasshoppers”….a report of Unbelief and Fear

The People Listened:

The people all clicked: “Like”, and “Repost”

The people all Posted: “Massive Leadership Failure, Leadership Change being decided ”

Then the People cried , wept, rejected Moses, and decided to select new leader and return to Egypt

- (ii). Joshua and Caleb:….Saw Bread

“The Land is good, The Lord is with us, and The Giants are our Bread

The People Reacted: “Stone them”

The People all clicked: “Unlike”, “Unfriend”

The People posted “Fake News” and “ Giants lives Matter too”

- (iii). God’s Response:

Num 14:23 they certainly shall not see the land of which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who rejected Me see it.

Num 14:24 But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.

- God Judged and Decreed

- God clicked : “Joshua Like”, “Caleb Like”, and posted “Joshua, Caleb and descendants just won Lotto”

- God posted: “Plan still on, Same Leadership , New Team”,

- God Decreed:“All the earth shall be filled with the Glory of the Lord”(vs.21)

3. Darkness or Glory?

Isa 60:1 Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.

Isa 60:2 For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the LORD will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you.

Isa 60:3 The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.

- What is your heart focussed upon?

- Unbelief and Fear?...... “Darkness everywhere”

- Faith and Hope?.......... “ The Glory of God is Here”

IV. We Must Actively Prepare for Jesus Return!

1. Jesus will return in great Glory and Power and Majesty

Luk 21:27 Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

Mat 16:27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

2. We Must Personally Prepare for the Second Coming of The Lord

- Three times in Mark 13 Jesus commands us to Watch

- Mar 13:32 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

- Mar 13:33 Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is.

- Mar 13:35 Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning—

- Mar 13:36 lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping.

- Mar 13:37 And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!"

“Watch”…..To arouse from a condition of spiritual slumber, to stay spiritual awake and prepared

Watching is always connected to a vibrant strong prayer life and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit

3. How Can We Prepare for Jesus Return?

=> That is Another Message: 8 Ways to Prepare for The Coming of Jesus

V. Questions for Personal Reflection

1. What did the Holy Spirit speak to you about during this message?

2. What areas of your life were challenged in this study

3. What changes do you need to make?

4. How vibrant is your personal prayer life?

5. What issues in the culture mentioned in 2Tim.3 are relevant to you?

6. How well can you describe the Gospel of The Kingdom?

7. Where do you need to grow in ministering the power of the Kingdom?

What action steps will you take?

Rest of Faith

The Rest of Faith (1 of 4)

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down."

Psalms is full of David's battle to find that resting place. In fact he had many difficulties, pressures setbacks, obstacles - all kinds of challenges, but he said “I'm never lacking, because God is my provider and my source”.

He came to rest inside, in God. The kingdom of God is about rest, not works.

“He that has entered into rest has ceased from his own works.”

The Rest of Faith (2 of 4)

Jesus said: If you're stressed out, come to Me. The answer is a person, your connection with a person, connecting with Him and learning.

Technology doesn't solve problems, because the problems we really face, the core of them, are found in the heart; and in our walk with God.

The reason He can teach you how to do life, is because He has an attitude of meekness, humility; and He gave an example of how to do life.

The Rest of Faith (3 of 4)

Stress and pressure are part of our life, and Jesus has given some clear things about how we can deal with it.

When you're stressed out, anxious and uptight you don't live your best; you struggle in your relationships; there's overflow in your health.

God doesn't intend us to live that way. Let's have a look what Jesus said…

The Rest of Faith (4 of 4)

"My presence will go with you, and I will give you Rest"

Rest is a peace in our heart, in spite of the turmoil around us. We're live in an age which is in turmoil; people are anxious & fearful - stressed out.

Rest is a gift to us. It's an experience you can come into, when no matter what's going on around you, you can still be at peace in your heart.

This is something God gives to us. It comes out of His presence being with us; and out of learning how to let go issues to Him. We're called to bring peace into wherever we go.

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The Rest of Faith (1 of 4)

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"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down."

Psalms is full of David's battle to find that resting place. In fact he had many difficulties, pressures setbacks, obstacles - all kinds of challenges, but he said “I'm never lacking, because God is my provider and my source”.

He came to rest inside, in God. The kingdom of God is about rest, not works.

“He that has entered into rest has ceased from his own works.”

Psalm 23 - I want to speak on the Rest of Faith. I've had such a great time in the rest of faith more recently, and I want to talk to you about it - it will help you.

Psalm 23:1-2 “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down”. He makes me lie down - so David is expressing his personal relationship with God. This is a psalm written by a shepherd, and he's defining his walk with God, or his relationship with God, in terms of: I have made the Lord my shepherd. If you read through all of the rest of the psalms, you'll find then he talks about the blessings, which flow by faith, out of that relationship.

He says: the Lord is my shepherd, therefore I shall not want. I'll lack for nothing. I have everything I need, because I've made Him my shepherd.

It doesn't mean he didn't have troubles, or lacks, in his life. In fact he had many. He had many difficulties, many pressures, setbacks, obstacles - all kinds of challenges; but he said: I'm never lacking, because God is my provider and my source.

He came to rest inside, in God; and if you read psalms, it's full of his battle to find that resting place.

Most people read it like: “He makes me lie down in green pastures” - but sheep don't lie down in green pastures.

In the Bible, sheep lay down in the ‘fold’ - in the sheep fold; so it reads more like this: “He makes me lie down. In green pastures He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul”.

It's just, sometimes people don't read it right, but if you look it up in Ezekiel 34:14, it tells very clearly that: “He calls us to lie down in the sheep folds”.

The sheep folds were a place of protection. They were surrounded; the shepherd slept at the doorway. It was a place where the sheep were safe.

If you've ever seen a sheep lying down, they're usually chewing the cud; and they are easily disturbed - they frighten easily, scatter easily.

So when a sheep is lying down and chewing the cud, it is perfectly at rest. That means: no stress, anxiety, pressure, worries, demands; it's at a place of rest.

Notice that it says: “HE makes me lie down”. This is something that comes from God - the ability to rest, and be at peace in your heart in life, no matter what you're facing.

This is the thing: what is it that God wants you to rest from? It's not from doing things. God expects us to be busy for His kingdom; but the rest he's talking about is an internal rest, that can only come about by faith. It's an internal rest, and a peace.

Everywhere we are, and I particularly noticed this in Australia recently, the two most common problems that came up in the altar calls: 1) Anxiety; 2) depression.

That quite surprised me. Over and over and over and over again, when I asked people what are the problems you're facing: anxiety, or worry and stress about life; and the second thing was depression, a feeling of despair, that they could never get on top of the pressure they were facing in life.

In spite of all the iPads, phones, texting, and everything else, there's a state of increasing stress on people. People are not rested.

People in fact are more stressed and pressured than ever before; so when it says: ‘rest’, its rest from internal stress.

It is rest from: anxiety, fear, danger; the worry about what will happen in the future. Rest from guilt about your mistakes; rest from striving to get somewhere in life.

It's a rest from effort, from having to work hard to be a good Christian, work hard to get the victory, work hard to get on top. It's about that.

It's about resting from all of that, and coming to a place where: no longer do you exude stress and anxiety; but you carry an atmosphere of peace and rest in your heart.

That's something all of us can come into - this is the rest of faith; and it's a fruit, and an outcome of your relationship.

It's not something you work at - you don't work hard to get into a place of rest. It comes as a result of doing something else - so we want to help you find that.

The first thing I want to look at, in relationship to this ‘Rest of Faith’ is: when we look at the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is about Rest; not Works.

Romans 14:17 – “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, or activities of the law; but it is rather righteousness (or right relationship), and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost”.

Peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Whenever the Kingdom of God is manifesting in your life, there comes peace.

That's one of the first things He said: “rightly-connected to God through faith, and at peace in our heart”.

So one of the key indicators that God's kingdom is there is Peace; and one of the key indicators that it's not there is: confusion, and turmoil, and distress.

So wherever Jesus' kingdom is manifesting in a person's life, they come to peace - in your finances; your family.

It doesn't mean to say there's not some difficulties. Jesus said: “the peace I give you is not like the world gifts. He said: “I give you a peace”.

This Peace (or Rest) that you get, brings you to a place of peace in your heart, where you're not in turmoil or anxiety and stress.

There may be concerns. He said: “My peace I leave you, My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, give I unto you”.

He said: “In the world you'll have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I've overcome the world”.

Jesus said: there's a peace that can manifest in your life, where you are freed up from stress and anxiety and worry - and it comes from Him. It's not like the world gives.

The world gives you peace when it's got everything around you all stabilized - no troubles; but Jesus said: there's a peace I give you, which is in you - in the midst of all the troubles.

So He said: that's the rest.

He said: it's not that there won't be troubles.

If you're a Christian, you'll have troubles. If you're a believer, and you're active in your faith, you'll have troubles. Some troubles come because of things you do; some because of things others do; some because of the devil; and some because it's just… troubles from being a Christian.

You try to be honest, you try to do what's right - and then you have these troubles; so peace is something God gives to us.

Colossians 3:15 – “Let the peace of God RULE in your heart”.

That word rule is to be an umpire. If you ever go down and see the netball or rugby, and the game is in play; if anyone breaks the rules [RRR!] – a whistle, or a red flag etc. Straight away the whistle blows, and the umpire has made a decision that you have broken the rules, you've done something wrong.

The Bible says: whenever you lose your peace, something is wrong - the whistle is blowing!

So today, if you are not at peace inside - the whistle is blowing on you.

Usually what happens is: the referee will blow the whistle; everyone stops what they're doing; and then he points - you! What have I done? Then the rules cited, and maybe get the red card, a sin bin, put off the side there…

Heaps of people get sin-binned you know; and in the church they get sin-binned too. It's a horrible thing really, isn't it, but there it is - it happens.

So every time you lose your peace inside (or lose the rest inside) - the whistle is blowing, something's not right. That's the warning to look at your relationship, your connection, what's going on in your thinking, and in your heart - because something is not right.

Hebrews 3 & 4 has got quite a bit about the Rest of God, and while it's got prophetic and dispensational aspects to it, we're just going to stick with the practical of making this thing work in your life.

Hebrews 4:1 - “Now there's a promise remains, of entering His rest; let us fear, lest any of you seem to come short of it.

So this is a promise to receive, that we can enter His rest (whatever that means). “For indeed the gospel was preached to us, as well as to them; but the word they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. And we who have believed, enter that Rest”.

Hebrews 4:10 – “He who has entered His rest, has himself also ceased from his works, as God did from His.”

To ‘enter’ rest means: to cease struggling and striving. It's to cease your own works, to try to accomplish something before God.

Unfortunately, it's very easy to go down that route. The Old Testament law seems to come like this: if you do this, you'll be blessed; if you do that, you'll be cursed. Tithe and you'll be blessed, don't tithe and you'll be cursed; and so on and so forth.

You have all of these laws: and so we get to have a mentality of the law: that if I just do enough, I'll get what I need.

If I just do enough, my parents will be pleased, and dad will smile and say: well done. If I just do enough, I'll succeed; if I just do enough I'll get a promotion. If I just do enough… and so we become wired: if I just do enough, I'll somehow get what I need.

The trouble is, what we do is never quite enough to get what we really think we want; and so we're left striving and struggling and wrestling. This is true of people everywhere.

Then we come to the church; and so the first thing you hear is: you hear the gospel - and the gospel's very clear:

We are saved by? Grace!

Grace through? Faith!

How do you get saved? Grace through faith, grace through faith. How is the rest of all your Christian life supposed to work? Grace through faith, grace! God's empowerment through believing, not striving.

Yet striving is where people end up, and I find so many people striving and struggling. The striving and struggling is very subtle, and it comes up in books and resources.

How many have read a book: four keys to this? What's implicit in that is: if I just do the four things - I'll get what they say.

10 keys to a great marriage; five keys to breakthrough - then we do them, we don't get the breakthrough, and we can't work out why. So we go for another book, and so on and so forth.

The shops are full of them. The Christian shops abound in books with keys; and yes, there are things we can do - but what you've got to realise is:

The core of the work of God is: believing.

The core of it is: believing what God is like; and what God has said He's done, and will do on our behalf - not trying to make it happen.

For example, a lot of Christians (sensitive area here), they hear this scripture; and I've heard it a number of times - it's always worried me a bit really.

Malachi 4 – “Prove me…” Now I believe you can prove God, and this is a great - and I believe in the whole area of tithing, and beyond tithing and giving; but people get into this thing that: “If I do it I'll be blessed; if I don't then I'll be cursed”.

Now that is the law; but I am blessed. In fact I'm blessed all the time. I'm blessed in Christ. He made me blessed. He positioned me for blessing, when I believed.

I don't work to get blessed. I don't have to work to get to blessing. What I need to do is: believe I'm blessed; and align myself with what a believer should do.

If I believe that God is my source, then I'm free to give to Him - and give well beyond the tithe.

Many Christians are locked in on this tithe thing, and they're locked in on the law.

Fear is what drives the law; rather than realizing: if I'm a man of faith, and believe that God is my source and supply, then I can give, and I can give well beyond that.

I can be a generous person. In fact, actually that's what God wants me to be; not just a tither, legalistically tithing, and wondering why I'm limited. He wants to make me a generous giver. A generous giver!

I counseled one guy, a former pastor. He was sitting in a group (a group of Cook Islanders), and we were talking to them. The guy was very grumpy, and he started off by announcing: “I've just stopped tithing. I've gone to the bank, and I've cancelled my tithe”!

There was a deathly silence in the meeting, and all the religious people... they all kind of went back, because the fire of God is about fall! [Laughter] Pastor's about to give him a hammering, you know? Ooh! Stand back, watch this! He's going to be charred!

I could feel all the pressure on me. I looked to him, and I said to him: “I can tell you're very sad, to have done that - you must have had a lot of disappointment”.

I said: “You know what? God's not too worried about your tithe. Why don't you go and take yourself and your family out for a meal, and give thanks to the Lord for all His abundant blessing, until your heart comes right?”

I said: what you're doing is, you're trying to manipulate God; “oh, You didn't give me what I want, so therefore I'll do this”. You can't - that's just not how we work with God. We don't work with God that way.

God is generous, and loving; and because I believe that, I can respond out of a generous heart. Anyway, he got himself sorted out very quickly after that, but see: Grace was given to him; not the Law.

We've got to not be under the law. Jesus came to set us free from the laws of do's-and-don’ts; and to bring us into the Rest that Faith brings.

So you notice here it says: “he that's entered into Rest has ceased from his own works”.

Notice two things here. When you come into the rest of God, you: ‘enter’ into the benefit of His works; and you ‘cease’ from your own works. Getting the idea?

Cease from works, means a cease from struggling. So if you're struggling, striving, contending, in distress, pressure, guilt, fear, anxiety, all that kind of thing, you are struggling and striving.

What’s needed is to understand what God has provided for you, and come to trust in that; and rest from whatever's pressuring and driving those emotions inside you.

Second thing about this, is that Repentance from Dead Works is quite foundational. In Hebrews 6 - the foundational doctrine of establishing your life in Christ - the first things you learn is: Repent from Dead Works; and Faith towards God.

It doesn't say there: repentance from Sin; its saying: repenting from working, trying to establish yourself with God. It's repenting from: striving hard to please God.

How can you please God more? He's pleased when you have faith in His Son; and what the Son has done.

He delights in His Son, and if I'm in His Son, He delights in me; and that's irrespective of whether I'm up and down, have problems, or fall over, or fall on my face, or make a mistake, or sin or something like that. It doesn't change God's view of me.

My daughter had an open vision, in a meeting where deliverance was taking place (I was leading the meeting).

She said: I couldn't see you, I saw Jesus; you were in Him. That's what the demons were seeing - they weren't seeing you; they were just seeing Jesus represented.

So that takes away a lot of the stress then, and the striving. We realise then, that I'm called.

Anything that I'm doing, and I'm struggling to get something God has already given me - that is a dead work. If I'm struggling to get accepted, to get forgiven, struggling, struggling, struggling; if I pray harder, work harder, read the Bible more, do this…

Praying is a necessarily discipline in our life; reading the Bible is a necessary discipline in our life; but if you approach it: I have to do this, in order to get something - you're going to get nothing much.

What I need to do is: come into the place of faith and rest that this is: I need to engage with God.

So Repentance from Dead Works - it shifts us. It shifts us from: striving to rest; from self-effort to grace. It's a shift, a big shift, from reasoning to revelation - I need to be listening to God more, instead of trying to figure it all out; from anxiety to peace.

It's a shift, a major shift; and when you're in the shift, your life looks different to everyone else; because they say: how come you're at peace, when there's all this turmoil going on? They can't understand it - how come you're at peace?

Simple: you're at rest.

How can be at rest? Don't you understand how bad it is?

Yes, I do; however, my eyes are fixed on Jesus Christ, who has promised: “My peace I give to you”.

So rest comes, when you overcome the driving internal pressures, and external expectations.

To look good - that's a pressure. To try and impress people, so you look better than you really are. Why not just be authentic? This is who I really am. It'd make life a lot easier.

It's easier to be authentic, than it is to try and keep up an image. Image costs you a lot of money, a huge amount of money. Then when you least expect it, it falls over and fails; and some of you blow it, and someone got a photo, or saw you, and you really blew your stack one day, and all the image is gone.

The facade is so nice and cool, and then it's blown away in one moment of anger! It happens, doesn't it?

So when you enter your Rest, you're resting in what God says; and you're focused.

The focus shifts from: trying harder; to coming to a place of believing, and dealing with the issues that stop me believing. It's where the focus is, that's the difference.

The focus of Works is: you try harder to get to achieve.

The focus of Rest is this: your work is directed to dealing with the internal issues that stop you trusting God; so your focus is on the issues of trust, not trying to make something happen.

That's where the key battle is fought. It's in the heart, on the issue of trust.

The Holy Ghost, when He came onto Jesus, came as a Dove, and He rested on Him. Here's the interesting thing: Doves will not rest where there's no ‘man of peace’. Jesus was at peace; and the dove came and rested.

If you want the Holy Spirit flowing in your life, you have to come to peace in your heart; because anything that disturbs your peace will cause the dove to flutter.

That's the nature of the dove. That's why they use the picture there. It's quite simple: if there's agitation and disturbance, the doves fly, they don't stay.

It's a particular type of dove, and so you'll find: it rests.

The Rest of God doesn't mean you're not doing anything. I've just got to make that clear, before I show you how to enter the rest.

The rest of God doesn't mean: I just lay around on my face and worship. It doesn't mean that: I do nothing, you know, I'm not occupied. In fact the Bible teaches exactly the opposite.

This is about an internal positioning in your heart; where you are free from fears and anxieties; the turmoils of guilt and pressure; trying to please people, trying to look good, all that kind of stuff; and you come to just be at peace in yourself with God - a great thing.

Titus 2:14 it says: “Jesus has redeemed us, to be zealous for good works”.

That's what He's making for Himself, a people zealous for good works. Are you zealous for good works? Are you zealous to do things for God? Are you passionate to do things for God? That's the people Jesus is preparing.

Titus 3:8 – “Be careful to maintain good works”. Be careful that your life is productive in doing things which advance the kingdom - reaching out to people, talking to people, building connection with people, winning them to Christ, showing kindness to them.

Titus 3:14 – “Let our people also learn to maintain good works, and meet urgent needs (or show compassion), that they don't be unfruitful”. So the Bible's very clear about good works.

Okay, but how? Hebrews 4:11 – “Let us be diligent, to get into this Rest of Faith”.

So our work is to come into a place of faith, where we're free, and it's natural to be generous, natural to overflow; and you actually become productive. You're productive, because you're no longer stressed out. This thing of being stressed-out is a huge issue for people today.

Fortunately Jesus makes an invitation. Matthew 11:28, three things Jesus said…

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus is promising… Rest!

Where's the Rest? “Take My yoke on you, learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls”.

Notice He said: “I give you” the rest; and: “you'll find” the rest.

So it says: it's a gift from God. If it's a gift, you didn't work to do it. If it's something God gives, I've got to receive - and I receive everything by faith.

Not only that, He said: it's something you'll find. In other words, you've got to pursue it. You've got to pursue this - to come to a place of peace in your heart.

A lot of people are not at peace in their heart; there's every kind of thing agitates them. Now listen, there's every reason for you not to be at peace in your heart.

There's issues in marriage, issues with children, there's issues in church, there's issues in relationships, there's issues of injustice, there's issues of offences, there's issues of pressures and stresses and work. Man, the world is just full of it.

This week I encourage you, look around the people you know, and see how many are stressed out, uptight and not at rest - you will be amazed.

Jesus said: “Don't be anxious”; don't be stressed out; don't be uptight. There are some remedies for that in Me. There's a rest you can come to, in the midst of all the strife; and so He then talks about how you receive the rest.

That's a better way. How do I receive that rest? He gives three parts to receiving Rest - and they're all to do with Relationship and Trust.

1) He extends the invitation to everyone who: labours, that's weary, troubled, turmoiled, heavy laden, loaded up, burdened out of all sorts of things to do. The invitation is one to find rest, from all the have-to's of life.

How's it going to come? He tells us: Come to Me.

I didn't want you to say that! I wanted you to say: here's the principle, here's the rule to follow.

Here is the rule to follow: come to Him. You come to a person. Yes, a relationship - connect.

He said: come to Me. He said: the connection to a person, not a principle. It's not something to do; it's a person to come to. It's a person.

He's the one that's got the peace. If you're in turmoil, rest is found in Him. Peace is a gift from Him, so it comes through the connection.

He is the Prince of Peace, so if we're going to come to rest, the rest will come out of my connection with Him.

How am I going to do that? What does it mean: “come to Me”? I thought I'd already come to Him - I come up the front and prayed the sinner's prayer; and now today I'm in turmoil.

No, it actually means to just change your focus from the problem, and put your focus back on Jesus. It means pushing out of your mind, the things that are troubling you, and re-centre around Him again.

Get your mind set on Him again, and that takes a bit of discipline. The discipline is not: to get Jesus to give you rest; the discipline's to: push the other rubbish out - that's where the work is.

The work is coming to a place where I have confidence and trust that God is going to meet my every need. The reason that you get anxious is: you're not sure that God is going to meet your need.

So I'm anxious, I'm uptight, I've got to work hard to get this need met. But what if God were to meet it? Where would your anxiety go then?

Let’s say a bill comes up, you've not got enough money in the account; the stress of how I'm going to pay this thing.

The focus is on the problem; but what if I was to shift my focus to Him; and allow my heart to meditate on the truth: I shall not want, because He's looking after me?

That takes the pressure off me figuring the solution to the problem; puts it back with Him, and I can come to peace.

It's a relationship. It's about connecting with Jesus - and that is where the trouble lies. We'd rather have something to do.

The ‘Rest’ is the person, connecting to the person.

The reason we have trouble connecting to Jesus: something got in the way. The moment you try to connect with Him, whatever's in the way of connecting Him will come up into your mind - to be dealt with.

It's always about trust.

Notice He says: “come to me”; and that's what Peter did. While he kept his eyes on Jesus, he was walking on the water. As soon as he got his eyes on the circumstances, all grace and power left him - and he began to sink.

Two last things… He said: “Take My yoke on you”.

That's something we can do. We can choose to come to Him or not; and we can take the yoke. The yoke is the teaching and lifestyle; and it means following His lifestyle.

Jesus was surrounded by turmoil. He was surrounded by people with agendas. He was surrounded by hostility. He was surrounded by people - even betrayers and traitors next to Him. He was surrounded by pressures and expectations - but He never lost His peace.

He always remained at peace, even when His friends pressured Him, he remained at peace. How did He remain at peace?

He says: “Take My yoke”; which means: to follow His lifestyle.

Use Him as your model – ask: what would Jesus do in this situation? How would Jesus handle this situation? To take the yoke on - how did Jesus handle it?

He just listened to what the Father had to say. So how did Jesus handle all that stress?

1) He just refused to be dominated by it; and

2) He just began to listen: “Father, what do You want Me to do”?

The Lord was speaking to me about some stuff earlier on in the year (and in this time away) - then He required me to do it; and so the first meeting was great. I had 10 meetings at night time, plus 2 training sessions in a day, every day.

These 10 meetings are power evangelism meetings. I got one message, the first night; but that was it! I thought: that's great, I got a message, praise God.

The next night came - no message. I sweated and sweated and sweated. There was no rest for me then!

I don't want to get up in front and speak - I've come all this way, and there's no message! This is horrible Jesus - HELP! So there was a little bit of stress and tension…

Then I just stopped and said: look, I need to get my eyes back on Jesus; so I got my eyes back on Him - and then an idea suddenly came to mind:

I should think of some altar calls, write some altar calls. I wrote an altar call down, then I wrote another one, then I had a whole list of them. I thought oh, perhaps Jesus just wants me to do altar calls tonight - that's a bit different.

I got up there, and the very first altar call I'd written - there was a woman had a testimony on that very issue!

I never even got to do all the other altar calls that night, because it was just the one she gave the testimony on - was the one I'd written down, was the one that everybody came up and got – and there was a massive deliverance. We were busy all night!

There was no time to preach a message. Oh, I fitted in a bit of preaching, did a 5-minute job, and all these people came up and got saved - but God moved. The same thing happened every night.

I had to learn to Rest! I didn't like it, I can tell you; but you've got to learn to rest. It's something you have to learn to do: learn to rest in Him – “take my yoke”. Loss of peace is a signal you've got your eyes off Him.

The final thing is: “Learn from Me”.

Here's a simple thing: ask Him questions. Ask the Lord questions. Learning, from a Hebrew point of view, was asking questions, listening, gaining insight, gaining revelation, gaining wisdom for life. You've got to ask the questions.

If you ask God good questions when you're in difficulty… what would that look like?

If you've got distress, something's gone wrong: “Lord, I've lost my peace. Lord, I just re-centre my life back on You. I push this thing at Your feet, because it's a care that's distracting me.”

You just begin to worship Him, until you come to a place of just ‘at rest’. Then: “Lord, I want to learn from You, how do I handle this thing. What do I do? What do I need to learn in this situation?”

Don't ask WHY! That's not going to work - He won't answer that one. He'll answer the other questions - the ones where you learn. Those ones He'll always answer - then be quiet to hear His replies.

It may come immediately to your heart and spirit. You may have a thought come to your mind, or you may just be reading the word of God, and the insight comes.

“Come to Me, all that labor, and are heavy-laden. Take My yoke on you. Learn in Me”.

Why can you learn in Me? Because I've got two qualities that are really amazing. One is: I'm meek; and the other is: I'm humble.

Humble means: I accept who I am, according to what God says about me, and I trust God.

I'm meek - it doesn't mean I don't get angry and uptight about everything that goes on. I've got my inner life under management. Meek; humble.

The opposite of meekness is anger? Why am I so angry? What is happening in my heart? What is it I need to learn? Where do I need to let go my rights? What is the injustice I need to let go of? Those are the kinds of questions God will answer, so you can come to peace. Then in the asking the questions, you'll find peace, because He's given you insight.

Now this is a lifestyle. The lifestyle Jesus wants us to have is: to come to peace and rest.

Does that mean you've solved all the problems? No, but what it does mean is: you're not letting the problems get inside you, and wreck your life; so when people look at you, they say: “there's one thing I don't want to be in the world, is like you. You're miserable, sad, angry, depressed - and you're a Christian! I don't think I want this Jesus you're talking about”.

This is the problem. This is why Christ is misrepresented so much, because we haven't learnt to come to the place that the rest of faith brings, and learned to relax and enjoy the journey.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank You, You're teaching us, helping us. Lord, You're speaking to our hearts and minds today.

I wonder is anyone here, who's never made the decision to receive Jesus? Today would be a great day to start, make that decision to connect with God, connect through Jesus Christ.

Jesus said: to all who received Him, and believed on Him, He gave power to become something, a child of God.

It wasn't power to do something; but power to become something. Power - the right and privilege to be a child of God.

How many felt challenged about this whole issue of Rest in your personal life? You've realised there's many turmoils, and you don't stay at rest very long. Perhaps you like to be at rest in a meeting like this, for an hour or two on Sunday, but the rest of the week it's not quite like that. You felt God just speak to you - to just start to develop and cultivate your intimacy, your faith, your trust in Him.

It's a word that God wants us to get a hold of in our hearts. It doesn't mean we're not busy for God; it means that in the busyness - we're at rest. We're at rest from strife, fear, anxiety, trouble.

Father, I just pray that Lord, as we've looked at these keys, that we will come to experience the reality of being at peace, and being at rest in Jesus' mighty name.

Why don't you just pray for someone next to you, that they'll experience the blessings of that. You might even have prophetic word, to encourage them and bless them in their journey. God bless you. Have a great week everyone.

Prelude: Report from Asia Trip (first 18 mins of Audio)

[Pastor Mike] We had amazing testimonies of people getting breakthroughs, of things that had gone back over years in their life: people that had been adopted, people that had been sexually abused, people that had had traumas in their life - amazing encounters with the Lord.

We had people out-to-it on the ground, just under the power of God, for long periods of time; and last night was incredibly touching.

In that particular church, we had an altar call I hadn't done before, but the girl gave a testimony, and she'd been really had a hard time at home, rejected by family, rejected by her father, and struggled with relationships.

She got into same sex relationships during her teen years, brought a lot of shame around her life, and she stood up and courageously testified how, in the last time we were up there, she'd come to the Lord.

She'd been set free, and had come to just a clean life, now walking with the Lord, and it took a lot of courage to share a testimony like that.

I felt the Lord say He wanted to heal her, and that He wanted to touch others as well; so I got her up after we were introduced, and thanked her for her courage in sharing so personally, and just honoured her for being so courageous.

We just prayed for her, and the Holy Ghost just came on her, she had a massive release in her life - it was extraordinary, and was out to it for quite a long time.

Because she'd been so courageous, I just felt to reach out to anyone else who was involved in same-sex relationships, had these affections, had issues of brokenness, that had resulted in that kind of trouble. I think we were staggered.

You can't believe the difficulty for Asians to come out in the open about this, and yet there was such an atmosphere of love, that they just streamed to the front.

We had people from wall to wall. Then the presence of God came on them - even before we even started to pray for them; and just a spirit of love, and they began to break and weep and weep and weep.

A lot of women, some guys; and some of them had been abused, homosexual abuse or lesbian abuse; some had just entered these relationships; and God just amazingly set people free.

It was just a powerful, powerful time, and I haven't been in a meeting like that before, where it was such an intense love of God, that enabled people to be so open about what they were struggling with in their heart.

So we had just amazing numbers of people set free, and those kinds of meetings were happening every day. Every night we were there doing evangelistic meetings; so we had hundreds come to the Lord, and multiple hundreds come up in altar calls for ministry. It was just amazing.

We had others there that we'd ministered. Everyone we went to, we'd known for a long time, and the fruit is all starting to manifest in their life in quite an amazing way.

One guy there I've worked with, some of the prophetic words I've had over his life, it's just unraveling now; and he's in enormous favor, financially doors opening into China. His churches are growing and expanding, multiple churches since we've prophesied over him, and he's just taken the prophetic word and worked with it. God has particularly enlarged that, and so again we have extremely accurate prophetic words over him.

Then we went up into Singapore, to a range of other churches we've worked with. We worked with one, the very first church I went to, at the beginning, in about 1990 - my first church in Asia I went to. We've come back to revisit them this last year and a half too, because they need a whole number of things.

They need reviving in the things of the spirit, which has been happening; and they also need a total fresh leadership change in direction, which is similar to what we're experiencing here.

So we were able to help them in a whole number of ways, and work with them, and just amazing presence of God just coming. It was just - the thing that surprised me this time, was how easy everything was. There was no effort, no struggle, no difficulty in getting breakthroughs in every meeting; and on the last night, with the worship team, in that particular church - we had like an open heaven, and people came into encounters. They were just lying on the ground, out-to-it on the ground - a whole number of them had experiences with God.

We're seeing more and more and more of that, and in that particular time I had, as I was leading them - normally you can't sort of get involved yourself, when you're trying to lead the meeting.

But this time I felt the Lord say: “just step in”; and so I began to step in too; and then had the most amazing encounter - the moment I just stepped into where we were leading everyone, I just had an encounter.

We had two miscarriages, many years ago; and I met with both of the grown-up children; I just saw them straight away, and knew them; and they began to talk to me. Then Jesus spoke with me for a little, and He began to just lay out some things He wants me to focus on and do, in the coming season in our life. So it was quite an extraordinary time, so I saw two of the children we'd miscarried at the age they would now be, identifiable...

[Joy] …in their thirties...

[Pastor Mike] ...I could see them quite clearly, all the details about them; and it was interesting just to connect - I've never had an experience like that.

Three of our children have, but I've never had it, so it was quite interesting. We also met a grandchild that we'd lost through miscarriage - and he recognized me as well.

Also I met with Jesus carrying our latest grandchild that was miscarried, and so we had quite - I had an interesting time in the spirit, just as an overflow of what everyone else was getting.

It was the very last meeting, the very last night before we quit and went home, so it was quite a touch of God at that time.

[Joy] It was interesting. Even the very first meeting, even without praying for anybody, people were lying on the floor being delivered, just coughing up spirits, furiously coughing up and nobody had even touched them.

We went to 3 churches in Singapore, had known all of them for about 20 years, but all had different needs. The second guy had come out of a Brethren background; and enjoyed very strong community penetration, awesome church, done great things. But they'd also kind of gone a little back into their Brethren ways, and forgot that they need to lean into the Holy Ghost more, and it suddenly dawned on them that actually yeah, we need to be also fortified and strengthened, into not trusting in our own efforts, but into leaning into God, so that was a great connection.

Then we went to a family camp in Malacca. Again it's church events for a major transition. It was good for us to see it. They hadn't had a camp for three years, because they had a radical change, lost a lot of people, but radically changed, and now there's new life there, new vision, new direction.

The whole place is quite different, and poised for a whole new season. I thought it was amazing. One lady just had strong prophetic word over the church, spent quite a long time just prophesying; and when the pastor stood up the next day, it was like you were in their board meeting. All their big dreams and visions, were all kind of spelled out, and your prophetic word over the church.

It was very helpful for them. They got trained and equipped in how to move in the spirit. They got delivered. They got a bit of everything actually, six sessions over two days, but it was a great re-launching of that church into their next season ahead, and it was great to be part of it.

[Pastor Mike] So thank you for all your prayers, been outstanding. We just honour the Lord for what He's done. It's fantastic, but let's give the Lord a clap, just thank the Lord, thank You Jesus for all You do, we can never out give You.

Praise the Lord, but we live here so here's the place to build. Amen. I love what God's doing in all the nations of the earth, but there's nothing like our nation here. We need to keep believing God and stretching for lives and souls to be changed and touched. Isn't that right? Amen to that.

There are some great things God is doing. I got a connection with the man who took me over to Asia, and I was interested to find out what he'd been doing…

He's in his seventies now, and he said: working up in Ethiopia. We've got a whole move of God taking place in Ethiopia, massive persecution, but there's also a massive work of God.

I said: when you say massive? He said: oh yeah, there are just miracles, like the New Testament. They walk in, and they just line up in queues for hours to come, and they just get New Testament miracles.

I said: so what's your role in there? He said: oh well, we're equipping the house groups, because the church is multiplying through houses there, all over the nation.

I said: define multiply. He said: well I've got about 240,000 groups (laughter) that we're working with.

He said: that's just in that nation. We're also working in other nations, so I thought: oh man! Just when I thought I was going well, and a 74 year old man revs me up, so I thought it was great.

Praise the Lord - so if you're 74, you've still got something to do in God, isn't that right? If you're 84, you've still got something to do.

Actually there's no such thing as passing a baton on to someone else. All that you really do is, you just change your season; and I believe that if you're walking with God, you've got a baton - well you hang onto that thing, and you pass it over when you die. There it goes… but what you do on the way changes; and so there are seasons in life, all of us are going to have our seasons.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Psalm 23:1-2 “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down”

· David expresses his personal relationship with God – Shepherd, personal friend.

· David outlines in Psalm 23 the friend of this relationship – the outcome of faith.

· “He makes me lie down” = picture of sheep resting with legs folded in sheepfold (Ezekiel 34:14)

· What is he resting from?

•Stress •Anxiety •Fear •Pressure •Danger •Striving •Self effort

•This is the rest of faith! – a friend and outcome of relationship.

2. Kingdom Life is about Rest not Works

Romans 14:17 The Kingdom of Heaven is not about eating and drinking (law keeping) but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

· Peace is an evidence that the inner life is at rest from striving, struggling.

· Peace is a gift that God imparts to us when we learn to trust (John 14:27).

· Anything that disturbs our inner peace is a signal something is wrong.

· Colossians 3:15 “ Let the peace of God rule in your hearts….”

· Rule = NT1018 = to attribute, act as an umpire, rule, prevail.

· Hebrews 4:10 “He who has entered his rest has himself ceased from his works as God did from His.”

(a) Cease from Works = Cease from Struggling

· OT laws – full of works to be done to earn blessing, often forever.

· Reliance on own efforts and strength results in striving and struggling.

· This leads to cycles of defeat, frustration, trying ‘to be good enough’.

· People lean towards self effort, ‘keys to success’ instead of faith.

· Books/resources abound in keys to success – works to do!

(b) Repentance from Dead Works is Foundation in Christ

Hebrews 6:12 Repentance from dead works and faith towards God.

Dead Works Faith

-Striving -Rest

-Self Effort -Grace of God

-Reasoning -Revelation

-Anxiety/Pressure -Peace

-Self Centered -God Dependent (Faith)

· Rest comes when overcome inner pressure by faith in God and His Word.

· Enter rest when you believe in your heart what God says and act upon it.

· Enter rest = focus effort on believing not doing.

· Holy Spirit rests on men of peace who have come to rest of faith.2

(c) The Rest of Faith Produces Fruitful Works

Titus 2:14 “…..zealous for good works”.

Titus 3:8 “…..be careful to maintain good works”.

Titus 3:14 “Let our people also learn to maintain good works to meet urgent needs that they may not be unfruitful”.

Hebrews 4:11 “Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest (of faith)”.

Diligent = NT4704 = to make effort, labour, study, haste

= Key issue is where effort lies:

•From contending to get results.

•To contending to believe Gods Word

3. Jesus Invitation to Rest

Matthew 11:28-30 The Kingdom of Heaven is not about eating and drinking (law keeping) but

(a) The Invitation to All

· “All who labour and are heavy laden".

Labor = NT2872 = to feel fatigue, wearied, work heavy, troubled.

Heavy Laden = NT5412 = to load up an animal, overburden, heavy cargo.

· Invitation is to all in turmoil in their souls to find rest.

Turmoil of duties, have to’s, laws, anxiety, stress, pressure, intentions.

(b) “Come to Me”

· This is the first of three decisions you need to make – rest is the outcome.

· Connection to a person not a principle – rest is in the person of Jesus.

· Peace/rest is a gift from Him – if it is a gift then it is not a work.

· Centre your focus on Jesus not on storms or pressure of life.

Eg Matthew 14:28-31 Peter walking on water.

While he maintained focus on Jesus not the storm he walked on water.

(c) “Take My Yoke on You”

· “Yoke” = teaching and lifestyle of a Rabbi.

· “Take Yoke” = to become a disciple/follower of Jesus and His lifestyle.

· Jesus was surrounded by turmoil, agendas, hostility, malice but walked in inner peace.

· Jesus rested by listening to directions of the Holy Spirit (John 5:19) and refused the pressures, expectations others placed upon Him.

· Loss of peace = signal to evaluate what is happening and yield to obedience.

(d) “Lean on Me”

· This means to receive instruction in the same way, same attitude – meekness and humility, disciples did from Master.

· A process of interaction, questions, enquiries listen to response.

· A process of gaining insight, wisdom through direct interaction.

· Slow down – stop reading – ask Holy Spirit questions – listen and obey.

Results: “Find rest for souls”.

The Rest of Faith (2 of 4)

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Jesus said: If you're stressed out, come to Me. The answer is a person, your connection with a person, connecting with Him and learning.

Technology doesn't solve problems, because the problems we really face, the core of them, are found in the heart; and in our walk with God.

The reason He can teach you how to do life, is because He has an attitude of meekness, humility; and He gave an example of how to do life.

Matthew 11, the Rest that Faith Brings. We started off looking in Matthew 11:28…

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden”.

Doesn't that sound like a lot of people you know? Burdened, troubled, anxious, uptight, stressed out?

Isn't it amazing, that with all the gadgets we've got now - all the computers and texting and emails and Facebook, that life has become more stressful than ever?

The things that people hoped to have achieved with all of that don't seem to happen. You may have 2000 friends on Facebook, but you're still sitting there lonely, because there's no one really to talk to face to face.

Technology doesn't solve problems, because the problems we really face, the core of them, are found in the heart; and in our walk with God.

Jesus said: if you're stressed out, come to Me. He didn't say: this is the solution, step one through three, how to get out of problems. He said: the answer is a person, your connection with a person, and connecting with Him and learning.

“Come to Me” - let your heart and attention come back on Me; then: “Let Me teach you”.

Let Me teach you: how to handle life, how to do life. He explains that the reason He can teach you how to do life, is because: He has an attitude of meekness; an attitude of humility.

He gave an example of how to do life: He faced opposition; accusations, betrayal, offences, people rejecting Him, being misunderstood - and He never lost the plot one time - not once.

Even when He was rejected, and the disciples said: I've got a good idea Lord, let's call fire down on that town! You probably would have, wouldn't you, if they just rejected you? Yeah, fire! Then you'd have found a verse in the Old Testament to justify it I'm sure.

Nevertheless, Jesus said: “you don't know what spirit you're of”. He didn't treat people that way; He always showed love and kindness and graciousness.

Jesus invites us to a lifestyle of learning how to handle life, how to handle the stresses of life; teenagers, youngsters, financial pressures, pressures everywhere.

The key to this is: intimacy with the Holy Spirit.

Its something you've got to do; but notice again: the key is a person. The answer lies in a person; and how you engage with a person in the Holy Spirit.

Galatians 5:22 says: “the fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace”.

That word 'peace' means: rest; or prosperity - to be in a place of settlement in your heart. It means to be joined or connected to God.

He tells us that's a fruit of the spirit. A fruit of the spirit is not something you work to do. It appears on the tree, when the life of the spirit is flowing - so peace in your life is an overflow of your connection with God.

There are some things can stop the Holy Ghost working in your life. In Judges 16:20, it says of Samson - he was in a deep sleep, because he was involved with Delilah in sin, and sexual sin.

It said: he'd gone to sleep on her knee, and was under the influence of a spirit. He'd gone into a place of slumber; and she cut his hair. He got the most expensive haircut in history.

Then it says: she woke him up and said “the Philistines are here”; and he jumped up, shook himself, expecting to feel the power of God flowing in his life - and he felt nothing.

These are sad words: He didn't realise the Holy Spirit had left him. He wasn't aware the anointing had lifted off him. He wasn't aware the Holy Spirit was no longer available to empower his life anymore.

He had grieved the spirit of God, over a period of time, so much, that now there was no empowerment of the Holy Spirit acting in his life.

God tells us: He would never take His spirit from us. He said: “I'm always with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you”.

The spirit of God remains joined to our spirit; but that does not mean that the tangible power, and presence, and activity of the spirit, is available to you.

It's always available; but we can cause a grieving and withdrawing of the Holy Spirit, and then when that happens, like Samson, you end up losing vision; you end up in chains, in a daily grind.

Most people wouldn't think of ‘losing their eyes’, and they wouldn't think of ‘being in bondage’; but daily grind… that rings a bell doesn't it? The daily grind!

Our life is to be full of joy. Not all the time - there'll be some difficult times.

Jesus promises His kingdom, His righteousness, right relationship with God, then the outcome of that - peace, and then joy in the Holy Ghost! Wonderful joy in the Holy Ghost!

You wouldn't think that many Christians have got much joy in the Holy Ghost. If you've got joy in the Holy Ghost, you laugh a lot more, and you stop frowning as much.

Remember, joy in the Holy Ghost is not something you do; it's actually something that turns up. It's a person!

Joy in the Holy Ghost; through the spirit of: love, joy, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. It's a joy He brings, as He is allowed to work in your life.

The peace is a peace He brings, as He is allowed to work in your life; so these things are fruits on the tree. So what fruits are showing up in your life?

Are you stressed out, pressured, uptight, anxious; wondering how you're going to make the next deadline?

Are you serious; or have you allowed the Holy Spirit to work in you? We need the Holy Ghost! You can't do life without the Holy Ghost.

Jesus didn't say: God so loved the world, He gave a book… He gave a person! Who wrote the book.

So you need the book; but you need the person - the spirit of God working in your life; and so it's possible for us to lose that flow of the Holy Spirit.

John 1:33 – “Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, that's the one who baptises in the Holy Spirit”.

The Holy Ghost descended on Jesus like a dove- a turtle dove.

A dove is symbolic of Peace. Where did they get that from? It's from the Bible, that the dove is a symbol of peace.

The interesting thing about turtle doves is: they’re a bit wary of humans. Now a pigeon - they're not wary, they'll just come - they just want food!

A turtle dove is not territorial. In other words, it's got no ownership, or anything like that; whereas pigeons are very territorial. Turtle doves won't fight and contend; whereas pigeons will fight one another and contend.

Pigeons will mate with anyone; but turtle doves mate one person, for all their life. It's no wonder they said the turtle dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

He came on Jesus, and remained on Jesus. There was no: one day the Holy Ghost's there; another day He's not. There was no lifting of anointing off Jesus.

The Holy Spirit remained on Him, because His life was perfectly aligned with the Holy Spirit. The ‘resting of the spirit’ was because Jesus' life was aligned.

Ephesians 4:28, and He's talking about how to live out the Christian life. It gets really practical…

“Let Him that stole, steal no more. Let him labour, working with his hands, doing that which is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need”.

When does a thief stop being a thief? When he stops stealing? No, when he starts working and giving.

It says: “Don't let any corrupt words proceed out of your mouth; but what is good for edification, that it impart grace to the hearers” - this is all once sentence.

He's talking about your language. That's the way we talk about one another; and to one another.

It says: don't let any corrupt talk come out of your mouth; but rather talk that will build up, and release grace.

Now grace will flow to you. Grace is God's power flowing. It's an enablement; so here's a question for you:

How much, after you're interacted with people, have they become empowered and graced and lifted up?

Then it says: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption”.

So it's very clear that we can grieve; that word grieve means: to cause distress; to cause sorrow; to hurt the Holy Spirit's feelings. Some of you may not have thought of the Holy Spirit as a person, but the Holy Spirit is incredibly sensitive.

One of the things about being sensitive is: it works two ways; so the Holy Spirit is very sensitive to you. He's sensitive to your needs; to everything that's happening in your life. He is sensitive to your feelings - but the other side of the coin is: He's also sensitive to how you treat Him.

Now a lot of people don't even consider the Holy Spirit, and His work in their life, very much. It's Father, Son, and Spirit of God - the Holy Spirit. He has been given to you, to be a friend and a comforter to you. When you're in distress, He is willing to comfort you, but you've got to turn to Him.

It says: “don't grieve the Holy Spirit”; and the first evidence that grieving of the Holy Spirit has taken place, is: how we talk to, and about, one another.

That's the first evidence. You only have to listen to your mouth - you can tell when you're grieving the Holy Spirit - it doesn't take long.

Some of you may have been in a conversation with someone, and while they were talking, you actually felt quite grieved in your heart, as they spoke. That's the Holy Spirit, bearing witness to your spirit: this is not right. You shouldn’t be here listening to this stuff - we should stop this stuff being spoken about.

Don't grieve the Holy Spirit. He says: let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

He said: there's some things you've got to make sure you deal with, because if you don't deal with them, you'll consistently grieve the Holy Spirit; and then find you lose vision, you can't see where you should be going, and you become into bondage to certain things. The life that you're living is a grind rather than a joy.

For many people, the first evidence that something's not right is: your life has become a grind. If your life is a grind, then there's something missing in your connection with the Holy Spirit. There's something going on in your heart needs to be addressed.

The second way that you would recognise something's not right is: the loss of peace. You may not be aware that the Holy Spirit's drawing back, and being grieved; but the loss of peace (meaning: you're agitated, internally distressed, or not at rest), is the indicator - the Holy Spirit is drawing back, and warning you something's not right.

The most common indication anyone has, that the Holy Spirit is struggling with your life and your behaviours, and that He is wanting to get your attention is: you feel the loss of peace. Loss of peace is #1.

Colossians 3:15 – “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts”. When we lack peace in our heart (some may never have had peace of course), but peace is God's gift: to be at rest in the midst of life, to be in a place of calmness. When all else is falling away and panicking, you're centred on the Lord, and know that even if you don't have the answers, He does.

Notice here the list of things it says, one after the other: bitterness; wrath (that's rage; raging anger); anger; clamor (loud speaking or yelling), loud quarrelling; evil speaking be put away with malice.

Malice means you hope someone really gets theirs. You're looking for a chance to pay them back. These are all heart issues.

Now here's the pattern - it's normally: a person gets hurt, they get angry. They don't deal with the anger.

The hurt, you can't do much about; life deals stuff up that hurts us. That's life - get used to it.

But when you get hurt, then the normal thing is to feel angry - and I've got to do something with the anger, because if I don't, I'll soon feel a growing, smouldering resentment towards people; and that can go deeper down in the heart, until it forms bitterness.

Once bitterness is rooted in your heart, then there's malice and ill-will; and before you know it, you erupt at the least things. This is what people do!

I had someone do that the other day - they just stood in front of me: face red, going for it. I tried to appeal to them, and talk to them.

What they were talking about, I had nothing to do with, but it didn't make any difference. They had built up this reservoir of anger, and I was the one it was directed to, and I was going to get it.

The person responsible came up, and said: excuse me, it was actually - it's what I did; and they just... It was me they were out to kill!

And I say ‘kill’, because whenever you've got wrath, you'll have the spirit of murder with it; and it ministers to you something that'll steal your life away - it's a horrendous spirit. If you get this spirit of anger, it brings with it a spirit of murder. It takes away life.

Cain was angry at his brother, and he ended up killing him. So you may not physically murder people, but there's lots of ways we can murder people, lots of ways.

Notice there, it starts off with people getting hurt; so here's the question I ask you: why are you so angry?

Ephesians 4:26 says: it’s okay to get angry. It's okay to get angry, because God gets angry. ‘Angry’ is just an emotion. Anger's a signal that something's not right going on inside. We want to know what the message is, so anger is just a signal.

It says: it's okay to be angry, but don't sin, and don't let the sun go down on your anger.

So here's the deal; you can get angry. Now that's quite a release, because actually all of us get angry - you see a person that’s so sweet and nice - they'd never get angry. Don't you worry, they get angry! They've just learned habits of burying the anger – a smoldering, seething, rage inside.

It's just part of what happens, when something happens in our life, and we lose something. So it says: be angry, but don't sin with your anger.

Deal with your anger properly; and thirdly, here's the timeframe to deal with it: one day. Before the sun's gone down, deal with it. Sort it out, and get rid of it.

If you've had something that upset you yesterday, and you're still sitting on it today - you are now sinning.

It doesn't matter whether they were right or wrong; if you've held your anger overnight, you've kept your anger. You've laid there, just lying awake stewing about it, wake up stewing about this thing; and you know what you should have done was, before you went to bed, sorted it out.

“Let not the sun go down on your anger” – so about sundown, you should have addressed your anger. You should have addressed the issue that caused you to get so angry and upset.

Now I want to just talk briefly on that, and just give you some ways to approach it that will be helpful, because remember: this is what grieves the Holy Spirit.

If you don't deal with anger, it leads to all the other things: quarrelling, bitterness, resentments, judgements, all kinds of stuff comes out of just not dealing with anger properly.

We tend to get angry, when we don't get what we want.

I always want to get to church time. Today I didn't get to church on time; but I laughed, because I saw exactly what God was up to. It was a choice how to handle anger; very simply, just deal with it; before you get to church. Especially if you want to keep the Holy Ghost on you, keep the joy.

I could have gone all the way to church: mutter-mutter, you know - I could have done that; then you arrive and its all (smiles): hello, praise the Lord you know?

It's what a lot of people do. They're furious all the way to church, then: “hello brother”. “Bless you brother”, and “praise the Lord”. That's very religious. It looks good, but no Holy Ghost there, because the moment they get out down the driveway - they're going again!

Anger comes when you: don't get what you want; or what you feel you're entitled to.

When we feel: our rights have been overlooked; or what should come to us, don't come - that's when anger arises. So it's an issue of rights and entitlements.

It's an issue of: something we expected to happen, didn't happen; or something we didn't expect to happen, happened.

So generally, anger means that something, one of your rights, or something of your expectations, was not met; and so the consequence is, you feel someone's robbed you. Someone has robbed you of something that you wanted, and that's why we get angry.

We get angry because we believe something was taken from us. It may well be something was - so you can understand a child, when parents break up - of course they feel angry. They have every right to feel angry. Something's taken away from them, so they feel angry.

You can go through the list of life, all the things that were taken away from you, or you thought were taken away from you, or you felt entitled to and it didn't come, so you get angry.

You think: “you owe me”! That's what happens, when people are angry: you owe me! Well, what do you owe me? You owe me an apology; or you owe me some money - I'm owed.

So you've got to understand that when people feel something that they wanted - a right, a demand, or an entitlement - when that seems to have been taken away, the person gets angry; and inside, they put the person that they're angry at, under a debt: you owe me; I'm owed.

If people don't deal with it, it becomes bitter, and then after a while: everyone owes me! You get with someone who's angry - man oh man, everybody owes them. They're angry, no matter where they go. You cannot reason with them, they're just angry.

In Proverbs, it says: if you hang around with an angry person, it'll do you no good. It says: “don't make friends with an angry person, because you'll learn their ways, and it will snare your soul”.

So anger is a contagious disease of the heart, every bit like bitterness is. Anger is a contagious disease. Why? Because you will hold over people that: you owe me. You'll have demands everywhere, so it starts small and grows, and in the end it becomes a real issue.

When someone's angry, there'll always be an overflow out of their life. They either: internalise it - and then they get depressed and stressed, and maybe get sick, or withdraw or shut down, or have all kinds of issues; or they blow out and let it all go out.

They find some way to vent it, because when a person's angry: I'm owed something, somebody should pay me back; and that turns into ill will, and bitterness, revenge, and all kinds of stuff. That's why people get stuck on revenge.

Utu (revenge) - I want payback, and if you can't give it to me, well I'm going to punish you in a way, that you will be sorry you ever did this to me. That's what movies are full of, that's what life is full of; so we've got to have a simple way of dealing with it.

How do we deal with it? Jesus said: it's okay to feel angry when things go wrong - just handle it. Handle it, so you don't end up grieving the Holy Spirit.

Is the Holy Spirit upset by you being angry? Not at all! He's not upset by you being angry at all.

What He's upset at is: you’re failing to deal with it; and then having a demand: that I'm owed. That demand, literally leads to a pressure put on everyone around you, because of your anger.

So here are some simple things you can do. It's a process, and it involves the Holy Spirit, because without Him, you don't get free of your anger; because many times, the thing that triggered your anger to explode, was not necessarily the thing you were so angry at.

You've heard of people, and they're nice all day at work, and they come home, and then the cat just gets in the way, next thing you know - the cat is getting it. There's a download of anger, and kicking the cat and whatever; and you think: whoa! Poor cat just walked in front of your path, and actually just got in the way as you were coming through the door - and yet the cat gets it all.

What the cat has got is: the overflow, of all the anger the person's built up all through the day - having to cope with stuff, but not really dealing with their anger - so it just flies out, and the cat gets it, or the kids get it, or the wife gets it, or someone gets it.

Why? Because I'm owed; and if I don't address it directly, where it needs to be addressed, it'll find a way out.

It'll be you, because: you remind me of someone who did. That's why people tend to marry someone who's very like the unresolved issues they've come from in their family… and they love them; and then they get angry at them.

1) You need to identify: who am I angry at. Now that may not be easy - you may need the Holy Spirit to help you; because you think: I'm angry at this person; but actually it's much deeper than that.

Ask the Holy Spirit to show you: who am I angry with? If I don't address where the anger came from, I can't solve it, so I need to address that.

Who's the source? You could ask these kinds of questions: who do I hope I never see again? Tick that name - you're angry there, okay!

Another one you could ask: who do I want to pay back?

Who, when they fail and fall over - I'm glad? That shows you've got buried anger underneath there, need to deal with it. Who is it you secretly hope will fail, and when they do, you're very happy?

You'd be surprised in the Kiwi culture, there's so much rejection that breeds anger - they just love to see someone 'tall poppy' fail and fall.

It's just unresolved stuff. We've to go face it: who are you angry at.

2) What do they owe you? What is it you're angry about? What do they owe you?

You can't be general, it must be specific. There's something you've lost; something you want; something you're entitled to.

What was taken from you, that you really are upset about? What right was violated?

What does this person owe you, or what did they take? They took away my happiness. I was entitled to have a happy family, and they took it all away.

Just think about it: what do they need to do, to put it right?

Here's the problem you'll find: a lot of situations in life, there's nothing the person could do, that's enough to put it right.

You think: if father commits adultery, betrays his family, breaks up the marriage, and the whole family goes into disaster zone - how could he put that right?

There's almost nothing he can do that could fix it; but there's something you can do, to walk free of it.

What he could do, would be to: acknowledge the pain; acknowledge the hurt; take responsibility; express apology - but that often never happens.

So people are left in the thing: you owe me. Now, they may never ever come to the place of ever wanting to put it right, so what do you do if someone doesn't want to put it right?

You've still got to face dealing with the anger you have in your own heart, otherwise it grieves the Holy Spirit, and wrecks you.

Why would you let your life be controlled by someone else, and what they did or didn't do? That's the question, so we can simply solve that.

We ask the question: who am I angry at; what am I angry about; what is it they've taken from me?

3) Just grieve the loss. Just grieve that there is a real loss. I think emotions are fine. You just need to cry them out, express them out. If people try to forgive before they've grieved, they never forgive from the heart.

Ephesians 4: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you”.

So that makes it real clear: the path through, is to let the debt go.

So who are you mad at? Why are you mad? What did they take? What's the right that was violated, or entitlement you didn't get? Now grieve over the loss, if you need to grieve over the loss, and get rid of the emotions. T

hen it's important to actually then let it go. Let it go! I forgive, I release! You've got to make a decision: to let it go.

Let it go! It's killing you. You'll grow old and ugly early. Think of all the old people you've met, that look ugly, because the bitterness on their face, because of stuff they've sat on for years. You don't have to talk with them long and… out they go.

You think: what did I just do - I pushed a button, something went off. That's not the beauty of Jesus! You just think: what a bitter old biddy!

It's not right! We need to deal with this sort of stuff, so we need to make a decision: I will release it, and let it go. I've made judgements about all kinds of people; I will renounce them and let them go. I will forgive; and here's why I forgive: because God in Christ forgave me.

I'm a forgiven person, and forgiveness is what I live out. I live in grace. I choose to live in grace. He's called: the spirit of grace; so if your rights have been violated, and you're very, very angry, there is a spirit of grace to empower you - to handle the loss, and to release the people; even as God did for you.

It's not so hard is it - except when you have to do it!

Some people just don't want to let go. I DON'T WANT TO LET GO! I won't let go. You see, something was taken, and you owe me. Well, they may never give it back; so what you've got to do is make the decision: I'm going to let it go.

Here's the last thing, because I've found just letting it go, you find the next day you pick it up again. How many have found the next day you're angry again, because there you are - they did that same thing that so annoys you? Your frown-face puckers up again, and before you know it, the fire's all burning again.

How can we live out a powerful life, if we don't handle this disease of the heart - anger?

So I found one of the last things, a great help is: to hold the person in your heart and prayer, and pray blessing on them. Pray blessing on them.

Jesus told us to: “bless those who curse us, pray for those who despitefully use us”. So maybe this person has despitefully used you, and continues to do so.

If they continue to do so, then you do need to have a confrontational experience; but not if you've got anger in you.

Don't even think of trying to work anything out, until you've dealt with your own anger; because you'll hide your anger and try: we need to come and have a talk. You come to have a talk, next minute [grrr] and it's all out there, and now it's even worse; so don't even think to try and put anything right with anyone, until you've resolved what's in your own heart first.

Jesus wants us, no matter what anyone else does in life, to be able to walk in joy and peace and rest.

Now maybe others don't get to put things right, they keep still doing goofy sort of stuff - it's appropriate to set boundaries at times, and it's appropriate to confront it at times; but the biggest thing to do, is to learn to let things go to the Lord's hands, and to let your own heart be changed with the experience.

Come into the revelation of what's called grace, and come there by peace.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank You for this day. We thank You Lord for the spirit of grace that's on our life.

We thank You Lord, we in no way want to grieve You, and quench the operation of Your presence in our life.

We ask Lord for great grace; that you’d bring a revelation to the hearts of people.

If you don't know Jesus; this would be a great day to give your life to Jesus, a great day to open your heart to God, and to come to know Him as your friend.

Jesus died on the cross to make this possible, but it requires a decision and a choice, to recognise this offer He's made, and receive Him.

Others, as I've shared, you think: boy, He must be listening to my conversations. No, I wasn't, but I was listening to the Holy Ghost last night as I went to sleep, and He started to talk to me about this.

We want to enjoy Him in our lives, and manifest His fruit in our lives. That means we need to see the things that disturb Him.

Holding on to my rights, entitlements, putting demands on people, it grieves Him, and it leaves me angry.

If I can just let go and say: God my life is in Your hands.

Jesus said: learn in Me, let Me teach you, for I am meek.

That word meek - it's the opposite of being angry. It means: my strength is managed, and I don't rise up when my rights are violated. I've learned how to manage my inner life. It's a great strength, great strength.

If I'm angry, how is it showing up in my life? Where does it come from? Who am I angry at? What was taken? What do I think I was owed, that's taken from me; and am I willing to just find God's grace in this, and release grace to that person?

Grace or judgement, which will I walk?

I pray that God will empower you and help you, minister to you deeply in this area; and bring you to a place where quickly you're able to sort through feelings of anger, bitterness, things that come that disturb us about the behaviours of others, and how we're treated; and that you would walk in great grace and rest in your heart. Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus invitation and promises “I will give you rest” “You shall find rest for your souls”

· So many people today are in turmoil – anxiety, stress, anger, fear, striving

· Jesus invites us into a lifestyle of learning how to handle life – have rest in our soul.

2. Intimacy with the Holy Spirit is the Key to Rest

Galatians 5:22 “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…..”

· The activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to produce the fruit of peace.

Peace = NT1515 = to join, rest, prosperity, quietness, set at one again.

(a) Example of Samson

Judges 16:20 “He did not know that the Lord had departed from him.”

· Over a period of time Samson continued to grieve the Holy Spirit.

· He felt nothing when the anointing lifted from him but the impact was devastating.

· The consequence of the Holy Spirit being grieved was that he lost his strength to prevail in life.

· The result: loss of vision – bondage to his enemies – daily grinding in slavery.

(b) Example of Jesus

John 1:33 “….. upon Him whom you see the spirit descending and remaining on

Him, the same is He that baptizes in the Spirit.”

· The Holy Spirit remained on Jesus empowering Him each day to live in victory.

· The Holy Spirit is gentle and sensitive:

(1) Sensitive to the needs and emotions of others

(2) Capacity to be hurt and grieved.

· The Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove – symbol of peace.

· Turtle doves are very sensitive animals – symbol of the Holy Spirit: Dove not Pigeon. E.g. Never fight, don’t like noise, can’t be trained, mate for life, not territorial, afraid of people.

· The Holy Spirit felt at home on Jesus – values and lives in agreement.

3. Don’t Grieve the Holy Spirit

Ephesians 4:29-32 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed…..”

· The Holy Spirit is sensitive, has feelings and can be hurt and quenched.

· Grieve = NT3706 = To distress, to make sorry, cause grief and pain.

· Grieving the Spirit occurs when our attitudes and actions hinder Him flowing.

· When He’s not grieved we experience the fruit of His presence within us.

(a) What grieves the Spirit?

Ephesians 4:31 “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice”

· Holy Spirit is grieved and withdraws presence when we are filled with bitterness, hold grudges, refuse to forgive and allow sin and uncleanness in our lives.

· The lack of peace (rest) is an indication that something is wrong (Colossians 3:15).

· Each of the sins mentioned is a response to failing to address the pain and hurts that arise in relationships.

· Hurt = anger = resentment = bitterness = malice = evil speaking.

.

(b) Why Are You Angry?

Ephesians 4:26 “ Be angry but sin not, neither let the sun go sown upon your anger.

· It is ok to have feelings of anger but must manage them or it becomes a disease of the heart and grieves the Holy Spirit.

· Angry – we get angry when we don’t get what we want or think we deserve.

- when we feel our rights or entitlements have been taken away.

· Anger – Somebody takes something, somebody owes me!, Payback!!

· When there is anger in the heart it will always find a way of expressing .

Internalise Anger – person suffers depression, sadness, apathy, withdrawn.

Extending Anger – tend to want payback, revenge, explode, tend to talk to others to justify feelings and causes.

· Anger is a contagious heart disease that is destructive – become angry with all.

Proverbs 22:24 “Make no friendship with an angry man and with a furious man you shall not go lest you learn his ways and set a snare to your soul.”

4. Dealing With Your Anger

Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”

· There is the remedy! But how to apply it?

(1) Identify who you are angry with

· Need to address the source of anger.

· Who do we hope we never see again?

· Who do we hope to payback?

· Who do we hope will severely fail?

(2) Determine what they owe you!

· Cannot be general, must be specific.

· What do you want, feel entitled to?

· What did they take?

· Until you know what’s lost you’re unable to relax

- What does this person owe you?

- What did they take?

- What do they need to do to put the matter right?

(3) Grieve the loss.

· You cannot just override feelings.

· How do you feel about the loss?

· Express grief constructively.

· Acknowledge the feelings that you have harbored in your heart.

(4) Cancel the debt, forgive.

Ephesians 4:32 “……., forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”

· Jesus endured the pain and forgave, He released us from all debt.

· Make a decision – speak it out, release them from the debt.

· Have you made any bitter judgments?

· Renounce and cancel the judgments.

· Ask the Holy Spirit to forgive you fro holding wrong attitudes and for grieving Him.

(5) Pray for the person to be blessed.

John 2:14 “We know we have passed from death to life when we love.”

Matthew 5:44 “Love your enemies……pray.”

· You are not free until your heart is free.

· Picture the person as you pray and release blessing over them.

· Jesus said “Come to Me and I will give you rest”.

The Rest of Faith (3 of 4)

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Stress and pressure are part of our life, and Jesus has given some clear things about how we can deal with it.

When you're stressed out, anxious and uptight you don't live your best; you struggle in your relationships; there's overflow in your health.

God doesn't intend us to live that way. Let's have a look what Jesus said…

Matthew 11. How many people get stressed out easily?

Bill's the honest one. He's stressed out all the time you know!

People come with all these things they want, and stress and pressure are part of our life. Jesus has given some clear things about how we can deal with it.

When you're stressed out, anxious and uptight, you don't live your best; you struggle in your relationships; and there's overflow in your health.

Things are not good when you're living like that. God doesn't intend us to live that way. Let's have a look what Jesus said…

Matthew 11: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you Rest”.

It doesn't mean lie down and do nothing. The kingdom of God's always about work; but He's talking about an internal rest, an internal peace.

Although there are challenges and difficulties, there's peace inside. Many people don't have any peace, they're struggling, tormented, troubled; no peace. The challenge that people have is: how to find that peace.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace. He said: come to Me, I'll bring a peace into your heart; but there's a way that that happens, and we're exploring the way that that happens.

That rest is a gift to you, something God gives to you; and when it's operating in your life, you remain at peace. You're actually in the middle of the storm, but calm inside.

He says: it's something that you will find. Therefore, there's a path of discovery to ‘find’, and then ‘receive’, the rest that God gives. It's a lifelong journey, learning how to come to rest - when you and I face pressures and struggles and difficulties daily and regularly.

In Exodus 33:14, God is speaking to Moses, and He said: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest”. It’s the same words: I'll give you rest; but the rest is connected with the tangible presence of God.

When He said “My presence will go with you”, He was referring to a visible cloud of glory - on the tabernacle at day, and like a flame of fire at night.

You and I have something better than that! We have the Holy Spirit come to live within us - the same spirit that manifested in a cloud of glory, comes to live inside you.

Once He lived in a tangible way, over the congregation; now He comes to live inside us.

My presence will give you rest. My presence will be with you, I will give you rest; and Moses said: if we don't have that, we're not going anywhere. Don't take us anywhere! Don't take us into conflicts and battles, any challenges unless we have your tangible presence.

You should never take for granted God's presence. It's something to be pursued, treasured, and valued. He is to be honoured.

It's easy for us to grieve the spirit that gives us rest. Have you ever thought that you might grieve the Holy Spirit, and limit His work in your life?

One of the tragic things is that, when we grieve the Holy Spirit, and His presence begins to withdraw - He never leaves us, but the expression of His presence can diminish, until you feel: God, where are you?

Here's the tragic thing in the Bible: almost every time the spirit of God draws back, or is grieved - most people don't know it. That's a bit of a scary thought, isn't it? Have you ever though that you could be grieving the spirit of God, who has come to give you rest and empower you - and you didn't even know it?

If you go on like that (didn't even know it), you end up religious; just doing lots of activities, and there's no life flow, no joy, no peace.

The presence of the Holy Spirit brings peace and rest in our heart, and brings joy in our life; so anything that disturbs your peace, anything disturbs your joy, is a cause for alarm bells going off: hello, hello, hello, something's happening! I need to look at what is going on.

The Bible says: “the flesh ‘wars’ against the spirit”. When you are flowing with the Holy Spirit, the fruit is peace, joy within; but when there's something has grieved the Holy Spirit, you're in turmoil, you'll lose the peace, lose the joy - and it's always your flesh fighting against that, in various ways, which you may not recognise.

Let me just give you four examples in the Bible of people who grieved the Holy Spirit, or who lost the presence of God - and didn't know it.

1) Judges 16:20 - “Samson did not know the spirit of God had left him”.

He got very familiar with God's presence around his life; God would come on him, and help him at major times; and he didn't realise the spirit of God had left him. Why, what had happened?

There had been a dulling of his spiritual sensitivity through sexual sin - lust that he allowed to rage in his mind and thoughts. Because of the sexual sin that he was involved in, he gradually became desensitised to the Holy Spirit.

There came a point where the Holy Spirit drew back - grieved; and at that point, if you follow what happened, he goes into terrible bondage, loses vision, loses his whole perspective in life. We see this again repeated in the New Testament.

2) Psalm 95:10. “Israel grieved the Holy Spirit”.

Israel is an example for us. This is a whole congregation of people that grieved the spirit of God: “For 40 years, I was grieved with that generation”.

Look at that: God is grieved with a whole generation; and He said: “It's a people who go astray in their hearts, and don't know My ways”.

God says what caused Him to be aggrieved: they did not learn about Faith.

They'd had years in slavery, and were embittered by the bondage and problems they had. God drew them through a path - to change them and prepare them.

He wanted them to learn Faith, to learn to trust Him to meet their needs. Instead, they complained, constantly!

Complaining grieves the Holy Spirit; yet people do it like it's nothing - complaining about all sorts of things; not realising that when we complain, we are manifesting: we do not trust God.

We are manifesting our unbelief; and without faith, you can't please God. What it cost them was: they lost inheritance. The things that God wanted to give to them, they couldn't enter, because they grieved Him through their unbelief.

3) Luke 2:41, Mary and Joseph. His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of Passover, and when He was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem, according to the custom of the feast. When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem.

Joseph and His mother did not know it; and supposing Him to have been in the company, they went a day's journey, and then when they sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances, they could not find Him. They returned to Jerusalem - seeking Him.

It says: after three days, they found Him.

They walked away for a whole day. This is their child, you know - the saviour of the world! They got so used to Him being there, for 12 years. Every year they've gone up to the feast at the temple, at the same time. Every year they come back, they're in a pattern of familiarity. It's okay, He's in the crowd - He's there somewhere.

Imagine the horror, after one day: their Son, which they’ve been entrusted with, is gone! Any parent that has lost a child knows the freak-out feelings you get around that.

It's easy to leave kids behind. I know that - we've had enough of that in our own life. Then when the moment of realisation comes to you, you've got this panic!

It took them three days to find Him again! There's the lesson: it's easy to become so familiar with God (and the things of God), that He draws back from you - and you didn't know it.

It can take some time to re-establish yourself in that place of connection again. It took them three days; but the worst part is: they didn't know it.

Imagine: you're selected, above everyone, to bring in the saviour of the world in - then you lost Him! Imagine the prayers on that day...

Father: we lost Him! We don't know where He's gone! That's horrendous isn't it? That's a real lesson to us; and of course: Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one; so it's easy to lose the presence of God. So they lost Him because of familiarity. They just supposed He was there.

4) Luke 19:41. “Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, and as He came near the city, He wept over it, saying: if you had known even this day the things that make for your peace! But now they're hidden from your eyes”.

Then it says: “these days will come, when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, level you to the ground, your children within you on the ground; and they'll not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation”.

Israel grieved the Holy Spirit, because when God was moving, they were so stuck in tradition, that they held on to the old, and did not welcome the new.

That's historical, that happened - and if you have a look at movements of churches, when God's started to do something different - tradition, and holding on to what they valued from their past - they didn't move with God into the new things.

That can happen to any church, any group of churches. History is full of movements, that started with a move of God; and ended up where God isn't there - but no one really knows it. No one's even speaking about it. There's just routines and tradition left.

These are all warnings for us: that we can, for a variety of reasons, lose the active moving flowing of the Holy Spirit - if we don't guard our relationship with Him.

So the key thing then, is: our relationship with Him.

Rest comes from the presence of God. The Holy Spirit is given to us, to bring that presence. He is the one who's present with us. I need to learn how to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and how to welcome His presence, how to draw in, engage with Him.

Ephesians 5:10 (from Amplified): “Try to learn, in your experience, what is pleasing to the Lord.”

Make an effort to discover what pleases God. If you are in love with someone, you normally want to find out what they like, and what they don't like. When you first start going out with someone, it seems like everything's going okay; but then after a little while: they like some things; they don't like other things.

They go quiet, when they don't like other things.

Have you ever thought that God might go quiet on you, because He doesn't like some things?

Have you ever thought: if God has given you His spirit, to help you in life - to be an over-comer; how important it must be to find out what He likes, and what He doesn't like - and to do the things He likes, and don't do the things He doesn't like (or put it right quickly if you do).

Have you ever thought: being a spiritual person is about discovering this exciting journey with the Holy Spirit - what He likes, what He doesn't like; and learning to relate to Him, and work with Him, and walk with Him?

How are we going to find out what the Holy Spirit likes, and doesn't like?

Trial and error; but a lot of it's through experience, and so you have to begin to work with Him. The Bible helps, it tells us things He likes, and things He doesn't like.

You could decide to do a search: I'm going to find what God likes, and what He doesn't like. The things He likes, I'm going to start to put them into practice in my life, more and more and more.

Things He doesn't like: I'm going to try and be aware of it. I'll ask the Holy Spirit: help me be aware every time I grieve you or hurt you, by my thoughts or attitudes or actions or words. I'll put it right real quick.

What a great thing, if we were to start doing that, and become sensitive to the Holy Spirit; because if we're not led and filled by the Holy Spirit, then you're just struggling in your own effort, and that's where the struggles of life come. That's where we lose the rest.

It doesn't matter what church you're in; personally, we've got to learn: what pleases God, what He likes and what He doesn't like.

Without faith, you cannot please Him. We have to consciously continue to exercise faith.

Ephesians 5:17 – “Don't be vague, thoughtless, or foolish; but understand and grasp what the will of the Lord is”.

Don't be a vague Christian; I don't know what God's up to. I don't know. It says: don't be vague, and don't be thoughtless; don't be foolish. What does it matter, He said, but rather understand what the will of the Lord is.

So it's a process, and we've got to walk through that process, so here's a few things that you could start.

1) Make Him Welcome. He loves to be welcomed.

Talk to the Holy Spirit: I welcome you; Thank You for Your presence; I just love You. Please come into my life today, afresh. Empower me today, afresh.

Make Him welcome, talk to Him. He's within you, and as you talk to Him, make Him welcome: I just invite You to help me. It's a simple thing to do: make Him welcome.

You know when you're made welcome, and when you're not. When you're welcome, you're very pleased; and when you're not welcome (or ignored), it's quite painful.

There's a book that Benny Hinn wrote: “Good Morning Holy Spirit”. Rise up: good morning Holy Spirit! Another great day of victory!

Rather than: oh no, it's time to get up again. That's what a lot of people do.

Holy Ghost, You're here! It's a great day! It's a great day. We're going to have a great day together, as you talk with me, and we fellowship together. Today is another great day in God! Talk to Him every day. Go: “oh Holy Ghost, come, come around my life”.

I walk down the road, and I go down the path, praying for about hour every morning, just walking there - and I met someone coming back. They said: “Whoa! Presence of God's all over you!” I said: “yeah, I'm praying, I'm carrying on...” I did carry on. I knew this person, they got quite touched.

2) Childlike trust.

You don't have to be smart to be a Christian. You can be wise; but God wants us to trust Him.

Matthew 18:3 - “If you want to enter the things of the kingdom, you have to be converted, and become as a child” (or develop child-like trust).

Hebrew’s 11:6 – “Without trust, without faith, how do you please God?”

So I've got to come to Him: Holy Ghost, I need Your help on this - I don't know what to do. Just come like a little child would come: Dad, help me, I don't know what to do. Show me what to do.

Come to Him in a very simple, childlike trust; confident He's there, confident He'll help - and asking Him for His help. Learn to talk to Him, invite Him in to those parts of your life.

Express gratitude. You know how hard it is to keep being kind to people, when they're just ungrateful?

Ingratitude offends. A lot of people just take everything for granted. It speaks of a heart attitude of demand, or entitlement, or: it's my right, why should I say ‘thank you’?

Mothers that are doing all these meals for teenagers every day, I wonder if the teenagers say: “thank you mum - that was a great meal”; instead of: “eww, what's this?”

Okay, well you'll wear it. There you go. That's what it is - it's a hat! Make your own from today!

Gratitude is a big thing. We enter His presence with gratitude.

Psalm 100:4 “Come into His presence with thanksgiving”

It tells very clearly: God loves it when we're grateful, and we begin to praise Him and thank Him. That's the way to talk to Him: Thank you Holy Ghost for helping me. Thank You Your presence with me.

Talk to Him and show gratitude. Place value on Him. Acknowledge His work in your life. These are really simple things.

3) Practice listening to Him.

Listening is an art to be learned. It doesn't come naturally, because we'd rather talk. We talk and don't listen.

It takes effort to listen. You have to train your heart to listen to the Holy Ghost.

When the Holy Spirit speaks, it's usually a very gentle, still, small voice; flowing pictures, thoughts, impressions. It's very gentle; so you don't hear much from Him when you're in great turmoil.

You've got to quieten down, focus your attention, listening for His voice.

What was the last thing He told you? Did you do it?

He spoke to you, so practice listening to Him. You have to focus, and give focussed attention.

Have a time of worship, and then just be: Holy Ghost, Lord just speak to me, talk with me. What do I do about that?

Begin to listen: Holy Ghost, You've got something to tell me; or read the word of God.

Holy Spirit, You wrote this - I don't understand it. Speak to me, help me, draw my attention to something that can help me today.

It's nothing sophisticated. It's being childlike (in this faith with Him) that seems to be able to draw His presence around. Ask Him questions.

Luke 2:46 - “They found Him after three days in the temple”, the place where the presence of God is, sitting in the midst of teachers - listening and asking questions.

So Jesus listened a lot, and asked a lot of questions. If you look at His ministry, He asked questions all the time; so ask questions.

It takes a bit of skill to ask questions - ask Him the right thing.

If you ask Him: why did it happen? He won't tell you that.

Try: Holy Spirit, what do you want to teach me? What's happened that I need to know? Holy Spirit, draw my attention to the things I need to be focussing on right now. In this conflict, what's my part?

If you talk in just a simple, childlike way, and a submitted way, you'll be amazed how He will talk with you.

Sometimes we need to accept His silence. How many have noticed: God sometimes doesn't talk to you at all?

I hate that so much! It's hard when God doesn't speak to you, and you just wonder, you go through all sorts of things. There's reasons why He does that, but sometimes He is just silent.

How come Mary and Joseph didn't know that Jesus was staying behind? There's only one reason: He didn't tell them! That raises troublesome questions...

Jesus, the near teenager, didn't tell His parents He was going to have a sleepover! That doesn't go down well with any parent, does it?

It's hard to understand; but we just recognise, that sometimes God does not tell us everything.

It can be quite offensive when you don't get answer, when you really desperately need one. I've observed over my walk with the Lord, that I'll have some things where God is talking quite strongly, directly, specifically about.

But the things I really need the help, there's this deathly silence. I can't understand it. It's horrendous, because on one hand, God's moving, and I'll get words for people - all kinds of things for others, but what about one for me?

He's not saying anything; and then you think stuff. You go through turmoil inside; but what it does is: it forces you to search for His presence.

You make a decision, in the midst of that silence, to search for His presence; and then to notice and observe what is coming up in your life, in that silent time.

It says of Hezekiah, that God left for a season, to find out what was in his heart; so silences of God, cause what's in our heart to come up to the surface; and then we're able to engage with God. Suddenly the silence is all over!

I've got many things I need answers to, some of them are actually quite critical - and I cannot get an answer.

I just feel so wasted over that, I hate it. However, you've just got to continue to trust, childlike trust. It's in God's hands. Amen!

Yeah, but I need an answer. Needing an answer can become quite a driver; then we get offended with God, and we grieve the Holy Spirit.

So learn that sometimes He just won't give you an answer. He just wants you to walk in the last thing He gave you to do; or just in the general principles.

What about some things that you should stop doing?

Ephesians 4:30 – “Now don't grieve the Holy Ghost”. This is written to Christians!

If you grieve Him - the word grieve means: ‘to cause Him great sorrow’. He's a spirit of joy; can you imagine the ‘spirit of joy’, very sorrowful? Hurt inside, grieved inside, and drawing back, because you've wounded Him.

You've done things that hurt Me; I'm not going to come near, I'm just staying over here - and you'll just blunder on your merry way, trying to solve all your problems, until one day you wake up: my God, when's the last time I felt the presence of God?

Then tears and brokenness, and: Holy Spirit, where did I leave You? Where did I move; do things, or say things; or have an attitude that caused You to be grieved, and lift off me? You can ask that sort of thing.

So don't grieve the Holy Ghost; and it's got a whole list of things...

Ephesians 4:29 - “Don't let any corrupt communication come out of your mouth, but that which is good for building, that it imparts grace to the hearers”.

Ephesians 4:31 – “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you”.

Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma”.

Ephesians 5:3-5 “But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know: that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God”.

As soon as you've grieved the Holy Spirit, you begin to lose the peace and lose the joy.

You've got to go back and ask: what happened Holy Spirit? How have I hurt You?

He may tell you things you don't like to hear - that's the challenging part of working with the Holy Spirit. I like it when He's just doing nice stuff; but then other times it’s not so easy: repent of this.

1) Deal with bitterness.

Bitterness is a root that defiles. The answer to bitterness is: repentance; renouncing judgements; and forgiving.

Bitterness is a long-standing resentment, a deep grudge; anger against someone, which in the end becomes everyone.

Bitterness defiles, so we can't allow bitterness.

Bitterness comes when you're disappointed, hurt, and you let it go down; and the resentment stays there. It just sits there.

You don't feel bitterness; it comes out in your words and language, and every time it does, it grieves the Holy Spirit - sharp, terse words.

2) Deal with anger. Anger is a root that destroys.

Proverbs 29:22 says: it's the source of immense conflict and strife in relationships.

Under anger, several things are mentioned; wrath, which means literally ‘blowing up’. Explosive anger is incredibly destructive - hurts everyone around, releases spirits of murder and violence against them.

Then He talks about an anger which is a slow, smouldering resentment, just this thing inside. Those sorts of things grieve the Holy Spirit.

Clamour: loud angry talk, talking loudly about your grievances, and the things that you've done wrong. Start to listen around, people are doing that everywhere.

It grieves the Holy Spirit! If someone is doing it, don't get involved in it. Quieten it down, and calm it down; get what the real issues are. Stop people blaming people; get them to face what they need to deal with, what's in their own heart.

3) Guard your tongue.

It says it in different ways: “Don't let corrupt words come out of your mouth”. Further down: “evil speaking”; then it talks about bad jokes, unclean jokes.

Communication that just is negative and destructive, that defile; that runs people down.

To ‘evil speak’ means: to slander someone, to speak against them. You may not even have the truth, the true facts; but you're running them down, and stealing their reputation.

It also refers to: filthiness; unclean conversation; smutty jokes. Everyone may laugh; except the Holy Ghost - He won't laugh - He'll just withdraw.

If we value the Holy Ghost, we need to start to listen what's coming out of our mouth, what we're engaging in; and then take a Holy Ghost sigh.

If there's any benefit of the doubt, give Him the benefit of the doubt, and don't get engaged in those things - shut them down.

If people are telling coarse jokes, and they realise you're a Christian - they'll suddenly shut up and say ‘sorry’. Isn't that interesting: they know that they've done something wrong? How much better if we pick that up in our own heart, and don't get part of it?

Malice just means: ill will. You're holding something against someone, and you want to see them pay.

Greed: I want more and more and more. Greed is idolatry. Greed means: I just need more of something.

That thing of greed is only gotten over by being thankful, and by expressing appreciation, and celebrating with others; instead of being resentful.

4) Sexual uncleanness.

Sexual uncleanness grieves the Holy Spirit. He is the spirit of holiness. He is the spirit of grace. Let's not grieve Him by allowing unclean stuff to rest in our mind and heart; or become part of our conversation and our talk.

It's so easy for it to happen; but imagine if you were to live your life saying: I want to live my life so I'm sensitive to the Holy Spirit at all times; so I'm aware of His presence, and people are aware His presence is with me - what a great way to live!

The ‘plus’ is: peace and joy in the Holy Ghost - wonderful peace, wonderful joy in the Holy Ghost. How great to have the Holy Ghost surround our life.

He is a person. You can learn how to work in the gifts of the spirit; but never build a love relationship, where you are empowered to win in your life. God wants us to win our life, and it only comes by the power of the Holy Ghost working in us.

Closing Prayer

What it is, that God is speaking about to you today?

What did God touch your heart on today?

What needs to shift in your life?

Are there some things that God wants you to do, in terms of: this is the thing you should start, to cultivate your relationship with the Holy Spirit?

Are there some things that you need to put out of your life? What are those things?

Last question: What are you going to do about it?

What steps will you take; so the glorious spirit of God, who's come in to live in you, and abide in you - but still has room to rise and fill you, to empower you - what will you do tomorrow, to allow that to happen?

I've been working for quite some time on my life, to become sensitised to the Holy Spirit; and become aware of the things that desensitise me.

Perhaps there's someone here today doesn't even know Jesus Christ. You're separate from God, but today could be your greatest change, when God gives you His spirit. His own spirit comes and lives joined to your spirit, you become born again and alive.

One of the greatest delights I would have, would be you would experience His spirit in a greater measure, experience Him in a greater measure, to experience Him.

Why don't we just stand together, with raised hands, saying: “Holy Spirit I need You; Holy Spirit, come”.

Let's ask Him, talk to Him - pray in the spirit. Pray. Open your heart to Him right now. This is time for a fresh movement of the spirit of God

One of the great things in moving in ‘Child-like Faith’ is just: letting go control, allowing life to flow with the spirit of God; rather than trying to make people and circumstance yield to us.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

• Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus invitation and promises “I will give you rest” “You shall find rest for your souls”

• So many people have no peace – soul is in turmoil, anxiety, fear, worry, stress, striving.

• Rest is a gift that comes by faith. (Hebrews 4:3) By trusting God and His Word.

• Rest is a fruit that comes from ¬ to the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22)

• Exodus 33:14 “My presence will go with you and it will give you rest” God promised Moses rest – came with the presence of God tangibly expressed. Israel were led and directed by the cloud of God’s presence. The presence of God distinguished them from all other people.

2. We can Grieve and Quench the Holy Spirit

• Grieve = NT 3076 = to distress, make sad, fill with sorrow and pain (opposite of joy). We grieve the Holy Spirit by actions and attitudes that hinder Him being Himself in us.

• Quench = NT 4570 = to extinguish a raging fire. We quench the Holy Spirit by actions and attitudes that hinder Him doing what He wants through us.

• We need to develop sensitivity to the Holy Spirit – what He likes and dislikes.

• We can grieve the Holy Spirit and quench His power without realizing it.

Examples of People Grieving the Holy Spirit

(a) Judges 16:20 Samson: He did not know the Lord had departed from him. Samson grieved the Holy Spirit be sexual sin and lust uncontrolled.

(b) Psalms 95:10 Israel grieved the Holy Spirit continually and lost their power to inherit. Israel grieved the Holy Spirit by unbelief, complaining and ignorance of Gods ways. Israel remained bitter instead of changing.

(c) Luke 2:43,46 Mary and Joseph were not aware that Jesus was no longer with them. They supposed that He was still with them – made assumptions.

(d) Luke 19:41-44 Israel grieved the Holy Spirit – they did not recognize the time of visitation. They grieved the Holy Spirit by unbelief and clinging to tradition.

• In each of the above people were not aware of what they did but all experienced loss.

3. Developing Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit

Ephesians 5:10 “And try to learn in your experience what is pleasing to the Lord (ampl)”

• To find out what people like we must: spend quality time with them; listen to them; observe them.

• We learn what pleases the Holy Spirit from experience and from the Word of God.

• Find out what He likes – Do that!

Find out what grieves Him – Don’t do that or put it right quickly.

Ephesians 5:17 “Do not be vague, thoughtless, foolish but understanding and fully grasping what the will of the Lord is”

• Discovering what another person likes and dislikes is a process of trial and error.

• We need to find out what pleases the Lord.

(a) The Holy Spirit Likes: Practice Doing These Things

(i) Welcome His Presence

• Talk to him. Speak words of welcome. Holy Spirit I welcome you!

• Take Him as He wants to come – Joy, Peace, quickened verse, promptly to apologise.

(ii) Childlike Trust Matthew 18:3

• Let go control – control of people, control of your world.

• Don’t try to fix up everyone and everything – let God be in control.

• Trust is developed as you let go attempting to control life and reacting to it.

(iii) Express Gratitude Psalm 100:4

• Don’t take the Holy Spirit for granted – express thanks and appreciation to Him.

• Gratitude places honour and value upon the Holy Spirit and acknowledges what He does.

(iv) Practice Listening to the Holy Spirits Voice

• Listening is an art to be learned. Holy Spirit speaks as a flow of pictures, thoughts and impressions from within.

• To listen you must focus – give the person your attention.

(v) Ask Questions Luke 2:46

• If you want to learn – develop the skill of asking questions.

• Ask the right questions – Lord what are you teaching me? Not why??

• Luke 2:46 “They found Him in the temple sitting in the midst of the teachers both listening to them and asking questions.”

(vi) Accept His Silence Luke 2:48

• Sometimes God does not speak to us or explain what He is doing.

• Jesus did not explain to His parents that He needed to stay behind in Jerusalem.

• God tells us what we need to know, when we need to know it. Don’t react.

(b) The Holy Spirit Dislikes: Stop Doing These Things

Ephesians 4:29 – 5:5 “ Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God……”

• We can easily grieve the Holy Spirit by how we react because of things God allows to happen.

• Where we react we lose the peace of the Holy Spirits abiding presence Colossians 3:15

• We need to enquire and ask the Holy Spirit to show us how we have grieved Him!

(i) Deal with Bitterness a root that defiles Hebrews 12:15

• Bitterness = long standing resentment, becoming a grudge and ill will towards others.

(ii) Deal with Anger a root that destroys Proverbs 29:22

• Wrath = passion, bad temper, outbursts of anger.

• Anger = smouldering resentment and reaction to people, life.

• Clamour = loud angry talk about personal grievances and injustices.

(iii) Guard Your Tongue a force of life and death Proverbs 18:21

• Corrupt communication = words that pollute and defile.

• Evil speaking = to slander, speak destructively against another person.

• Filthiness = unclean conversation, crude jokes, clever undertones.

(iv) Malice ill will towards others

• Malice takes delight in inflicting injury on another.

• Dwells on wrongs and wants the other person to suffer.

(v) Deal with Grief Ephesians 5:3

• Covetousness = idolatry

(vi) Deal with Sexual Sin Ephesians 5:3

• Fornication and all uncleanness.

The Rest of Faith (4 of 4)

Sun 28 Jul 2013 AM  « Back to Top

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"My presence will go with you, and I will give you Rest"

Rest is a peace in our heart, in spite of the turmoil around us. We're live in an age which is in turmoil; people are anxious & fearful - stressed out.

Rest is a gift to us. It's an experience you can come into, when no matter what's going on around you, you can still be at peace in your heart.

This is something God gives to us. It comes out of His presence being with us; and out of learning how to let go issues to Him. We're called to bring peace into wherever we go.

One of the things we saw in Exodus 33, when God spoke to Moses. He said:

“My presence will go with you, and I will give you Rest”.

So rest is a peace in our heart, in spite of the turmoil around us.

We're living in an age which is in turmoil, and people are anxious and fearful, stressed out.

The Bible tells us: Rest is a gift to us.

It's an experience you can come into, when no matter what's going on around you, you can still be at peace in your heart - and this is something God gives to us.

It comes out of His presence being with us.

It also comes out of learning how to let go issues to Him, and this is a great thing for us to be able to walk in.

We're called to bring peace into wherever we go; and wherever you go outside in the community, it's in turmoil. It doesn't take much scratching to see the turmoil and pain

I am just so delighted and proud of the groups that have gone out, and ministered to the turmoil, in very practical ways. This is the gospel in action, and I believe God is on it, and if you and we will continue to do that, we will continue to experience increase.

Moses said: “If you don't go with us, don't take us anywhere”.

He said: How will the world know that we are different, except Your presence is on our life, and there's a place of rest in our heart?

How will people know we're different? The reality is: people don't know Christians are different, because Christians seem to struggle with all the same issues.

Luke 2:41, this is Jesus' parents, His family; we can identify with family; and Jesus is doing stuff we didn't expect. How many have had an experience where Jesus did something you didn't expect?

His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when He was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.

When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and His mother did not know it. But they supposed, they assumed, He was with them in the company; and they went a day's journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances.

And when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him. Now it was after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening and asking questions.

And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. And when they saw Him, they were amazed”.

They were very distressed actually, they were shocked.

His mother said: “Son, why have You done this to us? Your father and I have sought You anxiously.”

No peace there, is there?

And He said to them: “Why do you seek Me? Did you not know, I must be about My Father's business?”

But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them. Then He went down with them to Nazareth, and was subject to them, and His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.

Now the Bible tells us very clearly, in the Book of John, that all the things written about Jesus, you couldn't contain them in all the books of the world. So the Holy Spirit has selected some things, so we look here and you get a glimpse. The only glimpse into Jesus life growing up is this passage here; and it's an unusual story.

His parents have gone down to Jerusalem to the feast; they've come away from the feast, and He stayed behind - and of course the parents are totally stressed out.

Jesus did not tell them what He was doing! That is really hard to understand. We can't say that He sinned, that He did something wrong; so we have to conclude there must be more to this passage than we realise...

1) Sometimes God is silent about His plans. How many have experienced a time when God was silent about what He was doing? And He answered things for you, that you really didn't need an answer for; but the thing you really needed an answer for, He didn't talk at all.

That is an experience we have as a Christian. It creates quite some turmoil in our life.

Jesus did not tell them what He was doing. He was actually entering into a new season in His life.

They got in a habit with Him, they would go down to the feast every year; they'd go through whatever they were going to do - six, seven days there. Then they'd travel home, it an annual thing they did, and they were quite familiar with it.

They didn't pick up that Jesus was now entering a new season in His life. He was approaching, at 12 years old, his Bar Mitzvah.

That meant He was moving from: being deemed a child; to where He's now responsible, as a young adult, to obey the law. The obvious thing is: He's going to connect with where He can learn the law.

They were so familiar with how He had been moving; they did not recognise that there was a change about to take place.

This is very true of the church, and very true of our lives. We get so familiar with God; with routines, the way we do things; that we can miss that God is making changes. He doesn't always tell it straight away.

In a marriage, for example, familiarity with one another can lead to a lot of communication breakdowns; and a lot of stress and difficulties.

I thought you were going to do this; but no one spoke. Well I assumed you were going to do that; but no one said anything. So in marriages and relationships, a lot of stress comes when we assume things.

One of the dilemmas we face in life, in relationships, is that: familiarity leads to assumption, or presumptions.

We can be so familiar with God, and with our walk with God, that we assume that we are walking right, that we are doing the things He wants; and it comes as a shock to us when something happens that up heaves our world. It doesn't seem like God gave us any warning, told us about it, talked about it to us at all.

Notice: they just “supposed He was with them”. They got familiar He was a good boy - they didn't have any trouble with Him. The last thing they ever expected was that He would do something they didn't expect, which was stay behind.

Any parent who's had a child stay behind, you've lost them - you understand the stress the parents would feel at this; but see how Jesus handles it.

So familiarity can lead to presumption. Jesus could have spoken to them, and told them - but He did not. He is now emerging from: being a child; to: knowing exactly who He is, and what He's called to do.

He's starting to emerge into adulthood. His ministry hasn't begun, His assignment hasn't begun, but He's definitely come into knowing who He is.

He knows He's the Son of God. He knows He's called into a work; and so the obvious thing is, as a young child now, is to come under tutors and governors, to be prepared for that.

To Him it was very obvious what He should do; so He stays behind.

It doesn't say He just lingered or tarried. The word literally means this, it means: He ‘endured’.

He stayed under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, to remain there behind; and obviously the Holy Spirit had told Him: don't say anything.

There are some times when God does stuff, and He doesn't tell us. When He doesn't tell you, it's not because He doesn't care about you; it's just He's going to move anyway, and He's not asking for your opinion about it.

You just get upset every time that God didn't ask my opinion, or consult me about what He was about to do.

Many things seem to just happen and it just upsets us. We get very distressed, very upset, out of kilter.

We have to realise that God is always God. He doesn't always tell us about the things that'll happen.

How many, when you chose to follow Jesus, had no idea what that might incur?

Many may very well have not decided to follow Jesus, if you had known all the things that might happen on the way? So God doesn't tell us.

Our journey is a journey of faith - which means you don't always know what's going to happen; or understand what's happening.

You do have to come to a place of Trust, and Rest.

Our dilemma is: we want to know everything; and when we're not informed, ‘nobody told me’, we get upset. God wants you to learn how to handle these issues in life.

I have found God does not consult me about everything, He doesn't tell me about everything; and sometimes happen that surprise me.

You've got to take it, and learn how to handle it, or lean into God.

Sometimes God is silent; and part of the problem is, we get so familiar in our relationship, that we just make assumptions on everything continuing like it is.

I believe that the church in the West, particularly, is needing to make massive changes, massive changes.

The more I have been praying, and looking at this over this last year, the more I am aware that church is just needing reformation, to engage fully in what God wants to do in our nation.

That means changing. That means: you changing, and me.

I'm on a journey of change. I've found it to be disturbing, painful, distressing; a challenging journey that God is with us in.

God wants to help you. It's so wonderful that God is with you, and promises to help you; so why is sometimes God silent? Why is it, that God doesn't always tell you what He wants to do?

I have found it to be a recurring experience, that: God, I can move very strongly, and God's speaking through me to all kinds of people, about all sorts of things.

Then the thing I need to hear, I hear nothing. It's quite a paradox: you can be used of God to touch other people; but the very need you have, doesn't seem to get answered. Why is that?

2 Chronicles 32:31 – “God withdrew from Hezekiah, in order that He might try him, to know all that was in his heart”.

Did God forsake him? No, He didn't. He just drew back His tangible presence, went for a season; that God might see what was in him, what would come up.

Sometimes God will let you face an experience which is painful, challenging, and difficult. You don't feel like God is there; and what He wants to do is to draw up out of your heart what is there - so you can see it, and grow and change.

Sometimes we forget that this 'following Jesus' is a lifelong journey of change. You think: I repented ages ago; I said I was sorry, I've done my thing. Now I'm trying to live a good life.

Actually no - repentance is a foundation, upon which we build our life.

Repentance is about: changing how we think, to align with what God is doing and saying to us.

Sometimes God will let us go through things: 1) to reveal what is in our heart. When you're under stress and pressure, what’s inside comes up; and it comes up in a way that's not always nice.

2) God wants to see if you'll put into practice what you've been learning.

We've taught you how to live in the spirit; how to build your spirit man; how to resolve. You've been more taught than any people I know.

But what do you do when you're under pressure? That's how much you've learned. It's only what we put into practice.

We've taught you how to flow with the spirit, how to listen to the spirit, got to be sensitive to Him; but you've actually got to put it into practice.

Most learning takes place in the course of life, not in a meeting like this. In meetings like this, you get flashes of information, flashes of help; but it's in the small groups that learning takes place, where we can interact.

Where we're interacting in our faith with someone, that's when we really grow. God wants us to learn and continue to grow, so He'll let us face a few experiences: 1) to reveal and bring up what's in our heart; 2) so we can see where we need to grow and change; and 3) so we can see if we're really applying what God has told us to do.

We've taught you how to build a strong spirit man; but if you're not doing that, then when pressure comes - you cave; you live out of your soul and emotions.

There's only so much the teaching can do. At the end, it's actually what we're putting into practice in our life.

That's where small groups are so helpful, because you get with others, and you're sharing and interacting over your faith. You bring out to the open what God is doing.

One of the best questions we can ask one another in a small group is something like this: what is God currently doing in your life right now? What was the last thing God was speaking to you about? How are you getting on putting that into practice, and doing it?

Those kinds of questions, when someone's facing you – that’s when you start to change.

I see people say: God's been speaking to me about this. I say: what's the specific area He's talking to you about? If you can't say what specifically it is - it's just general fuzzy stuff - you won't change; but if I can answer the question: God specifically is dealing with me about this attitude; then the next thing is: well what will you do to change?

What plan have you got in place, in order to grow?

What are you doing to shift from where you are, to where God wants you to be?

If we don't apply God's word into our life, if we don't actually let it shape and change us, we get deceived in our mind.

The Bible says: if we hear the word and don't do it, we're deceived in our mind; but when we hear the word and do it, our life becomes strengthened, and a foundation is built.

Do have anyone asking you these questions: what did God last say to you; or what is God speaking to you about right now? What is your plan to put this into practice? How are you getting on with that? How can I help you with that?

That's a great way we can help one another, in this journey of growing in God.

So God sometimes is silent, and sometimes frictions and difficulties come up - in order to stimulate seeking Him and growing.

With Mary and Joseph, it surfaces some things in them. It says: “they went a day without realising He was there.” Don't you love that - they went a day? Then it says: “they supposed He was there”.

We can drift in our Christian life, supposing we're flowing with what God wants, and suddenly become aware: it's not all right. That's the time to start to re-centre, and redirect, your life again.

It says: “they sought Him among their friends”. The first place they looked, when they found the loss of the presence of God, when they felt the loss of Jesus, was: they turned to their friends.

They took to their family their acquaintances; their small group; and then finally: they had to return to where they lost the presence of God. They had to return to where they lost the peace.

They went back to Jerusalem, seeking Jesus. Jerusalem means ‘City of Peace’; so they had to go back to the place where they lost their peace.

Their focus was on finding Jesus, and reconnecting with Him again.

If you have felt the presence of God lift off you, you can always sense it in different ways. It's not that He's left you, or abandoned you; but you can feel when the Holy Spirit is no longer flowing around your life:

1) You become anxious, and lose your peace.

Colossians 3:15 – “let the peace of God rule in your heart”.

The moment you lose your peace, is the warning signal of the Holy Spirit: something is wrong in my life.

It may be: the way I'm thinking; reacting; an attitude I have, or a value I have. Stop - something's not right.

Enquire of the Holy Spirit: what is going on.

2) You start to become irritable; you lose your love for people.

Someone who's irritable, they're manifesting an attitude of: lack of peace in their heart; and lack of concern for people.

They're wrapped up in themselves. There's a lack of love; because love is not irritable

Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, bears long”; so when you start to find people and they've lost their peace, and they're becoming irritable, the Holy Spirit's flow has lifted off them, and God is trying to get their attention.

3) Confusion & turmoil; and you start to look for someone to blame.

God is not the author of confusion; He is the author of peace.

The kingdom of heaven is always associated with peace; or rest in our heart. Not eating or drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

When you start losing your peace; become anxious and uptight; start losing your capacity to love people; become irritable; confused; looking for someone to blame - the spirit of God has lifted.

You need to see the warning signs; and go back to Jerusalem, back to Jesus, and find: Where did I lose you? Where did I miss You? What in believing needs to change? What in my response needs to change? What is it You are trying to tell me?

Or very simply: what am I feeling? How did I get to be feeling that way? What is going on in my belief system, and my heart?

This is something you practice - you put into practice.

It's called: taking every thought captive, and bringing it into obedience.

It's just stopping to evaluate what's going on momentarily, and re-centre your heart just as quickly as that, in looking towards the Lord.

In Elijah's day when the axe head was lost (2 Kings 6:1-7), and the man come up and said: “I've lost my axe head” - I've lost my cup, I've lost my anointing, I've lost my flow; He said: where did you lose it? Go back there.

He took him right back to where he lost the axe; and then He cut down a tree (which speaks of the cross), threw it in; and the miracle was: the cutting edge was restored (the iron floated).

Inevitably, when you've lost that flow of God in your life, you've got to go back: when did I lose it? Where did I lose it? What was the issue? Now God, what do I need to do to deal with this?

They returned to Jerusalem. It took them three days to get back to what they'd lost in one day.

One of the things about your life with God is: if you let your life with God go - it takes more time to get it back again, than it does to maintain it.

If you let go your prayer life, your life in the word, your relationship with God - it seems to take longer to get it back again, than it does to lose it.

You can lose it quickly, but you've got to actually get back into a flow again, to regain that life with God.

They returned to Jerusalem, and they were seeking Him; so very simple - when we've lost that peace, lost that flow of the spirit, first: recognise that's what's happened.

1) You need to return. They returned to Jerusalem. The word ‘return’ is the same as the word ‘repent’.

We need to come back: God, where did I lose You? Where did I miss You? What is going on in my heart, that I need to change?

The evidence of: loss of peace, irritability, anxiety means: I'm no longer aligned with heaven. The spirit of God has lifted.

I now need to say: God, where have I missed it? What do I need to repent?

Repentance is just saying: Lord, in my thinking, in my approach, I'm out of order with You. I need to realign. What a great thing to do, to realign.

So the first thing was Repentance - they returned; they recognised something. Usually repentance means: God, I'm so sorry. Lord, forgive me that I allowed my mind and my heart to drift. Lord, forgive me that I allowed this to happen.

Just be quite specific and ask: God, Lord show me what it is that I missed.

2) We need to pursue.

I have found people take God very casually. I do not take Him casually - I pursue Him.

It said: “They sought Him diligently for three days”.

Think about what it would be like to lose a child in a big city; to have to try and find him in a city - that is scary.

The worst thing is: they didn't have a clue where to start looking.

When they finally speak to Jesus, Mary gets quite testy with Him. Notice her language: “why did You treat us like this?”

A lot of people talk to God like that. “How come you're treating me like this, what's going on?”

Notice the irritation in her - she was upset with Him. She was centred on herself, only her.

“Why did You treat us like this?” People get like that with God; you're getting into blaming Jesus; and Jesus made an interesting statement.

He said: “How come you've been worrying and stressing and seeking Me like this? Didn't you realise what I would be doing?”

He's saying: you've been raised in the law, you've been raised in the word of God. By now, you should have understood, that this is what would be normal for me to be doing - to be in the house of God, at my Bar Mitzvah, beginning my preparation for the call that is on my life.

They're saying: “how could you treat us like that”; and He said: “you're My parents - how did you not realise this is what would be happening to Me right now?”

He turned it right around on them. How did you miss this? You went everywhere looking for Me - why would you think I'd be there, or there, or there, or there?

I'm 12! I'm beginning to go into my new season as a young adult, when I'm going to be responsible to obey the law, so I need to be instructed in law.

The only place I would be would be “about My Father's business” - which is in the house of God.

So at the age of 12, He was connected to: who He was; and what He was called to do.

His concern was: how come you, My parents, didn't realise what was happening? How did you miss this? If you were sensitive to the changing season, you would have known that this is exactly what I'd be doing.

For you and I as believers, even for us as a church, we can get so familiar to Jesus moving in certain ways, that when He changes - we get upset, because He's not doing what we think He should be doing.

We tend to be angry with Him, blame Him, because this is not going how I'd like.

His question comes back, saying: you've walked with me this season, for this much time, and you've learned all these things. How could you not realise, this is what I would be doing at this time?

Why are you so agitated, that I'm doing these things, at this time? It's because you're not aware of the season of God, you've become wrapped up in yourselves.

I believe the church in the West becomes so wrapped up in itself, it's missed that the whole season has shifted, that God is moving.

Today, as I was listening to the stories (I want to hear more of those stories) of people going out into the community, and just showing love and kindness, connecting to people in their need - that is where the river of God is running.

I have noticed in the last two years, that every time that we've had a need within the body (or something we've focussed on outside the body), where we've come in love, and started to gather around and help people - whether it's someone else in the church, or whether it's been someone else outside - there's like a river of God's spirit moves on that.

I've become convinced (and we have aligned our lives around that) that we need to redirect our attention, to being kind to the community, kind to people; and start to bring the gospel in a way that's palatable.

The church has to get out of its ‘small world’, meetings that seem so important, but are not important.

Micah 6:8 – “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you - to do justly.”

That word ‘justice’ is: coming to places where people are suffering, and doing what we can to put it right - to love mercy.

That word ‘mercy’, is the word ‘loving kindness’ - to extend loving-kindness to people, and to walk humbly in a place of relationship, intimacy and trust in the Lord.

Jesus spoke to the Pharisees and He said: you've tithed of all these little things, you've tithed of every carrot, and you’ve tithed of this and that. But He said: the things that you are missing are the weightier matters: justice, mercy and faith.

So in God's eyes, the weighty matters are: Justice - treating the cause of the hurting and broken, working to minister to it and help them; Mercy - showing loving kindness to people who are broken and in need; and Faith - believing for the power of God to move, and to work.

Mary and Joseph had been entrusted with the Saviour of the world, to raise Him; but when the season changed for Him, they failed to recognise it.

They got so familiar, and were blessed with what was happening up to that point. They had the perfect child, remember!

Then one day, at the age of 12, He does something that really messes with them. Jesus has a way of doing that.

My recommendation is always: see what Jesus is on, and stay with that.

The church has got a history of: staying with what it likes, what it's used to; rather than: seeing what Jesus is on, and working with that.

I believe that globally now, there is a desperate need for the ministry of Healing, Deliverance; of Kindness, Compassion; of mercies. It needs to flow like a river from the house of God.

Let's not be like Mary and Joseph, missing our moment, missing what God is doing, and being so caught up with what we're doing, that we go a whole day's journey, then realise: God, what has happened? Where are You?

Then have to face three days of pursuing, with anxiety - because we don't even know where to look - we're so out of touch with what God is doing.

God's moving on this area of compassion to the poor.

God is moving. Everything that you do, that involves reaching out that way - you'll find the river of Gods spirit come on it.

God is interested in healing the broken-hearted, restoring people. Whatever we do in that, you'll find the river of God will flow. Everywhere I go, I see this happening.

God is interested in people being discipled - growing and fulfilling their destinies and calls in God; not just sitting in church, coming on Sunday, and thinking that that's what it is to be a Christian.

To be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said: “Follow Me, and I will make you”.

Your life will undergo continual change and transformation; and the outcome will be: you'll be a fisher of men. You will reach out, engage, gather people, and bring them to become followers of Me.

This is the movement of God, in the hour we're in. We need to get on the page with Him.

Now at a personal level - if you find that you've lost your rest, your peace; you're becoming anxious, stressed out, irritable, confused - go back to where you lost it.

Return to the Lord, return to that place of peace - begin to make the adjustments and changes.

On the bigger scale, if you find that there's restlessness around your life, uncertainty around your life, then start to re-centre around the person of Jesus again; see what He's on, and begin to follow Him anew.

Let's just open our hearts to Him right now. The last thing is: interestingly enough, Jesus - even though He spoke that way to them - then submitted to them.

“They did not understand what He was doing - but He went along with them anyway, submitting in His heart to them; and He grew in wisdom, stature, and favour with God and man.”

Closing Prayer

Perhaps there's an issue in your heart?

Perhaps you don't know the Lord. You've never had an experience with Him, or learned what it is to walk with Him. You're walking in your own ways, following your own path, influenced by what's around you.

What a great day today to make a decision: that I'll put my life in the hands of Jesus Christ. I'll begin to pursue the One who loved me, and died on a cross for me. I will put my life in Jesus' hands, and partner with Him in changing this world.

Are you at that place, where you recognise your need for Jesus Christ, and you want to just give your life to Him today - trusting in Him, to save you from the power and the presence and the penalty of sin?

Perhaps, as I've talked, you've realised: I'm not in a place of rest; I'm in a place of stress and anxiety. I've moved away from a heart that's rested in Him.

Here's God's word to you today:

In returning, and rest or trust, you will be saved.

In quietness and confidence in God, you will find peace.

God wants you to come back in that place of peace again.

Perhaps God's been silent; and you're going through difficulties, pressures, struggles.

Say: “God, I want You to help me. I need You to help me today”.

Father, I thank You for each one here today. We thank You for Your grace to help them to come to a place of rest and trust in You, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Exodus 33:14 “My presence will go with you and it will give you rest”

· So many people live in constant turmoil, anxiety, fear, striving – no rest in their soul. God promises to give us rest: Rest is a gift of God received by faith – trusting Him. Rest is connected to the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives and our relationships.

Romans 14:17 “The Kingdom of heaven….. is righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost”

· Whatever disturbs our peace or joy should get our attention.

· Activating sensitivity to the Holy Ghost and response to His presence is key to rest.

Key Passage: Luke 2:41-50

2. Why God Sometimes is Silent

Luke 2:41-43 “Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem and Joseph and Mary his mother did not know it”

· Jesus was silent about His plans. He did not tell them what He was doing!

· Jesus was entering a new season in His life – He did not speak or explain it.

(a) Familiarity Can Lead To Presumption

E.g. Marriage: The most common problem is communication.

“You didn’t tell me”; “I assumed”; “Well I thought”

· Luke 2:43-44 “Joseph and His mother did not know it, but supposing Him to be in the company went a days journey…”

· Note: Jesus was silent – they supposed He was still with them.

· It was an annual event to go to Jerusalem; it was a custom or habit.

· Presume – to take for granted, to assume to be true, to assume without proof.

(b) Why God Sometimes Is Silent

2 Chronicles 32:3 “God withdrew from him (Hezekiah) in order to test him to know all that was in his heart”

· Sometimes God is silent about the things most important to us. Why?

(i) To Reveal What Is In Our Heart Deuteronomy 8:2

· God’s silence exposes and brings to our awareness or condition, priorities, values.

(ii) To Humble Us Deuteronomy 8:2

· We have a tendency to go our own way, to operate independently, to live in our comfort zone.

· Habits and routines are good but can lead us to familiarity and presumption.

· We constantly need fresh challenges to keep us dependent upon Jesus.

(iii) To See If We Will Apply What We Have Learned Deuteronomy 8:2

· God is constantly teaching us, changing us – His plan means ongoing change.

· He wants us to learn to walk by revelation and wisdom (applying the Word of God).

· If you collapse under pressure and challenge your personal foundations are not strong.

· In seasons you do not hear from God – do what He last told you and walk in the principles of God – prayer, thanksgiving, praise, fellowship.

· Mary and Joseph went 1 day without Jesus then experienced and acute sense of loss and anxiety.

3. How to Recognise the Presence of the Holy Spirit has Lifted

Luke 2:48 “So when they saw Him they were amazed, and His mother said to Him: “Son why have you done this to us? Look your father and I have sought you anxiously”

(i) Anxiety – Loss of Peace

· The presence of God brings with it a peace and loss of His presence brings anxiety.

· Mary revealed she was anxious but sorrowing from on road: to go down.

· She was tormented in her mind and emotions.

· Philippians 4:6 “Be anxious for nothing – peace of God will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus”

(ii) Irritability –Loss of Love

· Mary was irritated at Jesus – why have you done this to us?

· She was angry at Jesus and resentful at how He had treated them.

· 1 Corinthians 13:5 “Love – is not provoked (irritated, stirred, sharpened)”

(iii) Lack Clear Thinking - Confusion

· Mary did not understand what Jesus was doing.

· They were amazed…. Why have you done this to us? They did not understand.

· She accused Jesus of treating her unfairly – she took it personally.

· Stresses in life can cause us to turn inward, focus on self, blame others.

· 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, and love and a sound mind”

· When the Holy Spirit rests upon us our thinking is clear and we react in clarity.

4. Returning to the Rest of Faith

Luke 2:44-45 “They sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances, so when they did not find Him they returned to Jerusalem seeking Him. Now it was after 3 days they found Him.”

· They were so preoccupied with familiar – they did not realize Jesus was not there.

· They had to go back to where they lost Him (if lost axe head 2Kings 6:6 Where did it fall?)

(i) Repentance (“They Returned”)

· Repentance – Melanoia = change of mind

· Repentance – recognise have made a mistake, failed and admit “it was wrong”.

· People tend to be defensive rather than admit “it was wrong” and change.

· Repentance is foundational to walking with God – admitting wrong thinking and actions.

· 1 John 1:9 If we confess (say the same as God does) will forgive!

(ii) Pursuit of God –(“They Sought Him”)

· Their focus was not on pursuit of peace but on pursuit of Jesus.

· They wanted to reconnect with Jesus Psalm 27:4

· It took 3 days to find Him – they persevered determined to find Him again.

· We can pursue Jesus by re-establishing times of prayer, fasting, worship.

(iii) Openness to Fresh Revelation

· Their familiarity with Jesus caused them to miss the change in their life.

· He now was at an age where He would come under tutors for His destiny.

· They were astonished, they did not understand, they did not ask questions.

· We must move towards what God is doing, not react and move away to familiar.

Finance Seminar (Shane Willard 2011) (Shane Willard)

Shane Willard offers a unique Jewish/Hebraic perspective for Christians on Finance and Giving. Shane is mentored by a pastor with rabbinical training, and teaches the context of the Scriptures from a Hebraic perspective. This perspective helps people to see God's Word in a completely new way and leads them into a more intimate relationship with the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Finance (1 of 2) (Shane Willard)

There’s a great cure for poverty, it’s called get a job, work hard. God never set himself up as the cure for laziness, or the cure for stupid. There is no supernatural, super-spiritual thing that over comes a lack of hard work or laziness.

We've got to be wise, which means staying out of debt, not putting money in things going down in value, not trusting the government to do it for us, live on a budget, take charge of your finances, show self-control!

To know God, is to take care of the poor and the afflicted. Tsedaqah (Hebrew) is introduced, equating Righteousness with Generosity/Charity

Finance (2 of 2) (Shane Willard)

We're called to live on a circle in a square. A circle inside of a square is 79%. The math from the commands matches the illustration from agriculture. 2.5% is put in the hands of the Priest; then a tenth is given to the church; and a tenth for yourself, in the form of savings, but one third of that is given to the poor.

He doesn't want you just to go to heaven one day, he wants you to bring heaven to earth now. If your first fruits are in the right hands, your finances can't die. You sanctify everything else in your life by honouring the lord with your first fruits.

James 1.26 If anyone considers himself religious and does yet not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that our God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this; to look after orphans and widows in their distress. The religion our father sees as pure is generosity.

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Finance (1 of 2) (Shane Willard)

Sun 12 Jun 2011  « Back to Top

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There’s a great cure for poverty, it’s called get a job, work hard. God never set himself up as the cure for laziness, or the cure for stupid. There is no supernatural, super-spiritual thing that over comes a lack of hard work or laziness.

We've got to be wise, which means staying out of debt, not putting money in things going down in value, not trusting the government to do it for us, live on a budget, take charge of your finances, show self-control!

To know God, is to take care of the poor and the afflicted. Tsedaqah (Hebrew) is introduced, equating Righteousness with Generosity/Charity

Anytime that you bring up the topic of money, you open up all kinds of things - people get really irritated; and they instantly go: is this law, or grace? The short answer to that is: it’s all Grace.

If I can make a point: other than food and money, people don’t have a problem with the Old Testament at all.

If I were to say: the topic for the seminar today is “don’t be sexually intimate with your mother”, that’s in Leviticus 12, it’s a command: don’t be sexually intimate with your mother. But that verse is nowhere in the New Testament; and I guarantee you no one would say: wait a minute, you’re putting us under law!

Even though its nowhere in the New Testament, if I were to say: the topic of today’s lesson is “Don’t burn your children in Fire”, I guarantee you no one would say: wait a minute, you’re putting us under law!

Let me just handle the law and grace thing… Even in the oldest, of the oldest, of the Old Testament, your forgiveness was never found in keeping the commands; your forgiveness was found in putting your faith in God’s faithfulness.

They put their faith in a lamb, and they were forgiven. How are we forgiven: we put our faith in a lamb! Same - old & new – no difference, forgiveness came by faith, through grace.

The commands were never intended to forgive sins; but to show forgiven people how to live. This is not about law at all, this is about how God intended for us to live the best sort of life.

We have to ask ourselves some core belief questions, and that is this: if I’m willing to trust God with my eternal soul; what is it about money that I don’t trust him with? We trust him with something as big as eternity, but when it comes to money there’s something in us that wants to hoard.

God actually instituted a ‘divine order’, of handling money; a ‘divine order of giving’; or ‘divine order of living’.

He actually instituted a divine order of handling money, and he intended it to create the most blessed group of people in the history of the world.

Did it work, yes? You have a group of people, which make up less than 1% of the world’s population; yet they have 30% of the world’s wealth. They’re on to something!

We’re going to have five main points today. Let me just give them to you all at once: #1) Work; #2) Wisdom; #3) Honor; #4) Knowing God; #5) Tzedakah.

Financially, first we have to institute a couple of things; #1 Work.

God never designated himself as the cure for laziness. As a matter of fact, in the Torah, there is a certain disdain that god has for laziness. He actually deplores it. So God never set himself up as the cure for laziness.

There’s a great cure for poverty, it’s called: “get a job; work hard”. There is no supernatural, super-spiritual thing that over comes a lack of hard work or laziness.

We’ve all been taught to tithe? We’ve been taught that: if you tithe, it opens the windows of heaven – is that true? Sure, but is tithing the cure for laziness – no!

People say: “I’ve tithed, but God isn’t blessing me?” Yes, but you’re sleeping until eleven! You’re not doing anything to gain a skill that’s marketable!

There are things that you have to do in the natural that you can’t overlook; you have to work hard! In the age of the Jewish world, they worked six 12-hour days; and they still sort of carry that today. They worked six twelve’s; we work five eights - and we’re worn out.

They worked 6*12=72; we work 5*8=40; so take god out of it, and you already have 32 man-hours a week, of production, more than what we do. There’s a side to favor that’s spiritual; but there’s a side of favor that’s very natural. Have you ever noticed that very-prepared people are ‘luckier’ than unprepared people? So is it really luck? No, it’s preparation. So #1, work hard! Work Hard.

#2, Live in Wisdom. Let me say this: God is not the cure-all for laziness; nor is He the cure-all for stupidity.

God is not the cure for stupid. A stupid and selfish act on your part does not constitute an emergency on God’s part. If you do something stupid, or if you do something selfish, it does not constitute an emergency on Gods part.

Let me give you an example of what I mean (outside of finance). At this church, we believe in the Power of God, correct? We believe in God’s power to: Deliver, Save, Heal, Restore, and Redeem all things? Would you rather pray for someone, for a miracle; or would you rather see them prevent the need for the miracle?

Now I’m all for miracles - sometimes people face things that they did not deserve; they did not set up; they did not make decisions to sow into; and those are the people that we want to believe God to touch.

And we really want to believe for God to touch all people, regardless of if it was their fault or not; but to smoke 3 packs of cigarettes for 30 years, and then make prayer for lung cancer, that’s a little bit more preventable – are you with me?

Do we want to see God heal lung cancer, yes! But we would rather see you give up smoking at 22; so at 52, you’re not in that situation. So in other words: do all you could do… wisdom!

Let me just give you a couple of points that they have: they work hard; they stay out of debt. They don’t borrow money; and they particularly don’t borrow money on things going down in value.

If you’re paying 8% interest on something that’s losing 20% of its value a year, that’s a real problem. A car is a good example of that. There are some case where getting a new car is ok, but in 90% of cases, a new car is going to lose 50% of its value in the first 3 years.

If you buy something for $40,000, and in 3 years you know it’s going to be worth $20,000, you have to know that’s not the best choice.

If I said: I have a business proposition for you. I want you to give me $40,000; and in 3 years I promise I will give you twenty back - are you going to do that? Of course not right? Anyone want to play? Of course you would never do that; but what if I said: you give me forty, and in 3 years I will give you twenty; but in the meantime, I’ll let you drive a really nice car. Um, ok.

Now I’m all for nice cars, I have a nice car; but what I’m not all for, is: borrowing money going on something going down in value; or putting too much assets in the things going down in value.

The combined total of your toys, what I mean by toys is: anything with wheels; or has to get where it’s going with wheels. If the combined total value of all of those things is more than half of your income, then even if you own it, you can’t really afford it. Even if you don’t owe money on it, there’s too much of your liquid ability in something going down in value.

We have to have wisdom. Don’t borrow money; if you can’t afford it, save. If you can afford it, make a commitment that: I’m going to save until I can afford it; and in the time that it takes you to save, you’ll realize: you don’t need it; and it will save you a lot of heart-ache!

So #1 for Wisdom: Get out of Debt!

#2, Save! It was biblically mandated, a biblical command, to save 10% of your income. They saved 10% of their income, their whole life.

Let me show you how smart God is. If you’re over 55: if you had saved 10% of your income your whole life, how much money would you have now?

Financial people tell me: if someone saves from 18-30 and then stops, they’ll have more money; than someone that starts at 30, and saves until 60; because of compounding interest, and the rule of 72 (your money will roughly double every 6 years).

So those first 12 years get you two extra doubles at the end, which makes up from anything earned. It’s not a matter of amount, it’s a matter of time, a long period of it. It was a biblical mandate to save money, 10% of your income.

I thank my God in heaven, on a regular basis, for my mother. My mother made me save 10% of my income, from the time I was 4.

When I was 4 years old, she opened a bank account for me; mom would drive me to the circle-K, we would go in; and mum would ask for 10 dimes. Out of those 10 dimes, I had to put 10c in the offering plate; and I had to take 10c to the bank.

She would actually drive me to the bank, and teach me how to fill out a deposit slip; then let me hand it to the teller with 10 cents in it – she taught me how to do this. From the time I was four, I have always saved 10% of my income.

I don’t want to get too god-area, but I just want to tell you the power of that. That even from 4-25, when I was 25 years old I crossed the $100,000 mark.

Now it’s in something I can’t touch until I’m 60, alright… You’d have to put up with me until I’m 60 to get it! To have $100,000 at 25 is a fair whack of a good start, isn’t it?

So to have wisdom: don’t borrow money; save.

Here’s another one under wisdom: don’t trust the government to do it for you.

Let me share this scripture with you, from someone we would consider a hero; but he made a mistake; he’s still considered a hero because all people do make mistakes. It’s Joseph – it’s in Genesis 41:33-36. Joseph is in prison, and he is able to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh has this dream, which tells him is that: there’s going to be 7 years plenty; followed by 7 years of famine. He asks Joseph: what do we do about this?

This is Joseph’s answer: “Let Pharaoh look for discerning and wise man, and put them in charge of the land of Egypt”. I love it!

Have you ever said something that has an underhand meaning, like Joseph said in front of the Pharaoh? He’s still an inmate, and Pharaoh says: what should I do about this Joseph? And Joseph’s like: if only there was a wise man you could trust to take care of this… I love it!

“Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land, and take…” Everybody say “take”! “…Take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt, during the 7 years of abundance.”

So what did Joseph do? He instituted a 20% tax. So instead of making a rule/law that everyone has to save 20%, and store it up in their own barn; he says: no, let the government take it.

Presumably, if we take 20% over 7 years, we will have enough to provide for our people at the end. And that sounds good at first, but it never works!

Everything the government ever tries, fails, at least in America. Maybe in NZ government is better, but in America everything they have done fails. Amtrax broke, the post office broke, now they want to run healthcare – are you kidding me?

So it says: “they should collect all the food from these good years, and store the grain under the authority of Pharaoh”. In other words: the government will take care of it, to be kept in the cities for food.

“This food should be held in reserve, for the country, to be used during the 7 years of famine (now this all sounds like a good idea) that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine”.

So Joseph says: the government’s going to take 20%, and save it for the people; so when the famine hits, we will be able to take care of them.

This whole story ensues, about his brothers and things; and finally the 7 years of famine comes around, Genesis 41v56-57.

“Now when the famine had spread over the whole country, Joseph opened the storehouses, and sold grain to the Egyptians”.

Sold? So he took it from them, and then he sold it back to them; what a great business plan! Um, I’m sure he had good intentions at first; but eventually what happened is really, really not good.

It says that he collected so much grain, that they quit measuring it, because it was pointless. 20% of everybody’s harvest, for seven years! They quit measuring it because it was pointless…

“…and he sold grain to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe throughout Egypt, and all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in the world.”

So not only did he sell them at a profit to other countries, he also sold it back at a profit to the people he took it from to begin with.

Genesis 47v13-21 tells you the end of the story. It says: “there was no food in the whole region, because the famine was severe. Both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine; and Joseph collected all the money that was too be found in all of Egypt and Canaan in payment for the grain they were buying”.

In other words, he took it from them; then sold it back to them until they ran out of money – all the money was gone, in payment for the grain they were buying. And he brought it to Pharaohs palace.

When the money from the people of Canaan and Egypt was gone, all Egypt came to Joseph and said – give us food. In other words: give it to us for free now, c’mon seriously, we’re starving! “

“Why should we die before your eyes, our money is now used up.”

“Then bring your livestock”, Joseph said. “I will sell you food, in exchange for livestock, since you’re money’s gone. So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and he gave them food in exchange for the horses, sheep, goats, cattle, donkeys, and he brought them through that year with food, in exchange for their livestock”.

So first he took all their money for the food (that he took to begin with), and then he took all their livestock, and everything they had.

Now watch what happens – “when that year was over, they came to him the following year and said – we cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone, and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except: our bodies; and our land”.

“Why should we perish before your eyes, we and our land our land. Buy us, and our land, in exchange for food; and we, with our land, will be in bondage to Pharaoh. Give us seed, so that we may live and not die, and that the land not becomes desolate.”

So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt, for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, for the famine was too severe for them; and the land became Pharaohs, and Joseph reduced the people to slavery!” Joseph reduced the people to slavery.

In other words, you can’t trust the government to do for you, what God has called you to stand up and take responsibility to do for yourself.

Let me make one more wise observation: Jesus might not come back in your lifetime. It is better to be prepared, than to hope for that. You want to play Russian roulette with your whole financial future, over a theological concept that you have no idea when it might come to pass?

We have got to be wise. #1, we’ve got to work hard. #2, we’ve got to be wise, which means staying out of debt.

It means not putting money in things going down in value. It means not trusting the government to do it for us.

It means all kinds of other things: it means live on a budget. Take charge of your finances; show self-control.

If you want a good book on that, the best book I’ve read is called “The total money maker”, by Dave Ramsey. It will really help you a lot with those practical things. It has budget worksheets, and all kinds of things in the back of it.

So #1, Work; #2, Wisdom - stay out of debt; don’t put your money in things that lose value; save 10% of your income - don’t trust the government to do it for you.

#3, Honor. You want to stay within your calling, and your strengths; and you want to honor strengths and callings of other people.

Without going through the whole scripture, one of the things that stand out for me, from the story of David and Goliath: David is a shepherd, and the issue with David is the plan-o-graph.

You guys remember the plan-o-graph? How big is David on the plan-o-graph, and how big is Goliath? Goliath was like 9 foot 6; but the idea that David was some kind of small, puny guy is not true.

David was a shepherd, he was a tough man, he was a man’s man. He killed a lion and a bear with his bare hands! This guy is not someone you would just go mess with.

Goliath is challenging the armies of Israel, and he’s blaspheming God. David goes to Saul and says: are just going to let him do this? I’ll go handle this…

I would say that David was probably a little bit hot-headed… David said: I’ll go handle this, no problem, let me at him.

Saul says: we’ll, if you’re going to go at him, at least wear my armor, right? When David put the armor on, did it say that David couldn’t use it, because it didn’t fit? No, it says: David couldn’t use it, because he wasn’t used to it – it wasn’t his tools.

It says: Saul was a head & shoulders taller than anyone else in the land; so David must’ve been a pretty big dude, for them to think that they could even possibly fit him into the armor.

This issue wasn’t that it didn’t fit; the issue was that it wasn’t his tools. David was anointed to be king, but it wasn’t his time, his calling was still a shepherd.

So he goes down and gets five smooth stones, and this is what it says: and he put it in his shepherd’s bag. So when he goes to face Goliath, what does he look like? A shepherd – he’s got a staff, he’s got his shepherds bag, which had the sling, and the five rocks.

If you go back to read the story, this is what it says: “and Goliath was enraged, and he said am: I a dog, that you are coming at me with a stick (which is a staff)?”

Goliath chose to dishonor what David’s calling was. Goliath chose to dishonor and disrespect what David’s calling was - and ultimately it was his downfall.

David chose to stay within his calling, and it ultimately ended up resulting in victory for David, and the entire situation, and ultimately the nation of Israel.

Listen, one of the most destructive things you can do financially, is live in such a way where you always wish you were somebody else. If only I had this gift, if only I had opportunity, if only I had this education, if only…

Hold on, we’ve got to come back to a point of belief here. Do you really believe that God has already put in you everything you need for life and success and winning in abundance?

One of the Ten Commandments says: “don’t covet anything that is your neighbors” - anything that is your neighbors!

There are people in this room that would never get up in front of people and talk, because they’d be too scared; but those same people are the ones who can run business, and without them, I can’t even operate.

What I see is: a bunch of people with callings, and gifts, and talents, and personalities that I need to choose to honor; and it would be futile for me to live my life wanting to be like you; and it’s futile for you to live your life wanting to be me.

One of the keys to financial success is: honoring what God called you to be; by seeking it out, discovering it, being introspective, going through a process where you guess just what your talents and personalities are; and then finding something in the centre of that to make your living.

So #1, work hard! #2, be wise: get out of debt; save money; don’t put money in things that are going down in value; don’t trust the government to do it for you. #3, honor.

#4, Knowing God! Matthew 22:37-40, someone has asked him: what we need to do to inherit eternal life? There’s this discussion about how to read it; and then finally there’s this question:

“What’s the greatest command”? Can you summarize your holy yoke in one sentence?

Jesus says: “Love the lord your god with all your soul mind and strength – this is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the Torah and the prophets hang on these commands”.

In other words, either: memorize the entire Old Testament; or, just do those two things.

Here’s the issue: for us, we tend to think of ‘loving God’ and ‘loving people’ as two things. What’s your goal in life? I want to love God, and love people.

Actually, in the literary formation of the senate, as well as just in their thought, ‘loving god’ and ‘loving people’ is exactly the same thing.

To them: loving people is loving God; and loving God is loving people. That it is impossible to say: you love God, if you don’t love other people.

It is also impossible to hate other people (or have animosity between yourself and other people), and then say you love God.

It is also impossible to be a generous, loving person towards other people; and not somehow learn the love of God in the process.

That loving God IS loving people; and loving people IS loving God; to them, you can’t separate the two.

I was sitting with a rabbi once (not my rabbi, I just got on a plane), and he said: Shane, don’t you understand, that in Jewish culture, it’s impossible to be righteous and greedy - you just can’t do it.

You can’t say you love God, and then turn your back on a hopeless person. The way you love God is the way you love other people; and the way you love other people is loving God - the two things are intertwined.

Now in the bible, you’re going to see a lot of phrases like, ‘the kingdom of God’, ‘the kingdom of Heaven’, even as sometimes you see ‘inherit the land’ - all these phrases are the same as that phrase.

The word Heaven sometimes refers to a place, like a place we go, the abode of Heaven. But other times, Heaven is a euphemism for God, because they didn’t like to say the name God.

Even today, you might get an email from a messianic Jew, and they spell God, G (hyphen) D. They don’t want to completely articulate the idea of God; so what they did is they called it Heaven.

So sometimes, the bible might say: “you have sinned against Heaven” - that’s just a euphemism for: you sinned against god.

So the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, it was a euphemism, not for where you go someday; it was a euphemism for: what would your life be like, if God was in charge of it now, here, now, today?

What would it be like, if God was the ruler, and the reigned over everything in your life. If everything in your life was brought into the light, and darkness was dispelled; what would your life look like then? That was the kingdom of God.

So for the rest of this session, I want to ask you a question that’s going to seem confrontational, because it’s a question we have to deal with, and that is this question: Do you know God?

Do you know him? If I was to hand out a piece of paper, and I want you to write down a one-sentence definition of what it means to know God, we would get all kinds of different answers.

Some would be right, some would wrong; all would be sincere, all would be heartfelt, and all would have an element of your personal thing with God in it.

The question is: how important is it to know God; and the answer is VERY.

The second question is: how does God define what it means to know him?

Luke 13:22-30 says: “Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. And someone asked him Lord, are only a few people going to be saved”?

I love that – “lord are only a few people going to be saved”? You have to understand, the region he’s in, is in a highly orthodox region of Israel; it was filled with people who had made the Torah even harder than it was.

There are 613 commands in the Torah; but they were actually keeping 3000 commands, so they had made the Torah even harder than it was.

Here was their thought: since we are keeping the Torah better than anyone else, God loves us more than other people.

So they started having the thought that: we’re in, and everyone else is out. We’re right, and everyone else is wrong. We would never do that would we?

This group of people had names for themselves: the elect; the remnant; God’s special people.

So when they ask him: “Rabbi, are only a few going to be saved”, here’s what they’re saying: “Rabbi, are only a few going to be saved… and it’s us right”? Tell us we’re right, were in, and everyone else is out. We’re right, and everyone else is wrong.

When someone asks you a question like that, there are two ways to handle it. One is Taekwondo. The other is Judo. Judo, Taekwondo - you confront it. In Judo, you sort of side yourself with them; then just at the right moment you throw them. Jesus choose Judo, I love it.

“Lord, are only a few going to be saved?”, and he said to them: “make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many I tell you will try to enter, and not be able to”.

Jesus is saying: you guys think that only a few people will get in (through the narrow door), but be sure to enter through the narrow door; you’re right, there’s a lot of people who think they’re in; and they’re actually out.

Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will be the one standing outside and knocking like they do.

In other words: you’re right, there are a lot of people who think they’re in, and they’re actually out, and that’s actually you.

“Sir, open the door for us”; but he will answer: “I don’t know you, or where you come from”.

But he will say: “but we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets”, but he will reply: “I do not know you, or where you came from. Away from me you evil-doers, and there will be weeping there and gnashing of teeth”.

When you see Abraham, and all the prophets in the kingdom; but you yourselves are turned out; people will come from the north, the east and the south and the west, and will take their place at the feast of the kingdom of god.

Indeed, there will be those who are first, and those who are last; and those who are first will be last.

He says, to this group of people: there are a lot of people who think they’re in, and everyone else is out. Actually, it’s you who are out; you who thought you were in - you are the ones that will be shut out; because at my wedding table, many will come from the north and south and west - and there’s no room for people who think they’re better than everybody else.

So Jesus tells the story, and at the center of the story, twice, what does he say? “I don’t know you”. The issue was not-knowing God.

The other application is: how you treat others matters. He ends that whole thing by saying: the people you think are out; are actually the ones in.

All those people who you think are out (because you’re in, and they’re out), they actually the ones in, and you’re the one shut out.

Jesus is slamming them: how you treat others matters; and the issue is: I don’t know you.

John 17:3 – “now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God”.

So for Jesus, what was ‘eternal life’ defined by, in the simplest sentence? To know God.

How do you know you have eternal life? You know him. You know him – this is eternal life, that they may know you. H

Matthew 25:1-12. This is the introduction to Jesus sermon on sheep and goats. This is what he says to introduce this:

“at that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom, five of them were foolish, and five of them were wise. The foolish ones took their lamp but did not take any oil with them; the wise however took oil along with them in jars along with their lamps”.

I was listening to one Rabbi teach on this, and he said that in the Hebrew version of Matthew, when it says “they took the oil with them”, it says “they took no Tzedakah”, which is the Hebrew word for generous, generosity, or charity. They took no Tzedakah.

Tzedek is the word Righteous. Tzedakah is the word generous, generosity, charity. Try saying it: Tsadaq; Tzedakah.

So Righteousness and Generosity are the same word. You cannot separate righteousness and generosity. You cannot say you are righteous, and be greedy.

2106 verses of scripture connect righteousness with generosity. Greed and wickedness are also interconnected: Jesus said “the love of money is the root of all evil” - greed is the root of all evil.

Generosity was the key to righteousness; the suffix means ‘to reveal’. So ‘righteousness revealed’ was generosity.

The five foolish virgins, they don’t bring any generosity with them. This is going to play a huge point. The wise however, took oil along with their lamps, verse five.

The bridegroom is a long time in coming, and they all felt drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: here is the bridegroom, come out and meet him!

Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps; the foolish ones said to the wise: give us your oil, for our lamps are going out.

No, they replied, there may not be enough or both of us. Instead, go to those who sell oil, and buy some for yourself.

But while they were on their way to buy oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins were ready, went in with him to the wedding banquet, and the door was shut.

Later the others also came: “Sir Sir, open the door for us”, but he replied: “I tell you the truth, I do not know you”. The issue was: he didn’t know them – “I don’t know who you are”. The issue in the parable of the ten virgins is: I don’t know who you are.

The parallel is the introduction to Jesus sermon on sheep and goats, which is all about generosity. The sheep were on the right, the goats on the left.

To the sheep, he said: come into the kingdom and prepare the foundation for the world; for when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me drink, when I was a stranger you took me in, when I was naked you clothed me, when I was in prison you came to me.

And the righteous (Tsadaq), will say to him: when did we see you naked, or thirsty, or hungry, or in prison, or chains – when did we see all that and do all that for you?

He said: when you did it to the least of these, you did it for me. Now come on in; and to those on my left, I will say: away from me, for you did not do those things.

So in Matthew 25, when Jesus talks about how he’s going to judge the world, the key to how he judges the world is generosity. It was: Knowing God; Tzedakah!

In the sheep and goats, he doesn’t say: to those on my right, come in to the kingdom, prepared for you for the foundation of the world… for you said the sinner’s prayer!

No! So come in; for when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me drink, when I was a stranger you took me in, when I was naked you clothed me. It was Tzedakah, it was developing a Tzedakah spirit.

Matthew 7:21-23 – “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven; but only he who does the will of my father, who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name, and drive out demons, and perform many miracles? But I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. I never knew you!”

How important is it to know God? Pretty important! So Jesus says: there are a lot of people, at the end of the day, who think they’re in, but they’re actually out…

…this is incredibly scary! Can I get an amen? Why is that scary? Because I think I’m in, and so do you.

What separates me from them? Nothing yet: they think they’re in; I think I’m in. They’ve cried out: “Lord, Lord”; you’ve cried out “Lord, Lord”, so have I.

Then Jesus goes into this huge description, and he describes Pentecostal leaders. Who else is prophesying, casting out demons, and performing miracles? Who else is doing that – nobody, Pentecostal leaders! I mean seriously, Baptist in Auckland – they’re safe. Right, they’re not doing that?

Jesus says: many will say to me that day, “Lord, Lord”; and I will say: wait a minute – I don’t know you. Wait a minute, “but we cast out devils, and we performed many miracles, and we prophesied”.

“But I didn’t know you”, which is scary, because that sounds like me. I’ve cried out “Lord, Lord”, I have. I’ve made Jesus the lord of my life - I did it a lot of times; because in the Pentecostal church, you’ve lost your salvation every time you sinned - so I got saved every week. I’m more saved than all of you, probably. I might be in!

I’ve cried out Lord, Lord, I’ve prophesied, I have – I move in the spirit quite a lot. I don’t really do it when I’m here (because it happens here all the time), but I do move it the spirit quite a lot, I prophesy, I’ve cast out devils. So, I’ve been a part of miracles; some things that I would call miraculous. So what separates me from them? Nothing!

The issue isn’t what they did; the issue is: they didn’t know him. Which begs the question: what does it mean to know God?

You know there’s only one scripture in the bible that defines what it means to know him – only one!

Jeremiah 22:6-8: “He took care of the poor and the afflicted, so it will go well for him”. Is this not what it means to know me, declares the lord your God. So to God, to ‘know him’, is to ‘take care of the poor and the afflicted’. Doesn’t that make sense!

To do something for someone, who can’t possibly do something in return for you; that in doing that, you would know the heart of God, because isn’t that what God did for you?

That we are called not to go to heaven one day, we’re actually called to bring heaven to every place there’s hell now. This is central to their financial freedom.

We could talk about the whole system they have for dealing with money (we’re going to), but if I give you the whole system, and you miss the heart of it - it doesn’t make any difference.

If I give you the whole system, but you’re going to be lazy…whatever; if I give you the whole system, and you’re going to make stupid decisions, selfish decisions – whatever.

If I give you the whole system, and you’re going honor each other, and honor what’s in your own life – whatever. If I give you the whole system, and you’re going to miss the bigger aspect, which is: do you know him...

This thing of ‘knowing God’ followed Jesus through His whole ministry. “This is eternal life, that they may know me”. “Depart from me, I never knew you”.

Jesus was nice to everybody; who’s the only person that Jesus said went to hell – only one. Jesus whole life, he only said one person went to hell. There’s a rich man, who overlooked a poor man at his gate – that’s the man that went to hell.

Before we excuse ourselves from that conversation… we are the rich man! If you drove here in an automobile, it doesn’t matter what kind of car you have, you’re in the richest 8% of the whole world.

If you left your spare car at home, you’re in the richest 1% of the whole world. If the home you have has a concrete foundation, and lumber is the primary building material - in other words, you don’t live in a trailer; if your home is not mobile, you’re in the richest 0.1% of the whole world.

We are the rich man, the question is: what are we going to do about it?

If you look at the rich man in Lazarus, the rich man goes to hell because he overlooked that poor man at his gate; and then even in hell what does he do? Abraham: send that beggar over here, to give me some water.

The man is in hell; and he still thinks he’s better than the poor man! The very thing that put him in hell; he still kept making the same decision to stay there.

You know anybody like that? You know anybody that made decisions that put their life in hell, then they’re in hell, and they kept making the same decisions? Sounds like us.

So this thing follows Jesus through his whole ministry: the rich man and Lazarus; and the sheep and the goats – what was the key?

In Matthew 25, what did the sheep and goats get separated by? Tzedakah; Generosity; is this not what it means to know me?

Acts 10, Peter shows up, he says: Cornelius – god has already counted you righteous; because he knows at some point you’re going to pray a prayer. God has already counted you righteous, because your generosity to the poor went up as a remembrance to him. Is this not what it means to know me declares the lord your God?

Let me close this session out with a scripture from first 1 John 3:16. John has picked up on this principle, and this is what he says:

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us, and we ought (here’s the application) to lay down our life for our brothers.”

This is how he interprets that: “If anyone has material good, and sees his brother with material need, how can the love of God be in him?” Tzedakah!

Verse 20 - “Dear children, let us not love in word only, but in action and in truth. This then, is how we know we belong to the truth, and how we can set our hearts at rest in his presence, whenever our heart condemns us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything”.

In other words, John says: you know those moments with God, when you’re not sure if you’re ok with him? The way to overcome that, is to look around you, and make people’s lives better; because it’s in that generosity that you can know you belong to God, and you heart is set at rest in his presence.

Ten verses later, this is how he says it. 1 John 4:7 – “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God”.

My question is, before we get into the logistics of everything, do you know him? Do you know him?

If you’re not sure, are you willing to adjust your life to develop a Tzedakah spirit?

Are you willing to genuinely ask of God: God instill a Tzedakah spirit in me. A right spirit, install a Tzedakah spirit in me.

May I be a person who isn’t waiting to go to heaven, but is actually looking around for opportunities to bring heaven to every place there’s hell that I see. May I be someone who had developed a Tzedakah spirit, for I want to know you.

#1 work; #2 wisdom; (stay out of debt; don’t put money in things going down in value).

#3, save 10% of your income (don’t trust the government to do it for you, they will go broke; see America, 14 trillion in debt, hard to get your head around).

#4, honor what’s on your life, and the life of others.

#5, seek the face of god, desperately desiring to know him.

I bless you to be a people who know god, know god, not in some definition we made up, but in the way he defines it: to take care of the poor and the afflicted.

May we be people who look around us, and seek to show the righteousness and generosity and the love of god to the world.

Finance (2 of 2) (Shane Willard)

Sun 12 Jun 2011  « Back to Top

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We're called to live on a circle in a square. A circle inside of a square is 79%. The math from the commands matches the illustration from agriculture. 2.5% is put in the hands of the Priest; then a tenth is given to the church; and a tenth for yourself, in the form of savings, but one third of that is given to the poor.

He doesn't want you just to go to heaven one day, he wants you to bring heaven to earth now. If your first fruits are in the right hands, your finances can't die. You sanctify everything else in your life by honouring the lord with your first fruits.

James 1.26 If anyone considers himself religious and does yet not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that our God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this; to look after orphans and widows in their distress. The religion our father sees as pure is generosity.

Leviticus 19:9-10. The issue is: Tzedakah, and developing a Tzedakah spirit.

The question then is: How do you define Tzedakah? There’s got to be a working definition of it.

There are 2 answers: one, there's this sort ethereal sort of: are you a generous person?

But they also have a working definition, a system for doing their money; and the name of their system is called Tzedakah. In other words, if you do your money this way, this is called Tzedakah.

So here is the entire system. I’m going tell you the end from the beginning, and then go back and show it to you in Scripture.

The first thing they do with their money, the first offering to be given; is called the highest offering, the holiest offering. In some places it’s called the high-holy offering (superlative highest and holy offering), is called Terumah.

It was the smallest offering as well. The smallest offering was actually the holiest offering, because it was the first offering, the primary offering; and it sanctified all other offerings.

In their world, to tithe, without offering Terumah, was just lunacy! The very thing that sanctified the tithe was the Terumah; and the Terumah was very small - it was 1/40th.

I was teaching this once in the South, and said: it was 1/40th; and one guy shouted from the back “Well who could afford to give 40% to something?” Um, to which my thought was: where did you go to school? 1/40th is not 40%, its 2.5%, or $25 on a $1000, set apart for the Lord as a Terumah offering.

You might hear this called the ‘Offering of First- fruits. In their culture, first-fruits had to become Terumah, in order to be sanctified. For it to become Terumah, two things had to happen: it had to be lifted high; and then it had to be placed into the hands of their pastor.

The 1/40th offering went straight to the ‘man of God’ in your life, went straight to your pastor. A pastor was never intended to live on a salary from the tithe. The pastor was intended to live on the Terumah of the people.

We're going to talk about that… relax! The Terumah offering is mentioned 3 times more often than the Tithe in the bible; and I'll show it to you ok. It’s mentioned 87 times!

The problem is: the English translators translate the same word 13 different ways! If you translate something 13 different ways, it dilutes its importance by a factor of 13, correct? I'm going to show you some of those ways.

Terumah was 1/40th, straight to the pastor. Next they would take a tenth of what was left, and they would give it to their church. I’m putting it into today’s terms: they would give it to their church.

Here’s how detailed they paid their tithes. They would harvest their crop. They would place their crop on top of the animals. Then they would just go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10; move the animal out of line randomly, as a tithe; they would put him in a tithe pile, and then bring the whole tithe to the store house.

They would pay the next tenth to themselves. They were commanded to give the next tenth to themselves. The reason for this, for the confusion here is: if you take Strong’s concordance, and do a word study on the word ‘tithe’. In some places it says: “every year, bring a tithe of that years increase into my house, so there’s be food in my house, and the Levites take care of it...”

In other places it says: “every year you should bring a tenth and save it, store it up for your feast and your festivals, and an inheritance to your children’s children”.

So they were commanded, not only to give a tenth; but they were commanded to save a tenth, for a couple of reasons.

One: to save up for their feasts and festivals. But what was left over from their feast and festivals, they would trade it in for silver and gold; and save it up as an inheritance for their children’s children.

Which once again leads me to a question: if you’re over 55, and had saved 10% your whole life, how much money would you have? And then of course when you die, and leave that to your children, where are they starting? And then if they save 10% how much money do they have?

Do you see now, why these people are so blessed? In some sense, it’s the hand of God; in another sense, its obedience to natural common sense.

You save 10% your whole life… and this set me free in terms of the tithing realm - when I saw that God was just as interested in me saving money, as he is in me giving money. It is just a much a command to: Save it; as it is to Give it.

The last thing they would do is called the Maaser. The word Maaser is Tithe, it just means ‘a tenth’.

Every one of these, although they’re different, gets translated just one way in English: Tithe. So Tithe gets three times more emphasis than it should; and Terumah gets 13 times less emphasis than it should. It’s a problem.

The Maaser was this: every 3rd self-tithe, instead of giving it to myself; I give it to the poor. You can read about that in Deuteronomy 14. It says: “Every 3rd year, which is the year of the special tithe, take a tithe of that years increase and set aside for strangers, widows, orphans and aliens...”

So this was the system. Now I’m going to go back, show you each one in scripture, then talk about each one. Leviticus 19:9-10 – “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field; or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time; or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and aliens, for I am the Lord your God. “

When God got this group of people out of slavery in Egypt, and into freedom in the promise land; he was trying to create a culture of people, who would show the whole world: what does God look like, if he was leading the way.

So to create a whole new culture, you have to deal with a lot of questions, don’t you? What’s acceptable; and what’s not acceptable in our culture.

So he gives things like: we’re not going to kill each other. We’re going to take one day off a week. We’re going to do these things.

One of the commands is: “thou shall not steal”. Well hang on, to build an entire culture, one of the things you have to deal with is this: how do we think about our stuff? How do you think about what’s yours?

There is only two ways to accumulate things legitimately: one way is to work for it and earn it. You work for it, you paid for it, you earned it – it’s yours. The other way to legitimately acquire things is gifts.

So a year and a half ago, someone gave me a car. It was a nice one. The car is legitimately mine, not because I worked and earned it, but because someone gave it to me. But it’s still nonetheless legitimately mine. Every other way of accumulating things are illegitimate. It’s called stealing.

So essentially God sets out this command: we're going to think about our stuff in a new way.

Here’s the centre of the command: how do you think about your stuff? Do you think about your stuff in a way that: you worked for it, and earned it; or do you think about your stuff as: it’s all a gift from God?

He says it different ways: Remember when you have abundance in the promise land; that it is I, the Lord your God, who gave you ability to obtain wealth.

In other words, the best way to live is not to think that anything you have is your own, but that all belongs to God, and that you are a steward of something bigger.

So God says: since I am in charge, and you are the steward of my money, let me tell you how the best way to handle your money is.

He says: I want you to visualize your life as a square. When you reap the harvest of your land, don’t: reap to the edges of the field; or gather the gleanings of the harvest; or go over a second time. Leave that for giving.

So essentially, the imagery is this: if your field is a square, he wants you to live on a circle. He wants you to live on a circle inside a square.

In other words, the corners are for giving; they’re not for you, this is not for you! We are to live from what’s on the circle.

So I asked a mathematician, what percentage of a square is a circle? If you put a circle inside a square, what percentage is that? If you want to get technical...pi this and that... it’s 79%! If you drop a circle into a square, you have 79% of the square.

So Gods way of doing life, is to live with 21% margins. That we are to live on: 79% of what we make; and we are to give away the other 21%. Now there’s a problem with that.

In NZ, do people live with 21% margin? No. In America, the average person spends $1.01 for every $1.00 they make. Which means they’re living on their entire square, and 1% of some other person's square (ford motor credit, home equity lines, master card, visa).

So God’s way is live on a circle inside a square. What we believe is our version of the story, which is to live on the whole square.

Of course, when you live on your whole square, who moves into your house? Murphy, right? When you live on your whole square, with no margin, who moves in? Murphy. Not only does he move in, but his 3 cousins: broke; desperate; and stupid move in.

People do stupid things when they’re desperate, don't they. When you live with no margins, all it takes is one disaster to throw everything.

If you can’t afford to live, when your tire goes flat, what is wrong with you? We have to live with enough margins, that if the tyre goes flat, we can just go replace the tire, and not have to borrow money.

When you use credits cards, when we use that 1% of someone else square, here’s the problem: in the next year, we have to pay the 1% back don’t we, with interest. So we borrow 1%, but it takes up a bigger percentage of our square, until before we know it, our whole square is gone.

Let me tell you what that looks like: when you get paid, every cent of it goes to pay bills. How does that feel? If feels like you have no square. So what appears like freedom is actually bondage.

So they write things like: “the borrower is the slave to the lender”. In another words, if you make $1000, and $985 is actually someone else’s, because you owe it to them, then that’s not freedom - that’s lunacy, that’s slavery!

So we live on our whole square, plus a certain percentage of someone else’s square; and then we blame Satan for our financial problems. It’s not Satan - poor Satan!

When it comes to most of us, and how we manage our money, Satan can take a vacation. We make enough stupid decisions to ruin it ourselves.

God says: this is how I want to you to organize your financial life - a circle on a square.

If you’re buying cars you can’t afford, with money you don't have, to impress people you don’t like, it is not Satan’s fault where that ends up.

We have to take responsibility for it. We have to own it. We need to at least, enter into a process, a 2-year plan to get your life to look like that. At least make a plan to try.

You say: I can’t afford to Tithe? Great, do 1%. I can’t afford… yes you can. Everybody can afford to honor Terumah. It’s so small. It’s $25 on a $1000. Are you kidding me? That’s coke! (Drinking coke; not sniffing coke - that’s far more expensive). You could give up coke; you could give up coffee; to bring this thing around for your life.

Check out the next scripture; there is a connection between Generosity (Tzedakah) and Righteousness. Psalms 37:25-26 – “I have been young, and now I’m old; yet I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread; for all the day long, he deals generously”.

In English there’s a aural disconnect: “a righteous man deals generously”; but in Hebrew it would say: “a Tzedak man does Tzedakah”. A Tzedak man operates in Tzedakah.

Psalm 112v5, a righteous man always shows generosity".

Deuteronomy 24:17-18 - “Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of a widow as a pledge. Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you. This is why I command you to do this”.

In other words, why should you treat others with dignity, that maybe they don’t deserve? Because at some point in your life, God treated you with dignity that you didn’t deserve - and we have to remember that.

Isaiah 1:15 – “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers I won’t listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash and make yourself clean. Take your evil deeds out of my site. Stop doing wrong and learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Come let us reason together, though your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow.”

The whole rant - what was the problem? Generosity. The solution to their problem? Be Generous.

There’s this one scripture in Luke 3, it’s about a guy named John the Baptist, and he goes on this rant. This group of people comes out to be baptized by him; they're not coming to challenge him or anything, and here’s his response:

Luke 3:7-9 - “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Not the greatest church growth technique is it! People coming out to be baptized by him, and his answer is: you basket of snakes, you fatherless people, there’s a word for that it starts with a B; don't want to call people that right?

You basket of snakes, you fatherless people - it gets worse: “the axe has already fallen to the roof of your trees, and every one of you will be cut down and thrown into the fire”. I would suggest to you that John is not a Baptist at all. He’s more a Pentecostal pastor on speed!

So he gives this whole rant, what sin do you think he was addressing? Idolatry, homosexuality, everyone knows there’s 3 things the Lord hates right? What is he dealing with?

The crowd is taken aback, and asks: “what would you want us to do?” He says: “Let the person with two tunics, share with the person who has none; and let one with food do the same”.

The whole rant was about generosity and greed.

Luke 19, there’s this encounter with Jesus and Zacchaeus, where Zacchaeus gives half of what he has to the poor; and Jesus says: that’s it - salvation has now come to you. Generosity.

Acts 2 and 4, it says “they sold everything they had, and gave it to those who were in need” - and that’s the period of time where God moved the most mightily through the church.

James 1:26 says: “If anyone considers himself religious, and does yet not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself, and his religion is worthless. Religion that our God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress”.

The religion our father sees as pure is Generosity.

Now let me go back to this, the first and holiest offering in the Tzedakah system was called Terumah. Let me give you the gist of it.

Some farmer in the Gold Coast explained this to me from a science perspective, I’m sorry I cannot re-explain it. Essentially what he told me was: when you plant a field, a certain percentage of the field comes up first (has something to do with the half-life of a seed). When that comes up, its called the first-fruit.

Now here’s what they believe. Whatever is true of the first-fruit is true of the whole crop. That went through their whole culture: first born – whole family; first words – whole book; first letter – whole word.

What’s true of the first mention, is true of every other mention. What’s true of the first fruit, is true of the whole crop.

So think about it: if what's true of the first-fruit is true of the whole crop, then it’s very important that the first fruit is holy.

The word is Bikkurim: the only way for the first fruit to become holy, is that it becomes Terumah.

For the first fruit to become Terumah, two things had to happen. One, it had to be lifted high.

The word Terumah, the root word is room, which means ‘to lift high’. In English its translated ‘wave offering’, ‘heave offering’, ‘high offering’, ‘high-holy offering’; in one place it’s called the Tribute.

So they lifted it high, essentially saying: I gift this to God. My first-fruits belong to God.

The second thing they had to do was: place it into the hands of their pastor. So they had to lift it high; place it into their hands.

The imagery is this; when I lift it high, I give it to God, and God commands me to give it to my pastor/priest. When the first fruits was lifted high and placed in their hands it was called Terumah, and that made the first fruits Holy, which sanctified the rest of the crop.

They would harvest their first fruits, bind it, lift it high, place it into the hands; then they would go back, and when the rest of the harvest came up, they would harvest that.

From that they would pay a first tithe to the Lord; then they would go back and count out another Tithe for themselves; and then every 3rd-self tithe, instead of giving it to themselves, they would give it to the poor.

Let’s go back to Terumah. Remember that if the first-fruits is holy, the whole lump is holy. Romans 11.16 – “For if the firstfruit is holy, the lump is also holy; and if the root is holy, so are the branches.”

1 Kings 17:8, a story about Elijah and a widow: “Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying: Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”

So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me please a morsel of bread in your hand.”

But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

So let’s review: you have a widow. How many mouths does she have to feed? Two, her and her son. How many meals does she have? One! One meal, two mouths.

This guy shows up, he says: I need some bread and water. She says: listen, let me tell you my circumstance. I have one meal and two mouths; I’ve got a problem. I’m actually going to cook this meal; me and my son are going to split it, and then were going to die. How much hope is in that? Not much at all.

Elijah says to her, “Do not be afraid; go home and do as you have said (what did she say - I'm going to make one meal for two, eat it and die); but first make me a small cake of bread for me from what you have, and bring it to me; and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.

Put it this way: If CNN and the Internet were around back then, what is the Christian world saying about Elijah? Either Elijah is the most insensitive jerk in the history of mankind; or he’s on to something.

He says: Oh, you've got one meal and two mouths? That’s a problem. You can go home and eat it and die - you could do that, or - you can give the first portion to me; and watch what happens.

For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’” She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah, and for the woman, and her whole family.

The principle is this: when the first portion of something is in the right hands, the rest of it can’t die. It’s so huge when it comes to your money and your spirit (we will talk about the spirit part in a second).

When the first portion is in the right hands, the rest of it can’t run out or die; the whole lump has to follow the sanctify of the first portion.

It is very important that the first fruit of your entire increase is sanctified; and the only way to sanctify it, is to give it as a Terumah.

It has to be lifted high, placed in the hands. Try it with more gusto: It has to be lifted high, placed in the hands (repeats).

Malachi 3:6. Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me in Tithes and Offerings. Hold on, in that scripture, “you have robbed me in Tithes”, which is plural - there is more than one!

How many, you don't know at this point; which means there could be 9. How many of you are excited about that? Actually, there is only three.

“You have robbed me in Tithes”, then the world offering there is ‘Terumah’. You have robbed me in Tithes and Terumah.

In other words, don’t withhold your Terumah and your Tithes. To God (this is so important): to not save 10% of your income is stealing. Wow.

We always hear: if you don’t give your 10%, it’s stealing; but to not save is also stealing! They are both commands, and they are both commanded tithes.

Why, because God wants you under a law? No, because God knows: if you save 10% of your income, your whole life, you will be wealthy beyond measure. Just by compounding interest.

The rule of 72 says: if the stock market does 12%, then on average, your money is going to double every 6 years. The stock market in America has averaged 11.7 percent since 1920. So on average, your money will double every 6 years.

God is smart. My mum trained me to save 10% of my income my whole life, since I was 4. Right now, I’m on pace to have about 6 million dollars when I’m 60. Once again, I can’t touch it until I’m 60 - so ease up; but the truth is that: God is smart. God wants our best life.

Back to Terumah; I was taught my whole life that: tithes and first fruits were the same thing. In point of fact, they are not.

Leviticus says: you’re not even allowed to eat, until the first fruits and tithes are separated. Here are a couple of other scriptures.

Nehemiah 12:44 – “At that time, men were appointed to be in charge of the storerooms for the contributions, for both first fruits and tithes.” First fruits and tithes: two separate things.

Nehemiah 10:35 - "And bring the first fruits of our ground, and the first fruits of all of our trees, year by year into the house of the Lord. Bring, from the storerooms to the house of our God, also the first born of our sons, and of our cattle. And as it is written in the law, and the first of our herds and the first of our flocks, to bring into the house of our God, to the priest (that's the minister) in the house of our God.”

So the first fruit was meant to go into whose hands? The Priest.

“And that we should also bring the first fruits of our dough, and our heave offerings, Terumah. And the fruit of all manner of wines and oils, unto the priests, the the chambers of the house of our God”.

Then it goes on: “and the tithe of our ground was meant to be given into the Levites”.

So first-fruits and tithes were not the same thing: first-fruits went to the priest; and the Tithe went to the house of God. So first fruits and tithes separated: one went to the priest; one to the house of the Lord.

Let me just give you a few scriptures, where the word Terumah is used, and it’s translated all these different kinds of ways.

Exodus 25.2 “Speak to the children of Israel, that they take for me an offering (that word is Terumah) of every man who’s heart makes him willing, you shall raise my Terumah (to raise an offering, to lift it up).” Remember it had to be lifted high, and placed in the hands of the priest.

Numbers 31:41 Moses gave the tribute (the word here in Hebrew is Terumah). “Moses gave the Terumah, which was Jehovah's Terumah, unto Eleazar the priest as the Lord’s part, as the Lord commanded Moses”.

The Israelites had confiscated an entire city’s worth of loot, and they had counted all the head of cattle, and all the grain and stuff; then Moses said hey: before we divide it up against ourselves, we have to honor the man of God here; so they gave a Terumah portion of the entire thing to the priest, because God had commanded to. That's a principle of God: you have to honour the priest, with the portion of first fruits.

Ezekiel 44:30. They are in captivity in Babylon, and God sends these prophets to them to remind them to keep their prosperity mindsets.

It says: “and the best of all the first fruits of everything,” and this says Oblation - what is an Oblation? Sounds like a surgical technique! Its Terumah: “and the first of all fruits of everything, and every Terumah of everything, of all your Terumahs”.

The word Oblation there is the word Terumah, a Hebrew offering, that's supposed to be lifted high and placed in the hands of the Priest.

“You shall also give unto the priest the first of you dough, in order to cause a blessing on the rest of your house”. In other words, if you take care of your priest, the rest of the house takes care of itself. Interesting!

Also Ezekiel 48.10, they had been given a certain portion of land, and even the land had a Terumah portion. God was saying: make sure the priest get a Terumah portion to live in.

This is what is says: “and for these, even for the priest, shall be the holy Terumah (once again - oblation, odd translation) and even for the priest shall be the holy Terumah”.

Say with me: Holy Terumah! Once again Terumah represented the offering of the first fruits, and it was meant to be in the hands of the priest, in order to cause a blessing to be on the house.

Proverbs 3:9 “Honor the lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of your increase…”.

First fruits = Terumah = lifted high and placed into their hands.

“Honour the Lord with the firstfruits of your increase, then your barns will be fill to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.”

Deuteronomy 18:3 - “And this shall be the priest’s due from the people (in other words this is what you owe your priest), from them who offer a sacrifice, whether it be ox or sheep; and they shall give unto the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the maw”.

Mmmm! You don’t wanna know. The NIV says it this way: the shoulders, the jowls, and the inner parts. Yum, yum! So the priest does something for you; you owe him a portion of it. Next verse...

“The first fruit also of thy corn, of thy wine, and of your oil, and the first of the fleece from the shearing of your sheep, you shall give it to him (the priest - first portion of everything belongs in the hands of the priest). For the Lord thy God has chosen him, out of all the tribes, to stand to minister in his name always”.

Skip to verse 7... “Then he shall minister in the name of the Lord his God, as all his brothers the Levites do, who stand there before the Lord. They shall have like portions to eat, besides that which comes from the sale of his patrimony.”

What is up with that translation? It’s saying that a priest that has money from other places is still due the Terumah portion; even if he has money from other places it’s still his. Why? Because Terumah was not about your priest needing money; it’s about you needing to unlock the blessings of God over your life.

Numbers 18 talks about: “this is the share due to the priest; the first fruits of all of their offerings. For this will be an everlasting covenant of salt.”

This will be an everlasting covenant of salt! You guys know what a covenant of salt was? A covenant of salt happened at a wedding: basically the groom would stand on one side, and the bride would stand on the other, and each of them had a baggie of salt; and then the priest had an empty baggie.

So you would take the Groom's bag of salt, and dump in the the empty bag; take the Bride's bag of salt and dump in the bag; then he would hold it like this, and then shake it; and he would say: what God has joined together, let no man tear asunder (separate).

The teaching was that sometimes divorce happens, and you ought to be very gracious with it. Sometimes divorce happens, but whether divorce is right or not, you can never totally separate the salt – it’s too hard to do!

Then they would take the mixed salt, and sprinkle it on their hands; so the Terumah offering acted as a Covenant of Salt between you and your priest. In other words, whatever is on your priest's life, you can have rights to, when you're in a Terumah relationship.

You have a choice: you can stand in an impartation line for the next 20 years; or you can start honouring Terumah, and the very things that are on their lives, will start to come on yours, without you even trying - its Terumah.

Now, this is so important to your finances - so important. You sanctify everything else in your life by honouring the lord with your first fruits.

Let’s review: how do first-fruits become Terumah? It has to be lifted up; placed in the hands. Lifted high, placed in the hands. This has huge implications.

What's true of the first fruits is true of the crop. We have to understand this has spiritual implications too. Jesus was actually two offerings on the cross. One, he was a sin offering - behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world! But he was also a first fruits offering.

1 Corinthians 15 says it this way: that Jesus rose from the dead, being the first fruits of all who died.

Let's think of the principle: if what's true of the first fruits is true of the crop; if the first fruits of all who die, is living; then what's true of all who die? You're following me right? They live!

If what's true of the first fruits is true of the whole crop; if the first fruits of all who die, is living; then all who died are living - guaranteed the resurrection.

So if Jesus is a first-fruits offering, what did he have to become, to be sanctified? Terumah!

How did first fruits become Terumah - it had to be lifted high. “Behold if I be lifted high, I will draw on into myself.”

It had to be lifted high; and it had to be placed in the hands of the spiritual authority. Who was Jesus spiritual authority? The father! So when he dies, what does he say? Father, into your hands... which is what guaranteed the resurrection!

Three days later the Father says: give me my son back! If you humour me for a second, Satan may have said: based on what?

Based on the fact that the first fruits are in my hands, now the whole lump has to follow; now give him back.

Jesus is brilliant; he could've done all this miraculously, but all he did was instituted a universal principle, and he followed it. What's true of the first fruits is true of the crop, so he placed the first fruits of himself into the hands of the father, which guaranteed his resurrection.

It’s the very thing that guarantees yours. When you come to Christ, what do you do? You give your heart to Jesus.

The bible says it this way: that God gives you a deposit of the holy spirit; and you give him your heart.

You give him the first-fruit of your being; which is why, to be absent from the body, is to be present with God. Why - because the first fruits of your being is already in his hands. So when you die, the whole lump simply follows to where the first fruits are. The parable of the first fruits goes into resurrection.

So what does this mean for us financially? Well it means that if your first fruits are in the right hands, your finances can't die. They might look dead, but a resurrection is guaranteed.

The first fruits of your finances needs to be in the right hands; the first fruits of your spirit needs to be in the right hands - very important!

There are extra-biblical sources on this too. The Mishna is huge, but I've actually seen this volume four (it’s like, that thick); and this is how commonplace this was… Volume four was that thick, and its’ all about how to give Terumah - that's how commonplace it was - do you see how much we've lost? It was very common, it didn't go away until about 350AD, when Constantine...

This is how it went away, if you're wondering - Constantine had a meeting with the leaders of the tribe of Judah, and he says: we have all the education, we have all the resources, we have all the roads, we have all the ports, but you still have all the money - why?

And the leaders of the Tribe of Judah said, well they just pointed this out to him: this is how we do our money. You can read about this btw, in the history book "The Post-Nicean Fathers, Volume 7", if you’re interested.

Constantine said: is that it? They said: yes! He said: fine, this is what I'm going to do: I'm going to institute a tax! Now listen to the tax: 1/8 of a day's wage; 1/40 of a week’s wage; and 1/60 of a seasons wage; all on top of one another.

1/40 of a week’s wage - where did that normally go? To the priest; the Roman government reached out and confiscated it!

To which they asked: what about our pastors and our priests - what are we supposed to do when them?

Constantine said: the government will take care of them - don't worry about it; which was the start of socialism. It never worked, why? Because the power was supposed to be in God’s people doing those things; and God's principles never change. That's why America will never get out of debt, because it has abandoned God's ways. Not Satan's fault, our fault.

The Didache was a book that was written in the late first century. It's known by its longer name "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles to the First Century Church". The Didache did not make it into the Bible, and I'm not saying it should, I'm just simply saying that Peter, James and John wrote it, so we probably ought to listen.

In the Didache, Chapter 13, this is what it says: “If you have a Pastor willing to live among you and teach the word, he is worthy of your Terumah. If you do NOT have a Pastor willing to live among you and teach the word, then give your Terumah to the poor. Whatever you do, don't eat it. The only person allowed to eat the Terumah portion, is the priest.”

So, let me make a couple of observations. Number one, I have nothing to gain by telling you this, there's no selfish motive in my heart at all.

I'm not your Pastor, but I will tell you this: do you have a pastor willing to live among you and teach you the word? He's worthy of your Terumah, absolutely. (applause).

I will also tell you this. I will challenge you to weigh this out. I will challenge you to ask, is this really what God is saying? And if the spirit of god did not bear witness to you, then I will ask you not to do it.

But as you're listening to this, and you know something, that what you're hearing is right, this is what I want you to do. For the next 6 months, I want you to dedicate yourself to getting your life organised like this. If you care for anything, start with the Terumah (it was the first offering anyway), and it’s the smallest, the easiest to do.

When I was a pastor, the first Terumah I ever received was before I even understood it. Someone else understood it. This guy walked up, and in his hand was waving three dollars.

The poor guy wanted both of his eyes to work. They would work, but only one at a time, and so he would look at you like this, and the other eye would float around, it was weird.

And so, I used to mess with him; because one time, in front of this whole group of people, he told the whole group of people he could beat me up in a fight; which was ridiculous, but I didn't want to fight him, so he just kept going and going, so I said: hey, look, do me a favour, watch my hand. And so his eyes started doing this, and he was like: stop!

So he comes down the hallway, waving three dollars, and he was broke as - you can't believe how broke he was. Now I thought: I don't need his three dollars.

So he hands me this three dollars, and every impulse in me wanted to give it back; so I went to give it back, and as soon as I did, the Lord stopped me; and he said: you do not give that back! It's not for you, it’s for him.

Well he got home that night, and not one person, but two people, had given him an auto-mobile!

My mum gave her first Terumah; I explained this to her, because her company said she's capped - because of her education, they wouldn't promote her any more. And I said: Mum, try this; she gave her first Terumah; and three days later, they didn't promote her once, they promoted her twice; and they decided to put her through college at their expense.

My first Terumah, when I first saw this, I asked the Lord: please forgive me for not honouring Terumah, I did not know. I just did not, I wasn't being rebellious, I just didn't know.

I said: Lord, I want to start today, how far back do you want me to go? Lord, give me my first Terumah amount; and then going forward, I will honour Terumah.

For some reason, the Lord told me: $110, which was weird. But I wrote it down; I lifted it high; and I placed it into my pastor’s hands; and I asked him to bless it, with all the blessings of Terumah; which he didn't understand, so I wrote out a blessing for him to say. I said: just say this... fine! I gave him $111, as a Terumah.

The next week, someone gave me a house. He said: I'd like to give you my house. I said: how much? He said: I've got to do some repairs, just pay… it ended up costing me $50k, for a 3 bedroom brick home.

So he gives me this house; a week after that, and it took me a while to move in, and it wasn't until I moved that I realised, the first time I checked my mail, that my address was: 111 Birch lane! Coincidence, maybe; likely not - for me, it meant a lot to me.

All preachers, when they preach - they're still working it out in their own lives, ok, because none of us are perfect. But on this topic, as far as I know; if I stood before God - I live that way.

I honour my Terumah: I give my first tenth to the church; I give my next tenth to myself; then every third tenth, instead of giving it to myself, I give it to the poor. As far as I know, I live that way, and let me you tell you: it has done nothing but bless my entire life. I got problems, just like everybody else, but money isn't one of them. God, let God be true in every area of your life.

Now let me just close this out by giving you a practical example, because I know the biggest question is: ok, how does this work in my life? What do I do? What cheques do I write? Let me give you this: on $1,000 - I picked a thousand dollars because it’s easy to do maths on.

On a thousand dollars, the first thing you would do is: give a Terumah. Now remember we're called to live on a circle in a square. A circle inside of a square is 79%. On a $1,000, the first 1/40 is $25; that goes to your pastor. ($1000-$25=$975)

Then, the next tenth goes to the church, which is $98, we're not going to do $97.50 because we have Tzedakah spirits, and it's easier to do math this way. ($975-$98=$877).

After that, you pay a second tithe to yourself, which is $88, which leaves you with $789.

$789 is exactly 79% of 1000; its exactly the circle in the square! So the math from the commands, perfectly matches the illustration from agriculture – it’s almost like the writer had some help!

I bless you guys to know that God wants you to win; he wants you to develop a Tzedakah spirit. He doesn't want you just to go to heaven one day, he wants you to bring heaven to earth now. I bless you today to know that you can win financially, you can.

This next part I do with great trepidation. Um, are there any questions? Non-combative questions! You've got to be loud though, loud.

Question & Answer

Before or after tax? It's up to you. Good question though; there is no condemnation for those in Jesus. People who say: do we do this before tax or after tax? I say: listen to your heart.

I do it before tax, but I would never put that on someone as a stake in the ground; I'm in, you out. If it ever turns into: I'm right, you're wrong, we're missing the whole spirit of the thing. So good question; but let your heart be the guide here.

Frequency of payments? Great question, you do it however you want. They got paid once a year. We get paid once a week; or fortnight; or month.

I get paid once a month, and for me it's easier to do it when I get paid. So I get paid once a month; so every month I give a Terumah to my pastor, a tithe to my church, and then I pay a second tithe to myself.

Now here's how I do it, because I get paid by month: in the first months, January and February, I give a tithe to myself. In March, because it’s the third month, I give the second tithe to the poor.

So in the 3rd; 6th; 9th; and 12th months (March; June; September; December), my second tithe goes to the poor. Good question, I promise you a lot of people wanted to ask that.

How to invest the second tithe to yourself? Good question, here's what I tell people (to do with your second tithe), is: get $2000 in the bank. Pay the second tithe to yourself, to get $2000 in the bank; that way, if a tire goes flat, you'll have money to fix it.

Second thing you do (with your second tithe): pay off all your consumer debt: credit cards; Home equity lines; car loans - things like that. It does no good to invest, when you're paying a higher (18%) interest on your MasterCard.

So use your second tithe first to get $2000 in the bank (about a month's wages); then use your second tithe to pay off all consumer debt; except your house, because your house is going up in value, or at least it should!

Then go back to the $2000, and get 6months of expenses in the bank; then go back to stocks, bonds, mutual funds, whatever you call it here. And then after that, pay your house off.

Other giving? Well, you want to honour God, so first question is: Do you have a Tzedakah spirit? Secondly, it depends if you did it on your gross, or net, to begin with. I would say that your heart be your guide. You'll know.

Have you lost money during the GFC? Possibly, some of it, but not all of it, because some of its in gold.

Pay once a year? You can be, for them it was, because their harvest was once a year. It can be once a year. If you decided to give one Terumah offering a year, fine, of course.

Suspend payments during hard times? Good question, thank you for being brave enough to ask that. What he's saying is: if you're in a hard way, can you get a reprieve until things get back on your feet?

Yeah, sure. Listen, God is not petty, nor is he insecure; and God always sees your heart. Here's the truth of it: you want to unlock everything in the universe in your benefit.

Can I talk to you business owners for a second? I don't just run my personal finances this way; I run my business this way. You'll never do something better in your whole life. When that thing comes over your business, you won't be able to stop it.

Assuming: working hard; not being stupid. This is not a cure for stupid. This is not the cure for selfishness. This is not a cure for laziness. God is not duty-bound to finish anything that he didn't start, ok.

When making a loss? You don't give anything, until there's increase.

Giving a bit less? Well, very much so. The Terumah offering is so small, “to be faithful with little”; and Jesus addresses it a couple of times, in a way that you don't really understand unless you're very familiar with ancient Rabbinical teaching.

The main Rabbi, in Jesus day, was a guy named Halal (the other guy was named Shamai); and Halal had a famous teaching on Terumah that said this: Essentially, you could give anything between 1/40 and 1/60 as an acceptable Terumah; and I didn't go into all that, because 1/40th is just easier to remember...

But Halal said: if anyone gives Terumah at the 1/60th level, they have an ‘evil eye’. If anyone gives at the 1/50th level, they have a ‘middling eye.’ If someone gives Terumah at a 1/40th level, they have an ‘eye full of light’. And if someone doesn't give Terumah at all, they're ‘infidel’. This was a famous teaching of Halal's.

So when Jesus says: “If your eye is full of light, your whole body will be full of light; if your eye is full of darkness, then your whole body will be fill with darkness. And if the light that is in you is actually darkness, how great is the darkness.”

In the ancient near-east, to have an ‘eye full of light’ meant to be generous. To have an eye full of darkness meant to be greedy.

So essentially Jesus says: if you're generous, it’s going to apply favour to your whole life; if you're greedy it’s going to shut down your whole life; and if your generosity is actually greed masked, that's really bad!

Isn't it funny that Jesus always comes back to our heart, about small things? To be faithful in small things, starts to unlock bigger things.

(What if I am away overseas) Hebrew people always think function; Greek people always think form. Let me give you an example.

God hid Moses in the crevasse of the rock with his hand. White people always picture a big hand, because we think: form; we're from Europe - we think form. And of course, if God hid Moses with his hand, how big is God's hand? Huge, God's hand is huge right?

The problem is, the next verse says: and God showed Moses his backside! Well, if Gods hand is big... God's butt would be enormous!

But the truth is, does God have a hand? No, in fact it commands us not to put any human form around him. The Hebrew writers, when they write ‘the Hand of God’, they're not thinking of a hand, they're thinking: what does a hand do?

Function: it holds, it hides, it protects... So, when you lift something high, and you place it in the hand, its function - the heart attitude is: I give it to God, and then God gives it to my priest.

I pay my Terumah by wire transfer, because I'm all over the world, and so I give my Terumah by wire. Good question - everyone always asks that question btw, and I always have a bit of fun with it.

(Regarding those living in Poverty) Good question, and very pastoral.

First of all: wisdom has to reign. God doesn't want you to starve. Always take care of food, shelter, clothing, and electricity first. Never give your food though - I don't want to say never, if God tells you to then do it, because God told the widow at the well, so if God says to do it, do it.

But this is so important: never walk in condemnation, if you can. What I would say to do is: sit down with a budget, look at what you've got coming in, and look at what you've got going out; and see if you can ,by faith, do one part of it.

Maybe it’s half a Terumah. Maybe it's a tenth of a Terumah. Maybe on a thousand dollars, you'll give two bucks; but it’s a two bucks filled with faith.

Its: Lord, I believe the blessings of this to come over me; and when it does, I'm going to take the next step, and the next step. When the blessing comes, don't spend it! Use the blessing to institute the next thing, until the whole thing is implemented.

(Should we: have Insurance; or trust God?) No, have insurance, for goodness sake!

Some Christians won't eat with people not like them; but the truth is that you need a couple of bits of insurance. Now I don't live in NZ, so you've got to apply it to NZ, but in America you've got to have private health cover.

So that might be true for you; or might not be true for you; but in America, if you have a family, and you don't have life insurance, you're just plain irresponsible.

You need good, term, life insurance ok. Also, you need to have long-term income disability protection, why? Because you might get hurt!

My throat is insured for $10,000 a month, until I'm 65. If I lose my ability to talk, they will pay me $10,000/month until I'm 65. Now is that ‘not trusting God’?

No, that's just wisdom. I make my whole living with this tool. So it’s very important to have wisdom; you need to have proper insurance. Some insurance is a rip! Some insurance are very necessary, God called us to be wise.

Closing Prayer

Well guys, I hope you're very blessed by that today, I told you it would be a good afternoon. I hope I didn't disappoint, and I hope that you're equipped with something. I urge you to be obedient.

Let's have a second before we go, and let's sit before the Lord; and if you're like me, I will just tell you my own experience, the first time I learned this, I sat before the Lord, and I prayed a prayer something like this:

“Lord Jesus, first I ask you for forgiveness, for not honouring Terumah - I didn't know. I ask your forgiveness, for where I'm lacking a Tzedakah spirit.”

“Please develop that in me. Lord, forgive us for the lack of wisdom, for not knowing about saving, may we never be people who overlook the beggar in our own pursuit of God.”

So I want to give you a moment, to have a serious moment of introspection between you and God, where you get this thing straight between you and him.

I want you to know that before you prayed this prayer, that God already sees your heart, and he understands. This is not for God's sake; this is for yours. Say whatever you feel you need to before God, just quietly.

Now right where you're sitting, with your heads down and your eyes closed, I want you to make a quiet commitment to God.

Say: Lord with your help, I will live my finances your way.

Say: Lord with your help, right now I commit to this.

Maybe you want to do it Gung-ho, all at once, or maybe you want to start at the top and work your way down.

Lord by faith, by faith, I'm going to give this part a go, and I commit to it for the next 6mths, in Jesus name, Amen.

Comfort in Times of Trouble

Everyone experiences times of pressure, difficult, distress. When we're in pain, out thinking is affected, we tend to lose perspective, then isolate, and turn to false comforts.

The enemy of our soul likes to torment us, but God is a God of Comfort. We can position ourselves to experience great comfort in times of distress. Learn how to experience the comfort of God, & the reality of His presence.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation - that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

John 14:18 – “... I will send to you another comforter”.

The Comfort of the Scriptures (1 of 3)

Everyone experiences, at some point in our life, times of pressure, difficult, distress. How can we find solutions that work for us in these times? How can we position ourselves to experience great comfort in times of distress. When we're in pain, out thinking is affected, and we tend to lose perspective. We then easily isolate, and turn to false comforts. The enemy of our soul likes to torment us, but God is a God of Comfort. Learn how to experience the comfort of God, the reality of His presence, and the comfort of Scriptures.

Key Ingredients of Comfort (2 of 3)

Can you ever recall, as a child, being comforted during a time of emotional distress? When someone actually connected with you, listened to you, understood your pain, and gave you reassurance afterwards, so you felt better?

Sadly, many of us were not comforted, but developed ungodly reactions. Discover what comfort is NOT, and what does help.

Are You a Comforter (3 of 3)

Barnabus - The Son of Comfort - is a tremendous role model of a Comforter/Encourager. Study the key qualities in his life that gave him this ministry.

All of us can be encourager's and builders of people. See what comfort looks like in the life of this great Apostle.

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The Comfort of the Scriptures (1 of 3)

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Everyone experiences, at some point in our life, times of pressure, difficult, distress. How can we find solutions that work for us in these times? How can we position ourselves to experience great comfort in times of distress. When we're in pain, out thinking is affected, and we tend to lose perspective. We then easily isolate, and turn to false comforts. The enemy of our soul likes to torment us, but God is a God of Comfort. Learn how to experience the comfort of God, the reality of His presence, and the comfort of Scriptures.

Key Verse: Romans 15:4 – “Whatever things were written before, were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope.

“Whatever was written before” (speaking about the rest of the Bible) was written with a purpose in mind - for our learning “that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”

One of the things that's inevitable is that, everyone experiences at some point in our life, times of pressure, difficulty, distress.

Even Jesus Himself had great distress. Jesus said: in the world you will experience tribulation, or pressures, or difficulties.

How many recognise that life is not all sweet? Lots of stuff happens that you don't like, or wish didn't happen. So what we're looking at is: how to find solutions that work for you in those times?

There are many sources of problems - you can probably add your own list to this, but let me throw out some I was thinking of...

Marriage can be a source of pressure and difficulty and pain. Family can be a source of pressure and difficulty and pain, especially when it comes to the beginning of the year - paying all the bills. Then in their teenage years... there's stresses and difficulty. So marriage, and broken friendships, can cause real pain and stress and difficulty.

Financial setbacks - how many have been through a financial pressure, difficulty, stress - and really felt something?

A criticism can be extremely distressful. Injustice can be extremely distressful; conflicts, disappointment. The list goes on.

The more you look around, the more you see that we face a whole range of things - betrayals, sickness, redundancy. Life is full of setbacks and difficulties.

The thing we also should expect: that as a believer - it's normal to have that; and as a believer - you'll have more, because you follow Jesus. How about that?

It says: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous”. However, the good news: “The Lord delivers him out of them all” - and I'm interested how the Lord delivers. I want to know how to find, and experience, the comfort of God in the midst of stress.

The Bible tells us here: “that through the comfort of the scriptures”. God has given you the Bible to produce specific things in your life: teaching, correction, reproof, and structure on how to live. But one thing it says here is: it's designed to bring comfort to you.

We need to learn how to get comfort from the Bible, and to understand a little about it. There's a reason we need comfort - we can learn how to position ourselves to experience great comfort in times of distress. In the next session, I want to share on how you can comfort others with scriptures, and we'll see that very clearly in just a moment.

So there are three reasons that I thought of, primary reasons, why we need comfort when we're in distress:

1) When your feelings are hurt - our thinking is affected, and we lose perspective. When you're in a lot of pain - it affects how you think about yourself, about God, about life, about people, about church, about government, all kinds of things.

Your thinking is affected when you're in pain, and the tendency is to lose perspective. Remember Elijah, when he got into tremendous fear and pain, he was fearful of losing his life. He totally lost his perspective. In the end he said: I'm the only one in the whole nation that's standing for God; and God had to tell him: actually there's 7000!

Notice his perspective is all screwed up - and it's messed up because of pain that he's feeling; so one of the things we have to recognise is: when you start to go through feelings of pain, it affects your perspective - how you think, and for a while you just don't think straight.

What you tend to do is to isolate. That's the problem, we tend to isolate.

Proverbs 18:1 – “He that separates (or isolates himself) seeks his own desire”.

When we're trying to escape from the pain, we have our own things we're trying to do, and we're isolating to survive. How many understand that?

I'm going to show you how biblical comfort addresses the core problem - not just how you feel, but the root issue that happens, when you go through pain; and this is what it is: becoming isolated.

Church is called to be a community. The Christian faith is worked out as a community. It's not just all about you; and God's answers, many of them are provided through the community - not just directly from heaven to you. This ‘Lone Ranger’ thing, where it's just ‘God and me’, is absolutely a fallacy - and people who get into that zone, end up isolating themselves.

It says: “their heart rages against wisdom” - they don't take into account the wisdom of God. When our feelings are hurt and we go through pain - we tend to lose perspective

2) Our sinful nature leads us to isolate. We tend to isolate, and then want to find comfort in all kinds of unhealthy ways: eat chocolate; watch TV; alcohol... the list is endless, of the ways people try to feel better. Have a smoke – I’ve just got to have a smoke; and the reason usually people have to have a smoke, apart from addiction, is because they're in pain, they need comfort, and they turn to the drug.

The temporary solution to the problem has now created a new problem. The person who turns to alcohol to comfort themselves - do you feel better? Of course you do - today you do, while you're drinking - tomorrow you don't! If you keep doing that, then later on you've got a huge problem with alcohol.

So one of the tendencies we have is: not to follow God's process of dealing with pain. We tend to have our own way of dealing with it, and it's quite sinful and harmful to us.

People seek out sexual relationships, pornography - all kinds of things to try and find a solution to pain.

The solution is: the comfort of God. God wants to comfort us, and the whole nature of God is to comfort us - why don’t we just turn to Him?

3) When you're in pain and distress, there is a personal devil who seeks to torment you, and drive you into isolation.

The devil seeks to drive you into isolation, so he can then begin to work on your mind, and your emotions, and cause you to feel no value, to feel distress, to feel pain/tormented, and to lose all hope that the future could be better.

Anyone been in a deep depression? It's like the future looks so bleak, you can't find your way forward. The way forward is to have hope for the future - but before you have hope, you need comfort, because the pain is real.

In the next session, we talk about how you can use the scriptures to comfort someone - we'll learn to comfort one another - because part of the comfort God gives to us, comes through the body of Christ.

So there it is - 3 reasons why we need comfort: 1) when feelings are affected, we think crazy, we think wrongly, our perspective goes. 2) Our sinful nature means we tend to react, and do harmful things - we isolate, and then we try to solve it in different ways.

Esau comforted himself - as soon as dad's out of the way, I'm going to kill my brother - and he felt good about that feeling. I know lots of people, and they're just planning revenge: you wait, you just wait - I'll get them back! They're comforting themselves, in their pain, by harbouring revenge. These are very destructive ways, and demons torment people.

2 Corinthians 1:3 - “Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies - and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation - that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort which we ourselves have been comforted by God.”

What's the one word that really stands out there? Comfort turns up five times!

It's God's nature to comfort. Notice it says: “the Father of Mercies, and the God of all Comfort”.

He's the Father (or the author) of mercy. He is deeply compassionate - all the time. He doesn't have: today I'm happy and compassionate; tomorrow I'm angry, and out to get you - it's not like that. He is full of compassion. He is very tender in His heart, and when we're in trouble - He loves us; feels tender feelings; and desire to engage and help us.

When the Bible's using the word mercy there, it's: the Lord is incredibly compassionate. Read how many times Jesus was ‘moved with compassion’. Now He's also called “the God of all comforts” - so His nature is to comfort.

His nature is to comfort. We're going to have to look what that means, because when we think ‘comfort’ - we need someone to put their arm around you, and “there, there, there, feel better”, and pat you on the back and have a good cry - here's a tissue, get on with it, you'll be alright. But it's not that! In fact, that actually can be incredibly harmful to people.

Biblical comfort has certain things to it that make it work, and that's why we want to see. God is the God of all comfort - so whatever situation that we find ourselves in, here's the one thing you can guarantee: God does not change, He's still a God of comfort, and He's a God of compassion. Because He's compassionate - He feels deeply for your distress, and because He's the comforter - He wants to do something to help you in your distress.

All comfort means: no matter what you're going through, you can rely on Him. You can't always rely on people, but you can always rely on Him. He never changes. It's God's nature to “come alongside”.

The word “to comfort” means literally: to come alongside someone who is in pain and feeling isolated, and to stand with them in their distress. The primary meaning of the word: come alongside someone.

Remember how we said that when you're in distress - the tendency is to look to the wrong places, become tormented by spirits, and isolate. Think about that - how many times you have felt isolated, alone. You aren't alone - God has not shut you off, and people haven't - it's all an illusion you get in your mind, when you're in pain.

The main problem of humanity is: we're disconnected from God - and God's heart is always reconciliation, to reconnect us. So any time you're isolated, God is thinking: how can I reach through to you - to enter into the pain you're having, and assure you that I am with you, and I'll walk through it with you?

“Now the God of comfort” - so the nature of God is to show mercy and comfort. Mercy - we're not going to judge and blame you because you're in a mess - even if it's your own making. He just wants to help you.

“He comforts us in all our tribulations, so we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort we ourselves have been comforted by God”.

1) God is willing to comfort you in every situation, even if it's a mess of your own making. Even if you totally messed up, and you're in the deep stuff because of it, He still wants to comfort you. That's a good thing to know, isn't it?

2) He wants you to experience something. He wants you to experience a reality of God in your life - in pain. He wants you to have an experience - not head knowledge; not just to have a verse. He wants you to experience Him, to know the reality. It's not just about the Bible. The Bible points us to a person; so when you look to be comforted by the scriptures, God wants to use the scriptures, to bring you to an experience of Him - so your experience in the problem is changed. Unfortunately most people withdraw.

3) God intends you to be able to minister to others, with the comfort you've received. You can't give easily something to someone else, if you haven't received it yourself; but if you have experienced God in the deep, dark place - come to you in your valley - and you encountered Him, and He reassured your heart, and you overcame your isolation, and strength came in; and you stood and you walked out of that valley, into a place where it all changed - then you have a testimony that someone else needs.

When God allows you to go through difficulties in your life...

1) He wants to deepen your faith in Him. He wants your roots to go down, to engage Him in that problem.

2) He's got people prepared for you, to be able to help when you get out of your problem.

3) They won't get that solution, if you don't break through. That's why we say: people are waiting for you to break through.

This is why your testimony is important. Your testimony is: how I experienced God in my difficulty.

Think of Dave and Janine, when they lost their daughter - how they experienced God upholding them in the midst of their difficulty. I can remember when I went over to my daughter, how as I came - I came there just to be with her, not to solve it - I couldn't solve the problem. When you've lost a child, you can't solve that problem for someone. You can't fix it up. You can't tell them to get over it; you can't tell them: it'll be over soon. You can't tell them: it'll be better.

The person is in deep pain and shock - they're in a place of pain. What they need is someone alongside them. You don't always have to say anything, but I encouraged and directed her heart to the Lord. In the midst of it - right at the most painful time of the funeral, actually at the point of cremation - she had an encounter and saw God, and saw her child with the Lord (amazing isn't it) - and felt comfort. The reality of God comforts us. This is a great thing - God of all comfort.

John 14:6, Jesus said: “I'm not going to leave you alone”. Aloneness is the source of the problem. “I'm going to send you another comforter, even the Holy Spirit, who will never leave you”.

Here's the thing you can absolutely be sure of: even if you've messed up big time, even if you've sinned and failed, and your awareness of God is quite restricted now, and you're aware of your problems, nevertheless He says: “I won't leave you”. He's never going to leave you. He's never going to let you be isolated. You can let yourself be, but He will never isolate you. He will always seek to reconnect with you. Isn't that fantastic?

Romans 15:4 – “Now whatever things were written before, were written for our learning - that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope”. That's fantastic! Notice: “what's written beforehand” - so the whole of the Bible is written for your benefit.

You read about David going through his mess with Bathsheba - that's written for your benefit. How did he get through it? How did God handle it? How did God treat him? What did God do in the midst of that? How did God help him out of the mess? That's what that's for.

When the people of Israel went through the wilderness, and they messed up and fell over, and did all kinds of crazy things - it's written for you to learn from.

When Abraham lied about his wife, then had a sexual relationship with her concubine, and made a huge mess - that's there for you to learn from.

God has recorded things about people, and their encounters with God. This is not just a book of stories - it's a book of people, and their relationship and engagement with God. It's about people engaging with Jesus in various points of history, and how He engaged with them. This is why the Bible's been given to you, one of the reasons.

1) That you can learn, from the experience of others, what God is like. You can read what God is like, when you read someone's story. You say: that's what God's like? I was thinking He was like something else.

2) You can look at your life differently, and see it from God's point of view. When your emotions get stirred up, your thinking gets messed up, and you are the centre of your world. But when you get into the word of God, God begins to shift the thinking, so you start to see: what is God doing in the midst of this.

When we're in pain, it's all about me; but when I get into the word, it begins to lift my thinking to: where is God in all this? What is God saying in all this? What is God's perspective on all of this? So God wants me to align with His way of thinking. That's what helps you. That's what gets you through these things.

3) To experience the presence and comfort of God. God wants you to experience His presence. “These things are written, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures”. God wants to use this word for you to experience comfort in the midst of pain and difficulties, by learning from the lives of others.

4) Here's the outcome – “that you might have hope”. When you have turned to God in the midst of pain, engaged the comfort of the scriptures, and positioned your thinking and acting right, the thing you end up with is - a positive view about the future.

Think of how many people walk around depressed - it's a major chronic problem, all over the world now. How many people walk around uptight - full of rage and anger? It just gets triggered off at the slightest little thing. They're messed up. They don't have a positive view of life.

Listen to even how many Christians walk around, and they complain, complain, complain... - lose, lose, lose... That's unbelief manifesting. God wants you to have hope.

Hope means: because it's grounded in God, I can have a positive view about the future.

“Now the hope fills you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope” - I have to believe though! There’s something I've got to do, in order to get to that place where my attitude is completely different. I have to engage the pain, and engage with God, and shift my thinking, and respond to Him. That's what gets me out of it.

A lot of people say: I want ministry, come and pray for me, come and pray for me. If you want to be a baby, and suck on a bottle for the rest of your life - do that. That's okay when you're a baby, but if you've been 20 years a Christian, and that's still your answer to your problems, you're in trouble.

God wants us to learn how to use scriptures to obtain comfort in times of distress - that's what the scriptures are there for. God is a comforter, the Holy Spirit is a comforter, Jesus is a comforter, the Father is a comforter, and the Bible can comfort us - but we've got to learn how to engage with that, and end up with fresh hope and looking forward to the future.

Two keys that are given here: 1) I've got to receive comfort from the scriptures, and get my thinking right; 2) I have to exercise patience.

I need to engage with the word and person of God, and let my emotions and thinking be shifted - so now I'm thinking right, and starting to act right. Then I need to continue to do what God wants me to do - I know God is giving me a great outcome with this. I know this is going to work for good for me.

There are some things we have to do. 1) Receive comfort of the scriptures; and 2) I've got to be patient.

We're in an instant age - no one wants to be patient. People get impatient just trying to start your computer up. I just want to yell at it - it's so slow starting up, I can't stand it. No one likes to be patient. Everyone just wants it all, and wants it now; but actually patience is part of receiving the promises of God.

Through Patience, and Faith, we receive the promises. If I want to see my situation move and turn around, I have to: first of all - engage the scriptures; secondly, I need to make a decision - I will do what God wants me to do in the midst of this difficulty, and then it will pass. I'll have a great attitude, because I'm confident it'll pass, because I've got connected to God in it.

So what practically, would you do? Being comforted by the scriptures is not about just feeling good; it's actually about God putting something into you, to get you thinking and believing right. It actually requires you hold on to what God says - in spite of what you feel. That's the decision.

God wants you to learn to deepen your belief and trust in the time of difficulty; and He uses the word to enable you to do that. Get the idea?

Three practical ways that God does bring comfort from the scriptures. I kind of ask the question: I'm in pain right now, so how do I use the Bible to feel better? I feel in pain right now, so what do I do? Where do I even start? Here's my Bible - now where do I start? How do I use the Bible to obtain the comfort of God? That's the question to ask.

We've learnt that: everyone has pain; what people do when they're in pain; that God is willing to comfort you in scriptures, inspired by the Holy Ghost; and the way He does it. There's a part I have to play in it. How do I get the comfort from the scriptures in the first place?

1) Use scriptures and verses you already know. If you read the Bible regularly, you'll have verses, and they kind of stand out to you. They become great verses, so get those verses and read them.

Isaiah 40:27-31: “Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint”.

How many know that scripture? Why don't you get it in your mouth, and start to speak it out aloud. Why speak it out aloud? Because your emotions are going so strongly, you'll find that if you've got it in your mouth, and start to speak it, and start to in your heart embrace what you are saying:

“I thank You. I wait upon You Lord, I mount up with wings like eagles, I thank You, I run and not weary, I walk and will not faint. You are with me! I believe Your word! Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord God delivers him out of them all. Lord, I thank You in the midst of my affliction, Lord You deliver me out of it!”

Now you've got to actually make a decision, to get hold of the word of God, and do something.

Isaiah 43:2 – “Though you walk through the fire, it shall not consume you. Though you walk through the water, it shall not overwhelm you, because I will hold your hand. I am with you. Be strong!”

That's what the Bible says - you have to put it in your mouth and use it. What will happen is, your soul will start to shift, and your spirit starts to ‘YEAH! YEAH!’ and your emotions start to subside a bit. That's why you speak it out strongly.

It's not trying to make something happen. The core of it is not just speaking - a parrot can speak, but they don't get into faith. As I speak, I am choosing to hold that God's word is true.

“My words will not pass away, my word will not pass away, my word will not pass away. What you say to me, you will do.”

You've got to actually engage the person of God through the word. This is not anyone's word. The Holy Ghost is a comforter, but He comforts us directly by touching us in meetings and so on. He touches us by: quickening the word; and by comforting us through prophetic words, or encouragement from someone else. We'll get to prophesy - that's another part, but I want to get the word - the word is there to comfort you.

So number one: mark out scriptures that are great scriptures - and learn to pray them. Learn to speak them out, and repeat them over and over - and get them around and in your heart, so when adversity comes: “though he slay me, yet will I trust him, for at the scent of water, the tree shall rise again!”

There's a whole range of verses. You'll find of them in Psalms, in Proverbs, everywhere - and you mark them out. If you don't know how to find them, just get on the computer, and search for: words from the Bible to help me, comfort me - you will be amazed how many sites will come up. They'll give scriptures on Grief, Death, scriptures on this and that. They're all saying: the Bible, go back to the Bible, go back to the word of God.

Use the word to build and strengthen your inward man. You'll find, as you do that, you become conscious of the presence of God. Even if you don't become conscious of the presence of God, what will happen is: emotions subside somewhat, and your head clears. You start to think differently for a little while - faith can grow, and come, and arise in your heart.

Don't turn it into a works thing, where you're striving to make God's word work. It's His business to make the word work - our business is just to believe it, and respond to it. Don't get into the thing where you're trying to ‘make it work’, and your faith is in ‘your confession’, or in the word. Your faith is in God - trusting Him.

He says: “I exalt My word above My name. No word shall drop” - so that's one of the ways. There's a whole heap of scriptures like that, so you read it, read it aloud, personalise it, speak it out over your life, and embrace it in your heart as you feel it.

2) Expect the Holy Ghost to quicken a scripture to you. How many of you have found, as you’re reading through the Bible, you just suddenly spot a verse, and it comes alive, and it just touched your heart? What did you feel? God is near! What were you feeling before that? God is far! I'm isolated! Now God is near. Oh man, that cheers me up. There's hope, because God and me can do this thing.

Ask the Holy Spirit to quicken a scripture. It's His job, He wrote the Bible. Start to just read with expectation. Don't try and make something happen, just read with expectation. It's His job to open your eyes up and see something you never noticed before, and He can do it.

How many have looked at scriptures, you read whole sections, and suddenly one day as you're reading: oh, that stood out. I didn't even know that thing was there? It was the Holy Ghost quickening a scripture - and now you've got that scripture, you do what I just shared - begin to personalise that, pray that, and declare it over your life. Why? Now you've got a quickened word to hold onto. Before you just had the scripture - and prayer, and meditation, and confession helped quicken it. Now you've got the quickening - now you begin to hold it, and choose to believe it, and then stand. What does God want you to do in that? You've got to stand and continue to do that.

3) Look at stories of people who went through adversity. Read the story over a few times, just reflect on it, and ask the Holy Ghost to speak to you - and then enquire: what is this person facing? What would they have felt in that difficulty? What would they have gone through, as they went through that? What thoughts would they have had? What feelings would they have had? Then you think: how did God respond to them? Lord, I believe You'll respond to me the same way, because You're my God also.

For example, take Jonah - Jonah's running away. He's feeling a resistance - there's a rebellion, a resistance to God. He's really opposed to what God wanted him to do. He's now taking a hike, and a walk, and he's running away, and he's in a storm. In the middle of the storm, he's hiding in fear of being discovered - and they discover him and throw him out. What did he feel as he was out there, and then there he is in the sea? You might feel you've been thrown out of the boat, and you're in the sea, and you're just going to sink.

That happens sometimes! Anyone feel you've been thrown out of the boat - and there you are in the sea, you're swimming in the sea - and it's in a storm. What do you feel? You feel like he does. God had prepared something that would take him, and make him ready for the journey that he had, or the work that he had for him. God, what have You prepared for me, that I can find refuge in at this time?

You've got to engage with God. The scriptures are to bring us to God. Jesus said: “you search the scriptures, you think in them there's life - they speak of Me, come to Me to find life”.

Next session I'll share with you how you can take scripture, and use it to comfort someone. First you've got to receive comfort.

The Bible says: “God comforts us that we may be able to comfort others, with the comfort we have received”.

Closing Prayer

Open your heart to the Lord just one more time. There may be someone here who's never received Jesus Christ. This would be a great day to make a decision to become a believer, a follower of Christ. Become a follower of Christ requires a decision:

I will acknowledge that He died on the cross for my sins, He died on the cross to pay the penalty of those things separating me, that I could be reconnected to God.

You say: “but I've messed up so badly” - nevertheless He's for you. “You don't understand all the things that happened to me” - nevertheless He's for you.

He's a God of compassion, God of all comfort, wants to help you.

I wonder if there's anyone here today, and you're in a place of distress in your life, needing comfort. The first thing is to actually acknowledge it, say: God, I'm in distress.

Father, I just pray for each person here right now, that they would experience the comfort that you offer them.

I pray Lord, as a church, we'll learn how to get hold of your word, and experience the strength of Your presence coming near us. Help us to do that.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Key Verse: Rom. 15:4 “For whatever things were written before, were written for our learning. That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope”.

· Every one of us experience seasons of pressure, difficulty, pain – no one is exempt.

· Possible sources:

Marriage Financial setbacks Conflicts Severe sickness

Family Criticism Disappointments Redundancy

Broken friendships Injustice Betrayals Opposition

· Jn 16:33 “In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”.

2. Why We Need Comfort

(i) Hurt feelings affect our thinking and cause us to lose perspective.

· When you are in pain you don’t think straight and tend to isolate (Prov.18:1)

(ii) Our own sinful nature leads us to isolate and find comfort in unhealthy ways.

- Alcohol, drugs, entertainment, relationships, pornography, distractions e.g. Gen.27:42 and 2 Sam. 4:1

(iii) Satan actively seeks to isolate us during painful seasons of our life.

- He wants to separate us from a loving God and loving people.

- He wants to torment us with loss of hope, depression, loss of value, loneliness.

- Math.4:4

· Prov. 18:1 “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire, he rages against all wise judgement.”

3. God’s Nature is to Comfort Us

· 2 Cor. 1:3-4 “…the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulations, that we might be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

(a) The Nature of God – what He is like!

· Father of Mercies – NT3268 to have a deep compassion for those suffering.

· God of all comfort – NT3874 to come alongside to bring comfort, consolation, understanding.

· Whatever painful or distressing situation we face God expresses His compassion by coming alongside us to comfort and strengthen us.

· God’s nature is to come alongside not to abandon (Heb.13:5 “I will never leave you”.

· God has tender feelings towards us – He is attentive to our trouble and distress.

(b) The Actions of God – what He Does!

· God is willing to comfort us in all our painful situations.

· God wants us to experience the reality of His comfort personally.

· God intends us to be a source of His comfort to others in pain or trouble.

· Painful experiences are used by God to deepen our faith and prepare us to serve others.

· Jn.14:16 “I will pray to the Father and He will give you another (of the same kind) comforter that He may abide with you forever, the Spirit of Truth.”

4. The Comfort of the Scriptures

· Rom. 15:4 “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”

· Other people in history have experienced pressures, difficulties, pain and opposition. (1 Cor.10:13)

· God’s Word has Recorded their Experiences with God for our Benefit

(i) Learn from the experience of others what God is like.

(ii) Look at life from God’s perspective and change thinking.

- May not be able to change our circumstances but we can change how we think and respond.

(iii) Experience the presence and comfort of God through His Word.

(iv) Overcome despair and look ahead with fresh hope – anticipate with pleasure or

confidence.

- How Does This Happen?

(i) Receiving comfort from the Scriptures.

(ii) Exercising patience – your choice how you will behave.

- Continue to walk with God

- Persevere in doing what is right.

- Exercise faith in God that He will keep His Word.

5. Practical Application

How to receive comfort from the Scriptures:

(i) Use Scripture Verses you already know

(i.e. Heb 4:12 “God’s Word is living and powerful”)

- Read the verse aloud Examples

- Personalise the verses Is.40:27-31

- Speak it aloud - repeat (Eph..6:17) Is.41:10

- Picture it as you speak it Is.43:1-4

- Embrace its truth into your heart Ps.34:17-19 Ps 23

(ii) Expect the Holy Spirit to ‘quicken’ a Scripture

(Jer. 15:16 “Your Words were found and I ate them …”

- Ask Holy Spirit to speak to you.

- Read the Bible with expectation. E.g. Psalms, Proverbs

- Does any verse “stand out”, draw attention?

- Speak it aloud over your life (as above).

- Keep looking if nothing immediately apparent.

(iii) Look for God in the Bible Stories of adversity

Read the story over several times Example: Mark 4:35

- Picture the story – enquire - What did the person face?

- What did they feel? - How did God respond?

- What can I learn about God? - Turn the story into prayer.

Key Ingredients of Comfort (2 of 3)

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Can you ever recall, as a child, being comforted during a time of emotional distress? When someone actually connected with you, listened to you, understood your pain, and gave you reassurance afterwards, so you felt better?

Sadly, many of us were not comforted, but developed ungodly reactions. Discover what comfort is NOT, and what does help.

Review

Last week we were sharing a message called Comfort in Times of Trouble. I started off by sharing about God's nature, and we're going to look at that again, and we're going to look at another aspect of it today. I talked specifically about the comfort of the scriptures, how the word of God is designed to put strength in you, when you're in a time of difficulty.

Thessalonians – “It changed your lives, because you received it not as the word of man, but as the word of God - which works powerfully in you, when you believe”.

There's a part we have to play, for God's word to work. You can get hold of God's word in a time of trouble, and it strengthens you. I have been strengthened greatly by scripture over the years. Sometimes a vision, an impression, a prophetic word hasn't been enough, but a scripture has just given substance and strength.

2 Corinthians 1:3 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort”.

God is a Father (or an author) of mercies - of tender compassion. The heart of God is never against us, He's always for us, full of compassion. When you're in trouble, His heart is soft and tender and affectionate. He wants to help - He's the Father of mercies, many mercies.

We're even called to come to the throne of grace to find mercies - that's what God is like. His heart is to be tender and merciful to us - He's the God of all comforts. One of the ways that God shows us His mercy is: He comes to us in difficult times, to comfort us.

In a difficult time - you don't feel that God is near you at all. He feels a long way off, but nevertheless, He is nearer then than at any time in your life - in the difficult times.

Everyone experiences hard times, pressure, difficulties. Things you thought would happen, didn't happen; things happened you didn't think would happen - and the tendency, when we get into pain is: we lose perspective - and we tend to isolate.

We discussed why people isolate. The biggest difficulty people have in times of strain and pressure (marriage, family, etc) is the tendency to isolate and withdraw - and then problems become magnified and very big.

It says: “...who comforts us in ALL our tribulations.” In ALL difficulties we face, in ALL pressures we face, God comforts us.

He has a purpose in comforting us – “...that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort we've received”. So God has two purposes in comforting you: 1) to bring release and relief to you, in the time of stress - by bringing you into experiencing Him; and 2) having given you an experience with Him, that you would go and share that with someone to help them.

Main Message

God's purpose in your life is always redemptive. If you're in trouble, He gets you out - so you can help someone else get out. That's what ‘redemptive’ means. If you're in a mess, even if it's your own making, God still is tender. He still cares, He still wants to engage with you, get you out of it - and through the experience, give you something to share with someone else who is in trouble.

It's horrible having a person saying to you: “I know how you feel” - and they haven't a clue how you feel; but when someone has been through a difficult experience, and they come alongside saying: “I understand how you feel” - and they've been there before, they really do understand your feelings, to some degree, when you share them. An important purpose of God comforting you, is so you'll be equipped to help someone else. God wants every believer helping others.

Notice how easy it is. I was just in a book store just the other day, started to talk to the person there, and began to ask and enquire, and just talk into their heart. Next thing I know, the person's opening their heart - tears, this person's standing there in the middle of the place, where they're supposed to be selling. They're just blubbering and tears are all coming down, and they're starting to share. Why? Because they felt God come near them, because of what I said to them. We're called to bring comfort to others, and I was able to really help that person.

Here's a ‘comfort’ question (from a book I read): “Can you ever recall as a child, being comforted during a time of emotional distress - when someone actually connected with you, listened to you, understood your pain, and gave you reassurance afterwards, so you felt better?”

I thought: ooh, I don't like that question. The answer I had was no - and I was quite shocked when I thought: well actually... no.

Next question: “what do you do when you get in pain?” I came to the horrible recognition: over years, when I'm in pain - I isolate, and the pain increases. I used to read books to try and feel better.

Isn't that what people do when they get in pain - isolate? Or they react - get really on an edge; or we can receive comfort from God.

God doesn't always comfort you directly. Sometimes, His way of comforting you is through another person. You might be sitting next to the person that God has called you to comfort - or the person that God has sent to you to comfort you.

The word ‘comfort’ in the Bible is not just putting your arms around, and just: there, there, there and make you feel better. Instead, the word comfort addresses the root of the problem - it means literally: to call near; or to: come alongside you, in your distress, and be there for you.

Jesus is a comforter. He said: I'm going to send you another comforter, just like Me. His name is: Emmanuel, God with us. The biggest aspect of comfort in the Bible is that God doesn't leave us alone. He comes and connects with us to help us, and walk with us through the difficulty - it doesn't always change the difficulty, but someone is there with us.

You can see what comfort looks like in 1 Samuel 23:16. David is now hunted down. He's gone from fame, to he's now number one on the wanted list. There's a poster out: shoot him on sight. So he came out into the wilderness.

“then Jonathan, Saul's son, arose, and went to David in the woods, and strengthened his hand in God. And said to him: do not fear, the hand of Saul my father shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, I shall be next to you. And even my father knows that. The two of them made a covenant before the Lord.”

Here's a man who strengthened. If you comfort someone, after your ministry to them, they are strengthened in God. They feel stronger, more able to handle what they're facing.

There are some things you need to learn to do - I'm going to give you the not-to-do's first, because I know there's things that we've all done. I have observed over years in ministry, that when people are in trouble, the worst people that come to help them sometimes are Christians. I know this isn't you, but just in case you know someone who did some of these things, then you could just tick these ones off!

When someone has trouble, don't come to them and say: “I just know what you're feeling”, and “I know what you're going through”. You don't!

“Don't worry, it'll soon pass” - don't say that. “Get over it” - don't say that. “It's not that bad really - you want to hear what I went through, blah blah blah...”

None of those things help. Actually they make them more miserable - and somewhat angry. Murder rises in the heart! They think: shall I kill him now, or not? Would God forgive me, if I did?

Don't joke or make fun of it – “oh it's nothing, come on, you'll be okay - get over it”.

Don't say to them: “you need more faith brother!” More faith! More faith! Now I do want to kill you! All the faith I have - it's still not getting me through. Don't tell me I need more faith.

“You just need to praise the Lord anyway”. It might be true - but it's not helpful, it can actually really upset people.

“We all have days like that - move on”. Move on! None of that helps.

“oh, you shouldn't feel that way - you're a Christian - you shouldn't be angry. You should trust in God!”

“You should forgive!” Feel the word 'should' - it's the law coming. There's no grace and mercy in that. I know I should forgive - I just don't want to. I'm too angry to even think and go there, so don't tell me I should. I already know the Bible, I know that verse. It's not going to help me. I won't be comforted - just get more angry.

“You must have sinned”. There must be something you've done wrong. There's a problem, there's a fault in your life - you're reaping something. I'm really comforted now, after I've heard that. The spirit of murder is nearly unable to stop getting a hold of me, and to throttle someone. None of these things help. This is what people do.

“God's dealing with you, brother”. Is that right? Well I'm out of here already. None of those things help - they sound good, they sound spiritual.

“Oh, you've been treated really badly, - you're right. This is really bad what's happened to you”. That may be true, but it's not going to help them either – it fills them with self pity, and reinforces their bitterness.

“You talk too much”. Some people - they start off: “how are you doing?” Before you've even given half an answer - they're away blabbing. It is really hard for it to be a Christian at a time like that - isn't it hard?

Here's another one [laughs] that doesn't help - when they invade your space - and all you want is to be left alone.

I remember when a member of our family had gone through a trauma experience, and it was all I could do to come to church. I had to preach, but I was in tremendous grief. I just wanted to be left alone, but people would come up to me, and tell me stupid stuff. It was hard for me not to want to kill them. Before I preach, or after - I'm not sure when it should happen! It was very difficult, very difficult.

I just wanted to say: LEAVE ME ALONE! I just want to worship God, and cry. Sometimes you get into a worship session, you want to cry. You don't need someone to come up, put their arm around and smother you - and then prophesy over you. It's not going to help - I just need to cry – and then afterwards be encouraged and comforted.

It's good to know what doesn't work. How many have had some of those things happen to them? They actually increase the pain, and the isolation.

Jonathan strengthened his friend, and this is how he strengthened his friend - “he arose and went to him”. He connected intentionally with him. He made a decision to leave where he was comfortable, and actually go to be where his friend was. He went to him, didn't wait for him to call.

Secondly, he addressed his emotions. David was filled with fear, and he understood the fear that was in his life - the emotion, what he was feeling. Don't try and comfort anyone, until you understand what they're feeling. “You’re not allowed to have feelings - you shouldn't feel that way...”? No, he understood it, so he directed him to the promises of God: you will be king. He drew his attention to what God had spoken to him.

Finally, he made a commitment to stand with him, and walk through the issue with him. That's what biblical comfort looks like.

1) Connect intentionally with the person. David did want to see him. If people don't want to see you, - don't go to them; give them space - some people need some space.

He addressed the emotional area. He understood the emotions. He spoke, and directed David to the word of God - and then made an even stronger commitment to be with him.

We're not called to cure people's problems, or rescue them. Don't think you've got to rescue people, or cure their problems. Just come alongside to care for them and to comfort them.

Luke 24:15 – “Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them”. He's got two of His disciples in distress, the first thing He does is: intentionally comes near to them. Jesus said: hey, can I join you? He walked with him. He didn't try and fix anything straight away, He just walked with him.

Sometimes you've just got to walk with people for a little while - be with them, but don't try and do anything. As you walk and show an interest in people, and connect with them, you get a conversation going about things, and you can start to talk. He said: Hey, I noticed you looking sad. What's up? That's all He did. He just asked him: what's happening? I noticed you're sad. He said: I see you're quite sad, what's happening? What's going on in your life? He identified the feelings, and the pain. You seem to be shut down, drawn back - is there something wrong? Is there any way I can help?

The first aspect of comforting people is to connect with them sensitively, and just walk with them for a little bit. Sometimes a conversation opens up quickly, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people are ready to talk, sometimes they're not - but you have to come near them, and just stay on the journey with them a little bit. Sometimes it's just: hi, how are you? Just thought to drop this into you, to bless you and to help you - and that's it. Then you come again, and you're on a journey with them. It takes just little encounters to open their heart. Kindness will open people's hearts.

2) Ask Questions - Listen to their heart.

Proverbs 18:13 – “If you answer a matter before you've heard it - it's a folly and a shame for you”.

You can't comfort people if you don't give them a hearing. They may be right, or they may have done something wrong themselves. When you listen to people, you have to realise they only tell you their version of the story. There's another version - and the other version changes the picture completely. Realise that, but you do have to ask people: what's going on? Ask questions to draw out the facts and the feelings behind it - just talk to people, ask about them.

When Adam had sinned, imagine God just turning up in the garden. He must be making a bit of noise, because it says: “he heard the voice of the Lord walking” - so maybe God was singing? No, no, but Adam heard His voice - this is what it says. Genesis 3:9 – “God spoke to him and said: Adam, where are you?” God's got all these cameras everywhere, scanning everything. He can see it all, so why would He ask: where are you? It's a relationship question: Adam, what's up in your life? What's happening?

If you were to make a decision, that wherever you go this week, you take an interest in people - connect with them in just a very positive way, then enquire about: where are you, what's happening, what's going on? I notice you look a bit sad - what's up? If you were to just take that line - now don't try and fix anything - just take the line: that I want to draw near to people, and position myself with a heart that is interested, and cares to just ask them some questions about how they're doing. How are you doing? What's happening?

That's all I did with this girl in the book shop: hey, how are you doing? From the way she answered, I could tell something was going on - the feeling in the answer. I said: you just seem to be sad, what's happening? She started to tell me, and then that gave the doorway in, to then help her and comfort her. She walked away totally changed. You can do it, but you've got to get into the person's heart

Ask questions - draw out the feelings that they have. What are you sad about?

In Luke 24:17, that's what Jesus said - what's going on? I noticed you're down, you're heavy. What's happening there? So help people.

People often need help to identify what they feel, and put some words on it. They need ‘soul words’.

If you ask a guy what he's feeling, he'll say nothin'! How are you feeling? Nothin'! So you ask a guy tell me what kind of feelings you have? Well... angry - very angry, that's it, you know? A lot of men are not in tune to connect with feelings, people just need help to put words to the feelings. Just, this is what you feel - oh you're feeling sad? You're feeling upset? Feeling angry? Oh no, I feel hurt, and a little bit angry? Just find a way to draw out of people what's going on; because if you don't do that, then they don't actually share - they don't feel you've understood them at all.

I can remember sitting in a place, a woman asked me for help: her husband had just had an accident on a work site. One of the guys had been electrocuted, and she was upset; so I listened and found out what the problem was, and gave an answer, but she didn't want to hear it. I gave it again, she still didn't want to hear, and I thought: this is a waste of my time.

Then the Lord spoke to me, He said: “you're not even listening”; so whether your answer is right or wrong is irrelevant. She doesn't feel you heard her. She didn't want an answer; she actually wanted to be heard. I thought: oh, my male thing - a ‘fix it’ thing, you know? So I just changed mid-talk, and said: I guess you're feeling quite afraid over what the consequence of this would be? Then out it all came, and once she'd shared it, she knew exactly what to do, and she was fine. I didn't even need to give her anything much more than that.

3) Guide them (if it's possible at that point, and it isn't always possible) - to trust God.

That's where your testimony comes in - where you can share how God helped you: this is how God helped me. Someone this week was in a great distress, and I just texted them a verse, and they replied: this put strength in me - I've moved past that text, and I'm down into this part of it now. I just sent a text - that's all it took. Thinking of you, care about you in this distress. Sent the text, sent a verse, and was able to make a connection in a very simple way.

I was with Pastor Kong, and Pastor Kong's going through a tremendous stress related to the ministry, accusations being made. Now it all comes to Court, they're threatening him and six of his followers with years and years and years in jail. They just want to get rid of him. This is incredibly stressful - millions of dollars going in lawyer’s fees - it's a horrendous situation; but it's the making of a man of God! That's what it looks like - it looks horrible! He said: some people just don't want to come near me now. Some people avoid me. He said: some people think that if they're connected to me, their reputation will be tainted, and their ministry tainted. I said: well Kong - we're here with you, whatever happens. We've been on this journey too long to quit now - we're sticking with you, and we choose to stay with you, however it works out. We're with you, and for you, to do whatever we can to help. He said: can you bring me something from the Lord. I thought... and God just dropped something in - I had a scripture for him.

The word of God (it was a word God had given me) - that word broke depression on him. He went home and shared it with his wife - it lifted the pressure off her. He shared it with the leaders, and got them all into a place of Faith - praying, and the whole atmosphere started to shift around their leadership. All it took was one word from God, one word of scripture. That's what comfort looks like - call the person near to God!

I've had three words for him - each one has put strength into him. So you have something, to put strength and encouragement into someone. You can do it. You can do it, you've just got to be willing to. Share how God has helped you. The comfort is not just for you - it's for someone else as well.

4) Reassure the person, that you'll stand with them. At the end of the day, loneliness and isolation is the biggest pain barrier that we face.

This situation related to staff redundancies is extremely painful to me, but I've come through the biggest part of it now. There was a couple in this church helped me, Dot and Lyn. I want to honour them, because of what they did - but I was really going through deep emotional turmoil over it all. I just had to pop into church for something, but Dot spotted me, and she intentionally with Lyn made their way to me. They did exactly what I've outlined for you, on how you comfort people.

First they came, and they were quite sensitive. They came with love and care, and hugged me; helped me feel connected, when I didn't feel connected. They gave me room to share also what I felt. They actually made leading questions, that helped me share what I was feeling, and they shared what had happened for them as well. Then Dot brought a vision that God had showed her in her distress. She said: I cried to the Lord because I was so troubled, and she said God gave me a vision. She said I saw this, and I believe this is for you - and she could not have known the significance of that vision, was so tied to another time in my life, when I was in distress, and God came and comforted me. It was the exact same vision. She couldn't have known that. It was just God gave her an answer, for her pain at that time; but when she brought it, it became such a strength in my soul, lifted me back up again.

They reassured me of their commitment to stand together with me. All the ingredients that were there with David and Jonathan; there with Jesus and how He comforts people, like His disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus came near, He connected with them, He opened up their heart. Then He began to share the word of God; and then He made commitment through covenant, the cutting of the bread, the bread and the wine, to be with them. That's what comfort looks like. It's not just all emotional; it's not just all about hugging. In fact, that can be helpful, or it can be harmful.

It's about actually drawing near, so someone feels they're not alone in their difficulty. Someone is with them, to strengthen them, and walk with them through it. Biblical comfort - it is wonderful.

It's sometimes called Exhortation.

Prophecy is to bring the presence of God to people. When you minister prophecy to comfort people, you don't have nice words: oh never mind, God's with you, it'll all work out okay and don't worry. It's not like that. Actually, when you comfort someone, you minister in such a way with reality, that God's presence comes. They feel: God is near me. That's what brings the exhortation - I'm not alone, I'm with God, who is near me.

Closing Prayer

I want to just give an opportunity for any person, who's never known in their personal life, the presence of God to come and help you, touch you, comfort you, strengthen you.

You know we're born into this world, literally on our own - separated from God because of sin; but Jesus came - got with us, to solve that problem. God's solution is amazing: Jesus died on a cross, gave up His life, that we could be forgiven of our sins - the block removed, and a heart connection made with God. It just requires only one thing from you: the decision to recognise your need, and receive Jesus Christ.

Mankind's fundamental problem is being disconnected from God. The basic solution, is reconnect with God - and that's what Jesus came to do. He does it all the time, and He keeps on doing it.

If you're in a place of distress and difficulty, a place of trial - it could be in finances, marriage, family, personal life, difficulties - things that won't go away for you... God wants to strengthen you, help you.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Key Verse: 2 Cor. 1:3-4 “…The Father of Mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves are comforted of God.”

· Every one of us experience seasons of pressure, difficulty, pain – no one is exempt.

· A key issue that arises is isolation and with it loss of perspective.

· God is willing to enter our world and comfort us – last week: Comfort of the Scriptures Rom.15:4.

· One important purpose – “that we may be able to comfort those in trouble”.

2. The Comfort Question

· Can you recall as a child being comforted during a time of emotional distress? i.e. someone connected with you, listened to you and understood your feelings and reassured you?

· If the answer is ‘No’ – how did you handle pain?

a) Isolate and comfort self?

B) React with anger, blame?

· Comfort =NT3870= to call near.

To come alongside you when you are in pain and distress and provide reassurance and hope. God’s response is always a relational response to reassure and bring hope.

3. Things You Should NOT Say

· 1 Sam. 23:16 “Jonathan, Saul’s son arose and went to David in the wood and strengthened his hand in God.”

· Many Christians try to help others in distress and end up increasing their pain.

· Sincerity is not enough – we must know how to exhort – how to comfort.

· Common things people say and do:

(i) Don’t worry – soon pass! (ix) You need more faith

(ii) Don’t worry – get over it! (x) Praise the Lord anyway!

(iii) Not that bad really! (xi) We all have days like that!

(iv) That’s nothing compared to my problem!

(v) Joke and make light of it! (xii) You shouldn’t feel that way!

(vi) Must be due to sin! (xiii) God is dealing with you!

(vii) You are right you have been treated badly!

(viii) Invade the person’s space. (xiv) Excessive talking.

· None of these things help – they actually increase pain and isolation.

· Note what Jonathan did to comfort David (vs16-17) and strengthen him.

(i) He connected intentionally (v16)

(ii) He addressed his emotions (v17) – He understood what David was feeling

(iii) He directed him to the promise (word) of God (v17)

(iv) He reassured him of his support (v17).

4. Key Ingredients of Comfort

· 2 Cor. 1:4 “…that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort we ourselves are comforted of God.”

· We are not called to rescue people or cure their problems but to care and comfort.

· Every believer can do this!

(i) Intentional Connection

· Comfort = to call near, to come alongside because you care.

· Initiate a connection with the person you wish to comfort.

· Don’t wait for people to come to you – initiate connection with them.

e.g. Lk.24:15 “Jesus himself drew near and went with them.”

Jesus made connection where they were and joined them on their journey.

e.g. Mk.1:41 “Jesus moved with compassion put forth his hand and touched him.”

· Be sensitive not intrusive.

(ii) Listen from Your Heart

· Prov.18:13 “He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him.”

(a) Ask questions that draw out both the facts and the feelings behind them.

· Good questions that leave room for open response can open the heart.

· Gen.3:9 “Where are you?” this is a relational question.

· Where are you in your life? Relationships? Marriage? Finances?

· God asked a set of questions and listened carefully to Adam’s answers.

(b) Draw out the Feelings and Emotions

· Lk.24:17 “What are you sad about?”

· Help people identify and express what they feel – soul words.

· Emotions can distort how people think – draw out what they are feeling.

· It helps clean the souls when a person speaks aloud what they are feeling.

· It’s OK to feel that way! Validate feelings – that’s all they are – feelings.

· Reflect back to people what you hear them saying and the feelings emerge.

(c) Guide them to put their trust in God and His Word

· Is. 50:4

· Share how God has helped you during a difficult season/experience.

· The comfort God gave you is not just for you it is for others.

· Acts 11:23 “… he exhorted (comfort) them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave to the Lord.”

(d) Reassure them of Your Support

· We cannot carry others but we can stand with them and help break their feelings of isolation.

· Each person makes their own decisions about how they will respond.

Are You a Comforter (3 of 3)

Sun 5 May 2013 AM  « Back to Top

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Barnabus - The Son of Comfort - is a tremendous role model of a Comforter/Encourager. Study the key qualities in his life that gave him this ministry.

All of us can be encourager's and builders of people. See what comfort looks like in the life of this great Apostle.

Review

We're on a theme of scripture: Comfort in Times of Trouble. One of the things I have learned in ministry - I love the times of great blessing, times when you're on the mountain tops, times when things are well. There's also other times, times of distress, times of difficulty, times of pressure. Everyone faces those, and in those times, what you do, qualifies you to be enlarged in your next season. I firmly believe in that. I believe, as I walk through difficult times, that God is watching my response, and watching your response. At a time of pressure and difficulty and distress, we can make decisions that shift us in our capacity to the Lord.

2 Corinthians 1:3 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation”. And here's the redeeming factor: “comforts us” - God helps us.

When we're in pressure, when we're in time of difficulty, there are some things happen.

1) We tend to lose God's perspective. When you get your eyes focussed on difficulties and problems, you often lose the sight of what God is doing. I believe firmly, in the midst of every difficulty, when you face your difficulty, lift up and say: God, what are You doing, and how should I respond?

2) We tend to get disconnected, isolated; and 3) we usually try and find destructive ways of resolving pain that we feel.

The Bible tells us: God is tender and compassionate, and He extends in a very real way, comfort to us. He has a purpose - that you will be qualified to comfort others in all of their trouble. So whatever your situation - some are in a place that's great and positive, and they're seeing blessing and great things; others are at the extreme other end of the scale - in turmoil and emotional stress. It doesn't matter where we are, what God wants to do is put something into us, that we can then transmit, and pass on to someone else.

We looked at what comfort is. We realised it's not just putting an arm around someone, and making them feel better; or helping heal the emotions.

God is a God of comfort, and ‘comfort’ means literally this: He calls us near to Him. He comes near to us.

Our perspective can be shifted in the midst of the difficulty. That's why David said, in Psalm 23: “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I refuse to be afraid, because God is with me”.

Main Message

Every believer is called to comfort, or to exhort, or stir others. Hebrews 3:13 - “Let us exhort one another.”

Acts 4:34 - It's about a person in the Bible; and sometimes when you think of people in the Bible who are important, you come up with names like David, Moses, Paul, and some of the apostles. But this man is mentioned more than 10 times in the New Testament - more than every other apostle except Paul and Peter - mentioned in a whole number of ways. I want you to see why the Holy Ghost takes time to actually draw attention to this man, because there's something God wants us to learn from this.

Acts 4:34 – “There was no one among them who lacked; for all who possessed land and houses sold them; and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostle's feet - and they distributed to each, as everyone had need”.

Acts 4:36 – “Joses or Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles (which is translated: Son of Encouragement, or: Son of Comfort, Son of Exhortation) having land, sold it and brought the money, and laid it at the apostle's feet. But a certain man named Ananias and Sapphira, his wife sold and kept back part of the money.”

This guy Barnabas was nicknamed. Usually the nicknames that people give you are usually derogatory, and you spend years trying to get over it, and are quite sensitive about that issue afterwards.

But the apostles saw in this man Joseph, something that said: “we want to call you by this name, because this is the kind of person you are”. So they gave him a nickname, and he becomes known throughout the Bible by this nickname. His real name was Joses or Joseph; but they said: we're not going to call you Joseph anymore, because we see something is in your life, and something manifests through you, that is so remarkable, we want to identify you by that. So they said: we're going to call you Barnabas.

The name Barnabas means literally bar=son; nabas = prophecy. Prophecy is for encouragement and building and exhortation; but then in case you thought he was just a prophetic person, they actually interpret it. They say: which means by interpretation, Son of Consolation, or Son of Comfort.

Now this word 'comfort' is the exact word Jesus used when He described the Holy Spirit, when Jesus was leaving.

John 14:18 – “I go; but I will not leave you orphaned (or alone, or abandoned), but I will send to you another comforter”.

Comforter - that's the word ‘to call near’, ‘to exhort’, ‘to stir’. It's the name given for the Holy Spirit; so when you call out upon the Holy Spirit, you're calling upon the comforter - the one who calls us near; and the one who comes near to us to help us, to strengthen us in times of difficulty.

They name a guy after the Holy Spirit. They didn't call him the Holy Spirit - that would be dishonouring to the Holy Spirit. What they did was, they used the very name that describes the work of the Holy Spirit - here's the comforter. This guy is the Son of the Comforter. This one shows what the Holy Ghost looks like, when He's working to bring to help to people who are in distress. That's why this guy's so important.

He was an incredibly influential person in the New Testament, far more than you realise; and when you look into his life, and you actually look at Barnabas, you see this is what it means to be a comforter of people. A definition is just hard to get it, but when you look at this person - his name is literally ‘Son of the Comforter’. This man we see shows us exactly what the work of God is like - what it looks like to flow in comfort - what it looks like. It's not just putting your arm around people, it's far more than that; so let me just give you a few things about the guy that just are helpful.

1) They bring out Generosity. They contrast him. Lots of people gave, there were hundreds and hundreds of people gave; but on that day they said: this guy has got a great gift of generosity around him, and they contrast him with Ananias and Sapphira, who kept back part, but wanted to look good.

They're saying: the first quality in him - authentic generosity. He just was absolutely generous. You know every one of us can be as generous as we choose to be, but he had an authentic generosity. There was no trying to present himself as being something, trying to make out he's something; he was absolutely authentic.

He cared about people, he had a real love for people - he was a people person. He just loved people, and he cared about them. If you want to be an encourager, one of the things that will become part of your life (or you can build into your life), is generosity towards people - not financial generosity.

A person who's financially generous will be generous in other ways in their life - generous with their words, with their time, generous in all kinds of other ways.

If you want to be a great encourager, a great exhorter of people: generosity is one of the first things to build into your life - to become a generous person. I thank God I've got so many generous people here.

2) Acts 11:24 – “He was a good man, filled with the Holy Ghost, and with Faith”.

Being generous with people - you go out of your way to make them welcome in your world. You don't just turn up and church, and just connect with a few nice ones that you know. Well done, but that's not generosity. Generosity is when you make it your point that you will actually include people in your world, beyond your normal group.

3) Filled with the Holy Ghost. He's a spirit-filled guy, he's a man of prayer, he's a man who's stayed filled with the Holy Ghost, kept his life energised and empowered in the Holy Ghost. That was what made him able to encourage people. That's why they said: “this is the Son of the Holy Ghost”.

The life of God flows in him. There's a river flowing in him. He kept himself in a strong place in prayer. You don't get filled with the Holy Ghost with bad attitudes; when you're cranky; when you're negative. You've got to get your mind and your attitudes right - and the Holy Ghost fills you, and empowers you. Get into prayer, get into the word.

He's not just filled with the Holy Ghost - he was filled with Faith. It's so easy to see difficulties and problems; it's another thing to come into it, and be a faith person. Church is called to be Faith People.

Faith people don't ignore problems, but they look to see what God is doing, and bring a word from God into that situation. He was full of faith. Some people are full of it - but it's not faith. He was full of faith.

Imagine being known just for those three qualities: 1) you are generous; 2) you're filled with the Holy Ghost, and have the joy of the Lord operating and flowing in your life; 2) and you also impart faith to people.

The desperate need today in the church, is to have people impart Faith to someone else. I don't want someone to impart their depression to me, or their negativity to me, or their problems to me. I want them to be able to be grounded in the word, and connected to God, where actually they're a faith person. Faith people speak. Faith people talk in a certain kind of way.

That's what made him an exhorter - he was full of the Holy Ghost. He had a great heart for people, and when he spoke, he spoke words that lifted people's spirit, and connected them to the promises of God. That's what faith does - if we have the spirit of faith, we speak what God's word says about our life.

A week or so ago, we had a couple come forward, and we prayed and spoke God's word over their life - and within a week there was an outworking of that in their life. We have to learn the value of the word of God. The word of God is what builds your faith.

In the Old Testament, a whole generation lost their way, because when they faced problems and giants - they complained; but there were two men that said: “the giants are bread for us!” It's exactly the same spirit that is on David, in Psalm 23, when he says: “you prepare a table before me in the midst of my enemies”. What he's saying is: I'm surrounded by difficulties that could overwhelm and kill me; but Lord, You provide for me something that makes me grow. That's the spirit of faith - it speaks; it imparts hope and life to people, by redirecting them to the word of God.

Imparts words of faith - I love this guy Barnabas. He's filled with faith, filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the spirit of God. Notice at least three areas that you'll find this guy operating:

1) You'll find him operating in the church; and everywhere he goes, the church increases. How about that? Because he's got a love for people, and believes in them. Because he's a person of faith, he doesn't just see the difficulties they have, he actually sees beyond the difficulties, to see what opportunities and potential there is.

We find him mentioned in three kinds of contexts: 1) in relationship to the church, building and strengthening the church; and then going out to enlarge the church; 2) in relationship to Paul; 2) in relationship to John Mark.

Acts 9:26 – “Saul came to Jerusalem and tried to join the disciples, but everyone was afraid of him, and didn't believe he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and declared to them that: he had seen the Lord on the road, and how he had spoken to Him.”

We've got this guy Paul, and everyone's afraid of him, because of what he's like. His reputation is one of murder and mayhem - he's killed Christians. In fact, in that congregation, there were people there hurting, because their loved ones had been taken away by Paul. They hated him, they were offended by him, they were afraid of him - but Barnabas saw past the problems, went and talked with him, and sat down with him and heard his testimony. You've got to overcome the fear.

The other thing he overcame was: worry about what people would think about him. Imagine that for Barnabas to go to this guy Paul - the murderer of all these Christians, and the persecutor of the church - that was a huge deal. But he went to him, enquired of him - and discerned (because he's a Holy Ghost man) the call of God on his life. He brings the persecutor of the church, the murderer of the church, into the church fellowship to meet the apostles - and he helps him get reconnected into the church.

Paul had a great gift on his life, but without connection into the church, he wasn't going to fulfil it. He needed to be connected, so a great thing you see in Barnabas' life is, he overcomes fear of what people think, he overcomes the fear of losing his reputation. He goes and connects with someone who really needs help to get up on the next journey of his life. He comes alongside him, and then he brings him to come alongside the other apostles - and this is the man that was going to change everything in the world at that season.

We look at Paul, and we think: wow, what a great guy - but I wonder how many have stopped to think about Barnabas, who connected him. Barnabas connected him; and he did a lot more than that. Barnabas so believed in him, that he helped and worked alongside him. He so believed in him, that later on in Acts 13, when the Holy Ghost calls people to go out to missionary work - He called Barnabas and Saul.

Notice the order - in Acts 13:2, its Barnabas and Saul; but in verse 7, it's Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas begins to see the great gift on his life - this shows the bigness of heart. He realised there was a greater anointing and call on Paul, than on his own life – so he allowed leadership of the team to rest and transfer onto Paul. Now that is a big person!

That is what an encourager looks like. They're not worried about position; or what people think. They're not worried too much about the things that people are saying about someone else. They go to them, and help them get connected and fulfil their call, discover and find their way forward.

I think this is one of the most amazing things - that Barnabas stepped out of the leadership role, and from that point on: its Paul and Barnabas. That's the act of someone who acts like the Holy Ghost. He was willing to connect to people, encourage them and lift them up, bring them into relationship, and then empower them to go forward and fulfil their ministry.

You read a little later about John Mark, who was a young disciple. He was one of the apostles - the gospel of Mark. Mark was with Paul and Barnabas, and then the Bible says: the going got real tough, and Mark quit! There was a huge issue over this Mark quitting.

Acts 15:37.- “Barnabas was determined to take with them John, called Mark. But Paul insisted that they should not take him with them, because he had departed from them in Pamphylia, had not gone with them to the work; and the contention was so sharp, they parted from one another. And Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus.”

Barnabas saw the potential in Mark - he recognised there was good in him. Mark had actually quit the job – had gone there, and then quit. We don't know why he quit. Maybe he was just homesick, wanted to go home - he was quite a young guy. He could have quit because he was upset that the leadership transition had taken place - that Paul was in charge (who was a pretty tough man and a driver), rather than Barnabas. Or it could have been that he just was afraid, that the work ahead was hard; but in the end he left - and obviously they didn't approve of him leaving.

Later on he got reconnected again, and wanted to go back with them, but Paul said: no way, this is a quitter. Barnabas said: yes way, because I see he could step back up and recover. He got two men of God in argument over one another - one saying: no, I don't have quitters in my team; and the other saying: listen, he's got potential. If we believe in him, and work with him, we can get him back up on board and get him going. He can get through this.

There was a huge contention over this issue, and later on you'll find if you read the story, what happened is, Barnabas took Mark under his wing, under his arm, he discipled him, he worked with him, he got him back up on his feet; and later Paul writes and he said: “can you send Mark to me, he's profitable for me and for the ministry”.

Barnabas epitomises what exhortation, or comfort, from a Bible perspective, looks like. It's a person filled with the Holy Ghost, who's got faith in their heart to believe God can do great things in people, and in his own life. It's a person who's got a generous heart; and it's a person who loves people, and includes them.

When Paul wanted to exclude him, he included him and gathered him up, and got him engaged in ministry. That is the work of the church, that's everyone's work. When Mark failed, Barnabas put his arms around, came alongside him, and said: Mark, I know you quit on us, but you know what? I still believe in you. Come on, you can get over this. I forgive you. Let's get you going again, and got him back going.

That is the work of encouragement. When people fail, to come around them, help them back up on their feet, get them re-engaged in the work of God

Hebrews 3:13 “Exhort one another daily” - become a Barnabas.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank You for Your word to us. Thank You Lord, that You encourage us, and lift us. We pray for the spirit of encouragement to come upon every person in this church.

I want to ask you just a couple of questions:

Are you full of the Holy Ghost? What's stopping you?

Are you full of faith? What's blocking it?

Are you generous? What's hindering you?

Do you include people, or do you exclude them?

Do you not worry about what people think, but you go to people anyway, and find a way to connect them?

Are you a person who can see past people's failures, and believe the best and pull them up to function?

You are a Son of Encouragement!

Father, I just pray that that ministry of encouragement would flow through every believer here today, in Jesus' mighty name, in Jesus' mighty name. Why don't you determine in your heart, that this week, you're going to start to become an encourager of people? That is your ministry - it's the ministry of every believer, to be an encourager and builder of people. Let's do it.

Let's do it together, let's look for the opportunities. Like Jonathan did, he went to David, connected with him in his difficulty and pain, spoke the word, and lifted his faith, and then stood with him while he recovered. This is the work of the comforter. This is what comfort looks like, and it's something we can all do.

Amen, why don't you pray for the person next to you and bless them. If you don't feel comfortable praying that's fine, let someone pray for you.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

• Key Verse: 2 Cor. 1:3-4 “…The Father of Mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves are comforted of God.”

• Every person experiences times or seasons of pressure, pain, difficulty – it is part of life.

• In face of personal pain it is easy to:

(i) Lose God’s perspective

(ii) Isolate

(iii) Look for ways to comfort ourselves that are destructive

• Comfort =NT3874= to call near, to come alongside and strengthen.

• Example of Jonathan: 1 Sam. 23:16-18. Key ingredients in Comfort.

1) Initiate contact/connection

2) Identify the emotional pain

3) Direct to the Word and Person of God

4) Reassure of personal support

2. Barnabas – The Son of Comfort

• Acts 4:34-37 “And Joseph who also was named Barnabas by the Apostles/which is translated Son of Encouragement), a Levite from the country of Cyprus having land sold it…”

• Acts 11:24 “For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.”

• Barnabas’ name is mentioned 30 times in the Bible – more often than most of the Apostles.

• Tradition is that he was one of the 70 sent out by Jesus in Lk.10:1

• He was given a ‘nickname’ = described the kind of person that he was.

Barnabas = NT921 = Son of Prophecy

= Son of Comfort NT3874= Parakletos – to come alongside

Jesus used this same word to describe the Holy Spirit – Comforter. Jn14:16

He so manifested this aspect of the Holy Spirit he was given this name.

“Son of the Comforter” – identified by name as revealing what God is like.

• Key Qualities

i) Generosity – he had a heart for people in need and was generous in helping.

ii) Filled with Holy Ghost – he was not just a nice person, he was highly spirit empowered.

iii) Filled with Faith – He had deep personal trust in God and His Word – spoke faith.

3. Barnabas Encouraged Paul

• Acts 9:26-27 “And when Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples but they were all afraid of him and did not believe he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the Apostles.”

• He overcame prejudice and fear of Paul

• He initiated connection with Paul and put his own reputation at risk.

• He recognised potential and the call of God on Paul.

• He facilitated connection and spoke on his behalf.

• Acts11:23-26 Then Barnabas departed Tarsus to seek Saul.

• He exhorted the church and built their faith.

• He saw how Paul’s giftings could strengthen the church.

• He sought out Saul and reactivated his giftings.

• He included him in his team, discipling new believers.

Acts13:2 “separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

• Barnabas was the team leader – vs2:vs7

• He saw the greater gift on Paul and deferred leadership to him vs13,15:2

• He was secure in his own calling and committed to bringing others forward.

4. Barnabas Encouraged Mark

Acts 15:37-39 “Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark.”

• Mark had formerly been part of his team. (Acts12:25)

• Mark had ‘departed’ from them. Depart =NT868= withdraw, desert.

• Unclear why he left? - homesick

- reaction to leadership change

- Fear of hardship ahead

• Barnabas encouraged Mark:

He recognised the potential in him

He forgave him for previous failure

He spoke up on Marks behalf

He stood with Mark and took him under his wing

He imparted faith and enabled Mark to be restored to ministry with Paul

• 2 Tim.4:11 “Get Mark and bring him with you for he is useful to me for ministry.”

5. Are you a Comforter?

1 Cor. 14:31 “For you all can prophesy.”

1 Cor. 14:3 “He who prophesies speaks to edification, and exhortation and comfort to men.”

• All of us can be encouragers.

• Heb. 3:13 “Exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be harden through the deceitfulness of sin.”

• Initiate connection with people intentionally?

• Enter their world through questions, listening and genuine interest?

• Accept them and look for the potential in them not problems?

• Strengthen their faith – confidence in God and His Word?

• Help them fulfil the call of God on their life?

• Be there for them – walk with them.

Forces that Work in You

Forces that Work in You

Sin is a living, spiritual entity. When sin is in your life,it is something alive, operative, active, wanting to increase its hold over your life, to produce death.

Speaking in Tongues

The gift of tongues is vital for building a spirit dimensional life around you.

Tongues and Interpretation

Be immersed into the spiritual dimension, and be "clothed with power from on high".

Words of Knowledge

Learn how to operate the Word of Knowledge - a powerful revelation gift to open up a person's life.

Speak the Word of God

Things from the unseen realm of the spirit, make their way into the physical world, by speaking words.

The Truth about Tattoos

Leviticus includes a prohibition against Tattoos, in the context of slavery, Baal worship; blood covenants; and supernatural laws.

Forces that Work in You (1 of 2)

Sin is a living, spiritual entity. When sin is in your life, it's not just something that sits there. It is something alive, operative, active, wanting to increase its hold over your life and produces death. The Holy Spirit works to energise us. What does He energise us to do, and how do I get that happening in my life?

Gods Word Works In You (2 of 2)

The Bible says if I don't do the word of God, if I don't apply into my life what God's saying to me, actually I end up quite deceived. I think I'm doing real well, because I measure doing real well by the information I know - I've got three folders worth of Bible notes. I've been to Bible school. But none of this, until it's applied, changes my life. So the Hebrew way of thinking is very simply this; what you are doing, is what you know.

Speaking in Tongues

The gift of tongues is one of the most wonderful gifts that God has given you and me, and it is vital for building a spirit dimensional life around you. Without the flow of the spirit's life within you, you're left to live out of your own efforts and willpower, and without the intuitive flow, direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit

You've got something that can change your life as a gift to you. He's called the Holy Ghost. Jesus said I'll not leave you alone. He said I'll give you another comforter. He's been with you, now He'll be in you. You've got some fire inside you and he said they were filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. It's fantastic.

Speak the Word of God

Things from the unseen realm of the spirit, make their way into the physical world, by speaking words. Your words have power to shape your world, they have already shaped your world, and shape it today. With a heart man believes, with the mouth man confesses to salvation. Death and life are imparted to people through words, because there's a spirit content to it. The word of God has power to change your life. The mixture of meditating and speaking is what causes the word to become alive, and energised in your life.

The Truth about Tattoos

The book of Leviticus includes a prohibition against Tattoos (& cutting, mutilation), which is often not well-understood or observed. There's a natural/historical context, such as its association with Slavery and Baal worship; but also a spiritual context, involving blood covenants and supernatural laws. That side is related to the Deliverance ministry (commonly known as Exorcism) - one of the 3 parts of the Great Commission, which all believers are entrusted with.

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- Forces that Work in You (1 of 2).mp3

- Gods Word Works In You (2 of 2).mp3

- Speaking in Tongues.mp3

- Speak the Word of God.mp3

- The Truth about Tattoos.mp3

Notes

- Forces that Work in You (1 of 2)

- Gods Word Works In You (2 of 2)

- Speaking in Tongues

- Speak the Word of God

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Forces that Work in You (1 of 2)

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Sin is a living, spiritual entity. When sin is in your life, it's not just something that sits there. It is something alive, operative, active, wanting to increase its hold over your life and produces death. The Holy Spirit works to energise us. What does He energise us to do, and how do I get that happening in my life?

I want to just share something with you, to get your spirit up. Let's open up our Bible in Philippians - I want to speak on forces that work within you. So let's have a look in Philippians 2:12-13, particularly Verse 13.

"Therefore my beloved, as you've always obeyed not only in my presence, but also more in my absence; work out your salvation with fear and with trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to do, for His good pleasure".

God is working in you to do something. We're going to look at that whole area of what God is doing. God has a plan - He planned you before you came into this world. He planned something for you to accomplish.

God has wired us. Everyone is created for a purpose. We found in Ephesians 2, that every person, God has created us for accomplishing something with our life. We're not called to just breathe in and out, and expire. We're called to do something, and to do something significant, and to do something that takes a little bit of risk.

So God has prepared an assignment for us, and it unfolds through our life; but I want to talk about forces that work inside us, because if we don't understand how God gets this assignment out of us, we never end up fulfilling it.

There are some practical ways you can discover the assignment was that God had for you; and one of them is to connect with the Holy Spirit, and begin to listen to the voice of God.

So notice what it says: "it's God who is at work in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure". That word 'work', is a word in the original language. It's the word energayo, from which we get the word 'energise'. Let me give you a definition of it: it's to be active; to be efficient; to be mighty; to rouse into activity.

So let's read it again: It is God who energises you, and rouses you up into activity, so that you will choose to do the things that please Him; and it says: not only will He rouse you up, but He'll put it in your mind to choose (or to want to choose) the things that please Him; and not only to want to choose them, but He says: to actually do them; and it's the same word 'to energise', or become active doing things.

So let's read it again, and put it in simple terms. It says: God works, or energises you; so you become aware of, and choose, what He wants; and then are empowered to work it out, and get it done. That is an amazing scripture - so we are joined to the spirit.

So the Bible tells us, we get born again in the spirit of God; we are joined spirit to spirit with God. When it says: God works in you; its meaning: the Holy Spirit is at work in you. The Holy Spirit energises you.

Now if you are highly energised, something that you energise is alive. Have you ever seen that TV ad about the Energiser batteries - just keeps on going. So that's the word energise. God energises you.

Now the problem is, I don't see that happening in too many Christians, so I wonder why that is so. I don't want to focus on this today, but it's obvious there are other forces at work to de-energise us.

So the Holy Spirit works to energise us, and what I want to focus on today, I want to give you four simple things you do, that cause something to happen inside you - that activates the Holy Spirit to energise you.

You haven't got a different Holy Spirit to anyone else. You've got the same Holy Spirit. He didn't give a little bit to you, and a little bit more to him, He gave a person - the Holy Spirit. We are joined to the spirit of God, so it's the spirit of God that energises us.

However, my question is: what does He energise us to do; and more specifically, how do I get that happening in my life? That's the most important part - how can I move from where I am, to there?

But before we do that, I want to look at some forces that actually also work inside you, and these are quite negative. Let's have a look in Romans 7:5, and here's another force that works inside you. It says in Verse 5:

“For when we were in the flesh, sinful passions, which were aroused by the law, were at work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death”.

Notice something else is at work: sinful passions, or sin; and that's the same word 'work' as the word energise. So what its saying is: when we think of sin, we tend to think of it as something we do: I got angry; or I said words I shouldn't have said; or I did something wrong. We tend to think of it in terms of something you did.

What we seldom think is to actually think from a spiritual perspective; and what we don't realise is that sin is not something you did. It's more than that. Sin actually operates like a living entity in your life, and creates energy inside you. You have a think about this.

We know the Bible tells us that there's anger, which is sin. Now when you get really outrageously angry, have you got energy working inside you? What kind of energy have you got? You've got the energy of sin - and is it real? Oh oh oh, it's real! Wound up there, it stiffens your whole body, and your eyes start to glaze, and your nostrils start to snort, and you're saying and doing things you shouldn't be doing.

You go: oh, I shouldn't have been doing that. That was something energising your whole body; and did you remember the Holy Ghost, when that was happening to you? Not at all! He wasn't anywhere round. Now there's a different form of energy, and it's firing up inside you, and you're: grr-grr-grr, and kicking something, and there you are. Then you calm down again; now we can pray nicely and become aware of God again.

So - how many understand that experience? You probably had it on the way to church! You drove there and someone got in the way and grr-grr-grr-grr! Oh, I'm going to church, that's right, you know? Had a big row between husband and wife, grr-grr-grr and then coming up here - smile, I'm going to church - but the energy is still working inside you.

Sin is not some thing - it is a living, spiritual entity. When sin is in your life, it's not just something that sits there. It is something alive, operative, active; wanting to increase its hold over your life, and it produces death. It produces death! That means you become disconnected from God, and from people; and you become numbed or cold or insensitive; because a person who's dead is disconnected, and they're cold, and they're insensitive.

So when sin is operating in your life, there will be parts of your life where you are disconnected from people, where you're numb and dead, and there's something working in there to try and gain ground, like cancer.

So sin is not some thing. It's actually a living, spiritual entity that just grows; and if you let it, it'll rise up, and it'll dominate your mind. You can think of unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is not just something from your past. Unforgiveness is a living energy, that continues to work in your life, and it continues to try and reproduce itself so more unforgiveness is there.

Envy is the same. If you've got envy - ever remember when you got envious of someone? Oh, did you turn green? Was there energy flowing? You know, just get furious at something - the injustice of it!

So sin works in us. How many know sin works in us? How many notice it works in you, quite regularly? Yeah, especially when you're outside of church, and you’re not so nice then - so sin is there. Now here's the thing you've got realise: while we're in this body, that thing is going to be operating.

Think about lust - there's something about lust that just keeps operating. I reckon it only stops operating about half an hour after the person's dead, and they start to stiffen in their body and get cold then they're safe now! There's no energy going now! That lust has stopped, once and for all, see. So lust is actually a strong, driving energy.

When you start to look at something you shouldn't be looking at, you'll find whether it's got energy or not. It'll rise up inside, and dominate your mind. It'll take some effort to try and stop sinning. Have you noticed? And when we try to stop sinning, do you notice it actually gets worse? You know a lot about it?

It just - I do know a lot about these things. I've wrestled most of them all my life; just didn't know how to get the victory, that was all. But I've discovered something that'll help you.

One of the things is, it says: the strength of sin is the law. You shouldn't do that you know. You shouldn't do that. Now every time you say: you shouldn't do that, I want to do it! Well you just put a sign up over there - 'Wet paint, don't touch' - you know someone is going to touch it. We'll come out of church, and it'll be covered with fingerprints.

You put a box in the middle of a room, and it's a box and it's got a lid on it, and it's got a sign up: 'Do not open'; and we leave you alone in that room, it won't be long, because you will be insanely driven to open the box and have a peek. It's not because you really ever came in wanting to do it, it's just the fact you couldn't open it, and it looks like it's interesting. The more you think: I can't do that, I shouldn't do it, I mustn't do that - I'll just have a quick peek, I'm sure it won't matter. That's what sin is like. It's an energy!

Trying harder to stop it, isn't going to help. It just makes it stronger. Here's another energy that works in us, Ephesians 2.

He made us alive, who were once dead in trespasses and sins; in which you once walked, according to the course of this world.

It says: how we used to live, just like the unsaved did, presuming we've changed that; and we were according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.

Evil spirits work in you. That's the same word: energise. So they don't come and announce: hey, I'm an evil spirit, and I'm here. They just fill you with energy that drives you to sin, and if there are areas of sin in your life that are already energised, they just get in there, and ride in on top of them, and make it really hard for you to get over it.

So now, not only have you got a sin, you've got a devil pushing on you as well. There'd be a lot of people here who've got that happening, a lot. Well there's a lot. Now come on, don't be like that. You know that's true. You'd be a living a lot differently if there wasn't that happening; and we have a deliverance sermon every year, and we get people come in, and some of them are the same people that were there last year. Good on them for coming back. They've recognised they've got something going on in their life, and there's a sin energy that's defeating them, and making their life miserable and disconnected; and there's also demonic spirits, which are oppressing and energising the sin, making life very difficult, because as good Christians we know what we ought to do. And Paul wrote that in Romans 7. He said:

I know what I should be doing, but I find there's a law in my body, or in my flesh, that goes counter. There's something de-energising me from doing what God wants - and there's not a person here exempt from both of those things, not one of us. There's not one of us exempt from the sin energy, and demonic energy, that tries to depress you, hold you down, get you apathetic, and get you locked in.

Apathy is not just a word. It's a spiritual thing, with a life of its own, that when you've got apathy over you, it sits over you like a wet blanket; and oh - this is what you'd say: I can't be bothered; or another way of saying it: I haven't got the energy to do that.

So when spirits oppress people, they haven't got the energy to break out and be different, so they live life low-level. Now the answer to it is not lots of laws, and focussing on demons.

The Bible tells us in Romans 8: there's now no condemnation. Jesus does not condemn you because you've got the struggles of sin energy, and demonic energy. There's no condemnation whatsoever, Jesus doesn't condemn. Why on earth does most of the church condemn people and judge people that have got things wrong, as if we didn't? Hello! If you didn't have any, if you were as free as you claim to be, you'd be doing a lot more for God.

So it's because we've come under the law ourselves, we bring others under the law; I should be doing this, I mustn't do that, I must do that. It's the law. There's no power in the law. You can't get energised for God with the law. All it does is defeat you every time, because the thing you shouldn't be doing, you end up doing; or you're so consumed with fighting it, that you've got no energy left for anything much else.

That's why many Christians live absolutely miserable lives, because they come under the law, and they're trying to fight, and they can't. They haven't got enough of the world to be happy; or enough of God to be happy. It's just miserable. So what's the answer to that?

Well it's very, very simple. It says: the law of the spirit of life in Christ sets me free from the law of sin and death. In other words, I have to activate something else, and then I get the victory; and it's the activating something else that requires you to co-operate with the Holy Ghost.

It says: God works in you, both to choose to do what He wants; and then empowers you to actually do it.

So here's the question: How on earth does that happen? Glad you asked - that's a good question to ask. How does that happen, because it's not happening much for me, you say.

Let's go in Ephesians 3, and let me give you the keys for that, because they're so simple, and you've already heard them over and over, it'll be like reminding you of things you already know; and you just forgot, that's all. So what I want to do is, encourage us to just remember the basics, and do the basics again; and it's not so hard, because they work. It always works, and you try harder to overcome your sin, you just get worse into it, because you come under the law.

But if I actually acknowledge that sin is there, I can activate the spirit of life in Christ - so how can I do that? First thing to realise is: I'm positioned already in a place of victory, with Christ. We are already - it tells is in Ephesians 2 - seated in the realm of heaven with Him.

We're joined to the overcomer. You're joined to Him already. You're joined to Him already. Nothing can separate you from Him. You have the spirit of God inside you. You have to find a way to activate the Holy Ghost inside you! He is willing. It's just we're not doing what we need to do, that would arouse the spirit of God to flow more powerfully through our lives!

So in other words, it says in Ephesians 3:16, in Paul's prayer, he prayed first of all we'd have revelation of the power that is available to us; and then in Verse 16 he says: that God would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with Dunamis - supernatural, miracle, Holy Ghost power by the spirit of God in the inner man.

So the Holy Ghost makes available, to you and I, Dunamis - supernatural ability. The Holy Ghost works in us. The Holy Ghost energises us, and when there's more energy from the Holy Ghost than there is sin and demons, you win!

It's like a plane. You have a look at a big jumbo jet. Now a jumbo jet theoretically couldn't really fly. It's far too big and heavy, and there's the law of gravity says: stay on the ground; but if you get the thing moving fast enough on the ground, then another law arises, and you get an aerodynamic lift.

Now you have one law lifting it up; and another one pulling it down; and here's the thing: so long as the lift upwards is bigger than the downwards, up the plane goes, and away it flies with all those people on it. If at any point the lift upwards diminished and stopped, it would just go into a dive and crash.

Now notice this, that while the plane is flying, the law of gravity is still there - it did not change. It is still pulling on it. It's just there's a greater lift from something else, and it overcomes it.

Now for the people inside the plane, it doesn’t work like that; we've got to overcome gravity. We've got to really work hard to overcome gravity. Thou shalt not pull me down! You know? This is not going to help you. There's only one thing will help that plane stay in the air, and that's a greater lift upward; and so long as it keeps moving, it'll have the greater lift upward. Forward motion, and it starts to get a lift, and it goes up.

Now get this: the only thing that'll keep you victorious over sin, is not trying harder not to sin. It's actually having a life inside you, that's greater than that, keeps you lifted up, so continually you're above it. And if you do fall the occasional time, you're quickly back up there, activating that law of life again.

So the first thing you've got to recognise, God doesn't condemn you, if you fall over. Boom, hit the ground; boom, back up again - quick! Back up again! Up, up, up! Elevate, pull up, pull up! You know, that's what happens in a plane, when it starts to go down too near the ground. The cockpit recorders: pull up! Pull up! Pull up!

So you start to find you're losing energy, and you're starting to go down into the pit, starting to fall down where you normally would go, before you get there and fall down into that deep hole - PULL UP! So how do we pull up? Well there are several things you can do. All of them will activate the movement of the spirit of God in your life.

Here's number one. You notice here it says: that you may be filled with the fullness of God, now to Him who's able to do exceedingly abundantly, above all that we ask or think, according to the Holy Ghost power that works in you, energises you.

So how's it going to happen? Here's number one. Number one: pray in tongues. Pray in tongues. Why pray in tongues? Because when you pray in tongues, your spirit is praying, your spirit is engaging the Holy Spirit, and spiritual life begins to arise in you, and flow out of you. It lifts and energises your spirit. Pray strongly. Pray forcefully, and pray as much as you can.

Now that would be such a simple thing. Here's the thing - you can pray as much, or as little, as you like; but I tell you: if you stop praying, the energy will diminish.

You get praying strongly in tongues, and you get up, and I guarantee if you were to rise up every day and over a period of two or three weeks, build your praying in tongues strongly every day, and build it up so you're praying in tongues strongly and forcefully, between 15 and 20 minutes, and you're giving yourself into that praying in tongues, you'll start to feel the energy and life flowing.

Of course you'll have some reactions from your flesh. It will start to try and pull you down. Old problems will stir up, but you've got the throttle, and you're pulling back and as you pray in tongues, you are now co-operating with the Holy Spirit, and enabling Him to do what He does, which is build you up.

It's sort of, so simple. It's not rocket science is it, but it's just in the doing of it, you get the results. Pray in tongues, pray in tongues. Know what you're doing. Let your spirit rise up! Move your body! Pray in tongues until you feel your spirit rising up, and energy flowing in you. Now that's not all we need to do but it's a great start.

Here's the second thing that we need to do, and you find if we just go back to that Philippians passage again, Verse 13. It says: God who works for you, both to will and to do good pleasure; do all things therefore, without complaining or disputing.

Now they go together. When you read verses, you should read them together, read them in context; and it when it says: its God who's working inside you, to will and to do for His good pleasure, so therefore don't go around moaning and whinging and whining! What could be clearer?

Moaning and whinging and whining will de-energise you! The complainers always de-energise the atmosphere, and they de-energise you, if you hang around complaining people. You have to make a decision: if I hang around complainers, and if I give voice to complaining, then there's unbelief is stirred in my heart, the Holy Ghost is quenched. I am being de-energised - oh, oh, oh pull up! Pull up! I'm going to a bad place - so you have to make a decision:

I will refuse to give in to complaining about anyone, or anything. I will refuse acting like a victim, and passing judgement and blame on anyone or anything. I will start to do this: I will start to show gratitude and praise the Lord!

The Bible tells us, in Psalm 69: magnify the Lord with thanksgiving! Make God bigger in your life, by magnifying Him, by expressing gratitude for all the blessings you have.

In Psalm 69:30, it says: I will praise the name of the Lord with a song. I heard Ray praise the name of this Lord. Did you get stirred up this morning, when we had that sound of joy, and there was a spirit of faith in that song? Well you see that's what this is talking about - that lifts your spirit - that energises you.

How many got energised? See, yeah, you're energised if you decided to, but you get energised as you begin to praise the Lord, and thank Him, show gratitude.

If you were to decide for one week: I'm going to do all I can not to complain, and to catch my complaining out; and I'm going to start to show gratitude to God, gratitude to people, start to thank God for all the things I have, the blessings I have.

What a great place to live in; and as I start to adopt an attitude of gratitude and praise to the Lord continually, you know what will happen? You'll energise the moving of the spirit inside you. I guarantee it. Why? The Bible tells us, that's how you access the presence of God: "Come into His presence with thanksgiving, enter His gates with praise" - so I come in being thankful and praising, I can enjoy God.

Now we tend to think of that as just at a church service. Oh well, we'll come in and say: thank you Jesus, and honour Jesus. No - this is how you live in the flow of the spirit. See, Paul and Silas were beaten up. Now they could have said: oh, it's not fair. These Romans, you know, they're persecuting us, and the devils out to get us. They didn't say that, they just praised the Lord, and there was an earthquake, and the whole prison opened up, and there was some family got saved.

New Zealand has got a real issue, in the DNA, of being negative and critical. You've got to decide: that's over for me, and if people around me are negative, goodbye. Goodbye! I just want to elevate my life. I don't want to go down into the sinkhole of your negativity, and unbelief, and complaining.

I want to stay in a positive place, where I'm enjoying the presence of God, and I'm highly energised, because I have a mission to fulfil. You hang around too many negative people, and they will de-energise you in pursuing God, and fulfilling what God called you to do with your life. It's absolutely certain.

There's an example of it in the Bible, in Numbers 13, where two to three million people lost their way, because 10 people gave a negative/critical report. It's written for our learning. So there's two things - you just do those two things - to help you a lot.

I'll give you two more things, here's the next one, the third one: learn to tune into the voice of the Holy Spirit, and listen to Him, and do what He says. Learn to tune in to the Holy Ghost. Why? Because in Galatians 5:6 it says: He who supplies the Holy Ghost and works - there it is, that word again - energises the miraculous or supernatural.

How does he do it? By working hard to be a goody Christian; or by the hearing of faith? It's the hearing of faith. So every time you tune in to listen to the Holy Spirit, and start to do what He's telling you, and start to act out on what He's saying, energy comes into your life. You become energised.

It says: he who ministers the spirit to you, and energises miracles to happen, how does He do it? Does He do it because you just came to church? No. It says: it's by the hearing of faith; so when I've stirred my spirit up, I must practise constantly, and just in a moment, just turn in and say: God, just speak to me. Holy Ghost, just talk with me. Talk with me Holy Spirit, speak to me; and so you could just, from one minute, you could just stop; begin to show gratitude and praise: I want to just thank you, you're a wonderful God. I thank you for your presence here with me Holy Spirit. Thank you Lord, you're in me. I just honour you and welcome you Lord. I open my heart. Now Lord, begin to just speak to me, encourage me, show me some things I need to do.

Now I can immediately start to access the presence of God; but if I let negativity get around me, it shuts all of that down. The miraculous flows when you hear the voice of God; so if you want a greater level of the life of the spirit, you've got to activate your spirit, maintain an attitude of gratitude and praise; and learn to listen for the small impressions of the Holy Spirit, and act on them, and you'll start to get in a river of life. You just get it in flow, and the more you act on it, the more you get and the flow starts to increase and to grow.

Here's the last one that we need to do. Probably there's more, but this is one I felt the Lord put in my heart. You need to learn to give voice to God's word. Now this is something that's incredibly missing among so many believers.

In 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 13: You received the word which we preached unto you, not as the word of men.

Ah well, who's up preaching on Sunday? Oh okay, well I don't like that preacher, I'll stay home. I don't know if I like that message you know? He said: that you didn't receive it by looking at the people speaking, and how they spoke. You received it, as it is in truth, the word of God which works - there it is - energises or creates activity in your life, if you believe it.

Now in Hebrews 4:2, it tells us: they heard the word of God, but it didn't do them any good whatsoever, because they never believed on it.

So believing is not: well, that's nice, that was a good message, I agree with that. No, no, no - that's not believing! The demons do that, they believe in God, and they tremble, but it doesn't save them. Believing, from a Biblical point of view, is that you embrace what you have heard, and start to operate it in your life.

So to speak the word of God - so when we say speaking the word of God, the word of God works. The word of God releases energy in your spirit. It releases energy in your life. The word of God will activate the Holy Spirit to move.

Remember in Genesis, the spirit of God "brooded over the abyss"; and when the word was spoken, the spirit moved. Now that's the first time you see the spirit moving, and He moves when the word is spoken with faith.

Now think about your own life. If you started to get the word of God in your heart, and start to speak God's word over your life and circumstances regularly and consistently, the spirit of God will begin to move in a different way through your life.

It's not just that you rabbit on the scripture. You need to wrap your heart in it, through meditation, and speak it. You see words communicate language, but our voice communicates the spirit.

So you can read a scripture, and just: it's read, and then it's gone just like that; but when the word is spoken, you manifest your spirit when you speak the word of God; so you notice that most of the miracles in the Bible, where the Holy Ghost moved and changed things, someone spoke, and they spoke forcefully and strongly. So learn to speak the word of God over your life.

Take the Bible and begin to pray scripture: I thank you, I'm accepted in the Beloved, I am redeemed, and whom I have forgiveness and so on. You begin to pray the Bible out over your life: I thank you Lord today you're filling me, and strengthening me, with might in my spirit by the Holy Ghost; today my - and then you start with a scripture, and then personalise it, and get in a flow of prayer. Your energy will rise massively; so start with a scripture, declaring the scriptures, and then begin to pray around that scripture and make it personal.

The Bible says: the same spirit, that raised Christ from the dead, dwells in you; and shall quicken your mortal body. Now take that scripture: I thank you Lord today, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells within me, and quickens my mortal body.

I thank you Lord - now you see, as I've done that, I've meditated, and I've held a strong belief that I will give to the Holy Ghost! He will quicken my body with energy and life, and I'll stay young and lively and vigorous. People who yield to sin energy will grow old quickly.

People who stay full of the Holy Ghost stay very young and youthful. People who just let sin and negativity get over their life, age quickly. It shows - because sin is an energy. Sin causes decay and death.

You see some people, and you think: I can't believe you're only that old. You're carrying on like an old person. It's all in what's going on in their mind and spirit. Now I know, and I understand, that sometimes there are physical sicknesses, and limitations around people; but it is also true that the spirit of God, when I get it in my spirit, will cause my spirit to come alive, and my whole body will respond!

So you could take scripture, and start to speak it over your life, start to speak: Today I speak over my day, I say this is the day the Lord has made! I will rejoice and be glad in the Lord today! I thank you Lord today, I will bless the Lord at all times! His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make a boast in the Lord, the humble shall hear and be glad! Today Lord I will praise you and bless you!

You start to get into a flow, praying scripture, and then before you know it, the spirit is flowing through you. You become highly energised in your prayer, your prayer life changes.

If you make sin your focus, failures your focus, faults your focus, ten sin energy will overwhelm you, and depress you, and your spirit will not arise and be released. You'll have no lift. You may have done your time, but you'll still be on the ground. It's like not getting up enough speed to lift off, and it doesn't take much to lift off. All I've got to do is just activate what God has put inside me.

It's really clear: I can pray in tongues, and allow the spirit of God to rise in me. I can praise, and demonstrate gratitude to everyone and everything. I can be a very, very happy person, thanking people and appreciating people, and being glad about what people have done, and saying: thank you Lord for this great day, and lovely people. See, I can do that, and my spirit will arise!

In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God, and Christ Jesus, concerning you - in everything just be thankful. God, you're with me!

Well that's a bit of a downer that thing happened, but you know what? I thank you Lord you're going to use it for my good, so I'm going to grow in this. It'll be a stepping stone to something better!

Now you see, that gives you a different winning attitude, that stirs your spirit, energises you with life - and we need to be energised with life. Isn't that right? Anything less than God will let you down.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· God is at work in you!

· Phil.1:13 “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure”.

· God has planned a purpose for every believer – our responsibility is to discover and fulfil it.

· God is at “work” – within you.

· Work =NT1756= to be active, efficient, mighty, to energise and empower your life.

· We are joined to the Spirit of God – our spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17)

· What does the Holy Spirit do?

· Energise you to will (be resolved or determined) and to do (put forth energy) the things that bring pleasure to God – this is His mission and assignment.

2. Other Forces that Work in You

(a) Sin Works in You

Rom.7:13 “But sin that it might appear sin working death in me”

· “Working” =NT2716= to thoroughly work.

· Rom. 7:5 “For when we were in the flesh the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death”.

· Work =NT2716= energeo = to energize, to rouse into activity.

· Sin works to create strong negative energies within us that influence us and bring about death – spiritual isolation and separation from the Life of God.

(b) Evil Spirits can Work in You

Eph. 2:2 “In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that spirit now works in the children of disobedience”.

· Evil spirits work =NT1756= energeo = to energise, to rouse into activity.

· Evil spirits work to energise sin and disobedience within the lives of people.

· They use sin (disobedience) as the gateway to enter and ‘energise’ people to live in bondage.

3. How can I co-operate with the Holy Spirit to increase His working in My Life?

(a) His working releases supernatural energy

Eph.3:16-20 “He is able to do more exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us”.

· Power =NT1411= Dunamis = supernatural power and ability.

· He is talking about the Holy Spirit at work with us.

· The working of the Holy Spirit is to strengthen us with ‘dunamis’ in our spirit.

· The key is activating the moving of the Holy Spirit within us.

· The law of life (of the spirit) is what overcomes the law of sin and death.

(i) Speak in Tongues

· 1 Cor.14:4 “When you speak in tongues you strengthen and build your spirit”.

Speak fluently – speak strongly – speak often.

· Speaking in tongues activates your spirit to flow with the Holy Spirit.

(ii) Practise Praise and Gratitude

· Ps. 69:30 “I will praise the name of the Lord with a song, I will magnify Him with thanksgiving”.

· Lack of gratitude and honour creates disrespect.

· Constant gratitude and honour expressed creates room for the Holy Spirit to move.

· Ps. 95:4 “We enter (experience) His presence with gratitude and praise”.

(iii) Tune into the Voice of the Holy Spirit

· Gal.5:6 “He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you does He do it by the works of the Law or the hearing of Faith?”

· Practice turning in to impressions from the Holy Spirit, words, thoughts, pictures.

· Obey promptly – this releases life - tune to spontaneity – tune to flow

(iv) Give Voice to the Word of God

· 1 Thess. 2:13 “…the word of God which works effectively in you who believe”.

· Works =NT1756= Energeo = to energise

· The Word of God works – but only if we respond to it with faith (Heb.4:2)

· We take in the word of God through mediation and speak it forth.

· Jer. 23:28-29 “He who has my Word let Him speak it forth faithfully”.

· Is. 40:9 “Lift up your voice with strength”.

· Words carry information but your voice carries your spirit.

· It’s not what you say but how you say it that releases the anointing. Speaking forth the Word of God stirs your spirit and gives room for the Spirit of God to work in you!

Gods Word Works In You (2 of 2)

Sun 15 Jul 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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The Bible says if I don't do the word of God, if I don't apply into my life what God's saying to me, actually I end up quite deceived. I think I'm doing real well, because I measure doing real well by the information I know - I've got three folders worth of Bible notes. I've been to Bible school. But none of this, until it's applied, changes my life. So the Hebrew way of thinking is very simply this; what you are doing, is what you know.

Let's open our Bibles then at Philippians 1. Last week I started to speak to you, a series just on "forces that work within us"; and let's just pick up the scripture that we started with, and I want to pick up one aspect of it, and share with you something that's going to help.

So here it is in Philippians 2:12, and it says: it is God who works in you. God works in you, both to will and to do for or of His good pleasure. In other words, it says: God energises you.

It's the spirit of God that creates energy, passion and motivation in you, so this is not just about doing things that will pep ourselves up, and motivate ourselves. There is a reality, He says: where God's spirit will energise you so powerfully, that your mind begins to want, desire and choose the things that are going to please God; and your life reflects - you actually end up doing them.

That word 'to do' is the same word, energise; so putting it again, it is the spirit of God, when He's working in you, who energises you, to make choices in line with what God has for your life; and then energises you to work them out.

That's very, very powerful, and that's not the experience of most Christians by the way, because these things don't just take place in a vacuum. There are some things we have to do. There's a part we play, in co-operating with God.

Notice the context, it says: you work out your salvation. There are parts we play in it; and we looked last week at some forces that work in us, or energise us. Some are very negative, so we looked at sin, and we saw that sin works death in us. It actually creates an energy that's quite negative, depressing, brings isolation, brings us into a place where we don't want to be.

We saw also that evil spirits work in us. It's the same word, energise; evil spirits create negative energy flows in our life that depress us, frustrate us, irritate us; and strengthen sin working in our life. But we saw also that God works in us, and I'll talk a bit more about that, but I want to pick one aspect of it that we touched on last week, and it's found in 1 Thessalonians 2:13.

For this reason we thank God (and Paul's saying) without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works.

There it is again, the word 'works'; the word of God works in people. It may not be working in you, but it can do, so don't bring the word of God down to your experience. Have a look at what God says, and begin to expect your experience to come up to that.

It tells us that God's word energises us. Now that's interesting, so I always think: how on earth does that happen? What part do I play in this, because for a lot of us, when we read the Bible, we find that you read it, and you've read three or four pages or chapters or whatever, and then you don't sort of remember much, and it hasn't really done much either. Probably you're sleepy by then, and that's the experience of many people.

But there are some things we can do, which will cause God's word to create energy inside us, and to effectively strengthen our spirit, so our outer life begins to change, but we have to co-operate with God.

Why can God's word do this? Because Jesus said, in John 6 verse 63: the words I speak to you are spirit. So the only thing that can energise your spirit is spiritual substance, something spiritual energises you.

For example, how many this morning - you may have come in heavy or tired or weary or whatever, or problems living; but as we've been in this atmosphere, where there's been strong praise and exalting God, you felt yourself becoming energised on the inside? How many have found they're quite energised? Good - a lot of people. That's normal when you come into an experience of worship. That energy is a spiritual energy.

It comes about, by the way, as you participate; not as you spectate. You can come into a meeting like this, and you can be absolutely unmoved by everything. We can be in the most wonderful worship time, and God's presence is touching some, but He's not touching you. That's because of a failure to participate. It's always about participation. That's why when we come together, often it's very slow and sluggish to get started, because we kind of come in as spectators; passive, leaning on the musicians to do something for us, rather than arising in our spirit to engage with God. That's something we could speak on another time. I want to speak in this one here, of the word of God energising us. The question we have then: how does the word of God energise us? So let's go back into the verse.

The first thing is: you have to place value on God's word. I wander around, I look around, I watch people coming in. I find how many people don't have a Bible. Now I know we put the words up on there, but I like to have a Bible. I like to have my own Bible, and I like to mark my Bible, and I read my Bible and mark it, and take notes of what God is saying; because the word of God can ENERGISE ME! The word of God can bring MIRACLES into my life, you see?

And so I want you to notice something here, the first thing is: you have to place value on the word of God. Notice what it says here: you did not receive it as the word of men; so it says something they didn't do, and then something they did do. Just have a think about what that might mean.

If we're talking about some words being the words of men - in other words, someone is just sharing their opinions and their ideas - it's a lot of information. You can go on the Internet and get a lot of information. You can download words. You can download pages of words, but they may not do you any good whatsoever, and particularly in terms of your spiritual life.

They can help, or not help. The problem is in how we receive them. Now if you receive just the words of men, here are some things that you would automatically think: well it's just his opinion, and so immediately you dismiss the words as having much authority. There's no authority in this.

We think then: it's just someone's opinion, it's someone's ideas, it's quite interesting information, and the attitude is: you take it or leave it. So if I agree with it, I'll take it; if I don't agree with it, I'll leave it; and that's the mentality we have, with the things that people say. Not only that, many people say things which are either not true, or exaggerated; so we have a tendency, when we hear messages, to filter them all through, and just pick on little bits that we like or agree with, and we're receiving it as if it's the word of men.

Now it says here: you did not receive this word as though it was the word of men, or just people preaching. You received it as the word of God. Now to receive something as the word of God means: I am listening for God to speak to me. In other words, it doesn't matter who's up there preaching. I believe that: God, if His word is preached with boldness and strength, that I can receive something from the word of God.

So if I come into a place where someone's preaching, they may be preaching a particular message, but I'm listening for what God wants to say through it; and I know that at certain points in the message, He will start to speak to me; and I always have a pad, and I write down the things that God is bringing to my attention. Now that's what it means - to receive it as the word of God.

Receive it as the word of men - well it's nothing. It's very, very clear from experience, that about 70 percent of what you hear, you'll forget. That doesn't leave much that you'll remember.

So we can have great messages, but what really counts, is what is God speaking to you in the midst of it? You've got to value the preaching of the word, not: well who's the preacher? Who isn't the preacher? But what is God speaking to me, in the midst of it? Now that's a heart issue.

That's why we have worship. It's to prepare the heart; and loving God, to be open to respond, and hear what God wants to say, through whatever message is preached. Otherwise it's the words of men, so you'll look and you'll judge, and we have this person preaching: oh well, that's so and so. What we do is, we treat it all as the words of men; and we don't come with the right attitude, so we can't receive.

So firstly, you have to place value that God's word, no matter who preaches it, and how badly they preach, can still speak to me. That's nothing to do with how good the preacher is. That's the belief that God's word carries power, and that when it's spoken, and when it's preached, it will have ability to bring about some fruit in my life.

It says in Isaiah 55: my word shall not return to me void. It will not return without doing something - unless of course you actually don't take it in; so it's all in valuing the word of God.

So if I treat the message that comes as the word of God, then there's authority in it. There's the power to change my life. There's power to give me hope. In fact, out of any place I go, if I would have a right heart and attitude towards God, and look past the speaker to listen to the spirit of God, the He will speak. He will speak! I've been in all kinds of places, with some of the worst preachers in the world, and God still spoke. It had to do with the heart attitude. So value it.

In Psalm 119:105 it says: Your word is a lamp. It'll light up my way. In other words, when I'm struggling to know what to do, if I'll just hear your words, they will give me inspiration, and show me what I need to do.

There's another one here in Psalm 119:89. Forever O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven. So if God's word says it, it is settled like a decree, demons will yield to it, circumstances will yield to it. It's settled. There's no arguing. It's established in the realm of the spirit. I've got to bring it into the realm of the earth.

Jeremiah 23:29 says: Is not my word like a fire? Oh, you imagine a burning, blazing fire. The word of God is like a fire! It's when the Holy Ghost gets it, that it can start to burn in you. The disciples said: when Jesus spoke the word to us, did not our hearts burn inside us?

He said: is not my word like a hammer, that breaks in pieces the rocks? Every hard situation, God's word is like a hammer; that can bash it, and break it open, and shift it. That's what God says His word is about.

Well, you may agree with it; or not. If I don't agree that it's a hammer, then it's not a hammer. It won't be a hammer for me. It'll be a hammer for someone who can believe. If I believe that God's word is the fire, then if I learn how to take it in, and get it in my life, it can burn inside me until I ignite!

If I believe God's word is a lamp, then I can get it into my heart, and at the right times it'll speak to me, just like that. It'll speak to me, if it's in me.

It's so important to get the word of God into our lives and hearts. You need the simple skills, and the ability, to get God's word in. Why? Because the word of God can energise your life mightily! That's what God says. So you're going to be receiving it right now as the word of God, or something else.

Here's another thing. Have a look at this in Hebrews 4. How you receive the word determines whether it can do any work in your life. There are so many aspects of this, but we'll just pick up this one here in Hebrews 4:1.

Since there remains a promise of them entering His rest, let us fear lest any seem to come short of it. Now here it is: For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as them; but the word they heard did not have any value to them whatsoever, and produced not a bit of fruit.

Now that's an extraordinary thing to say. Now He's talking about the Hebrew people coming out of Egypt, redeemed by the blood, walking through the wilderness with the promise of inheritance; and this is what the Bible says: They heard the gospel. What did they hear? What gospel did they hear? They heard the gospel of the kingdom, that there is a realm of inheritance for you to possess, that advances God's purpose on the earth. They heard the same gospel as we have heard.

The Bible says: though it did them no good, because of one factor; it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it. Notice what it said: They got the word, but it didn't do them any good. They got the message, but it didn't do them any good. Now why did it not do them any good? Because something was missing in their response; and it says: they were not joined to it by faith. That word joined is to be mixed. It's to be connected. They were not joined to it by faith.

So Hebrews 4 - so they missed out on what they could have had, because they weren't joined to it by faith. God's word is powerful. Hebrews 4:12, it says: it's like a sharp sword. It says: it's alive or quick. It's full of the life of God, breathed in by the spirit of God.

This Bible that you have in your hands, or don't have in your hands, men died to get it to you. Men shed their blood to get it to you. They were tortured and burnt and suffered to get this word to you in a written form; and the Bible says in Hebrews 4:12: the word of God is quick. It's alive with the life of God. It is sharp. It's sharp like a two-edged sword. In other words, it's so sharp, it can just penetrate through with one slice, without hacking.

I saw in a movie, and they were trying to get this guy's head off with a sword - a lot of hacks to get that head off. He said: shwoosh! like that. That's what the word does - goes straight to it. Straight to it like that, no hacking with the word of God. Nice and sharp! Bible's full of pictures like that. Some people don't want to think about them, because they're too nice - but I'd like to think that when I speak the word of God, it'll hike the head off again! That'd be great wouldn't it?

Sharper than any two-edged sword, quick and powerful. The word powerful means - here it is again - energayo: to be energetic, or life-giving, or energising.

We tend to love experiences that are created in group situations, but there's something that can only be done in our life with God, and that's get His word into our heart.

Get His word into our heart - so it's says: this word did not profit them. It was no use. It didn't do any good - not because it couldn't do it, but because how they responded - they did not receive it.

Notice what the Thessalonians said. Here we come to the second thing in 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 13: you did not receive it as the word of man, but as the word of God, which works powerfully in you who believe.

So I must first of all value God's word. Your Bible, this Bible you carry, you may not understand all of it. There's a lot of it I don't understand I can tell you now - but there's some I really do, and it's the bit you really do, you've got to be working on in your life.

We can expand what we understand, because knowledge comes to those who apply what God has given them already, so I need to receive it as a friend. Take your Bible - this is my friend! It can help me. Bring the word of God near into your heart. Take hold of it, see?

Now here's the problem with Western thinking, it goes something like this: to believe something, I believe it. So what I mean when I say: I believe it - yeah, I read that verse, and I agreed with it. That's what we think. That is Western thinking, and it's informational or cognitive based, and we think: because I know it, that I know it; because our Western thinking is: if I've heard that story before, then I know it.

So if someone stands up and reads a passage - well I know that. Someone tries to share with you about something - I know that. Isn't it great? Good for you. You know so much - but not Biblically. From a Western point of view, we've got heaps of information. In fact, there's so much information, you can overload.

The problem is, what to do with what you have; and in the kingdom of God - little is best - a little, because you get a little, and put it into practise, you get more. But if you have a lot of information, and don't do anything with it, you end up in a bad place; because you believe you actually are in a great place with God, when you're not.

That's why the core of the Bible says: if I don't do the word of God, if I don't apply into my life, what God's saying to me, actually I end up quite deceived; because I think I'm doing real well, because I measure doing real well by the information I know - and I've got three folders worth of Bible notes. I've been to Bible school - I've got a whole folder full of notes - and the CD!

But you know what? In in the end, none of this, until it's applied, changes my life. So the Hebrew way of thinking is very simply this; what you are doing, is what you know. What you're doing, is what you really believe.

So we can say we believe all kinds of things. In James 2, it says: well the demons believe in God [brrrrr!] They really do believe, you know, but it doesn't save them. So knowing about God, and even believing the things about Him, that's one thing; but actually to apply it into your life is where - that's where energy comes. That's where traction comes. That's where real change comes, the day you start to do something you weren't doing before. That's when the change takes place.

There's so much knowledge. You get on the internet today, and on the tv, just there's so many messages; but you know what I'm interested in? I'm not interested in all those messages. I'm interested in what God is saying to us here. Because all those messages may be great, and many of them apply to what God is saying in other parts of the world; but what is God saying to us here in Hastings, and Napier, and Hawkes Bay, and New Zealand? That's what's important. That's what you want to be tuned into. What is God saying to us as a community? What is God speaking to us; and more important, am I hearing it, and am I responding? That's what really counts.

Oh, getting all very quiet; and so we saw in Hebrews 4:2 - the word didn't do them any good; and I've seen people come into church and be totally transformed. Others come in, been here for years, didn't seem to do them any good at all, because of response.

Have a look with me in Numbers 14. You can always tell whether the word's impacting people. There's actually evidence of it. There's evidence. Would you believe there's evidence to show, if someone's in the word, and the word is living in them?

Let's have a look at the example of Israel. Remember we had the verse: the word that was preached didn't do them any good. Now they had Moses - imagine having Moses up here every Sunday preaching; and you know, the water parts - he goes out there and all the traffic stops. He holds his hand up, traffic all stops, everything just is amazing! Puts his hands up and stuff falls down, all manner of things in the meeting - wonderful! However, they saw it all, and still didn't believe.

Miracles can assist your faith, and power-boost it, but they don't necessarily generate faith inside you. The word is: what brings faith into your heart; and it says clearly they heard the word, saw the miracles, and still they never got anywhere. You don't want to be like that: meeting after meeting, Sunday after Sunday, never got anywhere. That's just like spinning your wheels, isn't it really? Going nowhere!

Now here's a few things you can tell, very clear evidence, when unbelief lies in their heart. Now in the Bible, when the word uses the word “unbelief”, it's exactly the same as the word translated “disobedience”; so to believe, means to do. To not do, means to not believe - that's what the Bible says. They hated Him, because of unbelief, because they actually didn't do what God said to do.

Now have at look at this here. It shows up in their life, and the people come back with a negative and evil report. Now look at this, Numbers 14:1.

So all the congregation lifted up their voices, and cried and wept that night. And the children of Israel complained against Moses, and Aaron, and the whole congregation.

Oh, if only we'd died in the land of Egypt! If only we'd died in the wilderness! Why has the Lord brought us into this land to fall by the sword, and that our wives and children should become victims? Wouldn't it be better for us to return to Egypt? So they said: let's get another leader, and go back there where we're familiar with.

I just want to show you that unbelief always shows up in our life. Here's the first way it shows up. It shows up with self-pity, and self-preoccupation, when we face difficulties in life.

Difficulties of life, they're common to everyone. How many people are going through a difficulty right now? You're facing some challenging situation? Okay, there's a lot of people facing challenges: financial, family, marriage, personal, all kinds of issues.

Here's the thing: How you respond - these things are there to help you grow. How you respond in it, is what determines what's going on in your heart.

Notice the first thing they did: they felt sorry for themselves; second thing, they started to complain. They gave voice to the unbelief that was in their heart, and they found someone to complain about.

You hear someone complaining - I hear unbelief. If I complain, you know what I'm really saying is: actually I cannot trust God, in the midst of this, to work out some good for me, and for all of them. That's what I'm saying.

That's why we saw in Philippians 2, that Verse we saw said that: God is working in you to will and do; He says now: do everything without murmuring and complaining.

Now how many heard that today? How many thought: that's for someone I know? See, that's the problem. We sit in here: alright, someone needs to hear that - I better get them that tape.

Well what about you? If you've got your attention drawn to it, you needed to hear it. You understand? We just think: we don't need to; but actually God - our attention gets drawn to it.

Then the next thing that comes in: oh, someone else needs to hear that one. Man, I know they need to hear that, I must get them that tape. And actually, God's drawn your attention to it, because He wants first of all for you to consider: are you the one murmuring and complaining, and negatively talking?

Now faith is in your heart. I've worked for, and with, and under, the most outrageous people. I've always believed that God could do some good in the middle of it all. It's all about keeping your attitudes right. It's only about attitudes.

Third thing you notice is they started to blame; they had to find someone to blame. If you hear someone blaming, they're in unbelief, I'll tell you right now. A person who's blaming someone else for their misery and problems, is a person who's not trusting that God is sufficient for them, to help them arise and win the victory in it.

Then finally, they drew back. They started to build walls and defences, and drew back from the path of journeying forward with God. Well that's a whole story just of its own, but I don't want to focus there. I want to focus on building the word of God in your life.

Now have a look in Verse 9, at the contrasting attitude of Caleb. Whoa, look at this! He said: don't rebel against the Lord. Don't fear the people of the land. They are our bread. Their protection is gone from them, and the Lord is with us. Don't fear them!

So a person who's got faith in their heart, has got confidence that if God has said: I can do this; then He's going to give us something, it will come about. The fact that there's a giant is there is an inconvenience.

It's a temporary obstacle, and He calls it, or redefines the giant. He redefines it as a Big Mac. Whatever giant you're facing is a Big Mac. It's there for you to eat, and grow on.

He said: these giants are bread for us. They're just actually an opportunity for us to grow, because they look much, but their power is gone. God is with us. They look much, but their power is gone. That problem looks great, but the devil's power is broken! God is with you! God is with you!

I will never leave you, not forsake you; as the word says. If I was to meditate: God never leaves me or forsakes me, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is in me - my spirit rises with great strength. That's what the word says. We need the word in our life.

So how am I going to get the word into my heart? Let me give you some simple keys. It's not enough just to read it. You've got to build it, and incorporate it, into your life. That's why, if you're an internet scanner, you'll be full of information, but not much substance. You've got to actually slow down the pace, and focus on applying one thing at a time into your life.

Things in the kingdom take place one step at a time. There's no being swamped with information. One conference a year is about enough for me, because if I were to apply what I've learnt, it'll take me the rest of the year to do it. If you go from this one to this one, then another one, all you've got is this big high; but at end of the year, there's not a lot built. This is what is going on. We're living in an information age, and people are buzzed out, and overwhelmed with information.

If I was to ask you simply this: what two things are you currently working on in your life with God, believing Him for breakthrough? If you can't say anything, then you're not in faith, because you need some giant or challenge to apply the word of God, and stretch your faith over to defeat. That's what ensures you're in faith.

The Bible says: examine yourself, and see if you're in faith. It says: contend for the faith.

There's a challenge of us, in Christian life, and it's not one thing that does it. It's a combination of these things. Firstly, read the word of God. Learn to listen to the word of God. Two ways you can listen; why don't you get CDs and just listen to them, people who don't read too well, it's a great way, get them in, just listen to them. Janice just listens to them for hours, and now she's finding she's having encounters with God off what she's listening to, and she can remember large amounts of things, because she just listens and listens and listens and listens for God to speak. Put a CD on when you're driving. Let the word of God just be playing while you're wandering around, driving around. Let the word of God come.

The other one you can listen to is yourself. Speak the word of God. Pray the word of God. Get the Bible and read out the word of God, give voice to the word of God, and listen to what you're saying. That starts to affect you. You are speaking it out for yourself.

Second thing is: read the word of God, but when you're reading it, read with expectation. Ask the Holy Ghost - the Bible's not an ordinary book. It's written by someone, written by the Holy Ghost! So what better than to have the author living inside me! Holy Ghost, stir yourself up in tongues.

As you get the Bible, open it up, and say: Holy Ghost, I need you to speak to me, draw my attention to something you want to talk to me about today. You start to read, keep yourself alive, stand up and read as you walk around. If you sit down too long looking, you get snoring - Have another cup of coffee and away I'll go again, you know? I just get tired if I sit down too long, just looking at something. Get it and start to pray: Holy Ghost, speak to me. Read it out loud.

Another thing you need to do is to meditate in the word of God. Now when you meditate in the word of God, all of your brain is active. Your whole heart engages with the word. When you're studying, only the left part of your brain is active. A lot of people will read it, and then will study it; but actually don't take time to reflect on it, and muse over it.

In Psalm 39:3, David says: as I mused, or meditated, the fire began to burn. Now to meditate takes a bit of time, and it takes a bit of discipline, because everything in you wants to get busy. It's: hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry; quick, tell me, give me the message now, quick. This kind of lifestyle is not a spiritual lifestyle.

You've actually got to find, and create, moments to slow down your whole inner being, so you can begin to ponder the word of God, and let it get into your heart; and the first area of difficulty you'll have in doing that is: your mind will race, your body will race.

You've got to just begin to bring them down, say: no, I love the word of God. God is speaking to me out of His word, and you begin to meditate. To meditate, just take it, and begin to imagine it; so read a story two or three times, or read a Verse if you're drawn to a Verse, start to ponder it, start to just go over it and over it. Then begin to ponder on the Verse, look at it and imagine it; see what it would be like, if it was true in your life. Allow your heart and mind and soul to welcome it, like a friend, into your life. Allow your imagination to begin to flow. Let the Holy Spirit quicken things.

I found with some of the stories, for example, as you meditate on them, and dwell on them for a while - they get a life of their own. They begin to talk with you; so meditate on them. What is God wanting me to do?

For example, just a simple truth: I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus. For most people, the word 'redeemed' has no meaning whatsoever; for a lot of Christians - it's got no meaning at all.

Or the blood, covered by the blood. Now you see that's a lovely church term, but what does that mean inside? If I don't have a way of engaging with what that means, it won't mean anything except: oh, we're redeemed by the blood; and the person's thinking: yeah, we are, we're redeemed by - let's sing about it! Well singing about it is good, but it's not a substitute for embracing the truth in your heart - I am totally ransomed. Everything that needs to be paid, has been paid; so I can belong to God, and walk close and intimately with Him, and stand in His presence, totally free of any corruption, disease or any decay in my life! I stand there now, totally clean before God! That's what it means.

So imagine that, and ponder on that; let that get into your heart, and wrap around yourself the truth of: standing before God, absolutely innocent and free. Let that truth change you on the inside. It takes time for truth to come settle in, because of a lot of other things we believe in our heart - so the beliefs of the heart are shifted by putting in the truth; and breaking free, or renouncing, or letting go, the things which have been dear to us, which we have believed.

See a lot of people don't pray. I'll tell you why they don't pray. It's not because we don't know how to pray, but because in our heart, one of two things is happening: one, we're overwhelmed with problems; or two, we don't believe if we pray, that anything will happen.

So I don't think I'll go to prayer. Why? Because I do not believe that "the fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man will avail much". Or putting it more personal, I do not believe that when I pray, something will happen.

Because we've had disappointments and setbacks, and we haven't processed them; we haven't meditated and engaged with God to keep our heart in faith; so keeping our heart in faith. You did not receive it as the word of men, but as in truth it is the word of God, which energises those who believe it!

So we begin to build these disciplines into our life, then we need to learn to speak or declare the word of God. There's nothing more powerful than speaking the word of God.

Bless the Lord all my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord all my soul - you start praying that, your life starts to come up. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the Lord.

Start to speak the word of God: Blessed is the man, who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scorners; but who's delight is in the law of the Lord. In His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like the tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth fruit in season, who's leafs shall not wither.

I like to get in the spirit when I'm praying; and see it, and picture it. If you memorised it like that: one, you can pray it; two, you can pray it and then personalise it. The word of God is powerful - and I've got to get it into my heart by repetition, meditation, confession. I've got to get it out of my mouth, speaking.

The Bible says: the world we see was framed, or created, or formed, by the words God spoke; that if I give voice to His words, I shift the spiritual atmosphere around me, and I begin to shape my world.

People just forget it all the time. We just keep forgetting it. Think of all the miracles - they were all done when Jesus spoke a word. Jesus spoke something, and in the speaking forth that miracles are release. That's why, when you come into church, come into a gathering, one thing we need to be, is vocal. I need to give voice to my praise! I may not have a very good voice, I may have a hopeless song to sing, but there are enough people who will drown it all out, and I won't worry anyway. I'll get a new voice in heaven. Don't worry about it. I'd rather you sang or clapped or did something to exalt God.

Then finally, what must I do, to put this word into action? In other words, begin to ponder: if I really believe that word, how would I be operating in my life that is different now? What would I do, that would be different?

So take one area of your life; search God for a word on it; meditate, memorise the scripture, begin to meditate in it, begin to pray in it, begin to see what it would be like in your life. Speak it out over your life, and then walk out day after day, just doing that one thing that would make your life different. You'll find changes start to take place. They will take place, and you will find: oh my! The word of God does energise me - because when problems come, the word will come up that you've memorised. When a difficulty comes up, the word of God comes up, back into your mind, and if you'll give voice to it, you feel the energy come again.

There is nothing like the word of God to energise the spiritual man. The word energises your spirit, and when you are strong in your spirit, you prevail over the stuff in your soul, and your emotions, and your thoughts and your mind; because the life of God is inside you. Amen! Don't you just love the word of God?

Jesus said: heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away! His word! Mary said: be it done to me, according to your word. Peter said: and nevertheless, at your word I will lower the nets; and he saw a miracle. See, get the word into your life.

Here's the thing; listening will not get the word into your life, not just that by itself. You've got to do something. Let's just arise in our hearts, say: I'm going to get into the word of God, I'm going to start to give myself to it.

Listen, just before we finish, there may be someone here who doesn't know Jesus Christ. This would be a great day for you to get saved, a great day for you to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. We'd love you to come up after the service and talk with us, or talk with someone near to you about what it means to follow Christ, to walk with Him, have a life connected to God and with purpose in your life. We'd love you to know how to do that, but church, why don't we arise? Why don't we arise, and let's magnify God together. Bless the Lord oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord oh my soul. He'll forgive all your inequities, and He'll draw you to victory.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Last week we identified spiritual forces that work in you – energize and empower you.

· 1 Thess 2:13 “…when you received the Word of God which you heard of from us, you received it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the Word of God, which effectively works in you that believe”.

· “Effectively Works” =NT1754= Energeo – to energize, to be active, to rouse into activity.

· God’s Word is unique – it has power to transform your life, to energize you with the life and power of God.

· God’s Word can energize you to overcome adversity, setbacks, temptations.

· Jn.6:63 “The words I speak to you are spirit and they are life.

· God’s Word is breathed on by the Holy Spirit and has power to energize spirit, soul and body.

2. Place Value on the Word of God

· 1 Thess. 2:13 “… received it not as the word of men”.

(a) Word of Men

= someone’s opinion, ideas – may be true or not, information.

= opinion only and having no real authority.

= I can take it or leave it – useful information.

(b) Word of God

= Source is Almighty God Himself.

= comes with power to create.

= comes with power to overcome.

= comes with power to transform me.

· Ps 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”.

· Ps 119:89 “Forever Oh Lord your Word is settled in heaven”.

· Jer. 23:29 “Is not my Word like a fire says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces”.

· Heb. 4:12 “For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”.

· Living =NT2198= Zao = alive with the life of God.

· Powerful =NT1756= Energeo = to energize, to rouse into activity.

· Sharp =NT3091= to cut in a single blow instead of hacking repeatedly.

· Piercing =NT1331= to penetrate right through.

· Discerning =NT380= to distinguish the core motivations.

3. Believe the Word of God

(a) 1 Thess 2:13 “received” …”believe”

· How you receive – respond to the Word of God is important.

· Receive =NT3880= to receive near as a friend, become intimate with.

· To take hold of for yourself and make your own = incorporate into your life.

· Believe =NT4100= to place confidence and trust in and act upon.

Note:

(i) Western Thinking: Believe = to agree with = I know that!

James 2:9 Demons believe and tremble! But not saved!

(ii) Hebrew Thinking: Believe = to incorporate into life and act upon.

Obedience = from heart that is convinced.

(b) Example of Israel

· Heb. 4:2 “…the Word which they heard did not profit them; not being mixed with faith in them that heard it”.

· Mixed =NT4781= to combine, assimilate, blend together.

· Numbers 14:2 Unbelief = Disobedience (Failure to put into action) (Heb.3:19)

Evidences Self-pity = “Wept”

Complaining = “murmured”

Blaming = “murmured against Moses”

Drew Back = “stopped pressing forward in obedience

· Num.14:9 Active faith speaks and acts boldly and receives God’s power.

4. Build the Word of God in Your Life

· Not enough just to read and hear – must be joined to the Word by faith.

· So often people read Bible like a book and quickly forget – no impact.

(a) Listen to the Word of God (Rom.10:7)

· CD’s

· Pray the Word aloud and listen to the words you speak.

(b) Read Word with Expectation (1 Thess. 2:13)

· Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you.

· Read without distractions.

· Notice words, phrases, sentences that stand out to you.

· Focus on that and pray and reflect on it – ask the Holy Spirit to speak.

(c) Meditate on the Word (Ps. 39:3)

· Ponder on the Word – picture it in your imagination.

· Embrace it as truth – imagine it at work in your life.

· Determine to respond to what God says.

(d) Speak forth the Word (Heb.10:23)

· Declaring the Word of God shapes the Spirit World and impacts your spirit.

· Wrap heart around the word and speak it forth meaningfully.

· Speak it forth – not just think about it.

(e) Apply the Word of God

· James 2:22-25 – Put the Word into actions!

Speaking in Tongues

Sun 2nd Oct 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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The gift of tongues is one of the most wonderful gifts that God has given you and me, and it is vital for building a spirit dimensional life around you. Without the flow of the spirit's life within you, you're left to live out of your own efforts and willpower, and without the intuitive flow, direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit

You've got something that can change your life as a gift to you. He's called the Holy Ghost. Jesus said I'll not leave you alone. He said I'll give you another comforter. He's been with you, now He'll be in you. You've got some fire inside you and he said they were filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. It's fantastic.

I want you to get fired up with speaking in tongues, and not neglect the gift of the Holy Ghost, so turn with me to Acts 2:4.

When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound like a mighty rushing wind. And it filled the whole house where they were gathered. There appeared to them, divided tongues like fire, sat on each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the Holy Ghost. You're filled with something you know. Many people are filled with depression. Well that's their choice.

You've got something that can change your life, as a gift to you. He's called the Holy Ghost. Jesus said: I'll not leave you alone. He said: I'll give you another comforter. He's been WITH you, now He'll be IN you. You've got some fire inside you; and he said: they were filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. It's fantastic.

When I first went to India, one of the most interesting things I saw in India was, I stood out on this street and I looked around the street. I thought I could get lost here, real easy. I couldn't read a sign. I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. They had traffic on the streets I'd never seen before. The shops looked different. Everything looked different. The place we were in looked different. I could say: there was nothing familiar whatsoever. It was a total culture shock; the smells, the sights, noises, everything I had to hear, horns - I thought they were just to beep when you needed them, but in India they're there all the time. They're there to announce you've arrived, and everyone's arrived, and so all at once everyone's tooting. It's a horrendous noise.

And so standing there on the street, there's this huge culture shock; and then I realised I could get lost here incredibly easy. I started to walk down the street, just to have a look around, and I realised I can't read a single street sign. It was like there's nothing made any sense. I don't know how anyone could read it. It just looked like someone sort of had a squiggle, and I couldn't read a thing. I turned a corner and started to walk, and I thought if I don't get some markers, I am lost. I'll be lost here, and not only that, I won't even find where I started, because where I started wasn't recognisable either. It was just a door into a building, you went up the stairs, and we're living upstairs. I went back, actually walked right past it. I was lost, completely lost. I had to pray in tongues in the end, Holy Ghost, help me to find it. Holy Ghost, help me, I'm lost in India on my own. This is a horrible experience.

But I realised that I was being immersed in a different culture. Now when you get baptised in the Holy Ghost, God's intention is to immerse into a different realm. It's to put you in a different culture. Most people go like this: thank you, that was nice and that's all I need. Now you've come to Christ, then you got water baptised. Water baptism wasn't just, we put a little bit of water on you. No, no, you got BAPTISED! I went down a river, was in flood, down in the river, under there, the old life - gone! Come up, it's a new life!

Now we're supposed to get filled with the Holy Ghost. Filled with the Holy Ghost, baptised in the spirit, is to step into a new world, a new realm of the kingdom, a new realm of living and experiencing; and let me tell you this: it's all unfamiliar. Why is it unfamiliar? Because your natural mind has been educated totally in how to live in the things you can see, and feel, and touch; and so we've spent all our life being trained how to live in, and engage, a natural world. When you got baptised in the spirit, you were immersed, or entered into, a new dimension; and you have to learn the language, the culture, the ways of that realm, and learn how to stay there.

We are quite unique because we can enter, live in, and experience the supernatural; and also live in the natural. We are a gateway from one to the other; and so to live there, interestingly enough that one of the biggest problems I had in India, was language. I could not speak a word. You've no idea how hard it is, if you're in a place, and you can't speak a word anyone understands. I could wave & smile - that was about it, and I couldn't do anything else much. Nothing else I could say worked.

What I needed was an interpreter. Now when you've got an interpreter - you're fine. Now he can tell me: what the street signs mean; what direction to go; what they're saying; he can tell them what I'm saying - we're right, once you've got an interpreter.

So God gave us someone to help us. He's probably one of the most neglected gifts you've ever been given. It's called the Holy Spirit.

Jesus didn't say: I'd give you a Bible; but it's great He gave us a Bible. We have the word of God. He said: I'm going to give you another comforter, called the Holy Ghost. We need to love the Holy Ghost, learn how to live in the Holy Ghost, learn how to pray in the Holy Ghost, learn how to hear the Holy Ghost, learn how to flow with the Holy Ghost.

He is the one that Jesus said: this is the one you're to wait for, because you'll be totally ineffective in changing the world without Him. You can't do it! We need the power of God, need the Holy Ghost!

So God gave a gift. Interesting, the first thing that He gave you is the gift of tongues, and that gift is a gift. So you're entering into the realm of the spirit.

Now maybe you don't know much, but you know what you can do is: you can get off base one, and have the gift of tongues, and learn how to get into, and stay in, the realm of the spirit.

So I want to share with you some simple elementary things. These are actually real basic. I want to share with you some real key functions of speaking in tongues, and I'll just give them as headlines rather than tell you too much about each one, but let me just give them to you.

The gift of tongues is one of the most wonderful gifts that God has given you and me, and it is vital for building a spirit dimensional life around you, absolutely vital. Here's one of the reasons why it's vital: because without the flow of the spirit's life within you, you're left to live out of your own efforts and willpower. You're left to try and live the Christian life in your own effort and willpower, and without the intuitive flow, direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

He said: I'll guide you into all things. He said: I'll teach you about things to come. What things to come? End time events? Maybe, but maybe it's the things to come in your life that God planned for you. Maybe it's the things that you're going to face today. Maybe it's the things that lie out ahead.

He said: I'll teach you about things to come, I'll reveal Jesus to you. You can't even get to know Jesus without the Holy Ghost. We need the Holy Spirit, need to love Him, so here's the first thing.

Notice it says in 1 Corinthians 14 verse 14: If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit is praying.

First thing about speaking in tongues - it activates your spirit, activates your spirit man, gets your spirit man going. Now I can move my hand around, I can move my foot around - there you go, moving hands and feet, but what about my spirit? How can I get my spirit to go? Very simply - pray in tongues. Pray in tongues.

1 Corinthians 14:14 - when you're praying in tongues, your spirit is praying. Your spirit has a voice. Your spirit has eyes, your spirit has ears, your spirit has senses, your spirit actually can feel and engage and experience the whole realm of the spirit.

Your spirit man has spiritual senses, to enable you to live in the realm of the spirit, and to live directed by the Holy Ghost; so the first purpose of praying in tongues is to get your spirit activated, because if we don't activate our spirit, then we're forced to live out of our body and soul, out of the sense realm.

The interesting thing is, your spirit is incredibly important to you. Your spirit gives you life, your spirit keeps your body healthy. Without your spirit, your body dies. We need our spirit. Our spirit is vital; and praying in tongues will activate your spirit, get your spirit going. Every time you're praying in tongues my spirit is being stirred up. My spirit is coming alive.

The second thing praying in tongues does, it opens a direct line of communication with the Holy Spirit. Some people say: I can't hear God. That's not true. It's not true, you can hear God. It's like saying: I don't have ears. You have got ears, you've got a nose, and you've got eyes.

Can't hear God? Yes, you can, but recognising His voice - that's a different thing. You are wired to hear God, and God is inside you. He's inside you, so you can hear Him. He lives in you every day, 24/7, 365. Everywhere you go - the Holy Spirit is with you. God is with you, God is inside you. Everyone can hear God.

How can you build a relationship with someone, if you can't hear them? Very difficult. You say: well I don't hear God. That's just not true. God speaks. It's just you haven't trained yourself to listen. You get a room full of babies cry, mother will hear, say: that's my baby; because she recognises the sound. There's a lot of noise, a lot of things. Most people have got too much noise going in their life - that's why they can't hear God. It's quite simple to slow down, and get to hear God, and His voice is very easy to recognise. It's not very difficult.

In Acts 2:4, it says: they began to speak in other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance.

So imagine now the Holy Spirit is joined to your spirit, two separate beings but joined, linked. That joining is like a marriage connection, like an intimate relationship, so you are joined spirit to spirit with the spirit of God. That's how close you are to God.

God is not far off. He's inside you, connected to your spirit. Now how close to God can you get! Well, I don't feel Him. Of course not - you're tuned in to something else. If you were just to stop you'd feel God. He's there with you, He's inside you.

The issue is, the development of your inner life to be sensitive to God, to be sensitive to the spirit of God, when we're so used to listening to the noise of our soul, and the demands of our body. If you could just silence those, and increase the other, wind the volume up on the inside, then you'd start to find you're hearing God a lot more easily, a lot more frequently, a lot more quickly.

So let me just talk about then how - so the Holy Spirit, it says: they spoke as the spirit gave them the utterance. So how on earth does it get from the Holy Ghost, how does this language of tongues work?

How is it I end up going [Speaks in tongues] and the language is flowing - oh, flowing without any effort! How does that happen? How does that work?

First of all, the words are words of a real language. They're a language of communication, it communicates ideas, it communicates thoughts, and since it comes from the Holy Spirit - it comes directly from God Himself.

So the language that you are uttering, actually originates with God. It is His words, His language. It's something He actually understands. It's something that has meaning. It's not just a babble - ba-ba-ba-ba-ba - you know, you've got to learn to speak in tongues. But it's not just a babble. It's actually a language - so how does the language get from God, to ending up coming out of my mouth? How does that happen?

Very simply - the Holy Spirit imparts that language into my spirit, so because He's joined to me, and joined to you; He imparts it from Him, into your spirit, so that language is in your spirit; and then it rises up, comes into your mind, and you give voice to what is flowing from within your spirit.

Now get this: every time you're praying in tongues, you have opened the communication flow with the Holy Spirit. Why not keep it open all the time? [Prays in tongues] Keep the flow open all the time. Keep the flow going, get used to feeling the flow of God speaking to your spirit, and then your spirit flowing through you, and expressing the mind of God out through your lips. Get used to the feel of it.

Now if you were to do this, if you were to just sort of pray very strongly in tongues, and pray strongly for 3-5 minutes, until you get a real strong flow going; and then you suddenly stop, you'll find you'll hear the language in your head.

It'll just be rattling around, and you'll hear like the language is carrying on, except the only thing that's happening now, it's in your head, and not being spoken out. Now that flow that you are encountering, is the very same flow when God is speaking to you. At this stage, you are just hearing tongues, but you can actually hear in your own language, it would be coming from the same place, the same way, through the same channel. The Holy Ghost, into your spirit, up to your mind - identical, the same.

It would come to you the same way. It would come spontaneously. It would come as a flow, not as structured or logical thoughts. It is a flow, so when you're praying in tongues, don't just babble in tongues for five minutes, and then quit and give up.

Learn to pray, and consistently pray in tongues; and feel what happens inside your body, inside your spirit, as you're doing it. Learn to recognise the flow of God, recognise the flow of the spirit, because that's what's happening. There's a language coming through you. Now that language that flows in your spirit, it's something that God has created, see? God has created it; it's a language, okay.

Here's the third thing then. The third thing is: when you speak in tongues, you will energise and make your spirit man come alive; and consequently your body will come alive, and your soul will come alive as well. People don't realise that, and I'll tell you why in a moment.

In Ephesians 3:20, it talks about the power that works in you, the power that works mightily in you. Now most people get into what I call revival thinking, so they're waiting for some power to come to them - one day, if they pray hard enough. What about the power that's already in you? What will you do with that? Will you neglect that in favour of waiting for something bigger one day? You'll wait a long time.

See, we have to take what we have. What we were given is a gift, and that gift, you can be a steward of that gift. You can use that gift, and that gift is given to you for some purposes.

One of them is to energise your spirit man, so the Bible tells us in Ephesians 3 verse 16: Paul prayed that you would be strengthened, with Dunamis (greek for energise) in the inner man.

Well what is that? Is that some experience you'll have one day? No, it isn't. It's something that comes - the Dunamis is the Holy Ghost. The inner man is where He lives, and when you pray in tongues, dunamis begins to flow. So what happens is, when you pray in tongues - and I mean pray strongly and give yourself to that - then what happens is, your whole inner man energises, becomes full of the life of God. So that word energise is like an energy battery - He fills you up with energetic life, the life flow of the spirit.

So when you're speaking in tongues, and you start to pray, you'll find your spirit energised, comes full of life, full of energy. Now some people, they say: I've never had that experience.

Let me tell you why you haven't. It's not that the Holy Ghost has failed, and it's not the gift doesn't work. It's something else. Don't bring God down to your experience. Always bring your experience up, and believe that what God says is true - so you get energised by the Holy Ghost.

I'll tell you why it is - because most people that I observe, and I've been to churches all over our nation, they live under a spirit of heaviness and apathy and unbelief. It's in the nation, and what it does is, it causes you to shut down; so your body feels a little drained of energy, and heavy, and your soul is weighed a little.

That's all it takes, and so when you begin to pray, it's actually a little bit of effort to pray, doesn't come easily, so you've got to pray, and you've got to work at the praying for a little bit.

So what I've observed with people, and I found it happens with me too, when I was starting out, I'd pray, and after about five minutes I'm a bit tired out of praying in tongues - five minutes, that was about it. There was no energy, no life, nothing of what I've been telling you at all.

Then I decided well, I'll pray a bit more, I'll just increase it day by day, so I increased it, increased it; and then I increased the flow and began to do a couple of other things, began to just shake my body, just make my body come awake - come on, do what the Holy Ghost wants you to do! Energise, come on, wake up! Wake up! Wake up! We're praying here!

I found just the simple thing of shaking my body, and then praying strongly [Prays in tongues] until I could feel it rising inside me. Then I found an interesting thing happened. Sometimes it was five minutes, sometimes it was 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes - took varying amounts of time, and there would come a point when suddenly I'd feel the flow unlock, and I am alive and energised and the flow is now unhindered.

So when I was starting, it would take me a little while to do that. Why is that? Simply, the body was used to controlling me. My soul was used to controlling me, and so it was a matter of making a decision: whether I'll do the work with the Holy Ghost, and energise, and just work until I broke through. It's not a matter of trying to make your body overcome your soul, it's actually just making the decision to activate what God's given you, until you get the benefits.

So I found that sometimes it can be a few minutes. Nowadays I can pray in tongues, it's a couple of minutes, I'm into it. Most days - sometimes I don't even need to pray that long. [Prays in tongues] I'm already awake and alive - but other times you can pray quite a while, and you feel a heaviness.

Sometimes there'll be a direct spirit resistance, and when you pray you feel those words are barely getting out of your mouth. In fact it's a huge amount of energy just to get anything out. That is actually spiritual resistance to you. That's a demon stepping up, right in your face.

You know what it's like when you've got your eyes closed, you go up near a wall and you can feel the wall near you? Okay, you know that feeling? Okay, well a demon can come up, and do exactly the same to you; and come up and get right in your face, and when you try and pray in tongues, inside you're going: [prays loudly in tongues]; and what's coming out is: [prays quietly in tongues]; very little coming out, and you're exhausted after about two minutes. You think oh, this is just too hard.

What's happened is, there's a spirit is pushing against you. You just decide that's what it is, and I'm going to get stronger! Push against me will ya? Okay - ooh, we'll see who's stronger here! You just push and push - you just keep praying in tongues; and what happens is, it just backs away, and the flow comes. Once the flow goes, there's no awareness of any resistance there at all.

I found for example, that week after week after week, in congregations over New Zealand, people come in, and there's a spirit resistance around the corporate body. Why is that? Because individuals in the corporate body have not sustained a prayer life to keep themselves free, so when they gather, the same resistance is there in the corporate body. That's why we have to play some very fast songs and energise you, get you clapping.

Now if you really think about it, all we're doing is just the very things I just said you just need to do in your private life; make your body move! So the purpose of getting everyone to clap is - and you may not be a clapper. It's a shame, because the Bible says: clap your hands, ALL you people! So you could write that one out of your Bible if you like - but clap your hands. There's a reason for it.

Clap your hands, ALL you people; shout to God with a voice of triumph! So the Bible tells us how to break through the atmosphere around us: clap strongly; and shout! About 30 seconds is all it takes, and you've broken through! That's all it takes.

Why does it take so long? Why don't we come every week and we're fired up? Why don't you spend five minutes before you get here, on the way in your car; instead of having an argument with your wife, why don't you just pray in tongues? It'll do you much better, do her much better as well, and pray STRONGLY in tongues!

You come in there - oh, come on! Let's get into it! Don't delay! Let's start straight away! See, rather than carrying heaviness - don't have to carry heaviness because we've been given our Holy Ghost to fill us with life!

And you know what happens is, the overflow; when you start praying strongly in tongues, your body comes alive, it gets full of energy, it gets pumped up with life! Your soul clears, your head gets clear.

Sometimes I get praying in tongues, try to go to sleep, I can't sleep. I'm lying there - just like that you just can't sleep, so I KNOW it energises you. Just get going, see? Energise yourself.

Okay, here we go, fourth benefit of it - it brings forth the purposes of God. 1 Corinthians 14:2 - He that speaks in tongues, doesn't speak to men, but speaks to God, for no one understands him. However, in the spirit he speaks mysteries.

A mystery is something concealed, something you don't know, something that's hidden, something someone's sort of covered over, so you can't tell what it is. You think: well what's the purpose of that? Well when the Bible's talking about mysteries, it's inevitably talking about the mysteries of the kingdom of God, things that God knows.

You see, it's not a mystery to God, what you're praying. It's not a mystery to Him what you're praying, it's just a mystery to you, and the reason it's a mystery to you, because if God didn't override you on this one, you'd be praying some stuff that's totally irrelevant. Think about it.

We don't know what to pray, nor how to pray as we ought; so we'll be thinking we're praying for my marriage... oh God, change that wife of mine! God, move upon her! That's how you'd be praying, see?

But you get praying in the spirit - now the Holy Ghost gives you the language, and you might find if you were to listen in, and tune in, you might be hearing: oh God, I need to grow in love and grace. I need to be a more loving person. Oh God, help me to be kind and loving, and tender and thoughtful to my wife.

See, now you see you wouldn't pray that yourself so the Holy Ghost can just override you. That's why it's good to be praying in tongues, because you know you're getting it right. You know you're getting it right, see?

You pray for your children; God, turn that rebellious son of mine - you know, so you're praying God, all this stuff, trying to manipulate God. But you see, when you're praying in tongues, and you just hold the person in your heart with love, and you begin to pray in tongues, now you can pour forth God's plan, God's will, God's purpose, God's thinking.

You're starting to call Him forth, so the mysteries are not mystery to God. They're only mystery to you, and they don't stay a mystery. They're not meant to stay a mystery.

In 1 Corinthians 4:1: we're called to be stewards of the mysteries; so when you're speaking in tongues, you're speaking out God's purpose, God's plan. You're speaking out revelation. You're speaking out things that God wants to birth, either between you and Him, in prayer - isn't it a great thing?

I don't know how to pray, so God helps me pray, and gives me the right words to pray, so He can answer the prayer. It's got to be good - how good does it get, see? How good does that get aye?

And you just don't know how to pray; how can you tell Jesus you love Him? I love You, I love You, I love You. But you see you run out of words after a while. Hard to do that for an hour - I love You. I'm telling You again, I love You. You know, it's really hard to do that; but you can pray in tongues continually [prays in tongues], and allow yourself to get stirred, and get the passion to flow. Isn't that fantastic aye?

So you notice it says in Verse 2: you speak to God. Now if you have a look in Verse 28, it says: you speak to yourself, and to God; so when you speak in tongues, you're speaking both to yourself and to God.

You're speaking into your spirit the things God wants for your life. You're speaking into yourself, and you are teaching your spirit. You say: how can you do that? Listen, when I'm prophesying, I'm actually being taught by the Lord as I speak, because there's a flow, and I'm listening to the revelation, speaking out what's coming; and the other part of my head's saying: boy, I didn't know that. Oh, that's amazing - oh, that's incredible. I didn't know all those things Lord - so you're teaching yourself.

So when you're speaking in tongues, you are speaking directly God's purpose for your life, the things He's designed for your life. You're speaking, and you're praying them to God, you're calling them forth from God into the earth, and you're speaking them into your own spirit.

So you say: well what's the use of that, if don't get to know it? Well the point is, you can get to know it. It's just you don't know it as you're praying it, because you'd be analysing it and shutting it down.

So with the flow of the spirit - that brings us to the next thing - is that speaking in tongues initiates revelation in your life. It initiates the flow of revelation; and a lot of people don't say: I don't hear from God. Well, God's wanting you to hear - it's not He doesn't want to speak - it's just learning how to recognise it.

So when you're praying in tongues, notice what's happening: you're not using your logic, you're not using your smarts to work it all out. You're not using intelligence, so that's quite good. It puts us all on a level playing field, so it doesn't matter whether you've been to university, or at least flunked out of high school - makes no difference.

That part of your brain isn't the bit that's going to be any use anyway, because the rest comes from the Holy Ghost; so it's nice that God levelled it all out, isn't it? I think it's quite good. He thought some of those fellas will be so smart, couple of these fancy falutin' prayers. Tell you what we'll do, we'll just give them all the gift of tongues, then it won't matter. They'll all be praying the same, and it won't help to be very smart, because all being smart just confuses you, because you can't understand things of God. They're received by revelation, so you don't use logic for the things of God.

The language of the spirit is a language of flow. It's a language of spontaneity, it's a language of pictures, of visions. It's a language of inspired thoughts; so as you're praying in tongues, you can begin to tune and focus your mind to listen, to receive and thoughts come.

Sometimes they come while you're praying, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they'll just drop into you a day later, a week later or two weeks later or three weeks later; and because they don't come just when we pray, our flesh gets impatient, and says: what's the use of this?

But the Bible's very clear, when you're praying in tongues, you're calling forth God's will, God's purpose, God's plan. You're speaking it into your life. You're speaking it out into the spirit world, you're speaking it to God, and interceding for it to happen.

There will come an uncovering of it, if you open yourself up to the spontaneous; the flow of the spontaneous. That's how God speaks, He just drops the thought in, but if your mind continues to govern your life, it will just shut it down, and deny it, and block it off all the time.

So for some people, there's a bit of a challenge in hearing God, because they're so used to controlling and using their mind to dominate everything; rather than just learning how to dial down and rest, and become rested inside, and just let the spontaneous thoughts of the Holy Spirit come. That's the way God speaks.

1 Corinthians 14:4 says: he that speaks in an unknown tongue edifies, builds up, his spirit man. Well I want to know how many spiritual midgets we've got here? The thing is, we've probably got heaps - because only you can build your spirit man.

See here's something that can be incredibly deceptive. You can be in a wonderful church, with wonderful worship, wonderful teaching, wonderful ministries, and still never grow - and yet you think you are, because you're in the environment where the spirit of God is moving.

Actually the only things that really make you grow, are what you put consciously into your life, and you have to apply yourself to do that. You have to do something yourself - and it's the doing something yourself, that actually is what changes you.

So we can teach you a course on spirit life, and great, I've done the course! Give me the certificate! Look - I got a certificate! But a certificate is no use if you remain a spiritual midget. You're a spiritual midget with a certificate.

God wants some spiritual giants! To be a giant, you have to edify yourself, build yourself up, build yourself up; so when you get up in the morning... how many had breakfast this morning? Guess there'll be a few people had breakfast, you want to keep your body going don't you.

How many got praying in tongues? [Prays in tongues] Get your spirit going? First thing, when you get out of bed - leap out of bed, [Prays in tongues] start your spirit going. You can get the breakfast afterwards - get your spirit building, build your spirit man.

You know when you're speaking in tongues, then the words of God are going into your spirit. Your spirit man starts to become stronger, it grows; you grow in strength, you grow in capacity, you grow in sensitivity, the more you pray in tongues.

If you only pray once in a while, how are you ever going to tune in to God? Get in the flow, so the flow's happening; then you start to develop sensitivity, start to feel God working in you, become more sensitive; and then you become a spirit giant! You may be a little person in your physical stature, but the presence of God fills the place around you.

Think about this: the Holy Ghost is dwelling in your spirit; but God wants for the Holy Spirit's influence to invade the physical world around you; and the only way He can invade the physical world around you, is if you shift in your soul and body, and the spirit of God first of all fills your spirit, then begins to start to govern your soul, then flows out into the territory around you.

So wherever you go, people feel the presence of God is with you. See again, there's a bit of a problem if you're waiting for revival. This actually gives you something to do right now, to shift the level of spiritual vitality you have, the life and manifestation of God in you, and then around you.

Revival is like the icing on the cake. It is absolutely fantastic. I just love almond icing, love those - but you've got to bake the cake, and so we need to make the cake. You need to build your life with God - and finally, the last thing is the Holy Ghost - we can speak in tongues, get filled with the Holy Ghost, you start to get filled with the spirit.

[Audio truncated - refer to Summary Notes]

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

The outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost.

Acts 2:1-4 “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them the utterance”

Jesus made a promise to His disciples – promise of the Holy Spirit, promise of power.

Baptism of the Holy Spirit – entrance experience to realm of the spirit.

Example: visit to India – everything different – culture, language, streets, traffic. Needed an interpreter – someone familiar with the language and culture of India.

Holy Spirit is familiar with the culture and language and ways of the Father, of the Kingdom.

First experience – speak (whatever has your tongue has your life – Jam.3:4).

2. Functions and Purpose of Speaking in Tongues

(i) Speaking in Tongues: Activates your spirit man

1 Cor 14:14 “If I pray in a tongue my spirit prays.

You are a spirit being living in a body – you have spiritual senses and activities.

Speaking in a tongue = your spirit is active, is functioning and operating.

Your spirit has a voice, has a mind.

When you activate your spirit you are exercising your spirit man.

(ii) Speaking in Tongues: Opens a direct flow of communication with the Holy Spirit

Acts 2:4 “..began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them the utterance.”

Holy Spirit creates the language.

Language = way of expressing thoughts, ideas.

Holy Spirit knows the will of God – he creates the language of prayer to speak.

Holy Spirit transfers – imparts this language directly into your spirit.

This language overflows from your spirit into your mind for you to speak.

E.g. Pray strongly in tongues then stop – the language keeps flowing into your mind.

This is the same channel the Holy Spirit speaks to you in your natural language.

Practice getting used to this flow of thoughts from the Holy Spirit.

(iii) Speaking in Tongues: Energises your spirit man

Eph. 3:20 “..the power that works in us …”

Power = dunamus = supernatural power of God. The Holy Spirit.

Works = energeo = to energise, to fill with energy and life.

Words we speak can carry energy and life.

Praying in tongues strongly – your spirit man becomes energised.

This flow of the life of the Holy Spirit also energises your body and soul.

Body becomes quickened with energy and life.

Soul – your mind clears and you become sinsitised to voice of the Holy Spirit. (Prov. 20:27)

(iv) Speaking in Tongues: Brings forth the purposes of God

1 Cor.14:2 “..in the spirit he speaks mysteries.”

Mystery = something concealed, covered, unknown, not understood.

The mysteries are not for God’s benefit but for ours.

You are the one who doesn’t understand but needs revelation.

Mystery = revelation of God’s Kingdom purpose for your life.

e.g. Mt. 13:11 Mysteries of the Kingdom of God.

e.g. 1Cor. 4:1 Stewards of the mysteries of God.

V2 “speak to God’ = this is a prayer to be answered.

V28 “speak to self” = teach yourself – impart revelation into spirit as you speak.

As you speak in tongues you are also teaching and imparting to your own spirit.

e.g. 1 Cor.14:19 Teach others also = also teach self.

Paul prayed in tongues continually – also received great revelation.

(v) Speaking in Tongues: Initiates flows of revelation

1 Cor. 2:11-12 Received – the Spirit that is from God that might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

Revelation flows into our mind the same way the language of tongues does.

Language of the heart/spirit is not reasoning and logic.

- Flows – spontaneous, flow of thoughts and ideas

- Pictures, visions

- Thoughts

- Inner knowings

What is Revelation?

- Ideas and inspiration - Insights to Word of God

- Insights to own life - Gifts of the Spirit

- Warnings. cautions

(vi) Speaking in Tongues: builds and edifies your spirit

1 Cor. 14:4 “..edifies himself”.

Edify = to build up a house piece by piece.

You are responsible to build up your own inner life your spirit man.

Unless you strengthen and develop your spirit your spiritual capacity is limited.

Jude 20 “..but you beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith praying the Holy Ghost”.

Praying in Tongues:

- strengthens (Eph 3:16) - Sensitises the spirit

- develops capacity - surfaces fleshy limitations

(vii) Speaking in Tongues: Fills you with the Holy Ghost

Eph. 5:18-19 “Be not drunk with wine – be filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking to yourselves.”

Drunk = Methuo = to be under the influence of alcohol, spirit.

Filled with the Holy Ghost = overflow, free, generous, joyful.

What is holding you back from speaking in Tongues?

Speak the Word of God

Sun 22 Sep 2013  « Back to Top

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Things from the unseen realm of the spirit, make their way into the physical world, by speaking words. Your words have power to shape your world, they have already shaped your world, and shape it today. With a heart man believes, with the mouth man confesses to salvation. Death and life are imparted to people through words, because there's a spirit content to it. The word of God has power to change your life. The mixture of meditating and speaking is what causes the word to become alive, and energised in your life.

I want you to open your Bible with me. I want to share with you something I felt the Lord put on my heart, something that's been of huge value to me, and something that can be of great value to you. The message is called Speak the Word of God. Everyone's speaking something, you've just got to make a decision as to what you're going to let get in your mouth, because what you have in your mouth will affect your life. I want to start just in Joshua 1:8. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Notice the outcomes that God is promising: that you will make your way to prosper. Prosper means you go forward. God wants you to forward. That's His design, that every one of us goes forward, not backward; to have good success, that lives moves well for us. Now of course that's not true all of the time, but overall we can guarantee, that if we'll meet God's requirements, there'll be a river of blessing flow through our life.

Now notice what the requirements are: if you will make sure that the word of God remains in your mouth, that you meditate in it day and night; and then do it - do all that is in the law. Now you have to realise in the Old Testament, to have the blessing of God required that you just obeyed the law. For us in the New Testament, what's required is first of all faith, that we believe God and trust Him; and then we walk in the life of the Spirit, led by the Holy Spirit. It's just a different basis. On the Old Testament, you were cursed if you didn't keen the law; you were blessed if you did. In the New Testament, we're blessed because of what Christ did. Now we walk out that life, and so applying that to our life, what he's saying is: we need to let God's word get in our heart, to meditate. Meditation is what gets the word of God in your heart, opens your heart to receive, and to believe God's word. Speaking it gives utterance, and confirms what's in your heart, and begins to release the word of God into your environment. When we begin to do it, then our life comes into a flow of blessing.

I want to pick up from there, and I want to focus particularly around speaking the word of God, and the power of speaking the word of God. The first thing I want you to look at, I'm going to first of all look at one of the key functions of your spirit, a key function of your spirit. In James 2:26, every one of us, we can understand how God has designed us: spirit, soul, body. You're a spirit being. You have a spirit. Your spirit can be weak or strong. Your spirit can be lively or broken. You make decisions about what you do to build your life, and build your spirit. Every one of us makes that decision. We all have that opportunity to build our spirit, become strong in the spirit. Here's what it says: the body without the spirit is dead. Now I won't go into lots of scriptures, I want to just establish one thing. Your spirit produces life for your body. Your spirit communicates life energy, vitality into your body, and into your soul, so we are made to live from our spirit. So when God wants to change our life, He doesn't change your body, He doesn't change your soul. What He does is, He changes your spirit. He empowers your spirit; and so Micah says in Chapter 3: I am full of power, by the Spirit of the Lord!

So when God wants to change you, the place He starts is your spirit; so He puts His spirit inside your spirit, and there's a reason for that, because it's from your spirit, that life flows, to energise your body and your soul. If your spirit's damaged or weak, then there'll be an influence, or an effect, on your body and your soul. I won't go into all of that, I don't want to stay in that zone too long, but I'll just add a few things to it. So your spirit - the Bible says in John 7:38 - out of your innermost being [spirit], will flow rivers of living water; and he was speaking about the life of the Holy Spirit, so every one of us is called to bring forth the life of the spirit. It's from within you, so we need to have a look at our spirit, and see what's coming out of our spirit, what's coming out of our life. Whatever's in your spirit, in your heart, will flow out. Your spirit can be weak, or it can be strong. Your spirit can be very timid, or it can be very bold. Your spirit can be defiled, or it can be purified. Your spirit can be broken, or it can be made whole. Now we won't go into all the outcomes of that, because I don't want to stay there, but the thing to realise is this: a broken spirit dries the bones. In other words, if your spirit's damaged, it'll affect your physical health.

When the bones are dry, the bones are where the marrow and the blood, the centre of your life begins to be generated from; so if your spirit is damaged in some way, usually by sorrows and traumas - by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken - usually by sorrows and griefs, when the spirit becomes affected, then it will affect your health. It'll affect your soul, and your body, so everything is interconnected. What happens to your body will affect your soul and your spirit. If you have the 'flu, you feel miserable, you feel down. It gets really bad, so whatever's in your body affects soul and spirit; whatever's in your spirit will affect your body and your soul. We've got to realise that they're all deeply interconnected. Now God's word has a powerful part to play in shifting what's happening in our life. Our spirit is designed to communicate life, and communicate life to ourselves, communicate life to one another; and so through intimacy with God, there can be life flow into our spirit, that other people feel.

So when you're with people, no doubt they will feel what is inside you. When you come into a meeting like this, whatever's inside you is felt; so here's something that intrigues me: Why do so many Christians live out of circumstances and feelings? Because they've chosen to live in the soul and the body, rather than the spirit. You know, it doesn't really matter what is going on around you. Jesus said: in the world you will have tribulation; it's what's going on inside you that really counts. So He said: ...but you can have courage and confidence, because I've overcome. In other words, the capacity to rise above life circumstances lies within your spirit. If we don't build a strong spirit, and value the life of the spirit, and learn how to arise in our spirit, strengthen our spirit and flow from our spirit, then what will happen is, you'll live the other way. You're either living from the spirit out to the world; or from the world into your spirit. You're either living with the power of God flowing from your life outwards, changing your soul and body and the world around you, or you're living the other way. Only you can make that decision.

I've learnt that in winter, people get blue. They get down. You know what that tells us? It just tells us: you're living out of your soul, living out of your flesh, living out of your circumstances. We don't need to be blue because it's winter, and then happy because it's summer. That's not how we're designed to live. We're not designed to live that way. If things are going good, we're happy; if things are going bad, we're down. That means you're living out of your soul, out of your circumstance. We're not made to live that way. We're made to live from our spirit, and govern our circumstances, and govern the world around us; so we need to learn how to arise in our spirit, strengthen our spirit, live from inside out, not outside in. Amen.

One of the key ways that your spirit communicates around you, is through the words you speak. One of the key overflows from within you, from your spirit, are words. One of the keys ways you minister, or communicate with the world, and with everything around you, is through language, through words. So in John 6:63 Jesus said: the words I speak, they are? [Spirit.] They are? [Spirit.] Spirit and? [Life.] Life, okay, so words are - if they come from in your heart - are spirit. If it's just top of the head talk, it's not spirit, so only certain kinds of words are spirit words. You can have empty words, negative words. Negative words have spirit in them, unbelief and bitterness, all kinds of things. You can have words which are just quite empty, there's nothing in them, because they're not authentic or real; but when you speak from your heart, words that you mean, then something will happen. There's always something is felt.

If someone talks to you, and they're holding themselves in, then they're concealing who they really are, they're not being authentic, so you don't feel in those words any spiritual connection whatsoever. But when someone opens their heart, when we have authentic fellowship as believers, there's a flow from your spirit, and that flow from your spirit brings refreshing to others. That's part of coming into small groups, the power of small groups is when we open, share, share what God's doing, share testimony, share life with one another, there is a refreshing, and there is a flow. When you meet with someone and they're guarding themselves, holding themselves in, or just trying to create an impression, you can tell it ain't genuine. You can feel the lack of spiritual flow. It's absolutely easy to pick up.

I have found in working in Asia, I found even though there's a language barrier, even though I can't speak the language, I speak the heart, and speak spirit, so people are sharp. I have learnt that the Asians are incredibly sharp, very spiritual people, and so they always feel what is in your heart. No matter how slick you might look or try to be, they feel what's in your heart, and they can just read you like that; so in other words, they're spiritual people, picking up what's in the spirit. You can always feel it. You feel it. You may not be able to get words to it, but it comes out of your heart.

So let's just move from there, I want to just talk then about the whole issue of the Word of God. I want you to just look at first of all Genesis 1:2 - so the words we speak. Let's just have a look, and I want to just share some simple things which you can put into practice. Genesis 1: and the spirit of God moved, or hovered, over the face of the waters; and God said: let there be light, and there was light. So notice how God, from the spiritual realm, brought a physical world into being. There's two things are crucial; one was the movement of the spirit. The spirit of God was present, the spirit of God was moving, and within that, He spoke His word. As a result of Him speaking His word, with the anointing or the spirit of God on it, there was a bringing from the spiritual world, something into being in the physical world. Now that's in the very second verse of the Bible, so here's the principle: things from the unseen world of the spirit, make their way into the physical world, by words. I'll say that again: Things from the unseen realm of the spirit, make their way into the physical world, by speaking words. It's by speaking words. You think about that. How do you access the presence of God, and have God touch you? You speak words. He says: come to Me with words. Words are crucial for the building of our life, and so we need to think like a builder when we use our language, and not be careless with our language.

When God spoke His word, with the anointing of the spirit, some things began to change. That's how He creates. That's how He brings things from the realm of the spirit. Now here's the key thing for you. Your words have power to shape your world. Your words already have shaped your world. Your words are shaping your world today; your words will shape your world for tomorrow. Your words have power to shape your world. A couple of examples: when a person gets engaged, how does a person get engaged - which is a deep, long-lasting contract? They say words. How does a person get married, and have a contract, and now they're legally recognised? How does it happen? They say words, and why do we write down, and fill in a book, and sign a piece of paper? It's actually witnessing the words. The words created something, a bond that wasn't there before. The words created a covenant.

How does a person get saved? With a heart man believes, with the mouth man confesses to salvation. So always there's a speaking of words to set things in place. How do commitments get made? By speaking words. If you don't trust the words a person speaks, then you write them down, so they're reminded of them if they try to change them on the way - so that's an example. So the Bible very clearly talks about the power of your words. In Proverbs 18:21 it says: death and life are imparted to people through words; so you have the power to bless someone; you have the power to cut them down and deeply wound them. They're in your tongue. So think about last week - how many people did you intentionally build up, and how many did you accidentally cut down? Words have power to bring death and life, because there's a spirit content to it.

Here's a second thing about the words that we have. In James 3:3-5 it says: if you want to steer a horse, you put a bridle on it. If you want to steer a ship, you work the rudder. If you want to steer a person's life, the words they speak determine where they go. The words they speak determine the direction of their life. So your words can bring life and death; your words can direct the course of your life. Here's another thing your words can do, from Hebrews 11:3. It says: by faith we understand that the world, or the ages, were formed or shaped by the word of God; so that things which we see, were made or formed out of things not seen. So what he's saying then is: think that the word of God, which is not seen, when it is spoken, brings things into being. The word of God has power to change your life. The word of God has power to shift you, but there's a couple of things on it you've got to understand, for this to begin to work in your life.

Proverbs 16:24 - words have the power to affect your physical health. Think about all of the things that your life is affected by words: words impart life, words build relationships, words destroy them. Think about an argument or a conflict; what is the problem? Words, empowered by an attitude of the heart, by something in the spirit. So we've got power to build people, power to strengthen people, power to do good, power to build up, power to shape things. You can shape your world, which way you like. Numbers 14:27, it tells us there, that God spoke to the people of God; so see He's not speaking to the unsaved. He's speaking to people of God, and He said: as you spoke in My ears, I will do according to that. I have been listening to everything you said, and He said: I've been listening a long time; and He said: so according to as you're speaking, that's what you'll experience in your life. They said: we're not able. They said: we can't do it; it's too hard; it's too difficult. They said: oh, I can't see that we're going to get anywhere. They said: it's hopeless; there's giants. They said all those things. God said: you know what? What you said is right for you - for you.

But there were two other people, they were saying different things. They were saying: God is able. The giants are bread for us. If God is with us, then we can do this thing. Notice there was faith in the heart, expressed through the language. Whatever's in the heart, the Bible says, will come out through the words people speak; so if there's faith in your life, then you'll be speaking positively, strongly. You'll be speaking with encouragement. You'll be speaking and bringing life. Everywhere you go, people will like to be with you, because there's faith arisen in your heart. It's wonderful to be around faith people. I remember the first time I met Clark Taylor. I just loved being in his presence, because the message was so strong - of faith. I could literally feel faith being built inside me, being with him, just hearing him talk. I didn't need to talk to him; just listening, there was a flow of faith from his heart.

Notice in these people here, in Joshua and Caleb, there was faith in their heart. In one part in Joshua, Chapter 14, after 40 years wandering in the wilderness, Caleb said this: My strength to come in and go out has not diminished! I am 80 years old, or whatever it was; he said: I'm as strong as I've ever been. Now that's a strong spirit, and it's affected his body, and his health. It's affected his life; and so he's able to say: oh, don't give me a plain, give me a mountain! Don't give me the place where it's easy, give me the place - I want to take the giants that stopped everyone 40 years ago! Forty years ago they saw the giants, and he said: I've been wandering in the desert for 40 years because of those wretched giants, let me at them! You see, that is a faith kind of thing. So many people live just out of the circumstance. The circumstances change, their world's falling apart. Your world has not fallen apart! Changed yes, but now you need to be planning, dreaming, and speaking about what else is happening. You must decide how you will face life, and what you will speak about your life, what will you speak about the circumstances? What will you speak about God, and what God is doing?

See the people in the wilderness, He said: as you've spoken to me, I'll do to you. It'll be just like that. You were right, they are too big for you, or putting it another way, every opportunity I gave you to grow, you didn't take it, and now you're declaring what's reality. You're too small to handle these things, which by now you should be able to take. That's interesting isn't it? I wonder how many people here, there's things which you should be able to tackle, take on, and get victory over - and you still can't, because each time it comes around, you didn't respond with faith. Now I've been around long enough to know that this is true for every one of us. We all have our challenges. No one is exempt. You might see people, and they sit and smile in church, but you don't know what they're facing behind the scenes. You don't know what issues with marriage, with children, with finance, with work, with all kinds of things - but there they are, praising God! In other words, their spirit was able to arise, in spite of the circumstances; and I've noticed with such people, after a while everything shifts and changes, and the problem that was there a while ago has gone.

Think about some of the ones you've had Brydon. I remember praying with you, over your land, that bit of land for the house. Oh there were set-backs and set-backs and set-backs. Even when you had it signed up, it looked like it - it just fell over. Disappointment, but I remember Brydon just standing believing God ,and even when the thing that he should have got, and legally could have pushed for it, fell over he said: no, God's got something better for us. I like that, and I've seen the better, and it is much better than what he originally had in mind, because he never let go of faith, that God was at work. I don't always see God at work, can't always understand what He's doing sometimes. What I do know, is that He's faithful; and if you hold His word, and hold faith in your heart, you come out just pretty good at the other side of it. You may have matured a bit, lost a few hairs, and got a bit greyer, but you come out much better in your spirit, much better in your spirit!

So the Bible tells clearly of the power of words, and God's word, if you'll speak that, has got even more power. Hebrews 4:12 - now the word of God is living and powerful! God's word has power to change your life; so the Bible says: it's ALIVE! It's not just an empty book. Now the problem is, we read it and don't get anything out of it, and we think it's a dead book. I don't understand, this is hard, too hard for me, and so we quit and give up. But here's the revelation of it: God's word is quick, it's alive, and it's powerful, and it can sort you out. You've just got to let it. There's some things you have to do, to let it. You've got to value it. It's a sword. It's a sword. You speak the word of God sometime to someone, and you see if it isn't a sword - they'll bite you back. You start to share the word of God with people, you'll be quite surprised - it's a sword alright. No matter how nice you say it, it's still a sword. It gets a bite from people, it gets a real big bite.

In 1 Thessalonians 2:13, what is required for God's word to work in your life? The problem is never the word of God; the problem is faith in the heart. It says: now He said you received the word of God, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which works effectively in what? You who believe - so there must be a believing the word of God, in the heart, for it to actually have impact in the life, and that's where some of the problem is - we believe lots of other things to be true. You see, we know God's word says He loves us. God loves the world, but your heart may believe something completely different; actually I know that in my head, by my heart's saying: I'm unloved. We might see the word of God say: God is faithful; but then your heart is saying: I don't trust anyone, I've been let down too many times. So what is in your heart has to shift, has to change; so notice it says: it works effectively. That word 'works' is the word 'energise'; in other words, God's word can energise your mind, your soul, your body, your spirit. It can do it, but you've got to believe it.

So how am I going to get that to work in my life? God's word has got power to energise me, fill me with life, fill me up! How am I going to do it? I've got to work on heart belief, and I've got to work on speaking the word of God, resting and believing His word, and also making a conscious decision to speak it. Now one of the problems that's come up in the past, with people confessing the word of God, is: they put their trust in confessing, rather than their trust in the word; so they end up striving, and don't get results, and get disappointed. So the key thing is to recognise: God's word itself, carries the power to change you; all that's needed is for me to believe it, and that takes place as I meditate, and embrace it, and declare it, and speak it. So the mixture of meditating and speaking is what causes the word to become alive, and energised in your life.

Train yourself to speak life-giving words. Train yourself. Now why say train yourself? Because the tendency is for us to speak negatively, and live out of feelings. We need to live by faith. It's faith that pleases God. We need to live by the words God speaks, not by experience. You can have great worship experience, you have ones that aren't so good, it doesn't really matter. God never changed; I can still trust Him, still walk with Him. Notice what it says in Ephesians 4:29. It says: now let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but rather that which is good for the use of edifying - that it might what? Now you know this scripture, I want you to think about it - that it might? Minister grace. So what He's saying is essentially this: you have the power, as a believer, to release the life of God into another person - grace, so they become empowered by your connection with Him; or you have the power to defile them, by speaking negatively. He's saying: let no corrupt communication; don't let your words be negative, because you'll defile people, and set them back; but rather choose to speak words that bring grace, and build people up. He says: that way, you won't grieve the Holy Spirit.

One of the reasons so many Christians are not strongly empowered, is simply this: they keep grieving the Holy Spirit, making Him sad. He's there when you went, wherever you went, He was there with you. Whatever you said, He heard you say it; and the word of God says: don't grieve the Holy Spirit. In other words, choose good words. You may not feel like it, but just zip the lip, zip the lip. It means you've got to speak some good things. There's a time to speak honestly, but you have to zip the lip, so we can choose. So here's the thing, here's two things I'd like you to consider doing: number one, start speaking to yourself. Now that sounds crazy doesn't it? Speak to yourself! Everyone's talking to themselves. You're listening to yourself talk all the time, but choose intentionally to speak to yourself. Here's some things you can do: pray in tongues. Pray in tongues, you're speaking the words of God, your spirit becomes energised. That has to be good for you. I love speaking in tongues. I can't do enough of it. Speaking in tongues, you can turn it on and off whenever you want. Speaking in tongues will lift and energise your spirit, it's got to be good for you, got to help you, strengthen you.

Here's the second thing you can do speaking to yourself: start to speak God's word over your life. Speak His word over your life. Don't make it general, you know: I am blessed. Well that's great, that's a start point, but don't stop there. Get it down to specifics: Today I am blessed in my decisions. Today Lord, You were leading me in right paths, You are leading me in the paths that I'm taking. You are helping me make good decisions, and even bad ones work out together for good. Get the word of God and speak it, apply it to some aspect of your life. I remember one guy who was working in law, and every day when he would go to work, he would say: thank you Lord, You are speaking to me, and giving me the ability to speak and to see to the root of the problem, and bring wise answers. He became known for seeing to the root of the problem, bringing wise answers. So speak God's word over you.

Another thing, prophesy over yourself. Speak in the spirit over yourself. Ezekiel was told to prophesy to dry bones - you probably know some. Maybe you are some? So if you're dry, speak to yourself. David used to speak to himself. This is what he'd say: bless the Lord, O my soul. Now who's he talking to? He's talking to his soul. Why is he talking to his soul? Because he's down. So where's he talking from? His spirit, so your spirit has a voice. When you speak in tongues, your spirit is giving voice; but you can arise in your spirit, and speak to your soul, and speak to your body. Bless the Lord, O my soul! You can speak to your heart, direct your heart, speak to your body. I speak to my body and soul every day, and my spirit man. Spirit, arise and come to the lead! Be filled today, pray in tongues, and trust the Holy Ghost to come and fill me; speak into myself, speak into my body. Every part of my body, speak health and energy and life. Why not? Why would you not do that, if it clearly is something God said is a way you can build life? Death and life in the power of the words; why not speak to your own body?

Speak words into your body of life: Live! Live! Live! Speak into your body, speak life into it. Arise in your spirit, so you can speak to yourself in a way that shifts; and here's the other way to speak: speak over your circumstances. God said to speak into the storms. Most people have a whinge - storm comes, what's my response? A whinge of unbelief. You don't know, that the very storm you're facing, was an answer to a prayer you prayed: God, I want to grow stronger in You. [Exhales sharply] Wah, where's God? Why does no one love me? You know, all that pitiful stuff comes up out of your heart. It's pitiful, especially being a believer for a long time. That's what we are, believers, believers you know. [Laughter] Believers. Come on, speak into your circumstance; arise, begin to speak, arise in your spirit, then begin to speak God's word. Speak to mountains in your way, speak God's word. Grace! Grace! Grace! This shall turn to my good! This shall turn to my good. All things will work together for good. Speak to that problem. I command you to depart in Jesus' name! Learn to speak, speak, speak.

Use your voice. Practice speaking God's word; and then speak to others. Speak to others encouragement, edifying, imparting grace. How good is a word in season, it refreshes the soul. It really does refresh people, when you get a word. Bring a word of encouragement to people. If someone comes on your mind or heart, speak something that lifts them up. Come on, you can do it. These are simple things to do. Ask God to give you prophetic words. Ask God to give you something to encourage them. You say: oh, well I haven't got much. [Laughter] Stop that bleeding whinging, come on. Arise inside. God gave you His spirit, no doubt about that; and there's another promise of God: He said the gifts of the spirit are given to all men, every believer! So I can say today: thank You Lord, I wait upon You, Your giftings will flow through me sharply and accurately. Thank You today for prophetic words. Thank You today for words to help, words to bless, words to build. Thank You bringing people into my life, that are all ready for it.

In other words, here's the thing you do is, you shape your world with things you speak, intentionally. All the gifts I flow in, I intentionally speak them into being over my life, most days. Most days, so you say: what would that look like? I can say: well Lord, I thank You today for the gift of prophecy flowing in my life. Today I declare I hear Your voice clearly, and I instantly respond. Thank You Lord, You're showing me destinies, You're showing me in people's life, the things that You are doing. I begin to lay out what things I'm believing God to flow into in the prophetic gift, in the areas of power ministry, same thing, every day. Thank You Lord that blind eyes will open, the deaf will hear; as I lay hands upon people, I thank You lame people walk, sick people get out of wheelchairs. I speak it. Do you see it all the time? No, but I'm not living out of what I'm experiencing now, I'm living for another day, and I'm seeing more of that other day coming near to me. Do you understand? You see you're framing your world, not by what you see, but what is not seen.

If you frame your world, or interpret your world, out of what you see, you'll always misinterpret. If you interpret your world, and respond to your world out of what God says, you'll have a whole different life. If someone blows up, there's a big problem comes, then its: God what are You teaching me in this? How do You want me to respond? It becomes another opportunity to learn. It's no wonder David could say: I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I won't fear evil, You're with me. You're with me, You're with me. I meditate in that truth, You are with me. I see it. When I'm with the sheep every day, You're with me, every day. Then he says: You prepare a table before me. In other words, whatever happens, whatever difficulties come, it's a table of opportunity.

So why don't we just close our eyes right now. I'd like you to just think about a couple of questions. I want you to think just how you respond. God's trying to talk into our lives today, to shift us, to shift us, so here's the first question. Have you observed negative speaking coming out of your mouth? Where, when, and why? What could you do about that? It doesn't mean we don't talk about our struggles and problems with someone, that's an environment for sharing and caring, building connection and support. I'm just talking about mouthing-off. In what ways could you speak into your own life to build yourself? What could you do, to begin to intentionally build your own life; speaking into your body, your soul, your spirit, speaking into your circumstances, speaking God's word over your life? It has to be specific, don't be general. Get it more specific, and try to picture it, because your soul can't handle things that are not concrete. If you just say: I'm blessed; that's not going to cut it with your soul. What would blessing look like? Oh, I see people smiling, I see favour, I see God's hand drawing and attracting people, and I'm influencing them. Now that's specific, so try to be very specific, not general.

And what about others, how are you responding to others? Are you intentionally looking to impart grace and empower people; or are you finding often there's a negative flow in your interactions? Why is that, and what could you do about it? If there's a negative flow, then what does that say about what's in your heart, that you may need to examine, and to address? Nothing much happens unless you engage your own heart. Listen to yourself through the next week; what is coming out of my mouth? Am I intentionally building my life and that of others; or subtly, have I lost ground, and there's a lot of stuff coming out which is not good? What am I going to do about that?

Jesus, I will hold my confession of faith with You, believing and trusting, that what You began, You will complete; and trusting that in spite of weaknesses, lacks and failures, Your grace is sufficient for me. Today I receive that grace to change; and I release grace to others. Thank You Lord. What I'd love you to do, if you feel comfortable with it, is just to pray for someone next to you. Maybe God will put a verse or something in you, just to speak some encouragement to them, just something that would just strengthen them today. To you it may not be much, but to them it could be a life changer. You don't know if the person sitting next to you has decided: I've had it with God, I'm giving up; and your word could change that. Why don't you just pray for someone next to you, speak a word of encouragement into their life; I see this in you. I see good things in you. God bless. Have a fantastic rest of the day.

Summary Notes

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Speak The Word of God

22nd September 2013

1. Introduction

• Josh 1:8 This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do all that is written in it. For then shall you make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

• Notice the important promises to Joshua - prosperous, success.

• Keys to this happening are: speaking, meditating and doing the Word of God.

• Meditating enables the truth of Gods Word to penetrate our heart/spirit - faith.

Speaking and doing shapes our world.

2. A Key Function of the Human Spirit is to Communicate Life.

• Jam 2:26 The body without the spirit is dead.

• Your spirit is important to every part of your life.

• A primary role of your spirit – communicate life. (Micah 3:8)

(a) Life to your soul and body.

(b) Life to people around you.

• One important way life is communicated from your spirit is through words spoken.

• Jn 6:63 The Words I speak to you are spirit and they are life.

• Whatever flows from your spirit can bring life and death to self and to others.

• Gen 1:2,3 The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters and then God said “Let there be light”.

Creative power was released when God spoke and The Spirit of God moved.

• Spirit empowered words bring forth physical realities.

3. Words You Speak Have Power to Change Your World

a) Example:

– saved. – engaged. – married. – financial commitments.

– All take place when words are spoken.

b) The Bible clearly reveals the power of your words.

• Prov 18:21 Death and Life imparted.

• Jam 3:3-5 Horse, ship – course set for life.

• Heb 11:3 Shape your world.

• Prov 16:24 Affect your physical and mental health.

• Num 14:27-28 Alter your life and destiny.

4. God’s Word Can Release God’s Power On Our Behalf.

a) Gods word is powerful.

Heb 4:12 ‘The Word of God is living and powerful.’

b) Faith in the heart is required for power to be released.

1 Thes 2:13 ‘Word of God which works effectively in you who believe’

• Worth = NT1754 = energes = to energize, be active, efficient, work

• The key to the Word of God working in us is our heart belief in it.

• Speaking the Word of God aloud energizes our soul and body and others.

• The words must flow from our heart coupled with faith. (Mt 12:34)

5. Train Yourself to Speak Life Giving Words.

• Eph 4:29 ‘Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth but what is good for necessary edification that it may minister grace to the hearers and do not grieve the Holy Spirit.’

• Notice we have power of choice over the words we speak.

• Notice also our ability to minister grace (spirit life) to the hearers.

• You hear what you speak – so do others.

(a) Speak to Yourself – Be Specific not general!

• Pray in Tongues. (Jude 20)

• Speak promises of God. (Heb 4:12, Heb 10:38)

• Prophecy over self. (Ezek 37:1-4)

• Speak to soul, body. (Ps 103:1-2)

• Speak to circumstances. (Mk 11:22-23)

(b) Speak to Others

• Affirm people & their value. (Philem 6)

• Encourage – word in season. (Prov 15:23)

• Strengthen people. (Lk 22:32)

Application Questions

i) Are there times or issues about which you speak negatively, complain?

What will you do about this?

ii) In what ways could you begin to speak life giving words to yourself on a daily basis?

iii) In what wrong could you speak life giving words to others? Who?

The Truth about Tattoos

Sun 14 Nov 2010  « Back to Top

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The book of Leviticus includes a prohibition against Tattoos (& cutting, mutilation), which is often not well-understood or observed. There's a natural/historical context, such as its association with Slavery and Baal worship; but also a spiritual context, involving blood covenants and supernatural laws. That side is related to the Deliverance ministry (commonly known as Exorcism) - one of the 3 parts of the Great Commission, which all believers are entrusted with.

How many know someone who's had a tattoo, or got one? Look at that - hands up everywhere. There's almost no-one that doesn't at least know someone with a tattoo.

It's a growing phenomena now, people getting tattoos, tremendous increase in that has taken place since the '70s, just a huge increase. Actually the increase in getting tattoos is paralleled by the latest increase - trying to get rid of them! People try - there's a huge business developing in America, people trying to get rid of tattoos.

So we look around, you see celebrities have them, sports stars have them, athletes have them, and it's just like it's making a great comeback.

You see it everywhere, and so you think well, is there anything to it, you know? Is there anything about it? Well, God looks on the inside, man looks on the outside, let's not worry or sweat about it? But I believe we need to understand what lies behind these things, and I'm going to show you why this is so important. I want to just share with you something that will help you, just give you a little bit of insight.

There are not many Bible verses about tattoos, but there are some references around in the Bible, so we'll just start with looking at the word of God, want to look in Leviticus 19:28.

You need to understand the context of this. When we look in the Bible, in these sections of the Old Testament, God had taken a people out of Egypt. His people Israel were in bondage in Egypt, and not just in slavery to Egyptians, but also to occult powers.

If you remember the story of how Moses confronted the Pharaoh, it would have been real easy for God to just get him out on the first confrontation. Actually there were 10 confrontations, and each of the confrontations was with a different God, that was one of the Gods of Egypt.

Every time that Moses told the Pharaoh: let my people go; and the Pharaoh refused, a plague would come into the nation - and it was an attack on the foreign Gods.

So after the 10 plagues, by the time it got to the end, the people in the nation were aware that the power of God was greater than the power of the Gods that the Egyptians served.

Notice this: the final miracle, that got the people of God released, was the shedding of blood. In Exodus 12, everyone had to slay a lamb, they had to apply the blood of the lamb to their house, to their building, and only then would they be protected from a destroying angel.

So we find that Israel was delivered out of a land full of idolatry, witchcraft and spiritism. Occult powers were immensely strong in Egypt. If you read the story of Moses' confrontation with the wizards of Egypt, you find that some of the first miracles he did, they were able to duplicate. He threw a stick down on the ground that turned into a snake - they threw their sticks down, and they also turned into snakes. That is some occultic power! So the first three miracles that Moses did, the wizards of Egypt, operating in sorcery and occult powers, were able to duplicate them.

Perhaps what isn't known so much is that the Egyptians were worshippers of Baal, the Sun God; and part of the Baal worship involved both men and women being tattooed, as a sign of ownership and allegiance to that God.

Now when this verse comes up here in Leviticus, God is about to bring His people into the Promised Land, Canaan; and He said: I'm not bringing you in there because you're better than them; I'm bringing you in there because I love you, you're my people - and it says: because of what they have done.

So when you look into the Bible, about what they were doing in this land, there was strong and huge occultic involvement. The nations worshipped Baal. They worshipped Ashtoreth; so they worshipped the Gods of the Sun, they worshipped the Gods of the Storm and the Winds and the Weather, they worshipped the Gods of Fertility, and they had tremendous perverse acts went with it - and they got themselves tattooed.

It was part of the allegiance to their Gods that they had the tattoos. A tattoo's just a mark in ink, but actually it's what it opens your life to, is what's important.

So when God gives this command, He's talking in the context of making sure you don't get defiled by demonic powers. Notice what He says here:

Verse 4 - “Do not turn to idols, nor make yourself moulded Gods, for I am the Lord your God”.

Verse 28 – “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh. Don't mark, cut or destroy or blemish your flesh for the dead; nor any tattoo marks on you, for I am the Lord”.

You go down a little further, and then He begins to talk more in Exodus 20:1, He talks about then the practices in the land; so this scripture on tattooing is set in the context of occult involvement that went on in Egypt, and went on in Canaan.

God was quite strong, and very forceful, in His directions about being involved in the occult. He said: “do not be defiled by them”. Do not do any of these abominations. In other words, do not open your life to occult practices in any way - you will give room for demonic powers to enter your life.

So the reason that God set this principle in place was because He knew the connection between: tattooing, and the occult realm. He wanted to keep His people free from occult involvement, so that they could walk in the blessings and inherit their land.

So the only other places that there are references to this kind of thing - of the cutting of the flesh - are found in 1 Kings 18.

Remember the story when Elijah had a confrontation with the prophets of Baal; and when he had a confrontation with them, he called on them to demonstrate the power, the supernatural power of their Gods.

What they did was, they began to cut their flesh! They made themselves bleed; and he just mocked them and belittled them; and then demonstrated the true power of a covenant keeping God.

In the New Testament, there's a story of a man called the Gadarene, in Mark 5. When we look at that man, he was heavily demonised. He had a legion of demons in him - that's 6,000 demons.

Here's the interesting thing it said: “when he came near Jesus, the demons began to manifest” - and the guy used to cut himself! So you notice the cutting, the marking of the flesh, in the Bible, is continually associated with the occult realm, and with bondage, or slavery, or servitude to that.

So in a number of places in the Bible, it talks about the issue of blood, and bloodshed. When God began a walk with Abraham, one of the things He required Abraham to do was to cut a covenant with Him.

A covenant is the most strong, or the most binding, agreement that could be made between two people; or between a person and God. God is a covenant-keeping God; so covenants in the Bible are important.

God instructed him how to make a covenant, and it involved these things: there was a sacrifice, there was a loss of an animal, an animal shed its life; so he killed the animal, and cut it in two, and the blood was sprinkled there.

Then the two people making covenant would walk between the two parts of the animal, and various promises were made, or commitments were made; but a blood covenant, or a covenant - one of the things that characterise covenants in the Bible: always there was the shedding of blood.

So when you see any practice that involves the shedding of blood, you are looking at covenant formation. Anything that deliberately involves the shedding of blood, involves the forming of a covenant. A covenant is a binding agreement between two people, which gives legal rights and entitlements.

Now let me give you one other example, that's an interesting one, found in the area of marriage. Now the first time when a couple come together, and they make a marriage covenant - they come up the aisle.

It's not something that people thought up - wedding is a covenantal commitment to one another. It's not just living together. It's a covenantal commitment; so when two people become married, what they do is they meet together, and they make covenant with one another.

They speak to one another declaring their relationship, declaring their commitment. They do it publicly, so people hear it, and see it, and then you sign the book. They sign the register, and they are married - except for one thing: if they do not have sexual intercourse, it's considered legally that they're not married - and the marriage can be annulled immediately.

The first time that a woman has sexual intercourse with a man, God has designed the woman, and created a woman, so that in the first act of intercourse, there is the breaking of the hymen, and the shedding of blood - shedding of blood. Shedding of blood in the first act of intercourse is evidence that covenant has been formed.

So every time in the Bible that you see references to the shedding of blood, it is about covenant - two people being bonded together. In fact it was so important in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 22:15, that if there was ever doubt that a woman had been a virgin before she was married, if a husband became cranky and got complaining about his wife, and said she wasn't a virgin - that she'd had other men - the parents would bring the bedclothes, from the first night they had sexual intercourse, with the blood marks on them, and they would call them the ‘Tokens of Virginity’. They would present this as proof that she was a virgin on the night she was married.

So consistently through the Bible, the shedding of blood is connected to covenant formation; and a tattoo - so what happens in a tattoo? On a tattoo, you use a needle or some kind of cutting instrument. It can be a chisel, or it can be a needle that's moving very, very fast, and what it does is - it penetrates the flesh, blood is shed.

You'll see when a tattoo's being done; they're continually wiping away the blood that comes. The skin is being pierced. What is happening is now there is pain, there's sacrifice, and there is bloodshed. You can't escape it - that when blood is shed, there is some kind of covenant form.

Among the North American Indians, if you wanted to enter into covenant with a person, you cut the hand, and you touch the blood, one against another, and you became blood brothers. Now this is a worldwide phenomenon. This is not just something that's really cool, and 'in' to do. This whole issue of tattoos goes back to as far as they can find data and information; and so I did a little bit of research on it, to find out some information about it. So if you want to find out the root of something, go and have a look at where it came from, and what it's been used like, and follow and track it's record.

The issue is not whether it's right or wrong. That's eating from the wrong tree: tree of life, and knowledge of good and evil. We're called to eat of the tree of life. We're called to live a life that brings honour and glory to God.

Now just follow through, and track through the history of tattoos. A little while ago - in 1991, some hikers in Europe found an alpine ice man. He was well preserved. He'd been there about 5,000 years; so that's about 3000BC when he lived.

The interesting thing was: he was tattooed. When they investigated his body, they found that it was quite a lot of bone damage, and quite a lot of decay in his body. He would have been in a lot of pain. It's quite likely that the tattoos were part of invoking Gods to bring healing on his life.

In 1891, there was 4,000 year old mummy from Egypt found - heavily tattooed. In fact as we looked through the various cultures, you'll find all over the place, right through every culture in the world, tattoos appear. There's almost no culture that tattoos don't appear, and always it's associated with the occult, and engagement with spirit powers, or with slavery - slavery, or occult powers, or both; so I'll just read for you a few examples...

South American head hunters used tattoos; so they would go hunting. They would get a head, and once they've captured the person, killed them, taken off their head, they would generally eat the body, and tattoo themselves as a sign of their victory, and what they'd done.

It's also done up in Borneo. I was up there among the Borneo people, and they would tattoo themselves after they had got one of the heads - chopped someone's head off, and shrunk it, and hung it up.

I was able to go into some of the villages, and you could see the shrunken heads of various people (including Japanese soldiers) - and they would put a tattoo on themselves. In fact if you were a young man, you could not become fully a man unless you took a head (took someone's head off), and then got tattooed. The tattoo was the indication you had passed.

Among Hawaiians, they have tattoo Gods; so they consult the tattoo Gods about when to get tattooed, and what kind of tattoo; and they look to the Gods to guide them - even in the pictures of the tattoos that they take.

The Chinese use the tattoos to ward off evil spirits. So did the Japanese. They appeased different Gods.

The Romans used tattoos to brand their slaves; so when Romans would take anyone prisoner, or they'd take someone as a slave, they would tattoo on them "Tax Paid"; and that tattoo was an indication they belonged to the Roman government.

Many of the Christians, when the Romans captured them, they tattooed them on the head: “Tax Paid” - they belonged to the Roman government.

Native Americans tattooed themselves heavily. Wherever you went in America, with the Native Indians, they tattooed themselves. With many of them, the tattoos were required, in their belief system, to ward off evil spirits; and to gain them access into the spirit world. They believed that if they didn't have a tattoo, they could never get recognised by the spirit Gods; and they could never get access to the spirit world.

In Alaska, the Eskimos tattooed themselves to appease the Gods, so they'd be able to survive. So the tattooing, for them, was about a covenant with a spirit being, so they would survive.

In the Babylonian, and Canaanite temples, the prostitutes that worshipped there all tattooed themselves with fertility tattoos. The male prostitutes also tattooed themselves, and it was all part of the temple worship. It was part of their allegiance and loyalty to their Gods.

In the primitive areas of India, when people get tattoos, often the person who does the tattoo is a shaman, or a witch doctor, or a sorcerer.

In Africa they don't necessarily, because of the dark skin, do tattoos; but what they do is they do extreme forms of body piercing with the lips, and ears, and whatever.

It is about allegiance to their Gods. It's about calling on their Gods to protect them, so they don't have trouble with evil spirits. It's all over the world, so think about that - that's where it all came from.

Now we look at it, and we think: I wonder why this is such a big deal. We look in the western world - seamen would get tattoos. People were criminals, they'd get tattooed. The Nazis tattooed all the Jews - so tattoos are part of a slave culture; and part of an occult culture.

So what's the big deal anyway, if you get a nice little picture - the picture of the dove; or a cross; or ‘Jesus Loves Me’ - what is the deal about all of this stuff?

I sort of ask the question: I wonder why this is such a big issue today; and this is what I believe is the reason it's such a big issue - and this may surprise you.

How many believe that we're living in a time of unprecedented supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Okay, we all agree on that; and if you were to look into the world right now, and look at the age of the populations, you would find that more than 50 percent of the population of the world - much more than 50%, I heard it's a lot higher than that - is under 30; and it's in this age group that tattooing is very, very prominent.

Now here's why I believe it's such an issue. I believe we're living in a day of outpouring of the Holy Spirit, when God is raising a generation for whom the supernatural and miracles will be normal.

I have longed all my life for such a day. I've longed to be a young person today - how glorious. How wonderful to be in a day, and an hour, when there are miracles happening, where the power of the Holy Ghost is coming, where ordinary people moving in the gifts of the spirit; young people and older people being called up, and having visions of heaven. We're living in a day of unprecedented openness of the heavens, unprecedented miracles.

When I was involved in the church in the early days, it was rare to find anyone had any supernatural ministry at all, rare. It was rare! It was something that used to happen, but didn't happen anymore; and now 30 years later, we have a generation - and you're that generation that God is raising up.

He has in mind that you would learn how to reach into the realm of the spirit, how to discover the ways of the spirit, how to move into the heavens, and begin to experience the glory of God, engage God.

One of my children at the age of nine had an encounter, took her up to heaven. This is a great hour to be alive! This is an hour for the supernatural.

Now isn't it interesting, that in a time, and a season in history, when God is pouring out His spirit, making supernatural experiences available for a generation; that the devil is trying to make inroad after inroad into the young generation, to try and find ways to hold them, restrain them, hold them back, compromise them, destroy their lives.

Let me share with you something I found when I was in Singapore. I was in a Bible school. We had 700-800 students there, and the Lord just began to speak to me about video games opening a door through sorcery, through role playing games; and opening the imagination, through playing those games for extended times.

The Lord told me that there's a door open to the occult realm - people get involved with sorcery. I had a word of knowledge on someone, who was struggling with addiction to a particular game - and it was tormenting them, and they couldn't get this thing out of their life.

This young man came up on an altar call. I asked him what the game was, and he told me. I asked him what role he had, and he said: I play the part of a wizard, and what I do in the game is: I cast spells on people; and I walk through the game, and the goal of it is to destroy people using magic power, to gain their powers, and to begin to grow in power, and go from level to level and level.

If you go up enough levels, you begin to gain swords and all kinds of things, and you can actually sell them on the Internet. I said: would you be willing to renounce the game, and renounce the role you played? He said: yes; and I led him through a simple prayer to renounce his agreement, his covenant, his trading with a demonic spirit operating as a sorcerer in the game. He took on the identity of that spirit.

Now as he began to renounce the game, this is what he was saying: in the name of the Lord Jesus - he began to declare: “I belong to Jesus Christ, I confess Jesus Christ is my Lord and saviour. I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every demonic power.”

He said: “in Jesus' name I renounce this game - World of Warcraft. I renounce my role in this place” - and as he began to speak his renouncing of the game, and the particular role he played, his face contorted.

It was caught on camera - everyone saw it. Eight hundred students were stunned as they watched this guy, who's in Bible school, a committed Christian, wanting to serve the Lord - given up a year of his life to train, so he can become knowledgeable in the word of God, and walking with God.

There he is, manifesting a demonic power, the spirit of sorcery, manifested on his body. He fell on the ground, writhed around, shouted and screamed, and finally the demon came out of him - he was free. I had an altar call and we had between 200 and 300 students come up, and there was a massive move of deliverance from those young people playing that game.

When you say: what's that got to do with tattoos; very simply this. These people were fully committed Christians, a young generation, rising up to serve God; yet without even knowing it, they'd opened a gateway to an occult power. A spirit of sorcery was operating in their life, eroding, undermining, continually resisting them, and causing them problems consistently in their Christian walk. That day they were set free.

There is a whole realm of ways that demons seek to come into people. They do not announce they're coming in. They find a deceptive way, and what more appropriate way to get into people than games, see?

Another way they get in is through pre-marital sex. When you're involved in a sexual relationship with someone, you become involved in a soul tie, in a bond. It's an ungodly tie. You become connected to that person; and a gateway is opened to demons to come through to enter your life. You are connected literally to every person that that person has had involvement sexually with. When you are involved with drugs, you open your life to the realm of sorcerer.

Now think about this: When you get involved with tattooing, you're entering into blood covenant with the person who did the tattoo, and you open your life to whatever spirits he's engaged with - you allow them to come in. If you get an image of something associated with death, then a spirit of death can enter your life.

You say: how will I know that? You wouldn't know - that's the whole point! That's why I'm sharing the word of God with you tonight. You wouldn't know!

But this is what would happen: if a spirit of death came into you, you would find emotional numbness. You would find disconnectedness. You would find it difficult to form relationships. You'd find it difficult to flow from your heart in an intimate relationship. Why? Because the spirit of death had wrapped itself around you and now had a grip on your heart.

Sometimes the Indians used to tattoo themselves with pictures of animals. Then they'd call on the spirit of that animal to enter them, and to give them the abilities that the animal had.

Tattooing is directly connected with the spirit realm. It opens a gateway, through blood-letting, for you to allow demons to come in. That's what the problem is with it.

If you've opened yourself up, if you've got sexual pictures on there, you’ve opened yourself up to a tormenting, unclean, spirit. So when people get tattooed, very often it's in rebellion or pain, and they do it to try and find an expression somehow; and in doing so, open the gateway for the demonic.

So what do we do about that - if you've got tattoos? Well, some people want to get them all taken off. I just said: Tim, why bother about it? It's a great testimony of God's grace in your life.

Here's the thing: God wants to tattoo you! In 1 Corinthians 1:22 it says: “now God has marked us, stamped us like stamping with a signet ring”.

Now the way they used to have an ownership of things, in the New Testament days, and Roman days, is: they'd have some wax on something, and they'd take a ring that's got an engraving on it, and they'd stamp it on there - and you had a mark of a signet ring on you.

It was a sign of ownership. It was a seal of governments etc; and the Bible says: now God has sealed you; not putting marks on your body - He's not wanting to do that. God has sealed you with the Holy Spirit of promise - so God has got a mark to put on you! He wants to put His spirit on you! He wants to fill you with His spirit! He wants you empowered with the Holy Ghost, marked by this person's mark, the spirit of God is with them!

The Bible says in Acts 1:8, He said: “you shall receive power of the Holy Ghost coming on you”! God's desire is you be stamped, that you belong to Him, just like you have been purchased out of a marketplace. His stamp is the stamp of His spirit in your heart.

Now you should be glad you don't live in Old Testament times, because they had a different way of stamping, that you belong to God. One or two know about that... You would have to be circumcised, to have to have your flesh cut away and bloodshed - a very, very painful process.

Today the circumcision is one of the heart - putting our heart right with God, receiving the stamp of His spirit. Whatever we've been involved in, we can be set free.

If you've opened your life up through tattoos, drugs, sexual sin, video games or whatever - it's very, very simple. You just need to come and repent before the Lord, and renounce the covenantal agreement you made.

You say: I didn't know I was doing that. Hey, the devil doesn't care whether you know or not. He knows if you do it - because he's got a legal right to be there - and that right has to be cancelled.

It is cancelled by the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of a greater covenant. It's the blood of the king of kings, who came to earth!

You know why He shed His blood? So whatever you got into with the devil - He has got something stronger than it!

When Jesus shed His blood, He broke the power of the devil, broke the list of ordinances against you! He broke the power of tattoos, witchcraft, sorcery, all those kinds of things.

All that remains, is for you to repent, rise up and believe, and engage with Him. Be a great thing to do tonight wouldn't it, a great thing to do tonight. Why don't we close our eyes right now?

[Opening Testimony, by Tim Cashmore]

[Mike Connell] Fantastic, great to have you here tonight, and we're going to get Tim Cashmore to come up in a moment. Where's Tim? Tattoo Tim, come on Tattoo Tim, come on up here. Come on, and he's going to share a testimony just in a moment. It'll be fantastic testimony. How many know Tim or have met Tim before? You know Tim? Fantastic, he's a great guy.

Now I'm going to speaking tonight on tattoos, so I needed to get someone who's tattooed to come along and share a testimony.

Before we do that, I've got a video clip, and I'd like you'd to have a look at this little video clip. It lasts about 15 seconds, and it's for all of you who have a tattoo, or would like to get a tattoo. They look beautiful when you're 23, but they're something else when you get older. Have a look at this. [Plays video clip] ...lower back tattoo. Look, there's a really cool lower back tattoo, on an attractive 20 year old girl. Now watch what happens to that tattoo... So for those of you who have a back tattoo, welcome to what it'll look like in the future.

[Tim Cashmore] Good evening church. Oh wow. I sort of got a surprise on this one, because I was just talking to Pastor Mike yesterday, and he said: we'll have to get you up and give a testimony one day - well today's the day! [Laughs]

So first thing I want to do, really, is give the honour to God; because without God I wouldn't have a testimony, and the testimony is hugely important in my life - the transformation He's made.

Now I suppose I'd better give you a bit of background of where I came from. I came from a broken family, split up family. My father left when I was five, then I had an abusive stepfather that came in, and I pretty much got beaten up from the age of about seven all the way to about 13 when he kicked me out of home.

I was full of hatred of anybody in authority, so that's where my first tattoo came from. I was 14 years old, I was half way through high school and I decided I want a tattoo! So I went and saw my mate...

The other thing I was getting into was drugs, and I was actually make it a God in my life, so I wanted a picture of my God. You can't see it, it's under this one. Yeah, it's under this one - this is a cover up. It's actually a big dope leaf.

That was my first tattoo, and it was done with a matchstick, and a needle, and some ink, and it's just like donk, donk, donk, donk, donk.

Over the years, the funny thing about the tattoos: they're a story of my life, and what I was doing at certain parts of my life. Each tattoo's got a different reason, and a different story behind it.

Sort of fast-forwarding through life, I was getting more and more tattoos, and more and more and heavily into what I was doing, heavily into drugs, and even worse than what I started. Life was really not good, and then, fast-forwarding through it, I become a Christian, started learning about God, and God started doing a transformation in my life.

But it was only earlier this year - must be about eight months ago, nine months ago - I asked our elder at that stage in our church (Ian Clayton), about tattoos, and what they meant.

He went away, and he fasted, and prayed, and then came back and seen me. After church, we were sitting just in the row over there, everybody else had left, so there was nobody else here; and he started sharing with me about what I'd actually done.

Now when you get ink as they call it, you bleed, and you're actually making a blood covenant with the person giving you the tattoo; but it's more than that. Just like when you have sex with a woman outside of wedlock and you are spiritually-tied (soul-tied) tied to her, and you are tied to everybody that she's tied to, and the same thing is of tattoos.

With every person that those people had tattooed - because I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight - eight different tattooists tattooed on my body, and so I was tied to each of those eight people; but I was also tied to every single person that they had tattooed; then it keeps on going and you're tied to those people, tied to those people, tied to those people.

So Ian and I started praying. Now I've seen deliverance before, and I've always thought: oh well, I wonder if they're actually putting on a little bit of an act? Well there was only me and Ian there, so I had nobody to put an act on in front of, and hello!

You guys may just think: oh, the spirit realm's you know, you see it in the movies, and all that stuff - it can't be that real. It's real! It's real - because this demon decided to come out, and man, it's not fun. It is not fun!

Apparently some come out really easy. This didn't want to come out. There was a bit of coughing - there was quite a lot of coughing. There was a bit of pain. It was actually a lot of pain - but I just thank God; because as I shared when I first got up, the testimony is about God, and God loves us so much.

He didn't want me tied to those people, and He did not want me tied to those spirits, so when Ian delivered me from them, a radical transformation in my life, in my walk; praying was so much easier, engaging God was so much easier. It broke off a few nasty spirits, and I have to give testimony to God.

I've dealt with some more stuff since then, and so I've just got to - if you've got the chance not to start, don't start. If you've already started, or if you've got tattoos, see somebody who's an elder or a Pastor or something, and actually ask them about it.

Get more information about it, because they don't tell you back in those days what you're actually getting yourself in to. It's like drugs - nobody tells you what drugs are going to get you into. It's the same sort of thing. Before you even start, get some really good information.

I've had young Christian people come up to me and say oh, I've heard about Christian tattooists that are doing tattoos. I should get them - you know, I could get good Christian tattoos, and stuff like that; but it doesn't make any difference.

They are deluded in their own minds, because they are tying themselves to the people that they tattoo, and everything that goes with each person, they're actually tying themselves to that; and if you get tied to that person, you're getting tied to every single person in that line.

Unfortunately the curses come, and the demons come, and ride upon that. So that's about all I can say about tattoos - and thank you God.

[Mike Connell] Wow, fantastic. What a great story. Hey come on, show them all before you get down, come on. You'll get to see them all - you might as well see them all. Look at that aye?

[Tim Cashmore] So that's when I was getting heavily into dragons. I now know what dragons are, and what they mean. There's a star sign there, because I was getting into astrology, and everything that means; dragons all over there.

As I said, that was a cover up. I was actually a Christian when I got that. I'd only been a Christian for a few months and my wife turned around and said to me: we can't have you walking around with a dope leaf on your arm, and so we got that covered up.

This one's all about the Chinese year sign. I was under the year sign of the rat; so as I said - it's funny what you get yourself tied up to.

I've got a raven, because I was really into death at one stage, which is really not a good place to go I tell you. And you get tied to them. Because I had a tattoo of death, I was actually tied to death...

[Mike Connell] The spirit of death.

[Tim Cashmore] ...and I'm really, really glad that I'm free of that one because man, it's not a nice one.

My nickname when I was a druggy was Mutant. People are like: what! Well, I used to get so wasted, I couldn't even stand. People would look at me, and I'd go: aaahhh; because I was just away in the fairies, away in the thing.

Once again, this was the demon that I saw when I was stoned; and I actually got this guy called Ugg - I know, nice name - who was a punk from Auckland, and I was describing what I saw, and he actually tattooed what I saw. So the spirit realm is definitely true, and it's definitely real.

[Mike Connell] Wow, isn't that an interesting testimony? Come on, let's give Tim a clap and let's give the Lord a clap, thank Him for what He's done.[Applause] There's a lot of stuff people don't tell you isn't there?

Ten Commandments (Shane Willard 2009) (Shane Willard)

Am I me, regardless of what I'm producing; or is my entire life and worth defined by the number of bricks I can make? Is God still the creator, even when He's resting?

The Sabbath is a day where you live like your work is done, even if it isn't - and that is healing. The world goes on, because God is God, and you are not.

The supply of everything I need, is as close to me as the air that I'm breathing, I just need to stop and become aware of that.

The 10 Commandments is about Grace, its God giving people something that they did not earn or deserve - it's: welcome to being human again.

Ten Commandments (1 of 6) (Shane Willard)

God wants to marry you - leaven and all. No matter what you've done, or where you've been, God is determined to make it right for you - that is what the 10 Commandments are all about.

The OT marriage covenant (and its Hebrew context), are used to understand some things Jesus said about his return, and about the rapture.

The introduction of the 10 commandments is considered from the perspective of a long line of slaves. So we get a day off? You can't kill me, or take my things, just because you're stronger than me? My human rights and dignity will be respected in our new culture? That is fantastic!

I am the Lord your God (2 of 6) (Shane Willard)

The Ten Commandments starts with Grace, with God giving people something that they did not earn or deserve:

"I am the Lord your God", who is choosing to bless you with freedom from slavery, not because of anything you've done, but because I love you, and want all the people of the world to know that I am a loving God. Welcome to being human again.

Its: Anokhi - an offer to increase us, inside the “hedge of praise and submission”

Foundations for Your Success (3 of 6) (Shane Willard)

We don't like spirit, because we can't control it. It doesn't obey our rules. Where is God? How big is He?

If you want to live a successful life, you've got to organise your life to where God is with you all the time; not a statue/idol that's with you one minute, but not the next. We can't make God manageable.

To have the best relationship with God, don't make your prayer life about words and needs, He already knows what your needs are.

The supply of everything I need, which is as close to me as the air that I'm breathing, I stop and become aware of that.

Remember the Sabbath, Keep it Holy (4 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Is God still the creator, even when He's resting? Am I me, regardless of what I'm producing; or is my entire life and worth defined by the number of bricks I can make?

Anything we do around Sabbath that puts people in bondage, instead of bringing relief to a situation, misses the point. The last thing a group of slaves needs is another piece of bondage - and we're no different.

When our worth becomes about bricks, we become machines. Sabbath is a day where you live like your work is done, even if it isn't - and that is healing. The world goes on, because God is God, and you are not

Honour (5 of 6) (Shane Willard)

How do I honour someone who wasn't honourable? Nobody's parents are perfect. Honour is not ignoring wrong things, or saying wrong things are right, or having no boundaries.

Honour has more to do with what we pass on to the next generation; than how we respond to the previous one. It's maintaining godliness through our generations. It's choosing to be honest about the ungodliness, and choosing to break the cycle.

Be thankful you're alive; realise your parents were a part of fallen humanity; give up the urge to take vengeance, and to judge - realise they were wounded too.

11th Commandment (6 of 6) (Shane Willard)

God has not called us to be right - we're just Joe & Jane.

God has called us to be compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness. He's called us to show the whole world what He looks like.

Taking His name in vain is about: don't sign cheques I wouldn't sign, don't put my name to things that aren't me.

As a Christian, you're actually picking up and carrying (Nasah) the name (Shim) of God around with you. Shawv (in vain) means to live your life in a way that manifests (not disappoints) the hope that rests upon it.

The name of God rest upon a person (Ex 23:20), its a prophetic utterance of character (Exodus 34:6-7), it sits in a place (Deur 12:11), a force that provides protection (Ps 20:1), that has the ability to move with emotion - to fire a place up (Is 30:27).

It's a realm of awareness, that we can live in, or outside of (Micah 4:5). Its a force that brings about the best life (Jn 20).

The name creates a life so good, it's worth suffering & dying for (Acts 5:40-41). The demonstration of that life is so powerful, it threatens other people.

If you are reviled for the name of Christ, then you are blessed (1 Peter 4:14). Jesus: I have manifested Your name (John 17:6).

God has called Christians to be nice, more than He has called us to be right.

Paperback

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Audio

- Ten Commandments (1 of 6).mp3

- I am the Lord your God (2 of 6).mp3

- Foundations for Your Success (3 of 6).mp3

- Remember the Sabbath, Keep it Holy (4 of 6).mp3

- Honour (5 of 6).mp3

- 11th Commandment (6 of 6).mp3

Ten Commandments (1 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Wed 13 May 2009  « Back to Top

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God wants to marry you - leaven and all. No matter what you've done, or where you've been, God is determined to make it right for you - that is what the 10 Commandments are all about.

The OT marriage covenant (and its Hebrew context), are used to understand some things Jesus said about his return, and about the rapture.

The introduction of the 10 commandments is considered from the perspective of a long line of slaves. So we get a day off? You can't kill me, or take my things, just because you're stronger than me? My human rights and dignity will be respected in our new culture? That is fantastic!

Prelude

I want to talk to you tonight about the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20); but we have to make one ground rule really quick: in order to study God; and in order for the church, I believe, to get its credibility back - all of us have to lose our addiction to being right!

We're all "addicted to being right”. We could start our own 12 step program: Hi, my name is Shane, and I am an addict. I am an addict to ‘being right’; you are an addict to ‘being right’; and the worst addicts to ‘being right’, in the whole world, are: white Pentecostals!

Most of you look white; and 'Pentecostal - judging by how you just started this meeting. Everybody pray in the spirit for two minutes - that's pretty good. That means: you're white; you're Pentecostal - which means we are the worst in the world at thinking we have God figured out.

God does not expect us to have Him figured out! Jesus runs into people who were caught in the act of adultery. He runs into thieves on crosses. He runs into prostitutes in the middle of the night, and He's forgiving them. The people who really ticked Jesus off, were the ones who thought they had it all figured out - that they were in, and everyone else is out.

He goes into one place in Galilee, which was known for its orthodoxy. What they did is: they took the Torah - and then they made it harder; so they tried to live even harder; and because they were keeping the Torah better than everybody else, they thought they were saved. They actually called themselves: ‘The Remnant', 'The Chosen Ones', or 'The Elect'. We would never do that would we?

So they thought they were in, and everybody else was out; they were going to heaven, and everyone else was going to hell. So Jesus shows up, and they said: “Rabbi, are only a few going to be saved?” Of course, they mean them right; so basically they were trapping Jesus into agreeing with them.

Jesus - You tell us, are only a few going to be saved? Jesus gets so ticked-off, He says: at my marriage table, many will come from the north, east, south and west; but you who actually think you're in, will be the ones shut out - because you thought you were better than other people.

One of the things that the rabbis said - which I love: if we spent two hours tonight talking about God, if 95 per cent of what we said was wrong, God would still be pleased, just because we gave a night to talk about Him. God does not expect you to get it right, and let me show you why.... (gets out the whiteboard)

Let's be Gods for a second, alright? So I'm the Chairman of the Council of the Gods, and you are Gods (for the sake of our example). So I convene a meeting of the Council of the Gods, and I move that: because we're bored with each other, we're going to create something.

We choose to create people, and we'll call them Joe and Jane; and we make them perfect in our sight; they have all the mental and physical capacities that we do (to think). We make them in our image, and in our likeness. We say: that that is done; and we look back and we say: it is good, it is finished; what is still the problem with Joe and Jane?

There's still a problem with them: they're stuck on that board - their world is limited to what they can perceive in two dimensions. If I was to whisper in Joe's ear: Joe - in my world, I'm God; and in my world I can extend my arm out. Joe goes: that is unbelievable! Joe can't fathom a way that an arm can be extended out. Why? Because he is stuck in two-dimensions.

I whisper in Joe's ear: Joe - Jane is gorgeous, she's got nice curves. Joe looks over and says: she's just a line - I don't understand what you mean. Why? Because he's stuck in two dimensions.

If I wrote Joe a book about me; and I say things like: Joe, my ways are so high above your ways, you can't fathom it; “as high as the heavens or above the earth, so great are my ways above your ways”. Scientists tell us that the furthest star they know of is 12.3 billion light years away - that is a long way above us.

If I wrote Joe a book, and said: Joe, my ways are so high above your ways you can't understand it; Joe can't fathom that, in his world, I can go behind him; and in front of him. He can't understand that, because he's stuck in 2-D.

Let's get their attention: I take my hand, and I stick it through their world - they're going to see my hand in 2-D. What does my hand look like in two dimensions? #1: it's flat; #2: it would be five dots, coming through their world at differing times, followed by a series of dashes.

Joe says: Jane - did you see that? That's five dots, followed by a series of dashes! Jane says: no, I think it was bigger than that. I think that was the ‘hand of Shane’. He says: man, are you smoking something?

What if I took this ring, and I stuck it through their world - what would they see? That would just be one dot, which then separates into two dots, which then come back together as one - and then it disappears. He says: did you see that? That was roughly 20 dots that went like this. She goes: no, no - that was Doug's ring! He says: man, are you smoking...

What if I put my face up close to their world? She goes: do you smell that? Smells like curried chicken; I can feel something! Joe goes: no, no - that's the face of Shane - I can sense his presence. Who's right, and who's wrong? None of them - it takes faith to believe it all.

In two dimensions, the ring is a circle; but when you turn it (in 2-D) it's a rectangle. Are there ever enough dimensions to make a circle a rectangle? Yes, you need 3-D. We just need an axis to turn it on, to make a circle into a rectangle - but in their world it can never be. Mathematicians refer to a ‘dimension’ as a ‘degree of freedom’.

If this is a space in a jigsaw (2-D puzzle), and this is the piece that's supposed to go in the puzzle space, can you ever squeeze that into that, in two dimensions? No, you have to pick it up, move it over the top, and put it down. You need to have another degree of freedom in order to do that.

My point is this: that we are 4-D people. We live in 3x ‘space-dimensions’, and 1x ‘time-dimension’. We can only be at one place at one time - that's our limitations, that's our world. We are stuck to perceiving things that only exist right in front of us, something we can see, something we can touch, feel. We exist in three space dimensions, and one time dimension, so we are 4-D.

These are the complications that exist when a 4-D person tries to communicate with a 2-D one. These are the complications that exist.... They will never understand me; I would simply be pleased with the fact that: they even noticed; that they were giving it a go. Someone stuck in 2-D has no hope of understanding a 4-D person. All they can know is what I tell them; and even then, what I tell them is limited to their way of understanding things.

Imagine the complications that exist when an infinitely-dimensional God, tries to communicate to four-dimensional people? Can you imagine the intricacies? That's why God just kind of covers His bases. He says: “As far as the heavens are above the earth, so great are My ways above your ways.” You can't get your head around Me.

In Deuteronomy He says: “If you can imagine it, it isn't Me”! I'm so much bigger than you, that if you took your imagination to its furthest bounds, whatever's there - I'm bigger than that. Every aspect of Me is bigger than that.

If you just take “my love”; how wide, and how deep, and how broad, and how great, is the Love of God - that you can't even get your head around it. So before we go any further: God is infinitely big; and we're going to talk about this when we talk about the second commandment.

God is infinitely big; He's also infinitely small. Have you ever heard of the ‘Butterfly Effect’ (not the scary movie)? The phrase was coined by a MIT physicist in 1960; so this was a guy really, really smarter than us. He wanted to come up with a way to predict weather patterns with greater accuracy; so he was working with an algorithm on a computer program.

His algorithm contained a constant: .504162; he was using it to do wind patterns, in order to greater predict meteorological phenomena. So he'd type in that constant, and then let the computer run for a while, to see what would happen. One day he was in a hurry, and accidently, he just typed in: .504 (...and left off the 162).

Two hours later he came back; and the effects of leaving off those last three digits caused catastrophic weather events 150 miles away, and it was just a mistake. So on the computer model, he left off 162 hundred-thousandths of a percentage point, and it caused catastrophic effects 150 miles away.

They asked him: what’s the equivalent of that, in wind? He said: the puff of air that is caused by a butterfly's wing. So he said: theoretically, if a butterfly flutters in the wrong direction, at the wrong time - it can cause catastrophic events 150 miles away; so he coined the phrase in the scientific community the ‘Butterfly Effect’.

You say: Shane, what in the world are you talking about? God is so big, that He has His head around every puff of air that comes out of a butterfly's wing 100 miles from here - in order to protect you. God is huge!

We just need to come to the place of humility, a big place of humility, which just says: I am not God; and any attempt by me, to put my ‘box of God’ around people - just is not right.

One other thing, before we get into the Ten Commandments itself - I want to speak to you about the Humility factor. One of the tests of ministry, in the First Century, was something called the ‘Disposition of the Messiah’.

In English we write like this: A + B + C = D. So D is our main point; and we make three statements to end up at D.

Hebrew people don't write that way - they're not allowed to. They say: A + B + C = D = C + B + A. It's called ‘Reverse Concentric Symmetry’. When a Hebrew person writes, they write connecting points at the end, and it backs up into a middle point.

That looks like a Menorah! The theology of the menorah comes from Isaiah 11:2 – “the spirit of the Lord will rest on me - the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, power, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord”. A later writer said: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.

These are (to use our term) the ‘anointings’ that can come on somebody, from the Lord. There are six; but the centre one, which is the main point - the rest of this does not light without the centre one. The centre candle is called ‘The Servant’. Every anointing you'll ever get from the Lord, does not light up properly, unless it's done from the Heart of Humility - the Heart of a Servant.

As much as we learn this week, we're wrong. It's not in the ‘being right’ or ‘being wrong’; it's the questions that it puts in our lives, to make us change our lives, to be more godly. It's about the fruit that it might bear. If you just gain a bunch of knowledge - that is helpful, but it misses the point.

Will the girl at KFC know that you're saved, even when she messes up your order?

When you're on your way home from work, and you stop by the grocery store to pick up three things, and someone jumps in front of you in line, with 50 things - are you saved then? When you end up in the line with the slowest cashier in the entire store - are you saved then? Wives: does your husband know you're saved - even when he leaves his underwear on the floor? Husbands: do your wives know you're saved - even when they make a decision that disappoints you?

What are we doing to: live the Life of a Servant; to extract the Anointings of the Lord; in order to live it in such a way, that we are in fact a servant - that Jesus is the centre point of our whole life? Now with that being said, let's look at Exodus 20...

Introduction

I need to introduce the Ten Commandments, before we actually start talking about them, to put it in proper context. Exodus 20 starts something like this: “And the Lord spoke all of these words, saying: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, to be your God. Have no other gods before me”.

So the Lord spoke all these words saying: “I am the Lord your God”. The people that were listening to this - how would they have heard it? Who were they? What was their background? What sequence of events led up to this incredible event?

The people at the bottom of that mountain were slaves for 430 years. A 430-year heritage of slavery; 430 years of your opinion not mattering; 430 years of getting up every day at sun up and making bricks - hopefully enough bricks to keep yourself from getting killed. You get up every day: you make bricks; you go to bed. Seven days a week; 12 hours a day; 365 days a year - day in and day out.

You were treated with no dignity. You were a slave. You were less than human. If an Egyptian soldier wanted your wife, they just came in and raped her. There was no repercussions whatsoever; no thought to your dignity; no thought to the fact that you were even human. You were less than human. If they wanted something of yours, they just took it. If they wanted to kill, you they killed you, no repercussion. Moses only got in trouble because he killed an Egyptian, not because he killed a Hebrew.

These people had no human rights; so when you think of the Ten Commandments as a whole, I want you to think of it in terms of: a group of slaves learning how to be human again. God is trying to teach a group of people (and all they knew was slavery): this is how to be human.

He's also trying to create a culture that's going to have His way to live - so the whole world would look at what they have, and want it. He's trying to create the world's best culture. He's trying teach a group of slaves, after 430 years of slavery: this is how you be human.

It's also a wedding proposal: God proposing marriage to a group of people.

For 430 years, slavery was all they knew, and here's what they hear: “Thou shalt not kill”. Are any of them going: “oh no, that's the law”? No, everyone's going: wait a minute - in our new culture - you can't kill me, just because you're stronger than me?

Wait a minute, in our new culture, you mean that he has to respect the basic dignity as a human being God gave me? That he has to actually respect the image of God in me - that's how we're going to do this thing? That is fantastic!

Murder is the light sin; the heavy sin is actually believing someone's worth less than you. The heavy sin, is a belief that says: someone else isn't worth as much as you are. That's the heavy sin! So in our new culture, we're going to respect the basic human dignity?

Can you imagine: “Thou shalt not steal”? No one's thinking: “that's the law - we're being put under bondage, no, no, no”. They just got out of bondage.

God is not trying to make you good; God is trying to make you free. Make you good? Good compared to who - Him? No way, come on. He's trying to free slaves. He's trying to free people, when all they knew was: bondage and slavery. He's trying to free them to be human again.

“Thou shalt not steal” - no one's thinking: “hey, that's the law”; everyone's thinking: “wait a minute - in our new culture - you can't take things from me, just because you can? That is awesome!”

Can you imagine, all you knew was 430 years of slavery, and you hear: “Thou shalt take a day off”? Can you imagine that?

We haven't had a day off in 430 years; and He's actually commanding us to have a day, where we remind ourselves that our worth doesn't come from how many bricks we make? That is fantastic!

“Thou shalt not lie” - wait a minute, in our new culture, we actually have to have integrity in our business dealings?

I mean, if you know anything about sociology, you know that once a culture (or a country) becomes rampant with murder and theft and corruption in business dealings, the whole economy goes down the tubes - because no one wants to do business with you.

God is not trying to make people good, He's trying to make people free.

Main Message

For the rest of this first session, I want to talk to you about a wedding proposal. The Ten Commandments, Hebrew people call it a 10-word Ketubah.

In a Hebrew wedding, there were five steps. The five steps were: Lakah, Segullah; Mikveh, Ketubah and Huppah (Chupah).

I'm going to explain this in the natural; and then show it to you in the Bible; and hopefully bring this together to introduce the Ten Commandments.

Lakah: let's say Ali and I were dating, and she's out of my league, but it doesn't matter so - it's just hypothetical. So Ali and I are dating, and there comes a point where we cross the threshold of serious. There's a bit of chemistry going on between us. People are starting to ask her: how serious is this getting? This would have happened all the time.

Once it crosses a certain point, Ali would be longing to hear one word from me, and that word is: Lakah. She'd be longing to hear Lakah from me; so one night we're out on a date, we're down at the pizza place, and she bites into a piece of sausage - just perfect. That sausage fat and juice goes all over her. And I look across that table, and I think: I want to spend the rest of my life with that woman. Any woman that can bite into a piece of sausage like that - oh yeah!

So I take her home, and there's a moment on the porch, and she's still got a little bit of it right there on her face, and I say to her: Ali, Lakah. Well, on the outside she acts excited; but on the inside - she's 100 times more excited. On the outside she hugs me, and there's a moment there; but on the inside she's just clapping and going nuts, and on the inside she's just: OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! He said Lakah! He said Lakah! So she goes in and she calls her three best friends, and she's clapping... He said Lakah to me! He said Lakah to me! OH MY GOD! He said Lakah to me!

Lakah means: I want to make you my own.

The Book of Exodus is just one big giant marriage proposal between God and a group of slaves. Exodus 6:6 says something like this. He's talking about His accolades. He says: I have delivered you out of the hands of the Egyptians, and from the yoke of bondage; and He's just giving them a ra-ra sort of: this is my heart for you, this is what I've done for you.

Then in verse 7: “and I will take you as my own”. If you look that up in Strong's Concordance, it's just the word Lakah; I will take you as Lakah.

These are Hebrew people, so you didn't have to explain all this to them. They were standing there, and they would have thought: did God just say Lakah to us? Did God - does He want to marry us? Does God want to take our relationship with Him that far?

Doesn't He know we have issues? I mean, these people had issues! He had to tell them things like: don't be intimate with your mother, it's a bad plan. Well duh, right! But He had to tell them - that's how much issues they had. Later He had to tell them: don't throw your children in fire, not a good idea. So He had to tell them all these things, but He is instituted (He is initiating) a marriage with them.

You cannot understand the Ten Commandments outside the context of this: that God loves you so much, that He wants to marry you - Lakah.

So after I've said Lakah; what would be the next word she'd be longing to hear? Segullah!

You guys know how women are right? I don't want the women to turn on me, but there we go right - I'm going to step out there in faith! How long would it be, before Lakah wore off? Not long... Not long!

It wouldn't be too long after that, her girlfriends would be saying: has he said Segullah yet? Girl, is he scared of commitment? He needs to be saying Segullah.

So one night we're out on a date; and on the way to where we were going, she's hungry; and the noises that are coming out of her stomach are something God-awful. It's like a rhino's mating-call (ggroar), and I think to myself: that's the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with - a woman whose stomach can make noise like that. It's like a female drummer - there's something awesome about a woman that likes to beat on things, you know what I'm saying? They just...

So I take her on the date; we get home, and there's this moment and I say: Ali... Segullah!

Now this time, she can barely keep her hands off me - because I'm so irresistible. She is so excited; so she calls her friends: he said Segullah to me! He said Segullah to me! OH MY GOD! He said Segullah to me!

Segullah means 'treasured possession'. It takes Lakah one step further, and that one step further is: I don't just want to make you mine, I want to make you the most important person in my whole life, treasured possession.

Exodus 19, same group of people. Leading up to the Ten Commandments, they've already heard Lakah; and they would have been longing to hear the word Segullah.

In Exodus 19:5 here's what God says to them. “If you obey me fully, and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession (special treasure)”. In Hebrew it's: Segullah.

So once again, these people - for 430 years, all they've known is slavery - and they're like: does God want to marry us? Is He serious? Did He just say ‘Segullah’?

Now the next one, the next word she'd be longing to hear is Mikveh. Now Mikveh is not as romantic as the first two. The first one's sort of romantic; the second one's really romantic, like: I want to make you the most important person in my whole life. Women hear that and they go: isn't that something! They like that!

Mikveh is far less romantic, but it was necessary. Mikveh was a three-day warning that the betrothal was coming, and Mikveh meant this. Mikveh meant: go wash. Like: girl - you need a bath. Your breath is stinky!

Mikveh meant: go wash; or if you want to get spiritual with it, you could say: consecrate. It was a three-day warning, and the reason they did it was gracious; you wanted to give them a three-day warning before the betrothal happened, so that they could be touched. You wanted to be clean at the proposal, so you could be touched; so you'd give them a three day warning: go wash.

You see this all over the Bible, but I'll give you the most extreme example in the whole Bible that I know of, and that's Esther. Remember she bathed in perfume - for a year - before she went in and saw her husband (which I think is overkill). Can you imagine that? Whew girl, where you been! You know she bathed in a year's Mikveh.

Exodus 19:10 – “and the Lord said to Moses: have the people consecrate themselves for three days, and have them wash their clothes” - Mikveh.

Three days from now - a Ketubah is coming, a Ketubah is coming - and they would have known this. This is Hebrew culture - they knew the sequence; so three days from then, Exodus 20 happens. Exodus 20 is a Ketubah.

A Ketubah is a marriage contract. This is what would happen (in the natural)... Three days after Mikveh; I would come and get Ali, and we would go sit at a table. Normally it would be: her, and her father; me, and my father - and we would make an agreement, a list that defined the basic boundaries of our marriage. She could put anything in the Ketubah she wanted; and I could put anything in the Ketubah I wanted - so long as we both agreed.

If you're here today, and you're thinking about getting married, let me give you Paul's advice: don't! Remember was he said? “He who marries does not sin” (but they're signing up for a life of pain)! Marriage is one of those things that, even between two pretty good-hearted people - it's tough!

I'm a counsellor by trade. Anytime a man and a woman comes to me; and it turns into who's right and who's wrong - it never works; because typically, it's not a matter of right and wrong. Typically, it's a matter of just differences. I think marriage might be one of those things that God steps back and goes: what was I thinking? What was I doing? Men and women are just different, okay; they're not wrong, they're just different.

For example, when a woman says: “I have nothing to wear”, what she means is: “I have nothing new” - and other women understand that code! If a woman says to another woman: I have nothing to wear; the other woman says: girl, let's go shopping, right? If a man says: I have nothing to wear; what he means is: I have nothing clean - do some laundry right? Not wrong, just different...

Another example – smells! Women like sweet-smelling stuff, like: flowers and perfume, oil, candles. Two women can go into a candle shop and sniff wax for an hour. Girl, check that out! Ain't that - that is some sweet smelling stuff right there. They just can do that stuff. You give a woman some flowers - the first thing she does is smell them. You give a man flowers - he smells $70. That's all he smells! Women like sweet smelling stuff - it's in them to do that.

Men like ‘stinky’ stuff. You'll never see two men in a candle shop going: hey Billy, check that new white-lilac scent out. Now that is something special, right there! Bob, I'm gonna tell you: that is some sweet smelling stuff! You'll never see men do that – never!

Men like stinky stuff though... You have a man, and he plays a rugby match in the rain - and there's blood, and there's mud, and there's sweat - all mixed together on his shirt; and he's got to get to a business meeting really quick after it, so he runs into the locker room and showers. He puts nice clothes on. He takes all those muddy, sweaty, nasty clothes and he puts them in a plastic bag, and he ties it off and puts it in the boot of his car. Three months later... he's looking for something in the boot of his car, and he sees that bag and remembers what's in it. What's the first thing he's going to do? He's going to open it and he's going to smell it!

That's men - and if there's any other man around he'll say: “hey man, check that out. That's ripe right there, and I'm gonna tell you.” Men everywhere owe each other courtesy sniffs - if I smell Hamish's dirty clothes; and then later if I have something - he's got to smell mine, because I smelled his. That's why, if you're ever at a red light, and you see four guys in a car, and three of them have their heads out the window, and one in the back seat laughing - it's just somebody cashing in on his courtesy sniff.

That's all that is, because men like stinky stuff. There's nothing funnier to a group of men than something stinky happening. Women like sweet smelling stuff - not wrong, just different; and so to curb, to try to increase the effectiveness of marriage, we would sit down and talk about our basic boundaries before we got married - that became our marriage contract. She could put anything in there she wanted, and I could put anything in there I wanted, so long as we both agreed; because: “how can two walk together, lest they be agreed?”

Then once that was agreed on, that became the rules of our marriage; so if after marriage, if one of us broke our deal, it was called: ‘marital unfaithfulness’. You would go through a four step process to prove it: one-on-one; two-on-one; spiritual-leaders-on-one; and then discipline. This marriage contract became the ruling force of our marriage.

The whole Bible's about a wedding... After it was agreed upon, we would: sign it; then stand and face each other, and..

I would say to her: “I go to prepare a place for you; that where I am, there you may be also”.

She would say: “when will you come back, to receive me unto yourself?”

I would say: “I do not know the day or the hour, but when my father approves the wedding chamber, he'll send me back, to receive you unto myself.”

So when Jesus is saying this stuff, everybody there is going: God still wants to marry us? This is unbelievable! I want you to think about the Ten Commandments in terms of a marriage contract.

“You should have no other Gods before Me” - if we're going to be married, I've got to be the most important person in your life. That makes sense doesn't it? Let's take God out of it for a second... For a marriage to work: the husband has got to be the most important person to the wife; and the wife has to be the most treasured possession of the husband, right? It's the only way for it to work.

“Don't make idols” - if we're going to be married, you can't carry pictures of your old boyfriends around, because that's going to hurt my feelings. We’re not going to do that, alright!

“Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy” - if we're going to be married, then: one day in seven, it's going to be just me and you.

This is what God did to keep His marriage together; He said: one day in seven; and seven times a year, we're going to leave everything and just be together.

God did everything He could do to make His marriage with the national of Israel work - but it just didn't. In the Book of Ezra (and in the Book of Jeremiah) it says: God had to divorce Israel, because of their continual marital unfaithfulness. They kept breaking their deal. He had to divorce them, for their continual marital unfaithfulness.

If you've been through a divorce, maybe this is for you. There's a scripture that says: I hate divorce; but we teach that as if: God hates divorced people. Maybe God's not saying: I hate divorce (as a matter of judgement); maybe He's saying (as a matter of understanding): I've been through it - I know, it stinks! I hate it for you; I hate it for the other person; I hate it for all the tears it's going to cause - I hate it.

Maybe that's what it was about? If God hates divorced people, then He hates Himself; because in the Book of Jeremiah, and the Book of Ezra, it says: He had to divorce Israel, because of their marital unfaithfulness. Who did He marry? You; me - we're the bride of Christ. He hates divorce.

This was all about a marriage. So this is what would happen: I would go and prepare a place for her, a marriage chamber. Then I'd come back and get her, and we'd have a wedding. At a wedding, there was step five: Huppah.

Huppah means 'under the presence'. Remember the prayer shawl?

There were two huppahs: the first huppah was the marriage altar - and we still have those today - when you see people get married under archways? You get married under archways - that was the first huppah; it was a marriage altar that talked about: when you get married, you're doing so ‘under the presence of God’.

The second huppah was in the marriage chamber. They would take bed posts and extend them up. Then they would tie the tassels around the four corners of the bed, and it made the prayer shawl a canopy over the bed. They thought of the ‘prayer shawl’ as the ‘presence of God’

It happened like this: me and my new wife would get married under the huppah. Then they would march us to the door of the wedding chamber, and I would pick her up to carry her into the marriage chamber - do you guys do that in New Zealand - it's a good idea for some, not so good for others... Some people ought to hold off on that tradition okay!

But they'd pick them up, and carry them under the threshold - and that's where we get the word ‘rapture’ from. The word ‘rapture’ simply means: ‘to pick your bride up’; and carry her into the place you prepared for her.

I would take her then into the wedding chamber, and they had tied the huppah over the bed. They would shut the door behind us, and we would go in and consummate our marriage ‘under the huppah’. So the consummation of the marriage would happen ‘under the presence of God’.

They would wait outside for us to be done! They were way more ‘open with their sexuality’ than we are! So they would wait outside for us to be done; and then we'd come out - and we'd have a party. That was huppah; so this was the five steps to the wedding program.

The Ten Commandments was not: 10 proofs that God would love you. It wasn't: 10 conditions for God to love you. It wasn't: you do this - and I'll love you. No, no, no, no...

The Ten Commandments was: 10 proofs He already did! It was God's attempt to make us free.

He opens the Ten Commandments this way: “I am the Lord your God”. Before they did anything right, or anything wrong, He said: “I am the Lord your God”. He said “Lakah” to them; before anything right or wrong.

This is not about God making a group of people good; it's about God making a group of people free.

Now I want you to look at the end of the Ten Commandments, and I want you to see huppah - Exodus 20:18.

The people were at the base of the mountain, and it says: “and the people saw the thunder, and the lightning, and the billows of smoke; and they heard the sound of a trumpet”. The see three things: 1) Thunder, 2) Lightning, 3) Billows of Smoke; and they hear one thing: the sound of blowing wind - the sound of a trumpet.

If you picture this in terms of: Lakah, Segullah, Mikveh, Katuba, Huppah; these people - the Katuba has just been given, and they look up, and the whole mountain covers them in smoke - Huppah.

They look up, and they ‘see thunder’ and they ‘see lightning’. How do you see thunder? You can't see thunder! I looked that word up in Strong's Concordance, and it says that the word is ‘Kole. In every other place in the Bible, it's translated 'voices' or 'languages'. It’s the same word when Moses heard the voice out of the burning bush – Kole. So they look up, and they see ‘voices’, or ‘languages’.

It says: they see thunder and lightning. The word lightning is the word "glorified fire". It's the same word for fire out of the burning bush.

The Katubah has just been handed down; they're standing there, and the whole mountain covers them in a huppah; and they look up, and they see languages inside fire. What would the languages have been saying? Will you marry me.

The Talmud (which is the ancient rabbinical commentary on this) says, that on this day in history: God proposed (it uses the word proposed) to the whole world, using 70,000 tongues of fire.

In 1857, in Rangoon, Burma, an English sociologist went there. This is before electricity, any of that, and he's studying this group of tribal people. He says: I have one question: who is your God? And these tribal people in Rangoon, Burma, in 1857 said this: we serve a God named Ywa, who proposed to us from fire in the sky - 70,000 tongues of fire - but the Israelites got scared, and they stepped back.

They said: Moses, don't have God speak to us any more, lest we die. You go figure out what God wants, and then you tell us what God wants; but don't have God speak to us any more, lest we die. God says: they didn't want to accept, because they felt unworthy.

God marries them anyway - but He institutes a feast every year. Every year, on the anniversary of this day, by law, they had to celebrate a feast. Leviticus 23, the Feast of Pentecost. At the Feast of Pentecost, everybody had to bring leavened loaves of bread. It's the only place, in the whole Bible, that they were commanded to bring loaves made with yeast. Everywhere else, it’s: unleavened bread; there: leavened bread.

So they're bringing these leavened loaves, and they would give it to the priest. The priest would wave it before God, and say: “I thank You my God, that Your unleavened life, is willing to become one, with our leavened life”. Isn't that the truth: a little leaven, leavens the whole loaf. Sometimes we make God look bad. Sometimes we're the ones that make God look bad, but God is so humble, He wants to be in us anyway.

The priest would bring the leavened loaf down, and he would break it in half; then he'd fill the leavened loaves with oil – signifying, obviously, the Holy Spirit. Then he would say: “now the day of Pentecost has fully come”.

So one day, years later, they're all in the upper room; and they would’ve been celebrating this day, because they had to; and the priest would have raised the leavened loaves, and he would have filled the leavened loaves with oil, and said: now the day of Pentecost is fully come. This time they're in the upper room - and the exact same thing that happened, on the exact same day, years before, happens again: they're standing in the upper room, and the whole place covers them in smoke - huppah - and they hear the sound of a trumpet.

They look up and they see: tongues inside fire – the same exact thing that happened at Mount Sinai; same day, anniversary of that same day! The only difference is: this time they spoke back - which is the birth of the church, the bride of Christ.

To understand your walk with God, to have some cornerstones to your success, you cannot understand the Ten Commandments outside of this axiom: God wants to marry you, leaven and all.

Pentecostals for years have said: you have to get the leaven out your life, for God to use you!

Should you get the leaven out of your life? Absolutely! It's because it's the best life, to get the leaven out of your life; but that is pointless as to how much God feels about you. God wants to marry you, leaven and all.

The whole point of Pentecost: is oil flows through leaven. Aren't you glad that God uses ‘leavened’ beings? That the whole point of the Ten Commandments is: God, wanting an intimate relationship with a group of people, who are slaves to something.

What are you slave to? What's your slave driver?

If God touched your life tonight, what would be gone tomorrow? What would it be? What's your slave driver?

It's about: me and you, and God's determination to marry a group of people with heavy-duty issues - and make it work.

It's about: God teaching me and you, what it's like to have our dignity back; for our opinion to matter; for our image to be restored; to have dignity.

God wants to marry you - leaven and all.

No matter what you've done, or where you've been, God is determined to make it right for you; and that is what the Ten Commandments is all about.

I am the Lord your God (2 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Wed 13 May 2009  « Back to Top

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The Ten Commandments starts with Grace, with God giving people something that they did not earn or deserve:

"I am the Lord your God", who is choosing to bless you with freedom from slavery, not because of anything you've done, but because I love you, and want all the people of the world to know that I am a loving God. Welcome to being human again.

Its: Anokhi - an offer to increase us, inside the “hedge of praise and submission”

Exodus 20:1. We've already established that this is a Katubah, and this is how the Katubah starts: “and God spoke all these words, saying: I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, so you will have no other Gods before Me.”

1) God is talking. For almost the first time in their history, God is talking. For the first time since they've gotten out of Egypt, God is speaking! He says: “I am Jehovah, your God” - He relates to them as Jehovah (not as El Shaddai, which was odd).

When God first started ministering and relating to this family known as Israel, He ministered to a guy named Abraham - the grandfather, great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of this group of people. He showed up to Abraham, and said: My name is El Shaddai. My name is God Almighty. I want to make a covenant with you. That made sense to Abraham, because he was a sun-worshipper during the day and a moon-worshipper at night. That leaves one big nagging question: who's in charge?

So God shows up and says: I am God Almighty. I'm the one in charge of the moon, sun, stars. I'm one in charge of all that, and I want to make a covenant with you.

Abraham said: why?

God said: just because, just because I've chosen you, not because of anything you've done. You see this pattern with God all the time - not because of anything you've done, or anything you will do. I want to choose you. I choose you, Abraham, to be My person.

Abraham says: sure!

God is a mystery; so all of us are on this journey - to sort of journey to God. None of us will ever figure it out; and God tells us to do things all the time. Anybody who says that they figured God out, they don't realise that they're just Joe and Jane, trying to get through life. They're just 4-D beings, trying to make sense of an infinitely-dimensional God.

We say things all the time, that we think sound good, but in fact they're just stupid; like: God would never... What do you mean ‘God would never’? God would never do what? You've figured God out?

Leviticus says: do not touch your own poop; which is a really good plan, right? If you're going to be ‘the light of the world’, a ‘city set up on a hill’ - you can't be known as a group of people who ‘fiddle with your poop’, right? It doesn't bode well for what God wants us to do, ok? Imagine that - that weird group down at Bay City - they fiddle with their crap! You can't do that right?

But the Bible says this: “and the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, saying: cook food - using your poop as fuel”. People say: “God would never say that” - but He did. He did!

The Bible says: Do not marry Gentiles - and stone prostitutes; but the word of the Lord came to Josiah saying: marry that Gentile prostitute. You don't know what God might do.

There's this one place in the New Testament, where Peter shows up with a barrel of pork rinds. He's got a barrel of bacon, and they say: “you can't eat bacon!” - God said you can't do that! Peter says: Jesus told me I could - in a dream! In my dream, Jesus told me: I could eat bacon.

We make doctrine out of it! If Peter would have showed up now, all the white Pentecostals would be going: “God would never say do that”, because we think we've figured God out. No, just like Moses, just like Abraham, all these guys were just on this journey with God. They had this sense of awe.

‘El Shaddai’ wanted to speak to Abraham; so Abraham says: El Shaddai - what do you want me to do? He says: I want you to leave. I want you to leave everything you have. Where do You want me to go? I'm not going to tell you - I just want you to leave.

So Abraham goes on a 2,300 mile walk - that's a long way man! 2,300 miles - with a 100 year old wife - can you imagine? Imagine being 100 years old, on a camel, for 2,300 miles. You get off, and: oh, all stiff.

Along the way, at some point, he said: God - what do You want me to do? God said: I'm glad you asked. You see that rock? Yes. Pick it up, circumcise yourself with it. So the first command God ever gives somebody, is to a 100 year old man, and He says: rock; swing hard, don't miss! Good Lord!

So the first picture you have, of God relating to a human being, is a 100 year old man going: dear God, help me! But you know that gave him the ‘ace of spades’. You imagine 1,000 miles into the journey, and his 100 year old wife's like: Abraham - are you sure you know where you're going? I'm sure. You sure? I'm sure. How sure are you? Woman shut up! I'm so sure, I circumcised myself with a rock! You win! You're circumcising yourself with a rock - you win!

He made a covenant with El Shaddai. Now this is very important, because He relates here as ‘Jehovah’. He makes a covenant with El Shaddai; so when Abraham has a son named Isaac, Isaac would have said: dad, who are we covenant with? His dad would have said: El Shaddai. Isaac has a son named Jacob: dad, who are we in covenant with? El Shaddai. Jacob has 12 children: dad, who are we in covenant with? El Shaddai. Those 12 children have 12 children, and all 144 of them say: who are we in covenant with? El Shaddai. Those people then have 12 children; who are we in covenant with? El Shaddai. They end up in slavery - El Shaddai, El Shaddai - for 430 years. They're in covenant with God Almighty.

Finally God shows up to Moses in a burning bush; and He says: Moses, My name is Jehovah. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Moses said: uh-ah, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is El Shaddai.

God says this: I revealed myself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as ‘El Shaddai’; but by my name ‘Jehovah’, they didn't know Me. This was a further revelation of who God was - this wasn't just ‘God Almighty’ - this was ‘I Am’.

Later He reveals Himself as: I Am Healing (Rapha); I Am Provision (Jireh); I Am (Tsidkenu) Righteousness; I Am Sanctification (Mikadesh). I Am Peace (Shalom). I Am Your Shepherd (Rohi). I Am the Ever Present One (Shammah) - and so God revealed Himself over time, with extended revelations of who He was.

He couldn't reveal everything He was at once (obviously); but then over time, He revealed Himself as different revelations, and different names. There were these names that kept being revealed, until one place - there's a guy named Jesus; and one writer says that in Jesus, there was given a name that was above every other name, whether that name be written in heaven or on earth or under the earth, that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. In other words, Jesus is the encapsulation of all the names of God written before - so He's relating as Jehovah.

3) He identifies Himself as their God - before they did anything.

4) He declares His deeds for them - but they have not done anything yet.

He says: I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of bondage; which lends oneself to question: does God expect anything from us? If He does, what is it? What is God expecting from us?

We could say it a lot of different ways, but I would say it just one simple way: God expects us to respond to His love. Whatever that looks like, God expects us to respond.

Essentially, the Ten Commandments start with this: I've done this for you. What are you going to do about it? How will you respond?

The essential question for us is: understanding that God wants to be ‘in me’ - despite me; that God wants to marry me - leaven and all.

To understand that is one thing; to respond to it is a totally different thing. How will we respond?

Here are some myths we have to deal with, about the Ten Commandments. These are things that are not true:

1) God is proposing conditions for His love. No way! You don't propose to someone that you don't already love - this is a marriage proposal. God is proposing conditions to His love? No, He's not.

2) God is trying to make us good. Wait a minute, good compared to who? Him? No way! God's not trying to make us Good. God is trying to make us Free. His whole goal in this was to free people from slavery - to free people what bound them up.

3) God is offering a list of how to ensure that we are ‘in’. That's another myth. This is not a list of things that you do, in order to make sure you get to heaven one day. This has nothing to do with any of that. It's not a list of things you do, to make sure you're in.

He kind of covers that base with the last one: “Thou shalt not Covet”. In other words, don't ever want to do any of the other nine ones.

So where did the idea come from that ‘God is good’, and ‘we are bad’; and then we get to ‘impress God by doing good’? Why do we think that our Behaviour is linked to our Acceptance with God? Where did that come from - the idea that: God listens to my prayer more, if I'm a good boy; and He shuts His ears to me if I'm a bad boy?

This idea is worldwide - through all major religions. It's just in us. Where do we get the idea that God will listen to our prayers more, if I'm behaving? This way of thinking has done more to alienate people from God, than it has done to connect them with God, and this is why:

Guilt is always a temporary motivator.

There are two big-time temporary motivators: Fear; and Guilt. Those are very temporary motivators, fear and guilt. You'll do a lot of things when you get afraid, that you won't do under normal circumstances; and you'll do a lot of things when you get afraid, that you can never maintain.

Guilt's the same way. Am I the only person in the room that's ever made a promise to God at an altar, because of guilt, that I couldn't keep? Come on. I remember being at camp one time, and they told us we'd go to hell if we didn't pray for 30 minutes a day; so I got scared, and I got guilty, and I promised God that I'd get up at five o'clock every morning and pray for an hour. The first day I was excited about it, I got up, I prayed, read my Bible, and I opened my eye after praying, and it was 5.05am! I thought: what am I going to do now? I was only 13 years old. Fear and guilt are horrible motivators.

God's not trying to establish a relationship with fear and guilt. That would be the same as saying: “you have to marry me”.

Whether you love me or not, you have to marry me? No, no, no. God wants to create a relationship out of freedom. The message of God is exactly the opposite. God's laws, and His rules, are not condition for relationship; they're confirmation that He wants us to have the best life.

Let me make two observations about that:

1) You could tell a lot about a person, by the rules they establish. You actually train people how to treat you. You do; you set boundaries. One of the Hebraic definitions of hell is: a boundary-less place. If we're living in a circumstance where someone can treat me any way they want - and with no repercussion - that's called hell. That's called hell; it's a boundary-less place.

I've been here enough now, that I would consider the staff here my friends; and we treat each other with a lot of humour, a lot of joke telling. You think we're doing spiritual things, we're not. Our whole life is spiritual; but we're up there telling jokes okay; and we tell jokes, and we do a lot of things like that; and when it's time to pray, it's time to pray.

We have a good relationship, but all of us treat each with a certain amount of respect. I would never disrespect someone from up here; because he wouldn't tolerate it, nor should he. You could tell a lot about me, by what I tolerate from other people. You could tell a lot about how I think about myself, how I think about you, and how I care about the environment in the room.

What you allow to take place in your home, tells me a lot about you.

If you allow tension and anger and screaming and yelling and abuse to take place in your home, and let your kids see it, it tells me a lot about you. It tells me: you don't think much of yourself; and you ought to stand up, get your head up, get your shoulders back, and I'm not talking about be ridiculous.

I'm talking about have sensible boundaries around what people do with you. You can tell a lot about a person by the rules they establish.

Essentially, God's saying in the First Commandment: I want a relationship with you, more than anything in the world - but I'm not going to be #2. That's fair enough.

He says: “and remember, I got you out of Egypt”. Remember: I'm going to keep doing this the rest of your life. It's not like I'm giving you a free ride here - I just want to be #1. You could tell a lot about a person by the rules they establish.

2) You can tell a lot about a person, by the people with whom they establish rules.

You don't set boundaries with people, until there's a legitimate relationship in place - you just don't. Can you imagine being on a first date, just having a cup of coffee somewhere; and you say: listen, let me just set some rules for our relationship. You'd think: that was weird. Wait a minute, we're not even close to there yet. I don't even know what you do for a living. I don't know your mother's name. I don't know if you have children. I don't know what you like, what you dislike, and you're talking about rules? No, no, no, no.

See, once you get to a place where you have a relationship with someone, deep enough to establish rules, it tells me a lot about you. I can tell almost everything I need to know about you, with a couple of things: the questions you ask; and the stories you tell.

The questions you ask, and the stories you tell, reveal your values, and they reinforce your values.

I could tell a lot about what I need to know about you, by what you tolerate from other people; and I could tell a lot about what I need to know about you, by who you have a deep enough relationship with to have rules.

So this tells you a lot about God. These 10 statements tell you a lot about God; and what His heart is for us.

What is God trying to accomplish here with this statement: “I am the Lord your God, have no other Gods before Me”?

1) He is initiating a proposal of marriage.

2) He's offering a group of slaves the chance to be human, and have their dignity restored.

He's saying: listen, for 430 years you've lost your dignity, I'm going to teach you how to gain it back. We're going to create a culture, where everyone has the basic dignity in the image of God that I intended; and this is going to be so good, the whole world's going to want what we have.

3) He is establishing a community of people, who can one day bring forth messiah.

He's trying to set the ground rules in place, to have a culture in place, that one day messiah would come forth out of it, salvation will come to the whole world because of this.

4) He's establishing the kind of life, in a group of people, that the world can see what God looks like.

Ultimately in this, He wants me and you to show the girl at KFC what He looks like - even when she messes up your order. When someone cuts you off in busy Hastings traffic, how do you respond? Do you point your finger at the sky? Call them #1? Or do we show the world what God looks like?

There was an email that was sent around... (I never read those, but the person who sent it never sends it, so I decided to read it). It was a story about this lady, she was following really close behind this car; it was at an orange light - and if you stop, you're not wrong; and if you go through, you're not wrong - one of those. The guy in front decided to stop, and she was obviously in a hurry - She was going crazy! She was swearing at him out the window, I mean pointing her finger at the sky, she was doing everything. About that time this police officer came up (she didn't see him), and he knocked on the window. He takes her out of the car, puts her in handcuffs, and takes her to jail.

Two hours later, he comes and gets her out the cell. He said: I'm very sorry ma'am, I thought you stole the car. She said: why would you think I stole the car? He said: I saw the fish on the back; and I saw the 'What would Jesus do?' bumper sticker; and the 'Follow me to Sunday School' licence plate holder. Then I saw how you were acting, and I thought you stole the car. Ooh!

How does the world perceive us? We are meant to show the world what God looks like! Here's the message of the Ten Commandments, in a nutshell, in the first verse:

Now that the relationship is established, I want you to live in peace and joy. I want you to have My way of living, so that others will see who that I am.

It's not just about you. Jesus said it this way, in John 17: Father, as You are in Me, and I am in You, let them be in Us, so that the world might believe. It's all about showing other people what God looks like.

Two observations, before we get into the next big thing: rules never establish relationship - never.

Relationship establishes relationship; rules maintain it. You never establish a relationship with rules. You establish a relationship with love, and then rules maintain it, boundaries maintain it. This was a huge concept.

God chose to be their God before they did anything. Now I want to show you the first line of the Ten Commandments in Hebrew. This is the first line - here it is in English: “I am the Lord your God”.

In Hebrew it's three words: “Anochi Jehovah Elohim” The interesting part is this: you can say that sentence with just two words: “Jehovah Elohim” – I am the Lord your God. There's a hidden word in there that doesn't get translated, and it's actually the first word of the Katubah God is writing to His people.

The first word of the Ten Commandments is the word “Anochi” - four Hebrew letters: Aleph, Nun, Chet, Yud.

Now the Hebrew language was originally pictures. It wasn't letters (like today), it was pictures; so every Hebrew letter is a picture; every Hebrew word is a comic strip. Let me give you the pictures.

The Aleph is the picture of: an ox head going into a yoke. It conotates ‘authority’. Now remember: the people He's speaking this to, were slaves for 430 years; and the first word of His marriage contract with them is: Anochi. The first letter is Authority.

Nun is the picture of: fish multiplying. It has to do with multiplication, or increasing, or an increase.

The Chet is the picture of a fence, or a hedge. It means to protect, or to separate, or like a boundary fence.

So the idea of ‘boundaries’ is in the first word; the idea of multiplication; and authority.

The Yud is the picture of: an upraised hand. It's the letter of the word ‘Judah’, which means ‘to praise’. The upraised hand is to ‘praise’, or ‘submit’; like if somebody points a gun at me - I submit; if God wants my attention - I submit. I praise - it's an upraised hand - so that was praise or submission.

Anochi - So you have the ox head, which conotates authority; you have fish multiplying, which conotates increase or multiplication; you have a fence or a hedge, which conotates protection or separateness; then you have a yud, which is an upraised hand, which conotates praise and submission.

Here is a group of slaves for 430 years. God is at the Katubah stage of His marriage proposal to them. He is going to make a marriage contract. They would have been waiting diligently to hear His marriage contract.

Now there is a law in Hebrew hermeneutics called the Law of First Mention. What it means is: whatever's mentioned first, sets the stage for every other mention of it. This is true of everything in the whole Bible; so the first word of something means the most - and this is the first word of the Ten Commandments.

The comic strip on it: “Your Authority, is going to Increase, inside the Hedge of Praise and Submission”.

Anochi Jehovah Elohim - I am the Lord your God.

Your authority is going to increase inside the hedge of praise and submission. I am the Lord your God. Have no other Gods before Me.

The Ten Commandments starts with grace - with God giving people something that they did not earn, nor did they deserve – Anochi.

Maybe our whole life would find greater success and fulfilment, if our whole life was a life's response to Anochi.

Let me just give you a summary statement of what I've just said. This is a Shane Willard message translation exo-Jesus of Exodus 20:2 okay. It says: “I'm the Lord your God” (that one okay). This is the way I wrote it:

“I am the Lord your God, who is choosing to bless you with freedom from slavery, not because of anything you've done, but because I love you, and want all the people of the world to know that I am a loving God. Welcome to being human again.” That is the first line of the Ten Commandments.

How will we respond to Anochi?

Anything that brings joy and fulfilment is contagious, and must be shared. Joy cannot be bottled - it has to be shared with others. We invite others in on our joy.

For example: Why is it, that ugly babies are still cute? At what age does a cute ugly baby just become an ugly person? Because we all know that it's there, let's be honest! There's a critical juncture where you hope that this ugly baby (that everybody thinks is cute), becomes really cute, before they pass the age of... no, that's just ugly. But ugly babies are still cute. Why? Because they're called: ‘a bundle of Joy’ - it has to be shared. Crying babies are still cute - within reason. Why is it, the first thing we say, when we see a newborn baby: isn't she cute?

Here's another example of joy having to be shared: women who get an engagement ring. They're not thinking about the instructions of the Apostle Paul: that you're signing up for a life of p-a-i-n! They just have an engagement ring, and what do they do? They walk in the room - and even their attempts to hide it, makes it obvious. Why? Because they have to share their joy.

How about when men get a new truck? With a V8! What do we do? We pull up - you've got to see my new truck! What's the first thing we do? We don't get in the car for a test drive, what do we do? We pop the hood. Look at that engine! Nine out of 10 of us have no idea what we're looking at, but it's big! Sounds powerful! Joy has to be shared.

Is this why God created us: to share His joy?

Maybe His joy got so full in Himself, that He had to create someone to share it with Him. He couldn't share it with somebody that's not in His image, or in His likeness, so maybe you are a result of God needing to share His joy. When we have real encounters with God, we want to spread it to others. I want everyone to know my God.

What would happen to our church, if church was not: attending an event?

What if it is: a life, who was committed to turning the world upside down?

What would happen if our church became one giant response to Anochi? Instead of trying to know more things about God, what if we just chased Him, and the things of God.

What if we were responding to God's desire for Anochi with us - by providing Anochi for everybody else? What we make happen for others - God makes happen for us.

God wants to: increase our authority, inside the hedge of praise and submission.

What would happen if we created that for other people? What would happen to church if it became that; instead of a gathering of people who complained about the volume of the music; or where they're having to park; or what was coming off the pulpit? What would happen if our life actually became a whole big response to Anochi?

We'd have a group of people committed to turning the world upside down - to helping the poor; to calling in the middle of the night and saying: I'm not going to make it; to being authentic and safe, to giving. It's life's response to: Anochi, Yahweh, Elohim.

Through history, the greatest people in the world, were people who were willing to die for Anochi. Peter, they tell us, died by being crucified upside down - and it resulted in one of the biggest revivals in the world. In Foxes Book of Martyrs, it talks about Philip, and the way he died.

Philip was in a town called Heliopolis, and Caesar built these columns in the town. He said: you have to walk through those columns, to pay homage to me as God. Philip walked around the columns - He wouldn't go through them, so the authorities of the city brought him and his family out; and they said: you're going to walk through those columns. He said: I will not.

He had six children. They took the youngest and killed it. He said: now you'll walk through. He said: I will not. The story goes that his children screamed out: dad, dad, don't do it! God is worth more than that! Wow! So one at a time, they killed Philips children. Then they got to his wife, and she said: don't do it - Gods plan for these people, is worth more than you giving in now - and they killed her. Then they got to him, and he said: kill me if you like, I won't walk through. They said: we're not going to kill you; we're going to let you live with the fact that your family died. That was Philip.

One of the greatest revivals ever to happen, happened after that; and then the story goes that the Roman platoon, who was in charge of the killing, actually came to Philip later and said: you must serve the one true God - tell us about Him. Philip led every one of those people, who killed his family, to the Lord; and later they came back to him, and they said: can we call you dad? We took your children away from you, but we'd like to be your children now. Can we call you dad?

He said: absolutely. I did it, so that you could have Anochi; that the church will find it's greatness in making a life's response, that makes our whole life about responding to Gods offer - to increase our authority inside the hedge of praise and submission.

We don't get authority by aggressiveness; or through demands. We actually gain our authority through being generous, and serving, kind and compassionate, gracious, slow to anger.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, to be your God. Have no other Gods before Me”. That is the message of the Ten Commandments.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we honour You, and we thank You for who You are. We proclaim that: you are King of the Universe; and you are God and we are not - so we give You our life again afresh and anew. We respond to Your offer of Anochi.

Just right now, under your breath, why don't you have a response to God. I want you to say something like: “Thank You for getting me out of slavery”.

Why don't you just become aware right now, of where would your life be, if God hadn't touched you. It's very important to remember where we came from.

Lord, thank You for Your offer of Anochi. Thank You for Your offer to increase us inside the hedge of praise and submission.

I want you to respond with two things:

1) I want you to ask Him: Lord, how can I make that happen for someone else? Lord, give me a name. Give me a name of someone I need to call, even tonight and encourage them, bless them, pray for them. Give me some people I need to feed. Give me some naked people I need to clothe. Maybe I need to write an extra cheque and help some people in Africa. Maybe that's what I need to do.

I need to make Anochi happen for somebody else. How can my life be a response to Anochi? How will you make it happen for others? How will you let the world know what God looks like? How will you respond? What are you going to do about it? Anochi Jehovah Elohim.

2) I want your second response to be personal to you and God - yet out loud.

You serve a God who believes in you, more than you believe in Him. You serve a God who reached down and got you out of slavery, before you did anything to deserve it. Remember that, and never forget it, and be merciful and kind to other people.

You're meant to show the world what God looks like, when a person develops their whole life as a response to Anochi. He's the best God. You don't need another God. Have no other Gods before Him, none!

I'd like you to just spend one or two minutes - maybe just one, just one minute out loud, beginning to thank God. You want to do it in the spirit, do it in the spirit. If you want to do it in English, do it in English; but whether you do it in English, or do it in the spirit, do it loud!

Foundations for Your Success (3 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Thu 14 May 2009  « Back to Top

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We don't like spirit, because we can't control it. It doesn't obey our rules. Where is God? How big is He?

If you want to live a successful life, you've got to organise your life to where God is with you all the time; not a statue/idol that's with you one minute, but not the next. We can't make God manageable.

To have the best relationship with God, don't make your prayer life about words and needs, He already knows what your needs are.

The supply of everything I need, which is as close to me as the air that I'm breathing, I stop and become aware of that.

Review

Last night we talked about the first line of the Ten Commandments, all night long: I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God.

What we discovered was: God's heart towards us.

I hope what you took away from last night, is that: God is nice. We're actually more comfortable with a God who's judgemental, than we are with a God who's loving. I reckon it takes more faith to put trust in the fact that ‘God is Kind’, than it is that: ‘God is full of Justice.

I want for us to really get our head around the fact that: God wants to marry us, leaven and all - He wants to be with us.

Main Message

The second commandment, in Exodus 20:4 – “You shall not make to yourself any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands of those that love Me and keep My commandments.”

There's a couple of ways to read this... The rabbis taught was that every scripture is interpretable to four levels okay: Peshat; Remez; Derash; and Sod; [meaning: Plain; Hint; Seek; Secret].

At the end of the day, that we're just Joe and Jane okay, we're just these guys (draws stick figures). If you were here last night, you'll remember there are a lot of complications with a 4-D person trying to communicate with a 2-D one, huge.

If I said simple things like: Joe, in my world I can extend my arm out. Joe says: what in the world are you talking about? I can't. He's stuck in his 2-D world; so given the number of complications that exist between a 4-D being and a 2-D being, can you imagine the complications that exist between an infinitely-dimensional God, trying to communicate with a 4-D person? At the end of the day, we are just finite; so the rabbis said: “an infinite God limited Himself to the language of men”.

That's how the Bible came about, that God humbled Himself, and He limited Himself to the language of men. So because God limited Himself to the language of men: every scripture has four levels of interpretation; and is like a diamond, that depending on how you turn it in the light, has 70 different facets of truth. So we just never can get our head totally around God. We're just Joe and Jane.

But this command, on the surface, is this: “Don't put statues of other Gods in your house, and bow down to them” - and I think that that would be fairly irrelevant to us. Most of us would not struggle with that. If someone gave you a statue, of something that could have been God - there's something inside of you that just won't allow you to place it in your house. You'd think it's creepy, and it would give you a really weird feeling inside, so you just wouldn't do that.

So then the question becomes: what else is going on here? What is deeper; and there's two big things going on here, two incredible questions. When we answer these questions, or begin to journey to the answer to these questions, we begin to lay a foundation for the success in our life.

Those questions are this: 1) How big is God? 2) Where, exactly, is He?

These are the deeper underlying truths going on here. If you realise that once you ‘make God into an idol’, then there is a place where that idol lives - a place where He can be ‘here’, but He's not there. Once God becomes an idol, once there's an idol made to represent who God is, then you can organise your life around God being: ‘with you’ in some circumstances; and God ‘not being with you’ in others.

God says: if you want the best life, we're not going to do it that way. We're not going to do that!

Keep in mind the context. How would the First Century people have seen this? These people were enslaved for 430 years; and they saw this is as a 10-word Katubah; a 10-word marriage proposal. God is wanting to marry them; and not just to marry them, God is wanting to use them to create the best culture the earth has ever seen - a culture so blessed, that the whole world's going to want in on it.

If you remember the first word of the Ten Commandments was ‘Anochi’, which meant: your authority is multiplying inside the hedge of praise and submission. The first word of the Ten Commandments was Grace. The first word of the Ten Commandments was: this is my idea to increase you, to make you bigger.

He says: if you want to live a big successful life, you've got to organise your life, to where: God is with you all the time; that you don't worship a God that's: with you one minute, and not with you the next. That's going to lead to all kinds of problems, so we can't do that.

We also can't make God manageable; we have to examine our ideas around God.

Perception is everything. The Hebrew word for iniquity is the word Avon (A-V-N).The Hebrew language was originally pictures, not letters, so every Hebrew letter is a picture; so every Hebrew word is a comic strip. Avon was: ‘an eye’, ‘a hook’, and ‘fish-multiplying’. So a Hebrew person read the word ‘iniquity’ as: “whatever your eye hooks to, multiplies”.

Here's the principle of the second commandment: however you conceptualise, God gets huge - and you actually begin to buy into this lie that says: you're right, and everybody else is wrong – as if you, a 4-D person, has figured this infinitely-dimensional God out; and we can't do that. We can't live like that!

So my first question is: where is God? In white European cultures, innately we believe that: God is in heaven. We believe that God is in heaven, because we come from Europe; there's a really big powerful church in Europe, with big buildings named after apostles, who they said (they've done a lot of good things in the world - I'm not damning them) - in their idea of God, God was: ‘way up there’; and we're: ‘way down here’. You need to have somebody go between you and God - Gods are far off.

They even influenced the translation of the Lord's Prayer. When Jesus was talking about how to relate with God, He said: ...and when you pray, do not keep on babbling (like the Pentecostals do), for they think they'll be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, nor in your prayers make it about your needs - for don't you know, your Father in heaven knows what you need, even before you ask.

Jesus says: if you want to have the best relationship with God, don't make your prayer life about words, and about needs. Well, umm hello!

Let me ask you this question: if you took all the words, and you took all the needs out of your prayer life, what would be left?

Jesus says: if you want the best life with God, don't make your prayer life about words, and about needs. But when you pray, say this: “My Father, who is in heaven” - horrible translation. The word there is ‘Ouranos’, which is plural. The problem with translating it 'heaven' is that: 1) it doesn't fit; 2) if our Father is in heaven, where's heaven? Is it somewhere in New Zealand? Is it in Longreach, Australia? Is it in Utah somewhere? Like where's heaven?

So Jesus would have been saying: My Father, who is in a place, which I have no idea how to get to? No, come on!

If you're going to translate it ‘heaven’, you have to at least translate it ‘heavens’, because it's plural; but in 90 per cent of Hellenistic literature, the word Ouranos is translated 'air that we breathe'.

So Jesus was saying: my Father (who is as close to me as the air that I'm breathing) - hallowed be thy name. The word ‘hallowed’ just means: to ‘render’, ‘acknowledge’, or ‘become aware of’.

As a strict Jew, this is how you would read it: “the supply of everything I need - which is as close to me as the air that I'm breathing - I stop and become aware of that”.

The Hebrew people called it ‘God-awareness’; that we walk in an awareness of God all the time - and that is prayer.

It actually fits the first mention of the word prayer in the Bible, in Genesis 4, last verse - “Finally, the sons of Enosh called upon the name of the Lord”.

The word ‘called’ there, is three letters in Hebrew - three heads. The first letter is the picture of: ‘front of the head’; the second letter is the picture of: ‘back of the head’; and the third picture is: an ‘ox head going into a yoke’.

So the first idea of prayer in the whole Bible was: “a turning of the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden”. Get your head off yourself, off your words, off your needs - and you get it onto your Father - who's as close to you, as the air that you're breathing.

To the Hebrew people, the actual name of God was 'breath'. When Moses asked God: what is Your name; it's translated: My name is Jehovah. Actually what He said was: My name is Yod-He-Vav-He; which phonetically does not go together. It'd be like me saying: my name is Norshbin-Jabin-Yeshbinshavenhavenjaven - it didn't even make any sense.

Moses grew up in a culture where: if you could learn your Gods name, then you could control him. So Moses says: I want to control you - what is your name? God says: you can't box me in - are you kidding me? My name is Yod-He-Vav-He; essentially, My name is breath. The rabbis taught that the name of God was actually breathing; that essentially it mimicked the sound of breathing. Later they wrote things like: the name of God sustains life.

When you give birth to a baby, the first thing it has to do, to live, is to say the name of God. It has to breathe. The last thing someone does, before they die,: is they take their last breath; they quit saying the name of God. As you're listening to me, all of you, involuntarily, in and out, you're saying the name of God, over and over and over again, in order to sustain your life.

How gracious is God, that if you were to make an appointment with an atheist at a coffee shop, that the very breath it would take for him to say: “I do not believe in God”, he's actually utilising the name, of the one he doesn't believe in, to sustain his own life? How nice is God to let him keep breathing?

It is the name of God, that: “God is as close to you, as the air that you're breathing.

In order to live the best life, you have to live a life with that awareness; that if God is somewhere else, and you're in here, then that does not work. If God is in here, with you now; but when you go to work tomorrow, God's not there - I would say to you that we're missing something; that actually, the best life is found in: every morning, becoming aware, that the Mighty One is in you now. He's in you!

They called it ‘God consciousness’- that was prayer. If I go to the mall today (the giant Hastings mall, walking through the incredible metropolis that is down-town Hastings), that walking through that... If I stop and become aware of: the Mighty One - that's as close to me as the air that I'm breathing; that I'm just as much in the spirit, just as much in prayer - as if I was on my knees somewhere.

In accessing God, you have to understand where He actually is. What is the proximity of God? If your concept of God (your idol around God), is that: God is in heaven, and you're down here - I would say that we're missing something, that we're not living the best life; that God is actually as close to you as the air that you're breathing. That's why at rabbis, when they prayed for people, a lot of times it says: “and they breathed on them” - Jesus did this all the time.

There are websites dedicated to how horrible Benny Hinn was for ‘breathing on people’; but all you've got to do is look at how Jesus prayed - on many occasions (John 20 is one of them) it says: “and with that he said: receive the Holy Spirit - and he breathed on them”.

Why? They believed God existed in their breath. If God lives in my breath, then if I breathe on you - fair enough. So you have this idea of God: that He is everywhere; so where is God? Then the second question is this: how big is He?

How big is God? Qhat are my concepts of God? What are my concepts about the things that God would, or would not, do? All of us have them, and whatever they are, they are idols. They're idols! Whatever they are, however we conceptualise God: God would always do this; God would never do that; God would go this far; God wouldn't go this far - whatever those concepts of God are, they become idols.

The first part of the second command is the obvious one, which is: don't have statues of other Gods in your house. Don't carry pictures of your old boyfriends around, this sort of concept.

But the deeper concept, for those of us who've gotten past that, is this: don't live your life with God being here, but not here. God needs to be with us everywhere. For us to live the best life, we need to walk in a constant awareness that: the Mighty One is with me; right now He's with me, just now, the Mighty One is with me now. He's with me now, and He could do mighty things through me.

Whatever Jesus did, He could do through me; because I'm not a big shot - I'm a very small shot, with a big shot living in me. It's God in me, that God is my life. In the Hebrew language, there is no word, not one word, for ‘spiritual’; or for 'spiritual life'. That's something we made up, this idea that: this part of our life is a spiritual life; that part of our life is a natural life.

No, no, your whole life is spirit. Your whole life is spiritual, because you're a spirit. We spend forever trying to make our natural man spiritual; but you can't make a natural man spiritual, your whole life is spiritual. Everything you do is spiritual, everything to the smallest minute detail - it's all spiritual; and so where is God?

How big is He? What limits or boxes do you put around God, and say: God has to operate in this? How can you box breath? I think God messes with people's heads! In the scriptures, and every time a man tried to get his head around what God was, He just said - He gave him things you can't box up: I'm breath; I'm wind - can't do that.

He describes Himself as two things. Physics says: Force equals Mass times Acceleration; but God describes Himself as things that have infinite force, but no weight. He said things like: I'm light. Light weighs nothing; but a laser can cut through steel.

Infinite force, no weight; God says: that's Me, I'm an anomaly. I don't obey - I make the rules - that's Me.

He said: “I'm the word”. Words have infinite force; but no weight? Oh a word: I hate you - infinite force, no weight. I love you - infinite force, no weight. God said: I'm that. I have infinite force, but I can't be measured. You can't put a box around Me. A word has infinite force, but no weight? That's the word.

So the commandment is two things. On the surface it's: don't worship man-made things; but underneath that is: don't try to represent Me with anything you can create.

Observation: 1) while He was getting this command, the people were down there already - making an idol! It was just ‘in them’, to need something to worship - an object. God is trying to get across, that in order to have the best life: we have to walk with an awareness of God - that He is bigger than anything we can ever imagine.

Let me give you a couple of ways to say that...

1) Don't try to make me Manageable. God's saying: don't try to ‘manage’ me - you can't manage me! I'm things like: light; and word; and mercy; and wind.

2) Don't try to define me to a Location. Don't try to make me live here, and not here - that's not Me.

You realise this was antithetical to every major culture in the world. Every major culture in the world, at that point - their Gods lived in temples, and they built things to represent them.

God says: I'm so much bigger than that, you can't even imagine it, can't even imagine it. Don't put Me in a place where you could be with Me, or without Me. I am your life.

What boxes do I have for God? What boxes do I make God fit in? Only you know the answer.

Here are some boxes: He's in heaven - God's in heaven.

You know the idea that ‘God is in heaven’ is exactly what this command is trying to get us not to do? Don't define me to a location. I'm everywhere. What God would, and wouldn't do - we have all of these things. This is different for every culture, and this command takes care of all others.

If God is the centre of our life: you wouldn't steal - because you trust God; you wouldn't murder - because you believe God will take vengeance; you won’t covet - because you have God at the centre. To take God out of the centre - it ruins everything else.

After the first two commands, God adds a warning: “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God - punishing the children of the sins of the fathers, for the third and fourth generation; but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Me, and keep My commands”.

God is not trying to make us good. God is trying to make us free, and in order to live the freest life, two things have to be true:

1) We have to walk all the time in an awareness of Almighty God.

You live in New Zealand for goodness sake, this ought to be easy. I mean, how hard would it be, to be riding down some of these roads, and just stop for 10 seconds, and look at that great mountain and think: the God who put that there - He lives in me. He's as close to me as the air that I'm breathing. What would your life look like, if you stopped and felt the truth of that all the time; and in your imagination, you built that down to be true in your life?

The Bible says – and we quote this all the time – “the truth will set you free”. Actually it says: “You will know the truth - and the truth will set you free”. Truth, in and of itself, doesn't make you free at all; it’s about knowing the truth - and I'm talking about a deep knowing.

Hebrew people ‘feel’ thoughts; Greek people ‘think’ thoughts.

We're followers of Jesus Christ in here, and most all of us would believe that: Jesus Christ has forgiven us of every single sin? Jesus forgave you of every single sin? I'm not trying to confuse you - so you believe the truth, that: Jesus has forgiven you of every single sin, and you're completely innocent before God.

Now with that being a believed truth, how many of us have felt guilty in the last week? Yeah, so you believe you're innocent, but you feel guilty. That's not doing anything for you. When you believe you're innocent, but you feel guilty, then the truth that you're innocent doesn't matter! We have to take the truth that God is with me. What we just stopped, and became aware, that the Mighty One was in me; that He's not in heaven somewhere - He's actually in me!

God's not trying to make us good - He's trying to make us free.

Deuteronomy is a re-telling of the Book of Exodus; and in the re-telling of this command, something interesting happens...

Deuteronomy 4:13 – “and He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgements, so that you might do them in the land where you go over to possess it. Therefore take good heed to yourselves, for you saw no kind of likeness in the day Jehovah spoke to you in Horeb out of the midst of fire”.

So there's that whole ‘he spoke out of the fire’. They ‘saw languages, inside fire’ at Mount Sinai.

He says: “remember you didn't see any likeness”. You saw things that you couldn't get your head around - things like: voices inside fire; wind; trumpet sounds - things that you can't contain.

“...lest you act corruptly, and make yourself a graven image, the likeness of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish in the waters beneath the earth. And lest you lift your eyes up to the heavens, and when you see the sun, moon and stars, all the host of heaven, lest you should become driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has allotted to all the nations under heaven.”

If you can think it up - I'm not that.

Deuteronomy 4:23 (a couple of verses down) – “Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He made with you, and make yourself a graven image, a likeness of anything which Jehovah your God has forbidden you. For Jehovah your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. When your fathers, sons, and sons of sons, and when you have remained long in the land, and have dealt corruptly by making a graven image the likeness of anything, and shall do evil in the sight of the Lord your God, to provoke Him to anger.”

If you can imagine it - I'm bigger than that. Anytime you take a concept, that you as a 4-D person can put God in; and you say: “God has to live in here”, all you're doing is cheapening your life. You're going against the very nature that God made us to be.

Let me give you a common, and currently very relevant, example. Do you guys know, that the style now, is for men to wear women's jeans? Have you seen this? You guys are wearing them now – unbelievable! No, no, they're cool, they're very cool. That's what's supposed to be happening. What they do now is: they cut men's jeans, so that they would fit women's legs - and they're called skinny-jeans, right? I was given a lesson on this, I was doing the conference at the Dream Centre - huge, huge thing - and the whole band was wearing these jeans. In one of the breaks they said: Shane, in order to be cool man, you got to get you some skinny jeans! And I said: do I look skinny to you? They said: no, no, no, that's cool man. You can't be cool, unless you're wearing skinny jeans.

I said: but they look very uncomfortable! Like: highly, highly, uncomfortable. They said: oh they're very uncomfortable - but they're very cool! They're very cool, and so you have to get these. You have to go get some skinny jeans.

They said: as a matter of fact, we'll “sow them into your life” - we'll pay for them! So they took me to this shop in the Gold Coast called Diesel, which is like the skinny-jean capital of the world. So we walked in, and these jeans were $550 Australian dollars - wow! Whoa! $550, so I walked in, and I said: listen, they're going to buy them for me, but I want the most ‘unskinny’ skinny jeans you have. I want the skinny jeans for fat guys alright - that's what I want.

So we walked in, and so they got me the fattest skinny-jeans that they could get, and they got me a shirt to go with it, and I went into the dressing room to change. I squeezed my big rear-end into them, and just really trying to get my legs up in them; and once it got to my waist it was fine - I mean they fit my waist. It was cut fine at the waist. It's just the way they cut the legs, and everything else... so you squeeze, squeeze yourself into these jeans.

I held my breath. I could hardly breathe, and I buttoned them up, and then put the shirt on, and I walked out, and the girl that was working at the Diesel shop that was putting it all together, I walked out and she went... (shakes her head). And so I agreed with her. I went back, and I was peeling myself back out of these jeans, and... You know when you have a moment, when you look at yourself in the mirror - and I started to have a moment of feeling sorry for myself. The thought hit me: you're getting old! You can't wear cool jeans, you're just getting old. You're just really, really, really getting old - and so I'm putting my other jeans back on; and I realised - it hit me!

I looked at myself in the mirror, and I said: you're not getting old. Men were designed by God, to have room in the front of their pants! To go against the basic grain of that... is asking for trouble! You just are; and I would say to you guys: bless you guys. How you're sitting with one leg in the air, I have no idea! Or they're both in the air spread? Okay, that's fair enough. I've no idea what's going on back there, but one day the skinny jeans aren't going to be cool anymore - and you're going to look back on this moment and go: what was I thinking!? I lived in a way I couldn't breathe - for what? To be cool! Young men - you look pretty cool. I can tell you, you were designed by God to have room in the front of your jeans man, be free! God designed it!

Any time you go against God's basic wiring, you're asking for a problem - a big one. We could apply that in 100 different areas, but I can tell you this: God wired you to be a spirit; so when you try to operate with God outside of spirit - when you try to say: God's got to fit in my box - no, no, no. God's got to fit His box.

When you say: God lives here - but not here; we've stepped outside of spirit, and you're going against the grain. You may as well be trying to squeeze yourself into skinny jeans. You're going way against the grain.

Exodus 33:18. Once again we're asking the question: where is God; and how big is He? One of the great leaders of all time is having an encounter with God, and this is what happens between Moses and God. It says:

“and he said: I beseech you, let me see Your glory”. So Moses says: God - let me see all of You.

“And He said: I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I'll be gracious, and I'll have mercy on whom I'll have mercy”. In other words: you can't possibly understand Me.

He said: “you cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live. And the Lord said: behold, there's a place by Me, and you shall stand upon a rock, and it will be while My glory passes by, I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and cover you with My hand. And I will take away My hand and I will show you my back side, but My face cannot be seen”.

There's a lot going on here, let me give you a couple of thoughts:

1) Form versus Function.

Hebrew people see function; Greek people see form. It says: “and God hid Moses in the crevasse of the rock with His hand” - so us white people from Europe we all picture a giant hand - God's hand.

But a Hebrew person thinks function. He thinks: what does a hand do? A hand holds, comforts, hides, protects, touches. It's all about what a hand does. The ‘strong arm of the Lord’, the ‘hand of God’ - these sorts of things are all function. Why?

God does not have a hand, God is spirit. As a matter of fact, to try to put a form on God, is exactly what this command is trying to get us not to do - so you're thinking: function, not form. “and God hid Moses in the crevasse of the rock with His hand” - He's hiding him, He's a shield - it's a cover, it's a cloud; because the very next sentence doesn't work...

If you're picturing a giant hand, then when it says: “and God showed Moses his back side”... I mean, if God's hand is big, God's butt would be huge! It would just be: WHOA! It's covering the sky! We wouldn't think that way, right?

So it's not God's “hand” - it's what God's hand “is doing”; and it's not God's “back-side” - it's about the function of the back-side of God. So what is the function of the back-side of God?

The Bible says: “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all”.

Psalms says: “Blessed is the man who walks into the presence of the Most High, for he's dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty” - which leads a question that: if God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all - then how does a being of ‘pure light’ cast a shadow? In order to cast a shadow, something else has to be brighter.

But it says: “Blessed is the man who walks into the presence of the Most High, for he's dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty”; and so the picture is that: there's a man in the presence of pure light. There is a shadow being cast, but who's shadow is it? The man's; and so what its saying is that, when you're in the presence of God - the shadow of the Almighty is you. It's you!

You see this come into play in the New Testament. The Bible says that Peter was so ‘in the presence of God’, that his very shadow carried the power of God - and raised somebody from the dead; so you see this kind of stuff, where you're ‘in the presence of God’, all the time.

It says: “God is light, in Him is no darkness at all”. We know from science that light is travelling away from us at 186,282 miles a second (speed of light). We know that the universe is expanding (at the speed of light); and we know (from the Bible) that God is holding the universe together - so doesn't it stand to reason that the universe would expand, at the same speed, of the substance of which God is? So the universe is expanding at the speed of light; God is light; and God is holding the universe together.

The purpose of light is to hold pictures. Your eye doesn't see anything; it just takes a picture, and sends the image to your brain, and your brain tells you what you see. If Moses saw the “back-side of light”, he would have seen where light had been - which would be the past! It would be the past - which is how the rabbis said that he wrote Genesis - without living it.

Imagine Moses sitting there, in the crevasse of the rock: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and darkness; and the spirit of God...” - he saw the past! Moses could only handle God's trace parts. We cannot even begin to comprehend the smallest part of God.

To think that we could ‘figure God out’ puts us past Moses. To think that we could confine God to a particular system of theology is prideful. One of the Hebrew pictures of God is breath. How can we confine that?

Isaiah 26:4, the prophet is commenting on the character of God, and this is what it says: “Trust...”

You don't have to ‘trust’ anything that you already know. You didn't get in the car tonight and go: I trust that I know my way to church. You didn't get in the car tonight, put it in D and hit the gas, and go: well I hope it goes forward and not backwards. You didn't sit on one of these chairs tonight and go: man, I hope this holds me - I'm ‘trusting’ that holds me. No, you know the chair will hold you, you know the car, if you put it in D, is going to go forward. You know your way to church. You know your way.

You don't trust anything that you know fully. Trust, in and of itself, has an unknown element to it. It has something unknown to it.

“Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah, is the everlasting strength”.

The word for ‘everlasting’ is ‘olam’. Olam is often translated ‘everlasting’; everlasting-life; but the word ‘olam’ actually means: ‘to the vanishing point’, ‘properly concealed’ - it's like chasing the horizon.

The prophet Isaiah is saying that, part of walking with God is: embracing what you can know about Him; but another part of walking with God is ‘the trust factor’. There are things about God we'll never be able to comprehend, because to chase after God, would be chasing after something we will never find the end of. God is so huge, that to embrace this God, is to embrace a God beyond what we can comprehend. This takes faith, because we're stuck in time and space, and God is not.

We can't make time move any faster or any slower. We can only be in one space at one time, and we can't beam ourselves anywhere. God is the exact opposite of that.

In John 4:24, there's this lady, and she says: my ancestors say to worship God on this mountain, and your ancestors say to worship God “on that mountain - what do you say?” And Jesus is like: umm, hold on, don't you get it? Neither is true.

“God is spirit, and they who worship Him, must worship Him in spirit”. You can't confine God like that.

God is as close to you as the air that you're breathing.

As big as He is, eternally huge in the cosmos - He still is infinitely concerned about you, and willing to enter your very breath.

God is so humble, that He's willing to live in your very life, and be carried by you, to make you a divine taxi cab.

In order to live the best life, we have to live our life eternally-conscious that: the Mighty One is in us, and He is bigger than anything we could ever imagine. Jesus is saying: God is not a thing, existing in time or space. Things exist in time and space.

We can define everything by space and time. We know that that's a water bottle, because of the boundaries that it carries: the container that it's in, the way it looks. We know that this is a podium, because of how it looks; the boundaries that make.

God is saying: I'm not that. I'm going to be different than anything you ever know. I'm not going to be definable.

We don't like spirit, because we can't control it. It doesn't obey our rules. With God we lose control, because we can't fathom Him.

One of the biggest barriers to having a great relationship with God is: if you're addicted to being right, and are a control freak - which wouldn't apply to any of us would it? Making others bend to their will?

With God we lose control. To worship a God, who is spirit, means: we have to give up control, and choose to just trust. You can't get your head around Him. You can't be right about it.

God does not expect you to be right. The pressure is off from that. The rabbis said it this way: If we spend two hours tonight talking about God, if 95 per cent of what we said was wrong, God would still be pleased - just because we gave up a night to talk about Him. You're a 4-D being. You're just Joe and Jane man, just Joe and Jane. You're doing your best to try to figure out a God, an infinitely-dimensional God, and you're a four-dimensional person.

God does not expect you to get it right; God just expects you to journey. When you look at Jesus, the people who ticked Jesus off the worst was the people who actually thought: they figured it out; who thought: they were in, and everybody else was out.

One rabbi said: “There are things that I can know about God because He revealed it, but there is also a sense of God that I cannot fathom. To walk with this God, means I have to embrace both sides”.

I have to embrace both sides. God is indescribable. Let me give you one example (I stole this from Louie Giglio) that really spoke to my heart. If you just take a piece of paper, and you look and the thickness of the paper; the distance from the earth to the sun (one astronomical unit) was one piece of paper. To have a stack of paper representing the distance from the earth to the nearest star, you would need a stack of paper 21 feet tall (268,335au). That's unfathomable!

To represent the distance across the known galaxy (10e5 light years, or 6.3 billion au), we would need a stack of paper 310 miles tall). To represent the distance across the known universe, we would need a piece of paper 31 million miles tall.

What if we could get in a capsule, and go to the end of everything we can know about God's creation? What would happen when we got to the end? There would be a door there, and you would open that door, and there would be a whole other realm unexplored. God is Olam - you can never get to the end of His bigness. If you got to the end of the known universe, and you opened the door - there would be a little garden gnome playing a flute!

If you got to the end of the known universe, and you opened the door, you would actually open it to a whole other realm of things we haven't even thought of. God is that big. This is why we're constantly learning things.

Think about medicine now, versus then (50 years ago). When I was 12 or 13 years old, I had a stomach ache, and I told mum. I said: mum, I can't go to school today, I've got a stomach ache; but she wasn't sure if I was faking it or not, so she said: I might have to take you to the doctor - and normally that would do it; but I said: don't care, I'm hurting.

She told the doctor: he says he's got a stomach ache, I can't tell if he's faking or not; and the doctor said: don't worry about it, I'll figure it out. He said: this ain't my first rodeo, I'll figure it out. So he walked in there and he said: son, let me ask you. He said: you're stomach's hurting? I said: very badly. He said: well I'm going to have to check it out. I said: what? He said: I'm going to have to look up in there!

Now I was only 13 years old, but I know there was only two ways there - I had a 50/50 shot - neither one of them sounded pleasant; and I said: is that really necessary? Can't you just give me some pills or something? He said: well I can give you pills, but I need to look to see if what I'm giving you pills for is actually it - so I need to look. So he reached behind him, and he picked up something that looked like this. He held it, and he looked at it in such a weird way. He said: this is called the ‘Iron Horse’ - that was his word for it. “This is called the Iron Horse - I'm going to lube this up, and I'm going to insert it in your rectum”. They say it so nicely!

“I'm going to insert it in there, press as far as I can (until it stops) - and then I'm going to blow air! When I blow air, your intestines are going to straighten up – so I can shove it some more; then I'm going to blow air again, and shove it some more. When I get it as far up your behind as I can, I'm going to insert a camera in there – and then pull it out slowly, and look and see what I can see.

I thought: is that really necessary? I mean like: honestly? I said: look, I'm just hurting, give me some pills. He said: no, I've got to... I said: listen, you do what you got to do. I'm in pain, you just do what you've got to do - and he looked at my mum, and he said: “he ain't faking”! He's telling the truth! He said: man, we haven't done anything like that since the '50s! And then it hit me later - those poor people who grew up in the '50s. They actually did that to people!

If you're here tonight, and you've been Iron-Horsed, we need to pray for you for deliverance! I mean - my goodness! If you're here tonight, and they did that to you - I am so sorry! We'll be glad to pray for you tonight.

But think about it, think about medicine now. Do you realise that in 50 years, we're going to look at how we treated cancer, and we're going to go: what were we thinking? We're constantly learning new things.

God is infinitely big, but God is also infinitely small.

In 1911 they discovered atoms. Before that, they said: molecules were the smallest part of you. Then they said: wait a minute, no, no, no - atoms make up molecules. Later they discovered protons, neutrons and electrons. So they said: the protons, neutrons and electrons make up the atoms, so they're actually the smallest part of you. Then in the 1950s, they discovered baryons - which make up the electrons; so they said: wait a minute, no - baryons are now the smallest part of you. Then in the '60s they discovered mesons, which make up the baryons, which make up the electrons; they said: no, wait a minute, okay, mesons are the smallest part of you. Then in 1968 they discovered quarks, which make up the mesons, which make up the baryons, which make up the electrons, which make up the atoms, which make up the molecules, which make up you. Then in the '80s they discovered something called gluons, which make up the quarks, which make up the mesons, which make up the baryons, which make up the electrons, which make up the atoms, which make up the molecules which make up you.

How many of you know, that the longer we journey - and the bigger the microscopes get - the smaller the intricate details of your life are actually going to be? God is infinitely big; but to fully understand God, you have to understand: not only is God ‘infinitely big’, God is ‘infinitely small’ - concerned about every small detail in your very breath - because that is where He lives.

To truly ‘walk with God’ means embracing the idea that: I will never walk beyond God. I have to trust Him.

Are you a co-operator with God; or a manipulator of Him?

When we make God manageable, our concept of God becomes an idol; and here's the worst part of it: we always force ourselves to bow to our idols; but worse than that, we force everybody else to bow to our concepts of God.

Whatever idol about God we make - we make everybody else bow to what we think is right (and we're in, and everybody else is out).

So let me close this session out with a few application questions...

1) What are my concepts of God?

2) Are those concepts bringing me to light, or to darkness? Are they putting me in bondage, or leading me to freedom?

3) Where are my ‘concepts of God’ making my ‘addiction to be right’ and ‘to control’ even worse? Where is my concept of God making me an unloving person? Where do I believe that I'm right and everyone else is wrong - I'm in, everybody else is out?

4) Last question. Can I give up all that - to simply trust God - that He is the big Mighty One living in me?

Closing Prayer

Lord we give you that thought tonight - that you are actually living in me.

Just right now, where you're sitting, would you shut your awareness out to everything else, and just become aware of: the Mighty One, who can bear the burden.

What would you feel like, if you could feel God now? What would it feel like, if He flooded your very soul?

What would it feel like, if this room filled up with water, and that water was the love of God? What would it feel like if it was enveloping you now?

What would it feel like, if God got bigger in your life? What would happen in your life, if God was huge?

Lord we bless you tonight, and we proclaim to you that: You are King of the universe - and we are not.

Forgive us Lord, for where we've conceptualised You, and made an idol out of You.

Forgive us Lord, for where we bowed to something other than You - and forgive us even more, for where we made other people bow to it.

Forgive us for that Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Remember the Sabbath, Keep it Holy (4 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Thu 14 May 2009  « Back to Top

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Is God still the creator, even when He's resting? Am I me, regardless of what I'm producing; or is my entire life and worth defined by the number of bricks I can make?

Anything we do around Sabbath that puts people in bondage, instead of bringing relief to a situation, misses the point. The last thing a group of slaves needs is another piece of bondage - and we're no different.

When our worth becomes about bricks, we become machines. Sabbath is a day where you live like your work is done, even if it isn't - and that is healing. The world goes on, because God is God, and you are not

Exodus 20:8. Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy.

If you're here right now, and you're going: oh goody, goody, goody, he's going to tackle something controversial - no. Let me tell you what I'm not going to do tonight: I'm not going to try to solve theological problems around Sabbath. I'm not going to talk about what day it is. I'm not going to talk about: what time you celebrate it; what you're allowed to do; what you're not allowed to do.

All of it misses the point. What I am going to do, is try to bring out the heart of Sabbath - by relating to the first people who would have heard this command - people who'd been slaves for 430 years. All they knew was slavery, days defined strictly by how they made bricks; and finally God says: here's what we're going to do. We're going to create a culture that is so awesome, that the whole world's going to want in on it; and here are the first 10 rules of that culture: You should take a day off.

If you've been a slave for 430 years, and God lays down the law; and one of the laws is: “take a day off” - you are relieved! You are not put in bondage - so anything we do around Sabbath that puts people in bondage (instead of bringing relief to a situation), misses the point. Any box you put around Sabbath, that does not bring relief, it brings bondage.

The last thing a group of slaves needs is: another piece of bondage. And you know what? You're no different than them - something has had your life. I want to put a spin on the Sabbath, one that might set us free, if we catch the spirit of it.

Exodus 5:15 (same group of people) – “and the overseers of the sons of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh saying: why do you deal with your servants so harshly? There is no straw given to your servants, and they say to us: make bricks; and behold your servants are beaten, but the fault is in your own people. But he said: you are lazy! You are lazy! Therefore I say: let us go, let us sacrifice to Jehovah. Therefore go now and work; for there shall be no straw given you, yet you shall deliver the same number of bricks”.

Please do not read this just for the content. Read this for emotion, and try to identify with these people, and maybe ask yourself: who am I in this story?

“And the overseers of the sons of Israel saw themselves in affliction after it was said: you shall not take away from the bricks of your daily tasks.”

This is a culture that's all about: what you are doing, for the person who owns you? When you can't produce for the person who owns you, they kill you. Life in Egypt was all about one thing: achievement, and production of bricks. From birth to death, for 430 years, it was all about: what you could do for somebody else.

It was all about what you could work, and achieve, for somebody else. Somebody else was defining your worth, based on one thing: how many bricks could you make. Are we any different today? I would say: the answer is no.

For your wives, a lot of times - your worth is defined by: how well you keep your house; how well you keep your children; how well you keep up with all the people's schedules; how well you do all the things that a woman has to do. And now we're journeying into a place where, not only does a woman have to do all those things; but because of taxation and what-not, women also have to be breadwinners as well - because you can't eat without both people working. What happens is: your worth, as a wife, becomes defined by: how many bricks you can make?

Husbands, I can tell the wives: TV makes the guys out to be the bad guys; but I can tell you this: there is tremendous pressure on men to provide even more. It's inside the heart of every man, to feel his success or his failure, based on: how well his family eats. When he has to look at his wife and say: I'm sorry, you're going to have to work for us to live - something happens inside of him, that starts to destroy him. Why? Because, in a way, his worth is defined by: how many bricks he does, or does not, produce.

I would say to you tonight, that our society in fact is not much different than theirs. We don't actually have a Pharaoh standing over us, but we have: our conscience; the TV – Oprah and Dr Phil. We have people telling us, day in and day out - that our worth is defined by: how well we achieve. Our worth is defined by: how many bricks we do, or do not, make.

I think if we're honest, we will find ourselves in this truth - that we actually are no different than the people who got up every day, and when they went to bed at night, their worth was defined by: how well they produced bricks.

The job of every slave-driver is to take your dignity away.

The first slave-driver was the serpent. The lie of the serpent to the woman: “if you eat of this fruit, you will be like God”. That was a bad plan. Eve was already perfectly one with God; but she traded ‘oneness’, for a chance to ‘be like’. She traded: oneness, for likeness. She traded: perfect oneness with God; for a chance to have her life defined by how well she could navigate good and evil.

Bad plan, because: if you make 100 decisions in a day, and if 98 of them are good but 2 of them are bad - you go to bed thinking about those two. Any time you have your life defined by: how well you produce; or how well you navigate good and evil, it's a bad plan; because no matter what side of the tree of knowledge and good and evil you pick from, it's the wrong side.

The first lie of the enemy, to the first woman was this: it is a better plan to have your life defined by how well you produce things (and we're no different now).

Genesis 1, the creation story. God produces stuff - stuff that advances itself, which is a great leadership and business lesson. When you invest in something that makes money in and of itself; it's a better deal than you having to put your hand to it all the time. So Gods way of making things, was a way that advanced itself.

Genesis 1:31 – “and God saw everything that He made, and behold it was good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day, and the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work, which He had made, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made; and He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all of His work, which God created to make”.

For six days God creates - He achieves, He produces, He makes bricks; and then for one day, God rests.

If God rests, then God is not creating. Is God still the creator, even when He's resting? Is He still who He is, regardless of what He is producing? Is God any less God, when He's resting, than when He's producing?

There should be a sense inside of us, that God is God, no matter what He's doing; that God’s divinity is not dependent upon what He's doing at the time.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego: “Our God will deliver us, but even if He doesn't, He's still God”.

God will heal you, but even if He doesn't, He's still God. He's no less God, whether He's healing you or not. He's no less a healer, whether He's healing you at the moment or not. He's still a healer. God is kind, no matter what He's doing.

Am I me, regardless of what I'm producing; or is my entire life and worth defined by my bricks?

In Exodus, they're in a wilderness - which in the ancient Near East, was reminiscent of a transition, or something undefined. They're moving from a life that was defined by bricks, to something better. In the movement to something better, He says:

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall not do any work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man servant, nor maid servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger within your gates; for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that's in them, and rested on the seventh. Therefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day, and sanctified it.”

A couple of observations: 1) God affirms work. He likes it. In fact, He has a basic disdain for laziness. In one place it says: don't feed a lazy person, because you'll enable his laziness; in other words: let a lazy person feel the hunger. Maybe that'll motivate him to work.

God affirms work. He likes it. The Jewish people worked six 12-hour days (72hrs). We work five eight-hour days (40hrs). No wonder why they're producing more - but they rest on that seventh.

God has meaningful work. Even in perfection, before sin, He gave them jobs to do - big jobs: name all the animals. That's a big job! He had meaningful work for them to do.

Sabbath meant (in Hebrew): to cease work, or to rest. The command is not to keep a day. The command essentially is: to be like God, and have one day that is different from every other day. Have one day in seven that's different than every other day.

Because of men, the Sabbath has evolved into a list of things you do and don't do: be bored for the Lord, in other words. That was never the point.

The point was to stop working, to have a different day, to have a day that reminds you that you are worth more than what you produce. That is something very healthy to do. The scriptures teach Sabbath, not as stuff you don't do, but as something you do, something you enter into; that for six days you're labouring, and then that seventh day, you enter into rest.

There's an interesting scripture in Hebrews that says: I want you to try. I want you to strive to enter into Gods rest - sort of an oxymoron. I want you to strive to do that.

We use time, to create space; space is just: stuff that exists in space. We use time to create space. For example, we use 40 hours of time, to create a pay cheque (space/stuff); and we spend time fellowshipping to produce relationship.

We measure a day by the rising and setting of the. We measure a month by the moon (lunar cycles). We measure a year by the rotation of the earth around the sun. So we measure time by the planets, and so we use time to create space (stuff).

Sabbath is a day where we are free from the bounds of time and space. Let me just give you a couple of definitions of Sabbath....

1) Its a day of the week to remind myself that: I am not a machine. If you want to be whole, you need that.

2) Its a day I need to know that I matter to God - not because of what I do; I matter to God - just because God loves me.

When our worth becomes about bricks, we become machines.

Sabbath gives wives, husbands, workers, employees the energy they need to make another week.

The ancient rabbis said about Sabbath: “It gives us the energy to survive the voices that consume my world”.

As you go through a week, there are voices: Mummy look! Mummy look! Mummy look! Mummy look! Honey, come here. Honey, come here. The dishes need to be done! The dishes need to be done! Go to bed Johnny. Do your homework Johnny.

All of these voices consume your world. Sabbath is a day where you take a break from all of them - because all of those voices create cracks in your soul. That's why, if you're a mum here tonight, and you have more than four children, your eye twitches. Something happens, there's too many voices in your world. It does something to you. If you're under a lot of stress at work, there's something that happens.

Where have we missed God, because of all the clutter and the noise in our world? There's one scripture that says: God was with me all the time - I just didn't know it. Where have you missed God, because of all the noise, and the voices, in your world?

Sabbath was the day where you step back and you mended. If you picture your whole life as a windshield, you mend the broken places, so that you can go through another week. If you go through another week without it, the breaks get worse, and worse, and worse.

It is reminding us that: God wants to spend time with me, without me doing one thing for Him. He just likes me.

Big question: are you okay, without your achievement?

For example: are you okay, when you have to say ‘no’ to things you can't afford? Are you okay with yourself if you gain 20 pounds? Are you okay, not accomplishing something? Are you okay leaving one realm – bricks; and entering into another?

A new car (or a bigger house) is a great thing to have, but: if you're not enough without it - you'll never be enough with it. You'll never be enough! A bigger house is just more to clean - it's just more bricks! If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it.

Matthew 3:17. Jesus is baptised, and God says: “this is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”; and He said that before Jesus had done anything. Sabbath was a day to remind you of this.

Matthew 13. The word of God is like seed, and when you throw seed out it lands on four types of soil. It lands on good ground, stony ground, thorny ground, or hard ground; and the way we tend to teach that is this: which type of ground are you? Are you good ground? Are you stony ground? Are you thorny ground? Are you hard ground? (As if you're one or the other, all the time).

The truth is: we are all four types, depending on the topic. If I'm preaching on tithing, and you're a tither, then it's good ground; but if you're against tithing, then it's going to be hard ground, until God softens your heart about that.

If I'm up here preaching on anger, and you're a very peaceful person, then that's going to be good ground; but if you've got an anger problem - you might have promised God 100 times that you'll cure your anger problem, but that stony ground won't let it - it just depends on the topic.

The one I want to focus on is the thorny ground. Matthew 13:22 – “the seed falling among the thorns refers to people, who hear the word of God, but the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, choke the word out, making it unfruitful”.

He says: the thorny ground are good-hearted people. They hear the word of God. They allow it to be sowed into their life, but the thorns choke it out. Two things choke the word out of good-hearted people: the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth.

The word ‘worry’ there, in the Greek language, is something that causes us to split. In other words, I'm here, but I'm actually there in my mind. I'm here tonight, but in my mind I'm worried about how I'm going to pay my bills. I'm worried about the three meetings I have tomorrow. I'm worried about that new client that I'm - I'm thinking about the faxes I might be missing while I'm here. I'm worried about the fact that I had to turn my cell phone off, and I'm missing my emails. I'm worried about who might be trying to call me. I'm worried about that son that's away from the Lord, I've been thinking about him a lot. It's anything that causes us to split.

It's anything that makes us not be fully present. It's anything that says: I'm here, but I can never be fully present in the moment, and get what God wants me to get. I'm here; but I'm always here and somewhere else. That's the worries of this life.

The ‘Worries of this Life’ is: a ‘failure to be here’. I'm playing Lego with my kids, but all I can think about is the manager's meeting tomorrow. I'm being a wife or a husband, yet my mind is on another problem; so everything suffers because nothing gets my full attention. It's the worries of this life.

Jesus says: you could be a really good person, and the seed of the word of God can come into your life; but it'll never take root, if the worries of this life have choked it out. It doesn't mean you're not a good person - and all of us fall into this category at times. All of us have missed God, because of the worries of this life.

The ‘Deceitfulness of Wealth’: this is a lie that's future-oriented. It's a lie that says: if I just had this, I would be happy. There are people in the world who are worth $60 billion US -and they still get up and go to work every day, trying to figure out a way to make more - and we wouldn't be any different. It's the deceitfulness of wealth.

See there's a six and one rhythm built into creation (a circaseptan biorhythm). God did it, animals do it. They did a study years ago at a zoo: they put a certain group of animals out for seven days in a row; and they put another group of animals out six days, and let them rest the seventh day, and they did that for three months. The ones they let rest on the seventh day, actually were healthier, happier, better animals, and it was unbelievable what it did.

God set it up - you cannot go against a law that runs the universe. You can't do it. We're addicted to accomplishment, achievement, action. When we take a Sabbath, just to do it, we'll become depressed - because we miss the rush. You get so addicted to achievement actual chemicals are released in your brain (serotonin). When you first try to take a Sabbath, by two o'clock in the afternoon you are depressed, because we missed the rush. But when we take a Sabbath for the reasons God wants us to, it saves our lives.

Let me give you 4 definitions of Sabbath to the Hebrew person, and you just pick the one that means the most to you.

1) Sabbath was a day for you to get the energy you need for another six days.

2) Sabbath was a day for God to mend, and put back together again, that which was broken.

3) Sabbath was a day for complete honesty with God.

4) The Sabbath was a day that was unlike any other day (my favourite definition, the most common). It was one day in seven, that didn't look like the other six, therefore hitting a reset button in your brain, to let you start over. It's brilliant, which leads me to this application:

Do you have one day in seven that is unlike any other day? If not - why not? Why not start now?

Do you realise that: if it's a day, that's unlike any other day - it's going to be different for everybody? If you're a mother with six children, your day will be: a day without laundry. And guess what? The laundry will be there the next day! It will be okay. It will. It will be alright.

What day of the week do you not check your email? Do you have one day in seven, that you don't check your email? If not, why? Do you really believe you're so important, that if you didn't check your email for a day, that the world would quit turning?

Do you realise that, to think we're so important, that we have to stay in constant connection - to think we are that important to this world, puts so much pressure on us, that we'll die? That the journey to wholeness actually is found in taking just one - just one.

Have six days where you check your email 45 times a day; but one day in seven - why not make it different?

Why not remind yourself, one day in seven, that the world keeps going - even if you don't know what's going on in it? I'm telling you, if you do that for a month, it will reinforce a truth that will save your life, which is this:

The world goes on, because God is God, and you are not.

Do you have one day in seven, that you put your list away? Some of you are wired up to have lists, I'm not, so my one day in seven might be a day I get a list out. What day in seven do you put your list away? Do you know how healing it is?

If you get it, it'll save your life. Do you know how healing it is? Try it. Just pick one day this week - I don't care what day it is, but preferably not a day you have to work for a guy who's writing you a pay cheque. Take one day this week, where you pretend like the list is done, even if it's not. You're going to wake up the next day, and the world will still be turning, and the list is still going to be there, and you'll remind yourself: it will be okay. There's something very healing about that.

What day of the week can I not get in touch with you by cell phone? What day of the week, if I text you, would it be pointless? What day of the week do your chores not matter? And we wonder why we're broken. You know we all need deliverance, and we all need God to help us - and we do, we need that kind of stuff; but some stuff is just common sense. A lot of the pressure we put on ourselves, is put on by ourselves.

God designed us to have one day in seven that was different than any other day. Wives - if your house is a little bit dirty (or a lot dirty) - to have one day where that doesn't matter will save your life. It will be there tomorrow. It will. It'll save your life, and it might save your marriage.

Sabbath is a day where you live like your work is done, even if it isn't - and that is healing. Sabbath is a day where you are freed from your slaver driver of things to do. Sabbath is a day where you remember that He is God, and the world will go on, even if your list doesn't get done. To live differently is counter-productive.

There's a six in one biorhythm in creation, so if your rhythm isn't changing every seven days, if there's not one day in seven, that resets you to another rhythm - your life is boring. You get stuck on one rhythm. You're boring and counter-productive.

If you get thrown into a tizzy because of one interruption to your schedule, then you will miss out on God's best for you. One of His greatest miracles of all time (the lady with the issue of blood) was actually an interruption to His schedule. Imagine if Jesus had said: lady, I'm on My way somewhere, get away from Me, I've got a schedule to keep? No, we've got to step back and remind ourselves: God is God, and we are not. Interruptions are often Gods way of re-acclimating us to a new rhythm - and we need that.

Let me just give you some application questions.

1a) Who are the most important people in your life? There should only be a couple, unless you have five children. If you have five children, please write all of their names down. I'd hate to see them in counselling later. Mummy wrote his name and not mine! Who are the most important people in your life? Take 30 seconds and write their names down. Just do an honest assessment of how broken we are.

1b) Are you choking? Are you a good person, who can't seem to move forward in God, because the thorns have got to you? The people you just wrote down: are they getting the most of your energy; or are they getting what's left over? Are they being put first; or is everything else? Are the urgent things taking the place of the most important things?

2a) What are you called to be doing? What are two things you're doing in this world, which no one else can take your place and do? If you're a wife to a man, no one else should be taking that place. If you're a husband to a woman, no one else should be taking that place. If you're a mother to a child, no one else should be taking that place. If you're a pastor over a certain area, no one else should be taking that place. What are the things that you are doing, that no one else can do?

I would say this: the best wisdom for your life would be to delegate everything else.

2b) Is that getting the most of your energy; or is it only getting what's left over?

I'm telling you, if I was doing this in a counselling office, it would cost $120 an hour. These are huge questions. Let me ask it this way: If you were to move house tomorrow, what would you keep? What would you sell? What would you give away? What would you throw away? Why not do that today? If you're keeping stuff in your house, that you would throw away if you moved tomorrow, then all it's doing is taking energy from what you should be doing today.

We've got stuff-itus, and I would say this to you. If I took a look at your diary, and it didn't coincide with the people who are the most important, and the calling from God, then you're choking. You're choking! The cure for both of these things is Sabbath.

The Sabbath is a day where we separate ourselves from the worries of this life. There's something that is healing about taking a day back from all of our ‘lists’, our ‘things to do’; to have one day in seven that's different than every other day - that gives us a reset button. There's something about that, which cures us from: the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth.

Take a blank piece of paper, and draw a line down the middle. I want you to be honest with God about the worries of this life. The things that has caused you to be ‘here, but really there’, write on one side of the line called 'The worries of this life - that you can do something about' (versus those you can't).

I don't have a job. Well you could go apply for 50 jobs a day until you get one. There's an element that you can't do anything about, but there's an element of that you can; so the worries of this life that you can do something about; and the worries of this life that you can't do something about okay? This will only be between you and God, very therapeutic.

Let me help some of you. Whatever you're writing - God already knows. Whatever you're writing - He's not going to think any less of you, or any more of you. He already knows, and He likes you anyway.

I have an adult son, who I'm worried is away from the Lord - I can't do anything about that - He's an adult. You have to believe God for him, nothing you can do about that. Barack Obama - I can't do anything about him. Not one thing. He's too cool, can't do anything about him. You can't do anything about the New Zealand dollar. Exporters, you're happy with it; but people like me, who take money out, we're very sad with it - can't do anything about it. Separate the worries that you can do something about, on one side; from the worries that you can't, on the other.

If you can do something about it - then do something about it; but I want to end tonight with the side that you can't do anything about.

If the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, have kept the word of God from taking root in your life; and it's because of something you can't do anything about, then tonight I want you to have a holy moment with God, where you be still and know that He is God, and you are not.

Be still, and know that He loves you, regardless of whether what something works out, or what something doesn't; that He is no less God, or no more God, regardless of what happens - that that is where trust comes in.

I challenge you also, to begin to take a Sabbath - to have one day in seven, that's different than every other day; to remind yourself to be whole.

Closing Prayer

I want you to clear your mind of everything. If you are worrying tonight, just for the next one minute, I want to minister to you. I just felt that the list, and you doing some business with God, was effective.

Just wrap your awareness around God. I want you to repent for thinking you're so important that you don't need a Sabbath; or even worse - you're too busy to take a Sabbath. That's kind of the point.

You need to make a commitment with the Lord, to have one day in seven, that's different than all the other days. Just try it for the next 60 days, and see what happens in your life. Just have a headache tablet ready for the first couple of ones, and then you'll get used to the idea, and it'll give you pleasure: to sit back and know that God is God, and you're not.

If this room filled up with water, and it totally enveloped you, and you could still breathe, and that water was the love of God, what would you feel like now? To be totally enveloped with a God who is committed to increase you - what would you feel like?

Lord, I ask You now to just flood the souls of every person here, fill up all their cracks, fill up all their broken, hurting spots. Lord, we confess to You right now that we're broken, hurting people, with a lot of pain and a lot of cracks, and Lord, I ask that right now, that You would fill our broken hurting cracks, fill those spots in our soul, that are filled with pain and worry and distress and pressure. Fill them up with You, Lord. Just now, would You just let Your presence flow through this place. I can sense Your presence just going right through this place now.

Just take a deep breath in, breathing in God, and then a deep breath out, knowing that God is in your breath. Lord, as we breathe in, would You just fill all the broken spots in our life. Forgive us for the thoughts Lord, that we think we're God. We're not. Heal our brokenness God. May we be keepers of the Sabbath, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Honour (5 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Sun 17 May 2009  « Back to Top

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How do I honour someone who wasn't honourable? Nobody's parents are perfect. Honour is not ignoring wrong things, or saying wrong things are right, or having no boundaries.

Honour has more to do with what we pass on to the next generation; than how we respond to the previous one. It's maintaining godliness through our generations. It's choosing to be honest about the ungodliness, and choosing to break the cycle.

Be thankful you're alive; realise your parents were a part of fallen humanity; give up the urge to take vengeance, and to judge - realise they were wounded too.

Exodus 20:12 – “Honour your father and your mother, so that your days will be long in the land that the Lord your God gives you.”

Review

This is way bigger than a guy going up a mountain, and coming down with two tablets of stone. This is about a group of people who've been slaves for 430 years. All they knew was slavery for 430 years; get up, make bricks, get beaten, whatever. There was no dignity.

The job of every slave driver is to take your dignity away. The same thing is true today. You should be able to find yourself in this story pretty easily. If something drives your life, other than God, then it's a slave driver for you; and the job of the slave driver is to take your dignity away.

If you're a man, for instance; let's say you struggle with lust; and let's say you have a hard time getting away from the computer, and doing all the things associated with that. There are times in that slave driver, where you think you'll die without it; but the truth of it is: whenever it's over, when you lay your head down at night, you feel worse than you did before; because the job of the slave driver is to remove your basic dignity.

If your slave driver is anger, and you just can't seem to not blow up; you feel like: I'll die if I don't blow up; but when you actually blow up, when you go to bed at night, you feel worse than ever before. The job of every slave driver is to take your dignity away.

That's the job of Egypt. In Egypt, if they wanted to kill you - they killed you. If they wanted to steal something from you - they stole it; if they wanted your wife - they raped her. It didn't matter. The Israelites were less than human!

So God's trying to take a group of people, who've been taught they were less than human for 430 years, and He's trying to teach them how to be human again. In teaching them how to be human again, He's trying to create a culture that the whole world's going to want in on.

The Ten Commandments starts with: “And the Lord spoke all these words and said this; I am the Lord your God”. In the Hebrew language there's three words: Anochy Jehovah Elohim - I am the Lord your God. You could say “I am the Lord your God” by saying "Jehovah Elohim” - but they put this word in there “Anochy”.

Broken down into letters (which are then read like a cartoon strip), the word Anochy means: “your authority is going to multiply inside the hedge of praise and submission”. So the first word of the Ten Commandments is Grace. Its: I want to make you bigger. I want to restore your worth. I want to take you out from under the yoke, of a slave driver that's taking your worth away, and I want to restore your worth; and in that, I want to create a culture that the whole world's going to want in on.

It's amazing, the grace of God. I learned something just today, about the grace of God. This is a dollar coin, and I found it in the parking lot; so probably overnight that dollar coin had been driven on, stepped on; whatever was on the bottom of people's shoes was on it. There's no telling how long that dollar coin just needed someone to pick it up. There's no telling what sort of rough thing has happened, what kind of hot or cold.

Here's what hit me: no matter what that dollar coin has been through, as I hold it in my hand right now - it's still worth a dollar. If you found this in a pile of cow poop, it would still be worth a dollar. If you found it in a toilet, and you needed it so bad, you dug it out of it; it would still be worth the same, as if you went to the bank, and asked for the newest one made. Its worth is not determined by what it went through; but by what it is - and that is what God is trying to do.

God is trying to get a group of people to understand that: your worth is bigger than bricks. Your worth is bigger than anything you do; and part of you living a worthy life is: treating other people like they're worthy.

So we're not going to murder, we're not going to steal; and we're going to take a day off. We're going to honour the basic dignity that's in the life of every person. We're going to honour the human condition.

God is saying: through no act of your own, I chose you, to show My love to you, in order to show the whole world that I'm a loving God. Welcome to being human again.

Introduction

It's in that context that we read this scripture: “Honour your Father and your Mother.

Some of us would feel nauseated about that. As soon as we read that, there's this nausea feeling that comes over us; because our parents weren't honourable.

Some of us, our parents were good people; but whether our parents were good people, or not-so-good people, the command is the same: honour your father and your mother.

The obvious question exists: how do I honour someone who wasn't honourable? How do I do that? I hope to give you some things today that will help you with what honour means; and how you can continue to honour your parents, even if they're not honourable people.

Main Message

Nobody's parents are perfect. My parents were good parents, great parents actually. My dad is up every single morning at 4.30 in the morning praying for me, for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid he got up about 5.45; then when I was a later kid he got up about 5.30; by the time I was a teenager he was getting up at 5.00; and now he gets up at 4.30. The other day he said something like: 4.15 comes early in the morning; and I thought: dad, if you keep getting up that early, by the time your 80 you're going to eat breakfast the night before! He's up every morning praying for me. It's an honourable thing - but dad wasn't perfect.

Dad was a Vietnam vet, who enjoyed scaring people. He thought it was hilarious to scare us. They were trying to teach me not to fall asleep again, after they woke me up. I'm not a morning person, so mum would wake me up, and shake me, and sit me on the side of the bed. I'd sit on the side of the bed, and I'd get comfortable and fall back to sleep.

So dad decided: I'm going to teach him not to do that; but he didn't tell mum about this, because mum wouldn't have allowed it, Mum just figured he was praying somewhere. He got up under my bed; so mum shook me awake, sat me up on the bed, and I'm sitting there, and he waited for me just to get relaxed - then he reached out and grabbed my feet! That was dad - and $2,000 in counselling later - here I am!

He loved to scare me. One day he put himself in my closet, and my closet opened like this. Kids believe that bogey-men live in the closet anyway, and dad opened my closet, and he put himself in there - and a crucifix. So I get up, it's like 6.15 in the morning, I'm 9 years old. I walk over to the closet to choose my clothes for the day, open the closet - and there's my dad. That was dad. He loved to scare us.

So my dad wasn't perfect, but dad was a good man. Mum was a good woman. She wasn't perfect either. You don't ever tell on mum. Listen, if you're here today: don't ever tell stories on your mum. It's not right! She gave you birth, so just kind of keep her stuff secret. Mum's perfect right. Mum's good!

My parents were great, so when I see “honour your father and mother” I think: okay, that's fair enough. But I know that there are people in this room who've been violated by their dad. I know there are people in this room whose mother left them to drink alcohol. They chose alcohol, over a life with you; and the pain and the brokenness and the empty spots that that left in your soul - to read something like “honour your father and your mother” - it makes you nauseous.

I think central to dealing with this is this question: Is God's way the best way or not? If you could go to heaven without Jesus, would you still follow Him? If heaven and hell wasn't the issue, is Jesus still worth following?

Hopefully the answer is yes. Hopefully you don't follow Jesus simply because He lets you into heaven. Hopefully you follow Jesus because you really believe that His way is the best way to live. Hopefully it's not a fire escape; hopefully you follow Jesus because you really believe that: the best way to receive is to be a giver. The best way to live is: to forgive people who hurt you.

Hopefully we really believe that, and the Ten Commandments are no different. When you look at the Ten Commandments, most of them are easy to buy into: don't have any other Gods. Alright, check. Don't have idols in your house, check. Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy, check. Don't use God's name in vain, check. Don't kill people - alright, that's a pretty good plan. Don't steal - alright, that sounds right. Don't commit adultery - well alright, that sounds okay. Don't lie - well alright.

But when it comes to “honour your father and your mother”, somehow we make that conditional - as if God didn't know your story; and God does know my story. What we have to believe is that: God's way, and God's plan, is the best, regardless.

I think we missed it, just in a basic definition of terms. Let me give you three things that honour is not - that sometimes we confuse as being honourable.

1) Honour is not: ignoring wrong things.

I have a counselling background, so I've had people in my office, and they can't come to admit that: the way they grew up was dysfunctional. They can't say: this was destructive - they can't say that! The reason they can't say it is, somewhere deep down inside of them, they really believe that: if they admit that, somehow they're dishonouring their parents.

Honour is not ignoring it, like it didn't happen. Honour is not that! Actually the honourable thing, at some point, is to actually sit back and admit: this was wrong. Honour is not ignoring wrongs.

2) Honour is not: saying that wrong things are right.

The very next step, once I ignore wrongs, I start thinking that: what is wrong, is actually right. The huge risk is this: to create a new normal. We create a new normal; so our family is running around thinking we are normal, and everyone else is weird. That's crazy!

Whatever defines our normal, defines our life. Think about how TV has changed. One of the big reasons that the divorce rate has gone from 11% to 57% since 1967 is the feminist movement. The feminist movement took over Hollywood in 1967, and they were good-hearted people, I'm sure. What they were trying to do was probably try to help people; but this was their basic belief: women are more evolved than men. Women are therefore more complex, they're more evolved; and so men need to grow up and be like women.

They said: women receive love by love; and men receive love by respect (because they're Neanderthals). But if they were actually more evolved, they would actually learn to receive love by love; and if everybody is receiving love by love, then that will help everybody get along better, because we're all talking the same language. That was their thought.

They were dead wrong. God designed men to receive love by respect. God designed women to receive love by love. The command in the Bible is for husbands to love their wives; but the command in the Bible is for wives to respect their husbands. God does not have to command women to love their husbands, because women love naturally. God does not have to command men to respect their wives, because men respect naturally. God has to command us to do the things that don't come naturally.

So they took over the TV, and they did exactly what Hitler did to Germany. Hitler took over Germany by propaganda, and they changed the characters on TV. Think about the TV shows in the '50s and '60s: Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It to Beaver. In all of those family comedies, all of the comedy surrounded the teenager in the home, or the kid in the home; and at the end of the 22 minute show, the genius father comes in and saves the day. That's how it was.

They changed that in 1967. In 1967 they wanted men to change, so they started making men look retarded on TV; and all of a sudden the main characters on TV were: Archie Bunker; Homer Simpson; Hank (the guy from the King of the Hill - of you weren't my son, I think I'd hug you - that guy); Al Bundy (from Married with Children); Kevin James (from King of Queens). Think about these guys - John Goodman from Roseanne - think about how they started portraying the American family, and they portrayed it as normal.

The best one is Everybody Loves Raymond. It's one of the greatest shows on TV - it's hilarious; but in Everybody Loves Raymond, it embodies the psycho-pathology of what it means to create a new normal. In Everybody Loves Raymond, Debra Barone treats him like he's an idiot. She actually calls him idiot; she calls him stupid, she tells him he doesn't measure up - and she does it in front of everybody. She withholds sex from him. She says: you're not getting any from me, unless you do exactly what I say. So she calls him an idiot, and withholds his basic need for respect; and then she withholds his #1 physical need, unless he does exactly what she says.

So Raymond gravitates himself across the street to the only woman in his life who respects him - and that's his mother; and so you have this huge psycho-pathology going on. It makes for hilarious television, but it makes for a horrible life - a horrible life. It became the new normal, and we run the risk of creating a new normal when we don't honour; when we think that honouring is somehow turning a blind eye and saying: okay, that's okay. That's okay.

I was at a friend's house once for Christmas time, and the whole family's sitting there. The mother, the matriarch of the family - you've got grandchildren and children - this person would have been in her 60s probably, late 50s - and she didn't like the gift that the father gave her. So the father gave the mother a gift she didn't like, and she started screaming obscenities. I'm talking about she used the 'f' word about 25 times. And then he started using it back, and they started calling each other names, and everybody started yelling, and I wanted to find somewhere to hide. But after all the yelling was done, in two or three minutes, everybody laughed, slapped five and went on - and I went what just happened here? They said: oh, that's just how we are. That's just how we are!

If you want to know if your family has created a new normal, ask yourself this question: do I use the excuse “that's just how we are”? We never say that about good things: I'm just happy - that's just how I am. You know what? I'm just generous - that's just how I am. I'm just kind - that's just who I am - take me or leave me. No, we use those things about problems like anger and resentment and rage, and very dysfunctional things. We use “that's just how I am, take me or leave me” - of course most people will leave you, because you've created a new normal.

Honour is not creating a new normal. Honour is not ignoring the wrong. Honour is not saying what was wrong is actually right.

3) Honour is not: having no boundaries.

One of the Hebraic definitions of hell is to live in a boundary-less place. If you're living in a situation where someone can treat you any way they want, and you have no recourse - that's called hell.

Actually the honourable thing is to have boundaries. Sometimes the honourable thing is to say: dad, I love you, and I can be with you in this situation; but I can't be with you in that situation. In this situation, I love to be with you; but in this situation, where there's going to be whiskey involved... When you get drunk, it embarrasses me, so I'm drawing a boundary. I'll be with you here, but I can't be with you here; and it's not that I don't love you, it's that I do. That's honour.

Honour is not ignoring the wrong; honour is not saying what was wrong is right; and honour is not living without boundaries.

Let me give you a definition of what honour is. In Hebrew culture, honour has more to do with what we pass on to the next generation; than how we respond to the previous one.

To say: I honour you dad - that's one thing. But the heavier thing is actually what I'm taking away, and perpetuating to my children, and my children's children, and my children's children's children. The honourable part, in terms of me and my dad, has to do with what I'm passing on, so that when my dad is dead and gone one day, his great-grandchildren are reflecting a heritage of godliness.

Let me prove it to you. I'm going to talk about your pastor, because he's not here. I would just say this: he's one of the top five pastors in the world, that I know. You ought to stay behind him. He's one of the great guys I've ever met in the world; but let me tell you this: I don't know what his dad was like - I have no idea. His dad could have been a pastor; his dad's dad could have been a pastor; Mike Connell could be a fourth generation pastor, I do not know. Mike Connells dad could have been an abusive, drunk, horrible person, who spent half of his life in jail, in and out, and come home and beat him up. He could have been unbelievably horrible. I don't know, I've never met the man. I've never had a conversation with Mike about it, but it's irrelevant. Let me tell you why.

The decision Mike Connell has made for his life, to live a life of godliness, makes me assume that his father was godly. I just naturally assume Mike comes from a godly line - and he might; but if Mike Connell is the first generation of people who decided: I'm going to live godly - then it makes other people assume his whole line is godly; so that now all of his children live godly lives, and then their children will live godly lives. By the time there are four generations down, no one will remember the ungodliness that was before; and Mike would be the hero of the whole family.

That you want to honour your dad, honour your mum - you say: well they're horrible people. Still, you want to honour them? Make a decision today to change the cycle of ungodliness in your family, to start a cycle of godliness; and in four generations from now, no one will remember the ungodliness; they'll only remember the godliness, and you in fact will be the hero of your entire family line.

That honour has more to do with what you do “out there”, than what you do towards them. It's the same thing in here. Dave Connell's a great pastor. I've travelled the world - listen, I'm not an expert on many things but I am an expert in pastors. Dave Connell's a great pastor, and you ought to tell him that every now and then. But let me tell you something; to tell him that he's a great pastor, that is honourable - but that's light. He'd rather you respect the name of Bay City out there. He'd rather you reflect Christ-likeness out there. He'd rather hear: you're a good father to your children out there. He'd rather hear: you're a good wife to your husband out there.

I mean to come in here, and act like you're a good wife - that's baloney; to go out there and actually live it - totally authentic. To come in here and act like you have integrity in your business dealings - baloney. Anybody can do that for two hours. It's what we hear from out there; that when you go out there, and you're reflecting the name of Christ, the name of Bay City, and the fact that he's one of the pastors here - and everything reflects that. To honour him, is to honour him out there, not in here.

To honour him, is to honour him at lunch today, not in here; that's the small thing. The big thing is what we do away from Pastor Dave. It's what we do away from him, not what we do to him – with God, it’s the same way. Is it honourable to God to come up here, and jump around, and raise our hands, and sing at the top of our voice? Is that honourable? Of course it is, but only in small part.

What really honours God is when that does something in your heart, that changes the way you act out there; that makes you notice people who aren't eating, and you understand it's your responsibility to feed them. You notice naked people and you give them clothes; you notice sick people and minister to them; you go to prisons and you help people.

To raise your hands in here, and jump around - that's only a small part of it. What good does it do you, to raise your hands, and sing at the top of your voice, if you're only going to go home and be mean? Honouring God has more to do with what you do at home, and on the street; what you do for the poor person, and the naked person. Honouring God has more to do with that, than with this!

This ought to be an outflow of that, not the other way around; and God has to address this in Isaiah 1. God's talking to the prophet, and He says: I'm sick of your church services. I'm sick of your festivals, I'm sick of your sacrifices, I'm sick of your music, I'm sick of your traditions. I'm sick of all those things; and you know what was true of every one of the things? God thought it up!

God essentially says: I'm sick of all the ideas I gave you, of how to worship Me; because you come into My house and you worship Me with all the proper things; but then you go out there, and you leave a hungry person to die, instead of feeding them.

It hasn't translated into generosity in your heart. Honour has more to do with what you do out there, than what you do in here; the same with your parents. Honour has way more to do with what you do away from your parents. Teenagers: honouring your parents - to tell your mum and dad: “I love you. I honour you”; but to then go out and dishonour their name - that's dishonour! It has more to do with what you're doing out there, than in here. It has more to do with what we pass on.

Let me just give you three definitions of honour. Honour is...

1) Maintaining godliness through our generations.

It's actually doing some heart examination, and investigating: what part of my family heritage do I need to pass on? My dad's prayer discipline - I need to pass that on; but his propensity to think it's hilarious to scare people - I need to stop that. My mum's heritage of being generous - my mum is the most generous person I know in this world. Compared to what she makes, she writes bigger cheques than anybody I've ever seen, to all kinds of things. She lives a life of generosity, and I need to pass that on; but there are things in my mum's life that I need to say: no, no, no, wait a minute, that was wrong. It's choosing to pass on the godliness.

2) It's choosing to be honest about the ungodliness, and choosing to break the cycle; so that we pass on godliness, but we break the cycle of ungodliness, to the next generation.

It's tied to a promise of land, that we will “live a long time in a land”. This has nothing to do with a long life. There are other scriptures that talk about long life, that's fine. This has to do with when you walk into what God's best is for you. That the key to living a long time in that land is: to perpetuate godliness; to continue to honour. It has to do with the time in the land; it has to do with the health of an entire society.

In order to heal from the wounds of the past, and create a life of godliness, how do we get over this? How do we get over the fact that our parents were ungodly? How do we get over the fact that they were destructive? How do we get over the fact, and still honour, and move forward something to the next generation? Let me just give you a couple of very simple thoughts that hopefully help you.

2a) You need to develop an intense gratefulness for the fact that you're alive. We have to realise that before we deal with our parent's issues, we have to develop an incredible gratefulness for the fact that God used them to give you life. That in fact God created you in the spirit, and He put in all your personality, and all your passions, and all your gifts and talents; He breathed a vision into your heart, and a dream into your life; He built you in the spirit, and He said: you know what? I need two people to come together, so I can put some flesh on this - this is a great idea right here - and that idea was you.

So before your parents did anything wrong to you, they were actually used by God to do something very, very right - which was put flesh around His big idea - which was you. Before we deal with the whole anger and bitterness and rage about: oh, I was dealt the wrong set of cards in life - before we deal with all that, we have to actually step back and say: you know what? Hold on, before we talk about this any further, I need to stop, and I need to breathe, and I need to be thankful that two people came together and gave me life. Before they did anything wrong, they actually did something right, and that was give you life.

2b) You have to realise that: they're only a part of a bigger scope of fallen humanity; that you were not special; that everybody has dysfunction. You look at Jesus, and His family life in the Book of Matthew - Jesus' genealogy is like Jerry Springer on speed! There was cannibalism, there were people who burned children in fire, there were prostitutes, there were drunkards; there were all kinds of things going on in Jesus' genealogy.

You're not unique, I'm not unique - all God's people have got stuff, because we grow up in a fallen world; and the Bible says it this way: “all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God” - and your parents were no different.

When we don't step back from the pain, we start to believe: I was given a wrong deck of cards. I'm the only one that went through this. No - you weren't; but before they did anything wrong to you, they did something right, which was give you life. Whatever happened to you - I'm so sorry, I am; and let me tell you what God says about that. God says “every tear you cried, He collected it in a bottle”. That's how much He cares. He cared about every tear that you cried, every bit of pain, every bit of violation.

But for you right now, you're 35, you're 45, you're 55, and it's held you back your whole life. Today can be a day of salvation for you, in the sense that you make a decision that from this day forward: for MY family, “as for me and my house - we will serve the Lord”. We are going forward, to perpetuate godliness, so that no one else has to deal with this. They were just a part of fallen humanity. So #1: you need to appreciate the fact they gave you life; #2: you have to realise that they were just a part of fallen humanity.

3) You have to give up the control-freakiness in your life – desire to take vengeance.

Every one of us, at times, thinks that we can do a better job than God - all of us. One of the things that God says there's not a job opening for, is the “earth's vengeance-taker”. There's not! The Bible clearly says: “Vengeance is Mine!” God is the greatest vengeance-taker on earth.

Proverbs says: “See to it that you don't explode in anger on your enemy, lest the vengeance of God get removed from him:. In other words, God is duty-bound to take vengeance on your behalf; but He will not, if you take His job. If you want to be the one that takes the vengeance - then have it - but God won't. Just step back, take your hands off of it, and realise that they are accountable to God, not to you.

Romans 14:10 says this: “Why do you judge your brother (or why do you despise him), because he hurt you? Don't you know that every person will stand before the judgement seat of Christ?” So see to it to make sure that you are not an offence to somebody. The only person in this world you're supposed to judge is yourself - to make sure that you're not being offensive.

In a room this size, I know there's at least one of you, who really believes that it is your job to be the moral police for the whole world. It's your job to sit back and go: that's wrong, that's right; they're wrong about that, they're right about that. Maybe you're even one of those guys who started one of those websites, apostasywatch.com, to guard the body of Christ from error.

Let me help you with something okay? It is not your job to be the moral police for the whole world! Your job is to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” - to make sure that YOU are not being an offence to anybody else. Anything, that anybody else is doing, is between them and God - and God can handle it.

When you apply this to your parents, let me tell you this: no matter what they did to you, there'll be something inside of you that wants to take vengeance; but I'm going to tell you this: the best thing you could do, is to leave it in the hands of the most righteous judge in the world. Only God knows what they went through. Only God knows their heart. Only God knows their motivation, and God will take care of it. You need to step back and live your life to the fullest.

So 1) be thankful you're alive; 2) realise that they were a part of simple humanity; 3) give up the urge to take vengeance, and to judge.

4) Realise that they were wounded too. That whatever they were doing, was out of some holes in their soul - and God collected their tears in a bottle too.

Why is it that most of us, we want: mercy for ourselves; but just justice for everybody else? Don't we do that? Like when we stuff something up, we go to the foot of the cross, and we say: God forgive me. God, forgive me. God, have mercy. God, have mercy. God, have mercy - but someone else screws up, and we go: God, get them! We want mercy for ourselves, but justice for everybody else - but it doesn't work that way.

James 2 – “judgement without mercy will be shown to every person who's not merciful - for mercy triumphs over justice”. Choose mercy. Remember how much you've been forgiven, and do likewise to other people; and also realise this: that they were given the same choice you were. They had a choice.

At some point they had a choice: I will perpetuate godliness; or I will perpetuate destruction; and unfortunately maybe they chose destruction. If they chose destruction, I'm so sorry; but your choice today is to stand up and say: as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I will not make my children go through that - and I'm telling you, four generations from now, you'll be the hero.

The last thing, in terms of how to deal with the wounds of it, is this, is realise how big it is - that our survival as a society depends on it. It says that “your days will be long in the land”. That anger, contempt, malice, and slander - as it goes through the generations, it multiplies. It multiplies to the point where you've got people in this world today, who are destroying one another, and don't know why. They just know they're supposed to, just because mum and dad did it. That's all they know, and it perpetuates through generations.

As I understand it, God has a five-generation limit. His grace goes to three and four generations; but by the fifth generation, He'll destroy the whole generation, if they don't repent. Why? Because in generations, you're multiplying geometrically.

2 people have 6 kids; those people have 6 kids, and now you've got 36 kids. 36 kids have 6 kids... (6 - 36 – 216 - 1,296 - 7,776) You're left with a bunch of people that, if that infection, that distain, that bitterness, that malice, that resentment, that rage - if it gets into the fifth generation, there are enough people to destroy the entire fabric of a society.

God says: by my Grace, not my Judgement - by my grace I will judge; because it's gracious to save a whole society, by wiping out one generation. It's gracious, so our survival as a society depends on it. It depends on you and me making and maintaining a decision to perpetuate godliness in the next generation. It's about me and you perpetuating that thing all the way through.

Are you breaking the cycle, or are you perpetuating it? What cycle are you perpetuating; and what cycle are you breaking?

We need to say: what parts of my family were godly? And maybe sit down with your wife, and talk about: what habits did we learn? What habits did we learn from our home lives that are healthy, that we need to perpetuate (and make a commitment to do so).

Without any dishonour, with all due respect, what parts of our family did we learn that are dysfunctional, and it's destructive, and it's ungodly? Maybe you need to make a rule: there's no yelling in the house. Maybe you need to make a rule, like: I will not address my husband with obscenities. The lady that addressed her husband with obscenities - her seven year old granddaughter was sitting right there. What are the chances that that seven year old granddaughter is going to grow up calling her husband obscene names? Huge! Why? Because her grandmamma did it, and her mama does it. It just perpetuates all the way through generations.

Maybe it takes some person sitting down and going: we will not tolerate that any more. We will be a house that is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness. What cycle are you perpetuating? What needs to be broken? That is honour.

Ephesians 6:1 – “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long in the earth. But fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath.”

“Do not provoke your children to wrath. If you want to get a sense of whether you're perpetuating ungodliness or perpetuating godliness, you need to understand whether or not you're provoking your children to wrath. If you're a man, and you're a dad, what I'm fixing to tell you, will require more bravery on your part, and more courage, than you can possibly imagine.

If you want to know whether or not you're perpetuating your children to wrath - ask them. Ask them!

Let me tell you something my dad did, that I honour him for. It was the best idea I've ever heard of any dad doing. My dad would be one of the most courageous men I know, because he did this. Every 30 days, my dad took me on a date, probably starting at about seven years old. Once I turned 12, I asked him to please quit calling it a date, because it was bothering me. So we had a man's night, but this was the rule. Now how courageous is this?

My dad said: Shane, on those nights, you can tell me anything you want to tell me. As long as you say it respectfully, you will not be in trouble; so it gave me an environment to where I could sit down with him and respectfully say: dad, two weeks ago you punished me for this, and you were wrong. You did not understand what was going on, and he could say: Shane, tell me about that. I could say: dad, you didn't understand. Dad, you overreacted to this. I felt like you overreacted to this – and we'd talk it out.

There were a lot of times that my dad sat across the table from me and said: Shane, I didn't understand that. Please forgive me for overreacting; and there were times where he looked across and said: Shane, you're a child. I'm an adult. I know you don't understand now, but one day you'll understand - the environment was there, so that I could be open and honest with dad.

Dad did that, so that my anger with him could never go past 30 days - that's brave, but that'll shut down “provoking your children to wrath”, because option #1 is: your children will learn they can be honest with you; option #2 is: that they can't be honest with you, and then you've got a whole new set of problems.

Parents are supposed to be the pictures of what God would look like, to your child. If I was to ask your child: based on how mummy acts, what is God like? What would that child say? Would that child say: God must be an angry, worried mess? Does God's left eye twitch uncontrollably? You know when we go to the grocery store; and mummy gets really mad at the cashier. Mummy says she's the slowest cashier in the store. How would your child say that God would act to the girl at KFC, when they mess up the order?

How are you presenting God to your children? Are you breaking a cycle or are you perpetuating something? What are you perpetuating? How do your children see God? Do they hear you and your husband, do they hear mummy and daddy talking about: hey, we need to take care of the poor this month. We need to make sure we feed someone who can't feed themselves. We need to make sure we clothe someone who can't clothe themselves; or do they simply see you raise your hand in here, and then hear you yell at each other at home - and you're teaching them that God's a hypocrite.

I challenge you today, as people of God, to increase your amount of time in God's Promised Land for you; by perpetuating godliness, and by honouring your father and your mother.

Closing Prayer

Now Lord, You're the best. We love you, and we honour you; and we proclaim that you are King of the Universe.

Is there anyone here today who says: I need to start perpetuating godliness in my life, by choosing to follow Jesus Christ? I have never made that choice to whole-heartedly, with everything in me - to follow Jesus Christ.

I might have come to church. I might have put the fish on my car. I might have the “What Would Jesus Do?” bumper sticker. I might even have the bracelet, the cross around my neck; and I realise that none of that's going to do anything for me in eternity. I know that it won't.

Today God's knocking at the door, and I need to make a whole-hearted decision to follow Jesus Christ. I realise nothing else I can do is going to help me in eternity. I need to make a decision to re-write the history of my family, if nothing else. I'd like to accept Jesus Christ today. It goes like this...

“Lord, Jesus Christ, thank You for coming; thank You for dying for me. I confess that I'm a sinner. I have no hope of saving myself, so I ask You Lord, to forgive me, cleanse me, come into my heart, and be the Lord of my life. I want to live for You in Jesus' name. Amen.”

Bible says about that: God is so excited about your decision, that He just stopped all of heaven to have a party for you. Welcome to the kingdom of God! It's a fantastic thing.

You serve a God who believes in you, more than you believe in Him.

The godliness heritage is sitting on you. It's your decision what you do with it.

A lot of husbands and wives need to go home today and say: we need to talk about this. What needs to change in our house? If you're willing to stand with me, and say: right now I'm going to take a stand: “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”.

We're going to investigate the godliness, and keep it going; but we're also going to say ‘no’, and repent to the ungodliness; and we will honour our father and mother to perpetuate godliness. Four generations from now we will be the heroes of this family.

Lord, we repent for the ungodliness of our past. We repent for racism and prejudice and greed, anything that's held our families back. Lord, we proclaim the blood of Jesus over that, and ask for a fresh start.

We make a decision today to perpetuate godliness; to honour our father and mother - by perpetuating godliness, and repenting from ungodliness. Lord, may this church be a haven of honour in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let the name rest on you. I bless you to go today to be people who ‘carry the name’.

11th Commandment (6 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Sun 17 May 2009  « Back to Top

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God has not called us to be right - we're just Joe & Jane.

God has called us to be compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness. He's called us to show the whole world what He looks like.

Taking His name in vain is about: don't sign cheques I wouldn't sign, don't put my name to things that aren't me.

As a Christian, you're actually picking up and carrying (Nasah) the name (Shim) of God around with you. Shawv (in vain) means to live your life in a way that manifests (not disappoints) the hope that rests upon it.

The name of God rest upon a person (Ex 23:20), its a prophetic utterance of character (Exodus 34:6-7), it sits in a place (Deur 12:11), a force that provides protection (Ps 20:1), that has the ability to move with emotion - to fire a place up (Is 30:27).

It's a realm of awareness, that we can live in, or outside of (Micah 4:5). Its a force that brings about the best life (Jn 20).

The name creates a life so good, it's worth suffering & dying for (Acts 5:40-41). The demonstration of that life is so powerful, it threatens other people.

If you are reviled for the name of Christ, then you are blessed (1 Peter 4:14). Jesus: I have manifested Your name (John 17:6).

God has called Christians to be nice, more than He has called us to be right.

Review

We're just Joe and Jane. We can't be addicted to being right. We're just four-dimensional people, trying to make sense of an infinitely-dimensional God. It's not about being right - God has not called us to be right. God has called us to be: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness. He's called us to show the whole world what He looks like. We're just Joe and Jane.

Exodus 20, we've been talking about the Ten Commandments. I only got through five of them, this is the fifth; and so there's obviously five more. If you want a full discussion on it, see “Ten Commandments” – ShaneWillardMinistries.org.

The Ten Commandments is about a group of people that have been slaves for 430 years. All they knew was slavery; and God is trying to do a lot of things, but the primary thing He's trying to do is: He's trying to create a marriage relationship with a group of people, who've been slaves for 430 years.

The Jewish people see it as a 10-word Katubah - a marriage proposal. It was God taking this group of people, and He's trying to create the best culture on earth. He's trying to create a culture that will show the world what God looks like; and it's going to be so awesome, it's going to be so great, the whole world's going to want in on it.

He's trying to teach these people to be human again. He's trying to teach these people: what would it be like to live in a culture where you have to respect the dignity, and the image of God, in every other person. What would that be like?

What would it be like to live in a culture that perpetuates godliness, by honouring their father and mother?

What would it be like to live in a culture where God does not exist in boxes, that God actually is everywhere? He's spirit. You can't locate Him in a place.

What would it be like to live in a culture, where you can't kill people just because you can? You can't steal from people, just because you can.

God is trying to create the greatest culture on earth. He is not trying to make a group of people good. He's trying to make a group of people free.

Main Message

Exodus 20:7. – “You should not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless, anyone who takes His name in vain”.

So in the context of creating this incredible culture, in the context of creating a marriage between a group of slaves and God, in the context of creating the greatest culture in the world, that everybody's going to want in on, the third thing He says is: “Do not take my name in vain”.

When you marry somebody, you get the right to use their name. God is saying is: don't sign cheques I wouldn't sign. Don't put my name on things that I wouldn't put my name on.

We primarily make this a language issue; but when we make it a language issue, we miss the entire point. When we make it a language issue, don't ever say "oh my God" - as if ‘God’ is God's name.

Let me just clear something up real quick: ‘God’ is not God's name – it’s his title; and actually the English word ‘God’ has a pagan origin. Every word in the English language is pagan. Monday was a day to honour the moon god; Thursday was a day to honour the god Thor; Saturday was the day to honour the god Saturn; Sunday was the day to honour the sun god - so don't get caught up in language issues.

If you say “I'm not going to say any word that has pagan origins” - you would lose your entire language. The English language, as an entire language, is based in pagan origins - even the ways we get swear words. Swear words come about by whoever won the war. The words became dirty; and by Jesus' day, the Aramaic words were dirty. Why? Because the other people won the war, so they make the other language dirty. This happened in Serbia and Croatia, and it happened in English. The way we get our swear words, actually comes from the William the Conqueror.

William the Conqueror and the Normans attacked the Saxons back in the 1300s. William the Conqueror won the war, and the Norman word for ‘sexuality’ was ‘fornication’; but the Saxon word was another word that starts with an 'f'. The Norman word for something like ‘going to the bathroom’ was: poop, or crap; but the Saxon word was something entirely different. When the Normans beat the Saxons, their words became clean, and the Saxon words became swear words. That's all that happened.

You realise if the Saxons won the war, for me to say ‘fornicate’ from the stage, people would go: WHAT! As it is now, it's not the case; so it's never a language issue.

That's why Jesus was shocking people, when He'd say: if you say to your brother ‘Raka’, do you realise that He was swearing? He was, in their culture, using a dirty word - and people were going: Huh! His whole point was: you guys are making it all about language. I'm not concerned with what comes out of your mouth; I'm concerned with what's going into your heart that defiles a person.

It's not a language issue. It's not like saying: “oh my God” - although those things are probably distasteful, and we probably shouldn't do them - even that is irrelevant. Taking God's name in vain has nothing to do with language - it is far bigger than that.

Three main words in this command; the first word is Nasah, translated either "to carry", or "to take". The context is not "to say it"; even the meaning of the word doesn't mean "to say it"; it means "to pick it up"; “to carry something”, or to “take it”.

Don't pick up the name of God in vain, that's Nasah – to: don't carry around. The picture is that, when you call the name of Christ - when you wear a 'What Would Jesus Do?' bracelet; or a cross around your neck; or put a fish on your car; or wear some sort of Christian t-shirt.

When you identify yourself as a Christian, it's bigger than just going to heaven one day. You're actually picking up, and carrying, the name of God around with you. He says: don't take the name in vain.

The next word is ‘Shim’, which just means ‘name’. So it says: don't pick up and carry the name of God in vain.

Finally, the word ‘in vain’, is the word ‘Shawv’. So you have Nasah, which means "to carry"; you have shawv, which is translated "in vain"; and you've got Shim, which is “name”.

The translator's primary job is to make the verse readable. There is no way that they could translate the actual literal meanings of the words in order, because it would make it unreadable. Let me give you the full Hebrew dictionary definition of the word shawv.

It's translated "in vain" - that makes it readable; but this is the full dictionary definition: Anything that disappoints the hope that rests upon in.

He's saying: if you want to have the best life, the culture that everybody wants in on, here's what I want you to remember:

Do not carry My name in such a way, that disappoints the hope that rests upon it.

Carry my name in a way that manifests the hope that rests upon it.

When you identify yourself with Christ, there's two ways you can live: in a way that manifests the hope that rests upon it; or in a way that disappoints the hope that rests upon it.

Let me present this a few different ways:

1) Do not use my name for things that I would not use it for. Don't put My name on things that I wouldn't put it on. Don't sign cheques I wouldn't sign.

2) Be a co-operator with God, not a manipulator of Him.

I've been guilty of this. I confess this before men, I ask for forgiveness. I've done this! There's been times I've done it on purpose, which is really bad, but I had to mature past that. There have been times that I've done it by accident, and I didn't mean to; but all of us at some point have done this, where: we use God's name to accomplish our own purpose.

We have an idea, we really believe it's a good idea, but we're not confident enough to sell the idea, so this is what we say: “God told me”. When you hear somebody say "God told me" all the time, normally it's someone who's not confident enough to take responsibility for their own feelings. That's using the name of God in vain. Co-operate with God, don't manipulate Him.

3) Do not take my name, and then do things that are incompatible with who I am.

The name of God is defined a lot of different ways; but the primary definition of the name of God, to the Hebrew people, is found in Exodus 34:6 and 34:7, and it says this: He is the Lord. He is the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God. He is the Lord. If you don't remember anything from tonight, remember that: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness. When you take the name of God, you are called to show the world what God looks like.

Let me tell you what that is not.

1) Its not: being ‘doctrinally right’. None of us are doctrinally right. We're just Joe and Jane, trying to make sense of an infinitely-dimensional God.

2) Its not: being the moral police for the whole world.

You are not called to tell the whole world who's right and who's wrong, who's in and who's out, who's in heaven and who's in hell. You're not called to do any of that.

What we are called to do is: to carry the name; which means we are to act: compassionate; gracious; slow to anger; abounding in love and forgiveness.

In the First Century, they called it ‘The Disposition of Messiah’. It was the primary test of ministry, particularly the prophetic. If someone gave a prophetic word in the First Century, they would test the prophecy; and the first question about the prophecy was not: “is it right or wrong”; the first question about the prophecy was: was it delivered in a manner consistent with the disposition of messiah? Was it delivered in a compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness way? What was the tone of the prophecy?

Let me say it this way: you can be right, but be wrong, at the top of your voice.

Are we carrying the name ‘in vain’; or are we carrying it in a way where, the world around us would look at our lives, and say: they are compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness?

Is it possible to never swear with your tongue, yet be swearing with your whole life? Is it possible that you would never say a ‘swear word’ with your mouth, but yet your whole life is actually profaning the name of God.

You're supposed to be compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love; so when you're critical when you gossip, slander, lose your temper, go off at someone, when you're mean, when you're judgemental. When these kinds of things happen, you understand that that is just as much ‘swearing’, as any other swear-word. Using God's name in a way that ‘disappoints the hope that rests upon it’; instead of a way that manifests it.

3) Don't be people who carry my name, and yet live however you want.

Don't be people who carry the name, and then overlook the poor; don't carry My name, and then lose your temper; don't carry the name, and then not forgive people; don't carry the name, and then gossip and slander and drag other people down; don't carry the name and be judgemental. The only way to carry the name of God, in a way that manifests the hope that rests upon it, is to be: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness.

How did the Hebrew people understand the concept of God's name?

1) As a description.

All we have is the full revelation that was given in the Bible. Obviously the Bible was limited to the language of men, whereas God is infinite. Hebrew people saw the name of God as a ‘prophetic utterance of character’. God's name was more about: who He was; than what you called Him.

When people's name changed, their character changed. When Simon became ‘Solid’ - they changed his name from Simon to Peter. God changed Saul's name to Paul. He changed Abram's name to Abraham, and Sarai's name to Sarah. When there was a fundamental change in their character, God changed their name; so what was the first name that God revealed Himself as, in the Bible?

The first name He revealed Himself as was to Abraham, and He said: My name is El Shaddai.

He says: Abraham, I want to make a covenant with you. My name is El Shaddai - that means God Almighty, and that made sense. Abraham worshipped the sun god during the day, and the moon god at night. Well when you worship the sun during the day, and the moon at night, you're left with a fundamental question: who's in charge? So God shows up and meets his need. He says: let Me tell you who's in charge, I'm in charge man. I am El Shaddai, I choose you Abraham, I want you to go.

They become somewhere between three and four million people in Egypt, and their God was El Shaddai. One day God chooses to reveal Himself a guy named Moses, and Moses said: what is Your name? God says: My name is Jehovah. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses' response was understandable: no way.

God says this, in Exodus 6: “I revealed Myself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by My name Jehovah, they didn't know Me”.

So God begins to expand the revelation of His name. Now He's not only El Shaddai, God Almighty; He's Jehovah, Jehovah what? Just Jehovah. Later He says: I'm Jehovah Rapha, in other words I'm a healer. He later says: I'm Jehovah Jireh, I'm your provider. He says: I'm Jehovah Tsidkenu, I'm your righteousness; Jehovah M'Kaddesh, I'm your sanctification; Jehovah Shammah, I'm the ever present one - I don't leave or ever forsake; Jehovah Shalom, I'm God, your peace; Jehovah Rohi, I'm the Lord; your shepherd; Jehovah Nissi.

He reveals Himself over time, over and over and over again to a group of people, until the concept of God's name got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger; until the New Testament says that God gave Jesus a name that was “above every other name, whether that name be written in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth; that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, to the glory of God, the Father”.

Jesus Christ lived in the flesh, the encapsulation of everything the name of God was; so it was a prophetic utterance of character. It was less about title, and more about a description of who a person was - that was name.

2) My name is: ‘in Him’.

Exodus 23:20-21 – “Behold, I send an Angel before you, to keep you the way, and to bring you to the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before Him, and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions, for My name is in Him”.

So as they understood the name as a prophetic utterance of character; now their understanding expanded to: wait a minute, the name of God can actually rest on a person; the name of God can float around, and it can rest on a person. It could come on me, it could come on you.

I don't want you to lose track of the context here: that when the name of God comes on you, what is actually coming on you? Compassion, grace, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness.

What else is coming on you? Whatever you need - in the name - at the time. If you need healing, Jehovah Rapha comes on you; if you need provision, Jehovah Jireh comes on you; if you need peace in your heart, Jehovah Shalom comes on you. That the name of God can actually rest on a person.

3) A dwelling place.

Deuteronomy 12:11 – “then there shall be a place which Jehovah your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell”.

So now, not only can the name of God exist on a person; but the name of God can actually come into a place; that not only can the name of God rest on you, the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God. Not only can it rest on you, but it can actually make this place a dwelling place.

How many of us agree we should make this our prayer: God, let Bay City Outreach Centre be a dwelling place for Your name. What would happen in the city of Hastings, if this church was known as a dwelling place for the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God?

What would happen around Hastings, if the reputation of this place became: people get healed there; people get fed there; people get peace there? I have a friend who went in there, and her mind was all chaotic, and she left and now her heart is full of peace.

What would happen if it became a dwelling place for the name; when this place becomes fully devoted?

If we, individually, have the name of God rested on all of us; then we become a place (and it's a specific place), that God chooses to make His name dwell; that manifests the name of God, instead of disappointing the hope that rests upon it.

One of the reasons the church in general has lost its credibility, is because we made it all about getting to heaven one day. It's all about getting saved, and get to heaven one day, and we forgot our basic mission: to bring heaven to earth. We forgot our basic mission: to carry the name of God well.

So the name could: sit on a person; be in a specific place.

4) A force that provides protection.

Their next understanding of it was found in the Book of Psalms 20:1-2, and the writer of this Psalm is reflecting on God, and he makes an interesting observation about God. He says: “May Jehovah hear you in the day of trouble. The name of God of Jacob set you on high, sending you help from the sanctuary”.

So now their concept of this started to expand: not only could it ‘rest on a person’; not only was it a ‘prophetic utterance of character’; not only could it ‘sit in a place’; but now the name of God could actually be: ‘a force that provides protection’.

It could be a force that provides protection - that when the enemy comes against you like a flood; the name of God is what sets you on fire; that nothing can touch you; no weapon formed against you can prosper.

The name of God is ‘setting you on high’; that when you ‘carry the name of God’, the responsibility on you is to carry it well, to carry it in a way that manifests the hope that rests upon it, to everyone you know - that's our job.

God's job is, when we're carrying the name of God, is to make sure that when the enemy comes against us like a flood, He lifts us up on high. The name of God actually has the power to protect you from anything coming against you. That was their understanding, and then this understanding grew even more.

5) An emotion, that moves.

In Isaiah 30:27, the prophet is expanding the definition of the name of God, and he says: “Behold, the name of Jehovah comes from afar, burning with anger, and uplifting of smoke. His lips are full of fury, and His tongue like a devouring fire”.

So Isaiah expands the abilities of the name. Now, the name of God can not only ‘rest on a person’; and ‘rest on a place’; it can ‘provide protection’; and has the ability to ‘move with emotion’. There's an ‘emotion’ in the name of God - that can ‘move’; separating it from anything our name can do.

Can you imagine somebody saying: the name of Shane moved through the place with fiery emotion? No, their concept of the name had to do with what happens when the name of God shows up in a place.

When the name of God chooses to make this place a dwelling place, it should fire up our emotions inside. It should change the way we feel. It shouldn't just change the way we think (although that is big time); it should manifest itself in a difference in thinking, to the point where it changes how we feel; that we should feel the truth of the name of God.

How crazy is it, that for us to believe (with all of our heart) the doctrine of forgiveness - we believe that we've been forgiven of every single sin - yet we feel guilty. So we believe we're innocent, but we feel guilty - that makes no sense.

When the name of God comes into a thing, it changes the emotion in a place. It fires a place up!

So the name of God started to expand, and it wasn't just a prophetic utterance of character. Everything that was in this character could actually rest on you. It could rest on a place. It could provide protection - it could move with emotion.

6) A realm (of awareness) that can be lived in.

The next thing they understood, and this is really when it starts to click, is in Micah 4:5. Micah is a later prophet in the Old Testament, and he touches on something about the name of God, that no one before him had discovered.

If the people in Micah's day would have thought they had ‘figured it all out’, then they would have called him a false prophet for saying this; but they allowed people to journey with God, and this is what the prophet Micah says, in Micah 4:5.

“For all the people will walk, each one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of Jehovah our God, forever and ever”.

So Micah says: the name of God is not just something that: ‘rests on someone’; can ‘be in a place’; protects, can move with emotion. The name of God is a realm - that can be lived in, or lived out. Everything you do, and everything you say, is in the name of something.

It's a realm of awareness: that we can live in, or outside of. You're either ‘in the name’; or you're ‘outside of the name’.

What dominates your awareness? Whatever dominates your awareness is the name you're living in.

You are meant to minister the name of God. We are called to minister the name of God; and I would suggest to you, that you're ministering the name of whatever you're ‘aware of’.

How many of you wives have ever been on your way home (alone), and you got mad at your husband? You're on your way home, you've got a 20 minute ride home, and you're mad with your husband.

What's going on in that car? It's just you in the car - what's going on in the car? Imaginary conversations, exactly! We love imaginary conversations. We love them. Come on, am I the only one that likes a good imaginary conversation? We love imaginary conversations, and you should - do you know why? Because you never lose, never!

In an imaginary conversation, you always win; and let me help you: if you're having imaginary conversations, and you're losing - get your head checked man - it's YOUR imagination! You can win!

For 20 minutes home – oh, you're letting him have it! Oh yeah, you're letting him have it - and he's cowering in the corner somewhere. And then there's a group of people, when you get home - and they're all taking your side, yeah!

You walk in, and all you're aware of is your anger; and when you walk in that house, I promise you, you minister your anger through the whole house. You walk in, your husband says: what's the matter with you? Oh, nothing!

Do you have any trouble ministering the name of Anger? No. If you were angry with me, you could let me know without saying one word. Why? Because you're a ‘minister of the name’!

You can minister depression. Has anybody, besides me, ever had a good, successful depression? It's fantastic! You can make your face look sad; you could sit off all by yourself; you could cross your arms. People will notice - they come over: what's the matter? Nothing! Why? Because you can ‘minister depression’.

You can minister in the name of: insecurity, rejection, abandonment - or you can minister in the name of the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God.

What is the name of the God that you walk in? Each of us will walk in the name of something.

If I understand this correctly, this is what God's saying:

Don't say that you walk in my name, and then walk in the name of something else - which disappoints the hope that rests upon it. If you walk in My name, then be compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. Manifest the hope that rests upon it.

So they understood it as a realm that could be lived in.

7) A force that brings about the best life

John 20:31 – “these are written, so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, you might have life in His name”.

So now the name even expands even further, and the name is a force that brings about the best life. Actually it takes Micah's revelation, (the name is an awareness that you can walk in, or out of), and it says: if you live your life completely aware of the name of God, it brings about the best life - so it's a force that brings about the best life.

8) Creates the best life.

The next revelation is found in the Book of Acts 5:40-41, and it says: “and they obeyed him, and calling the apostles, they beat them; they commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go”. Once again, this is a reference back to Micah.

“In the name of Jesus" has nothing to do with saying: "in the name of Jesus"; it has to do with Being in the name of Jesus.

What they were speaking, was actually ministering out of a realm of awareness (Micah 4:5), that they were in the name. Acts 5:40-41 -“they speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go; then indeed they departed from the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to be shamed for His name”.

So now the name creates a life - in John 20 the name creates the best life. In Acts 5, they realise that the name creates a life that is so good, it's worth dying for, it's worth suffering for.

It doesn't say: they were ‘tormented’ for God, or they were ‘punished’ for God. It does not say: they were ‘shamed’ for God.

It says: they were ‘shamed for His name’.

This is a concept that is not true of other people. Your name does not travel on its own. Your name does not have power that people walk in and out of. Your name - no one will ever be beaten in the name of Shane - no one. People are beaten because they made a decision to live a compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness life; and that the demonstration of that life is so powerful, that it threatens other people.

They're not shamed because they were shoving religion down people's throats. They weren't shamed because they were thumping their Bibles, saying: we're in, you're out. They weren't shamed because they were saying: we're right, you're wrong. They weren't shamed because they were handing out tracts that ‘don't make any sense’. They weren't shamed for any of that.

They were shamed for living a life, that was worthy to be called of the name; and that the power in that life was drawing people to itself.

Acts 19:37. There's this guy named Paul, and he's in a place called Ephesus. Ephesus was the headquarters to the goddess Diana, and the goddess Artemis. He is in the epicentre of the goddess Artemis. The temple to the goddess Artemis is still one of the eight wonders of the world today, and he's winning so many converts to Christ, they don't know what to do with him, so they arrest him.

This is what Acts 19:37 (I don't have it in front of me), but the judge in the court says something like: Why have you brought these men to me, who have neither robbed our temples, nor have they blasphemed our goddess? Paul is in the epicentre of the goddess Artemis, and he's building one of the greatest churches of all time, and he doesn't say one bad thing about Artemis. He simply lived a life in the name of God, and that, in and of itself, drew people to itself - and that's what we're called to do. That's what we're called to be. We're called to demonstrate before we announce - to demonstrate. It's worth dying for.

9) 1 Peter 4:14 – “if you are reviled for the name of Christ, then you are blessed, because the spirit of God and glory rest on you”.

He says: you want to walk in the spirit? Then you walk in that realm of awareness that Micah 4:5 talked about. When you're in the realm of awareness of the name of God, then that is walking in the spirit. That's when the spirit of God and glory rest on you.

You want to be about glory? Fine, but glory is not primarily gold, and diamonds, and angels, and wind, and trumpets, and all that stuff. I'm all for all of it - great. When God does that stuff – it’s fantastic. But if that kind of stuff is it, then we've missed the point - that the glory of God always comes back to a manifestation of the name; which is: producing a group of people, it's producing fruit, that produces the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God.

What good does it do, to have a church of people covered in gold dust, with diamonds in their shoes, seeing angels in the sky, and they walk out and be mean? No! That is not the point! The point of the spirit of God and glory resting on you, is that it produces something in your life of the name of God: the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God.

1 Peter 4:15, which doesn't have anything to do with it, but I'm putting it in for my own self, because I just love this scripture. It says: “Truly, according to them, He is blasphemed; but according to you He is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a meddler in the affairs of others”. I love that.

This says: ‘busybody’ - I like that even better. “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, thief, evildoer, or a busybody”. Isn't that awesome? I mean murderer - that's bad! Thief = bad. Evildoer = bad; but in the same list, he puts ‘busybody’!

Let me help you for a second. You want to walk in a way that manifests the name of God, let me give you the most common-sense advice I could ever give you. Mind your own business! Don't be meddling in the personal affairs of other people!

Let me help you with something. If they want you to know their personal life - they will tell you. And if they're not telling you, there's likely a really good reason why they're not telling you - and it's none of your business!

I feel better already. This is like a big counselling session. If you're one of these people, who waste time at home looking on the internet, to find all the trash on all the preachers in the world - stop! That is using the name of God in vain. We are called to something bigger and better. Don't be known to be a murderer, a thief, an evildoer or a busybody. Be known as someone who: walks in the name of God, and manifests it everywhere they go.

The conclusion there is this: the untouchable name of God is actually placed on you; so God entrusts His reputation to people. Why? I have no idea! He entrusts His reputation to people - namely Christians, who are carrying it. If you say you're ‘a Christian’, then you're carrying the name of Christ; so wherever you go, and whatever you do, God is present in your actions.

One writer says it this way: Whatever you do - do it in the name of Jesus.

How do you run your business? Are people seeing what God looks like, in the way you run your business? Do you have integrity, compassion, humility, love?

What kind of neighbour are you? How do you spend your money? If I looked at your cheque book, what would I see is important to you? Is it the things that are important to God, or is it just to you? How do you give? Are you generous?

How do you handle stress and problems? Are you an angry, worried mess; or are you showing people the profound trust in God Almighty?

Are you a forgiving person; or do you excuse and rationalise a reason to hold a grudge? How do you talk to, and treat, your husband? How do you talk to, and treat, your wife? What kind of representation of God are you?

If you, and your ideas, were the only concept of God that people had - what would they think of Him? Would they think: He's kind? Would they think: He's compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love - because that's what He is; or would they think: He's mean, judgemental, caustic, critical, cynical, a gossiper, someone who's insecure? What picture of God are you putting off on a day to day basis?

Is there any area in my life right now, which is swearing, and using the name of God in vain, to the world around me?

John 17:6. This is Jesus' last big sort of prayer – “Father, I have manifested Your name, to everyone You gave Me out of this world”.

“I have manifested Your name”. In that same prayer later, this is what He said: “Father, as You are in Me, and I am in You, let them be in Us, so that the world might believe”.

Your relationship with God is never about you and God; it's about: you, and God, and everyone in your sphere of reference.

“Father, as You are in Me, and I am in You, let them be in Us, so that the world might believe”.

This is about a group of people committed to showing the whole world what God looks like - and we will either carry the name of God in a way that manifests the hope that rests upon it; or we will carry the name of God in a way that disappoints it. That is using it in vain.

There's unimaginable power in using the name of God properly, because here's the truth - listen to me very carefully: If I can misuse the name, then I can use it. I can live in it. I can live it out. I can heal. I can deliver. I can encourage. I can show generosity. I can feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and bring encouragement to prisoners. I can give instruction, and if nothing else, if you're sitting there going: I can't do any of those things - listen to me: then you can be nice.

Just be nice. I mean, is that just a heavy revelation or what? God has called Christians to be nice, more than He has called us to be right. Can I get a hearty amen to that?

Is your life revealing the name, or profaning it? Are you manifesting the name, or are you profaning it?

I'm going to close this out with this story - it's an awesome story in the Bible. It's about a guy named Jacob, and Jacob is a mama's-boy. Jacob had severe psychological issues; because, first of all: his name was ‘Liar’, which I think you could agree, if your parents called you that from birth, it would mess you up. God to bed Liar, get up Liar, do your homework Liar, come to dinner Liar, do your chores Liar. It would be bad, but it even gets more complicated...

It says that: his father loved his brother more - and he knew it. Jacob was trying to do anything he could do, to sort of get his father's attention, and he wanted his father's blessing - but the father's blessing belonged to Esau.

But it says that his father was blind; he was laying there because he was old and blind. He's laying there, and he says: “is that you Esau?” Jacob said: “yes, it's me dad - it's me, Esau”. He says: “you sound like Jacob”. He says: “no, no, dad it's me, it's Esau, give me your blessing, give me your blessing dad - come on”. He says: “no, the blessing belongs to Esau - you sound like Jacob”.

Jacob had taken fur - it says that Esau was very hairy, but Jacob was fair-skinned. So he took fur, and he wrapped it around his arms, and he said: “no, no dad, feel my arm - feel it”; so Isaac feels his arm, and he says: “you sound like Jacob, but you feel like Esau” - so he gave him the blessing.

Listen to me very carefully: you don't deserve anything from God. Everything you have is by the grace of God. When you go to God in yourself, in your own name - you don't get anything. But when you put on Christ - you sound like ‘you’, but you feel like ‘Him’ - and the Father gives you every blessing that belongs to Christ anyway. That's living in the name.

One writer said it this way: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name”. Next line: “...and forget not His benefits: who forgives all of your sins, and heals all of your diseases”. Why? For He is the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God, who does not treat us as our iniquities deserve, but gives us mercy that's new every morning. Great is the faithfulness of God.

You serve a God who believes in you, more than you believe in Him. He's trusted you to carry His name. He's trusted you, and me, and all of us, and as a church, as a dwelling place - He's chosen us to carry His name. Carry it well.

May you be: manifesters of the name of God; and not just carriers of it. May you never carry the name in a way that disappoints the hope that rests upon it. May we be people who carry the name that manifests the hope that rests upon it.

You can walk out of here tonight, completely aware of the name of God - and if you do that, then you're walking in the spirit of Christ, for the spirit of Christ and glory dwells on you.

Leadership Seminar (Shane Willard 2008) (Shane Willard)

Tefillah, Teshuvah, Tzedakah (1 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Pictures from Hebrew hieroglyphics are used like a comic strip, to illuminate the word. Tefillah/Prayer: turn the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden. Teshuvah/Repentance: change your thinking.

Tzedakah/Generosity: Righteousness revealed; to be generous. The desire of your heart opens the door to humility.

Being a Peacemaker (2 of 6) (Shane Willard)

This story is about Peacemakers & Escalation…Our hero of the faith was a rebellious, spoilt brat, who wanted his own way, in every single way. This was a man that was sleeping with prostitutes on his wedding night, because he got depressed, because his best man stole his wife.

From what started out as a joke no-one understood, a fascinating cycle of violence ensues, based on: because you did this, I now have a right to do that. I merely did to them, what they did to me. This way of living will always bring death.

Demonstrating God's Power (3 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Remarkable similarities are found between the Corinthian Gods of Mithra, Adonis, Addis, Horus, and the Gospel story of Jesus Christ.

Paul's strategy changed in Corinth, instead of making fine-sounding arguments that Jesus was the Christ, as he did with the Jews, he demonstrated what Jesus' life looked like, by living it out.

That gave him the credibility to announce that the kingdom of God was at hand. Cookie-cutter evangelism doesn't work. Demonstrating the Power of God, within the Disposition of Messiah, gives us the Credibility to speak life into any situation.

Being a Good Neighbor (4 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Luke 12:13 is the only time that Jesus' actually proclaims: God is going to kill you. It's not any of the sins you would think. It's not adultery, fornication, burning your children in fire, idolatry. Its greed!

Jesus is not impressed by what kind of car you drive, house you live in, or anything you possess; but with how much compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding-in-love, character is present in your homes.

Form versus Function (5 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Greek people, people from Europe, see form. We were trained to see form and think in form. Hebrew people see function.

To study our Bible more effectively, we should be people who are training ourselves to see function.

Worries of this Life, Deceitfulness of Wealth (6 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Jesus says: the worries of this life will keep the word of God from taking root in your life. It's something that chokes your life out.

The other one is the deceitfulness of wealth, which is a lie that says: if I had this I would be happy.

Do you have one day in seven, that is unlike any other? If you do, how is it different? Who are the most important people to you? What are you called to be? Is that getting your attention first?

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- Demonstrating God's Power (3 of 6).mp3

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Tefillah, Teshuvah, Tzedakah (1 of 6) (Shane Willard)

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Pictures from Hebrew hieroglyphics are used like a comic strip, to illuminate the word. Tefillah/Prayer: turn the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden. Teshuvah/Repentance: change your thinking.

Tzedakah/Generosity: Righteousness revealed; to be generous. The desire of your heart opens the door to humility.

I want to start out tonight by talking about faith. Of all the ethnic groups of people in the world, and all the different types of cultures and races and stuff, I have a rule. I can only make fun of those that I am… So I can make of white people okay - because I'm white.

We have a certain way. If I was to take a survey of people who come from Europe; and we're talking about good-hearted people, on their way to heaven, saved as saved can be. If I was to ask them: why, if you died today, would you go to heaven? Some 90% would give me the same answer: I would go to heaven; because I believe in Jesus.

Now there's a problem with that, isn't there? Is there anybody in hell, who believes in Jesus? Yeah, there are lots of people in hell, who believe in Jesus - particularly demons! I won't say people, because it's not my place to put people there, but yeah, we'll say: demons. There are lots of demons in hell, who believe in Jesus; and they don't just believe in Jesus - they actually are scared to death of Him! They actually have a certain respect for who He is, and yet they still find themselves in hell.

So obviously then, a ‘belief in Jesus’ is not enough to save us eternally. We're talking about salvation here. It's got to be Faith; so I met with my mentor, and we started fleshing this thing out about faith, and I want to show you what faith means.

Now there are three steps to faith, in a Hebrew concept, from a rabbi. The first step is: Tefillah; the second step is: Teshuvah, and the third step is: Tzedakah. So if you asked a First Century Hebrew teacher, what it means to have faith, they would’ve said: Tefillah, Teshuvah, Tzedakah. Doesn’t it have kind of a da-da-da da-da-da da-da-da; has this sort of ring to it.

So when Paul makes statements like: “for by grace you've been saved, through faith and that not of yourself, this is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast”. In his mind, as a First Century rabbi, he'd be thinking: Tefillah; Teshuvah; Tzedakah.

Now the Hebrew language, originally, was pictures (hieroglyphics). So every Hebrew letter is a picture; so a word is like a cartoon strip. It makes sense doesn't it; because where did the nation of Israel come from? Egypt right! They were a group of people that started out as a family, and ends up in a place in Egypt; they grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. So it stands to reason, that as they develop their own way of thinking, that they would have had a language similar to the Egyptians, which was hieroglyphics.

So the Hebrew language originally was pictures, all the way up to Babylon. If you look at the history of the Hebrew people, they were in slavery to Egypt for 430 years; and then a guy named Moses comes in, and he rescues them out of that slavery. Then they were out of slavery for 430 years; and then they get re-enslaved. We're going to talk about that later this week, why they got re-enslaved.

Part of the reason was because this group of people who were slaves, and God freed them from that, eventually started enslaving people again. Solomon had forced labor building the temple of God! So this God, who hates slavery so much that He got this whole group of people out of it - the very group of people that He got out of slavery into freedom, they turned around and enslaved people.

So then they get enslaved into Babylon. From the slavery in Babylon to the time of Jesus was exactly 430 years; so to the Hebrew people, the Hebrew people were waiting on a new Moses, to come and kind of ‘save the day’. So when Jesus comes along the scene, the writers and people are proclaiming things like: “peace on earth, and good will to all men”. In other words, what they were saying was: Caesar is not the answer, this guy is. This guy is. It was all a political thing.

So anyway, back to this group of people in Egypt. They developed this language in pictures, so every Hebrew letter is a picture. Every Hebrew word then is a comic strip. For example, the Hebrew word for inequity, is the word Avon. Yes, all the old school Pentecostal say Amen? Even the word for make-up is sin - I told you Mildred, I told ya!

Now in Hebrew, the 'o' does not exist; we just put the 'o' in English, so you know how to pronounce it. In Hebrew it's just: A, V and N; or: Alef; Vav; and Noon. Now the picture of A is an eye; the picture of Vav was a hook; and Noon was fish that were multiplying. So it's kind of like one fish becomes two, becomes four, becomes eight - like it looks like that.

By the way, can you imagine being a scribe between Moses and David? Like all the psalms would have been written like this!

So when a Hebrew person read: ‘Inequity’, they would see this word: Eye + Hook + Fish-Multiplying. So when a Hebrew person read ‘Inequity’, what they read was: “whatever your eye hooks-to, multiplies”.

If you've ever done premarital counseling, you know this to be true; because two people come, and they're in love, and their eye is hooked to all the good things. I've had them sit in my office, and I'm saying: “are you sure that you want to do this”? “Yes”. I'm like: “sir, have you seen the way she acts, when she doesn't get her way”? He's like: “oh yeah, but it'll be okay, we're in looove”!

How many of you know, like four months into that, it's like a disaster right; because your eye - it's not because anything's changed. It's just because the focus of your eye has changed to something different. The focus of your eye has changed.

How many of you have ever been guilty of: focusing on everything you don't have; instead of being thankful for what you do? Whatever your eye hooks to, multiplies. Has anybody, besides me, ever been guilty of wanting something really, really bad; to the point where we thought we'd die without it; and then we get it, and it's not what we thought it was? That's what this is. Its inequity.

I'm just using this as an example of their pictures; but this should give us a revelation on grace; and that is, that there's three levels to sin in the Hebrew culture. I always say ‘levels’, but that makes it sound like one's worse than the other, so we'll say ‘stages’.

Stage one is: Inequity; and that's when your eye hooks to something, and it starts multiplying. So let's say, I want this pen. My eye hooks to this pen; and my need for it on the inside starts to grow. Even if I look over here, my eye's still drawn to this pen. Any guy here ever been on a car lot, and your eye gets drawn to the V8 - even though petrol's $1.85 a litre! Your eye gets drawn to the V8, because you'll be more of a man if you have the V8. Chicks dig the V8; and so the eye gets hooked to it.

Now at some point in that journey of my eye hooking to this, it starts multiplying. It creates something that the Bible calls a lust; and once that lust is in us, and we are enticed by it - that's when the Bible says we sin.

The Bible says: a person sins when he's drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. So my eye hooks to it, it creates a lust, and now I'm having a lust for this pen. I really want it. I need it. I have to have it in my life. I might die without that pen.

Come on, this is about all of us, isn't it? I mean it might not be a pen, but it could be something else; and so that's sin. That's level two - so you've got Inequity; and then you've got Sin.

The third stage is: Transgression, when I actually take the pen. It's when I actually do something. So in the Old Testament, could you prosecute somebody for Inequity? Could you prosecute somebody for having inequity in their heart? Absolutely not! Why? Because you didn't know it was there. How would you know?

Could you prosecute somebody for sin? No, because you don't know it's there. However, you could prosecute somebody for transgression; because if you had two or three witnesses of somebody transgressing the law, that's when you could prosecute them.

So Jesus comes along, and He starts blowing people away. He starts saying things like: you have heard it said: “don't murder”. Now is murder: Inequity; a Sin; or a Transgression? It's a transgression.

He said: “you've heard it said: don't commit murder; but I say to you: don't hate” - so He starts bringing the standard back to Inequity.

You've heard it said: “don't commit adultery”; but I say to you: “don't lust”. Wow! So He starts bringing it back to Inequity, which should give us a revelation of grace, because the Bible says: we all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has laid on him the Avon of us all (the inequity of us all).

In other words: Jesus doesn't just forgive you for what you've done; He forgives you all the way back to where your eye hooked to it. That's grace.

So you've got this concept of Faith: Tefillah; Teshuvah; Tzedakah. Tefillah, that's Prayer; and Teshuvah is Repentance. I'm going to define Tzedakah with the word itself, in just a moment.

Can anybody tell me: when was the first mention of the idea of prayer, in the whole Bible? Here is just basic Hebrew from Hermeneutic 101: It's called the Law of Firsts - so what's true the first mention, is true of every other part of it in the Bible. What's true of the firstborn is true of the whole family; what's true of the first fruit, is true of the whole crop; what's true of the first word, is true of the whole book; what's true of the first letter, is true of the whole word, okay?

For instance: Jesus came along by the fig tree, and He didn't see any fruit; He only saw fig leaves. Well, one of the first things you'd do, as a Hebrew Hermeneutic, is you would say: where's the first mention of fig leaves in the Bible? It's of course, all the way back in the Garden of Eden - so you can go look at those kinds of things.

So I started asking questions like: when is the first mention of Prayer in the whole Bible, and its much later than you would think. It's actually in Genesis 4:26; and it says this: “Finally the sons of Enosh called upon the name of the Lord”.

What the rabbi said about that, was that it took that many generations for people to overcome the shame of Adam and Eve, and to begin to address God again. So if you go look up that word 'called', this idea of prayer, this is what you see. You've got three pictures.

You've got three heads; three letters, three heads. First letter is the front of the head; second letter is the back of a head; and the third letter is an ox head, going into a yoke. This was the Hebrew idea of prayer, as found in Genesis 4. That word morphed into the word Tefillah; so you've got front of the head, you've got back of the head, and then you have an ox head going into a yoke. So that tells you a comic strip

What a Hebrew person sees is this (follow the pictures): that prayer is a “turning of the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden”.

Let's say it this way: prayer is being God-conscious. Prayer is being conscious of God, instead of conscious of myself. Prayer is any time I take my focus off of me, and put it onto Him.

In other words, the Hebrew idea of prayer had very little to do with words. As a matter of fact, Jesus was against long babbling prayers. Jesus said: when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the Pentecostals do, for they think they'll be heard because of their many words.

The longest prayer Jesus ever prayed takes like, 25 seconds to read; so it would have taken Him less to say it - yet Jesus could go off and pray for an hour. What was He doing for an hour? How could you pray for an hour, and not say anything? What was He doing? What would you do for an hour?

You would turn your head, in order to face the one, who could bear the burden; and then after that hour, where you were completely conscious of God, only then would you speak out loud, what the spirit of God had put on your heart to do. That takes a very short amount of time. We do it backwards. We speak, until we feel God. They would feel God, and then speak out of that - two totally different things. It's a turning of the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden.

Now Teshuvah/Repentance: it could mean a couple of things. It could mean ‘to change your mind’, or ‘to change your thinking’. It also was an ‘exile’ term. These were a group of people who were used to being enslaved by people; and the prophets would come to them, and they would say things like: Return - Teshuvah, Teshuvah, Teshuvah. In other words, there's a kingdom that's available to you, that has nothing to do with this. You can return to that.

So let's put it in context. Tefillah is: to turn the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden. Tefillah is: when I step out of myself, and I begin to become aware of the Mighty One who's with me, the Mighty One who's in me. Tefillah is when I become totally aware of God, and He and only Him, the Mighty One, the creator of the entire universe, every bit of Him is within me. The kingdom is not this way, or that; or up and down; the kingdom of God is the last place we look, which is inside us. That is prayer.

Repentance is: once I'm facing the one who can bear the burden, then I position myself to change my thinking, to how He thinks - which is a bigger shift than we would think.

We all like the 'what would Jesus do' bracelets. We love that! We love the what 'would Jesus do bracelets', until someone slaps us on our right cheek, and then we're supposed to turn the other cheek.

We love the 'what would Jesus do' bracelets, until someone asks us to carry their pack one mile, and we're supposed to carry it two.

We love the 'what would Jesus do' bracelets, until someone insults us. The Bible says in 1 Peter 2 and 3 (I'm very much paraphrasing this): that Jesus was hurled every kind of hurt and insult imaginable, and yet He took it and said nothing, and left it with God. Could you do that? Can I do that?

1) Tefillah; 2) Teshuvah; then the last one is: 3) Tzedakah. This is a compound word: Tzedak - just that part of the word, is the word ‘Righteous’. So you can see how Faith leads to Righteousness.

Tzedak, if you put the pictures on this, there's three letters: Tsadi; Dalet; Gof.

The picture of Tsadi is: a fish hook with bait on it. So when the Hebrew people saw the letter Tsadi, it meant: the desire of your heart, what lures you, what baits you, what draws your attention, what sort of Avon-thing happens? What desire in your heart is that? Tsadi is the picture of a fish hook with bait on it.

Dalet is the picture of an open door, which is easier to understand, because it just means: the ‘pathway into something’’ or: ‘open the door to’.

Gof is the picture of the back of a head.

In other words, the Hebrew idea of righteousness is this: the desire of your heart, opens the door to humility - that's righteousness.

If you put a 'ah', on the end of that - that is an open window, which means: ‘to reveal something’. Remember, windows back then, were made of wood, not glass; so to ‘open a window’ meant ‘to reveal something’; or: ‘to let wind in’; or ‘to let the spirit in’.

So the word Tzedakah means: “righteousness revealed”.

Hebrew people have a way for doing their money, which is really cool, and you ought to check it out if you don't know it; because they have 4% of the population, but they have 40% of the money - which means they might be onto something. And they don't even believe in Jesus, most of them - it's just principle.

I was sitting by a rabbi once on an airplane, and it was one of those great 8-hour flights, that you get stuck on the runway for 2-hours. It's really cool, because there's so much room on an airplane, and so we got talking... So I said: listen, I've discovered this thing about Terumah; and first and second and third tithes - three different tithes; the way they do their money. Can I share that with you?

So I shared it, and he said: oh yeah, you've got it spot on. I said: thanks. He said: do you know what that whole thing's called? We have a word for the whole thing. I said: what? He said “Tzedakah”, which means 'righteousness revealed'.

You see Jesus talking about it in Matthew 6. He says: when you do your acts of righteousness, do not do them before men to be seen, but do them before your heavenly Father, who is in secret. Tzedakah - acts of righteousness.

That word morphed over time to mean ‘Generosity’; so that today, in certain Middle Eastern countries, the beggars sit on the side of the road, and they go: “Tzedakah, Tzedakah, Tzedakah, Tzedakah…” Show me righteousness, show me righteousness. To ‘Reveal Righteousness’ meant: ‘to be generous’.

Jesus said: “your acts of righteousness were…” what? What were the three acts of righteousness? Prayer; fasting; and giving alms to the poor (Tzedakah).

Faith, then, is a mixture of: “turning my head in order to face the one who can bear the burden”.

As I turn my head, to face the one who can bear the burden, I change my mind to think like Him. As I change my mind to think like Him, He regenerates my heart, and lets me do at some points, even greater things than Him.

Tzedakah - that is faith; and living a life like this.

It's really easy to make grace cheap, because there's a part of grace that's free - but it's not cheap. Are you forgiven of every sin? Jesus said (in red letters): “Every sin a person commits will be forgiven him” - every sin. Every sin a person commits, shall be forgiven him; except for unforgiveness, and the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. But does that mean that it's cheap? No, because Paul said it this way: “where sin abounds, grace abounds much more”. So you're going to have a hard time ever out-sinning grace.

Holiness is the best life. God might forgive sins; but people say: because God forgives sins, that means He's not punishing sin.

Let's just assume for a second, let's say: God doesn't punish sin. I'm not saying He doesn't, I'm just saying, let's assume for a second, an axiom that might be true. I don't think it is, but let's just say it is.

Even if God doesn't punish sin, sin has punishment built into it naturally. Sin has this thing called death, that's built into it by nature; so even if God takes His hand off the punishment of sin (even if God's not punishing sin any more), sin punishes you - just the natural consequences of what it is.

So the best life then, comes from a life that is built around: Tefillah, Teshuvah, Tzedakah; this is a daily thing. I love this definition of faith, because it's not a definition of faith that says: pray a prayer once, and you're in!

It's a definition of faith that says: “every day I can pick up my cross”. Every day I can turn my head, and face the one who bears the burden. Every day I need to change my mind, and make sure my mind is thinking like He does; and every day, this should be producing acts of righteousness.

It should produce something in life; and one of the things it produces is Trust. I want to talk to you, for the rest of this first session, about Trust.

We're going to talk about Leadership; and God's biggest idea: that one of the responsibilities we have as leaders, is to trust; and one of the trust factors, one of the things that trust is the antidote for, is temptation.

Years ago, this group of psychologists, they were doing a study. It was a longitudinal study, which is very rare, but they do it. What they do is: they take a group of people, and they study them over a long period of time; the same group of people, over a very long period of time. It's called a longitudinal study.

What they did back in 1965 is, they took a group of 6-year-olds, and they were going to study that same group from 6 to 36; so from 1965 to 1995 they were going to track their progress. You'd have to compensate people pretty well to do this, I would imagine, but here's what they did when they were six years old is, they put all of these kids in a room.

This is one of the questions they were asking: how does a kid's ability to delay gratification at age 6, translate to that same kid's ability to delay gratification at 36? So hey put homemade, piping-hot, chocolate-chip cookies in front of them! The kids came in, and sat around the table; and every one of them had a plate, with a piping-hot, still-smoking, freshly-homemade chocolate-chip cookie in front of them.

They were only given one set of instructions, because six year olds can't handle more than one set of instructions. The instruction was this: you cannot eat your cookie. Ooh!

If you eat your cookie, there will be no consequences. We're not going to be mad at you, but you will not get the prize.

If you can wait 10 minutes, and not eat your cookie for 10 minutes, then we're going to take your one cookie away - and we're going to give you three cookies! So if you can just wait 10 minutes, we're going to give you three cookies; but if you can't wait 10 minutes, you can eat your one - but that's all you'll get.

So they left the room, and then they go behind one of those like mirror things and film them. They watch the behavior of these kids sitting around, and you can see that their willpower starts to break down. One kid leans over and starts smelling his cookie. One kid actually took his plate and licked his cookie - because they didn't say you couldn't lick it; they just said you couldn't eat it!

Finally, there's this moment of break-down. The one kid, the kid that's going to break first, somebody's going to break first. The kid that's going to break first picks up his cookie, and there's this collective: NOOOOO!

It's kind of like in Star Wars III, remember when Anakin becomes Darth Vader? Remember that? He becomes Darth Vader, and he's Luke's father; and Anakin is like Luke. You kind of put it together; so in Star Wars III you're going into the movie theatre, knowing that he's going to become Darth Vader. But you're sitting there, and the whole way you're like: NOOO! If you could only know how this is going to turn out, this is going to be really bad for everybody!

How many of you know decisions like this are really easy to see in other people, but very difficult to see in us? It's very easy to do! So the kid picks up his cookie and eats it; and once one kid ate his cookie, then there was a chain reaction… Other kids started eating their cookie - but some kids held on; and so at exactly the 10 minute mark, the people in charge of the study came in, and they took everybody's plate away. The plate that still had one cookie on it, they replaced it with three cookies; and the plates that had nothing on it - they got nothing.

The next day, they came in again. You would think that the kids who could not wait the first day, when they saw the three cookies come out, you would think the second day that they would wait - because they know three cookies are coming out. They can trust who's in charge, to do, what they say they were going to do; but what they actually found is: over the course of 21 days, that the kids who ate the cookie on day #1, kept eating the cookie every subsequent day.

Every subsequent day, they ate it quicker, to the point that by day #21, the kids who ate the cookie on day #1, actually as soon as the cookie went down, they just ate it. They didn't even give it a go; and the kids who waited on day #1, actually by day #21 found it very easy to not eat their cookie - found it very easy!

What the psychological study found, over 30 years was this: that a 6-year-olds ability to delay gratification was directly correlated to that same 6-year-olds ability to delay gratification at 36.

Now before you panic - I guess there's always Jesus! How many of you realise that a 6-year-old not being able to delay gratification, is one cookie instead of three; but a 36-year-old not being able to delay gratification - that's lost employment; that's buying huge items that you can't afford, with money you don't have, to impress people you don't like. That's huge ramifications! That's broken relationships. That's a spoiled brat, who just, if he can't get his way, runs every time.

How many of you realise that sin/temptation - there's just always more than meets the eye? It's just always bigger than what it looks.

I want to talk to you the rest of the session about Temptation and Trust; because temptation is one of those topics that leaders have to deal with; and it's also one of those topics that, if you're here tonight, and you've been saved for 40 years - you deal with temptation.

If I took a group of people, and I put someone who's been saved 40 years; someone who's been saved 30; someone who's been saved 20; someone who's been saved 10; someone who's been saved 10 minutes; and someone who doesn't even know who God is; if I put them in a study group, and I said: your topic for tonight is temptation - everybody would have a story to tell. It's not something that's limited to just a few people. It brings us all into one boat.

I want to use the temptation of Jesus to bring this together; so in Matthew 3:16-17, then it goes straight into Matthew 4. It says this: “As soon as Jesus was baptised, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on Him. A voice said from heaven: this is My Son whom I love, with whom I'm well pleased”. So you have this huge fireworks show at Jesus' baptism.

If you're a dad, and you made this big of a deal at your son's baptism, the church people would just go nuts. “What - do you think he's that special?” I mean there's lightning, thunder and birds - all kinds of things happening. “This is My Son whom I love, with whom I'm well pleased”.

Next sentence: Then, then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil - which is kind of an odd sequence of events, isn't it? “This is My Son, I love Him, I'm so proud of Him. Now come on, you’ve got to be tempted by the devil”.

You can see why, in two chapters, when He's teaching His disciples to pray, He says: and when you pray, part of what you say is: please lead me not into temptation - lead me not into temptation. Why? Because Jesus was led into temptation - and it just is hard work.

After fasting 40 days and 40 nights He was hungry, and the tempter came to Him and said: “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread”; and Jesus answered: “it is written: man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God”.

Then the devil took Him to the holy city, and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. He said: “if You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: He'll command His angels concerning You, and they'll lift You up in their hands, so that You will not strike Your foot against the stone”. And Jesus answered him: “it is also written, don't put the Lord your God to the test”.

And again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of this world and their splendor. “All this, I'll give to you, if you'll bow down and worship me”. “Away from me Satan! For it is written: worship the Lord your God and serve Him only”. Then the devil left Him, and the angels came and attended Him.

This is such an odd passage of scripture; and the truth is, the first time I ever read this, with the exception of the last temptation, I couldn't figure out why the first two were sin. The last temptation was: worship Satan - that one's obvious okay.

The first two temptations: “turn stones into bread” - what's wrong with that? Who gave Jesus the power to turn stones into bread? God did. Has Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights? Yes. Was He hungry? Yes. Would God want Him to be hungry? No. Would God be okay with Jesus using power He gave Him to meet a legitimate need? You'd think.

The second temptation was: “throw yourself off the mountain, and believe angels to catch you”. Odd yes; but sin? I realised that none of us will be tempted like this - none of us. You will never, within reason, be tempted to turn stones into bread. You'll just go down to New World, and buy you some bread!

You'll never be tempted to throw yourself off of a mountain. Imagine that: “hey, got an idea - throw yourself off a mountain, and believe God to see if He'll catch you”! Probably won't happen. Most of us won't be tempted to worship Satan - most of us. That kind of, is just too obvious.

So in a way, none of us will be tempted like this; but in another way, every one of us will be tempted like this. Turn stones into bread - every one of us are tempted daily, to meet legitimate needs, in illegitimate ways. It's a huge one: meet legitimate needs - in illegitimate ways. Your needs are legitimate; but you have an illegitimate way for you to meet it.

All of us, particularly people who call themselves ‘faith people’, there's a fine line between faith and stupidity; and so particularly ‘faith people’ were tempted to presume upon God's power. We just presume upon it. Throw yourself off that mountain, and believe God to catch you!

In church work, we do it all the time; like we say: hey, we've got an idea, and it's not well planned. It might be a little immoral, maybe even illegal; but it's an idea - and we don't have the money to even come close to doing it. No common-sense of any kind tells us that we're in a position to try to accomplish this - but we're going to believe God.

That's how we frame it! If that's faith, then it’s holy, but there's another way. If it's flesh, then it easily becomes: we're just going to presume upon God's power.

It sounds like this: I'm going to do what I want to do anyway, then I'll just believe God to fix it up. Jesus is like: God doesn't work that way.

In the South - I'm from the South by the way. In the South, smoking cigarettes is no big deal. In California, it's illegal to smoke inside a building; but In South Carolina, it's like illegal NOT to smoke inside a building; and I've prayed for people all over the South with lung cancer.

They've smoked four packs a day for their whole life, and you ought to see what their lungs would look like, if they were taken out of their body. So I pray for them; and then they go - and they still smoke! And I say: what are you doing? They say: oh we'll just believe God. We'll just believe God. We do things like that all the time - we presume upon God's power.

The third temptation is to take a short cut. Satan offers Him all the kingdoms of the world - which was Jesus' anyway; it just wasn't Jesus' right then.

Psalm 115:16, says: “the highest heavens belong to God, but the earth He's given to man”. Then eventually, at the end of the story, it all goes back to God's, and God uses us to rule; but right now, the kingdom of this world - it's given to us; and to the Prince of the Power of the Air.

So the Prince of the Power of the Air says: hey, I'll give it to you - now. I'll give you a short cut: if you worship me, you can avoid the cross - you can avoid all that pain - and I'll give you the end of it anyway.

But Jesus realised something very quickly: that a kingdom, is not a kingdom, without people. So to meet a legitimate need, in an illegitimate way, is to take a short cut to God's plan, and to presume upon God's power.

These are the temptations; and I realised there's a couple of keys to beating temptation, that isn't what we think. Let me just tell you what doesn't work: willpower. Your emotions will override your willpower, every single time. Willpower just typically doesn't work.

Has anybody, besides me, ever promised God that you would never do something - ever never, ever never, ever never again? How many of you lied? We all lied, yeah. But two things will help us beat temptation, and number one is this:

If we can simply pause, step back, and realise that there's far more at stake with temptation than meets the eye - there's far more!

One of the biggest lies in the world is: my behavior is between me and God. Listen, if your behavior is between you and God, then do whatever you want to do - God can handle you! Your behavior is never between you and God; your behavior affects everybody around you.

There's always much more at stake, with temptation, than meets the eye. The temptation is: oh, it's just me and God, and this one situation. It's just this one. One more beer – which, how many of you know, for some people, is never just one more beer. It's broken families; it's anger outbursts. It leads to other things.

It's just one more piece of cake; I'll start my diet tomorrow, it's just between me and God; and this one piece of cake. It's just this one new car purchase I can't afford. I'm going to get into debt for six years, for this one impulse, this one moment. It's just between me and God, and He's okay with it. It's just this one moment. It's just this one outburst of anger. It's just this one bit of rage.

I was with a guy once (he was 52), and we were praying together, a whole bunch of us were praying together. There was a lady who I'd never met before, and there was a group of us. This lady was very prophetic, very much the real deal, and we'd never met her before, but she asked if she could pray for this man, and I said: sure.

So he came forward, and she said: sir, I'm seeing you crouched in the foetal position. It's a yellow house on the outside, with old wood panelling on the wall; and you're crouched in the foetal position by a stove. There's a stove, a wood stove that was used to heat the whole house, and you're crouched in the foetal position. You're roughly nine years old, I'm guessing, and I'm seeing your father walk into the room, and your father walks into the room and he's yelling, and he said this to you, and she quoted something that this man's father had said to him when he was nine.

This man who I knew very well - and he's the real deal, and he is not an emotional freak of nature, or anything like that - this man started heaving and crying. I'm talking about crying, to the point stuff's coming out of his nose; stuff's coming out of his mouth. I knew this guy. This guy was the real deal. He is crying and weeping so hard from that; and she said: that's been the seed-bed of your depression for all of these years.

This man had been hospitalised four different times for depression in his life, and I thought: maybe when his dad did that; because he kept saying: “my dad was a good man. It was just that...”; maybe when his dad did that, he convinced himself: ”oh, it was just one outburst of anger.” It was just one fit of rage. God will forgive me anyway. No, no, no. This affected - this man was 53 years old, so for 44 years he had been dramatically affected by that one moment.

I think sometimes with temptation, if we can just step back and realise, that there's something far more at stake with temptation than meets the eye.

If we could ever just step back and realise: if I buy this car, I'm going to have to make payments for six years. I'm going to end up paying way more than the car's worth; and it's going to go down so fast in value I can't keep up.

And yeah, if I just drink this, if it's just this one more beer, if it's just this one more then whatever. But it's not going to be that. If this one more beer is going to push me over the edge, then I might get a DUI on the way home. I might yell at my wife. This is going to affect everybody.

This one more piece of cake, it could be just one more piece of cake, but if I step back and realise this could be the thing that throws me over the edge to diabetes. This could be the thing that causes heart disease. It's never just one more piece of cake.

The first thing is: there's always more at stake with temptation than meets the eye. The second thing is: overcoming temptation has far more to do with who we trust, than our willpower.

It has far more to do with this: where's our eye on? What are we thinking like?

Beating temptation has far more to do with: do we trust the people to bring three cookies out?

Do we trust that God's way - is three cookies -better than our way?

Where in our life are we settling for one cookie, when God intends for us to have three? Where in our life does God have three cookies waiting for us, if we'll just die to our need to be in control of the one?

It's not so much about willpower, of not eating the one cookie; it has everything to do with: do I trust that the three cookies is a better way.

I've had so many teenage girls in my counseling office, and they say stuff like this: I thought that he would love me more, if I crossed the line morally with him, and so I did, and when I woke up, I was lonelier than ever before.

It wasn't so much that they succumbed to sexual stuff; they do succumb to sexual stuff, but bigger than that. It's more: for a moment, for just a brief moment, I trusted that my way was better than God's way. All it takes is just that moment, and it affects their whole life.

In a room this size, most of us, anybody over a certain age, would have something, some decision, that they did way back in their past, that they thought was just about the moment; that they still, every now and then, think about today.

It's trust. See Jesus died, not to just forgive us from this stuff (because we are forgiven); Jesus died to free us from slavery to it. Jesus died so that we would not have any slave drivers in our life. Jesus died so we would be free from this stuff, so that we could be free to be leaders in God's biggest idea - free from the slave driver of temptation, free from the slave driver to eat the one cookie instead of the three.

It's all about perspective. Remember the Wizard of Oz? Dorothy, and the Tin Man? They were all so frightened of the wizard, just scared to death of the wizard; and they'd get in (the 1937 version is pretty cool) it's this huge curtain, and he's like: who dares call me? But when the wizard finally steps out, he's like a midget that's bald. So he comes out, and this guy that was so scary and spooky, is like five foot two. Remember the response? They were like: you're the wizard!? You're the guy we've been scared of?

In every temptation, there's a guy behind a big screen that makes us so scared, like we have to give into this; but the truth of it is that, if he ever revealed himself, we would realise how weak it really is.

If we could hold on just once, if we could not eat that cookie once, it would give us so much reinforcement when God gives us the three, that the next time it's so much easier, and so much easier, until finally we have beaten that thing; because Jesus didn't just die to forgive us. Jesus died so we could be slave-driver-free.

In other words, sin can't tell you what to do. In the midst of temptation, the tendency is to think that the only thing going on is what's going on right now. Should I eat this dessert? Should I call him back? Should I do this thing, which might be a sin? Should I make this decision? There's so much more.

And Jesus says: temptation - it's not just about breads, and hills, and devils and angels - it's about me and you. So much could have been sabotaged, right there. Imagine if Jesus had rationalised: man, I'm starving. God wouldn't want me to starve. I'm starving; and in the moment, what if He'd have rationalised: I'll meet this legitimate need - in an illegitimate way. It's just between Me and God, and God will forgive Me. What if He would have done that?

It's not just between Him and God. There is far more at stake than meets the eye. He tells a story about God providing bread from heaven. I love this story. I love this part of Jesus. He looks at the devil, and He says: you must have forgotten who you're dealing with. I come from a group of people, who had to believe God in a desert, with no food and no water to meet our needs - and He did every single day. Do you remember where I came from?

I came from a group of people that Moses got out of Egypt towards the Promised Land. I come from a group of people who came up against the Red Sea, and the Red Sea parted. There was a 30 feet high wall of water on each side. Moses is trying to get five million people - you're talking about the whole nation of New Zealand, plus some. He's trying to get them through a 30 foot high wall of water.

Can you imagine the challenges; because not everybody would have been full of faith - somebody would have been complaining about the wind! If you’ve ever watched an action movie, you know there's some woman that just won't co-operate. She's a good-hearted woman; but she just can't - so she'd be standing there: “I just can't”.

And the Pharaohs coming, and all the chariots are coming, and Moses is like: get in the water! Moses is trying to get everybody through the water; and little Johnny's sticking his hand in the water; there’s a 30-foot-high wall of water, and little Johnny's trying to catch the mullet. Little Johnny's mum went: “Johnny, don't put your hand in the water! It could crash in”! Little Billy's down playing in the mud, making sand castles.

Moses is trying to get everybody going. Everybody goes, he gets them out of the water, and he looks, and he's fixing to lower the boom on the Pharaoh. He looks down and little Johnny's playing in the mud again.

Moses is like: would somebody get little Johnny out of the water! He gets little Johnny out, and he closes it down, kills the entire Egyptian army. Now how far, do you think that Moses would have credibility for, from then? Doing this - water does this, you walk through, it closes down on the largest army in the world. For how long do you think he should have credibility for? You'd think for the rest of his life, aye?

But how many of you, who have ever been in leadership, know that's just not true? The very people that you think would be there for you, through thick and thin, are the people who will not. Yeah, people are fickle. Three days later, they wanted to kill Moses; like, they were going to kill him. Moses had to retreat up a mountain, to keep them from killing him. Why? Because they got thirsty!

What, did you bring us out here to die? It's just people - so God says: hit the rock. Hit the rock. Remember flannel graphs in Sunday School? Remember how big that rock was, that Moses hit? It was like this big, and this little spout of water came out of it. You're talking about five million people. There would have been mass chaos. Can you imagine that? Line up, single-file, at the water fountain - can you imagine?

Moses hits the rock, and enough water comes out, to water three to five million people. I don't know how much that is, but that is a lot of water; and all of a sudden everybody's attitude changes again! We're singing in the rain - everybody's attitude's changing. Everybody's jumping in the water. Little Johnny's mum's like: little Johnny, don't go the toilet in the water.

The slave girls are jumping in and coming out. Coca Cola's out there with their video cameras. Slave girls are coming up out of the water, and it says: Coke - refreshing! Entrepreneurial people find plastic containers, and they're dipping in the water, walking around you know: selling their water.

This whole thing changed in an instant; then they had to believe God every day for food and water - and Jesus says: don't you know where I came from? I come from a group of people - we were in a desert with no water, five million of us - and God provided mana every day.

I will die up here, before I'll meet my own need, and not trust God for it; because He knew there are three cookies on the other side. It wasn't worth it. He knew that temptation affects three things. It's not just between you and God.

Temptation at least affects three things. Number one, it affects your future. Temptation affects your future; and if you don't care about that, temptation also affects the future of the people you love.

But more importantly, temptation affects your Faith. The temptation of the enemy for us is always to turn stones into bread. It's always to take something that's our truth, and make it God's truth; take your guilt, turn it into bread.

You're forgiven, completely innocent of any sin, but you just feel guilty the rest of your life. That's good - you need to feel guilty. God will like you better if you feel guilty. It's like He's happy with you or something. That anger - I know that the Bible says: don't even associate with one easily angered. But you get angry - and that's just you; people don't understand what you've been through. Turn stones into bread. Rejection, bitterness - it's easy to see this in others. People say: anger, what about righteous anger? Well, the problem with righteous anger is: you always think you're right. We always think we're right!

So it was really easy for me to see this in your life; and it's easy for you to see it in mine; but can we see it in ourself? A mum that can't quit drinking - this isn't just about a mum who can't quit drinking. This is about a broken home, with kids with emotions who are going to be affected. A dad who has affairs - this is broken homes. A person who can't control their anger - this is broken relationships. All of this affects generations.

See a six year old who cannot control their impulse, is a six year old eating a cookie; a 36 year old who can't control their impulse - we've got a real problem.

Sometimes it's as easy as sitting back and pausing, and saying: wait a minute - this is going to affect my future; the future of the people I love; and more importantly - my faith!

I've found is that: almost nobody believes their way out of Christianity.

I have people all the time coming to me and they say: Shane, I just don't believe this Jesus stuff anymore. If they'll let me get into it with them, almost 100 percent of the time, this is what I find - at some point in their past, they had a moment, that they just thought was between them and God.

They compromised something that was very important, and it started chipping away at their faith. So they ate the one cookie, and it chipped away at their faith; because they met their own need - they didn't need God right then. They met their own need - it was a legitimate need; and they met it in an illegitimate way, so it chips away at their faith; and 10 years down the road, they don't believe anything anymore.

Most people do not believe their way of Christianity; everybody behaves their way out of Christianity.

Do you understand that in Jesus' situation, if He turned stones into bread, it might have started sabotaging His faith enough, that maybe the next day He meets His own need, and maybe the next day, and maybe the next day. So by the time it comes time for the cross, the faith that it took for Him to get on the cross, just isn't there any more.

If His faith is sabotaged, then the cross is sabotaged; and if the cross is sabotaged, then we are sabotaged. It is never just about you, and God, and the moment. It is always about you, and God, and the moment - and your future; and the future of the people you love; and your faith.

But the good thing is, Jesus died so that this couldn't be your master.

So I want us to end this session with a word of faith confession, that will leave you feeling empowered okay? Say this with me:

“Temptation: you're not going to take my future”.

“You're not going to take the future of my loved ones…”

“…and you're not going to take my faith”.

I want you to position yourself for Faith: Tefillah, Teshuvah, Tzedakah.

I want you just to: “turn your head and face the one who can bear the burden”.

I want you to have a moment of Repentance, for where you've given in.

I'm not saying we're not good-hearted people when we do it. You want to think like a kingdom person, to just take that position: I am a kingdom person. I am a person of God's.

Your future, the future of the people you love, and your faith, will be secure; because we will stand against it.

WE WILL TRUST GOD. WE will not compromise for the one cookie. We will trust God for the three.

Just let that empowerment settle up in you. Sin can't tell you what to do, one more day. That anger has no power of you. That rejection doesn't have any power over you.

You can stand against it today, and be a better leader in the kingdom of God.

Temptation can't have our future; it can't have the future of the people we love; and it cannot have our faith.

WE will overcome, for WE will trust God. Amen.

Being a Peacemaker (2 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Tue 22 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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This story is about Peacemakers & Escalation…Our hero of the faith was a rebellious, spoilt brat, who wanted his own way, in every single way. This was a man that was sleeping with prostitutes on his wedding night, because he got depressed, because his best man stole his wife.

From what started out as a joke no-one understood, a fascinating cycle of violence ensues, based on: because you did this, I now have a right to do that. I merely did to them, what they did to me. This way of living will always bring death.

Let me ask you a question, and be careful how quick you answer this inside. This is an internal question: If you could go to heaven without Jesus, is He still worth following? If heaven and hell wasn't the issue, is Jesus still worth following?

You can't go to heaven without Jesus, but I think it's very important for us to play with that thought for a second. If you could go to heaven without Jesus, is He still worth following?

If the answer to that is yes, then I would ask us why? If the answer to that is no, I would ask you, why are you using Him as a fire escape only?

And that would also tell me why our lives are not victorious, and it's because we've become a group of people who are all about getting to go to heaven one day, and we've lost sight of the fact that Jesus is actually worth following, even if there was no such thing as heaven, because His way is the best way for our life.

If, when we died, if we just died - Jesus is still the best way? He's still the best, and that comes down to faith. It comes down to trust. Do we really trust that His way is the best way for our life?

Do we really believe that mercy is better than justice? Really, like do we really believe that? It's easy to believe that with other people, but do we really believe that for ourself? Do we really believe that mercy triumphs over justice? Do we really believe these things?

I want to spend the rest of the night talking about one area, that takes a lot of faith for us to live, but as leaders in God's biggest idea, we should be living it, and that is this.

Jesus said it this way: Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are people who bring peace to situations, instead of retaliation.

We're all about retaliation, aren't we? It's the way of the world. It's been that way since Adam and Eve.

Adam named his wife Eve. God never named her “Eve” - Adam named her Eve.

The problem with that was it was Adams job to name the animals; so when Adam names Eve 'Eve', essentially he's calling her an animal. He's saying: you animal - look what you've done to us. It's retaliation. It's escalation.

How many of you have lived long enough to know that retaliation and escalation is the way of life? It just is. You married folks, have you ever got into an argument with your spouse about how to cut a tomato? It escalates into insults about the other person's mother. It's called...

[Pastor Mike] You're married aren't you?

[Shane Willard] Yeah. It's called escalation. It's just escalation. It escalates. Things escalate. I mean has anybody besides me ever gotten into a conflict, and when you walk away from the conflict, that's when you think of everything you could have said? Yeah. Do you let it go there, or do you have imaginary conversations? We love imaginary conversations, don't we? We love them.

Why do we love imaginary conversations so much? Because we never lose! If you're here tonight, and you're losing imaginary conversations, get your head checked - it's your imagination. You can win!

We love imaginary conversations, and there's so much teaching I could do around imaginations, but I don't want to go there tonight. I want to talk about being a peace maker - so we rationalise escalation.

We rationalise things that the Bible clearly says not to do - and it could be: yeah, but I had a bad day. Yeah, but I was stressed; yeah, but I had pressure; yeah, but they're weird. They're weird - which essentially all that's saying is: your way is better.

Like how many of you know some weird people? We all know weird people right? Let me let you in on something. They think you're weird. Weird is relative, but we're all ethnocentric.

People tell me, because I'm American, people tell me: oh you people from America, you think the whole world's like America. Well, that's kind of okay, I'll give you that, yeah. We probably do, but so do you. You think the whole world's like South Africa, you think the whole world's like New Zealand.

We're all ethnocentric. Ethnocentric is just a big word that means: you think that your world is normal; and that everybody else's world is weird. That your world actually creates the normal for everybody else, and becomes the gauge for what normal is for everybody. It's called ethnocentricity, and we're all like that.

Let me tell you about a guy I know named Bubba. Bubba was from Colquitt County, Georgia. He's a redneck, and Bubba's never been out of Coalquitt County, Georgia in his whole life. So he was with his church, and he got the opportunity to go on a mission’s trip with his church to Peru. So now Bubba's never been outside - Bubba's never been on a plane. He's never been anywhere. He's just been in Coalquitt County, Georgia; and so he went to his pastor.

He said: now what do I need to do to go on this trip? The pastor said: okay, well you need this much money, you need a passport; and so Bubba went to Walmart to try to get his passport. He had no idea about anything, and they sell those at Walmart? You serious? So this was what he was; so he's never been on a trip in his life, and his first trip ever was from Atlanta International Airport - which is the size of Napier (city) okay - Atlanta International Airport to Peru.

So his first time ever on a plane is like 12 hours. Everything was new to this guy, how to get a passport, it was unbelievable. So he gets on the plane, and he's sitting next to the pastor; and he leans over, he says: pastor, how long's this flight? And the pastor says: I don't know Bubba, 12 hours or so. He says: oh my God, pastor, I'm not going to make it! The pastor says: well, what do you mean Bubba? He said: well I got real nervous, and I drank me about seven Coca Colas, and I'm about to go all over myself right here. The pastor said: well Bubba, they've got toilets on the plane. He said: toilets on the plane! How'd they do that? When it flushes where's it go? Those poor people down below! That's unbelievable!

So everything was new to him; so they land in Peru, and they land at like 8am; and there's no sleeping, because it makes jetlag worse, so they just go right into it, and they're helping all these kids and stuff like that. So later that afternoon they're having a downloading meeting, like a debriefing meeting, and the pastor's - he says: oh what did God show you today? Everybody's saying roughly the same things.

If you've ever been on these types of trips, the first day everybody says the same thing: oh pastor, I can't believe how much we have, and how little they have, and how happy they are with how little they have, and how - and so everybody's saying this. Everybody's saying this, and so the pastor finally gets to Bubba.

He says: Bubba, what did you learn today? Bubba said: well pastor, I don't know what all these people are talking about. He said I'm going to tell you something right now. These are the smartest kids in the world. The pastor said: well Bubba, like they seem normal kids to me. What are you talking about? He said: normal? These are the smartest children in the whole world. The pastor said: well Bubba, honestly, I'm lost. You're going to have to fill me in. What did they do that was so smart?

He said: pastor, open your eyes man, they ain't but four years old, and can already speak Spanish! That is unbelievable! How smart you gotta be, to be doing stuff like that? See Bubba thought everybody spoke English, because he did.

So we all have all of these rationalisations for what it means to retaliate and escalate and make things worse. We think people are weird. We have a bad day, we have a list of probably 1000 excuses of why we stepped outside of Jesus' way to live. We probably did it today. We probably spouted off at somebody today, and we thought: oh, God will forgive me for that, and He understands.

I had a bad day - and the truth is: God does understand, and He will forgive you for that; but it's affecting your future, and the future of the people you love. It's affecting your faith. We start rationalising our way.

So I want to talk about being a peace maker. I want to do that by looking at the life of one of the heroes of the faith. I want to look at a story that isn't just a story about Him, it's a story about all of us - in Judges 14 - we'll find our self in this story.

This guy's a hero of the faith. Somehow he made it into that list. As you read his story, you'll realise that he was a rebellious spoilt brat, who wanted his own way, in every single way. How he made it into the heroes of the faith, I don't know. This was a man that was sleeping with prostitutes on his wedding night, because he got depressed, because his best man stole his wife. He made it into the heroes of the faith somehow. This man was something else. I think we'll find our story in this.

It's about a guy with excessive amounts of strength – Samson, in Judges 14. Samson went down to Timnah, and there he saw a young Philistine woman; and when he returned he said to his father and mother: I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah, now get her for me as my wife.

Do you see his tone, this elevated sort of: I want what I want - and I want it right now, kind of thing?

His father and mother replied: isn't there an acceptable woman amongst the relatives from all of those other people, amongst all your people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?

But Samson said to his father: get her for me, she's the right one. And his parents didn't know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.

And Samson went down to Timnah, together with his father and his mother; and as they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. And the spirit of the Lord came upon him in power, so he tore the young lion apart with his bare hands, as he might have done a young goat. But he neither told his father nor his mother of this.

Then he went down and talked to the woman, and he liked her. Sometime later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion's carcass, and in it was a swarm of bees and some honey, which he scooped out with his hands, and he ate it as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they ate it too, but he did not tell them where he had taken the honey from the lion's carcass.

So here's a guy that really doesn't have much regard for himself. He doesn't have a regard for the law of God. Was it against the law to scoop food out of a dead thing? Absolutely! So not only does he scoop food out of a dead thing for himself; he spreads the uncleanness around, by giving it to his parents, and not telling them where it came from. So he, in essence, makes his parents unclean, and doesn't tell them: you need to offer a sacrifice. He is playing with God.

It says: and when he rejoined them again, they ate it, he didn't tell him where it came from. Now his father went down to see the woman, and Samson had made a feast there, as was customary for bridegrooms to do. When he appeared, he was given 30 companions. Let me tell you a riddle, Samson said to them, and if you can give me the answer within seven days of the feast, I'll give you 30 linen garments and 30 sets of clothes. But if you can't tell me the answer, you must give me 30 linen garments and 30 sets of clothes. Tell us your riddle, they said, let's hear it.

So let's make sure we know where we are in the story. He gets to where he's going, and he says: listen - Samson just loved to be the life of the party. He said: listen, I've got a joke for you, it's a riddle. If you could tell me the answer, I'll give you 30 pieces of clothes and linen garments. These are expensive things, 30 linen garments; and if you can't tell me the answer, you have to give me 30 linen garments, so you've got a 30 to one chance here.

They said: well let's hear it, let's see what's going on. He said: out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.

Now obviously they didn't understand this riddle, because he just made it up. He just made it up off the top of his head, out of an experience he had, that no one knew he had. For three days, they could not get the answer.

Now let's stop and make a mark in our self, as we examine this for our own life. This whole situation started out as a joke that no one understood. This is where this started, was a relatively innocent joke.

Actually it started out as a complete dismissal of God's way of life, and he scoops food out of a dead thing. He then makes a joke out of it, and he makes a joke out of an experience that only he had. He had it alone. He didn't tell anybody about it - so obviously they won't get the joke.

This thing starts out as a fairly benign situation - a joke no one understands, but watch how it escalates, and it escalates very quickly. It's the basic way of the world, is to escalate.

For three days they could not explain the answer, so on the fourth day they said to Samson's wife: coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father's household to death.

Now this thing escalates fairly quickly. This thing starts out as a joke no one understands; and within four days you've got the threat of burning an entire family alive. Now watch what happens:

Did you invite him here to rob us? Then Samson's wife threw herself on him sobbing: you hate me! You don't really love me! You've given my people a riddle, but you haven't told me the answer; and Samson said: I haven't even explained it to my father and mother, so why would I tell you? And she cried the whole seven days of the feast.

Do you see Samson's dilemma? I mean Samson's heart attitude: why would I tell you? Um, I should tell you, because they're going to burn you, if I don't. It never even crosses his mind!

You're talking about a joke that no one understands, escalating into the threat of burning; then her husband says: why would I tell you? What reason - as if burning her isn't enough reason! I haven't even explained to my father and mother, so why should I explain it to you?

She cried the whole seven days of the feast, so on the seventh day, he finally told her, because she continued to nag him; and she in turn explained the riddle to her people.

Before sunset on the seventh day, the men of the town said to him: what is sweeter than honey, what is stronger than a lion; and Samson said to them: if you had not ploughed with my cow, you would not have solved the riddle.

So this thing starts out as a joke no one understands; it escalates into threats of burning; she finds out the answer, they tell him the answer - and now he's calling his wife a cow. This thing has escalated very, very quickly.

Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power, and he went down to Ashkelon, and he struck down 30 of their men, stripped them of their belongings, and gave their clothes to those who explained the riddle. Why did he do that? Because that was the bet, remember? The bet was: if you tell me the riddle, I give you 30 pieces of clothes. If I tell you the riddle, then you have to give me 30 pieces of clothes. They tell him the riddle, even though they cheated; and so what he does is, he goes down, he says: you know what? I owe you 30 pieces of clothes, fair enough. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to kill 30 of your friends, strip them naked, and I'll give you their clothes.

This thing started out as a joke no one understands, and it escalates into now 30 people have lost their lives, and it keeps going. Watch how revenge works.

Burning with anger, he went up to his father's house, and Samson's wife was given to his friends, who had attended him at the wedding.

So his best man at the wedding - the guy gave Samson's wife to him. So this thing starts out as a joke no one understands, and now there's all of this tension.

Has anyone ever had a moment like this, where everything starts out light, and then somebody says something stupid in the room and everything escalates, and you just want to go hide? That's this.

It starts out as a joke no one understands, escalates into a threat of burning, they figure out the riddle, he murders 30 people, strips them of their clothes to pay the debt from the riddle. As a result of that, her father gives her to his best man, instead of to him. Gee - and it just keeps going.

Later on at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife; and he said: I'm going to my wife's room; but her father would not let him go in.

I was so sure you thoroughly hated her that I gave her to your friend. Isn't her younger sister more attractive?

I don't know what Samson was looking at him like, for him to say that, because that makes no sense - that I gave her to your friend. Isn't her younger sister more attractive?

In other words, Samson's look on his face must have been unbelievable. Take her instead; and Samson said to them - now if you're a note taker, you want to note this, because this is the basic way of the world.

Samson said to them: this time, I have a right to get even with the Philistines, so I will really harm them. In other words, this is what the basic way of the world, this is the anti-peace maker: since you have acted this way; now I have a right to step outside of Jesus, to unwrap my tassels, and to deal with you harshly. Now if you missed the tassels thing you need to get that, but we do this all the time.

If Jesus was: why did you act that way? Don't you know the way of Jesus? Don't you know that that's not in the way of Jesus?

Yeah, but Jesus, did you know what they did? They acted this way, so that gave me a right to act that way. And it's an escalation pattern, that goes nowhere good fast, and you're going to see this pattern in the rest of the story.

So he went out and he caught 300 foxes, and he tied them tail to tail in pairs, and then he fashioned a torch to every pair of tails, and he lit the torches, and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines, and he burned up all the shocks and the standing grain, together with the vineyards and the olive groves.

When the Philistines asked: who did this, they were told: Samson, the Timnite son-in-law, because his wife was given to his friend.

Remember now this thing starts out as a fairly innocent joke no one understands, and it escalates into a threat of burning; they figure out the joke; he kills 30 men to pay the debt of the joke; his father-in-law gives his wife away; then Samson says: because you've done this to me, now I'm going to really harm you.

And in an agricultural community, he burns down all their grain, which meant he ruined their economy for the whole year. This thing has escalated from a joke no one understands, to 30 people have died, his wife has been taken from him, the economy of an entire nation is ruined, and 300 foxes have lost their lives.

Hmm, so now he takes 300 foxes and he ties them - now you've got to give him points for creativity on this. Come on now, you've got to give him some points! So it goes, because his wife was given to his friends; so the Philistines went up - now watch how it escalates - because he did that, the Philistines went up and burned her to death.

So now, now they said: why did Samson burn our grain down? Oh, he burned the grain down because his father-in-law gave his wife to his best man; so the Philistines said: oh, they're the cause of it, so they go and they burn the father and the daughter to death. This thing is escalating out of control!

So they went and burned her and her father to death; and Samson said to them: since - now watch, here it is again - Samson said to them: since you have acted this way, now I won't stop until I get my revenge on you. Since you did this, now I have a right to do this.

That is not leadership in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is: blessed are the peace makers. The fact that God is working in your life, does not mean that the way you're acting is right; because God was working in Samson's life obviously, but it didn't mean that what he was doing was right.

Since you have acted this way, I won't stop until I get my revenge on you; and he attacked them viciously, and slaughtered many of them. Now how many that is, I don't know, a lot. Then he went down and stayed in a cave at the rock of Etam, and the Philistines went up and encamped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi.

The men of Judah asked: why have you come here to fight us? We have come to take Samson prisoner they answered, to do to him, just as he has done to us. Since he acted this way, now I'm going to act this way.

Then 3000 men from Judah went down to the cave at the rock of Etam, and said to Samson: don't you realise that the Philistines are rulers over us? Why have you done this to us?

And this was Samson's answer: and he answered: I merely did to them, what they did to me.

Is it almost like God is in charge of a bunch of six year olds? Why did you act that way? I only - since they acted that way, now I act this way. Well why did you do that? Oh, because he did this, now we can do that. Oh but why did you do that? Oh, since I merely did to them, what they did to me. It's the way of the world.

And they said to him: we've come to tie you up, and hand you over to the Philistines; and Samson said: swear to me, that you won't kill me yourselves. Agreed, they answered - we will only tie you up, and hand you over to them - we will not kill you.

So they bound him with two new ropes, and led him from the rock, and as they approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes of his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands.

Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it, and struck down 1000 men that day. Then Samson said: with a donkey's jawbone, I have made donkeys of them.

Wow. This thing started out as a joke no one understands, and it escalated into 30 men losing their lives, to a whole family being burned, to the entire economy of a nation being gone, to 1000 men dying, to many be slaughtered, all the whole time, every side saying this is their defense: I'm only doing what he did. I have a right to get even.

So if you finish the story, they take him, and they end up, they start sending prostitutes to him, and he has a particular weakness for this, so they start sending prostitutes to him. There was one prostitute named Delilah, and she got to him in a very personal way.

They get him, and they put his eyeballs out, and they say to him: you thought you made donkeys out of us, we're going to make a donkey out of you. They give him the job of a donkey - winding a millstone.

Hmm, and in the middle of all that, no one no one learns anything. They keep one-upping each other, until finally the Philistines are throwing a party, and everybody's in the temple of Dagon, and they bring Samson out to make fun of him, because enough just can't be enough.

He asks God for strength one more time, and God gives it to him, and he pulls down the whole temple on their heads, and everybody dies.

This thing started out as a joke no one understood, and God used the basic human condition to judge the whole Philistine nation. Now the fact that God used the basic human condition to judge it, does not mean we have a right to act that way. It's an example of how not to live - that this way of living, will always bring death.

How many of you - and don't answer this out loud, I'm just asking a question. How many of you are still dealing with revenge thoughts about something that happened a long time ago? How many of you know someone who is?

How many of you know someone who actually, their lives have been wrapped up in revenge so much, that they don't know where it stops and where it starts?

How many of you know that there's no end to this pattern, that you'll never, ever, do enough to make it alright.

Is this anything new, two different groups of people in the Middle East, arguing over land start one upping each other to no end? Is this really that new? It's still going on now - one group of people straps bombs to their chest, and they walk into a public place and blow themselves up. The other group of people says: since you've blown yourself up, and blown us up with you, we're going to shoot missiles over the top; and I go with the whole missile crowd, but nonetheless - yeah, it's a smarter way to go. You just think, one day they're going to run out of those suicide guys, you know? Like eventually you just run out of guys that are crazy enough to do that, don't you?

But it's just all back and forth, and back and forth, and it's a basic pattern in the world; that if we can really trust God, if we can really trust that Jesus' way is the best way for our life, we can get out of that, and we can be leaders; because the leaders are the ones who are acting different. The leaders are the ones who can step up and say: no, no, no, that's not the way to live; this is a better way to live.

Here's the basic pattern. Here's what we see. This story isn't just about Samson. This is a story about me, and about you, and about husbands, and about wives, and about co-workers. This is about every time in our life that our home turned into an Everybody Loves Raymond episode gone very wrong. This is a story - this is how it goes.

Here's how it goes: there's a basic pattern of revenge, in the way of the world. The first thing that happens is offence. So you have an offence; somebody does something wrong.

The second thing that happens is, somebody gets vilified, so each party vilifies the other. Surely your heart was bad, surely you meant to do that, and we judge everybody's heart, we judge the motivation of their heart, like: you surely couldn't have just made a mistake. Surely you meant to really harm me, so we vilify the adversary.

And then we make an excuse. We fail to accept any responsibility for our self; and the way we do that is we say: since they did it, now I'll do it.

So we have an offence; and then we vilify the adversary; then we make excuses to unwrap the tassels. We make excuses to unwrap the tassels, and our excuse is always about somebody else. It's blaming, it's: since you did that, now I'll do this; and then you have escalation, so it goes from offence to vilification, to excuses, to escalation; and in escalation, that's where you go from a joke that no one understands, to killing 1000 men in one day, to eventually killing everybody.

This thing escalates, and then you hold the pattern over the other person's head: it's all your fault. Since you did this, that's the reason this whole thing happened, and they go: no, no, no, you started it with this right, and you do this whole thing. It's like God is dealing with a bunch of six year olds; and then we make the excuse of: this is just how the world is. That's the basic way of the world.

Of course Jesus died on the cross to make a public spectacle of the basic way of the world, and the worst thing is that we don't learn anything, so we repeat the pattern.

We don't learn anything, and this is built in to even our cartoons. Did you watch Tom and Jerry as a kid? Did anybody ever wonder: when will Tom ever learn not to stick his head in the hole? He's always after Jerry so much, that he loses sight that every time he sticks his head in the hole, Jerry hits it with a hammer, or blows his head up or whatever. That's Tom and Jerry.

How about Roadrunner and Coyote? You watch Roadrunner and Coyote, and you're like: don't strap the rocket to your back. It's going to send you over a mountain; or you know when he paints the picture? Yeah, like he cuts the road off, and then he paints the picture, and then Roadrunner runs right through it. Then he steps up, and a truck comes from the other way and hits him. It's like what are you doing? Like, just be a peace maker. To make peace between the two of you would be a lot less painful!

Or how about Popeye, Popeye ran for what, 17 years? Seventeen years, once a week, Popeye, and it's always the same story. Popeye loves Olive Oyl; Bluto loves Olive Oyl. Bluto kidnaps Olive Oyl, Popeye goes to get Olive Oyl out of Bluto's house. Popeye goes over there, Bluto beats up Popeye. A magical can of spinach appears. Popeye eats his spinach, Popeye gets strong, Popeye beats up Bluto. Popeye gets the girl every week, exactly the same, exactly the same every week. Every week! Did anybody besides me ever watch Popeye, and go: Popeye, eat your spinach FIRST!

We just don't learn anything. We just don't learn anything. There's so much about this. Jesus had to deal with this, and He dealt with this for me, and He dealt with this for you.

Look at Matthew 26:47-54. While He was still speaking, Judas, one of the 12 arrived with a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and elders to the people. Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them. The one I kiss, arrest Him; and going at once to Jesus, Judas said: greetings rabbi and kissed Him.

And Jesus said: friend, do you've come for. Then the men stepped forward and seized Jesus and arrested Him, and with that one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

And Jesus said to him: put your sword back in its place, for all who live by the sword, will die by the sword. Do you think that I cannot call upon My Father, to at once put at My disposal more than 12 legions of angels? How then would the scriptures be fulfilled?

A legion was a Roman platoon. He's saying: they've come with one platoon, I've got 12. If you want to go sword for sword doc, we can go right now, and I will win, but that would destroy my way of life.

Jesus had said all along: blessed are the peace makers; if someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other cheek. If someone wants you to go one mile, go two; and His disciples who'd been with Him for three and a half years, they didn't get it.

They'd come to arrest Jesus with swords and clubs, and instantly they went back to the basic way of the world; you're going to kill Him, we're going to kill you - and Peter misses and cuts off his ear, which was instant death penalty by the way. And Jesus saves his life; He's like: you are coming to take my life, but I'm going to put your ear back on - that is the way of the kingdom of God.

You're coming to hurt me, but I'm still going to heal you. See the basic way of the world is: since you've come to do this to me, now live without your ear. That's the basic way of the world, but the basic way of the kingdom of God is: you've come to hurt me, but I've come to bless you. And Jesus dealt with that. He dealt with that. He was teaching a different way to live, called the kingdom of God.

Jesus could have gone sword for sword and won, but He wanted to teach a different way. He wanted to teach a way to publicly defeat the way of the world. He wanted to teach a way of peace.

It says at that time, Jesus said to the crowd: am I leading a rebellion - that you come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sit in the temple courts teaching, you didn't arrest me there.

But this is all taken place, so that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled; then all the disciples deserted Him and fled. When the pressure was on, they deserted that way of life.

You guys know the rest of the Passion of the Christ, all the beatings, all the harassing, the pulling His beard out, spitting. At every phase, He was still a peace maker.

At the end of it, everybody who did all of that to Him, He still forgave them. He was still blessing people, up to the very end of His life. He was still letting thieves into heaven. That is the way of our rabbi, that is the way.

Why did Jesus die on the cross? Why? Is it just to forgive you of sins? I hope not. Is it just to forgive me of sins? I hope not. You know why Jesus died on the cross?

Part of the reason Jesus died on the cross, was so that here, now, in Hastings, New Zealand, we could talk about something like this, and everybody here who's been hurt and traumatised, can walk out of here tonight knowing: it's still possible to be a peace maker.

Jesus died on the cross, so that the basic way of the world doesn't have a rule on your life any more, so you don't have to escalate. You don't have to one-up people who hurt you.

Jesus died on the cross so that anybody here who was violated at a young age, they can forgive. They can deal with that pain, and they can go on. Jesus died so that every woman here, who was hurt by your father, and you're married now - He died, so that you won't make your husband pay for the sins of your father. He died for that.

Jesus died on the cross, so that every one of us who've had friends desert us and flee, in our moment of need - they deserted and fled; He died on the cross for all of us who've had that happen, so that we could know that it was possible to cook breakfast on the beach for the very people who've hurt us the worst.

Jesus died on the cross, so that we could be peace makers, and not be a slave to the way of the world, which says: since you've treated me this way, now I get to treat you that way.

He died on the cross so we could be leaders in His biggest idea, and leaders in God's biggest idea are committed to being peace makers. The cross here was not passive. You realise being a peace maker is not passive? It's not some kind of just passive thing that just happens.

Being a peace maker is an active decision, a pursuit of a way of life, called the kingdom of God. Jesus was hardly passive when they were beating Him. Jesus was actively choosing: I will not call 10,000 angels to end this. He was actively choosing: I will be a peace maker at all cost, because that way is the best way for life, and I will die for that way, before I'll let it be sabotaged by one moment with a sword.

So where are we with that? Where are we? How freeing does that make us, to know that we can go home tonight, and if an argument breaks out, somebody can be a peace maker.

Of course we say: which one needs to be the peace maker? The one who's most mature! The one who's the most mature will act first, so everybody go home and have a competition on who can be the most mature!

It means that tomorrow at work with that guy - you know that guy? That guy! The one you wish God would just go ahead and take to heaven, that guy. Yeah, it means that you can bless him, if he shows up to hurt you.

Do you know disempowering it is? Somebody says something bad about you; you realise that all these pastors who get talked about bad, you realise how disempowering it is, if those same pastors - if somebody said something bad about me, the best thing I can do is get up on that stage and bless them from the stage, because then everybody's thinking: what's wrong with you? He's blessing you.

Jesus' way was: you always gain authority through generosity. You always gain authority through being a peace maker; but the question is this: do we have the faith to believe for that, or do we settle for one cookie instead of three, and take our own way and escalate? Then all we'll get is what we can bring, which is more escalation.

Jesus died so that you and I could go out of here tonight, and for the rest of our life be peace makers, for blessed are the peace makers.

Lord, you're the best, and we just give You our leadership, we give You our hearts, we give You our minds, we just commit our self again to You, and say openly: Jesus, Your way is the best way for my life.

If you're willing to just make that word of faith confession tonight, just out loud after me, with some gusto, say it this way: Jesus, [Jesus,] Your way [Your way] is the best way [is the best way] for my life [for my life.]

And Lord, we proclaim that regardless of heaven and hell, we would still follow You, even if we could go to heaven without You, for Your way is the best way for my life.

Maybe right now before you leave, because we've got a few minutes, I just want you to do some business there with God. Maybe I just feel inside to do this. Maybe you're here tonight with your spouse, and now with head bowed and eyes closed, maybe you've been guilty of some of this escalation, and maybe you just need to reach over and take your wife, or take your husband by the hand, and just give it a quick squeeze and say: hey, it's going to be okay. It's kind of your way of saying: it's going to be okay, we're going to stop this now.

Maybe you're here tonight and you have children, and things have escalated with them, and you just need to agree together that it's going to be okay. Maybe as a community of people, maybe just individually right where you are, you need to make a conscious decision to stand against the wiles of the devil that says: it's the best life to escalate. It's never the best life to escalate. It's always the best life to be a peace maker. Maybe that's what we need to do.

God bless you tonight to know that you serve Jesus, and Jesus believes in you more than you believe in Him. God bless you tonight to know that you're leaders in God's biggest idea. He's got this huge plan for us, in Jesus' name. Amen.

[Pastor Mike takes up an offering for Shane]

Great to have you here. Great river of life. We're going to just take up an offering right now, and just honor God in giving. One of the things I noticed: Noah believed the word of God. He had a word from God in his generation, and he believed it. It's really amazing how, as a man of God, he took hold of what God said in His day, acted on what God said, and then became a pioneer of faith in his generation.

The Bible tells us that straight after the earth had been destroyed, and the ark came to rest, that he offered a sacrifice. Interesting, you'd think that the last thing you would do, when all the animals and everything has been wiped out, and there's only just an ark full of animals left in the whole world. You'd think the last thing a person would consider doing, is to take them, and to start to offer some to the Lord. Quite extraordinary really, isn't it?

But this just shows you, just in Noah's heart, just a heart of gratitude for the word that God had given to him, for the grace that God had given to him, to be able to walk in what he'd been shown; and he expressed it by building an altar, and making an offering to the Lord.

That was a very, very expensive offering; and I believe that one of the things that is an evidence of being right before the Lord, is that we have a heart of generosity to God, a heart of generosity for how He gives to us. We take up an offering, just a free will offering, just out of our heart, out of a heart that's generous and thankful, and says:

Lord, thank You for what you've given to me. May you give me also grace to walk in it; and our offering is a tangible way, it's an act of righteousness, a tangible response just to what God has been speaking to our hearts.

Shane lives by faith. That means he has no income from anywhere. The only income he has is what people who receive his ministry give to him, and so it's always right that we sow, and we sow generously, so we want to do that, want to give generously. Okay, come on, let's give Shane a great welcome as he comes back up again.

Demonstrating God's Power (3 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Tue 22 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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Remarkable similarities are found between the Corinthian Gods of Mithra, Adonis, Addis, Horus, and the Gospel story of Jesus Christ.

Paul's strategy changed in Corinth, instead of making fine-sounding arguments that Jesus was the Christ, as he did with the Jews, he demonstrated what Jesus' life looked like, by living it out.

That gave him the credibility to announce that the kingdom of God was at hand. Cookie-cutter evangelism doesn't work. Demonstrating the Power of God, within the Disposition of Messiah, gives us the Credibility to speak life into any situation.

Last night we talked a lot about Tefillah, Teshuvah, Tzedakah; and how those three things create Trust, and create a way of life, a way of living, that requires trust. We talked about Temptation, things like that. Tonight I want to talk about a different type of thing, that requires the same amount of trust.

In English, when we make a point of something, like let's say our thesis is: “Shane's shirt is blue”. Let's say it takes us three sentences to build the case that: Shane's shirt is blue - it shouldn't, but let's say it did. Once we make our case, and state our point - we just stop; the Hebrew people do not do that. The Hebrew people talk in what's called "reverse concentric symmetry".

Reverse concentric symmetry is this: let's say that our main point is called Statement D - this is where we're trying to get people to. Leading up to Statement D, we have to make Statement A, B and C, in order to prove that Statement D is true. Now in English, that's where we stop; but in Hebrew, that is where they start again.

So if you have to make three statements; A, B and C, in order to get to D; then you have to back out of it, in parallel statements. In other words, you have to make a parallel statement to C, a parallel statement to B, and a parallel statement to A.

So you've got A, B, C and then D's your main point; then you've got C1, B1, A1, which are parallel statements to these statements. In other words, A corresponds to A1, B corresponds to B1, C corresponds to C1, and D is the centre point. Now what does that look like? A Menorah (7-branched lamp-stand; widely used as a Jewish symbol) - which is just one big giant reverse concentric symmetry.

The theology of the menorah comes from Isaiah 11, where it talks about the Spirits of the Lord. It says: “the Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him”. So you've got one spirit - the Spirit of the Lord, will rest on Him; and then it divides this one spirit into six different characteristics, like: the Spirit of Wisdom; Understanding; Council, Might, Knowledge, and Fear of the Lord.

So you've got these six anointings in here - and it makes sense: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The centre candle is called the Servant. In other words, whatever anointing you have as a leader - in the Church of Jesus Christ, whatever anointing you might have - if you're not a servant, it doesn't matter.

If you're not a servant, none of the other candles light up. The Hebrew people called it "Disposition of Messiah". The theology of the ‘Disposition of Messiah’ comes from Exodus 34:6-7, and it says this - and you ought to memorise this, say it 10 or 20 times a day to yourself, until it builds down inside of you.

It says: The Lord, He is the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God. That is the disposition of messiah.

Later David says it - they quote it all the time - Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name! And forget not His benefits. Who forgives all of our sins, and heals all of our diseases. He does not treat us as our inequities deserve, for he is the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God”.

Everything we do, as leadership in God's biggest idea, has to be done in the Disposition of Messiah. In the first Century, specifically around the gift of prophecy, prophets were tested. So if somebody gave a word of prophecy, the first thing that would be done is they would test it; and they have this bench of three.

They had these three guys sitting in holy-man chairs, they sat up above people, and they would test the prophecy. They would have all these questions about the prophecy, and the first question of prophecy was not: is it true? It was NOT: is it true? The first question of prophecy was: was it delivered in a manner that was consistent with the Disposition of Messiah?

In other words, did the person delivering the prophecy, deliver it in a “compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding-in-love” way? If somebody delivered a prophecy, it could be 100-percent spot-on true; but it would be considered false prophecy, if it was delivered in a tone that was not: “compassionate, gracious, slow to anger…”

In other words, you can be right, but be wrong, at the top of your voice. That when you minister - whether your ministry is singing; playing the drums; greeting people at the front door; parking cars and saying ‘hello’ out there; dressing up like Barney, and waving at children and handing them lollies; preaching, teaching like in these meetings…

I want to be very gracious, but at the same time, sometimes we need to be challenged to a better life. The test of what I'm saying is - did I deliver it in a manner that was: compassionate; gracious; slow-to-anger; abounding-in-love-and-forgiveness? Or did I deliver it in a prideful, puffed-up manner that made me look better than anybody else? We have to be that - the disposition of messiah.

For the rest of tonight, I want to talk to you about demonstration - about demonstrating God's power. I can't talk to you about demonstrating God's power without understanding that, no matter what we have, what power gift we have, or what we do with what we have - if we do not use our gifts inside the Disposition of Messiah then we miss the point.

1 Corinthians 2 - one of the New Years resolutions that me and my group made in Charleston made, is that we never want to be a punch-line in one of Jesus' parables. We do not want to live in such a way, where we're a punch-line in one of Jesus' parables.

So we have this police man (I'm being euphemistic there); she has become the ‘policeman’ for the whole group for that; and her name is Joanne. What Joanne does… like we were all sitting around, and one of the people in the group was complaining, like really whinging pretty bad. Joanne had had enough of it, so she said:

There's this lady, and she was blessed by God, and she'd be in the richest one per cent of the whole world, because she owns two cars and a house. She came in, and was complaining about her day, while in the same day, people were being raped and murdered and pillaged in Sudan, just because of their faith in Jesus Christ; yet she was complaining because she had to wait in traffic. Surely that woman's life will be required of her tonight? And everybody's like: okay, yeah, we'll quit complaining!

It's very easy to have Jesus Christ as a Doctrine, and there's nothing wrong with that - nothing wrong with believing the right things about Jesus, nothing wrong with it. But what we need to be challenged to, as leaders, is to take it one step further, and: have we moved to Yoke?

Have we moved from Doctrine to Yoke - to a way of life, to where we're binding people to a certain way of life, and we're loosing people to live a certain way? Are we doing that? Now with that in mind, in 1 Corinthians 2, here's what's going on.

This was a letter written to a group of first Century Christians, in a city called Corinth; and he leaves, and sends the letter back, because of reports of some problems,.

He goes into an area where there are seven or eight different gods. One of the gods in the region received worship through sexual acts. So one of the ways they worshipped that god was, you'd go to church (on whatever day you went to church), and they had temple prostitutes there. You would just pick up your prostitute, and you'd come in here and you worship the god - through intimacy.

So there was all kinds of really odd sort of things going on there; and Paul goes in there, and he gets a bunch of people saved; then he leaves; and he leaves them there to form a church.

Now how many of you know, that there is going to be problems with that? There are hairs on that! There's stuff that needs to be corrected, and some historians say that 1 and 2 Corinthians, which is what we have in our Bible, was actually like 4 and 5 Corinthians - that there was several letters before this, so he was trying to help sort them out.

So in 1 Corinthians 2:1, he says: “So it is with me, when I came to you, that I did not come with eloquence of speech; but I came determined to only know Christ, and him crucified”.

Now this is Paul, the great orator, the great debater - this is the guy who it said: hey, he proved from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ (he was talking about Jews who already had a working knowledge of Torah). So this guy is walking into a gentile nation, a gentile city, and he reminds them.

He says: Remember when I came to you, I didn't come to you, to sit down and argue about who was right and who was wrong. I didn't come and sit down, and base out my doctrine in 19 bullet points, and intelligently argue with you - I didn't come like that.

I came only to know, and to demonstrate, a way of life that's found in the cross. That's it; and it goes on, and I think in Verse 5, it says something like this. He repeats himself, which is so Hebrew. He's like - he's repeating himself. He starts here, and then at the end he says the same thing; and he says this.

“I did not come with persuasive words. Rather, I came with a demonstration of God's power”. So he says: when I came to you, I didn't come with these persuasive words, and 19 bullet points and all of this stuff. I came with a demonstration of God's power - which was not really his mode of operandi. Paul's mode of operation, normally, was to sit down in a group of people, and prove that he was smarter than everybody else in the room; and he would prove vigorously from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. Normally, that's how Paul did things.

Why did he do things that way? Because he was dealing with Jews, who had memorised the whole Torah, who should know that Jesus was the messiah - and he's trying to convince them of that, because they have similar belief systems - very similar belief systems.

But Paul changes his mode of operation, as a leader, when he walks into a situation where this is not going to work. In other words, let me just say this simply: cookie-cutter evangelism doesn't work. Sometimes you've got to change what we're doing, to reach a different group of people.

Now why would he have to do that? Well let's think about this. In the late 50-60AD, it was the Romans who were ruling the region of the world that Corinth was in? The Roman Empire was ruling the whole world; and they tried to put that religious part into it, saying that Julius Caesar was god; and then Augustus Caesar was god; then Caesar Tiberius was god. The problem with all that was - all these guys died; so there was just this mental mindset of: yeah, we've kind of got to go along with these guys saying they're god - but they're really not god.

There was a whole plethora of other gods in this region. Let me just tell you about a few of them, so when Paul writes this, here were the people ruling the religious side…

The main god of that region was a god named Mithra; and this religion around Mithra was the central religion of the entire Roman Empire. So 600 years before Christ, this religion comes forward, and it's ruled by a god named Mithra.

Now here's what the followers of Mithra believed: that their god was born in a cave to a virgin; was worshiped by shepherds; and had 12 followers, by which he then spread his message of life over death to the whole world. That was Mithra, 600BC; so this religion from 600BC had now grown, and it was the main religion in the city of Corinth - and it was a god who was born of a virgin, worshiped by shepherds, had 12 followers to whom he disseminated his information to, his way of life. They spread that way of life to the whole world, that death can be conquered by life, if you believe in Mithra. That was Mithra.

There was another god named Addis. His followers believed that he was born of a virgin in 200BC; that he was hung on a tree, was killed, and then rose from the dead, to bring life to his followers. That is the god Addis.

There was another god of the region named Adonis. Now Adonis is the god that every man thinks he is, when he's looking in the mirror. You ever notice that a woman can be like three pounds overweight, and she's like: I am faaaat! A man can be 50 pounds overweight, and still bring Adonis out, man! It's because that's what we are. We're men.

Another god was Adonis. Now Adonis, the religion around Adonis originated in 200BC as well, and his followers believed: that he was born of a virgin; he was referred to as ‘the son of god’; and his followers believed that he died and rose again, in order to save human kind. That was Adonis.

The longest-standing god of the region was a god named Horus (what a horrible name for a god). Horus is the red-neck god of deer-hunting! Actually it is his name, Horus - and the religion that worshiped Horus originated in 1500BC; so 1500 years before Christ, this religion started.

Horus was born of a virgin named Isis, so the virgin goddess Isis gave birth to Horus - so he's the son of this virgin goddess. When he was a child, foreign kings came and brought him gifts as acts of worship. Horus eventually dies, and rose from the dead, in order to conquer death and bring life to his followers. That is Horus.

Then of course you had Julius Caesar, who died in 17BC - and 12 witnesses saw a strange star in the sky, which they said was him “ascending to the right hand of the bigger gods”.

So Paul comes into Corinth, and he calls a town meeting, saying: come, I have something to tell you about my faith. Paul comes into Corinth, and he breaks out a 19-page doctrinal statement; and he says:

Hey listen, I serve a man. His name is Jesus, and He was actually God in the flesh, and here's how I know He was God in the flesh: He was born of a virgin, He was worshiped by shepherds; there was a strange star in the sky, which substantiated His birth. He actually was killed by being hung on a cross - but don't worry about that, He rose from the dead, and that conquered death, and gave life to all His followers - His name's Jesus.

The people in Corinth in first Century would be like: that is so cool - us too! Hey, we serve Mithra - that happened to him too. We serve Addis - that sounds like him too. We served Horus - that happened to him as well.

So your God was born of a virgin, your God put flesh on, and was born of a virgin; there was a strange star in the sky that substantiated it; foreign kings bringing gifts. He was hung on a tree; and He died, and rose from the dead, in order to bring life instead of death for everyone who follows Him. You're kidding me - us too!

So Paul says that “his strategy changed in Corinth”, and instead of making fine-sounding arguments that Jesus was the Christ - he didn't do that at all. Actually, what he did was, he demonstrated what Jesus' life looked like, by living it out; and then that gave him the credibility to announce that the kingdom of God was at hand.

The same thing is true with us! Now this strategy was familiar to Jesus as well. Look at Luke 10. To demonstrate the power of God, within the disposition of messiah, gives us the credibility to speak life into whatever situation we want to speak into.

We have moved away from that, as a culture, and as a church. Most churches do not: demonstrate, then announce; we announce, and then hope demonstration comes.

Luke 10:6, Jesus is talking, so this is red letters; and Jesus is a Hebrew rabbi, talking to major followers of Him. He's talking to key leadership in His movement.

Now follow me here, because there's stuff here we have to wrestle with; and before I even read it, I'm going to tell you: I don't know the answer to some of it - and that's okay. I'm so glad that I serve a God that I can't figure out all the answers about Him, because if I served a God that I knew all the answers about Him, I'd be scared that I had chosen the wrong one.

Luke 10:6-8 says: “after this, the Lord appointed 72 others to go ahead of Him” - to pave the way. He gave them some instructions, and this is what He says: “When you come into a town and are welcomed, eat whatever is placed before you, heal the sick there, and then announce that this is the kingdom of God”.

Can you believe that? Jesus Christ, the Hebrew rabbi Jesus Christ, is telling His followers: when you go to spread this message of the kingdom of God, this is how you do it: go into a place, eat - listen to this instruction: eat whatever is placed before you. Now how revolutionary is that? He's telling a bunch of Jews, that when you go into a Gentiles house, you are free to eat whatever is placed before you.

In other words, this kingdom movement is bigger than your personal propriety. In other words, be the more mature, swallow your pride, and if they throw some bacon down - how about it!

So Jesus appears to be giving instructions that would go directly against what the Torah said; which kind of goes against this whole notion of: God would never tell you to do something apart from the Bible. That sounds good, and it's probably pretty good personal boundaries, but it just doesn't work all the time.

Last session we talked about Samson - was it God's will, to continually escalate something into violence? No, but God used the basic human condition to judge the Philistines.

The Bible says: “do not marry Gentiles”, and “stone prostitutes”; but the word of the Lord came to Hosea, saying: “marry that Gentile prostitute”.

The Bible says (the Torah says): do not - this is so good, you ready for this? This is so good. This is revolutionary - do not touch your own poop. It's a really good plan right? Yeah. Like when you're living, don't play with your own poop right? Don't go and do that - bad plan. And how many of you would have any problem with that?

No one's raising their hand, going: wait a minute Shane, you're putting us back under the law. We should be able to play with our own poop if we want!

Leviticus says: do not handle your own body excrement. But the word of the Lord that came to Ezekiel saying: I want you to cook food, and use your own poop as fuel! Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine me coming in here tonight saying: hey everybody, I got a project for us to do: on your way out the door, the ushers have a little Tupperware container for you, and we've got to all take a little visit to the bathroom. Then we're going to bring it back in here, we're going to cook ourselves a meal. We're going to see how well this works. God has told me to do that!

Most people would say: “God would never say that”! Well, be careful. If you want to say: hey, I'm not with you there - I don't think God's saying that - that's one thing. But to say: God would never?

God told the same guy: I want you to lay naked on your front lawn for 140 days - 70 days on one side, 70 days on the other.

Imagine driving by my house and... Shane, what are you doing! God told me to. People say: “God wouldn't tell you to do that”! He did to somebody.

Remember in the first Century, Peter shows up, and he almost starts a riot. What did he do? He shows up at a first Century leadership meeting, and he's chewing on some pork rinds. They said: what are you doing? He said: oh, Jesus showed up to me in a dream, and He told me: all foods are clean. Can you imagine?

Can you imagine, if like the Pentecostal Church World Council was there, and somebody shows up and says: oh yeah, I know it clearly says in the Bible don't eat pork. It clearly says that - don't eat pork; but Jesus showed up to me in a dream, and He told me I could.

We would have branded him as a false prophet; but we look back and we say: yeah, Peter did it, I can do it. We make doctrine out of it; but then we're hypocritical, because we say: “oh, God would never tell you to do something apart from the Bible”.

God told people to do stuff all the time that makes no sense. We've got to be springs, and not bricks. We've got to seek God. You say: Shane, how do you handle all that? I don't know - I just know it's there, and I know in this passage in Luke, Jesus Himself is telling 72 people:

I'm sending you out to pave the way, and when you get into these cities, eat whatever is put in front of you. Surely the religious leaders would have had a problem with that. Hey, that goes directly against the Bible!

He says: do a couple of things; eat whatever's put in front of you - which is bigger than just eating whatever's put in front of you. We read that command, and we go: oh goody, I get to eat. To them He was saying: grow up, suck it up, be mature - and if what they put in front of you offends - you suck it up, and be bigger than that. He says: eat whatever's put in front of you; in other words – fellowship!

Then He says: then heal the sick; and after you've fellowshipped and healed the sick - THEN announce that the kingdom of God is here. So Jesus' way of growing the church was this: Fellowship; then Demonstrate what the life's all about; and then Announce.

Later on He says: …and if you're welcome, fine; and if you're not welcome, don't sit around and argue with people. Don't sit around and give your 19 bullet points on why you're right and they're wrong. How many of you know that never works?

He says: simply shake the dust off your feet, and respectfully leave. Yeah, people ask me all the time, they say: oh, I've got his neighbour, and they're into something, some kind of denomination or something. What do you think about that?

I'm going: I don't have anything to think about that. Well what should I do to help them? What should I do to save them from that? I'm going: last time I checked, there's not a vacancy in the trinity for you!

Last time I checked, it's not your responsibility to save anybody - especially not with sound argumentation; it’s your responsibility to demonstrate what the life of Christ looks like, lived out - and leave the rest to God.

Actually to do it the other way is counter-productive; and we get ourselves a reputation for being belligerent people, who think that we're the only one who is in, and everybody else is out. Jesus is very hard on that.

Luke 13:23-30, Jesus goes into this village in Galilee, and these people in Galilee say: “Lord, are only a few going to be saved”? Jesus goes nuts on them - why? The reason is that, in that village in Galilee, it was filled with a group of people, who thought that they had the only way to salvation. Since they had the only way to salvation, they were the only ones in, and everybody else was out - so they're trying to get Jesus to agree with them. They're trying to get Jesus to agree that they're the ones, the only ones that are going to be in, and this is what Jesus says: Just the nature of your question tells me you're not.

He says: “at my marriage table, many will come from the north, the east, the south and the west, but you who actually think you're in will be shut out, because you think you're better than other people”.

Are we hitting home here? Is this just a story about a group of people in the first Century; or are we finding ourselves in these stories? Jesus' way for us, to be leaders in His biggest idea, is to: eat whatever's put in front of us; heal the sick; and then announce.

Fellowship - in other words, be friendly; then demonstrate what the life looks like; and then announce.

Fellowship, and then be respectful to your husband in front of them, and then announce what the peace in your marriage is all about.

Fellowship, and be loving to your wife in front of them, exhibiting peace in your home, and then announce: this is what the kingdom of God does for you.

Fellowship, and then watch emotional wholeness come to somebody's life, and then, then announce the kingdom of God is at hand.

In Luke 7:8 they ask Him a question: “are ou the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else”? In other words, they're trying to figure out if Jesus is the new Moses; because remember, the Jews were enslaved for 430 years, then Moses shows up. They get out of slavery for 430 years, and then they're put back into slavery - and so there's 430 years exactly from Babylon into Jesus, so it all fits together.

Everybody was looking for this new Moses. Are You the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else? Then there's a bit of dialogue there, then He says: at that time, Jesus cured many sick, demonised, and blind; and He said: go back and tell John what you have seen.

In other words, Jesus' way of spreading the word about Himself, was not sound argumentation, it wasn't: hey, here's all the prophecies from the Old Testament; and let Me show you how I fulfil every one of them. He never did that.

Jesus simply healed the sick, and cast devils out of people - and that is hard to argue with. He says: don't go back and tell them all the prophecies, and all the sound argumentation, and all this. Just simply go back and tell Him what you saw. Fellowship; then demonstration; and then announcement.

John 9, there was this guy that was born blind, and His disciples say: Jesus - who sinned, that this man should be born blind - him, or his mother and his father?

Jesus says: oh look, none of them have sinned. Like, nobody's sinned! He is here so that God may be glorified now; and so Jesus spits in his eyes, with some dirt. He takes some dirt, and He spits - which is another thing that, if we started doing, people would call me a false prophet (just like they did Him) - and He spits in the dirt; makes some mud; and He puts it on his eyes - and the guy has to wash in the pool of Siloam, and he gets healed.

Now this creates an interesting dilemma for the religious people, because many people (I'm paraphrasing this) saw and asked if he was the blind beggar - you're the guy that's been there since birth? Are you that guy?

The Pharisees asked him how he received his sight on the Sabbath, which is interesting, isn't it? They come up to a guy born blind, and instead of rejoicing with him, that he can see; they say: how did that happen on the Sabbath? Why? Why was that a problem for them?

Because their way said that stuff like that didn't happen on the Sabbath; and here's a living-testimony witness that it actually did.

They became bricks instead of springs. They started putting God in a box. They started saying things like: God would never heal people on the Sabbath, because He rests on the Sabbath. They start putting human logic into God. They start trying to relate to a 1000-dimensional God, from a 4-dimensional world, and were proud enough to think they had it figured out.

The Pharisees asked him how he received his sight on the Sabbath. In other words, this is what they were saying: Jesus can't be of God, and break the Sabbath; yet he can see, so you've got a real problem.

Is Jesus of God, or isn't He of God? The blind man's going: umm, I can see; and the Pharisees logic was: Jesus can't be of God, because He broke the Sabbath; but if He's not of God, then how can we explain that this guy can see? Which is a real dilemma isn't it?

So the religious people are divided, and they accuse Jesus of being a sinner; and this whole weird story takes place, and they say: well maybe that's not the guy; so they ask him: are you the guy that was blind your whole life, a beggar on the street, and now you can see? Yes, I am.

Well, we're not sure, so they go get his parents, and they say: mum, dad, is that him? They say: yeah, that's him. He was born blind, he's a beggar, now he can see. So they are in this huge dilemma, so finally the Pharisees come back to the blind man, and they say: you received your sight today by somebody - and the blind man's like: I was blind, not deaf, hello!

And now you can see? Yes. They say: we have a question for you - was the man who prayed for you - and you received your sight - was he a sinner? So they leave this judgement to this guy, who was a beggar, just hours before.

They say: “was he a sinner”? I love the blind man's answer. He goes: whether He's a sinner or not, I do not know; but one thing I do know - I was blind and now I see.

Demonstration in life, is far better than announcement. To announce, without demonstrating, loses credibility; but demonstration covers any deficit in announcement. If things are happening, and people are getting set free, and made whole, and healed and walking out; people who were once mean are now nice, and people who were once angry are now peaceful - you can't argue with that stuff.

I think Jesus wants to free the leaders in His biggest idea, because there's a lot of pressure, sometimes, on us. We go out, and there's unsaved people, and they have all these questions, and we feel the pressure for having to have all the answers.

Listen to me: Jesus wants to save you from having to have all the answers. Jesus wants you to be able to go: I don't know! All I do know is, once I had no peace, and now I have peace, and I don't know; once I was blind, and now I see, I don't know.

I have a friend who struggled with eating disorders, and now she doesn't, because the power of Jesus - well what's that about? How did He do that? I don't know, I just know she did, and now she doesn't. I don't know!

Isn't that freeing, to be able to say: I don't know - I don't have to have all the answers? In other words, Jesus wants to relieve you from the pressure of having to defend your story; that your story is your story.

Notice in that passage, the religious people are the ones with the problem. They're the ones that want answers to explain everything. It has to be theology and doctrine - they have to have all the answers.

The blind man doesn't have the answer, and he's the ultimate frustration to them. In other words, you don't have to defend your story of what God's done for you. If anything, Jesus spoke against those who claimed to have the answers, and He speaks for people who are journeying with the right heart.

The rabbis said that if we spend two hours here tonight (which we will) - if 95 per cent of everything we said here tonight is wrong, that God is still pleased that a group of people are talking about Him - that we can be freed up from that.

There are 613 commands in the Torah, 613, so a common question that people would ask their rabbis is this: can you summarise this up in a sentence? Can you like just give us some kind of summary statement? 613 commands, hard to remember them all, so can you give us a way to keep the whole thing in just one shot?

It was a very common question - and Jesus' way of answering that was what? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and to love your neighbour as yourself - in that you fulfil the whole Torah. So instead of doctrinal answers, can I just move us to real life demonstration?

Let's ask ourselves some questions:

Do you have a love for God today, which is greater than it was yesterday? If that's the case, then you are free to say: I don't know, I just know I love Him more today than yesterday - and that life speaks loud.

Does your heart break for the things that break God's heart? Do you get angry at the things that would anger God? Let me give you a litmus test for that - if it's angering you, it's probably not angering God. God got angry at things like: injustice, oppression, slavery, hunger, things like that. He didn't get mad when somebody cut Him off in traffic with their donkey.

Do you have a greater love for people today, than you used to? Are you patient? Are you more patient today, than you used to be?

Do you have awareness that the things that bother you really badly might actually be God working things out in you - instead of demanding others to change? That when something gets under your skin really bad, it might actually be God trying to kill you - and God is trying to kill you.

Do you honour kindness? Do you put other people first?

If these kinds of demonstrations are in your life, people can say whatever they want, but at the end of the day, you've demonstrated the life. It's where we don't demonstrate it, that we lose credibility with the whole world.

In Acts 19:37 the same guy, Paul - he's in Ephesus, and the main god, the main god in this region was a goddess named Artemis.

Actually the temple to the goddess Artemis is one of the like big wonders of the world - it's still there. It was huge, and the entire economy of Ephesus is built around capitalism regarding the goddess Artemis. So you can imagine if a guy comes in talking about another god, that's going to threaten the economy of the whole region, people might not take too kindly to that?

So they go to throw him in jail. They go to throw Paul in jail for preaching about Jesus, but watch what the clerk of court says (in Acts 19:37) about the situation: “For you have brought me these men, who are neither robbers of our temple, nor have they blasphemed our goddess”.

So Paul goes into a town where the main god is the goddess Artemis, and he doesn't say one bad thing about her. He simply lives the life Jesus called him to: a life of compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God. He demonstrates the power of God, and he says: you make your choice - the kingdom of God is at hand.

They arrest him to put him in jail, and the clerk of court says: you don't have a case - he has not blasphemed our god, not even once. Where have we been guilty of that? Let's just be real. Where have we been guilty, that in trying to make Christianity look better to other people, we've downed other people's beliefs?

We spend more time talking about why other people are wrong, instead of demonstrating the power of God in our lives; and all the time people are looking at our lives going: yeah, but you're mean to your husband; yeah, you withdraw from your wife; at work you have no integrity - you leave early and charge your employer full time; you have an anger problem.

We spend all this time talking about why everybody else is wrong; and in the meantime, people are looking at our life, and they see no power.

Paul said nothing against their goddess; he demonstrated the power of God. He did not speak against anybody else; He simply showed what Jesus looked like, lived out.

We love to announce with no demonstration, we love: JESUS IS THE WAY! Turn or burn! You'll go to hell if you don't get this right. My doctrine is right, yours is wrong! No man comes to the Father except by Him! We're in, you're out!

We always announce, and then demonstrate; but Jesus did it the other way - He demonstrated, and then He announced. There's one exception where He did it backwards, one exception, and it almost caused a riot, and so He fixed it very quickly. Remember the guy who was paralysed, and his friends picked him up on his mat and lowered him in, so they lowered him down. Jesus announced before He demonstrated (it might have been a slip-up).

He said: “oh, your sins are forgiven” - so He announces, before He demonstrates. So here's a paralysed guy there, and Jesus is calling him clean; and the whole room erupts, remember? YOU CAN'T CALL HIM CLEAN! He's paralysed! Look at that! You can't do that!

Jesus goes: oh yeah, I forgot - we should demonstrate first. What's easier to do: to say your sins are forgiven; or to say get up and walk? Obviously it's easier to announce, than to demonstrate, because who really knows? He says: so that you may know, that I am who I say I am - get up and walk - and then in the demonstration, no one could say anything.

As leaders in God's biggest idea, I can tell you this: that the most effective way for you to minister, is to demonstrate, and then announce.

What would the life of our church be like, if we demonstrated and then announced? Let me give you some illustrations of what it would be like if we helped the poor first, then we announced that we're about the kingdom of God?

What would happen if we healed the sick, and then we announced? What would happen if we showed loving kindness, and then announced? What would happen if, as a group of people, we got a reputation in this whole city, for being the most loving group of people that's ever come into this place, and then we announced?

What if we became patient and less stressed, and then we announced? What if we demonstrated peace in our hearts, and then announced? What if we demonstrated loving families, and then announced? What if we demonstrated genuine care for others, and then announced?

What's your story? What's your demonstration?

In Deuteronomy 26 it says (it's giving instructions on how to give a first-fruits offering) - every year when you give a first fruits offering, you're to put it in a basket, raise it high, put it in the hands of your priest, and then you are to proclaim in a loud voice: “my father is a wandering Aramean” - which just is Hebrew for: “my father was a homeless refugee, a slave”.

In other words, God built it into their culture to remember where they came from; because if we don't remember where we came from, we stand the risk of being proud, and looking down on people who haven't got through what we've already gotten through.

“My father was a wandering Aramean”.

How many of us need to remember: I used to have an anger problem, and God healed me from that, so I have no right to look down on somebody else, who's just going through the same thing I did? My father is a wandering Aramean.

In a room this size, I'm sure that there are some teenage pregnancies in here somewhere. Maybe you're 40 years old, and you have a 24 year old daughter. That's not hard math to do, and you're sitting here, and somewhere you've wanted to conceal it; but the truth is, you have a story to tell, of God's grace, and how He got you through that, and now you're a living servant of God. You can demonstrate, and then announce your story. It's very important. My father was a wandering Aramean.

Anybody ever went to bed at night, not knowing how they're going to pay their bills that were due the next day - and somehow God came through at the last minute; and now you've got more money than you know what to do with, but deep down in your heart of hearts, you remember when you needed to depend for your next breath on God. Now He's come through, and you need to remember your father was a wandering Aramean.

Where were you blind, and now you see? Where were you angry, and now you're peaceful? Where were you stressed, and now you're calm? Where were you sick, and now you're healed? Where were you insecure, and now secure? Where were you depressed, and now full of joy? Where were you emotionally unstable, and now stable? Where were you lazy, and now proactive? Where were you selfish, and now willing to put other people's needs first?

This is the most powerful witness imaginable, for healing and wholeness: to demonstrate, and then announce.

I challenge you tonight, as we talk about leadership in God's biggest idea, to understand that your most powerful witness is not in announcing - it's in demonstrating.

To show peaceful families, to show calmness of heart, to show no stress, to show peace in our hearts, to show financial security, to show generosity - that when we demonstrate, it gives us the credibility to announce.

That the greatest credibility is not in walking through the streets of the mall in Napier going: let me give you this tract, you're going to turn, or you're going to burn. Do you know where you'd spend eternity?

Listen, I'm not against all that. I'm just simply saying: we can have far greater impact, and far greater credibility, if we demonstrate; and then announce - that that was Jesus' way; Paul's way; and Peter's way.

Paul went into a city where another god was the mainstay, and he never said one bad thing about the other god. He simply demonstrated what Jesus was like, and he said: that's it. They had no standing in court.

Closing Prayer

Lord, You're the best, and we proclaim You king of the universe, and realise that we are not, that we're not.

Lord, we just take a second tonight, and repent for where we announced before we demonstrated.

We realise now, that the reason there's such a ruckus against Christianity, is because of us; it's not because of anybody else. It's because we announced without demonstrating.

We said that we had something other people don't have - which makes us sound elitist - and then we didn't demonstrate anything.

Forgive us for that. Lord, may we be demonstrators of Your life, demonstrators of Your life. Would You empower us to do that, in Jesus' name. Amen

Being a Good Neighbor (4 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Wed 23 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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Luke 12:13 is the only time that Jesus' actually proclaims: God is going to kill you. It's not any of the sins you would think. It's not adultery, fornication, burning your children in fire, idolatry. Its greed!

Jesus is not impressed by what kind of car you drive, house you live in, or anything you possess; but with how much compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding-in-love, character is present in your homes.

We've been talking about demonstrating, and then announcing. Luke 12:13 - this is the only time in Jesus' whole ministry, that somebody does something so heinous, that God kills him; that Jesus' actually proclaims: God is going to kill you.

It's not any of the sins you would think - it's not adultery; fornication, burning your children in fire, or idolatry - its greed! I want us to examine this, because we're going to be a group of people who want to bring heaven to earth, and not just go to heaven one day.

Luke 12:13 - “One of the company said to him: Master, Rabbi, speak to my brother, to divide the inheritance with me; and he said to him: who made me judge, or divider over you?” So this guy comes to Jesus, and he says: “Tell my brother to do things my way”.

In those days, it was a rabbi's responsibility to create a yoke of a way of life; it was a rabbi's responsibility to teach the scriptures; it was a rabbi's responsibility to make sure we were living the right way. But in these matters, it was not a rabbi's jurisdiction to make legal decisions like this.

He says: who made me judge (or a divider) over you? He says: I can't make a legal decision here, but I can make a yoke.

Here's his yoke; then he said to them: “watch and keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man's life is not in the abundance of the things which he possesses”.

So in Jesus' yoke, Jesus is not impressed by: what kind of car you drive; what kind of house you live in; or what kind of anything you possess.

Jesus is impressed with how much “compassionate, gracious, slow-to-anger, abounding-in-love” character is present in your homes - and He spoke a parable to them about this, saying: “there was a certain rich man”.

Now any time Jesus starts a parable "there's a certain rich man", it is not going to end up good! “There's a certain rich man, who brought forth plentifully; and he thought within himself…” This is a very anti-Hebrew statement; a very white-person statement. It's a statement that the Hebrew people would look at us, and go: “oh, that's foolish”.

We use statements all the time like: “I just have to go work this out, with myself”; “I just have to work this out, in myself”; “I need to go think to myself for a while”.

Hebrew people would never do that, never. Hebrew people thought in communities. As a matter of fact, we even talk about studying the Bible, saying: “did you have your quiet time today”?

Now is that a bad thing to do? No, I'm just simply saying, that the Hebrew people were not even allowed to study the Bible alone - they weren't allowed to do that. The reason is: something as reverent, and something as holy, as God's word - they didn't want to open up people to error, by opening it up to them individually.

So you studied the Bible all the time, but you did it in groups, and you did it in the presence of a rabbi, who, if you got off-base, would say things like this. If somebody got off-base in the discussion, they would say: “you have abolished the Torah”. In other words, you've gotten off-base from the Torah. If somebody was on-base with what the Torah was saying, the rabbi would say: “you have fulfilled the Torah”.

So when Jesus comes, and He says: “I have not come to you to abolish the Torah, but to fulfil it” - that was a common rabbinical phrase, that just meant: I'm not coming to go off-base from the law. You think I'm threatening the law? I'm not coming to go off base from the Torah, I'm coming to show you what it looks like, lived out. That's what I've come to do.

So for a man to say "I thought to myself" - it tells you a lot, in Hebrew culture, about his attitude. He thought he was better than other people. He thought he could work it out on his own. This was not a common thought in those days;

“…and he said to himself, saying: what should I do, because I have no room in which to store all of my food? And he said: I'll do this - I'll pull down my barns, and build bigger ones, and I'll store all my fruits and goods in there; and I will say to my soul: soul, you have many goods laid up through many years. Take ease, eat, drink and be merry.”

Remember that the Romans were ruling the world at this time, and collecting 80% taxes! People were losing family land, which had been in their family since the Book of Judges - they were taxing everything. Herod was coming in, and taxing things on top of things, on top of things, on top of things.

There were people struggling to even eat, and this one guy has more food than he knows what to do with, and he thinks to himself: “what should I do with all of my extra”? Everybody around him is starving, and he's going: I've got so much - I don't know what to do with it.

We look at that go: you idiot! What are you talking about? You don't know what to do with it? There is so much need around you! See, it's very easy for us to read over this, and as soon as we say "there's a certain rich man" we dismiss ourself, because we don't think we're rich; but the truth is, we're very rich.

If you drove here tonight, you're in the richest 8% of the whole world - even if you only own one car. If you own two cars, you're in the richest 2% of the whole world. If you own two cars, and you drive home to a house with a roof on it, you're in the richest 0.5% per cent of the whole world. We are the rich man!

This is a story about me, and you; and about a group of people, who are surrounded in the world by enormous need. The cry of the hungry is everywhere, and we have more money in our bank accounts than we know what to do with. We have plenty of food to eat, and instead of feeding other people, we build bigger barns, to horde things for ourselves; simply so that our soul can be at ease, and we know we're taken care of.

This is a story about us, and about our heart attitude - to think we're actually better than what we are; and it's a heart attitude that hordes, instead of gives. It's a heart attitude that says: all the needs of the hungry - that's not my problem, someone else will deal with that.

The truth of it is, to be leaders in God's biggest idea, we have to take the heart attitude that says: it IS my problem - that WE can bring heaven to earth by making it our problem.

Watch Jesus' response to him: “But God said to him: you fool!” The word ‘fool’ there is the word ‘offen’. It's the word we get the word 'diaphragm' from; where we get breath.

He's saying: you breathless one, you person with no effectiveness. You're living all to yourself - offen. To call someone "offen" meant: you have lost all of your effectiveness. It's not the same word for ‘idiot’ - it's offen. It means: your ability to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide has ceased. It's almost like you're dead already.

“You fool, this night your soul will be required of you. Then who shall all these things be, which you have prepared? So it is for he, who lays a treasure for himself, but is not rich towards God”.

So let's get real challenging tonight? This challenges all of us, because I'm rich, and you're rich. Can we just admit: we're all rich? We're just rich. Did you drive here tonight? Yes, you're rich, very rich. How many of you know homeless people here? So we're all going home to homes tonight, you're very rich, we're in the top 1% of the whole world.

Have you laid up treasure for yourself, without being rich towards God?

In this passage, being ‘rich towards God’ means: taking into account other people's needs first. Where have we written a cheque, to make one more investment, so that our soul can be at ease; where that cheque could have easily gone to feed the orphans?

Is God against investments? No. Is God against wealth? Absolutely not. God wants us all to be wealthy stewards, but the key there, is the word 'stewards'. He wants us to be wealthy stewards; not people who sit around and think to ourself: I don't need to meet the needs of the hungry; I'll keep building bigger barns for myself, so that my soul can be at ease, at the expense of somebody else.

This man had starving people right outside his front door, and he was building bigger barns, so that his soul could be at ease. Do we find any of ourselves in that story? Has anybody, besides me (we've all done it I think), ever seen a legitimate need… Legitimate - I'm not talking about laziness. The Bible clearly says: don't help a lazy person, lest you enable that laziness okay! I'm talking about HIV aids orphans. I'm talking about Sudanese refugees, who can do nothing to help themselves.

Has anybody, besides me, seen an opportunity to help those people; and we turned the channel, or we turn our head from it - just so we can keep that one little bit of $50 extra in our bank accounts, so our soul can be ease, when we've got plenty of money to meet that need?

Are we demonstrating, and then announcing - or are we standing at the roof tops announcing, with no demonstration? Being rich towards God, is about meeting the needs of others first (in this passage); and in doing that, it actually saves our soul as well.

It looks like poor people need our help, but in actuality, we need their help. The poor people need us to feed their belly; but we need the poor people to keep our hearts humble - remembering that the Lord our God brought us out of Egypt, without us deserving it - and that is why He commands to meet their needs first. We are called to be a group of people who make it our problem

Luke 10. This is another story Jesus tells, which is kind of disturbing.

Before we start this I need to teach you something Hebraically; that in Hebrew culture, when they read parables, they do not read parables for content. We read parables for content; but they read parables for identification. They're always asking themselves: who am I in a story?

That's why, when I read a story, I'd say: are you finding yourself in there anywhere? They read the parables for identification, so normally a parable starts out with a question. Somebody is asking a question, so person A is asking rabbi B a question.

Rabbi B answers person A by saying: let me tell you a parable to answer your question; and the answer to the person's question comes in: who does the person identify with in the story. So with that in mind, let's look at the parable of what we call the Good Samaritan..

Luke 10:25, it says: “and behold, a certain expert in the law stood up and tempted Jesus”. It doesn't really necessarily mean a bad thing, it just meant he was asking Him a question.

He was testing Him, saying: “Rabbi, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” This was a very common question in those days, about the rabbis.

The words 'Eternal Life' doesn't mean: I get to go to heaven one day. It was the word Olam Habah, which meant: Eternal Peace with God; or Harmony with God.

So what do I need to do, to inherit eternal life? And he said to him: “what is written in the law?” How do you read it; which is another very common thing. Jesus is trying to figure out whose yoke he's under – who is your Rabbi?

So he says: "what have you heard? How do you read that? Of course, this was an expert Pharisee - he probably was his own Rabbi. How do you read it? What does your yoke say?

In answering, he said that: “you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and then to love your neighbour as yourself”. Jesus said to him: “you've answered right, do this and you'll live”. In other words - we agree, our yokes are the same.

And it says: “but he, willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: well who's my neighbor”, which is an awesome question, isn't it? He says: okay, we've got to do two things to inherit eternal life: #1, we need to love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and #2, we have to love our neighbours as ourself.

Since we have to love our neighbour as ourself, then in order to inherit eternal life, there is a group of people on this planet that we actually need to learn to love, like we love ourself. So we need to define who those people are.

So the Pharisee, the expert in law says: okay Jesus, here's our box. Tell me, who's in there - that we have to love, like we love ourself? Obviously I'm in there, because I can love me like I love myself; but who else is in there? My wife; my children; some church people - who's in this box - who's my neighbor? If I have to love my neighbour, like I love myself, then who is my neighbour?

So Jesus tells him a parable. He's going to tell him a parable to answer the question: who is my neighbour? The answer to the question is going to be found in whoever the Pharisee identifies with in the story. You see how their culture works? So Jesus is going to tell a story, and whoever the Pharisee identifies with in the story - that's who his neighbour is.

Answering him, Jesus said: “a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among some robbers, who stripped him of his clothes, and wounded him, and left him half-dead”.

Let's remind ourselves: who is asking the question? The Pharisee. Who is answering the question? Jesus, with a parable. So the Pharisee is looking for who he identifies with in the story.

So there's this guy, he gets beaten and left for dead - would the Pharisee have identified with that guy? No, alright, so we can go on.

“…and by coincidence a certain priest” - now there's going to be three characters. There's always three characters in a Hebrew parable like this - three characters are going to come by.

“By coincidence, a certain priest came down that way, and seeing him, he passed by on the opposite side”. So there's a priest, and he comes by this guy that has been beaten and left half-dead, and He passes by on the other side of the road.

Would the Pharisee have identified with the priest? No. Why? Because the priest were Sadducees. All priests were Sadducees - they were Torah-only. The Pharisees were Torah and the prophets; so as soon as Jesus said: “there's a priest”, the Pharisee would have tuned-out.

Our tendency is, when we read the story, is to think: bad priest, you're supposed to help the person - bad priest! That's not necessarily the case. The Torah said that it is against the law to touch someone who's bleeding out. It also says: it's against the law to leave somebody for dead - so no matter what this man did; he's going to be breaking the law; so he's not necessarily a bad priest.

So how do you determine which way to go, if either way, you're going to be sinning - how do you determine which sin to do? Would you want to have that responsibility? If you leave him for dead, you're sinning; if you touch a person bleeding out, you're sinning - so who made those decisions? The Rabbis.

The Rabbis did something called ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’. In situations like that, they bound their followers to certain behaviours; and they loosed them to certain behaviours. The principle was called [kow-ve-khol-mer]; or in English: “light and heavy”.

So the rabbis, in their yokes, had to determine what was the light sin, and what was the heavy sin - and you wanted to do the light one, not the heavy one.

So this guys rabbi would have had a yoke, and in that rabbi's yoke, he would have determined: is it the lighter thing to touch someone who's bleeding out; or is it the lighter thing to leave somebody half dead? The priest would have done whatever the lighter thing was, so maybe in this priest's life, his rabbi said that the heavier sin is becoming Tumah by touching blood.

Maybe he was just obeying the yoke of his rabbi, by binding and loosing. Maybe that's all that was happening, so the priest steps over him; and the Pharisees going: okay, that's not me.

The next guy comes by, and he's a Levite, and he passes by on the other side of the road too.

Would the Pharisee have identified with the Levite? No. Why? Same reason - they were Sadducees. Levites and Priests came from the same place, they were Sadducees. So the first guy's a Sadducee, and the second guy's a Sadducee, and once again: is it bad Levite, bad Levite, or was he maybe just following the yoke of his rabbi? Maybe the yoke of his rabbi said: I can't touch someone bleeding out, it's best that they leave them for dead.

In a Hebrew parable there's three characters, and if you're not the first, and you're not the second, then you have to be the Third. So this Pharisee would be going: oh, oh, oh, who am I? Who am I? And Jesus said: oh, there's a third character, and he's a Samaritan.

“And a certain Samaritan came upon him, and seeing him, was filled with pity. And coming near, he bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine, and set him on his animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. Going on to the next day, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him: take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when I come back, I'll repay you”.

Then Jesus lowers the boom: which of these do you think was a neighbour?

So what is Jesus saying? Who is asking the question initially? The Pharisee. Does the Pharisee identify with the priest? No. Does the Pharisee identify with the Levite? No. Does the Pharisee have to identify with the Samaritan then? Yes.

So what was the question the Pharisee was asking? Who is my neighbour; in other words, who do I have to love like I love myself; and Jesus says: the Samaritans.

In other words, according to the yoke of Jesus Christ, the people that we need to love like we love as ourselves are: the people we hate the most.

Look at his reaction: “Then which of these three do you think was a neighbour, to those who fell upon the robbers”? In Verse 37, and he said: “the one who had mercy”; and Jesus said: “go and do likewise”.

The guy couldn't even say "the Samaritan". He couldn't even say his name! The Samaritans were untouchables. They were horrible. They were hated amongst the Jews; and Jesus says: if you want to inherit eternal life, you have to learn to love the people that you hate the most, just like you love yourself

By the way, the people that you hate the most, often times, is you. You're just projecting your stuff onto them, that's all.

Oh, and by the way, what is Jesus revealing about His yoke here? According to the yoke of Jesus Christ, which one is the lighter sin: to show mercy; or to leave somebody half dead? Jesus wants us to show mercy, because He says: “go and do likewise”.

In other words: in my yoke, the lighter sin is to touch someone who's bleeding out; the heavier sin is to leave somebody for dead. Someone who acts like a neighbour does that.

So his first axiom is: who is my neighbour? The person who he hates the most! What is the yoke of Jesus Christ concerning it? Go and do likewise, show mercy.

Then He tells the guy: you're asking the wrong question. You're asking: “who is my neighbor”, because you want to get a way around it; but I tell you, the real question is: “how can you be a neighbor?”

You should never ask yourself the question: “who is my neighbor”; because the question gives you too many outs. The question is: “have I acted neighbourly today”?

So, my brothers and sisters: who today, did we act like a neighbour to; and who today, did we not? If we had to stand in front of Jesus today, and based on this passage, ask Him: do I get eternal life; would He look at us and say: yes, you acted like a neighbour; or would He say: wait a minute, what have you done?

Who in our life right now, do we actually believe we're better than them?

So let me just ask a couple of questions to close this night out…

1) Where, in our life right now, are we too independently-minded? Where are we not aware of the cries of the hungry? Where are we only aware of ourself?

2) How are my actions affecting other people? When you choose not to sow into the kingdom of God, how far is that effect going? When you choose to turn your back to the cry of the hungry, how far is that going?

3) Where do I need to share in my good things now? Where do I need to make it my problem? Where do I have an extra $300? I can either save that $300, or I can bless somebody else with it. Where have I chosen to bless, instead of to horde? It's a good thing to save too - they were commanded to save 10% of their income.

4) Hard question: Who do I hate the most? Normally it's people who are different than me. Who do we hate the most? Is it the people over there with towels on their heads, who blow people up? Jesus said: if you want to inherit eternal life, you have to learn to love them, just like you'd love yourself. Who do we hate the most?

5) How can I be a neighbour to someone today? Maybe you can write a cheque that feeds some orphans. Maybe you can sow into some ministry you believe in, to help them. Maybe you can give a phone call tonight, before you go to bed, to someone who needs your encouragement. There's 100 different ways you can be a neighbour. How can you be a neighbour today?

The last question is this: There's no answer to this, this is just something we need to ponder.

6) How can making a decision to "be a neighbour" actually save our own soul? Maybe the decision to love someone, you previously hated, humbles your heart to the point that it brings you closer to God, and it actually brings wholeness to your own self - maybe. How could your decision tonight to be a neighbour, actually save your own soul?

I bless you tonight to know that you serve a God who believes in you, more than you believe in Him. He's so humble to make us leaders in his biggest idea, He trusts us, He believes in us, to take His message, the cross of Jesus Christ, that life - to demonstrate, and then announce.

May we be a group of people who always have our hands wrapped in the tassels; never anything more, never anything less; for when we serve the tassels, we are serving wholeness; but when we unwrap the tassels, we unravel wholeness.

May we be a group of people who serve the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding-in-love God, by being neighbours to everyone, including those we hate.

Form versus Function (5 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Wed 23 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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Greek people, people from Europe, see form. We were trained to see form and think in form. Hebrew people see function.

To study our Bible more effectively, we should be people who are training ourselves to see function.

If I only had one session, if somebody said: listen, you've got an hour, and I want you to talk about the most important Hermeneutical principle you can talk about, this would be it: Form and Function.

Greek people, people with white skin that come from Europe - they find their origins in a really big, powerful church in Europe, which has big buildings with apostles names named after them - we see form.

We always see form. We were trained to see form; we think in form; everything about us is form. Hebrew people see function. Hebrew people always see function.

Let me give you the most obvious example I can think of. It says this: “God hid Moses in the crevasse of the rock with His hand.” All of us are form-thinkers; so all of us would have images in our head. We'd have a big cave, you have Moses in there; and then primarily the focus of that particular sentence in scripture is the Hand of God; so you have: Moses, a big cave, and God's hand.

Everybody pictures a big giant hand. It’s really big, right; like it's the hand of God, man. But the question is: does God have a hand? The answer is: no, God's a spirit. God doesn't have a hand like we have. Wait a minute, what about: the mighty hand of God; the strong arm of the Lord?

Again, Greek people think form; Hebrew people think function. When a Hebrew person writes something like 'the hand of God', or 'the strong arm of the Lord', they're thinking: what does a hand do?

The image is a form; but they're thinking: what is the function of a hand? A hand holds, a hand comforts, a hand hides, a hand does all of these things; so when a Hebrew person reads 'and God hid Moses in the crevasse of the rock with His hand', they're thinking: what's God doing to Moses in that cave? He's hiding him; comforting him; touching him. The focus is not on the form; the focus is on the function.

Later it says: “and Moses saw the back-side of God”. Form doesn't really work there, does it; because if God's hand is big... God's back-side would be huge! Can you imagine? Whoa, man! What happened? I saw the back-side of God man!

That doesn't work for us! Our 'form' kind of starts messing up; so we have to learn to see function. Moses saw the back side of God; so if we're going to look at that Hebraically, we have to understand: what is the function, of the back-side of God?

What's the function of God's back-side; because that's what Moses saw? You've got to extrapolate that back, and ask yourself questions like: what substance - is there any substance that God is described as, as observable and tangible?

You could say: God is love, God is mercy? God is all these things; but you can't really observe those things. Those are behaviors or verbs; you can't really observe those things. The only tangible substance that I can think of, that God is described as, is light - something you can see.

As a matter of fact it says: “for God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all”. There at least two substances on earth, that have no weight, and yet have force - which is pretty cool.

Physics says that Force equals Mass times Acceleration; so in order to have force, you have to have weight; but there are two things on earth that have no weight, yet they have force. The first one is light; and the second one is words.

Your words carry no weight, but yet they have force; light has no weight, yet it has force. If you focus light down, focussed enough, you can burn through steel. God is described as both those things - that God is Light; and God is the Word.

So God is described as a being, with no definable weight or matter; yet He has infinite force. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

Now here's what we know from science. We know that the universe is constantly expanding at the speed of light. We also know from the Bible, that Jesus (or God), is holding the whole universe together; so doesn't it stand to reason, that science would prove, that the universe is expanding at the very speed, of the substance, of the one who's holding it together?

Doesn't it stand to reason, that if God is Light; and God is holding the universe together; therefore the universe is expanding at the speed of light?

We also know that the function of light, primarily, is to hold pictures; so if the lights were off in here, you couldn't see. Your eyes don't see anything - your brain sees everything. Your eyes simply take high speed camera photos; and transmit the images to the back of your brain; and then your brain tells you what that is: green shirt. Light allows that image to be stuck.

So we know from science that light is constantly moving forward, at 186,282 miles a second. There's a guy that speaks, Chuck Missler, and he's brilliant. I can listen to him for like seven minutes, and then I'm done, because he's done passed me. He talks about this thing they did with this big telescope. They could see pictures of different phases of creation, because they were looking way, way out there.

So if Moses sees the “back side of light”, what does he see? He sees where light had been, which would be the past; so he sees these images of the past, which is how the rabbi said he wrote Genesis, without living it.

Imagine him standing there, seeing the back side of God, writing it down: Oh, in the beginning God created the heavens, and the earth was without form, and darkness... and the spirit of God was... he saw the past.

You see how seeing function, kind of helps things? Like there's this one place in Psalms it says: “Blessed is the man who walks into the presence of the most high, for he is dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty”.

Now that begs a couple of questions... If God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all, then how can one who is pure light ever cast a shadow? By definition, in order to cast a shadow, you have to be darker than something. But is there anything in the world brighter than God?

You have a hard time convincing people of that; so if there's nothing in the world brighter than God, then how can God cast a shadow? It's odd. It's kind of a strange statement: “blessed is the man who walks in the presence of the most high, for he's dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty”. So how do you work that out?

The key to that phrase is: “blessed is the man” - blessed is the man, when he walks into the presence of the most high. He is then dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty.

If a man walks into the presence of God, then whose shadow is actually cast? The man! So when you're in the presence of God, the shadow of the Almighty is actually you!

Can anybody think of a scripture where that comes into play? In the New Testament, Peter's walking along, and his shadow raises someone from the dead. Why? Because he was in the presence of God, so it wasn't his shadow anymore. The presence of God filled every part of him - including his shadow. The shadow of the Almighty was actually him - form and function.

We're such form-thinkers. This is the ultimate Pentecostal form, and since we're all Pentecostals here, we ought to be able to make fun of ourselves right?

The ultimate Pentecostal form is laying hands on somebody. We love that form because, since we're form-thinkers, to lay hands on somebody, what does it mean?

To lay hands on somebody, we actually take our hand and we lay hands on them. Laying on of hands has nothing to do with touching people.

Would rabbis ever have laid hands on sick people? Of course they did, they laid hands on sick people all the time - but did they ever touch them? No - but did they lay hands on them? Yes - but did they touch them? No. See our minds are blown already. Do they, or don't they Shane? Would you just spit it out? Why do you speak to us in parables?

Rabbis laid hands on the sick all the time. As a matter of fact, they commanded other people to lay hands on the sick. Jesus said: Lay hands on sick people, and they will recover. Laying on of hands was an important part of their culture, but would rabbis have ever touched a sick person? No, but did they lay hands on them? Yes. Why wouldn't they touch them? Because they'd become unclean - but did they lay hands on them? Yes. That's because laying hands on somebody, had nothing to do with touching them. It's function, not form.

The idea of laying hands on somebody actually came from Yom Kippur; and it came from: when they offered the sacrifice on Yom Kippur that would take away the sins of Israel, there was two lambs; and one lamb is going to have a really bad day, and the other lamb's going to be set free. So they take the lamb that's going to have the really bad day, and they set him on the altar, tie him down.

Function: why would you tie a lamb to an altar, that you could easily just hold there? The idea was: going to go on the lamb, was the sins of the whole nation; and when sin goes onto a lamb, you leave it there. You leave it at the altar; so they tied the lamb down, then the priest would press the sins of Israel into the lamb. He did things twice, because you had to have two witnesses.

He would press it into the lamb. So he would take the sins of Israel - and all this was obviously in the spirit (or in his imagination) - he'd build the awareness of it, and put it on the lamb. He would lay on top of the lamb, reach around, and press it into the lamb - and the lamb would be going [baaa!] - it would be a bad thing. So he'd be pressing the sins of Israel into the lamb, that would take away their sins.

When Jesus was in Gethsemane - because Jesus obviously is the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world - He said: “Father, I am pressed”. Gethsemane means 'the place of the press'; so He's the lamb, and He's being pressed with the sins of Israel; and it says that He sweat blood from the pressure from it.

Then after that, the priest would lay hands on the lamb - not touch the lamb, lay hands on the lamb, and it was Malar - the word meant ‘to impart something’ - that you have the authority to impart onto somebody else. So it meant to take something (that you have the authority to give), and give it to somebody else; or give it to something.

Remember when Peter said: “silver and gold I don't have, but what I have, I give to you”. That's the idea of Laying on of hands - to take something out of yourself, and place it on something else (and it's within your authority to give it).

So the priest would take all the sins of Israel, and he would malar, he would lay hands on the lamb. He would take it, and place it on the lamb. Tradition says that the pressure of the sins of Israel going onto the lamb would cause the priest to have to turn his head - so the priest would turn his head.

Remember when Jesus was on the cross, and the Father put all the sins of the world onto Him? It says that God, the Father, had to turn His head, because of the pressure.

You want to hear the rest of that? It has nothing to do with Laying on of hands, but it's pretty cool. At exactly the ninth hour, the Priest would proclaim: “it is finished”; and he'd pull the lambs head back, and he would cut the lambs throat; then he would catch the lambs blood in this cone shaped cylinder - and he would shake it, because the blood had to be living.

If the blood congealed, it would be not fit for sacrifice, and then he'd go into the Holy of Holies, and he would die! So he would shake the blood to keep it moving - to keep the blood active and living - and he would run into the Holy of Holies; and he would shout the whole way: don't touch me, don't touch me, for I have not yet offered the blood of the sacrifice.

Remember when Jesus rose from the dead, and the two women meet Him in the garden, and He doesn't even say hello. He's like: don't touch me, don't touch me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father. Why?

Because He had not yet gone to heaven, and offered His blood in the real Holy of Holies in heaven - not the one made by man, but the real one in heaven. There was no blood there, that's why there was no forgiveness of sins there - so He had to go ascend to His Father, and offer His blood.

So the priest would go in, and he would offer his blood. Do you realise, if would have been touched right then, the offering would have been negated - He'd have had to go through it all again. Not good! Do you see now why He was like: “no, no, don't touch me man!”

So He goes up to heaven (you don't know about it, because no one was there to write it down), and He sprinkles His blood on the Holy of Holies; and the next thing you know, He's showing up in the upper room going: okay, I can be touched - which meant the blood was accepted forever.

So the priest would go in, and he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, on the horns of the altar; and if it was not accepted, he would be killed, and they would drag him out. If it was accepted, then he would come out, and wash his hands -then he could be touched again.

Then he would walk out, and take the other lamb and say: “Behold Israel - your sin”; and he'd march the lamb between them. Then he'd let the lamb go, and when they couldn't see the lamb anymore, he would say: “Behold Israel, your sin has been removed from you, as far as the east is from the west”.

So the idea of Laying on of Hands has nothing to do with form; everything to do with function; and we've made a form out of this, big time. We've made a form out of everything - I'm talking about good people, who love God with all their heart.

The first time I ever got to pray for somebody, I was on staff at a Presbyterian Church – yeah, they're not really into all that - but I was on staff, and there was this lady who had MS. Her name was Kim, and they came to me, and they said: we heard that you're Pentecostal; and I didn't know if I wanted to admit that or not, because Pentecostals in Charleston are a bit embarrassing, and I said: aah, who told you that?

They said: listen, you believe in healing, don't you? I said: yes. They said: well you're the only one here who does; so we want you to pray for this MS to go. She was in a wheelchair and what-not. I said: oh sure. I mean, what am I going to say? I was 19 years old at the time, and I said: give me a week to prepare myself, because it takes a week to get the anointing and stuff back then - and this is what I thought. Kind of embarrassed about that now, but I was 19, and giving it my best.

So a week's time, with three days left to go, I fasted for three days. My heart was right - I fasted for three days, I did everything, all the forms, all of them - like I did everything I could think of. Man, I had oil out, I was dousing the whole place with oil, I was fasting, I was praying in tongues, I was praying in English, I was praying laying down, I was praying standing up. I even did that whole like crying thing, where you're like breathing in and crying at the same time, the thing that Pentecostals do, you know that thing, that (gasp/inhales) like that, I was doing that!

I was doing everything I could think of to get the anointing to come. I was throwing all the devils out the place, and I mean - oh man, I was doing everything. Then of course the day came, and I was so excited, and I'm like full of faith, because I had pressed in, I'd broken through, I'd done all these things that we do. So she comes in, and of course we start to pray. Then we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we do this don't we, we just do this. We do all our forms.

So this man comes and says: okay, I'm sick; and so what do we do? We have all the forms to get him healed right, so we lay our hands on him, so we put our hand on him, and we pray something like: Lord, you know, heal him; and then we step back and we say: do you feel better? And he says: no.

Then we go: oh, what do we do? Jesus said: lay hands on the sick and they'll recover; and so I just did - and he didn't get any better. I must be missing something. What am I missing? Oil, we need oil - so we get oil, we douse his head with oil, and then we pray over him, and we say: do you feel better? He says: no; and we're like: okay, what am I missing? What am I missing?

Agreement! We need agreement, right? So we're praying, we didn't even switch the person we're praying for. We're praying and we're like: okay, you need to agree, and so we're all agreeing, we're all agreeing, and we step back and say: do you feel better? He says: no.

What are we missing? Volume - maybe God's deaf, right? So we do this stuff, and we get louder, and we get louder, and we get louder, and we get louder, and we step back. We say: do you feel better? He says: no - which at this point, if he was smart, he would have just said: yes - so we'd leave him alone.

What are we missing? What form are we missing? Tongues! We haven't done the tongues thing yet, so we're like: hey [Prays in tongues] right, we're doing this stuff, and we've got our hands on him, we've got agreement, we've got volume, we've got oil, we got tongues baby, we got it going on! We step back and we say: do you feel better; and he says: no.

What are we missing? Demons, maybe he's got a demon. He's got a demon, so we get the demon off of him, we're doing all this stuff, and we step back and say: do you feel better? He says: no; and we think: ooh, what are we missing? Man, what are we missing here?

Then we run out of form. We run out of everything, we run out of form, and he still doesn't feel better; so then we turn it on him, and we say: “maybe you just don't have faith”. Yeah - and so the same word - oh I forgot, oh yeah, we stand on the word right, yeah, like God forgot what He wrote, remember, so we're doing this whole thing, and we turn it around on Him, and we did.

I'm praying for Kim. I'm doing all the forms, every form I can think of, and then I was so full of faith. I was 19, I'd fasted all week, I was skinny - and wanted to go eat at Outback afterwards; and I had oil - I mean this poor girl, her head drenched in oil. I mean, demons were outside the door, shivering from fear, like they were so scared of me, you know?

I was so full of faith, and I said: Kim, get up out of that wheelchair and walk - which is a disaster, if you've missed it. I was just - my heart was so good I'm telling you, I was - she said: okay, and she stood up, and fell flat on her face. Oh no! I wanted to die! I wanted to crawl under the carpet, and just disappear from the face of the earth. Just this odd feeling; and I was such a form thinker. I was even a form thinker with demons - which will get you beat up.

My first encounter with a demon, I was 19 years old, and it was at the Presbyterian Church, and I was the only one in the room that they thought knew what to do. I didn't know what to do. I just knew what I thought I knew - which is really bad; when you don't know what you don't know - it's really scary. This lady was about, I don't know, 130 pounds or so, not a very petite lady - and she beat four grown men.

I mean she beat us. I mean she had this one big guy picked up - 6'5", 250lbs, played full scholarship basketball for Oklahoma. She had him off the ground; and he's like: Shane - get her off of me man! And so I did this full gainer; and so you know, we didn't know what we were doing.

They said: Shane, what do we do? I said: I don't know! I said: wait a minute, I've seen this on TV! I said: look at me! She's on the ground (growling sounds). I'm like: look at me! (growling sounds) and then I thought: wait a minute, what am I missing? I'm missing something. There's some form - oh, in Jesus' name - look at me in Jesus' name! She went: grrr; and then I didn't know what to do.

I just knew what I had read about what Jesus did, so I said: you loose her in Jesus' name; and this is what - she's laying there. She goes (in a growling voice): NO! And I went: okey-dokey, I don't know what to do!

I just said: “in Jesus' name” - and you're staying - that's my ace of spades - I have no idea where to go from here! You're not supposed to be able to say “no” to Jesus' name - what are you talking about, you know? Then I found myself arguing with this devil. It was weird. It was the weirdest, most ethereal, 19 year old experience; like other kids my age were out drinking and partying. I'm out throwing out devils, and whoa! And I needed a towel for my pants you know…

Then this thing came over me, like this confidence came over me, and I thought this: I was walking away from the lady. I'm like: I don't know what to do with that, and then this thing came over me, and this thought: “demons can lie”!

So I just said: “yes, you will”. It had to be supernatural power of God stuff, because I did not know anything, about anything, about anything, and that thing left! Wow! Now where it went, I have no idea, but it went! I was like: phew, let's go home before something else happens here.

I got lucky once - even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. I realised I was missing something, because I had to deal with scriptures that said: “lay hands on sick people, and they will recover”. Jesus said that. He predicted His own death and resurrection, and then pulled it off; and yet I was laying hands on people, and nothing was happening. So was He lying, or was I missing something?

The truth is: I was missing something. I was making a form out of everything. We make a form out of everything. We make a form of "in Jesus' name". I mean, we've all been guilty of this at times, but how many times do we use in Jesus' name as a "10-4 over-and-out" sort of thing? We do it all the time. We do it at the end of prayers without thinking, don't we? Yeah, it's kind of like a "10-4 over and out", but if you look at the New Testament, most of them did not end their prayers "in Jesus' name". They didn't.

What they did was, they stayed in Jesus' name - so everything they said was in Jesus' name. Peter was in Jesus' name so much, that his shadow was raising people from the dead.

“In Jesus' name” is not a form, it's a function - it's a way of life. To lay hands on people means: to take something, that's in your authority to give, and place it over the top of somebody.

The rabbis called it hovering. I can take anything in my authority to give Doug - and I can hover it over him. I cannot put it in him - that is his faith; but I can put it over him - and it will saturate him from head to toe. You see Jesus doing this all the time: “peace be on you”, or “go with peace on you”.

So you might say: what's in my authority to give? You have the authority to give anything that's in the name of God; because you're heirs according to that covenant. You have the authority to give, because you are Abraham's child, and heirs according to that covenant.

God first revealed His name as “El Shaddai” - God Almighty. Some 450-odd years later, He appears to Moses in a burning bush, and He says: my name is “Jehovah” - I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Moses' response? He's like: na-ah, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is El Shaddai - which that's all he would have known. God appears to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, and they pass it on to their kids and to their kids and to their kids. Who are we in covenant with dad? El Shaddai. Who are we in covenant with dad? El Shaddai. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Shaddai. 430 years of slavery, in covenant with a God named God Almighty, and he wasn't doing anything, hmm.

So God finally appears to Moses, and Moses says: what's your name? Who are you? I am Jehovah - oh, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and Moses is like: no, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is “El Shaddai”. You just said your name was Jehovah. And He said: My name is Jehovah, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by My name Jehovah - they didn't know Me.

So God, over time, revealed himself in different names, and with different character traits: God Almighty (the God that has all might); Jehovah - Jehovah who? Just Jehovah; then later: Jehovah Rapha; Jehovah Jireh; Jehovah Tsidkenu; Jehovah M'Kaddesh; Jehovah Nissi; Jehovah Rophe.

These revelations of the name of God came in spurts, and every time God revealed a different part of His name, it expanded who He was; until Jesus came, and then He was given a name that is above every other name. Whether that name be written in heaven or on earth or under the earth, that Jesus is the name that encapsulates all other names of the revelation of God Himself.

We are in Jesus. We are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to that covenant; which means that in every one of us, we have the authority to reach into our spirit, and give to someone else - anything that's in the name of God.

Let me say it this way: you have the authority to give to someone else, anything that's in the tassels, anything. So if Doug needs healing, what name of God is that? Jehovah Rophe. Who has the authority to give that to him? Me - I can simply reach into God.

I can do one of two things: I can pray an intelligent prayer over him, which will do nothing for him; or I can reach into God, and I can grab everything that's in me in the kingdom of God - in Jehovah Rophe - and I can place it over the top of him, and it'll saturate him. That's laying hands on somebody!

If he needs provision, what name is that in? Jehovah Jireh. If he needs inner-healing what name is that in? Jehovah M'Kaddesh. Yeah, it's in us. The kingdom of God is not up and down, or this way and that. The kingdom of God is within us. It's ‘Laying on of Hands’, form and function. We have to learn to be function thinkers.

Last week I talked about Romans 12:1-2 – “I beseech you therefore brother and the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice” - and what it meant to be a living sacrifice. It's the function of living sacrifices, which are holy and acceptable unto God.

Paul was a Jewish rabbi. His connotation of sacrifices came from Leviticus. In Leviticus 1- 3, it says: “for these are the sacrifices which are holy and acceptable unto God. They have to have their head cut off, their legs cut off and their inner parts clean”.

So functionally-speaking, if you take somebody's head off, what are you taking off? You're taking their authority; so he's saying: an acceptable sacrifice gives up his authority for Jesus' authority. We all, as one body, grow up into Him, who is the head - our legs have to be cut off.

We give up our authority for His authority, our way for His way, and then in that process, He cleans our inner parts up, and that's what makes us holy and acceptable. This is all ‘function’ stuff.

Now with that, as the backdrop of form and function, I want you to look at this. I want you to look at this alphabet I just gave you, called Paleo-Hebrew. This is the Hebrew that was around before Babylon, this is how they wrote. The Hebrew language has morphed, and there's all kinds of different ways to write the letters, but the ones I want to talk to you about today, is the one that says: literal meaning; and then symbolic meaning.

So in the literal meaning category, those are the pictures of how they wrote each letter. So every Hebrew letter is a picture, and every Hebrew word is a comic strip. If you have the pictures, you can put the letters on it, and go from there.

The way they write ‘Aleph’ was an ox or a bull; and since we're learning to be function thinkers, the function of an ox or bull is ‘strength’, or ‘authority’, or ‘a leader’, or something that can ‘bear a burden. That's an ox or a bull.

Bet is a tent, or a house. It can mean ‘in’, or ‘into’, or ‘household’.

Gimel is the third letter, and it's a camel, or a camel hump. It means ‘pride’, to ‘lift up’, to be ‘puffed up’. There's one interesting misnomer with that one. Gimel is a camel. If you just take the 'l' and the 'e' and switch them - its rope.

Remember when Jesus said: it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to get into heaven? This doesn't change the meaning at all, but we've made up all kinds of stuff about what that means…

“Oh, there's this place in Jerusalem and the camel has to duck down...” What? The point is, it's impossible; but what likely happened was: instead of gimel, it was gimla (which would have been rope); so Jesus would have been saying: “it's easier for a rope to make its way through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to get into heaven” - so it doesn't change the meaning, but you can kind of see where the things can get mixed up a bit.

Dalet is door. The way they wrote a dalet was a door; which meant ‘pathway’, or ‘the way into’ something.

Ha was a window, or a fence, and meant to reveal something. It meant to: reveal something; or in some spiritual circles: to let wind in - so it's the spiritual sort of thing.

Vav is a nail or a hook, and it means: to ‘fasten to’, or to ‘hook to’ something. By itself, vav just means ‘and’.

Zayin is a weapon, or it could be a harvester, harvesting supply; and it means to ‘cut’, or ‘cut off’.

Chet, which has a 'ch' sound, is: a fence, a hedge or a chamber, and it meant: ‘private’, or ‘to separate’.

Tet is a snake, which ultimately, we always conotate that with evil - but it didn't mean that in this day. The snake, or the ‘twist’, meant: to ‘surround’ something.

Yud is a closed hand; or it is this image: to lift your hands up to God. It's the first letter of the word praise (yuda), so this kind of image.

Chaf is an arm, or a wing, or an open hand over a head. That's where we get the word ‘cover’ from. The word Kippur (atonement), the first letter of that word is ‘cover’.

Lamed is a cattle goad, or a staff. It means to ‘prod something along’.

Mem is water - moving water, and it means ‘massive’ or ‘powerful’; or it can mean ‘on occasions to be from something’ - from something.

Nun was fish-moving; or fish-multiplied.

Samech was a prop, like a cane, to support something, or to turn something.

Ayin is an eye, which obviously means to see.

Pe or Fe - they get used interchangeably. Pe (or Fe) is an ‘open mouth’, which means ‘to speak’.

Tzadi is a fish hook with bait on it, and it means: the desire of one's heart. It has to do with ‘what lures you’.

Kof is the back of the head, which means behind, or humble, or the least.

Resh is a giant head, and it just means: the head honcho, the highest person, the person in charge.

Shin is teeth, but over time it started to mean this (Spock’s hand-gesture from Star Trek) - the Duchening. Spock was a devout Jew. When the writers of Star Trek asked Leonard Nimoy: what do you want the sign of Vulcan to be he said: this.

If you trace that out, it looks like the Hebrew letter ‘Shin’, which means (by itself): name. So when the priests would bless the people at the end of a service, at the end of the priestly blessing it says: (in Numbers 6) “and he will put my name on them”.

So what he would do is, he'd stand before the people, and he'd do this, and he'd say: let the name of God rest on you now, hovering, hovering. Now don't walk around Hastings doing this to each other, they'll think you're a cult. Or you can - it doesn't matter what they think, just do it!

Tau is the last one. Tau was a cross, and it meant covenant.

So what does this have to do with me? Well, when you study your Bible, if you just have a Strong's Concordance, or if you just have Crosswalk.com, or a Bible software, e-Sword, something like that, when you put your cursor over the word in e-Sword, it'll give you the Hebrew spelling.

So you can come to the Hebrew word, and you can look up the spelling, which means you can see the pictures, which means you'll see the comic strip, okay? Every non-serious Bible study student just yawned, but for those of us who like that kind of stuff, let me show you what this can do to the Bible okay.

The word iniquity for instance: Avon, and it was three letters. ‘Ayin’, ‘Vav’, and ‘Nun’. Using the chart, you can look up: Ayin=Eye; Vav=Fish-hook; and Nun=Fish-multiplying. Iniquity is: “whatever your eye hooks-to multiplies”

How about the word ‘atonement’, which is Kippur? Chaf, Pe, Pe, Resh ( plus the vowels that are inserted for pronunciation). Chaf=Open hand over the head. Pe=Open-mouth; but if they write it twice, that means: yelling/shouting. Resh=A head (a giant head). So Atonement is read: “Covering, is being spoken loudly, out of the mouth of the head-honcho”

Who proclaimed atonement in the Old Testament? The high priest - he's the head honcho - the highest person. Who proclaims atonement in the New Testament? Jesus - He's our High Priest. So Kippur: covering is still being proclaimed, loudly, from the mouth of the highest person.

How about this Hebrew tongue twister from John 1:14? “and the word became flesh, and dwelt among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father”.

John 1 is just a commentary on Genesis 1, which says: “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. John 1 says: “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God”.

So John 1 is a commentary on Genesis 1, it's about the same thing, and John says things like: “in Him was light, and the light was the life of men”. Genesis 1: “and God said 'let there be light', and there was light”. In Him was light, and the light was the life of men; John is expounding on Genesis 1.

Then he says this in Verse 14: “we have seen His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father” - which in the Hebrew language is a tongue twister.

The word dwelt (from the word ‘became flesh and dwelt’), is the word Shaken. It looks like the word 'shaken', but it's pronounced [shi-caan]. Shin+Chaf+Nun. Now the way Hebrew words are formed, you normally have a three letter root-word, and then it's formed about that.

Shin=Teeth, or Name. Name is more common, so name. Chaf=the covering over the head (same as in Kippur). Nun=Fish-multiplying.

So in Hebrew, the comic strip says: “and the word became flesh, so that the covering of His name would multiply”.

Now it says: “the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen His glory”. The Hebrew word for glory is Shekinah, it’s very similar. Taking the vowels out, its: Shin, Chaf, Nun, Ha - same three letters, with a 'ha' on it.

So the Hebrew idea of Glory was: “the covering of His name, multiplied, revealed”.

In other words, what would we look like, if we were covered in God? Jesus showed that, He revealed that that the glory of God is what we would look like, completely covered.

Interesting, it says: we have seen His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father. Where did they see the glory of God in the Old Testament? By the way, this is still Old Testament; because when Jesus was walking, the New Testament hadn't been established yet. It just happens to be written in the New Testament, but it was still ‘Old’ - Jesus hadn't established the new covenant yet. That happens at like the end of the book.

Where did they see the Glory of God? In the tabernacle! The word for tabernacle is: Mishcon - same word. Mishcon has: Shin, Chaf, Nun with an [m] prefixed to it. ‘M’ means ‘Water’, or it could mean ‘From’.

Mishcon (the word ‘tabernacle’), could mean one of two things. It could mean: “the power, of the covering, of His name, multiplying”; or it could mean: “from the covering, His name multiplying”. So the tabernacle was a place from where the covering of His name multiplies.

But do you see the tongue twister? These are the same words; shaken, shekinah, mishcon - same root word and everything; so in other words, he's like: the shekinah of the mishcon is now shaken. Hmm, it's pretty cool.

How about the word ‘Tsedek’? That's the Hebrew word ‘righteous’. Tsedek = Tzadi + Dalet + Kof. Tzadi is a fish hook with bait on it; Dalet is an open door; and Kof is the back of a head. The comic strip is: “The desire of one's heart, opens the door to humility” - that's righteousness.

If you then put a 'ah' on it, tzedakah, it means 'righteousness revealed'; which means, in a word: Generosity. “The desire of one's heart opens the door to humility – revealed”. The ultimate act of humility, is to meet someone else's need first.

How about the word praise? The word ‘praise’, there's seven of them, and I'm just naming one: Judah [pronounced yehuda] We'd say Judah - it's: Yud + Dalet + He.

Yud is: the upraised-hand thing. Dalet is” an open door. He is: a window to reveal something. So in other words, this is how they taught Judah. They said: “as I raise my hands to God, He opens the windows and the doors of heaven for me”. Or you could think of it this way: “as I raise my hands to God (as I submit my life to God), the pathway to revelation is made known”.

How about God's name? When God says His name first, it's Yahweh: Yud + He + Vav + He, which is a Hebrew anomaly - its four letters that don't phonetically go together. So Moses is asking Him His name, and God in essence looks at Moses and goes [gibberish]. In essence, He says: I'm not playing this game with you. You want to know My name? My name is: [Koshperovenavonshaven] [Robinhavenshavenoven]

He just made something up: yud, he, vav, he; but if you put the pictures on it, what does it do? Yud is the upraised hands; He is revelation; Vav is a hook; and then He is revelation. So God's name, at its essence means this: “As we worship Him, revelation gets connected to revelation”. It's glory-to-glory, never-ending, perpetual glory-to-glory.

How about the name Rapha, Jehovah Rapha? What letters do you hear there? Rapha? You've got: Resh + Fe + He. Resh is the giant head; Fe is a mouth; and He is ‘to reveal something’. So the word ‘Jehovah, My Healer’ means: “the highest person is speaking revelation”.

Jireh, the word provision, or provider, it's: Yud - up raised hand; Resh - giant head; He - revelation. In other words: “as I put God in His proper place, the highest person reveals Himself to me”. That's provision.

How about Shalom, the word peace, Shalom? Shin + Lamek + Mem. Shin is: teeth (or name); Lamek is: a cattle goad, or a prod; and Mem is: ‘powerful water’, or ‘from something’. So the word ‘shalom’ means this: “the name is prodding me to power”. In other words, the most powerful state you can be in, is the state of peace inside. That's where you can harness all your power.

Kanaf: Kof + Nun + Fe. “Covering is multiplied out of somebody's mouth”. That was the corner of their garments. That's where the tassels were.

The initial word for Prayer, in Genesis 4, is Tefilla. It had three letters: the front of the head, the back of the head, and then the ox head going into a yoke. So prayer, to a Hebrew person is: “Turning of the head, in order to face the One who can bear the burden”.

It's all about being God conscious, not sin conscious. That is prayer, so what would our prayer-life look like? My brothers and sisters, leaders of God's biggest idea, what would our prayer life look like, if we spent more time becoming aware of God, becoming aware of everything that's inside of us; and knowing that we could take it out of ourselves, and place it onto somebody else? What kind of power would that bring?

If I could have shared anything with you (for an hour), in terms of how to study your Bible more effectively, it would have been on that: that we should be people who are training ourself to see function, not form. And then you can use the letters for every single word in the whole Bible that's written in Hebrew.

Worries of this Life, Deceitfulness of Wealth (6 of 6) (Shane Willard)

Wed 23 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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Jesus says: the worries of this life will keep the word of God from taking root in your life. It's something that chokes your life out.

The other one is the deceitfulness of wealth, which is a lie that says: if I had this I would be happy.

Do you have one day in seven, that is unlike any other? If you do, how is it different? Who are the most important people to you? What are you called to be? Is that getting your attention first?

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells this parable. He talks about four different kinds of soil, and I don't have time to do the other three types; but the third type of soil, Jesus says about it: the seed gets sown, and it takes root, and it starts to grow; then the thorns choke it out.

These people are good people - they're great people. They just can't seem to get the truth of God's word to stick. The reason is not because they're stony; and it’s not because they don't understand.

These are people who understand that: Jesus' way is the best way for their life. They know what to do -they just don't do it; or they do it for a time - and then it gets choked out. The life of it just gets choked out.

Where do you find yourself in that story? Sometimes, people have tried to preach that, and say: these kinds of people are ‘bad people’; and these kinds of people are ‘good people’; but that's not the point at all.

Jesus, when He explained the parable, said: the hard ground, are the people who don't understand the ways of God, in that area. Have we ever been there? Of course!

Has anybody ever preached something to you, and you went: I've never thought about that before? That means, before that day, you didn't know - you didn't have the revelation of it; so we've all been there.

Has anybody ever been stony? I mean has anybody besides me, ever had a point in your life where you hear something, you get all excited about it, you make all these promises to God - but it has no root, so then it dies off? We've all been there!

Good-hearted people are there; and in a thorny ground, it actually takes root, starts to blossom - everything's going good, and then the thorns choke it out. Just choke it out. Then of course, the good ground - we've all been there! But I want to talk to you tonight about the thorns, and about: in leadership - are we choking?

Jesus, interestingly enough in this story, He doesn't give them bullet points, or solutions. He just says: “Let him who has ears, let him hear”.

If you're willing to do the work in this area, there's an overcoming that's available to you. The kingdom of God demands that we wrestle with things.

His disciples get frustrated in this story, and they say: “why do you speak to us in parables”? Just tell us what the deal is!

So in Matthew 13:22, He explains the thorns, and saying: “the seed ‘falling among the thorns’ refers to people who: hear the word; but the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, choke the word out of them, making it unfruitful”.

So Jesus says: two things cause good hearted people (where the word of God starts to take root in their life) from the thing taking root. It chokes it out; and that is: the worries of this life; and the deceitfulness of wealth.

The worries of this life: the word ‘worry’, in the Greek language, is something that causes us ‘to split’. In other words: I'm here; but I'm actually there. I'm here with you preaching; but my mind is thousands of miles away on a problem I have - the worries of this life.

I don't have young kids, but how many of you have ever been playing with toys with your kids, but your head was on: how are you going to pay the bills? Split. It's the worries of this life.

Have you ever been out on a date with your spouse, and to have quality time, with just you and them - and you spend your whole time talking about the worries with your kids? The worries of this life…

It's: I'm here; but I'm actually there, and there, and there, and there, and there, and there, and there. The word ‘anxiety’ or ‘worry’ means: anything that causes you to split; or anything that keeps you from being ‘fully present’. It's the failure to be here.

Perhaps you're sitting here tonight, receiving fresh teaching in the word of God; but your mind is somewhere else? It’s a failure to be here.

Jesus says: the worries of this life will keep the word of God from taking root in your life. It's something that chokes your life out. The other one is the deceitfulness of wealth, the deceitfulness of wealth.

The ‘worries of this life’ is: I'm worshipping; but my mind's on my money. I'm here, but I'm actually in four different other places - I'm split apart.

The deceitfulness of wealth is a lie that's future-oriented. It says this: if I could just get to some place, then I would be really living. It's pushing for something that never quite shows up.

Has anybody besides me, when you get pay raises, you think: phew, I've arrived; but then it doesn't take long, and you haven't?

I remember my first ministry job: I was making $500 a month. I was like: yeah, I could afford a new car! I was living real cheap; but then my first full time ministry job out of college, they paid me $23,000 a year (maybe $400 a week or something?), and I was like: man, I have arrived!

Then of course, after that, it's like: man, I need to make $40,000. It wasn't until like 2004 that I ever made $40,000 in a year; and then when I got that pay raise I was like: whoa! Oh man!

Then you enjoy that for a while, and then you think: what could I do with $60,000? Then you make $60,000 and then it's: what could I do with $80,000. Then you make $80,000 and then: what could I do with $100,000? Then you - what could I do with $200,000, and what could I do with a quarter million? Oh, what if I made $500,000 and then oh…

The deceitfulness of wealth: you have people in this world who are worth $60 billion dollars, and they still go to work every day to make more!

The deceitfulness of wealth: it's a lie that says: if I had this, I would be happy. Has anybody besides me ever been convinced that you ‘had to have’ something; and then you bought it, and six months later you saw it hanging in your closet, and you wondered why you bought it? Maybe the tag was still on it?

Hmm, there are people in this world with nothing to wear, and we have clothes in our closets with tags still on them - the deceitfulness of wealth.

It's deceitfulness - and essentially, the ‘worries of this life’ is: a failure to be here. The ‘deceitfulness of wealth’ is: a failure to be now. It's a failure to be content. It's always pushing for something else, that doesn't happen.

If you've ever made $40,000 and pushed for $60,000; then you find that $60,000 didn't do what you thought it would do. If you've ever made $60,000 and pushed for $100,000, you found it didn't do what you thought it would do. If you ever had $100,000, and pushed for $200,000, and you made it - it didn't do what you thought it would do.

Now let me say this: “money can't buy happiness”. But in a sense, people who really believe that - don't know where to shop! Let me explain what I mean by that. If you're going to struggle – with money, or without money - go with the ‘with money’ side of it, okay.

But what Jesus is saying is: there's contentment. Jesus wants to make us wealthy stewards - He does! He wants us to be wealthy stewards; not rich men, but wealthy stewards - two totally different things.

The Rich Man and Lazarus is the only time in Jesus' whole ministry that he used the word Hades, in terms of somebody going there, and we need to deal with that.

So Jesus wants to make us wealthy stewards. He's not against that, but this is about the heart attitude, which always has to have more. It's a failure to just sit back and say: look at what God's blessed me with. I'm so content NOW!

The ‘worries of this life’ is a failure to be here. Can anybody remember the last time you could not be fully-present in a situation, you were thinking about something else, because of the worries of this life?

Does it stand to reason then, that is why the word of God cannot take root in our hearts: because of the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth? Is Jesus nailing it, or what? Jesus gave this message 2000 years ago, and it's still true today. The worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, keep us from God's best.

Have you ever popped off in anger, and when you were confronted on your behaviour, you said: yeah, but I was just stressed out? The worries of this life kept you from God's best.

Have you ever made a rash decision that had horrible consequences to it, and when you were confronted on that, you said: yeah, but you don't understand the pressure I was under? The worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth.

We could give example after example after example, but what's the answer? There are a lot of answers. I just want to give you one, and this is in no way a complete answer, this is just one answer that helps. That answer is Sabbath.

Jesus said this: “Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath”. Let me just tell you some things about Sabbath….

To argue about which day of the week it is, misses the point. To make it a day of ‘no fun’, misses the point. To make it a day of ‘rules to keep’, misses the point. To make it a day that puts guilt or condemnation on somebody, misses the point. “Let no one judge you by days, or moons, or festivals”.

But the principle of Sabbath is absolutely necessary to save our life. It will save our life. Will God love you more; or love you less? Absolutely not; it’s nothing to do with condemnation or guilt. It has to do with basic rhythms, that God built into creation.

There is a six-and-one rhythm built into creation. God did, and the animals do too. There's a recent zoological study, using animals in zoos; they put them out for six days, and then hid them for one day, letting them rest. The other group, they just put them out every day. The group they put out every day, actually got sick. There's a six and one rhythm to creation. God built it into that.

The truth is that we're addicted to accomplishment, achievement, and action. We're addicted to it. It releases something in our brain. You realise we can be addicted to anything? We can be addicted to stress. We love being stressed out; and even though we say we hate it, we actually couldn't do without it, because it releases something in our brain, that we like the feeling of it. Let me prove it to you?

Take a Sabbath; and then by two o'clock in the afternoon, pay attention to how you feel. You feel horrible, and you say: oh, this thing doesn't work. No, it does work; but your body is detoxing from the chemical being released in your brain, that's used to being stressed out.

We can be addicted to anything. I knew a guy once, he'd sleep 10 to 12 hours a day, and when you'd ask him how he was doing, he'd still say: he was tired. Why? He was addicted to that feeling, he liked it.

There's something happens. Something about action, accomplishment; stress - we love it; and we feel like we're a failure if we're not a part of it.

So if you take a Sabbath - just to do it; we'll be depressed, because we miss the rush. When we take a Sabbath for the reason God wants us to - it saves our lives.

Let me just give you a couple of definitions, Hebraically, of the Sabbath - the principle of Sabbath.

1) The Sabbath was a day for you to get the energy you need, for the other six days. That's what it was meant for. It activates the six and one rhythm that God built into creation.

2) The Sabbath was a day for God to mend, and put us back together, that which was broken.

God instituted a time (one day in seven) that was just for Him and His bride. Remember the whole thing was about a wedding? God's way of keeping His marriage together was: one day in seven; it's just you and your spouse, you and your bridegroom. Seven times a year; and one day in seven - those were the festivals. That was how God kept His bride strong.

It was one day in seven that you could come to God, and say: God, the last six days produced this much brokenness in my life. Fix me, so that I don't go into the next six days, and get more and more broken.

It was a day of complete honesty with God - openness, no hiding anything; because you can't get healed if you're hiding something. So it was the day that you could come and say: God, in the last six days, I took this many bumps.

This person said this to me, and it angered me; my father, he's struggling with this, and it makes me angry. My co-worker said this to me, and it hurt me. My child did this - listen, this is broken. These are my broken pieces. I give them to You. Please put me back together. It was a day of complete honesty with God.

I love this definition, the Hebrew boys would say this: Dad, why is this day ‘unlike any other’? So Sabbath was a day ‘unlike any other’. Do you have one day in seven, which is unlike the other seven days? If you do, how is it different?

Let's get right down to the nitty-gritty. What day of the week, do you ‘not check your email’? What day of the week, do you ‘put your list away’? What day of the week, can I not ‘get in touch’ with you? What day of the week, do chores ‘not matter’ for that day?

Sabbath was a day that you reminded yourself: He is God, and you are not. It was a day where you pretended like your work was done, even if it isn't.

Sabbath was a day where you were freed from the slave driver of ‘things to do’.

If you’ve never tried it, I won't like you any more or any less; neither will God. I'm just saying: it'll save your life.

If you ever try it, you would not believe how addicted we are to our lists of things to do; to the internet; to feeling like we're needed.

There's something so healthy about one day in seven, that reminds us that: He is God, and we are not, and the world will still keep going around, even if my little list doesn't get done.

There's so much pressure on us, when we don't see it that way; because the only other way to see it, is: if my list doesn't get done, then this won't, and this won't… Then we get into the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth - which chokes the word out of our life.

Sabbath is a way to live differently, to live differently for one day - just one day - to remind yourself that God's in charge, and you're not; and this whole thing's going to be okay, because He's God, and we're not. To live differently, to live a different way, is counter-productive.

Ecclesiastes 3 says: “To everything there's a season, there's a time; there's time to be born, a time to die”, a time to preach, a time to watch Rambo. There's a time to pray, and a time to play golf. There's a time to counsel, and a time to fish - if that's your thing.

Tell me about the rhythms in your life; because, if you get stuck in one rhythm, then you're boring. You're boring!

If you get thrown into a tizzy with one interruption, you often miss God's best. We get so focused on our list (our things to do), that one little interruption causes us to be stressed out.

So we call, we say: how are you going? Oh, I'm stressed out. Why? Well, I had my day going, and then such and so interrupted me, and then… Yeah, but what did God show you in that? Oh, I don't know, I'm just so stressed out.

You know, some of the best miracles of God, came in an interruption? The tassels - remember the lady with the issue of blood? Was she in Jesus' plan that day? No. Where was He going? Jairus' daughter.

The lady with the issue of blood interrupted Him, and actually because of her interruption - the girl died before Jesus got there - and it was still okay. Some of the greatest miracles in Jesus' life came in interruptions.

If an interruption ruins us, we miss the reclamation of a new rhythm, that God is calling us to. But sometimes Sabbath, what it does is: it backs us up, and it reminds us that God is in charge; and if He brings something new into my life, well - blessed be the name of the Lord.

So let me just apply this in some very simple ways:

1) Who are the most important people to you? If you just take a second, and just write out some names, there should be only four or five names - unless you have eight kids. If you have eight kids, please write all their names. I'd hate for one kid to see another's on there, and I didn't make the list! Then they come and see me, and they're stressed because of it. Yeah, they're all worried, yeah.

Who are the most important people to you? Either write it down, or make mental ascent to who they are. Who are the most important people to you? Take time and think about that, the most important people. If you're married - yeah, it should be that person. If you're writing your kid's names down before your husband, you have a problem.

Who are the most important people to you? There's no reason not to be honest, it's just you and God - are they getting your attention first?

What percentage of your energy are they getting? Or are you caught in your list, and the very people who most need your attention - because they're the most important - actually get the least energy. Then everything goes to custard, and we wonder why. It's not that anybody's a bad person, it's just the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth.

2) What is the most important thing to you? Put another way: what are you called to be? Is that getting your attention first?

Have you ever talked to somebody, and you say: what would you like to do? Would you like to snow ski at Queenstown? Oh I'd love to go snow skiing at Queenstown! I just haven't had time in the last three years. It's like: what? I mean they've got money, they're gainfully employed - they could afford to do it - they just can't find the time in three years. Are you kidding? The ‘worries of this life’, and the ‘deceitfulness of wealth’!

Do what is the most important! Let me ask you it this way: if you were to move tomorrow, what would you keep? If you had to box your whole house up tomorrow, what would you keep? What would you sell? What would you give away? What would you throw away? If you were to move tomorrow and do these things, why haven't we done it today? What are we holding on to? The ‘worries of this life’; and the ‘deceitfulness of wealth’.

Everything we keep in our house, that doesn't belong there, takes energy; so what are we giving energy to today, that is taking energy away from the most important things?

If I looked at your list - at the most important people in your life, and the thing you're called to do; if you take that list, and only you can do this - take that list, and then look at your calendar. Look at your diary. Look at your schedule.

Does your schedule reflect that list? If it doesn't - you're choking. The worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, have got you; and it's choking the word of God out of a good-hearted person's life.

Can I give you just like one exercise to do? This is so cool, and if you were in my office, it would cost you $120 an hour; but this is free.

Everybody's got their piece of paper? This is part of our altar call - if you're really spiritual, and you need to think of it as an ‘altar call’, then think of it that way, okay? The altar call is starting - let me just get holy okay - altar call's starting. Here's form and function...

I want you to take your piece of paper. This is so therapeutic, this is going to help you so much, and I just want to deal with the worries of this life. The deceitfulness of wealth is something that takes some time to develop, but the worries of this life...

I want you to take five minutes; and I want you to list out everything you're worried about right now.

Don't think too hard! Man, some of you are writing fast, good Lord! I'm only kidding...

The worries of this life - what are you worried about right now? Money? Bills? Marriage? Whether your dad likes you or not? Whether Cooder Montgomery (at work) thinks you're doing a good job? What are you worried about right now?

Where do the worries of this life have a hold? Please don't think of this as ‘admitting you're wrong’, or something like that. This is just getting in touch with an emotion that you might not have touched - the ‘worries of this life’.

It's such an important emotion. It's the first thing Jesus mentions, of what keeps the word of God out of our life. Where are you worried? Maybe a way to identify it is: when you're here; but you're actually there - what is ‘there’?

You know for pastors sometimes, sometimes I'm in one place, and I'm already thinking about what God needs to do in the next. That's worry. God can handle that. He's like really big, and I'm really small. I'm a really small shot, and a big shot lives in me.

Below that list, I want you to write two columns. The first column is: things I can do something about; and the other list is: things I can't do anything about. Now look through your list and categorise it.

Category #1 is: things I can do something about - for instance, if you're worried about finances, and you don't have a job, then getting a job would be something you could do something about.

Things you could do something about, and things you can't. For those things you could do something about, let me just go Joyce Meyer on you for a second okay.

Joyce Meyer impersonation: “Shut up, quit complaining, get off your behind and do something about it! Make a plan of action, put that plan of action into place, and go and do likewise; and if you can't make a plan of action, go sit with someone who can help you make a plan of action. Put that plan of action into place, and go and do likewise”.

Or I could go Joel Osteen on you: “You're a champion! God loves you! You don't let that list get in your head, and get you all negative. You tell that list to go on back to hell, where it came from. Me and Victoria, we was talking the other day about what daddy used to say about y'all, and he wouldn't tell you to worry about your list. He'd tell you to do something about it! Think positive, and be a champion!”

If the ‘worries of this life’ fall under the category of ‘something you can do about it’ - then do something about it. Don't sit around. Don't let me come back next year, and you have the same list of the stuff you can do something about. Man, do something about it! If you don't know what to do, then go sit with somebody who does. I promise you, there's somebody - and do something about it.

On the other side, are things that you cannot do anything about. This would include any worry you have, that involves the actions, behaviours and emotions of another person. They're responsible for them. This involves any worry you have about: approval from somebody else. This involves any worry you have about: a need that you have, that only somebody else can meet. This involves any of those things.

With the things that you can't do anything about - oil prices; the price of milk going so high, that you can drink Bourbon cheaper than you can drink milk, hmm. I mean just for financial reasons, mothers could be giving their kids whiskey - it's cheaper than milk! This would include all of those things.

Everything that you cannot do anything about - here's what I want us to do; and we've had a light hearted moment, and I'm glad because God wants us to be light-hearted. But I can tell you this, that for most of us - some of us, we might have worked this out, and that's great - but for most of us, we need to have a holy moment with God, and we need to repent; for the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth - choking God's best out of us.

I mean, does anybody besides me need a moment with God with that? We need to take a stand in faith against the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, and just say: you can't have my life one more day. You're choking God's best out of my life, and I am taking a stand, right now.

Maybe we need to take the other side of that list, and we need to have a holy moment with God, and have a Sabbath, and just say: you know what? I'm taking a Sabbath from worrying about these things; and I'm taking a permanent vacation from worrying about the other, because I'm going to do something about it.

But for this side of the list: Lord, You are God, and I am not, and I'm tired of choking. I don't want to choke one more day. I want Your best. I want Your word to take root, and I want Your best to come through my life. It is so freeing, and the pressure's off from me, to let You know that You're God, and You're going to have to handle this.

I'm not talking about some cliché - just leave it with Jesus. I'm talking about the feelings and the emotions that you would feel, if all of that anxiety was off of you now.

Mr Soundman, if there's like a Terry MacAlmon CD or something back there - I gave you no warning on this, and if there's not don't worry about it; but like, I don't want you to put on any rock 'n roll or anything. That'll come later, you know. “Back In Black” is not appropriate right now.

But here's what I want you to do. I want us to take from now, to the end of the night, whenever God's done; and I want us to have a holy moment with God, where we stand in faith, and say: “the word of God will take root in my life, because I am going to stand against the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth”. We need to repent for it.

Maybe some of you need a moment around the tassels. We need to remind ourself, that God's way is the best way for my life. That my life is covered in the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God, the grace of God, and the nature of God.

I don't wear these tassels, but sometimes they mean so much to me, like it normally is in my closet. There's been times where I was so worried about something, and I went into my closet to get dressed, and I was trying to decide what shirt to wear, and I looked up and the tassels were pointed out, and it just reminded me: God is God, and I am not.

There have been times where I thought I was going to have a stroke, from the anxiety that had come over me, over something. My head was rushing, my face was flushed, I was all flustered, I didn't know what to do, and I walked in my closet, and this was hanging out. I reminded myself: God is God, and I am not. May the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, never rob me of God's best.

Lord, we repent for allowing the things that choke our life: the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth. Lord, I repent for letting those things be Lord. I repent for letting those things dominate my thoughts.

Forgive me Lord, for every time I've been here, but actually there. Forgive me Lord for the deceitfulness of wealth, for constantly pushing for something that doesn't come. Lord, we repent for that.

We change our thinking; and Lord, we look at our list, and we tell You: this is stuff we can't do anything about - and we leave it with You. Truly, in our emotions, we leave it with You. Lord, we repent for the feeling of worry, and what it does to our faith. We own it. We repent for it.

We stand against it together. We stand against any spirit that comes against our mind that tells us: worry is the best way for life. No, we stand against it. We stand against the deceitfulness of wealth.

Maybe we need to commit to taking a Sabbath, to the principle of Sabbath; reminding ourself that He is God, and we are not. I want you to have a holy moment with God. The tassels are here for you.

If you're paying attention, you can really sense a strong presence of God in here. He's dealing with those emotions that come from the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, things that choke our life out. He's just dealing with those things. He's setting people free. They can leave free to have the word of God take root in their life, and we leave tonight with that mind.

So let that presence keep flowing thicker and thicker and thicker, that feeling of the presence of God. Let it just rush through this place now, through every person from the top of their head to the soles of their feet. I reach into that now, and I ask that You'd flood this place with Your presence.

We just love the sweetness and the gentleness of the Holy Spirit, and how His presence takes painful things like these sometimes, and He just deals with them and sets us free.

In a position of faith Lord, we stand now with You. We stand against these things, and we proclaim ourself kingdom people. We live Your way. Let the word of God take root in good soil in our heart.

May the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, die off of our ground. Just weed it out, Lord. Pick the thorns out. Lord, I say to You: please do that in my life. I submit my heart to You, tell You I love You with everything I am; and I want Your best for me. Let this take hold.

Lord, I pray that You bless us tonight, that You would mark us - let us mark this in the spirit tonight - as a moment where we know that we're empowered over the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth. Free us Lord, for the principle of Sabbath - to know that You are God and we are not. In Jesus' name, Amen.

The Spirit of Mammon

Spirit of Mammon (1 of 4)

The number of times Jesus talked about wealth and possessions, stewardship and accountability, far exceeded any discussion on any topic. In fact there's about 10 times the number of references to finances and stewardship and resources, than there are to faith and salvation, and yet all of these go together. Often the moment we start to talk about money, people freeze - and we will see why...

Put God First (2 of 4)

I've seen too many rich people who had miserable lives to believe that money can really make your life happy. It just can't. God can make you happy, money can't. Money is just a piece of paper. It's some numbers in the bank. It cannot make your life happy. What it does instead is it tends to create problems.

Generosity (3 of 4)

We have seen many people that have had much money and yet they didn't have what money seemed to promise, health and prosperity and every good thing. It seems like it still eludes them, so we looked at that and saw that Jesus taught very specifically about us placing God first. To be generous is to be liberal. It's an attitude of heart that shows up in every area of your life including finances. Generosity exposes selfishness!

Generosity (4 of 4)

There's something about generosity that creates a very sweet fragrance. When people give and there's nothing in it for themselves, they've just given unexpectedly to you, then there's something sweet about it. Generosity usually exposes greed. God is love and you can't love without giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving, so the greatest way we express the love of God to people is when we can be generous and kind to them with no agenda. That's when people see God, because that's what God is like.

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Spirit of Mammon (1 of 4)

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The number of times Jesus talked about wealth and possessions, stewardship and accountability, far exceeded any discussion on any topic. In fact there's about 10 times the number of references to finances and stewardship and resources, than there are to faith and salvation, and yet all of these go together. Often the moment we start to talk about money, people freeze - and we will see why...

I want to speak today on the Spirit of Mammon.

I want to have a look in Matthew 6.

Jesus spoke a lot about many things, but the number of times He talked about wealth and possessions, stewardship and accountability, far exceeded any discussion on any other topic.

In fact there's about 10 times the number of references to finances and stewardship and resources, than there are to faith and salvation, and yet all of these go together.

Often the moment we start to talk about money, people freeze, and you'll see why just shortly. I'm not after anyone's money. I'm not trying to talk to anyone to give any money.

I want to help us gain understanding of the spiritual nature of money and what lies behind it, and how to be free, how to walk in freedom.

Matthew 6:20-21 says: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”.

So we ask the question: why did Jesus speak so much about stewardship, resources; being a steward or servant of God; managing resources, finance - why did he speak so much about that?

It says very clearly: where your treasure is, your heart is there too. Now there's a lot of things we teach on that, but let's just take the most simple thing is that: where your wealth is, where the things you value lie, that's where your heart is.

Wherever your treasure is, that's where your heart is; or: where your money and wealth is, that's where your heart will be.

For example, if you bought $1.00 worth of shares in a company and the company falls over, you're not even worried at all.

But if you put all your life savings in that company, now you'll be watching the paper every day to see how it's doing.

Where your treasure is, your heart will naturally flow there; and Jesus makes it very clear: God is concerned about our hearts, and what grips our heart.

God does not need our money. He doesn't need the silver and gold. Heaven's full of gold. Gold is like the paving stones of heaven, so therefore in heaven, gold has a different perspective to what it has on the earth.

God is interested in us. Gold and silver pass away, but people are eternal; so God is interested in you, and He's interested in your blessing, your welfare and your success in life.

He wants us, each of us to succeed in fulfilling our destiny in life. So as we look at this area on the Spirit of Mammon, we'll see that there's competition for your heart.

There are four references to Mammon in the Bible, and all of them are spoken by Jesus.

One of them is found in Matthew 6:24 - “No one can serve two masters, for either you'll hate one and love the other; he will be loyal to one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon”. That's the first reference to it.

The second references is found in Luke 16:9-13 – “I say to you: make friends for yourselves of unrighteous Mammon, so when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. He who is faithful in what is least, is faithful also in much; he who is unjust in what is least, is unjust in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you've not been faithful in that which is another man's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; he will hate one and love the other, or he'll be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon”.

This is the only time that Jesus ever said that you can't do this and that - that it's impossible; so what He's saying very clearly: it's impossible to serve Mammon (whatever that means), and to serve God.

There is an antagonism, or they are opposed to one another, so we have to understand or look at what it means.

The first thing is to ask the question: what is the Spirit of Mammon?

The Bible is very clear that we live an actual world, but there's also a spiritual world around us; and that the spiritual world influences and controls the lives of people.

The Bible says in 1 John, that “all of the world lies in darkness”. All of the world lies under the influence of spiritual powers.

In Ephesians 6 it tells us also, “we wrestle not with flesh and blood”. Our problems are not with the people around us.

Problems lie with wicked spirits, who contend against us. “We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers…” So very clearly, the Bible over and over and over speaks of the invisible spirit realm.

So we're going to ask the question: what is the Spirit of Mammon?

The name or the word 'Mammon' literally means this: it means ‘riches’; or it also means ‘greed’, has a similar kind of meaning. It means: something that you put your trust in; something you are leaning your life upon; and it comes and dates way back.

Jesus used the word in Aramaic, He used the word Mammon. It was translated to Greek - they never could come up with a word for it, so they just called it Mammon in Greek. They called it Mammon in Hebrew, they called in Mammon in English.

In other words, there's been no attempt to change the name. The name is the original name, going right back to where it was originally used; and where it originates from of course, it comes from the Syrian God of Riches, and that originated out of the Tower of Babel.

Remember in the Old Testament, how there was a group of people wanted to find their own way to heaven, wanted to build themselves a tower, wanted to make their own way. They were full of pride and arrogance, and God came on them and confounded them; so the word 'Babel', or ‘Babylon’ means: confusion.

So this God of Mammon (God of Finances, God of Wealth), that they worshipped, called Mammon - right through history, that God dates right back to the Tower of Babel - it's rooted in confusion, and pride, and arrogance, and independence. That's the roots of the thing; it's just carried on.

If you were to watch or play some of our modern video games or DVD games, you'd be quite surprised how often Mammon is one of the great Gods that turns up in the video games, that you have to contend against. In the game Dungeons and Dragons, Mammon is the arch devil of hell, in one of the levels in the games.

This ‘Mammon’, everywhere through history, has been portrayed as (or is a representative of) a God. Since we understand that things which are worshipped in the Old Testament have spirit powers behind them.

If you track through the Old Testament, you find God's people continually contended with Idolatry; and that the idol of Baal continually was a problem for them.

Chemosh was another; or Molech, where they worshipped and sacrificed their children. The spirit behind that still works today in the area of abortion. So these ancient gods, that Israel fought, all had behind them spiritual power; and that spiritual power is still present today.

We read the Old Testament, we see the natural stories of worship of idols, but it was to try and teach us that behind idols is a spiritual power.

In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul writes: “Those that worship idols, or fellowship with idols, fellowship with demons”, and he says: “you can't fellowship with demons and with God”.

So consistently through history, and right through to today, Mammon refers to wealth and riches; but more particularly to greed.

Greed is an inordinate desire: I need more. I'm not satisfied with what I have, I need more.

You ask the question: how much is enough? The answer's always the same: a bit more. It wouldn't matter how wealthy you are - you ask how much is enough? A bit more. A bit more.

You could ask a poor person how much is enough? They need a bit more to get by. Ask a rich person how much is enough? They need a bit more - same thing, doesn't matter what level of society you work at; and so behind this, operates a spirit.

Key verse, Matthew 6:24 – “No man can serve two masters. He will hate one and love the other, or he'll be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon”.

God is a spirit. We know that God is invisible, but He's a spirit being. We are made in His image. We are spirit beings. We're made for intimacy with God. We're made for relationship with God. We're made to love God, enjoy Him, and then live a life that reflects Him and serves Him.

That's what we're designed for, so anything that competes with the place of God in our heart, is obviously going to have behind it some demonic spirit, some demonic power.

So it says: you can't serve God (God is a spirit) and Mammon (Mammon must be a spirit). He's contrasting one with the other; so Mammon is a spirit being. It's a very real spirit, a demonic spirit, associated again with wealth, riches and assets, or coveting more.

In Colossians 3:5, it warns us about coveting. Coveting is: I see what someone else has, that I don't have, and I want it. Coveting becomes idolatry when it starts to control our life.

So very clearly, when we're looking at this issue of Mammon, we're looking at a spirit which seeks to get hold of your life.

Of course we just love Jesus. We're here to worship God, so it would never occur that perhaps we might be serving this God.

I remember being in a Bible school, and teaching on the video games and how they open the door to the occult - some of them, in the role playing of occultic games; and 200 students came up.

They were committed to serving God, but actually in their private time they were bowing down to a demon - and we'll see that behind this thing always lies deception.

So the first thing to see then, is that there are two spirits that long for our heart. God longs for your heart - so He can bless you. Mammon longs for your heart - so he can control you; and so we see that there's a conflict goes on between the two. The first thing to recognise: there is a conflict.

Money itself has no power. See, this is just a piece of paper. Lovely piece of paper, $20 piece of paper; but it actually has no value at all, unless you can trade it for something. The value is what I put on it; and of course I could have hundreds and hundreds of these, and overnight they could lose their value.

If you watch what's happened to money over the last decade or so - it's lost its value. They've just printed more and more of them, they've just lost value; meaning by that: it takes more to buy the same thing than what it did a while ago.

We call it by a fancy name, 'inflation' but the reality is, it's just a piece of paper that lost its value. It takes more pieces of paper to buy the same thing - so the dollar lost its value; and for many years now there's been the spirit of greed operating through financial sectors. It has created huge problems globally in the financial area, and has eroded the value of money - and behind it has been greed.

Anyone who looked at the recent financial issues in America, and the world, you do understand, that the problem is greed – ‘not enough money’.

The issue's not the money; the issue is the greed, and the spirit power that manipulates and controls people through the money.

This is just a piece of paper, which is neither good nor bad. It can be used to bless someone; or it can be used for evil.

What really determines it, is the spirit that's on it - the spirit that motivates how it's used; so all money has a spirit associated with it, because money is a form of trading in the world.

This money, originally they used to trade gold - so real wealth was gold. If you had gold, you had real wealth; but then it was inconvenient, so they made the gold into coins, and so people traded gold coins. I've got a gold coin on this ring here, so that was a form of trade at one point.

Then it become inconvenient, so then they made paper money, pieces of paper that originally, if you're old enough (and my generation), you could redeem this for a pound of gold. Do you remember that?

Then they took away the pound of gold, and just made more pieces of paper - and the money lost all its value. So this is money - so the thing then is: money is just a way of trading.

The world system is one of trading: I give you something, wanting something back - I trade. I might trade my money, in order to receive something back; but the world system is a system of trading, buying and selling.

The kingdom of God runs on a different principle; but the problem is: we're so used to buying and selling and trading, that when we come to God, we start to think the same way about God:

“if I just give Him my offering, He will bless me”.

That's the principle of the world: trading, and buying/selling. It stops you coming into any kind of area of blessing, because it depends on your works.

“If I just tithe, then God has to bless me”. People think that, but actually that's not true. God blesses because He's a giver - He's generous and He loves to bless; and when you align your finances with His plan, then of course blessing starts to increase and flow - because you've actually brought it out of the power of Mammon.

So it helps us, if we understand that money, or finances, or wealth, or riches, have a spirit behind it, that seeks to use it.

I can have God on my money, and live in blessing in my money - a river of blessing in my finances; or I can have the Spirit of Mammon resting on it, and I will have many, many problems.

So the issue of money or wealth or riches, is really an issue of what controls your heart.

A person who has got a great heart with God, will be entrusted with a flow of resources to work through their life. Their money is good - it's got the blessing of God on it.

A person who's under the control of Mammon, will live with other problems on their life. We need to try and identify what they are.

We see then, that there is a spirit world; and there's a particular spirit called the Spirit of Mammon, which competes for your heart, your attention, your relationship with God.

Now you notice here it says: “No one can serve two masters…” So how does Mammon operate?

Is there any way I would know that Mammon has got a hold of my life? How could I know whether I'm under the influence of that spirit or not?

My assumption is: I'm not; but the problem is, that's the whole point of deception. You think you're one thing, and then it's something else; so we want to have a look at that.

So the first thing to realise is: Mammon's intention is to control your heart, your love and your loyalty.

Notice what it says here: “no one can serve two masters. He'll hate one and love the other. He'll be loyal to one and despise the other.” So here's the thing: Mammon desires - it's a spirit; behind this, is a spirit.

Here's the bait, and here's the spirit; and the spirit wants to use the bait to gain control over your life.

So how does it do it? What it's trying to do - its intention, is to have you love and serve and be loyal to it - and that's always the way of idolatry.

They wanted people to bow to them, to love them, to serve them - but all idolatry ended up in bondage, fear - terrible problems.

So Mammon is opposed to God. It's very clear in that scripture - you can't serve two masters. So Mammon is an ‘anti-christ spirit’. It's opposed to what God wants to do in your life.

In the last days, it will so control the world's financial system, that anyone who will not participate in that, will actually be marked out, and won't be able to trade - so it's a spirit.

Secondly: it is looking for slaves or servants.

Mammon is a spirit that seeks to control your life.

Don't think there's any neutrality in it - it's pushing on you all the time. It's talking on you all the time, so Mammon is the spirit that seeks - it's looking for a slave.

Here's the third thing: Mammon is looking to take the place of God in your life.

It's looking for slaves; it's looking to take God's place in your life. If it can succeed in taking God's place in your heart, then you will find yourself serving Mammon, not God; holding onto Mammon, not the Lord; despising the Lord when it comes to the area of God's provision for your finances, or your prosperity.

It operates by deception. Remember, a spirit talks to you - so money talks to you.

I'm using this, and holding it up; because some will be thinking: what am I going to do with it? I've already given one away - I wonder if he'll give the other one to me? That's what goes on - don't tell me you're not thinking that. That's why I'm holding it up wavering - because it will talk to you. What will I do with it?

Money talks. You know what it usually says? “There's not enough”. It says: “you can't do that, because there's won't be enough for you”!

One of the things the Spirit of Mammon does, when it talks to you: it reminds you that you ‘don't have enough’. Why? Because it wants you to know: ‘you need a bit more’.

But how much is ‘a bit more’? Probably, all your life, you'll need ‘a bit more’. At the end of the week, of every week, for all my life, I've needed a bit more, it would seem.

So it talks: you need a bit more. You can't give. If you give, there won't be enough; so it always talks, it's always saying to you: there's not enough.

Here's the second thing that Mammon says. It says this, often when you're in a shop: “you need this”. You need this! I need this. I need that.

I think I looked on a Commodore car, owned by someone in our church, and 'I need this' was on the back. I looked at it and I thought: I DO need this - this is a really nice car!

Very soon my mind was agreeing with what the spirit was saying: I need this. Lovely V8 with a hopped up motor: I did need it too, you know? No, not really. It's just a spirit that talks. It talks all the time.

Here's another way it'll talk to you. This talks to Christians: if I had a bit more money, then I'd really be able to give to poor people, and help them - if I had a bit more. So when I've got a bit more, I'll really be able to do a lot to help people - when I've got a bit more.

Now remember that the whole thing behind greed is: you always need a bit more; so it talks.

It promises you something; it's talking to you - and it's making promises. If you had enough, you'd be really free! If only I had enough, I'd be free - I need a bit more.

If I had enough, if I had more money, I'd be independent - I'd really be able to do some things then. I wouldn't have to go to that workplace. If I just won the lottery - man there's all these things I could do if I won the lottery.

I don't want to read about all the stories of people who won it, and their lives become ruined - I don't want to read that at all. I just want to think constantly: if I had a bit more, I'd be right.

So it always is talking, and it makes promises. It promises: you'll have freedom, financial freedom. You'll have security - everything will be right.

Jesus talked about a man who had everything - all the money. He said: oh, now I'm right! The guy said: what are you going to do tonight, your soul is required of you? Now what? Who are you going to leave it all to?

So money talks all the time, talks: “things are not enough” - it speaks to you, and continually tries to dominate your thinking; and if you'll agree with what it's saying, you'll end up following its leading.

Here's the other thing too, you'll notice, is that people are more valuable, if they've got more money. Automatically, we rank people: the one's who've got the wealth; and the one's who've got no wealth.

The Bible says very clearly: when people come into the church - treat them all the same. It doesn't matter if they're very wealthy people; or ordinary people - they're all people, and they ought to be treated of same value.

But even in our society, people automatically think: the one who's got more, is more valuable. To me, he's got more worries, and more problems you know; but people think: he's of more value.

So people think and believe that money has power; but money has no power. Demons have power; money doesn't have power. Money's just a piece of paper.

It's the demon, the spirit that controls the thing, that has the power; like God has power.

In Deuteronomy He says: “I give you power to get wealth”.

So God has power, demons have power. Money doesn't have power; but if you believe it's got power, then you're going to seek it - and you'll find yourself in a conflict, because it will seek your heart; your loyalty; your service. As you yield to it, then it starts to affect you.

People don't realise that as we give in to the voice of money (the voice of the Spirit of Mammon), we can find ourselves loving Mammon and hating God. You say: how could that be?

I can be holding onto Mammon; and despising, or in other words, thinking little of God's ways of doing life and managing money; and I can be loyal to money, and disloyal to God.

But it's actually not the money. It's not this. It's the spirit - that's the thing that gets you - it's the spirit.

So would there be any evidences in your life if the spirit had hold of you? There'd be heaps of them, because straight away Jesus said, in verse 25: “Don't be anxious”.

One of the first things that happens around money, is extreme anxiety and worry. If you're having extreme anxiety and worry around finances, then you’re under the influence of a spirit.

God has got no anxiety and worries to give you - He's got peace.

He tells you what to do about anxiety and worry: redirect your attention in certain ways.

Here's another one - I would think that one of the biggest evidences to me, that a person is under the spirit of bondage to Mammon, is very simply this: they just can't give. It just is impossible.

If I have some money in my hand here, here's the big question to ask: do I have the money, or does the money have me? Who's holding who?

If I'm holding the money, it's very simple - I'm able to then open it, and let go of it, and give it someone - which I did before.

If the money's holding me, I think: “ooh, there won't be enough”. I need a bit more.

One of the greatest ways that you can tell if money's got a hold of you, is the ability to give.

I want to speak on another session, I want to talk about the whole issue of Generosity; and also what you do that brings the blessing of God around your money.

So anxiety and fear, inability to give, a poverty mentality (there's not enough) - if you continually live with this thinking dominating you - that I haven't got enough, then you are under bondage to a spirit - absolutely.

Another evidence would be: Impulse Buying. If you find you just can't stop buying - you are under the influence of that spirit. It's got control over you.

You're buying more than you can spend, more than you've got money. If you're in bondage to debt, so that you're paying so much back in interest, you've got no ability to do anything for God - this is a spirit. You're in bondage to a spirit. We need to find a way out of that.

If you continually find that you're discontented with what you have, and ungrateful for what you have… I'm sorry, you're under a spirit; because Paul said: “every state I find myself in, whether it's abundance or lack, I've learned to be content, grateful to God”.

So there are some very tangible evidences, if this thing is impacting our life.

I remember a particular season, when God showed me clearly the extent to which I was in bondage to this spirit; and looking back now, I'm very ashamed of it - but it was a horrendous bondage.

I was brought up of course, in an environment where security was everything; so my father come back - having been through the Depression, through the war - and coming back, having to rebuild; so having security - a secure job, secure income - it was everything.

So I was working for the government, and I had a government superannuation; then God spoke to me: I want you to let it all go, and I want you to go into ministry, and set up a Christian school.

Now I heard His voice, and responded to His voice. The fear that overtook my life - I can hardly describe it - just horrendous fear.

I remember when I made the decision, put in my resignation, made the decision to let go, and do what God wanted me to do - I was in tears, uncontrollable tears, for almost three days; with fear of what was going to happen to me, and my family. The spirit had such a grip around me.

I remember just weeping, and going through this dread, that I'd done something terrible to my family and to our future.

I had fears about how I'd provide, because the job that I picked up in ministry - my wage went down by 75%! I got 1/4 of what I'd been getting; so we had very little to go on.

What happened was, this overwhelming fear that: I'd not have enough, that I wouldn't be able to provide for my family's education, their clothing; and when it came later on to weddings, I wouldn't be able to provide for weddings.

It just come around me, and along with it, tremendous shame at not having much.

It wasn't helped by Christians, you know? They actually were incredibly unkind, and some of the worst difficulties I had were with Christians.

God was teaching me to break free of the control of money, and learn how to lean on Him, and depend on Him; but I had to make a change in lifestyle, and in heart attitude. I had to learn to let go of all of the things we had; and learn to be grateful for the little things we had.

So we couldn't buy meat; we would go and buy, with some other guys, six sheep. We'd kill them all, and do them all - and then we would have meat, and the rest of the time we didn't have meat, but I was thankful we could do that.

We would come up here (to Hastings), and I'd bring a trailer up, and we'd go round into the orchards, and we'd pick up apples off the ground and put them into boxes, take them back and store them right through winter. We had apples all winter.

There are many things that Joy did, over the years, because we just didn't have the income; but what God was dealing with was: the fear of not having enough; and teaching us: He can, and does, provide - and He is to be trusted.

Now the first time I ever had money for a wedding was when the first wedding came; but prior to that never had I any excess in my account, always I was on the edge all the way. But God made a way, and we never lacked.

We had holidays. I didn't have a car for a while. We just drove around on bikes, but we learnt - the biggest thing I learnt - was to be content to trust God; and to become generous with what we did have.

So it affected the way we bought a house - the way we did everything. Everything was affected, learning to break out of the Spirit of Mammon, and the dread and anxiety and fear it would bring around every aspect of life and provision.

If we didn't have much (we didn't have much), we thanked God, and we celebrated with what we had.

So we'll share with you some of the keys around that, but the big thing is: the spirit that was behind it; and to break free of that spirit was the major first step for me to get into ministry - the biggest obstacle of all, was the Spirit of Mammon. What will happen?

We've had to learn to develop a generous lifestyle; so you know, the fear of provision, and the embarrassment…

I remember one of the first times I went to my friends in Wellington. We had a reunion after being in university; and of course they're all highly skilled professionals.

We all came out of the same physics class, we were all graduates with honours or masters or doctorates, come to meet them for the first time; and they've all got everything that money can buy.

We just had a little humble car, we were struggling; and you could tell from the way they looked - just the despising of where we were at; and it took me a bit to get over the shame, to actually say: “No, God I thank you I've got six wonderful children, I have a wonderful wife, and we are serving you, and I'm content with that”.

I had to overcome the feelings. Later on in life, we've realised that all that glitters isn't gold. In fact actually, they're all in bondage, and they've all had problems of every kind ever since; not the least being marriages breaking up, and children that went off the rails; so I've learnt to be content.

So it's a spirit. There is a spirit behind that. Does that mean that money is evil? Not at all.

Some of you may understand that terrible dread and fear. You may know what that's like, you know; and when the next bill comes, how are you going to pay it; the sickening feeling, when they open them up, and there's all these unexpected expenses come; all of the fear of living like that…

1 Timothy 6:8 - “Having food and clothing, let's be content with these.” Contentment is a huge thing.

Verse 9 – “Those who desire to be rich (or who have greed), fall into temptation and a snare; many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destructive perdition; for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”.

Notice this: ‘the love of money’; not money itself.

Money is not evil, its just a form of exchange, that can either have God on it or something else on it. But it's the love of it, it's that greed, that desire, that longing for it, that in the end gets a hold of your life.

It says: the love of money, is the love of a substitute for God. When you love, or you have a substitute for God - that is the root of all many problems; and we don't realise just how much that gets a hold of us.

The love of money is a root.

If there's a love of money, it means: you have a fear of being without it; and: it controls all the decisions you make.

If a decision comes up: I can't afford to do that.

We made a decision we would never tell our kids we were poor, even though we felt it at times. We'd never say “we didn't have enough”; we'd just find a way to do the best with what we had.

So the love of money is a root that controls people; but money has no power. It's the spirit behind you, that makes you afraid; by telling you that: you may not have enough. That's the spirit.

It's a spirit that creates fear, anxiety, dread, lust, and greed in the heart.

Money has no power; it's ‘the love of it’ that creates it; and it says: “some have strayed from the faith in greed, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows”.

He's saying that some Christians, having started well, when God comes on their life, and they begin to prosper and get blessed - have a greed for more; and in the end, they lose what they have - they go off the rails. They lose it.

When they were in need, they prayed and sought God. When they were prosperous, they didn't need Him, and other things took over.

Luke 16:9 – “I say: make to yourself friends of the unrighteous Mammon, so when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. He who is faithful in what is least, is faithful in much; unjust in least, unjust in much. If you're not faithful in unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches”?

Jesus said: “make friends with unrighteous Mammon”.

That doesn't mean: “use your money to buy people”, because the key word here is: “when you fail” (or when you die) “they may welcome you”.

So what it's saying about Mammon, or money, or riches is: use your wealth to win people for Christ; because when you die, when you come into heaven, you will have people come to greet you, who will say: “thank you that you sacrificed, and I was saved, because the gospel went out”.

They will greet you with gratitude, with tears of thankfulness and joy; appreciation that you used money you had, to win people into the kingdom of God.

This is why, over the years as a church, we have had such an emphasis on missions - global missions.

That's why we've poured money into Cambodia, Uganda, and Philippines; and more recently of course, into Pakistan, into the television station; and it may seem at times like it's just another project that we have to give money to, but understand: we're taking money to win friends for eternity.

Maybe we go through lack, and there's not enough quite at the moment; but remember: there will be a day where you'll enter heaven; and on that day, for us as a church, there are going to be heaps of people who will say: “thank you Bay City - you were so generous”.

I'm amazed, that for this ministry that Anwar has, so few churches are involved with it. I'm staggered, that we are involved with it. I can't understand how something with global-reaching potential…

We're probably the only church that's stood up and said: “we're going to go with you and make this happen”.

We raised the money for the satellite TV; had missionaries go over; we've poured money in; and of all the money that's been received in New Zealand, about a half of it came from BayCity!

It's just extraordinary. So I want to thank you, and honour you, because this is what's called: “making friends out of unrighteous Mammon”.

This is about using wealth, to bring in the nations of the world, for when you fail.

So how can we break free of the Spirit of Mammon? I think the first thing is to recognise the signs that you're in bondage - and there can be many reasons.

There can be acute lack when you're younger. It can be going through hardship, and you make inner resolves: I'll never, never lack; or: I'll never have my family - you can do all this kind of stuff out of bitterness, hurts, pains and failures; or out of just straight being under the influence of the spirit - and we come into bondage.

The first thing to do, is just recognise: I'm in that place of bondage. The second thing is to come to the Lord and repent.

This is a spirit - it's not about the money. It's the spirit that gets a grip of your heart, so you can't access God's blessing and fruitfulness on your lives, as He wants you to.

I know there'll be some people here, and around the issue of money, there's immense bitterness, immense grief and pain, all kinds of injustices you've faced, and difficulties and hardships; but you don't have to be in bondage to that spirit.

You can instead let God heal your heart, bring you to a place of enlightenment.

#1 step is: acknowledge where I'm at.

#2, I need to come to the Lord with a repentant heart, and say: God, I'm sorry I put my trust in these things.

#3: I need to honour God. We won't go into that today, but I need to actually make a decision: that with my finances, I will give God a place of honour.

I've got to honour God with my finances, to bring His blessing over them; because otherwise there's another spirit that says: “not enough”.

Finally (#4), I need to learn how to be a good steward of what God has given me.

I need to recognise: there's a problem. I need to come to the one who can help in repentance and faith, expecting Him to help.

I need to make some changes, so I start to honour God with my giving - with the first of everything I have; and then finally: I need to become a great steward of what God has given me, so I actually then use well what God has given me; and that involves a whole range of things in our life.

Closing Prayer

Father, I just thank you for your presence here today, helping us to deal with this issue of money. Thank you Lord. Thank you Jesus.

I sense, even as I talk, people get a bit tense and uncomfortable; but I'm trying to help us to uncover the spirit that makes your life miserable; that brings you into bondage, and sabotages your relationship with God.

Remember: no one can serve two masters. We love one, and hate the other. We serve one, despise the other; loyal to one, and disloyal to the other.

It really does show up in: can I honour God with my finances? Am I managing them well; and do I have a spirit of generosity around me?

Holy Ghost, I just ask: if there's any person here today, that's in the grip of this spirit, that you would deeply convict them and help them today; that Lord as a church, we begin to journey into a place of great increase, and great blessing financially, great increase in our lives, in our finance, in our resources.

Father, I ask for a total breaking over our lives, of meanness and tightness and stinginess; and of every kind of bitterness, anger, and frustration around money.

Lord, I ask that you would unlock the hearts of every person here; and the finances of every person - may ever family here be blessed, every business be blessed, every person here be blessed in abundance in finances.

Just while our eyes are closed: I wonder if God spoke to you today, and you realised to your shame or embarrassment or fear or concern, that actually this spirit has got a hook into my life.

I'd love you just to acknowledge it today, just put your hand up and say: God, I know you're speaking to me today. I'm glad you're so honest.

We can't solve it all today, but we will pray for you, and believe God for a breakthrough in that thing.

For some of you, there'll be some issues in your past you'll have to address; but always it's fear, and your belief that: this thing is what I need to make my life safe.

I wonder if there's anyone else here today, and you're not yet a Christian, but you'd love to receive Jesus today, invite Jesus to become your saviour; to make a public declaration: I'm going to be a follower of Jesus.

Jesus said: “to everyone who received Him, He gave power to become a child of God” - everyone who believed on His name, trusted in Him.

So today, is there any person here at that place where you'd like to receive Jesus Christ as your saviour?

Father, I just thank you for each person that's responded here today. Father, I pray for the power of your spirit to come over their lives, to bring release in the might name of Jesus as we move forward into blessing, enlargement, increase and growth in every aspect of our life in Jesus' name. Everyone said... Amen!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Jesus Teachings – 16/38 parables are about finances, stewardship; 10x verses on dollars as on faith and salvation.

· Why such emphasis on finances? Key issue is your heart.

· Mt.6:21 “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”.

· Mammon is mentioned by Jesus four times – one of these is a repeat.

Mt.6:24 “No man can serve two masters – you cannot serve God and Mammon”.

Lk.16:9-13 “Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness”.

· Only thing Jesus said you cannot serve this and serve God also.

2. What is the Spirit of Mammon?

(a) Origin

· Mammon =NT3126= of Chaldee Origin – Aramaic Word for riches = wealth, greed. Whatever you put your trust in.

· Came from the Syrian god of riches which came from Babylon.

· Babylon =OT894= confusion – God confused the language of the people.

· People of Babylon built their own system to get to heaven – pride, arrogance, self-confidence, independence.

· Babylon - rooted in pride, arrogance and independence.

(b) Key Verse

Mt.6:24 “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon”.

· Mammon is a spirit that rests on money and controls people through money.

· God is a spirit being – a person we are called to love and serve. Mammon is a spirit being – a demonic spirit.

· Many modern video games mammon is an evil spirit being e.g. Dungeon’s and Dragons – Arch devil of hell.

· Mammon = wealth (assets, possessions, earnings).

= greed (coveting, desiring more, idolatry)

· Col. 3:5 “Covetousness which is idolatry”.

· OT – Warfare and conflict with false gods Baal, Malech, Ashteroth, Mammon. All demonic spirits had some form of representation in the physical world.

· Money has no power – the Spirit of Mammon has power – demonic power.

· All money has some spirit power on it – Spirit of Mammon (bondage) or Spirit of God (blessing).

3. How Does the Spirit of Mammon Operate?

· Mt.6:24 “No man can serve two masters!”

(a) Mammon’s intention – control your heart and loyalty

· Demonic Spirits all work to turn your heart away from God.

· Mammon desires to have you love, serve and be loyal to him.

· Mammon is opposed to God (antichrist)

Looking for servants – slaves

Seeking to take the place of God in your life

(b) Mammon’s operation - Deception

· Mammon is a spirit – it talks to you. If you listen and believe you will serve it.

· You won’t have enough! You need this! If I had more money I could help more people.

· Mammon promises what only God can give.

- security, freedom, respect, purpose, identity, happiness.

· Mammon entices you to place great value (honour) on money.

People are more valuable if they have more wealth.

· If you believe money has power – you will want to serve it!

· Money – God is a love/hate relationship.

· Many believers don’t realise it but they despise God – blame him when lose money/provision.

· Mammon is a demon – can never deliver what it promises or bring blessing.

(c) Evidences of Bondage to Mammon

Inability to Give Impulse buying

Anxiety – fear over money Bondage to debt

Poverty mentality – can’t afford it Greed – want more

Discontent and ingratitude

(d) Personal Testimony

· Biggest struggles over call to serve God in ministry – issue of money.

· Loss of security – government job, superannuation.

· Loss of income – reduction of wages by 75%.

· Had to deal with fear, shame and learn trust, contentment, generosity.

· Fear for future provision – children, education, clothing, schooling, weddings.

4. Is Money Evil?

· 1 Tim.6:10 Love of Money is the root of all evil = from faith, sorrows.

· Having something in place of God is root of all evil.

· Love of Money is a root that grows in the heart like bitterness and defiles.

· Love of Money = fear to be without money, controls decisions and activities.

· Money has no power – Mammon does.

· Lk.16:9-14 “Faithful in least – faithful in much”.

V9 Make friends of mammon of unrighteousness = seems to imply use money to make friends.

Key Word: When you “fail” = when you die.

Take unrighteous money, redeem it and use it to bring people into the Kingdom of God.

When you die – people from other nations meet you, welcome you, thank you.

God is able to turn money into souls – money is neutral.

· True Riches = people

5. How to Break Free of the Spirit of Mammon?

(a) Repentance

(b) Honour God with the first portion.

(c) Become a good steward of your money

· Faithful in little – God sees what you do with a little and gives you more.

· Faithful in another – first portion belongs to God either keep it or steal it.

· True riches = people. Should be using resources to steward people.

Put God First (2 of 4)

Sun 19 Aug 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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I've seen too many rich people who had miserable lives to believe that money can really make your life happy. It just can't. God can make you happy, money can't. Money is just a piece of paper. It's some numbers in the bank. It cannot make your life happy. What it does instead is it tends to create problems.

We're just talking on money at the moment - and that's enough to get anyone to freeze up; but I do not want to take any money from anyone, I want to help you.

So today I want to share a message called ‘Put God First’, and I encourage you to open your heart to let God speak to you today.

We don't want any person to be under law. Law puts you under a sense of duty: I have to do this; I have to do that, or whatever.

I want you to catch the heart and spirit of how you walk with God, and enjoy a blessed life. We certainly have a blessed life.

Last week we spoke on the ‘Spirit of Mammon’, so let's look at Matthew 6:24 – “No one can serve two masters...” - no one. It's just impossible. You've got one or the other. “...Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he'll be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon”.

No one can serve two masters, it's just impossible. You're either serving one or serving the other; you love one and hate the other; you're loyal to one and despise the other.

Jesus is laying this out very clear. This is the parable of the Blessed life; He's speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, and He's explaining the principles that lead to a life that's blessed; so He begins to address an issue of finances.

The first thing to see is that there is a battle for your heart that goes on every day - a battle for our heart. Every day I have a struggle and a battle for the loyalty of my heart - and you do too - no one is immune to it.

We live in a fallen world. It's under the rule of principalities and powers, so pressure from our culture comes on all of us. No one is exempt. We all face pressure, and so there's a battle for loyalty on your heart, and the Bible's very clear. It contrasts the word God and Mammon, so it's saying: God is a spirit; Mammon is also a spirit. It's a spiritual power that works and operates behind money, and wealth, and riches in the world. It's a spirit being, it's a spiritual power.

As we're well aware, whoever has a lot of money or has the accumulation, well he seems to have tremendous power; but money itself, we saw last week, has no power. It's the spirit behind it that has the power - the power to rule you, or power to rule your life, and cause you to have many difficulties.

So one of the things we know, from simple things about deliverance, is that if you are under the influence of a spirit, then it will be talking to you continually; so if you're under the influence of the spirit of Mammon, it will talk to you.

Now it doesn't sort of turn up and say: I'm an evil demon, and I'm talking to you. It's just: you have your mind gets full of thoughts, and if you listen to those thoughts, they can become so familiar and so natural to you, that they seem quite reasonable; but if a person is under the influence of the spirit of Mammon, then there'll be a number of things.

First it will speak to you. It will speak to you: “there's not enough, I need a bit more”. It'll always be talking to you, and it'll be talking about money, and the concern about money: “oh, they're just after my money”, or “people want my money”, or “I haven't got enough money”.

It'll promise you: if you just got a little bit more, you'll be really secure. If you just got set up, you'd be right. If you had enough money, then people would really notice you.

So it talks all the time, and it makes promises that it never delivers on. I've seen too many rich people, who had miserable lives, to believe that money can really make your life happy. It just can't. God can make you happy, money can't. Money is just a piece of paper. It's some numbers in the bank. It cannot make your life happy. What it does instead is, it tends to create problems.

I remember going to a man in Taiwan, and he was one of the wealthiest men I've ever met in my life - I never asked the amount, but he owned banks, and railroads, and he was extremely wealthy. He had guards everywhere he went. He couldn't even come to church; because it's just such a drama coming to church with armed guards around him all the time. He was in danger of kidnapping, and his family were in danger of kidnapping; so they used to live with security, and the first thing I saw when I go in the door is an armed guard, who checks me out before I can go. I passed three guys with guns before I got to the guy; then we sat and talked, and everything around him was very nice.

This guy has now become a Christian, but he's very, very young in his faith. So we got talking about his life, and he said to me: well, a lot of my friends don't see the need to go to church, because they see church is for needy people.

I said to him: well that's very true. I said people come, because they recognise their need for Jesus Christ, and they gather to be built, and to express His life.

I said: you actually have a need you're not aware of. He said: what's that? He was quite surprised. I said: well I look around, and I see all the wealth you have, and no one in their lifetime could spend it all, so here's the need. The number one need you have is: you have no purpose for your life; and so therefore money controls your life.

I said: I'm picking that most nights you won't sleep very well, and you'll have a lot of anxiety and fear, because you'll be fearful about losing all you've got; and not only that, you won't trust people around you, because you'll never know whether they're interested in you, or your money.

He was shocked, and he said: exactly true, I continually have trouble sleeping. Then I had a word of knowledge for his wife, and I looked at her and the Lord dropped a vision into me. I saw a vision of this beautiful bird, like one of these parakeets, beautiful colours and whatever - but inside a cage.

I said: you're a beautiful person, but you're trapped in a cage; and she began to break down and weep, and in front of her astonished husband - she broke down and wept.

She said: I hate all of this stuff - it controls my life. How about that? How about that ...and you thought they were all happy? It was quite a shock. He was shocked, so she got delivered and he got prayed for, he got delivered. Last time, I saw there was a complete difference in how they were handling themselves.

So money definitely has a spirit, money carries a spirit with it; and if the spirit of Mammon is pushing against you, you'll feel fear and anxiety over money.

Notice, straight away after this, that Jesus talks about ‘not worrying’. So in the context of talking about money, He then talks about worry, and anxiety, and fear. If anything creates anxiety and fear and dread in people, it's the issue of finances, because we don't manage well, we don't know how to get them so that they're blessed finances.

So finally, the thing about Mammon: Mammon is a spirit that desires to make you a slave; and to take the place of God in your life.

You have to understand, you're dealing with spiritual entities, and you're dealing with heart issues, so it's not just a matter about giving, or doing this or doing that. It is a battle for your heart, so you can be free - God wants you to be free from fear, free from dread and anxiety around the money area, and to live in a place of blessing, and a place of joy.

Associated spirit with the spirit of Mammon is the spirit of Pride. Pride says: I've got it all myself. I've worked hard, I deserve it – and it gives no honour to God.

Pride also says: I paid this much for it, and kind of flakes what everything's worth; and a Spirit of Poverty - you can have it whether you're rich or poor; a Spirit of Poverty will keep telling you: there's not enough, there's not enough, there's not enough.

With a Spirit of Poverty around your life, you can't even enjoy what you do have; so if someone says: how much did you pay for that? Oh, nothing much, I just got it down the road at this price - and you can't even just celebrate: actually God is generous, and gives us all things to richly enjoy. How about that? God gives us all things, richly, to enjoy - so whatever you've got, enjoy it! But you can't enjoy it when you're under the power of a spirit.

We saw last week that money was not evil; it's actually the love and the spirit that gets behind it.

Jesus talks about not being worried (verse 26): “I say to you: do not worry. Look at the birds of the air - they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you more value than them?”

In that we see, that God doesn't require sowing and reaping, to be good to you. Many Christians think: if I just give this to God, then He'll have to do this to me - it doesn't work like that in the kingdom of God. Or if I sow, then I'm certain to reap - God will have to make sure I get something back.

Listen, God doesn't operate that way. God is generous. He gives to the birds, and they don't sow at all. God is just generous. This is hard for us to get a hold of, God is extravagantly generous. He is not mean. He does not withhold. It's the devil who withholds. The devil is the thief. It's the devil who's the robber. It's the devil who's the poor one. God is extravagantly generous, in every aspect - it's His nature to be extravagant and generous.

So He points it out: don't be anxious. God is so generous to the birds, and you're much more value than a bird, see? Then he goes on, and he said (verse 31): “Don't worry, saying: what will we eat? What are we going to drink? What do we wear? After these, all the Gentiles seek; and your Father knows you need these things.”

So he says: don't get anxious about how you're going to meet daily living requirements. God knows what you need. He said: the world worries like that. If you're a believer, God has a blessed life, where you don't live in anxiety and dread and fear about your provision.

God has become your provider. You're released from the burden of having to make it all happen, and to work under this dreaded spirit - this heavy task master - that drives and hurts people. We're called to live under the influence of the Spirit of God, under the blessing of God, in our financial and material area of our life.

So notice then it says: “but...” (it says what you should do). It says: “don't be anxious”. So it talks about firstly: here's the conflict, something is competing for your heart; and secondly: don't get anxious, because if you're anxious, you're not in the place of freedom; and then thirdly, it says here's what you do: Put the Lord first. Nothing could be clearer.

“Seek first the kingdom of God”, or seek God's rule or order around your life, and every aspect of it; and seek the way to live, or a right way before God to live, he said: “...then everything else will add to you”.

Now that's an extraordinary promise. Of course, it's not one that too many people see happen, because it requires of us: prioritising God in our heart.

It says: “seek first”, not seek second, or third, or add on a bit of God. It's not ‘add-on God’ - I'll run my life, and add God on. That's not what brings adding into your life.

Adding means God's power or God's blessing comes on your life, and around your life, and things start to attract into you; that before you had to work and stress and sweat to get.

So it says: “seek first the kingdom of God”, and I want to look at this area of putting God first, giving God the first place, giving God the first place; not the second or third, or a little add on.

In Exodus 13, you'll see this ‘Putting God First’; or this area of ‘First-Fruit”; or ‘first in your life’ – and you'll see this goes right through the Bible.

So what do I need to do with my money? Well I need to do two things at least: #1 I need to give God the first; and #2 – I need to steward, or manage the rest; and mismanagement is no substitute. You can't just expect God to meet everything, if you won't manage your part of it properly.

So notice here, the Lord spoke to Moses saying: “Consecrate to Me all the firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both man and beast - it is Mine”.

Consecrate, or set apart, the firstborn. Verse 12 – “You shall set apart to the Lord all that opens the womb, every firstborn that comes from every animal which you have, males shall be the Lord's. Every firstborn of a donkey, you shall redeem with a lamb. If you don't redeem it, then you'll break its neck, and it'll be sacrificed. The firstborn of your men among your sons you shall redeem”

“So it shall be, when you son asks you in the time to come, saying what is this”? Or in other words: why are you managing your money like this? Why are you managing your resources like this? You'll say: “It's because, by strength of hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt, and out of bondage”.

So notice even here, at this first introduction of the law of first-fruits, or the first, giving the first to God, it says very clearly two things: #1, that we should give the first portion to God; and #2, it comes because we're grateful for what He has done.

This is not a matter of law, or obligation, or duty. This is an issue of gratitude, so when your children ask you: why is it, that you manage your finances by giving the first portion to the Lord? You say: because God delivered me out of bondage. I used to live in the world in anxiety and debt and dread; I used to live coveting; I used to live in bondage and fear.

I had all kinds of things going on, my money was in a mess, and now God has delivered me out of all of that bondage. Now I'm in a place of blessing, and here's why I'm in a blessing: I put the Lord first. This is a principle for how families should govern their finances.

Notice it said: “you have to set apart the first born of the womb”. Suppose I've got two sheep, a ram and a sheep; and now I have the first lamb. Now, this is the way we would think: I will wait until I have 10 lambs, and I'll give one to the Lord; but what the Bible says is: no, the very first one, you give that to the Lord.

Now here's the question that immediately would come, if you're under the power of Mammon. What if the ewe fails to bring forth any more lambs? What if it damages itself, when it has that first born, and can't produce any more lambs? Where will I be then? I know what I need to do: I'll keep this one, and I'll wait until I've got 10, and I'll give the tenth one to the Lord. That is not giving the first to the Lord.

Here an act of faith is required. The act of faith is this: I will give the first, and I expect all the rest to be really blessed; and you'll find consistently, whenever it talks about giving the first to the Lord, the purpose of it is to redeem all the rest, so that the rest is blessed.

The hard thing is to think that way, because we don't tend to think that way at all. We think: I'll wait until I've got a few more, then I'll do it. But this is the principle: when we offer the first to God, it puts all the rest under blessing.

That's it in a nutshell; so when you offer the first to God, all the rest of what you have is now blessed; and I'll show you some scriptures related to that, but if you would just take away this one thought: if I give my first to God, then the rest is blessed. There's a blessing on it.

What does that mean? It means: I don't suffer the devouring, by lots of things going wrong, that others suffer. I have opportunities come, that others don't have. It's: somehow, God makes the nine-tenths go further than the ten-tenths.

Now when you're living in bondage, if you can barely making it on ten-tenths, then surely in your mind you'll think: nine-tenths, I'm going to fall over.

What He's saying here is this: you have to act in faith. Your money is under the power of a spirit. Put it in God's hands. Okay, here it is, I give it to You God. He says: no, no, no, no, no. I only require the first portion - you give me the first portion, and all the rest is under blessing.

This principle follows everywhere. Romans 5:8 – “While we're yet sinners, Christ died for us. God in His generosity, gave His first born”.

Jesus Christ was called the lamb of God, the spotless lamb of God. He was called the Firstborn, from the dead; so Jesus Christ - God actually modelled it. God gave, or He gave of His Son.

He gave generously and extravagantly; He gave His Son, who was holy and spotless and clean? His Son, Jesus came to the earth, born of a human body.

Now here's the deal: we are unclean in sin, but God's offering of His first born, makes all of us clean. In other words, the blessing comes on all of humanity, because the first is given.

Jesus never had His life taken from Him - He gave His life. There's no duty, or taking - right through the Bible - when it comes around this area of this first portion to God. It's always an issue of Faith, of trusting that God's principles will work.

You see it from one end to the other. Even in the Garden of Eden, God gave them plenty, but He said: there's one that belongs to Me; you can't touch that one - touch that one and you die.

The first is always something God says ‘belongs to Him’. I don't have to give Him everything to prove that He's Lord of my life. What I need to do is, to show He's my Lord, by actually taking the first portion and giving it to Him.

He may ask me to give at various times, and He has done in all kinds of ways; but if the first is in His hands, then the rest is blessed. The big deal is to put the first in His hands.

You're all very happy today, everyone happy? There's something, a pressure comes around, every time we try and talk about this area.

Have a look in Leviticus 27:30 – “All the tithe of the land (all, all the tithe of the land), whether the seed of the land or the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's. It's holy to the Lord”. God is saying to people that He's provided for abundantly, He's given them all this wealth; and He's saying: the first portion or the tithe belongs to Me. It belongs to God.

Now here's an interesting thing. If my finance resources and life is under God, then I show it by giving the tenth. When I give Him the tenth, the rest is under the blessing. If I withhold the tenth, I'm withholding what belongs to God.

I used to think, when I started off giving a tithe, and started to give and tithe, I thought I was doing a big deal. It was a huge deal, because I was under a spirit of bondage.

After I gave for a while, I realised: actually, this is no big deal at all. I can't out-give God. How can I possibly show Him that I really honour Him, and love Him, and value Him? Well this is the way, I just give Him a portion of what I have, and we have done that faithfully since we first heard about this.

Notice that the first portion determines the rest. Have a look at this in Romans 11:16 - the first, the nature of the first portion, determines the rest. “If the first is holy, then the lump is holy. If the root is holy, so are all the branches”.

Notice what its saying: “If the first fruit is holy, then the root is holy”, or the rest of it is holy. Now we just saw that God has spoken to His people. He said: “Out of all the tithe, of all the trees (agricultural land)...”

He said of the tithe: the tithe belongs to the Lord, and it's holy. I'm going to show you something. Your money can be holy or cursed; and it all depends on the place you give God in your money - simple.

Notice He said: the tithe is ‘holy to the Lord’. In other words, it is sanctified. We were singing that this morning, holy to the Lord. So the tithe is holy to the Lord; and the Bible says: if the first fruit is holy, all the rest is holy, all the rest is blessed. So the principle is always the same. When you give your first to the Lord, the rest is always blessed. The blessing of God comes upon it, so let's have a look at a couple of things related to it.

So the first portion determines the nature of the rest. In Joshua 6, they went in to take the Promised Land; and we, as believers, would think of the Promised Land as being: the promises of God, the blessings of God.

The Promised Land was a land of promise. It was a land that came by promise, not by working hard, but they had their part in it. Notice what God says, when they go in there, and the first city they come to is Jericho.

When they come to Jericho, God said an interesting thing about Jericho. Joshua 6:18 – “By all means abstain from the accursed things, lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things, and make the camp of Israel a curse and trouble it. All the silver, gold and bronze, vessels of bronze and iron are consecrated to the Lord, or devoted to the Lord. They will come into the treasury of the Lord.”

Now notice you see two words there: ‘devoted to God’; and ‘cursed.’ You can't have them both - its one or the other. He's saying: this city Jericho - I want you to touch none of it.

He said: I want you to conquer the city, and when you've conquered the city, whatever wealth you find there, it comes into the house of the Lord. It is the Lord's - it is the first fruit, the first portion.

Now you can understand, it's the same deal with the sheep. I've got all these battles, I'm going to have to fight to conquer all these cities; and here's the first city, and now I start to see gold and silver.

Maybe we're not going to win so much in the other cities. You know, there's a lot in this first city. Maybe we could just wait until we've conquered three or four cities, and then we'll take our portion and give it to the Lord then. We'll wait and sort of see how this goes.

No, He required them, by faith. He said: “the first belongs to Me”. He required them by faith to take what was the first, and give it to Him, and believe that if they did that, the rest would all be blessed.

So that first thing, the first portion, the tithe or whatever it is that belongs to the Lord - it either belongs to the Lord and it's devoted, or it's stolen from the Lord and it's a curse, so notice what happens here in Joshua 7.

“Now the children of Israel committed a trespass concerning the accursed things (or ‘devoted’ things), for Achan took of the devoted things (or the ‘accursed’ things), and the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel”.

Before he took it, it was devoted to the Lord. After he took it, it was a cursed object. Now this is extraordinary.

That means, I can have an object - take this bottle here. So God says: you give me the bottle, the first thing - and there's lots of water coming after this. I look at it thinking: I'm pretty thirsty, I wouldn't mind that you know? I've been fighting all these battles, I've got to fight this war, and here's all this treasure. I wouldn't mind that, you know? It'd be quite good for me to have that.

I've got to decide what to do with it. The choice is always mine; so the choice is: either I give it to God - in which case it's devoted; or I keep it - in which case it's cursed.

Isn't that interesting? That's what He's saying. He said: if you give it to Me, then it's devoted, and blessing is on the rest; but if you hold it back, it's cursed, and now everything else is cursed.

So the next thing that happened was: they had no power to stand in the battle. They were defeated by an inferior army at their next battle; and God's trying to teach us, that behind the natural, there is a spiritual power.

It wasn't that the army was any less, or they had fewer weapons. The problem was they lacked power. When Achan held back the thing that was devoted to God, and kept it for himself, he and everyone around him no longer had power to overcome. The power to overcome depended on the devoted thing belonging to the Lord.

It’s the same thing with our finances, and our resources. If we keep back from God what is owing to Him, it turns from being devoted to Him, to being a curse for us. When I give my first portion to the Lord, it ensures blessing on the rest. If I hold it back, I'm under the power of Mammon.

Now why did this guy go for it? The Bible makes it clear why he took it. Joshua 7:20 “They finally found him out”, he said: “I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did: when I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels - here it is - I coveted them, and took them, and I hid them”.

The Bible says in the New Testament, that coveting is idolatry. So what happened is this. He went in, he fought the battle. When he fought the battle and they conquered the city, he comes into a place where there are these garments, in silver and gold.

Now the instructions were clear: this belongs to the Lord. Give it to the Lord. But he looked at it and thought: ooh man, I could do with these - this is good. He kept it for himself. He coveted what belonged to God; and so the sin of coveting, or greed, indicates he was under the power of the spirit of Mammon.

Mammon is a spirit that moves in greed, you just can't have enough - so a problem came. Notice this: before he took it, it's devoted; after he took it, it's cursed.

This is how it seems to me to work: I can either have 100 per cent of everything I have - and it's all under a cursing, and under the power of the spirit of Mammon; or I can have 90 per cent of what I have - and it's blessed.

I have found from years of experience, that 90 per cent with blessing, is better than the 100 per cent with trouble. I know at times it has been very difficult to uphold that commitment, but it was always about an issue of the heart. Will I put God first, and trust Him?

Now I want to just pick up four very simple heart issues that lie behind giving the first portion to the Lord. Remember Jesus said: “the battle is one for your heart”, there's a spirit that is seeking to conquer your heart, so here they are.

#1, the first one is the principle of Honour. The word honour means ‘to value’, or ‘to place a weight’ on something.

So will I honour God; and place value on His willingness and ability to bless me? What value will I put on that? Will I honour, God and put Him first in my finances? What value do I place on God, in the issue of managing money?

That's what it boils down to; and very similar in Proverbs 3:9 – “Honour the Lord with all your substance, and with the first fruits of all your increase”.

Now the way we have done it is: whatever we have done, we've always considered God's best, and how we would best advance His kingdom. So when we come to buy a house, it was never about what would look good, or be nice, or in the right area. It was always: what would help advance the kingdom of God? What kind of house do we need to have that would enable us to have people in and out, and show hospitality?

It was always going to be a factor. It was never just about: whether we could have a family. It was always about: what God had for us. We've always tried to put Him first around all these different kinds of areas, and God's kept us from all kinds of difficulties; and brought us into all kinds of blessing around this, that we could never have imagined. I don't even understand how it happens; that we have what we have now.

It can only be understood by Blessing. There's no tangible or visible sign, that we've been able to progress as we have. It is the blessing of God that's done it, and so you know, so we're blessed. We're blessed! I can't say I'm that smart on all this issue.

There's a second area, the area of Faith: will I trust God, that He is a generous provider? Will I trust Him, He will generously provide for my life? Think about that. It's an issue of Faith. Will I trust Him, by giving my first portion to Him?

How old was Abraham, when Abraham had his first son? About 100 wasn't he? His wife was probably in her 90s? Now remember, he got impatient waiting for that first son, and then finally he got the son - he got a mess with Ishmael, and then he still has to wait for the promise.

So finally the promise comes, he's got the first son. Now you've got to understand, if you're 100, and your wife is nearly 100, getting any son is a miracle. It is. Now - and this is the son of promise, this is the son he loved.

In Genesis 22, God says: “Take this son that you love, and offer him up to Me.” No! How could this be? She's so old! What if she doesn't have any more children?

Can you understand, that the same thing we talked about with the sheep, and with Joshua - it's exactly the same deal. Is she able to have any more?

It's not like: hey God, look, I'll tell you what. Can we put this deal off, wait until I've got a few more in the family, and then we'll bring #10, and give #10 to you?

No, it was an issue of: do you trust Me - that the promise stands, regardless of whether Isaac is here or not? He had the promise before he had Isaac; and when he offered up Isaac, he knew he still had the promise. God cannot lie.

This is why he's called a Man of Faith, because he trusted God over this issue. If he offered God his first and his best that he loved, then God would somehow restore him, raise him up; God would fulfil the promise that he'd be a father of nations. It's an issue of Faith, and that's why he's called the Father of Faith - because he made what is almost an ultimate sacrifice, and in doing so, showed us just the great love that God had.

Here's the third area: gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. So one is honour - placing value on God; the second is faith - trusting that He can actually provide, better than I can provide for myself; and if I put Him first, I can then expect the blessings on everything that I do.

The third thing is Gratitude: am I grateful to God for all He's given me? How grateful am I? Now think about this: Abraham, in Genesis 14, had been blessed, and become very wealthy; and he came after a great battle, where he rescued his nephew Lot, and he met with Melchizedek, the high priest. The Bible says: “he gave him a tithe of everything”. Now he wasn't required to. He gave it as an issue of gratitude.

Now get this: immediately, the King of Sodom came to him. He said: listen, you can have all the goods, but give me the people.

He said: I will not take anything of yours, lest you say you got me rich. I want my total blessing and source to be in the Lord.

Now it's no coincidence, that at the point where he gave this offering to the Lord, there was a choice between: negotiating with the King of Sodom (or the spirit of Mammon); or dealing with Melchizedek, which is a type (or a picture) of Jesus Christ. Will I put God first, or will I put Mammon first?

He said: no way - I'll enter no deals with you. I want to put God first. He will be the source of my supply.

So again, notice that the motivation is one of gratitude. Now how much would you pay to get your soul out of hell? What would you put on the line, if you had a vision of hell, and you saw what it would involve for eternity? What would you be willing to give up, in order to BUY freedom from that? The answer is: you'd put everything on the line. However you don't need to; we only need to put one-tenth.

We're not buying anything. We're actually saying: God, it was too expensive to save me. You have saved me. You have given Your Son to save me. The least I can do is acknowledge, with gratitude, your generosity; and honour you and trust you, and give to you. It's very, very simple isn't it?

You find even in the New Testament, there's the last one here: it has to be of a Willing Mind. So the last thing is: will you give out of a willing heart; or will you give out of duty and obligation: I have to do this?

We have never in this church, ever said: you have to tithe. I've always avoided saying anything like that. Do I believe that we should tithe? Of course I do. We do, and we do it diligently and regularly; and we give, and have offerings, and are grateful for all kinds of things, ourselves personally.

But the thing is, I don't want anyone to come under the law. It has to be of a willing heart. When they came to offer for the building of the tabernacle, the first question God says: every person who is of a willing heart.

Paul is writing at the Corinthian Church, in 2 Corinthians 8, he says: “It's required, first of all, a willing heart”; so it's not a compulsion, no arm-bending, no twisting, no manipulation, no pressure - it's a willing heart.

A willing heart comes because you have revelation that God is good, and generous, and I want to honour Him, I'm so grateful to Him. When I do that, and give Him that, it's now an issue of Honour and Faith, and this is what brings the blessing on the rest.

Now if I'm going to give God the first, it needs to be the first - so it comes right off the top; and it's not at the end, when everything else is paid - it's the first.

When Jesus spoke to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:23, he said to them: You will tithe; and you tithe off this and this and this.

He said: these things you ought to have done; but the weightier (or bigger) matter, and bigger issues of Justice and Mercy and Faith, you've forgotten about those altogether.

You got legalistic about tithing every carrot. One carrot in 10 goes to God. You've got into all that kind of legalism; and he said: what you've missed is the bigger issues of justice, treating people rightly, mercy, showing people kindness; and faith, trusting God. Those are the biggies. Those are the big issues.

So I need to make a decision then, what I'm going to do. I do not want to live under pressure, stress and bondage.

I must make a decision to bring my finances out of this place of pressure under the spirit world, and into a place of an open heaven with blessing; and God says that very clearly in Malachi.

He says: why don't you just check me out on this one? See that I want to open up the windows of heaven, bring what you have into the storehouse”.

So I want to encourage us in this. Go through the scriptures yourself, and then begin to ask yourself: I wonder what is happening in my financial world.

Remember, I'm required first to honour God with the first part, then I have to manage the rest; and we're not dealing with how to manage the rest at the moment.

We're just looking at bringing the whole financial area under God; and the first part of it, is to take my first portion, and give it to the Lord; to take my tenth, and to take it off the top, and give it into the house of God. That's where it goes.

Now people have got all kinds of ideas, and they do all sorts of things, but it's not what the Bible says. Listen: the tithe, or the first fruit, is the only part that's got the power to redeem the rest.

I need to make sure I treat it as a holy thing, and I need to put it where God says to put it. Then I can believe consistently for the best.

So I believe God wants to help us in this area, and I'm speaking this in order to bring just some clarity around our heart; so we actually see how to respond out of a good heart.

Now the world has criticised the church on this thing of tithing; but let me just finish you with this. I was watching a program on Oprah (I don't watch Oprah very often, but I watched this particular one), and I was absolutely astonished what I heard.

The special guest was a financial manager, who helped people who were in distress and debt, to get out of their distress and debt. So they had a few people of course, who had credit cards maxed up to the maximum height, everything like this, and they were totally in bondage.

They got this woman to come, and she spoke with her; and they got people to describe their problems; and she said: what would you advise them?

She said: it's really quite simple - they need to tithe. Now she was not a saved person; she's not a Christian person. She said: I've done a study of money and wealth, and people who have it and people who don't, and I've noticed something quite interesting, when I've observed all these different people.

She said: I've studied the people who've got it, people who haven't; and I've noticed that for some people, money is attracted into them. I've noticed with other people, money seems to be repelled away from them; and when it's repelled away from them, they seem to go from difficulty to difficulty to difficulty; but the others just seem to from blessing to blessing to blessing.

She said: so I've realised that there's a power involved; and she said: either you have power over money, or money has power over you.

She said: I've also learned, the only way that you can know whether you have power over money is if you can open your hand and give.

She said: consistently I have seen that some of the wealthiest people also give no less than ten percent. They just practice it, as a part of maintaining power over money.

Most people, money's got power of them, and they're in fear of it; so the moment it comes to giving anything to anyone, immediately there's conflict in the heart; and she's saying that actually, generosity or giving is the only way you can demonstrate and maintain your power over money.

Now that's a secular person, in a secular program, talking about the whole issue of money, and a power behind money. She couldn't give it the language we can give (didn't have the Bible connections with it), but did understand this: that there is a power behind it; and that the only way I can be free of that is if I start to learn how to open my hand, and to direct giving.

We see from reading the Bible, that if I put the first fruits to God, then I have blessing come around the rest. Things start to come towards me, instead of going away from me. I come into a place where there's a river of blessing.

Another time I want to talk about generosity, which was touched on today, the whole area of having a generous spirit. This is the Christian spirit, it's a generous spirit.

I want to just ask you this, to consider: where am I, in this whole area? Am I in problems? Am I giving God the honour and the glory?

Closing Prayer

If you're here today and you don't know Jesus: you know one of the greatest things to understand, is the generosity of God.

I know we've talked a little bit about finances, but we're talking about coming into a blessed life; and the first step of coming to a blessed life, has nothing to do with money.

It’s to acknowledge Jesus Christ. God gave His Son to love you, and bless you, and to bring you out of sin; Jesus died on the cross to redeem from sin. He gave His life as the offering, so you could become clean and blessed, but what it requires is that you identify with that, and that Jesus becomes your offering.

Instead of trying hard to be a better person, you come to the cross and say: Jesus, I accept what You have done on my behalf. This is my offering, on my behalf, and I thank You my life is sanctified and made whole, and I'm free from sin, because You are my first fruit.

You are my offering. I take what You have done, and I say: God, accept this offering of Jesus Christ. What an amazing deal. What a great thing.

The first step of course is: you need to make a decision to receive Jesus. How much more could He give you? He doesn't want you to suffer. He wants you to be blessed; and the first step is to receive what Jesus did for you, and invite Him to come into your heart.

In a moment, we'll all stand together, and we're going to rejoice; because God in heaven rejoices when a sinner comes to Christ. We'll all hold hands together, and church, let's reach your hands out to them, and let's all pray this simple prayer together.

Prayer is just talking to God. When we talk to Him, He'll hear you; He'll hear us when we talk. Let's just follow us in this prayer, all just listen to the words; and pray this prayer, reaching out to give your life to Jesus.

“Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. Thank You for loving me. Thank You for accepting me. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins.”

“Jesus, I ask You to forgive me. I turn away from all my sins today. I receive You as my Saviour. I give You my life today. I receive Your spirit into my heart and today before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and my friend forever. I am blessed. Amen.”

With all our pain and hurting, He understands us and He forgives us. You know today, the Bible says that God wipes away all your sins, all your failures; and sees you as His Son, His Daughter - clean, acceptable inside. You belong to Him. He loves you. God is a God of fresh starts, always fresh starts.

Last decision, just in your own heart, here's the questions to ask:

How do I honour God in my finances?

Do I have faith that He will provide?

How grateful am I for what He's done for me?

Do I have a willing heart? Or do I get niggly when someone asks me for anything?

I just pray blessing upon every person here. Father, we pray increased blessing, that not only as we are blessed, but all our finances will be blessed as well. We pray blessing on each household, each family, each person represented here today.

Father, let today be a day of decision, and a day of new beginnings in Jesus' name, and we give You all the honour, we can never out give You!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Mt.6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will be loyal to one and despise the other”.

· There is a battle for your heart over the issue of money – a daily on-going battle.

· Mammon is a spirit that seeks to capture your heart, loyalty and love.

· Mammon = Aramaic word = “riches”, wealth (assets, possessions, earnings).

· Spirit of Mammon:

Speaks to you Overwhelms people with fear and anxiety

Promises you much Desires to take place of God in your life

Seeks to enslave you

· Money has a spirit power operating behind it – Spirit Mammon – or Spirit of God.

· Associated Spirits

Spirit of Pride – I worked hard to get all this, I am entitled to these things.

Spirit of Poverty – Not enough, why should you have those things and not me.

· V26 - God is generous – He is a giver – it is His nature – He is extravagant.

· V33 – “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you”.

Put God first in your heart and financial matters – faith not fear (anxiety).

2. The First Portion belongs to God

· What should I do with money? – Give the first portion to God and steward the rest.

(a) Ex.13:2 “Consecrate to me all the first born”

- Every first born animal was either sacrificed or redeemed with a lamb

- This was an act of faith – did not know whether animal would produce more

- Didn’t want to give until had 10 lambs and give one – gave the first born in faith

- The offering of the first born redeemed the rest – all others are now blessed.

(b) Rom. 5:8,18 God demonstrates His own love towards us in that while we were still sinners – Christ died for us

- Jesus was referred to by John the Baptist as the “Lamb of God”

- No one took Jesus’ life He offered it up – He is the first born

- God gave the first born so the rest could be blessed

(c) Lev. 27:30 “All the tithe of the land is the Lord’s”

The first portion belongs to the Lord – it is the Lord’s

The first portion is devoted – set apart for the Lord

3. The First Portion determines the nature of the rest

(a) Rom. 11:16 “If the first fruit is holy, the lump also is holy; when we give the first to the Lord all the rest is blessed. When we withhold the first from the Lord the rest is cursed.

(b) Josh 6:18-19 Jericho – all the silver and gold and vessels of bronze and iron are consecrated to the Lord – they shall come into the treasury of the Lord.

· Jericho – was the first city. All its contents were first fruits to the Lord.

· It took faith to give the silver and gold to God – what if they win no other battle?

· They did not wait to conquer other cities and then give tithe to the Lord.

· Achan took what was devoted to the Lord

Money: Devoted before he took it Choice 100% kept all cursed

Cursed after he took it Choice 90% kept all blessed

Result was no spiritual power to prevail in warfare

V2 Key sin: Covetous – greed and deception.

4. Giving the First Portion is an Issue of the Heart

· Giving the tithe, the first portion to God is a heart issue.

· Is God going to be first in my life, have my love and loyalty?

· Key Heart Issues

(i) Honour - Will I honour God and place Him first? (Prov.3:19)

- What value do I place on God and my relationship?

(ii) Faith - Will I trust God with who He is – a generous provider

- Will I trust God by giving my first 10th – tithe?

e.g. Gen.22:1 Abraham gave his first born son

Gen 4:4 Abel gave his first born animal

(iii) Gratitude - Am I grateful to God for all that He has given to me?

e.g. Gen.14:18 Abraham gave tithe out of gratitude to blessing

(iv) Willing - Will I give out of a willing heart or out of duty, fear

e.g. Ex. 35,5 Israel brought with a willing heart

1 Cor.8:12 First a willing mind

· Without exception tithers say – I am blessed God has blessed me

· Without exception non tithers say – I cannot afford to tithe

· The first portion carries the blessing that redeems the rest

· Mt.23:23 “These things (tithe) ought to have done and not neglected the weightier matters of the law justice, mercy, faith”

· Mal.3:8-9 “Prove me in this – bring the whole tithe into the storehouse”

Generosity (3 of 4)

Sun 26 Aug 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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We have seen many people that have had much money and yet they didn't have what money seemed to promise, health and prosperity and every good thing. It seems like it still eludes them, so we looked at that and saw that Jesus taught very specifically about us placing God first. To be generous is to be liberal. It's an attitude of heart that shows up in every area of your life including finances. Generosity exposes selfishness!

I want to speak today on Generosity. I've been learning as I've been going, you know, I haven't spoken on money for years really; and yet Jesus spoke on it so much, so many times.

A large percentage of what Jesus taught and spoke about was stewardship, and managing natural things; but when we start to talk money, immediately people tend to freeze up.

So let's go back where we started in Matthew 6:24; and it's talking about laying up treasures in heaven. “No one can serve two masters. He will hate one and love the other; or he'll be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon”.

So we see God is a spirit, Mammon is a spiritual power, and we looked through and talked that money itself doesn't have power, but the spirit behind it does.

So the Bible's very clear, in Jesus teaching, that it's impossible to serve both; but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have money. In fact actually, you could be a great blessing if you have money.

You can have a lot of money, and be no blessing to anyone; or you can have very little money, and be a great blessing to people. It's not the amount of money; it always has to do with the heart.

As we learn about the spirit of Mammon, we saw that there is a battle, a spiritual battle, for your heart. There is a conflict between money, and the values placed on money, and what money seems to be able to do.

We saw that that is like an illusion; because we have seen many people that have had much money, and yet they didn't have what money seemed to promised: health and prosperity, and every good thing. It seems like it still eludes them; so we looked at that, and saw that Jesus taught very specifically about us placing God First.

Last session we talked about seeking first the kingdom of God; putting God first in our money; and that as we honour God first in our finances, then the rest is set apart.

Matthew 5:17 - Jesus said: “Do not think I came to destroy the Law, or the Prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but fulfil”.

So Jesus is saying to people, who thought He was going to do away with the Old Testament (do away with the Bible), and He's saying: don't think that I'm going to do away with it.

He said: I'm not going to destroy what was in the Old Testament. There are many things in the Old Testament, but He said: what I'm going to do is - I'm going to fulfil them.

He's saying this: you have the Old Testament. I'm not going to take it away. I'm going to teach you, and show you what it's true intent was; and I'm going to show you how you work it out in your life, so you don't live under law, but you live in a new realm of the spirit - under the grace and favor of God.

Now the dilemma for us, as Christians, of course is: we tend to pick up a bit of the law, and the bits that suit us; and we'll apply it and say: I'm going to live under that; but we're called to live in a different dimension now, we're in the new covenant.

For example Jesus didn't do away with law. He said, notice His statement: “I come, not to do away with it, but to fulfil it”.

Then He begins to talk. In verse 21 He says: “you have heard it said to those of old: you shall not murder” - so don't kill, or don't murder was an Old Testament commandment.

How many people have killed someone here? Okay, so we're doing pretty well, but Jesus said: I want you to understand that it's not a matter of the letter of this thing. Actually there's a heart motive behind it.

He said: I'm raising the standard; I'm telling you what this really means: it's not about whether you've murdered someone; it's a matter whether you keep your heart free of anger and hate against people. He said: I want to lift you to a different dimension.

Then He talked about the area of Adultery, verse 27 - Adultery of the heart, He's talking about. “You've heard it said to those of old: you shall not commit adultery…”

One of the Ten Commandments: “Do not commit adultery”. I won't put that question out, because there may be one or two have; but He's talking about the act of adultery.

He's saying: I'm telling you something different. He said: I am raising it up, and showing you how God intended this to be fulfilled - that you'd not have lust in your heart (lust after someone), because if you've got lust operating in your heart, then adultery is already present.

So you notice now, He hasn't done away with the law. He's lifted up an understanding of what it really means.

Now we have to understand that when you look at the Old Testament, some of the laws were moral laws; some of them civil laws; and so on. The dilemma for us is: what do we do, and how do we handle it; but you see here Jesus lifted the level of expectation up.

So for example, concerning circumcision, in the Old Testament all the children, descendants of Abraham were to be circumcised. Now in the New Testament, in Galatians, it tells us that circumcision is of the heart and spirit, it's not a physical circumcision - otherwise the moment you become a Christian, we've got to circumcise you.

So He said: we're not under that. There's a fulfillment that comes by the spirit; and that fulfillment is a circumcision of the heart, where you have a heart change; because people cannot murder someone without hate in their heart; people cannot commit adultery without lust in their heart. People can be physically circumcised, but still have no faith in Christ. You getting the idea of what it means: the fulfillment of the law?

So then we start to look then at the issue of tithing. In the Old Testament - and we won't go into all the details, I just want to catch the spirit of this - the Old Testament said: give a tithe to the Lord. Why would we come back just under the letter of that, when we come under the letter in no other area?

You see, what He's really saying in the New Testament is: I don't want your heart to be in conflict with God over the issue of money; I want you to be free. So in the New Testament He raises it up: tithing was the letter of the law. He says: “I want you to have a generous heart”, and almost all New Testament teaching concerning giving, has to do with the heart attitude, generosity, willing heart, free will.

When we talked on this area of Mammon, and giving, we said: it required that it came out of a heart that honored God, had faith in God, was thankful to God, and was willing.

Whatever you give then is acceptable to God, if the heart is right; because it's possible for people to tithe diligently like the Pharisees did; but have no heart for God, nor trust Him in any financial area. In fact, the Pharisees were quite covetous, yet they tithed.

So when it comes to the area of tithing, it's not just a matter of physically, or literally, tithing every carrot and every turnip and every apple. It's actually: having a heart free from greed; and being full of thanksgiving, and generous; because I know many Christians who will diligently tithe, but generosity isn't in their life.

It's like saying: well, I haven't murdered anyone, but I've a little hate sitting in my heart, and that's okay; or: I haven't committed adultery yet (or haven't been caught out), but I've got all this lust going on in my heart, but that's okay.

No, no, no, no, Jesus lifts it all in the New Testament to say: we're under a new covenant, and it has to do with the heart and the spirit, so we're not caught with the letter of the law. That's why I've never commanded, or demanded and told people: they must tithe. Instead we talk about honor, and first-fruits, and giving to God; and being generous is the thing that flows. It must come from the spirit.

Now clearly, tithing was in the Old Testament; and every other realm of Old Testament law was lifted to a higher level; so clearly our giving is going to come to a different level, than it was in the Old Testament. We won't be stuck with the letter of the law; we have a new realm, that's a realm of generosity and giving. It's a lifestyle.

I want to talk about Generosity, John 12:1. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus, who had been dead, whom He had raised from the dead. That's where Lazarus was.

They made Him a supper and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with Him. Mary took a pound of costly (that word costly - you can underline that) oil of spikenard; she anointed the feet of Jesus, wiped His feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.

One of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray Him, said: “Why isn't this fragrant oil sold for 300 denarii, and given to the poor”? He said that, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and he had the money box; and he used to steal.

Jesus said: “Leave her alone, she has kept this day, for the day of My burial. The poor you will always have with you, but Me, you do not always have.”

Firstly we just need to have an understanding of the word generous. Generous means literally: ‘to be liberal in your giving’. It means: ‘to be unselfish'. It means: to be free from any kind of meanness, or smallness; that is to be generous. To be generous, is to be liberal. It's an attitude of the heart that shows up in every area of your life, including finances.

The word that is the opposite of ‘generous’, is the word ‘selfish’. Other words that mean the same as selfish: you could say mean, stingy, withholding, those kinds of words. Do you know some people like that? What's in their heart flows over their money, and it's always mean; stingy; reluctant to give.

Another word we use is tight. Some Christians are so tight - and it's in every area of their life. It's never just in the money, but it shows up in the money first. It's an issue of heart.

Now think about this: we're born selfish, not generous. Notice with children, they're not born generous? Parents who've got little children they’re: mine! It's mine! You don't hear them saying: oh, I'd love to give it to you - you never hear a child saying that. Mine! Mine! Mine!

It's a shame if you're a Christian for a few years, and it's still: Mine! Mine! You come in, and someone sat in your seat: that's mine! This is what goes on! Someone parked in your car park - that's mine! Mine!

So ‘mine’ is what we're born with. It takes a work of the spirit to be generous; it takes the work of the spirit to stop us being selfish. That's the whole deal; so we've got a battle against selfishness and meanness all the time.

The first thing you think: there's not enough for me, I need to hold onto it. That's what goes on, you see it with children, and sometimes we grow up and we're still the same. It's still about me and mine.

Now selfishness originated with Satan. It's a trait in human nature that has demonic origin, demonic roots. Satan (or Lucifer) saw what God had, and he wanted it to become his. He said: It's mine - it's going to be mine! I will arise, I will... It'll be mine!

Then after he fell, everyone that's connected with him - it's the same thing, mine! Mine! And it's all about me and mine. We understand that. We learn to live with that see?

Notice here that generosity has exposed the heart of the mean person. I remember a funny situation that happened to me years ago. I was part of a leadership team (I was pastoring), and there were three people on the team, and one of the guys felt God leading him to go to Australia on a speaking engagement.

Anyway he said: “I must feel God doing that”, and I felt God say: “donate to him”. So I said: “oh, that's wonderful that God's put it in your heart, you're going there. I'd love to give you $100 towards your fare”. There was a stunned silence, and then an angry reaction, from someone who coveted what was happening, and was angry – “why should he have that?” Isn't that interesting?

So generosity exposes selfishness.

Now you notice that Mary does the totally unexpected: she comes in there, breaks that alabaster box of oil (we'll come into that, and how costly that is in a moment) breaks it, pours it over Jesus. Now she's extravagant - not with just her money. Notice that she's on her knees, and she's washing with her hair, wiping the hair and the oil and the dirt - and she's weeping. That is extravagant!

And the mean person, selfish person: We shouldn't waste so much money on this kind of thing. We should really sell that sort of thing, and give it to the poor. Ever heard people say that?

I remember I was trying to get a school facility going, and I had one of those (this is the principal's office, where everyone comes in) Chinese-Hat lights, you know, just a little wee light bulb thing. I thought: we need to get something; so I went around looking.

I spent a lot of time to try and find something that would be attractive, and represent the Lord and what we're doing well; and yet wouldn't be excessively expensive. I got something that was $35, how about that?

The same person that erupted over the giving, erupted over that - and I'd actually given it. Generosity exposes meanness; and the kind of comments that mean people usually say is: oh, it shouldn't be wasted on that. It shouldn't be wasted on something that honours God, it shouldn't be wasted on... shouldn't be wasted on…, shouldn't be wasted on... You know what? “We should give it to this person who's in need”.

Now when people start to talk like that, you know what? Ask the question: how much are you giving? Because inevitably, coming out of a selfish heart, a heart that's mean, a heart that's not generous - it's a heart that's locked up.

It says: “he said that, not because he cared for the poor, but because…” he was missing out on an opportunity to put his finger in, and get a little bit for himself. Selfishness; greed; coveting; that's what was in his heart. Isn't it interesting: the extravagant generosity of one person, exposed immediately how tight the other one was.

He should have just thought: wow, that's great. Man, I need to learn from that, and be inspired to be more generous. Instead of that, he had to attack the generosity, and say: that is a waste, it shouldn't be done.

You notice how the world continually attacks the church over the issue of tithing. Whether tithing is right or wrong is irrelevant. They attack it; because they can't handle that someone would give so much.

Why are you doing it? This is a poor person, why should they be doing this, and this, and this? Well, because it's actually an issue of the heart, and of generosity, and you're just flushing up your own meanness.

I remember when Brian Tamaki was interviewed, and they were going on about his car, and about his house and whatever. He said: I've worked all my life, I've invested, I've saved, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't gamble. Wouldn't I expect to have something for all of that? I've been generous and giving, wouldn't I expect to have something to show for all of that?

It was hard for them to concede. It's just that meanness, and selfishness, hates generosity. It reacts, and that's what this guy did. He just reacted in the presence of the generous giving; and the thing is: he was a thief, and he had the money box.

Here's the most amazing thing: he had the money box. Jesus gave him the money box. Did Jesus know he was a thief? Yes!

Why did He give him the money box then? To give him a chance to walk through temptation, and come out the other side victorious.

God will always place things in our path that will give us an opportunity to reveal what's in our heart; and He, with it, will never allow us to be tempted above what we're able; and will make a way for you through it.

So I can tell you now, every one of us face temptations around this area. It's just a matter of what we're showing up; and if we are faithful with money, we can be trusted with true riches.

Now the next thing you notice about it is that generosity is extremely extravagant. I did the math on this (I don't know whether I got them right). You notice it says: she gave oil of spikenard, worth three hundred denarii.

One denarius is a day's wage, so what would today's wage be worth in New Zealand? Maybe $100, something like that, so $100. So that means she gave 300 day's wages - almost a whole year's wages!

Now what would you think if someone gave a whole year's wages to the Lord? You'd [inhales sharply] – “you shouldn't do that!” But you see: she had a heart that was just abounding in generosity, and gratitude to the Lord. No one told her to do it - she just did it, because she wanted to express her love. She was extravagant.

Now when you look through the Bible, you'd be surprised how many extravagant people there are in the Bible, for example David. In 1 Chronicles 29, it says that when David came to prepare for the house of God, out of his own money, his own purse, he gave 3,000 talents of gold; and he gave 7,000 talents of silver.

A talent of gold is just over a thousand ounces of gold; and gold today is just over $2,000 an ounce. So he gave: 3,000(oz) * 1,000(oz/talent) * $2,000 (per/oz) = $6 billion!

So we're talking big money here, billions of dollars, out of his own wealth, he gave to the house of God; and he said: “of your own, we have given to you”.

Now here's a man who walked in grace. There's no tithing thing for him. He's a man of generosity, a man of a big heart, a man who knew God - he had in his heart to build God a house.

You know what? God didn't even tell him to build the house. God said: you're not even going to build it. He said: nevertheless, I did so great, I've got to do something - and he gave. He gave billions to the work of God.

What about Solomon (his son), at the dedication of the temple. The required offering was one oxen. Instead he gave a thousand oxen.

You can imagine people saying: what! The law only requires one. How come you gave more than one? Oh, I am so glad - bring a thousand of these bullocks on! Bring it all on! I'm going to give God the greatest offering! He asked for one, you watch this. I've given Him a thousand, because I can't out-give God. Look at what He's given me.

That that same night, God appeared, and said: “ask what you want, and I'll give it to you”.

Now if he was like a lot of Christians, he'll probably say: well, I've given to God, now I've got to get something back. I gave him a 1,000, let's see… a hundredfold? Ok, 100,000 oxen back.

No, he didn't do anything like that. He said: “I want a hearing heart; and an understanding heart; and the ability with wisdom to lead people”. And heaven was silent, because his value is on true riches.

Then God spoke. He said: “because you've asked this thing, I'll give you not only that, I'll add to you all the riches, all the wealth that you could ever possibly want”.

So his heart was set on true riches, and it was revealed by his generosity. God just said: oh, I just can't help it, I've got to add all this stuff in. Remember what it says, seek first the kingdom of God, and the rest is added in? It frees the life from anxiety, and stress, and law and how much is... We don't want to get into that kind of thing.

Of course there are heaps of other people. There's the widow in 1 Kings 17, who gave the last meal. Now that would make a great story for the media wouldn't it aye? A prophet come and asked the last meal of this poor widow. How horrible!

But God had already given her direction, and as a result of her responding prophetically to what God said, she came into an abundant supply for a whole year, so it goes on.

Think about Abraham, who gave up his only son. Can you imagine what that meant? Imagine giving up your only son. I mean he's nearly a hundred years old; he's given up his own son; but he had faith and confidence in God. He gave, because God spoke to him about that giving; and he doesn't speak to us that way, not like that.

What about Jesus? God gave His own Son. God so loved the world. You can hardly love the person next to you, let alone love the world.

In India, you look at the millions of people; you see the crowd, and hope they'll all go by; but God says: every one, I know them by name. I love them.

God is so generous - what's the best thing I could give in heaven? So I know what, I'll send a legion of angels to save the world. No, no, no, no, that may not be enough. I'll send a few more angels. No, no, I know what I'll do: I send what's the most precious and dear to me. I'll give the most extravagant, expensive gift, My Son.

You can never out give God - He is so generous. It's the nature of the kingdom to be giving. The problem is: we get caught up with this thing of the law - if I just do this, then God must do that. So if I just do this, God will do that.

I did this; and He didn't do it - what! He didn't do it? Why did He not come through for me? I sowed, I gave, I did this, I did that - God didn't come through for me. Why?

You get angry at God, and resentful, and all that kind of stuff. I want to show you this is not the spirit of giving that the Bible talks about. Let's just go through and look at one more, in John 12:1.

Firstly, notice the motivation for gratitude. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, who had been dead. Her brother was dead, not only dead, he was dead-dead. He was buried, and in the grave four days, and they said: he will be stinking by now, totally corrupted.

All hope of anything is gone, and Jesus came, and raised him from the dead. Now she's been without her brother, in mourning for four days; and suddenly her brother's restored. Whoa Jesus! My whole perspective has shifted.

So what can I do? Aah, that alabaster box, I'll take that, and she extravagantly gave. Why did she give? Gratitude! No one told her to do that.

If you were there, we'd tell her: take a tenth of it and give it to Him. Come on now, this is about gratitude; this about someone who has been blessed by God, and is responding to being blessed - by living and acting as a blessed person. That's what it's about.

See, we get the thing: if I do this, God will bless me. Let me ask where you get that theology from? Where did you get to hear that? It's the law. The law says: if I just do this, then God will do that.

Ephesians 1 it says: “God has already blessed us, with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places”. I'm not required to perform or do anything to get God's blessing.

I am required, though, to believe; and in believing, my faith will be expressed through actions; otherwise you move out of a place of faith and trust in God, and into a place of trying to manipulate Him: I'll do this, and you've got to do that; I'll give you this, and you've got to give me that…this is not going to work. She was full of gratitude.

Notice in 2 Corinthians 9:5, it talks about giving and He says: “now brethren, I thought to exhort you ahead of time, and prepare your generous gift beforehand, which you had previously promised, that it may be ready as a matter of generosity, and not grudging obligation”.

He's saying: sort out your giving before I come. I don't want there to be any pressure and grudging obligation.

He says: “I tell you this: who sows sparingly, will reap sparingly; he who sows bountifully, will reap bountifully. Let anyone give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or reluctantly” - or with his hand bent up his back, it means.

God loves you to give out of a cheerful, glad and grateful heart. He wants us to give that way.

God is able to make all grace abound to you, because this is the nature of grace. It just gives, because that's what it is, “…and having all sufficiency in all things, you may have abundance for every good work”.

So God makes it very clear, that the motivation of all our giving needs to be generosity and gratitude: I love God; I want to give; what can I give?

Many people come to church on Sunday thinking: what can we get out of this service? Get out of the service? Oh, you're already beaten before you start - because you're coming to get.

I come every Sunday to give. I come to give God something; oh, I love to give to Him, and worship Him, and give myself to Him; and I get blessed by this wonderful worship team we have, they can lead and bring us into the presence of God; and sometimes I think: I'd just like to stay there. I know people want a message, but might as well stay loving God, I'm enjoying this. It's giving something to God.

The last thing is: generosity is rewarded. God will always reward you if you're a generous person; but it's not the motivation for giving.

Have a look in Luke 6:31. It's interesting when Judas and the others (not only Judas, but the others too), all bothered Mary. They all were critical of her - it says in Mark's version of that same story; and Jesus said: leave her alone, leave her alone.

He said you know what? You're all having a whinge about generosity. He said: I'm going to make sure that when the gospels are written, her name is recorded - what she did, and how much she gave - so everyone everywhere can read it.

That's not very many times in the Bible that someone's name, and what they gave is recorded, so everyone reading could read it.

She's rewarded with true riches. She's given honour by Jesus, which extends into every nation of the earth, wherever the gospel's preached. In every nation, it'll be proclaimed: this was a great woman with a great heart, and a generous heart - and Jesus liked what she did. Not only that, He was not impressed with the miserable thief!

Luke 6:31, in Jesus' teaching, there's the Parables of the Kingdom. He's teaching the Sermon on the Mount, about how the kingdom operates. Now look at this, just watch this.

He said: “and just as you want men to do to you, do also to them likewise”. Just as you want people to do to you, you do that to them. We call that the golden rule.

Let me ask you this: do you want people to give to you - and they've got a hidden hook in it, so that after they've given, you're now manipulated and have to give something back?

Is that what you want? Nobody likes that! You feel ripped off. You thought it was a gift, but then it turns out it was a trade. The world system operates on trading: I give you something, you give me something back; and hopefully it's better than what I had, or at least it's worth the same amount.

So the world system works on trading. The world system is so embedded in trading, that if you were to operate on a different system, and say: “I want to give to you”; the first thing you would say is: “what's in it for you?”

Now if I say to him: “nothing”, he says: “it can't be true”. There must be something in it for you. Now why is he talking like that, and saying it like that? Because he's so filled with the world system - that no one gives anything for nothing, there's always a reason and a motive and an agenda.

That's called trading. Trading: you give one thing; and you receive something back. The kingdom principle, as Jesus demonstrates, is very simple.

He said: you wouldn't like people to do that for you. Do you think God likes it, when it's done that way?

I'm going to be nice to you today, and pray… because I need something. That's not relationship; it's mean, selfish, and manipulative.

I remember someone I knew, and once in a while this person would come and give us a gift. In the end I cottoned on, because always two days after the gift, was a request which I couldn't turn down.

I didn't twig to it, because I never give with that kind of expectation. It kind of caught me by surprise - and every time I'd get caught. I'd think: that's nice, so kind of you, thank you very much.

What I thought was just a gift, she was thinking was a trade: I'll give you this, but tomorrow I'll be back for something, and you'll have to do for me.

What can you do? Now you're kind of - ooh. You feel that manipulative thing get around your soul. It's horrible, I hate it. I've learnt now to say no.

Here's the principle: if you love those who love you, what grace is upon you? Sinners love those who love them.

He's saying: if the only people you extend love and kindness to, are those who've already given it to you - then there's no grace; no kingdom life on that. An unsaved person will do that.

The second thing He tells us then: “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit (or grace) is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

What He's saying is: if you do good, but you only do good to the people who are doing good to you (or you want to get something back), there's no grace in that. There's no kingdom in that.

He said: “If you lend to those from whom you hope to get something back, what grace is on your life?” Even sinners lend to get something back.

Now He's saying: but you, if you love your enemies, do good, and lend… “hoping for nothing in return”. This is what defiles things - when you give, hoping for something in return.

If I just do this, I'll get this in return; that sets you up for resentment, disappointment, anger - and you'd be amazed how many Christians who eventually gave up, stopped walking with God; because at the core of their serving and giving was: I'm giving to get something back; and in doing that they set themselves up. When what they expected never came, it hurt them. Of course it hurt them, but rather than just dealing with a heart attitude, people take offence.

Now notice what it says here: “love, do good”, He says, and: “hoping for nothing in return”. So He said: this is how you operate in the kingdom. You actually become a generous person, giving with no agenda.

You sow, you give, you're kind, you do good and there's no agenda whatsoever - including no agenda that: I'm going to now talk you into coming to Jesus. No agenda, full stop. No agenda.

Notice what He says, two things… #1: “your reward will be great”. Giving with no agenda qualifies you for God to reward you greatly.

If I do something with an intention of getting a return, then you give me a return, then I've had my reward. But if I can give; and operate in the way Jesus gave, where He gave without trying to get anything back out of anyone; then I'm qualifying myself for God's reward - and it may come in eternity; it may come here and now.

Some of it comes now, a lot of it comes in eternity. That's why Jesus said: “lay up treasures in heaven”.

Second thing he said: you will be the sons of your Father. In other words, when you can give without an agenda for yourself, you are acting like God. You truly are one of His Sons, because you know, notice this - He's kind to the just and the unjust.

I don't know whether you read that scripture, because the Christian thinking often goes along the line: God blesses the Christians; He doesn't bless the non-Christians.

But that's not what the Bible says. It says: He blesses all people; causes the rain to come on all people. So why does God do that?

Under the law, we think: that's not fair. I've been coming to church, I've been doing good, and I've been serving, I've given my tithe - and see, I'm like the older brother - and you never gave me an option to celebrate with my friends!

Many Christians are caught in an ‘older brother’ thinking; rather than actually: extravagant grace; that God gives because He's a giver, and He wants us to become like that - giving because we're givers.

I give because I'm a giver. I love to give, I want to give; I'm feeling right now like giving - feeling very generous right now. I actually am committed to generosity.

Now it wasn't how I grew up, and it wasn't what I saw modeled; but it's something that my wife and I have come to embrace, when we learned how to trust God, and lay everything down, and just lean upon Him.

Then we learned how to be content, how to celebrate what we had, even though if it was little, then as we got things, how to be generous.

[Alter Call]

We just love to be generous; so listen, I just believe God wants to set people free today. Why don't we just have a great time now, where the Holy Ghost comes, and starts to touch us.

You see, I can feel the tension around talking in this area. That's because there's devils of poverty; and hurt, pain, and grief, over finance. Wouldn't it be great if we could just get free of all of that, just let God touch us and help us today?

If there are any single parents in the church today, I'd like to pray for you first. Single parents in the church today, if you are struggling financially right now, would you like to just come right up to the front now? We just want to bless you in a moment.

Won't you come, single parents, and you're struggling financially, there's just a pressure on you. It worries you, it's stressing you out and whatever, and you know, we want you to be free of some of that. Come on, let's come on up.

We want blessing to come. How many want blessing to come? We know it's a very hard time… I said that we wanted you to come up, and that's not easy for you to do that, so I honour you for responding today.

We said we wanted to pray for you and bless you. Now praying for you and blessing you can be two different things - so the first thing I want to do is bless you; then we'll all pray for you.

Whenever I talk about generosity, I can't ‘not be generous’; so what you didn't know, when I asked you to come up, was that I was going to be generous to you. We want to bless you, so I'll just get my wallet out; we just raided the savings today.

I think this couple here, I want to bless you, there you go, have $50. Bless you. Do something for your family aye.

We've got another couple here, God bless you. God loves you. God's a generous God, He wants to bless you, in not only financial ways. He wants to really help you and touch you and bless your life; and you're a great person, I know you go through so much, that we've got one for you too, there you go. Bless you.

There you go, there you go. It must be difficult being a single dad? Challenges! God wants to bless you, and help you with that; it won't solve all your problems, but it'll be a great start just to bless you, and I want you to know that God is generous, God loves you.

There you go, you're facing all these battles and challenges but you know God loves you. Here it is, $50 for you, bless you.

God bless you, hey, and all those boys to look after. I hope you make them all work and do something. I know it's been a great challenge for you. God loves you, He wants to bless you too. There you go, there you go, there's $50 for you.

Hello. God loves you. He understands the pressure you've been under. He just wants you to know today: He loves you. He's a generous God.

Hey, you're a great person. I see you at church, and you're just so full of joy, and so full of serving God, and I love you, and we just appreciate what you do. Anyway here's a blessing, $50 for you too aye, how about that? God loves you, wants to bless you, teenage girl. There we go.

[Ian Clayton] I really (in the spirit world) I can feel the angelic, very much, in what's going on here. I really feel like there's a platform opening up, for our creation and our people to sow into these people here.

I really feel like the generosity that Mike and Joy have shown has opened up a door that needs to be followed by people, and what I want to do is: I just want to invite you, if you have some cash on you, I want to invite you to come up and just put it on the floor over here.

What we will do is, as a leadership, we will distribute it to these people. I real feel like we need to do something here, in the Holy Spirit. This is something God's sitting on, and we need to be doing this, so I just want to open it up for you - there's a platform, just come and put it before Mike and Joy.

Let's just lay this before the Lord. I really feel like the platform that God wants to bring, from the body of Christ to these people, is to bring blessing to them, and to release the glory of God in the middle of this thing.

Father, we want to receive this today. If you want to write out something, an IOU and you don't have cash on you, then please do that. If you don't honour it I will.

See, this is what, in the spirit world, in the kingdom world, this is called trading - where you take something of your life, and you give it to God as an honorarium; and as an offering to Him, to sow into the lives of people who have been struggling.

The Bible says, you know, we're less than an imbecile, if we don't take care of those, even in our body, that are suffering like this.

I really feel, in times like this, that it's important to do what's needful from the house to engage the kingdom; and if you've given, what I would really love you to do, is just to come and stand behind and beside one of these people - we just need to get around them, because this is body ministry. Just come and get around them, I just want some of you folks who have given just to come and get around some of these people.

[Mike Connell] Thank you Lord, praise the Lord. We should have a fund in the church, which is specifically for this purpose: for helping people when there's stress and pressure; helping them in time of need.

We've just got these ones here that have come up, and they'll be overwhelmed with the love of God. All you feel like you want to do is just cry, because you feel the heart of God when we give to those around us; and those that particularly are among us who desperately have need, so let's just reach our hands out to them all, right now. Let's bless them. Thank you Lord.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank You for the generosity of people in the house, for the generosity that's in this church.

Lord, we just ask You that You would pour Your blessing on each couple, each person that's come out; that Lord today there'll be some bills paid, power bills paid, food supplied, that each one will have an abundance.

Lord, we thank You that You've enabled us to give like this; thank You Lord for Your goodness to us. We can never out-give Your generosity. We can never out-give Your generosity; and so Lord today we thank You, and Father, we just pray release of financial blessing to each one of these ones here.

If each of the people that came up and responded to the altar call today, please come over and give him your name and a contact, so after we add it up and work out what we've got here, we can make sure that it's divided equally and goes to you. Amen. Indicate if you've got a child (or how many children you've got), and we'll take that into account as we do it as well. Amen.

It is something else isn't it? Come to church and they're giving money away! That's unusual isn't it aye? Who ever heard of such a thing? But we have to break this thing that gets around our mind, that: all God wants to do is take.

God wants to give. God is an abundant giver, God is a generous God. Angels rejoice when we show kindness on those who are in need.

Why don't we just give a generous worship to God, as we finish with this last song. We love the Lord, and we want to honour Him today, and just express our gratitude.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Mt. 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon”.

· There is a battle for your heart over the issue of money. It is a daily on-going battle.

· We need to bring our finances into position of divine blessing by honouring the Lord first.

· Mt.5:17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law of the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfil (reveal their true intent and application).

· Jesus raised the standard – He revealed the true intent and application.

· V21 e.g. OT = You shall not murder – but I say that whosever is angry …

e.g. OT = You shall not commit adultery – But I say to you whosever looks at women to lust …

e.g. OT = circumcise children – NT circumcision is of the heart (Rom.2:29)

e.g. OT = tithing – give 1/10th – NT Generosity 2 Cor. 9:5-11

You can tithe and not be generous – generosity is an issue of the heart.

2. Generosity is a Heart Issue

· Jn.12:1-8 “The house was filled with the fragrance of the oil”.

· Definition = Generous = liberal in giving or sharing, unselfish, free from meanness or

smallness.

= willing to give of money, time, resources.

· Opposite = Selfish = mean, miserable, stingy, reluctant to give, tight, withholding.

· Generosity and selfishness are a daily battle.

· We are not born generous – we are born selfish e.g. children – “mine, mine”

· Selfishness originated with Satan and was imparted into the human race.

· Generosity exposes and reveals selfishness.

· Vs5-6 Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?

· Judas became agitated, critical, judgemental – “ought to give to the poor”.

· He manifested heart attitude of greed, selfishness, envy, jealousy. He did not care for the poor – he cared for himself.

· Selfishness always criticizes the generosity or blessings of others to conceal “itself”. Selfishness – cares for self, protects self, and provides excuses not to be generous.

· V6 He was a thief – and had the money box (entrusted with Jesus finances). He was unfaithful in unrighteous mammon – lacked generosity.

(Eph.4:28 “Let him that stole steal no more – rather work with his hands what is good that he may have something to give to him that is in need”.)

3. Generosity is Extravagant

· Jn.12:3-5 very costly oil – 300 denarii cf Mk. 14:4

· Extravagant = exceeds the bounds of reason, goes beyond what is deserved.

· Generosity is never a waste! It is an issue of heart – expressing the nature of God.

· It is not the amount given that counts but what is in your heart as you give:

e.g. Mary: 1 denarii = 1x days wage – gave 1x years wages

David: 3000 talents of gold 7000 talents of silver – 6+ billion dollars

(1 talent = 1050 per oz) (1 Chron.29:2-5)

· Solomon (1 K. 4:3-13) 1000 burnt offerings (God’s response - ??

· Widow’s meal (1 K. 7:13) Widow gave her last meal.

· Widow’s mite (Mt. 12:47) Gave more than all.

· Abraham (Gen.22:2) Gave his only son.

· Jesus (Jn.3:16) Gave His life for the world.

4. Generosity flows from Gratitude

· Jn.12:1 “Lazarus who had been dead, whom He raised from the dead”.

· Mary’s perspective totally altered by the resurrection from the dead of her brother.

· Heart was filled with gratitude and appreciation and honour for Jesus.

· (v7) When you give to God you do not know the impact it will have, how God uses.

· God always has a purpose for the gift that you give.

· Generosity to the Lord and people is the overflow of a grateful heart.

2 Cor. 9:7-8

· David was grateful – gave

· Solomon was grateful - gave

5. Generosity is Rewarded

· Mk.4:6 “Leave her alone – what she has done will be told as a memorial to her”.

She did not give to be rewarded – but she was rewarded.

· Lk.6:31-35 “Your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High”.

- Jesus teaches on giving with no hidden agenda of personal gain.

- World: operates on trading – buy and sell – I give you and I expect from you.

- Kingdom: operates on giving and receiving – I give to you without any expectations from you.

· This is what astonishes people – when we give without expecting return.

· It is contrary to the trading they experience in the world – “giving with hooks”.

· Will we be rewarded? Certainly – God sees to that in His time and way.

· Is.32:8 “The generous man devises generous things and by his generosity he will stand” NKJ

· Good men will be generous to others and will be blessed of God for all they do” LIVING BIBLE.

· How intentional are you in planning to be generous?

· How could you grow in generosity with money? Time? Resources?

· How readily available are you and your resources for the Kingdom of God?

Generosity (4 of 4)

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There's something about generosity that creates a very sweet fragrance. When people give and there's nothing in it for themselves, they've just given unexpectedly to you, then there's something sweet about it. Generosity usually exposes greed. God is love and you can't love without giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving, so the greatest way we express the love of God to people is when we can be generous and kind to them with no agenda. That's when people see God, because that's what God is like.

John 12. “Six days before the Feast of Passover, Jesus came to Bethany; where Lazarus had been dead, whom He raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper and Martha served, but Lazarus was one who sat at the table with Him.”

“Then Mary took a pound of costly ointment of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, wiped His feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the oil, and one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray Him, said: why didn't they sell this fragrant oil for three hundred denarii (a denarii is a day's wage) and given it to the poor? And he said this, not because he cared for the poor…”

He implied he cared for the poor, but he didn't. Rather he was a thief, but he gave out that he cared for the poor, but he was really a thief, and he had the money box. He used to steal what was put in it. The offerings that were put in, he was stealing them.

Jesus said: “Leave her alone, she has kept this day for the day of My burial”. Jesus commended her.

So we saw that generosity is unlimited. You can be as generous, or as mean, as you choose. It's a choice. Mary was deeply grateful; her brother had died, they'd gone to the burial service, they'd buried him, mourned, had the wake. He was dead and buried. Four days had gone by - there's no show of him ever coming back again, and she was still in a stage of grieving.

Jesus came and brought life into a desperate and hopeless situation: Lazarus rose from the dead, much to everyone's amazement. No one can do that except God, and so her heart was deeply touched. Now the gratitude: just what can I give for all He's given to me?

So she took out something worth thousands and thousands of dollars - you imagine 300 day's wages. I don't know what you earn in a day, so just multiply that by a $100 a day:

300*$100/day = $30,000. We're talking very expensive offering here. She just extravagantly put it out all over Jesus.

You notice that when people give extravagantly, a number of things happen. The first thing that happened was: the house was filled with the atmosphere. There's something about generosity that creates a very sweet fragrance. There's something about generosity - with no agendas - that is very sweet.

When people give, and there's nothing in it for them, they've just given unexpectedly to you - then there's something sweet about it. Giving; generous giving.

You know, we come into church, and if we come and just drag ourselves in, and then it takes us half an hour to get warmed up - that's not a very nice atmosphere.

But when we come in and: oh God, you're so good to me! I just want to give something, and we begin to give them something - oh, there's a lovely atmosphere. It's a great atmosphere when people give God the best - and so that's what she did. So generosity usually flows out of a heart of gratitude.

The next thing about generosity: Generosity usually exposes Greed.

Coveting is when: I don't have something, and I want something I haven't got.

Greed is when: I've got something, and I want more of it. Judas was greedy, and he wanted more money; and so generosity often exposes greed.

I can remember we were in a situation where one of our friends had made the decision to go on a mission trip; and I just decided straight away: we would give him some money. We didn't have much money at that stage, but I felt God giving me a figure to give to him. I gave it to him.

I said: look, I'd love to sow this into you. Well there was this deathly silence in the room, and then suddenly someone else erupted. I thought: whoa! What is that?

Actually, what was happening was: he did not think it was fair that he should be given the money. It was my money to give. I just gave, because I felt God tell me to; but this guy thought: it's not fair (or right) for him to get it. He doesn't deserve it. What kind of thing is that?

Actually what he's thinking is: I deserve that; so generosity flushes out heart attitudes. I'm sure, before the end of it today, that someone's heart attitude will be flushed!

Generosity is a reward in unexpected ways. When Mary came out, and she brought out this thing, I bet she wasn't thinking this: I want to become famous in history. I want to become the woman that everyone in every nation of the earth for all time remembers, and knows: I'm generous. I don't think there was any of that in her heart at all. It wasn't there at all was it?

She just gave because she loved, she was grateful. You know what happened? The unexpected reward is: everywhere you preach the gospel, her name is mentioned; and what she did is mentioned. Her prayers are not mentioned, what's mentioned is her generosity; and He said: her generosity be remembered. Why is this? Why am I on about this generosity thing?

Let me put it very simply. The Bible tells us: God is love. It doesn't say: He's power. God is love; and you can't love, without giving.

You can give without loving; but you can't love, without giving. So the greatest way we express the love of God to people, is when we can be generous and kind to them with no agenda.

That's when people see God, because that's what God is like. Do you see the power? Yes, and that's great too; but the love of God gives something to people, that's just touched by God.

Generosity is the practical outworking of being right with God.

How many people here know: that you are made righteous by the blood of Jesus Christ? Now here's the thing: for most of us, our thinking is, this is about a legal stand with God.

We think that ‘righteous’ means: I'm in right standing with God, by the work that Jesus did for me. If you think that you're correct; however, if you only think that, then that's very limiting on what biblical righteousness means.

So yes, it's true that we are ‘in right standing with God’ by what Jesus did - His gift to us that brings us to right standing. But for the Hebrews, and the whole nature of covenantal relationship with God: to be ‘right with God’ didn’t just mean that you didn't have any sins currently going with Him.

It meant: you were living out your covenantal relationship with God. In other words, it always had an overflow in your life some way. In other words, for a Hebrew, and the Hebrew thinking about being righteous, was not that: “I have a legal position with God, now I can live my life the way I like”.

It means: “I have a standing with God that now overflows, in a way of living that is different to before.”

We tend to just focus that: I've made right with God; and now I've got no responsibilities in this covenant - and that's not really true. I am made right with God by faith, and by faith alone; but ‘being right with God’ - there now needs to be an overflow, that demonstrates the rightness with God is real. The way that shows is generosity.

Psalm 112:9; I want you to see the connection between being right with God, and being generous (first in the OT, then in the NT).

“He has dispersed to the poor abroad. He has given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever”. Notice the connection between: giving to the poor; and being a righteous person.

Psalm 37:21. “The wicked borrows, and doesn't pay back; but the righteous show mercy and give.

You can actually tell a righteous person; not because they go to church, and carry a Bible, and pray long prayers, or speak in tongues. A righteous person actually does something else: shows mercy, and gives.

Matthew 25, when Jesus separates the nation out, in a day to come. “The king shall say to those on his right hand (He's gathered the nations together, sifted them out): Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you, from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, you gave Me to drink; I was a stranger, you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick, you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.”

“The righteous will say: oh, when did we see You hungry, feed You; and thirsty, and give You drink? When did we see You stranger, and take You in; and naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick in prison, and come to You?”

“And He said: assuredly I say to you, as much as you did it to one of the least of My brethren, you did it to Me”. Notice the connection between being righteous, and being kind to the poor. They go hand in hand.

Would you consider the people of our city are: blessed; or are they really struggling? Not in the blessing of God; but from a spiritual perspective, extremely poor?

They are. The whole region is extremely poor. It shows up in a whole number of ways; but one of the things that God puts in us very clearly to see, is that if we are in right standing with Him, the way we express it… What does a right man live like? How does a righteous man live?

Now that I'm made right, by what Jesus did for me, and I'm trusting in it; now how will I live out that being right with God? What would it look like?

I'll go to prayer meetings? I'll go to Bible Study? I'll speak in tongues? Heaps of things are great; but the thing the Bible consistently says is: show mercy; and become generous to those who are in need.

It's something the church has forgotten, and yet needs to awaken to it; because this is something that's part of every one of us.

So when we look at the word righteous, we tend to think of just: ‘our standing with God’; but the Hebrew thinking is righteous means: ‘a lifestyle outworked’, because of my standing with God.

Wikipedia: the word for ‘Righteous’ (in the OT) is Tzedak; and the word generosity (or charity, or ‘giving to the poor’), is the word Tzedakah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzedakah).

So the Hebrew word ‘to be right’, or ‘righteous’, or ‘right with God’ (in the OT) – ‘Tzedak’, and that means: to be right with God.

The word generous; giving to the poor; being charitable; being concerned (or having compassion), and demonstrating it to people in need - is the word Tzedakah; which means: ‘Righteousness Revealed’ is Generosity.

You can't separate the two from one another; so Hebrews considered that all our resources belong to God; and God has therefore the right to direct our resources. So when I think about the tithe, or the first portion of my finances, I always think: it doesn't really belong to me anyway, that’s God's.

There's another part of our finances which doesn't belong to us either. It's the part that needs to be given to people in need; and so we allocate and worked our finances, such that we have:

A first portion always set aside for the Lord; a portion for us; and a portion for people in need.

That means we can be generous at any time, because we pre-plan generosity, according to: this is how a righteous man lives.

We have a portion of our resources, which I consider to be ‘not mine’. I call that the tithe, that doesn't belong to me; I can't spend it on me, or mine. I believe that it ‘belongs to God’, and therefore I should put it for whatever the Lord directs me to - into the house of God; into the work of God; into advancing the kingdom of God.

We've got another part that doesn't belong to us either: the part set aside for people who are poor. It's God's provision for them; that's why it's not mine. I'm free to: be a steward of it; and I can just give it to myself; or I can give it to people who are poor.

It's just a choice; so all of us have a choice with the resources we have, how we manage them; and it's all to do with: what you believe about it, and how you handle it. Now I'm not getting into legalism of how much, and any of these things; but this is always an issue of the heart. My wife and I find it a huge joy to be able to be generous, because a righteous person is a generous person.

1 John 3:16 – “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren”.

Because of the example of Jesus, and our gratitude, the outworking of that is we give ourselves to people.

“Now whoever has this world's goods…” (its not talking to the poor, but to someone who's got something) “…and sees his brother in need…” So it's talking about you having some provision, for when you see someone in need.

What you could do, is say: well - the church ought to do something about that! The Government ought to do something about that! No, actually you're the one who ought to do something; because you've got the goods, and you saw the need - simple.

And so he said: “…who sees his brother in need, and he shuts up his heart from him…” How can you say the love of God is in that person?

He said: “however, let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth”.

That's how you know you're of the truth, and that's how your heart becomes assured. Why? Because when you see people in need, there's a sense of feeling moved to want to help; and then getting engaged in helping - that's how you can assure your heart that you are in the love of God, and walking with God; because you're a person of generosity and compassion and kindness, and you give where there's needs.

It's your lifestyle, and if I want to abide in the love of God, I've got to abide in loving people. You see if we try to separate that: I just have a stand with God; but no responsibilities to live my life; I become just religiously disconnected from everything that is really important to God.

If I think that I can love God, but have no expression to people I can see, I'm actually fooling myself. The outworking of my love of God is an overflow towards people.

The people next to you, you can see; God, you can't see; so the overflow of loving God, is that when I meet people in need, my heart is moved with compassion to reach them. In reaching them, I am demonstrating the love of God, and staying in the flow of the love of God.

#1, generosity is a practical way you express that you're right with God.

If you want to know how to express that you're right with God - make a decision, and begin to put into practice generosity to people in need - in every kind of way, and you'll find yourself walking with God. You can't help but find yourself walking with God. God always seems to be on it somehow. He's just on generosity somehow.

#2, Generosity is a lifestyle.

Generosity is not just: well it was great, we had an offering, took up some money, and there it is, I've done my bit. No, actually the church has done amazingly.

A couple of Sundays ago, God put it in our heart, when I preached on generosity, to demonstrate generosity; and it wasn't church money - it was our personal money, which we had put aside.

Some of it we put aside for this purpose, some of it we hadn't put aside - it was just our money, full stop; but God gave the amount, and so I wanted to demonstrate that when we listen to God in the handling of resources, you can't just talk about it without living it out. You just have to live it out.

So I felt the Lord give me a specific sum, and a specific thing to talk to people about. I made an undertaking that we would pray for and bless people.

Now it took humility for people to come forward. It's not easy to do that; and there were others in need, that didn't come forward. I know that, because they had money left over.

It's just because we couldn't admit that we really did have a need. It's real hard to do that - it takes humility; and so what happened was, Ian stood up and encouraged the church; because we could sense that just God was suddenly coming in. His presence just filled the place when we did that, in an extraordinary way.

I always notice what brings God's presence: that suddenly in a moment of time, all the worship, the intensity, when we started to give to people in need, was far greater than anything we had right through the service. Notice that? I thought: ooh, God liked our worship; but boy, He loved the giving even more - He came even stronger!

The church just suddenly responded, and I am very, very, very delighted to be able to say that over $6,000 came up to bless those people!

Come on, give yourself a clap, that was amazing. Who has that kind of money? I had to go specially to get some, so I'd have some. Usually if I have some - it's gone, you know?

Find someone in need, and bless them with it; but this was just brilliant. Our giving needs to be a test; so that was a one-off thing, but actually generosity is a lifestyle, and God has always intended it be a lifestyle.

Deuteronomy 24:18. “But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this thing”.

You were in bondage to sin, and God redeemed you. Do you remember what it was like, when your life was miserable in sin, and you were tormented and troubled, down and wretched, and then God redeemed?

God generously paid the price to get you free. It cost you nothing, because it cost Him everything. Then he said: “therefore I command you to do this”

He said: remember what it was like to be unsaved, when your life was in turmoil? Remember how God paid the price to get you free. He says: now I command you to do this. Why? Out of gratitude! Whenever God gives a command in the Old Testament, it's because He knows we tend to forget it; but it's a principle that'll bring success in life.

“When you reap the harvest of your field…” They were an agricultural community, so to ‘reap the harvest of your field’, meant they were getting their income for the year out of their harvest; and they'd have a harvest in certain seasons. They'd get an income at that time.

For us today, we're not out there harvesting the fields; we go to work and we receive a wage. So when it says: “when you harvest your field”, today's equivalent would be: when you get a wage; an income; something coming in.

He says: “When you reap your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, don't go back for the sheaf to get it. It's for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow; that the Lord your God may bless you, in all the work of your hands.”

“When you beat your olive trees, don't go over it again. Just do it once, because the others that are left on the tree are for the stranger, the fatherless, the widow. When you gather the grapes from your vineyard, don't glean it afterwards. It'll be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.”

Three times, He said that God is concerned about: firstly the stranger. The stranger is an unsaved person; so He's saying to His people: make sure you put aside resources from your life, to reach the needs of people who don't know Christ.

We'll just look at what that could mean, but it's not just money; it's more than money. He's talking about your field; in other words, He's saying: don't take everything in your field; leave the corners, leave a part of your harvest, deliberately and intentionally available for these people.

#1, the unsaved - that's the stranger; #2, the fatherless. That's the solo-parent families, people who are orphaned in various places in our nation, or in the world.

#3, “for the widows” – that’s the person who has no husband, no provider; the person in dire-straights; or under immense pressure.

God's saying: care for the widows, the fatherless and the stranger; and God has never changed. He's still concerned about the unsaved. He's concerned about those who have no father (and we live in a fatherless generation, we’ve got a whole generation like that); and He's saying to His church (to His people): be intentional about this - this is a lifestyle.

They only had two harvests a year. We get a harvest every week (of fortnight, or month); so this is, for us, all about a lifestyle of: considering unsaved people; and being willing to take what you have in some way, and show kindness to people who are unsaved.

The stranger was someone from another nation, and the reason we're to show kindness is very simple: because you yourself were a stranger once; because we're so grateful to God.

We talk about the need to go witnessing to someone, to share the gospel etc. The church has a responsibility to do that; but firstly, it needs to get the motivation.

The motivation of sharing the goodness of God, is that we have been blessed by God; so when you continue to stay in a place of gratitude and thankfulness, you can intentionally set aside some of your resources for this work of the poor, and the unsaved. What that means, effectively is: sowing into the work of evangelism; and sowing into areas of needs.

Now this could be organised by someone else, and you sow into that; it could be part of the church's work, and we sow into that. It could be something we're doing overseas; or it could be there are people around you, that you can work for and sow into.

That's where God brings strangers to you – you’re surrounded by strangers. What portion of your life is available to them?

Putting it another way: don't spend up to the max, so you've got no money left to give out, to be generous to people at appropriate times.

Don't fill up your diary and your schedule so much that you've got no time to build connections with people, and relate to them.

Don't fill up your own household with so much busyness, you've got no room to show hospitality to people and bring them into your home.

Every part of our life, we can leave a portion of it, so unsaved people or those in need can share it.

When we've bought houses, the first question we always asked was: how will this help us, in the work of the Lord? Will it meet all the needs of our kids?

We've been amazed how God led us to places; everyone had this in common. They were big and had plenty of room, and we could have lots of people in. I love it. I'm so glad we did it. I've never regretted that.

At times it's difficult and challenging, but that doesn't matter, because it's part of a lifestyle. Bigness has to do with your heart; and your lifestyle. You may have a very little house, but you can have a big heart; and have someone in there.

You may have very little money coming in, but you can have a big heart and include someone in what you've got. You may not have anything very much nice in your home, but you can open your home, and have someone come in; and what I’ve found is: the poorest people, with so little, are so generous! In fact some of the most generous people I've found, are in third worlds; they have very little, but they've got a big heart - and what they have got they share with you.

The more materialistic we get, the less generous we often get. Something's wrong; and its because the spirit of Mammon can get a hold of your heart; so it becomes more about me, and what I've got, than about actually God's desire and heart to reach the world.

If you've got a house, bring someone unsaved into it. Get them over for a meal, have a barbeque, bring some Christian friends. Find some ways that you can make portions in your life available to those who don't know Jesus, or those who are in need.

He's saying: “Don't consume everything”. Two things about it here: #1 is the motive. Remember that you were once a slave, and I redeemed you; or putting it another way: remember you were totally in bondage, you were on your way to hell; and I paid a full price, the most expensive price, to pull you out of that state and get you where you are. That's why you do it... Gratitude! Being thankful!

Here's the other reason you could do it too (#2), and that is because: God promises He will bless you. Most of us think: if I give something away, I won't have enough left - and that's fear – “there won't be enough for me”.

So He says: Deuteronomy 24:19 - “I command you to do this thing, that the Lord may bless you in all of the work of your hands”.

So God says: if you'll make this a lifestyle, then everything you do will be touched (or blessed) by God.

Deuteronomy 14:28-29 – “At the end of every third year, you'll bring out the tithe of your produce for that year, and store it up within your gates. And the Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance; and the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, who are within your gates, may come and eat and be satisfied; so the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand.”

Notice again, they were commanded, that on every third year, one of the tithes… They had more than one tithe. They had a tithe for the house of God; they had a tithe for themselves; and from that tithe for themselves, every third year, was given to the poor. In other words, that amounts to 1/3 of 1/10, so 1/30th.

So if you got a wage this week, say $100; then one-thirtieth of it ($3.33) you give (put aside specially) for the blessing of those who are poor. Isn't that wonderful?

That's how we've done it. We've just opened up an account, a thirtieth of everything we get goes in there, sometimes more. Quite simple; then it begins to accumulate and grow up; and there are some other things we've received, and it all goes there, so we can do this.

Notice that this was actually scheduled into the lifestyle of the people of God (in the OT). Why would it not be in the New Testament? It would be even more in the New Testament, wouldn't you think? It would be even larger, in the New Testament?

2 Corinthians 9:5; and it's the same sort of principle: Intentional! “I thought it necessary to exhort you, to go ahead of time, to prepare your generous gift beforehand, which you had previously undertaken to give, that it may be ready as a matter of generosity, not some kind of duty or obligation”.

He's saying: I don't want to come up and take up an offering, and have you under emotional pressure. I want you just to have a think about how God is speaking to you, and how generous you want to be.

An interesting thing with generosity: there's no limit to generosity. You can choose how generous you are. It's something you choose to become.

Of course, you can also hear the voice of God; and you can also be moved by compassion; so I've found that for us, the movers (motivation) that we have, when it comes to generosity, are very simple:

#1, we Hear the Voice of God. Whenever we have anything big, we always hear the voice of God; and here's the one thing I know: I don't hear the Lord clearly on a lot of matters, but when it comes to giving, we just click like that. Joy and I both get the same amount every time - every time!

#2, Compassion; sometimes I just see someone, and I feel my heart move. If I feel my heart move, I don't need any more.

Now I'm not foolish in that, because I remember the Lord speaking to me one time, when I was overseas, about: professional beggars, and the manipulation of emotions; and He said: “in those situations, you need to hear from Me” - so I learnt how to say: no; as well as say: yes.

So one is: hearing the voice of God; and then the other is: the decision to practice generosity, to practice enlarging. If you have a meal, put an extra bit out, and have someone else in; it’s really quite simple. If you have a celebration, bring a few extra people in; have a barbeque, put a few more sausages in, and bring some more people in.

If you go to the beach, then get someone in your car with you. That's why we always have big cars: big family; but we could always bring someone with us as well. Jam them in!

In those days you didn't need all these car seats; however can't do that today. It's a bit more difficult. We used to just jam them - jam them in! It was loaded with people!

So #1, it's a practical expression of being right with God. #2, it's a lifestyle. #3, it has no selfish agenda.

Luke 6:38 – “Give, and it shall be given to you! Pressed down; shaken together; and running over; will be put in your bosom. Same as you use, it'll be measured back to you”.

Often this is preached in the area of money; but actually it's not just referring to money; and secondly, it's not referring to: doing something, so you can get something.

God wants us to understand that generosity is to be a part of our life. Generosity is the evidence of God's grace on your life. Grace is goodness, His love, His empowerment, His blessing.

Just before that one, in Luke 6:31 – “As you want men to do to you, do likewise to them”. Treat people as you'd like to be treated.

“If you love those who love you, what credit…” Now the word ‘credit’ is a poor translation. The word is grace. If you love those who love you, then what grace is on your life? If you're good to those who do good to you, what grace is on your life?

Many people give because they feel they have an obligation to: someone's done something for them, and now they've got to do something back, so they give out of obligation. There's no grace when there's obligation.

“…but if you lend to those, from whom you receive nothing back (and you hope to receive something back) - what grace is on your life? Even sinners do that.

Sinners lend to sinners; do good to sinners; and love those who love them. He says: look, there's no grace.

We're not under law, we're under grace; the goodness, the kindness, the generosity, the abundant extravagance of God. Oh, how we need grace. You need so much grace; because without that, you live under laws.

God wants you to understand the fullness of His grace. He's saying: if I just give, and I want something back out of that; then I'm giving, expecting in return. He said: there's no generosity or grace on your life for that. Sinners will do that.

“If I lend, and I want to get something back…” He said: there's something in this for me, a self-centered agenda; there's no grace when there's a selfish agenda.

There's no grace, when there's duty or obligation. If you do it because you have to (which the law requires), you have no grace on your life. So you've got to make a decision: whatever giving I give; whatever good I'm doing; and whatever else I'm doing; I've got to make a decision inside, about my heart in doing this thing.

Either do it, and do it gladly, and do it 110%; or don't do it at all. Funny thing, when I tell people that, they often say: “I won't do it at all then”, because their heart wasn't right in the first place.

I think it's still better to do good (and then let God help you on your motivation); than to not do good (and have a bad motivation) - but it's better if we have a great motivation.

I've just learned, if you're going to give: give and put your heart into it - put 110% into it; then the 10% extra you put in, is what brings grace into it.

That's why He said: “if they tell you to go a mile, go two miles”. Why? The one mile was required by the law; the second mile (the Roman soldiers were not to make you go a second mile, so if you went a second mile), you are now putting them in debt to you.

Grace was in it, so if someone makes you do something for this much, do a little extra, and the grace has gone into it now, and you're totally empowered, because you have put something in that wasn't required.

Ever notice how, when you ask someone to do something, and they do it reluctantly, they only do about 80% of it? The way to change 80%, into 110% is: put in a little bit extra, that you weren't required to do; now you are fully empowered, and you've become a generous giver. It's a matter of decision; so Jesus, very clearly, He reinforced this much into giving.

It’s not only about money. Notice here - He extends it. He says: Give mercy to people! Didn't God give you some mercy? Give mercy to people.

Don't judge them. If they said: don't judge; He said: don't condemn people. Now it's clear: show mercy to people; don't judge them, condemn them, put them down, write them off, speak about them, criticise them… don't do those things!

Forgive people. Sow out mercy and forgiveness; get over all this stuff of looking at what's wrong in people's lives. In other words: be a generous person.

A generous person gives when people don't deserve it - that's what makes it generous. If you deserved it, then you've worked for it, you're entitled to it; but if you don't deserve it, and you get it - that's what grace is.

That's what grace is, and so God wants us to have grace on our heart, so we can give to people whether they deserve it or not.

It says: here's the consequence of it - two things: #1, there is a reward. You don't have to be afraid that: if you're generous to people, you're too generous.

“I think you were too generous”. How can you be too generous? Too mean maybe, but too generous! How can you be too generous?

Too fearful, maybe? He said: don't be fearful, if you're generous, because you can be sure of this: that God will abundantly reward you.

So when He says: “give, and it'll be given to you”, it's to take away the fear of giving; not to create a motive of giving so you can get something.

God wants us just to learn how to be generous givers, and give not wanting anything, because He said: “if I'm giving without getting anything back…”

I remember doing that: giving for a while… and waiting. I'd seen that scripture: give, and it'll be given to you. Okay, I'll give it; now let's see it! And it didn't happen! I got ticked off… Well that's it- it doesn't work! But I realized, and God spoke, saying “your motive is completely wrong”.

You're just giving trying to get something. You were like that before you were saved. Now you're saved, He said: I want you to learn how to give, and give generously, and give lovingly, give out of a glad heart, give out of a thankful heart.

What if they don't deserve it? Does it matter? Because He's kind to the just and the unjust.

You see, we've got this measuring system, whereby if someone deserves it, then we'll bless them and help them; but if they don't deserve it, we won't. That's the world system by the way.

God is kind to everyone. When you were a sinner, He was kind to you, and sent Jesus to die on the cross. I

Look at a few of the people that are under blessing - there are lots of things going good in their life. Now think about it: God's grace is abundant grace. It's a generous grace.

We need to get out of meanness and smallness, and start to learn how to give. Give kindness, give compliments, give praise, give your time, give your talent. Learn how to become generous with people, generous with people. When you're generous with people your reward will be great.

Here’s the second thing: You will be the sons of the most-high God, sons of your Father.

Most people see Christians as hypocrites. Have any heard that one? There's hypocrites outside the church, as well as ones in it; nothing new about being a hypocrite.

But here's one thing you can't mistake. He said: when you give, and there's no agenda in it, you're not a hypocrite. You're so sincere that people can't work you out.

There's got to be a hitch. There's got to be a string, got to be some test. No, no, no, no. Actually that's what the kingdom is like: God's good to everyone, whether they're good or not.

If we're going to move towards engaging our community, the first thing we have to do is enlarge our hearts and become generous, to be able to give.

What if they don't come to Christ? Was that a waste of time? No, it wasn't! You gave, and sowed the time’ and God knows how to restore it and redeem it to you.

The issue is not what happened in them. The issue is: you doing something God wants you to do - being kind to people; and sowing time into people; connecting with people; investing in people; encouraging people; showing hospitality to people - it's about us doing that.

If we haven't got enough for ourselves, there's no overflow; and if we think people need to deserve it before we'll give it, there's no overflow either.

We need to come into a place of grace: God is good to us. Can w say amen to that? God is good to us!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction (Review)

Jn.12:1-7 “Mary took a pound of very costly oil of Spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil”.

· Generosity is unlimited – you choose how generous you are.

· Generosity that is extravagant is like a sweet fragrance – very noticeable.

· Generosity flows out of a heart of gratitude – Mary grateful Lazarus is alive.

· Generosity exposes greed (vs5-6)

· Generosity is rewarded in unexpected ways (Mt.26:13 – a memorial to her).

2. Generosity is the Practical Expression of being Right with God

· Ps.112:9 “..He has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever”

· Ps.37:21 “…The righteous shows mercy and gives (Also vs 25-26)

· Mt.25:31-40 “Come you blessed of thy Father … for I was hungry and you gave me food”.

· Wikipedia Definition

· Tzedek = righteous

· Tzedakah = charity, generosity to the poor

· Shane Willard (Hebrew meanings)

Tsidag = righteous Tsidagah = generous ‘h = to reveal

Righteousness revealed = generosity

· Hebrews considered that your resources/finances all belonged to God who entrusts you with it – your responsibility is to steward and be generous.

· 1 Jn.4:17 “Whoever has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?”

· The practical outworking of being in right relationship with God is generosity – especially to the poor. (Jm.1:27 – Pure Religion)

3. Generosity is a Lifestyle

· God intends that generosity overflow from our life continually.

· Generosity is both intentional (you plan it) and spontaneous.

OT Examples

(a) Dt. 24:19-22 – Law of Harvesting

- The people were agricultural based; the fields were their source of income.

- Consumerism – pressures people to spend more on themselves.

- God is against consumerism – selfishness and greed

· Don’t consume everything – create margins in life for compassion to the poor.

· Set aside : Money – time – talents for the benefit of others.

· No quantity specified – it is the principle of intentional generosity.

· Give to the stranger (unsaved/gospel), fatherless and the widow.

· Note: Motive v 22 – Gratitude

Re3ward v 19 – God will bless you in every work of your hand.

(b) Dt.14:28-29 – At end of every third year – a tithe for stranger, fatherless and widows within your gates

· Principle of intentional generosity setting aside 1/3 >1/10 = 1/30th

(c) 2 Cor.9:5 – Prepare your generous gift beforehand - generosity

· Principle of intentional generosity – not grudging obligation.

· Plan to set aside a portion intentionally so have provision to give.

4. Generosity has no Selfish Agenda

· Lk.6:38 “Give and it shall be given to you”.

· Most people focus on getting – the motive is to get something for self.

· God’s desire is for us to love being a giver, being generous without an agenda.

· Lk.6:30-38 Context of giving – Grace

- People assume Jesus on speaking about money

- Jesus also speaking about mercy, judgement, condemnation, forgiveness.

- He is talking about the principle of giving and its motivation.

- God weighs the heart motives Prov.16:2

- Principle: whatever you give will come back to you increased.

- World system = trading – I give you something and I expect in return.

e.g. (v32-33) (i) repay someone ) What grace is on your life?

(v34) (ii) hoping for personal gain ) This is just trading

· There is no evidence of grace (true generosity) when give with agendas

5. Generosity is rewarded

· Jesus Directive: Love, do good, lend with no personal agenda of gain.

· Outcome: (i) You establish your identity – son of God. (righteous revealed)

Lk.6:35,38 (ii) You receive great reward from God. (This promise removes fear or

regret in giving).

· God is generous and will ensure a return that is generous. May come in unexpected form, may be delayed, and may be in eternity.

· Example Acts10:2 Cornelius – gave alms generously and rewarded by God.

· Example Acts 4:36 Barnabus – gave generously = apostle.

Eternal Rewards

Introduction to Eternal Rewards (1 of 12)

One of the major themes of Jesus teachings was the theme of Eternal Rewards. This topic is seldom taught in churches, but it provides major motivation for holiness, personal transformation and faithful service. This message is an introduction to the theme of eternal rewards and the need to build our heart and character on Jesus teachings on the Sermon on the Mount.

Key Principles Related to Eternal Rewards (2 of 12)

One of the major themes of Jesus teachings was the theme of Eternal Rewards. This topic is seldom taught in churches, but it provides major motivation for holiness, personal transformation and faithful service.

We shall all stand before the Judgment seat of Christ to give account for our stewardship as followers of Christ. At stake are position, honour and reward in the coming Kingdom of Christ. This message is an introduction to the Bible Foundations of Eternal Rewards.

Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 1 (3 of 12)

One of the major themes of Jesus teachings was the theme of Eternal Rewards. This topic is seldom taught in churches, but it provides major motivation for holiness, personal transformation and faithful service.

We shall all stand before the Judgment seat of Christ to give account for our stewardship as followers of Christ. At stake are position, honour and reward in the coming Kingdom of Christ.

This message looks at the Two of the glorious Eternal Rewards that the Bible reveals are prepared for those who love Jesus, overcome in life and serving faithfully.... Eternal Intimacy and Eternal Authority.

Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 2 (4 of 12)

Eternal Rewards are an important part of Jesus teachings, both in the Gospels and in the Book of Revelation.

Eternal Rewards are Jesus generosity to us in the coming Millennium and beyond that acknowledge our love for Him, our transformation to become like Him and the service we have done on His behalf during our life on earth.

This series brings understanding of the significance and importance of Eternal Rewards. This teaching continues to explain what those rewards are, and its focus is Eternal Glory.

Garments of Glory & Beauty (5 of 12)

Jesus frequently taught about Eternal rewards in the Coming Millennial Kingdom and for the need for His disciples to pursue them and live in preparation for His Second coming.

In this series we examine what are the Eternal rewards that Jesus has reserved for those who love Him. The focus of this study are Eternal Garments of Glory and Beauty.

Victor's Crowns (6 of 12)

A Crown is given to the Victor who has won the race or the fight. It is given in recognition and honour to a person because of what they have achieved or overcome.

In this message we discover five different Crowns that are promised to believers who meet the conditions. These are the Incorruptible Crown, The Crown of Rejoicing, The Crown of Righteousness, The Crown of Life and the Crown of Glory.

Honour, Treasures and Vindication (7 of 12)

The Bible has much to say about eternal rewards. Eternal Rewards are expressions of the value and honour that Jesus places upon those who love and serve Him in this life. The rewards are eternal and will be recognised and valued in the Millennial Kingdom and ages to come.

In this study we examine the rewards Eternal Honour, Eternal Treasure and Riches, and vindication by Jesus before those who have ridiculed or persecuted us.

The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 1 (8 of 12)

Every believer must appear before the Judgment seat of Christ to give account of our life and stewardship service. Our life and works will be examined to establish what rewards we will qualify for.

For some believers this will be a time of celebration, joy and eternal honour. For other believers it will come as a shock as they discover they have wasted the life and opportunities entrusted to them, and that their life and works fail to qualify and they are excluded from the rewards that Jesus had prepared for them. Such believers are saved, but forfeit rewards in the coming Kingdom of Jesus.

The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 2 (9 of 12)

Every believer shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give account of how we have served the Lord and what our lives have become.

What will Jesus take into account when He evaluates our life and service? This study examines key heart qualities that Jesus is looking for that reflect His image has been formed in us, and which overflow into works that honour Him and advance His Kingdom.

The First Resurrection (10 of 12)

The First Resurrection is presented as the great hope and the prize to be won by the believer.

Believers and unbelievers will both arise together in the General resurrection at the end of the 1000-year Millennial Kingdom of Christ.

However, the First resurrection is for those believers who qualify to participate. It is possible for a believer not to qualify for this First resurrection. Some principles of selection are shared in this important study.

Abundant Entrance to the Kingdom (11 of 12)

In 2 Peter 1, Peter describes the necessity of personal transformation and fruit-bearing in the life of the believer.

Peter shares his revelation of Christ coming in majesty to rule and reign, and the necessity of the believer to be diligent in adding to their foundational faith the character qualities of Christ.

Believers who neglect to commit to personal growth, Peter describes as barren, unfruitful, blind, short-sighted, and forgetful of the work and calling of Christ.

Personal growth, heart and character transformation ensure we will never fall, will be fruitful and stable, and will have an abundant entrance into the Coming Kingdom of God.

The Need for Faithfulness - The Parables of the Talents and the Minas (12 of 12)

Two important parables, concerning the end-times and coming Kingdom, are the parables of the Talents and the Minas.

Jesus has entrusted believers with “His goods”, and calls every believer to be faithful in stewarding what has been entrusted to them. He has devised a plan to discover who he can entrust with great authority to rule with Him in His coming kingdom.

There is no limit to the faithfulness that any person can cultivate and develop over the course of our life. At stake is reward and joyful participation in Jesus coming reign on earth.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Introduction to Eternal Rewards (1 of 12).mp3

- Key Principles Related to Eternal Rewards (2 of 12).mp3

- Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 1 (3 of 12).mp3

- Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 2 (4 of 12).mp3

- Garments of Glory & Beauty (5 of 12).mp3

- Victor's Crowns (6 of 12).mp3

- Honour, Treasures and Vindication (7 of 12).mp3

- The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 1 (8 of 12).mp3

- The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 2 (9 of 12).mp3

- The First Resurrection (10 of 12).mp3

- Abundant Entrance to the Kingdom (11 of 12).mp3

- The Need for Faithfulness - The Parables of the Talents and the Minas (12 of 12).mp3

Notes

- Introduction to Eternal Rewards (1 of 12)

- Key Principles Related to Eternal Rewards (2 of 12)

- Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 1 (3 of 12)

- Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 2 (4 of 12)

- Garments of Glory & Beauty (5 of 12)

- Victor's Crowns (6 of 12)

- Honour, Treasures and Vindication (7 of 12)

- The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 1 (8 of 12)

- The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 2 (9 of 12)

- The First Resurrection (10 of 12)

- Abundant Entrance to the Kingdom (11 of 12)

- The Need for Faithfulness - The Parables of the Talents and the Minas (12 of 12)

Introduction to Eternal Rewards (1 of 12)

Sun 7 Jun 2020 AM  « Back to Top

Notes»  Audio»  Paperback(1)»  Website»

One of the major themes of Jesus teachings was the theme of Eternal Rewards. This topic is seldom taught in churches, but it provides major motivation for holiness, personal transformation and faithful service. This message is an introduction to the theme of eternal rewards and the need to build our heart and character on Jesus teachings on the Sermon on the Mount.

Introduction

Welcome to the first series, and this series is called Eternal Rewards and this message is number one in the series and it's called: Introduction to Eternal Rewards.

Probably when you hear it, you'll think I've taught all there is to be taught about it, but I certainly haven't and today we're going to just give you a big, a broad picture and then within that, there'll be many questions arise and there'll be things that you'll want to know more about.

But in our journey, we get revelation right at the very beginning of the teachings around eternal rewards, and they become a motivator for your life. They cause you to set a course for your life that, regardless of what anyone else does, you remain focussed on eternity.

Main Message

Perhaps if I could put it like this: if I were to offer you: $2 now; or $1000 in a weeks' time - what would you take? Children will take the $2 now, because they can't conceive of $1000 in a weeks' time. But anyone who understands the value of things would say: oh man, I'll put off getting my $2 now, because I have in mind something much bigger ahead - and this is what all this teaching is about.

It's being able to lay aside some things now, because there's something much bigger that God has for you. It brings about an adjustment of what's important, so you place less and less importance on temporary things, and more importance on eternal things.

The first thing then is: God is a rewarder! God is a rewarder, and the first thing is that the hope of a reward is a motivator to pursue God. Hope of a reward is a motivator - it’s what motivates us to pursue God.

In Hebrews 11:6, it says: without faith, it's impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Notice that two things are required: 1) that we must believe that: God is present; God is real; God is interested in us; God wants to access us; God wants a relationship with us; and 2) that God rewards. He is a rewarder.

That says that's something about who He is. He's a rewarder. He rewards those who diligently pursue Him. To be a rewarder is one who pays wages generously, so God is generous in rewarding us for the activities we undertake on His behalf to represent Him. The first thing then is: God is a rewarder; and the hope is that He will reward us.

When we look at inheritance, we'll see that God's promise to Abraham was: “I am your shield, I am your exceeding great reward”. So not only is God a rewarder, but it's accessing more of Him that comes as one of the key aspects of our reward.

Secondly, Moses was motivated by the hope of a reward. Hope causes you to look forward to something. Hope causes you to anticipate something. Hope causes you to have an expectation. Hope keeps you looking forward; you know, we're hoping for this holiday, we're hoping for this raise, we're hoping for this new thing.

Moses was motivated by the hope of reward. When you look at Moses, you see his life, and how it was in the Pharaoh's Palace - he had everything possible available to him: education, a significant role, riches and wealth - anything he wanted was his. He was a valiant warrior, and he was a great man. However, he forsook it all! He gave it all up - which people would have thought was crazy, but we understand it when we read in Hebrews 11:24-26.

Hebrews 11 is the book of men who responded to God, who pleased Him. Without faith, without trusting Him, and committing our life to following Him, we can't bring pleasure to Him. Our goal is to bring pleasure to Him, but it requires that we exercise faith that: not only that He is; but if I will give my life to His pursuit, He will reward it.

In Hebrews 11:24 - by faith, Moses when he became of age, refused to be called “son of Pharaoh's daughter”, and he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures or temporary pleasures of sin - esteeming the reproach of Christ's greater riches, than the treasure of Egypt... for he looked to the reward.

We see very clearly that Moses was motivated by hope of reward, and we see several things...

The first thing is about him, is that he refused to identify with Egypt. Now Egypt is a prophetic picture of the world, with its values, its rewards, its incentives... all the things in it which are very temporary in nature. Whenever the Bible refers to Egypt, it always refers to the world dominated by Satan - its values, its culture, all that's in the world - the pride of life, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. All those things are enemies in the relationship with God.

Firstly, it says that he refused to identify with Egypt - even though he had access to privilege and position.

Secondly, he refused the convenient, comfortable life - just cruising along in sin, with the temporary pleasure; and he chose instead that he would identify with Jesus Christ, identify with His purpose, and identify with the people of God.

It was a big choice for him. It was the decision to let go a life of privilege, of position, of power; and instead to identify with God, to identify with the people of God, and with the purpose of God... and he totally embraced it! He chose to accept reproach, ridicule, and misunderstanding of his peers. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God.

When you choose to follow Jesus, the people who knew you - they think you've gone crazy, that you've gone weird! You don't do the things you used to do, because you've chosen a different path; and that path has with it, some hardship. It usually has the hardship of misunderstandings and ridicule by people; esteeming the reproach of Christ, for a greater rich, than the treasures of Egypt - he looked for the reward.

That word ‘looked’ means ‘to have respect for’ - so he valued, or had great respect for, what God offered. He must have had a revelation of it. God must have shown it to him.

It means: to turn the eyes away from everything else and fix them on one thing.

So Moses, even though he's surrounded by everything you could buy... he had money, he had position, power, the opportunity to sin, opportunity to have anything - he turned his eyes away from it all, and fixed his eyes on something that God had shown him - an eternal reward! Something that was not temporary, something that would go on into eternity - forever, and ever, and ever, and ever! he chose the eternal over the temporal.

We find also that the Bible tells of other men and women of faith, who were also motivated by the hope of reward. In Hebrews 11:35, it says: women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.

It's saying here that people, by faith, got miracles to happen! By faith, they endured suffering and even death; and what they saw was that there was a better resurrection available for them.

This opens a whole lot of questions about resurrection. The word ‘better’ resurrection implies that there's the better one, and there's a lesser one; one is better than the other! If you're going to have that opportunity to have something; or something better - you want something better! I always want a bit better for me, I want better for my children, and so on.

In this case, ‘better’, means stronger, more noble, more excellent, greater in strength or power… so clearly there are two resurrections, and one of them is a better one! One of them is stronger. One of them is more powerful. One of them has better outcomes for us.

There is the first resurrection; and we may touch on scriptures around the first resurrection, found in Revelations 20. We read on, but back in 8:52 (and we're just looking at people being motivated by reward), here is another one who was motivated by reward: Paul was motivated by the hope of reward.

Reward offers us something to look forward to, that causes us to go through hardship. If you think about saving up for a house, you first have the vision of the house. You pay a price - you sacrifice. Your eyes are focussed to something you're looking forward to, and that causes you to discipline your life, and bring it into alignment, to get the goal - and that's what Paul has in mind here.

Philippians 3:8-12 - “Indeed, I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and I count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained it or am already perfected; but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ laid hold of me.

Brothers, I don't count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind and reaching forward to the things that are ahead, I press towards the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, if any of us are mature, have this mind - let us, as many as are mature, think this way, have this mind; and if in anything you think differently, God will even reveal this.”

There's a lot in there and that's a passage, so I'll have to go through on its own and open it all up, but I want to just focus on this thought: that he very clearly indicates that there is a prize to attain to - and that he hasn't already attained it.

Notice he uses the words “that I might gain Christ”. He was motivated strongly by the promise of a reward. He said: everything I've succeeded in, all my position, my status, my record, everything I've done... in the light of the prize, I consider it to be just rubbish! Little value! It just... is nothing!

Often when you set out to do a degree, it's a kind of... if I just get that degree, then I've got everything. And then you realise when you've got it... you don't know anything! It's like, it's the other side of it - when you don't have it, it seems like it's everything; but when you have it, you suddenly realise, it's not such a big thing at all!

Paul was motivated by the promise of a reward. Notice he said, “that I might gain Jesus Christ”. Now you think, wait a minute... haven't you already received Christ? Yes, he had. He was born again, so he had received salvation. He was saved. He was joined to Jesus, and the prospect of heaven was certain. But he's talking now about gaining a prize, which is a much deeper intimacy, a much deeper relationship, much deeper connection with Jesus Christ!

He says... “if by any means I might do this”. In other words, there's a possibility I might not make it, so I'm going to do everything I can, to make sure I get it. If by any means there's a possibility I may not win the prize... and so he goes on... not that I've already attained it, or am already perfect, but I press on to lay hold of this!

He said: now Christ has taken hold of me, because he has this in mind for me. Now I need to take hold of Jesus, that I might be ready, and prepared, and qualify for it. He says: I press towards the goal, for the prize of this high calling. If there's a high calling, then there's also a low calling!

He said this is a very high calling! It's the calling of God, to every believer - and it has to do with eternal rewards; and he said: it requires that I ‘press on’ towards that. I make a determined effort; and that I forget the things that have happened, or the successes of the past, or the issues of the past... and I press on towards that goal.

What is the prize? He implies the prize is “winning Christ”; and he implies also that the prize is “by any means, I might attain to the resurrection from the dead”.

This resurrection that he's referring to here, is not the second resurrection. In the general resurrection, everyone will rise from the dead. The word used here is different to the word normally used for resurrection; it's the word “ek”, meaning: “out from”; and “astasis” - resurrection. That I might attain, or reach out and gain, the “out from” resurrection - the resurrection that will “lift me up”, and “out from” everyone else.

He's referring to the first resurrection; and it's a prize that he considers to be won. Every person will rise from the dead. He's saying this: the first resurrection... and even after all he's done, he has no guarantee he will qualify!

In Revelations, it tells us a little bit about the first resurrection…

Revelations 20:5 - “The rest of the dead did not live again until the 1000 years (or millennium) in Christ was finished. This is the first resurrection; and how blessed, and how holy, is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such, the second death has no power; they shall be priests of God, and of Christ - they shall reign with Him on earth for 1000 years.”

There are two resurrections. The first resurrection is a resurrection of reward. It's a prize to contend for, to qualify for; and the outcome of winning that, is that you are resurrected ahead of everyone else! You have a life on earth; and a resurrection body, in which you act as a representative of Christ, bringing order and change to the whole of the earth. I'll talk more about that in another teaching, where we talk about the millennial reign of Christ.

It is a great honour, it's a great blessing, it's a great privilege, it is a prize to be won - the first resurrection. Now regarding this first resurrection, I'll just make one more statement...

Much of the church does not understand that, it's a prize to be won! If you ask them, they don't even know there's two resurrections. They just consider everyone gets raised from the dead... and that's it! However, as we'll see in another teaching, the first resurrection is a prize to be contended with.

He says about the first resurrection: they shall be priests of God, and Christ and will reign with Him 1000 years. Now the promises, all the promises connected to reigning, sharing authority, bringing transformation to this world... always belong to overcomers! This is a promise given only to people who overcome - and that's another series I'll have to do - on the overcomers, what they overcome, and what's involved in all of that.

The next thing is, number four: Paul describes our life as “a race”, for “a prize” or reward.

1 Corinthians 9:24 - “Do you not know that those who run in a race - all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way you may obtain it. Everyone who competes for a prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Thus, I run not with uncertainty; and I fight, not like one who beats the air. I discipline my body, and bring it into subjection, lest having preached to others, I might be disqualified.”

Notice what he's saying. He's saying: our current life is like a race you run, with a prize in mind. Everyone is running this race, and there's an eternal prize to be won.

2 Timothy 4:7 - “I have run my race, I have finished my course, henceforth is laid up for me a crown.”

He was aware that, at the end of race, at the end of his life, that the prize had been won, and that it was for him! Of course, we have no guarantee that it’s for us until we've finished our course. He must have got revelation on it.

He was aware he could be disqualified. The word disqualified means: to be inspected, and not improved - considered unfit to win the prize. Think about that for a moment. If God is Just, then clearly, He must distinguish between people who passionately serve Him, who walk through His process of change and testing... and He must treat them in some way differently, to those who are casual, careless, where there's no prayer life. They're just casual Christians, who turn up at church, but have no commitment to serve... They're inconsistent in their walk. Clearly there's a distinction between those two kinds of people and, to be just, God must address that difference. Paul motivated people who served with the hope of eternal rewards.

Number five, Paul motivated people by pointing them to the reward. Here's a scripture: Colossians 3:22. He's talking to people who are in slavery - they've been captured, and now they're slaves. He doesn't say: rise up, and throw it off, and rebel. He says this…

Colossians 3:22 – “Bondservants, obey in all things your masters, according to the flesh... (notice this) ...not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do - do it heartily, as if you were doing it to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance, for you really are serving the Lord Jesus Christ.”

That’s an amazing scripture there, with a lot in it. I'll just drop a few thoughts out there. He says: servants… now obey, or yield, or submit to those who are over you. He's talking about their natural serving. They were forced to serve people - and those people were quite brutal, and quite harsh.

He says: in your serving, don't do your serving with eyeservice. What does that mean? Eyeservice means that you show off, when the boss is around. It means that you act in a certain way, when you know people are watching. Eyeservice means that I look out to see if anyone's watching, and then I up my game.

He says that when you're doing eyeservice, you're not genuine, you're pretending. Basically, you're doing it as a man-pleaser. You're trying to get the approval of men; and he says: in our service, whatever it happens to be, whether it's a big job, a little job, a tedious job, an insignificant job, an unseen job... whatever you do, in all things, don't operate trying to impress people.

Rather, have a sincere heart. Do it from the heart, out of a reverence that God is watching. Whatever you do, whatever task you have, do it full-heartedly, not negatively, not reluctantly, not half-heartedly, not with a bad attitude. Do it as if you're doing it to the Lord Himself, not to people.

The reason you can do that, is because you know God is watching you, and you know that you are in the process of qualifying for the reward of inheritance.

He starts to now talk about the reward being an ‘inheritance’ that you must qualify for. It's a reward. The key thing is, there is a reward. God is watching everything you do; but more than that, He's watching how you do it.

All of us have had an experience of people who are just slack - they're inconsistent. Their heart is not in things, they don't do things well. They have no revelation that all the behaviour is noticed by God, and that its disqualifying them for eternity.

“Whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men - knowing of the Lord you receive the reward of inheritance” - now that changes the way you look at every task. Whether people acknowledge it, or don't acknowledge it; whether they are happy with me, or unhappy with me; whether they see it, or don't see it - is irrelevant! God sees it all; and I am in my process of qualifying.

As we'll see in another session, our life now is not our main ministry. Our life now is our preparatory ministry. In the millennium, and in the ages to come, we enter our primary ministry. All that you do now is your apprenticeship, it’s preparing you. No one can decide how you will respond to the preparation process.

God's got lots of things in His preparation process, including being ignored, overlooked, treated unjustly, people carrying on like you've done nothing, others getting the reward for things you've done... all that kind of stuff! It's all about the development of your heart - that your longing, and desire, is to please the Lord.

The last one then, on this theme here, on that point is that Jesus motivated His disciples by the promise of eternal reward. In Matthew 19:27, Peter answered and said: we've left everything, and followed You - so what shall we get? That's a good question isn't it? We've sacrificed. We've given up a lot. We're serving You. We're whole-heartedly following You. We've given up our business, we've given up our lives to follow You. What are we going to get?

And I said I assuredly... (In other words, you can guarantee, you can write this on your shorts, you can guarantee it) ...I say to you that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on His throne of glory... (that when Jesus, that's the Son of Man, when He comes in His kingdom, and in His glory) ...you who have followed Me shall sit on 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

He's saying that in the coming kingdom, you will be with Me. You'll sit with Me. There will be 12 thrones, 12 realms of authority and rulership that I will give you; that you will rule over, and govern, on My behalf - the 12 tribes of Israel.

We know that Israel had 12 tribes; and although they've been scattered, they will be gathered; and those in charge of them, who will rule them, guide them, direct them, govern them... will be the 12 apostles.

When are these rewards to come? The rewards that God has in mind are eternal rewards. That means they're not temporary.

God does give temporary rewards. We are blessed with temporary rewards. We have a house, we have cars, friends, we have blessings, and favour - these are all temporary things. In the end, they all pass away, you leave them all behind. Everything you can see; if you can see it, and touch it, then it can be left behind; but there are also eternal rewards.

Eternal rewards are given to us at the second coming of Christ, when He comes again - and that's a whole teaching of its own, what that looks like, and what that will involve. Jesus taught this directly…

Matthew 16:27 - “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father and the angels, and He will reward each, according to his works.”

He said: when the Son of Man comes, in the glory of His Father with His angels... (he's talking about the second coming of Jesus Christ, which is the great hope of the church) ...then He will reward each one. He's talking to His disciples, so every disciple, every follower of Christ, will face an encounter with the Lord; and at stake, will not be whether you go to heaven on earth, or heaven, or not. What's at stake will be: what level of reward (or not).

Revelations 22:12 - “Behold, I am coming quickly, My reward is with Me, to give every one according to his works.”

Notice there that it's our work, it's what we did; and we'll have to explore that a bit more, what's required of us, in another session. But notice the thing we're bringing out here, is that eternal rewards are connected to the coming of Jesus Christ. Both of those scriptures indicate that, and Jesus also taught the same thing in His parables.

When He taught in the parables, particularly Matthew 24 and 25, He taught about the second coming. They asked Him: when are You coming again; what are the signs of the End of the Age; what are the signs of You coming - and He gave several parables. Each one of the parables has to do with the issue of reward or loss at His coming.

The first one is the Parable of the Wise and Faithful Servant, Matthew 24:45-51. The issue there was how he handled himself in the house of God; and the issue is reward or loss. The reward is authority and responsibility in the coming kingdom.

Then from Matthew 24, it goes on to Matthew 25:1-13, the Wise and Foolish Virgins; and again, the issue of reward - some were rewarded, some lost the reward. What was the reward? Entrance to the celebration of the Marriage Supper of Jesus Christ.

The third one He mentioned is in Matthew 25:14-30, and it's about the faithful servant, or the productive servants. Again, the issue is reward or loss; and the reward offered there is authority and responsibility in the coming kingdom.

There are more like this. There's another one in Luke 19:11-27, also about the faithful servant, and the issue again is reward or loss; and the reward at stake is: authority over cities, to rule over groups of people in the coming kingdom, and establish God's order, and peace, and prosperity… in governance.

You understand then, that in being faithful over little, God responds with much. It's just like the: $2 now; or $1000 in a week. It's like, you just can hardly compare the two! All these parables are stories with a lesson, and all of them are parables about the kingdom, about the coming of the Lord, and the need to prepare. In every one of the parables there's reward. Some are rewarded; some lose their reward, and some suffer loss; but in every one of the stories, there are some actions people did, which others didn't do, that resulted in reward. All of these have in common: reward and loss; and the timing of it is to do with the coming of the Lord, the return of the Lord.

John saw it in End Times, in the Book of Revelation. In Revelations 11:15-16, he talks about the seventh angel sounding... “and there were loud voices in heaven, saying: the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ - He shall reign forever.”

It says... “We give thanks to You, O Lord God Almighty, the One who was, and is, and is to come - you've taken Your great power, and reigned. The nations were angry. Your wrath has come, the time of the dead, they should be judged. And that You should reward Your servants, the prophets, the saints, and those who fear Your name, small and great.”

Notice, he connects: the seventh angel sounding, the coming of the Lord, and then... reward for the servants of the Lord. So those who have served the Lord faithfully will be rewarded. That brings us then to the next heading…

All our works will be Judged. God will evaluate the works of every believer!

The first thing is: everyone gives account of their works to the Lord - everyone! There's one appointment we will all keep, and it doesn't matter who we are. Our position is irrelevant; our title is irrelevant; our wealth is irrelevant. Every one of us must give an account of oneself to the Lord.

Romans 14:12 - “So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.”

2 Corinthians 5:9 - “We make it our aim, or our goal, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.”

This is motivating!

“I want to bring pleasure to Him, for we must all appear before the Judgement Seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the Body, according to what he's done - good or bad. Knowing the Fear of the Lord, we persuade men.”

Again, there are not only two Resurrections; there are also two Judgements. The final judgement is the Great White Throne Judgement, found in Revelations 20:11-15; but this judgement, referred to here, is called the Judgement Seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:9). The Judgement Seat of Christ comes at the beginning of Christ's reign on the earth, and it is where believers are evaluated as to whether they qualify to enter that kingdom, that realm, and to be rewarded.

The second thing then is that all our works will be evaluated by Jesus. He's interested in our stewardship. After we got saved... What did you do with what was entrusted to you? In 1 Corinthians 3:10, and Paul is writing. He said:

“According to the grace of God, which was given to me, as a wise master builder, I laid the foundation, and another builds on it.”

Here's the warning: “Let everyone take heed how he builds on it. No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, or wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear, or manifest, for the Day - that's the Day of the Lord - will declare it or it will be revealed by fire; the fire will test everyone's work (what sort it is).”

That's a whole passage for me to go into more detail, but if I can pick up some key things in it…

The first is, his warning: everyone should take heed how you build - what you do. ‘Take heed’ means to carefully think about what you're doing, how your life is progressing, how you're building. He says: take heed how you build - in other words, the motivation, the principles that you're using to build your life - what lies in behind it.

He warns people; you can build on wood, hay, stubble. These are temporary things. The response of people, the claim of people, temporary reward - things that are just short term; and he says: these are things which are consumed by the fire, because they're all about what I can get. Gold, silver, precious stones... these will survive the fire - they are eternal.

For example, if I serve you in order to get something back - that is wood, hay, stubble; but if I serve you with no agenda but to bless you, and to honour Jesus in doing so - that is gold, silver, precious stones. You understand? The same work may have been done, but the motivation was different.

You think of people you know - they have all kinds of agendas for what they do. God sees all of that, and it's not all the things you do, but what motivates what you do - what is being manifested in what you do. Is selfishness, and self-centredness, and ambition being manifest? Or is there just a genuine love for people and love for Jesus? He can tell the difference. Usually people can too!

He says: people may get away with lots of stuff today, but at the coming of the Lord, it'll be tried by fire, and the fire will reveal what was concealed, or covered, or that you didn't see.

People may look like they have a great ministry. They may look important. They might look successful. They may look like they've done very well… but God looks on the heart, and sees what motivated them, what's going on - and whether this is built on the foundation of love for God and people; or whether it's built on an ambition, selfish ambition and desire to get themselves ahead. He sees the very core of our motivation and judges the works accordingly. He sees each work, what sort it is, its quality.

Then of course, he goes on to say: rewards and loss are possible. If anyone's work that is built endures, he will receive a reward. In other words, if you let God test your work, if you let Him access what you do, and He views it, then what He has in mind is: His desire is to reward you.

So basically, if you were to look at perhaps, a chain that's producing something, they do what they call quality testing. They take one out, and test the quality of it; and what they're looking for is: does it meet the maker's standard, or does it fall short? If it falls short, it's disapproved; and then you must adjust the process. If it passes, then it goes on.

He said: “if anyone's work endures, He'll reward it. Anyone's work is burnt, he suffers loss, but he will be saved, yet even by fire.”

Notice that the issue here is not being saved - both people are saved. The issue here is reward or loss. If the work is burnt, he suffers loss, but he's saved. He's saved, but he's done nothing of great value that would qualify him for the things God had in mind in eternity.

In other words, he failed his apprenticeship. He didn't put in the required labour to prepare himself, that he could be qualified. Take the example of a doctor or surgeon. What if a guy goes through medical school, but he fails all his exams, and doesn't turn up for the practicals - he's away for half of the classes? When he gets to the end of the year - he won't qualify.

Not qualifying means you didn't meet what was required, to put you into a position where you can be permitted to operate on people. Even when they come to be operating on people, there's still a process of internship around that area as well - same as with a dentist, or anyone doing an important job like that. You're not going to let someone operate on you who failed, who didn't pass - that makes sense.

Neither will God put into positions of authority and responsibility, and bring into intimacy, people who, throughout all their Christian walk, were self-centred, and ambitious, and had no heart for God and for His people. Make sense? It's about our stewardship, and how we've handled it.

What are the rewards? If I can just share with you what He has in mind, what are the rewards at stake, what is it He's offering. Each one of these is very big, and it will require me taking some time to show you what it will all be about.

I note firstly, that in the coming kingdom, not everyone is the same. We like to think everyone's the same. We like to think we're all equal. We even try to equalise one another out, try to get ahead of one another; but in the kingdom of heaven, in the kingdom of God, in the coming millennial kingdom, and all through eternity - people will occupy different realms of intimacy, or closeness and companionship, with Jesus. Now that's quite stunning!

If you've got no love for His presence now, then this is not something you'd want. But the more you are intimate with Him, the more you want of Him, the greater the hunger. In the coming kingdom, in eternity, people will have different realms of level of access to Jesus. Some will be very near to Him; some will be further away; some will be far away.

A simple way of looking at that would be: you have a prime minister, who runs the country. As a normal citizen, you don't get close access to them. You get access to their representatives - it's just practical. In the coming kingdom, it will be the same.

Secondly, there will be in that kingdom, different realms of service and authority and responsibility. God has in mind that, in the coming millennial kingdom, His people will occupy positions of authority and power and influence and will guide the courses of the nations. Cities, nations, communities - someone must guide it all.

Once you start to think about that, you realise - now I see why I'm just on an apprenticeship. Right now, if I can't handle what I've got, I'm in no way going to be qualified to do anything great in the coming kingdom. If you see yourself as being in an apprenticeship, then it doesn't matter what your assignment is.

Your assignment could be just your one child at school, and that's it - and you've got very little time for anything else, so that's where your assignment is. God watches that, and that's your qualifier. He watches what you do. He watches how you do it, and why you're doing it. He watches what you do in adversity. He watches the way you manage, and handle, and bring His life into it - as simple as that!

I don't need to compete with anyone for their position, or their assignment. Everyone has their own unique assignment and, even on this earth, as you are faithful and productive in your assignment, you get your assignment enlarged.

I had a season where I gave up a career, gave up security, gave up finances, gave up reputation, in order to start a school, which had a few, just a handful of kids in it - and that was my preparation process, qualifying for a larger, global ministry. People look at the global ministry, and they think: oh, I want that! How do I get that? What can I do to get there? They don't see that there were lots of little decisions, over the little things. You know, the managing of the tea, the cleaning the building - all the little stuff, cleaning the toilets, all the stuff I did. You understand, that's all part of it.

Then the third area is that there will be different realms of resurrection glory. People tend to think of just being raised from the dead; but when we're raised, each of us will be displayed in different levels of glory, in a way that everyone can see what kind of life we've lived.

No one knows what you're doing in secret; your secret pain, your secret struggles, your secret temptations, your secret fears, the pressures you've gone through, the loneliness you've walked through… but God sees it all; and in eternity, we will be surprised that He will ascribe to people that we would never have thought of, immense glory, because of the kind of life they lived before Him.

As you understand this teaching then, suddenly you've set your eyes on eternity. Eternity is real, the rewards are real; and everything I'm doing now is either: preparing me for it; or disqualifying me from it. It's got nothing to do with what anyone else is doing; it's got totally to do with my decision to live a life with Jesus at the centre, and to honour Him.

These rewards that He promises - they begin in the millennial reign of Christ

(the 1000 years when He rules on the earth, literally), and they go on for eternity. When you come to the point where that kingdom starts, whatever He decides, regarding you, is irreversible, and unchangeable. You are what you are, and you have qualified or disqualified; or qualified to a certain level, or whatever. That gives an incentive for all of us to be faithful, and productive, and do the very best with what we have.

Colossians 3:23 - “Whatever you do, do it from the heart unto the Lord, not with eye services pleasing men, knowing this: that God is preparing you for a reward.”

The last section that I want to look at, is the Wise and the Foolish Builders. Jesus' conclusion in the Sermon of the Mount - His famous Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:6-7, in the context of this. Jesus concluded at the end of it…

Matthew 7:21-27 - “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father. Many will say to Me, in that day: Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in Your name? We cast out demons in Your name. We did many wonders in Your name, and I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from Me you who practice lawlessness.

Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of Mine and does them, I liken him to a wise man who builds his house on the rock: the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on the house. It didn't fall, it was founded on a rock.

Everyone who hears these sayings of Mine and doesn't do them, is like the foolish man built his house on sand; the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, beat the house and it fell down. It was a great fall.”

Firstly, the context of the teaching… this is the Sermon on the Mount. He's teaching the heart required to operate in the kingdom. He's teaching the core heart values, and lifestyle, of the kingdom. He's teaching about the heart of the kingdom.

All His teaching there, in the beatitudes, are about the kind of heart you cultivate: a hungry heart, a humble heart, a meek heart, a pure heart… Then at the end of the sermon, He finishes it off, and He starts to talk about the coming millennial kingdom.

Part of God's kingdom is present with us now. In the millennium all of it will come in its fullness, and in great power, that will be irresistible. So now, He's talking about the entrance. Notice what He said, He uses these words:

“On that day, many will say”. When the Bible uses the term ‘that day’, it's referring to the second coming of the Lord to establish His kingdom. It's also called ‘the Day of the Lord’. It's also called ‘the Great and Terrible Day’ - it's great for some; and terrible for others.

The Day of the Lord is a period of time, not just a 24-hour day. When it says ‘that day’, it's talking about the coming of the Lord; and it refers to the period of time just before the millennial reign of Christ, when He'll shake the nations, and then His kingdom will manifest. Notice what Jesus warned His disciples: He said ‘many’!

“Not everyone who says: Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom, he who does the will of my Father.”

What He's saying is: there's something required of you; and not everyone who does things in the church is going to qualify. He said: many will say, in that day... many, many... “Whoa! We did miracles! We prophesied, cast out demons! He's saying: no, you don't qualify. I'll tell you why they didn't qualify, in a moment.

Notice then, that we're all builders, of some kind of house. Every one of us is a builder. The word ‘son’, and the word ‘daughter’, both come from the root ‘to build the Father's house’. Whenever God calls us ‘sons and daughters’, He's saying: we are builders.

The first house you build is your own life - your character, your heart. You are responsible for your heart attitudes, your heart values, for your character, and the development of your life. No one can do it for you.

We are builders of marriage. Marriages must be built, families must be built, finances must be built, business must be built, churches built... Nothing just happens. Ministries are built.

Jesus says then, the wise man and the foolish man - which are you? Both were building; and both, on the exterior, looked similar. They had similar materials, but it was the foundation was different. The exterior is what you can see; and the foundation is what you can't see - it's only seen by God. God looks at your heart. You may look successful, but He sees what it really is all made of.

In 1 Samuel 16:7, Jesus (the Lord) said to Samuel: don't look at the appearance, or the physical stature, for I have refused him. The Lord doesn't see like man sees - Man looks on the outward appearance; but God looks on the heart. God always looks on the heart.

No matter what you've built with your life, it's your heart God is interested in. Your exterior success is not nearly as important to God as what motivated it; or what was in your heart, as you did it.

Notice He says then: the storms come upon the wise man, and the foolish man - so no one is exempt from the storms. He said: the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on the house. Rain refers to divinely initiated storms. Rain comes from heaven. The rain that comes means that God initiates a storm, that uncovers what's going on in your life. Some storms come from God, and they expose what our life is like.

Now He says: floods came. Floods often refer to the actions of ungodly people. Some things that come against us - unkind, unloving, and often very hurtful mistreatment by people - they're the floods.

The winds refer to spirits - the pressure of demonic spirits. We can have storms come into our life that can come from God. They can come from people's behaviour towards us, bad treatment of us; or they can come from demonic spirits directly. But the storms will reveal what the foundation of your life is like, what you're built on.

Storms will come now, currently in life, and they're to grow you. But at the end, every storm is to expose the condition of your heart, to give you opportunity to change. At the end, He's saying that in the coming of the Lord, God's going to uncover the whole deal - what you really built.

Who is the wise man? The wise man built his house on the rock; but the foolish man built his house on the sand - what does that mean? Fortunately, Jesus explained exactly what it means to build your house on the rock. Now the Bible tells us in more than one place, that God is a rock.

Psalm 18:31 - “Who is a God, except the Lord? Who is a rock, except our God?”

In 1 Corinthians 10:4, it says: “the rock is Christ”.

When it's using rock - it's something that's stable, that can stand up to storms, because it's eternal in value. But Jesus in the passage says exactly what it means.

“Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of Mine and does them, I'll liken them to the wise man who built his house on the rock.”

We're not talking about everything Jesus is saying, although it can apply to that. He's saying: whoever hears these sayings of Mine. He's just concluding His Sermon on the Mount, so when He says: “these sayings of Mine”, it's referring to what He's just taught, which is about the heart values of the kingdom.

He said: whoever hears these heart values of the kingdom - what I require, to establish and build My kingdom - whoever hears, and puts those into his life, and applies them - that man is the stable man. That's the man who'll stand the test of storms.

The teaching He's referring to are the core heart values of the kingdom. In other words, there is a need for a transformed heart.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

If you want to receive from God expansion to your life, and your influence, develop the quality of meekness. Put focus on developing a meek heart. If you want to be lifted, and given greater promotion, God says: develop a humble heart - humble yourself, and He will lift you up.

There's all kinds of things through the teachings there, that are heart issues; so in other words, in the teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, you find constant reference to the motivation; not just What people did, but the Why they did it.

Matthew 5:46 - “If you love those who love you, what reward have you? Even the sinners will do that.”

Notice he said: if you love those who love you; so basically, you're doing a payback. They gave to you, and you don't want to be indebted to them, so you're paying them back. He said: if that's all you do, there's no reward! There's no eternal reward in that.

In Luke 6:35, he says the same thing. He said: “if you love your enemies, and do good, and lend, and hope for nothing in return, your reward will be great.” Your reward will be great! In other words, he's saying that giving, and kindness, that has no personal agenda will be rewarded by God, because it carries the heart of the kingdom. It carries the heart of the King! It represents the King!

He talks the same thing about giving - “take heed you don't do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen of them, otherwise you have no reward, of your Father in heaven.”

Notice here: gave money to the poor. Was that good? Was it bad? I don't know - why did they do it? If we do it so people will notice, and say: man, that's great - then you've already got your reward. But if we give, and we don't announce what we've done, if we don't try to get approval from people - we just secretly give, as God directs us, as God leads us, and guides us... He said: I see it! I will reward you!

Remember, you can't have the reward both ways. If you try to get it by impressing people, you can't have it from God. If you want it from God, then don't worry about impressing people. Unfortunately, what happens is that we do things, and we serve, and we give - and often it's overlooked. It's not even noticed - and that tests out whether you are doing it for the Lord; or are you doing it to have someone acknowledging you; someone that's saying: oh, you're great, you're wonderful. And always, it will be withheld. Always, if that's what you're looking for, you'll never get enough; and eventually you get offended - and that's what happens to many people. They get offended, because of what they were looking for - they were not giving, they were not loving - they were trading! Trading means: I give you this, but I expect something in return. They gave something, but they wanted something in return - they just never said When it didn't come - they got upset!

It's the same for praying. “When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who like to pray, and stand in the streets to be seen by men.” Notice that the motivation here is to be seen by men, rather than be seen by God.

When we come into the age of the kingdom, we're going to be amazed at people who are honoured by God. They were praying, and giving, and doing things... we never saw them. They never had a position in the church. No one ever noticed them, everyone just walked past them; but they quietly got on with serving God and doing what they were called to do - and God noticed.

He refers to it too again, in the motivation for fasting. “When you're fasting, don't be like the hypocrites, who put on a sad face and announce everything; but rather, do it secretly, that your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

Notice then, that the whole issue here of the foundation, is the motivation for what we do. The motivation flows through, like a river, everything you do. If there's love, generosity, humility, kindness - the characteristics of the kingdom, then it touches everything you do, and it brings God's favour on it.

When you work hard, give, and serve, but always you're looking for something, and trying to get something in return - somehow it never cuts it. It never seems to get a return. It's like, what is wrong? I've done everything. Why is nothing happening? And we haven't seen it's a heart issue.

Then he continues... and who's the foolish man? Well, he didn't align his heart with God. He didn't let his heart be transformed; and his works were all built with people in mind. Jesus laid it out very, very clearly.

He said: “many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, did many wonders in Your name.” Notice there is prophecy, miracles, and deliverance - but what was missing? What was missing was the heart motivation.

1 Corinthians 13:1-2 - “If you prophesy, and know all these things, but there's no love, it is like empty and clangy, it profits nothing.”

Many are like that! Many use God's gifts, God's grace, and God's resources to impress people, and gain recognition; and he said: all of that will count for nothing!

Then He says: what's going on?

1) I never knew you;

2) You practice lawlessness.

What does he mean by that? He means these things: First, I never knew you. He means they lacked real intimacy with Jesus, and heart transformation. Relationship with Jesus is designed to bring progressive change in our heart. The more we're loved, the more loving we become. The more He touches us, the more we want to touch and bless people.

When He says: “I never knew you”, the word ‘knew’ is the word used to describe the intimacy of a husband and a wife - it's a very deep intimacy. The first priority we have is an intimate relationship with Jesus - to know Him. It's like a life-long journey, deepening my connection to Him, bringing the little things in my life to Him, having it invade the little parts of my life. And it results in heart transformation.

God is looking for people who want to know Him, and want to find what He wants; so you can either live your life pleasing everyone, doing what everyone else wants - oh you're a great person, doing this, doing that - but the key question is: did you do what God designed you to do; or did you fit someone else's plan? It really will always come down to that and so the first reason they were rejected was because of a deep lack of ongoing intimacy that led to transformation of their heart.

Jesus in contrast, in John 17:4 said - “I have brought honour to You, I finished the work You gave me to do and I manifested Your name or revealed Your heart.” We see it all in there.

The second thing he says is: “you're workers of iniquity”. That word means: to be distorted from God's original intention or plan. Probably, it means: to promote yourself. What He's saying is: you never made Me your first priority, and grew in the knowledge of Me, and had a transformation of heart, so you become like Me. What you did instead was: you promoted yourself, and used the gifts for your benefit, and for your advancement.

You can see then, that the labours had no eternal value, because of what motivated them. Their heart remained; and He said: great will be the fall. The key challenge then is, as we just go through it very simply, just an overview…

1) Eternal rewards are real. God is a rewarder; and people throughout the Bible have been motivated by that hope.

2) God's eternal rewards are rewards that go into the millennium. They start at the millennium, go into the millennium, and right through to eternity. They're given at Jesus' coming, and Jesus taught it directly - that He would reward people at His coming. He also taught it in His parables indirectly. John saw it in His teaching, in His revelation, in the Book of Revelation.

3) God is going to evaluate each one of us. Every person will give an account of themselves; and what we'll give account of ourselves for, is how. What sort of work we've done, and what was the motivation in it? He will check all our work - what sort, or what value, there was in the work.

If it's motivated by love, and the desire to honour God, and love people, then it's work that lasts the fire. If it's motivated by self-promotion, and self-interest, then it won't last.

4) We saw then that rewards are at stake, and the rewards involve increasing intimacy with Jesus. It involves authority and responsibility in His kingdom. It involved realms of glory in our resurrection body.

5) Finally, we can choose to be a wise, or a foolish, builder. The wise builder understands that the teachings of Jesus, in Matthew 5:6-7 (the Sermon on the Mount), are designed to show us the heart characteristics of the kingdom that will cause a stable life, that will be rewarded.

We saw also when Jesus spoke, that at the Day of the Lord there will be a massive shaking that will uncover everything that people have built. God will see to it that everything we've done will be brought to the light.

The wise one will have built his life on a revelation of Jesus Christ and obedience to Him. The foolish man will have heard all this stuff, but there's been no transformation, no change. He basically still does his own thing. The key thing is: he that does the will of My Father.

Doing the will of My Father - first thing, is His desire for intimacy; and second, His desire for us to change; and thirdly, His desire to discover and fulfil our assignment.

So, there it is: kingdom rewards - the introduction to it. I've just started you off, and once you start, you see it's a huge thing in the Bible. There's many topics that we could just branch out from, in all these areas.

We can go into the area of the Day of the Lord.

We can go into the area of the second coming.

We can go in to look at the area of: what are the rewards?

The different rewards of the...

- Wedding feast

- Ruling and reigning with Christ

- Different realms of glory

- Different resurrections.

We could go on to look at some of the things around…

- The motivation.

- How do you become intimate?

- How do you become faithful?

- How do you qualify

...all of those areas, and that's the theme around eternal rewards.

Summary Notes

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ER1: Introduction to Eternal Rewards

I. God is a Rewarder

1. The Hope of Reward Motivates Us to Pursue God

* Heb. 11:6 - But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

* “Rewarder”…..One who pays wages generously

* Our faith is demonstrated by our consistent pursuit of God for encounter and breakthrough

2. Moses was Motivated by the Hope of Reward

* Heb. 11:24 - By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, v26 esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.

* Moses refused to identify with Egypt (The World System)

* Moses refuses the comfortable and convenient life of sin with its temporary pleasure(enjoyment)

* Moses chose to identify with Jesus Christ and His purpose for His life and His people

* Moses chose to accept the reproach, ridicule and misunderstanding by his peers and friends

* “Looked to”……to have respect for, to look towards, to turn the eyes away from everything else and fix them on one thing

* His heart was set on the eternal reward revealed and prepared for him by God

3. Men and Women of Faith were Motivated by the Hope of Reward

* Heb. 11:35 - Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not

accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.

* “Better”….Stronger, more noble, more excellent, greater in strength and dominion

* There are two resurrections. The first resurrection is a stronger, more powerful resurrection

4. Paul was Motivated by the Hope of Reward

* Php 3:8 - Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

* Php 3:12 - Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.

* Paul was motivated strongly by the promise of a reward

* “Gain Christ”…..To Acquire, to win a prize that is offered

* “If by any means”…this implies that there is a possibility of not achieving his goal and the need to do all he could to win the prize

* “Resurrection from the Dead”….literally…the “Out From” resurrection

* Every person will rise from the dead. Paul is referring to the First Resurrection

* Paul does not consider even after all he had done that he would attain the First Resurrection

* Rev 20:5 - But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.

* He considered that it was a prize to be contended for and won

5. Paul Describes our Life as a Race for a Prize or Reward

1Col. 9:24 - Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore, I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus, I fight not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

* Paul considered life is a race to be run with a prize in mind…an eternal prize

* He was aware of the possibility of becoming disqualified for the prize

* “Disqualified”….inspected and not approved, unfit for the prize in view

6. Paul Motivated Servants with the Hope of Eternal Reward

* Col 3:22 - Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ

* “Eye-service”….Acting in a certain way only when you know people are watching

* “Sincerity”….singleness, without self-seeking, hiding under a false appearance

* “Reward”……recompense, reward or pay someone,

* He is encouraging servants to do their work as if they were personally serving watched closely at every moment by Jesus Christ Himself

* “Reward of the Inheritance”...We each have an inheritance set apart for us but must mature to qualify

7. Jesus Motivated His Disciples by the Promise of Eternal Reward

Mat 19:27 - Then Peter answered and said to Him, "See, we have left all and followed You. Therefore, what shall we have?" So Jesus said to them, "Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.

* Jesus response to Peter’s question was to reveal the reward of intimacy and ruling with Him in His coming Millennial Kingdom

* There is an inheritance laid up for every believer

II. Eternal Rewards are Given at Jesus Second Coming

1. Jesus Taught This Directly

* Mat 16:27 - For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."

* Rev 22:12 - "And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work.

* “Reward”…….The rewards that God will bestow on believers in acknowledgement for their works

2. Jesus Taught This in His Parables

* The Wise and Faithful Servant

Matt. 24:45-5 - Reward or Loss…..Authority and Responsibility in His Coming Kingdom

* The Wise and Foolish Virgins

Matt. 25:1-13 - Reward or Loss……….Entrance to the Marriage Supper of The Lamb

* The Faithful Servant

Matt. 25:14-3 - Reward or Loss….Authority and Responsibility in His Coming Kingdom

* The Faithful Servant

Luke 19:11-27 - Reward or Loss……Authority and Responsibility in His Coming Kingdom

* The Wedding of The King’s Son

Matt.22:1-14 - Reward or Loss……..Entrance to the Marriage Supper of The Lamb

* Parables are stories with a spiritual lesson contained within the story

* Each of these Parables is about The Kingdom of God with a focus on our need to prepare

* Each of these parables is a story of Reward and Loss…some are rewarded and some suffer loss

* In each story it was the actions or lack of action that resulted in Reward or in Loss

3. John Saw This in His End Time Revelations

* Rev 11:15 - Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!"

Rev 11:16 - And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: "We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, The One who is and who was and who is to come, Because You have taken Your great power and reigned. The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, And should destroy those who destroy the earth."

III. God will Evaluate the Works of Every Person

1. Each of Us Must Give Account of our Works

* Rom 14:12 - So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.

* 2Co 5:9 - Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.

* There are two places of Judgment:

a. The Great White Throne… Rev. 20:11-15

b. The Judgement Seat of Christ… 2Cor. 5:9

2. All Our Works Will be Evaluated by Jesus

* 1Col. 3:10 - According to the grace of God, which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.

For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.

* Note Paul’s Warning: “let each one take heed how he builds on it.”

* “Take heed”…. To carefully consider and weigh up

* “How”…In what way, the motivation, and principles that we build with

* He warns each of us regarding how we go about building our lives and ministries

* “Wood, Hay, Stubble…materials that are consumed by fire…temporal

* “Gold, Silver, Precious Stones…materials that survive fire...eternal

* “The Day”…refers to the Day of the Lord, the time of Jesus return

* “Reveal”…disclose, make bare, bring out into view what has been covered

* Fire refers to God himself

* Heb. 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire. In Revelation Jesus is described and “having eyes like a flaming fire”

* Rev.2:18 …eyes that see and penetrate into the very core of our heart and its motivations

* “He sees each one’s work, what sort it is” ( The quality or nature or kind)

* He sees into the very core of motivation behind our works and judges them according to the standard of His nature

3. Reward or Loss are Possible

* 1Col. 3:14 - If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. (Pay, wages, recompense) If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

* The issue at stake is: Rewards or Losses that Jesus distributes for our labours in advancing His Kingdom

* If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire

* The issue here is not whether we are saved or not…..”he himself will be saved”

* It is not about Salvation …..it is about our Stewardship after we are saved

* What have we done, what have we become that would qualify for reward?

4. What are the Rewards at Stake here?

It refers to different realms of reward in the Coming Millennial Kingdom:

• Different realms of Intimacy with Jesus…closeness and companionship

• Different realms of Authority and Service assigned

• Different realms of Resurrection Glory visible to all men

• Rewards are for the Kingdom Age and for eternity…..they are irreversible and unchangeable

IV. The Wise and Foolish Builders

1. Jesus Conclusion to His Sermon on the Mount

* Mat 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'

Mat 7:24 - "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house;

and it fell. And great was its fall."

2. What is the Context for this Teaching?

* Jesus is teaching His famous “Sermon on the Mount”

* His sermon teaches the core values and lifestyle of the Kingdom of God…

* He is teaching on The heart of the Kingdom

* At the end of His sermon He talks about Entrance to His Coming Millennial Kingdom

* Some will enter…some will be refused entrance

3. What is meant by “That Day”?

“That Day”…..

* The Second Coming of the Lord to establish His Kingdom

* Also called “The Day of The Lord”

* Also called “That Great and Terrible Day

* Joe 2:30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come

* Zep 1:14 - The great day of the LORD is near; It is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the LORD is bitter; There the mighty men shall cry out. That day is a day of wrath, A day of trouble and distress, A day of devastation and desolation, A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness,

* Isa 2:11 - The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, The haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, And the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the LORD of hosts Shall come upon everything proud and lofty, Upon everything lifted up —And it shall be brought low—

* “That Day” refers to the period of time before the millennial reign of Christ on earth when He will shake all the nations.

4. Jesus Warning to His disciples

* Mat 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

* This is a parable….a story with a clearly visible truth to give understanding of the truth Jesus has just taught

* He is warning people of the requirements to enter and experience His Coming Kingdom

5. We are all Builders of Some Kind of House

* Sons & Daughters… both words come from the root…”To Build the Fathers House”

* House = Life, Heart & Character, Marriage, Family, Finances, Business, Church, Ministry

* Jesus describes a wise man and a foolish man….WHICH ARE YOU?

* Both men were builders….Both men built a house

* The Exterior or outside of the house was clearly visible to all

* The Foundation undergirds and supports the whole building

* The Foundations of each house built are unseen….seen only by God who searches the hearts

* 1Sa. 16:7 - But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

6. The Storms came upon the House of Both the Wise man and the Foolish man

* Mat 7:25 – “and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beaten on that house;

* Rain…Divinely initiated storms

Deu. 28:12 - The LORD will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its

season, and to bless all the work of your hand.

* Floods…Actions of ungodly people

Psa. 18:4 - The pangs of death surrounded me, And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid.

* Winds…Pressure of demonic spirits

Eph. 4:14 - that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine

* The storms uncovered and exposed the hidden foundation underneath each building

* The nature of unseen foundation of the building was revealed by the storms…stable or unstable.

* This happens in our life now….giving us opportunity to repent and make changes

* This will happen at the Coming of Christ and the assessment will be unchangeable and irreversible

7. Who then is a Wise Man?

* Wise: Thoughtful, discreet

* Pro 24:3 - Through wisdom a house is built, And by understanding it is established;

* Pro 13:1 - A wise son heeds his father's instruction(correction), But a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.

* The Wise Man Built his House upon a Rock

* Jesus Himself is called the Rock….something substantial and unshakeable

* Psa. 18:31 - For who is God, except the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?

* 1Col. 10:4 - and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.

8. What Does it Mean to Build your House Upon a Rock?

* Jesus explains exactly what it means to build your house or life upon a Rock

* Mat 7:24 - "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:

* Note: “These sayings of mine”…refers directly to His teaching on Kingdom values and lifestyle, that preceded this story

* These teachings are on the Core Heart values of the Kingdom…The Need for a Transformed Heart

* Jesus teaches that it is not just our actions but our heart…the motivation behind the actions

* Eg. Motivation for Kind Acts

Mat 5:46 - For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

Luke 6:35 - But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

* Eg. Motivation for Giving

Mat 6:1 - "Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.

* Eg. Motivation for Prayer

Mat 6:5 - "And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.

* Mat 6:6 - But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to

your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

* Eg. Motivation for Fasting

Mat 6:16 - "Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

* This story identifies two kinds of followers of Christ at the end time

* This story points out the consequences of our choices: Reward or Loss

9. Who then is a Foolish Man?

* Foolish….Moros….from which we get the word Moron

Dull, stupid, little or low understanding

* He built upon a foundation of sand

* Note: When an earthquake comes sand will liquify and the building collapse

* He heard the teachings of Jesus on the Kingdom and its eternal heart values

* He did not surrender to the Lord to do what Jesus directed

* He did not align his heart with the will of God but carried on …busy but unchanged in heart

* When we hear the Word of God and do not do it we deceive ourselves Jam.1:22

* “Deceive”….mislead, cause to believe something that is not true

* Hear….but fail to respond, to assimilate and to act on

* He persuades himself that he is doing ok and not required to do anything more

* Pro 12:15 - The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But he who heeds counsel is wise.

* Pro 15:5 - A fool despises his father's instruction, But he who receives correction is prudent.

“Instruction” = correction, discipline,

* Mat 7:27 - and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."

* “Great fall” ……all that he had invested his life into was exposed and revealed as unstable and ruined

10. Jesus Teaching (Instruction)

* Mat 7:22 - Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'

Mat 7:23 - And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'

* Many….a great multitude or great number of people

* They are operating in the supernatural power of God…prophesy, deliverance, miracles

* They call Jesus Lord… they recognize Him

* These are spirit filled believers who are serving and ministering

* Jesus knows the works that they have done….but refuses them entrance to the coming Kingdom

* Jesus refuses to reward their service, but uncovers its foundation as being sand.

V. Why were they Rejected?

1. Lack of Intimacy with Jesus and Heart Transformation

* “Never Knew you”

* “Knew”…… is the word for a husband and wife being intimate

* Our first priority is intimacy with Jesus to know Him and become known by Him

* Intimacy is a lifelong progressive revelation, the goal of which is heart transformation

* It is to discover His heart and will for us and to surrender and do it

* David: “And when He had removed him, He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave testimony and said, 'I HAVE FOUND DAVID THE SON OF JESSE, A MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART, WHO WILL DO ALL MY WILL.' Act 13:22

* Jesus: “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do…I have manifested your name…revealed heart and character of God”. Joh 17:4

.

2. Self-Promotion

* “Workers of iniquity”

* Iniquity…twisted , distorted from Gods original intention

* It originated in Lucifer himself….I will ascend

* They used the gifts and resources of God to advance their own will, and for self-promotion instead of fulfilling the purpose and will of God for their lives

* All their labours had no lasting or eternal reward personally because of the motivation of their heart

* Their heart remained not transformed …their works unacceptable

This is a Time to evaluate our life and service for the Kingdom…Time to Reset!

Action:

1. What are you building your life upon?

2. Are you cultivating ongoing intimacy with the Lord……

Becoming vulnerable before Him?

Seeking to Know Him… Hear His word?

3. What is God speaking to you about?

4. What do you need to Surrender?

5. What changes do you need to make?

Key Principles Related to Eternal Rewards (2 of 12)

Sat 13 Jun 2020  « Back to Top

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One of the major themes of Jesus teachings was the theme of Eternal Rewards. This topic is seldom taught in churches, but it provides major motivation for holiness, personal transformation and faithful service.

We shall all stand before the Judgment seat of Christ to give account for our stewardship as followers of Christ. At stake are position, honour and reward in the coming Kingdom of Christ. This message is an introduction to the Bible Foundations of Eternal Rewards.

Introduction

We're looking at our series called Eternal Rewards. Eternal Rewards is the name of the series, and this is Session 2, on: Key Principles Related to Eternal Rewards. We'll find in the series as we go through it, that we'll undoubtedly overlap, and there's no problem overlapping, because what happens is you then you're reminded of them... reminded of them... reminded of them... and then gradually it just gets into your spirit. So here we are, ready to go!

Main Message

First, I'm going to give you a number of principles. Here's #1, and this one we've touched before, but we're going to go back to it again.

The first one is: we must all give account of our works to God. All of us must give account of our works. We read in 2 Corinthians 5:10, and here's the first point under that: every believer must stand before the judgement seat of Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:10 - “We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so every one may be recompensed for his deeds in his body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

Now this is not the great white throne judgement that takes place at the very end of the millennium. This is a judgement for believers - and it's not a judgement for punishment. It's a judgement for rewarding us for faithful service. As we have served the Lord, and walked with Him, He is looking for the opportunity to acknowledge our love for Him, and acknowledge our walk with Him, and this is a great incentive for us.

It means whatever we do, whatever we put our hand to, God is watching all of it; and He has in mind, has in view, that He can acknowledge it in a much greater way in the coming kingdom. Notice that scripture says: we must all appear - so that's every person; and everyone gives account. There's no one who doesn't give an account.

Sometimes we'll get discouraged. We see people do things, and we see people treat us badly, and it's even more miserable when it's Christians that treat us badly, but we must understand that God is watching every action. He watches their actions against you. He watches your response; and every response, every action that we take, God takes notice of. Jesus will evaluate our life, based upon what we have done.

Notice, He said: He will recompense us for the deeds in the body, whatever he has done, whether good or bad. And the word there for ‘done’ is the word ‘prassa’, meaning to practice, or perform repeatedly, or habitually. It means to practice, continually practice, or perform repeatedly, or make a habit of it. You notice then what He's looking for are the things which become a habit; not just the random: “hey, I blew it this time”. Those kinds of things really are not important. It's the trend of where our life is going, is what counts - whether the trend is moving in a certain direction. The fact there's ups and downs are not a problem to Jesus. It's where the trend of our life is, what we have practiced, or what we have done habitually. If you judge people constantly, then that's something that turns up in your life as someone - you've been a person who's judgemental. That will be considered.

The second thing we saw, as we looked last time, in the scripture in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, is that, at the Judgement Seat, all our works are tested - so there's a Fiery Test!

1 Corinthians 3:11-15 - “No man can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident, or become manifest, for the day will reveal it, or expose it or uncover it. It shall be revealed by fire, the fire will test the quality, what sort of work each man does. If any man's work is built on remains, he will receive a reward; any man's work is burnt up, he will suffer loss; even though he will be saved, yet so as by fire.”

We touched on this scripture last week. The first thing we see in this again, is that Jesus Christ forms the foundation of what our life is about - what we do. He said it's like building a house. You lay a foundation, and then you build on the foundation. The foundation that's laid... we have a relationship with Jesus Christ. We have a faith in Him; and the goal of our covenant with Him, is that we would walk with Him in ever increasing unity in life, and outwork His plan. That is, our lives would reflect what He's like, and we'd do what He calls us to do. So therefore, that determines then, how our works are evaluated.

They're evaluated! Did we build our kingdom, or did we build His? Did we do our own thing, and use the things of God to help us get ahead; or do we genuinely and authentically, because we love Him, desire to do something?

He says that there are different types of materials that you can use - temporal and eternal; and it says: “the Lord will try every man's work” - what sort it is. The word ‘try’ means literally, “to put it to the test, to see its quality” - like on a manufacturing line, they'll take a sample out, and they'll test it. Now they're not testing it to destroy it. They're testing it to see whether it meets the manufacturer's requirements, so it can go on to then be sold. In this situation, He says: He will try our works, or look at the quality of what we have done.

We can fool people, but we can't fool what God sees. God sees!

Hebrews 4:13 - “There is no creature, or no person, hidden from His sight; but everything is naked and open to the eyes of Him, before whom we give account.”

Everything - God sees everything! He doesn't just see what you do, He even sees why you're doing it, and what you're thinking as you do it. All of it is open before Him, which is quite extraordinary, isn't it? Then that causes you to start to rethink then - actually, my life is under observation all the time. It is a motivation then to challenge our thoughts, challenge why we're doing things, and so on. It says: “the fire will test the quality of every man's sort”.

Here's another scripture in 1 Corinthians 4:5 - “Don't judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes. He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels (or motivations) of people's hearts.”

That's when people will receive praise from God - 1 Corinthians 4:5. So He says: when we look at what people do, and how they behave, we really don't know what's going on. You don't know why they do what they do. You don't know what's going on in their heart. Sometimes actions which hurt us are not intentional at all. They may come from a person who's just got something else going on in their life. But the Bible says that when the Lord comes, He will bring out to light everything that's hidden, even the motivations of the heart. People who have got away with a lot of stuff - you can't get away with it before Him. He sees it all!

He sees why we did it; sees if there was a hidden agenda, a hidden motive, or so on. Notice then, the quality of what we're doing is based on our heart - which is why it is important to have heart healing and heart development. Everything flows from the heart. Jesus' interest and focus was on the heart. The Bible says: “out of the heart, flow the boundaries (or borders) of our life”.

What God will be looking for is: is there a love for Jesus burning in our life? Are we on fire for the Lord, and do we love Him? Has the Holy Spirit inspired us; or have we been willing to surrender our works to the Lord, so we're doing the things He calls us to do? The works could be burned up; and the ones who are ‘burned up’ are self-centred. There's pride, there's ambition, there's self-promotion - and you see heaps of that around, with so many people.

They may look good now; but will they look so good when He comes, when He puts the light on it? You will see that most of what was done - it looked great before men; but from God's eyes, He sees it was done out of pride, and self-promotion. It's all about them! Our works can be burned up, if they're motivated by pride, and self-ambition, and promotion; but our works can also pass the test, and then we receive reward. Our works pass the test if He looks into our heart and sees: actually, there's a motivation of love, genuine love; not trying to get something back, is what motivates us - and whether we've been responsive, and obedient, to what the Holy Spirit said to do.

You can be busy doing a whole heap of things, but they may not be what God called you to do. They're all just your own stuff. He can tell the difference between the two! That's why He calls us, really - #1, to have a love for the Lord, and love for people; and #2, to be surrendered to what He wants us to do.

So that means, it's not whether it's a good idea or a bad idea - it's whether: is God directing me that way? In another place it says: those who are led by the Holy Spirit in their choices, decisions and actions - they are the ‘sons of God’. So ultimately, if our works pass, they determine then, our Eternal Rewards.

Notice He said: “if any man's work abides, he'll receive reward; any man's work burned up he'll suffer loss, even though he's saved. Notice: reward; or loss - and that's what this whole thing of eternal rewards is about. It's about our activities now, and how we show up when God looks at them. I've found that as I've gone through this study, it just has caused me so much more to sharpen again, my own thinking about my life, and so on.

Here's the second main point then... Rewards are given, according to Works. Rewards are given, according to our Works. I touched on this last week and I'm going to put a bit more in on it this time, because I think it's really important that we don't get caught out - struggling to perform, and striving to do this, and do that; but that we actually see what God is looking at. Perhaps in another teaching session I'll share how God evaluates what we do. That's very powerful! There's a lot of things that I’ve just started to see around, related to that. I knew of three, but now I've found a lot more.

Firstly, rewards are given, according to our works. Some Christians don't understand that; and others react to it. But nevertheless, Jesus used that word. Jesus Himself, used the word ‘reward’.

He said in Matthew 16:27 - “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, He will reward each one according to his works.”

Jesus talks about reward.

We saw this scripture last week too: Revelations 22:12 - “Behold, I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give every man according to his works.”

Luke 6:35 - “Love your enemies, do good, not trying to get something back. Your reward will be great.”

Reward is something you receive, because you've done something right, or done something good, or done something. Rewards are an evidence that God is really kind - because what He rewards us with, is bigger than what we did - far bigger! It's like... there's no comparison!

Second thing: we're rewarded for the acts we do in this season in our life - acts that are right. We're rewarded for acts of righteousness.

Revelations 19:8 - “Let us be glad, and rejoice, and give honour to Him, for the marriage supper of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready. To her it was granted she would be arrayed in fine linen, for the fine linen are the righteous acts of the saints.”

Notice then, you start to see that, in the coming kingdom, what you have done in this life will be visible to people. In other words, even if you did it, and no one saw it - in the coming age, and for all eternity - everyone will see it!

1 Corinthians 3:8 - “everyone will receive reward according to his own labour”

What are the works that are involved? The works mean: our actions, the things we did; things we said; our attitudes; how we spent time and money; what we did with our wife, our family, those near to us; how we handle our relationships - all those things are included.

James 2:17 - “If we have no works, then our faith is considered to be dead”.

Faith, by itself, if there's no works, is dead! The Bible is very strong on this - we are saved by faith in the work of Jesus Christ; but we qualify for rewards by demonstrating our faith is genuine – how we live out our life. If your faith is genuine, then it should show a changed life. It should show in what you do; the way you treat people; what you do with your life - your priorities all should show.

Titus 3:8 - “This is a faithful saying: I want to affirm that those who have believed in God, should be careful to maintain good works, which are good and profitable to men.”

He's exhorting us: now that you're saved, don’t just sit back and just do whatever you want - be careful to maintain good works.

Titus 3:14 - “Let our people so learn to maintain good works, to meet needs, so they may not be unfruitful.”

You just need to make it a priority to be proactive for the kingdom; and you'll see that lots of Christians aren't, but this is contrary to what God says.

Titus 2:14 - “God has redeemed to Himself a people who will be zealous for good works.”

God's plan means that not just we get saved, but now we join with Him in becoming passionate, in what He's passionate about - which is people, and changing society, making things different and better. Our faith reveals then, our works.

If you look at our life, you'll see clearly: something mobilised us, and motivated us; and it's these teachings on the kingdom.

Our works include even small things. Sometimes we think works are the big things - going and planting a church, doing some big preaching, something like that; but the works are usually small things.

Hebrews 6:10 - “God is not unjust (or unrighteous) to forget your work, and labour of love that you did in His name, in that you ministered to the saints, and do minister.”

God is not unrighteous - it would be wrong for Him to not acknowledge, or reward, what we do. When you look, and see so many slack Christians or believers around, it can be very discouraging. But when you have this truth in you, you know that God is not unrighteous - He sees what we do. He will reward those who do; and there'll be loss for those who don't.

As you start to look around the church, you see that people are asleep! People have got wrong motives, they're not understanding! There's a lot for them at stake - eternity, for them, is at stake!

Most of our faithfulness is manifested in very little decisions. Most of our decisions are very little. Most of our actions are very little; and our works include all the little things: kind words, a small attitude change, a little act of service. You helped someone; you did this, you did that. You turned up, when you didn't feel like turning up; giving something, to help someone. It's all the little things! No, it's not the big things, it's lots of little things. What did you do; and why did you do it?

In Luke 21, Jesus looked up, and He saw the rich man putting big gifts into the treasure; and He also saw a certain poor widow, putting in just two mites. And He looked - in other words, He saw it all - saw what she did; and He said: “this poor widow gave more than everyone”.

You'll see that, when we touch on how God evaluates. He evaluates not just on what we do, but: what did that represent in your life. He said look here, you've got all these big shots, and they're all putting in a lot of money; but there’s this little woman, and for her, what she gave was her very life itself.

He said: I notice that she gave more than everyone! Notice then, God’s measuring, is different to our measuring. We tend to measure: there's $1000, and there's $10; but God looks at it in relationship to: what did that mean to you? So, for the $1000, perhaps he made a million - so for him, this is nothing; but for the woman who gave $10, perhaps that's all she had left over - she can't buy something now. There's more in this than just the action you do; it's what it means in your life. That's why, if it's not a sacrifice for us, it doesn't mean much to God either.

God is attentive to every little thing. He watches; every little deed is seen by God; and no matter how unnoticed people have been.

Matthew 10:42 - “whoever gives just a cup of cold water to this little one in my name shall by no means lose their reward”.

A little cup of cold water - now that's so little! But God says: I watch all of that, and if I see that it's done out of love for people, and a love for Me… I will reward that. When you hear this sort of teaching, you realise how Just God is.

I think it's a thing that people struggle with is injustice - it doesn't seem fair, I've done all this, and I haven't done any of that; but actually, you're just looking too close - you're not looking at the long picture! When you get the long picture, and you come to the Judgement Seat of Christ, you think, wow! Did I get all of that, just for that little thing? Man, you're so generous! You're so kind! God will see all those things.

Our works also include the secret intentions of our heart. God sees *why* you do what you do.

1 Corinthians 4:5 - “don't judge anything before the time, the Lord will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and the motivations of the heart.”

Matthew 7:22 - “Many will say in that day: Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy, and cast out demons, and did many wonders in Your name? And He said: ‘I never knew you’”

There's been no intimacy, and you practice lawlessness. You just do your own thing, your own way, to promote yourself.

Then finally, our words will be evaluated, because our words reveal our heart.

Luke 6:45 - “a good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth good things”.

So out of the abundance of the heart, you speak. Your words can bless people. Your words can hurt people. Your words can bring life; your words can bring death - all our words are noticed.

Matthew 12:36 - “By your words you'll be judged, for every idle word that men speak, they'll give account of it, in the day of judgement.”

By your words, you'll be justified. Every idle word, every unprofitable word. Think of how people talk, and chitter-chatter, and gossip, and complain, and run people down - God is hearing every conversation! The words are all registering; and carry weight to bless, or to bring about loss.

Here's another principle then, related to eternal rewards - all our words are written in God's books. I don't know whether they're literal books, or books of some kind, but it’s very clear from the scriptures, that God keeps a written record of everything! In a moment of time, you'll see all your life; everything you did, why you did, it and the effect it had - just like that!

The first thing then is: the works of people are important, and they have a lasting impact.

Psalm 139:16 - “Your eyes saw my substance, being unformed. And in Your book was written all the days You prepared for me, when there wasn't even one of them.”

God obviously has a book; and in the book, He writes out every day of your life. You're not going to die before your time; you're going to die in time, and God has planned every day for your life - He keeps a record of every day.

Daniel 7:10 - “the court was seated, and the books were opened”.

He’s talking about the coming of the Lord, and now there's books (plural). So clearly, books, or records, are kept of our actions, and words in our life; and our motivation.

Revelations 20:12 - “I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and the books were opened.”

There it is again – books (plural); and it says…

“Another book was opened, called the Book of Life, and the dead were judged according to their works, by the things written in the books.”

God keeps a record, and even our conversations are recorded.

Malachi 3:16 - “those who feared the Lord spoke to one another; and the Lord listened and heard them. A Book of Remembrance was written before Him, for those who fear the Lord and meditate on His name.”

There's lots of books - the ‘Book of Life’; and now there's another book called the ‘Book of Remembrance’!

Matthew 12:36 - “Every idle word that a man speaks, he gives account of”!

God keeps a track on our conversations!

The next main point is that our works follow us for eternity. Our works follow us, for all eternity! We will be known by our works.

Revelation 14:13 - “I heard a voice from heaven saying, write: blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours - and their works follow them.”

Their works follow them! For all eternity, we'll be known by how we lived in these 80 years. Our works will ‘follow us’. That word ‘follow’ means: ‘to accompany you on the journey’.

For all eternity, we'll be known for the passion we had for the Lord, and the purity of our motives; or whether we did our own thing and built our own empire - it will be known forever! It's not like, you get to heaven, and everyone's equal; everyone's the same; and no one knows what went on, it's all covered or concealed... Nope!

Notice here, he's talking about people who have loved the Lord; so it's the positive aspect that is being remembered - those actions and activities that earn acknowledgement by Jesus - those are the ones that we will be seen to have done. The failures, the mistakes... none of that will be visible, or seen. It's the way Jesus has seen, and evaluated our life, and chosen to honour us.

Imagine passing into eternity, facing judgement, and the Lord brings back to memory all the little things you did all through your life - and those things accompany you.

It's not that your works can come from heaven to earth; or from earth to heaven. No, what will happen is: the honour of them, is going to be carried in your life, and will be recognisable to people.

He talks about us having ‘wedding garments’.

Revelations 19:7 - “Let us be glad, and rejoice, and give honour to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready - and to her was granted she'll be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen are the righteous acts of the saints.”

Notice it says that in the glory of the coming kingdom, we will be ‘clothed with white garments’; but the nature of the garments reflects the acts that we have done, which have served God. Any works that were not consumed by fire at the judgement time; that survived the fire, because they were operating out of love, and out of being led by the Holy Spirit, then they will form the foundation of our clothing - for eternity!

Such a short time that we have, so you want to be busy... don't you? Our clothing will reveal to everyone how we lived our life on earth. When people look at your clothing in eternity, they will know you've maintained the First Love for Jesus. It'll be obvious to everyone, that you kept your first love. It'll be obvious to everyone, that you did many things, that were motivated by love, to bring honour to Him. It'll be obvious to everyone, that you were a person who was walking with God.

Now that's a great encouragement! A great encouragement, to see that it's not just now, and it'll all pass away... that we'll just forget all about it. No, God has a way of dressing us, and clothing us in glory, which will reflect the measure of what we were like, and what we did on the earth.

Revelations 16:15 - “Behold, I am coming like a thief (or I'm coming secretly)! Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.”

Jesus warned us; and frequently talks about watching and praying. Watching and praying… that you don't fall to temptation; watching and praying… that you're ready for His coming; watch and pray… overcome temptation - all these things.

It says: “watch and pray”, and: “keep your garments, lest you walk naked, and they see your shame”. “They” - that must be other believers. He's saying: we must be careful to keep our lives passionate, or ‘on fire’ for the Lord; and not become complacent and apathetic, or passive and shut down - or ‘lukewarm’. Otherwise, it will be revealed to all.

If you were a believer who came to Christ and started out good; but then slowly slacked off, and ended up pretty slack, then it will be obvious that you have no clothing that would bring honour to you.

1 John 2:28 - “Now little children, abide in Him (maintain intimate connection with Jesus), so when He appears we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming and shrink away from Him at the shame of His coming.”

It's another version of it! What it's saying is: when the Lord comes, you want to be bold and confident, because of how you lived your life; and not: oh my God, I've been caught out, and embarrassed - that now you're in a bad state.

It says: “He will come at a time when no one knows” - so you've no idea when the coming of the Lord is. When He comes, you want to be passionate - on fire, full of the Holy Ghost, and doing good things for the Lord! It doesn't mean we won't have our ups and downs. Remember, it's the practice; it's the trend of where our life is going.

The next main point is that these rewards are Eternal. They're irreversible; and they never diminish. The rewards are Eternal - they're called Eternal Rewards. It's called ‘Eternal Judgement’.

Hebrews 6:2 – “…Eternal Judgement”.

Once it's made, it's made for eternity. There's no reversing the decision. Once you arrive at that point, there's no turning back. There's no: ‘give me a bit longer’. There's no second chance! At the judgement seat of Christ, whatever reward we get, is ours for eternity - and our rewards determine the way we spend eternity!

The second thing is: the rewards are irreversible. You can't change what the judgement is. You can't reverse it! If our works are burned, and we suffer loss, there's no way to reverse it! If we are disqualified from ruling with Christ, and being near to Him in eternity, there's no way you can reverse it.

When we look at more detail on the prizes, you realise that the prizes are out of proportion to anything we do, because of the generosity of God. If God is so loving, that He gave His only Son, then how much more will He reward us, who serve God - who serve Him Faithfully?

The third thing is that the rewards will never diminish! They can never be taken away, once you've got them.

Matthew 6:20 - “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where moth nor rust destroy, does not corrupt, and where thieves can't break in and steal.”

Whatever treasure you have in heaven can't be stolen or taken away. The Bible talks about people being rewarded with crown; and the crowns are imperishable, they don't fade away.

1 Corinthians 9:26, Paul writes about ‘running the race’ and ‘run to obtain’. He says: in the natural world people do everything in order to get a crown, to get an award; and he says: that's a perishable one! Ours is an imperishable one - it can never fade. Heavenly rewards are eternal, and they're imperishable. They never go, they never perish, they never diminish.

Let's have a look at the next key principle then. We find that Jesus Himself was motivated by rewards; and He also motivated other believers. Jesus was empowered to live His life, because of what He saw ahead. He was motivated by an eternal reward.

A temporary reward would be… what do people think of me now; how well am I living now; what income have I got now; what house do I live in now? An eternal reward is something completely different. It's not temporary, it's eternal - and He was motivated by that.

We find in Hebrews 12:2, Jesus endured the shame of the cross, and it says: “...for the joy set before Him”. ‘Set before’ means: ‘to lie in front of you’ - as a reward! To be constantly in your mind!

So Jesus, in facing the cross - with all its shame, and the pain, and the difficulty, and the rejection of people... all those things, it says: “He endured it, because of the joy that was positioned, or set before Him” - the opportunity to receive reward in the coming kingdom. It was the joy of what He saw ahead - and that's how we need to live our life.

If you’ve got no vision of what lies ahead, then you've got no motivation for being sacrificial. People look, and they say: you do this, and you've given up this, and you've given that…. We see something else here - and we're paying a price for that! We're making an investment... of our lives! If you don't see what is set before you, then you've got little motivation to keep going.

Understanding this issue of eternal rewards... then you realise: I'm willing to let Jesus transform my heart. I'm willing to bring out the broken places, the hurt places. I'm willing to humble myself, to let Him bring healing. I'm willing to work on my heart attitudes. Why? Because of something that lies ahead for me!

I read somewhere that Jesus gave 50 references to Eternal Rewards - so it's a big, big thing! There are many things that He taught about that - but He did teach His disciples, over, and over, and over again, about Eternal Rewards.

He called them to ‘become great’, called them to ‘receive rewards’, called them to ‘become a ruler over much’, to have ‘authority over nations’, to ‘sit on thrones’, and ‘gain crowns’. He was constantly moving them with this prospect.

His teaching on the ‘Five Wise, and the Five Foolish Virgins’ - it's all about entering into a ‘marriage feast’; about ‘eternal intimacy’, and a ‘close relationship’, and a ‘joy’ with Jesus. He taught a parable about the man with the ‘talents’ - how he'd been faithful over little, but much is given to you. In Matthew 25, He said: I'll make you ‘ruler over many things’.

So constantly, He's moving His people, saying that. The most important thing of all, is that we walk in love; that we love Him passionately, and love people.

Everything you can see; you will leave behind. What's left that's valuable? It's the things which you can't see; the things which are invisible - things of the kingdom!

The next thing then, is the eternal rewards are Glorious. It's hard to describe them, but there are many pictures of it through the Bible. The rewards that God has in mind, are beyond our imagination!

1 Corinthians 2:9-10 - “The eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.”

He said: you've never seen it! No matter what you've seen, that's been magnificent - it's still small! You've never heard it spoken, and you haven't been able to even imagine the possibilities that God has ahead; he says, but the spirit reveals them to us.

The Holy Spirit, as you hunger for more, will gradually, little by little, reveal more of the wonderful things God has prepared, for those who love Him. Notice it said: ‘those who love him’. Also, “If you love Me, you'll keep My commandments”!

Paul is praying, and he prayed that…

Ephesians 1:17-18 - “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, you might know what is the hope of His calling… (and here it is) ...what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints”..

There's a Glorious Inheritance. The word ‘riches’ - it's abundant, magnificent. It's full of glory, and it's within us! It's the formation of Jesus' life, and what will become. It's spectacular!

When you have a look at, say, Buckingham Palace; and you look at all the buildings - the detail, how ornate... and there's gold, and jewels, and all those things. When you look at the way that royalty carry themselves, the clothing, and everything that's there... Well, whatever God rewards us with, that's just only a little pale thing, compared to what He has.

1 Peter 2:9 - “you're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood”. ‘Royal’ means that you're descended from a king. You're part of a royal family.

Exodus 28:2 - “God appointed special garments for Aaron, the high priest”

He called these ‘garments of beauty and glory’. Aaron, who was the high priest, who had access to the presence of God - they made special garments for him, with gold and jewels - all kinds of things; so whenever you saw him, his garments were beautiful, and they covered him in glory. They shone; there was a magnificence about them; such that, the high priest wearing these beautiful garments, is a picture of us, in eternity.

A second picture of it that you can find is in the story of Jesus, on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Matthew 17:2 - “His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as light, or brighter white than anyone could make”.

When Jesus was transfigured on the Mount of Transfiguration - as He was praying, the glory that was within Him, began to shine forth, and all His clothes changed. His countenance changed. He began to shine.

“His countenance was like the sun, in all its magnificence”.

There's a glory that has been put into us. Christ has been put into you, and although it can't be seen yet, there is a day, when what God has been doing, will shine out of our lives.

Matthew 13:43 - “the righteous (that's us) will shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father”.

God has reserved rewards for us, and they're shown, in different ways.

Another place it shows up is in Solomon's temple; and you remember in the Kingdom age, when Solomon built his temple - it was magnificent! It was the most amazing, beautiful thing. It said: there was so much silver, they didn't bother to count it. They had gold everywhere.

1 Kings 10:4-13 - “when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house he built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants, the service of his waiters, their clothing, the cupbearers, the way he went up to the house of the Lord, she fainted.”

There was no more spirit in her; and she said: wow! It's a true report, that I heard in my own land, about your words and wisdom. I didn't believe it, so I came and saw it with my own eyes - and half of it wasn't even told to me! Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame of what I have heard. Happy are your men, and happy your servants, who stand before you, and hear your wisdom.

Jesus is obviously much greater than Solomon, and yet this is what the Queen of Ethiopia said: Oh! I've seen kings, and I've seen glory... amazing things; but she said: I have never seen anything like this! This is stunning.

We'll get to the last couple of key points now...

There are different degrees of eternal rewards. There are different types of eternal rewards. ‘Different degrees’ means ‘more or less’. There’s no ‘equal field’. The only equal field we have is here on earth - when everyone can aspire to be great. That's the amazing thing - all of us have a call to greatness - all of us can be great!

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be great. It's wired into you, to be great. It's wired into you, to want honour. It's wired into you, to desire glory, because you're made in the image of your Father. However, it's how you get it!

In the coming kingdom... the Bible, in many ways, indicates that not everyone will be the same. There will be some who are first; and some who are last. Some who are first - and first means: most important; and last means: least important.

Matthew 19:30 - “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

There are degrees of eternal rewards. Some will be first in authority, and glory, and intimacy; others will be last. Some will be in the throne with Him, others will be watching and praising around the throne - there's a difference! There will be the least; and the greatest.

Revelations 19:5 - “...and a voice came from the throne, saying: praise God, all you His servants - those who fear Him, both small and great.”

There are some ‘great’ servants of God; and there are some ‘small’ servants of God. There's greatness, and smallness; some will be small, some will be great.

Matthew 5:19 - “In the kingdom of heaven, there are ‘least’, and there are ‘great’. Whoever breaks the least of these commandments, and teaches men, shall be called ‘least’ in the kingdom. Whoever does, and teaches them, shall be called ‘great’ in the kingdom.

Even Jesus said: some will be called ‘great’, and some will be called ‘least’; and it has to do with whether you live out what you're saying.

What makes a person ‘great’, and what makes a person ‘least’, is their life choices. It's got nothing to do with your family of origin, your money, your job, your talents, your gifts... your anything! It totally has to do with the life choices that you made. Did you make ‘great’ choices? Did you make ‘bad’ choices?

Here's another comparison that the Bible points out. Some will sit with Jesus, ‘in’ His throne room; others will just be saved, they'll be ‘around’ the throne. We saw in 1 Corinthians 3:15, it said there: “they will be saved, yet so as by fire they'll lose their reward. Yet others will sit with Jesus on His throne and rule the nations with a rod of iron.”

Revelations 2:26-27 - “...to him that overcomes, will I give to sit with Me in My throne, and he shall ‘rule the nations’ with a ‘rod of iron’.

Notice there, overcomers are ‘ruling’ with Jesus, in His throne - sharing His governance, in the coming kingdom; and then there's others, who barely scraped in! Who do you want to be - a ‘barely scraped in’; or do you want to be in a position of great honour, great authority?

Here's another one:

“...and some believers will shine like the sun, and others will not”.

In Resurrection Glory, there will be a difference.

1 Corinthians 15:41-42 - “One star differs from another in glory, and so will it be in the resurrection.”

Go out at night and look at all the stars. There’s bright, shiny stars; and little ones, very faint ones - he uses that as an illustration. For example, there's one star there, the Pistol Star, which is 10 million times brighter than our sun! That's really big, its mass is 100 times greater.

Just as the stars vary from one another, in their brilliance and their glory, so it will be in the resurrection. The degree of honour, and glory, and majesty, that we have in the resurrection - that will be determined by the life we live now. It will be directly related to what you do, and what you overcome, in life.

No two believers are going to be the same. Everyone, while you're in this life, have got an equal chance; but once you get to the gate... then you can't make any more decisions on that one! Some believers will enter the wedding feast; some will not. We saw that in Matthew 25:10-13. Some go into a time of celebration and joy and intimacy with Jesus; some do not.

In another verse, Matthew 25:21 - some believers will be commended; some will not. Some will hear the Lord say: well done, you were faithful in a few things - I put you in charge of many; others will hear: you were ‘wicked’, and you were ‘lazy’ - and you can't be here!

Here's another one, in Luke 14:10 - some believers will receive ‘great honour’; and some will not. “When you're invited in, go and sit in the lowest place; and when he who invited you comes, he can say: ‘friend, go up higher’. Then you'll have glory in the presence of those at the table with you.” He's saying: just start off serving, and let God lift you up.

Some will be considered worthy; some will not. Some will attain the prize of a high calling; some will not. In the coming kingdom, there will be different responsibilities, and positions of authority. Everyone will have their own assignment.

Think about this... In the nation of New Zealand, how many cities are there? How many towns? There's many! All of those will require people in roles, and positions, to bring about reformation and transformation. There's going to be millions and millions and millions of roles to fill; and the role you fill will be determined by how you live on the earth now. Everyone has an opportunity! Everyone has the opportunity!

Matthew 20:26 - “If you desire to become great, become a servant. If you desire to be first, be the servant of everyone. Just like the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and give His life a ransom for many.”

What will make you ‘great’ in the coming kingdom, is: your heart attitude - a heart of humility, and meekness, and serving… and everyone can do that! Everyone is unlimited in their faithfulness - you determine the limit. If it's a gifting, like music; or gifting with business; or gifting with finance - if it's something like that, then we might feel: “oh man, that's not fair, I haven't got enough, and others have got more”. But when it comes to the issue... it's just about your heart; and about your faithfulness - then everyone's in the running.

Finally, there's different kinds of rewards, in the millennial kingdom. There are many! There's about 18, mentioned in the Book of Revelation; so rather than do a list of them, I felt I'll just touch on them in a bit more detail in another place, another time. Many of them are mentioned there; but perhaps the three most important ones, would be these:

1) Eternal Intimacy with Jesus - a deep intimate connection; and our level of intimacy, or connection to Him, and fellowship with Him, will be determined by our life here.

In Matthew 25, we saw the ‘wise virgins’ - some went into the feast; some didn't.

2) The second, and this one is a major one, that is spoken of, is: Eternal Authority. Of course, that also means: Eternal Responsibility, as well. Eternal Authority; and what that means is that, in the coming kingdom, God has responsibilities for us. Your life now, is just your preparatory service. Your real assignment comes in eternity - in the millennium! Whatever you're doing now - it's all about your preparation; you can handle disappointments, the setbacks.

You invest in people... and they fail away, or they fall away. You can get very overwhelmed and say: I don't see any results; or you can be doing it unto the Lord, and just maintain your joy, and your happiness, despite the disappointments. God is watching all of that; and the Eternal Authority, and Responsibility... it's out of proportion to anything we did!

In Luke 19:11-27, it talks about the wise servants - faithful over little; ruling over much. One was faithful over little - then ruled over 10 cities! Can you imagine being given responsibility for 10 cities - for their reformation and restoration; proper governance; reshaping the culture, the finances - that's a big responsibility! So obviously, there's various levels of responsibility.

3) The last one is: Eternal Glory. Eternal glory; Resurrection Glory. In Revelations 3:5, it talks about how they'll be ‘clothed in white garments’. It's indicated that it's a ‘reward’. There are: rewards of Intimacy; rewards of Authority, and with it, Responsibility; and rewards of Glory.

There are other rewards that are mentioned... Perhaps one that I'll mention is the Honour; an Acknowledgement of your life pleasing God. There’s quite a few that come to mind, as I think about it... That God will ‘honour’ you: “well done, good and faithful servant” - well done! You did well, with what you had.

Remember, it's not about us working hard, to try and get something. It's about our love increasing; and the passion overflowing, in our desire to serve the Lord - and He sees our love for Him, our love is expressed by obedience to Him. He says: I just want to do all I can to acknowledge that - far more than you can ever imagine; I'm looking to reward you! He's not looking to punish us! He's looking to see what, in our life, that He can acknowledge - that requires honour in the coming kingdom.

Of course, the last thing is that some will suffer ‘loss’, at the Judgement Seat. Some will suffer loss at the judgement seat!

1 Corinthians 3:15 - “...if their works are burned, then they'll suffer loss, but they'll be saved, yet so by fire.”

So ‘suffering loss’ - it's not physical suffering; it's just the forfeiting of rewards. In other words, it's saying: there was a cheque being offered, of $1 million; but I mucked around - I didn't get to the bank on time, and now I can't cash it! That's sad - that's suffering loss! That really is suffering loss. You didn't do it in time, and now it's been taken away from you!

2 John 1:8 - “watch out, that you don't lose what you worked for; but you may be rewarded fully.”

He warns us: make sure that you don't be ‘cheated out’ of what God is wanting to give you. Jesus warned people too....

Revelations 3:11 - “...hold fast what you have, that no man take your crown.”

There are warnings in there, in a number of places, about suffering loss! The ‘loss’ means: not that I'm going to be in pain, I’m not going to be hurt - it's nothing to do with that. No, I will experience the love of God - I'll experience many things in the coming kingdom. However, the thing that will be sad is: the loss of what I could have had.

We must believe that God is able to reward people brilliantly. It's His nature to be generous. It's His nature to be kind. It's His nature to be gracious. It's in His nature to be Just - to give what is deserving and will be recognised.

As you look around the world, you can see that people are dying for their faith, in some countries. Then you see in the west, for the most part, that people are passive, lukewarm, and indifferent. For many people, the core problem is that they have no passion going on, in their life for Jesus. There's compromise of all kinds; and this is what Jesus talks about, in the Book of Revelation. He talks to the Seven Churches of Revelation, and identifies what's good, and what is lacking, in their lives; and HE encourages them to overcome - and then offers many rewards, for those who overcome.

This topic is a very big topic. There is a lot more in the Bible, about the nature of the rewards; and there's also quite a lot in the Book of Revelation, about the actual challenges that God calls us to overcome. At some point, we'll look at each of those... What are the specific challenges that will come that you will need to overcome in your life?

For example, with one of the churches, He commended them for many things; but He said: I've got this against you - you've left your first love. In other words, they're busy in church, and busy doing things... but the passion, the fire, the love... their first commitment to Christ had gone; and you see that with many people!

Our desire is that we understand Eternal Rewards; and that we are greatly motivated by the prospect that everything I do is seen, and visible. Therefore, because it's all visible...

What words am I saying? Are they bringing life or destruction?

What are the motivations I've got going on? Is it love of God flowing through me, or am I reactionary, reacting, retaliating?

Is there unkindness in my heart? How am I serving the Lord?

Am I connected to Him in passionate worship? Am I serving Him to the best of what I can?

Remember, it's not ‘perfection’ that He's looking at. He's just looking at a heart that's towards Him. He's not looking at the individual acts as much as - although they're all recorded. He is looking at: what is the arc of your life? If you keep getting up, keep moving back, keep reaching out, keep going forward... then you qualify for reward.

God, who knows our lives, knows what we've done in secret; and will reward us openly, before all people, and everyone will then know what kind of life you lived on earth - what kind of passion you had for the Lord, and how faithful you were in what you did.

It's an incredibly motivating teaching, around eternal rewards, because you realise then... if you're hurt, knocked back, set back, disappointed, things go wrong... then it's okay, I can turn to the Lord. He will comfort me and strengthen me. I will deepen my relationship with Him, and I'll carry on. What people do, won't stop me. If failures come, I'll just get up and keep running again. Amen!

Closing Prayer

Father, we just pray right now, that the words we've spoken, will find a resting place in good ground; that Lord, each one that hears this message, will feel the fire of the Holy Spirit burning in them - to renew their first love; and to passionately serve You; and to the run the race - to win the prize, that's laid before each of us.

I pray, Lord, for every member of my family; that Lord, they'll catch a grip: that there's an eternal prize to be won; and will live a life that honours You, and qualifies them for: “well done, good and faithful servant”. Amen!

Summary Notes

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ER2: Key Principles Related to Eternal Rewards

I. We Must All Give Account of our works

1. Every Believer will stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

* For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor. 5:10).

* We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

Every believer will stand before Christ and give an account for the way they lived.

* At that time, we will be recompensed - or rewarded - for the works that we did while on earth.

* Jesus will evaluate our life based upon what we have done.

The Greek word for done is prasso, which means ― to practice, perform repeatedly or habitually.

That is why it is important to form Christ- exalting, kingdom-building habits now—before it‘s too late.

2. At the Judgment Seat of Christ our Works will be tested by fire.

* For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire (1 Cor. 3:11-15).

* Jesus Christ is the Foundation for all that we do.

Our works will be evaluated on whether we built His Kingdom or our own

* There are different types of materials we can use for building… Temporal or Eternal

* The Lord is looking and the quality or motivation for what we have done

“Try”….To test or examine the quality of something so it can be approved

* The Fire will test the quality of each man’s work…what sort it is, its nature and motivation

And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. (Heb.4:13)

Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts.

Then each one's praise will come from God. (1Cor.4:5)

* The Quality of our works will be based upon Heart issues:

Our love for Christ & Whether we were led by the Holy Spirit, our motivation

* The outcome is Reward or Loss for Eternity

* Our works can be burned up… i.e.. not survive close inspection of the motivation

If they were self-centred, coming from pride, selfish ambition, and self-promotion…

We built our own Kingdom instead of His

* Our works can pass the test….

We will be rewarded for every action no matter how small that flowed out pure motives because of our love for Christ and obedience to the Holy Spirit

* The Judgment seat of Christ does not determine whether we go to Heaven or hell. It is to determine our stewardship… what Eternal Rewards we shall receive

* It determines our eternal rewards, such as our degree of Intimacy, Authority, and Glory.

II. Rewards are Given According to Our Works

1. Jesus Himself Used the Word Reward

* For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. (Matt.16:27)

* "And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. (Rev.22:12)

* “Love your enemies, do good...and your reward will be great”. (Lk. 6:35)

* “But when you give a feast, invite the poor...the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection”. (Lk. 14:13-14)

* “Reward” …fruit that results from tools and labor’s, wages

* Rewards are really evidence of Gods abundant mercy and generosity…they are completely out of proportion to any work that we do

2. We are rewarded for our acts of righteousness done in this age

* To her [Bride] it was granted to be arrayed...for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. (Rev. 19:8)

* Each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor [work]... If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. (1 Cor. 3:8, 14)

* Our works include our actions, words, attitudes, and how we spend our time and money and care for our families and others.

3. Faith without “works” is considered to be “dead faith”

* Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (Jam. 2:17)

* ‘This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men” (Tit.3:8)

* ‘And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful”(Tit.3:14)

* We are saved as a gift by faith in Jesus’ work, but we are rewarded according to our works.

* Our entrance into heaven is not based on our works, but our role in the Coming Kingdom is.

* “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age,

…looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works” (Tit.2:11-14)

* The Grace of God is His goodness and power freely given by faith

* Grace is not only to save us but to transform us and empower us to godly living and to good works

* Some misunderstand the value and importance of their works;

Since no one can be saved by their works, they falsely conclude that their works do not matter.

* I will show you my faith by my works. Do you see that faith was working together with his [Abraham’s] works, and by works faith was made perfect? …so, faith without works is dead also. (Jas. 2:17-26)

4. Our Works include Small Deeds

* Heb. 6:10 For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.

* Our faithfulness is manifested in our life choices — 99% of our godly choices and deeds are small.

* Our works include the small things that we do: Speaking kind words, Small attitude adjustments, Little acts of service (in our family), and sacrificially giving small amounts of money (Lk. 21:1-4).

* Luke 21:1 - And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, "Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had."

Jesus evaluated the giving not by the quantity….but by the quality, what it represented to them

* Because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities. (Lk. 19:17)

5. Jesus Remembers every small act of love,

* Every deed that we do is seen and rewarded by God, no matter how unnoticed it is by men

* Even giving a small cup of water is noticed by Jesus

* And whoever gives... only a cup of cold water... he shall by no means lose his reward. (Mt. 10:42)

* God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints. (Heb. 6:10)

6. Our Works include the Secret intentions of our heart to love and obey God

* 1Col. 4:5 - Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

* Mat 7:22 - Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'

Mat 7:23 - And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'

7.Our Words will be Evaluated on the last day since they reveal our Heart

* Luke 6:45 - A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

* For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Mt. 12:36-37)

For every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.

* Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father. (Mt. 10:32)

III. All our Works are Written in God’s Books

1.The works of human beings are important and have a lasting impact

* God keeps detailed records of what each person does

* Psa. 139:16 - Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.

* Dan 7:10 - A fiery stream issued And came forth from before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, And the books were opened.

* Rev 20:12 - And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.

* Rev 13:8 - All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

2.Even our conversations are recorded

* Mal 3:16 Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, And the LORD listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him For those who fear the LORD And who meditate on His name. conversations

* But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.

Mat 12:37 - For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

* God’s books contain the names and actions of all believers

IV. Our Works Follow Us for All Eternity

1. We Will Be Known by Our Works

* Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, "Write: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.' " "Yes," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them." (Rev.14:13)

* For all eternity, we will be known for the way we lived the seventy to eighty years of our life.

Our works follow us”….

‘Follow“….Accompany in the same path, associate with as a disciple

* For all eternity, we will be known for building the kingdom with pure motives or for building our own empire out of selfish motives.

2.The Wedding Garments that we will receive in heaven will testify to everyone how we lived our life on the earth.

* Rev 19:7 Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

* NB: The fine linen in which we will be clothed ―is the righteous acts of the saints.

* The works we have done that are not consumed by the fire at the judgment seat form the foundation of our clothing for eternity

* Our clothing will reveal to everyone how we lived our lives on earth

* In eternity people will be able to look at us and immediately know:

i. We maintained our First Love for Jesus

ii. Our works were motivated by a true desire to bring Glory and Honour to Him

iii. Our works were done under the leading of the Holy Spirit and obedience to Him

3. Jesus Warning:

* Rev 16:15 - "Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame."

* Jesus warned us about staying awake and keeping our wedding garments unstained

* If we allow ourselves to grow complacent, apathetic, indifferent, and lukewarm, our works will be burned at the judgment seat of Christ and the ―shame of [our] nakedness will be revealed

* And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not and not be ashamed before Him at His coming (shrink away from Him in shame at His coming) (1 John 2:28).

* Jesus paid a great price to redeem us, and to position us for honour. Our daily choices affect our spiritual condition when He returns

* We can “love His appearing and receive a crown”…. Or …”be ashamed before Him” because of our condition

V. These Rewards are Eternal, Irreversible, and Never Diminish

1.The Rewards are Eternal

* The judgment seat of Christ will be an ―eternal judgment (Heb.6:2)

That is, there will be no reversing the decision.

* At the judgment seat of Christ, the rewards that we receive will be our portion for all eternity.

* Our rewards determine the way we spend eternity…, the intimacy, the authority, the glory

Eternity will be better for some believers than for others.

2.The Rewards are Irreversible

* If our works are burned and we suffer loss, there will be no way to reverse this.

* If we are disqualified from receiving our fullest eternal inheritance—such as sitting with Jesus on His throne and ruling the nations with Christ — there will be no way to change this.

3.The Rewards Never Diminish

* Treasure in heaven can never be destroyed or stolen

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Mt. 6:20)

* The Crowns of the saints are described as imperishable—not fading away

...to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. (1 Cor. 9:25)

* Heavenly Rewards are eternal and imperishable—they will never diminish

but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Mat.6:20)

* Our Resurrected Bodies will shine like stars forever. Their brightness will never diminish.

“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine Like the brightness of the firmament, And those who turn many to righteousness Like the stars forever and ever.” (Dan.12.2-3)

VI. Jesus Was Motivated by Eternal Rewards.

1. Jesus was Motivated by Eternal Rewards

* Jesus was empowered to live a consecrated life and endure the suffering of the cross because He was motivated by eternal rewards.

* … looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb.12:2)

* Jesus endured the shame of the cross by looking at ―”the joy set before Him”

“Set before”…to lie before in view, to stand forth as a reward, to be present in the mind

“The joy set before Him”…a multitude of sons & daughters ruling creation with Him

* Jesus was moved by love for His Father, and desire to Honour and obey Him

* “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (Jn.17:4)

* He also was moved by the Eternal Reward that would follow His committed, faithful life

‘And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name” (Phil.2:8-9)

2. Jesus Motivated His Disciples by Teaching on Eternal Rewards

* The Sermon on the Mount: Jesus repeatedly used eternal rewards to motivate people to a life of meekness, purity, and righteousness (Matt. 5-7).

e.g. ”Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth” (Mat.5:5)

e.g. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Mat.5:8)

* The Kingdom Parables: Jesus repeatedly used eternal rewards to motivate His disciples

“And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.” (Lk.19:17)

* In Revelation 2-3: Jesus offered the churches eternal rewards to motivate them to righteousness and to empower them to overcome compromise and complacency.

e.g. Gain Eternal Authority:

“And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations” (Rev.2:26)

e.g. Gain Eternal Glory

“He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” (Rev.3:5)

e.g. Gain Eternal Intimacy

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” (Rev.3:20)

“To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev.3:21)

3. What God considers First and Greatest.

* You shall love the LORD...This is the first and great commandment. (Mt. 22:37-38)

* Loving God with all of our heart is the first emphasis of the Spirit in our lives, and it is the greatest calling on anyone’s life.

VII. Eternal Rewards are Glorious

1.Eternal Rewards are Beyond our Imagination

* “But as it is written: "EYE HAS NOT SEEN, NOR EAR HEARD, NOR HAVE ENTERED INTO THE HEART OF MAN THE THINGS WHICH GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM."

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. (1Cor.2:9-10)

* …that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints and the exceeding greatness of His power towards us who believe,(Eph.1:17-18)

* They are spectacular and far more glorious than anyone imagines—exceedingly abundantly beyond what we think (Eph. 3:20).

2.These Rewards are Appropriate for God’s Royal Family

* 1Pe 2:9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light;

* We are a priesthood…Royal…descended from a King

* E.g. God appointed special garments for Aaron the High priest …garments for Glory and Beauty

* And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty.(Exod.28:2)

* E.g. Jesus Garments altered on the Mount of transfiguration

* His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. (Mt. 17:2)

* The righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. (Mt. 13:43)

3.These rewards are glimpsed prophetically in Solomon’s temple

* And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants, the service of his waiters and their apparel, his cupbearers, and his entryway by which he went up to the house of the LORD, there was no more spirit in her. Then she said to the king: "It was a true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. However, I did not believe the words until I came and saw with my own eyes; and indeed the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame of which I heard. Happy are your men and happy are these your servants, who stand continually before you and hear your wisdom! (1Ki.10:4-13)

* Jesus is greater than Solomon…He will manifest His majesty in His Household

4. The glory of the Royal daughter in Psalm 45 symbolically points to the glory of the Bride of Christ.

* The royal daughter is all glorious within the palace; her clothing is woven with gold. (Ps. 45:13)

* We must not limit God’s power and creativity in preparing rewards for those that love him

* “it has not entered into the heart of man the things God has prepared for the next that love Him” (1Cor.2:9)

* Who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. (Phil.3:21)

VIII. There are Different Degrees of Eternal Rewards.

1. Some will be will be First …Others will be Last

* Speaking of eternal rewards, Jesus said ―many who are first will be last; and the last, first (Matt. 19:30).

* This shows us that there are degrees of eternal rewards.

* For all eternity, some will be first in authority, glory, honour, and intimacy while others will be last.

2. Some will be Greatest…Others will be Least

* That is, their life choices will be “called great”—by God, the angels, the saints.

* Jesus described a great diversity in how the saints’ life choices will be viewed in the age to come.

* In the kingdom of heaven, there are the ―least and the ―great (Matt. 5:19).

Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt.5:19)

* “Then a voice came from the throne, saying, "Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!" (Rev.19:5)

3. Some will sit with Jesus on His Throne…Others just be Saved

* Some Believers will sit down with Jesus on His throne and rule the nations with a rod of iron

(Rev. 2:26-27; 3:21).

* Many Believers will be saved but with No Reward

Many believers will barely make it into heaven—they will ―be saved, yet so as through fire

(1 Cor. 3:15).

4. Some Believers Shine like the Sun…Others will not (Resurrection Glory)

* Some believers will shine like the sun, others like the moon, and others like a faint star

(1 Cor. 15:41-42).

* There are many billions of stars, and each is unique.

* The Pistol Star is 10 million times brighter than our sun and has a mass 100 times greater.

* In the age to come, there might be several billion people in God’s family.

* The realm of “the resurrection” includes our body, garment, thrones, crowns, and more—each area of our life in the resurrection will express a measure of the glory of God.

* The degree of glory that we will have is based upon the way we live on earth.

* The degree of glory in our resurrected bodies will be directly related to what we overcome in this life and the amount of Christ- likeness that has been formed within us.

No two believers will have the same measure of glory.

5. Some Believers will Enter The Wedding Feast…Some Will Not

* Some believers will go into the wedding feast while others will not be allowed to enter

* “And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. (Matt. 25:10).

* “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us!' But he answered and said, 'Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.' (Matt. 25:11-13).

6. Some Believers will be Commended…Some will not

* Some believers will hear the Lord say, ―Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful over a few things, I will put make you ruler many things; enter into the joy of your Lord

(Matt. 25:21).

Others will hear Him say: You wicked, lazy slave-assign him a place with the hypocrites (Matt. 25:26; 24:51).

7. Some believers will Receive Great Honour… Some will Not

* In heaven, there are ―places of honor, people who are ―more distinguished and there is ―the last place

* ‘If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor” (Jn.12:26)

* Based upon how we live on the earth, we can ―move up higher (Luke 14:10).

* But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, 'Friend, go up higher.' Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. (Lk.14:10

8. Some Believers will be Considered Worthy…Some Will Not

* Jesus said that some will be ―considered worthy to attain to that age [the Millennial Kingdom] and the resurrection from the dead‖ while others will not be counted worthy (Luke 20:34-36).

9. Some Believers will attain the Prize of the High calling…Some will not

* Paul said that there is ―the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, suggesting that there are lesser callings for those who do not

* It is a ”Prize to be won”…..prizes are for the victor

* I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:14, KJV).

10. In God’s family in the New Jerusalem, there will be different positions, responsibilities, capacities, and experiences.

* We see similar differences in this age.

* The distinctions in the age to come are related to our faithfulness, humility, obedience, and diligence, not to our gifting, position or money in this age.

11. There will be different Positions of Authority, Responsibility, Experience :

* We will all have different work assignments with varying measures of authority and responsibility

* There are many different roles in the infrastructure of a nation.

For example, in the USA, there are over 22 million people employed in the infrastructure—federal, state, and local.

* “...because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.”

And the second came... likewise he said to him, “You also be over five cities.” (Lk. 19:17-19)

* “And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nation” (Rev.2:26)

* Then a voice came from the throne, saying, "Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!" (Rev.19:5)

12. Everyone has the opportunity to be called great in the age to come.

* Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant, And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Mat 20:26-28)

* The desire to be great, to have honor is in the heart of every person…we are called to this.

* Jesus did not rebuke the disciples for their desire to be great but for their understanding of what it means and how to obtain it

* Every person can become great in the Age to come

IX. There are Different Types of Eternal Rewards

1.There are very Many Eternal Rewards Mentioned

* These are mentioned in the teachings of Jesus especially in Revelation

* The three Most Important of these are:

a. Eternal Intimacy (with Jesus)

Math.25 1-13 The Wise Virgins………. the Wedding Feast

Deep relationship and personal intimacy with Jesus and the Father

Great joy and celebration and fellowship together

b. Eternal Authority (and Responsibility)

Luke19:11-27. The Wise Servant………Ruling over Ten Cities

The joy of partnership with Jesus in restoring and rebuilding his creation

Deep friendship and access to His wisdom and supernatural power

c. Eternal Glory ……Rev.3:5,18. White Garments

Garments of beauty and glory that display the life we lived on earth

Great honour and affirmation by Jesus

“Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (Rev.20:6)

X. Some Will Suffer Loss at The Judgment Seat of Christ

1. Some will suffer loss of rewards that could been received

* (1 Cor. 3:15; 1 Jn. 2:28; 2 Jn. 8; Rev. 3:11, 18; 16:15).

* Suffering loss does not mean physical suffering but forfeiting potential rewards. Imagine discovering what could have been yours but through foolish choices you were disqualified from it

* Loss of Eternal Rewards comes by neglecting God’s will, refusing to repent of sinful activities, and not persevering in our calling.

* If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved. (1 Cor. 3:15)

* Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for but that you may be rewarded fully. (2 Jn. 8; NIV)

2. Jesus warned believers not to allow anyone to take their crown

* “Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown.” (Rev. 3:11)

Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 1 (3 of 12)

Fri 19 Jun 2020  « Back to Top

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One of the major themes of Jesus teachings was the theme of Eternal Rewards. This topic is seldom taught in churches, but it provides major motivation for holiness, personal transformation and faithful service.

We shall all stand before the Judgment seat of Christ to give account for our stewardship as followers of Christ. At stake are position, honour and reward in the coming Kingdom of Christ.

This message looks at the Two of the glorious Eternal Rewards that the Bible reveals are prepared for those who love Jesus, overcome in life and serving faithfully.... Eternal Intimacy and Eternal Authority.

Introduction

We're starting again on Eternal Rewards #3, and this study's going to be called: Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 1. There'll be two parts to this part, because there's quite a lot of teaching on eternal rewards, and I think it really helps if you do understand them. We start at the introduction, and we just cover a little bit of familiar ground, and in this study I'm going to actually list for you the main categories of rewards, and then we're going to look at two of them and go through them in more detail. Next time round we'll go through some of the others.

Main Message

One of the great things that Jesus had was the teaching on Eternal Rewards. He constantly talked about it, because it motivates us to look beyond temporary, and to eternal.

Matthew 16:27 - "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father and with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works."

The word reward means to recompense, or to pay what is appropriate and what is due. What he's saying then, is that there is a day when the Lord will come, and He'll come in power! He'll come in glory; and that will be a time when He will reward, or acknowledge in a very specific way, the labours that we've done in serving Him.

The second thing is, there's many different kinds of rewards. When you start to read through the Book of Revelation and then through other places in the Bible, you find many rewards that are listed are different kinds - and it makes sense. God is extremely creative, and if He can create the universe, and create all the details of creation, then He's got unlimited resources to find ways to reward us, which are appropriate for us, and to recognise what we've done. In Revelations 2-3 He describes a number of rewards. He talks in Revelations 2-3 to the churches, and firstly He reveals Himself, an aspect of His character; then He talks about knowing their works, and honours them for the works they've done; then He points out the bit they need to come to grips with or overcome - and then makes promises to the overcomers!

If we're familiar with the significance and importance of different rewards, then it's a huge motivation; becoming aware of it requires a response. Once you're aware of it, you then need to actually then do something - having the information won't be enough! It's meant to change our life and give us motivation.

In Colossians, for example - Colossians 3:22-24, we saw this verse last week: "Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. For whatever you do, do it heartily, as though you were doing it to the Lord and not to men, knowing... (and here it is - you do it this way) ...knowing that from the Lord you receive the reward of inheritance, for you serve the Lord Jesus Christ."

What he's saying there in the verse is that, when we know that God is watching every detail of our lives, every aspect of our heart and thoughts and motivation, and that He will recompense us, then we can boldly face up to the difficulties that we have with people, with working with people, with serving people. He's talking to slaves, people who are constantly, or frequently, abused by their masters. He didn't address the issue then, of the slavery or the injustice. He put in their heart an eternal perspective, so they could overcome in the midst of their difficulty.

Third thing is, rewards are not given automatically. There would be many Christians who would like to think, well: we'll all be equal; or everyone's the same. But actually, although we're of equal value to God, nevertheless He relates to us differently based on our response, so rewards are not automatic. They come if we fulfil specific conditions.

Revelations 3:21 - "to him who overcomes I'll grant with him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and am sat down with My Father on His throne."

John 12:26 - "If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me and where I am My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honour."

Notice there, in both of those passages there is a promise to someone who does something - to him who overcomes, I'll give this place of authority with Me. The second passage there, in John 12 - anyone serves Me, let him follow Me and then He says My Father will honour him.

He talks then about Authority in the first passage, and then He talks about Honour in the second passage. God desires to raise our level of responsibility and authority in the coming kingdom. God desires to honour us in the coming kingdom. Notice there in that first verse, to 'overcome' means to 'subdue' or 'get the victory over' something. At some stage we'll go and look at the Churches of Revelation, but in each one, there was something to overcome; and the last one of all, was the church that was lukewarm. If you look of course at the church now, you will see Luke-warmness is a significant problem, but one of the greatest promises are to those who overcome Luke-warmness, passivity and apathy.

Number 4, the small sacrifices made now have a huge recompense in eternity - small things. It may seem big to you, and for some people little is very big, but this is what Jesus:

Matthew 25:21 - "If you are faithful over small things or few things, I'll make you ruler over many things."

Notice the contrast: few things, many things. The key is being faithful. Here's another one in the Parable of the Pounds:

Luke 19:17 - "Well done, you were faithful in very little, have authority over 10 cities."

Notice: very little... 10 cities! Wow, that's just no comparison right there. What He's trying to do is, using the stories to say, the recompense will far outweigh any sacrifice. When you understand what He's offering, it so overshadows the cost and sacrifice, that people are motivated and willing then to lay down things.

In Hebrews 11:6 we saw before that God is a Rewarder. That means He recompenses, or He is extremely generous and extravagant. We can trust that God is going to give a big pay day. You know how people at work - they look forward to getting a big bonus at the end of the year? Well for a believer, we get blessed in the journey, but then there's a massive bonus at the other end, a massive bonus, and it’s out of proportion to everything. Even though we may have temporary difficulties, we are persuaded because of what we know to persevere, because today's not my pay day - it's still coming! Jesus promised the disciples…

Matthew 19:29 - "Everyone who has left houses, or brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or children, or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life”.

Notice He said, 'a hundredfold', meaning the maximum possible return. He's trying to convey to us that if we have to sacrifice, if following the Lord means alienation from people, if following the Lord means we lose or leave behind things, He says: nevertheless, there will be a hundredfold return! Frequently there's a portion of it is in this life; and we see, if you look at our lives you can see the blessings that abound, the blessings are tangible, and visible in lots of different ways. However, they're not the real rewards. The big ones are to come. That's what makes you then excited about living every day, and not afraid of death, because how could you be afraid of death when your big pay day's ahead? You can't be! So now we've talked about the rewards, I want to give you a summary of them.

This is an overview and it's just one way of grouping them together. There's so many mentioned, somewhere between 18 and 30 in different ways, that they do cross over and connect with one another in different ways. So here they are…

#1 - Eternal Intimacy, which means that there is a realm of intimate relationship with God that's reserved for those who overcome.

Revelations 3:12 - "He who overcomes, I'll make him a pillar in the temple of My God, he shall go no more out. I'll write on him the name of My God, the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven from My God. I'll write on him My new name."

When He talks about writing the name on someone, He's talking about having a deep intimacy with God as a Father, and a deep intimacy with Jesus Christ.

#2 - the second significant reward that's offered is Eternal Authority. What that that means is that, we are given different work assignments with different levels of Authority and Responsibility and Power - and that will be forever! It's not a temporary thing.

Right now, what you have is temporary, and it keeps changing, and when you see that what you do now is just your assignment for now, it's your training assignment. Every time your assignment changes, it's just more training, different assignment and how we fulfil our assignments determines then what God entrusts in eternity.

When I look at my journey, there was an assignment to teach in a high school, and run Christian outwork there, among the children. Then there was a new assignment, so I had to leave that behind; to have an assignment with a Christian school; and then the time came for that to end. There was an assignment pastoring, and then that time came for that to end. There was a new assignment then, that involved starting and planting another church; and there was an assignment leading a movement... and then the assignment shifts - it comes to an end.

If you understand your life is just a series of assignments, then you stick with your assignment until God says it's time to let it go. Then when you let go, it's easy to let go. It's just so simple. It's just having the right perspective; but if your identity is tied up in your assignment, you can't let it go. You just use everyone to make yourself feel better, because you've got a lack inside that God wants to meet.

#3 - we saw the scripture in Luke 19:17 - if you're faithful over very little, you'll have rulership over cities. So thirdly, Eternal Glory. God intends to manifest His glory. It'll be in several ways. One will be through a resurrection body. There'll be other ways God will manifest His glory, but it'll be in different measures.

Matthew 13:43 - "the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

Reward #4, the Bible describes Eternal Garments. There's quite a number of scriptures that refer to garments of different kinds, and the garments will vary in glory depending on how the believer lived. If you go to a special function, you'll notice how everyone dresses up - they dress up in their best.

If you go to a graduation for example, you'll notice how they dress up, and they have different kinds of aspects to their clothing, and when you look at it, you know: oh wow, oh that's a Master of Science. Oh wow, that's a PhD in arts. You can recognise it from the different clothing they're wearing, and so it will be that in eternity we will be clothed in garments - garments of glory, and they will probably have different kinds and styles and colour, and God's creative in all of that. But they will indicate the life we've lived on the earth.

Revelations 3:4 -"he who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments".

We're not clear exactly what the garments are, but they will be aspects of God's nature and His glory.

Reward #5, the Bible describes Victor's Crowns. We'll look into this next week, but a crown is a reward, or an acknowledgement, that you've run a race and won - you're the victor. You've won! Always with a victor's crown, there was something you overcame. Some will receive crowns because of their private victories.

James 1:12 - "Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he's been approved, he will receive the crown of life the Lord has promised to those who love Him."

Our love for the Lord is demonstrated by obeying Him and overcoming temptations which are frequent in life. Each temptation is a chance to prove the quality of our love, and our faith, so when we overcome or endure temptations and pressures, then God's approval comes, and we receive reward in the next life.

Reward #6, Honour and Praise. In the eternal kingdom, or millennial kingdom, we will receive varying degrees of praise from the Lord. God doesn't say "well done" to everyone. He will actually be quite specific and acknowledge each person's life.

1 Corinthians 4:5 - "Don’t judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes, then each one's praise or affirmation will come from God, because God knows the hearts."

He knows the intents. He knows what's really going on. What he's saying, or the context of it is: don't judge people. Don't think that you know what's really going on in their life. You don't really know their heart and intent - but God does, so leave judging to Him, and when the time comes, then everyone will receive the praise that's appropriate, because God, who sees all, will reveal and acknowledge what's worthy of acknowledging. There are varying degrees of praise, and we saw in Luke 19:17-19 how the man's commended: "well done good and faithful servant, you're also over five cities". There's honour and praise. In other words, God will publicly, and openly, honour each of His children for what they've done.

Reward #7 is Riches and Treasure, or treasure in heaven. Jesus spoke about laying out for yourselves treasure in heaven, which is incorruptible. Neither moth nor rust destroys it, and it can't be stolen - Matthew 6:20. Jesus called us to lay out for ourselves treasure in heaven, so what that must mean is: there's things you can do, which cause an accumulation of wealth or reward from God in heaven.

It's quite good to study the scriptures: what are the true treasures then, what are the real treasures of life - and you'll find that they're not what you think they are. The real treasures are usually not what you can touch with your hands, because you've got to leave them behind - they're corruptible; they're the things that can't be touched. For example, wisdom is better than riches and gold, because if you have wisdom, then wealth and whatever will come to you. That's a whole other series of studies that we'd have to look at, as to what are the true treasures in the kingdom of heaven, because if you'll labour for the true treasures, then you'll gain other things as well.

Finally, then, Vindication. There will be vindication before one's enemies.

Revelations 3:9 - "Indeed I'll make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and they're not but lie, I'll make them come and worship before your feet, and know that I have loved you."

People misunderstand us. People shame us. They accuse us, they criticise, they laugh, they mock, all these kinds of things. Some people actually persecute and oppose Christians and believers.

What He's saying is that there will come a day when God will vindicate, or He will validate, the choices we have made, before those who have made fun of us, or laughed at us, or belittled us, or even persecuted us. That means, it doesn't really matter what people are doing - you can bless them - because there's one day you'll stand in a place of honour; and they'll be in a place of shame, and God will be saying: well, you had your day, and you laughed, but here I want to tell you My opinion, which is an eternal opinion. This enables you then to... if you get the concept of these rewards in your heart, you can walk through all kinds of stuff, because they just run off you - they're not important.

In looking at the rewards, the first three deserve special attention:

* Eternal Intimacy

* Eternal Authority

* Eternal Glory

They require us we have a look at them especially, because they are things particularly related to our original design as sons. When God designed us to be a son or a daughter, when He created man, He created us for these things:

(1) Intimate Relationship - notice then, one of the major rewards is intimacy with Him.

(2) Secondly, He created us to exercise Authority and Dominion on His behalf; and in the coming kingdom one of the rewards is the level of authority and dominion that are appropriate for what we've done on the earth.

(3) The third one is Glory. We're called on the earth to represent the Father, or show His nature, what He is like; and doing that now on the earth, allowing Him to transform us so we represent Him in His nature. In the age to come, there'll be a glory on our life. We'll go into those in more detail.

We have an overview of the seven kind of broad categories of rewards, and now we want to look at the first two rewards, and I want to go into them in a bit more detail. The first one we're going to look at is the issue of Eternal Intimacy.

Eternal means: it goes on, with no time limit on it. It goes on, and it does not cease, it does not stop - it is forever ongoing. Intimacy means a close personal relationship, where you become known by someone, and they become known by you. There's a revealing of hearts to one another at a greater depth.

In all relationships, intimacy or close connection grows and develops. Even when you think you know your wife... you don't really know her. There's more to learn! With God, no matter how much we think we know of Him, there is more to know. Paul describes it as the 'unsearchable riches of Christ', or the 'excellent knowledge of Christ'.

In looking through this area of Eternal Intimacy then, it's clearly related to our preparation now, so I want to go through several descriptions of it. In the Bible they don't just have a heading 'Eternal Intimacy', and then explain it all underneath - no topic is like that! The way God lays out the Bible is, He puts a little bit all over the place, like seeds in a bag - and you've got to hunt for it; and when you hunt for it, and bring it together, you'll find there's a bit on it here.

There's a bit on it there, there's a bit on it there, there's a bit over here, there's a bit - in fact there's been a bit right through the whole Bible, if you just knew what to look for. They use often (because this is a spiritual concept), stories to help you:

If you look in the Old Testament, there's stories like the story of Isaac and his father, who sent out the servant to get a bride for him. There are all these details about the bride, and the finding of the bride, which is a referral to God Himself searching to find people who'll have a love relationship with Him, and there's all sorts of characteristics about the bride.

Then you find there's the story of Ester; and Ester's a story about a bride, about a person who was selected. Why was she selected? There must have been some reason for being selected for the role of greatest intimacy with the King.

You see many stories like that; and there's the natural story, and then, when you look beyond it, you see it's a prophetic picture of something in the future. All through the Bible they've got these stories. One of the stories we've already seen, so I won't go into it too much, is the Parable of the 10 Virgins…

Matthew 25:1-13 - "Then at the end times, when Jesus comes, the kingdom of heaven shall be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom, five were wise and five were foolish..."

I've taught a little bit on this, but the parable reveals that some will be given access to great intimacy, into the marriage feast; and some will be excluded. The things that we need to see in that story: they were all virgins - they were all believers. They all had lamps, they all had oil, they all were waiting for the bridegroom. The lamps are our life that we live before men. They are the overflow of the life of God within us - the oil represents the presence, tangible presence of God in our life.

The bridegroom is Jesus. The wise ones were wise because they prepared ahead of time and paid the price to have oil. The foolish ones were foolish because they failed to anticipate the coming of the bridegroom, they failed to prepare. The key issue in the parable is really simply this: there is a need to prepare for the coming of Jesus - and if we are prepared, we enter into the marriage supper of the lamb, into a season of rejoicing, celebrating, festivity, of honour and communion with Him. If we're not prepared, we don't enter - it's as simple as that!

The key thing in that was, the foolish one said: give us what you've got; and they said: no, we're not going to do that - you must pay the price to have the oil. There's a price to prepare your heart. It's a price you pay daily, little by little, when you keep your heart right before God, you remain soft and tender and responsive to Him. There's the price in prayer, the price in surrender to Him, and becoming filled with His presence, so you become a presence carrier. So that's one story, and clearly, if you look in that story: some entered; some did not. There was a distinction between people who were believers.

There's another one here - another promise is found in the Book of Revelation, and it's found to the Laodicean Church. In Revelation 3, Jesus spoke this.

Revelation 3:20 - "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears My voice and opens the door... I will come in to him, and I will dine with him, and he with Me."

What is He saying there? Clearly, this is a church. There were things to overcome; He's talking to people who overcome, who respond to Him. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock" - so the key thing here is, the door represents our heart or our life - do we hear Jesus speaking? Notice the strange thing is: Jesus is outside of the church, when He should be inside the church. He's seeking access to come in. Believers can live a life where they're living, and they're in church, and they're doing whatever - but they're not in intimate relationship with Jesus. He constantly is seeking access to our heart, access to different areas of our life.

It says, the promise here is: "I will come in to him, and dine with him" - so what does that mean, to dine? Again, frequently, if you look at just the natural thing, and what it would mean to you, you then get insight of what He's saying. Dining with others, if you think about it - it's an opportunity to relax. You laugh together, you enjoy one another. People talk, they open up their hearts, they build relationship around a table - and the early church was really built around a table - so Jesus said: I will dine with them, and them with Me. What He's saying then is: He's promising one of increased access and intimacy to Him - and we have that now, to some degree; but in the millennium, we will know Him in a much greater way. He will reveal more of Himself.

Ever know when you can be with someone, and they don't give away much; and then they suddenly one day, open up and let you know a whole lot of things? You think: oh my, I thought I knew you, but I hardly know you at all! He's talking about something like that. The word 'dine' that's used there is the same word in Revelation 19:9 that refers to the marriage supper of the lamb. The word 'supper' - it comes from that same word, dine. When He says: I will dine with him, He's saying: I will bring you into the marriage supper, where there'll be celebration, and a place of intimate conversation and friendship. He's really offering the opportunity for us to enter into a deeper intimacy with Him - and that requires that we overcome something.

It's hard to describe what that will be like - it's hard to find words for it! You can think of the happiest meal you've had, the funniest time you've had at a meal, and maybe that gives an indication. But this is... let me give you a couple of things. Firstly, David. David said this... He said that intimacy with Jesus is an indescribable pleasure.

Psalm 16:11 - "You will show me the path of life, in Your presence is fullness or extreme joy, and at Your right hand, or sitting next to you, there are pleasures that are forevermore."

You'll find many of these verses in the Bible. He's saying... and he's obviously experienced a measure of it on the earth. He said: when you come into the presence of the God, there is an immense joy that comes. There is a deep sense of pleasure and fulfilment that comes that makes everything else seem very, very trivial. Here's another one that he wrote...

Psalm 36:8 - "They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house, and You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures."

He's saying: God's ability to bring pleasure to us is like a river that can't be stopped. You can see the trouble in finding language to describe the depths of intimacy, and what it will mean to be in His presence - most amazing. Now when Paul writes about it, writing about intimacy, he writes and says: it's a prize that you win. So yes, we're given a relationship with Jesus now, but you can neglect that relationship. You can take it for granted. You cannot really do anything to build it - or you can pursue a greater intimacy.

Philippians 3:8 - "I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ my Lord, and I've suffered the loss of everything and count them rubbish, that I may gain Christ."

Notice two statements in there: the excellence of the knowledge of Christ; and everything else is just junk. I want to win this prize of gaining Christ! The key thing in there is that intimacy is given to us in a measure; but the fullness of it is a prize to be won. He says... and he's just listed all his achievements, and how great he was, and then immediately he says: but really - that's all junk, compared to this! It's all comparative. People looked at him, and he looked like he had his life all together; he looked like he's really reached the peak. He's a Rabbi - highly respected. He's got a high place in society, and in the system; but he said: it's all junk compared to this. This is really something! I've had a taste of this - and this has ruined my life; that the more we taste the Lord, the more it ruins our life.

There's an example of it there, and another scripture that refers to intimacy is found in the promise to the church at Pergamon. This promise is made also to overcomers - they had to overcome something in that church; and this is what he said: "he that is near to here, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches" - which is really a common statement in the Book of Revelation. What he's saying is: you need to develop a heart that listens and responds to God.

Revelation 2:17 - "To him that overcomes, I'll give him some of the hidden manna to eat".

Now you see again, the use of a picture language. If you're not familiar with the pictures or stories in the Bible, then it doesn't mean anything. But when you look, just look up 'manna' in the Bible. Notice he says: I will give him 'hidden manna' to eat. You've really got to ask the questions: what is manna; and what is hidden manna? What does he mean by it?

Well, the first reference to manna is found in the Old Testament, in the Book of Exodus 16:15, and manna was a food that was supplied supernaturally by God, to nourish the people of Israel. It was supernatural food. Jesus is saying: I'm offering supernatural food to you. In Exodus 16:15, when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another: what is it, because they didn't know what it is; and Moses said: it's the bread the Lord has given you to eat.

In Psalm 78:24-25, the manna was called: 'the bread of heaven'; and 'angels food'. In other words, whatever it was they ate supernaturally sustained them. It was a provision of God that kept them healthy, kept them alive, kept them vibrant in a difficult journey through a wilderness. Jesus Himself said: Moses gave you that manna; but actually, I'm the real manna. He uses this story of manna, saying: actually, the real manna is a person - I'm the bread of life! He's talking then about intimacy with Him - it’s like a supernatural food for us.

What's hidden manna? Is there any reference to 'hidden' manna? Well, the word 'to hide' - hidden means just 'to conceal'. So, is there any place where manna was hidden or concealed? It tells us that, after the manna was gathered up, they put a portion of manna in a pot - and they concealed it, or hid it, in the Ark of the Covenant - in the Holiest of Holies of the Tabernacle. It was a reminder to Israel, of God's miracle provision. So in the Ark of the Covenant, which was a wooden box covered in gold, in which were placed the 10 Commandments (the word of God) - the hidden manna, secret food, hidden supernatural food - and Aaron's rod that budded supernaturally; all of these things are supernatural. The tablets were supernaturally given, the manna was supernaturally given; and Aaron's rod was a dead stick that suddenly leaved, and had fruit and budded, budded and had fruit - so all of that is supernatural.

And the only place it was to be found - no one saw it, because it was hidden! It was hidden in the Holiest of Holies - in the furthermost part of the Tabernacle, where the glory of God dwelt. When he says: I'll give him 'hidden manna' - everyone who was listening understood what that meant. Oh man, hidden manna! That means He will take us into the very throne room of God, and we will have fellowship, and will be fed and nourished supernaturally there. This is a promise... and it's a promise to overcomers! Notice then, he's using different pictures to describe an important promise.

Here's another promise also to Pergamon and this is the promise of a 'white stone', in Revelation 2:17. It's virtually the same verse again. He says:

"I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written that no one knows except him who receives it."

Again, to us that has little reality. You look at it, and it doesn't have any meaning. But the people there knew exactly what it was; we've got to ask the questions then: what does the white stone refer to; and what does it mean to have a new name written on it? "I'll give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, and no one knows it except the one who receives it". This is a secret! What he's going to get... it's got an element which is open, the white stone; and there's a part of it which is secret - the name that's written on it. It's a new name!

So what's the white stone? Well, to the people who were listening to this, they were aware that there were competitions. There were the gladiators and the competitions and so on. Anyone who won a great victory in the races, or a great victory in the competitions, or a great victory in the games or the battles - they were given a white stone. Probably the best thing you'd say is: they got an Olympic medal. You've all seen an Olympic medal - the guy gets the gold! You want to go for gold! When you go for gold, you're put up on a dais, the medal's put on, they sing the national anthem... and it's a very emotional, moving thing. Here's a thought: Why is it when, in New Zealand, our country wins a gold medal, and you see them on the dais, and our national anthem's sung... why does it stir something in our heart? What is it in our heart? I mean just a person won a gold medal, what the heck?

And yet when you watch it and hear it there's an emotion stirs in us, because deep in our spirit there is a knowledge of a day to come when you will stand on a dais and be given the white stone, that will acknowledge what you have done. It was given as an award of honour; and people who had the white stone were given privileged access to special events, and to special meals. If you had won a white stone, or won an Olympic medal - if I use that language, if you'd won your Olympic medal - then everyone knows who you are! Everyone wants to have their picture taken with you! Everyone wants to connect with you; and the access, or 'having the stone' gave them access to games. It gave them access to festivities, all kinds of things.

That word 'white stone' - the 'white' means to 'shine', or 'glisten', or to be brilliant white. Probably, the different stones will be different degrees of honour. Even if you look now at stones, you see different sized stones, and different quality of diamonds. I can tell a good diamond - You can tell it! Its colour... its sparkle... you can see it! So clearly, the stones themselves will acknowledge - they're a form of honour; and it says: He has a 'new name' written on it. What does it mean, that God's written a new name on the stone? Firstly again, you must ask: the 'new name' - what does a 'name' mean? Then when you look at what a 'name' means, then you can go back and then work what a 'new name' might mean.

Your name is the means by which you're identified. Steve, there's Steve. There's Dave. There's Josephine and so on. We call your name, Steve, you'll know who we called. Everyone knows who we called. You're identified by your name. In the Bible, names always signify the character of a person, or something to do with their destiny - both for good and for bad! There was a Nahash - that meant: 'the serpent'! He was an Ammonite, who came against the people of God - so names meant something. There was Jephthah, the one that 'breaks through'. So frequently names meant their character, what they're like - Peter, the 'rock'; or their destiny - what they were called to do. Names then, have a meaning.

If God gave a person a new name, you ask the question: a new name means a different name. Did Jesus or God give new names or names to anyone? Yes, He did. What did that mean, when He gave them a new name? A new name means a change in relationship, or a change in status, or a change in role in the kingdom. If God gave a person a new name, it meant there was a change in relationship, a change in status, or a change in their role in the kingdom. Think about the stories we know - you'll know them straight away...

* Abram was renamed Abraham, meaning father of a multitude.

* Sarai was renamed Sarah, meaning princess.

* Jacob was renamed Israel, meaning prevailing with God.

* Simon was renamed Peter, meaning the rock.

Notice that each time we saw someone in the Bible that got a new name, there was a changed status; or there was something to do with the destiny that they were called into - so quite amazing really. Now here's a thing: Jesus Himself was given a new name! Wow! So again, you look up 'new name', and every time you find 'new name', you'll see some insight on it.

Philippians 2:9-10 - "Therefore God has highly exalted Jesus, and given Him a name which is above every other name - that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of those in heaven, of those in earth, of those under the earth"

Notice that Jesus humbled Himself, and became obedient to death. He's humbled Himself, and served the purpose of His Father; and now, there's an exalting! What is the exalting? The exalting is being given a new name. He's lifted up, and given a new name; and it says: we'll still know Him as 'Jesus', but the new name then refers to His status. Notice what it says: He's given a name above every other name. In other words, the name of Jesus, or His name, has been given a high new ranking or status - that at the name of 'Jesus', every knee will bow - in heaven, and in earth, and things under the earth - everyone will bow and acknowledge who He is. In other words, God has taken Jesus, who has humbled Himself, become obedient to death - and now elevated him up to the highest possible place that could ever be had, in authority and ranking. The 'new name' that He receives then... His name is still known as 'Jesus', but His 'new name' then refers to His new exalted status.

He is the King of Kings! He is the Lord of Lords! He is Emperor over all of creation; and He has won that, because of His death. He's the Eternal Emperor! For God to give you a 'new name', it will reveal to people - giving you a new name means a change in your status or character, or God's destiny to you. Interestingly, it says a 'new name' that only He knows. That means that God has a secret with you. Secrets are a part of friendship. The giving of a new name is an altering of status and friendship.

Here is #5: Jesus made this promise…

Revelations 3:12 - "I will write on him My new name."

What does it mean: 'write' on him? My new name? To 'write' means you take a pen, you write something down.

2 Corinthians 3:3 - "you are an epistle, or you are the letter ministered to by us, not written with ink but written by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is the heart." Notice he's saying that: you've become the letter, because God wrote on your heart his life, or his character. To 'write on your heart' means: the Holy Spirit gives revelation to you. Things you didn't know, God writes in your heart.

Jesus' new name and identity and rank is: He's now the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, He's the Emperor. He had a name that no man knew except Himself. In other words, He was also awarded a prize for the victory, the white stone. We are following Him. What it says, when He says, "I'll write on you My new name when you overcome", He's saying I will share with you a deeper level of intimacy. I will lift you to a greater status, and I will share some of My authority with you. So again, a lot of these pictures or images overlap with one another, but it primarily speaks of a much greater intimacy. "I will write on him My new name" - so He will impart revelation to us, of who He is; and not only who He is, but also a deeper revelation of Father God. One of the prizes to be won is a much deeper revelation and intimacy - both with Jesus, and with the Father.

Here's another promise - and again, all of these are to do with intimacy.

Revelations 2:25-28 - "I will give him the morning star".

It's the promise of the Morning Star. What does it mean, the morning star? Again, just ask the question, what could that possibly mean? Firstly, in nature, what does it mean; and secondly, is there a reference to it in the Bible? So firstly, in nature, the morning star is the brightest star in the sky. You see it just before the dawning of a new day. It's usually the one lowest on the horizon, and it's the beginning of the new day. But the morning star in the Bible is a reference to Jesus Christ Himself.

Revelations 22:16 - "I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star."

Jesus Himself! In other words, He's saying that He Himself is your reward. What does it mean - He is your reward? It means: a greater level of intimacy, and relationship, and knowing. He will reveal more of Himself. You can see then, if one of the significant rewards in eternity is a much deeper closeness, intimacy, knowledge, and revelation of Jesus, that brings fulfilment and honour into our life - now's the time to develop intimacy. If intimacy with the Lord is not your passion now, it's hardly ever going to be a reward, because you won't seek it. I put this one first, because rather than just wanting this and that from God, He wants us to want Him.

He said to Abraham: I am your Shield. I am your Exceeding Great Reward. Abraham had just given up everything, and He said: it's okay, I'm your reward. When you've got Me, you've got access to everything; don't seek the everything, seek Me! I've put a few questions in the study to get you think about your relationship with the Lord and intimacy; and that brings us to the second one.

The second one that we mentioned is the area of Eternal Authority. So eternal again - what does eternal mean? Eternal means: there's no time limit on it. It never expires. It goes on and on and on and on, once you're on that journey. Right now, we're in time; but when you go into the millennial kingdom, you're in eternity - then it never stops. It just goes on. So right now, we're ruled by time; then we're not ruled by time.

The Bible makes it clear that believers will rule with Christ for 1000 years. I saw thrones and the saints; they sat on them, and judgement was given to them, and they lived and reigned with Jesus Christ for 1000 years. Revelations 20:4-6 - "...they shall reign with Him 1000 years". In the Book of Revelation, it says there is a 1000 year period, a millennium; it means a 1000-year period, and Jesus will come to the earth and rule over the earth - but it's not just on His own. It will be in partnership! When we understand more about the millennium, and what will happen, and what will precede it, and then our part in the millennium, it inspires us then to actually overcome the trials of life.

The first thing to see about the millennium is that: it’s a 1000 period. The second thing to see is that Jesus, in that period when He returns, will be King over all Kings. He will be King over all Kings. That means He will exercise rulership over all the kings of the earth. Right now, we don't see that. Right now, He has the title to it, but when He returns He will exercise it. In Ephesians 1:21 it says, after His resurrection... "He's been raised far above all principality and power, might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, the one that is to come." In other words, He's being made King over everything.

Revelations 19:16 - "He's King of Kings, and Lord of Lords."

Psalm 72:11 - "All kings will fall down before Him, all nations will serve Him."

Now you look at the news, you look at all the things that are happening in the world, you think: wow, something dramatic has got to change for that to happen - and it is! We'll touch on it tonight; and it says: Jesus, right now, is at the right hand of God; and rules, but His leadership in the earth is not fully manifest yet. It’s like when we cast demons out, then there's a little of His leadership is seen. When we see miracles, a little bit of His leadership's seen. When people's lives are transformed, saved and healed and delivered, you see His kingdom advancing, and so on - but we haven't seen what it will look like when it manifests fully!

When He comes, His authority - He will manifest authority with consequences. We're not used to seeing that, but when you look in the Bible, you will see it. What I mean is this: authority with consequences means He has the power to enforce His will on the earth. Now right He's demonstrating that His kingdom is a kingdom of love, and He draws people into a love relationship - to honour Him, and serve Him, and become like Him; but when He returns, it will be with power, and it will be with majesty. He came to earth the first time as the lamb; but He will return as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. There is a change! He's still the same person, but there's a change in the aspect we will see of Him; and that means all will yield to His authority, and His right to rule, or they will face the consequences.

That's an extraordinary thing to consider. If you look at the paper, you see all these people, and you see their pride, the arrogance, the posturing, the manipulation - you see all the injustice. But there is a time when all will yield to His authority... or face consequences!

Psalm 110:5 - "The Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath."

That means: if leaders of nations won't yield, they'll die!

Psalm 110:6 - "He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many countries."

Notice that He's talking there about, not the aspect of God which is the kindness and mercy and compassion. He's talking now about how He's coming to impose His kingdom in the earth. He's coming to exercise His right to rule. He won the right to rule - first by creating. He won the right to rule by His death on the cross; and by God honouring Him, and giving him that right. He holds it back to grow a people who will work, be prepared ready for Him. And int that time in His coming, there's going to be manifestations of power we haven't seen before.

That brings us to the next thing, point #3. He says: before His coming there'll be a time of great tribulation on the earth.

Matthew 24:6-8 "You will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not come. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places. These are just the beginning of the sorrows. For then there'll be great tribulation, such as never been seen since the beginning of the world until this time, and shall never ever be."

He's saying that, before His coming, there will be a period of vast destruction; and suffering in the earth, before He comes. The Bible describes in Revelation: He will open seals in heaven, and this will unleash on the earth all kinds of devastation. The Bible talks about a third of the earth's population being destroyed by the things that come on the earth. Now that's another whole teaching of its own, when we teach about the day of the Lord.

It's hard for us to comprehend that, until you go into the Bible, and see. Have these things ever happened before? When you go back and ask: did these things ever happen before? Did God ever bring judgements into the earth like that? The answer is: yes, He did! In the days of Noah, which is also a picture of the coming of the Lord - "As in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of man." He said: "the flood overtook them all". In the days of Noah, the whole earth was covered with a flood, and a handful were saved. There are other examples of that as well. Because there's a period of vast destruction, there's going to need to be a period of restoration - that's where we come in. We are part of the judgements in the earth; and we're part of the restoration!

When Jesus returns, as I mentioned before, He'll come as the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelations 5:5). In the Book of Revelation, it describes Him coming.

Revelation 19:11-16 - "I saw heaven open and behold, a white horse and He who sat on him was Faithful and True (that's Jesus), and in righteousness He judges and makes war."

So when He comes back next time, it won't be peace to all men - it is war! So, good to be on His side; not good to be not on His side. He said: His eyes were a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no man knew except Himself; clothed with a robe dipped in blood, His name is called The Word of God. See - it's very clearly Jesus!

Now look at this: "...The armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses". The armies of heaven, white linen, clean and white - that's what the bride is given, in Revelation 19. "...Out of His mouth goes a sharp sword (that means: His word), that He should strike nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron." That means His rule will be unbending, people will have to yield to it. "He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God. He has a robe and on His thigh a name written: Kings of Kings and Lord of Lords".

Notice then, He's saying: there will be an inevitable confrontation, and conflict with anyone who resists Him. When He came the first time, it was to demonstrate the 'lamb' nature - meekness, humility, the suffering servant. When He comes back again, He will come as the 'lion'. He will come to confront kingdoms; He will come to transform the earth.

There's a couple of examples, more than one example, in the Bible of it. Here's one: Moses' confrontation and conflict with Pharaoh over the release of God's people from bondage. Pharaoh was a natural ruler, of the most wealthy and influential empire in the world; yet one man forced him to bow and let go everything. How did that happen? He carried Sonship Authority; he carried Sonship power! The guy had to yield or lose everything. We see it in Elijah's confrontation with the false prophets of Baal - he called fire from heaven! You understand, when God is backing you, and supernatural power is available at this kind of level... people can't say no! If they say no, there's a big problem! You understand that? Once you start to look in the Bible, and start to see the stories then, of these confrontations of kingdom against kingdom - they all have pictures of the end time of kingdoms in conflict; and Jesus Himself will overcome all resistance to His rule, and establish His kingdom on the earth. He will partner with believers to do that.

Here's the fifth point, #5 and it says: Jesus will establish His rule over the world - over a worldwide kingdom. There will be a one world government; it will be in Jerusalem; it will be Jesus in charge - and He'll have a team! He'll have a people who help Him administer His government - all governments require people to administer it. He has a name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

In Revelation it says: "Jesus Christ was the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth". He will establish rulership over two types of kings. There will be resurrected kings, resurrected believers - so that'll be you and me, resurrected in a resurrection body; can't be hurt, can't be killed, can't be even captured. Can you imagine? You're living in a resurrection body - in an earth where people are not resurrected. There's nothing can harm you! There's nothing! You can move, transport from one place to another - there's nothing can hold you back. No sickness can touch you, no one can kill you. It's like impossible to cause any problem to you! You understand then, Jesus will have a company of people in resurrection bodies; but then there'll also be natural kings, and they will be guided by and directed by people. They may not want to yield to them - but they will have to, just like all kings have advisors.

Isaiah 61:4 - "They will rebuild the old ruins, raise up the former desolations, repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations."

In the season of the millennium, every aspect of society will be changed. Now just think about the task of doing that, the task of changing government just alone: laws, the legal system, the financial, economic systems (which are manipulated), the education systems, the media systems, the entertainment, the sports, community, religion... Think of all the aspects that make up a society - someone has to change all that! Who is going to change all of that? Well, God is preparing believers! He has them from every age since the beginning. He will have people prepared. The thing that will differ will be: what role you have.

#6: Jesus' government won't be instantaneous; it will be progressive, will progressively increase. He's not going to click His fingers and make everything change. He could do that now; but He doesn't want to do that. He wants to raise you up. He wants to raise people up. He wants to raise people up, who He can share His authority with, who will partner with Him - and they'll come from every generation that have ever lived! There will be people arise; some resurrected, and some changed, now that they're alive. In Isaiah 9:7, it says: "of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end." In other words, His government or His kingdom will increase without ever stopping; so that opens up the prospect that, even what we see is not the limit of what God is going to create, or have for us to rule over.

In Daniel 2:35 he says: Daniel had a vision of the end times, and it was a vision - an image he saw; and he saw a stone come and shatter the image, and he said: the stone that struck the image became a great mountain that filled the whole earth. That stone is the kingdom of God. In the vision that Nebuchadnezzar saw (he was the ruler of Babylon), there was a vision of a head of iron and so on, silver and gold, right down through to feet of clay and brass... Then he saw a picture of a small rock come and shatter the feet of this image, and the whole thing collapsed. So when you look historically, every one of the parts of the body that were mentioned represent a kingdom; except when we get to the last ones, which refer to a kingdom originating in Europe from Rome, probably made up of 10 countries, that hasn't yet come into being. Many people thought it would be the EUC, then the EU and so on; but it's a collaboration of nations that hasn't yet come. And he says: in the days of those kings, God will set up a kingdom, and it will invade the whole earth. In other words, there's going to be massive conflict; massive, massive, massive conflict - there's no other way! As David was saying, if you can't run with the footmen, how are you going to handle the horsemen? This is really little stuff compared to what's coming!

Daniel 7:27 - "Then the kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High; and His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him."

He's saying that all of the kingdoms will become His kingdom; and every dominion, every realm over which anyone rules, will become His domain; and they will serve and obey Him. So we get then to the applications of this, and of course, faithfulness in this life determines the level of authority you'll carry in the millennial reign. So everyone of us has got a different responsibility and assignments in the millennial kingdom - everyone, everyone. Think of what it takes to run a nation - you've got to have people doing all kinds of jobs, all kinds of places, and so there's going to be a place for everyone. God's big enough to make that happen.

In Revelations 20:6, it says: we'll be priests and Gods, and reign with Him 1000 years - that means we'll have an authority to bring about change or transformation. In Luke 19:17, someone was put over 10 cities; in Luke 19:19, someone was over five cities. In Revelations 2:26 - some will get power over the nations. Revelations 3:21 - some will sit with Me in My throne. Now the thing I want you to see from there is this: there are many different realms of authority. Some will sit in His throne with Him. Some will have authority to change nations.

Well, there's only so many nations of the world, a couple of hundred, so there's only a couple of hundred people going to be doing that! And then there'll be others who have authority over ten cities, over five cities, and then over less and less and less and less. He's saying then, that what we do now determines the level we will operate at in the coming kingdom. Faithfulness now, in serving, determines what responsibility and authority we have in the coming kingdom.

I'd like you to read Luke 19:11-27, which is the parable, not unlike the Talents parable which is a slightly different one. It's the Parable of the Pounds, or Minas.

"And a certain Nobleman when to a far country to receive a kingdom for Himself and return."

The Nobleman is Jesus; the country is heaven. He's gone to receive a kingdom, and return. He tells His servants: occupy, or do business, until I come. In other words, every believer... God doesn't want you just mucking around - enjoying a nice service! He wants you to be busy with your gifts, your time, your resources - engaged in advancing the kingdom, and representing Jesus. When He returned, having received the kingdom, He commanded the servants who He'd given money to, and called them: I want to know how much each man had gained by trading - Luke 19:13. So everyone will be called when the Lord returns: what did you do?

In another session, I will show you what He takes into account, which is quite a relief really! He takes our weaknesses into account. He takes lots of things into account, in working this out - He's a Righteous Judge! Everyone will give account; and our faithfulness will be acknowledged, and then rewarded. If you've been productive and fruitful in this life, you will then be productive and fruitful, and given authority, in the next.

What about people who are not? What about people who resist Him? He said: bring these enemies of mine, that did not want Me to reign over them - and slay them before Me! People who fight against God in this age - there's going to be a problem for them, when He returns. They'll meet an untimely death!

That's a great parable to study. It's a parable of the coming kingdom. There's lots of truths hidden in the parable. The core of it, is that faithfulness now is required - well done, good and faithful servant; faithful over few things, ruler over many! In order for us to participate in ruling with Jesus, we have to overcome now. Now is the day! Every day presents a new challenge to overcome. It's a great honour that we have been given! Our eternal destiny is the throne of God Himself.

Revelations 3:21 - "To him who overcomes, I will grant with him to sit in My throne, as I also overcame."

Overcoming is the big issue.

"He who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, I'll give him power over the nations".

Notice how, in all of these great promises, they're very, very big, mind-blowing promises. But at the core of them, always - you must overcome! There's always something to overcome. Revelation 2 & 3 tells you what all the end time churches have got to overcome. It's not automatic, it doesn't come to every believer; it's promised for those who overcome! You overcome losing your first love; you maintain passion; you overcome in trials, and don't quit. Think of people you know in church - one little thing, and they quit! What? You - it's like, you don't understand what's at stake here. Compromise - think of many people are compromised. They're just living one foot in the church, one foot in the world; one in the kingdom, one outside the kingdom - that's not going to cut it! We need to live strongly!

The Book of Revelation says that we must overcome the works of Jezebel; and right now, in this current season there's been an increasing emphasis on the activity of the spirit of Jezebel - that controlling power. We have to learn how to overcome that in our personal life, and whatever we're doing. So there's all these things we need to overcome: spiritual apathy, indifference, and complacency. There are huge and immense promises made for us. These promises are eternal; eternal intimacy, pleasure being in His presence, joy forevermore. Can you imagine being in His presence - everything fades away. Think of even the meetings we've had, where you've felt overwhelmed by the presence of God.

Everything that worried your life fell away, as you enjoyed His presence, and wept when you felt His love. Now imagine multiplying that 100, 1000, 2000, 10,000 - multiply that. It will be worth it! That's why He talks about the pleasures of sin for a season. Sin is enjoyable. You know, you enjoy it; but it's only for a season. It says for Moses: he turned away from the pleasures of sin for a season, because he had respect for the reward. So Moses got a revelation of this reward - that's why he gave up Egypt! It tells us in the Book of Hebrews 11: "he forsook Egypt by faith, and choosing to endure affliction with the people of God, rather than the pleasures of sin for a season - for he had respect for the recompense of the reward". See, there it is, right there! Moses understood: there is a big reward, for me giving up.

Imagine what he's actually giving up! He's giving up: sitting in a throne next to Pharaoh; ruling over a nation; wealth; everything at his disposal. He's in charge of armies! He's got everything you could imagine - and he gave it all up, because he saw what God was offering. For a season, or eternal - that's what the choice is; seasonal, or eternal. When you fix your eyes on the eternal, it motivates you to overcome, no matter what anyone else is doing. I will be faithful. I will develop intimacy. I will hold my ground. I will overcome the challenges of life, because I have respect for the reward that God has, the reward of eternal intimacy, the reward of eternal authority! Well bless you - there's the study.

Summary Notes

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ER3. Overview of the Eternal Rewards Part 1

I. Introduction

1.A Great Theme of Jesus Teaching was Eternal Rewards

- Jesus constantly taught about seeking Eternal rewards, and the need to pursue them

- “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”(Mat.16:27)

2.There are very Many Different types of Rewards

- In Rev.2-3 Jesus names many different rewards for those who Overcome specific challenges and trials

- The many Eternal Rewards that are described potentially form an important part of our Eternal Destiny

- We need to be familiar with the significance and importance of the different rewards revealed.

- Understanding what is at stake gives us great motivation for perseverance and transformation

“Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.

And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.

But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality” (Col.3:22-24)

3.Rewards are Not Given Automatically…Only to those who fulfil specific Conditions

- “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev.3:21)

- “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor” (Jn.12:26)

- Note that in each of these scriptures receiving a reward is conditional upon our works and actions in response to Jesus

4.Our Small Sacrifices Now have Huge Recompense Eternally

- “You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.” (Mt. 25:21)

- “Well done...you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.” (Lk. 19:17)

- God greatly values our small expressions of obedience in our mind , emotions and will

- He remembers them and rewards them in a much, much greater proportion

- God is a “Rewarder” ( Heb.11:6) and He is extremely generous!

- “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.” (Mt. 19:29)

5. A Summary of these Many Rewards

- The many Rewards mentioned in the Bible could be listed under the following possible headings:

- Reward 1. Eternal Intimacy

Our communion with God will vary according to our spiritual capacity.

Jesus will reward some by writing the Father’s name on them. This includes receiving insight about God.

- Reward 2. Eternal Authority

We will all have different work assignments with varying measures of authority and responsibility

“...because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.” (Lk.19:17)

- Reward 3. Eternal Glory

God’s glory will be manifested in our resurrected bodies in varying measures.

“The righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Mt. 13:43)

- Reward 4. Eternal Garments

Garments will vary in glory according to how believers lived

“He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments,”(Rev.3:4)

There may be many different types of clothing with unique designs, fabric, brightness, color, etc.

- Reward 5. Victor’s Crowns

Some will receive crowns to publicly honor their private victories

“Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him”(Jam1:12)

- Reward 6. Honour & Praise

Each will receive varying praise from God

The Lord comes...then each one’s praise [affirmation] will come from God. (1 Cor. 4:5)

“…likewise he said to him, “You also be over five cities.” (Lk. 19:17-19)

- Reward 7. Riches & Treasure

Jesus’ call to gain treasure in heaven includes many different things

“…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Mt.6:20).

- Reward 8. Vindication

Being vindicated before one’s enemies

“Indeed I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie—indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you” (Rev.3:9)

6.The First Three of these Rewards Deserve Special Attention

- This is because God’s original design for man is to be a Son

Having Intimate Relationship with Father….Knowing the depths of His heart and communing with God

Exercising Authority on behalf of Father……Working with Him to extend His Kingdom

Representing Father………………………………….Revealing through words and actions His Character and Glory

- One of the Rewards mentioned more than any other is Ruling and Reigning with Christ

II. Reward 1. Eternal Intimacy

1.The Parable of The Ten Virgins (Mat.25:1-13)

- This parable reveals that some believers will have greater intimacy with the Lord than others.

- All were Virgins

Because of the blood of Christ, every believer is a ―pure virgin who has been betrothed to Jesus as His Bride (2 Cor. 11:2 ).

- All Ten Virgins had lamps, and oil and were waiting for the Bridegroom

That means all ten virgins are genuine believers.

- Only the five wise virgins paid the price to purchase the oil in order to make themselves ready

- “ but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps” (Matt. 25:4, 9-10).

- The foolish virgins, on the other hand, lived an undisciplined life. They did not pay the price for the oil

“And the foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.'

But the wise answered, saying, 'No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” (Mat.25:8-9)

- They ran out of oil, their light went out, and they did not make themselves ready as a worthy Bride

- Jesus clearly revealed the reward for the wise virgins when He said,

“Those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut” (Matt. 25:10).

- Because the wise virgins paid the price to purchase oil and to make themselves ready, they were rewarded with eternal intimacy with the Bridegroom.

2. The Promise of Intimacy (Laodicean Overcomers)

- “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. (Rev.3:20)

- Dining with others is an opportunity to relax, laugh together and enjoy one another. It is a time where communication at a deeper heart to heart level occurs

- This promise of dining is one of increased intimacy with Jesus in this life, but mostly will find fulfilment in the Millennial Kingdom at the extended celebration of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb

- “Dine”…. Is the same word used in Rev.19:9 referring to the Marriage Supper

- In the Bible culture dining is a place of intimate conversations and the developing of bonds of friendship and companionship

- “I will dine with him”… Jesus is offering us the opportunity to experience deep communication and oneness with Him, to celebrate with Him and enjoy His close friendship

- The Marriage Supper of the Lamb is a Highlight of History. It will be a wonderful time of celebration and enjoying close relationship with Jesus

- It is impossible to describe in words the joy and pleasure of this deeper intimacy with Jesus

- David: Intimacy is Indescribable Pleasure

“You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps.16:11)

“They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house, And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures” (Ps.36:8)

- Paul: Intimacy is A Prize to be Won

Paul described this intimacy as a prize to be won greater than any other pursuit or achievement

“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ”(Phi.3:8)

3.The Promise of Hidden Manna (Pergamon Overcomers)

- "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. " (Rev.2:17)

What is Manna?

- Manna was the food supernaturally supplied by God to nourish Israel in the wilderness

- “So when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "This is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat” (Exod.16:15)

- And the house of Israel called its name Manna. And it was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (Exod.16:31)

- Manna represents revelation we receive personally from Jesus who is the Bread of Life (Jn.6:48-51)

- The Manna was called “Bread of heaven” and “Angels food” (Ps.78:24-25)

What is Hidden Manna?

- The Manna was hidden on a golden pot in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies

- This Hidden Manna could only be seen by the High Priest once a year in the Holy of holies

- Hidden Manna means being fed revelation knowledge of Kingdom mysteries by Jesus personally.

It means a privileged much greater depth of intimacy with Him

4.The Promise of a White Stone with a New Name written upon it (Pergamon Overcomers)

- “I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.” (Rev. 2:17)

What is the White Stone?

- Precious stones were given as awards of honor to those who did valiant service, won victories in the Games, or who performed courageously in battle

- Those receiving these stones with their name on it were given privileged access to special events including games and feats offered by the Roman Empire

- “White”…..to shine or glisten, brilliant, dazzling white

- “White Stone” probably refers to varying degrees of honor and status and privileges at the Marriage Supper of the lamb

New Name Written on it

- Your Name is one of the means by which you are identified.

- Sometimes people are renamed or given a nickname as a sign of endearment and friendship

- Bible names all have a meaning which describes their character or personality

- When God gave people a new name it meant a change of relationship, of status, or of role in the Kingdom

Eg. Abram was renamed Abraham… Father of a Multitude, Nations (Gen.17:5)

Eg. Sarah was renamed Sarah… Princess (Gen.17:15)

Eg. Jacob was renamed Israel… Prevailing with God (Gen.32:28)

Eg. Simon was renamed Peter… The Rock (Mat.16:18)

- Jesus Himself was given a New Name

“Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth” (Phil.2:9-10)

- “Exalted”…. To lift or elevate to the highest possible rank or position, Supreme Majesty and Authority

- Jesus new name reflects that He humbled Himself being obedient to death, and now Father has exalted Him to the highest possible rank… Eternal Emperor

- Our New Name will characterise who we are, how we lived our lives in the secret place with Jesus, and the rank or position that Father has exalted us to in His Kingdom

- The new name which no one else but God knows describes an intimate , private and deeply personal relationship with Jesus and Father God ( Close friends have secrets they share)

The White Stone with a New Name written upon it means Jesus has raised us to a new level of

deep personal intimate relationship with Him and given us a new rank of status and honor

5.The Promise of Jesus New Name

- “I will write on him My new name.” (Rev. 3:12)

- “Write on him” refers to the Holy Spirit bringing personal revelation to our hearts

- “… clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.” (2Cor.3:3)

- Jesus new name is the new identity and rank that He now has as King of Kings and Lord of Lords who overcame. He is Supreme Emperor

- “He had a name written that no one knew except Himself”. (Rev. 19:12)

- Jesus will reveal his heart and beauty and glory in a much deeper way to those who overcome

- “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.”(Rev.3:12)

- Jesus will impart and share with us a deep revelation of Father God and lift is up to a new realm of loving intimacy, an exalted rank of honor and authority in the Kingdom

6.The Promise of The Morning Star

- “I will give to him the morning star.” (Rev. 2:25-28)

What is the Morning Star?

- The Morning Star is the brightest star in the sky seen just before the dawning of a new day

- The Morning Star is a reference to the Person of Jesus Himself.

- "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches.

I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star." (Rev.22:16)

- God revealed to Abraham that he Himself was his “exceeding great reward” (Gen.15:1)

- Paul referred to intimacy with Jesus as being a prize to be won (Phil.3:8)

- Overcomers are promised the exceeding great reward of a deeper personal intimacy and relationship with Jesus. He will reveal much much more of His presence and of Himself

7.Now is the Time to Cultivate a Deeper Intimacy with Jesus

- Each of the promises of greater intimacy with jesus in the Millennial Kingdom were give to Overcomers

- “Overcome”……to subdue, prevail, gain the victory

- There are always obstacles to us developing intimacy with Jesus on a daily basis

- Some of these obstacles are External (circumstances) and some of these are Internal(the flesh)

- Intimacy is a progressive journey of deepening connection, openness and responsiveness to Jesus

- We pay the price daily to cultivate Intimacy with Jesus…The rewards are indescribable

Questions for Personal Reflection

1.What has the Holy Spirit impressed upon you in this study?

2.How would you describe your current relationship and intimacy with Jesus?

3.How consistent and fruitful are your times of prayer?

4.What could you do to cultivate an atmosphere of worship in your home and life?

5.Are you experiencing Jesus in Daily Worship Encounters?

6.Are you journaling to develop a two way relationship with Jesus?

7.What external circumstances are hindering your relationship with Jesus?

8.What internal blocks or issues are hindering a deeper intimacy with Jesus?

9.What steps of action do you need to take to deepen your relationship with Jesus?

III. Reward 2. Eternal Authority

1.Believers will Rule with Jesus for 1000 years.

- I saw thrones, and they [saints from Rev. 19:14] sat on them, and judgment [decision making] was committed to them...and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

...but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. (Rev. 20:4-6)

- The Millennium is a 1,000 year period in which Jesus will rule the earth in partnership with resurrected believers

- Understanding the Millennium gives us insight into what the Lord is preparing His people for.

2.Jesus is King over all Kings

- Jesus has been raised to a position of supreme authority and power by God the Father

- “far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church” (Eph.1:21-22)

- Jesus has been made King over All Kings

- He has...a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. (Rev. 19:16)

- “Yes, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him”. (Ps. 72:11)

- Jesus reigns now at God’s right hand over the kings of the earth, yet His leadership over these kings is not fully manifested to all.

- However, in the Millennium he will come in glory and power and will fully manifest His Kingship and Authority on the earth.

- He will Manifest Authority with Consequences

- All will yield to His Authority, His right to Rule, or face consequences

- The Lord is at Your right hand; He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath.

Psa. 110:6 He shall judge among the nations, He shall fill the places with dead bodies, He shall execute the heads of many countries” (Ps110:5-6)

3.Before His Coming there will be a Time of Great Tribulation on the Earth

“And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” (Mat.24:6-8)

“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Mat.24:21)

- There will be a period of vast destruction and suffering in the earth in the period before Jesus return when the seals in revelation are opened.

- The Earth will Need Restoration having been devastated by events preceding the Coming of Christ

4.When Jesus returns it will not be as the Lamb but as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah(Rev.5:5)

- He will return to establish His Kingdom on the Earth

- “Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.

His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself.

He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God.

And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses.

Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Rev.19:11-16)

- There will be inevitable confrontation and conflict with those who resist His Rule

- E.g. Moses confrontation and conflict with Pharaoh over release of God’s people from bondage in Egypt

- E.g. Elijah’s Confrontation with the false prophets of Baal

- Jesus will overcome all resistance to His Rule and establish His Kingdom on the Earth

- He will partner with Overcoming Believers to accomplish this

5.Jesus will Establish His Rule Over a Worldwide Kingdom.

- He has...a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. (Rev. 19:16)

- “….and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth (Natural).

- He will establish His rule in partnership with two types of kings—

Resurrected Kings ……Believers with physical, resurrected bodies walking in great authority

Kings of the Earth…….People with natural, non-resurrected bodies

- Together they will establish a godly social order that will transform every sphere of life in the Millennium.

- “And they shall rebuild the old ruins, They shall raise up the former desolations, And they shall repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations” (Is.61:4)

- Every aspect of society will be transformed to become aligned with the Kingdom of God

- This will involve major transformation ….government, law, finance, education, media, entertainment, sports, community, religion,

6.Jesus government will not be instantaneous but will progressively increase

- E.g. “Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. (Is. 9:7)

- E.g. Dan 2:35 - Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Dan.2:35)

- It will take time to transform the Kingdoms of this world. It will not happen in an instant.

- Natural processes will continue but deeply impacted by the presence of God and His glory

- “For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea” (Hab.2:14)

- What an enormous honor to be chosen to work with Jesus to establish true peace and prosperity upon the earth

- “Then the kingdom and dominion, And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” (Dan.7:27)

7.Faithfulness in this Life determines the Level of Authority we have in the age to Come

Each of us will have differing responsibilities and assignments in the Millennial Kingdom

- Note these scriptures indicating different levels

- They will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years (Rev. 20:6).

- “And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.' (Lk.19:17)

- “Likewise he said to him, 'You also be over five cities.' (Lk.19:19)

- “ And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations” (Rev.2:26)

- “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” (Rev.3:21)

8.Faithfulness in Our Serving now Determines our Responsibility and Authority in the Age to Come

- Your life now is your preparation for your eternal Ministry in the coming Kingdom

- The Parable of the Pounds(Minas) Luke19:11-27)

- “ A certain nobleman went to a far country to receive a kingdom for himself, and to return” (Luke 19:12).

- Jesus is that Nobleman and the far country is heaven. He will receive the Kingdom at His Heavenly Coronation and Return (Dan.7:13-14)

- “ Do business until I come (Luke 19:13)

- Every believer is entrusted by Jesus with gifts, resources, time, ministries, and opportunities and commanded to engage in advancing the Kingdom of God

- "And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading” (Luke 19:13)

- Every one of us will be called to give account of our stewardship at the judgment Seat of Christ(Bema)

- Our faithfulness in serving Jesus in His absence will be acknowledged and rewarded

- Our rewards will reflect how faithful and productive we have been during our brief life on earth

One was given rule over ten cities, one was given rule over five cities

- There will be a multitude of levels of responsibilities for people to serve in the coming Kingdom

- But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.” (Luke 19:13)

- Jesus enemies who refuse His rule over them will meet an untimely death

- Jesus will give his faithful servants authority to rule over literal cities in the Millennial Kingdom.

- With such a High Calling of God upon our lives we must become faithful in all areas of our life

- We need to be faithful Jesus and His call upon our life even in the dry and difficult seasons

- These difficult times “ work for us an eternal weight of glory” as we remain faithful to Christ

- We need to be faithful in the small things especially when no one but God is watching

9.To Participate in Ruling with Jesus we Must Overcome in this Life

- Jesus has invited us to sit down with Him on His throne and to rule the nations with a rod of iron in the Millennial Kingdom and for all eternity.

- What a Great Honor we have been called to participate In….everything else pales in significance

Our eternal destiny is the Throne of God

- To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne”(Rev.3:21)

“ And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON; THEY SHALL BE DASHED TO PIECES LIKE THE POTTER'S VESSELS'—as I also have received from My Father;” (Rev.2:26-27)

- To qualify for this high calling, Jesus says that we must overcome.

This reward of eternal authority is not for every believer.

These rewards are reserved for those who overcome losing their first love, trials and tribulations, compromise with the world, the works of Jezebel, spiritual slumber, apathy, and being complacent

- Those granted authority will participate with Jesus in judging the nations in the Millennial Kingdom.

Not only will the overcomers sit down on the throne with Jesus, but the Bible says that ―judgment [will be] given to them (Rev. 20:4).

- “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts?” (1 Cor. 6:2-3).

- The overcomers will assist Jesus when He judges the nations and evaluates their role in the Millennial Kingdom (Matt. 25:31-46).

Questions for Personal Reflection

1.What has the Holy Spirit impressed upon me in this teaching?

2.In what areas do I need to repent of being unfaithful, inconsistent, resentful ?

3.In what areas do I need to cultivate greater faithfulness to The Lord?

4.In what areas do I need to overcome passivity, lack of motivation, complacency?

Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 2 (4 of 12)

Sun 21 Jun 2020 AM  « Back to Top

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Eternal Rewards are an important part of Jesus teachings, both in the Gospels and in the Book of Revelation.

Eternal Rewards are Jesus generosity to us in the coming Millennium and beyond that acknowledge our love for Him, our transformation to become like Him and the service we have done on His behalf during our life on earth.

This series brings understanding of the significance and importance of Eternal Rewards. This teaching continues to explain what those rewards are, and its focus is Eternal Glory.

Introduction

Welcome to the study. We're looking at the series, Eternal Rewards. In the last session, I did an overview of what the eternal rewards are. This is Part 2 of that, so I'll just touch on and review where we went last time, and then we're going to get into the new teaching today.

What you believe about the future will greatly affect how you prepare, and how you live, your life. One of the things that Jesus taught a lot about was eternal rewards. He taught about Eternity, He taught about a coming kingdom. His message was on The Kingdom. The Kingdom is here now. It's available now, but it's also a coming kingdom as well. So there's a measure available now; and by faith we can stretch into the kingdom age, and pull some of what God has prepared in the ages to come, into the age we live in now.

The dilemma you have, when people get some of these end time teachings, is they put everything off until the future, and do nothing now. But throughout the Bible you find people, God showed them what was to come, and their life showed they stretched into that age, and pulled it into where they lived; and you see it in many different people that ministered.

When we look at this teaching on Eternal Rewards, Jesus talked about us coming into relationship; and then He talked about our life, in other words, what we live, our stewardship.

Matthew 16:27: “now the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father and His angels, He will reward each man according to their works”.

Jesus is talking about Eternal Rewards, and He associates the rewards we receive with the works that we do - in other words, our activities, as a steward for Jesus. Secondly, we saw there are many different types of rewards; and in almost every situation, the rewards were for overcoming some particular challenge or difficulty. We saw in Revelations 2 and 3, how there are many, many different rewards that are mentioned by Jesus, and they all relate to overcoming something. At some stage we may look at the Churches of Revelation, and in every one of them, Jesus reveals Himself in a certain way. He reveals an aspect of Himself. He commends them for what they've done; and then He begins to talk about where there's a lack, or what He wants them to do; and then gives a reward associated with it.

We need to be aware, or familiar with, what is at stake. If nothing is at stake, then you don't get interested in this - it doesn't mean anything to you; but if there's a lot at stake, then that changes the way you look at it. I used the illustration last time: would you rather have $10 now, or $1000 at the end of the week? The issue is: can you delay gratification now, in order for the bigger thing. You can imagine, if the end of it all is a massive prize, then you're motivated then to lay your life down.

The third thing we saw was: rewards are not given automatically - it requires that we meet specific conditions. For example...

Revelations 3:21 - “to him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down My Father on His throne”

Jesus is saying: I have modelled the life of overcoming, and as a result of overcoming, I've been elevated to this particular realm, as a man. He had the realm of glory, had a realm of rulership, before He came into the earth. Now He's been elevated, as a man, into that; and He says: if you overcome, likewise you will be lifted up, and share the throne with Me. That means to share a position of honour, to share a position of authority and to be a friend of Him, in advancing His kingdom, in the ages to come.

John 12:26 - “If any man serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also, for if anyone serves Me, him My Father will honour.

Notice, He then talks about God, the Father, honouring people who meet certain conditions; and the two conditions are: #1, serving Jesus; and #2, following Him.

Serving has to do with: performing activities on His behalf, as His representative. Following Him means: letting His word transform our life. To follow Jesus, or to follow a rabbi, meant you walked with them, and learnt how they lived their life, and applied the word of God to their life; so it's a life-transformation process. Notice He says: “Whoever serves Me...” - that means you're involved in the work of ministry of some kind.

The second thing is, then He says: “...let him follow Me”, which seems weird. You would think that if you're following Jesus, then you'll serve Him. He's saying: no, “if you're serving me”, in other words you're already in-relationship, and you're serving, He then goes on to say: “then you must follow Me”. In other words, you must commit to letting Me teach you how to do life, and how to apply kingdom principles to the way you do your life in ministry. Notice then, in both of those scriptures, receiving the reward is conditional on our response. Him who overcomes, gets the reward; he who follows Me and serves Me, gets the reward.

Then we saw in #4, that small sacrifices on our part now, will have huge recompense eternally. Small things now, big things later. For example, He used it in Matthew 25:21. He says: “you were faithful over a few things…”, so what we have now in this life are ‘few’ things. Then He says: “...I will make you ruler…”, or give you a position and a role of responsibility “...over many”, and that's ‘a multitude’, it's ‘mega’.

Then in Luke 29:17, He says: “well done, you were faithful in very little, now have authority over 10 cities”. Now you just can't compare ‘very little’ to ‘authority over 10 cities’. He's saying: the comparison between what you're responsible for now, and what God has planned for you, is enormous - there is no comparison! But it does require that we be faithful, in the fulfilling of what He gives us now; and He doesn't say: that's a ministry. He doesn't say: it's pastoring. He doesn't say anything about what that might be. He just says: faithful in the little you've been given. So that applies to every person; whatever our opportunity, whatever our talents, whatever our giftings - we all have the opportunity to win, to have authority in the coming kingdom.

In Hebrews 11:6, God says that He is a ‘rewarder’. He that comes to God must believe that He is; that He's available, that He cares about us; and #2, that He's a rewarder - that He recompenses us for every little thing we do: our attitudes, our choices, the things we've overcome, the way we've represented Him, the sacrifices we've made, the things we've walked through and kept a good, loving spirit. When you start to get this revelation into your heart, it helps you very much to overcome the petty stuff that goes on in life with people, because you look past it all. You realise that whatever you're experiencing now, God has got His eye on the little details of it; and particularly, how you respond, and what you do with it.

Matthew 19:29 - “Anyone who left houses, or brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or children, or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. Notice He's saying: a hundredfold!

Main Message

So we just reviewed where we've been, and the last time we looked at some possible categories of the many rewards, and there are many described, which means God is just unlimited in what He can do for you; so He's got your back. He's thinking about you.

I put them under some categories:

- Eternal Intimacy

- Eternal Authority

- Eternal Glory

- Eternal Garments

- Victor's Crowns

- Honour & Praise

- Treasures & Riches

- Vindication

We found that the first three are the three perhaps the most important ones, but the others are also important, and I'll get on to them at another time. We saw that one of the most important ones is: the sharing of governance over creation - because that's what we've been made for. We've been made for intimacy, an intimate relationship with our Father in heaven. We've been made to represent Him, and that means: to show His glory in nature and character, which means we need to be transformed; and we know that we're designed to partner with Him, in the expanse of His kingdom. In Isaiah 9 it says: “Of the increase of His government, there is no end”. That's amazing. That means that God will forever be expanding His government.

If He could do what He's done for a planet called Earth, He could do that for many of the stars of the galaxy, or many places in the galaxy. We've got no concept of how great the things are, that God has ahead; and we saw that in 1 Corinthians 2 - “The eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of the man, the things God has prepared for them that love Him”. We also saw that love is not to do with feelings; it has to do with our willingness to yield to obey Him.

So in this study, I was going to do a couple of the different rewards, but as I did this one I thought: it's actually better I focus on this one, because it's of immense interest, immense importance, so I'm going to make this one the focus of today's study.

I want to look at reward #3, which is Resurrection Glory, or eternal glory. We'll call it Eternal Glory. It means that for age after age after age, there is a glory, or an honour. The word ‘glory’ in the Bible is the word ‘kabod’ - weight, honour; so it has many ways it expresses itself, but it means weight. God will put eternal weight, or a weight that lasts for eternity. It cannot be taken away from you once you've got it, it will be there forever, it will be seen by all, forever. So right now, you are preparing yourself for how you will be in the coming eternity. The millennium kingdom is where everyone on earth will see what you are, and in the coming eternal ages. We've got no concept of what God may have laid out ahead for us!

We're going to focus then on eternal glory, and that refers in many ways, or primarily, to Resurrection; or the Glory of Resurrection. Today I'll focus very much on Resurrection: what that looks like; and the First Resurrection. There are many aspects we could teach about it, particularly in relation to the current resurrection life we have, but I want to focus on the coming resurrection, the First Resurrection.

2 Peter 1:16-17 - “We did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honour and glory, when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice, which came from heaven, when we were with Him on the holy mountain.”

Now this is an amazing scripture. All the scriptures we do today... you will want to go back and look at them, mark them, go through them and study them, make them your own. The first thing in that one is that the three disciples were eyewitnesses. An eyewitness is a spectator. They saw it personally; saw it with their own eyes, they were eyewitnesses. They were spectators, personally present, and they saw it. That's why he said: we didn't make up a big tale. This is not a fable. It's not some fiction. It's not some myth. We saw it. We were there. They're eyewitnesses; and what were they eyewitnesses to? They were eyewitnesses to the power, and coming, of the Lord Jesus Christ - we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

The word majesty - get this - the original word is ‘mega’; mega liotes, l-i-o-t-e-s, meaning: ‘magnificence’. We saw His magnificence. It means visible splendour. We saw His superb-ness. We saw His brilliance. We saw His royal dignity. That's the only word he could use that would describe it: it's mega! It's mega, mega, mega! Very, very big. They encountered the glory of Jesus, the majesty of His second coming, when He comes in resurrection glory.

Interesting, just a side note to think about: only three of the 12 saw it all, which - it's just an aside, but it does point out: not all will participate in this.

They visibly encountered Jesus. They saw Him transformed to become full of glory, and they saw what it was like; they tried to describe that, and they identify in that scripture where they saw it. They saw it on the Mount of Transfiguration. There are three good scriptures on the Mount of Transfiguration - Matthew, Luke and Mark all talk about it.

The second thing then is: Jesus’ resurrection glory was revealed to them; His Resurrection Glory. Firstly, Matthew wrote about it, in Matthew 16:27 - 17:2; then Luke wrote about it, in Luke 9:29; and Mark wrote about it in Mark 9:2-3.

Matthew said: (this is what Jesus said) “For the Son of Man will come, in the glory of His Father, with His angels”. He's saying: He will come in great Glory; and then He will reward each one, according to his works. Then He says: “assuredly I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death, until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. And then after six days He took Peter, James and John his brother, led them to a high mountain by themselves. He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, His clothes became white as light”.

What He's saying is: He prophesied to them, that some of you, some of you won't die before you see the Son of Man coming in glory. Straight after that, He took them up the mountain, and they saw it! What they're seeing is: the coming of the Son of Man; and they're seeing the Resurrection.

Luke wrote it like this: “As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered. His robes became white and glistening”. Then Mark wrote of it, in Mark 9:2-3 and he says: “After six days, He took Peter, James and John, let them up the high mountain apart and was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white like snow, there's no launderer on earth that can whiten them”.

It says Jesus was transfigured. That's the word ‘metamorphu’. It's a Greek word - we get the word ‘metamorphosis’ from it, which means you change from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Think of a caterpillar: earthbound, limitations galore; and then a butterfly: heaven-bound! The word ‘transfigure’ means to totally change your form - from something earthbound, to something heavenly-bound. That's why they use that word - it means a complete change of form. When Jesus was transfigured... yes, they could recognise His body; but it had been completely changed for a moment, by the power of God. That word metamorphosis describes His transformation, a complete transformation. They were just overwhelmed by it.

I want to just pick up a second thought, and then we'll go on and look at Jesus' resurrected body. The Bible tells us that we will have a resurrected body, like Jesus. It'll be like His. That's what God's design is for you!

Philippians 3:20-21 - “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working, by which He is able to subdue everything to Himself.”

Notice He says: “He will transform our body”, so whatever body you've got now, God's not going to get rid of it. He's going to transform it, and that's that same word, to change the form totally, a complete transformation of our body. What is He transforming it to become? That we might be conformed, or become like, something that's not there yet.

He says: it'll be exactly like Jesus' body. The only thing that will differ is: not the resurrection, but the glory that you carry; but everyone's body will be transformed to become like His body. We'll come back to look at what He could do - this is what really makes this so interesting to study.

There will be a transformation; there'll be a demonstration of God's power, that totally transforms our physical body - spiritually transforms it. Our physical body, it will become like Jesus' resurrected body - totally changed! What was it like? What was His body like? I'm going to go through and give you a range of things that Jesus' body was like.

Now just think about this; try to think ahead, what it would mean for you, if you entered into resurrection. Also think what it would mean to you, if everyone around the table, except you, entered into it. There would be great joy if you entered in; and there would be considerable grief and loss to realise that you are part of a body of people, and God called you to become something, but you didn't enter it, at that time. So here's some things about the body of Jesus... What was Jesus' body like?

#1) He had a physical body with flesh and bones. He actually had a physical body; so you could go out and touch Him, and you could feel the bones, you could feel the flesh. If you reach out and touch someone now - His body felt like that. It was that real.

In John 20:27, He said to Thomas: “Reach your finger in, and look at My hands; and reach your hand, and put it into My side. Don't be unbelieving, but believing.”

In Luke 24:39 - “Behold My hands, here's My feet, here's Me, handle Me”. He said: ‘touch Me’. See, touch Me and see - a spirit doesn't have flesh and bones. He said: I'm not a spirit; actually, this is what a resurrection body looks like. So they could see His body, and touch His body, but it was a resurrected body.

#2) The second thing about Him is: the disciples could touch Him, and they also ate with Him, and drank with Him. In other words, in your resurrected body, people can touch you, and you feel like the real deal. You feel like a real person. They can feel the bones, they can sense there's a real person there. You can also eat!

John 21:12-13 - “Jesus said to them, come and eat breakfast, for none of the disciples dared ask Him, who are You? - knowing it was the Lord. And Jesus came and took bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish”. So they had breakfast on the beach, which Jesus prepared for them.

Acts 10:40-41 - “Jesus, God raised Him up on the third day and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses that God chose”.

So God selected the people He would reveal Jesus to; and even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. He's saying now: we sat down, we had a meal. We could touch Him. We could eat with Him. He's as real as you are. He's not some ghostly apparition. It's not some weird spirit thing. It's a real, real physical person in front of him.

#3) Here's the third thing... There's something different about His body. It looked like, you know, it's just another person - except: Jesus could materialise, and dematerialise His body; His physical body. Oh man, when I read through these things, they read like something out of a superhero story! They really do! You read some of the things He could do, and you think: oh my goodness, no wonder all these movies are coming up, all this superhero stuff. They're preparing us for great things, but this is so much better!

He was no longer controlled by time or space, or physical world laws or any limitations. Nothing - He's not constrained by the physical world, because He now has a spiritual body that supersedes the physical world. That means: you could enter the natural world, and then leave it, and that's just so crazy! He could supernaturally move from one location to another. He could be here now, and then suddenly, He's in another place, another country. It's interesting to read the descriptions of all of that, and Luke described His sudden disappearance. You've just got to try and put yourself in the story, and think: what would I feel, if suddenly someone just disappeared; they were there, sitting at the table, then they were gone, like that. That is so staggering!

Luke 24:31 - “Their eyes were opened, and they suddenly recognised Him”.

Now they've been sitting there having a meal with the guy, they didn't even know it was Jesus. They were just sitting having a meal, with a regular guy, who's been walking with them on a journey, then He breaks the bread, and gives it to them, and suddenly... it's Jesus! Then, the moment they knew who it was... He's gone! That is such a freaky thing that happened, He just - it says: “He vanished from their sight”. That means literally, to become invisible, or suddenly just disappear from sight.

Luke described the appearance; and then John described Jesus' sudden appearance. He describes the disappearance: He's there, and suddenly, He's gone; then John describes the appearance. Here's John's description, and possibly He walked through the wall, because in one of them it says: “the door was shut” - so we're in a locked room!

“The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, the doors were shut”. See, everyone's got the doors shut. Maybe they're locked? They were assembled, for fear of the Jews - so probably they're locked... and Jesus suddenly, He came and stood in the midst, and said: “Peace be to you”. So they're in a locked room, and suddenly... He's there! I don't know whether He just walked through the door. He's just suddenly... there!

There’s another one, in John 20:26 - He did it more than once! It says... “After eight days, the disciples were again inside, and Thomas was with them, and Jesus came, the doors being shut, and suddenly stood in the midst, and said: “Peace be to you”.

Notice they described: “the doors were shut”. In other words, there's no way to get in. Suddenly… He's there - appeared; and disappeared! Man, oh man! Then Mark describes it...

Mark 16:14 - “Later, He appeared to the 11, as they sat at the table, and then rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they didn't believe those who'd seen Him, after He'd risen.”

They're all sitting at the table having a meal, probably talking about: where do we go from here... and then ‘poof’ - He appears! Guys, I told you about this... What's wrong? You didn't believe me? Now the shock of seeing someone physically, after you watched them die... You ran away, because it was scary, and then suddenly... it's so hard to comprehend - it's just mind blowing!

Paul makes a list of the appearances that he knew of, and it's found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 - “I delivered to you first of all which I received - and this is the gospel. Christ died for our sins according to scriptures. He was buried, He rose again the third day according to the scriptures”.

Now look at this list... “He was seen by Peter, then seen by 12, then seen by over 500 at once, and mostly they're still alive, some of them have died. After that, seen by James, then by all the apostles. Last He was seen by me, like one out of due time.”

He had his own encounter and saw Jesus, so he identifies the different occasions. Jesus - this is what He did: He appeared, then He disappeared! So you see that regularly, after Jesus rose from the dead, He made appearances - just sudden appearances; and he himself had a face-to-face encounter, in Acts 9.

Luke also shared some things about these ongoing daily appearances. As you read this, you think: oh my goodness! What kind of atmosphere must have been around the disciples, when this was happening?

Acts 1:1-3 - “The former account I made, Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to both do and teach, until the day he was taken up, after he through the Holy Spirit gave commandments to the apostles He had chosen, to whom He presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many infallible proofs, being seen of them during 40 days”.

So He kept appearing, for 40 days; and what was He doing? He was speaking things, pertaining to the kingdom of God. Can you imagine: Jesus died; and then suddenly, He turns up; and now you don't even know when He's going to turn up. He's going to turn up, and share with you about the kingdom of God; and you don't know when that's going to be! Wouldn't you be hungry? Wouldn't you be excited, waiting for that to happen? Wouldn't everything else take on a whole new kind of, oh wow! When is it going to happen, today? I suppose they gathered to worship; and when they're gathering, worshipping, suddenly… He appears! Whoa, worship's over, He's here! He's here; and then He would teach them - teach them about the kingdom… If only they'd written down what He taught them! That would be good - or they'd taken a video of it or something.

I'd like to see Him appearing and disappearing. I think that would be so just amazing; and you know, I don't know whether He just went ‘poof’, and He was gone; or whether He turned, and just walked through a wall, and was gone? Hard to know, isn't it? But suddenly, your perspective of the real reality of the physical world would alter enormously. The invisible world of the kingdom would suddenly become a great reality for you; and of course, the impact of someone doing that is overwhelming. I mean, it’s all very well to talk through a list about it here, but if someone suddenly does it... the effect!

Luke 24:36-37 - “Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them: “Peace be to you”.

He says: “Peace, guys”, but they were terrified and frightened, thinking they were looking at a spirit. That word ‘terrified’ means to be overcome with astonishment, and to fall down prostrate on the ground. So you understand, this is enormously impacting. What Jesus is doing is, He's actually giving a little view of what the millennium's going to be like - except it will be on a much bigger scale, because there will be lots of people! Man oh man, I'm so looking forward to that!

It says: they were frightened. He says: they trembled in fear! So this is not some little deal; and you can read it, but then.. If you watch anything on the TV, and a ghost appears, or some kind of thing in one of the stories... God, it's frightening! You get a scare out of it! Someone doing this is just… even though He says ‘Peace’.

Here are some more things about Him... He could materialise, He could turn up or disappear. He could go wherever He wanted. That's what you can do, in a resurrection body, because you're no longer bound by the physical laws or the physical world or time. You can go anywhere! Here's another thing: Jesus' body could change form.

Mark 16:12 - “after that, He appeared in another form, to two of them”.

That's a visible shape or appearance - so He could alter how He looked. Oh man, isn't that something! Being able to alter how you look! He could alter how He looked, so they didn't recognise Him! Just... didn't recognise Him! So obviously, He could alter His physical appearance, or the way He fronted up.

He could front up differently, because they just thought He was another traveller. Could it be another skin colour? Could He turn up as an Asian? Could turn up in any kind of form?

That word ‘form’ means: a visible shape or appearance. He could alter His appearance, so people couldn't recognise Him... and they didn't!

Luke 24:15-16 - “While they talked and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them and their eyes were constrained, they didn't know who He was.”

How could you be with someone for three years, every day with them, living, eating, breathing... and then they turn up next to you, walking, and you're talking... you haven't got a clue! You can forget names, but you can't forget faces.

[Female speaker] But it’s about their eyes, not about His form at that point. Is that right?

[Mike Connell] Well, no. Mark 16 says the same story, and he says, “in another form”. One says: “their eyes were withheld so they couldn't see”; but the other one says: “it was another form”, so you've probably got to put the two together.

If someone is in another form, and they talk to you, you usually recognise their voice or recognise how they're talking. They didn't recognise anything. Everything was withheld...

Mary Magdalene didn't recognise Him! Jesus appeared outside the tomb, and said to her: woman, why are you weeping? And she said: because they've taken away my Lord, and I don't know where they've laid Him. Now when she'd said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, and did not know it was Jesus!

In fact, in another one, it says: she thought He was the gardener. His form is different. How could you mistake Jesus for a gardener? The fact that He came as a gardener of course, is symbolic, that He is of course, a great gardener - you know, sows and reaps, and so on.

Anyway - ...and Jesus said: “Mary”; and she turned and said to Him: “Master”. She saw Jesus standing, and it was so unimpressive that she turned away again - until He said: Mary! Then suddenly, she realised: it's the Master - she hadn't even known!

[Female speaker] So do you think at that point His form changed to what she knew?

[Mike Connell] Ooh, I don't know, I wish I knew. She knew who He was, but her first thing she thought: He was just a gardener. It's helpful if you move past just a simple concept: one day we get a resurrection body; to actually have insights from the word: this is what it looked like; this is what it's going to operate like. Remember, He's going to make our body like His body - able to do these same things!

Here's the next thing then; the next characteristic of it: Jesus' resurrected body radiates glory. It radiates life and glory out of it. In other words, it's like a bright, shining lamp.

Matthew 17:2 - “He was transfigured before them, His face shone like the sun, His clothes became white as light”.

Mark 9:3 - “His clothes became shining, exceedingly white; face like a sun, clothes exceedingly white, white as you could ever get it”.

Luke 9:29 - “As He prayed, the appearance of His face altered, and His robes became white and glistening”.

Notice the key, they all describe a little different aspect of it - it was as He prayed, the glory shifted and changed.

It says: His face shone like the sun. That word shine is the word “lampo” - to beam or radiate out light; brilliant light. His face shone like the sun - so in other words, you couldn't look upon His face, because of the brilliant light, and it's coming from the inside out. It's from the glory within, shining forth like rays; brilliant rays, like the sun. His garments, His clothes, become white. That word ‘white’ is the word ‘leukos’, which means: brilliant, or dazzling white. The guy says: you couldn't launder your clothes to look that white; this is beyond white! This is better than anyone could do.

It also means: to radiate dazzling, bright rays of light. You see His countenance radiating light, bright like the sun. Used to look at the sun, it's that brilliant light, and you can feel the light and the warmth - that's what it's like; and it says: His clothes were glistening. That means they shone out lightning. The glory of God, which was within Jesus, began to radiate out through His whole body, changing all of His body. It was what was in Him, expanding out, and changing what was outside.

His body, and His garments, and His countenance, all radiated brilliant rays of light. Now when John saw Jesus in the Book of Revelation, he had an encounter with Him, and said a similar thing…

Revelation 1:12-16 - “I turned to see the voice that spoke with me; and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands, One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment to the feet, and girded with His chest with a golden band. His head and His hair were white like wool (here it is again) - white like snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire.”

In other words, His eyes are burning like there's a fire. That's the only way he could describe it, was it's like His eyes are on fire, a blazing flame of fire. And he says...

“His feet were like fine brass, as if you'd refined it in a furnace, and His voice like the sound of many waters; in His right hand, seven stars; out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword; and His countenance was like the sun shining, in its strength”.

Again, he's seeing the glory, and he says that it's like looking into the sun - the brilliance of His face... it's too much to handle. Jesus' countenance was shining with brilliance; and it tells us about God's people in Matthew 13:43 - “...then the righteous will shine forth like the sun, in the kingdom of their Father”.

It could be just prophetic statements; or it could actually be literally, the glory is so brilliant, that it shines right through us. Here's another thing about Jesus' resurrection...

Jesus could veil His glory. He could fully cover it, so you couldn't see it; or just partially, so you could see it. So sometimes He appeared in glory; other times He appeared like a gardener. Sometimes you could recognise Him; but other times, you couldn't recognise Him. He could appear, and He could vanish. We need to see then, the glory of God that's within Him - as He walked no one recognised it; but when He was on the Mount, it suddenly shone forth, and you could see it.

The last thing is this statement here, a scripture that says: Christ in us, the hope of glory. In Colossians 1:27-29, but I'll read 2 Corinthians 4:7 first... “We have this treasure in an earthen vessel, so the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”

In other words, as a believer, the Bible describes you as having a treasure in you. Most times people are trying to get God to come down from somewhere to do something, and they lose awareness that we are one with the Spirit of God, when we're in Christ. We have a treasure within us, which we have to grow and cultivate. We have this treasure, which is Christ in an earthen vessel; so even though we may be frail, may have limitations, may have weaknesses and so on and so forth, nevertheless it's not about the vessel. It's the treasure inside the vessel that counts. Then Paul, talking about that same treasure, says this, in Colossians 1; he says: “to them, God willed to make known, what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”.

Christ has put a deposit of His life in you, which gives you hope of a glory, yet to come. I'll say that again. God has put a measure of Christ in you, and that gives you hope, that this is a glory yet to come; no one sees it, because it's veiled. Remember how with Jesus, the glory was within Him, but it was veiled; yet they were on the Mount, it was revealed. It’s the same for us - the glory is hidden; but there is a day when it will be revealed; and our job is to walk with Him, and serve Him now, so we qualify for that day.

Ephesians 1:13-14 - “In Him you trusted, after you heard the word of truth; the gospel of salvation, whom having believed (here it is, here...) you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise...”.

That word ‘sealed’ means: ‘to put an ownership mark on you’; and the Holy Spirit is the guarantee, or it's called the ‘earnest’ of our inheritance - “...until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory”.

What does that mean? Well that word ‘guarantee’, or ‘earnest’, is the deposit you give someone when you're buying a house. If I'm going to buy your house, then we seal the deal by paying a deposit. That means, if you have the deposit, it's the guarantee that I will return with all the money, and it will all be completed. I will take ownership of the house fully, and what you will receive is the rest of the money. What he's saying is: the anointing, or presence, of the Spirit of God, that you have in you now, is the down-payment.

It's the down payment until God redeems your body - the rest of the glory comes at that time; he connects then, that coming glory, or that hope ahead of us, with the coming day of resurrection. You all have a ‘deposit’ of God. It's not a matter of how big it is, it's what you do with what you have, is what counts. The glory that is within us, reminds us of a greater glory, that we're called to take hold of.

Notice what Paul said: that it's ‘until’ - so we've got that measure... ‘until’. Paul then says: “...about therefore we preach, we warn every man…” - that means: confront them with the truth. “We teach every man with all wisdom”. Notice what he's doing? Preaching, proclaiming the truth, warning, or talking about people, to get them right in their lives; teaching every man, with all wisdom. Why? So we may present everyone as perfect in Jesus Christ.

So what he's saying then is: Paul was motivated by this prize, to persevere, in his calling to mature people. The hardest thing in pastoring is just to mature people. They forever want to stay childish, but the work of the ministry is to preach; to proclaim the word of God, believing God to honour it. It's to confront, or to warn people; to face them up with what's going on in their life; and it's to teach them, instruct them in how to walk and become mature in God; presenting every man perfect.

All believers in the coming kingdom will manifest different levels of glory. We saw Jesus manifested a full glory, but we will manifest different levels of glory. No matter where you are now, it doesn't matter what it looks like to everyone, or how important or whatever you are - only Jesus really knows what you're qualified for. No one can say! It's got nothing to do with anything external, it has to do with your journey.

Philippians 3:21 - “He will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to His glorious body”

In the coming resurrection, we will have a body like Jesus. He's going to transform our body.

1 Corinthians 15:47-49 - “Just as we've borne the image of the man of dust, we'll also bear the image of the heavenly Man”.

What he's saying is that yeah, when we look around, we can see that we're carrying the image of the fallen Adam. However, it's absolutely certain that one day, we will carry the image of God. We'll just be like in the image of Jesus Christ.

1 John 3:2 - “Beloved, we are children of God now, but it has not yet been revealed what we shall be”.

You don't know; but we do know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him. I've given you three scriptures that indicate very clearly: we will be like Him, in our resurrection body; and then it says: whoever has this hope in himself, purifies himself. In other words, knowing that there's a hope of being like Him, in resurrection, we are responsible to get our life right; to walk with Him, to allow our life to be purified, to become clean vessels, with no compromise.

In the resurrection all our abilities will be enhanced, so it's not just your body that changes. Everything about you changes; your mental abilities will be enhanced - no memory problems! Your ability to understand; your ability to think... They say only about 10% of our brain is currently used, probably as a consequence of the fall, which means 90% remains unused. I presume the Lord, in resurrection, since our body is transformed, the full capacity of our creativity and thinking will be released.

Our emotions will be enhanced. The ability to feel love, to feel peace, to feel joy, to feel all those things; our abilities to communicate will be enhanced, because you won't just be words. You know, communication of the spirit is - it's telepathy, pretty much. When God speaks, you don't hear the words, you just pick up the thought inside you. The nearest thing to that is telepathy, I suppose.

Strength, there'll be enhanced strength; you see glimpses of it in the Bible, with the ‘spirit of might’ coming on people, like Samson. He could do extraordinarily strong things; you see glimpses in the Bible, of these characteristics.

Endurance, your ability to do things without being fatigued or sick. Transportation will change. You'll be able to move from one place to another, without any problem. Material, you'll be able to pass through walls; there's nothing physical that will constrain you. Beauty, we'll be enhanced in our beauty; and incorruptible, unable to get sick, or die, or be damaged. Doesn't that sound great! You never get sick, no teeth go, no hair fallout. No back problems, nothing like that; no memory problems either.

It's like everything becomes immensely enhanced in that coming age; and then as you look at that, you realise: oh my, sin has really reduced us, and humbled us, and we're wearing a garment that's so corrupt! You see hints of this in the scripture...

1 Corinthians 15:40-44 - “There are celestial bodies and terrestrial. There's heaven and earth, and the glory of the heavenly is different to the glory of the earthly”.

It says that right now, you're in an earthly body; but there's a totally different dimension of glory in the heavenly body. Just look up at the sky and see how vast it is! That's how different it's going to be, in that coming day. He said: there's one glory of the sun, another of the moon. If you look at the glory of the sun... wow, brilliance! Look at the moon... it's like a cold light at night. It's quite different. He says: another glory of the stars, and one star differs another in glory; so he's saying: if you just look at creation, it's all yelling at you, that in the coming kingdom, we'll all be in different levels of glory.

God can do it. I mean look at the stars. Some are really bright and shine, some are quite faint, very faint. He said: it'll be the same in the coming kingdom - just extraordinary! He said: the resurrection of the dead is sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power. So notice then, these things, now in corruption, will be incorruptible - no sickness, no death, nothing going downhill, like it does now. Glory, he says; purity and honour; so in other words, there will be just a glory that's unchangeable. Power; instead of being vulnerable, and in pain. Spiritual body, with capacities that surpass everything; and immortality, unending life and love. It's just extraordinary - and you see little glimpses of it.

You see Samson, with all the strength; and you see Elijah, who ran ahead of a chariot. How do you run ahead of a chariot, for goodness sake? He just did that in his physical body, under the power of the Holy Ghost, and you see so many things like that. Our physical body will be completely transformed; our sight, we'll be able to see near and far; hearing, be able to hear with clarity at great distances. It's like everything changed: your taste, you'll enjoy things better; touch; everything will be enhanced to another level.

Then finally in that area, every believer will have a different level of glory in that resurrection. Jesus talked about it in Matthew 5:19 - we see there's ‘great’ and ‘least’ in the kingdom. There will be greatest, and there will be the least; so that means there's a range of ranks. We saw in 1 Corinthians 15 that there's different degrees of glory; so, in the resurrection, everyone will have a different degree of glory, and you won't be envious of someone else's, because you will see why they deserved it. I'll get onto that when we get to garments.

There's different degrees of glory; and the degrees of glory relate to three things: our intimacy with Jesus; what we overcame in life; and the degree of inner transformation. In other words, to those key things of sonship, that's why they're so important.

Let's then look at the first resurrection - I want to just do a section on the first resurrection. This is really quite an important area here now. We see what Jesus was capable of; what His body looked like; and how we're going to be conformed to that same image. Now I want to now touch on the reward aspect of this; and I want to talk about the Resurrection. In this section, we'll look at the First Resurrection, and I'm calling it: the Resurrection of Reward.

So firstly, the Bible reveals there are two resurrections...

Revelations 20:5-6 - “The rest of the dead lived not again, until 1000 years were finished. This is the first resurrection”

For the millennium, there's a whole lot of people who are dead; but there's others who are resurrected.

“...So blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection, on such the second death has no power. They shall be priests of God and of Christ and reign with Him 1000 years”.

There's a First Resurrection; and if there's a first one, then there's also another one. The First Resurrection takes place at the beginning of the millennium; then there's 1000 years, and at the very end, then there is a General Resurrection. The second, or general, resurrection takes place at the end of the millennial reign of Christ, at the Great White Throne Judgement.

Revelations 20:11-15 - “Then I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, small and great…”

(there it is again, different degrees)

“...standing before God and the books were opened, and another book was opened which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

(we saw before that God keeps a detailed record).

“...The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and Death and Hell were delivered up their dead which were in them. They were judged, every man according their works, and Death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire”.

Notice in the first resurrection, it says: they become priests and kings; but it doesn't say that about the second resurrection. In the first resurrection, we become priests and kings to God; and we reign for 1000 years, working with Jesus for that 1000 years. And what are we doing? What happens?

1 Corinthians 15:24-25 (at the end of the 1000 years) - “He will then hand over all the kingdoms of the world to God the Father, then He'll put an end to all rule and authority”.

In other words, for 1000 years, Jesus will be working to establish the kingdom on earth; and when it's all done, then comes the end, and He hands it all over to the Father; and the Father comes and inhabits the earth, fulfilling what God has always wanted to do: to dwell on earth, with His people.

The first resurrection, I believe, is a resurrection of reward. I believe that participation in the first resurrection is reserved for those who are overcomers. It would be helpful for you to understand that there is a significant point of difference of doctrine about this issue, and not everyone will be happy if you take this position; but I believe it's a true position, and here's why... Some Christians don't even know there's two resurrections; if you ask them about the resurrection, they're not even sure about that, let alone that there's two! Did you know there's two resurrections? Which one will you be in? Will you be in either? People don't always know.

The second thing is, some believers, or some Christians, think that the first resurrection has already taken place. They think it's already happened! I don't believe that at all; and then some Christians, that's another group of them, believe that all believers will be in the first resurrection. That's a position, and there's some scriptural support for that; but others believe that the first resurrection is a prize, and therefore not automatic. That's the position I've taken, for many, many years: that the First Resurrection is a Resurrection of Reward - a prize to be won. If you think about it, that's an enormous prize: to come into a resurrection body; to share in changing the earth with Jesus; and to be never able to die again - yet living among a world where people live and die.

I'm going to give you some scriptures in support of that... that it's a resurrection of reward. What evidence is there, in scripture, that would point towards the first resurrection being a reward? It's quite a subject of its own of course... Firstly, Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

Philippians 3:7-11 - “The things that were gain to me, I counted loss for Christ; and indeed I count everything loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them rubbish, so that I may gain Christ...”

I thought: he already had Christ? He's a Christian. Yet he's talking about ‘gaining Christ’, so he's not talking about our salvation experience. He's talking about winning, or obtaining something, he doesn't yet have.

“...and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God, by faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformed to His death...”

And here's the key line: “...if by any means, I might attain to the Resurrection from the Dead”.

Notice that Paul considers that all his achievements are meaningless, compared to the prize. The prize is ‘winning Christ’. Since he has already received Christ into his heart and life, and he has a relationship with Him, including encounters, he must be talking about something ahead to be won. It's a prize.

Notice there, the word ‘resurrection from the dead’ - this is the only place in the Bible that used this term. When they use the term ‘resurrection’, they use the term ‘anastasis’, which is the Greek word for resurrection. “Anastasis ek nekron” is the normal statement - Anastasis, meaning ‘resurrection’; ek, meaning ‘from’; and nekron, meaning ‘the dead’.

So normally, if it's talking about resurrection from the dead, it will be “anastasis ek nekron”; but this one is different. He uses “ek anastasis”. He puts the two together, so it reads something like this: if by any means I might attain to the “out-from” resurrection from the dead. He's saying: this resurrection is a different resurrection; this is the thing I want to win!

I believe when he talks about this resurrection, he's referring to the First Resurrection, when people are resurrected for the millennium, to rule and reign with Christ. Notice he says: “if by any means”. That statement means: there's a possibility I may not make it!

In the Book of Acts, they said: if by any means, we might reach Crete. Well, they didn't - they sank! They didn't make it! So “if by any means” means: I'm going to do the very best I can, any means possible, so I might get there. You must realise then, it's clear he's not convinced he qualifies yet; and he's been in ministry for quite a while. This is six years before his death. He's been planting churches, and doing all kinds of things, yet when it comes to this reward, he's saying: everything I've done doesn't mean anything much, compared to qualifying for this. This is what my life is for; I want to qualify for that. He's indicating it's a possibility that it may not happen. It's a prize to contend for, it's the high calling of God and Jesus Christ.

Philippians 3:12-15 - “...not that I have already attained it, not that I'm already perfected, but I press on, that I may lay hold of what Jesus Christ lay hold of me. Brethren, I don't count myself to have apprehended it; one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, reaching forward to the things that are before, I press towards the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ. Now let us, as many be mature, have that same mind, and if you think otherwise God will show it to you surely.”

He's going on to say: I haven't made it, so it's not my experience yet, and I'm not sure I'm actually going to be qualifying for it. He says: he has not apprehended the prize, meaning ‘to take possession of it’ or to be certain he's got it. He says: I press towards the mark. That word ‘press’ means: to flee, to run swiftly, to take hold of a prize; you see in the whole language of it, there's a certain resurrection ahead, and it's a prize to be won.

It consumes me. Everything is nothing, in comparison to getting or losing this. Everything is nothing. I want to get this; and he said: I press on towards the mark, for the prize of this high calling of God in Jesus Christ. If there's a ‘high calling’, then there's probably a ‘low calling’ as well. This is a high calling - that we will live our life, and qualify to rule and reign with Christ; and Paul expresses it there.

In the letter to Hebrews, it's talking about the people of faith; and it slips this one-liner in there…

Hebrews 11:35 - “Women received their dead raised to life, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance”.

Why did they allow themselves to be tortured, but refused to be delivered? It says: “...that they might obtain a better resurrection.”

So everyone knew about the general resurrection. Everyone's going to be raised, so don't worry about being raised from the dead. Everyone's going to be raised from the dead. But they're saying: this is a better resurrection, and it caused them to endure everything, even to the point of dying. Why? To get a stronger resurrection. The word ‘stronger’ means: a ‘more excellent’ resurrection; a ‘nobler’ resurrection; a ‘having dominion or power’ resurrection.

So notice now, when you look at the first and second resurrection, on the one hand you've got people who become ‘priests and kings’ to God, and rule and reign with Him for 1000 years. On the other, it doesn't say anything. It just says: they're all raised from the dead, and they will give account for their works; and if their name is in the Book of Life, that means they're believers. They go through into eternity in a resurrection body. The big issue is: whether we're in that first resurrection.

Here's another one, from the Book of Revelation - the promise that's made to the overcomer...

Revelations 2:26 - “Whoever overcomes, and keeps My work to the end, to him I will give power over the nations”.

Notice: ‘power over the nations’, to rule and extend Christ's kingdom and nation; and they're not given to anyone, but an overcomer.

Revelations 3:21-22 - “To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. If you have an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Notice again: to sit in the throne with Jesus; or to share His authority and dominion, and rule with Him in eternity, or in the coming kingdom - you must be an overcomer. That means, you've got to have something to overcome; and Revelation 2 and 3 tells us the various things we must overcome, the challenges all of us must overcome, and of course there's many other kinds of things.

We're getting towards the end of the study, just the last couple of thoughts related to it now... So where will we live in our resurrected body? If you've got a resurrected body, you've come into that resurrection... Where will you live? Where will you be? Will I need this house, for example? There's lots of things that you question, of course.

When you start to look at eternal things, the glory of the eternal, He says: I go to prepare a place for you. So those with resurrection bodies... the Bible indicates that they will ‘live’ in the new Jerusalem, and ‘reign’ on the earth. That means they will have instant transportation anywhere in the earth, just to carry out Jesus' commands.

If Jesus has declared He will ‘rule from Jerusalem, over the whole earth’, there will be the natural Jerusalem, and there will be the new Jerusalem, the City of Our God. He will be there. You must have the natural realm, and the supernatural realm, very close and interacting with one another. It looks as though, for all extents and purposes, God is reigning through the world through natural Jerusalem, just like He did with David. He reigned over the known world, through David, and then through Solomon.

But heaven was on earth. Heaven - there was an immeasure. The veil will be lifted. There will be the natural dimension... people carry on: they eat, they drink, they work, they sow, they plant, they do all the kinds of things they do. They study, they learn, they grow, they die. There will be all of that sort of thing happening; but all the human processes will be greatly enhanced by the glory of God being present - that's what will make a difference. Everything will grow better. Everything will work better, everything - the devil has been put in chains for 1000 years, so there's no demonic interference, no demonic structure. I think people will be amazed at just that one thing, what that does.

Then when you start to fill the place with the glory, things accelerate in the glory. Things thrive in the glory. Everything will thrive. The whole of the millennium will be a time of unprecedented world peace, prosperity and productivity, so who knows what things will be created? If you look at what's been created in Israel since they came back as a nation, and all the Nobel Prizes in Israel, you realise: creativity will be released; new ideas! New sources of energy will be released.

Those with resurrected bodies will interact with people on the earth, like Jesus did. Probably the best way to see what it looks like, is to go back to the 40 days between Jesus rising from the dead, and then when He ascended into heaven, and say: what happened then? That's one little glimpse you get of what this could be like.

Acts 10:40-43 - "God raised Him up on the third day, and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God - even to us who ate and drank with Him, after He rose from the dead”.

He was teaching them; He sat at a table, they ate together, they drank, they probably hugged Him; and He's appearing and disappearing all the time! Every day He disappears; everyday appears again; turns up, has a meal with them, teaches them, shares things of the kingdom with them. No doubt He prayed for them, and blessed them... then He's gone! He doesn't need to stay in the house; has got some other place, some other dimension. My goodness, isn't that exciting?

You can imagine then, the joy and excitement. Imagine living every day, and Jesus is going to turn up sometime today - physically! Imagine then having the meal with Him, and He's sharing with them things from the word of God, sharing with them about the kingdom, sharing with them about His plan for the world. Oh my goodness! The joy and the excitement must have been enormous - that whole dimension of heaven and earth connecting like that. It must have been phenomenal; and every time, they can just touch Him like that, they can give Him a physical hug. Then suddenly… gone; and they don't know when He'll come back - when He's ready, so they just carry on. What are they going to do? They're going to carry on with their lives. So that's an insight - the joy and excitement!

The last thought I would have on it is: intense joy; or great sorrow? God's purpose has always been that heaven would come to earth, that the two realms would overlap. Can you imagine what it would be like to be part of it? Imagine what it would be like to be disqualified, for some reason. Intense joy; a really intense, eternal joy; being resurrected, part of the first resurrection; part of the eternal ministry of Jesus. Great sorrow to think: I've been in church all these years, I've just sort of been carrying on and whatever, but I missed out on what I was really called for.

We have to make a daily choice how we're going to live our life: whether we'll live it for the ‘now’; or we live it for eternity. Will He live it now, for His kingdom, advancing His kingdom, allowing Him to work in our life?

Numbers 14:21 - “As truly as I live (in other words, you can take this one to the bank), all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord”.

We hunger for that glory in meetings. We long for that glory in meetings. We have waves of it, and levels of it, when it's really heavy; where you can't get up off the ground, when the weight of that glory is on you - you can't move, you cry; things happen, healings and deliverance. Imagine the whole earth full of the glory of the Lord - everyone knows about it, it’s not hidden.

There's a company of people with Jesus - the Sons of God, transforming the earth, bringing justice, and setting everything right. You and I are called into that! It's called the high calling of God, in Jesus Christ. What a calling that is!

I encourage you to go through the notes and have a look at them; study the scriptures, make them your own scriptures; and when you've done that, then they become your message. The more you look at them and see it, the more you will then have it as a part of you.

Not everyone, as I say, agrees or believes these things. There will be other people who have a different view: from those who don't know there's two resurrections; to those who think it's already happened; those who think everyone gets resurrected in that first resurrection. Then you will find there are some, a remnant, that believe: no, it's a prize to be won! This is why you lay your life down! This is what it is about. It's all for something, and even if there's frustrations in the short term; in the long term, there's a prize, that you will never want to have taken away from you.

Summary Notes

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ER4: Overview of the Eternal Rewards (Part 2)

I. Review:

1. A Great Theme of Jesus Teaching was Eternal Rewards

- Jesus constantly taught about seeking Eternal rewards, and the need to pursue them

- “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”(Mat.16:27)

2. There are very Many Different types of Rewards

- In Rev.2-3 Jesus names many different rewards for those who Overcome specific challenges and trials

- The many Eternal Rewards that are described potentially form an important part of our Eternal Destiny

- We need to be familiar with the significance and importance of the different rewards revealed.

- Understanding what is at stake gives us great motivation for perseverance and transformation

“Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord

you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ. But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality” (Col.3:22-24)

3. Rewards are Not Given Automatically… Only to those who fulfil specific Conditions

- “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev.3:21)

- “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor” (Jn.12:26)

- Note that in each of these scriptures receiving a reward is conditional upon our works and actions in response to Jesus

4. Our Small Sacrifices Now have Huge Recompense Eternally

- “You were faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many things.” (Mt. 25:21)

- “Well done...you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.” (Lk. 19:17)

- God greatly values our small expressions of obedience in our mind , emotions and will

- He remembers them and rewards them in a much, much greater proportion

- God is a “Rewarder” ( Heb.11:6) and He is extremely generous!

- “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.” (Mt. 19:29)

5. Possible Categories of these Many Rewards

The many Rewards mentioned in the Bible could be listed under the following headings:

1. Eternal Intimacy

2. Eternal Authority

3. Eternal Glory

4. Eternal Garments

5. Victor’s Crowns

6. Honour & Praise

7. Treasures & Riches

8. Vindication

- The first three of these rewards deserve special attention

- One of the Rewards mentioned more than any other is Ruling and Reigning with Christ

- This is because God’s original design for man is to be a Son

* Having Intimate Relationship with Him

* Working with Him to extend His Kingdom with Power and Authority

* Representing Him… His Character and Glory

II. Reward 3: Eternal Glory

1. Jesus Manifested Resurrection Glory

“For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain” (2 Pet. 1:16-17)

- Three disciples were eyewitnesses to the Majesty and Glory of Jesus in His resurrected Body

- This is not a fable…some form of fiction or myth that has been invented

- “Eyewitnesses”…..spectators, personally present to see with our own eyes

- “Majesty”…megaliotes….magnificence, visible splendor, wonderful, superbness, brilliance, regal dignity

- The disciples visibly encountered Jesus in the Glory and Honor of His Resurrected Body

- Not all the disciples were given this revelation of His Glory

- They identify clearly when they saw His Majesty and Glory…on the Mount of Transfiguration

2. Jesus Resurrection Glory Revealed

- By Mathew

“For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."

"Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light” (Matt.16:27 - 17:2).

- By Luke:

As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening” (Lk.9:29)

- By Mark:

Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mk.9:2-3)

- Jesus prophesies in Mathew that some of His disciples will be eyewitnesses to his resurrection glory and His second coming before they die

- As Jesus prayed on the mountain He is transfigured before His three disciples

- “Transfigured”… Gk. metamorphoo …to completely change into another form

Metamorphosis….a change of form or structure by supernatural means (Miriam Webster)

In nature this word is used to describe the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly… radical transformation

3. We will Have a Resurrected Body Like Jesus Body

- “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil.3:21-22)

- “Transform”…..to change the figure of, totally change the external condition

- “Conformed” …to bring something into existence that was not there previously

- “Like”…………….Gk summorphos… to have exactly the same form as another

- There will be a demonstration of the supernatural power of God that totally changes our physical body

- “Working” …….supernatural energising by the Spirit of God

- “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom.8:11)

- Our physical body will be made like Jesus resurrected physical body, it will be totally transformed by the supernatural power of God

4. What Was Jesus Resurrected Body Like?

(i) Jesus had a Physical Body with Flesh and Bones (Jn. 20:27).

“Then He said to Thomas, "Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing." (Jn.20:27)

“Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have." (Lk.24:39)

Jesus gave evidence that he was the same person as before when He went to the cross His body retained its scars, perhaps as eternal badge of Honor

Jesus body was a real physical and spiritual body, able to operate in both the physical and spiritual worlds

(ii) The Disciples Touched Jesus and Ate and Drank with Him Jesus Disciples Touched Him

“And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, 'Rejoice!' So they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him” (Mat.28:9)

Jesus Disciples Ate and Drank with Him “Jesus said to them, "Come and eat breakfast." Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, "Who are You?"—knowing that it was the Lord.

Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish ” (Jn.21:12-13)

Him God raised up on the third day, and showed Him openly not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead” (Acts10:40-41)

- Jesus body was tangible, physical and material…it was a real physical body. It had been transformed, transfigured to become a glorious spiritual body without limitations

(iii) Jesus Could Materialise and Dematerialise in His Physical Body.

- Jesus was no longer controlled by time, space and physical laws or limitations of this world

- He could enter and exit the natural world at will

- He could supernaturally transport from one location to another location

- Luke describes Jesus Sudden Disappearance

“Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight” (Lk.24:31)

“Vanished”… vanish out of sight, become invisible, disappear from sight suddenly

- He sometimes vanished from their sight suddenly… there physically one moment and then suddenly gone.

- John describes Jesus Sudden Appearances

Jesus possibly walked through walls on two occasions when doors were “shut”

“Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, "Peace be with you." (Jn.20:19)

And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, "Peace to you!" (Jn.20:26)

Mark describes Jesus appearance “Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen” (Mk.16:14)

- Paul Lists Jesus Many Appearances after His Resurrection

“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remains to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time” (1Cor.15:3-8)

- Paul identifies several different occasions when Jesus appeared and then disappeared before people.

- Paul himself had a personal face to face encounter when Jesus appeared in blinding light. Paul’s companions heard Jesus voice but saw no one (Act.9:1-9)

- Luke also Lists Ongoing Daily Appearances of Jesus. These appearances and disappearances took place daily over a period of 40 days

“The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Act.1:1-3)

- Jesus continued sharing His message regarding the Kingdom of God over 40 days in a resurrection body

- No doubt He appeared as they gathered in worship, taught them and then suddenly disappeared.

- Can you imagine how that must have felt to those experiencing this happening?

- The impact of Jesus appearing could be mentally and emotionally overwhelming

“Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, "Peace to you." But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit” (Lk24.36-37)

“Terrified”……….to be overcome by astonishment, fall down prostrate on the ground

“Frightened”……to cause to tremble in fear.

The sudden appearance of Jesus out of nowhere must have been a deeply disturbing experience

(iv) Jesus Body Could Change Form

- The Disciples on the Road Did Not Recognize Jesus

- “After that, He appeared in another form to two of them as they walked and went into the country” (Mk.16:12)

“Form”….visible shape or appearance.

Jesus body appearance could alter so people not recognize Him

“So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him” (Lk.24:15-16

- Mary Magdalene did not Recognise Him

Then they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him."

Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus”

Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him, "Rabboni!" (Jn.20:13-15)

(v). Jesus’ Resurrected Body Radiates Glory

- “and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light” (Mat.17:2)

- “His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mk.9:3)

- “As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening “ (Lk.9:29)

- “Shone”………..lampo….to beam or radiate forth light, to radiate out brilliant light

- “White”………..leukos….brilliant, dazzling white, radiating out dazzling bright rays of light

- “Glistening”….To shine out lightning

- The Glory of God transformed Jesus face, His body and His garments so they radiated out lightning and rays of brilliant white light

(vi) John saw Jesus in His Resurrected Glory in a Vision

- Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength” (Rev.1:12-16)

- Jesus countenance shone with the brilliance of the sun…He displayed His resurrected glory to John

- The righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. (Mt. 13:43)

(vii) Jesus Could Veil His Glory—fully or partially.

- Sometimes Jesus appeared in His Glory…other times He did not

- At times, Jesus was not recognised as He veiled or concealed His resurrection glory

- He could suddenly appear or vanish from sight.

- Jesus’ resurrected body has “supernatural flesh” with bones and has the capacity to eat and drink

- “Jesus Himself drew near and went with them [to Emmaus], Their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him.” (Lk.24:15-16)

“Then their eyes were opened, and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight” (Lk.24:31)

(viii). Christ In Us, The Hope of Glory

- “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us” (2Cor.4:7)

- Each believer is joined to the Spirit of God. He is the treasure dwelling within us

- To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily” (Col.1:27-29)

- Each of us has a measure of the Glory of God within us. It is veiled and is not visible to people

- That measure of Gods presence and Glory is like a down-payment on what He has planned ahead for us

“In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory” (Eph.1:13-14)

- “Guarantee”…..earnest……the deposit given in advance as a down payment or pledge that the final payment will be completed

- That Glory within us is a reminder of the Greater Glory we are each called to take hold of, to possess

- This motivated Paul to persevere in his ministry calling mature believers for their Eternal Destiny so that they would qualify for their Reward

5. Believers will Manifest Different Degrees of Glory

- We will Have a Body Like Jesus Body

- “who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. (Phil.3:21)

- The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.(1Cor.15:47-49)

- Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1Jn.3:2-3)

- We Will Have Supernaturally Enhanced Abilities

1. Mental: Enhanced abilities to understand, remember, and reason

2. Emotional: Enhanced abilities to feel: Love, joy, peace, etc.

3. Communicate: Enhanced abilities in speech, song, music, writing, poetry, etc.

4. Strength: Enhanced abilities in speed, endurance, lifting objects without fatigue or sickness

5. Transportation: Enhanced abilities in flight and speed, transportation Eg Elijah, Philip

6. Material: Enhanced ability to pass through walls or crowds like Jesus

7. Beauty: Enhanced physical appearance ….physical countenance, fragrance, light, color, etc.

8, Incorruptible……..Unable to become sick, injured or die

- Our Five Senses will be Enhanced by the Power of God.

“There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. (1Cor.15:40-44)

Note the changes to our physical body:

Incorruption: …Vitality and strength replace sickness and decay.

Glory: …Purity and honor replace failure, shame, and dishonor

Power: …Safety and strength replace pain, vulnerability, and addiction.

Spiritual body… Supernatural capacities replace natural limitations.

Immortality: ….Unending life and love replace physical death and loss.

Our Physical Body will become Transformed and Greatly Enhanced

- Our current physical bodies are limitation and deterioration. Our resurrection body will be gloriously transformed

- Our spiritual body (Resurrected body) will not be subject to the physical limitations and laws that govern the natural world

- Our new body will be glorious and have amazing abilities

1. Sight: Ability to see at a distance and at close range

2. Hearing: Ability to hear with clarity and perception at great distances

3. Taste: Enjoyment of food and water to the fullest degree (1 Cor. 10:31; Rev. 22:1-2)

4. Touch: Glorified physical senses

5. Smell: Supernatural ability to enjoy and discern heavenly fragrances ...will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body... (Phil. 3:21)

- Each Believer will Receive a Different Measure of Glory in their Resurrected Body (Mt. 5:19).

“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. There will be least and greatest in the coming Kingdom. i.e. different realms of glory “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption” (1Cor.15:4)

There will be different realms of Glory for each believer based upon their life and stewardship.

Believers will not have the same degree of glory in their resurrected bodies

- Just as there are great differences in the bodies of the Animal Kingdom there will be great differences in the coming Heavenly Kingdom

- Believers will have varying degrees of glory in their resurrected bodies just as stars differ from other stars in brightness. The degree of glory that we will have is based upon the way we live on earth.

- The degree of glory in our resurrected bodies will be directly related to what we overcome in this life and the amount of inner transformation to become like Christ.

6. The First Resurrection: The Resurrection of Reward

(i) The Bible Reveals That There are Two Resurrections

The First resurrection

But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years” (Rev.20:5-6)

- If there is a First resurrection then there must also be another resurrection

- The First resurrection takes place at the beginning of the millennial reign of Christ on earth The General resurrection

- The Second or General Resurrection takes place at the end of the millennial reign of Christ at the Great White Throne Judgement

- “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev.20:11-15)

- Those who take place in the First Resurrection become Priests and Kings to God and reign on earth for the 1000 years working with Jesus to establish His Kingdom and Rule over the earth

“Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet” (1Cor.15:24-25)

(ii) The First Resurrection: Resurrection of Reward

- Participation in the First Resurrection is Reserved for those who are Overcomers

This would be a significant point of difference of doctrine or belief among Christians

Some Christians do not know that there are actually two resurrections

Some Christians believe that the First resurrection has already taken place

Some Christians believe that All believers will participate in the First Resurrection

Other Christians believe that The First resurrection is a prize to be won. It is not automatic

(iii) Evidence that Points to the First Resurrection being a Reward

Paul’s Letter to the Philippians:

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil.3:7-11)

- Paul considers all his achievements meaningless compared to the prize ahead….winning Christ

- Since he has already experienced Christ indwelling, he is referring to a future prize to be won

- “Resurrection from the dead….” ekanastasis …literally the out from resurrection

- This refers to the First Resurrection when a people will be resurrected out from among the dead at the beginning of the Millennium

- “If by any means” tells us that he is uncertain that he will attain to this prize of the First Resurrection.

- Paul, six years before his death, wanted to make sure that he was qualified to participate in the resurrection of the dead….The First Resurrection

- Paul tells us that there is a possibility that this will not happen…

- It is a Prize to contend for, a prize to be won

- It is the High Calling of God in Christ

- “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.” (Phil.3:12-15)

- Paul goes on to tell us ….he has not yet attained to that “out from resurrection”

- He also tells us he has not apprehended that prize but makes it the motivation for his life and ministry

- “Attain”………..to take in the hand

- “Apprehend”..to take possession of, to lay hold of so as to make one’s own possession

- “Press”………….to run , to flee, to run swiftly in order to take hold of a prize

The Letter to The Hebrews:

- Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. (Heb.11:35)

- All knew of the general Resurrection when all people would be raised from the dead

- These people by faith refused to deny Christ even to the point of death

- Why? …” In order to obtain a stronger resurrection”

- “Stronger”…….more excellent, nobler, having dominion or power or strength

- This refers to the First resurrection…..reward for remaining faithful to Christ

Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians:

“When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.

Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power: (2Thes.2:10-11)

- Note Paul’s prayer that believers would be counted worthy of this calling to manifest the glory of God

- He would not be praying this if He did considered it to be guaranteed

The Book of Revelation: The Promise to Him that Overcomes

- “And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations (Rev.2:26)

- “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." (Rev.3:21-22)

- The promise to rule with Christ in both Revelation ch.2 and 3 is s given to those who Overcome

- Those who rise in the First resurrection “ shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him one thousand years”(Rev.20:6)

- These means that those participating in the First Resurrection must be Overcomers in life

8. Where Will We Live in Resurrected Bodies?

- Those with resurrected bodies will live in the New Jerusalem, but they will reign on the earth.

- There will be instant transportation from the New Jerusalem to any place on the earth, just like angels can move back and forth between the realms effortlessly.

- The veil will be lifted between the realms. Limitations on travel will be removed

- There will be a Supernatural dimension merging with the Natural world

- In the Millennium, the natural human processes will not be suspended, but will be significantly enhanced by the supernatural dimension of the Spirit.

- People with natural bodies, not resurrected will continue life on earth as before with all the the natural realities and processes of life.

- Those with resurrected bodies will be interacting with them, but will have government and exercise leadership over them.

- A Brief Glimpse:

- We see brief aspects of this natural and supernatural realm flowing together during the forty days after Jesus resurrection and before He ascended into heaven

- “to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.’

(Act.1:3)

- Him God raised up on the third day, and showed Him openly not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead” (Acts10:40-41)

- He was teaching them. He was eating their food with them. He was hugging them and ministering to them. He was appearing and disappearing. What an unbelievable time!

- They would have been overwhelmed with joy and excitement

- This is just a brief insight to what life will be like in the Millennial kingdom Intense Joy, or Great Sorrow?

- God’s purpose has always been that heaven would come to earth….that the two realms would overlap, and that God would dwell among us

- Imagine what it would be like to be part of this, to see and experience this. The Intense Eternal Joy of being resurrected and part of the Fist resurrection and this Millennial ministry. The Great Sorrow at missing out on what you had been called to participate in!

- We have to make the daily choice…..Run our Personal Race to Win this Prize of The High Calling of God

- Num. 14:21 but truly, as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD

III. Questions for Personal Reflection

1. What has the Holy Spirit being speaking to you about during this session?

2. What response or actions do you need to make?

3. Why would building your inner spirit life be so important\/

4. Why is embracing personal inner transformation so important?

5. What issues currently hinder you running passionately for Christ?

Garments of Glory & Beauty (5 of 12)

Sun 5 Jul 2020  « Back to Top

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Jesus frequently taught about Eternal rewards in the Coming Millennial Kingdom and for the need for His disciples to pursue them and live in preparation for His Second coming.

In this series we examine what are the Eternal rewards that Jesus has reserved for those who love Him. The focus of this study are Eternal Garments of Glory and Beauty.

Introduction

Okay, welcome. We're doing Eternal Rewards, and we've been looking at a series on the rewards that Jesus has promised to those who overcome. So many believers understand that we receive the gift of salvation by a free gift, by faith in the work of Christ; but what many believers don't understand, is that our life, our service in following the Lord, counts for our life in eternity. So it's not just a simple way you follow Jesus, die and go to heaven - it's not like that. Jesus came not to talk about a message of going to heaven. He talked about a message of being born again, and then of a kingdom we come into, a kingdom we participate in; a kingdom with values, and a lifestyle, and a king that we respond to. Then He talked about the coming kingdom, and the rewards for those who participate with Him in this life. So the teaching on eternal rewards gives us incredible motivation for personal change, and for living a focused life of following Christ.

Today's study is on the Garments of Glory and Beauty. By way of introduction, the first thing we want to remind everyone of, is that one of the great themes of Jesus' teaching was eternal rewards. He constantly spoke about the life in the kingdom, and also about the values of the kingdom. He talked about laying up treasure in heaven, and even that statement there tells us that there's a possibility our actions here will result, or have a consequence, in eternity.

Matthew 16:27 - "The Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father, with His angels, and He will reward (or recompense, or pay what is owing), to every man, according to his works."

We saw (in the study so far) that there are many different kinds of rewards. Looking at Creation, you see the diversity of creation, you see the variety of God, so it's obvious that God can reward us in a whole variety of different ways, and particularly in a way that's appropriate for us. You see the diversity in flowers, diversity in all of creation. We understand then, it's possible for every one of us to receive a reward that's quite unique to us, in our life that we've lived.

When we read in Revelations 2 & 3, Jesus is talking to the seven churches. They all existed in time. They've all gone now, but they're also a prophetic picture of churches, in the different ages and seasons of church history. He points out problems in each of the churches, and He lays out a reward for those who overcome. The implication is: if the reward is for those who overcome, then those who don't overcome, don't receive the reward. Quite simple. To overcome means: to conquer something. To overcome means: to prevail over an issue that is a cause of stumbling, or a difficulty, or a pressure on your life. To overcome it means: I've been able to persevere and subdue that problem; it means to subdue it.

In 1 John, He tells us: this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. All who are designated 'overcomers' are people who have learnt to believe God; and not just a mental ascent, but live it out in the way they tackle the problems that come up on a daily basis. We need to be aware of the rewards, and their significance. If you don't understand the size of the reward, or what's at stake, then you won't put value on it. If you don't put value on it, it won't affect how you live your life. When you see what is at stake, when you look through and study the rewards, you understand Jesus' teaching, of the man who saw the treasure in the field, and because of the treasure was such a big prize to be won, he sold all and bought the field. Also, the pearl of great price, He taught that. He's teaching about the value of what God has prepared for us is so great, that it causes people to consider everything else of less value, and to put that kingdom of God first. When we understand what's at stake, that there's a reward at stake for each of us, it motivates us then, no matter what our circumstances.

We saw in the scripture in Colossians 3:22-24, where Jesus is talking (or Paul's talking) to servants, or slaves, who are badly treated by their masters; and he says: "obey your masters in the flesh, not with eye service as men-pleasers, but in sincerity (or from your heart), because of the fear of God; knowing whatever you do, you do it heartily, to the Lord, knowing that of the Lord you will receive the reward of inheritance, because you serve the Lord Jesus Christ". Notice there, that He talks again, not about trying to address the injustice of the slavery, but learning how to manage yourself in an unjust condition in the world.

The third thing we looked at was that rewards are not given automatically. They come to those who fulfil certain conditions, and we saw in Revelations 3 - to him that overcomes. "Him that overcomes will sit on My throne". In John 12 - "him that serves Me, him My Father will honour". So, we see promises that have conditions; and clearly, it's a just God, that would distinguish each believer from the other, according to the life they live.

We won't go into it today, but the judgements on sin vary in the level of the person's actions, their motivations, and the light they walked in. The depths of hell and punishment also vary in level; and the rewards in heaven vary in level. We saw in the Book of Revelation, you can either be: seated in the throne with Jesus - in a place of close connection and participation in the coming kingdom, in a governing role, a ruling role, a shaping role, a forming role, where you can be around the throne - and that's quite a different position to be in.

We saw also that our small sacrifices now have a huge, huge recompense. In other words, what God rewards us is out of proportion to what we do. We saw that in Matthew 25:21, where He said to the servant: "you were faithful over few things, I will make you ruler over many things"; and: "well done, you were faithful in very little, have authority over 10 cities" - Luke 19:17. So notice there: very little; much! Very little; much! Little here; 10 cities! Now you understand what kind of status is involved in the management of 10 cities. That's a very high level of authority and responsibility, so He's saying: faithful now, a little; then certainly you'll be given much.

We saw it in Hebrews that God is a rewarder. So we look then at the list of the rewards, and there are so many you can't list them all out, it would take a long list to do that. But we kind of put them under these kinds of headings, because they seemed to overlap a little:

- Eternal Intimacy

- Eternal Authority

- Eternal Glory

- Eternal Garments

- Victor's Crowns

- Honour & Praise from God

- Treasure & Riches in heaven

- Vindication of our Life, before our enemies.

Those were the eight categories I spoke of.

In the first studies we looked at: Eternal Intimacy; Eternal Authority; and Eternal Glory. Last week we spoke on the eternal glory; the resurrection and the two resurrections. Today's one is on: Eternal Garments; but I've re-labelled it to: Garments of Glory and Beauty, so that's our focus for today. Next week, I'll pick up the next couple: Victor's Crowns; and then, Honour and Praise.

Main Message

First of all, what are 'garments of glory and beauty'? What is He referring to? If you want to search the Bible yourself, type in: 'garments' or 'clothed'; and then do a search across the Bible, and you'll find there's many, many references. Perhaps the first reference that we would be aware of, is in the Book of Genesis, where it says: Adam and Eve were naked, but not ashamed. In other words, they must have been clothed in the glory of God. When they sinned, they were covered in shame, and they went and covered themselves with fig leaves, and hid themselves in the trees. We see then God clothing them with animal skins, because of their nakedness; and that was a prophetic picture, of the death of Jesus on the cross. He would provide for us the covering by faith, the covering of righteousness, that we would need. Clearly, Adam and Eve had lost the garments of beauty and glory, that they were clothed in.

The Bible tells us about God Himself being clothed; for example, in Psalm 104:1, it says: He's clothed with honour and majesty. You've got to get out of thinking naturally; you've got to think of the spiritual realm; and of the great honour, great majesty, and great regal garments, that Jesus has. In Psalm 104:2, it says: He clothes Himself with light, as though it was a garment. If we were to catch a glimpse of God, then we would see brilliant light. In the New Testament it tells us: He dwells in immortality and light, which no man can see. You know, it would overwhelm him, because of our limitations of our flesh. In Psalm 93:1, it says: God is clothed with majesty and strength. Notice, it's talking about honour, majesty, light, strength - so these are spiritual things, spiritual realities, but they express themselves in the person appearing to be clothed with substance.

We find also other references: for example, the angels. There's a number of references to angels in the Bible; and when angels appeared, we find that they generally were clothed in what appeared to be fine linen, or white linen. When you look at the Old Testament, they described it through what was familiar in their day; so, if the same thing happened today, you'd use a different language to describe it. For example, Jesus said: I am the bread of life. They understood bread, there was a culture of bread; if you were in Asia, you would say: I am the rice of life. There was a use of something they're familiar with. In the Old Testament, almost all of the pictures relate to what they're familiar with. In the New Testament, you see it done differently.

In the Old Testament, when they see the glory of the coming kingdom, they often see a temple, or a house, and they see it terms of natural priesthood; but we see the spiritual realities, what those things signify. In Ezekiel 10:1-2, angels appear and they're in white linen; in Daniel 10:5, an angel appeared to Daniel, and he was clothed with white linen. We see also, in Leviticus 6:6, when it comes to the high priest, that the high priest had a particular role in relationship to standing in the presence of God, and God gave instructions; so we're going to look at the instructions that were given on the clothing of the high priest, and you'll see why shortly. The high priests, and the priesthood, all of the sons who served the high priest, all had to be clothed in white linen. No white linen meant that you can't go near the presence of God; so to function in their priesthood, they were required to have white linen. Every time you see an angel, it's white linen. You'll see later on, various occasions of white linen; and every time it's white linen, it's referring to a particular kind of supernatural garment or clothing, that represents glory and honour, and rank and stature in the coming kingdom.

When Jesus was transfigured in Mark 9:3, it says: His robes became brilliant or dazzling white, whiter than anyone could make it. His garments… when the glory began to manifest, His countenance changed. His body changed, His garments changed, and He appeared in white linen - white clothing, which was brilliant white. The white garments, the white linen, referred to a supernatural clothing, a supernatural garment, which is needed for us to go in and out of heaven, and into the earth. Right now, we access heaven only in our spirit, by faith. When we have the white garments, referring to the resurrection body and resurrection glory, then we can access the realm of heaven; and walk in the realm of the earth as well. At the moment we can only do that in our spirit; and so, by our spiritual senses, we can access the presence of God. In our spirit, we're connected to Him. But this is something completely different. This is actually the overwhelming of our body, and the clothing, with an ability now to literally move in and out of dimensions.

A second thing I want to mention then, by way of introduction, is the white garments that are referred to are not the same as the free gift of righteousness.

Matthew 16:27 - “He will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, rewarding each man or every man according to his works”.

Revelation 19:7-8 - “let us be glad, and rejoice, and give honour to Him, or give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. And to her was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”

Jesus says He will reward us, at His coming. In Revelations 19, it's talking about one of the greatest events that will take place in the future, in history, and that's called the ‘marriage supper of the lamb’. It's when Jesus, the bridegroom, meets with His bride, and it says there: “let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory to Him, and give Him all the honour”. It's His work that's caused this to come about. It's His invitation that made us possible to be there. But notice that it said that the bride was ‘given’, or it was ‘granted to her’, or this was given to her: that she should be arrayed or clothed in fine linen, clean and white. Then it explains the construction of that. It says: “for the fine linen is the righteous acts [plural] of the saints”.

The righteous acts of us, on our earth now, are accumulated, and result in the clothing with garments of honour in the coming kingdom. The righteous acts. Notice ‘the acts’ are plural, and it's the acts of the saints; so, this has got nothing to do then, or it doesn't refer rather, to the work of Christ on the cross. These righteous acts, or these garments, are an expression of each believer's devotion to Christ, and their acts of service. So you're dealing with two distinct things now: coming to Christ, and receiving a clothing of righteous, standing before Him, by His work; and then us, after we've been positioned like that, now responding with love and gratitude, and living a life of serving Him and honouring Him - that qualifies us for rewards. It's probably the simplest way I could put it.

Our justification, that's right standing before God, is received by faith; and it's based on His work, not on our works. In Revelation 19:8, it's our ‘works’, and a reward we receive; but in Ephesians 2:8, where ‘by grace’ have you been saved through faith, that's not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, or not your works, lest anyone should boast. So the scripture Ephesians 2:8 is very clear: our salvation, being born again, coming out of sin and into right standing with God, being clothed with the righteousness, a right standing - that is totally on our trusting that Christ did all of the work necessary for this to happen at the cross. Our standing before God is based upon the work of another, and we must always build from that foundation. What Jesus did on the cross has positioned me now to be a recipient of His blessings and benefits. It says the same thing in Titus 3:4-5 – “The kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man has appeared, not by works of righteousness we've done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing, regeneration, renewing the Holy Ghost”. Notice that it’s not by any works of righteousness we have done.

We see there two distinct things, and you need to have these very, very clear. We are saved not by our own works; we are saved by solely the work of Jesus Christ, by faith alone in His work. All of our standing before God rests totally on His work, and our believing that when He died on the cross for our sins, it is enough. It's a complete work, a finished work, that enables all our sins to be forgiven and us to have a standing with God. By faith, we have that standing. We have access by faith, wherein we stand - it tells us in the Book of Ephesians. We understand, then, that we have a standing with God, by faith in His work. As a result of His work, now we give evidence, that we're in that right standing; by loving Him, by serving Him, and by letting Him express His life through us; and then He investigates, and checks, the quality of those works we do, and the motivation of them, to see if they qualify for reward. So remember then, bottom line: our salvation depends on faith in His work - a free gift; but our eternal rewards depend on our works - how we live life as a steward, an acknowledgement, a recompense by God, who is a rewarder.

Who gets the white garments then? Who receives the white garments? Ultimately, all of us will have a resurrection body; but when the Bible is talking about white garments, it describes it this way…

Number 1: ‘overcomers’ receive white garments - those who overcome. An overcomer is awarded white garments - as a prize, or an honour, for overcoming in life. The implication is: if you don't ‘overcome’ in life, or ‘defeat it’ in life, then you won't qualify for that ‘white garment’ that's being referred to.

Revelations 3:4-5 – “You have a few names, even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments. I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life, but I will confess his name before My Father and before the angels.”

Notice the first thing there: he who overcomes will be clothed in white garments. What are you currently facing? What issue do you face, that you need to overcome? God knows every one of us - He knows the details of our life, what we do, our position in life, where we are, what we face - and most of the challenges we face are never seen by anyone but God. The giants we face, mostly, are internal ones. Sometimes they're external; but primarily, it's the struggle to overcome being intimated, or set back, by life. Number 1 then: overcomers - those who overcome and prevail, receive white garments.

Number 2: the bride, the lamb's wife, receives white linen garments.

Revelations 19:8 – “To her it was granted she be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen are the righteous acts of the saints.”

It tells us the bride of Christ made herself ready. Now there's many Christians who are not making themselves ‘ready’ in any kind of way. A lot of Christians are not actually engaged in serving the Lord in any kind of significant way; but it tells us here that the lamb's wife, those who God selects, from among all those who are saved into intimacy with Him… it says very clearly, that they have made themselves ‘ready’. That means, they took on the responsibility of building a deep, intimate life with Jesus; and of allowing the life of Jesus to transform their heart and their motives - and because of that, they made themselves ready. The overflow of that relationship expressed itself in works of service to the Lord. We see this in many different ways in the Bible.

The third area, people who are clothed in white linen, that the Bible tells us about, they are people ‘from every tribe and every nation’.

Revelations 7:9 – “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, people and tongues, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed with white robes and palm branches in their hands”.

So, we understand that there are two resurrections. The ‘first resurrection’ (and therefore must be a second resurrection); in the first resurrection, we're taught that it's a resurrection of reward - and you'll see this as we go through today's study re-emphasised again. I'll try to keep re-emphasising it, because it's such an important teaching.

What are the white garments? Firstly, the white garments represent Eternal Rewards. The white garments are supernatural clothing, that acknowledge the quality of our love and service for the Lord while we're on earth - and it makes sense. God is a just God, who will not only show mercy to people, and be patient with people, and provide grace in the midst of failures… also He is a Just God. There are two aspects of it: His justice means He will acknowledge what we've done, and the life we've lived, and respond accordingly. We saw in Revelations 3:4 for example – “you have a few names, even in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments; they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.”

Notice then, ‘walking with Christ in white’ is a reward for being faithful; and the reason He gives is: they are worthy. What does ‘worthy’ mean? It means having weight; substance; having value; having merited something; deserving acknowledgement. Some people, in their relationship and service, deserve being acknowledged, because what they have done has been outstanding in God's eyes. They've not defiled their garments. They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.

What does the word ‘white’ mean? The white is used to describe purity; but it also describes the dazzling brightness of the garments. The word white is the Greek word leukos, L-E-U-K-O-S. It means bright, brilliant, dazzling garments, that emanate light. Most of our garments don't emanate light! He's saying that the garments we'll be clothed in are garments of glory - they actually emanate light from within. A third thing about those garments is that every person will be clothed uniquely, with different degrees of light and brilliance. They'll have their own degree of light and brilliance, that will depend on their rank and stature in the kingdom. You see that naturally too. If you go to a royal wedding, and see everyone there, you will see that they're all positioned in different ranks and places in the wedding service. You notice they're wearing different kinds of clothing; and all of the clothing, whatever they wear, reveals something about their rank, or about the status the person has.

Daniel 12:3 – “those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness who are (in other words they're evangelist, reach people for Christ) will be like the stars, forever and ever and ever.”

Matthew 13:43 – “then the righteous (that's when the kingdom comes) will shine like the sun, in the kingdom of their Father”.

1 Corinthians 15:41 – “there is one glory of the sun, another of the moon, another glory of the stars, and just as one star differs from another in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead”.

I believe that in the coming resurrection, there will be great ranges of degrees of glory that people carry, and it will be evident in the way you present yourself, in the way you clothe. We see that even today - the way people dress tells something about them; and so it's quite possible that the garments will be diverse and varied, depending what the occasion is.

Now one of the things we shared before, was that if you want to understand some of these spiritual realities, you've got to go into the Old Testament, and have a look at the hidden prophetic pictures in the Old Testament's stories. When you start to get a hold of this, or understand this, you'll realise how amazing the Bible is, in terms of prophetic pictures of Jesus Christ - all the way through the Bible, and you've got to keep looking for Him everywhere.

I want to just divert now for a while and talk about the priestly garments. There are two reasons: Number 1, because we are all called to be priests to God.

Peter 2:5 – “you as living stones have been built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”.

Notice now, God says that we are a ‘holy priesthood’. We are a spiritual priesthood. We offer spiritual sacrifices, paise, worship, offerings, honour. There are so many different ways we can honour God, and offer something to Him. In our journey in life now, one of the roles every believer has, is to be a priest to God. What does a priest do? Priests would stand before God and offer sacrifices. So, our first call is to come before God, on a daily basis, and to praise and worship - that's what priests did. If we have a look at their list of duties, you'll see: they had to keep the candle, and they had to keep the fire burning; and they had to offer offerings every day - that was their job.

Second thing is, they stood between God and men, to make intersession. So, a second role every believer has, as a priest, is to be an intercessor - to pray on behalf of others who can't help themselves, or are in bondage or whatever.

The third role of a priest was to come from the presence of God, to men, and to bless them. There's a whole lot could be taught all around just those things there: how do I develop intimacy? How do I grow in the realm of building the atmosphere of God, and accessing His presence? How do I move in intercession? How do I begin to intercede for people? What are the strategies of intercession? What is involved in blessing people?

1 Corinthians 12:7 – “Now the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man for the blessing or benefit of others”.

All of us come into the presence of God; we worship, we praise, we build intimacy, we listen to Him, we surrender to Him, and He works in our life. We pray for people, and we come out of the presence of God, we're called to bless people. To bless people… you can bless people by serving them, giving to them, and ministering the gifts of the spirit to them. Priests bless people. We're not called to curse people, even if they are unkind; we're called to bless people. So that's a whole area you could study - the priesthood, and what's involved in the priesthood. I want to just put out this: we're called to be priests to God.

Revelations 20:6 – “The overcomers in the first resurrection will be priests and kings to our God, and will rule on earth”.

That's why I want to look at the priestly garments, because it's part of who we are, and it's part of what we'll become. The second reason is that the priestly garments in the Old Testament give an insight to how important garments are to God. As you start to read in the Old Testament, bear two things in mind: that there's prophetic pictures inside here, that refer primarily to Jesus; and secondarily, to me. You've got to look at it through that filter, that lens; and therefore, as you look at the things, you look at the natural and how they're put together and their function, and then you begin to consider what that means for me. That's how you get revelation on these things.

Exodus 28:1-3 – “Now take Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister to Me as a priest”.

The first insight then: they're chosen. Second insight: they minister to God. So that first role of a priest - to minister to God.

“Aaron and Aaron's sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar”. And it says: “…and you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty”.

There it is: ‘garments for glory and beauty’ refer to the high priest's garments, and He said: “You will speak to all the gifted artisans”. You need gifted people to do this. This is not just wrap together some garments – “…whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments, to consecrate him, that he may minister to Me as a priest”.

What are the purposes of the priest's garments? Here's the three purposes…

Firstly, they're garments of glory and beauty. God designed them to: show His glory, and reflect His beauty. These are garments of great glory and beauty. When people look at them, they'll be stunned. Glory means splendour, or honour, or majesty. Beauty means glory, highly attractive - like an attribute of God. The purpose of those things is that the person wearing the garment was clothed with glory and beauty.

Secondly, the garments were used to consecrate, or set someone apart for a special purpose. They were used for the consecration of the priests. He said: “you'll make Aaron's garments to consecrate him”, so the second reason we see then of the garments, is to set him apart. When you see him in the garments… whoa! That's the priest – he’s got the special job. Thirdly, He said: “…consecrate him, that he may minister to Me as a priest”. So those garments are to minister personally to God, to enter His presence, engage with Him face to face. I want you to keep those three things in mind: 1) that the garments are full of glory and beauty; 2) they are an evidence that the person is set apart for a particular service to God; and 3) they are given the honour of having access personally into the Holiest of Holies, where the glory of God dwelt, to engage with Him face to face.

The next thing then about those garments (after those three things), is they reflect, or they are a prophetic picture, of Christ. The Bible says: “He is our high priest, after the order of Melchizedek”. He is our high priest, so these reflect then His resurrection glory and beauty. His consecration, even now, to be a priest unto God; to act as an intercessor on our behalf; and to live in the throne room, in the presence of God. After Jesus rose from the dead, He had a glorious resurrection body, He had garments of glory and beauty. They indicated He was ‘set apart’. Notice that Mary couldn't touch them, because He was consecrated, set apart; and He now was to enter the presence of God, in the very throne room of God, face to face. In order to do that, He required these resurrection bodies, resurrection garments.

That leads us then to the details of the priest's garments. Now the study of the priesthood is a major study of its own, and the study of the garments is a big thing of its own, because all of them are full of significance. However, let me just give you a few things, and remember: each time we look at this, think firstly of Jesus; then begin to think of the sons of God, in the glory of God. The place you'll find most of the description is in Exodus 28, there are about 43 verses on it. That's a lot of verses, so the topic must be important. God gave exact directions about the design of the priest's garments. You couldn't just make anything, had to be done exactly the way God said and they had distinct parts: trousers, coat, girdle, bonnet, robe, ephod, breastplate, tunic, turban, hat, sash and crown - all the details are there. If God takes time to put all the details in, then it must be important to Him. He's trying to say that, when it comes to our clothing in eternity, every little detail is thought through by God.

Exodus 28:4 – “…and these are the garments they'll make: a breastplate, an ephod, a robe, skilfully woven tunic, a turban, a sash. They shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother and his sons, that he may minister to Me as a priest”.

God says: this is the bits you've got to make up, this is what it's going to look like. Notice the many parts to it.

Exodus 28:42-43 – “You shall make for them linen trousers to cover their nakedness, that reach from the waist to the thighs. They'll be on Aaron and his sons when they come into the tabernacle of meeting, when they come near to the altar to minister in the holy place, that they do not incur iniquity and die. It shall be a statute forever to him and his descendants after him.”

Notice, He says: the priest can't come into the presence of God without the garments. You cannot go into the throne room of God in heaven without the linen garments. If he were to do that, he would be struck dead immediately! Notice the primary garment was made of fine linen, and all the garments had different colours. Every colour has a significance - there was gold, blue, purple, scarlet... Every colour has got a significance. For example, the colour gold – heaven is paved with gold. It refers to the realm of heaven, the realm of eternity. The colour blue also speaks of the Holy Spirit - it speaks of the supernatural realm. The colour purple is always a sign of royalty - they clad Jesus in a purple garment, ridiculed Him as a king. The scarlet refers to the blood shed on the cross.

They had a breastplate here, with stones on the breastplate. It was worn over the heart, and it had 12 stones, and every one of the stones had the name of one of the tribes. Again, the significance of it spiritually is quite enormous. Then on the shoulders, He had also a stone on each shoulder, and on one stone there was six of the tribes (half of the tribes), and the other half, their names were inscribed on the others. Then on His forehead He had a crown. He had a turban with a gold plate, and on the gold plate, Holiness To The Lord. The breastplate worn over the heart speaks of a transformed heart - the need for the heart to be transformed.

“Aaron shall bear the names of the son of Israel, on the breastplate of judgement over his heart, when he goes into the holy place, as a memorial before the Lord continually”.

When we are born again, we have a heart transformation, and that transformation must be ongoing and continuous. An interesting thing is that on the breastplate there were 12 stones, representing all the tribes of Israel - one stone for each name. If you go through all the names, you find they're all important. For example, the first name is Reuben. All the names in a Bible are associated with a character, and a destiny. “Reuben behold a son”. So, the first stone: behold a son. I'm a son of the living God. When you're born again, you become a son, or a child, of the living God. I'm born into relationship: God is my Father. The second one, Simeon, means: a ‘harkening’, or a ‘listening’. God has harkened or listened to me. Sonship means: hearing, and obeying, the voice of God; and pleasing Him. The third one was Judah, which means ‘praise’; sonship means we constantly live a life of gratitude, thanksgiving, and praise to our Father. The stones refer not just to the tribes of Israel, but each tribe had a name, which refers to some aspect of our sonship before God. They all tell us something about our sonship.

He also had memorial stones: the first was worn over the heart; the second were two stones, one on each shoulder. Naturally, we shoulder responsibility, so therefore the names on the shoulder refers to responsibility as a son. So firstly, I need a heart change as a son. Secondly, I must carry responsibility as a son. Sons are responsible to represent their father, and extend the father's name and house, and so are worn on the shoulders.

Isaiah 9:6 – “The government shall be on His shoulders”.

So as a son, as a priest to God now, I now have a transformed heart, and many aspects of sonship are written by the Holy Spirit, on my heart. I need to grow into all of them. Secondly, I now have responsibilities as a son; and in my responsibility as a son, I must learn how to represent God, and exercise authority on His behalf. Then the final thing, the gold crown, which was worn on the forehead. Gold has to do with divine, or heaven, or God. It's worn on the head, or the forehead, which refers to the mind, the way you think; it talks about the mind of Christ. The gold there means that we have the mind of Christ. The statement it had on it was: ‘Holiness To The Lord’.

Part of our journey as a priest is the ongoing transformation of our heart. Part of our journey as a priest is that we take responsibility for working with God, and serving Him and advancing His kingdom. Part of our responsibility, as a priest, is to have our mind renewed, so that we're constantly being renewing our mind, and being transformed. So, every aspect represents an aspect of Christ, and an aspect of what it means to be a son or a child of God. Only the overcomers receive those priestly garments of glory and beauty.

Revelations 3:5 – “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments”.

So where you look in the Bible, you'll find pictures that you can just draw out, and suddenly they show you things that it's not easy to explain in the New Testament. The next thing I want to look at, in relationship to the priesthood, is that there was a change made, in the priesthood - God changed His mind. Now when God changes His mind, there's got to be a good reason for it; so, I want to have a look at that change that took place, in the priesthood. In Exodus 19 He called everyone to be priests to Him. However, because the people fell into idolatry, He said: okay, I'll limit it to the tribe of Levi; and then later on, He changed it from Levi to Judah. I want to have a look at that transition, because there's always a reason for it.

So in Exodus 19, He called them all to be a kingdom, or a holy nation, a kingdom of priests; but because of their idolatry, He narrowed it down to the tribe of Levi, and they had an Eternal Priesthood. Then He made a change, and I want to look into why He made the change, because what it means, very simply, is that the people who were operating in the priesthood didn't qualify, and so the priesthood went to someone who did qualify. I want to ask the question: why did they not qualify? What caused them to be disqualified, and lose their priesthood, their access to God? What caused the other ones to be qualified?

There are two priesthoods that are mentioned in the Bible: one is the Levitical priesthood, and they descend from Aaron and his descendants; the second one that's mentioned is called the Melchizedek priesthood, which is the priesthood associated with Jesus' ministry. So firstly, the Levitical priests: we saw before that everyone was called to be a priest. However, most people didn't want to go near God. They wanted someone to go to God on their behalf, and so they fell into idolatry, and then it set on the Levitical priesthood.

So the Levitical priests were chosen to minister the old covenant. They were all descendants of Aaron, so the Levitical priesthood represents the old covenant. It represents the law. Under the law, I had to do things to walk with God; and it says, concerning Levi, that Levi was quite violent and cruel, and came under a curse. In Genesis 49:5, Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments of cruelty in their dwelling place. So, the Levitical priesthood was replaced by another order - the Melchizedek priesthood. The Melchizedek priesthood are chosen to minister the new covenant, the things of the spirit. Two priesthoods: the priesthood of the law, where you're operating under law, under rules; and then the priesthood of the New Testament, which is under Melchizedek, and it is operating in the spirit.

The letter of the law kills; but the spirit gives life - two kinds of priesthoods. Levitical, the old covenant, Old Testament law; and then the New Testament, which is all to do with the spirit of life. We're called to be ministers of the spirit, and the spirit will always bring life. The interesting thing about the Levitical priesthood was, every now and then, the chief priest would die, and they would have to find another one, and that's when they ran into their troubles. With the Melchizedek priesthood, it comes from Jesus, who never dies - therefore it never changes. We've just got one guy in charge, and He's our high priest forever. So the Levitical priesthood has been replaced by the Melchizedek priesthood. We read that in Hebrews 7:11-13. That means it's taken over all their roles.

Why did it get replaced? Why did they let it go? Why did God change His mind about this group? There's always a reason. God appointed them initially, because Aaron was sent to work with Moses, in terms of delivering the people of God out of Egypt. Then after Aaron and his sons were supposed to be priests, their descendants were supposed to be priests. But at some point, someone really blew it big time, and as a result of what he did, and what his sons did, God said: I will take the priesthood off you, and give it to a faithful priesthood - and He's referring to Jesus Christ.

He's saying: the old covenant will come to an end. I'm going to introduce a new covenant. A new covenant will have a new priest. In order to see the transition from the old covenant (under the law) to the new covenant (of the spirit), you've got to look to some people. No picture in the Bible is perfect, but you'll see the transition. I want you to see is the why it took place, and there were many reasons, but I one reason is particularly important. Levi, and the priesthood of Levi, was replaced by Melchizedek, or by Zadok.

1 Samuel 2:35 – “I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what's in My heart and My mind. I will build him a sure house; he will walk before My anointed forever.”

Eli was replaced by Eleazar. He was replaced by Abiatha; and then when it came to King Solomon, and the coming millennial rule, He replaced the priesthood, put another one in. So, the millennial rule has a different priesthood. So why did He put Zadok in there; and why is it that Levi forfeited there? It all goes back to a man called Eli, and he's found in the first Book of Samuel, in the first few chapters. Eli was the high priest, and God was planning a massive change, so He raised up Samuel, who became the prophet and priest to the nation.

This is in 1 Samuel 2:29-30, and I encourage you to read this story yourself. Eli was old, and blind - had no vision. Eli was very heavy, a big fat man; and what happened was that his sons, who were also the priests, were stealing the best offerings for themselves; and they were also being involved in sexual immorality with the women who came to worship. God spoke to Eli, and said this: Why do you kick at My sacrifice, and My offering, which I have commanded in My dwelling? You honour your sons more than Me, to make yourselves fat with the best of the offerings! Then He said: “therefore the Lord God of Israel says: I said indeed your house and the house of your father would walk with Me forever.”

In other words, this was going to be a forever job - but now it's far from Me. Those who honour Me, I will honour; but those who despise Me, shall be lightly esteemed. He then lays out exactly what's going to happen. He puts a curse on them. He says: in your family no one will ever get old, they'll all die prematurely; and He said: here's a sign for you. On one day, both of your sons will die. So on one day, both of his sons died in battle; and when the news came back to Eli, it was such a shock for him that the sons had died, and the ark had been captured, that he fell over and broke his neck. There's symbolism in all of these things, but the key thing in here was: there was a lack of relationship with God.

Here's the reasons they forfeited the priesthood. The bottom line is: they dishonoured God; and they honoured themselves - that was why they forfeited their priesthood. In any priesthood, which includes us, in any leadership, any kind of ministry… if we dishonour God in our actions, and honour yourself - you will forfeit your priesthood in eternity! Very, very serious! It's a huge issue!

God called it: “they dishonoured Me”. He said to Eli: “you honour your sons more than Me. You make yourselves fat with all the best of the offerings”. So read the story, there were three things that were identified: 1) Lack of intimate relationship with the Lord. It says: “they were sons of Belial, they did not know the Lord”. Now that seems crazy! Here they are, they're serving in the tabernacle, all the things of God. They're fully involved in the religious system, yet there's no intimacy or relationship with the Lord. It's a very strong picture of people who have no ongoing personal relationship with the Lord - they're just fulfilling religious roles, religious duties. No relationship with the Lord, and as a result, they have no respect or honour for Him. No respect, no honour.

The issue of honouring God is a crucial one. In Malachi 1, when He's talking to the priesthood, He said: “sons honour their father, and servants honour their master. If I be a Father, where's My honour? If I be a Master, where's My respect?” He said: you guys dishonour and disrespect Me. They said: how do we do that? He said: in the offerings, because you bring the weak, the blind, and the sick. You've got to remember that when we come, whether our giving is financial, or praise and worship, the core of it is: we must respect and honour the one we're coming to, and give Him the honour, give Him the best, not give Him something half-hearted, not give Him something which is unsatisfactory to Him.

In Malachi 1, He says: try pulling that stunt with the leader of the nation and see if he'll be happy with it. He says: I am a great king. Don't bring your half-hearted, blind, sick sheep and offer them to me, and say you're doing a good thing. He said: what you're giving reflects a heart that dishonours and despises Me. This is a crucial reason that the sons of Levi lost their priesthood, and it also leads us to why someone else got it. There's also a second reason that they lost it. It's all to do with dishonouring God, and honouring themselves, and the second one was: selfish ambition, and self-promotion.

Ambition and self-promotion, what do they mean by that? What did they do? Well, people came, and wanted to worship God. They wanted to honour God, so they came, and they brought their offering, and their offerings depending on what they were able give. It's not important how much you can give, it's the heart that's behind it that counts. They came, and they gave; and these sons would see what these people have, and they'd take the best for themselves. In other words, they exploited the giving, to make themselves prosper. This goes on a lot in the church today! Thankfully, it doesn't take place where we are. We've got great leaders, who honour God, and would never think to use God's resources, and God's people, to further their own ends; but this is what it’s saying they did.

They dishonoured God; took the best for themselves, and they used their position to advance themselves. This happens, and of course this is one of the great scandals in the American church right now - the exploiting of the things of God, to take money off people; offering them false hopes. The third thing that they did was: immorality; sexual immorality. They dishonoured God by violating the women who came to worship. Putting it another way, they abused their position of power. Having been given responsibility, and power, they hurt the people that were under their care; and God saw it, and called them all to account; and they lost the priesthood. Not just them, but all the future generations lost it. It's just incredibly serious.

There's a whole study around all of that, but I just want you to see that there's a shift between the old covenant and the new; and there's a reason for the shift: the failure to honour God, in fact dishonouring Him, and exploiting the role in ministry for their own ends and own purposes. The change in that priesthood means the loss of millennial inheritance, of that priesthood. The Bible uses the story of Eli and Zadok as a prophetic picture of the priesthood in the millennial age. You find Zadok mentioned in a couple of places. We find him mentioned 1 Kings 2:35; when Solomon became the king, he put then Zadok as priest in the place of Abiathar - that's when Zadok came in.

I encourage you to read around there. There was a lot of skulduggery going on, but Zadok remained faithful to God's appointed king. In the story of Eli's sons, they dishonoured God, as their king. They dishonoured God in their offerings, in their morality, their life, their attitudes, everything; but Zadok, he honoured God, and honoured God's selection. The Bible talks about the transition, and it starts to then talk about the millennial impact of this, and so when we go into Ezekiel 44, I want you to see the prophetic picture in here as well. In the Old Testament, they had a natural temple, and natural sacrifices, so when he's describing what he sees, he's describing it through the natural. You've really got to see beyond that, to the supernatural.

Ezekiel 44:10 – “The Levites who went far from Me, when Israel went astray, and who strayed from Me after their idols, shall bear their iniquity. Yet in spite of this… (and He's saying there's consequences for holding idols in your heart) …they shall be ministers in My sanctuary, as gatekeepers of the house and ministers of the house; they shall slay the burnt offering and sacrifice for the people, they'll stand before them to minister to them. Because they ministered to them before their idols, and caused the house of Israel to fall into iniquity, I have raised My hand against them, said the Lord, and they shall bear their iniquity.

Ezekiel 44:43 – “They will not come near to Me, to minister to Me as a priest. They'll not come near to My holy things, they'll not come near to the Most Holy Place. They will carry the shame of their conduct. Nevertheless, they will still work in the temple”

What is He saying then, with the sons of Levi? He's saying then, in the coming millennium kingdom, this is what'll happen... They will not receive a glorified resurrected body that can go backwards and forwards between heaven and earth - that's the body Jesus had. The cost to any believer, of dishonouring God, and not being faithful in their priesthood to Him, is they will not receive that glorified, resurrected body. They will not be able to pass back and forth between heaven and earth, just as Jesus was able to do. They will not have access into the throne of God. They will not reign with Him on earth, and they will have a limited role serving in the earthly realm. They will have a role serving in the church, but they will not have the realm of being able to move and enter into the very throne room of God, and bring the supernatural life and power of God in a massive way back into the earth. They represent believers who are legalistic; there's no transformation, they dishonour God. They dishonour God; and they've refused heart transformation. I see a lot of people like that - legalistic people, dishonouring to God in the way they conduct themselves, and not letting God into their heart to bring about transformation. It says: they will not come near to Me, to minister to Me as a priest. They will not come near any of My holy things. They will not enter the Holy Place.

The language He's using is the language of the temple. There was a Holy Place, where the glory of God dwelt; and what He's saying is: the priests go in there, and then they come out; and He said: these guys will not be allowed in there to Me. They will be not allowed near Me. They will not come into the glory. They will not come into the resurrection. They will not come into ruling and reigning. They will have to stand at the outside. That's a very serious loss! So we understand then, that when the Bible is talking about inheritance, the inheritance of the priests was God Himself.

Numbers 18:20 – “The Lord said to Aaron: you will have no inheritance in the land, you will have no portion with them. I'm your portion, I am your inheritance.”

To inherit God means: I receive that ‘first resurrection’ glorified body; and it means I have face-to-face access to God. Imagine that! God is my inheritance. It's why nothing you've got on earth can hold us. There's nothing you can be attached to, compared to loving Him, and knowing Him, and having Him as your inheritance - access to Him. It's like if you have the money, then the money runs out. If you have the source, you've got an endless supply. You've got to put your eyes on the source. He's saying that, to be faithful as a priest means: access into the very glorious presence of God's throne, and fellowship and friendship with Him. To not be faithful as a priest now disqualifies you from that. The loss is enormous.

He said, of the sons of Zadok: they were faithful, when there was the transition of power from David to Solomon. They remained faithful to God, and faithful to God's calling.

Ezekiel 44:5 – “The priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok who kept the charge of My sanctuary, when the children of Israel went astray - they will come near to Me, to minister to Me. They will stand before Me. They will offer Me the fat, and the blood. They will enter My sanctuary. They will come near My table, and minister to Me. They will keep My charge.”

He's using Old Testament language to say these people: They have failed to honour Me. They ha0ve failed to keep the responsibilities of priesthood. I will not let them near Me. I will not let them access into My Holiest of Holies. I will not let them fellowship with Me, closely and intimately. They will stay at a distance, and they will have an inferior role.

But He said the sons of Zadok: They were faithful. They will come near to Me. They will minister to Me. They will dine at My table. They will have friendship, and fellowship, with Me. Notice what else it says here, and here's we get the garments…

Ezekiel 44:17 – “Whenever they enter the gates of the inner court, they shall put on linen garments. No wool shall come upon them, while they minister within the gates of the inner court. They will have linen turbans on their head, linen trousers on their bodies. They will not clothe themselves with anything causing sweat. When they go to the outer court, where the people are, they will take off those linen garments, and leave them in the holy chambers. They will put on other garments, and then they will go out to them.”

What is He saying here? He's talking about the resurrection body. He's saying that the priesthood of Zadok - I will give them garments of glory, garments of beauty, and they will enter My presence because of that. When they're in My presence, they will be in that glorified state; but when they leave that, and go out to people, they will just look like they're normal again. Amazing isn't it? The garments of linen are the garments God provides. The garments of wool cause sweat. They're anything about the flesh, or effort (self-effort).

He's using a language of the spirit. He's using prophetic-picture language, to describe two kinds of people: those who are not allowed near Him, those who will not have intimacy, those who will not enter into His glory, those who will not approach the throne, those who will not be able to come anywhere near to Him… but they will be still His people, and have a role to serve; as against those who are faithful - they enter His presence. They will come near to Him; they fellowship with Him. He empowers them; they're given a resurrection body, that enables them to enter; and then when they go out, they're like Jesus - they appear in an ordinary body. The linen represents the glorious resurrected body, and the garments, that the overcomers will receive.

Those who are called to be priests to God and are faithful - they will be given those garments, they will have access. They will put on those garments, to enter His throne room. At the moment, you can't do it. You can't go into the throne room. You can go by the spirit. You can go in your spirit. You can access God, and His presence - by your spirit, and spiritual senses; but right now, your physical body is earthbound. He's talking about clothing given to us - a new body, that enables you to access like that (whoosh) into heaven, and then walk out and be in the earth; to manifest in glory, and in the presence of God; then walk out, and be in the earth, and go anywhere. It's extraordinary - and that's exactly what Jesus did! Jesus did exactly this thing, after the resurrection!

Luke 24:36 – “As they said these things, Jesus stood in the midst, and said: peace be to you; and everyone was afraid and frightened, because they supposed they'd seen a spirit. He said: why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your heart? Look, here's My hands and My feet, see? Touch. Handle. See? A spirit doesn't have flesh and bones like you see; and as He said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.”

So notice there, that Jesus could suddenly appear, and it looks like He has got a normal body, like ours; and then just vanish, and He's into the glory realm, into the realm of heaven. That is what this thing is talking about. That is what you stand to have or miss. That is the reward.

What do the sons of Zadok do?

Ezekiel 44:23-24 – “They will teach My people the difference between the holy and the unholy. They will discern between the clean and the unclean; and in controversy, they will stand as judges”.

Those who have this priesthood will be able to manifest anywhere. They will have responsibilities to teach people, instruct people, train them in the ways of God; and also, to stand in controversy, and have the power to bring an answer and resolution to it. So that brings us then to Jesus then, His warning and His counsel about garments, His warning and His counsel about garments...

Let's have a look at a Jesus warning, and counsel... He is warning! He warns of two conditions:

1) No garments at all

2) Defiled garments

He's talking to the Laodicean church, which was a very self-satisfied, very lukewarm.

Revelation 3:17 – “Now you say: I'm rich, I have become wealthy, I have need of nothing. But you don't realise that you're wretched, poor, miserable, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, you may be rich; to buy white garments, you may be clothed, and the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see.”

Jesus is talking to the church, and He says:

1) You say you have need of nothing. That means you're lukewarm; there's pride, and you're blind - you can't see your true condition.

2) Your true condition is you're naked. That means you are exposed in your lifestyle.

Revelation 16:15 – “I come as a thief in the night. Blessed are those who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he be naked.”

To ‘keep your garments’ meant: you stay connected – an intimate relationship with Jesus; and you produce fruit in your life as a result of it - your life demonstrates fruit. There are many scriptures on that…

1 John 2:28 – “Abide in Him”.

In other words, stay intimate with Jesus - so we may not be ashamed before Him, at His coming; and be confident.

Titus 3:8 – “Be careful to maintain good works.”

Al of us are to keep our garments. What does that mean? Putting it very simply: I need to maintain an intimate, passionate, love relationship with Jesus. I need to let Him transform my heart; and I need to be actively involved in serving in some way. I need to produce works. We saw when it comes to sonship, that these are the three major roles of sons:

1) Intimacy with God

2) Transformation of the heart

3) Doing things, acts of service, extending His kingdom.

Jesus warned about not having a garment on, and He's not talking about being saved. He's talking about make sure that when He comes, you're not a slacker. You're not lukewarm, and you're not hanging around, being idle. He said: make sure that your heart is on fire; that you're in vital, intimate relationship; and that you're very busy advancing His kingdom. There's nothing more clear than that – it’s very, very clear.

The second warning Jesus gave was about having defiled garments. Revelations 3:4 – “you have a few names in Sardis who have not defiled their garments”. That tells us that we can defile the garments. If the garments are acts of righteousness that we do; or in other words, it's the life we're living, and what we're doing - then they can be defiled. How could they be defiled?

Jesus checks our garments. He said: “You have a few names in Sardis who have not defiled their garments. They will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.”

They didn't defile their garments. What does that mean? ‘Worthy’ means: to be deserving of praise, to be deserving honour. He said: ‘they are worthy’. Jesus will check our garments - our actions, to see: are they defiled? Are they worthy of close companionship, and reward? He checks you out. If your garments are dirty… He's using spiritual language. Dirty garments, can't get in; clean garments, you're in. He said: don't allow your garments to be defiled. What does it mean, to be defiled? It means: to be polluted, or stained, or contaminated. Something inferior was added to it, that changed its quality. So ‘clean garment’ means ‘clean heart’, and ‘pure motives’, when you do things. This is very simple.

Clean garments, clean heart - you're operating out of love; there's no hidden agendas with what you do. You're doing things because you love the Lord; doing them out of love. These are works flowing out of faith and love; there's no personal agenda. What defiles our garments is hidden selfish agendas. He looks to check your life: are you passionately in love with Him? Are you overflowing, and representing Him, and showing what He's like, with selfless acts of love? He said: love your enemies; do good; hope for nothing in return - and your reward be great; you'll be sons of the most high, if he's kind to the unthankful and evil. Blessed are the pure in heart – they will see God.

The theme of His teaching is really simple; it's not complex. It simply comes down to this: stay on fire, and in love with Jesus; keep your heart pure; and abound in good works. Notice why He's caning the Laodicean church: because, He's saying: you're proud, and you think you're doing well. You've got big buildings, a lot of money, and all these people and whatever; but actually the whole thing is lukewarm, and it's tainted, and stained - it's not acceptable. Jesus' counsel then, is to: “buy of Me white garments”.

Revelations 3:18 – “I counsel you. This is My advice (Jesus' advice): buy gold, refined in the fire, so you can be rich. Buy white garments, that you may be clothed, and the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed. Anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see”.

Remember, the garments are the righteous acts of the saints; the accumulation of what we do clothes us for the coming age of glory. Notice His counsel: buy of Me. Now let me give you three simple things in here…

1) “Buy of Me” means: He is the source. What you're going to have to do can only come from Him. You can't get it from me, you can only get it from God. Remember the foolish virgins, who didn't pay the price? So “buying of Me” means Jesus is the source. I've got to get engaged with Him, to get what's needed.

2) “Buy” means I have to pay a price. There's a cost of getting this gold, refined in the fire. There's a price to following Jesus. There's a price in walking with Him.

What is the “gold refined by the fire”?

1 Peter 1:6 - “Now you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you're grieved by the various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it's tested by the fire, may be found to praise, honour, and glory, at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen Him yet, you love Him. Now though you don't see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy, and exceedingly full of glory”.

He uses here simple picture. Gold needs to be refined. How do you refine gold, so it becomes pure, and its value increases? You've got 9ct gold - you know, the ring, 9ct gold. That coin on the ring, that's 22ct gold. Which is more valuable? 22ct gold. What's the difference? The refining. What is gold that's refined? Gold ‘refined’ means it was put through fire, that was just enough to melt it, not consume it; and when it melts, the impurities surface, and they're skimmed off by the refiner. That's gold; now your faith...

Your faith is what pleases God. Your faith is about trusting Him, believing His word. Gold goes through a process where the refiner puts heat onto it, until it melts; skims it off, lets it cool, and it's now refined; and he keeps doing it, until it's pure. Faith: I believe God, I trust God, I start to act on what He says. Then when pressure, and resistance, and opposition comes… I persevere, until my heart motives are pure, and I come out of it, and my faith and love have been tested by the fire. It's really quite simple.

So faith is ‘refined’, and becomes authentic, when you: hold onto God's word; and trust Him, in the face of opposition, hostility, difficulties, delays, contrary circumstances, and resistance by people that you thought would love you. Faith that's refined means: you're not just doing things, but you're experiencing reactions, hostility, difficulties, pressures, because you're following Jesus. He said that He watches how you respond, and if you hold onto Him, and His word, when everything is turning to custard; when it's difficult, it's hard. People around you walk away, or accuse you, or blame you, or do this or that. If you keep holding onto Him, and trusting Him, your faith is refined. Your character becomes different, and you become like gold refined in the fire.

He said: “I counsel you, buy from Me gold, refined in the fire”. This thing can only come from God. Every one of us goes through fiery trials. There's no one who doesn't. The moment you step out to follow the Lord, and trust Him, you will go through fiery trials - and God watches it. He said that this trying of your trust in Him is more precious to Him than gold that's been refined in the fire. God is looking for is your faith, because that's what pleases Him. Your faith is refined, when you face hardship, difficulties, opposition, persecution; yet you hold onto God and keep your heart right. Then your faith becomes refined. Your character begins to change. There's a depth in you, and a substance in you.

Think of the many Christians you know, who come along, and they will hear a message, and get excited; but when a bit of pressure comes… they fold! They didn't have their faith refined by the fire. It will always come. Jesus said in His parable, in Matthew 13, which is the fundamental Parable of the Sower and the Seed - several things will happen, when you receive the word of God. First, the devil will try and take it away from you - you've got to hold it! Secondly, the sun will come up - you've got to be able to stand up to the sun, and the heat. Thirdly, the thorns and the thistles are going to come - and He said: they'll grow up! Other things will distract you, and take you away... He said: you've got to overcome those distractions and stay focussed. He said: finally, you bring forth fruit; some 30, some 60, some 100.

He uses that parable to say: this is how it works. It doesn't matter what role or function in the church, that's irrelevant, and unimportant. That's unique to every one of us. What does matter, is your personal relationship, and how you conduct yourself, when pressure comes on you. This is what qualifies, or disqualifies you; and everyone has their trials, which are private, personal. No one can go through them, but you. God is watching every one of those things. He sees how you respond, and you are either growing in your character and patience, endurance and love, the fruit of the spirit, the character of God; or there's things coming up - your garments are defiled.

Yeah, I was doing these things… but I had an agenda. Yeah, I'm doing things… but I was angry. I was doing these things… but I was bitter and resentful. I was doing these things… because I wanted to impress people. You understand? God has to take us through that process; and if we respond to that process, we become a priesthood which have qualified for: garments of glory and garments of beauty; access into the realm of heaven and earth, and into the coming kingdom. It's an incredible opportunity, an incredible privilege, and you see it described there, under the picture of garments of glory, garments of beauty of the priesthood. There you go!

Summary Notes

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ER5: Garments of Glory and Beauty

I. Introduction

1. A Great Theme of Jesus Teaching was Eternal Rewards

- Jesus constantly taught about seeking Eternal rewards, and the need to pursue them

- “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”(Mat.16:27)

2. There are very Many Different types of Rewards

- In Rev.2-3 Jesus names many different rewards for those who Overcome specific challenges and trials

- The many Eternal Rewards that are described potentially form an important part of our Eternal Destiny

- We need to be familiar with the significance and importance of the different rewards revealed.

- Understanding what is at stake gives us great motivation for perseverance and transformation

“Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.

But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality” (Col.3:22-24)

3. Rewards are Not Given Automatically…Only to those who fulfil specific Conditions

- “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev.3:21)

- “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor” (Jn.12:26)

- Note that in each of these scriptures receiving a reward is conditional upon our works and actions in response to Jesus

4. Our Small Sacrifices Now have Huge Recompense Eternally

- “You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.” (Mt. 25:21)

- “Well done...you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.” (Lk. 19:17)

- God greatly values our small expressions of obedience in our mind , emotions and will

- He remembers them and rewards them in a much, much greater proportion

- God is a “Rewarder” (Heb.11:6) and He is extremely generous!

- “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.” (Mt. 19:29)

5. Possible Categories of these Many Rewards

- The many Rewards mentioned in the Bible could be listed under the following headings:

1. Eternal Intimacy

2. Eternal Authority

3. Eternal Glory

4. Eternal Garments

5. Victor’s Crowns

6. Honour & Praise

7. Treasures & Riches

8. Vindication

- The first three of these rewards deserve special attention

- One of the Rewards mentioned more than any other is Ruling and Reigning with Christ

- This is because God’s original design for man is to be a Son:

Having Intimate Relationship with Him

Working with Him to extend His Kingdom with Power and Authority

Representing Him… His Character and Glory

Reward 4: Garments of Glory and Beauty

II. What are the Garments of Glory and Beauty?

1. Some Places in the Bible Where Garments are Mentioned

- God Himself:

God is clothed with Honor and Majesty. (Ps.104:1)

God clothes Himself with Light as a Garment. (Ps.104:2)

God is clothed with Majesty and Strength. (Ps.93:1)

- Adam and Eve:

God clothed them with animal skins because of their nakedness (Gen.3:21)

They had lost their garments of Glory and Beauty

- Angels:

Angels are clothed with white linen. (Ezekiel.10:1-2)

Angels are clothed with white linen. (Dan.10:5)

- The High Priest: Clothed in white linen. (Lev.6:6)

- Jesus Transfigured: Jesus robes were brilliant dazzling white. (Mk.9:3)

- The white linen garments that shine brilliantly refer to supernatural clothing, suitable for access to the realm of heaven

2. White Garments are Not the Same as the Free Gift of Righteousness.

- Mat 16:27 - For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

- Rev 19:7 - Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready."

- Rev 19:8 - And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

- “The fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints” …Note: Acts(plural) of the saints

- These garments express each believer’s devotion to Christ and their acts of service.

- Justification is a Gift Received by Faith, Based on Jesus’ Worthiness, not ours

Eph. 2:8 - For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast

Tit. 3:4 - But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared,

Tit. 3:5 - not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,

- Our faith in the work of Jesus Christ saves and justifies us before God

- Our garments begin with the gift of righteousness that is imputed to us by faith (2 Cor. 5:21).

- However if our faith is alive and growing should produce a fruit of character and works that can be seen

- Our Salvation depends upon our faith in His Work….a Free Gift

- Our Eternal rewards depend upon our works: How we have lived out our life as a steward…A Reward

3. Who Receives the White Garments?

- (i). The Overcomers Receive White Garments

Rev 3:4 - You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.

Rev 3:5 - He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

The Overcomers are awarded white Garments as an prize, or honor for overcoming in life

- (ii). The Bride, The Lamb’s Wife Receives White Linen Garments

Rev 19:8 - And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

The Bride of Christ has “made herself ready”, she has prepared herself for the coming of the Bridegroom

- (iii). These are People from Every Tribe and Nation

- Rev 7:9 - After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands,

4. What are The White Garments?

- (i). The White Garments are Eternal Rewards

- The White Garments are supernatural clothing awarded to believers to acknowledge the quality of their love and walk with Jesus during their lives on earth.

- Walking “with Christ in white” is one reward for being faithful. The reason for receiving these white garments is given—“for they are worthy.”

- Rev 3:4 - You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.

“Worthy”…Having weight, having value, one who has merited something, deserving reward

- (ii). The Word “White” Describes the Brightness of these Garments.

White… (Gk., leukos) …Bright, brilliant dazzling, emanating light

Mar 9:3 - His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them.

Mat 17:2 - and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.

- (iii). Each Person will be Clothed Uniquely, Having Differing degrees of Light and Brilliance

The brightness will depend upon the Person’s Rank and Stature in the Kingdom

Dan 12:3 - Those who are wise shall shine Like the brightness of the firmament, And those who turn many to righteousness Like the stars forever and ever.

Mat 13:43 - Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

1Col. 15:41 - There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead

- (iv). It is Possible that the Garments will be Diverse and Vary Depending on the Occasion

In the natural world leaders dress differently for different occasions

“who cover Yourself with light as with a garment... (Ps. 104:2)

“clothed in pure bright linen, and having their chests girded with golden bands. (Rev. 15:6)

III. The Priestly Garments

1. We Are All Called to be Priests to God

- 1Pe 2:5 - you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

- Priests stand before God to offer sacrifices of praise and worship

- Priests make intercession on behalf of men

- Priests come before men to bless them

2. The Priestly Garments in the OT give insight to the Importance God Places on Garments

Exo 28:1 - "Now take Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister to Me as priest, Aaron and Aaron's sons: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.

Exo 28:2 - And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty.

Exo 28:3 - So you shall speak to all who are gifted artisans, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments, to consecrate him, that he may minister to Me as priest.

3. The Purpose of The Priests Garments

(i). Glory and Beauty

God designed the Priestly Garments to show His Glory and reflect His Beauty

“Glory”…….Gk. Kabod…..Splendor, Honor, Dignity, Majesty, Nobility

“Beauty”…. Glory, Honor, Rank, Splendor, Highly Attractive, an attribute of God

(ii). Consecration of the Priest

“Consecrate”….to set apart for a special purpose

(iii). Ministry Personally to God

To enter into His presence, and engage with Him face to face

4. The Details of the Priests Garments

- These are described in detail in Exod.28:1-43

- God gave exact directions regarding the design of the Priests Garments

- They had distinct parts (trousers, coat, girdle, bonnet, robe, ephod, breastplate, tunic, turban hats, sash, and crown).

- Exo 28:4 - And these are the garments which they shall make: a breastplate, an ephod, a robe, a skilfully woven tunic, a turban, and a sash. So they shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother and his sons, that he may minister to Me as priest.

- Exo 28:42 - And you shall make for them linen trousers to cover their nakedness; they shall reach from the waist to the thighs.

- Exo 28:43 - They shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they come into the tabernacle of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister in the holy place, that they do not incur iniquity and die. It shall be a statute forever to him and his descendants after him.

- These Garments had to be worn by the priest when he entered the presence of God to minister

- The OT priestly garments were made of fine linen

- The garments had different colours, each with significance (gold, blue, purple, scarlet.).

- The breastplate was worn over the ephod and had shoulder-pieces with onyx stones.

- The ephod of blue was worn over the robe, which was worn over the coat and girdle.

5. The Details of the Seals

(i). The Breastplate…Worn over the Heart (Transformed heart)

- Exo 28:29 - "So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel on the breastplate of judgment over his heart, when he goes into the holy place, as a memorial before the LORD continually.

(ii). The Two Memorial Stones…Worn on the Shoulders ( Responsibility as Son)

Exo 28:12 And you shall put the two stones on the shoulders of the ephod as memorial stones for the sons of Israel. So Aaron shall bear their names before the LORD on his two shoulders as a memorial.

(iii). The Gold Crown…Worn on the Forehead (Mind of Christ)

Exo 28:36 - "You shall also make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet: HOLINESS TO THE LORD ………So it shall be on Aaron's forehead,

- Each aspect of the Priests Garments prophetically point to Jesus Christ and Manifested The Sons of God (Rom.8:19)

- E.g. The Engraved Stones with the names of the tribes of Israel in order of birth (Exod.28.10)

Names are always associated with character, nature and destiny. These names identify the new creation

Reuben: “Behold a Son” …Sonship. We are born into a relationship with God as our Father

Simeon: “A Hearkening”…Sonship means hearing and obeying the voice of our Father, pleasing Him

Judah: “Praise”…Sonship means that we constantly thank and praise our Father

6. Only Overcomers will receive these Priestly Garments of Glory and Beauty

- What is an Overcomer?

“Overcome”…To subdue, to conquer, to prevail or gain victory over temptation and difficulties

- Rev 3:5 - He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments,

- Rev 20:6 - Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.

IV. The Change in Priesthood

1. Overcomers will Be Priests to God

- The Overcomers who are raised in the First Resurrection are called Priests of God and of Christ

- Rev 20:6 - Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.

2. Two Priesthoods

- There are two priesthood’s mentioned in the Bible: Levi(Aaron) and Melchizedek( Jesus)

- Levitical Priesthood

- The Levitical priests were chosen to minister the Old Covenant

- The Levitical priests were all descendants of Aaron

- Levi was violent and cruel and came under the curse of Jacob.

Gen. 49:5 - "Simeon and Levi are brothers; Instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place.

- The Levitical Priesthood was replaced by Melchizidek, who was chosen to minister the New Covenant

- Melchizedek Priesthood

- Gen. 14:18 - Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High.

- “Melchizedek”… HB. Tesdeq … Justice, Righteousness: King of Salem… ”Shelem”…King of Peace

3. The Levitical Priesthood has Been Replaced

Heb. 7:11 - Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according to the order of Aaron?

Heb. 7:12 - For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law.

Heb. 7:13 - For He of whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no man has officiated at the altar

- Both Jesus and David were from the Tribe of Judah. They are Melchizedek Priests

- The Order of Melchizedek has replaced Levi and taken over the duties they were given

- The Overcomers who descend not from Levi, but from every tribe and nation are also Melchizedek priests. This priesthood no longer includes blood sacrifices because they have a “better” sacrifice… The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross

4. Levi Replaced by Zadok

- God declared to Eli, a Levitical priest and descendent of Aaron, that He would replace him

- 1Sa. 2:35 - Then I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in My heart and in My mind. I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before My anointed forever.

- Eli was replaced by Eleazar (1Sam.7:1) and Eleazar was replaced by Abiathar. Solomon replaced Abiathar with Zadok

- 1Ki. 2:27 - So Solomon removed Abiathar from being priest to the LORD, that he might fulfill the word of the LORD which He spoke concerning the house of Eli at Shiloh.

- 1Ki. 2:35 - The king put Benaiah the son of Jehoiada in his place over the army, and the king put Zadok the priest in the place of Abiathar.

5. Why Did the Sons of Levi Forfeit their Priesthood?

- 1Sa. 2:29 - Why do you kick at My sacrifice and My offering which I have commanded in My dwelling place, and honor your sons more than Me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel My people?'

1Sa. 2:30 - Therefore the LORD God of Israel says: 'I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever.' But now the LORD says: 'Far be it from Me; for those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed

- Why They Forfeited the Priesthood: Dishonoring God, Honoring Themselves

(i). Lack of Intimate Relationship

They had no relationship with the Lord, they did not know or respect Him and His Ways

(ii). Selfish Ambition and Self Promotion

They dishonored God by taking the best offerings for themselves.

They used their position to exploit people and to advance themselves

(iii). Immorality

They dishonored God by sexual relationships with women who came to worship

- They took advantage of vulnerable people and abused their position of power

- God saw it all and held them to account!...The loss of the Priesthood

6. Change in Priesthood means Loss of Millennial Inheritance

- The Bible uses the Story of Eli and Zadok as a prophetic picture of the Priesthood in The Millennial Age

- Ezekiel uses OT pictures off the temple and sacrifices to describe NT Kingdom realities

- God will not reintroduce natural sacrifices again. These have forever been replaced by Jesus sacrifice

- The Old Covenant and its sacrifices have been replaced by the New Covenant and the sacrifice of Christ

- Notice what God says to the Levitical priesthood through the Prophet Ezekiel:

Eze. 44:10 - "And the Levites who went far from Me, when Israel went astray, who strayed away from Me after their idols, they shall bear their iniquity.

Eze. 44:11 - Yet they shall be ministers in My sanctuary, as gatekeepers of the house and ministers of the house; they shall slay the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before them to minister to them.

Eze. 44:12 - Because they ministered to them before their idols and caused the house of Israel to fall into iniquity, therefore I have raised My hand in an oath against them," says the Lord GOD, "that they shall bear their iniquity.

Eze. 44:13 - And they shall not come near Me to minister to Me as priest, nor come near any of My holy things, nor into the Most Holy Place; but they shall bear their shame and their abominations which they have committed.

Eze. 44:14 - Nevertheless I will make them keep charge of the temple, for all its work, and for all that has to be done in it.

- The Sons of Levi

- In the Millennial Kingdom they will not receive a glorified resurrected body that can go back and forth between heaven and earth such as the body Jesus had following His resurrection

- They will not have access into the realm of heaven and the throne of God, nor reign with Him on earth

- They will be limited to ministering in the earthly realm, they will have a role serving the house

- These represent believers operating under Old Covenant legalism, who dishonor God, and who have refused heart transformation

7. The Inheritance of the Priests was God Himself

- Num. 18:20 - Then the LORD said to Aaron: "You shall have no inheritance in their land, nor shall you have any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel.

- To inherit God means to inherit a glorified body and have access to Face to Face encounters with God

- The Sons of Zadok

Eze. 44:15 - "But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, they shall come near Me to minister to Me; and they shall stand before Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood," says the Lord GOD.

Eze. 44:16 - "They shall enter My sanctuary, and they shall come near My table to minister to Me, and they shall keep My charge.

Eze. 44:17 - And it shall be, whenever they enter the gates of the inner court, that they shall put on linen garments; no wool shall come upon them while they minister within the gates of the inner court or within the house.

Eze. 44:18 - They shall have linen turbans on their heads and linen trousers on their bodies; they shall not clothe themselves with anything that causes sweat.

Eze. 44:19 - When they go out to the outer court, to the outer court to the people, they shall take off their garments in which they have ministered, leave them in the holy chambers, and put on other garments; and in their holy garments they shall not sanctify the people.

- Linen is made from plant and wool comes from animals, sheep

Rev 19:8 - And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

- Linen then represents the glorious resurrected body and garments the Overcomers will receive

- Wool represents the fleshy physical human body

- These priests of God and of Christ will be given resurrected bodies like Jesus and be able to pass easily between heaven and earth just as Jesus did after His resurrection

- They will “put on linen garments” to enter into the Throne Room of God and minister to Him, and then “put on other garments….Wool” to return to earth and interact with and minister to people

- “ Cause sweat”…means human effort and toil, the consequence of the curse upon the earth (Gen.3:19)

- This is exactly what Jesus himself did after His resurrection

Luke 24:36 - Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, "Peace to you."

Luke 24:37 - But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit.

Luke 24:38 - And He said to them, "Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts?

Luke 24:39 - Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

Luke 24:40 - When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.

Jesus appeared to His disciples in a body of flesh and bones that they could see and touch. He ate with them.

The overcomers will be able to do exactly what Jesus did, travel between Heaven and earth

This is what is will mean to be a Priest after the Order of Melchizidek

- These overcomers will instruct people and judge difficult situations

Eze. 44:23 - "And they shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the unholy, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.

Eze. 44:24 - In controversy they shall stand as judges, and judge it according to My judgments. They shall keep My laws and My statutes in all My appointed meetings, and they shall hallow My Sabbaths.

V. Jesus Warning and Counsel Concerning Garments

1. Jesus Warning: No Garments

- Rev 3:17 - Because you say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—

I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.

- “ Need of Nothing”….reveals pride and luke-warmness and blindness to spiritual condition

- “Naked”… is a term that means to have sin exposed, and hidden things revealed

- Gen. 3:10 - So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."

- Rev 16:15 - "Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame."

- “ Keep garments” …stay abiding in Christ and produce fruits that reveal the character and love of God

- To be naked or shamed in eternity is to be devoid of the reward of heavenly garments.

- All believers have the robe of righteousness, yet Jesus warns us of the shame of nakedness or “lacking the reward of clothing” that reveals one’s commitment to Jesus in this age.

- 1Jn 2:28 - And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.

- Tit. 3:8 - This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.

- Mat 22:11 - "But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

2. Jesus Warning: Defiled Garments

- Rev 3:4 You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

- “Worthy”…..deserving of praise, having the suitable qualities

- Jesus closely checks our garments (acts) to see if they are defiled or if they are worthy of His Close companionship and reward

- “Defiled”…pollute, stain, contaminate, soil

To contaminate or make unfit by the addition of something unsuitable or unwholesome, lower quality

- Clean garments means clean hearts, and being clothed on the outside with righteous works

- These are works that flow out of love and faith and humility and are not stained with selfish personal agendas

- Our garments become stained by the presence of selfish agendas, hidden expectations, legalism, duty rather than love, lawlessness, doing our own thing rather than seeking Father’s will (Mat.7:23)

- E.g. Luke 14:12 - Then He also said to him who invited Him, "When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbours, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just."

- E.g. Luke 6:35 - But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

- E.g. Mat 5:8 - Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.

- E.g. 1Jn 3:2 - Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

3. Jesus Counsel: Buy of Me White Garments

Rev 3:18 - I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.

- What are the Garments?

The Garments are the “Righteous Acts of the Saints”

Rev 19:8 - And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

The accumulation of our acts of righteousness on earth forms the foundation for the garments we will be clothed with in the ages to come

- Jesus evaluates all of our acts with a desire to acknowledge our devotion to Him and acts of service

- Jesus Counsel: “Buy of Me”

“Buy of Me”……Jesus alone is the source of what is lacking our missing. We must trade with Him

“Buy”….To pay a price, or make an exchange in order to obtain something of value

The Foolish virgins failed to pay the price of intimacy to obtain the oil and were excluded (Mat.25:8-13)

There is a price to following Jesus.

It takes many different forms daily as we seek to represent Him and obey Him

We must die daily to self, trust and surrender our lives to Him, and develop a serving heart and lifestyle

“Heb.6:11 - “Without faith it is impossible to please Him

Jesus counsel is to “buy of Him gold tried in the fire”

- What is Gold Tried by the Fire?

1Pe 1:6 - In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.

Gold is a precious metal of high value. Gold is refined (purified) by passing though fire

Faith is compared to physical gold. It is refined (purified) by trials and testing

Faith comes by hearing but it is refined and becomes authentic when we hold onto God and His Word in the face of opposition, hostility, difficulties, delays, contradictory circumstances, resistance by loved ones

Faith is refined when you apply it to your life and do the works, persevering and speaking of faith

Jas 2:17 - Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead

Our authentic faith is revealed by works of love

4. Different Types of Garments

Garments will vary in glory according to how believers lived

- (Rev. 3:4-5, 18; 19:8).

- There may be many different types of clothing with unique designs, fabric, brightness, color, etc.

- To her [Bride of Christ] it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. (Rev. 19:8)

Rev 20:5 - But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.

VI. Questions to Reflect Upon

1. What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about through this study?

2. What has been the area that has challenged you personally?

3. What impact does this have upon your motivation to serve God?

4. Are there any areas your motivation has defiled your works?

5. How will this teaching affect your attitude as you face difficulties, and hardships?

6. How will this teaching affect what works you say “Yes” to taking on?

7. How will this teaching change your response when your service is not acknowledged and honored by people

Victor's Crowns (6 of 12)

Fri 17 Jul 2020  « Back to Top

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A Crown is given to the Victor who has won the race or the fight. It is given in recognition and honour to a person because of what they have achieved or overcome.

In this message we discover five different Crowns that are promised to believers who meet the conditions. These are the Incorruptible Crown, The Crown of Rejoicing, The Crown of Righteousness, The Crown of Life and the Crown of Glory.

Introduction

Welcome. We're doing our series on Eternal Rewards, and we're up to #6, Victor's Crowns.

Jesus taught about Eternal Rewards. In fact all of His message was about a kingdom that was here now, and then a kingdom that was coming. You will find the theme running right through scripture is sown from the very beginning, where a man and woman come together, and there's a wedding; and at the very end, there's a wedding of Christ and His bride who has prepared herself.

So the Bible is an unfolding revelation of Jesus Christ. It's not our story, it's His story, and it's all about the Father's plan and how it unfolds. As we look at Eternal Rewards, we find that Jesus taught in many different places about the kingdom, and about rewards.

Matthew 16:27 – “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each one according to his works”.

That reward is a recompense. It's got nothing to do with being saved, so we need to then distinguish what it means: to be saved; and what it means to be rewarded for service. Receiving a reward is different to receiving a gift. If you receive a gift, then it's free - there's no strings attached, it's a gift. You did nothing. It was all dependent on the person who gave.

A reward or a wage is something that you have contributed effort, time, sacrifice, labour, and now there's a recompense for what you've done. So the free gift of eternal life is offered to every man. God's plan of salvation includes every person, and it's totally by faith, and by faith alone.

Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace you've been saved, through faith, and even that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not works, lest anyone should boast.”

It's very clear in that scripture there: there are no works involved, in us being saved. We are saved totally by the work that Jesus Christ did on the cross; and His work on the cross has made full provision for us to be redeemed out of sin and curses, and established in a relationship with God, and with Him, as a Father.

We're justified by what Jesus did, totally, and you must have that as a foundation for your life. Otherwise, when we teach on eternal rewards, you move from that foundation, and then you begin to work to try and gain acceptance with God. To be saved by faith means: I am now declared innocent. I am in relationship with God. I can't do any more to make Him love me more. I can't do any more, to be more accepted. I'm accepted fully, by what someone else did.

However, now that I have become saved, I'm part of God's plan - and His plan is not just to save me. Many people consider, or their whole understanding of the cross, and the work of the things described in the Bible, is that it's all about us being saved and going to heaven. This is not the plan! That was the glitch in the plan, that man fell, and God implemented a process for us to be restored; but it's the restoration, and back into His purpose, is the thing that really counts.

Reward for service is a recompense, for something you have done. It's something you receive, because you qualified. So in this situation you qualify, or you don't qualify; and the rewards are not given automatically. They're given to those who fulfil specific conditions. When we read Revelations 2 & 3, you get a number of promises, and they're spread through Book of Revelation; promises that have conditions attached. For example…

Revelations 3:21 – “o him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down My Father on His throne”.

John 12:26 – “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honour”.

God will honour those who serve Jesus. From God, the Father's point of view, the whole of the Bible is the revelation of Jesus Christ; the whole of His plan centres around the person of Jesus Christ. Notice in that other scripture: to him who overcomes. That means there must be something we have to overcome, so Revelation 2 & 3 lays out different things that we're called to overcome, and different promises for the overcomers.

We looked at the different kinds of rewards. We're going to pick up one today called: Victor's Crowns. There are different ways you could organise the rewards, but as I've gone through them, and looked at them, they really fall into three principle categories. All the rewards can be placed under one of these headings.

1) Eternal Intimacy. God is inviting us into the very same intimate relationship and fellowship that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have. They had that relationship before time even began, and now they invite, or call us, to enter in and experience the deep level of intimacy that they enjoy.

John 17:23 – “That the love that you have for me, may be in them, and I in them”.

It's hard to fathom what that would look like. It's hard to even imagine that the deep intimate connection that God has with the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the fellowship they have - that God's desire is to include us into that, so we would be part of that, and enjoy face to face encounter, with all that goes with that.

2) Eternal Authority - and that implies responsibility. God invites us to share ruling with Him, and that means His plan is that we would rule with Him, over all His creation. It's not just the earth. It includes all that He has created. It just blows the mind to try to comprehend that, even just when it comes to the millennial kingdom, that God will have a people He will empower supernaturally. He will give responsibility, that will involve the restoration of the whole earth; working with Jesus Christ, to bring the whole earth, all its government, all it's systems, education, social systems, everything into alignment with the Father's kingdom, for a period of unprecedented peace. It doesn't end at the end of that kingdom, millennial era; it goes on for the ages and ages and ages.

Isaiah 9:7 – “Of the increase of His government, there's no end”

God will work with us, and through us, to expand His dominion through vast regions of the physical universe.

3) Eternal Glory (or Honour). His plan is for us to have a resurrection body, that would enable us to enter His throne room, to engage Him face to face; and we'd be able to express His glory. There are many ways that God intends to honour, and produce glory for us; one of them will be the crowns.

The last thing, before we get into the study for today, is the issue of God's design for sonship. Sonship is a key aspect of God's eternal purpose, so when we unfold what God planned, before the world was even created, is that the Father would have a family of sons, who would be in the exact image of Jesus Christ. God so delights in Jesus. He wanted to create a family like Him, that would also enjoy the same relationship with Him. The key concepts of what it means to be son is: it matches the rewards.

John 17:3-6 – “This is eternal life: that they may know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You've sent”.

Eternal Life has to do with intimacy; experiential knowledge of God. Intimacy where He invites us, as a son, into an ever-deepening intimacy. You can't stay where you are. God calls you to know Him more deeply, more intimately. That requires engagement with Him; worship, seeking Him, and a life that pursues Him.

The second thing, which is a characteristic of sonship, is having an assignment.

John 17:4 – “I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work You have given Me to do”.

This season of our life on earth is a season of preparation for our big assignment. We get lots of little assignments - an area of responsibility that God gives to us, an area that we're called to faithfully fulfil, and each assignment we faithfully fulfil prepares us for our next assignment, which would be larger. One of the key areas that God requires is faithfulness: that we are faithful with what's entrusted to us; and we persevere, and see through the assignment He's given to us, until we've finished it.

Jesus said: “I honoured You or glorified You on earth. I have finished the work You gave Me to do”. We're not called to do everything; we're called to know what God has spoken into our heart to do. He's wired it into our makeup, and He speaks prophetically to our heart, what He calls us to do. Notice those two aspects, or functions, of sonship: intimacy; and an assignment, both relate to the Eternal Rewards - which is a much deeper intimacy, and a much greater connection with the Father, and with Jesus and the Holy Spirit; and also a greater level of assignment.

John 16:6 – “I have manifested Your name to the men You've given Me out of this world”.

What He's saying there is: I have demonstrated your character. That speaks to us of transformation; of the need for each of us to be transformed progressively, in our character, so the fruit of God's spirit is manifested through our name.

When we teach on sonship, you'll discover that sonship has three phases to it. The first phase is being adopted, or brought into the family, where we become a child of God. We're what's called ‘teknon’ - a young child, one who has the nature of the Father, one who is part of the family. Then we are brought into the process or preparation, where we come under the training of the Holy Spirit, who trains our character, and prepares us; and then finally, God positions us into our sonship, at the second coming of Christ. In that positioning into our sonship, that's when we enter into all these experiences that we talk of here. So one of the key aspects then, of our journey as a child of God, is: we let God transform us. That means healing, deliverance, character transformation, shifting beliefs, changing the way you think… all those kinds of things.

Main Message

I want to look at one specific aspect of reward, called the Victor's Crowns. They all come under the heading of honour. The Bible tells us then that some believers will receive crowns. A crown is bestowed as an honour, or an award, to recognise someone. If someone's wearing a crown, then you know they're recognised. There's some reason behind them having that crown.

In the Bible there are two words used for crown. The first one is diadem; and the second one is Stephanos; and today we will focus on Stephanos. Diadem means: the crown of a ruler. If a person is a king, or a ruler, he has a diadem on. That's a special type of crown that acknowledges that he has authority, and he rules, has dominion. For example…

Revelations 19:12 (talking about Jesus) - “His eyes were a flame of fire and on His head were many crowns, and He had a name written that no one knew except Himself”.

The whole concept of a crown comes from a thing where they used to have a cap, or a turban; and there was some form of metallic plate, or a thing that circled the head, that had jewels on it. If you look at the crown jewels, the Queen's crown, it's magnificent, rich; and it says of Jesus: He has many crowns. Obviously, you can't wear many crowns. He's talking in terms of a spiritual picture, that Jesus has all authority over everyone. He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords; therefore, He has many crowns. He is the Emperor over an Empire. You don't hear that word used much, but He is literally an Emperor. He has an empire, made up of kingdoms; and kings over those kingdoms; and He rules the kings, so He's called the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. The crown represents His royal position, His royal honour, and His authority. Christ now reigns, is King over the whole of the universe, and not because He was the Son of God, but because, as the Son of Man, He gained that honour.

Ephesians 1:20-22 – “Jesus is the centre of God's purpose, which He worked in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, might, dominion, every name that's named not only in this age, but also the age to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church”.

He's far above every principality and power, every dominion, every authority. His ranking is far, far higher; far, far above. He will reign, until He's put all His enemies under His feet; then He will present the kingdom back to the Father - meaning that Jesus is now in that position, but when He is crowned, He will return to earth. He will gather to Himself His people, invest in them authority, and power, and a resurrection body; and they, with Him, will then bring the whole of the earth and creation into order, over a period of 1000 years. So He wears the crown of a ruler.

There's also another crown, and that's the crown of a victor - that's a different crown. A crown of a ruler is someone who sits over a place. They rule over it - they have the responsibility to rule and govern; but the victor's crown is someone who won. That's the word ‘Stephanos’, and the first reference you find to that is in 1 Corinthians 9:24-25. Paul is writing, and he says:

1 Corinthians 9:24-25 - “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. For everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we, an imperishable crown.”

The second crown there is the word ‘Stephanos’, and that's the wreath, or the garland, that they put on someone who is the winner of a race. It comes from the word ‘Stepho’, meaning to ‘entwine’, or a wreath that encircles the head. It was either: someone who won a race; someone who won a fight; or it also referred to a Roman emperor, or a Roman commander, who came back from a battle, and he's won the battle, and he's wearing it.

The Bible talks about five different crowns, and they may overlap. Some of them may mean the same thing, it's not always easy to tell; but they do refer to five different crowns and that's what we're going to look at. Each one represents a different award, or a prize, you must contend for.

A crown then, if a crown is awarded to you, is a visible, tangible sign to everyone you won. The winner's crown means you won. Everyone who sees you with it will know that you're the winner. We tend to have a medal around the neck, and it's got #1, or First Place. Everyone knows you won. The crowns are incorruptible. That means they will go on forever; so forever, we will have something given to us, that acknowledges the kind of race that we run, and the kind of battles we fought; and they will no doubt differ from person to person.

Crowns are very important to God. When the high priests’ garments were defined, God gave exceptional detail, in Exodus 28, about the high priest’s garments. One of the things He gave detail to, was the crown that he would wear. The high priest had a head covering: a turban; and then a golden plate, which had on it: Holiness To The Lord; and jewels, and various other things.

Obviously, if you win a crown it's a treasured possession. People put the things that they've won up on a wall, its visible to everyone coming in, an honour is presented. When we win one of these five crowns, it will be clear for all eternity, that we have won a crown. The honour will be recognisable.

Let's first look at the incorruptible crown, the one we've just looked at it. Paul is using the term ‘run a race’. He's referring to the Roman public games, and what he's saying is that, naturally, there was a certain kind of lifestyle, and a certain kind of preparation, that they all went through; and their goal was to win in the games. If they won in the games, then they got a wreath - the victor's crown. They got also a stone, with their name on it, which gave them access to public events free of charge. In other words, they were honoured.

Notice he says: not everyone wins the race. He's saying then, it is possible, as a believer, you won't complete your race; that you will drop out of your race; that you will not do what's required to complete, or to win, the race. He says there's a prize; one receives the prize. In the Roman games, in each race that was run, only one got the prize. He's not saying that for us - everyone can win the prize. However, you've got to do what's required of you, and that's an individual thing. The prize is a crown, awarded to the victor, at the public games, and it was a symbol of the reward. Notice he says, that in the public games, it's corruptible. The garland eventually withers, and after a while it's just an old, dried up set of leaves. We're after something that's absolutely incorruptible; it goes on for eternity.

He says then: if they put in all that effort, for something natural that gets withered after a while; then how much more should we put in the effort needed, for something that is totally incorruptible, that will last for eternity? So, he says: run your life, or run your race, fulfil your following the Lord in such a way that you win the prize. That word ‘obtain’ or ‘win’ the prize means ‘to possess’ or ‘take a hold of it’.

If you look through there, you'll see there are four different things that he points out in that passage there, that are required for winning the crown - four things!

1) We need to value the prize. If you don’t know there's a prize, you won't put a value on it. You won't change your life to win the prize. Paul knew that there was a prize, and he knew the value of the prize.

Philippians 3:7-8 – “For the things that were gain to me, I counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I count everything loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things, and I count them rubbish, that I might gain or win Christ”.

He knew exactly what was at stake. He was called up to heaven, he had a heavenly vision, where God showed him His eternal plan, and showed him what was at stake; and then he tries to express it and write it. When he's writing this, he's saying: I see what it is; everything else is just nothing, because everything else, you'll leave it behind; but this is eternal, and it's about winning Christ.

If we don't know there's a prize, we won't value it; so he valued the prize, to the point where he said: nothing in my life compares to this; whereas in contrast, Esau didn't value the prize, and so he placed no value on it, and he traded it away for a bowl of beans, which is where many Christians are. They either don't know the inheritance God has; or if they do know, they trade it away, because they don't value it. Many people come into the church, but without a vision of eternity, of preparing, running the race, of actually what God has in store for them, then they place no value on the price needed to get there. There's no internal desire, and longing, that I can experience that.

God speaks about how He loved Jacob, and hated Esau. It's not that He hated him. He's trying to bring a contrast: this one is precious to Me, because he valued the inheritance. The contrast is like love and hate, because actually he placed no value on it whatsoever, and it talks about that in Hebrews 12:16-17. So, the first thing is: value the prize.

2) The second thing is: we need to run with determination.

1 Corinthians 9:26 – “I run this way, not with uncertainty”. He says: I run with determination. The word ‘not uncertainly’ means something is not clearly identified as a goal, so he says: I run with certainty. I've got a determination.

That means literally a fixed intention to achieve a goal. He said: I have set my life on this goal of winning that prize. I've set my life on fulfilling my course. If we don't run with determination, with a goal in mind, we’ll never do what's needed to win. So any of you who've achieved anything know, if it's weight loss, or winning a race, there's a work needed to be able to do it. You've got to decide that you're going to be determined, because on the way you just feel like quitting, giving up. Even getting fit, you've got to be determined that's what's going to happen, or you'll quit on the way, because of the cost, or the pain, or the difficulty.

3) The third thing is: you need to engage the enemy.

1 Corinthians 9:26 – “Thus I fight, not like someone who beats the air”.

He talks firstly about racing, and running a race, and there's a prize to be won, and you've got to run. Then he shifts, and he begins to talk about a fight, and says: I'm in a fight. I'm not a shadow boxer. A shadow boxer is someone who practicing; they have an imaginary opponent; they're just playing, hitting the air. They're not hitting anyone. He looks like he's fighting, but he's not hitting anyone; no one's hitting him either. It's just all a lot of effort, and it's all about practice. Most shadow boxers just practice in the gym, so there's never any real conflict - and that is where many believers are.

They never really engage the enemy, in any kind of real way. They never stand in spiritual warfare. They don't stand, and push out into the spirit, so they never face the kinds of reactions that come, when you determine you're going to take new ground in your life, or in a ministry, or in your business - there's a fight against hidden spirit powers; and it's a real fight! They come for you, and they're nasty, and there's a pressure. There are all kinds of conflicts you go through; but many believers never get involved in that, so they never get involved in the difficult work of being involved with dealing with spirits, or in the difficult work of working with people. They'd rather just look spiritual and so on, without actually engaging and involvement. Paul talked very clearly, that our warfare is not with people; it's with spirit beings, and they do resist. He's saying then: I'm not a shadow boxer; I get into it - and when I get into it, I'm going for it, to win that fight. I'm not backing down. Our fights are against spiritual powers, and also against temptations, and various kinds of distractions.

4) The fourth (and last) one is: develop a focussed lifestyle.

He said: everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Temperate means showing self-control. It means moderation. You won't let anything take control of your life. All things are good, but don't let anything run control of your life. If you think about someone training for the Olympics, they're careful with their diet, they're careful with their sleep, they're careful with their exercise. They're living a highly disciplined life; and he's saying: that's the kind of life we need to be living, a disciplined life that's bringing honour to God and not just indulging, going doing this and doing whatever we want. He said: he disciplines his body; and that was through fasting. The discipline, the fasting to discipline his body, he said “lest I be disqualified”. He said: “having preached to others I might be disapproved or disqualified (or a castaway)”.

So he talks about: the race, with the prize; the fight, and the need to win; and then he said: I bring order and discipline to my life, in case having preached to everyone else, and told them all these things, I'm then when I get assessed, I didn't make it because I had too many things going on in my life privately. That's what you see frequently with people in ministry. They look great, there's great gifting, there's blessing, great ministry… and then suddenly, there's a collapse, and you think: disapproved. Why? There was some hidden thing that they never ever dealt with, they never let their body be sorted out, never disciplined their inner life.

When he talks about the running the race, he said: you run - everyone runs, but you so run to ‘obtain’. In the Book of Hebrews, he talks also about running the race, and in this case he talks about weights, and things that hold us back.

Hebrews 12:1-2 – “Therefore, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us cast aside every weight, and the sin that so easily ensnares us; let us run with endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God”.

Firstly, you notice he exhorts us to “to run the race with endurance”. There's an endurance needed, and there are weights and things that hinder us. We need to realise they're there and address them. Then he tells us: “let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily ensnares us”. What is the sin that ensnares us? That word ‘ensnare’ means: to stand around you, surround you, distract you. What is the sin that surrounds us, and constantly seeks to distract us? It's most likely the sin of unbelief - the loss of confidence and faith in God, because we're going through hardship, or disappointments, or difficulties. It could also apply to a particular sin, or a stronghold, that you struggle with. He's saying then: for each person, what is the sin that most easily taps into our life? Probably unbelief, where we stop believing and trusting God - that His word's reliable, that He'll see us through, and so on. There are often other things that snare us as well. I think everyone's got their struggles that they have, their own unique kind of things to get over.

Secondly, he says: not just the sin that snares us, but also every weight. A weight is something that hinders you or burdens you. In the Roman races, they would take off all their clothes - they'd run naked, so that they had nothing to hold them back. If you want to be a winner, you've got to make sure nothing holds you back; there's no hinderances, no burdens - we're to cast them off. What are some of the weights? You could probably think of a few yourselves, but here's a few just to think about...

Unresolved issues are a weight. People who are carrying offences, bitterness, judgements, issues of the heart, unresolved grief... all those things are weights. That's where the ministry of healing and deliverance is so needed - it's to help you let go of the weights (apart from the issue of transformation). Abuse, betrayal, addictions… all of those things hold you back. So you may run, but you always can't give your best, because you've got something holding you back. Ungodly heart beliefs can be another thing - where you just believe lies. You believe that you're not good enough, you'll never make it, that you can never do anything right. There are many lies in the heart, that act as a weight to success.

Ungodly relationships can hold us back. God gives us a relationship, to accelerate us towards our destiny. The devil brings them in, to bring us back. I can remember at one stage we had a whole group of women, probably in their 40s, 50s, that we won to the Lord, and not one of them had had a man in their life for years. Within six months, all of them had gone off with some guy - and all of them left the Lord, left the church, left everything. I learnt that the devil brings people into your life, to take you off course; so the person who sets their mind to serve God, sets their mind on the course, going to fulfil it faithfully, then often the devil will add in people around that are a burden - so you need to just recognise that.

Any relationship that is consuming your time and energy, and is unproductive, probably is a hinderance. It could be ones that are ungodly, that are abusive, or have no boundaries. Frequently, when it comes to church, you get people that are like vampires - they're just draining your energy, draining your life. There's no response to your wisdom, or counsel, or direction - they just drain life, and they don't go anywhere; so those ones, you've got to boundary them quite strongly.

There can be other kinds of relationships - putting someone on a pedestal and making too much of them. That's a most common one in churches, where there's an idolatry around the minister, and that then becomes a burden, because then all our life is around that person, rather than being centred on Christ. These are issues that come up.

We can be involved where our identity is found in rescuing, or helping people, wanting to be needed. Those kinds of things then lead you into relationships that are dependent. The people never grow, never mature, never get released, and frequently this is a problem when you try to get groups to multiply - that they all attach so strongly to the leader, and he never built them to Christ, and now either the leader doesn't want to let go of them, or the person doesn't want to let go. These are problems. These are real things, that hinder us in our journey, and then a wrong focus.

We just set our eyes on the wrong thing, and when we have a wrong focus in our life, then we do end up being de-energised, and you get discouraged very easily. It says: set your focus looking to Jesus - setting your eyes on Him, who, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross and the shame. That's the first one, that's the crown, the Incorruptible Crown. There was a lot in that one! The others don't have quite so much, but I found as I've studied them, I've seen more in each one of them. That's the first crown, the crown for running the race diligently, with your eyes fixed on the prize, and doing the discipline in your life, to maintain your walk.

The second one that's mentioned there, is called the Crown of Rejoicing. Remember, we're not sure whether it's: a literal crown, which is visible and seen; or whether it's a form of honour that God puts on us. It's hard to know, it could be both.

1 Thessalonians 2:19-20 – “What is our hope, or joy, or Crown of Rejoicing? Is it not you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, at His coming? For you are our glory. You are our joy”.

The Crown of Rejoicing is the reward God gives for soul winners. Each time the Crown of Rejoicing is mentioned, it always has to do with people, and the winning of people. Everyone that you've helped lead to Christ, win to Christ, or played a part in them coming to Christ - that person will be a part of the crown, or reward, because God places such value on people. The church has got to maintain its value on people too. We need to value soul winning. I find it distressing, when you come to the altar call, how many people just switch off, rather than actually being in a place of intercession prayer, participating in the warfare needed, for that person to come to Christ; then helping make them welcome, being a friend to them, incorporating them into their circle. It's like… hello? Don't you understand that this is God's heart, that God places high value on souls, that in heaven there's rejoicing over every soul that repents? We need to rejoice as well.

The simplest thing is just when they get saved give a big clap. When they get saved, smile and welcome them, you know, connect with them, be part of the journey. There's so much in that, and usually the reason people don't engage like that, is because soul-winning is not in their heart; and because soul-winning is not in the heart, then they don't celebrate, or participate, in the joy of soul winning. Think about this: the souls that are won in our church, are won by a corporate effort mostly; so therefore, there's a corporate reward for this - so we need to be a soul-winning church. If we become a soul-winning church, then the reward that God puts upon us then, is distributed around those who participate in it; so those who are involved in intercessory prayer, then you're part of that journey; and those who are in the prayer room, and they don't even get seen - they're part of winning that Crown of Rejoicing. Paul talks about soul-winning in 1 Thessalonians 2:2-11. He's got quite several things he outlines, about the way he works with people

1 Thessalonians 2:2 – “After we had suffered before, and were spitefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God, in the midst of conflict. Our exhortation did not come out of error, or uncleanness, nor deceit. For as we've been approved of by God to be entrusted with the gospel, we speak not as pleasing men, but as pleasing God who tests our hearts. For neither at any time did we use flattering words, as you know, as a cloak of covetousness – God is our witness. We didn't seek glory from men, either from you or others, when we might make demands as apostles. We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother nurses her children; affectionately longing for you, well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel, but also our own lives, because you become dear to us. For you remember our labour, our toil, labouring day and night, that we might not be a burden to you, we preached to you the gospel of God. You are our witnesses, and God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe, as you know we exhorted and comforted and charged you as everyone a father does his own children”.

Paul is saying: these are the characteristics I demonstrated, that gave me the ability to influence people. As you look through it, you see a whole number of things…

1) Pure motives. Genuine interest in people. No deceit; error; uncleanness; trickery. Not trying to prove he's right; not trying to get a scalp; I won someone to the Lord kind of thing. You've got to have a genuine love for people, and only God can give us that.

2) He was God honouring in his ministry.

“We speak not as pleasing men, but as pleasing God who tests the hearts”.

He sought to please God alone, and is willing to face rejection. He didn't flatter people. He didn't try to influence them to get their money; didn't try to persuade them to accept him. He just spoke the truth, despite their reaction.

“we had a fair few reactions that we suffered before, despitefully treated, and much conflict when we were with you.”

In Philippi, they were all thrown into jail; and they got beaten up in jail. He's playing it down, but he's saying that when you speak the truth, and seek to engage people, and not trying to just please them or be nice to them - there will be reactions, and you've got to learn just to handle that, because you're seeking to honour God.

3) “We're gentle, like a nursing mother cherishes her children”. He gives a picture, or metaphor there, of how you treat people: like a mother would hold her child; very precious, and very tender. He's saying: that's how he's like with people - easy to talk to, easy to relate to, a tender heart, and a real love for them.

He spoke of having an authentic lifestyle. He said: we laboured day and night, that we might not be a burden to any of you. He worked, so he could support himself, so he could then give his ministry, without expecting anything back from anyone. A lot of people don't do that today, they want everyone to carry them, and do things for them rather than working, so you've got something to give.

4) Finally, he says “we endured conflict”. He had a positive attitude, when he faced conflict. If you read Paul's stories of conflicts, he would have been the hardest person to be with, because everywhere he went, there was a fury stirred up against him, because he was bold. He just boldly proclaimed the gospel, and demonic spirits stirred the people up. They would shout! There was one stage there, where the people were dragged into the middle of the arena, and they just shouted for two hours non-stop - didn't even have a chance to say what was going on. In the place he gets stoned, and dragged out of town, he just… they gathered around and prayed. He got up and carried on to the next town. It's unbelievable commitment to win people, despite being knocked back. We get knocked back, but it's nothing like that. It's just bad attitudes, and stupid people, doing stupid things. But the lesson here is: no matter how people react, you’ve just got to be able to endure it, because of Christ - and he's saying the Crown of Rejoicing awaits a soul winner.

So those are some things to think about: our motives in working with people - that what we do is honouring to God; and doesn't hold back the truth in any way. When working with people, you're gentle with them; not hostile and argumentative. That our lifestyle speaks a message, that people can see in our life that we're genuine and authentic; and then when there's difficulty, we don't get wimpy, and draw back, and then get sad… somebody hurt me, and I'm offended kind of thing.

When you look at his story, and you see what people are like today, it's kind of… oh my, come on guys, come on, toughen up! So that’s the second crown.

The third crown is called the Crown of Righteousness.

2 Timothy 4:7-8 – “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. Finally, there's laid out for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that day; and not only to me, but to all who love His appearing”.

I love these statements: “I've fought the good fight”. This is a good fight! It's a fight to gain territory, to get freedom for yourself, or freedom for others. It's a race you're running, that requires endurance, because it’s a marathon. Many start well, but a lot don't see it to the end. When I think of all the things in our life that's sad, it's the ones that didn't see it through - who started with us, and then when the difficulties came, as they always come… they walked away. They saved themselves, and that's very, very sad, and I feel a grief when I see that kind of thing happen. He says: he's finished the race, he kept faith! In other words, the only way you can really keep in the race, and keep in the fight, if is you hold onto God. He declared how he lived a right life. He engaged spirits. He persevered. He overcame temptation. He completed the course, meaning he's completed his assignment right until the very end.

Many people, as I say, don't finish their assignment. You give them a task to do, they don't even finish the task, let alone finish the ministry call, or finish an assignment in an area. That requires, because there's difficulty, that you maintain faith, and you develop a good character. So whatever assignment is entrusted to people, it's not just the outcome of it; it's what happens in them, as they do it, is the key thing; and sometimes we overlook. We sometimes think people come ready, but they're not. People don't come ready. They'll come broken, and they come needing help to grow, and a lot of the work I do now is helping people understand what God is doing, and how to respond, in the pressure they're in, so they grow.

Notice it says: Crown of Righteousness. What a great thing to end your life saying: I've finished. I got to the end. I'm looking forward. My next step is a crown, which the Lord has prepared for me. Isn't that exciting? Imagine being able to get to the end of your life, and you're still full of ‘oh yeah’! I'm just about to graduate, the best is ahead for me yet. I've qualified! Isn't that great to finish your life like that? You see that with Roger Galbraith in the funeral the other day, and he finished strong, and in faith, and just positive to the end. I love seeing that! Just that brief period of pain, and now there's glory - what an amazing thing! What a great hope.

Crown of Righteous - Paul said: not just for him, but for all who love His appearing. What does it mean to ‘love His appearing’? To ‘love His appearing’ means to live your life in expectation of the Lord coming; and live, or behave, like it's today. You live your whole life with the fact that He is coming again; you live every day like it could be today. It’s like it refers to a bride, preparing herself for when the groom is about to come.

Here's four things that, to me, explain what ‘loving His appearing’ might mean...

1) If you ‘love His appearing’, the first thing is, you want to make sure you're pursuing intimacy. There's got to be a pursuit of intimacy. If you're going to win that crown, then the first priority in your life is: I want to deepen my relationship with the Lord. We saw in Matthew 25:6, how the wise had oil in their lamps. They took oil in the vessels, and they got that oil because they built time building their relationship. They spent time, they paid the price, to have that ongoing connection with Him.

2) If you know that someone important is going to come, and you know when they're coming, you'll dress up your very best to meet them. So I think the second thing is, to commit your life to preparation, or transformation. That means, you're letting God heal the places you're wounded, letting Him set you free; claiming freedom, and possessing your own life and freedom; letting God shape your character, and grow you through adversities. It's important we commit our life to letting God shape our character; so every assignment you get is not just a job to be done - it's about the character to be formed in it. Sometimes that might just be perseverance; it might be just loving the unlovely; being kind to people that are just nasty and difficult people. Sometimes it's standing up and confronting; or ruling over spirits. Every assignment you get, regardless of what that assignment is, within it is the opportunity for you to grow - if you can see it.

3) To make seeking the Kingdom of God our priority. I think that to ‘love His appearing’ means you're putting Him, and His kingdom, first. We're waiting in expectation, for a coming kingdom, and all that goes with it. I make the priority of the kingdom now, not one day. Many people have other priorities. The Lord and His kingdom is not their priority.

Matthew 6:33 – “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness”.

Colossians 3:2 – “Set your affection on things above, not things of the earth”.

The Bible is very clear: decide that your focus, your priority, is always about Jesus and His coming kingdom; and about your affection being on the things that are eternal, not things that are temporal. You still have to deal with daily things, but you're not fixed on them. If you listen to people when they talk, you'll find what they're fixed on, because they'll talk about it. Sadly, with many old people, they're fixed on their sicknesses, and aches and pains, and problems. When you get with them, that's all they want to talk about! What you really want, is to be talking about the things of God: what is God saying? What's God doing? What's the latest testimony? In other words, our life is centred around Him.

4) Serving people. If we are taking a posture of longing for His coming… In Matthew 24:45-46, he talked about the servants in the house (talking about people in the church), and he talked about two kinds of servant.

The first servant was the wise servant, who gave the house ‘meat in due season’. They were current, in what they shared with people, in the house of God. For a preacher, it means he's hearing God, and what God's wanting to say now. He's bringing a ‘now’ word, not just some old thing. For people in the church, it means that we are sharing what God is speaking in our lives.

Then it says… if that servant thinks in his heart: my Lord delays His coming… (not going to happen, don't worry about it). It starts that way - no expectation of the coming of the Lord - “then he begins to beat the fellow servants”. He mistreats other believers. Notice how it starts: “the Lord delays His coming” - it's okay, no need to get ready, no need to make any changes, I'm in church, I'm okay... Then the attitude to the believers goes off, they start to beat them. We beat people, but not usually with sticks - it's usually with words. It's the way we treat people; the attitudes and words, and way we treat people. Then it says: he begins to eat and drink with the drunks, and his life becomes careless. His friendships become among the unsaved, in a way that their lifestyle influences him.

So those are the four key things I see, about what's involved in the Crown of Righteousness:

- Loving or pursuing intimacy with the Lord

- Seeking His kingdom, as our priority

- Serving people

- Committing to character transformation.

The crown of righteousness is reserved for those who love the Lord, and His word - enough to let it change their life. Are you growing? Are you changing? Are you pursuing the Lord? Are you serving? Have you been stumbled? It will not be given to those who say they ‘love the Lord’, but they hate their brother.

1 John 4:20 – “If someone says: I love God, but he hates his brother - he's a liar! If he can't love the brother he does see, how can he love the one he can't see, the God he can't see?”

1 John 4:21 – “And this commandment we have from Him: he who loves God, must love his brother also”.

It won't be given to those who say they ‘love God’, but they've got issues with people, and they don't do what God tells them to do. Many believers will say they say they love God, but it always fronts up: do you do what He tells you to do? Do you apply His word to your life? When it comes to people - how are you treating them? It's always down to that! Paul lived his life constantly from a view of eternity.

The next crown is called the Crown of Life. That's the fourth crown; and the fifth crown is the Crown of Glory. Let me just talk about the Crown of Life…

James 1:12 – “Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for after he's been approved (or tried), he will receive the Crown of Life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him”.

The crown of life is the reward or honour that God gives us for persevering through tests of our faith - staying with it, when the pressure's on to let go; or overcoming temptation. It's a reward for trusting God and staying on course. Notice there: “blessed is the man who endures temptation”. That word ‘temptation’ means: to be put to a test, that tests your character, your heart, or the reality of your faith. It says: “they endure”. That means they endure the temptation - they bear it calmly, and they carry on without getting all discouraged, disheartened. That's what this is about.

Many people, when they go through a bit of pressure, they lose their love for the Lord. They stop praying, stop coming - they're not passing! The testings are designed just solely for this - it's to test your faith, and trust in the Lord, and the quality of that. It's about developing character. There's always tests that come. Many believers suffer persecution, even to the point of death. Right across the world, from the beginning of the Bible, right through until now, people are dying for their faith! They're having their heads cut off, their throats cut, because they refuse to quit. There are people in prison in China, people dying around the world, because they refuse to deny Christ.

For us, losing our life is probably not like that. It's more like… today I stop being focussed on myself, and I just focus on doing what God called me to do. Every believer is going to experience their faith being tested – everyone; and there's a reason why it must happen. You can either pray for God to rescue you, when difficulties come; or you can ask God to show you what to do, so you can grow through it. That's basically the choice you have.

People think: if I just had that ministry, that'd be great. Actually no, when you get there, you'll find there's some tests there, that'll really try you big time. God desires to mature our character, and one of the ways is through prayer and intimacy with Him; and one is through the word of God; but one of the ways that God develops us, is through the trials of life

James 1:2-8 – “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing the testing of your faith produces patience. And let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect, and complete, and lack nothing. If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives liberally without reproach, and it'll be given to him. But let him ask in faith, without doubt, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea tossed by the wind. Don't let that man think he'll receive anything, he is double-minded and unstable”.

Notice here, there's some key insights here on trials. He said: they're going to come. He says: when trials or difficulties, or pressures or obstacles come - don't collapse! He says: praise and worship; celebrate; just turn in towards the Lord. There's a reason for it, he says, knowing that the testing of your faith - it's not to crush you. It's to test whether you really lean on God or not. Usually the tests come where we lean on something else, and then we start to shake when the pressure comes on, and it's to bring us to lean on God.

He says: the testing of your faith, will produce in your character, the quality of endurance. He says: patience, when it's been complete, or done its complete work - it will make you perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Very clearly then, he tells us here, that the first thing we do, when we experience difficulties and pressures is: turn into the Lord, and praise Him for His goodness, and His kindness, and His faithfulness.

What happens, or how you respond, when a pressure comes, reveals what your heart condition is like. If the first response is complaining and blaming, that tells you that unbelief is sitting in the heart. What if life was not random things happening to you? What if God carefully orchestrated every little situation, so it could work to grow in you what He wants to build in you - so you can qualify for eternity? What if your perspective of life was, instead of being fearful of what tomorrow will bring; it's actually: my life is fully in the hands of the Lord, and every situation that comes, He will turn it for my good. It will actually end up benefitting me. Even the painful things, the frightening things, the difficult things – with all of them, God can use it to bring me where He wants to get me.

So instead of seeing the trial as an inconvenience and a burden, I begin to see it as the hand of God preparing me for something bigger. That takes an act of faith to do that! That's why it's called: the trying of your faith! How you look at it, you'll either see: the natural - oh no; or you see: oh God, wow! What's this one? What do I need to learn here? It's just how you view it.

He says: first thing is to rejoice; start to focus on the Lord, knowing that the trying of your faith, or the testing, will cause, or bring about, an endurance. Most people, when they go through tests or difficulties, cry out: God, get me out of here; save me; rescue me; stop this happening; fix it up... They carry on like a victim wanting to be rescued, rather than a son wanting to be grown.

He says: patience is endurance. That's a person who doesn't waver, when the pressure comes on. God tells us: rejoice, because it's going to do good. The second thing He says is: ask for wisdom. That passage there, where it says (in verse 5): “If any man lacks wisdom let him ask God” - is connected to trials. In other words, ‘wisdom’ means understanding what God is doing, and knowing how to respond. God, what are you trying to teach me in this? Give me wisdom. Help me see what the real issue is, not just react to the packaging.

A lot of the work I do now is helping people see the bigger picture of God at work, rather than be caught up in the dramas of badly behaving people. Most of the trials in life come because of setbacks, knockbacks and badly behaving people. Usually we want God to rescue us. He wants you to grow through it.

Think about this... If you're a parent, and you rescue your child from every consequence of their choices, they will grow up totally self-centred and irresponsible. You don't do that! You want to teach them that things have consequences. If you'll face the consequences, then you'll grow through it, and you'll learn. It's similar for God, He wants us to have wisdom, and wisdom is the principle thing. When you're running through a difficult time, the first thing is set your face towards God, and ask for wisdom: God, what are you trying to teach me? How do you want me to respond? What do you want me to learn? What's coming up in my heart, that you're wanting to change? That's the way to look at it, that your first reference point is God

1 Corinthians 10:13 – “There's no temptation (or testing) overtaken you that is not firstly, common to man; secondly, God is faithful; and thirdly, He's going to provide a way of escape in the midst of it, so that you can bear it”.

We want: God, get me out of here, I'll go to another church, I'll go to this, I'll go to that. God says: no, no, no, no, I want you to trust Me with this one, I've got your back in it, and there's a way. With the problem, comes a solution; except the solution can only be seen by looking at it through the eyes of faith.

Expect to grow. Expect that every situation you face, that's difficult - you will mature, grow, come to a greater level of authority. When I teach on authority and power, everyone is wanting the power; everyone wants the authority; but no one wants the process to get there. The process to get there, is being able to abide under the pressure, so you develop what's necessary, that you gain that authority. We need to expect to grow.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 – “Our light affliction, which is just for a moment or temporary, is working for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory. It will only do that while we do not look at the things seen, but at the things unseen.”

The things you can see - if you can see and touch it, then it's temporary. Here's the thing: with all problems - they've got an expiry date, they finish. You don't know that date, but it has got an expiry date; so we've just got to understand that it will work out for us - it's temporary, it won't last, and even if it goes on for months, it still won't last. It will end, and then by the time it's ended, the big thing will not be the problem, which is behind you; but rather, what kind of person did you become through that?

It says: it will work for us, it will shape us - so long as we fix our mind on the Lord, on the things unseen.

Romans 8:18 – “I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy compared to the glory revealed in us.”

The Crown of Life is reserved for those who love the Lord, more than their own life and comfort, and hold onto Christ, and don't let their love grow cold when they're in troubles.

The last one is the Crown of Glory. This is another crown, an honour.

1 Peter 5:2-5 – “Shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers; not by compulsion, but willingly; not for dishonest gain, but eagerly; not as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock - and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the Crown of Glory, that does not fade away.”

It's incorruptible! The Crown of Glory is reserved for those who ‘shepherd’ the people of God. Anyone who is called to lead, or shepherd, or has a group of people they're leading and shepherding, then God has a Crown of Glory for you! Jesus is called the Great Shepherd. He entrusts the pastoring to other people, to under-shepherds. He understands that it's a very difficult task - sometimes it's very frustrating, and sometimes it's full of grief. It's often filled with great sacrifice, and often you see little result for what you do - that would describe all of us here, who've worked with people. Sometimes it's very frustrating - you don't see a lot, for what you do. Sometimes people take everything you've given, and then walk away, with no gratitude whatsoever. All of this is a sacrifice, and it causes us suffering.

We need to understand that we're not in the role because it was a great idea. We're in the role because we were called by God, and because we were called by God into the role, you are certain of two things…

1) He will give you grace to stand in it, and grow

2) There's a crown of reward for it.

In this passage, he does speak of what it would take to qualify for that reward. He says: “shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted but being examples to the flock.” He says: This is what you do, and then when the Chief Shepherd appears, you'll receive the crown of glory. Clearly, he connects these instructions to the Crown of Glory being received, so these are the qualifying conditions.

The responsibilities of the shepherd is to shepherd the flock. “Shepherd the flock”, means: to be a friend; to provide nurture, and nourishment; to protect; to give your life for them. A major role of shepherding is to provide the word of God, and the flow of the Spirit; and then encouragement. If you're going to bring the word of God, we don't want to just say what people want to hear: nice, sweet words of encouragement; we need to bring the whole counsel of God.

Often what makes pastoring difficult is, when you bring the truth, when you reprove, when you correct, then you find people react - it's just part of the deal. If you think about your children - they don't want to eat their vegetables. They love to eat the sweets, and the desserts, and drink the fizzy drink; and you know as a parent, if you do that, they're going to get sick. They're going to lose their appetite for good food; they'll get sick, they'll be unhealthy; you have to give them a balanced diet - it’s the same in the church. We're not just to teach messages which are sweet, motivational, positive, feel-good messages; we must speak messages that involve repentance, transformation - addressing the issues of the heart, and the character.

This is a big issue across the world right now. There are many churches, when you go to them, you'll find that what is spoken is not a word that will really build. It's basically wanting people to feel good. The Bible tells us that in the end days, that people would have itching ears, and they'd turn their ears away from the truth, wanting things would just tickle their ears. We need to be able to say things, and say them in the spirit of love, but also bring them from the word of God. Help people see it; here's what God says, it's not just me saying this. So, the first thing is: we need to shepherd or nurture people.

Secondly, we need to lead them willingly. Willingly means you're doing it not reluctantly, or out of a sense of compulsion. The moment you get any ministry, or any job, where you are feeling reluctant - sort your attitude quick. You've got to really repent: God, I'm feeling reluctant. I'm feeling resentful. I'm not too sure why. Lord, I just yield to You, to do this 110 per cent. The only way you can get over these bad jobs, unpleasant jobs or reluctant feelings, is if you embrace it. Do a little more than you were asked, then you kill the bad feelings. You either say ‘no’, and not feel guilty; or you say ‘yes’, and don't feel resentful - and do a little extra, so you get rid of all those feelings. The little bit extra you put into it solves that problem. He's saying that some people don't do things willingly. They do it reluctantly, or out of a duty or obligation, rather than a love for the Lord and a love for people.

Thirdly, he says: lead with pure motives. Don't do it for dishonest gain or exploit - he's talking about leaders exploiting people to advance their reputation or their finances; and again, we see a lot of that around the world. There's a lot of issues come up, particularly around Prosperity Gospel, and so on - people being exploited by shepherds, who are using them to make personal gain, so this is quite a challenge. Essentially, how that would apply to us, would be simply this: have a purity in your motives. Don't do it to get something off people. Don't do it to later-on come back and want something. It's just appalling when people do that - they give and serve, and then they want something back - it just creates a massive a problem. God wants us to have pure motives in our work with people.

The last couple of things then... Notice there, he talks about the purity of motives; then he goes on to talk about serving as an example - “not lording it over but being an example to the flock”. Jesus rejected ‘lording over’ people. That means dominating them, controlling them.

Matthew 20:25 – “He called His disciples and said: you know the rulers of the Gentiles lord over people, and they exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. If you want to be great (or desire to be great), become a servant”.

He talks there about rejecting trying to control, or bring privilege, or power, or weight, or all that kind of stuff over people. We're to humble ourselves, and to serve them - and that means you love people. You're a genuine person in your treatment of them. We're to be an example to the flock. People watch your life! Man, they watch your life, they watch everything. When you don't think they're watching… they're watching! We had one lady come up to us, and she said: I'd like you to pray for me. I said: okay then; and she said: I've been watching you for two years and feel it's safe to ask you to pray for me. I feel I can trust you... I thought: I'm shocked - two years, you've been watching me? I said: what have you been watching? Oh well, how you treat your wife, and how you treat your children, and how you treat people who are a little bit strange, and unusual, or difficult in the church - I watch all of that. I thought: man, everything you do is being watched by someone; and its always being watched by the Lord. She said: I feel I can trust you.

To ‘be an example’ means: you model doing something like Jesus would do it. What they look for is: your character; your intention; whether you're warm and loving; whether you've got passion in what you do. People read you like a book - it's great really because: 1) you can't hide; and 2) you can't hide!

It’s good, because you get a lot of places where everything's all covered and concealed, rather than being authentic; but God is wanting us to be authentic. Leadership is just one assignment. There are other assignments we can have, and it's possible that the Crown of Glory is not just for those who lead and pastor the flock, but also for those who follow and honour them. Here is a scripture that seems to indicate that…

Matthew 10:40-41 – “He who receives you, receives Me; he who receives Me, receives the One who sent Me. He who receives a prophet, in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward; receives a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward.”

So looking at that, it's quite likely that if we honour the people that God has sent to us - pray for them, serve them, receive from them - in receiving, and honouring, and responding, we are positioned for the reward that comes to them.

Lastly, Jesus warned about losing our reward. It is possible to lose your crown!

Revelation 3:11 – “I've come quickly! Hold fast what you have, so no one takes your crown”.

He's saying you need to ‘hold fast’ - use strength to maintain your walk with Me, so you rule over your life, and don't let anyone take away from you what is rightfully yours. If we look in the Bible - Adam lost his crown; and Saul lost his crown.

So, these are the five crowns. Remember the crowns are all rewards - different crowns, different forms of honour. Every crown had a reason for being given, and they all come down to: God wants to honour you. He's looking for every possible way He can find something in your life that deserves honour.

Summary Notes

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ER6: Victor's Crowns

I. Introduction

1. Jesus Taught about Eternal Rewards

* Jesus taught directly or through parables the reality of Eternal rewards, and the need to pursue them

* “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.” (Mat.16:27)

* Jesus is looking to see that our love for him and life qualify us for the Eternal rewards he has offered.

2. Saved by Faith... Rewarded for Service

* Receiving a Reward is not the same as receiving the Free Gift of Eternal life, by faith in the work of Jesus on the cross

* Free Gift:

* Eternal life is a free gift offered to all men by faith and faith alone

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Eph.2:8-9)

* Our salvation is totally based upon the work that Jesus did as our representative.

* By that work we are completely justified before Our father in Heaven and become part of His Kingdom and family. We cannot add or contribute to that work in any way

* Once we have been born again and become children of God He purposes that we grow and that we serve our father

* Reward for Service:

* “Reward”... to recompense, to give something by way of compensation for service or damage incurred

* A Reward or prize is something we receive because we have done what was required to qualify for it

* Mat 16:27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

3. Rewards are Not Given Automatically... Only to those who fulfil specific Conditions

* “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev.3:21)

* “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor” (Jn.12:26)

* Note that in each of these scriptures receiving a reward is conditional upon our works and actions in response to Jesus

4. Three Main Categories of these Many Rewards

* There are very many different rewards mentioned in the Bible, especially in the Book of Revelation

* These different rewards can be understood most easily under three different headings. Each of the rewards that are promised to those who overcome fall under one of these categories

(i). Eternal Intimacy - God invites us into the same intimacy and fellowship the Father Son and Holy Spirit have always experienced

(ii). Eternal Authority (Responsibility) - God invites us to share in ruling with him and in expanding His rule throughout His creation

(iii). Eternal Glory (Honour) - God invites us into His throne, to see Him face to face and to Radiate His Glory

* These different rewards correspond to God’s Sonship Design for each of us

5. Sonship Design

* Sonship is a key part of God’s Eternal Purpose

* Sonship will be the subject of a further series of studies.

* Here are some Key Concepts of Sonship Design. Each Function relates closely to a Category of Eternal Reward

* Joh 17:3 - And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Joh 17:4 - I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.

Joh 17:5 - And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Joh 17:6 - "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.

* Once we are born again into the Family of Our Father we have three key area of function as Sons

(i). Intimacy

Joh 17:3 - And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

We are called to ongoing intimacy with our Heavenly Father and with Jesus Christ who represents Him

(ii). Assignment

Joh 17:4 - I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.

A son in the Bible means a “ Builder of the Father’s House”

We each have a personal assignment to complete to bring honor to our Father, and to develop faithfulness, and fruitfulness

(iii). Transformation

Joh 17:6 - "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world.

To “manifest your name” means to accurately represent the character and nature of God as a Son

Each Son is called to accurately represent what their Father is like, to represent Him on earth

This requires that we embrace the work of personal transformation to become like Christ (Rom.8:29)

* Each of these three functions interact with the others like interlocking circles. All are necessary for balance

II. Reward 5: Victors’ Crowns

Some Believers will Receive Crowns

* A crown is bestowed as a reward or as an honour, to give the recipient recognition and honour because of what they have done or have achieved

* In order to have value and worth a crown must be earned. It is given for a reason

* Two different words are used for Crown in the New Testament... ”Diadem” and “Stephanos”

(i). The Crown of a Ruler... (Gk. Diadem)

* Rev 19:12 His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself.

* The concept of the crown originates from a cap, turban, or more formal metallic crown that was decorated with jewels. Its placement on one's head indicated that one was set apart for a particular task or calling.

* This Crown symbolises the Royal Position and Honour as a King ruling over a Kingdom

* Jesus in Revelation has many crowns... He is the King of all Kings and Lord of all Lords. He is the Emperor who rules over an Empire made up of kings ruling over kingdoms

* Christ now reigns as the King of the Universe and will do so forever. He is the Centre of God’s Purpose “which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.

And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church” (Eph.1:20-22)

* Christ is far above all forms of rule or authority or power in the universe... ”far above”

* He is above all rulers in the Natural realm and all rulers and powers in the Spiritual realm

* “For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.” (1Cor.15:25)

* He makes victory possible for every one of us in our personal lives and callings

* “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place” (2Cor.2:14)

(ii) The Crown of a Victor... (Gk. Stephanos)

* “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.

And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.” (1Cor.9:24-25)

* The second term for Crown (Stephanos) means a wreath or garland given as a prize to a victor in the public games

* “Stepho”... a twine or wreath encircling the head and it refers to winning a race or winning a fight

* It also refers to the sovereign crown that a Roman Conqueror wore after triumphing in a battle and overcoming an enemy. It is a cause for glory and great joy

* Paul declared that a crown was laid up for him... reserved in heaven and awaiting him (2Tim.4:8)

Five Different Crowns(Stephanos):

* There are Five Different Victors Crowns (Stephanos) referred to in the New Testament.

There may be more but these are the ones referred to in the New Testament

Some of these crowns may refer to the same thing

* Each of these crowns represents a Prize or Eternal Honour to be contended for and won.

* These are possibly literal crowns but certainly they will be a recognisable eternal honor bestowed upon people for their distinctive service as a believer.

* Crowns are always worn as a sign of recognisable or tangible honor or distinction, and are highly prized.

* Crowns are worn by Kings, Rulers, Victors, and often, by a bride at her wedding.

* Crowns are important to God. He designed them for beauty and glory and honor (Exod.28:2, 36-37)

* The Crown will be a highly treasured and valued possession for the believer who receives one!

1. The Incorruptible Crown

1Col. 9:24 - Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.

1Col. 9:25 - And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.

1Col. 9:26 - Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air.

1Col. 9:27 - But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

* “Run the Race”: Paul uses the Roman Public Games as an illustration of how we must live our life

* Not everyone who enters the race wins the prize. It will require personal discipline and effort

* “Prize” ... (Gk brabeion)... The crown awarded to the victor in the public games, a symbol of the heavenly reward

The prize in the Public Games is corruptible….perishable, temporary….and yet people strive to possess it

The Crown set before us as a prize to win is “incorruptible”….can never perish, continues on forever

* Paul’s Exhortation: “Run in such a way that you may obtain the prize”

“Obtain”... (Gk. Katalambano) to eagerly possess, to take hold of and make your own

Four Criteria for Obtaining the Incorruptible Crown

(i). Value the Prize

* Unless a believer knows there is a prize, and places value on that prize he will not pay a price to win it.

* E.g. Paul: Knew the value of the prize and gave his whole life for it

* Php 3:7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

Php 3:8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ

* E.g. Esau: Placed no value on his spiritual inheritance and traded it for a bowl of beans

* Gen. 25:34 And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birth right.

“Despised”…..MW…to look down upon with disrespect, to regard as negligible, worthless

* Heb. 12:16 lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birth right.

Heb. 12:17 For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.

(ii) Run with Determination

* 1Col. 9:26 Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty.

* “Determination”……a firm or fixed intention to achieve a desired end, a judicial decision settling and ending a controversy

* Runners in a marathon must fix their mind on completing the course and winning the prize

* “Not uncertainly”…not clearly identified and defined as the goal of the race

* A Runner must begin with the end or prize in mind, or he will be distracted and fail to put in the necessary discipline to win

* There must be a mental determination at the beginning of the race of running to win

(iii). Engage The Enemy

* 1Col. 9:26 Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air.

* Paul changes the analogy from running a race to fighting with an opponent.

* “One who beats the air” ……refers to shadow boxing

* What is a “Shadow Boxer”?..........Shadow Boxer is a person who:

Practices boxing with an imaginary opponent. He is not facing a real opponent

Has the appearance of fighting, but he is not engaging anything.

Just pretends to fight, but never faces the risk of being hit

Will practice in the safety of a gym, but will never engage in the real conflicts of serving Christ

* Many believers are just shadow boxers. They have an appearance of being spiritual, but have no impact.

* They never really engage the invisible spiritual realm, never engage and overcome spirits

* They never actually get involved with the real difficult work of ministry to people

* They never get engaged in the real work of advancing the Kingdom of God with its risks

* They control personal risk and sacrifice by limiting the Lord’s influence to their own agenda

* Paul declares that we are all involved in a fight against invisible spiritual beings.(Eph.6:10-13)

* The opponent and the resistance are real, and we must be willing to engage and take a blow or two

(iv) Develop a Focused Lifestyle

* 1Col. 9:25 And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things.

* Temperate in all things”….to exercise self-restraint, self-control, to master desires and passions

* Temperance means moderation…refusing to come under the control of anything

* Temperance is a fruit of yielding to the leadership and training of the Holy Spirit (Gal.5:22-23)

A person who is in training for the Olympics does not live the same lifestyle as a non-athlete

* 1Col. 9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

* “Discipline”….literally….To hit under the eye so as to disable vision and ability to resist

* Paul strongly disciplined his body, like a fighter in training so he could always be in peak spiritual condition

* Paul disciplined his body through fasting and he practiced self-discipline lest he should be disqualified

* “Castaway”…..Disapproved, not standing the test, unfit for the victors crown..the Incorruptible Crown

Weights and Besetting Sin

Heb. 12:1 - Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

Heb. 12:2 - looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

* We are exhorted to lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and to focus upon Jesus

What is the sin that so easily ensnares us?

* “Ensnare”….Literally to stand all around, or surround and distract like a competitor hindering you winning

* It is a sin that surrounds us at every moment and presses upon us to defeat us. It hems us in on every side and seeks to defeat us.

* This most likely refers to the sin of unbelief….loss of faith in God as a result of hardship and opposition

* It could also refer to a particular problem or stronghold that a believer struggles with.

What is a Weight?

* A weight is different to a sin

* Weight: (Gk. Ogkos)…a Burden or a Hindrance.

In the Roman races the runners cast aside all clothing so nothing would hinder them being a winner

A burden is something that weighs us down so that we cannot perform our best.

A Hindrance is something that holds us back or interferes with our progress

There can be many things that burden or hinder us running our race and fulfilling our calling

* “Lay aside”…….to put away or to cast off (anything that hinders and obstructs you running strongly)

Examples of Weights:

(a). Unresolved Issues

The heart is the center of our life and directs the course of our life

Unresolved sin or relationship issues burden the heart and keep people trapped in cycles of failure

Unresolved issues include: Unforgiveness, bitterness, judgments, grief, failure, abuse, betrayal, fear, addictions

We must be determine to face and to process the issues in our heart so we run freely (Ps.84:5-7)

(b). Ungodly Heart Beliefs

Beliefs are formed in the heart as a result of how we interpret life experiences good and painful

Ungodly beliefs are beliefs we hold that are contrary to the truth of God’s word... they are a lie

Those heart beliefs then trigger ungodly responses or reactions to things that we experience

(c). Ungodly Relationships

Relationships can either accelerate us towards our destiny or become a hindrance and a weight

God blesses us by introducing new relationships, the devil hinders us by using relationships

Ungodly relationships consume time, energy, resources and produce no lasting fruit

This includes relationships that are controlling, abusive, without healthy boundaries,

Co-dependent, idolatrous (where the person is set up on a pedestal to be served), ungodly yoking to unbelievers

It also includes relationships involving rescuing, enabling people to avoid responsibility or consequences

(d). Wrong Focus

Whatever we focus upon, our heart and life opens up to…eg focus on offense and you become bitter

God desires to be the focal point of our lives…he wants us to place Him first

Failure in life frequently comes through having a wrong focus. These are idols of the heart! Eg. Self, pleasure, entertainment, social media, making money, pleasing people, being needed, avoiding risk

Wrong focus will produce fatigue, weariness and constant irritation in our lives

Loss of focus through distractions is a key strategy of the enemy against us.

* Heb. 12:2 - looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

We are exhorted to intentionally fix our focus upon Jesus as our example and on the reward to be won

“Looking”... to turn the eyes away from other things and fix them (upon Jesus)

(v). Finish Your Course

Heb. 12:1 - Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

* “Endurance” ...persevering, remaining constant, not swerving from deliberate purpose, loyalty and faith

* It means to bear up under trial and difficulty and keep going courageously when the going is tough

* It is not how we start the race it is how we finish our race. We must finish, and finish strong in faith

* Many start out strong and enthusiastic, but drop out in the face of pressure, opposition, disappointment, and difficulty, and delays in seeing fruit for their labour

* 2Ti. 4:7 - I have fought the good fight, I have finished my race, I have kept the faith.

* At the end of his life Paul testified that by holding faith, he had finished his race strongly and was ready to receive a crown of honor and recognition of his life and works

2. The Crown of Rejoicing

* 1Th 2:19 For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?

1Th 2:20 For you are our glory and joy.

* Father places great value on each person. There is rejoicing in Heaven over every sinner that repents

* The Crown of Rejoicing is the Reward for Leading People to Christ

* Every person you have helped lead to Christ in this life will be a crown of rejoicing in the next.

1Th 2:2 - But even after we had suffered before and were spitefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict.

1Th 2:3 - For our exhortation did not come from error or uncleanness, nor was it in deceit.

1Th 2:4 - But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts.

1Th 2:5 - For neither at any time did we use flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak for covetousness—God is witness.

1Th 2:6 - Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, when we might have made demands as apostles of Christ.

1Th 2:7 - But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.

1Th 2:8 - So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.

1Th 2:9 - For you remember, brethren, our labor and toil; for laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God.

1Th 2:10 - You are witnesses, and God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe;

1Th 2:11 - as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children,

* Paul modelled what is is to be a successful soul winner. He describes key characteristics

(i). Pure Motives

“No error, uncleanness or deceit”

Paul operated out of a genuine interest in people and not trying to prove a point, or claim a soul

(ii). God Honouring

“We speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts”

Paul sought to represent God and please Him alone, and he was willing to face rejection by men.

He refused to flatter people, ie. Speak with the intention of gaining their money, acceptance or approval

As God’s entrusted representative he spoke the truth boldly, in spite of reactions and hostility

(iii). Gentle

“But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children”

Paul was gentle in how he treated people, kind, friendly, easy to talk to.

He had a tender heart, and genuine love for people, like a mother is gentle with her children

(iv). Authentic Lifestyle

“Laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you,”

Paul worked to support himself so he could be generous, sow into evangelism, and place no demands upon people for money

“You are witnesses, and God also how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you”

Paul lived a lifestyle that was above reproach. He was a living letter.

People could see that he lived the message he preached and were attracted by the life and power

(v). Endured Conflict

“Even after we had suffered before and were spitefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we were bold in our God to speak to you the gospel of God in much conflict.

Paul maintained boldness in the face of conflict through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit

It takes courage and commitment to maintain boldness in the face of the deep hostility Paul faced

A Crown of Rejoicing awaits the Soul Winner. He will be honoured for continuing Jesus Work

3. The Crown of Righteousness

* “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.” (2Tim.4:7-8)

* Paul declared how he had lived a righteous life:

He actively engaged evil spirits and persevered in his fight to resist and overcome temptation

He completed his course... he completed the assignment and ministry Jesus had entrusted him

He maintained his faith in spite of circumstances, he held onto first love, trusting Jesus and His Word

* The Crown of Righteousness is the Reward for Longing for His Appearing

* What does it mean to “love His Appearing”?

To love His appearing means to live in expectation of the coming of Christ, to behave as if He were coming today.

* It refers to a Bride waiting in expectation for her Bridegroom and making herself ready( Rev.19:7-8)

* To love His appearing means

(i). Pursue ongoing Intimacy with Christ...

“But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.(Matt.25:6)

“And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming” (1John 2:8)

(ii). Commit your life to His ongoing work of transformation, preparation... healing, deliverance, character shaping

1Jn.3:3. “Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure"

Rom.8:29 “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren”

(iii). Make the seeking the Kingdom of God our first priority ….”

Matt.6:33 “Seek first The Kingdom”

Col.3:2 “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.

(iv). Serve the people of God…..

“Giving them "food in due season" (Matt.24:45-46)

“And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.

* This Crown is laid up for us... as a prize to be won... in view but not yet in possession

The Crown of righteousness is reserved for those who love it enough to let the truth shape their lives.

* It will not be given to those that say they love Christ but hate their brother

1Jn 4:20 - If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

1Jn 4:21 - And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

* It will not be given to those who say they love Christ but do not obey His Commandments

* Joh 14:21 - He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."

* Paul lived his life from the point of view of Resurrection and Eternal Reward

* Act 20:24 - But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

4. The Crown of Life

* “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved(tried), he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” (Jam.1:12)

The Crown of Life is the Reward for Persevering through the tests of their faith (Trust in God)

* “Temptation”... to put to proof, to be put to a test, to have your character and heart tested by adversity

* “Endure”... to bear ill treatment bravely and calmly, to persevere, suffer patiently without reacting

* “Tried”... to test the quality of something so that it can be approved... i.e. Quality tested

* The testings of life have the purpose of revealing the quality of our faith and developing character. Vs 2-4

* Those who love Jesus remain steadfast in the face of trials and temptations

* “ Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (Rev.2:10)

Many Believers Suffer Persecution and even Death for their faith in Christ

* All of the apostles apart from John were put to death for their ministry

* In many parts of the world today Christian believers are also severely persecuted and suffer much. Every week there are reports of Christian men women and children being put to death rather than renounce Christ.

* It is right and just that God would place an eternal honor on those who love Him and give up their lives for Him. We will rejoice with them at the honor they receive

* When you take a stand for your faith you may face reaction, hostility and possibly persecution

* Those who receive this crown do not blow hot or cold depending on circumstances

* Father is watching how you respond, to see if you qualify for rewards for your consistency.

* “Losing your life for Jesus sake”…may not mean physical death, but death to self-centeredness

* Every Believer will experience their Faith being Tested

Jas 1:2 - My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,

Jas 1:3 - knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

Jas 1:4 - But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

Jas 1:5 - If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

Jas 1:6 - But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

Jas 1:7 - For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;

Jas 1:8 - he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

* (i) Rejoice

* When people experience trials or difficulties their first response reveals their heart condition

People choose to Complain and Blame, or they choose to Praise God

When our faith is put to the test it becomes strengthened in the process and our character developed

* Jas 1:3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

“Patience”…..Endurance, a characteristic of a man who does not waver in purpose or loyalty

* When people go through trials of life they usually cry out for God or someone to rescue them

* God tells us to rejoice in trials because of they work for our good, and to ask for wisdom from God

* (ii). Pray for Wisdom”

* “Wisdom”... Understanding what God is doing and knowing how to respond to Him

* People usually want God to fix the circumstances or rescue them out of painful circumstances

* God wants us to be developed and become mature through painful circumstances.

Parents who rescue children from negative consequences of bad choices do not help them mature. They enable them to avoid the painful consequences and they do not learn and grow mature

* When we ask God for wisdom we must believe that He will give us the resources to handle the hardship

* 1Col. 10:13 - No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

* God is faithful. He will provide a way through each trial so we can handle it correctly and grow because of it

* (iii). Expect to Grow

* “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2Cor.4:17-18)

* “Affliction”... the pressure, troubles, difficulties we experience as a believer

* These pressures are light... light in weight, easy

* These pressures are temporary... very brief in the light of eternity. They have an expiry date!

* These pressures “work for us”... to form, shape, render you fit for something

* These pressures prepare us for Eternal Intimacy, and Eternal Authority, and Eternal Glory

* The condition is that our focus remains on Christ and Eternal reward and not on temporary pain or difficulty and longing for rescue

* “Look”... to fix your attention upon

* For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Rom. 8:18)

* The Crown of Life is reserved for those who love Christ more than their own life, and comfort, and who hold onto Christ through the trials of life and grow

5. The Crown of Glory

* “Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; Nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.” (1Pet.5:2-5)

* The Crown of Glory is reserved for those who faithfully shepherd Gods people

* Jesus is the Great Shepherd. He entrusts the pastoring of His people to under-shepherds to represent Him. The importance of this role cannot be overstated

* Shepherding people is a very difficult and sometimes a frustrating and grief filled work.

* There can be great personal sacrifice and very little result for the work invested into shepherding people

* Often the people you have loved, cared for, sacrificed for, become offended, react and walk away when you try to help them face the truth and grow. It takes great courage and perseverance to shepherd

* Not all who hold leadership roles will receive the Crown of Glory

The Responsibilities of the Shepherd:

(i). Shepherd the Flock

* “Shepherd”……To tend a flock, provide pasture, be a friend to, to rule, to defend, to give your life for.

* A major role of Shepherding is providing a balanced diet of truth…not just what people want to hear

* This includes reproving and correcting as well as encouraging and instructing (2Tim.4:2).

* Often people react and become critical when they are faced with truth that would help them change.

* People who are fed only on motivational messages (sugar) will never mature

* Shepherds must build a spiritual atmosphere or praise, worship, and unity where there is a flow of revelation and moving of the Holy Spirit

* Shepherds are called to mature believers for the work of ministry and growth to Sonship (Eph.4:11-13)

(ii). Lead Willingly

* “Willingly”…..embracing the ministry of shepherding others by active choice and without reluctance or

feeling compelled, or out of a sense of duty or obligation

* Shepherds must embrace people in their heart and see their role as a assignment and honor

(iii). Lead with Pure Motives

* “Dishonest gain”….eagerness to exploit people for personal financial gain

* Shepherds who rule well should be financially rewarded for their service (1Tim.5:17-18)

* This is about heart motivation….serving and ministering to people without hidden agenda of gain

* Motivation to use ministry and exploit people for personal financial gain is called dishonest gain, “filthy lucre”

(iv). Serve as an Example

* Jesus rejected leadership “lording over” people, dominating and controlling them.

Mat 20:25 But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them.

Mat 20:26 Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.

* “Being Example”... model a Kingdom lifestyle of Sonship and service for people to see and imitate.

This is what following Christ looks like... character, faith, passion, focus, relationships

* 1Col. 11:1 - Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.

The Crown of Glory is also Available to Followers

* Mat 10:40 - "He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.

Mat 10:41 - He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.

* Jesus reveals that the person who receives and rightly responds to the person He has sent to lead them will receive their reward

* The leader’s reward is also available to those who respond to that leader and the Holy Spirit working through them

* Leadership is one assignment. There are many other assignments that people have, some in the church but most in the world

* Receiving, honoring, and responding to leaders whom Jesus has sent, positions us to receive their reward

III. Jesus Warned of the Possibility of Losing Your Crown.

* Rev 3:11 Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. “Hold fast”…….use strength, hold or retain from loss, to keep carefully from loss, to master, to rule over

“Take”... to take away or seize by fraud, to claim or procure

E.g. Saul lost His Crown:

* “So I stood over him and killed him, because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown that was on his head and the bracelet that was on his arm, and have brought them here to my lord." (2Sam.1:10)

* Saul acted foolishly and lost his crown... lost his Authority, Honour, & Position as Gods Representative

* How did Saul lose his Crown?

“And Samuel said, "What have you done?" Saul said, "When I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered together at Michmash, Then I said, 'The Philistines will now come down on me at Gilgal, and I have not made supplication to the LORD.' Therefore I felt compelled, and offered a burnt offering."

And Samuel said to Saul, "You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God, which He commanded you. For now the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.

But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be commander over His people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you." (1Sam.13:11-14)

* His heart and character were not shaped... Pressure and testing exposed his condition.

* He was motivated by desire for the approval of by people, and he feared their rejection of him

* He blamed people and circumstances for his actions, instead of being responsible

* He was impatient, and would not trust God and await His timing,

* He was fearful at the growing enemy opposition to him

* He tried to control the situation instead of trusting God. He took on a role or function that he was not called to….offered sacrifice and worship to appease people….

* God desired a man after His own heart….who would seek to please and obey Him

* Saul lost the presence and anointing of The Holy Spirit ….before he physically lost his crown and his life

E.g. Adam lost His Crown

* “Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.

Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours." (Luke4:3-5)

* Delivered to me... to give into the hands (of another)

to give over into (one’s) power or use

to deliver up treacherously

to betray and to cause one to be taken

* Adam lost his crown….he lost his Intimacy with God, his Authority, his Glory,

* Trading….He exchanged something of great value for something of no value. Suffered great personal loss

E.g. Don’t Lose Your Crown

* “Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown.”(Rev.3:11)

* “Hold Fast”…..To use strength, to hold or retain from loss, to rule over

* It is possible to lose your crown….to lose the Eternal Reward that Jesus has prepared for you, for fighting your fight, and running your race

* Rewards are Eternal….They are the prize for winning your personal race and overcoming

* You crowns will be recognized, and will be a source of joy and honor for all eternity.

* They will not be a cause for pride…Jesus will be honored as the one who empowered your victory

“... the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:

"You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created." (Rev.4:10-11)

IV. Summary: Eternal Victors Crowns are Rewards Presented to Believers for:

1. Practicing Self Discipline…Running to Win

2. Leading people to Christ

3. Cultivating Intimacy with Jesus

4. Embracing His process of heart and character transformation

5. Remaining constant in the face pressure, opposition and temptation

6. Faithfully Shepherding God’s people

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.” (2Tim.4:7-8)

Honour, Treasures and Vindication (7 of 12)

Sun 23 Aug 2020  « Back to Top

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The Bible has much to say about eternal rewards. Eternal Rewards are expressions of the value and honour that Jesus places upon those who love and serve Him in this life. The rewards are eternal and will be recognised and valued in the Millennial Kingdom and ages to come.

In this study we examine the rewards Eternal Honour, Eternal Treasure and Riches, and vindication by Jesus before those who have ridiculed or persecuted us.

Welcome, we're on Eternal Rewards #7, and tonight we're going to cover the issue of: Honour, Treasure in Heaven, and Vindication (3 areas of different rewards).

Matthew 16:27 – “The Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father, with His angels, and He will reward each according to his works”.

Constantly, Jesus taught about Eternal Rewards. He taught it directly, through parables, the reality of eternal rewards; and then He also taught about the need to prepare for a coming kingdom. He talked about the kingdom coming now, within us; and then a kingdom coming, which would be a manifestation of His second coming into the earth. He taught that within this whole realm of the Kingdom, we enter the Kingdom by faith. When we receive Jesus Christ, our Saviour, the Spirit of God becomes joined to us. We become a new creation; and then we must grow, and mature, and develop, so that the character of Christ is formed in us.

We looked at the different rewards, and there were three main categories of the rewards. I shared how in the Bible, especially the Book of Revelation, there's a whole list of different kinds of rewards; but you can actually summarise them, or bring them all together, into 3 principle categories; and these 3 categories relate very closely to God's design for us as sons, His eternal purpose for us as sons.

1) Eternal Intimacy - rewards that signify a much greater intimacy, connection and experiential knowledge of God. There are realms of intimacy in the coming kingdom, just as Jesus had realms of intimacy with His disciples on the earth.

2) Eternal Authority - rewards that signify a greater level of partnership, responsibility, and authority, in partnering with Jesus to establish His kingdom. Throughout the Bible, you see manifestations of that sonship authority. Moses was able to upheave a whole nation and bring about the change and deliverance of his own people, by demonstrating or bringing the power of God to bear in that situation.

3) Eternal Glory. These are rewards which signify special honour, and special distinction, that God puts on us; acknowledging, or placing honour on us, for how we've followed Him and served Him in our journey through life here.

So those 3 categories, 3 areas of rewards - each of those things are eternal, in that once the decision's been made what you qualify for, it's irreversible. That goes on not just for the kingdom age, it goes on into eternity. We have privileged access, privileged roles and privileged honour, and it's just; this is the justice of God. It makes sense that God's justice would show this way - that someone who lives a casual, non-committed life, a compromised life, would definitely spend eternity living in a different realm, and a different degree of eternal life, than someone who has sacrificially given, sacrificially served, and lived their life to bring honour to Jesus - allowed the Lord to change their heart, and their motivations, so the character of Christ forms. It just makes sense.

Before I go on into those three rewards, I want to just touch on an area which I will call ‘Sonship Design’. If you have a look at how we're designed for sonship, the 3 dimensions of reward correspond exactly to the 3 dimensions we are to pursue, in the way God has designed us to be sons. God's eternal purpose is to have a family of sons, in the image of His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus will have the pre-eminence, and those sons who are ‘overcoming’ sons will partner with Him, in changing the whole world.

John 17:3-4&6 is called the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, and in each of these three verses He identifies one sonship design.

John 17:3 – “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You've sent”.

John 17:4 – “I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work You gave Me to do.”

John 17:6 – “I have manifested Your name to the men You've given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and I have kept Your word”.

Notice 3 things:

1) ‘Eternal Life’ means an intimate relationship. “This is eternal life: that they know You”. The word ‘know’ is a word of intimacy with the Father; and intimacy with Jesus, who accurately represents Him. So, intimacy with God, intimacy in our spirit, means an impartation of His life to us, that changes us. You don't get changed by information; you don't even get changed by reading the word of God; it's a pathway to encountering the true word of God.

John 5:39 - “You search in the Bible, and you think in these you have life; but they speak of Me, and you won't come to Me”.

Eternal life is an impartation that comes into our lives; that transforms us, by a relationship with Jesus Christ, and a relationship with God, the Father. You see this even in the garden, where Adam was given a choice: he could eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil; or he could eat from the Tree of Life. In Revelation, it tells us that Tree of Life was Jesus. I suspect that the Tree of Life was not an attractive-looking plant; but the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil was a fascinating-looking tree. He had to choose between eating of one tree or the other. If he ate the Tree of Life, then the life of God would be imparted to him, and he would grow, and mature, and come into his full inheritance; but as you know, he chose something else.

Notice then, 3 things:

1) Intimacy – “this is eternal life: that they know You”. As we develop intimacy with God, our lives are transformed and changed. We are preparing ourselves for a much greater level of intimacy, when we see Him as He is.

2) Assignment.

John 17:4 – “I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work You gave Me to do”.

A son means: to be a builder of a father's house; to extend the father's kingdom. Every son has an assignment to do, that is to bring honour to God, our Father. In our assignment, whatever it is, whether it's as a housewife, a mother, serving in some small capacity, whatever dimension our area of territory is - that is where we develop our faithfulness as a son It's where we develop the character of serving; where we grow in our ability to love people, in the face of disappointments. Whatever our assignment is now, it is a temporary assignment, that prepares us for a much greater Eternal Assignment.

Each of us, in our assignment, is called to…

1) Bring honour to our father. That the way we do it, represents His character and nature - we're not exploiting people, or hurting people.

2) Develop Faithfulness. We can be relied upon; there's consistency; integrity in what we do.

3) Fruitfulness. We produce something - this is an important part of our role as a son.

4) Transformation. He said: “I have manifested Your name to the men You've given Me out of the world”. To ‘manifest Your name’ means: to actively represent what the Father is like; to show His nature - His kindness, His love, His compassion, His longsuffering, His joy… all those things. To accurately represent what the Father is like, we need to embrace a lifelong journey of being transformed - and that's where inner healing comes; it's where deliverance comes; it's where we grow our heart qualities, kingdom heart qualities. All those interlock with one another. Each one helps support the other, and so it's not surprising that the three categories of reward are all interlocked the same way as our design is.

Main Message

We'll look at now Reward #6 - Praise & Honour. One aspect of Eternal Reward is Eternal Glory; there's many aspects of it, one of them is Praise & Honour, from God Himself. We're created for honour.

Psalm 104:1 – “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, You are very great, You are clothed with honour and majesty”.

God is clothed with honour & majesty.

Psalm 93:1 – “The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty”.

That's kingly honour, kingly glory. The Lord is clothed. He has girded Himself with strength. We are made in the image of God. We are made to carry glory. When Adam & Eve were designed, when they were first created, they carried a dimension of glory. The presence of God surrounded them. They were majestic people in the earth. There was no one in God's creation like that. We're created to represent God, and God is full of majesty and honour. We're created to carry the honour; to carry the glory of God; to carry His life, His nature, His immense power and majesty. We're meant to carry that and represent Him in the earth. Of course, through the fall, the glory has left; and this created the situation we find ourselves in now - naked, ashamed clothed with dishonour, and struggling to try and find honour for ourselves.

Psalm 8:4-6 – “What is man, that You are mindful of him; and the son of man, that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, or a little lower than Elohim, than God Himself. You have crowned him with glory and honour and made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands. You put all things under his feet”.

Notice that word ‘crown’ there means: to put on a royal headdress of sovereignty. When God created man, He created us for sovereignty in the earth. We're created to have dominion over the earth; and we're created in order to make the work productive, and fruitful. He said: You crowned him with glory & honour. Glory means: the shining nature of God. Honour means splendour, and majesty, and magnificence; sovereign power, dignity.

Notice how we've been designed, how God created us; we've been crowned. God has put upon us the evidence of majesty, and kingly glory - as His sons, and representatives of a royal king; with the shining nature of God, and all honour & splendour. We cannot comprehend what we were like before the fall. It can't easily be understood - the majesty and magnificence of Adam, and how jealous the devil was of him, desiring to steal from him what he had, because it was what the devil wanted.

So firstly then, we're designed, or created, for great honour, great glory. God has not changed His plan. He still plans to put upon us, and bestow upon us, great honour and great glory. Right now, that glory comes within us, and Christ within us, the hope of a greater measure of majesty and glory to come. Secondly, the believers will receive different realms of praise and honour in the kingdom.

1 Samuel 2:30 – “The Lord of Israel says (He's speaking to Eli) that your house, and the house of your father, would walk before Me forever; but now be it far from Me, those who honour Me I will honour. Those who despise Me will be lightly valued”.

God makes it very clear that, if we honour Him in our life, then He will put honour upon us.

Matthew 25:21 – “The Lord said to the servant: well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of your Lord”.

The faithful servant receives praise, approval and a reward – ruler of many things. God looks not on our outward actions; He looks on the motivations of our actions.

1 Corinthians 4:5 – “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes. He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness”

Everything that's covered now - when the Lord comes, there will be an exposure of them. He will reveal the counsels or the motivations of the heart; then, everyone's praise will come from God. That word ‘praise’ means to ‘commend’ or to ‘approve’ a person. It's saying that you can't really tell with people, what they're like; you can't see into the motivations of their heart. He says: don't judge things before the time - you can't even really see for your own life very clearly; so, judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes. When the Lord comes, then He will bring out into the light everything that was hidden. He will also expose what motivated people to do what they did; and then they're either: rewarded, praised, commended, and honoured; or they are dishonoured, their shame is manifest.

The Bible is very clear: some will receive great honour in the kingdom. The Old Testament gives you some examples, so you can get a glimpse of what eternal realities are like. If God wants to honour you, He can lift you up; He is able to put amazing honour upon your life. Solomon received great honour from the Lord.

1 Chronicles 29:25 – “The Lord exalted Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been seen on any king before him in Israel”.

That's an amazing scripture! Notice that God exalts (or lifts) him up - promotes him. Always, before promotion, comes humility; a massive requirement in our lives is we develop a humble heart. Jesus had a humble, and a meek, heart. Those who humble themselves, God will lift them up. Solomon humbled himself in his early days and you can tell that by what he asked God for, which from a wise and understanding heart. It says that God bestowed on him such royal majesty, as hadn't been seen on any king before him in Israel. The Queen of Sheba heard about him, and she came to see him. She looked at his majesty; at the way they came up, and into the house; at the servants, and how they were dressed; and every aspect of Solomon's kingdom - and it said: it took her breath away! She said: I've heard so much of it, but it's just far greater than anything I could've imagined!

There's a wonderful story. When the King Solomon was at his height in his glory, all kinds of things came to him. People came from all over the world; they came to him, because of what God had given him. We see there in history, an example of one man that God was able to lift, raise up, and cause all the kings of the earth to come and seek his wisdom. If He did it once, He could do it again. By far, the greatest honour though, are eternal. Solomon's honour and majesty lasted temporarily, because it was of an earthly nature; but the greatest honours are eternal. They're reserved for the millennium, and for the ages that go beyond.

When God is talking about Eternal, the word means literally ‘age-lasting’. There is age, upon age, upon age; and there is reserved for the coming millennial kingdom, and the ages beyond, God has reserved honour for people who quietly serve Him, that no one knows. In the kingdom, or the coming kingdom, there's small and there's great; and there's least and there's greatest - that's all talking about ranks of honour. There are massively different levels of honour, in the coming kingdom. In Matthew 5:19, two things come out, in each of these scriptures: 1) the level of ranking in the kingdom; 2) a behaviour that characterised, or led, to that person having that rank.

Matthew 5:19 – “Whoever breaks one of the least commandments and teaches men to do so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever does and teaches them, will be called great in the kingdom”.

If you keep the word of God; or if you take His teachings, especially from the Sermon on the Mount, and you do them, and teach them – you will be called great in the Kingdom. Least and great, and he's talking about the coming kingdom.

Matthew 23:11 – “He who is greatest among you shall be your servant”.

If you want to be great, become a servant. If you want to be greatest, then you learn to serve more people.

Revelation 19:5 – “A voice came from the throne, saying: praise our God, all you His servants, and those who fear Him… both small and great”.

Even in around the throne, the angels are saying, and they're identifying, that there are both small and great. You choose: will you be small; or great? It's dependent on how you walk with God in this life.

Revelation 3:21 – “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne”.

Notice there, a tremendous honour - to sit with Jesus, ‘upon’ His throne. The Bible also talks of people ‘around’ the throne; which do you want to be? A person ‘around’ the throne worshipping; or a person ‘upon’ the throne with Jesus, consulting with Him, about the advancement of His kingdom? Big difference!

These are just some scriptures, and they all point to, in the coming kingdom, that there are levels of honour, status, and recognition by God, of the character and service you've given while you're on the earth. Jesus Himself received great honour. He was honoured on earth by His Father.

Luke 3:22-24 – “The Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said: You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased”.

Heaven has opened, and God Himself has spoken, and declared His pleasure, His honour, His value of His Son. Jesus received honour from His Father in front of everyone.

Jesus was honoured in front of the crowd, and Jesus was honoured in front of His disciples.

Luke 9:34-35 – “While Jesus was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them and they were fearful as they entered the cloud, and a voice came out of the cloud saying: this is My beloved Son. Hear Him!”

Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration, and as He's prayed, He was transformed and changed. The Father gives Him immense glory and immense honour. He radiates the glory of God. He radiates the life of God, and only the 3 disciples saw that.

Peter 1:16&18 – “We did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty”.

We saw it personally, His majesty – “for He received from God the Father honour and glory”. When did that happen? “When a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mount”.

He's saying: we saw great honour, great majesty. We saw Jesus honoured by His Father in front of us. Jesus is honoured in front of the crowds; and He's honoured in front of His disciples; and then the Bible tells us that He will return, with exceeding great honour and majesty.

Philippians 2:8-11 – “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient to the point of death on the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him, given Him a name above every other name; that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, that every tongue should confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God our Father”.

Again, it tells us, that Jesus is highly exalted; and when He returns, He will return with glory. We saw the example of Solomon being elevated by God, given exceeding great honour before men. We see Jesus being honoured before men; and in front of His disciples. We see that this honour comes from God Himself. Jesus has received great honour; and Jesus also promised honour to us. He was talking to His disciples; and He promised them honour in the coming kingdom.

Luke 22:28-30 – “You are those who've continued with Me in My trials. I bestow or I gift to you a kingdom, just as My Father has bestowed upon Me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel”.

What an amazing promise that Jesus has made now to His disciples, who have given their lives now following Him, given up their careers, they've given everything to serve Him and to follow Him. He says: in the coming kingdom, just like My Father has bestowed upon Me - I'm going to allow you to eat at My table. It's one thing to eat the bridegroom's table; it's another to eat at the guest's table.

He said: I'll grant you to eat at My table, and to sit on thrones with Me - and you'll be judging the 12 tribes of Israel. He promised them intimacy – “at My table, eating with Me”; and of honour – “I'll bestow on you a kingdom, and of authority, you will judge the 12 tribes of Israel”. He's made that promise, but He's also made a promise now to every believer that follows Him. You see a pattern there: Solomon was honoured; Jesus was honoured by the Father, in front of His disciples; He's honoured when He comes again; and now He's talking about honour to us. Here's the promise…

John 12:26 – “If anyone… “. This is open to all. It's not something that God determines. It's something that you determine, by your response to Him. “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him will My Father honour”.

Anyone, so this is for anyone. This is an open invitation to any person: “if anyone serves Me, let him follow Me and where I am, My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honour”. If anyone serves Me - they do acts of service to Jesus, or as His representative. If any man serves the Lord, He says: let him follow Me. It seems like a weird combination, saying: if any man serves Me, now let him follow Me. You would've thought ‘those who follow Me, should serve Me’, but He's not saying that.

He's saying: if you serve Me, meaning you already have decided to connect with Him, build relationship with Him… when He says, ‘to follow Me’, this is what He means. This is not evident, when you first look at it. To follow a rabi meant to accompany him, and then copy his teaching and his lifestyle, and become like him; do the same things he did and teach the same things he taught. So to follow Jesus means to allow His words to shape our life and character, so we become like Him. In the Book of Acts, where they said of the disciples: “they perceive they're ignorant untrained men, but they realised they'd been with Jesus”. They had received an impartation of His way of thinking, His character and His lifestyle.

If we're going to serve the Lord, we must also commit to walking with Him, and letting Him bring transformation to our life and heart. It's not enough just to serve Him; we must embrace the promise of being transformed. Notice the two rewards that He makes there. He said: “you'll be with Me, where I am”. What does that mean? They're already with Him? When He says: “where I am”, He's referring to a place of intimacy, with His Father.

John 1:18 – “No man has ever seen the Father, but the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father (intimate relationship with the Father), and He has made Him known”.

He's saying: I'm living in a deep, intimate, personal relationship with My Father; and that love and unity that I walk in with Him - that's what you're going to have. You're going to have that same dimension of love. He even referred to it later, in His Priestly Prayer in John 17, where He says: “the same love that's in Me, will be in them”. The key there is that we've got to serve Him and follow Him. Same place of relational intimacy!

The second thing He says: “him will My Father honour”. He promises that if we serve, and in our serving the Lord, we let Him transform our heart and character, He promises then deep intimacy with the Father; and He also promises then, that our Father will honour us. It means God, the Father, will compensate us for all the suffering, all the loss, all the hardship, all the difficulties we've walked through, in serving Jesus.

It says that God sees every part of that, and He will recognise that we've lived a life seeking to honour Jesus, and in return He will confer on us great honour, far more than anything we've ever suffered or lost. Jesus has got a price. People misunderstand you; people reject you, people can be very hostile, and sometimes we suffer quite deep hardship. We walk through spiritual warfare, and trials, and difficulties. There are some real deep challenges in following Jesus; and Jesus said: “if they persecuted Me, they'll persecute those who follow Me, because the servant is not greater than the master”. If we fully follow Jesus Christ, hardships come; difficulties come.

He's saying in this scripture, that if you walk through that, and let the process of all of that pain and difficulty that you go through transform you, He said: “My Father will honour you”. He sees it all, and He's planning to honour you so greatly, that the troubles will seem so little. Imagine, for example, an Olympic runner, and they've spent three years training, up every day, training hard, discipline; then finally, that final moment on the dais, and they get the gold medal. They forget all the training - it was all about that moment of honour. If they do that for just something so temporary, how much more should we do this for the eternal?

1 Peter 1:6-7 – “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have grieved by various trials…”. This is talking about a difficult life following Jesus. “…so that the genuineness of your faith, being more precious than gold that perishes, though it be tested by fire, may be found to the praise and honour and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ”.

He's saying: yes, for the moment, it may well be that we're in grief, and we have trials; but those trials are proving and developing our faith, and this is precious to God. When the time comes for His coming, then there will be honour and glory and praise. He will publicly acknowledge us. So, we must choose then between the honour of God, and the honour of men, and that's a challenge for every person.

Some cultures are very centred around honour, and the culture of Jesus' day was a culture of honour and shame; so that meant honour was the main commodity to be desired, and it still is, in the Middle East to today. About 70 per cent of all cultures in the world are driven by the pursuit of honour, and the fear of losing face or being shamed; these are the cultures of Asia, Pacific, Africa and Hispanic - many cultures in the world. Honour was the level of approval the community put on you. People either honoured you, or they shamed you; and the honour that was given to you depended on your family of origin, where you came from; it depended on your courage in the battle, whether you fought or whether you ran, showed cowardice. It's on your generosity to the poor; and on your position or rank, so they were very, very conscious of position, ranks, titles; and particularly, your family of origin, and your wealth status. The whole culture system of Jesus' day – social, religious and political - was built around status, and honour, and positions, and ranks. That's what people sought, as they still do today. Many cultures, that's exactly how they operate, and they shame anyone who won't comply, or flow and agree, and come under that system. Jesus totally rejected the honour system of His culture.

John 5:41 – “I do not receive honour from men.”

To ‘receive’ means to claim it for yourself, so Jesus put no expectation on people honouring Him. In fact, it was exactly the opposite; He sought only to please His Father. In John 6:15, when Jesus perceived they were about to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain, by Himself, alone. Notice there, He sees the crowd. They want to make Him king. They want to bring Him to a place of honour and position. He takes off. You find frequently in the Bible, when Jesus did miracles, and His fame went abroad, He immediately withdrew. He didn't feed off fame, or the honour of people. What fed Him was doing the will of His Father, and this is a huge issue for people to face.

Jesus rejected their desire to exalt Him and give him pre-eminence. He was primarily motivated by love for His Father, and desire for His Father's approval, so that meant He was free from pride. I don't need you to like Me, to accept Me, to agree with Me. There was no ego - I need you to recognise Me, to honour Me. There was no demand on anyone, for any of those things; and that made Him free to declare the truth. He could just say what He wanted to say. If people left Him, He didn't chase them. He didn't say: wait, wait, you misunderstood Me… and try to get them back. He never did that! He just boldly declared the truth. If they didn't like it, that was their choice; and when all the crowd left Him, He just said to His disciples: “you going to leave too? And they said: where are we going to go? You've got the words of life!

These are things from the Bible, that tell us the importance of us being free from the need for honour from people. Jesus rejected all self-promotion, all honouring of Himself

John 8:54 – “Jesus answered, and said: if I honour Myself, my honour is nothing. It's My Father who honours Me; and you say He's your God”.

The pharisees did everything to be seen by men. Whatever they did, if they prayed, they prayed to be seen by people, all the long prayers. When they fasted, they dressed up and they looked ‘oh man, you're fasting’! The pharisees constantly did things to get recognition from people, and Jesus said: none of those, it doesn't count. He taught that creating your own honour, is not honour at all. If you're into self-promotion, then God is not on that at all. He's not backing you up one little bit. If you promote yourself, you've got keep yourself there; but if we let God promote us, then He backs us, to keep us where He's promoted us to.

Proverbs 20:6 – “Most men will proclaim to everyone his own goodness, but who can find a faithful man?”

Every one of us has the experience of people, where all they want to do is promote themselves - they just talk about themselves. When you get with someone, and you listen, if they're talking all about themselves, then they're into self-promoting - to honouring themselves, it's all about me. Jesus said: every man who speaks about himself, promotes himself. He's not into promoting Himself in any way; Jesus confronted the honour system. He showed that there's another honour system.

This is also what He taught: if we seek the honour from men, it will undermine your faith, and your trust in God. Tt's going to be a point of conflict, if we seek to honour God, if we seek to honour Jesus, seek to live a life that honours Him, it's going to bring us into conflict with having the trust, having received the honour that God has.

John 5:44 – “How can you believe (or how can you have faith or trust), who receive honour from one another, and do not seek the honour that comes only from God?”

How can you believe, how can you be in a place of faith? Without faith, it's impossible to please God. How can you be in a place of faith, or believe, when your goal is to receive honour from one another; and you're not seeking the honour that comes only from God? There's an honour that comes from men; and there's an honour that comes from God. If I seek the honour that comes from men, then I want to be recognised, honoured; I want to have privileges and titles, and I have an expectation of that. He says: this is going to conflict with me trusting God for that honour; it's a choice, between one or the other.

People honour us, and it's okay to just receive that, but we should reflect it back to God. When people honour you for something you've done, and appreciate you, it's okay to receive it; but then reflect it, bring it back - Father, this has come from You, this is what You've done. You always bring the honour back to Him. There's an honour that comes from men, which is temporary. In life, people have temporary; they look good for a while… but watch their whole life - they don't look good all the time! He said: there's also an honour that comes from God, which is eternal. What will you pursue? The honour that comes from men: position, recognition, understanding, people liking you; or are you going to seek the honour that comes from God? If we seek the honour that comes from men, the outcome is we'll never develop a life of faith that pleases God.

Galatians 1:10 – “Am I now trying to win the favour and approval of men, or of God?”

There it is. What's motivating you: wanting people to like you, and approve of you, and favour you; or do you want that from God? He says: am I seeking to please someone; for if I'm trying to be popular with men, I cannot be the servant of Christ. He makes it very clear: if I seek to please men, I can't be the servant of Christ. All of us are going to find ourselves, as we follow Jesus, there will come points of conflict, where people misunderstand you, people reject you, people speak against you. You should not try to explain or try to repair that. We make our focus on honouring God in what we do. This requires a life of faith, trusting that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Jesus taught an honour system that was different. He taught this is what the eternal honour system, or the culture of kingdom of heaven, is.

Matthew 20:25 – “Jesus called to them and said: you know the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them”.

In the kingdoms of the world, people seek honour; privilege; roles; titles; influence; recognition; seating at the highest place in the table; having people acknowledge them, whenever they come in the room. He said: that's what they do; but it shall not be so, among you. He makes it very clear that in the kingdom of heaven, greatness is demonstrated by the heart of a servant - a humble heart, a serving heart.

Humility and serving, sacrificial serving, is the core of what God is like, and Jesus demonstrated it in many ways. He says: “whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your servant, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give His life a ransom for many”. Jesus never had any expectation that people, or life, would serve Him, and this is where many people get angry and frustrated. They have an unspoken expectation that life should work well for me; people should be nice to me; life should go good for me; and when you have that expectation, you'll have disappointment - you'll get frustrated, and angry.

“He did not come to serve, to be served, but to serve”.

Whenever He entered a relationship with someone, or went into a situation, it was not to extract value out of it; it was to give value into it. Jesus identified clearly that the honour system of the world is rooted in pride, and it's based on a desire for position, power, control, privilege, and honour. You can either seek it in this life; or you can seek it in eternity. In eternity it goes on for eternity; but when you seek it in this life, it comes and goes! You can be doing well one day and gone the next; but if our goal is to honour God, and seek His honour, then what happens is we'll go through seasons of elevation and humiliation, but at the end, God lifts us up.

So that's the teaching around honour, and we see that honour is a kingdom value. The culture of the kingdom is one of honour - the honour of all men, not just a privileged few. Even in Christian circles, often the honour flows all one way, but it doesn't flow back again; but in the kingdom of God, He says: honour all men; and He gives a list of all the people to honour. We honour widows, children, kings, those in authority, leaders, elders... Honour is the value of people, regardless of what they do. It's a gift to them. We all must choose then, between the honour of the world, or the honour of God.

Let's have a look then, at the next reward. I want to look at a reward which Jesus also spoke about, which is: Treasure & Riches in Heaven. Jesus called us specifically to pursue treasures in heaven.

Matthew 6:19-21 – “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, whether neither moth nor rust destroys, and where the thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart is”.

Jesus makes it very clear: ‘laying up’ means to amass, to accumulate, to store up; and the word ‘treasure’ means wealth or substance, or valuable goods that you can exchange. He's saying very clearly: don't lay up treasures on earth, because they're corruptible; lay up treasures in heaven. One thing He's not saying, is that you should not seek to prosper in this life - He's not saying that. He's not saying that you should not grow wealth, because that puts you in a position of generosity, and a place to help others - He's not saying that. It's the setting your heart on it! The key thing here is, what you set your heart on… The heart needs to be set on eternal treasure. Why? Because earthly treasure: house, car, money, all the things that we can accumulate, can be lost in a moment. He said: they're corruptible, meaning they're not eternal, they're not lasting. Treasures in heaven can't be stolen, they can't be corrupted; so obviously there's a message there, or a mandate, that we should set our heart on eternal things.

Psalms 62:10 – “…if riches increase, don't set your heart on them”.

If you prosper, don't fall in love with the prosperity; keep your heart set on eternal things.

Luke 16:11 – “If you've not been faithful in unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust true riches?”

He's talking about money - He calls it ‘unrighteous mammon’, or a spirit; and just like God is a spirit, mammon has got a spirit or a power behind it. He's saying very clearly, that if we're not faithful in the management of the money we have, how will God entrust to us true riches? Money is ‘riches on earth’, but there must be another kind of riches called ‘true riches’. Most people, all they can think about is money, because money is a source of power and influence - and the love of it corrupts. He's saying there is also ‘true riches’ - what does He mean by that?

Matthew 19:21 – “If you want to be perfect, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you'll have treasures in heaven”.

Matthew 6:21 – “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be”.

There's earthly treasure, and then there's heavenly treasure. With earthly treasure, people seek it all their life, and never find it; or people become rich, they find it, and then they worry about losing their riches all the time. People trust their riches, rather than God. They start to trust, and they become secure in their money, rather than secure in God. When people become very wealthy, they tend to look down on others. He tells people who've become wealthy: not to set your heart on the riches, and to trust God, and do good on others, not look down on them.

1 Timothy 6:17- "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment."

The problem is, if we make the pursuit of wealth our main goal, it then destroys our focus on eternal things. Paul also directed us to set our attention on seeking ‘treasure in heaven’.

Colossians 3:1 – “If you were raised with Christ, then seek those things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God”.

Set your affection on those things - things which are above, not on things of the earth. Don't let your affection be attached to things which are temporary; let your affection be on the things which are eternal. Jesus described treasure in heaven as the ‘true riches’ and I want to look at then what it is.

Luke 16:11 – “If you've not been faithful in unrighteous money, who will commit to your trust true riches?”

If you can't be faithful in another man's, who will give you what's your own?

The word ‘true’ means authentic, genuine; the opposite of imaginary, or counterfeit. There are ‘true riches’, eternal in heaven, which can be laid up, and can be reserved; so, what qualifies us? How do we lay up treasures in heaven; and what are the treasures in heaven? In that parable, Jesus commended the steward, because he thought ahead, acted wisely and invested in his future. He's saying that Christians need to do the same thing - we need to think ahead for eternity. He uses the comparison of a steward who is unfaithful, and now he's going to lose his job, and lose his provision… but he plans ahead, so that people will look after him.

Jesus said: that's a smart guy! There are not many guys in the kingdom, who in this life, think about the eternal life, and then plan intentionally how to lay up treasure in heaven. What are the true riches? Heaven is full of gold and precious stones - they're everywhere, so they can't be the true riches.

Revelation 21:18 (talking about the city of God) – “The construction of its wall was of jasper, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass”.

Revelation 21: 21 – “The 12 gates were 12 pearls, each gate was one pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass”.

The streets are gold, and if there’s so much gold that you can just put it on the street, then how much value is that? We use bitumen on the road, and bitumen is everywhere, because it doesn't cost much - there's so much of it, they just use it for a common thing. He's saying: in heaven, gold is like that. In the Book of Revelation, you find there are gold and precious stones everywhere in the city, so therefore, true riches cannot refer to things like gold and silver. The true riches in heaven, or the treasure in heaven that Jesus refers to, is: Eternal Intimacy, a deep, close, very personal relationship with Jesus, and the Father; Eternal Authority, working with Him, and being invested great authority to bring transformation in the kingdom; and Eternal Glory, honour. Wealth is something that's very, very valuable. It's a commodity that enables you to accomplish many things; and the true riches of heaven are: Intimacy, Authority and Honour or Glory. Those are the things we should set our heart on. Those are the things we should seek.

Revelation 2:17 – “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give hidden manna to eat, and I'll give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows except him who receives it”.

That word ‘white stone’ means: a brilliant light dazzling, dazzling white like a diamond. The white stone was a stone that was received like a gold medal at the Olympics. If someone had run a race, achieved something great, they were given a white stone - it was a symbol of honour; and it gave them admission. He's using the idea of the white stone in heaven - giving you honour and admission. He's talking about deeper relationship, intimacy, and access to the things of God. Hidden manna – again, being able to enter the very presence of God, and have an intimate relationship with Him. The ‘treasures in heaven’ refer to privileged access to Jesus, and to the Father. It's all to do with a relationship - a union with Him, a connection with Him, and all that flows out.

Treasure in heaven then refers to privileged access to Jesus - access to the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’.

Ephesians 3:8 – “To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

Unsearchable means: past finding out, they're beyond comprehension. Intimacy with Christ, and knowledge of Him, is far beyond our human brain's ability to comprehend, by logic; it's only known by revelation. Unsearchable means: there's so much, you can't search it all out, you'll never get to the end of it - you'll never exhaust the fullness of it. Isaiah had an encounter with heaven…

Isaiah 6:1-2 – “I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.”

He saw the glory of God. He saw Jesus, sitting on a throne, high and lifted-up. He saw seraphim, and it had six wings. He's getting a view of the glory of God. The seraphim have six wings; with two they cover their face or their eyes, because the brilliance of God's glory is beyond their ability to comprehend; with two they cover their feet, meaning the holiness of God is overwhelming to them; and with two they did fly - they stayed in their position, or their ranking. It tells us we get access to the unsearchable riches of who Jesus is; we get access to the riches of His glory.

Romans 9:23 – “…that He might make known the riches of His glory, or His majesty on the vessels of mercy He prepared beforehand for glory”.

Access to the riches of His mercy and love. Notice what it says are riches: the unsearchable riches of Christ - the riches of His glory, the riches of His mercy and love.

Ephesians 2:4 – “God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love He loved us. The riches of His grace, He has raised us up and made us seated together in heavenly places in Jesus Christ, in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace”.

Notice there, the ‘riches’ are around spiritual things, which have magnificent value: access to the riches of His wisdom & knowledge.

Colossians 2:2-3 – “…that our hearts may be encouraged, and knit together in love, and attaining to all the riches of full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, of the Father and of Jesus Christ, in whom are hidden all the riches of wisdom and knowledge”.

Solomon had been taught by his father, who was a man who walked with God, and his father taught him. In Proverbs 2, it's Solomon speaking to his son, and he says: “son, now listen to the teaching of your father, for my father taught me”. Then he began to talk about the value of wisdom, and he says: “wisdom is the principle thing, and in all your wisdom, get understanding”. God spoke to Solomon, and said: what is it you want? I'll give you anything you want! He said: “give me an understanding heart to discern, I want wisdom”. God was pleased with that, because He's looking for eternal riches - and then God gives him everything else. He said: because you didn't ask for power over your enemies, or riches, or any of these other things… I'll give you all of that!

When you have wisdom and understanding, everything else comes to you. So often, we put our value on what we consider riches: gold and silver, a bank account, a boat, a house and all those things - those are temporary, they pass away; they need maintenance, they disappear. He said: there's other riches, other things, which are eternal riches; wisdom and knowledge are eternal riches. In Colossians 2:3 it talks about Christ, “…in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”. You want wisdom, you want a deeper relationship with Jesus. He's the source of wisdom, the source of knowledge.

Wisdom - by understanding, we get to see how things are. We gain insight to the reality of what things are. Wisdom - we know exactly what to do. There are many scriptures in Proverbs about wisdom.

Proverbs 3:19 – “the Lord, by wisdom, founded the earth; and by understanding, He established the heavens. Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding”

Proverbs 3:13 – “Her proceeds are better than profits of silver, and her gain better than fine gold, she's more precious than rubies, of all the things you may desire cannot compare with her”.

Proverbs is full of statements about how wisdom and understanding are the true riches. If you've got those, everything else you need will come out of that. We have access to the riches of revelation, from Jesus.

Psalm 119:72 – “the law of Your mouth (revelation) is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver”.

David is writing, and he's saying: I’ve got lots of gold and silver, but what's more important is revelation, hearing from God personally, because all I have has come out of that. I encourage you to go through the verses around true riches; and then start to look at your own heart. Is your heart set on intimacy with the Lord, and knowing Jesus Christ, in whom are all the riches? Is your heart set on wisdom and on understanding? Is your heart set on the pursuit of those things, or is your heart set on the pursuit of other things? If you get wisdom and understanding, then many other things come to you, or are attracted to you, in life.

The Bible tells us of several ways we can lay up treasures in heaven. You can look at the scriptures on it, but prayer is one. Jesus taught in Matthew 6, that with Prayer - God will reward us. Fasting - God will reward us. Giving - God will reward us. Treasure in heaven! Kindness to the poor - God will reward us. Loving people with no agenda - God will reward us. Faithfulness (Luke 16) - God will reward us. Enduring persecution - God will reward us. Sacrifice, laying down your life to service - God will reward us. Worship lifestyle - God will reward us. You can find the scriptures… all these things give us access to the riches of heaven. Every time you pray, you can access the presence of God and lay up treasures in heaven. You lay up an access to God's resources coming and manifesting in the earth.

The last one I want to look at tonight, and is the area #8, Vindication. Jesus will vindicate us, for following and obeying Him. So what does vindicate mean? It means to clear of accusation, blame, suspicion, doubt. It means to defend you - to insist you are recognised, or to validate you. To clear you of accusation, or blame, or suspicion, take away all doubt - it’s got supporting proof. It means to defend you; insist that you're recognised. It means: to demonstrate, or prove, your value; to justify you.

Revelation 3:9 – “I will make those who persecuted you come and worship before your feet and know I have loved you”.

Frequently during life, Christians who are following the Lord sincerely and deeply suffer misunderstanding. We get falsely accused; rejected; ridiculed for our lifestyle; ridiculed because we don't do what everyone else does, or because of our choices and our values. Part of the suffering that we have, is you can't vindicate yourself; you can't prove that you're right. All you can do is let the fruit be shown over time - but in the end God will vindicate us. Christ will openly vindicate the godly choices you make. Your lifestyle, your choices, He will honour you for what you've chosen to do, in following Him.

1 Peter 4:3-5 – “The time is past enough for doing what the unsaved Gentiles do, living in the course of sensuality, lusts and drunkenness; in connection with this the unbelievers are resentful, surprised you not think like them, value their values, or run with them in the same excesses of dissipation, immoral freedom. They criticise, abuse and ridicule, make fun of you. But they will have to give an account of him who's ready to judge, and pass sentence on the living and the dead”.

As a believer you suffer ridicule, misunderstanding, abuse, and all kinds of accusations, mistreatment, and hardship. However, those who do that, will give account to the Lord, and He will vindicate you. “I will make them know I have loved you”. One of the things that God plans to do is, He wants to make everyone know how deeply He loves you, because of the walk you've had. Jesus said: I will make them know. He Himself will vindicate you, before those who gave you such a hard time. “Those who honour Me, I will honour them”. God has His own way of doing that. As we've honoured Jesus in our lifestyle, and gone through suffering, then He will in His coming again, will honour us before all people.

John 17:23 – “I in them, and you in Me, that they may be perfect in one, that the world may know You sent Me, and have loved them as You've loved Me”.

God will make it clear to everyone, the high value He places on those who follow Him and who serve Him, who give honour to Him. He says: “I will make them come and worship at your feet”, and Jesus will manifest His love, and vindicate us before those who have persecuted, opposed us, and falsely criticised us. If you love someone deeply, you desire to vindicate them, if they're being badly treated. For example, when Saul was persecuting the church, he had an encounter with Jesus, and Jesus said: “Saul, Saul, how come you're persecuting Me”? Jesus identifies so strongly with His people, that when He confronted Saul, He said: you're persecuting Me! “When you do it to the least of My brethren, you're doing it to Me.”

When people persecute you, mistreat you, misunderstand you, whatever, they're doing that to the Christ in you, and Christ Himself will come and stand on your behalf. In this age, it doesn't always look like God has vindicated us, but in the coming age He will do exactly that - He will vindicate us.

Isaiah 45:14 – “They shall come over to you, and they shall be yours; they shall walk behind you; they shall come, they shall bow down to you. They will say: surely God is in you, there is no other. They will bow the knee to Jesus, in the presence of the people they persecuted”.

Isaiah 60:14 – “The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bowing to you; those who despised you shall fall prostrate at the soles of your feet, and call you The City of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One. Whereas you've been forsaken and hated, so no man went through you, I will make you an eternal excellence, a joy of many generations”.

God is promising to bring honour to His people of Israel, and honour to His people who have faithfully served Him.

At the end time, no matter how people have thought, and responded to Jesus, the Bible is very clear: “every person will bow their knee to Jesus”.

Philippians 2:10-11 – “At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow in heaven and earth, every tongue confess that He is Lord”.

To bow the knee means to humble yourself; and admit to His kingly honour and glory. No matter how unbelievers rage, no matter how they abuse and blaspheme, and say all kinds of things; attack Christians; attack the church… at the end, all shall bow before Jesus - because of His authority and His majesty will be irresistible.

Psalm 102:15 – “All the nations shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth Your glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion or His people, He will appear in His glory”.

Psalm 102:22 – “When the peoples are gathered together, and the kingdoms come, to serve the Lord”.

Jesus will be vindicated before all men, and those who have identified with Him in their serving Him will also be vindicated.

In the story today, we've covered a lot of ground…

1) We've seen how Jesus has promised Praise & Honour; that where we're dishonoured, where people have rejected us, and spoken against us… God Himself will bestow honour on us, that will be visible, tangible, recognised by everyone - and there's a pathway to that. The pathway to that honour is: serving, and humility.

2) We saw in the study how God offers Treasures & Riches in Heaven. They are the true treasures, and these are riches that come out of the knowledge and intimacy with Jesus Christ. These are the treasures of Eternal Intimacy, Eternal Honour, and Eternal Authority, that God alone can give.

3) Finally, we saw that God will vindicate us, in every place where our choices have been rejected, mocked, ridiculed. Where our lifestyle has been ridiculed, God will honour us, and point out before people that these were godly decisions, and they brought honour to Him. What an amazing prize! What rewards God has, for those who love Him!

There are a few challenges to think about…

1) What did God really touch you with today; and what do you need to do, to respond to that?

2) Is there any area you need to let go seeking honour of people, and fearing rejection? Is there some area you need to face that you've tried to get approval of men, and now you need to actually repent of that, and bring that to the cross, and say: God, I just want to honour You. I want You to be honoured in all I do.

3) Is there some area where you need to change your focus, and set it on eternal riches? Is there some area related to the management of riches and resources, where you need to then say: I've got to bring this into kingdom alignment?

4) Finally, are there any areas where you tend to want to vindicate, or prove you're right - where you just need to let it go, and let God do that?

God bless you. It’s been a great study, and we'll share a bit more on this area of Eternal Rewards. God bless.

Summary Notes

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ER7: Honour, Treasure and Vindication

I. Introduction

1. Jesus Taught about Eternal Rewards

* Jesus taught directly or through parables the reality of Eternal rewards, and the need to pursue them

* “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”(Mat.16:27)

2. Three Main Categories of these Many Rewards

* There are very many different rewards mentioned in the Bible, especially in the Book of Revelation

* These different rewards can be understood most easily under three different headings.

(i). Eternal Intimacy: Rewards that signify much deeper intimacy with God

(ii). Eternal Authority: Rewards that signify much greater responsibility and authority

(iii). Eternal Glory: Rewards that signify special honour and distinction

* These different rewards correspond to God’s Sonship design for each of us

3. Sonship Design

* Sonship will be the subject of a further series of studies.

* Here are some Key Concepts of Sonship Design. Each relates closely to a Category of Eternal Reward

Joh 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Joh 17:4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.

Joh 17:5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Joh 17:6 "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, you gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.

* Once we are born again into the Family of Our Father we have three key area of function as Sons

(i). Intimacy

Joh 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

We are called to ongoing intimacy with our Heavenly Father and with Jesus Christ who represents Him

Intimacy results in impartation of the very life of God into our spirit

(ii). Assignment

Joh 17:4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.

A son in the Bible means a “ Builder of the Father’s House”

We each have a personal assignment to complete to bring honour to our Father, and to develop faithfulness, and fruitfulness

(iii). Transformation

Joh 17:6 "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world.

To “manifest your name” means to accurately represent the character and nature of God as a Son

Each Son is called to accurately represent what their Father is like, to represent Him on earth

This requires that we embrace the work of personal transformation to become like Christ (Rom.8:29)

* Each of these three functions interact with the others like interlocking circles. All are necessary for balance and maturity

II. Reward 6: Praise and Honor

1. We were Created for Great Honor

* “Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, You are very great: You are clothed with honor and majesty,” (Ps.104:1)

* “The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD is clothed, He has girded Himself with strength.” (Ps.93:1)

* We were made in the image of God who is full of Glory and Honor and Majesty and Power

* We were created to have Glory and Honor and act as Gods Sons and Representatives

* “What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet,” (Ps.8:4-6)

* “Crowned” - to put upon him the royal headdress of sovereignty

* “Glory” - The shining nature of God

* “Honor” - splendor, majesty, beauty, magnificence, sovereign power and dignity

2. Believers will Receive Different Realms of Praise and Honor

* “Therefore the LORD God of Israel says: 'I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever.' But now the LORD says: 'Far be it from Me; for those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” (1Sam.2:30)

God reveals that He will honor those who honor Him

* “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God” (1Cor.4:5)

“Praise” …To commend, to approve,

God looks upon the hearts of men and not on their outward actions or appearance (1Sam.16:7)

God evaluates the heart and motives of people that are unseen by others, but are clearly visible to Him

God will praise and honor those who are worthy of it in proportion to how deserving they are

* “His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.” (Mat.25:21)

The faithful servant receives praise and approval, as well as reward for his labor …”ruler over many things”

3. Some will Receive Great Honor

* Solomon Received Great Honor

1Ch 29:25 So the LORD exalted Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel, and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel.

Solomon pleased The Lord and he bestowed upon him great royal majesty beyond what had ever been seen

God can bestow great honor upon us while we live on earth

* By far the Greatest Honors are Eternal - reserved the the Millennial Kingdom and the ages beyond

* In that Kingdom there will be “ small and great”, “least and greatest”…ie different levels of Honor

* “Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. “ (Mat.5:19)

* “But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Mat.23:11)

* “Then a voice came from the throne, saying, "Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!" ‘ (Rev.19:5)

* “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” (Rev.3:21)

4. Jesus Himself Received Great Honor

Jesus was Honored on Earth by His Father

* “And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, "You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased." (Lk.3:22-24)

* Jesus received Praise and Honor from His Father in the presence of people

Jesus was Honored before His Disciples

* Jesus also received majesty, honor and praise from God the Father in the presence of three disciples.

* “While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!" (Luke9:34-35)

* This was a glimpse or preview of the Glory He would receive as a reward and honor for His sacrifice

* “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain” (2Pet.1:16-18)

* “and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.” (Mat.17:2)

Jesus will return with Great Honor and Majesty

* “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,

and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil.2:8-11)

* “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.” ( Heb.2:9)

5. Jesus Promised His Followers Honor

Jesus Promise of Honor to His Disciples

* "But you are those who have continued with Me in My trials.

And I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Lk.22:28-30)

* Jesus promised a place of Intimacy, Honor and Authority in His Coming Kingdom for faithfully following Him

Jesus Promised Honor to All who Follow Him

* “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor”(Jn.12:26)

* ‘Anyone”…..Jesus also promised Honor to all who choose to follow Him

* “Serve”…….to do Acts or Works of service to Jesus and on His behalf as His representative

* “Follow”….to “follow” a Rabbi meant to accompany him, copy his teaching lifestyle, become like his Rabbi and then do the same works as his Rabbi

* It is not enough to serve Jesus, we must follow Him and embrace being transformed to be like Him

* Jesus promises two rewards for faithfully following Him

a. “With me where I am” - Having the same place of relational intimacy that Jesus has with His Father

b. “My Father will Honor” - God the Father will bestow Eternal Honor upon us

* God The Father will compensate us for the suffering, loss, hardship we have endured in following Jesus by conferring great honor upon us…far beyond anything that we suffered or lost

* “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1Pet.1:6-7)

* “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” (Rev.3:21)

6. We Must All Choose Between the Honor of God or of Men

The Culture of Jesus Day was an Honor /Shame Culture

* Honor was the main commodity to be desired in the Middle East culture of Jesus day

* About 70% of all cultures in the world are driven by the pursuit of Honor and Fear of Shame or “loss of face”

* Honor was the value or level of approval that the community placed upon a person

* Honor was ascribed according to Family of Origin, Courage in Battle, Generosity to the Poor, Position or Rank

* The whole culture system, socials, religious and political, was built around the pursuit of honor of men

7. Jesus Rejected the Honor System of the Culture

* "I do not receive honor from men.” (Jn.5:41)

‘Receive”……to take or claim for yourself,

* “Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone. (Jn.6:15)

* Jesus rejected their desire to exalt him and give him a place of prominence

* Jesus was motivated by love for His Father and had no agenda to seek the recognition, approval or honor of men.

* This heart purity from pride and ego, made Him free to declare the truth boldly regardless of whether men were offended or not

* Joh 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

* Joh 6:66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.

8. Jesus Rejected Self Promotion, Honoring yourself

* Jesus answered, "If I honor Myself, My honor is nothing. It is My Father who honors Me, of whom you say that He is your God” (Jn.8:54)

* The Pharisees constantly did all their works to be seen and honored by men

* Jesus taught that creating your own honor counts for nothing eternal

* “Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, But who can find a faithful man? (Prov.20:6)

9. Seeking Honor from Men undermines Faith and Trust in God’s Provision

* “How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?” (Jn5:44)

* There is an honor that comes from men (temporary) and there is an honor that comes from God(Eternal)

* Seeking or pursuing recognition and honor from men undermines faith in God as the source

* Gal.1:10 “Am I nowN1trying to win the favor and approval of men, or of God? Or am I seeking to please someone? If I were still trying to be popular with men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ”

* Jesus taught we are to seek the honor that comes from God alone and is eternal

* This requires a life of faith…..trusting God is a “ Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”

* Heb.11:6. “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”

10. Jesus Taught the Honor System of His Kingdom

* Mat 20:25 But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them.

Mat 20:26 Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.

Mat 20:27 And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—

Mat 20:28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

* “Lord over”………………to hold in place of subjection

* Exercise authority”….to wield full power or privilege over,

* Jesus identified the world honor system …pride based desire for position, power, control, privilege

* He rejected that system and taught Kingdom greatness and honor is given by God and comes through humility and serving

* Humility and sacrificial serving are core characteristics of the kingdom of God

III. REWARD #7: Treasure and Riches

1. Jesus Called us to Pursue Treasures in Heaven

Mat 6:19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal;

Mat 6:20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Mat 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Luke 16:11 Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?

Mat 19:21 Jesus said to him, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."

* “Lay up” - (Gk. Thesaurizo) to amass, to gather up, to accumulate, to store up

* “Treasures” - (Gk. Thesaurus) deposits, wealth, substance, valuable goods that can be exchanged

* Earthly treasure: Suffers corruption from nature and requires guarding from thieves i.e. No Security

(i). People seek for riches all their life and never find them.

(ii) People who become rich worry about losing their riches. (Mat.6.19)

(iii) People tend to place their trust in riches rather than God. (1Tim.6:17)

(iv) People who become rich tend to look down upon others. (1Tim.6:17)

(v) Your heart becomes preoccupied and attached to the things that you place value upon. (Mat.6:21)

* Treasure in heaven:

* (i) Jesus directs followers to pursue “treasure in heaven” - make eternal things the focus of our heart’s pursuit

Mat 6:20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven

* (ii) Paul also directs us to set our affection and thoughts upon seeking Treasure in Heaven

Col 3:1 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.

Col 3:2 Set your mind (affection) on things above, not on things on the earth.

* (iii) Jesus Describes Treasure in heaven as True Riches

Luke 16:8 So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.

Luke 16:9 "And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.

Luke 16:10 He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.

Luke 16:11 Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?

Luke 16:12 And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own

* “True” - real , genuine, authentic, the opposite to counterfeit, imaginary

Note Jesus teaching:

* There are riches which are true riches - eternal and reserved in heaven for us

* Faithfulness with money and resources qualifies or disqualifies us from “True Riches”

* Jesus commended the steward for acting wisely - planning ahead for his personal future

“Commended” - to applaud, approve, praise for his actions

* We are to think and plan ahead with eternity and Eternal Reward in mind…using resources to advance the Kingdom

* What then are True Riches?

2. Heaven is Full of Gold and Precious stones

Rev 21:18 - The construction of its wall was of jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass.

Rev 21:19 - The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones: the first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald,

Rev 21:20 - The fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.

Rev 21:21 - The twelve gates were twelve pearls: each individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

* Heaven abounds in gold and precious stones

The City of New Jerusalem is pure gold

The street of the city is pure gold, like transparently glass

The foundations of the city are adorned with precious stones

The gates are made of twelve pearls

* These Riches may include Gold and precious stones and dwellings

* Since gold and precious stones abound in Heaven what then are the True Riches?

3. What is Treasure in Heaven?

i. Treasure in Heaven refers to Eternal Intimacy, Eternal Authority, and Eternal Glory

* “Treasure” - Wealth, something of great price or value, something rare or precious

* The greatest treasures are not the things that we can see and touch but things unseen in Heaven

ii. Precious stones were given as awards to honor those who offered courageous service to the community or in battle.

* Rev 2:17 - "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it."

* “White” - (Gk. Leukosis) - light, bright, brilliant, dazzling white, like a diamond

* This stone was like receiving the Gold Medal at the Olympics with the name recorded on it

* This white stone symbolised honor and gave them admission to special events and special privileges

* The new name symbolises our new standing and deeper relationship with Jesus

* The “Hidden Manna” - refers to being able to enter the throne room of God and receive Face to face revelation from Him

iii. Treasure in Heaven refers to Privileged Access to Jesus Christ

Access to The Unsearchable Riches of Christ

* Eph. 3:8 To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,

* “Unsearchable”…. means “not tracked out...untraceable, past finding out, unsearchable.”3

* Given that the riches of Christ are far beyond the human brain’s ability to comprehended by reasoning, logic, and intelligence, this mystery can only be known by revelation.

* Unsearchable means you can search them out—the Bible tells us to— but you will never get to the bottom of it. You will never exhaust the fulness of the splendour and magnificence of Jesus

* Around the throne of God, the angels cover their eyes, the seraphim, the four living creatures. They see the glory of God, and they are overwhelmed. They cover their eyes and cry out, “Holy, holy, holy!”.

* We will see Him face to face but will never exhaust the glory and the beauty of our God ever.

Access to The Riches of His Glory

Rom 9:23 - and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory.

Access to The Riches of His Mercy and Love

* Eph. 2:4 - But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

* The Riches of His Grace

Eph. 2:6 - and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

Eph. 2:7 - that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Access to Riches of His Wisdom and Knowledge

Col 2:2 - That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,

Col 2:3 - In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Pro 3:19 - The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; By understanding He established the heavens;

Pro 3:13 - Happy is the man who finds wisdom, And the man who gains understanding;

Pro 3:14 - For her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, And her gain than fine gold.

Pro 3:15 - She is more precious than rubies, And all the things you may desire cannot compare with her.

Access to The Riches of Personal Revelation from Jesus

* Psa. 119:72 - The law of Your mouth is better to me Than thousands of coins of gold and silver.

(iv) How do We lay up Treasures in Heaven?

* Prayer (Mat.6:5-6)

* Fasting ( Mat.6:16-18)

* Giving Finances (Mat.6:1-4)

* Kindness to the Poor (Lk.14:12-14)

* Loving People without agenda (Lk.6:27-35)

* Faithfulness (Lk.16:10-13, 2Tim.4:7-8)

* Enduring Persecution (Rom.8:17, Lk.6:22-23)

* Sacrifice…Laying down life to serve (Mat.16:24-27)

* Worship Lifestyle (Col3:22-24, Jn.4:24)

IV. Reward 8: Vindication

1. Rev.3:9 “I will make those [persecutors]...worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you.”

2. Jesus will Vindicate us for Following and Obeying Him

* What does “Vindicate” Mean?

To clear of accusation, blame, suspicion, or doubt with supporting arguments or proof

To defend, maintain, or insist on the recognition of

To demonstrate or prove the value or validity of; justify

* During their life following Christ believers suffer misunderstanding, false accusations, and rejection. They are frequently ridiculed for their lifestyle and godly living

* Part of the suffering is being unable to vindicate or prove self right

* Christ will openly vindicate our godly choices and lifestyle and honor us for them

* 1Pe 4:3 For the time already past is [more than] enough for doing what the [unsaved] Gentiles like to do--N1living [unrestrained as you have done] in a course of [shameless] sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and wanton idolatries.

1Pe 4:4 In [connection with] all this, they [the unbelievers] are resentful and surprised that you do not [think like them, value their values and] run [hand in hand] with them into the same excesses of dissipation and immoral freedom, and they criticize and abuse and ridicule you and make fun of your values.

1Pe 4:5 But they will [have to] give an account to Him who is ready to judge and pass sentence on the living and the dead. (Ampl)

3. I will make them...to know that I have loved you.

* The Father will reveal to the nations the fact that He loves His people.

* “I will make them know” Jesus will act on behalf of those who have loved Him to vindicate them

* 1Sa. 2:30 Therefore the LORD God of Israel says: those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.

* As we have honored Him He will honor us before those that rejected Christ

* On the last day, unbelievers will witness Jesus’ love towards the people they persecuted.

* The Father will openly manifest His love for His children before the nations.

* Jn.17:23 “I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

4. I will make them come and worship before your feet.

* Jesus will manifest His great love for those who remain faithful to Him, by vindicating them before the unbelievers who persecuted them.

* When you love someone deeply you desire to vindicate them if they are being mistreated.

* The persecutors of the saints at Philadelphia will worship Jesus at the feet of those they persecuted.

* Unbelieving false Jews, along with the unbelieving Gentiles, will bow before the true believers in the millennial kingdom

* Isa 45:14 Thus says the LORD: "The labor of Egypt and merchandise of Cush And of the Sabeans, men of stature, Shall come over to you, and they shall be yours; They shall walk behind you, They shall come over in chains; And they shall bow down to you. They will make supplication to you, saying, 'Surely God is in you, And there is no other; There is no other God.' "

* They will bow their knee to Jesus in the presence of the people they persecuted in the first century.

* Isa 60:14 Also the sons of those who afflicted you Shall come bowing to you, And all those who despised you shall fall prostrate at the soles of your feet; And they shall call you The City of the LORD, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

* Isa 60:15 "Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, So that no one went through you, I will make you an eternal excellence, A joy of many generation

5. Every person will bow their knee to Jesus on the last day.

* At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth...that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord... (Phil. 2:10-11)

* “Bow the Knee” - Humble self before Jesus Kingly glory and majesty

Psa. 102:13 - You will arise and have mercy on Zion; For the time to favor her, Yes, the set time, has come.

Psa. 102:14 - For Your servants take pleasure in her stones, And show favor to her dust.

Psa. 102:15 - So the nations shall fear the name of the LORD, And all the kings of the earth Your glory.

Psa. 102:16 - For the LORD shall build up Zion; He shall appear in His glory.

Psa. 102:17 - He shall regard the prayer of the destitute, And shall not despise their prayer.

Psa. 102:18 - This will be written for the generation to come, That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD.

Psa. 102:19 - For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; From heaven the LORD viewed the earth,

Psa. 102:20 - To hear the groaning of the prisoner, To release those appointed to death,

Psa. 102:21 - To declare the name of the LORD in Zion, And His praise in Jerusalem,

Psa. 102:22 - When the peoples are gathered together, And the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.

* Jesus will be vindicated before all men when He appears in Glory and majesty to establish His Kingdom

V. Personal Reflection and Action

* What has the Holy Spirit spoken to you during this study?

* What response do you need to make to this revelation?

* Where do you need to let go seeking the honor of men and fearing rejection?

* Where do you need to focus on seeking the True Riches?

* Where do you need to let go seeking to vindicate yourself before men?

The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 1 (8 of 12)

Sun 30 Aug 2020  « Back to Top

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Every believer must appear before the Judgment seat of Christ to give account of our life and stewardship service. Our life and works will be examined to establish what rewards we will qualify for.

For some believers this will be a time of celebration, joy and eternal honour. For other believers it will come as a shock as they discover they have wasted the life and opportunities entrusted to them, and that their life and works fail to qualify and they are excluded from the rewards that Jesus had prepared for them. Such believers are saved, but forfeit rewards in the coming Kingdom of Jesus.

Welcome to our study in the Eternal Rewards, and we're looking at Study #8: The Judgement Seat of Christ.

It's very important for us to understand how our lives are going to be evaluated. What is it that God is looking for, when God is looking to reward us? Because it's so important, I want to spread this over a couple of teaching sessions.

The Bible talks about two places of judgement. It talks about firstly The Judgement Seat of Christ; and secondly, at the end of the Book of Revelation, it talks about the Great White Throne Judgement (or the Final Judgement), where believers and unbelievers are judged, and eternal destinies are worked out. The Judgement Seat of Christ is different to that, and this is the focus of today's study.

So firstly, every believer, every Christian, every follower of Christ, has an appointment at The Judgement Seat of Christ.

Romans 14:10-12 – “We shall all stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ. Each of us shall give account of himself to God.”

2 Corinthians 5:10 – “For we must all appear before the Judgement Seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad”.

Those are the two key scriptures that refer to the Judgement Seat of Christ. There are some other scriptures in the New Testament that talk about the Judgement Seat, referring to the same thing (the same word is used), but these are the two scriptures that refer to the Judgement Seat of Christ. Notice it says: “we shall all stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ; and in 2 Corinthians 5: “we must all appear before the Judgement Seat of Christ”. Every believer must stand before the Judgement seat of Christ - there's no exceptions. It's an appointment every believer will keep.

You have ahead of you, an appointment; I have ahead of me, an appointment. It's an appointment I have no way of avoiding. It's an appointment where I stand before Christ, at the Judgement Seat, so we do want to understand that. Every believer will stand before the Judgement seat of Christ, and the issue there is not sin. The issue is reward. The issue is: giving account of my stewardship, as a believer, after I got saved; or putting it another way: what have I done, to follow Christ and advance His kingdom, in the years that have gone by since I first made a decision to receive Christ. The Judgement Seat of Christ is a place of rewards. Each believer will be rewarded, or they will experience a loss, and this depends on how they lived their life as a believer. Jesus will evaluate our lives on what we've done.

“Each of us shall give account of himself to God, each one receives done in the body according to what he's done, good or bad”. At the judgement seat, we give account - we're called to stand before the Lord, and He will look at every aspect of our life: our service, what we have done - and why we have done it, what motivated us. He's not looking to punish us; what He's looking for is: have we done anything that would qualify for Eternal Rewards? Jesus will evaluate our lives, based on what we have done.

2 Corinthians 5:10 – “we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one way receive things done in the body, according to what he has done”.

The word ‘done’ there is the Greek word ‘prasso’ - it means to practice, or perform repeatedly, or habitually. It's not talking about a single action in our life; it's talking about what have been the habits, the practices - what has been built into our lifestyle? Sometimes as believers, we can get preoccupied with the single things that are happening - with a decision that was a bad decision, or a good decision; but what God is looking at is: the practice - what we have performed repeatedly, which tells much about the condition of our heart inside. Every believer then, has an appointment at the judgement seat of Christ.

Secondly, what is the judgement seat of Christ, what exactly is it? The word that's used there is called ‘bema’, and it's often translated as ‘Judgement Seat’, but it's used in the gospels, and the Book of Acts, in two different ways. Firstly, it was the raised platform, where a Roman magistrate or ruler sat and made decisions or passed sentences. The ‘bema’ is literally the bema seat, or the bema platform - an elevated platform, where a judge sat, and made decisions or passed a sentence. We see that in John 19:13, and in the Book of Acts, where someone sat in judgement; it's a seat where legal decisions are made.

The second use of it (the most common use of it), is a platform where the judge sat to evaluate the athletic contests, like the Olympic Games. In the public games, the contestants would compete for the prize under the scrutiny of judges, and they would make sure that every rule of the contest was obeyed. It was an elevated platform, the ‘bema seat’, and they would observe: how each runner ran his race; did they obey the rules? Did they stick within the rules; or are they going to be disqualified? As you can imagine, if you're in Olympic Games, then someone is evaluating your performance; and if you break the rules, then you're disqualified - even if you ran what appeared to be a good race. So choosing that kind of image, we're all called to run a race. We're all in a spiritual race of sorts. We're all in a spiritual fight; a spiritual journey; and at the end of the journey, then we are evaluated on how we've run our race, how we've fought our fight, what we've done on our journey.

Paul wrote about that. In the public competitions, what would happen is, the victor who had won (or participated), and if he'd obeyed the rules and won, was led to the bema platform, and a laurel wreath was put upon his head, as a sign of victory. The Bible is using this imagery, of people who have been in a contest, a competition - they've been surrounded by people watching them, and now they are they going to be acknowledged with a reward. There are two scriptures written by Paul about this…

2 Timothy 2:4 – “No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of life, that he may please him who has listed him as a soldier”.

2 Timothy 2:5 – “Likewise, if anyone competes in athletics, he's not crowned unless he competes according to the rules”.

Paul is talking about our journey as being a ‘warfare’, where we can't get entangled with things that everyone else gets their life entangled with. We must be focussed on pleasing the Lord, that we may please him, who has enlisted him as a soldier. You and I are in a warfare - we're part of the army of God; we've been enlisted by Jesus Christ, when we got born again; and our goal is to please Him, and the only kind of warfare that pleases, is the one where we engage, and are victorious. Anyone who competes in athletics, is not crowned, unless he competes according to the rules. Paul makes it very clear - our life is like a fight; and our life is like a race. At the end of his life, he was able to say:

2 Timothy 4:7 - “I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, I have fought the good fight, and now is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, not only for me but also for all who love His appearing”.

He's using the image of a fight, a spiritual battle, a spiritual warfare, a long warfare - more like a military campaign over the course of our life, and there's a reward to be received for successfully completing the campaign. He uses the illustration of a race we run - we must stick to the rules, and run the race properly, and there's a prize to be won. In 1 Corinthians 9 he talks about it again in terms of the race…

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 – “Don't you know that those who run in a race, everyone runs, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it, obtain the prize. Everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown. We do it for an imperishable crown. So I run, not with uncertainty. I fight, not as one who beats the air. I discipline my body and bring to subjection, lest when I preach to others I myself should be disqualified”.

Notice there, he raises that, even as an apostle, even as someone who laboured, and worked, and served the Lord, he's saying that I still need to keep my life managed. I need to discipline my body, so it doesn't run my life. He said: I need to keep my life in order; and if I don't, I could be disqualified! The word ‘disqualified’ literally means: to be not approved of; to have failed, or not passed the test.

The Bema Seat, or the Judgement Seat, then refers to every believer appearing before Christ, to have his life and works evaluated; to determine: do you qualify for eternal rewards? It is the place of evaluation, where you receive reward (or you receive loss) - and this is one of the most important teachings, that we need to have as a foundation for our life: understanding the reality of Eternal Rewards, Eternal Intimacy, Eternal Authority, and ruling with Christ, and expanding His kingdom, Eternal Glory. These are laid out in many places in the scripture, and the Judgement Seat, or the Bema Seat of Christ, is the place where we will meet with Him. Our life, our works are all evaluated; and we either receive reward, or we suffer the loss of reward, which we saw in 1 Corinthians 9.

In the Judgement Seat of Christ, all our works will be tested by fire.

1 Corinthians 3:10-15 – “According to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another one builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds, for no other foundation can anyone lay, than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear, for the Day will declare it. It will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. And if anyone's work which he has built on endures, he will receive reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

He's talking about the evaluation of our works at the Judgement Seat (or the Bema Seat) of Christ. The first thing then is: the foundation laid in every believer is Jesus Christ. The foundation of a building is the unseen structure. It's what the building is constructed upon; a building always rests on a foundation. You start with a foundation, then you build up. The foundation of our faith is Jesus Christ Himself, and the finished work He accomplished on the cross. Our salvation and standing as a child of God is based solely on what Jesus did. Now this is an important truth. This is what you consider a foundational truth; and when this is laid, it never stops being the foundation, but you build upon it.

Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace have you been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast”.

In other places, in Titus for example, God makes it very clear that our salvation experience, our being born again, our being joined to God and becoming a new creation, is not based on any work we do. It's based totally on the work of Jesus Christ, and our willingness to believe and trust at the cross He paid the full price for our salvation. There are no works involved in that; absolutely no works, whatsoever.

Notice it says: “by grace have you been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast”. No works to get saved; salvation comes by putting our trust in what Jesus Christ has done. There's no work you can add to the foundation, to gain more forgiveness, or to gain more acceptance before God; our entrance to heaven, and to eternal life, is not based on any work. Primarily, it's based on the work of Jesus Christ. However, our status and role in the coming kingdom of heaven - that is determined by what we do. The foundation that we have in our life - our relationship with God, is built solely that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for all our sins, was our representative, has offered to us eternal life; “for by grace are you saved through faith”.

The grace is the power of God saving us. He does a work in our spirit, and cleanses, forgives us, gives us positioning and status before God. We're positioned where we can grow as a child of God into full sonship, and into qualification for reward. So, at the Judgement Seat of Christ, at the Bema Seat of Christ, the issue at stake there is not whether you're saved or not. The issue at stake there, because all believers appear there, is: what have you done with your life since you've been saved? What has happened; how have you grown; how have you related to God; how have you served people; how have you advanced the kingdom of God? Those are the questions that He will ask.

So secondly then, each believer is responsible to build his life, and fulfill his assignment from Jesus. You can't put that responsibility anywhere else. Your life is your life. Your assignment is your assignment. God put you in a local church, so that you have a family around you to support you; where you can then have opportunity, and a culture, and environment to grow spiritually. He also calls you to fulfil an assignment. Every believer is entrusted with an assignment in life that's unique to him.

Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are His workmanship…”, meaning that God is constantly working to build and grow you; you are His precious piece of art; He is working on your life; you're not complete yet; “…created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”.

When you create something, you manufacture it for a purpose. It is created with something in mind. It's saying: we're His fine piece of art, His masterpiece, constantly being worked on by God. Your part is cooperating with the process of life transformation - you're responsible for the building of your life. It tells us: we're created in Christ Jesus, for good works. So God has assignments prepared for each one of us. They are uniquely related to our passion; our gifts; where we've come from; our journey; and it says: God prepared those beforehand, that we should walk in them.

They were planned by God, for you to accomplish. You are brought into this world as a gift of God to the world, and you have a work to do, that will represent God, bring blessing to others, and expand His kingdom. It says that we should walk in them. In other words, this is a lifestyle, not just some simple thing, or single action, we do. A similar thing is laid out in Paul's letter to Titus.

Titus 2:14 – “Jesus gave Himself for us…” (that's the work that He did on the cross) “…so that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people”.

Notice there, we see salvation. Jesus gave Himself to redeem us (to pay the full price to rescue us), as it says, “from every lawless deed and to purify Himself His own special people”. Jesus paid a full price - firstly to rescue us, from the power of sin, curses, and demonic spirits; that we might be purified, or set apart or made clean, made holy, to be His special people, and there it is: zealous for good works. Titus 3 also says a similar thing - we are created for good works. God has distinctly designed you, gifted you, and He prepares you, to do some things which are unique through you - to bring blessing to other people, and advance His kingdom. Every person's gifts, and capacities, and life circumstances differ, and so too do our assignments.

Let’s go back to 1 Corinthians 3 again... It says: “If any man builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw”. There are different types of materials we can use to build. You have a building built of wood, or bricks; there are many ways you can build a building. So, in terms of our life, and our ministry, we must choose the materials we use to build. He says: we can build with gold, silver, precious stones - they are building materials that will survive the fire; or we can build with wood, hay, stubble - but if you put a fire to them, are all burned up and consumed; just ashes are left.

Frequently in the Bible, wood is used as a symbol of humanity. When the Bible is talking about people, He uses the word ‘wood’ - it may use the picture of trees, symbolic of people. Wood is symbolic of people; but gold is very symbolic, or used consistently through the Bible, to speak of things which come from heaven, things which are eternal. The city of God is paved with gold. When they made the tabernacle, the ark that would carry the presence of God, it was made of wood overlaid with gold, a picture of Jesus Christ in His humanity, but fully divine.

If it talks about different materials, then it tells us very clearly, that Jesus is not just looking at the works we do. He's also looking at the kind of work, the motivation of our work. People can do things for many different reasons, or motivations. Notice it says: “the fire will try the work” - what sort it is, meaning the quality, or nature of it. So when we come and stand at the Judgement Seat (or the Bema Seat) of Christ, He's going to evaluate: what did you do; and what was the motivation - what was the quality, or the nature, of the work you did?

Jesus will test everyone's work with fire. What does that mean? Generally, in the Bible, the ‘fire of God’ refers to the activity of the Holy Spirit, which exposes and consumes what's of no value. It says: “He will test every man's work with fire”, meaning He will put it through a testing - the Holy Spirit will look at, evaluate. I'm not sure what the testing will literally be like, but it's very clear the testing will reveal every man's work - what sort it is. The word ‘reveal’ means it's the word ‘apocalypto’, meaning: to take the cover off something, and reveal what has been covered or concealed.

Everyone's work will become clear! That word ‘clear’ means: to be plainly recognised; evident; or its true nature revealed. Was it genuine, authentic love; or was there an agenda purpose behind it? We can't tell, when people do things, why they do them. People do things for many different reasons; but when the time of evaluation of works, God wants to see not just what we did, but what sort of work it was. Was it a dead work, or was it living work? What is the quality of the work? It's the Day of the Lord; the coming of the Lord; and it says: The Day shall reveal the work. Everyone's work will become clear - the Day will declare it; or literally, the Day will make something plain, or take the cover off it.

The next thing is: “the fire of God will…” (we believe it refers to the Holy Spirit) “…will test and reveal the quality of every man's work”.

1 Corinthians 4:5 – “Therefore, don't judge anything (or judge nothing) before the time, until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the heart. And then each one's praise will come from God”.

It's saying: “don't judge things before the time” - there is a time when the Lord comes, and He will bring out into the open everything: what people have done; and why they did it. The hidden motivations of the heart will be exposed to view; not to condemn people, but to see is this work a work that is qualifying for reward or not. Any works that originated from a self-centred motivation (full of pride, or there's a hidden ambition, self-promotion) - that will all be exposed; and this was a problem Jesus found with the Pharisees. He said: “when you pray, don't pray like they do - they pray to be seen of men”. Notice the works (they pray), but the motivation is not for the honour of God. It's not for a priestly ministry; it was to be seen by people.

He said: “they have their reward now”. People saw them, and they looked very spiritual - and many people are like that. They can look very spiritual, they can speak very ‘spiritual’; but God looks on the heart, what the true nature of it is. So the hidden motives of the heart will be revealed. In Matthew 6, Jesus is talking about giving. He said: “don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”, meaning: do your work, do your giving secretly – “not like the Pharisees do”. They do it to be seen by men. We can do our works secretly and quietly, out of love, and out of inspiration by the Holy Spirit - being directed by God to do things; or we can do it with a different motivation - the same activity, different motivation. We can do it with a motivation to be recognised, affirmed or celebrated by people - what a great person you are!

God is not just looking at the works. He's also looking at the motivation of the works: are these works of divine origin and nature - gold, silver, precious stones? Are these works of human origin, and human nature - the wood, hay, stubble? Are these works inspired by the Holy Spirit, and with a pure love, with no hidden motive? These are gold, silver, precious stones; or are these works done, and it's just you're trying to get yourself ahead, and trying to impress people - wood, hay, stubble? The Holy Spirit will test and reveal exactly what it is. Works which are evaluated upon whether we're building our own kingdom, or whether we're advancing the kingdom of Jesus, and His concerns. Paul wrote (in Timothy), that “everyone seeks their own, and not the things which be of Jesus Christ”. God is looking for people who have a heart after Him, to bring pleasure to Him, to please Him; and we should, in all that we do, seek to please Him - not please people.

If our works endure Jesus' scrutiny, we receive reward. Also, if they don't endure His scrutiny, then we lose reward. Works that are done out of love for Jesus, that are inspired by the Holy Spirit, and have a pure motive - they're going to be rewarded. He says: “…if our works endure, then we receive reward” - and the Judgement Seat of Christ is exactly that. The Bema Seat is the place of awards. It's the place of Eternal Judgement, the Bible tells us.

Hebrews 6:2-3 talks about the foundational doctrines of Christ, and one if those is Eternal Judgement. The judgement that's made at the Bema Seat of Christ is a final judgement - there's no reversing it! Once the decision is made, you can't make a change in the outcome. Even if you're sorry at that point, it's too late to do anything about it. If we live on earth for 70, 80 years, 90 years, this period passes by very quickly; and everything we do, once we become a believer, start following Christ, is being kept a record of. God keeps a record of it, knows exactly what we've done, and why we've done it - and all of this is laying up either a reward in heaven that accumulates, and qualifies us for reward in eternity.

Or, what we've done has not been of divine nature - we never have changed from a self-centred orientation. Those kinds of works won't receive any reward, won't be acknowledged in any way – they will be burnt! This is very, very significant for us! God's desire is not just that you be saved - that's just the first step. That puts you back into the family of God, but His purpose is that we grow into the image of Jesus Christ. We grow to become like Jesus Christ in our nature - and that requires a daily putting off the self-centred nature, so we can live out of a desire to please God, and out of a relationship with Him.

Our rewards will determine how we spend eternity. This is very important! For all eternity, we will be known by how we lived our life on earth. You can't kind of say: well, I got to the judgement, I got through, and I'm okay - no one will ever know, it's just between me and Jesus. No!

Revelations 13:14 – “Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works follow them”.

“Their works follow them”. In way, it will be acknowledged, for all eternity: the kind of life we have lived on the earth; the way we've honoured Jesus Christ; the character we've developed and formed - our works will follow us! If our works are burned, then we will suffer loss - and we cannot reverse it! If we get disqualified from receiving our Eternal Inheritance - sitting with Jesus on the throne, ruling with Him… there's no way we can change it! These rewards are Eternal, and Irreversible. They determine not just whether you get into heaven, but also: the quality, status, standing that you have in that kingdom; the level of intimacy with Jesus; the level of responsibility and authority; and the level of glory that you carry (we've seen this in the previous studies). If our works don’t endure Jesus' scrutiny, then there's going to be a loss.

The Bema seat, or the Judgement Seat, is the place of reward, or loss of reward; and every believer will stand there. Every believer has the appointment with Jesus; and at that appointment, we will exit that with rewards, where Jesus acknowledges in the most generous, abundant, and totally out of proportion to what we've done way. He will acknowledge what we've done with rewards, which are eternal; or, upon examination, we might find that our works don't qualify.

1 Corinthians 3:15 – “If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as by fire”.

Only believers appear before the Bema Seat of Christ; and at the other side of it, they are saved. The question is: whether their works, after evaluation, qualify for any reward; or whether we will suffer loss. What does it mean, to suffer loss? It means to experience some detriment, or to lose and forfeit what God had prepared for me. Paul talked about it in 1 Corinthians 9:27, where he feared that, having preached to others, he might be disqualified - not approved, or meeting the required standard, or standing up to the test. In the letters to John, John speaks about it too…

1 John 2:28 - “Now little children, abide in Him, that when He appears (that's the coming of the Lord), we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming”.

It tells us there that it's possible to have total confidence, and boldness, and not be at all shamed when He comes; but the opposite is also true - that when He comes, we may lose all our confidence, and may be quite ashamed.

In the Amplified version… 1 John 2:28 – “Now little children, believers or dear ones, remain in Him (or remain in relationship with Him), with unwavering faith, so that when He appears at His return, we may have perfect confidence, and not be ashamed or shrink away from Him at His coming”.

It tells us: “abide in Him”, so we're not ashamed, and draw back, because we're embarrassed about our condition - He warns us about that. The consequences of abiding in Him will be a fruitful, productive life, bringing forth fruit that qualifies for reward; but the result of not abiding in Him means that, at His coming, we will be acutely embarrassed by the kind of life we lived, and what we have to present to Him. That's a huge challenge for us, not to live as lukewarm believers, but to live passionately full on for the Lord.

What does it mean to “abide in Him”? The word literally means ‘remain’, or to ‘closely be connected’, or ‘closely joined’. It means to have fellowship and intimacy with Jesus; to remain in close union with Him. Putting it another way, it means to draw on His life, as the source of our life; and to obey Him, out of the relationship we have with Him.

John 15:4 – “I'm the vine, you are the branches, abide in Me and let My word abide in you, and you'll produce good fruit, fruit that remains”.

‘Abiding’, then, is an issue of personal relationship; and it's also an issue of responsiveness to His words. We abide in Him, and let His word abide in us. To let His Word ‘abide in us’ means that we take seriously what Jesus has to say, and we do the best we can to apply it to our life. If we don't do that, the opposite to that is not abiding - our life with Him is very sporadic, or up and down; and it says: we will be ashamed at His appearing.

‘Ashamed’ means: to experience a loss of honour. When Jesus appears, the revelation of what our life has been like: what we prioritised; what we considered important; why we did things; how we did them; our motivation… when this is all uncovered, we will be aware of our failure to live the life Jesus planned for us, and the enormity of the loss of eternal rewards - of intimacy, honour, glory, and authority.

We will suffer and experience feelings of shame, disappointment, grief – but these will not be permanent. The status will be permanent, but the feelings won't be, because…

Revelations 7:17 – “He will wipe away all tears from their eyes”.

There will be a moment of realisation: of what we have done with our life; the opportunities wasted and lost; the impossibility of now recovering that; and the consequences of what we've lost for eternity. I think there will be immense grief, and immense shame over that. However, the shame and the grief won't last forever. It will just be a thing that happens, and then we will see, as we look at the evaluation, that God is a just God - that He has done what is right, and we will accept His judgement concerning our future.

Wow! That raises then the question… How will Jesus evaluate our works? If you're trying to do this naturally, how long would it take to work out someone's life? This will all happen in just a moment of time for us, because in the realm of the Spirit, time is not there to hinder us in any way. So how will Jesus evaluate our works? Let me share with you four things just related to that…

1) We need to find out what pleases the Lord. Now that you're a believer, one of your roles, your responsibilities, is that you discover what pleases the Lord - because relationships are meant to bring pleasure to us. God designed us, He created all things for His pleasure. God created us for His enjoyment; and so, some things bring God pleasure, and enjoyment. For example, with David… “I delight thy will, oh God” - he delights to bring God pleasure! In God's assessment of David (in Acts), He said: “I have found a man after My own heart, who will fulfil all My will”. God has been looking for someone who has a desire to bring pleasure to Him; and participate, or partner with the Father, in accomplishing His will. So, the first thing is, we need to set the direction of our life to discover what pleases the Lord.

2) Jesus constantly sought to please His Father.

John 8:29 – “He who sent Me, is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him”.

“I always do the things that please Him”. Jesus' whole life was focussed around His Father, and pleasing His Father; and He brought such great pleasure, that on more than one occasion the Father spoke from heaven, saying: “this is My Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”. He brings Me great pleasure. I am delighted in My Son, because of how He lives and what He does. Paul also spoke, and he urged believers that we should seek to find out how to please the Lord. Here's a couple of scriptures, talking about knowing the will of the Lord; and finding out what pleases the Lord…

Ephesians 5:10 – “Don't say you don't know. You've got a Bible and you can pray. Go and find what pleases the Lord”

2 Corinthians 5:9 – “Therefore, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him”.

Jesus modelled a life lived to please His Father. You can live to please yourself; you can live to please people; or you can live to please God. Who is it, that you're living to please? If you live to please God, it will put you in conflict with your own desires at times. It will also put you in conflict with what other people want.

Galatians 1:10 – “If I seek to please men, I cannot be the servant of God”.

If I make it my priority to keep people happy, or to please people, then I won't bring pleasure to God, because I will be in conflict with Him!

3) Pleasing God requires we walk in faith. Pleasing God requires you trust Him.

Hebrews 11:6 – “Without faith, it's impossible to please Him; for he who comes to God must believe He is, and He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”.

Without trusting God, believing, and allowing that belief to be worked out in our life, it's impossible to please Him. Faith is the bottom line! It is crucial then, that I exercise faith; that I live a life of trusting God, hearing God - because faith comes by hearing God.

4) Pleasing God requires we be led by the Holy Ghost.

Romans 8:8 – “So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God”.

Without faith… we cannot please Him; and living in the flesh, living according to our mind, emotions, circumstances… we cannot please God. We must have faith; and we must be led by the Holy Spirit. If you search the Bible, there are a whole number of things which are the will of God, and which please Him if we do them, so I'll leave you to search that out…

The second thing then, related to Jesus evaluating our work, is that God's eternal purpose is the plumb line for evaluating our works. Amos had a prophetic vision…

Amos 7:7 – “Behold, the Lord stood on a wall made with a plumb line, and with a plumb line in His hand”.

A plumb line is a weight attached to the end of a cord, and gravity pulls the weight down, so when you hold the plumb line it goes directly down and gives a vertical line. Plumb lines are used in the construction of buildings, and they judge whether walls are upright or not. God measures the quality and success of our works: do they align with His eternal purpose? Do they align with His standards? God will never deviate from His standard for measuring success, and that is His eternal purpose.

Success can be considered in all kinds of ways - you might have all sorts of ideas of what success is, but real success can only be found in fulfilling God's will for our life. There are several aspects to God's eternal purpose...

1) Jesus Christ will be at the centre of everything in heaven and earth. In Colossians it tells us that Jesus will have the pre-eminence in all things. One part of God's purpose is to bring honour to His Son Jesus Christ, by giving Him pre-eminence over everything. One part of my life is then to be aligned: that in everything, Jesus has pre-eminence.

2) Father is extending His kingdom through a family of overcoming sons - exactly like Jesus Christ. Another aspect of God's eternal purpose is that He is building a family of sons, like Jesus, who will expand His kingdom.

The eternal purpose is that: Jesus Christ will be at the centre of everything, to have pre-eminence and prominence in everything; and God is building us to become just like His Son, which brings Him such pleasure - to work with Him, in expanding His kingdom. That is what God's purpose is!

He's not going to bring blessing on what you think is good, and what you think is right. He's going to bring blessing upon the things which agree with, and align with, with His overall plan; and then His specific plan, for you. In evaluating our works, we need to see that.

3) The next thing we need to see is, the importance of our heart. Most people just look on the outside…

1 Samuel 16:7 – “The Lord said to Samuel: do not look at his appearance, or his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord looks not as man looks, or sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, the Lord looks on the heart.”

Samuel is evaluating the sons - which one of the sons might be the future king, and they looked good; they looked to be qualified. However, God says: don't look externally; don't look at what they appear to be; God looks on the heart. For example, Jesus was in the temple, and He watched the people doing their giving, and He saw that some people put in a lot of money; but He saw another woman, and she put in two little mites, which was just a very small amount of money. He said: “she has given more than all of them”. This one gave out all this money, and she only had two mites; but He said: I weighed up what this meant to them; and for this woman, this is her whole livelihood.

So, you understand then, that being poor, and having few resources, does not disqualify you for great eternal rewards. The wealthy people that had much, and gave much, still didn't in proportion to what they have, give what the little lady gave - she gave her whole life. She had such a love, and a passion for the Lord, that she gave her very best to Him. God looks at what is going on in our heart, in relationship to our activities.

Proverbs 16:2 – “The ways of man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirits or heart”.

We think we're doing well, but God really looks at what's going on in our heart; and the motivation. He looks at what we've done; and also at what has been the driving motivation; the life flow from within it - how much of it has been birthed out of relationship with Jesus, and is an overflow of that relationship; and how much of it has come out of self-centred, or self-promotion, purposes. In all of this, God is using His Son Jesus Christ, as the pattern. If you're going to try to build something, Jesus is the pattern.

Colossians 1:15 – “He's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”.

Jesus is exactly like God, in His nature, character, and His make-up; He's the firstborn of many.

Hebrews 1:3 – “Who being the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person, upholding all things by the word of His power. When He Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of God”.

Jesus is the express image of God. Jesus is the pattern upon which you build your life. If you model your life on other people, they will always let you down; you will always find a measure of disappointment; you will always see them come short. We need to make Jesus Christ the centre - we are following Jesus Christ. Paul said…

1 Corinthians 11:1 - “Follow me, as I follow Christ”.

Notice that, if he wasn't following Christ, then there's no reason to be following him. Often people put too much in men. We tend to make idols out of men. We want people to be perfect, when they're not perfect. The only one that's perfect is Jesus Christ, so build your life on Jesus, the pattern - how does He lead you; what example did He give; what did He teach; what is He saying; and how is He guiding you in all of this? If you do that, you won't get offended when people fail. On our journey, we've seen pastors who were over us, who failed in immorality. We've seen many, many people fail over the years; but it never stopped us pursuing the Lord, and our calling in Him, because our eyes are fixed on Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 12:1-2 – “…let us run with patience the race that's set before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus Christ, who's the author and finisher of our faith…”.

Set your eyes on the Lord!

Acts 4:10-12 - “Let it be known to all of you people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, who God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. This (Jesus) is the stone, which was rejected by the builders, which has become the chief cornerstone. Nor is there salvation in any other, there is no name given under heaven whereby men must be saved”.

Jesus is the chief cornerstone. He was rejected by the religious leaders, who were supposed to be building the people of God; but God has made Him the chief cornerstone.

Isaiah 28:16 – “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He whoever believes on Him will not act hastily”.

A cornerstone was the most important part of the building, because the whole weight of the building rested on that stone; and if it was removed, the structure collapsed. The stone was very important; and the cornerstone was also the keys to keeping the walls straight. When they were building, they would take sightings along the lines of the stones, and they would line all the walls up with the cornerstone. If everything is lined up correctly on the cornerstone, then all the angles will be right, and the building would all meet.

So when it comes to evaluating our works, looking at our works…

1) We need to discover what pleases God, what brings pleasure to Him

2) His eternal purpose is the ‘plumb line’, on which our works are evaluated. God considers the motive of our works; and He also considers how it relates to Jesus Christ - have we been formed to become like Him? Are we operating in sonship, like Jesus did? How much have we been conformed to the image of Jesus Christ?

3) Primarily, He's looking on the heart. He's also looking at: how does this relate to, compare to, and line up with, My eternal purpose; and also to the ‘pattern’ Son, that I put out in front of everyone.

It requires that we commit our lives to a life of intimacy. The first, and most important thing then, is intimacy: intimacy with Jesus - having a surrendered and pure heart. No matter what stage or state you are in, how much wealth you have, or how many gifts you have, every person can commit to intimacy; to develop, cultivate, and grow a surrendered, pure heart, because that's what intimacy does. It develops in us a surrendered and pure heart. Jesus is looking for works that are flowing out of intimacy. He won't overlook anything we do, but what He primarily looks for, are things that come out of a surrendered and a pure heart - works motivated by intimacy with Jesus, and surrender to His spirit, with a pure heart.

What does a ‘surrendered heart’ mean? Your ‘heart’ is your motivation; and ‘surrendered’ means to yield the power or control to someone. In worship, we surrender to Jesus, to His will. It's an expression of humility, humbling yourself before the Lord, to recognise Him. A surrendered and a pure heart is a humble heart; so intimacy with Jesus means: humility; developing a humble heart; a surrendered heart; a pure heart. A ‘pure heart’ means: no hidden self-centred agenda; no hidden expectations behind what we do; no impure motives. A ‘surrendered heart’ means that I'm yielded to Jesus, I've humbled myself, to surrender to Him; and pure heart means that there's no hidden agendas, so what I do is pure.

There's not a mixture in it. God doesn't like mixtures. Sadly, we can be motivated by many reasons other than sacrificial love. Jesus said: it's what's in your heart, that defiles. What comes out of your heart, is what defiles a man. We can have heart motivations that defile. That we can do the right things, but for the wrong reasons, with wrong motivations.

God is weighing up not just what you did, but the ‘why’ you did it - what was driving it. Jesus was moved by love; He was moved by compassion; He was moved by the spirit; He was moved by obedience to God. Whatever Jesus did, flowed out of a heart of love. However, the heart motivations that defile people - there can be many. Let me give you a few...

Some people are motivated by guilt. They've failed somewhere in their life; and a lot of their activities - they look like they're good, they look sacrificial, but they're actually driven by guilt. There's a pressure in their life of guilt, that's motivating the actions.

To some people it could be a false burden of responsibility. Maybe they had a parent fail, who was an alcoholic, or a drug addict, or abandoned the family. The child has stepped up, and felt that, out of fear of what might happen, I need to take on the responsibility; or maybe the parent's put it on them - you've got to be the responsible one. So all their life, they've carried this burden of responsibility, and this in the end makes them ‘rescuer’ in their relationships. They take over things, but not because of love, which would make people responsible for their lives, but out of a sense of responsibility (or fear) of what may happen; so, they end up rescuing people.

For some people, what moves them is the fear of being rejected. They fear that if they don't do it, they will be rejected - they won't be approved of; won't be accepted. This can be a big thing in some families, in some cultures.

For some people, they do it out of duty. When you do things out of duty, you do it because it's the right thing to do; but no one feels the love in it - the job was done, but there's no sense of love. There's no fragrance of Christ in it at all, there's no sense of the presence of God. It was just: I did my duty; I did what I needed to do. No one acting that way produces life; it's just, you did what was right.

Some people do things out of resentment. They're doing it; and they're reluctant to speak up, and out, that they don't want to do it - so they do it with resentment. They do it with a grudge. When people do works that are resentful, the work may look good, but it's got a wrong motivation - there's a polluted river flowing through it!

For some people, they do it because it's a religious work; and sadly, churches are full of religious works, that are completely dead. Religious works are works that are done out of the law; they're done out of obligation, or duty; they're done to please people; they're done out of because I'm afraid of what'll happen – that I might be shamed, or put to shame, if I don't do it. Religious duty, or religious spirit, can put a burden on people, to function and do things; but what they do has got no life in it, and there's no eternal value in it, because it's not motivated by the love of God.

For some people, they're driven by what's called ‘performance orientation’. They've never been affirmed, never been loved; their heart has been broken. Perhaps they were never good enough; and they believe in their heart: nothing I do is good enough. Their approval came when they did something, so their whole life was all about doing, doing, doing, because of a core need in their life, for validation or acceptance, that was never given to them. They're operating out of a broken heart!

Some people can do it out of rejection.

Some people do it out of pride - they want to look good in front of everyone. What they're doing is carefully selected to impress the person who can promote them.

Every one of us have seen those kinds of activities, and the Bible calls them ‘Dead Works’. In Hebrews 6:1-3, the foundation of our faith in Christ, starts with building ‘repentance from dead works’, and then ‘faith towards faith the living God’. We need to repent from dead works. Dead works are works - they're things that people do; but they're not done out of love, or out of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; they're not done out of a pure heart. They're done out of all these wrong heart motivations. When you look at that list of heart motivations, they tell you that the person's heart is broken. They're damaged in their heart, and they need heart transformation.

We saw as we looked at sonship, that intimacy with God is the primary driver of everything, the primary part of our design. Works are part of our design. We all have an assignment. But the third thing is that, God wants to change and transform our heart, to be filled with love; to be healed, and filled with love, so what flows out of our heart into our activities and into our relationship, and into our walk with God, is a flow of love. Only out of intimacy, can we discover what God wants us to do. Only out of intimacy, do we become empowered to do what He calls us to do. Only out of intimacy, do we have encounters with the love of God, that move us to operate out of love.

Intimacy means having a surrendered, and a pure, heart; and Jesus modelled what this is like, and taught it. He surrendered to the Father's will. He taught intimate life, and He's looking for this. Let me give you a few examples…

1) He modelled intimacy with God. Look at Jesus' prayer life...

Mark 1:35 - “Now in the morning, having risen a long way before daylight, He went out and department to a solitary place, and there He prayed”.

There it is - Jesus modelling intimacy. That's why the disciples said: “teach us to pray”; and even in teaching them to pray, Jesus showed them exactly what it means to pray. He said: “Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come; Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”.

Notice He said: “Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name” - that's intimacy. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” - that's a surrendered life. Jesus taught the surrendered life - that we come to God in intimacy; and surrender in humility; and then align with His will. We surrender to His will. Jesus Himself indicated how He surrendered to the Father's will…

John 6:38 – “I've come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me”.

Luke 22:41 – “When He was withdrawn about a stone's throw, He knelt down and prayed, saying Father, if it's Your will take this cup from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Your will be done”.

Notice then, it's about ‘surrender’ and ‘intimacy’. Jesus modelled surrender, intimacy, and humility. He modelled surrender to the Father's will, and then He taught about it. Jesus then looks for works that are motivated primarily by love for Him, and response to His spirit - that's what He's looking for; that's what's bringing Him pleasure. So that has several outcomes…

The first is, we need our own personal relationship with Jesus. You've got to commit time. There’s actually an effort, and a work involved, to build a prayer life. For example, Jesus taught (in Matthew 25:1-13) about the five wise, and five foolish, virgins. They were all virgins, meaning that they were all believers; but five were wise, and five were foolish. All had lamps, with oil, and all of them were waiting for the bridegroom. It says that the foolish said to the wise…

Matthew 25:8 – “Give us your oil, our lamps are going out. And the wise answered, saying: not so, lest there be not enough for us. Go to them that sell and buy for yourself”.

In other words, you need to do the work, you need to pay the price, to have the oil of intimacy.

“…And when they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready, went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut”.

So here is an example of reward and loss. The five foolish virgins, came later, and were denied access. It's talking about the reward Eternal Intimacy, and how important it is, for us to invest in our relationship with Jesus. Don't just get busy doing works. The primary thing is to ensure that the works we're doing are coming out of a relationship with Him. They're empowered out of the overflow of that relationship. Every believer must commit time and energy, and make a sacrifice, to buy the oil of intimacy. This is a work - getting up to pray, spending time fasting, spending time with God… this is an activity. This is a work we do. It's not a burdensome work, but there is a work in it.

Every believer, for example is called to be a priest; and our priesthood is an important part of our kingdom work. What is a priesthood? Priest is a person who comes to God, they offer prayer and worship and intercession, and they get empowered by God with ability, to be able to then bring blessing to others. Every believer is called firstly to a priesthood, to be a minister to God, in worship and in intimacy; and then everything we do flows out of the work we've done in our priesthood. Your priesthood to God is your first ministry, your first work, which empowers and changes everything.

Now the second thing about doing the works is that, without love motivating our works, they have no eternal value. Without the love of God, the agape, the sacrificial love of God motivating our works, they have no value! When God looks at your works, to what level is love motivating them? Now this is perhaps something difficult to get a hold of, so let me show you a scripture.

1 Corinthians 13:2 – “Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have all faith - I could do miracles and all kinds of things - and I could remove mountains, but if have not love I am nothing”.

1 Corinthians 13:3 – “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor (wow, that's sacrificial!), though I give my body to be burned, or sacrificed as a martyr (whoa, that's amazing!), but have not love, it profits me nothing”.

Without love flavouring what we do, it doesn't have any value for us in eternity. We are called to be like our Father, and we're called to love people like our Father loves, with no hidden agenda. Wow, that's challenging isn't it? We must pursue God, and pursue the love of God, and then release that love to others. What is the Great Commandment?

Luke 10:27 – “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your strength; and love your neighbour as yourself”.

Here's another thing then that shows the importance of love… Without love, our works are no different to an unbeliever's works!

Luke 6:32-35 – “If you love those who love you, what credit, or what grace, or what empowerment by God, is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what grace is that to you? What credit, what thanks? Even the sinners do the same. If you lend to those you hope to receive back, what grace is that? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back”.

If you only love people, because they've loved you, then you're acting as a response - there's no big deal about that. You don't have to be saved to do that. If you do good only to the ones who do good to you, you're just repaying them. You know, you're indebted to them, so what credit is that? Even sinners will do that! If you lend, and you always want to get something back, what credit? Even sinners will do the same.

” …but love your enemies, do good and lend, hoping for nothing in return”.

There it is right there: “hoping for nothing in return”. When you love people, when you do good, when you lend or give, there's no hidden expectation that they are indebted to you. The love you've given is totally free of any hidden agendas - otherwise you're trading. You're giving this, but want something back. The nature of God's love is to give, not wanting something back.

Luke 6:35 – “Love your enemies, and do good and lend, hoping for nothing in return. If you'll do that, your reward will be great!”

Not a little reward; a great reward! And, you will be sons of the Most High! Why? Because He's kind to unthankful, and the evil. If we operate like that - loving our enemies; doing good; lending; giving; and serving… without trying to extract a favour, an entitlement, or something back - then God sees it all! God will reward it greatly; and we are establishing that we are sons of our Father, because we're representing exactly what He is like - and that's what sonship is! That's what God's eternal purpose is! That's what He's looking for!

Will you be a son of the Most High? Will you act like your Father? Will you be like Jesus Christ? Will you act like He acted; and love people, love your enemies, do good - in the end hoping to get nothing back? This is a very powerful scripture. When we do works which are motivated and empowered by love, it establishes two things.

1) We've set it up for God to reward us. We will receive reward in heaven.

2) Our identity, as sons, who represent our Father in heaven.

We'll finish with just one last other thought on this... Many Christians (not a few, many!) will find their works rejected, and having no value. Now we think: they did all these things, don't they deserve to be acknowledged? No, no! Remember, God is looking at: did the works fit the pattern of divine design; and do they represent what Jesus Christ did? Are they following that pattern?

Matthew 7:21-23 – “Not everyone who says to Me: ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter the kingdom, but he who does the will of My Father…”

(See, surrender!)

“Many will say to Me in that day…” (many is not a few people. That's many!)

”…Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, done many wonders in Your name?”

(These are believers are operating in the supernatural. They're operating in kingdom reality)

“…and I will declare to them: I never knew you! Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”

In this passage, Jesus is referring to entrance to the coming millennial kingdom, and the accompanying rewards. The thing at stake here is the entrance to coming kingdom; not operating in the kingdom now but entering into the glory of Eternal Rewards. He's saying here, ‘many’ - that's multitudes of people! They will have experienced supernatural ministry. They've seen the power of the kingdom. But this is what Jesus uncovered: they lacked an intimate, surrendered heart.

“I didn't know you”. That word ‘know’ means: to be intimate; deeply personal, intimate, because of building a relationship. He uncovers the lack of an intimate, surrendered heart; and He uncovers their motivation. He says: you practice, this as a habit - this is how you're doing your life! You're practicing lawlessness. That means ‘without law’; or virtually, it means you're operating in independence; pride; self-promotion. That word ‘lawlessness’ or ‘inequity’ refers to the reason that Satan fell - because he wanted to elevate himself. It's saying: yes, I saw you did all those works, and I blessed the people for My Name’s sake - but I also saw WHY you did it. You did it to build your own ministry, your own life, your own finances, your own reputation - you didn't love the people. You loved what you could get from the ministry.

Wow, isn't that powerful! So just a few thoughts for reflection then, that you need to ask…

What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about in this teaching? What have you felt impacted you? What action would you need to take in response?

Thinking about the judgement seat that you're going to stand before one day, the bema seat of Christ, for evaluation - how does that challenge you right now?

What about your motivations - how are they challenged?

I listed a number of different defiling heart motivations, that are moved out of things other than love. Are there any you could identify with? Have another look at them. What changes would you need to make?

Are there any areas you should surrender to the Lord? I think the key thing here is, the need to develop an intimacy; develop a surrendered and pure heart. We need a humble and surrendered heart; a heart that's become pure - and that's a journey to do that, but it starts with the first decision. All the works that we do, God is going to pass them through the test of intimacy. Have we humbled ourselves, and surrendered to the Lord's will, and done things out of a pure heart of love?

I trust this really helped you, and been a blessing for you, and I look forward to carrying on Part 2 of this... God bless!

Summary Notes

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ER8: The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 1

I. What is the Judgment Seat of Christ?

1. Every Believer has an Appointment at The Judgment Seat of Christ

* Rom 14:10-12 - For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.

* 2Col. 5:10 - For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

* Note: Every believer must stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

* There are no exceptions. This is an appointment that every believer will keep

* Every believer will stand before Christ and give an account of how they have lived as a believer

* At that time each believer will be rewarded (or experience loss) for what he has done during his life

* Jesus will evaluate our lives based according to what we have done - our lifestyle

“Done”….Gk. prasso …to practice, to perform repeatedly, or habitually (not single acts)

Whatever we have regularly practiced will have consequences

2. What is the Judgment Seat of Christ?

* “ Bema”, or Judgment Seat is used in the Gospels and Acts in two ways:

(i). The raised platform where a Roman magistrate or ruler sat to make decisions and pass sentence (Jn.19:13)

(ii). The platform where a judge sat to evaluate athletic contests like the Olympic Games.

In the public games the contestants would compete for the prize under the careful scrutiny of judges who would make sure that every rule of the contest was obeyed.

The victor of a given event who participated according the rules was led by the judge to the platform called the Bema. There the laurel wreath was placed on his head as a symbol of victory.

* 2Ti. 2:4 - No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

2Ti. 2:5 - And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.

* 1Col. 9:24 - Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.

1Col. 9:25 - And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.

1Col. 9:26 - Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air.

1Col. 9:27 - But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

* The Bema or Judgment Seat refers to each believer appearing before Christ to have his life and works evaluated for the purpose of determine his qualification for Eternal Rewards

* The Bema or Judgment Seat of Christ is a place of evaluation and either reward or loss

3. At the Judgment Seat of Christ all our works will be tested by Fire

1Col. 3:10 - According to the grace of God, which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.

1Col. 3:11 - For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

1Col. 3:12 - Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,

1Col. 3:13 - each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.

1Col. 3:14 - If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward.

1Col. 3:15 - If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

(i). The Foundation laid is Jesus Christ

The foundation is the unseen structure upon which a building is constructed

The foundation of our faith is Jesus Christ Himself and His finished work on the cross

Our salvation and standing as a child of God is based solely upon the work that Jesus did

Eph. 2:8-9 - For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

There is no work that we can add to this foundation to gain forgiveness and acceptance before God

We are saved by faith in Jesus’ work, as a free gift, but are rewarded according to our works.

Our entrance into heaven is not based on our works, though our status and our role in the Kingdom of Heaven is.

(ii). Each believer is responsible to build his life and fulfil his assignment from Jesus

Each believer is entrusted assignments in life that are unique to him

Eph. 2:10 - For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Tit. 2:14 - who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

Every person’s gifts, capacities and life circumstances differ…so too do our assignments

(iii). There are different types of materials that we can use to build

We can build with gold, silver, and precious stones, or wood, hay, stubble

Gold, silver, and precious stones are building materials that will survive the fire

Wood, hay, and straw will be incinerated.

This reveals that Jesus is looking not just at the works that we do but the quality of the work

He looks at the motivations behind our actions…what sort it is

“Sort”…..the quality or nature of

(iv). Jesus will tests each man’s work with Fire

The Fire of God refers to the activity of the Holy Spirit exposing and burning what is of no value

“Clear” ……Gk Phaneros…to be plainly recognised or known, become evident, reveal its nature

“Declare”…to make something plain

“Reveal”….Gk. Apokalupto…to take the cover off something and reveal what has been covered

The Lord will evaluate the quality and nature of every person’s work.

(v). The Fire of God will test and reveal the quality of each man’s work

1Col. 4:5 - Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

Hidden motivations of the heart will be exposed to view not to condemn but for the purpose of reward. Works that originate from self-centred motivation, pride, selfish ambition, self-promotion will be exposed. Our works are evaluated upon whether we built our own Kingdom or advanced Jesus Kingdom and His concerns.

(vi). If our works endure Jesus scrutiny, we shall receive reward

Works done out of love for Jesus, inspiration of the Holy Spirit and a pure heart will be rewarded.

The judgment seat of Christ will be an eternal judgment (Heb. 6:2).

That is, there will be no reversing the decision.

(vii) Our rewards determine the way we spend eternity.

For all eternity we will be known by the way we lived our lives on the earth

Rev 14:13 - Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, "Write: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.' "Yes," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them."

If our works are burned and we suffer loss, there will be no way to reverse this.

If we are disqualified from receiving our fullest eternal inheritance—such as sitting with Jesus on His throne and ruling the nations with Christ—there will be no way to change this.

The rewards given to the saints will be eternal and irreversible

(vii). If our works do not endure Jesus scrutiny we suffer loss

1Col. 3:15 - If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

“Suffer loss”….to experience detriment, lose or forfeit the rewards that were prepared

1Col. 9:27 - But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

“Disqualified”……not approved as meeting the required standard, not standing the quality test

1Jn 2:28 - And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming

1Jn 2:28 - Now, little children (believers, dear ones), remain in Him [with unwavering faith], so that when He appears [at His return], we may have [perfect] confidence and not be ashamed and shrink away from Him at His coming. AMPL

“Abide in Him” means fellowship and intimacy with Jesus …to remain in close connection, union

It means to draw on His life as the source of ours and to obey Him out of that intimate relationship

“Ashamed”….experience a loss of honour

The revelation of the quality of his works brings an awareness his failure and the enormity of the loss of eternal rewards and Authority and Glory

The feelings of grief, shame and disappointment will not be permanent (Rev.7:17)

II. How will Jesus Evaluate our Works?

1. We Need to find out what Pleases The Lord

(i). Jesus constantly sought to Please His father

Joh 8:29 - And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him."

(ii). Paul urged believers to seek to please Him also

Eph. 5:10 - and find out what pleases the Lord.

2Co 5:9 - Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.

(iii) Pleasing God requires we walk in faith

Heb. 11:6 - But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

(iv). Pleasing God requires that we are led by the Holy Spirit

Rom 8:8 - So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

2. God’s Eternal Purpose is His Plumb line for Evaluation of our Works

* Amo 7:7 - Thus He showed me: Behold, the Lord stood on a wall made with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand.

* A Plumb Line is a weight attached to the end of a cord. Gravity pulls the weight straight down

* Plumb lines are used in building construction for judging whether a wall or building is upright

* God measures the quality and success of our works by their alignment with His Eternal Purpose

* The Lord never deviates from His standard for measuring success…His Eternal Purpose

* Two Key aspects of God’s Eternal Purpose

(i). Jesus Christ the Son will be at the Centre of everything in Heaven and on Earth

(ii). Father is Extending His Kingdom through a family of Overcoming Christlike sons

3. The Importance of the Heart

* 1Sa. 16:7 - But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

* Pro 16:2 - All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, But the LORD weighs the spirits.

* God looks not just at what we have done or how we look. He evaluates the heart, the motives

4. God’s Sonship Design is Foundational for His Evaluating our Works

* Jesus is the Pattern Son

Col 1:15 - He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Heb. 1:3 - who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

* Jesus is the Chief Cornerstone

Act 4:10 - let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole.

Act 4:11 - This is the 'STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED BY YOU BUILDERS, WHICH HAS BECOME THE CHIEF CORNERSTONE.'

Act 4:12 - Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

Isaiah 28:16. - Therefore thus says the Lord God: "Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; whoever believes will not act hastily."

Building on the Cornerstone

Historically, the cornerstone was the most important part of any building. The total weight of an edifice rested on this particular stone, which, if removed, would collapse the whole structure.

The cornerstone was also the key to keeping the walls straight. The builders would take sightings along the edges of this part of the building. If the cornerstone was set properly, the stonemasons could be assured that all the other corners of the building would be at the appropriate angles as well.

Thus, the cornerstone became a symbol for that which held life together.

* We are being Conformed by Holy Spirit to become like Jesus

Rom 8:29 - For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

III. Intimacy: Having a Surrendered and Pure Heart

1. Surrendered and Pure Heart

* Works motivated by intimacy with Jesus, surrender to His Spirit and from a pure heart

* Surrendered Heart…..to yield power or control to another

In worship and intimate relationship we surrender to Jesus and His will

This is an expression of humility, humbling ourselves to yield to Jesus

* Pure heart….No hidden self-centred agenda, hidden expectations, or impure motives

We can be motivated by so many different reasons other than sacrificial love:

* Heart Motivations that Defile:

Guilt, False Burden of Responsibility, Fear of rejection, Duty, Resentment, Religion, Performance Orientation, Rejection, Pride, Desire to look good,

The Bible calls these works “Dead Works” (Heb.6:2)

* They lack the life giving presence of God because they are not motivated by faith and love

* Intimacy with God means an exchange of life through worship and surrender.

We experience and receive His love. This moves us to respond in faith and obedience

* Only out of Intimacy can we discover the will of God and what He has called us to

2. Example of Jesus

* Jesus modelled intimacy with Father God

Mar 1:35 Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed.

* Jesus Surrendered to His Father’s Will

Joh 6:38 - For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

Luke 22:41 - And He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and prayed

Luke 22:42 - saying, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done."

* Jesus taught an Intimate Surrendered life

Mat 6:9 - In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name(Intimate)

Mat 6:10 - Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Surrendered)

3. Jesus looks for works motivated by love for Him and response to His Spirit

* We Need a Personal Intimate relationship with Jesus

Example: The parable of the five Wise and five Foolish Virgins (Matt.25:1-13)

Mat 25:8 - And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.

Mat 25:9 - But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

Mat 25:10 - And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

The Five wise virgins paid a price (works) to ensure they were ready

They committed time and energy and made sacrifice to “buy the oil of intimacy”

Every believer is called to be a Priest to God.

Our priesthood is an important part of our Kingdom work…Prayer, worship and intercession.

Every believer is called to the work of the priesthood….to make themselves ready for His Coming

We are also called to works of service that bless people

* Without love motivating them our works have no eternal value

1Col. 13:2 - And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

1Col. 13:3 - And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Paul identifies clearly how essential our works be motivated by sacrificial love (Agape)

We are called to be loving people like our Heavenly Father

We are called to love people as Father loves us with no hidden agenda

* Without Love our works are no different to an unbeliever

Luke 6:32 "But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

Luke 6:33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

Luke 6:34 And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back.

Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

“Credit”….the word used is Charis…Grace…the enabling power of God

People in the world return a favor…..they love those who love them, and do good to those who do good to them

People in the world do favors so they can receive something in return

Works motivated and empowered by love establish two things:

(i). Reward in Heaven

(ii). Identity as Sons who represent Our Heavenly Father

* Many Christians will find their works rejected as having no value

Mat 7:21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

Mat 7:22 Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'

Mat 7:23 And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'

Jesus teaching refers to entrance to the coming Millennial Kingdom and accompanying rewards

“Many”….this applies to multitudes of believers in Christ

These are believers who have experienced supernatural ministry, the power of the Kingdom

Jesus uncovers the lack of an intimate and surrendered heart

Jesus uncovers that their motivation: Pride, independence and self-promotion

IV. Personal Reflection and Action

1. What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about in this teaching?

2. What actions to you need to take in response?

3. How does this teaching on the Bema Seat of Christ challenge what you do?

4. How does this teaching on the Bema Seat of Christ challenge your motivations?

5. Are there any of the defiling Heart Motivations that you identify with?

6. What changes do you need to make?

7. What areas do you need to surrender to Jesus?

8. In what ways do you need to deepen your intimacy with Jesus?

The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 2 (9 of 12)

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Every believer shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give account of how we have served the Lord and what our lives have become.

What will Jesus take into account when He evaluates our life and service? This study examines key heart qualities that Jesus is looking for that reflect His image has been formed in us, and which overflow into works that honour Him and advance His Kingdom.

Welcome to Eternal Rewards, this is session #9, and we're looking at: The Judgement Seat of Christ, Part 2. The more I've studied it, the more I realise there is for us to learn about it. In the last series, we've been looking at the different Eternal Rewards that God has made available, which can be summarised under: Eternal Glory, Eternal Intimacy, and Eternal Authority/Responsibility.

I want to recap again what the Judgement Seat of Christ is, and then I want to look then at what is God looking for. It's one thing to know there's rewards, and that He's going to evaluate us, but what is He looking for? In the last session, when we did the first session on the Judgement Seat of Christ, we saw that God looks very much at the motivation - not just our works, but why we did them. We saw the necessity of having an intimate pure heart, that there's a purity in our motives, and that's an ongoing journey course.

Let’s just review again: what is the Judgement Seat of Christ?

Romans 14:10-12 – “For we shall all stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ, then every one of us (or each of us) shall give account of himself to God”.

2 Corinthians 5:10 – “For we must all appear before the Judgement Seat of Christ, that each one may receive things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or whether bad.:

Every believer then has an appointment at the Judgement Seat of Christ - to meet with Him; and what's in view for us, is not whether we have a life with Him forever. What's in view is, at what level and in what way, do we qualify for rewards that would go on for eternity. The key issue then, is qualifying for eternal rewards. What's at stake is our service as a believer, how we've lived, and how we've walked with the Lord. There are no exceptions; everyone will be there - we'll all be there!

We saw that the Judgement Seat of Christ refers to a judicial platform, in the Bible days, that was either used for: a judge, to sit on and make decisions about something; or for sports, for judges to rule whether the competitor had competed according to the rules, and therefore qualified for reward.

We saw that Jesus will judge us, or evaluate our service, based on what we have done; and that word ‘done’ was what we have practiced continually, so He's looking at the lifestyle, and the arc or direction of our life… and the outcome is rewards.

Matthew 16:27 – “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and He will reward each one according to his works”.

No matter where we are, or who we are - if we're a believer, then we have this appointment with Jesus. We will be called to give account of the works that we have done. I want to then look at some things that I think that God will use, or consider, when He's judging our works.

1 Corinthians 4:5 – “Don't judge anything before the time until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsel or motivations of the heart”.

We'll either receive praise, or lack of praise, from the Lord. I want to then look then, on the basis that all of us are called to a lifestyle of serving - of honouring God by serving Him. We saw that it was part of our sonship - that as sons, we're called to be intimate with our Father. We're called to serve Him, and expand His kingdom as His representative, and we're called to grow and be transformed.

What will God consider?

Number 1 - our alignment with His will and purpose.

Matthew 7:21 – “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven”.

All through His ministry, Jesus made it very clear He was aligned with His Father, and He did what He saw the Father doing. He must have then spent time in intimacy - to hear, and have revelation about, what the Father called Him to do. So, the first one is: our alignment with His will and purpose - and alignment with God comes out of intimacy. There's got to be time in worship and prayer, and time in His word, talking with Him, listening to Him, out of surrender to Him. We need revelation from Him, if we're going to be aligned with what He wants us to do.

Success doesn't come from just doing, achieving many things. Success comes from discovering what God called us to do; and that we know, at the end of our life, have pursued and faithfully done that. Alignment with the will and purpose of God means we need revelation about how God wants to build. Otherwise, we can in all sincerity build, but how we're building, and what we're building is not actually aligned with Him in any way.

Number 2 - our motivation. Having an intimate heart, and now a pure heart.

1 Corinthians 13:3 – “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing”.

Luke 6:35 - “Love your enemies, do good, lend with no hidden agenda, not hoping for anything in return… your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the unthankful and the evil”.

He's saying that it's not just what we do; why we do it is very important. Jesus constantly rebuked the Pharisees, because everything they did was done with a hidden motivation of promoting themselves. He said: don't be like the Pharisees when you pray - they pray to be seen of men. Don't be like the Pharisees when you fast - they fast and make a fuss of it in front of everyone. Don't be like the Pharisees when you give - let your giving be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward openly.

God constantly looks at the why you do things, and many activities we do can be completely dead works, because there's no faith in them. They're coming out of fear, guilt, or an agenda - every kind of reason, except what God wants us to come out with: that our motivation is one of purity of heart.

Number 3 - our faithfulness. We're going to look at that in one of the studies today, in Matthew 25, which is part of sequence of parables, where Jesus is talking about the end times, and His return. He starts with the wise and faithful servant in Matthew 24, then the five wise and five foolish virgins in Matthew 25. Then He goes on to talk about the Parable of the Talents…

Matthew 25:23 – “His lord said to him: well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over few things, I'll make you ruler over many. Enter the joy of your lord.”

Very clearly, God looks for faithfulness; and there's no limit to our faithfulness - every person can choose to be faithful. It has nothing to do with your gift; it's entirely to do with your character, and the way you handle the tasks that are assigned to you - whether you complete them, you're reliable, you do them when you're supposed to, and the way you're supposed to, on time etc - so everyone can be faithful. Faithfulness is commended by God.

1 Corinthians 4:2 - “It's required of servants they must be found faithful”.

To ‘find’ someone faithful means you're looking for that quality. We must be found, upon inspection, to have been faithful to what God called us to do. Faithfulness is developed by serving with excellence, and persevering through difficulties. With faithfulness, if we're a five-talent person, we can get the same reward as a person with two talents, or one talent - God just considers not what we have, but what we did with what we had. So equal faithfulness means equal reward.

Number 4 - Diligence. Diligence means I really apply myself, and my life is given over to this task. In the Parable of the Servants and the Pounds (or Minas), he says:

Luke 19:17 – “Well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over very little - have authority of 10 cities”.

In that story, everyone got one pound (or one mina). Everyone got the same amount at the beginning, but… one of them earned 10 minas - made a huge profit; one earned five; and one hid it away. The one who earned 10 was put in authority over 10 cities; and the one who earned five, was put in authority over five cities.

Greater diligence means greater reward. Whatever our status in life, our gifts, or our experience - wherever we're at, if we are faithful, then we have equal opportunity, equal reward. If we're more diligent than the person next to us, then God will honour the fact we were more diligent. Someone who is highly productive for the Lord - God will acknowledge that. It's got nothing to do with whether you're a preacher, or any kind of role you have. Every servant of the Lord can function, because our functions are mostly in the realm of life, and in the community.

Number 5 - The opportunity that was given. God considers the opportunity we've been given. In the Parable of the Servants in the vineyard, in Matthew 20.

Galatians 6:10 – “As we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially those who are of the household of faith”.

Opportunities vary, from one person to another. A person who was saved when they're younger has a lot more opportunity than a person saved when they're older. People in a certain nation may have greater opportunities. Whatever the opportunities we have, God takes that into account. In Matthew 20, different workers came into the vineyard to work at different times. They had different amounts of opportunity, and God considered the opportunity they had. The man who had worked all day received the same reward as the man who came in and did work, or did the best he could, or was faithful in what he could, at the latter season of the day. God accounts the two, with both getting the same reward; and the servants argue with Him over that and think that's not very right; but He said: no, I agreed to do this, and that's what will happen. God is Just; so even if we have not much opportunity, or if our opportunities are more restricted and limited, God still takes that into account. He's looking at the bigger picture: faithfulness, diligence and motivation.

Number 6 – Overcomers. All of us have struggles. We all have things to overcome, and the battles most of us fight, to overcome something, are in private and secret - seen only by God, and it's very clear that Jesus will reward us according to what we've overcome. We see that in Revelations 2:2-3, where He makes promises to the overcomers. An overcomer has faced a challenge, and over a period has overcome it, and maintained overcoming it, and they qualify for reward.

Revelations 3:21 – “To him who overcomes, I will grant with him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne”.

Overcomers are promised specific rewards. Someone who has stood, and held onto the word of God, had some ups and downs, but eventually prevailed, and overcame some of the challenges in life, then it's appropriate that God acknowledges that.

James 1:12 – “Blessed is the man who endures temptation, after he's been tried, he'll receive the crown of life”.

Overcomers are promised rewards, for overcoming a whole range of things. Revelations 2 talks about cold love, where a heart goes cold, and we need to return to our first love, so maintaining a passionate heart is something that requires us to overcome coldness, indifference, the lukewarmness.

We're called to overcome persecution, so when we're opposed, when people resist us, when people attack us, when we're given a hard time, it's very easy to become embittered, discouraged or overcome by the adversity we've gone through. There's a reward for those who overcome persecution.

In Revelations 2, it also tells us about the necessity to overcome false doctrine. False doctrine are any teachings that are contrary to the true spirit and intent of the word of God. They may seem very appealing, and they may condone various kinds of things, but we need to overcome false doctrine, so we need to then be students of the word of God. To do that, we need to study for ourselves what God's word says, so we can overcome teachings that are not true.

The Book of Revelation also refers to overcoming false teachers, and false prophets. Teachers that come into the church, who look plausible, and prophets that come and look plausible, and I'm sure they do love the Lord, and have their own relationship with Him, but there's something out of alignment in their lives. God calls them false teachers, and false prophets. Primarily, they're concerned about building their own lives, and their own ministry, and we have to watch we don't get seduced away by the pull that they put on our life, and end up away from the course God called us onto.

In Revelations 2, it also talks about the Spirit of Jezebel - how there was a woman in the church, and she taught and led, and the servants of God strayed into immorality and compromise and an idolatrous society. Again, that's something we must overcome. Every one of us must overcome the desire to control; or the influence of that spirit, which is very seductive.

Revelations talks about entering compromise, about being lukewarm, or compliance. “I have this against you: you're neither hot nor cold, you're lukewarm”. Lukewarm-ness is prevalent throughout the western church. It's something we must overcome, and that requires that we have engagements with God, have fresh revelation, and stay passionate, in our pursuit of Him. Lukewarm-ness, and temptation, are some of the things we must overcome.

Number 7 - another thing that God considers is: what we've become.

We know that the purpose of God in sonship is intimacy; and assignments, or faithfulness in what we're doing; and that we're transformed to become more like Jesus.

In 2 Peter 1:3-11, he's saying you need to add to your foundational faith, all the character qualities: patience, and brotherly love - he lists a whole number of things that we are to build, and incorporate into our life. This is about inward transformation, so we become a loving, humble, and meek person.

2 Peter 1:8 – “If these things are yours and abound (or be in you, and abound), you'll neither be barren nor unfruitful”.

Here is a promise: if we let God work in our life to transform us, then we'll never be barren - we will always be fruitful for the Lord; but he says if you lack the things, you're short-sighted and can't see afar off. Then he gives exhortation:

“…brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do all these things he's referred to, adding and building into your character and life, so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”.

We read in 1 Corinthians 3 that people could be rewarded, or they could barely scrape in, and everything has been burnt up. There's no work they've done that qualifies for any acknowledgement or reward, apart from their salvation by faith in Christ. This is talking about it again - a similar thing, put a different way.

You can have an ‘abundant’ entrance, or you can have a ‘barely gotten in’ entrance. The abundant entrance means abundant honour and glory in the kingdom; a barely gotten entrance means very little honour and glory, which is why there are both small and great in the coming kingdom. That would be a whole study of its own, in 2 Peter 1. What are the things I need to begin to work on building into my life? What should I be intentional about developing and putting on in my life? These are done by the power and the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Number 8 – The words we speak.

Matthew 12:36 – “I say to you, that for every idle word man may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgement”.

The words we speak, and our actions, are the overflow of our heart, and our life. Jesus said He's going to consider all the words: kind words, loving words, encouraging words, building words, harsh words, critical words, negative words, unbelieving words. The words we speak will be considered.

Number 9 - the revelation God has given us.

I think that we are responsible to grow in revelation, to grow in insight and understanding, but the more God gives to us, the more is expected of us. If you've sat in a church, and you've been exposed to great teaching, and great revelation was given to you, then a lot more is required of you, than the person down the road who got very little revelation and insight, but they walked fully in what they were given.

Luke 12:48 – “Everyone to whom much is given, much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask more”.

Clearly in that scripture, talking about the servant of the Lord, if much has been given to you, then more is required of you. It's echoed again…

James 3:1 – “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that as teachers we shall receive a stricter judgement”.

Both scriptures seem to indicate that, if a lot has been entrusted to us, more is going to be expected of us. As he puts it in James, a higher standard is required, if you're going to be a teacher of others. He's not saying: don't be a teacher; he's just saying: make sure you live up to what you teach - live out what you're teaching. If you're saying one thing, and living another, a higher standard of judgement will be required.

Number 10 - how we have judged others.

James 2:13 – “For judgement is without mercy, to the one who was shown no mercy; for mercy triumphs over judgement”.

In the course of our life, there are many failings of people around us, and we can either show mercy and compassion to those people, or we can choose to focus on where they've failed, or what they've said or done wrong, and then be harsh or demanding on them. God considers whether we have walked in mercy or not. You see that in Matthew 18, where He teaches about the servant who was forgiven much. It was expected of him that he would show mercy to the fellow servant, and when he didn't show mercy, then more was required. There was a whole judgement he went through. It's a very clear scripture, that in our dealings with people, we need to show the nature of God, show the mercy of God - and that is considered, when we're judged for what we do.

There are 10 things there. Ten is a complete number (the number of completion), so I felt those give a breadth to God's evaluation. We must remember that God is a Just God and He will judge rightly, He will do what is right. At the Judgement Seat of Christ, He is looking for: what is there in you, and in your service, that I could identify, honour and then reward in a major way. Going back over them very briefly…

How aligned are we with His will and purpose?

Are we intimate, and listening, and doing what He's called us to do; and walking in the revelation He's given?

What about our motivation? Is it a motivation of love, pure, no agenda? Are we doing things because we love the Lord, and are passionate to show His love to people?

Our faithfulness, what are we doing with what opportunities we do have? Are we fulfilling them and doing them well?

What about our diligence, how diligent are we in our prayer, our application to what we do - or are we very casual about it?

What about the opportunities? Do we seize opportunities? God will take all of that into account.

What have we overcome? Maybe right now you're facing something you're trying to overcome. God is watching that battle, and urging you on, saying: there's a great reward, if you can overcome and break through that, and that gives us motivation to overcome. Even if we fall over, time and time and time again, just keep getting back up and going forward again. We will overcome.

Then there are things that we have become, and we saw then it's important, not just that we have a saving faith, but we add to our faith, godliness and brotherly love, and the love of God, and various other qualities mentioned in 2 Peter 1.

He will consider the words we speak, so that means we need to guard what we're saying, and the spirit we're speaking in.

He will look at the revelation we're given and take that into account; and then how we've judged and treated others.

That gives you then a kind of an overview of how God is dealing with us. I want to look now, into some of these a bit more closely…

I think one of the biggest areas, is having a faithful and a loyal heart, because all servants of God are required to be faithful. In 1 Corinthians 4:2, we're required to be found faithful. Found means an enquiry into it.

In Revelation 17:14, those who are with the Lamb are called, they're chosen, and they're faithful. The word ‘faithful’ constantly comes through the Bible, and particularly in the New Testament, it's very strong on faithfulness; not so much on giftedness, but faithfulness. With the gifts God gives you - it's your job to value them, to develop them; but faithfulness - every person can be faithful. That means: to be reliable, steadfast, predictable. You fulfil your responsibilities. You can be relied on.

It's a personal choice, and faithfulness is in many areas of life, but in Luke 16:10-13, it teaches be faithful in the little things. If you're faithful in little, you will be in much. Faithful in money, the handling of money; Luke 16:10-13, be faithful in your handling and management of finances, and be faithful in serving someone else. Often people are using someone else to get themselves ahead, rather than seeing that actually, that very motivation will stop God promoting them. We need instead to serve others, and help them succeed, and in doing that, God lifts us up and promotes us.

Faithfulness is a hard thing to find.

Proverbs 20:6 – “Most men will proclaim his own goodness, but a faithful man, who could you find?”

Everyone talks about how good they are, but who is actually a faithful man; who is doing something to bring honour to someone else? Timothy was very like that, and the Bible tells us that God is looking all through the earth, to find people who are faithful and loyal to Him.

Loyalty is a slightly different word. Loyal means to be continuing, or unswerving, in your faithfulness and allegiance. Regardless of difficulties or hardships, you remain committed to serve the Lord - that's a loyal heart. When God doesn't seem to come through, and you remain true to Him - that's a loyal heart

2 Chronicles 16:9 – “The eyes of the Lord go to and fro through the earth, looking for someone whose heart is loyal to Him”.

To have divided loyalties means: I'm loyal to the Lord, but also loyal to other things, and now there's a conflict between my loyalties. Having a loyal heart means: I maintain Jesus is first in my life, over and above every other relationship, every other situation, every other thing. I remain loyal to Him, even if there are pressures around me, in those areas. Jesus Himself exemplified faithfulness.

Hebrews 3:6 – “He was faithful over His house”.

John 17:4 – “I've honoured You; I've finished the work You gave Me to do”.

Jesus remained faithful, and loyal. You see this outplayed in a parable that Jesus taught, called the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30.

I’ll leave it to you to read it through, but the core of it is it's a Parable of the Kingdom and there are a sequence of parables, so there's the Parable of the Servants, Matthew 24; the Parable of the Virgins in 25, and then this parable. The Parable of the Virgins terminates with the Marriage Supper of the Lamb - five enter, because they have oil; and five are left out, or excluded, because they haven't done the preparation work. Now it goes on from there and adds in the prospect of ruling and reigning with Christ. The Parable of the Virgins introduces intimacy, the marriage celebration. The Parable of the Talents introduces now ruling with Christ, and the story is very simple...

A man goes to a far country, calls the servants to deliver his goods, and to someone he gives five talents, to another two, to another one, each according to his own ability, then goes on the journey. After he's been on the journey a long time he comes back. He calls them all to give account, and the one who had gained five brings his talents and trades with him, made another five. The one who had two, traded and made two. The one who had one, buried it in the ground. Then he came back and reckoned with them, and the one who had five said: I've got five more; and he says: “well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over few things, I will make you ruler over many things, enter into the joy of the Lord”.

The one who had two talents says: you gave me two, I've got two more. I've done 100%, like the other guy did, and he gets exactly the same commendation: “well done, good and faithful servant, you've been faithful over few things, I'll make you ruler over many things, enter into the joy of your Lord”. Then of course, there's the one-talent man.

The man travelling to the far country represents Jesus, and He entrusts His servants according to their ability - they're each given some talent, and a talent was a very big sum of money. In other words, we all have a precious entrustment given to us, which we must do something with “according to his own ability”.

The master recognised that different servants have different capacities, different levels, different limitations, and so he assigns responsibilities accordingly. God gives everyone talents, giftings, abilities… but this is the opportunities that He has given to us. So regardless of our personal capacity, our ministry role, our task, our assignment, everyone is expected to be faithful with what has been entrusted and be productive.

The opportunities God gives you, are not only for your development, but also to show your heart loyalty and faithfulness to Him - that you care about Him, and what He's interested in. That's really the problem with that servant with one talent. He was only concerned about himself. Fear does that. It makes you focus on yourself, and your primary framework for operating is: what's in this for me?

But the others… they had a heart that was faithful, a heart that loved the Lord, was faithful to Him and they knew that He would want to see a fruit for what was given to them - and that's true for every believer. Jesus has paid a price to save us - given up His life, paid such an immense price for us to be saved, and so, as a consequence of that, we should in response of love then have His interests in our heart.

What is He interested in? He is always interested in people! He's always interested in people being loved, and blessed, and benefited. So regardless of personal capacity, we're all expected to be productive. It's got nothing to do with your capacity, your background, your learning or anything like that. Every believer, no matter what your capacity or entrustment, can earn the same commendation from the Lord.

So, the master comes, and He settles accounts - that's referring to the Bema Seat of Christ. He will call each of us before Him, to give account of how we have served Him, during that period when He was absent. Notice the commendation: Well done, good and faithful servant! That was the commendation given to the five-talent man who got five, and the two-talent one who got two. Both did the best they could. They were hundredfold believers. In other words, if you go back to the Parables of the Sower and Seed, you realise that the hundredfold came where the guy had the good and pure heart.

The master was full of praise: “well done”. I have received great pleasure in what you have done. Jesus expresses His pleasure for what the servant has done. Secondly, He honours the kind of character he has. He affirms this, He affirms that he's good. That means to be excellent. You have distinguished yourself. You are a man or woman of honour. He says: you are an honourable, distinguished person. You are faithful. He highlights their diligence, their follow-through, in doing the tasks assigned to them, in spite of the pressure, obstacles, mundaneness, and the temptations around it.

That's a very big lesson for every believer! Whatever task, whatever assignment you're given, no matter how small, don't look at it as a small thing. Look at it as an entrustment, and God is watching, not just that you did it, but how you went about doing it. When we have a spirit of worship, when our heart is surrendered to the Lord, then every task that we do, we bring His presence and blessing and favour into that task. It could be the simplest thing like making a cup of tea. Your cup of tea can bring blessing to people, because of the joy you've done it with, the spirit of excellence you've done it with, the way you've made people welcome. When you see someone, who's got that love for what they do in their heart - they love people through the tasks that they're doing. You can tell the difference!

I remember being in a place, and they had a little welcome, with a welcome basket, and the pastor looked at it, and he said: I can't feel the love in that one. Someone had just been a fill-in job to do it, and for them it was just a task - quick, throw a few things on a plate, in comparison to the lady who was usually there who did it. When she did it, it was like… stand up and shout, because it looked so beautiful, with little touches and things! It was done with detail, and excellence, and that's what should be, in the kingdom. That's the way we should operate

Notice then He says: “well done, good and faithful servant”. That means you are trustworthy, and that you're willing to sacrifice, to serve others. You're willing to lay down your own life, in order that I might be benefitted, and others be benefitted.

The word ‘servant’ there, is the word that Jesus said.

Matthew 20:27 – “If you want to be great in the kingdom, become a servant”.

Greatness in the kingdom is not your stature, position, ministry, or the anointing, miracles or anything. Greatness is… do you carry the heart and activity of a servant - even as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life.

He says: you've been faithful over few things. That means your assignment, or sphere of responsibility, was very small.

Some people think that their life only counts, or their work only counts, if it's big, or significant, or impacts many people, but there's only a few people that are going to impact large numbers. Most of the work that's done is out of sight - it's the small tasks. It's the ordinary person behind the scenes, making the bigger thing happen, and they may think well, I'm not out there doing this or out there doing that. Nevertheless, their assignment, even though it's small in their eyes, and the eyes of other people, it's important to God - so important, that He will reward those who faithfully do it.

What a blessing that is for all of us, because that means that it doesn't matter really what your role is, or what you're called to do. It's the manner you do it, is what God is looking for. Do you see the little everyday tasks? In this, I'm serving the Lord. This is my act of worship. I've given my day, my life. I've presented my body to Him, and now I'm letting His love, and life, flow into everything that I do.

There's something like a river of life that just flows to bless even the ordinary tasks. I've seen people who did the car park, and they just stood out there in the cold and made people welcome and smiled, and when you go up to them, you can see the love, and the joy, and the servant heart in it. I think they qualify for reward, because with the capacity they have, they're turning this task into a river of blessing for people coming in. So it's a great inspiration, great challenge, that whatever your task, God is watching you.

Now He talks about the rewards... He said: well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Rewards that are received at the Judgement Seat of Christ are based on our faithfulness.

He says: “I will make you ruler over many things”. You might look and say: I've only got a few things, I'm not really doing all that much; but if you're doing it passionately, doing it with love, doing it unto the Lord, doing it as a blessing to people, then you're letting the love of Christ flow through it!

He says: “I will make you ruler over many things”. See the generosity of Jesus! Few things now; many things in eternity. A multitude of things! It's out of all comparison, and now He introduces that we will rule. That means to put someone in charge; to appoint them over an office. In the coming millennial kingdom, there's a great realm of ruling with Jesus, and administering His kingdom throughout the whole world.

There's going to be multitudes of layers, and levels, of tasks and jobs. Right now, you're qualifying for yours, and whatever you've got on your hand now, do it. Notice there, He introduces two aspects of reward:

Firstly… I will make you ruler, or give you ruling authority, to serve and to advance My kingdom, with authority and empowerment over many things; and secondly… He says: “enter the joy of the Lord” - that's a reference again to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. We have the joy, we know that He values our efforts, our choices have mattered, and those who are faithful will enter the joyful Marriage Supper of the Lamb. We will be with others. We will celebrate with Him, and will also share with Him, the joy of walking alongside Him and advancing His coming kingdom. This is just so inspiring!

The key is having a good and faithful heart. Jesus will reward our assignments, no matter what the task is, or size of the task. If you did it faithfully, God will commend you. The two-talent man, and the five-talent man, received equal commendation. Even our smallest efforts won't go amiss. You think no one saw you, but someone was watching, so the way we orient ourselves is: Lord, today everything I do I'm doing unto You. I want to do it really well. I'm asking for Your life to flow through me. Even little things…

Matthew 10:42 – “Whoever gives even these little ones only a cup of water in My name, in the name of a disciple, he shall by no means lose his reward”.

Even the smallest act of blessing someone - God takes that into account.

Hebrews 6:10 – “God is not unjust to forget your work and labour of love, which you've shown towards His name, you have ministered to the saints and continue to minister”.

Notice there, he's saying it would be unjust if God overlooked and forgot what you did. Sadly, in church life, frequently the serving acts, the sacrificial acts, the generous acts of people, are often overlooked, or not acknowledged, and that can often lead to a disheartenment, and a quitting. We grow weary in the welldoing, but it says that God is not unjust. He will not forget your labour of love. He won't forget it, and He will acknowledge it, He will reward it.

Colossians 3:23-24 – “Whatever you do, do it heartily. Do it with full heart, full passion, full joy, knowing you're doing it to the Lord, not to men like pleasing men and being a man-pleaser, but knowing that from the Lord you'll receive the reward of inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ”.

When you know that everything I do is my act of worship to the Lord; if I have presented myself, and my activities, to Him, then whatever I'm doing today, I'm doing as an act of worship. If the person mistreats me, or the people are harsh, that's irrelevant. I'm doing it to the Lord. And as I do it to the Lord, we know that the Lord sees it all and will reward us. Frequently, people do transactional kinds of things - he wasn't nice to me, so I won't be nice back. That's a very carnal way of thinking. We want to understand that we do it heartily; if you're going to do anything, do it heartily! Do it very well!

Then we get to the last servant, and we find there that he experiences no commendation, or honour, and reward - He receives rebuke and loss…

“He that received the one talent came and said: Lord, I know You to be a hard man. You reap where You haven't sown, gather where You haven't scattered. I was afraid, so I went and hid Your talent in the ground”.

“And the Lord answered him and said: you wicked and lazy servant, you knew I reap where I didn't sow and gather where I didn't scatter seed. You should have put my money with the bankers and at My coming would've received back My own with interest”.

what you've got to look here is the heart of this man, the way he's thinking. He said: ‘I knew You to be a hard man’ - so basically, he's complaining that God is unreasonable and harsh, that His demands are very high, that He requires too much. “I knew” means that his perception, his way of seeing God, was that God is excessively harsh and demanding. That tells me he's been under someone harsh and demanding, perhaps a harsh, demanding parent, or boss, and he's projected his brokenness and anger towards God.

Secondly, he makes the accusation: “You've reaped where You haven't sown”. This is basically accusing God, that He requires more than He's given them - which is completely wrong. When people have got bitterness and anger in their heart, over how they've been unjustly treated, they tend to then look at God as being harsh, demanding, and difficult, and then make complaints, or accuse Him of withholding love from them.

He said: I was afraid, so I buried it. There's many reasons people bury their talents or bury what God has given them. It could be the fear of failing, the fear of being rejected; it could be shame, could be difficulty. Think of the Christians you know, who pull back, and then stop serving God - buried their talent, because they went through difficulties or hardship, faced some opposition, or just got worn down.

The stresses, difficulties and pressures that come with being a believer can cause people to just bury their talent, which means virtually, I'm no longer active to the Lord. I may be coming to church, turning up, giving a little bit of an offering or whatever, but this is not the life God's called me to - just to come to religious service, and have a little bit of a conscience attendance, so I don't feel like I'm bad. No, no, no! God is looking for wholehearted, passionate, sons and daughters, that love Him, and are exemplary in loving people.

This is how Jesus addresses that servant... Remember, the other servant, he was called “good, well done” - that's the commendation for what he did - good and faithful; but this one here – “you wicked and lazy servant”! There are three things that Jesus brings against him.

1) He calls him ‘wicked’, and that word is not like ‘evil’, in terms of doing bad things or terrible things. It's the word poneros in Greek, meaning to have a hurtful or negative influence on others. Think about that. Someone who is half-hearted, they don't fulfil their commitments, they quit on the task halfway through it, they quit when there's pressure... They demoralise leaders. They take the heart out of others who are serving. They are not a positive influence. If you're committed, diligent and passionate, you are a positive influence; but if you're half-hearted, reluctant, have to be constantly rung up and followed through, or you never turn up, and you never really do the job well, and there's always something negative going on… this is actually having a negative influence. That's what that word means.

What He's saying to him is: your influence is not a positive influence, that would inspire and move people forward. You have a destructive, negative influence; and that's what leadership is about -influence!

2) He says: “you're lazy”! You're just unwilling to put in the effort that's needed. Many Christians think it's just all about the grace of God - Jesus did all the work, I don't have to do anything. That's nonsense! Jesus did the work; now He expects us to walk with Him and serve Him… and the work of ministry is hard work! It's very difficult work. It requires that we develop a diligent mentality, a hardworking mentality, rather than a lazy one.

Proverbs 13:4 – “The soul of the slothful man desires much, but he has nothing”.

A lot of Christians are wanting much, and they're asking God for much, but they won't put in the necessary work in order to have it.

Proverbs 12:4 – “The soul of the diligent will rule”.

3) He calls him an “unprofitable servant”. Unprofitable, producing no benefits to the kingdom.

What an assessment! He was having a negative influence; unwilling and lazy, wouldn't get down to business and do what was needed; and he produced nothing beneficial. Over the years, I’ve known many people like that.

Here's the thing... He lacked revelation or intimacy. He didn't really know God. There's no depth of relationship. He has a distorted view of God, because he never let God work in his heart to shift that, and he failed to be faithful in his serving.

I just see this over and over and over - people just prefer to do their own thing, spend their time, money, and energy on what they want, that they feel good about. Notice there, a fearful, unbelieving heart caused him to avoid serving, or avoid any personal risk whatsoever. He's focussed on himself.

What did he lose? What was the cost to him, of that state? The first thing was the loss of opportunity.

Matthew 25:28 – “Take that talent from him and give it to the one who has 10 talents”.

He lost the talent. What God had given him, as an opportunity to qualify for great reward in the kingdom - the opportunity was removed from him and given to the one who had 10. That's not very socialistic, is it? It doesn't flow with socialism. Socialism would've taken the 10 and distributed them.

Jesus is trying to bring our attention of the importance of being connected to Him, and being productive in Him, so He says: the one who is unproductive, I'm going to take what he had, and I'm going to give that opportunity to the one who's very productive.

The second thing is, He cast this unprofitable servant out into the outer darkness, where there be weeping and gnashing of teeth. He becomes excluded from the Marriage Supper and celebration. There was no benefit in all I invested in Him, no tangible benefit to the kingdom. “He will be cast into the outer darkness, where there be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.

What is the ‘outer darkness’; and what is the ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’? Some Christians think the ‘outer darkness’ refers to hell, and this is a story about whether they're saved or unsaved, but that cannot be true, and here are two reasons why it can't be true…

1) Firstly, it calls it ‘outer darkness’, but hell is described as a place of ‘burning’ - so it can't be burning, and dark, at the same time - it doesn't make sense!

2) Secondly, our works do not qualify us for heaven; faith in the work of Christ does. He's talking here about reward versus loss.

What then, does ‘outer darkness’ refer to? It's very simple. When we read these things, we read it through western culture, rather than looking at the original culture. In the original culture, the context of the last parable was what? It was the virgins, that went into the marriage feast, the Marriage Supper. What would that look like?

Well, in the Hebrew wedding, the bride and the groom would make their vows, or their covenant to one another - they would become betrothed; and then the groom would go away, and he would prepare a place for his bride. Then, at the appointed time (she was aware of the time, but she wouldn’t know the exact time), he would return; and he would return at night, and would have with him his people, who had lamps, because it's dark. There were no streetlamps; the only light they have, is the one they're carrying. They would walk in a procession through the dark, come to the bride's home; and the bride is all prepared, all ready. She's got a lamp burning, and would accompany the groom, and they would go back into the wedding feast. The doors would be shut. That was the wedding feast.

In the wedding feast, it's a house, and it's full of light, it's full of life - it's the sound of music, of joy and laughter, the sound of a meal, and celebration. You're either: in the light of the wedding feast; or you're outside - and there's no light, you're in the outer darkness outside. So ‘outer darkness’ refers to the conditions outside the banquet hall, meaning exclusion from the celebration of the marriage feast.

You could only begin to imagine the grief of knowing that you were invited to something, but because you were unfaithful, careless and negligent - you're now disqualified! People who were in the same meeting with you, when you put your hand up to get saved - they got saved in the same meeting, and they're in there, but you are not! The devastation would be amazing!

That brings us to the next statement… “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (verse 30). What does that mean? It's an expression that refers to two things...

1) The ‘weeping’ means deep sorrow, or grief, at the realisation of what I've lost. When we don't have a revelation of the importance of eternal rewards, there's no sense of urgency to grow, pursue Christ, and serve passionately. But there will come a time, when we will be aware what we've missed, and then there will be tremendous weeping - so the weeping refers to deep grief and sorrow.

2) The ‘gnashing of teeth’ refers to anger - it's an expression of anger. In Acts 7, it says they were angry or furious at Stephen, and they ‘gnashed their teeth’ on him. So, ‘gnashing of teeth’ refers to anger at being outside, when you really wanted to be inside. It's not then the suffering of hell; it's grief, sorrow, and anger at being excluded from the feast where there's laughing and celebration.

We could be near to Jesus, celebrating. Imagine being outside and hearing the joy - it's like being outside a party, and you hear all the fun, the laughter, people celebrating, the lights and music… but you're outside, and being excluded. Man, the feelings of grief and sorrow!

When Jesus returns to bring justice to the earth, to establish His kingdom, some Christians will experience His coming with great joy, gladness, and celebration. They were prepared, they were faithful, they enter in - and now, not only the celebration; they're now going to be acknowledged and given roles and responsibilities in the coming kingdom. Wow! The joy of that!

That's what keeps you going, moving forward, and persevering - the stakes are very high, and very eternal. Imagine then, other Christians experiencing shame, regret, sorrow, exclusion, exclusion for what they were called to be a part of. They were called, but they were not chosen, because they weren't faithful. How sad is that?

All believers need to develop a faithful and a loyal heart; and take what we have and use it to the best of ability that we can. There are other parables that talk about the basis for rewards - that's one of the very best ones. I encourage you to search through the Parable on the Pounds (or Menas), in Luke 19:11-27, where the focus there is not on equal faithfulness, equal reward. The focus in that one is that when someone is more diligent, they will gain more reward. This teaching is very clearly there to show to us the importance in our lives, of not just of being faithful, but also being diligent, to be productive for Him.

Luke 19:11-27 is the issue of being diligent, having a diligent heart. It looks similar, but it's actually very different to the other one. In the Parable of the Talents, the faithful servants get positions of honour of glory in the Marriage Supper of the Lamb; but unfaithful servants are excluded – so, equal faithfulness, equal rewards. In this parable, the faithful servants are given positions of honour, glory, and authority in the kingdom; unfaithful servants don't get responsibility and authority – so, greater diligence, greater rewards

Luke 19:11-27 – “They heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. So He said: a certain nobleman went to a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and return. He called 10 of his servants and delivered them 10 minas and said occupy, do business until I come. He called the 10 servants and gave them the minas.

But his citizens hated him. They sent a delegation after him, saying: we will not have this man to reign over us. And when he returned, after having received the kingdom, he commanded the servants he'd given the money, called them that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

Then came the first one saying: Master, your mina has earned 10 minas. He said: well done, good servant, because you were faithful over very little have authority over 10 cities. The second came, saying: Master, your mina has earned five minas. He said: likewise, you also be over five cities. Then the other came, saying: Master, here is your mina, I put it away in a handkerchief. I feared you, because you're an austere man. You collect what you didn't deposit, you reap what you didn't sow.

And he said to him: out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew I was an austere man, collecting what I didn't deposit, reaping where I didn't sow. Why didn't you put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might've collected it with interest? And he said to those that stood by: take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has 10.

And he said: I say to you, everyone who has, will be given; and from him who does not have, what he has will be taken away”.

Nobleman means a person of high rank - it refers to Jesus Christ. Jesus has gone into heaven and received a kingdom. One day He will return - literally, physically, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then He will call all the servants to account - and we're called to account at the Bema Seat of Christ. Then, if we qualify, to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb; and then empowered to rule with Him in the coming kingdom.

Notice there, 10 servants, and 10 minas. Ten is usually the number meaning all the servants, all the gifts. It's a reference to the fact that this is encompassing all the body of Christ, over all eras and ages.

“Do business until I come” - everyone is commanded to be productive for Jesus. Don't just hide your gift, or be a quiet Christian - be proactive in serving.

“And how much each had gained by trading” - that word ‘trading’ means literally: to be engaged constantly in exchange and purchase. It means our lifestyle - taking what God has given us, and using it as best we can, to advance His kingdom.

Now the commendation, and the reward… In Luke 19:17, well done, good servant, you were faithful over very little, have authority over 10. Here we have the same words – “well done, good, faithful”, but now He introduces “authority over cities”. Then the one who came second, “well done, good servant”. He's commending them for being diligent.

One earned 10, so He said: you've been faithful over very little, you've laboured, you've been very productive, so now you have authority over 10 cities. That's like a whole region! He's saying that in the coming kingdom, there will be different layers and levels of authority, and God wants us to qualify for that by our faithfulness and diligence now.

With the second servant - you be over five cities. He started with the same, and he's also been faithful, but he hadn't been so productive. His diligence and fruitfulness were less than the first, and what he was given reflected that. He said: “have authority over five cities” - so greater diligence and fruitfulness means greater reward.

Aren't you glad of that! That someone who was a slacker, someone who's unproductive, will not be acknowledged in the same way as someone who committed their life, paid a price, sacrificed, did things in secret, overcome things in secret - clearly there's going to be a difference. Justice requires it, and the Bible teaches it.

Why was one more fruitful than the other? I think diligence is a big part of it, because I don't think he could've done it any other way. Diligence is not just working hard - diligence is in his alignment with Jesus!

John 15:5 – “I am the vine, and you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him brings forth much fruit”.

I think it all comes back to our heart connection, and our passion for the kingdom. So very much, the teaching in this is: greater diligence and fruitfulness, means greater reward.

What about the other servant, the one who had the one mina, who did nothing, who hid it? He faces not commendation, reward; but rebuke and loss - like the previous parable. He said: “I feared you because you're an austere man”. Again, he has a distorted view of the Master, seeing Him as lacking compassion, being hard - and that is many people's view of God. They've never developed intimacy, never come to know Him, never let God deal with their heart, and so they're projecting onto God what's not there. He won't take any risks serving. He just wants to keep everything hidden.

“I have kept the mina hidden away” - so he preserved it but wasn't productive. He was a consumer, not a producer. Sadly today, many Christians are like that - they bury or hide their gifts, or they put them in some other arena that will serve them, but do not use them to advance the kingdom of God.

They like to enjoy the benefits of Jesus: I would like Him to forgive me, and bless me, and heal me, and provide for me, bring breakthroughs for me - but I don't want to give up my life to serve Him, and please Him. They enjoy the Jesus that benefits them, so they have half of Jesus – but they don't have the other half, where He's the King, who's receiving a kingdom, and will come back. They're not allowing Him to rule by surrendering their life – “Lord, not my will but Your will”.

The Master's rebuke: “you wicked servant” - you have a hurtful influence on others, and that's true of all Christians who are self-centred, and consumers. They drain and demotivate others.

“Why didn't you put My money in the bank” - if you have a gift or opportunity, why didn't you connect with someone who could show you how to make something of it? Not everyone is called to do a ministry, or start a ministry, but we can connect with others, and make what we do have available with them; and then together, we can make a great result.

The consequence of that was his loss. He had a loss of opportunity, and he lost his authority and position ruling in the coming kingdom. Jesus then adds a little to this, and we'll finish with this today…

“Everyone who has, more will be given; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away”.

Jesus repeats that about five different times! Everyone who ‘has’ means, He's talking about having an ear to hear. Everyone who was responsive - has understanding, and responds, and does what God wants - more will be given to them. He will have an abundance. When you obey God and do what He's calling you to do - when you start to faithfully serve Him and put into practice what you're learning… then more is given. It's in the doing, that you qualify for the more.

He says: “he who doesn't have” - who actually hears the word of God, but makes no response to it; unresponsive to God, doesn't really understand the significance of it; then they may seem to be spiritual, but what they have… eventually will be taken away.

I've observed that if we don't respond to revelation by acting upon it, then we seem to lose that revelation, and drop back to a lower level. We've seen then, in the two parables: equal faithfulness means equal reward; and greater diligence means greater reward.

There's other parables and stories - two others, that I encourage you to read and look at:

1) Matthew 20:1-6, which is all about the opportunity given; and…

2) Matthew 24:45-51, about the importance of being a wise - having a wise and understanding heart and knowing what to do at the right time.

Bless you.

Summary Notes

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ER9: The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 2

Intimacy - Relationship personal devotion and surrender to will of Father

Faithful Service - Faithfulness How we have fulfilled our assignment & responsibilities

Transformation - Maturity, how we have submitted to God’s \formation process

I. What is the Judgment Seat of Christ?

I. The Judgment Seat of Christ

1. Every Believer has an Appointment at The Judgment Seat of Christ

* Rom 14:10-12 - For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ …..So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.

* 2Co 5:10 - For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

* Every believer must stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

2. At the Judgment Seat of Christ our Service as a Believer is evaluated

* There are no exceptions. This is an appointment that every believer will keep

* Every believer will stand before Christ and give an account of how they have lived as a believer

* In ancient times judicial decisions were typically handed down from an official seated on a bema seat, a raised platform on which a judge or magistrate would sit as he pronounced a decision in some matter before him.

* At the Judgment Seat each believer will be rewarded (or experience loss) for what he has done during his life

* Jesus will evaluate our service based according to what we have done…our lifestyle

“Done”….Gk. prasso …to practice, to perform repeatedly, or habitually (not single acts)

Whatever we have regularly practiced will have consequences

* Mat 16:27 - For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

II. God Judges the Works of Every Believer

1. Every Believer is Called to Faithfully Serve Our Father

(i). We are Created for Lifestyle of Good Works

Eph. 2:10 - For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

(ii). We are to be Zealous for Good Works

Tit. 2:14 - who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

(iii). We are to be Careful to Maintain Good Works

Tit. 3:8 - This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.

(iv). We are to be Fruitful in Good Works

Tit. 3:14 And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.

(v). We are to Encourage Others to Good Works

Heb. 10:24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,

(vi). We are Commanded by Jesus to do Good Works

Mat 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

2. All our Works will be Judged to Qualify for Rewards

* Works…..our actions, things that we do, the visible overflow of our heart

* Works are flavoured by the heart attitude that we perform them…love and faith..…duty, obligation, guilt ,fear

* Works flowing from faith and love and obedience to Holy Spirit are an act of worship seen and acknowledged by God

* Eph.6:5 - Bondservants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ;

* Eph. 6:6 - not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,

* Eph. 6:7 - with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men,

* Eph. 6:8 - knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.

* Col 3:22 - Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.

* Col. 3:23 - And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,

* Col. 3:24 - knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.

* Col. 3:25 - But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.

* Mat. 16:27 - For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

3. What will God take into Account When Judging Our Works?

* 1Col. 4:5 - Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

Things that God will take into Account

(i). Our Alignment with His Will and Purpose (Mat.7:21-23)

Mat. 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

Alignment with the will of God comes out of intimacy and surrender to Him

(ii). Our Motivation….Purity of heart (1Cor.13:3)

Luke 6:35 - But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

1Col. 13:3 - And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Purity of heart means purity of motivation. It comes out of experiencing His love and yielding to His Spirit and transformation work

Prov. 22:11 - He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the king will be his friend.

(iii). Our Faithfulness (Mat.25:23)

Mat. 25:23 - His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of your lord.

There is no limit to the faithfulness we can demonstrate.

It is developed through serving with excellence and persevering through difficulties

Equal faithfulness brings equal reward

(iv). Our Diligence (Luk.19:)

Luke 19:17 - And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.'

There is no limit to the diligence that we can demonstrate

It is developed by serving with diligence, passion and excellence

The greater the diligence and fruitfulness the greater the reward

(v). Opportunity We have been given (Mat.20)

Gal. 6:10 - Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.

God takes into account the opportunities that have been given to each person

(vi). What We have Overcome (Rev.2-3)

Rev. 3:21 - To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

Every believer has unique battles to overcome during the course of their life

Overcomers are promised specific rewards in Rev.2-3

Rewards are promised for overcoming: Cold love, persecution, false doctrine, false teachers and prophets, spirit of Jezebel, compromise, self-satisfaction, Luke warmness, temptation.

(vii). What We have Become…Our Response to His Transformation Process (1Pet.1:5-11)

2Pe. 1:8 - For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2Pe. 1:9 - For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

2Pe. 1:10 - Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;

2Pe. 1:11 - for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

(viii). The Words We have Spoken (Mat.12:36)

Mat. 12:36 - But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.

(ix). The Revelation Given to us (Luk.12:48)

Luke 12:48 - But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.

James 3:1 - My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.

(x). How We have Judged others (Jam.2:13)

James 2:13 - For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

III. Faithfulness in Assignment: Having a Faithful and Loyal heart

1. Faithful and Loyal Heart

* All servants of God are required to be faithful to the Lord and His assignment

* 1Col. 4:2 - Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.

“Found”……Gk. Heurisko…to search after, to find by enquiry or examination

* Rev 17:14 - These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful."

* Faithful: means to be reliable, steadfast, predictable in fulfilling responsibilities

* Faithfulness is a personal choice…There is no limit. It is demonstrated in many different ways

Small things, Finances, Entrustment from others (Luke16:10-13)

* Faithfulness is a rare quality, and of great value in the Kingdom of God

* Pro 20:6 - Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, But who can find a faithful man?

* Example Timothy

Php 2:20 - For I have no one like-minded, who will sincerely care for your state.

Php 2:21 - For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus.

Php 2:22 - But you know his proven character, that as a son with his father he served with me in the gospel.

* Loyal: Means to be faithful and unswerving in ones allegiance, regardless of difficulties, hardships. Having a heart undivided between to masters

* 2Ch 16:9 - For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him. In this you have done foolishly; therefore, from now on you shall have wars."

2. The Example of Jesus

* Heb. 3:5 - And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after;

* Heb. 3:6 - But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

* Joh. 17:4 - I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.

3. Jesus Acknowledges and Rewards Faithfulness

* The parables of the Talents and the pounds address the issues of faithfulness of the servants of Jesus

* The parables differ in the amount left to the individual servants, the exact time following His return the Lord reckons with His servant, the actual rewards given, and the basis of reward

IV. The Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14-30)

* This parable comes after the parable of the ten virgins which terminates with the Marriage Supper of the Lamb

* This parable also concludes with the Marriage Supper of the Lamb which precedes the Reign of Christ

Mat 25:14 - For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them.

Mat 25:15 - And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey.

Mat 25:16 - Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents.

Mat 25:17 - And likewise he who had received two gained two more also.

Mat 25:18 - But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord's money.

Mat 25:19 - After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them.

Mat 25:20 - So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, 'Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.'

Mat 25:21 - His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

Mat 25:22 - He also who had received two talents came and said, 'Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.'

Mat 25:23 - His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

Mat 25:24 - "Then he who had received the one talent came and said, 'Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

Mat 25:25 - And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.'

Mat 25:26 - But his lord answered and said to him, 'You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed.

Mat 25:27 - So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest.

Mat 25:28 - So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.

Mat 25:29 - 'For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.

Mat 25:30 - And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

Commendation and Reward

(i). “The man travelling to a far country”

* This man represents Jesus

* He entrusts goods to His servants according to their ability...different amounts according to different ability

* “Talent” …a substantial sum of money. This does not refer to natural talents

(ii) “According to his own ability”

The master recognised the different abilities and limitations of each servant and assigned responsibilities to each accordingly

Jesus gives talents that are unique to every persons gift, ability, capacity, background

Some servants are entrusted with more than others.

* Regardless of the personal capacity or degree of responsibility each servant is expected to devote time and attention to managing the talent entrusted to him

* All servants are expected to be productive…to act on His behalf and advance His interests

* Every Christian is responsible to The Lord, but each differ in the capacities for carrying out responsibilities

* The issue is not how many talents that a believer is given, but the faithfulness of the believer towards the responsibility that he has been given

* Every Believer is able to earn Jesus commendation whatever their capacity and unique calling

(iii) “He settled accounts”

* When the master returns he calls each servant to give account of his service, how faithful he has been in fulfilling his assignment

* Likewise at Jesus coming each believer will stand before the “Bema” seat of Christ and give account of his service (2Cor.5:10), how faithful he has been in fulfilling his assignment

* The first slave doubled his five talents as did the slave given two talents. Both slaves received the same commendation from the master.

(iv) Jesus Commendation:

“Well done…Good and faithful servant”

Mat 25:21 - The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. NLT version

#1 “Well done”:

* Well done”….The servant has brought great pleasure to his master

* Jesus will affirm faithful believers before the Father and the angels (Rev. 3:5).

* He who overcomes...I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels." (Rev. 3:5)

#2 “Good and Faithful Servant”:

* Note three affirmations that Jesus will declare over His people.

“Good”………..Gk “Agathos”…excellent, distinguished, upright, honourable

Good points to godly motivations with sincere intentions to do God’s will.

* Faithful highlights diligence and follow-through of our intentions to do good in the face of pressure, obstacles, mundaneness, and temptation.

‘Faithful”…….Gk “Pistis”………trustworthy, can be relied upon to fulfil his responsibilities

Steadiness over years is emphasised here.

* Servant speaks of being willing to sacrifice our comfort, honour, and personal agenda.

“Servant”……Gk. “Doulos”….devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interests

Mat 20:27 - And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave (doulos)

Mat 20:28 - Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many

#3 “Faithful over Few things”:

* Most people have a small “assignment” (sphere of responsibility and influence).

* Some believe that their work only matters if it impacts many people.

* Our life assignment may be small in man’s eyes, but it is so important in God’s eyes that He greatly rewards those who are faithful in it.

(v). The Rewards:

Mat 25:21 - His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

Rewards which Believers receive after the Bema Seat of Christ will be based upon their faithfulness to Christ in this present age

Each believer will be judged and must be found worthy of reward

#1 “I will make you ruler over many things”:

* Jesus’ generosity is seen here in that He rewards our “few things” with “many things.”

* “Ruler”…. To appoint someone over or in charge, to appoint to administer an office

* The realm of ruling with Jesus in the Millennial Kingdom is related to faithfulness over “few things” in this age

#2 “Enter into the joy of your Lord”

* We have joy in knowing that He values our efforts to serve and that our choices matter to Him.

* Servants judged to be faithful enter into the marriage Supper of The Lamb to celebrate with Him

* In addition to the great joy of the Marriage Supper will be the joy of ruling with Christ

* The reign of Christ is mentioned vs21,23, but this is not the main subject of this parable and the one before it of the Ten Virgins

(vi). The Key: A Good and Faithful Heart

* Jesus will reward faithfulness in fulfilling our assignment regardless of its size

Even though the master assigned a different degree of responsibility to each slave, when both slaves performed faithfully, the master awarded each slave equally.

The master’s commendation to each slave in v.21 and v.23 was identical.

Jesus will emphasise each servant’s faithful service rather than the magnitude of his achievement.

* Even our smallest efforts will not be forgotten by God

Mat 10:42 - And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward."

* Jesus does not forget every act of love we show Him in serving family, friends and others.

Heb. 6:10 - For God is not unjust to forget your work and labour of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.

* Paul taught believers to be diligent in knowing that the Lord watches and rewards them.

Col 3:23-24 - And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.

By knowing that He watches us, we can serve “heartily,” with diligence. Some only serve with diligence before the people who can promote them! The Lord is our ultimate promoter.

Rebuke and the Loss

Mat 25:24 - Then he who had received the one talent came and said, 'Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

Mat 25:25 - And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.'

Mat 25:26 - But his lord answered and said to him, 'You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed.

Mat 25:27 - So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest.

(i). The Mindset of the Servant

#1. I knew you to be a hard man vs.24

This servant complains that Jesus’ leadership is unfair and unreasonable

This servant complains that Jesus requires too much, offers too little help, and does not understand how difficult their life is.

#2. Reaping where you have not sown vs.24

The complaint, or accusation, against the Lord in this statement is that He requires more from His servants than He invests in them. He considers Him demanding and unreasonable

#3. I was afraid vs.25

This servant claimed that he buried his talent in the ground because of fear.

Fear of failure, rejection, shame, difficulty, opposition from people, fatigue, loss of free time, or inconvenience leads many to refuse to seek and serve God faithfully and consistently

(ii) Jesus Rebuke:

“You wicked and lazy servant”

#1 Wicked…Gk. ‘Poneros”…..having a hurtful, negative or destructive influence upon others

#2. Slothful…Gk. ‘Okneros” …slow, lazy and unwilling to work

#3. Unprofitable….producing no gain or good result, not fruitful or beneficial to the Kingdom

* He lacked revelation or intimacy with Jesus.

* He had a distorted view of Jesus

* He failed to provide faithful service to his master

* He preferred to spend his time money and efforts on his own comfort and honour

* Mat 25:25 - And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground

A fearful and unbelieving heart caused him to hide his talent ….he avoided service or any personal risk. His focus is on himself and on self-preservation. He is self-centred but anticipates approval

(iii) The Loss:

#1. Loss of Opportunity

Mat 25:28 - So take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents.

#2. Exclusion from the Marriage Supper and Celebration

Mat 25:30 - And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

(iv). Outer Darkness vs.30

This cannot refer to Hell. Hell cannot be both a place of darkness and burning

Banquets in ancient times, just like today, usually took place in the evening.

There was a distinct contrast between the lighted Banquet Hall and the darkness outside where there were no lights. Inside the hall was filled with light. Outside the hall was completely dark

Outer Darkness does not describe Hell, but the conditions outside the Banquet Hall

Outer Darkness means exclusion from the celebrations of the Marriage Feast

(v). Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth vs.30

The servant who is excluded from the Wedding banquet experiences weeping and gnashing of teeth

“Weeping”……………….means deep grief and sorrow at the realisation of what has been lost

“Gnashing of teeth”…means anger at being outside when he should have been inside celebrating

This is not an expression of suffering in Hell, but rather immense regret, sorrow and anger at being excluded from the feasting and laughing and celebration of the Wedding Feast with Jesus and with those servants who have been found faithful

When Jesus returns to establish justice and peace upon the earth some Christians will experience His coming with Joy, gladness and celebration because they prepared and were faithful

Other Christians will experience shame, regret, grief and great sorrow at their unfaithfulness and exclusion from Eternal Intimacy, Authority and Glory, as they see others celebrating

Principle: All believers are expected to develop a faithful and loyal heart

All believers are expected to serve the Lord faithfully with the talent they have been given

V. Diligence in Assignment: Having a Diligent Heart

The Parable of the Minas (Pounds) (Luke19:11-27)

* This parable of the kingdom look similar but is vastly different

* In the Parable of the Talents:

(i). Faithful servants are given positions of honour and glory at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Unfaithful servants are excluded from the Supper and celebration

(ii). Equal faithfulness by the servants (100-fold gain) receives equal rewards (Same Commendation)

* In the Parable of the Minas:

(i). Faithful servants are given positions of honour and glory and authority in the Kingdom.

Unfaithful servants are denied these positions of responsibility and authority

(ii). Greater diligence by the servants receives greater rewards

Luke 19:11 - Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately.

Luke 19:12 - Therefore He said: "A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.

Luke 19:13 - So he called ten of his servants, delivered to them ten minas, and said to them, 'Do business till I come.'

Luke 19:13 - So he called ten of his servants, delivered to them ten minas, and said to them, 'Do business till I come.'

Luke 19:14 - But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We will not have this man to reign over us.'

Luke 19:15 - And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

Luke 19:16 - Then came the first, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned ten minas.'

Luke 19:17 - And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.'

Luke 19:18 - And the second came, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned five minas.'

Luke 19:19 - Likewise he said to him, 'You also be over five cities.'

Luke 19:20 - Then another came, saying, 'Master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief.

Luke 19:21 - For I feared you, because you are an austere man. You collect what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.'

Luke 19:22 - And he said to him, 'Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow.

Luke 19:23 - Why then did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest?'

Luke 19:24 - And he said to those who stood by, 'Take the mina from him, and give it to him who has ten minas.'

Luke 19:25 - (But they said to him, 'Master, he has ten minas.')

Luke 19:26 - 'For I say to you, that to everyone who has will be given; and from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

Luke 19:27 - But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.' "

(i). A Certain Nobleman

* Nobleman….Person of high rank

* The day is coming when Jesus will return literally and physically as King of Kings and Lord of Lords

* After He has returned He will call His servants to give account of their service

* The sequence of events will be as follows:

Jesus returns, The Judgment seat of Christ, The Marriage Supper of the Lamb, Saints empowered to rule

(ii). Ten servants and Ten Minas

* Ten is the number of completion. It represents all the servants and all the pounds

* Jesus has left His servants in charge of all His business during the time He is in a far country(Heaven)

* In This parable each of the servants are given the same amount

(iii). “Do business till I come”

* Each servant is commanded to be busy advancing the masters business

* Each servant is expected to be faithful to fulfil the masters command until he return

(iv). “How much every man had gained by trading”

At the master’s return he calls every servant to give account of their serving

“Trading”……thoroughly occupy self with, to engage in exchange or purchase

Christians are to take the Lord’s goods and to use these goods to produce an increase

Each servant was expected to fully occupy them self in advancing the masters interests in his absence

Trading involves risk, possible loss and suffering

Commendation and Reward

Luke 19:17 - And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.'

Luke 19:18 - And the second came, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned five minas.'

Luke 19:19 - Likewise he said to him, 'You also be over five cities.'

(i). “Well done good servant”

The servant is commended for his serving that has been so productive

He has been extremely diligent and fruitful. One Mina has now earned ten Minas

Fruitfulness comes forth from abiding in Christ and His Word abiding in us

Joh 15:5 - I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit for without Me you can do nothing.

(ii). “Faithful over very little

He has both a faithful and diligent heart over very little. He has laboured and been very productive

(iii). Have authority over ten cities

In this parable the reward for faithful service is authority in the coming Kingdom

The servant who gained ten minas is rewarded with a position of authority over ten cities

This servant shares with Jesus responsibility and authority for ruling and reigning

He will partner with Jesus in establishing the Kingdom with power and authority

(iv). “Likewise he said to him “You be also over five cities”

The second servant started with the same Mina that the first servant did.

He has also been faithful but has only made five minas by trading

He is diligence and fruitfulness were less than the first servant

(v). “Have authority over five cities”

This servant is also rewarded with a position of authority, over five cities

His reward reflects that he has been less diligent and less productive than the first servant

At the Judgment Seat Jesus will not only take into account our faithfulness but also our diligence

Note:

In this parable the rewards are determined in relation to the diligence the person showed

Greater diligence and fruitfulness will result in a greater reward

Rebuke and Loss

* Luke 19:20 - Then another came, saying, 'Master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief.

Luke 19:21 - For I feared you, because you are an austere man. You collect what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.'

Luke 19:22 - And he said to him, 'Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow.

Luke 19:23 - Why then did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest?'

(i). “ I feared you, because you are an austere man”.

This a servant has a distorted view of the master

He views the master as being hard, demanding, lacking compassion

He has never developed intimacy or relationship or come to know the masters true nature

He has a heart of fear and unbelief and does not have the masters interests in his heart

He is interested only in himself and his own welfare. He will not take risks and engage in serving

(ii). “ I have kept the Mina hidden away”

He has preserved what he was entrusted with but he has failed to invest and be productive

He is like many believers who bury or hide their gifts and never engage in advancing the Kingdom

They enjoy the benefits of Jesus but will not give their heart and lives to serve and please Him

They enjoy Jesus as the Saviour who saves, forgives, heals, comforts, provides and guides

They do not embrace Jesus is King and surrender their lives to His will and purpose.

The Master’s rebuke

* Luke 19:22 - And he said to him, 'Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow.

Luke 19:23 - Why then did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest?'

(i) “You wicked servant”

“Wicked”……..to have a hurtful influence upon others causing pain and trouble

When Christians are self-centred and consumers, they drain and demotivate other believers

They have a negative influence on the community because they do not serve others

(ii). “Why did you not put my money in the bank?

Jesus expects each believer to use their gift to trade and gain increase, or to make it available to others who are committed to trade and make increase

Every believer has a role to serve the local church working with others to fulfil the Great Commission

The Servant’s Loss

* Luke 19:24 - And he said to those who stood by, 'Take the mina from him, and give it to him who has ten minas.

Luke 19:25 - (But they said to him, 'Master, he has ten minas.')

Luke 19:26 - For I say to you, that to everyone who has will be given; and from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

#1. Loss of opportunity to serve and gain reward

#2. Loss of Authority and position ruling with Jesus in His coming Kingdom

Key Kingdom Principles

* Principle: “Everyone who has, more will be given, but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away”—

* Jesus spoke this principle five times (Mt. 13:12; 25:29; Mk. 4:25; Lk. 8:18; 19:26).

#1. Everyone who has:

Everyone who has a tender, responsive, understanding, and faithful heart

We must respond to and apply truth to keep from losing it—

#2. More will be given—an abundance

If we faithfully serve God, we will experience an increase in understanding, capacity, & opportunity

#3. He who does not have:

This person is saved but is unresponsive to God. He lacks understanding and does not Respond. He seems to be spiritual but does not respond to Jesus directives

#4. What he has will be taken away

When the Holy Spirit gives us insight and understanding we must respond with action or our heart hardens and becomes unresponsive. Spiritually we go backwards

* Principle: Equal faithfulness will receive equal reward

* Principle: Greater diligence will result in greater reward

VI. The Parable of the Vineyard (Mat.20:1-16)

* In this parable the rewards are determined in relation to the opportunity the person had

Even those who are last into service can receive and equal reward as those who laboured all day

Jesus takes into account the opportunity we have had to serve and how we used it

* Mat 20:1 - "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

Mat 20:2 - Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

Mat 20:3 - And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,

Mat 20:4 - and said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.' So they went.

Mat 20:5 - Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise.

Mat 20:6 - And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said to them, 'Why have you been standing here idle all day?'

Mat 20:7 - They said to him, 'Because no one hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right you will receive.'

Mat 20:8 - So when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, 'Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.'

Mat 20:9 - And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius.

Mat 20:10 - But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a denarius.

Mat 20:11 - And when they had received it, they complained against the landowner,

Mat 20:12 - saying, 'These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.'

Mat 20:13 - But he answered one of them and said, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?

Mat 20:14 - Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you.

Mat 20:15 - Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?'

Mat 20:16 - So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen."

(i). Hire laborers for his vineyard

The landowner who went out to hire laborers for his vineyard is Jesus

The Vineyard is the Church…..people who have received Christ and become the planting of the Lord

The laborers are idle (unemployed) in the marketplace (The World”)…….spiritually

Unoccupied in world

Jesus calls each of us to Himself, and then to labour with Him in His Vineyard

(ii). Sent them into his vineyard

“Sent” …Gk.. “Apostello”….to give an apostolic commission.

Believers have an apostolic commission to advance the Kingdom of God, to serve Jesus and people

The first vine to tend is our own life, which needs cultivating and protecting spiritually

Jesus promises each laborers a wage for labouring in His Vineyard - Give them what was right!

Each laborers works for a day, representing the course of his life

(iii). Third, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh hour

Laborers were recruited at the first hour, 6:00AM, the third hour, the sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour

People are saved and called to serve the Lord in His Vineyard at different stages of their life

Some are called in childhood, some as young adults, some in midlife and some in the latter years

People have different opportunities to serve depending upon when they are called

(iv). Made equal to those who have born the burden of the day

The master calls the servants and paid them their wages starting with paying the last first

All servants were paid according to what was agreed by the master, not according to hours worked.

This first bargained with the landowner, the others agreed to receive what the master thought right

The first laborers hired complained. They were under law, the other laborers were under grace

God is sovereign: Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? vs.15

Principle: Different Opportunity, the Same Reward

God’s rewards are a matter of grace and not law. Everyone has equal opportunity

VII. Wisdom: Having a Wise and Understanding Heart

1. Wise and Understanding Heart

* Pro 24:3 Through wisdom a house is built, And by understanding it is established;

* Have we built according to God’s Eternal Purpose or not?

4. The Parable of the Wise Servant (Mat.24:45-51)

The servant was faithful and wise. He had understanding of the times

* He was sensitive and responsive to the Holy Spirit and learned to be obedient

Mat 24:45 - Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?

Mat 24:46 - Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.

Mat 24:47 - Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.

Mat 24:48 - But if that evil servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming,'

Mat 24:49 - and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards,

Mat 24:50 - the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of,

Mat 24:51 - and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The Wise and Faithful Servant

(i) He is a servant of The Lord, a believer

(ii). His heart is sensitive to the Master and His requirements. He is practices intimacy

(iii). He is faithfully serving God’s people

(iv). Meat in due season

Meat - means nourishment. It refers to spiritual food (wisdom) for mature believers

(Heb.5:12-14) Due Season - Means at the appropriate time.

He has an understanding heart and discerns what God is saying and doing (1Chron.12:32)

He possesses wisdom understanding and revelation

(v). The Wise Servant’s Reward

“Make him ruler over His household”….and Make him ruler over all his goods”…

If this wise steward is to be made “ruler,” then we know he is of the first resurrection, for these rule and reign with Christ a thousand years.

The wise steward is one who has learned to be a good servant, one who abides by the laws of the household and does the will of his Master.

He has learned that ruling does not mean having servants, but being a servant and having the authority to serve others.

The Foolish and Unfaithful Servant

(i). He is a servant of the Lord, a believer

(ii) His heart is hardened …lack of intimacy and love

(iii). He is unconcerned at the prospect of his Master returning

He has no fear of the Master or of the consequences of being unprepared for His return

(iv). His neglect of love for the Master is shown in his attitude and behaviour towards fellow servants

His words and actions are destructive towards the fellow servants

(v). His lifestyle is entangled with ungodly people

(vi). He is totally unaware of the spiritual season and timing. The Lord returns suddenly & unexpectedly

(vii). The Foolish Servant’s Loss

Cut in two (Lit. To flog severely)………...Refers to painful discipline because of his behaviour

Portion with the hypocrites…………….….Excluded from all the celebration and reward

“Weeping and gnashing of teeth”………..Deep sorrow and anger at the greatness of his loss

VII Personal Reflection and Action

1. What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about in this session?

2. What actions do you need to take in response?

3. Of the factors God will consider in judging believers, which one challenged you most? Why?

4. In what areas do you feel challenged to greater faithfulness?

5. In what areas do you feel challenged to greater diligence?

6. Why do you think God places such value on wisdom and understanding?

7. How is or service (works) related to intimacy with God and personal heart transformation?

The First Resurrection (10 of 12)

Tue 8 Sep 2020 AM  « Back to Top

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The First Resurrection is presented as the great hope and the prize to be won by the believer.

Believers and unbelievers will both arise together in the General resurrection at the end of the 1000-year Millennial Kingdom of Christ.

However, the First resurrection is for those believers who qualify to participate. It is possible for a believer not to qualify for this First resurrection. Some principles of selection are shared in this important study.

Welcome to the next study, we're doing Eternal Rewards, and this is #10. We're looking on the First Resurrection. We've already talked a little bit about the First Resurrection in one of the early studies. I really want you to understand the scriptures around it, because this is an area in which there's major disagreements in the body of Christ, so it helps if you do some search of the scriptures yourself.

Matthew 16:27 - “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father, with His angels, and He will reward each one according to his works”.

In this scripture, and in many other scriptures, it tells us very clearly, of reward for our activities; but it's not just any kind of works, it's works that come out of a life that's yielded to the Lord, and wanting to honour Him, and please Him - so there's a dimension of faith to it.

Our status before God is totally based on faith, not works.

Ephesians 2:8-9 - “By grace you are saved, through faith. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone boast.”

We know that our standing is totally related to what Jesus did; but our reward, and our position and status for eternity is very much determined by how we respond to God's call on our life. Each of us have got a calling, and that calling is individual. It's also corporate, and that calling involves us becoming into full sons, full maturity and the issue of intimacy with God, with personal growth and transformation and with fulfilling our assignment.

We talked about the rewards, and put them into three categories:

1) Eternal Intimacy - many of the rewards describe a deep, intimate connection with Jesus.

2) Eternal Authority - having responsibility to govern with Him and bring total order to creation.

3) Eternal Glory - we looked at resurrection, and our status and honour in the coming kingdom.

There are two resurrections…

Revelations 20:4-6 – “I saw thrones and they sat on them, and judgement was given to them and I saw the souls of them who were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and the word of God, which did not worship the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ 1000 years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the 1000 years were finished. This is the First Resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that has part in the First Resurrection. On such the second death has no power. They shall be priests of God, and of Christ, and shall reign with Him 1000 years”.

This is the key verse, and the clearest passage, that there are two resurrections. If there's a First Resurrection, then there's a second one. This is the First Resurrection, and it's very clear that the people who are in that First Resurrection are given responsibility and authority to rule with Christ in the coming kingdom.

“Blessed and holy is he that has part in the First Resurrection, on such the second death has no power, they shall be priests of God and Christ, shall reign with Him 1000 years”.

Here's a few key thoughts...

1) This is a limited resurrection. Some people are excluded from the First Resurrection. Many people are excluded from that, and most Christians would accept that.

2) The First Resurrection is for believers, for followers of Christ. There is no indication anywhere that there would be unsaved in that. The First Resurrection is a resurrection of reward, and it's for believers.

3) Here is the controversial part... Although only believers are in the First Resurrection, there's nothing anywhere says that all believers will be in that resurrection. In fact, there's several descriptions which indicate quite the opposite - that it's limited. It says: those who participate in the First Resurrection will rule and reign with Christ in the millennium - that's very clear!

That promise is given to overcomers, in Revelations 2 & 3. The promise of ruling is part of the First Resurrection; and the promise given to overcomers is ruling with Christ; so quite clearly, overcomers are the people that have qualified to enter into this First Resurrection, and participate in ruling and reign with Him, and establishing His kingdom on earth.

Clearly, not all Christians are overcomers - many are overcome. They're overcome by sin, by worldliness, by temptations and pressures, by offences… overcome by so many things. It says: these people will rule and reign with Christ - they are the overcomers. Those who are in the First Resurrection are blessed and holy. That means they're set apart for God, and blessing sits on their lives.

What about the rest of the dead? The rest of the dead includes people who are dead at the time this happens; and those who are living, who will then subsequently die. It says those who participate in the resurrection, they're going to live; but those not in the resurrection, will rise in the General Resurrection, at the end of the 1000-year reign.

It says “the rest of the dead did not live again until 1000 years were finished. This is the First Resurrection”. Now just stop there for a moment and imagine: if you understood your calling was to grow, and become like Christ, to serve Him on this earth; and then the reward would be putting off this body, and putting on a resurrection body, and being able to move, with unlimited freedom, unlimited access, into the realm of heaven, into the realm of earth - being able to move anywhere, at any time, you wanted to. And that those who failed to enter that, would then live their life out and die - imagine the impact of this on you, knowing that you were called to this, but now you have been excluded from it!

“The rest of the dead did not live until the end of the 1000 years” (we'll come to the General Resurrection in a moment). Clearly, the First Resurrection is the better one to be in. Two resurrections; and that's the one you want to be in.

Revelations 20:11-15 talks about the Second Resurrection, or the General Resurrection. From what we've already read, we know that it must take place at the end of the millennium.

Revelations 20:11-15 – “I saw a great white throne and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away. And there was no place found for them. I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. The books were open, another book was opened which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books according to their works. The sea gave up their dead which were in it, then death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every man according to their works. Everyone that comes up in the Second Resurrection is judged. Death and hell were cast in the lake of fire. This is the second death. So whoever's not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire”.

Notice here, in that resurrection, there are people small and great; and there are people dead, and people alive. There are many, many people; and there are both believers and unbelievers in the Second Resurrection. The only people that won't be in the Second Resurrection will be the overcomers, because they come up in the first one. The Second Resurrection - that's those who are alive at that time, who are changed; and those who have died, will be raised at that time. Now whether they're believers or unbelievers, they will all appear before Christ, and there will be a judgement.

This one is called the Great White Throne Judgement, in comparison to the other one we looked at, which is just the Bema, the Judgement (or rewards) Seat of Christ. Believers and unbelievers are both in the Second Resurrection. We know that, because people are found written in the Book of Life, so that means they're a believer. The First Resurrection contains believers; but not all believers, only overcomers.

Not all Christians make it into the First Resurrection. This is the area of this teaching in which you do need to know the scriptures, because it's an area where people assume: everything's all right, I make it no matter what kind of life I live. It's the teaching that we can come to Jesus, and then just do whatever we want after that. It's the kind of complacency and half-heartedness that we see in so many places, and it comes about because of a lack of revelation.

I want to share with you a key scripture on this, and I'm going to show you some other ones as well. Some are quite clear, some are not so clear, but they imply it. Not all Christians make the First Resurrection.

Philippians 3:8-15 – “Doubtless I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things, I count them dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is by law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death, and (here it is) if, by any means, I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

Not as though I'd already attained, either were perfect, but I follow after that I may apprehend that for which I'm apprehended of Christ. Brethren, I count myself not to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, reaching forth to the things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Now he concludes then…)

Let us therefore as many as be perfect, think this way or be thus minded; and if anyone be other minded, God shall reveal even this to you”.

Wow, very powerful scripture! Paul has been talking prior to this, about everything he did before he was a believer - he talked about his pedigree, his training, his teaching. He said all of that is nothing. He said: it was valuable to me then; but now he says: I consider it all loss, compared to the knowing or knowledge of Christ. He said: I've given up lots of things. I've given up basically my life and my security, and I don't consider any of these things important. My goal is to win Christ.

We have talked before about running the race, and that there's a prize, so here he lays out in that brief statement, that I may win Christ; meaning that intimacy, deep fellowship, and deep relationship with Jesus is something to be won, by running our race according to the way God wants to run it.

He says: “if by any means I might attain to the ‘out-from’ resurrection, unto the resurrection of the dead, not as though I'd attained it, or were perfect yet, but I follow after, because this is what God has called me to.”

There are two things that he points out…

1) He points out the prize to be won. He identifies it as the high calling of God, and Christ Jesus. The prize is a calling - it's fulfilling a calling; and he says that it's a very high, or elevated calling. It's the calling God puts to every one of us, an invitation. A calling is an invitation.

Then he talks about the prize… I press towards the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God and Christ Jesus. I forget the things that are behind. I'm stretching out constantly. In other words, my life pursuit is this prize. This is so valuable, I have laid down everything to get this.

Then he goes on to say: I'm not even sure I'm going to get it. He says: “not that I have attained it already or even made perfect, but I follow hard, that I may obtain (or apprehend) that for which Christ has called me”.

He's saying there is a prize; and that prize is the high calling of God and Christ. That prize involves winning deep intimacy with Jesus; and he said: I have not made it - and he's writing as an apostle. He's gone through hardships, difficulties and suffering, but he still has no assurance in his heart that he will qualify for this reward.

Now right there in the middle of the passage, you'll see that what he's referring to is the resurrection of the dead. Philippians 3:11 – “If, by any means, I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

That statement is from New King James Version, but it is not a good translation. It's a poor translation that hides what they were saying, so if you go back to the original language of Greek, the word for resurrection is ‘anastasis’. Anastasis means resurrection, calling back to life again, calling you to stand up again. Stasis, to stand; ana, again. Stand up again.

The word resurrection is ‘anastasis’, so in the Bible, whenever they use the word resurrection, they use anastasis. The resurrection of Jesus, anastasis. But this word here is different. It's the word ‘exanastasis’, meaning the out-from resurrection. It's a resurrection that takes me ‘out from’ everyone else, and then he adds to it, and doubles down on it, saying “exanastasis ek nekron” - from the dead ones.

The language of it is really saying something like this: There is a special, unique resurrection. This resurrection is an out-from resurrection, which brings you out-from all the dead, ahead of all the dead - and this is the prize that he's looking for, to attain into that First Resurrection. It's the out-from resurrection, from among the dead - it's not a General Resurrection. It's a very limited resurrection, and he's talking about the First Resurrection.

We read about the first one, and he's saying that as an apostle, he's not even sure he qualifies. What he's saying then, is that it's a prize that you could disqualify yourself from at any point. When you look at some ministries, and they've done very well, for so many years… and then totally disqualify themselves! A stronghold in their heart breaks out, and a problem comes, and then it's all over.

The resurrection, which is from among the dead, is a privilege you arrive at. It follows the way you live your life, and he implies that the key part of that is that I might know Him (ongoing intimacy with Jesus); that I might experience the power of His resurrection, and that I might also participate in the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to death.

What does that mean? He's talking about the pursuit of Christ. The pursuit of this resurrection means: I will embrace a life of knowing Him and surrendering to His will in my life. To become ‘conformable to His death’ means that I surrender my life, and what I want to do, to fulfil what God wants to do. That's what it looks like. Jesus humbled Himself and became obedient under death.

We have this opportunity to die to ourselves every day, all through the day - it's all to do with the self-life. Jesus said: if you want to follow Me, (deny self) take up your cross. He's talking about being conformed to His sufferings. That means, to be shaped in our life, through the tough experiences we have, so we become like Him. Whatever tough experiences we have: disappointments, setbacks, offences, betrayals, delays, difficulties, traumas… life is full of those things; He said: but all of those things, God will use them, and make them work to shift and change us, so we are prepared for what He has. It's all in how you respond to them.

When we see and experience problems, we can enter into ‘reaction mode’ to the problems; or by looking at the natural, or we can set our eyes on Jesus Himself, as the example of enduring suffering (how did He handle these things), and allowing Him to change us. He says: “we are changed from glory to glory”. He says: “beholding as we look not at the things natural, but the things invisible, then God uses them to change us”.

Notice here: “…if by any means I might attain to the resurrection”. What does that mean - ‘if by any means’? Well, any time you see ‘if’, that means a condition - I may not do it. “If by any means” implies a possibility I don't make it. In Acts 27:12 they use the same term…

Acts 27:12 – “And because the harbour was not suitable to winter in, the majority advised we set sail from there also, if by any means we could reach Phoenix, a harbour in Crete, opening towards the southwest and northwest, and winter there”.

If you've read that story in the Book of Acts… they never made it - they were shipwrecked. They did not reach their destination. When it says: “if by any means”, it's saying very clearly, there's a possibility you don't make it. So again, is a resurrection going to happen? Yes, for everyone; but the First Resurrection, is a select resurrection - it's not ‘all inclusive’; it's for those who have run their race according to what God wants, and it's very helpful to see that.

The resurrection takes place at the coming of Christ.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 – “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep (those who have died), so you don't sorrow, like others that have got no hope. If we believe Jesus died and rose again, even though them that sleep in Jesus God, will bring with Him. This we say to you by the word of God, that we which are alive, and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who are asleep”.

Here is the verse, Verse 16: “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout (a shout of victory), with the voice of the archangel and (here it is) with the trump of God”. (there's a trumpet blast, the trump - a single trump). “The dead in Christ shall rise first, and thee which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord”.

Verse 17 – “to be caught up together with them”, is a term used by many people in the church called ‘the rapture’. Like the First Resurrection teaching, most of the church has got the story wrong about the rapture as well; and so, understanding it, and knowing the basis of what the Bible does teach, you'll be better equipped then to talk into these things.

Notice there, he talks about how ‘the trump of God will sound’ and that's when the resurrection takes place. He is referring to a trumpet blast from heaven; but in the Bible, you'll find that many things which are fulfilled in the New Testament are prefigured through the Old Testament. What we see happening in the New appears in the Old Testament in a type, a pattern, a shadow – someone, something, some event, or some object, that prefigures all of this.

In the Old Testament, there was a feast called the Feast of Trumpets. There were three feasts of Israel… The first feast was the Feast of Passover; and it was held in the first month, on the 14th day. God re-ordered their calendar, and He said: this will be the beginning of your calendar from now on; so the Feast of Passover takes place in the first month, and this was fulfilled literally by Jesus Christ.

The Feast of Pentecost was the next feast, and it was held in the third month, 50 days after the first month feast; and this also is characterised by the coming of Christ - at the first coming of Christ, that feast was fulfilled.

Then there was the Feast of Harvest. So, Passover was at the beginning of their year; Pentecost then is the Feast of First Fruits; and then Tabernacles was the third feast, held in the seventh month - and that has not yet been fulfilled.

You'll find through the Bible, many references to the Feast of Tabernacles; the Feast of Trumpets was a part of that - the Day of Atonement. Yom Kippur was a part of that; and then the Year of Jubilee and so on. All of that, was a part of that feast. What we need to see is that two of those feasts were fulfilled exactly into the detail historically. These feasts have firstly a personal application, and then secondly, a prophetic application. Personal means: there's something about this feast for you to experience; prophetic means: there's something about it that foretells of events in history, the eternal plan of God.

These feasts of Israel, and what God put out in those books of the law, outline the whole story or the whole history of man, from one end to the other. As you go through it, it leads you to discover firstly, Jesus Christ; and secondly, the total plan of God. Most churches don't teach anything on this, so people don't understand why these things are important - why they celebrate the Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. There's no context or teaching for it, so we need to have that.

So firstly, the Feast of Passover, in Exodus 12. The people of Israel were in bondage in Egypt. They were in slavery to Egypt. There were 10 plagues, and on the eve of the last plague, they were all told that every family had to take a lamb, a spotless lamb. It was taken on the 14th day of the month, and it was slain. It was taken on the 10th day, and it was investigated for four days, to be found spotless. On the 14th day it was slain. They took the blood, and applied it to the lintels and the door posts, and then that night they stayed in there and ate the Passover Feast - the first Passover Feast, and that night the destroyer went through, and all the firstborn in the land were slain. Immediately, because of that, they were all able to escape Egypt; and they then became Israel, the nation entering their land.

In the New Testament, the Feast of Passover was the feast when Jesus died. Jesus gave up His life, and there was a darkness over the land for three hours, and that stopped people offering up the sacrifice until the very moment Jesus died. As Jesus died, or when He died, then everyone was able to offer the natural Passover sacrifice. The very event, a lamb is slain, and its blood shed for forgiveness of sins; the very timing of it, the exact day, the exact time, coincided with the natural Feast of Passover. The Passover of the old was fulfilled exactly to the very hour, by circumstances God engineered. That's when the veil of the temple tore down. When you see that, you realise that God pre-planned all of history - He's bigger than all of events.

Jesus was inspected four times, by four different people - just like the lamb was inspected, over four days. It tells us in 1 Corinthians 5 that Christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us. The personal experience for us is that we receive Christ as our saviour. His blood cleanses our sins. We become justified before God, and now we become escaped out of Egypt. We're now born again into the family of God.

Then Jesus told the disciples that they should wait, and they should wait until they receive power from on high. They had to wait, and they had no idea how long to wait - or maybe they did? They waited until the exact day of Pentecost, at the exact hour, that they would pour water out in the temple. The Holy Ghost fell on them, and the Pentecost Feast that had been celebrated for years now was literally fulfilled. Jesus is now pouring out His Spirit upon all flesh and it's very much like its counterpart in the Old Testament.

In Exodus 19, where they came to the foot of the mountain, and the fire of God fell, and they saw the fire of God, and God spoke to them, and the law of God was given. Now in the New Testament, the fire of God falls - they see the fire of God falling. God speaks and ministers to them. The spirit now is put into their heart, the law of God's written in the heart. The parallels are extraordinary.

Again, we have the Feast of Passover, which we can experience personally - we get saved. We have the Feast of Pentecost - we get filled with the Holy Ghost, and fire, and God begins the transforming work in our life, and empowers us for service. What I want you to see in this point is: 1) it's personal, and it leads us to an encounter with God; and 2) it's also prophetic - it has an accurate time when it gets fulfilled.

That brings us then to the feast of Tabernacles, which is in the seventh month. At the beginning of the seventh month, they have the Feast of Tabernacles, which started with a trumpet, the sound of the trumpet. The Feast of Trumpets was on one day; and then there was the Day of Atonement, which was fasting - Yom Kippur; and then there was the Feast of Tabernacles - the Jubilee announced.

Clearly there's two things… The first thing is: this must also be a personal experience with God; the second is: it must have a timing, which is exactly the right timing. So, it's almost certain that the Feast of Tabernacles will be literally fulfilled when they're celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem.

Numbers 10:1 – “the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: make two silver trumpets for yourself. You will make them of hammered work; you shall use them for calling the congregation, directing the movements of the camps. When they blow both (two trumpets), all the congregation shall gather before you, at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. However, if they blow only one, then only the leaders, the heads of divisions of Israel shall gather to you”.

There are other things about it… “when they sound the advance, then the camps will all move”. So, whenever there was a movement, they sounded the trumpet. Whenever they wanted to have a gathering, sound both trumpets; and to gather only the leaders, the rulers - one trumpet.

If they had war, they would sound the trumpet to remind God to step in and help them in their wars. If they had a day of gladness or feasts, the feasts of Israel, they would also sound the trumpets at the feasts, so that's where we get the Feast of Trumpets.

Notice here, two things: that when one trumpet is sounded the leaders gather; but when two trumpets are sounded, then everyone gathers.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 – “When the trump of God sounds, the dead in Christ shall rise first”.

In the Old Testament, when He sounded one trumpet, all those who were leaders would gather. So when the trump sounds, you notice the overcomers will arise, and they are the ones who will rule with Christ, so you see a strong picture prophetically in the Old Testament, of two different situations: one trumpet, the leaders or rulers arise; the other trumpet, the whole congregation arises. When the Lord returns, one trump will sound, and then the overcomers will arise into their resurrection bodies. It won't be until the end of 1000 years that the two trumpets will sound, and all the rest are gathered. Imagine that!

It makes the study of the Old Testament so wonderful, because hidden everywhere through it is Christ, and the prophetic plan of God. That's why, when Jesus met the disciples in Luke 24, He shared with them all things in the prophets, in the law, that spoke of Him. That must've been the most amazing message to ever hear, for Him to go through the books of the Bible - this is about Me, that's about Me, the Passover Lamb, that's Me… Ruth and Boaz - that's Me, and that's the bride, the church.

He's gone right through the whole Bible, and shown them exactly where He appears in it, and how all these stories have been integrated by God, to point to the end times, and God's plan unfolding. That's what makes the Bible so - it's just inexhaustible, and once you get the understanding of that, you really delight in it.

So, what is the basis for selection? I want to go through a few things that are clear factors in this, and I want to look also at how we are responsible to prepare ourselves. We have to do something to qualify.

The first selection is on faithful service. The Parable of the Wise Servant.

Matthew 24:45-51. – “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, who the master has made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, finds so doing. I tell you he'll make him ruler over all his goods.

But if that evil servant says in his heart, my master delays his coming, beats his fellow servants, and eats and drinks with the drunkards, then the master of that servant will come on a day he's not looking for him, in an hour he's not aware of, and will cut him in two (or cut him off), and appoint his portion with the hypocrites, and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.

Now the context of this is Matthew 24:25, where Jesus is talking about the second coming. So, he's now saying, regarding the second coming, that in his house there'll be wise servants and there'll be foolish servants. We saw wise virgins and foolish virgins; now it’s wise servants and foolish servants.

It says: “who is that wise and faithful servant, he finds” - it's that servant whom his master, when he comes, finds doing... Firstly, he's a servant of the Lord, he's a believer. Secondly, he's sensitive to what's happening. He gives meat in due season, meaning meat is the word of God. ‘Meat’ means something substantial; and ‘in due season’ means at the appropriate time; so essentially, he is fulfilling his assignment, and he's sensitive to the hour that it's in, and what's required. The wise servant has discovered his assignment, and he's fulfilling his assignment, with the heart of a servant, and with loving sacrifice.

What is the wise servant's reward? He will make him ruler over all - over his household, and over all his goods - that servant is an overcomer. What does it tell us in there about being an overcomer? It tells us that I must fulfil my assignment, and I must do it in the right spirit; and I must be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. His reward? Ruler over the household. Because he's ruler over the household, we know he's of the First Resurrection. These are the ones that will rule with Christ for 1000 years. He's over the household, and all the goods, so he's in a place of substantial authority; and he's learnt and qualified for it, because he's developed being a servant.

The foolish and unfaithful servant – he is also a servant. He's a believer, but his heart is hardened, because of neglect of intimacy. He's unconcerned about the master coming back. “He says in his heart, my master delays his coming”. Putting it like this: oh Jesus, I don't know when He's going to return, probably not in my lifetime, so don't worry about it, let's just enjoy life. It's a casual attitude, of having no respect for what the coming of the Lord will involve - so he's just living casually, he's living at ease. He has a neglect of love for his master. If he loved his master, he would feel very concerned, to be diligent in serving his master's cause, and serving his master's people.

It also tells us about this attitude that showed up towards the servants - he began to beat the fellow servants, which means to mistreat fellow Christians, to speak ill of them, to treat them badly. Every time you see someone mistreating another Christian, they are increasingly disqualifying themselves from the First Resurrection - so don't get caught in the injustice of it. Keep focussed on what the consequences are, and how we should keep a good heart. His attitudes towards the fellow servants were destructive, and his lifestyle is entangled with ungodly people. He's eating and drinking with the drunkards. In other words, there's no commitment to live a godly life, to be sensitive to the Lord, build intimacy.

He's totally unaware of the spiritual timing, and when the Lord returns, he's caught out. It says there “be cut in two” - that means painful discipline; “weeping and gnashing of teeth” refers to grief, and then anger at his loss. So in other words, he's been in the house, he was called to this great thing. It happens that he's disqualified, and lost the opportunities he had, so the result is weeping - deep sorrow, that forever I've missed my opportunity, I chose the wrong things; and gnashing of teeth speaks of anger, deep frustration and anger, that I can't do anything about this.

We see there that Jesus reveals what it means to be an overcomer, who inherits the First Resurrection - faithfully fulfil your assignment, with loving service to people, especially the people of God.

The second thing is another parable - the Parable of the Banquet. Here is a second qualification: loving people with no hidden agenda; faithful service, loving service, and loving people with no agenda. In Luke 14:12 it's talking about the banquet, and there's a whole group of pharisees, and they've gathered all their friends together, and they've got a big banquet going on; and Jesus observed how they were all fighting for position, and being top of the table, all that kind of stuff. It was a highly competitive group.

He said: “then He also said to him who invited Him (so His discussion is to the host): When you give a dinner or a supper, don't ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, rich neighbours, because they'll invite you back and you'll be repaid.”

What He's saying is: “Don't just give out, where you hope to get something back...” Sound familiar? We saw that last week. He said “…but rather, when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you”. Our generosity should have no hidden strings attached; that when we give, our giving is with no expectation of return from the person who we blessed - that we should not just give where we hope to get something back. It's this whole thing that I do something, so I can get something back mentality. He says: “when you do it, this is what you should do - give to the people that cannot repay you”, and He says: “you will be blessed”, and He says: “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just”.

Now what resurrection is He referring to? Well, He's talking about payment, He's talking about reward, so He can't be talking about the Second Resurrection. He's talking about the First Resurrection. He's talking to the host of the banquet and confronting the fact that, in spite of the big banquet, and the apparent generosity of the man, it's all riddled with wrong motivations, of cultivating mates, paying them back - you know, you give me a meal, I give you a meal back; or, I give you a meal, and now you owe me one back - all that kind of thing. Basically, it was all given to those who could pay him back, because all of them had a selfish agenda. Jesus then reveals what it is to be an overcomer who inherits the First Resurrection - we must show the quality of unconditional love, that gives no thought to receiving a return. Simple.

Luke 6:32-35 – “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners can do that. But if you love your enemies and do good and lend hoping for nothing again, your reward shall be great and you shall be children of the Highest, for He is kind to the unthankful and faithful”.

Notice there, that ‘great reward’ is given to servants who show unconditional love. Your reward will be ‘great’; and you shall be children - that's a bad translation. The word is ‘huios’, meaning mature sons. Maturity - overcomers have developed a generosity, and a loving heart towards people, that has no hidden agendas. He says: that's what sonship looks like, because when you do that, you're acting like the Father does.

The third one - a daily walk with God, by faith. This is not just one thing we do now and then; this is our lifestyle. The example given there is Enoch.

Genesis 5:24 – “Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away”

He was translated - never saw death, and that makes him a prophetic picture of those in the end time, who are alive, and never see death. What a great thing to never see death, never grow old, get cancer, fade away, weakening and whatever; but rather, we are just suddenly changed. So, he's a prophetic picture of someone who was resurrected, and the reason they give there is: he walked with God.

Hebrews 11:5-6 – “By faith Enoch was take away so he never saw death, and was not found because God had taken him, for before he was taken, he had this testimony: he pleased God”.

He walked with God, and this is the testimony that they gave: he brought pleasure to God.

Verse 6 – “…for without faith, it's impossible to please Him. He that comes to God must believe He is and He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”.

When you put those scriptures together, you see then that Enoch was a man of faith, who trusted God. To “walk with God” means he had a relationship with God, and all the things that he did brought pleasure to God. So, that's an example for us.

There's another scripture about Enoch. There’s a whole Book of Enoch. Enoch was a very significant man in the Old Testament, and the Book of Enoch tells all about Genesis 6:5 - about the watchers, and the defilement of demonic spirits with mankind, which led up to Noah and the flood – it’s very interesting.

Jude 1:14-15 – “Now Enoch, the seventh of Adam, prophesied about these ungodly men, saying: behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of His saints, to execute judgement on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds”.

Notice there, he was prophetic. He prophesied, and he warned his generation. He had a walk with God, a daily walk with God. That means he had relationship, and intimacy, he had faith, he trusted God. He lived a life that brought pleasure to God; and he was one who warned people about a coming judgement, which took place after he had vanished, at the time of Noah. So, he walked with God, had a life testimony that pleased God, he had faith, and he was looking for the coming of the Lord. Jesus reveals what it's like to be an overcomer, who inherits the First Resurrection - we're called to walk with God by faith and live a godly life that pleases Him.

A fourth one is to focus on eternal rewards, and a life of faith. I think that it's important if we want to qualify as an overcomer, that we think in terms of eternity, instead of in terms of just temporary things. I'll just share with you a scripture then, and this one here is about the Old Testament saints who pleased God. We saw that Enoch pleased God, now it tells us in again Hebrews 11, about the Old Testament saints.

Hebrews 11: 13-16 – “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were persuaded of them, embraced them or welcomed them into their arms, confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. And those who say that kind of thing declare plainly they're seeking another country.

And if truly they'd called to mind that country from which they'd come out, they'd have had opportunity to go back, but they desire a better, that is a heavenly country; therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. He has prepared a city for them”.

He's talking about some of the listed men of faith, and it says that the promises that God had for them were never received then. They are all to be fulfilled in the end time; but they were persuaded that God was faithful, and they committed their life to serving Him and honouring Him. It says: “they desire a better country and God is not ashamed to call them His”. Notice what it says…

1) They desired a heavenly country. They had a goal of eternal reward.

2) They looked for, and they sought it. They sought God and they sought to please Him.

3) They saw what God promised, and believed, and embraced them.

4) They lived a life that honoured God, despite hardships.

God honoured them, because He's not ashamed of them. He says: He's prepared for them a heavenly city, speaking of the resurrection.

Hebrews 11:35 – “…Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection”.

There it is again - obtain a ‘better’ resurrection. What empowered these Old Testament saints to do what they did? They had a vision of a better resurrection!

Everyone knew that there was going to be a resurrection; but a better resurrection - that word ‘better’ means: stronger, more noble, more powerful, having dominion and power. So they endured even being sawn in two. They endured being put to death. They endured all kinds of things and they also overcame, because they had a vision that God was using them; they were prophesying of something to come, and they served God in their generation.

Jesus then also reveals through this, what it is to be an overcomer who inherits the First Resurrection, focus on eternal rewards - walk with God, and live a life that pleases Him… and persevere through difficulties and persecutions.

I'll now give you one more. It's an exhortation by Peter, and it's: Growth in Godly Character.

2 Peter 1:5-12 – “for this very reason, give all diligence, add to your faith virtue, virtue knowledge, add to knowledge self-control, self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, godliness brotherly kindness, and brotherly kindness love. If these things are yours and abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you lack these things you're short-sighted, even to blindness, you've forgotten you've been cleansed from your old sins. Therefore, be diligent to make your call and election sure, if you do these things you'll never stumble, and an abundant entrance will be supplied to you into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

And so, for this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you of these things, even though you know and established them as current truth, or present truth”.

The context of this is very clear - it's about the resurrection and the coming of the Lord.

In 2 Peter 1: 16, he talks about “we saw the coming of the Lord”, so all his discussion here is in the context of the second coming of Jesus, and the First Resurrection. He's saying: now you've been saved, add to your faith - and all the things he says to add are all character qualities. He says: make sure you're diligent. Add to your faith virtue (that means good characteristics); and to virtue, knowledge; to knowledge, self-control; to self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, brotherly love.

He says: here is a guarantee, that if you develop those qualities in your life, then the result is that you won't stumble. You will be fruitful, and have an abundant entrance to the kingdom, instead of being excluded from it.

It tells us very clearly, if he's urging them be diligent, to make your calling and election sure, then clearly the implication is that you're not sure, unless you do these things. Our election or selection for the high calling of God or First Resurrection is not sure, not for any one of us. Our lifestyle, and diligence, is the thing that will qualify us for that First Resurrection. Notice that he mentions diligence twice. It means hasten, hurry, exert yourself. If you look it up on Merriam Webster Dictionary: to be steady, put in energetic effort, persevere.

Understand that it requires that you don't be a pushover. If there's difficulties, then you keep going; you remain diligent, and you assert yourself to grow, and the promise is an abundant, or wealthy, abounding-in-resources entrance into the kingdom; which is in contrast to being saved, but having no reward at all.

Peter then tells us what it is to be an overcomer who inherits the First Resurrection: diligent pursuit of growth in your character, in Christ. Jesus taught that it's important to qualify, it's important to be considered, or counted, or assessed to be worthy of the calling; because the calling to work with Him, to be intimate with Him, and to share with Him in governing and bringing order to creation is such a big calling, such a high calling, that you need to be worthy of that calling.

I'll share with you some scriptures on that. Here's the first one, which was a question on the resurrection, and they're asking about what happens in marriage.

Luke 20:34-36 – “Jesus answered them and said: the sons of this age marry, and are given in marriage; but those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. Neither can they die anymore - they're in the same rank as the angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection”.

He says that they are ‘counted worthy’ to attain that age and counted worthy to attain the resurrection. The Bible is very clear: everyone will rise from the dead; so, He's talking here about the First Resurrection, and being counted worthy to attain to it.

Now here's the thing. If Jesus teaches that you need to be accounted worthy, then He's teaching us that there's a possibility of not being in it. He's laying a foundation: The First Resurrection is not automatic. We need to live a life that God looks at and says: I consider it worthy of being put into this kingdom, into this realm - and that life will differ for everyone.

He said: “they will be counted worthy to attain that age”. That age is not referring to eternity; it's referring to a number of ages, beginning with the millennium, and the General Resurrection is expected, but He's talking about the limited resurrection - to get to it, you have to consider yourself worthy. He repeats this warning of ‘being considered worthy’ - it's repeated in many places, but here's one.

Luke 21:34-36 – “Take heed to yourselves (in other words, look out, take care, watch, be watchful) lest your hearts be burdened with carousing and drunkenness and cares of life, and the Day suddenly catches you unexpectedly, for it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the earth. Watch therefore and pray always you may be counted worthy to escape all those things and stand before the Son of Man”.

He's teaching that at the coming of the Lord there's a time of upheaval, but you should watch and pray, so you will be considered (or counted) worthy to escape all of that hassle; and the escape for us will be getting a resurrection body. The escape is coming to access the throne of God; nothing can touch us.

Paul said the same thing - made the same warning.

Ephesians 4:1 – “I, a prisoner of the Lord, beseech you walk worthy of the calling”.

1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 – “You know we exhorted you, that you would walk worthy of God, who calls you to His own kingdom and glory”.

Notice again, the calling into the kingdom and glory of God relates to being worthy.

2 Thessalonians 1:7 – “…and may God give you, to you who are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord Jesus reveals from heaven with His mighty angels; in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who don't know God, and those who don't obey the gospel (he's talking about the end time, the coming of the Lord) - these will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints”.

The glory of God is going to come forth from within us, and Jesus Himself would be admired in those who believe. When Jesus manifests Himself, our body will be changed, and He Himself will be visible to people. They will see and know this is Jesus, and he says: …and we pray that God would count you worthy of this calling, and you'd fulfil the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with power.

Notice again, he's saying this is a very big deal. It's a very big calling. It's so stunning that you need to walk worthy of that. We find examples in the Old Testament, in Zechariah 3. Joshua, the high priest, appears before the Lord, and they put him on clean clothing which is a gift to him. Then God says to him:

Zechariah 3:7 - “If you walk in My ways and keep My commands, or keep My mandate or assignment, you will judge My house and have charge in My courts, and I will give you places to walk among these people in the angelic realm”.

There it is again, an Old Testament picture of coming into the First Resurrection, but it requires faithfulness to the charge that God has given us, and that varies - some aspects are the same for all of us and some are not. Also, in the Old Testament, the sons of Zadok…

Ezekiel 44:15-19 – “They kept charge of My sanctuary, when the children of Israel went astray from Me, they will come near to Me to minister to Me”.

He says that in the days when there was backsliding in the nation, the priesthood became corrupt. The priesthood fell away from serving God. We are the priesthood, called to worship God, offer up sacrifices of prayer and worship, and of service to God, and service to people. We are that priesthood now; and He said: when pressure came on, when there was decline in the nation - some became unfaithful in their priestly duties.

These people were faithful, so now I'm going to reward them. They will now come into resurrection bodies; and it says that when they come into His presence, they have certain garments on; but when they leave His presence to be with others, they've got different garments. It's a prophetic picture of resurrection.

I'll finish with this then, one last point…. When will we know that we've been counted worthy?

I've been wrestling with this question over the last couple of weeks. Let’s look at the example of Paul.

Philippians 3:11 – “if by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead, for I have not that I've already attained, already perfected; I press on that I may lay hold of it all”.

Does that sound like someone who's confident he's going to be in? No. Okay now read just before his death…

2 Timothy 4:7-8 – “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I kept the faith. Now, finally, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness”.

Does that sound confident? Earlier in his life, he's not sure. He's forgetting all things that are behind, he's pressing on… and then now, he's got to the end of his life… I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown. He's saying, that's why I don't worry about dying now. I know it's there - I've got it! How did he know? God told him. God can tell us before we finish our race that we've finished well.

Basically, they have a sense of great peace, in dying; there's no fear of death, because He's there. But the issue of the reward… either He reveals it, or we don't know (or you didn’t get it). All we know is that, for Paul, God told him before he died. However, others found out after they died.

The next one, some found out after they died, so afterwards you know. At some point in Paul's life, he was judged, and found to qualify, and given the assurance he qualified. But there are others who found that out afterwards.

Revelations 6:9-11 – “When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who'd been slain for the word of God, and the testimony which they held. And they cried out with a loud voice, saying: how long, O God, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

These are people who've died, and specifically, people who were martyred for their faith. They're saying: God, when are you going to do something about it? That's what their prayer is.

“…Then a white robe was given to each of them…” - and the white robe we understand is the righteousness. It's symbolic always of the overcomer. In Revelations 3, those who overcome will be given a white robe. The white robe given to them is an indication that they have qualified - they're an overcomer, who has qualified for the First Resurrection and reward. We either find out before death, or we find out after death - when the Lord comes, we're either resurrected or we're not. We're left behind in that sense.

You can understand then, the distress of finding that you're living, and there's turmoil in the world. The world's in upheaval, there's been problems such as we've never seen before; and in the midst of it all, suddenly, someone you know, has put on a resurrection body - and at that point you know you missed.

They will never get older - they will always look around about 30-ish. They will always look magnificent. They'll be able to change their form, they'll be able to come in and out of rooms and places. They'll be able to travel around, wherever they want to go. They will move in and out of the heavenly realm, and will be on assignment from the Lord, to reveal what God is like.

With that happening, that releases the latter reign into the earth. It releases the outpouring of the spirit, to bring about transformation of life. That's when we see multitudes and multitudes coming to Christ; this is so real, so powerful, the TVs will show it. It will be like the astonishment of the world, to see people who've overcome death… and it can never happen to them. Who can possibly argue with this? There is no argument. They can't be killed - nothing can be done.

There are pictures spread through the Bible of God's eternal purpose, but you've got to look for it to see it; and even the work that they will do is spread through the Bible in different stories, so you've got to look for it. This is the story, this is what happened, and what it meant in that time. Here's how it works for me, and how it applies to me; and this is how it reveals Jesus, and how it speaks prophetically.

There are different layers - you look at the story…

1) What happened at the time, and how it impacted the people and how they saw it.

2) What it prophetically reveals about Jesus,

3) How it can apply to my life

4) And sometimes… has this got any prophetic implications?

When you see this, it just brings a tremendous joy. You cannot stop studying the word, you want to re-read the word. You want to find out the stories, you want to know all the things that are going on - but first you've got to get the knowledge of the word. Then you've got to look how the things interconnect and if you - and now what you're seeing is like a massive jigsaw puzzle, with pieces everywhere, and some of them are hidden; but as we get nearer the end time, God will reveal more of the pieces, and suddenly… oh my God, how did I miss that? That's so evident!

It's all about the unfolding of His plan that's been there since eternity - that He will have a kingdom of overcoming sons, who will extend His kingdom through all the earth.

I encourage you to think about that…

How did the Holy Spirit speak to me?

What sorts of response do I need to make?

Are there any areas of my life where I'm not qualifying, and I know it and I need to make an adjustment?

Summary Notes

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ER10: The First Resurrection

I. Introduction

* Mat 16:27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

II. Two Resurrections

(i) The First Resurrection

Rev 20:4 - And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Rev 20:5 - But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.

Rev 20:6 - Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

* This is a Limited Resurrection…..some are excluded from the First Resurrection

* The First Resurrection is for believers, followers of Christ

* Although believers only are in the First resurrection it does not say that all believers take part in the First Resurrection

* Those who participate in the First Resurrection will rule and reign with Christ in the Millennium

* This promise is given to those who are Overcomers….Clearly not all Christians are Overcomers

* Those in the First Resurrection are Blessed and Holy

* Those not in the First Resurrection will arise in the General resurrection at the end of of the Thousand Years reign of Christ

* The First Resurrection is a “ Better” Resurrection

(ii) The General Resurrection

Rev 20:11 - And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.

Rev 20:12 - And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

Rev 20:13 - And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

Rev 20:14 - And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

Rev 20:15 - And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

* There are both believers and unbelievers in the second resurrection…not the Overcomers

* Some are found written in the Book of Life. These are believers.

* Some are not found in the Book of Life. These are unbelievers vs.15

* All who are resurrected at the General resurrection will be judged according to their works vs.13

* Jesus taught about this General Resurrection when all the dead would be raised

Joh 5:28 - Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice

Joh 5:29 - and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation

* Paul also taught that there would be a General Resurrection

Act 24:15 - I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.

III. Not All Christians Arise at the First Resurrection

* Note: This area of teaching is not understood or is disagreed with by many Christians

* Php 3:8 - Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

Php 3:9 - And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

Php 3:10 - That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

Php 3:11 - If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

Php 3:12 - Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

Php 3:13 - Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

Php 3:14 - I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Php 3:15 - Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.

* “The resurrection of the dead”….this is a poor translation of the original language

Greek: teen exanastasin teen ek nekrōn…literally …The out from resurrection from among the dead

Clearly this is not the general resurrection. It is a Limited Resurrection

* Paul is speaking about the First Resurrection.

He also calls it the High Calling of God in Christ, and “winning Christ”

* This resurrection which is from among the dead (teen exanastasin teen ek nekrōn) is a privilege at which one must arrive (katanteesō) by a given course of life, even the experimental knowledge of Christ, of the power of His resurrection, and of the fellowship of His sufferings, thereby becoming conformed unto His death (Phil. 3: 7-21)

* “If by any means” ….the word “if” is a condition and implies a possibility of the event not happening

* Act 27:12 - And because the harbor was not suitable to winter in, the majority advised to set sail from there also, if by any means they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete opening toward the southwest and northwest, and winter there.

In this situation they were shipwrecked on the journey and failed to reach their destination

IV. OT Pattern: The Feast of Trumpets

* NT Coming of Christ: The Trump Sounds

* 1Th 4:13 - But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

1Th 4:14 - For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

1Th 4:15 - For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

1Th 4:16 - For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

1Th 4:17 - Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

* OT Feast of Trumpets

* Three Feasts of Israel

(i). Passover. 1st Month…..…………First Coming of Christ

The first occurrence of the Feast of Passover is found in Exodus 12. This feast culminated in the people of Israel being redeemed by the blood of a lamb from slavery to Egypt. The Feast of Passover is prophetic of Jesus the Lamb of God

Joh 1:29 - The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Jesus, the true Passover Lamb was slain on the cross, on the Feast of Passover, at exactly the time the priests were killing the Passover lamb

1Col. 5:7 - Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

The Feast of Passover is also the personal experience when we receive Christ as our sin offering and are born again

(ii). Pentecost. 3rd Month - First Coming of Christ

The first occurrence of the Feast of Pentecost is found in Exod.19

This Feast involved God descending upon the Mount in fire and giving the law to Israel

The feast of Pentecost is prophetic of Jesus baptising the disciples in the upper room with the Holy Ghost and fire

The Feast of Pentecost is also a personal experience when we are baptised in the Holy Ghost, receive the gift of tongues and begin to move in the supernatural

The Feast of Pentecost and encounter with the Holy Spirit took place exactly on the day of Pentecost at the time the feast was being celebrated in the city of Jerusalem

It was also called the Feast of First fruits - we receive the first fruits of our inheritance Eph.1:13-14

Eph. 1:13 - In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,

Eph. 1:14 - who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

The Feast of Pentecost is a personal experience when we are baptised with the Holy Spirit

(iii). Tabernacles. 7th Month……….……Second coming of Christ

The first mention of the Feast of Tabernacles is found in Lev.23 , and it was first kept when Israel entered the promised land

The Feast of Passover and the Feast of Pentecost were both fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus

They were fulfilled at exactly the time the natural feast was being celebrated

The Feast of Tabernacles will be fulfilled at the second Coming of Jesus

The Feast of tabernacles is prophetic of the return of Jesus and the Great end time Harvest

The Feast of Tabernacles will also be a personal experience when the First Resurrection occurs

* Personal Application and Prophetic Application

Num. 10:1 - And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying:

Num. 10:2 - Make two silver trumpets for yourself; you shall make them of hammered work; you shall use them for calling the congregation and for directing the movement of the camps.

Num. 10:3 - When they blow both of them, all the congregation shall gather before you at the door of the tabernacle of meeting.

Num. 10:4 - But if they blow only one, then the leaders, the heads of the divisions of Israel, shall gather to you.

Num. 10:5 - When you sound the advance, the camps that lie on the east side shall then begin their journey.

Num. 10:6 - When you sound the advance the second time, then the camps that lie on the south side shall begin their journey; they shall sound the call for them to begin their journeys.

Num. 10:7 - And when the assembly is to be gathered together, you shall blow, but not sound the advance.

Num. 10:8 - The sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets; and these shall be to you as an ordinance forever throughout your generations.

Num. 10:9 - When you go to war in your land against the enemy who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, and you will be remembered before the LORD your God, and you will be saved from your enemies.

Num. 10:10 - Also in the day of your gladness, in your appointed feasts, and at the beginning of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be a memorial for you before your God: I am the LORD your God."

Note:

* When one trumpet is blown, all the leaders are gathered together at the tabernacle

* When two Trumpets are blown all the congregation gathers together at the tabernacle

* This prophetically points that the first resurrection is a limited resurrection.

* Those who are overcomers and who will rule with Christ will come forth in the First resurrection

V. Principle of Selection for First Resurrection

1. Faithful Service

* The Parable of the Wise Servant (Mat.24:45-51)

This parable reveals there are two different groups of servants at the Coming of Jesus

One servant represents the Overcomers, who arise in the First Resurrection

The other servant represents believers who fail to be worthy of the First Resurrection

Mat 24:45 - Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?

Mat 24:46 - Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.

Mat 24:47 - Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.

Mat 24:48 - But if that evil servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming,'

Mat 24:49 - and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards,

Mat 24:50 - the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of,

Mat 24:51 - and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The Wise and Faithful Servant

(i) He is a servant of The Lord, a believer

(ii). His heart is sensitive to the Master and His requirements. (He practices intimacy)

(iii). He is faithfully serving God’s people.

(iv). He is fulfilling his assignment

“Meat in due season”

Meat - means nourishment. It refers to spiritual food(wisdom) for mature believers

(Heb.5:12-14) Due Season - Means at the appropriate time.

He has an understanding heart and discerns what God is saying and doing (1Chron.12:32)

(v) This Servant: Faithful, Wise, Serving,

(vi). The Wise Servant’s Reward

“Make him ruler over His household”….and Make him ruler over all his goods”…

This servant is an Overcomer

If this wise steward is to be made “ruler,” then we know he is of the first resurrection, for these rule and reign with Christ a thousand years.

The wise steward is one who has learned to be a good servant, one who abides by the laws of the household and does the will of his Master.

He has learned that ruling does not mean having servants, but being a loving servant to others

The Foolish and Unfaithful Servant

(i). He is a servant of the Lord, a believer

(ii) His heart is hardened …lack of intimacy and love

(iii) He is unconcerned at the prospect of his Master returning. He has no fear of the Master or of the consequences of being unprepared for His return

(iv). His neglect of love for the Master is shown in his attitude and behaviour towards fellow servants. His words and actions are destructive towards the fellow servants

(v). His lifestyle is entangled with ungodly people

(vi). He is totally unaware of the spiritual season and timing. The Lord returns suddenly & unexpectedly

(vii). The Foolish Servant’s Loss

Cut in two (Lit. To flog severely)………...Refers to painful discipline because of his behaviour

Portion with the hypocrites…………….….Excluded from all the celebration and reward

“Weeping and gnashing of teeth”………..Deep sorrow and anger at the greatness of his loss

This servant fails to qualify for the First Resurrection

* Jesus reveals what it is to be and Overcomer who inherits the First Resurrection

We must faithfully fulfil our assignment, with loving service to the people of God

2. Loving People with No Agenda

The Parable of the Banquet

* Luke 14:12 - Then He also said to him who invited Him, "When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbours, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid.

Luke 14:13 - But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.

Luke 14:14 - And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

* Jesus is not talking about the General or Second Resurrection

* He is taking about the Resurrection of the Righteous, the First Resurrection

* He addresses his comments to the host of the banquet in response to seeing the behaviour of guests

* Guests were seeking the highest places of honor. Banquets were held for friends who could repay

* Jesus reveals what it is to be an Overcomer who inherits the First resurrection

We must show the quality of unconditional love that gives with no thought of receiving a return from the recipient

* Jesus also gave indication of this in His teaching in Luke 6

Luke 6:32 - "But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

Luke 6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children (Huios…Mature Sons) of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

Great Reward will be given to servants who show the quality of unconditional love.

That Reward will be the First Resurrection and Manifested Sonship

3. Daily Walk with God by Faith

The Example of Enoch

* Gen. 5:24 - And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

* Heb. 11:5 - By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, "AND WAS NOT FOUND, BECAUSE GOD HAD TAKEN HIM"; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.

Heb. 11:6 - But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Jud 1:14 - Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints,

* Jud 1:15 - to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."

* Enoch was translated alive directly into heaven before the earth was destroyed by judgement

* He is a prophetic picture of those alive at the end time who will be resurrected and not see death

* Notice what the Bible says about Enoch

Enoch walked with God

Enoch had a life testimony he pleased God.

* Enoch was a man of faith in God whose life pleased God and qualified him to escape death

* Enoch looked forward to the Coming of the Lord and warned his generation of the coming judgment

* Jesus reveals what it is to be an Overcomer who inherits the First resurrection

* Like Enoch we are called to walk with God by faith, and live a godly life that pleases Him

4. Focus upon Eternal Rewards and life of Faith

OT Saints who pleased God

* Heb. 11:13 - These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

Heb. 11:14 - For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

Heb. 11:15 - And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.

Heb. 11:16 - But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them

* Note what is says about these heroes of faith

They desired a heavenly country

They looked for and sought that heavenly city

They saw the promises of God, and embraced them

They lived a life to honour God and suffered hardships for this

* God’s response is that He is not ashamed of them and has prepared for them a heavenly city, because of their manner of life and devotion to the call of God

* Heb. 11:35 - Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.

* This is a description of men and women of faith who had faith in God that empowered them to overcome enemies and endure persecution

* They had a vision of a “better” resurrection that they desired to attain to

* “Better”…stronger, more noble, more powerful, having dominion and power

* “Attain” ...to reach, attain, obtain, get, become master of

* Jesus reveals what it is to be an Overcomer who inherits the First resurrection

* Like OT Saints we are called to Focus upon Eternal rewards, walk with God by faith, and live a godly life that pleases Him, and overcome difficulties and persecutions

5. Growth in Godly Character (Transformation)

Peter’s Exhortation to Believers

2Pe. 1:5 - But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,

2Pe. 1:6 - to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,

2Pe. 1:7 - to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

2Pe. 1:8 - For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2Pe. 1:9 - For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

2Pe. 1:10 - Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;

2Pe. 1:11 - for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

2Pe. 1:12 - For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth.

* The Context of this passage is the coming of Jesus and the First Resurrection

2Pe. 1:16 - For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty

* The Apostle Peter urges believers to make our calling and election sure

This indicates:

Our election, or selection for the High Calling of God, or First resurrection is not sure

Our lifestyle and diligence is important to qualify us for the first resurrection

“Diligent” - mentioned twice…to hasten, make haste, to exert one's self, endeavour, give diligence

“Diligence” - MW…steady, earnest, and energetic effort : persevering application

* The Promise: An Abundant entrance into the coming Kingdom

“ Abundant”….wealthy, abounding in resources …in contrast to “saved , yet so as by fire” 1Cor.3:15

* Peter reveals what it is to be an Overcomer who inherits the First resurrection

Diligent pursuit of growth in the character of Christ

VI. Jesus Teaching on the Need to be Counted Worthy

1. Questions on the Resurrection

* Luke 20:34 - Jesus answered and said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.

Luke 20:35 - But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage;

Luke 20:36 - nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

* The Bible is clear that all the dead will rise again. This was well accepted by the Jews of jesus day

* Jesus is talking here about the First Resurrection….and being accounted worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from among the dead

* “That age” (singular) is not a Bible term for eternity, which is not one age but many, “the ages of the ages” (thirteen times in the Revelation).

* “That age” is set by Christ in direct contrast to “this age,” and so means the age of the kingdom to follow this age.

* A general resurrection the Jews expected (Jo. 11: 34: Acts 24: 15), but here Christ speaks of “the resurrection which is out from among the dead” (tees anastaseōs tees ek nekrōn).

* This is the first clear intimation of such a limited, select resurrection.

* This is Jesus teaching about the First Resurrection and he makes it clear that one must “attain’ or “be counted worthy” of receiving this

* Since Jesus is the one who determines who enters the First Resurrection we must take His words seriously

2. This warning of the need to be Counted Worthy is Repeated

(i). Jesus

Luke 21:34 - "But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.

Luke 21:35 - For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth.

Luke 21:36 - Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."

(ii) Paul

Eph. 4:1 - I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,

Eph. 4:2 - with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,

1Th 2:11 - as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children,

1Th 2:12 - that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.

2Th 1:7 - and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels,

2Th 1:8 - in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2Th 1:9 - These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,

2Th 1:10 - when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.

2Th 1:11 - Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power,

2Th 1:12 - that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

(iii). OT. Joshua the High Priest

* Zec 3:6 - Then the Angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying,

* Zec 3:7 - "Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'If you will walk in My ways, And if you will keep My command, Then you shall also judge My house, And likewise have charge of My courts; I will give you places to walk Among these who stand here.

* This is a prophetic vision of the end Time Overcomers received by Zechariah

* Joshua the High Priest has access to the presence of God, to the throne room

* His unclean garments are removed and he is given freely garments of righteousness

* The promises that are made to him are conditional… “if”

* If he walks in Gods ways (Lifestyle), and fulfils his calling…then he shall have access to the throne room and shall rule the house

* Joshua must be counted worthy of receiving the promises

(iv). OT. The Sons of Zadok

* Eze. 44:15 - "But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, they shall come near Me to minister to Me; and they shall stand before Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood," says the Lord GOD.

Eze. 44:16 - They shall enter My sanctuary, and they shall come near My table to minister to Me, and they shall keep My charge.

Eze. 44:17 - And it shall be, whenever they enter the gates of the inner court, that they shall put on linen garments; no wool shall come upon them while they minister within the gates of the inner court or within the house.

Eze. 44:18 - They shall have linen turbans on their heads and linen trousers on their bodies; they shall not clothe themselves with anything that causes sweat.

Eze. 44:19 - When they go out to the outer court, to the outer court to the people, they shall take off their garments in which they have ministered, leave them in the holy chambers, and put on other garments; and in their holy garments they shall not sanctify the people.

* This passage reveals that some of the priests were faithful in their priestly service and some were not

* Those priests who are faithful, the sons of Zadok, are given privileged access to Jesus.

* They are also given linen garments, clothing which they wear when entering the presence of Jesus in the Holy Place.

* Linen garments are a prize awarded to the overcomers. (Rev.19:8)

* These garments that they are given correspond to a resurrection body(2 Cor.5:1-4)

* Faithful priests enter the First resurrection, those who are not faithful do not

* We are all called to be priests to God. (1Pet.2:5,9)

* Those who are faithful to fulfil their priestly call will enter the First resurrection.

* The unfaithful will not

3. When will we be Counted Worthy?

Example of Paul:

* Before Death

2Ti. 4:7 - I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

2Ti. 4:8 - Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.

* Compare with earlier in Paul’s Life:

Php 3:11 - if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Php 3:12 - Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

Php 3:13 - Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended;

* At some point before Paul’s death his life was judged and he was found to qualify

He was given personal assurance that he qualified for the First Resurrection and Reward

* Example Of Dead Saints

* After Death

Rev 6:9 - When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.

Rev 6:10 - And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?"

Rev 6:11 - Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.

* These saints are not yet raised from the dead but have been given a white robe acknowledging that they qualified for the First Resurrection and Reward

VII. For Personal reflection and Action

1. What has the Holy Spirit being saying you in this study?

2. What actions do you need to take in response?

3. Which of the Principles of Selection most challenged you?

4. Where did you need to grow and develop?

5. What actions will you take?

Abundant Entrance to the Kingdom (11 of 12)

Fri 11 Sep 2020 AM  « Back to Top

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In 2 Peter 1, Peter describes the necessity of personal transformation and fruit-bearing in the life of the believer.

Peter shares his revelation of Christ coming in majesty to rule and reign, and the necessity of the believer to be diligent in adding to their foundational faith the character qualities of Christ.

Believers who neglect to commit to personal growth, Peter describes as barren, unfruitful, blind, short-sighted, and forgetful of the work and calling of Christ.

Personal growth, heart and character transformation ensure we will never fall, will be fruitful and stable, and will have an abundant entrance into the Coming Kingdom of God.

Welcome to our study in Eternal Rewards, and we're up to study Number 11. This one we're looking at the Abundant Entrance into the Kingdom, and we're going to base the whole study out of a passage of scripture in 2 Peter 1:2-17.

2 Peter 1:2-17 – “Grace and peace be multiplied to you, in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which we've been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the world through lust.

But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance or patience, to patience godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness love. And if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble or fall, and so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

So for this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I'm in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover, I'll be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.”

Peter is at a stage in his life where he knows, God has shown to him, that very shortly, he will die. When you know you're about to die, then what you're saying, and what you're sharing, are very important things. Notice there he's sharing with the church, reminding them of something he'd already taught them. We don't have the record of what he taught, but he said: “I think it's right, as long as I'm in this tent” (meaning while I'm alive) - I will stir you up. I will stir up your spirit. I'll stir up your passion. I'll stir up your zeal for God, by reminding you of these things. What we're going to study are the things that he's wanting to remind them of. He also says: I'll make sure, or I'll be careful to ensure you have a reminder of these things after my decease - this is why he's written the letter. He wants us to remember what he's been sharing, because it's very, very important. He's writing it so it won't be lost; and like all of these passages, we need some context for it - and so that's what we want to have a look at, first of all, by way of an introduction to this whole teaching again.

We're going to look firstly just at an introduction to this; and then secondly, we're going to look then through the passage at its context, and then how it applies to us. We've looked and studied Eternal Rewards; and at the whole concept of God's eternal purpose, something He planned long before the earth was created. Part of it includes giving pre-eminence to Jesus Christ; that Christ will be everywhere, and everything, admired, and honoured and understood who He is; and that He will have sons and daughters in His express image, who will work with Him in sharing His work in governing, and establishing the kingdom in the earth.

Romans 8:29, NLT: "For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters."

It's very clear that God predestined us, to be conformed to the image of His Son – “that He might be the firstborn among many brethren”. God's plan was predestined (planned); but we choose whether we're part of the plan. Predestined doesn't mean you've got no will or power to choose. You still choose, but God has a destiny, and He wants us to cooperate and flow with Him into that destiny.

The word ‘conform’ means to be fashioned jointly, or to become like Him, through the same process. It's a process of experiences, of revelation, and we'll go into exactly what's involved in it, and how God works to change us. With every child that's born in the kingdom of God, God takes you into a process of growth, with a purpose of changing you. But if you don't understand the process, then you just react, and fight, and get disappointed. You say: oh, God didn't come through for me - this happened, that happened. Many Christians fall over and fail, because they just don't get what God is trying to do, and how He goes about doing it, and then what our part is.

We want to open up here in this passage again, what God is trying to do, and then what our part is in it. We think things are a bit random - we have bad things happen, some disappointing things happen, but it says in Romans 8:28, that He can use every circumstance that we walk through. God can use it to get us to where He wants us to get.

Romans 8:28 – “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

It doesn't matter what you've been through, what pain, what issue - if we're responding to His call, then every situation in life, when God is allowed into it, and we lean into Him in faith - He can use it to grow our character, and make us more Christlike. In doing that, we've got to learn to stop reacting to problems. When problems come up, issues come up - with finances, marriage, life, people, whatever - the thing is, we need to enquire what God is doing, and how we should respond. Then when you do that, then the situation, although it's painful, negative, difficult, and seemingly overwhelming, is used by God to shape your character, because you're leaning into Him. That means, mainly, you can just enjoy your life. Even with things happening - we just don't react anymore; we enquire of God how to respond.

Paul in his writings, in Romans 8, makes it clear that the whole of creation is waiting for this process to be fulfilled…

Romans 8:18 – “I consider the sufferings of this present time are nothing, or not worthy, to be compared to the glory to be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of all creation is eagerly awaiting the revealing or manifestation of the sons of God”.

He's saying that “all of creation is in an expectation”, because creation understands that God has a plan, and that it takes time to work the plan out, and it's all waiting for that moment, when the sons of God will be manifested, in the coming of Jesus Christ. That word ‘sons’ is mature, fully grown sons.

Now you see the issue, that much of the church remains immature. Christians remain immature. They have no understanding of why personal growth is important, so they just come to church. It's about a meeting; but not about a kingdom, and a bigger purpose. With that in mind, now we look into the passage of 2 Peter 1, where Peter is ensuring we've got a written record of what he sees is incredibly important.

Like all these passages, you always need to look at the context - what is the scenery, the background, the overview, that gives meaning to what we're doing? In this situation, in this passage, the context is that Peter is saying: I'm about to die, and I want to make sure you never forget this. I've taught it. I'm reminding you, and now I'm going to write it, and this is the letter.

Peter is talking about the End Times; and about the majestic coming of Christ in glory; and he says that there's an entrance we can have into that kingdom, via the First Resurrection; and that we must prepare. That's similar to what we've been hearing everywhere - all the messages we've done have had that same theme in it, of a reward that's in the coming kingdom - a reward that goes on for eternity; and of the need to respond, and prepare for this. In the other ones, we focussed on the Parable of the Virgins - on intimacy, the need for intimacy with Jesus. We looked at the Parable of the Servants, about faithful service; and now we're looking at the need for transformation. Sonship involves all those things: intimacy; service; and transformation. This one is focussed on the transformation, that's why I'm making it a whole study.

If we read then, he describes the coming of Jesus Christ in Verses 16-18...

2 Peter 1:16-18 – “We did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father, honour and glory, when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’. And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain”.

He's talking about the things that Matthew wrote about, in Matthew 17; that Mark wrote about, in Mark 9; that Luke wrote about, in Luke 9; and now here, Peter is giving his own version. He's referring to when Jesus took three disciples up onto the mount, and as He prayed, He was transfigured. The glory that was within Him began to shine forth, like a light shining through a thin veil, and all His body and countenance became changed, and shone and radiated glory. He was transfigured before them, and then there was a crown of glory came over them. God spoke, and they saw Moses and Elijah, who were talking with Him. They were very excited about this whole thing, which is what they had been looking forward to.

Moses was the one who introduced the law; and Elijah brings the prophetic. Moses and Elijah are both there, and they're talking with Jesus about what is happening, and what's about to happen. Their lives are literally a prophetic heads-up of what was about to come, so they're incredibly excited at that time, and the disciples are completely overwhelmed. They fell down. They didn't understand what was happening. Peter said: “we should make booths, and stay here”, meaning - in his mind, he's thinking: this must be the fulfilment of the Feast of Tabernacles - when there’s a blowing of the trump, and the Lord returns, and the kingdom comes. He didn't understand that it wasn't that fulfilment yet -we are the ones living in the hour when it will happen! Peter then is giving an eyewitness testimony of Jesus coming - he saw it personally; he heard everything, and now he's speaking and writing it.

The context then, is that what he is experienced is about to come; and then in the writing, he talks about “an abundant entrance for us into that kingdom - if we qualify”. Notice that, in all the teaching we've had – something is always required. We have to qualify. We read in three verses, and each of these verses makes it very clear, that the promise is conditional…

2 Peter 1:11 – “…for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ...”

Notice the conditions: “if”.

“…If these things are yours and abound, if you do these things, you'll never stumble”.

So very clearly, he puts conditions on it. He says: there's a condition placed on being fruitful; and on having an abundant entrance to the kingdom - the two are the same.

When he says: “if these things are yours and abound, if you do these things you'll never stumble”, he's saying that we need to do some things about our life. We must work with God in the transformation process, or we will be unprepared. When we enter the coming kingdom, we enter by qualifying for it - by entering through the First Resurrection - that's our “high calling, and our hope”. Seeing that that as the context, now we'll go into it...

Firstly, we want to talk about the need for intentional personal growth, meaning transformation. We shared before about many Christians remain very, very immature; but there are many, many ways that the necessity for growth is pictured in the Bible, and there's descriptions of where we need to grow. We need to grow in grace - that's the empowerment of the Holy Spirit; and the knowledge of God - that's revelation of Him. We need to grow by the word of God.

1 Peter 2:2 – “As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby”.

It's talking about growth.

2 Peter 1: 5 – “Add to your faith…”

‘Add’ means you've got to build on something that's been established. He's already stated earlier on that we have faith in our hearts, because we've trusted Christ - the foundation of our walk with the Lord. We received Jesus. He becomes our saviour. We have saving faith. We've become introduced to His kingdom, so we have a foundation of relationship with Christ. He's talking and writing to people who he assumes already have faith. He says: “add to your faith”, so he's assuming that faith is already there - our saving faith. We can't do anything to add to what Christ has done.

Ephesians 2:8 – “By grace are you saved through faith, not works...”

Our faith is a gift to us. It's our response to what Jesus did. But now he's saying: God doesn't want you to stop there, He wants you to add to your faith, or build on the foundation. The foundation of your life is a revelation of Jesus Christ - the spirit of Christ comes into us, and we become joined to Him. Now we need to grow. He says: don't stop there, build on the foundation, you must add to your faith.

The Bible describes our life like a building; like a body that must grow up, and go from childhood, through to young man, through to fatherhood; or it's like a building - that we've got a foundation laid, and now you've got to build on the building. We can't just stop at the fact that we're saved, and we belong to God. We're on a journey to maturity; and the Bible makes it clear that without maturity, we can't enter all that God has for us.

Galatians 4:1 – “…as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate…”.

When the heir is just a child, he's no different to a servant. He can't have his inheritance. You've got to grow up - and we see that naturally. If you want to receive an inheritance, you have got to be old enough to handle it. Without maturity, we can't enter God's inheritance; so we must embrace, not just that Jesus wants to save us, but also to embrace that God's purpose is to mature us, and grow us until we become like Christ - and we understand that Jesus is the express image of what God is like.

In Hebrews 1:6, we understand He's the “firstborn of many”, so those scriptures tell us God's plan is not just to have Jesus in glory, but to have many, many sons and daughters exactly like Him, in their character and their nature. That's not accidental. We must commit to God's process of transformation, and building character, and Jesus is the model.

This is what we would call our ‘heart journey’. It doesn't talk about the heart there, that's talked about other places. The heart journey is our personal journey. It's something everyone must take, and it's a journey of freedom, and a journey of formation. Freedom, because we've got wounds, we've got attachments, addictions, and old reactions that we make. We've got immaturity, areas of bondages - and they all show up in our relationships. If they weren't shown before, they will show when you get married! They will show up again when you have children! They show up through life. The wounds of our heart need to be healed; the bondages in our heart need to be broken; so our journey with the Lord is a journey firstly, of letting God bring progressive freedom in our life; and secondly, it's one of formation - the formation of the heart, and character, of Christ in our lives.

Matthew 11:29 – “Take My yoke from Me, and learn from Me, for I am gentle (or, I'm meek and lowly in heart, meek and humble in heart)”.

Jesus wants us to learn the value of the heart qualities of' ‘meekness’, and ‘humility’. The quality of meekness means: my strength is under control, under management; my passions, my energy, my life is yielded and surrendered to God, so I don't react to life's adversities. I'm not imposing my power and forcing my will and way. Humility means that I adopt a ‘servant attitude. When we take on the qualities, and grow the qualities, of meekness and humility, then we become more and more like Christ. When we humble ourselves, God lifts us up; when we're meek, God causes us to inherit. In other words, we receive things that we never worked for. We have influence with people.

The second thing is he tells us is: be diligent; diligent to make your call and election sure.

1 Peter 1: 10 – “Therefore brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble”.

Notice he says: “if you do these things”. That phrase ‘do these things’ means: constantly practice the list he's just given us (we'll go into that list in detail in a moment); but he's saying: it requires diligence. You've got to constantly work on these areas, you're constantly practicing, putting into practice; and he's saying: you need to be diligent, to make your calling sure. If someone says you've got to really be diligent to make this thing happen, that implies that if you're not diligent, then it won't happen.

He's saying: you have a high calling. You have precious promises from God. We've got wonderful things He's prepared. We must be diligent. The promises are what God makes available; but diligence is our part. You can either be diligent; or you can be lazy - and this is the difference between many Christians.

Some are very diligent in their prayer life; diligent in reading the word; diligent in following what God is showing them. Others are neglectful. They turn up on Sunday. It's casual, what they have; and they never take notes, and never respond to anything that's taught. For them, it's just coming to church - great atmosphere, feeling encouraged and strengthened, reminded God loves them, and being inspired by a message. It's not a lifestyle of intentional building.

When you've got a lifestyle of intentional building, you want to be in a learning process constantly. He says: we need to make our calling sure, implying that it's not sure, unless you make it sure - and even Paul wasn't sure until the very end. So be diligent!

What does it mean to be diligent? Diligent. I love diligence. I've won the prize for diligence three times. Once in primary school; once in secondary school; once in university - diligence will get you through. It's not the gifting you have; it’s the diligence you show, that makes all the difference. Diligence means: to make every effort; to give care and attention to something, making sure you do what's necessary.

Another meaning of diligence means maintain the focus - an ongoing, sustained effort. That's a great definition - keep your focus; this is where I'm going; sustain the effort. You keep at it; you persevere at it. Diligence is the difference between just dreaming about something, and actually having it happen. Many people are dreamers; but they're not diligent, applying themselves intentionally to grow.

He says: we're to apply diligence to make our calling sure; and he mentions it twice. When something is mentioned twice, they're trying to get your attention - it's important. When its mentioned three times, it's even more important.

Verse 5 – “give diligence to build on your faith the Christ qualities”.

Verse 10 – “be even more diligent to make your call and election sure”.

He connects the two - building the qualities into your life, with making your call and election sure. Notice it's: “give all diligence” - be even more diligent, so he's emphasising that laziness is not acceptable. You're not getting anywhere if you're lazy; you've really got to apply yourself to this. Making your call and election sure is connected to building the character qualities of Christ in your life.

It's worth the study to look through the Book of Proverbs, and other places in the Bible, on the meaning of diligence, and the promises of diligence; and the meaning of slothfulness, and the things stated concerning slothfulness.

Proverbs 12:24 – “the hand of the diligent will rule…”.

If you want to be in charge, be diligent in whatever you're doing. A person who's diligent will end up in charge.

“…but the lazy man will be put out to forced labour”.

You'll find these contrasts in the Book of Proverbs, of diligent versus lazy.

Hebrews 6:12 – “Be not slothful, but rather, be followers of those, who through faith and patience, inherit the promises”.

Again, diligence is a God-quality. God is diligent. He wants us to be diligent; so, whatever you do, do it diligently. Sustain your focus on what you're doing, keep persevering in doing it - you will get there. I've discovered, in the walk with Christ, that diligence in following the Lord, and seeking the Lord, and doing what He wants you to do, despite everything else, brings you through.

Every believer needs to grow, and it's not automatic - it needs to be intentional. Some people think: if I just turn up, something is going to happen. No, our growth needs to be intentional; so, studying the word is an intentional effort; prayer is an intentional effort; working on your personal life is an intentional effort; going to a seminar to get healing is an intentional effort. All these things require intentional effort. Intentional means it's conscious, deliberate and you're doing it on purpose - you've got something in mind. When we understand our calling, then our response is to be diligent - very diligent; and as we're diligent, there are great and precious promises, that cause us to become transformed, and changed, and enter the kingdom magnificently. We can have an abundant entrance to the kingdom, or we can barely scrape in. I think it's better to have an abundance.

Then he talks about the consequences of not growing. Having given diligence to grow, and to change, he then talks about the characteristics of not growing; and then the seven qualities that we are to diligently work on. Let's have a look then, at the characteristics of Christians that are not growing - and you probably all know some of them. Essentially, there's a lack of life and freshness around them - they become stale, and old, and religious, because they're not growing.

2 Peter 1:8 – “If all these things are yours, and abound, they will make sure you're neither barren, nor unfruitful, in the knowledge of our Lord. But if you lack these things, then you're short-sighted, even to blindness - you've forgotten you were cleansed from your old sins”.

If we don't keep growing, then we stagnate. Stagnant water is not life-giving water. There's no freshness in your walk with God - no fresh insights, no fresh learning experiences, no fresh growing experiences - and people like that become quite shut-down, and passive. When people are not growing, they draw on their gifts, their talents, instead of a relationship; and they draw on past experiences, instead of what God is currently speaking to them. So, if we don't persevere in development and growing, then it results in the following things: unfruitfulness, blindness, short-sightedness, forgetfulness.

I'm going to go through the list of the five things that characterise people who are not growing. The consequences of not growing…

1) Barren. The word literally means ‘without labour’. They're not serving. They're not productive. They're spiritually unemployed. They live off the service and faith of others. Think of the Christians you know like that. They're never available to serve, they're not passionate for good works…

Titus 2:14 – “He's redeemed us to Himself… a people that'll be zealous for good works”

Where is the zeal? Where's the passion? They're negligent in their walk with God; they're not in a grow mode. Our serving the Lord catalyses the growing, because it puts you into difficult situations, which force your growth. You can't just grow just by reading the Bible - you've got to be engaged.

2) Unfruitful. From agriculture, most of the new fruit comes on the new growth; so ‘unfruitful’ means you're not producing the fruit you're supposed to produce. You lack the fruit of the Spirit, you're not actively involved in advancing the kingdom, you're not having a positive influence. Think of the sheer number of Christians, many people we know are like that - and they're not aware that they're disqualifying themselves from the First Resurrection. They're disqualifying themselves from their calling, they're disqualifying themselves from being part of the great coming age with Christ.

3) Blind. They're wretched and blind. That word ‘blind’ is a Greek word, ‘tufloss’, meaning: to be opaque. It means literally, to surround you with smoke. If you ever looked at anyone in a car who's been vaping, you know the whole car gets filled with that vape smoke, and everything around them gets covered with smoke? He says it's like that. He's saying: your blind; you're enveloped with smoke. It also means: to be puffed-up with pride; or conceited; or rendered foolish - and it's a demonic activity.

2 Corinthians 4:4 – “Satan has blinded the minds of those who don't believe.”

When we're not growing, our faith isn't growing, we're not leaning into God; then what happens is, we become very self-centred, self-oriented; and of course, that brings the next thing: we become short-sighted - can't see afar off. If you can't see afar off (I've got short-sightedness), everything afar off is blurry, so it creates a bit of problem going forward. In fact, I can't drive, unless I've got my glasses on to correct the vision.

It says there ‘can't see afar off’, which means that you're focussed on what's near to you, so you don't see further down - where it's all going, and what it all counts for. It refers to a life that's living in the moment, rather than living with eternity in mind. Short-sighted, you're not seeing ahead.

One day, you will stand before the Lord; one day, you will give account for your life - your decisions, your choices, your values, what you've done. You're not thinking ahead! You just are just not seeing it. It's like it's out of your view, all the time; therefore, you're not living with that in mind. Then he says: you've got a bad memory, you've forgotten what God has done, and why He's done it. When it says ‘to forget God’, what it really means is, not keeping His commandments.

Deuteronomy 8:11 – “Beware you don't forget the Lord by not keeping His commandments”

1 John 2:4-5 – “The one who says, ‘I know Him’ and doesn't keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. Whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God matures in him, and this is how we know we're in Him”.

Clearly, the consequences of failing to grow is, we just forget what God saved us from, we forget why we're saved, and then we forget to do the things He wants us to do. We start to just live for ourselves, and that's the condition of so many in the church, it's quite heartbreaking really. Quite a bad thing, isn't it - blind, half blind, short-sighted, bad memory, unfruitful, barren, spiritually unemployed... These are bad things, aren't they? This is all the consequence of not being committed to personal growth.

Look at the people you have the difficulties with; all these things are in them. You will start to notice it. They won't do things. They're not engaged. They're not growing. They're not sharing anything fresh from God, or from the word. They're not thinking about eternity. They're not even thinking past next week. They're thinking about this: my marriage, my children, my money, whatever. Their whole life is preoccupied with what's in front of them; and what's in front of us, can change. Having a long-term vision enables us to walk through the good and the bad, the highs and the lows, because we are looking for something that's eternal.

Hebrews 6:19 – “This hope that we have ahead anchors your soul… (stops you being tossed around in the storms)”.

Then he talks about the qualities… add some things; so be very diligent and add these things into your life. What does he want us to add? How do we add it?

Here are seven qualities, and it’s interesting that he used the number seven. Previously he talked about seven things for people who are walking away from God, but now he talks about seven things we need to add in, so let's have a look what the seven things are.

1) He says: “add to your faith virtue” - so what is virtue? It means literally: valour, courage, excellence, purity, doing what's honourable. Virtue means do the right thing; do what you know God wants you to do. Virtue - add to your faith ‘doing the right thing’. It means spiritual courage in a hostile world; being able to stand up for what's right, in the face of reactions.

That's virtue. You can see how virtue's a good word. It describes manliness, courage, being a man (or women) of honour. You have the courage to stand up, among people who are hostile to your way of life, and you stand up for what's right. Virtue means doing what's right in God's eyes, not what people think, or what's best for me.

An example of a man of virtue is David; and even though he had some things that were wrong, he stood up courageously for what was right. If you look at the apostles, they all died for their faith. They were men of virtue. They had courage to stand up and do what's right. You see Peter standing up and doing what's right. The authorities tried to shut him down for preaching the gospel (in Acts 4), and he said: God has commanded us to do this thing, and so whatever you think, you're allowed to think that, but we will do what God told us to do. That's courage, it's doing the right thing.

You always have opportunities in your life to choose to do the right thing, to do what God wants done. It may be to speak up, when no one else is speaking up. It may be to stand by someone, who's having a hard time. It may be to not lie, when you're tempted to. It may be to be honest, when you're tempted, or when others are saying don't be honest. There's lots of ways that virtue can be developed.

2) “…add to virtue (add to doing right), is knowledge”. Get understanding. Now the word ‘knowledge’ is the word ‘understanding that's gained by learning’ (intentional learning and experience). We need to keep growing in our spiritual knowledge and understanding. Solomon is an example of a man who developed great knowledge and great understanding - but he also sought it. He asked God for it.

What is it? It's the knowledge of God. It's an understanding of how life works, so we need to persevere. Solomon wrote like this….

Proverbs 2:1-6 - “My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding, if you cry out for discernment and lift your voice for understanding, if you seek for her like silver and search for her like treasures, hidden treasures, you will understand the fear of the Lord. You'll find the knowledge of God, because the Lord gives wisdom. From His mouth comes knowledge and understanding”.

Solomon, the wisest man in the world, understood that you can have natural knowledge by study; but there is spiritual knowledge and understanding of how life really works, that only God can give. He excelled in that. When God said to him: you can have whatever you want, he said: this is what I want. I want a hearing heart that understands, and God gave him wisdom. God was very pleased and with that, so God gave him everything else as well.

We need to pursue knowledge. That means being diligent in studying the word of God, being diligent in listening to people that have revelation and insight. It's applying yourself to understand how the realm of the spirit (God's kingdom) works. As you understand it, then of course you can make great decisions. Your life starts to flourish, because you understand: there's sowing and reaping. You know that I may do some things today and look like I'll get away with it - but I'm going to reap the consequences of those bad decisions.

I may pray, and do some things today, that don't look like I'm getting anywhere, but I will reap the benefits of all of that eventually. By understanding the law of sowing and reaping, in relationship to spiritual things, then I'm able to go forward and grow. I do things, because I know what's going to happen in the future. Then of course, then your life becomes where you're continually reaping, and continually sowing - it's your whole life, because you understand: that's how God works. Most people don't get how God works - they like what He does, but don't know how He works. One way He works is through the principle of sowing. You sow, sow, sow, sow and then gradually, after a time, you start to reap, reap, reap, reap, reap - and then your life is a flow of sowing and reaping.

God works through principles, like the principle of serving: if you want to be great in the kingdom, then become a servant. It looks counter-productive. In the world, people want to be great, they promote themselves; but God says no - if you really want to get ahead, this is how it works: become the servant, and gradually, God Himself will find the place to lift you up - either in this life or in the next.

3) “… to knowledge (understanding), add temperance”. Temperance means literally, to control yourself. Temperance means self-control. It means mastering your feelings and impulses; and of course, you know so many people and they can't do that. They live out of their feelings.

Self-control means not just controlling your actions; it means controlling your emotions, your impulses, your thoughts. It means delaying instant gratification. Even in the secular world, people know that if you can delay instant gratification, you set yourself up for success. “I can give you $5 now, or $1000 in a month” - there's so many people who just want the money now - they can't wait, and it's a characteristic of children. They usually take what will come now, rather than wait, because they can't see ahead; that, I’ll be much better off if I just delay this thing now, for the sake of that ahead of me. Based on this, people are caught up with impulse buying. They're caught into temptation to sin. All those things are usually quite impulsive. Self-control means I resist impulsive behaviour, and I maintain a direction where I'm going.

Self-control is a fruit of the spirit, so it comes as we yield to the spirit of God, consciously, and ask for God's help to overcome that thing, rather than just yielding to the impulse. Also, it requires emotional intelligence. You've got to be aware of your emotions; what you're feeling, and what others are feeling. That helps you manage your choices.

Examples of that would be Daniel and Joseph. JosEph. developed self-control. He was in a position of privilege. He was in a position where he sought serving the Lord, and the Potiphar's wife tempted him. Repeatedly, she tempted him, but he maintained self-control, and resisted her, even to the point where he was thrown into jail, and falsely accused. He was a man of virtue, who did what was right, and he was a man of self-control, so God raised him up, and made him a leader.

Many times, people focus on God raising Daniel up to be a prime minister, but they don't understand what he built into his life, that caused God to be able to lift him up. In Daniel 1, he was faced with the pressure to compromise his beliefs, and to drink the wine and eat the food offered to idols. He made a decision in conscience not to follow that, and eventually God promoted him as well.

1 Corinthians 9:25 – “Everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things”.

If you want to be a winner, an athlete, you don't overindulge in anything. We need to control food, control drink, and control what we do - put it under management, so we don't get caught out of control in any one area of our life.

4) “…to self-control, add patience”. That word means: a steadfast endurance; persevering through difficulty. Stay the course, don't quit. Perseverance is the ability to bear up, and press through, when things are against you. In the Christian life, we experience many different difficulties, and opposition, and times where nothing's happening. People upset us and offend us. It's very easy to give up and walk away; but perseverance means that I stick with it, because it's a conviction - God put me here, and I'm going to see it through.

Perseverance can have a couple of applications. One is, continuing to do something when it's hard to do. It also means, to be able to wait for someone, that you believe will come. The problem for most Christians is, they don't realise that God works through processes, and processes take time, but we would prefer quick results. Hence, people up in altar call… won't just someone pray for me, fix me up, come and do this for me, that for me. But God values the process, and He uses processes and time to grow us. When you don't understand that, you can be very up and down and flighty in your Christian walk.

Patience also has the meaning of ‘long-suffering’ - just enduring people's difficult circumstances, and difficult people, and never giving up on anyone. Again, long-suffering is a fruit of the spirit, as we yield to the Holy Spirit. The opposite of that is impatience. “Love is patient, love is long-suffering…” God perseveres with us with all our little glitches, and ups and downs, because He loves us, and that's His character.

Hebrews 10:35-36 – “Don't cast away your confidence, which has great reward. You need endurance, so that after you've done the will of God, you may receive the promise”.

Of course, patience is developed in our life through adversity.

James 1:2 – “Count it all joy when you face trials or tribulations, or temptations or adversity, knowing that the trying of your faith works patience; and patience, when it's had its complete work, makes you perfect and mature”.

He's saying then, to Christians, that the testing of your faith, when circumstances don't seem good and favourable, when God doesn't seem to be coming through, when there's opposition, when there's difficulties, he says: still, stay positive that God is in this all, because in doing that, you develop the quality of patience; and when you develop patience, you grow, and become mature, and complete in everything.

This is a very important quality to develop in your life: stickability, never quit, keep going. Just persevere in faith, keep going - everything around you is temporary, it comes to end, but God continues. Whatever you're going through, it has an expiry date on it. You may not know the expiry date, but it does end; you've just got to persevere, and if you will persevere, with the right attitude, trusting God, then He uses it all for your good.

5) “…to patience, add godliness”. Godliness means literally a fear, and a respect (or reverence), for God. It's a reverence, and respect, and fear of the Lord. It's a deep awareness, that the honour and the glory belong to God, and He will call all of us to account.

Everyone must give account, so when there's godliness in our life it means a deep respect for God, and respect for His authority; and therefore, a respect for other authorities, because all authority come from God.

Godliness always shows up in the way you live - clean living; and with a respect for authority. You find with someone that has a lack of respect for authority, they've got a godliness issue. There's something missing in their life, and they can never be great in the kingdom, because to be great in the kingdom I need to be a man under authority. There's a big difference between a man under grace (depending on God to cover all his mistakes), and a man under authority, who intentionally submits to God's order, and honours those over him. To operate in the kingdom, we need the fear, and respect, of God.

6) “…brotherly kindness”. Practice being kind to people. Brotherly kindness means love and kindness to the brethren, or to fellow Christians. It manifests itself in our words, the way you speak, how you treat people; and it manifests in acts of generosity and care.

Kindness shows up in how you treat people; and obviously, the best way to build great relationships, is to be kind to people. When you are kind to people, they respond. It's just it's a winner, being kind to people. Many people don't deserve you being kind, but we show kindness anyway, because that is the fruit of the spirit. It is a fruit of the spirit. Kindness comes when you yield to the spirit, when you're provoked. Instead of reacting, and showing unkindness, you show kindness to people - even when they don't deserve it.

An example of that is Jonathan. He developed kindness towards David; and David himself developed kindness towards Jonathan's family.

Proverbs 19:22 – “The quality to be desired in men is kindness”.

I shared that with someone the other day... I was just talking with a neighbour, and he was asking: all this big, tough, man thing - is that godly? I said: no, it isn't. I said: here is the quality God says is great in a man - loving kindness (and other qualities as well).

Ephesians 4:32 – “Be kind to one another” (loving kindness.)

7) Finally, the last one he says to add into your life, is love. That's a very broad word; it means literally, sacrificial service. Love, in this sense, is the God-type of love. It's a service and kindness, that has got no agenda, no strings attached.

We just had one of these yesterday... We had someone come and drop something off to us at the door, and left a note wanting us to ring - this is a trade. They've just left a little gift, and it had expired I think [laughs], but they wanted to get a response. It's gifts with agendas. That's not love! Real love means: a desire to do what's best for others. It calls us to act in the opposite spirit to the world.

John's an example of a man who developed great love…

1 John 4:8 – “Whoever does not love, does not know God, for God is love”.

The more you get to know God, and find and experience that He's loving, and kind, and generous, then you put on those qualities, and begin to practice those.

Luke 6:35 – “Love your enemies, do good, lend, hoping for nothing in return, and your reward will be great - an abundant reward, you'll be sons of the Most High God”

That's just what He's like. Paul tells us to “be imitators of God and walk in love”.

You see there seven qualities. There of course are other qualities, but those seven encompass what growing to maturity looks like:

• Doing the right thing; acting courageously, when there's pressure to do otherwise.

• Growing in knowledge, understanding and wisdom.

• Controlling impulsive behaviour - mastering yourself, your eating, your drinking, what you do and where you invest your time and finances and stuff.

• Developing patience - staying the course; no matter what happens, just stick with it, and stay on course; stay on target and walk with it.

• You develop godliness - a deep fear and respect for the Lord; you respect authorities, and you're careful to live a good life.

• Practicing kindness, wherever you go - particularly to the church firstly, and sometimes the church people are the hard ones to love, because they take it for granted, and they act in ways which are just are disgraceful to say the least – dishonouring, unkind and meanspirited. Many Christians are very mean-spirited; they want something, but they don't give something; they don't invest.

• Finally, love. That word ‘commit’. We're called for a life of sacrificial service.

There are two other areas then, that I wanted to look at…

What are the agents that God uses to help us in this? God will never ask you to do something, without empowering you to do them. God will always provide what we need. The Holy Spirit is the one who helps you grow these qualities. It's not like trying to do it all in your own strength, trying hard to be a better person. No, it's more about building a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1:3 – “His divine power has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him”.

This is the power of God - the Holy Ghost will help you in the journey. We need to pray in the Spirit, build the connection with the Holy Spirit - ask Him to help us and when issues come up. Surrender, or exchange the thing you're struggling with, for the godly quality which He will give to you.

The second thing that will help us grow is revelation knowledge. Verse 3 – “His divine power has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him”. That word ‘knowledge’ is the word ‘epignosis’, meaning: the knowledge that comes upon you from God. It's revelation that God brings - through your relationship, and your study. That ‘revelation’ knowledge is given to people who hunger for God, and it brings change in our life, so very, very important.

Thirdly, the word of God. We must study the word of God, or we never understand God's ways, nor even understand how, what to do.

2 Peter 1:4 – “…by which we've been given exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these, you may be partakers of the divine nature”.

What it means is, our change; we become changed, we become different. We become like Jesus. How do we do that? It comes about when we hold the word of God in our heart, and it calls us to persevere in these other things. The promises of God anchor your soul and keep you going.

A fourth provision God has made for us is the five-fold ministry gifts. They're given to process, to bring us to maturity.

Ephesians 4:11-14 tells us that the five-fold ministry gifts are given, that we would grow to the maturity of Christ, that we'd be no longer children. Five-fold ministry gifts… they're teaching, their impartations help you in the journey. That's why the church needs it so badly, or it remains immature. Many churches that are a pastoral – everyone is immature. No maturity, no growth, very little knowledge of God.

Finally, life experiences. God uses life experiences to develop these qualities in you.

James 1:2 – “Count it joy when you fall into various trials, because the trying of your faith produces patience. Let patience has its perfect work, you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing”.

He's talking about difficult experiences, delays, temptations, betrayals, diverse opposition, times when God seems a long way off… but it works or accomplishes endurance in our heart and life, and that's a key to growing. Then finally, we finish up with these things then, the promises that God makes.

If these things are yours and abound, here's what it'll mean… It means you'll be fruitful. You'll be fruitful. You will be neither barren, nor unfruitful. God is looking for fruit in your life - godly character, activity of engaging in His kingdom and serving people. He wants you to be fruitful. Jesus came looking for the fruitful tree, so God wants to see fruit in our life, wants to see us grow up, produce something with our life and our gifts.

Secondly, stability. He says: if you will be more diligent, to make your call and election sure - if you do these things, you'll never stumble. If you want to stay stable in your life (never stumble) - that word ‘to stumble’ means: to fall down; to descend from a higher place to a lower place; to be overcome by fear or grief or demons; to lose your authority; to be removed out of your assignment.

Here is His promise… You'll never fall out of your place in God, if you put those things into practice consistently. Israel is the example set before us. They did not grow; they did not change; and then they all fell, and no one entered what they were supposed to - it's the same condition.

2 Peter 1:11 – “If you do these things, if they abound in you, you're diligent in them, you work on them, you live them out, then so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”.

Abundant means: huge quantity; overflowing with wealth and honour. We've already seen that an abundant entrance to the kingdom was associated closely with the second coming of Jesus Christ, with the First Resurrection; so, they're all synonymous. An abundant entrance to the kingdom means I will attain the First Resurrection – I will enter the coming kingdom with glory and honour and stature.

That's going to vary from one person to another; but nevertheless, you can choose whether you have an ‘abundant’ entrance, or whether you barely get in, and have nothing that qualifies for reward. The presence of these qualities in abundance guarantees us an entrance to that coming kingdom. Some will be more abundant than others. There will be different degrees of reward, but you and I choose whether we will grow and mature, and let Christ be formed in us.

Galatians 4:19 - “I travail in prayer until Christ be formed in your life, and so that's our desire is that in our journey”.

It's not that we're busy doing things, but something is happening, in what we're becoming. We're becoming more like Jesus. We're becoming more godly, more consistent, more upright, more courageous, more persevering. We're becoming more loving and more generous and more kind. These qualities are growing and increasing in our life.

You've seen how, when these things have been worked on, in a man's life, for a long period of time, the fruit is evident everywhere. So, I encourage you with that - that you go through the study and make it your own study. You can take those qualities, and explore them in the Bible, so you understand them more. You can go back and look at diligence and slothfulness - you've got much to work on!

Summary Notes

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ER11: Abundant Entrance to the Kingdom

I. Introduction: God’s Eternal Purpose

* God’s Eternal purpose includes forming a Kingdom of Overcoming Sons in the image of Jesus Christ

Rom 8:29 - For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

“Conformed”. Gk summorphos - to be jointly formed, fashioned like unto

* God takes every child born into His family into a process of growth with the goal of shaping and forming our character to be Christlike.

* He is able to use every circumstance in our life work towards this goal if we embrace His process and cooperate with him in our responses.

Rom. 8:28 - And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

We stop reacting to problems, and instead enquire what God is doing and how to respond to Him

* Moreover, Paul reveals that the whole of creation is eagerly awaiting this process of forming Sons into the image of Christ to be completed

* Rom. 8:18 - For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

* Rom. 8:19 - For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.

* “Earnest expectation”...intense anticipation of all of creation

* “Revealing” Gk. Apokalupsis - manifestation, revelation to take the cover of something concealed

* “Sons” Gk. Huios - mature fully grown son

II. Abundant Entrance to the Kingdom

1. Key Passage: 2 Pet.1:2-17

2Pe. 1:2 - Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,

2Pe. 1:3 - as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,

2Pe. 1:4 - by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

2Pe. 1:5 - But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,

2Pe. 1:6 - to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,

2Pe. 1:7 - to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

2Pe. 1:8 - For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2Pe. 1:9 - For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

2Pe. 1:10 - Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;

2Pe. 1:11 - for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

2Pe. 1:12 - For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth.

2Pe. 1:13 - Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you,

2Pe. 1:14 - knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.

2Pe. 1:15 - Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.

2. Context: The Coming Kingdom

Note the following scriptures in Peter’s Teaching

* Peter describes the majestic coming of Jesus Christ in His Kingdom, and reveals that entrance into this Kingdom and the First Resurrection require that we diligently prepare ourselves

3. Peter’s Revelation of the Majesty of Christ in His Coming Kingdom

* 2Pe. 1:16 - For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

* 2Pe. 1:17 - For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”.

* 2Pe. 1:18 - And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.

* Peter is giving an eyewitness testimony of Jesus second coming in Kingly Majesty

* He personally saw this when he saw Jesus transfigured upon the Mount

4. Abundant Entrance into the Millennial Kingdom…if we Qualify

* 2Pe. 1:11 - for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

* Note the Conditions: “If”

* 2Pe. 1:8 - For if these things are yours and abound…

* 2Pe. 1:10 - Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;

* We enter the Coming Kingdom by qualifying for the First Resurrection, our High Calling & Hope

III. The Need for Intentional Personal Growth (Transformation)

1. “Add to your Faith”

* “Add”….to fully supply in addition to the precious faith that we have already received

* Without faith we cannot please God…we must believe that He is and that He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him (Heb.11:6)

* Faith or trust in Christ and His work is the foundation of our relationship with God

* Peter is writing to Christians who have already received saving faith…He assumes they have it

* We can do nothing to add to what Christ has done. We are saved by grace alone through faith (Eph.2:8)

* However God does not intend for us to stop there. We must build upon that foundation.

* We must: “add to our faith”

* Our life is like a building (1Cor.3:9)

* We cannot just stop at the fact that we are saved and belong to God. We are on a journey to maturity.

* Without maturity we cannot enter the inheritance that Father has prepared for us(Gal.4:1)

* We must embrace His purpose for saving us…to form us into the image of His Son , Jesus Christ, who is the express image of the Father (Heb.1:3), and the firstborn of many brethren (Rom.8:29)

* We must commit to Father’s process of maturity and transformation and build a godly character according to Christ the Pattern son

* This is our Heart Journey…….Our personal Journey of Freedom and of Formation

Freedom: Freedom from wounds, attachments, addictions, reactions, and bondages in the heart that show up in our words, actions, and how we respond in relationships

Formation: Formation of the heart and character of Christ in us.

* Mat 11:28 - Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

* Mat 11:29 - Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

* Mat 11:30 - For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

* Father’s plan is to form the heart and character of Christ within us

2. Diligent Effort is Needed to make our Call and Election sure

* 2Pe. 1:10 - Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;

* “Do these things” - to consistently practice

* Peter urges Christians to exercise diligent effort to make their calling and election sure

* This implies that if we fail to be diligent in this, we may not qualify for entrance into the coming Millennial kingdom of Christ

Be diligent

* “Diligent” - to make every effort, to give care and attention to something, make sure you do what is necessary.

* Diligence means maintaining focus and an ongoing sustained effort over the course of your life

* Diligence is the difference between merely dreaming and actually realising your dreams

* Peter instructs us to apply diligence to cultivating these qualities

* “Diligence is mentioned twice, verse 5 and verse 10

* Vs.5. Giving all diligence add (build upon) your faith the list of Christ qualities

* Vs.10 Be even more diligent to make your call and election sure

* Note the emphasis place upon diligence: Giving all diligence”, “be even more diligent”

* Peter is strongly emphasising that we must be diligent, that laziness will disqualify

* Making your calling and election sure is dependent upon the formation of these qualities in your life, and also results in an abundant entrance to the Kingdom

* Pro 12:24 - The hand of the diligent will rule, But the lazy man will be put to forced labor.

3. Each Christian needs to grow

* Personal growth is not automatic. It must be intentional

* “Intentional”: Conscious, deliberate, done on purpose with an end in mind

* This requires a commitment to the ongoing process of growing and knowing God

* There is a great difference between a man under grace, and a man under authority

* 2Pe. 1:4 - by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

IV. Characteristics of Christians Not Growing

1. Peter Reveals Characteristics of Believers who are not growing

2Pe. 1:8 - For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2Pe. 1:9 - For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

* If we do not keep growing we stagnate in our Christian life and experience.

We then draw upon our gifts, and past experience instead of leaning into God for fresh encounters with Holy Spirit and fresh revelation for the Word of God

* Failure to persevere in the development of Christian character leads to barrenness, unfruitfulness, blindness, short-sightedness, and forgetfulness.

2. Five Characteristics of Believers who are not growing:

(i). Barren Gk. Argos - without labour

Will not serve and be productive, shunning labor and service

Spiritually unemployed, living off faith and service of others

(ii). Unfruitful .... not producing the fruit it was designed to produce

Lacking the fruit of the Spirit, lacking on active and engagement in advancing the Kingdom positive Kingdom influence,

(iii). Blind Gk. Tuphlos - Opaque - to envelop with smoke so cannot see far, puff up with pride, self conceit centred, high minded, render foolish

Eg. 2Cor.4:4 - Satan has blinded the minds of them that do not believe

(iv). Can’t see afar off - short sighted, lacking vision of the Coming Kingdom, seeing only what is near, focus on personal needs and problems and not see or embrace what God is doing

(v). Bad Memory - Forgotten what God has done and why He has done it.

Deu 8:11 - "Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today,

1 Jn 2:4 - He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

1 Jn 2:5 - But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.

V. Qualities to Cultivate

7 Qualities We are to Add to our Faith

1. Virtue - “Do the Right Thing”

* Virtue - Valour, manliness, moral excellence, purity, Honourable

* Spiritual courage in a hostile world, being able to stand up for what is right in face of reactions.

* Virtue means doing what is right in God’s eyes, not what is right or best for me

* David is an example of a man displaying great courage

2. Knowledge - “Get Understanding”

* Knowledge - Gnosis...understanding gained through learning and experience

* We must continue to grow in spiritual knowledge and understanding and practice God’s Word

* Solomon is an example of a man who developed great Knowledge

Pro 2:1 - My son, if you receive my words, And treasure my commands within you,

Pro 2:2 - So that you incline your ear to wisdom, And apply your heart to understanding;

Pro 2:3 - Yes, if you cry out for discernment, And lift up your voice for understanding,

Pro 2:4 - If you seek her as silver, And search for her as for hidden treasures;

Pro 2:5 - Then you will understand the fear of the LORD, And find the knowledge of God.

Pro 2:6 - For the LORD gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding;

3. Temperance - “Control Yourself”

* Temperance...Self-control, master passions of the senses and flesh, overcome anger and lust

* Self-control means not just controlling our actions, but also controlling our emotions, impulses, and thoughts. It means delaying instant gratification

* Self Control is a fruit of yielding to the Holy Spirit instead of our flesh (Gal.5:22-23)

* It requires emotional intelligence…awareness of self and others and managing our choices

* Joseph. is an example of a man who developed great self-control

Joseph was faced with temptation to sin secretly or to resist and to flee

* Daniel is an example of a man who developed self-control

Daniel was faced with a choice between following the crowd or following his convictions

* 1Col. 9:25 - And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.

4. Patience - “Stay the Course”

* Patience - Steadfast endurance, perseverance with a positive attitude, remain not quit

* Perseverance is the ability to bear up and press on in the face of all that seems against us

* In the Christian life we experience much opposition, difficulty and seasons where we seem to be unfruitful, or offended by people. It is easy to give up and walk away offended.

* Perseverance has two different applications

Continue doing something when it is hard to do

Wait for something or someone you believe will come

* We must realise that God works through processes and processes take time. We prefer quick results but God values process and time as tools to grow us and accomplish His work

* Job is an example of a man who developed great patience

* Patience also has the meaning “long suffering” as never giving up on someone

* Long suffering is a fruit of the Spirit, developed in us as we yield to the Holy Spirit ,not impatience

* Heb. 10:35 - Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.

* Heb. 10:36 - For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:

5. Godliness - “Fear and Respect God”

* Godliness - respect and reverence towards a God

* It is a deep awareness that Honor and glory belong to God and that He will call all men to give account of their actions

* Godliness means to have a deep respect for authority. Since all authority comes from God (Rom.13:1) we must show respect for and honor all who are in roles of authority

* Godliness show up in our conduct with practical holiness, and respect for authority.

* Daniel is an example of a man who developed great godliness

* 1Ti 4:8 - For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.

* Pro 22:4 - By humility and the fear of the LORD Are riches and honor and life.

6. Brotherly Kindness. “ Practice Kindness”

* Brotherly kindness...love and kindness to fellow Christians

* Kindness manifests itself in our words, how we treat people and in acts of generosity and care

* This particularly applies to how we treat the people of God, God’s family, the Church

* The obvious way to build and maintain relationships is to show kindness consistently

* Kindness is also a fruit of yielding to the person and influence of the Holy Spirit (Gal.5:22)

* Jonathan is an example of a man who developed great brotherly kindness

* David is a man who showed kindness

* 2Sa 9:1 - Now David said, "Is there still anyone who is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake?"

* Pro 19:22 - What is desired in a man is kindness,

* Eph. 4:32 - And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

7. Love - “Sacrificial Service”

* Love - sacrificial kindness and service with no agenda or strings attached

* Real love is not a feeling or affection but an act of sacrifice.

* Real love means to desire and do what is best for others

* Love causes us to act in the opposite spirit to the world, overcoming evil with good

* John is an example of a man who developed great love

* 1 Jn 4:8 - He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

* Luke 6:35 - But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

* Eph. 5:1 - Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

* Eph. 5:2 - And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

VI. Key Agents of Transformation

1. The Person and Power of The Holy Spirit

* 2Pe. 1:3 - as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,

* “Divine power” Gk. ‘dunamis” The supernatural power of the Holy Spirit

* 1 Co 2:11 - For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

* 1 Co 2:12 - Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

* The Holy Spirit reveals to us the promises of God, what God has planned for those who love Him (1Cor.2:9-10)

* The Holy Spirit empowers personal growth and transformation

Php 2:13 - for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

2Co 3:18 - But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

* Transformation requires relationship and fellowship with the Holy Spirit

2. Revelation Knowledge

* 2Pe. 1:3 - as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by(for this reason) glory and virtue,

* ‘Through” - Gk - dia -the primary channel of act

* Knowledge - Gk - epiginosis - the upon knowledge, knowledge gained through experience

* A primary assignment of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Jesus and all His character and qualities

Joh 16:13 - However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

Joh 16:14 - He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

* Knowledge given to us by Holy Spirit is revelation knowledge…..experiential knowledge

* Revelation Knowledge is given to those who hunger for God

* Revelation knowledge brings impartation and change in our lives

* Revelation knowledge imparts (multiplies) grace and peace into our lives (vs.2)

* Revelation knowledge supplies everything we need for life and godliness

* We must hunger for Holy Spirit to give us encounters and revelation of Jesus

3. The Word of God

* 2Pe. 1:4 - by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

* “Partakers of the divine nature”…means to become

* ‘Precious”……of enormous value

* “Promises”….God solemnly commits Himself to follow a course of action

* God cannot lie about the promises that He makes. He guarantees to fulfil His part

* Tit. 1:2 - in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,

* Heb. 6:17 - In the same way God, in His desire to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable nature of His purpose, intervened and guaranteed it with an oath,

* Heb. 6:18 - so that by two unchangeable things [His promise and His oath] in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled [to Him] for refuge would have strong encouragement and indwelling strength to hold tightly to the hope set before us.

* Heb. 6:19 - This hope [this confident assurance] we have as an anchor of the soul [it cannot slip and it cannot break down under whatever pressure bears upon it]--a safe and steadfast hope that enters within the veil [of the heavenly temple, that most Holy Place in which the very presence of God dwells], [Lev 16:2]

* Heb. 6:20 - where Jesus has entered [in advance] as a forerunner for us, having become a High Priest forever according to the order ofN1Melchizedek. [Psa. 110:4]

* The promises of God when we receive and believe them act as an anchor for our soul in times of adversity and pressure to quit

* We must read and meditate upon, embrace, and act upon the Word of God

4. Five Fold Ministry Gifts

* Jesus has provided the Five Fold Ministry gifts to the Church for the process of maturity

Eph. 4:11 - And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,

Eph. 4:12 - for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,

Eph. 4:13 - till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;

Eph. 4:14 - that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,

* Exposure to the teaching and impartation of Fivefold Ministry gifts , especially the apostle is a an important part of our journey to maturity

5. Life Experiences

* Jas 1:2 - My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,

* Jas 1:3 - knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

* Jas 1:4 - But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

* “Various trials” - tests that examine the quality of our faith and trust in Christ and His Word

* This refers to difficult experiences in life where we are experiencing difficulties, opposition, delays, injustice, betrayal, temptations, and it seems that God is far away, silent, and uncaring.

* “Works” - to produce, to fully accomplish or achieve or bring about

* “Patience” - endurance, perseverance, patient waiting for God to work

* Note the connection between painful, difficult , confusing life experiences and the development in our life of the character of Christ

* The key for the development of maturity is our faith response during these experience

VII. Three Promises to the Overcomer

1. Fruitfulness

* 2Pe. 1:8 - For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

* In the parable of the fig tree, Jesus came looking for fruit but found none (Luke13:6-9)

* Jesus is seeking fruit in our life

* Spiritual Fruit comes from abiding in Him and His words abiding in us (Jn.15:4)

* Fruit: Fruit of the Spirit, Proven Godly Character, Faithful service, Use of Opportunities

2. Stability

* 2Pe. 1:10 - Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;

“Stumble” - to fall, to descend from a higher to lower position, be overcome by fear, grief of demons, to lose authority or force, to be removed from assignment by death

“Never stumble” - this is a double negative to emphasis the certainty of this promise

* Israel is set forth as an example for us. They were saved but did not enter the promised land

* They failed because of unbelief - a pattern, or practice of refusing to believe and obey God

* Heb. 4:11 - Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.

* The word “fall” is exactly the same word used in 2Pet.1:10 - “stumble”

* It refers primarily to being saved but failing to enter the coming promised Millennial Kingdom

3. Abundant Entrance to the Kingdom

* 2Pe. 1:11 - for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

* “Abundant” - present in great quantity, filled to overflowing with wealth and honor,

* Abundant entrance to the Kingdom is closely connected to the second coming and transfiguration of Jesus Christ and the First Resurrection of overcomers

* Mat 16:27 - For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

* Mat 16:28 - Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."

* Mat 17:1 - Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves;

* Mat 17:2 - and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.

* Abundant entrance contrasts strongly with Paul’s teaching in 1Cor.3:15 “saved yet so as by fire”

* The presence of these qualities in abundance guarantee us entrance to the First Resurrection and the Millennial Kingdom

* Some will have a more abundant entrance than others. There will be degrees of reward. And the rewards are here said to depend on the degree of one's conformity to the Savior.

VIII. Personal Reflection and Application

1. What has the Holy Spirit been revealing to you during this study?

2. What response do you need to make personally?

3. Which of the qualities mentioned by Peter do you need to focus on in your walk with God?

* Diligence

* Virtue

* Knowledge

* Temperance

* Patience

* Godliness

* Brotherly Kindness

* Sacrificial Love

4. What are the current hindrances to developing this quality?

5. What could you do to Overcome that hindrance and grow?

The Need for Faithfulness - The Parables of the Talents and the Minas (12 of 12)

Thu 17 Sep 2020 AM  « Back to Top

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Two important parables, concerning the end-times and coming Kingdom, are the parables of the Talents and the Minas.

Jesus has entrusted believers with “His goods”, and calls every believer to be faithful in stewarding what has been entrusted to them. He has devised a plan to discover who he can entrust with great authority to rule with Him in His coming kingdom.

There is no limit to the faithfulness that any person can cultivate and develop over the course of our life. At stake is reward and joyful participation in Jesus coming reign on earth.

Eternal Rewards #12. We've gone on quite a journey with all these studies, and I wanted to go back and just touch on an area that's quite an important area, and that is: The Need for Faithfulness.

I want to look again at the Parables of the Talents and the Pounds (or the Talents and the Minas) and just approach it a little bit differently, because when Christians hear these messages, they struggle to think it might apply to them; so I want to really focus on that, and show you how, in these two parables, very clearly the focus of Jesus is on Christians, and Christian stewardship. These are not parables for the unsaved.

The two stories, Matthew 25:14-30, which is the Parable of the Talents, and Luke 19:11-27, the Parable of the Minas - they're quite similar. They look quite similar, but they really are quite different, but for what we're doing today it's quite good if you see the two together. When Jesus is teaching a parable, it's a story with a spiritual truth involved, so some of the details have specific prophetic application; while others are just part of the story, so we're going to open that up.

We'll read the Parable of the Talents, and it's in the context of Jesus teaching the sermon where He's answering questions from the disciples… What is the sign of the destruction of the temple? What is the sign of Your coming in the end times? He's talked about the destruction of the temple, and then He's gone on to give three parables: one about servants; one about the virgins, five wise and five foolish; and now He's gone on to another parable about the servants - so three parables, one after the other.

Then He talks about the end times, the judgement of the nations. So, these three parables all work together, and this one of the talents matches very closely the one in Luke 19, where He talks about the pounds. Let's read it then...

Matthew 25:14-30 - “For the kingdom of heaven is like a man travelling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his own ability, and immediately he went on a journey.

He who received the five talents, went and traded them and made another five – a hundred-fold increase. He who received two, gained two more also. He who'd received one, went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord's money. After a long time, the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them.

So, he who'd received five talents, came and brought other five talents, saying: Lord, you delivered me five talents. Look, I've gained five more talents beside; and the lord said to him: well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of the lord.

He also who received two talents, came and said: Lord, you delivered to me two talents. Look, I've gained two more talents besides them. His lord said to him: well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter the joy of your lord.

And he who'd received the one talent, came and said: Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you've not sown, and gathering where you've not scattered seed. I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours. But his lord answered him and said: you wicked and lazy servant. You knew that I reap where I haven't sown and gather where I haven't scattered seed. You ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I'd have received back my own with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has 10 talents.

For to everyone who has, more will be given, he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away, and cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The other parable, in Luke 19, has a little slightly different context…

Luke 19:11-27 – “Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. He said: therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom and return. He called 10 of his servants, and delivered to them 10 minas, and said to them: do business until I come.

But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying: we will not have this man reign over us. And it was so that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded the servants to whom he'd given the money to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

Then came the first, saying: master, your mina has earned 10 minas. And he said to him: well done, good servant. Because you were faithful with very little, have authority over 10 cities. The second came, saying: master, your mina has earned five minas. Likewise, he said: you be also over five cities.

Then another came, saying: master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief, for I feared you, because you're an austere man. You collect what you didn't deposit, and reap where you did not sow.

And he said to him: out of your mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew I was an austere man, collecting what I didn't deposit, and reaping what I did not sow. Why did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest? And he said to those who stood by: take the mina from him, and give it to him who has 10 minas. And they said to him: but master, he has 10 minas. And then he replied: for I say to you, that everyone that has will be given, and from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. But bring here these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.”

The story for both parables is very similar. The master goes for a trip to a far country. In one, it says he's going to receive a kingdom and return; and then he entrusts the servants with his goods while he's away.

In the Parable of the Talents, he entrusts according to capacity, ability to manage; but in the Parable of the Minas everyone gets the same amount - so there is a bit of a difference there. When the master returns, he evaluates each servant on the stewardship of his goods, and the increase he's made - and clearly his expectation is gain or increase. Now gain represents a degree of faithfulness, what has been entrusted; and in response to a gain, he's then given a reward (or recompense), according to what he's gained.

The two faithful servants who made gain - they receive reward. The one who was unfaithful, and did not make any gain, but just merely conserved or preserved - he suffered loss. So, we’re just looking at the context for them; and then we want to look at the prophetic warning.

In the first one, the Parable of the Minas, the setting is on the road to Jericho. Zacchaeus has just been converted. They see the tremendous change in Zacchaeus; and so, the crowd gathered, and they expected that Jesus is about to restore His kingdom. So the context for that parable is everyone is expecting that the kingdom is going to come now. He's going to go to Rome. He's going to take over or overcome the Romans in some way.

He's going to introduce the kingdom, so everyone is crowding around Him, expecting Him to be the king. He told them the parable, to make it clear what's really going to happen - and so He tells the story. They were familiar with the story. They understood that, in terms of what had been happening already politically, locally. Basically, He wants them to see that there is a space between Him receiving His kingdom and returning, in which servants are going to be entrusted with something to do on His behalf.

In the setting with the Parable with the Talents, it's different. It's in the context of end time warning, about the coming of the Lord. It's set in the middle of three or so teachings around the end times, and particularly warnings.

Here's what we understand prophetically - when you look at the parables, they're a story with a meaning, that has an application straight away. They usually have within them a prophetic aspect, concerning the coming of the kingdom, and that's very true with this. The parables cover the period from the lord leaving, or the nobleman leaving, and him returning. It covers that entire period. At the start of it he's about to leave; at the end of it, he returns.

The parable then, both parables, cover the entire Church Age - the period from when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, until He returns. When you're reading it, you've got to think prophetically - there's aspects of these parables have not yet happened. They will happen.

When Jesus returns, the Bible's very clear, He will return to establish His kingdom. He's going to need servants, that can share with Him in the responsibility of that kingdom. Before He departs, He sets a plan in motion. Here's the plan...

He will distribute to all His servants some talents, or minas, or opportunities. Every servant will have an opportunity. His plan is: I want to know, when I come back, who can I entrust working with Me, in establishing My kingdom.

Many people sort of think that Jesus is going to come back, and He's just going to do it all Himself, or do it with angels; but the plan of God is that the advancement of His kingdom through the earth will be through people. It's always been that plan. It's never any different.

He sets a plan in place, and the plan is: how can I select the people that can work with Me, and be entrusted with roles of honour, and responsibility, and authority, in the coming kingdom? Here's what I'll do… I'll use the season called the Church Age, which for most of us is the course of our life; and over the course of our life, I'm going to give you an opportunity to prove your faithfulness, so you can qualify for what I have ahead for you.

He deliberately places a period between when He departs, and when He returns. That period of time covers about 2000 years, or a bit more, and that enables, or allows, generations to rise and go; and from all of those generations, God is looking in every generation, for people who will serve Him faithfully, that He can then raise up to participate in the kingdom.

When He returns, there will be a generation that is alive when He returns, and they will receive their reward immediately. There's a prolonged period between His departure and return, in which servants, in every generation, are being given their opportunity to qualify for what God has ahead.

If you understand that is the plan, then you understand that every day on this earth, is your day to qualify for what Christ has when He comes. If you don't understand that's the plan, then every day has got no sense of purpose, or accumulation towards a grand climax, and a grand reward.

His plan is in operation right now, and the key issue in Jesus' plan is, how the servants demonstrate their faithful service in His absence. That's it - it's a very simple plan.

What are you doing with the time, talents, opportunities and giftings you have, during your life? God is watching every aspect of it, and He has in mind, this is your apprenticeship. This is your qualification period. This is the time you develop within yourself, the qualities needed to partner with Him in establishing His kingdom. The key issue then is faithful service to Him in His absence.

Other parables looked at different things. The Parable of the Virgins, for example, looked at the whole issue of their intimacy with the Lord - their time in prayer, their personal relationship with Him. The last study we did was on the transformation process in our life; but in this one, we're returning now back to the faithfulness.

Luke 16:10-12 – “Whoever is faithful in that which is least, or very little, he will also be faithful in much”.

He's not worried about what you have, or how little it is. He's saying that, if you're faithful when you have very little, you show and demonstrate that, when you're given much, you will also be faithful as well - and at stake are the true riches.

Luke 16:11 – “If you've not been faithful in unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? If you've not been faithful in that which is another man's, who will give you what's your own?”

Right there, He explains what He's looking for. He's looking for faithfulness, and He's looking in at least three dimensions:

1) How faithful are you in the little matters of life

2) Are you faithful with money - with the handling and management of your money? Your money represents your life, and they're an entrustment from God.

3) Are you faithful in serving someone else?

All three areas are vital requirements, to demonstrate faithfulness. Faithfulness in small things, that are not seen by anyone, but are seen by God. Faithfulness with your finances, and the way you manage and handle them and invest them. Faithfulness also in how you serve other people, which involves the church; your family; your work, and so on.

The focus is not how much you've been entrusted with, and that then puts everyone on a level playing field, because we tend to look and see others more gifted, more talented, and we tend to think: oh wow, they've got so much; but actually, that's not what God is looking for. He's not worried; the focus is not at all on how much you're entrusted. The focus entirely is what you do with it, so every believer is on a personal journey, to discover and to develop faithfulness.

That's what God is looking for - your capacity to take responsibility, and partner with Him, in establishing His kingdom in the earth. He's designed a plan; and the plan's very simple. Who is going to be faithful? Who can I trust? Who can I rely upon? Who is dependable? Rather than have some magical process, it's a very simple process - God just observes how you do your life now.

From that, He can assess - are you trustworthy, are you reliable, are you faithful, are you dependable? Really simple, and of course, looking around at people, you see that many are not faithful at all. Faithfulness is a quality that is missing in so many people. The goods entrusted are small, but the possibility for the future is great.

Faithful in small things? I will make you ruler over many things! Faithful in this, I'll make you ruler over cities. He's trying to not actually specify what He will entrust to us; it involves little now, but much then. He's trying to highlight the difference between what's at stake for us, and what's involved now. It doesn't matter what small level of responsibility, gifting, or anything you have - it's what you do with it, is the very important thing.

You see that demonstrated in the Parable of the Talents, where one had five, and gained another five - that's a hundredfold increase. One had two, gained another two - a hundredfold increase. God did not make any mention of the amounts they had, just that they were faithful with it. Both were equally productive; and both were given the same reward.

In the Parable of the Pounds, it's different. They all started with one each, but one got 10, so he receives a greater reward - greater diligence, focus, and effort. He's proven himself to be extremely productive and is rewarded accordingly.

Now, here's the thing I want you to see. The focus on both parables, is the servant who fails! If you count up the number of verses that talk about the servant who fails, you'll find there's seven on the servant who fails; but if you look at the number of verses about the other two servants, there's only three for each of them.

When someone has got a lot to say about something, it's because it's more important, and so the focus here on the seven verses, are on the person who had only the one talent. If you look back in the two parables prior to that, the Parable of the Virgins (five wise, five foolish) - same thing. There are more verses on the foolish virgins, than on the wise.

Go back one more parable, into Matthew 24, and there it is again - there are more verses on the foolish servant, than on the wise servant. Three parables in a row, and the greater focus is on the person who failed, the servant who failed, so that means that the identity of the third servant is absolutely the key for the parable. If you don't think it could be you, you will miss the point of the parable.

We can draw or focus on many aspects of the parable - the nobleman going and coming back; the coming of the lord; on the rewards, and what the rewards might be. But if we just take what's written there, the focus is on the third servant, the unfaithful one, because Jesus wants to warn that this is possible for any believer.

If we don't think that the servant could be me, and that I could be the one who suffers loss, then I'm going to miss the application of this. It will just be a message; a great message, but I miss the warning that's inherent in it - that if the servant is me, then I could be the one who loses. I could be the one in outer darkness.

We automatically resist that this servant could be me. When you read the story, no one puts themselves as the third servant. They think: I won't be the five talent one; maybe I'm the two talent one? We put ourselves somewhere in the middle, mentally, because it's troubling to think we could be the third one. Yet the whole point of all this is, it's all about the third one; and here’s the point…

If we live and act like the third servant, we will experience what he experienced. If we live, and act, and treat the talents, and the things that God has given us the same way he did, we will have the same experience he did.

There's a lot of reasons why we could show that this third servant is a believer. Many Christians, when they read this, don't recognise the third servant as a believer; they'll explain: oh, he must be unsaved, he can't be a Christian. I want to show you that that third servant is a Christian. Therefore, it applies to every person, and it's the focus of Jesus' warning.

Here's a few reasons why we can say that third servant is a believer; and that he represents the majority of Christians. Most Christians are not five talent, or two talent; they're one talent people. The warning of this, to His disciples, is to not to be that person. Let me give you some reasons why the servant has to be a Christian….

1) Jesus calls them His servants. “He called His servants to Himself”, and that word servant is the word ‘delossis’ – slave; someone who's been purchased or bought for a price; devoted to someone else.

The Bible tells us, we have been bought with a price. Jesus calls the people His own servants. He gives them an entrustment - and that makes them His servant. Very clearly, we were bought with a price; we belong to God; we're His servants.

2) Every believer is called a servant of Christ, so we're all called servants of Christ.

Colossians 3:22 – “Servants or bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing God. For whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not men, knowing from the Lord you'll receive the reward of inheritance; for you serve the Lord Jesus Christ”.

He's saying that, even if you're employed in secular work, you are still the servant of the Lord, in that place. If you're a mother or father, you're the servant of the Lord, in the home. If you're a young person, you're a servant of the Lord, in a school. Every believer is the servant of the Lord.

3) Every believer has their own personal assignment or service.

Ephesians 2:10 – “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that God prepared beforehand we should walk in them”.

Our works are things we do, and they're the basis of our service, and for developing faithfulness.

4) The third servant is entrusted, along with the other servant, with the Lord's goods. God doesn't entrust His goods to the unsaved. He doesn't give the gifts of the spirit to the unsaved. He doesn't give faith to the unsaved. So clearly, this third servant is a believer.

5) In the parables, the three servants all have to give account at the same time. The Bible tells us that the accounting for believers is all together, at the judgement seat of Christ. The accounting for the rest of the world, and unbelievers, is all at the end of the millennial reign; so, the fact they're all called to account together, points also to the fact they must be believers.

6) All three servants are judged solely on their works, not on their position or status. When you get saved, you become a child of God - you have a position, a status as a child of God. What is evaluated is not your status, but what you did, once you had that status - it's your stewardship, as a servant.

In the Parable of the Minas, you've got three servants. Then, the next group of people are the citizens who refuse to let the master rule - and he deals with them differently. You've got His servants; and then you've got those who refused his rule. The ones who refused his rule are clearly unsaved - people who have rejected Christ; Jews and Gentiles, and they're dealt with differently to the servants.

The servants are all called to give account for stewardship, all at the same time. The citizens who resisted Christ, and rejected His rule over them, rejected His kingdom - God deals with them differently, and on a different basis. So very clearly, the servant is a Christian.

Now we're going to look a bit further at the third servant, and I want to look at: how did he fail? What's the lesson we need to learn?

Here's how he failed... He did not place value on what God had entrusted him. He undervalued what God had given him. Think about it. Many people look, and they see: I'm not as gifted as someone else, haven't got as much education, I'm not as smart as someone else. I haven't got the training someone else has, I'm not a good talker like someone else is… We make other people the focus, and we compare ourselves unfavourably and then undervalue what we do have. That's a big problem for Christians.

God is not interested in what you have. He's interested in what you do with what you've got.

For example, with Moses, He said: what have you got in your hand? He said: I've just got a shepherd's rod. God said: okay, I'll use that - I will deliver a nation, with a shepherd's rod.

The lady that Elijah visited, she said: I've got nothing, we're about to die. He said: what do you have in your house? She said: I've just got a little pot of oil. That will do, and the power of God came on that, and the whole house was fed for a year!

You find constantly, the stories where people looked down on the ‘little’ they had, but when it was yielded to the Lord it became very powerful and very effective. What about the feeding the 5000? How do we feed 5000 people? Well, has anyone got anything? One boy has got a little bit of lunch, some bread and some fish. He said: that will do. Let's bring that, and make that available, and that can then minister to a crowd.

Every one of us must look at how much I have, or what I could do, and not be limited in our thinking and contain ourselves. We should take what we have, present it to the Lord and let Him bless it, so the blessing and anointing comes on what we have, when we make it available to Him. Then He can do far more, through one little act of kindness, than you could ever imagine.

It's very easy to look and think, I haven't done anything, and then find that actually, the little that you did carried on, and had huge impact.

I remember hearing a story of a guy in a church, and he was only casual in his attendance at church, he would come just once a month. The pastor discovered he just loved vehicles, loved cars, and so he approached him and said: there's a lady just not far from where you live, and you pass her place on the way. How about you take her to church next Sunday when you come? He said: yeah, sure, I can do that – it’s a very little thing. He picked up the lady and took her to church. Anyway, the pastor asked him the next month… would you do that again? So, he did it again, and then he decided he'd like to do it a bit more often, so he started to take her every fortnight, and then he took her every week. Soon he's bringing her every week, and the pastor just kept encouraging him, and appreciating what he had. Eventually, the guy ended up in charge of the whole transport ministry, for the whole church. It's a big church, 5000, and he got such a passion and a joy out of just - it started with just picking up that first person, and he had a huge impact with it.

I heard another story too, it's very powerful, and this woman was a hairdresser, and she was thinking: what can I do? Anyway, she heard the message about the talents, and she said: what can I do with what I've got? I don't know much of the Bible, but what I can do is, I can cut people's hair. So, she's walking through the street, and she went past a strip club. The Lord said: go and offer the girls there to do their hair before they perform.

Of course, you understand that's a radical thought for many church people! She went in, and they said: yeah, what do you want? She said: well, I'm a hairdresser, I'd love to just come for the girls before they perform, and I'd like to just do their hair for them, make them look beautiful. They were shocked, and she said: I'll do it for free; and so she would come, and then of course, she's got time sitting there with the girls, and she began to talk to them, and the girls were really happy. They're having their hair done for free, and she was very clever what she did. Anyway, eventually she said she brought something along for them, messages for them and whatever, and would share a little bit with them. Eventually, all of them got saved! Remember, it was just a simple little thing she had, but with the hand of God on it, it produced a huge result.

So, here's how the third servant failed. He undervalued what had been given. He didn't value his importance. Interesting enough, Paul talks to Timothy about the danger of the same thing…

1 Timothy 4:14 – “Don't neglect (or look down on, or minimise) the gift that's in you, which is given you with prophecy, by the laying on of hands of the eldership…”.

That word ‘neglect’ means: to be careless; or make light of; or consider not much value. He said: don't do that,

“…but rather meditate, and then give yourself to that gift”.

So again, it's the same kind of concept. Don't look down on the things God's entrusted to you, but pray over them, and just use them to what you have, to do what you can with them. So, the first thing then was, he undervalued the gift.

Secondly, he didn't understand the plan that Jesus had - to qualify him, for sharing and rulership. If you understood clearly what's at stake, for you being faithful now, then you'd be faithful now. Clearly, he didn't understand; and the plan of the king was: use your time now, to develop faithfulness and prove faithfulness, and when I return, because you've proven faithful, I will entrust to you much more.

Revelations 2:26 – “He who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, him I will give power over the nations”.

God's intention is to put us in a place of royal authority in the coming kingdom, but if we don't understand the plan, then we won't prepare. If we don't prepare, we will have the same experience that servant had.

Notice how Jesus described him... He described him as ‘wicked, lazy and unprofitable’, exactly the opposite of the other two, where He said: ‘well done, good and faithful servant’. He called him wicked, meaning your behaviour, it's not evil. Your behaviour causes me anguish, because I planned so much for you. Your behaviour has a negative influence on others, because they're discouraged by your lukewarmness. He called him ‘lazy’ (or slothful); so basically, He's saying: you lack any passion, or diligence, in serving Jesus, and your influence is quite negative on others.

Romans 12:11 – “Don't be slothful in business, but be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”

God's desire, whatever we do, is to be passionate, be fervent in spirit; and in all you do, serve the Lord in it.

The fourth thing about the servant is, he made nothing of his life. He just didn't do anything. That’s what he did wrong. He withheld his abilities, and time, from serving the Lord. Doesn't that describe large numbers of Christians? They will come to a service so they can be blessed, and that's great to do that; but they withhold their abilities, and their time, from serving God. He hasn't demonstrated love and loyalty in the master's absence. He's hoarded when he should've conserved - he should've invested. He's got no sense of responsibility. His focus is entirely on himself.

Notice, he's not thinking about a test, and failing a test. He's basically just disqualifying himself, as day and day go by, and there's no service. Essentially his ‘wickedness’ is just the failure to be a good steward.

In both parables, the Lord scolds him: at least you could have given what you have to someone else and got Me interest. What He's saying is: what I've entrusted to you, is with the expectation that it will produce fruit.

How did Jesus describe the other two servants? Well done, good and faithful servants; and ‘well done’ is because they did well, so it's not just a matter of being a worshipper. We need to actually apply our life to serving the Lord in the assignments He's given us as well.

They remained diligent and engaged. Throughout the appointed season of their lifetime, they were faithful, and productive, and that's really our life testimony, because we saw these eternal riches to be gained. We saw the message of the kingdom and understood what is at stake. We made this our life scripture:

Matthew 6:33 – “Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all the things will be added to you that you need”.

We've gone through hard times, good times, and challenging times. There are many different times we've gone through, but in all those times, God is watching: how did you handle yourself? How did you treat people? How did you deal with what was given to you? Were you fruitful? Were you productive? Were you faithful, in the midst of all of that?

Now, I'm 74, and my wife Joy is the same age. We're at the season of our life now, where a large portion of our life, 50 years, has gone by serving the Lord; and we've got a portion left, so all those years mean it’s much more important to remain faithful and true, and not just say well, I've done my dash, I should quit now. You understand? That's what keeps you with passion, and fire - because you understand the truth of this story here.

We must be clear in it then, that it's not the possession of your talents that determines the reward - it's just what you do with them. What did you do, with what you had? Many people look and say: I've got nothing. Well, you've got a home. Why don't you bring people into your home? Can you cook? Make someone a meal? There are no limits to what we can do.

This is the point I'm trying to make - all three servants are believers; and the difference between the two who were rewarded, and the one that was not, was all about their stewardship. Every one of us is going to face an accountability to God, according to what we have done. We can receive reward, or we can suffer loss, just like they did.

Here's the bottom line... It's not a parable for the unsaved! It's a parable for those who've received Christ, to be engaged in serving. If we act and live like the servants, the ‘one’ servant, or the ‘third’ servant, we will experience what he experienced.

I want to get to the point of what it means - what faithfulness looks like; but if I just touch on then, the reward and the loss. There may be some people watching or listening to this message that weren't in any of the other messages, so essentially the reward is ruling with Christ in His coming kingdom.

In the Parable of the Talents, they're all given a different amount, according to different capacity; and the outcome is that they enter into the joy. They celebrate with the Master. They partner with Him. They enter His joy at their success, and they will be put ruler over many things, because they've been faithful, they produced, they increased, and they were commended. They're invited to enter and experience their Master's joy, and they're both given responsibility and authority, in establishing His kingdom.

In the Parable of the Minas, they're given different amounts, but the same opportunity. The one who is rewarded more, is the one who did more with what he had.

Greater diligence and fruitfulness meant greater rewards.

Equal diligence and faithfulness meant equal rewards.

The loss involves exclusion, both from stewardship, and ruling in the coming kingdom. The servant who received one talent is considered wicked and lazy, because he put no effort into stewarding, no effort into increase. He was rebuked; and then he suffered then loss. Take the talent away and give it to the one who has 10 talents - so he loses stewardship. The opportunities he had - he doesn't have anymore.

Instead of entering the joy of the Master, he's put into outer darkness, where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. That's a reference to the celebration, the wedding feast. Those who were in it, the place was full of light, the place full of joy; but for those outside, it's dark. They're excluded from sharing the joy and glory of that millennial kingdom with Christ.

What's the weeping and gnashing of teeth? Just the grief at realising how great the loss is; and then the anger (or frustration) at the failure to do something with the opportunities that were given. Scripture over and over points out that, if we do what God calls us to do, we will reign with Him, and have glory in His kingdom; but if we don't, we will suffer loss. In the last part of the second parable, the citizens who hated Him, and wouldn't have Him reign - there was a judgement of them that followed.

Finally, the last part I want to look at is: what does it mean to be faithful? How I could do it?

Why does God consider faithfulness so important? Why is it it's not your talent, or your gift, that's important? Why does He consider faithfulness? There's a whole number of reasons…

1) God Himself was faithful.

Deuteronomy 7:9 – “Know the Lord your God is a faithful God”.

It's the nature of God to be faithful, reliable, trustworthy.

2) Jesus Himself modelled faithfulness, because He came to represent what God is like. He was faithful.

Hebrews 3:1 – “Consider holy brethren, and partakers of the heavenly calling (or sharing in this heavenly or great calling), consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus Christ, who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, just like Moses was faithful in all His house”.

He identifies that we have a calling to share with Christ; and Christ was faithful in what was entrusted to Him.

3) Faithfulness is required of sons.

Hebrews 3:6 – “Christ was a Son over His house, whose house we are, if we hold the confidence, and rejoicing firm to the end”.

Jesus was faithful as a Son; and so, if we're a son, we need to be faithful as well.

4) Faithfulness is required of all servants.

1 Corinthians 4:2 – “It's required of servants, that after they've been checked, they're found to be faithful”.

5) Faithfulness is required in all emerging leaders.

2 Timothy 2:2 – “The things you've heard from me among many witnesses, commit them to faithful men who will reproduce, or teach others”.

Galatians 5:22 – “Faithfulness (or faith, but actually the word can be translated faithfulness), is a fruit of the Spirit”.

Just as peace develops in our life, as we yield to the Holy Spirit; and love flows of our life, as we yield to the Holy Spirit, instead of reacting; so also faithfulness develops in our life, as we surrender to the Holy Spirit. He leads us to be faithful.

It's quite a good prayer to pray: Lord, today create in me a faithful and a loyal heart. Give me a heart that's faithful. Holy Spirit, I yield to You, help me be faithful in what is entrusted to me.

It's not just church things; it's every aspect of your life. You're trusted with a house, be faithful in the stewarding of it, and maintaining it, looking out for it. Faithful with your children - be faithful in your raising of them, and in leading them towards the Lord. Jesus will reward faithfulness - well done, good and faithful servant, faithful in few things, I'll make you ruler over many.

Faithfulness is everywhere in the Bible, from one end to another, and people are listed in the Bible as being faithful, and they're trusted. People like Nehemiah… When Nehemiah had to leave the building of the walls, and go back and for a season, he found faithful men he could entrust, that wouldn't be bribed, wouldn't be corrupted, who could be relied on to do the job. So faithfulness is always important. You want a faithful man, more than a talented man.

What does it mean to be faithful?

Faithful means to be thorough in fulfilling the duties you're given. You're thorough, and you're detailed, and you follow them through.

It means that if you give your word, you keep it. That makes you a faithful person. When you make a promise, if you're reliable, you'll keep your word. That's a big one.

Faithful means to maintain constant allegiance and affection for someone. In a marriage, you want to maintain - you maintain your heart affection to your spouse, and there's no other people that come in, and the loyalty divided.

Faithfulness also means that you commit to a standard and you stay there. So faithfulness will always hinge on what is important to you and your commitment to it.

For us, our destiny in the coming kingdom is important to us. Our destiny in the eternal kingdom is important to us. Being faithful to Christ is important to us, and so we've remained committed to that over the course of our life.

How can we develop faithfulness?

Let's look at a few practical things…. The first thing is to understand God is not looking for perfect people. There's no perfect people, no people that have it all together. They may look like it. He's just searching for people who will commit to Him, and then be faithful with what they do have. Faithfulness means being loyal, and steady, and dependable, and it's the fruit of having a heart that believes and trusts God.

If you believe truly in your heart that He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, you will diligently seek Him. So, faithfulness flows out of what we believe about the character of God, and the goodness of God; we're no longer looking at what people are doing, or what people are saying. Our focus is Jesus Himself. It doesn't mean we'll be perfect. It doesn't mean we won’t struggle. It doesn't mean we won't make mistakes or decisions... It simply means this: that you're just going to continue to trust God, and follow Him, and do what He tells you. That's not so hard is it?

Here's the big thing... You are unlimited in the amount of faithfulness you can have. We might be limited in money; or in our case, in the time left; limited in the resources or giftings you have; maybe limited in your education… But none of those things have any bearing to do with faithfulness.

Faithfulness is a quality of your heart and character, and there's no limit on the degree you can be faithful with what's entrusted to you. Faithfulness is cultivated in a whole number of different ways. Let me just list a few areas, so when you're thinking of faithfulness, it's not some church-based thing. You're looking at how you do life, and how you handle what is entrusted to you. Faithfulness can be cultivated in all kinds of areas…

1) Your personal devotional life. Maintaining the first affection towards Christ; maintaining your prayer life in secret. Keeping your secret life with God constant, your priesthood to Him, you are faithful to that.

2) You obey Him in little matters. When Jesus gives you just a little instruction (don't do this, or do this), you just follow His instructions, even if you don't always see what the outcome is.

Basically, you're choosing: my life is about pleasing God, not about keeping people happy, or pleasing people. If I seek to please people, I will not be faithful to God, because my desire for their approval, or to please them, will put me in conflict with what God wants me to do.

That's very important when it comes to marriage and family, and often people make the mistake of putting family or their spouse first, instead of actually being yielded and obedient to the Lord first, which will direct you on a fruitful path.

So small tasks, many people have the attitude if it's small, then it's no value. It's insignificant. But if you treat every little task as: it's my act of worship, it's my act of serving God, then you can just, whenever you do the task, you do it well. You do it excellent. You do it on time. You do it with care, and you develop the character of a faithful servant… and of course, you get promoted. Even naturally, that happens.

Faithfulness can be practiced and developed with your words. Do you keep your word? When you say you'll do something, do you do it? You establish a character of faithfulness.

It means keeping confidences. Do you keep confidences? If someone shares a secret, a faithful man will keep the secret. An unfaithful man will then share it and gossip it around.

Do you keep God's word in your heart? That's another aspect of being faithful - God's words, holding onto them.

Time - you can demonstrate faithfulness with time. Time is just like money, you steward it. You give God the first portion of your time, so there's blessing; and the rest of time is set apart. Are you faithful in the use of your time? Do you consider time your asset to invest, and then plan and prioritise your life? If you just drift through days, you're not being faithful with time. You're not thinking: how I can use it well? I only have a limited amount of time - I can never get any more.

Finances, we can development faithfulness in our finances, firstly by bringing our finance to the Lord, and declaring that they're His property, not ours. Then I'm called to administer it, so if I'm going to administer it, I need to think about budget. I need to think about wisdom with saving. I need to think about and learn how to invest. I need to then learn how to honour God with a portion of the finances.

All of that's about faithfulness. It's not just to do with the tithe. Faithfulness has to do with your whole attitude, and approach, and stewardship of money. If we steward our money well, then we're in a position to bless others. Part of your stewardship and faithfulness with money is learning how to manage it, and how to grow it.

Church family is another area where we develop faithfulness, which many people don't understand. God puts you in a family, and that's where you learn faithfulness; it means remaining loyal to leaders, and to the church family, especially when it's going through a hard time, instead of taking a walk.

It means being reliable - you turn up, you attend, you participate. It means you're faithful in praying for the church, praying for its ministries. If you've got a responsibility there, which everyone should have, that you fulfil it. You do it and can be relied on to fulfil it.

Another aspect of faithfulness in church is when people are offended, when there are difficulties going on - you remain steadfast in the face of those things; instead of becoming offended, and feeding on gossip, and then becoming literally out of the race.

Relationships - you demonstrate faithfulness is in relationships. God gives us friends, gives us people, and those people are divine connections, so remain faithful to them. Remain loyal to the people. Support them. Be there for them when they need you. These are quite simple things. If someone is being talked about, refuse to participate in gossip. All of these are just simple ways of demonstrating and growing faithfulness.

Another way you grow faithfulness is persevering, just perseverance. You stay true to God, even when it's very difficult, even when it seems like you're alone, even when it seems like there's overwhelming pressures and difficulties - you just refuse to quit and turn away from what God said to do. You complete your assignment.

Those are very practical ways that we can develop faithfulness - it just can be developed everywhere. So basically, if someone walks with God consistently, and they humbly serve Him, you can say they're faithful - they're a faithful servant, and they will be qualified to rule over many things.

Revelations 3:21 - “Be zealous and repent”.

In other words, if you haven't been doing these things… be zealous, be passionate, be fervent, repent!

“To him who overcomes (and the context is lukewarmness and spiritual passivity and unfaithfulness), I will grant to sit with Me on My throne and reign with Me, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father”.

The reward for faithfulness is assignments in the coming kingdom; and the loss of sharing in the kingdom will produce profound sorrow, and regret at our loss. Some believers don't understand what's at stake, and minimise it - they think: well, if I don't reign with Christ, it’s no big deal, at least I'm saved.

This is exactly why this parable is spoken. The person who thinks like that, they will suffer great loss. There's weeping, for a reason; and there's gnashing of teeth, for a reason. There's darkness. All of these things indicate not about heaven, but about the grief and the sorrow of being excluded from what God had planned for those who love Him. The loss will be very significant, and those who suffer that loss will experience deep sorrow and regret. You don't want to be one of them. The whole point of these parables is… don't be that man!

What God is looking for, is that we be faithful. The application of this story is very, very clear. It's about the third servant, who hid his talent, undervalued what he had, and failed to serve. Whoever is like him will also be rebuked and excluded.

Our lifetime is the test time - our internship, your stewardship, this is it. You don't get a second run at it. This is your chance to develop the quality of faithful service, a faithful heart to God; and our use of time, how we use our time, and our giftings and talents, will determine if we enter or not; and what level of participation and honour we have in that kingdom.

This is a challenge for many people, and a lot of Christians struggle with this. There may be some listening to the message right now, and you're going to struggle with all of this. There are a number of reasons why people struggle. See if any one of these fits you...

1) The story makes them uncomfortable. They don't like to think - I might be that man. I might be excluded; I might suffer loss.

That doesn't mean it isn't true, and it doesn't mean it won't happen. The fact you're uncomfortable doesn't change the truth of the story. Jesus taught it to teach us to be ready and prepared and to be faithful.

2) It places expectation to engage in Spirit-led faithful service. There's a requirement put upon you. You can't just drift along, come and go, do what you want, and run your life the way you want. There is a price now, and eternally, for that.

3) They don't want to consider the possibility that they could be the third servant. Therefore, they come up with a theology, that it can't be a Christian, it can't be a believer. God would not be that unkind.

This is not about the kindness of God. The kindness of God is seen in the reward; is seen in the opportunities given to us; is seen in the fact that He's welcomed us into His family and given us the privilege of being able to serve - that's where the goodness of God is seen.

We're talking here about the justice of God - that for those who are faithful, their faithfulness is acknowledged; and so, for those who are unfaithful, there is a cost, and a consequence. It's all about the justice of God.

4) They don't have any understanding of the importance and value of eternal rewards. That's why we've run the series, so you see it for what it is, understand its significance and see the warnings in the stories that Jesus gives.

So what excuses are you making for engaging in faithful service? If you're failing to engage, you're failing to prepare, and there's many reasons that people have for that, and I'm going to list a few reasons. Whatever the reason is, it won't cut it when Jesus comes. He's just looking: were you faithful? Were you fruitful?

You can't come up with… well, I was afraid. That's an excuse. I was hurt in the past, and so I don't want to do it anymore. I wasn't thanked, I wasn't appreciated; I served, and I gave my time and effort, but wasn't appreciated. I've got so little to contribute, I've got nothing much, and very little gifting. I haven't got any training, haven't got any abilities, I haven't got any finances. I had a family, I had to look after my family, or I had a business I was trying to run….

We can come up with many, many things like that. Perhaps you were just disappointed when you've seen how other believers have behaved? Perhaps there's been a delay in being fruitful, and so you just got tired, and weary, and gave up? Perhaps you're struggling, because you don't really believe that this is an important aspect of Jesus teaching - our stewardship for eternity? Perhaps you were part of a doctrinal group where the focus is on grace - that everything that is just given to us, and we can just enjoy what God's given, rather than understanding that responsibility, and a commitment to maturity is needed.

No one arrives faithful. You grow into becoming a faithful person, and perhaps for you there's the excuses; there's a lack of understanding, of the eternal significance of rewards. Well, I suggest you go back through the series and have a look at them, so you understand. Ask the Lord to write in your heart the value of these things. It is important that at His coming, we be found faithful.

1 Corinthians 4:2 – “It is required of stewards that a man be found faithful”.

Faithfulness is something you can commit to. It's something you can develop. It's something you can grow, and it will show up in every area of your life, with positive benefits.

God Bless! I trust that you enjoyed this teaching.

Summary Notes

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ER12: The Need for Faithfulness: Parables of the Talents and Minas

1. The Parable of the Talents and Minas

* The Parable of the Talents (Matt.25:14-30) and the Parable of the Minas (Luke19:11-27) have some similarities, and should be read and studied together

* Parables are stories that have a central theme and present a spiritual truth

* Some Key details in the parable will have actual meaning to convey the spiritual truth

2. The Parable of the Talents

* Mat 25:14 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them.

* Mat 25:15 And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey.

* Mat 25:16 Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents.

* Mat 25:17 And likewise he who had received two gained two more also.

* Mat 25:18 But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord's money.

* Mat 25:19 After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them.

* Mat 25:20 "So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, 'Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.'

* Mat 25:21 His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

* Mat 25:22 He also who had received two talents came and said, 'Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.'

* Mat 25:23 His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

* Mat 25:24 "Then he who had received the one talent came and said, 'Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

* Mat 25:25 And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.'

* Mat 25:26 "But his lord answered and said to him, 'You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed.

* Mat 25:27 So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest.

* Mat 25:28 So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.

* Mat 25:29 'For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.

* Mat 25:30 And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

3. The Parable of the Minas

* Luke 19:11 Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately.

* Luke 19:12 Therefore He said: "A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.

* Luke 19:13 So he called ten of his servants, delivered to them ten minas, and said to them, 'Do business till I come.'

* Luke 19:14 But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We will not have this man to reign over us.'

* Luke 19:15 "And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

* Luke 19:16 Then came the first, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned ten minas.'

* Luke 19:17 And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.'

* Luke 19:18 And the second came, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned five minas.'

* Luke 19:19 Likewise he said to him, 'You also be over five cities.'

* Luke 19:20 "Then another came, saying, 'Master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief.

* Luke 19:21 For I feared you, because you are an austere man. You collect what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.'

* Luke 19:22 And he said to him, 'Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow.

* Luke 19:23 Why then did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest?'

* Luke 19:24 "And he said to those who stood by, 'Take the mina from him, and give it to him who has ten minas.'

* Luke 19:25 (But they said to him, 'Master, he has ten minas.')

* Luke 19:26 'For I say to you, that to everyone who has will be given; and from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

* Luke 19:27 But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.' "

4. The basic story in both Parables is the essentially the same

* A master (nobleman) takes a trip to a far country (to receive a Kingdom) and return

* The master entrusts his goods to his servants while he is away on his journey

* In the Parable the servant is entrusted according to his capacity, or ability to manage (Matt.25:15)

* In the Parable of the Minas, each servant receives the same amount, one Mina (Luk.19:13)

* When the master returns he evaluates each servant on their stewardship of his goods, and the increase that he has made

* The master clearly expects an increase or gain from what has been entrusted to the servant.

* A gain represents a degree of faithfulness with the entrustment on the part of the servant

* After his evaluation the master rewards or recompenses each servant according to the increase gained

* The two faithful servants receive reward, the unfaithful servant suffers loss

5. The Setting or Context of the Parables

(i) The Setting for the Parable of the Minas

* The setting for this Parable is in Jericho, in the open among the crowd

* Zaccheus has just responded to Jesus who declared salvation had come to his house

* A great crowd was gathered and expected Jesus to set up His Kingdom immediately

* Luke 19:11 - Now as they heard these things, He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately.

* Jesus told the parable to explain that the nobleman (Christ) would go away to receive His Kingdom and would return

* Prior to His departure He entrusts His ten servants each with one Mina, and requires that they do business on His behalf until He return

* Luke 19:13 - So he called ten of his servants, delivered to them ten minas, and said to them, 'Do business till I come.'

* At His return He will evaluate their stewardship with the prospect of great reward, or loss

(ii) The Setting for the Parable of the Talents (Matt.25)

* The Setting of this Parable is Jesus Mount Olivet teaching Matt.24-25

* Jesus had warned His disciples of the impending destruction of the temple they were admiring

* His disciples privately asked Him when these things would happen and the signs of the end of the age and His coming as King to reign

* The parables He shared in Matt.24-25 concern end-time events and warnings to His disciples

(iii) The Prophetic Warning in these Parables

* The Parables cover the entire period from the noble man’s departure until his return

* It covers the entire period of the Church from Jesus ascent until His Return

* When Jesus returns it will be to establish His Kingdom and rule over the earth

* To establish His Kingdom and rule He will need servants to assist Him who are trustworthy

* Before He departs, He sets out plans for the selection of those who He can trust to aid Him in the expansion and administration of His coming Kingdom

* God deliberately sets in place a prolonged period of time between His departure and return to test His servants in His absence to discover who are faithful and will qualify for positions of responsibility and trust at His return.

* Jesus plan is in operation at this present time.

* The key Issue in Jesus plan is how his servants demonstrate their faithful service to Him in His absence:

- Luke 16:10 - He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.

- Luke 16:11 - Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?

- Luke 16:12 - And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?

* The focus is not how much is entrusted, but our faithfulness with it. At stake are “true riches”

* Every believer is on a personal journey reveal if they are faithful and trustworthy, and their capacity for responsibility and authority in the Kingdom

* He has designed a plan to discover who is suited and their capacity.

* The goods entrusted are small….but the returns possible are enormous

* Mat 25:21 - His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

* Luke 19:17 - And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.'

6. The Focus of Both Parables is the Servant who Failed

(i) The Main Emphasis in Both Parables is the Third Servant

* There are seven verses concerning the third servant who failed and suffered loss, but only three verses each to the successful servants

* Immediately prior to the parable of the talents Jesus spoke two other parables concerning His Return:

- The parable of the wise and foolish servant (Matt.24:44-51)

- The parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matt. 25:1-13)

* The servant who failed and the virgins who failed are also the principle focus of Jesus teaching in the previous two parables. There are also more verses on these than the ones who were successful.

* Immediately prior to teaching this parable Jesus warned us to watch and be ready (Matt.25:13)

* The identity of the third servant is therefore the key focus of the parable

* Unless we see that servant could be us, and what we could lose, we will miss the main point.

* We automatically resist the thought that we could be that unfaithful servant, in spite of this person being focus of Jesus teaching in all three parables

* However, if we act or live like that servant, then we will experience what he experienced rebuke and loss

* The contention many people have is with the third servant being a believer, possibly me!

(ii) What is the evidence that the Third Servant is a Believer?

* Jesus calls them his own servants

Mat 25:14 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them.

Servant”…Gk. Doulos…slave, one bought for a price, one devoted to another

Jesus calls His own servants and trusts them to care for His interest as their own

The servants differ in capacity, and talents entrusted, but all share a common goal of service

It is that entrustment to serve that causes him to be a servant

1Col. 6:20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

* Every Believer is called a Servant of Jesus

Col 3:22 Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.

Col 3:23 And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,

Col 3:24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.

Jesus does not call the unsaved His servants, nor entrust them with advancing His Kingdom

* Every believer has an assignment, a personal service to Jesus

Eph. 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Our works are things that we do.

They are the basis for developing our faithfulness to Christ before His return.

* Possessions or “Goods” given by Jesus to His servants could include

The Holy Spirit, The Gifts of the Spirit, The Gospel, Material Resources, Opportunities, Assignments

Jesus gives gifts to His Church to use for service in His absence

He gives spiritual gifts to the Body Rom.12, 1Cor.12, Eph.4:11,

1Pe 4:10 As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

Every believer is expected to steward the gifts that he has received

* The Third Servant is entrusted along with the other servants with the Lord’s goods.

Christ never entrusts His work to the unsaved. This man is the servant of the Lord and a believer.

* All the servants are called to give account to Jesus at the same time

* The Judgment Seat of Christ is not an evaluation of our “position.”

* It is an evaluation of our works, our experience here on earth, how we actually lived and served, or not served.

* All three servants are judged together. The third servant is the last to be judged

* All the rest are judged at the end of the 1000 year reign of Christ, at the Great White Throne

* All three servants are judged solely on their works, not their position (status)

Their faith in and love for their absent master is assumed. Their status as servant of Jesus is never challenged

They are judged on what they have done, and who they have become

The third servant is "the servant which knew his Lord’s will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will" (Luke 12:47).

* In the Parable of the Minas, the Lord’s servants are contrasted with citizens who refuse His reign

The Servants are those who are saved and are entrusted with His goods

One servant is unfaithful in his service and suffers rebuke and loss

The Citizens are those who refuse His reign and openly rebel

7. How did the Third Servant Fail?

(i). He undervalued what Jesus had given him

Mat 25:18 - But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord's money.

Luke 19:20 - "Then another came, saying, 'Master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief. The servant only received one talent, one Mina. He did not value its importance

There are few five talent and two talent people. The majority are one talent capacity people. We must value what we have and use what we have in service.

* Paul warned Timothy about the danger of undervaluing the gift entrusted to him

1Ti 4:14 - Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership.

“Neglect”... Gk. Amelio... to be careless of: - make light of neglect be negligent not regard.

All that is entrusted to us is of value in serving and developing faithfulness

(ii) He did not understand the plan of Jesus to qualify him for sharing rulership in His Kingdom

It is the plan of the Future King that the servants first prove their faithfulness with a small sum of money. At the return of the King their reward will be sharing with Him in managing part of His Kingdom

Rev 2:26 - And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations

Jesus reveals the “many things” over which He puts the faithful service signifies royalty

If you do not understand Jesus plan to prepare and qualify you, you will neglect opportunities given. Jesus will treat you in the same manner that He treated the unfaithful servant.

(iii) Jesus describes him as “wicked, lazy, and unprofitable

* Jesus describes the third servant as the exact opposite of the first two

* Instead of "good" and "faithful," He says he is "wicked" and "lazy(slothful)":

Mat 25:26 "But his lord answered and said to him, 'You wicked and lazy servant…”

* “Wicked”…..Gk. Poneros….hurtful, causing anguish, having a negative influence

* “Lazy (slothful). Gk.okneros….slow, to delay, to hesitate,

This implies lacking any sense of passion or diligence in serving Jesus. Note Paul’s warning

Rom 12:11 Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;

* “Unprofitable”…Gk. Achreios… Lacking any merit, useless, good for nothing

(iv) This servant of God made nothing of his life.

* All he has done wrong is withholding his abilities and time from serving God

He has not demonstrated love and loyalty to his master in His absence

He hoarded and conserved when he should have invested.

He has no sense of responsibility. His focus is entirely upon himself.

He lives with no consideration that he is failing Jesus test, and disqualifying himself from responsibility and participation in the coming Kingdom

* Actually, his wickedness is just his failure to exercise proper stewardship, because in both parables the Lord scolded him that he could have at least produced a minimal return if he had put forth the effort (Matt. 25:27; Lk.19:23).

* So, the Lord judged him for poor exercise of stewardship as a servant.

(iv) How did Jesus Describe the other Two Servants?

* Mat 25:21 - His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

* “Well done”…..This is conferred for one reason alone….They have done well

* They have remained diligent and engaged in serving during the long delay of Jesus return.

* Throughout the appointed season of their lifetime they have remained faithful and productive

* “Good”…….Gk. Agathos….excellent, distinguished, honorable

* “Faithful”….Gk. Pistos …trustworthy, reliable in following commands and the execution of duties

* What qualifies them for reward is not what they received, but the use they made of it

* It is not the possession of the talents that determines our reward, but solely our use of them

(v) We must be clear that all three slaves in the story are examples of genuine believers.

* The difference between the two slaves who produced a profit and the one who did not was their faithfulness in stewardship, not their genuineness as believers.

* Matt. 25:19 - "Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.”

* This verse speaks of the Judgment Seat of Christ where what we have done in our Christian lives (not pre-conversion) will be manifested and recompensed (2 Cor. 5:10; Rom. 14:10-12).

* The recompense (repayment) to the believer there is “according to what he has done,

whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10).

In other words, we can receive a positive recompense or a negative one .

* The two profitable slaves in the parable received a positive recompense, but the

failed slave received a negative recompense.

This parable is not for the unsaved. It is a warning for those who have received Christ to engage in His service and not to hide their talent. If we act or live like that servant, then we will experience what he experienced… rebuke and loss.

8. The Reward and The Loss

(i) The Reward: Ruling with Christ in His Kingdom

* In the Parable of the Talents, each servant is given a differing amount related to different capacity (Mat.25:15)

* Mat 25:21 His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

* Both the servant given five talents and the servant given two talents come boldly forward (1Jn.2:28, and 1Jn.4:18)

* They have both exercised all their gifts and abilities for the interests of their master

* They have demonstrated love and loyalty to their master during the period of His absence

* They have been faithful. They have doubled their talents. They each produced 100 fold increase.

* Their Reward:

- They are both commended equally

- They are both invited to enter and experience the joy of their Lord in His Kingdom

- They are both given responsibility and authority in establishing & governing His Kingdom.

* It is not the number of talents we possess that is important, it is the faithfulness and diligence we demonstrate over a long time to produce fruit for Jesus in His absence

* In the parable of the Minas, each servant is given the same amount, the same opportunity

* The servant who is more productive is rewarded in a greater measure

- Luke 19:16 - Then came the first, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned ten minas.'

- Luke 19:17 - And he said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.'

- Luke 19:18 - And the second came, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned five minas.'

- Luke 19:19 - Likewise he said to him, 'You also be over five cities.'

* The reward is a city. The more devoted the life the more intense the glory and honor

* Note: Greater diligence and fruitfulness resulted in greater rewards. Equal diligence and faithfulness resulted in equal rewards… the number of talents received is not important

(ii) The Loss: Exclusion from Stewardship and Ruling in the Kingdom

* The servant who received one talent was deemed wicked and lazy because he put no effort into stewarding and increasing what he was entrusted.

* He was rebuked for what he failed to do

* As a result of his failure, his stewardship was taken away from him

- Mat 25:28 So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.

* Instead of ruling and reining with Christ he lost his stewardship

* Instead of entering into the joy of his master, he was thrown into “Outer Darkness”, a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth”

* Mat 25:30 And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

(iii) What is “Outer Darkness”?

* Many Christians think that “outer darkness” refers to hell.

* This is a mistake and brings confusion concerning the real possibility of a believer being excluded from ruling with Christ in His coming Kingdom

* Outer darkness does not refer to hell. It is referring to a different state or condition

* The final fate of the lost is called “the lake of fire”(Rev.20:15)

* In the parable of the talents the penalty is called “outer darkness”.

* “Outer darkness” means exclusion from sharing the joy and glory of Christ in the Millennial Kingdom

* The marriage supper and the Kingdom are full of light. “Outer darkness” means to be outside or to be excluded, and therefore to be in darkness

(iv) What is “weeping and gnashing of teeth”?

* “Weeping”…refers to great sorrow as the Christian realises too late, that he has missed out on the very purpose of his calling and wasted the opportunities given to prepare for eternity

* “Gnashing of teeth”…refers to great anger and frustration at his failure to prepare for his future by being a good and faithful servant of Jesus when he had the opportunity.

* He will forfeit an abundant entrance into the Kingdom, and the first resurrection which provides that entrance (2Pet.1:10-11)

* Two scriptures that point to the possibility of reigning with Christ in the Kingdom and sharing His glory, or being excluded from reigning and sharing His glory

* 2Ti. 2:12 - If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us;

* Rom 8:16 - The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

* Rom 8:17 - and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

(v) The Judgment on the Wicked among Israel and the Gentiles. "

* Luke 19:14 - But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We will not have this man to reign over us.'

* Luke 19:27 - But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.' "

* Following the judgment and distribution of praise, rewards, and penalties to His servants the King then proceeds to execute vengeance upon all his enemies who rejected Him

* This may refer not only to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, but also the impending judgment on those who reject Christ

9. What Does it Mean to Be Faithful?

(i) Why is Faithfulness so Important?

* God is Faithful

- Deu 7:9 - "Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

* Jesus Modelled Faithfulness

- Heb. 3:1 - Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus,

- Heb. 3:2 - who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in all His house.

* Faithfulness is Required of Sons

- Heb. 3:5 - And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward,

- Heb. 3:6 - but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.

- 1Col. 4:17 - For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church.

* Faithfulness is Required of All Servants

- 1Col. 4:2 - Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.

* Faithfulness is Required in All Emerging Leaders

- 2Ti. 2:2 - And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

* Faithfulness is a Fruit of the Holy Spirit

- Gal 5:22 - But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

* Love and gentleness develop by the work of the Holy Spirit in our heart and life, so also faithfulness is something that grows and develops as we surrender to obey the Holy Spirit daily

- Daily Prayer: “Lord, create in me a faithful and loyal heart”

* Jesus will Reward Faithfulness

- Mat 25:21 - His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

- Rev 17:14 - These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful."

(ii) What does Faithful mean?

* Definition:

- Strict or thorough in the performance of duty: a faithful worker.

- True to one’s word, promises, vows, etc; reliable, trusted.

- Steady in allegiance or affection; loyal; constant: faithful friends.

- Adhering or true to fact, a standard, or an original; accurate:

- a faithful account; a faithful copy.

* Faithfulness hinges upon what we value as important combined with commitment to it

(iii) How can I develop Faithfulness?

* God is not looking for perfection or people who seem to have it all together. He is simply searching for those who will be committed and faithful.

- Faithfulness is being loyal, steadfast, and dependable.

- Faithfulness is the fruit of a trusting believing heart

- Faithfulness does not mean that we will be perfect. It does not mean that we won’t struggle or that we won’t make poor decisions.

- It does mean that we will continue to trust in God and try to follow His commandments even when life is difficult.

- Your gifts and resources may be limited, but the possibility of being faithful is unlimited

* Faithfulness is cultivated in many different ways

- Personal Devotional Life ( Priesthood)

Maintaining Christ as the first affection of your heart

Faithfulness in secret with God will lead to a life of faithfulness – fruit that others can taste and see and be blessed by.

Remaining constant in following Christ during difficult times

- Obedience to God in little Matters

Following Jesus instructions regardless of the consequences, or if you cannot see the outcome

Choosing to please God rather than please and conform to people’s expectations

Holding firmly to Christ and His words in the midst of adversity, difficulty, disappointment, mistreatment, or loneliness

Turning to Jesus instead of substitutes, when you feel overwhelmed by life’s circumstances

- Small Tasks:

Treating small insignificant tasks as an act of worship and service to God

Completing small tasks, with excellence and care for detail, on time

- Words:

Keeping your word. Fulfilling the promises that you make

Keeping confidences. Refusing to gossip

- Holding God’s Word in your heart and mouth

- Giving an honest answer when it is painful to do

- Time:

Placing God first in our use of time….time alone in His presence and prayer

Treating time as an irreplaceable entrustment and investing it wisely

Planning the investment of your time in Kingdom priorities

- Finances:

Treating your resources as His property for you to administer, and not your own.

Honouring God with your first fruits

Regular Giving both spontaneously, and as a planned practice

Learning finance management and wealth building practices

- Church Family

Remaining loyal to your church family and leaders especially in difficult times

Reliable attendance and participation in Church gatherings

Faithful in prayer and fulfilling responsibilities assigned to us

Remaining steadfast even when offended or facing decisions you disagree with

- Relationships:

Remaining loyal; and supportive of people God has set in your life, and being there for them especially in trouble, when they have failed or fallen.

Being there for people when they most need your support

Refusing to participate in gossip in a personas absence

- Perseverance

Staying true to the call of God upon your life in the face of pressure and difficulties

Refusing to quit and turn away from following and obeying Jesus and completing the assignment that He has given

Joh 17:4 - I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.

* When a person walks consistently with God, in humble service to Him, he or she can be called “faithful” and qualified to “rule over many things”

* Rev 3:21 - Therefore be zealous and repent…..To him who overcomes (luke-warmness and spiritual passivity) I will grant to sit with Me on My throne (and reign with Me), as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

* The position of authority or the work assignment we are entrusted in the Coming Kingdom are dependent upon the faithfulness that we demonstrate in this age

* The loss of sharing in the kingdom glory and reign will produce profound sorrow, regret and self- blame over the believer’s failure and loss: “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 25:30).

* A believer should never minimise this potential loss by thinking, “If I don’t reign with Christ in His glory that is no big deal. I still belong to Him and will be with Him in eternity.”

* This loss will be very significant and those who suffer this loss will be greatly affected with sorrow, and regret.

* The Lord is warning us that we must be ready when He comes at an unknown time, being faithful in our stewardship! There will be an accounting for each of us at the Judgment Seat of Christ!

* We may not be able to fully understand all what this means, but that should not keep us from accepting this picture of truth that God has given us in His holy word.

10. Conclusion:

(i). The Clear Application

* The third servant who hid his talent, and neglected to faithfully serve, was rebuked and excluded from the coming Millennial Kingdom.

* Whoever is like him will likewise be rebuked and excluded from the coming Millennial Kingdom

* This life is our appointed test time, our internship, our season of preparation

* Our use of time will determine our entrance, position and participation in the Coming Millennial Kingdom.

(ii) The Personal Challenge

* Many Christians struggle with these parables and teachings of Jesus:

- It makes them uncomfortable

- It places an expectation upon them to to engage in Spirit led, faithful service

- They do not wish to seriously consider the possibility that the third servant is them

- They have no understanding of the importance and value of Eternal Rewards

(iii) What Excuses are you making for Failure to Engage in Faithful Service?

- Fear?

- Hurt in the past?

- Not been thanked or appreciated?

- Have so little to contribute?

- Lack ability or training?

- Other priorities?.......work, marriage, family, busyness?

- Disappointment at responses of people?

- Delay in seeing fruit or success?

- Don’t believe this clear teaching of faithful stewardship?

- Focus is upon grace and not works?

- Lack of understanding on the eternal significance of our works?

(iv) What does it Mean to Faithfully Serve God?

11. Personal Reflection and Application

* What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you of in this message?

* What particularly has challenged you

* What areas of faithfulness do you need to grow in?

* What actions do you need to take?

* What areas do you need to grow in faithfulness?

* What excuses are you making to justify not changing?

Sonship Series

Sonship & The Supernatural (1 of 3)

The whole of creation is eagerly awaiting! The earnest expectation of the creation is the manifestation, or the unveiling, of what God has been doing over thousands of years of history.

The highlight of what He is doing will be the revealing and unveiling of what He's doing in us - the revelation, not just of the Son of God, but of a family of sons and daughters.

Men and women are 'sons', just as men and women are 'the bride'. It is a language used to describe a certain kind of relationship.

Sonship & Heart Transformation (2 of 3)

What the world is waiting for, is the manifestation of the sons of God, who are in intimacy with their Father, who accurately represent their Father - having a servant heart, an honoring heart, and a powerful anointing.

Jesus said: "I've finished My work". He finished the things that the Father gave Me to do.

Part of being a 'son' means that we need to accurately represent the Father. "When He appears, we shall be like Him". You and I are on a journey of transformation, that should be ongoing.

The heart is the...

1. Center of your identity.

2. Focus of God's attention.

3. Focus of Jesus' ministry.

4. Center of the boundaries and borders of your life.

5. Center of faith.

Sonship & Spiritual Warfare (3 of 3)

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of His might” (Eph. 6:10). He wants to strengthen us!

“Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand the wiles (or the cunning plans) to overcome you” (Eph. 6:11).

You're here by divine design, and purpose. God has an assignment for you. You also have an adversary, who plans: how can I defeat that person, and stop him from operating in a supernatural life, and hinder him in fulfilling his assignment?

Every promotion of God brings another level of engagement that you must face; but beyond that engagement is a prize to be won.

Before David slew Goliath, he said: what's in it for me? They said: you get to marry the king's daughter, and your whole family will be free of taxes. He said: that sounds good to me - I'll take him on! After he took on the giant, he was promoted. You don't become an overcomer without a challenge to face!

Sons Break Strongholds

If we are a son or a daughter of the living God, then we are called to be a builder. Relationships must be built, and sustained. A church has to be built.

Our relationships are like a garden. They can have weeds in them, and they become overgrown. The garden of our heart, and our relationships, need to be nurtured - you need to protect them.

Adam was given a mandate, as a son of God - put in a territory, put in a place (in a garden), and his mandate was to cultivate it - to nurture it, and develop that garden.

He was also told to protect it. There's a warfare, around being fruitful - around your marriage, family, finances, and your relationship with God. You must become then, a ‘breakthrough’ person.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Sonship & The Supernatural (1 of 3).mp3

- Sonship & Heart Transformation (2 of 3).mp3

- Sonship & Spiritual Warfare (3 of 3).mp3

- Sons Break Strongholds.mp3

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- Sons Break Strongholds

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- Sons Break Strongholds.mp4

Sonship & The Supernatural (1 of 3)

Mon 26 Aug 2019  « Back to Top

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The whole of creation is eagerly awaiting! The earnest expectation of the creation is the manifestation, or the unveiling, of what God has been doing over thousands of years of history.

The highlight of what He is doing will be the revealing and unveiling of what He's doing in us - the revelation, not just of the Son of God, but of a family of sons and daughters.

Men and women are 'sons', just as men and women are 'the bride'. It is a language used to describe a certain kind of relationship.

Introduction

I want to share a message called: Sonship and the Supernatural. Then I want to talk in the next session on: Sonship and Heart Transformation; and then tonight I want to speak on: Sonship and our warfare - what our warfare is about, where the warfare is, and then the nature of what comes against us.

If you want to move in the supernatural, you will be involved in spiritual warfare. If you don't know what you're up against, and how to fight, you will become defeated in that; so we want to pray and minister to people, and also impart to people. Tomorrow I have some other messages. Tomorrow night I'll speak in the spirit of might. I want to particularly impart to people that you start to carry the deliverance and anointing and the power of the spirit around your life, and you begin to nurture that anointing and grow and explore, breaking into new territory. Amen.

Main Message

Our theme scripture is Romans 8:19 - "The whole of creation is eagerly awaiting". Now if you ask most people what they're waiting for, they're waiting for Jesus to come back again, but the Bible doesn't say that. It says: the earnest expectation of the creation is the manifestation, or the unveiling, of what God has been doing over thousands of years of history. The highlight of what He is doing will be the revealing and unveiling of what He's doing in us - the revelation, not just of the Son of God, but of a family of sons and daughters. So when we use the word 'son', it's a non-gender term, as far as we're concerned. Men and women are 'sons', just as men and women are 'the bride'. It is a language used to describe a certain kind of relationship; and I want to explain just what that is, as we look at it, so we don't get sort of "ooh, that's not about me", or "I'm being excluded", or something.

I want to just talk a little bit about God's design - the way God has designed things to work. We see the pattern through the Bible is one of a father/son relationship. In Numbers 14:21, when God has brought Israel out of Egypt, He's wanting to bring them into the land, and they all fell short of the promise. It was a generation that never entered into what God had prepared for them; and even though they failed, God said this: "they will not enter the land, but nevertheless, nevertheless as truly as I live all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord". So the exit of the people from Egypt, their journey through the wilderness of preparation, and their entry into the Promised Land, is a prophetic picture of God's work in the church, and of us entering into a great supernatural legacy that Jesus purchased for us.

He said: "even though that generation failed, nevertheless the earth..." So it's not just about the land - it's the whole earth - "...shall be filled with the glory of the Lord". In Habakkuk 2, he says: "the whole earth shall be filled with knowledge of the glory of the Lord". We're living in an electronic age, where now it can be known. The church needs to start to rise, and step up into it. So when it says: "the glory of the Lord", what does it mean? The glory of the Lord is very simply: the goodness of God, His nature and virtue - manifested in a tangible way. Every time you saw the glory manifest in the Bible, it was manifested in something that could be seen, or felt, or experienced. The glory of God... Moses said: "show me Your glory", and God said: "I will make all My goodness pass before you" - and then He describes what that looks like...

The nature of God, the power of God... He describes first His power, and His unlimited resources; then His ministry towards people. So God is very clear that the earth shall be filled with a manifestation of His glory; and that glory will be manifested through His sons. When God designed the earth, He designed it to fill it with His glory and goodness; and He had many ways He could show His glory. He's shown it through nature; so when you go to nature, you feel connected somehow to God. You go and see the vastness of the oceans, there's a connectedness seems to come to the Lord. We’re starting to touch the glory. You've seen aspects of it; that you look at the vastness of the stars and you start to see the vastness of God. You start to look at the beautiful designs in nature and creation and think; you start to see the magnificence of God, but this is nothing compared to what He has planned to unveil and reveal.

This is the thing we can catch: we are the centre of His attention! We are the centre of His attention! So God's plan to manifest His glory - it began in the beginning, and it's never changed. He planned to manifest what He is like through a father/son relationship. It's not to do with gender; it has to do with function, and the biblical understanding of the function of a son, in relationship to his father.

We'll just look first of all, at the word 'father'. So when we think about father, of course for many people there's emotional things come to mind that aren't that pleasant. But when the Bible is talking father, it's talking about these: it's talking about a source of life. It's talking about the author or originator, the supplier of life. So from a Bible perspective, everything originates from some source. The father is the source; the father is the author of life. The mother nurtures the life and brings it forth, but the father is the one who authors life. He is the source. That's where life comes from; it comes from the father. So when we're thinking about God as a Father, then we're thinking about an originator. He is the source, He is the supply; and in Exodus 34, where God reveals, He reveals that He is unlimited resources. He is the unlimited one.

When Jesus ministered in the power of the Holy Ghost, He had unlimited resources available to Him to minister; so the Father is one of unlimited resources, unlimited resources, unlimited supply. A father fits certain functions. For example, a father is the source of our identity. You take the name of your father; so if you have no relationship with a father, you struggle with identity. The father is the source of identity. Notice when Jesus comes up out of the water, the Father speaks to Him: You are My Son. You belong somewhere; your identity is in Me. The devil's first attack on Jesus was on His identity: to shift His identity away from revelation by His Father, to performance in ministry. Many people in ministry struggle, their ministry is their source of identity, so their life is tied up in it, and they use people to build who they are. That's not fathering! That's not even true ministry. That is actually spiritual trading; I'm trading, to get something! We have to be free and cleansed from the defilement of trying to find out identity in things external, when it must be found inside the Lord. If it's found in something outside you, then it's never going to be stable.

Father is a source of purpose. One of the things the Father does is, He has a purpose; the word I like to use is the word 'assignment' - fathers give assignments to their sons and daughters. A purpose is a very general, broad thing - it's like a broad, big plan. Assignment is: this is what my job is; this is what I've been given to do. So purpose could cover what everyone's called to. We're called to the purpose of: changing our community, evangelising, sharing the gospel; but specifically, you have your own assignment, and that becomes very, very important.

A father is a source of provision. If God is the source of my identity, then my life is wrapped up in Him, and nothing you say or do changes who I am, because I'm secure in Him. He is my Father. I belong somewhere. So if you don't like me and reject me, that's okay, I still belong somewhere. If your identity is found in a relationship with an eternal spirit being, God Himself, then the security comes into your heart. When your identity is attached to the things outside you, inherently it's unstable, because they change. We think that church will be a certain kind of thing. It's a bit of a horror when you're a pastor, and you find it isn't quite like what you expected, and the people that loved you and said 'hooray' today can boo you tomorrow, and turn on you, just like that. But you see, it hurts very deeply when we don't understand: our identity is in our Father; and it's not to be found in the ministry, how big it is, how spectacular it is, or anything else related to it. Our goal is to honour our Father in the calling, just as sons honour their fathers.

A son is called to honour his father, and we'll show the ways that he honours him, in just a moment. So that's fatherhood. Fatherhood is under attack. Fatherhood's been under attack for such a long time. The Bible talks about sons, and our concept of a son is very much: they're just someone you raise up, and they're male, and they're a bit of a nuisance. They go out of home; but the biblical concept of a son, the word literally means it's the word 'ben', meaning: to build the father's house. So the biblical concept of a son is this: he is the extension of the father. The father works through his son to extend himself; and he works through the son as his representative - a delegated representative.

So a son always is the spokesman for the father, and advances the father's business. You see that in the mandate that God gave Adam: that he would subdue, have dominion and he would be fruitful and multiply. The dominion mandate is that God's Son would represent what He's like in the earth. That's what made the betrayal so big. He literally gave up the mandate, gave up the authority, and gave it into the hand of his Father's enemy; so from a biblical perspective, he brought immense shame on the family name - dishonour to his Father, shame on the family name. It would need another Son to restore the family honour, and to reconnect the lost children back to their Father. And once you start to catch these concepts, you'll see them everywhere; they're just unmistakeable!

You re-look at the scriptures, and there they all are, just exactly what it is. It's about God's heart; that He might restore His original purpose: sons and daughters, in relationship with Him, representing Him in the earth, extending His kingdom. And as soon as you lose any of those aspects, you then distort what ministry is all about. You begin to have something that does not represent the heart of God at all. So it tells us for example (in Luke 3:28), that Adam was the son of God. But God's thinking is not just to have a son. His thinking is to have a corporate son; so in the Book of Exodus it says Moses' message to the Pharaoh was, concerning Israel: let my son go, that he may worship me.

So God started with a son, but He had in mind a corporate son, which was Israel the nation; but beyond that, He had in mind the church, His son representing Him, and expanding His kingdom in the earth. So there's a progressive development, from one son in the Book of Genesis, through to a corporate son. First there's a family; then there's a corporate son - a nation. It's a nation of people. Now you understand when He talks about you; it should be a Godly nation, a holy nation, a royal priesthood - it's all about sonship. It's just the language of sonship; and the theme of sonship is everywhere. The whole family on earth draws its name, or its nature, from Father in heaven.

So you can understand then, that all of the movement that's currently taking place with the homosexual agenda, and the transgender agenda - all of it is an agenda to attack and destroy the design of God; so people are so confused, and they're actually in total rebellion against the order that God has set up to establish blessing. As soon as you remove 'father', you've lost your source of identity, then identity becomes confused. You'll find this warfare that we're seeing today is an old warfare. It actually goes right back in history, and it's always been there; it comes out of a demonic spirit with a particular agenda.

So John 17:3-6, Jesus' last words in prayer, before He gives up His life on the cross - "this is eternal life: that they may know You, the one true God; and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have glorified You on earth. I finish the work You gave me to do. Now Father, honour me, glorify me, put honour back on me with Yourself, with the honour I had with You before the world was. I have manifested Your name to the men you've given me out of this world. I have declared to them, or made known to them, Your name, and I will declare it, so that the love with which You love me may be in them, and I in them". Amazing revelation there!

So we see then that one man (Adam), the son that God put into the earth, betrayed his Father over to his enemies. When Jesus had His encounter with the devil, the devil showed Him the kingdoms of this world, and said: they have been delivered to me. The word 'delivered' is 'betrayed', and Jesus never denied it. Adam's action was a betrayal of his Father, to sell his own Father out to his Father's enemy was a massive betrayal. It requires now a son who'll be loyal and obedient, even to the point of death, to restore the Father's honour. So now you get a new glimpse on that scripture, John 3:16 - for God so loved the world, He gave His only Son. So to restore His plan, God introduces His Son into the earth. It's always about the Son; and the Father and Jesus revelation there is that the relationship He had with His Father is the one He purchased for us to have.

Most believers, as far as I can see, do not experience the love of the Father for them, the way Jesus experienced it in His own life; but He purchased it for us! I want to show you three things which are part of the sonship design...

#1) It says - "He said: this is eternal life that they may know you, the one true God; and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent". The word 'sent is the word 'apostello', meaning: to commission someone to go into a hostile territory, subdue an enemy, and then establish the culture of heaven - the ways of heaven on the earth, hence Jesus' message. What was His message? The kingdom of God is here, now. There is another realm available now for you. But to access it, you have to admit: I was wrong, I've been doing life wrong. I need to change the way I think, to come into agreement so I can enter an experience - and of course, that's a lifelong transformation process.

So there are three things that stood out to me very strongly about Jesus' sonship, which is also our sonship. Number 1 is intimacy. Intimacy is that sense of deep closeness; of knowing, and becoming known. Intimacy is a lifelong journey of growing in the knowledge of God. The source of that is the Holy Spirit Himself. In 1 Corinthians 2:14, it tells us that no man knows the things of God, save the Spirit of God. We have been given the Spirit of God, that we may know the things freely given. So we need the Holy Spirit, to help us to deepen in intimacy with God as our Father. We need to have revelation of His Fatherhood, and learn how to step into and engage Him as our Father, with all that that means.

So the first issue that God calls us to is intimacy. This is eternal life! Eternal life is not just some gift you get in a bag. Eternal life, He says, is about knowing. Knowing is the word 'to be intimate'. It's an intimate connection. The word can be used tp describe two people in sexual intimacy, in marriage. It is an intimate union. That's where life comes from. It comes from the joining, not from just: I said a prayer one day. See, we're on a journey to deepening intimacy with God. Whatever you think you know of God, there is much, much, much more. Paul said: I count everything done that for the excellency of knowing Him.

Hello... I thought he already knew Him? No, no, no. He's saying that there's so much to know of God - we must make it our life pursuit to be intimate with Him. Prayer firstly is about intimacy, coming near to God. Of course, if you've got blocks and barriers in your heart, these will be blocks and barriers to intimacy; blocks and barriers to knowing God; blocks and barriers to representing Him as a son. So Number 1 is intimacy, and God is seeking intimacy. John 4:24 - "the Father seeks those who will worship" - that means 'to kiss towards' or be intimate with Him, from their spirit, without hiding anything. The words 'spirit and truth' - truth means without concealing or hiding anything. In other words, God wants us to become vulnerable.

Adam experienced intimacy in the Garden; he was intimate. The presence of God means the face of God - he had face-to-face connection. When we fall on the inside, then we remove ourself from connection. Have a think what Adam did... First of all, he covered himself, meaning he was trying to cope with the shame that he had. Secondly, he got busy doing, he got into the trees. People get very busy, because they've got a lot of brokenness and undealt-with stuff - and they fill it up with church things, and every other kind of thing, instead of actually coming into the face of God, and facing Him, and coming near to Him. Then the third thing that he did, which is a horrendous thing, is: instead of loving his wife, he blamed her! When people are afraid, they then tend to react, and blame, and accuse, and distance themselves from other people. So we see all of those things. Jesus came to restore and heal all of those, and bring us back into intimacy again.

#2) We're called also to represent the Father. So a son, one of his primary roles, apart from relationship; which Jesus said, in things like this: I do nothing, except what I see the Father doing. I haven't come to do My own will. I've come to do the will of My Father. In other words, He was driven by the Father's agenda, because He represented Him. If you hire a lawyer, you expect the lawyer to represent you; not just say: well, wait a minute, I've got a plan of my own. No, you're paying him to represent you, so you don't want him to bring his own plan. You want to bring the plan that benefits you. So we're to be a representative, an accurate representative.

Here's a question to ask: do I represent what God is like, as a Father, to the people that I work with? How well do I represent His Fatherhood? God is love; therefore am I patient and kind? Does the fruit of love, and no agenda, come out of my life when I work with people? Or is my life built like the world - transactional; I leverage people to get what I want, it's always with an agenda? Of all the things I've seen break the hearts of people in churches, it's leaders with agendas, that actually use them to get something, and then drop them the moment they can't get that. It is horrendous, because it misrepresents the Father. That's the only thing that got Jesus angry in the New Testament - the misrepresentation of the Father. If that got Him angry, it should get us disturbed too - unless we don't have the same value system He has. We get angry about other things; we get angry about all the wrong things. He got angry about one thing, and that was that His Father was misrepresented; and the people that were God's family were abused, and taken advantage of. That's what got Jesus angry, in the two situations, where it referred he was very angry. Ooh, it's getting really quiet now - it's probably someone you know!

So we're called to represent Him. It says in Hebrews 1:3, He was the express image of the Father. In other words, when you see Him, you see what the Father is like.

John 40:9 - "if you've seen Me, you've seen the Father".

John 1:18 - "No man has seen the Father, but the only begotten Son of the Father, who is intimately acquainted with Him, has declared Him or made Him known."

So you notice here in Verse 6, as he's finishing his prayer, he said: "Father, I have manifested Your name". I've shown people what You're like. So in other words, a key part of being a son is not just intimacy; it's actually expressed by your lifestyle, and relationships, what God is like as a Father. You can't do that without revelation - that comes from intimacy. So intimacy and representation go hand in hand. It's the same Holy Spirit who helps you do that. The representation of the Father in your life is actually the fruit of the Spirit flowing. It comes out of connection with the Holy Spirit. Intimacy comes out of connection with the Holy Spirit.

Now in order for us to represent the Father, guess what must happen? There must be an ongoing transformation of our life, a healing and restoration of our heart, so we become more and more like what He is; beholding Him as in a looking glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image by the Holy Spirit. It's not about self-improvement; it's not about willpower; it's not about trying harder. It's about surrender to the Holy Spirit, and allowing Him access to the broken places in our heart and life, that we have desperately covered, defended, and are now dysfunctioning in our life, and stop us representing the Father. It's an ongoing, lifelong journey, letting the Father, letting the Spirit access your heart.

Otherwise, the broken parts, that you've tried to hide, will overload. People who are bleeding, pour their blood on other people, who didn't do anything to cause it. Some people are dripping blood everywhere - it's on the carpets, it's on everyone they meet; can't be mistaken! It says in Romans 8:29, that His purpose, His express purpose, is to conform us to the image of His Son. So God has designed a plan to shape you up, and it's unique to you. God knows exactly what you need now, to pull up to the surface the things in your heart He wants to change. If you're listening, then every situation you experience is a growing opportunity. It's not about all the things other people did. It's about you representing the Father, and growing.

A lot of people are upset about what everyone else is doing. When you're like that you're out of control, because your focus is in the wrong place. Focus should be on the Lord, and the Father, and what He's doing; and then if people do dumb stuff... Listen, people do dumb stuff! They do dumb stuff because they're broken. Even if you're nice to them, they still do dumb stuff. That's why dumb stuff happens in the church; it even happened back there in the Garden of Eden - with the perfect Father, it still happened. Why would we think it's going to be different? So God has a plan and a pathway for you; so that then means that my journey to wholeness is in my Father's hands.

I just need to start to become more aware of what is happening in my heart, and what the Holy Spirit's trying to get me to do. If I've got so hard in my heart that I'm not listening anymore, then you know I'm going to have a lot of pain come. Many people have a lot of pain, and if you look at it, and start to think and pray about it, you find it's recycling pain. It's the same dumb stuff happening over and over- different faces, different places, different things; but if you could label it, it's the same stuff - because it's in you, and God's trying to change you. That's why "all things work together for good" - so long as we're called, and responsive to God. Otherwise it doesn't work for your good - just makes you more angry! That helpful for you? So transformation is always by the power of the Holy Spirit - but it also requires our cooperation.

3) The third thing is our assignment. Notice what Jesus said... Now He hasn't gone to the cross yet, but He could say: "I've honoured You". I've brought honour to You on the earth. That was His whole purpose - I'm here to honour My Father. Sons honour their Fathers, because, if you honour your father and mother, apparently there's a blessing goes with it. What I've found when I counsel people and their life is not going so well, I always check: did they honour the father and mother. I found they didn't. They've got unresolved baggage, and so they've got problems.

So notice what He said: I brought honour to You. How did He honour the Father? Through intimacy, through representing Him. He said: I've finished the work You gave Me to do. In other words, He had an assignment given to Him. Jesus had an assignment, a specific assignment His Father gave. Now if you're a son, you need to think: what is my assignment; who are my assignment? Where has God positioned me, and planted me? What has He called me to accomplish; and who will help me in the training process? Church is to help train people to become sons, so they can fulfil an assignment. Now here's the thing: every assignment God gives, requires the power of the Holy Spirit. It requires the supernatural power of God. If it didn't need the supernatural power of God, then He could just get an unsaved person to do it.

The assignments God gives us cannot be done without the supernatural power of God. There's nowhere that God commissions someone to do something, without giving supernatural ability to do it. Why would we think we can do it today, in a world of today, without the supernatural power of God? Why would we neglect the supernatural? If you're going to represent God - is He a supernatural God, or not? If He's a supernatural, then don't hide who He is! It's like I'm embarrassed of what God's like, so I'm going to dress it up a little bit, so I won't tell you all about Him. You might get upset by what He does... because He's a mighty deliverer! But we better hide that in a corner, because it might upset someone.

Do you understand, the church has moved so far away from what it's supposed to be doing. It's got to return again to the original design - intimacy with the Father, being transformed to become more and more like Him, so we build a community where it's safe to be open, and let the Spirit of God bring healing and deliverance; where there's a plan in place for people to be healed and restored and built, so sons and daughters can find their assignment, and do it. So you need the power of the Holy Spirit to be intimate. You need the power of the Holy Spirit to change. You need the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfil your assignment.

Jesus began His assignment saying this: "the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me". Why is He anointed? So He can do His assignment: proclaim the gospel, connect people to God, to heal the broken hearted. He just announces His assignment: set people free, connect them to the Father, release them from their bondages... When Jesus commissioned the disciples, Mark 3:13, He called them to be with Him, that He might send them to: preach the gospel, cast out demons, heal the sick. Why do we only just take the one little bit: preach the gospel? Why just narrow down, and take away two-thirds; take away the doing part, just have the preachy bit? In Matthew 10:1, when He sent the apostles out, He anointed them and appointed them, and gave them authority and power over demons; and to heal sicknesses, commission and preach the gospel, minister the gospel.

In Luke 10, you see the 70 disciples - same thing; then In Mark 6, now He sends it to the whole church. Anyone who believes can minister and move in the Holy Ghost, because that's divine design. 1 Corinthians 12:7 - "now the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every person". See - it's given to every person! Why? Because it's God's design, that every son, every daughter, move in the power of the Spirit; because the challenges you face cannot be met. There are needs that cannot be met without the power of God! There are people in your church who cannot be set free without the power of God! There are people sitting there, harassed by demons, who need the power of God! Why hold back on ministering to their needs? Or is it because I want to use them to build something?

Come on, you’ve got to understand: this is the heart of God, for His people to be freed! We cannot just avoid those things, because we feel uncomfortable, or we've got our own bondages. So churches replace the power of God so frequently; they replace the ministry of the Holy Spirit. To replace means to make a substitute for something - instead of this, we have this. We're cheating people, when we do that! If you think about the first revelation of the church - it was the House of God, the place of His presence, and the gate of heaven. The gate is the place where authority is given to make judicial decisions that affect the governance - it's a place of governing authority.

The church has replaced deliverance with counselling; so we counsel instead of delivering people with demons. Counselling is okay; but you can't counsel demons - you've got to get them out! Instead of 'anointing' on people, now there's 'charisma' - it's all about the charisma they carry. Instead of apostles and prophets, we've got administrators trying to run the church, and build the thing, and keep it all safe. They kind of hold it all together, because that's how they're wired; but an apostle or prophet will say: no, we've got a mission, come on. We need to grow people up - come on, mature, grow up! The Prophet says: come on, there's the blockages, let's get rid of the blockages! It's what God is saying. The Minister is saying: you can't do all of that kind of thing! Yes, we can - because it's what God wants! In the 5-fold ministries, apostles are first, then prophets, then teachers... but a 'minister' is a fair way down!

Instead of faith, there's reasoning; we try to reason everything out, we teach people so much, that in the end, their heads fall, their heart is empty - no faith. Faith is of the heart and Spirit. Instead of having family, we have organisation - it breaks the hearts of people. They're looking for family. Why? Because God is a Father. Sure, we need to be organised; I've got a big family, and you have to get really organised. You need organisation, but that doesn't take away that it's family. Family has to do with bondings, and connectings, and the way you relate to people. That's why it talks about 'brothers' and 'sisters' and 'mothers' - all of this is the language of family. Why is it taken out of the church?

When there are broken hearts everywhere, they desperately need to know what family is like; they come to the church... oh no! We call God 'Dad', but what is this? Is this a family? Think about it. Instead of worship, we fill it with entertainment. I love everything being presented nicely and well; but there's no substitute for true, intimate worship in the Spirit. There's got to be those things. So it's a challenge for us, isn't it? A Challenge! Instead of fathers, we have leaders; and its great to have leaders - a father leads, but he's a father too, and that's different, because fathers are concerned about their son's identity. A leader wants to get the vision done; but a Father wants to see the kids grow up, fulfil their course, discover their course... there's a big difference, isn't there?

So the needs of people cannot be met without the power of God. The church needs the supernatural. It needs this, why? Because there are people that need healing; there are people that need deliverance; there are people who need a breakthrough, and provision; there are people that need connections - they need favour on them, in their business. There are people facing challenges that need God to give them breakthrough, and I go round the world, and I see God doing these things everywhere; but not so much in the western churches. The western church has drawn back from the power of God - afraid of the unusual, afraid of the unexpected, trying to control it all. It's not going to work! It isn't working - we need the power of God! The Power of God brings breakthroughs!

I just got a text on my phone the other day - a woman who'd been suicidal, depressed, and under counsel for two years. In one meeting, the power of God hit her, and boom, she we set free! No problem - it's all gone! Another person in the meeting, and they were addicted to marijuana, had been on it for years. Addiction... boom, the power of God hit them, and that's it - addiction has gone! Now they're free! Now they can start to grow the journey of connection, and intimacy, and healing, and so on; because that's what caused the problem in the first place. We need the power of God!

Now there's a contending for the power of God. Maybe you've prayed and stepped out and things didn't work out. Don't let that stop you! Learn to find out what are the factors. You've got to ask questions, and Jude says: "we must contend for the supernatural". You have to contend in prayer. Jesus spent 40 days in prayer, fasting, solitude, meditation, warfare, surrendering to the Holy Ghost... then He returned in the power of the Spirit. So these things have to come back into our lifestyle again. There is a contending for miracles! If I want miracles to happen, I have to position myself, and grow in my faith for these things; and if there are setbacks, to not worry about the setbacks. Learn how to start to build the atmosphere in the church, build the atmosphere round my own life, strengthen my prayer life, feed myself om things that will grow my faith; and determine that my ministry will have supernatural in it - that wherever I operate, the supernatural will be there.

If you don't make that decision, there'll be no fight in you. There's a spirit assigned to shut down the supernatural everywhere - to shut you down; and not just shut you down, but take lots of other things off you as well. There is a spirit assigned to do that very thing. You must understand, that when you say: "the church needs to have the supernatural" - you're declaring war straight away! No man who is a soldier of Christ entangles himself, so he can please and honour his master. It's as simple as that! There are entanglements in our life, that sometimes we need to get rid of; but it starts with saying: God, I'm not happy with how it is. I look, and I see what the Bible says. I want the church that I'm part of - I want that to be full of power!

I want my life to be full of power, and I will pay the price to pursue it. I'll pay the price to pursue it! What would that look like? It would look like: prayer; it would look like: fasting; it would look like: time meditating in the miracles, meditating in the word of God; it would look like: making connections with people that can inspire faith; it would look like: getting testimonies constantly, so your faith is being lifted; it would look like: taking risks regularly - to step out, pray for people, try things, push the boundaries out, and not withdraw. It may look like: you go out on a missions trip, and go to a Third World nation where they are hungry for God, and start to stretch out, so you break out your own expectations; then come back, and you're enlarged in your spirit, and you realise: what have I been tolerating? What have I been putting up with? How could I settle for that?

I've just been in a meeting, where I laid hands on a woman who had a gallbladder removed; and the gallbladder was creatively put back in her body. I saw her body shake and move; I could feel her hand under mine moving; and I looked at her, and she started to smile. She said: the gap has gone, the place there where it was taken out is full again. You see, God does things; we have to pursue it! Will you pursue; or have you settled for so little, because that's the common thing. You say: God, I don't want to be like that; I want to be a man, a woman, approved of God by miracles, signs and wonders. I will commit to pursuing God, to become intimate, to let Him work in my heart; and to embrace that, my assignment must be filled with the power of God. That's about every believer!

When I was a young Christian, I was able to bring the presence of God into the classroom in a way that shifted everyone's educational outcome. I saw people get saved! People coming were touched by the presence of God. I was very young, didn't know anything - but I was able to do it, because I did what God showed me. What about you? You could do that. You're called to do that. You're called to be the gate of heaven, for heaven to be released. Have you drawn back from that, because of the pressure, or disappointment, or just the lack of nurture? Make a decision: I will not stay drawn back. I am going to press on for miracles, press on for the supernatural, press on for breakthroughs in my life, press on for my ministry to grow in the power of the Holy Ghost. Say 'amen' to that!

Closing Prayer

Why don't we just stand right now; why don't we just begin to pray in the spirit. Won't you lift your hands. If there's a place you need to repent, because you've accepted so little, maybe you just need to say: God, today I just repent. I repent in my heart of settling for little. I repent in my heart of not representing You well. I repent in my heart of not being intimate with You, of neglecting the altar of the Lord, so there's no fire on that altar anymore. Lord, today I come to You. I say: God - fresh fire on the altar, fresh presence and power on my life. Holy Spirit, come. Lift your hands, begin to pray. Let's hear us raise our voice to the Lord, start to cry out to Him, let's cry out to Him!

Father, we cry out to You, we cry out for a fresh move of Your Spirit. We cry out for the fresh power of God. We cry out for the fresh anointing of the Holy Ghost. We cry out for a fresh encounter with You. We cry out for our hearts and lives to be stirred. Oh Lord, touch us, touch us in the place we've become embittered. Touch us in the place we've struggled with disappointment. Touch us in the place we've compromised and tolerated. My God, touch us today! Let Your Spirit come on our lives today! Help us today Lord. Help us today, pour out Your Spirit upon our lives! Come on, let's give the Lord a great clap shall we? [Applause] Thank You Lord! Thank You. We honour You Lord.

I can feel His presence is here. Holy Spirit, I just release a fresh activation. For every person here, I stir again the gift of God to start to flow in power. Father, today what You started, Lord continue it through the day until we become charged with passion, charged with fire, charged with a desire to serve in a new way, charged with faith to go back and hold altar calls, the power of God touch us, in Jesus' name.

Sonship & Heart Transformation (2 of 3)

Mon 26 Aug 2019  « Back to Top

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What the world is waiting for, is the manifestation of the sons of God, who are in intimacy with their Father, who accurately represent their Father - having a servant heart, an honoring heart, and a powerful anointing.

Jesus said: "I've finished My work". He finished the things that the Father gave Me to do.

Part of being a 'son' means that we need to accurately represent the Father. "When He appears, we shall be like Him". You and I are on a journey of transformation, that should be ongoing.

The heart is the...

1. Center of your identity.

2. Focus of God's attention.

3. Focus of Jesus' ministry.

4. Center of the boundaries and borders of your life.

5. Center of faith.

Introduction

It's great to be here with you, and have people that are hungry for these things. It's stirring, and we need to be stirred, don't we? We need to be really stirred up inside; so again, we're going to go back, and just start off by just referring to that first scripture we started with, which is the theme: what the world is waiting for, is the manifestation of the sons of God, who are in intimacy with their Father, who accurately represent their Father - having a servant heart, an honouring heart and a powerful anointing. Sons who understand their assignment, and stay within the boundaries of that, and don't mess around with someone else's.

That's why Jesus said: "I've finished My work". He finished the things that the Father gave Me to do. There were still lots of people weren't delivered, still lots of people weren't healed - but that wasn't His assignment. He was assigned to certain ones; He came to the nation, so everyone who came to Him, He ministered to them and healed them. Those who didn't come to Him, He empowered His disciples to carry on the same work.

Main Message

This time I'll talk about: Sonship and Heart Transformation, because part of being a 'son' means that we need to accurately represent the Father.

1 John 3:2 - "now we are the sons (that's children of God, meaning we haven't fully grown to maturity) and it does not yet appear what we shall be. But when He appears, we shall be like Him".

So that speaks to me, you and I are on a journey of transformation, that should be ongoing. If you are not continuing in personal growth, you are stagnating. If you are stagnating, you're living out of yesterday's experience and anointing. We cannot stagnate! We must continue to grow in God; and the growing in God comes by intimacy. So intimacy opens up the parts of our heart where we're blocked, because those are the parts where you're lonely, are bound, are locked up. Those are the parts where love doesn't enter, and love doesn't flow - and we bring those things into our marriages, into our churches, into our leadership... So as leaders, we should model then, that we're on a journey of transformation that will go on all our life; and it will only go on as long as you cooperate; let the Holy Spirit have access, and you are a willing participant in it. If you're not willing to participate, then you'll find yourself allied with a spirit that controls, and shuts down the supernatural, and also steals legacy and other things. I'll talk on that tonight.

I want to focus on the heart; and transformation of the heart. So why is it then, that the heart is so important? I want to give you a number of reasons why the heart of man is so important; and we're going to look at some heart conditions. and why it gets like that; and then the journey or the process of getting out of that place.

So first of all, why is the heart so important? Most churches are concerned with behaviours, but behaviours are the fruit that point to a hidden root. So whatever you see happening outside reflects something from the inside; it is the fruit. The behaviour is the way we do life and relationships, and that flows out of something within us. So even if you take yourself somewhere else, you'll still manifest the same kinds of things around you, because if they're in you, they'll keep producing fruit. So God's interest is always on the root, never just on the fruit. He is not worried about the funny behaviours, and the weirdness that we get up to. He's more concerned about the transformation of the heart, because if you've got the heart, you've got the person. So let me share with you several reasons why the heart is so very important.

When did you last hear someone preaching on the heart; or how the heart gets into bondage, and how to recognise it's in bondage, and how to minister healing to the heart? The church has become motivational. There's nothing wrong with motivational, but if the heart isn't transformed, then it's like wheel-spinning - you get revved up, but you can't go anywhere, because you soon run out of steam. You still go back to the old patterns, the old things, because the structures of bondage are still in place. It's like a riot in a prison camp - at the end, when it's all over, you're still in a prison camp. You're not free! That make sense? A lot of stuff that goes on is like that!

Everyone's ay-ya-ya-ya-ya; they go: I love all of that, give it to me, pump that music up, lets it get it going, I love it all! But it's got to go deeper than just that. It's got to go right into the heart. I love it, it's highly expressive! Anyway, let me give you some reasons why the heart's so important...

#1) The heart is the center of your identity.

Proverbs 23:7 - "as a man thinks in his heart, so he is."

The way you think about yourself determines the identity you'll live out. When we got born again, we received a new identity. We've got the identity; but we still live out of the old, because we haven't yet been changed in our thinking, in our heart belief structures yet. So the person who's rejected, after they've come to Christ, still struggle with rejection; until the truth of their acceptance is established in the heart, and they can say: I am accepted, I am a child of God - I know it in my heart. So the heart is the center of your identity - who you are. As you think in your heart, so you are; and it says: "a man's heart is like water, it answers to the heart". In other words, just as you see your reflection in the water, so you see a man's heart - you'll see what they're really like. We get caught up with what's external, with the giftings and abilities of people, or the appearance of people, all the external trappings - and we get overwhelmed with that, and fail to look at the heart. Pastors and leaders must look at the heart of people. We must become heart specialists, because that's the thing that God is interested in.

#2) The heart is the focus of God's attention. 1 Samuel 16:7, where Samuel is sent to find a new king who will rule Israel; he went to the house where David's father was, and he got all the sons out, and the first one comes out alive - He's tall and good looking. He said: this must be the king; but this is what God said to him. He said: I have rejected that man; and the word 'rejection' is a very strong word, meaning: I have utterly set that man aside as not qualified for this role. Now the prophet, he looked a good man, but to God... and then He said this: "for man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart". What God saw inside him, in his heart, was pride and arrogance - someone He couldn't use as king.

They brought all the sons out, and he thought: this is the one, this is the one, this is the one... and then he gets to the end... what the heck, what's going on here? But God had told him there's a son, so he says: is there anyone else here? They said: oh yeah, there's David, but we've got a problem with David. You know, there's a real question about how he was born, and there's a whole shame around his life; and actually, we don't really include him in the family. We've put him out there where he's in danger with the wild animals, because actually we don't really see him being part of the family. He said: bring him in. They brought him in. He said: that's the man; and this is what God said to David: "this is a man after My own heart".

So God has a heart, and this is what He said about David. See, we know David, lots of things about David that you know - you look at the failures and mistakes, and all the things; but God looked on his heart. So what was there about his heart, that God says: this man, I really love. He's a man after My own heart, who will fulfil my will in this generation. So David, what it means to be 'a man after the heart of God', means: his pursuit, in worship, was to discover the desires of God. Most people pursue God to get something; but he pursued God to find out what God likes - and when he found out what God likes, he totally overturned the whole religious and worship structure of the day; transformed it.

Moses had established the pattern of worship. He got it on the Mount. He was shown what to do. He was given the pattern on the Mount; and there's this young upstart who comes along, and he says: we're changing it all! You've got to have some pretty strong authority to be able to change something that's a historical tradition for the church's worship. He got rid of the whole lot, except the ark; and then he established 24 hours of worship, singing, praise, prophetic ministry. He stepped, because he saw God's heart; he saw way into the future, what God had in mind, what He really wanted; and that these things were all just symbols - they had no power in them, whatsoever.

He saw that what God wanted was Spirit worship, and so he brought it out of the age of grace. He reached past the cross, and brought it back into his age, by revelation. Now that's really something. So before, it was silent, and only one man went; but now everyone's got access, and there's worship, there's music, there's trumpets, there's noise, there's dancing, there's laughing, there's singers... Let's look at it, and you see that it's expressive, and it's passionate, and he's in it. He fought and won; and he's in it, they're jumping up and down... and that's why his wife hated him, because she looked at it, and she despised him: kings don't behave like that! You're supposed to be a king; you don't behave like that!

He said: "I did it to the Lord, and I'll do worse than that - you can't stop me". You can't wet blanket me! I did it to the Lord. So you see - he's a man after God's heart; and God says, in Acts 15 - "I'm going to restore what was taken away, this tabernacle of David". David had a passion for the heart of God. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will seek after, that I dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold His beauty, and to enquire in fellowship with Him" - because I want to know His heart, and then implement it for the generation I live in. If you're looking back at where church has been, you're looking in the wrong direction. We've got to look into the heart of God, and be intimate with Him, and find what is it.

I want to be a man after Your heart, and change what needs to be changed! The old system of someone, they're doing all the ministry - it's gone! It's history! It was never God's plan. He's got a five-fold ministries: apostles, prophets... empowering people to rise up, and carry the power of God; to go out and do something - change the community, pray for people! Get the creativity of God, design things, bring things into the earth! It's a whole new day. You've got to break out. Some of us are still back in Moses' tabernacle and we should be catching the heart of God. It's reformation time, revival time, a change time! Catch the heart of God! So God's attention is always on the heart, because God has a heart too; in His heart, or His motivations.

3) The heart is the focus of Jesus' ministry. If you think of Jesus' ministry, when you look at His teachings - they're all concerned with the heart. He said: you heard it said that you shall not commit adultery - that's actions. He said: I'm telling you something different. He said: it's bigger, and beyond that. He said: if you even look on a woman with lust in your heart, then you've committed adultery - I want your heart pure! In the Old Testament, it said: don't kill people. He said: listen, I'm telling you now, when you've got anger and hatred in your heart, you've got the roots that cause the thing to happen - I want your heart to be free of anger. So everywhere He went, He dealt with the heart.

When He stood up to announce His ministry, He said: the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; He's anointed Me to proclaim, to preach the gospel to the poor, or reconnect people to My Father and then to heal their broken heart - because if you don't heal their broken heart, they can't build intimacy in relationship. They must have their heart healed, because they're shattered and broken. Why would you just overlook the pain and struggles that people have, and not be willing to engage in healing them?

Matthew 15:18 - "out of the heart flow the things that defile a person".

It's not things outside you that defile you. You think: oh, I better avoid that. No, no, no. It's not about avoiding things; it's about being clean on the inside, so the things outside you don't defile you. Jesus showed it with the leper. He showed physically what it looks like. He found a leper, the leper came to Him; and it was advanced state of leprosy, totally unclean, totally defiling. It's a highly infectious disease. His thinking is: but what's in Me is more powerful than that, and so He touched him. No one touched them. You didn't touch a leper. To touch a leper, you're ceremonially defiled, and you run the risk of being a leper yourself. That didn't worry Him! He said: what's in Me is stronger than that. Boom! Touched him. Connected to him, because His big pain was disconnection in the heart. Then he got healed as well. So when you start to look at this, you'll see that Jesus is always concerned with the heart - what motivated people. So we've got to be concerned with the heart as well.

4) Let's just give you a few more reasons why the heart's so important. The fourth thing is, the heart is the center of the boundaries and borders of your life.

Proverbs 4:23 - "guard your heart diligently, for out of your heart flow the issues of your life".

The word issues is the word 'borders', or 'boundaries of the territory'. In other words, the limitations of your life are determined by what you believe in your heart. If you have poverty in your heart... no matter what you have, you'll always see poverty. Here's another reason why the heart is important: because you interpret life from your heart. You see it with your eyes, but that's just signals. You interpret it with your heart.

In other words, when people say and do things, they just said and did something; but it's you who decides what that means - because you judge it in your heart. So in Matthew 7, he said: don't judge. Learn not to judge. Be an observer, not a judge. You've got no idea really what's going on. He said: if you become a judge, then you're just going to start to reap things in your life, because it's in your heart. The judgements you have in your heart will be a cycle that you'll keep reaping in your life. That's why patterns keep forming - because there's judgements in the heart. He said: first get the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly. In other words, what's in our heart stops us seeing clearly. We just don't see people; we see them through what's in our heart.

So if someone just ignores you, what does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. Maybe they didn't see you. I don't know what it means. You won't really know unless you actually ask them, and we jump to conclusions and judgements about what it means; and we don't engage the person to find out, because our heart has got the judgement and the offence in it already. So if you've got offence in your heart, people will offend you all the time. If you're offended with your father or your mother, you'll be offended by authority figures all your life. You won't even see possibility that you could be wrong. You will interpret their actions always in terms of what's in your heart.

That's why your heart's so important. That's what is the cause of so many problems in marriages. We miscommunicate; and instead of asking for clarification, we jump to conclusions about what that might have meant - out of what's in our heart. Our heart then defiles the relationship. That's why it says to 'guard your heart'.

Hebrews 12:15 - "beware, lest you fall from the grace of God, and a root of bitterness springs up".

Where does it spring up? In your heart! Bitterness springs up when you've allowed offences to accumulate - you become angry, resentful, and then bitterness is there. When people are bitter, they don't even know why they're bitter; they're just negative about everything. They've long ago lost what caused them the problem, but the fruit of bitterness flows out of their life, and it says that it poisons every relationship.

It doesn't matter whether you're a pastor or not. It's got nothing to do with the role you play. It's got to do with your heart. If your heart's bitter, bitterness flows everywhere you are. You see why the heart's so important when you try to counsel people in marriage, or counsel people in life. If you just try to deal with behaviours, and don't deal with the heart you'll never get lasting change. They'll be inspired, but they won't change.

#5) The heart is the center of faith.

Proverbs 3:4-6 - "Trust in the Lord with all your... Heart!"

Trust is an issue of the heart. If you have experienced betrayal or disconnection in the earliest years of your life - say, if there was no bonding with a mother, then you've never learnt to trust, because the first bonding that would have formed trust has not been formed. So suspicion and distrust become the thing that grow in your heart, and affect all relationships.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart" - so trust is an issue of the heart.

"Lean not on your own reasoning or understanding; in all your ways be intimate with Him and He will direct your ways".

Romans 10:10 - "a man believes with his heart".

So faith, the faith for miracles, is in the heart. Also, unbelief is in the heart, so where people have been rejected, and they come to a conclusion: I'm not good enough - it's hard for them to believe for any miracles for themselves, because inside their heart is conflicted with what the word of God says. The heart needs to be healed. The word of God is sewn in your... Heart! It can bring forth fruit, or not bring forth fruit, depending on the condition of your heart.

Most people, when they hear that Parable of the Sower and the Seed, put themselves somewhere. They never think: I might be the wayside; no, I'm here in church... and I wouldn't be the rocky ground. No, no, I'm here every week! I wouldn't be the thorny ground, no, no, I'm serving in the church. Isn't it wonderful how we hear: 30, 60, 100, and think: I'll just be modest, I'm 30-fold. So we put ourselves in there, not really thinking that actually: in one part of our life, we may actually be really bearing fruit, but another part really barren, hard, hard ground - and often that's in family. It's the heart. It's really important.

I will just give you one more scripture... In the last days the condition in the earth, of hardness of heart will be so great, that God has to send a revival to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, and the fathers to the children. He would not send an end time move like that, unless there's a major issue with hearts - disconnected relationships in marriages and families. It will be so great, that it will need a revival to repair the damage! Elijah had to confront what was the substitute for the reality of God's spirit and love, which was a controlling power. So whenever the heart is damaged, if we don't get it healed, we will come under a controlling spirit, and we will become controllers.

So the heart is where you experience and carry the presence of God.

Ephesians 3:16-17 - "His prayers will be strong, strengthened with might in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your... Heart, by faith"

Our spirit is joined to the Lord, but the manifestation of His presence, where we feel Him, is in our heart. But if your heart has got walls, then you don't feel the presence of God. You know He's there by faith, in your spirit, you're born again; but you don't feel it, because the feeling of God is in the heart. The emotions that you feel are a reflection of your heart speaking.

Romans 5:5 - "Now the love of God is shed aboard... out of our hearts."

Where is the love of God felt and experienced? In your heart - and it flows from your heart, if you have revelation of it. So all ministry should be flavoured with the revelation of the love of God, not with agenda to be important. So your prophesying, if there's no love in it, is like 'clanging', because people feel: I see what you're doing, but actually something's missing. I don’t feel the love. I see what's done, but I don’t feel the love. The love is the heart part in it.

The love is the investment of the heart. This is one of the reasons relationships break down - we don't feel the love, because the heart has become hardened by all kinds of things: disappointments, and griefs, and setbacks, and other things; so the flow is reduced.

#6) The heart is the place where sin, or faith, is conceived. In Matthew 5:28, we saw that adultery is conceived in the heart; and finally, the heart is the center of your motivation. Your motives are the motives of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 it talks about the word of God being sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the diving asunder of soul and spirit, and the intents and motives of the heart. So the intentions that drive you, the motives that drive you, really come out of what's going on in your heart.

If you don't connect with your heart, how will you know what really moves you? That's why we've got to be tender in the presence of the Lord, and allow Him access to our heart, so He can show us the places where actually, there's a hidden agenda behind a lot of what we do - so we can represent Him accurately. God has no agenda except to love you. His love is a gift to you, but we kind of get caught up with this thing where actually, I've got a leverage in here, I want to get something, that's why I'm doing this, and this, and this. That's what makes it all political, and it makes it something missing in it - and you can actually feel it.

One of the things I've loved about coming to Asia, and I love about Asians, is they're acutely sensitive to anyone who has an agenda. They just feel it, like that. And what's given me ability to be there, is just to love people with a pure heart - so it's given me access to, and favour with, people. I have access, there's two or three family dynasties that pretty well run Taiwan financially. I have access to two of them as a friend. They will come to me, because there's nothing they have, that I want. I just want to be their friend, and love them, and help them. I would never - it would offend me to even consider the money issue, because that would wreck the relationship. I'm here to love them, and to help them, because they have an influence in society. If I can help and empower them, they will touch people I could never reach. But you understand, you can't have an agenda if you're going to do that. The only agenda is to love the people, and empower them, and heal them where they need healing. There's got to be that purity around it, and that's why we're to grow, mature and love.

The Bible talks about many different heart conditions. I encourage you to look at them, and discover some of them. The most obvious one, is the condition of a broken heart.

Psalm 147:3 - "the Lord heals the broken heart and binds up all their wounds". So Jesus came to announce that He healed the broken heart, but the heart can be broken. The heart can be fearful. The heart can be bitter, very bitter. The heart can be very hard. The heart can be angry. People that have got anger in their heart... they're just angry all the time. They don't even know why they're angry. They stir it, they're like a ball just waiting to go off. Just a little thing will set them off, because there's a whole lot of unresolved offences in the heart.

A heart can be numb or disconnected. This is the condition that many men are in, but also many women who have been traumatised. For example, Tamar in the Bible, when she was sexually abused by her brother, the Bible tells us this: she remained numb, and devastated in the house. That's the word 'numb' - a disconnected heart. A disconnected heart is where you've had so much pain, that you have literally shut down engaging the pain, as your way of dealing with it. Instead of getting it healed, you've buried it; but it's buried alive, and the consequence is you become hardened and don't feel anymore.

Many people can't feel things, because their heart is hardened. I prayed for one pastor's wife, she hadn't felt love in 40-plus years; and the reason was, her father rejected her and wanted only boys, so she made a decision she would have to shut down the emotional side of herself, and compete with the men. In doing that, a spirit of death came around her - shut her heart up, and all her life she never felt anything, until we got her delivered and healed - and then she felt lots of things. Then actually her identity came out; because this is the word I had... I said: what I see is that you're in a cave, hiding. I cannot see the real you - and she tried to avoid me of course, like crazy, but I said to the pastor: I'm coming to your church, and I don't need to preach; but I'm going to meet your wife. We're going to talk.

So I helped him with his process of getting her free, and it changed their marriage completely, it changed her. She's just like, radiating with life! Another person I can think of now, and her mother had a terrible miscarriage; incredibly painful, traumatic. So when she got pregnant again, she'd never been healed, because then that faith moved. In other words, what you do is you murder your heart, so while we need to hold the word of God, it's got to be in the heart; and if the heart's wounded, then heal the heart, then put the word in. Don't just, out of will power, try to do something to try and overcome something that really needs healing. So what she did was, she put a wall round her heart, so she wouldn't be hurt in the next pregnancy by a possible loss; but here's the consequence: her daughter experienced deep rejection, deep disconnection and would not bond with her mother; and so the mother and daughter were hostile to each other, all their lives.

She said: I have never been able to work out why I had the conflict. Now I get it. I'm angry from the womb at being rejected. I need to repent and forgive. I never realised that. Isn't that amazing? I actually love all of this stuff, because everywhere I go, people's stories are so interesting. and nothing's like what it appears to be. What you see is not real; it's just the outward thing. What you've really got to see is the heart. When you see the heart... sometimes I've just cried with people, what they've gone through is so sad. How could people still survive all of that?

The church, they've got them sitting in the church every week, needing healing, needing a ministry to the heart. Heart transformation; so the hidden roots in the heart produce external fruits and behaviour, and you need to deal with them. God's plan for transformation starts on the inside. So how does God change us? Religion will try and change you externally, by forming a culture, or a pressure to conform in a certain way; so you'll find when there's religion, or a religious spirit, it will always try to control you to perform, and reject you if you don't play the game. You can never really be you. You have to conform; and so of course, you're lonely all the time and you're pretending, and you have to live within this thing.

But when God changes us, He changes from the heart. He wants truth in the inward parts. David wrote: "You delight in truth in the inner parts" - not lies, not cover ups, not pretending. God wants truth in the inner parts. So how does God change us? Number 1, He solves the power problem by putting a spirit in us, so we become born again; meaning: God's spirit joins to our spirit, internally we have a power source, and that power source is called the Holy Ghost. When He's in our heart, He says: you know what? I want to reveal to you, over and over again: you're a child of God! The Holy Spirit bears witness, that we are the children of God. He tells you: you're a child of God. You're accepted, you're loved, you belong.

You've got a father who loves you, cares for you. He's got a plan for your life. He puts the power, He puts the identity, on the inside; shifts it now, this is who I am, I'm totally transformed. But there's an outworking of that. The other thing He says, in Ezekiel 36, "I'll put a heart of flesh". So He puts in a new spirit - that’s the Holy Spirit - but then He puts a heart of flesh, because it was stony before. It didn't believe God, didn't want God, rebelled against God... it was stony, in that respect; but after we've come to the Lord, our heart has become changed towards God - not completely healed, just changed in its orientation. We now have a tender heart, we actually want to please God. People want to please God - they just don't know how. The Holy Spirit helps us how.

The heart however, is still in a damaged condition, and it needs transformation. If you transform the heart, you transform the person; but it cannot take place without the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and your willing participation. This is a life journey of transformation on the inside out. We get hung up with all the mistakes and failures and things, get condemned. The devil accuses you, tells you're no good... this, this, this, all that sort of stuff. God's not even worried a toot about that, because He already paid the price, for all of it to be forgiven. He just wants your heart! If your heart is towards Him, then even if you're up and down, it doesn't make any difference. He's still helping you all the way. You've just got to find where the heart is.

Capture the heart, and you've got the person. He wants your heart. That's why He said: love the Lord with all your... heart. Well, here's a question: if your heart has been shattered, how can you love Him with all your heart? You can love Him with the part you're conscious of, but the other broken bits are going to need to be healed, and repacked, restored. That's why David said: "unite my heart". It's all fractured. I've got little bits over here that are hurt, and I buried them there; and another bit hurt, and I fractured that one off there. Another bit over here, and I've got all these parts in my life, all these things in my life, and I've just buried them all here. Now I've got a pile of pain! But in my heart, in the core of me, I love You, and I want to serve You; but the other stuff caused me to malfunction.

So God says: it's okay, I accept your love. Let's just walk the journey. You be committed to pursuing Me, and being intimate, and allow Me access; leave Me to do the work with your heart. Isn't that amazing? So how does God do the work with your heart? Well, He just engineers a few circumstances, and you suddenly hear yourself - now where did that come from? And if you'll just stop, and go quiet a little bit, and listen, the Holy Spirit will tell you exactly where it came from - a wounded heart somewhere, an offence in the heart, anger unresolved, resentment unresolved. Everyone is trying to change the world around them, and they don't change themselves. Change yourself! You want to change the world? Start with yourself. Change your own world.

So God heals the broken heart; and the word 'broken' means to be shattered into pieces. It means to be crippled or quenched, so when our heart has been wounded by events in life, it becomes shattered, or crippled, or unable to function. In the spirit that's what it's like: your leg is broken, and you're dragging it behind you; and they say: why won't he run, I don't know why he won't run. Why won't you run? In this church, you need to run. Run brother! It's like putting a pressure to do something that they can't do. They're powerless to do it.

The woman that was bowed down with a spirit of infirmity, it said she had no power to stand up! She had a demon on her. That's where a lot of Christians are, they've got demons riding on them, having access into the wounds and the brokenness, and they're hunched up, they can't go anywhere. They need healing and deliverance. That's what His ministry was: heal the broken-hearted; deliver the captives. The word 'wound' means literally to be an idol. An idol is a substitute for God that you end up serving, and become angry with. So when you've got a wound in your heart, you end up serving it. It controls your life, because now, you know what'll happen?

Instead of wanting to love people, now I'm going to hold myself back, and I've got to guard myself. You might hurt me, so now that what's governing my life is a pain in my heart, and the spirit driving it is the spirit of fear, rather than actually the love of God. That's why He needs to deal with these things; we want God to touch those areas. Lord, touch my heart, heal my heart, whatever it is. Jeremiah makes the complaint, in Jeremiah 6:14 - "they've healed the heart of My people lightly, saying 'peace brother, peace' - but there's no peace!" There's war in the heart, and the people need healing. In your ministry, do you have a process for healing the broken heart? Do you have a process for setting the captives free?

Is there a process in place? Do you celebrate that this is part of everyone's journey; or do you allow them to come in, take them through a little bit of a program, connect them in, take the money, and them get them serving... but their hearts are still broken, and there's no process to heal them, and restore them? We need to be committed to do that, because that is Jesus' ministry - and you don't want to have people broken. If your children are hurting, you know what a mother does? They run; oh they fuss over them; get them, and bind them all up, and hug them, and reassure them. They do something! A church is a mother to God's family. We need to do that; heal them, and bind them all up.

So there are many ways that people can have a broken heart. It's many; but it's either things that happen to us; or things that are withheld from us break the heart. Things that happen to us; or things that are removed; or that we need for life, and they are withheld. Rejection will break the heart; abandonment will break the heart. Abuse will break the heart - sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abuse of any kind shatters the heart, causes wounding; it varies from person to person. Being bullied, being hated just because of who you are - all of these things break the heart; being in an unstable, unpredictable, unsafe environment will break the heart. Going from loss and grief break the heart. Betrayal breaks the heart. These are things people have happen to them.

Controlling relationships break the heart, and cause people to feel deeply rejected. Sometimes in some families, it's not what was actively done; it's just because of various reasons, what was needed was withheld, and that was what broke the heart. We have certain needs that we're born into this life with: love and acceptance. When people are not loved and cherished, it affects them. They begin to make conclusions about why I'm not loveable. If acceptance is withheld, because for example, you're a woman or female, rather than a male - this affects your whole identity. So you understand then, if there's a lack of nurture; even a simple thing like being prematurely born, and then put in an incubator for a while - that will affect the child.

Being separated from a mother affects the child. I know, I've gone through both of those. It affects you deeply, because the bonding that should have happened doesn't happen. The nurture that should have happened, doesn't happen; and then you're affected, and wounded, and come to conclusions about yourself, and life. Demons use all that to manipulate and torment you. Lack of touch and affection affects people - lack of just affection, just a hug and a touch. Some families don't touch or don't hug; it affects the child. It's one way that love is communicated, just through touch and hugging.

A lack of affirmation (this is one of the major ones) - a father's role is to affirm and speak into the sons and daughters. When that's withheld, they don't know what to believe about themselves, so they believe the lies of the devil - that there's something wrong with them, they're not good enough, never good enough. Then they get angry, and then you've got rebellion going on, and you don't even know why it's there; but there was a withholding, of what would have nurtured the plant. You know, I have trouble with plants! I don't know what happens, I have them one day, and then they're dead. I don't know what happens. Somehow they die, and so I don't even bother now, it's just too hard for me. I'm just not into it - but you understand, they didn't die because it was a bad place or anything. They're in a lovely place and lots of sun, it's just the thing they needed wasn't given. They didn't get the water.

Simple - so you can hurt people if you don't give them the right things. Lack of welcome, just the lack of celebration; just a child unwanted, and then being unwelcome because of some shortfalls or whatever, or difficulties - all of that has dramatic affect on the heart of the child. So these are some of the ways that people get hurt, and Jesus came to heal it. He came to heal it! Do you realise that one of the things Jesus took for us was a broken heart?

In Psalm 69 it tells us: "Reproach has broken my heart. I sought for comfort and there was none, for help and no one would help".

I just weep when I read it, even sharing it, that actually the treatment that Jesus received broke His heart. It's how He can heal broken hearts - he's represented our broken heart. He's taken our pain to the cross. He took all of those things to the cross.

So what would be some keys? I think the first thing is to recognise: it's a journey you take.

Psalm 84:4-6 - "Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, whose heart embraces pilgrimage or the journey, who passes through the Valley of Tears, and makes it into a well. That person will go from strength to strength."

So what it's saying simply is: there is a process, we walk with God and in that journey, when we let Him heal the places of pain, they become a place we can comfort others. So whatever hurt you, whatever came into your life that damaged and hurt you - if you'll let God into it to heal you, not only will your life change, you will be empowered to help others. Someone is waiting for your breakthrough. Someone needs you to break through, to testify of the reality of the power of the Risen Christ. Someone needs you to do that; and if you will hold back, then you're not only perpetuating the pain; you're multiplying its impact, rather than experiencing healing and being able to minister to someone else.

Here's one other thought; this is something the Lord showed me. Many people look back on their family, at some of the things that happened, and it varies. For some, it's quite a happy family; for others, there was a lot of grief, and trauma, and all kinds of dramas going on. Have you thought of this: that maybe God, who could see all of this, put you into that family, to end the generational cursing in the family, to bring the pattern to an end, and generate a new pattern for the next generation. That you are actually a gift to the family - a gift from God to that family, to end the cycle of pain and start a different pattern: different fathering, different mothering, different family-building. You're actually building something different; not repeating the stuff that went on that hurt you. Have you thought of that?

You'll find it in Isaiah 61 - "that they might repair the desolation of generations". You're not called just to be healed in your heart for yourself. You're called to be healed in your heart, so you can carry the heart of God and rebuild the damage - the damage that's been done in families, damage been done in young people, the damage that's done in our society. Someone has to rebuild that; and those who let God into their heart, to heal their heart, can see clearly to heal the heart of others.

The more I've let God into my heart, the more I've wept and let Him deal with my pain, the more empathy and compassion I have for others, and the more easy it is for me to see it when I'm with people. No matter how you hide it, and you can hide it all you like, it just leaks like tears - it just leaks out. It cannot be hidden for those who have an eye to see, but if your heart is still hard, you just don't see. You can't see it. You just get people behaving and performing. How we need leaders that are healed, that embrace the journey of healing, and give permission to their people to do the same. They're not going to present an image that: I've got it all together; but rather, I'm on a journey of healing and wholeness, and I have my challenges, in my personal life and ministry.

I want you to know that God is committed to me, and I'm committed to the journey; and I'm creating a safe environment for you, to be committed to that journey. But when we cover it up, they just carry the burdens of loneliness. How can we journey? Well, we have to realise first of all, it is a journey; second, you need to ask the Holy Spirit to bring revelation to your heart - where you're broken, where you're not functioning. He will bring it. Maybe someone will yell at you, and tell you? There's lots of ways He's got of getting your attention. Maybe the problem you're having right now, you're looking at the other person, instead of saying: God, what is this revealing about me? You understand - when you're looking at someone else, you can never change your life.

You've just got to look at what am I doing: is the love of God manifest in my heart and life; or is there something else? So we need to then ask the Holy Spirit: uncover where was I hurt. Who hurt me? What did they do? How did that feel? You see, we spend all our life trying to stop feeling. Then we say: God, I don't feel you.

Hey, why don't you ask this prayer: Holy Spirit, show me where I stopped feeling and shut my heart up, I surrender control. How did I feel? How did I respond? How did this affect my life? What did I do to protect myself; because all of that I've got to undo, in order to let God in. Is there someone I need to forgive from my heart? Notice what Jesus said: forgive from the heart.

To forgive from the heart, you've got to connect to the pain. Oh, is there an easier way? No. But I've been spending all my life trying to stop the pain! No, no, now you have permission to feel it, and bring it to the cross. This time, you don't have to control it. You can let God heal it.

Is there someone I need to forgive? Do I need to break my agreement with lies, or with vows I made to protect my heart; lies about myself, lies about men, lies about women, lies about life, lies about God, lies about money? Have I agreed with things that now dominate my life - that's what runs my life: I believed a lie?

I've had people do that. I had one woman, she had her fifth miscarriage, and when we got down to the root of it, basically she hated her father, and made vows: I'll never carry a male child. Another woman, she'd gone through some terrible thing, and she so hated being a woman, she cursed her own womb, and then had major problems that went after that.

See, we do things to try and manage the pain, and they create another layer of problems. Demons access those things. Then I need to establish the truth in my heart; what is the truth? Meditate on the truth. Ask the Holy Spirit to build it into your life: I am loved. I am loveable. I am my Father's delight. I'm accepted. I am safe. My Father has my back. I've always got Him with me. You need the truth to enter your heart; it comes through meditation.

Is there something you need to put right, someone you need to apologise to, because you behaved so badly you also contributed to the problem? You need to just humble yourself and say: I'm so sorry, please forgive me. Are there patterns you need to change in how you deal with life? You understand, that's what heart transformation looks like. It's painful. That's why people don't want to do it; but it's fruit-bearing, because you change. One breakthrough will change your life!

My marriage changed when I saw I was bitter, and I realised why I was bitter, and repented and confessed it to my wife, and to the Lord, and asked for forgiveness, and it was put right. Otherwise, if we don't do these things, if we don't let God have access to our heart, how can you struggle through ministry? We need help, help of the Holy Ghost. He'll help you.

Closing Prayer

Why don't we just close our eyes, open our hearts. Holy Spirit, come. Perhaps there's some of you right now as I've just talked, I feel the Spirit of God is on you now, and you've been in a turmoil, but it's starting to clear, and actually I have an issue I need to face. You're not responsible for someone else's stuff, just sort your own out. When you're changed, everything around you changes. The people who become most angry when you set boundaries, are the ones who benefited most when you didn't have them; so change is not always easy, because people react, and try to get us back to the way we were. But you're called to be free, free to fulfill your course, free to be intimate with Father, free to have a free heart, free to be who you are, free, free in your heart and soul and spirit, free to fulfill what God called you to.

So perhaps today God's speaking to you right now and you say: God, I just need you to touch me now. I don't want to miss the moment. There's something I need to bring to you. There's something I need to let go of. It is a journey, but it starts with a step; so why don't you just make a step to the front today, and say: God, I realise my heart is aching. I just want to come and say: I'm hearing you talk into me. I want to open up my heart, and surrender control, and give You access to my heart; and to begin the journey of owning the responsibility for my own heart. I want to guard my heart, and nurture my heart, because this is what's causing the limitations on my life.

Sonship & Spiritual Warfare (3 of 3)

Mon 26 Aug 2019  « Back to Top

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“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of His might” (Eph. 6:10). He wants to strengthen us!

“Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand the wiles (or the cunning plans) to overcome you” (Eph. 6:11).

You're here by divine design, and purpose. God has an assignment for you. You also have an adversary, who plans: how can I defeat that person, and stop him from operating in a supernatural life, and hinder him in fulfilling his assignment?

Every promotion of God brings another level of engagement that you must face; but beyond that engagement is a prize to be won.

Before David slew Goliath, he said: what's in it for me? They said: you get to marry the king's daughter, and your whole family will be free of taxes. He said: that sounds good to me - I'll take him on! After he took on the giant, he was promoted. You don't become an overcomer without a challenge to face!

Introduction

We spoke on Sonship and the Supernatural, and then we spoke on Sonship and Heart Transformation - the necessity of heart transformation. Tonight, I want to speak on Sonship and Spiritual Warfare, and we're going to look at a verse in Ephesians 6.

Main Message

Now these come out of life experience. Sometimes I won, sometimes I failed. Sometimes I got the thrashing of my life and ended up hiding in a cave. Other times, I came out, and I didn't always win the fights. In fact, I had many, many hidings until I understood what the fight was about, and then I began to get the victory.

I began to consistently get the victory, and with every setback, I was able to turn it back, and overthrow what was there, because God gave me revelation of what really the battle was about, and how to fight the battle. There's a lot I could share, but I'll try to keep it condensed around the things that will give you understanding of the nature of the warfare that you're up against.

We must understand, you have no choice in this. Your only choice is whether you roll over and come under something; or whether you'll stand up, and persevere, and take hold of what Christ won for you. That's the decision you make. You don't get an intermediate decision, well look, I'll tell you what, I won't bother the devil if he doesn't bother me – that’s not going work!

You have an adversary (1 Peter), who walks about like a roaring lion - seeking or scheming or planning how he can devour your life. You are called to resist, to make a stand in your life; but if you can't locate the warfare, and don't know how to fight the warfare, you'll be beaten every time, and you'll have cycles of issues you can't seem to understand why it happens.

Ephesians 6:10 – “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of His might”.

One of my favourite declarations: I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. He wants to strengthen us.

Ephesians 6:11 – “Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand the wiles (or the cunning plans) to overcome you”.

How many know that there are cunning plans in place to overcome you? A lot of people don't even recognise, that you're here by divine design, and purpose. He has an assignment for you to accomplish. It doesn't matter where you come from; whatever your background, God has an assignment for you. You also have an adversary, who plans: how can I defeat that person, and stop him from operating in a supernatural life, and hinder him in fulfilling his assignment? It doesn't matter what level of spiritual maturity you have, or your walk - we all have adversaries.

Every promotion of God brings another level of it, and a different engagement that you must face; but here is the interesting thing: with every engagement, beyond that engagement is a prize to be won. That's the thing; so, we should never be worried that there's a spiritual warfare, or a conflict, because it tells us that beyond that, there's something worthwhile for us to take hold of.

Before David slew Goliath, he said: what's in it for me? They said: you get to marry the king's daughter, and your whole family will be free of taxes. He said: that sounds good to me - I'll take him on! After he took on the giant, he was promoted. Every battle of David led to promotion, promotion, promotion. You don't have great victories without great battles.

You don't become an overcomer without a challenge to face, so it tells to:

Ephesians 6:10-12 - “Be strong in the Lord, and the power of His might… Put on the whole armour of God… for we wrestle not against flesh and blood”.

It's an important statement there - we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against invisible spirit beings, that are highly structured, and organised to replicate what God created in the angelic realm. God created an angelic realm, with angels of different levels and layers of authority, empowerment and assignment. The devil just looked at it, and copied it; so we have various layers and levels of demonic structure, and they all have their own assignment, and levels of authority that they work under.

It says: “we wrestle not against flesh and blood”. In other words, our conflict is not really with people; it's the invisible powers, that have access to their life, to manipulate them to do their will.

2 Timothy 2:26 – “And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will”

The devil manipulates people, to accomplish what he wants. When you find yourself in conflict, you've got to stop being in a reactionary mode to people. You've got to govern your own spirit, and learn to understand where the battle is, and what you're fighting, and how to fight, so that in the end, you win the victory.

The only one you have management over is yourself. If you can't control yourself, then you're going to be wiped out every time there's a spiritual conflict, because the devil will manipulate you in the places that he has access. Jesus said: the devil comes, but he's got nothing in Me. There's no place in Me that he can manipulate Me.

I want to talk specifically about the battle... Paul wrote about it, to Timothy…

1 Tim. 1:8 – “Timothy, war a good warfare by the prophetic word, the revelation God has given you”.

Use it as a weapon to war against invisible beings. The ministry of Deliverance is literally the manifestation of God's kingdom, bringing an exposure of the demons, and bringing them out into the open, so you see the warfare. I never hide it. I don't mind if demons manifest, not at all. Great stuff!

Let's point out what's going on here. Jesus did that. In fact, if you have a look at His ministry, it was His Deliverance ministry that caused Him to become famous. He became well known everywhere, because He had the authority to subdue demons, and they did what He wanted. He gives that authority to you. He has won the battle for you. He gave His life, for you to become empowered. You need to step up in the game!

I want you to look in the Old Testament, at a particular power that operates - an invisible power. There's a difference in realms of the spirit. Most of us are affected by mere demons, just the little, low-level spirit beings, trying to gain access, and put themselves at work in your life to destroy you; but there's other beings that run those ones, and that's the one we want to have a look at.

The Bible tells us very clearly that there is a warfare that will take place in the End Times. The last verse in the Book of Malachi, just before the Old Testament ends, it says:

Malachi 4:5-6 - “I will send the prophet Elijah (or literally, the spirit of Elijah) before the great and dreadful day of the Lord's coming and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to their fathers, lest he come and smite the earth with a curse”.

Without going too deeply into that, we see several things in there...

#1 - At the End Times there'll be significant breakdown in families, and family relationships, to the point where there's great bitterness and strife and conflict in families.

#2 - That would end up with a curse coming into the earth, because of the dishonour in the families (parents of their children, and children of their parents) - so God has to intervene.

#3 - The intervention is the anointing that was on Elijah. What did Elijah do? Elijah confronted a spirit power that affected the whole nation and corrupted the nation.

In the last days, God will put a prophetic anointing on us, empowering the church to uncover, expose, and tear down the very thing that Elijah had to deal with in his day. It was a spirit power that corrupted the nation, corrupted the governance, corrupted the morality, corrupted the worship, corrupted the family life and broke down the nation. That same spirit will be powerfully at work in the end times, but God will raise up an anointing, to overcome that spirit.

Elijah came out of nowhere. God has many people, who will come out of nowhere – anointed, because they've been in the presence of God, and they have an authorisation to start moving in the supernatural, to confront spirit beings. But before you'll do anything on a bigger scale, you've got to fight your own devils, and so we want to talk a bit about the strategy of that.

1 Kings 16:30 – “Now Ahab the son of Omri… “

Ahab was a ruler appointed by God, but it says he did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than everyone that was before him. He wasn't a good guy - he was a corrupt leader. Corrupt leadership in the nation brings corruption throughout the nation.

It says: as if it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, he did something worse. His ancestors were evil, but he does something worse! He forms an alliance with Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians; then he served Baal and worshipped him, setting up an altar for Baal, in the temple of Baal, which he built in Samaria. Ahab made a wooden image, or an Ashara, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

The king that was appointed to rule, to bring peace and prosperity to the nation, but his heart has swerved aside. He's come into an alliance with a particular woman, but it's the spirit behind that woman that is the thing we are concerned with. In the Old Testament, you see stories of people having encounters with God, and people having conflicts, but behind that, there is an invisible realm that influences it. The stories in the Old Testament are given to help unveil that spirit world.

The person that's involved in the Old Testament, by the name of Jezebel - that same name turns up with a different person, in the Book of Revelation. In the Book of Revelation, it's right there in the church, being tolerated, and bringing corruption - bringing defilement and causing people to be seduced away from God. It's not the same person; but it's the same spirit, doing the same kind of work - and God wants us to revolt against it.

His complaint in Revelations 2:20 is that we ‘tolerate’ this thing to operate. Tolerate means we're just passive, and compliant, and let it happen. His complaint with the church was not that they weren't zealous, not that they weren't hardworking, but they tolerated something that God found intolerable… and the consequence was disastrous for them!

Mostly, the reason the spirit operates is because: (1) it's incredibly deceptive; and (2) people become passive, and tolerate it operating, because they don't recognise its operation.

They become entangled with it. They become entwined in it, they come under its influence, then wonder: why have I got no power? Why does the church have no power? Why are we lacking in the supernatural? There's a very good reason - if you want to move in the supernatural, you have an enemy that is committed to oppose your operation in the supernatural. Every person who steps up, and wants to move in the supernatural, will engage a different kind of warfare they've never had before.

You might say: oh well, I just don't like the idea of that, so just leave me alone - my life is hard enough as it is. Yeah, it's hard enough, because you are tolerating things to operate, that God gave you authority and a mandate to overcome.

He said in Luke 10:19 - I give you authority. I won it on the cross. I won it for you. I have won the authority over demons. They have no power to rule you. I have paid a price on the cross to gain authority for you, to reposition you with authority, so you will trample underfoot serpents, scorpions, all the power of the enemy, nothing will harm you.

You need to believe, and stand up, and learn how to fight! But if you don't know where the war is, and how to fight... we just pray in tongues, but don't know what to do, so I want to help you with that.

Let's just look at this person here... The word ‘Sidonian’ means literally ‘to catch someone in a snare’, so the Sidonians, literally their whole nature was to catch people in a snare. The Sidonians, literally, are a picture, prophetically, of demonic spirits - assigned to catch us, snare us.

The snare of the devil - Timothy talks about it. Their whole plan is to catch you in a snare, and there's many pictures of this in the Bible, many operations of the spirit, right through from one end of the Bible to the other. This is just one glimpse into it, but you can find it at work in many different parts of the Bible. Let me give you one major example...

When the people of Israel were walking in blessing, and could not be overcome, their enemy hired a prophet, but even he couldn't prophesy against them. He said: there's only one way you can deal with this - you've got to seduce them away from God. It tells us that they then sent in women to sleep with the men, and then, as a result of that, to bring them into union with them, and with their gods.

They moved away from God and began to worship idols. That is the same spirit at work, seducing people away from the Lord through sexual sin - into immorality, and then into the worship of idols, or substitutes for God. This is an old story. It says that 25,000 men perished at that time. That's a lot of sleeping around, by many, many women.

It's actually an invasion, by the women, against a culture, intentionally set on seducing these men. Young women, married women, they sent them all in, to sleep with the men, and 25,000 died. Now these things are written for a lesson, that the spiritual conflict is real - this conflict happened, and it was blatant, it was done in front of everyone. One man was highly commended, because he wouldn't stand for it. He wouldn't tolerate it. He stood up and confronted the thing. God said: I will make that man; I will give him honour all his life.

Understand then, there are parts of the Bible where, if you look past the natural story, you see the hidden spirit realm. It tells us that this woman, and the spirit we're talking about - although we may call it the spirit of Jezebel, it is not a ‘woman’ spirit. In the spirit realm, there's neither male nor female. It's a spirit that finds an expression, in this case through a woman; but it can also express through a man; or through an organisation; or through a family; but it usually finds a person that it gains access to, to operate through, and then its desire is to do a whole number of things…

When you look at the gods that they worshipped, they worshipped the god Baal, and the god Ashtara. If you have a look at it, you'll start to see, that it’s what is happening today, on a big scale. It's an old spirit at work. Baal was a god of the storms, the god of thunder, and the god of divination. Baal was a god they worshipped, and one of the ways they worshipped was they offered, and they sacrificed their children. Their children died to please Baal. That same spirit is at work today - look at the increase in abortion!

She seduced Ahab. He become entangled with her through the marriage; she seduced him, and he sold himself to do evil. He just gave himself over to follow what she wanted, so he could gain advantage; but in the end, he lost everything. Let me just tell you what the agenda is, and you find this by just looking through the scripture, through the story.

If God refers to it, at the end in Malachi, it must be important. It must be something significant. When John the Baptist came, preparing the way of the Lord, preparing for Jesus to come, he said: this is the same spirit. “The spirit of Elijah is on him” - preparing hearts for an encounter and carrying a revival. That's the anointing God wants to release on you.

What is the agenda? There are several things...

#1 - To steal your Inheritance. The spirit of Jezebel is a power at work, that wants to steal your inheritance.

If you read the story in the Bible, there was a man named Naboth. He had a vineyard, and it was his inheritance; it was his provision from the Lord, through his family line. It was something that was handed down to him - He didn't have to work for it, it came down by inheritance. Christ has won many things for us by inheritance; but the devil wants to steal them from you. He is committed to taking everything that Christ won at the cross - your healing, your deliverance, your confidence, your identity, everything that Christ won - to remove it by deception, to remove it by accusation.

One of the big problems that Christians have, is struggling with guilt and condemnation. In other words, the victory, the acceptance that Christ won, has been stolen away from you. It comes as a thief to steal, and you don't notice that it's being stolen, but you lose your peace. You lose your sense of identity; and then you start to find it in other things.

I find so many people struggling with a deep pain, deep grief of rejection and deep insecurity on the inside. They've had their vineyard ripped off. What God said is for your provision for you, to supply not only yourself but your family, has been stolen by deception. She raised a false accusation, and raised up false witnesses, and then she had him killed, to get his vineyard. The inheritance, what God has provided for you, promises for your money, your finances, your marriage, your personal life, your health - the devil wants to steal those things away from you.

#2 - To steal your Legacy. Your legacy is what you will leave to the next generation. In Malachi 4:6, he said he will “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers”, meaning there's a breach in the family relationships, and no longer are the families united, but they're embittered against one another.

I've prayed for businessmen, and they've got a lot of things going for them, in terms of money, but their family is a wreck. Their legacy has been ruined. The legacy you leave… it's not all the money you get. The legacy you leave are the people you have built up, and invested in, that carry on the values and the life that you've given them. Think about that.

The legacy is, first of all, natural. It's our own family, and the next generation. The devil wants to steal the next generation. We are very active working to invest, we've got seven children, and now we're investing in the grandchildren - we have 24 grandchildren. All families are in church, but there was a fight to hold onto the legacy. I had to fight for every one of them, in prayer. Every one of them could have been lost. There's a warfare for the next generation. You have to stand in prayer - husband and wife, standing together, believing God, holding God's promises over their family, and intentionally investing into them.

Then it's got a bigger aspect, that has to do with the legacy of the next generation of soul winning and discipleship. New souls that come in… the devil will try to hinder whatever he can - try to hinder evangelism; and try to stop you having a voice, so there's no voice of witness, no testimony, no reaching out to the next generation. If you got saved, and stay in church, but you never win a soul, never do anything, then he's quite happy with that, because there's no legacy, spiritually, for your life with God. That’s why, when it comes to evangelism, there’s always a warfare around evangelism.

The church has got to be stirred, because we're always only one generation from extinction.

#3 – To destroy the prophetic, and the supernatural.

1 Kings 18:4 – “While Jezebel was killing off the LORD’s prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, fifty in each, and had supplied them with food and water”

Jezebel viciously attacked the prophets, killing everyone she could find. She was determined to stop the voice of God being heard in the nation - to shut down the voice that would have the power to unseat her, to shut down the supernatural power of God.

I look and see the supernatural power shut down in most churches around in the west. Why is it shut down? Fear! What are you afraid of? Are we afraid that God might do something? Are we afraid that there might be something a bit messy? Are we afraid that things won't all look nice?

Our God is a supernatural God. We misrepresent Him, if we're not strong advocates for the supernatural. Why is it, that we're not strong advocates for the supernatural? Fear! That fear leads to control; and shutting it down. We're in agreement with the spirit while in church, offering. This is a serious issue!

The prophetic voice - every person can flow in the gift of prophesy. Every person, who is the sheep of Jesus Christ, can hear His voice. The devil wants to shut down the voice of God. If you stop hearing the voice of God, the prophetic in your life is shut down. The voice that brings life, brings revelation, inspires, and guides… he wants to steal that voice out of your life!

That's why there's a fight for the prophetic - to either stop it, or to make it so weird, that no one wants it. Either way, it shuts it down. We must keep ourselves stirred, so we can stay in prophetic flow. One thing I like about this church, is that there's a prophetic atmosphere here. It's just easy to flow, easy to hear God. Even while I'm worshipping, I'm hearing Him tell me this and that, and I write it all down straight away, so I don't lose that word. This is the warfare you have!

Timothy was told: “war a good warfare, by the prophetic word”. In other words, what God says to you, is a weapon of war, that will destroy the devil; that will bring down the resistance in your business, the resistance in your family. It brings down things, in the spirit. That's why it's so precious. That's why the devil wants to shut it down. Stop the prophetic voice, and you stop the flow of revelation - you stop the church advancing.

Her first thing - shut down all the prophets. Kill them all! Except she didn't get them all - there was still a remnant who were hidden - and they came out in the right time. When Elijah stood up… this is the hatred against the prophetic - she said: I'm going to kill you! You see, the hatred for the prophetic was very intense. When you're dealing with the spirit realm, you're dealing with pure hate, like you've never seen before. I've encountered it. I've seen it; I've confronted it; and it is full of hate and violence - and it's against you. The fact you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there, and doesn't hate you.

That's why you can't entertain these things, you cannot allow access. We've got to actually stand up and learn how to fight in the spirit; learn how to stand, as sons and daughters, in the position that Christ won for us; and to war a good warfare, where we came to a victory. Amen!

#4 - To seduce people's heart away from God. To seduce.

When Elijah confronted the people, he said: why do you halt between two opinions? Why are you double-minded?

Why is it, that you come into church, but you're living another double life? Why is it, that there's not a consistent commitment to Christ, throughout your life? Why is it, you've got a piece of God, but you've also got a piece of something else?

He said: if God is Lord, then serve Him; but if Baal is lord, then serve him. Now I'm going to show you who the true one is, and he brought fire down from heaven! So whoa, okay, we got it!

I was in a meeting in Singapore, and God started to move, and demons started to manifest and scream out. Pastor Kong and his parents were there, and his mother said: what's going on? The father said: I see there's a greater spirit at work here - and we need to respond to that. These others are scared of it! So, just by seeing that happen, they came up on the altar call, and gave their hearts to Christ. We want to be connected to the stronger power.

Oh God, Your throne will rule forever! Amen! We're the winners! He is the winner! He's already won! He's waiting for us to take hold of His victory; and to rise up and win!

#5 - To undermine and replace kingdom order in relationships.

To undermine marriages and families, undermine church leadership, undermine governmental authorities, undermine authorities all through society. Any kingdom order that God has set up, and put in place - this spirit wants to undermine that order.

Here's the thing... People want God's blessing; but God blesses what He orders. God doesn't bless chaos; He blesses things which come into order. He's a God of order. All of nature has got order in it; it's ordered by God.

The spirit world has order in it too, so my role is to seek first His kingdom, meaning to align with His order, and priorities, in my relationships. If I'm aligned, then I'm automatically positioned, by the faith I've expressed, for God's blessing to flow.

Understand then, that the devil wants to corrupt God's order everywhere - to make men passive, so they don't pray, and become a priest and a leader in their home. Now we have a whole culture that reinforces that. You've got to join the rebellion against that, and stand up and say: actually, we want our lives in God's order. We want men standing up, and being the head of the home, as God called them to be.

Now it may not be a PC kind of language, but I tell you what the Bible says…

“God is the head of Christ. Christ is the head of the man; but man is the head of the woman”.

There is a governmental order. It's not an order of who's important, and who's not important. It's a functionality, to make it work. It's about fulfilling your rightful role, that you're appointed to fulfil - men and women standing together, rightly aligned, so they have authority in the spirit, and can put an umbrella of spiritual protection over the family.

The biggest problem with men, is the roots of rejection, that cause them to become passive, and fail to fulfil their responsibility to lead, and be a priest in their home.

When you take that line, it doesn't really matter why you took it. When you take that line, you are surrendering to the spirit, and permitting, or tolerating, disorder spiritually in the home. Then you wonder why you've got problems…

There's no authority to bring covering over the family. If you're a woman, and you've been hurt, and you never resolve it, then you start to want to control everything, so you feel safe - but then you're out of order, and now you've got a problem. You now are the doorway through which the spirit comes. Your husband has allowed it to be there, and so there's chaos, and constant conflict.

Or, it can be the other way - it may be that the man has been abused, or hurt, or whatever; and he's now got the spirit around his life, such that now he's the controlling, abusive leader in the family. Now he's totally out of order. He's violating God's order, that the man should lead, and serve, and love his family - so he's violating God's order. By violating God's order of functionality, he gives permission for the spirit to operate.

We can still go to church on Sundays; yet we have no power in our lives - why is that? Oh, perhaps you should pray for me? No, no, I want to change you, so you come into divine alignment! If you come into divine alignment, the result is outstanding. God's blessing comes around your life, and that means favour comes around your life. It means that opportunities come.

In other words, we should “Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness” – meaning right order, right relationships, right functionality - and everything you need is added. You initiate a law, that brings the presence of God, and the blessing of God, into your life.

But people react, you see… Our culture is totally against kingdom order. You stand up, and start to talk this, and speak this, and say this… you will unleash hatred against yourself. Where is that coming from? That old spirit, which hates the prophetic, and wants to shut down and destroy God's order. It's an old spirit - there's nothing new about it; but now you see it, and it's very, very violent; and it's very expressive, and it's showing itself all through the west now. The media - you can see it everywhere; you can see it all over the place. It's very tangibly visible. You say something, and immediately, you're falsely accused. That's what's going on! That's where the warfare is!

How do people come under that spirit?

If you look at the story of Ahab, you find two things that he did. Number 1, he entered a marriage relationship, or he became entangled in a wrong relationship. The second thing he did was, for the sake of peace, he sold himself out, to do what would keep her happy. Just to keep the peace, he tolerated ungodliness. Does that sound familiar?

He was passive, in the face of things being wrong. That goes right back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam was silent, when something was going down. Silence - no fight, no resistance, just for the sake of peace. You see this all come out again, in the final confrontation with Jezebel, where she's finally taken out - you'll find the key issue is ‘peace’.

Can we just be more ‘tolerant’? But the thing is, it's a tolerance of ungodliness; and the moment you stand up for what is right, there's a vicious reaction against it. It's not tolerant! It's totally intolerant - full of hate! We must champion the truth - champion God's word!

How does it get in?

Let me give you a few ways that the spirit gets to operate into people's lives, so you can recognise that it's far more common than we realise.

The number one doorway is: unresolved heart pain. When we are wounded in relationships, when we are hurt by people - it could be in family, with a father, a mother, in life, in school… There are so many ways that we get hurt… we live in a fallen world - stuff happens.

When we're hurt, we're faced with a decision, a crisis. I can either surrender myself to the Lord, turn to the Holy Ghost, and bring that pain, and injustice, and all that's happened to me, to the cross; and find the grace of God to forgive and bless - and I grow stronger, and more yielded to the Spirit. Or, I can decide to save myself, by building walls around my heart to defend me, and now I begin to control my pain, and control my relationships, and my circumstances, so I can't be hurt again.

That's how it gets in, very simply. Every time, instead of letting go the pain, and being healed, and releasing forgiveness, you decide to bury it, and try to control it - you get into alliance with that spirit.

Now it works on you: fear, loneliness, rejection, torments. It draws you then, to addictions. The cause of addictions, the root cause, is disconnection in relationships, because of pain in the heart. You can't solve it just getting off the stuff - you've got to fix the pain in the heart. That's how it gains its access - it manipulates people, by seducing them into things that will offer a comfort, but they eventually end up being in bondage to. Pornography, alcohol, drugs, all manners of things - it's a seduction, to try and bring a false comfort to pain, so you can control and medicate your pain, instead of bringing it to the cross - to the price that Jesus paid, and getting free, and healed.

That makes all of us open to the possibility of tolerating that spirit in our life. When you tolerate unresolved offences and hurts, you are tolerating that spirit gaining access to your life. Why? Because you will be afraid of being hurt, so you will try to control life, conversations, and relationships, to prevent being hurt (or to medicate being hurt).

I did that, for a long time; I had my own ways of medicating the pain. I had no idea what it was, but it was all attempting to control pain, to try and soften the pain, to keep myself protected, and it left me isolated, alone, and under the power of that spirit - until I broke my agreement with it, and broke my patterns of doing it.

Here's another way it enters in: it enters in through generational strongholds; through broken family patterns. If the family is broken, and there's generational strongholds of control - a controlling mother or controlling father, then the spirit is in the family. The children are wounded by controlling behaviour.

When a parent is controlling… there is legitimate control; but we're talking about ungodly control. Legitimate control is good boundaries, guidelines, discipline; illegitimate is where you dominate the child, and they have to comply, and they're never able to share their feelings, their heart, what’s going on in their life - their dreams and their passions. They are under pressure to comply with a parent who makes them perform. Their heart gets broken, they get wounded; and then they will try and control the pain - firstly by hiding it. Then they start looking for ways to medicate it, and eventually they repeat the pattern; or marry into someone who is also a controller and perpetuate the problem.

It can be in the culture. Some cultures are so hierarchical, and so strong in their way of doing things, that they actually have control spirits that run right through them - and you can tell that, because you can't say anything. You can't raise a voice. You can't share a differing opinion. You can't question, or ask something, because you will be abused and shut down - that is a controlling culture. Some cultures are like that; some families are very like that; and some churches are like that.

Churches that proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ can be totally filled with a Jezebel spirit, controlling everyone; and the emphasis is always on performance, and external appearance, but never on the heart. People can't talk about what's going on, because they feel that if I say it, then something bad will happen to me. That is a Jezebelic power at work!

This is serious stuff, and it is the enemy of the End-Time move of God. It's the enemy of the church. It's the enemy of the kingdom advancing. It was the enemy in Elijah's day, and it's our enemy. You've got to find out where it attacks you. You've got to find the location of your battle, because if you don't know where your battle is, and what the issue is over, then you won't stand up, and deal with your part in it, and fight.

Ahab tolerated it, and then went along with it; but interestingly, God held him fully accountable for everything that he did - or was done under his name. You can't escape accountability to God.

It's no coincidence that you build something strong, and great, as far as a family; but bitterness and bitter envy, and ambition, will lead to the spirit operating. Someone who has got bitterness in their heart will be looking for power and control. They go into the occult, spiritism, idolatry; and it directly opens the way for controlling spirits. You become afraid to do anything without consulting the spirits or going to the idol. If you've been in a culture like that, then the spirit is already on your life and your life is not free until you're delivered.

Rebellion, when we're hurt, and rejected, and we rebel - the Bible says that a cruel messenger will be sent against them.

1 Samuel 15:23 - “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft…”.

When you rebel against God's order, that usually means that you're rebelling against someone you know - don't tell me what to do. It's kind of an arising, to dishonour people who are in authority, and react and rebel. Of course, if you look in the media, that's what's going on everywhere; but to be part of the kingdom, you must align with God's order. When you align with God's order, and own responsibility for your life, then God's blessing falls on you.

Another way that controlling spirits come into people's lives is through what I call Boundary Violations. Here's how it works... Let me put it this way… my skin is a boundary. Everything inside it belongs to me, and I'm responsible for it. A boundary defines what you're responsible for. I'm responsible for my stuff; you are responsible for your stuff.

I am not responsible to keep you happy - it's impossible for me to do that. If I try to keep you happy, then I'm under your control. I'm under the control of a spirit. I am not responsible for your happiness; you are. My responsibility is to live the life to follow the Lord; and if you don't like that, and get unhappy with that, well I'm sorry - that's too bad.

Boundary violations are when you take on someone's responsibility that isn't yours. That means you control them, or you're trying to control a dysfunctional relationship. For example, if a parent fails; let’s say, a mother or father is an alcoholic, and one of the children steps up, and takes on their responsibility - it all looks good, but it's driven by fear, and the desire to save myself. That person enters a great bondage, that affects them all their life. They're trying to control every relationship, to keep it safe.

There are boundary violations, and when someone has got a control spirit around them, they can never bring forth any leader under them. You can never produce a leader if you're a controller, because they'll be forced to please you, and they will bury their gift, and their identity, just in the order of getting peace.

It's so corrupt! The spirit is so corrupt, and so we must hate it, as God hates it. You know God hates it so much, that He gave you a free will, to decide your own destiny. He loves us so much, that He will give us a free will about our destiny. We've got to be able to give people free will, to make their own choices and be responsible. This boundary-blurring is a big issue - when I take over someone's responsibility that's not mine, then I start to move in witchcraft. When I start to prophesy over someone, in things outside the boundaries of prophecy, then I'm operating in witchcraft.

It's such an insidious spirit, that it creeps in. That's why, when you start to get an understanding of this, you want to be under authority; you want to be in alignment, because you understand what's at stake. Understanding that it's about a kingdom, and that kingdoms have an order and a governance, and the anointing flows within the boundaries of that governance. The moment you remove the boundaries of God's order, now it's like a river moving with no banks. There's a flood, and all kinds of junk happens.

You will find that when people are like this, they show certain traits. Maybe you'll find that as you listen to these traits, you may realise - ooh, that's me! I do that! Or you repent? You repent - it's quite simple, stop doing it. You are hurting people. You're not making it better. You're participating in the destruction! You're cooperating with a spirit.

You see, if I said: have you yielded to a demonic spirit recently? They say: no, not me; would never do; I'm a Christian! But if there's brokenness in your life, and you start surrendering to ungodliness, then you're allowing the spirit to express itself through you. You're increasing its ability to get control. Here's a few things it does…

#1 - It flipflops between being highly aggressive, and highly seductive. All of it is about: I want you to do what I want, and I'm going to find a way; so, it's going to be soft, or hard, or it may be both. Soft to start with, and then hard later.

So, number 1 is manipulation - relationships are emotionally manipulated, by making you feel guilty. You don't love me! Yes, I do love you, but I'm not going to do that. Understand? It's just a manipulative ploy, trying to make you to feel bad, so you feel obliged to do something.

#2 – Accusation. You're this, you're that - false accusation. Blame - it's all your fault. No, it isn't. I've got my bit; and you've got your bit. I'm just going to own my bit; stop blaming me! When you blame people, you act like a victim, so you get tears.

#3 – Victim. I've been in encounters with people where I've raised an issue, and at first it was vehement denial, then accusation, then blame. Then when I kept pressing, they suddenly collapse, and now it's all tears. Oh, I'm so hurt, my background… Next thing you know, you're feeling sad for the person. It's a flipflop thing, can go one or the other; and when you meet people like this, they're very difficult to work with, and usually conflict, and confrontation, are the only way that you're going to find your way through it.

#4 – Agenda. There's always an agenda to everything, so when you're dealing with someone who's got the spirit operating in their life, nothing they ever do is without a hidden agenda - there's always a reason they do it. They will do all kinds of things - they come into church, and they'll serve, and they volunteer to serve.

#5 – Flattery. They flatter; but the flatter is seduction - it's dishonest. Praise and affirmation is good; but flattery is just saying things to impress you, so I can gain access; because a person with that spirit will want to gain access to whoever's authorised to lead, so they can undermine their leadership, and gain power and control. That's the agenda!

#6 – Intimidation. One aspect of it is manipulation - through guilt and tears, through fussing, all that kind of stuff. Another way is through intimidation - through anger, threats, or threats to withhold. It can be as simple as withholding intimacy in marriage, withholding money, withholding all kinds of things - the threat to withhold puts a pressure on people.

#7 - Sharp criticism is a very violent way. In the Asian culture, they use shaming or scolding as a way of controlling children. It doesn't control them, it just gets them quiet, and it wounds their heart, because you've unleashed against them a demonic spirit. It creates dependency. You'll find the intimidating aspects of this person operating will be passive-aggressive. They may say something, but you can feel the anger in it, and you feel intimidated by it.

#8 - When you're around someone who's got a strong, controlling spirit, you're always on eggshells, because I don't know how they're going to be next. There's a control spirit operating. You've got to call the bluff on that one. Why should you walk around feeling afraid - worrying, or guarding what you say? Because you're trying to get their acceptance, or please them, or whatever? You've got to stop it. If they're unhappy, they're unhappy. Oh, I see you're unhappy; what's the trouble? It's their problem, not yours. When you tiptoe around people, you've taken ownership of keeping them happy. You've taken on a responsibility that isn't yours. You can never fulfil it. But if you don't make them happy, then they can make your life miserable, so you've got to have the courage to stand up to that.

See, it's seductive; and then it's threatening. Seductive - it's a goddess of love and seduction; but it's also a goddess of war. It will be violent against you. You've got to learn to be able to stand up in the Lord, to overcome the thing. You find it in the workplace; in homes; in churches; or in organisations. There will be the seductive side - in my experience, it's firstly by flattery. Oh pastor, you're so wonderful, your gifts are wonderful, I'm just so touched; but you can feel there's a lack of authenticity in it. There is genuine honour; but “flattery works ruin”, the Bible says. Sometimes it's flirting, slightly seductive talk, innuendos - all that kind of thing. It goes on in the workplace, in relationships - it just has hints of sexuality in it. That's to seduce, to draw people, and if you've got a broken marriage, or pain or struggle in your marriage, then that's the thing that will draw you away, and seduce you into something that will destroy you.

#9 - They can seduce people by false prophetic words, that can seduce people into agreeing with them, because they seem spiritual. People operating in this might seem spiritual, but if you look at the fruit, no one is built into the church - they just build to themselves. What I look for, in a leader - can you release other people, or not? If you can't release other people, then you're just building to yourself. There's something wrong with this - this is controlling. Are people being built into Jesus, or are they built to you? It's how this thing operates, and it's ghastly - horrendous. I hate the thing so much.

#10 - It's self-promoting. All kinds of ways of promoting self, usually by talking about what I can do; but also, criticising and undermining others. When you have a person with that spirit, they will smile to your face, but behind your back, they'll criticise you and run you down, and their strategy is very clear: undermine everyone, until in the end I'm the one, the last man standing.

They try and gain access to a pastor. If you pastor a church, they try and get near to you, by a process of serving, flattery, seductive, all that kind of thing. The idea is to gain control, gain your confidence, and your voice, and be the influencer in your life - not necessarily in charge, but just the one who's behind the scenes. It's horrendous! It can be hard to pick, because the person seems nice, and they do love Jesus, but they're broken, and a part of them is functioning under the influence of a spirit, that has trained them in this way of operating.

Repentance is required - you've got to deal with the spirit behind it, by leading the person to repentance. The only way through it is repentance. If you try to confront the person, if you try and have a meeting with them and say: listen, I need to talk about something I'm not happy with - you know what's going to happen?

Total Denial! No! They will deny so vehemently, what you know to be a fact, that you will feel ‘confused’, as to whether you got it right. The denial is so strong. They will literally lie, straight to your face, because they don't want to lose control.

Then, if the denial doesn't work, and you keep pressing in with the facts – and you've got to have those facts, if you're ever going to confront a person who's got that spirit operating. These are the facts; you present the facts; and you have a witness to the facts... I've had people sabotage my witnesses, and then I'm left with egg all over me, like I'm just an idiot. I've failed a few times, and I’ve had to get smart about how to deal with this thing now. So first they deny… then they'll blame you! It will suddenly turn; and it's all on you - you're being blamed! They will accuse you! So now it's turned from denial, to now attacking.

If none of that works, and you remain resolute… then they collapse in tears! And still, it's still not taking responsibility. It's trying to get you to feel sorry for them, so you take your eyes off what the issue is - they refuse to deal with the issue. It's horrendous!

You've probably had some experiences, I've had a few experiences with it; but in the end, I could very accurately predict it! I could tell people: this is what's going to happen; and they'd say: man, it happened just like you said!

In secular society, they might call them a narcissist. Anyway, how are we going to get free? There's an anointing of the Holy Spirit that breaks the yoke. One of the great things I love is that the Bible tells us of people that overcame that spirit, but it always requires repentance. Samson was overcome by that spirit, lost his vision, became confused, lost his anointing, lost his strength… but when he repented, God restored his strength, and he stood up!

I can remember when I went through a major battle, and my own son said to me: dad, you're going to have to fight another battle in this area. You're going to need to stand up and bring this thing down. I knew it was a word from God, from my own son - and I knew what that meant. There was a warfare, that went on for about nine months; so I can tell you exactly how to pray, how to fight, and how to stand up; but the first thing you've got to realise is, you must let go of all entanglements, that this thing has got access to your life in.

There has to be a deep repentance, from any place you’ve become entangled - whether it's some sexual thing, some kind of little habit you've got, anything that that thing works to manipulate you - you have to bring it to the cross. There's got to be a recognition: I'm in a warfare; it's about my inheritance; it's about my legacy; it's about my future; it's about other people's lives, as well as mine. I will make a stand! I will begin to fight!

The first thing is to recognise: it's a fight.

The second thing is to repent - of every place where I tolerated this. Did I allow this to happen?

Don't go blaming someone else! I have men come, and they complain that their wives are controlling, and all this kind of stuff. I say: shut up! You need to man up! You need to repent that you have tolerated this your whole life, just because you just wanted someone to love you. You want someone to be nice to you; and you haven't got the strength in you, to stand up, and lead properly, and courageously.

You need to repent every place you've tolerated this thing, because repentance will bring you back into heavenly alignment, and you will then be re-authorised to confront the spirit. When you confront the spirit, you can bring resolution to the issues; but if the spirit is not confronted, there will always be a problem of this thing working behind the scenes to interrupt it all.

The first step is to recognise: it's a problem; and make the decision: I will fight.

The guy in the Bible who stood up against this thing was Jehu. The Spirit of the Lord came on him, and he just went for it; and this is interesting... The first person he met said: is it peace? Can we work this out? Can we tolerate? Can we get on? No peace! Next one came, is it peace? No peace! Next one said: is it peace? No peace, while this witchcraft continues!

There will never be peace, while this spirit is allowed to operate! Peace is what you get after the battle - when you win. Peace comes from victory!

It says: he pulled his bow back, full strength, and gave it everything. Then he went into the city. The moment he goes into the city, Jezebel painted her eyes up! She wants to seduce him, wants to impress him, wants to give herself power, whatever. Then she begins to mock him: oh, you're going to be like one of those other guys? What good came of him, when he tried this on?

He said: who is on my side? Who is on the Lord's side? Throw that thing down! The eunuchs, the people that had had their life, their energy, their identity stolen away by that spirit - they rose up and cast it down. This is an hour for those who have been hurt by that spirit, those who have had their strength taken away, those who've lost their identity - to start to stand up again!

Say: God, I'm taking hold of You! I repent! I bring the pain in my heart to the cross, for You to heal. I release forgiveness, and now I stand in my place, in the spirit. You've got to understand where the battle is and what your position is. We are sons of the living God! He has won the victory! The devil is defeated; so, the only power he's got, is the bit that I gave him. That's why I disentangle; have a repented, clean heart, and begin to seek the Lord.

How do you warfare? When you're positioned right, you learn to build your spirit, praying in tongues, until your spirit is strengthened - start to stand up, on the inside!

You need to stand up on the inside, stop rolling over, stop lying down, stop feeling sorry for yourself! Don't be like Elijah, and hide in the cave, and feel sorry for yourself. Stand up, man of God! Stand up! There's an anointing, of the Spirit of Might, that comes on you. Start to pray in tongues every day! Commit to pray! You're fighting for your life! You're fighting for something that's valuable; so, put up a fight!

My fight is for my future. My fight is for the generation that will follow me. I will win this battle! Pray in the spirit; begin to engage with God, until you become strengthened on the inside again. Your spirit starts to stand up, and then out of that place you decree - you speak to the spirit, and you exercise your authority. I speak to that spirit! I forbid your operation against me; against my wife; against my children - whatever it's against, you've got to find where the battle is. Wherever the battle is, forbid its operation.

I bind all your spirits; I forbid all communication - because there's a whole network of spirits. Now, I release the power of God into that situation. I release the angels of God to work. I release revelation. I release an exposure of that thing. I decree the kingdom of God has come into that place!

You've got to use the word of God. You've got to start to exercise something in the spirit. You're the voice, for God in heaven to manifest on the earth. Repent! Get your heart right with God. Build your strength in the spirit!

When David was overcome and defeated – when everyone wanted to kill him, wanted to destroy him… he rose up inside! He strengthened himself in the Lord, and then he started to hear God, and God gave him a strategy. He ended up on top.

When you win this battle, you'll end up on top. You'll end up better than you were. You'll end up with the blessing of God released. You'll end up with things you never expected, because God has been activated to work - because you stopped tolerating something ungodly, and you stood up and said: I and my family, we will serve the Lord. We're going to honour God, and so as the head of the household, I'm going to take contention up against that spirit.

It's quite a simple thing. It's basically the reconnection with God, by removing the entanglements in your heart, and then just pressuring the spirit, day by day. I usually do it for about three weeks. I pressure it, and pressure it, and sometimes there are massive reactions. Sometimes massive reactions happen, and then sometimes it just flushes out, and there it is. Now the problem is out, and we can see it, then we can have a good discussion about new boundaries. You can address the problem.

Always enter spiritual warfare first; and when the Lord says, then you address the problem face to face. You have the facts, you set it out; and then you set new boundaries: this is how it's going to be. You need to be quite insistent, and strong in this area, and not be afraid. Fear is how it will gain access again.

My trust is in the Lord. I'm not afraid of what you will do! I remember standing and facing someone, and they said: this is going to happen, and this is going to happen, and this is going to happen...

I said: I don’t mind. I'm telling you what God wants, and this is how it's going to be. People that had been influenced by that spirit just walked away, but God came through, and we went from strength to strength to strength.

I had people accuse me falsely. I had people say all kinds of things to me. I had people speak false prophesies over me - and none of them have come about. The opposite came about! Exactly the opposite! You see, because my heart was clean, I didn't mind.

God said this to me: don't try to defend yourself. Let Me do that. You'll just make a problem that you can't solve. He said: just be an honourable man; be generous, and honour people; forgive people, and just follow the vision that I have given you.

Don't become entangled in fighting the people. Our warfare is not against flesh and blood. You've got to rise in your spirit. Will there be difficulties? Will it be painful? Of course! But the outcome… You've flushed the spirit out, and you've brought a change in the relationship. Either you're not in it anymore; or you're in it, and it's changed.

If you change you, then everyone around you must adjust, because there's no longer the old you. The people who get angry when you set new boundaries are the ones who were benefiting by you not having those boundaries. The ones who get angry that you've got a new authority in your life, are the ones who benefitted when you didn't have any authority in your life, and you compromised.

That's why we need to stand - get your life back, come out of the cave. Elijah - what are you doing here? You don't belong in a cave! If you're defeated, you need to open your heart and say: God, tonight I'm going to break out of that place. Amen!

Sons Break Strongholds

Sun 8 Nov 2020 AM  « Back to Top

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If we are a son or a daughter of the living God, then we are called to be a builder. Relationships must be built, and sustained. A church has to be built.

Our relationships are like a garden. They can have weeds in them, and they become overgrown. The garden of our heart, and our relationships, need to be nurtured - you need to protect them.

Adam was given a mandate, as a son of God - put in a territory, put in a place (in a garden), and his mandate was to cultivate it - to nurture it, and develop that garden.

He was also told to protect it. There's a warfare, around being fruitful - around your marriage, family, finances, and your relationship with God. You must become then, a ‘breakthrough’ person.

Introduction

What if God wanted to touch you, and you were just switching off? What if you were right at a point, where God was wanting to speak into your heart about change, and you just switched off? One of the dilemmas we have is, we get so used to the worship time, that we just turn off; rather than hungering for Him, and lingering with Him, saying: Jesus, I love You. I deeply love You. I long to encounter Your love. I want to be rooted and grounded deeply in Your love. I want to reflect Your love to the people around me. I want to break through the limitations to being a loving person. Come Holy Spirit, speak into our hearts. Lord, we just honour You.

There's a lot of people right now that are in just agitated state - agitated because of election results in New Zealand, agitated because of what's happening in America. But you need to get your eyes fixed on what counts. Jesus said: My kingdom is not of this world - otherwise my servants would fight. We've got to watch that we don't get caught up in fighting against people, when our battle is against hidden spiritual powers. We're called to love people and hate the devil.

Jesus said this, concerning His kingdom… It begins like a little rock, then becomes a mountain, that will fill the whole earth. We must always stay centred on Him, and His kingdom. Our role is to be aligned with Him, and His kingdom. Whatever happens in the elections, God's instruction is the same: pray for those who are in authority, that we may have peace. We're not to hate them, judge them, or speak against them. We are to dwell in peace; and pray for those in authority. Our primary call is the kingdom of God, to become ambassadors for heaven. How can you become an ambassador for heaven, while you tolerate hatred, and bitterness, and anger, and deep feeling of injustice? We need to be clean of all those things. Say, Father, let Your will be done.

This is what got the disciples agitated. They wanted Jesus to lead a kingdom, that would rise and overthrow the Romans. He said: you don't understand. My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and it operates in the spirit realm, through people whose hearts are surrendered. Lift your heart to the Lord, lift your hands. I surrender. Lord, cleanse my heart, from being entangled with the affairs of life, of this world, to such a degree that I've lost sight of just loving people, and loving You. Lord, return my focus to what I'm called to be, and do - to be a son of the Almighty, an ambassador for the kingdom. Lord, we honour You. We thank You. Amen.

Main Message

I want to just continue one thought, related to the seminar I did. It's called “Sons Break Strongholds”. The Bible is very clear, if we are a son or a daughter of the living God, then we are called to be a builder. There is nothing in life that doesn't require building. A marriage must be built, and it must be sustained. Relationships, we build them, and we sustain them. A church has to be built. Nothing happens by accident. Everything must be built.

Our relationships are like a garden. They can have weeds in them, and they become overgrown. The garden of our heart, and our relationships, need to be nurtured - you need to protect them. Adam was given a mandate, as a son of God - put in a territory, put in a place (in a garden), and his mandate was to cultivate it. In other words, nurture it, and develop that garden. The second thing he was told to do, was to protect it. In other words, there's a warfare, around being fruitful. There's a warfare, around your marriage, around family, around finances, and there's a warfare around your relationship with God. You must become then, a ‘breakthrough’ person.

I want to look at this area of strongholds…

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 – “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty in God, to pull down strongholds (mighty through God), casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ”.

We are involved in a conflict, but it's not a conflict with people. When you start to get angry, and reactionary, and start to name-call people, then you've lost the plot. You've lost the battle. You're already defeated. Our battle is not against people; our battle is against something that's unseen. It's in a spiritual realm – unseen, but very real; hostile, spirit beings. That's where the warfare always is, and they operate, and they work through people; so, we end up reacting to people, instead of loving people. We end up reacting to them, and then perpetuating, or reflecting, the lack of love that's in their own life.

Jesus has equipped us. The Bible talks about “the weapons of our warfare”, meaning that we have a “warfare”, and we have “weapons”, that God says you can use; but if you don't use them, then you will be defeated in the warfare. So, we must realise, there's a warfare. Notice in that verse, that he talks about “pulling down strongholds”. A stronghold is something you've got to pull it down; and it requires an intentional effort. The word ‘pull down’ is to ‘demolish’ something. Everyone that's sitting here today… there is some area, that you must demolish.

When they went into the land that God promised them, He said: see that good and fruitful land? I give it all to you. I've given it into your hands, and I've overcome the enemy, but… you must go in and possess it. You have to do something. If you want to develop in your relationship with God, there is a conflict over that. If you want to see more miracles in your life, there's a conflict around that. If you want to see greater breakthroughs of finances, there's a conflict around that. Everything that God has promised us, we must take hold of, by the exercise of faith. It doesn't just come to us - so we have a spiritual battle. Every believer is called to be a warrior, and a builder - every one of us.

Freedom is a legacy given to sons. Part of your inheritance, as a believer, is that you are called to freedom. I just loved it up here today, around that offering time, just watching everyone being free. I just love it when people can laugh, dance, enjoy God, and just enjoy the freedom. We're called to that. We're called to liberty.

Galatians 5:13 – “You are called unto liberty...” You're called to it! We're called to freedom! Man, I love that, we're called to it. You're called to freedom, and freedom… you can see it! You can feel it, because it shows through people's emotions - the joy, the freedom. There's all this freedom; but it has to be taken hold of, and then expressed, and valued in our life.

Galatians 5:13 – “You're called to freedom, but you don't use freedom to indulge the flesh, but by love, serve one another”.

The real freedom we have is when we learn to love people and serve them; but anything that stops you loving people is a stronghold. Anything that stops you being free to serve people is a stronghold. It's resisting you reflecting God's love to people. So, what is a stronghold? God wants you to get a breakthrough today.

A stronghold is a fortified place, a heavily defended place, behind which is an enemy. It's a heavily defended place; a place of survival or refuge. It's a place which serves as a centre for a hostile group, or a group that all have a common mindset. That's dictionary definition; so, what then, is a spiritual stronghold? It is an ungodly mindset. It is a way of thinking. It is a way of behaving, that hinders you coming into the knowledge and experience of God. Let me say it again: an ungodly mindset; or a way of thinking and behaving; and it's got several characteristics…

1) It's probably been established over a period of time - and you've gotten used to living with it.

2) It strongly resists change. You can say: oh God, I have a new resolution - a new year’s resolution… but they never work, because they rely on the flesh. They rely on your willpower; and sometimes, underneath it, there's something else.

3) It's empowered by unseen spiritual beings. There's something that energises it; something is giving it power. If you don't dismantle what's giving it power, then you struggle to change. A lot of people come to church, and they love the atmosphere, they love the experience - and that's wonderful, but God wants you to change, and become a worshipper, and become a free person - one that knows how to love people, and serve people. See, that's being free of it.

4) It undermines your relationships, and success in life. If you have a financial stronghold, a stronghold of poverty, it will affect you getting wealth, and growing successful, and prospering - no matter how hard you work. It will increase loneliness in your life, because it's the secret part. It's the part you've got hidden. It's the part you covered up. It's the part you don't want anyone to find out about. It's that ‘little secret’ you're wrestling with constantly - that's your stronghold. In that place where you're wrestling, the stronghold, there's no revelation of love - you're isolated, and alone, and in pain. When we have those strongholds, we try to look good, but in fact many of us are struggling with something.

Finally, here's the key one, which it says very clearly in that passage…

5). It actively obstructs you experiencing and knowing God. One of the key characteristics of a spiritual stronghold… it actively obstructs you experiencing and knowing God. That's why you need to deal with it. That's why you need to find what your strongholds are, and overcome them, because they are standing between you and a greater dimension of God's love and blessing.

If you have a stronghold, for example, of rejection, there will be a wound in your heart, that came some point in your life. There will be a lie, or a belief – that I'm not accepted, I'm not good enough… and that's been there so long, that demons now have gained access to your life, and they continue the torment. So, every time you look at life, you look through the filter of rejection - they don't want me… they don't like me... I don't fit in here... I don't belong here - it's talking all the time. It's a stronghold, with spiritual beings that torment, that keep you fixed there.

When you have a stronghold of rejection, usually then unbelief gets with it, and it stops you believing I could experience from God. It hinders you. It obstructs you. God can be moving, and yet you're gripped in rejection and unbelief, and so you can't receive from Him. That’s why we need to overcome them, because they exalt self. They put you at the front - they put your thoughts, and your ways, at the front; and they stop you experiencing and knowing God - so we want to deal with them.

Let's talk about examples of some strongholds. I know ones that I've wrestled with have been in our family for generations, but God calls you to be the generation that arises in faith and brings an end to that pattern. He calls you to be the generation that brings a breakthrough, and builds a different future, but you can't build a great future if you don't address the things that obstruct you experiencing God, and His provision for your life.

With strongholds, frequently they're hidden, they're secret. They're hidden away, because we don't want anyone to know about them. Sometimes they're obvious, so obvious that people react to you, because they see the way you are – unloving, reactionary, angry, and a bully; or critical, or negative, or passive… or whatever it is. There are many strongholds, that the Bible talks about.

There's a stronghold of bitterness - that's the most common one. A stronghold of bitterness is rooted in hurts and offences that we’ve never resolved. You don't always feel bitter, but you react; you complain; you're negative. You react hostilely, when you're mistreated, because you're interpreting it wrong. A stronghold of bitterness, the Bible says, is a “root that defiles”. Imagine having an enemy that has occupied part of your heart, so no matter what you do, there are hidden spiritual forces trying to work through your mouth, through your mind, and through your attitudes, to corrupt every relationship you've got. If you want to build, you must overcome your strongholds. It's not either/or; build or fight; build or battle. I've got to actually fight, to overcome things that resist me building; that are in the way of knowing God; that are in the way of my marriage experiencing more; in the way of my family; in the way of my relationships experiencing more.

Sexual sin, and lust, are another big one; and often it's been there for years. Sometimes it's been within a family - the mind tormented with defiling pictures, or unclean thoughts. Sometimes we've done things that have opened the door to that, and now it's become something that's got a hold of you, and grips you, and now it defiles everything. You can't see people right. Instead of looking on people and seeing them as a beautiful person in the image of God, you're corrupted by the stronghold.

Bitterness, lust and sexual sin - these things defile us. These are strongholds. We can have many different kinds of strongholds. There can be a stronghold of rejection - it affects the way you see yourself, and the way you see people around you. Men with rejection can't build great marriages, because they want someone to love them, and care for them, and mummy them, etc, but they don't know how to love people. God says: “husbands, love your wife”. So, these strongholds must be dealt with!

We've got to address any strongholds that stop us being the people God called us to be. We're called to freedom!

For some people, the stronghold is one of shame. Shame is a message that says: something is wrong with me; I'm not good enough. Shame causes people to hide, when we feel like something is broken in our life. We've been put down by people, shamed by people… sometimes it's in families. Sometimes it's in cultures, that use shame as the weapon to hold you, and control you; and when you've got that shame around you, you can never enter intimate relationships.

All strongholds resist love. All strongholds resist experiencing God. All strongholds leave you alone.

Shame is a major one. It's a mindset, that something is wrong with me; we hide.

Addictions are another stronghold. When people lack the experience of love, where love has been violated, or love has been withheld from us - that's what causes these strongholds. They're all a love deficit somewhere, and the thing that will deal with them is not our fighting, and trying, and performing. It's the encounter with the love of God, the love of a Father, who loves us. Addictions usually are rooted in shame and pain, the pain of being wounded, hurt, abused, abandoned, beaten, whatever it is; and it's unresolved in the heart, so we feel a deep shame. Shame causes people to go into addictions, and that not only increases the shame; it now gives them a secondary problem as well. We must resolve those things. These are strongholds to deal with.

Another major stronghold and you see it today all over the world (it's fuelled by media), fear - fear and anxiety. Fear is a spirit, the Bible says. “God has not given you a spirit of fear, He's given you a spirit of power, a spirit of love”. God has given you a spirit that reveals you're loved - and it overcomes the fear! A lot of people right now are reacting in fear, because of what they see going on in the world; but we're not to be that kind of people - we're called to be something different. We're called to be passionately filled with the love of God; and having an answer to the fears that others have!

How can you do that, if you've got a stronghold of fear? You'll be attracted to things that stir your fear. What's going to happen? What's going to happen next? There are so many people living that way - fearful of what's going to happen next. Just read the Bible - it tells what's going to happen next! It tells us that the big end of everything is Jesus, and His kingdom prevailing over all things! It tells us that before that happens, there's going to be a lot of troubles in the earth; and yet the whole church… people get so full of fear when they see stuff happening! You're yielding to the wrong spirit!

Those things that are happening, that engender fear… that are stirred by others engendering fear… are sent to try and attack you; and bring you into fear; bring you into agreement with it. God wants you to be stirred to overcome it, to break that stronghold, so you live in no fear of what you're reading and seeing. In fact, you stop reading, and seeing a lot of stuff, because your focus is on an invisible kingdom. Your focussed on looking to Jesus - the author, and finisher, of our faith. It's our faith that will overcome.

How can you overcome, if you keep filling your mind with the wrong stuff? We're to be caught up in praise and worship, as sons and daughters of the living God; building a house that honours Him; and having the boldness to come forth, out of His presence, with answers.

Strongholds, they don't go away. You must overcome them; and that stronghold is set in front of you, for your maturity. If you won't defeat your stronghold, you remain immature. If you'll take the challenge, and face, and overcome the stronghold you have, you will grow in maturity.

You will be able to build upon now that new piece of land; like in the Old Testament - there was a piece of land, that's occupied by the enemy. If you want the land, then overcome the enemy. When you've overcome the enemy, now you plant, and cultivate, and use the land for your benefit - that's how war works. We are to overcome the places in our mind and heart where there are strongholds, and to cultivate the word of God, cultivate the love of God, cultivate faith. It's God's plan for us. That's God's plan!

All these strongholds are caused by violations of love, or a withdrawing of love. The remedy will be the love of God. It's encountering what love is really like. Freedom will begin when we start to connect with the one who loves us and start to experience His love.

When the Prodigal Son returned home, he was in a mess… but his father ran to him, embraced him, and hugged him, and loved him, and restored him - that's what love looks like!

How are we going to break strongholds? We've got to make a decision, that I will do all I can, to connect with the love of God, through worship. I will begin to engage Him; and then I need to address the strongholds...

If you're going to overcome a stronghold you've got to recognise there's one there - recognise the pattern. Everything begins when you recognise that you've got a problem - and call it by its name.

Secondly, it requires you take responsibility for the change. Don't wait for someone to pray for you. That will help, but you've got to own what you have to do, to deal with that thing. You're in agreement with something - you've tolerated it living in your life, and it's your journey to overcome it, so you can grow. Fathers give their sons challenges.

Third thing we need to do, to deal with a stronghold, is resolve the hidden pain. Usually with a stronghold, there's pain somewhere. You were wounded, you were hurt, you were rejected. Someone did this, or did that, or withheld, or betrayed – whatever it is, under the stronghold, there's always some pain to acknowledge, and grieve over, and bring to the cross. Is there someone I need to forgive? Do I need to release forgiveness to someone? Do I need to repent, that I've held this thing, that I've agreed with this thing? Do I need to repent that this thing has become an idol, that I've bowed down and served? Instead of encountering God, I've let this thing dominate my life.

God is wanting to bring us, and His end time church is going to be full of worshippers, full of people who love His presence, full of people that are abandoned before Him, full of people that can flow with the Holy Spirit, full of people that can stay in His presence, enjoying Him, knowing how to bring heaven to earth. That's the people God is building. That's why He wants you to be free of the stronghold.

Do you have to break your agreement, or renounce your agreement, with something? Then renounce it! Speak the words. Cancel your agreement with fear. Cancel your agreement with rejection. Cancel your agreement with unbelief. Cancel your agreement with those things. Cancel listening to criticism. Cancel it! Break your agreement with it; and then make your stand, and speak against it, and resist it.

That is what sets you free; but after you're free, you must build in that part of your life. Every time you encounter God's love in that part of your life, the revelation of His love helps to build us, and establish us, in truth. God loves His people. He's committed to raising up a family of overcoming sons. You're called to be one of them. You're called to rebuild, overtake, and overcome the enemy, in whatever part he's robbed from you.

Closing Prayer

I believe some people today need a breakthrough. I don't know what your breakthrough is in, but people here today are needing a breakthrough.

Perhaps it's fear and anxiety? You say: God, I've been listening to stuff, reading stuff, watching stuff, and my fear levels have gone high. I really want to break my agreement with that and repent of agreeing with that. I want to refocus my life on the eternal kingdom, and upon You.

Perhaps it's bitterness? You say: oh man, I've got some anger and issues underneath in my heart, I need to address those. Come on, deal with it today. Don't put it off. Name it; and start to press in, to change it.

Perhaps it's some area of uncleanness that keeps badgering you, and coming around you? Don't just agree with it, or tolerate it - stand up, and push it back.

You are called to freedom! You are called to liberty. You are called to it. Jesus paid a price for it. It's yours to take hold of, if faith will rise in your heart. You say: I don't have to live with that stronghold anymore. I can push through that stronghold. Jesus - You conquered that thing on my behalf. I'm identifying with You, breaking my agreement with it and breaking through it today.

What is it? A stronghold of poverty, stronghold of failure? Whatever it is, you say: God, today I want to deal with that thing. Who is ready to deal with something, and say: God, I can see something in my life, it's just there constantly, it's hindering me - I want to overcome it!

Sons overcome strongholds. Sons are fighters. Sons are warriors. Sons learn how to stand up - to be men and women of God.

That's you! That's who you are. Don't let the devil tell you that you're not that. That's who you are. Don't you live out of the old identity, live out of who you are now. You're a son. You're a son of the living God! You are loved. You are blessed. You have an inheritance. Freedom is your inheritance. Reach out by faith and take hold of it, come on.

If you're needing a breakthrough today, say: Jesus, I am coming today to break my agreement with that stronghold.

Rejection, bitterness, unforgiveness, unclean torments. People struggling with fear, disappointment, or intimidation. People struggling with grief… make your way to the altar. Lift your hands to Jesus. People struggling with shame, the words spoken over you, the treatment you got, the looks, the words... Break out of that shame today.

People struggling with addictions, whatever it is, it's a poor substitute for love. It's a withered substitute for love. Whatever addiction you've got, you say: God, I'm using that as a substitute for love. I want to break the power of that thing today. Say: God, I know who I am. I'm a child of God. Freedom is my legacy, and inheritance - I'm taking hold of that today.

Perhaps you've never received Jesus Christ as your Saviour? You've never given your life to Christ? This would be a great day to receive Jesus as your Saviour.

I want you to fix your eyes on Jesus. There will be people come and pray with you. They will pray a prayer of agreement, to break whatever it is you've decided to break your agreement with. They're not coming to save you; they're coming to agree with you. They're agreeing with your decision: I am a son of God. I am a child of the living God. I am a daughter of a King. I'm part of a royal family.

Before we pray, just name (before the Lord in your heart, or with your mouth quietly), what it is you want to break out of. Name it, call it what it is. Stop blaming people. It's my thing. I choose today to rise against it.

Is there some pain you need to bring to the Lord? Is there someone you need to forgive? Is there something you need to repent of? Do you need to break your agreement? Declare your identification with Jesus Christ, and then break your agreement with that stronghold, and command every spirit that's behind it, to go from your life.

We're going to worship God together, and in that atmosphere of worship, freedom comes! In the Bible, sometimes they shouted it, and then freedom came. People are going to come and lay hands on you, and You'll be delivered. Follow me in this prayer...

Father, I come to You in Jesus' name. I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord! I'm redeemed from every stronghold, every evil spirit. Freedom is my inheritance. Today in Jesus' name, I break agreement with my stronghold, with the spirits behind it, with the lies behind it. I break my agreement now! I command it to loose from me! I declare now, freedom, freedom, freedom! Come on, let's shout to the Lord!

In Jesus' name, I take authority now. I come against every spirit stronghold - witchcraft, rejection, bitterness, unclean spirits, shame, fear, addictions... I command you now, loose in Jesus' name! We decree breakthrough! The power of God is here to minister. Thank You Lord! Your power is here to set people free! Thank You Jesus.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

Sons Break Strongholds

I. Introduction

1. Sons are Builders of Fathers House

* Gal 5:13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

* Your Marriage, Family and Relationships are Important must be built

- Relationships are like a garden…it must be cultivated and protected

- Unresolved issues can grow and sabotage both life and ministry

- Most people are unaware of hidden spiritual roots that sabotage relationship and intimacy

* Sons Breakthrough Spiritual Strongholds and overcome unseen spiritual resistance …

* Breakthrough and then Build

2. A Tree is Known by its Fruit

* Luk 6:43 For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.

* Luk 6:44 For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.

* Luk 6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

* Insights:

- Naturally we recognize a tree by the kind of fruit that it brings forth

- In the same way spiritual roots produce spiritual fruit good or bad

- Unless the root is removed it will continue to sprout and produce fruit

- Jesus reveals that the Heart is a soil that produces fruit good and bad

- Learning new skills, or making resolutions, or trying harder will not deal with the spiritual root

- Spiritual roots must be identified and removed, and love must be cultivated and increased

3. Strongholds must be Demolished

* 2Co 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,

* 2Co 10:5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ

* Insights

- We are in a warfare against unseen wicked spirit beings in the spirit world, not against people

- Conflicts with people are often the fruit of the activity of unseen wicked spirits

- Jesus has equipped us with spiritual weapons and given us authority to overcome wicked spirits

- “Pulling down”…. Greek ..kathairesis;

a pulling down: destroying, destruction, tearing down, demolition

- There must be an intentional effort to remove spiritual roots and strongholds

- Freedom is the legacy given to sons... we must take hold of it

II. What is a Stronghold?

Definition:

* A fortified place or a fortress.

* A place of survival or refuge

* An area dominated or occupied by a special group or distinguished by a special quality

* A place that serves as the center of a faction or of any group sharing certain opinions or attitudes.

Spiritual Stronghold:

* An ungodly mindset, way of thinking and way of behaving that

(i). Has become established over time,

(ii). Strongly resists change

(iii). Is empowered by unseen evil spirit beings,

(iv). Undermines building relationships and success in life

(v). Increase loneliness and isolation

(vi). Actively obstruct experiencing and knowing God

III. Examples of Strongholds

- Each generation contributes good and bad to the following generation…..legacy

- Many personal strongholds are patterns that have been in a family line for generations

- Each generation has struggled with hidden spirits. No one has been able to overcome them

- You are the generation to overcome those strongholds.

- Sometimes they are secret ………covered over, hidden away to avoid possible rejection, shaming

- Sometimes they are obvious…….attracting criticism, judgments and rejection, strife and conflict

- All strongholds are a source of suffering and shame

- Conflicts and strife in relationships reveal the lack of mature love, and presence of hidden strongholds

Examples of Strongholds:

1. Bitterness and unforgiveness

- Bitterness is a root that defiles all relationships and produces destructive behaviour cycles

- Unresolved childhood issues are a major source of anger and bitterness

- Frequently this is directed at a parent who has failed or withheld love

- The unresolved pain experienced grows into bitterness and dishonour of parents

- This introduces an ongoing cycle of relationship issues in marriage and family Eph.6:2

- Bitterness causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

2. Sexual sin and lust

- Many men struggle with pornography, sexually perverted thoughts

- These can be generational, rooted in rejection, or originate from previous sexual experiences,

- Thoughts and emotions are defiled by demonic spirits and ungodly soul ties to previous encounters

- Lust causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

3. Rejection

- Rejection is a deep painful wound in the heart that can arise from many sources

- Rejection often arises very early in life from painful personal experiences

- Rejection can be rooted in a performance based family relationships…”loved if do well”

- Rejection defiles how we interpret life experiences and results in bad communication and reactions

- Rejected men struggle with passivity and addictions, or with aggression and competition

- Rejection causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

4. Shame

- Shame is a feeling of dishonour or disgrace and embarrassment caused by our own actions or the wrong actions of others against us

- Shame carries a mindset: “Something is wrong with me”… “I am the problem”

- Shame causes people to hide from intimacy…Eg Gen.3:10 Adams and Eve, isolate and blame

- Shame causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

5. Addictions:

- Addictions are a common stronghold

- Common addictions are alcohol; drugs, pornography, media, work.

- Addictions are rooted in shame and hinder intimacy with secrecy and avoidance

- Addictions cause major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

6. Fear and anxiety

- Fear and anxiety are very common strongholds

- They arise from many different causes including generational

- Fear leads to controlling unloving behaviour in relationships hindering true intimacy

- Anxiety is rooted in fear and withholding love

- Fear causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

IV. Strongholds are Rooted in Violations of love….withered substitutes for love

1. All these strongholds are the consequence of violations of love or of love being withheld from us

- We are made in God’s image…we are made to receive and give love

- We all long to be loved…to be valued, accepted and affirmed for who we are without conditions.

- When love is violated or withheld from us we react with unloving actions towards ourselves and towards others

- Love is willing to understand and show mercy and forgiveness to those who have injured us

- 1Jn 4:8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

2. Freedom comes when we connect to love and begin grow and abound in love

* Paul’s Prayer: Rooted and Grounded in Love

* Eph 3:16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,

* Eph 3:17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

* Eph 3:18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—

* Eph 3:19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

- “Comprehend”…… to take hold of and make your own possession, eagerly take.

- “Know”………………..to personally experience, know through the experience of intimacy

- The more we experience and become established in love and learn to draw from love, the more we become filled with God’s love and reflect His loving nature to others

- It is not enough to remove strongholds (roots)… we must grow and abound in love (fruits)

- 1Jn 4:12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.

- “Perfected”….to make complete or mature, to bring to maturity, accomplish God’s purpose

V. How to Break Strongholds

We experience Freedom when we reconnect to love and become rooted and grounded in love

1. I need to believe I am loved, and align myself with Jesus to receive His love and power to break free

- Father God loves me. His love is constant and unchanging and is available

- Eg. Father welcomed and embraced the Prodigal Son and restored him

- Jesus loves us and has made provision to empower us to overcome all spiritual strongholds

- I need to become aligned with Jesus and His order for my life and relationships

2. I need to Identify and Remove Hidden Roots and Establish new ways of Thinking and Acting in love

- Strongholds resist change…. so humility perseverance are needed for lasting change

- Jas 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Practical Action Steps:

1. Recognise the Pattern

- All change begins with recognising and acknowledging there is a problem

- What is the problem or behaviour that keeps repeating and sabotaging relationships

2. Responsibility for Change

- Responsibility is the first step to maturity

- Stop blaming, denying, minimising, avoiding and face the issue

- What is my part in this

3. Resolve Hidden Pain

- Ask Holy Spirit to bring hidden pain surrounding the stronghold to the surface

- Grieve the loss.

- Bring your grief to the cross and exchange it by faith for healing

4. Release Forgiveness

- Who are you holding a heart grudge against?

- Forgiveness sets you free from the destructive actions of others against you

- Forgive from the heart speaking it aloud

- Bless those who have hurt you

5. Repent

- What ways have you violated God’s laws?

- We must repent , confess them and bring them to the cross

6. Renounce Agreements

- Where have you agreed with a demonic lie that is contrary to God’s word?

- Break your agreement with that speaking aloud

7. Resist and Remove

- Are there any spirits that you need to assert dominion over?

- They are invisible persons who are speaking and impressing you negatively?

Invasive intruding negative thoughts and feelings

- Assert your dominion over them verbally…speak to that spirit being and command them

8. Rebuild

- Become established in love…learn to give and receive love

- Meditate upon the Word of God

- Declare the Word of God

- Establish new patterns

- Catch thought patterns and resist them

- Maybe you begin by sharing with spouse what God has been showing you

- Do you need to Apologise? If so… do not blame

- Just acknowledge your action, the pain it caused and ask forgiveness

Gal 5:13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

Php 1:9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment,

Php 1:10 that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ,

Php 1:11 being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

VI. Personal Reflection and Application

1. What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about during this teaching?

2. Can you identify or recognise where there are blocks in your relationship with God?

3. Can you identify any of the hidden spiritual strongholds mentioned in this teaching?

- Bitterness and unforgiveness

- Sexual sin and lust, or unclean defilement

- Rejection

- Shame

- Addictions

- Fear and anxiety

4. Are any of these generational, a continuation of a family pattern?

5. When did this first become an issue in your life?

6. What action steps will you commit to to overcome this issue?

7. What kind of support would help you in your transformation journey?

Who is Jesus

The focus of Revelations is a revelation of Jesus Christ - His person, His characteristics, His purpose and plan for us. Jesus as Bridegroom; King of Kings; and Judge

Who is Jesus (1 of 4) Revelations

The focus of Revelations is a revelation of Jesus Christ - His person, His Characteristics, His purpose and plan for us. Overview - Jesus as Bridegroom; King of Kings; and Judge

Who is Jesus (2 of 4) The Passionate Bridegroom

The gospel story revealed in the context of a Jewish wedding.

Who is Jesus (3 of 4) Sovereign King

Rev 19:11-16 Symbolism brought to life. How should we respond to a mighty conquering king?

Who is Jesus (4 of 4) Jesus the Righteous Judge

If you loved someone passionately, had great power, and saw injustice - would you not step in and make it right? Get to understand what Justice and Judgement really mean.

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- Who is Jesus (2 of 4) The Passionate Bridegroom.mp3

- Who is Jesus (3 of 4) Sovereign King.mp3

- Who is Jesus (4 of 4) Jesus the Righteous Judge.mp3

Notes

- Who is Jesus (1 of 4) Revelations

- Who is Jesus (2 of 4) The Passionate Bridegroom

- Who is Jesus (4 of 4) Jesus the Righteous Judge

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Who is Jesus (1 of 4) Revelations

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The focus of Revelations is a revelation of Jesus Christ - His person, His Characteristics, His purpose and plan for us. Overview - Jesus as Bridegroom; King of Kings; and Judge

How many know it's in your spirit you worship God? You know, you make a decision that you're going to give yourself to Him, you'll be surprised as you give yourself how the flow comes and you don't want to stop. So I've just been praying and thinking about where to go for just ministry on Sunday mornings and I felt I'd start a series called Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? I want to speak primarily from the Book of Revelation, but we're going to open up some other aspects and I want to encourage you to let God talk to you and bring a revelation to your own heart of who this Jesus is.

The Bible's full of Jesus, the great revelation of Jesus, so I'm going to confine myself to three aspects of who He is, and one of the works of the Holy Spirit is to make real Jesus to us. In John 16 Jesus said: the Spirit of God will take the things that are Mine and reveal them to you, so even though I teach you today, you can walk out totally unchanged. You can just have another great message - that was nice, what do I do next? I'll go and have McDonalds. You see? Or we can ask the Holy Spirit to speak to our heart, and when the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart the revelation changes us, so what I want to do is give an introduction today and just open it out, and then in the next three weeks I want to open up three different aspects of who Jesus is, and encourage you to think how to let the Holy Spirit bring revelation to you along these areas.

Some of you may only know Jesus in one kind of way; some of you may know Him in a different way. We've all got aspects of Him, but here's the key foundational conflict that will be in the end times, it's over the person of Jesus Christ. It's not which church you go to, it's not what doctrine so much. It's who is Jesus. This is the great controversy that will be in the world, and will become increasingly an issue globally, and I'll show you why shortly, because we will see as we look into the Book of Revelation how Jesus will trigger off a global war, and how He will actually - and the issue will be who is He, and how will we respond to Him. So I want to just go and have a look, start off first of all in Matthew, Chapter 16, because the Bible tells us that we all have a race to run, and we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, so what does He look like, and how do I keep my eyes on Him?

Those are good questions to ask. Do you know how to keep your eye on Him? Or do you get caught up with everyone, and everything else, caught up with this one's things, and that one's things, offences, anxieties, worries? Or have you learnt how to run your life keeping fixed on Jesus? We're going to help you to do that, and give you some practical keys over this series. But let's just start here in Matthew, Chapter 16, one you're very familiar with, Verse 13. When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples: who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And He said: but who do you say that I am? I would love to be able to just sit with each of you and ask you this question; who do you say Jesus is? What revelation do you have of Him? That's very important, because the way you see Jesus will determine how you relate with Him. It'll determine how you run your life, and I'm absolutely convinced of this, that the revelation you have of Jesus currently, if you'll be open to the Holy Spirit, He will increase the knowledge of who He is.

He is like a diamond with many facets. You just can't come along and think well I just know who He is; He died on the cross for my sins. There's much more than that, and we want to open up some of that. Now this challenge took place in Caesarea, it's the centre of the Roman Empire in Palestine, so it's situated right there at the foot of the Golan Heights, and it was a place where there was worship of Pan, half goat, half man. It was a place of idolatry, a place of emperor worship. It was a place where there was conflict over who Jesus was, and Jesus asked the question: who do men say I am? And so they began to say well, some say Elijah. Well why Elijah? Because Elijah was full of passion and prayer, confronted controlling spirits and idolatry. And some say well, He's John the Baptist returned from the dead. Why? Because John was a fiery preacher who preached repentance, so they thought that looks just like John was.

Then some say Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet of great compassion, who wept over the nation and its difficulties, so people picked up different impressions about what Jesus was like. They likened Him to people they knew; someone passionate, they must have seen Him preach passionately; someone compassionate, someone who was fiery in confrontation. Those are the things they saw in Him. We get a weak, wishy washy watered down Jesus. You need to know that He's passionate and fiery, and I want to show you some aspects of Him - so Jesus then put the question of well, who do you say I am? Who do you say I am? He said: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now notice what he says: You are the anointed one, the Son of the living God - not a dead God, you're the Son of the living God, and Jesus said: you didn't figure this out by being smart, or going to a message. You got this by revelation of the Holy Ghost.

Now if you're going to know Jesus, you need the Holy Spirit. If we don't know how to commune with the Holy Spirit, listen to the Holy Spirit, let Him speak to us, how will we ever get to know Jesus, because that's the Holy Spirit's job description - reveal Him to us. So we'll touch on that a bit more. So let's go now and have a look into Revelations. The Book of Revelation is a great book. Now most people look at the Book of Revelations, they get caught up with beasts and antichrist and marks and numbers, and overall very negative. This of course is not the focus of the Book of Revelation. It's included in it, but it's not the focus of it by any means. Let's have a look at that, the Book of Revelation. Here it is, Book of Revelation, Chapter 1, Verse 1. Here it is.

It says: the Revelation of Jesus Christ - so what's the Book of Revelation about? It's about? [Jesus Christ.] It's about? [Jesus Christ.] It's not the anti-christ and the beasts and the tribulation, all the other stuff and marks and stuff like that. It is about Jesus Christ! Get it right, it's about Jesus. Now what is it about Jesus? It's about the person of Jesus, who He is, and what He's like. It's about His purpose, and how He's going to unfold it step by step by step, and it's about His plan for us, and the part we would play in it. In Revelations 1, 2 and 3, where it talks about the churches, there's at least 24 different descriptions of what Jesus is like. You could just go through the first three chapters, and have a look where Jesus reveals Himself, and begin to get an idea what He's like. Now here's the thing. If you don't know what He's like, how can you relate to Him, and know Him?

To know Him, or to become intimate with Him, is to get to know who He is, not someone else's idea of Him. That requires the Holy Spirit to help us, so the Book of Revelation is the revealing or unveiling of Jesus Christ and His plan for the church, not to run away, not to be caught out of it all, but to bring the grace and the glory and the goodness of God to all nations in the earth! I don't know if you've read the book, but the last part of the book is very clear, that all of the nations will walk in the light of the church, the house of the living God. This is a great book to read. Not only - look, look what it says here. It says: the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him, to show His servants things which must take place shortly, and He sent and signified this by His angel, to His servant John. Now notice what it says, Verse 3: Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things. Notice it says: there is a blessing if you will read the Book of Revelation - even if you don't understand it all. There'll be some things you can understand and respond to, and this is what He said.

If you read it, hear it in your heart, and respond to it, you'll be blessed. It's the only book in the Bible that says you'll be blessed if you read that one. Why? Because it's important to the end times, it's important to us in this day. Notice what it says, Verse 7, look at this: Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him. So what Jesus is about to do in the end time, is not going to be hidden away, or a secretive thing in a building down Omahu Road. It'll be something global! Every eye shall see Him - so what Jesus is planning to do, is to impact all nations, all people, the whole earth. You are part of a global ministry, and you're called, each of us are called, to play our part. Now notice this - what will our part be? Well I'm not going to go into this aspect, I want to focus on Jesus, but have a look in Revelations 5:10. It says: you have redeemed us to God by Your blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God; here it is, Verse 10 - and we shall reign on the earth. We shall reign on earth.

Now notice what it's telling us. The Book of Revelation reveals who Jesus is. It's on a scale that will affect the whole of the world, and there's a vital part we play in it. Now you have to get your thinking right, otherwise you withdraw from our great call, our great commission, to change the world - not retreat from the world, but to change the world, one soul at a time, one soul at a time, one life at a time, change this world. So I want to show you three aspects in Revelation 19 of Jesus, who He is, and what He's like, and then we'll unfold each one, how it works out. We're going to ask the kinds of question like this: Who is this Jesus? What does He do, or what are His characteristics? How do I need to respond? In other words, it's a great thing to know, but you know the devils know about Jesus too, they just tremble and go to hell see? So knowing this stuff doesn't do you any good. It's how you respond, so at the end of the meetings, I'll give you an opportunity to think: Holy Ghost, what did You say to me? How shall I respond? What are You telling me to do? Getting the idea?

Okay, let's have a look in Revelation, Chapter 19. There's a lot of stuff in Revelations I don't understand at all, and I've seen charts and tables and all kinds of things, and they're all proved wrong, so I think there are many things though that we can know, and we should act on if we know them. So let's have a look at three ways that God reveals, or Jesus is revealed, in the Book of Revelation, so Revelation, Chapter 19, here it is in Verse 6 through to Verse 9: And I heard as it were, the voice of a great multitude, the sound of many waters, and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Oh, that's a great sound isn't it? Let us be glad and rejoice - now it's involving us - and give glory to Him. Why? Why should we be glad and rejoice? Because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And Blessed are those called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!

Here is the first picture of Jesus, and I'll unfold it next week in greater detail. He is presented as the bride groom, so one facet of Jesus is He is a bride groom. Now I want you to think about it. Notice it says, it talks about a marriage that has not yet taken place. It talks about a feast that's not taken place, it talks about a bride, so if we just take the picture out there, this is how Jesus presents Himself. He is a passionate bride groom who loves you! That's the first thing to know about Him. Now He doesn't just love you. See a lot of people stop there. He is a groom. Now each one of us has different aspects to our life, for example I am two people - a son, but I'm also to someone else a husband. I am to some others a father, and to some others a grandfather, to others a teacher, and to others a minister of God. So I am known in the world to different people in a number of different ways, and all of those ways are right, but it's only when you bring them together, you see who I am.

So it's when we bring together the pictures of Jesus that we get the proper picture of Him, and you'll see if you've only got one aspect of Him, you get a distorted view of Jesus, and it will affect how you live your life and represent Him. Think about that. See, if someone only knew me as a teacher they'd have no idea of the whole sphere of life I have as a global minister of God. They'd have no idea at all, so they say: oh well he just taught physics and maths, that's what he did, and he was quite good at teaching, and we did pretty well. But their concept is completely limited, so if they had to tell someone about me, they wouldn't really even tell them half the story. They'd have been missing out 20-30 years, do you understand that? That's why you need all the facets of it - so the first thing to see is, He is a passionate bride groom.

Now I'm going to use the word bride groom, rather than just that He loves us. We need to get up above that. He is a groom. Now here's some things about the groom. From the Bible perspective, the number one, He pursues us. You didn't suddenly have a good idea to come to Jesus; He sent the Holy Spirit to activate some people to pray for you, and pursue you, so the first thing about Jesus, He pursues people. Why does He pursue people? Because He's passionately in love with us, and He just puts His love into action, came out of heaven, came into the earth, and then He began to pursue people. Not only does He pursue us, He initiates a unique kind of relationship called covenant. That's why you need to know Him as a groom, not just Jesus, your saviour. He is a bride groom. A groom is a person who initiates covenant with a woman. Understand that - we've got a great couple over there. Kess and Steve, you're going to be getting married in about a week, is that right? And who proposed to who? [Laughter] You proposed to her, good man. See, I wonder why he did that? Because it's biblical; for the man, to initiate connection, relationship and pursue with love the woman. Why? To bring her into a covenant relationship with himself.

God has got no casual relationships. He just has what's called covenant, so you either are in covenant with God, through receiving Christ as your saviour and the lover of your soul, or you're not in covenant with Him, you're not connected to Him. If you are in covenant with Christ, which most of us here are, then the issue really is, are you a covenant keeper with God, or are you an adulterer with God? Well, there's only one or two isn't it? We either are covenant keepers, and understand what it means to keep covenant with Him as the groom, or we're an adulterer. There's no in between in it. Think about that. Jesus said in the Book of James, the word of God comes out. He said: you are friends of the world, you are adulterers, and you find yourself in hostility with the one who covenanted with you to love you.

See the relationship God has with us, He is a jealous lover. Now I don't know with you, but there was a time when I was going through a very difficult stage in my relationship with Joy at university, and she broke off with me, and she started to date someone in the same class. [Laughter] I won't spend much time describing how I felt. [Laughter] But I do understand jealous lover! [Laughter] And all the feelings that go with jealousy over someone! A jealous lover, so the Bible portrays Jesus as jealous. He's jealous over you. Paul writes of it in 2 Corinthians 11. He says: oh, I've espoused you. I've engaged you to Him, and I'm jealous over you. I want you to be in intimacy with Him, and faithful to Him, and in love with Him, and walk with Him, and have a covenant with Him, and represent Him as husband and wife in the earth. So the church is called the bride of Christ, and we become the bride of Christ by entering covenant, and by keeping covenant.

So not only that, in order for us to become the bride, He has to rescue us. Now everyone loves a story where the woman has been trapped or captured or kidnapped, and the man comes and rescues her. I love stories like that, great stories like that. I saw a movie called Taken. Oh I enjoyed that movie. The guy's daughter got taken by these traffickers, and the guy with an unusual set of skills got her back! Oh it was gripping! It was a gripping story - but there's something in us, loves that kind of story. The fairy stories are all full of it; it's about the woman being rescued by the man. It resonates with our heart, because God came to earth and the person of Jesus to rescue us, save us by beating up that old devil, and paying the price of the redemption, and getting us free! What a great story - He's a lover of our soul, so the question is: how will I respond to His love?

We love Him because He first loved us, so love is your response. So we need the Holy Spirit to reveal the depth of Jesus' love for us, and the first way He reveals Himself is the lover of your soul - but wait, there's more as they say. [Laughs] Wait, there's more! So here's the second one, Revelations 19, let's go again and read Verse 11 through to 16. Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, so he's in the spirit having the same vision, but he's seeing it develop, and seeing other aspects of Jesus. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, in righteousness He judges and makes war. Notice that, judges and makes war - and His eyes were a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. We know it's Jesus. And the armies of heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth went a sharp sword - the words - that He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them, the nations, with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

So here is the second one. The second thing you see is, He is a sovereign king. Now you may not think Jesus is a sovereign king, because you don't see it. You see instead a world where the devil still runs amok in people's lives, where sin goes unchallenged many times, and we don't appear to see the sovereignty of God. Nevertheless Jesus is sovereign. He said: all authority in heaven and earth is given to Me. There's no one greater than Me. When He was on the earth He demonstrated that sovereignty, so here's another way we could recognise Jesus is a king, and now you relate to a king different to a husband. If you only know Jesus as someone who likes you, or loves, you or died on the cross for your sins, we just come away every time you feel you're sorry for your sins, and ask Him to forgive you. But if you know Him as a groom, then intimacy, connection, relationship, hearing Him is everything - but now to be revealed that Jesus is also a king, now that means I have to understand, this is not a democracy I've been put in.

I've been translated out of the kingdom of darkness, and put into the kingdom of His beloved Son. I'm now in a kingdom, with a king, a servant king but nevertheless a king, and a king has a will. A king has rules and principles that govern his kingdom. A king gives directives, and the king has a desire to advance his kingdom. Jesus' message was the kingdom, so He demonstrated His sovereign power. Think of all the different ways He demonstrated it. We'll touch on some of them later, but here it is. He healed the sick; He delivered people; He raised the dead; He calmed the storms; He spoke to trees and they died. He demonstrated complete sovereignty over all creation, and so He is king, and that requires you relate differently.

Now most of us come in, and we think like this; we're used to a democracy, and so well we just sort of argue with God over stuff. He's king and His word is final. The question is, whether you'll relate to Him as a king or not? To relate to Him as a king means I need to yield to His design for my life in every area: finances, marriage, personal life. I need to discover what He's designed me to be and to do, and then begin to co-operate with it and align with it, otherwise I'm operating out of the kingdom of darkness, not in the kingdom of His Son. I can only find that by the word of God. Now for me, the revelation that Jesus was king came when one person preached a message on the kingdom of God. I've looked at the message since. It looks so shallow and empty I don't know how I got anything out of it, but on that moment the Holy Spirit revealed to me that this king has authority, and I needed to bow the knee.

From that point everything in my life began to shift because revelation of a kingdom and then it began to unfold as time went by - and a king. So you and I can come to Jesus and He's intimate and loves us. We come to Him as the husband who loves us, but we also need to come to Him as the One who has a purpose, a destiny, direction for us, and He wants to direct your life. The question is will you yield? Whether we will yield, whether we will respond, and one of the issues of responding is recognising His authority in different spheres of our life - so He's a king.

Okay, here's the last one. Here it is, we've already seen it. We'll read the same verses, and it says: He judges and makes war. Well that's a bit tough isn't it, because we like gentle Jesus. He's lovely and He's sweet, and He loves us and forgives our sins. We come to church and half-heartedly sing, and we go home and run our life the way we want, and that's it. I'm sorry, that is not it, because He is a judge. God has appointed to Him to judge all the earth. He is a just judge, so we see Him, He's the passionate lover, He's the sovereign king, and He is a just judge. Now what does that mean, that He judges? It means that whatever's unfair in the world, He's going to sort it out. It means wherever there's wrong government, He's going to displace it, and put in His own righteous government. It means that wherever there's been crime and sin, and things have gone wrong, He's going to intervene and bring judgement on it, and that judgement sometimes means people die, because many would rather die than bow the knee to Jesus.

Now He may have come as a servant, a shepherd, a lover of our soul, and demonstrated His kingdom, but when He comes next time, He's coming in power. He's coming in glory, and He's coming to judge the earth, nothing surer. So when we look at the tribulation, and all the things that are in there that look so horrible, guess who's responsible for all of that? It's Jesus, and the saints triggered it off by their praying. He is going to introduce something that will affect the whole globe, and disrupt everything as we know it. You have to understand that, that He is a judge. He judges the intents of hearts. He judges our actions, and He calls us to account. That's what it means, He calls us to account.

Here's the good side of it: He rewards those who labour and serve Him. Here's the down side of it: He also calls us to be responsible for what we've done with our life and gifts. Not only that, if we're not saved, He will bring us into judgement. Now see this is a struggle the church is having globally, because it doesn't want to talk about hell. Hell is a real place, people do go there, have gone there, are going there, will go there. It's a real place. You should not negate or minimise that something in all of us wants justice. Now we often get it wrong in the way we do it in our spirit, but He is a righteous judge, who's able to sort this whole thing out, so He is the judge of the whole earth. So if I was to relate to Him as a judge, what does that mean? It means He is going to treat me fairly. He's going to treat me fairly. He's going to honour me, and value me, and reward me for my labours and services, even if no one noticed,and I was treated unjustly. I don't have to worry about all the injustices in my world. I just need to let them go, because He can sort it out, He's the just judge.

What I need to do, is to learn how to lean on Him and trust Him. I need to learn how to be faithful. I need to learn how to open my life, and allow Him to inspect my life regularly, and call me to account. Now a lot of Christians hate this. They struggle with being called to account for their behaviour, their words, their actions - better to be called to account by someone you can see now, and deal with the problem, than wait and suffer significant consequences over your life by not doing that. It's better we welcome someone to speak into our life, than we resist all attempts to correct us. Why? Because the Bible's clear; all of us will give account. No one escapes, no one. I think that's great news. That's great news. That is GREAT NEWS! Now you see most people get caught up with the heavy side of the thing - ooh, what's going to happen to me? Hey, I don't have to worry about that. I'm in love with Him, I'm yielding to Him, I'm walking - I don't have to be worried about what will happen. I'm looking forward to the reward!

It's those who are sinning that have got a problem! They're the ones who need to be worried - but you see He's not just the judge. He's the lover of our soul, and He'll rescue us. So you see you start to get all three put together. Now Jesus Himself taught this, John taught this. See, you think about Matthew 25. Jesus taught the parable of the Groom and the Virgins. He taught following that the parable of the King and the Kingdom and the Servants. Then He taught following that, He was the judge of the whole earth, that called the nations to give account, so Jesus Himself taught that He fills each of these roles. A bride groom and a pursuer of your soul, to rescue you, redeem you, love you, forgive you, bring you into intimacy, make you clean, present you to Himself a wonderful person. He's also the king, so He calls us to grow up, align, begin to find a place of function and serving. If we fail and fall, He's the lover of my soul.

And He calls us to be accountable with our life, our words, our actions, behaviours, because one day we will all have to give account. But if I fail, He's still the lover of my soul. I can come to Him as the lover of my soul, so all three things bring a great balance in your life. He loves, forgives, blesses. He pursues, He won't ever let me go. He will do all He can to get me where He wants me to get, but He's also got a kingdom. He won't bend, I've got to bend. It's my knee that has to bow, not His one, see? And then He's going to call my life into account in some kind of way, so better to become accountable now. That's why the Holy Spirit's given to us. Why? It's really simple. The Holy Ghost wants to reveal how much you are loved, and Jesus is your lover; two, that there is a kingdom, and it's time to get aligned, not just so that you come under His direction, but so you can bring His kingdom into the earth; miracles, signs and wonders, and bringing the presence of God to people. You can't minister that power unless you submit to the king.

Then finally, He wants us to be accountable, to open our life so we allow people to speak in, we allow the Holy Spirit to speak in, and we become safe. That's how you become safe. So here are the questions to finish. Here's the thing to finish with. If you only know Jesus as the lover and the bride groom, you become sentimental and wishy washy. If you don't know Him as the king and the judge, you just become sentimental: Oh Jesus, oh if you love me... come on, grow up. There's a kingdom to advance. It's not that that's wrong, it's just it's absolutely out of order, if that's all you've got in your revelation of Jesus. It ends up with a wishy washy, God forgives everything, God loves everyone, everyone gets to heaven, you can sin and God will forgive you. That actually despises the Spirit of God, so that's why I need the balance of the other with it, that He's the king, and there's order, and there's principle and balance in your life. So if you know Him only as the king, and you don't know Him as the lover of your soul, and the just judge, if you only know Him as the king you'll think He's authoritarian, telling you what to do, and you'll be in conflict with God as an authoritarian God.

Now if you only know Him as the judge, then you'll think that He's harsh, and He's judging you, and He's out to get you on everything, so many people, the revelation they have is not the biblical revelation. They've got some kind of harsh thing from their background. I had that for years, a harsh thing that constantly sinning, constantly wrong. I was living under a spirit of judgement, and I had a misconception. I had a partial thing of Jesus, and I didn't see He's the lover of my soul. That's a great revelation. I didn't get that for years after I was a Christian. I responded to the gospel, but I had no real revelation how much He loved me, and I want to show you about that next week and how we can enter that.

So here are the questions that just, I want you to close your eyes, and just consider right now. Just consider them right now. Here's the first question: Who is Jesus to you? Who is Jesus to you? When you think about Him, what do you think of? When you close your eyes right now, who do you say He is? What words just quickly come up to your mind right now? See, just think, don't speak it out loud. Just think about it, and then ask yourself, what does that really mean to me, see? Here's another thing to think of then: What of those three aspects of Jesus that we saw today most impacted you, or challenged you? The lover of your soul, the groom, the king and the kingdom, governing, ruling, authority, dominion, power, or the judge calling us to account, seeing into every aspect of our life, rewarding good, judging and dealing with those things that are wrong, bringing us into discipline in our life, so we'll be productive? So which aspect do you feel the Holy Spirit is challenging you on? The groom and your relationship with Him; the king and your yielding to Him; the judge and your openness to His seeing eye?

Here's the last question: What will you do about what you just realised? As the Holy Spirit speaks to you right now, what will you do about what God spoke to you today? If you're here and you're not a Christian, don't know Jesus Christ, here's what you need to do. Jesus said: to everyone who received Him, made Him welcome, put their trust in Him, He gave power to become a child of God. Jesus has been pursuing you with love for years, probably sent people into your life, invited you to church, talked to you about Jesus - but here you are right now. I can tell you now He loves you deeply and dearly, and seeks a relationship with you. You say well there's too much mess in my life. Don't worry, the thing about the groom is He just loves His bride, and He'll do everything He can to make it right.

So here's the decision you have to make if you're not a Christian today: I will receive Jesus Christ. I will turn from living a life without God, a life of sin, a life without God. I'll turn to Jesus Christ, receiving Him as my saviour, inviting Him to become my lover and friend. You know when they have a wedding, the bride comes down and makes a commitment, and so what I'm asking you to do is to make a commitment. Until the words are spoken, the commitment made is not real. There's an engaging one with another one, so here's what I'm asking you to do. If you don't know Jesus just raise your hand and say: I want to become a Christian today. Anyone here wanting to become a Christian today, right at this point, just raise your hand quickly, raise your hand quickly. Is there anyone here wanting to become a Christian, wanting to come to Jesus, give your life to Him?

How many people today felt challenged about Jesus being the groom, a covenant keeper? How many felt Him speaking to you about that today? That's wonderful - forgiving you and loving you. How many people felt challenged about Jesus being a king today, He's the king? Wow, that's quite a few, God bless. How many felt Jesus challenging you that He is also a judge, and He calls us to account? How many felt that challenge there? Praise the Lord. I won't ask how many people didn't hear the Holy Spirit speak at all, because if you didn't hear the Holy Ghost speak to you, you've got to ask yourself this question: How long since I last heard God speak to me, and what was He trying to tell me?

Father, we just thank You for every person here. We thank You that You are over this next month, bringing an increased revelation of Jesus in all His wonder, all His beauty. We thank You that we are called to be part of a great and mighty church, part of a great kingdom, a global kingdom, a kingdom that will prevail, a kingdom that does prevail. We thank You Lord today for Your hand on our lives. Everyone says [Amen.] Amen. Come on, let's rise and give Him a clap shall we? [Applause] Let's give the king of kings, Lord of Lords a clap. Let's shout to Him, He's our God, He's our king. We shout to You today, You're the lover of our soul, You're Almighty God. We honour You and thank You today, You're our coming king. You're the judge of the whole earth. We honour You and bless You today.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Heb. 12:1-2 “...Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith ….”

· Each of us is called to keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus – He is the One we must follow.

· Key: Foundational issues that is at the heart of conflict throughout the world.

1) Who is Jesus? 2) How will I respond to Him?

· Mt.16:13-17 “Who do you say I am?”

· Location Caesarea – centre of Roman Government, place of worship of god Pan, near Golan Height.

· Pharisees knew Bible – but missed Jesus – He didn’t come as they expected.

· Crowd thought Jesus was: Elijah (Passion), John (Passion), Jeremiah (Compassion).

· Peter had revelation by Holy Spirit: You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

· How you see Jesus affects how you relate to Him – Holy Spirit’s work is to reveal Him. (Jn.16:14).

2. The Three-Fold Revelation of Jesus

· Rev.1:1 “The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show His servants …”

· Main Theme of the Book of Revelation is the person, power and plan of Jesus Christ. Jesus is returning to take leadership of the earth in partnership with His people.

Rev.1:7 “Behold He is coming with the clouds and every eye shall see Him”.

Rev.5:10 “You have made us Kings and Priests to our God and we shall reign on earth”.

· Rev.1:3 - There are 24 distinct aspects of His Kingly Majesty and Glory.

(a) Jesus is a Passionate Bridegroom

· Key Questions we want to ask?

(i) Who is Jesus? (ii) What does He do? (iii) How will I respond?

· Revelation uncovers Jesus to be: Bridegroom; King; and Judge.

· Rev.19:6-9 “…the marriage of the lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready”.

Jesus is the passionate bridegroom!

He is passionate in His love for people.

He pursues us to reach out in relationship and intimacy.

He proposes and initiates a covenant relationship with us.

He rescues us from sin, iniquity and bondage.

· How will you respond to Jesus the Passionate Bridegroom?

(b) Jesus is the Sovereign King

Rev.19:11-16 “He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords”.

· Jesus has sovereign power and authority to rule.

· Jesus will intervene and overthrow unrighteous government.

· Jesus is a King – He rules a Kingdom not a Democracy.

· No one will be able to resist His power and authority.

· He will establish righteous government in the earth.

· How will you respond to Jesus the Sovereign King?

(c) Jesus is a Righteous Judge

Rev.19:11-15 “…in righteousness He judges and makes war”.

· Jesus is a righteous judge who calls all men to account.

· He will confront and overpower every hindrance to love and justice.

· He sees to the root of issues and will both punish and reward people.

· How will you respond to Jesus the righteous judge?

(d) These three Aspects of Jesus are Revealed throughout the Bible

e.g. David wrote on it (Ps 2:8-12)

John Baptist preached on it (Jn.3:29-31; Mt.3:1-12)

Jesus taught on it Mt.25:1-13 - The Bridegroom and Virgins

Mt.25:14-23 - The King

Mt.25:31-46 - The Judge

3. We need Revelation of All Three Aspects of Jesus’ Nature

(a) Partial knowledge leads to deception

· People tend to focus on the aspect they like.

· This distorts your view of who Jesus is – really is.

· This misleads and misrepresents.

(b) Balance is needed

· Jesus as Bridegroom without King or Judge = sentimentality, (Rom.6:1), Compromise.

· Jesus as King without Bridegroom or Judge = Authoritarian, hard, (Mt.25:24).

· Jesus as Judge without Bridegroom or King = Harsh, judgemental, (another spirit Lk. 9:54).

(c) Application

Who is Jesus to You?

Which of the three aspects of Jesus most strongly impacted you?

How will you respond to Jesus?

Who is Jesus (2 of 4) The Passionate Bridegroom

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The gospel story revealed in the context of a Jewish wedding.

I want you to open your Bible with me in Revelations, Chapter 19. We just started a series last week called Who is Jesus? This is a good question: Who is Jesus, because a lot of people have got a lot of ideas. Jesus was talking with Peter, and He said to Peter: who do people say I am? They all come up with different ideas, and today it's the same. People come up with different ideas about who Jesus is, and if you don't really know who He is, how can you connect and relate with Him? How can you enjoy the relationship if you don't really know who He is, and out of who he is, how to connect with Him?

So the Bible talks about the riches of His glory. In other words, there's a great dimension. He's unsearchable. You could spend all your life trying to get to know Him but there's still more, so we've got to find some way that we can see what He is like. Jesus said to Peter: well who do you say I am? You will live out of who you say Jesus is, that's the reality. You will live out of the revelation you have of Jesus, so if your revelation is very light and superficial, your Christian life will be fairly superficial as well, so we want to grow in the knowledge of Jesus. Our relationship, or our walk with God, is about a relationship with the person, Jesus Christ. It's not about all the things we do. They are the fruit, and the flow of the connection to a person, and so we look in the Book of Revelation, and we are reading now in Revelations, Chapter 19 and in Verse 7.

This is yet to come, and John's got this vision. He hears the voice of a great multitude, and this is what they're all saying. Oh! A great multitude, I love that. Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb - that's Jesus Christ - has come, and His wife or His bride - that's the church - has made herself ready. And to her it was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he said: Blessed are those called to the marriage supper of the Lamb! Then when you go on, you find in this passage, in Revelations 19, there are three pictures given of Jesus Christ. This one presents Him as a bridegroom, a passionate bridegroom. The next one presents Him as a sovereign king, coming to conquer and subdue the earth, then the third one presents Him as a judge, calling every man and woman and child to account for their actions.

Now which is the right picture? The answer is they're all part of the picture, and there are many other pictures in the Bible, for example in Psalm 23 there's a picture of Jesus being a shepherd. So there are many facets to Him, so we're looking now in the Book of Revelation, where three distinct aspects of Him will be revealed. The Book of Revelation is about the revealing of Jesus Christ in the end times, and so these three aspects are quite important. So we're going to look today at Jesus, the passionate bridegroom, the passionate bridegroom, and there are in the New Testament about 23 different references to this, so it's not just something that appears in Revelation. There's about 23 distinct references to Jesus being a bridegroom. Now for a guy that's not so easy to handle. You know, Jesus the bridegroom, and the bride, give me a break! That's not - give me the king stuff next, I'll come along next week and get the king stuff. That's my thing there. So for men this is not such an easy thing to do, but it'll help you if you understand this, that each of these represent - it's just a picture. It's a way of representing someone, and an aspect of what He's like, see?

So each of these is a picture. It's a representation to help you understand invisible things, which you can't understand just easily see naturally, so if I try to relate to Jesus, what am I going to think of? Am I going to think of sort of, someone tall, blue eyes, long hair, long robes? What am I going to think of Him? I need to know what He's like, and so the word of God reveals Him, and the different aspects of Him. The Bible tells us concerning this particular Book, you are blessed if you read it and do what it says, so for us to understand Jesus the bridegroom, and to understand how to respond to Him, what that means to us if He's a bridegroom, and how should I respond? How should I respond? How should I live out my life, in the light of that revelation - that's what we'll look at. So to do that, you've got to understand a little bit about the Jewish wedding, because if you and I think of a bridegroom and a wedding, we think immediately from our western mind set. So immediately you think of a church setting, there's three guys up here in black suits, the bride comes down, and we do some things and so on, so that's what we think of.

So if we're going to understand Jesus the bridegroom, we do have to understand a little bit about how the wedding ceremony took place, in the Jewish context. You need to know what it was like when Jesus - when the Book was written, the people understood exactly what He was talking about, because He was writing to their culture. He was writing to their culture, so for example if we said that the local tribe had called a hui, for many people they wouldn't have a clue what that's about, but for the local tribe they'd say we know exactly what that's all about. Do you understand? So you have to have a bit of culture to pick it, so let's just go through it.

The Jewish wedding consists of two parts, two primary parts and there's a bit in between. We're in the bit in between. The primary parts are what's called the betrothal, and then the actual wedding itself, the betrothal, and then the wedding. I want you to look with me, and you'll find this referred to in Matthew, Chapter 1. We're going to look first of all just quickly at the main aspects of a Jewish wedding in Jesus' day, and then we're going to see how Jesus - what He is to us, and how to respond, because the Bible's very clear on what the bride had to do.

There was a part the bride plays. There's a part we play. Okay, let's go - in Matthew, Chapter 1, Verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was like this: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph - the nearest thing we could say is the word 'engaged', but if I use the word engaged, you'll have a different concepts, so we use the word 'betrothed' - before they came together, she was found with child by the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make a public example of her, was thinking or pondering about divorcing her. So notice the word divorce is connected to someone who's engaged, so their concept of betrothal is different to ours - so here's how a Hebrew wedding went. There's a family, you can imagine a family, and they've got the father, and got a young daughter. The father's concerned that the young daughter get married, and the common practice there, number one, was the arrangement which is called in Hebrew language Shiddukhin.

Now what happened was, it took place one of three ways; either the father of the groom came and negotiated with the father of the bride, which happened to Samson. Samson's father negotiated - or he sent someone. He sent an agent on his behalf to the family, and negotiated with the father, but there's always the negotiation first of all. So of course in the story of Abraham, you remember how Abraham sent Alianza to negotiate for a bride, so these pictures are scattered through the Bible - or the son himself would come, and he would do the negotiation. So the first part was the arrangement, or the initiating the prospect of a marriage, and so the young man would have to bring with him a lot of money, and he would also bring with him a wedding contract, and he would bring with him some wine. He would go - and you could imagine this day when a man turns up at the house, and it's obvious from how he's come that he is looking to set up a wedding. You can imagine the excitement in the house.

Now at this point the girl goes out, and the men negotiate, so there's a negotiation takes place, and what is determined in that negotiation is the next thing, the bridal price. What is this? What do I need to pay for the bride? How much do I need to pay, because the family is losing their daughter. They're losing, or there's a loss in the family, and there's a gain in the other family, so there was always a bridal price paid. They did a negotiation until they agreed upon the price that would be paid, and of course the higher the value of the bride, the higher the price that was paid, so if you got 10 oxen that's very, very - ooh, that's impressive! So the bigger the price, the more value is placed. So there's a negotiation takes place to purchase the bride, and once the price has been paid, once the money is all agreed and been paid, then the woman is then no longer going to be part of the family. She is now freed to become part of the new family, so this is a big deal, the bridal price.

The third thing that happens is the wedding contract, the wedding contract. It's called ketubah, ketubah, the wedding contract. What would happen is the girl would then be, after the men have had the arrangement, the woman would be brought in, and then he would propose to her. This was the opportunity for him to present his desire, and she had the right of refusal. She could refuse. Remember in the day when Alianza came to Rebecca, they did all negotiations with the father, and there was all the gifts of gold and silver and jewels given. Then she had to give her consent, so the bride must give consent. The bride must give consent. Now once the bride's given consent, then they draw up the wedding contract. The wedding contract, the ketubah was very, very important.

We have a little piece of paper which we sign, you know, you sign the marriage register, and you sign a little bit of paper, but this is a different bit of paper. It's not like here. This is a different bit of paper. In this piece of paper, it outlines a number of things. One of the things it outlines, is the bridal price. It makes it very clear what's going to be paid. The second thing it outlines is the details of the wedding, how big the wedding is going to be, what's going to happen in the wedding, and then the third thing it outlines, is the provision that the groom promises and undertakes to make how he will provide for the bride. Now you can imagine the excitement. Here's someone come into the house, talked with dad, there's a price been sorted out by the men, and now she's got the opportunity to enter into this marriage contract.

Now if she agrees, then they sign the marriage contract, and they drink wine together, and now they're betrothed. They're betrothed. That word betrothal there is as good as married, they're as good as married. In fact the only way you could break a betrothal was by divorce, so legally the betrothal actually meant they're now husband and wife. Now notice what it said in Matthew 1, Verse 18. It says now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, so they're betrothed. Now the next thing that would happen would be that the groom would have a bridal gift. He'd have a gift, it's called matan - and he would gift up - they drank the wine together, and they'd written and signed the documents. He would give a gift to the bride, and the gift to the bride, sometimes it could be a few coins. Often she would make the few coins into a band and put them around her head, hence the story or the parable of the Woman Who Lost the Coin. It possibly was the wedding gift, so that's why she really, really went everywhere looking through that house trying to find that coin.

So she had that, and now she's ready to be married. She's got the wedding gift. She's got the wedding gift, they've worked out the price, worked out the contract, got all the details about everything, all the promises are going to be made, and now they're as good as married. They're betrothed. Then the husband would say, the bridegroom would say: that I'm going now to prepare a place for us to live together as husband and wife. It was understood that's what he would do, and so there would be a period of separation which could be a year or two years. Quite interesting, in Singapore, housing issue is so major for young couples, that they go and have a service in a registry office so they're legally married, and then they wait a year to two years until they can get accommodation. Then they have the official wedding. It's quite interesting to see that they do that - think whoa, that's not easy, two years, my! So anyway but there it is.

Now the bride of course, and the groom, there was some things happened during the betrothal period, and during the betrothal period, which is an important period, it was the period of preparation, period of preparation. So the betrothal period is not just hanging around waiting, it's a period of intense preparation. The first thing that we find is that the groom, he went to his father's house, because he would take his bride to the father's house, so he had to prepare for her, and the normal thing they did was to add an extension onto the father's house. So he would build onto the house that existed and make new rooms for her. The new rooms would have within it the bridal chamber, and where they would live as a couple, so they would be part of the father's house. While he was away doing that and making that preparation, then the bride's responsibility was to get herself ready, so she had one to two years. Now she knew approximately when he's coming, but she didn't know the exact details, so here's the thing.

She never knew as the time went by, which was the night he's going to come.

Now you can imagine - you know when Christmas is coming, and the frenzy that gets just before Christmas. Got the lights, I've got everything up, presents under the tree, that anticipation of it all coming is all part of it all. The anticipation of Christmas coming is immense! The kids get so excited they can hardly sleep the night of it. Now of course with this, you never knew when he was coming. You knew approximately when he was coming, didn't know exactly when he was coming, and so therefore that required that she be always ready. So she had this intense process, where now she's having to deal with all the spots, all the wrinkles. She's got to deal with her skin, and get her skin all beautiful, so now is when you get Botox, and now is [laughter] when you get to the beauty place. That's when you get yourself all done up, get rid of every wrinkle, every spot, everything that says - you wake up and there's a little bit of pimple, oh no! He might come tonight, so there'd be a frenzy to get everything right.

So it was incredibly important that first of all, that her body was presented well, and then also she focussed on getting the wedding garments, so she would work to get beautiful wedding garments ready, and she would either use the family jewels, or borrow jewellery from neighbours and friends, so that when the time came, she could instantly put on the wedding garment. She could put on the jewels, and she could go forth to meet her husband, so that's the period. Now during that period, it was expected the bride would be faithful. In other words, they're as good as married. There's no other lovers, there's no other boyfriends. All boyfriends are gone, that's the end of all boyfriends. This is one lover, one person I'm committed to, and he is coming, and we've got a great wedding day, and a life together, so that's the betrothal.

Now you can understand the problem that Joseph had here, when he's got this season of betrothal, he hasn't got to the wedding, and his wife's pregnant, and he hasn't had a part in that. That is a problem. [Laughter] That is a big problem - small town, big problem. [Laughter] Small town. Small town mentality, the atmosphere's full of judgement, and comparisons, and everyone looks at everyone else. Everyone's watching everyone else's business, minding everyone's business, so for Mary to get pregnant during the time of betrothal, either Joseph did it, or she's been unfaithful, so he's thinking whoa, what am I going to do? Now it says that he's a just man, and he's thinking: I wonder if I could have a quiet divorce. I don't want to shame her publicly, so he had a good heart to her. Imagine how he felt. He loves her, paid the price, done all the negotiations, got the thing he's looking forward to the wedding and she's pregnant? That's not easy for a man to find his wife's pregnant before they're married - and he wasn't involved. [Laughter] Just think about the internal struggle he had over that.

Being a just man, he did not react with retaliation. He decided what he would do would be to try to quietly divorce her, because of her unfaithfulness apparently, it was as good as over. However the angel revealed to him, this is actually a divine intervention, don't do that thing. Keep her, and it says - notice this - it said: he did not know her, until after they were married. In other words during that betrothal, no sexual intimacy, faithfulness, and he kept her until after she'd had Jesus. So you see it there in the Bible. Now of course the next phase of course is the actual wedding ceremony itself, which is called nissuin (marriage), which means to carry away. Now we get this thing of carrying the bride across the threshold. That's where it comes from, out of the Bible. It all comes out of the Bible, but mostly it's so changed these days we don't understand it - so you see then the return of the groom.

So the bride is aware of approximately when it might happen, but not exactly when it will happen, and so the time is determined by the father. The father decides when the son's got everything all ready, and when he's got everything ready he says: okay, time for the wedding, and they would have the whole house all prepared for the wedding. The guests were all ready to come, guests were all invited, and now they're ready to have the wedding, so the son would go out, and he would have friends with him. They would have the shofar (trumpets), they would have lights, they would have a noise, they would shout, there would be a tremendous shout, the shofar (the trumpets), the sound and they would make a great din outside. Now you can imagine if you are waiting, and you don't know which night this is going to be - and suddenly you hear the shouting!

Now of course they're not coming in a car, so they've got to quickly get ready - if you're awake! [Laughter] I can imagine she's not going to bed early any night. Just put yourself in the picture, don't want to miss this. Not going to miss out on this - immediately she hears a - oh, and all the attendants run around, quickly and suddenly getting into her garments, she's already got everything. All the make up's all ready, she's all ready, she's into the garments, and they're ready to go out and meet the groom. They meet the groom, and they go to the father's house, where they have the final part of entering the bridal chamber, which is called chuppah. There there's the consummation of their wedding, and then the celebration or party with all the guests for seven days. Isn't that fantastic? Isn't that great, seven days, isn't that amazing?

Now how does this relate to us? Well the first thing we see is that the Bible tells us Jesus presented Himself in many different ways as the groom. I want to just show you several verses just related to that. The first thing is, He pursues us, because He loves us. He loves you passionately. The deepest need in the heart of every person is to be loved unconditionally, and God loves you. John 3:16, God so loved you, He sent His Son into the world. What did He send His Son into the world for? Why did He send Him? That He might enter into a marriage covenant with us, and to do that He had to do some things. Number one, He had to negotiate what the price would be, and here's what the price would be: His own life. 1 Corinthians 6:20, you are bought with a price; 1 Peter 1:18, you're not purchased with silver and gold or things like that which perish, but with incorruptible things, the precious blood of Jesus Christ. So when Jesus entered the world He knew He would pay the ultimate price. Greater love has no man than he lays down his life.

So out of this immense love, Jesus enters the world to pursue you, and not just you; to pursue every person in our city. He came to pursue us. Why? He loves us. He wants a relationship. He wants to bless us. He has many things planned, and your destiny can only be fulfilled if there is that connection. How wonderful it is, isn't this amazing? So He pays the price, and we see at the cross Jesus paid the price. He said: it is finished, which is the exact words that the groom would say to the bride when they're doing the arrangements for the betrothal. After it's all signed up, it's finished. The price has been paid, contract's been signed, it's as good as done. The next thing we find is this; He invites us into covenant with Himself. Look at this in Matthew, Chapter 26, Verse 27: Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying drink all of this, for this is the blood of the new covenant, or the new marriage, which is shed for many for the remissions of sins. And I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now, until the day I drink it with you in My Father's kingdom.

Now you've got to realise that they are having a supper together. Now the order of this is a little different. What they understood completely is He is now offering a covenant. Now interesting in the Old Testament, the old covenant also worked out exactly like this thing of a marriage arrangement. You find Moses went to Israel, and invited Israel to come into the wilderness unto the Lord, into marriage relationships. Then they paid the price, the blood was shed by the lambs in order to set them free. Then they went out and they get the Holy Spirit, the glory, the provision, everything came, and then they came to Mt Mount Sinai, and that was the day they should have come into their covenant relationship with God. That's the day when what was given? The law was given. What's that? The katubah. That is the marriage covenant - if you will be this, if you will do this, I will be your God, you'll be My people.

So in the Old Testament, the disciples understood completely what He's doing. He's now presenting Himself as the bridegroom, saying I have a new covenant with you. I want you to enter in, and as you eat and drink with Me, you are entering covenant. That's why we do communion. It's to remember we have entered covenant. Covenant is not convenience. Covenant means I am loyal, I am faithful, I am committed. This is the one I've given my life to, to live for. This is the one who gave His life for me.

It is a marriage thing, so when we have a communion service, you may kind of get distracted by the fact you've got this little wee thing here, a cup and a little wee bit of bread and whatever. It looks so small, but actually, what it's to do is to call to mind, we're covenanted with God Almighty! Isn't that something else! Now what about the gift? Well how about that, I'm glad you asked about the gift, because He promised. This is what He promised. Now notice this, it tells us in Ephesians 1, Verse 18, it says: He has given to us, the earnest of the spirit, which is the down payment of our full inheritance. So He's given us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now this is the important one, is to understand the gift He's given you. In Acts, Chapter 1, Verse 8, you shall receive power from on high, and shall be witnesses unto Me - so this is, you have to understand, the gift is really significant. The gift is the reminder that you are in marriage covenant with the Lord, and the gift will empower you to prepare for His coming.

This gift God has given us, is the most precious gift of all. It's the gift of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit, that leads, guides, convinces of sin, that helps us know we belong to Him. You know that what the witness of the spirit is, that we belong to another. We're already committed. Want to look at my wedding ring? I belong to another. I belong to another. That's why you wear a wedding ring. It's like you belong to someone. People go out on the dating scene, they look around and see the wedding ring - oops, belongs to another. So you are given the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in you is visible to the spirit world. Demons recognise you are a believer. They understand you are joined to the Lord. They understand you are in covenant with the Lord, you belong to the living God. You have received the mighty Holy Ghost, and gift of God!

You'll see something else that He does in a moment, which is the bit we really want to get to - and so this is so exciting. I got so excited about all of this, I think it's wonderful. He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now John, Chapter 14, you know this familiar verse. Of course it doesn't mean a lot unless you understand the context of the wedding - Verse 2. Pick it up at Verse 1 - Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions, or dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, chuppah, the bridal chamber for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am - where is He? In intimacy with the Father - there you will be also, in that same place of intimacy with God. Where I go, you know the way that I go.

So you see here, this is the language of a groom, because the groom would say, as they finished up the betrothal: now I'm going to my father's house, to prepare a place for you, and I will return. So when Jesus said this, we've got to remember the context of this is, Jesus is having His last meal with His disciples, so everything He says has got more significance than almost any other place. The significance of this is He's saying: I'm about to leave you. They didn't understand that. I'm about to pay the price to purchase you - they didn't understand that. I will rise again from the dead, and I will ascend into heaven, and I will give you a wedding gift before I go. I will return, and I'm going to prepare a place for you, so all of this is the language of the marriage. In their culture, their mind would be racing, that just as God of the Old Testament coveted with the people of Israel, now Jesus - God is revealing Himself in Jesus, saying I have a covenant not of law, but of love. I'm about to lay My life down for you all, and then to take of the spirit in Me and put that spirit in you. You and I will be one. We will be like husband and wife. Isn't that fantastic?

This is the language of it, so when it says: He's coming as the groom, this is all that it implies there, it's in these things here. He promises to return, and we saw that in Revelations. Now Jesus has made it absolutely clear, He has gone to be with the Father, to prepare for us, so He's already in the process of preparing, and He's preparing places of intimacy, dwelling places of relationship with God, that all of us are called into. Now the key to it happening is the Holy Spirit. The key to all of this is the Holy Spirit, because the bride is called to prepare herself, so just as the husband went to prepare the place that they would consummate their marriage, and get the feast all ready, the bride had to prepare herself. Now I'm going to give you four scriptures about the bride preparing, and each one of the scriptures contains a truth about what preparation looks like for you. The thread that flows through all of it is, it has to do with the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. You can't prepare yourself without the work of the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit to help us. I'll show you how to help us in just a moment, so let's have a quick look at it. I won't take long. Let's have a look.

So how can I respond to what Christ has offered? The first two things are simple, and we'll talk about the third one in a bit more detail. The first is simple: receive Christ. Receive Him! He died on the cross for you! Why live without God? Why live a life without destiny and purpose? Receive Him, and receive Him today! The second thing is, if you're not baptised in the Holy Ghost, and haven't received the power of the spirit to live out a great life, then receive the Holy Ghost today! Get filled with the spirit, and the gift of tongues! Oh, a sign to who? Unbelievers. What of? That I am in covenant with God. How wonderful. Then the last part is this, is that we're called to prepare ourselves. Now let's just quickly look at the scriptures, very quickly. I'll just highlight them. You can search them out, and go through them yourself.

Here's number one. Number one is found in 2 Corinthians 11, Verse 2. Paul says: I have espoused you to one spouse. There it is, Verse 2. I am jealous with a godly jealousy. I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunningness, your minds might be corrupted from the simplicity, or pure simple devotion to Jesus Christ. Number one, the work of the spirit is simply this: to help you grow in your love relationship and devotion to Jesus Christ. This is number one. I love Him! That's why we have worship. I love Him! And this is why you get into the word. I love Him, and I want to hear from Him, so the first thing is, loyalty to Jesus Christ. Now what that really means is, He's number one in your life. You can't have a husband and a boyfriend. [Laughter] It's true. It doesn't work anywhere in life, because when the husband finds out, he'll be very jealous.

So Paul's saying: I'm really jealous, because I see how easy it is, having fallen in love with Christ and received Him and responding to Him, to then get your life filled up with other stuff. How much other stuff is filling your life? How many other things have got first call on your time, your life, your heart, your attention, your affections, your thoughts, your worries? Where is your life going? What place does Jesus Christ have in your life, number one? Number two is found in the Book of Esther, in Esther, Chapter 2, and Verse 15. There's a whole thing of its own. I got so much studying all of this, but I can only do one thing on it, so here it is, Esther. Now look at this. Now remember Esther had the opportunity to become a bride to a king. The picture is the bride to the king, and so the king sends out and says we're going to buy lots of pretty girls, and what we want to do is get all the pretty girls to come, and they'll all dress themselves up, and get themselves looking good.

They'll come in and the king will try them out, and if he likes them they're the queen, and if he doesn't like them they're gone. They're just one of the concubines, another one out there. Now I know that's pretty primitive, but that's what life was like in those days, and that's what actually was happening to her. Now here's the key thing about Esther. Look at this. Everyone else of course did what they thought was right in their own eyes. Every one of them dressed up the way they thought they'd look pretty. Every one of them did their make up the way they thought would be right, but look what it says about her. It says Esther, Verse 15, when the turn came for Esther, the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Moredecai, who had taken her as a daughter, to go in to the king - look at this - she requested nothing but what Hegai the king's eunuch, the custodian of the women, advised. And she obtained favour in the sight of all who saw her.

Now who is Hegai? The custodian of the women. The custodian of the women, his role was to get the women ready to be the wife to the king. Whose role is that? The Holy Spirit. Notice it said everyone else just did what they thought was right; this is what she did. She required nothing except what the Holy Spirit directed her, so this speaks of a surrendering to the leadership of the Holy Spirit daily in our lives. Listening to the voice of God, listening to the Holy Spirit, letting Him show you what God likes, what God doesn't like. Have you ever stopped to ask Him, what is it You like? What is it You don't like? Is there anything in my life You don't like? And then listen until you hear the reply. When you start to ask those questions, you hear all kinds of things, very specific things: I don't like this. I don't like that, it grieves Me. So the Bible says we can grieve the Holy Spirit. We can upset the one who knows Jeses, the holy spirit doesn't speak of Himself. He just finds what the Father wants, and He reveals what the Father wants. The Bible tells us that in the Book of John.

Not only that, it tells us in the Book of John that the Holy Spirit will take the things of Jesus and make them known to us, so now what Jesus likes, the Holy Spirit can put on your heart. So don't follow tradition, don't follow your old ways, don't follow what you think is best. Start to listen to the Holy Spirit, because those who are led by the Holy Spirit are the sons of God, or they will be the bride prepared for the husband. The moment that she went in she was immediately favoured, because she let the Holy Spirit prepare her, so yield to the Holy Spirit.

Here's the last two now. Matthew 25, there's one found there. Look at this, Matthew 25 Verse 10, and it's about Jesus teaching about the end times. He says look, the kingdom of heaven is like a wedding, and guess what's happening in the wedding? The virgins are chosen, five wise, five foolish, and the five foolish of course didn't have any oil. Then the midnight cry came, Verse 6, and the bridegroom is coming, go to meet him, and all the virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, Verse 8: give us some of your oil, our lamps are going out. They said no, lest there's not enough, you go and buy for yourselves.

While they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready, went in with him to the wedding, and the door was shut. Oh, we won't go into all of that. I have taught on that before, but here's what this says. You notice it says: those who were ready? Those who were ready had paid a price to have oil for their lamp. Now you are the lamp, you are the light of the world, but what ignites you? Huh! Oil, Holy Ghost! Oil is always a type of the Holy Ghost. You and I need to be full of the Spirit of God! Excited by the Holy Ghost! Praying in tongues, letting the Spirit of God energise you day by day. He said: there's a price, it just doesn't happen. You get up, and you pray. You set discipline in your life and pray, begin to arise and ask God to empower you to pray, and you pray. You spend time in the word of God, and as you spend time in the word of God - the word of God by the way, it says it's like a mirror, that when you look into it, oh, you see what you're really like. The Holy Spirit points out where you need to change - and so notice this. Some were ready, some were not, so while all were invited, some prepare, and some do not.

Let me ask you, what is happening in your life? Are you preparing your life? Are you in connection, communing with the Holy Spirit? Are you letting Him talk to you about your life? Are you letting Him put the finger on things which don't make Him happy at all, but rather grieve Him, things like anger and bitterness and resentment and jealousy, pettiness and small mindedness, exclusivism and all that kind of stuff, pride? All those things grieve Him. Are you letting the Holy Spirit in - are you building a prayer life? What a great - why don't we this year make a decision, we will prepare ourselves, for the new things that God has? And here's the last one, I'll finish with that, and go back to where we started in Revelations 19 and Verse 7: And His wife has made herself ready. How about that? She made herself ready, so don't leave it all up to God. There's something you have to do. It requires a choice.

I've had God speaking to me about the use of my time, about using time carefully, because time can be spent, but not regained. You can get money again, but you can't get time. For many time is running out, so how are you using your time? What is wasting your time? You'd be surprised if you watch the news every day, how many hours a week that will amount to. You'll be surprised if you spend a lot of time watching this and that, or doing this and that on games, how your life disappears, and you cannot get it again. You cannot get it again - so what are you doing with your time? Here it is. His wife has made herself ready and - Verse 8 - she was arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. I see here's the last thing that makes us ready. It's not just about our prayer life, and our intimacy with God. It's not just about spending time in the word. It's about our life becoming beautiful with acts of compassion and kindness.

Notice it said: she was arrayed in fine linen, which is the righteous acts. The words righteous acts means things you do out of your relationship with God, and in the Old Testament the word righteous was the word tzedakah, meaning to have compassion on people, to be generous to people. So here it is. You can see it all there. We see the different aspects of preparation, making yourself ready: your relationship with the Holy Spirit, your response and yielding to the Holy Spirit, you're building a life of prayer, a life where the Spirit of God moves easily and quickly through you, and you let it overflow to the reaching of people in our community, the people around you; acts of kindness, acts of mercy, acts of evangelism, acts that reach people, and let them know there's God that loves them. And to her it was granted she would be arrayed in fine linen, which is the righteous acts of all of the saints.

So we have some choices to make today. Why don't we just close our eyes just quickly now, and I want to just ask you to consider how you will respond to Jesus Christ. How will you respond? How will you respond to Him being the groom? How will you respond? Number one, if you don't know Jesus Christ, the first response you could make would be to receive Him as your saviour. Jesus said to everyone who received Him, made Him welcome in their life, He gave power to be a child of God. If you're here today and never made the decision to personally commit your life to Christ, to put your trust in Him - church can't save you. Works can't save you. The only thing that can give a relationship with God is faith in Christ. Is there any person here today at that place of decision, please raise your hand and let me know I want to receive Christ today. I want to receive Jesus.

Okay, the second decision for you to make, are you filled with the Holy Spirit yet, do you have the Holy Spirit baptism, speak in a new language, starting to flow with the Holy Spirit, because He's the one who prepares you. He's the one you'll be listening to. When did you last speak in tongues? Have you got that gift? Why not open your heart today and receive it? Is there anyone here just at that place of decision to receive the Holy Ghost?

Here's the last decision I want you to consider. I wonder today what you are doing this year to make yourself ready, to prepare yourself? How is your devotion to Jesus Christ? Are there things in your heart, other lovers, other friends, things that have taken away that simplicity of just enjoying walking with Him? What are they? How about your prayer life, your time in the word and prayer, building a daily time and also listening and being empowered and filled by the Spirit of God day by day? What's happening there? What about the area of just yielding and surrendering to the Holy Spirit, letting Him talk into your life. When did you last hear Him speak? You need to make decisions about reordering your life, and what are you doing to extend the gospel, to build the house of God, and extend the kingdom? If there's nothing you're doing, then that would be a great place to make yourself ready this year.

This is what we'll do now, just as you're thinking about what it is you need to respond to, we're just going to stand in a moment, just each who person put their hand up to receive Jesus I'd like you to make your way to the front, stand in a row in front of me. I want to lead you in a prayer to receive Jesus. It'll take about a minute, two minutes and then we'll pray for you. Everyone is going to appreciate and value you made this decision. It's a great decision. So ready church, let's all stand together, one, two, three, stand, come on, let's give them a clap as people who put their hand up come.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· The key question Jesus asked Peter: Who do you say that I am? (Mt.16:15-16)

· The main theme of the Book of Revelation is the revealing of Jesus Christ. (Rev.1:1)

· Rev.19:7-9 “…the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife has made herself ready”.

· Rev.19 Reveals Jesus as:

(i) A Passio9nate Bridegroom – coming to fulfil His Wedding promises

(ii) A sovereign King – coming to conquer His enemies and rule

(iii) A Righteous Judge – coming to call all men to account

· Each picture reveals a different aspect of who Jesus is and how He relates to us.

· N.T. has 23 different references to the Bridegroom aspect of Jesus.

2. The Jewish Wedding – Key Elements

· The Jewish wedding consisted of two distinct parts: Betrothal and the Wedding.

(a) The Betrothal (Kiddushin) (Mt.1:18-19 Joseph and Mary)

(i) The Arrangement (Shiddukhin)

· Either the father of the groom arranged the marriage (Samson), or the father sends an agent in his place (Abraham), or the young man comes by himself to the girl’s father to arrange the marriage.

· The young man brought money, a wedding contract and a flask of wine.

(ii) The Bridal Price (mohair)

· The two men discussed and agreed upon the price that would be paid to

purchase the bride. It changed her status, freeing her from her father’s house.

(iii) The Wedding Contract (Ketubah)

· The groom then proposed to the bride and if she consented the marriage contract (Ketubah) was written up and signed.

· This binding document called a “Ketubah” was kept in the bride’s possession until the consummation of the marriage.

· The wedding contract laid out all the groom’s promises of provision for his bride and details about the wedding arrangements.

(iv) The Bridal Gift (Matan)

· Once the proposal was agreed, the price paid, and the wedding contract signed they drank wine together. In the drinking of the wine the bride commits to the groom – they are now betrothed and considered married.

· The groom gives a bridal gift to his bride, a reminder to his bride of his love for her and his coming to receive her as his wife.

(v) The Betrothal Period (Kiddinshim – set apart, holy)

· After the betrothal the bride was considered to be married although still living separate from her bridegroom. It would take a divorce to break the betrothal.

· The Groom – went to his father’s house to prepare a bridal chamber and home for the bride to live in – by extending the Father’s house.

· The Bride makes preparation during the period of separation from the groom.

- She prepares herself and her wedding garments

- She had to be ready and watchful as her groom would come at night

- She wears a veil to indicate she belongs only to the groom.

(b) The Wedding Ceremony (Nissuin = to carry)

(i) The Return of the Groom

· At a time determined by his father the Bridegroom returns for his bride.

· Since the exact timing was a surprise the bride had to be ready.

· The groomsmen run ahead of the groom to sound the Shafar and shout.

(ii) The Bridal Chamber (Chuppah)

· The shout warned the bride to go out with her bridesmaids to meet the groom and return with him to his father’s house.

· On their wedding day the Bride and Groom are called King and Queen.

· The Groom and the bride entered the bridal chamber and consummated the marriage once the ceremony is complete.

· Then the guests celebrate together for seven days.

3. Jesus Our Bridegroom

· He pursues us with passionate love and longing for us (1 Jn.4:19)

· He has paid the full bridal price – His life (1 Cor.6:20)

· He invites us into covenant relationship with Him (Mt 26:27)

He gives us His Word – the Bible outlining the covenant.

· He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit (Eph.1:13-14)

· He promises a place in his father’s house (Jn.14:1-3)

· He promises to return and complete the marriage (Rev.19:7)

4. Our Response to Jesus

(a) Receive Christ and His Offer of Covenant Relationship

Rev.3:20 “Behold I stand at the door and knock – if any man hears my voice and open the door I will come unto him. I dine with him and he with me.”

(b) Receive the Holy Spirit

Acts 1:8 “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and be witnesses to unto me”.

(c) Prepare Ourselves for Jesus Return

(i) 2 Cor.11:2 Personal devotion and loyalty to Jesus.

(ii) Esther 2:15 Yielding to the Holy Spirit to shape our attitudes and behaviour

(iii) Mt.25:10 Prayer/Word – pursuant of God’s presence and power.

(iv) Rev.19:7 Acts of compassion/generosity that spread the Gospel

Righteousness = Acts of righteousness.

O.T. Righteousness = Tsedagah = Acts of compassion.

How will You respond to Jesus Christ?

Who is Jesus (3 of 4) Sovereign King

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Rev 19:11-16 Symbolism brought to life. How should we respond to a mighty conquering king?

I want you to open your Bible with me, go into Revelations Chapter 19, and I want to carry on with: Who is Jesus? That's what we're looking at, Who is Jesus? We're looking in the Book of Revelation. Of course the Bible abounds in insights to who Jesus is. In John 5, Jesus said to the Pharisees, He said: you searched through scriptures, and you think in them you find life. He said you go right through the Bible looking to find life. He said they all talk about Me, and you won't come to Me, that you might have life, so the Bible is full of the revelation of Jesus Christ. From Genesis to Revelation, Jesus is there, and you're going to say well: I didn't see Jesus in the Old Testament. Well listen, in the Book of Genesis, He's the Father of faith. He's the promised Son. In the Book of Genesis He's the deliverer that delivers the nation. He's also the lamb that sheds His blood. You go through each Book - in Exodus He's the one who brings the nation out, He's the rock that provides the water, He is the bronze serpent the hang on the cross so that people could be healed.

When you go into Leviticus He's the High Priest. He's also the offering. Every book of the Bible Jesus appears. In Joshua, He is the triumphant warrior king, who possesses the land and conquers the enemies, and makes a provision for God's people. In 1 Samuel He's the prophet, whose words never fall to the ground; in 1 Kings He becomes the king, the shepherd king, who saves and builds a nation. In the Book of 2 Kings He becomes the wise man who builds the temple, and then we go through; in Ezra He's the one who restores the temple, in Nehemiah He rebuilds the walls, so Jesus is found right through the Bible. You've just got to look for Him in the Bible. That's why Jesus said: you search the word and you're looking for life in the words; they speak of Me. You've got to come to Me, that's where life is found. It's in the relationship, the flow of a dynamic relationship, not just in lots of laws and principles. And so we could go right through the Bible. It's interesting isn't it? You know, He's the shepherd. He's the one who purchased the prostitute, and then redeemed her. He's everywhere in the Bible.

The Bible is about Jesus. It is the revelation, and we get to the Book of Revelation, and now it's the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and certain things are revealed. Firstly of course it's revealed what He is to the churches, but I want to follow and go through to the last part of Revelation, and this has yet to unfold. We saw there are three aspects of this; one, He is the bride groom, who loves us. Now remember these are just pictures of Jesus to help you know what it's like, and then show you how to relate, so as the bride groom we saw, He loves us! A passionate love. He wanted to come and save us! He pursues us. He wants to forgive us. He wants to enter into covenant with us, and so we see Him as the one who offers a covenant, love, a life long eternal relationship. What a wonderful thing. Our role is to submit, receive Him and enter that relationship, and live like someone married to the king.

Then now we want to look today at Him being the king. Well that's an awesome one isn't it? Revelations 19, Verse 11, and He said: now I saw heaven opened, and I saw a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. Sounds pretty serious doesn't it? His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name was called The Word of God. The armies of heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses also. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe, and on His thigh, a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

So now we see He's revealed not just as someone who loves you intentionally, and forgives you, and will pick you up and care for you, nurture you, that gentle loving side of Him, now we see another facet of Him. It is the same person, but here's another facet of Him. He is a sovereign, all-powerful king. Now most people like to relate to Jesus as the one who died on the cross for their sins, and loves them, and is always going to be there. We love the words of comfort, but we need to grow up and understand: He is a king. Essentially around that - I'll come into opening these passages in a bit. I want to just lay several things out about Jesus being king. Firstly He is king over a kingdom, not a democracy. It's not about my ideas and what I think, I think this and I think that. Jesus is king over a kingdom, a realm of rule, and the only place in all creation that is rebelling against that rule is this planet we're on. The contention globally is about who will rule. Jesus said in Matthew 28:18: all authority in heaven and earth is given to Me. You say well I don't see it. That doesn't mean He doesn't have it. You don't see the air either - doesn't mean it's not there.

What we haven't seen is the exercise of that authority, in a global scale. We've seen it in a local scale, but not in a global scale - so Jesus came as the servant king, but now He will come as the conquering king. So the Jesus you read about that came the first time, don't think He's coming that way the second time. It's not true. It's not how the Bible reveals Him. The second thing about Him being a king is, He's established a government. There is a government in the heavens, and He's delegated government to angels. He's delegated government in the heavens and in the earth, so every time you engage, every time you encounter an authority in the earth, you are encountering the government of God. You say well I don't like some of them, they're not nice. That's irrelevant. The core issue is your heart attitude to authorities, wherever you are in life. If you understand He's the king of a kingdom, and you're in the kingdom, Romans 13 says: submit yourselves to those in authority, because God has ordained or put them in these places.

So therefore, every time you meet a person in authority, whether they act well, act badly, whether they do their job well, or don't do their job well, you are encountering the authority of God. Keep respect for that delegated authority, because you are respecting God. Think about that. Getting the idea? Okay then. The third thing about it is that in His kingdom, Jesus has established protocols, which are ways of doing things, and order. In other words Jesus' kingdom is incredibly ordered. The planet is quite ordered. It runs by laws and rules and principles, which God set in place, but His kingdom, both invisible and visible, also has order and protocols. There are ways of doing things in a kingdom. You know if you want to go visit the king, there are ways or protocols of accessing the king, and so it's the same in the kingdom of heaven.

The Bible tells us for example in Acts 4:12: neither is there salvation in any other, for there's no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. That is a protocol. That's a way. There is no other way to get saved but through faith in Jesus Christ. Now I know we would like to be tolerant of everyone, and everything, and all the other things in the world, but there is no other way a man can be saved, except through Jesus Christ. God has set His protocols in place. He's set His order in place. Here's the protocol for salvation: acknowledge Jesus Christ. There is no other way. He said: I am the way, the truth and life. No man comes to the Father except by Me, so God has set things in place, and not only that, He has set the way you can access God. There's a certain way to access the presence of God. If you don't follow God's way, you don't enjoy the access to His kingdom benefits and privileges.

Associated with that, there is a way of ordering our relationships. The husband is the head of the wife. We may not understand what it means, and how to outwork it, but it's an order God set in place that the spirit world operates under. God has set things in order. He's set principles in place for us to govern our life, principles for your finances. Now the problem is, we get saved in a democracy, we come into a kingdom, and then don't understand there's a major reformation needed in our thinking, to change our lifestyle, to live as a kingdom person - and there's a reason for that as we'll see shortly. Here's another thing too about this kingdom, is that Jesus has absolute standards in His kingdom. Now the liberals and humanists don't like these absolute standards, but the kingdom of heaven has absolute standards: lie/truth; holiness/uncleanness. There's absolute standards in His kingdom, and this is the issue that humanism has brought, is to dilute down absolutes until you're wishy-washy, and it's: well I feel this, and I think that in this circumstance, this in that circumstance, all this whole area of humanistic thinking.

There are absolute standards, for example God makes it very clear if you just read - here's an interesting example - if I just read in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6. I'll just read a little bit of a verse, look at this - Verse 9 - He says: do you not know the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom? Be not deceived. In other words don't get this one wrong. Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortionists; none of them will inherit the kingdom. It's simple. If you're doing those things, you won't inherit things in the kingdom, it's as simple as that. In other words God has some clear absolutes, that we don't negotiate over to suit ourselves. There are non-negotiables in the kingdom.

Finally here's the last one - you'll love this. He has the power to call all men and all nations to account for what they did. He has got the power. Just because you haven't seen Him exercise it, doesn't mean He doesn't have it. He has as sovereign king, the right and the power to call every person, every government, every nation to account, and He will do it. That's an interesting thing. In Revelations 20, Verse 12: I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened. And all were judged, small and great. The President of the United States, the Queen of England, it doesn't matter who you are, everyone gives account, so that is the nature of a king in his kingdom. Now let's go and have a look here and see how Jesus is revealed in Revelations 19, and I want to give you some simple ways that you can just respond to this revelation. Getting the idea?

Revelation 19, okay, first of all I saw heaven open, so John is getting a vision. He's getting revelation from heaven, about something that has not yet happened, and he said: I saw a white horse, and someone sitting on him. So the first thing you see is His transport. Now don't look and think of horses; think back there if someone was on a white horse, they were a military commander and they were on their way to a battle, so probably if we were to put it in today's language you'd say: I saw an F15, It was armed to the teeth, and He was sitting there driving it! That's probably more the language that we would have, and so the first thing you see is the white horse, it's a military picture of a conquering king, so when Jesus returns, He will return as a triumphant king to conquer the world, to subdue the world. That's got to be good news hasn't it? He's coming to subdue it.

Notice the second thing, they tell us about His character; He is faithful and true and righteous. In other words, He's faithful, He fulfils what He says He'll do. Not only that, He is true to His word. He's true to his character. He never ever goes outside what He says He'll do. He's true and His righteousness, the decisions He makes are right. Now you think about why is Jesus going to do all these things. Very, very simple, you'll see it in a moment - notice the thing about His eyes. His eyes are a flaming fire. Now of course you look at it, you've got to think about this spiritually. When you see someone whose eyes are blazing, what do you know is going on inside them? There is passion! Ever seen an angry person? Whoa! Nostrils flaring, and of course they've probably got devils flaring out their eyes, but He's got something else inside. He's got this passionate, zealous love for His people, and He's about to enter and do something to make the world a different place with them, and through them, and for them.

So when His eyes are ablaze, it's because there's passion inside. Have you ever seen a person whose lost all their fire in life? Their eyes are dull, and what it's really saying is He is full of life, and passion that flows out of the heart, that's ignited with love and fire and holiness! Isn't that something else aye? Glory, that's what He's like - and not only that. They see right through you into where you are, and every little thing going on inside you. You can't hide. You get one look from Jesus and you're undone. [Laughter] It's like He took off all your clothes and there you are, and everything is there. You can see everything. You cannot hide from His gaze! His eyes go right through to the core of your soul. Today we all dress up and look pretty, but before Jesus, He looks straight through who we are.

The second thing, the next thing you notice is His head. On His head are many crowns. The word crown is that of a victor, someone who's fought a battle and triumphed - and on His head are many crowns. What you've got to realise is that is a picture that He has fought many, many battles and in every one, He has triumphed and won the victory! You want to follow someone, follow someone who won, not someone who lost. He's won the victory! He's won the victory in battles. He's skilful at war, and winning battles. You got a financial battle? He's won that. Got a marriage battle? He knows how to handle that, He's having them all the time with His bride. [Laughter] Think about that. Come on. He's having them all the time. You got a battle with people? He had many of them. He knows how to conquer battles with people. You got people rejecting you? Oh, He knows how to conquer that battle too. You're feeling depressed and down and rejected, oh oh! He knows how to deal with that.

You have some devils getting on you, like a monkey clawing into your ears? He knows how to conquer that one. I would want to follow someone who's won the battles, and so He's portrayed, oh oh! many crowns! Halleluiah, and that's why it says: when you come before Him - here's the protocol of heaven - when you come into His presence you know what you do? You take your crowns, and throw them at His feet, in other words acknowledge you got the victory, and He gets the honour. See, the picture language is to help us engage with heaven, engage with God. So this is this wonderful king, man oh man, and His clothes - notice this, His names. No one knew His name except Him. You think well what does that mean? I know His name. His name's Jesus. No, no, no. Listen. What it says, no man knew His name, this is what it's meaning. The name speaks of the nature, what a person is like. So when it says: no man knew His name, this is what it's saying: there are things about Jesus you can't even find in the Bible. Only He knows them, and He's going to make them known in the end times. You will be surprised.

He is unsearchable, there's so much to be known about Him. Not only that, He is also known as the word of God, because everything He does is in harmony with the word of God. He never departs from the word of God. That's why it says: in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God. His life shows what it means to live out the written word of God. His name is the word of God. What else is He called? The king of kings. He's the sovereign ruler over everyone. You met a king? He's the king over them. You think someone's important? He's over them. You think someone's got some power? He's over them and more powerful. He's the king of kings, and like to repeat it, the Lord of Lords, so He's over the whole deal. You've got understand, this is the One that we are working with. This is the One we are connected. This is the One who loves us.

It says here about His army. Oh, look at His armies - armies, more than one. There's an army in heaven, angelic army. There's an army on earth, saints of the living God, His armies. Oh I love that, and His armies. Let's see if I can find it, I'm getting excited here. The armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. So it tells how they're clothed. It says first of all, they're in heaven, in other words they have learnt these are people who are mobilised to flow together for a military purpose of conquest, to advance a kingdom in the earth. They are in heaven. That means that they are connected by the Holy Ghost. You are already connected to heaven, and all you have to do is learn how to enter and stay in that realm of the spirit, and you are part of the army of God in heaven, following this conquering king, who wants to advance His kingdom through the world. It's an absolutely amazing picture - and they're clothed in fine linen, which the Bible tells us is the righteous acts.

It is the right doing of the saints. White speaks of the glory of God, the life and nature of God, clean and white, white and clean. Clean means purity, so now we see very clearly that Jesus is not just coming alone, He's coming, and He has mobilised people with a certain purpose, and this is what the purpose is: take over the earth. Take over the earth. We're not to get out of it, and abandon it, we're to transform it, but at this stage we're transforming it by the proclaiming of the gospel. When He comes, it'll be with the raw power of God as well as the gospel, and oh my, when the raw power of God comes, you want to read your Bible and find out what happens to people who stand in the way - not good. You know the God of the Old Testament is still our God and when people stood in His way, there's some horrible things happen. Angel Lord come on one army, and a couple of hundred thousand died overnight; came on another couple of guys, and fire came from heaven on them. You see God is not limited in His power. Just because He doesn't use it, doesn't mean He doesn't have it, and it doesn't mean He won't hold back forever. This is exciting.

You don't have to look at the world and say oh, it's so bad, it's getting worse. Oh my, read the Book of Revelation, who we are following and what He is like and what He will do. Look at what it says. It says His clothes, His robe. His robe was dipped in blood. He was clothed in a robe dipped in blood. Now I'm not too sure, didn't say whether it's His blood or not, so probably it's like this. If you are a - I guess - you're writing there to a group of people who are used to military combat, where soldiers carried shields and swords, and they got into face to face, close quarter combat. Now if you ever see someone come back from that kind of battle, they are covered in blood, someone else's blood, so to me it just seems to speak very, very clearly that He engages at close quarters. He's not going to do this from a distance. He will engage in close quarters in addressing issues in the earth. He will be engaged, personally. He'll also be engaged through His body.

Here's the next thing it says, it tells something else about His actions. What does He do? Here are three things that He does: number one, He judges and makes war. You say it doesn't sound like the Jesus we knew. You're right, but it's still Him. He came as a servant king and everyone missed Him. Why? Because they were looking for a king who'd come and take over and conquer Rome. Right till the very end, the disciples thought He was going to come and set up an army and conquer the earth, and they got it wrong that time. Why did they think that? Because the Bible tells us He will do that, just not that time, but next time. Next time. Next time. Next time. Don't have to look and be in panic about ooh oh, you know, the Muslims are spreading through the world, and this is happening... don't live in fear! Ooh oh, what's happening, have you read the news, quick, get the latest concern about what's happening in the world. Listen, get into the Bible, and see what it says, and align with heaven and the purpose of heaven! That's a much better plan I would think. [Applause]

So He judges and makes war. That means He intervenes to put things right. Now why is He doing this? Because He is a passionate lover of people, and He will not stand back forever, and allow evil to triumph. He will finally come and say: I'm putting an end to this now. He will judge it; that is evil and wrong, repent now or you're finished. He'll make war. War means a conflict between two governments, as who will rule and be in charge, so He will judge. He'll look out of love, out of righteousness, and see what is right and what is wrong, and He'll sort out those things by confronting them. It says He'll strike the nations. Now that's interesting. I can't develop all of these, but here's an interesting thought: the nations. That's all the nations, so whatever He's going to do, will affect all the nations. There will be confrontation over government, over the nations.

It says in one place all the kings will be gathered together at battle, and they'll all be wiped out in one day. God is going to shift governance in every nation of the earth. [Applause] Every nation of the earth will experience change in governance, right government, He will root out corruption. He will root out injustice. He will root out the things that are going on, that grieve any good person. He will root them out, and He'll replace people who won't repent, with those who will fulfil His will, and rule righteously. He will have a righteous government. You say well I find that hard to believe. Listen, there was a day, in David's day, when there was a righteous government in the earth, in a nation, and it was there to let all the world know how good it is when there's godly government, how blessed the nation is. The Bible says: righteousness exalts a nation; sin is a shame for any people. Laws like this [Homosexual Law Reform] are a shame on our nation, and also a huge problem for us. Make no mistake, you will find once that law if it's passed, it will increase demonic activity of a perverse nature in the nation, because it'll be legally allowed by the representatives on earth. That's a perversion.

Okay, well we'll carry on, move on. We need to get some hope in here. Notice the last thing it says, that I picked up there is: out of His mouth goes a sharp sword to strike the nations. Ooh, so it's not like He's got a sword in His mouth, and He's got a long tongue or anything like that. Listen, this is the word of God, very sharp, very powerful, very quick, and when God speaks, something happens. Jesus spoke to the tree: no more fruit, and it withers and dies. Jesus spoke to the storm: silent! And it was silent. That's the sharp sword. What it means to say sharp sword, it means the word He speaks is spirit, and life, and is empowered by heaven, and it always does not return and avoid. It does what it's called to do, so if He's going to smite nations, He's going to speak prophetically into nations, and consequences will come. Now you think well I don't know, I don't know whether I can go along with that, seems all a bit much. Okay, read Jeremiah.

Read Jeremiah, and then go to the history and ask where are all the nations He prophesied against, and what kind of end did they come to? Where are they now? They are exactly where He prophesied. You see these things are all through the Bible. The Bible is the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's whole centres on Jesus Christ. Okay, so how can I respond to all this? What should I do? Isn't this exciting, getting some things out of the word like this? But what can I do, what do I do, what do I do? I need to know what to do, not just get excited about the word. Number one, I need to acknowledge Jesus' right to rule. Bottom line is, at a personal level, if you are here today, and you are not a Christian, you've not given your life to Christ, you're living your life your own way, you're a rebel against heaven. You're a rebel against the order of God, you're a rebel against God's government, your life is out of order and you are suffering immensely. Not only are you not in the kingdom of heaven, you are under the rule of another kingdom, a demonic kingdom called the kingdom of darkness. It rules your life, and torments you, and seeks to steal from you continually. The first thing is to acknowledge: I have run my life my own way. Jesus, I come to You as the one who loves me, and I submit to Your right to rule my life. I acknowledge You as Lord.

Notice what it says in Romans 10:9; if we believe in our heart, and confess Jesus Christ is Lord or king, then we'll be saved. This is an issue of governance, living in one kingdom, coming into another kingdom, and re-ordering my whole life. It's not just well I come to church, that's the end of it, nothing like that at all. The second thing, what do I need to do? Well, because I'm called into His kingdom, I now need to learn how to live in His kingdom. I need someone to help me and empower me to do it. I need to receive the Holy Ghost, the power of the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues, which is an entrance into a spirit world. Acts 1:8, you shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost has come on you. I need to get filled with the spirit, because I can't live in the spirit dimension with God. I can't live a kingdom life without the power to live that life, and that power is given to me. He's the Holy Ghost. He's a glorious person. Halleluiah, maybe some of you are at that point now.

Here's the third thing I need to consider. I need to consider aligning my life into God's order, aligning my relationships with God's order. Now you start to think about it, it starts with your personal heart. Jesus said in John 14, Verse 21: He that has my commandments and keeps them, he's the one that loves Me, and My Father and I will come and manifest Ourselves. If you're not getting much of God perhaps there's commandments of God you're ignoring. Now notice what Jesus said: if you keep My commandments, that's how you demonstrate you really do love Me. This is not a legal thing. This is what this is. I looked and thought oh man, that's a tough statement. If you keep My commandments, then you love Me. I think if you do what I tell you, then you love Me - it sounds incredibly hard doesn't it? But it's not meant to be like that. In fact that's actually not what it's about.

What He's saying is something like this: all your life you've thought that doing it your way you would have your needs met, and it's not worked. So I want you to repent, and recognise that the ways you've tried to run your life, and manage your life, and control your life, do not work at all. There is a need to turn from them, and in faith believe that aligning with Me will get what you were looking for, see? And so what I need to do if there's a mess in my life, the first question you'll ask is, where do I need to align up with God and His ways? Repentance and faith is the foundation for living in kingdom life. You say well, I repented years ago. Ooh, I think you should repent before you go home. Listen, repentance is the continued process of recognising when I'm living out of my own strength, my own way, my own ability, my own ideas about life, and coming to realise it's not working, and it never was going to work, and re-centring, getting rid of the idols, and re-centring on the king and His kingdom, letting my life be aligned with God: your finances.

That's the most vulnerable place. Everyone - finances, money. You think oh, don't talk to me about money. No, because you want to stay not aligned with heaven, but God wants to talk about your money. Why? Because He wants to bless you. He wants you to be aligned with heaven, so He can increase blessing in your life, and the flow of blessing that comes through divine alignment. This is true of every area of life. This is what God is saying to the churches at this time. Alright then, here's the last one. I'd love to develop this more but I don't have the time, so I'm just going to put it out to you. Here's the last couple of things. We need to learn how to enter and experience kingdom realities. I need to learn how to enter and experience kingdom realities. What do we mean by that? I'll give you a few things now.

I need to learn, for example in Hebrews 4, Verse 16, it says: let us come boldly to the throne of grace, and obtain mercy and grace to help. So I need to learn how to, in my personal prayer life, come near to God. I have to learn that it's by faith, that just in a moment of time, I can just access and step into His presence immediately, and feel Him and engage Him, so I need to learn how to do that. It's done by faith. It's done by boldly coming into His presence, and believing I'm forgiven. It's done through repentance. It's done through praise and worship. There's a number of protocols the Bible says how to enter His presence. Let me tell you this: it is normal for every believer to enjoy access to heaven's presence, the presence of God, and the reality of His kingdom. It's a normal thing. If it's not happening, there's something you need to learn to do, and something you need to align up in your life, in terms of priorities. Now that would be normal.

In relationship I need to learn how to enter the presence of my God, and how to present myself. Do you know how to present yourself to Him, that day by day we're called to present ourself. There's various parts of you to present to Him. Have you thought about that? And have you thought about when you stand in the presence of a king, how you stand? See, that's what the Bible teaches us, about how to stand in the presence of the king of kings, because He is the king of kings, He's calling us to be a king, or to rule, or have authority in our own area of life. Here's another thing to think about. He's called us to see and hear, why? Because that's how Jesus lived His life, so it's normal for us, as part of this kingdom, to learn how to see in the spirit and hear in the spirit. We have courses to help you with that.

Here's another thing that would be normal to learn to do, how to receive from God, how to step into His presence, and begin to imbibe His peace, because the kingdom of heaven is peace; how to imbibe His joy, and to begin to feel it and draw it around your life. That would be something all of us are called to do, because we're in a kingdom now, and we have access. Here's another thing you could learn to do, and that is, as you've come into the presence of the king and worshipped Him and love on Him and done these things, then He wants to teach you how to arise as a king representing Him, and speak over your situation, speak over your life, speak over your relationships, make decrees of the word of God, that heaven will back up, to bring your life, and those things around you, so that God's able to manifest in them. This is exciting, the kingdom side of Jesus.

Finally, we're called to share and advance that kingdom with others, to win people to Christ. Go make disciples of all nations. Well there's got to be something for everyone in that lot. There would have to be something for everyone in that lot. I just want you to close your eyes for a moment, and just think and let the Holy Spirit challenge you. I want to just quickly ask you, in what area God spoke to you? It helps instead of saying boy, that was enthusiastic, now let's get over to Art Deco and out there the afternoon, before you do that, just make a decision what God said, and how you'll respond. So close your eyes right now. This will only take about three minutes to do this, but this is the important part for you.

I can feel His presence just so strong right now - hard to stand up actually. It is, I'm really finding it hard to stand, because I can feel His presence so strong right now.

Here's the first question: Have you given your life to Jesus? Have you come into His kingdom? Have you come to the one who loves you, and desires to lead you, who has demonstrated His love by dying on the cross for you? Have you come to Him? He wants to lead you, to show Himself as the lover of your soul, and the one who will lead and govern your life, and make you blessed and prosperous, fulfil your destiny.

Here's the second question. Have you received the Holy Ghost, and got filled with the spirit yet? Be a great step for you to take. Is there anyone here needs to be filled with the spirit?

Here's the third thing: we need to align our life with God's word. Is there some area that you know you're fighting God, you've got out of order and maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's some character area, it's a sin issue in your life, you say God, I need to repent today. Just raise your hand, say that's me, God's speaking to me about an area to put right. Maybe it's a relationship you need to put right. What about entering the presence of God, and living in kingdom life. How many of you felt the challenge today to learn how to enter in God's presence more consistently day by day? How many felt that - God bless, many hands.

How many felt you need to learn how to present yourself to God, each part of your life to Him? How many felt that today? Quite a number, very good. How many felt the challenge that I need to learn how to see and hear what God is saying and doing? How many felt that - oh many today. How many felt God speaking to you, you need to learn to stand up and speak and decree His word, start to exercise spiritual authority? God bless. How many of you felt God speak to you, you needed to be more proactive in advancing the kingdom of God by sharing your faith with others? God bless, so many.

Father, I thank You today that You are speaking to our heart. We feel Your sovereign presence right now. We're going to pray a simple prayer, we're going to talk to Jesus. When we pray, He will hear and He will respond, so I want you all to just help these ones at the front, as we come and we pray together, and open our hearts to Jesus. Are you ready? Listen to me and follow me in this prayer, make it your prayer. Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus' name. Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus' name. Thank You for loving me. Thank You for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. Lord, I have lived my life without You, doing it my own way. Today I turn to You. Jesus, I ask You to forgive all of my sins, to make me clean inside. I receive Your spirit into my heart. I receive You as my saviour and Lord and I give You my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my saviour and king. Amen.

Who is Jesus (4 of 4) Jesus the Righteous Judge

Sun 24 Feb 2013 AM  « Back to Top

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If you loved someone passionately, had great power, and saw injustice - would you not step in and make it right? Get to understand what Justice and Judgement really mean.

I want you to open your Bible with me in John, Chapter 5 and we're just concluding our series we've been doing on Who is Jesus, and this is number four. We looked at Jesus as revealed in the Book of Revelation. The Bible tells us, Jesus spoke in John 5 verse 39, and He said: you're searching the scriptures, hoping that in them you'll find eternal life, yet these speak of Me, and you won't come to Me, that you'll have life. So the scriptures, one end to the other, reveal who Jesus is, and when we know who Jesus is, it changes how we relate to Him. So as we increase in the revelation of Jesus, it changes how we live our life, so we don't want to live in yesterday's revelation, we want to grow. So the questions we've been looking at: Who is Jesus; and how should I respond to Him, what should I do, because any revelation of Jesus, any new insight in Him, must lead to something changing in our life.

So this is what Jesus said, and we looked in the Book of Revelation, and we saw Jesus revealed. We saw Him revealed as the passionate bride groom, the one - and remember these are just pictures. They're pictures to help you understand a person - and so He's portrayed as the passionate bride groom, someone who just loves people. If you love someone deeply, what would you do to rescue them? If you loved your child deeply, what would you do to help them, if they're in a mess? You'd do all you could.

Secondly, we see Jesus revealed as a king, and so as a king He has great power. So if you loved someone, and you had great power, would you not use your power to rescue the one you love? Okay then, so we saw He's revealed not just as a bride groom who loves us and pursues, and gave His life for us; as a powerful king who has power to heal and deliver and transform our lives; but we see also He is a righteous judge. This is an aspect of Jesus people don't like, or don't feel comfortable with.

But that means often it's because we don't understand. When we think of judge, we think of being punished. For many people the only thing they think of judge, they think when they appeared in Court, because they had a fine of some kind, and it was a horrible experience and they got punished. That's what we tend to think - judge, we tend to think of punished. Yet there's far more to it than that, so let me just rephrase it again. If you really loved someone passionately, and had all power available to help them, and you saw them in a place of great injustice, would you not step in and make it right? So when it says that Jesus is the judge, He's the one who steps in, with all power to make things right, to fix it up. So as we're looking at that, we're going to help you understand a little bit about what God is like, and I want to particularly apply it, because revelation without anything to apply in our life, it doesn't do us any good at all. It's just a lot of knowledge.

So let's have a look in Psalm 89. Here's the thing I want you to get the first grip on, is that God loves justice and judgement. He actually loves justice and judgement. We live in a world which is full of injustice; turn on the news, you'll see injustice and oppression. Everywhere you go you see injustice. You see the injustice in nations, the injustice in governments, the injustices - injustice is all through the world. It's because the world is fallen, and ruled by oppressive demonic spirits, and so the world living in sin is a terrible unjust place. So wherever you look in the world, you'll see and hear examples of injustice, and you shake your head at it, you think that's terrible, or if you experience injustice, you get really angry. You say that's not right! There's a great sense - have you ever noticed with kids there's a great sense of justice in them? You give one strawberry too many [laughter] and you'll know whether that's in them or not. Immediately those eagle eyes, that's not fair! Kids have a greatly developed sense of justice when they're quite young.

Some people in their personality have this great sense of justice, right and wrong, but it actually comes from the nature of God. Look what it says in Psalm 89, Verse 14: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before Your face. If you look at it in King James version it says: justice and judgement are the habitations of your throne. The words there are 'justice' and 'judgement', so everything needs a foundation to uphold it, so there are four foundations uphold the throne of God - or putting it another way, God's kingdom is established on four key pillars. Here's what they are. The first one is justice; the second one is judgement; third one is mercy; fourth one is truth. So when you want to extend the kingdom of God in your personal life or in any part of your world, you've got to remember it's built on four foundations. It's built on justice, judgement, mercy, truth, so these are foundational to the kingdom of God.

Not only that, it tells us in Hebrews 6, it says about the doctrines of Christ, the foundational doctrines of Christ. It says: we want to go on to maturity, and we will go on to maturity if God permits us, so in other words it's impossible for you to mature as a believer, unless God permits you to mature. He won't permit you to mature unless certain foundations are laid properly in your life. Those foundations are found in Hebrews 6; repentance from dead works, faith towards God, the doctrine of baptisms and laying on of hands, resurrection from the dead - now get this one - eternal judgements.[See series: Foundational Principles] So judgements and understanding about judgement is a foundation in the life of a believer. You can never mature if it's not properly laid in your life, so I can't teach all of that today, but I want to give you an insight to God being a judge and some aspects of what it means, how it would apply to our life.

So this is foundational. It's not some new big revelation. This is actually quite foundational for a believer, and people don't like to hear terms like God is a judge or God judges, unless it's in terms of accusing the church, or accusing God in some way. But God's kingdom is clearly established on justice, what is right; judgement, seeing what is right and putting it right; and mercy, extending mercy to people; and on truth, so that's how God builds His kingdom. Now let's have a look. So we see the kingdom is established that way, so when the Bible talks about justice, the kingdom is established on justice, that word is the word tzedakah, means to be right or to be just or fair. Also the word can be interpreted generosity and compassion to those who are poor, so one of the pillars of the kingdom of God is what is right, justice, and showing generosity to people who are troubled or in difficulties of some kind. That is a pillar of God's kingdom, to show generosity to people who are poor. Why? Because that's right in God's eyes.

So when we help people, widows, orphans, people who are afflicted, when we are involved in social justice, we are doing what is right in the kingdom of God. So generosity to the poor is one of the foundations in the kingdom of God, because it is what God calls justice. It is justice to do that. The second word there is judgement. The word judgement means - it's a word to deliver someone out of a situation, so the Book of Judges who delivered people out of oppression; it means to rule over, the judges ruled over Israel, and it also means to sit and to make a decision as a third party. So two people are in trouble, and the third party sits, listens to both sides, and makes a decision what is right and gives direction what to do, then sees it takes place. So that's what it means when it says judge. It's not all about punishing. It's about seeing to the root of issues, and making things right. That can include that people are punished, or have consequences for their behaviour, but in essence it's looking right into the root of something, and making a decision: this is what is right, and this is what will happen. Get the idea?

So now this is what God's kingdom is built on. Now notice this - in Jeremiah, Chapter 9 - look what God says in Jeremiah. So we see the kingdom is established on those four pillars, and justice and judgement are key parts of that. Now look what it says in Verse 24. It says: let him that glories, glory in this, that he understands and knows Me. So He said if you're going to rejoice, don't rejoice in your giftings and your successes and be boasting of all kinds of things. If you want to boast in anything, boast in the Lord, that you know Him. Then it says that I am the Lord, exercising loving kindness - that's mercy - judgement - there it is, there's that word again, justice and judgement, and then righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight. So there it is again, so God delights in kindness or mercy. He delights in justice, and He delights in judgement, doing things that are right. Notice God delights in that, He loves it. He is passionate about it. It pleases Him when something is done right.

When parents lead their families, and they do it right, and they discipline their children right, it pleases God. These things please God. When leadership leads well, and leads with righteousness, or leads in a right way, decisions are made which are right, this pleases God. Why? Because His kingdom is established, He loves what is right, and He loves judgement. He loves these things, because they bring what is right to people who need something done on their behalf. Notice the next scripture - and that word delight means to bend towards, be pleased with, be jealous over, or attentive to, so God is absolutely pleased when we act rightly, when we do justice and judgement. Think about that. When you help someone, even if they don't respond to you, you help someone who's in need, it delights God. He loves it. In fact in Matthew 5:25, He divides the whole world up into those who do rightly, or do justice and those who don't do it. When they say: how do we do this to You, He said: when you did this to the poor, when you fed the poor, when you clothed those who were naked, when you visited those in prison; this is what is justice to Me. This is right before Me. You do it to them, you're doing it to Me - so God is totally attentive to social justice, to things that are wrong being put right, to injustices being fixed up.

He is very attentive to it. He delights in it. Ultimately He will reward it as well. Interesting isn't it? Pentecostal churches tend to minimise this aspect, while proclaiming the need for a personal relationship with Jesus. Now we do need a personal relationship with Jesus, to address the root issue, but that does not mean we shouldn't deal with the injustices done to the poor. The church has been the champion of hospitals, of schools, of orphan work. Everywhere in the world, the church is the one who initiated and made these things happen. Why? Because this is in the kingdom of God. That's the nature of the kingdom of God. Church has withdrawn and let governments do it, but this is the kingdom of God to do these things, so the church will have to move back out that way again.

Have a look in Jeremiah 22, Verse 16 and it says: He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then was it well. Was this not to know Me says the Lord? You know what God says? To know Me, if you say you know Me, this is how it shows up in your life: you do kinds acts, or acts of compassion to the poor, justice. You minister to the broken hearted. You help those who are afflicted, you visit people in their distress. This is what He's saying - this is what it means to know God. The revelation you have of God is very little, if all it does is ends you up with hands in the air worshipping, and it doesn't flow out in kindness and mercy to people who are in desperate need. It's the very nature of God. If we encounter this God, He says: to know Me, means to do these things, so that's why Jesus said: we'll sort the church out, not on the basis of how much they prayed, but we'll sort it out on the basis of whether there was an overflow of the river of My heart and kingdom to those who are in need.

It's quite challenging isn't it, quite challenging. This is what is justice and judgement, so when we're looking about judgement, don't just think about punishing. Think about this whole area of putting right what is wrong, and because God is a passionate lover and has the power, He has the ability to put right what is wrong. He can fix this stuff up. Now that's a great revelation to have, because it frees you from having to fix it all up. You can just now respond. You don't have to get angry, don't have to pay back, don't have to get vengeful on anyone. You can put it in God's hands, and let Him sort it out. You can just get on with your life, and enjoy doing what He wants you to do, instead of being screwed up with some injustice that you've had. Most people come into the church messed up with some injustice. Come to the cross, the greatest injustice of all, where the innocent, the creator, was hung on a cross!

So the Bible is very clear, that God is concerned about injustice and oppression and poverty and these kinds of things. At Jesus' first coming, Jesus came - everyone thought He come as a king to put it all right. He came to deal with the root issue, so when He came the first time, He came to deal with the root of sin, to pay the penalty, lay His life down, demonstrate the aspect of loving kindness of God, and the mercy of God over judgement, and so He died, Jesus died on the cross for our sin, so we can be free of the power of sin, live like God intended us to live. But when He comes the second time, I'm sorry, it's not going to be so nice. He will come the second time to put things right. He'll come the second time because He's concerned about His people, and how they've been treated over centuries. Don't mistake God's patience for His tolerance of things. The Lord is long suffering, not willing any perish, but all come to repentance. So we think because judgement is not executed against evil work, that God doesn't seem to care and it's alright, but it isn't alright, as we'll see in just a moment.

Okay then, so the Bible says in Genesis, it says: shall not the judge of all the earth do right? So we see that God has committed judgement into the hands of Jesus Christ. We see that judgement and justice go together, they're about doing right, and dealing with injustice in the earth, and putting it right. So we see that God will do it, He'll put it all right. Now that's a fantastic, hopeful thing isn't it aye? God will put it right. God will put it right, it's the putting right that counts isn't it? Okay then, so I want you to look with me in Revelations, Chapter 8, then we'll just apply this into our life, what can we do. Revelations, Chapter 8. We need to go to Revelations, where we can see Jesus again, as He's revealed in the Book of Revelation. It's interesting in Isaiah 26 and Verse 9; it says: when your righteous judgements are in the earth, all the inhabitants will learn righteousness. So if 2000 years of kindness didn't solve the world's problems, a little bit of stick might make a difference? [Laughter]

So we have 2000 years, two millennia of the kindness of God being shown, and God will continue to show kindness, because that's His nature; mercy is always greater than judgement. God's always looking for a way to get us right, right before Him, and right living. Now when we look in the Book of Revelation, we find - we'll just look firstly in Revelation 19, just at the verse we were looking at last week, Verse 11: I saw heaven opened and a white horse, and He that sat on him was called Faithful and True, in righteousness He judges and makes war. Verse 2; For true and righteous are His judgements, because he has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her sexual sin; and He has avenged on her the blood of all the servants shed by her. Without going into all the details of it, when Jesus comes, He will judge all systems in the earth, governmental or religious, that have persecuted and martyred His people. There are more martyrs in this Century, than in all the history of the earth, more martyrs!

People are being martyred for their faith in India, in Pakistan, in countries all over the world. This is a day when the blood of the saints is being shed, and God hears that, because the blood cries out. He will do something about it, so let's have a look what He does, and of course people don't always necessarily like this part of it. I don't even understand all of it, but let's just read in Revelations, Chapter 8 and read a few verses there, then I want to get focussed on just how we should respond in the light that Jesus is a judge. Now remember John saw this, this hasn't happened yet, and what John saw - Verse 1 - He opened the seventh seal, and he saw seals open, and he saw some bowls released. There was silence in heaven for about half an hour, and I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets. And another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints, upon the golden altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel's hand.

So notice the first thing you see is incense. Incense is the prayers of God's people. Now notice what happens when God's people pray, so it's picturing that in the end time, there will be a revival of prayer in the church globally. The church will begin to rediscover the power of prayer, and arise to pray, and some things are going to happen that the only parallel in history is in Egypt, and you can read that in the Book of Exodus, where God literally brought judgements on a nation, so He could release His people and get them free into the Promised Land - so read Exodus again if you want to see what God's judgements look like. Try to put yourself in it, and imagine the fear of it all, the horror of it all. But the Bible is very clear in Exodus 12:12, God was judging the Gods of Egypt. He was dealing with the idolatry and spiritism of Egypt, and the way it manifested in the culture. He was addressing the spirit world, to tear down and humiliate it, and show His sovereign power. All who responded to Him, whether they were Egyptian or Israeli, who responded and believed were saved.

He didn't make any distinction. On the way through the judgements, He distinguished between His people and the Egyptian people, and that some of the curses that came on the Egyptian people never came on God's people at all. They were in the middle of it, and untouched by it. Now that's a great thing and hope for us; you can be in the middle of something, and untouched by it. In the midst of all those judgements, God still extended mercy, that all who believed were saved. Isn't that a wonderful thing? So no matter what it tells us here is going to happen in the end times, there's a couple of things you can be sure of, if we look at the first situation in Exodus. One is, God's people will have His hand on them - if you're walking with Him - and secondly, that there be opportunity for all people to be saved in the midst of these difficulties. You've noticed how tragedy has a way of softening hearts, and people tend to turn to the Lord; it's unfortunate, but it's the hardness of man's pride.

So you notice then it says: the trumpets sounded, in the Bible. Whenever a trumpet sounded, it spoke of a message. It was a prophetic message, and the trumpets were used for a number of things; one was used to declare war, another it was used to announce a king's enthronement, so it says: the trumpets began to sound one after the other, seven trumpets. Each trumpet, as it sounded, something happened in the earth. Now have a look at this. This hasn't yet happened, and it will happen, and it is progressive, and it gets more serious as it goes on, but it ends in great victory. That's the best part of it. Look at it, it says - He said the angel took the censer, filled it with fire, threw it on the eart,h and there were noises, thunderings, lightnings and an earthquake. Wow! So the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

Now if you read through this in Verse 7, the first angel sounded: hail and fire followed, mingled with blood. It sounds like Egypt and the exodus doesn't it? And they were thrown to the earth, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the grass was burned up. So what He's saying is: globally, an impact and judgement on the vegetation and food supply. Look at the next one, second trumpet. It says the second angel sounded: something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, a third of the sea became blood. A third of the living creatures in the sea died, a third of the ships were destroyed - so a judgement on trade, and on food supplies. These are all natural things. Then the third trumpet: The third trumpet sounded, great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, fell on a third of the rivers, and on the springs of water. It was Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, or bitter. Many died from the water because it was made bitter - water supplies.

The fourth trumpet: The heavens were struck. The fourth angel sounded, a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, a third of the stars, a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night. So you notice there cosmic disturbances, perhaps meteor showers. Who knows what it all is. I don't understand what it all means, but I know when it happens, you know that's what that meant. That's how prophecies seem to be. Now you notice this is not hidden in a corner, this is global. This is on TV all over the world. This is everywhere. This is more impacting than all the disaster movies you've ever seen. This is the real thing. The others were imagining what could be, so you've seen the last few years, these disaster movies, and there's been an increase in temperature of the earth, there's been the sun blocked out, there's been cosmic showers. There's been all kinds of dilemmas come to the earth, and it's all Hollywood imagining it, but often Hollywood's imagination is not so far off sometimes reality, it eventually becomes reality.

Anyway, this is what the Bible says will happen, and you think well that's enough, we've had enough. We'll all repent then. No, no, no, there's a bit more to come, two more. He says the fifth angel sounded, I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth. To him was given the keys to the bottomless pit, and he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and air were darkened because of the smoke. Out of the smoke locusts, to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power, and they tormented people so they wanted to die. So here's the fifth thing that'll happen; there'll be an unleashing of demonic activity in the earth like you've never seen before. Church doesn't even, half of it doesn't even believe in deliverance. Want to read Revelation, they're all going to be released in a massive way at the end times, a massive way at the end times. You think well and people seek to die it says. In other words, suicide and distress and hopelessness, despair will abound in the earth. These are the things God is bringing on the earth before He comes and sets everything right, overthrows all governments, and establishes His own government in the earth. It's amazing to see these things.

Look what else it says. It says in Verse 11, there's another thing happen there and it says, Verse 13, the sixth angel sounded: I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar - that's the incense altar. This is released because of intercessory prayer - saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. And they were released, they were prepared for that hour and day and month and year, and were released to kill a third of mankind. Now that's pretty serious isn't it? Perhaps you have another Bible. Perhaps you don't like to read this. The Bible says: blessed are those who read the Book, and do the things in the Book. Now so you as a believer, you can look at the things happening in the earth and say hey, you ain't seen nothing yet, you want to see what God's about to do! Want get onside with Him, this is going to be something else. It's not going to be hidden. Getting the idea?

So God is a righteous judge, then finally it's the seventh - now what you're seeing here is God is bringing judgement on the Gods of this earth, to prepare for what will come, which is the establishing of His kingdom. So when the seventh trumpet sounds, and it tells us there in Chapter 11 and Verse 15, the seventh angel sounded: There were loud voices in heaven, saying: the kingdoms of this world have now become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. He shall reign forever! So there is a mighty end time demonstration of the power of God, and a manifestation of Christ Himself, with His people, that will start to put right everything put wrong. All governments will be changed, unjust systems will be altered, financial systems will be altered, governmental systems, educational systems. Over the period of 1000 years, everything will be altered to make it right. That's pretty good isn't it? Don't sound very impressed - I'm very impressed. I think well that's a very powerful God, and God will do it.

Why will He do it? Because He will be tired of seeing His people martyred generation after generation, and time will have come to actually demonstrate He's not just merciful, He's also righteous. This is fantastic - so we see then that God is merciful, He is truthful. We see He is just, and He judges, He sorts things out. So what do I need to do, if that's the Jesus that I have never met, and that's the Jesus of the Bible, because He's the one who will come to do this? It's Him coming to do this, so the Jesus that we like to see in the manger, is also the Jesus who subdued the elements around Him, overcame the storms. He's also the Jesus who died on the cross and rose again. He's also the Jesus who will come with great love, great power, and He will put things right. That's a great thing for us to be aware of, a great hope.

People look around the world, they get worried about the antichrist, worried about this and that, ooh oh! The kingdom of our God is about to come, and we're about to be a part of that! So what do I need to do? How could I respond? What can I do? Well I'm glad you asked, there's a whole heap of things you can do. Let me give you a few of them that you could do that would help there. Number one is, I want to be on Jesus' side would be the first place to start. It would be a great thing to receive Jesus Christ, open your heart and life to receive Him, and to acknowledge He died on the cross for your sins. You don't have to experience judgement for sin. You can actually be free of all of that, and have a new life God intended, by receiving Jesus Christ. John 3:16 through to 18; God so loved you He gave His only son, that He died on the cross, you'd live and not perish but have eternal life. God did not come, Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but the world through Him might be saved. He said: I didn't come to judge, I came to save. The second time round He come to judge, so we're in the time when we can get saved easily. It's a good day to get saved. What a decision to make right now, if you don't know Jesus, to make your decision to put your life right before the one who loves you, and gave His life for you.

Secondly, here's the second thing we need to do. You need to take responsibility for your life, and stop thinking like a victim, and blaming everyone else for why you are where you are. Why do I need to do that? Very simply this: because in Romans 14 it tells us in Chapter 14, Verses 10 to 12: every one of us will stand before the judgement seat of Christ to give account of our life, everyone. Fortunately I won't have to give account for you, I'll be giving account for me. You'll be giving account for you! You'll be standing alone. Your mates won't be around you, you'll be there all on your own, and Jesus will be enquiring of your life. Now if you're a non-believer, the issue for you is then: what did you do with Jesus? Did you receive Him, or reject Him? That's the core issue. If you rejected Him, then there is nothing more for you. There's actually eternity of suffering, but if you're a believer, that's not the issue for you.

The issue, the question Jesus will be doing is this; when He judges you, He is not judging you to condemn. He's saying: I want to look at your life and see how you lived your life, and is there anything that would be fair and right to reward and acknowledge in how you've served me? I really have got rewards. You've been doing your internship, so we're evaluating your internship for eternity. You've now just graduated, and so how have you been running your life? What have you been doing? What kind of love has been in your life? What did you do about your character? What did you do about the people I brought into your life? In what ways did you represent Me well, so people saw Me? I am looking to reward you. I'm so looking forward to this, now can we talk over your life? He zips the button, and the whole video screen plays, and there it is, everything, what you did and why you did it. So the first thing is: take responsibility. Stop blaming anyone else. Don't blame your past.

We have a tendency to blame others because we feel treated unjustly. You've got to realise God sorts out the justice thing, you just do what He wants you to do, stop blaming, take ownership, and say: my life is mine, I'm with the Lord. Now I'm going to do all that I need to do, going to own my life. I'm not going to blame anyone, ever again, for anything. It's about me being responsible for my choices. Isn't that good? That's good. Tell someone you need to hear that. Stop being a victim. So you know there's heaps of people around like that.

Okay, here's the third thing you can do. Here's the third we can do. Third thing we can do would be become accountable. Oh, I don't like that word - but there it is. We need to become accountable. We need to become accountable to someone else with our life. That's why we have small groups, so you have a group, within which you can grow and deepen your Christian life. Why do we need to be accountable? Because you grow better when you are sharing what God is speaking to you in front of others, who can then call you to come and to hold you to what you've actually said you're going to do. Everyone needs that.

We all grow best when someone else speaks into our life, and the Bible in Hebrews 13:17 says to submit, or to yield, or to yield under those who have leadership over your life, whoever that is, so that you can let them speak into your life, and help you adjust and grow and mature. Many Christians can't stand that. In fact the moment you try and speak into their life about something that's immature, or something that's lacking, they react. So here's the question: do you have anyone in your life that gives you feedback honestly out of love for you, and concern for you? Secondly, how do you respond to that? So you have to be in a group. You know, if two people form a group, you get three, four, it starts to get a bigger group. Now you get more people in a group; that's a place you can grow. I've observed that people in groups grow better. They grow better because they're interacting and sharing life, and there's an accountability comes. It's not a legal thing. No one can hold you accountable easily. You actually have to decide, I want to share what God is doing in my life with you, so you'll help keep me on course if I look like I'm going off it.

There's nothing like at the end of a week, you know, someone in your small group saying how did your prayer life go this week? You said: I'm going to pray every day, but you lasted two days. Someone asks you: how did you get on? You say well I didn't do too good this week, so why don't we pray with you, and stand with you and believe. We'll believe that God will help you just to grow to three days next week, then just make it more steady. See, it's that kind of encouragement and nurture, that's part of the kingdom and it's just part of the whole nature of the kingdom. So here's the next thing we could do. That's a good one - it got real quiet. No one's getting excited about this. I'm excited about it, but no one else. [Laughs] Here's another thing we can do, don't judge by appearances. Learn to listen to God, and ask a lot of questions. Don't judge by appearance. If we judge, we'll be judged; so our tendency is as believers is, we tend to judge by what we see. We tend to quickly come to conclusions and assumptions, without actually asking the questions and listening.

Jesus made a couple of interesting statements, and He said in John 5, Verse 30 and John 7:24; He made two interesting statements. He said: My judgement's not My own, it's what I hear from the Father. He said: I don't judge according to appearances, what looks to be, but what I see and hear, and so of all the mistakes I've made in assessing everything, most of it's been about judging by appearances. It's the most chronic thing. I think about the difficulties we've had in communication in our marriage. That could all be boiled down to just one problem: making assumptions. Well I thought you meant, or I thought, I thought, I thought. You never stop to enquire, you just come to a conclusion, which is a judgement. So one of the things that would help our lives, is to not jump to conclusions about anything; ask questions until you've found out. Just enquire - and listen to God, because things aren't always what they seem to be. What looks bad can sometimes be quite different in the light of God's presence on it. Whoever's firm in their own course seems right, so when someone comes to you and tells you how badly they've been treated by a leader, how bad they've been treated by this one and that one, remember they seem right because the first to speak up. Wait until you hear the other side of the story. Oh, different.

See, a neighbour comes and it's a different story when you hear the other side of the story. It's a huge discipline not to judge by what you first hear, but to keep calm, and wait until you've heard the whole story, and help people do what God wants them to do. That's learning judgement. Ooh, this is too deep isn't it really. Here's a simpler one then. I'll give you the last couple. [Laughs] The last couple that you could do, and then we'll finish. Here it goes. Generosity to the poor. That's got to be a response to Jesus being just, and being a judge. Is that our heart, we learn He is generous, and He loves generosity to people who are in need? He loves it. He actually demonstrated - He came to earth to people who hated Him, rebelled against Him, there's no one saved, and He came to all of them, and He showed generosity in extreme. That is the nature. Why? Because He's a just God. That's what justice looks like - but you say: that's not fair. That doesn't seem right to me. No, it isn't, but it's what God is like. He will give to people when they don't deserve it, and He calls that just.

You think ooh, this is hard for me to get a handle on. No, just be generous, and be kind, and when you see people in need, show generosity before anything else. Show kindness to them before anything else, and you'll extend the kingdom of God. They will see what the kingdom of God is truly like. Isn't that amazing? Aren't those great keys to learn, great and simple keys to learn? And here's the last one that you could do, the last one you can remember is this: whatever you do, serve the Lord passionately, and do it well. Why? Why would I need to do that? Why can't I just come and cruise? Why can't I just come and cruise, you know? That suits me more. It suits my lifestyle, you know, I'll come if I like, and don't come if I don't like. I'll do if I want, and don't do if I don't want, give if I want, don't give and if I go on the internet, and if I argue with them and disagree here - getting into all of that kind of - why? Why? Why? It's very simple.

Colossians 3:23; whatever you do do it fully, passionately, from the heart to the Lord. Why? Because you know something. What do you know? From the Lord, you will receive reward, inheritance, that it is eternal. Now this is one, this is the whole doctrine of eternal judgement. It's not about just doing things right. It's about God's justice in rewarding His saints. Now God has got every one of us here on an apprenticeship for eternity, so how are you conducting your apprenticeship? Who is speaking into you, to help you with that? How are you treating people? What are you harbouring in your heart, and are you serving passionately? Why? Because there is a day when I'll cross that line. If He hasn't come before then, I'll cross it into well done, enter into the reward I've prepared for you, because I'll leave everything else behind. It doesn't matter how fancy it is, you'll leave it all behind, but the things you've sown in the kingdom, oh, you carry on into eternity, for a reward that is everlasting. That's why we're motivated.

That's why we serve Him passionately and fervently. That's why, because He loves us. He's done right by us, and we'll do right by Him, and live for Him passionately, in a love relationship with a bride groom lover. We'll surrender to a king who has a kingdom, and knowing there's a day of reward, and living in respect and reverence for that God. That's what gives you the balance of the end time life to live. It's seeing each of those aspects of Him, and aligning your life around each aspect; not just one aspect, but all the aspects. I'm loved! I'm in a kingdom with a king, and I have a role to play, and He will judge righteously, I will give account for my life. Then He's merciful, so you live in the revelation of all three, and it produces something deep in your life, and substantial in your life, that helps you build a great life with God. We say Amen.

Come on, let's just close our eyes right now. I wonder is there any person here, and you haven't yet become a Christian, haven't yet received Jesus Christ. You haven't in your heart made a decision to receive the Lord. You're living your life without God, separated from the wonderful life He has prepared for you, separated and not even knowing what your destiny is, where you're going. That could change in a moment. For every person who received Jesus and believed on Him, He gave power to become a child of God. Is there any person here right at that place, I want to become a Christian, would you raise your hand right now? Just raise your hand right now and say oh, God is speaking me. God is touching my heart. I want to come to Christ today. I want to come to Christ. Would you raise your hand right now?

I want to receive Jesus today. Who here today is at that place? Make that decision. Perhaps you've walked a long way from God, and there's no reality of Him in your life. Things have come around you and sunk you a bit, but today you say: Jesus, I want to come back to You. I've been touched by what you've spoken into my heart today. Today I want to respond to You. If that's you raise your hand just right now, come back to the Lord, want to walk with Him, want to walk humbly with God. Perhaps there's some of us today, as I just shared how we respond to that revelation, perhaps God was speaking to you, just about one aspect of it. If God spoke into your heart about one aspect, you say: man, I just need to allow the spirit of God to build that in my life. I'm going to begin to focus on building that part of my life. Is it generosity? Is it withholding judgement, and learning to listen and enquire?

Whatever it is you say God, help me to build this dimension in my life. Help me to get a hold of this, and begin to grow, so I become Christ-like. If you had God speak to you an area of your life today, won't you raise your hand, say God's speaking to me today - God bless, God bless, God bless, many hands going up. Father, I just thank You for each person that's responded today. Father, I pray revelation of Jesus as bride groom, king and judge. I pray revelation into the hearts and a change in lives. Father, we love You and honour You. We're excited about Jesus. We're excited about His church. We're excited about the gospel. We thank You Lord for Your goodness to us. Everyone said [Amen!] Amen!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· The Bible from Genesis to Revelation reveals who Jesus Christ is.

· Jn.5:39-40 “You search the Scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of Me, but you are not willing to come to me that you may have life”.

· Foundational Questions: 1) Who is Jesus? 2) How will I respond to Him?

· Book of Revelation =

1) Passionate Bridegroom 2) Sovereign King 3) Righteous Judge (Rev.9)

· Jn.5:22 “For the Father judges no-one, but has committed all judgement to the Son, that all should honour the Son just as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him”.

· Understanding the principle of eternal judgements is foundational to maturing. (Heb.6:1-3).

2. God loves Justice and Judgement

· Ps.89:14 “Righteousness and Justice are the foundation of your Throne”. NKJV

“Justice and Judgement are the habitation of thy Throne”. KJV

Justice = OT6664 Tsedeq = right, just = Tsedagah = generosity to the poor.

Judgement = OT4941 Shaphail = to judge, deliver, rule = a third party who sits over two parties at odds with one another, hears their case, decides what is right and what to do about it. He functions as a judge and jury and ensures the judgement is carried out.

· Jer.9:24 “…I am the Lord exercising loving kindness, judgement and righteousness in the earth for in these things I delight says the Lord”.

Delight = OT2654 = to bend towards, be pleased with, desire, eager and jealous, attentive for.

· Jer.22:16 “He judged the cause of the poor and needy, then was it well with him, was not this to know me? Says the Lord?”

· God is concerned about the issues of injustice, poverty, oppression.

· Jesus’ first coming was to deal with the root issue – sin!

· Jesus’ second coming will be as a powerful King who loves His people and has come to execute justice and judgement.

· Gen. 18:25 “…shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

3. Jesus Will Return to Judge the Earth (Is.26:9)

· Is.26:9 “When your judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”

· Rev.8: Future, progressive judgements of God in the earth.

(i) These are parallel to the judgements of God against god’s of Egypt (Exod.12:12)

(ii) These judgements are triggered by intercession of God’s people (vs2-5)

(iii) Trumpets – used to sound war (Num.10:9)

- used to announce enthronement of King (1 Kg.1:34)

(iv) Judgements are released globally:

Natural 8vs7 Vegetation and food supply

8vs8 Sea Trade and food supply

8vs10 Water Supply

8vs12 Light – cosmic disturbances

Spiritual 9vs1 Demonic spirits unleashed

9vs13 Demonic angels released

9vs1 Kingdom of God established on the earth!

· When judgements fell on Egypt God’s people were present but protected.

· How can we respond?

4. How we respond to Jesus the Righteous Judge

(i) Receive Christ as Saviour – Surrender to His leadership - Jn. 3:16-18

(ii) Take responsibility for your life – stop blaming, living as a victim - Rom. 14:10-12

(iii) Become Accountable – let people speak into your life - Heb.13:17

(iv) Don’t judge by appearances – listen, question – Jn. 5:30; Jn. 7:24

(v) Keep your heart free from injustice, offense and anger – Rom. 12:17-21; Jam. 4:11

(vi) Generosity to the poor, needy and oppressed – Lk. 10:33

(vii) Serve the Lord with Passion and Excellence – He rewards! – Col. 3:23.

Taming the Tongue

Power of Words (1 of 12)

Words have the power to change lives. You can empower people through words you speak, or cut them down. You can cause them to live, or to wither and die. Don't let your mouth be full of negative talk, but rather practice and make it a habit, a lifestyle of speaking words that build.

Diseases of the Tongue (2 of 12)

When the tongue is not controlled then it has all kinds of dramatic and serious consequences in people's lives, but when the tongue is controlled, when we begin to yield our tongue and master the words we speak and begin to learn how to speak words that are God-given words, if we get into agreement with God and begin to speak the things God is saying about our life, our circumstances, our condition, our future, then we make way for God to move in those situations.

Empty Words (3 of 12)

Words are containers – they carry a ‘spirit’ content. They are living seeds that produce fruit when spoken. The words we speak impacts our relationships, our personal health and destiny. What words are you releasing into the world around? Empty words include: flattery; religious Words; lame excuses; insincere commitments. God speaks words that create, impart life, and release spiritual authority. We are called to imitate god.

Dealing with Put-Downs (4 of 12)

The Tall Poppy Syndrome is the words and behaviours intended to cut people down who are achievers or excellent in their field in some kind of way. It originated as a reaction in New Zealand and Australia to the class system of England and particularly the first place the tall poppy syndrome really began to express itself was against people who thought they were more important or better than anyone else, or carried on like they were, or projected I'm better than you. It started off as a reaction against the class system; now it's evolved. Now it's a reaction usually rooted in envy against anyone who shows excellence or achievement or gets ahead in a field. It's envy. The root behind it is envy, bitterness and envy.

Dealing with Put-Downs (5 of 12)

If you connect with Jesus Christ and begin to listen to His dreams for your life, He will want you to stand up and become a tall poppy. He wants you to be one. You're called to represent heaven. You're called to stand out and be different. You're called to stand up and bring something of God into the earth.

Power Of Agreement (6 of 12)

The words that we come into agreement with, and then begin to speak forth, create and shape our future and our destiny. Who are we agreeing with?

Hasty Words (7 of 12)

Hasty words always have bad consequences. Words spoken out of inflamed emotions. Have you ever found afterwards you've had to say I wish I hadn't said that? When our emotions are stirred, we get angry, we get wound up on the inside, we say and do things we later regret. Anger is a strong, violent feeling. It is the seed that gives rise to murder. Be angry but do not sin. It becomes sin when we don't resolve it.

Verbal Abuse (8 of 12)

How many know we live in a culture that really puts people down? If we don't break out of things which are spoken against us, then those negative words spoken in our life which we agree with will soon speak, and begin to set the course of our destiny.

Power of the Tongue (9 of 12)

One of the biggest difficulties all marriages and families struggle with is the failure of men to actually speak words that give value, identity, purpose and encouragement to their wife and their children. Marriages languish for lack of words like plants languish for lack of water. Relationships languish for lack of words. They just wither. Use words to build relationships.

Wise Words (10 of 12)

When God wants to change something in the natural world, He always gets someone to speak, because words are the way the power of God is released from the spirit world into the natural world. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Your tongue has power. With our tongue we express our words, ideas, feelings, and fears. If there's bitterness/anger or doubt/limitation in your heart, you'll express it through your tongue. Change on the inside, then you'll start to see the things change on the outside. Internal shifts first.

Shaping Your Own World (11 of 12)

You know you've heard the old saying: sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me? Not true, because long after the bones have been fixed, the words and names you've been called are still ringing inside you like a message that won't go away, defining who you are. You cannot let what other people say define who you are. Let God define who you are. He's designed you and through relationship with Him, you begin to embrace what He has to say, and your life comes up to a different level.

Creative Power of the Tongue (12 of 12)

Atmosphere is the prevailing influence that's around; it can't be seen but it can be felt. An atmosphere can affect your whole life, your quality of life. You can either thrive in it or be destroyed in it. Atmosphere gets polluted, it affects you very, very seriously.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Power of Words (1 of 12).mp3

- Diseases of the Tongue (2 of 12).mp3

- Empty Words (3 of 12).mp3

- Dealing with Put-Downs (4 of 12).mp3

- Dealing with Put-Downs (5 of 12).mp3

- Power Of Agreement (6 of 12).mp3

- Hasty Words (7 of 12).mp3

- Verbal Abuse (8 of 12).mp3

- Power of the Tongue (9 of 12).mp3

- Wise Words (10 of 12).mp3

- Shaping Your Own World (11 of 12).mp3

- Creative Power of the Tongue (12 of 12) .mp3

Notes

- Power of Words (1 of 12)

- Diseases of the Tongue (2 of 12)

- Empty Words (3 of 12)

- Dealing with Put-Downs (4 of 12)

- Dealing with Put-Downs (5 of 12)

- Hasty Words (7 of 12)

- Verbal Abuse (8 of 12)

- Power of the Tongue (9 of 12)

- Wise Words (10 of 12)

- Shaping Your Own World (11 of 12)

- Creative Power of the Tongue (12 of 12)

Power of Words (1 of 12)

Sun 28 Oct 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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Words have the power to change lives. You can empower people through words you speak, or cut them down. You can cause them to live, or to wither and die. Don't let your mouth be full of negative talk, but rather practice and make it a habit, a lifestyle of speaking words that build.

Let's have a look in Ephesians 4, Verse 29. So things that I encourage you to just begin to fast off or to begin to confront; every one of us as got our own little giants. How many know they've got a giant, something that's pushing you down, holding you back? How many can recognise at least one that's doing that right now? Okay then, so for some of you it might be passivity. You just sort of shut down. That's a giant that holds you down so you're passive. You can't even begin to express or enjoy life. That's a spirit that gets around our life and we have to actually break out of the habit pattern of being passive sort of people, but there's other kinds of things. Some of us may be intimidated. We can have something that scares us and when you're intimidated your gifts won't flow, so you can't be all you're called to be if you live under the bondage of fear and are in agreement with the spirit of fear.

But I want to look at this area of negativity, where our mind, our thoughts, our heart and particularly our mouth talks negative stuff and let's just start off with this verse here in Ephesians 4:29, and it says let no corrupt word come out of your mouth. So how much room does it have for corrupt words or negative words? Let NONE, so why don't you circle 'none'. Don't let any. Zip your lip to negative talk. See, let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth. It doesn't mean stop talking. That would be just too much to ask, see [Laughter] . but rather speak words that will build up people. Speak words that are good to edify. Now words you speak are going to do something to you and the people around you. I'm going to talk a little bit about that further in a moment, but words have an ability to shape what's around us in the atmosphere and shape the relationships. In fact words have the power to shape the world we live in. Think about that.

So the Bible says put a stop to negative talk and rather practice and make it a habit to speak words that will actually edify and build up the world and the environment around you, see? Speak words - and then it goes onto an interesting thing. It says that it will minister grace or impart empowerment. You see you can empower people through words you speak, or you can cut them down. You can lift them up, or you can put them down. You can cause them to live, or you can cause them to wither and die. Words have the power to change lives and notice that straight after that it says, having exalted us, don't let your mouth be full of negative talk, but rather practice and make it a habit, a lifestyle of speaking words that build.

Then it goes on to begin to say, and don't grieve the Holy Ghost. So it tells us very clearly that negative words are associated with grieving the Holy Ghost, and if you grieve the Holy Ghost that means you make Him sad, you cause Him to withdraw, you cause Him to grieve and feel burdened about you. How can you be empowered to live a powerful, strong life if the one who's given to help you live that life, you're hurting Him and grieving Him and making Him sad all the time? I really encourage us to have a fast off negative words, because the very fact that you start fasting in that area - fast off food too, that'll get the negative words up to the surface much quicker [Laughter] . See, fast off food. You know when you fast off food, you can't believe how negative you get. You just have these feelings come over you, and they want to express.

We were sharing with the kids at camp how whatever's in you is going to find a way out of you, firstly on your face. See, secondly, through your words and finally, the things you do. So we were talking to the kids about getting filled with the Holy Ghost, so that certain things come out of our life. We talked about some things that'll come out of your life, so when you get in a fast, whatever's in there is going to come up, start to come out of your life and manifest, so don't worry if, when you fast, your problems appear to get really bad. It seems like they took on a life of their own, flared up and got out of control. That's perfectly normal. How many have found that, know what I'm talking about here?

You fasted to break the power of something in your life, and the moment you started fasting, it just suddenly got very, very bad, it got worse, aye? It's because now you've made a decision to war with it, it rises up to see how determined you are. See, sin has a life of it's own - so the Bible tells us then, not to grieve the Holy Ghost, not to cause Him to withdraw, not to cause Him to shut down. I want to talk with you a little bit about the power that is in your words. I want to make a statement that I felt the Holy Ghost put in my heart today. I'll read it so I get it right. The words we agree with, and the words we speak, create our future. That's powerful isn't it? I'm still thinking about that one. The words we agree with, and the words we speak, create our future. What words are you agreeing with? What words has your heart come in agreement and embraced and said, I believe that? Very soon you will be speaking those words, and the words that you have agreed in your heart and spoken with your mouth then begin to shape your future and your destiny.

Man, if you just got that bit you'd be doing well wouldn't you? I'm still thinking about that. The words we agree with, and the words we speak, shape our future - so our words have got tremendous power. Your words reveal who you are. You see you can put on act, you can do all kinds of things, but after a little while of listening, your words will show who you are, what kind of person you are. See, if we could just following you around, hear everything you were saying, you know what? We'd know exactly what kind of person you are, because your words come out of your heart. So the Bible tells us the words are the overflow of our heart. In Matthew, Chapter 12, Verse 34, it tells us, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks - so whatever's in your heart, whatever is you, see? Whatever's in your heart will overflow and come out your mouth, and so all you've got to do is catch yourself, what am I saying? Then you'll find out exactly what really is in your heart. So I know we come to church, we sing happy songs, and we love Jesus, and it's a wonderful feeling and all that kind of stuff, and it's beautiful. We feel the presence of God, but we've got often in that kind of situation unaware what is really in our heart. But if we listen to our words, after a while we'll begin to see what is in our heart. You've just got to listen and out of the heart, the mouth will speak.

Listen to the words. Now when you're listening to words, it's not just what they say, it's the impact, or the feel they create with the words. You see, Jesus said the words: I speak, they are spirit, and they are life. So when Jesus speaks words, they impart something of a spirit nature. That's why the first words that's recorded, God spoke, created something, so words can create something, so whatever's in your heart is creating something. So for example, if you're constantly critical of your husband, or constantly critical of your wife, constantly speaking and giving voice to negative things, you are creating a very sad marriage. You're actually creating the future, you then have to live with. Think about that.

Your words are creating an atmosphere, an environment, which will either sustain your life and nourish you, or will cause you to wither like a plant without water. Words. People want words. We need words. Even Jesus said, Matthew 4:4, man shall not live by bread alone. In other words, food is not enough to sustain us. Our soul needs words, words that love, words that encourage, words that build, prophetic words that speak destiny. There's a generation dying because there are no fathers to speak words of encouragement, love and faith and destiny. Without those words, people get lost. They don't know where to go. They're looking for something, so they look in the bottle, they look in drugs, they look in the cell, they look on the internet, look with games, look with high speed cars. They're looking for something, but what is needed are creative words to shape destiny.

You and I have got a unique ability to be able to create with our mouth, not only in our own life, but in the lives of others. Whoa! See, so whatever words you agree with, whatever you're speaking is creating a world around you. So what kind of atmosphere are you creating? You know you go into some people's places and they make you welcome and you feel quite, you know - but you go in, you feel man, what's in this place? Feel the atmosphere, and that atmosphere is actually spiritual atmosphere created by the words you speak, so either you've invited the Holy Spirit and the angels of God into your house, and the words you speak are cultivating that atmosphere, or you've invited demons into the house so now they're causing all kinds of other things.

Now I was just thinking about words, and sometimes you know, we kind of meekly agree with this, but I started to look in the Bible for some word pictures of what words are like, and I got some beauties. I started to look and search through the Bible and find out some pictures. Now sometimes when you hear words spoken, the impact, you don't fully appreciate it, but when you get a picture - I only wish I'd had the time to get some pictures of this, because if I got the pictures up, you'd be stunned enough to actually really have impact. I'll try and describe it to you, and I'll give you some scripture references, but I don't want us to spend a lot of time just looking up the verses. I'll give you the reference and what it says, but what I want you to do is get the picture it creates see, so that you begin to start to be aware my words are the overflow of my heart, and they are creating something.

How do I get into a relationship with God? Words. How did you get married? Words. It's true. Words establish the covenant. When those words were witnessed, and it was written down, the words you spoke - that's it. It's a binding covenant. See words on earth are listened to in the heavens. You speak cursing words, demons are just waiting, and they become empowered to begin to operate, so you can speak words into your own life. You can agree with words about your own life, and that way as you begin to give voice to them, that will cause demons to operate against you. You can agree with the words other people speak, and then when you agree with them and begin to repeat them, what happens then our demons are unleashed. See, agreement on the earth, and then giving voice to what we've agreed with, activates things in the supernatural realm. We have to understand the importance of that.

Of course, as you begin to realise this and start to fast, to break negative words and to tame the tongue - Bible says no man can tame it, only the Holy Ghost can tame your tongue. The first part of taming your tongue is to realise what it's saying, so I want to give you some pictures, some word pictures of what the tongue is likened to, or what our words are likened to. I'm going to give you about six different word pictures. I'll show you where they're found in the Bible, but I want you to get the picture of it, because as you get the picture of it, you begin to think my God, are my words like that! This sweet person sitting there and you look so nice and we all look lovely, got our hands raised to Jesus today and then tomorrow something else is coming out of our tongue, see?

The Bible says it shouldn't be like that. You know today you're blessing God, and tomorrow you're cursing someone near to you, that you're supposed to be loving. Come on now. I want to give you some word pictures. These are good ones I found in the - these are really [laughs] man, I was shocked. In 2 Timothy 2, Verse 17, it says in talking about certain kinds of people, it says their word eats like cancer - or if you look up the original it means like Gangrene. I don't know if you've ever seen Gangrene. Gangrene is where the flesh has actually died, and not only has it died, it's started to turn green and give a horrible smell off, and it not only does that, it begins to poison the body. So if a person gets Gangrene in them, if they get Gangrene in them, then what happens is you've got to amputate that limb. There isn't any remedy. The flesh is actually dying, and it's starting to turn septic, and if you don't deal with it, it begins to poison the whole body. When a person's got Gangrene, death is imminent. When there's Gangrene, death is imminent. In the medical field - and I don't know a lot about it - but if they see Gangrene all the emergency bells go off. You're into that operating theatre right quick, because it will poison the whole system. You can't have Gangrene in one bit. It gets in and affects the whole lot, so it says there, words, it's talking about certain words eating your whole life away, like a gangrene would eat a limb away, and poison the whole body.

Gangrene - ask somebody have you got gangrenous words? Oh, cancer. See the word cancer? Uses words like a king. It's like it eats away, like a worm eating away. Think about that. That's a horrible picture. I don't like the smell of that. I don't want to have cancer. I'll get you another couple of words. Here's another word found in James, Chapter 3, Verse 8. Just read the verse there, and it talks about words, or the tongue. Here it is; No man can tame the tongue, for it us unruly or uncontrollable evil, full of deadly poison. Now that word poison there actually has two meanings to it, so we're going to give you both meanings. You notice what it says, it says deadly. That means it carries death. The tongue can carry death.

Imagine just carrying a little bag around on you and you got something to give to people. Here it is. Some people have got a little bag of it, some people have got a huge bag of it, but here they're carrying it around and you know what it is? That word deadly means death bearing. They carrying around death, ready to give it to someone, and the word poison has two meanings. Number one, it means rust. It means literally rust. Any of you know about rust? Men know about rust. Get it in your car, it's a big problem. In fact rust, you know you get it in your car, and it starts off as a little bit, then it begins to spread and it starts off like a little wee bit on the surface, and then it begins to eat. Finally it's eaten the metal out, then it begins to spread out, so you kind of cover it up and patch it up but it breaks out again. So you cover it again and patch it up, breaks out again, put some paint over it. But in the end if there's rust there, it always comes through the paint. No matter how good the car looks, the rust always come through the paint, so no matter how sweet you dressed yourself up, no matter how good we look on the outside, if we've got bitterness and negativity in our heart, it's a rust that eventually shows through that fine paintwork of yours.

You go along and test a new car if you want to buy a second car. You go along and test it, the thing you want to look for is rust. Some cars, in England, they put salt on the road where there's a lot of snow. Of course the car gets the salt under it, and it just eats the thing out. You've got this fine looking car, but underneath she's all eaten out. It's actually not fit for the road, so you take your car - now one of the things they'll put the car off the road for is rust. So you get your car down there and it looks fine, starts up, got a lovely stereo pumping, looks nice, everything's painted up and looks good. Take it down there and then they cancel the Warrant. There's no new Warrant given to you and you say why? Why didn't I get a new Warrant? Look at the stereo! Look at the car seats. Look at the colour, look at the paint on the thing, it's brilliant! And they say it's got rust underneath in the chassis - so it's not roadworthy.

How about a Christian being not roadworthy? Called on a great mission, but no Warrant of Fitness. Got no Warrant of Fitness, what happens? You leave your car parked out on the road, no Warrant of Fitness, come on. Now don't tell me you don't know. There wouldn't be many of us haven't had that one time. No Warrant of Fitness, they give you a fine. You should not be on the road. You're not even allowed to park it on the road. When you haven't got a Warrant of Fitness, it's a crime even to have it out on the road. Imagine Christians being without a Warrant of Fitness, out on the road, trying to extend the kingdom of God. Trouble is their chassis's full of rust. Negative talk spewing out, criticise the boss, talking negatively about this, negatively about that, they're on about every kind of thing. Listen, that is not roadworthy. You can't accomplish anything with that kind of rust working in your life. You've got to get it out, got to cut the rust out, get the thing strengthened. Sometimes you've got to actually cut it all out, put a whole new beam in there.

Here's another meaning of that word. It means deadly poison. It means a venom, so it means two words - it's a cancer, a gangrene or it's a rust or it's a - these are good words aren't they? The Bible's actually got quite good descriptive words about our tongue. What's coming out of our life. Imagine carrying around a big bag of deadly poison see, and you're about ready to impart it to someone. You've got to not only deal with it in our own lives, but what we need to do is recognise when it's operating in someone else, and take preventative action. Okay then, so the next is venom. Now I looked up on venom, so it's the poison, so when a snake bites you - a venomous snake is a snake that's got poison. When it bites you, sometimes the bite itself is not a real problem, just a couple of punctures, but it's the venom that gets in you, and that word there, the tongue - the tongue is a deadly poison, means the tongue is a deadly venom. When a snake bites you, and there's venom in you, there's two kinds of different responses you have depending on the type of snake that bit you. One of them is the venom paralyses the nervous system slowly, so you can't actually breathe. Your system, in the end, you actually suffocate, because your whole nervous system shuts down. The nervous system is that part of us that causes us to be sensitive and aware to directions from the head, so when you have got a deadly poison working inside you, you can't actually respond to what God's saying properly at all. You're paralysed. Death is imminent.

The other kind of venom produces gangrene in a person's life, and so when a person gets bitten, what happens is the flesh begins to die all around the bite, and it keeps on and on and on. If it's not cut out, they die. Whoa! That's the tongue. Has anyone not got a tongue? All got a tongue. Okay, the thing that differs is what we're using the tongue for. So what are you using your tongue for? Are you building consciously, taking dominion over it, and using it to build, or you lose control of it? Suddenly you find you've blabbed out. You can't get those words back once they've gone out there. They're already out there doing their work. It's real hard to get them back, and after you've blabbed off your mouth, you can't seem to get the words back. Even if you go and say sorry, you can't get it back, because it's still done it's work. It's still hurt someone, and saying sorry, recognising, taking responsibility for the words, but it doesn't heal. The person's then been bitten by venom.

So here's another. James 3, Verse 6, it says the tongue is a fire. I was just looking at that stuff up in California, and they think someone may have lit it, but anyway whatever it is, this whole house is burning down because of a fire they couldn't control. Notice what it tells about the tongue. Look at the tongue - Verse 5; the tongue is a little member, very, very small. There's some have got a bigger tongue than others, but it boasts great things, and see how great a forest, the little fire starts. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. It's set among our members, and it defiles the whole body, it sets on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell itself. Whoa! Whoa! So hell - now we find that hell has got a gate. At least one of them, I know what the gate is. Have a look in the mirror and it's found just here. That's where hell gets to work. Straight from our heart, out our mouth, is one of the gates of hell.

Jesus said the church that He's building will prevail against the gates of hell, so we've got to learn to use our mouth to build words, to have words that build. To do that, we've got to get to sort through the issues of the things of the heart. I'll give you a couple more. In Psalm 64 and Verse 7, it says the tongue fires out arrows. Ooh. Imagine - suppose it went down, and you have a look there, and you see that you come out to a field there, and you notice there's a whole lot of people, and they're practising archery. They've got their bow, fine set of arrows and they've got this compound bow, and they're just launching the arrows. Man, it's great! It's great if you stand behind the people who are shooting. [Laughter]. It's not so nice if you're at the front and you're the target. If you're the target, and they hit you with one of those arrows, you will hurt, and the Bible says, there is that speaks like the piercing. So it goes - there's woundings that go deep down into people. Gossip wounds people. It's like an arrow in them, and it goes right into the core of their being, and it begins to work away on the inside, like a snake actually. So you don't want to be in front of someone shooting.

So if people are talking to you, and they've got poison in their mouth, and they're talking negative, shut it down. Don't let them keep talking arrows, because some of them are going to get in there, and once you agree with them, you'll find they start to grow in you, and then you're talking the same stuff. Whoa! What are we coming into agreement with? What are we listening to? What are we welcoming into our inner world, that then is beginning to express through the outer world, of our language and words?

Proverbs 18, Verse 18 describes the tongue as causing wounds. The words of a tale bearer are like wounds that go right down into the inner most parts. That word wound again is the same kind of thing. Imagine that. That's a whole heap of descriptions of words. I wonder if anyone - now of course we won't just make it personal. We'll just keep it away from you, because you might feel uncomfortable for the moment - but I wonder if any one of you have been exposed to, or could think of someone, as you were listening to them talk, their words are like a deadly poison. It affects people. How many have been in homes been ripped apart by words? How many of you have been there, and it's like a rust? You know what I'm talking about, talking about rust just eating the thing out. You've seen whole families eaten out by bitterness, fighting. It always is expressed through words, always through words.

So words have tremendous power. That's why the Bible gives us these pictures of things that we can recognise, so we'll hate it. If you saw a snake, I know you'd jump out of the way, but if you see someone or hear someone talking, and they've got bitterness in their heart, you need to do something. A serpent is about to bite you. How does it bite you? First you've got to agree with what's being said. You've got to listen and agree with what's being said, and once you agree with what's being said, those words then begin to find a place in you to grow as a wound, a sore, rust, a fire, cancer or whatever. Then they will find expression through you, and will begin to start to impact others.

Let me just give you - we won't look them up just in the interest of time, but let me just give you some examples in the Bible of this kind of thing. First of all agreeing with words; now there are lots of ways we can agree with words. In Numbers, Chapter 13 and 14, it tells us in Numbers, Chapter 13, that 12 people went into the Promised Land, and God showed them some wonderful things. God showed them many, many wonderful things but what happened was, 10 of them came back, and they came back, and what was in their hearts was negativity, and it flowed out. They began to say things - we can't do it! We can't, it's too hard. There's giants, and they build big walls. Yeah, I know God's good, but this is too big for Him even. And this is what God said; the very words you spoke, determine your future. You won't be able, and you won't enter. See how important it is?

God said, I've heard what you spoke, and I agree with you, so it's not going to happen. Isn't that a shocking thing? Caleb said, our God is mighty! If He is with us, we are well able. Joshua said, I've brought word, as was in my heart. You see, one group of people looked at the circumstances, and doubt and fear and negativity and feeling sorry for themselves - all of those things arose, and they agreed with it. Once they agreed with it, they spoke it, and that was their destiny. Joshua and Caleb, the Bible says, they agreed with the Lord. He said, I brought word as was in my heart. What was in his heart? Our God is with us, we're well able. See, what gets in your heart, is what finds expression through your mouth. Hence the heart has to be cleansed, because that's the source of the trouble with the tongue. You can stop talking, but in the end, you've still got stuff in the heart, see?

So what are we coming into agreement with? In 2 Samuel, Chapter 15, there was a guy called Absalom. People listened to him, and this is what he was doing. He was running down the king and promoting himself, and the people who agreed with him then followed him, and then their lives were destroyed. It's really important what you're agreeing with. Are we agreeing with what God says about us?

Listen, you may have rejection. Rejection has a voice. You may have fear; fear has a voice. You may have shame, or self-pity. These things have a voice. If you hear those voices speaking, and agree with them, you will come into alignment, start to speak it - oh, I can't do anything. Oh, there's not much love around here. Nobody loves me. See, I've come into agreement, now I'm speaking, and you know what? It's true, I'll have all of those things. It's true because I've agreed in my heart, and started to echo it, and speak these things. See demons, when they get into a person's life, first of all speak to you. Listen, Eve came into agreement with the Devil's words, and then began to speak them, then that's when the problem started. It defined her destiny. She let the Devil, let his words come into her heart. Once the words got in there, and she agreed with him, and gave voice to them, then her destiny was described.

What you agree with, and begin to speak, will shape and create your future. It's really important. I don't know who you've been agreeing with, or what you've been agreeing with. See, we could be agreeing with negatives that have been spoken into our life; perhaps someone spoke over you, you're no good, you'll never amount to anything. Now if you agree with that, then that will actually begin to reflect through your life, and your mouth, and it'll shape your future. We have to break the agreement with the negatives that we've been listening to over the years, and begin to start to meditate, and come into agreement with what God says, and reflect that into our world.

Now the problem is, if our experiences have been real bad, it actually is a shift of faith to abandon the speaking and thinking, and begin to start to think and speak like God wants us to think and speak like. But when you start to do it, your experience goes from here, and shifts up to here. You've made room for the word of God, and the spirit of God, to move. See if we begin to say well, I can't do that, I can't - someone's spoken over our life, you're dumb, you're stupid, you're thick, you'll never come to anything. Now, you see and you begin to agree with that, because you are wounded by it, very soon oh, I can't do much. I can't do anything - so God begins to come into your life, and He talks about your destiny. Oh, I can't do that. See, we're in agreement with the past words spoken. Got to break the agreement.

Now one of the things that David was preaching and speaking into the church as prophetic word was, we need to resolve the past, and become empowered in the present. Then our future begins to reflect what God has given us, to break the things of the past we've got to recognise them, and break my agreement with them. Sometimes that means I've got to forgive people who've hurt me, but always it means I need to cancel my agreement with the words and the thoughts, and begin to speak something different.

The Bible tells us a whole kind of lot of words that people speak that create problems: lying words; flattering words; too many words. See, empty words; - we'll maybe share some of those soon, but what I want to just talk about that agreement. Let me just finish with this last thing here now, just on this area.

Number one, the words we agree with; number two, the words we speak. Now let me just give you a second one, and that is Abraham. This is a really good example is Abraham. Abraham's a brilliant example. I'll tell you why he's a brilliant example. Do you know God said? God said, I want you to look up, see Abram, see all the stars? He said that's what your descendants are going to be like. Have a look down, you see the sand? That's what your descendants are going to be like, and you know what? In order to get this right, I'm going to change your name, and this is what I want you to do. You're not going to be called Abram. You're going to be called Abraham, so at any time anyone says to you who are you, you won't say oh, I'm Abram, and I'm old, and my wife's old, and we've got no kids. What you'll say is, at 90-plus and your wife's 90-plus, He said you'll begin to declare I'm the father of nations, and every night when you look up at the stars, your heart will begin to be filled with the vision of a multitude. Every day when you rise up, and someone says who are you? I'm the father of nations. When you look out, and you walk through the desert and see the sand, your heart will be filled with My promise. Day and night, your heart will fill with My promise. See, the heavens and the earth will speak My promise to you.

Now we don't have that. We have the word of God, so God wants us day and night to have His word come into our heart about who we are, and what we're called to do, and what we can do, and what we can be, and then we need to give voice to it. If someone says who are you? Oh well, I'm just an old man. Listen! I'll tell you who you are! You're a child of God! You're the daughter and son of a king! You're royal family, destined to rule, destined to reign. You have a destiny! Listen, what are you agreeing with? What are you agreeing with? What words are you listening to in your heart that are negative and defeat-filled words? You're reflecting them into your environment, and creating that kind of thing.

Listen, we need to fast off that stuff. See fasting is not just having to do without. I'm actually going to cancel it's power completely. I'm going to deal with this thing at it's root, and the root is always in the heart, and it's expressed through the mouth. See God wants us to come into agreement with Him. Let me just finish with one last scripture. The Bible says in Hebrews 3, Verse 1, Jesus is the high priest of our confession. Now that word confession means, speaking the same thing that God is saying about us, and about our circumstances. See, so what I need to do is, agree with what God says about me, and about my family, and about my marriage, and about my finances, and about my world, because if I agree with Him, I position myself to come up to actually see Him work on my behalf.

It says, Jesus is the high priest of what? The high priest's role was to go into the presence of God, intercede on behalf of others, and begin to receive blessing and bring it out to the people. So when Jesus goes before the Father, He's got something to go with. It's your confession! And not just talk and talk, and confessing about your sins. That's the lowest level of confession - important, but it's not where - that's a start point. We confess our sins, positions us to be forgiven, provided I believe Jesus died on the cross for them. But listen, see God is wanting us to access the realm of the supernatural, so He has to have something to work with. When I come in here, we begin to praise the Lord, and thank the Lord, express it. Why do we do that? Because I want Jesus to have something to work with.

I've got to give Him something to work with. I've got to give Him something from my heart; gratitude, praise, confession. I've got to begin to declare things. You notice some of the songs, and the songs that help us come into the presence of God, they are declaring things. See, you listen to that song, Lord, You're My Healer. You're My Healer. You know, that man positioned himself to get the healing, because it was in His heart that God's a healer and he spoke it out of his mouth. He said, I'm going to write a song about it. Even if I die, long after I've died, they'll still be singing the song, Lord, You're My Healer. You're my portion.

I just have thought about that for a week or so, what it's like to sit in a chair, your body slowly losing energy, breaking down, you can't even stand without breaking limbs. No strength, everything's brittle, but in the heart there's no negativity, there's just Lord, You're My Healer. I believe you're my portion. What a great thing - but he positioned himself you see, because Jesus, the high priest of that confession - now this is what I like about that song. This one man didn't just make a confession of faith, and agree with what God said, and position himself for the healing. He wrote a song that could touch and bring others into it, so the very thing that the devil sent to destroy him, becomes not just the stepping stone of his own faith, but actually makes a provision and a blessing for other people to experience God.

People are waiting for you to break through. All around you, there's someone waiting for you to break through from negativity. Maybe there's some relationships you need to cut off. Listen, not all friendships and relationships help us achieve what God wants. The devil is well able to send people into your life, full of negativity, who just eat out what God is trying to do, and you don't even know it. You've got some sense of false loyalty, you're holding onto those people, thinking that this is going to change them. Well, if they haven't changed in three years, what makes you think they're going to change? But what's been happening to you, while that negativity's been getting into your ears? Think about it - fast off negativity.

To fast off negativity means, I need to recognise Lord, I need you to show me in my heart, where I have embraced negative thoughts, doubts, despair, unbelief, self-pity, reasonings, where I've listened to gossip, listened to rumours, focussed on negative things. I want you to show me where the things are. Every time you show me something, I'm repenting, I'm disagreeing with it. I'm breaking my agreement with that thing, and I'm going to begin to declare the things that You say to me.

Start off - give up the news for a while. Give up your papers. Give up the television. Give up the stuff that's filling you full of despair and hopelessness. Fast off it. Some people can't even begin a day without having to look at the news, see what's happening. I'll tell you what's happening - it's all bad. Well, that's the bit they're reporting on, but actually there's heaps of good stuff, but you didn't hear about that. See, you didn't hear about that, unless you looked at Shine TV or something like that. You didn't hear about it on most of the main channels. The main channels are concerned with the negativity. It sells. People are absorbed with it. There's something in us - we want to see someone else fail and fall so we'll feel better. How perverse.

Hey, God wants us to change on the inside. Come on, let's make a decision in our heart. Listen, the Bible says if you believe with your heart and confess with your mouth, Christ is Lord, salvation comes to you. If that's how our faith starts, that's how it continues. I believe that God provides for me. I believe that God comes through for me. I let my heart dwell and meditate on His word, until it truly is rooted in my heart.

I refuse to agree with the doubts and the negatives. I begin to speak day by day. I believe You're my portion. I believe You are all I need to fulfil my life. I believe, and as I begin to declare those things, I start to make a way in my life for the spirit of God to move afresh.

Let's close our eyes right now. Father, we just thank you that you are committed to teach and instruct us, and to cancel and break the power of negativity, which rests like a blanket over New Zealand, over so many people in this nation. It shouldn't be here Lord, we have such a fine nation, such a wonderful place to live, and yet Lord, we confess to You today, that we have imbibed of the spirit of the nation, negativity and criticism and judgementalism. Today we repent of those things, and turn from them, and we ask Lord, You begin to help us and give grace, that our heart might be filled with good things. Whatsoever things are good and true and just, lovely and have good rapport, any virtue, any praise, any good thing; Lord, we give ourselves to think on those things, and reflect those things from our life, that Your spirit might move supernaturally, and our lives could have a powerful impact.

Father, I ask that for every one of us, over the coming months Lord, the whole issue of negativity will begin to be exposed by Your spirit, and we'll be given grace to repent and change, that our words might be words that refresh and build people. Bless them, and speak words that break bondages, and bring releases of the power of God. Lord, I just thank You right now You're going to do it.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Joshua 3:5 - “Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you”.

· People of God positioned to receive their promised inheritance.

· God requires hem “sanctify yourselves” – prepare heart/life so positioned to receive.

· Sanctify = 6942 = to prepare, dedicate, set apart.

· One area must face: Tongue – negativity.

· Ephesians 4:29 - No corrupt communication – do not grieve the Holy Spirit.

· Corrupt = 4550 = rotten, corrupted by age, no longer fit for use.

· Words we speak impact relationships and impact presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

· Grieve = 3076 = to make sorrowful, affect with sadness, put into sorrow.

2. The Power of your Words:

· The words we agree with in our heart and the words we speak shape our present and create our future.

· Proverbs 18:21 – “Death and life are in the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit”.

· Words we speak can impart death to ourselves and others or impart life.

· Words we speak:

i) Reveal who we are - Matthew 12:34

ii) Flow out from what is in the heart - Matthew 12:30

iii) Shape and create our environment - Proverbs 18:21

- atmosphere

- relationships

· Words have a ‘spirit quality’ that shapes our world.

- ‘Angry words’ – fill the atmosphere with ‘tension’ – the demonic present.

- ‘Encouraging words’ impart life to ourselves and others.

· “Fruit” = the consequence of the “word seeds” we have sown.

3. Bible Pictures of Negative Words:

i) Words are like cancer/gangrene:

· 2 Timothy 2:17 - “…their word does eat like a cancer…”

· Cancer is like a deadly cell that spreads and invades the body destroying it.

· Gangrene – dead flesh that spreads and kills without amputation.

ii) Words are like rust:

· James 3:8 - “ The tongue no man can tame – it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison”.

· Poison = 2447 = Rust

· Words can eat out and destroy relationships like rust eats out metal.

iii) Words are like snake venom:

· James 3:8 - “But the tongue no man can tame, it is an unruly evil full of deadly poison”.

· Poison = 2447 = snake venom.

· Snake venom:

i) Paralyses the nervous system leading to suffocation.

ii) Kills tissue and spreads through the body like gangrene.

· Deadly = 2287 = deathbearing.

iv) Words are like fire:

· James 3:5-6 - “…the tongue is a fire …and it is set on fire by hell”.

· A very small fire can cause destruction of unstable areas of property, endanger and destroys lives.

· The tongue sets on fire “the course of nature” i.e. an career, life course.

· The tongue is set on fire by hell = a spiritual power.

v) Words are like arrows:

· Psalm 64:3 - “… their tongues like a sword and bend their bows and shoot their arrows, even bitter words”.

· Arrows penetrate a person’s body destroying organs, poisoning.

· Words spoken can penetrate and wound like an arrow.

· Even words spoken in humor can be like arrows – Proverbs 26:18.

vi) Words are like wounds:

· Proverbs 18:8 - “The words of a tale bearer are as wounds, they go into the innermost parts of the belly”.

· Words spoken can deeply wound people – impact their spirit.

· Wound = 3859 = to burn, cause bitter irritation.

Root – Latin = little snake, festering sore.

4. Words Shape and Create our Destiny:

· James 3:3-5 - “the tongue – like a horses bridle , a ships rudder.

- the tongue can direct life like a horse’s bridle or a ship’s rudder.

- By agreeing and speaking we release:

i) Spirit of God

ii) Demons

a) Agreement:

· Agree = to give consent to, harmonize with, come into one mind with.

· E.g. Genesis 3:1-5 - “Eve came into agreement with devils words.

· E.g. 2 Samuel 15:3-4/11 - People came into agreement with Absolom’s words.

· The words they agreed with => actions => destiny.

· What words are you coming into agreement with?

· E.g. Words of rejection / shame / fear / self-pity / unbelief?

E.g. Words of criticism / gossip?

b) Speaking:

· To utter aloud what is in our heart.

· Numbers 13:30-32 - Israel / Caleb spoke words.

· Numbers 14:26-28 - The words they spoke determines their future.

· Genesis 17:5 - Abraham – ‘Your name shall be Abraham’, father of nations.

God put before Abraham a vision of his descendants – sand, stars.

Everybody spoke his name, they spoke his destiny.

· The words we agree with and speak shape or present and determine our future.

Diseases of the Tongue (2 of 12)

Sun 4th Nov 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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When the tongue is not controlled then it has all kinds of dramatic and serious consequences in people's lives, but when the tongue is controlled, when we begin to yield our tongue and master the words we speak and begin to learn how to speak words that are God-given words, if we get into agreement with God and begin to speak the things God is saying about our life, our circumstances, our condition, our future, then we make way for God to move in those situations.

Okay, would you open your Bible with me. We're going to just carry on where we were last week. We're talking about Taming the Tongue. The Bible says that no one can tame the tongue, but God can. God can, when he changes the heart, and I just want you to pick up where we were in Joshua 3:5, Joshua, Chapter 3, Verse 5. It's got nothing to do with the tongue really, but it's just the scripture God put in my hand in relationship to just speaking about this area. And Joshua said to the people, sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you. Sanctify, or separate, or prepare your heart, prepare your lives, for God desires to do unusual things, impossible things, miracles among you.

Or another way of putting this, he's saying position yourself today, so that God can do unusual, different things in your life tomorrow. The choices you're making today, decisions you're making today, are preparing your tomorrow. Now here's one of the interesting things on that story, that they went from that place there, into their first encounter in battle to possess the Promised Land, and do you know what God required for them to do? Nothing. They had to actually master the tongue.

Now I want you to think, sometimes we read this story the Bible tells us in Joshua, Chapter 6, that they walked around the city of Jericho for six days. Every day they went around it several times. Every day they went around it, and no one was allowed to speak, or to talk, or to say anything. Now I want you just to imagine what that's like. Here you are, it's your first conflict. This is the first battle in the Promised Land. This is a history-making battle, and the strategy that Joshua's come up with is, no one talks. Six days they walk around, and the seventh day they walked around it seven times, and then at the end he gave the command to give a shout, so for six days they had to walk around. Now I want you to think what that is like for a man who's armed, who's got a shield and sword, and they've got trumpets playing. He'll be thinking what kind of battle is this? What kind of leadership is this? We just walk around the place.

Every day they walk around it, they see how big the walls are, they hear the jeering of the enemy. Every day they're walking around, and no one's allowed to say anything. No one is allowed to speak a negative thing. You can't say anything positive, well don't say a negative. For six days they had to walk around, and in that period of six days, they developed in their heart a vision of the city falling down, and on the seventh day, when they let the shout out, can you imagine the anticipation on the seventh day, and they go round it seven times, then they all stop and face the city. Then the whole lot let out a shout - seven days in the making! Actually 40 years in the making - and a shout went out, and the Bible tells us that God heard this, and the walls fell down flat, and they went straight into the city.

It's interesting. This is the first battle in the Promised Land, and they had to control the tongue; the very first encounter in the New Testament with the church, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they spoke in tongues and magnified God. God got a hold and control of their tongue. The tongue, I suppose it's a very little thing, but it says it actually controls the whole of your life. James 3 says like the rudder on a ship, it'll control where it goes. It's like a bridle in a horse's mouth, it'll control where you go. I only have to listen to what you're saying, and I can tell where you're going. Think about that. So we're going to just share a few words. I want to just follow this theme with taming of the tongue, but I want to pick up today on some diseases of the tongue - some diseases of the tongue.

But first let's just have a look at a couple more verses. I want you to have a look with me in Psalm 34. We shared last week that the words you agree with in your heart, and the words you speak, shape your future. We talked about a wedding; you get married, you had something in your heart, you come into agreement with it, and then you spoke the words out, and there it is, you're hitched. You're hitched. You made a commitment, and there it is, so before you say the words, think it through. It's a good principle to success - think it through. Anyway, let's have a look in Chapter 34 or Psalms, Verse 11; Come and listen to me, and I'll teach you the fear of the Lord, so he's talking about having the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, beginning of success in life. And he says, who is the one that loves life, and wants many days, that he may see good?

When he asks this question, who is it, that would really love a great life, and would like their days to be filled with many blessings? I guess that's everyone here, then he says well, deal with your tongue. Deal with the words you're saying, because the words you're speaking are shaping the world you live in. Relentlessly, day by day they're shaping your relationships; they shape the spiritual atmosphere over you. They shape your destiny, so he's saying - notice this what he says. He says very clearly concerning the tongue, if you want a good life, and you want to have good days, many days that you may see good, keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil, do good, seek peace, and pursue it. So he makes it very clear, that there is a very close connection between the kind of life we have, and the way we speak.

Obviously people who are very angry, very hasty with their words, they have a very poor life, because all the people around them are in conflict and turmoil, because they speak angry, hostile words, so the words we speak have tremendous power.

Jesus said, the words I speak, they are spirit, and they impart or bring life to people, so your words are unusual. Your words have a capacity to change the spiritual atmosphere around you, to release the spirit of God to move, and to create a better future for yourself - or to shut down your future, open the way for demons. A little later, when we begin to talk about releasing the power of God, you will realise that the power of God is primarily released by words spoken. Last term we were doing a whole series on undercover. I really appreciate all who put their hand up and led a group. I thank you for your commitment, because it was just life-changing for so many people, but doing that and coming under cover, the whole purpose of that is to position yourself, so you're in a place where you can begin to express the authority of God, and change the world around you.

It's done in many ways, but the one we're looking at at the moment, are the kinds of words that we speak, the sort of words that you speak, and last week we shared about different pictures of what the tongue is like. We found that the Bible described it in one place like gangrene; a poisonous tongue was like gangrene. We saw it was described like snake venom. We saw it described in one place in scripture like rust. In other words, when the tongue is just out of control it's like a fire, it's like an arrow. It actually has power to hurt people. We saw that when the tongue is not controlled, then it has all kinds of dramatic and serious consequences in people's lives, but when the tongue is controlled, when we begin to yield our tongue, and master the words we speak, and begin to learn how to speak words that are God-given words, if we get into agreement with God, and begin to speak the things God is saying about our life, our circumstances, our condition, our future, then we make way for God to move in those situations.

You will be surprised, we talked last week about coming to a point where we begin to fast off negative talk, fast off talk which is destructive. How many people had a go at that this week? There's a few. How many found it was a bit of a challenge actually? Bit of a challenge, you couldn't help that tongue going [blab blab] [Laughter] Once the words are out, you can't get them back again, that's the problem - I wish I hadn't said that. We don't want to be in that place of saying, I wish I hadn't said that, having to cancel the power of the words and take them back, and eat our words with a bit of humble pie. We don't want to do that. We want to learn to actually let our heart be changed, so we can speak words that shift things.

I've known people who have prayed and commanded demons, nothing happened, and then when something came into their heart, and their heart was changed, they began to say the same sorts of things, and the power of God was in their words. You must have words that have substance, and we're going to just over two Sundays, I want to just share with you some common things, which are very common. Actually I thought there's a lot of things in the Bible. I felt I'd take the ones that I personally have had to wrestle and break through, either because this is what's come against me, or because I've had the issue in my own heart and had to deal with it. I felt that would bring more life to do it that way. You can make a search yourself in the Bible of these things.

Notice in Proverbs 21, Verse 23; Whoever guards his mouth and his tongue, keeps his own soul from troubles. So you keep your own soul - so the words you speak not only create an atmosphere around you, and affect the people around you. They actually affect your own life. Interesting isn't it, that when we got the Holy Ghost, we got the gift of tongues. The gift of tongues, when you begin to pray in tongues, it actually edifies or builds your spirit man. If you understand the power of words, and begin to start to speak into your own spirit, you begin to start to speak words in tongues, your whole spirit man becomes energised and full of life. So the words we speak have got tremendous power to change our life, affect us. You begin to speak words over your life - I'd never be able to do that. I can't do anything. I never get things right. You start to speak that kind of word over you, you then come into agreement in your heart with failure, and you make the way for demons to help you achieve your goal. It's very, very powerful. We need to understand this important principle.

However, in Proverbs 15, Verse 4, look at this one. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. The wholesome tongue; the tongue has the power to bring healing to people. You can actually speak words that bring healing to people, touch their spirit, encourage them, lift them up. Imagine having a life like this where everywhere you went, the words you spoke lifted people up, and gave them encouragement. Imagine deciding every day, that I will speak words that will minister grace to people. I'll actually empower people through the words I speak, and even if they speak negatively, I'm not going to be defiled by that. I'm actually going to be proactive in changing this environment, by speaking words that build. It's a choice. It's actually a lifestyle, a whole lifestyle.

The Bible tells us - I want to show you a Verse in a moment, a very, very powerful Verse about our relationship - there's a number of them, but our relationship with God is greatly affected by the kind of words we speak. God listens to the words you speak. I want to show you this, and have a look with me first of all in Proverbs 27 and Verse 19. The root of the issue is the heart, so if we're going to deal with the tongue, you've got to deal with the heart, what lies in the heart, but the tongue gives an indication of what's in the heart. So the tongue's like the flag waving [laughs] and it tells you what's going on. You listen to people talk. Within a very short time you know what's in their heart.

So in Proverbs, Chapter 27, Verse 19, look what it says here. It says as in water, face reflects face, so a man's heart reveals the man. So he's using an illustration of a mirror. When you look in a mirror, you see yourself, you see exactly what you're like, you see the exact image, so you look at the mirror - oi, spots! Need a shave. Need some make-up. You actually see what you're like - and so the Bible says when you look into the person's heart, as the heart is, that's what the person's really like. So how are you going to look at the heart of a person? It's very simple. The way you look into the heart of a person is, you listen to the words they speak. If you want to see the heart of a person, listen to the words they speak.

Have a look in Matthew, Chapter 12. We'll read these Verses here - so if I want to know the state of a person, their condition, where they're at, what's going on in their heart, I've only got to listen to how they're talking, and the words they're speaking, and then the feeling of those words, what sensation or impression the words leave me. It's interesting with people, their words sound okay, but after you've been with them, you realise your spirit has been deeply affected. Something is wrong. You don't know what it is, you can't work out what it is, but actually what's happened is, you have picked up the flow from their inner man, their heart, and if you can identify what you feel, then you'll actually discover what's in their heart. See, because words have a spirit capacity, and so when we start to talk, we speak words, and some people carefully guard their words. Their words are very carefully shaped and spoken, and when you listen to the words, the words sound all correct, but when you feel what's in the words, you sense the person is hiding behind a wall of pretence.

You're not meeting the real person. They're projecting an image, a very carefully crafted image for you to connect with, so you know there's something not right in that person. The Bible says, we know people after the spirit, not after the flesh, not after what we see, so you've got to learn to listen to people, and to train yourself to open your heart to listen to the content of the person's words. You'll be amazed what you hear. If I hear a person praying, I listen to a person praying, I can tell the content of their walk with God. It just comes out in their praying. If a person is intimate and engaging God intimately, when they talk, you'll feel in the spirit of it, you'll feel the content of their walk with God. That's why the Bible's very clear; you want to know what a man's like, don't look at the outside, don't look at the money, don't look at the car he drives, don't look at the house. Don't look at anything around - look at the heart. How do you look at the heart? Well here it is; you've got to listen to the words that are spoken. Words give it all away.

Look what Jesus said here, and in Verse 34 He's rebuking the Pharisee's religious people. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A good man, out of the good treasure in his heart, brings forth good things, an evil man, out of the evil treasure in his heart, brings forth evil things. Let's just stop there for a moment. So He said notice that whatever's filling your heart, will find expression through your mouth. Treasure are the things that you value, and you hold onto, so if you've got little treasures at home, you've probably got them in a little box, squirreled them away somewhere. They're treasures; maybe you've got some papers, maybe you've got some jewellery, maybe you've got something that's really valuable, something that's given, handed down. You'll have squirreled it away, and it'll be a little treasure. Anyone touches your treasures, you get upset - so everyone's got little treasures, but we also have treasures that we hold in our heart. Now they're not all necessarily good, but we still hold them in our heart, and hold on to them.

So for example, some people hold onto offences. Now offences aren't good things, but if you hold on to them, then they become the treasure of the heart, and guess what must come out? Offences. See? Some people have been really deeply disappointed, and they hold on to the hurt of their disappointment. Their disappointment's treasured in their heart. They hold on to that little thing, and they've buried it down... disappointment will be coming out of their words. It just cannot help but come out. Jesus said, out of what's in your heart you will speak, you will speak, and declare. Now notice what else He says. He says that every idle word that a man speaks, he'll have to give account for. Now I may get on to idle words next time around, but an idle word is a word that's empty, or has no substance or value in it. It's just chatter.

Here's the thing I want you to notice about it; that heaven is listening to every word you speak, and somehow every word you speak is recorded, otherwise how would you give account for it? Now some people can't even give account for their money, let alone their words. How you going to give account for your words? That's a major thing. You think about this, that the words that I'm speaking, all of them, God will remind me of them, and call me to give account for what I've said. Even as a preacher, I'll speak words, and then God will hear me speak the words, then He'll ask me if I was living the words, and show the inconsistency between spoken, and words lived. Ooh! We've got to think about this. See, not only do we give account before God one day, but we actually give account on the way, because on the way, you begin to reap the consequences of the words you speak - so even words spoken in silence have a way of getting out somewhere.

See, so our words are an expression of the life we have. Your words are an expression of the life you have, so for many men for example, we struggle to speak words that build intimate relationships, because of being alone, or being locked up, or being shut down in our own world, so when a man lives in a world where he keeps his thoughts, his heart and everything to himself, then what you find he'll struggle to build intimate relationships, because he hasn't got words, or hasn't learned to express words. Often you find in meetings, men won't sing, they won't clap, they won't do anything. They won't express, but that's actually a sign of dysfunction, because relationships are formed through words that have a substance of love in them.

So very clearly - I want to share one more Verse, then we're going to look at these diseases of the tongue. You're going to love these ones and just see, you may find there's one that reflects you. In Proverbs 22:11, look at this. It says he who loves purity of heart, and has grace on his lips, the king will be his friend. That's a good one isn't it? He who loves purity of heart, and has grace on his lips; now what does that mean? Well, whatever comes out of your mouth is going to be a reflection of what's in your heart, so when we begin to cultivate purity in motive and heart and intent, when we begin to let the Holy Spirit show us where we need to make shifts and changes, and we do it, and we begin to make a practice of speaking life-giving words; grace means words that empower and build and bless people. The Bible says let your speech always be seasoned with grace, that it may build up the people who listen.

So it's something we can begin to cultivate in our life, is the words we speak, we speak to build people, to strengthen and to change what's around us. We can do that. It's a decision to do that, and notice what it says, that the person who does this, the king will be his friend. The king will be his friend. In other words intimacy with God is deeply impacted by the way you speak to people, the way we treat others with our words, the way we speak to people around us, deeply impacts our relationship with God. In Psalm 15 it tells us very clearly there, who shall abide in the hill of the Lord, he that has clean hands, a pure heart - now look at this - and then hasn't lifted up his soul to deceit and lying, doesn't take up a reproach against his neighbour, doesn't backbite with his tongue. Notice there's about three things, where the tongue deeply impacts the ability to abide in intimacy with the Lord, and experience His power in our life.

So if you were serious, if we're serious about enjoying the presence of God, carrying the presence of God, we have to put a guard about our lips. We have to actually deal with the things in our heart. Now the Bible says, no man can tame the tongue, so therefore God has got to help us in it. Amen, He's willing to help us in it, and I want to show you some things. First thing is, you've got to know where He needs to help you, so we've seen then, if you want to know what a person's like, you've got to look at their heart, not at their outside. If you want to find out what's in the heart, listen to the words, and feel the content of the words, then you can begin to start to see what's really there.

If you want to change a person's life, change the heart, what the person's holding in the heart. Now I want to look at three diseases of the tongue, very quickly look at three diseases of the tongue, and we'll look at each disease, and I want to give you what a scripture says about it, then an example of person who did it, then what is in the heart. There's always something in the heart drives it, so if you're going to change the tongue, you've got to change the heart. You've got to come to grips with what we've got going on in the heart. Are we okay on that? Alright, here's the first one.

See, now when you go to the doctor, one of the first things he gets you to do [laughs] open your mouth. He looks at the tongue, he looks down your throat, looks at your tongue because your tongue, you know, if it's a furry tongue - if you're not well in your body, your tongue doesn't look good either. Ever looked when your body's unhealthy, how bad your tongue looks? See, so even physically in your body, when your body's not well, your tongue looks grotty and smells bad, tastes bad, gets furry, gets horrendous. But the same thing in the spirit; when our heart isn't good, when our heart isn't sound, then the words we speak won't be either. So let me get the first one, the first disease of the tongue - see how far I get, may only get one or two done today, but we'll keep going with these because I just felt it's really a time, if you just look at it now, and then begin to just decide Lord, if this applies to me, I'm going to make a shift. Here's the first one, Proverbs 6 and Verse 16.

The first issue is the one of lying. Of course some immediately say well that's not me, I tell the truth. So I'd like you just to remain open to the possibility that this might include you, and these six things the Lord hates, a-ha, so God hates things. Now it's interesting when you hate something, you define what you love; what you hate, you move away from, what you love, you move towards. So to hate certain things is really good. You hate certain things, you then move away from them, you stand against them, you shift them out of your world, so one of the things that God hates is a lying tongue. These are the six things that the Lord hates; seven are an abomination; a proud look, a lying tongue. He hates a lying tongue, how about that?

Verse - we might as well pick it up while we're there - Verse 19, a false witness who speaks lies, and someone who sows discord among the brethren. Well we could just stop at that point, but the Lord hates a lying tongue. David said, I hate lying tongues. The Bible tells us, David hated what God hated, so he hated liars, anyone who lied. Now of course to lie, you can lie in a couple of ways - many ways you could lie I guess, but let me give you two things. To lie means literally you alter the facts, so you deliberately misrepresent the situation. That's the most common form of lying, you just tell something that isn't the truth. But there's another form of lying which is very much more subtle, which is far more common, so after you've been a believer for a while, we would hope that we're all moved away from lying. The Holy Spirit's a spirit of truth you know, kind of wants us to tell the truth. The moment you tell something that's not right, He convicts you; that wasn't right!

But the most common form of lying is when we withhold information to create an impression that isn't quite true - give a bit of the truth,, but not the whole truth, given just enough to keep the situation nice, but not enough to really explain what was happening. That's the most common, in other words, where we give partial truth. Partial truth is a lie, because it creates an impression in the other person that is not true. They believe something that's now not true. The most common place you'll find that, is when someone sells something. They tell you all the great points, and they ignore the things that may not be right, then you go and buy it and you've driven around the corner and next thing the gearbox drops out. Well how did I not notice that before? Or you're rubbing it down one day and suddenly your hand goes through the side; there was all this rust had been painted over, just neglect - and that's why the guy says, let the buyer beware of course.

But when we deliberately in our relationships with others, try to create an impression, or to misrepresent what's really happening, that is a lie. That is a lie, and God hates lying. It grieves the spirit of God, and so your words can hardly be empowered with the Holy Ghost if you practice doing that. Of course, this is the one that's most common, where people misrepresent. Young kids will do it, teenagers will do it, adults do it, where they don't quite tell the truth. Where are you going tonight? Oh, I'm going to so-and-so's - which is partly true, but actually from there we're going to somewhere else. So the parent says oh, that's good, good Christian family from Bay City, wonderful. What they didn't know is, you've got something else planned on the way, and so this is one of the most common areas of course where people misrepresent the truth. They only tell you half the truth, and we'll get on to this next year too; a lot of people who buy stuff, you only get half the truth it seems, when you buy the object, about the cost of the finance. They don't always come up front, in fact, would you realise this: they'd have to legislate so that people come up front with the real true cost of the finance, because the tendency is to misrepresent.

Misrepresentation is a lie. Okay then, so God hates the lie, and so that's one of the issues we've got to deal with. Now there's a great example of it, because there's examples all through the Bible of it. A great example is found in Genesis, Chapter 20, and we find it with Abraham. Abraham has got a lovely, beautiful wife. She's been magnificently restored by the Lord, been on one of Lyn's retreats and really come alive now, but she's not only got healed on her soul. She's actually become quite a stunner, and so here's this 90 year old woman, and now she's looking a stunner after God's done a miracle work on her, and Abraham gets a bit nervous. You know, if this king that we're going to be staying with, he'll just kill me to get the wife. That tells you she must have looked good! No man is going to be chasing after a very old 90 year old woman whose teeth have fallen out, and everything's not there you know? You don't want to be chasing after that - and he was really scared, because he thought, the king was going to kill him to get his wife, so she must have really had a massive restoration job, true total make-over by the Holy Ghost! [Laughter]

So he told a little bit of a lie. Now it wasn't a complete lie. He just said oh, she's my sister, and actually there was a relational connection, so he didn't quite lie completely. He just misrepresented, so the king thought, oh this one's up for grabs, and took Sarah into his home and so what happened was, he got struck down with a plague, he and everyone in the home. God showed him, you're a dead man. You've got someone else's wife. He said I didn't know, no one told me and he went back and said to Abraham, what's this thing you've done? You lied to me. And he said this; he said I was afraid, so fear causes people to lie. That's one reason that people lie, is because they're afraid. Another reason they lie, is because of hate. The Bible says, that the person who lies, hates the one and they afflict with the lie, so true love, we don't lie to people. We tell them the truth. We're talking, we're open, we're honest - so the key heart issue here when people lie, one is fear, fear of being truthful, fear of the consequences. One heart motivation for lying, misrepresenting the truth, holding back the truth, is just plain fear, I'm looking out for myself.

See the second one is hate, where actually we lack love for people, and we've got no hesitation to just tell them a lie. Another one is a hidden agenda, where we have a hidden agenda, we have something we're trying to accomplish, and if we told them the truth they'd never buy in, so we tell them a part truth, so we'll get them to respond, and we get what we want from them. We're getting close now aren't we? There's an awful lot of that goes on isn't there? So there's a Holy Ghost, a spirit of truth. So the first place for Him to talk the truth, is to us. The Holy Ghost wants to tell us, so what you do, if you would ask the Lord to just begin to speak to you every time you misrepresent the truth, or tell something that's actually creating some kind of illusion or misrepresentation - just begin to ask the Holy Ghost to do it. Believe me, the words will barely have got out of your mouth, and He will tell you. That wasn't true. That's what He'll say - that wasn't true, or He'll say more bluntly, you lied. I tell you, it's quite a shock to get a slap on the face by the Holy Ghost, when you've asked Him to help you deal with words, and you didn't quite lie, just sort of well, you know, told most of the truth. [Laughs] Yeah, most of the truth is still a lie, because it doesn't actually paint the full picture.

So we see that those are things of the heart, so therefore if I want to deal with that, I've got to ask the Lord to help me get over the issue of fear, begin to really have a heart that loves and embraces the truth, embraces the truth in my own life, and then embraces the truth in speaking the truth to others. Of course, some people aren't ready to hear the truth. You know, there was a Jack Nicholson movie and they were talking, they were saying, I want the truth, I want the truth. He said, you can't handle the truth! Of course some people in relationship aren't able to handle truth. They go bananas when you tell them the truth, and they just react, and get angry and upset. You still have to tell them at some point, but there is a timing in things, so just because we've talked about being truthful, doesn't mean you have to go now and blab. You've got to speak the truth in love, so in our relationships, our relationships are cultivated by speaking the truth.

Think about this. If you lie to your spouse, or lie to your parents, or give things which are misrepresenting the truth, your relationship is going into darkness. You've left a whole area now, where demons can come in to isolate you and afflict you. The Bible tells us in Isaiah 28, it says that we've come into a covenant with death and hell agreement. Now in other words, we've come into a binding agreement with demons. How? Because we made lies our refuge. We hid under lies and deceit. You'll find whenever people speak a lie or misrepresent something, immediately demons are empowered by their agreement with the devil, who's a liar. The Bible says, John 8:44, the devil's a liar. The lies come from him, so when we lie, when we deliberately misrepresent something, deliberately tell a lie, we immediately come into agreement with a demon, and now he's empowered to further increase the web.

The interesting thing is, once you start down the road of lying, you've got to keep going there, and it gets more and more - you can't even remember what you said and what you didn't say. Then finally it all collapses, and you get caught out, and it's a disaster. You're humiliated, because you never just embraced the way which is right. God hates lying. He loves the truth. He's a God of the truth. Why don't we just in our heart just say Lord, help me now to just guard my lips, that I actually speak and represent the truth, and that every time I misrepresent it, you'll convict me, show me, so I can get out and walk in the light very, very quickly. Oh, he'll go quietly. See, the truth sets you free. Truth sets you free. I can give you one more, because I think it's gotten - I'll give time, four minutes to do one more. This one's a good one too, and it's an infectious disease. It's a deadly disease, actually really breaks up families and churches and businesses and all kinds of things.

Let me just give you one more, come on, here it is, this one here. It's gossip and slander. Gossip - you knew that one was coming. Juicy gossip, it's the words of a tale bearer, like dainty morsels, they go down, but they wound you on the inside. They have an effect, so tale bearing, gossip. There's a bit of a difference between gossip and slander, I'm going to define that for you. The first one, gossip; gossip's when you talk about someone. You talk about them, and you share their person affairs, but here's the thing about it. It's always flavoured by your interpretation of it, and when you tell someone they don't just pick up the facts, they pick up your interpretation of the facts. So when we start to uncover what's happening in other people's lives and share it, what we do is we begin to create a defilement. We begin to defile the relationship, and then the person's name and reputation are run down. That's a horrendous thing. Magazines make millions on gossip, juicy gossip, all the women's magazines. Now if you're going to fast off negativity, fast off every magazine that's loaded with gossip. Just start with gossip. Start with gossip and end with that. Put and end to it.

Get on the phone - did you hear about so-and-so? Oh [natter natter] Well if it wasn't edifying, why did you tell them that? Why did you go and share that thing? Why did you share what was private, see? Here's the thing is, when someone shares with you something about someone else, you don't hear all the story. You hear what's in their spirit, you feel it, and you're left with an impression, and your facts aren't quite right, because anyone knows if I start a story off over here and we spread it round, by the time it gets up here it's a totally different story. So what happened? See people repeated what they thought they heard, and sometimes they hear out of their own heart, so if someone's got a snitch with Bill, and I share them something about Bill, they don't hear what I said. It just reinforces what they already felt in their heart towards him. You understand? So gossip's horrendous.

Now slander's something different again. Slander goes a bit further. Slander deliberately misrepresents a person, so the things that are spoken deliberately create a wrong impression about them, so undermining their character and reputation, their good name. Slander is a horrendous thing, because when you slander someone, you are destroying their good name and reputation. You're actually taking something - if you took $100 from them you can pay it back, but if you slander someone, you can't pay it back. You can't even fix it. It's a horrendous thing to slander someone, to speak and misrepresent them deliberately. That's what a slander is, and so in Psalm 15, Verse 1 and 3, it tells us if you want to abide the presence of the Lord, don't get into back-biting or gossiping, and don't take up a reproach, or start to agree with people about someone else's faults. Everyone has got faults.

Listen, if someone comes to you with the faults of another, you've got a choice in a moment to shut it down, and begin to speak something positive. If you don't, you lose your initiative. We've got to be empowered to actually create changes in relationships, by shutting down things which destroy them, and speaking in things that will build them. So gossip and slander are just horrendous ones. We get on the phone, in Proverbs 11:13, a tale bearer reveals secrets; but the one with a faithful spirit conceals a matter. So if you've got a faithful spirit, you don't go around blabbing other people's failures. You actually just keep them quiet. You don't advertise them, you don't shout them out. Even when Saul fell, David didn't rejoice over Saul falling. He actually mourned over it. He didn't go around gossiping. He didn't go round spreading stories, spreading rumours, all that kind of thing.

In Proverbs 6:19, the Lord hates a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among the brethren. God actually hates it. If you start to talk about a person and negatively affect their attitude, you're sowing discord, and you'll reap something even greater in your own life - and God hates it. Just think about that. Every time you start to talk about someone negatively, and they're not present, you're saying things that God is recording, that's been listened to in heaven, and you're starting to set something in motion that can move you forward, or it can move you backward. You make the decision.

These are very, very powerful. Anyway, I'll just finish it with this thing here. An example of it's Miriam. Miriam thought she had every right to criticise Moses, because he married a black Ethiopian woman, so she got her tongue wagging, and started to gossip about - you see this woman he's marrying? Man, what kind of choice of a wife is that? An Ethiopian! How come he marries an Ethiopian? Isn't anyone around here good enough? She got gossiping and running him down - and God heard. God said this: I heard what you said. You should have had more respect for Moses than to speak about him behind his back like that. You've got Me upset now - so Miriam walked away covered in leprosy. Horrendous - that's a story for us to get a lesson from. Don't go bad-mouthing people, don't go bad-mouthing - if you can't say anything nice, just zip the lip. Just better to zip the lip, than to let it run away and get yourself into trouble.

The heart issues usually are bitterness and pride, bitterness and pride. When we're bitter in our heart, we will then start to run others down. When we've got pride in our heart, we'll speak, and run people down. We delight in their failures and their weaknesses and shortcomings. If there's envy of another person, you'll be caught up doing this kind of thing, so the common heart issues are envy, bitterness and pride. So if we're going to deal with gossip and slander, then what we've got to do is deal with those things in the heart; bring the Lord in place of repentance. See, the Holy Ghost will help us. You don't have to really sweat on this one; He is a spirit of truth, sent to lead us into truth, so all you've got to do is say Holy Ghost, begin to talk to me, if I've got a disease of lying, and I'm beginning to open the way for demons in relationships, and misrepresent things, and create a situation that's not real, or not true. Lies inherently must fail, because there's no substance in them. The truth inherently will stand, because it's the truth, it's got substance in it, see?

If I'm a gossip, if I get on the phone and yappety-yappety-yap about others; young people, guard your tongue, guard your mouth. Don't go running people down, don't go listening to the stories you - someone comes with a story, did you hear about so-and-so? No, I didn't, I don't want to hear if it's negative either. Why are you telling me this? Have you told it to them? Shall we go to talk to them and see if it's true? Just stand up and actually don't become a garbage can for someone else defiling you. Normally if someone comes with gossip, they'll test you out, how open you are to hear it, and when they start to test you out, that's the time to make a stand and say no. Just put your hand up and say no, I don't want you to speak about that person like that without them present. If you can't speak positively about them, please don't run them down to me.

See now these are things in our culture that if we went into a different dimension with God, we just make a decision, I'm going to be a man of truth, I'm going to be a man who refuses to gossip. I'm not going to allow this thing to be a part of my life. You say Amen to that and what happens is, God comes on the person, and we can abide in His presence. See, we're wanting to have a supernatural life in this coming year. Why don't we start to prepare the ground in our personal life for it to happen? Begin to start to speak words that bring grace to people.

When I've done the other diseases of the tongue, I'll begin to talk to you then about how you release words that change atmospheres, how you release words that shift demons. There's a way to about doing it, but you can't do it if you don't deal with these other things.

Father in heaven, we just thank you that you are lifting us up to a new level. You're preparing us for greater things. We thank You Lord always there's greater things. This year's been great - next year will be greater. We thank You for greater blessing, greater opportunities, a greater church, greater impact. We thank You in every area our lives will be greater, our influence will be increased. Lord, we thank You right now, today, You're working in our lives to prepare us for that.

Lord, we ask that the spirit of truth, the spirit of grace be in our midst and that Lord, over these next weeks You would come upon every one of us and convince us quickly, if we're misrepresenting people, misrepresenting situations, misrepresenting the truth, come upon us quickly and empower us to change, so we come to a new level. Lord, if Your ears hear us giving heed, or passing gossip or slander, Lord speak directly and quickly into our hearts that we might be convicted, and immediately respond to put it right. Lord, lift us to a new level, so our words will be like Your words; we watch over them, to keep them. Our words will carry substance of spirit and life. Our words will create. Our words will impart life to people. Our words will build better relationships, and a better atmosphere around us. God, we believe You will lift us to a new level, in Jesus' name. Can you say Amen? [Amen!] Say Amen! Come on, let's stand to give the Lord a clap, come on, let's stand to give Him a clap. He's a great and awesome God, and He wants us to lift us into a better place, lift us into a place of blessing, lift us into a place where our destiny begins to unfold in harmony with His plan. Lord, we thank you today! We thank you today! Halleluiah. Musicians, you got a great song to finish with?

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Joshua 3:5 - “Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you”.

· Sanctify = to separate, make clean, set apart for divine purpose.

· Wonders = things beyond natural ability, supernatural release of miracles.

· People of God called to position themselves for increase of the Supernatural.

· Joshua 6:10 - “… no word proceed out of your mouth until the day I say to you ‘Shout!’”.

1st miracle of possessing Jericho required mastery of tongue.

1st sign of Holy Spirit filling in NT – Spoke in tongues – praised God.

2. Your Words can Shape your Future:

· Words we agree with in heart and words we speak create our future.

· Psalm 34:11-13 - “Who is man that loves life…keep your tongue from evil”.

· Word pictures of tongue: Gangrene, Rust, Snake Venom, Fire, Arrows, and Wounds.

· Fear of the Lord that leads to life and prosperity seen in how we speak.

· We cannot have a good life if we cannot control our tongue.

· The words we speak either nurture or destroy relationships around us.

· Proverbs 21:23 - “Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles”.

· Proverbs 15:4 - “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life – but perverseness with it breaks the spirit”.

Wholesome = healing - the tongue has power to bring healing, encouragement.

Perverseness = distortion, crashed dealing – tongue has power to wound

and hurt.

3. The Root of the Issues of the Heart

· Proverbs 27:19 - “As a water face reflects face so a mans heart reveals the man”.

- Water act as a mirror that reveals what we look like.

- What is in your heart reveals what kind of person you are.

- The overflow of the heart is the mouth – your words reveal who you are.

· Matthew 12:33-37 - “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”.

- Abundance = to overflow with what fills the heart.

- Treasure = things that you value, long for, hold onto, think on, store up.

- Whatever your heart holds and values will overflow out through words.

- Our words are so important that we are required to give account for them.

- Our words give expression to the life within and create our future.

· Proverbs 22:11 - “He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the King will be his friend”.

- Purity of heart overflows in grace – empowering words that strengthen and build.

- Our relationship With Jesus – the King of Kings is impacted by our words.

4. Diseases of the Tongue:

· Note: Problems in you body – Doctor looks at tongue (poor diet, infection)

i) Lying:

· Proverbs 6:16-19 - These things the Lord hates – Lying tongue.

· Lying = deliberately alters facts to misrepresent truth.

= withhold part of truth to create a false impression and deceive.

· Example: Genesis 20:1-12 - Abraham lied about his wife Sarah – created false impression.

· Heart issue: Fear; Hate (Proverbs 26:26-28); Hidden motive.

· Proverbs 12:27 - “lying lips are an abolishment to the Lord”.

· Jeremiah 9:6 - “Through deceit they refuse to know me”.

ii) Gossip / Slander:

· Psalm 15:1-3 - “… does not backbite with tongue,…take up a reproach”.

· Gossip = talk about someone else’s personal affairs.

- As the story is shared it is ‘colored’ by the person’s attitude.

- Those listening hear the words and pick up the heart attitude.

· Slander = False and malicious statements about someone.

- Words falsely spoken that misrepresent the person and damage their reputation or impart offence to the hearer.

· Proverbs 11:13 - “A talebearer reveals secrets but he who is of faithful spirit conceals a matter (doesn’t gossip or slander)”.

· Proverbs 6:19 - “Lord hates – false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren”.

· Example: Numbers 12:1-9 – Miriam.

· Heart issue: Bitterness; Pride; Envy; Rebellion

Ephesians 4:25 - “Putting away lying speech”.

· Proverbs 12:19 - ‘lip of truth shall be established forever but the lying tongue is but for a moment”.

iii) Flattery:

· Proverbs 26:28 - “a flattery mouth works ruin”.

· Flattery = excessive or insincere praise – often with hidden agenda.

- Person showers positive compliments but with hidden motives: ask for favor; obtain information.

· Proverbs 29:5 - “A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet”.

· 2 Samuel 15-16 - Absolom.

· Heart issue: seeking approval, seeking recognition, hidden agnda.

· Isaiah 6:5-7 - “Isaiah’s lips cleansed through confession and encounter with God => empowered to represent God.

Empty Words (3 of 12)

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Words are containers – they carry a ‘spirit’ content. They are living seeds that produce fruit when spoken. The words we speak impacts our relationships, our personal health and destiny. What words are you releasing into the world around? Empty words include: flattery; religious Words; lame excuses; insincere commitments. God speaks words that create, impart life, and release spiritual authority. We are called to imitate god.

I want you to open your Bible then in James, Chapter 3. We've been speaking about Taming the Tongue. Oh my, it's been a really good series. I've found myself catching myself every day with words, catching the words I'm speaking, starting to look again at the things I'm saying, and we saw that we're in a season where God's wanting us to prepare our hearts, prepare our lives. One area of your life to really deal with is the tongue, the words that we speak, and we've been looking at diseases of the tongue, chronic diseases of the tongue. We looked at some Bible pictures of the tongue, and it was pictured as a deadly serpent about to bite. It was pictured as a sword, about to pierce someone. It was pictured in a whole number of different ways; as rust eating people out, so the words that we speak have tremendous negative impact, but the words we speak can have amazing, wonderful, positive impact.

We looked at some particular areas that God was wanting us to become sensitive to. Once the word is preached you become aware of it, then you become sensitive to it, then the spirit of God can suddenly bring to your awareness, whenever you're slipping with your mouth. We looked at the area of lying. We looked at the area of gossip and slander. Last week we looked at the area of put down words, words that put you down and cause you to feel devalued and a loss of esteem or shamed.

How many people have been really aware of the put down words around them this last week or so? Yeah, a lot of people aware. How many have been aware in your own life, you start to catch yourself whenever you've said anything that had a slight put down thing in it? How many started to find that? Great, that's wonderful. I found I become much more alert to it, so I want to get into another area today and where we're leading to is we're going to be looking at how God has designed us to function. So I want to start to sow something out on that today, how God has designed us to operate, and then we're going to go into look at another kind of words which we're all guilty of, and that area we'll look at is the empty words, empty words, insincere words, words that carry no substance.

So let's have a look in James, Chapter 3, pick up and begin to look into these Verses - Verse 3. Indeed we put a bit in a horse's mouth, that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look at ships: they're large, but they're driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so the tongue is a little member, but it boasts great things. See how great a forest, a little fire kindles!

So you notice he's using some pictures here. You steer a big horse, you change the whole direction of its body by the bridle, by getting a hold of its mouth. You see a ship, we change direction of a big ship just with a small rudder. What he's saying is your life is turned about, if you can tame the tongue, and master the kinds of words you're speaking. Now of course that, yeah, we can understand it with a horse, and we understand it with the ship. We really do find it a lot more difficult to understand it from a spiritual perspective how this affects our life, but the Bible's very clear. If you can shift a horse by tugging on its mouth, you can change your life by speaking different words. You can change your life by speaking different words, and we talked about kinds of words that people speak. Words are containers. Words are containers. There's not just words that are spoken. They actually carry something with them. That's why when someone says something to you it sounds okay, but then you feel different afterwards. You can get off the phone with someone and you feel quite down afterwards, you feel depressed. You don't even know why you're like that, but as you evaluate it, you realise although the words seemed okay, the negativity and despair or offence in their heart was downloaded to you. You pick up what is ministered from their heart, as we saw that people speak out of their heart, their inner man, so what is in our spirit will always flow out of our mouth. The words that flow are containers. They actually carry something.

Another place, the Bible says that the words we speak are seeds; a seed is very small, but if you just leave it'll germinate and grow. You start to tell a lie about someone, pretty soon that lie springs up and grows and the person's whole relationship with that other person is changed. So words have great power to shift and change the way our lives operate. Now I want us to look a little bit about how God designed us to operate, and we want to ask the question, what words are you releasing into this world? What words are you speaking into this world? What words are you reflecting?

Last week we were looking at the issue of whether you are an echo or whether you are a voice. An echo means something is being repeated, that someone else said, and so we looked at your life, and many people are just repeating what someone else said about them. Many people just reflect - you were put down, you were told you were an idiot, told you couldn't do this, couldn't do that. It got into your mind and heart. In the end you begin to echo what was told to you, and that begins to now determine your life course. You are in agreement with it, and you're speaking it, it's where you're going. If we're going to change our life, we need to come into agreement with the words God says about us, the words God says about our life, the words God says about who we are, what we have, what we can do. We need to agree with what God says, and give voice to what God says. When you agree with what God says, and give voice to what God says, the power of heaven is released. Your life changes.

How does a person get saved? How does a person get out of the power of sin, and change their eternal destiny for an eternal destiny without God, an eternal destiny separated from God, tormented forever? How do they change, and end up with a destiny which is eternal, it's walking with God, enjoying this life on the earth? Simply this: words. Words from God get in your heart. You believe Him, and speak Him, and then heaven hears, and your life changes! So if such an important thing as my eternal destiny can be changed by the words I believe and speak, how much more will the rest of my life be affected, in exactly the same way? It's just because we have a western non-spirit world view, we don't understand the power of words, so I want to just talk to you a little bit about God's design. I'm not going to go far on it, because I want to go from here back into this issue of empty words, and want to identify words which we so commonly speak which are quite empty.

So let's have a look at divine design. First of all look with me in Ephesians 5, Verse 1. When we talk about divine design, we're talking about the way God designed things to work. God designed stuff to work. I guess the guy who makes something, knows how it works best. Sin means we disagree with the designer how to do it best, we have our own plan. The reality is though, that the way God designed things to work, is actually how they really work. He knows how life works. You do things His way, you find you get His results.

In Ephesians 5, Verse 1, it tells us this. It says be therefore, followers of God, as beloved children. Now any of you who've had children, little children, realise there's something they do quite regularly. It's very common, is they copy mum and dad. It can be really embarrassing, it can be really good, but they copy you. They listen to what you say, they watch what you do, and then they do it, and so you'll find little kids often acting out what mum and dad say and do. We've had ours in the pool baptising kids, pushing them under, trying to remember what we said - but they got the picture of it. Someone's been baptised, they're into it and they're copying what they've seen done. So children tend to imitate and copy or walk like their parents. They do that thing, and the Bible says be followers of God as beloved children, so if we're born again, we're called to be followers of God. That word means to imitate, literally be imitators of God. That word comes from the word meaning to mimic, be a mimic of God. In other words, the way God speaks, and the way God operates or behaves, do the same thing, like a little child would do that to his father.

It's interesting that Jesus actually ran His whole life that way. He said the things I hear the Father say, I say those things. The things I see the Father doing, that's what I do - so His life on earth was a reflection of imitating His Father, and that why He was able to say, if you've seen Me, you've seen My Dad. You've seen God the Father, you've seen what God is like. I'm reflecting Him completely. Now we are called and designed to represent God in the earth. We're designed to be His ambassadors, to be His sons and daughters, to reflect in the earth what He's like, so therefore, we are called to operate in the world like God operates. Now there's many ways He operates, but I wanted to pick up one particular thing and this is about the use of words. I want to give you three uses of words, three ways that God uses words and we should imitate those ways, okay?

Here's the first one. God uses words to create things. Hebrews 11, Verse 3, says by faith, we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God, so the things that are seen came from things that were not seen. Now that's a hard thing for a western-minded person to think. We think of building of house. Then we think of the materials, we think of the construction, the foundation, we think of things we can see, but everything that you see around you which is visible came into being this way; the spirit of God was moving, and the word of God was spoken, let there be, and things were created. In other words, the things you see, were created by words coming out of the heart of God, and God still operates that way. When God speaks words, the words have creative power to bring something into existence that wasn't there before. Now that's a real problem for us, especially if you're an evolutionist. You'll have a lot of trouble with that.

But God does it. He creates new things by speaking His word. That's how things work, so it says we understand the words were framed. In other words they were established or brought into being, or they were designed and brought forth so we can see them. How were they done? By the word God spoke. So that tells us that the first words that God is recorded to have said in the Bible were creative words. Let there be! - and there was. We go, well that's God. Okay, we'll just take it a little further then, because your words are creating something too. Your words create an atmosphere in your home. Your words create the relationships you have around you. When you come up and you stand up here at an altar, and you speak words, you create a marriage bond, and you're committed for life.

When you want to build a building, you'll always start off with the dream, and you'll put it into words. You're never going to get a building built if you don't speak words, so even without spirit creativity, words are still used to bring new things into existence. If you want to bring something new into existence, you have to first have the dream, but somehow you've got to speak and communicate it. Now God's way is even at a different level, He can speak, and it supernaturally is created. So we realise then that Jesus did exactly the same thing. Think about it. Jesus spoke into bread, and it says He blessed the bread, or He spoke words over it, and it multiplied. How do you figure that one?

If He hadn't spoken any words, they'd all go hungry for lunch. He was able to release creative power. He released it in a whole number of ways. He spoke creatively into situations. He spoke into the environment. He spoke into diseases. He spoke in a whole range of things, but the way things are brought into being, creative miracles come when the spirit of God is moving, and someone speaks a word. Now God is wanting us to imitate Him, so if we want to bring forth God's design in our life we must know it, and see it, and then speak it from our spirit. Now a lot of people don't understand that, so they remain like this: oh God, please change me. I bet you've been praying that prayer a long, long time and you will be continuing to pray it a long, long time because that's not how you bring about change.

You don't bring it about by saying please God, change me. The Bible says very clearly how change comes about. It comes about when we change how we think, change what we believe and change what we say. According to your faith, let it be done to you - so if I know what God has done in my life with the new birth, and I begin to declare that, and I begin to confess it, and I begin to decree it over my life, my circumstances in life will begin to adjust to agree with the words I'm speaking. You see, I can feel the struggle we have with it see, because we only think of things being constructed by something we can see. If you're a builder, you know you've got to get some four-by-twos and some other stuff, put it together, I can make something, but we don't think of designing things by the words of God being spoken out of our mouth. But we must get into that. That's how Jesus operated.

He spoke into people's bodies, and there were creative miracles, in other words limbs restored, eyes restored where there were none before. How did it happen? The spirit of God moving. He heard what the Father wanted to say, He said it, and something changed. That's how we're designed to operate. Is God seeking to change you to become like Christ? You just begin to operate the same way - and we'll get on to how to do that in another session, but I want to just get these seeds laid out in your heart.

Here's the second thing about the words that God speaks. The words God speaks impart life. In other words, when God speaks, He will always speak in such a way, that there is an impartation into you, of life. That means you'll be encouraged. It means you'll be built up, or if He convinces you of sin, it's not to put you down or condemn you. It's to show you what needs to change, so you can come into life, so there's still words of life. In John 6:63 Jesus said the words I speak, they are spirit. See, they are spirit, and they are life. So He said, I don't just speak words that are nothing. He said words I speak actually have a spirit nature about them, because I'm in the image of God, and so He says I speak words, and there's a spirit content in them, and wherever they go they bring life into people. That's how we're designed to operate. You're designed as a spirit being, to be able to speak God's words, the words God gives you into a situation, and it changes and it turns, and it begins to become like what you've said. This is a new thing for many people, but it's actually how we're designed to operate see. Think about it.

See, Jesus spoke to a withered hand. A man had a withered hand in Mark, Chapter 3. Jesus said this, now this is what He just said. He just spoke a command. He said stretch! That's pretty mean to tell a crippled man to stretch. Unless your words are spirit, and have life [grunt], and there was power released. He spoke. See, Jesus spoke. Whenever He spoke, He released something. Something happened when He spoke. This is why we're going through this process of looking about words which are destructive, so you wake up and stop saying that kind of word, and begin to position yourself where you can say words that change environments, change circumstance, bring life into people. There's no situation ever recorded where Jesus put anyone down.

A put down word, is a word releasing the spirit of murder and death into someone. That's why when someone puts you down, you always feel afterwards downed on the inside. You don't feel alive and built up and lifted up. You actually got hit by something. Have you noticed you get around some people, and after you've been around them, you are down? They are releasing a spirit of murder, which steals away your life, because before you were talking to them you were doing just fine, and after you were talking to them, you're downed. They stole away your life. That's what murder is. So people can release a spirit against you without even knowing, and two people get talking, come into agreement, it'll come against you, and you'll feel it, and you can't work out why you feel down. But a spirit has been released from the spirit world to come against you and to begin to press on you and drain your life out, see?

Spirit of death. What does the spirit of death do? When we tend to think of death, we tend to think oh, there's a body, he's gone, but death means a separation, to become isolated, or to become cut off relationally, is death. See, the wages of sin is death. It means we're cut off relationally, so when people speak words that down you, when people speak words that lie to you, they release a spirit of death. Why? Because when you find out, or you feel those words, what happens is you become separated from that person. Someone puts you down, you want to move away from them. Someone lies to you, you feel wounded inside, and you want to move away from them. You're alienated from them. Someone gossips about you, or slanders you, again it releases a spirit of murder and death. It releases something, and when you find out about it, you are wounded and hurt, and then you withdraw from them. That's the very symptoms of murder and death. There's a spirit come against you.

Now you and I are responsible. We are called to be ambassadors of Christ, to use our mouth, our creative faculty to bring words that change how people are. You every day could go round and speak words of encouragement to people. Sincere words of genuine encouragement will make people's faces light up, and their day a happy day. It's such a contrast. Most people go around complaining, they're negative, they're impatient, they demand things of people that are serving them. But when you go, and you begin to encourage and lift up and speak well, something changes. You release or you give permission for the spirit of God to touch their life. What an amazing thing - so God's words; one, they're creative; two, they speak life. What are your words like?

Here's another thing about God's words. The words that God speaks, release power and authority. They release spiritual power and authority. In Luke, Chapter 4, Verse 36, Jesus has just cast out a demon. How did He get rid of a demon? Words. They said what word is this! They realised it was His words. What kind of words does this man speak, for He speaks with authority, and He speaks with power, even the demons listen to His words, and do what His words say. Don't ever complain you've got demons harassing you, when within you is the power to confront them and drive them away. It's just you're not using it. You're probably using it to attract them. You speak negativity and death, and speak pessimistically, and won't use your mouth the way God designed your mouth to be used, to glorify Him, to honour Him, to bring His life into the earth. Well it's not surprising demons hang around, and if they're hanging around, you have to understand this. God gave you the capacity to deal with them. If they're hanging around, it's because you didn't deal with them, and that's probably because you didn't get into your heart an understanding of the power of your words, and the privilege you have as a son, a daughter of the living God to dismiss these demons, get rid of them. If they're there, you let them be there. Do something different - use your mouth. See? Use your mouth differently.

Okay, see, so words of life, so Jesus' words released power. In other words, ever heard this statement: his words carry weight, or he's a man of his word, see? That means, the words had something in them that's substantial. If he's a man of his word, means what he says, he'll do. I like that. God's like that. He watches over His word to do it, see. Jesus' words carried substance. I've heard people shout at demons, shout until their voice is hoarse. He said listen, you can shout all you like, no demon's going to shift through shouting. They will shift when you believe in your heart the authority Jesus has given you, and as His representative, you speak with belief. Your words carry your spirit, and carry faith. According to your faith, it'll be done to you.

Jesus spoke to winds, they changed. He spoke to storms, they changed. He spoke to dead men, and they rose up. His words carried substance. You say oh well, you know I'm not like that. Well listen, maybe that's big brother, but you're called to be like big brother, so start off now, doing the right things. Copy big brother, start to speak the right kind of words, speak words that live. Okay then, so we got the idea of how we're designed.

So Jesus said this, in case you didn't realise this, John 14:12, the works I do, he that believes in me, the works I do, he will do also, so if you believe in Jesus, the things He did spoke to things, you'll do them also. If you're not doing them, it's because you don't believe it'll work, and one of the reasons we don't believe it works, is because our experience with our words is they're not very good words. They're often deceptive words, or dishonest words, or gossipy words, or as we'll see in a moment empty words. Listen, if I become aware of the capacity I have, with the words I speak, to change my environment, I'm going to be careful what I say. I'm going to ask the Holy Ghost to pull me up every moment I speak a word that's empty or deceptive or dishonest or gossipy or negative or whatever. Holy Ghost, pull me up on that, immediately show me. I'm not going to have that flowing out of my heart. My heart is going to speak out of my mouth, words that change atmospheres, bring life, create things.

Long before I saw miracles actually present, I was seeing them and speaking them, see? I was in my prayer room speaking them, declaring it shall be this, see? Long before I ever saw them happen, I saw them with my mind and imagination, agreed with the word of God, and declared it would be so. So you are creating by your words and your meditations of your heart, your future. That's why we need to be guarding what we say. I'll get on to different kinds of words next week, and then we'll get onto how to just release things. See, Jesus said, have the faith of God, Mark 11:22, if you will speak to this mountain, be moved. Now you see most people, when they've got a problem, you know what they do? They talk about their problem. Then they'll ring someone up, and talk to them about their problem. They come to the cell group, and talk about their problem. They come up in altar call, and they're still talking about their problem. They have not moved into a position where it will change, because they're not talking solution.

I need to speak to the problem, not talk about it. I need to command it to be diminished! I need to command the spirits that energise it to go in Jesus' name! I need to declare what God says, blessing into this area. Long before I see a result, I've got to do that. Okay then, so let's have a look at Matthew, Chapter 12. Let's go back, I want to pick up this thing of idle words. Okay, are we getting the idea how God intends you to use your tongue, how He intends you? We'll go back into that area. I just want to pick up this thing of idle words, Matthew, Chapter 12, Verse 34. A good man, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth good things, and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, brings forth evil things. I say to you, every idle word men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment, for by your words you will be justified, by your words you'll be condemned. Isn't it interesting? The words you speak reveal who you are. The words you speak, reveal the kind of person you are.

The words you speak, the spirit world is listening to. It's listening to your words so carefully, that every one of them is recorded. Every one of them, every idle word. How can you hear an idle word? You've got to be listening in, tuning in to every word, so every word that we are speaking in the earth, as God's representative, He's listening to, all heaven is listening to, demons are listening to it so they can leap on it and have a chance to do some havoc. God is listening to it, because He wants to be able to work on your behalf. The key thing is, are you speaking as an ambassador of heaven, or are you representing and reflecting the demonic chaos of the world? What are you speaking?

He says every idle word; an idle word means literally something that's barren. It yields no return. There's no fruit in it. It's an empty word, so probably the best way you'd describe it is, it's a word that you speak, but you never meant it. Any word you speak, and you didn't mean what you said, is an idle word, any word. Any word you spoke, but you had no intention of keeping it, is an idle word. Any word that was insincere and not genuine or authentic is an empty, idle word, see? No content. Now the thing is oh, well if it's an empty word, at least it's not a negative word. Actually that's not true, because an empty word still releases something. I tell you, it's so simple to see it. If I give a commitment to you that I will pay a bill today, and you then arrange your plans on the basis of my word, but I had no intention of doing it, the day comes, I don't pay the bill. Don't say that you won't be affected by that. You will be affected in a number of ways. First you'll be hurt that I treated you with such little respect and value. Secondly, you'll feel distrustful of me. Thirdly, you will step away from me, so these are all the manifestations of the spirit of death. See, words can bring us closer, words can separate us, so it does minister something. Empty words - you think, when a tradesman said they'd come, and they never came. You think when someone said they'd do something, and they never did it. You think when someone said something to you, and you just felt as you heard it, it's not going to happen. They're just lying to me, and you wanted to say something, but didn't know what to say. Don't tell me it doesn't have any affect. Empty words have a huge effect. They actually have a number of effects in our relationships. Let me just give you some examples of negative, empty words.

I'll just quickly do them, just so you get an idea of what they are. I just want you to understand what they are, and then we want to turn so that we never speak empty words. We're going to speak words that have substance, or we'll just zip our lip. Okay, empty words: flattery is a form of empty words. Flattery is insincere praise. When people flatter you, they tell you oh, I think you're wonderful, and it's just sort of over the top. Now there's sincere praise, there's insincere praise. It's actually praise which is over the top, and it has a hidden agenda. The Bible says the person who flatters with the tongue, is spreading a net for your feet. They want something, so when someone comes and flatters you, they're buttering you up, they're going to ask for a favour or they're pumping you up to get some information out of you. That's what they're doing, all of which of course is manipulative and deceptive, and releases the spirit of death, because when you find out what they were up to, you feel quite wounded, hurt and distrustful. Ha! Something was ministered alright - so flattery, flattery, flattery, flattery. There's an agenda in behind it.

Religious words. Here's another one, religious words. This is the one you find around the church, religious words. It's found in Matthew, Chapter 15, Verse 8. These people honour Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. You say whoa! We would never do that! We're in a Pentecostal - we're actually in Bay City. Listen, any time you stand there, and you're just mouthing some words, but your heart and your mind and everything is far away, there are empty words. Don't think they don't do something. The only kind of words that build an atmosphere that brings the presence of God, is words that come from a heart that's engaged, and actually really authentically wants to love God, and express to Him something, and He comes to those words. The other, He says, they're religious words. He said Pharisees are like that. He said the Pharisees talk, but they don't do. That's why you'll get stirred periodically in church to get out of just being half-hearted. Half-hearted means you're saying the words, and going through the motions, but your heart isn't in it. That is empty words, and they don't release life. They release death. They actually reinforce a heavy spirit over the whole congregation. That's why we stir people to be very expressive physically, and with words. Why? Because it totally shifts the atmosphere, by putting something with life into it.

Empty words won't do that. Empty praise will not bring about the presence of God. Don't think that just because you sing a few songs, God has to come. He doesn't at all. He comes where there's faith, and a heart that loves Him, and will engage Him. So engaging God is what counts, not just having a service, and so you get these palavery oh well, the Lord bless you. You think, oh! Actually, religious words make me sick. I just actually feel sick inside, because they're sweet to the point of being sick, because they're not authentic, and they turn you off, and not only that, if you're an unsaved person well, you've got every right to be turned off. I'm turned off by them! I can't stand them, because they're insincere. There's no life in them. They don't carry life, they carry a religious spirit, which brings death. Oh brother, we're praying for you. Just do it - don't tell me about it!

You start to listen around, boy, you'll just be amazed how much of this religious talk goes on, and it's just words which are not sincere, words which the person's heart isn't engaged in. That's all it is, and Jesus said we're called to account for empty words. Don't speak empty words. They don't bring about life. They bring about death - empty, religious words. Whoa! We're getting all quiet now. Here's another one, empty words: lame excuses. Ever heard the old lame excuse? Someone gives you an excuse, and you think oh God, that one's so lame it can't even stand up on its feet. [Laughter] Kids give all these excuses, why they didn't get their homework done, and why they didn't get their room done, didn't do the dishes, didn't do this, didn't do that. You think oh God, give me a break. Basically, you're just not being responsible for your behaviour, and you're covering it with these empty words. They don't mean a thing.

Saul did that, had empty words, you know, empty words. He failed to do what God said, and then he said oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, right! How do we know yeah, right? Because a few minutes later, he was saying look, I'm really sorry, but could you come and honour me in front of all the people, because that's what I'm really concerned about? He wasn't concerned about God. It was empty words. It sounded religious and good - oh, I'm sorry, I have sinned against the Lord. But listen, just so that it looks good in front of all the people, could you make sure you come over here and pray with me? Come on, this is the kind of nonsense. This is the sort of stuff that people get offended with, and God gets offended with it. He took away the guy's role because of that.

Here's the last one, insincere commitments. This is the classic one. This is the one most commonly, where we speak empty words, and you are really truly only as good as your word. I've been guilty of this myself. I've worked all my life, I try hard at it, and every now and then slip up, but let me just give it to you. I've written down a few, you'll think of your own ones, but a commitment's an undertaking to fulfil a responsibility, so when you make a commitment, you've got to be careful that you actually are going to fulfil it. If you're going to fulfil it, that's fine. If you're not going to, don't give a commitment. This is what happens, see, these are the kinds of things that happen. I'll give them to you quickly then we'll just finish up. Well meaning - I meant to do it, but I forgot. That's an empty word. Yeah, you meant well. Oh, I really meant it when I said yes, I don't know what happened, I just forgot. I talked to someone else, and just forgot - so don't say things you don't mean to go - and some personalities are a bit more like that than others, so some personalities have a tendency. They really meant well while they were with you, but then five minutes later they were distracted and they just forgot. Really meant to do it, I really meant - but it was an empty word, because it never got fulfilled. It was an empty word that requires acknowledgement and repentance of, or its power stands.

Okay, here's another one: vague. Yeah, yeah, I'll do it. When are you going to do it? Oh, I'll do it - its okay, just leave it to me, I'll get it done. And you hear those words, and in your heart you're thinking oh no, it's not going to get done. It's sort of vague. It's got no specifics on it, got no time and day and completion point. You know it's not going to happen, and you get on edge. Did you get life given to you? No, you did not get life. Empty words do not impart life, they impart death, they definitely do. They leave you nervous. I wonder if that's really going to get done. You start to lay awake at night thinking, I wonder if it will get done - and sure enough, it didn't get done. I knew it! You see, how did you know it, when the words were, I'll get it done? You knew it, because you felt it was empty. They weren't in it. They weren't in it. Their heart wasn't in it. You heard the words, the heart wasn't in it.

Here's another one: punctuality. Yes, I'll be there at three o'clock. Jesus help me! Three o'clock comes and goes. That's the most common one of an empty word. I'll be there to do the job tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and goes, and the job isn't done. Oh! Tell the person next to you, boy, this is for you! This is all for you. [Laughter] I just feel it in my spirit this is from God for you. I really feel this is for you. I hope you're listening. You really need this one! [Laughs]

Okay, I better quickly finish this one then. Here we go. Here's another one, it's where a person makes a reluctant commitment. They've made the commitment, but it's under pressure, and you feel the reluctance. You should know either it won't get done, it'll get done late, or it'll be done bad. Either way, it's an empty word and boy, you can feel it. Teenager - got your room done? Yeah, okay. [Laughter] I can see we're in for a fight over this one. There's no mention of a fight. All you heard was yeah, I'll get it done - but you knew! How did you know? You felt their heart wasn't in it. Their heart was definitely not in it. It was an empty word. The other one, insincere words. Insincere words are words said just to please someone, and get them off your back. Now many people, especially if you're a mother and you're trying to get your kids to do something or you're talking to your husband about something, say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get it done. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll get to it - and what they're really doing is, they're not at all saying, I'll get to it. What the real meaning is, get off my back! [Laughter] Just don't remind me I haven't done it. Don't tell me that - I don't want you to tell me that - so they say words like yeah, I'll get it done. Okay, just in a minute. But they're empty words, because they aren't what they mean.

They don't mean anything. It's just smokescreen - so empty words are a smokescreen. They always leave people disappointed, hurt, frustrated. Here's what they do, the thing is your words - let me just finish with this scripture here, Numbers, Chapter 23:19. God is not a man, that He should lie, neither the son of man, that He should repent. Has He not said, and will He not do? Has He not said it, and will He not make it good? That's God. So we're called to be like Him. He said it, do it! Said it, make it good! Said it, then do it - that's how God does it. Copy Him.

See, now your words will establish your credibility, so when you actually decide you're going to back up your words, repent of empty words, so the first place to start is God, help me to see every time I say something that's empty. Just quickly show me, so I can quickly repent of it. Help me to just zip my lip, rather than say words that are empty, and if I make commitments, help me to see how important it is to keep them, and to keep them like you would keep them. Because we don't keep our word, and we don't experience people keeping their word, and we find a lot of words are empty and full of da-da-da-da, we find it real hard to believe that God would keep His word. We project our negative experience onto God, and we have trouble believing if God says it, He's as good as His word. Say Amen! [Amen.]

Father, we just thank You right now that You're helping us in this whole realm of the words that we speak. Lord, we are designed to speak words that create and bring new things into being. We're designed to speak words that impart life and encouragement and lift people up. We're designed to speak words into our environment with authority, and power, that shift things. Father, help us to be people like that, that speak those words. Father, show us every time we speak empty words that we are insincere, have no intention of keeping or actually fail to keep. Show us so we can repent of them and put it good. Father, we pray You'll help us by showing us words which are deceptive and dishonest, words which are gossipy and slanderous about others, words which put people down. Lord, Holy Spirit, no man can tame the tongue, but You can. Take hold of our tongue, that we might begin to move into realms in the spirit, where we speak and things begin to change, where we lay hands on people, and speak to diseases, and the disease responds to the words we've spoken; where we can lay hands and speak, and demons will listen to the words we speak and respond, where we can speak over our office and work environment and things begin to change, things which were covered, manifest and come out, things which were controlling are defeated, and life comes into the relationships, and the business. Father, that's the kind of people we're designed to be. That's the people we are. We've just gone along with something else for a long time, so much it's become a habit. Help us to break the habit and to stand up and be who we're called to be.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· James 3:3-8 - The tongue directs the course of our life like a bridle or a rudder.

· The words we speaks impacts our relationships, our personal health and destiny.

· The words we agree with in our hearts and speak with our mouth shape our present and determine our future.

· Words are containers – they carry a ‘spirit’ content.

Words are seeds – they are living seeds that produce fruit when spoken.

What words are you releasing into the world around.

2. Devine Design:

We are designed to be ambassadors of the Kingdom, speak and act on behalf of God.

Ephesians 5:1 - “be followers of God as dear children”.

- Follower = 3402 = imitate, mimic, to speak and act like another.

- We are called to imitate our Heavenly Father – to speak and act like Him, represent Him.

How God uses Words - God speaks:

1. Words that Create:

· Hebrews 11:3 - “By faith we understand the words were formed by the word of God”.

· Framed = 2675 = to put in order, arrange, make what ought to be, completely finished.

· The first recorded use of words = words used to create something visible.

· Jesus did exactly this when He blessed the loaves and fish – Mark 6:41

· He spoke creatively into them and released a creative miracle into the earth.

2. Words that Impart Life:

· John 6:63 - “The words I speak to you are spirit, they are life.

· Words are containers for what is in our spirit.

· When words are spoken their spirit content is felt – creates and impression.

· God uses words to nurture the spirit of people and to impart supernatural life.

· Jesus did this when He spoke to the man with the withered hand – Mark 3:5.

· He also did it when He spoke to discouraged disciples – Luke 4:32.

3. Words that Release Spiritual Authority:

· Luke 4:36 - “What a word is this, for with authority power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out”.

· Jesus spoke with authority – there was a weight, force behind His words.

· Jesus words released spiritual power that demons obeyed.

· Jesus spoke words to trees, storms, sickness, demons, dead men.

· His words carried a spiritual substance that altered the world around Him.

· He spoke words that He heard from His Father with faith they would work.

· We are called to imitate God:

- John 14:12 - He that believes in Me – the works that I do, he will do also”.

- Mark 1:22 - Have the faith of God – Who ever says to this mountain “Be removed and be cast into the sea and does not doubt in his heart….”

- God fully stands behind the words He speaks.

- We are designed to use words to create, impart life, release Spirit Power and Authority.

3. Don’t Speak Empty Words:

· We have looked at:

i) Lying Words ii) Gossip Words iii) Put Down Words

· These release a spirit of murder and death that impacts people.

· Matthew 12:34-37 - “Every idle word that men speak, they will give account”.

- Words we speak reveal who we are – “As good as his word”.

- Words we speak are noted, recorded and have significance in the spirit world.

· “Idle” = 692 = without work, barren, yielding no return.

- words that we spoke but did not mean it.

- Words that we spoke but did not intend to fulfill.

- Words that were insincere, not genuine.

- Empty words – without significance or substance or content.

· Examples of ‘Empty Words’ – they release a Spirit of Death:

· Death = distance, separation, coldness, distrust.

i) Flattery:

· Flattery = excessive or insincere praise.

= positive words spoken that conceal a hidden agenda.

· Agenda is usually to gain favour, gain knowledge, impress, please, placate.

· Proverbs 29:5 - “Men who flatters their neighbour spreads a net for feet”.

ii) Religious Words:

· Matthew 15:8 - Honour me with their lips but their heart is far from me”.

· Religious words – “sound nice”, “sound plausible” but have no spirit life.

· Saying the ‘right thing”.

iii) Lame excuses:

· 1 Samuel 15:24,25,30

· Lame excuse = failure to take responsibility and empty words to cover failure.

· Lame excuses for not coming to work, doing job, completing responsibility.

iv) Insincere Commitments:

· A commitment is a undertaking to fulfill some responsibility.

· E.g.: * Well meaning - meant to do it but forgot

* Vague - commitment lacks clarity

* Punctuality - commitment to be at place on time

* Reluctant - commitment under pressure – please

* Insincere - said to please person or get these ‘of

my back’.

- said ‘Yes’ but really meant ‘No’.

4. Words Impact our World:

Numbers 23:19 - “God is not a man that He should lie….has He said and will He not do? Has He spoken and will He not make it good?”.

Works: * Establish your credibility

* Establish your character

* Establish your testimony as ambassador

* Establish standing before God

· Start small – repent of empty words – keep your word in small matters.

· Psalm 15:1-4 - Keep your commitments, honor your words.

Dealing with Put-Downs (4 of 12)

Sun 18 Nov 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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The Tall Poppy Syndrome is the words and behaviours intended to cut people down who are achievers or excellent in their field in some kind of way. It originated as a reaction in New Zealand and Australia to the class system of England and particularly the first place the tall poppy syndrome really began to express itself was against people who thought they were more important or better than anyone else, or carried on like they were, or projected I'm better than you. It started off as a reaction against the class system; now it's evolved. Now it's a reaction usually rooted in envy against anyone who shows excellence or achievement or gets ahead in a field. It's envy. The root behind it is envy, bitterness and envy.

Praise the Lord. Let's open our Bibles. I want to carry on where we were at and share with you, we're just talking about the tongue. Stick it out, let someone have a look at it. Very dangerous [laughs] and we're talking about Taming the Tongue, and where we're going to is this. Let me just say where we're leading towards, so we just know where we're going, and this is where we're heading towards. We're doing a series, we're in the church on being under cover, or positioning ourself under the authority of the Lord, in order that we can have authority to speak, and to begin to say words that release the power of God to flow. So what we're doing now is just looking at this area of the tongue, and I want to identify some of the diseases of the tongue, some of the ways we speak, and we often are not even aware of it, and they are totally counter-productive to us being able to advance the kingdom of God.

So we're just over these two or three sessions getting you aware of the power of the tongue, of the power that God has given to us to create with our tongue, and the impact of the words we speak. The Lord put something on my heart for today that really quite impacted me, as I've thought about it and dwelt on it, and I know it's going to impact you too, so let's just go back and just pick up where we were. We were sharing how God had spoken out of that verse in Joshua, Chapter 3, Verse 5; Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will work wonders among you. God has been speaking about getting our lives in order so that we can come to another level in Him, so we're looking at the tongue and in James, Chapter 3 it says this. It says Verse 2, we all stumble in many things, and if anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man. That's not bad - and able to bridle the whole body. So if you can control your tongue, you can control every part of your life. Indeed, we put a bit in a horse's mouth, that they may obey us, and we turn the whole body. Look also at ships, although they are so large and driven by very fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder, wherever the pilot desires it to go. Even so the tongue.

So notice what it's telling here, that the tongue is like a bridle on a horse. I remember one time when Joy had a go on a horse in Dannevirke. It was a great experience, and it was a spectacular experience, because she couldn't keep her feet in the stirrups, and didn't get the bridle in the horse's mouth properly, so the horse just got the bit between the teeth, and anyone who's ridden a horse knows if you haven't got the bridle in the right spot so you can pull on the mouth, you can't stop it, you can't steer it. You just are in for a ride of your life, and Joy had the ride of her life, and she couldn't do anything because she had no power to get the bridle into the back of the mouth to control the horse. If you want to steer a huge horse, you've only got to get the bridle in the mouth. You control the mouth, you steer the horse. Same with a ship; you can control the rudder, you steer the big ship. No matter how big it is the rudder will determine it's direction.

So the Bible uses these two things, a bridle for a horse, and a rudder for a ship, so the tongue for your life. Bridle for a horse, turns it. Rudder for a ship, turns it. So the tongue turns your life. You want to turn your life? Talk differently. Talk differently, if you want to turn your life, so we want to pick up a few things. I want to just go back to where I was, because there's something new I want to share today, about the tongue. In Proverbs 18:21, the Bible says death and life are in the power of the tongue, so there is power in your words. Notice, death and life are in the power of the tongue, so your tongue has power. It's not just some empty little thing. It's not like your hands or anything else. There is power in the words we speak to shape atmospheres. There's power in the words we speak to create an environment. There's power in the words we speak to build relationships. Our words have power, they have an ability. When you think how God created, He didn't create by waving His hand.

When you read the Bible, it doesn't say that the spirit of God was moving and God waved His hand - Boof! Then something happened! It says He spoke words, so creation, or creativity, and particularly creative miracles of God, are all released by words. What you didn't pick up there was that I actually spoke creatively. I said to the Pastor, when you step up on the lectern and read the Bible, you will not be able to stand. See, they didn't put it in the clip, but I spoke what I felt God showed me would happen. When we came into the meeting I got a vision and saw seven walking sticks leaning against a wall, and I spoke out that today God is going to set seven people free of walking sticks, and I immediately without any warning in the meeting just got everyone with a walking stick to come up. There were seven people, and so what you saw was an excerpt of seven people leaving their walking sticks behind. But you understand a word had to be spoken when the presence of God was there, so words are very powerful. They affect our future, they affect our lives.

Here's how important it is. We saw last week in Joshua, when they were doing their first battle against Jericho, Joshua said be silent, don't utter a word for the six days, because it would be so easy for them to undo the creative miracle God was about to do by speaking negatively and critically. You imagine marching around a huge city for seven days, imagine what must have gone through people's minds about this military strategy, but they were forbidden to give utterance to any word. If you read in the New Testament, interesting, now that was the beginning of the possession of God's promises. Now get this - in the New Testament when God was about to birth Jesus, he raised up a forerunner, John the Baptist, and when the angel appeared to John the Baptist's father Zachariah, he didn't believe and he was struck dumb. He wasn't able to speak a word negatively against what God was about to do.

Now these things are not in there just as a coincidence, it just happened to be that God just felt mean one day and struck him dumb. He realised that the father had the power to speak words that could totally undo what God wanted to do, and so he had a zip lip. He couldn't speak, until the day he wrote on a piece of paper, his name will be called John, then immediately he could speak. See, so the Bible, there's so many examples. It's all through the Bible you'll see this, but I want to just have us be very aware. So your ability to speak words is part of your creativity of God, so God's given us the ability we can reproduce life sexually, but we can also create things with words, and we have power to release things into being, and build families, build relationships with words - so death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Now get this; notice it says death. Jesus, in Mark 11:21 I think it is, He spoke to a tree, and the tree withered. Don't say sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. They do hurt, and they have power to change your life. The Bible says it very clearly, and so when Jesus spoke words, a tree withered and died. When Mary spoke words, a baby in the womb leapt. Don't say words don't have power. Your words carry not just the words that you say, but the spirit that flows from within your heart, so the Bible says out of the heart, the mouth speaks. So whenever you speak, it's not just that you say words, but there's a content of your heart, and spirit flows with the words.

In John 6:63, Jesus said, the words that I speak, they are spirit, and they are life, so when Jesus speaks a word to us, it has spirit power in it, and it imparts life, and it can change your future. If you can hold onto the word and let it build in your life, it can change your whole future. Isn't it amazing? Most people wait for the miracles to happen, when actually as soon as you've heard God, the miracle is there ready to walk into, if you can agree and speak it, then start to act on it. So this is a very powerful thing, very important for us to understand this, and particularly so as I share with you some things today. Now I do want to move to the positive ways of how we can actually speak our words to build, but I feel it's really important that we look at some of the areas, or recognise how negative we are, and learn to begin to deal with this issue in our life, and also in the people around us.

So Jesus said, the words I speak, they are spirit. So words can release a spiritual atmosphere. Words have a spiritual power in them, so words can shift an atmosphere. So angry words, for some reason, the whole atmosphere changes, becomes incredibly tense, because demons are activated into that atmosphere. When we begin to, like for example when we come in here, then we will begin to actually speak words and then sing words, and as we sing words, the atmosphere shifts and changes, see? Now you were watching something, and you were hearing something. If I had no sound on, you wouldn't have had much happen in here, but when you saw and heard, it started to affect you, and the same anointing that was in that video started to touch us here. If we had no sound on, you wouldn't have felt a thing. Words, words carry a spirit substance, a spirit content, and so when people speak to you, there's not just the words they utter with their mouth, but what is in their spirit flows with the words, and what you're left with, is the impression that your spirit was touched by.

So for example, if someone comes to you and they've got an offence with someone, no matter how nice they are, you'll feel the offence, and if you've got something in your own heart, their words will stir it up, and before you know it you're talking and running someone down together. If someone's a carrier of gossip - gossip we talked about was one of the misuses of the tongue, while we're speaking about someone, talking about them in a negative way, revealing their secrets, revealing their heart. When you begin to start to gossip, if gossip is in your heart, then someone starts gossiping, it'll stir the thing to come up in you, and before you know it, now the two of you are in agreement. Now there's a whole new dynamic of this gossip. It starts to infect. We talked about the different slander. Slander is where you talk about some person's life, and you run them down. The intent of slander is to run down their reputation or misrepresent them, so when we begin to speak and run people down behind their back, what we do then is we release something into the atmosphere.

The Bible says one of the words for the word devil is the word slanderer. Anytime you're running someone down, you have taken the devil's side. You are releasing hell into earth. You are violating your very cause that God raised you in the earth for, and you cannot gossip or slander against someone without wounding yourself. You cannot, because you're malfunctioning. You're functioning against your purpose. We were raised up by God to bring heaven into the earth through our words, our faith, our believing, our actions, our speaking, and so when we begin to slander, run people down, we are now releasing hell into the earth. That's why in James 3, it says the tongue is set on fire by hell. How does hell manifest? Mostly with words. Words start fights. Words start wars. Words break up relationships. Words build, words create. There's all these things that words can do, death and life in the power of the tongue.

So words have a huge effect. Deuteronomy 1, Verse 28, it says that Moses or Caleb was talking, and he says something like this. He says our brethren discouraged us, or made our heart to melt with their words, so when the twelve spies went into the land, two came back and said we can do it. God is with us, we can do it. This is bread for us. We're going to grow. The others came back and said, it's too hard, we can't do it, we're going to perish. So what happened? The 10 spies infected the whole nation - negativity infects people. It's so easy to take it on-board. It just spreads like a disease, and yet when we speak positive words, we can stand up and make a difference.

Now last week I shared with you some manifestations of diseases of the tongue, and one of them was lying, the other one was gossip and slander. Today I want to pick up another one and I started out, and I had the series all worked out, but it's changing on the way, so this one I want to share on is I want to speak about put downs. Put downs - that's a very Kiwi thing, put downs. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about it, and share with you some scripture. I want to share with you some insight on it that may surprise you, and I want us to become sensitive in our conscience and in our heart to any kind of words we use, or things we do that put people down, because we are moving to build people up. We're called to create. That's why you come into a prophetic seminar, you're going to get words that will lift and build people, and so we have to recognise the other.

I hadn't realised, and as I say, all of this stuff's coming out of experience; let me just give you a couple of definitions. I looked up in the thing put down, a put down is literally this; to remark, to make a remark, or speak or act, a remark or an action that's intended to humiliate or embarrass someone. So a put down, you put someone down when you speak, or do something that embarrasses them, or humiliates them, put downs. Okay, let's just define it a bit further. Humiliate means you cause the person a painful loss of dignity. They feel embarrassed. They feel ashamed. They feel their respect is gone. They feel down, see? They become self-conscious. So a put down, any words or actions that intentionally, or even sometimes we don't even know we're doing it, it puts a person down, or it causes them to be humiliated, to feel they're shamed about who they are, and they lose their sense of value, they lose their sense of self-respect, become quite embarrassed.

How many have had a put down in your life, one or two? [Laughs] Okay, yeah, well the reason we get it of course, is because the world's the devil's playground, and the devil's been put down. He's been put down, he wants to put everyone else down, so put downs are a manifestation of demonic nature. Build ups are a manifestation of divine nature. Build up - that's God at work. Put down - that's the devil at work. You and I choose whether we build up, or put down, whether we bless, or whether we curse. Put downs curse people. Put downs release spiritual power against them. Put downs can eventually determine, and set the direction, for a person's life, put downs, so we're going to look at some put downs, and this of course is a major thing in New Zealand culture, is put downs, a whole put down culture, and put downs can take many forms.

I want to just pick three forms of put down that I felt I've had to address and deal with in my own life, and that you'll have to address and deal with in your life. There's probably other ones as well, but the first ones come out of family dysfunction or family patterns, and of course they take place in tribal groups as well. But the first one I want to look at is in the area of family patterns. We're going to look at it in just a moment. Now a put down can take many forms, but get this, this is what it is. When there's a put down takes place, inevitably words are spoken that have a spiritual empowerment in them. We'll get to this in a moment, and I'll show you what the spirit is. When a person puts another one down, words are usually spoken in some kind of way that are spiritually empowered, there's a spirit carried with the words. I'll show you what it is in a moment, and what it comes out of, in the heart.

The second thing is, it's the spirit of murder. It's the spirit of murder. The Bible says, hatred is as murder, because murder arises when we hate people in our heart, so a spirit of murder is released against a person when you put them down. A spirit of murder - oh well, of course we're such sweet people, we'd never murder anyone. Not so. We murder people with our words. Let me give you a couple of verses that describe this. In Psalm 55:21 it says the words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. See? His words were softer than oil, but they were as drawn swords. Notice it says the words, soft, smooth, but there was war in the heart, and actually when he spoke the words, they were like a sword. It cut in, and hurt, and I felt it. How many people have made a comment to you, and it may be a laughing kind of comment or a joking comment, but you suddenly felt there was something in it? You want to know what was in it? The spirit of murder, and it hurt you, and if you don't do something about it, it affects you, especially if it keeps happening.

Here's another verse. Psalm 64:3; They sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words. So put downs then are words, put downs release a spirit of murder, and put downs are a form of cursing, and the root behind it is bitterness, and hatred, and envy. I'll show you those roots are in - whenever there are put downs, there are roots of bitterness, and hate, and envy. Now because we ask ourselves, have you got bitterness in your heart? Well no, no, I don't feel it, I don't feel like I have. Have you got hatred in your heart? No, I don't feel like I have. Got envy in your heart? I don't feel like I have, no, I feel real good, just been praising the Lord, I feel real good.

Okay then, now let's have a look what words begin to flow, because the words reveal what is actually festering, and is in the heart. If I find having come to church and felt good and praised the Lord, had a wonderful time, then 10 minutes later I'm putting someone down, there's something in my heart, something in my heart - there's bitterness. There's something not right in my heart, because when you put people down, you actually release a spirit of murder against them. To murder someone is to unlawfully take away their life. When you put people down, you take away their life. They don't feel better afterwards, they feel worse. Oh yeah, you haven't thrown them on the ground and physically cut their head off or stabbed them to death. What you've done is, put words into them that actually wound and hurt them, then they struggle to cope with the feelings that all go with that, and we take away people's life.

That's one of the most common ways that people have their life taken away, is by words which put them down, words which put them down. Remember, death and life in the power of the tongue. So there are three common sources of it that I want to identify for you. The first one as I mentioned, is family put downs, family dynamics and some families are filled with put downs. There are some families, the whole family get in that environment. Everyone is putting people down. It's like the whole culture of the family is filled with put downs and so you know then that demon powers are at work. The family is unhealthy. It's not an environment people can grow in and so people grow bitter. Why does it happen? How does it work? Well, name calling is one way you put people down, call them names. Another way is nicknames. Most nicknames are derogatory, or many nicknames are derogatory. Sometimes you find in families, abusive words are being spoken, that people speak abusive words. Abusive words don't just talk about behaviour, they actually attack the person. Oh you're stupid, you're a dummy, you're an idiot, you're a fool. That is a put down, because it ridicules, or it attacks the person's identity, and shames them. It releases a spirit of murder against them, and then the person's got to cope with what's happened.

Of course, if a father speaks words like that, the results are devastating through the whole family. Some cultures are like that, and I think there's a lot of it in New Zealand culture. My observation in teaching, and I've got no issue here, but I notice among a lot of the Maori kids, the words, the way they spoke to one another, I have never heard such vicious put downs in my life. What happens is, it's trying to bring everyone down to the same level, or at least put someone down lower than you, so you look better, and it's got a spirit of murder in it. It's violent murder. It releases violence against a person. I was astonished teaching, to find how much put down goes on in classes, how much put down goes on in schools, and in some families that's the whole family's riddled with put downs, so people are not speaking words to encourage, bring forth dreams, bring forth destinies, identify gifts, lift up and bless. Instead it's critical, negative, fault finding, putting down, and when you put down, you actually attack the person and push them down, so they don't stand up the way they ought to.

So one area that's most common is in families. Some families are riddled with it. Now of course there's Biblical examples for all of these things, so one example is Genesis 37, 4 to 5. Joseph's brothers put him down all the time. Often the youngest one is picked on by everyone. Sometimes there's a black sheep in the family, and they're picked on by everyone, and that put down is actually attack of the spirit of murder, rooted in hatred and bitterness and envy. So Joseph's brothers put him down all the time. It says they couldn't speak peaceably to him. In other words there was war continued, their words hurt him, and we're going to look at what it does to you, if you don't deal with this thing, or don't know what to do with it, and I'm going to minister on it tonight, and give an opportunity for people to be set free.

In 1 Samuel, 17:28, David's brothers put him down. David come down because his dad said, take some food down. Now get this; his dad said go down to the battle, take some food to your brothers, so he goes down there and Elijah rides up - who do you think you are? What are you doing down here? I know you're naughty. You came here just because you want to see a battle. He could have said some battle, no one's fighting, but understand it was a put down, and David turned away from it. He turned away from put downs. He would not allow himself to be put down, he wouldn't allow himself to be devalued. You have to do something about put downs, see? So some cultures are just absolutely full of it. Now inevitably, at the core of put downs, are attempts to control people. At the core of a put down, is an attempt to control you, so if you have a vision and a dream and aspire to greatness, you're going to meet a world of put downs, and the attempt is to actually control you, and suppress your destiny, and the dream inside you.

Notice Joseph was hated for two reasons; one, because his father loved him, and two, because he's had these prophetic dreams, which described the destiny God had for him, and that initiated the put downs of him, because of envy. Why did the brothers put him down? Because he was daddy's little favourite. Well, we'll show daddy's little favourite. That's what they did, gave him a hard time, gave him a very hard time, and then betrayed him, so put downs - it's a terrible thing.

Here's a second one. Now this one here is one I had to really repent of one time, and I've got to watch it all the time, and that is bitter humour, bitter or dark humour, and I'll just describe what it is. The first thing to see is that joy is a feature of the kingdom of heaven, saw it in a meeting, God moves, people laugh, people are happy. Joy is about the kingdom of God, and it's a wonderful thing to be joyful. Humour is the ability to see the funny side of things, so I love funny movies. I love humorous movies, and I like to see the funny side of things. It keeps perspective in life. Some people are too intense and too serious. They do need to laugh a lot more, and the manifestation of joy is laughter and being able to see the funny side of things is very healthy. If you don't take yourself too seriously, and you can enjoy life with all the funny things that happen, and the unusual interesting things that come into your life, you've got to be able to laugh at that. I've survived many things because of an ability to laugh.

However there's another side to humour. Humour can be misused as a way of putting down, and humour can be used to ridicule people by laughing at them. That's the misuse of humour. It ridicules them. Now let me just define that word ridicule. Man, I've just really felt God showing me some things. Ridicule means to make fun of a person with the intention of humiliating them, see? Intention is there to humiliate them. It's a mocking humour. It's got a bitter edge, and you hear the laugh, but you feel put down. There's something in it, and I had an issue one time, I was in a Pastor's Conference and man, we did a lot of laughing there to get rid of stress and stuff and we were all standing around. A group was there and someone was there and he's a funny guy. Man, he's a funny guy, a friend of mine and boy, did he just joke all the time. So he's joking all the way there, and we're just standing around laughing away and just enjoying ourselves, and in the middle of it, I heard the Lord say, step back. So I just stepped away from the crowd that were laughing, and then He said to me, I want you to listen, and I started to listen. As I listened, I realised that this guy was telling jokes, and all of the jokes had one thing in common; they were putting himself down.

We were all laughing and getting involved in the humour, but if you analysed it, the humour was all about him being put down, and the Lord said he's got a spirit of rejection, and he's manifesting it through humour, and you're all being defiled by it, and you're joining in and carrying on putting him down. I was shocked. I went away and repented, then I went to him and I asked forgiveness, and he cried when I spoke to him. He hadn't even realised he was doing it, then he told me he'd been kicked out of home by his dad. There was a deep root of rejection in his life, and the way it manifested was by this dark humour. He was laughing at himself and putting himself down, so some humour puts people down. There's two examples; one of them is found in Nehemiah, Chapter 2, and it says when they had a vision to build the house, and build the house for God, and build a great thing for God, it says their enemies came and mocked and laughed and ridiculed them, but they used laughter as a put down. There's another example in Luke, Chapter 8, where Jesus came in, and there's a girl, and she's lying there dead. He said she's not dead, she's just sleeping, and they laughed and ridiculed Him. This is what He did. See, this is what Nehemiah did. You cannot remain in the presence of a mocking, laughing, belittling, putting down person. You've got to do something, so what Nehemiah did, he says you've got no portion with us. No way you're having anything to do with - in other words he created a separation, said we're going about God's business.

You know what Jesus did? He put all the mockers out. He just rejected them all, put them all out, so that He could create an atmosphere, within which a miracle of life could take place. You have to put out of your life all mocking, belittling laughter that puts you down, in order to create an environment for you, to be able to build things that God can come in, and do creative things. Okay then, are we getting - it must be striking home, you're all getting real quiet, and looking at me like that aye? So we all know that there's someone who's done that. We've done it ourselves, laughed, and then realised there was a bite to the laugh.

Now here's the next one. You're going to like this one. It's the tall poppy syndrome, the tall poppy syndrome. I looked it up on the Internet to find out exactly what this thing is, the tall poppy syndrome. Now have you ever seen a poppy - it's quite interesting. It's just got a long single stalk, and then a flower on the top, beautiful flower often on the top. My mum used to love these poppies, and a tall poppy then is one that stands out above all the others, so a tall poppy then is a person who stands head and shoulders above others, because of their success or their position, or their money or their achievements in life, a tall poppy. The origin of the tall poppy syndrome is where people take a scythe through the poppy field, and they cut off every top, so everything is equalised. Okay, so the tall poppy syndrome is very common. It's actually found when you Google it, you find it's common in New Zealand and Australia. It's not referred to as being anywhere else in the world, just New Zealand and Australia. In fact, the Prime Minister of Australia said, one of the things we need to eliminate out of our culture is this tall poppy syndrome, because it stops excellence, and it stops achievement.

So what is the tall poppy syndrome? Well, the tall poppy syndrome is the words and behaviours intended to cut people down who are achievers, or excellent in their field in some kind of way. Now where it originated from was this. It originated as a reaction in New Zealand and Australia to the class system of England, and particularly the first place the tall poppy syndrome really began to express itself was against people who thought they were more important, or better than anyone else, or carried on like they were, or projected I'm better than you.

That came particularly out of the British class system, and so coming out to New Zealand, Australia, there was a strong reaction to the class system, and a culture of what we call egalitarianism - everyone is equal. It's got some really good things in that. However, the problem is - so what it did initially, they began to pull down and mock and laugh and belittle anyone who thought they were more important than anyone else, or better than anyone else. It started off as a reaction against the class system; now it's evolved. Now it's a reaction, usually rooted in envy, against anyone who shows excellence or achievement or gets ahead in a field. You know what the root thing that drives this tall poppy syndrome is? It's envy. The root behind it is envy, bitterness and envy. I'm upset because I don't have that.

Benjamin Franklin said this; you cannot strengthen a person by weakening another. You cannot add to the stature of a dwarf, by cutting the legs off a giant. That's not bad is it aye? You can't make a dwarf taller, by cutting the legs off a giant. It won't make you taller. In fact actually, it makes you a smaller person, so you can't do this thing without it, so of course it's rooted in envy. Envy is wanting to possess what someone else has, so jealousy is a bit different. Jealousy is when you have a bitter feeling about someone, and you have ill will towards them, because they have something you really want, or think I should have that! I should have that. Aah, watch the tall poppy syndrome come out. Soon, words and actions to cut the person down, belittle them, scorn them, find ways to explain why they've got where they've got, except the obvious thing which is they worked harder than you did.

But the interesting thing is, tall poppy syndrome is found in the Bible. It's not referred to, but you can find it there if you understand what it is. Remember a tall poppy is a person who stands out from others because they're great achievers, they've worked hard, they excel. Financially they've got ahead. They've risen up and achieved in sports, they've really risen up and they've got somewhere in a position somewhere. Okay, that's a tall poppy. Tall poppy syndrome is, pull them down so they're equal or less than us - not good. It absolutely promotes mediocrity, and lack of achievement, and lack of potential, and destroys dreams. It's a wicked thing. It's a wicked thing. It's a wicked evil. It's a spirit of murder, that comes in the nation to try and knock people down. Jesus experienced it in Mark 15, Verse 10 I think it is somewhere. It says that Pilot or Herod knew that it was envy that caused the Pharisees to hand Jesus over. They had Him killed, because they envied Him. That's tall poppy syndrome. They did a dirty on Him, because of the tall poppy syndrome. They wanted what He had. He was popular, they wanted to be popular. He didn't seek the fame, he had it, so the tall poppy syndrome - you can see it manifest. Someone gets a new car, someone gets a promotion, someone gets some money, someone gets a new house, someone gets ahead, someone achieves - oh oh oh! Do you think people can rise up and bless them? No, often they just kind of ah well, he probably stole it, probably cheated. Well, you know lawyers, they steal stuff. He's probably ripped it off someone down - see, it's all words to tear down, rather than acknowledge an achiever, rather than acknowledge someone achieving.

What I found in school teaching is, I found that in some of the classes, the tall poppy syndrome is so powerful, it shapes the whole academic achievement of the class, and again unfortunately, it was particularly so among the Maori students that I taught. When one did well, all the others so abused him for doing well, that the next time the tests came in, he didn't do well at all. Oh, I used to get so upset with that kind of stuff, but it's not distinct for any culture. It's just part of issues we've got to deal with in life. How about that aye, so how are you going to deal with the put downs? Well you've got to deal with the put downs, because these kinds of put downs, and the tall poppy syndrome, or mocking humour, or family put downs, all those kinds of things, they wound your spirit, they impart shame, so you don't like who you are, and what they do is they destroy your initiative, and your excellence. They shut your gifts down. That's the things they do; shut your gifts down, destroy initiative and excellence.

So now this is what happens when people are put down. There are two responses you can make to being put down, and how you respond is going to have a huge impact on your life. Tonight I want to make it possible for people to receive ministry if you've lived a life where you've been put down. Now listen to this. When a put down comes, usually there's words or humour or an attitude, and it always imparts a spirit that murders your initiative, your life, your desire, your dream, whatever, tries to hold you back down.

Now there's one of two responses. Number one response is, you can receive it, and come into agreement with it, but when you do, that not only do you get wounded inside, but you come into agreement with that statement. You come into agreement with a curse, and then almost certainly you'll start to echo it yourself, and repeat it yourself, and put yourself down, then soon you'll be putting someone else down, like for example I'm no value, I can never get ahead, I'll never get anywhere, I'll never achieve, I'll never amount to much. See, once we start to agree I'm no good, there's something wrong with me - see when we start to listen to those messages of shame that put downs put in us, and we agree with them, they become empowered to become our future. Is that what you want for your life? Is that what you want for the people around you, who you love? I don't think so. We've got to get this put down thing out of our system.

So here's what happens. When you begin to agree with the put downs, so suppose you're in a family, and there's abusive put down, often it's like men putting down women; sometimes it's women putting down men, sometimes it's parents putting down kids. It goes in all of these forms, but you feel it. You feel the spirit of put down, something sharp goes in and wounds you. Now here's what happens if you come into agreement with it. You will start to interpret all of life as putting you down. You'll misinterpret everything in life, and you'll begin to interpret life's things, that people are putting you down. You come into a church, you think people are putting you down, you think people don't accept you. No matter where you go, you'll have this thing working in your life, you'll interpret life that way. If someone tries to correct you and adjust you, you'll take it as a put down. It's not a put down, it's words spoken in love, to change your life, and help you fulfil your potential.

So when we get into that zone, man we're really in bad shape ,and we can't receive any help, we can't receive any ability to go ahead, so what we need to do is, we need to actually repent. We've actually got to realise, I've been agreeing with the put downs about who I am. I need to repent of it, I need to break the power of those words, I need to forgive the people who have put me down, and start to bless them, and I need to renew my mind, so I agree with what God says, see? He says I'm a child of God! He says I'm forgiven! He says I'm something beautiful, created in His image and likeness! He says I'm an ambassador. He says I'm a gift to this world. He says I have something to do that can change life. God says these things about me! I'm agreeing with what God says about me! I don't care what you say about me. I'm believing what God says about me.

See, unless you start to agree with what God's saying, you'll agree with the put downs. See God is a builder upper, but the devil is a putter downer. You agree with the put downs, you allow the spirits from hell to dominate you, and soon you'll join the ranks of people putting people down - so we have two options; one, we could receive it, in which case if you've received these things and come into agreement with them, you've got to cancel that power, break those agreements, change the meditation of your heart to agree with God. See, and the other thing is that when people do try and put you down, you've got to do something. Jesus walked away from it. Joseph walked away from it. Nehemiah told him, you'll not have any part to do with me. I will not be part of a mocking, jeering, ridiculing, putting down environment, because it breeds a spirit of murder, and that's not what I want to create around me. So the only way to stop that, is to do something about it, got to stand up, and speak out, and stop it.

So if you're in that situation, begin to start to speak God's words, remove yourself from an environment if it's at all possible, where it's negative and putting down, or confront it if it's possible, or if not, trust God to help you walk through it until that season is over, and use it as an opportunity to grow character and excellence in your life. The pursuit of excellence, is the pursuit of God's dream, that we would rise to our greatest potential, and ahead of us, between us and that dream, there's a culture of people that want to put you down. You've got to decide, I WILL NOT be in agreement with the putter downers. I will not be in agreement with that spirit of murder. I will not manifest that spirit of murder, but I will speak words that build. Philemon, Verse 6 says this. The communication or imparting of faith, is effectual when you acknowledge every good thing in you, in Christ. We have to learn to acknowledge the good, acknowledge the things God's put in us, acknowledge what God's put in others, speak words that impart grace and build and empower and lift, and not be part of a culture that's a put down culture.

You start to excel in an area, someone will say, who do you think you are? Well, I think I'm a child of God, called with a destiny to excel, and do my best - who are you? You have to get something in you that rises up, and no longer will be put down, no longer will accept that spirit of murder, but rises up and challenges it. We have to do it. We have to do it in order for us to flow prophetically, in order for us to begin to release in the atmosphere around our lives what God wants to release. We have to get rid of this put down thing that gets around our life. If you're in agreement with it, today decide I will disagree. I will disagree with those words that curse me, those words that stole my life, those words that wounded me, those words that said I couldn't be anything, I couldn't do anything. I will disagree, because there's nothing impossible to him that believes God! I will believe God, and what God says about me. I will believe His plan for my life. I will believe His words, because His words are life for me.

Friends, you've got to get that into your spirit. There's no place for neutrality, no place to be passive and neutral. You have to make a stand in this area about words, and the power of words to create an atmosphere and environment which releases the supernatural and activate your potential. Can you say Amen! [Amen!] Can you say Amen! [Amen!] Come on, let's give Jesus a great clap. [Applause] This is how Jesus speaks. Your name is Simon and I'm telling you something, I'm calling you Rock. I'm calling you a rock because I'm going to build something great upon you, that will touch generations. That's how God talks, so people say all kinds of stuff about you, but it's what God says about you - if you will believe that, and stand up and confess it, then heaven will come to your help and you will fulfil the dream God has for you.

Come on, let's stand and give the Lord a clap. [Applause] Who are you? I'm Abram. No you're not, you're Abraham, the father of nations. Who are you? Well I'm nothing, I'm a nobody, I'm the least of my family. You're a mighty warrior! You'll change a nation. Come on, you've got to get it, you've got to get it in your spirit. That's how God talks. That's how God talks. The devil talks a different way. God talks that way! He talks that way! You've got it in you. You're a winner! You're a winner! You can win in life! Thanks be to God who always in all things causes us to be winners and triumph in Christ! Come on, let's give the Lord a great clap.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· The words we agree with in our hearts and speak with our mouth shape our future.

· James 3:2-5 - “We put bits in horses mouths that they may obey us”.

The tongue is like:

1) Bit in horses mouth.

2) Rudder on a ship.

The words we speak forth control the direction our life takes.

· E.g. Numbers 14:28 - “…just as you have spoken in my hearing, I will do to you”.

· Note:

i) Joshua 6:10 - Israel forbidden to speak (negatively) prior to miracle.

ii) Luke 1:18-20 - Zechariah forbidden to speak prior to birth of John the Baptist.

2. There is Power in Your Words:

a) Proverbs 18:21 - “death and life is in the power of the tongue”.

· Your ability to speak is part of the nature of God.

· Your words carry power – to destroy or to build.

· E.g. Mark 11:21 - Jesus spoke words to a fig tree – he cursed it and it withered and died.

b) John 6:63 - “The words I speak have spirit and they have life”.

· Words that are spoken from the heart release “spiritual energy” into the atmosphere.

· Words we speak can attracted the presence of demons or angels.

· Words spoke create a spiritual atmosphere that motives are polluted.

· Words are seldom “neutral” – they impart the ‘spirit’ of the person speaking.

· E.g. Deuteronomy 1:28 - “Our brethren have discouraged our hearts”.

- Words spoken surface and reinforce issues people have in their heart.

- E.g. offence, negativity, unbelief, gossip, slander.

3. The Spiritual dynamic of “Put Downs”

· “Put Down” = a remark or act intended to humiliate or embarrass another person.

· Humiliate = to cause a person painful loss of dignity, personal value, so they feel shame, embarrassment or self-conscious.

· A major issue in NZ culture is “Put Downs”.

· Put Downs can take many forms but all have similar character.

i) Words are spoken – spiritually empowered by the heart of the speaker.

ii) A spirit of murder / death is released against the person being put down.

· Psalm 55:21 - “Words of mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart his words were softer than oil, yet they are drawn swords”.

· Psalm 64:3 - “ Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows – bitter words”.

· The roots behind put downs are bitterness, hatred and envy.

· Hate is the root of murder – to deprive a person of life in any manner.

i) Put downs are a form of cursing.

ii) Put downs are an attack upon a persons identity to shame them.

· People who have been put down - tend to put others down (cycle of cursing)

4. 3 Common Sources of Put Downs:

i) Family Dynamics:

· Some families and cultures is filled with ‘Put Downs’.

· Men put down woman, woman put down men, adults put down children.

· Name calling.

· Nicknames – especially if the person is gifted or different.

· Abusive words.

· Genesis 37:4-5 - Josephs brothers hated him, could not speak peacefully to him.

· 1 Samuel 17:28 - David’s brothers ‘put him down’ for coming to the battle.

· Some cultures are filled with ‘violent’ put downs.

· Put downs are a form of control.

ii) Bitter Humor:

· Joy is one of the characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven

– Romans 14:17

· Humor = ability to see the funny aspect of a situation.

· Humor can become ‘dark’ when used as a form of put down.

· Nehemiah 2:19 - “They laughed as to scorn and despised us”.

· Ridicule = to make fun of a person with the intention of humiliating them.

· Mocking humor or humor with a bitter edge “put people down”.

· Luke 8:53 - They ridiculed Jesus, knowing she was dead.

· Jesus’ response: “put them all out” – protected the environment so that the miracle of resurrection can happen.

iii) Tall Poppy Syndrome:

· Tall Poppy is a successful person or achiever.

· Tall Poppy Syndrome = Lords or nations that put down or equalize them into who stand out above others because of excellence or achievement.

Origin – reaction to British class distinction, reaction to people who project an ego, self-importance or desire to impress others.

· Evolved – reaction to any person who stands out from others as excellent or achieving in their field.

· TPS is a manifestation of bitterness and envy.

· Berry Franklin = “You cannot strengthen one by weakening another. You cannot add to the statue of a dwarf by cutting of the leg of a giant”.

· Envy = longing to possess what belongs to another.

· Jealousy – feeling of resentment that someone else has gained something you feel entitled to.

· Mark 15:10 - Pharisees manifested - TPS – envy of Jesus.

· TPS manifest when another person :

i) gets a new car

ii) gets promotion

iii) succeeds

iv) gets recognition

Who does he thing he is? Probably cheated.

· James 3:14 - Bitter envying and selfish ambition => TPS.

· 1 Corinthians 12:26 - One member is honored, all members rejoiced with it.

4. Dealing with Put Downs:

Psalm 18:14 - “The spirit of a man sustains his infirmity, but a broken spirit who can fear?”

· “Put Downs” impart a spirit of murder that:

i) Wounds the persons spirit.

ii) Imparts shame – loss of value and esteem.

iii) Destroys initiative and excellence.

iv) Removes people from God’s positioning and shuts down their gifts.

· How you respond? – determines the course of your life.

· Two Options:

i) Receive the words / spirit of put down, agree with them.

‘I’m of no value’.

‘I never do anything right’.

Once a person agrees with the Put Down words they come into agreement with the demons behind them.

· They interpret all life / relationships through wrong belief.

· Innocent comments, actions are interpreted as Put Downs.

· Honest feedback is interpreted as Put Downs.

· Person is in agreement with the “Shame Message”.

· Need to:

- Repent of Agreement.

- Forgive and Bless those who cursed.

- Establish boundaries to Put Downs.

- Meditate on God’s Word.

ii) Reject the Words / Spirit of Put Down:

· E.g. David; Jesus; Nehemiah.

· Agree with God’s Words – encouraged.

· Minimize exposure to people who Put Down.

· Establish supportive relationships.

Philemon 6

Dealing with Put-Downs (5 of 12)

Sun 18 Nov 2007 PM  « Back to Top

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If you connect with Jesus Christ and begin to listen to His dreams for your life, He will want you to stand up and become a tall poppy. He wants you to be one. You're called to represent heaven. You're called to stand out and be different. You're called to stand up and bring something of God into the earth.

Let's have a little look at a verse in Romans, Chapter 5, Verse 17. I want to speak on dealing with put downs, and I want to give you some practical advice. I want to have a chance to minister to people - dealing with put downs. Who's been put down ever? Oh, one or two. [Laughs] Its part of life, isn't it aye? But I want to share with you some things. I want to pick it up from this morning, and I encourage you to just let your heart just be open to let God firstly, help you see how you've responded to this, and secondly, what you can do to break out, because at the end of the day, you'll either be where God has positioned you, and you chose to agree with Him, and stand there, or you'll be where other people put you. Think about that.

You've got to take responsibility for our life. Notice here it tells us in Romans, Chapter 5, Verse 17, the last half of it, it says those who receive abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness, will reign in life, will reign in life. Now that means, you are wired to win, when you get connected to Jesus Christ. When you and I connect our lives to Jesus Christ by faith, He implants His spirit, His DNA in us, and you are wired to win in life. God has no plan for you to fail. He doesn't dream up plans whereby you can fail. He has one plan for you, and that is a plan that in every arena of life you succeed, and no matter what is dished up to you, that you use that as a stepping stone, and you come out on top at the end of it. See God wants you to win. Notice He said, those who receive - two things; number one, those who receive the gift of righteousness, or in other words, those who by faith have embraced Jesus Christ, and come into a place of right standing with Him. The key to being able to walk a life that wins, is our standing with God. Righteousness means I am in right standing with God, no sin issues in the way, I'm accepted, loved, valued. I'm positioned for winning in life.

Second thing, out of that position I then need to access and receive words and power to live my life. So first, I've got to be in connection and maintain that connection, secondly, I've got to learn how to draw from God what I need to cope with, and handle, and overcome things in life. This morning we're talking about put downs in life. Let me define again a put down for you. Put downs are words or actions intended to humiliate or embarrass you, or put you down. Put downs are words or actions that are intended. Their intention is that you will be humiliated, your esteem will be lowered, you'll feel ashamed, embarrassed, you'll be put down. That's what you do to an old dog aye, put him down? Well people do that to people. They put them down, and some cultures are very, very bad. We have in New Zealand, we were sharing this morning about a particular culture of the tall poppy syndrome. We defined it this morning, but a poppy is an interesting plant. It's got a long, narrow stem with a poppy, beautiful flower on the top, and a tall poppy is one that stands head and shoulders above everything else. The tall poppy syndrome is the tendency in our culture to cut down anyone who excels or rises up, or stands out in any kind of way.

Now listen. If you connect with Jesus Christ and begin to listen to His dreams for your life, He will want you to stand up and become a tall poppy. He wants you to be one. We say oh, I just want to blend in with the crowd. Where did you get that idea? You're called to represent heaven. You're not called to go with the crowd and blend in with the crowd. You're called to stand out and be different. You're called to stand up and bring something of God into the earth. We're not called to be short poppies, we're called to be tall poppies. We're called to stand up, and stand out in life, see? So this tall poppy syndrome, literally what it does is it takes away the desire of people to excel, and causes everyone to just become mediocre, fit in with the crowd, go with the flow where everyone else is going. Listen, you're not called to go with the flow. You're called to stand up, and make your life count for something, called to stand up, and be different. Stand up, and fulfil the course that God has for you.

Now the thing is that happens is, when we connect with God and embrace His dreams for our life, there will be additional put downs come just because of that. You have to understand that becoming a Christian - how many found as a Christian you get people make fun of you, put you down? See. How many know they're watching you? You make one mistake and they're onto you? See, that's a put down, because what they're trying to do is to take away from you the calling, and the stature, that God has implanted right there in your spiritual DNA. You find that in Genesis, Chapter 37 and in Verse 4. Just have a look at a couple of verses here, just so you won't be surprised if you begin to become a dreamer for God, if you begin to embrace God's dreams for your life, you're going to get some extra tall poppy syndrome dished up to you, so you've got to learn how to handle it. Here it is here, Verse 4; When his brothers saw their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and couldn't speak peaceably to him, kept putting him down. And he had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more, because of the God-given dream in his life.

And his brothers - Verse 8 - said to him, shall you reign over us? Or have dominion over us? They hated - now notice this - they hated him even more because of his dreams and the words he spoke. When you begin to stand up and you live out the life God called you to and begin to speak out your dreams, you're going to have people come and put you down. They will want to somehow stop you showing them up. They'll want somehow to bring you back down to where they are, but there's something in you that's different. You weren't designed by God to just flow with the crowd. You're designed to stand up, and be different, and you've got to choose to embrace what God says, who you are, and what you can do, and not let the world push you down and say you're nobody. You're somebody destined to rule, designed by God to rule.

Now listen, there's some sources of put down. I want to share with you three sources of put downs. I want to share with you briefly the impact on their life, but most importantly how to get out of it when that put down comes. It's already come, and it's going to come, don't worry about it, it's a stepping stones. The giants have breads for you, see, bread to grow you. So three sources of put downs, here's number one. The first source of put downs really are demons. Understand that the devil has been put down, literally. The devil was in a realm or occupied a realm in the spirit, a positioning in relationship with God, and when he sinned, God put him down, so he wears shame all the time. He wears put down all the time, and all he's got to give to you is more of the same. He wants to smother you with shame. He wants to smother you with feelings of being put down. He wants you to experience what he has experienced, see? He can't do anything to attack God, so he sets his target on the people God has designed to replace the devil's occupancy in the spirit, the people God has designed to arise, and begin to occupy places in the spirit, and have dominion in the earth. The devil wants to put you down, because he's envious you're occupying what he was called to occupy.

So the first enemy we have are demonic spirits. The Bible says in Revelations 12 and Verse 10, it talks about the accuser of the brethren, the devil is the accuser of the brethren. The word devil means, one who launches violent abusive attacks against you. That's what the word devil means. It comes from a word bellow, to violently hurl fiery darts against you. The word devil also means, to slander, or to run you down in your character and your reputation, by making false accusations against you. The devil by nature, is wanting to put you down. Now to put you down means to humiliate you, so you actually experience shame, so I'll put it in a nutshell. You either walk in the glory God has for you, or you live in the shame that comes out of being fallen and under accusation. The devil wants you to live accused and ashamed, God wants you to live in glory.

When Adam sinned, he lost his glory and felt ashamed, and he retreated and hid, and lost his dominion. Jesus came to restore you, by positioning you back in relationship with God, where you have no need to have any shame, so it says the righteous, those who have no shame in the presence of God, are bold as a lion, see? So boldness is not something you feel. It comes out of knowing where you stand with God, and living in His presence, feeling that I'm clothed with glory, knowing that His glory is over my life, that I carry His nature, His divine presence. I'm His representative, and so the devil's going to put you down. Here's the second that'll put you down, people will try and put you down. Now the devil tries to put you - notice when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness, the devil said you're the son of God, why don't you prove it? Why don't you do something? But people will do it too. People will reflect the kingdom that rules in their heart, so if people are ruled by shame or ruled by being put down or ruled by demonic spirits, they will naturally reflect out of them what is in their heart. So it's a tendency in people to put us down, and it's rooted in envy, and it's rooted in the desire to control people, to hold them down so we're on top of them, or to pull them down so we feel better about ourselves.

So put downs just come, and everywhere you get them; schools, put downs are very, very common see, so it's a way of controlling people. Usually the way its done is by words, words of abuse, name calling, laughing and mocking and ridiculing, anything that will cause you to feel humiliated as a person. So of course if you're a Christian, called by God to be an ambassador, naturally even if you don't do anything, you will experience some ridicule, because the devil knows that if he can get the ridicule to stick, you will be put down on the inside, and you will never express what God called you to express. So when we allow ourselves to be put down, see you can't stop it coming, but what you can do, is decide whether you'll allow it to put you down. If you come into agreement with it and let it put you down, then you can never be what God called you to be, so one of the challenges in our walking with God and representing Him, is how can I deal with the put downs? People laugh at you, they laugh at you because of what you look like, they laugh at you because you're a woman, laugh at you because you're a man, laugh at you because you're smaller in your body, laugh at you because your nose is big, laugh at you for all kinds of reasons. There's all sorts of ways, and in schools particularly, the environment can be incredibly cruel to people.

I can remember vividly times in my own school years of being ridiculed and scorned and how painful it was. I can remember a teacher standing over me when I was in the seventh form and literally red in the face, shouting and abusing me, and telling me I would never pass, I'd fail. That's put down. That's straight out of hell, that's a tongue on fire by hell itself. It is demonic, and it comes to people, and often people in positions of power will use their power to put others down, so they can stay in that place of power. That's not godly leadership. In Asia, they have an issue called scalding. We'd probably call it something different here, you know, got a growling or something like that, but it's actually more than just a growling. They actually use their position to speak and yell, they actually yell and put people down, and it controls the Chinese people.

I remember having an altar call one time, and got people to come. I was just moving in the spirit, and God spoke to me about scalding, started to drop a download of some scriptures on it. I got people up, and they were absolutely screaming with the wounds, and the pain, and as the demons came out of them, because when a person abuses another one by putting them down, by speaking words, they unleash a spirit of murder against them. They unleash a spirit of murder, because the Bible says there's death and life in the power of the tongue, so people can unleash a spirit of murder. They can unleash a spirit of life. We are called to bring life, we're called to prophesy. We're called to speak creatively. We're called to build! We're called to lift people up! But the devil wants to use your tongue to create something different, and so you will create around your life your own atmosphere you'll live in, and you'll be in, the atmosphere around you, so you're either going to be under that thing or over it.

You've got to decide whether you rise up and deal with the put downs, and so put downs that the devil brings against us, we need to recognise them and resist them. Put downs that people bring against us, we need to learn how to handle them. I'll show you in a moment what to do - and then there's another kind of put down, and that's the ones which come about because we think negatively about ourselves. Proverbs 23:7, as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. So the way you think about yourself; how do you see yourself? How do you see yourself? Now I'll give you an example of it. Jeremiah had a visitation of the spirit of God - a wonderful thing to have a visitation of God - and God begins to speak to him. Low and behold, God begins to say good things, and this is what God said to him. He said Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and I ordained and prepared that you would be a prophet to nations, so God's plan's are always good for us aren't they. But you know what his response was? He echoed what was in his heart. What did he echo? What was in his heart? I, I, I'm only a child, I'm only young, I'm too young for this stuff. This is what God said to him; he said don't talk like that. He stopped him giving voice to attitudes and a mindset inside, that would stop him totally fulfilling the call of God. In other words inside him, in his heart, in his inner life, he had issues about his youth.

When God spoke to Gideon - Gideon, you mighty man of valour. He said what? Me? I'm the youngest in the family. Gideon! You will deliver this nation. Now God is speaking His will, His purpose, which He will empower to take place. Gideon is reflecting what he really thinks, and he's reflecting his put downs - oh, we're the smallest tribe. How can any good come out of this? I'm the lowest in the family. Notice it's all about who I am, and God just ignored it completely, and kept going down the line declaring until in the end, he yielded and he actually aligned his internal thinking, and agreed with God said about him. Don't you think it's time that you aligned your thinking inside about what God says about you?

Are you an echo of what the devil is saying? You know what an echo is? HELLO - hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. You get in one of these big valleys and you yell out, or a big cave. HELLO - hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. That's the echo. Now listen, let me ask you this question. Are you an echo of what the devil has been saying about you? Are you an echo of what your family have been saying about you? Are you an echo of what your teachers have been saying about you? Are you just an echo, repeating the put downs that someone else put into your life, or are you a voice that comes from hearing what God says, and saying things that determine your destiny? An echo or a voice? To be a voice, you've got to hear God personally. Jesus said, Matthew 4:4, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that God is speaking. The revelatory words of God is how we live our life, so are you living by echo, by what others have said about you, by the voice of your experience, the voice of your circumstance, the voice of your feelings, the voice of your father, who has long died, but told you you're an idiot, and you'd never get anywhere? The voice of a teacher, who said you're a fool, you'll fail, you'll never go anywhere? What are you living by?

Or are you living by the words that God says? You are My son, My daughter, created in My image, designed to reflect uniquely what I'm like. I've got good things for you. What are you living by? Well, if we were to listen to you talk, we'll know what you're living by, and you have to decide whether you'll be an echo or a voice, whether you're going to echo the put downs of the world, or whether you'll listen to what God says, and start to speak that, and think that, and agree with that. We choose what we agree with. Now of course, it's easy to agree with the put downs; I'm no good, you know? See, we tend to listen to the put downs and agree with them and see, we've got to stop doing that. Now let me just show you what happens, the impact on your life, when people put you down. It can be all kinds of places people put us down, but there are certain things happen when we live in a family environment of put downs. Sometimes it's the brothers, there's one girl in the family, and all the brothers gang up on the girl. Sometimes it's one guy, and all the girls gang up on the guy, and sometimes it's the dad puts down the women, sometimes it's the mum puts down the men. It's through life. This is wherever we go, we're going to find it, but it will impact you, and the thing is for you to find out, well, have I been impacted by some of these put downs? Have I come into agreement with it, and am I echoing it? Or am I listening to what God says about me?

See, so the kinds of things that can happen is, number one, your spirit gets wounded when people put you down. Because they release a spirit of murder against you, you can be wounded deeply in your spirit, and need to be healed. A broken spirit causes sickness in your body, so when people have been put down, often they become vulnerable to sickness, because the words have wounded their spirit. So sometimes you find people have been deeply wounded by being put down, abused in life. They actually end up very sick. The second thing is shame. Shame comes on people, because the essence of a put down is your identity is attacked, and you are made to feel and believe I'm useless, I'm no good, I'm a failure, I'm a nothing, I'm of no value, I don't even belong here. I, I, I. Message of shame is something is wrong with me, and so the devil wants to shame you continually. People may shame you. They may not even know that they're doing it.

The third thing when we get put down is, it shuts down your giftings. Now listen, you've got to understand this. You have giftings inside you. You have giftings which are an answer to problems in life. You have giftings to help people, you have giftings to express how God has made you unique. But listen, if you are echoing shame and put down, you'll never release your gifts. See when Jesus came He was full of giftings, full of anointing, full of the presence and power of God. They just said oh this is nothing, this is just a carpenter you know. What the heck could He do? You see, so in other words, they put Him down, and when they put Him down, they shut His gifts down, no gifts operated. Do not mistake, this kind of thing really affects how you operate, and how you live your life. Now just even that one scripture alone would tell you, if the friends around you are put down people, you need to change your friends. You can't thrive in that kind of poisonous, sick environment. You have to separate from it. No plant grows in a poisonous, polluted environment, and you can't grow thoroughly and properly to your full potential, if you're surrounded by people that keep knocking and put the knockers, you know, they put people down.

I've even had to withdraw from some Pastors who've got this in them. First I spoke to them about it two or three times, then I withdrew from them. I just don't want to be in an environment where people are pulling down anyone else. I don't want to be in an environment where people are scorning anyone else. The moment it starts, I get uncomfortable, and I'm about to leave. I just am not going to live in that environment anymore. I lived with enough of it growing up, and I've made resolution inside to step out of any environment where there's a knocking, shaming, putting down spirit. I either rebuke it and stand up and confront it, or withdraw from it completely, but not live in it, where it starts to rob and ebb your strength and life. You've got to do something about this thing see, and we've got to really make a decision, I'm not going to be put down. I'm going to rise up to my full potential see? It causes a loss of initiative and motivation to excel, so when you're in an environment of put down you actually lose initiative. You lose energy to get up, and do things and you don't even want to try, and not only that, you don't excel.

Now you'd be amazed how much criticism comes when you try to do something great for God. You'd be amazed how people will knock, you know, money spent on a sound system, money spent on doing a building up, money spent on making things excellent for God. I can only assume that's because in their mind, they think you give God your crap and your leftovers. I don't think that. I think we give God our very best. I think we give Him our best, and when we give Him our best, we honour Him for who He is. You don't give God your second-hands and your leftovers, but you see there's a mentality that gets like that. When we first came here into the city, my first welcome from a Pastor; oh, you'll never last here more than six months. I said thank you very much, we'll see. We'll see. It wasn't my idea to come here anyway, I never wanted to come here. God told me to come, so I expect He'll do something to help me. Within a year and a half he was gone - never join the knockers. Never join the scorners, you know? You want to walk with God, you want to be blessed in your life, the Bible says blessed is the man who doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful. Don't sit with people who are knockers, and scorners, and putters down.

Young people, you've got to really make a stand on this one here. Choose you're going to be a builder of lives, not a tearer down. See, you're not going to tear people down, you're going to build people up. I tell you what, you'll guarantee you'll become a leader. You'll guarantee you'll have genuine, authentic friends, and you'll also guarantee you'll experience a lot more put downs, because there's something about doing that, that really gets people upset and wound up. They just can't help it. They must do something. Even Saul, when he saw that people were complimenting David, he had to put David down, see? It's just part of life. The other thing it does, it causes us to begin to believe the things we hear. We begin form beliefs inside ourselves, so when we're living in a put down environment, there's a lot of put downs coming, it can be just a father who's a perfectionist, and nothing you do is good enough. So after a little while, no matter how hard you try, it's never good enough, so you're totally put down. What happens is you lose initiative, and when people get like that, and they start to agree well I'm no good, I can never do anything right or whatever. What happens then is then you become angry, and rejected, and distressed, and down.

Spirits come around your life, and they rob your potential, so we can't afford to agree with those things. So how can I get out of it? See, I have to get out of it. There are two lots of put downs I've got to get out of; one, the ones that are outside me. The ones outside me can never really destroy me. Anything outside me, I can actually confront and deal with, or use it as a stepping stone to grow. There is no put down outside you that has the power to defeat you, until you agree with it. The moment you agree with the put down, then demons come upon your life, and then it begins to reinforce in your heart, and then it begins to become effective in your life. So what do you do if you're in an environment where you've been put down, whether it be a home environment, whether it be a school environment, a work environment, whatever kind of environment? Listen, we can't always change the environment completely, but we can do some things. Here's some things you can do, and you've got to work out and let the Holy Ghost show you what to do.

We need wisdom from God what to do, but there is no put down environment that can destroy your potential. It can make it hard for you. It can make it challenging for you. It can make it very difficult for you. It can make it very painful for you, but what you do, is what will determine what happens. I'll give you an example. David was in an environment where he was continually put down, but he learned to strengthen himself in the Lord. Jepthah was in an environment where everyone put him down, because he was a half-breed illegitimate son of a prostitute. Everyone put him down, but he became the one God used to change a nation. He was in an environment where he was put down. The Bible says he fled, so one option, you leave the environment. You say goodbye, and you're off, and you change friends, change the circle of people you connect with, shut it off, say no to it, cut it off. So it would help if you're going to move in this area of beginning to start to grow on the inside, so we can be who God called us to be, and be unashamed. It would help if you got rid of all negative, scorning, mocking, belittling stuff that you're exposed to. The first place would be TV, newspapers, magazines, any kind of junk stuff. Cut it out, cut it off and begin to start to change what you're doing with your life.

Then evaluate the people around you. If they're knocking you down, and putting you down, number one, can you shift out of that environment, just have another group of friends, or cut down the time of exposure to them? If you can't do that, then you may be able to actually speak to them about it. Sometimes we can talk to people, and just challenge it. It's not always possible to do that, but many times you can just challenge it, and you'll find when you challenge it, then the full hate of it will manifest. You'll have no doubt then it's a spirit of murder, absolutely. You start to speak about someone who's putting you down, you'll then find out what's in them. That's good you see, so you've got no illusions. That person you're trying to seek their approval and friendship, and all they've got is a spirit of murder that puts down, they're not a suitable friend. They're not a friend. They're not going to help you forward in life, see, so you've got to sometimes make some shifts and changes. I've done it.

I've deliberately disconnected from people that I would share with and talk with, who were scorners and putters down. I just am so irritated by it now, five minutes in it and I'm up, I'm getting fidgety, I'm literally getting fidgety, and I just want to walk. Most times I'll say something. I'll say I'm not comfortable with us talking like this. I think we should be speaking things that build people, not tear them down - so sometimes I've just spoke it out. That's a very mild challenge, but it often will challenge people, and that's often enough. Sometimes you actually just have to stay in it. Sometimes you may be in a home environment that's like that; you can't get out of it, but what you need to do then is ask God to give you grace how to stand up in the middle of it, get some friends to support you, and learn how to stand up, and forgive, and bless those who are cursing you, because make no doubt about it, they are cursing you.

People who put you down are releasing a spirit of murder and cursing you. You have to do something with curses. Forgive and bless, release it, pray for them and begin to fill your life with what God says about you. Remember, if you're in an environment which is polluted, poisonous, choking you, putting you down emotionally and spiritually, you must create your own zone or space and place where you are lifted up and built up. You can't just do that on a Sunday. You have to build your own life and environment. Sometimes if it's in a home situation, the place to do it is in your bedroom. You can have worship music playing. You can begin to get tapes playing. You listen to things that will lift you and build you, and you consciously work to actually have an environment that supports you, including some friends that will support you, and believe in you, and speak into you. Getting the idea?

Okay, so the things outside you, can be a stepping stone to get you where God wants you. You know why? Because in the midst of a put down environment, when you can't get out of it, can't change it, can't do anything, there's only one place you can go. You've got to go to God, and when you go to God, and then you, instead of complaining about the environment, you ask God for grace, and you begin to draw your light from Him, you begin to let your roots go into Him, you find the very environment sent to destroy you, gets you growing deeper in God, and gets you to grow up, so you become strong. Joseph was in an environment where he was put down continually, hostile words, he was betrayed, he was treated unjustly, falsely accused of rape, put in jail, put down in jail. No matter where he was, he was put down, but you know what? He kept popping up, and how come he popped up? How come he just woosh! Up to the top like a cork that someone's pushed down into the water? You try and get a ball, a decent sized ball, and you hold that thing and push it down in the water. You cannot hold it down for long. The moment you let it go, woosh! Up it comes again.

Now you see it does that because it's got something. It's got buoyancy. There's a pressure. The very environment you're trying to smother it in, now pops it up, and so we can do that in God, but we've got to train ourselves to deal with what's going on on the inside of us. So number one, the things outside can actually serve God's purpose. David said, well you guys all hated me, and sent me out here, and put me down, but God sent me. It wasn't you - God sent me. God used all of this to get me where He wanted me to get. Now I'm in a position to help you. Remember I had that dream and you put me down? God used it to get me here, see? So God can use the put downs to get you where He wants to get you, and put into your life what He wants to put in there, but you've got to decide.

Okay, here's the last one now. The last thing is, it's not the put downs so much outside you, it's the ones inside you that are the problem. If you have come into agreement in your heart with a put down message, in other words, your thoughts echo put downs, now everywhere you go in life, you'll misinterpret everything. You'll see everything as a put down. People will say things, and you'll misread what they're saying. You interpret it as a put down. You get angry. People try and come and adjust you, or speak into you, or bring correction; you get angry and resentful, you take it as a put down. It isn't that at all. Innocent things are taken as a put down. You go there and you look around, and all you can feel is everywhere you go, it feels like you're being put down, because something in you is resonating, you've come into agreement with put down. I'm no good, I'm no good, I'm no good - oh, I'm no good. Oh, I'm no good. It's like having red glasses. Everywhere you look its red see, so you have to actually deal with the inner things in the heart.

Now let me just give you some simple steps. I won't develop them. There's some things which you can do right now, and there's other things you can't. You've got to make it a part of your life, so let me give you quickly the things you can do, that will help you get out of the put down place, out of the echo within. If you don't silence that echo within, you will stay below your potential in Christ. But if you can silence the echo so that whatever people say, or whatever they do, I don't care about that. I know what God's put in me. I've got a dream. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to do just what God told me to do. You can't do that they say. Oh, you watch me. Yeah, just watch me! See, Nehemiah said come on down, talk and reason with us. He said no, I've got a big dream in here, I'm going to fulfil my dream. I'm much too busy to come down and reason and talk and argue with unbelievers and scoffers. I'm focussed on a vision and a dream that God has given me! There's no way I'm being diverted and distracted. See, you've got to think that way.

Okay then, so what are we going to do with the things that are inside us? Well there's a few things you've got to do. The first thing is I believe you've got to come to a source. If you don't come to Christ, the source of life, you can hardly ever get over your put downs. What you can do is read a lot of motivational books, and get some good positive motivational messages, and they will help, but they won't deal with the core issue, which is sin. They won't deal with the thing you do need, which is to be grafted into the king of kings and Lord of Lords, a royal family and become a royal person! That's what you need - become a royal person, a royal person, royalty! Something of heaven inside me, I'm grafted into the winner. Man, the devil threw everything at Jesus, and he won it all - and He's in me! Oh, I'm a winner! I've got to be a winner, with that kind of spirit in me, see?

So first, I've got to be joined and grafted to Him, so I've got to choose to believe that God is good, and get connected to Him. That'd be the beginning, because if you don't have a source of something to lift you up, God is always lifting us up. God is always building us up. God is always - and even if He puts His finger on something in your life, it's so He can get rid of the junk, cut the rust out so you can be built up and become strong again. So every now and then you've got to turn up to the Holy Ghost panel beaters, you know? We've had a few accidents. We've had a few funny old cars in our time, and some of them had rust in them. I had one car there, and everyone in the family had dented one of the panels. There were dents in every panel, and once a year we'd take it into the panel beater. The Little Brown Poo they used to call it. [Laughter] It was a brown Mitsubishi Mirage, and it had dents all over it, front, back, left, right. Even the boarder borrowed it one night, and he was driving down the road, a dog ran in front of him, and he dented the front of it. It just seemed to have sort of something about that car you know? I remember shifting it one time, and it seemed to be in the way and I shifted it, and I forgot I'd shifted it. I hopped into my car and I drove back and ran into it, and I dented it as well, so everyone dented it. I tried not to tell anyone. When I came home the kids had all talked. They all asked who dented the car? They came to the conclusion there was only one person possible. I walked in and they all pointed the finger. [Laughter] It was ME!

So we get it in the panel beaters once a year, they knock out all the panels, cut out the rust, put in the good stuff, it's ready to go again. And that's sometimes what we've got to do, to get with the Holy Ghost; let Him knock out the dents, and get Him to cut the rust out. It's not very nice to cut the rust out, but let Him cut the rust out. If you've got some bad stuff going around in your mind, let the Holy Ghost cut it out. Let me give you the keys to it now. Come on, you've got to recognise your stinking thinking. You've got to recognise how you see yourself. You've got to recognise those thoughts. What is it you're saying or echoing inside?

Number two, you need to forgive, and bless the people that have spoken those words over your life. Consciously, we need to forgive them. They may have hurt us - we need to consciously forgive and release them. If you don't, you remain locked into their sin, you can't get out of that stinking thinking of put down. It just keeps you there. Then we need to repent, need to break the agreement with it. I need to change my agreement with put downs. I'm not a failure. I'm not nobody. See, that hurts people to believe that. See, we're somebody that God made, in His image and likeness and I'm well on the way to completion. See, so I've got to break the agreement with shame and negative belief, got to break it. In Jesus' name, I reject that old thinking. I reject those lies! I don't know how I've ever put up with them. I'm rejecting those things IN JESUS' NAME! I cancel that thing now. I will not echo it. See, so I need to do that. Sometimes we need to grieve over, and bring to the Lord the grief we've had of being put down. Being put down hurts, hurts bad and sometimes there's just a part where we've got to take the grief, come into the presence of God and remember what happened, remember how we felt and connect with how we really feel about those put downs, let it go to the Lord. Just weep, just let it go.

And so those kinds of things we can do. You can do that in one evening. You can do it in one session, one encounter with the Lord, you can do that see? Believing God's best, connecting with Him, choosing to identify what you're in agreement with, and cancel that agreement with that demon, cancel that agreement with that thought. Forgive and release the person and let the grief go to the Lord. You can do all of that in one moment, one encounter with God can actually deal with that. But then there's another part, and it's this part that you've got to really embrace. It's the rebuilding of how you think. It's very, very simple. You know Jesus made it very clear, the words I speak are spirit and life. You've got to let God start to talk to you, you've got to get God's words. Now they can come direct through encounter, but for most of us they'll come through reading the word of God and meditating it, so some things you can do with these. Let me just give them to you quickly.

The first thing you can do is begin to just take some scriptures and begin to meditate on them, and confess them, make them personal, see? I'm made in the image of God. I'm loved by God. I'm fully embraced - begin to meditate, picture it, see it. I'm of great value to God. Begin to personalise it, and begin to confess it daily see? Fast off the negative stuff, just cut it all out for a season while you re-establish good thinking inside, see? Catch the negative thoughts when they start to come. Sometimes you get knocked, you get down, you get on an old negative pattern. Stop it quick. Just stop it! Pull yourself up. Stop going there. Redirect your attention somewhere else. It's actually quite an aggressive thing to catch your life. Then the other things you can do is, constantly express gratitude and praise to the Lord, and I'll tell you why, because the Bible tells us very clearly that when we praise God, when we begin to speak out of His goodness, then we silence the accuser. In other words, demonic spirits invading your life and accusing you, you can directly rebuke them, or you can literally silence them by choosing to acknowledge the goodness of God.

The second thing that praise and thanksgiving does is this, it let's us magnify the Lord with thanksgiving, so God becomes bigger in your life, as you become very grateful for what you have, instead of focussing on what you don't have. What you don't have, is only for a season, then that season changes. See another thing you can do is, when we praise the Lord is, we create an environment and atmosphere where His presence is around us and we're hearing His words, so I have to create atmosphere around my life, and I do it by consciously choosing what I'll set my mind on, and diligently working on my thought and belief system. Now most people aren't willing to do that. They kind of want a quick fix, but that's where the key really lies. It's in the process of shifting how I think, until I'm in agreement with what God says, and catching yourself at it. You could become accountable to someone. Any time you hear me running myself down, or running anyone else down, stop me immediately.

It's so addictive this behaviour, and the moment you start to make a stand against it and you say no more put downs, I will not live in a put down environment anymore. I will create the environment in my own life that nurtures vitality and health. I will begin to catch these negative thoughts and stop them in a moment. I will meditate, and fix my mind every day on what God is saying about me. I will let the spirit of God come around my life, as I worship, and thank Him, and meditate, and dwell in His presence. I will consciously shift what is inside me. I'll no longer be an echo of negativity and put down. I will be a voice of the power of God to change a person's life. Now no one can make that for you. The challenge for you is this - let me ask you this. How many people know that it's an issue in your life of agreeing with, and allowing put downs to rest on you? How many know that's an issue? Just put your hand up, just let's identify it, see how widespread. See, its wider spread than you thought, and the reason it's so widespread, is because within you is the potential to change your community.

The devil's got to target you. He's got to put you down, because if he can get you to agree with it, you can never stand up and say oh, I'm here to bring God answer to something, and that's what he wants to stop you. Put downs mean you carry yourself like this. I've seen in some cultures and you watch people, they go [condemning expression]. You know what they're wearing? I'm wearing a shirt right now. That's wearing shame and put down. It is so visible on some people, you can literally see it on them, they walk down - and you can see the put down all over them. Don't wear that spirit! There's another spirit called the spirit of God. God has got the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. You've got to decide to put on another spirit! Oh yes! Confront that kind of thinking! Change what I believe, and begin to start to speak and declare, oh, this is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice today! Now young people, you need to do something. Break out of all of that stuff. Be different. Don't follow the crowd. You want to live in depression? Oh, enjoy your misery. I'm not going there. I'm NOT going there! I was there. I used to be there for long periods of time, but no more!

You choose what spirit you'll wear. Why don't you put on the garment of glory, put on the spirit of God, put on a garment of praise, begin to be a different kind of person, make a difference, instead of coming under that thing! Stand up and say whoa! Well God put me in this school to make a difference. How am I going to go about doing it? God put me in this street to make a difference; how can I do it? God has put me in this community to make a difference; how can I do it? How can I be all that God wants me to be? That's what you've got to do, and if we can start to do that, you know what'll happen? Everything will change. When you stop echoing the negatives and put downs, and give voice to what God says, creative miracles happen. The Bible says in Job, He will decree, and it will happen. That's what I like, but you've got to change on the inside, change on the inside. Come on young people, the community you live in, the school you live in, the young people you're with, all want to put you down, and when they've got you down, they'll offer a comfort, a way out, called drugs, or sex, or all kinds of stuff.

It's anything to feel better. You look at all the young ones you know around you, that are into that scene. All of them have got the same thing; they carry a put down, and they don't know what to do with it. Because they don't know what to do with it, they've got to make themselves feel better, so they drink until they chuck. They do weird stuff to show off, and all of it's because they're put down on the inside. They're wearing something. They're wearing a garment. Oh, they look cool, they talk bravado, but inside there's broken people wearing a garment of shame and trying to feel better.

You've got what it takes. You've just got to lay hold of it and say, I'm going to stand up. I'm not going to live ashamed of being a Christian. I've got the answers for them. There's an authority in me to cast the demons out that torment that person! I'm connected to the one who gives eternal life! See? I'm not talking about being geeky here. We're talking about actually being bold, see? Being bold. You've got to be bold. The only way you can be bold, is if you shake off the put downs, and know who you are. Who are you? See, some of you are artists, you're creative, some of you are musicians, some of you have got great gifts and abilities. You've just got to stand up and be who God called you to be. Don't copy someone else. How can you be them? God threw away the mould when He made them. You've got to be you. You've got to be you. If you can accept you - you know an interesting thing, we've got a room in there. It's a good room. It's called a mirror room. Kids love it. They go in there - adults go in there, open the door, take one look at AAAH! A mirror - and out! You would be amazed how many adults run from the dreaded mirror room. Why do they run?

I'll tell you why they run - because they see themselves, and they don't like what they see. You should be able to look in the mirror and say oh, you're beautiful, made in the image of God! Full of glory. Today's another great day for us. Come on, the reason you can't do it, is because you've got issues - time to chuck the issues, stop being in agreement with them, cancel them until you can stand up in who you are! Be a beautiful person, a wonderful gift to the community, a wonderful expression of God's uniqueness in you!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· The words we agree with in our hearts and speak with our mouth shape our future.

· James 3:2-5 - “We put bits in horses mouths that they may obey us”.

The tongue is like:

1) Bit in horses mouth.

2) Rudder on a ship.

The words we speak forth control the direction our life takes.

· E.g. Numbers 14:28 - “…just as you have spoken in my hearing, I will do to you”.

· Note:

i) Joshua 6:10 - Israel forbidden to speak (negatively) prior to miracle.

ii) Luke 1:18-20 - Zechariah forbidden to speak prior to birth of John the Baptist.

2. There is Power in Your Words:

a) Proverbs 18:21 - “death and life is in the power of the tongue”.

· Your ability to speak is part of the nature of God.

· Your words carry power – to destroy or to build.

· E.g. Mark 11:21 - Jesus spoke words to a fig tree – he cursed it and it withered and died.

b) John 6:63 - “The words I speak have spirit and they have life”.

· Words that are spoken from the heart release “spiritual energy” into the atmosphere.

· Words we speak can attracted the presence of demons or angels.

· Words spoke create a spiritual atmosphere that motives are polluted.

· Words are seldom “neutral” – they impart the ‘spirit’ of the person speaking.

· E.g. Deuteronomy 1:28 - “Our brethren have discouraged our hearts”.

- Words spoken surface and reinforce issues people have in their heart.

- E.g. offence, negativity, unbelief, gossip, slander.

3. The Spiritual dynamic of “Put Downs”

· “Put Down” = a remark or act intended to humiliate or embarrass another person.

· Humiliate = to cause a person painful loss of dignity, personal value, so they feel shame, embarrassment or self-conscious.

· A major issue in NZ culture is “Put Downs”.

· Put Downs can take many forms but all have similar character.

i) Words are spoken – spiritually empowered by the heart of the speaker.

ii) A spirit of murder / death is released against the person being put down.

· Psalm 55:21 - “Words of mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart his words were softer than oil, yet they are drawn swords”.

· Psalm 64:3 - “ Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows – bitter words”.

· The roots behind put downs are bitterness, hatred and envy.

· Hate is the root of murder – to deprive a person of life in any manner.

i) Put downs are a form of cursing.

ii) Put downs are an attack upon a persons identity to shame them.

· People who have been put down - tend to put others down (cycle of cursing)

4. 3 Common Sources of Put Downs:

i) Family Dynamics:

· Some families and cultures is filled with ‘Put Downs’.

· Men put down woman, woman put down men, adults put down children.

· Name calling.

· Nicknames – especially if the person is gifted or different.

· Abusive words.

· Genesis 37:4-5 - Josephs brothers hated him, could not speak peacefully to him.

· 1 Samuel 17:28 - David’s brothers ‘put him down’ for coming to the battle.

· Some cultures are filled with ‘violent’ put downs.

· Put downs are a form of control.

ii) Bitter Humor:

· Joy is one of the characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven

– Romans 14:17

· Humor = ability to see the funny aspect of a situation.

· Humor can become ‘dark’ when used as a form of put down.

· Nehemiah 2:19 - “They laughed as to scorn and despised us”.

· Ridicule = to make fun of a person with the intention of humiliating them.

· Mocking humor or humor with a bitter edge “put people down”.

· Luke 8:53 - They ridiculed Jesus, knowing she was dead.

· Jesus’ response: “put them all out” – protected the environment so that the miracle of resurrection can happen.

iii) Tall Poppy Syndrome:

· Tall Poppy is a successful person or achiever.

· Tall Poppy Syndrome = Lords or nations that put down or equalize them into who stand out above others because of excellence or achievement.

Origin – reaction to British class distinction, reaction to people who project an ego, self-importance or desire to impress others.

· Evolved – reaction to any person who stands out from others as excellent or achieving in their field.

· TPS is a manifestation of bitterness and envy.

· Berry Franklin = “You cannot strengthen one by weakening another. You cannot add to the statue of a dwarf by cutting of the leg of a giant”.

· Envy = longing to possess what belongs to another.

· Jealousy – feeling of resentment that someone else has gained something you feel entitled to.

· Mark 15:10 - Pharisees manifested - TPS – envy of Jesus.

· TPS manifest when another person :

i) gets a new car

ii) gets promotion

iii) succeeds

iv) gets recognition

Who does he thing he is? Probably cheated.

· James 3:14 - Bitter envying and selfish ambition => TPS.

· 1 Corinthians 12:26 - One member is honored, all members rejoiced with it.

4. Dealing with Put Downs:

Psalm 18:14 - “The spirit of a man sustains his infirmity, but a broken spirit who can fear?”

· “Put Downs” impart a spirit of murder that:

i) Wounds the persons spirit.

ii) Imparts shame – loss of value and esteem.

iii) Destroys initiative and excellence.

iv) Removes people from God’s positioning and shuts down their gifts.

· How you respond? – determines the course of your life.

· Two Options:

i) Receive the words / spirit of put down, agree with them.

‘I’m of no value’.

‘I never do anything right’.

Once a person agrees with the Put Down words they come into agreement with the demons behind them.

· They interpret all life / relationships through wrong belief.

· Innocent comments, actions are interpreted as Put Downs.

· Honest feedback is interpreted as Put Downs.

· Person is in agreement with the “Shame Message”.

· Need to:

- Repent of Agreement.

- Forgive and Bless those who cursed.

- Establish boundaries to Put Downs.

- Meditate on God’s Word.

ii) Reject the Words / Spirit of Put Down:

· E.g. David; Jesus; Nehemiah.

· Agree with God’s Words – encouraged.

· Minimize exposure to people who Put Down.

· Establish supportive relationships.

Philemon 6

Power Of Agreement (6 of 12)

Sun 28 Oct 2007  « Back to Top

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The words that we come into agreement with, and then begin to speak forth, create and shape our future and our destiny. Who are we agreeing with?

Great to be able to just exalt Jesus aye? What a great privilege we have that you and I, with our heart or with our lips, can do things that open up heaven, and bring heaven into earth. What an amazing thing aye, with your heart and your mouth, you can bring heaven to earth - or hell of course. You can bring hell to earth as well. You know you've got to choose on that one, but oh, if only we would just understand the power of agreement, the power of our heart agreeing with God, and beginning to declare what God says is true. It opens the doorway through which the life of God can flow - wonderful Jesus. We are in agreement Lord today, that heaven will invade earth and your presence will invade our lives. Amen ... Thank you Lord, wow, just enjoying God.

We've had a wonderful weekend with God touching young people. We'll get Steve to come up and just share just what he saw happening there and how he saw God touch young people. You know, in all my years growing and what - I never saw God move, never saw anything. I went to schools that taught about God, and went to church that taught about God, but never ever in my younger years growing up, 20, 30 years almost, never saw God move. I look at these young ones here, and they're not only seeing God move, they're actually experiencing Him, and encountering Him. I thought oh, the privilege to be part of a new generation that can access the presence of God. What a great thing to be in a church that God comes too, you know? How we just love His presence - you've got to love the presence of God. To love His presence is to love Him as a person, and a lot of people, God is sort of out there and impersonal but He wants to be personal see. So He told us - Jesus made two promises, some promises before He ascended into heaven.

He promised we'd never be alone, we'd never be an orphan, we'd never be abandoned, we'd never be on our own. We may experience a time when people abandon us. We may experience difficult circumstances in life, but He promised I will not leave you an orphan, I'll not leave you without someone to parent you. Then He promised He would pour His spirit into our life, that we would be joined to the Holy Spirit and then become empowered by the Holy Spirit to fulfil an eternal destiny, a purpose and assignment of God. What an amazing thing. Boy, that's got to be great. Now that beats anything the world's got to offer, to have something that lasts for eternity.

Today I was hearing about family members and all the nice houses they're building and everything and I thought oh, I'd love them to see the house I'm building. [Laughter] Their one will go up in smoke, but this one will go forever, see? It'll go on forever - a house where Jesus is welcomed and celebrated, a house where His presence come and miracles happen. Oh, that's the house we're building, the house of the living God, an eternal house that lasts forever, and ever, and ever, and I read the end of the book, and it says that house shall come from heaven into the earth, and every nation shall see it, and the glory of that house shall be greater than anything that's ever been seen. That's what we're building. It's great, all get excited about things like that, get a vision for building something great. Anyway, Steve's going to tell us. I'm just enjoying God. I need to get Steve up - come on, tell us about what God's been doing.

[Steve] Oh I tell, man we had such an awesome weekend, and every camp that we have is just totally awesome, but I'll tell you this one - man, it would have to be - we called it a Supernatural Kid's Camp, because we've said to Pastor Mike, well you're coming and I don't know if you can do any clowning or puppets or anything like that, but one thing I do know is that Pastor Mike is awesome when it comes to the supernatural. So we said Pastor Mike, just do what you do, and so I'll tell you, man. On the Friday night, we had everything over the whole weekend, from kids who were vomiting, kids who had blood noses, one child had to go back to the medical centre because they'd injured themselves. We had other kids encountering, and seeing open visions, so that was an awesome weekend, and it had everything. So that's always a sign of a good camp.

In all seriousness, on the Friday night we had the Worship Team come out and they also came out on the Saturday night. It was just such a privilege to have just this awesome Worship Team out there, leading the kids [Applause] into the presence of God and man, I just want to really honour Pastor Kate and also Andy who just sacrificed their time. They brought out their core team - they said man, we're bringing out the best of the best, and so they all came out. Man, they just went hard. They just rocked on and I tell you, that really set the platform for what happened over the weekend. I mean CDs are great but there's nothing like a live band, you know, just bringing the anointing, and kids just getting smashed. So they just flowed into worship and honestly man, they got nailed. We just flowed into worship, then I got up and just picked it up and just spoke about God's love. Then I opened my eyes and all I could see was just kids everywhere, just with their hands raised, and these seven year olds to about 12, hands raised, just tears just flowing down their faces, because they were encountering the love of God.

You know some of these kids come from homes that are broken. Some of these kids haven't experienced love from in the natural, but man on that night, the very first night, they encountered nothing but the love of God and it was once they encountered the love of God, man it just - honestly, I had to hold back the tears and keep it together, just because - well, you know ... Really? [Laughs] And so - easy - so it was just - alright, there was a tear that came down. [Applause] Yes - so that was awesome, then we handed over to Pastor Mike and man, he just got up there and he just flowed. One thing I love about Pastor Mike, is that he will flow with what the spirit of God is doing, whereas you see some of the other ministers, they'll come in, and then they'll just get into a message. He just picked it up from there, and he pulled different kids out, just prophesied over them, and just spoke into them.

I was speaking with Pastor Mike before and I said man, did you realise that a couple of the kids you spoke for, did you realise they were these kids and he said not right then, because man the words he was speaking to them that were so sharp, just exactly where their backgrounds or what they were coming out of, and just from kids that had no love, other kids who were struggling at school, and we just ended up having the whole altar just full, full of kids just totally just crying and just being healed and touched with the love of God. It was so powerful. It was so powerful just to see how open they were, and the awesome thing was was that it didn't take a meeting to get the kids warmed up, they were right there, right away, right at the start.

So then we just flowed on from there. At the end of that, you know man, there was just such a laughter of God, and the joy of God there, just about all 80 kids just on the floor just cracking up with the Holy Spirit, and it was so great. It was so funny that come the Saturday night - we also had a Saturday morning meeting, but come the Saturday night the kids were like Pastor Mike, can you do that again? Like it was some great party trick or something. That's what I love about kids, they're just so innocent, just think that's something you do. I was laughing. So then on Sunday morning we had another awesome meeting, and we had kids - just one kid in particular, Reuben Cash, and he had an open vision on that Saturday morning, and you could just see him, he was just standing there looking up with his eyes open. He was just looking up, and we said what are you looking at? He said I can see two angels standing right there, where the front of the hall that we were having the meeting in. I was like what do they look like man? Just clothed in white, you know, just face just shining with a great smile.

How big were they? Like they're huge, you know, bigger than me anyway - and so they were standing there man, and you could just tell the impact that it had on him. Then he turned around to look at the back and he saw another angel standing there, clothed in diamonds. It was just amazing just to see and just to hear him testify about that man. I don't ever see anything like that and man, but to see these kids, they're just hungry. They've got no insecurities, they've got none of this whole thing, I've got to be cool or anything like that. They just let themselves totally go and God comes, God comes. So just over the whole weekend there was encounters like that, even to the point on that Friday night, especially the girls were so impacted by the love of God that they were up talking to the leaders in their dorms just about this, just the circumstances and the situations that they're going through at school, being bullied, being hassled, the hassles that they're having with their parents, which was awesome. It just enabled our leaders just to be able to speak into them, and just pray for them, and you know, as opposed to all the joking around and eating lollies and laughing that can go on at night.

So it was just - the tone was just set. Then last night was just a real great, you know, fear broken off kids lives and one girl in particular was just going for it full time, just had to take her out and just pray for her, had fear totally broken off her life, and other ones just coming into real freedom in themselves. So man, I just want to thank Pastor Mike for being available to come out and honestly, man, the best camp we've ever had. We didn't have to bring anyone in from anywhere in the world, we had him right here so [Applause] it was awesome.

[Pastor Mike] Wonderful! Praise the Lord! What a great job the Kid's Search Team are doing, that they've got children that are open to God right from the very beginning. I love that. Of all the things I've always hungered for more than anything, it's the presence of God. Never take Him for granted. Never, ever take Him for granted. We need to learn how to open our heart, and many adults can't do that. We've got too much control, or too much stuff in the way. Got to learn how to just become like a little child. That's what the Bible says; unless you become as a little child - it doesn't say be a little child, or silly or childish, it says rather become like a little child, which is open and receptive. As we become open and receptive, and just let the walls of our heart come down - I noticed even with one or two children, they had quite strong control and fear built around their life.

But as we decide in our hearts that we're going to actually come near to God, and open up and remove the barriers - a lot of the barriers that adults have are self-consciousness, what will people think of me? Oh, who cares? They're going to think it anyway, so why worry about that? Don't let what someone's thinking determine your destiny. That's a crazy thing. See, we need to be willing to just allow our heart to open up to the Lord and be able to celebrate Him, rejoice in Him. You know David, I love about David he was absolutely unashamed of his expressions before God, to thank Him and rejoice. We had a blast with the young ones. The laughter came [laughs] and it was hilarious.

I was a bit concerned because you know, it's the first night at camp and we've got about 80 kids all crying. I'm thinking I can't go home and leave them all like this [Laughter] and so what happened the first night - mum, get me home, you know? Because often when children don't understand why their crying, don't understand what's happening to them, and so we just needed to get them just to move from one experience of God into another. I didn't want to leave them all crying there, and a lot of them didn't understand. I just talked to them; now what's in us, will always find a way out. It'll always find a way. It comes out on our face, we see it on the face, it comes out through the words we speak, comes out in what we do, but somehow, what's in us, will always come out. So we were just talking to them about how, as we make room for God to come in, so we make room for the spirit of God, then things will come out of our life. Things will naturally come out of our life.

We talked about what happens, and tears are just a language. They're a form of expressing something that's going on inside, and so a lot of children were crying, didn't even know why they're crying initially. It just took probably a couple of sessions to help them connect what they're feeling, with actually God doing something, because we were sharing with them, you can't see God, but you can actually feel and experience, and see what He's doing, or what He's done, so you've got to keep your eye out for what He's doing, not just get caught up in all the experiences. You can't see the Holy Spirit, but we can with the eye of faith, begin to understand what He's doing, and position ourselves to co-operate with that, so in flowing in a meeting, actually - and I appreciate Steve's words of honour, but it's actually not really that hard. It's actually just feeling what God is doing, and just saying yes, I'll work with your agenda, rather than have my own plan, and stick with my own plan.

So as we just began to - so I looked around too in the worship; all these children, you could see tears starting to come down their eyes, and starting to feel the love of God. Well, if God is wanting to love people, then we want to love people too, so we just do with what God's doing. Jesus said, what I see the Father doing, is what I do. It's not really all that hard. It's so easy in fact, even a young kid can actually do that, so they began to experience, began to weep, and so I just began to talk; well what's happening is, as you feel God loving you, you've got to find a way of expressing it, and your body expresses it sometimes by tears. See, these children were just tears flowing down them, as they began to experience and feel the love of God. Its one thing to read God loves me, it's another thing to feel it. When you feel it, then it's an experience that you can keep going back to, and back to, and back to. You can begin to remember what you were doing, what was happening, and as you begin to remember, the feelings of it begin to arise again, and then you can begin to start to encounter the Lord through that same experience again. That's why it's so powerful for us to have experiences with God.

A lot of people write off experiences, and over emphasise just the mind, but actually we have to actually balance up renewing our mind with also experiencing what God has for us, and so we just began to talk, and as I began to prophesy, I began to put words to what God said, then you could see the kids - not just the ones I was praying for, but others began to start to get touched as well, because as they heard speaking encouragement into these ones that I was praying over, then it also stirred in their own heart their own struggles. So when God is beginning to speak, His words seem to bring a life into the atmosphere. It's amazing, so I just said well God, you've got to help me. I don't want us to go away tonight, and all the kids all cry, so anyway we just quietened them all down a little bit and said man, God wants to do different things, different things. See, sometimes we just get locked in God doing one thing, and God's really creative, so He can do lots of things. So we just began to talk to them all, let's see if God can do other things, or do other things in our midst, and I was trying to teach them how to begin to respond when God is doing different things.

So if He's loving us, well let's just open our heart to receive His love, but if He wants to do something different, then stop trying to do that, and don't go back there to that. Begin to hear what God's doing now, and respond to that. See, it's sort of actually not really - it's not rocket science is it? See, not really. You don't have to be smart and go to university to get all that kind of stuff. You've just got to be open in your heart, and responsive and in that sense, like a little child, or just open to what God's doing, and delighted with God. Sometimes we get to lose our delight with God. The Bible says, if we will delight in Him, see? Then He will give us the desires of our heart, so desires and destiny are unlocked as we begin to delight in the Lord - so we just began to talk, and the Lord had been putting a scripture on my heart for probably about the last couple of weeks. It comes out of 1 Peter 1, and it goes something like this; whom not having seen, yet you love. How about that? Not having seen Jesus, we just love Him see, and you rejoice with joy unspeakable, or you rejoice, or you celebrate, or you leap on the inside, you leap with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.

What he's saying is, as we believe, as we put our trust in the Lord, there can be a release of joy in our life. I've been singing that scripture, and praying that scripture, and laughing that scripture every day as I come in and out to work, so I just began talking about it. Next thing you know, they're starting to laugh, well it just broke out, and it just was everywhere. They were just rolling around. In the end we had about 80 of them all down on the ground, all rolling round, absolutely fair screaming with laughter, so we encouraged them to get to pray - we got to pray for all the leaders as well. [Laughs] Ah well, that was great. When we got to pray for all the leaders I said, let's see if we can huff and puff and blow them down [Laughter] and so we got the all in a crowd. We got them all - now you see for adults, adults have got problems with all of this you know. Adults really have got issues with all of this, but the kids don't have any trouble doing it at all. They all stretch their hands out - I don't know where they got all those kids. Man, you had so many adults out there, I don't know where they all come from. There were heaps of them out there, but the power of God just come, and the whole lot went down, they began to roll around laughing, and there was joy, see? Joy, tremendous joy.

The the kids all want to go back there the next day. I said that's fine, let's go back there and have some fun, but let's move forward, there's other things God wants you to have as well, so if you just lock in on one thing God did, you can't move forward to experience new things. The Bible says His mercies are new every day, so there's something new for every day, so let's be open to the new things that God wants to do aye? Let God do some new things [laughs] do some new things in your life.

How open would you be to new things though? Or is your mind sort of set, this is how God works: I come to church - this is what God does. Listen, it's not like that at all. Actually I never quite know what'll happen when I come to a meeting. Sometimes I'm crying as I come here, sometimes I'm laughing as I come here, sometimes I'm just still as I come here. Sometimes I'm really praying loud in tongues. There's all kinds of different ways of expressing what we're feeling with God. It's fantastic [laughs] so you need to learn to rejoice. The Bible tells us to rejoice, and that word rejoice is a word for leaping up, twirling around, getting excited. Now that's a bit of the opposite to the old Kiwi staunch thing isn't it aye? See, Kiwi staunch is completely opposite to actually being able to rejoice and celebrate, but I've watched staunch Kiwis absolutely lose it [laughs] at a football match! I've got to watch them. You look at them and you see them, they're absolutely going berserk - seen my brothers in law in front of a television when the All Blacks are playing, and I didn't watch the TV, I wasn't watching the game. I was watching them. [Laughter] That's a sight to behold, you know, these conservative people, not even filled with the Holy Ghost, and they're jumping up in their seats, and screaming and yelling. I thought well, why can't you do that for the Lord, you know? I can YES! OH YES! you know, someone gets a - YES! - excited you know. Well, you think well, you don't have to feel anything to get excited. You don't have to feel anything at all.

The Bible says there's joy inside us, the kingdom of heaven is righteousness, right standing, right relationship, being connected with God, getting short accounts with the sin, righteous peace inside because we're right with God - then JOY OF THE HOLY GHOST! You say well I don't feel joyful. Well you don't have to be joyful. You don't have to feel it. You've got to rejoice! [Laughter/applause] Yes! There's joy inside you, you've just got to give expression to it. You want to learn to do it, you know? You want to learn to do it sometimes, just run around and YES! I did it the other day in the staff room, and they all said oh, what's up? I said well nothing's up, I'm just rejoicing, full of joy. It's got to come out of you some way doesn't it? [Laughs] Well you've got to - some of you really need to loosen up like that. See, we've lost the simplicity.

The Bible says - Pauls writing in 2 Corinthians 11, he says, you know I'm really concerned that you lose the simplicity of just a passionate devotion to Jesus. You just love Him. It sort of kind of blows everyone away you see, because everyone wants an intellectual God. He's not an intellectual God, He's a personal God, and so if it's personal, then we can enjoy it. We can enjoy Him, well it should be coming out of your face somewhere you know? First place you see it is on your face - see, joy! Yes! YES! You'd be surprised when you start to give expression to joy, how you begin to start to feel it. You don't have to wait to pray in tongues, you just begin to decide, I'm going to pray in tongues. As you pray in tongues, and express praise to God, and let your mind begin to focus on His benefits, His blessing, begin to magnify God, then pretty soon you find, your whole life is overflowing with the joy of the Lord.

Sometimes I've come down here, I've come down to work sometimes. Sometimes I'm speeding up, I've got so excited. Sometimes I'm slowing down, I'm weeping so much. [Laughs] People - if anyone was watching me drive to work, they would really wonder what is with this guy? What's happening today? Let's have a look, what's today? [Makes crying sound] I've got to drive slowly, or I'll go off the road you know, I'm feeling the presence of God - and other times YES! OH YES! Oh come on, slow down, slow down - YES! [Laughter] Got to find expressions, you've got to learn to express. See one of the things in our nation, there's many things in our nation are a bastion, but there's some strongholds in the nation; one of them's a sort of staunch thing, that guys are all staunch, and they won't show any emotion or feeling or anything - except at a rugby match of course, so it's kind of a controlled staunch. It's okay in rugby, but it's not okay anywhere else. YES! Oh yes! See, give expression to what's inside you. There's joy in there - let it come out! Let it get on your face, and smile, and come out! You'll look much better, much happier when you're smiling, laughing, see. So we've got to learn how to just have a simplicity - not be simple; God doesn't want us to be simple, but it's simplicity. It's actually just a simple heart that loves God, and passionate love with God, and stirred up to keep loving God you know?

I just want us to keep that alive, so any time that people get a bit upset that we're just too expressive I think great, let's get more expressive. [Laughter] Obviously we're doing the right thing, it's stirring someone up, see? Get more expressive. Some of you don't know how to be expressive. You've got to learn to be expressive, you've got to practice it. Practice it. Have a practice jumping for joy. You'd be surprised - some people leap for joy! It says Jesus rejoiced. Can you imagine Jesus rejoicing? It says when the disciples returned, and He saw that they were - they were telling Him about the demons they cast, all that kind of stuff, and it says He rejoiced. Now can you imagine Him rejoicing, what did it look like? Oh well done. [Laughter] The word they used in that scripture in Luke 10 is rejoiced. He leapt and twirled! Now you see a lot of people have got a problem with that one, but there was a leaping of joy in His spirit. See with people becoming activated to do what God called them to do. Isn't that fantastic? You need to leap inside in your spirit a lot more.

John the Baptist, it says he leapt while he was in his mother's womb, just hearing the prophetic word - got him all excited, see, right from in the mother's womb. He got excited when he heard the prophetic word. We hear and hear words from God and don't get excited at all. Get excited! Get expressive! Break out of just that deadpan. I didn't used to be like this. I had to have an environment where it was okay to do it, but when I did then I found man, it really works. I was just watching our granddaughter this morning - interesting about little babies, little children, the really young ones is, they don't understand all your words, but they read your spirit, and they read your face. Particularly they read your face. They just read what's on your face see, and so I thought well that's good, I'll do something, so I just began to give her the biggest smile and you know what? She just broke into beaming, and I just thought I'll do this a bit more and see what happens. The more I just gave wild expressions to joy on my face, the happier she got. [Laughter] She started to get excited and wave her arms. I thought see, that's childlike you see, getting excited.

Now imagine if we can just begin to keep beholding what God is like, beholding by meditating in His words what He's like - WOW! YES! You can't contain it, can't contain the joy. [Laughs] We can't contain the joy. Okay, I want to share some things that'll just help you tonight, and that's probably helped you already, but I'll give you something else that'll help you. [Applause] See, learn to become expressive, so any time you see anyone who's a bit slack, just go encourage them to get involved, be part of it. Just really stir up yourself on the inside. You'd be surprised when you walk down the street, and you're just grinning and smiling and happy, how it changes people. You'll be amazed at what it does to people.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey, I want you to open your Bible with me. I'm just going to pick up where I was this morning, and share some things about agreement - not going to give a big teaching, just want to share just a few things on it, but first of all, I'm just going to look in Genesis, Chapter 1. What I want to do is just talk to you a little bit about agreement; I want to ask you the question, what are you in agreement with? Now I'll give you a little statement that the Lord just spoke to me today while I was waiting on Him, just worshipping Him. He said the words that we come into agreement with, and speak forth, create our destiny. How about that? I'm still a bit stunned by that. I'm thinking about that more and more, every time I say it. The words that we come into agreement with, and then begin to speak forth, create and shape our future, and our destiny. How about that? Words that we come into agreement with.

Now I want to just show you something, and we're just going to pick up a couple of things. I want to look at two areas of agreement, one: who are we agreeing with. Are we agreeing with demons, or are we agreeing with the spirit of the Lord? Okay, we ready? I want to have a look first of all in Genesis 1:26. Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle of the earth, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created Him, male and female, He created them. Okay, now we see how God has made us to be spirit beings, and assigned us a purpose in the earth, to bring something into the earth. He's called us to be His ambassadors, to represent Him in the earth and to bring something from heaven into the earth that will change, and form, and shape the world around us. So we're made in the image of God. We're a spirit being, with access to the realm of the spirit, and we have also the capacity to live in a physical world, and to begin to shape it.

That is God's plan. It's not that you just get born and have a life, but rather through relationship with Him, you shape the world around you. You don't just let it be the way you found it, but you enter it, with a desire to bring dominion. Dominion means not that you're bossing everyone around. Dominion in this sense means that what God has planned or destined, or His will, you are going to bring that into the earth, so the earth becomes shaped by your influence. That's awesome isn't it see? So we see we're made in His image, so we're going to operate like God. So the Bible tells us how God formed the earth. It said the spirit of God was moving, and then God spoke the word. The word was spoken, and when a word was spoken, the spirit of God moved, and things were created. Now we are able to create and shape what's happening around us, by coming into agreement with what God says, and beginning to give voice to it, and live it out in the earth. Now you are giving voice to something. In Proverbs it tells us - Proverbs, Chapter 18, Verse 21 - it says death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those that love it will eat the fruit of it.

In other words, words that we speak have consequences, fruit. Words that you speak and declare have an impact on you, the people around you and on your life, and you're going to eat the fruit of it. So some of you right now are eating the fruit of words that you or someone spoke a long time ago. The Bible tells us in Matthew, Chapter 12 and Verses 33 and 34, it says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, so whatever words you've got in your heart, you're going to give voice to them somehow, and it's going to overflow, see? I was sharing the young ones and it's pretty obvious, if there's sadness in your heart it's going to come out on your face, and eventually you'll talk about it. If there's anger in your heart then it's going to come out on your face, your countenance. You know God said to Cain, how come your countenance is cast down, or why are you so angry? Why does your face look so angry? So whatever's in, is going to come out some way, and the first place is on the countenance, second place is through the words, and so whatever's inside us will find expression. Why? Because you're designed to bring expressions of God into the earth, but when we're separated from God, or we let other things fill our heart, they will express in the earth. Pretty simple isn't really?

Now listen. Your words can impart death. They can release something that kills, destroys, robs of vitality in life, or your words can bring a creative aspect that imparts life, lifts up and builds up, both yourself and the people around you. The key thing is this; what words are you in agreement with, in your heart? Whatever you believe in your heart, you'll begin to give utterance to, and it will determine where your life goes. That's why in Proverbs 4:23 it says, guard your heart, or diligently watch over your heart, because out of what's in your heart, are all the rivers or expressions of your life. Now of course sometimes we don't know what's quite in our heart, but if we begin to watch what we're speaking, we will begin to find what our heart has come into agreement with.

If I want to get saved for example, suppose I've been born in this world, I'm not walking with God, I'm just doing my own thing, and trying the best I can, and I begin to hear the gospel, and how Jesus came into this world, how He expressed the life of God, how He confronted sin, confronted demons, and then how He went to the cross. He died to break the power and the penalty of my sins, and God raised Him from the dead. When I hear that message, and I believe it in my heart, and begin to speak it with my mouth, heaven's power, the spirit of God is released into me to change my eternal destiny. Now look at this. I can have an eternal destiny in hell. I can have an eternal destiny in heaven, and what changes that, what turns from one to another is the words I agree with in my heart, and give expression to with my mouth. It is really important what is in your heart and what's in your mouth see, so at the point when a person, in their heart, embraces God's words. God's words give us the true perspective of life. God's words are higher than our words, His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, so He gives expression to life.

So my Christian walk begins when I agree with God's words, and I begin to speak God's words, and the Bible says in Hebrews 3:1 Jesus, the high priest of my confession, or what I'm agreeing with with God - that word confession is to speak the same as what God is saying; when I speak the same as what God is saying about sin and salvation, then power is released that changes my destiny, and I've got a totally new destiny. Now that is how we start it, that is how we continue. That is how we walk the walk of faith. My challenge after I've got saved is to begin to discover God's words, and come into agreement in my heart with God's words, embrace them as a friend, meditate on them, let them become in my heart, and begin to speak them out of my mouth, and they begin to release something in my life. I'm amazed how careless people are with their words. You know, the Bible tells us be careful, because you are snared by the words of your mouth. You see, suppose you speak words to act as a guarantor for someone's loan. The Bible says in Proverbs, you're snared by the words of your mouth. Go and cancel that thing quickly or you're in trouble.

Now many a person has given a verbal guarantee, or given a written guarantee, that they would be a surety, or they would back up someone's loan, and then the person defaulted on their loan. They left, and they're snared by their words. Now their words have come back, and they have to pay the price for the careless words that were spoken, so the Bible tells us you've got to be careful with your words, careful with what's coming out of your mouth. It's beginning to shape your world. I listen to some people talk. You know what happens? You hear them, and they're very, very negative, all the time they're negative, and you know that their heart is in agreement not with God. Their heart is in agreement with something else - very, very important. Now listen, you can come into agreement with demons, and not even know it. You can find yourself expressing demonic thoughts, not even realising you are becoming an agent for hell to enter earth. Think about that.

Let me just show you a scripture, and I'll give it to you. I don't want to open it too much, because it's quite a teaching of it's own, but I just want you to see the thing here in Isaiah, Chapter 28. Here it is here and it says in Verse 15 - I want you to see a simple thing here and then we're going to look at just one other thing, and finish up. Okay, it says because you have said, we have made a covenant with death and with hell we're in agreement, when the overflowing scourge, or when judgement comes through, it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. Now what they're saying essentially is this, the core of it really just to get it very simple is this; it said that instead of embracing the truth, people found refuge and comfort in a lie. In other words they embraced a lie about their circumstance. Now it's very easy for us to believe lies.

The Bible says the devil is the father of lies, for example, suppose someone when you're very, very young, someone begins to speak over you, you're no good, you're a failure. They can say those words, and the words will hurt, the words sting you. Emotionally, they hurt you and wound you, and they begin to have an effect, but the moment you agree with them, now they have a resting place. You have agreed with a lie. You're not a failure. No one can be a failure. You can have failures, you can't be a failure. A failure is an event, it's something that happens, but I am not a failure. I'm a person made in the image of God. Now I may be separated from God, but I'm still a person in the image of God. I am not a failure, I'll never be a failure. That's not who I am - but if I come into agreement with that lie, if I begin to hold that lie in, and begin to agree in my heart with it, I empower spirits to work and operate, to ensure that lie then is expressed through all of my life. Think about that.

Think about that. Death is a spirit. It's a spiritual power. It causes people to become lonely, isolated, numbed in their emotions, and feeling separated all the time from people around them. Hell is a power, which torments people with fears and insecurities, and all kinds of stressful things, but they are demonic spirits, and so when I agree with a lie, when I believe what the devil says to me, I then empower a demon to come into my life, and begin to operate in my life, and express and magnify and develop that lie, until it becomes a major aspect of my life. Many people say I'm a failure, and you say why am I a failure? Why do you say I'm a failure? Well, because look at all my life, all the stuff that happened. Then you go back, and you find out that years ago they came into agreement with a lie, then it began to find it's expression through their life, through their words, their attitudes and everything they did. That's why the Bible says, after we've come to Christ we must continually present our life, every part of us, our thoughts, our imagining, our heart and be renewed in our thinking, so we might outwork in our life, God's will for us.

So I can come into agreement with demons, and then they are empowered to express themselves through my life. You get some people, they embrace the lies of self pity. They embrace the lies of rejection. Rejection is a feeling, a very painful feeling. Rejection is an experience we have. Rejection is a spirit that comes against us. Rejection is also a lie that I can believe, so if I have an experience where I'm rejected, and the devil sows a lie in, and I agree with the lie, I now empower the demon to enter and begin to work this out through me. I will begin to express it in many different kinds of ways through my life, because my mandate and your mandate is to express God's dominion, the kingdom of God in the earth, but to express that, I have to agree with Him. When I agree with the words of God, the spirit of God is able to find an expression through my life, but if I agree with the words of a demon, then the demon can find it's expression through my life. They know that. That's why they work that way.

They sow thoughts and doubts sometimes, your mind can be so filled with pressure, thoughts, when you come into agreement with it, then it's empowered. So we have to learn how to break agreements in our heart with demons. If you've agreed in your heart, and believed a lie, I'm a failure, I'll never be good enough - you know that was a lie I was in agreement for many, many, many years. It didn't seem that no matter what I did, it was ever good enough, and that's part of being in a situation where someone's a perfectionist, so no matter what you do, it's never quite good enough. There's always something else you need to do, so after a while I got to believe nothing I do is ever good enough. What I was looking for was approval. What was coming was criticism and fault-finding, and in my heart I began to believe the lie, well I will never be good enough. Nothing I do will ever be good enough, and that had dramatic effects on me all my life, until I got to grips with it. It wasn't that long ago either, not as long as you think - until I actually realised that I had come into agreement with a demonic lie, and I had to break and cancel that agreement with the lie, repent of it. I had to release forgiveness where words had been spoken to me. I had to cancel the agreement with the lie, and begin to embrace the truth, meditate in the truth, and begin to give confession and expression to the truth; I am good enough, because Christ has made me accepted, see?

Now you know the scripture but listen, knowing the scripture is one thing. Having the scripture living in your heart, and you're in agreement with, it's another, and you see we have to be in agreement with what God says. In Hebrews 11 the men of faith - I think Verse 32 or something like that, it says something like this; about the men of faith it says, who saw the promises of God are far off, so the first thing when you see, the word of God is, it feels like it's a far off, or removed from your experience. But then it says, they were persuaded that what God said, He was able to do, and they embraced what God said, so you notice - embracing means like reaching out and putting your arms around the words of God, because they bring life to you, holding them into your heart.

Now initially when you reach out to the words of God, they seem strange. They seem weird, because they're not your experience. They're far off, so when God begins to speak into your destiny - I spoke to someone today, and I spoke some words of encouragement, and the moment I did, I could see the heart belief rise up and manifest on the face, and you could feel then their spirit shut down. Why? Because they had believed a lie. When I spoke the truth, it caused a reaction inside. Now what that person needed to do, was abandon the agreement with the lie, embrace the truth, begin to speak the truth, begin to meditate in the truth, until the truth became established in the heart, and then they would experience that being outworked by the spirit of God. So there is a process, recognising where I've come into agreement with a lie, cancelling the power of the lie, speak words to cancel the lie, beginning to meditate and embrace that word of God, embracing until it fits into my heart and it stays in my heart, and that's more real to me that what I feel, what I see, what I'm going through.

It says, having seen the promise afar off, they were persuaded that God was able to do it. In other words, they were persuaded God was faithful, what He said was reliable, so they embraced it. Then it says the confessed, they began to homologeo, speak the same thing as God about themselves and then they began to walk it out in their life, and that's the process of faith. Faith always speaks. Listen, I can be around you a few minutes, I can tell whether you're in a place of faith or not. It doesn't take long. It's going to be on your face, it'll be in your countenance, it'll be in your words, so let me ask you tonight then, what are you in agreement concerning yourself?

Are you in agreement with a demonic lie, so demons are empowered to give expression in your life, or are you in agreement with the words that God has to say about you; you are meditating on them, renewing your mind in them, confessing them, and acting on those words? What are you doing? We're having a season in the church of fasting, fasting off negativity. Now fasting off negativity is much more than trying to stop talking negatively. You see, if I just try and stop talking negatively, it's missing the point. See what's coming out of my mouth is a fruit. You can't just keep plucking off the weeds at the top, you've got to get the roots out. The root is what's underground, and so the words, when you start to fast off negative words, what you're going to find is that those negative words have got a root in your heart, and it's the root in your heart you've got to get out. That word repentance, changing my agreement with it, changing my mind and thoughts towards it, and coming into agreement with God, and abandoning the other, that's what repentance is about.

Jesus said repent, so the benefits, privileges, experiences of the kingdom can be yours, and find expression through you. So what do you believe about yourself? Ask yourself, what do I really believe? What am I saying? What am I living out? Someone was saying today, they were making some kind of comment about the bright shirt, I said yeah, you've got to be secure to be able to wear one like this. Huh? See, why not? I don't care what anyone thinks, I can wear what I like. You understand? You've actually got to have security that's internal, not dependent on what's around you. You've actually got to have the words of God planted and rooted inside you, so our experiences with God lead us to then embrace His truth. As we embrace His truth, and we begin to express it, we begin to have experiences with God. It's like a cycle.

Now I remember one time - I'll finish with this - I remember one time, when I was struggling with some issues, a man of faith, a powerful man in the Holy Ghost, just in a meeting. This is what I remember him saying. He said, if you had an area of your life that was a stronghold or a block for you, affecting everything that was happening in your life, all your relationships, everything you did, would it not be worth it taking that on, until you can break through it, and all the rest of your life would be changed? If it was a week, or two weeks, or three weeks, or six months, wouldn't it be worth breaking through it, so that all the rest of your life would be different? On that basis, I went home and I spent time working on myself, on thoughts I had about myself, until I experienced and encountered the Lord. Before I experienced Him, I had to abandon my agreement with the lie, begin to embrace the truth, meditate in the truth, welcome it like a friend, hugging it, and seeing it, and picturing it, until my heart welcomed it, and the day my heart welcomed it, I felt the demonic realm shift around me, and I encountered the Lord. I've carried what I've encountered everywhere, I've gone in the world. See? What are you in agreement with?

Let's just close our eyes right now. Father, we thank You that You desire us to express the kingdom of heaven in the earth. We recognise tonight, that often we give expression to other things, to self pity, to doubt, fear, to anger, to hurt, to a victim mentality, to being offended. There's so many things - but tonight Lord, we hear Your voice speaking to us. It's time to sanctify, and set ourselves apart, because of the things You want to do in our life in these coming days. Lord, we ask that You would uncover the lies that we've been in agreement with, so we can cancel their power, and begin to receive Your words into our heart.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, perhaps there's some of you, and the lie you're in agreement with is, I'll never be good enough. See, that's something you need to cancel. Maybe there's some of you, the lie you're in agreement with is, I'm a failure, I can never do anything right. Maybe for some of you the lie you're in agreement with is, no one really could love someone like me, I'm unlovable. Maybe the lie you're in agreement with is, no one cares about me, I'm on my own. Maybe the lie you're agreeing with, and starting to agree with is, well it'd be better off for everyone if I died, and was out of here. You know when people come into agreement with these thoughts, they become troubled, become oppressed when demons oppress them. We want to be in agreement with God.

Perhaps there's some of you, and you have doubts about your standing with God; well I'm never good enough for God - then you need to break your agreement with that lie. Christ is your righteousness. If you can trust Him, you can be perfectly right with God, and enjoy Him. Perhaps for some of you, you're overwhelmed with fear; if I open my life to genuine relationship I'll be hurt. That's a lie. It's a part truth. All relationships leave us vulnerable of course, but that's only a part of the truth, because following on that is, I'll never open my heart to anyone, they'll just hurt me - and that is a lie. See, what is it, that the spirit of God is showing you, you're in agreement with? Now if you're not sure then just determine that you're going to begin to fast for a little period of time. You're going to fast, and you're going to ask God to show you, what in my heart have I come into agreement with that's a lie, that stops me fulfilling my potential?

Lord, I want to break that lie right at it's root. How do you break it at it's root? Ask the spirit of God to show you where, and how, it got established; forgive the people involved. Maybe it's a sin, something you've done, and you feel so guilty about it, God could never forgive me. Listen, just break that agreement with the lie. Jesus has already forgiven you, you've just to receive it. Whatever it is, cancel the agreement with the lie, and begin to meditate in and embrace, speak the truth, and begin to start to run your life as a person who has that truth living in them. Meditate in it, imagine what that truth feels like to be forgiven, accept it, love, enjoying the presence - meditate. Hold it into your heart until it becomes an experience for you.

Father, I just thank You right now that You're touching people. Listen, if God has been speaking to you about something you're in agreement with that's a lie, I want to just quickly raise your hand right now, just as a sign to the Lord. I'm not going to ask you to come up and get prayer. God bless, God bless, hands going up all over. God bless, God bless. I don't want you to come up and get prayer. That's not going to solve it completely for you. What is needed is you take responsibility for what you've embraced, and begin to embrace the truth. Say Amen [Amen] Some of you have just come into agreement with these things, you know, they've just changed your life. CANCEL THE AGREEMENTS! I'm a child of God! I'm born by the spirit of God! I'm called, and I have a destiny to influence my community. I have gifts this world needs! I have something to give to the people around me! I'm a child filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the joy of the Lord! I'm going to express that life! Listen, let the truth get alive. Jesus said you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free! Yes, FREE! Free to be yourself. Free to express the life of God. Free to make a difference! Come on, let's stand, let's give Jesus Christ a wonderful honouring clap tonight. He came to set us free! Come on [Applause]

Hasty Words (7 of 12)

Sun 2nd Dec 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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Hasty words always have bad consequences. Words spoken out of inflamed emotions. Have you ever found afterwards you've had to say I wish I hadn't said that? When our emotions are stirred, we get angry, we get wound up on the inside, we say and do things we later regret. Anger is a strong, violent feeling. It is the seed that gives rise to murder. Be angry but do not sin. It becomes sin when we don't resolve it.

I want us to open up in James, Chapter 3 and we've been looking at the tongue, Taming the Tongue. Oh, terrible thing to tame. Very, very difficult instrument in our body to tame, and you would have all been finding over the last three or four weeks, how you suddenly become aware of just actually what is coming out of your mouth. The Bible says in Matthew, it tells us that the tongue speaks or brings out of, what's stored up in the heart, so if you want to know what's in a person's heart just listen to them talk. After a while you'll hear it all. It'll come out in one way or another, so the words we speak come forth from our heart. They come out of our spirit, come out of what we're meditating on, treasuring in our heart, and we can keep up a bold front, a good appearance, look good, sweet and nice, but to a discerning spirit person, you can never hide what's really going on. It's the truth.

The Bible says that we know one another, not after the flesh, but after the spirit. In other words once you're born again, you become aware of the spirit life or the nature of God, and the life that flows. When you relate with people, you can quickly pick up what's coming out of their spirit. You can quickly pick up what is impressing your life, and we are aware of that. So what we did was we looked at different kinds of words. Let's just read these verses again, and very vivid verses, Verse 2; for we all stumble in many things, and if anyone does not stumble in words that he speaks, he's a perfect man - we got any perfect men here? - able also to bridle the whole of their body. Indeed we put a bit in a horse's mouth that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. I think we've got a picture of that there somewhere; do you want to stick it up? Got a picture there of it? May have one, you can pop it up if it's there.

We also looked [laughs] Hey, look at that. Now there's a lovely looking young couple up there, and you see what happens when you get a hold of the horse's mouth, you get the bit in the horse's mouth then you're fine, but if you don't get the bit in the horse's mouth, then you can't control the horse. Big problem if you can't control the horse, and there it is there. Now that one there was just before Joy lost control of the horse. [Laughter] She was pregnant with one of our children, and she let the bridle go out of the horse's mouth, and it just took off. I can still to this day remember the horse. I was looking at the rear end of the horse as it departed across Bruce Simmond's paddocks, and her legs were sort of out like this and that, and holding on for all she was worth.

But if you don't have a control over the horse's mouth, you have no control over the whole horse, but if you can control the mouth, you control the whole horse, where it goes. Same with a ship; you've got control over the rudder, you can steer the whole ship. If you've got no control over the rudder, then you're in big trouble. The Bismarck, which was one of the greatest war ships that the German Navy produced, it had the power to out-shoot and out-run any of the ships in the British Navy. Its first engagement with HMS Hood, it had one shot went into a magazine, and the whole of the Hood with 2000 people sank. The Bismarck travelling through the seas presented a huge problem for the British Navy, and for all the merchant ships, huge problem. So Winston Churchill sent everyone to go out, and they have to sink the Bismarck. What happened was, it was attacked by some planes, and they got a lucky shot and they disabled the rudder, and there's this huge war ship covered in guns and armour, it was the leader in it's day, but the rudder was jammed. Instead of being able to steam for safety, it just went around in a circle and the British ships surrounded it and they literally pounded it until it sank. It's just amazing, just one lucky shot hit the rudder, and when they had no control over the rudder they couldn't control the ship, and the destiny of that ship and all that were on it was changed - just because of the rudder.

See, so the Bible uses these illustrations of the horse and the ship, to get us to understand that what's coming out of your mouth is determining where your life and relationships and destiny go. I just cannot state it more passionately and clearly. What you are speaking is beginning to form your future, and what we've done over the last two or three weeks is, we've looked at some of the negative kinds of things we say, and the impact they have, because we saw that words are containers. You hear the words, but what they contain, their spirit content, leaves an impact, and an impression on you, and so that begins to shape everything around you.

We looked at lying words, and the impact of lying words. We looked at words which were words of gossip and slander, destroying people's reputations. We looked at the area of put down words, words which put people down, words which have a spirit content, a spirit of murder and death and when you've been exposed to put down words you feel belittled, diminished, crushed and withdrawn on the inside. Something has impacted you. What's impacted you is the spirit released when the words were spoken, and so a spirit of death and murder comes against you. You literally shut down. Words of life would lift you up, but words that put you down actually murder you. They destroy or take away your life, and I know talking with people, many many people here suddenly become aware that within their family background their whole upraising, or the way they've been raised was in an environment of put downs that destroyed and limited their potential, maybe because they were a girl, maybe because they were the youngest, maybe because they just didn't do so good in school. Some of you would have been in school, and would have had words belittling you because of the way you looked, some defect, some kind of thing you couldn't do, maybe it was a reading problem, maybe it was some other kind of thing. And what happened was you just get put down and belittled, and those words ring in your ears for years.

It's like they programme the inner man, and then we begin to operate and live our life out of it. Truly they have begun to shape our life. What happened we saw, was we get into agreement with those words, and once you've agreed with the words, I'm no good, I can't do anything - then now you begin to speak them, and you begin to start to actually reinforce what's been spoken over your life. Those kinds of words are cursings. They are cursings. They release a spiritual power that holds you down and restricts your potential. You wouldn't know how many times over the years I've sat and looked in the eyes of a person, began to talk about their potential, and speak about the impact of these words, to watch them just break down and weep, just literally weep as they felt the grief for the first time of what had happened.

Most just say oh, that's just our family, that's just me. You see, but we want to break out of that, so we've focussed on those. Last week we talked about empty words, words which have got no substance in them. The person's got no intention of keeping them, or that the words are just for show, or the words are designed to manipulate. We saw about empty words, now in all of these cases that the words, which could have brought life, actually bring death to people. I want to look at one last area of these negative words, then next time round we're going to begin to look at how God has designed us to move prophetically, how God has designed us to speak and alter spiritual atmosphere, alter even the course of our own life by the words we speak. We're going to look at about how we can begin to actually tap into God's creative ability to speak over our life, and over our family, and over our relationships, words that release the spirit of God and the angels of God to begin to work, instead of creating an environment for demons.

So we want to look at hasty words today, okay, hasty words, angry words - hasty words. [Laughs] Hasty, irritable, impatient, thoughtless, rash, spoken quickly without thinking about the consequences, see? Here's a verse in Proverbs 29, Verse 20. Do you see a man who is hasty with his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. How about that? Now you're going to find there's an awful lot in the Bible. I'll cover some of it today. I just want to give enough that you get a handle on this, and also can deal with the root issue, but a person who is rash in their talking, they speak without thinking, they utter words without thinking, they flare up and speak out things they shouldn't be speaking, he says there's more hope for a fool than someone like that. In other words, if you want to work with someone, work with a fool, rather than work with someone who's angry and explosive, and they let outbursts of words go.

Now I know this is going to speak to many, and I want it to speak to your heart. I want you to begin to think about what you're doing, because I'm aware that in some families and some relational situations, some of you are totally unaware of the havoc you're creating by your words. I want you to become aware of these words, and then come to a place where you learn how to handle and rule your spirit, so you become able to begin to speak words that are life-giving, and words that build. If most of our life our words are out of control, when we try to speak God's words, probably there'll be no force, no power, no life in them, because they're not really part of the way we live our life.

Hasty words always have bad consequences. Words spoken out of inflamed emotions. Words that are spoken like that, out of an inflamed emotion, always have bad consequences, and have you ever found afterwards you've had to say, I wish I hadn't said that? I just wish I hadn't said that? How many people have said that - I wish I hadn't said that? When our emotions are stirred, we get angry, we get wound up on the inside, we say and do things we later regret. I wish I hadn't done that, now I've got to go and say I'm sorry and undo it all. I thought I was so right when I was saying all those things. Now I've got to go and humble myself, because I was a fool. See, so let me give you a couple of verses. So hasty words have bad consequences. Read this, Proverbs 14, Verse 17; A quick-tempered man acts foolishly. A quick-tempered man acts foolishly. Ever seen someone that flares up? Notice they always do dumb things? How many have broken something when you flared up, or you've done something stupid with your car? Ooh yes, yeah, something got broken, something was bumped into when we got angry see, so the Bible says very clearly, that a quick-tempered person will act foolishly. In other words they act without thinking - don't know what they come up with is stupid.

Proverbs 14:29, He that is slow to anger, or slow to wrath, has great understanding. If you can hold your anger back, and keep your anger in check, you're a very smart person! See, smart people can hold back their anger. Foolish people can't. He that is hasty in spirit, exalts foolishness, so the person who quickly flares up, you know what he does in his life? He does lots of stupid things. The person who can control their anger, and manage it and deal with it appropriately and right, that person's very understanding, understands the power of this thing if it's let go. Have you ever seen somebody who's started a little fire, and then couldn't put it out? That's what hasty words do. Angry words will really set something going. You know, you break out and you begin to have a deluge of angry words, what will happen is, you start a fire going in the family, in the household, in your relationships - very hard to put it out. That's why it says the tongue is a fire. The tongue is a fire, a fire!

When people are angry, they tend to speak and do things that are crazy. Shane Willard was saying that when a person gets angry their IQ drops 30 points, so if you were only an average IQ anyway [Laughter] which is most of us. You know, if we're really, really brilliant people then we can afford to drop a few for a moment, but if you're just sort of, just the normal, average, run of the mill person, and you lose 30 points on your IQ you're just a raving lunatic, can't think right. That's why the Bible says, they act stupidly, act foolishly, act like an idiot. Isn't that true? Have you ever seen someone acting like an idiot, and you think what on earth do they think they're doing? Look at that, look and they look like a crazy man, and all it is, is they're angry. Their IQ dropped. Your IQ drops 30 points when lust gets a hold of you, you just lose your ability to think. It's true, and then when anger gets a hold of you again, you lose your ability to think. All thinking's gone, now there's just I'm wanting to smash something, or yell at something. Isn't that right?

Look at this, so always when people get angry, they'll say and do things they later on regret. In Psalm 106 - let's read Psalm 106, Verse 32-33. Even Moses is a pretty good man, got upset. Cost him a bit too. Moses, now Moses was a meek man. He had himself under control, but even he got upset. It says, Verse 32, they angered Him at the waters of strife, and it went badly for Moses on account of them. It says they rebelled against His spirit, or the spirit of God, and he spoke rashly with his lips. So what happened was this. Notice this, what happened was Moses got into trouble, because he spoke angrily. What had happened was, the people of God were always complaining, and here's the man who's trying to them get to where they're supposed to get. All they can do is complain, and they complained so much, they got him wound up. So in the end God had spoken to him. He said now the last time you smote the rock with the rod. This time I want you to speak to the rock. Then he comes out, and he says you blimmin' people, you want water, you want water do you? You want water do you? Alright! And he gets the rod and he whacks the stick, he hits this rock twice, calls them all rebels. He gets very angry.

Now the interesting thing was, God gave them the water, but then God had words with Moses. Moses was not able to enter into the Promised Land, because he got angry, and didn't do what God told him to do. I think the thing that was the thing that caused the trouble was, not that he struck the rock. I think it was when he spoke with his words, because it said it was what he said was the problem. When he was angry, he spoke out. He said you rebels, you want us to get you some water, and he hit this rock, and so God honoured the office and honoured the act to get water to the people, but he was accountable for his rash words. That cost him.

Imagine you've been 40 years in the wilderness, and the very place you've got to lead everyone, you can't go yourself. So God was good. God gave him a little glimpse of it - have a look, there it is. You can't get in there, because you were crazy in your speech, and you actually began to accuse people of something. You cursed them virtually, called them rebels, see? Now it's one thing to talk to them about their complaining; it's another thing to brand them, and label them, and call them a name. I think that's what got him into trouble. He began to label, and name, the people of God, and I think that's what got him into trouble, because they're God's people, and God identifies with them.

We've got to be really careful, or we get stirred in our emotions or feel angry, that we don't begin to start to label people, and yell at people, and begin to start to vent our reaction in a way that causes us unseen consequences in the future. Okay, there we go, that was wonderful. That went down well didn't it aye? Oh well, okay. Do you want another one, found in 2 Chronicles 26:18 and 19. Now this one here's Uzziah. Uzziah was a king, and he got a bit uppity. After a little while he got so successful he got a bit proud, and he thought he could do anything. The trouble with success, when you're having successes you can begin to start to think more highly of yourself than you should. So what happened was some good Godly men rose up, and they confronted him when he was wanting to be a priest, so they stood and said you can't do this. You're not called to do that. What they did was right. They blocked him. You know what it did? It said he got absolutely outraged. He got filled with wrath. He become filled with wrath and anger, and wanted to actually then kill them, and what happened was leprosy broke out in his body, so we've got to be careful when we're confronted or blocked in life, when things don't go the way we want, that we don't end up developing attitudes that cause sickness and problems and all kinds of things to emerge in our body.

One of the things that cause people to be sick almost more than anything, certainly a cause of depression, is people being angry. When people are angry, they get depressed. When people angry, they get sick in their body, so there's some examples of it. Ecclesiastes 7:9 says, don't be hasty in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the heart of fools. Don't be hasty, or don't allow yourself to be stirred up to get angry, because anger sits in the heart of a fool. He will actually blow out and destroy what he's trying to build. Suppose you had a dream to build a family, and you have great ideas, and you have great things that you want this family to become. Then all the way when you're investing all this time and energy and labour for your 20/30 years, all the time you're doing that, you're then destroying what you're building as fast as you build it. Would you call that stupid or foolish? Pretty foolish isn't it, and that's what it says, a person who can't master this issue of anger, it says it rests in his heart, he becomes foolish in his life.

So God wants us to learn how to handle it, and we're going to touch on you how to handle it, what the root cause is in a moment, but I want you to get the message on it, okay? You getting the message? Have a look in Ephesians, Chapter 4 then. Unresolved anger opens the door to demons. Of course, we're all lovely church people. [Laughs] We would never open the door to demons. We just come and say Jesus, you're wonderful. We look beautiful with our hands up singing Jesus, I Love You. Isn't that wonderful? But the same people today singing Jesus, I Love You, later on in the week could be very, very angry and inviting demons into their home. Isn't that craziness? Isn't that sort of foolishness, isn't it really? We're wanting God to bless us, and then a couple of days later we're undoing it completely, and opening the door to something else.

Notice what it says in Ephesians 4, read these verses here - I like this verse, Verse 26. Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, nor give place to the devil. So the verses in the original are not there, it's just one flow, and it's talking about our relationships, and dealing with our life, and certain things we need to change. So it says - now get this - it says be angry. So it's okay to be angry. For those Christians who didn't think it was okay to be angry, and carried on in a fantasy world, where actually real people get angry about lots of things, see, it's okay to be angry. Anger is just an emotion. God feels anger. We're made in the image of God, we can feel anger when there's an injustice. So it's no problem to feel angry. Anger is just like an indicator on the dashboard of your car, it's just an emotion that signals a message. Now it's okay to be angry. It's okay to feel angry, okay to feel upset. It's what you do with it, is the issue, and so it says be angry, but do not sin. So it says, it's okay to feel anger, but don't let it just blow over so it becomes sin. It becomes sin when we don't resolve it. It becomes sin when we allow it to internalise, and we begin to brood over it, and we begin to think and smoulder on the injustice of what went wrong, it stirs us up, or it becomes sin when we let go and let rip at everyone around us.

Some people are the brooders. They sort of let it go in, and sit on it. Then there's another group, and they blow up. They just kaboom, and there's a bomb goes off, you know? They let everyone have it - then they feel better. It's great, but behind them, there's this ground of people bleeding all over the place. [Laughter] They've got over it. I feel good now. I feel just great. I've done my stuff. I feel better - now what's all wrong with you? Everyone's lying there bleeding from all the wounds that they've got, cut to the quick by the spirit of murder. But they feel better, I feel better now - until the next time, because when you get into family environments like that, they're unsafe, and they create insecurity in the family. There are problems in all relationships, and people do not grow to activate their potential, see. It says anger rests in the heart of fools. [Laughs] Don't sit on your anger. Get to sort it out quick, and the Bible tells us how quick it should be. Well that's quite handy isn't it? It says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. In other words you've just got today to get over it, see, today to get over it.

When you go to bed at night, don't go to bed angry. Just get over it. Tell someone, actually you need to get over it. I can see you getting angry already. Just get over it. You need to get over it, need to resolve the anger, get over the anger before you go to sleep see, because failing to resolve the anger is like opening the door to demons. So isn't that interesting, that people would every night time go to their doors and they lock the doors, and make sure all the thieves don't get in to steal their goods, all of which could be replaced and are probably insured anyway. But then they go and throw open the spiritual doors, and allow the demons to come in and destroy everything that's of real value. That's what it means when it says don't give place to the devil. Don't open the door for demons to come, its because they can smell anger a mile off. Even dogs can smell it, you noticed that? You get stirred up inside and dogs will know it. You can get them riled up if you get a little like that. When people get angry they stiffen. You get near a dog and you begin to stiffen and stare at it, it'll get really wound up. I found that out [Laughter] with many a dog. [Laughs] Okay then, so anger needs to be dealt with.

In Proverbs 25:28, he that has no rule over his own spirit, if you can't actually deal or manage with anger - so the Bible says, it's okay to feel angry at times, but if you can't manage it and deal with it properly, it says you're just like a city that has got no walls in it. It's got no defences. The city's been broken down, an enemy has breached the city, there's nothing to defend it. So in the old days of course, they'd build a wall around the city, you defended the city against enemies. You had no walls, you had no defence. The enemy could come in and take what he wanted, so today it would be equivalent saying a person who's got no rule over their spirit, or a person who can't manage this emotion of anger, is like a person who leaves his doors and windows open every night for the thieves and burglars to come in. That would be the best way to describe it. Foolishness isn't it? But we still tolerate it. So there it is, so always unresolved anger opens the door to demons.

Now look at this. In Genesis, Chapter 4, Verses 4 to 8; Cain, the first example of someone getting angry. That's good, and we'll see what resulted from him getting angry. You've got to remember, if we just take the Bible account that there was Adam and Eve and two sons, that's four people in the world, and one quarter of them get put to death because one person got angry. Look at this. Here it says, Verse 5, the Lord did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, why are you so angry? Why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, you'll be accepted. If you do not, sin lies at the door. Its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now Cain talked with Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. The Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? He said I don't know, am I my brother's keeper? I don't care about him. [Laughs]

Okay, so you notice here that Cain was angry. He was angry. Now one of the first ways you can see someone's angry, is look at their face. They get broody, moody. They get a darkness over their countenance. See, you can always tell what's in the heart comes out on the face, and so when people are angry it usually shows on their face, so his countenance fell, meant he got moody. He got the black look, you know, the black look. They look black. You know people get like that, they give you the evils, means they stare at you, and you can feel and look at the anger, ooh! [Laughs] So his face, his unresolved feeling of anger, and he was warned that if he didn't deal with it, it would get worse. Of course what happened is he didn't deal with it at all, and what happened then was he was resentful and angry, because of something he felt was unjust treatment. He felt he should have been accepted like his brother was, and when he looked at his brother - isn't it interesting? He looked at his brother, and how God favoured his brother, because the offering was an offering of faith. He looked at how his offering was not accepted, and he become angry, and the anger expressed first on his face, and then against his brother, then in the field he rose up and slew his brother.

I would think over the course of my ministry life, I would think that the greatest miracle that I have seen, is that I'm still here [Laughter] because of the words that have risen up to slay me. Simple, they hurt you, they do. People can be extraordinarily abusive and hurtful, and you need to see here, there's something - let me give a definition for anger, so you define it. I want to just talk a little bit about anger, because I want you to get a handle on this. Then we'll show you what to do, because you've got to learn how to deal with it, okay?

Anger - this is what it is - anger is a strong, violent feeling. How many - when you've got anger, it seems to fill you, have you noticed? In the Bible, actually the word means to flare the nostrils, so that's kind of like when someone's really wound up [Laughs] see, so it's a strong, violent feeling, coming out of a sense of injustice. There is of course various levels of it. Resentment, now resentment's the one most people have. Church people tend to get this. Resentment is like the smouldering fire. It doesn't kind of break out. It's just like a smouldering anger, cold, quiet. You know, granny gets it, and there's this coldness in the atmosphere. Is anything wrong? NO! [Laughter] The whole atmosphere becomes unpleasant, unsafe, and you want to run away and hide. That's what you do. That's what disconnects families of course, because see what happens is, when people are in that environment, they become afraid of the anger, and feelings of anger. They actually are afraid of the spirits, which are in the atmosphere. They don't understand that's what it is, but they're fearful of what may happen to them, and then they will find a way to retreat and find a way out. Of course one way is just to disconnect from everyone, withdraw, hide, read books, watch television, go play on a computer, disconnect, get busy, do a hobby, all kinds of ways it happens. But see often when people are resentful, it's like a dark scowl on the face, or moodiness, or sulking.

The next level of anger is - probably call it the word wrath. You don't use that much, but it's an anger that's looking for revenge and retaliation, so the definition of wrath means, you're angry to the point - you're going to pay for this. That's wrath. Can you see this? It wants to hurt someone, wants to hurt them. That's why, when it gets out of control, it comes to rage and then manifests as a violent explosion, an outburst against the people around, often physically or verbally. Now you think of how many people are in jail, because they just lost it. What did they lose? They had no rule of their spirit anger, smouldering resentment rose into wrath and then rage, then they did something, and then they can't get it back. You have a look and there's a real problem in our area of this kind of thing, of violent outbursts, violent rage. I talked to the police about this, and they said Napier and Hastings are completely different. They said in Hastings, he said like in Napier if someone hits someone they just hit them once, that's about it, or twice. He said in Hastings when they do it, they just won't stop. It's like something gets out of control and it's extremely violent, because behind anger, see anger unleashes a spirit of murder. That's why it's so serious. See a lot of Christians just laugh at the whole deal and think nothing of it. So I'll give you some examples, and then how we tend to think about it, typical examples of people who are really angry.

Ever seen a kid throwing a tantrum? Don't you love it? There he is, on the ground, screaming and they stiffen and they scream and bellow until they get what they want see; shouting, stamping their feet. Stamping feet is another form of outbursts of frustration and anger, stamping feet, smashing things, slamming doors, banging things, slamming phones, throwing things, breaking things, hissy fits. It's all the same thing, it's all anger that's exploding, and unleashing spirits of murder on everyone in hearing distance. Some homes you go to, there's dents in the wall, sometimes unusual heights. [Laughter] I've been to some homes, I've looked and thought how did that hole get up there? In other places you can see a perfect round hole the size of a man's fist, banged through something or other, banged into something, see? That's explosive anger. It's terribly destructive. Not only that, it hurts your knuckles. Now this is what we tend to do. That's why taking time to just outline this for you, because the tendency is to accept it, and say that's just me. Is it? It's an unacceptable expression of the spirit of murder. Just you? Is that what you are, a murderer? Okay, if you want to be a murderer. I think you're better than that.

See, you've got to see it for what it is. If you don't see it for what it is, you'll never ever treat it seriously, and break out of the habit pattern of angry expression. Think about it. We have to actually see it for what it is, so most will say it's just me, it's my Irish nature you know. Couple of drinks, and out with a fight. Don't drink then! You know, have you noticed many guys, they have a couple of drinks, and then suddenly all this buried anger, and now they're punching and fighting and looking for a fight. Anger is waiting to find - it's actually at a level of wrath waiting to find someone to beat on, and of course in homes where there's this kind of anger, it just perpetuates, goes generation to generation.

So a second way people tend to deal with it, is they tend to just excuse it - it's not my fault. I can't help it, it's just the way I am. Another way people tend to treat it, is just deny it - I'm not angry. I'M NOT ANGRY! Why do you think I'm ANGRY! Well, just a thought. [Laughs] Look at yourself in the mirror. [Laughs] So unrestricted anger, or unrestrained anger, will release a spirit of murder. I want you to see that Jesus taught this very clearly, so we'll get to Jesus' words. Now Jesus got angry, but He controlled His anger, and directed it productively at the right thing. See, God gets angry but there's a righteous anger - well I've got righteous anger! Yeah, yeah, we'll see. [Laughs]

Matthew, Chapter 5. Mostly what we think is righteous anger, isn't at all, but here, read this. Verse 21, you've heard what it was said of those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders is in danger of judgment. So you've heard the commandment, thou shalt not murder. So do we have any murderers here? Now don't all shout.[Laughter] Do we have any murderers here? I think we have heaps of them. See, He said in the - see the Old Testament, the law dealt with the behaviour, the external. Murder is the behaviour expression of unresolved anger and hate, so Jesus is saying yes, I know the law, and you've heard it said, don't murder people. There's very practical reasons not to do that. There's real punishments if you do do it. He said I'm telling you this; that the nature of God who set the law up, His intent was we would love people, and if you love people, don't harbour anger in your heart against them. He says you know if you murder someone, you're in danger of judgment. He said I'm telling you differently. I'm telling you if you get anger in your heart against someone, and don't deal with it, you are in danger of judgment, because anger is the seed that gives rise to murder. That's pretty strong talk from Jesus isn't it, but He says it there.

I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment. Whoever says to your brother is an idiot, shall be in danger of the council. Whoever says you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Now I won't go into all that's there, and all that it means, but very simply this; anger is the root from which murder flows, and God is calling us to live a different life. He's calling us to have a spirit empowered life. See the spirit empowered life, we go far beyond not killing people. We go to a level where we deal with our heart attitude, we learn how to love people, and not hold anger, and express anger and murder at them, see? That's why He said concerning adultery, He said you know it said, don't commit adultery, but I'm telling you what God is wanting is, He's wanting a heart that's pure, that doesn't actually lust after other women, because that's what leads to adultery. Can you see? So He's saying what I'm telling you is, what we're looking for here, is far higher than just a little set of rules to keep. What we're looking for here is spirit filled people, who've got a pure heart, and know how to actually express the life of God, because that's what you're all on about. That is what I put you in the earth to do, to express the love and the life of God. So He said you need to deal with this issue that's inside you. We getting the hang on that now?

Jesus was pretty straight about that, wasn't He? Oh, you've all got very quiet about it now - so [Laughs] and remember that anger will always lead to some form of verbal or physical retaliation, with a desire to hurt. You've got to realise that. The intent when someone explodes is to vent what's in them, and usually to hurt someone else with it, and if they don't intend to hurt them, it still makes no difference, they do. Now we've all been through that. How many have been through an experience where you've had someone really nut off and lose it, and it was directed at you? How many have had that experience, and found it really unpleasant? See, everyone here, everyone here. How many - well I won't ask how many have done it themselves. The tendency is to just do, because you don't know what to do.

Let me just give you quickly now the root of it, and then a couple of practical keys how to deal with this, because God wants us to deal with it, and you don't deal with it by sitting on it. So the root of it is very simple, simple as this. Anger arises when we believe our personal rights have been violated. Anger has to do with your rights, what you believe you're entitled to. See, notice this. You see a kid doing a hissy fit on the ground. They're fussing to get what they want, and they're doing everything they can to make you do what they want, because they believe what they want, they're entitled to, see? Isn't that right? The core at the root of anger, is my belief that I'm entitled to have life go right for me. It's actually a consequence of the fall, and you'll see at the core of dealing with anger, the issue of personal rights has to be addressed, because as soon as a person believes their personal rights have been violated in some way, whether it's real or just they imagine it, they get angry. Every time they get angry, so it could be simply a blocked goal. You know, you're just trying to get to work, and then there's some silly slow car with some old person sitting there, and they're blocking the blimmin road! You just are wound up and you do something hasty. Then you're pulled over by the cops, then you really have regret, measured in how much it's going to cost you, see?

But it's like when goals are blocked, we can't get what we want, we get angry and all it is is my goal is blocked, because I believe I have a right to have my goals achieved when and how I want. That's the heart belief. You change that belief, you'll change the behaviour, see? The reality is, we live in a world where there's all kinds of things block us and hinder us. Everyone gets blocked and hindered. The thing is, if you've got an attitude like Jesus, His attitude was, I came with no expectation it would all work out good. I came with an expectation I would give My life to make things better - different mentality, if we didn't get outraged or angered by things that people did.

Badly treated - we get badly treated, we get well, I've got a right to be treated right. I haven't been treated fair, it's not fair! That's what kids say isn't it? It's not fair! Get over it, life isn't fair. Lots of things aren't fair, but God doesn't actually treat us fairly either. He treats us justly. That's a different thing from being fair. Fair means we get what everyone - you know kids, to be fair you've got to count up the strawberries that go on the plate to make sure it's fair, make sure everyone got the same number, see? Okay, we getting there? So injustice. Injustice, when we feel we've been treated unjustly, and of course injustice abounds in the world. That's the thing that really racks us up, and gets us going. So maybe someone's shouted at you, misunderstood you, did this, did that. Whatever it is, there's a perceived injustice. What the core of it is, I have a right to be treated better than this, now I'm angry.

Now I would say just this: if you were stirred up about the injustices others have, probably it's more near to God's sense of anger, how He gets angry. If you're really wound up about your own stuff, probably it's less justification for it. You need to learn how to get over it, so how do we get over it? Let me just give you a couple of simple scriptures, and I'll give you four or five simple steps what to do practically, okay?

So 1 Peter, Chapter 2, we'll find the scripture and then I'll show you just what you do. So we don't want to be murderers. We've already got a lot of people convicted of murder here today. [Laughs] We don't need to be all free of being convicted of murder. Repent of your sin, and if you've really injured people by your anger, go put it right with them, that would be the simplest thing to do, and then start to work on your life. But here's the core of it here, and it's found in 1 Peter, Chapter 2, Verse 21. Here it is, and it says for this you were called, because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example we should walk in His steps. Remember the example of Jesus, how unjustly He was treated? He committed no sin, neither was there any deceit found in His mouth - Verse 23 - when He was abused, He didn't abuse in return. When He suffered, He didn't threaten. Notice what He did: He committed Himself to the one who judges righteously. In other words, this is what He did. When He was on the receiving end of bad treatment, instead of arising in anger, and using His power to hurt people and retaliate, or prove He was right, He committed His soul to the one who judges rightly. In other words He let His rights go to the Father, and that freed Him from the emotions, so He could then have a spirit-led response.

Did He get angry? He did get angry. He got angry in a church actually. He got angry at the church people, when they had no heart for the broken people, but He didn't actually take it out on them. He just used the anger, and He healed the person who was sick. See, He addressed the problem, addressed the issue. You find the same thing again in 1 Peter, Chapter 4, Verse 19. It says the same thing. Let those who suffer according to the will of God, commit their souls to Him in doing good, as to a faithful Creator. So here's the core issue. The core issue behind anger, somewhere I perceive my rights have been overruled or violated. I need to commit my rights to the Lord, and allow Him to be the just judge on it, and that frees me then to listen to what He wants me to do.

If He says let it go, I can let it go. If He says speak up, I can speak up. If He says put boundaries, I can put boundaries. If He says walk away, I can walk away. In other words, I'm not controlled by the emotion. I'm actually spirit-led, because I've brought the injustice and the feelings of the injustice to the Lord, so it's actually a faith walk, being spirit led. That is the core of dealing with it. Here's a few practical things that will help you, because remember always, that the key under this issue of anger is always ownership and personal rights; I have a right. Just let go your rights, and then you'll be free to be able to actually listen to what God wants you to do. Be a part of the answer, rather than part of the problem.

Here's some simple things. Number one, if you're angry, admit you're feeling angry. You just need to admit it. You've got to admit to yourself you're feeling angry. Second, create some space so that you can just process what you're feeling. Sometimes we just need to withdraw from where we're at. It's provocative, we just feel upset, we know that if we stay there, we're going to be stirred up. Just withdraw, get some space. Say look, I'm a bit emotional right now, and I just need a bit of space. Go and create some space where you can slow down and start to think through what's actually happening. Remember, anger is just the signal I've had a rights or injustice somewhere, and I need to discover it and bring it to the Lord. Okay, slow down. So you let the negative energy out constructively, so maybe if you're really, really wound up go out and chop some wood, go out and run, go out and beat a bag, go out and just do something to let the physical energy go, because when people get angry, they get a huge build up of physical energy in their body, and that's why they just go crazy, and do crazy stuff. So that's a simple thing you could do.

Fourth thing, ask the Holy Spirit to show you what's the root problem, and it may be there's been lots of little things accumulate over a number of days, lots of frustrations, lots of little blocked goals, and instead of dealing with them one at a time, day by day, you just let it all build up, and now here you are, and you're sullen, resentful, black, gloomy, negative, feeling disempowered, angry at the world. Then one thing comes - the cat goes in front of you. Next thing you know, you've kicked the cat, you've yelled at everyone, and it's all on. You think where did that come from! Well it was a long build up aye, okay, so ask the Lord to show you where the root is, try and identify what the root is, and then surrender your rights to the Lord. Just surrender to the Lord, so you can let it go.

Then the final thing is, I've got to look for constructive ways to deal with the issue. I've got to look for constructive ways. A constructive way is to just let it go. A constructive way is to go and confront. A constructive way is to do some kind act. There's lots of constructive ways, but while you're angry, you can't think of one of them. You just want to smash their face, see? That's what goes on. I know you may not think that. Some people are so sweet and nice, they'd never think of that, so what they do, instead of the anger going out, they direct it inwards, they get sick and depressed, and never happy. See, so we need to be able to do that.

If you're facing someone who's very angry, again don't treat anger with anger. You'll just stir up a fire, and you can't get rid of it. The Bible says, a soft answer turns away anger, so if a person's angry, they're really nutting off in front of you, talk to them quietly in a quiet voice. Ask questions, listen to them and try and draw out of them and they'll calm down and be quiet. A second way to deal with an angry person, is to walk away and avoid them, just to actually remove yourself completely from that situation, and withdraw from it. A third way is to, at the appropriate time, talk to them about their anger issue, and start to set some healthy boundaries.

Now we've got to learn what to do when people are angry, especially people we live with. Some situations you can't get away from, but you don't have to put up with it. More than once I've told people to confront things, or told them to just stop, and just let God help them grow through it. Remember, there's no one answer to it all, but when your rights are in the hands of the Lord, you're then able to listen to Him, and able to work this issue out properly. It is an issue of rights.

Now some of you may be sitting on stuff that goes back years, and so a little thing happens, it just triggers off a huge storm. You've got unresolved issues you need to bring out into the open, need to actually get some help to get them out. We want to move on, so we're not caught up with this thing of personal rights, speaking angry words, and destroying. We want to be able to speak prophetic words, words of life, words that build, words that bless, words that impart to people and we don't want to be foolish, destroying the thing we're trying to build. You say Amen.

Father, we just thank you you are teaching us. We thank you Lord, we had never realised just the power of our words, the impact of our words. We've never realised Lord, the way our tongue just gets so out of control in so many ways, and we're saying Lord, help us to begin to start to rule our spirit, to rule our inner man, and to begin to express the life of the kingdom and be part of the answer, instead of expressing the life of the flesh, and intensifying the problems. Lord, I pray for every person here today that's heard the message, those who listen to it on the internet or listen to it through the CD, that Lord as they begin to start to think about their words and how they're speaking, that Lord they will sense Your hand upon them to expose these things, and to help them and give grace, give grace that we can begin to start to speak words that bring life. Give us grace to overcome injustice in our personal life. Give us grace, and help us Lord to let go the demand and right that life serve us, and to become wonderful ambassadors of heaven, that are able to serve and make a difference in life.

Father, I pray this church will grow, that members will grow, people will grow to a whole new level of maturity and ability to handle this issue of anger, to handle the issue of hasty words. Lord, in this next week or so begin to show it to us every time we get into that flow that we've been in and help us to stand up and come into a breakthrough in this area - and everyone said ... Amen!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· James 3:2-8 - “The tongue is a fire..”

· Our words and speech are containers – they release death or life wherever we direct them.

· People ‘hear’ the words but are ‘impacted’ by the spirit they are spoken in.

· Our body, soul and spirit are all impacted by spoken words.

· Previously: Lying words, Gossip, Put Down words, Empty words.

· Today: “Hasty Words” – “I wish I had never said that!”

· Hasty = irritated, impatient, thoughtless, rash, done quickly without thought of impact.

· Proverbs 29:20 - “Do you see a man hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool that him”.

2. Hasty Words Have Bad Consequences:

Proverbs 14:17 – “A quick tempered man acts foolishly”.

Proverbs 14:29 - “He that is slow to wrath has great understanding but he that is hasty of spirit exalts folly”.

When people are angry – they are prone to speak and act foolishly.

When people are angry – then their IQ drops – no longer think through the consequences.

E.g. Psalm 106:32-33 - Moses got angry with Israel and spoke and acted foolishly.

Moses’s hasty words and actions cost him his leadership opportunity.

E.g. 2 Chronicles 26:18-19 - Uzziah became very angry when his goal was blocked.

His failure to respond properly cost him his physical health.

Ecclesiastes 7:9 - “Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the heart of fools”.

3. Unresolved Anger Opens the Door to Demons:

· Ephesians 4:26-27 - “Be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, neither give place to the devil”.

- anger is a strong emotion – It is ok to feel angry.

- Anger that is not resolved properly leads to sin.

- Anger needs to be dealt with the same day – before going to sleep.

- Anger unresolved will create a door for demons.

· Proverbs 25:28 - “He that has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down”.

· Genesis 4:4-8 - Cain was very angry and his fell.

- Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

· Cain had strong unresolved feelings of anger.

· Cain was warned that sin would come as a result of unresolved anger.

· Proverbs 29:22 - “an angry man stirs up strive and a furious man abounds in transgression (to rebel and react”).

· Anger = strong violent feelings of reaction at some perceived injustice.

· Anger has various levels of intensity.

i) Resentment:

· Smouldering, brooding on injustice.

= often appears as a dark scowl on face, moodiness, sulking.

ii) Wrath:

· Anger that seeks revenge or punishment – lashes out to hurt or wound.

iii) Rage:

· Intense explosive reaction, destructive expressions.

· Examples: Tantrums, shouting, stomp feet, slam door, yell, phone hung up.

Throw things, break things, hissy fit”, hit things, bad tempered.

· Response: People tend to “accept it” …. “Just me” (minimize it)

People tend to “excuse it” …. “Not my fault, can’t help it”.

People tend to “deny” ….”I am not angry”.

4. Unrestrained Anger releases a Spirit of Murder and Death:

Matthew 5:21-27 - “Whoever is angry with his brother is a murderer”.

Old Testament standard for living – “Thou shalt not murder…”

The intent of the law is that we live under the law of love.

New Testament standard of living – “Anger is a root from which murder flows”.

Wrath = anger that seeks revenge, punishment, retaliation, lashes out and seeks to hurt or wound”.

How many murders was the result of anger?

Explosive anger => hate => murder - 1 John 3:15

Unresolved anger opens a door to judgment in the spirit world against us.

The Root of Anger:

Anger arises when we feel our “personal rights have been violated”.

i) Blocked Goal - I have a right to get my way, what I want.

ii) Badly Treated - I have a right to be treated fairly.

iii) Injustice - I have a right to just treatment.

When anger is out of proportion to the event there is probably many

unresolved ‘injustices” that have accumulated.

5. How to Handle your Anger:

· The example of Jesus:

- 1 Peter 2:21-23 - He committed himself to him who judges right.

- 1 Peter 4:19 - commit your souls to Him in doing good.

· Key issue is one of ownership and personal rights.

· Practical:

1) Admit the feelings 2) Create space to process

3) Let – energy out constructively 4) Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal root

5) Surrender rights to God 6) Look for constructive ways to

Address issues – Do Good!

How to Handle Angry People:

· Don’t feed of their anger or react to it.

i) Speak quietly, touch arm.

Proverbs 15:1

Ecclesiastes 10:4

ii) Ask questions to understand the person.

James 1:19

iii) Withdraw – boundary abusive controlling behaviour.

iv) Confront at appropriate time to obtain changes in the behaviour.

Verbal Abuse (8 of 12)

Sun 2nd Dec 2007 PM  « Back to Top

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How many know we live in a culture that really puts people down? If we don't break out of things which are spoken against us, then those negative words spoken in our life which we agree with will soon speak, and begin to set the course of our destiny.

How many know we live in a culture that really puts people down? We're just going to talk tonight about breaking through verbal violence, and I want to pick up where I was speaking this morning, so even if you weren't there this morning it won't make any difference. You'll still be fine, be able to pick it up from where we go tonight. I want to just share just a few scriptures with you, then I want to talk primarily about how you break out, and if we don't break out of things which are spoken, then those things which are spoken, we agree with, negative words spoken in our life, which we agree with, we will soon speak, and they will begin to set the course of our destiny.

So it's really important that we understand the power of words. What we've been doing in the last three or four weeks is we've been looking at various aspects of the words that we speak, different kinds of words people speak, and I've taken time. I was hoping to do that all in one session by the way, then what the Holy Ghost did was He said no, He said it took me a long time to sort these things out in your life, so you can take time to sort them out in everyone else's too, so just take your time because - He said this, He said you'll never move forward, to be able to move in speaking God's word to change environments prophetically, unless you recognise where the words you speak actually are poisoning the environment.

The Bible says in James 3, out of the same mouth receives blessing and cursing, it shouldn't be like that. So over these last three or four weeks the Holy Ghost has been just speaking into our hearts about the kinds of words we speak, the quality of the words, and what kinds of things are coming out of your mouth, and how they're affecting the people around you. So tonight I want to pick up one particular aspect. We started on it this morning, but I'm going to pick it up tonight again, and begin to just share with you how you can break out of it. I believe there'll be many people here that will begin to start to realise you need to break out, and then not just to break out, but to stay out, and to stay free of the spiritual put downs that are prevalent in our society. You get in school - man, one of the worst places to put people down is schools. Young people are just shocking to one another. Unfortunately many teachers are like that too, and our culture is like that. Everywhere you go, there's this spirit that comes to try and contain or hold the dreamers down.

You find of Joseph, Joseph was a dreamer. He had prophetic dreams of a destiny that would change nations, and yet around him in his own family, he had those who hated him because of it, and did all they could to destroy the dream and the dreamer. Isn't it interesting, and it seems to be the nature of the world we live in, that whenever God has put a dream of something in your heart, the first thing that'll happen when you begin to articulate the dream, is that people will tell you it can't be done. They'll begin to knock you back down into your place, so if you believe that through faith in Jesus Christ you are called to express the life of God in a unique way, then God is going to put dreams in your heart, and you're going to have to recognise what are the dream thieves, what steals the dream away from you, and what stops you actually expressing the life of God. If we don't understand that, and how to nurture the dreams in our heart, and how to speak the dreams in our heart, then what happens is we become contained, and we stay where everyone else is. We don't want to be that kind of people.

This coming year I believe is the year for people to break out, and so God is preparing the way, so these four weeks we've been speaking about certain kinds of words and their impact on our life, and how many people have found God challenged you about what you're saying? How many found you just felt yourself pulling back, words would go out and you'd think oh man, what did I say that for! I've been finding that. I've been finding every week that oh, why did I say that - and then you've got to repent and ask God to forgive you, and cancel the power of the words, then begin - but it's in the heart. Whatever's in the heart is going to find a place out of your mouth. Is that right? So we're going to just tonight open the way for you to just get free of stuff, give you a couple of keys that will help you to break out of things. Then it's up to you to begin to learn how to stand up and break forth, aye? See? Learn how to stand up! Be different! Come on, tell someone: Stand up! Be different! ... Stand up! Be different! ... It's not that easy to do you know. It's not that easy to do, because the moment you try and be different, someone says who do you think you are? Well I'm me and I'm being me - and we aren't ashamed of who we are.

I want you to open up with me in 1 Peter, Chapter 2. We're going to start where we'll finish virtually, 1 Peter, Chapter 2. I want to just share with you just a couple of scriptures in the Bible that give a real insight to how Jesus handled issues, and when you look at Jesus' ministry, Jesus said this. He said I have come to give you life, and give it more abundantly, so when Jesus came, what He had in mind was that whatever kind of life you're living right now, there is another whole dimension coming, with access to the life of the spirit that you can enter into, that will lift you to a whole new dimension of how you live your life, and run your relationships, and what you do. There are dreams that God has, that when you become connected with Him, you become lifted up inside, and there's a desire to fulfil something you never thought you'd ever do before.

Some of you have got God dreams waiting to be hatched inside you, to be vocalised, birthed in prayer and then begin to be activated in your life. But the Bible says, Jesus come to give life, and give it more abundantly, so He didn't come to take stuff from us. He came to realign us with how we should live our life, so we can position ourself to come up to new levels. It's wonderful. I'd never be doing what I'm doing now. I actually remember saying as a 14 year old boy, I'll never sing in front of anyone, never. Well that was not God's plan, that was just a hurt, and an embarrassment, and shame, and a rejection thing talking, and I was saying words that would have sealed my fate. God gave me the grace to repent of the words and cancel them, and change and discover that there was more in me than I realised. There's more in you than you realise, but you've got to learn how to tap into God's life, the flow of the prophetic spirit, and begin to start to agree with the words of God. Always there's going to be other words that will come to try and knock you down, and that's what we want to do tonight, we want to speak to you about those words, how to deal with those words, and then after this we're going to start to be looking then at beginning to tap into the whole prophetic realm of getting words from God, agreeing with the words of God, begin to meditate in the words of God, speak the words of God, until our life begins to reflect and begins to start to articulate what God has to say about our life. See, there's what you see, and there's what God sees. What you see, well it's temporary, and it's subject to what you can't see, and so we need to begin to understand how the faith realm works.

So in the coming year we want to look at faith, and how faith operates, and how to position yourself in a relationship with God, and how to begin to speak God's word, so that you see things change around you. You're going to love that, but to do that, we have to shift in our heart, and abandon negative speaking. We have to actually let the Holy Ghost help us purify our heart, and our thought life, so that we begin to reflect and speak the way God speaks. You never find Jesus putting anyone down. He spoke the truth, and people didn't like it, but He never deliberately put anyone down. The devil is the one who puts down.

Let's have a look in the scripture here, 1 Peter, Chapter 2. I don't want to draw this out. I want to just give these points just quite simply and quickly. We're going to first of all look at how Jesus dealt with violence, verbal violence. Okay, we'll pick it up in Verse 21. Now for this were you called, because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example we should follow His steps. He committed no sin, neither was any deceit in His mouth. So He didn't do anything wrong, and He didn't lie or use trickery or anything like that. Now notice this, it says when He was abused, He didn't abuse back. When He suffered, He didn't threaten. See, but what did He do? So you notice here, it's speaking of two things that Jesus experienced in His life in the earth. He experienced many things, but one of them was He was abused verbally. He was abused verbally. Many times when you look at Jesus' ministry, you find Him subject to verbal abuse, constant accusations, constant gossiping about Him, words spoken. The Bible says, they hated Him and wanted to kill Him, because they were envious of His success, so He experienced verbal abuse.

The Bible tells us when He was in the desert at the beginning of His ministry the devil came to Him and attacked Him and began to come against who He was, began to challenge who He was. Who do You think You are? The devil still does it. Who do You think You are? Well You reckon You're the Son of God - You better prove it by doing something that looks like You're the Son of God. See, there is an abusive attack upon Him and He overcame it by the word of God. When He's hanging on the cross, in suffering and in pain, the Bible says they went by and they abused Him as He was on the cross. The soldiers abused Him and belittled Him. So the kinds of words which we talked about that people do that really hurt, that release spirits of murder and death and violence against us, Jesus experienced all of those things. So when we talk about Him we often think of Him, a baby in the manger, we think of a gentle Jesus, but actually He was a man of outstanding courage and strength because when He was in His greatest pain and people stood around Him and abused Him and cursed Him and swore at Him, plucked off His beard, when they did all of these things, He did not abuse them back and He did not threaten them.

So the Bible tells us they not only verbally abused Him, they physically abused Him as well, and He didn't abuse them back verbally, and He did not threaten them, or use the threats of violence against them. He could have. The Bible says in a moment, He could have summoned angels, and those men would have gone into an eternity screaming in terror and fear. He had the power to make that happen, and yet He never used that power to get back at the people who were hurting Him. Amazing - and it says He gave an example, having suffered abuse verbally, and suffered abuse physically, how you and I can do the same thing, and it says this is what He did. He committed His cause to His Father, who judges righteously.

What it is, is He committed His personal rights to the Father. In that sense, He allowed God to sort things out on His behalf. He just listened to what the Father wanted to do, so He laid down His rights. The reason people get angry, the reason people get really upset, is because they become frustrated, and their perceived rights are violated. We think we have a right to be able to get straight here without being blocked, we get blocked by some cars or traffic, we get angry, frustrated. So Jesus laid His rights down, so Jesus' attitude in coming into the world was this; the world sucks, but I made it, and I love it, and I'm going to come in and make a difference. So as the Bible says very clearly, He came into the world, it says in Matthew, Chapter 20, Verse 28, it says He came with no expectation that the world would meet His needs. He came with an expectation, He could make a difference. He had access to something from heaven that He could release into the earth, to change what He saw. Most of us want what's around us to work to serve us, and so we set ourselves up for all kinds of anger and upsets and every kind of thing, so in this it tells us very clearly, the secret or one of the keys, was that Jesus released His rights to the Father, and let the Father sort the mess out. He just listened what to do, so instead of getting wound up and angry and reactionary, He just let it go to the Father, and then He listened to what He should do. We just want to yell, and jump up and down, and stamp, and yell back. We get all upset or hurt or withdraw, all kinds of things we get.

Notice here, 1 Peter, Chapter 4 - In 1 Peter 2 it says it's an example to walk in the same way. Now to follow His steps means, you have a look how He walked, and you'd walk the same way, so when people yell at you, you don't yell back. When people treat you badly, you don't treat them badly back. That's walking in His steps, following His example. To follow His example, you need two things to work on your behalf; one, you've got to learn to lay your rights down in the Father, let the rights of your life go to the Father, so whatever happens you're okay with, and secondly, you've got to learn how to draw from His life and spirit, so you know what to say and do. If you don't know what to say and do, you'll never know when you should: stand up against what's happening, withdraw from what's happening, or wait timing to do something. If you're angry and upset by what people are doing to you, and how they're treating you, you'll never be able to respond properly, so when we let our rights go to the Lord, when we let the injustices, and the things that are happening just go to Him, and begin to listen to what He wants us to do, we're positioned then to be able to change the situation.

I'll show you some things you can do that will help, and of course there's a lot of young people here tonight, so some of these things will be relevant for you I'm sure. So we see, we talked about different kinds of words, so the words we found which really release violence against us - it's not nice to be in situations where there's violence, I can tell you now. It's alright to watch it on television perhaps, as long as you don't watch too much and feed your soul on it. The Bible says, God hates those who feed on violence. There's something addictive about it. Violence brings a shock to the human system, and I can remember I've been in some situations which were potentially quite violent.

One, I remember being at a party, and a guy was putting down my brother, and I had to stand up and stop what was happening. The situation got very difficult, and although I was able to restrain the guy, handle the situation, afterwards the shock to my spirit was quite intense. There's something about violence that shocks our spirit, see? We're not made for that. We're made for heaven's life, which is the life where there's love and peace, and when we're in an environment where there's violence, it actually impacts us extremely deeply, because it's not something that's comes from God. It's something that comes out of the demonic realm. I've been in situations where I've had to confront people who were causing trouble to people in the church. I remember one time, having to take someone out of a meeting, because I knew his only reason for being there was to wheedle his way into the church, so he could sleep with girls in the church, so I actually confronted him in a meeting and took him outside. But you know, you could feel the violence that was about to erupt there, and it shocks your system.

Any time you're involved with or experience violence, there's a tremendous shock factor, because we're not designed for that. We're not designed for that. When you have an operation, usually the shock of the operation leaves quite an impact, it can have quite an impact on you. You're involved in an accident, a traumatic accident, a traumatic experience, then the shock actually hugely affects your body, your soul and your spirit. Every part of you is affected by it, so when you're exposed to verbal violence, and that's what we're going to focus on tonight, verbal violence - in Proverbs it tells us, in Chapter 18:21, it says death and life are in the power of the tongue. So a person can speak, and the words they speak release a violent, murderous, destructive spirit against you, or they can speak different kinds of words, and release a life-giving spirit that heals, refreshes, touches and blesses you.

When we move prophetically - prophetically means we are listening to God, and getting words from Him to speak to people - people weep, because their hearts are touched. They get touched in the depth of their being. They feel loved. They feel enveloped, they feel - when you minister prophetically, or have a word of knowledge about a broken heart, or some area in a person's life, the spirit of God comes with those words, and people often just break down and weep, because the spirit carried by the words has deeply entered into their heart with healing and restoration. So the words we speak can be words of death, they can impart destruction into people's lives, see? Suppose I got totally drunk on booze, and had a sword and start swinging the sword around. I'm just goofing off, swinging that sword around, and this room's not this big, it's a bit smaller. You would understandably get very nervous, because there's a real danger to you, that I'm unaware what I'm doing. I'll cut someone, or hurt someone seriously with that sharp sword. And yet we can be in a room with a person, who is under the influence of anger or some kind of demon spirit, and they begin to start to mouth off, and the words that they're speaking, the Bible says, there is one who speaks like the piercings of a sword, their words are releasing something against us.

Of course you know sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me; words will hurt you, and change your life. The bones will repair. The wounds that the words create, may never ever be healed, unless you actually do something to change them. I've known people who have had words of cursing spoken over their life by a father, and they believed they were a failure all their life, and their life was always below their potential. When they broke the agreements with the words spoken over them, and began to agree with what God said, it was like they came alive, and emerged out of a place where they'd been contained all their life, so there's no doubt words carry a spirit. They carry something that nurtures you, or wounds you, one way or the other. Think about that. Now we're beginning to think about words, so we found there were certain kinds of words, and words which were put down words. That means they are attempting violently, they're attempting to use words literally to beat you down, so you come back down, and let go your dream, and stop being who you are called to be. Now you find that everywhere at school, people try to put you down.

There's these put down words, put down comments, put down accusations, and all those kinds of things. Now what they carry is they carry a spirit which is - its assignment is to wound you, so that you will not pursue who you are, and what you are, in Christ. That's what they do, so put down words will do that. Oh you idiot, who do you think you are? You're nothing. Those kinds of things, sometimes teacher speak those words, sometimes those words have been spoken by a father or a mother. I've had to pray for young women whose fathers called them a slut, and spoke words over them that actually changed how they saw themselves, and wounded - their whole identity changed. They began to actually agree with the words the father had spoken, and began to live out what he'd proclaimed over their life. Oh, words have power alright. See, by the blessing of the upright, the city is established. So we can bless a city, we can speak over a city, and alter its atmosphere. We can speak over our life, and alter its atmosphere. We can speak death, and many people speak death, so put down words.

Angry words also carry a spirit of violence. They carry a spirit of violence and murder, and when they come against you, you become wounded by them. You think what it was like the last time someone nutted off against you, and began yelling at you and abusing you, what it felt like on the inside. I'm just going to give you a list of some of the things that verbal violence does to us. Believe me, it's not a neutral zone when someone is nutting off at you, and someone is yelling at you, when someone is abusing you, when someone is putting you down, when someone is actually acting with verbal violence against you, there is an impact on every part of you, body, soul and spirit.

You just begin to say to yourself no, I'm no good. I'm a failure. After a while, you'll find you don't even have to say it very much and your whole soul and body begin to lose energy, as you come into agreement with those things, so when others abuse us, it can potentially have dramatic life-changing effects on us, particularly if it's the home environment, where God has designed that we be nurtured like a little plant. Now I've got some plants. I'm hopeless with plants. I don't know what happens, the day after I buy them they die [Laughter] or it seems like the day after I buy them. I'm sure it's actually a lot longer than that. Something happens. I actually neglect them, so the fact that I didn't hurt the plant, just actually fail to nurture it, it just died, and people are like plants. If they're not nurtured, then what happens is they begin to wither.

Let me just give you some examples then of what happens when there's verbal violence, put downs, scolding, yelling, anger, accusations, all of those kinds of things. They carry with them something designed to put you down. If you don't actually take a proactive step against it, it's going to hurt you, and wound you. Let me give you a few things that it does, and I'll just quickly give them, then I'll show you - mostly I want to speak about just how to get out of this thing. The first thing is violence. Proverbs 18:21, there's been a violent attack on you, when someone has abused you, yelled at you, put you down or whatever. You have been subject to verbal violence. Someone has attacked you. You've been attacked. Now if you went down the street, and someone grabbed you and beat you up, and left you lying bleeding on the ground, you'd know you'd been attacked, but people do it with words, and we don't seem to realise what it's done. But what happens afterwards, you actually feel quite numbed and stunned, and you don't even really know what's really happened to you. You've gone into shock.

Very often, if you're in a relationship which is controlling or abusive, where particularly men, sometimes men get incredibly abusive of women. They have unresolved conflict with a woman. They begin to really put down women; what can happen in that relationship is the woman actually becomes stunned and numbed totally by the violence. Maybe he never touched her once and physically harmed her, but the words. Sometimes young people growing up, they've been subject to that kind of verbal violence and angry outbursts, and it hurts their spirit. So first of all, number one, it's violence. Number two, it releases demons against you. In Ephesians 4, Verses 26 and 27, tells us be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger, and don't open the door to demons, so it tells us it's okay to feel angry, it's okay to have expressions of anger, but don't let it explode and hurt people. Deal with it the same day, so you don't open the door to demons, so very clearly angry people open the doorway to demons.

You go into some homes and you wonder, whoa, what is this? You feel the atmosphere. See, people came here the other day at the funeral and whoa! What's in here? They can't see it, but they can feel it, because we're spirit beings. So the atmosphere of heaven where there's glory, nurtures us the most. The atmosphere of the earth, which can be at times filled with violence, can destroy your life, so we have to actually determine to run our life, so while we're in the growing phase, we have continued access to the presence of God, words of encouragement and atmosphere of life, so our spirit and soul are nurtured and become strong. If you're in a situation where you're exposed to put downs, you've got to make some decisions what you're going to do about it. I'll give you a few options of what you can do, but we need to understand that demons are released. You get someone who gets violent or angry, yelling, accusing and putting down, afterwards you have had a fiery dart, and have you noticed after you walk away, it's like you can't get the words out of your ears? It's like for three or four days you say oh Father, I forgive them, but you feel like oh man! This thing, I can't seem to get over it, and now instead of being able to enjoy the next two or three days, something someone yelled at you is just echo, echo, echo. You think man, what's happened to me! Actually the Bible calls it a fiery dart. That was an arrow that had some flammable material, they'd fire it at a building, and they'd fire it at you, fire it at your shield, and set you on fire.

That's what's happened. You've had a dart come, that set you on fire. That's why we need to know the armour of God so we can quench those fiery darts. The devil doesn't always personally come to us. He often works through people around us, that are near to us, and they speak scornful or sometimes they don't even know what they're doing. They say words, and you go away and you think oh, oh, oh. You notice how often you come to a conference, or go to a camp, and you've had this wonderful, wonderful time with God and about five minutes after you're out the place ZONK! Aah! It feels like all the thing was stolen from you, because an arrow has come, and it's a living spirit that's come, using words to try and quench you, knock you down, get you out of the place God has brought you.

If you don't know how to deal with it, what to do with it, you will actually then lose all the benefit of the time you had when you went to the camp, so you've got to learn what to do. So the third thing is that verbal violence wounds people. Verbal violence wounds your soul, and your spirit. In Proverbs 12:18, it says there is one that speaks like the piercings of a sword. There are some people's words have got an ability to get right inside you, and absolutely wound you. Now if I got a sword and cut you, you'd see you're bleeding all the way out to the toilet to get fixed, but if someone spoke words into you, you could be bleeding on the inside all the way home, and all the next day, and the next week, and no one saw you, see? Because we look on the outside, God looks on the heart.

I've found over the years, as I've begun to look into this area, I found I'll just look at people sometimes, and just talk with them, they begin to weep and they're bleeding, because you look past the outside at that cocky, confident attitude or whatever it was, and suddenly saw inside there's a hurt person, who doesn't know what to do with what's ringing and echoing around in their life. So words, verbal violence wounds people. The fourth thing it does is, it intimidates people, and shuts down their gift, intimidates them, and shuts down their gift. 2 Timothy, Chapter 1 and Verse 6, Paul's talking to Timothy, and he says stir up the gift which is inside you, don't be afraid. Why was he afraid? What was he afraid of, and why was he afraid? He was actually afraid of people. People were intimidating. You know what they were doing? They were telling him you're too young to be doing that job. Who do you think you are? They were challenging him, and Paul wrote to him another time and said, don't let anyone despise your youth. Sometimes older people can have a tendency to do that. When a young person's arising and emerging, the light of God is shining on them, they begin to speak. Who do you think you are?

What that does is it intimidates, so verbal violence or angry words or accusing words, abusing words, what they can do is so intimidate a person, it shuts down their gift, they can't function, they can't even be who they're called to be. You come in a home environment where there's a lot of anger, and shouting, and disturbances and things like that, you've got to find a way to survive it. What you do is you shut your spirit up, you close up, and you close up house, and you go away somewhere in your mind, in your emotions. You just vacate being present, so this is a huge issue, especially people who've been in homes where there's been physical, or sexual, or verbal violence or anything like that. They get shut down, then you see, you come to Christ, but you've got to actually open that part of your life that was shut down, and let the Holy Ghost heal you, restore you, and begin to start to change what you believe about yourself. Does that make sense? You're all getting quieter. How many know what I'm talking about here, aye?

Here's another one then, another thing of verbal violence. It stirs up or causes further anger, so if you've been in a place where people are yelling and abusive, how many know that the first thing you feel is, you feel hurt when people yell at you? Well, what follows on just after that? You get angry. You get angry, and if you can't find a way to deal with the anger, you just internalise it, and then you've got all this anger. The Bible says that. It says in Proverbs 15:1, a soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words, harsh words, stir up and create anger. So if you're in a verbally violent situation - you have a think. Young people, think of the homes of some of the kids that you're going to school with. I have seen them in classes. They can't function. They can't succeed. They're too much of an emotional mess, because of what's going on in their homes. They're wounded, they're angry. There's a lot of young people that are really angry, and you get a few drinks, they go crazy. They get in a car, and away they go, and they go crazy, but actually they're angry, and they've got no way to deal with the anger, don't know what to do with what they're feeling, see?

They've been affected by this whole deal, and we need to know how to get out of that. So it stirs up anger, finally it lowers esteem, it lowers the value. So when you're abused, one of the things that happens is your feeling of the value you have about yourself, it tends to be lowered. You actually feel very lowered in your esteem, but you feel down on the inside, rejected and often depressed as well. But these are kinds of things that happen. This happens all around. You walk down the street, you can see people who look like that. You can see it in their eyes. You get into a church like this and of course, what we encourage is expression to the Lord, but if people have got controls, and are shut down, and been hurt and wounded, what happens is they actually find it real difficult to do it, whereas it's the most natural thing for a little child. They don't worry about anything. What happened on the way?

You weren't born reserved. You got that way. You got that way, trained like a monkey not to function like a man, see? The people that God's created, everything God's created is to praise Him, express Him, find different ways of expressing, you see? But verbal violence beats you down and then you don't function right, so how can we get out of it? There's a few simple keys, I'll give them to you now.

So what are you going to do to break free of this whole deal? So you're faced with verbal violence. One of the first strategies you could do is calm the person down, if they're angry with you. I remember having a lady over the road, and she started yelling away at me. I thought she was yelling at someone else, turns out she was yelling at me. She's yelling at me in front of the whole street, telling me what a terrible father I am. Well, I felt quite hurt. I got angry after that, wanted to throw some dirt at her. [Laughter] I was digging something there. I felt like, you stupid old woman, I know what I can do to you. I'll throw some stuff down - get off the street! Anyway, you drink too much, and you're nose is - I was thinking all those things. [Laughter] See the problem is, if you're hasty, if you're quick to get angry, then you do foolish things. Then you have to apologise. So instead of actually being right, now you're in the wrong, and you've got to go and humble yourself, eat humble pie.

So I just went down to talk with her, and I just talked very quietly, so if a person's really angry and abusive, just calm them down. Don't react, don't buy into the anger, feed on the anger, react to the anger. Just quietly talk. Talk quietly, talk with a soft voice, and begin to ask them questions, and what it does, the calm spirit will cause them to calm down, and they begin to have to talk and answer your questions, and you begin to listen to them. What happens is, they begin to start to get out of that angry cycle, and they start to talk, then they begin to open their heart. I've had a number of people angry, or really in a state, and just that one scripture, see, just soft answer turns away anger. The Bible's real clear, so you just talk softly. Oh, what seems to be the trouble? You just seem to be very upset. There must be something really worrying you? What's happening, what's going on?

Anyway, it turns out the real problem was the lady was fearful of death. You think how on earth did that come about? She's yelling at you, and she's afraid of death. Well very simple, it sort of went like this. I'm up there, and there's kids on the street. She thought they were my kids - that was wrong for a start. She was afraid someone would run them down, specifically, she was afraid her husband would run them down, and specifically, because her husband had been going through medical problems, and actually she was concerned about his health. But what she was really concerned about was, him dying, and her being alone. So the fear of death was what was causing this angry abuse of me. I hadn't done anything to cause it. It's a reflection of an unresolved problem she's got, but if I'd actually not stopped long enough, and just acted biblically, I'd have never found that out. I'd have thrown dirt at her, and told her to get off the street, and stop drinking, and I've had had an angry neighbour who'd have run me down for weeks. I have enough troubles with neighbours as it was. Just coming into the street seemed to be a trouble for the neighbours; lights on all the time, prayer meetings in the morning, meetings late at night, young people in the yard. I mean, whatever we did seemed to upset everyone. I didn't need any more angry people around you know, but that's just a very simple thing.

So sometimes you can actually quieten an angry person down, or quiet someone who's hostile. Just touch them, talk with them quietly. That's one thing that could work. Here's the second thing you do is, you just take a hike. Jesus took a hike. He even told them. He said if they persecute you, you just take a hike. In other words, you withdraw totally from the situation where people are abusing you, so if you've got people who are so-called friends, but they're angry, abusive people, they've got a lot of anger in their life, you just actually don't make them close friends, because you'll pick up their anger, and you'll become like them. Sometimes, the only way to get away from verbal violence, or violent abuse, is to actually cut off the relationship, and withdraw totally, and put a boundary on it.

That may mean hey listen, put your hand up, I'm not taking this and just walk away. I won't be treated like that, I'm out of here. Sometimes you've just got to stand up, and walk away. Now not every situation you can walk away, but many you can, so when people start to get that way, then get out of the place. Often you find you get around people, and they've been drinking a bit, it's okay for a little while, and then there's a certain point reached and they start to get nasty. When they get like that, hey, I'm out of here. So you boundary it. If it's possible to boundary your life against being exposed to it, then you should do that. Sometimes people have got to move out of relationships, even have to move out of homes, because it was too abusive, and it was actually destroying their ability to go forward. Sometimes a young person can't get out of that situation, so you've got to figure another way to deal with it, but you do need a safe space, so sometimes it's just a matter of just going into your own room and just being away from the environment.

You do have to boundary that kind of behaviour. Jesus didn't say you should be some kind of martyr and put up with it all, just because you love them. He said no, if that person leaves Christ, go to another place. Come on, you've got to get smart in this thing. Many people have stayed. I can just think of someone here tonight who was counselled by some well-meaning person, who I'd like to slap, into staying in an abusive marriage for years, violently abusive. We're talking here physically violent. I think what kind of crazy Christian would counsel that sort of way? I mean they must be confused in their head. I just said well, you should have told them to change places, and see if they've got the same counsel after two days. Well some people just give stupid - well-meant, but it's just stupid counsel. See, we're not meant to stay in a place which is going to endanger our future, where we become actually destroyed by the environment we're in, because in order for your life to go forward, you have to have an environment that nurtures emotional and relational health.

Sometimes we can do things to shift the environment we're in, sometimes we've got to learn to go deep into God, in order to make an environment of our own we can live in. So sometimes you've just got to wall it off. I can remember having a teacher that used to yell and abuse me in front of the whole class, I can't believe it. Now this is seventh form, and stand there yelling, hostile yelling. Of course there's no way I would, you know - well, of course I could have said a few things. Actually I did. I let off some bombs round in the toilet [Laughter] No, it gets better, it gets better. I put a time fuse on them, and found the guy, and started to talk with him, so he'd be my alibi. [Laughter] There's always a way of getting around stuff! I don't recommend that at all. [Laughter] You'd probably be put in jail these days. They seem to be a bit of a sensitivity about people making bombs now and [Laughter] it was fun when I used to do it, but we can't do that sort of thing today.

So what I did mentally was, I learned mentally to erect a wall, or a boundary inside me, to stop his words impacting me, because even though I wasn't a Christian, I knew intuitively they would hurt me, and they'd get in and affect me. So you actually have to build a wall. He could yell all he liked, I didn't hear a word. I'd just shut my hearing off, and just focus my thoughts and attention elsewhere, just to avoid the abuse. So I wasn't able to get out of the classroom. I needed to be there to get the instruction, to get to where I wanted to get. I had to then adopt a strategy to stop the violent abuse penetrating my life and damaging me. Get the idea? You've got to learn strategies on these things, isn't that right?

Another thing then is, sometimes you've just got to confront it, so another strategy is to confront. You have to do it at an appropriate time, so don't confront someone when they're nutting off. You'll really get them going. It's not the best time. The best time is when they're quiet, and then you sit down, you pray, you arrange to have a talk with them, and you talk about how what they're doing is impacting you, and that's it, not acceptable any more. Then you have to just set up a boundary again. Now of course, if you're in a home where this is happening, particularly unsaved parents, it's a lot more difficult, but you can find usually a room to go to, and you can do a lot to soothe. Believe me, I know what this is like. But when you're in that verbally abusive environment, it does dramatically affect you, and often we need healing.

So I'll give you the last couple of steps, and then we can just have a chance to have an altar call. Some of you, this will be really ringing bells with you. So the next thing is, we have to deal with how things have impacted us, and what I've found is that being in a terribly abusive, verbally, just there's an environment which has got a lot of anger and tension in it, you become filled with fear and you shut down. Then you become incredibly sensitive to whenever that anger and tension is in the air, and the moment those things are around, fear grips your heart.

I can remember for a long, long time being incredibly sensitive to anyone being angry, and immediately feeling afraid, just like that. So the impact can be life-long. How do you deal with that? Well we need to bring it to the cross. We need to bring what's happened to us to the cross. There's people have been abusing you, people have spoken into your life, the cross is the place of injustice and unfair treatment, where I can actually remember what has happened to me, and how I feel about it, and weep and grieve, and release it to the cross. I've got to let it go to the Lord, got to let go the right to try and get payback and vengeance, release it all to the Lord, and let it go, and grieve over it. He carried our grief. He understands what this is like. He carried our sorrows, He carried the pain, He carried the damage. He carried every aspect of abuse. He was abused. He died as a person abused, so He understands what it's like to be in that environment and He can offer healing.

The first place is to come to the cross, to come into that place by faith where Jesus took the penalty, the burden of all of these failures, so we bring it to Him and grieve over it, and forgive the person who's done it. Forgiveness unlocks the thing. Then the second thing I need to do, is to cancel the power of the words. Sometimes words spoken over us by angry people, cursing us and speaking into our life can follow us, because they've got a demonic empowerment, so we need to cancel their power, just simply like this; In the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, I cancel the power of those curses. I cancel the power of those negative words. I cancel and break their power - so we can get out of this thing that's come around our life.

Finally, if I've been hurt and wounded by a verbal violence, first to the cross, then cancel it to release forgiveness and grief, secondly to cancel the power of these things, and thirdly I need to then begin to start to take time to renew how I think. Now that takes time. We'd much rather come up in altar call and get a fix. You know the fix will do a certain amount. It'll shift demons, it'll break grief, it'll break bondages, it'll unlock ties, but then I've got to actually take the word of God, and begin to start to find a strength and identity in Christ. I've got to begin to meditate in the word of God, and begin to agree with what God says about who I am, about the strength, about the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is inside me, giving me life, giving me the ability to prevail over everything in life. I need to get that as a reality inside me. It is true, but my conscious awareness isn't aware of that. I just feel too small, because of what's been spoken to me, but meditation in the word of God, and confessing that word of God, begins to rebuild the strength and the inner man, so I can stand up and have strength on the inside.

Then when things come, I can immediately stand up to it, or I know straight away what to do. Now what happens of course, is when people have been beaten down with verbal violence - ever seen a cowered dog? You know, I hate them. I don't know how they walk, they've got a funny way of walking. They don't walk straight. They've kind of got their tail hooked in under them, you know? When you see them you think what's happened here? Obviously they've been intimidated and frightened, but a lot of people walk through life like that, like some kind of cowered, beaten up, dog you know? That's not what we're called to be. We're sons of the living God! We're sons and daughters of the living God! We're ambassadors of heaven! We have access to the presence of God! We can create an environment that nurtures us. We can build relationships that strengthen us and cause us to be encouraged. We can get in a small group, we've got people around us can speak words of life and prophesy over us, and speak the word of God into our life. We can pray in tongues, and build our spirit man, and begin to access the presence of God, and begin to have an environment that's different! That's what you're called to be. See, you're not to live out of the environment around you, but to carry the environment of heaven to that place. But that's a growth step too. You don't just suddenly arrive there. You grow your way there, but you have to realise if you're in a verbally destructive, violent situation you must do something. To do nothing is to be beaten down, and wounded, and damaged for all of your life by what is happening, and you are too special and important for that to happen.

You make a decision; I won't live with put downs. I won't live with negatives. I won't live with these things. I won't be put down any more. What I will do is, I will begin to arise and handle things differently, whether that means confront it, quieten it and calm it down, whether it means withdraw from it, I'll do whatever is needed to do this. If it means that I've got to spend time alone and change my friends, begin to build a different kind of environment around me that supports the life of God, I'll do that. I WILL pursue the person that I'm called to be. See, you're called to do that. You're called to do that. You're called to do that and that's what will make you different, because others will look around, they'll say how did you get where you are? They want to know because they need your help to get there.

So whatever you've been through, whatever you've faced, God's just ready there to help you get up, be a winner in it. That's what you're wired up to be, a winner in life; a winner in whatever situation, a winner! You say well, you don't understand how bad my situation - well, what a great chance for Jesus to raise the dead! Suppose you got killed and knocked down, battered, beaten, broken and there you are, crushed, don't even know who you are, whatever. Well that's as close to death as you can get. Jesus raises the dead!

He has the power to lift you up, but you've got to tap into it by faith in Him, and engaging Him at a heart level over these things. So over these few weeks God has been doing that, and tonight's an opportunity for you, if you've been subject to verbal violence, to cursing, words spoken over you that put you down, this is your time to make a decision, I will break out of that. If you're a person here tonight, and you've never ever actually walked with God, known what it is to have a personal connection with the Lord, tonight's your night to make that decision, to come to Jesus Christ. He came to give you life. That implies something. If He came to give you life, and give it more abundantly, it means you're living below your potential, and to maximise what God has called you to be, you must connect with the one who created you.

Come on, let's close our eyes right now. Maybe there's someone here tonight, and you know what I'm talking about. You just know what this is. You think man, I think he must have known, must have read my mail or something. He's talking just about my life, but friend tonight God loves you. You are loved by God. You are valued by God. I have taught people around the world to hear the voice of God, and almost every time they feel Him love them, and they hear Him say I love you, I love you. You are special to Me. Words from heaven - what wonderful words. Words from heaven; I love you, you are very special to Me. God Himself telling you He loves you. I have been to meetings where God's love started to touch people, people felt the love of God, and then they began to hear Him say, I love you, you're very special to Me.

When you've lived years with put downs, abused for never being good enough, criticised, accused, attacked in various ways verbally, then you hear a different kind of word, a word from heaven, I love you. Suddenly the well springs of grief begin to break open; I'm valued. I'm important to God. See, connecting with heaven you connect with the environment of God's glory and goodness, an environment where everything thrives.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Proverbs 18:21 – “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…”.

· People are spirit beings – the words we speak are containers that carry spirit content.

· We use words to express ourselves – to express what is harbored in our inner man.

· Words we speak have power to impart death or life – to change the course of our world.

· James 3:3-5 - The tongue – like a bridle or rudder – steers the course of our life.

· This week: Shaping the Inner World by the Word of God.

2. Changing the Way You Speak:

· Ephesians 4:29 - “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for edification that it might impart grace to the hearers”.

· The person you hear the most is yourself!

· Every person has an ongoing self-talk – 150-300 words p/min.

· Much of it is just about daily activities but can be negative/destructive e.g. “I’ll never be able to do that!”

· Ongoing self –talk that is negative creates “ruts in the mind” (neural pathways) and forms inner beliefs about life that can be hugely restrict or release.

e.g. Insurance Salesmen, athletes – formation of inner life key to top performance.

· “Impart Grace” = to supply something that is needed to build and

strengthen.

= the super natural ability and life and favour of God.

· “Hearer” = one who listens attentatively and receives what is spoken.

· Most people are unaware of what they are saying to themselves and its negative impact – complaining, self-pity, bitter, harsh, putdown.

· You can break negative patterns that ‘corrupt’ your inner world. You can speak God’s Word to yourself and impart grace.

· Isaiah 55:8-9 -“My thoughts are higher than my thoughts”, of Greater Value!

· John 6:63 - “The words I speak to you – they are spirit and life”.

· To change Inner World – do it the same way it was formed = by Words!

3. Changing Your Inner World:

a) Defining “Inner World”:

· Proverbs 23:7 - “As he thinks in his heart, so he is”.

· The Bible refers to your inner world as “the heart” or the “inner man”.

· Your inner man is made up of your soul and spirit.

· Matthew 12:34-35 - “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”.

· Your words are the overflow of what you have stored/treasured in your heart.

· E.g. Beliefs – something accepted as true.

Agreements – something have come into one mind, harmony with.

- get along with our contention.

· Mindsets – Habits of the mind, fixed ways of thinking or attitude.

· Expectations – things you look forward to and anticipate will happen.

· Judgments – things you have formed a decision or verdict about.

· These things can be ungodly/negative and impact the course of your life.

· These things can be shaped – formed, moulded or given new direction.

b) You must Identify the Issues – e.g.:

· A broken relationship to be resolved by forgiveness and blessing.

· A grief – painful experience to be faced.

· Bitter judgment made out of disappointment and hurt.

· Words that you have come into agreement with e.g. names you call yourself.

· Beliefs that you have formed that limit you e.g. “I’m no good at….”

· Mindsets that have formed that prevent growth.

· Key issues of all – living a life without God!

· John 10:10 - “Jesus came to give us life…more abundantly”.

· That life requires we change in the inner man = Choice.

· God imparts His Spirit into our spirit so that we have the power to change.

4. Key Steps to Change Your Inner World:

i) Personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

- 1 Corinthians 6:17 - “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”.

ii) Identify and resolve the relational issues e.g. broken relationships/grief/ judgment.

- Mark 11:25 -“When you stand praying, forgive”.

iii) Speak out and break agreements with negative words and demonic

spirits.

- Luke 10:19 - “I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions

and all the power of the enemy”.

- Matthew 16:19 - “I will give you keys of the Kingdom of heaven…”.

iv) Search out and embrace what God’s Word says about you.

- Embrace = to clasp another person in the arms in welcome and

affection”.

- Jeremiah 5:16 - “Your words were found and I did eat them and your word was to me joy and rejoicing of my heart”.

v) Declare strongly God’s Word over your life as an affirmation.

- Philemon 6 - Communication of faith is effectual as acknowledge every good thing in you in Christ.

- Romans 4:17 - “Calling those things that be not as though they are”.

- Scriptural affirmations – short – present tense – personal – positive.

vi) Meditate in what God says about you.

- Joshua 1:8 - “You shall meditate in it day and night that your may observe to do….for then you shall make you way prosperous.

- Meditate – turn over and over in the mind – picture it – imagine it.

- What does it look like? What does it feel like?

Power of the Tongue (9 of 12)

Sun 16 Dec 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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One of the biggest difficulties all marriages and families struggle with is the failure of men to actually speak words that give value, identity, purpose and encouragement to their wife and their children. Marriages languish for lack of words like plants languish for lack of water. Relationships languish for lack of words. They just wither. Use words to build relationships.

I want you to open your Bible at Proverbs, Chapter 18. Man, we feel like we've been having a feast in these last few weeks haven't we? I've been speaking on Taming the Tongue. How many found that their tongue is getting a bit better? How many have started to pick up not only what you're saying, but what others are saying? Have you noticed how strong the put downs are? It's unbelievable isn't it, and we need to learn how to address those things. First we address it in our own heart, and we're coming near Christmas now, near the end of the year, but I wanted to start to move from where we were talking about the negative aspects of the tongue, to actually how God has designed us to operate, and I want to share with you something today that'll help you.

We're just going to look at a message called the Power of the Tongue. I feel I'll add to this, and do some other sessions related to it, but I want to just give you some things that are really - I want to lift your thinking about God's design, because if we don't see how we're designed, we will always malfunction. The same with a natural thing; if you have some natural object, you don't know what it's made for, don't know what it's supposed to do, you'll end up using it for the wrong thing and use up, you know, like kids pick up a remote and use it as a hammer. They just don't quite know what it was for, until someone starts yelling [laughs] isn't that right?

Okay then, Proverbs 18:21; Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. The Bible tells us very clearly, your tongue has power. There is a power, a spiritual force in words. The Bible tells us very clearly, words that we speak are containers. They contain something. They contain what is in your heart, and we saw that there are all kinds of words people can speak. We looked at some of the negative kinds of words, and we also looked at what they release, and we're going to look today, I want to go and look really at the more positive aspect of this. But we've looked at how people release lying words, and it releases the spirit of murder and death against people. We looked at gossiping words. Gossiping words release the spirit of death against people, they hurt people.

We looked at flattery, which is empty words. They're words with an agenda, and they also hurt people, because ultimately the agenda comes out. We looked at empty words, words spoken which are insincere, have no meaning and they tend to disappoint people. Again, they minister death to people. We saw about put down words, words that you hear the words, but the spirit within it, and what it contains, you go away and you feel downed afterwards, and you feel put down. You feel less. You feel actually dishonoured and devalued, and we saw these kinds of words and what they did. We saw the last one we looked at was angry words, and we saw how angry words release a spirit of murder, and people don't just hear the words, they feel the spirit that the words contain. It's a mixture of the human spirit. It's what's in your heart, and it also activates and releases demonic spirits, so many people I know and have prayed for, ministered to, have been deeply wounded for almost the whole length of their life, because of some angry outburst within the family by a father or mother, or by someone near to them when they were very young. They've carried the impact of that right through their life.

So we saw these were some of the different kinds of words, but now I want to look at the proper use of the tongue. I want to look at design, and I want to show you something from the word of God about design, about things that God designed us to do, because most of us, because we don't know what we're designed to do, don't actually function properly. We don't realise that when people that have been made in the image of God, means we're made with God nature. We have a spirit nature, therefore when we speak, we're able to do things with our words that nothing else in creation can do, and it's part of God's purpose for our lives. So let's just go first of all into Genesis, Chapter 1 and I don't want to expand this much. I want to just show you a couple of things in Genesis, about how God uses words, how God uses words. It's quite interesting; God doesn't seem to use lots of words.

When God was speaking to Adam; Adam, where are you? Who told you you were naked? Did you eat the fruit of the tree? It's not kind of like, lots of words is it, a real man talking that one. But men and women both carry the nature of God, so God is also willing to share in the most vivid ways, and so when God communicates from the spirit to us, what He imparts into us can - it's hard to even put it into words, there's so much He can download in such a short period of time.

Okay, let's have a look in Verse 1, Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void; darkness was on the face of the deep. The spirit of God was moving or hovering over the face of the waters, and God said "Let there be light" and there was light. Let there be light, see and God saw the light and it was good. God saw the light, it was good. So number one, I want to share with you, two primary uses of words you'll notice that God has. Number one, He uses words to create, by releasing supernatural power. He uses words to create. He uses words to create. In fact when you're looking in the Bible, the law of first mention applies. The first place something is mentioned gives you the foundation for how it's consistently used right through the Bible, and so the very first reference to God speaking words, are words where He spoke creatively, and released power from the spirit world into the physical world, to create something that wasn't there. Now think about that.

God's first recorded use of words - I'm not saying He didn't talk before then, but the first recorded use, therefore the first mention is, He uses words to create something, by releasing supernatural power. Now if we're made in His image, and called to be imitators of Him, innately within us is an ability to create something in our physical environment, by releasing supernatural power. We may have been marred or affected by the fore, but innately inside us, is still this capacity to create using words, and we have an ability with words to release something from heaven into the earth. Now you've got to understand, that's totally connected to our design see? It's connected to our design, so God uses words to create.

In Hebrews 11, Verse 3 it says by faith we understand that, the worlds were framed by the word of God. That word framed means put together, assembled or constructed or brought into being, so by faith - we understand that with faith operating, God spoke, and His words created what we see. Now it says we understand that the things which are seen, the visible things, were made by things which are not seen. Now most of us, when we read that verse, we read it like this; the things which are seen, were made out of something invisible. But actually it says, the things which are seen by this naked human eye, were made out of something which is present, but just not visible to the naked human eye. See, for example, we can see visible - there's a certain spectrum of light waves you can see, but there are actually other light waves present. You can't see them with the naked eye, but they're still there, and what it's saying virtually, He said the things you can see, were made out of something that was there, which you couldn't see. So in other words, things from the spirit realm, brought into being the natural realm, so the spirit world is all around us, and what we see which is formed in front of us, was created by words, words brought from the spirit world into the natural world into being. That's how God did it.

It's not like He went sort of poof! Look at that! It didn't happen that way. He operated by a principle of faith, fully believing that what He said will come to pass, fully empowered to make it come to pass, because He's God. He spoke, let there be light - now you notice two things were there. The spirit of God was moving, and the word was decreed or spoken, and that created something that hadn't been seen before. Now as you look through the Bible, you find that Jesus operated in this consistently, and it's a realm that God is wanting you and I to learn how to grow up into. We already operate it in some degrees, for example the kinds of relationships you have, the kind of world that you have around you, primarily is shaped by the things you've been saying, see?

A lot of angry words, you've got a very unpleasant home and the home was created. I remember talking to staff one time, and they said we had to live in the house we build. Let's decide what kind of house we'll build, and build with one agreement about what that'll be - and it won't have gossip in it. It'll be a house without gossip, see, so words create something. They create things which we can feel, and see, their impact. So the first use of words that's recorded there, was to create something in the natural world which wasn't there before, by bringing power from heaven, the power of the Holy Spirit into the earth. Now you think of all the miracles Jesus did, how did He do it? How did He do it? The spirit of God was present. He spoke a word, power was released from that realm of the supernatural, from the realm of heaven into the earth, and the earth changed. Blind people saw, deaf people heard, crippled people walked. Now that's Jesus, who is the man, He's the one we're to follow. He sets the pace and how did He do it? He just actually fulfilled the original design, that one of the reasons for the use of words, of the tongue, is to be able to create things by releasing supernatural power.

Okay, well we could develop that a lot. I'm not going to go too far on it today. I just want to show you a few things, just to connect some things together, get the picture. Okay, the second thing that you find in Genesis that God did was this. This is the second thing He did with words; He established, and nurtured, and protected, relationships with words. He established, and nurtured, and protected, relationship with words. Now again, each of these could be developed quite a lot, but I just want to get you the overview right now, because we're right on Christmas. I want to get you to think about this. God established relationship with words. All relationships are established with words, or they're created through the words you speak. They're also nurtured, or kept alive, like water watering a plant, by the words you speak, and they're protected by speaking words.

Sometimes you have to confront things. Sometimes you have to set boundaries, so you notice in the first two or three chapters of Genesis, God begins to - let's have a look in Verse 26 for example of Genesis 1. God said "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, all the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him. So notice He established by words, a man that He intended to have a relationship with Him. God wants relationship. Man invented religion. God designed relationship. He made us for relationship. Religion is a very poor substitute. It's a lot of emptiness, with no relationship. It has no connectedness, so how did God get connectedness? Through words, and so we read in different places there, for example it says in Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 15; The Lord put the man in the Garden of Eden, to tend and to keep it. He gave him a purpose, and the Lord commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but out of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you'll not eat. The day you eat it, you'll surely die. It's not good that man should be alone, I will make him a helper comparable to him.

Now I'm going through this really quick, but the essence of it is this, that God used words firstly to create a man, and then used words to define his purpose, and to begin to enter into relationship with him. God put a boundary around the relationship, to protect the relationship. He said listen, you have all this freedom, but you can't eat that particular tree over there. You eat that tree, you'll die, so God used words to establish boundaries in relationships, and consequences for breaching it.

The Bible says in Genesis 3, they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden. Obviously it was God's practice in the evening to come and talk to the man He'd made, so we see emerging here, without looking into it too deeply, we see emerging in it two primary uses of words; number one, to create - to create in the natural world something that wasn't there, by releasing the power of God into that area; secondly, to establish, and build, or develop, or cultivate relationships, and protect them by speaking words. Now you think about this. How did Adam and Eve come into such a big problem? Why is it we got such a mess in the world? Very simple - they listened to someone else's words, and agreed with those words, and then hell came into the earth. Think about that.

Here's another thing to think about just while we're on it, that Adam who was mandated to protect with words and actions what he was entrusted, failed to speak up. Adam was with her, when she was talked to by the serpent, and he never did a thing. He never spoke. It's still a problem today; silent men. Silent men. Silent men allow the devil to work. The women are all smiling now, the men are - I don't like this message! Why don't you preach something better? Silent men allow the devil to work, because without saying words, they allow relationships to suffer and be neglected, boundaries to be broken, and in the end death and destruction come. Words. Oooh! Now you've got it. Now you begin to see what we're designed for, so if you begin to think now, and just keep remembering now, I'm designed to be creative with my words, to bring changes in the world around me by the use of my words, and I'm also designed to establish relationships, and to nurture them, or maintain them, and to protect them, by the use of words.

That's what it is, and I know I use my tongue to eat, but animals can do that too. See what distinguishes humans, is humans by their words, can release a spirit content into the world. Animals can't, so although animals can communicate, they cannot release spirits into the earth. Animals cannot release the Holy Ghost to move. Animals cannot release demons to take place, and move into areas in the earth, but people can. Why can they? Because their words have power. It's part of design, part of design. Okay then, so we got that clear? You've all got real quiet about that now. It's true, see? Now we're called. Now if God used words in those two ways, to create things, or to create by releasing supernatural power, and to nurture, protect, establish relationships, and we're called in Ephesians 5:1 to be imitators of Him, then we're called to do the same stuff. We're called to do the same stuff, create things with words, start things up that weren't there with words.

How does a new business get started? Someone has words. How do you get into an agreement to get married? Words. How do you meet a girl? Words. How do you form friendships? Words. Now it'll take more than words, but words are what initiate it. You've got to start with words; hi, how are you doing, you know? That's why silent men are a bit of a problem. [Laughter] It's true, silent men are - there's an issue there. There's an issue of malfunction. It's true, it's malfunction. We're just not functioning like we're designed, and we've got to learn how to function how we're designed. We're going to see how that works out in a moment. Okay then, so now I want you to have a look in Psalm 16. The Bible says your tongue is your glory. I'll show you that. I want to compare two verses. We'll just quickly look in Psalm 16, and then we're going to go and look into Acts, Chapter 2. The Bible says a strange thing about your tongue. It's called your glory. Like to stick your glory out, and we'll have a look at it? Ooh, it's furry. How did that happen?

Okay then, so in Psalm 16 and in Verse 9. We'll read it in Verse 8. I have set the Lord always before me, because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Remember that bit - therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices. Okay then, so you got that? Okay, now we look in Acts, Chapter 2. Now in Acts, Chapter 2, Peter is filled with the Holy Ghost, just got filled with the Holy Spirit, and so what does he do? Well, he begins to speak, and when he speaks, in Acts, Chapter 2, Verses 25 and 26, he quotes that Verse. David says concerning Him, Jesus, I foresaw the Lord before my face. He is at my right hand, I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad. So in the Old Testament it read my glory rejoices; in the New Testament he says my tongue was glad, so very clearly it means the same thing. Your tongue is your glory. Your tongue is you glory. Well goodness me, what does that mean?

Psalm 30, Verse 12 says, my glory may sing praise to You. Well what does that mean? Why on earth would they use such a strange terminology? First of all, let's have a look what glory means. The word glory means, to be weighty, or to have honour, and it comes from a word meaning this; it means - think about this - your tongue is your glory. Okay then, now think about your tongue being used for these things: to honour, to build people up, to bring honour to something, to increase the value of something, to impart value into something, see? So the words you release, reveal what you're like, and they impart something into the environment around you. They can either value or devalue, so with our words, we can give glory to God, or we can dishonour God. We can honour people, we can dishonour people. Your tongue is your glory, because your tongue reveals what kind of person you are, so if I want to know what you are, I watch what you do, see how you spend your money, but listen to your words, because in the end you'll give it away.

Your words will reveal who you are, because the Bible says out of the heart, the mouth speaks. In other words your honour, the honour you carry as a person, is seen by what you express through your words to the people around you. So for example, in one of the Proverbs it says, by the blessing of the upright, the city is exalted. In other words, if we speak well about our city, and begin to talk well about our city, and begin to bless our city, there is power in blessing it for it's atmosphere and it's vitality to be changed, see? But most people curse the city, curse the mayor, curse the government, curse this, curse that. They actually speak negatively and open the way for something else to happen - so your tongue is your glory.

Okay then, now I want to show you something we'll just read here. Now the first use of words in the Bible were to create value. See, there was no world. After God spoke there was value there. There's gold, there's silver, there's trees, there's fish, there's birds, there's people, all kinds of things are there. God created value with His tongue. He brought value, He brought something there see. Now the first use of words after the Holy Spirit got a hold of the New Testament Church, remember the first mention is always the one that tells them find it, so the first use of words in the Bible by God, what did He do? Number one, He created something, released power to create; two, He developed and nurtured relationship. Now have a look in the New Testament, and see when the Holy Spirit came, and the spirit of God came and filled people just like Jesus was filled, some things happened. I want you to see two things that happened, and you find they're the same two things. You find the first thing happens is people use their tongue to give honour to God, so they use their tongue to honour God. The first thing a person does when they're filled with the spirit is to begin to speak, and honour, and thank, and praise, and give glory to God. It's the overflow.

Acts, Chapter 2, they heard them speaking in tongues, declaring the wonderful works of God. Acts, Chapter 10, they were filled with the spirit. They heard them speaking in tongues and magnifying God, so the first evidence that your life has become filled with the spirit is, you begin to start to honour God, you begin to overflow and say something! Silent men are a problem again in this area. Our tongue is to speak. It's to speak, and we're to do something with it, so one of the things that happened in the New Testament was - the first thing that happened was, they honour God, who is the source. Acts 2:11, they began to speak in tongues, declare the mighty works of God. Acts 10 and Verse 46, they spoke in tongues and magnified God. What was the second thing they did? Oh, you're going to love what the second thing they did was. You're just going to love this. They acted as God's representative, and spoke words that created new lives. How about that. Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, stood up, began to speak the things of God, as God's representative, spoke on behalf of God into the earth, and 3,000 people were born again. Now what does that mean, 3,000 born again?

It means a supernatural miracle of God came into their life. They were born again. Sin was broken off their life. They got charged with the Holy Spirit. They came alive on the inside. That is a miracle! That was the new creation, the Bible calls it when you're born again, any man born again a new creation. Well so isn't this amazing? The two things that happen straight after people get filled with the Holy Ghost; number one, firstly honour God; number two, act as His representative, and begin to create things. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing. Act as His representative. First of all to honour God, and then to act as His representative, and begin to create things. Now you begin to see what you're designed to do. See, honour God, speak as His representative, and make things happen, create things.

I'll give you three things that'll show you how you can honour God, and speak things as God's representative. Let's quickly do them now. Okay, so God's designed you to do some speaking. You say well, I'm not a man of words. Well no, some people are far more strong in actions. They're able to do acts of kindness. Some are very compassionate. There's a whole range of different expressions, but you have been given a tongue, and words are necessary. Words are necessary. A gift without words is actually quite empty, and it's when you give it the words you create the value, the honour, tongue is your glory, your honour. So when you get at a function, one of the things at a lot of Kiwi functions, notice this, they don't speak words, or if they do speak words, they're so awkward and embarrassing and sometimes dishonouring, that you cringe and you wish no one had spoken. I think it's wonderful in the church in Bay City here you've got the message, because I go to any function anywhere, and I hear people stand up, and no matter how good or how simple or extravagant the meal has been, I here the words of value.

Interesting, when Rachel invited us to her birthday in a restaurant, and we went to the restaurant, and she had half of the people from church, half of the people from her work, and then she got to that magic moment where she asked me to actually speak words of honour. It's not an ego trip for her, it's actually she's wanting her unsaved friends to understand the power of words to create something in the atmosphere. They just were - like that. Bryden had a 40th birthday in Little India, and it was surrounded by people. We had lots of people there, and there was a bit of party atmosphere going on. Right next to us, there was a whole table of people who'd been boozing, and the guys were quite noisy. One after another people stood up, and they began to use their tongue for the purpose it's designed, create value, and his wife and his children and various friends and various people spoke. Do you know what happened? It changed the whole atmosphere. It added value, shut down the boozers and the drinkers, and they actually - actually, the wives were telling the guys to shut up, because we want to listen to this.

See, the tongue is used to increase value, to create value in people in their hearts, this is design. We're created to do that, and everyone longs to be honoured and valued. See, so one of the uses of your tongue, it's why we had to identify all the bad stuff, so you just get aware when that's happening to shut it down, stop it, zip it, move away from it. But now we want to move into being creative with our tongue, so we have power to bring honour, to do all kinds of stuff. Okay, so here's the two base reasons then. Number one, honour God as our creator and source, and there's a couple of ways we can honour Him. I'll give them to you. Number one, thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Psalm 69, Verse 30 says, I will magnify the Lord with thanksgiving. How do you make God bigger? He's already big. How can I make Him bigger? I make Him bigger in my experience, or I give honour to Him. How do I do it? By thanking Him, so we develop a heart of gratitude and thankfulness. We begin to thank Him, and express thank you to Him. Speaking in tongues is one way of expressing thanks and gratitude to God. The second one is praise. In Psalm 50, Verse 23, whoever offers praise glorifies or honours Me. So thankfulness or gratitude, being thankful and praise, praising God, speaking and declaring His works, and declaring who He is, and what He's done; when we do that we are giving honour to God, see? That's why we start the service this way, because we use our tongues and our bodies to express honour to God, and the interesting thing is, God has promised to inhabit the praises, to come in - He said if you want to come into my presence, the key is thankfulness and praise. I'll enter His gates with thanksgiving, enter His courts with praise, so it's a divine design that I can access heaven, if I will be vocal. I have to be vocal. I have to use my tongue for the intention God designed it, which is to magnify Him, and honour Him, and praise Him, and as I do it, the Bible says, He even inhabits the praises of His people. Hence we make such an issue of it in expressing gratitude and praise continually to the Lord, and doing it vibrantly, and alive, and expressively. Why? Because it's design. We're designed that way, and God's appointed that's the way into His presence, otherwise you have a nice little quiet thing, but nothing happens. You don't feel the presence of God.

Now remember noise is not what counts, it's words that carry gratitude and genuine praise. Man, isn't that great? Okay, second thing then is this, that we're designed to speak out as God's personal representative. We've got to speak as God's representative, so there are three primary ways I could think of that you would speak as God's representative. You don't start off by doing "this is God speaking"! It's not done that way. The first way you can speak in a way that makes you as a representative of God is this. Now this one will surprise you, and yet it won't surprise you, but it's not the one you'd first think to come up with. Here it is; when you fulfil commitments you have made, you are speaking like an ambassador of God. Oh! When you fulfil commitments you have made, you are speaking like a true ambassador of God, because - why is this? God fulfils His commitments. God watches over His word. The Bible says in Numbers I think it is, it says God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent. Has He not said, and will He not do? Has He not spoken, and will He not make it good? So when you say and do, speak and make it good, you're acting as a representative of God. How? With the way you use your words, and you know what? Here's the interesting thing. When you're a person who keeps your word people, treat you as being someone of honour. If you're a person who doesn't keep your word, people despise you, and so they should, because you're dishonourable. Have a think about it. Think about it.

We can actually - and this is the hardest thing is to watch over your words and make them good. I've taken the habit the last couple of years of writing things down, so I try to make sure I do keep good what I do. I mess up every now and then, but I've got to realise, it's really quite important, because God is a God who keeps His word. Our whole Christian faith is based on God keeping His word, so if we're to represent Him, one of the first things we must do with our words is keep them. So that introduces the whole area of making and breaking commitments. People just make them and break them without any thought. Be careful what commitments you make, and once you've made them, keep them. Commitments of what you'll do, get it done. Don't let someone down. Commitments to be there, and be there on time, do it and don't let the person down. Ooh, I had a few bad ones on that one.

We had a few difficulties in our marriage on that one, however we're on the way to a greater level as I have repented and come right. [Laughter] Yes, so it's probably why men don't say too much, because they'll be reminded of it later on [laughs] what they said. Did I say that? I don't remember saying that. Oh well you see, this is one of the things. Men may not speak well, but their wife has got an excellent memory [Laughter] to be able to remind you, a year later, what you said. How do you remember? I can't remember a week ago what I said, however fortunately this is a great teamwork. You say it, she remembers it! [Laughter] It's very, very good, a good arrangement God has made there, the second Holy Spirit.

There we go, so number one [laughs] fulfil your commitments. Okay, here's the second one. The second one is to use words to establish, nurture and protect relationships. Use words in relationship. Again all of these I could give a few things on, but let's keep it really simple. Use words to build relationships. One of the biggest difficulties all marriages and families struggle with is the failure of men to actually speak words that give value, identity, purpose and encouragement to their wife and their children. It's true. Marriages languish for lack of words, like plants languish for lack of water.

Relationships languish for lack of words. They just wither. They wither. Proverbs 15:23, A word spoken in season, how good it is! How good when you get someone encourages at the right time. Proverbs 15:4, A wholesome tongue is a tree of life. It really nurtures people. People hang out for people to encourage them. Ephesians 4:29, Let no corrupt word come out of your mouth, but that which is good to build up, and to encourage, and impart grace, and empower people. Words like that, they're treasures. Anyone who can speak words that impart grace to people, you're never going to lack for friends, never. People will be attracted like a magnet, because it's like their soul is withered, waiting for those kinds of words. You start to speak words anywhere in a street, encouraging people, valuing people, appreciating people, noticing things about them, it's like music. They will respond every time - when it's genuine and authentic, see?

In Ephesians 4:15, speaking the truth in love - so we have to protect relationships by speaking the truth and confronting, so relationships are shaped, framed, nurtured by words. Come on now, you were designed for this, and I can tell you now, I've prayed for enough people in the church. I've prayed for many young people, and they're withering for lack of words. Here they are in their teenage years, seeking direction and affirmation and help as they go through all these strange things happening in their body, and pressures from around them, and uncertainties about the future. To be silent then, is a crime against them. That's the time to speak in, and give direction, and be courageous, and if they fuss and yell and say you've ruined their life, don't take it personally. I've ruined all of my kid's lives at some time [Laughter] by saying "No!" [laughs] I can still remember a door slamming - You've ruined my life! You've ruined my life! Very dramatic. [Laughter] All I'd done was to ring up and ensure they were in the right place, the place they were supposed to be, and then gone and seen the people, and drawn them all to account for why they weren't there, and why they'd let them go when they - yeah, all that kind of stuff, you know?

Okay, so words. We need words for relationships, isn't that right? Strong silent men, this is time to start to get a tongue and use it. Okay and here's the last one. We use words to release the power of God. Words are used to release the power of God, so as an ambassador of God, you represent Him, one, when you keep your word, because you represent His character; two, when you establish, nurture, and develop, and build, and cultivate, and protect relationships, and three, when you release the power of God, by speaking the word of God. You release the power of God. Now you're called to do that. Did you realise you were called to do that? You're designed to do that. If you're not doing it, what's wrong? You're not functioning right. The tongue's flapping, but the wrong stuff's coming out, see? So let me just give you a couple of examples. We won't develop it, we'll just develop it in the next year, but we can use words.

Faith confessions, confessing what God says, releases Jesus to work on my behalf and bring it about. Hebrews, Chapter 3, Verse 1. Prophetic words; prophetic words are words that God gives me to speak, that bring encouragement and edification, to build up people, touch them, they begin to weep. I've seen people - just words and they cry when you speak words that have got the spirit of love, and hope, and encouragement in them. Wonderful! Wonderful gift to have. Notice this, interesting thing this. It says all may prophesy. It doesn't say anything about any other gift, but all may prophesy. Why? Because all have got a tongue called to build, nurture, encourage, develop relationships. Another thing we can do is faith commands, in Mark, Chapter 11. Faith command is where you speak in the name of Jesus to sickness, speak to demons, speak to invisible powers, speak to things that won't seem to move, and they move. No one's got any idea why and how they moved, but you know because you used your tongue to speak words that released heaven into the earth. Absolutely wonderful - just like we're designed to do, we've just got to learn how to do it. We'll teach you how to do that next year. And finally prayer. James 5:16, the Bible says the prayer of a righteous man, it releases great power into the earth, one of the modern translations. Is that fantastic? Well isn't this great. We're called to represent God and in representing Him we can nurture and build and encourage relationships. We can release the power of God into the earth, and we can honour Him. What a wonderful deal our tongue is given for - all that, and we can eat Hokey Pokey ice cream as well. [Laughter] Man oh man, what a deal aye! All of that, and strawberries and ice cream as well. It's great. You can do all of that.

But you see the thing is, the reality is, we've misused the tongue, because we didn't understand what it was for, and now God is saying up to another level next year, up to another level. Start to become a person who can build, who can establish, who can nurture, who can develop, who can encourage relationship. You've got a word in season, who can come to someone and bring a word of God to them, who can speak the word of God, pray the word of God, knows their authority, can start to command things. Oh no, it's not for me. Of course it's for you, you were designed for it. It wasn't for the dog down the road you know. It's actually for people. People are designed in connection with God to do all of these things. The problem is, we just don't believe in our heart we can do it, or we don't know what to do. Next year we're going to show you what to do, and how to do it, and believe for everyone start to come up to another level.

How many are involved in that prophetic evangelism over the weekend? Okay, keep your hand up. Now just put your hand down again. Here we go. How many of you found that the words you spoke touched people's lives? Whoa ho! Look at that! And we saw people saved by it. A new creation came into being, because you spoke. The church's time, the church got it's tongue.

Father, we just thank You for the great love You've given to us. We thank You for the great and wonderful power that You've put in a man and woman of faith who believe You, who love You and are connected to You. What a privilege. What a deal to be able to represent You in the earth, and to be able to bring forth the life of God, creative life into relationships, into businesses, into troubled situations, to have a word from heaven that changes it all. Oh my, we thank You, what a privilege, what an honour. Lord, we've just got to give You the glory. We've got to give You the praise and thank You Lord, You've destined us to do such wonderful things. Come on, let's give the Lord a clap [Applause] shall we? Let's stand on our feet. Let's honour Him.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Proverbs 18:21 – “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”.

· Words we speak are containers – the carry a ‘spirit content’.

· Words we speak impact our life, relationships and future.

· We looked at the impact of Lying, Gossip, Flattery, Empty Words, Put Down Words, Angry Words.

· Now – the power use of the tongue – as God designed us.

2. Hoe God uses Words:

· Law of 1st mention – Genesis outlines the pattern and designs.

· God used Words:

1) To Create by Releasing:

· Genesis 1:1-4 - “And God said let there be light …it was good”.

· The first recorded use of words in the Bible, the creation of the natural realm.

· Words have power to create when spoken with faith – they release Power.

· Hebrews 11:3 - “By faith we understand the world we framed by the Word of God”.

· The created world was made out of things not visible, no seen.

· “Framed” = 2675 = to put together, put in order or arrange, make what ought to be.

2) To Establish, Nurture and Protect Relationship:

· Genesis 1:26 - “Let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion”.

· God established man for relationships with Him by the use of words.

· God established a purpose and design for that relationship with words – Genesis 3:8.

· God protected the relationship by setting boundaries and speaking truth.

· Note: Eve fell into sin by listening to words.

Adam came into agreement with those words.

Adam failed to speak words to protect their relationship.

· Ephesians 5:1 - “We are called to be imitators of God – as His children”.

3. Your Tongue is your Glory:

· Why has God designed you with a tongue? What did He intent?

· Psalm 16:8-9 - “My heart is glad and my glory rejoices”.

· Acts 2:25-26 - “My heart rejoiced and my tongue was glad”.

· The tongue distinguishes man above all other living creatures.

· Peter was inspired by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost interprets

– Psalm 16:9 - “My tongue is my glory”.

· Psalm 30:12 - “My glory may sing praise to you” – your tongue is your glory.

· Glory = 3519 = kabad = weight, honour.

Rt = to honour, to bring honour to, to gain value, to impart value, honour.

· The words you release:

i) Reveal your heart.

ii) Can impart value and honour.

· Note: The first use of words in the Bible – was to create value, produce new things in the visible realm.

· The first use of Words after the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost:

i) Honour God the Source – Acts 2:11 and Acts 10:46.

ii) Speak and Act as His representative and create new life.

- Acts 2:4 - Peter standing up with the eleven raised his voice.

- Acts 2:40-41 - Those who gladly received his words were baptised.

- Acts 3:6 - In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.

4. God’s Design – Life Giving Words:

· John 6:63 - “The words I speak are spirit and life”.

Jesus is the model – He is the example to shape and build life upon.

· Two key purposes for our tongue:

i) Honour God – our Creator and Source:

a) Thanks Giving:

· Psalm 69:30 - “I will magnify Him with thanksgiving”.

b) Praise:

· Psalm 50:23 - “Whoever offers praise magnifies Me”.

· Thanksgiving and praise create an atmosphere that God indwells.

· God delights in thanksgiving and praise – Hebrews 13:15-16

· Using our tongue to honour and express gratitude nurtures our relationships with Him – Romans 1:21

ii) Speak and Act as God’s Personal Representative:

· How do we use words to act as God’s representative?

a) Fulfill Commitments we make:

· Psalm 15:14 - “Swears to his own heart it does not change”.

· God is a covenant keeping God who watches over His words and reputation.

· When we keep our word – we act as God’s representative.

b) Use words to Establish, Nurture and Protect Relationships:

· Proverbs 15:23 - “A word spoken in season, how good it is”

- Isaiah 50:4

· Proverbs 15:4 - “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life”.

· Ephesians 4:29 - “No corrupt word – good for edifying that might impart grace”.

· Ephesians 4:15 - “Speaking the truth, in love we grow”

c) Use words to release the Supernatural Power of God:

· Faith Confession – Hebrews 3:1

· Prophetic Words – 1 Corinthians 14:3

· Faith Commands – Mark 11:22-24

· Prayer – James 5:16

Wise Words (10 of 12)

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When God wants to change something in the natural world, He always gets someone to speak, because words are the way the power of God is released from the spirit world into the natural world. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Your tongue has power. With our tongue we express our words, ideas, feelings, and fears. If there's bitterness/anger or doubt/limitation in your heart, you'll express it through your tongue. Change on the inside, then you'll start to see the things change on the outside. Internal shifts first.

Great, if you've got a Bible, if you could open it up, Proverbs 18:21 and I want to share with you today. I want to continue where we started last week. We were speaking about the creative power of the tongue, and I want to just pick up again, I want to talk about shaping your world with the word of God, shaping your world with the word of God - still part of that same series, the creative power of the tongue.

Proverbs 18:21, death and life are in the power of the tongue. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Your tongue has power. With our tongue we express our words, we express our ideas, we express our feelings, we express our fears. If there's bitterness in your heart, you'll express bitterness through your tongue. If there's anger in your heart, you'll express anger through your tongue. If there's doubt and limitation in your life, no doubt you'll speak that through your tongue as well. Your tongue has power to speak out over your life, and around you into the environment, and change it, and so we see if you have a look at all of creation, the only one creature in all of creation that has the power to build civilisation and culture are human beings.

The thing that distinguishes us, that enables us to be able to do that, is we have a spirit man, we're created in the image of God,, and we can speak words that communicate in ways that the animal world cannot. We never came from the animal world. We came from God. We're a spirit being, and so last week we talked about how God used words, and we talked about the beginning in the Bible, the first ways that God used words, number one, He used words to create, so if we have a look at how creation took place, we saw the spirit of God was moving, and then God spoke words, and words released something. There was something came from the spirit world, and manifested in the natural world, something that was existing in God's heart, and in substance in the spirit world, manifested in the natural world. People that have had glimpses of heaven, or been to heaven, say there are some things which are like what it is on earth, but they're much more intense and full of life, see?

So the things which are in the natural world, in many areas, are reflections of the unseen spirit world, but they came into being because God spoke. We saw also that God used words to establish relationships, and we then talked about our responsibility to use our tongue to honour God, and then to actually represent Him, so I want to look now at the creative power, the creative power of God's words. So I want you to look with me in Jeremiah, Chapter 1. I want to just establish that, because if you don't understand this, everything we do afterwards over these next weeks, you'll miss it, because you haven't got to embrace this one thing, that God's word has power to change what you are seeing, and living in, and experiencing. God's word has the power to change it, but you've got to be able to be linked to that word, and know what to do with that word, and I'm just going to be taking one aspect of that, which is particularly speaking and declaring the word of God - but there are other aspects of course. We need to walk in obedience. I like what Bryden was sharing, how he began to speak over his life, and then he began to order his life according to what he was speaking and believing in his heart. Then externally, everything changed.

So firstly I want you to see that consistently, when God wants to change something in the natural world, He always gets someone to speak. He'll always get someone to speak something, because words are the way the power of God is released from the spirit world into the natural world. It's almost like God is waiting for someone to speak His word. When God wanted to prepare a generation for the coming of Jesus Christ, the Bible says He raised up a man. His name was John the Baptist. It said the word of the Lord came to him, and he began to speak what God was saying, and he upheaved a whole nation. See, the whole nation came out to hear him, because something was in the words he spoke, and it's getting that, not just the word of God, but there's something in it we want.

Okay, let's have a look in Jeremiah, Chapter 1 and I'm just going to read several verses. We'll pick it up at Verse 5. The word of the Lord came to me saying - now this is the word of God coming to Jeremiah. He says before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you, and set you apart to be a prophet to the nations. Then said I, ah, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak. I'm but a youth, and the Lord said to me, do not say I'm a youth, for you shall go to all whom I send you. Whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you, said the Lord. Then the Lord put forth His hand and He touched my mouth, so he had an encounter, an experience with God - and the Lord said to me, behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, or get the vision, or begin to picture this, I have this day, set you over nations and over kingdoms, to root out and pull down, to destroy and throw down, to build and to plant. And then the word of the Lord came to me saying Jeremiah, what do you see? And I said I see the branch of an almond tree. And the Lord said to me, you have seen well, for I am ready to perform My word, or I am watching over My word, to make sure it comes to pass. How about that?

So God had a purpose. Very clearly in here, we see that God had a purpose and a destiny for Jeremiah. God's plan for him was more than just having a relationship with God. God wanted Jeremiah to be a representative of Him, and to bring about some changes, so I want you to see what God says to him. Very, very clearly, he says the Lord touched my mouth. He said behold, I have put My words in your mouth. So God had an assignment for him. The assignment that Jeremiah had was this: his assignment was to change the order in the known world. You think how on earth could you do that? His nation had been defeated, the nation were in sin and about to be overrun by the Babylonians. The nation was about to be supplanted and brought into captivity. All kinds of things were about to happen. The world that they knew it was in turmoil, and in the middle of it God said, I have ordained you. Before this time even began, before any of this stuff happened, I already had someone I was preparing to go into it and to change it. So He's saying Jeremiah, before you were born, before your parents thought of you, I had already prepared for you to be My spokesman, to go into this world situation, and to begin to speak My words into it. I will watch over the words that I've given you, and I'll make sure they come about.

When you read in the Book of Jeremiah, you find he prophesied destinies over nations, and every one of those destinies, destination was formed. If you have a look now, he began to speak that the nations which prospered, he said some of them will be so broken down, there'll be no evidence left that they were there, and you start to look at the various nations he prophesied over, or spoke God's word over, and every one of them, it was done to them exactly according to what God said through the prophet.

In other words, he spoke God's word, and began to declare how the world around him would become. God worked with him, and changed the world around him, and it became exactly what Jeremiah had said. Its powerful stuff isn't it. So of course what happens when we hear that is we - oh, that's Jeremiah. I'm only me. Now I want you to have a look at this, because Jeremiah had the same issues we have, so Jeremiah has an assignment, speak the word of God, so God has now got a basis, he's got a man on earth who agrees with Him about how this will be. Now He's able to move, and begin to create it, so God began to speak the overthrow of Jerusalem, and what would happen to it. He prophesied through Jeremiah the destiny. He prophesied what would happen to the army, how it would take it over. He prophesied about what the people would do, and how that would work out. He then prophesied about a restoration, and every one of those things historically happened. He literally shaped the known world, by the power of speaking God's words. It's a powerful thing to recognise, you can shape your world by getting a hold, or getting connected with God, and as He begins to put His words in your heart, and you begin to get the word of God in your heart, and speak it out, you begin to shape the world around you.

I'll show you, there's several areas that you need to shape, and then in later sessions we'll share with you exactly how you go about the shaping process, shaping the world around you by the word of God. Very, very powerful. Notice this, what happens in there. Notice the impact of the word of God. We see several things happen. The first thing you see is, he said Verse 10, see, I have set you over the nations, and over kingdoms. So God positions him in a place of spiritual authority, and He defines what that area is. We'll come back to this a little later - so God has connected with Jeremiah. There's a relationship. He begins to explain what his destiny is. He explains what he's going to do: he's going to speak the words of God, and He says now I have positioned you. Now where has He positioned you? In the spirit He has positioned him over the kingdoms and the nations, so you see a natural king, you see natural armies, you see natural - well you see all these things He said, but spiritually I have positioned you over it, and when you speak these words, the natural will change.

Now it didn't all change straight away. He went through a lot of difficulties, a lot of hardships, but nevertheless everything he prophesied came about, so in spite of what it looked like naturally, in spite of the fact at one stage he's in a dungeon, and looks like he's going to die, and be swallowed up in the mud at the bottom of a well, nevertheless he came out, and nevertheless everything he said worked out. Nevertheless, he got favour with the enemies, and in the end he was blessed. Everything he said came about, so we see here God positioned him. Now you have to understand this. When you got born again and joined to Jesus Christ, you are positioned with Him in a place of spiritual authority and God wants you also to speak words from that place that will shape the world around you. Think about that.

Now either you're going to go in and act like a victim in the world, or you'll act like an ambassador of God, and begin to shape the world around you. See Jesus never came into the world with any expectations the world would do Him some favours. He came in with an expectation as God's ambassador, He could change the world. Now did He change all of the world? No, He didn't. He changed a group of people, in one place, at one time, because that was His assignment. You also have an assignment. Only God can give you that assignment, and your assignment is to represent God and then to bring His words into that situation, to shape it as God wants it to be. The problem is the church has thought that the church was the kingdom, and has then become very church-centred instead of understanding God wants to invade the world. He invades the world by working in you, making you joined to Him, giving you a position of authority in the spirit, which grows as you walk with Him, and then beginning to get you to speak His words, and begin to release His life into wherever you are. What an exciting thing to do.

Okay then, let's just move on. So you notice what he's called to do with the words of God, just so you understand, He said what you're going to do is root out and pull down, destroy and throw down, build and plant. So notice he's got two things to do. The first lot of things have to do with rooting out things which are established. In other words He says, the words that I give you, one of the first functions they have is to root out imbedded spiritual powers, to root them out, dismantle them and stop them operating, see? So the first use of those words that God gives him is to confront demonic powers, which are creating situations in the world that are not according to the will of God. Second thing is that you'll speak words that will build and plant, and so when God draws you into relationship with Christ, He positions you as an ambassador. Now if you get the word of God in your heart, and learn what to do, and how to speak it, then you will do these things. You will begin to root out demon spirits. You'll root out things which are contrary to what God wants. You begin to sow in, and plant in, and then you begin to see things around you change.

Bryden just gave a testimony today - I can't wait until next week to hear the second part - but his boss gave him an assessment of his current physical situation, and instead of accepting that diagnosis he stood up, got a word from God, a rhema from God, began to declare it over the workplace, declare it over his life, and then applied himself to fulfil it - and then it all changed. This year he was recognised as the top organic farmer in the district. Now what changed it? A word from heaven! [Applause] A word from heaven. Well it's alright if it happened with Jeremiah, but it happened with someone here, sitting next to you - and if it happened for him, it can happen for you too. The question is whether you will do what Jeremiah did, and respond to what God says, so let's have a look how Jeremiah responded.

This is what Jeremiah said, Verse 6. Ah, no! I can't do it! I'm just a little youth! - and that would be the response of the majority of Christians, when they begin to hear what God called them to do. When you get a grasp of what God has called you to do, in your own sphere of influence in the community, you begin to see that God has planted you there, to bring a difference - AAAH! I can't do it! I'm too young. I'm only just a new Christian. You know what God says? [Zzz!] [Laughter]

Yeah, made him stop. Stop talking that way. This is what God made him do first. First he had to have a change inside him, then he could change what was outside him. So what he was saying - I can't do it. I can't do it! It's too big! It's too hard! You're not fair, asking me to do these things. He had to change inside, so he needed a change in his internal world, before he got a change in his external world, but you see the same thing that would change his external world, would change his internal world, a word from God. God said just cut out that negative kind of talk, that limiting talk, that actually causes you to minimise what you could do. It causes your potential to be locked up. It causes my plan to be frustrated! Stop talking that negative stuff. You're stopping Me working in you! That's what He's saying to him and He's saying the same to us today.

Two years ago we had a prophet come. He said negative words are limiting what you can do. Change. We've been speaking, done a series on negative words. I hope you took a note of it - that was God speaking to us the second time. A-ha! And now He's going to say, how to get into the flow, see, so Jeremiah had to make some changes. Now notice what happened. He stopped making excuses, embrace what God called you to do. Just stop making the excuses. Stop excusing yourself that you can't. If God says you can, you can. If God says you can, you can. Stop making excuses. The second thing, stop speaking negatively. We've already been through that; stop speaking negatively, or speaking limitations around your life. Some people, the reason they're staying where they are, and have stayed where they are all these years, is because they keep speaking limitation, because limitation is in the heart. You have to change your inner world, see?

Don't be ruled by fear. So you notice what he was afraid - the Lord said this to him, Verse 8. Do not be afraid. Don't be afraid. Get faith in your heart, not fear. Don't approach 2008 afraid to step out. Approach 2008 - I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to step out! There's new things God has for me. See, approach it with that kind of attitude, approach it with that kind of way see. Connect with God, connect with God, relationships. Verse 9, the Lord touched me, so we need to connect with God. If you have no connection with God, then God can't put His words inside you, and it's His words inside you that will change your world, so personal relationship, personal connection, personal intimacy, the touch of God. Oh, the touch of God, how I keep needing the touch of God see, because with the touch of God, then comes the words of God. That's why we worship. That's why we engage God, because we want to prepare ourselves, so we can hear the words of God.

You know the Bible says, enter His presence with gratitude and praise, and then begin to worship Him and listen for His voice. Now we could be hearing His voice, and what God's saying to you, will set what could happen in your life for years to come, so we need to do that. Your life can change. It doesn't have to stay the same. It doesn't have to stay the same, see? So embrace and agree with what God says. You're going to begin to speak that out, expect Him to do it. Expect Him to do it. Notice what God says; the things Jeremiah said, the things that I'm going to put into your mouth, He said I'll watch over them to make them happen. You don't have to worry about whether they happen or not. You job is to speak them. I'll figure out how they'll happen, see. Think about that. Think about that - so this is Jeremiah. Now of course what mentally we do, is in our heart, what we mentally do is we're like, oh that's Jeremiah, you know? Jeremiah, oh he's a big man of God you know?

Jeremiah was a young boy. He was a teenager probably, in the day he lived, and God encountered him, touched him, and told him what his destiny was. Then he changed a nation. What could you do here? You're in the presence of God, God's speaking and touched your life. All you've got to do is open your heart to hear what He wants you to change next year. Let's have a look at another example. Notice that everything Jeremiah spoke - let's have a look in Luke, Chapter 1. Everything he spoke came about. He changed his known world by the word of God. How about that? The thing is because we're so set on natural things, it just takes a little time for us to get a hold of this, because we tend in a western world, we tend to think that words don't really have much effect, because we've never learned how to use words. I want to show you in these next few weeks, how to use the word of God to shift things, firstly around your own life, then around what's around you.

Look at Luke, Chapter 1, Verses 35 through Verse 38; And the angel Lord came to Mary and said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Highest will overshadow you, and the Holy One that's born of you shall be called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her, who was called barren. Notice this, someone else was called barren, and yet she had a child - For with God, nothing shall be, or nothing will be, impossible. Then Mary said Behold, the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me, according to your word. Now firstly we're going to look in Verse 37. The angel makes this statement: for with God, nothing shall be impossible. Nothing shall be impossible with God. Another way of interpreting that, it comes out in the American Standard version is this, no word spoken by God lacks power to bring it's accomplishment. Okay? No word spoken by God, lacks the power to bring about it's accomplishment, so whenever God says something, there is power. Now the word 'word' is a rhema, a word spoken forth, or a word declared, so when God says something, then it has power to be able to change, or to do what it's supposed to do, provided it meets someone who believes.

The thing that unlocks the power of the word of God, is faith. I must believe what He said. I need to in my heart hold on to it. The heart now believes, and my tongue confesses to salvation, it says in Romans 10. In other words, I must believe what God says, and then begin to speak it, and live on it as though it's true, then its power is released. So the word of God is like a seed. It can be released, but the thing that releases it is our faith. We must be linked to it. Now notice what her response was. Behold, let it be done to me according to your word. So she came into full agreement with what God said, spoke it forth, and her world and our world changed. Listen, I've just taken a couple of examples, but you could go through the Bible and you'll find everywhere, when God wanted to change something, He needed a person that He could speak to, that would take His words, believe His words, speak His words, act on His words and change their world - and He's never stopped. He's still looking for it.

You see this is the problem, when people are thinking or have a revival mentality, where we're thinking of waiting for God to do some great thing. He wants you to arise now, and dare to believe that now, today, you can begin to make a difference. You get the word of God in your heart, and you begin to arise and hold that word, speak that word, act on that word, so things around you can change. When I first came here to Hastings, people came to me. You know what they said to me? Oh, you'll never last more than six months. Is that so? Well it's been the longest six months of my life and I was sent by God. I had a word from God, I had a clear word from God. Every day I would take that word, hold that word and believe that God would fulfil that word - and He did, shook everything up. It literally shook everything up. Everything that was around us got changed. So what is shaping your world? Is it the word of God? Are you consciously shaping your world with the word of God, or have you given in and come into agreement with negative circumstances, disappointments, actually have come into agreement with wicked spirits that fill you with despair, it can't change. What have you come into agreement with? Think about that.

If you have despair that you can't change in any area of your life, you've come into agreement with the words of wicked spirits. What will shift you, is when you decide to disagree with those words, break their power, and begin to listen to what God says, hold what God says, speak what God says, meditate what God says. You will see everything around your world change. Many people are waiting for another revival, or they're waiting for someone to lay hands on them, or waiting for some counsellor - God is waiting for you to dare to believe, because no word from God is without power to bring about its own accomplishment. So when God gives you something, you can understand this. He's watching over that word, to make sure it takes place. All you've got to do in your part, is to hold the word, hold that word, because when you start to hold God's word, everything around you looks like it's got worse. The moment God gives you a word, it's almost like straight away everything gets worse, and the point of it is - the Bible predicts it - it says the moment the sower sows the word, the devil will come and say, I don't believe all that stuff. Then afterwards He said, then will come a bit of heat and pressure and tribulation, and if you haven't got the word into you, haven't got it rooted down in your heart, then it'll very soon wither up too. Then there'll come a lot of distractions, and that'll choke it all out too, but He says if you can just hold the word in your heart, and keep your life focussed on its fulfilment, then you'll see. You'll see it, come on, you'll see it. See, you'll see it - so what's shaping your world? What do you come into agreement with?

I want you to have a look with me in Hebrews, Chapter 11, and I want to talk to you about shaping your world by the word of God, so we're just getting into it now, and I want to share with you four areas you can shape. Hebrews, Chapter 11, Verse 3. It says by faith, we understand that the worlds were framed, or the ages or the world was framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen, were not made of things which are visible. By faith, we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God. The word frame means to thoroughly complete, put together, assemble, construct something, so by faith we understand that God constructed the visible world by faith, the operation of faith. It tells us that it was the word of God being spoken forth that brought about that construction, and so we see then that God framed, or made, the world. That word 'word' there, the word of God, is a rhema, a spoken utterance, a declaration.

So He says we understand then how God created everything. It was done by moving in the realm of faith, the realm of the supernatural where the word He spoke, He never doubted it would come about. The power was released, it came about, so we understand then the world that we see, or what we see around us, was framed, formed or put together or constructed by God's word. Okay then, now how much of your world has been constructed by God's word? Oh well, I love Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. But how much of your lifestyle, and your world has been constructed in harmony with God's words? Are your finances constructed around what God has to say? Is your marriage constructed around what God has to say? Are your relationships constructed around what God has to say? What have you consciously built by referring to God?

So what the majority of Christians do is, well I come to church once a week, maybe twice and I go to cell group, and I love Jesus - and that's it. But they don't seem to move and understand, you're an ambassador, called to shape your world with God's words. That's what we're called to do, to shape the worlds around us, and so we need to consider that.

There's always three factors take place. There's always three factors in it: number one, the Holy Spirit. We have to have the power of the Holy Spirit operating around our life. Without the spirit of God nothing happens, so you can teach a parrot to say the word of God, but it doesn't make any difference to the parrot, and it doesn't make any difference to anything around him, except tick everyone off, see. But you see when the spirit of God is moving in a human being, a spirit being has the word of God in their heart and they speak it, then things begin to happen. That's how people get healed. Someone with faith in their heart, and the Holy Ghost moving over that person, they speak the word of God, and the person gets healed, and a miracle takes place. That's how Jesus did all His miracles, and you find always with all of Jesus' miracles ,the spirit of God was present, and operative, and He was connected to the spirit of God. There was faith in the heart, and there was a word of God spoken. That's how it happens every time. You have a look at all the miracles. You'll find the spirit of God was there, the anointing of God was there present, the word of God was spoken, there was faith and expectation, and it released the power of God. Now nothing has changed. That's how power is released.

So I've got to learn well, how can I build my faith? How can I learn how to go about doing this? Alright then, so lets look at those areas now. Now you understand in Ephesians 5:1 it says we're to be imitators of God, so if God's shaped things by speaking the word, we've got to shape things by speaking the word too, got to learn to shape things by speaking the word, speaking God's word over our life, over our circumstances. Now there are four areas. I'll break them up into two things. Firstly, shape your inner world. The first thing to shape is your inner world. Then shape your outer world. Shape your inner world, then shape your outer world. That word shape means literally to form it, to bring it together, construct your inner world with the word of God, construct your inner world, meaning constructing your thoughts, constructing your ideas, your dreams, desires, the way you approach life with the word of God.

If God says in his word, that you can do all things that He calls you to do, you can do all things, but you see a negative mindset, a negative frame of thinking, will cause you to think I can't. I can't! I've never done that before, I can't do that! See? In other words, the prevailing or ruling thought is something quite different, and until you reconstruct your inner world with the word of God, nothing outside you changes. In Proverbs 23:7 I think it says, as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. So I have to learn, we're going to show you how to do this, how to begin to construct your inner world with the word of God, because if we don't do that, we don't have really much to offer people.

If you haven't built something on the inside, then you haven't actually really been able to develop inside you what you need, to be an answer to a dying world. We need more than just come to Jesus, and she'll be right. We need to come to Jesus, and the Bible tells us God's plan, we grow to become more like Him, in other words our internal world of values and attitudes and thoughts begins to change, so God wants us to change on the inside. Let me give you an example of it, of shaping your inner world. It's interesting, the first thing that happened when the Holy Ghost came on people, the first thing that happened, was they began to speak in tongues, and the Bible tells you what the purpose of speaking in tongues is for. It's to build up your spirit man. Isn't that amazing, so the first expression after they got filled with the Holy Ghost, was to build themselves up on the inside. Isn't that amazing?

Okay then, let me give you another scripture related to that, in 1 Samuel, Chapter 30 and Verse 6. David was in a very, very difficult time and it says David strengthened himself in the Lord, strengthen - there's a tremendous book out by Bill Johnson, Strengthening Yourself in the Lord. I couldn't over recommend that book. That is a wonderful book on how to strengthen yourself, in your inner life, in the Lord, the keys to strengthening yourself. So very clearly what David did when he was facing a catastrophe, the lowest point in his life, when it looked like he'd lost everything. He was in the valley of all valleys. He'd lost his wife, he'd lost his children, lost his money, lost his house, he had a financial collapse, he had a major collapse. Then he'd lost the confidence of his men, and they were now talking about killing him, and he was in a foreign land, and he was hunted by the king. It was a mess, and yet in the middle of it, the Bible says he strengthened himself. He did things that did something in his inner man, and then he got a word that changed his world. See?

Pursue, overtake and you'll recover all - and he not only got back what he lost, he got back a heap more. Now you understand what he could have done was, he could have thought like this: I've got to get out of here! They're going to kill me! It's all over - where can I go? He said nowhere, I've got nowhere to go except to God. He knew how to go to God and strengthen himself in a place of pressure. A lot of people, when they're under pressure, the first place they run is to a bottle, some to smoke, some run down to some other place. Some run to a counsellor. Run to the Lord! And you don't just run to the Lord in a pressure time; run to the Lord daily. Run into His presence, and learn how to shape your inner world. Now because there's quite a bit involved in shaping your inner world, I'll save that for a separate session just on some of the keys, how to shift your inward world - but so the first place to shift is your inner world. You shift your inner world, everything around you will start to change as well.

Interesting, I was listening just as Bryden was talking there. The first thing he did was to get a word from God. He had a word from a man, but he got a word from God. I like that and it was a beautiful word wasn't it aye? The hand of the diligent shall be rich or something like that. That was good aye? But it wasn't just a scripture. It was a personal rhema from God, and it carried with it power to bring a change in his external circumstances, but he had to believe it, confess it, then align his life. So you notice it's all internal. There had to be an internal shifting before there was external. It's always the same; shift internal, shift inside, shift your perspective, shift your values, shift your ways of thinking, begin to bring your inner world into order according to God's word - everything changes. So I'll share with you some things on that, the whole issue of how when you speak, you literally alter the neural pathways in your brain, and you set everything going differently you see, but it's in the Bible - just confess, confess the word of God.

Here's the second thing you need to change is, you need to shape the outer world, and there are three areas of the outer world to shape. I'm just going to briefly give them, I'm not going to go into how to shape them, because I want to actually focus on each one, because if I rush it through I don't think anyone will change what they're doing in their outer world, so I want to actually just take time to develop each one of these. So we're looking at the how to shift our inner world, then how to shift our outer world. Is that okay? Is that good? Okay, because we're going into a New Year. It's going to be great! And the Lord said sanctify yourselves, because tomorrow I want to work miracles among you, I'm going to work great things among you, and that's the word we had about a month ago. So sanctify yourself means to set yourself apart, and become more focussed upon what God wants for your life, and begin to align your life according to God's words. It's all the change on the inner man, He said because I want to do things outside you, so we want the things outside - Lord, give me a miracle. Give me a change, give me a breakthrough, give me this, give me that. Now listen, change on the inside, then you'll start to see the things change on the outside. Internal shifts first.

Okay then, don't just rearrange the furniture on the Titanic. It'll still go down, okay so [laughs] don't just shift a couple of little things. Change it on the inside! Patch the cracks, or take the word of God and break your agreements with demons! And break your agreements with negativity! And break the agreements you have with limiting mindsets, and begin to let God's word be over your life! Oh yeah, that'll shift you. That'll be a change won't it.

Okay, here's the three other areas on the outer world to shift, and not necessarily in order of importance, but all of them are needed, and I think it's in this sequence. Things to shape in your outer world - number one is to shape your spiritual atmosphere. I'll explain that a little bit more fully in another session, but one area that we need to shape is the spiritual atmosphere around us, because miracles always work when we're living and abiding and flowing in the presence of the Holy Spirit, so if you're living under depression or living with negative atmosphere, or the people around you are overwhelming you with negative atmosphere, you've got to do something about that. You have to shift the prevailing spiritual atmosphere. If you shift that first, again you'll start to see, shift the invisible before you see the visible change, see? You've got to shift the - there's a priority in this, so first we shifted what's invisible, what's inside us, so what's outside us can change. Then if you want to change what's outside, first shift the spirit world. It's not very hard to do it, real easy once you know what to do. I'm going to show you what to do in coming days.

So shift your spiritual atmosphere. You can shape spiritual atmosphere very, very - the Bible tells you how to do it, very, very simple. You can either listen, and meditate, and dwell, on negative things, or you can begin to develop a life of praise and gratitude, and thankfulness, and positive - you just begin to do that. The Bible says God will inhabit the praises of His people, so this is how David said it. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make a boast in the Lord, the humble shall hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me! He got a good spiritual atmosphere around him hasn't he? See, he built a spiritual atmosphere. Your spiritual atmosphere is created by what's in your heart finding expression outside you. Now I know what's outside you. The devil's outside you, wants to depress you, make you flat, wants to make you boring, wants to make you depressed, wants to make you passive. God's inside us saying there's a lion in here - let me out! See? And I can see it when it comes to worship time.

Some people haven't understood you've got to use your voice! You've got to use your VOICE! HOW TO USE YOUR VOICE! The Bible says even God says come to Me with words. You've got to actually have words. Oh, I just - oh. No, no, no, nothing like that. No, we need to come to Him with words. The second thing is, shape your relationships. Your relationship can be shaped by declaring the word of God over them, and then speaking into them, so you shape it two ways; one, you begin to first of all speak it over it, you begin to make declarations, a declaration, a statement about what is, strong declarations, see? You begin to declare God's promises, God's word, over your marriage, over your family, over your relationships and what it does is it begins to create the atmosphere within which those relationships change. Then you've got to learn to speak into the relationships, so first speak over them, then speak into them.

You find the biggest problem in relationships is, people either not speak into them, or they're saying the wrong things, and all you've got to do to change it is begin to start to speak over them differently, so you begin to shape the atmosphere over the relationships, then speak into them. Speak words that bless, words that build, words that encourage, words that lift up, words that impart value, words that impart destiny, words that put boundaries, words that confront. You've got to speak into it, as well as speaking over it. The first place again as you see is to speak over it, and finally the last place you need to speak into is your metron, or your sphere of responsibility, your metron, or sphere of responsibility. Whatever God has given you as your area of responsibility, that's the area you've got to shape with the word of God, see? So if you are the boss of a work, or run a business, then we need to learn to shape the business, not just with business principles, but by getting the word of God and speaking God's word over that business, and beginning to allow my heart to dwell on what God says about my business, then aligning the business according to how God wants me to run it. It may be different to how I'm currently running it, and then the difficulty will be, will I be in agreement with my ideas, or will I agree with God's ideas on how to make it work? It's quite a challenge isn't it aye? For many people, if money rules you, you'll be afraid to let God's word have the directive into shaping your business. You'll let the money shape the business. Now I better unpack that just a little.

We can't serve God and Mount Money! Can't serve God and Mammon, so we're either serving one or the other. Now God doesn't say money's evil. You need money, money is needed to make anything happen, but the love of it and being ruled by it is the issue, so He says you can't serve God and Mammon. So Mammon is a spirit. God is a spirit. There's a spirit called Mammon that rules, controls and works through money and you've got to decide whether you're going to be under the dominion of the Lord in this area. Now He didn't take your money away from you. He wants you actually to be blessed and grow, but He wants you to become a channel of blessing but you've got to actually break free of the things that rule people and so we want to shape our world with the word of God. Oh, getting exciting now.

Next year I want to speak a little bit on that area because an awful lot of people are ruled by a credit card and ruled by debt. They actually can't serve God, because they're serving debt, see? If you're serving debt, and can't serve God, you need to make next year the challenge, get out of that thing. Shape your world according to the word of God. We had one couple come into the church this year, and they were in debt for a range of reasons. They got their life right with God and then miraculously God was able to arrange the whole debt was cancelled, the whole thing. They were able to pay it off. They got the money, paid the whole thing off. Now when they came in at the beginning of this year, they came in as a result of the concert we did in the park. They came in and then what happened was God was able to intervene in their life and totally shift their financial circumstance, because they ordered the inner world and then their outer world began to come into alignment.

See, everyone wants to see something happen, but you've got to shift on the inside first. We getting the idea? Getting the idea, so change your outer world. Now I'll just give you one last thing on that one, your realm of responsibility. Have a look at this in 1 Samuel, Chapter 17. Dave referred to this the other Sunday, it was just great. Now here's ruling your outer world, and it says here in 1 Samuel, Chapter 17, Verse 42; The Philistine - that's Goliath - looked at David, and he despised him, because he was just a youth. You're just a little boy! He's a hardened battle warrior, and he says am I a dog, you come to me with sticks? And he cursed him by his gods. Now what you understand is he's releasing a spirit of intimidation upon David. He's releasing cursings upon him. He's attacking him, and this is the way the devil tries to deal with us, in terms of life. He tries to accuse us, put us down, make you feel little, remind you of your failures, but David - notice this - he stood up, and he spoke the word of God. He began to declare how the battle would work out. He said today I'll lay you out fully on the ground, and I'll take your head off, and the birds in the air will eat you! I like that, that's good talk. That's fairly positive affirmation about how the battle will go.

Now you've got to realise, he's actually speaking prophetically. He's not speaking because he's hyped up, and he's really excited with youthful enthusiasm. There's much, much more to him than that. He's got a proven track record of battles won, depending on the Lord. See long before he met Goliath, he met a heap of other things as well, including a lion, and a bear, and you see he said the Lord who helped me there, is going to help me here. You see there was an anointing on his life, and he knew see, that the enemy comes at him cursing him, putting him down, trying to intimidate him. Now you've got to understand this. This is a battle-hardened man, and he's got demons operating around him, and he's intimidated a whole army, including Saul, who was the champion. He was actually head and shoulders above everyone. He should have been able to take him on, but even he's intimidated. You see there's a spiritual atmosphere has been released that's intimidated everyone, shut everyone down, and in the middle of it, a young boy rises up who's got something in his inner world!

See the problem, the others had nothing in their inner world. Saul was defeated. He had no presence over his life, he had no anointing, no faith. He was defeated. He never walked in the word of God. He actually reacted to the word of God, and now here's a young boy turns up, and here he is, 17 years old, and he says listen, you come against me with a shield and a spear, I come against you in the name of the Lord God of Israel, who's armies you have defied, and this is how the battle is going to go today. I will lay you out on the ground. I'll use your sword, and take off your head, and then the birds will eat you, then the rest of your army will be put to flight. That's how it's going to be.

But you understand, he has already formed and built his inner world. When they said you can't do that, he said listen, I've got a proven track record. I'll do it. You watch me, and it says he ran to the giant - zonk! And Goliath got the biggest headache he's ever had in his whole life. While he's lying on the ground complaining about that migraine, he lost his head completely! See now you've got to think about this. See David first shaped his inner world, then shaped his outer world, and every one of those things, shaping your inner world, shaping your relationships, shaping your spiritual atmosphere, shaping the world around you - David did all of those things. He was actually a man of the spirit and word of God, and he's an example you and I can follow.

Father, we just thank you for what you're teaching us about the need to frame our world by the word of God, just as you framed the natural world. You want us to frame the world that we live in as your representatives. Lord, firstly you want us to frame and shape the world within our heart and life and inner man; the thoughts, dreams, desires, passions, the way we think, our perspective and Lord, you want us to shape what's around us. You want us to shape the world around us, the spiritual atmosphere, so instead of depression and heaviness the spirit of God is there to bring hope and help and life. Lord, you want us to shape the environment, the relationships around us. You want us to shape the environment. I'm asking Lord over these next weeks, a spirit of faith will begin to arise among every believer here, a spirit of faith, an ability to believe that the word of God embraced in the heart, and spoken with the mouth, and acted on in the life, will release change into lives in 2008. Lord, we thank you that every generation you have men and women who dared to believed.

Summary Notes

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The Creative Power of the Tongue – Part 2

23 December 07

1. Introduction:

· Proverbs 18:21 – “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…”.

· We use words to express ourselves – ideas, dreams, desires, fears, pain.

· This ability is exclusive to humans – we are spirit beings able to release spirit life.

· Last week: God used words

i) To Create/ Release Supernatural Power

ii) To Establish, Nurture and Protect relationships

· We are called to act as His ambassadors – speak and act on His behalf.

· This week: “Shaping your World by the Word of God”.

2. The Creative Power of Words of God:

a) Jeremiah:

· Jeremiah 1:9-10 - “Behold I have put my words in your mouth”.

· God has a purpose for Jeremiah’s life – to change the world around him”.

· Verse 5 - Sanctified = set apart for the purpose of God – change the nation.

· Verse 9 - God’s assignment - speak His Word our as His representative.

· Verse 9 - God positions him in a place of spiritual authority.

· By speaking what God gave him, he made way for the Spirit of God to move.

· Note the impact of the Word of God:

i) “Real out, pull down, destroy, throw down” - verse 10

- to exercise dominion over ruling spiritual forces and mentalities and cancel their power.

ii) “To build and to plant”

- to saw seeds of hope for the future, proclaim the promises of God to build and release the nation.

· Before Jeremiah could shape the world outside him he had to change his inner world!

· Verse 6-7 - “Behold, I cannot speak for I am a youth”.

· NB:

i) Stop making excuses – embrace the call/assignment of God - v7

ii) Stop speaking negatively, stop speaking limitations - v7

iii) Don’t be ruled by fear but by faith - v8

iv) Personally connect with God – relationship - v9

v) Embrace, agree with and speak His Words from the heart - v9-10

vi) Expect God to Supernaturally fulfill His way -v11,12

· All that Jeremiah spoke was fulfilled – he changed his words by the Word of God.

b) Mary:

· Luke 1:35-38 - “Let it be according to Your Word”.

· Verse 37 - “For with God nothing is impossible” (NKJV)

· Verse 37 - “For no Word of God shall be void of Power” (ASV)

· Mary heard, embraced and agreed with and spoke the Word of God – heart and mouth!

· Mary expected God to supernaturally fulfill His Word.

· Mary’s faith declaration of what God had said changed her words.

Question: What is shaping your world? The Word of God or the agreement with Demons?

3. Shaping your world by the Word of God:

· Hebrews 11:3 - “By faith we understand that the world were framed by the word of God”.

- Framed = 2675 = to thoroughly complete, put together, put in order, arrange, make what ought to be, to construct.

- Word = Rhema = 4487 = an utterance, spoken word or command. = word spoken out aloud by a living person.

· Notice 3 factors always present in creative activity of the Word of God.

1) Presence of the Holy Spirit Relationship

2) Faith – total confidence, heart.

3) Spoken Word of God – mouth.

· In all of Jesus’ miracles those factors were present.

· We must learn to operate as God operates - Ephesians 5:1

a) Shape Your Inner World:

· The first area to shape is your inner world – thoughts, attitudes, perceptions, beliefs.

· Proverbs 23:7 - “As a man thinks in his heart so he is”.

· Your inner life can be shaped by speaking/declaring the Word of God.

· 1 Corinthians 14:4 - “Speak in tongues – edified himself”.

· 1 Samuel 30:6 - David strengthened himself in the Lord.

· Declare = to state clearly you position in a controversy.

b) Shape Your Outer World:

i) Your Spiritual Atmosphere:

· You can shape/form the supernatural atmosphere around your life by the Word of God.

· Psalm 34:1-3 - David continually shaped the spiritual atmosphere around his life with thanksgiving and praise.

· Psalm 22:3 - “You are holy – enthroned on the praises of your people”.

ii) Your Relationships:

· Your relationships can be shaped by declaring the Word of God.

· Declaring God’s Word, God’s promises over marriage, children, and friendships makes room for the Holy Spirit to work to bring about the Spoken Word.

· 1 Samuel 23:14-18 - David was strengthened by Jonathan’s words. Jonathan spoke words of destiny, commitment, encouragement.

· Relationships are impacted by words!

iii) Your Metron – Realm of Responsibility:

· Metron = sphere of responsibility – 2 Corinthians 10:12-13 = people, work, money, ministry.

· Declaring God’s Word over your metron makes room for the Holy Spirit to act.

· 1 Samuel 17:47-48 - Goliath’s venomous cursing released a spirit of fear. David stood his ground and declared the real outcome based upon his trust in the Lord.

Hebrews 3:1 - Jesus – the Apostle and high priest of our profession.

· Apostle = one who is sent to build, establish.

· High Priest – the one who acts on our behalf before God.

· Profession = homologeo = to speak the same words as God.

Shaping Your Own World (11 of 12)

Sun 30 Dec 2007  « Back to Top

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You know you've heard the old saying: sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me? Not true, because long after the bones have been fixed, the words and names you've been called are still ringing inside you like a message that won't go away, defining who you are. You cannot let what other people say define who you are. Let God define who you are. He's designed you and through relationship with Him, you begin to embrace what He has to say, and your life comes up to a different level.

I'm going to be speaking again, carrying on where I was last week. We've been doing a series on the Power of the Tongue, and we did a series for about four weeks on Taming the Tongue, and all the different ways that people speak destructively, and speak words that impact negatively the lives around us. Then this last couple of weeks we've been looking at the Creative Power of the Tongue, how we can actually speak words that change our lives, change our environment, so we're going to just pick up with a couple of scriptures you're familiar with. I keep going through the same scriptures, because I know then you'll get them into your mind and heart.

Proverbs 18:21, how many can remember already what that is? Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it, shall eat the fruit of it. In other words, whatever words we speak, begin to shape what's around us, shape our relationships, shape the way we are, and we have a fruit from the things we say, so already you have a fruit you're eating from, the words you've sown into relationships, and have spoken over your life over times past. I was with one group of people the other day. We were just having lunch with a friend and as we were down there I was just looking around, seeing if there was anyone I knew, found someone I knew, went over and said hello - it was a birthday party so well, it was great. We congratulated them on the birthday and say well, we've got a tradition here, what we're going to do we're going to sing Happy Birthday.

We got everyone around who was anywhere near us, we all sang Happy Birthday out loud, and then I said we've got another tradition, and we're going to start it, and that is we like to speak words that impart honour and value into people. One of the family members - not my family - one of the family members immediately says oh, we don't do that our family! Isn't that amazing? Well that was your past. You can choose a different future, and it begins today, so I'll show you how to do it, and then you can be next [Laughter] and it changed the whole environment. Isn't it interesting how someone had got fixed in their mind, well we don't do things that way. Why would you ever agree with that, when you can disagree with it, and change it, change yourself, and change your future? We need to be willing to do that - so creative words. So it was just wonderful to see them begin to talk, and share words of affirmation that spoke value into that person.

So let's have a look in James, Chapter 3. I want to go back to that one again, and then we'll start off where we want to go today. So we saw that words have power in them. You know you've heard the old saying, sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me? That is not true, because long after the bones have been fixed, the words and names you've been called are still ringing inside you like a message that won't go away, defining who you are, and you cannot let your past define who you are. You cannot let what other people say define who you are. You must let God define who you are, and when you let God define who you are, and say what He sees in you, or what He's designed in you, and through relationship with Him, you begin to embrace what He has to say, and your life comes up to a different level. We're going to touch on that a little bit later.

James, Chapter 3, just go back there where we were, and He says this, Verse 3. Now we put a bit in a horse's mouth that it may obey us, and we turn the whole body. Isn't that amazing? Just one little part of the horse, you've got a hold of it there and control of it, you can control the whole horse. Then he says look at ships; though they're so large and driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder, wherever the pilot wants, so he uses two pictures real easy to see - a horse and a ship. It says both of them are controlled by something very, very small and then in case we didn't get it, he says it's the same with your tongue. If you can bridle the tongue, and begin to change the words you're speaking, you will change the course of your life. You will change the course of your life. You will change the course of your life. Not listening to lots of messages is going to change your life - it's what you do, will change the course of your life.

I want to share with you some things today that will help you. I'll develop them in depth or in a different way a little later on into next year, but we were talking last week about the words we speak, the words that God spoke. They are spirit, and they have capacity to bring a power to bear in the world, beyond what's just natural around us. He said the words I speak, they are spirit, and they are life. So when Jesus spoke words, many things changed. The supernatural was released. There was a spiritual dimension unlocked as He spoke the word of God, and so the Bible's very clear that, when you and I begin to start to tame our tongue, and master our tongue, begin to speak differently, our life's direction will begin to change. We looked at several areas that we wanted to change, but the most important one, the one I want to look at today, is the shaping your own world, shaping your inner world by the word of God, because if you don't shape or change what's inside you, mostly what's outside you will remain - there'll be very little change.

I talk and counsel a lot of people at times, and always they're looking for something outside them to shift. The belief inside is that if just I get a better chance, or if I just win Lotto, if I just strike it lucky or something, if I just get a break, that they're looking for an external thing, and they're putting their hope in something external that will actually shift everything for them. Reality is, it doesn't work that way. We had a guy over the road from us, and he thought that way. He won $50,000 in a scratchy Lotto thing, and so he was very happy for a little while. He thought his whole life would change. I thought well, you know, unless he's changed on the inside, it'll be about a year, and he'll have lost it all. In the end I couldn't stand it, and went over and said listen, for goodness sake get a house, do something with your money. It was all just being frittered away. He'd already done $25,000 when I intervened, and tried to help him and give him some advice to actually help him get direction.

Because he didn't change inside, a change externally didn't make any difference. You can run away from your problems, but the problems are inside you, and so next place you go, the funny thing is, the same things are happening there. Okay then, so we want to look about changing your inner world, and particularly my focus is on the words, shaping your world by the word of God, and particularly words you speak. I want you to look with me in Ephesians, Chapter 4, Verse 29. So first thing we want to look at is changing the way we speak, changing how we speak. Paul has been writing about what Christ has done for us, and the position He's given us, and now begins to talk about how you live your life. He talks about some changes to make in our lifestyle, and here's one of them. He says - Verse 29 - let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. In other words, he's saying you need to change the way you talk, after you've given your life to Christ. You need to change the way you speak. The life before Christ, we tend to speak all kinds of negativity, all kinds of things are in our hearts and life, but we come to the Lord and our inner life changes. We're born again inside.

Then he says you need to change how you speak, and how you address the outer world because, notice this, he said you should let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. That's stop doing that, then look what he tells us to do. He says but rather speak words which are good for edification, or building up. Just stop there for a moment. He said change from negative talk, critical talk, putting down talk, destructive talk, bitter talk, harsh talk. He says begin to actually start to commit yourself to speak words that are building up words, that acknowledge good things, that honour people, that value people, that appreciate people. Start to speak differently. Now notice this: he said speak words that are good for edifying - notice this - that they may impart grace to the hearers. That word impart means to transfer, or to put into someone's life, to bring into them something which they need. The word grace always in the Bible refers to the power of God. By grace you're saved, in other words the power of God that changes us on the inside, when with faith we respond to Christ.

So notice this. He's saying start to speak words that release the life of God to those who hear, or are responding to what you're saying. Now he wouldn't tell us to do that, if it wasn't possible for you and me to speak words that release the spiritual life of God, to encourage, lift up, and refresh, and touch people. Many of you have had an experience where someone prayed for you, or had a prophetic word, and your heart suddenly just felt overwhelmed, as you felt the love of God touch you. You felt the spirit of God flow through that person's words, and impact your life and heart, so you and I can speak words that impart grace, that empower people, release the life of God. Now one of the greatest dilemmas in families is silent men, men who have the power to speak words that could change young people in their thinking, in their outlook, but they don't say anything. So one of the things that God has given all of us the ability to do, is to speak words that can release grace, release the life of God. You don't even know, like you don't feel any different. You're just speaking from your heart. You're speaking the things that you have in your heart, you're speaking out of the life you're living with Christ, and what happens is the words have an effect you just were surprised by.

There's a life flow within your words, because you're joined to the Lord. He that's joined to the Lord is one spirit, so as we speak, words go out. Now the word 'hearer' means someone who's listening attentively. Who is it you listen to most of all? Yourself. The one you hear talk more than anyone in the world is yourself. Is that not true? You're talking to yourself all the time. Thoughts are going through the head, even right now some of you will be thinking, agreeing, disagreeing, feeling hot, tired, thinking about lunch. There's thoughts going on all the time, there's stuff going on. Your mind just doesn't zone out completely you know, there's thoughts going on all the time - about 30 to 40 words a minute I read about. That's an awful lot of words, a lot of words going on inside you, and you're either agreeing with those words, or rejecting those words, but there's a lot of words going on inside you, and some of them you're agreeing with, and many of them you speak out.

Now the ones you speak out, means you've come into agreement with what you're thinking, and they begin to start to impact you. You're hearing what you say. Now if our words have power to impart grace to those who hear them, you have the power to speak words of encouragement and strength into yourself. Now a lot of people say oh, why didn't no one encourage me. Encourage yourself! Well no one's really spoken words that lifted me up. Well okay, do it to yourself! Take God's words, and begin to speak them into your own life. The Bible says when David - 1 Samuel 36 - when David was in this huge problem place, he'd lost everything. In the middle of it all, when everything was disastrous, he strengthened himself. He must have said something. He spoke words that strengthened himself, in his relationship with God, and in his faith, and it turned that day. What a brilliant example, that is of a man who's whole life looks as though it's just gone down the sink hole, and in the middle of it, when everyone is talking failure, defeat, grieving, weeping, he spoke differently. He spoke words that strengthened himself in the Lord.

The result of it was, he heard God afresh, and the direction he got carried him through, and he ended up the day better off than he had been before he heard the bad news. How did he do it? Well you can read that in Bill Johnson's book, you can find some great keys on that, and I'll share some things on that, but we'll talk a little bit about it today, because there are some basic principles you do need to understand, on how to speak words to build yourself up. That'd be a good thing wouldn't it? Tell someone next to you, you need to encourage yourself. You need to encourage yourself. Now a lot of the words we're speaking to ourselves, are kind of just like oh, I need to get that done today. Man, I mustn't forget that. A lot of it's just neutral kinds of words, but there are some other kinds of words which are different, and there are many words we speak which actually are completely destructive to us, and very limiting; oh, I can never do that. Often the first time you ever ask people to do something - oh, I can never do that. Who said that? Who on earth told you you could never do that?

How many here in the church have found themselves, you've been here a while, and you've done things you'd never have thought you could have done? Look at it, all over, see? Because you just needed some words that would build you up, and encourage you, so you'd stretch out and do things you'd never done before, so obviously you were limited in your thoughts, and limited in what you were saying on the inside. There was a need to change. It's very well known of course in the sports field, this whole issue of self-talk, and insurance people use it, sportsmen do it. The cutting edge between winners and losers in the sports field is often not about the talent, it's about the inner mentalities, and that is generated and developed by what they think on, and what they say to themselves; I can do it. I can do it - so there's an inward talk that goes on.

See even naturally, without any presence of God, it's understood in the secular world, that you can actually improve your performance by speaking the right kinds of things to yourself, and stopping the whining, negative talk. How much more then, if you're a Holy Spirit-filled believer, and you begin to start to speak words into your own life, how you yourself will begin to change on the inside - but you've got to do it. See, I can tell you the message, and I can tell you the how, I can get alongside you and show you what to do, but at the end of the day, when you walk away, you've got to do something. You just have to decide at the end of 2008, I will be enlarged in my capacity, I will have changed some things in my life, and one thing I'll change is the way I talk, particularly the way I talk to myself. I'm going to begin to speak differently. I'll talk to you a little bit about what to speak - see, so we can - that word impart grace, means to supply something needed to build and strengthen you, from the resources God has made available. Isn't that amazing aye? You can build yourself.

There was a season in my life where I had to make a conscious decision to devote time specifically to building myself. Now a lot of Christians get this religious kind of thinking that oh well, you know, just be thinking about other people, doing stuff for other people. No, listen. You can only give to others what you've received. If you can grow and increase your personal capacity, and mentalities, and skills, and attitudes, you've got more to give. Even the world understands that. If you just come in and you have no skills, you get paid a low rate, but if you go away and train and you learn new skills, you're worth more. You have more to give. Well now what a tragedy for people who remain Christians, and never do anything to improve themselves, to increase their value.

You know you can have one year's Christian experience 10 times, or you can have 10 years experience. You've got to think about that. What have you done to put into practice what you learned this year? Okay, so let me just read you another verse, Isaiah 55, Verses 8 and 9. Look what it says here, and God is talking to Isaiah, a prophet. He makes an interesting statement, and this is what He says; My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as heaven is higher than the earth, so are My ways of doing things higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Okay, let's just stop there for a moment. Now what He's saying is, He's not being negative. He's just saying this; He's saying a human being without God is limited in their thinking. What He's saying is, the thoughts I think, are far higher than what you would think, they're bigger than what you think, they have more value than what you have. If you would connect with Me, and begin to listen to My thoughts, and come into agreement with them, your inner life would shift and change, and then your world would change. So He says My ways of doing things, now for example, one of the ways of God doing things is serving. Jesus came, He said I've come not to expect anything, or to get anything from anyone, I've come to serve and give my life. Now very clearly, the greater you are at serving, the greater influence you have, but often people think the other way.

It's more natural for us to think, I've got to get myself ahead, but actually if you serve, and value, and invest into people, which is God's way of doing stuff, it actually works. So many things you find in life, people are struggling trying to make life work, but God says listen, tune in. I know how it works, because I designed it. He says My ways of doing things have got greater value than your ways. Some ways we do things are fine, but He said there's other better ways of doing things. He said if you can lock in with My words, and My thoughts, and you begin to agree with them, and you begin to let them be a part of you, then your life will come up to a different level. My life now is a completely different level to what it was 10 years ago, and that was a completely different level to what it was 10 years before that. The more I've come into agreement with God's thoughts about me, and about life, and about what could be done, and what I could do, the more my life changes.

So who's responsible for that? You are. So to change your inner world or shape your inner world, you actually have to change what's inside your heart, see? The thing is - and let me just read this verse here - I want you to have a look with me in Proverbs 23 and Verse 7. I'm going to talk about changing your inner world, and then I'm going to give you several little keys on what to do, how specifically you about changing your inner world. I'm not just going to exhort you and tell you it's possible. I want to show you actually how it happens, then it's only a matter of just putting the discipline and the commitment into working with yourself. Why wouldn't you work with yourself? You're of great value to God. Oh, I can see straight away some thoughts come up - I'm not much value. Who told you that? Why do you agree with that?

I've found very often when I ask someone, why don't you pray for yourself, they can't pray for themselves, and when you explore why they can't pray for themselves, it's for this reason; their belief about what their value is, is very low, and they don't realise they're of great value to God. So they can pray for everyone else except for themselves. They can ask for everyone else except for themselves. God wants you to know you're of great value, but someone a long time ago, or experiences, may have told you you're not much value. Someone may have spoken it over your life, and if you've come into agreement with those words, they define who you are, and I want my life defined by what God says I am, and what I can do. Think about that. See, don't let your past define you, don't let friends define you. You need to let God's word - God's your designer, He knows what you're capable of, and I can tell you now, I can absolutely assure you now, you're capable of much more in 2008 than you did in 2007. You are capable of much, much more, but to position yourself for that to happen, you've got to be willing to change how you think about yourself. Next time we'll talk about how to change the atmosphere around you, then we'll talk about how to change the world around you, how you actually bring influence of God to bear through words you speak.

Right now, I want to just look at first of all defining your inner world. Proverbs 23:7 says as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. As a man thinks in his heart, so the Bible uses the word heart, not your physical heart. It's describing your inner man - in the heart of the matter, the core of the matter. So when the Bible's talking about your heart, it refers to the inner man. The Bible describes us as being made up with body, soul and spirit. We're a spirit being. We have capacity to interact with the spirit world. We're a human being, we have capacity to live and function in a physical world, and the soul is the connecting point between the two. If a person's in this world without God, then they're cut off from that life that God could give them. When we connect with the Lord, then we have access to the life of God.

Okay then, now in Matthew, Chapter 12 and Verses 34 and 35 it says this; Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the abundance of the heart - so you have to do more than just change what you're saying. We do have to address the issues of the heart, and I'll show you just in a moment how that takes place. It's not very difficult. Nothing in God is very difficult, never is, but if I just try to control my words and change my words, and don't change what's going inside me, I'll actually find I'm slipping back into old ways. Some of you who would have had real trouble with swearing, and then you find every now and then, suddenly you lose and you're back down that track again, even though you tried to stop see? Because we've got to change the heart, so if we change what's inside us, then what's outside of us will shift easily, but the two work together as we'll see in just a moment.

Okay, so the words overflow what's in your heart, so when the Bible's talking about your heart, and what's in your heart, and what flows out of your heart, what will flow out of your heart will be things that you believe. You may be conscious of them, or not conscious of them, but things you believe, things you've accepted as true, for example, if you've accepted I'm of no value, it's going to affect everything. You'll have trouble receiving a compliment. You'll have trouble receiving praise for anything you do. You'll have trouble receiving a gift. You'll love to give them, but very difficult to receive because inside, if you were really true, you actually don't believe you're of great value and not deserving of something. These values, these beliefs form while we're younger of course.

The second thing is, that are inside us, in our heart, are agreements. Agreement is something you've come into one mind or harmony with. Now of course, the Bible tells us in the spirit world, there are demonic spirits, wicked and evil spirit beings, that invade people's minds and body, when they're ever given an opportunity, and when they invade, they fill you with feelings, and they fill you with thoughts. If you come into agreement with their thoughts, and don't actually make a stand against them, then that demon's empowered to work in your life. It will continue to work, until the day you come into disagreement with it, so I found for years for example, I struggle with thought patterns, and I was just in agreement with it. It never occurred to me that actually demonic spirits were riding in on the back of some hurts in my younger days, and were just talking to me.

They were just familiar thoughts; I could never do this, I'll never be good enough, nothing I ever do is good enough - thoughts which were demonically empowered, so I found it really difficult to change initially, until I realised I had to deal with it. One, I had to come into a disagreement with that thought, and the spirit behind it. Then I had to begin to start to plant new thoughts. I remember when I went to Dannevirke and got a school property there, they showed me the garden, and the garden was overgrown with weeds, oxalis actually. There's no chance you could grow anything unless you pulled out the weeds and plant something good, and many times when we look into our heart, we begin to see what we're saying, we're echoing what people said to us when we were younger. Some people have had dads say oh, you're an idiot, you'll never do anything, and that thing is resonating away in their head. It's in the heart, I believe I'll never be any good at anything, and so we come to the Lord; yes, we've accepted Jesus saved us, we've accepted He died on the cross for our sins, we've come into our initial connection with Him. Now He wants to renovate the inside, so you can actually accomplish His purpose for your life.

That's why it's important to grow in the Lord, to continue to grow, never stop growing, never settle down, never say I've got enough. You have far more potential in you, that'll be unlocked as you change what you're agreeing with, change what you believe. Another thing that gets into our heart and into our mind are mindsets. A mindset is like a mental rut. It's a way of thinking. Now some people have got mindsets about Asians. Some people have got mindsets about Maori. Some people have got mindsets about white people, some people have got mindsets about Africans. Now mindsets are a fixed way of thinking, and I must admit when I faced going to Asia the very first time, God opened a door for me to go to minister to Chinese. Now I had a bit of a problem, because I had a bit of a mental set birthed out of my experiences with Chinese. The only Chinese I ever met were Chinese who were in the market gardens around here. They were very cold, very unfriendly, I didn't understand them, and they were different people.

I had, I would not say positive attitudes, and now God's called me to go to minister to them! Now clearly you can't do that unless you change your mindset, so the Lord had to help me to shift, and let go the things I'd come into agreement with, and begin to form new things. I said to Him Lord, I don't know what to do. You've opened the door for me. I've got no idea how to connect with a culture that's so different to what I'm used to and I said, how would I do it? He gave me three keys, and I've just followed the three keys He gave me systematically for the last 20 years, and everywhere I go I get favour.

Now you see my thinking was lower than His thinking. He had the answers on how to think, how to behave, how to speak, how to respond, that changed everything around my relationship with the Chinese people. Now I love them, and I was away in Taiwan for about three weeks I suppose, ministering one time, came back and had to go into a chemist to pick up something. There were two people there; there was a young New Zealand boy, there was a young Chinese boy. I felt drawn to the Chinese boy, and I looked at him and I thought man, I know what that draw is. That's the spirit of God drawing me. I said you're from Taiwan aren't you? He said how did you know that? See, because God had done something in my heart to connect me, when I changed how I viewed Chinese people. Think about this.

Some people have got it towards women. There are many men sitting here, and you have got mindsets about women, and that affects your capacity to grow and develop deep and meaningful relationships. There are women here who have mindsets about men, and that affects your ability to enter into and have a long term relationship with men. You're carrying baggage, and if you want your future to be better, to you've got to - well God, what do I do about this? How can I change what's inside me? Most times, when I hear people talking about what the problem is, it's always the other partner. It's a shame really, because you can't do anything about them, you can only do something about yourself, see, because you're not responsible for them. You're responsible for yourself. Oh, gone real quiet now. Those elbows are getting out, I can tell it! [Laughter] I hope you're listening.

Okay and of course expectations are a part of our inner life, what we expect, what we're looking forward to, what we're anticipating. I had a negative outlook, very negative, expected things to go wrong, and to break, and to go wrong for me. Terrible isn't it? It's very, very bad really. Judgements is another thing, you know, where you've actually formed an opinion about someone, about men or women or life or whatever. So these are some of the things that get in our hearts, and we've got to shift, so if you're going to change what's on the inside, you have to identify the issues. You have to know what it is I need to change, and fortunately the Holy Spirit will help us. You ask Him show me what I need to change. Don't go saying: show him what he needs to change, or show her what she needs to change. Show ME what I need to change to grow to another level and enlarge my potential and capacity, see. Show me what I need - He loves to answer that kind of prayer.

Okay then, now what kinds of things He will help you see, and I'll put them in two categories, then I'll show you just a strategy for working on some of these things. One group of areas that affects how we see ourselves, and how we speak, are the issue of past trauma that we've had, painful experiences, so I'll give you three areas; one, broken relationships. If broken relationships are not resolved through forgiveness, the pain that we feel tends to cause us to lock up with certain mindsets, and so you can try and change the mindset, but if you don't deal with the root issue that's feeding it, it doesn't shift easily. So I've found, for example, when I was coming to deal with myself, I had come to the point of a situation of forgiveness of perceived unfairness I'd felt towards my own father, see. But I had to deal with it, in order to break free from the past, to be able to be changed by the word of God to go forward. So many times, to move forward, we have to actually release or identify issues of broken relationships, and release forgiveness. If you don't, you'll lock into mindsets and you're speaking negatively, you speak destruction over your life.

The second area that we need to deal with, is areas of grief, where there's been a grief, a disappointment, a loss. It could be a death of someone close to us, a loss of some kind of business, unexpected tragedy, a marriage or family break up, but the grief of it. I was just talking with someone last Sunday, and I was very sad to hear that their marriage had broken up, that I could have helped them. They didn't need to break up. The problem was this, that there was grief, and I pointed out to them about a year ago what I saw was a problem that was developing. They stood up to address it, and then the grief, they turned on one another. What a tragedy, so if we don't deal with the grief in our heart and release them, and let them go, and grieve over them, and move on, we just stay angry, and no amount of positive confession, or faith confession will shift it.

We do have to address the issues of the heart, so there's relationships, grief; bitter judgements are where we judge, or make a judgement about someone, based on a bitter feeling. Now those kinds of things lock us in to things, and there's an emotional power inside, and demons get in around - it's hard to shift it. It doesn't shift easily. It's much easier if you do what God says. You know what He says, if someone hurt you? He just says forgive them - so easy if you do it. My way is, I want to stay angry at them. God says, I've got a better way, it's a higher way, just forgive them, and let them go, and move on. Oh, that's not fair. Well that's your way of thinking. God says no, I know it's not fair, but nevertheless just let it go, it'll empower you to move on. Okay then, so let's just talk then about some of the steps that you can - so there's the first thing are relationships. The second group are the area of words, words we've come into agreement with.

I remember praying for one lady one day, and as I went to pray for her, these words came up into my mind: no one ever wanted me. I suddenly heard these words come into my mind, and I realised the word of God was showing me, this is what controlled this woman. She had come to believe years ago when she was a little girl, had gone through a conflict in her home, no one ever wanted me. So she lived her life out of that belief, and I just prayed for her. I didn't even ask her about it. I laid hands on her, broke the power of those words that said no one ever wanted me, and spoke the truth, and she just broke down and wept and wept and wept.

There was a tremendous freedom came to her life. I said now the power of that thing you've come into agreement with is broken, now you need to begin to face the issues of forgiveness, and then change how you think - no longer agree with it. You are of value. God loves you. God values you. God wants to work with you, see? Okay then, so beliefs and mindsets, so these are the things that need to change.

Now I want to share with you, is just a couple of simple keys on how to shift them. How can I shift what's going on? How can I use God's word to shift the things, just remembering that God's words have a power of spirit life. Jesus said, the words I speak are spirit in their life. Number two, that God's thoughts always are higher than ours, so initially we may find ourselves reacting to what God says, but what I want to show you is just some simple steps. I know they work. I've worked them myself, and they change the whole way I view life and they change particularly the way I viewed myself, and then my capacity to receive from God. I want to just give them to you very, very simply. Take a note of them, and if you can't get a note, get the CD or get something like that, but just put these things to work.

The first thing was - and it goes almost without saying - is I need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ for this reason. The Bible tells us, when we're born in this world, we're born without God, so we've got to try and get along on our own, do it our own way. So when we come to a place of faith in relationship with God, we open ourselves to His help. We open ourselves to His grace, we open ourselves to His power being able to touch us. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:17 if you are joined to the Lord, you are one spirit. There's a oneness of connection, so that means you now have the ability to draw on the life of the Holy Spirit. Okay, so this is the first thing, the first step to a significant change in your inner world is to actually respond to God's love, God's gift to you. He loves you and values you. The first thing is to agree with that, and become connected with Him.

Okay, here's some other things that you can do. The second one is we can identify and resolve the personal issues we have. If you realise that the Holy Spirit - I remember speaking to some of our young people over the last year, and I had spoken to them probably on and off for about a year or two years over issues that blocked them going forward and growing, I said if you will deal with this issue, your capacity and the life of God around you will increase. Just would you deal with it? Deal with it. In the end, I spoke to one and said, just deal with it now, and gave him a 10 day period, and they did it, and their life changed, see so we need to resolve relationship issues, unforgiveness, hurt, those kinds of things, just resolve and forgive.

Jesus said very clearly, when you stand praying, if you've got anything against anyone, just forgive them, release them, let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Grieve over it, and let it go, so you can move on. Then the third thing is, practice speaking out and breaking agreements with negative words. Learn how to break agreements with negative words. Now if you've never learnt to speak things out over your life, then this will be a bit of a challenge for you, because just even hearing your own voice will be a shock. For some people, just hearing their own voice speaking is a bit of a shock, but we can speak. Remember, I can speak words that change my inner world, so one of the things I began to do was this. The first thing I did was I actually dealt with some of the unresolved relationship conflicts in my life by forgiving, grieving over it and letting it go. That meant I could move on instead of being tormented by it.

The second thing I did was I began to identify where I was in agreement with certain mindsets; self-pity, poor me, no one cares. I had to actually stand against it, and break its power - in the name of Jesus Christ I break the power of self-pity. I cancel those words. I reject those words and the spirit behind them. You've actually got to stand up. You come into disagreement with it, not settle with it, and let it be over you. You've got to stand up and disagree with it, see? Another one was rejection. I felt like I was not acceptable, so I had to actually stand up and speak words; in Jesus' name, I break that mindset of rejection, I break the power of that spirit behind it. I refuse its hold over my life in Jesus' name - actually had to make a stand against it, and there were a number of areas I had to make a stand against. If you don't make a stand against some things which are negative in your life, they're going to continue to dominate your life. You must get some grunt and fight in you and stand up, disagree with them.

Some people just want perpetual counselling. What they really need is to stand up, and take personal responsibility for your life, and begin to contend with the things which are contrary to what God says is for your life. If He says He has accepted you, why do you live with the lie of rejection? I'm not accepted, I don't belong, I've no value - why live with the lie when God says I love you, and have accepted you, because of your trust in Jesus Christ? Well I've found, yes, I knew it in my head, but my heart didn't know it, so I still lived like I was a rejected person. I had to change my heart, by speaking the word of God, and contending, and standing against the things which were negative. You've got to resist them. Don't let them settle on you. Some people live their life bowed down, because they're accepting this kind of negative thought, rejection, defeat, self-pity, bitterness, all this kind of stuff. You've got to take a stand against it, come into disagreement with it. Disagree with it. Disagree with it. You don't know how long you've agreed - I decided it would probably take me a little while, and so I set aside about three to six months to come into disagreement with those things which I saw dominated my life, and of course it's not a matter of just coming into disagreement. You've actually got to sow something - here's the next thing.

The next thing is search out and embrace what God says about you. Find out what God has to say about you. He's got a lot of good things to say about you. Find out what He has to say. Oh, that'd be a bit much work. Well listen mate, it'll change your life - do it! The word of God will change your life. It's given to build you up, so you're equipped for every good work. You need to know what God says about you. If you don't know, let someone help you, so when we read what God says, we get His thoughts on us. He says I've redeemed you. I love you. I have accepted you. I forgive you. I have a destiny - He's got a lot of things to say - got a lot of things to say, and so if we don't agree with what He says, then we're locked into the old ways of thinking which limit us, for example He tells us how to come to Him. He says come boldly to the throne of grace, so He doesn't say to come timidly and quietly. He says come boldly.

So you see if I don't know what He says, how can I be in agreement with it? You know what I'll agree with? I'll agree with what everyone around me said, or my tradition, or my background, or whatever. You've got to go to what God says is the thing we ought to do, and believe that. So find out what God has to say. In Jeremiah 15, Verse 16, he says I found your words and I ate them. I took them right into my life, and they were the joy and rejoicing of my heart. So God's word coming into our life shifts us, and changes us. You can't believe how many people, hundreds and thousands of people by now, have come into tremendous freedom because we broke the power of things that were over their life, the demons that were in them got out, the presence of God and the word of God came in. I've got letter after letter after letter of people who've felt God love them for the first time in their life, and how did that happen? The power of Spirit anointed words, spoken from someone who had changed and believed what He was saying. Okay, so find out what God has to say.

Then here's what you do is you need to begin to declare it. These are the key parts these next two parts: first, resolve the conflict. Secondly, break the agreements with the negative patterns of thinking as you identify them. Somebody will say oh, I can never get anything right. Stop saying that. Disagree with that. Some people agree, you know, they've got words spoken over them, you're a fool, you're a failure. No! God has not planned failure for you! He's planned success for you! You've got to break those agreements with those negative things. Now who's going to do it? I'm sorry, but unless you do it it's not going to happen. You have to make a decision in 2008, I will arise, I will no longer stay limited with my current limitations. I'm going to begin to start to content to break out and that means I'll change on the inside.

Now here's the next two parts which are really important. Declare strongly God's word over your life as an affirmation. We need to learn to declare what God says over our lives. Now see a lot of people are very familiar with the 23rd Psalm for example. They all know the 23rd Psalm of: the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, and so on and so forth. But now what you need to do is to take it from just being a statement by one man, David, and personalise it, and make it your statement. Lord, you are my shepherd, I have an abundance of everything I need. See? You make me lie down, in green pastures, you lead me. You restore my soul. Today, I think of you leading me in right paths, because you're a good shepherd.

To get the word of God to work in your life, you need to find a promise of God, personalise it, make it so it's personal - I, me, my. Secondly, it needs to be simple and direct. Always make it positive - so I never go declaring the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord is my shepherd, I have an abundance of everything I need. He leads me in right paths. Thank you today Lord you are leading me, and guiding me in every step, and everything I do. You actually need to declare God's word over your life, and as you declare it, speak it into yourself. Hear what you're saying, and if you need to speak up, tell yourself SPEAK UP! Don't mumble. [Mumbles] No, listen, not like that. The Lord is MY shepherd. I lack nothing. I'm full of every abundance of everything! See, get positive instead of mumbling away. Mumbles don't change anything. You've got to learn to speak, speak the word into yourself, and hear what you're saying, because the Bible says as you hear the word of God, faith rises in your heart.

This is what will happen when you personalise and speak the word of God over your life on a daily basis; it begins to change what you believe about yourself, and as it changes what you believe, you begin to change. You've got to do it, personalise it, take scriptures, speak them; I'm accepted. Today I Thank You Lord I have acceptance.

See a lot of people don't know how to pray and make their prayers personal. Thank You Lord, I'm accepted in You today. My sins are forgiven. I walk in freedom today! I thank You I can boldly come into your presence today! Now that's just taking scripture and declaring it over my life. Now what happens when you keep doing that is, you begin to change on the inside. You hear your own words, you hear yourself speaking positive, encouraging, life-giving, spirit-filled words, and you get lifted up, and you change. Your inner man changes.

Finally the last thing to do is to place with that - the Bible talks about meditating. Now non-Christian meditation is about emptying yourself until there's a vacuum all kinds of stuff can come into, but Christian meditation always means picturing, imagining, visualising, seeing God's word over and over and over. When we say we learnt our tables by heart, it meant we memorised them by repetition. In Joshua 1, Chapter 8, He said these words that I speak shall be in your mouth, shall not depart our of your mouth He said, but you'll meditate on them day and night to do them, and then you will make your own way prosperous. This is what you need to do. I'll share this in more detail in another thing. I'll just make a focus on it, and show you how to do it. We have done this overseas with large numbers of people hungry for God, and got them meditating in the word of God, and they began to encounter and experience the reality of God. Meditation opens the way for you to begin to experience the reality of God, so meditating. So what do I meditate? The Lord is my shepherd, so I need to picture, and see that as a reality. What would it look like if the Lord was my shepherd?

See for many people [recites speedily in monotone] The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want - it's just a prayer. It's never actually become an experience for you. It's never become your reality. Until it becomes your reality, it's just a prayer in the Bible, a nice prayer. Pray it when you're dying - but what I want to do is pray it now and live by it, see? So I took some time, probably for the best space of six months, praying that prayer. Sometimes I'd go through the whole lot, sometimes just one. Lord, you're my shepherd. The word shepherd is a friend and companion. I'd begin to picture and meditate Him being near to me, very near. If He's a shepherd He's near me, and meditating means you're declaring, you're speaking, and you're picturing what God's word is being true. I imagine what that would feel like, He's my friend, because all I really could imagine and feel was being alone - so time spent with the word of God, confessing it, declaring it and meditating in it, it began to find root in my heart, and I knew it changed one day, because one day I suddenly encountered the experience of God's love for me as a personal friend. I wept and wept when it become that real.

Before that it was a little hard going, I didn't feel a thing. I was doing it because I knew this was somehow going to get me to change on the inside. Afterwards, for about three months afterwards, any time I'd sit with anyone and pray the 23rd Psalm with them, they'd all break down and cry, because what I had experienced of the reality of God started to flow to touch them. Now you have to make the decision, whether you'll accept life at this level in the next year, or whether you will walk with yourself to grow and enlarge in your faith, your capacity, your mind, your way of viewing things, if you'll let the spirit of God and the word of God renew your mind and your inner man. The Bible says don't let the world shape you, and push you down into it's mould, but be totally shifted and changed, so you become quite a different person, by renovating your mind, renovating what you believe, renovating your inner man.

I've given you the keys to it today. All you've got to do is begin to start to put them into practice, and you can begin to shift whatever it is in your life at this point needs to shift. For some, it may be a poverty mindset. Poverty mindset goes like this; there's not enough, there's not enough. A person can be very young, and be deeply wounded by not having enough. They go to school, they haven't got the clothes everyone else has got, everything is second hand. They get deeply wounded, deeply hurt, begin to think there's not enough, not enough, so they begin to decide I know what I'll do. I'll really make sure I'm never in that position. So they grow, and they work, and they train, and they do very well, and they're really doing well; they've got a heap of money, but you know what their prevailing mentality is? There's not enough! I've seen people with heaps of money, and you know what they're saying to themselves? There's not enough! How much is enough? But the message inside is not enough! They've got a message of poverty, even though they've got all this money around them. Now they need to shift on the inside, change on the inside, and then all their outer world will change. You can shape your world within by the word of God.

Father in heaven, we just thank You right now for Your love and care and kindness to us. Thank you for your goodness to us. Thank You for all that You do, and continue to do. Thank You for the keys on how to change, how to shift on the inside. Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, there may be someone here today, you've been thinking about spiritual things maybe for a long time, and one of the first keys to a significant change in your inward life is to have a relationship with God, through a personal faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible says, people are born into this world without God. We live our life without Him. We try the best we can, do what we can, but the Bible calls it sin, living a life apart from our creator. Jesus came to give us that life, and the Bible says this; whoever received Him, whoever put their trust in Him, He gave the power to become a child of God. So there's something required of us, not just to acknowledge Jesus was a historical figure, but to acknowledge He died on the cross for my sins. He rose from the dead, I have to put my trust in Him. To everyone who received Him, to everyone who made Him welcome in their life, to everyone who put their trust in Him, He gave power to be a child of God.

Summary Notes

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Proverbs 18:21 - "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it, shall eat the fruit of it"

James 3:3 - "Now we put a bit in a horse's mouth that it may obey us, and we turn the whole body."

James 3:4 - "Look at ships; though they're so large and driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder, wherever the pilot wants"

Ephesians 4:29 - "let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth..."

You need to change the way you talk, after you've given your life to Christ. You need to change the way you speak.

The life before Christ, we tend to speak all kinds of negativity, all kinds of things are in our hearts and life, but we come to the Lord and our inner life changes. We're born again inside.

"...but rather speak words which are good for edification (building up)..."

Change from negative talk, critical talk, putting down talk, destructive talk, bitter talk, harsh talk. He says begin to actually start to commit yourself to speak words that are building up words, that acknowledge good things, that honour people, that value people, that appreciate people. Start to speak differently.

“…that they may impart grace to the hearers.”

Impart means: ‘to transfer’, or to put into someone's life, to bring into them something which they need. The word ‘grace’ always in the Bible refers to the power of God - By grace you're saved, in other words the power of God that changes us on the inside, when with faith we respond to Christ.

Speak words that release the life of God to those who hear, or are responding to what you're saying.

I can speak words that impart grace, that empower people, release the life of God.

Silent men - have the power to speak words that could change young people in their thinking, in their outlook, but they don't say anything.

There's a life flow within your words, because you're joined to the Lord. "He that's joined to the Lord is one spirit"

You have the power to speak words of encouragement and strength into yourself.

1 Samuel 36 - David was in this huge problem place, he'd lost everything. In the middle of it all, when everything was disastrous, he ‘strengthened himself’. He must have said something! He spoke words that strengthened himself, in his relationship with God, and in his faith, and it turned that day. In the middle of it, when everyone is talking failure, defeat, grieving, weeping, he spoke differently. He spoke words that strengthened himself in the Lord.

Isaiah 55:8-9 "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as heaven is higher than the earth, so are My ways of doing things higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

=> a human being without God is limited in their thinking

My ways of doing things have got greater value than your ways.

Proverbs 23:7 - "As a man thinks in his heart, so he is."

Matthew 12:34 "...Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."

Matthew 12:35 "A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him"

Inside us, in our heart, are Agreements.

Another thing that gets into our heart and into our mind are Mindsets.

Expectations are a part of our inner life - what we expect, what we're looking forward to, anticipating.

Kinds of things He will help you see:

* Broken Relationships – pain leads to certain mindsets

* Grief (or disappoint, loss, family breakup)

* Bitter judgements

* Words we’ve come into agreement with

How to shift them?

* God's words have a power of spirit life. Jesus said: the words I speak are spirit in their life.

* God's thoughts always are higher than ours,

#1 – Having a relationship with Jesus Christ (respond to God’s love)

1 Corinthians 6:17 – “if you are joined to the Lord, you are one spirit.”

#2 – Identify and resolve the personal issues we have (deal with it – just resolve and forgive – let it go) Jesus said: when you stand praying, if you've got anything against anyone, just forgive them, release them, let it go.

#3 - Practice speaking out and breaking agreements with negative words. Learn how to break agreements with negative words.

#4 - Search out and embrace what God says about you. (He says: I've redeemed you. I love you. I have accepted you. I forgive you. I have a destiny)

Jeremiah 15:16 - I found your words and I ate them. I took them right into my life, and they were the joy and rejoicing of my heart.

=> God's word coming into our life shifts us, and changes us.

#1 - Resolve the conflict.

#2 - Break the agreements with the negative patterns of thinking, as you identify them.

#3 - Declare strongly God's word over your life as an affirmation.

#4 - Meditating: picturing, imagining, visualising, seeing God's word

Joshua 8:1 – “These words that I speak shall be in your mouth, shall not depart our of your mouth, He said, but you'll meditate on them day and night to do them, and then you will make your own way prosperous.

Creative Power of the Tongue (12 of 12)

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Atmosphere is the prevailing influence that's around; it can't be seen but it can be felt. An atmosphere can affect your whole life, your quality of life. You can either thrive in it or be destroyed in it. Atmosphere gets polluted, it affects you very, very seriously.

We did a season where we were talking about Taming the Tongue, identifying the ways that we speak which are negative and destructive and change the atmosphere around us. Now we're looking at how we constructively use our tongue, so we're looking at a whole series now on the Creative Power of the Tongue, the ability of your words to create atmosphere and to create life. We had that verse, anyone remember it? Proverbs 18:21, death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it shall eat the fruit of it. So in other words we will eat the fruit of the words we speak, and the words we speak can impart something to us. They can impart death. They can impart life. You choose.

So I've found as I've been speaking even on this series, God's been speaking to me also, about this same area. I've been finding myself being challenged all the time on how I speak, continually, how I speak to children, how I speak to various people, God continually putting His finger on it, so we can improve what's happening around us. We shared last week, we shared with you different ways, about how you could influence and shape the world around you, and the first place to start was by shaping the world inside you. So we looked in Ephesians 4, Verse 29. It talks there - can anyone remember that verse? Can you all remember that verse? A-ha.

Don't let any corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. In other words guard what you're speaking. Put a stop to negative talk, but rather such which is good to the use of edifying. Edifying is to build up, to strengthen, to enlarge something, make it bigger and better than it was. To edify, build up. So He says - notice this, He's talking about the words we're speaking; stop talking negatively. Learn how to speak words that build up, that impart grace to the hearers, and that word impart means to give, to transfer something that's needed to build, and that something that we can transfer is the grace of God, the life of God. So it's not like we're just ordinary people. We have the ability to bring into the lives of others a word of God, encouragement from the Lord, words we speak can touch the hearts, and strengthen the lives, of people around us. What a tremendous chance!

End of last year we did a seminar, and it was just prophetic evangelism, how to hear from God, and speak words that open up the hearts of people. That was fantastic. How many enjoyed doing that? That was really good. That's something to keep doing, and of course what happens is as you speak words from God, as you speak from your heart, the things God's speaking to you about, then what happens is it opens up and touches the lives of people, builds them up - most wonderful gift. It's a tremendous gift. That's why the Bible says covet to prophesy. Covet - in other words, of all the gifts, it says covet to bring words from God, that lift, and build people up, release destiny into people. Release destiny into people. Come on, release destiny into people. Release hope into people. See, people are hungry for it, and you and I have the ability, as representatives of God, to speak into people, and to release the word of God into them. That word of God brings life.

Ezekiel prophesied into dead bones; LIVE! And God came on them, and they lived. Now God never came on them until he spoke see, so we have power in our words to speak, and something from the spirit of God can be transferred into people. Whoa! That's got to be good! So tell someone next to you, speak up, don't mumble. You won't impart life mumbling you know. That won't do it. You've got to speak words, and speak from our spirit into the world around us to change it. Now notice in that verse there, Ephesians 4:29, it says this: don't let any corrupt words come out of your mouth, but rather that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may impart grace to those who are listening to what's being said, and don't grieve the Holy Spirit.

So your words can release the spirit of God, or grieve and quench the spirit of God. See we can stand here and praise, and ask God to work through our life, but then our words can grieve Him, and the spirit of God withdraws. If He withdraws, you don't impart grace to people who hear you. Okay, we're getting there. Now what we saw last week was that, the one that you listen to the most, is yourself.

Last week we were talking about how you can speak words into your own life, into your own spirit, that shape what's going on in your inner world. I encourage you to get that if you weren't here, and begin to start to look at each of the steps I gave. They could all be developed further, so they're just the seed steps of what to do. I can tell you now, you can change your inner world. Now if you're not going to change it, who will? Okay, now then, we talked about changing first your inner world, because out of the heart the mouth speaks, so if I don't change what's going on in my heart, if I'm still negative inside, inevitably negativity will flow out. So it's not a matter of just stopping the words. I've actually got to change the attitude of heart. I've got to let the Holy Spirit in, and work with myself, and we saw that required that I deal with inner conflicts and unresolved relationship hurts, and we talked about how to do that. It involves that I begin to break mindsets, and stop agreeing with words which are limiting and negative, and begin to start to speak words that build, and are positive, and begin to start to impart life into the world. So we saw how to do that last week.

Now this time I want to start off this year, I want to carry on that same theme. We talk now about shaping the world around you. Now one of the first places is to shape the spiritual atmosphere around your own life, so what I want to do today is to talk how to shape and build the spiritual atmosphere around your own life. Then next, we'll look at shaping your relationships by the word of God, then we'll look at shaping the world around you, in other words how you release the word of God, to shape and influence what is happening around you. Is this good? Okay, so we'll look at building or shaping your spiritual atmosphere, shaping the spiritual atmosphere around your life by the word of God, or shaping your personal spiritual atmosphere.

Let me just talk to you. Most things that are spiritual, are actually really easy to understand. Anything that God wants to teach us, is usually very, very simple in it's concept, it's just we make it hard, and so when it sounds complicated, I kind of switch off to tell the truth, because God talks really simply and directly. The things He shows us are hard to put words to sometimes, but the things He wants to teach us are very, very simple. So first what I want you to do is, I want you to - we're going to just talk about atmosphere for a start off. I want to talk about something that you would know and understand. This is something we can all relate to very, very easily. I want to talk a little bit about atmosphere, define what it is, and different kinds of atmosphere. Then we want to look at spiritual atmosphere, what that is, and there are three things that it could be formed from. Then I want to just give you some simple keys on how you can shape your own spiritual atmosphere.

Okay, so first of all, the word atmosphere means this: atmos means vapour, and from the word sphaira meaning sphere, so literally, atmosphere is the sphere or the circle of vapour that just surrounds the world, and is held to the world by it's gravity. Note that, we're going to talk about that in a moment. The atmosphere that the world has, when we go outside, we can feel the atmosphere. Go to Singapore, Asia, it's a different kind of atmosphere. It smells different, feels different, everything about it is different. You go to some countries in the world, the atmospheres quite different in some countries, and some places, a very heavy atmosphere, different kinds of atmosphere. So there's a natural atmosphere which circles us. We live in that atmosphere. We live and we breathe that atmosphere, so the atmosphere is the air surrounding the earth, which the gravity holds in. It's also a surrounding or prevailing mood or influence. An atmosphere is a surrounding, prevailing influence.

Think about that - a surrounding, prevailing influence. What influence, what spiritual atmosphere surrounds you, and does it prevail? See, because if we're going to talk about making influence, spiritual influence, and impacting people, you have to be able to carry something on the inside to do that, otherwise you get overwhelmed. We used to do an experiment at high school. You get a can, a big four gallon can, put a bit of water in it and boil it. When you boil it it turns to steam, you drive all the air out. Now if you just put a cap on it and let it cool, what happens is there's the atmosphere, the air's been driven out. The water then, as it cools, just turns from vapour, it turns just to water drops, then you see the whole four gallon tin crush. You can't see what's crushing it, but there's something crushing it you couldn't see. Now what's crushing it is the weight of the air which is in the atmosphere around it, and it just literally collapses. I've done it many times - it just collapses, about 14lbs per square inch, in the way I used to remember it.

But there's an atmospheric pressure. The weight of the air has an atmospheric pressure. You go into the sea, the further down, you go the greater the pressure of that environment on you, so the atmosphere naturally exerts a pressure on us that affects us, and unless you've got something inside you to be able to withstand it, you'd collapse as well. Okay then, so there's natural atmosphere, and it's quite distinct and tangible. You can feel the atmosphere. Today it's quite sticky. Everything, you know, you do a little bit and then you're sticky and gluggy and you feel uncomfortable and go and have a shower - need an air con in here, that's what we really need [laughs] okay. So now let's just talk about some different kinds of atmospheres. Obvious one, if you go into Taipei or Thailand, you'll notice all of the policemen wear these masks, because the atmosphere is polluted. You can't see it, unless you look around in the sky you can see it, but it's polluted, and it will affect their health.

So remember atmosphere then, is the prevailing influence that's around; atmosphere can't be seen, but it can be felt. An atmosphere can affect your whole life, your quality of life. You can either thrive in it, or be destroyed in it. Atmosphere gets polluted, it affects you very, very seriously. This time of the year you get a lot of pollen in the atmosphere. You don't see it unless you look on your car in the morning, but even though you don't see it, it affects your eyes, affects your nose. So the atmosphere has effect on us, so that's just a natural atmosphere, but then there's other kinds of atmosphere. How many of you have walked into a home where there's been a death in the family, and immediately you felt a tremendous grief? You can feel it. What are you feeling? How can grief be felt? It must create an atmosphere, spiritual atmosphere that comes in on you, and you feel it. You can think of other kind of negative sorts of atmosphere - we're not talking the natural atmosphere, we're now talking about the mood, or the environment around you. Just start to think of some atmospheres.

I had one of my daughters, Sarah - she wanted to go to cricket, one of these cricket matches over in Napier, and my brother said you're not interested in cricket. Oh, yes I am! He said no you're not, who's playing? Oh, oh - she didn't have a clue who was playing. He said why do you really want to go? She said well I love the environment, the atmosphere, the excitement of all the people. So when you get in a crowd at a football match, it gets incredibly exciting. What is it? The whole atmosphere changes. It becomes changed. You change the atmosphere. You can actually feel it, and it affects you. You get into that, and you get excited. You can go into places where there's negativity and pessimism, where everyone's gloomy. Have you ever met someone who's very, very gloomy? Have you noticed that when you get around them, after a little while it affects you? Their influence, their spiritual atmosphere that they're carrying, now is coming in on you and it's starting to affect you. If you don't do something they'll be the prevailing atmosphere, not you. Think about that.

I remember we were in a cafe, it was the funniest thing, and we'd just been in a move of God, in the presence of God ,and carrying the presence of God - went into this cafe, and there's this old farmer there. He and his wife are sitting there. Well every time he opened his mouth he was negative, but we'd just been in the presence of God. We'd just had these great meetings and God was around, we were carrying the presence of God. We began to start to laugh, and the more we talked and laughed - then it became a while, every time he opened his mouth he would be negative, and we would laugh. We just were killing ourselves. In the end we were just roaring with laughter in our seats, just laughing, and just the whole humour of it all, and after a while it overcame his talking, and he began to laugh. He began to change, and when we left he and his wife were still laughing.

In other words, the atmosphere, and the way it was expressed, overwhelmed what was on his life temporarily, because as soon as we left and stayed away for a while, then he would go back to his normal state, negative and pessimistic see. How many have been in an atmosphere where it's controlled, there's a strong control presence? Some people - I haven't been into a home like this, not in Bay City, not for a long time been in a home like this, where there's a strong control. Boy, you feel like [inhales sharply] I'm going to break something for sure! You've got to watch your feet in case you trip or get something dirty. You feel it. What are you feeling? You're feeling a strong, dominant control spirit in there, and you're feeling this pressure to comply, so you do what they want you to do. That's a prevailing spiritual atmosphere, see, so people do carry it, and it can fill their home.

Ever been into a home where there's a great sense of tension in the home? You go into it, and everyone's trying to be nice, but you can feel the tension. But what are you feeling? You're feeling the prevailing spiritual atmosphere. How many have been in an environment where it's incredibly confused? The Bible talks about in Acts I think, 29, it says the whole city was filled with confusion. What's going on? Confusion, no one can make decisions, so it's an atmosphere of confusion, and it can get over people, and gets over a whole city. An atmosphere of distrust; that's a shocking one, because you can't build relationships in an atmosphere of distrust.

Now what is this thing, this atmosphere? Obviously it's spiritual, it's felt in your spirit, but it's made up of something someone's putting out there, and if they're putting it out, you could put something out that's different, and we're called to do that. So we have to learn how to build and develop a strong spiritual atmosphere around our own life, and become aware of what's around us, so we can change it. Isn't that right? Now of course you see the spiritual atmosphere you get in a church. You get a lot of broken relationships in a church, and get conflict and backbiting, and talking, very soon it's an unhealthy atmosphere, and people are not attracted. Even though God wanted to add them in, they will stay away until this issue is addressed. It's why unity is so crucial, because the mission cannot be accomplished without the church maintaining a unity of heart, vision, and focus, and one heart, one mind, one spirit. Getting the idea now?

Alright, now of course there's other kinds of atmospheres too. There's an atmosphere of excitement - oh yes! Excitement! I love Anna's full of excitement. Everyone around her is too, see? She's built that into the youth. Do you love it? She's excited. You see it in her eyes, and she carries it around everywhere she goes. I like that. Why not? I'd rather have an atmosphere of excitement about something. You go into places, you go into it just before a show. Sometimes the atmosphere of excitement - everyone's in anticipation, and you can feel it literally, and you get excited too. Well either that, or you resist it, you overcome the excitement with your passivity.

Okay, enthusiasm. Enthusiasm creates an atmosphere. You get an atmosphere of confidence. You know a person is - have you ever heard this term; they exude confidence? Well how can you feel confidence? What is it that's happening? What are they doing, that's causing a flow out of them, that you would feel when you're with them, this is a confident person? There's something going on inside them, that is being communicated. They don't go around sort of "I'm confident." That's exactly what they don't say. In fact, if someone says that, probably they're not confident, but you can feel it. It fills the atmosphere around. A confident person, the atmosphere around them is filled with confidence. They just exude confidence. Ever had a guy come to the door to to sell you something? Oh, they're full of confidence in their product. If they weren't, they'd never sell it. It's interesting, they have to build an atmosphere of confidence to overcome your resistance initially, so you find a salesman who's a good salesman will have this hugely confident attitude, confident in the product, very confident in what it is, and what it can do, and why you need it, and this is going to be wonderful! Your life will be so much better because of it.

Now you see if they just said oh, it's a good product, you're not going to respond. They are overcoming the natural resistance. If they come on too strong, I walk away, can't handle it. There's another kind of atmosphere, a romantic atmosphere. Now that's a nice one to cultivate. Not many homes have that, but they should have a romantic atmosphere. You can create a romantic atmosphere. Come on there, I saw a few - man, we're going to have to pray for some of the men here. They must have broken ribs on both sides now [Laughter] after the last few weeks. A romantic atmosphere, so you can create a romantic atmosphere. If you can create it, you can also destroy it by rudeness and crudeness. You can create a romantic atmosphere, and so what is there, that you can feel? You feel something, and it affects you. So men, if you're smart, you'll create romantic atmosphere in the home periodically, so that your wives will glow, and they'll be very loving to you. [Applause] Won't that be good? That'd be good. Some are huh? What's that? [Laughter] See? It doesn't mean you turn on the telly and watch rugby. [Laughter] That's not a romantic atmosphere - exciting atmosphere, but definitely not romantic. Romantic, you think more of candles - aah - and nice music. Aah, now we're getting it. Flowers, ooh oh ooh, yes! Now we're getting into romantic ground you see? Some of the ladies here need so much romance, they'd buy themselves flowers you know. [Laughter] You'd be surprised who.

Okay, so we've got then atmosphere. You got some idea about atmosphere, so it is very real, very tangible. It does affect people. It can be built, and can be developed and is real, people get affected by it, and it affects you. You can either thrive, or you can go down under it. Now here's an interesting thing is, if you have a look at David's men, it says this was what characterised all of David's men. They were distressed. That means they were really down in the mouth about a few issues in life. It says they were in debt, they owed a lot of money, and they were discontent. They were cranky. That's not bad is it? Three. See, they were in those conditions.

Then it tells you a little later, in the Bible it says this. It says that they were mighty men of valour. Well how did they go from being distressed, and in debt, and discontent, now become mighty men of valour? There was a prevailing spiritual atmosphere over David, that being with him, and drawing on that, and associating with him, they were changed by that spirit. They changed on the inside, because they wanted to change, they wanted to be different. They didn't want to be cranky. No one enjoys being cranky. No one enjoys being in debt. No one enjoys being upset. See, they wanted something that he had, and they saw there was something he carried. There was a charisma around his life, an anointing around his life, an atmosphere of God that was attractive to them.

When we went down to the park, we were able to change the whole atmosphere in the park. Get a choir of 100 Bay City people up singing, the whole atmosphere changed, and I could feel it from over the road. I was just getting changed and was up in my room upstairs, and I could hear the practice going on, and you know what I felt? I felt I wanted to run down and find out what was going on. I wanted to get there quick. See, there's an attracting power, and a healthy, good, spiritual atmosphere. So we got the idea about atmosphere now? Alright then.

Now I want to talk a little bit about your spiritual atmosphere, and then how you form and shape that. Okay, so your spiritual atmosphere is just the prevailing spiritual influence surrounding you. Your spiritual atmosphere is just whatever spirit is prevailing, whatever spirit is prevailing, or literally it's the presence or the spiritual presence that surrounds a person that's held around them by what's on the inside. Remember atmosphere, the natural atmosphere is an influence that's all around us, held by the earth's gravity, but your spiritual atmosphere is a spiritual presence around your life, that's held in by your inner life, held in by your God life, held in by the things you are saying and doing on the inside, and also giving voice to, outside you. See, so that's your spiritual atmosphere, and it's very distinct, it's very tangible. You ever got with a person, and they're at such peace that when they're there, sometimes just being in their presence you feel calm. See? There's a spiritual peace there. You can be with some people, and when you're with them, you just feel very loved. They haven't said or done very much, but there's something flows from their spirit. There's a prevailing spiritual atmosphere.

Now the spiritual atmosphere around us is made up of a mixture of things, but it can be any one or a mix of these things; number one, your human spirit. Your human spirit, see? Think about a football match. Everyone gets excited. You can feel the excitement - that is the human spirit, so your human spirit is designed so that it fills all of your body, and can extend into the area or region around you, and influence it. You're designed that way. Your human spirit is designed to bond with God, and receive a flow of life from the spirit of God. Your human spirit is designed so it can bond with another person, hence two shall become one. Your human spirit is designed to be able to flow out from where you are, beyond you, and begin to influence and fill what is around you. Your spirit flows. Your spirit is not contained to the limitation of your physical body. In fact your spirit can leave your body. We won't go into all of that, we'll touch on some of those things a little bit later. So you find recorded examples of that in the Bible, many examples of that in the Bible.

Okay then, so the human spirit, that's you. You can release yourself. You can express a life from within you, that affects everyone around you. A second is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit. So a second influence in the atmosphere around us is the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit can so invade the atmosphere, that no one can stand. In the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles 5, they were worshipping and praising, the spirit of God so invaded the atmosphere, no one could even stand. They all fell on the ground. The spirit of God can come and fill the atmosphere, and when He fills the atmosphere, miracles and healings take place. Ever been in Benny Hinn Miracle Crusade, there'll come a point and he might just be talking around for a bit, but he's waiting for the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost comes, and suddenly miracles break out everywhere. There's a spiritual influence of the Holy Spirit, and he was the one that brought that there. See, came through a man, came through a person, see because God seeks to work through a man or woman, so He can invade the earth. He wants to come. He wants to do miracles. He wants to invade your neighbourhood. He wants to invade your home. He wants to come, but He's chosen to limit Himself to work through you, and with you, so we have to learn how to co-operate with the Holy Spirit.

Okay then, then the third kinds of spirit that can be around of course, are demonic spirits, and demonic spirits, when they are around and fill the atmosphere, then they oppress, and they shut people down. They create an unhealthy spiritual environment. They shut you down, they cause you to wither, and diminish, and not flourish. It's like living in a polluted atmosphere all the time. You can't flourish. You can't flourish. We're not designed to flourish in a demonic atmosphere. We're designed to flourish in the atmosphere of heaven, the presence of the spirit of God. That's what we're designed to flourish in, see? You have a demonic atmosphere around, and of course it affects your whole way of life. How many people - now get this. I'll just say this. Many people have learned to accept a prevailing demonic influence in their life, and never stop to think it may not be them, and to challenge it. If you can't challenge your own personal demons, how will you challenge the demons of others?

Now what happens is, we allow it to settle on us, things which depress us, fill us with grief, cause a fear of rejection. We allow them to settle on us without realising, I'M NOT DESIGNED TO LIVE IN THAT ATMOSPHERE! I'll die! I need to PREVAIL over such things. So Saul, the Bible tells us of King Saul in 1 Samuel 16, Verse 14, he was oppressed. See, he fell out of relationship with God, and walked in disobedience, and he was oppressed by a spirit. It would come on him, and he'd get a downer, he'd have a black dog day. I used to have black dog days, they'd go on for days, but they're actually a spirit of heaviness oppressing me, that I just thought was me - until the day I realised it wasn't me, and began to contend to have dominion over it, so I could live in the presence of the spirit of God. Getting the idea?

So now, so human spirit, the spirit of God, and demonic spirits. Now of course you choose what's going to flow, and what'll be around your life. It's your choice. No one makes that choice for you, it's your choice, and let me give you two key very simple scriptures. I'll develop them at another time in another series, but here they are, 1 Corinthians 6 and Verse 17. The Bible says he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. So how many spirits there? One. That means when you are joined to the Lord, when you become a Christian and you walk with God, your spirit is joined - and that word is the same word, like in a marriage, two becoming one. They're two distinct people, but they flow as one, so a good marriage, the couple flow as one. They're in unity. Now of course you can get into disagreement and grieve the Holy Spirit, but if you become sensitive to Him and begin to listen to Him, and we begin to walk with Him, and we do the things that please Him, and follow His promptings, we begin to walk and flow with Him. Now notice this. If my spirit is joined to the Holy Spirit, then when my spirit flows out, the anointing flows with it. When my spirit flows out, the anointing flows with it.

Notice in John 7, Verses 38 and 39, it says out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water, and this Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit just doesn't flow out of you. You have to be part of this. You have to give yourself, so if you're locked up and demonised and subject to demonic atmospheres and oppression, you are locked inside, you can't release your potential. You can't release what God has given you today, so I want to build an atmosphere around my life, that creativity can flow, and ideas can flow, and life can flow, and joy can flow, and I can have a strongly positive influence around me. Is that right? Now you choose that. You choose that, and you develop it, and you build it. It's not something that just happens. Everything you build you build. You don't just sort of have a whole lot of materials there, and hope the building will put itself together. It doesn't happen that way.

Now how many have heard of the word charisma? Charisma - and you kind of feel well, you've either got it, or you haven't got it, you know? Well charisma is a divine impartation to people. How many people have charisma? We all do. Well, the charismatic movement, you know, the charisma that comes from the word charis, the grace of God. Is there anyone here doesn't have the grace of God? We all have the charis, so we all have the potential to be in a measure, charismatic. Of course you think well, that's not me. Time to upgrade mentalities then, and get in touch with who you are as a new creation person. You are charismatic. Why? Because God has given you grace, that you might impart it to others, and to impart it to others, you've got to catch it, and be free in it, and flow in it, and access it continually. This is what God has called all of us to be, charismatic people, people who flow in the gifts of grace, the grace of God to others. This is wonderful. I'll give you some keys, some simple things in a moment. I'm just trying to get you thinking right around this.

So of course certain people who are not born again, also have a great degree of charisma. They're flowing from their human spirit without the Holy Spirit, but they still have charisma. So another definition of charisma is, it's an empowerment to be able to influence people. Now you notice this, see President Kennedy, a political leader, had tremendous charisma. When you were around him, you felt his personal presence. He influenced people. Ever looked at some top entertainers, top movie stars, they carry a presence, a charisma. There's something about them. But when they go off the rails, boy that something leaves quick, and people who are spiritual people can carry a charisma too. Now charisma - I'll develop that when we talk on things of the human spirit, developing the whole flow of the life of the spirit later on in the year, but let me just say this. Charisma is the flow of the life of God from within you, and it comes about, of course we need focus. You have to have a focussed life. A divided life is not going to flow, you'll be too divided. People are attracted to where someone is really focussed, and know what they're doing, and know where they're going, and are non-compromised. It is extremely attractive.

When people have a sense of responsibility, and they're determined they're going to make a difference; they've taken an ownership of something - I'm responsible, I'm focussed, I'm going to change it, there's something comes out from them, and they're vocal. You have to be vocal to be charismatic. You have to speak words, so we'll touch on those things a bit later, because that'll become a part of how you influence the environment around you, because if you take a negative, defeatist aspect of end times, you'll tend to withdraw from what's around you, instead of seeing it's my mission to influence it all, to invade it. We're called to invade it all, so I need to carry the kind of atmosphere that is an invasive atmosphere. You don't go into places just to hide. You're not called to hide your light, you're called to let your light shine, and it's got to be more than just doing good works. Yes, do good works, but you've got to be vocal. Say some things. Oh, this is starting to bite.

Okay, so how do we shape our spiritual atmosphere? Let me give you some simple keys. To shape means you create it, or you're to cause something to come into a definite form, you're shaping it. It's not just something that oh well, she'll be right, whatever. If God wants to use me, use me. Now that's not it. Actually you create an atmosphere around your life by distinct things you decide to do. You literally form and shape the atmosphere, and a key problem in this is overcoming passivity, passivity. Now passivity is a major issue among men, and particularly men in our nation, and among a lot of males in the west. It's a male issue, but everyone can be passive. Let me just describe passivity, then we'll talk and give you the keys how you can break through this stuff.

Okay, to be passive means - get this - not participating readily or actively. Not participating. They're a spectator - oh yeah, watch what's going on, not participating. A person not participating, we would describe them as being passive. They don't participate actively. Here's another meaning of the word passive, it means to submit to something without resistance, so a passive person lets whatever's out there flow over them, and they become under it. That's a passive person. This is clearly not a prevailing spiritual atmosphere is it? Passivity is my enemy. Here's another one, another definition of being passive, here it is again. It's lacking will or energy, being lethargic. Lacking will or energy, in other words it's a choice. If you're passive, you've grown that way by choices made. You can come out of that by different choices, if you're passive and no believer, no follower of Jesus Christ was ever called to be passive. We are called to advance the kingdom of God, and in Matthew, Chapter 11 and Verse 12 it says now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, or that word means literally, it's people get in there forcibly. They exert energy. They make decisions, and they pursue diligently, until something comes about. That's kingdom. That's what you're born into. That's part of your new culture, its now no longer passive, yielding to whatever's this way, that way, blown around this way and that way, but you've got something in you, and you know where you're going, and what you want to achieve. You are becoming active in making it take place. See, now that's a lifestyle.

That's a lifestyle, so we need to break out of passivity. Of course once we've talked about it, now you're going to be responsible for this okay? Okay, now let me just give you then some simple keys.

I'll give you some simple keys; every one of them could be developed, but I'm just going to give you the keys, and leave you to develop them. This is about your future. Now sometimes we need help to get out of passivity. Sometimes people have been so shut down in their spirit, by the lack of nurture, or the hostile spiritual environment in the home, they actually need ministry to help unlock their spirit of freedom, but for the rest of us, we've just got to make decisions see, a decision not to be passive. I will participate actively. I will not submit to things without resistance. If they're bad, I'll resist them, see? I'll stand up and resist them. I won't be walked over by the prevailing spiritual atmosphere. Now you've got that, remember because we're going to talk about how to change the atmosphere around you. Right now you've got to change - this is the one you've got to deal with because either you prevail or something else prevails. You'll find that very quickly, go into some atmospheres and sometimes it's time to retreat, sometimes it's time to do something, take charge.

Okay then, so let's give you some simple keys. First one is take responsibility for your personal spiritual atmosphere. You've got to take responsibility and own it, it's yours. I'm not going to make it. I can help you. We provide an environment where you're nurtured, but you've got to actually choose to be responsible. Now in 2 Corinthians 5:20 it says now we are ambassadors of Christ. An ambassador is a person who represents someone, and speaks and acts on their behalf. Now if we're going to speak to you about ministry, and flowing in the power of God, and releasing the power of God, you first have to stand up and say, I'm responsible for my own spiritual life, and the atmosphere around me. I will start to do something about it, so stop blaming someone else. Stop saying that's just me, I'm that kind of person. NO! You're a born again person, with capacity to change, a new creature is inside you waiting to come out, with the right kind of things to get out.

But you've got to own that. If you are passive, then you chose to be, and if you're going to get out of it, you've got to choose not to be, to change, to change. You've got to do something specific, or you'll never change, see? So reject the old mindsets, reject the passive mindset. No longer will I stand back and just observe. I will be part of the solution. I will be involved. I will do something. Need to do that. Okay, so number one, you've got to take responsibility, so if it's going to change in this year, if you're going to be a different person, non-passive - a lot of teenagers get very passive. A lot of adults get very passive. I was incredibly passive. Males in our home were incredibly passive. I've had to have a major renovation, still underway. Every year there's something new - break out of that passivity. I'd just become passive and switch off, disengage, IQ would drop about 30 points [Laughter] waiting for someone to do something. Now I don't do that.

Okay, number two, and this is an interesting one. You have to manage your inner world. You have to take responsibility to manage your inner world. Proverbs 23 and Verse 7, as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. You've got to actually deal quickly with the junk. I'm not going to go into all the how to's of that right now, we've got other places we can do that, but you need to deal quickly with negative thoughts and feelings. You've got to acknowledge them, and resolve them quickly, in other words don't let stuff sit there. If you let stuff sit in your heart, it will become a doorway for demonic oppression, and a demonic atmosphere to sit on your life. A lot of people are depressed because they're angry, so if you've got guilt feelings resolve it quick. If there's real guilt just confess it, put it right. If it's not real guilt then reject that thing, reject it. See, you've got to reject being guilty. Jesus doesn't have a guilt trip. Religion does. Jesus has got no guilt trip. See, if you've got those kind of - if you're feeling angry or hurt, just acknowledge it and deal with it quickly. Don't go grr, grrr all day, bang, bang, bang, bang. You just - things will go bad for you all day, and you'll have a bad atmosphere. Ever been near an angry person? Don't they just alter the spiritual atmosphere? Most people just shut down and flee. Best thing you could do is confront it, and subdue it. Aah, that'd be good to do that, wouldn't it aye, instead of putting up with it and saying wah-wah. Got to try and keep him happy. No, you don't have to keep him happy at all. I told someone here - but they're angry at me. I said they're allowed to be angry, as long as they let it go today, see?

Talk to people. You can subdue anger. You subdue anger, by telling the person their behaviour is totally unacceptable, please stop this behaviour. They can be held to account for their behaviour, or just talk quietly and softly to them, ask them what their problems are, help them quiet down, and be focussed on a solution, instead of just venting anger. But you can do something, but passivity, not an option. Not an option, no passivity around here. Okay then, so offences and - all those things, if you've got negative stuff, deal with it quickly, just deal with it quickly. Here's the next thing then, having done that - okay, now develop - now this is an interesting one; develop stronger expressions with your body. Now a lot of people - I'll talk about vocal expressions shortly, but stronger expressions with your body. Now one of the things I've found about passivity, it creeps all over you, and then your body just won't co-operate in any kind of way. It just doesn't want to do anything, and we need to make it. We need to take dominion over our body.

In Psalm 47, Verse 1, it says clap your hands, a few people who feel like it, who are charismatic, and like that kind of thing, and go to a Pentecostal Church. [Laughter] It doesn't say that does it? It says clap your hands, all you people, shout to God with the voice of triumph! [Applause] I hear over here, but I don't hear much over there, come on! You've got to learn to do something! Make your body move. Take dominion over your body, which is very lazy, and wants to not do anything, and you'll find that you can begin now - you're not necessarily going to go around clapping everywhere you go, but there are times in your personal life, and times in your body, you've got to learn to take dominion. One of the ways of taking dominion, is to make your body do what it doesn't want to do, so strong clapping, strong clapping, move your body, move your body... When we're worshipping the Lord, move your body, because what happens is, you know, have you ever seen someone who's uptight, who's uptight and they're sort of stiff. Everything's stiff. Their body just won't seem to move. I feel like sometimes grabbing it, and dance down the front and whirl.

You see what's happened is, the body is being passive. You've got to break the passivity. You don't have to jump all the time, but if you can't jump at all there's something wrong - unless you've got broken legs or something, you're in a wheelchair but that's fine. You can still - have a look at that brother over here. You can tell he's jumping! He might be in a wheelchair, but he's jumping on the inside, I can see it! See, so there's not constraint okay, so move your body, smile, dance, express yourself, especially in your times of prayer. Move your body, make your body stop being passive, see? Okay, then we begin to get vocal expression, develop stronger expressions of praise. Develop stronger vocal expression. You've got to learn to speak, and say, and do things. Now there's a few things you could do. Psalm 100, Verse 4, the Bible tells us if I want to enter into the atmosphere of God, if I want to breakthrough from the natural realm into the realm of the spirit, very simple, it's right in front of me - heaven's not a long way off. All I've got to do is just do what God says to do, and He says I will enter into His gates with thanksgiving in my heart, I will enter His courts with praise. I know what to do - thank Him, and praise Him.

So if I will just give myself to thanking and praising, then I can open heaven, and once you've learned to do it, it opens up very easily, very quickly. So here's some things you can do. Develop strong vocal expression, strong speaking in tongues [Speaks in tongues 00.44.58] Let it rise up from your spirit until it's got some energy and life in it. You say oh, I'm not like that. Oh, you agree with that old passivity, oh, too bad. Everything in life's going to walk over you. Change! Just change. Of course it feels awkward. How many people ever had the thought I'd like to get fit? Especially right now - like to lose weight then. Ha ha! There you go. Okay, we got that, 90 per cent here, okay then. But you know there's going to be pain. [Laughter] There will be pain before you get fit. You go run around the block once and that's fine. The next day you're starting to feel a bit wary. The next day you're aching. The day after it's all over. [Laughter] You're back in bed again, being very passive. Your body won the day. You have to make decisions and follow them through, so learn to speak strongly in tongues, learn to praise God, use the word of God. Take the Psalms and read them aloud, read them with feeling, thank the Lord. Thank the Lord - I will magnify the Lord with thanksgiving, so I can open up the world around me, the spiritual atmosphere of God, and connect with heaven by speaking in tongues, by praising the Lord, by thanking Him, by gratitude, those kinds of things, see?

Declare the word of God over your life. Start to speak what God says over your life. As you speak it over your life, you find everything begins to shift, the whole atmosphere changes. You've got to do it long enough, and strongly enough, and consistently enough, until you feel and get the breakthrough. Then it's easier to maintain until you have see, so I watch people in services, and I don't mean any disrespect, because I can remember myself sitting in a service with all these people doing hoot and Hannah and jumping up and down and stuff, and I just thought what is this! Then they want us to raise the hands - no, they couldn't get past the waist. They literally couldn't. They were frozen when it came to praising God. They were frozen at this height. What was that all about? [Laughter] That was just self-consciousness. I needed to break through it. You can't, because you're laughing at it, not like that, but actually I was like that. I was worse than that. I very much worse than that - but I changed, and you can change. It's possible to change, but you've got to make a decision, take responsibility for your spiritual atmosphere, deal with your inner world, then begin to start developing strong expressions with your body because that's - you notice in a football match, you have a look there how they create an atmosphere. They don't sit - [Spoken in monotone 00.47.29] well that was a jolly good run wasn't it. That was not bad. [Laughter] Good run wasn't it? They don't create an atmosphere that way do they? They're strong, whole hearted expressions, and that creates the atmosphere - coming from the inner man, full of enthusiasm, just everything given into it.

You start to do that with God, the whole atmosphere around you changes, spiritual atmosphere shifts, everything shifts, everything changes. You've got to learn to do it. Okay, here's another key then; manage your outer world. You need to also manage what's around you. You've got to make decisions, I'm not going to actually let what's around me prevail over my life, so that means you've got to watch what you're looking at, what sorts of things you're feasting your eyes on, what sorts of things you're listening to, and what kind of people you're hanging out with. You become like the people you hang out with, so hang out with good people. Now you're friendly to all, but your friends are people who are going forward for God, see? If you make your friends the unsaved, you'll find after a while if you don't have a strong inner life, they will eventually take you where they're going. You see you've got just guard your outer world, so in other words be on the alert.

Then the final thing is, you need to consciously release the life of God. We need to consciously release what's in our spirit. Now that means I've got to do something, got to be quite proactive, so if I've spent time and I've built with God in my prayer life, had time in the presence of God, strong expressions, now I can start to let something fly out. Now have you ever seen a person who got a little bit afraid on the stage, and they sort of got a bit [Spoken quietly and awkwardly 00.48.59] nervous like this and um, and ah, and then they sort of shut down? Now what you're feeling now is, I'm withdrawing all spirit life completely from this. I'm actually shutting down, letting my soul block you all off, and that's what many people live their life like. But I can come, and choose to smile, and speak, and appreciate, and praise, and acknowledge, and I can start to do things with my voice that actually start to change the things around me. You can stand up inside, even with a little prayer; In Jesus' name I take dominion over this, and I release the life of God, and just begin to see the life just flowing from within you.

You see you can release the life of God all around you. Today Father, everywhere I go, I carry the life and joy and vitality of the Holy Ghost! You see it in prayer, long before you're doing it, and then you begin to develop a different habit. When you walk into a room, go and say hello to everyone, don't wait for everyone to come and say hello to you. When you see someone who's a teller, greet them, hi, how are you doing? Thank you for what you're doing for me today. Just start to express the life of God whole heartedly, and you begin to start to have an influence. You find the atmosphere begins to change. As soon as you walk into a room and it's all shut down, well you can change it within a little while but you're going to have to speak things, have to do some things. You have to talk, you have to speak, you have to start to actually arise on the inside instead of shrinking. Shrinking is because we're intimidated, arising is because we've chosen to be ambassadors and to have a prevailing spiritual atmosphere.

See the word of God alive in my heart. Wherever I go the life of God is flowing out of me. I am joined one spirit to the Lord. The spirit of God flows out of my innermost being. I thank you today wherever I am that life will flow. I see it long before I'm ever out there, and the life of God surely flows, but you've always got to make the decision not to be passive. Tell someone next to you, don't be passive. Don't be passive - change. Change. Change. Change. Change. Change! Change! Become vocal. Become expressive. Change! Get around people who are.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Proverbs 18:21 – “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…”.

· People are spirit beings – the words we speak are containers that carry spirit content.

· The words we speak have power to impact life or death – to change the course of our world.

· Ephesians 4:29 - “…that which is good for necessary edification that it might impart grace to the hearers”.

· “Impart grace” = supply something needed to build and to strengthen – life of God.

· This week: “Shaping Your Personal Spiritual Atmosphere”.

2. Atmosphere: What is it?:

a) Definition:

· Root meaning: atmos = vapour; spharia = sphere

· Air surrounding the earth held to it by the force of gravity.

· Surrounding or prevailing mood, influence, environment.

· Distinct tangible quality that surrounds a person.

b) Examples – Different kinds of atmosphere:

* Polluted * Grief * Negativity * Pessimism

* Control * Confusion * Excitement * Enthusiasm

* Confidence * Romantic * Joy * Faith

* Hope

· The atmosphere cannot be seen with the eye, but can be felt.

· The prevailing atmosphere influences people = they thrive or struggle e.g. David’s men were distressed; in dept; discontented (1 Samuel 22:2).

Under the influence of David’s prevailing spiritual atmosphere they were shaped and became “mighty men of valor”.

· The ‘atmosphere’ around a person can be shaped and developed.

3. Spiritual Atmosphere:

a) Definition:

· The prevailing spiritual influence that surrounds a person.

· The Spiritual presence surrounding a person held in place by the life in their inner man.

· The distinctive and tangible spiritual presence surrounding a person.

b) What is Spiritual Atmosphere made of?

i) The Human Spirit - overflowing from a persons inner-man.

ii) Demonic Spirits - intimidating and oppressing person – like flies.

e.g. 1 Samuel 16:14 - Saul – oppressed

e.g. Acts 13:45 - Jews filled with envy.

iii) The Holy Spirit moving freely within and around a person.

· 1 Corinthians 6:17 - He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

· John 7:38-39 - Out of you inner most being shall flow rivers – Holy Spirit.

· When your spirit flows freely without restraint there is a release of the life of the indwelling Holy Spirit – Comes from intimacy.

c) Charisma:

· Charisma = spiritually imparted gifting or ability.

= spiritual power or authority that gives a person influence.

= ‘presence’

· E.g. Political Leaders: Kennedy = Entertainment; Religious = Luther King.

· Key factors in “personal charisma” = Focus + Sense Responsibility + Vocal Experience.

4. How to Shape Your Personal Spiritual Atmosphere:

· Shape = to create; cause to conform to a particular pattern.

· Key problem = to overcome is passivity!

· “Passive” = not participating readily or actively, inactive.

= submit to something without resistance.

= lacking will or energy, lethargic.

· There is no place for passivity in creating a strong personal spiritual atmosphere where you influence others.

· Matthew 11:12 - “The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence…”

“forceful” e.g. Caleb.

· “Violence” = to use or apply force, act energetically.

· Keys:

i) Take Responsibility for your Personal Spiritual Atmosphere - 2 Corinthians 5:20

· Reject the blame game

· Reject old mindsets – ‘That’s me’.

· Break out of passive mindsets.

· You are an ambassador of heavens.

ii) Develop Stronger Physical Expressions of Praise – Psalm 47:1

· Move body

· Smile

· Clap

· Dance

iii) Develop Stronger Vocal Expressions of Praise – Psalm 100:4; Matthew 18:18

· Speaking in tongues.

· Thanksgiving – Word of God.

· Declaration of the Word of God.

· Praise – Word of God.

· Time in the Presence of God.

· Ephesians 5:18 – Filled with the Holy Spirit – speaking and singing and thanksgiving and praising.

iv) Manage Your Inner World – Your Soul – Proverbs 23:7

· Deal quickly with negative thoughts / feelings – acknowledge and resolve it.

· E.g. Guilt; Hurt; Anger; Offence; Fear - Keep focus on purpose.

v) Manage your Outer World - Psalm 101:3

· Guard what you allow to enter your inner world.

· What you see.

· What you hear.

· Who you fellowship with – resist negativity and unbelief.

vi) Consciously Release the Life of God - John 7:38

* Smile. * Speak positively, enthusiastically.

* Thank * Fill with your presence.

* Encourage * Engage people.

Deliverance Training (Special Topics)

驱邪术培训（具体事宜）

驅邪術培訓（具體事宜）

Detailed teaching to train leaders in how to minister Deliverance (exorcism), bringing freedom from Generational Curses, Occult powers, and Sexual sin.

As you listen, you will gain insight into how demons can enter the lives of people; and what to do (step by step) to set a person free.

详细的教学，培养领导者如何拯救部长（驱魔），从世代诅咒，神秘的力量，和性罪带来的自由。

当你听，你会深入了解如何恶魔能够进入人们的生活，以及做什么（一步一步地）设置一个自由的人。

詳細的教學，培養領導者如何拯救部長（驅魔），從世代詛咒，神秘的力量，和性罪帶來的自由。

當你聽，你會深入了解如何惡魔能夠進入人們的生活，以及做什麼（一步一步地）設置一個自由的人。

Freedom from Generational Iniquity & Curses (1 of 3)

Understand Generational Iniquity and Curses, recognize when it is operating in a person's life, and learn how to minister to help a person be set free.

从世代遗传的罪恶和咒诅中得自由

從世代遺傳的罪惡和咒詛中得自由

Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3)

People trade with evil spirits for knowledge, power or protection and end up in bondage.Learn how to recognize occult bondage and how to set people free,

从邪术/秘术中得自由

從邪術/秘術中得自由

Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3)

Understand God's design for a blessed life, and about the deep impact on our spirit and soul of sexual sin. Learn how to break bondages, minister deliverance, and rebuild damaged lives.

从性犯罪中得自由

從性犯罪中得自由

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- Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3).mp3

- Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3).mp3

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Freedom from Generational Iniquity & Curses (1 of 3)

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Understand Generational Iniquity and Curses, recognize when it is operating in a person's life, and learn how to minister to help a person be set free.

When we have understanding of this whole area, then we can more easily administer to more people. So we want to understand what Generational Iniquity and Curses are. We want to learn how to recognise them - what we look for, and then we want to learn how to minister to people to set them free. So we’re going to focus around those things today.

So first of all, we’ll start in Mark 9. I believe that all of you, when you’re ministering to people, will need to become aware of this root problem of generational curses. I’ll just explain what we mean by these terms shortly. So first we want to take a look at a story in the gospel. We’re going to read from Mark 9:20 – “Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.”

So here is a young man, who has got a demonic spirit, and the spirit is manifesting. Many times you find, that when Jesus went to different places, spirits actually manifested. They did this as a reaction to the high level of anointing and presence of God He carried. As the level of anointing in our life rises, we often experience more of these things happening. Particularly you’ll find when you go to third world cultures, you’ll see very often spirits manifesting quite quickly. So the disciples had tried to cast the demon out, but were unable to.

I want you to notice here in verse 21 – Jesus asked the child’s father: how long has this been happening? And he said, “From childhood” - and the word literally means from being a little infant. 22 And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out, and said with tears: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” 25 When Jesus saw the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it: “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” 26 Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but by prayer and fasting.”

So we’re going to go through the story, and gain some insights. The first thing we see is: a child is being tormented by an evil spirit. This means demonic spirits can be in people from childhood. There’s more than one example, of demonic spirits being in children, in the Bible. We need to distinguish between what is just bad behaviour, and lack of discipline, and a demonic spirit. Some children behave badly because they’ve never been disciplined. This example is not just bad behaviour and lack of discipline - the demon is actually throwing him into the fire - its destructive behaviour. So we see in this child, destructive behaviour, caused by the demonic spirit.

It’s interesting the question Jesus asks: How long has this been in him? Or how long has this been happening. That’s an important question to ask, when you are working with people. One of the things to look for, when you are tracking the presence of generational curses; ask this kind of question: when did this problem begin? Or as Jesus said: how long has this been happening? Now when you ask the question: how long has this been happening; if the person responds: well, since I was very young; then it’s either a trauma that happened when they were young that caused it; or it’s a generational curse of some kind.

So when you are working with people, you would ask: what is the problem you have; how does it affect you; and this question – how long have you had it”. When you ask the question “how long have you had this problem”, you get pointed to: possibly, this has been a generational thing. If you’re in some of the meetings, you’ll know I asked more than one person: how long has this spirit been tormenting you? Oh, since I was very, very young. In one or two cases, I said: this has been since very young, hasn’t it?

So, there’re two questions that will give clues to the presence of a generational curse. The first one is how long has this been happening? Or in other words, when did this start? The second one is: has anyone in your family had a problem like this? Those are the two questions to remember: 1) when did this first start; and 2) did anyone else in your family have this problem?

So, in trying to locate the root of this problem, you have to ask questions. Notice how Jesus started, by asking the father questions. The word “child” is literally the word

“infant”, one that’s just born, or very young; and the father describes the way the child behaves. So it’s almost certain that the child was suffering from some generational spirit.

Evil spirits need some legal ground to enter a person’s life. They need some door to get in. So unless the child had a trauma of some kind, its most likely this was a generational spirit. One thing we need to understand is that generational curses can be the cause of many problems that people have. A little later, we’ll ask: how we’ll recognise a generational curse - we’ll talk about how you would identify it.

Notice that Jesus said that faith is required for deliverance. If you can believe, all things are possible. So, faith is essential. I must believe that God will move - that I have power to cast these demons out. Notice that Jesus, later on the disciples asked Him: why could we not cast this demon out? They had done a lot of deliverance, they had seen results; but this time, it failed - and they were quite puzzled why they failed.

Jesus did not blame the father or the child. Jesus said to the disciples: it requires faith. Then he said an interesting statement – this kind comes out by nothing but by prayer and by fasting. In other words, Jesus is saying two things: 1) there are different levels of authority or power that evil spirits have; 2) we require faith that we’ll move them; 3) that prayer and fasting helps establish faith in our life.

You noticed Jesus did not stop and pray and fast - He just immediately delivered the demon out of the child; but when we read of His life, we find that He prayed, and He fasted. So moving in deliverance, we need to recognise the place prayer and fasting has, and we’ll talk a little bit about some aspects of prayer later on. I’ll just perhaps get a chance to share with you some things I pray around my life; but there has to be faith in the heart - so without faith, nothing happens.

So we see then, an example of a child who needed deliverance; and the single requirement: that there be faith - we have to believe God for the breakthrough; and that sometimes, there can be resistance. Notice that when the demon came out, Jesus identified what it was – a deaf and dumb spirit. It’s very helpful if you can name the spirit you’re commanding out. Naming it weakens its power in the person’s life. You notice also, that Jesus spoke directly, he commanded: “I command you come out”.

The last thing I noticed there is quite different - it’s the only place I’ve seen it. He commanded the spirit not to enter the child again. That’s the only time that’s actually mentioned, as far as I’m aware: “Don’t go back into this child”. So, when we do deliverance, the only example we have for forbidding the demon to return, is this particular one. I think that Jesus said this, because it’s a child. In the other cases, Jesus taught (Matthew 12) that if the demons do try and re-enter, the person has to be responsible, to build a good life with God. So, here is an example then, of what appears to be a generational, demonic spirit in the family.

Let me share with you a couple of stories of people we’ve prayed for, where there was clearly a generational spirit. The first one concerns a young child. Two people came to me, and they said: "we’re having a major problem with our child”. I said: “What is the problem?” They said “when the child wakes up, he immediately starts to destroy things in his room - he’s extremely destructive, and we have no idea why”. The child was around about the age of two and three. When it woke up, it would just go in a rage, and begin to be destructive. The parents had no understanding of why the behaviour would be like that.

So, I began to enquire about both of their backgrounds, and I looked for a spiritual root for what was a really unusual behaviour. It turns out that the husband had been involved equally in drug addiction, and had major anger problems; and the mother’s family had been involved deeply in the occult. So it would appear to me that the spirits that were there, came as a result of what the family, or the parents, had opened their lives to.

So in this particular case, praying for such a young child - we prayed when the child was asleep. It just was an easier way of doing it. You can pray when they’re awake, but you’ll find that often the demon will manifest, and the child will scream and shout and fight, and it becomes a very difficult process - can be quite unnerving. So, we prayed - I had the parents there with me, I didn’t want the child to wake and find a strange person in their room. So even if the child would maybe have recognised me, I didn’t want them to be awake and be frightened, so I had the parents with me, and the parents agreed that we would pray for this child. So I didn’t put my hand on him, I just put my hand just slightly above his head, so as not to wake him.

Then I spoke and prayed, and we broke the curses operating down through the father’s side of the family, and the mother’s side of the family – commanded the spirits to go. When we commanded the spirits to go, the child just began to yawn and sigh. He was asleep all the time, and several times as I prayed, he kind of gave a big sigh - it was quite evident that something was happening. We then just prayed that the spirit would not enter the child anymore; we released peace over the child; and he never woke up through the process.

The next day, the parents called me, and they said: “The child woke up today with absolutely no destructive behaviour - the problem has just completely gone! It’s just not there anymore.” So that was a great learning experience for me, of the reality of these generational spirits. This is what we’re going to look at – to identify these things, and discover how they occur, and primarily, what to do about it.

So that’s an example of a young person. I’ll give you an example of an older person. I had a woman come to me, and she must have been in her 50s I suppose. She said “I’m a Christian worker, I’ve been working for the Lord for many years of my life”. She said “I have a problem that greatly disturbs me, can you help me with it?” So, you notice the thread of questions: what is the problem; how does it affect you; how long have you had this problem?

She said: “Here’s the problem. I have these tormenting, unclean, sexual images coming into my mind - it disturbs me during times of worship.” So I said: “How long have you had this”. She said: “Since I was very young”. So then I asked the next couple of questions: “Did you have any traumatic experience, or were you exposed to any sexual abuse of any kind?” She said: “No”. So that left the only possibility open – that it was a generational spirit of some kind. The fruit was torment by an unclean spirit. She was experiencing these horrendous, unclean images in her mind - often as she worshipped.

So I asked her and enquired about her family background, and she began to tell her story to me. Her grandparents were missionaries in China, and they had two children – a daughter (which was her mother), and a son. They served the Lord in one province, and sent their children to another province. They sent them to a boarding school, but that province was overrun by the Japanese, and the school was taken over - and these were white, Western children. The girl was sexually abused by Japanese soldiers, over quite a long period of time. Eventually, the children were restored to their parents, and eventually they left China, and came and re-settled. The child grew up, got married, had a child, and the marriage broke up. So, we asked: “Are you willing to act on behalf of your family, and forgive these Japanese soldiers?” She said: “Yes, she would”.

So I led her in a very simple prayer, acknowledging her faith in Christ, and renouncing all of the sexual abuse that has come into the family life, and releasing forgiveness to the soldiers. When I commanded, unclean spirits just came out, with strong manifestation. Because we were aware of the nature of what had been done, I knew what to pray against. From that point on, her mind became clear, and she did not have the torment in her mind. She did not have these unclean sexual images - they were the product of a spirit of perversion, which had entered years before, into the family line.

So we’ve seen many other people, over the years, set free of spirits that were generational in nature. So, that’s why we want to have a look at this area and understand it. The first thing we see is a Bible example of a demonised child, and then we’ve seen a couple of personal stories. Now we want to have a look at this whole area.

First, I’m going to look at Galatians 3 - I want us to see what Christ has done. Galatians 3:13-14 says: “13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), 14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

So we notice very clearly in the scripture, that one work that Christ did on the cross, was to redeem us from cursing. The purpose of redeeming us from cursing is to bring us in to blessing. So God wants to move us from being in a place of cursing, into a place of blessing. Specifically, he wants to remove all curses from our breaking of the law of God. Notice in verse 14, God’s purpose is that blessing would come upon us, that we might receive the promise of the spirit.

So the Holy Spirit working in our life is the source of blessing. Blessing means favour. Blessing means fruitfulness. Blessing means the flow of the life of God. So God’s plan is to bring us, or position us, so we live a blessed life. So we need to understand - there’s absolutely no doubt here - God’s desire is for a blessed life, and our cooperating with the Holy Spirit is the cause of that blessed life. It is the life of faith in the spirit, that is a blessed life. Notice as the blessing of Abraham come upon the Gentiles in Christ; so God’s blessing on Abraham is fulfilled in Jesus. So when we identify with Jesus, and live with Him and identify with Him - that is the way blessing is released.

So blessing comes out of identifying with Jesus Christ, and aligning with his life. It comes out of living as a new-creation person in Christ. God’s blessing came upon His son Jesus Christ, and when I identify with Him, I am blessed. So when you become a Christian, you identify with Jesus Christ and His death, burial and resurrection - you are already positioned for blessing. You are blessed because of your relationship with Christ; and not because of all the things you do.

One danger is that, having come to Christ, we go back under the law. I am blessed because I identify with Christ; it’s not because of what I do. Otherwise, you come back under the law: if you do this you’re blessed; if you don’t’ do it, you’re cursed. Jesus has redeemed us from the curse of the law. In other words, He has paid the full price. His work on Calvary was enough to break the power of all cursing.

When Jesus died on the cross, He fully satisfied the demands of God. When Jesus died on the cross, we died with Him - and a dead man can’t be affected by curses. So notice He says: He redeemed us from the curse of the law; having become a curse for us. So on the cross, Jesus represented us. The nature of His death, hanging on a tree - in the Bible God said a person hanging on a tree is cursed.

So hundreds of years before the Romans invented crucifixion, God planned how we would be set free from cursing. He set a law in motion: if the person is hung on a tree, that person is cursed. So when Jesus was hung on a tree - He became a curse for us; and redeemed us from the curse of the law.

The power behind curses is demonic spirits. The power behind the curse is a demonic spirit. A curse is a spiritual force that works against us. A curse is an unseen spiritual force, that’s powered by an evil spirit; and it continues until the curse is broken. A curse is an unseen, or invisible, destructive force; that is empowered by evil spirits; and it continues until the curse is broken. Hence, we find many people struggling with the consequences of curses, in spite of the fact that Jesus has already redeemed them. It’s like the devil is making an illegal claim against them, so we have to enforce on the evil spirits what Jesus has done.

So we see here a couple of things then. Firstly, that the power behind a blessing is the Holy Spirit. And your life is blessed when you identify with Christ. Ephesians 1:6 says “We are blessed with every blessing in heavenly places in Christ”. I don’t have to work for blessing, I just need to receive blessing.

The power behind a curse is a demonic spirit. Curses are the result of the law of God being broken in some way. Jesus has redeemed us from all curses that come about as a result of breaking God’s law. To redeem means to pay the full ransom price - to pay the full price to set someone free. So if Jesus paid the full price, how much price do I have to pay? None! If Jesus has provided for me to be blessed, how much do I have to do to earn His blessing? Nothing - I need to just believe. So we’ll see as we get to how a person remains free, that the key for our victory is faith - not trying harder. The harder I try, the more I come under the curse of the law. I’m called to live differently. I’m called to live as a blessed person. So I am a blessed person, regardless of what is going on around me - I am blessed. I am blessed through faith in Christ. It’s not an external thing, it’s an internal thing. You are blessed. You are blessed in every way. You are blessed by God in every dimension of your life. You don’t have to earn the blessings; they’re something that comes when we identify with Christ. They are released through faith. We’ll talk a little bit about that later on. So we know what a blessing is and what a cursing is.

I’m going to go a little bit further now and look at Generational curses and Iniquity. I want to show you a couple of scriptures. We’ll look at the first few verses of Exodus 20, these are what we call the 10 commandments. We’ll read from verse 2 to verse 6:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

So you notice here, a very clear warning against idolatry. So as we look at this verse, we begin to see that God sees people as families, interconnected families. Notice that, when we look at people, we see them as individuals. When God sees people, He sees them as part of a family line. So God views people generationally, and His plan is for His blessing to be generational. God desires blessing to flow from one generation to another. So remember, blessing is God’s favour. Blessing is the flow of the life of the Spirit around us. God’s plan is that blessing flow from one generation to another. That as you walk with God, your children benefit from your godly life.

In other words, without doing anything, they can receive great favour from God, because they are the children of someone living rightly for God. God’s intention is that each generation should build on what the previous generation established, or accomplished. So in God’s original design, blessing would flow from one generation to another. Each generation would have the advantage of what their parents had done, and they could go further. In other words, God’s desire and plan is that parents would leave a Godly legacy. This isn’t always seen at the beginning of a person’s life but it does show up in the latter part of their life. We often don’t notice that the little choices that we make each day are leading us on a certain course.

I’ll just give you an example. My wife’s parents have both died now. But I remember very vividly going to her father’s 80th birthday. It was a family celebration, and present at the celebration were all the family, and also friends. There were five children who had all grown up and all got married, and all had grandchildren - there were many grandchildren there of different ages. At a certain point in the evening, we began to celebrate and honour Joy’s father. Each of the 20 grandchildren stood up and shared briefly why they loved their grandfather.

He had intentionally over the years, walked with God, sacrificially given to the work of the Lord, and had made a decision to invest in each of his grandchildren. So when they were from the age of about 5 through the age of 11, he would take them on holidays. Two, three, or five of them together, and they would have a grandfather holiday. He would take them, and they would have a morning devotional, and pray together, and read the Bible together. They would go out and have fun together. Everyone had an opportunity to choose an activity and plan the day. He did all kinds of things over many years. In other words, he believed in generational legacy. So rather than spending money wildly on all kinds of things, he invested in his family. So at the age of 80, all of the grandchildren were able to testify how they loved him, and what they learned from him.

His brother was also present at the celebration. His brother had taken a different course in his life. He had rejected Christ, and he was now on his second marriage. He had committed adultery and been unfaithful, and now he was with another person. He had two daughters, neither of whom was married, and they were unusual people - and he had no grandchildren. I looked, and of course when his brother was growing up, he’d laughed at his faith in Christ. But here at the age of 80, you could look and you could see the life’s course, and the result of the decisions.

One had invested in family and walked with God and there was a Godly legacy – the legacy of a stable family, a good marriage, a legacy of grandchildren who loved their grandfather. The other one had an unstable marriage, unstable family, and no legacy to grandchildren.

So we understand God’s plan is that a legacy flow from one generation to another. We can align with Christ and leave an intentional legacy, or we can live a destructive life and other things come on our family. So if we walk with God, blessings begin to flow into our family, without us even realising it. They are blessed because we have walked with God - and this is what the scripture tells us.

I can remember when I was in Indonesia some years ago, and I was taking a meeting, and there were about 2000 people there. I had my son David with me, and he had come with me on more than one mission’s trip. Normally when I plan them, we do all the training of the leaders, and after we’ve trained the leaders, then we do the ministry. So we got to the first day, and I’d asked them: train leaders, then ministry - but it was a holiday, so they had meetings - and we had no one trained. So no one knows what to do, and they’ve all come wanting deliverance. It was only David and me, and more than 1000 came up in the altar call - it was a monstrous altar call - rows and rows and rows of people.

So I remember looking at my son saying: well Dave, you can do half of them, and I’ll do the other half, and so we got going. I got praying and things were happening, people who were slain in the spirit, demons coming out everywhere. Suddenly I thought: I need to have a look and see how Dave’s getting on. All around him, people are on the ground and demons have been coming out. He’s just had a major move of God around him. I spoke to him a little later about it. I said: “What happened?”

He said: “Well, about 3 months ago, I decided that what was on your life from God was an inheritance for me.” So I began in prayer to take hold of what belonged to me. Isn’t that something? He said: “...and this is what happened today”. So, there’s an example of Godly legacy. He stood up and said: what is on your life is mine to have. What he’s saying is: I don’t have to pay the price you paid, to get that. I can have that, because I’m connected to you, we’re family. Interesting thinking isn’t it?

So we can have what is upon Christ, because we are connected to Him - He is our elder brother. We just have to arise and take hold of what Christ has provided for us. He is the elder brother, who broke through and became blessed. We are blessed because we’re in Him - we just need to take hold of the blessing.

Now, notice the two sides of this. We see then that families are interconnected. Now He says this: The Lord your God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me; but showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. So God is saying in this scripture here, that there are generational consequences of sin. Of course the most obvious one is Adam. Adam sinned, and we’ve all been born in sin. In this particular scripture, God says: certain kinds of sin will have generational consequences; and this is echoed in other scriptures.

Let me read another one for you. Lamentations 5:7. In this chapter 5, the prayer is for God to bring restoration. It starts of in verse 2 - Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens, and our houses to foreigners. 3 We have become orphans and waifs, our mothers are like widows. 4 We pay for the water we drink, and our wood comes at a price. 5 They pursue at our heels; we labor and have no rest.

Now look at what he’s saying. He’s saying: we are in reproach. That means we’re incredibly ashamed and embarrassed of our condition. He said: the Godly inheritance has been taken away from us by other people. He’s saying that the blessing have been stripped away. He said: we’ve become orphans, or no one to father us, we’ve lost parents. He said: the water that we drink, which should be free, we have to pay for. The trees which we should be able to cut down for wood, we have to pay for them as well. He said: we are labouring, or working, and there’s absolutely no rest; and we’re in bondage to the Syrians and Egyptians. So that’s a very unhappy condition isn’t it? So what’s he saying, we’re in bondage, we’re in slavery.

Notice now what he says in verse 7, he actually says what the cause of the problem is. 7 Our fathers sinned and are now no more, or have died, but we bear their iniquities. What he’s saying is: our parents did something wrong, and we’ve experienced the consequences. What they did has brought problems to us. Or in other words, their sin has had a generational impact. That’s exactly what he said in Exodus chapter 20. So there are many scriptures that are like this.

Let’s go back to Exodus 20. God is speaking specifically about idolatry and iniquity. Let’s first of all, talk about idolatry. Verse 5 says: I the Lord your God, am a jealous God. We need to understand what that means. When it says: God is jealous; He’s talking about having a passionate love for us. It says: I’m passionately in love with you. So when I see someone else be your lover, I am extremely upset by this. It’s not saying that God has got some evil nature to Him. It’s saying that I love you so immensely; it hurts Me deeply to see you follow some other person. He’s using a marriage language here. He’s saying: I’m like a jealous husband.

It would help you to understand this a little more, if I just tell you a little bit about the context here. The context in which something is said, is very important for what it all means. What is going on that causes God to give these 10 commandments? So we’re going to answer that one. If you don’t know anything about the Hebrew culture, this is a bit of a mystery. It’s like God has just written down laws: you keep the law. Do the law – good! Don’t do law – punish! Most people think of it like that.

You need to understand that there is a much bigger picture here. You remember that the Lord drew the people of Israel out into the wilderness, then God came down to encounter them. God began to talk to them about wanting to meet with them; and there was a covering that came down over them. The words God spoke are quite meaningful to the Hebrews. He said: you are a special treasure to me.

In the Hebrew culture, when someone wanted to marry someone, there were steps that they took. The first step was to say: you are a special treasure to me. There were a number of steps that would take place. Finally they would come to the place of engagement, or betrothal to marry. They would come under a canopy, and in preparation for marriage, the groom would bring out what was called the marriage arrangement.

Their marriage arrangement consisted of the requirements of this marriage covenant. So this Exodus 20 is what’s called the ketubah, it was called the marriage covenant. So what they would do is that they would exchange vows, and there would be an agreement. This is what we agree to, so we can maintain our marriage relationship. They had lived in slavery for years, so this ketubah was absolutely wonderful to them.

But notice what God is saying: rethink this! Rethink it as a marriage relationship. I’m the Lord your God, you have no other gods before Me. I want to be number 1 in your life, don’t have any other boyfriends. Don’t make images of other gods. Don’t keep the pictures of your old boyfriends. Honour the Lord your God. Don’t take My name in vain. In other words, when we get married, I want you to live a life that honours me, so I’m proud of you and not ashamed of you. So it goes through, and all of those steps – don’t steal - I’ll provide for you.

It’s all about a marriage relationship. It’s all about the terms of living as a husband and wife betrothed to God. I encourage you to look up and search on the internet a Hebrew wedding, and the engagement process; and you will see here in Exodus 19 and 20, this is the whole process of coming into covenant agreement with God.

So now God says: there are consequences if you are unfaithful in marriage. We tend to think of relationship with God being casual - but it isn’t, it’s called covenant - a binding agreement. So this is what God is saying: if you’re unfaithful to Me, there are consequences. So this is what He says: if you follow after idols, the impact of that idolatry, will last for generations. Let’s go and have a look at that. Have a look at what He’s saying here.

So in Exodus 20: I the Lord am a jealous God. In other words, I’m a passionate lover - I don’t want you to have other boyfriends. That’s what that means - it’s true! In James He puts it this way: if you follow the world with all its values - you’re an adulteress. You’re unfaithful to God! God loves us – and He wants to have an intimate relationship.

Notice God talks about specifically idolatry. There are many sources of cursing, but idolatry is a significant one. He said: you’ll have no other gods before Me. Don’t make any images, don’t bow down to them. Now, to “bow down” means to worship, or pay respect, to an idol. It means to give that idol a place of honour and value in your life. When a person bows down to an idol, they are actually acknowledging the demon that’s in the idol. The power behind an idol is an evil spirit; but the idol itself is just a piece of wood - it’s actually nothing, it’s meaningless, it’s a carving of hand; but behind it and within it is an evil spirit. So when people bow down to the idol, they are actually honouring and yielding to the demonic presence that inhabits it. So you understand God being very upset with that.

Now, when a person makes an offering to an idol, they are trading with an evil spirit. They are trading. That means, they are offering in exchange. To trade, I give you something; you give me something - it’s an agreement. So if you make an offering to an idol, you are intentionally entering in an agreement with an evil spirit - that’s why there’s a problem with this. You give the offering to the idol, and implicitly you are looking for protection, or provision, or power.

These are all things God wants to provide, so when you bow down to an idol, you are rejecting God as the source of provision, power and protection, and you are trading with an idol; trading with an evil spirit. So this is the problem with idolatry – that when we bow down and offer sacrifices to them, we are trading with an evil spirit, entering into an agreement with an evil spirit, and the evil spirit now has a legal right of access. A legal right of access!

In Psalm 115 verse 8, we’ll read from verse 3. Notice what it talks about idols. “3 But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases. 4 Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. 5 They have mouths, but they do not speak; Eyes they have, but they do not see; 6 They have ears, but they do not hear; Noses they have, but they do not smell; 7 They have hands, but they do not handle; Feet they have, but they do not walk; Nor do they mutter through their throat.” Now notice this: “8 Those who make them are like them; and so is everyone who trusts in them.”

Those who make them are like them - so you become like what you worship. So if you worship the idols, then what will happen is, you will end up becoming like them – cold and hard. So I have observed: that people who are involved in idolatry, usually have deep roots of bitterness in their lives, and emotional coldness and hardness. Literally, a spirit of death gets hold of them. So when there’s family idolatry, usually the people are very hard emotionally.

Let’s go back into Exodus 20. So God says: if you bow down to them, I the Lord am a jealous God, and I will visit the iniquity of your fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who do these things. Notice God says: He visits the iniquity.

The consequence of sin is death. God set that law in place – you sin, you die - and a number of sins in the Bible had death penalties. The problem is, if God kills you when you do that sin, it cuts of all the generations. So rather than kill you, the judgement on that sin is just spread generationally. So no one dies; but everyone’s affected.

The word iniquity then, means to be crooked. The Greek word ‘avon’ and the Hebrew language means: what you look at with your eye, will hook you in. So iniquity then, is to be crooked - to be twisted or bent. It’s to have a leaning towards a certain kind of problem. So iniquity is the driving power that turns people towards sin. Iniquity is the root, out of which the sinful acts turn up. Iniquity is a problem!

I want to show you a verse in Exodus 34:6-7 – 6 “And the LORD passed before Moses and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 keeping mercy for thousands.” I want you to notice this very carefully – “forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin; by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

We see here that God is proclaiming His name or nature. The first thing we see is God says: I’m a God of mercy. 1) Mercy. I give mercy - merciful, gracious, long-suffering, kind; also, He’s a God of justice. Mercy is greater than justice. God’s mercy means He forgives; is long-suffering, goodness. God’s justice - He requires us to come account for sin.

Notice what He says here – that God forgives 3 things: Iniquity; Transgression; Sin - those are 3 different things. We just tend to think of sin - I did something wrong, but the Bible distinguishes between them. Iniquity is one thing; transgression is something else; sin is something else - these terms all turn up in the New Testament as well. We tend to just use one broad word – sin. Jesus died for my sins. Actually, we need to understand iniquity, transgression, sin. All of them, the blood of Jesus has the remedy for it, but each of them is completely different.

Iniquity means to be crooked or twisted - it’s the bending in your life towards sin. That’s what we’re going to be dealing with, when we’re dealing with generational curses and iniquities.

Transgression – that’s something different. It means to deliberately break the law of God. You knew it was wrong, you knew in your conscience it was wrong, but you did it anyway - you broke the law of God.

Sin means to fall short of the mark; to cause an offense. It pertains mostly to things we have done but we didn’t realise ot. We did something wrong, but we didn’t realise we were doing something wrong - we did it ignorantly.

For example, you may not realise there’s a 50 km/h speed zone outside, and you went 80 km/h; and you were stopped, and they said: “You did 80, this is only a 50 km/h zone.” You say “Well, I didn’t know”. The policeman doesn’t say to you, “Oh, I’m so sorry you didn’t know - it’s ok then - move on”. He doesn’t say that, instead He says: “Whether you knew it or not, you still broke the law. You have to pay the fine”.

Notice now, three categories of issues that need to be addressed. 1) Iniquity – the twist in the person’s life. So even if they say they’re sorry, they still keep moving towards that. 2) the transgression – deliberate violating of the law of the Lord; 3) I made a mistake I didn’t know I was doing wrong, I’m so sorry.

There was an offering for sins of ignorance, and there was an offering for transgressions, so they were quite different. You notice in the Old Testament that when Moses required the people to apply the blood, notice what he did: apply it to the lintel, the post, the post. Iniquity; transgression; sin - Basic crookedness; willingly breaking the law; sins of ignorance – apply the blood. Why did he not say: just put it on the top one? Because the blood of Jesus Christ totally deals with every aspect of our sin and failure - iniquity, transgressions, sins. Notice that in applying it, they literally make a cross. So right back there in Exodus 12, God points out the cross and blood that will deal with iniquity, transgression, and sin.

Notice this – the transgressions that’s doing something wrong, the sins that’s doing something wrong - everyone’s responsible for their own. Everyone is called to look to account for their own sin. You are not blamed for the sins your parents committed. You are not blamed or responsible for their transgressions - but the iniquity you carry. We need to deal with the issue of iniquity – the cursing in our flesh, that seems to produce these troubles.

We’ll just finish with one more scripture. You notice that what is visited upon the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation is iniquity. In Deuteronomy 23, I just want to read you one other kind of cursing that passes from one generation to another. In verse 2 - 3: “One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD forever”.

I want you to just be aware as we finish this session of just these two particular curses. The first one referred there, refers to illegitimacy – conceived, born out of wedlock. What it is saying is that there is a curse of rejection upon that person. In other words, when a child is conceived or born out of wedlock, then there is access of a particular type of spirit – the spirit of rejection - to their life.

Let me give you an example. I had a man come up in an altar call, we had a lot of people in an altar call, and we didn’t have time to counsel him, so I just ask a few simple questions. What is your problem? I want you to notice the questioning that gets to the root. Each day I pray that God will give me the ability to ask questions that go right to the root of problems. This is what I asked him – what is your problem? He said: “I’m angry, a lot of anger”. I said: “Who are you angry at?” “Everyone”. Now that means, he has a root of anger, he was angry at someone, but he never dealt with it. So I said, “how do you get on with your parents?” We’ll go right back and start there. He was very angry with both of his parents. I said: “Did they do something wrong against you?” He said: “I don’t know. I’m just angry at them”. I said: “Are you the eldest in the family.” He said: “Yes, I am”. I said: “Were you conceived out of wedlock”. He said: “Yes, I was”.

I said: “Here’s where the anger is. You are carrying a deep root of rejection and shame in your life, and you put the blame on the people who stepped in to help you. Being angry with them, you’ve continued now to project that anger on everyone. I said: “You need to forgive the parents who gave you out (for adoption). The father who rejected you, the mother who rejected you. You need to forgive the parents for projecting on to them all your anger. You need to go to them and put it right and apologise; because they stepped in to help and you’ve rejected them - you’ve greatly dishonoured them. That’s all it took!

Notice that the cause of it was the illegitimacy; and the deep root of rejection and anger that was in his life - and the way he carried it constantly. Anger is a demand - you took something from me, you must pay back. It’s a reaction to what’s felt or believed to be an injustice. You owe me - is the message of anger. Letting your rights go, and forgiving, is the release of it.

Just think about this – you go into a family line through four generations.... Assume that everyone had just two children. Your parents have two children, next family line there’s another 4 people there, next family line now we go back there’s more people. So gradually we begin to start to realise there’s up to 30 people involved. With 10 generations, there’s a lot more people.

Notice what we finish up with. God loves us passionately, but certain types of sins open the door for a generational curse, and an iniquity. We saw then, a cursing is a negative destructive force, empowered by an evil spirit. Notice that iniquity is a crookedness in the family line that causes people to sin. So iniquity and curses go together - they are quite different, but they go together, and they transfer from one generation to another. Next we’ll look a little bit more about those areas. We’ll look at some Bible examples and we want to come to a point of showing you how you’ll minister to people to get them free. Next we’ll show you some more things about it, then the path to freedom.

We’re looking at the topic of Generational Iniquity & Curses. Generational refers to something passing down from one family member to another. So, generational iniquity is a tendency in a family to a certain kind of sin, for example: patterns of adultery or alcoholism. There can be patterns of sin running in a family line. Generational curses are negative forces running through the family, one generation to another, that’s powered by evil spirits. Firstly, I want to look at how iniquity is transferred. How it shifts from one family member to another. Then we’ll look at curses in themselves, and how to identify them.

First of all, iniquity - how is it transferred? We’re going to list some possible ways they’re transferred. The first is: it’s generational, it’s inherited. Just as you carry physical features of your parents, you also carry some of the iniquity. Secondly, they can be empowered by spirits; there may be familiar spirits operating in the family. Thirdly, they may pass in a family line, because of bitter judgements against the parents.

Bitter Judgements - if you judge your parents for a particular sin or failure, you set in motion a cycle of sowing and reaping in your life. The thing you have judged will turn up in your own life. You hear someone say: “I’ll never be like my father”. That means they have been hurt, there is a judgement against their father, and now an inner vow. The result is, they’ll probably become exactly like him. When we judge our parents, we set in motion a cycle of iniquity continuing in our family. The thing we judge, we reap.

It seems likely then, that causes of this iniquity moving from one family generation to another are: familiar spirits; bitter judgements; and possibly genetic code. It’s quite possible that some of these areas of sin corrupt the genetic code, and create issues that pass through the genetic line. Another cause or source of the iniquity transferring is just patterns of learned behaviour. In other words, people tend to copy what their parents do.

In looking at iniquity continuing in the family line: 1) there’s a spiritual power, and a curse operating. We’re bearing the consequences spiritually of their sin. 2) Bitter judgements. 3) Patterns of behaviour; and possibly familiar spirits; and maybe genetic code.

You understand then, if you’re going to deal with something, you need to know what it is you’re dealing with. For example, if the person has judged their parent, they need to repent of the judgement and forgive. If the person has learned or copied their behaviour, they need to learn new ways of behaving and living.

Now, let’s have a look at the issue of curses, generational curses. I want you to understand what a curse is, and how we can recognise them. Usually curses are spoken words, which set in motion spiritual powers. Curse – you speak words, and they’re spoken with force, and they release spiritual powers. Generally they continue from generation to generation until they’re broken. The power behind the curse is an evil spirit or a demon. To curse someone, means to bring evil, or calamity, or destruction on them. Curse – bring evil or calamity upon them.

When a curse is operating, there’s a spiritual pressure on the person, to continually bring destructive results in their life. This presses the person who presses their relationship, presses their circumstances. Another way of putting it would be: recurring cycles of defeat.

Where does the curse come from? Proverbs 26:2 said “the curse, without a cause, shall not come”. Or to put it another way: if there’s a curse, there’s always a reason. There’s always a reason. One possible cause of the curse is God – He set laws in place, you violate the laws, there are consequences. Breaking God’s laws, gives demons room to move in a person’s life.

A second cause of curses is people - people speaking out, cursing our family, cursing us, or people practising witchcraft. Witchcraft – words are spoken that release spiritual power against someone. For example, a person dedicating a child to an idol or a temple - that initiates a cursing. If a person opens their life to an evil spirit, or dedicates themselves to an evil spirit - that would initiate a cursing.

Sometimes, authority figures can speak words of cursing. “You’ll never do any good. You’re stupid”. People in authority, speaking in destructive words, can cause cursings to take place.

People can curse themselves. “I’m a failure. I’ll never do any good. I’ll probably fail.”

Another potential source of cursing on a person’s life is occult objects. Deuteronomy 7:25-26. This is what the word of God says: “You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.” So, objects such as idols or occult objects can bring spiritual forces into the home, and you have undue influences.

If a curse is operating, there will always be fruit. If you want to discover if a curse is operating, you just look for repeated patterns of failure. When we’re looking for generational iniquity and curses, we’re looking for repeated patterns of failure - particularly the ones that pass from one generation to another.

So what kinds of patterns of failure? The book of Deuteronomy lists many. Deuteronomy 28:15 says: “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you”.

It begins to talk about these and gives a whole list of them. What we’ll do is, we’ll just summarise them so you’ve got a list to look for. These are evidences it could be operating. There may however be other factors as well. At least it’ll give you a start place to look for.:

1) Recurring mental and emotional problems in the family.

2) Recurring chronic sickness and allergies.

3) Difficulties with pregnancy. That means difficulties conceiving; miscarriages; childlessness. Interestingly enough, this is particularly associated with idolatry. In the book of Hosea 9, it says that idolatry - one of the consequences is: the womb will cast forth its fruit.

4) Recurring patterns of family breakdown and divorce. So, repeated cycles of divorce and family breakdown. Also conflicts in the family – everyone’s against everyone.

5) Recurring patterns of financial lack. Everything should be going right, we should get blessed, and suddenly there’s a setback; recurring patterns of family lack or financial lack. 6) Another symptom is that a person’s got patterns of accident-proneness. Tend to constantly get accidents; or it seems the family has patterns of accident in it.

7) Another thing to look for is recurring patterns of suicide, or premature death. You look in a family, and there’s a history of suicides or people dying unexpectedly early - that could be evidence of a curse.

8) I’ve also come to the conclusion that patterns of abuse and traumas or mistreatment is also evidence of a curse.

9) Another one that I have observed is inability to settle - no rest, no ability to be stable. Remember that Cain was cursed with this - he was a vagabond; he couldn’t rest or settle anywhere.

Now, all of these problems can have a variety of causes, but if they are repetitive problems, they tend to be generational. For example, if someone came to me and they’re suffering from tormenting nightmares, I would ask: “Tell me what is the problem. How is it affecting you. When did it first start?” “I’ve had it all my life” - that would suggest it is family or generational. Or they could answer – they’ve got another problem, “I’ve got these allergies”. “How long have you had them?” “All of my life” “Did anyone else in your family have them?” “My mother had them, and her mother had them.” So you see a repeated kind of pattern, and you realise there’s something operating down the family line.

So you’re looking for repeated patterns - something that’s crooked and twisted. There’s a power operating behind it. I’ll give you a few examples in the Bible, where clearly either iniquity or curses are operating. You can quite easily see that actually, the two are connected, but you can usually easily see which is which. We’ll have a look at a few of them now.

Let’s look at King David. 2 Samuel 12:10 – these are the words of Samuel: “Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.” So what does that sound like? Sounds like a curse - the sword shall never depart from your house. So what did David do that caused this problem in his family? He committed adultery and murder. Here’s the first question – did David get forgiven by God? Yes he was forgiven. However, the consequence, or iniquity, went down his family line. So, if you follow David’s family, you realise there was adultery, there was rape, there was bitterness, there was betrayal, and one of the brothers killed the other brother. So looking at David’s family line, you see many problems, which had a generational root.

I’ll give you another example from 2 Kings 5:27. You remember Gehazi and Elisha. Remember how Gehazi coveted the money and goods that came from Naaman the Syrian. This is what Elisha spoke to him (2 Kings 5:26 - 27): “Did not my heart go with you, when the man turned back from his chariot to meet you? Is it time to receive money and to receive clothing, olive groves and vineyards, sheep and oxen, male and female servants? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and your descendants forever”; and he went out from his presence leprous, as white as snow.

You notice that his sin was that there was coveting, or greed in his heart. He lied - he deceived, in order to manipulate someone to get some possessions in gold. In doing so, he ruined the strategic alliance between Elisha and Naaman, who was a high military person in Syria. Elisha did not want anything from Naaman the Syrian, even though he was an extremely wealthy man. He wanted to leave this man in debt to him, and to operate free of any requirement of him - this would give him power to speak into his life. If he took money from him, if he charged for his services, it would undermine his authority and the strategic relationship.

Just to give an example of that, there are times when I minister to some very highly important people in Taiwan. It’s always important that when I go to them, I never ask or want anything from them. That I go, what I give is free. That keeps then, the ability to keep my heart clear, and to have influence in these people’s lives. This is because the moment I was to show any signs of greed, they would pick it straight away.

Authority in their life depends on being totally free from a hidden agenda; so this greed in Gehazi’s heart was very serious - it undermined Elisha’s reputation. You notice that the result was leprosy - physical sickness. Notice that it was ‘cling to you and your descendents’. His sin opened the door for a generational leprosy in the family line.

Think of some other ones. In Genesis 12:10-13, remember how Abraham lied about his wife Sarah? In Genesis 26:7, Isaac his son lied also, about his wife. In Genesis 27:19, Jacob lied - pretended to be Esau - lied and deceived his poor blind dad. Then in Genesis 37:33, the whole family lied, when they covered up the death of Joseph. This is an example of an iniquity - a tendency towards dishonesty – lying in the family line. Notice the sins get worse and worse.

Another example would be Eli – 1 Samuel 3:12-14 and 1 Samuel 2:30-33 Remember he was unfaithful in his priesthood, and the curse came upon him and his family. Let’s just have a look at what the curse was - 1 Samuel 3:13 – “I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them.” So notice there, verse 14 says – “Therefore, I have sworn to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.”

Now we find out exactly what it was - go back to chapter 2, verse 31: “Behold, the days are coming that I will cut off your arm, and the arm of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house.” Verse 33: “But any of your men, whom I do not cut off from My altar, shall consume your eyes and grieve your heart; and all the descendants of your house shall die in the flower of their age.”

Basically what he’s saying is: the generational legacy of worshipping God will be removed from you, and there’ll be premature deaths in your family. He said – there’ll be constant grief. What he’s saying is that there is a generational curse coming, and it can’t be removed.

So there are other examples: Genesis 9:23 – Noah’s grandson Canaan was cursed. Genesis 4:11 – Cain was cursed with his descendents.

So we see then, the activity of generational iniquity and curses. How are we going to get the person free? What are the steps to freeing a person up?

The first thing is to know and understand fully what Jesus did, and then how to apply it. So we’ll just give you the scriptures for this, without taking too much time to develop them.

First, in Galatians 3:14 - Jesus positioned us to be blessed by breaking the curse. So in Galatians 3:13-14 - He redeemed us from the curse of the law. In other words: paid full price, to rescue us from all of these curses. If He paid the full price, there’s no price we have to pay. He did it so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us through faith in Christ, and we receive the promise of the Spirit. So Jesus broke the power of curses, and positioned us to be blessed.

He also carried our iniquities. In Isaiah 53:5, it says: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

Notice there that Jesus took our transgressions - that’s breaking the law of God. He was bruised for our iniquities - that’s the core twist in our nature against God. So when Jesus died at the cross, He took all our iniquities, so that the power of iniquity could be broken completely. He took our transgressions and our sins. Colossians 2:14-15 – he removed them out of the way. Broke the power of curses, and positioned us to be blessed.

So therefore, what is required of us? How do we get a person free of these cursings? When you are working with someone, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to show us what the real problem is, and what its root is. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us. It’s always challenging to find the problem and its root. The problem may be obvious, or not obvious; but the root is what is empowering this thing. So we need to find: what is the root; and remove it, so that the person gets free from the power.

How would we get to the root of the problem? You have to ask the Holy Spirit to help you. You have to ask questions. So ask the Holy Spirit to help you, and of course, listen to what He has to say. He might just drop a thought in your mind to enquire about something.

Do you remember I’ve told you about the young man who was angry - and the Lord just dropped a thought in my mind. Obviously I asked the first question – “When did it start?”; “Are you the elder son? Were you conceived out of wedlock?” He said: “Where did you get these questions from?” “I just felt them inside - I was just listening to the Holy Spirit, and immediately nailed the problem”. From there we could work out a solution.

So the first thing is to ask the Holy Spirit to help you, and learn to listen to what He shows you. It may be that you just get a thought that comes to mind, a picture comes to mind, or you just feel the need to ask something. Stay sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

So when we’re looking at the person’s problem, you can ask these questions. What is the problem? When did it start? The question ‘when did it start?’ tends to open up whether this is a generational problem or not.

Did any member in your family have this problem? So you could draw a simple family tree, and you begin to look and see where these things have come from. When I’m working, I always have a piece of paper with me, and I ask questions about the person, then about their father, about their mother. I begin to look and see if there’re any issues coming down from either side of the family. Asking questions can help establish where this thing had begun; or the Holy Spirit will show you.

So you get it by listening - listen to the Holy Spirit; listen to the person. So listening is very important in trying to diagnose. Don’t jump to conclusions quickly. Listen and ask and follow what God is saying to your heart. The first steps of getting a person free are what you call ‘diagnose’. I would sit with a piece of paper, and I write down the things which are apparently the problems.

Now, how do we deal with a generational curse, and generational iniquity? Let me give you just a couple scriptures on that. In Leviticus 26:40, there’s a clue to how the person can get set free. Notice what God says in His word in verse 39 – 40: “They’re in their fathers’ iniquities, and are wasting away; but if they confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, and their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and walked contrary to Me.”

So you notice: confession of iniquity is important. There are a number of examples of people confessing iniquity. For example, Nehemiah 1:6 - he confessed his own iniquities, and the iniquities of his fathers. Nehemiah 9:37 – Nehemiah confessed the iniquities of himself, and his fathers. Daniel 9:3 – who also confessed his iniquities. So, there has to be acknowledgment of the sin. The sin, the iniquity, must be brought to the cross.

So, what is the generational iniquity; and have you been doing this yourself? You have to find that out. For example, if the issue was idolatry - the parents were involved in idolatry; but did you do this as well? Your own sins you need to acknowledge, and the sins of your parents that opened the door for the sin.

1) We diagnose the problem - by asking the Holy Spirit; and asking the person questions.

2) We talk to the person and we show them how to get free. We explain to them what Christ has done for them. They are redeemed from the curse. God desires to position them for blessing. Galatians 3:13-14. But for this to happen, they need to do some things. So we explain to them what they must do.

These are quite logical steps: the diagnosis of what the problem is; help them understand what Christ has done; help them understand what they need to do; then we tell them what we will do to help them. I will lead you in a prayer, and this is what you will need to do in the prayer.

1) You will need to acknowledge Christ, because it is by identifying with Christ that we are free.

2) You will need to acknowledge the iniquity - for family iniquity, and your own iniquity.

3) You will need to renounce the generational curse. To renounce means to cancel its power. You need to speak words, to break the power of this iniquity and cursing. You need to ask Jesus to forgive you, to cleanse you from this iniquity. You’ll need to release forgiveness – to forgive family members who opened the door for this iniquity; and you’ll need to make a stand of faith, calling on the Lord to deliver you, and holding on to His words.

We’ll go through that again, so we’ve got the pattern of what must happen. It begins with diagnosis – asking the questions and listening to the person and the Holy Spirit. Identifying where this came from, father or mother - through which line? So we’ve done the diagnosis.

Then we need to explain to them what Jesus has done, because it’s faith in Christ that brings freedom. Galatians 3:13-14 are very good verses for this - very clear. So help them understand, that it is by faith in Christ that the remedy comes. Then we explain to them their part in the process; and what our part will be. We will lead them through a prayer to acknowledge Christ. We will lead them through a prayer to acknowledge the generational iniquity, and their own iniquity. To renounce and cancel the cursing, ask forgiveness and cleansing; release forgiveness to family members who open the door; to resist this curse, and reach out to Jesus in faith. So that’s the process.

Then of course, the last thing I found which is helpful, is to teach them to hold the cross of Christ between them and the family line. You are a new person in Christ.

What would the prayer look like? What would a prayer for generational idolatry look like? I’ll go through now, and I’ll put words to what I’ve just said. I’ll go slowly, because you may decide you’d like to write it down. Here’s the thing: don’t be preoccupied trying to get exact wording. Some people get fussed over getting the wording right - which is just the externals. I’d rather get the heart right, and stay in the flow of the Spirit, than be worried about getting every detail right.

Let me just break the prayer down for you, following exactly the steps we said.

1) The confession of faith. It would sound something like this. “Father I come to You in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus. From every curse, every evil spirit, all iniquity, all sin, I am redeemed. I belong to Jesus.” That’s just a confession of faith. It is extremely powerful. It’s really good for you to lead the person in that. You notice it’s just confessing my connection with Christ, and belief in what he’s done - this is the basis of freedom. What sets you free is faith in the blood, not faith in the prayer. What sets a person free is faith in Christ, not faith in the person praying - so you’re directing them towards Christ. Now we’ll go to the next part.

2) “Lord I stand as a representative of my family, and acknowledge our iniquity. I bring our family generational iniquity of idolatry to the cross. I confess I have also been involved in idolatry, so I bring my iniquity to the cross.”

You notice quite clearly that we brought family iniquity or sin to the cross; we brought personal sin to the cross. It may well be that the person has not actually been involved in that iniquity themselves, but most likely they have. You can see that it is important to confess the sin. “I ask you Lord to forgive me, and cleanse me of this iniquity and from all iniquity and sin”. So sin is confessed.

3.) Now speak words to renounce. “In Jesus’ name, I renounce, I cancel, all generational curses, all agreements with evil spirits. I renounce them, and cancel them. I renounce all iniquity in our family line, in Jesus’ name.

Lord I forgive my family; I forgive my parents; and those in my family who opened the door for this iniquity, who opened the door for this curse - I forgive them and bless them.”

It may be helpful at that point to renounce any judgements - “I renounce all judgements I made against my father and mother. I cancel them now.”

Now can you see that just by words - we’re dismantling things. If you can remember just the key things that are involved, it’s quite easy to remember how to pray a prayer to dismantle it - “I renounce all agreements my family members have entered into with evil spirits. I renounce all generational curses - I renounce and cancel their power. I renounce all agreements with evil spirits. I renounce this iniquity in my family line, and I cancel its power.”

Now, here’s where you would put in the cross - “Father I forgive my family, forgive my father and mother; renounce all judgements I’ve made against them. I hold the cross of Christ between me and my family line, and declare this iniquity and curse broken.” You see that the person, by confession, is dismantling this problem. “Now Lord I ask You to set me free”.

I tried to break that down into its elements. Now, what would you do at that point? At that point, you need to minister to them; so, this is what you would do. You need to speak into two things” 1) into the iniquity and curses, to break them; and 2) to the demonic spirits that are in the person. So one: you need to confront and break bondages, break the generational curses and iniquity, and two: you need to command the spirits to come out of them. Let the Holy Spirit to guide and direct.

You would do it something like this. Remember when you’re speaking now into the spirit realm - speak differently to when you are leading them in a prayer. Rise up in your spirit – “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break the generational curses. I break all agreements made with evil spirits. I break them in Jesus’ name. I break all generational iniquity. I break it in Jesus’ name. I cut off this hold from your life.”

It’s like you’re speaking, as God’s representative, to cancel things. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command the spirits of idolatry - I command you to go”. Of course, the spirits you will command depend on the nature of the thing you’ve been dealing with - the unclean spirits. As the Holy Spirit leads you, you’ll command different spirits.

There’s one more part. This is what the person must fulfil. Let’s go back to Galatians 3:14-15. Here’s the last thing the person needs to do: they need to meditate, and renew in the word of God, and renew their thinking. They need to meditate in the word of God; and renew their thinking - this would lead to a change in how they behave or respond. There should be a shift in thinking, and a shift in behaving - both are needed. That will need to be specific, depending on what the person has been involved in.

In Galatians 3:14-15 – “He has redeemed us from the curse of the law”. So that is actually broken, but it’s important I don’t live anymore like a man under law. It’s important I live as a blessed person. That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through faith in Christ, and I receive the promise of the Spirit.

So what I need to do is to take the word of God, and begin to meditate in it. To meditate in God’s word, and relate it to the specific area I’ve been defeated in. I need to begin to picture this word as real in my life. I’m not earning blessing - Jesus earned the blessing. What I need to do, is believe that I am blessed; and think like I am blessed; and hold on to ‘I am blessed’; and then begin to live it out. So I need to renew how I think. This is where a lot of people get into difficulties - they’ve gone through ministry, but in their thinking, they still think like a cursed person; rather than think like a blessed person.

For example, suppose the issue was repeated cycles of financial failure. So when a person fails financially, they tend to believe in their heart: I’m no good with money; I’m a failure; there’s always a lack; something will always go wrong. They begin to think: failure; their heart becomes set on failure, expecting failure. They live and behave in ways that produce failure.

The person has come into a place now where they are free from that - they can change their believing. That means to meditate – Today I am blessed as I come in, I am blessed as I go out. God’s favour is on all that I do. Thank you that my finances are blessed. I now need to shift the way I behave, to live that out.

Before when I was cursed, living under bondage, I was afraid and fearful to give; or if I did give, it’s giving out of fear. You do this and you’ll be blessed; don’t do this and you’ll be cursed. I’m going to shift my thinking now - I am living in blessing. I have all I need. God supplies everything. I have no lack. Now, externally, I may not have changed, but internally I have to change. I’ve got to start to align with what God says is true. If I align internally, with faith, in what God says - eventually, externally everything will change as well.

In other words, I need to begin to meditate on God being an abundant God, and agree that I’ve got no lack. I need to be established in what God’s word says is true. I don’t want to go back into some old thing, where I’m thinking: if I tithe I’m blessed; if I don’t tithe, I’m cursed - then I’m living under the law again. A lot of Christians go back to the law. I need to stay in this place: I am blessed; and a blessed person is a generous person - who gives. I give because I’m blessed. I’m not giving because if I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll be cursed! I need to adjust my thinking to live how a blessed person lives.

What I have noticed with people is that they want you to come fix their problems with a prayer; but they often don’t want to follow on to know the Lord in the area of blessing, because this requires work and effort and responsibility. It requires that I begin to meditate in the word, and begin to align my life to agree with the word of God.

In other words, I need to follow on to know the Lord - I need to become a disciple of Christ. So there is no neutral ground: I’m either dropping back into the old way of living; or I’m turning to the new way of living - I need to hold that constantly.

So what do I do when I still feel the pressure on me leading me back to the old way? I need to declare strongly: the blood of Jesus has broken iniquity, I refuse to yield to it - I am blessed. I need to identify: I am a new person now.

So I begin to picture what that looks like. Thank you Lord I’m blessed in all that I do. Begin to see it, imagine it, and allow truth to be established. Then look at my life - am I living it out like a blessed person. What would that look like? You notice that it’s not passive. It’s not – I have these problems, please pray for me. No, I am a new creation in Christ - I am a blessed person. I have the Spirit of God, and I live in blessing as I set my mind on the Spirit, and not on the old ways of the flesh.

So the life of blessing is something given to me freely; but I need to believe and walk out of my life. That is where a lot of people don’t move on. They don’t realise that I have to tear down old thinking patterns as they come back into my mind. If any thoughts of poverty come, I have to pull them down quick; or I’ll start to feel lack, and I’ll start to respond in fear, and go back to how I used to live. Living in blessing, means living in faith - confident in what God says is true. It may take time to educate my heart to believe, that I have really changed.

So what happens in something like this: I’m living in this path of iniquity and cursing and bondage; then I come to Christ, and He says: now you are a blessed person. So I cut off all of those things; but I still at times keep thinking like the old way used to think. It’s like this pull towards the old way, all the time.

I need to speak: iniquity is broken, I am a blessed person. I’ve got to speak to this thing: that it’s broken by the blood of Jesus, and I live as a blessed person; and you meditate on that blessed life – God is with me, my needs are met, I have abundance, the Lord is my Sheppard and I shall not want. People know ‘the Lord is my Sheppard and I shall not want’; but what they don’t know in their heart is that: God Almighty is my friend, and there’s no area that I lack. It’s a heart place of confidence in God. So I’ve been shifted into blessing by Christ. Now I have to think and live like a blessed person.

When maybe there’s some pressure that comes financially - old thinking starts to return. I’ve got to constantly push against it, and redirect my attention: I have abundance in Christ - I am blessed. I look out, and it doesn’t look like I’m blessed; but don’t go back to old thinking, stay in the new. It’s an internal shift from iniquity, crookedness, demonic power, cursing Me and resisting Me; to now: confident in God, and living like a blessed person.

So if I live like a blessed person, then a blessed person is generous, confident. So the battle is now not a battle to make God bless me; it’s a battle to believe I’m blessed, and to be at rest - it’s an internal battle, and that’s the battle all believers have to face. When your heart becomes at rest, actually, God is blessing you. Each time your heart comes to rest, you’ve won the fight. This is an ongoing thing all your life.

People all love to just get ministry to get free; and there’s a place in the power that release can come; but they have to then change and live like a free person. Very soon they go back, and instead of living from the spirit and heart, they live out of the mind, and all its old opinions and thinking.

Question & Answer

Can you share any secrets to how to keep your sensitivity to the Holy Spirit?

I also mentioned that I would talk about praying. To maintain sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, it’s a daily life with Him. So that requires prayer; and it also requires that you act on the little impressions the Holy Spirit gives. The more you act on the little impressions, the more sensitive you become, and the more you seem to receive.

In Mark 4:24 Jesus said: “If you have ears to hear, and you respond, then more will be given.” Listening and responding to the Holy Spirit helps develop sensitivity. In my prayer time daily, I pray a number of things. One of the things I pray, is that I spend time in worshipping and just loving God for who He is. I try to keep extending that time out. I’m just meditating in His presence, speaking in tongues, and just loving on Him. I’ve learned that you can speak in tongues, sing with your mind, and picture Jesus - all at the same time. You actually have the power to give yourself to Him in worship.

Then I also take a time in my praying, probably about 20 minutes or so, I consciously yield differently parts of my life to Him, and begin to speak over my life, what I’m believing for God to do. I’ll just give you an example - I’ll just show you how I pray.

“Lord today I yield to You my hearing. I yield the ears of my inner man and outer man to You. Thank you Lord I hear Your voice clearly today. My heart is sensitive to Your voice. Lord I hear what You are saying to me, and I respond immediately. I thank you Lord that You’re giving me a hearing heart, to hear people, to ask questions that probe right to the root of the problems. Thank you Lord that You’re giving me an ability to see what the problem is - eyes to see, ears to hear, ability to discern exactly what is happening.”

What I’m doing is, I’m picturing and declaring the life I intend to live. Now there’s a basis for this. I’ll give you a scripture - 1 John 4:17 - “As He is, so are we in the world.” As He is now, we are in the world. I want you to think about that one. I don’t have to make myself become something; the Bible says – as He is, so am I.

So what is He like? Jesus hears the voice of the Father all the time. Jesus looks right into people’s hearts and knows what is going on. Lord as You are, so am I in this world. I hear the voice of my Father clearly. I instantly respond. I hear the voice of people’s hearts. I see right into their lives.

You say, well, but actually you’re not living that way. No, I am building the future I intend to have. I’m beginning to declare the operation of His life through me. As I meditate in who I am in Christ, and what I can do in Christ, and believe that, it shows up in my life. This is the blessed life.

People try to work hard, to be able to get God to help them to do stuff. What if you already have all, you are complete in Christ? Everything you need, you have? How about this one: “We have an anointing, and we know all things”. I don’t know all things. No, but I have an anointing that knows all things - I need to be more conscious of the anointing within.

So, reflective prayer, prayer of meditation and affirming the truth is crucial to building your life with God. So you don’t wait until you’re in a ministry situation to become sensitive; you develop it day by day. It’s something you build into your life, and it manifests through your life.

I wish I’d know those things years ago. It would’ve made my life a lot easier! I just didn’t know what to do to see the reality of God moving - it’s taken me years to find it, because people who do - don’t tell. They just do - and everyone thinks they’re wonderful. You know there’s a magician and he shows off the magician’s tricks? That’s what I want to be! Show what the tricks are; but it’s actually a lot easier than you realise, when you understand the dynamics of the spirit man, and you begin to understand: I already am that new creation man. I’m already complete in Christ. As He is, so am I in the world.

So what is He like? So I meditate on Him - that’s what I’m like. Oh, I see. I begin to see Him, and say: that’s who I am, that’s what I’m like. Doesn’t the Bible say: we’ve been conformed into the image of Jesus? Trouble is, you look in the mirror, and you see what you think you’re like. We should look in the spiritual mirror, and see Christ, and say: “Ah - that’s who I am, everyday I’m more and more like that”. So this is not like working hard to make something happen; it’s like training the heart to believe the truth, through meditation and confession: I’m in the presence of God.

The last thing on that, in Hebrews 5:14 it says: “Having our senses exercised to discern”. So, you develop sensitivity by practice; not by reading about it - you just have to try. So ask God to send you plenty of people to practise on. Just practise, until you get the feel of the flow of His anointing on you.

There’s a lady with a question. There is this particular person in authority, in the office, like a manager. When this person deals with her, he has this huge rage inside. He gets really mad, and there’s a lot of anger. She can sense there’s a power behind it. He has no problem with anyone else, just her! Every time she prays, or speaks in tongue, or tries to control the situation. Now, she’s asking: besides prayer, is there anything she can do to deal with this situation?

It’s most likely that there’s a spiritual reaction going on. That sometimes happens. If he’s nice to everyone, and to you he’s very angry- either there’s something in him reacting to you, or there’s ways you’re operating that are irritating him very much. We’ve always got to be open that perhaps God wants us to grow in the situation.

So Lord, help me to overcome evil with good. Romans 12: 21 I think, overcome evil with good, don’t be overcome by evil. I would, in prayer, hold him up before the Lord. Get a picture, see his face, and begin to speak and take authority over the spirits that are operating behind him. I presume this is an unsaved person - this is why it’s such a big reaction. So speak to the spirits. Picture a demonic spirit got a hold of him and is manipulating him. Speak to that spirit. Command it to release him.

In other words, in prayer, assert your authority spiritually over the driving power behind it. Decree that you already have authority over it. Don’t fight to get the authority. Speak from the place of authority: I tread on serpents and scorpions, over all power over the enemy. Nothing shall harm me. No weapon formed against me shall prosper.

In Jesus’ name, I bind that controlling spirit. It’s controlling through anger, and it’s very intimidating and frightening - it’s a spirit of witchcraft. Take authority. Bind the spirit. Forbid its operation against you. Decree its power broken. Hold a place of strength over the spirit, in your prayer time.

Then you ask God for grace. To be able to love this person, and to be able to relate and connect with them well. You have to, first of all, get your heart right; address the spiritual power; and then you can deal with the person.

When the person gets angry, there are some things you can do. Here’s one thing. The Bible says – a soft answer turns away anger. One thing I felt has helped me, is when someone is very angry with me - I would just, in a quiet voice, ask questions to clarify what they’re saying. In other words, I just act a little bit thick (stupid), and juts ask questions to understand what they’re saying. When you speak quietly, and just enquire what they’re saying - they have to calm down in order to answer the questions. That is just one strategy I found has helped.

Another strategy is to be a little bit more direct; one of trying to manage it. In other words, to say: excuse me, I notice you seem to be very upset or angry with me. In other words, you bring to the open what is hidden there. I notice you seem to be quite angry and upset; is there something I’ve done that has upset you that I can put right? I really want to help you and serve you; I don’t want to be doing things that upset you. Sometimes you get: ‘I’m not angry!’ So, there’s a variety of ways to manage someone who is difficult in the workplace, but you have to work with God to find the best way through it.

First you have to manage yourself; then deal with the Spirit world; then learn some skills in handling someone who is angry with you. Use a soft voice, enquiring, clarifying, get the expectations clear; and if need be, say: I’ve noticed this, is there something I’ve done that’s upset you so deeply? Sometimes, just that quiet voice enquiring after the person, just can have a good calming effect.

Another thing is acts of kindness towards that person - acts of kindness can soften that person’s heart as well - a gift or card at an appropriate time. There are many strategies you’ve got to find. In some places in the west, they would actually take a more confrontational line; and actually stand up and say: you have no right to speak to me in that tone. That kind of response tends to cause a huge conflict, and employment laws in New Zealand favour employees, so bosses have to be more careful. I don’t think it’s the case here! So, therefore you have to carefully work out how to handle it.

The last thing in your situation, is that after such an encounter, realise you’ve probably been quite knocked. As you turn away from the encounter, “Lord, I just forgive this man, release him right now. Lord I ask for love to come back to my heard. Amen”. So it becomes an opportunity for you to grow.

You notice it’s a mixture of spiritual and practical - both are needed to solve the problem. In military, first you win the battle in the air; then you can win it on the ground. There’s always a spiritual pressure.

The spirit of idolatry is very strong in their family, both on the father’s side and mother’s side. For quite a few of them, they are full time temple workers, and some of them are even in the committee of the Taoist association in Taiwan - so they are a very high level in Taiwan. Even when she prays very hard, she tries all kinds of anointing in the house; still she is troubled by those spirits. So what can she do to break the power of those evil spirits in the household?

The first thing to realise is that Christ has defeated them. So here’s what I’ve noticed happens in Taiwan: people become very impressed with the devil, very impressed with the idols, and very impressed with demons; in spite of the fact that Jesus has defeated them! So, this is an issue of what you believe in your heart.

Now, I’m not minimising the reality of demonic oppression, and the high level this would be around family members involved in the temple. What you must realise, is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the blood He shed, the blood of a spotless King, is more powerful than any of their offerings, or any of their gods.

For example, I want to Taichung, and there’s the big temple there. I noticed that before I went, everyone was like: ‘Oh Taichung!’ I was thinking: Jesus conquered the demon! But in the belief system, there was an ascribing of power to these things, which they did not have. I said: ‘Let me get to Taichung quickly’! Then I said when I got there: take me to this temple, let me see what’s going on. I refused to be intimidated, because I recognised that everyone was intimidated. When I got into the meeting of church workers, they were some of the most depressed people I’d ever seen. Many were sick, and many people had died! So you either look at it and say: “Woah, big devil”. Or, you say: “Wow! Guys, rise up - you need to believe Jesus!”

So I decided the first night I was there, I will preach on idolatry. I will be highly confrontational. Not only that, it was the feast of Matsu. So Matsu’s coming through the streets with thousands of people - so, I will preach against Matsu as well, and I did! It was a very difficult heavy atmosphere, very oppressed. I spoke and preached, not to the people, but beyond the people into the spirit world - declaring the authority of Jesus Christ, the power of the blood.

We had a great deliverance meeting that night, lots of people got set free - wonderful. Then I read the news the next morning. That night in the temple, the temple committee had voting - and a fight broke out, which became so violent that the police were called, and everyone was dispersed. I realised then, how important it is, never to be intimidated. Arise in who you are in Christ - the demons are terrified of you; don’t be intimidated by them.

I’ll give you a couple of stories. I had a girl who had been dedicated to Sai Baba; and in the home, there’s a huge alter to Sai Baba. So she got massive deliverance. “But I got home and my father has this huge alter to Sai Baba, right in the house!” I said, “Don’t worry about Sai Baba.” I said: “Your room, that’s where you belong. Dedicate your room, make an anointment with oil. Decree no spiritual oppression in this room. Invite the Holy Spirit in. This room is my sanctuary. Play worship music. The rest of the house belongs to your father. So this is what you do: you don’t criticise, you don’t say all kinds of things against what they do, you honour your parents. Every time you go past Sai Baba, then you pray in tongues; and you make a declaration – Sai Baba shall decrease, Jesus shall increase. Every time you walk past that idol, every time you walk past that alter: “Sai Baba decrease, Jesus increase”. Not a big prayer, very easy prayer.

I come back one year later, I said how are you getting on? “I’m a cell leader now, doing very well.” I remembered her, so I said, “How’s Sai Baba doing?” “Not so good.” She said, “We had some financial difficulty. We had to move out of our apartment to a smaller apartment where there’s no alter - only a picture.” “Ah, very good - Sai Baba is decreasing! Keep praying.” So next time I went back, I asked how are you doing? “Oh, I have 3 groups now.” “How’s Sai Baba doing?” “He’s not doing good at all. The picture fell off the wall and got broken. Now we have a smaller picture. Sai Baba is definitely decreasing; Jesus is increasing”.

The point is this: you must not be intimidated. You are in spiritual places in Christ, seated with Him. What does it mean to be seated with Him? He’s done all the work! If I’m in heavenly places, far above every principalities and power, there’s no devil up here, the devil’s down there. It’s all in my believing. I encourage you to meditate in scriptures, and establish clearly faith in your hearts, that these are nothing – nothing! That doesn’t happen straight away. It takes time to build in your heart, that you are joined to Christ, the demon conqueror. You have authority over these things. As you speak to those things, each one will be subdued and go.

So in your prayer, firstly you arise in spirit in a place of worship near God. Put on the armour of God. Speak in Jesus’ name. Stand as a representative of this family. Counsel this wickedness and idolatry. Bind each and every spirit power. In Jesus’ name, I forbid your operation against me, against my family. Jesus of Nazareth has conquered you already. You are defeated.

So don’t fight against them; stand and declare your victory against them - it’s a big difference. The wrestling is to establish what is true. What seems to be true is that they have all the power; but what is true, is that Jesus has all the power, and you have also - but you do not believe that yet, and that’s why this thing affects you. The struggle is not outside you, it’s within you, to come to a place of total confidence over these things.

Obviously it’s brought grief to you; obviously you’re distressed about this. It’s a great chance for you to become stronger. The Roman Caesar, his house was full of idols, but they had a worship meeting in his house. I’ve learned you must never be intimidated; intimidation is the big weapon the devil uses against us. So it says, beware, the devil prowls as a roaring lion - big idols, big temples, little Christian - seeking to devour you.

It says: resist, steadfast in faith. When you start to resist like that, there might be all kinds of upheaval take place. Just let that happen, it’s part of walking with Christ. In City Harvest Singapore, when the young people came to Christ, their idol-worshipping parents often beat them! I can remember when Pastor Yi Ping Tsang was 18, when many of them were very young in high school, they’d come back and they’d been beaten up by their parents - but almost all that generation have seen their parents saved.

Pastor Kong, I took the meeting where his parents got saved. You have to believe that what we have is stronger; even if temporarily it doesn’t appear to be so. So you have what appears to be true; you have what is true. This one seeks to intimidate you and capture your heart; you have to come back into the place with confidence in God.

Part of that will be that you will bring your grief and pain to Him, bring your fear to Him, and undoubtedly there’d be some anger in all of this. You need to bring that to Him too and forgive your parents. Ask God to give you great love for them. Choose to be the great representative. I understand this is not easy. But that’s the journey we have in Christ. We have our challenges.

Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3)

Thu 3rd Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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People trade with evil spirits for knowledge, power or protection and end up in bondage.Learn how to recognize occult bondage and how to set people free,

We’re going to carry on today on a topic – Freedom from the Occult. The pastor’s asked me to share on three specific topics over three days, so we’re able to develop it a bit more. Yesterday we looked at Generational Issues, Iniquity, and Curses – recognising their impact, and how to deal with them.

Today we want to talk about the occult. We want you to understand what it is, and what it’s doing to young people today. I want you to understand what divination and sorcery are, and to understand how you set people free from these things. I’m not claiming to be an expert at it, but I have some understanding because we’ve dealt with a lot of people in this area. So, we’re going to share today about this whole area, and give you an understanding of it.

The first thing to realise is that God has created us to be bonded. God’s design has created us to be bonded - to be attached. We are a spirit being, with a soul living in the body; and we have the capacity, by God, to attach. We have yearnings inside our heart that only really God can meet. So God’s design is that we become attached to Him; and that out of that attachment to Him, His nature, His life, flows.

For example, in 1 Corinthians 6:17, the Bible says: “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” So, God has designed us to become attached to Him, bonded spirit to spirit; and from that bonding, a life would flow into the world. In other words, we’re designed to bring His kingdom into the world. So God’s design includes: 1) Relationship – intimate connection and bonding to Him; and 2) to Exercise Authority as His Representative - to advance His kingdom.

His original mandate to Adam and Eve, one part of the assignment He gave them was, He gave them a garden and He said: “I want you to guard and keep the garden”. So He gave them a Territory to rule over. He gave them Authority in that territory. So Adam was given Spiritual Authority to represent God.

He was given two commands related to the Garden of Eden. 1) Cultivate it; develop it, so it produces fruit. So God has called us to cultivate our territory - make it fruit-bearing for the kingdom. 2) Also to guard the territory - to protect it from an invader with destructive intent. So right at the very beginning, God designed us for relationship, for bonding with Him; and gave man authority to represent Him, and advance His kingdom in the earth. He gave a mandate to cultivate the garden, and protect it from invaders. We know what happened – Adam broke his relationship with God, and then lost his authority.

When he broke his relationship with God, he became vulnerable to living differently. We won’t track all of this, but we’ll just say this: that over the course of the first century or so of human history, demonic spirits began to invade the Earth and corrupt the culture. I won’t go into how this has happened, and how it affected the nations of the Earth. We’ll just focus on the occult, and what that’s about.

You need to understand that Jesus came to restore intimacy with God, and to give us back our authority; and give us a mandate again – be fruitful and go advance in the Earth. So becoming a Christian is actually about the connection to Christ and following Him; and it’s about being able to bring kingdom influence back into the Earth again. To act as God’s ambassador, and have authority over demonic spirits, and over the creation. We see that when we look at Jesus’ ministry, that He trained His disciples for authority over the demonic. Let me give you a couple of scriptures on that, and then we’ll start teaching about the occult.

First of all, we see in Mark 3:14-15 – “Then He appointed the twelve, that they might be with Him, and that He might send them out to: preach; and to have power to heal sicknesses; and to cast out demons.” So the great commission includes preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and authority over the evil spirits.

Have a look in Luke 10:17 - Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” Verse 19, notice this: “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” So, that word ‘Authority’, is the word ‘Exusia’ in Greek. It means: a legal delegated right to speak and act on behalf of God. Notice that Jesus is saying: I give you authority. He has the authority; we just act as His representative. The authority is not yours; it’s yours as a delegated authority. So we have an authority to represent Christ. Our authority comes out of connection with Christ.

Notice what He gives authority: He says: authority to trample, or literally crush under your feet, serpents and scorpions, and all the power of the enemy. So He uses two pictures to describe demonic spirits: the serpent; and the scorpion. They both inhabit the wilderness. The serpent bites, it releases toxins into the body to poison it. The scorpion has a sting that causes tremendous torment. It’s not clear, but it’s possible that He’s referring to two specific types of demonic entity. The serpent - demonic spirits; and the scorpions – angels, or angelic beings.

He says He gives you authority over all the power – that’s the word ‘Dunamis’. So, ‘Dunamis’ is the same word that’s used when it says “you shall receive power”. That word means ‘supernatural ability’. I think it’s important to realise this: that you have legal right over the supernatural ability and demonstrations of the devil; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. That’s a very good scripture to memorise - if you ever get into a deliverance situation which is a little bit intimidating, always remember – nothing shall in any way harm me.

We’re going to look now at the Occult. We’re going to refer to Deuteronomy 18. The Bible is not exactly clear where demonic spirits come from. So, it’s a little bit open to ideas or opinions about this. Some people think that they may be angels who fell. I’m not so sure about that, there’s nothing quite clear on it. The Bible’s not clear where they originate. They’re called ‘evil spirits’. So they’re definitely spirit beings, and they’re definitely evil in their intention.

As an aside, the Bible does tell us, it refers that in Genesis 6, that a certain group of angels abandoned the positioning God gave them, took on a human form, had sexual relationships with women, and that there were offspring off that called Nephilim. The Nephilim were extremely wild and fierce beings. It would seem that they corrupted the Earth. You may wish to search on the internet and find more information about these. Eventually, the destruction was so great that God destroyed the Earth with the flood. If these beings were part angel and part human, it’s quite possible these are the evil spirits that are actually in the Earth now, continuing to attack humans. So, I won’t go down that, it’s a very interesting area to explore. It helps you understand the whole number of things that remain otherwise hidden. So, we won’t worry about that, we’ll just say: there are evil spirits called demons.

What happens is that people in every culture are aware of the spirit world. It appears when you read books apart from the Bible, for example the book of Enoch, that there were a group of angels called watcher-angels who were assigned to instruct men. But the whole group of them abandoned their positions, corrupted the role God gave them, had sexual relationships with women, and began to teach people about the whole occult spirit dimension.

These angels God has held in judgment until the last days. It seems that it’s from the influence of these angels, that all of this teaching around the occult came into the nations, and spread through the Earth. One particular nation that had been filled with all this Occult activity was the land of Canaan. The nations that were in the land of Canaan were deeply involved in the occult; and with it, a whole range of perverse practices.

So in Deuteronomy 18:9, it says: “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.” So God is warning the people that the nation they’re about to go into, the nation of Canaan, was full of activities God calls ‘an abomination’. He’s referring to occult activities. The word occult means this: secret, covered, hidden.

So occult activity is: seeking knowledge or information from the spirit world; or seeking power from the spirit world; or protection from the spirit world. The two main streams of the occult are what’s called divination – seeking information from the spirit world; and sorcery – seeking power from the spirit world. Connected to this, of course, is idolatry. They are all integrated together, although each one is quite distinct.

The problem that people of God had was: the whole of the nations they came into were perverted by this demonic activity. In those days, there was no deliverance. So they needed to destroy the nations, because the people were demonically filled. So the word occult means to be covered or hidden; because usually, the power is secret. The source of the information or power is hidden.

People involved in the occult may be aware that they’re connecting with evil spirits. But they are deceived – they think they have power over the spirit, but the spirit has power over them. When people engage in the occult, they think the spirits are helping them; but in fact, now they’re gaining power over them. Eventually, they extract a price - all magic exacts a price - there is a price to be paid!

In the kingdom of God, the price is always upfront: pay first, benefits later. In the kingdom of darkness, it’s the other way round: benefit now, pay later - and you pay more than you think! That’s how the system works.

We see here that God lists a whole number of practices. These are associated either with idolatry or with the occult. One of the problems with the occult is that it is progressive, and it is addictive; and once people are in it, they find it extremely difficult to get out of it. It’s progressive; and it’s addictive.

Let’s have a look at some of the things that are in here. When the people of God went into the nations, they found them involved in idolatry and Spiritism. Let’s have a look at what it says (Deuteronomy 18:10 - 14): “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, nor one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations, the LORD your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God. For these nations, which you will dispossess, listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the LORD your God has not appointed such for you.”

This list here is not comprehensive; it’s just a list of some of the things they were doing. Every culture has their own variations of this, and every one of them has a spirit power behind it. As we look at these, we see a number of things. The first one they talk about was offering their children to idols. There was a particular god called Molech. He was a big brass god with arms reaching out. They would ignite fire on it, and heat it up until it was very hot. Then there would be drums playing and people shouting, and they would throw their children into Molech, where they’d be burned up. You’d understand this is a horrendous thing in God’s eyes. It indicates the nature of the demonic spirit that operates behind it. The desire is to steal the children. The activity today most like that is abortion - the same spirit operates behind it.

Notice there’ll not be anyone who practises witchcraft, soothsayer, interprets omens, or a sorcerer. So people were involved in a number or range of activities. For example, many of them were into astrology – looking at star signs. Let me give you just a brief explanation of that. There’s a book that explains the background to this: The Witness of the Stars by E. W. Bullinger. Let me just explain the whole issue of astrology.

The Bible says: the heavens declare his glory. So in Psalm 19 it talks about the heavens, and it talks about the word of God. Before the word of God was written, God revealed or spoke to... maybe it was Enoch, and He showed him a pattern for recording God’s history by looking at the stars. So they divided the stars into 12 different constellations or groups. And they ascribed to various star groups, a particular picture so it’s easier to remember. The stars were all given names, and each section of this described a part of God’s redemptive plan.

Starting with the woman; and the serpent; and then the fall of man, going right through to the coming of Jesus Christ overcoming the serpent, and establishing a rule. So each of the constellations, and even the names of the stars in it, were given as a message of encouragement; and a way of understanding the bigger picture - from creation to the return of Christ. The question is, where do you start? You notice the Sphinx has a picture of the woman’s head, and lion’s body. The story starts with the woman, starts with Virgo, and goes right through to Leo. It describes in the stars, God’s story of history, and the coming of the Son of man to redeem His death on the cross - everything is in that story.

So the stars have no power over people. It’s just God gave a way for people to pass on to their generations, the hope of the coming redeemer. Of course, over time, it became corrupted; and people began to believe that stars influenced the course of our lives - it’s a corruption of the truth. The truth is: God laid out some patterns, so people could know His plan for redemption. The message of the stars is the most amazing message! Many of the names of the stars have been forgotten. But those that have remained, all in them have a message - the heavens declare.

So, the whole area of astrology opens the door for people into the occult realm. It becomes addictive, because people are looking to some spiritual source in order to direct their lives. They are attaching to the wrong thing. God directs our lives. It’s God who has a plan for our lives, not the stars. I encourage you to read up on that and become equipped, because it will quite stun you how the message of the gospel is in the stars. At Psalm 19, it starts off ‘the heavens’, now we have the Bible, ‘the Word’. So the Word now gives us the plan of salvation.

You notice here that it talks about the whole realm of all of these areas. Notice divination or fortune telling, and magic - various kinds of magic. Overall, you can summarise the occult activity into two groups. The first one is divination.

Let’s have a look in Acts 16:16-18. We read here an example of a woman involved in divination. “Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” - and he came out that very hour.”

So here is a woman who has a spirit of divination. Today you would call her a psychic – a person who tells things about your life, and foretells your future. Psychics are extremely popular today, but they operate in way counterfeit to the word of knowledge. The second thing you realise, is that this woman extracted money, in order for doing the fortune-telling; meaning that people paid to get their fortune told. When people paid to get their fortune told, they were entering into an agreement to trade with a demon - they were prostituting themselves.

The Bible tells us in Leviticus 20:2-6, God warns his people not to prostitute themselves with these demonic spirits. Let me read it for you, Leviticus 20:5-6, He said: “I will set My face against that man and against his family; and I will cut him off from his people, and all who prostitute themselves with him to commit harlotry with Molech. ‘And the person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute themselves with them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people.”

Notice what God says in this verse: that anyone who’s involved with a medium or familiar spirits is prostituting themselves with them. What does that mean? They are paying money; and they are becoming bonded or attached. He uses the imagery of a prostitute, just as Paul did in 1 Corinthian 6. What it means is that you are selling yourself. You think you’re buying information; but actually you’re selling yourself! You’re being sold into bondage to the demonic spirit. So you need to understand then, that all involvement with the occult realm is a form of prostitution; and the person becomes joined to the demonic spirit. It has a right to access their lives.

A medium is someone who is a channel for a spirit. They usually go into a trance, and then spirit speaks through them, and gives information. In Leviticus 20:27, the Bible is very clear that a person who is involved with these demonic powers, there’s a death penalty for them.

Let’s go back to Acts 16 and now there’s a woman who has a spirit of divination. The region was a place known for divination and fortune-telling. It was a region where people came to get their fortune told – the whole area was filled with this. It was in a place in Greece, where what was called an oracle, was situated at Delphi. An oracle is a psychic. People would go and consult her to get information, and they would pay money. So the whole area was filled with psychic activity – divination.

It said this woman, a slave girl, was possessed with a spirit of divination. Again, the word possessed is a very bad translation. If you look up the original meaning, it means “to wear like a garment”. She was wearing the spirit like a garment. In other words, instead of being filled or clothed with the Holy Spirit, she’s clothed with the demonic spirit. The word there – spirit of divination - the word divination means literally ‘python’. That was the name of the area where the people worked – Putho I think it was called. So there was a spirit of a python wrapped around her, whispering in her ear. That spirit is called a familiar spirit. So a person operating as a medium or in fortune-telling or divination has a familiar spirit - a spirit that communicates with the person, speaks into their ear.

So what do these spirits know? Do they know your future? Again, the Bible’s not clear, but my conclusion is that they do not know your future - your future is hidden in God’s hands. I do believe they see what God is bringing to you - because they operate in the spirit world, they can see things. For example, when Daniel in Daniel 10 prayed, the angel was sent to him, but demonic spirits resisted it.

So demonic spirits are aware of you; they observe you and watch you. I believe it’s like a demonic internet, where everything is all connected. A familiar spirit can communicate information about you, because spirits have been watching you, and watching your family. It’s hard for us to get a hold of that, but we are under observation all the time. The spirits observe your behaviour and notice how predictable you are; and a demonic spirit can pass on information to the psychic, which may be quite correct, and counterfeit of the word of knowledge.

Many of these psychics operate in quite a strong and accurate word of knowledge, but the source of the information is a demonic spirit. I believe they give you information so you start to believe in them; and then when they begin to ascribe a future to you, if you agree with it, they are now empowered to bring or manipulate your life for that to happen. So involvement with the demonic realm will open the doorway for spirits to enter you. You literally give a legal right for the demon to control your life.

Notice there that the girl had a spirit of divination. Notice in verse 17, she cried out saying: these men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaimed to us the way of salvation. Was this correct? Yes it was. Did most people realise that? No they didn’t.

So she’s calling this out, and the effect of it was that Paul felt quite grieved, or irritated, or there was a struggle in his ministry because of her. So this spirit was actually creating difficulties for him. It said: she did this for many days, until finally he confronted the spirit. Once he confronted the spirit, it triggered off a riot in the area, and he was thrown in jail!

So divination means: consulting evil spirits for hidden knowledge. There are a whole range of practices of divination. It seems that Chinese people are addicted to it - just want to know about the future; and rather than walk by faith with God and trust him, they try to find out information from evil spirits. Now I know there are heaps of different activities, so I’ll just give a few of them: Consulting the fortune-telling or a psychic; Consulting an Ouija board, where they have letters around and they put a glass in the centre and they ask questions - that’s consulting a familiar spirit. Going to a medium – that’s a person who goes into a trance, and the spirit begins to speak through them. Astrology; Tarot cards; Numerology; Horoscopes; some people go into pendulum-swinging. Every culture has their own forms of these things - the water divination.

The key question to ask is: what is the source of the power. If a spiritual power is operating, there’s a spiritual source. What is the source of the power? Another type of divination is séances – calling up spirits. I’m sure that in your culture, you’ve got all manner of different kinds of ways this is done; but in the end, the key question is this – what is the source of the information?

If the source is evil, the influence will be evil also, and God forbids us to be involved in these things. So sometimes people reach out into this realm of divination - just curious, but then that opens up a whole realm. Unfortunately, many of the movies recently, have been filled with all kinds of things of divination. The Harry Potter movies, for example, are full of divination – all kinds of different forms of it. I think you’ll find, when you look, that many of these are drawn from some things which actually exist; and they can be very seductive, because you have the thought of getting secret information- find out about your future – will I be blessed, will I prosper? People want to know those things; but if we consult with the demon, he has a legal right to access our lives.

The Bible says: when you’re involved in divination, you prostitute yourself with an evil spirit, and you defile yourself. So any person involved in fortune-telling has become defiled; and they would need to renounce the words spoken over them, and the evil spirits behind them. You can’t walk with God, and hold on to what the demons have been saying.

So core foundations to being set free from divination would be: Repentance – turning away from it; Confession of sin – because it’s a sin, an abomination to God. It would also involved renouncing attachment to the spirit, and any words they had been given from these demonic spirits. You can’t serve two masters. There’s no ground for holding on. We’re either going to put our life in the Lord’s hands, and respond to His leadership, and His promise of guiding us; or we consult these others. If we consult the demonic realm, we’re slowly drawn into darkness. People get quite addicted, and they can’t make decisions, or begin a day, without consulting their horoscope, or reaching out to these diviners.

The last thing you notice is that, when the demon came out, the girl had no power to do this again - the source of the information was an evil spirit. I remember someone coming up to me after church one day, and they said: can you pray for my friend? I said: “Why’s that?” She said “Well, he’s in a bit of a mess, and he’s going to see a fortune-teller”. I said, “Yes, bring him to me”. I said, “I understand you’re going to see a fortune-teller”. He said: “Yes”. I said: “Well, God knows your future. You should learn to look to Him.” I said, “Let me pray for you”, and I asked God to give me a clear, sharp, accurate prophetic word, and I delivered this to him. And he left, saying thank you. I knew he was going to go to the fortune-teller, so I prayed a simple prayer: “Lord I know he’s going to the fortune-teller - turn her counsel to confusion.” So he comes back a week later, came up, and gave his heart to Christ. He said, “Oh you know, I went to that fortune-teller”. I said: “Yeah, how did it go?” He said: “That was a waste of money”. I said: “How much did you pay?” He said: “I paid 50 dollars! What she told me was a lot of nonsense - very confusing.” And he came to Christ.

So, you must learn to lean into the flow of revelation yourself. We cannot abandon the supernatural realm, and leave it for the psychics. We need to press in, and develop the flow of revelation in our own life - words of knowledge and prophetic flow. These are gifts God has given the church. The psychics are substitutes. The real thing, is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s a reproach to the church that some of these psychics have become so good, and so influential; but the church struggles to just embrace simple things of the spirit world.

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The next area we want to look into is the area of Sorcery. Sorcery is a major aspect of the whole occult dimension. Let’s have a look in the Old Testament – Exodus 7:11. Sorcery is the pursuit of power - power obtained from evil spirits. Sorcery is the pursuit of power from evil spirits - power over people or circumstances. So it’s a pursuit of power; and sorcery involves engaging evil spirits, and drawing supernatural power into the Earth. We’re going to look at an example in the Old Testament, then in the New Testament.

Exodus 7:10: “So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh; and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent.”

Now that is pretty spectacular! Imagine if I brought a stick in here, threw it on the ground, and it turned into a snake - you’d all be screaming and yelling and jumping for that door. That is really scary! But look at what these sorcerers did - Exodus 7:11 – “But Pharaoh also called the wise men and the Sorcerers, the magicians of Egypt, and they also did the same with their rods.” It says: they did in the same manner with their enchantments, or their secret arts. Notice that term for the occult: Secret Arts.

Exodus 7:12 – “For every man threw down his rod and they became serpents.” So, you notice now, Aaron has thrown down Moses’ rod, and now there’s a serpent. The Pharaoh isn’t fazed, he says: “Hey”, brings in his own sorcerers, and they threw down their rods, which turned into serpents. Now that is really scary stuff. Now we’ve got God’s serpent, and the other serpents. I think at this stage, we’d all be running out the door, but Moses’ serpent ate up the other serpents. Then he picked it up, and it became a stick again.

Now this is a display of supernatural power. Notice that God’s power in this area was copied - the Sorcerers were also able to do this. They did it because of the connection they had to the occult realm. So when we’re talking about sorcerers, we’re talking about real power, demonic power. People connected to evil spirits, who have a range of powers. When you go to many cultures, you will experience and see those things. Especially if you go to primitive areas, because you’ll see in a moment, sorcerers want power; not only over people, but also control over areas.

So there are three times when the magicians of Egypt copied the miracles of God. Verse 22: The magicians of Egypt did the same with their enchantments or secret arts; they caused the water to become blood. Verse 7 of chapter 8, the magicians did so with their secret arts, and brought up frogs on the lands of Egypt.

I want you to get the picture here, what they did. God’s battle was with the gods of Egypt. The real conflict was between who the real God is; and who are the false gods. All of these plagues were to confront the gods the Egyptians worshipped. These sorcerers were able to copy the first three miracles. Notice what they were able to do – change a stick into a snake - that’s quite scary. They were able to change water into blood - that’s scary. They were able to call frogs up onto the land. So they had power over objects; and over animals - they could transform them.

So when you begin to look at what goes on in the occult realm in many parts of the world, you find in cultures, people are terrified of the sorcerers, because of the power that they have; which is not their power, it is demonic power. So in some cultures, they can make themselves invisible. They can change their shape – turn into an animal.

Now you start to look at some of these movies that are coming out – this is all putting into a Hollywood-form, what actually is just sorcery. So many of the things that come out of those movies find their origins in the realms of sorcery - people able to transport themselves from one place to another – just vanish and turn up somewhere else - or change and become an animal. The forms that these people have are quite significant. So when you are looking in some of the movies, they’re drawn from some real things. They just put them in a Hollywood form that makes it attractive to people. The powers are very real, and people get seduced by them, controlled by them, and then destroyed by them.

Have a look in Acts 13. Sorcerers like to get near people who have power. So in Acts 13:6 it says: “when they had gone through the island of Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, or son of Jesus.” He’s literally an open gate into hell. Acts 13:7 – 8: “He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. This man called for Barnabas and Saul, and sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer (for so his name is translated) withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.”

So this sorcerer is like an open gate of hell. He is exercising demonic power, trying to influence the roman proconsul. He’s operating in magic, operating in sorcery, and he was trying to resist the gospel spreading. Paul’s way of dealing with it, was to bring the power of God around the mind, and put him into darkness. Notice in verse 11: “the hand of the Lord will be on you, you shall be blind not seeing the sun. Immediately a mist fell of him and he could not see”. It was the demonstration of the power of God that broke the hold of that sorcerer, and opened up the proconsul to believe. Paul demonstrated as Moses did, the power of God is superior to all of these powers.

Let’s have another look at another scripture in Acts 8:9-11 – “But there was a certain man called Simon, who previously practiced sorcery in the city, and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying: “This man is the great power of God.” And they heeded him, because he had astonished them with his sorceries for a long time.”

You notice here, that here is a man who is practicing sorcery, and he has a huge influence over people. Literally, people have come under his spell. They’ve come under his influence, and his influence is demonic.

Notice an interesting thing that the Bible uses the language like this: ‘he projected that he was a very important person’. So you’ll find people involved in sorcery are very self-oriented, and they project out their own importance - there’s a huge issue of self-importance.

Of course, when Paul came, he was converted and baptised, and then he saw the power the apostles had, and he wanted that power. So he offered them money to get the power, because that’s how he thought: you use money to get power. See, verse 19: “Give me this power also, that anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” So he had a passion for power, most likely driven by bitterness inside him. You notice there, he’s seeking power.

Peter said: “Your money perish with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money! You have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray God may forgive the thought of your heart; for I see that you are poisoned by bitterness, and bound by iniquity.”

You see that Simon is still thinking in the old way. He understood spiritual trading – you pay a price to get the power. You always pay a price to get the power. So he thought: I can pay a price, and you’ll give me the power. Peter refuses to be bought, and confronts the root issue, which is this: bitterness in his heart. He was a very rejected and bitter person - that’s why he sought the power. Not only that, there was a selfish ambition – he said: “you’re full or bound by iniquity”, which means there’s crookedness in your life that you’re twisted up in.

So, sorcery is very real, the power behind it is demonic. People who are involved in that prostitute themselves with evil spirits. We notice it’s addictive and it’s progressive.

So what are some of the ways that people are involved in sorcery today? One of them is the practicing of magic – casting spells. Anyone who enters into any kind of arrangement with evil spirits, in order to gain power, is opening themselves up to evil spirits. Now, inevitably, in the occult, spiritual trading takes place. In other words, there is a sacrifice of something.

When people get involved in this area, they always make agreements with evil spirits. There’s an invitation to the spirit to come into their life; there is an exchange of some kind, and sometimes blood is shed. We need to just be aware of this, when we’re working with people; because if blood is shed, this is another level of connection to the demonic spirit. There’s a reason for that, I’ll come back to later.

Let’s have a look – magic, practicing magic. Now, I’m not talking about the magician slight-of-hand, card-trick kind of thing. That’s just all a trick to make you think one thing, when something else is happening. We’re talking about real spiritual power that causes influence in the world, and on people. So, one doorway to the occult in this area is practicing magic.

A second common one is fantasy computer games. Many of the computer games represent sorcery as entertainment. Some computer games involve role-playing, where you take on a new identity - you become a different person online. In some games, people take on the identity of a sorcerer. Then they begin to cast spells, and battle various people to gain more power - and it can become addictive.

In Matthew 5, Jesus said: “If you look on a woman to lust after her, you have committed adultery”. Notice that adultery, as a sin, begins in the heart. So a person can have the sin of adultery, but no physical act has taken place. Matthew 5 makes that very clear, in Matthew 5:28 – “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” That means that sin begins in the heart, with your imagination and desire.

I felt the Lord show me, that when people are involved in computer games like this, for extended periods of time - the imagination, coupled with desire for power, can open the door for sorcery to enter. So what was initially a little bit of entertainment, becomes an open door for sorcery spirits - this creates a problem. Now, can you turn on and play the game and get demonised? I think that: not initially, but over time, you will become demonised. I think probably the best way to recognise that, is if you become addicted to the game.

I had word of knowledge of a young man in City Harvest, that he was addicted to the game - couldn’t get it out of his mind, kept being drawn back to the game. So the guy came up, and we found the game was World of Warcraft, and he indicated the name of the character he played. When I asked him to renounce the game, and renounce the identity of this sorcerer; as we prayed, the spirit of sorcery manifested on his face, and he fell, yelling on the ground. He had opened his life to a spirit of sorcery while he was playing these games! We had an alter call, and nearly 200 people came up, and there was massive deliverance.

This is amazing! People at Bible school learning about God, but privately practicing sorcery. What it alerts us to, is the way it is disguising itself, and become acceptable. You understand now, that this is still a problem. It’s an old problem in a new form.

Another doorway to the Occult is the area of addictive drugs. The word sorcerer in the New Testament is the word ‘Pharmakeia’ from which we get the word ‘pharmacy’. So certain drugs put people in an altered state, and people can become addicted to drugs because of pain in their lives. Rather than resolve the root cause of the pain, they medicate it. So, Pharmakeia – taking drugs, can be an addictive substitute for relationship with God, and proper resolution of issues.

It’s quite interesting that when people get onto some of these drugs, the hallucinations they have can be quite similar. I went to pray for one man, and he was hallucinating under prescription medicine, but he had a history of alcohol and drug addiction. Although he’d given it up, when he got on those pain-killers, he started to hallucinate. He was seeing spiders literally coming out of the walls at him. When we came against the spirit of sorcery and cast it out, the hallucination stopped, and all the pain in his body left as well. So, addictive drugs can open the doorway to sorcery.

Related to that, there’s another form of this. What’s happening in many places in the Western world, and possibly here too, is the use of drugs to render a woman unconscious; so a man can have sex with her, without her realising it. They were called ‘date-rape’ drugs. When the person comes under the influence of the drug, they are literally unable to respond, or unable to control their life, and I believe a spirit of sorcery is involved behind that.

I had a person come to me who said: “I think this is what’s happened to me”. What happened was that I prayed for this girl, and when I prayed for her, I commanded the spirit of sorcery to leave her. In other words, the power the man had bought over her life, by using the drugs - and there was a massive manifestation.

Another example of that, I found in Malaysia. I prayed for a woman, and she was bleeding from her womb. Her belly was very swollen; and it turns out, they told me, she had been charmed. I said: “What do you mean, charmed?” And she said: “Well, there was this man, and he consulted with a evil spirit; and made up this powder, which he dedicated to the evil spirit.

He took the powder, and went knocking on this lady’s door. When she opened the door, he blew the powder in her face. Immediately, she went under the influence of the spirit, and then he sexually violated her, and then left her. When she came out of the trance, or out of the spell, she had this problem that her belly began to swell, and she was bleeding. There was no way to stop it. So we prayed for her, broke the attachment to this man, and commanded the spirit of sorcery to go - and she was healed.

No doubt there are other forms of sorcery. For example, martial arts can open the door to spirits of sorcery. In Mark 5:4, the man had unusual strength – he could break chains, and there was demonic power behind it. So, martial arts - now, you get into trouble the moment you start to talk about some of these areas. I had a son who wanted to get into martial arts, so I talked to him about the doorway to the demonic. I said, “It will start as physical exercises, and it will move to where you have to meditate, in order to open your life for greater power. At that point, if you do that, you’ll be demonised. The power you receive will be a demonic power.” I said: “You’ll notice that at some point, the instructor will give away this aspect of it.” So, he went on for a while, and got involved in doing this martial arts training. Eventually it came to the point where this was exactly what was the issue. At that point, he left and gave it up. So, martial arts can lead towards meditation, which opens the door for spirits.

We have to be aware and alert to various doorways for these spirits to come in. Some forms of music can open up the doorway for demonic spirits. Quite interesting, in the mass murders at the school in USA in Columbine, Columbine massacre, that there were two things that were involved there, that were part of what happened. 1) The guys were on the drug Prozac. 2) They were into heavy music, with these horrendous lyrics and driving beat that shifted them, and opened them up to spirits. That’s not the only reason, but we need to be aware that some forms of heavy music can open the door to demonic spirits.

Idolatry can open the door to demonic spirits. In 1 Corinthians 10:12-21, things the gentiles sacrificed, they sacrificed to demons and not to God. So idolatry opens the door for demons; as does dedication to a temple or an idol.

I want to look just briefly at the issue of blood. Sometimes you’ll find that when you’re dealing with people involved in the occult, then there is blood involved. You need to be alert for this one. In Leviticus 17:14, the Bible says: the life is in the blood. Demonic spirits seek to bring people into agreements, and they seek to engage in trading. One way they do it is by blood covenants. Blood covenants originated with God, and the devil realises the power of this – the powers of alters and sacrifice – so he tries to encourage people to build alters, or to make sacrifices.

In 2 Kings 3:27, Israel was in a place of great victory, pursuing an enemy army, and then suddenly the battle totally turned. The king that they were facing, offered his son as a sacrifice on the wall of the city. The Bible says: there was great indignation against Israel. In other words, he invoked spiritual powers, because of the shedding of the blood of his own son. So, when you are dealing with people involved in the Occult, enquire whether they’ve made any blood covenants, shed any blood, invited demons and cut themselves. Just enquire whether there’s any bloodshed, because that needs to be clearly broken.

The Bible tells us in Colossians 1:14 “We are redeemed by the blood of Jesus”. In other words, the blood of Jesus has more power than any other offering. In 1 Peter 1:18 “we are redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus”. But we need to apply the blood of Jesus, and what it has done. So, putting it in a very simple basis - life is in the blood. When blood is shed, covenants are formed. God’s plan is we’re in covenant with Him through the blood of Jesus. Demons want us to covenant with them, through our own blood.

We prayed for someone just recently, and her blood was taken by her parents, and then taken to the temple, and dedicated to the idol. She didn’t go there, but her blood went there. So, we need to just be aware of these kinds of things, and understand the great power released by blood. The blood of Jesus releases great power. So in various parts of the world, those involved in sorcery will make offerings, and they will shed blood - the blood of animals, or the blood of human beings - in order to draw supernatural power around their life.

Just be aware when you’re dealing with the occult, to enquire how the connection was formed. Whether there was blood involved, or sacrifice involved. You’d be surprised how many young people have made blood covenants with demons; and they need to renounce the agreement and the shedding of their blood.

I want to move on a bit now. I want to give you a number of symptoms of people who are under occult oppression. In other words, what would we look for? What are some of the evidence? It helps if you can recognise that. Usually, they’re reasonably self-evident. For example: 1) Unexplained noises at night; unexplained noises in the house - that’s usually an occult activity. 2) Hearing voices – the person’s hearing voices talking to them - that’s usually evidence of demonic activity. 3) Objects moving unexpectedly - that’s scary. 4) Doors opening and shutting. 5) Lights going on and off. It’s quite scary stuff really. 6) The appearance of spirit beings. When spirit beings appear, that can be a major source of problem. 7) Physical sensations of being sexually molested, but there’s no one there.

Now this one’s more common than you think as well. There are particular spirits that sexually molest women and men. The sexual demon that molests women is called the Incubus spirit; the one that molests men is the Succubus spirit. These are sexual demons, occultic demons, and they will molest people at night - possibly even pinning them on the bed, and the person may go through all the feelings and sensations of being molested or raped - but there’s no one there to see. That is a demonic spirit. Of course, people are ashamed to tell about it, because they feel they won’t be believed. So you need to be alert, if you hear anything like that, or sense anything like that - just enquire of what has been happening, and be willing to believe the person if they tell you: this is what is happening to me.

A person having tormenting sexual thoughts - that can be an occultic demon e.g. extreme heaviness and oppression; or agitation in meetings where anointing is flowing; inability to focus on spiritual things; literally confusion. These are some symptoms that show occultic activities are taking place, so we need to be able to look and ask: what’s happening in your life. There may be a whole number of doorways that people have gone in. We’re going to have to then look at how we’re going to minister to people. What are the steps in setting people free?

First thing is: we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us. We need Him to expose the roots. We need power from Him. 1) Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the roots - this is totally dependent on the Holy Spirit. 2) Diagnosis – we need to find out what the problem is.

You have to ask questions. What is your problem? How does it affect you? When did it start? That tells us whether it could be a generational problem. What happened at that time when it started? Was it something you did, or was it something that happened in your family? Those are sorts of the ways I would look and ask. I’m looking – did you do something that opened the door; did someone do something to you that opened the door; or did this come from the family. The person must be open and honest. So we have to find out what the real problem is. Have you opened the door to evil spirits; and has it been opened in your family by someone else?

I’ll just give you an example. I had a woman call me, whose house was haunted. “Please come and fix the haunted house”. So I went there, and the woman and her boyfriend, and her daughter and boyfriend, were all in the house. They were all very afraid - they said: “Our house is haunted. There are noises and things. We can’t sleep and we’re frightened”. As I began to talk with them, I could hear the noises. “Wow. Can you hear this?” I said: “Yeah I know there’re things there - they’ll go soon. I want to know how they got here.”

So I started to ask questions. In finding the root of problems, you have to ask questions - and listen - then ask more questions. Develop a listening attitude. Listening to the people, and listening to the Holy Spirit - because He’ll show you where to ask. You’ll have a thought come, to ask something.

So this is how I did it, because I knew what the problem was – there were ghosts in the house, I said: “How long has it been like this?” “A while, it was two weeks”. “What happened two weeks ago?” “I don’t know”. Then they tell me “Oh yes, my daughter and her boyfriend came to live here”. So I get this clear: “Before they came, no problems at all?” “That’s correct”. “After they came, now the problem’s here?” “Correct”. “Therefore the boy and the girl have brought the problem to the house”. Quite simple - not hard to ask these questions.

So I said to the two of them: “Tell me this, before you came here and had this problem here, did you have this problem in your house?” Yes they did. So you brought it with you then. “Yes we must have”. “So it came with one of you - we can find out who it came with”. I said: “Was it in the house where you previously lived?” “No it wasn’t”.

Let’s have a look again. So I asked them: “Has either of you been involved in the occult?” “No.” “No.” I said: “Has either of you slept with someone involved in the occult?” The girl said: “That was me - it was my last boyfriend.” I said: “Did that relationship end badly?” She said: “Yes.” “Did he curse you?” She said: “Yes.”

I said: “Well, by sexual relationship with that man, you become one with him, so the demon had every right to enter your life. As a result of sexual relationship, and him cursing you, the demon has come to you, has come into your house - and you brought it to this house. So when you leave, it will go - it’s with you.” This was a shock! She said: “All they could think of was there’s a ghost in this house. They didn’t think of finding: if there’s a ghost there, how did he get to be there.” I said: “Your sin has opened the door for the spirit.”

So we led them all to the Lord, renounced the relationship and agreement with the spirit, commanded them to leave, and the house came to rest - and they came to rest, and they moved back to their own place again. It was easier to blame the house of being haunted, than to take ownership of the problem. Do houses get haunted? Yes they do, and usually someone has invited the spirit in- either they were involved in the occult, or some form of Spiritism; or there was a tragedy in the house - otherwise it wouldn’t be there.

So, you see then you’ve got to actually diagnose the root of the problem. If you find the person has been involved in some form of sorcery or occultic activity - and there’s just so many of them - you’ve got to enquire, and ask the Holy Spirit to help you locate the root. So asking questions like: when did it first start; and what happened about that time; can draw out this issue.

So I begin to identify: is this generational; or is this personal – they did something themselves. You got to really get this clear: we’re diagnosing what the cause of the demon being there is.

Then, step 3: you need to explain to them what Christ has done. Briefly explain what Christ has done. They need to understand the power of the blood of Jesus, the power of God - He has authority over all these demons. It doesn’t need to be long, but you need to present Jesus to them. Jesus is the deliverer; Jesus is the conqueror of demons - share a little bit like I just did with you about the scripture.

Then you need to explain their part in getting free - explain to them what they must do. Explain their part, and their part involves: you need to repent, and confess the sin. Go through the foundations - you have to deal with your sin. You’ve invited the spirits in, and you must confess, and ask Jesus to forgive you.

Secondly, you must receive forgiveness; and release forgiveness to others. Often, the reason people are in the occult, is because of deep bitterness - broken family relationships, painful relationships, bitterness and anger and rejection in the heart. Often, this is the root, which caused them to go into the occult - you need to pull all of that stuff up. Receive forgiveness, and release forgiveness.

Thirdly, they must renounce all agreements with evil spirits. To renounce means to cancel - speak words that cancel the agreement. They invited the spirit in, now they need to tell it to go. They came into agreement with the spirit - break the agreement. Words are important. Not just lip the words – saying words, but they must actually mean the words.

We tell them: this is your part - if you hold on to the sin, you cannot be free. You hold on to unforgiveness - you’ll stay in bondage. If you won’t stand against the devil, he will hold on to you. You can share with them James 4:7 – “Therefore submit to God; resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Submitting to God is repenting, and releasing forgiveness. It’s choosing to reach out to God as the source of your power, not the devil. So we need to explain their part; and that when we pray for them, they must actively resist the spirits. So that’s the preparing the person.

Explain to them your part, explain what you will do, help them understand what ministry will be like. I will lead you in a prayer, you will follow me. When we get to the end of the prayer, I will break the bondages, and command the spirits. I won’t be speaking to you; I’ll be speaking to the demons. I don’t want you to be praying. I want you just to resist, and when I command the spirits, maybe cough or breathe heavily.

So, we’ve got now the steps involved in this - they’re quite simple and quite logical. Now, you need to lead them through a prayer. So the prayer would be quite a simple prayer. Here’s what it would be made up with - here are the parts of the prayer. 1) Confession of faith in Christ. 2) Renouncing all agreements with the evil spirits. 3) Asking God to forgive them. Confessing the sin, and asking for forgiveness, receiving the forgiveness. 4) They need to release forgiveness to others; as often, their journey into the occult came out of bitterness and hurt. 5) They must reach out to Jesus, and actively resist the devil.

When you are doing these prayers and renouncing, just remember whether there are covenants or agreements that need to be broken - they would’ve told you by this point. Second thing to look at too, is to make sure they’re not wearing objects associated with the occult around their wrist or around their neck - it can just be a hindrance to being set free. We’ve had some people, the moment they took off the object; they could be delivered straight away.

Now, the exact words, and the exact order, are not important. Stay listening to the Holy Spirit as you pray. Now I’ll lead you through a prayer, just to show what it might look like. It’s just basically made up of those various parts. I get in the Spirit, and follow the flow of the Spirit, when I pray. So, you may change the wording a little bit, or change the order.

This is how I might lead them. Remember the first phase? The confession of faith. This is important, because basically they’re saying: “I’m standing on the Lord’s side, and I’m holding on and believing in Him, and what He’s done.” It’s really important to speak those words.

It goes something like this: “Father in Heaven, I come to you in Jesus’ name. I confess Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord. I’m redeemed by the blood of Jesus, from every curse, every evil spirit, all occult powers. I am redeemed, I belong to Jesus.” Does it make sense to you what I’ve just prayed? It’s identifying with Jesus.

Second thing then, maybe we’ll say something like this: “Lord I confess I’ve been involved in these activities. I confess my family have been involved in these activities. I ask you to forgive them. I receive your forgiveness. From my heart, I forgive those who’ve hurt me. Especially, forgive my father and my mother.

I renounce now, all agreements I have made with evil spirits. I renounce all invitations. I renounce them and cancel them. I renounce any agreement I made with blood. I renounce it and cancel it. I renounce all words spoken over me by psychics. I renounce them, and cancel them. I renounce all generational curses, and agreements with evil spirits, that my family have made.”

Can you see, I’ve tried to incorporate into that prayer, any agreements that were made to just cancel them. So how do you know what to pray? When you did the diagnosis, you should’ve been able to establish that. Just jot down these things; and when you’re praying, you follow those things.

“Now Lord, I reach out to You, I ask You to set me free. Satan, go from my life. In Jesus’ name” Ok? Then you’ve done it. Now, they may manifest while you’re leading them in the prayer. Stay in charge, don’t be intimidated - just command the spirit to be still and quiet, and continue with the process.

Now, the next phase of it is to exercise your authority, and begin the deliverance. You have to exercise your authority. Remember what we realised, that God has given us authority to tread on serpents and scorpions. So, this is what you need to do: first of all, break the agreements. Imagine it like this: words spoken; and you’re cancelling the words. Or imagine it as a demonic cord; and you are cutting the cords.

“In Jesus’ name, I break the generational agreements with evil spirits. I break them. I break agreements that have brought bondage into this family. I break the blood covenant you made, inviting that demon into your life. I break the words spoken over you, giving a false destiny. I break all attachments to these evil spirits.”

I haven’t gotten the wording exact every time, but I’ve got the flow of what needs to happen. You may find that the Holy Spirit gives you things to break as you pray. Just be willing to give it a go - just try it. Don’t lean on a method! Get the picture of how it takes place, the principles and the process; but lean into the Holy Spirit to help you with the language of it. If it helps you, have a little list written out. It if helps you, write a prayer out. Then, in “Jesus’ name, I break this bondage etc…”

Number 2, then begin to command the spirits. Speak directly into the person, and command the spirits to come out. Just keep pressure on. Speak from inside your spirit. Rise up inside; speak and command it to go. That’s why you develop your spirit-man, so you carry strength inside you for this work.

Now, it’s not how loud you pray; it’s praying with faith. So, picture yourself and you’re speaking like you’re speaking into a cave, to an animal in there. “I command you to come out.” Your attention focus – you’re commanding the spirit to come out.

Just notice any changes that take place. Sometimes, nothing happens, but as you keep the pressure up, next thing you see, it starts to come up. I have found sometimes it helps if I name the spirits. So when I’m praying, I have observed: if nothing’s happened, and I start to name spirits, something starts to happen. What would you be praying for? You might be praying: spirit of divination, spirit of sorcery, spirit of witchcraft, spirit of bitterness, spirit of death, spirits of hatred - all of those things could be there. Speak into those things, command them to go. Push against them from within your spirit, all the time leaning on the Holy Spirit to help you.

Now, sometimes they will manifest, and there are many forms that can take place - it can be wild, screaming. Now, if the person just keeps screaming, it’s almost certain no deliverance will happen. It’s like a show, so, don’t keep it up. You’ve actually got to get the person to stop screaming, and start resisting. Again, be sensitive to the Holy Spirit in this. If the person keeps screaming, I just, in the end, say: “Listen, stop. Stop. Cooperate with me. Resist the spirit.”

So, they may start screaming, they may start to shake. They may get built up rage, and get very violent. Don’t be afraid. Their eyes may flare and glare at you - in that case, rise up and look them in the eye - stare them down. Let them see your eyes are more fierce!

You have to see that you are representing Jesus - how would He stare at the enemy? How would he look at those demons? Blazing eyes! So, rise up, eyes blaze, and look into them. You’ll find an interesting thing, sometimes they’ll be full of fear, and they’ll try and look away. Then, if I notice it starts to lose eye-contact and look away, or look down - I move in very strongly then, and often it just comes straight out. The moment it backs up from defiance, it’s starting to lose ground. How many have had something like that happen?

So, those are manifestations. Sometimes people will want to throw up. So it’s helpful to have bags and tissues around; but this is an assistant to you, it’s not something automatic - you pull the bag over their head – don’t do that. They’re suffocating! Be sensitive and aware of what’s going on. Just keep commanding.

Now, if they wrestle and fight, you only need to restrain them if it’s likely they’ll be a danger to them, or someone else. I just sometimes step back, and they’ll wriggle and do this and that, and just keep commanding.

So, you need to constantly be listening to the Holy Spirit while you’re doing that. Listen to His guidance; and have a look and see: is this demonic; or is this just emotions? It can move from demonic to emotions very quickly; because when you start to confront the spirit, sometimes deep-seated pain and grief come up as well. If it’s demonic, it tends to look ugly and feel yuck. If it’s emotional, it looks a bit like that, but it’s kind of unresponsive - just yells and screams. You think, that’s actually just emotions, or sometimes a lot of tears.

Try to distinguish between emotions and spirits. Spirits you cast out; emotions - you stop, because now the person needs to let go, forgiveness – there’s some area that was unresolved in your preparation. Ask them what’s happening. Interact with the person. Just interact with them. Show them how to cooperate in the ministry.

It’s not always easy to tell what is from demons, and what is emotions - experience will give it to you. If you’re getting nowhere with a deliverance, just stop it altogether. Just interact with the person and gain their cooperation, and see if the Holy Spirit has issues He wants them to resolve, before further deliverance.

What if the demon argues with you, or threatens you? They do that sometimes. “He belongs to me. I will not leave. Who are you? Nothing! You have no power.” Well, the truth is: we have no power; but Jesus does, and we’re coming in His name. So, you have to speak to them. “I come against you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.” Then sock it to them. “He defeated you in Calvary. He stripped you of your power. He humiliated you in Calvary. One day we’ll put you in hell forever.” Just use scripture, push on them. “No. No. No. It’s a lie”. As soon as they say “it’s a lie”, then you keep going. Sometimes I’ve had them say: “Don’t say that to me!”

So the demons don’t like the word of God. Sometimes I’ll just make statements. “The blood of Jesus has broken your power.” If the demon is pushing against me, I’ll sometimes look at it and say: “Look at the cross you demon. Look at the blood. Your power is broken. Your hold is broken.”

It would seem to me, that the natural world is subject to time, so for us today - I can’t look at the cross of Jesus, because it was 2000 years ago, I can only see it in my imagination. But it seems from the spirit world - it’s like the thing’s alive now, it’s real now - it’s a spirit reality now. I’ve noticed when I told them to look at the cross, and look at the blood, that often seems to precipitate the deliverance taking place.

Otherwise, if there’s excessive resistance, go back to seeing if there’s something you’ve missed that needs to be resolved. Dismantle the house the demons are in, and you should get the demons out quickly. So, all the time you’re ministering, lean on the Holy Spirit to help you.

When you finished the deliverance, then you comfort the person, and pray for the love of God and the peace of God to come into their heart. Don’t start comforting before the person’s delivered - I saw that last night. I see it all the time. The person’s put their arm around someone to comfort them; I put my hand on their head, and they start screaming again - the demon has not come out! So stay in that place, alert, in case the demon just tries to deceive you.

How do you know it has come out? You can literally feel the release; or the person tells you. Or the Holy Spirit tells you - that’s the only way you can really know.

If people have been involved in the occult, one additional thing - they need to remove out of their home, all objects associated with the occult. In Acts 19, it says in verse 18 and 19, “Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together, and burned them in the sight of everyone. They counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver.”

You notice a number of things happened there. People were convicted of their sin, verse 18; they confessed their sin openly; they resolved they would not return to these things. So, they gave up the books, and everything involved with the occult, and they destroyed them. Obviously there’s a lot of money here - fifty thousand pieces of silver is a lot of money - but basically what they did was, they refused to be attracted to the value of those objects - they just got rid of them.

It’s the same in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 7:35. So, the person does need to cleanse their house of objects which are involved in the occult. You just ask them to do that, maybe bring the objects to you and burn them. You cannot be compromised on this issue. When people are involved in the occult, they need to get free of it completely.

So what spirits would you pray? Well, there’s the whole heap of them that we’ve suggested - let the Holy Spirit guide you - as names come to mind, just confront them. Amen? Amen!

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Question & Answer

She has this question: She went to see a Chinese medicine doctor. In Chinese culture, we believe there is air moving in our bodies - and her qi is quite weak. So, the doctor suggested that she should try meditation (sitting) to enrich the qi. But she was afraid that will get into the spiritual phase, so she refused to do that. Instead she tried to do some exercises to increase her stamina. She’s wondering whether it’s possible that tai chi, or yoga, or all kinds of different exercises - may cause us to fall into the trap of evil spirits?

Very good question! The whole ‘qi’ is your life force - for a believer we would understand that’s the life from your spirit. So, a broken spirit dries the bones. There’s a connection between your spiritual energy, and your physical vibrancy. Spirit, soul and body are all very closely connected. What happens in our spirit, and in our heart, affects the flow of life and energy in our body.

The dilemma you have in getting into meditation is that you would open yourself up to the demonic realm. Biblical meditation is very proactive - it pictures the word of God; it imagines the word of God; it sees the reality of the word of God - so it’s focused on some thing. Other kinds of Eastern meditation involve emptying of your life - and that opens the door then, for something else to come in. So I don’t consider that to be a good thing to do. The exercises in yoga - each yoga position are representative of the worship of some god. I always think that the root of something always indicates where it has come from. Some people do some exercises – tai chi and yoga exercises, and they seem to benefit from these things; but the roots and origins lie deeply in the worship of false gods.

So the question is: how close to the edge can you get before you fall off? I think that’s something you have to ask the Holy Spirit about.

What I would suggest, is that you do these sorts of things: that you walk, because walking is good for you; or you swim, because swimming is good for your body. I would encourage you to take time to pray in tongues, and begin to develop the energy and life within the spirit. The Bible says: the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is within us. It just needs releasing, and the path of releasing is by opening our heart, and our inner man, to allow God to move in us.

What I do, that really is helpful, is that I walk everyday; I pray in tongues; and I pray intentionally to rouse my spirit man. While I’m praying in tongues, I meditate that God is near me; that I am joined to Him; and I spend that time praying and worshipping Him, intentionally allowing His life to flow up and through me.

When I’m here, I do it around the hotel and my floor - I tend to do it really early, so I avoid meeting people. Otherwise, I’m the foreigner who’s crazy. I kind of sing it too, and they think “Oh, he’s the happy, crazy foreigner” I have found that my energy and flow of life has improved through physical exercise; through praying in tongues, and worshipping; and through meditating on God’s presence with me.

As I made it a habit, I have become greatly energised because of this. So, blocks in energy flow through you, tend to be in the soul area, or in the heart area. If we consciously yield those parts of our life to the Lord, and allow His life to flow in us - I would expect significant increase in energy. So, I have a lot of energy - it’s surprising when you consider my age. I can minister for hours, and pray for lots of people - but I need to have my time with God.

I need to be meditating in His presence, filling me up on the inside. I need to constantly be returning to the source, and the basics of building your life with God. In Isaiah 40, it says: “Those who wait on the Lord will exchange their strength.” I believe that the life we live is an exchanged life. It’s not me trying to make something happen - it’s actually letting go of that, and beginning to realise and become aware that: Christ is in me; that the power is already in me! Meditation helps train your heart to believe that, and that’s what begins to energise you. I felt strong praying in tongues, exercising, and meditating have been powerful keys to shift my energy level.

I think you also need to eat properly and rest properly. Sometimes, low energy levels can be: imbalance in your body; or something going on in your soul. For example, anxiety will greatly strip away your energy. Fear will greatly strip away your energy. The systems of our body are so designed to work with the heart that’s in harmony with God. So when our heart is flowing with God, other parts of the body come into alignment as well. I hope that helps.

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This person had an encounter with a Malaysian girl, who studies overseas here in Taiwan. The girl was with them late at night, and all of a sudden she started to manifest. She changed her actions, and everything - girl to a boy. Later on, she shared with them she had very severe depression, but she stopped the medicine by herself without consulting the doctor. The person wants to ask: how can we distinguish whether it’s a medical situation. or spiritual situation?

Very good question - I think you always need to be open to the possibility that people’s problems are physical and not spiritual; or it’s a mixture of these things because everything’s interconnected. Now, we give advice on spiritual matters - we’re not doctors, we’re not trained in medicine, so we should not make decision about these things where we have no expertise. So I think that if there is an issue where it’s possibly an issue of medication needed, or even in many situations - encourage the person to get a medical check. Sometimes a medical check will pick up physical problems in the body, and they need to get the balance back, they need to change their diet, or something to set them right.

It concerns me when people are on medication and they go off it, and they don’t tell the doctor. I find usually, a little while later, they have massive problems; because there’s usually a process of withdrawal from the drug, and their body and everything reacts. So any issues relating to medication or health issues, the doctor should be involved, and you work with them, not as someone who’s more knowledgeable than them.

For example, we had one lady, and it appeared that the more she got prayed for, the crazier she got. In the end, we said: “No more prayer”. I said, “There’re two things I want you to do. 1) No one will pray for you. There’s just this one person you can go to talk to, and they’ll pray for you. 2) Go to the doctor and get a medical check, because something’s not right. 3) Do practical things - stop being spiritual - get practical and just flow in your gift of kindness to people. Initially, she really reacted to all of that.

Eventually, we boundaried her, and kept her with one person, and it was so difficult getting her to the doctor. But once we got her to the doctor, and got her family involved, and got her accountable for what she was doing - the last I saw her, she’d totally settled down, and she was totally calm. It wasn’t a deliverance issue - it was just an emotional, and physical, and chemical instability in her life. Everything is linked to one another; so, emotional, spiritual problems can trigger physical problems.

People have the tendency to want to blame demons for their problem, and take no ownership for their life. So, it’s a normal thing to go to a doctor and get them to check you – take a blood test and so on. If you suspect that it could be a mental problem - don’t go beyond what you’re competent to do; and do refer them to go on to a doctor – there’s nothing to be lost, and everything to be gained.

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Many times, she would hear sounds in the house. The rattling of the house - in the bricks or the structure, just some sounds that she can’t really explain, but she can hear it. It’s quite noisy, causing her to be unable to fall asleep, so how can she handle a situation like this? The second question - just now you mentioned that some spirits may harass or sexually invade someone’s body - when you are in that position, what would you suggest people to do?

The two may be connected. If a person is being molested by a sexual spirit at night, there are strong occultic links; there is a door open for that spirit to invade. It is claiming a right into the person’s life, that it has no right at all. Spirits like that are always from the occultic realm, and they can come from spirits of perversion in the family line. Secondly, if there are spirits like that, it would be not unusual for this to be accompanied by noises or other disturbing kinds of things happening.

I think, in all of these things, bringing it to the light is the first step. Then it needs the Holy Spirit to show: what is the root of this; when did it start; what caused it to start? Is it generational, is it something the person has done - and then it requires deliverance. You can deliver yourself over most things, through just following the steps - and rise in your spirit and tongues and command it to go. However, sometimes people just need ministry - it may help go deeper, or touch things they couldn’t get hold of themselves.

So I suspect the two are connected, and that noises in the building are part of an overall oppression created from the spirit world, over this person. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show you potential doors of entry; then, either: renounce them, close them, and stand against the demons; or get ministry to help.

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She has this problem for kids. There’s a kid about 7 or 8 years old, and this kid will scream and wail in the middle of the night. During daytime, she tried to pray for the kid, and the kid manifested very violently. So how can we help and deliver a kid like that?

So, with children, there is a way of ministering to them; and, there are two possible approaches you can use to this. One would be to pray for the child while they’re asleep, with a parent there, so if the child woke up during the ministry, that they don’t get frightened. I have prayed for usually younger children like that.

It would help before doing this, to look into the family background, and find if there are sources for where the spirit has come from. Are there any generational doors; are there any kind of spirits likely to have come through the family line? Talking with the mother and father could help establish that. You could minister to them first, so that you remove the legal grounds for demons in the family line.

If you’re going to pray for the child while they were asleep, you want probably the mother there; or someone there with you. Don’t touch the child, just pray quietly, pray in the spirit quietly; invite the Holy Spirit to come. Keep listening to what He has to say, and then based on what you already should know, you begin to break the curses in the family line, the holds and the agreements with spirits, and command the spirits to go. That does not involve the child participating strongly.

An alternative approach would be to sit with the child and talk with them. When you talk with them, ask them about the dreams they have at night. Get talking, and let the child talk about what they feel about this stuff. Engage the child in their language, at their level. So, you’ve got to talk, and present truth, at a child’s level. You could say something like this – after the child’s talked to you - you say: “Do you know what’s causing these dreams?” “I don’t know why I have these dreams.” “I think it’s a bad spirit. You know there are bad spirits, and they come and trouble us. It’s not your fault, you haven’t done anything wrong, it’s just that’s what bad spirits do. Jesus dealt with bad spirits. Jesus had a good spirit with Him.”

You notice I’m putting the language at a level a child could understand. “...and sometimes bad spirits get into people, trouble them and make life very sad - or very frightening. But Jesus came to release us from these bad spirits. You know, in the Bible, wherever He found them, He got rid of them. Did you know that the bad spirits are afraid of Jesus? In fact, they’re so afraid of Him - they want to get away as quick as they can. So, we could ask Jesus to come; and He’s stronger than the bad spirits - and He could help you get rid of these bad spirits. Would you like that to happen?”

You see, it’s kind of like talking at their level. Then they say now: “Yeah yeah ok.” “Alright then. This is what we’re going to do. In a moment, what I’m going to do is I’m going to pray for you, and I’ll speak to the bad spirits. I won’t be speaking to you - you’ll know I’ve changed - I’m speaking to the bad spirit. We’re going to command the bad spirit to go. You may feel something inside your body. The bad spirit might become frightened. It’s not you that’s being frightened - it’s the bad spirit being frightened. All you need to do is breathe out – make him go, push him out.” A child can understand all that sort of language. “...or you could cough. So when I speak to it - you cough. Let’s work together, make the bad spirit go. Jesus would be very happy.” See, we’re using a language a child could easily get a hold of.

Now, you could sit down beside the child, or you could sit the child on your knee. The problem is that about 8 years old, if they got manifesting, they could be a real difficulty – quite strong. So we would hope that the spirit would go quite easily, now you’ve engaged cooperation.

You want a parent there when you’re doing it, so that this is kept totally transparent. You say and do nothing that will frighten the child. You should constantly build confidence – “This is going to be straightforward. This is going to be good. If you feel something happening inside you, you just cough that thing out. We’re going to get rid of this thing.” Then, go through that process. If a child manifests, you can hold on to them to restrain them, but it can be difficult. It would be better to engage the child’s cooperation, because in doing that, they work with you to resist the spirit.

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A lady’s been helping this person. This person has family inherited problems – sickness - insomnia, can’t sleep well for a long period of time, and it caused all kinds of sickness in the body. Many of them in the family, in the end, they even committed suicide. This person came to church and also attended many deliverance conferences or meetings, but every time, they didn’t really react much - no response at all. So, after yesterday and today’s teachings, because the person has started to hear things, causing them more suicidal thinking; and because it seems to be both generation and occult related, she’s wondering: how we can identify it, recognise it, and how can we help this person.

“Was the person involved in the occult themselves?” “He never mentioned it.” “Was it asked?” “Before this teaching, they never had the idea to ask.”

“Generational?” “Idolatry is all the way in the family.”

There are a number of reasons for insomnia - some of them may be medical, related just to the body - some people just don’t sleep well. Some of them may be related to anxiety, or spiritual issues. So, sometimes you have to apply both medical and spiritual remedies.

You can see the way I have approached this, is to be systematically asking questions. Try and discover the root system. If you don’t deal with the root system, you can never get the person free. The person needs to take ownership of their things. Sometimes people just want you to fix them up, but they don’t want to actually recognise: “It’s my problem, and my responsibility to apply, and reach out in faith to Christ.”

There’re various ways to look at it. See, immediately you tell me that there’re suicides – plural – there’s something in the family line - spirits of suicide; oppressing spirits; occult powers; idolatry. So we have to identify what the feeding causes are. The person takes a stand to resist those things, and bring them to the cross. Sometimes I find that people don’t have faith for their freedom. Deliverance isn’t some passive thing - we have to arise in faith, to take hold of what Jesus said. Sometimes, instruction is needed prior to ministry.

In looking at an alter call for example, you’ll notice different responses of people coming up. Now, they’ve all come up – so that means they all want something, but what happens is completely different; ranging from the dramatic, to: “Did anything happen at all?” We can’t always tell, but it seems that the person’s attitude of heart, and preparation of heart, is quite a factor in what they receive from God. Someone might come: “I’ve really got this problem, I want to be free, I’m believing God, I’ve come, I fasted - and they get a massive deliverance.”

Or another one will be just thinking “Oh, I’ll just go up to see what happens.” - or someone says: “You need to go up.” - nothing happens. In other words, there was a passivity, and no preparation of heart for an encounter with God. So the preparation for encounters with God is very important.

I would think 1) Look at the roots. There’re things that need to be asked. You have to find out what are the roots feeding this. Then work through the steps and the process. See if you can get some response that way. 2) Perhaps encourage the person to fast. Get them scriptures to meditate on – the promises of God. Don’t just let them turn up, passive, waiting for you to do something, because they put all the responsibility on you – “Fix me up” rather than - “this is my pursuit of wholeness.”

Where the responsibility lies is a big issue in these cases. So often we don’t recognise a person who’s nowhere near desperate enough for freedom. It’s a good idea, but alignment with Jesus - no I don’t want that. So, when we’re talking about an issue like insomnia, and the suicidal things, you’ve got to bring some instruction.

I’ll give you a scripture related to that. 2 Timothy 2:24-26 – “A servant of the Lord must not strive, but in gentleness, instructing those who oppose themselves, and perhaps God will give them repentance to acknowledge truth. Then they come to their senses, and they escape out of the snare of the devil, who holds them captive whenever he wants.”

You notice the process is one of instruction that leads the person to understanding, and then holding on to the truth. I don’t have all the answers for insomnia. For some, it’s a demonic spirit, some it has to do with body chemistry. A friend and pastor of mine - he doesn’t’ sleep much at all. He just studies, and reads the word of God, and uses the time to be productive. But there is a promise – he gives his beloved sleep. So the remedy may be partly spiritual, and partly physical. Taking some kinds of things that help rest the body and prepare it for sleep; not taking other things like coffee and things that would keep the body awake; leaning how to relax before going to sleep. The solution’s not obvious – there can be several aspects to it - at least you’ve got some places to look.

“The person is taking more and more sleeping pills, more and more dosage, and still they can’t sleep”

“Yeah, something’s not right.” I’d start looking at some of these roots that are in them, see if there’s anything in that.

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Father we just thank You for this time together. We pray Lord that we’ll be able to apply what we’ve learnt. Pray for release of increased anointing, and increased fruit people’s lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3)

Fri 4th Oct 2013  « Back to Top

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Understand God's design for a blessed life, and about the deep impact on our spirit and soul of sexual sin. Learn how to break bondages, minister deliverance, and rebuild damaged lives.

3 – Freedom from sexual sin

We’re always learning. There are always things to learn. I encourage you to keep on a learning journey. The last couple of mornings we shared with you on generational iniquity and curses, and we shared on the area of the occult. Today we want to look at the whole area of freedom from sexual sin.

This is quite a big topic, that can’t really be handled simply. I want to just approach it on this particular day, from the point of view of just understanding, in ministering to people, what you’re going to be ministering to. We’ll just share some things I’ve learnt on the way that help.

This is becoming an increasingly significant issue that we have to deal with now. We’ve got to continue to be willing to learn and understand the problems people are facing. We’ll just start with a story out of the Bible, of a man tormented by unclean spirits; then I want to look at God’s design for us; and then I want to look at the impact of sexual sin; and then we’ll look at some ways of ministering to people.

Let’s read first of all, in Luke 4:33-34 – “Now in the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. And he cried out with a loud voice, saying: “Leave us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” But Jesus rebuked him, saying: “Be quiet, and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him in their midst, it came out of him and did not hurt him.”

So the Bible says the man was in bondage to an unclean demon. All demons are unclean; but it’s quite possible that this man was in bondage to sexual sin. So, the story begins in the synagogue – a place where believers meet; and a believer has an issue with sexual sin. In some way he’d opened his life, and he was being tormented by spirits. So, he was tormented by spirits of lust and perversion. There was a torment going on in his life, day-by-day. So, what form would that torment be like?

1.) There would be constant memories and pictures in his mind of past sexual experiences. The demons would be keeping the memories alive, just keeping them in the front of his mind constantly.

2.) He would be having fantasies of future sexual experiences. His mind would constantly be thinking about possible future experiences; and there would be driving feelings or passions, lust, longing; and there would be repeated cycles of failure in his life.

So those would be some of the things that would be happening in him: memories of past sexual experiences; and fantasies of possible future experiences - driving feelings and longings of lust, and then cycles of failure. We would sin and ask for forgiveness, and then be alright for a while, and then back into the same problem.

So, this man, the driving force underneath it was demonic. We need to understand that demonic spirits cause energy inside people. For example, Ephesians 2:2 refers to demonic spirits, and it says that they ‘work in us’ – “You once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience”. So, demonic spirits work in people.

The word ‘work’ is the word where we get ‘energise’. Demonic spirits create energy, pressure inside people. Sin also creates energy in people. So, sin energises people. I think in Romans 5:7, it says: sin works in you. When a person has these kinds of problems, there is a strong energy, and pressure, and drive within the person. The presence of demonic spirits, and the presence of unresolved sin, tends to increase that pressure.

Our sexual drive is an appetite we must learn to manage. It’s something God gave to us. For example, you want to eat everyday. You want to have food. It’s an appetite inside the person’s life. So, sexual desire is an appetite, a longing that God has put within people; and it has to be managed. However, the presence of sin and demonic spirits creates a massive energy that drives this particular appetite, so we need to learn how to manage ourselves.

Have a look in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8, and it says: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual sit; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of, and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but to holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.”

You notice, you never have to pray about sexual sin. The Bible says: this is the will of God – purity. In case we didn’t understand it, He says: “abstain from sexual sin”. Notice that He makes it very clear. It’s God’s will that we avoid, or restrain, or hold back from sexual sin; and two, we learn how to manage this appetite in our life; in contrast to unsaved people, who just look for opportunities to express it.

The third thing he tells us to do, is not to sexually manipulate a brother or sister; and in doing so, defraud them in the relationship. This is a major area of teaching itself – How to conduct relationships, without sexually manipulating someone.

The last thing He says is that: this call to holiness is something God has ordained, not man. So, if we resist this teaching of holiness and purity, we’re resisting God. We’ll look at some insights as we go on this journey. The man we’re looking at, in the story in Luke 4, was in bondage to sexual sin, and needed to be set free; and for that man, deliverance was the key to freedom. After he’d been set free, he still needed to walk in holiness, and he still needed to manage his appetite, and he still needed to conduct his relationships differently.

Now, let’s have a look at God’s design. We need to see how God designed us. Genesis 2:18 – “And the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Then, going down a bit further to verse 24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

You notice that the only thing God said was not good was loneliness. In other words, man is created for relationships. We are created with the ability to be intimate; and a need for intimacy - intimacy with God; and intimacy with another person. God has given us the ability to be able to express intimacy in a physical way. Not only that, he has given us the ability to bond.

In other words, when two people are involved sexually, they bond together. In the act of sexual intimacy, there is a chemical released in the brain that causes a bonding, or connecting between one person and the other. As well as that, there’s also an attachment, or a soul-tie formed. Remember, it’s the issue of loneliness that’s resolved by intimacy - intimacy with God; and intimacy with another person. So, God has made us to be able to bond; and sexual intercourse is a key to that bonding taking place. “The two shall be joined, and become one flesh.” So, when people are sexually intimate, there is a bonding together, and the two become one.

Now, let’s have a look in Matthew 19. So, God has given us several abilities – the ability to be intimate, to express that intimacy, to bond with someone else, and the ability to create. We can create things with our mind; we can create things with our body. Two of the great aspects of our sexuality are: the ability to be intimate and bond; and the ability to create another life. Clearly, that requires responsibility. The world tends to exploit all of this, of course.

Let’s have a look in Matthew 19:4 – “And He answered and said to them: Have you not read, that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’”? So you notice God’s design - male and female. Not male and male; not female and female; but male and female. Verse 5-6: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” So then, they are no longer two, but one flesh.”

You notice that God is talking about His original design. When two people become intimate with one another, intimacy means you become vulnerable. You open a part of your life to others, that’s not normally seen. You can’t be intimate with everyone, it’s not appropriate; it’s damaging to you. So intimacy is developed, it’s a process of building trust, and disclosing ourselves. Intimacy is very important to God. He made us for intimacy. He designed us for very close connections. So, the ability to be intimate makes us vulnerable.

If you open your heart to someone, you reveal something of yourself to them, and now you’ve become vulnerable; they can hurt you. They could reject you, they could betray you. There’s the dilemma: I want to be close; but if I get close, you might hurt me. So, that’s the dilemma. If you hurt me, it’ll make an impact on my life, and make it difficult for me to be intimate again. You see the dilemma of intimacy - all intimacy makes you vulnerable.

Therefore, God’s design is for there to be some protection around being intimate. When two people are sexually intimate, it involves body, soul, and spirit. God’s design is that we live from our spirit; and that the life of our spirit flows from soul and body, and touches other people - that’s God’s design. Now, the world reduces sexual relationship to something quite physical. From God’s point of view, it starts from the inside and goes out - heart to heart connection, sharing your life; and then physical. The world turns it around, and places the emphasis on the physical; and neglects to tell you of the potential damage that could be caused to your soul and your spirit.

For a person to have a physical sexual relationship, but no intimacy, no opening their heart in love to another person, just totally reduces that physical act to something no more than a physical act. So, intimacy without a commitment opens the door for injury - intimacy without commitment and trust. It makes sense: you just don’t get intimate with every person, because you become vulnerable to that person.

So, God has designed us, so that when two people become sexually intimate, you have sexual intercourse, firstly, something happens in their body. With the act of sexual intercourse, chemicals are released in the brain that bring immense pleasure, and cause a feel of bonding. When people are intimate with one another, they see and hear and experience things and their soul bonds together.

When people are intimate with one another, their spirit can flow and touch the other person. Just think about God’s design. It’s for a flow from your spirit to touch the spirit, soul, and body of the other person. So if you ignore all of that, you reduce intimacy to something little more than a physical act; and this actually, totally perverts God’s design, which is for intimacy – spirit, soul, and body.

That’s why the Bible uses this word: it uses the word ‘know’. Adam ‘knew’ his wife. They translate the word ‘know’, so it’s the word ‘yada’ – to be intimate. There was a flow from one person to the other. When a person has a relationship with someone, and they’re not married, they use the word: ‘he lay with her’. If it’s between a husband and wife: ‘he knew his wife’; but for something else: ‘he lay with her’, for example, when Dinah got raped: ‘he lay with her’. The Bible uses totally different language. Sexual intercourse is about intimacy, and the flow from the spirit and the heart of a person to another.

You can see then, why, to protect our intimacy, our capacity to be intimate, God put in place covenant. God is a covenant God. When God enters relationship with you, it is covenantal - He makes a covenant with you. A covenant is a binding agreement. In a covenant there are agreements: I will not hurt you. So God enters into a relationship called ‘covenant’.

In marriage, God designed marriage to be a covenant relationship. One person committed to the other, not to harm them, but to be faithful to them. God’s plan for marriage, man and woman, husband and wife, is that it be a covenant relationship; and it reflect what the relationship between Christ and the church is like. Covenant is a commitment of lifelong faithfulness, to protect intimacy.

Whenever in the Bible a covenant was made, there were always: words spoken; and there was blood shed; and promises made. God has designed the woman, so that in the first act of sexual intercourse, blood is shed. There’s no real reason for this, except its God’s design; and it’s God revealing again to us, that sexual intimacy is a covenantal issue. When a husband and wife have intercourse, it should be for the first time, and there’s a shedding of blood.

So it’s normal for example, for a wedding service, the couple may speak words to one another and form covenant. They exchange rings as a sign of covenant; people witness the covenant being made; there’s a celebration of covenant; but the marriage is not complete until the first act of sexual intercourse, and in that, the shedding of blood. What the parents used to do, was they would keep the sheets where the blood was shed - these were the tokens of the woman’s virginity. This was very highly valued in the Hebrew culture – that the woman kept herself for the husband, and the man entered into covenant with her.

So, when a man has sexual intimacy with a woman, and does not make a covenant with her, he is taking advantage of her. He is using her to meet his needs, but he is not offering her covenant, commitment, and security. This is devastating to women. God has set this in place - it’s His divine design. So God has also wired into us, that the man would conquer or pursue to conquer; and that women would desire security and commitment - that was the design.

So Jesus pursues us, offers us covenant, and we are secure in our relationship with Him. In the marriage, the man pursues the woman, offers her covenant, and then is faithful to her in the whole season of their relationship.

You understand then, that the whole act of sexual intercourse is in the context of marriage covenant. Everything about the whole wedding service, and the area of sexual intimacy, is to do with God’s design for marriage covenant. You can understand why we’ve just read in 1 Thessalonians 4 not to defraud the other person. That means to manipulate someone, and get something from them. When you defraud someone, you take something they wouldn’t have given you, except you put one over them. So men defraud women – leading them on, and drawing them into sexual intimacy, and then abandoning them. Women seeking to be secure, or have a relationship, can give in to this, and then feel defrauded.

You can see by what I’ve shared already, how far everyone’s moved away from God’s design; how we need to return to God’s design. If you create something, you know how it works. A designer who makes a microwave, they have a manual on how to make it work right. They say: don’t put any metal into this thing. “I don’t care; I don’t follow the manual you know. I do this my own way”. So you put a cup in with some metal stuff on it, and all sorts of things go off inside the microwave. “Whoa! What’s wrong with that?” We just didn’t follow the makers design.

We need to come back to God’s design, and embrace how God intended sexual intimacy to work. However, understand that man, opposed to God, will have his own ideas. Remember, the definition of sin means: to fall short of what God intended for our good. So, sexual sin – people fall short of what God intended. Do they enjoy it? Of course they do - God made it to be enjoyable; but there is a hidden destruction, because the wages of sin is always death.

We’ll find that the Bible warns about sexual sin; and we want to understand the damage caused by sexual sin. You understand, if God’s purpose is intimacy; and if we’re intimate we become vulnerable; it’s not surprising that damage takes place if we have sexual relationships outside marriage.

Let’s have a look at some warnings on this area. You have to remember this: that God is not against sex. God thought it up. We recognise God as the creator; He’s given us the ability to create a life; and He thought up exactly how it would work. He designed us for this; and He built in that this is going to be good. You’ll feel good, and you’ll like it. He built this into us - and then just in case we just don’t want to go that way, He puts a desire for this in us. Don’t go praying that God would take it all away - He gave it to you for a purpose.

We’ll just have a read in 1 Corinthians 6:13-20 – “Now the body is not for sexual sit, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” What it’s basically saying, is that God does not want you to be involved in sexual sin; He wants you to honour Him. So, clearly, right at the beginning - keeping ourselves pure, honours God.

Just think again about His design. He’s designed us to reveal what He’s like; and He doesn’t go around having sex with people with no commitment. His relationships are covenantal - they are permanent.

Remember we saw how blood was shed for covenant between a husband and a wife? God forms covenant with us in the blood of Jesus Christ. We have communion - we celebrate we’re in covenant with God. When you have communion, this is what you’re celebrating.

You’re celebrating many things of course, but here’s the key of it – that I’m in a committed relationship with God. God has made covenant with me. I am His wife, and as evidence of that covenant, I will take this bread and take this cup, to remind me that in this covenant, it was Jesus’ own blood that purchased me. I am valuable to God. I am loved by Him. I belong to Him. I don’t belong to anyone else. I belong primarily to Him. That’s the core of communion. I am forgiven, because a Husband forgives me. I am loved, because my Husband loves me. See, it’s a marriage covenant.

We don’t tend to think about our relationship with God like that, but everything about His relationship is covenant; because He says: I am a covenant-keeping God. So breaking covenant, being unfaithful - is a terrible crime. From God’s eyes, if relationship means life, then breaking relationship is death. If covenant means: this is how God relates to us, then betraying covenant is a wicked sin – it violates the core of who God is. Let’s go on a little further...

It says in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 15: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them members of a prostitute? Certainly not! Or do you not know, that he who is joined to a prostitute, is one body with her? For the two shall become one flesh.”

Notice what He’s saying here. He’s saying that, as a believer, the Spirit of God lives in me. I’m a part of Jesus’ representation in the Earth. I’m a part of the body of Christ – meaning I represent Him - He lives within me. So He said: why would I get involved with a prostitute, and be joined to a prostitute? Notice that when you’re involved sexually, it affirms again, that you become joined. He says: I’m joined to the Spirit of God; I don’t want to get involved in sexual sin - it’ll grieve the Spirit of God. Think about it, if you get involved in sexual sin, you’re taking the Holy Spirit where He doesn’t want to go.

Notice what it says in verse 18: “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality, sins against his own body.” The word they use there for sexual sin is the word ‘Porneia’, which means: unlawful sexual relationships, or idolatry.

Now, look at this. It says: “...every sin you do, is just outside you”. If you lie, it’s outside you; you steal, it’s outside you; you break the laws, it’s outside you. Every sin is outside you; but there’s something about sexual sin that makes it different. This is why God warns about it. He says: he that commits sexual sin, sins against, or into, his own body.

When you sin sexually, there is something that enters into your body; because the two become joined, there is an entrance into you, of another person. There is a part of them that enters your life. This is why it’s saying that sin is so difficult - why it’s such a problem; because in every other sin, it’s just outside you; but in sexual sin, something happens inside you - you change on the inside.

For example, your brain chemistry will begin to respond, and there’ll be memory tracts put inside you. Sexual sin can build neuron pathways that become quite addictive - you build tracts in your mind. So, in a whole number of ways, sexual sin brings something into you. You need to be aware of this when you’re ministering to people.

It’s not just a sin outside to say “I’m sorry” for; it’s a change within them that’s taking place; and it will have ongoing effects on the person. You can’t walk away from it, because you’re carrying the impact of your sin inside you. So sexual sin is quite unique in its impact - something comes into us.

There’s a verse in Romans 1:27, it says “Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another; men with men, committing what is shameful; and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.” Notice something ‘inside’ the person changes. So, what He’s saying in both of these verses is simply that: sexual sin has an impact on you that no other sin has. Something changes inside you. The more you follow the path of sexual sin, the deeper the impact and changes on you.

Let’s have a look at some of the damage sexual sin causes. Many people won’t acknowledge it, but the more you become sensitive to your spirit, and what is happening in your life, the more you become aware of the presence and impact of sexual sin. Firstly, there is spiritual damage. The first thing is, it affects your relationship with God. You grieve the Holy Spirit.

In Ephesians 4:30, it talks about grieving the Holy Spirit; to cause Him pain and sorrow. Because God is a covenant God, if you are involved in sexual sin, then you grieve the Spirit of God, and it affects your relationship. Ephesians 4 and 5 are both connected, and it lists the things that grieve the Holy Spirit. So sexual sin grieves and dishonours what God has called us to be.

If we continue in the sin, we become desensitised in our conscience. One of the things that seem to happen, when you’re involved in sexual sin, is that there’s a guilt, and a shame, that comes around your life. Guilt – I’ve done something wrong. Shame – something’s wrong with me. For all the emphasis the world makes on sexual sin being okay, if anyone in a significant role is caught in sexual sin, they immediately experience shame and dishonour.

So the first spiritual impact is that our relationship with God is affected or wounded. God wants us to be confident and bold towards Him. You’ll find that when people are wrestling with sexual sin, they feel condemned, and unworthy to enter into the presence of God. We’ll come back to that later, in how to step back up again after you’ve sinned.

However, I’ve noticed in the area of sexual sin: 1) the devil will push on you to do it; and 2) he’ll follow it up with an accusation of shame. So God has made provision for cleansing, we just need to know how to apply it.

Second thing, demonic defilement can occur. In other words, demonic spirits can transfer from one person to another, if the two have had sexual relationships. This is why: if two people have sexual intercourse, what does God say about it? The two become one. If two people have become one, then if I have demons in me, and I become joined to a person, then we’re one, so the demon has a right to go there too. Just as sexual disease can be transmitted, demonic spirits have a legal right to come into that person.

Now you understand how, in the Old Testament, one of the things that caused men of God to go off track was sexual sin; because it enabled demonic spirits to come into the person, and bring them into captivity.

For example, in Numbers 25, Balaam had tried to curse Israel; and God said: “No, they’re blessed”. He said: “What can I do? I know what to do: send in the women who’d been worshipping idols; get them to sleep with the men - and then it’s all over”. That’s exactly what they did. They sent women, who were worshipping idols, to come and sleep with the men and compromise their life.

You think about what happened to Samson. Judges 16 – It says: “there were people lying in wait for him to fall into sexual sin”; and then they took away his strength, then they brought him into bondage and captivity. In other words, sexual sin was the doorway for him to become spiritually captive. You think about King David - sexual sin led to other things like deception and murder.

So, when people are involved in sexual sin, in the Old Testament, there was a law that said: they had to be put to death; or in other words: a spirit of death can legally enter them.

So, you find demonic defilement can easily occur when people have been involved sexually. I had one girl, as I shared with you, who was struggling with occult oppression; and the doorway the spirit used was: she was involved sexually with someone involved in the occult.

Another aspect of spiritual damage is that ungodly soul ties are connected. They give demons the right to enter in. A soul tie is a bonding. So when two people become one, they’re bonded together. If they’re married, it’s a lawful tie; if they’re unmarried, it’s an ungodly tie - ungodly soul ties. So this bonding enables demonic spirits to enter the person’s life. You will find, when you start to break ungodly soul ties of sexual partners, that many times, the demons will manifest immediately.

So you can see the spiritual impact – relationship with God damaged, demonic spirits can enter, conscience is damaged, becomes vulnerable to condemnation, and demonic soul ties are formed. It’s quite a load of stuff isn’t it? But that’s not all.

Remember what I said, something comes into you. So, when God says: you be careful about this sin, because something would change inside you. Something would change, that’s not easy to change back again. So He said: that’s why you keep yourself pure. You will change. Something will happen inside you, and it’ll take some effort to get this damage fixed up.

Now let’s have a look at what happens in the soul. We’re talking about the soul of man. Proverbs 5, 6, and 7 talks quite a bit about sexual sin. Let’s have a look in Proverbs 5:3-5 for example. “For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell.”

Notice what it’s saying there – it’s talking about sexual sin. It says: it’s smoother than oil, lips dripping honey, sweet. What it’s saying is that it’s very sweet. When you start down the path of sexual sin - it’s very sweet; but you see, the end is bitter. Starts sweet; ends bitter. You’ll find that bitterness becomes a problem when people have been involved in sexual sin. Bitter men, bitter women; feeling used in the sexual relationship - expecting intimacy and love; and instead, being rejected and abandoned; so the end – bitterness. When you’re ministering to people, be aware there’ll be bitterness there.

Proverbs 5:5 – “Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell.” Notice death and hell are spiritual powers. Death causes people to be isolated. Hell torments people. So the two spirits are found very commonly connected to sexual sin: Death – which isolates and numbs; and Hell – which torments. Proverbs 5:22 – “His own iniquities entrap the wicked man, and he is caught in the cords of his sin.”

So that’s Proverbs 5. Let’s have a look at Proverbs 6:32-33 – “Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding (or heart); for he who does it, destroys his own soul. Wounds and dishonour he will get, and his reproach will not be wiped away.” Isn’t that amazing? The impact in the Bible is very clear. Talking specifically about adultery, and He said: you will get wounds and shame come into your life.

You think about now, public exposure of adultery, anywhere you’ve seen it in the media - it brings tremendous dishonour, and it brings tremendous pain. Everyone despises it. Even if no-one talks about it, when it comes out to the open, people are dishonoured and shamed and wounded.

Let’s have a look in Proverbs 7:25-27 – “Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, do not stray into her paths; for she has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death.”

So, this passage again says of the issue of wounds; and refers again to death and hell. If you want to look at the whole process of temptation, you can see it outlined in Proverbs 6. What I want you to pick up from here is that: there is damage caused in the soul. Wounds, or blows, or cuts to the soul. So exactly what happens? Your soul, we think, is your mind and emotions and your imagination and your will. Let’s have a look at some of the things in the soul.

Firstly, defiling pictures - pictures and memories of sexual experiences. See, your memory works like this – whatever you see, or have experience of, your mind retains a picture of that. If there’s intense pleasure associated with it, or intense pain, it’s more deeply imprinted; and if it’s repeated, it imprints even more. The nature of sexual sin is that whenever people are involved in sexual intimacy, chemicals are released; and thought trees form in the mind; and they are very strong because of the immense amount of chemicals released.

There are pictures in your mind, and you can’t get rid of them - they will come back when you’re praying, come back when you’re having intimacy with your spouse. They just keep coming back - because they’re in you. They’re in your brain. Now, you can do something about them. I’ll show you a little bit later what you can do about the pictures.

Demonic spirits get on them, and use them to manipulate you. You could be having time of worship, and whoosh the picture comes back, then condemn you; because the area of your brain that’s involved in worship, and with God, is the same area involved in sexual intimacy. That’s why when you’re trying to worship God, the part of your mind that gets involved, is the part involved with intimacy - that’s why those pictures come up. If there’s a healthy relationship in marriage, the pictures don’t come up. If you’ve got unhealthy or ungodly sexual relationships, up come the pictures to block your intimacy with God.

The second aspect is: painful emotions. What kind of emotions? As you remember the relationship, and the relationship broke up, there’s usually grief – because there was high expectation in that relationship; there’s feelings of being rejected; there’s often bitterness; and sometimes people begin to hate men or women, or they’ll hate themselves. There’s often anger, and there’s often shame. Now isn’t that an amazing bunch of things inside you? People were looking for love, and got hurt.

So, what happens is: their soul is left with the damage. Grief – I feel angry; I feel rejected; and then the person begins to feel bitter and hateful against men, or against women, or often against themselves. A woman, who was seduced by a man, afterwards will walk away feeling: I just hate myself - how could I have let that happen. Of course, it’s all in secrecy from family, so there’s an immense shame that sits over the person’s life.

When you come to talk to a person, they’ll barely tell you what they did. They won’t tell you about all this mess that’s going on in their life. You just need to know: that’s the turmoil. There’s more - there’s confusion inside, because the person who’s had several relationships: they gave a part of their soul here, and it was hurt; now they give a part here, and that’s hurt; leave a part here, and that’s hurt. Now they’re scattered.

So when they finally get married, it’s hard to give themselves anymore - too much brokenness, too much pain; and because the person’s scattered, it’s hard to give themselves intentionally to one person. Sometimes they feel they’re still attached to the other person. Sometimes, if a spouse is spiritually sensitive, they can feel it. It’s like you’re not with me.

Remember we said that sexual intercourse is about intimacy, it’s about connection from within. When I’ve been teaching you about flowing in the spirit, remember I talked to you about the need for focus; that if your mind goes somewhere else, you disconnect, and there’s no flow from your spirit. So in sexual intimacy with your spouse, it’s important your mind does not disconnect; does not go remembering other relationships; does not go fantasising; but you connect with your spouse. So if you’ve got lots of images in there, your mind disconnects, goes all over. You understand why God warned about this? This is a problem for people; they don’t talk about it though.

So wounds and dishonour is caused; and not only that, but you find if a man for example, is involved in pornography, his whole brain chemistry changes. In other words, each time he’s involved in a pornographic experience, which means: fantasy, desire, and sometimes sexual masturbation. Every time that happens, there’s a tract formed in his mind.

There’s a thing about pornography – when people are involved with pornography, they’re not dealing with a real person and a real relationship; they’re looking at an image. In that image, they objectify the woman. The woman’s treated like an object for the man’s pleasure and control. When a man watches pornography, his whole brain begins to be trained, so if he sees a woman, he does not see the image of God, he does not see the person. He sees the body; he sees an object; and his mind is trained by the constant exposure to pornography. He sees her as an object, to be used to feel good.

So when a man is involved in watching pornography, images are formed in the soul, in the mind, brain chemistry begins to develop ruts, mental ruts. This deeply affects his ability to be intimate, because every time he sees a woman, he’s looking at her body, to scan her body parts, and treat her as an object of pleasure. This totally perverts the image of God, and turns this person into an object for him.

So he has all these fantasies about what a woman would be like and do, and this totally defiles his ability to enter into intimacy in marriage; makes him self-centred rather than loving. Spirits of perversion and prostitution enter his life and defile him. So, if a man has been involved in pornography, his wife would never feel loved by him. How could she? He won’t flow from his spirit to her, because his mind is defiled by a different kind of thinking. That whole process of the mind needs to be cleansed.

“Flee sexual sin”. There’s a good reason for it! It’s not because God says: “Oh, I hate sex. It’s so bad.” He said: “I love you, be careful. I’ve given you a gift that could destroy you.” See the difference? Church often won’t talk about it. Just: sex is bad. Even if people don’t say it, you get that message: “Don’t do it. You’ll be a bad person.” So all the shame is all over it; rather than God’s perspective – “I’ve given you this amazing, fantastic gift. It’s just unbelievable. It creates so much pleasure; and possibly creating a life. It’s a great gift. Please be careful. You’ll do a lot of harm if you misuse this gift.”

It’s almost certain in Genesis 5:6 that the group of watcher angels fell from their place God appointed them, because they wanted to be involved sexually with women. “Wow. Look at this gift God’s given to people. Man, this looks so good. We want a piece.” So they left what God appointed them to, and got involved with women. The Bible says: that’s when the nephilim and giants were born into the Earth. We won’t go into that, but you would understand there’s more to this whole issue than you’ve realised.

Now the last one we’ll put down is: people form destructive reactions in their soul. When people are hurt, they usually try to defend or protect themselves in some way - they don’t want to be hurt again. So it’s quite common when people have been involved in sexual sin, that there’s a reaction or a wall built in the heart, to stop themselves being hurt again.

Typical issues in people to be aware of are these:

1) Inner vows; or inward vows. I’ll give an example in a moment. It’s a vow the person makes in themselves, out of hurt and anger. For example, “I’ll never trust a man again.” “I’ll never trust a woman again.” If you make an inward vow in your heart – “I’ll never trust a man again”, your heart will believe that. You know what your heart will say? I agree, let’s not trust a man. You may forget you said it, but years later, you get married and he’s a wonderful man. What if just a great man came into your life? But you know what your heart is saying? Don’t trust him. You can never trust a man.

So, no matter how good he is, you’ll still never trust him; and the relationship will begin to fail, because a stronghold of distrust is in there. The inner vow - I have prayed for people who’ve made inner vows never to carry a male child, and then miscarried every male child. When people get hurt, and they make inner vows to protect themselves, these are like strongholds in the heart, that stop their lives being productive.

2) Bitter judgement. You’ve been hurt by a couple of men, or hurt by a couple of women, and you’ll never trust a man again. You’ll never trust men - they’ll always let you down. Never trust women - they’ll always control you. These kinds of bitter judgements then defile all future relationships. A very common one is a death wish - I just wish I was dead. People covered in shame about what they’ve done, and what they’ve allowed to happen to them, just say: “I wish I was dead”. These are reactions in the soul that you have to address when you’re ministering to people.

So, you start to notice now, every sin you commit is outside your body; but sexual sin is inside the body. Now we see there’s: issues of sin; there’s the issue of demons; ungodly soul ties; the pictures imprinted in the mind and the body; the hurts in the heart; and the reactions in the heart. What a mess! No wonder God says, or warns us about it. It’s not because it’s evil, it’s a good gift. It’s just it needs to be kept in God’s guidelines, for it to be a wonderful gift.

In the next session, we’ll look at some of the examples of sexual sin, particularly pornography, and then what I’ll do is how to get people free – what to do.

[Second Session]

We see in the last session how God has given us an amazing gift, and He wants us to learn how to steward and manage that gift, so it’s a blessing and not a cause of pain.

One of the big things related to sexual sin, is that it thrives in darkness and secrecy. Because of the shame that seems to come with it, it remains covered and concealed; and whatever’s concealed, is a place of darkness thriving.

I believe in today’s culture, this is becoming an increasing problem. Particularly the internet has opened up all kinds of ways of people accessing sexual perversion. People can be connected into a whole realm of perversion and you wouldn’t know. Even simple exposures can have a huge issue in the person’s life.

We prayed for one young pastor’s son, and he’d been involved in internet pornography for about two years. The pastor was really upset, because he said: we’ve got a computer in the open, and we’ve done everything we can to keep them from it, but we cannot understand how this happened. He kept all the boundaries up in the home over this issue of pornography. His son went to a friend’s place, and they were open about it - the father let the kids watch stuff on the computer; and that one exposure - he became addicted. He’s just a teenage boy, who’s got drawn into this thing.

The word pornography comes from two words put together - the word “porno” - “prostitute”; and the word “graphic”, or “to write”. So the writings of prostitutes were the original form of pornography - that’s where it originally came from. You’ll find behind pornography is a spirit of prostitution, a spirit of perversion, and usually idolatry, self-idolatry. Prostitution – because many of those are involved are selling themselves, or receiving money in order to do these things. That’s one aspect of it. Spirit of perversion – it totally perverts the image of God.

A woman is also created in the image of God, but Pornography totally destroys that image - treats the person as an object or a thing, rather than as a person. Men particularly, are vulnerable to pornography: 1) because they’re very stirred or stimulated by what they see; and 2) often because of rejection, and fears of real relationship. It’s often driven by a desire for comfort, or a desire for control.

Pornography alters the chemistry in the brain - it releases serotonin and dopamine, and that creates pathways in the brain. Pornography is progressively addictive. It’s like a drug in the person’s life – they need more and more and more, in order to get the same feelings. It results in soul-ties being formed to images. A person in pornography is actually locked in to the images, locked in on the websites, like attached to them.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:28 “If you look after a woman with lust in your heart, you’ve already committed adultery. So pornography opens the door for: spirits of lust to enter; spirits of perversion; spirits of prostitution; and spirits of idolatry. In the Old Testament, the idolater’s practices in the cultures that Israel went into - you know one thing they mostly had in common? Temple prostitutes! So being involved with prostitutes, male and female, was a part of the whole worship ceremony. Again, what God intends for good and blessing, becomes a destructive doorway into people’s life for demons.

I was reading recently about a survey done on pornography. They did a test on the areas of the brain that were affected, when a person was exposed to pornography. This is what they found: if a person had little or no exposure, when they saw some pornographic images, there was not a very big response in their brain; however, if they were watching a lot of pornography, whole areas of the brain started to become alive and stimulated - and these are exactly the same areas that become stimulated by someone who’s involved in drugs, or some kind of chemical dependency.

The conclusion they came to, was that the response of the brain to pornography is chemically identical to that of any other kind of addictive material, or addictive substance. Of course, you can understand there’s a lot of resistance to agreeing with that point of view. Essentially they’re saying that it is addictive, in the same way a drug is addictive. It alters your brain chemistry; creates a false reality; and progressively requires more to produce the same result. This is a major area now, and we need to be straight upfront and talk about these things - help people in their journey to get free of it.

So that’s only one of a whole range of sexual sins. I’ll give you a number of things that the Bible talks about; you can search them out yourself. The Bible talks about, first of all, fornication – sexual sin outside marriage; adultery; homosexuality; rape; sexual intimacy with demons; child abuse; bestiality – sexual relationship with animals; prostitution; cross-dressing. In other words, anything that perverts God’s pattern for man is a problem - incest; rape and abuse. So the list goes on and on. We need to have some strategies on how to set people free. We need to know what we would do to help people.

I wanted to just talk about some of the pathways to freedom. Here’s the first scripture, Proverbs 28:13, “He who covers his sins will not prosper; but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.”

Let me just go through perhaps the journey of ministry to set people free. I think there’s the actual ministry itself, and there’s the follow-up afterwards. Let’s first of all, have a look at the ministry side.

1) Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to reveal the roots. We must learn to depend on the Holy Spirit’s help, in dealing with any person. Learn to listen with your heart, to any impressions He gives you. It could be simply a question to ask: “Have you been involved in this?”, and watch to look at the person’s response. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Be open all the time to listen to His promptings.

2) Diagnose the problem. That means you have to ask questions; and keep asking questions until you feel that you have got to the root of the problem. The root of the problem may be generational; that could be a factor in it. This is not just this person’s problem, there’s a contribution that comes from the generational line. Perhaps there’s some trauma the person’s been through. Were they sexually abused? Where they exposed to any sexual situations when they were very young?

Abuse ranges from just being exposed to something you shouldn’t have seen, right through to very serious and prolonged abuse. Is there a pattern of sinning in this area? Take your time to find out the truth, because sexual sin carries with it a huge deception around it. People will try and conceal from you what’s really happening. Commitment to the truth is the only way the person will get free. There can be no shadow of darkness, the person’s got to come clean.

So diagnose the problem. That means asking questions; looking for any contributing roots - are there generational issues; are there trauma, abuse issues; is it a habitual pattern; when did it start; how did it start? It just helps to search, because sometimes, for example, a young man may have experienced a family breakup, and in the midst of the pain, he’s gone looking for comfort.

So sexual sin is the comfort; but the root is the pain of the breakup. So look for anything that contributes to this problem. Don’t just look at the sin, and get disgusted by the sin -diagnose what the problem is. When you think you’ve got it summed up, just talk back. Just share with them what you see is the problem - interact with the person over this. If you don’t understand the extent of the problem, your solution will only be a patch over the top. The person needs to be honest with you.

In being honest with you, if there’s any crime involved, you can’t cover it. You can’t cover crime. If there’s a sexual abuse situation, you can’t be committed to be secret about that. You know, the person says to you: “I tell you what’s happening, but you must promise you’ll never tell anyone!” “Whoa, you say - wait a minute. I want to help you, but I won’t agree to that. I will keep confidence, but if there’s something really serious, I will remain free to talk to someone over me - to get their advice and help.”

If you don’t do that, you could be drawn to something terrible. Person might say: “I’ve been sexually molesting my younger sister.” Woah! Or it could be: “I’ve been involved sexually with a leader in the church.” Wow! You just can’t have a secrecy thing sit over your counsel in this area. Confidential? Yes, I’m not going to talk about you in any kind of way to anyone. Secrecy – I won’t promise I won’t tell someone. You have to keep open the option, that what you’re going to encounter, you need to talk to someone above you.

You’re not an expert, and you may need someone else to advise you. If someone tells you a terrible secret, you’ll be left in a very condemned state if you don’t talk to someone about it. In other words, when they say: ‘You must keep this secret’, they’re about to bring you into the secrecy and darkness that they’ve already had for years. Don’t be tricked into making that kind of commitment, because you may need to tell someone else.

I had one person who came to me, and they had married this woman who had two boys. He began sexually abusing the boys. It came out to me - the man came and confessed his sin. He confessed his sin because he’s in turmoil, absolute turmoil. So I said: “Well, it’s good you’ve become honest. It’s good you brought this to the light; but what you’ve done is wrong. There are many consequences of it.

The first is your relationship with God; we’ll talk with you about returning to the Lord again.” I said: “You’ve betrayed your wife’s trust, and breached your marriage by abusing her children. Secondly, you’ve committed a crime. This is against the law, you’ve broken the law. This kind of crime cannot be hidden - I cannot hide it, neither will I attempt to.” So I said: “There are a couple of options. You need to report to the woman what you’ve been doing. Separate yourself. Inevitably, she will make a complaint to the police. You may choose to go to the police first, and make a confession.”

I said: “I will not be party to anything being covered up. So I’ll give you a season to decide how you’re going to respond. This is a crime. It’s a crime against children; and by law, we have to report this. So I’ll give you an opportunity to take initiative to put the thing right. You will face the consequences. However, the Bible’s very clear – if you confess and forsake, you’ll find mercy. By coming upfront about what you’ve done, will mean there will be leniency in the outcomes. I’ll give you a week, and I’ll ask you at the end of the week what’s happened - I’ll check up.”

Of course, it all came out into the open. Just understand: I refused to be kept in a place of covering a crime. These things come out in the open anyway. I don’t want to be party to concealing something that should be dealt with by proper process.

Can you imagine the reproach on your ministry, if someone was abusing a child, they told you, and you took no action? Your ministry will be discredited - totally discredited! You would be seen to be agreeing with a child molester. This is where churches get confused - they feel sorry for the criminal, they feel compassion for him. That’s okay to feel those things; but you must follow due process, or you become party to this whole issue. You have to be really clear about this.

You need to do it like this: tell them they need to confess their sin to the Lord, and ask for His forgiveness. Assure them their forgiveness will come, but they must turn away from the sin. Repentance is not just saying ‘sorry’. Repentance is: realising I’ve hurt people, and turning away from it because I’ve hurt them.

You need to explain the area of forgiveness – that the person must forgive the people who’ve hurt them. There may be some anger and grief in this area. So, you may take a little bit of time, helping the person face and admit their grief and anger, and being willing to forgive. Forgiveness must come from the heart. From the heart, forgive.

You may say: “Look, you’re still very angry at these people. Why don’t you just do an exercise, and over the next week, you write an anger letter. Write a letter to the person, you’ll never send it to them. It’s to put your anger out of your heart and on paper, where you can see it and resolve it before the Lord. So the person needs to let go of anger about the things that have happened and forgive the person.

Forgiveness is twofold: first of all, forgiving the people who’ve hurt you; second, receiving forgiveness and forgiving yourself. Some people have trouble forgiving themselves. It’s important. Particularly girls often feel great shame - they find it hard to forgive themselves. So you’ve got to talk about that and encourage them: “You need to release yourself from this demand, because God’s already forgiven you.”

Another thing we need to help people do is to understand their need to renounce, or cancel, bondages. What sorts of things would you need to cancel? Well, ungodly sexual soul ties. Inevitably, there’d be soul ties – cut them. Soul ties to pornographic images – cut them. Soul ties to websites – cut those ties.

There may be defensive reactions that need to be renounced, such as: inner vows; judgements; death wishes; and the person may need to renounce each of those. “I must renounce each inner vow I made, that I’d never let a man come near me again. I renounce all bitter judgements I formed against women. I renounce every death wish; I choose life.” So renounce the bondages. Finally, the person needs to then come near to the Lord - ask the Lord to forgive them and set them free.

Let’s do that again. Confession and repentance of sin - the person must turn away from their sin, and then speak words confessing it: “Lord I ask You to forgive me, for the sin of pornography. I ask You to cleanse me, and set me free from all its defilement in my life.” Lead the person in a good confession. Forgiveness; receive forgiveness; and forgive others; and forgive themselves. Renounce bondages – ungodly soul ties, any kinds of defensive reactions, walls in the heart.

So, when we’ve got there, we then need to get involved in ministry. Ministry to the person - you must again, follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. One of the first things I tend to do, is to break the bondages: “In Jesus’ name, I break...” The things you break are of course: the generational curses or iniquity; any soul ties; any bondages like inner vows, or death wishes and so on. “In Jesus’ name, I break them.”

Then, begin to command the spirits. Speak into the person, command spirits to come out. So what kinds of spirits might you come up against? Well, there are all kinds. Let me just give you a few: spirits of lust; spirits of perversion; spirits of idolatry; could be generational spirits. So those are the kinds of spirit things - spirit of pornography; spirit of adultery. Those are some of the obvious ones.

First of all, think about the spirits that have come into the person. Then, begin to think about the reactions the person has made – spirits of hatred, spirits of bitterness, spirits of grief, and spirits of shame. Makes sense? Spirit of self-hate; spirit of death; spirit of torment or hell. I’ve just given you ideas of what you could be looking for; the kinds of spirits that are there.

I tend to think of it in just three layers: spirits that have come in because of the activity itself; spirits that have come in because of the person’s reaction to the offender; then spirits that come in because of the reaction to themselves. The sin itself; reaction to the offender; reaction to themselves. So reactions to yourselves, such as: self hate; shame; bitterness - those kinds of things. Reactions against the offender: hatred of men, or hatred of women; bitterness; anger; rage - those kinds of things; then actually coming in from the sin itself.

I think logically about these things. When it comes to the ministry, the bondage – what are the bondages? 1, 2, 3, 4, break them. What are the sins? What spirits have come in? Go for those. Reaction for the offender – go for those. Reaction to themselves – go for those. Just speak. You find sometimes, if you just mentioned the name, the things come up to the surface.

For example, we were doing ministry in the alter calls, some of you were just laying hands on people; and that’s good – releases the power of God. However, with many of them, there’s no response until I began to name spirits. Always keep in mind that God will give you the names of spirits. It’s just sort of knowing where to look, rather than: woah - not knowing where to look. So, I know where to look: the sin; the offender; and then themselves. When you know where to look, it’s quite simple. So, those are some things we would do.

There are a couple of other things I do, two other things: 1) I ask the Holy Spirit to remove out of the person’s body, soul, and spirit, everything imparted through the relationships. Ask the Holy Spirit to remove out of the person, out of their body, soul, and spirit, everything imparted through the relationships. That makes sense? If something comes into you, ask the Holy Spirit to take it out. “I speak into the spirit, soul, and body. Holy Spirit, I ask that You would remove everything that’s been imparted into them.” I also ask the Holy Spirit to restore every part of them that was scattered. Make sense?

In other words, God does the restoration part. I don’t understand all of that, but I have found that really helpful in bringing a peace and wholeness in the person. I’ve found often, people weep when you pray, because they feel something’s in them. There’s a sort of shame and uncleanness, and you can’t seem to get rid of it - especially women have this difficulty.

“Father I just ask You to remove out of their spirit, soul, and body, everything that was imparted in that relationship. Take it out. Father, every part of their soul and spirit that went out to those relationships, Lord, restore it to them now.” So there’s a kind of that pulling their person back together again. Then, I just ask the Lord to release cleansing holiness back into their life. Release cleansing. “Lord, release Your love, and Your cleansing, into their heart.”

Sometimes people pray that the spirit of virginity would be released into their life. They can’t get back their physical virginity, but they can be restored by God to feel completely clean inside, as though nothing has happened.

So that’s kind of the process of ministry. You can see that you can’t do all of that in an alter call, but you can do that when you’re praying with people. Does that make sense to you? Everything I’ve done in the ministry is to undo something that happened in the whole situation in being involved in sexual sin.

Now, let’s look at the next area which would be after ministry: follow-up. We look at follow-up. Clearly, sexual sin has an impact, which is quite major on a person’s life. First sexual experiences can be particularly impacting on people. Here are a few things you could follow-up with.

1) House cleansing. Are there things they need to get rid of? House cleansing. Are there any items they need to get rid of? It could be magazines, computer files, old love letters, sometimes gifts that were given. Is there anything the person needs to get rid of? Remember: you want them to separate from sin, and to walk with God. So don’t hold on to things - it’s over; if it’s over - it’s over. Let it go.

It may be you need to get rid of letters, or items, or pictures, or anything that’s likely to lead to sin again. Don’t be controlling in this matter. It’s their life - they must be responsible for this journey. So, you can just ask the Holy Spirit: “Are there any items I need to get rid of”. Let the Holy Spirit tell them - you can throw out a few suggestions – computer files, images, videos, books, pictures. Are there things you need to get rid of? Do it quickly. Get the momentum going, of shift - don’t delay it.

2) Are there any relationships the person needs to distance themselves from? To distance means to create a space, so they can repair their life. So, are there any relationships where the person needs to create some space and distance? In other words, if they were sexually involved with someone, are they still in the relationship? If they stay in the relationship, as it is, it’ll just go back to where it was. Once a relationship has turned sexual, the person stops developing intimacy, and it becomes physical. So they need to cut off and separate for awhile, while they begin to walk right with God. You just got to ask the question, and talk about it; but it’s still their decision.

3) Are there any apologies they need to make? Is there anything to be put right? Again, don’t be harsh on this, and demand them. Let the Holy Spirit show you. Is there anyone they need to apologise to? If they’re going to apologise to someone, then you need to instruct them how to do the apology. Otherwise it becomes worse. Sometimes it’s better to just leave it. Sometimes the person needs to actually put at least one right. With the issue of apologies, or restitution, God sometimes doesn’t require it; sometimes He’ll just use one as a sample. The key is to listen to the Holy Spirit.

If a person is to make an apology, there are some things about their apology.

1) There can be no blaming the other person whatsoever - no blame at all. If you’re apologising, you’re owning your own stuff - even if they cooperated. It’s not about that, it’s about you owning your own stuff. So, no blaming whatsoever. All blame must go.

2) You must be clear what you’re apologising for.

3) The person must resolve their own grief and anger. You can’t go to someone, and you’ve got blame in your heart and anger in your heart. It will be a mess. Just won’t work. So the person needs to be free of all anger, free of all blame, and decide what it is they need to apologise for.

It’s probably better to do it personally than with a letter. A letter is incriminating evidence. However, sometimes a letter or brief note can do. If you’re going to make an apology personally, contact the person and say: you’d like to speak to them very briefly, when it’s convenient. It has to be convenient to them. You may need to say “I want to put something right.”

Then, when you’re making the apology, it needs to be very brief. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk with you. God has been speaking to me, and I realised that I have deeply hurt you with my actions.” You identify the pain you’ve caused the other person. So very briefly, don’t go into lots of detail: “I’m so sorry for the distress I’ve caused you. Please forgive me.” Very brief! It takes courage to do that, but it’s amazing what it does in your heart and conscience.

Now, the person may not forgive you, but it’s not important - that’s their issue. The person may not want to see you, so you may be able to speak briefly over the phone, or do it in just a brief note - but keep it short. Quite easily: “Look, you know I’m a Christian, and God has been speaking to me recently. I realised what I did, when I did this, was very hurtful to you. I’m so sorry for the distress I’ve caused. Please forgive me.” That’s it. Sometimes people need to apologise.

4) Here’s the next thing. This is the harder part; and that is – rebuilding your life. If a person’s going to walk clean, they have to do some things differently. I guess there are lots of things you could do. I don’t want to give you a list of all these things: don’t do this, don’t do this - it just won’t work.

I think the beginning is: you must want to be clean, and see that it’s a good thing to be clean. You actually have to want to do this, by having a vision of a life serving God. I need to have a vision before me, of serving God, and having His life flowing through me. So I need to build my life. Pray in tongues everyday - spiritual life gets energised. Meditate in the word of God – begin to meditate in God’s love. Begin to allow God’s love to come round my life. These are very important things to do: meditate in God’s love; confessing His word over your life; daily bringing your life into alignment.

I have found it helpful to speak into my heart, and to speak into my mind. So what are you going to say? Speak into my heart – to command my heart to turn from all fantasies of sexual things. I want to arise in my spirit, and insist my heart align with God; because out of the heart flows the issues of life. If your heart has had fantasies of sexual things, your heart needs to turn from them. So as I speak to my heart, I might be picturing something very destructive, and I’m turning from it, and turning towards the Lord, who’s my friend.

Another thing I’ve found helpful, is to speak into your mind. The reason is, I believe your body will respond to your words. So what are you going to say? Well, Jesus cursed the tree; remember He cursed the tree? What did He say to the tree? No more fruit. So what I’ve found helpful, is to speak into my mind. I curse all the memory trees associated with sexual sin. No more fruit. Wither and die.

Here’s an interesting thing that they’ve discovered. There’s a great book by Caroline Leaf, and they’ve done research that indicate that thoughts actually occupy space in your brain - Neuron Trees. Every time you think about that thought, the tree starts to come alive. If they are destructive thoughts, it’s a thorny tree; if it’s positive thoughts, quite a healthy looking tree - they discovered this by research on the brain.

Here’s the interesting side of it - that the moment you think about those thoughts, they come alive, and subject to change. What if you were to actually picture that tree, just see the tree, and “I curse those thoughts In Jesus’ name”. No more fruit. Literally reject them. See the blood of Jesus; reject them. This is all before anything happens. It’s just a part of building a life with God; setting a life course, before you ever come into the place of temptation, you’ve daily set your course. I have found that helpful.

The next thing you need to do is to capture thoughts when they come. Capture temptations when they come. Capture the thoughts. There’s two ways of capturing the thoughts. In other words, we’ll just give an example - a male example. So, you’re walking down the street, and this woman comes towards you; and she’s dressed quite provocatively. Now, males are designed, immediately, the image and picture will come into the mind, it will start the man down the thinking pattern against her, to begin to look on her as an object. You have to catch the thought. We’ve got to capture it straight away. Capture it. “I refuse to treat a woman like an object. I reject that thought now.” Just capturing it, just like that. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 - capture your thoughts. It’s like it’s a living thing; and instead of letting it come in and fill your mind - capture it and stop it.

The second is, redirect your attention. Focus on something else. The moment you move your thinking somewhere, you start then, to start a different track going in your mind. Once the mind starts down the thoughts of sexual sin, the body chemistry starts to move. You’ve got a dynamic happening inside you that’s creating energy. So redirect your attention for the next 15 minutes, and all of that brain chemistry will subside. It’s like everything just goes away. You understand? It’s no use saying to yourself - this is the one thing that won’t work - “I shouldn’t think that.” I shouldn’t think: “ooh, that was a bad thought, I shouldn’t think that thought.” That won’t work, because it’s the law. It won’t work. Saying I shouldn’t do it.

I’ll give you an example. Suppose, I put a box up the front here, and it had a button on the top of it. A bit red button, and a sign – ‘Do not press’. Then, I leave it in the front, and I leave you in the room with the box. You know what you’re going to want to do! What happens if I push that? In the end, it’ll become an obsessive thought. No one’s looking? Push the button. In other words, the law – ‘Don’t press’, stimulated sin. The law never saves us, it’s got no power. Telling someone “you shouldn’t do that”, increases the desire to do it.

Suppose we put a little sign up there: ‘Wet paint, don’t touch’. You know what a lot of people will do? They want to touch. The sign is clear; but you see, something is stirred up inside - that’s what the law does. The moment someone says: “You mustn’t do that.” “Why not? I think I’d like to...” The law never helps you in this area.

You are better to treat it like this – instead of saying: ‘I shouldn’t have thought that, I’m such a bad Christian’, that strategy will lead you to failure. Say: “Lord, I’m thinking about this in this way, Lord it’s destructive. I don’t want to think that way, I bring that thought to death, I redirect my attention. Thank you Jesus for Your holiness rising up inside me. You have to deal with it with a spiritual and a practical approach. Trying to condemn yourself is not going to work.

Here’s another thing that’ll help – accountability. Being open with someone about your life, particularly so if someone’s been involved in pornography. You have to remember, accountability is just a way of you being responsible for change; because if you want to, you can always hide what you’re doing. It’s helpful to have some form of accountability. You have to realise that, if I’m asking someone to hold me accountable, it doesn’t mean that now they’ve got the problem - it’s still my problem.

So I frame it up like this: “Look, I’ve been wrestling with this problem. I’m really doing these things to try and break free. I really want to walk in freedom. I want to, each week when we go into the small group meeting, I want to meet up with you. I wonder if you can just ask me how I’m doing; ask me if I’m telling the truth. I just need you to help me keep my commitment to go forward.”

So it’s actually me owning the journey, but someone else helping me in the journey. Otherwise I’ll avoid her, and think: ‘oh, if I go talk to her, she’ll ask me the question, I don’t want her to ask questions. So accountability – I own, it’s my journey, someone is going to help me on my journey.

Get this - that being open, is the way I walk into freedom; because in the past, it was in secrecy. So, for this to happen, it’s important the person doesn’t condemn me. “Oh, why do you do that?! Why do you look at those things?! I told you not to look at those things!” I’m never going to tell her anything after that. So there’s a need for a relationship of openness. It’s the actual openness, free of condemnation, that allows the person’s grace to come free.

So the last thing perhaps we’ll share, in relationship to that, is there needs to be a simple strategy to handle failure - if the person fails, what to do? Inevitably in this journey, failures happen. Just saying, “I’ll never do it again!” – don’t make those promises. You’re probably going to fall. The Bible says: “the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he falls - though he falls - he won’t be cast down, God will lift him up.

So listen, if you fall, whether it be pornography, or masturbation, or something in the relationship - quickly acknowledge it; almost immediately acknowledge it. Quickly repent of it; and then stand up again inside, and hold the blood of Jesus Christ over your life. Because the longer you stay condemned, the more that thing will work in your life.

So if a person fails, as they are often likely to do, I’ll tell them: very quickly, do this immediately after the sin. Quickly turn to the Lord – “Lord I’m so sorry, I confess my sin to you. I’m just so sorry. Lord, I receive Your forgiveness; I receive Your cleansing; and I rise into Your presence again.” Because, the disconnection from God will keep the problem running.

The person must be helped to believe: “Listen, God will forgive you.” Begin to speak the word of God: “I thank You Lord, if we confess our sins, You’re faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us. I thank you Lord I am forgiven; I’m cleansed; I stand up like it’s never happened.” In other words, there’s a faith stand to stay connected to God - very important. And then it’s helpful to just be open with someone – “Hey, listen, I’m not doing so good.”

So, those are key strategies in this process. One last thing, perhaps - it’s helpful to become aware of what I call “sin cycles”. So you could draw a big circle. Outside the circle at the top, you could put ‘event’, ‘trigger event’. What happens, is that many times, the sin we’re struggling with follows a predictable cycle. It’s like it’s acted out, almost like it’s following a script. So it becomes a cycle.

A cycle is something that keeps repeating, almost the same way. It helps if you understand about a sin cycle. Usually there’s a trigger event – something happened. First thing, something happened. Second thing, you have a negative feeling. Hurt, I’ll put the word hurt – rejected or hurt, hurt feelings. Next thing, number three, is sadness or heaviness. Heaviness is often a sign that sexual sin is about to come – there’s a bit of a depression or heaviness.

At that point, you must redirect your attention; or the next stage in the cycle – pictures of sin, memories of sin, start to come back. When you get to the bottom of the circle, and the person sins. Then, the next part, they feel sad, or guilty. About the next part, 9 o’clock, they start to say I’m sorry. Next part, they’re trying to pray and read the Bible again. Then they’re back to the top again. It follows the same cycle all the time.

I’ve found that with many men who are in sexual sin, they just are there without seeing that there was a process to getting there. It’s like it was acted out. It’s almost like a script. They felt hurt, and negative feelings; began to feel bad about themselves, wanted to feel better; started to remember things that made them feel better, fall into sin; and then say I’m sorry, feel guilty, start to come back out of it again. So that’s what’s called the “sin cycle”; and it’s often fuelled by the rejection that’s in the heart.

The only way to deal with it is to recognise it, and become aware of things as they affect you; and change your behaviour. So, when you feel a bit down, don’t go back to where you were going, change what you do. Do something different, so you break this pattern that’s been formed in your brain chemistry.

Now I notice you’ve got someone coming who’s going to be speaking on addictions, and I have no doubt she will speak on this area – sexual addiction - and give you a lot more information on this topic. It will be helpful for you. What I’ve tried to do is give you just the basics of how you would minister to people. We’ll stop there and give room for questions.

Question and Answer

Can you tell us clearly how to break the sin cycle?

1) You need to be aware of it and recognise it – that I’m following a pattern that’s predictable. In fact, the way the person sins is often predictable. They come into fantasy, they start to dream and think about things. Next step, open the computer. Next step, start to look at certain sites; then they’re into sexual sins. So it’s a predictable pattern. If a person’s got a pattern of failure, recognise the pattern; and the process of acting out. That’s the first step – awareness.

2) They need to then start to ask the Holy Spirit to help them become aware of what their feelings are; and become alert to the first phase, when they start to feel down, just before the draw to sexual sin comes. At that point, when they realise they’re down, they should say: “Actually, I feel like I’m down. I feel quite low in my emotions. I wonder what has triggered this off. Sometimes you just: “Oh yeah, it’s after I spoke with them that I felt quite heavy.” Then they can just resolve it quite quickly.

Even if you don’t get to that stage, one thing you can do is then recognise: if I don’t redirect my attention, I’m going to go down the old track. Instead of going around to the bottom into sin, and back up the other side to the top again. When the person reaches to about 3 o’clock, when they’re feeling a bit down, make the decision to redirect the attention somewhere else; because by redirecting your focus into something that occupies your attention, after about 15 minutes, all your feelings will change as well. Then, you can move out of it. You don’t go down the old sin cycle. After about 15 minutes, if you take a different path, your feelings will shift, because it’s something programmed in you.

We don’t realise that when we sin, and we keep sinning, it often follows a completely predictable pattern, and it becomes programmed in the mind. So, I’ve suggested some prayer strategies for dealing with some of that; but ultimately, you’ve got to form different patterns. Sometimes it’s as simple as get up, go somewhere, and do something else that takes a lot of focus. Put your attention elsewhere - that totally redirects your mind, and the feelings you have will shift as well; then, the temptation subsides.

Divert your attention. Capture the thought, become aware of what you’re feeling, and aware of where this leads; or capture thoughts as they come and stop them, and redirect your attention. The refocusing of your attention changes what you open yourself up to. If you stand trying to fight the thing, it just gets bigger, because you’re focusing on it. What you focus on, you open your life to.

For example, in prayer ministry, if I focus on the other person’s needs too much, it can overwhelm. If I focus on myself, I shut down. If I focus on the Lord, it just opens up the way for God to move. So a simple prayer, and then change your direction. You’ve got to develop a new pattern; and eventually, it becomes the norm. Something happens – capture it, and then redirect your attention, and just change. For some who’d been in sexual sin for a long time, this can take some help, and some work with them.

Here’s one thing to realise: that all sins - the price has already been paid for; the worst thing you can do is live in condemnation, believing: I’m a failure, or something’s wrong with me; when God says: “you’re my son, I love you, you’re forgiven.”

Religious condemnation is a thriving ground for sexual sin. The overall feeling there’s something wrong with me, or I’m bad, or I’m not good enough. If people don’t feel good enough, they want to feel better. How can I feel better quickly? I know, I’ll have a drink. I’ll have a smoke. I’ll turn on the computer - just a little look. Then you’re gone. You go down a path.

It just helps if you understand that your brain gets programmed to follow that path; and that it can just take a little while to reprogram the path. Like we said - sexual sin does something inside you, but God is greater than all of that.

How can we help or minster to a homosexual person?

I’m learning that one! I think, number one, love and accept them - they’re people, and they’re valuable. I think the hardest thing is to get over the belief: this is evil; and the judgement that comes with it. Homosexuals are people too, and they’ve got their own pain, and their own journey. God loves them, and died for them. There are particular problems around homosexuality that create great internal difficulties.

The number one thing, I think, for all people, no matter what they’ve done, is that they feel that you accept them, and are not judging of them as a person. However, for many homosexuals, their identity is so attached to the behaviour, that if you point out things about the behaviour, they consider it an attack on themselves. So this is quite a difficulty; but I think in all helping people, it starts with accepting them. I don’t doubt that there are a number of homosexuals that came to Jesus. He accepted them, He received sinners, and ate with them, but never condoned the behaviour.

The first thing people read is your attitude; and the first thing to get right is attitude. “God, give me a love for every person.” One of the things I do, when I’m introduced or someone I know is a homosexual - I’ll hug them like I’d hug everyone else. Now, I had to work a few things out of my mind over that one; but I’d just hug them as people - they’re people too.

Often, they’re very creative. Often, they’ve been deeply damaged in their relationships, in their family. Often, because of their creativity, they’ve suffered, by not fitting in with the male culture or female culture, so often there are deep roots of rejection in their life. For many of them, they were taken advantage of or abused in some way; and this has opened the door. For some, there was just loneliness, and they were drawn into relationship; looking for the same thing everyone else is looking for – to be loved.

If you can understand that part of a person’s make up, they’re just looking for love in the wrong place, and in the wrong way, and it’s producing a problem in their life. Remember what we said - sexual sin produces problems inside you. Homosexuality produces many problems inside people.

So, the first thing is acceptance; recognition they’re a person of value; and I think to draw them to Christ, who accepts them; rather than trying to fix up the problem. Sometimes as Christians, we sort of want to get people to fix up their life before they can come to God. Whereas God says: I just take you like you are; and then once I’m in your life, I’ll help you on the journey. So, let the power of God get in their life first.

I found Christians often become highly confrontational of the people, because of this thing about the sin, rather than saying: actually, this person’s of great value to God; and only the Holy Spirit has the power to really change them. My job is not to change them. My job is to love them, and to point them to Christ. If you can just stop trying to make them change, and leave God to do the changing; and do what Jesus says to do – love them, pray for them, and bring Christ to them, and help them on their journey with Christ, and let the Lord sort the thing out.

See we have problems of people coming into church, and they’re living together. The way we have chosen to address it, is not to be confrontational about them living together; but to start them on the journey of walking with God, believing that if we connect them to Jesus, and His love for them and His kingdom, and start them walking with God, the Holy Spirit and their own conscience will convict them deeply that this is wrong, and they need to do something about it. So, we give this great window of grace, and don’t worry about some of the things that are happening, believing if I keep them walking with God, that He will speak into their heart and they’ll know it’s wrong.

Having said that, we have a point, when it comes to membership of the church, where we ask the question directly. In order to be a member of the church, we need to ask you some questions, and here’s one question - and go straight for this issue. Now, for almost nearly 99% of people, it’s come up in conversation before we ask that. But we do have a point, we ask it; and they say: “Well, you know, I’m living with this person… blah blah blah”. You say – “Well, let’s talk about that. To be part of this family of God, you actually need to face the situation now.”

It’s sometimes very complicated. So, we have to take each one individually, and help them on their journey. Some of them such a bad deal, and it was a bad thing they got into. To get them out of it is the big deal. Some we need to get them married. It’s not one answer to it all; but it’s: loving them as Christ would love them; and yet telling them the truth, and letting them make the choices how they’ll move forward.

So in terms of healing homosexuals, and getting them totally set free - I haven’t got all the answers, but I know Jesus has the power to heal them. Our focus should stay on doing the things we’re called to do; not things we’re not supposed to do. It’s to love people, and bring Christ to them, and encourage them on the journey with Christ. There’ll always come a point where the issue gets talked about. So it helps if you have some understanding, like what I’ve done today, of God’s design for people - and have some answers prepared to be able to talk and engage around this issue.

It’s becoming a highly political and emotional issue now, and the church is going to have to wrestle its way through it. In New Zealand, they’ve already altered the law, so two same-sex people can marry. Next thing they’ll be trying to change the education system.

So it’s a challenge for us, advancing the kingdom, to present God’s pattern for life; and the benefits of the kingdom come with repentance. The consequences of sin always come if we don’t follow God’s way.

Just now, you said sex is a blessing in God’s legal way in a marriage; but you also said that when two become one, the evil spirit in one person has the right to come into the other. So what if they’re a married couple, and one party has the evil spirit. Then, how does it go? Do I keep having the evil spirit as well?

I think that a relationship which is ungodly is an empowerment of demons to come into the person. In other words, because you’ve become one in an ungodly way, now there’s a right to become tormented. I always think the power of good is greater than the power of evil. If two people are married, I would not expect the married partner to become demonised, because the marriage is sanctified by their faith. I don’t believe that the person will experience demonization at all, because the relationship is in God’s order.

I’ve never seen, I’ve not had one experience, of a person who is married being demonised through their spouse - not one. So it would seem as though, when the relationship is godly, there is no ground for the demon to get in. I can’t give much more than that - I’ll think a bit more about that question too.

It says for example, in 1 Corinthians 7, that if a believer is married to an unbeliever, that the unbeliever is sanctified, or blessed, by the faith of the believer - otherwise the children would be ungodly. So I think one person, believing in faith, has greater influence than we realise.

[Closing prayer]

Father we just thank You for this time together, thank You for Your presence. Thank You for helping us with very difficult situations, to find solutions for people lives.

Father, I pray great grace upon every person here, to flow with the Holy Spirit; to be gentle and loving with people; to be very firm and clear with the truth.

I pray that those who struggled today with some of these issues will experience great victory because of the things we’ve shared today.

I pray for the coming meetings, and ask for Your power to flow, to set people free. In Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.

The Blood of Jesus

The seven different ways that Jesus bled on the cross represent seven different things that Jesus came to redeem us from, seven things that the blood of Jesus Christ addresses. This series discusses the first use of blood during the passover in Egypt, and then onto the Day of Atonement, where the blood was applied to the mercy seat seven times, and the symbolism of the scapegoat. Sins, Transgressions, and Inequity are compared, and related to exactly how and why Jesus blood was shed for us.

The Blood of Jesus (1 of 4)

Many struggle consistently in their intimacy with God, and in believing that God will answer their prayers. In fact probably the most common problem that people face is a sense of not being good enough, that somehow I'm not good enough, that there's something wrong with me and when I pray it doesn't look like God's going to answer. If you're living with this it's because there's some foundations are not built and established in your life and until they are, let me tell you this; you will continue in what you're struggling with.

The Blood of Jesus (2 of 4)

Sin has consequences. God wants us to deal with the deliberate transgressions, with the sins of ignorance, and to deal with inequity, the thing that gets into our whole family line. The blood is the remedy for all three. God says that rather than kill people the moment that they commit sin, He'll let them carry inequity or carry the consequence of it through their generational line.

The Blood of Jesus (3 of 4)

If I just tell you that Jesus died for your sins, and He's forgiven you, it's very shallow. But if we begin to look into some of the pictures and patterns shown in the Old Testament, oh, it becomes so vivid all that He did, because it's hard to explain to someone all that Jesus did on the cross. That's why the Old Testament has got these pictures so as you study them and keep thinking about Jesus and what He did for us you begin to see the full breadth of it

The Blood of Jesus (4 of 4)

If you have a besetting problem, something that seems to stick in your life, it’s been in your family, it’s in your life and you’re concerned it’s starting to turn up in your children, I’ll help you understand what it is and what to do about it. The answer is the blood of Jesus Christ. Exodus, Chapter 12, and this is the first Passover that the Jews ever had. It’s a prophetic picture of the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary.

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- The Blood of Jesus (2 of 4).mp3

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- The Blood of Jesus (1 of 4)

- The Blood of Jesus (2 of 4)

- The Blood of Jesus (3 of 4)

- The Blood of Jesus (4 of 4)

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The Blood of Jesus (1 of 4)

Sun 30 Oct 2011  « Back to Top

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Many struggle consistently in their intimacy with God, and in believing that God will answer their prayers. In fact probably the most common problem that people face is a sense of not being good enough, that somehow I'm not good enough, that there's something wrong with me and when I pray it doesn't look like God's going to answer. If you're living with this it's because there's some foundations are not built and established in your life and until they are, let me tell you this; you will continue in what you're struggling with.

So we're in a great day. Isn't it a great day to be alive? [Yes!] Great day to be alive. Great day to serve God. I want you to open your Bible for me in Ephesians 1, Verse 7. I want to share something I felt the Lord has just put on my heart, to do two or three messages on it, and I want to speak about the blood of Jesus. I want to talk about the blood of Jesus, and I reckon there's a heap of people haven't got a clue what it is, apart from it being a song and we talk about it in church and, you know, [sings] I am redeemed by the blood of the lamb.

Yeah, we know these songs, but I want us to get some understanding. Without understanding you won't have faith, and it's absolutely certain that if you're going to build a building, you need to make sure you've got something holding it up, and if the foundation's not much good, then when it gets a shake, down she goes. That's what we saw in Christchurch. We saw that - and it was actually completely predictable by the way. The surveyors had surveyed the whole area before the town plan was put out and they advanced and built, the geologists already knew where the places were that were unstable and what would happen if you built on there.

About 10 years ago a report was put out about what would happen, and it was almost accurate to exactly the locations, so isn't it amazing? And yet in spite of the knowledge, it didn't make any difference. People still built there. Isn't that amazing?

So buildings have to have foundations. Your life with God needs certain foundations in it. My experience in working with Christians over a long period of time is many struggle consistently in their intimacy with God, and consistently in believing that God will answer their prayers. In fact probably the most common problem that people face is a sense of not being good enough, that somehow I'm not good enough, that somehow there's something wrong with me, and somehow when I pray it doesn't look like God's going to answer. This is very common amongst Christians and it could well be that that's what you're living with.

If you're living with this, it's because there's some foundations are not built and established in your life, and until they are, let me tell you this; you will continue in what you're struggling with. It will not change. More meetings won't solve it, more Bible studies won't solve it. It requires revelation to your heart, and then application to your life of some things. Now I want to pick up one thing that is absolutely foundational to building your relationship with God, and it's also my observation over counselling people for many years, that people start with it and shift from it. This is a huge consequence in terms of how it works out in our Christian life.

Notice what it says here in Ephesians 1, Verse 7. We'll just keep coming back to this one over two or three Sundays. In Him, in Jesus Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to - look at that. Isn't that amazing - the riches, not poverty, rich! God is rich in what? Rich in kindness. Grace is about kindness. It's about favour. It's about God being good to you. God is very, very, very wealthy in grace, see?

So the problem is, what's all this thing about redemption and the blood? Now if you go out of church and into the streets, you don't hear people talking about redemption. You don't even hear them talking about the blood, and if you mention it then probably eyes will raise, so there's no concept out. The only place you'd hear about redemption perhaps, would be if you went to the bank and talked about your mortgage, and they would want you to redeem your mortgage, so they do know what redemption is in a financial sense.

But I found a lot of the church, if I was to ask everyone to say, what do you mean I'm redeemed, we would probably struggle with getting clarity about what that is, and what that means, and why it's important. So I want to lay a foundation around this, and see what the blood of Jesus has accomplished for us, and how specifically you apply it to your life, because what Jesus has done for us - we know He died for the sins of the world, but a lot of the world isn't saved. Have you noticed?

That means that all that God has done is ineffective, because they haven't applied it to their life, and so God has done many things for us, but if we don't know what He's done, and then apply it, it's in the application that change takes place. And if you don't know how to apply the blood to your life, and where to apply it; the blood of Jesus is to be applied to at least three areas of our life to bring a change, and Jesus shed His blood in a whole number of different ways, to deal with every possible condition of humanity. So He didn't just shed His blood and that's it. There's quite a lot more to it. As we'll see it's very, very foundational. So what I want to do get this started, I want to just start off really, right now before we even talk about the blood and why we need the blood, we need to look at what it is, that is the problem, because if you don't know what problem you're trying to fix, then you won't embrace the solution.

So we say Jesus is the saviour - in fact the name Jesus means saviour - but why do you need to be saved? And do you really need to be saved? And why is it people go out on the streets and speak to people, why are they so passionate to do that? What is there about it, because if you listen to a lot of people, you get the impression that almost like somehow it's all going to work out alright for everyone, no matter what. Actually nothing could be further from the truth, and I want to lay out some foundations.

The first one I want to talk about is, God has established consequences for sin. God has established consequences for the sin. Now I want you to listen to this part very carefully, because I want to show that there are two major things that God has established. The first one we're going to see is that He's established certain consequences. The thing about consequence - we'll see in a moment - you can absolutely do nothing about them. That's not the bit you get involved in. That's what you experience as a result of making decisions, so if we see for example in John 1, we find in the first three verses it tells us that everything that was made, or everything we can see, that was made was made by Him. As believers we would understand creation has been made by Him. I'm going to keep appealing to things you know, to get you to look a little above it to things you're not so sure of.

So if I designed something, I'm a manufacturer and I designed something, I decide how it will work, because I'm the designer. Steve Jobs designed an iPad. He's the one who knows how the iPad works, and it can't do anything more than he put into it. He designed it - so you can either use it for what it was intended, or if you don't know what it's intended for, you'll end up abusing it and smashing it or destroying it, because you just didn't know what to do with it. It's designed with certain things built into it. In other words the person who designed it makes the rules about how it's to be used, and makes the rules about how it works, and what will make it work well, and how you get the best out of it. You don't get a say in that. You just either buy in or don't buy in. Getting the idea? So it's quite foundational this.

So we need to see that God created the physical world. He set in place physical laws. Now scientists have got no idea why the laws are there, they just know there are laws, and by observation they can work out the laws; for example there's the law of gravity. Now no one knows what really creates the law of gravity. They don't understand fully what is the cause of it. They don't even understand fully the forces behind it. It's just a law of gravity which they can describe, and that we can work with.

Now you can say I don't believe in the law of gravity. It doesn't really matter whether you believe in it or not, it's still in place, it's still there. It's what holds you to the earth. It's what makes planes crash if they run out of power. There's a law of gravity, and whether you believe it or not is irrelevant, it's still there and it operates, holds our solar system in place. So God has set the law in there, and He's set many physical laws in place; for example He's set in the law of sowing and reaping, so we know and we depend on it in this area - we sow products and we expect to reap, we sow vegetables, we expect to reap. We sow, we expect to reap - so we actually run our life without even thinking, but there are laws that are in place. Okay, we've got one.

Now, so we know that God has set physical laws. Now God has also set spiritual laws in place. This is where the contention comes. God has set spiritual laws in place. Now you cannot change the law of gravity; you either understand it and work with it, or you violate it and it costs you something. It's as simple as that. So God has also set in place spirit laws. He's set in place principles - He doesn't continually intervene. You know, they see something happening over - and there's a big flood and they say oh, it's an act of God. It isn't an act of God at all. It's actually the consequence of certain laws being in place. It's the consequence of neglect of the environment many times, and ultimately, as we'll see, it's the consequence of sin.

When we look and say well, there's this big thing happened and there was this earthquake and tsunami and all that kind of thing, and that was a big act of God - it wasn't an act of God. It's actually the earth croaking, groaning and creaking because it's under the bondage of sin. Sin has affected the whole environment, and we often don't understand that the problems that we see in the world, are a direct consequence of sin. If we don't understand this, we won't get the remedy for it, nor even see why the remedy is needed. So firstly I've got to just establish a little bit around this area here.

So God has also set laws. I want you to have a look with me in Genesis 2, Verse 15, and I want to look at one law that God has set in place. Now whether you agree with this law is irrelevant. It's just like the law of gravity, it's there and you either agree with it and learn how to work with what God says, or you violate it and have consequences. So number one, God, the one who does the creating, established the rules. That's the first thing we've seen. The second thing is, God has established certain consequences of sin. In Genesis, Chapter 2 and Verse 15 through to Verse 17; Now the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend it and keep it. So God created man, gave him an assignment. He created all of us with an assignment, which only God can give to us. It's only discovered as we spend connection with Him, and it involves guarding something and also cultivating it - and the Lord God commanded the man, the first man, of every tree of the fruit of the garden you may freely eat, tree of the knowledge of good and evil you should not eat, for in that day you eat it, you shall die. Here's the law; violate God's law, and you die. It's as simple as that. Violate the law and you die - so God gave man freedom, God gave man responsibility, God gave him ability to make free choices. However, God describes the consequences. So for example with the law of gravity, now there's a law of gravity. It's very clear there's an attractive force pulls any object down, it's proportional to so and so and masses and so on - and so here it is, the law of gravity. If I go over this edge here - I'll just take it off here, I don't want to fall too far - take it from here. If I step out into this space you all know exactly what's going to happen. You know if I just take a step out here, just off here, that just in a moment there's nothing - I'm going to go straight down. You know that. You're convinced of it.

Now I can't do anything to change that. I wish it could be different. I could say well I don't believe in it. I don't agree with it. I think this is a religious concept gravity and you see, I step off and it doesn't make any difference. Now imagine that was a very tall building. Suppose now it's a skyscraper and I tried the same thing now off a skyscraper. Now I'm in deep trouble because here's the thing - I have power to make the choice, step or not step, but definitely no power over the consequence. So in other words God sets consequences in motion. You get to make the choices. You have total free will on all the choices of your life. God loves you enough, loves me enough, loves all of us enough to say you get to run your life the way you choose. How about that? Isn't that great? Because I love you, and I'm never going to impose my will on you. I'm never going to force anything on you. I am never going to make you do anything. I'm going to attract you with love, and if you want to walk in a loving relationship with me, here's the deal; if you do life my way, connected to me, you'll live - but if you cut off from me, and you do life your own way, you'll die. You get to choose. Live or die. Simple as that.

Now that's what sin is about. Sin - I'll define it; sin is literally transgressing, or breaking the law of God, the Bible tells us. When you break the laws of God, that is what sin is about. He says don't steal. If you steal something, hold something back, mislead someone as to the value of something, and rip them off or cheat them - that is sin. There's a consequence.

You may delay the consequence, hide the consequence, conceal it for a little while, but there's always a consequence. And I'll show you, there are several consequences of sin that you may not have thought about or considered, but it's always there. Whether you believe in it or not, it's as inevitable as stepping off a building. Just the same, see? So if I step off a building, you all know what's going to happen; I'm going to fall on the ground. I'll hit splat on the ground, and if I can still breathe a few things I could be saying something like this - it's not my fault you know? [Laughter] No one told me about this. Not my fault. Actually it's just stupid that they don't make the buildings wider, so I could walk further out. [Laughter] Now you see, that's - now you understand how stupid that reasoning is, but when it comes to sin, we apply that kind of reasoning. When it comes to these things that God talks about as sin, so sin is - get it clear - sin is whenever you break God's law. Now whether you know the law's there or not is irrelevant. It's like when you drive down the road. It actually is, it says over there 30kms so go down there at 70km - whether you saw the sign is irrelevant. The cop's there, you're done. You're guilty. You broke the law, you pay the price, simple as that. Don't complain. Don't make excuses. You just did the crime, do the time. That's kind of how it works.

We understand - and something about that appeals to us. Have you noticed that? Especially when it's someone else that did the crime. We think they should do the time. It really appeals to us that. You notice young kids feel that way? They'll always do that. They'll point out someone else's crime, to make sure that they do their time. Have you noticed that they do that as well? There's an inbuilt sense of justice in us, and it's bigger than that; it's actually part of godliness. We have a sense of justice in us. We hate to think that people who do terrible crimes get away with it. It's not right, it's unjust. Something should be done - in fact our nation would be an unsafe place if there wasn't a consequence for bad actions. Imagine if everyone could drive around, do whatever they wanted, bump people off, knock people, mug people and they could do it with impunity, no consequence. What an unsafe place it'd be - be hopeless. You couldn't run it. It'd be absolute chaos and disorder - so we live in our life off this expectation that if something is wrong, there should be a consequence.

And if you want to raise good children, make them understand there are consequences for their choices. Give them the freedom to choose, but make sure they understand the consequences, and make sure they experience it, or you don't help them at all. Okay, so we've got the deal now. God makes the rules. He's got rules that govern the natural law, rules that govern spiritual world and our interactions, relationships, how we do life, and this is what He says very clearly; if you sin - sin is the transgression of the law, sins breaking God's laws, so I'll put it this way - sin is saying yeah, I know you're God, but I'm going my way. That's sin, and sin is a little more than that; it's going my way, and then it's doing it my way, which means what's best for me, so sin in its full manifestation is just living your life without God, going your way, doing it your way for your advantage, and using people to get where you want to get. That's sin.

Now it's got many ways it shows up, but that's what it is, and God says this about it; there's a consequence. You get to choose, but not the freedom of what happens. Now you see the problem is, we just don't believe in this, and so we've got some certain approaches to sin, so what we tend to do is this. We tend to find ways of trying to avoid the consequence, so first of all we'll just not call it sin; I have a problem. See sin's got a remedy. It's got God's remedy. A problem? A problem usually comes from sin, so what you're dealing with is the fruit, the root is usually sin, doing it your own way for your own advantage, ignoring God and hurting someone on the way. That's usually what is sin.

So when people come, usually what they do - what you find is that people try to find a way to get rid of this concept of sin and the New Age, they totally reject God, and an ultimate moral authority. Therefore, there's no such thing as sin, nor failure. So everything is smoothed over, so no one has to own that I have sinned, and it really sounds very appealing, because man becomes his own God, his own redeemer, his own saviour. This works kind of like this; well I can work on myself to improve myself. That's the core of it. The trouble is, you can't deal with sin just by working on yourself. That's what we're going to get to - redemption - in a moment, because you have to see what redemption means, and you'll see how there's two ways you're either going to redeem yourself, one or the other - you either do it God's way, or your way. Ha ha! Okay, so sin's violating God's law.

Okay, now let's get this. So I can deny it, I can blame someone else, I can say I don't believe in it, I can say it's just a Christian junkie thing to make you feel guilty. I can try and find all kinds of ways to try and persuade you sin isn't sin, and dress it up so it looks better than it is, but actually sin is sin. Okay and sin has a consequence - death. So what does that look like? What does death look like, because you notice that Adam didn't immediately die. He lived quite a long time before he died, so when God says that you'll die, He says certain things are going to happen around your life as a consequence of your actions, you see? And once you realise this, most believers, most Christians can't connect what they're experiencing now, to what they chose to do a little while ago. That's why they don't get to repent of sin, and that's why we don't fear sin, because this next bit we don't really believe. Let me tell you what it means. This is what sin means; every time, every situation, every circumstance that this happens, this is the consequence - these are the consequences. I've identified these ones. There may be others, but these are good enough to me. Number one is, the separation from God, or a loss of connection with God. You lose. You become disconnected from God. The wage of sin is death. What it means is you are disconnected relationally. You've disconnected from God because you rejected Him. He didn't move, you moved. You disconnected when you sin. Okay then - and what that leaves is spiritual emptiness. Romans 6:23, says the wages of sin is death, so sin pays up, and it's just always the same. It's never inflated. It's always been the same. You actually get disconnected.

Some of us in the church today, the thing we're struggling - the disconnection we're struggling, I'll just put it really simply; it's due to sin in the heart. Oh, well I don't know about sin. I don't feel I've got any sin going on. That doesn't mean there isn't any, just because you can't recognise it. That's why people counsel. We show what causes - and people come, you know why they come? They can't see what's going on! It's just terrible, all of these things in my life - the fruit. And the counsellor, if they're a good counsellor, will just sift through it all, pull it all apart, get right down - guess what's underneath it? Sin! Every time - and as soon as they own the sin, and do God's remedy, you get free, see?

See, so the first thing's sin. So we've got to see that first is separation from God, so mostly you find when people come to us with a problem, they've disconnected from God. They don't hear God. They feel just, boo-hoo! I don't feel God anymore, God's a long way off - so they talk at God; God, He's a long way off - see, because the heart's not clean and clear and close and intimate.

The second thing that we experience is judgement. God must hold us to account for what we've done. He's a just God, He's a holy God, so He does call all of us to account. The Bible's very clear, in Romans 14 I think, Verse 10. It tells us that all, all, all, all, all - no exceptions - give account of ourselves to God - no exceptions. You come into the world one at a time, we leave one at a time, we stand before God one at a time. We get to be judged one at a time - so there's no we and us in that. It's personal, very personal, very personal, every one of us.

You have an appointment one day. Fortunately, if you're a believer in Christ, the issue of sin and its judgement is over. What's now in mind will be how you've handled your stewardship of your walk with God, and whether you've produced anything for His kingdom. Okay then, so judgement, and so the Bible's very clear. I won't go into it all, but Matthew 25, Verse 41, He said separate the sheep from the goats, and the sheep go into the kingdom, and the goats go into a fire prepared not for man, but for the devil and his angels, so believe me there is an eternal consequence of sin. Mark 9 talks about it being tormented day and night, and night and day, forever. There is a consequence - and that's quite good that there's a consequence. I feel happy that God is a just God now, that the world, actually ultimately it's alright, because God's in charge, and everyone's going to get their dues. Everyone. They may not get it now, but one day they'll get their dues.

Everyone gets to be called up front. Everyone gets to be found out. Everyone. There's nothing hidden from God, so that's not bad is it? So maybe someone pulls one over you and gets away with it, or gets away with it in front of the law, but long term they never get away with it. They never get away with it eternally, but actually something else happens too. Here's the third consequence. Third consequence of sin - that's why you don't have to look at God. When you see a major tragedy or something, it's not God intervening, judging the nation or anything like that. He doesn't - it's very rare He does that. What actually is the thing that's happening is, reaping consequences, so God set laws in place, naturally and spiritually - found in Galatians 6, what a man sows, that he reaps. Sow, reap. Sow, reap. The problem you're facing today, probably was sown a while ago, so when we counsel people we often look right back to the roots of how they started, and whether - you trace it right back. One of the first places you look is in the family; did it come right there, right at the beginning of the family? Did it grow in the person's life and here they are, full of a mess, and somewhere there's sin and they're reaping? You see, if you start to tell a lie - think I got away with it. Oh, I'll tell another one. Got away with it, got away with it, got away with it, got away - I'm getting away with it. Oh, this is quite good. I'm getting away with it - and then you think oh well, you know, I'll just say sorry before I die, get right with God, and I'll be right.

Now listen, God's got another process in place, and it's called sowing and reaping, so now what you begin to find is you've got all these problems of breakdowns of trust in relationships everywhere. Life is actually going in a mess, and you can't get to figure it's right back to your sin, which has created the problem, so counselling always directs people back to what they may be reaping from what they've sown - for example, we've found in marriages a lot of people are reaping the consequence of sowing judgement against a father and a mother, bitterness is in the heart and now what's in the family, what's in the marriage now, and what's coming up in their children is the same thing that grew in their heart - they never saw it happening because they didn't recognise it or feel it.

But when the fruit is there, if you see it's an orange tree - an orange is on it, it's an orange tree. If you see that there's bitter fruit, there's definitely a bitter root, absolutely. Sin has got consequences. Now here's the fourth one, this is the grand slammer of it all. This is why God doesn't have to intervene all the time to keep the world going, because He set laws. So here's the law - you sin, you cut off from God; two, sin, you have consequences. Three, sin, there's actually a reaping, so whatever you keep doing you're going to reap, reap, reap and you reap more than what you sowed! Isn't that nice aye? That makes sin really scary, so if I sowed a little bit of judgement in my background on my parents, I got a whole heap of reaping coming up! [Laughter] and the problem you have now may be that whole lot of reaping is because you didn't notice a little bit of sinning back there. But does that mean it didn't happen? Oh no, it happened. Does that mean you can fix it up without solving that problem? No, you can't.

See, God just set it in place. See one of the things that's happening in the earth today is, the earth is reaping centuries of the power of sin operating, and so then the world is creaking and groaning and protesting. They point its global warming is the problem. That doesn't explain all the wars you know - doesn't explain all the earthquakes either, doesn't explain lots of things. In fact there's lots of things can't be explained, except what the Bible says, which is the whole earth groans under the burden of sin.

So the earth is in turmoil, and people are in turmoil. Why are there wars when we're so educated? Because sin is the problem - and here's the last one. This is the grand slammer of all. God has set the laws in place. Notice what He said, that the wages of sin is death. Okay, now here's the thing. Get this one. I want you listen on this; so in the area I sin I disconnect my life from God, so I go from light into - and guess who's waiting there to latch onto me? Demonic spirits - and God has allowed them, and permitted them, to operate everywhere that there's violation of His law. What a grand slam! Man, you can't escape. There is no escaping!

Why do people get tormented with demons? You'll find out there's a sin there somewhere, always. So the problems people have - now how do demons torment them? Infirmity, sicknesses, poverty, setbacks; you work so hard, and just when you should be getting ahead, should be just really making the breakthrough, suddenly it all falls over and you can't work out why, and you build again, another four or five years, suddenly it all falls over again. There you are, pain and bitter and angry and frustrated. Why? Somewhere in the background, sin is working! It's alive! It's not a thing, it's something that lives, that works, and the Bible calls it the law of sin and death! It needs a remedy, and you don't remedy it by calling it something else like a problem. It doesn't remedy it, it just disguises it.

But you know, you hit the root of it, there'll be a problem there see, and here's how - the extent of it. Here's the bit I - this bit here, just to make you feel happy that you're not the only one, Romans 3:23 says all have sinned. So all of us have sinned, and you've heard some of us testify of some of our short-fallings and failings, and how God's had to help us. All have sinned. There are no exceptions. All have sinned, we've fallen short of God's grace, so we need a remedy to sin.

Now you can try all kinds of remedies for all kinds of things. None - nothing will be solved permanently unless we address the root cause, it's as simple as that. So there's an answer at the root cause, so what do we need to do for the root cause? Ha ha! The root cause, alright then, we've got to find a remedy - and here's the remedy: What can I do to get out of this mess? I want out of the mess! So what can I do? Well the first thing you can try is a little bit of religion, and religion has this in common; this is all religions everywhere, and you may have your own form of religion - no guarantee that being here, you don't have a whole heap of religion around your life, see? And all religions everywhere, the core defining thing is, what do you do about this problem of sin that won't go away? How do we solve it? So here's the remedies we come up - well we'll pray some prayers. Great, but that won't solve the sin problem. Well, I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll do some good things. I'll really try hard to live a good life, and four times out of five I did. It was that fifth time was a bit of a worry - fifth time I really lost it, made the promise I wouldn't get angry, and the fifth time I blew it, and it was worse then than it's ever been before - but I'll try harder again.

So we've got what we call a self-help, self-improvement programme. You go on the internet, they're everywhere: Improve yourself! Improve this! Improve that! Improve that! Get another book - How to - Seven Steps to This, Eight Steps to That, 21 Steps to - God knows how you remember it all anyway! [Laughter]

And what you do find is, there's not a lot of improving takes place. There's certain up-skilling takes place, yes, but the core problem doesn't get dealt with any time, because the core problem is a spiritual problem, needing a spiritual remedy - and there is a spiritual remedy, so we will try all our remedies first. So we'll try a little bit of religion, we'll go to church, some services, we'll get involved in some community - oh, community work, that'll be the way! I'll do some community work. I know what I'll do - I'll go and I'll get involved with one of the things in the community. I'll work hard and I'm such a good person, such an upstanding person in the community - it's a shame you found out about that sin I was hiding! [Laughter] But this is how I'm going to work it out.

I'm going to have these little scales, and my sin will be on one side, and my good deeds on the other side, I'll do a juggling act. The problem is, I never know how bad my badness is, and whether the goodness is going to balance it up. That's the problem. Are you doing enough good to balance up all the other stuff? Well of course you think well, I wouldn't be like that. Oh yes you are, far more than you realise it. I'll show you how it shows up in Christians.

Today, glory to God, I'm doing well. I've had a great prayer time, so I feel close to God - then tomorrow, I didn't have a prayer time. I actually really blew it, so I'll come to God now - oh God - and you see, so I've got no foundation at all. I'm still thinking that my works make the difference in the relationship with God, because if I did well today, or blew it today, is irrelevant. God has got a way to come near and solve my problem, and it's not me working harder and trying harder. You see, you've got to get that out of your system. We're all wired to perform better, wired to try harder, perform better - it's not the answer.

So the deal then is, how can I get free of the sin which has snared me, its right through my whole make-up, it's in my fabric. You don't even have to tell kids how to be selfish, they're just selfish automatically - have you noticed that? So God's established a remedy, and the interesting thing, you can't even use money to buy the problem of sin away. In Psalm 49, Verse 6 and 7, it said man's soul's so precious, there's not enough money in the world to buy it. So you can't solve it with money, you can't put enough money to solve the sin problem. You can't do anything like that, so what can we do? Well here's the answer: God has established a way to deal with it.

Now remember, God set in the physical laws, God set in the spiritual laws, God set in the consequences of sin, God also set in the remedy for it, and the remedy is called redemption. Now you don't hear that word too often, so I'll just explain the word so we know what it is. The process of dealing with the issue of sin is called redemption. I am redeemed! Right, see? Now what does that mean?

Well we sing the song, but what does 'redeem' mean? Since you don't hear the word too often, I want to get a good, clear definition. So how many of you saw on the news a little while ago that Somalia, some of the pirates there captured some people that were in the boats offshore? Have you noticed that - they caught some ships and captured all kinds of people? Now anytime someone fronted up with the money, and gave the money to the pirate, and then the pirate released them, and they got set free, that is redeemed. That is redeemed. A lot of people aren't redeemed. The ships are still in bondage, people are still in bondage, the crew's still in bondage, they're all still in captivity. They're in captivity to someone evil, and when you pay up the money you get free, that's what it is.

So to redeem someone is to pay the ransom - simply, that's all it means. It means a ransom, it's a price paid to liberate a captive, save them out of the power of someone else, which they couldn't do themselves. So in other words, you get possession back. Now you may have already owned it, but you get it back when you pay the money. God owned us because He created us, but He had to pay a price to get us back, and the problem with - this is the problem of sin: sin puts you in captivity, and you haven't got the power to get yourself free. Religion and all the other activities or works are about attempting to get free. It cannot do it, not by the works. No works we can do get us free. We need God's provision.

You can't save yourself. I know that's a blow. That is a bitter blow, because many of us have been doing all we can to save ourselves for many years. Saving yourself is called control. It's called control; controlling your world, controlling your emotions, controlling your inner life, controlling every kind of aspect of your life. That's what's saving yourself. It's because underneath, you believe it's unsafe out there. The only one to be trusted is me - so I will save myself the very best I can. It's okay to do that, until you've found that there's a saviour. In Matthew 1 it says, you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.

So we need to be redeemed. We need a redeemer. You cannot save yourself. You cannot do enough good works to go into heaven. You actually have to have someone help you out. Isn't it a terrible thing to feel you're that lost? I hope it's sinking in, that we're that lost, that there is such no hope to deal with the issue of sin. Our communities have been trying for years to make it a better place. It isn't getting better. There's no hope with all the programmes.

The core issue is not dealt with, which is sin, and there's only one remedy for sin and fortunately - I'm glad you asked what it was because Jesus tells us. Let's have a look in the Bible, Leviticus, Chapter 17. So God who set the laws about sin, set the laws about how to deal with it as well. Isn't that nice that He did that? He laid it out, Leviticus 17, Verse 11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given the blood of an animal on the altar, or I've given it, or the blood, to make atonement for yourself, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Now that word atonement, well there's another funny word. Any of you see the movie Atonement? Girl did this terrible lie, and wrecked someone's life, and spent all her life in guilt trying to find a way to atone for what she had done, but she never was able to, and in the story, she was starting to get Alzheimer's, and she tried to write her story out, but she changed the story to try and make it have a happy ending. Actually she couldn't atone for her sin, because the people had died, and she couldn't get free of the guilt.

So atonement means to make two at one, that weren't one before - at one - it means an at-one-ment. So what it means, when you atone something, is that you pay the price to get the relationship come back together, so the two people are one again, so redemption and atonement are very similar things. Redemption, you pay the price to get someone out of someone's captivity, and atonement is you pay the price to make two people one, so it's all together; redemption, atonement, similar things - a price is paid, that enables a person to get totally out of a snare, and become one with the person they're separated from.

So whenever you hear the word redemption, that's what it means; someone's paying a price. He is my redeemer! That means He pays the price. He has the chequebook. He pays the price every time. Every time! Every time! Every time He pays the price.

Okay then, so God set the law up. He set the law up that if you sin, you die. He also set the law up, if you've sinned, this is how you get free - you need blood. And this is another gory thing about Christianity. It's a blood religion. It is a blood religion. In other words, you can't buy your way into heaven. You can't work your way into heaven. You just need blood, the way God said. That's humbling because surely there must be something I can do to help out in this thing. I've got to submit to God's way, and God's way is the blood. He said atonement's in the blood. Notice that we read in Exodus, Chapter 12, where the people of God were coming out of captivity, and the angel of death was bringing judgement on the Egyptians, and He said Verse 22 take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin, strike the lintel, strike the two doorposts with the blood, and don't go out. Stay under the blood. Stay in it. You've got to realise what's happening now is, there's an angel of death. That means you're going to die if you go outside the house, you're going to die if you haven't got a remedy. Now that's a scary place to be. Imagine in a nation, and you're all going to die unless someone finds an antidote.

You know there's a movie coming out and it's probably - I can't remember quite the name, but it's all about a virus, the pandemic thing and the virus spreads and they can't do anything. No remedy! Sheer panic when people find there's no remedy. Imagine if there's a pandemic and it spreads and you can't - you know what you'll be looking for? You're going to die unless you get the remedy, see? And this is what this is about. These people are all about to die. They were about to die. You imagine, going to lose someone you love and they're going to die. You could do nothing about it - except God's remedy. And God gave them revelation; here's the remedy, take a lamb, a perfect lamb, a lamb without spot. Keep the lamb four days, inspect the lamb, slay the lamb, take the blood of the lamb, apply the blood to the lintel, apply it to the doorposts, and stay in the house, under the blood!

And the destroyer, seeing the blood and your faith in it, will pass. Oh, they were very glad to have that kind of inside information weren't they, because they heard the cries through the streets as family after family after family had their firstborn struck dead by the judgement of God. What was the remedy? It was always the blood. That was it. See when God set up, if you sin you'll die, He said, I know what you're going to do. I know exactly what's going to happen. I've already planned the remedy - the remedy is the blood, and actually it's not even the blood of an animal. It's the blood of my Son, and I've already planned it all out before you get down this track. I planned it out, that He already is willing to go. Even before you come up with your sin ideas, even before you go down messing it all up for everyone, I've already got a plan for a solution. It's called the blood of Jesus Christ, who was the lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world, so before the world even began, God had a plan to solve it, anything that could come up, anything that could come up.

He figured out what man was likely to come up with, and He come up with a better plan called the blood of Jesus, the lamb that was slain. Why is it so significant? You see the blood of animals was only a temporary thing. It was never that that could keep a person free, or get them redeemed. It sufficed for one year, then they had to do it all again, because they kept sinning - but there's another offering, and why the blood of Jesus? Why His blood had to be shed - very simply, in a person's blood, so far as I understand it, the main part of the blood comes from the DNA of the father. The mother's DNA doesn't come into it. There's a separation of the mother's bloodstream, and the father, and the child's bloodstream. It's always kept separate. The two bloodstreams are completely separate, although there's food goes in, nutrition goes from one to the other - no blood exchanged. So the DNA, or the shaping of the blood, comes from the father, and of course Jesus, remember whose birth, that the Holy Spirit - Luke, Chapter 1 - came on Mary, and she conceived by the Holy Ghost. She got the DNA of God planted into her, so she never had the sinful nature - He never had the sinful nature of Adam. His blood was pure! His blood was without any sin! His blood was totally clean. He lived His life right before God, and so He was the lamb that was to be slain.

His blood was to be shed. His blood breaks curses. His blood breaks demonic powers. His blood breaks the hold of sin. His blood breaks inequity. His blood breaks transgression. His blood does it. There ain't no other way! You've got to know, not only what it does, but how to do it - and I'll share that another time.

Let me just finish with quoting these verses. In 1 Peter 1, Verse 17 to 18, it says you are redeemed, not with corruptible things like money, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, highly valuable. Ephesians 1:7 it says in Him we have redemption. We have purchase out of sin, its power, influence of devils, curses, everything. We are brought out by the blood. What a great deal! This is getting better every verse you read it.

Romans 3:25 it says that God has sent Jesus to be the mercy seat, so by His blood and faith in it, we would be free of sin. Revelations 5, oh God, you have redeemed us out of every nation - so it's not a white man's religion. [Laughter] It's a Jewish religion, and it's God's idea - blood, Jesus' blood, no other remedy. So what about the other faiths? Well I'm sorry, they don't go anywhere, because the one thing they can't bring you, is to the Father. Why can't they bring you to the Father? Because they can't deal with sin. There's only one remedy for sin; it's the blood of Jesus Christ, and we must not only know what it does, but also how to apply it to our life.

I'll finish with this last verse then, and just flow into it. Colossians says this - it says the most amazing thing, Chapter 2, Verses 14-15. It says Jesus at His death, when He shed His blood, took away the list of every sin recorded in our past, present and future against us. How did He do it? His blood! His blood - because He provided the remedy. The blood cancelled all the sin, and so He was able to take away the list. And then the Bible says, He disarmed devils. Now I don't know whether you've thought about that.

What does it take to disarm a devil, to take away the power they have to afflict your life? The blood. You've got to deal with sin. The only weapons they have, are the ones we give them by sinning. We've got to remove it by bringing our sin into the light, and to the cross, and to the blood, and He triumphed over them! They never figured when they killed Him what He was up to - devil wasn't that smart - says if they figured what He was up to, they'd have never crucified Him.

God hid the plan of the cross totally, and after Jesus had died and given up His life, then the devil's realised - oh no! We've actually brought ourselves down. Think about that. We inspired these men to whip Him and torture Him, and put Him on a cross and put Him to death. Instead we found ourselves co-operating with God's plan, and now the very thing we initiated to do, has now become the very thing that's caused our defeat. Isn't this a stunning wisdom of God!

Christ has made for us redemption, and so now you are redeemed from every curse, poverty, sickness, failure, loneliness, emptiness, meaningless life - redeemed! Someone paid the price. A redeemer paid the price so that I could walk in blessing, favour and have the Holy Ghost in my life. Galatians 3:13 and 14; oh my, what a great thing God has done for us. How we need to be grateful. How you need to really constantly see, constantly see, any sin, however little, has an effect - call it the Butterfly Effect. One little thing, and it magnifies and goes everywhere, affects all kinds of stuff - but get on top it it quick. Don't call it by some other name. Don't say it didn't matter. Get a sharp, sensitive conscience with the Holy Ghost. Say Holy Ghost, I know that was wrong! I didn't say the truth. I did this - was wrong. That was the wrong - that was a bad - I bring it to the cross, and I declare I am guilty! But Jesus has redeemed me! [Yeah! Amen.] His blood has broken the power of the sin, so I can just step back boldly into the presence of God again, like it had never happened! That's what justified means, just like it never happened, and I can come back, walk in His presence, enjoy Him again.

What an amazing thing is the blood of Jesus! Oh my.

I'm going to share with you a bit more about what He's done through His blood so you understand it. I want to share how to apply it, because there's things - if you don't apply this truth to your life, you'll always walk condemned. You'll never walk free, and you'll think you're just doing your best - and you probably are, but you're just missing what could be better, God's way.

Father, we thank you. I just say thank you. My redeemer lives. I got so touched I wept this morning as I felt the fresh reality of the need for a redeemer. Jesus, my redeemer lives! He paid the price and I'll honour Him by believing, dealing with sin and holding on to His promise.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Every building must be established on a sound foundation e.g. Christchurch earthquake.

Our relationship with God has foundations upon which it is established and maintained.

Eph.1:7 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.”

We need to discover what the Blood of Jesus has accomplished for us – and also how we are to apply it to our lives to walk in the grace and favour of God.

2. God Established Consequences for Sin

a) The One who creates makes the rules

Jn 1:1-3 “All things were made through Him …. and in Him was life.”

The one who designs/creates something establishes how it will work/function.

If you don’t know the purpose something designed for you will abuse it.

God created the physical world and also the laws that govern how it operates.

You can’t make or break the laws only work with them or against them.

God also created laws that govern His relationship with people.

b) God established the Consequences of Sin

Gen.2:15-17

God gave man freedom, responsibility, boundaries and consequences.

God gave man free will to choose how he will govern his life and relationships.

God also established the consequences of sin “You shall die”.

This is a spiritual law “the law of sin and death”.

You are free to choose what you will do but not the consequences.

e.g. if you jump of tall building – no power over consequences – law of gravity.

Definition of Sin: Sin is violating the laws of God(1 Jn3:4).

Sin is choosing to live independent of our creator and live for selfish advantage.

c) The consequences of Sin

Consequences of breaking God’s laws are as inevitable as night follows day.

You cannot avoid the consequences.

You may try to deny, blame, redefine sin, ignore, explain reality experience.

(i) Separation from God – loss of connection, spiritual emptiness Rom.6:23.

(ii) Judgement from God – experience a penalty ct Mt.25:41/Mk.9:44.

(iii) Reaping consequences in personal life, family, relationships Gal.6:8.

(iv) Legal authority is established for evil spirits to access your life.

Eph.2:2/Lk.4:5-6.

None of us are exempt from this spiritual problem of sin.

Rom.3:23 “For all have sinned…”

Rom. 5:12 “Death has spread to all men..”

We must find a remedy for sin and its consequences – What?

We must return from cursing to blessing and favour of God – How?

3. God Also Established the Remedy for Sin

a) What can I do to resolve the problem of sin?

Religion = man’s efforts to try to improve his life and gain access to God.

= favour with God is thought to be determined by my works.

Serving, good works, charitable acts, prayers, attempts to improve self.

What must I do to be good enough? How much is enough?

What must I do to redeem myself? Ps.49:7 1 Gal.2:16.

b) God has established a law a basis for dealing with sin

The process of addressing the issue of sin is called redemption.

Redemption =3083= a ransom

= price paid to liberate a captive or prisoner, someone in power of another.

= to regain possession by paying the full recovery price.

= to buy back, ransom – e.g. redeem mortgage e.g. Somali pirates.

Atonement =2643= exchange that restores divine favour

= to resolve a difference, to exchange money for something of equivalent value.

= the condition of being “at one” – reconciled.

c) God requires the shedding of blood

Lev.17:11

There are two aspects to this (i) Blood must be shed (ii) Blood must be applied.

Exod.12:22-23 “Strike the lintel and the two door posts with the blood”.

God set up a temporary process where the blood of animals was shed.

d) Only the Blood of Jesus can Redeem Us

Blood of a child is determined and contributed to by the male chromosomes not female.

Mother’s blood never mingles with the blood of her child.

Lk1:35 Mary was impregnated with male chromosome – came from God.

Blood of Jesus was never contaminated by Adam’s sin/blood.

Blood of Jesus was pure.

1 Pet.1:17-18 Redeemed – with the precious blood of Christ.

Eph.1:7 In Him we have redemption through His blood.

Rom.3:23-25 God has set forth as a mercy seat through faith in His blood.

Rev.5:9 …and have redeemed us to God by your blood …

Col.2:14-15 Paid the full price – obtained redemption for all.

Removed the sin list.

Disarmed spiritual powers = took away their weapon.

Gal. 3:13-14 Redeemed us from the curse of the law – blessing and favour.

We must choose God’s way to deal with sin – applying Blood of Christ.

The Blood of Jesus (2 of 4)

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Sin has consequences. God wants us to deal with the deliberate transgressions, with the sins of ignorance, and to deal with inequity, the thing that gets into our whole family line. The blood is the remedy for all three. God says that rather than kill people the moment that they commit sin, He'll let them carry inequity or carry the consequence of it through their generational line.

I want you to open your Bible in Genesis, Chapter 2. We’ve started just doing a series on the blood of Jesus, and our foundational truth for your walk with God, and unless the foundations of the building are established, the building doesn’t stay very strong when the pressure comes on. I just want to revise what we saw last week, and we looked at a key verse in Ephesians 1, Verse 7; in Him we have redemption, through His blood the forgiveness of sin. So we saw about those terms and what they meant. This is basically what we covered last week, just for those who this is perhaps your first time here.

The first one we saw was, and we looked very much at the natural things, the one who designs something always knows how it works best. The one who designs something writes the manual how it works. You make something, design something, you create something, you set the manual how it works. God made the something – He made the design, the creation and He made the rules and we saw that there are clearly physical laws in place. There are also spiritual laws in place. Man is a moral being, and subject to both the physical laws and spiritual laws, and because God set the laws in place, He just set them in place. We can’t change the laws. We can’t break the laws. All we can do is understand them, and work with them, or violate them.

If we violate them, we see a third thing that we looked at last week, is God establishes the consequences of violation of His laws. He’s the one who set the consequences. We saw how with gravity you can pretend it’s not there, ignore it, deny it or whatever, but if you step off a building you will feel the consequences. You could lie there, and you could blame your father, your mother, you can blame the government, you can blame everyone – but in the end you’ve just proven that there was a law, and by acting in such a way in ignorance of it you have actually proven the law exists. Yet when it comes – so we would think that’s stupid that someone would blame someone else for something like that, but when it comes to spiritual and moral matters, when we violate the laws of God, there’s still a consequence, except we look everywhere but to the right place to find where the problem is, and also what the solution is.

So we’ll have a look in Genesis, Chapter 2. We looked at this and we saw in Genesis, Chapter 2, how God gave man consequences, and the consequences of sin, Verse 17, in the day you eat, you will die. It’s really clear isn’t it? You eat, you die. What could be harder about that? You sin, you die. You sin, there’s a consequence, and of course we think that we’re exceptional, that we could do things and there won’t be a consequence, that God just says you break the laws or the rules or the guides He set in place for a productive life, there’s always a consequence.

Romans 5:12, we found in Romans 5:12 that by one man’s sin, sin entered the world, and death through sin, and sins come on all – death comes on all. Everyone has sinned, so we saw this issue of sin’s a big problem, and you can dress it up. You can call it another name, but whatever you do with it, in the end it is the root behind the problems we have. No education can overcome it, no counselling can overcome it. There actually has to be a remedy for this issue called sin, and that’s what we’ve seen, so in Genesis, Chapter 3, when Adam and Even sinned, Verse 7, the eyes of them both were open. They knew they were naked, and sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves coverings. There was an immediate impact, firstly within them, of sin. The first place you experience the impact of sin is within you, and then you notice it turns up in all the relationships. They can cover themselves - then in Verse 8 they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord. God called Adam and said where are you? He said I heard your voice in the garden. Now notice what he is going through internally. This is the consequence of sin: I was afraid. Fear is an outcome of sin. I was afraid because I was naked. He was ashamed. He was ashamed of his condition, so he carried things in his emotions now, that he had never carried before.

Sin disconnected him from God, so his spirit did not carry the glory and life of God. His soul becomes filled with fear, guilt, shame and then he began to conceal, cover and hide himself, and all his relationships became shattered. And of course there were further consequences physically. Eventually he died. A curse came into the earth, and we face the problem that we have. It's a serious and a big problem. It's not going to go away easily, but God has given a remedy for it, so we saw - the last thing that we looked at last week was that God established a remedy for sin. God established a remedy for sin. We saw in Hebrews 9:22 that without the shedding of blood, there can be no cleansing of sin, so if God said here's the law and here's the consequence, He also provided the remedy, and we saw the remedy was the shedding of blood. So I want to pick that up now and go a little bit further now, and look at how the blood of Jesus is applied. I can't do it all in one session. I will spread it out over two because the work of the cross is absolutely stunning in its completion to help us. It's absolutely stunning in its completion to help us, so I thought I'd start to talk about the application just at this point, and some foundational things to applying the blood of Jesus.

First of all we look in Exodus, Chapter 12. Now this is the first place in the Bible where it talks about a particular feast or a particular occasion, when God required the people of Israel to shed blood, the blood of a lamb. It says in Exodus, Chapter 12, Verse 21, pick out and take lambs for yourself according to your families, kill the Passover lamb. And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin, strike the lintel, strike the doorposts, put blood on it. Now He said, and when you put the blood on it, stay in behind that covering that's provided, and when the Angel of Death comes through you will be protected, you will not be harmed, because he will see the blood.

Now imagine you were a Hebrew on that day and you knew, having watched all the miracles and plagues that had come through, that God is well able to do what He said, and then shortly a plague is going to come. It's going to take out the members of the family, eldest members of all the families. Now you've got a loved son, he's the eldest first born, and you also are the first born. You are going to do something. Now what are you going to do? Are you going to do it because, you know, this is oh well, you know, God loves us and he's asked us to do this? You're not going to do it for that reason. You're going to do it for one reason alone; you're absolutely convinced that there's consequences if you don't. Think about that.

You see if we pretend there's no consequences, we won't see the need for the remedy, but when you see the consequences - here's the consequences. If they did not apply the blood, death came into the home, and they didn't have windows in those days so what would have happened then is they would have heard the screams and shouts as family after family were hit by God's judgement on each of them, and the only thing that stood between them and that judgement was the blood, which they had to apply. Now I think you would be pretty keen to do a good job of applying the blood. I reckon you'd make sure you got all the blood you could out of that lamb. You'd get it in a big basin, you wouldn't let any of it go, get that hyssop there, and dad would go out there - notice dad, the head of the home had to apply the blood for the whole family. And you get out there, you'd make sure there's a heap of blood on that lintel! And you'd make sure there's a heap of blood on the door-posts! And you know who'd be helping you make sure? Your family and particularly your eldest son! [Laughter] Dad! You do a good job. I don't think there's enough! I don't think the Angel of Death... Put more on! Get the blood on the lintel and the door-posts!

Now you see? Now this is the very first mention of applying the blood to be a remedy for sin, and notice how important it was, how big a deal it was that they stayed in, under the blood, under the covering of the blood. There was something important about it, because it's God's answer to the issue of sin, and the consequences of sin. There is only one thing stands between you and the consequences of your sin and generational inequity. It is the blood of Jesus. It's not enough He shed it. We have to apply it. Alright? We have to be able to apply it. So they applied the blood, and notice there, that word strike means - it could mean to touch. It also means to strike. I think if I was there, I'd be smiting it and striking it until all the blood's all gone, there's nothing left, blood everywhere.

I'd want to make sure. I wouldn't be worried about making a nice pretty job. I'd make sure I got it all up there, so it's absolutely certain there's blood there. No angel's going to miss that unless he's blind, you know! We make sure we've got it in place - so the blood was applied in three places. Now the interesting thing is it was in three places. It had to apply right across the lintel down the - He was quite specific. You notice what He didn't say? He didn't say just put it on the door. He said put it in these three places. Often in the Bible when there's three, it describes the completion of something that God has in mind, and so the three things that are there, the blood deals with three different aspects of man's failure, and these words, now some of you may know them but not know what they mean, so I want to explain them, because if you don't know what they mean, you will miss applying the blood to it.

I wonder what would happen if they just put it on one of the doorposts. That's kind of risky isn't it aye? Maybe you just put it on the doorposts. That should be enough. I mean it's there, won't that do? Come on, just put it on there. It should be enough. I don't think so. God said three places - I think we should think three places are where it needs to go, so I want to show you just something, just a verse. I want you to have a look with me in Leviticus, Chapter 16 - and there were three places. Now I think we must understand is that when we're talking about this Passover, it's not something Old Testament. It's actually an Old Testament picture of something real in the New Testament, because the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 5:7, Christ, our Passover is sacrificed for us. So whatever you're seeing here, in a picture from in the Old Testament, actually is a deep truth for us in the New Testament, so we don't need to go celebrate a Passover feast. Christ is our Passover! Every time we have communion we can celebrate that Passover with Him, any day, day after day, every day we can celebrate it because the Old Testament feast of Passover pointed to something very spiritual, very great that one day God was going to bring into being.

So even when they did it here, it was referring to the other, and so Leviticus, Chapter 16. Let's see if we can get it, Leviticus, Chapter 16. Here it is - in Verse 21; Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat - now he's talking about the law of the offerings - and he said and he shall confess over it all the inequities of the children of Israel. Inequities - and all their transgressions - so there's another thing, second thing - concerning all their sins. That is what the High Priest was told to do. He had to confess all the inequities - whatever that is - all the transgressions - whatever that is - all the sins. I think I know what that is. So he had to confess them or speak them aloud over a goat, lay his hands on it, impart all the sins to it, and then one goat was sent out into the wilderness, and another goat's blood was shed. This is the offerings that would take place consistently.

Now notice three things are mentioned there. The three things that are mentioned there are inequity, transgression and sin. When you look in the Bible in the New Testament, the only word we hear out mostly is sin, the word sin, so if I use the word sin, what would you think? Because God is very clear. God is very clear in getting this sorted out. When we think the word sin we think oh, I did something bad. You know, I got drunk, okay, alright, you know. I beat someone up. You know, we think of it that way but sin, the word sin just means missing the mark. So when the Bible refers to sin in the New Testament, it's the word hamartia, meaning to miss the mark, so you can imagine an archer and he's standing there, and now he's going to take a sight at a target. There is the mark. Shwoosh! Missed! Blow. Sin. That's it - missed the mark, missed the mark of what God intended. Fell short of his glory. He said all of sin.

Now there's three reasons if I was doing this, I could miss the mark. Reason number one, I just didn't know how to hit the mark. I was just ignorant. I didn't even know there was a mark there to be hit. I just fired at that big old target over there and I missed the whole thing completely and I missed it, it was unintentional. I didn't really mean to. I didn't really know about that. I was just firing the arrow. I didn't know I was supposed to hit a mark. I just was ignorant - see? So the first reason I could have missed the mark is because I just didn't know.

Second one is, I could have aimed at the mark and then gone deliberately off - ooh, deliberate. Miss, see? And the third reason is because I've got faulty gear, and I'm not doing it the right way, and I'm not holding it the right way, and I'm trying to get this thing and I'm just actually functioning wrong. I can't get it right because I'm not actually operating right. So there's three things: unintentional, intentional and faulty in the way of doing stuff. Got the idea? And all of those would end up with the same consequence, missing the mark. So when the Bible talks about sin, it says we have missed God's mark, missed God's plan, missed God's best for which there is a consequence, and that could have been unintentional. You just didn't know.

Well we kind of think like this; well if I didn't know I can't be blamed then. Not so. Try driving down the road at 100km and say, I didn't know it was a 50km zone. Doesn't work. You broke the law, do the crime, do the time. Not only that, in the Old Testament there was an offering specifically for sins of ignorance. Ignorance can never, in the spirit realm and the realm with God, be counted as an excuse for something being done. You can't come to God and just say, I didn't know. It is called something. It's got a specific name, and we're going to explain - it's called sin, see? Or you could have actually seen the sign down there, 50km, driven anyway, so you drove 100km. I'm going to give it a go - hope there's no cops around. Now you knew exactly what you were doing. That is called transgression, a deliberate violation of something you knew to be the right standard. You knew it and you still deliberately did it. That's a transgression, so from God's point of view sin is something that you did, and you didn't have knowledge of what it was, or you didn't fully understand what it was. It's still sin.

A transgression means you knew exactly what you were doing, and you did it anyway. There's something in your heart, rebellion in your heart - so sins and transgressions are two different things, but in the New Testament it's called all sin. But they do use the words sins and transgressions and inequities in the New Testament as well, but often when they use word sin, it's referring to the whole deal. But the blood applied to all three, so just to come to God and say well, I didn't really know, it doesn't mean you're not bearing consequences, because as far as the spirit world goes, they don't care whether you know or don't know. You still have the consequences. Aah, that's not fair! That's called sin, and all of sin, and the wages of sin, is death. Oh, but that's not fair! Go talk to God. He set the rules. Get clued up. Get connected. The real problem's deeper than that. The real problem is deeper than that - and then there's a third thing, inequity.

Now inequity is a crookedness. Inequity, the word means literally twisted. You know, you see those wicker furniture, they have all these things twisted together? That's wicker. That's kind of wicked, you know and that's what inequity is. Inequity is the crookedness inside you. Inequity is not so easy to see, because inequity lies right through the strand of your being. In fact, inequity is in the family line, and God says that rather than kill people the moment that they commit sin, He'll let them carry inequity, or carry the consequence of it, through their generational line. So we have several things that the blood deals with. One, inequity, the crookedness that's in your family background, in your family line, specifically motivating you to then do sins, things that you're not even sure they're right or wrong, and transgressions - things you know exactly what you're doing, and you still did it anyway.

The root behind the whole deal is inequity, so inequity is like the lintel. Sins and transgressions are like the failures that we have on either side, some we know about and some we didn't know about. Some we did deliberately, some we just did it was a mistake - it was all a mistake, I didn't know! Listen, there's still an offering required for those things you didn't know. There's still a price to pay for the things you didn't know. Oh, this is a real problem sin then isn't it? What am I going to do? Because most of us think oh, we'll come out - somehow God will - I'll just say a little prayer to Jesus and it'll be right. No, no. There's a way that you apply the blood to your life, and there are areas of your life to apply the blood, and three areas to apply it are transgressions, deliberate violations where you know exactly what you did, and did it anyway; sins, where actually I did this thing, but I didn't realise I was doing it. You're still required to front up and own up and say you're sorry. I found a lot of relationships, people do things, and they don't realise what they did was wrong, but then they don't take any ownership either. God requires us to take responsibility for all three, and there's a remedy for the things that you own up to. The things that you don't own up to just remain in effect. Oh, well it's not a big deal, we'll just let it go. No, no, no. That's why so many Christians walk defeated. They've got so much baggage unresolved, and so much demonic stuff around their life, they can't seem to stay free, so God wants us to deal with the deliberate transgressions. He wants to deal with the sins of ignorance. He wants us all to deal with inequity, the thing that gets into our whole family line that's like a twist toward sin, and the blood is the remedy for all three.

Notice that Aaron had to confess all three. The blood deals with all three. Now you getting the idea? In Ephesians 2:1 it tells us - just to give you a New Testament context, Ephesians 2:1, it says you were dead in trespasses and sins. There it is. The word trespass is the word transgression, so He tells the same thing. Trespasses and - or transgressions - and sins, things you didn't know, things you did know, and did anyway. He said you were dead in sin in those things, but Christ, oh thank God that He's rich in grace and mercy because it says we were dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to the course of this world, under demonic influence, sowing and reaping havoc in our lives and we were without any hope, but Jesus with His goodness and grace helped us! Oh my! When you see what disastrous situations we've all been in and still face, how you'll appreciate oh the mercy of our God, and the blood that was shed! The precious blood! It is very, very precious.

Titus 2:14 tells us that Jesus shed His blood that we might be cleansed from all our inequity, so these words are all through the Bible. Now, so how are we going to do it? So number one, here's the first thing; we have to apply the blood, and we're going to apply it specifically to those things. That's the first thing. We need to know what to apply it to, and apply it to those three things. The second thing is this; you must speak out. Notice the High Priest. He confessed the sins. You have to speak. You can't do this stuff just in your head. You have to speak, and you have to be vocal, and you have to be specific. I've found that people pray a very general prayer - oh, well I'm so sorry for what I've done. That's wonderful. It won't do you much good though.

What you've got to do is, actually be specific. It's good that you spoke up, but you need to go further than that, and actually be specific. Have you ever noticed that people who make an apology like this, it doesn't cut it with you? Oh, well if I've hurt you I'm sorry, or if I've done something wrong I'm sorry. What? And you kind of think oh blow, you know, this is a pain, because they're saying they're sorry - yes, they're a bit sorry, but why is it I feel so bad about this? Because something's missing. They didn't - 'if' I've done something wrong - they're not even admitting they've done anything wrong, and 'something' - well whats 'something'? See? There's no awareness of actually an action creating a pain in a relationship and needing to be addressed, so the apology never cuts it. You walk away feeling that didn't really cut it too well. Apologies need to be specific, and need to be vocal; I was wrong when I did this. I'm sorry. What I did was wrong. What I did was sin. What I did was, I sinned against you - but you see, we just call it a problem or a mistake, or we kind of just remove what it really is, and so we can't fix it.

So if you can't fix it with God's method, then it still stays there, and it has a burden on your life. It just exerts a pressure, continued pressure. So it says in Leviticus 16:21, Aaron shall confess the inequities. Now that's a long day that day. He's got a whole nation to confess their inequities. Well Father, I just confess before you the inequities of these families in the church, idolatry and sexual sin and - and now my list goes, there's a whole sin list going there, a whole list of crookedness and twistedness and inequities, sin and transgression, all of it being confessed. It's a long, long, long list but he did the whole lot, and laid it on the hands of the goat. But the Bible says in John 1:9, if we confess. Oh, you mean I just - it's more than being sorry for it? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So there's our bit, God's bit. God's bit is to shed the blood, so we could be forgiven and cleansed. Our bit is to meet the condition: if we confess. We have to come before Him confessing.

Now, when you think of that word confessing, you think if you come up like me, as from a Roman Catholic background, you're thinking a little box and telling your sins to some priest, you know? But actually there's someone we're to talk to. He's called Jesus Christ. That's the one that we go to. He's the only one that can make the difference, and the word confess is the word in Greek, homologia - homo meaning of the same kind, or to be in agreement, or to be of the same; logia meaning a word. So what it says simply is this: I need to speak to God the same things His word says about my sin. This is sin. I am guilty. There is a judgement that comes because of this. Demonic spirits, sowing and reaping, all kinds of consequences and I'm guilty. That's only half of the confession. The other half of the confession is what the blood has done - but Jesus, I believe that you died on the cross for my sins. You shed your blood for my sins, and I confess today that my sins are forgiven because of the blood you shed by your mercy and by your grace! I apply that blood to my sin, and it's as good as gone!

Now you notice it's not just an, all down on your knees, feeling sorry for yourself? It's actually about declaring God, you're right, I'm wrong. God, you're provision and I apply it - both parts. You have to do it. You have to do it. That's how you get out. Now a lot of people mumble. Hello! Speak up! I didn't hear I'm guilty sound yet! [Laughter] You'd be surprised how hard it is to get 'I'm guilty' to come out of anyone. Do you know why that is? Because of inequity. We think somehow the rules don't apply to us. We're special. My mummy said I was special. [Laughter] Pastor told me I'm special to Jesus. Aah, but sin also has to be brought out in the open specifically. Got to bring it out specifically. I was wrong! I sinned! What I did was sin! I sinned against you Lord, when I did these - when I spoke those words in anger. Lord, your judgement is upon what I've done. I bring it to the cross, and to the blood, and you have said if I confess my sins, oh glory to God, I will be forgiven! Now what does that mean? It means whatever happens in the courts of heaven, there's a cancelling of the consequences of my sin. And I will be cleansed inside of the impact of this thing in my life, the inequity, the perversion that goes on inside, the twistedness in the heart.

Now here's the thing. We have to speak! I hear people come to church and they mumble, mumble in praise, mumble in prayer. They come up and you lead them in a confession, they mumble most times when I do deliverance things. I've got to stop them and tell them to speak up, because this is an important issue to deal with. You don't want mumbling around it. Be specific, be vocal, be clear. Bible's very, very clear, and so here's the thing you need to realise, that the spirit world is watching every word you say, everything you do. The spirit world watches.

What makes you think you can get away with anything, when there's someone watching all the time? Well I'm not watching all the time, so you think I can get away with the Pastor anyway, he won't notice. Says he's listening to God and then he notices. Oh, how did you know that? [Laughter] But the spirit world is watching, so there are a number of people watching you. Number one is watching. Number one who is watching, is the devil. He's watching every word you say, every move you make. Why? Because he wants to go before God and say listen, did you hear what that blighter said? Hear what he said? Hear what he did? I demand the right to afflict him!

God says well, not much we can do about it. He just mumbled. [Laughter] There's too much pride. Wouldn't even admit that he'd made a failure, sin - so the devil is watching all the time. The bible says in Zechariah 3, Verse 1; Joshua with the High Priest, he had a vision - Joshua with the High Priest, standing before God, standing in the courts of heaven before the presence of God, and Satan right there to accuse him. So there is a courtroom where there is a legal process goes on. It's to do with the laws that govern the realm of the spirit, and the realm of earth, and in that courtroom there's a whole number of people present; number one is the devil, and he's there and he's ready to get on your tail straight away and you know what? The Bible says, Revelations 12:10, he's not going to stop accusing you. He's a vicious prosecutor. If you've ever been to court - probably the person next you has - I hate going to court. I've been there a few times - very embarrassed, very humiliated to stand. In those days you used to have to go to court for a traffic fine - it was a shocker. They've got rid of - I'm glad those days are gone now, just pay the fine and get over it, you know? [Laughter] But you go there and you have to stand in a dock. Oh, it's a miserable place to be and there's a bench, oh-ho there's a bench, and there's someone who's a judge - horrible. The whole thing's horrible and humiliating and frightening, so you go there, and there over on one side, there's a man in a uniform. He's a prosecutor, and he's got a list of charges. There they are, and they're all itemised, and do you know something? The devil has a list of everything you've done, everything you've said, every mistake, every transgression, every inequity - he's got the whole list! It's a big list! You should be ready to forgive others - your list is too long. You can't afford to be showing no mercy to others, see?

So he's in the court and happily reads it out, and he has a right to afflict you. This is why many people live burdened, pressured, depressed, can't get victory, repeated cycles of sin, living with infirmities and all kinds - they live defeated, because they haven't known how to get into that place and apply the blood and shut the devil up!

People come and tell me they're oppressed of devils. Listen! Jesus said you stomp on them, tread them under feet, and I've given you something to do it with! I have dealt with his list of accusations at the cross of Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us He removed the list that was against us. That's our inequities going back generations. He removed all the sins, all the transgressions, and He stripped away the devil's power to accuse, and triumphed over gloriously. Well that's what He's done. What have you done?

It's what you do that determines whether you walk in victory, because your actions activate this to become real in your life, see? Think about it. Think about it. So you have to speak, so we have to speak - so number one, the devil's watching. Number two, the Holy Ghost is watching. He's watching. How do we know He's watching? Because His role is to watch you. One of His roles is to tell you any time you go off the tracks. One of His roles is to tell you any time you go off, so He must be watching everything you say and do. You think oh, I let him out of my eyes for a little bit. He even went overseas, I didn't notice what he did, you know? It doesn't work like that. God's everywhere. He knows exactly what you do, so the Holy Spirit also knows all that you've done, and here's the tricky part. There's also an angel, the Scribe Angel [Laughter] and this is the bad one. He's a good fella, but just got a very simple job, and his job is just to record what you said and did. Whoa, really! Oh - on the way out of church, oh! Write it all down!

He's got a book. It's got your name on it. You open up that book, oh-ho-ho - and believe me, it will be open one day. See? And it's got in it everything you said or did. My goodness me, that's a bit of a concern isn't it? [Laughter] So it seems in the spirit world, everyone's got their eyes on you. That's a bit of a shock. I kind of thought I could sneak in and sneak out and sneak off and have a private fag and no one would notice [Laughter] and sneak around the pub and have a little drink and no one would notice and, you know, sneak a little look at something I shouldn't be looking at, you see? That's what people think - but all the time the spirit world is whoa! The devil's rubbing his hands, all the ammunition he's got to fire off against you, and demand the right to have a go at you!

He did it to Peter. Jesus said that. He said Satan has demanded the right to come against you, but I've prayed your faith doesn't fail in the middle of it - and boy did he get a hiding too! He got a massive hiding, publicly humiliated, but you know, it's because there was something there in his heart, there was pride. So everyone is watching what you're doing. How exciting! And everything is written down. So here we go, we'll get to how it works out.

So your confession, you must speak from your heart, you know? Bible says we confess with our mouth and speak with our heart towards salvation, so I've got to be sincere - so mumbling - oh, I'm sorry - that doesn't really quite cut it. It doesn't cut it with anyone. Kids come up and say oh, sorry - you know they're sorry because they got caught out! [Laughter] It's not a very deep sorry is it? It doesn't really change either. A lot of us come to God and say I'm sorry. We're sorry because we're in a mess, rather than deeply sorry because of the consequences. Okay, here's the next thing and then we'll show you how your confession activates Jesus' High Priest ministry.

In Hebrews 3, Verse 1 it says - now get this. Listen to this carefully: Jesus is the apostle - now notice this - the High Priest of our confession. So what are you giving Him to be a High Priest with? Remember it's the High Priest who dealt with the sins of Israel, but they had to let Him know what they were. Jesus needs something to work with. He's done the work. The problem is we've got to do our part. He's the High Priest of our confession, so the Bible says in Hebrews; hold fast your confession of faith. It's always using the same word, homologia, a profession, a statement agreeing with God about my sin, and about the remedy. Hebrews 4:15, we don't have a High Priest that doesn't know what it's like to be tempted and can't feel what we feel, and doesn't understand us. There's not someone there who's impersonal. We have Him - He's so personal He walked everywhere in Israel, He suffered everything we could suffer, He knows exactly what it's like. So when you go to talk to Him, He knows what its like - I know what that's like. Oh, I know what that one's like! Oh-ho yeah, I know what that one's like. You must come to Him and the Bible says, let us come boldly! Boldly! Boldly! Boldly! Ooh, ooh - no, that's not how to come. That's coming religiously. We are to come boldly!

Where do we get our boldness from? Because we absolutely know what Jesus has done, and if I will step in and agree with it, then His High Priest ministry will be effective, and this is what'll happen; the court in heaven - number of places refer to it. I won't go into the things on it now, but the court in heaven, there's a prosecutor there, and he reads out the list of charges. Here you are, he did this, this, this, this, this, this - oh! Look at them. It's such a long list. Then comes over to you and of course the Angel of the Lord, the Scribe Angel is there and the Holy Spirit's there. They check the records - oh, that's pretty true. It's exactly what went on down there, and we know exactly what happened down there. We were watching too. And so now it comes to your turn to speak, so what will you speak? Well I didn't know. Don't blame me. Don't look at me like that. Don't blame me. Well, it was my father, it was the Pastor. I didn't go through the new Christian's class - and so it comes out. Well it wasn't really that bad. Well anyway, that guy was mean to me, so it's all - now you understand what you're doing is, your falling into the trap, there's no blood will apply to you for what you've done. The devil will say guilty as charged, so I've got a right to have a go at him. Jesus said if you harbour unforgiveness in your heart, and won't admit to it and deal with it, well of course the devil will have a right to afflict with infirmities and sicknesses and things - and people wonder why there's so much trouble?

This is what needs to come. Lord, I hear the list of charges. How do you hear them? Because the Holy Spirit talks to you about them. If He doesn't, someone else near you will come and tell you [laughs] There's a lot of people around like to tell you, but there it is - so I am guilty. Just I have done exactly what was said that I did. I did it. I am guilty. However, I brought these matters to the cross, to the blood of Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus, I put my case in Jesus' hands. He will speak to me. Now of course if you go to a court, you have to have lawyer, and the lawyer does the speaking for you, so they just ask you, are you guilty or not guilty? So in this case you say well, I'm guilty. They say great! The devil's rubbing his hands, he can have a good go at you now. Your lawyer stands up and His name is Jesus Christ. One John, Chapter 2, Verse 1: We have an advocate with the Father. He is gone in, a High Priest has gone into the heavenly places, to be in the presence of God, for us it tells us. Oh! He's there for us!

Now, have I been in discussion with my advocate? Oh, no. Well there's not much for Him to work with then, is there. I need to have come to Jesus, the High Priest, to Jesus, my advocate in the court, so that when I've come to Him and confessed my sins, acknowledged my guilt, acknowledged my sin, before I ever get into the courtroom - acknowledge it straight away. God, this is what I have done. Jesus, I come to you. I hate that sin, I turn from it, I take the blood that you shed for me, and apply it to my life. I thank you, I am forgiven and cleansed. Apply it to my inequity, my transgressions, my sins. I apply your blood - and then when the devil's done all his accusing and you've pleaded guilty, say well I'm just going to leave it in the hands of my lawyer to sort this one out. And Jesus steps up, excuse me but I have a record here, and you notice here that there's no sign or evidence of any of these charges in our record.

There is no record in my book of any of these charges! There can be only one reason - not because he didn't do them, but because he applied the blood that I shed for him successfully to the charges and therefore devil, you can tear up your list of charges. This man is innocent - I paid the price. [Applause] See - paid the price! Paid the price! Now, that won't stop the devil badgering you. He will keep badgering you - oh well, out of court, when you get out of court - you know something? You really are a bad person. You did all that stuff. I know you did all of it. I've got the list. I've been watching - you did all that stuff. You're really a bad - how can you come into church? How can you?

You've got to shut him up. You've got to shut him up, because you've already been to Jesus, you've already been into court, you've already brought the things there. You say devil, go talk it out with my advocate! Go talk it out with Jesus Christ! I'm listening to none of your stuff. I overcome you by the blood He shed, and my confession is that I believe what it did. You've got to be quite assertive on this, and some sins more assertive than others. You've got to take a strong stand of confession, not only agreeing with God and coming into alignment with Him and turning from sin, but also agreeing with Him what the blood has done for you. I am redeemed by the blood! I am redeemed completely! Oh-ho, all my sins are forgiven! You need to get it in your mouth, confess it, confess it, confess it! Build this confession out of your mouth. I'll be listening to hear in the next few weeks what you're confessing, so whether it's got into your heart, because if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you will make effective Jesus' High Priest ministry. Amen! And that blood will cleanse you. You'll come to church, you won't be all depressed and down, saying oh my God, I thank you! I'm clean, I'm free, that inequity's gone, that old devil, I sent him running. I trod on him underfoot, showed him the blood.

Listen, I've been in some deliverance cases, got a bit tricky on the way, got a bit hard, the devil's resisting. I say devil, look at the cross! Look at the blood - and they would scream! Aah, not the blood! Not the blood! Not the blood! [Laughter] Hey, how about that. They know more than we do. It was just when I applied the blood by confession that they got into a bit of a frenzy. They get into a frenzy when you apply the blood, because now they've got nothing to work on you with.

Oh halleluiah, I thank you for the blood of Jesus Christ by which I am redeemed. I am forgiven. I have acceptance with the beloved. Oh, I thank you, halleluiah, come on! Let's stand and give Him a clap today shall we? [Applause] Oh my! Oh, I feel so excited about what Jesus has done for us! Oh halleluiah! The blood - there is power in that blood, mighty power in the blood of Jesus Christ! Oh, you try it. You apply it, and you will see what it will do for you! Every time that accusation comes up, oh, stick the blood in there! Speak of what Jesus has done for you. Hold it out over the devil and make him shrink away defeated! He'll give up on you after a while. Come on, what are we going to sing?

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Eph.1:7 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His Grace ..”

The one who creates makes the rules – God the Creator put in place physical and spiritual laws.

God established the consequences of sin

- Gen 2:15-17 “…in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

- Rom.5:12 “By one man (Adam) sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, for all have sinned.”

- Gen.3:7-10 “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked and I hid myself.”

Consequences: spiritual – emotional – relational – physical.

God established a remedy for sin – the blood of Jesus Christ.

Heb. 9:22 Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.

The Old Testament shedding of blood of animals was a prophetic picture of the blood of Jesus shed.

Redemption =3083= a ransom, price paid to totally liberate a captive.

2. How the Blood of Jesus is Applied

(a) The blood must be applied – there is a part we must fulfil.

Exod.12:22-23 take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin and strike the lintel and the two door posts with the blood that is in the basin.

These were the instructions given for the first Passover – how to apply the blood.

Christ is our Passover (1 Cor.5:7) – He is the fulfilment of this feast.

Strike =5060= to touch, strike with force.

The blood was applied in 3 places – lintel and 2 door posts.

These three places cover all areas of man’s sin.

(b) The blood is to deal with Iniquity, transgressions and sin.

Lev.16:21-22 “Aaron shall lay both hands on the head of the live goat; confess over it the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, and all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat.”

In the New Testament one word is often used to describe all these three words.

Sin =harmartia= to miss the mark and forfeit the prize e.g. archer.

We can miss the mark in three ways:

(i) unintentionally (ii) Intentionally (iii) Fault or flaw in how doing it

These three words all mean different things that must be addressed by the blood.

(i) Sin = unintentional wrong. An action committed in ignorance, without

knowledge = an error made in ignorance.

(ii) Transgression = a wrong committed with full knowledge. It means to know

better but to do it anyway.

(iii) Iniquity = an inner perverseness, twistedness, which causes a person to commit a sin or transgression – it motivates the person.

Eph.2:1 “..you were dead in trespasses and sins..”

Tit.2:14 “..that He might redeem us from all iniquity..”

(c) You must speak out – be vocal – be specific

Lev.16:21 “Aaron shall lay both his hands on the live goat and confess over it…”

1 Jn.1:9 “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Confess =3670= homologeo= to say the same thing as the Word of God does concerning our condition.

We must speak – be vocal and be specific about what the Word of God says.

(1) We are guilty as charged. (2) The blood of Jesus was shed for our forgiveness.

The spirit world is watching our every action and word.

(i) The devil watches: Rev.12:10 He accuses us on every point.

(ii) The Holy Spirit watches: Rom.9:1 ..my conscience bears witness to the

Holy Spirit.

(iii) The Angel of God watches: Ecc.5:6 The scribe angel keeps account of all

we say and do in a book. Rom.14:12 Each of us shall give an account of

himself to God.

(d) You must speak from your heart = sincerity

Rom.10:9-10 “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.”

There must be ‘heart’ behind your words – sincerity not just empty words.

(e) Your confession of faith activates Jesus Ministry on your behalf

Heb.3:1 “…consider the Apostle, and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus”

Confession =3670= homologo = to say the same thing as the Word of God.

1 Jn.1:9 “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us…”

Heb.4:15-16 “..Let us hold fast our confession …

…Let us come boldly to the throne of grace!”

We need to hold fast to the confession of what the Word of God says that the blood of Jesus has done for us.

(f) The Courts of Heaven

There is a heavenly court (Dan.7:9-10)

There is an accuser – the Devil

Rev.12:10

Zech.3:1

There are witnesses – the Holy Spirit/The Scribe Angel

There is an advocate with the Father – someone to represent us

1 Jn.2:1-2

The Devil reads the charges against you (accuses you).

(i) They are detailed and specific

(ii) They are valid

(iii) How do you plead? - Guilty as charged

- Blood of Jesus Christ forgives

Rev.12:10 “They overcame him (devil) by the blood of the lamb and by the Word of their testimony.”

The Blood of Jesus (3 of 4)

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If I just tell you that Jesus died for your sins, and He's forgiven you, it's very shallow. But if we begin to look into some of the pictures and patterns shown in the Old Testament, oh, it becomes so vivid all that He did, because it's hard to explain to someone all that Jesus did on the cross. That's why the Old Testament has got these pictures so as you study them and keep thinking about Jesus and what He did for us you begin to see the full breadth of it

Well I want to continue a series I've been doing on the blood of Jesus Christ, and it's true that people everywhere, it doesn't matter who we are, we talk to one another, you find that what goes on in our lives that is not seen, are struggles with low esteem, struggles with not feeling good enough, struggles with guilt. We remember things that we've done in the past, and struggle to feel good enough to come near to God. We have issues that seem to - we thought we'd gotten over them, and they seem to come back, old patterns, old habits, old ways.

For all of us there are inner conflicts and turmoil that go on. I think they go on until the day you die. They're a struggling against the old life, that old nature - but there is a remedy. There is a remedy, and there are things that you and I can get hold of in our life that will cause us to get victory over those struggles. One of the most powerful weapons that God has given you and me, to overcome anything the devil would throw, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ. The blood that Jesus shed is still powerful today. I have been to many meetings where I have spoken to a demonised man and said to that demon, here, look at the blood of Jesus! And I saw that demon with fear in its eyes scream out. They certainly know the reality of the blood and what it does. Most Christians don't, and so we want to help you with that.

We saw as we've looked over the last couple of weeks that God who established all things, set rules in place, He set physical laws, He set spiritual laws. Not only that, He also set consequences for disobeying or breaking spiritual laws, so when we break spiritual laws, there's always a consequence. You say well, I sinned and didn't even see anything. I didn't feel any different afterwards - but that doesn't mean that you haven't set in place something you will feel and experience. That's the problem with sin. It really deceives us, because we think we sin and get away with it, nothing much seemed to happen immediately. God spoke to Adam - in the day you sin you'll die, but he didn't die physically that day. He lived almost 1,000 years - but was it true that what God said actually applied? Certainly. The day he sinned, something changed in him. He changed, and that change outworked in all kinds of different ways. So that's the deception of sin.

We come and we call things by another name except sin; what is my problem? Oh, it's my hang up, or it's my past. We have all kinds of labels to try and smooth it out, rather than calling it what it is. That was sin. That was pride. That was anger. That was hate. That was lust. That was fear. That was sin! And when you can call it what it is, there's a remedy. If you try and cover it or deny it, or wrestle to admit to it, you've got no remedy. It's still going to work in your life, you'll just reap the consequences.

There is a remedy for the failures of life. There is a remedy for our mistakes that we make. There is a remedy for the besetting problems. It's found in what Jesus did at the cross, so we want to look about it. Let's have a look in Hebrews 9, and I want to share some things today about the completeness of the redemption in Jesus. We'll just read this in Hebrews, Chapter 9 and when you read these, it may be initially a little difficult to get a hold of. We'll just explain it in simple terms shortly.

Now Verse 11 - Christ came as a High Priest of good things to come - so Jesus is a High Priest - of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is not this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves - notice - with His own blood, He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. If the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling of unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

So He's referring here, and the book to Hebrews was written to people who understood their heritage and their history, so they understood the law of Moses, and all the things that perhaps you and I are not so familiar with. So they understood that all that they had learned in the past, was a picture of something that would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. They were told by God when they came out of Egypt to build a tabernacle, a place where God would dwell, and there was a protocol for coming into the very presence of God, which the High Priests followed. If you broke that protocol you died, so once a year the High Priests would go into the very holy place, where the presence of God shone and lit this place up, and he would make offerings on behalf of the nation, with the blood of goats and heifers and bulls and calves. He would do it once a year, and that would sanctify the people for one more year. It never solved sin. It never dealt with the root problems. What it did was, legally before God, made provision for the nation for another year, but God was using these things as a picture of something that was to come. So when you study these things in the Old Testament, they are a vivid prophetic picture of the reality of what Jesus has done, and I want to lay that out in a bit more detail today.

So go into Leviticus, Chapter 16 and it'll become quite practical in just a moment when you start to see, how this translates into realities for us today. In Leviticus, Chapter 16, it is a description of what would happen on the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement was the one day a year when the High Priests came in and had to deal with sins of a nation. There'd be a lot of sins wouldn't there? Two or three million people, and everyone's sinning every day. Man, that's a lot of sins. So once a year he'd come, and this was the big day - and God describes exactly what he's got to do, and notice what he says, Verse 7; Take two goats and present them before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of the meeting. Two goats - then he'll cast lots for the two goats. He'll throw a lot - one for the Lord, and the other for the scapegoat - so he'd have two goats. The two goats were presented to the Lord, one offering. So when you think two goats, one offering, okay? One offering.

Then they would get the dice, throw the lot, and one of them would be chosen, and one of them was chosen to shed its blood, the other was chosen to be the scapegoat, but it was all a picture of the same and one offering, what Jesus would do for us. So they would take the goat that was chosen to be the offering, the sin offering for the people, and in Verse 15, he kill the goat of the sin offering for the people, and bring it's blood inside the veil, and do with the blood what he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat, seven times. So the Priest would take the two goats, present them to the Lord, one offering. He'd take one of them and that one would be slain, take the blood and he would go into the very holiest where God was, and he'd take the blood - he had it in a basin - and seven times he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, on the ark where the presence dwelt, and then right down on the ground before it, seven times. We'll come back to that in a moment.

Then the second thing he did after that, in Verse 20, when he made an end for atoning for the Holy Place and so on, he'd bring the live goat and he'd lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the inequities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions, all their sins, and he'd put them on the head of the goat - ooh, that's a long, long list. Imagine going around the nation finding out what did you all do wrong this last year? That's a lot of sinning has gone on among two million people in one year. You can imagine that.

So he would lay hands on the head of the live goat. Notice what he'd do - laying on the hands always is impartation. He'd put his hands on the head of the goat and he would speak or decree these are the sins: lust, pride, fornication, adultery, perversions. He'd go through the list of what had been going on in the nation for a year and he would speak them over the live goat. Then the live goat would be released or go into the wilderness. He would never be seen again - so notice two pictures: two goats, one offering. One goat would be slain and shed it's blood, and the blood sprinkled seven times. The other goat, hands laid on it, and now the work becomes complete, the sins are imparted to the goat. The goat goes, never to be seen again. A picture for us of Jesus Christ who shed his blood, and when you and I apply the blood to our life, our sins are taken away, never to be remembered any more - a most amazing picture, amazing Old Testament picture.

All of these things in the Old Testament are to help us understand what Christ has done, because if I just tell you well, Jesus died for your sins and He's forgiven you, it's very shallow. But if we begin to look into some of the pictures and patterns shown in the Old Testament, oh, it becomes so vivid all that He did, because it's hard to explain to someone all that Jesus did on the cross. That's why the Old Testament has got these pictures so as you study them, and keep thinking about Jesus and what He did for us, you begin to see the full breadth of it. It's extraordinary! But even in how it happens, someone has to shed their blood, and someone else must confess the sins, see? But the work is complete - the work of Jesus Christ, so we want to focus on that. Now notice what they confessed over them: inequities, transgressions and sins.

Now in the New Testament you hear one word and it's called sin, kind of the coverall word, but actually it's composed of three things: Sin - sins are where we break the law of God, but we do it ignorantly. We didn't realise, we didn't know. That's what the Bible calls sins. Transgressions are where we actually knew what we should do, we knew what was right and what was wrong, and we deliberately did what was wrong. That is a transgression. One, we didn't know and did it anyway, we're still guilty. There was an offering for those sins of ignorance. Two, we did it and we knew exactly what we were doing and the third thing is inequity. Inequity is the crookedness or the twistedness in our life that motivates and moves us to continually sin in certain kinds of ways, so often it's connected to our generational background. We'll get back to that another time.

Okay, so notice what he did. All of it went on - sins, transgressions, inequities. It didn't matter if you didn't know. It still needed a remedy - so God has provided a remedy, all of them, the whole lot - ignorance, deliberate, or just the crookedness in our life, this is all there. Now notice - so we've got it there. Notice what happens here in Verse 14: He'll take some of the blood of the bull, sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat, seven times. Now I want to look at this thing, seven times. Whenever you see something done seven times, seven times the blood of this was put on, seven times the blood of that was put on - every time you see the number seven, it tries to highlight to us, that whatever we're looking at or whatever's there, is a complete picture of what God is wanting to do. There's always a perfect number; seven days in a week, a full week. Now how many times should I forgive? Seventy times seven - in other words Jesus was saying, you just forgive completely, and you don't keep going back there. It's completion of whatever we do. Many cycles of things are in times or days of seven, so even is a number of God, but it's a number where something is complete. So he sprinkles seven times - so each time he sprinkled, it was a part of the complete picture of sin and the things we struggle with being dealt with.

So he sprinkled the blood seven times, and I want to open up for you a little bit of understanding about the shedding of that blood. He shed the blood so that we could be forgiven, made clean, come out of all cursing, and walk in blessing. That's the provision. We'll look at it in another scripture, but just have a look in Isaiah 53. There are seven things that Jesus came to redeem us from, seven things that the blood of Jesus Christ addresses. Go into Isaiah 53, you notice - very familiar - then I'm going to pick up, and see if you can identify what the seven areas or seven ways, Jesus shed His blood. It's interesting, shed His blood in seven ways. The High Priest sprinkled the blood seven times, seven. Now why did he do it seven times? Just because this is a good thing? It's a happy thing? It's a good number? I like that seven - we'll do it seven - no, it was not. It's because God's trying to tell us that the work Jesus did can be applied to every aspect of our life, and there is a way to apply it. Now, if we don't apply the blood, in the way God designates, we don't get the benefits of what He's done for us, see?

So let's have a look at it, Isaiah 53, Verse 4: Surely He has borne our griefs, He's carried our sorrows; we esteemed Him stricken and smitten by God, but He was afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions, or pierced through for our transgressions. He was bruised for our inequities. The chastisement for our peace, lack of peace was upon Him. By His stripes we were healed, and we all like sheep have gone astray. We've all turned, every one, to his own way and the Lord put on Him the inequity of us all. Now I'm not going to open all that up but I'm going to go through piece by piece and have a look at where and how Jesus shed His blood, and you'll see all of them are included.

There are different things that the blood of Jesus was shed to do in our life. If you just say well He just shed His blood for my sins, Jesus, please forgive me and I'm getting on my way now, that'll be fine. Thank you for forgiving me. Now God will operate with you when you're a young Christian certainly, just through simple prayer like that, but as we grow He wants us to understand the completeness of the work, so we can lay hold of all the fullness of what He's done for us, because I've observed that many people come to Christ, they experience the initial joy of their forgiveness and salvation, and often don't stay in a place of life. Much of it is because of an internal wrestling with feeling guilty, something's wrong with me, not good enough. Something seems to keep landing on the soul they can't seem to get a victory over - struggles that go on, old issues seem to come up. There's a remedy for all of these things.

You've got to know what the remedy is, and how the remedy applies, so let's have a look at the first one then. So the first thing we'll do there is we're going to ask you then, if you can identify how many places you felt Jesus shed His blood? Probably you'll come up with a few of them. See if we can get all the seven? Where would be the first place that you can just think of? The head? The head was one, yeah, yeah, okay. Another one? Hands - must have been the hands, yeah, nails and hands. The back, yes, okay, the back, yes. Side, yes, spear in the side, yeah. Feet. Okay, we've got it. Five - internal bleeding, yes. And the blood - good, you got a whole seven, that's fantastic.

Okay, let's go through each one of them and have a look at each one of them in turn. The first - not necessarily in the order of importance, but I want to pick the last two are the very important ones, very, very important. First, Jesus, when He was crucified on the cross they drove great spikes through his wrists. When the Bible's talking about your hands, whenever the Bible's talking about your hands, it's always referring to the work you do, because you do things with your hands. If you have no hands, it's very hard to work, so with our hands we work, so when we talk about hands we're talking about the works that we do. In the Bible the first sin was committed with hands. You know, Even took the fruit with her hands. She gave the fruit to her husband. He took it and he ate it, with his hands.

The first murder was committed by the hands of Cain. Cain slew his brother, so the Bible tells us very clearly that by the hands of a man, sin came. In other words, your hands then is a picture of every work that you do, the things that we do. Now you can think of the things that you've done with your hands that you're a little ashamed of, things that you've done with your hands that you wish you hadn't done, areas of our life where we've done things with our hands, the works of our hands, literally the things we've done that we feel a sense of shame or guilt or regret about. All the works of our hands - now Jesus when He died on the cross, they pierced through. Now they didn't put it through His hand - it would have just torn off the cross. What they did is they drove two big spikes just at the base of the hand, right there just in this part of the wrist here where there's a gap between the bones. It is also the place where there's a major nerve. Now if you were to get your hand - if I hold my hand up like this and I just start to squeeze into my - now you can see like that, just involuntarily when I put my finger on that nerve that runs down inside my arm, the hand begins to shrivel up. You just can't stop it.

Any of you had a massage, and someone puts a hand and they squeeze you there? Your hand will just close like that, just closes. Actually when someone massages it's very nice - and the reason it does that, is because there's a massive nerve that runs through there, around past your elbow - that's called your funny bone but it's actually the nerve - and it runs right across through to your heart, right across the chest.

So what they did was, they drove a spike right through the nerve, and immediately His hand would go like a claw like that, and blood would spurt out all over His hands. When Jesus did this, He suffered immense torment and He had to, in order to breath, keep pulling Himself up on His hands, on that spike. Blood would spurt out until in the end, the hole opened up, and you could even see the very bones inside. It was a horrendous way to die, and Jesus shed His blood on His hands for every work you did that was evil, everything you've ever done that was wrong. The blood was shed for forgiveness and cleansing, and that blood can be applied to every sinful action, no matter what we have done, no matter what we have participated in, no matter what our hands have touched that have brought defilement to our life. You can come and say Lord, with my hands I have sinned. Lord, I am guilty of punishment and judgement because of what I did with my hands, but I thank you today that the blood of Jesus Christ was shed to cleanse all my works!

You can apply that blood and have cleansing - not only have cleansing, but you can also have blessing upon the works of your hands, because Jesus died not just to forgive us, but that we might be blessed in all the works of our hands. So you can arise whenever you fail, whenever you do something with your hands that's wrong or evil, and you can just say Lord, I come before you. What I did was sin, what I did was wrong, but I come Lord to the cross, I come to the blood was shed, I apply that blood to this work of mine, and I decree and declare in agreement with you, forgiven, now today I present my hands to you, and I declare the works of my hands are blessed. When I lay hands upon people, the blessing of God will flow, the anointing of God will flow. Whatever I do will be blessed by Almighty God.

That's good faith praying for you, day by day by day, praying for the works of your hands, because everyone can go out and do something. You do something with your hands. Why not begin to get your hands clean. Hands are always connected to the heart. What we do comes out of our heart.

Second thing then is the feet. The Bible - because obviously the feet speaks of your walk, because wherever your feet go, that's where you're going. So your feet are the walk, your direction in life, your steps, your ways. So when the Bible's talking about your feet, it's talking about your ways, the kind of walk you have. You can walk in pride. You can walk in fear, you can walk in anxiety, you can walk in rebellion. You can walk in independence. Whatever your walk, your walk is your path. Now initially when you take one step, that's not a path, but you keep taking the same steps, after a while there's a path that you've worn, and when you look at that path you can see what's written all over it: pride, fear, grief, rejection. Your path that you walk will come out of the decisions you make, and so your feet speak then of your walk, the way you live your life.

People become known for their walk. They become known for how they live out their life, so if there's pride in your heart, you become known as a proud or an arrogant person; if there's anger, you become known as an angry person, and you have an angry way. The Bible says we all like sheep have gone astray, every one to his own way, so when the Bible's speaking about the feet it's speaking about your steps, the walk you take. It's speaking about the decisions you make day by day that will take you in a certain direction. Jesus died and shed His blood. He shed His blood over His feet. What did they do? Well they took these huge spikes and they put them right there between the second and third metatarsal bone. They drove the spikes straight through the feet. Now it turns out that if you were to find that spot on your feet and press on it, you'd find it quite painful because there's a nerve there as well, so the spike went straight into the nerve that's bunched there, right at that place, and now this excruciating pain and shock would have gone right through His body.

So He's in shock because of the spikes on His hands, and in shock because of the spikes through His feet, and the blood spurted out all over His feet. He shed His blood a second time, this time for your ways, the way you walk, the decisions you make, choices you make. We make decisions every day. How many have made some bad decisions? How many did it, and you didn't really realise it was bad? You kind of thought it was okay? Yeah - but it was still a bad choice. You have a bad consequence you notice, even if you didn't - but I didn't mean it. It doesn't make any difference. You still get the results. Have you noticed that too? But I didn't mean - I meant well! No, but you actually made a very bad choice, so your bad choices have consequences and remember sins - or sins of ignorance - are still a sin. They still have a consequence. You can't go through life with God saying well, I didn't know, it's not fair.

It doesn't work that way. He just laid the principle out, we either walk in His principles or against them. When you violate them, there's always a consequence. Oh, but I didn't really know. No, no, your conscience, in your heart you knew it was wrong. If you'd stopped to listen to your heart, you would have known that wasn't the right thing to do, but you still did it anyway.

Well here's the good news. The good news is the blood of Jesus was shed for every wrong decision you made. The blood of Jesus can be applied to every wrong decision. It can be applied to the choices you've made in the past.

Sometimes we say I wish I hadn't made that decision, I wish I hadn't done that. I can think of some right now. I wish I hadn't done that. To this day, the consequences are there. Well God will give you grace for the consequences, provided you bring the wrong decision to the cross. So for all the wrong decisions that I've made, I need to come - Lord, that decision was a wrong decision. Lord, I acted contrary to you. I went against your way. I just followed by old crooked ways. It's sin and it has a consequence, but Lord today I bring my choice to the cross. I bring it to the blood and I thank you, I agree with you. It is sin worthy of punishment, but I also agree that your blood has paid the price of that wrong choice, so today in Jesus' name it no longer stands, and I commit my life today to make good choices. I thank you today you will lead me in every decision I make - so you can bring your wrong decisions to the cross. You never need to be condemned or guilty any more for any wrong choice you make.

The blood is there to cover, and to address, the whole thing of your wrong decisions. I wonder how many of you today as you pray, and you get up and you begin to pray, commit your hands to the Lord, the works of your hands, all you put your hand to today and declare His blessing over it, or commit your walk today and choose to walk - today I'll walk in dependence on you. Today I'll walk in love, today I'll walk in faith, today I choose to walk in humility. Today Lord I thank you, your blood cleanses my will and every part of me, cleanses my feet. Today I will walk in right paths because you're leading me.

See, this is powerful faith praying to establish your life before you go out in the day. You could do that couldn't you? Many people don't think to do that, and then they wonder why they seem to have a lot of problems. You can establish your life very easily.

Here's another one - His back. The back is the strongest part of your body, and the Bible tells us that that's where the strength is of course, that's where all the muscles and so on are. In Isaiah 53, Verse 6, it says we've all turned, every one to his own way to do their own thing. By His stripes we are healed. Now think about that. What they did was they stretched Him up against a post and then they had this whip, had all these chords and little bones and pieces of metal in it, and then they would systematically go right down the back, right down the body on one side, right down the body on the other side, and it wouldn't just cause Him to be red. It would actually start to tear open the whole of the flesh, and the particular reason the Romans did this was to bring the body into shock, and to maximise the suffering of the person. So they would be torn open, literally the body would be dripping with blood, and then what they'd do then is of course the person would - ultimately they'd be dragged in the ground, there'd be dirt in it. When they're on the cross the constant moving up and down on the cross to try and breathe, the wounds are kept open and they continue to bleed, so the blood's continually washing down, coming down the back, constant pain, constant distress.

The Bible tells us very clearly, helps us - says this is for your healing. By His stripes, you were healed. If there is no healing for a believer, then there's no need for the stripes to have been laid on Jesus. When that blood was shed, it was shed for healing. It was shed for wholeness. Sickness is when we lose our strength in our body. Sickness is a part of the curse of the four, so when sickness comes around our body it's an invader. It's part of the cursing. Jesus Christ shed His blood, the blood than ran down His back was shed for you and for me, so there is blood. There is a provision made in Jesus' death. His blood was shed for healing. Why do we not see more people healed? Well much of it's to do with unbelief. Some of it has to do with unconfessed sin, and some to do with being determined to take hold of what God says is my provision.

You know when they came out of slavery out of Egypt, there was not one sick person. That's a pretty tall order isn't it? They were all healed at the Feast of Passover, and we celebrate Jesus as our Passover. Interesting thing about all these feasts, Jesus was the High Priest. Jesus is our High Priest. Jesus was the offering, He's our offering. Jesus is the altar where the offering was shed, Jesus is everything. That's why when Jesus was speaking to the disciples, He said He opened up in their understanding, everything in the Old Testament concerning Himself, and this was part of it, so they begin to see all of what were their tradition and their culture, they saw it suddenly, like the lights came on. They were oh my! Oh my! That blood that was shed, oh, it was shed for this, blood that was shed for that, oh, it was shed for this!

They began to see Him in all the amazing what He'd done, so He shed His blood for healing. What about His head? The head is the crown. It's interesting it tells us in the Bible - let me give you the Verse for it - Matthew 27, Verse 27 to 30 - it says they plaited a crown of thorns, beat it upon His head, and they put it down. Then they began to bow down and mock Him, and they called Him the King of the Jews. They began to mock and ridicule His kingship. Was He a king? Yes He was, and yet they bowed down and ridiculed Him. Now when Adam fell of course, the Bible tells us that he fell by giving up his rulership, by surrendering. He put something in place of God in his life. He put something before God. He put his own wife, he put his own desires before God and what happened was, the Bible said there was a curse came, and the ground that he laboured that he should have had dominion over, brought forth thorns.

That means it was very hard, it was very difficult. If you'll notice with people today is they struggle and strive. It doesn't matter who people are, it's like the ground of their life does not yield and become fruitful. They don't prosper easily. There's a lot of sorrows and pains and difficulties accompany trying to accrue wealth, trying to succeed and get ahead in life. Life seems to be extraordinarily difficult, in spite of all the modern appliances we have. Why is that? Because there's a curse on the ground, and it won't yield forth willingly. That's why people struggle and wrestle.

It's like there's an invisible power that you're working against, and you just get something happen and it goes backwards, something else breaks out. It's like there's a constant pressure against people, and that's a result of the curse. When Jesus took this crown on His head, He dealt with the issue of idolatry in our lives, putting something ahead of God, so you and I could be restored to our rightful relationship, and the ability to reign in life. You're not a victim any more. When Jesus had that crown put on Him He suffered, He endured the failure of Adam. He endured Adam's sin where Adam substituted God being first, put something else first, and in the end brought all of us into a problem. So Jesus took that. Isn't that amazing?

They plaited a crown of thorns. Whenever you place something in your life ahead of Jesus, ahead of God, its idolatry. Have you noticed this, that when you put something ahead of God, how hard life gets? Have you noticed or ever had the experience, where God told you to repent of idolatry, and when you put something right, life went a lot easier for you? This is the crown of thorns. These are the thorns of life, and I've found whenever you're going through thorny experiences in life, have a look into your heart and see if something came in your heart ahead of God. If somehow you've displaced God from your life, and now your life is very, very hard - I've watched people and it shows the stubbornness. They will go through hardship after hardship after hardship, and never stop to think that maybe the hardship is the consequence of having idols in my heart, that my life is not rightly aligned.

Jesus shed His blood to get our lives right. Oh, today Lord I put you first in my life. I seek first those things of right living, the things of your kingdom. I seek to honour you in all I do and I thank you Lord today I reign in life. I thank you Lord, I bring every mistake, every place where I've substituted something for you, I bring it to the cross. Lord, I am guilty as charged but I thank you today I am forgiven by the blood. I thank you today I reign in life. Your life flows through me, I have the victory.

See, you can pray very powerfully if you will start to take what God has done for you, and start to bring it in your prayer life and apply it. It's only applied through confession. You have to speak something if you want the things of God to work in your life, see? It grieves me, because I see a lot of people struggle, and I watch them go through suffering after suffering after suffering, and yet when you talk to them it's almost like there's a blindness. They can't see it's the things in their heart have stopped them going forward, and only a revelation of that can change it.

Then the last couple of things - side. Jesus was wounded in His side. The Bible says in John 19, Verse 34, the soldiers pierced His side. They just - when they thought He was dead, this was the last thing they did. They took a spear, pushed it right up His side into His heart. Blood and water came out - last place the blood was shed, and He shed that blood for our transgressions, every place that you and I wilfully have sinned against God, wilfully have done it, it comes out of the heart. Out of the heart flows the issues of your life, and where our heart has wilfully chosen to do something, the blood was shed not just to cleanse us, but to give us a new heart, a right heart, a heart to please God. Oh Lord, today in my heart I've wilfully gone against you in this way. Lord, I am so sorry. I decree it's a sin, I declare and agree with your word what you say about it, but Lord I bring it to the cross where the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses me, forgives me. Today I thank you; you're renewing my heart, a right spirit within me.

See? We need to be established in God, because your heart is what condemns you. When it comes to praying, the hardest place it is to stand before God, is in your personal life, when you come to pray and then you get reminded of all the things you've done wrong, and so the moment you start to be reminded of all the things you've done wrong, you will either take God's remedy and apply the blood to come out of it, or you'll yield and withdraw from God, and draw away from Him, because you're depleted.

That's what lots of people do. They just got overwhelmed and condemned in the heart. If you can't deal with condemnation in the heart, the devil will just have a hey day with you. You see God has established a plan whereby you and I can be right before Him. It's called the blood of Jesus, and we get right with Him by believing what the blood has done. If our heart condemns us, God is bigger! If your heart knows something you did wrong, God is bigger! If you have failed, and there's something the devil's reminding you of, then God is bigger! The work of the blood of Jesus is bigger! You don't need to live with your head down, condemned by what you've failed to do, didn't do, someone pointed out you did. Rather, take that thing and say, I bring it to the cross! You're right Lord, I didn't do that. Thank you devil for pointing that out, I did do that but I thank you that the blood has covered that thing now! I refuse to be condemned. I refuse to hold myself down. Why? Because there's no condemnation to me in Jesus Christ! I stand up, cleansed by the blood, confident before God!

This is the place most people struggle. It's the one place the devil will beat on you more than ever. If you can't break through that, you'll never have the victorious life - you'll struggle never being good enough. We are made good and right before God by the blood of Jesus Christ, not by our works. The devil can shift you back to your works, get you focussing on your failures, you've lost the battle. The only way I can enjoy the power of God flowing in my life is to know I am righteous before Him! By what Jesus did for me I firmly hold it! How do I hold it? By my heart believing and my mouth confessing! You've got to learn to speak. I listen to people pray. I can tell when they're praying they're not near God, nowhere near God. Why are they not near God? Because of condemnation, because of this issue here. The very last thing - they put the thing through His side, blood came out and that blood covers what's gone on in your heart, covers your wilful transgressions. So now I can come boldly into His presence!

When the Bible tells you to do that, tells you the protocol for coming into His presence; thanksgiving, gratitude, praise, boldly - but you'll never know until you stand up and do it, that it works. So many people just live in a melancholy and a heaviness of condemnation, and they don't feel good enough. Where is that coming from? It's coming from old transgressions. It's coming from old ways. It's coming from the devil accusing you, condemning you. Listen, even if you've got a list as long as your arm and then some, of all the things you did wrong, the blood of Jesus is bigger than those things! Bigger than all of them! That's why a murderer can be forgiven and become an Apostle, and the greatest New Testament leader. And you know what? Religious people, it's a mystery, it's a total mystery, because religion is built on, I have to do it, and I have to earn it. That's why it astounds people when the grace of God comes to a simple person, says Oh God, I really messed my life, but I believe you love me and died for me! I receive your forgiveness! Then God's grace flows in their life, and people say but he doesn't deserve it. He's still got so many things wrong. Now who said you needed to deserve it? Where did that come from? That's the older brother talking, the older brother and the prodigal son. The prodigal son just come back and got all - God blessed him. That's the mercies of God. Oh the blood, thank you for the blood! Thank you for what you've done! Thank you Lord, I'd have lived in condemnation and judgement. See? Don't need to. Can be free, and if you're free then your feet know it, let your face know it, let your inner man know it! See the blood, it's for all of those things.

The last two places was the brow - interesting, and it took place as the very first place the blood was shed - Luke 22:44, when Jesus went into the garden of Gethsemane, it said He was sorrowful and in distress, and it says that He came in - because He knew what was coming up. He knew that shortly, He's going to die in the most horrible way. Now that would freak you out. Ever been to the dentist you know, and you know you've got to have something taken out? I went to an Indian dentist in Malaysia and I had to get a - what do they call those - an implant. I was terrified. When they started cutting and the blood spurted I went into shock - oh ho ho no! Horrible! Now that's a little thing compared to knowing you're going to be tortured to death tomorrow. That would keep you awake at night wouldn't it aye?

So fear, terrible, terrible fear, dread, anxiety, concern - emotional trauma, that's what He went through. See what happened was He prayed. Now He prayed so intensely, and so strongly, and so fervently, and He's so engaged and purposing He'd do what God wanted and not draw back, the Bible tells us that He sweated is the word, great drops of blood, and the language of it just says that the sweat became blood - so it started off sweating, and then eventually the capillaries started to burst and blood started to come out. It's a medical condition, and the blood started to just flow out through His skin and began to drop down, and what was it all about? His determination to overcome fears, anxieties, dreads, all of those things that would stop us from doing what God wants, from living a powerful life and He overcame it! Shed His blood, so whenever you've got a fear and a dread, go back and look at Jesus. He shed His blood. Why don't you get the blood of Jesus, and hold it by your faith confession against that fear! Hold it against that fear! Yes, I'm afraid. Yes, I'm anxious. Yes, I have all these things around my mind - but Jesus Christ came and He shed His blood. Therefore it will not have power on me!

Got to do it. You've got to take a stand on what you saw. He bore our griefs and our sorrows, so blood is only shed when there's great emotional trauma and distress.

So Jesus took all the traumas and distresses that we face in life, took them on Himself. Finally the last one is the bruising. He was bruised for our inequities. A bruise is an interesting thing because you can't see - or we don't see it initially. If someone gets a beating, you know the interesting thing is, they may not fracture the skin but the next day man, there's the worst black eye you've ever seen. Ever had a black eye? That's a bruise. Is it painful? Oh my! Ever played Paintball and someone hit you and you've got these bruises and spots all over you now? Of course it's just this red thing, and then have you noticed it turns this black colour? That's because underneath the skin the blood - the vessels have been broken, and the blood has been shed, and you notice when you touch that bruise how painful it is? Oh ooh ooh ooh - and you can't even see it.

Now the Bible tells us of Jesus - I'll just give you the Verse then we'll finish with this. Here it is, in Mark 14:65, they put a hood over His head, and they just began to beat Him. The thing about it is, when you put a hood over someone's head, you can't see where the blow's coming from. They just kept raining blows on Him, and He couldn't see who it is - so tell Him who it is, tell us who was that? They mocked Him and jeered Him and they rained blows on Him, and His body and face became bruised. The Bible says He's bruised for our inequity. A bruise is something you don't see on the outside because it's underneath. Inequity is a twist in our life towards sin. Often it comes from our background, our families, it's in our family line, it's in the DNA of our line, and it's a horrible thing because you can't see it, but you find it's affecting your life. You find the thing you hated in your family background is manifesting in your life. It's like a hidden, invisible thing, and so Jesus shed His blood inside, bruised, to break the power - everything! Whatever you've come from, whatever was in your family line, whatever's in your DNA, blood was shed that you could be free!

But you need to take the inequity to the cross - Lord - and it could be a whole range of things; pride, fear, anger, lust, bitterness. Those are the common ones - I bring my pride to the cross! My father walked in pride. I am walking in pride. It's an inequity in our family Lord, and I bring it to the cross because the blood of Jesus was shed - He was bruised for my inequity, so I decree the blood of Jesus Christ breaks that inequity right now! I'm forgiven. I'm cleansed. It has no more power. I hold the cross of Christ between me and my family line and decree the blood has broken that power!

You've got to be quite assertive on this stuff. You notice none of this is timid stuff. It was a huge act of aggression and violence of Jesus to die in such a way and shed His blood so horribly. It's so horrible that you know when that movie came out of Jesus, that latest one and Mel Gibson's one? It shocked everyone. What shocked everyone? Who did it shock? It shocked the Christians, the lovely sweet Christians who got a little picture of Jesus on a cross, and didn't stop to think that the cross is the most wicked and evil and painful way ever devised to kill a human being, to prolong their suffering, deliberately strip the body of all of it's blood, so in the end they die from shock and loss of blood - and all the time there's pain that can't be relieved.

We look at the movie and we're so shocked by it, our sensibility's shocked, and it's true because no one wants to be exposed to violence. But listen, this is the reality of what Jesus took on, so you and I could be free. We honour Him when we believe and apply it to our life, and live in the freedom. We honour Him and we honour what He's done when we believe what the blood has done, apply it to our lives and take hold of the freedom He called us to walk in.

I don't care what the issue is. The blood of Jesus has the answer for it. It's a matter of whether you will believe or not. Will you believe? Will you believe that Jesus shed His blood for you to be free?

By the blood of Jesus Christ I am redeemed! The full price paid, I have to pay no more price! I just need to believe and confess. If you'll believe in your heart and confess these things with your mouth the power of God will be released to make them effective in your life. I encourage you to apply it.

Let's just close our eyes right now, perhaps there's someone here today, and you've never even made the first step to get near to God, which is to receive Jesus Christ. Oh, friend today I can't put in words how much God loves you and all of those failures, the things you're ashamed of, things you did with your hands, things that you did with your feet, the choices you've made, the things you've done - the way you've thought, the way you've governed your life, the bad choices you've made, the traumas you've been through. Oh, the things that have been in your heart that you never said anything, but you knew they were there, the crookedness, the following in old bad ways, whatever has happened the blood of Jesus has made a way for you.

If you will believe in your heart and receive Jesus Christ you will be set free. He said I did not come into this world to judge you. I came to save you. Perhaps you're sitting today in great pain, great anguish of heart because of your sin and your failures. Friend, Jesus is here for you. He loves you, and if while you were away and abandoning Him and refusing Him, He died for you, how much more will He give you all that you need. It just requires one decision. Is there any person here today ready to receive Jesus Christ, I'd like you to raise your hand.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Eph.1:7 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace”.

God has put in place both physical and spiritual laws.

God has established that sin has consequences – death (physical, spiritual and mentally).

God has established the only remedy for sin – the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the Cross.

Heb.9:11-14 “But Christ – by His own blood – obtained eternal redemption for us…”

Redemption =3083= to ransom in full, totally pay the price to release captives.

2. The Redemption of Jesus for us is Complete

(a) The Old Testament Pattern

Lev.16:7-21 The sin offering

(v7) Two goats = one offering for the sins of the congregation.

(v15) One goat slain – blood sprinkled on and before the mercy seat 7 times.

(v21) Second goat – confess all the iniquities, sins and transgressions – never seen again.

Two goats represent one offering = the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

Sin = unintentional wrongdoing, action committed in ignorance.

Transgression = intentional wrong, action committed with full knowledge.

Iniquity = inner twistedness which causes a person to commit sin.

Note: (i) Jesus is our High Priest

(Heb 3:1 Jesus the High Priest of our confession)

(ii) Jesus is our offering

(Jn.1:29 Behold the lamb of God which …)

(iii) Jesus is our mercy seat

(Rom.3:23-25 God set faith as a mercy seat)

All of this is a prophetic picture of the work of Jesus on the Cross redeeming us.

(b) His Redemption is Complete

Lev.16:14-15 “… shall sprinkle some of the blood seven times”.

7 = number of spiritual perfection; complete e.g. Forgive 70 x 7 Mt. 18.

The blood was sprinkled 7 times.

Jesus shed His blood so we could be forgiven, cleansed, enter the presence of God and walk in blessing of covenant relationship in every area of our life.

Jesus also shed His blood in seven separate ways to redeem us.

Is.53:4-6 “Surely he has born our grief’s and carried our sorrows …”

Each way Jesus shed His blood purchased for us forgiveness, cleansing and freedom from all cursing in that aspect of our life.

Gal.3:13-14 “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law – that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Jesus Christ”.

3. Seven Ways Jesus Shed His Blood

Can you identify different ways that Jesus shed his blood for us?

(i) Hands = the works that we do.

Gen.2:6 Eve took of the fruit and ate (with hand) – Adam took the fruit.

Gen.4:11 Cain slew his brother with his hand.

Cain’s hands were cursed by committing murder.

Your hands – what you do are connected to your heart (Jam.4:8).

The spikes did not enter hands but entered without severing median nerve – hand become black.

Weight on hands opened the wound – blood shed.

Hands can now become a source of blessing when cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

(ii) Feet = walk, the decisions that we make.

The steps of your feet determine the direction of your life, your way, path in life.

Is.53:6 We have turned, everyone to his own way – Do own thing.

Many times we follow generational patterns or ways, wrong paths of parents.

Nailed between 2-3 metatarsal bones – nerve centre of foot – body in shoe.

Blood shed for wrong decisions – forgive, cleanse so make a godly decision.

(iii) Back = strongest part of the body, also defenceless.

Pilate had Jesus scourged with a whip containing pieces of bone and metal.

It not only lashed but also cut, tore, ripped and shredded.

Jesus limited it to 39 times – Romans did not limit the lashing.

Is. 53:5 and by his stripes we are healed.

Infirmity = without strength. Jesus shed his blood to break the curse of sickness.

Blood cleanses sins done against body = e.g. drugs, alcohol, diet, abuse, sexual sin, tattoos, piercing

Blood shed so we could walk in health, wholeness, (Ps 105:37).

(iv) Head = mind, governs direction of life.

Gen.3:17-18 Ground cursed – thorns and thistles bring forth – sweat.

Adam was given dominion over the earth – it became cursed when he betrayed his loyalty to God as King and lost his dominion.

Thorns = frustrations, difficulties, setbacks in life.

Mt.27:27-30 “They plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head – bowed .. mocked him”.

Placing something before God is idolatry.

Jesus shed His blood to cleanse us from all idolatry so we could be restored to the place of dominion, crowned with glory of God and be free from striving and serving idols.

(v) Side = heart, the motivation of life.

Transgression = wilful action, not a deception but intentional sin.

Eve was deceived but Adam’s sin was intentional – he knew what he was doing.

Adam gave away his rights to rule the earth and opened the door to sin.

Jn. 19:34 The soldiers pierced his side and forthwith came out blood and water. The spear pierced Jesus side - pleura = membrane that lines the chest cavity and covers things.

The spear pierced Jesus heart.

The last place Jesus bled address the first transgression ever committed – Adam.

The blood of Jesus cleanses every wilful sinful action and restores us to relationship.

(vi) Brow = mind, fears, anxiety, sorrows.

Lk.22:44 Being in agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.

The first way Jesus shed His blood – in the garden of Gethsemane in prayer.

Mt.26:37 He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.

He was agonising over doing the will of God – prevailing over fear, grief’s, sorrows.

His sweat was = became great drops of blood.

Hematidrosis = medical term – mental stress and emotional trauma.

= blood oozes out of capillaries of skin instead of perspiration.

Is 53:4 surely he has borne our grief’s and carried our sorrows.

The blood of Jesus breaks the power of fear, sorrow, anxiety so we can be at rest.

(vii) Bruised = internal bleeding – iniquities.

Is.53:5 He was bruised for our iniquities.

Bruise = internal injury, no seen, internal, very painful.

Mk.14:65

The temple guards beat Jesus with his head covered so he could not see where the blows cam from.

Blood vessels under the skin ruptured and bled.

Iniquity is an inner drive towards sin, unseen, often generational.

Generational iniquities pressure and torment people.

Tit.2:14 “He gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify to himself a peculiar people zealous for good works”.

The blood of Jesus cleanses us from iniquity – generational, pride, lust, fear, anger, bitterness.

How to Apply

Heb 3:1 Confession = to say same things as God says.

(1) Admit sin

(2) Admit guilt

(3) Admit punishment

(4) Declare what Jesus has done – forgiveness, cleansed, freedom.

The Blood of Jesus (4 of 4)

Sun 27 Nov 2011 PM  « Back to Top

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If you have a besetting problem, something that seems to stick in your life, it’s been in your family, it’s in your life and you’re concerned it’s starting to turn up in your children, I’ll help you understand what it is and what to do about it. The answer is the blood of Jesus Christ. Exodus, Chapter 12, and this is the first Passover that the Jews ever had. It’s a prophetic picture of the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary.

I want you to open your Bible with me in Exodus, Chapter 12. We’ve been doing a series on the blood of Jesus. If you have a besetting problem, something that seems to stick in your life, it’s been in your family, it’s in your life and you’re concerned it’s starting to turn up in your children, I’ll help you understand what it is and what to do about it. The answer is the blood of Jesus Christ. Exodus, Chapter 12, and this is the first Passover that the Jews ever had. It’s a prophetic picture of the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary. When Jesus came John prophesised, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 1 Corinthians 5:7 says Jesus, our Passover, was sacrificed for us, so when we see what happens here you’ll see a picture of some things that God intends us to understand.

He said in Verse 22 of Exodus 12, you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that’s in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that’s in the basin. Notice this, notice what they had to do; they had to slay the lamb, take the blood of the lamb, put it in a basin. Then they had to apply the blood, first to the lintel, then to the two sides of the door. Then they had to go inside, and notice what it says, stay in the house until the morning or the new day, for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians. When He sees the blood on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you. And you’ll observe this as an ordinance for you and your sons forever.

This is one of the most important feasts in the history of Israel. It was the first feast that led to their deliverance out of bondage, and it was all centred around a lamb, which was inspected for four days, inspected four times. Jesus was inspected four times, found innocent each time. In the end they trumped up the charges and declared Him to be guilty.

The lamb was taken, its blood was shed. They had to apply the blood, and notice this; they had to remain behind the door covered with the blood, and when they stayed behind that blood, behind that covering of the blood, the destroyer, the demonic powers could not enter in to afflict them. I want you to notice this; when they applied the blood, the devil had no power to enter their house, to destroy them, or afflict them in any way. There’s a tremendous picture here for us, of how necessary it is for us to apply the blood of Jesus, and then to remain by faith in a place where we stand. Under the protection of that blood, no demon can access your life, no demon can continue to afflict you, no demon has a ground for a hold. Whatever you have brought behind the blood, now there’s no legal grounds for you to be afflicted and attacked. But you must exercise faith.

It’s not a matter of some formula – I plead the blood. It’s nothing like that. It’s actually something far more than that. It’s actually a personal faith, that what God said works, will work! Halleluiah! It’s exciting. So we saw it had to applied three places, and in one of the previous messages we saw that there were three issues that the Bible says have to be dealt with by the blood. The first was sin, the second transgression, the third iniquity. Let’s review it again. Sin was any action against or contrary to God’s laws that was done in ignorance. You didn’t know what you were doing or you didn’t know there was a law. In spite of the fact you didn’t know, there was still a sin, and so there was a particular offering it tells in Leviticus, Chapter 4. There was a special offering for sins of ignorance, so don’t say that you don’t know. It won’t do it. You need to bring things under the blood.

The second thing was transgressions. Transgressions were deliberate violations. You knew to do better ,but you decided well I’m just going to do what I’m going to do anyway. The third is iniquity. Iniquity is quite different, and that’s the one we want to address today, because this is the root cause. Iniquity is an inner twist in a person’s life that bends them towards sins and transgressions. It’s something crooked inside you, so even if you’re brought up in a good environment, you still get twisted, and still do bad stuff. So iniquity is the issue.

Now there’s three different words, three different offences, one single issue that dealt with it. It’s the blood of Jesus Christ. Legally, the blood of Jesus Christ puts and deals a death blow to the issues of sin, transgression and iniquity. In Isaiah 53, Verse 5 and 6, I want you to have a look at this. We’re going to focus on iniquity which is the root cause, the major thing that lies behind the sins and failures and issues we have in life. When you begin to see this, you’ll begin to see tremendous victory that Christ has won for us.

Isaiah 53, in Verse 5 and 6; He was wounded for our transgressions, deliberate violations of God’s laws. He was bruised for our iniquities. Bruised means He suffered internal haemorrhaging. His blood was shed as the blood vessels were shattered internally for our iniquity, our crookedness. He shed blood so you could no longer – you don’t need to be crooked any more on the inside. You don’t need to be under the power of anything on the inside. Notice what else it says. It says He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, by His stripes we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned, every one to his own way. Now look at this. You’ll see the significance of this Verse in a moment. The Lord laid on Jesus Christ the iniquity, crookedness, perverseness, of us all. He didn’t just deal with your sin failures done in ignorance. He didn’t deal just with your transgressions, deliberate actions against Him. He actually initiated an answer for the root cause that drives us into dysfunctional and sinful behaviours, and we want to have a look at that.

The first thing we want to have a look at is iniquity. What is iniquity? In the New Testament they use one word, sin. So most of the time, Christians, we use the word sin; well I sinned. Actually we need to be quite clear what we’re talking about here. Are you dealing with sin? Are you dealing with transgressions? Are you dealing with iniquities? They are three different things. They all need an answer. They all need an answer, not just that you just generally – oh God, won’t you just forgive me all? You know God in times will allow His grace to flow, according to the knowledge we have to cover it all, but as we grow we need to learn how to deal with things properly.

So first thing is it’s an internal corrupting force. When Jesus was speaking with the Pharisees in Matthew 23, Verse 28, notice what he – remember he said this to them. Now these are religious people that look good. He said outwardly you appear to men to be righteous. You look good. But he said inwardly, you’re full of hypocrisy and iniquity. The word there is iniquity, so what he’s saying is to religious people. He’s saying outwardly you’ve got all the behaviour looking good, you’ve got yourself dressed up, you’re behaving meticulously on the outside – but I know what’s in your heart. It’s full of hypocrisy. You’re acting out something, because really there’s iniquity, there’s a sinful power operating in your heart. You just look good on the outside. The real issue is you’re full – he said this – full of iniquity. Full of it in other words. That’s where the expression came from I suppose – you’re just full of it. So there it is.

So iniquity is an internal corruption inside us. We’ll see where it is in a moment, and how to deal with it. Not only that, it’s a painful lasting influence. I want you to have a look in Genesis, Chapter 4. It is something that lasts. It’s something that goes on. This is why you’ve got to deal with this. This is the spider. The rest is all the webbing. You don’t get the spider, you still keep having the webs turn up. So notice in Verse 6 – Genesis, Chapter 4, Verse 6, and God is speaking to Cain and He said “Why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen?” You notice what He’s speaking there and He goes down, then you know that Cain went out and he committed sin. He murdered his brother. We’re going to look why he did that shortly.

He said now notice there in Verse 11, now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. And He said you’ll be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth. Now notice this, Verse 13; Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear!” The word punishment there is the word iniquity. It’s exactly the same original word iniquity. So in the Bible when they use the word iniquity, it has several meanings. That’s why language, it helps you understand what it means, because if I say use the word ‘love’ you’ve all got different kinds of understandings of what that could mean. So if I use the word iniquity, probably you don’t even know what it is. I use ‘sin’ you’ve got all kinds of ideas what that might be, so I’ll just pull iniquity apart and give you it, so you actually understand what we’re dealing with here. Then you’ll see why the blood is so important to deal with it.

The word iniquity in the Old Testament’s translated two ways. It’s translated, number one, it’s the same word as the word avon. Avon, a-v-o-n is the original Hebrew word. Now what it means is this; it means to be twisted, to be crooked, to be perverse, to be twisted out of shape. That’s one meaning of it. The second meaning it has is the meaning ‘punishment’ or something painful that goes on for a long time, because of something you’ve done, so now you’re getting the idea. Iniquity is something painful that continues in your life as a result of things you’ve done, and you end up twisted and corrupted on the inside with a tendency to certain kinds of bad behaviour. That is iniquity.

In the New Testament they use a different word. The use to be without law, or in other words, no one tells me what to do, or another way of saying it is, I’m the exception, the laws don’t apply to me. Now have you ever had that thing where you know you see the speeding signs, and you think well it doesn’t apply to me. It applies to everyone else, not to me. How many cases have you, situations you've been in, where you think well yeah, it may apply to everyone else. It doesn’t apply to me. That is iniquity. It’s saying I am not subject to law like everyone else. I actually can do my own thing, go my own way – or putting it another way, it’s just I want to do my own thing. Doing your own thing, acting independently of God, is iniquity. That is the core of it see? So that is iniquity, a bit of a bad word isn’t it aye?

When you look it up in the dictionary, the word iniquity is the word translated ‘wickedness,’ wickedness. It’s roots find itself in a ‘wicker,’ you know, the wick in a candle, it’s all twisted, twisted cord or ‘wicker,’ the twisting that causes people to get involved in spiritualism. All of this gives you a picture of what iniquity is like. It is a crookedness, a perverseness, a twistedness that is painful. It stays in our life. It continues to operate in our life, causing us lots of suffering, and it’s something that causes us to want to live without any restraint, doing our own thing. In the last days the world will be full of iniquity. That’s what the Bible says. It’ll be full of iniquity, people doing their own thing, so that is iniquity. So where’s the Verse reference of it? Well here it is up here, in Verse 6. The Lord said to Cain “Why are you angry?” And he was angry, Cain was angry at the Lord, for He rejected his offering, because he didn’t go along with what God said was the right way to do it. I’m the exception remember? God had explained what He wanted, He explained how to get the right offering that would have pleased Him, and he didn’t give the right offering. He said well I’ll just do what I think will please God, and it wasn’t accepted. He got angry. He got angry with God, and angry with his brother. Now what did he do as a result of being angry? He went out and killed his brother. Now get it here; anger is the iniquity. Murder is the transgression. The murder flows out of the iniquity. One is the action that’s seen, the other flows out of what lies in the heart, the unresolved issue, and that is called iniquity. Whoa! You notice someone who’s angry, there’s murder waiting to happen. It’s true.

Once you can connect them that the murder, the sin of murder, flowed out of the anger in the heart. When a person unleashes their anger, they release a spirit of murder. It hurts and wounds people, and if it’s unrestrained it’ll result in violence that ends in death. See? Okay, we’re getting the idea. Now when Jesus spoke on the Sermon on the Mount, notice what He said. You’ll remember this very clearly now. Now you’ll see what He’s getting at. On the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:21 and 22, He said if you have anger in your heart, you are literally a murderer. Why? Because anger leads to murder. If you lust after a woman in your heart, you have already committed adultery. Why? Because adultery is the outward behaviour of lust, or the iniquity of lust in the heart, so iniquity, lust is the iniquity, adultery and sexual sin is the transgression. This is the outward, the other’s the inward. You don’t deal with the inward, the other will just keep bubbling out somehow. Religious people try to cover the outward and keep it hidden, but inside what goes on is all this iniquity; lust, fears, envy, hatred, bitterness. Those are all issues of the heart. That is what’s called iniquity. It’s the twist that inevitably will show up in your relationships, and this is the thing that Jesus came to deal with. Iniquity is the spider, the other stuff’s all what it produces (the web).

Now where does this stuff all originate from in the first place? Well the first place it originates in our life in several ways. It helps if you understand this. The first is it comes from the devil himself. The Bible says, the first reference in the Bible to the origin of iniquity is found in Lucifer himself, and we read in Ezekiel 28, in 14 to 18, we find that Lucifer was an anointed cherub in the Garden of Eden. He was an angel, full of worship. He was absolutely a beautiful sight to be seen – until iniquity was found in him. When iniquity was found in him, it then manifested, by him arising up and saying actually, I want what belongs to God. I want the worship that belongs to God. I want the place up on the mountain of God. I want to arise and ascend – and so his iniquity in his heart was pride, exalting himself, coveting, wanting what was only God’s and the result was rebellion, leading angels to react and rebel against God, and the result was they were cast out of heaven.

Iniquity originated in Lucifer, and he imparts it into lives. When you have iniquity operating, you’re touching something from the spirit realm that comes out of the demonic realm. See? When Adam and Eve ate, they didn’t just eat some fruit. They ate of what he ministered to them, and iniquity was imparted into them, so if you see almost straight away after Adam and Eve fell, the Bible says that they begat children in their own image, not the image of God any more, the image of them, which was they had iniquity operating in them. First generation, they’ve got anger and then murder. Second generation, third generation – if you watch the lines they just get worse and worse and worse. Why? Because there’s this thing operating called iniquity. Iniquity is the problem. We’re going to see how it gets in, and how to deal with it in just a moment.

Second origin of iniquity – the primary origin is demonic. The second is generational. You think oh blow, ooh, I didn’t want this to happen. You’re going to have to see this. Exodus, Chapter 20, you see why in a moment, and then you see how Jesus really dealt with it. In Exodus, Chapter 20, He’s talking about – the 10 Commandments – He’s talking about the sin of idolatry, Verse 4. Don’t make a carved image, a likeness of anything in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the water in the earth. Don’t bow down or serve them. So He’s saying, don’t get involved in idolatry, putting things before God, because – notice this – because here’s why you don’t want to do it. Why? Because He said I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Now notice what happens; He said I will visit the iniquity of the fathers onto their children, and their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren up to their great-great-grandchildren. That’s a lot of people.

Now when you look at that you think, what a mean God that is, my! How could it be like that? What is this? Now here’s what’s going on here. God has set a law in place. The soul that sins, dies. So what’s He going to do if you do something that He says counts for death? You killed someone, you’re involved in idolatry, involved in some kind of sexual sin, and the law that God has set in place says you need to die. Now He’s got a dilemma now. He’s a just God, so you need to be held to account for your sin, but if He kills you, then you can’t produce a family and on-going generations. So what’s He going to do? This is how He deals with it. Listen to this, very simple. What He does is He takes the death penalty, and He spreads it over four generations, so it’s no longer a death penalty. It becomes bearing the iniquity. In other words He just shares the original punishment over three to four generations, so when you are involved in a sin which is worthy of death, God in His mercy doesn’t kill you, but the iniquity, the consequence, the corruption of what you’ve done now spreads over three to four generations. Think about that. Say ooh wow! That means – so how does it actually transfer? Very simply.

First of all it’s in a person’s spirit. It’s in their spiritual DNA, so if you have iniquity charged by God to you, what will happen is any of your children, it will be in them as well. Secondly, it’s imparted through the DNA, physical, genetic DNA. The DNA gets impacted and affected by iniquity. That’s why you find that certain things will pass down generation to generation. Have you looked in your family line and you’ll see there’s certain traits. There’s corruption, there’s physical sickness, there’s breakdowns, there’s various kinds of things. We can call them generational curses, but actually what they truly are, is the iniquity of the fathers having an influence or a consequence over generations. You don’t want to sin against God. You have four generations that will be affected by it.

You don’t want to break the laws of God, because not only does it affect you, but you’ve got generations after you who’ll be affected by this. We don’t want to bring from our actions a consequence on following generations. Probably the greatest example of this is found in the life of King David. You think about King David. King David was guilty of murder and adultery, first adultery, so the root, the physical thing of adultery was birthed out of lust. Is that right? Lust was the iniquity. David said in Psalm 51, he said I was shaped in iniquity. My mother carried me and birthed me in sin and iniquity. So where did that come from? Follow David’s line back, you find he comes from the tribe of Judah, and if you have a look at Judah, you find that Judah went out and slept with a woman he thought was a prostitute, and it turns out it was his daughter-in-law, had a child out of wedlock to her, and so you have a curse comes into the family because of his sin.

So what happens when you follow down that family line? You see sin after sin after sin. What is the iniquity? Lust. The sins are sexual in nature, and of course accompanied with it is a spirit of anger, that goes with being rejected, and murder. So you follow David’s line, you find he's got one son commits incest with his half sister, and he gets murdered. You’ve got another son, and he lusts after David’s wife, and he gets his life cut off. You got another son, and he just has so many women, he’s just full of lust, full of all kinds of things, and his whole kingdom is lost. You find right through the family line of David, you find this iniquity flowing through, generation after generation. You think oh my goodness, what could be done about it?

So out of kindness and mercy, God spread the consequence of sin – but now in the New Testament He deals with it, and He doesn’t just deal with sin. He deals with iniquity. It won’t matter where you’ve come from. It won’t matter what has happened in your background. It won’t matter what line you’ve come out of! There is a remedy for it! You don’t need to blame your past or your background. You may have had some corrupt DNA. You may have had some corrupt impartation into you. You may be brought up in a difficult, or bad, or destructive environment, but you do not need to carry that iniquity! I’ll tell you why in a moment.

This is what the Bible says, in Isaiah 53, Verse 5; He was bruised for our iniquities. He shed blood internally. He suffered internal pain, internal suffering, just like you and I suffer when there’s torments of hatred and bitterness and various other iniquity. They torment people. They make them sick. They make them do things that are crazy stuff. They make fathers that love their daughters abuse them. What causes such a thing? It’s iniquity inside them. It’s a driving power of sin working in their heart. God has to deal not just with the behaviour, but the very root core of the thing, so Jesus was bruised for our iniquities and not only this. Look at this. He laid on Him the iniquity of us all! Now I want you to get what that means.

Suppose here we have a father sins in idolatry, then the sin is carried here, laid on this one, laid on this one, laid on this one, laid four generations. Now this is what Jesus did at the cross. All of that iniquity, which normally would be spread generationally, the Bible says God laid it all on Him – ALL the iniquity of every generation laid upon Jesus Christ. He was bruised when He was beaten viciously, and the skin punctured, underneath He was bruised and damaged, His blood shed. It was for the crookedness, the twist, the torments that go on inside our lives! It was to deal with the root of sin itself, so no longer would you carry the iniquity of your fathers and your ancestors. No longer would you pass it on. You could be free of that thing, and walk in peace with God, and peace in your heart. What an amazing thing the blood of Jesus has done!

What an amazing kindness. What an amazing God! Oh my, that the blood was shed for our iniquities and crookedness. So how come so many people still wrestle with it?

Colossians 2, Verse 13; He took away the list of ordinances against us, all the transgression and sin, all the iniquity. He put it on Jesus on the cross, the whole lot put on Him! You don’t have to carry any of it. You don’t have to carry any of it! So what the blood of Jesus Christ does – I’m going to show you, last couple of Verses. You’ve got to have a look at this. Have a look at this, and then we’re going to pray for people who’ve got iniquity gripping and sticking – you need to stand up, get the blood of Jesus flowing into your life and spirit. Get set free of it!

Look in Hebrews, Chapter 10, notice what He says. So this gives a whole new dimension on communion which I can’t cover, but here it is. It says – Verse 12 – But this man, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever – once – from that time waiting until His enemies made His footstool. By one offering, He has perfected forever those who are in the process of being sanctified. Verse 16; Holy Ghost witnesses out of Jeremiah, "This is the covenant I will make with after those days," says the Lord; I will put My laws in their heart, in my mind I will write them - now notice this - and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. Now it's the remembering of iniquity that causes sin to flourish, so if your iniquity is not dealt with, sin flourishes in your life. You can restrain it, hide it, cover it. It'll always find a way out somewhere.

You'll keep your temper five times out of six, and then the sixth time out you go! Whack! Come back in - you know they all saw it. It's too late to get it back - or you'll try not to talk about the things in your heart. Suddenly WHOOSH! Out it comes. It's too late. It's out there. Now your own mouth has revealed the iniquity that's in your heart. Bitterness or hate or whatever it is, envy and jealousy, all those things. Those are iniquities in the heart, and they will carry on generationally if we don't deal with them.

He says this is the covenant I'll deal with, this is the covenant. The covenant is - this is how God is - I love this. He said first of all, when Jesus went to the cross, God put all the iniquities on Him, so He shed His blood, all the iniquities He dealt with - I've get to get this thing to apply, so this is what God says; I'm going to make a new covenant. It's not external, it's internal. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going change that crooked spirit you've got inside you. That spirit that's carrying all that corrupt DNA, that spirit that's carrying iniquity, that part of you that motivates you, drives you, He said I'm going to put it to death and give you a new spirit! That's the deal! When you get born again, you get a whole new spirit inside you! You come alive inside, on the inside! You come out of death and trespasses and sins alive in God, a new creation!

What else do we need to do? We need to apply the blood to my lifeline. I need to apply the blood to my generational background. I need to put the cross and the blood between me and where I've come from and declare by confession of my mouth it stops here. [Applause] IT STOPS WITH ME! Iniquity stops with me! It will not proceed! It will not go any further! How can I apply this? I've got to confess it.

The Bible talks in Leviticus about confessing the iniquity that's in your family, confessing your own iniquity, get it out into the realm of the courts of heaven, and speak it out. You know, in Nehemiah 9:2 it says they confessed the iniquities of their fathers and their own iniquity - said we've walked this way and so did our family. Our whole family's been into this stuff and we've gone along with it. That's why we're in a mess. Bring it out to the light! If you've got a bad corrupt seed you've come from, bring it to the cross! Bring it to the blood! Make value of Jesus' bloodshed. He shed it for our iniquity, shed His blood for our iniquity so I need to confess it, bring it out!

Lord, this thing has been in my family. It's been an iniquity in my family line, and I've been a part of it, and it's resting on me. I bring it to the cross today! I thank you, your blood shed at the cross breaks the power of iniquity!

See? And so the Bible says in Romans 6:16, then reckon yourself dead to that thing. See, now you say but I keep having the thing come. Well now you've got to actually stand up by faith. To reckon is an accounting term. You've got to hold over it and say, I don't care if I feel that thing pulling on me. Spiritual reality, the cross says you're dead! You're dead. I hold the blood over that thing right now.

Start to do it, assert the blood over the iniquity in your life, and begin to watch as it loses its power. The devil will try - now here's the difficulty, is of course there's cells in your body retain memories of iniquity. That's a part of the problem. Cells in your body retain memories of iniquity and your mind itself, the way it's constructed, it retains memories of the things you've done that were wrong. It does it in the form of neuron trees, and I just saw something recently that really just fired me up. I see Jesus spoke to a tree, it was a bad tree. He cursed the thing. No more fruit! And I encourage you to just bring whatever's in your background to the cross, hold the cross and the blood against it, reject anything coming down your family line, and speak into your thought trees - NO MORE FRUIT! Just speak to them like Jesus did. Speak into that kingdom of iniquity, no more fruit! Hold the word of God - NO MORE FRUIT! I bring the blood of Jesus against that tree, against those memories - NO MORE FRUIT!

Jesus said that's how faith operates - NO MORE FRUIT! You got some bad memories? Bring the blood over them - NO MORE FRUIT! Curse them in Jesus' name, just like He did the big tree. All He did was say no more fruit! I found it a great help personally in dealing with memories of things - hold the blood up to it, then begin to just speak into that thought tree, that physical structure in the brain, the memories of past sins and speak into it and curse it - no more fruit!

The interesting thing that scientifically they tell you, that when the memory comes alive, you can either add to it and increase the memory tree, or you can decrease it. You can increase it if you keep focussing on those negative thoughts; you can decrease it if you reject them and put something else in its place. How about that? Science tells us what the Bible's been telling for all these years, that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses me from iniquity and sin. I AM FREE OF IT!

Wow! I'm sure you're sitting on something today that you need to depart from. The Bible says in Titus, depart from iniquity. Get rid of it. Don't hang out with people that practise it. Start to walk with God, and let God bring you to new dimensions, bring all of us into a new dimension of freedom in the Holy Ghost. You don't have to live condemned. Bible says no condemnation. Why? Because that blood has dealt to it. Oh my! I want you to just put that clip up right now and while we put the clip up and just play it, if you could just watch this and let this - this blood is for you. You may want to put something right in your life, make your way to the front. Stand up here and we will come and pray with you.

[Video clip 00.34.17] Quietly they grabbed his arms, as they tightly strapped each wrist. With the hellish looks that a strong arm soldier, whip clenched in his fist. Laced with chips of bone they beat Him hard, from His shoulders to His feet and it sliced right through His olive skin just like razors through a sheet. Countless times the blood splattered as each inhuman lash was given. Several times His knees gave way as His flesh just came loose. Surprisingly He turned His head and the words He used were few, the soldiers face turned pale and He said this blood is for you. Uncarefully they tossed armaments across His weakened form and His blood pressure fell down below, as the crows witnessed. They forced Him to carry His cross uphill as His face they punched and smacked, while the splinters from the cross dug deep into His back. Through lack of sleep and dehydration His tongue began to swell and weakened by His loss of blood this prophet teacher fell. When He did some blood splattered on the man called Simon's shoe and as he bent to wipe it off the prophet looked at said Simon,this blood is for you.

[Song 00.36.09] This blood can save the soul, heal the sick, mend the heart. This blood can give you access to the very throne of God, and it still can go the distance through the pain to where you are. This blood is for you, the blood of the lamb. Then they pounded a spike through the bones in His wrists, bursting arteries and veins. And as they drive the cross in the hole they dug His body convulsed with pain. Through agony and torment that never a soul shall find. He tilts His face towards heaven with full control of His mind, with more love than any human holds, before mankind ceases. He made a statement that to this day pledged the strongest love. He cried Father God forgive them for they know not what they do - and as He gave His life for those lost in sin He was saying this blood is for you. His Blood save the soul, heal the sick, mend the heart. This blood can give you access to the very throne of God. And it still can go the distance through the pain to where you are. This blood is for you. If you're lost and alone and your mind is confused, this blood is for you. If you feel like you have been hurt and abused, this blood is for you. The atoning, cleansing blood of Yahweh. His blood can save your soul, heal the sick, mend the heart. This blood can give you access to the very throne of God and it still can go the distance through the pain to where you are. This blood is for you. The blood of the Lamb. This blood is for you. The blood of the Lamb.

Father, we thank you for the blood that was shed for us, for the love that you have for us and your willingness to help us. Is there any person here today who's never given their life yet to Christ? You're without God in this world, tossed and turned and struggling with issues in your heart that you have no power to deal with. They're called sin. Jesus died on the cross shedding His life for you, so you could be free of sin, but for that to take place you have to take a step, to acknowledge I have these issues in my heart called sin. I'm walking my own way without God. I'm full of iniquity, but Jesus, I believe You died for me and I'm coming to You to receive Your forgiveness; to become a child of God, to have a whole new start, the power of sin broken in me. Lord, I'm coming to you.

Is there anyone here today, just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, you're not yet a Christian, but right now God has been speaking to you, and you want to come to Christ? Would you raise your hand right now and let me know? Raise your hand right now. Is there any person here today needing to come to Jesus Christ, raise your hand. Put it up. Put it up. Make a decision today, I'm going to receive Jesus Christ. Maybe others here today and you're not walking near Him, you have issues in your heart that have choked Him out. You know that you're not walking with Him but you say today Jesus, I'm coming to you. Would you raise your hand? People here today, raise your hand. God bless, God bless, God bless.

I wonder while I was speaking about the issue of iniquity and crookedness, and as you've thought about that you realised there's things in my life have been in my family line - perhaps it's anger, could be pride, could be fear, could be lust. There's so many things it could be. If you're wrestling with something, it's like a fire that goes on inside you you can't resolve, would you dare to believe that Jesus could break the power of that iniquity? God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. You don't need to carry it any more. It's just a deception of the devil to keep you in bondage.

Here's what I'd like you to do right now. If you're carrying issues that go back right into your family, generational issues, things that have gone from father to son, mother to daughter, come down through the family line. You've got issues that you've wrestled with inside and you're willing to believe today - you'll dare to believe that what Jesus did is enough to break its power. I'd like you to get out of your seat and come down to the front, begin to start to speak in your heart to the Lord, bring words to Him, talk to Him and tell Him Lord, I want to be free today. I want to be free of this thing today. I hear you talking to me. Lord, the last few weeks you've been talking to me, but today there's something in my heart I need to get out. I need to let go of this iniquity, this crookedness, this twist inside me that drives me. I hate it. I don't want it to be there and Lord, today having heard the word of God I have faith to believe I could be set free by the power of Almighty God.

I could be set free from my iniquity. I could be set free from tormenting spirits that use my iniquity to drive me into actions I don't want to do, that I feel ashamed of doing. Come on, there's others here today. Let's come and let's our hands to Jesus Christ. I'll lead you in a prayer and then as you worship the Lord we're going to come and break the power of this thing over your life. We're going to believe that God will come upon you, the power of the cross and the blood will set you free today.

Oh, there's so many of us responding today. I know we're going a little bit longer than we expected but friend, this is a God moment. This is a time to meet with Him today, to let the power of Almighty God, the power of the blood break this thing in your life once and for all.

Now this is what I want us to do right now. Have your eyes closed and for just a few moments talk to the Lord about this iniquity. What is this thing, this twist inside you that so disturbs you, you so hate it? Has it been in your father? Has it been in your mother? Has it been in your family line, that crookedness? Is it in other members of your family? It doesn't need to remain in you because you're a born again believer, but you need to hold the blood of Jesus Christ against that iniquity, assert the victory of Calvary over it by believing in what Jesus has done.

I'm going to lead you in a prayer and I want you to not just be waiting for someone to do something to you, but I want you to rise in your heart; this blood was for you. It was shed for your iniquity. It was shed to set you free. When Jesus went to the cross, He carried that iniquity. You don't have to carry it any more - so you've just got to bring it. You've got to speak it out. Maybe it is idolatry, freemasonry. Maybe the thing you're struggling with is anger, there may be violence and murder in your family lines you don't really know. If the issues you're struggling with are fears and pride and rebellion and anxiety and those kinds of things, probably there's been idolatry in your family somewhere. If you're struggling with lusts of all kinds, addictions of all kinds, probably there's been sexual sin in your family background - so we'll just come to the cross with it right now.

I want you to follow me in this prayer:

Father, I come to you in Jesus' name. I believe Jesus carried my iniquity, and the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all iniquity. Lord, I confess my iniquity now. I confess the iniquity of my family, that we have carried for generations and I'll bring it to the cross. I bring it to the cross. I hold the cross of Jesus between me and my family line. I hold the blood of Jesus against that iniquity. I refuse its power! I am dead to that iniquity. Now Lord I ask you to set me free from every oppressing spirit that has used that iniquity to hold me in bondage. Thank you Jesus for setting me free. Halleluiah! Okay, Halleluiah! Halleluiah! Praise the Lord. Okay then, thank you Jesus. Come on, just keep worshipping Him - thank you Lord, thank you Lord. Father I thank you for the mighty power of the blood of Jesus.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Exod.12:22-23 “And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin.”

The first Passover feast – a prophetic picture of Christ Our Passover (1 Cor. 5:7).

Blood was applied in three places – the lintel and the two doorposts.

Israel stood by faith behind the protection provided by the blood of the lamb.

Three wrongs were atoned for by the blood:

(i) Sin = an unintentional wrong, action committed in ignorance (Lev. 4:27) – sins of ignorance.

(ii) Transgressions = wrong committed with full knowledge.

(iii) Iniquity = an inner twist that moves a person to commit sins and transgressions.

Three different words – three different offences – one remedy – The Blood of Jesus Christ.

Is.53:5-6 “He was bruised for our iniquities … and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all!”

2. What is Iniquity?

(i) It is the driving power, the motivating force behind sins and transgressions.

· Ezel.21:24

· Whenever sins and transgressions occur iniquity is remembered – it is the root cause.

(ii) It is an internal corrupting force

· Mt.23:28 “Even so outwardly appear righteous to man but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

· It is an inner torment, pain, pressure, force that motivates people to sin.

(iii) It is a painful and lasting influence

· The first mention of the word iniquity is associated with Cain.

· Gen. 4:11-13 “My punishment is greater than I can bear.”

· Punishment = Heb 5771 Avon = punishment, iniquity.

· O.T. Avon = to bend, twist, distort, do perversely, be crooked.

= an inner force that causes a person to be twisted.

= a punishment – a painful long lasting consequence of a

wrong action.

· Dictionary: iniquity = wickedness from wicca = to twist, wick-twisted condition.

· N.T. Iniquity =458= anomia = illegal, violate the law of God, contempt for the law.

· Person thinks: I am an exception – this law does not apply to me.

(iv) It is the motivating force or power behind sins and transgressions

E.g. Gen. 4:5 Why are you angry?

Cain was angry with God and angry with his brother Abel.

· Anger = iniquity = motivating force or drive.

· Murder = transgression = resulting action.

E.g. Sermon on the Mount.

· Mt.5:21-22 Anger = iniquity; murder = resulting action.

· Mt.5:27-28 Lust = iniquity; adultery = resulting action.

· Iniquity is the spider – sins and transgressions are the web.

3. What is the Root Cause of Iniquity?

(i) The Origin is Demonic

· Ezek.28:14-18 “Iniquity was found in you.”

· The first occurrence of iniquity – it was found in Lucifer.

· He desired (lusted) after things that belonged to God –

· Lucifer became corrupted by iniquity and sought to rebel against God.

· He traded – exchanged his relationship and role with God in order to exalt himself.

· Satan – imparted iniquity into Adam and Eve – spiritual impartation.

(ii) The Origin is Generational

· Exod.20:1-6 “..visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”

· If God applied the death penalty to Adam immediately then no descendents.

· God showed justice – He required a consequence for sin.

· God showed mercy – He spread the death penalty over several generations. He forgave their transgressions but the consequences were carried to successive generations in the form of a twist or bent towards sinning.

· The sin is charged to the offender – the iniquity is spread over three or four generations.

· Ps.106:6 “We have sinned with our fathers – we have committed iniquity.”

· Iniquity manifests as a twist towards sin – if the family members sins it carries on.

· E.g. murder = anger is passed on

Idolatry = pride, fear is passed on

Sexual sin = lust of all kinds is passed on

· E.g. King David’s sin of adultery and murder = iniquity passed on to family.

Family experienced = rape, murder, betrayal

– Amnon/Absolum/Adonejah/Solomon

David’s origin – tribe of Judah = sexual sin with daughter in law Tama

Resultant iniquities – rejection (Dt.23:2) lust (Ps.57:5).

(iii) How is Iniquity passed on?

· Human spirit carries iniquity

· Human DNA carries “twists”

· Family environment – how the child is raised.

4. What is the Remedy? The Blood of Jesus!

· Tit.2:14 “He redeemed us from all iniquity”

· Is.53:5-6 “He was bruised (shed blood) for our iniquities the Lord has Laid on Him the iniquity of all”

· Col.2:14-15 “He took away the list of ordinances that was against us!

· Heb.10:12-17 “Their iniquities I will remember no more

· New Covenant = New Spirit = New Spiritual DNA!

· How can I be free?

(i) Confession of iniquity (fathers and own Lev.26:40-42; Neh.9:2)

(ii) Faith – believe and confess what Jesus did (Rom.6:6)

(iii) Depart from iniquity (2 Tim2:19).

Five Seconds After You Die

Five Seconds After You Die

We read in the paper of accidents, car accidents and young people dying, and there are questions, many questions people have in their hearts, about the reality of what happens after death, and what happens to a person when they die, what will happen in those first five seconds after you die. These are questions people often don't speak out but they wonder about them. There's a tremendous amount of nonsense in the movies to try and explain some of these things. If we want to find out about what happens in eternity, if we want to find out about life after death or what happens at death, the best place we can go is to the one who made it known.

Live with Purpose (Men's Breakfast)

Ghenna was the town rubbish dump (a present reality), and Hades is an afterlife (a future reality), in English its Hell. When we think of Hell, we tend to think about: them (in the future); but in the vast majority of Jesus' teachings, Hell was: us (in the present). Heaven & Hell are both true, and both occupied, in the here/now. They are also both true of another place in the future, which is also occupied, by real people. Jesus' emphasis was far, far, far more on one, instead of the other. When you take care of the poor and the afflicted, that is what it means to know God.

Are You Worthy?

There are 4 verses in the Bible that say homosexuality's wrong, and 2000 verses in the Bible that tell us to love each other, have we got our emphasis wrong? Who is worthy to break the seals, and open the scrolls? No one in heaven, or earth, or under the earth, could open the scroll, or even look inside of it. There are people, already in heaven, who aren't worthy? The "Flames of Heaven" is God's relentless pursuit, to make you the best you can be in His kingdom, without taking your free will away. Hell will let you stay greedy, or a racist, heaven won't.

Be the Salt and Light

There are 6 mentions of fire in hell, but 229 mentions of fire in heaven! If you walked into heaven tomorrow, what parts of you would be burned up? 15 of 18 of Jesus mentions of hell, was about us, here, now. It's about: what are you bringing to the earth? How's your lust problem? How's your anger problem? Do you call people fools? How is fear of man instead of fear of God? What are you bringing to the earth?

Resurrection of the Dead

Jesus was the first-fruits, the first-born to be resurrected from the dead, and appear to many in a resurrection body - immortal, incorruptible, able to vanish in and out, no longer constrained by the physical world. He was a pattern for all that is to follow. This teaching covers the first resurrection, 1000 year reign of Christ on earth, and the second resurrection. Which one will you be in?

Eternal Judgment

Sometimes we focus a lot on the grace of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God we forget or overlook that there is another side, that God is also holy and He's just. His justice requires that He deal with how we've governed our life and what we've done in our life. All of you have an appointment to keep with this. There is no exception. Matt 16:27 I come and my reward is with me, to give to every man according to his work.

Five Seconds After You Die

We read in the paper of accidents, car accidents and young people dying, and there are questions, many questions people have in their hearts, about the reality of what happens after death, and what happens to a person when they die, what will happen in those first five seconds after you die. These are questions people often don't speak out but they wonder about them. There's a tremendous amount of nonsense in the movies to try and explain some of these things. If we want to find out about what happens in eternity, if we want to find out about life after death or what happens at death, the best place we can go is to the one who made it known.

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Five Seconds After You Die

Sun 14 Aug 2011 PM

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We read in the paper of accidents, car accidents and young people dying, and there are questions, many questions people have in their hearts, about the reality of what happens after death, and what happens to a person when they die, what will happen in those first five seconds after you die. These are questions people often don't speak out but they wonder about them. There's a tremendous amount of nonsense in the movies to try and explain some of these things. If we want to find out about what happens in eternity, if we want to find out about life after death or what happens at death, the best place we can go is to the one who made it known.

This week I had a very sad task, to take a funeral of a young girl, a 20 year old girl. Very sad when you go into a funeral service, and there's someone who's only 20 years. We would expect most people to live these days beyond 70, and so to have 50 years or more of her life cut off is just nothing short of tragedy; very, very painful for the parents, very, very difficult. I know we had a number of young people there, and every one of those young people was deeply affected by the loss of a friend.

I think this kind of situation happens over and over and over. We read in the paper of accidents, car accidents, motor vehicle accidents, young people dying; and there are questions, many questions people have in their hearts, about the reality of what happens after death; and what happens to a person when they die, what happens in the first five seconds after you die.

These are questions people often don't speak about, but they wonder about them. There's a tremendous amount of nonsense in the movies to try and explain some of these things. If we want to find out about what happens in eternity, if we want to find out about life after death, or what happens at death; the best place we can go, is to the one who made it known.

The Bible says of Jesus Christ: He came from eternity. He came into the earth; and then knowing where He'd come from, and where He was going to, that He was going back to His Father, He served people, laid His life down as a sacrifice for people; then went into eternity again. So before He did, he appeared to many people; so if you want to know about eternity, then it's quite good to find directly from the person who's been there, lived there, experienced it, and has gone to be there now.

If we look through the gospels, the stories of Jesus, He taught many things, and many times He taught parables. A parable is just a story. It's not a true story, not a real story. It's just a story to get interest, but in it there's a spiritual principle.

What I'm going to read to you is not a story, and we know it's not a story for two reasons: one is, He doesn't tell us it's a story. Everywhere else, if it's a parable, they say it's a parable; so it doesn't say this is a parable, and Jesus is talking directly to His followers. He wants them to understand something.

The second thing is, there are two people who are mentioned in this story. They're mentioned by name. There's a third one who's not mentioned by name, and probably very well that we don't mention his name, but these are real people, who once lived on the same planet we do. They lived in another time, but these people are very real.

I want to just go through and read what Jesus had to say about these people. At times, Jesus, it's almost like He rolled back eternity, and gave people glimpses into it. There are a number of ways that He did that, sometimes with miracles; miracles are manifestation of the eternal power of the kingdom of heaven, coming into the earth. Sometimes He did it through miracles. Sometimes He did it through confrontation of demons, and suddenly for the first time, people become aware of an invisible spirit world.

So when you look at Jesus' ministry, He made the spiritual tangible and real. Not only that, He talked about it. He taught things about the eternal kingdom. He talked about things that would come. He made it very clear, that He would not return until the gospel of the kingdom had been preached through every nation of the earth, and we still have a lot to do.

Then He spoke one story, which gives you a window into eternity. It's not a very pleasant window. It's not a very happy window, but Jesus had seen this. Jesus knew this, and Jesus could teach it like no one else could teach it; so we're going to look in Luke, Chapter 16.

What I want to do, is for you to just open your heart to look for a moment, not just at something in the Bible, but to look, just glimpse into eternity, to discover something you may not have been aware of before. We want to ask the question: what happens in the first five seconds after a person dies? One, two, three, four, five. There's some things happen in those five seconds when a person dies.

I've been with people who've died. I've been with a number of people who died, and it's an unusual experience. I remember being with an older woman, it was John Steele's mother. She was part of our church. She had cancer, and people used to go to her because she was dying of cancer, and they would feel sorry for her; so they would go to the house feeling sorry for her, to visit her, and they'd come away changed, because in her heart was an absolutely confidence of a reality of eternity. She was totally at peace. When you'd go to her, she would talk, and fill you with joy, and fill you with peace. She was extremely positive about what was about to happen to her.

I remember I was called up to the hospital another time, and there was a particular family there, and I didn't know who they were. They weren't part of our church. They just asked - I don't know how they even got my number. They rang me, come up, so I go up there, and I go in. There's a family around, and this must have been a younger person, around about 30-ish I suppose.

The moment I looked at her in the bed, I knew immediately she was going to die. She was in a coma, but what stunned me was the contortions she was making. You could tell this was a person with no peace in their heart. You could tell this was a person who was tormented inside, who was troubled. It was all over the person's face, even though they were out to it, it was all over her face, it was all over her body. I looked at her, and I said to the family: I believe this is her last night on earth. You need to prepare to let go.

It was an incredible time; and then I was with another lady, and she was an older lady dying of cancer. She was in that particular room, which I don't like, and she was there. I went and sat with her, and talked with her, and she asked me this question: what is it like, when you die?

I shared with her a few things. I said: well, if you're a believer (and you are a believer), the Bible says: precious in the eyes of the Lord, is the death of a saint. So in other words, it's an incredibly precious moment of time, when someone who trusts Christ dies, because then they can see Him face to face. The veil is moved. Suddenly the one they've worshipped, and loved, and walked with, all the years of their life; suddenly the veil is removed, and they see Him.

So I talked with her about that, and suddenly - now you've got to realise, she was very weak. She was dying of cancer, and there was very little life left in her. Suddenly she sat up straight, bolt upright. I was quite astonished that she did this, because she looked so very, very weak and feeble. She stood up, and she looked, and I could tell she was seeing something I couldn't see.

I was quite interested of course. I said: what are you seeing? She said: that man over there, can you see that man over there? I said: no, I wish I could, but I can't see Him. I said: tell me about Him, what is he like? I asked first of all because I didn't know whether it's a devil, or what it is, you know; but I just asked - I said: is He smiling? She said: He's smiling! Then she began to talk about His countenance, and what He looked like. She described - now she was almost like she was transfixed, looking at something; and as she looked, she could see this person. I knew she could see the person. She could describe exactly where in the room He was standing.

She described Him, and I said: it has to be the Lord Jesus, has to be Jesus Christ, and He's welcoming you. He's giving you a glimpse into what is about to come for you. Sure enough, that very evening she died, and she died in tremendous peace; the Saviour she'd served, and walked with all her life, now she saw a glimpse of Him, before she went into eternity to meet Him.

So there are just some stories of people - but this is something different. This is actually something Jesus taught, and so this is also a very real story. These are real people, and two of them have names.

The other one doesn't have a name - so we found it in Luke 16:19 - and Jesus is talking to His disciples. He's in the presence of the Pharisees. So the Pharisees, very rich, they coveted money, they lusted after all kinds of things. They were people who were religious, but there was no heart change. There was no love for people.

So let's have a look at see what it is; and as we go through it, you will see for a moment a glimpse into eternity, and we'll be able to answer the question, exactly how it is, five seconds after a person dies. So here it is.

There was a certain rich man who died, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, and he fared or ate sumptuously every day. Now this is the man they don't tell you who he is. There's just a rich man, a man who was extremely wealthy, and there are three things that characterised him; one, he was very, very rich, very, very wealthy person. Second thing that characterised him was, he bought the best of clothes; so he was out shopping, fine linen, so very, very expensive to buy fine linen. He went out and shopped for all the best of clothes. He had a great life, because he had a lot of money. Not only that, he ate well. In other words, he had a great feast every day, drank wine and ate well; and had food laid out on the table, like you'd never seen before. He was very wealthy. Whatever he wanted, he could have; so that's the rich man.

Doesn't tell us who he is, but this is a real person, and we can tell not only from this story about this man living. We can actually tell you, in just a few moments, exactly what he's experiencing right now, 2000 years after Jesus spoke this. We can see it, and Jesus made it very clear...

but there was also a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores who was laid at his gate. So now Lazarus is described. Lazarus is a real person. He was as alive in his day, as you are alive today. He was a person who walked the earth. He had a name, he had a family background, he had a family.

He came from a family, but he was a very sick man. The Bible doesn't tell us anything much about his sickness, but what it does tell us, it tells us two things about this man, and that was: one, he had lots of sores on his body, so he was riddled with some kind of disease. Second thing is that he was laid at the rich man's house. If he was laid there, that means he couldn't walk, so this man was riddled with a disease, and the disease affected him so seriously he couldn't walk. He actually had to go and be carried to the rich man's house. He was carried to the rich man's house, because his only way of sustaining his life was by begging.

So here they are, two men, a very, very rich man, a very wealthy man, very rich, clothed well, eating well, has everything that money can buy; and another man who's a poor man. This man is sick with disease, and when people are very sick with disease, with sores, it's very easy for others to despise them - so he was very needy. So they laid him at the rich man's gate, so that hopefully the rich man would have some compassion.

Throughout the Bible, the Bible tells us, God is a God of compassion. That means He's moved by the plight of people. We see so much on television, we're not moved by much at all. Very little moves us, until we actually meet real people, with real problems.

So here are two people: one is Lazarus; and one is the rich man. Notice this: Lazarus desired to be fed with crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and the dogs came over and licked his sores. So this guy is in a terrible state. His sores are obviously flowing, they're open sores. He's in a very, very terrible state. He's hoping to be fed, even just little crumbs from the rich man's table. He's hoping that someone will have mercy on him, and help him. This man who had so much, he's looking to him, and hoping that he will help him on the journey, that he'll provide him a little bit of food, a little bit of comfort, a little bit of help, something just a little to support him. He'd have even eaten the crumbs under the table, like one of the dogs would, but the man wouldn't give him anything.

So that's the story; two men, and the issue is not the wealth they had. The issue is not about being rich and about being poor. The issue is about the state of the people's heart, the condition of their inner life. It's never about what we look like outside.

God looks on the heart, and sees what we're really like; and it says the beggar died, and later on we'll find the rich man died. So he probably died of his disease, died of what was afflicting him. He died. Now notice this; he was carried by angels to Abraham's bosom. Just notice that for a moment. There are many other references to this, but it says: the rich man also died, and was buried. Now you notice, it tells us the beggar - doesn't say anything about his burial. He was so poor, I guess a few people who knew him picked him up, and gathered him, and made some poor grave and put him in there, just did the best they could. But there was no big fuss, no big funeral, no big celebration of his life, or anything like that.

But the rich man died and was buried; so he also died, probably prematurely. He thought he would live a long time. That's one of the things that happen to us. We all think we're going to live a long time, and we don't really know. You have no idea how long you'll live. You have no idea how long you're on this earth. You only have the life you're living and breathing today, and today is the day you make decisions.

Today you live the life you have. You don't know what tomorrow holds. You don't know what the future holds. We all have our dreams, our hopes, our aspirations, but the reality is that many people, at a very young age, are cut off in their life by various kinds of tragedies. This is a reality. We see it in the paper all the time.

So this rich man assumed he would have a long life. He assumed his life would go on, and suddenly he was struck dead; so they had a big funeral for him, because he's a very important man. But notice the difference immediately after death.

It says for Lazarus - it names him - Lazarus had a relationship with God. We know he had a relationship with God, and a faith in God, because he ends up in the presence of God. You can't end up in the presence of God, if you haven't come to know Him while you're alive on earth.

Everyone is born separated from God; so Jesus is describing a real man, and where he is now, and He said that straight after he died, something happened. So what happened for him, in the five seconds after he died? One, two, three, four, five.

In those five seconds, this is what happened to him. He closed his eyes and fell asleep, and immediately he become aware he's in the realm of the spirit.

You are a spirit being. You live in a body, and when you die, the Bible says when a person dies, their spirit leaves their body; and so he left his body, had a final out-of-body experience.

Notice it tells us, it said: angels gathered him, or took him; so immediately in the five seconds after he died, he suddenly was aware of his body being dead on the ground, and he is alive. Angels, real angels, have come to gather him into an eternal realm, where he's in the presence of God.

So in the five seconds after he died, he suddenly wakes, and is aware his body's on the ground, he is moving into eternity, and angels have come to gather him. In other words, he's a friend of God, and so God has brought angels, to bring him into His presence.

There are many scriptures in the Bible, which tell us when people of God die, they are 'gathered' into the presence of God. Gathered means someone meets and walks, or takes them on the journey into the presence of God; so you're a believer, in the moment, the first five seconds after you die, the person who trusts Christ, you'll suddenly become aware that your life, as you knew it, is over.

You may become aware of your body, and you're outside your body. But what you will become aware of is that there are angels waiting to greet you, and to take you and usher you into eternity, into the presence of an Almighty God who loves you. There you will face your creator. There you'll face Jesus Christ, and you will give account of your life, and your eternal destiny will be made very plain for you.

Now what about the rich man? So the rich man, it doesn't say anything about angels there. There's no mention of angels when the rich man died, so we can only conclude if Jesus did not mention angels for him, there were no angels met him. So what happened for him, in the five seconds after he died?

It says: and being in torments in Hell. There are a number of scriptures. There's an interesting one in Job 27:19-22, and it talks about the rich man coming before the king of terrors.

You've got to understand this. He assumed he was going to live a long life. It was a shock to him to die early. It's always a shock for people to die early, so this man died; and the moment he died, he suddenly become aware that he's now no longer in his body, but there are no angels waiting to meet him.

In fact actually the opposite; he is ushered immediately into an eternity separated by God. He doesn't tell us who took him there, but it says in other places in the Bible, he shall stand before the "king of terrors". It's not a very nice sounding name is it, the king of terrors?

So it says - notice about this man - it says: he, being in torments in Hades, lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. He cried, and he said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus - that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.

Abraham said: son, remember in your lifetime, you received good things; and likewise Lazarus, evil things; now he is comforted, and you are tormented; and beside this, between us there is a great gulf, fixed so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot; nor can those from there, pass to us.

So let's have a look what the Bible tells us. Now Jesus is giving you a glimpse into what it's like. Now the reality is - that man is still there now. That man is still there now. The reality is, is that Lazarus is still in the presence of God.

Notice what it says of Lazarus, first of all. It says: he was carried by angels to Abraham's bosom. Now Abraham is the father of people of faith, so people who were descendants of Abraham, or people who follow Abraham, or people who believe in Jesus Christ, are children of Abraham by faith.

Now to be in the person's bosom, they understood what that meant. In the Eastern times, they would lie down to eat their meal; and so to have a particularly close intimate relationship with someone, you put their head against your bosom, against your chest. John the Apostle leant his head on Jesus' bosom. He had a close relationship.

So what its saying, is that this man Lazarus was deeply loved by Abraham, recognised by Abraham, has a very close relationship with Abraham, the father of faith, and is wonderfully happy in eternity. That was what happened to him.

But what about the other man? Now there are two things that you can tell, and these are the interesting things. There'll be a lot of people who are your friends, they've got no idea. I've been to some funerals, and I've heard the weirdest things, weirdest songs, the weirdest kind of statements about how they've just become a star, and they're looking down on us now. This is total nonsense - or they're just floating around, and they're watching over us. Again, this is not true. It comes out of the mind and imagination of people, who don't know the reality. Here is the reality.

Now this is a reality for any person you know who doesn't know Christ. Jesus said: you must be born again if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must be born from above. It requires an encounter with God to change you on the inside.

Now young people, I want you to think about this. You live and walk every day in the presence of people who are spiritually dead - and this is their eternity, should they have an accident next weekend; should they go drinking to get rid of the pain that they feel in their heart, and a car goes out of control. Before you know it, there's two or three young people killed. This, which you're going to read now, is the reality for them. It's not just some sort of story.

You know the movies try to make these things, and portray them, and make them look in certain ways, but Jesus describes reality. So I want to show you two things about this.

Number one, I want to describe for you the person himself, because in case you wonder what it'll be like for me - all that happens is you lose your body, but you are still very alive.

Death does not mean you don't exist anymore. Death is just you're separated from your body, separated from the people, separated from this earth, separated from loved ones, so the ones who are grieving are the loved ones.

If you're a Christian, for you to go into eternity is great joy, and great release. In fact many people who have had experiences of going into eternity, and encountering Jesus, never wanted to come back; but they came back because Jesus assigned them to come back.

So what about this man here? Now it says, notice, these things. We're just going to look at it very carefully: He was in torments. He had eyes, he could see, he could recognise Abraham and Lazarus - he recognised him. Notice he cries out, he's got a voice. He's crying for mercy. He talks about Lazarus dipping the tip of his finger in water, and cooling his tongue for I'm tormented in this flame.

So here's the thing that you notice about the man himself. The man himself has eyes, he has a tongue, he has fingers, he has feelings, he has emotions, and he has memories. So in hell, this man is totally conscious.

He can recognise Abraham, who he's never met; so in the realm of eternity, you're able to recognise people you've never met – you just know them immediately. You notice he's got memories - he recognises immediately who Lazarus is; which tells us that in his lifetime, he knew exactly who Lazarus is, and what his condition was - but he ignored it completely. No heart, no compassion, no mercy, quite self-indulgent.

So what else does it tell us? It very clearly - there are fingers, there's tongue, and notice what it says: he was in torments, terrible, terrible, terrible torments. It was his tongue that was tormented, and it described that it was food, and lust for food, was his issue. So he says: I'm tormented in this flame, so notice now he's got these tremendous issues.

Here he is, he exists; so when you die, you won't just cease to exist. You'll just walk out of your body, and someone who could see you, will know exactly who you were, a person from eternity.

You'll walk immediately into eternity. You'll have fingers, and you'll have eyes, and you'll have a nose, and you'll have all the features that a human being would have; except not a physical body, just a spirit body, and your memories. Everything you remember, every experience you had, you'll take it with you.

Now notice also about the place. The people struggle with this thing of a real hell, but there is a real heaven, and there is a real hell. You could probably search out the internet, and you'd find stories, testimonies of people who went to heaven; also people who went to hell. Those who went to hell, it's extremely frightening, terrifying experience for them.

We had some CDs a little while ago, Mary K Baxter I think it was, and she had these visions where she was taken into hell, and she was almost in trauma for days afterwards. It took her a long time to come out of it, and then she's become a most powerful witness, and she described the scenes of the people she saw, who she saw, what she saw. It's a most gripping thing. I tell you it's one of the most motivating things, when you see it.

But let's have a look at this place called Hell. Firstly you notice he was in hell. He was in a real place - it is a real place. There is a spiritual place, a place in the spirit realm, that is called Hell. Notice it's a real place, and it's a place of torment, a place of tremendous pain. Notice it says: talking about the flame; so there's obviously flames of fire in that place. Notice in that place in hell, there's memory. You can remember your life on the earth. Notice also that you know a number of things; you notice that he's able to recognise.

There's an unquenchable fire, Jesus said in Mark 9. He said: in that place, there is a fire that burns, and it can never be put out. There's a corruption takes place, can never, never, never be stopped. In other words, it's a place of immense pain, and torment of all kinds. Part of the torment is flame. Part of the torment is some kinds of things that consume you, but you're never fully consumed. But part of the torment is you remember your life on earth, and you remember the opportunities you had.

You remember people on earth who've known Christ, and you're aware of them in eternity. You're also aware that there's no possibility that you can ever escape this place. This is the most horrendous thing. Most of us in a place of pain, or a place of difficulty, the thing that comforts us is it won't be too much longer. You go to the dentist, well it's very painful, but it's going to be over in an hour - but not so in this place. This man is still there. He's going to be there for all eternity.

So notice some other things. Abraham said: son, remember in your lifetime - so he's got memory. He remembered in his lifetime all the good things, and he said: now here's comfort, and you're tormented, and there's a justice in this.

When we go to heaven, we're comforted. We experience the comfort, the love of God. If a person goes to hell, they experience torment. They've left God out of their life, and now there's torment that goes on forever.

Notice he said: there's a great gulf, fixed between those who want to pass from here to you, that cannot; and those from here pass to us. So notice he's saying that it's impossible, once you're in that place, to shift from one to the other. He said: even if someone here saw a loved one, and wanted to go, they could not. Even if you wanted to come and change your realm, you cannot. He said: it's fixed. It's fixed by God, so one of the torments for people in hell is, they're aware of those who went ahead, who have actually died in faith. It's a horrendous thing.

Notice this, as we go down, he says: now I beg you. I beg you father, that you would send Lazarus to my father's house; for I have five brothers, and he may testify to them, lest they come to this place of torment.

So you notice now he calls it a place of torment, he actually describes it. This is Jesus telling us about a real person. This is not some story. This is actually a reality, an eternal reality. Well, tell me something motivational. Tell me something to get me excited. Tell me something to get me wound up. No, no, no, no. We're telling you about eternal reality.

There are two eternal realities; one is a reality in heaven, and the other is a reality in hell, and tormented; and that's why Jesus came. He never told us what the name of the man was, and I'm glad he never did. It's impossible for us to know who goes into that place. Only God can decide, because only God is the judge.

That's why it doesn't tell us at all who that person was, but we know he came from a big family, a family of six and they were probably a wealthy family, because he has great concern for his brothers. So isn't it interesting, in hell he remembers his family, and his only thing is: boy, they're in trouble if they come here.

He wants something to be done, and you notice what Abraham said to him: We'll have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. He said: no. If one goes to them from the dead, then they will repent.

Now notice this; he is aware that the reason he is in that place, is because of his self-centred life, and failure to repent. Jesus came and preached: if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, there must be a change in how you think, and how you run your life. There's a need to abandon a life without God, and embrace a life of relationship and faith in him; so this man knew the reason - he was there was lack of repentance.

There was no opportunity for him to repent, and his concern is this: he remembers his friends. He remembers his family. He remembers his brothers, and his memory of his brothers - I don't want them to come here. Can you tell them?

And Abraham says: well they've got the Bible. Oh no, no, no, no, send someone from the dead. He said: no, even if we send someone from the dead, they won't listen to the Bible, and the prophets of God. They won't listen to someone who came from the dead!

So what Jesus is saying, very, very clearly is this: is that the word of God is what we need to change our values, our thinking, and our heart attitudes. If we won't believe the word of God, and put our trust in what God says, then even if we saw a miracle, it won't change us.

When Jesus' friend Lazarus - it's a different guy Lazarus - when he raised him from the dead - the religious leaders, instead of celebrating and having faith, wanted to kill him, because he was inconvenient.

Jesus rose from the dead, and in spite of Him rising from the dead, there's still great contention worldwide; even though a man rose from the dead. People do get raised from the dead. In Pakistan, Dave was telling me just recently, one of his last meetings he took there, another girl was raised from the dead, so people do get raised from the dead, but what counts is: what we will do with Jesus Christ, and our response to the word of God.

So what happens in the five seconds after a person dies? Death can come very quickly. Death can come slowly, but there is just a moment when the person dies. When a person dies, their spirit leaves their body, so here's what happens.

They become aware, as they leave their body, they're leaving this realm. If a person has faith in Christ, they become immediately fixed upon the presence of angels, in white dazzling garments, with a great smile on their face, coming to greet them and welcome them as a person of faith, and bring them to where they belong, an eternity in the kingdom of heaven, forever and ever and ever. They're ushered into the presence of Jesus Christ. They're ushered into a realm of joy, of peace, of tremendous beauty, of beauty that you can't even possibly imagine, of colours and of life that is just beyond what we could know here.

That's why when people experience it, they're reluctant to come back; because it's so beautiful, so intense, and so fulfilling, they never want to leave it to come back to a war zone. So that's what a person experiences, the moment they die.

I have no doubt that David's daughter Jessie, in the moment alone at her bed, when she had an epileptic fit and then suddenly died, there was a moment suddenly she was aware she's stepping out of her body, and she's encountering angels, and coming into the presence of the Lord. In that presence, she'd have no desire to return, so intense, so wonderful, something that's hard to describe.

But for a person who doesn't know Christ, it's quite a different story. Maybe you know someone who doesn't know Christ. This is why they need to be saved, because of what will happen to them. That person that doesn't know Christ, we don't know how long they'll live. You don't know what can happen to that person's life. You don't know whether they'll have some kind of accident. We just do not know. Neither shall we be so confident that it's not going to happen. We just need to actually carry the heart Jesus had for them.

Now notice what it says: Straight away he opened his eyes, and found himself in hell. There were no angels to greet him. It's most likely demons dragged him into hell. He turned up in a place of torment, his life terrified, in absolute agony and pain, aware of his fingers, aware of his tongue, aware of his memories of earth, in a place of great torment, aware of other people in a different place - and there is no, no, no release forever. This is a 'window into eternity' story, and it's a story about real people.

Jesus told the story so we would have no doubt whatsoever. He knew that there would come a day when people would question whether there's an eternity, question whether there's life after death, and so He came to make it very, very plain. So people today have two eternal destinations: one in the presence of Almighty God; one in the presence of torment forever.

Only God can make the decision who is who, but what He has done is this. The Bible says in Matthew, Chapter 9, it says: Jesus looked on the harvest field. He looked on multitudes of people, and He felt deeply moved with compassion. Why? Because He saw into eternity, and He saw their condition, and His heart was moved.

Remember the problem with the rich man? The problem with the rich man was not his wealth. The problem with the rich man was his heart. He actually had no heart of compassion for people. His heart was not moved with love for people, concern for people, desire to reach out. He was actually self preoccupied. This was his problem.

Jesus looked out on the multitude, and He said: they're like sheep without a shepherd. He was moved with compassion. He said: the harvest is great, but what’s lacking are labourers - people with a passion for souls, people with a passion for the harvest. Eleven young men put their hands up, and said: I'll go. Eleven young men gave their lives for the gospel. This gospel of Jesus Christ is good news, that there's an eternity that begins now, with a relationship with God. There's an eternity that is true now, and just gets worse forever; and you and I have the words of life, to help people come into it.

We live in an hour when God is calling the church to understand the realities of heaven and hell, to experience and encounter heaven, and to get in our heart a deep compassion for people that are lost; not to go and harangue them with words, but to understand the gospel is the power of God to salvation, to every person who believes.

I've had great joy to speak the gospel, and watch people weep as God touched their life, and they came to Christ, to feel and see the joy and the peace come into their life.

Young people, God has a mission for you. It's a mission to carry His life to this generation, to carry the life of God, the word of God, the power of God, and to find ways, creative ways of communicating these spiritual realities to people.

You're living among young people who - many are in pain, and they're trying to dull the pain through alcohol and drugs and relationships. They're actually lost, and don't understand. This is why a person needs to be saved. They're lost. They can't find the way. It's the nature of sheep. If a sheep is lost, it cannot find its way home. It needs someone to go and say: this is the way.

Jesus said: people are like sheep. If you've ever had anything to do with sheep - go and ask Barry. Barry knows about sheep - they just, once they're lost, they're lost. They can't find their way anywhere. They're just lost. They need someone to go - and you are the person to go. You are the person to carry the love of God. You're the person to bring a message of hope.

I remember when someone first reached out to me, and it wasn't what they said, because I was pretty resistant, but it was what I saw in their eyes, as they spoke their concern for me, and I knew, I knew I was in trouble. It wasn't the words they said. I can't even remember what they said, but the look in this person's eyes, of concern and compassion for me, made me aware something was deeply wrong inside me, and I needed help. I could see in the person's eyes, a compassion and love of Jesus Christ; and it deeply disturbed me, because I knew I had something wrong inside, and I think the very next time I went to a church meeting, I looked around. For the first time I saw, they had something that I was lacking, and I needed to be saved.

Just close our eyes right now. I really just feel tonight that God is wanting to awaken in our heart just a desire for the lost, a desire to reach to people. If you've got a Bible, go back into Luke 16, and just meditate on it. If you've got a computer, go look on the internet, you'll probably find some things in YouTube, a little bit about it. Get testimonies of people who were there, who've been to this place, have seen it's reality, and ask God to fill your heart with a deep love for people who are lost.

When you see the young people in your classroom, or the people around you in your neighbourhood, begin to look at them quite differently. As you look at them, this is what you look for. As you look at people - I did this for a little while when I first came to this city, just began to walk down the streets, and praying quietly in tongues ,and looking into the eyes of people, looking in to an eternal being, and my heart was moved for the city, as I saw how lost people were. It shows in the eyes, the deadness and dullness. You see the vacancy. There's no joy, no vibrancy, no life. They need a saviour.

What were you saved from? You were saved from the power of sin, with all its torments, the separation it brings, an eternity without Christ, an eternity in that place of torment, that the rich man is in right now.

He would wish that someone could come from the dead, and appear in front of you right now; but Abraham said: no, even that won't change things. They have the word of God - if they won't believe that, then even someone turning up and appearing to them won't make the difference.

So tonight you have had the word of God. You have heard the very words of Jesus. We put them on the screen and read them out. There is no mistaking there are two possible destinations, and one decision to make. What will I do with Jesus Christ? That is the decision. It's not about church; it's not about some big experience. It's actually: what will you do with Jesus Christ? What year are we living in? It's that many years since Jesus Christ came. What will you do with this person?

I just sense, God wants to put into people's hearts a fresh passion for souls, a fresh concern for the lost; and if that's you tonight, why don't you just come, just lift your hands to the Lord, or kneel down in front. Say: God, put a deep burden in my heart.

It's not something I can work up. It's nothing emotional I can do, but I just want you to start to awaken in me the compassion and love that you have for people around me. I walk around them and pass them, and I just overlook that they're in such desperate need. I've lost the passion to see them saved. Lord, tonight I'm asking you to reignite it.

Would you do that? Would you come tonight, that's your prayer, say: God, ignite that fire again in my heart. Why don't you just make your way out of your seat tonight and say: God, ignite a fresh passion, a fresh desire for lost people, ignite it in my heart.

Lord help me to see, and become aware of, the very fires of hell, of the very fires of torment. Help me become aware of it. Lord, I want the reality of these things to quicken inside me; so there's urgency, a desperation, there's a concern that can be seen and felt in my words, and my countenance. Lord, I'm asking you to awaken this in my life. Come on, don't be afraid to come if that's you. If you have no heart for the lost, and no concern for them, it'd be good to just say: God, I don't know why I feel no concern. Awaken in me concern, awaken it Lord.

We'll just lift our hands to the Lord right now, just begin to worship Him. Holy Spirit, I can't make this happen, but I'm asking for you to come. I'm asking Lord, that through vision, through revelation, you would awaken the hearts of people tonight, to the eternal realities of heaven and hell, whether it be by vision, whether it be by dream, whether it be by an encounter in this next few days or week or whenever.

I'm asking Lord, that the reality of eternity would come alive, for every person that's standing here today; Father, that they begin to see into the spirit, the reality of those flames, the reality of people in torment, the reality of the lost that's there, people trapped in dungeons, people who once walked the face of this earth, absolutely lost for eternity.

Oh God, write in our heart a deep passion, a deep concern, that Lord, tears would come, we'd begin to weep for the lost, weep for our own generation, weep for our family members, weep for those in the church, who think they're safe and really their condition is desperate.

Lord, we weep for the city that we live in, for its lost state. Lord, we pray tonight that you begin to pour your spirit upon people, that we begin to have a fresh fire, a fire for souls awakened in us.

Lord, open our eyes to see into eternity, to see that rich man, the horror in his eyes, in his countenance, lost forever, remembering his brothers, but now they're there with him. It's possible for the spirit of God to open your eyes, to see and begin to feel the pain. Begin to see and feel that place; but as you see it, feel the heart of Jesus.

Hell was never made for people, it was made for the devil and his angels. God never made that place of torment for people. It was made for the devil and his angels.

Tonight as you look into that place, begin to be aware of Jesus, His great compassion. It's not His heart that any should go to that place. Peter writes this: God's heart is that none should perish, but all should be saved. What is the will of God? None perish, all saved. None of your friends perish, all saved. None of your family perish, but all saved.

So who will pray? Who will stand in the gap of indecision, to break the yoke of sin, to break the yoke of Satan over people, so their eyes are no longer blinded? Who will rise in prayer, and begin to passionately intercede the souls? Who will arise and begin to equip, and get to know how to share the gospel, and begin to look for ways to reach out to their friends; with kindness, with love, and to share unashamedly the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Paul says: I'm not ashamed of the gospel. I'm not ashamed of the gospel message. I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ. I'm not ashamed of what He said. I'm not ashamed of who He is. I'm not ashamed of what He did. I am not ashamed of the good news of Jesus Christ. It is the power of God, of salvation to all who will believe.

Father, awaken in us. Awaken in us as a church; awaken in us as individuals, your compassion for lost people. Let it begin to mobilise and drive us and empower us to reach our friends with passion, with purpose, with zeal and Lord, with a sense of urgency.

One of the challenges we find is, we live in a culture where people are passive, and there's nothing really urgent, except that I can answer my phone right now and see who's calling me. But we need to get the urgency of the gospel going out.

Lord Jesus, I thank you for people tonight who are standing. Awaken in each of us a passion and desire for the lost, a deep awareness of what we are saved from, and who saved us, and how much we love You.

We thank you tonight, Jesus Christ, that you came into this earth. We thank you that you left heaven, and came into this earth; we thank you Lord, that you demonstrated the kingdom, demonstrated the love of the Father, demonstrated for us the realities of the kingdom, taught on the realities of the kingdom; and then boldly gave up Your life, knowing that You would never stay in that place of death, but knowing that You would rise again from the dead.

Oh my God, fill us also with such confidence, with such absolute confidence in the gospel, that we're willing to pour out our lives to see lost people saved. Lord, we give You the honour and we give You the glory, in Jesus' mighty name.

Now Lord, just as we finish this service tonight write in the hearts of every person here pictures, faces, names of people you want us to pray for, and show kindness to, and reach out to, build bridges to, and share the gospel with. Lord, let the Holy Ghost come on us, to do this work in Jesus' mighty name.

Hearing the Voice of God

Adam heard God speaking to him when he was in the Garden, even though he'd sinned and walked away from God. People can hear the voice of God. We need to learn what it's like and how to recognise it. Once you become a believer Jesus expects not only would you hear His voice clearly, but you would actually respond and follow Him. So for a believer the number one thing that I would say if you have to learn anything in your life, this is the thing you'd want to learn; how can I build a relationship with Jesus and hear His voice consistently?

Follow Jesus (1 of 6)

How many people can remember the last time Jesus spoke clearly to do something? Here's the real question. Have you done it? When nothing comes, go back to what the last thing Jesus said was. Following Christ introduces you to a whole new set of challenges in your life. Following Christ is a courageous thing to do because you will face things you'd never have had to face. You'll face some opposition, difficulties, challenges, setbacks. You've got more questions than answers, but they're different questions.

The Princess Syndrome (2 of 6)

Church isn't perfect, it has many problems, probably so many problems we could spend a day or two just describing them all, but nevertheless His church is His church. It's His bride, it's the one He came for and He will make His church perfect. We can't follow Jesus and not be engaged with His people, and the cause He has in changing a community. Life is not all about you, and the sooner you realise it, the happier you will become.

Hearing the Voice of God (3 of 6)

People are the measuring stick of how you're doing with God. It's very easy to be drawn into all range of spiritual experiences and these are wonderful, but if it doesn't convert to being connected to people and working with people and helping people, there is something majorly lacking. If you engage with Jesus, with Him and His work, you will discover the true identity and call of God on your life. If you focus on using God just to get your needs and whatever met, He said you'll end up inward-looking and non productive. You'll actually lose your life. Learn how to hear His voice, and then choose to consistently say yes, and respond by doing something

Hearing the Voice of God (4 of 6)

Adam heard God speaking to him when he was in the Garden, even though he'd sinned and walked away from God. People can hear the voice of God. We need to learn what it's like and how to recognise it. Once you become a believer Jesus expects not only would you hear His voice clearly, but you would actually respond and follow Him. So for a believer the number one thing that I would say if you have to learn anything in your life, this is the thing you'd want to learn; how can I build a relationship with Jesus and hear His voice consistently?

When God Seems Silent (5 of 6)

Most of us would have had an experience where you really need God to give something to direct you but nothing happened. You sought the Lord, you prayed, read your Bible and nothing seemed to happen. It can be very troubling. You ask God to help you, He doesn't seem to help you; ask God to guide you, He doesn't seem to be guiding you, you don't seem to hear anything and it seems quite disturbing. It seems like at times heaven seems to be silent about the things that are really important.

Evidence of Your Discipleship (6 of 6)

By this shall all men know you're My disciples: your love for one another. If you won't let me wash your feet, you won't have a part with Me. I am a foot washer. Those who follow Me are foot washers. Sometimes Jesus doesn't do the foot washing directly, He does it through a member of the body, so we need relationships, connections.

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Audio

- Follow Jesus (1 of 6).mp3

- The Princess Syndrome (2 of 6).mp3

- Hearing the Voice of God (3 of 6).mp3

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- When God Seems Silent (5 of 6).mp3

- Evidence of Your Discipleship (6 of 6).mp3

Notes

- Follow Jesus (1 of 6)

- The Princess Syndrome (2 of 6)

- Hearing the Voice of God (3 of 6)

- Hearing the Voice of God (4 of 6)

- When God Seems Silent (5 of 6)

- Evidence of Your Discipleship (6 of 6)

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- When God Seems Silent (5 of 6).mp4

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- When God Seems Silent (5 of 6).mp4

Follow Jesus (1 of 6)

Sun 28 Oct 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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How many people can remember the last time Jesus spoke clearly to do something? Here's the real question. Have you done it? When nothing comes, go back to what the last thing Jesus said was. Following Christ introduces you to a whole new set of challenges in your life. Following Christ is a courageous thing to do because you will face things you'd never have had to face. You'll face some opposition, difficulties, challenges, setbacks. You've got more questions than answers, but they're different questions.

Let's open our Bible in Mark 2:14. I want to speak a message called Follow Jesus. It says: He came by and He saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax office; and He said to him: Follow Me; so he arose and followed Him. Now as it happened, as He was dining at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and the disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. Notice the word 'follow' again. Then the Scribes and the Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners. They said to the disciples: how is it He eats and drinks with all of these terrible sinners? Jesus said to them: those who are well, have no need of a physician; but those who are sick. I didn't come to call the righteous, I came to call sinners to repentance.

Let's go back to that first verse again: and Jesus said follow me; and he arose and followed Him. You know Levi was an unusual person. Levi was a tax collector. In those days, Israel lived under Roman oppression, and the Romans transacted with some of the locals to become tax collectors. In other words, they just used them. They used them as a go-between, and they required that they extract taxes. Now you can imagine the attitude there was, to someone who's a tax collector for the hated Romans, and most of them were corrupt people anyway. They put an edge, or a margin, on what they charged for tax; so everyone thinks they're paying too much tax, so they were absolutely scorned, derided and despised. He was a tax collector. He lived in a community where everyone hated him. His only comfort was the money he got, and the wealth he had, from living as a tax collector. But at a personal level, he was without friends; he was without a sense of belonging, or without sense of community. He's one of the most unlikely people in that town that Jesus would call to be His follower, and His disciple.

It's the same today. God chooses the most unlikely people; so the call comes out: follow Me. Here's the interesting thing about this; Jesus said: you didn't choose Me, I chose you. Now there's a lot of things in life you don't choose. You don't choose the city you're born in, you don't choose the nation you're born in, you don't choose your family. There's a lot of things in life you don't choose, and you can't have any say in it, you just have it. There's one thing you also can't choose, and that's the call of God on your life. It's God's decision to call you. Jesus - you didn't choose Him. He chose you. The Bible says: He chose you, before the foundation of the world. Think about this. God chose you. He selected you, chose you for something. The problem is, we don't mind being chosen, we just neglect the next bit. He chose us to do something. He didn't choose you for a ministry. He didn't choose you to be a great leader. He didn't choose you to Pastor a church. He didn't choose you to have some kind of phenomenal business. He didn't choose you for any of those things; and so often what we think is: because I'm come to Jesus, that now all of my life somehow will go well, and I'll be blessed, and I'll have all these things happening in my life. This is what Jesus called you to do: He called you and me, to Follow Him. Follow Me, follow Me.

I want to highlight for you, five characteristics of people who are following Jesus. I don't care if you call yourself a Christian or not. What counts is, are you following Jesus? People follow many things. I don't know what you're following. You could be here, and we all look when we stood up and worshipped God; but are we following Jesus in our personal life? That's what Jesus called you to do, to follow Him. Think about that. We are called to follow a person.

I looked up in the Bible, how many times the word 'leader' appears. I'm sorry - doesn't appear very often. I looked up in the Bible, how much the words 'follow,' followed,' 'follower' is. It's there everywhere. The world doesn't need a lot more leaders; it needs many people following Jesus. That is the core of it. If you follow Jesus, you'll have an influence, and create ripples; and people will want to follow you, because they see what you have. Why don't you have a think about this: Everyone is following something, everyone. Whether you're aware of it, whether you've made an intentional choice, whether you did or not, you are following something.

One of the things that people follow are celebrities. People love celebrities. Look at Woman's Day, they're full of celebrities; and people are just fascinated with what the celebrities are doing, so they follow celebrities, they follow what they're doing. But you know celebrity is a mask, and it eats away the face. When a person's a celebrity, their personal life is on public display, and the crowd that loves them and follows them can just spit them out the next day. I've worked with many celebrities over in Asia, and I've come to discover that they're like public property; to be used, consumed and discarded when I don't like you anymore. It's a horrendous thing to be a celebrity. Fame exacts a tremendous personal price, and what I can see for most celebrities, there's very little in their life worth following. And yet they influence people, they give their opinions, they're promoted as having values, and we see them on the television, all that kind of thing. There's no value in this. Jesus called us not to follow the celebrities of the world, but to follow Him.

Here's the second thing people follow. People follow fashion. You notice that people follow fashion? They want to know what the latest thing is; and it's very hard to resist the latest thing. That's why we live in a consumer society. There's a pressure to follow: everyone else has it, I need to have it. I've got to have it! I noticed this week, they had a great release came out on television, and guess what it is? It is the iPad Mini - you just HAVE to have it! No, I don't have to have it; and so there they hold it up, and it's this latest thing, you just NEED to have. Everyone's going to buy one of these - you'll need one of these too. You'll be second-class if you don't have one of them. It'll make you happy if you have one - until the year after when they produce another model. See, this is what happens. The Bible says: the fashion of this world passes away. In other words, what people think is great today, is gone tomorrow; something else is in its place. So when the Bible talks about the fashion in this world, it's talking about it's values, what it believes in, what is hot, what is great to go.

I can remember about three to four years ago, it was really hot to buy up property; and then suddenly it's a disaster. That's the fashion of the world. I remember reading a little while ago: oh, there's an oil crisis, the world's running out of oil, and blah blah blah blah blah. I just read yesterday and they tell me how they've found these new methods of extracting oil, and now America will now increase its oil production, and become almost not dependent at all on any global oil from other countries. Hello! What's going on here? I read in the paper, they say: oh, we'll worry about global warming. The world is warming up and whatever; but I can remember in the '70s, they were worried about the next Ice Age. [Laughter] Someone can't be right with all of this. It's called the 'fashion of the world', and it influences you; and you begin to live, and you begin to set your whole course of your life around it, begin to start to shape our values and what we think. It affects the way we educate our children, raise our children, the fashion of this world. But Jesus said: follow Me. Don't follow the world, follow Me, follow Me, follow Me. Be distinctive - follow Me. Follow Me. That's His command, to follow Him.

Here's another area that people follow. People follow the crowd, especially if you're a teenager. I've been following you on Twitter. Really? Following me on Twitter? Actually I don't even use the thing, but however, people follow all kinds of people on Twitter; and so there they are. So we say who are you following? Well I'm Twittering so-and-so, following all of their Tweets. Wherever they go they say mindless things, like I met with so-and-so for lunch, and you're following all of that. Why are you following them like that? Where does all that go, that mindless Tweeting, where people just blurb out what's on their mind? They all hang out there, had lunch with so-and-so today. Oh really, oh - and Facebook's the other one. We're getting to that one! [Laughter] Facebook. My goodness me - and so social media now, you've got this whole thing of people are following what so-and so - they can't do a day without getting on the Facebook, and finding out what's going on. Oh, they're doing that, I need to do that - without being aware of it, and I'm not speaking against them - these things are wonderful ways that we can connect and communicate, and it's a great influence, but who are you following? Are you following Facebook? Are you following Twitter? What are you following? Who are you following? What is setting the course for your life?

Jesus said: follow Me, I'll Tweet you every day! [Laughter] How about that? [Applause] You want to see heaven's Facebook? There it is there, the Bible. Get into it every day, and look up and see: oh, that's happening, oh, that's happening. If you love this, as much as you love getting on Facebook, you might find you follow Jesus, instead of someone else. Come on, think about this. Who are we following? Then the other thing is, the popularity circus in the Christian world; another celebrity circus. Should we go there? Well I can remember when I was told: you need to go to this leadership conference, this is one of the foremost Christian leaders. You need to go and hear what he has to say, and we went and heard what he had to say, and I came away with the conclusion in the middle of it: that man is manifesting, and needs help. [Laughter] Am I the only one who can see this?

Then a little while later, I was following the Christian news, and I found that someone who is a prominent leader, that's influenced thousands of churches all over the world stood up and - very courageously stood up by the way. I admire and honour his courage - and said: we got it all wrong, when we said: copy the corporate structure of the world. I first of all, had to just honour him, that he had the courage to say he got it wrong; and my thinking is: what about the thousands of churches that are all going down that route, and had been led astray by following something else other than Jesus? Come on, this has ruined churches. It's totally ruined, and changed, the nature of the western church, following those models. God's trying to bring the church back to its family origin, its supernatural origin, and to get back to following Jesus. That's what the Bible tells us to do: follow Jesus. Jesus said: come follow Me; and you know when you follow other things, you end up usually following demonic spirits. The Bible says: this whole world operates under the influence of the demonic realm; in Ephesians 2. Some people are following their offences - so you hurt me. Hello! Who's leading you now? Is Jesus leading you? If Jesus was leading you, He'd take you that way, to forgive them and bless them and connect with them. No, no, no, no, you're following your offences, and you're following your bondages, and following your addictions. Actually you're being carried around, and pushed around, by demonic spirits.

I go to many places, they don't even talk about it. I went to one church, a big church, a very famous church, and they said: we didn't realise that deliverance was part of the great commission. Who are you following? Who are you following? You got a book, you got the Holy Ghost, you got men of faith, that you can model your life on? We're not called to follow them. We're called to follow Jesus. We're called to follow Jesus. It's following people that'll get you into trouble. We do need to follow Jesus, and Jesus ministers to us through people. In fact actually, following Jesus requires we connect with people. However, we shall right at the beginning, at the core of our being: I'm following the Lord. You know, I've found in the course of my life, that lots of people had a plan for my life. My family had a plan, but it wasn't God's plan. Joy's family had a plan, and they told me it over and over, and that wasn't God's plan either. The plan God had was quite unique, and I couldn't find it until I followed Jesus. Until I made a decision to put my life in His hands, I was in a mess; and if I'd stayed listening to what everyone else said, I would never have been here. Constantly, at key points in my life, I've had to make decisions, follow Jesus. That's all I'm called to do in my life. I am not, by identity, a Pastor. I function as a Pastor, but I am a follower of Jesus. That's who I am. I'm a son of the living God; so it doesn't matter where I am, or what I do, the identity never changes. It's still: am I following Jesus? That's who I want to be, all my life, a follower of Him; who loved me, and gave Himself for me, following Jesus.

So let's have a look at what following Jesus might mean. You could always ask yourself right now: I wonder who I'm following? Who's the voice in my life? Here's the thing about voices in your life - have a look at what fruit they have. Don't just look at their giftings. I have seen over the years, many gifted people and talented people, and they shine very smart; but you look behind them, and oh my goodness! Have they got a good marriage? No. Have they got a good family? No. Have they got savings? No. Have they got a good track record at work? No. What? Why am I listening to that person? Well they look good, and they're saying smooth things. You've got to look for fruit - and follow Jesus.

Okay, let's have a look at it, what following Jesus might look like. Okay, first thing is, it's good to tell you what it doesn't mean - now you're going to love this bit. It does NOT mean that you have all the answers! In fact, you've got more questions than answers. How many know that? Got lots of questions, wish God would tell you the answer? You have lots of questions. You have more questions than you had before you started, but they're different questions, you know? The question I used to have was: who can I go out and have a drink with? Now I don't have that question anymore - you have different kinds of questions when you're following the Lord. The second thing is, it doesn't mean is suddenly all together - I just come to Jesus, now my life is all right. Actually your life isn't all together. You discover as the light comes into just how broken and messy you are, and I remember crying for the first two years, and many times since then; as I've become aware, with every fresh touch of Jesus, what's in my life that needs to change. It doesn't mean you've got your life together, so don't think you've got to have your life together in a church. Stop trying to impress people. Follow Jesus. He just takes you like you are.

He said to the tax collector, He said: that guy there, follow Me. Everyone said: why is Jesus mixing with these wrong kinds of people? That's what religion does, it's got you all boxed u:, you're never good enough, you're the wrong kind of person; but Jesus said: don't listen to them. Follow Me. I'll accept you, love you. I've called you. Your part is the following, be available to follow. So it doesn't mean that you've got your act together, doesn't mean that you're even too smart, see? It doesn't mean that your life will go smoothly. How many thought your life would go smoothly after you become a Christian? It did for five minutes, then after that lots of things happened. No, it doesn't mean your life will go smoothly, without challenges, setbacks or difficulties. In fact, my experience has been quite the opposite. I found there are challenges that come I would never have had without following Christ.

Following Christ introduces you to a whole new set of challenges in your life. Following Christ is a courageous thing to do, because you will face things you'd never have had to face. You'll face some opposition, difficulties, challenges, setbacks. You'll face things, and you'll think: God should have done that; and He doesn't do it. You face griefs and difficulties, and you think: whoa! But you know God is creating an authentic representation of Christ, and people are watching how you respond; and they're asking: do we see Jesus in this person, as they go through that? Do people see Jesus, reincarnated in you, living through you, as you face those challenges of life? That's what people are looking for. They're not looking for a perfect Christian. They love to say: oh well you're a Christian, you shouldn't be doing that. I say: I'm a Christian, I love Jesus, I do all kinds of things that aren't right, but God's helping me to grow in those areas. You understand that? You're walking with God. It's a journey. That's what following Jesus is, it's a journey; by nature, it's a journey; and so it doesn't mean you'll see clearly everything God's doing.

I would like to have a plan. I'd like God to have just laid out for me a plan, step by step, of how it would all work out. I didn't get anything, except the next step; and you know what? I've never had much more than the next step. People say: why don't you have this big thing with this? I said: well I don't know, all I know is I know what to do next. I know I know what to do next; and I can see ahead some of the way, and I'll walk as far as I can see, but I don't have it all together. And it's nice to set out plans, but you've got to have them flexible, because God can just interrupt them like that. Do have a plan, but make it a flexible plan. Put it in pencil, not in ink aye? [Laughter] Allow God to interrupt your life, because you'll find if you're walking with Jesus, and following Jesus, He interrupts your schedule something terribly! It's part of what He's like, and so then it becomes an issue of: who's in charge of my schedule? Am I following Jesus; or following my schedule? A lot of people are following their schedule. Some are following their finance, which is not much going anywhere. We should be following Jesus, need to be letting Jesus direct how our life goes. So it doesn't mean you won't have any of those problems. In fact you'll have all sorts of things like that. It's a journey, so following Jesus is actually a journey of faith. It's a journey; I'll put it in a different language. It's a journey of connection to a person, and trusting Him; and that's what you're called to do: follow Jesus. We could just simplify the whole Christian walk, it's just this: following Jesus. That means, that you're on a journey of life with Him.

So what does it mean to follow Jesus? Have a look in Matthew, Chapter 4. You'll see it in there. I think the church has got to return to the simplicity again, of just following Jesus; and it takes away all the complications, of all sorts of things, when actually your life is just centred: today as I rise, I celebrate, worship and follow Jesus. I let Him help me with my day. Yes, I've got my plans, and I put my plans in His hands, and I choose to follow Him. Jesus said, in Matthew 4, Verses 19 and 20; and He said to them: follow Me. I will make you become fishers of men; and immediately they left their nets and followed Him. Now that word 'followed,' when we think follow, we kind of think there's someone over here out in the front, and I'm behind, and they're telling me where to go. How many think that's what it means? See, we would normally think that's what it means. I used to think - until today I thought that's what it meant. I thought: well Jesus, there you are, you're going ahead, you follow Me; so all I've got to do is listen, and be told what to do. Actually that's not what it means; and that will release you immensely, when you realise, He isn't going to tell you everything to do.

If Jesus has to tell you everything to do, then you're not taking responsibility for ownership of your life, and bringing your contribution of creativity into it. You're not owning your dreams in your heart, you're not owning the things that God put in your life. You're waiting to be told what to do like a slave; and we have to learn obedience. We'll come to that in a moment - but you see the word means: to go on a journey together with someone. So when the Bible says: follow Me; Jesus is saying something simply like this. He said: I'm inviting you, to walk with Me, through your life's journey. In other words, I want to come into your journey, and I want to walk with you, alongside you. See the thing about walking alongside is, that we're partners and sharers of life; so He's not waiting for you every day just to have some little prayer time, and ask Him what to do, and wait and hope you'll hear something. He's asking you to invite Him each day into the sphere of your life, and begin to walk with Him, and have Him part of what you do through the day. It's a journey of life, therefore it comes as every aspect of our life.

So the word 'to follow' means: to be on the same road as a companion. Or it means like this, it means: to enter another person's world, and journey with them. So getting it like this, Jesus is saying: I want you to enter My world, My perspective, and journey your life with Me; and that'll result in a whole number of things. I'll explain some of those things. There's probably more, but I'll give you some that are very clear to me. So it's not the goal: that I'll be this, or I'll be that, or whatever; I'll have this or that. It's not the goal that I'll get to heaven. The journey itself is the goal. Now of course there's rewards in heaven, of course there's things we look forward to, and there's things we press through. But God wants you to understand: enjoy the journey, focus on the journey. He said: follow Me. That means, walk on a journey of life with Me, bring Me into every aspect of your life, bring Me into your life. He didn't just say: read your Bible, or pray. Those are great things, but Jesus said: you can read the scriptures, but these speak of Me, and you won't come to Me that you have life. So what He's wanting to do is, to come into every sphere of our life.

We tend to compartmentalise our lives, so here we are, we're at church. We're at church, doing Jesus' thing; then I'm out doing something else. That's not how it is. He said: I want to be part with you, in a journey through your life, that's every part of your life, every aspect of it, see? So it means to be caught up with what God is doing. So here's a core question. On any time, any day, when you face any situation, what is God doing? What is Jesus doing? What do I see? You know what Jesus said? He said: I do what I see the Father doing. Now sometimes He was really purposeful, He was on a mission, away He'd go. Sometimes He carried on like there was no panic at all. You know they'd say: oh, a girl's dying, she's dying, you've got to hurry, got to hurry, got to hurry! And He just moseys along, and stops to talk to a lady. Why? Because He saw what the Father was doing, and so He lived His life this way. Was He busy? Yes, sometimes so busy, He couldn't even eat. However, He had one driving thing: just listen to what the spirit of God is speaking to Me, and do that. See what the spirit of God is on, see what Father is showing Me what to do. That could be in relationships, in terms of ministry focus. He'll get up one day, have a time of prayer, they said: we're having a revival, stick around and preach; but He would say: no, I've got to move somewhere else. He was internally led by the spirit of God, He Himself was a disciple of the Father. He was a disciple. Notice this - He said: I say what I hear the Father saying, I do what I see the Father doing. In other words, what He's saying is: I've learned to yield to the spirit of God, and be happy with this life, full of the joy of the spirit, flowing with what My Father is doing.

When the parents said: where were You? We sought You; and they were angry, and they were scolding Him for staying, He said: don't you understand, I had to be about My Father's business? Even at the age of 12, He was aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit around His life, guiding Him what to do. So that starts to get you really thinking how you do life, because a lot of people are living in the house of God like a slave, waiting for God to tell them. He doesn't tell them, they don't know what to do, so they just carry on, and then kind of disconnect from God - except for Sundays. So what does it mean then, to follow Jesus? Let me give you five marks of following Jesus.

Number one, which we've already referred to is, following Jesus means walking your journey, it means sharing life with Him, just share your life with Him. Share your life. Talk about your family, talk about your marriage, talk about the issues. In other words, there's no issue of your life, that He's not interested in coming and helping. He's interested in the pains, the struggles, the fears. He knows them better than you do. He's asking that you would invite Him into that part of your life; so when you begin to share the aspects - Lord, today... - and it's not just an hour's prayer at the beginning of the day. It's just on the way through the day - Lord, I don't know what to do about that, that really got me by surprise. Just talk with Him, and it's so simple, to just engage Him like that; to talk with the Lord, and listen, and slow down and listen to your heart.

In Mark 3:14 it says: He chose them to be with Him. So number one, to be following Jesus, is to be with Him. Now to be with Him doesn't mean I've got to have an hour of prayer every day. That'd be a great help for you. Being with Jesus means: I consciously and intentionally allow Him to come in and around whatever I'm doing through the day. In other words, I just turn my mind to Him, and say: Lord, what do you think about that; or Lord, what about this? How do I handle that Lord? It's like praying continually. It's just being in a flow, where actually whatever I'm doing, Jesus is with me. Otherwise you've got this thing: when I'm in church and ministry, Jesus is with me; but when I'm in my workplace, Jesus is not with me. This is not true; and that kind of thinking has created this - it's a Greek thinking of: this is spiritual; and that's secular. In God's eyes there's no division. If you're at home, and you're a mother and a wife, and you're fully involved there, bring Jesus into your life, and into your home, and you're following Jesus. But I'm not out preaching. No, no, you don't need to - or I'm not out doing this, I'm not out doing that. No, you don't need to. Do what you're doing now, being a great wife, a great mother, and do it with great joy, and bring Jesus into it, and you'll be following Jesus, so that means talking with Him. It means commune with Him, talking with Him about life. Sometimes we think we've got to run everything ourselves, and we get stressed out unnecessarily. One of the signs you brought Jesus into it is: in His presence, there is joy. Ha ha! You lose your joy, lose your peace? Jesus isn't there anymore. You've shifted. Start to open up again.

The second thing is, we need to develop a relationship with Him. That means: listening to His voice; and responding. In John 15:27 He says: My sheep hear My voice, I know them and they follow Me. So get this, so the biggest skill you can learn, if you're going to learn any skill, is this one skill: how to hear what God is saying. If there's one thing every believer must learn, it's how to hear the voice of God, recognise it, and then trust Him that this is the best way for my life. It's about knowing He loves me; and trusting Him ,by listening to what He says, and doing it. There's no following Jesus, without doing what He says to do. How can there be? How can there be?

John 14:21, He who has My commandments, and does them, is the one who loves Me. Now let me ask you this. Don't put your hand up, because this is not to embarrass you. How many people can remember the last time that Jesus spoke clearly to do something? Don't put your hand up. Here's the question, that's the starter question, here's the real question. Have you done it? Have you done it? You're in a meeting, and you felt God speak to you about something. Did you write it down, and go do it, or did you say: man that's great, God spoke to me; but didn't do it? So responding to the Holy Spirit in obedience is a crucial part of being a follower of Jesus. There's no other way. So this is the interesting thing; God puts His spirit in us, so you'll always have Jesus with you, have the spirit of God with you. You've just got to decide whether you become conscious of His spirit within, and attuned to listen to the flow of spontaneity. As soon as you lose your peace, stop. You're disconnecting from following Jesus. You're going your own way, and you'll be stressed out. Why so many people are stressed out is, they've got burdens on them, that God never intended them to have, because they're no longer following Jesus. They've actually gone their own way, thinking: I have to work it all out myself. It's learning how to bring these things to the Lord, and listen to Him, and respond to what He has to say.

It's all so complicated isn't it? So that's a very decisive question: what was the last thing Jesus said to you? Are you doing it? You know, one of the things God spoke to me of a little while ago, and it really saved me huge grief, He spoke at a personal level: get rid of your mortgage. Get rid of debt, so we started to work hard on getting rid of our mortgage. Now that was just before the building boom, and then the building boom came. Everyone's saying: you need to do this; in fact many were saying: you need to mortgage the church, and expand, and all this kind of thing; and I listened to it all. In the end I thought: what was the last thing Jesus said to me? I prayed, and asked Him: speak to me, tell me something, what do I do? I'm a leader, tell me? - and nothing. So when nothing comes, go back to what the last thing Jesus said was. I went back to the last thing, and I said: you know something? The last thing Jesus said was: get rid of my debt. If He said it personally, then there's no difference between personal and corporate, we keep it the same way corporate. Then of course, within about two years, that whole building thing went, prices of everything dropped; we'd have been carrying a mortgage up to our eyeballs, and no way of servicing it. So sometimes you just don't get a fresh direction. You've got to follow the old one, until you get a new one. That's not sort of rocket science, all this stuff is it? Following Jesus. [Laughs]

I'll give you the last three quickly. The next one is: if you're going to follow Jesus, we must commit to personal change. We must commit to personal change. Let me tell you this: there is no following Jesus, without commitment to change. How can there be? If you're following Him, He wants you to change. Here's the plan of God, Romans 8. God's design is that we be conformed, become more like Christ. That means, I've got to change; because I'm not very like Christ, in a lot of areas in my life. How many find sometimes you're not very forgiving? How many find sometimes you get quite angry? How many know sometimes we've got all kinds of things that we don't like in there? God wants us to change! So what amazes me - I'll just put it straight out here - as a Pastor, we know of so many marriages which are struggling, have got major issues in them. When we do a marriage seminar, people don't come, and actually commit to change. That's foolish.

We have wonderful people here who teach on training children; and I've seen some, and they've got their kids out of control, things are not going well. Hello! Are you blind or something? Invest. Get some training, learn what to do. Church is to be an equipping centre, not a nursery, not a hospital. It has those aspects to it, but it's one thing to have like a little room, where you carry your patients, and you help them for a little, while they recover. It's another thing for the whole thing to be full of patients, and nurses running around giving IV feeds every day, trying to look after - this is not the church. Jesus says, those who follow Me, they're called to be warriors, and to be great soldiers for Him. So some people have got issues with finance, and so we get involved with counselling with them, and we find they have these massive issues of finance. The whole financial world is a total mess, they're not following Jesus; they're following the chaos of advertising in the world, and irresponsibility; yet when something's put on, they don't commit to come. What stupidity is that? We have to be committed to invest in ourselves. It's not the Pastor's job, or the leader's job, to make your life go right. You've got to own this yourself.

If you need help, you put up your hand, and find it, from wherever you can get it. If you've got brokenness in your soul, everyone has a bit of it. Get along to a course. If it doesn't do it all, go back and do it again, don't worry about it. Just own change, own this business of growing. It's your life. Don't stay a baby all your life. Make a decision to invest. Next year, as we begin to share what we'll do next year, you make the decision: what do I need to grow in? In fact, before you even get there: what do I need to grow in? Where do I need to grow personally? Where do I need to change? What things do I need to learn, to become a better follower of Jesus? Next year, when there's opportunities up, you put your hand up, and turn up, and get to change. That's how life works. Get in a group - so commit to change. Ha ha! You've gone all quiet on that one. Tell someone next to you: he was talking about you, you know; it wasn't me, I've changed enough. I don't need to change - I've arrived. [Laughs] How many know someone that's already arrived? There we are, don't need to change.

Matthew 16, Jesus said this. He said: if any man really purposes in their heart, that they will come after Me, and walk the journey with Me; this is what He said, oh, you're going to love this! He said: you'll have to deal with selfishness, and there'll be a cross, there'll be a part of your life that I can't carry for you. There'll be some stuff you won't like, where you'll have to actually surrender and yield. He said: you can't follow Me, unless you're doing that route. Now this is what we want: we want a path of following Jesus, that bypasses Gethsemane, Calvary; just take me straight to the resurrection! [Laughter] Glory! I want glory! I want buzzes, and things happening! But no, it's not going to be like that. Before every resurrection, there's a death; and I have journeyed with God long enough to know, that it goes in ebbs of flows of life and death, that life comes when something dies.

So sometimes the thing that needs to die, is your dependency on yourself, the bondage you've got in your heart; there's an area you have to bring to the cross, issues in our life. Jesus said: if you want to follow Me, you're going to have to deal with self-centredness, the self-protective life, the self-governing life; and take up your cross. That means specifically, you will face some challenges in your life, that no one else will face; and if you will face them, and walk with Jesus in them, you'll come out with a resurrection life out the other side. No one can carry your cross. We can help make one for you. [Laughter] Wouldn't that be right? We could make crosses for everyone, it'd be great; but you're the only one who can carry your cross. [Laughs]

Okay, here's the last two then. Learn how to be great at serving, to serve generously. I don't know anyone following Jesus, who isn't a generous server, giving of yourself. Jesus said: in the world, everyone wants to be great, and be a kingpin, and have privilege, and have this and have that; but it shall not be so in My kingdom. He said: if you want to be great in My kingdom - Matthew 20:28 - then learn to be a servant. You want to be the top dog? Who wants to be the top dog? The most important and famous in the kingdom? Awesome! Just serve everyone, and there you are, you've arrived! Now that just gets over you, because you see people want title, they wanted this, they wanted that, but actually it's just in the serving of people you grow as a follower of Jesus. Here's the thing. In church, so many people want a position. Why would you want a position? Ridiculous. It's just a job to do. Anyone desires the office of an elder, do work, so work, you've got to work, something to do, so all positions are just titles.

See, what really counts, is serving. So if you've got the kingdom heart, you're a follower of Jesus, you can take on a role, and then you can let go of the role. You can pick up this role, and then let go of that role, that's not a problem. Why? Because your life isn't in the role. Your life is in following Jesus. Your life is in serving; and if you're a server of Jesus, it doesn't matter whether anyone here notices you at all. What really counts, is the audience of one. Well I'll tell you something, if you're following Jesus, and you're serving well, everyone's going to notice you, because you'll stand out by being so different. I know it's sort of basic, it's not rocket science - tell someone: this is simple, you knew that didn't you? I knew you knew that.

Here's the last one then. I'm not even going to go into this one too far, but let me just tell you, here's the last one. If we're going to follow Jesus - I'll put it to you really straight on this one - it does mean: we share His mission. Now let me ask you this: how is it possible to follow Jesus, and not share His mission in the world? Jesus is constantly engaging with lost people. He came to save the world, not just a few people at church. Think about it - and His mandate is to go, and engage with other people, and make them disciples; not just get a decision for Jesus. One of the greatest deceptions of all - I don't even know how many people, when they say a little prayer, really get saved. I know that's not what Jesus said, you can't see it anywhere in the Bible. He said: I want you to be people who follow Me; and following Me, means learning to listen to Me, and do the things that I say. That's what we're called to make; so you can't look around a church, and say whether it's any good or not. You can see certain factors of it, but one thing you've really got to look for, is how many people are pursuing passionately, they're followers of Jesus; and those signs, those five signs will be there.

Now what does it mean then, to engage in mission? It means: just as Jesus entered your world through someone; you consciously make a decision, you'll intentionally enter the world of other people, who don't know Jesus; and find their story, find their journey, and help them discover the One, and hear His call on their life for the first time, and then encourage them to follow Him. We should not think that it's okay just to pray a sinner's prayer, and that's that. That's not what Jesus came to do. That's only one part. It's like getting your foot out of the womb, but the rest doesn't come out. You know there is a lot more to go. We're called actually, to build people, who love Jesus, and follow Him.

So here's some simple things then, you could look and ask yourself these questions: am I bringing Jesus into most parts of my life, some parts of my life, no parts of my life? Have I reserved Jesus for Sundays? What room do I make for Jesus? Do I talk with Him, engage Him in His word, in prayer? Do I bring Him intentionally into the issues in my life? Number one, that's very, very important - do I bring Him.

The second thing is, am I listening to Him? What did He last say to me; and am I doing it? Am I listening and building a trusting relationship, where I can trust Him with my finances, trust Him with my marriage, trust Him with my pains and sorrows? Have I made a decision, am I serving? Am I committed to change? What did I last change in? Where was there an issue that I last stood up, and actually embraced change? How engaged am I in reaching people? This coming year's going to be a great year. We're going to push forward in this whole theme of becoming a follower of Jesus, becoming a follower of the One who loved us. Amen?

Why don't we close our eyes right now. Father in heaven, I just thank You that You love us, that You are with us; and I thank You that each person here has heard the call of God. Lord, I pray for grace to follow you.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, is there any person here has not yet actually responded personally to Jesus Christ? God sent His Son in the world, to die on the cross for your sins. If you're here, and haven't made a personal response to Christ; to receive Him into your life, to commit your life into His hands, to journey through your life with Him. God calls you to follow His Son, Jesus Christ. In Him is life. Whoever follows Him, will have the light of life. They won't walk in darkness. If you've never made that decision to follow Jesus Christ, I'd love you just to raise your hand today, and say: today's my day, I want to make that decision, become a follower of Jesus.

I wonder just while we've been listening, and just enjoying the meeting today, in the midst of it, if you felt God speak to you about some aspect of following Jesus. It could be just beginning to share your life with Him at a greater level, it could be the issue then of listening to Him and reading His word, listening to His voice, responding to Him; obeying something He's already told you to do. It could be an issue of an area of change in your life, your marriage, your family, your finances; whatever it is, you just need to make a decision, you're going to start to move there. Maybe it's the area of just engagement in mission, or engagement in serving in some kind of way. What is your serving like? Do people find you as a generous server, or do they find you as someone who's always withdrawn, and holding back waiting for someone to serve them? Are you engaging intensely in anyone's life, reaching out to people to enter their world, find out where they are, and let them see: you don't have all the answers, but there is a God who loves them, that could help them; and point them to Him.

When we follow a Pastor or leader, we point people to them, and their preaching, or their ministry or whatever. When we follow a church, we point to the church, this is the area where you get your help. When we follow Jesus we point people to Him. How many are feeling God's spirit speaking to you, and challenging you today, about following Jesus? I'd like you just to raise your hand, if there's some area that God spoke to you, just raise your hand. God bless, God bless, God bless, many hands, many hands.

Father, we just thank You today, that Your hand is on our life to change us. I pray that change will become practical, tangible, and real; as we exit this year, and even into next year, Lord there'll be an arising of people to follow You, in a whole new dimension. Lord, we give you all the honour, because You model for us, what it means. You came from heaven, You came into this earth, You love people, You walk with people, You engage with people, You serve people. You've brought a revelation of the kingdom of heaven. Now Lord, we commit our lives to do the same, in Jesus' Mighty name.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Mk.2:14 “And as He passed by He saw Levi the son of Alphyaeu7s sitting at the receipt of custom and said to him :”Follow Me” … and he arose and followed him”

· Levi was a tax collector employed and used by the Roman oppressors.

· Tax collectors were despised, scorned and hated by Jews, considered traitors.

· Jesus chose Levi : summoned him to follow Him.

· John 15:16 “You did not choose me, I chose you” – He invited himself into our life

· Each of us is chosen by God – His call is to “Follow Jesus”.

· Our call is to attach to a person Jesus and to “Follow Him!” – a personal call.

2. Everyone is following something!

· Everyone follows someone or something – only question is who/what will we follow?

e.g.

(1) Celebrities – pop, movie, business – Fame is a mask that eats away face

(2) Fashion/values of the world (1 Cor. 7:3 fashion of this world)

(3) Popular leaders in the Christian World (1 Cor.3:3-5 Paul? Apollos?)

(4) Demonic Spirits (Eph.2:1-2)

(5) The Crowd (friends, face-book, social media, web, twitter) (Acts 28:4-6 … they changed their minds)

· Jesus is the true leader – will you follow him?

3. What does it Mean to Follow Jesus?

(a) What it does Not Mean?

Following Jesus does not mean that:

i) You have all the answers

ii) Your life is suddenly all together

iii) Your life will go smoothly without challenges, setbacks, difficulties

iv) You will always see clearly what God is doing

v) You will always have money

It is a journey – constantly moving after the one you said Yes to!

It is not the goal, the reward, the destination – it is the journey itself being with Jesus

(b) What it Means to “Follow”

· Mt 4:19-20 “He said to them Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men, and they straight away left their nets and followed him”.

· “Followed” = NT190= Akoloutheo : ‘az’ union; “Kelenthos” = road

= to be on the same road as a companion

= to enter another person’s world and join them on their journey

= to be caught up with what God is doing and participate

(c) How We Follow Jesus

(i) Share Your Life with Jesus

· Mk.3:14 “He appointed twelve that they might be “with Him”

· “Be With” = intentional sharing of our life allowing the Holy Spirit into every area.

· Not just “me and Jesus” but also connection to His Body the Church.

· Acts 9:4 We cannot separate Jesus from His people, His church.

(ii) Develop Relationship with Jesus

· Jn.15:27 “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me”

· Following Jesus is closely connected to serving Him and serving people.

· Following means trusting and obeying His words – doing what He says.

· Jn. 14:2 “He who has my commands and keeps them, it is he who loves me”

(iii)Commit to Personal Change/Spiritual Growth

· God desires each of us to become like Christ – to represent him Rom.8:29.

· Spiritual Growth is not accidental it is a journey of intentional change.

· Mt.16:24-27 “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me”

Literally: “If any person resolves or determines in his heart to journey with me he must contradict his selfish nature and surrender to my leadership”.

· Jesus accomplished at the Cross all that is needed to save us. Our response is to apply it to our lives.

(iv) Learn how to Serve

· Jn.12:26”If any man serves me let him follow me ….”

· Following Jesus is closely connected to serving Him and serving people.

· Mt.20:25-28 “Whoever desires to become great among you let him be your servant”

· Jesus rejected the leadership model of the world – position and privilege.

· Jesus modelled and taught serving : great followers are great servers.

· Kingdom Leadership = serving people and meeting needs.

(v) Share His Mission

· Mt.28:18-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you”

· This is an intentional effort to enter the lives of other people and journey with them to become followers of Christ.

· John 21:20 – Follow Me!

The Princess Syndrome (2 of 6)

Sun 18 Nov 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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Church isn't perfect, it has many problems, probably so many problems we could spend a day or two just describing them all, but nevertheless His church is His church. It's His bride, it's the one He came for and He will make His church perfect. We can't follow Jesus and not be engaged with His people, and the cause He has in changing a community. Life is not all about you, and the sooner you realise it, the happier you will become.

Open your Bible with me in gospel of Mark 1. The last message I preached was a message called Follow Jesus, so we're going to pick that up. I feel challenged on that one, on Following Jesus. People are following many things today, and I want to challenge you to follow Jesus. This is something we do corporately, but it's also something that is very individual, and so I want you to think.

You can be following all kinds of things. We saw last week a number of the things we could be following. Let's just start with a key verse to trigger off with. Then I want to share with you a message which I've called the Princess Syndrome, and you'll see what it's about, and how it connects to following Jesus in a moment. I didn't even know there was such a thing. In fact, it wasn't until after I'd thought about it, and got some ideas together, and felt the Holy Spirit quicken some things, I thought: I wonder if that is something? I should look it up - and then it turns out that it's well known in psychologist circles: the Princess Syndrome. I'm not going to be talking about that. I'm going to be talking about discipleship, following Jesus, and about one of the issues that stops us, so let's have a look.

Mark 1:17-18, Jesus said to them: follow Me. Here it is. He hasn't changed, He still calls us to follow Him, not follow an experience, to follow Him. It's a person, not follow a doctrine - follow a person. Not follow celebrities - follow Jesus. We're called to follow Him, and I feel the Holy Ghost pressing on me, the church needs to return to the very foundations of what our faith is about. It is about following Jesus; and it says it was the disciples, the followers of Christ, that were called Christians. Today we call lots of people Christians, and it doesn't say anything, it doesn't really mean anything much at all. You can call yourself what you like. What counts is that you follow Christ, and that is not just a decision you make, it's a lifestyle. Jesus said: Follow Me, I will make you to become fishers of men. If you follow Jesus, your life will become something it isn't now. He will make you something you're not. He will change you, to become something He wants you to become, and that is someone vitally interested in the salvation, and welfare, of people. That's what He'll make you.

People who get caught into experiences, and forget the lost, forget the needs of people, have gone astray from the faith. We're called to follow Jesus, and He will make us a fisher of men. He will make us someone who engages people who don't know Him, and gathers them up in different kinds of ways. It doesn't mean you'll be all evangelist. It does mean engaging people where they are, and helping them progress in their relationship with God, is what all believers are called to do. So to follow, just define it again, what it means to follow Jesus; I'm still trying to get a handle on it, so every week as I study, I'm looking for more insights on it. So the word comes from a word that means union; it's two words coming together - union; and the second one is in a road; so it means being united on a journey, or a road, with Jesus. So notice here to follow Me, it means literally to be: on a road, with someone as your companion; that's what it means. To follow Jesus, you are on a journey with Him through life, so following Jesus is about the journey, not just about where you're going to get. It's actually about learning how to have a day to day relationship, and walk with someone through life.

It's sharing the journey. He comes as a companion to you, to share your life with you. You walk with Him in life, sharing your life with Him, and so it's a journey on the same road. The word means literally to enter someone else's world and journey with them. So if we're going to follow Jesus, we're going to enter into His perspectives on life. It's thinking life differently to the way you've thought it. If you want to follow the world, it follows a course; but when we follow Jesus, we begin to think about how He sees life, what is His perspective on life? What is important? What isn't important? What is of value, and what's not of value? So our values begin to change. We begin to shift how we think about life. One of the challenges that the church faces is, the lifestyle of so many believers is so similar to the world, and the anxieties and pressures and problems they have are so identical, it's hard to find someone following Jesus. There's plenty of people going to church; it's someone following Jesus that'll provide the answer.

We want to focus on what it means to follow Jesus, so it's a lifelong journey with Him, being committed both to Him and to His cause. I don't think you can be a follower of Jesus without loving His church. Church isn't perfect, it has many problems, probably so many problems we could spend a day or two just describing them all, but nevertheless His church is His church. It's His bride, it's the one He came for, and He will make His church perfect. I don't think we can follow Jesus, and not be engaged with His people; and also with the cause He has, in changing a community. Following Jesus means that.

I want to pick up one aspect of following Jesus, in a scripture you'll be very familiar with shortly; and so here's the first thing that you have to realise, if you're going to follow Jesus: It's not all about me. [Laughter] Tell someone: it's not all about me. Speak the words: It's not all about me! And I know that just on that one revelation, some of you could go home today very disappointed. [Laughter]

Life is not all about you; and the sooner you realise it, the happier you will become. Your family, your children, need to learn this lesson - many lessons they need to learn, here's one lesson they need to learn: it is not all about them. Wake up! You've got to fit into the world somewhere, and you've got to learn how to live in it, and make sense with it, so it's not all about me. Now I want you to have a look in Luke 15. I'm going to follow this thought: it's all about me; and I'll describe what I call the Princess Syndrome in a moment. So we read in Luke, Chapter 15 - now I'm going to come to the discipleship verse in a moment, but I want to give you just something that'll make sense to you now, when you see this. When I go to the passage that Jesus said what it means to follow Him, you need this in the back of your mind, as we're going there.

Now you know the story. This is the story in Luke 15, and it's a revelation of who God is, and what God is like, in three phases; Jesus is the shepherd. God reveals Himself as the one who lights up our way, the Holy Spirit. He also reveals Himself as Father, and this story about the Father - we call it the Prodigal Son - but it's actually about the extravagance of God as a Father, and His love as a Father. Now we've ministered it to you from the perspective of the Father's love. I don't want to approach it that way. I want to look at it a different way. I want to have a look at the younger son's ruin, and why he was ruined. I want to draw your attention to four words, and here's the first two of them. The first two of them are found in Verse 12: And the younger one said to his father, father, GIVE ME - give me my share of the property. Give me - and we find from that point on, he goes progressively down into total ruin. Then there's a turning point comes in his life - verse 17, he came to himself and said: how many of my father's hired servants have bread enough to spare and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I'll say: father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Here it is - MAKE ME. Give me the path to ruin; Make me the path to promotion. Now if you just took that away you'd have something. Give me, is the path to ruin. Now you notice here in the story, give me; his mentality is this: It's all about me. It's about what I want. He has a sense of entitlement. I was interested in reading the American elections recently, they said there's a major concern in the way the country is going. It is moving away from it's foundations of personal responsibility, and moving towards a sense of entitlement - that the Government needs to come through for me, and provide something for me. That is the road to ruin.

When you get a sense of entitlement, it's my right - to have a sense of entitlement means: I believe that I am owed something, by someone. The Government owes me, the church owes me, my parents owe me, someone owes me something. That kind of sense of entitlement is identified by the two words 'give me.' Give me - spirit of entitlement, a sense of entitlement. He had no interest in the welfare of his father. In fact actually, a person who's got this 'give me' mentality sees people from the perspective of: can I use you to get me somewhere? Give me. It's all about me. I want something from you, that will help me get to where I want to get. There's an expectation of special treatment. I'm special, you should break the rules for me. I should get this ahead of time. I should get what I want, when I want. Notice he's also strongly promoting himself - me, I want you to give to me. It's about me. I want to fulfil my own destiny, and I want to be free of restraints; so his focus is on his personal rights. Dad, you're going to die, and I'm going to get a share, but I'm not interested in waiting. I want it all, and I want it now!

Now, do those thoughts sound very familiar, in today's generation? It is a road to ruin. It's a road to ruin, total road to ruin. Now I want to just talk a little bit about the Princess Syndrome. The Princess Syndrome goes something like this: when children become the focus of all the attention in the family, they become like little princesses. It's all about me, and it's all about what I feel; and if I'm unhappy, you've got to make me feel happy. If I want this, you've got to give me what I want. The loss of fathers in family, bringing order and identity, has contributed to this. The breakdown of families has contributed deeply to this; and so we have a generation arising, and actually they've all got a princess syndrome - it's about me. I want to look good, I want to feel good, I want you to meet my needs, so don't tell me anything that will upset me.

So we'll have to change our education system. We won't have a pass/fail! In my life, I don't know about you, but all my way through life, there were many pass/fails. You got the job; or you didn't get the job. That's a pass/fail isn't it? Why would you hide from someone, that real life works that way; that you sometimes get things, sometimes don't? That's actually life, and if you qualify, you get; if you don't qualify, you don't. This is actually what you experience in life. Why would you hide from a generation these realities, and give them kind of soft-grades? I'm all for education, and for improvements in education, but what I'm seeing is a generation arising, that's actually got like a princess syndrome. It's all about me, and what I feel, and what I want, and you coming through for me. It's actually not the understanding that this is the road to ruin.

So there's a whole season in education, where there's this focus on the esteem of the child. Fine, but actually our esteem is not found by cultivating and nurturing self. It's actually found by identifying with Christ - totally, radically different. So when you pamper people's esteem, what happens is, you don't help them. It becomes more, and more, and more about me. Then, let me tell you, when you come into the kingdom with that mentality, then you know what? God, it's still all about me; and so when I pray, I want you to bless me and help me; do this for me, get me this, get me that; and that moment something goes wrong, and I don't get what I want, now I'm having a hissy fit. I don't need to go into all of those, but you can see that there's a generation emerging with a great sense of entitlement, and what they need, is to be challenged over this. It's the road to ruin. What you need is, a cause to live for bigger than yourself. You need a person to connect to, and a cause to live for. You need to get outside yourself, and into something bigger.

Every time you get into yourself, you decrease and become smaller and smaller. It's when you get caught in something bigger than yourself, you grow in capacity, and start to flourish. In fact actually, we're designed that way. We were never designed to be the centre of the world. We're designed not to be the sun. We're designed actually, to have Christ as the centre of our world, and from that perspective we establish who we are. One of the things a child has to establish, in the family, very clearly has to be established: who is in charge; and if mum and dad don't establish they're in charge, that child gets the princess syndrome, it's all about me, and then there's this spoilt-brat kind of deal, where they want everything, and they fuss and create tantrums, all kind of deal when they don't get their way. They come into church, they do the same thing, and I've seen many people fail in their walk with God, for this reason. They never got, that it's not all about me. They just didn't get it, because our society cultivates that.

It keeps presenting that. All the advertising's directed that way: you will be happy if you have this, you'll be happy if you have that. You just need this. Oh, you can get it right now - three years and you don't have to pay a thing! It's interest free all that time; but what they're not telling you, is actually you don't need it to make you happy, because after you've got it, by the time you come to pay for it, you'll be unhappy. So it's not all about me, so we need to realise that. Of course there's a whole thing here, you may have heard about a guy by the name of Narcissus in Greek mythology. He loved himself actually, that's the best way to describe it. He was in love with himself, and he wanted everyone to admire him. He was very beautiful, wanted everyone to admire how beautiful he was; and so everywhere he went he expected everyone to say: oh, you're lovely, you're wonderful, you're beautiful, it's all about you. We've been watching that TV series called Big Bang Theory, and for Sheldon it's all about him. The whole world is about him, and his obsessions; and of course this is the extreme of it, it's all about him, and it's disrupting and dysfunctional in all relationships. So Narcissus, it was totally about him; and so all his relationships, what he wanted was people to give to him, but he didn't want to give anything back; and so he destroyed all relationships, rejecting everyone, until one day he sat by some water, and saw his own face. He thought that looks amazing, that's a wonderful person, I like that person; and touched the water, and the water moved, and the person was gone - a bit shocked because the person's gone. Then he looked into the water again, and there it was, he saw himself. He became captivated by himself, and in the end, he began to wither away, and just grow old and die, even though everyone tried to help him. So when you use that term Narcissus, it's someone who's totally preoccupied with themselves.

Unfortunately, many people are caught up with that. They're caught up with themselves; and when you're caught up with yourself, let me tell you this. I have learnt this, in moving in the spirit. The one thing, that will stop you flowing in the anointing, is being preoccupied with yourself. That should teach something, shouldn't it; that the moment I think about myself, the anointing stops flowing. I've proven that over and over and over, and we teach and demonstrate how to move with the Holy Spirit. It always comes to this point: if you think about yourself, the flow of the spirit shuts down, and you have no movement of God, when you look in on yourself. There is no movement. There's no life there. Now there's times to reflect, and to consider our needs, and so on, but here's the thing. The result of being self-absorbed is, people do this: they end up with broken relationships. So you've got a generation emerging that can't form committed relationships, doesn't know what they are. They're preoccupied with getting something out of a relationship; rather than growing, and becoming someone who can build into it. There's a major problem in our society of this, and it's all around this thing: give me.

It requires a radical shift, and at the core of discipleship, and following Jesus, is a shift from: 'give me', to 'make me.' He said: Follow Me, I will make you something. There's a shift, that requires internal changes on a daily basis; so one of the things that happens when people are occupied with themselves, is they end up rejecting everyone else, because others have got no value to them. They end up absorbed in themselves, end up with all kinds of problems, it creates division in the church, it creates division in the workplace. You look in the workplace, at the cause of the problems, and most of the time it's people; it's all about me, is the thing that's going on. This creates all sorts of difficulties. You think about addictions. Why do people get so addicted into drugs? Why? It's all about me, and their pain, and what they want to feel like; and they totally, in the end, become so gripped with it, that they ignore all the hurt they're causing everyone around them. So this is the path to ruin, a path to ruin. It's rooted in pride. Look where he ends up! This should be a lesson for us.

It says in verse 15: he went, and joined himself to a citizen of that country, who sent him in the fields to feed the pigs. He ended up down with the pigs. The path of give me, give me, give me, is a slow steady path to ruin, in every aspect of your life. At some point, you've got to say: God, help me to make a shift on the inside; and you'll see that the core of discipleship, is a shift around that issue, of who's in charge. Have a look in Matthew 16 verse 21: From that time, Jesus began to show His disciples, He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things at the hands of the elders and priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up the third day. What is Jesus doing? He's revealing His life's purpose. He's revealing: this is what the Father has planned for Me. This is the course I must run, because it's not about Me, it's about salvation of many. It's about the world. It's about salvation coming. It's about My Father's plan, it's not about Me. Therefore I will experience suffering, I will be put to death, but I will rise, and then we will accomplish what God sent Me for.

But you see Peter interrupted Him. Look what Peter did. Peter took Him - so he put his hand on Him, or even took Him aside, and he began to rebuke Him, saying: be it far from You Lord, this shall not happen to You! Now I want you to see what he did. The first thing is, he begins to rebuke Him. Now the interesting thing about the word rebuke means, it means literally to place value on someone. So what he's doing is, he's saying :listen, You are the one who's helping me be the centre of attention. We're having revivals. There's a coming kingdom, and we're going to rule in that kingdom, and if You go mess it up by dying on the cross, what will happen to me? Listen, listen to me, he said. He began to rebuke Him. If you really care about people, you will talk about things in their life; so he began to rebuke Him, and this is what he said: Be it far from me; or literally, it says: pity Yourself. What he's really saying is: now I heard what you say about suffering, and crosses and stuff. I didn't hear resurrection at all - but what I do sense is this. You need to look out for Yourself, pity Yourself, have mercy on Yourself, look after Yourself.

Now that's an amazing statement to make, because I hear that all the time, you need to look after yourself. Actually it's true, you must be responsible for yourself. There's a difference between being responsible for yourself and your needs, which are valid needs, and then being preoccupied with yourself. That's quite a different thing. Here is a direct statement from Jesus of His purpose, His life's purpose; and someone's saying: there's hardship in that, don't take that route. Well I feel God's calling me to do this. Oh, that sounds pretty tough, don't take that route. I feel God's calling me to get up, and do this. Oh, well don't take that route, it'll be difficult for you. Now I tell you what, there'll be a Peter in every person's life, to say: don't take that route, look out for yourself. What will happen to you financially? What will happen to you if you do that? If you gave your life to serve the Lord, what would happen to you? Oh, I don't think that's a good move. You know, Jesus said: sometimes the enemies of the call of God, are within your own household; trying to keep your family members happy, who don't carry the same spirit of faith towards the things of God that you do. He said: that's why, in discipleship, there would come choices you'd have to make, as to the priority you place on the call of God, or the work of God, in your life. It's quite a challenge, and no one escapes it. How many can identify a time, when you felt committed to do something that was going to be costly for you, and there was some resistance, and people tried to talk you out of it? How many have had that happen to you? See, it's almost everyone here. Interesting isn't it aye?

So here's the next thing that Jesus did. Now what Jesus did is quite interesting. This is what He did. He turned and said to Peter: get behind Me Satan, you're an offence to Me. You're not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men. Now in that is a tremendous amount of insight. I want you to have a look at the first thing He said - He actually confronts the mentality. He confronts it strongly, and says: behind Me Satan. Now here's the interesting thing. He ascribes to Satan, the mentality: look after yourself, give me. Of course Satan was the great give me, give me, give me person. That's where it all stems from; and so when He heard that thought come through, look out for yourself instead of - put yourself before God's purpose for Your life, He immediately ascribed it to the devil, and rightly so. The devil will obstruct every attempt you make to fulfil the course of God, by saying: look out for yourself, it'll cost you too much.

The second thing He said: you are an offence to Me. That word means, you are putting in my path, something that will stumble and hinder me going forward in this purpose of God. When people tell you: hey, look out for yourself, take pity on yourself, have compassion for yourself, and it's all about you, it stumbles you fulfilling God's purpose in your life. It's not all about you. It's about the Lord and what He wants. Isn't the deal one of covenant? My wife married me, it was a covenant. She agreed to follow me, wherever I went. I was a Catholic boy when she married me. She didn't know I'd go all over the world casting demons, and doing weird things all over, in different countries. No one told her that. I was a teacher, and earning quite good money; and she didn't know, when she said she'd follow me, that that would involve hardship and difficulty, which she would have to embrace her part in it. This is the thing you see, is that you don't know. When you give your life to Jesus, the deal is one of covenant, not casual: if I agree with you, I'll go there; if I don't agree with you, I don't. If I like it, I'll say yes; if I don't like it, I'll say no. That's not the deal we're in! We're in a deal of covenant, where He makes everything available to me. I make all I have available to Him as well. That's the deal. It's covenant! It's actually a commitment to engage in a journey together through life. This is why today's generation needs this message, because they don't understand what it means to journey through life, and stick through thick and thin, when it's tough. They need to actually get a message life is about covenant relationships, not casual. It's about: make me to serve; not: give me what I can.

So the third thing that Jesus said to him: you are stumbling me. In other words, this kind of thinking is an obstacle. You know, there's humanity to it as well. He wrestled with this thing, of going to the cross; and when He prayed in the Garden, and sweated blood and tears, His whole humanity didn't want to die. He sweated over that one. That's why He said: you coming along, and telling Me I shouldn't do it, that's a real stumbling stone for Me. I need you to say: yes, go for the will of God! Not every reason why I shouldn't.

And the last thing He said, so He identified the source of the statement: look out for yourself, and give me, as being the devil. The impact is an offence, or a stumbling block; and He said: the root of it, is in the way you think, because you have more concern, and your affections are set on, what people think, rather than what God thinks. So He identifies that the core, or the spirit behind it, is the devil. He identified that it stumbles you, in your walk with God, when you get exposed to it; and He said: it all has to do with what's of the highest value in your thinking, in your life. Are the things of God important to you, or are the things men more important? He's not saying you shouldn't be concerned with the issues of life. He's saying: it's about priorities; and so there'll always come a point, where what you feel you'd like to do, what you would want to do, what would be nice to do, comes in conflict with what God wants you to do; and that's when you meet the next part, which is what Jesus says. He used it as an opportunity to instruct, about what it means to be His disciple, and here it is.

He said: if anyone desires to come after Me - that's anyone - who desires to come after Jesus? Well we all do, we all sort of, it's not a trick question. The word desire there means literally: has any one here purposed to follow Jesus, anyone purposed to be His follower, to walk in the same path with Him. He says: this is what it's going to take, to stay on the same path; here's what it'll take, these three things: Let him deny himself; take up his cross; follow Me. You can't get that clearer. I haven't preached on that verse for a long time, and people don't like that verse, because you know what it's got in it? Two very uncomfortable things - number one: deny yourself; and we don't like to have that one in there; and number two: take up your cross. We don't want crosses, we want power and glory! [Laughter]. But before the glory, there's the cross; and if it took Jesus to go through the crossm into the glory, there will be points in our life in following Him, where the will of God, and our will, will cross; and that's when you have to make the choices. It's in those costly choices, that you find the favour of God. That's where resurrection comes.

So number one, deny self. Any man come after Me, he must deny himself. So what it's saying is this: you've actually got to recognise, that the self-centred, what's-in-this-for-me, give-me mentality must be rejected. You actually have to make decisions to reject, and these are daily decisions. Now it's not about proper care for needs, proper managing your finances, proper looking out for emotional and physical needs, or keeping yourself fit, or anything like that. It's actually the whole issue of a self-centred way of thinking and acting. What's in this for me, is no longer my viewpoint. Now if you think about this, if everywhere I went, I changed; and no longer was it: what's in this for me; but: what can I give; you would be on the path to kingdom thinking. You do the counselling in the marriage - how many of them come in: what am I going to get out of this, you know? What can you give me? I want sex, I want this, I want that; and you've got to re-orient their whole thinking - actually what do you bring into this thing? You're bringing in very little. You're not ready for marriage yet. Isn't that how it works?

In other words, people come into the relationship thinking: what can I get out of this marriage, and they end up destroying it. But if they came in saying: what can I bring into this marriage, what can I give in to this marriage - that would start to build it. That's true of every arena in life. If you approach it from not: what's in this for me, but: what can I do to serve? How can I give in to this? Then you'll radically change your view of life: what can I give? How can I serve? How can I help? What can I do? You see it's a way of thinking, that just says: no, to: what do I get out of this? What do I get out of this anyway? The whole path - number one, deny self. Now every one of you has to face that, it's your own journey, where you have to deny self. I can't do that for you unfortunately. You could pray a prayer, but that won't do any good. Could have an altar call - that won't do any good either, because at the end, you still have to say: NO! No! No to me; yes to others. That's what it'll boil down to.

And take up the cross. Now here's the interesting thing, what does it mean take up the cross? Well you don't have to take up Jesus' cross, He's already done the dying on the cross for sin. You don't have to go to the cross for sins, or anything like that, but what does it mean to take up the cross? Very simply, it means doing what God requires of you, regardless of what people say or think, or what you feel. Better run that one by you again. Take up your cross - the cross was the instrument of death, so when you took up your cross you were on your way to death, on your way to the gallows. Now here's the thing. The gallows was a horribly painful unpleasant thing; and not only that, people looked at you, stared at you and ridiculed you, so that kind of gives you the picture, why He used the word cross.

So what He's really saying is: you need to make decisions; and it's take up your cross daily Paul adds, one of the gospel writers adds. It's a daily decision, that I'll do what God is calling me to do; I'll follow what He's calling me to do, regardless of what people say, or think, or how I feel, or if it inconveniences me - I will still do it. I'll do what God wants me - so you notice the perspective is thinking: what God is wanting for me. It's a heaven perspective, it's a thinking about how I work in this situation, what is the spirit of God saying for me to do. What is the word of God saying for me to do? It takes away a lot of guess work, just: God, what do you want in this situation? Lord, I'm really happy to do that, and follow Me, follow Me means that I walk in the same spirit that Jesus did, and I follow the same leadings He did. He was led by the Holy Spirit. I need to follow Him, so that means I keep my eyes on Him, not on what people are doing.

Interesting Peter said: hey, what about this disciple over here? John, what about him? What's going to happen to him? And he's all het up about what's going - he knows he's going to die - so he goes: what about this guy here, you know? Jesus said: if he lives forever, what's that to you? You follow Me. In other words, mind your business about what God's doing in someone else's life. You just follow Me. Mind your business. Don't worry about what God's doing with someone else - you just make sure you're following. Don't worry about what this one's doing this, this one's doing that. No, no, no, no, mind your business, stick with what God called you to do. Even Paul wrote, and said: study to mind your own business, it's a good - tell someone, mind your own business. Good idea isn't it? There's even an accounting program, isn't there Bruce, on that one: Mind Your Own Business? [Laughs] So if you're going to follow the Lord, what it'll require, is you adopt a lifestyle of saying: I'm here to give what I can, even if it's little I'll give what I can. Two, it'll mean at times, it's not comfortable for me, it's painful for me, or difficult for me, if people don't agree; but I've got my eyes fixed on Jesus. That's all it is. Just for a simple example, I'll give you two simple examples, that just show you how simple this thing works out; just keeping in mind: deny self, take up your cross, follow Jesus, okay?

Here's the first issue. Someone upsets you. That's pretty common isn't it? [Laughter] They upset you because of your pride. You become offended and hurt; so deny self. I need to deal with the pride, and the offence, and the hurt, and I need to bring resolution to it. Stop focussing on me, what about me, give me, you owe me an apology, give me, give me. I need to actually realise, something's happened, it's set me back. It's not what I expected, or what I hoped for, it's knocked me around a bit; but here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to actually deal with this thing, very quickly. Instead of demanding my rights, I'll surrender my rights; and think: yes, they have offended me. What can I put into this to improve the situation? Most people want to go there: well I'm going to see them, I'm going to get there, and their nose is flaring, and their eyes are out there bulging, and their highly set up - I'm going to tell them what's what! Good on you mate, you know? They're not walking after Jesus, that's for sure; and you'll end up with the pigs, like everyone else does, who follows that path. It doesn't go anywhere. It ends up in destruction. What you need to decide is: yes, actually what's happened is not good. However what can I give in to this, that could improve or change the situation? You understand, just the change in thinking?

Number two, take up the cross. Well what would it mean to take up the cross? Well I need to forgive, because on the cross Jesus forgave. But I don't want to forgive, I want to shake my fist! Oh, so take up your cross, and forgive. Then follow Jesus. What did Jesus do? Jesus showed grace and mercy to people. Remember what they said, when He came past one town, and the disciples said: these guys have rejected us. We should call down fire! Give me the word Jesus, and we'll call fire down, and burn them all up! Oh, they were really full of 'Holy Ghost' fire, you know and this 'righteous' indignation. I notice when people get angry, they always say it's righteous anger. I doubt it, I haven't seen much of that really. [Laughter] Righteous anger's usually addressed to the poor, and fixing the grievances of the afflicted, not towards being angry about your own injustices. Anyway, that's an aside. So I've lost the track now [Laughter]

So what do you need to do? You see most people just flare up. Well it's a very, very simple thing. Instead of saying: I'm hurt, and it's all about me; why don't you just say: what could I do to help this situation? How could I build a bridge of peace into this relationship, and be a peace-maker; and what will it cost me to do it? I need to forgive. I need to go and ask what's my part in it, and say: I'm sorry. [Wails] But it's all about me, and they did this. I should be getting someone saying sorry to me! But they're not saying sorry to me. It's actually about letting it go. You may have only contributed ten percent. Just go and put your ten percent right. What about them? Don't worry about them, it's not about them. It's about you, doing your part, to make this a different situation; and in doing that, you follow Jesus; because when you follow Jesus, you'll have the peace of God in your heart. That's how you know you're following Him, your heart is at peace. Why? Because the spirit of God, the kingdom of heaven is righteousness, peace. As soon as the peace lifts, you're out of place. You've got to make a decision; deny self, take up the cross, do what Jesus would have done, okay?

Second example, quite easy, I've learned this, is when it comes to moving in the spirit, very, very simple. The moment you stop, and think about yourself, the movement of the spirit stops, just like that; and that should be a lesson, that if you want to flow with the Holy Spirit, stop thinking about yourself. I found one of the things that's helped me mostly, in ministering to people, is very simply this: begin to think how much God loves them, and agree with that. Begin to think about the person being of great value, and that God wants to help them, and I could just be a channel for that. As I orient my thinking that way, the spirit moves. It's not really hard is it, it's quite sort of simple stuff. Okay, follow Me.

So let's finish it up. We'll go back to that one in Luke 15, finish back up there again. The young man had a revelation; and when you're right down in the pigs, and your life's a mess, and everything's fallen apart, you're having a disaster, maybe 'give me' was the part that got you there. Maybe it's a financial ruin, and when you think about it was: give me, give me, give me; and you went to the store, and you got thi,s and got that and got something else. Then there you are, down there in ruin, and they're coming to the door to take away your stuff, and you're embarrassed and humiliated. You're right down there, and then he came to himself. Isn't that a good thing? What does that mean? It means he was actually out of his mind. We've got lots of crazy people - they're out of their mind. You know when you start to think according to the ways of God, you come to your senses, you come to your senses. Usually you come to your senses when you repent and acknowledge the truth, then your mind clears, the demons go, and you think: that was stupid of me. Anyone had that one before? That was stupid. Why did I do that? What came over me? [Laughs] What came over me? So he came to his senses. I'll give you the key thing. The first thing he did - and this is what we need to do - need to just recognise the condition. He said this: I'm perishing with hunger, my life is a mess. I need to recognise, the reason it's a mess, is because the way I'm looking at life is: give me, give me, give me. That's why I'm in this mess. It doesn't matter whether you're a Christian or not, I've seen plenty of Christians get into a mess, because they still had that same thinking. This is one in the house of God really, this young man here.

The second one here is, it needs to be heartfelt repentance. He said: I know I'll go to my father; and I'll say: I've sinned against heaven and before you. There has to be an admission of wrong, that actually my attitude has been wrong, and that I've hurt people with it. That's the hard one, and you notice he was willing to go and say: I've sinned before God. What I did is actually sin, that's the root of it; self-centred thinking, give-me, is sin. Oh? See we think of sin as: well I got drunk, or did this, or did that. We don't think, that actually that whole self-centred orientation of life, is actually out of order, and therefore sin.

He said: I'll say I've sinned against heaven, and I've sinned against you, so here's the thing. Number one, I need to recognise that my 'give me' approach to life and relationships, whether it's work, marriage, children, family, ministry, whatever it is, actually is a path to ruin. I need to come and start to reflect and say: God, show me not only where I'm at, but show me how I've hurt people through this. Then he went to the father, and he was willing to apologise and say: I am sorry, what I did was wrong. I have really damaged our relationship. I'm not even worthy to be called your son. Notice there's no claims, no entitlement, it's all gone. He said: make me to be a servant in the house. What a change!

So number one, we need to recognise just the condition we're in, and that mentality and way of thinking. Two, deeply repent, because it has affected those around us. It has affected people in your sphere of influence. Where appropriate, put it right by apologising. Then thirdly, we need to actually take up the cross. There's actually a decision, that I'm going to do things differently, I'll do things differently. You notice what the young man did. He come back, and he said: I'm going to be a servant; so make a commitment you'll serve in situations. The moment you set yourself to serve, a decision to serve others, and make your value in life: I will honour people, I will serve people; because this is who I am. When you make that decision, everything in your life starts to shift; because every situation you go into, it's not: what can I get out, give-me, and getting angry and upset and offended. It's now, what can I put in that will make it better? What can I contribute that would shift this? How can I be a blessing, how can I build? Now I may not be able to fix everything, but I can do my part to make this office, this house, this neighbourhood, my marriage, my family a better place; and in doing so, you're following Jesus, because He said: if you want to be great in the kingdom, serve. Serve, serve, serve, serve, serve, serve, serve, serve, serve, serve.

You never graduate from it. It doesn't matter what position you hold, title or rank, they don't mean anything. It's all about serving, and if you haven't got the serving thing fixed up, then the title's a mess. It just means you use everyone, and you'll hurt them; but if you've actually got serving right, you can have a position or no position; it doesn't mean a thing, because when you have no position, you're serving; when you have a position, you're serving. It's just how you serve different, and this is what's going on right through the world right now, the corporate structures are starting to collapse, because they are based on: give me, and entitlement; and not on serve me. Now they're starting to collapse, and the world's saying: we need to look to another way of doing life. Churches which picked up that model for years, and ran with it, and where are they going to look now? Need to come back to what Jesus said, and Jesus was able to - now get this, you'll love this. We'll finish with this. It's His last meal. Now if you're about to have your last meal, you want it to be a special meal, a happy meal; let it be a happy meal with everything added on. What you would probably want is everyone to be nice to you, because you're about to do this very big thing you know. I'm going to go to the cross, it's going to hurt! [Laughter] What He did instead was, He washed the feet. See, that is the spirit of the kingdom. That is the spirit. Now if you follow Christ, that's the spirit you walk in, a spirit of serving.

Why don't we just close our eyes right now, shall we? Father, God, we just thank You for the great privilege, of being called to walk in Your kingdom, and to have Jesus as such a model. We thank You Lord, that even now as we open our hearts, You will come forth, and You will serve us. You will minister to us, You will help us. Lord, wherever our feet are dirty, because of the way we've walked our life; we may be down in the pigsty because of the decisions we've made; but You will come, and wrap Your arms around us, and help us to get up out of it.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, is there anyone here today, that's not yet become a follower of Jesus, haven't given your life to Jesus? Be a great day to do that, wouldn't it? To be in the atmosphere of God, the presence of God. Why don't you make that decision today: I'm going to actually open my heart to Jesus Christ. I'm going to take the first step, by inviting Christ into my life, and trusting Him to deal with the issues of my sins and failures of the past. That's the first step. Then it's a journey after that, walking with Him. Is anyone at that place to receive Jesus? Would you raise your hand, just let me know, any person here? You're not a Christian by coming to church. You're a Christian by a decision, the work of God; and so the work of God in your heart comes when you believe and trust Christ. Is there anyone here just right at that place of decision right now?

Just before we finish now - we're going to finish just exalting Him and lifting Him up - I wonder is there anyone here, and God really challenged you; you realise actually, this thing of give-me, give-me has been more in my life than I realised, and I really need to address it. God has been speaking to me about this issue of denying self in some area; of actually reorienting, to become what can I give, and how can I serve; rather than what can I get, and what can I receive. If you heard God speaking about that, or maybe about the issue of the cross, where actually you've quit on many things, because people were upset, or someone didn't like it, or it cost you something; it hurt, it was difficult on the way, and there were unexpected setbacks and difficulties; and Jesus is saying: come on, pick up your cross, you need to follow Me again, come on, start walking with Me. If you know you had God speak to you today about that, just make a response today. See, we love all these words about 'destiny' and 'future' and 'purpose of God', but you know the pathway there, is the pathway of following Jesus; and it involves denying self, taking up your cross, following Him. That is the path of a disciple. It's the path of every disciple, there are no exceptions.

I thought it'd be different for me, you know, I'm sort of special. My mum told me I was special. All the time, when the kids bullied me, they told me I was special. Yes, you're special; but stop being a pretty princess, and make a decision to man up and follow Christ. If that's you today, and you know God was speaking to you in some area, why don't you raise your hand right now, God challenged you - God bless, God bless, many hands coming up. Father, I just thank You. Why don't we just, as we stand together, what we'll do is, we'll just worship with that song we sing right at the very end of the service. We'll just exalt Him, and you build an altar in your heart. If God spoke to you: you need to go and put a marriage thing right, a family thing right, a relationship right, a work situation right; work out how to do it, how to own it, how to go there with a serving heart, how to actually make the apology a good apology. Then believe that now you're going to come and serve. You know the path to my promotion in the workplace came one day, when I went to my boss and apologised to him, because I had neglected something in my work that was very important to him. I could see the astonishment in his face, but within eighteen months he'd promoted me. Hmm, principles of God work. Come on, let's just stand and worship Him shall we, let's just stand up, flow into that song.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Mk.1:17-18 “Then Jesus said to them “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men”. They immediately left their nets and followed him”

· Each of us is called by God to attach to Jesus and to Follow Him.

· “Follow” = NT190= akoloutheo az = “union”; Keleuthos = “road”.

= To be on the same road as a companion.

= To enter another person’s world and to join them on their journey.

= A lifelong journey with Jesus constantly learning and being committed to His Cause.

· Jn.10:27 “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me”.

2. “It’s Not all About Me”

(a) “Give Me” – The Entitlement Mentality

· Lk.15:11-12 “The younger son said to his father: “Father give me, my share of the estate” (NIV)

· Story is about the father’s generosity – also contains keys to why people self-destruct.

· “Give Me” = mentality = It’s all about me!

· Son was self-centred = sense of entitlement

= no interest in the welfare of his father

= expectation of special treatment

= Strongly promoted himself – self focused

= Used others to advance himself, exploited relationships

= Focus on personal rights rather than responsibilities

(b) “The Princess Syndrome”

· When children become the central focus of family they can grow up self centred.

· “Princess” = the centre of attention. Whatever princess wants she gets.

· A generation is emerging with a great sense of “entitlement” rather than responsibility.

· Education system has greatly contributed to “Princess” mentality.

· e.g. Narcissus - Greek myth very attractive young man renowned for his beauty.

- He wanted others to give to him but he gave to no-one.

- He formed many relationships, drew from them then rejected them.

- Eventually he became captivated by his own image in a pool of water.

- He refused all attempts to help him – withered away and lost all his beauty.

· Fruit of this self-absorption is:

- Broken relationships - Division - abuse in relationship

- Rejection - Mental illness - addictions/crime

· The Root is Pride Proverbs 16:18 = Pride goes before destruction.

· Lk.15:15 “He joined himself to a citizen of that country and he sent him into the fields to feed the swine”

· The path to ruin – financially, relationally, emotionally and spiritually “Give Me”.

3. Jesus Teaching on Discipleship

Mt.16:21-25 “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me”.

(vs21) Jesus reveals his commitment to serve the Father – his commitment to the will of God. He reveals his path involves suffering, death, resurrection.

(a) Peter’s response “Save Yourself”

· (v22) Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying be it far from you. Lord this shall not happen to you.

· “Rebuke” =NT2008= epitimeo = to fix a value upon, raise the price of, admonish or forbid.

· “For be it” = pity yourself; show mercy and kindness and look after yourself.

(b) Jesus Rebuke of Peter

· (V23) “He turned and said to Peter: Get behind me Satan. You are an offense to me for you are not mindful of the things of God but the things of men”.

· He identified the source of this statement = “Satan” - one opposed to the purpose of God’s Spirit.

· He identified the impact of this statement = “Offence” – something hindering your course.

· He identified the root of this statement = “Mindful” – to set the affection on short term personal gain.

(c) Jesus Instruction to Disciples

· (v24) If any man will come after me – will =NT2309= to be resolved, determine, purpose.

(i) “Deny Self”

= turn away totally from self-centred way of thinking and acting.

= “What’s in this for me?” is no longer the viewpoint or attitude.

= total opposed to a self-centred agenda.

(ii) “Take up His Cross”

= Doing what Jesus requires of us regardless of what people think or say or do, or what may personally experience e.g. pain, inconvenience, pressure, difficulties, hardships.

= this is a daily decision (Lk9:23) – it is personal.

(iii) “Follow Me”

= look to Jesus constantly for direction, strength, encouragement.

= stay attached to Christ and His cause.

· The outcome of this kind of life is blessed and rewarded, now and eternally.

· E.g. Forgiveness = deny self, take up cross, follow Jesus example.

4. It’s All About Serving

· Lk.15:17-19 “He came to himself … “Make me to serve”

· The change in heart – from Give Me = Make Me to Serve = Great favour and blessing.

(i) Recognise Your Condition (v17) – “I perish with hunger”

(ii) Heartfelt Repentance (v18) = “I will go – I have sinned”

· Admission of his wrong and willingness to turn away.\Admission of how he had hurt others by this self-centred attitude.

· Turn away and put it right with those we have wronged – apologise

(iii) Decision to Love and Serve others (v19) “Make me like one of your Servants”

· We cannot experience resurrection until we identify with Christ’s death.

· Sins of selfishness, self-idolatry must come to the Cross.

· When we die to selfishness we are free to love and serve others.

· Dead people don’t react, get offended or hurt, or walk in pride.

· There may be roots in the heart to address.

(iv) Follow Jesus “Son of Man came to serve and give His life”

· Walk in the opposite to pride – humility.

· Matt.20:26-28 “Whoever desires to become great, let him be your servant”

Hearing the Voice of God (3 of 6)

Sun 25 Nov 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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People are the measuring stick of how you're doing with God. It's very easy to be drawn into all range of spiritual experiences and these are wonderful, but if it doesn't convert to being connected to people and working with people and helping people, there is something majorly lacking. If you engage with Jesus, with Him and His work, you will discover the true identity and call of God on your life. If you focus on using God just to get your needs and whatever met, He said you'll end up inward-looking and non productive. You'll actually lose your life. Learn how to hear His voice, and then choose to consistently say yes, and respond by doing something

I want to share with you something that would be extremely helpful for you, and I'm going to ask you to do something at the end of this too, which will be even better still, so I'll tell you in a moment what I'm going to ask you to do. Let's pick up where we're on. We're talking about following Jesus, and the Bible doesn't talk about coming to meetings, it talks about following Jesus. Coming to meetings and gatherings, it talks about not forsaking gathering together, or being gathered together; but the primary focus of Jesus' ministry was that we would engage Him and follow Him, so we'll pick up our key verse we were looking at which was found in Mark 1, and Jesus spoke to some of the disciples.

This is what He said to them here, He said to Simon and Andrew, his brother, who were casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen, and Jesus said to them: follow Me, I will make you become fishers of men; and immediately they left their nets and followed Him. Every one of us is called to be connected to Jesus and to follow Him. We talked about many, many things that people follow today, and you could be following the trends, following the fashion, following the world. You could be following the Middle East, you could be following lots of things; but ultimately many of these things lead to all kinds of pressures that we don't need. We are called to follow Jesus Christ, and we want to talk about what that would look like, following Jesus. I mean in those days there, there He was, He said: follow Me; and you just came up and followed Him; but there was always a price for it, so last week we shared on, in following Jesus, you will be caught up into what He's caught up in. There is no way you can follow Jesus Christ without being changed, and starting to shift in your values; what's important, what isn't important. When you begin to follow Jesus Christ, your whole value system begins to shift. It shifts because He will lead you somewhere you've never even thought of going; and the Bible says in this verse here, it says: I will make you fishers of men; so there's one thing absolutely certain, that when we follow Jesus Christ, He will teach us how to be a lover of God, but a lover of people. You can measure how spiritual you are, not by how many visions and dreams you have, but whether you actually overflow and love people, and connect with them and help them.

People are the measuring stick of how you're doing with God. It's very easy to be drawn into all range of spiritual experiences, and these are wonderful; but if it doesn't convert to being connected to people, and working with people and helping people, there is something majorly lacking. So that's where we start, that's where we got to, and we shared a little bit about how we seem to have a generation which is fairly precious. Last week we talked about the Princess Syndrome, and how many people are just wanting to look after themselves, fuss over themselves; and in doing that, Jesus said: you can't be My disciple, unless you deny self, take up your cross, follow Me. In other words, He's saying very simply this: I'm called to something much bigger than looking after myself. He said: I am called to change the world, and changing the world will involve Me suffering, dying, going to the cross. Peter's response was: don't even think of doing that; and Jesus said: listen, if you don't actually deal with this issue of self-interest, and embrace the difficulties and hardships accompanied with My mission, you can't be a follower of Me.

Then He went on to say an interesting thing - I don't want to develop it today, I want to look at something else. He said: if you save your life, in other words, if you look after yourself, you'll lose it. He said: if you try and preserve your selfish interest, you'll end up immersed in problems beyond what you can imagine; but He said: if you will lose your life for My sake, you'll find it. What He's saying is something like this: If you engage with Jesus, with Him and His work, you will discover the true identity, and call of God, on your life. If you focus on using God just to get your needs and whatever met, He said you'll end up inward-looking, and non productive. You'll actually lose your life.

So I don't want to go into that. I want you to look with me in John 10:27. We're still looking on the theme of following Jesus, and this is going to be quite practical for you, very practical. Verse 27: My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. Here it is: My sheep hear My voice. They follow Me. Now what could be simpler than that? So here it is, right in a nutshell, what we're talking about today. We're talking about hearing the voice of God. Jesus said: if you belong to Him - here's the first thing - you hear His voice; and two, you respond to what He's saying. So at the end of the meeting today, I'm going to ask you this question: What impression, or what impressed you about today's message? In other words - or in today's service - what impressions did you have, that impacted you? In other words, I'm going to ask you to start to reflect, what you actually received today; then the second question is: what will you do with that? What steps will you take, or what choices will you make, because the Bible's very clear. If we come into gatherings, and we spend a lot of time listening to messages, and never respond, we end up in a religious, deceived state. The Bible is always very practical, God calls us to act; to listen, and then to respond, so I want to just pick up this thought here today about hearing the voice of God. So tell someone: actually, you need to hear the voice of God.

How can you follow someone, if you don't know where they're going? That's pretty simple isn't it? How can you follow someone, if you don't know where they're going? How can you know where they're going, unless they tell you where they're going? So if you're going to follow Jesus, you need to know where He's going. You've got to be able to listen to Him, so essentially to belong to Christ means very simply this: that we have a capacity to hear Him. Every person here can hear the voice of God. Listen, even if you are not saved, you can hear the voice of God. Adam, after he fell, heard the voice of God. Every person can hear the voice of God; and if you become a believer, then hearing the voice of God becomes absolutely vital, totally vital to your life! So here's the thing: communication is foundational to every relationship, communication. You cannot build a relationship without communication; and it needs to be two-way, absolutely two-way! ...and your wife's nodding furiously. Now that means you have to listen. [Laughs]

Okay, so communication, one of the biggest skills in communication, is the ability to listen; to actually listen, and hear what the person is saying; not jump to conclusions what they might be saying, but actually hear what they're saying; and then make a response. If you don't hear what someone else has got to say, and actually hear it properly, and make a response, that relationship's going to be in deep trouble. That's true of every area of life. How many know that's true of life? Now I want to just picture this up a little bit. Now can you imagine a young couple going out together, usually what you notice is that they talk a lot. Isn't that right? Then you see the same couple years later, and he's got the paper, and he's got his nose in the paper, and she's sort of looking, where to look, and there's no talk going on; so notice that relationships start with a lot of talk, and then when you see them and there's not much talk, you could say that relationship's pretty well in bad shape. Would that be right?

So what are the conditions there? What does it look like, when a relationship is in bad shape? Actually there's no passion, there's no fire, there's no excitement, there's no joy. It's actually ho-hum. Is that right, ho-hum? No ho-ho, it's ho-hum. So when relationships have deteriorated, the ho-ho has gone, and there's just ho-hum [Laughter] isn't that right? Okay then. Now what would that look like for a Christian then, who started their relationship with a lot of ho-ho, and now it's ho-hum? The core behind that, is they've stopped hearing and responding to Jesus; and they've substituted personal connection with Jesus, hearing what He has to say, with religious duties, or religious habits. Now I believe it's great to have habits. We need to have habits, but they are not a substitute for living connection with Jesus. Now that really creates a bit of a problem, because if we individually stop hearing Jesus and responding to Him, we are now living our life out of habit and routines, and it lacks passion, life, vitality, spontaneity - it becomes ho-hum and routine.

The problem is, most people don't know when they stopped hearing and responding. They just drift that way. It's true of marriages. It's true in families. It's true of all relationships, that if they're not nurtured and built in the communications area, they will diminish until there's nothing left. Now understanding that means we need to place a high priority on personally, and corporately, hearing the voice of God. Of all the skills you could learn in your spiritual journey, if I could just nail it down to one, it would be this: learn how to hear His voice; and then choose to consistently say: yes, and respond by doing something. Would that be true? That sums it all up aye? You don't need much more than that, but I'll give you a bit more [laughs], because it raises a lot of problems and a lot of questions, so here's a couple of questions I could ask you straight away to just get you thinking.

Here's the first one. What's the last thing that Jesus said to you? How long ago was it? What have you been doing about it? If that's a bit of a guilty response after that, and it's a long time since you last heard Jesus speak personally to you, your relationship is in trouble - not with Him, He's fine. You're the one who's in trouble, because you've replaced a living, vibrant connection, with routine, and it gets boring, and you get bored. You get to quit on doing the stuff that God wants you to do, so that's interesting isn't it? Well okay then, so we'll think about that. So Jesus actually made a number of cautions. Looking through the gospels, and Jesus' teaching, did you realise, eight times it's recorded in the gospels alone, Jesus said: that he that has ears to hear, let him hear. In other words, He's saying: make sure you stay tuned in to God; and He gave many, many warnings related to that. In the Book of Revelation, which is about the end time church, it's about the revealing of Jesus Christ, seven times He said: let he that has an ear to hear, hear what the spirit is saying to the churches.

Now here's an interesting thought: God is speaking to you individually; God is speaking to the church. Now if God is speaking to you individually, then He'll speak in a personal way, about the issues of your life, about your relationships - He's interested in every arena in your life. He does want to talk to you about that. But He also wants to talk to us corporately. Now when He talks to us corporately, I'll put it down in a simple thing. It means: He's talking to Bay City people, about something, at one time; hence the need to place importance on what God is saying to us. Now I can go on the Internet, I can hear all things God's saying all over the world, to all kinds of different people, but they're all around the world. What I need to be hearing is what God is saying to us here, in Hastings, New Zealand; and so to do that I need to be attentive to that, so Sunday gatherings for example, we gather at church like this. I wait on the Lord for messages. I just don't think: well give me something to do you know? I'm listening to God. In fact, if I don't hear from God, I get quite upset, under pressure, and I don't know what to do. It's no trouble, if you have experience, and if you're a teacher, to have a message; but it's something else to hear the voice of the spirit, and say what God is saying to us; so when I bring messages, I endeavour to hear, or have something quickened, by the Holy Spirit, that's what He is saying to us. He is saying at the moment, He's inspiring and calling us, to follow Jesus; to actually centre our focus on Him; and to understand in our life and personal walk, what it'll mean to follow Him, to be a follower of Jesus Christ, not just a Christian.

Now lots of people call themselves Christians, but to be a follower of Christ implies a dynamic of a walk with God; so if you're coming to meetings on Sundays, and this is your home, then God would be saying something here. Either through the worship, He'll say something, in the meetings He'll say something. Usually I find when I speak and minister the word of God, about a half, if not more of the church, were already thinking about that, studying it or had heard something on it a week to two weeks before, meaning God is speaking to the church. He doesn't just speak one Sunday, then another Sunday. Usually there's a flow, and He's speaking about a number of things, and He's wanting us to adjust and respond; hence the importance of keeping and taking notes. I notice so few - I just don't know about you. I can't remember an hour later what anyone said, except my wife - sometimes. [Laughter] Then I'm on to the next thing. I'm a man you know; that was then, I'm on to now, and so I don't always retain what I've heard.

I've made it a discipline over years, write down when I'm in a meeting what was said, what happened. I do it in personal meetings, I do it in group meetings, I do it in Sunday meetings. I write down what was said. Even when the young guys are preaching, I write down what they said, what the message was, because in it, I'll hear from God. So I might record the message, and write the notes on it, but as I'm writing the notes, I'm listening: God, what are you saying to me? And I'll write at the top of the page: I heard this. Now either you believe God's talking to you, and you respond; or you believe God's talking to you in your head, and it's ho-hum, oh yeah, okay, move on. You see the relationship with God requires response: My people hear My voice, and follow. Follow, means I make decisions to respond to what I've heard. Getting the idea? You all got quiet all of a sudden. I must be getting in too deep. I need to lighten up [laughs] praise the Lord.

Now here's a couple of ways you could think of, of helping yourself, on whether you're hearing God. One of them is: on Sundays, just take some notes. I notice the newsletter that you get, there's a little space to write them down. All you've got to do is remember to bring a pen, write something down. Here's the second thing you could do: Get involved in a small group, where they can ask you these two questions: what has God been saying to you? What have you been doing with that? Now we think that our Christian life can be lived alone. It cannot be lived alone. It's never designed to be lived alone. We're designed to live in community, so not only does God speak to us individually, the Spirit speaks to the churches - not only our church - He speaks to churches all over the world. I have been to prophetic churches around the world, and I've found the very things I'm preaching, someone else has been preaching it in other places as well. When people are prophetic, they're picking up what God is saying, and He is talking about turning the church, re-centring on Jesus, re-centring on the harvest, re-centring on discipleship.

In this last couple of months, every place I've gone, the one thing that's been common everywhere, is the emphasis again on harvest of souls, and on discipleship. It is everywhere, so that means to not go and move intentionally that way, means we're not hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Getting the idea? When you hear what the Spirit says, and you respond, you become an overcomer! Being an overcomer's not that hard really. It's not like I'm on top of it all the time. Have a look at all the people in the Bible. One thing that's got to be common, with all the great heroes of faith, is how many times they were defeated; and fell down, fell over, or made mistakes, or just plum outright sinned; yet they were all core men of faith, because when God spoke to them, they responded. So I don't think being an overcomer means I'm on top of everything all the time. I think it means that when I hear God speak, I say: yes; and do it. You start to do that your life will shift immensely. Amen.

So what does the voice of God sound like? What does God's voice sound like, when He is speaking to us? And of course it raises other questions; what if God isn't speaking? What if I've been praying and asking for something for a long time, and He hasn't spoken? That is a real horrible one. How many know what I'm talking about there? You've got an issue in your life, and in that issue in your life, heaven is silent! In the midst of that silence, there's stress, because I need a reply from heaven, and no reply is forthcoming. It's like God's got the pip, and He's not talking, shut down; and so, how many know that experience? Right, we all have it; so when I say that the Bible says: My sheep hear My voice, and follow Me, we also have to take into account, there are times when God remains silent for a season. In that season, your heart is tested, what you will do; and in that season, He requires that we just trust Him, and do the last thing He told us to do. That's probably as simple as I can get it.

Now I hate those times when He's not telling me, but I've learned in them trust Him, and relax. He's got an answer. It is coming, and in due time, He'll tell me. He will tell me. He will show the way. He's promised to show the way; so if you're stuck in that place now, and it feels like you've got an issue in your life - maybe it's an issue with a child, an issue with a spouse, an issue with finances, an issue with a job - there's so many of them in life, and it's like God speaks on lots of trivial things, but on the big thing He's not saying anything. That is horrible, and it happens to all of us, and it happens more often than we'd like to say - it happens. And in those times remain confident, trust in the Lord with all your heart, don't lean on your own understanding and try and find your way. Walk with God, humbly dependent, confessing His word over your life, and trusting Him - and acting on the last thing you were given.

Now having put that aside, now we'll look at hearing the voice of God okay? So if you hear the voice of God, what will it sound like? Very, very simple - Jesus spoke in 1 Corinthians 6:17, Paul wrote: he that's joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. So we have to be very, very clear that when God speaks, He is speaking to our spirit; and here's the amazing thing. When the disciples were on the earth, they literally had to physically follow Jesus, and walk after a person; but now Jesus said: there's a whole new deal; and so He says: I want you to abide in Me. I'm going to put my spirit inside you. My spirit and your spirit will be joined, and because of that you will be able to have free access to the realm of heaven, but you will be on the earth. You'll be living here, but you'll have access to the realm of heaven, the realm of the spirit. My spirit will always be with you, so you won't need to physically be in Israel. You can be with Me. I will be with you. I'll never leave you, not forsake you; so notice it's he that's joined the Lord, is one spirit - and therein is the key. If we're going to hear from God, it will be in our spirit. Now I'm not going to downplay the word of God in this. The word of God is vital to all guidance and direction, and moving from the word of God creates disasters. However, God wants us to learn how to recognise when He's speaking to us, so it will be from our spirit. So He wants us to learn how to be aware of the movements of His spirit within us.

Now worship is one great way you can learn how to flow with what God is doing.Have you noticed in a worship meeting, or at the beginning, and there's a flow begins to build, and as the musicians began to lead you actually can feel yourself shifting, and things begin to move, your spirit becomes stirred inside you, you start to arise within. You are starting to arise in your spirit, so all movements of God are movements in our spirit, so He leads you from within your spirit. That means - here's the interesting thing - that you are one spirit with the spirit of God - now get this - so therefore, His thoughts will come into your thoughts, His feelings will come into your feelings, His visions or pictures will come into yours, the impressions He has will, come into yours. In fact everything that He is like, He's a person, the Holy Spirit's a person - He will implant into your spirit, His own very thoughts and ideas. That's a very, very simple concept. God is joined to me. I'm one spirit with the Lord. He's never far from me. I don't have to come to a service, to actually hear the voice of God. It's wonderful to come, and to be inspired in corporate worship. There's a place for that, and hear what God's saying to the church; but I also need to be stirred in my own spiritual life. I need to grow and develop spirit awareness, spirit sensitivity. Everyone can develop it. It's not automatic, it's something you develop. For example, a mother can quickly pick the voice of her child in a room of yelling children - huh, that's my one! You just hear noise, she hears her child. She has tuned her ear to the voice of her child. We have to tune our ear to the voice of our spirit, because that's where we'll hear the Holy Spirit. You won't necessarily have some great big picture and revelation. You may not have some great big open dream, or thing like that; but you can, within your spirit, hear and receive impressions of the Holy Spirit.

In John 7:37-39, Jesus was speaking, and He said: out of your belly, out of your spirit, out of within, you will flow rivers of living water; and He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, or the ministry of the spirit. The word I want to draw your attention to is - two words; one is 'out of your belly', out of your spirit, out of deep within you - that's the first word. The second word is this: flow. Flow is not one, two, three, four, five, six. Flow is more like a river moving. It's a spontaneous movement; so the movements of the Holy Spirit, and the guidance or direction of God, or the voice of God will be: number one, from within you; number two, it will be a flow. It will be spontaneous, and there'll be a moving. Now that seems so very, very simple, yet there's a whole lifestyle of actually learning how to hear that voice. So God's voice is not going to be yelling at you, although He can. It's not going to be outside you, although it can be. It may not be very dramatic, although it can be. Usually, for most of us, most of the time, it's like Elijah described: a still small voice, very still. In other words, it's not loud, raucous, pushing, pressy; and it's very small, it's very little, and very easily stopped.

Now if we're going to hear the voice of God then, that means I've got to deal with inner noise, and learn how to come to rest. If I have got a lot of noise going on my soul, it will distract me from hearing God. If I've got a lot of turmoil in my soul, it will stop me hearing God; and so the reason a lot of people don't hear much from God, is because of turmoil going on inside their life; and usually in the turmoil, when you really most want to hear God, there's so much turmoil, it blocks your hearing; and so you've got to do something about the turmoil. Let me give you some of the common hindrances, things that literally obstruct that flow of the spirit; then we'll just give you some very simple ways, you could just develop it. It's not hard, but it's a lifetime of practice. Here's some of the things. One of the things that will stop you, or hinder you - I'll use the word hinder, because nothing stops God. Even Adam and Eve, after they sinned, heard the voice of God. So here's the thing: hidden sin. If you've got things in your heart God's been talking to you about, and you're not responding; that sin will create noise in your life, that blocks out God. It's like you just don't hear Him anymore. If I regard inequity in my heart, He shall not hear me; so it affects our prayer life, everything. Hidden sin opens the door to being: the voice you hear, is the one that condemns you, that's not the voice of Jesus.

So there are many voices, many impressions we have within; we have to learn how to distinguish what they are, and removing a few of the hindrances can help. One of the hindrances is sin, un-confessed, un-repented of. Another common hindrance, more common than you'd realise, is if we are disappointed with God. This is a bigger one than you realise, disappointed with God. If you are disappointed with someone, you're hurt, because they didn't do what you thought, the way you thought. What normally happens is, you close your heart up to them; and when you close your heart up to someone, then when you meet with that person, there's a distance between you, and you're not really receiving properly. So if we've been disappointed, we've prayed, sought God over something and nothing happened, there's a tendency to feel hurt, rejected and to blame God, and then shut down. This just hinders us, and here's the problem. If you're wanting to hear the voice of God, of course you're going to have to face this issue where you felt disappointed by God, [laughs] and I don't want to face that! So now we hold the hurt in our heart, it just blocks us. We need to resolve things, and if there's a hurt and a grief and a disappointment, God knows about it. The big one that's got the issue, that's not facing it, is ourselves.

Another area related to it, is unresolved grief and offences. Offences with people, and with God, are blockers to hearing from God. I just can't have my heart with offence in it. I can't stay that way, because I lose peace. It's just a horrible way of living your life. There's so much turmoil inside, about what someone did, and how hurt you are; you can't - it just drowns out the voice of God, which is very gentle. So when you try to hear the voice of God, if there's hurts and offences, resolve them very quickly. Another thing that can be a problem is mindsets, where you've got a mindset about something, or you've got something you've just set your mind to. For example a person's asking God to direct them over a relationship, but they've already got their mind made on it. They want to go in that relationship. They're just doing a nominal thing, asking God about it. You're not going to hear. You'll just hear what's in your heart already, so when we're approaching God for guidance and direction, we've got to come from a place where, whatever the Lord wants, we're happy with. If you come from the place: hey, this is what I've already got made up, I want You to confirm it, well that's crazy stuff. God's not going to rubber stamp your plans. You have to come with an open heart, and no mindsets about what it'll be. Mindsets often come out of hurts and offences, so come with a free heart.

Another thing that will hinder you, is an over-dependence on reasoning; where we've learnt to reason and work everything out, and we get stuck in our head trying to figure it out. You can't figure God out; so for most people, their thoughts, and the flow of their life, is off their reasoning; but God want us to learn listen to the thoughts from the heart. There are thoughts from your heart. These are the thoughts of the spirit man. We have the mind of Christ, so there's a flow from our heart and spirit, and we need to listen through that; then our thoughts of our mind - they can can be quite distorted. You can have an opinion about something, that's completely wrong. You can have an attitude that's completely wrong, but if I listen to the voice of my heart, then I can actually then re-think life. Now a lot of people, the moment they see something, go back into reasoning, trying to work it out. It just hinders them flowing with the spirit of God, so those are some of the most common hindrances.

Of course if you're loaded with demons that can make a huge problem too, just get full of confusion, and doubt, and condemnation. So the voice of doubt, and condemnation, and being put down, all of those voices do not come from God. They come from the demonic realm, through access to our mind. God loves you, He wants to talk with you; so what would be some of the simple keys on how you can receive from God? Lots of people have got different ways of doing it. Mark Virkler has written a brilliant book about Hearing the Voice of God, we've done a great course - how many have done that course by the way, Hearing the Voice of God? Well look at that, see, already so many.

Okay then, now here's what I have found helps. I'll just put it in language that's easy. The first one is: you need to free up your spirit. If your spirit is held down, because you're oppressed in your thoughts or emotions, you won't easily hear the voice of your spirit. So many times we come to listen to God, or want to hear God, our spirit is heavy, shut down. That's why, in the meetings, we encourage you to enter in, to give out something, to give something to God; so you can free your spirit up in a number of ways. One is by starting to express gratitude to Him. Another way is by praising Him, until you start to feel your soul and emotions move. Another way is by praying in tongues. Praying in tongues will stir your spirit up; so we need to actually do something, that our spirit is free.

It may well be that you've got clutter in your soul. Then bring it out, and put it out before Him, and remove the clutter. Write it down. Do something that gets it out of your head, where it buzzes around; put it down in front of the Lord, then arise and begin to praise Him, and worship Him; pray in tongues, so you feel your spirit flow. Sometimes it can take a little while to feel the flow of your spirit, hence worship meetings are great places for hearing the voice of God. I love our worship. Every time I come in here, I feel impressions of the Holy Spirit, straight away, because there's such a great atmosphere; and you can come in on what someone else has done; or what's even better, you can come and contribute, and build something, that everyone else can be blessed with. So the first one is free up your spirit. Soft music can help you. Constantly, when I'm preparing messages, I have some soft, what I call spontaneous, music flowing; because I've found if I have words, they tend to echo in my mind, and I wake up, they're just stuck in my mind; and so I found that with secular and spiritual songs, and I found if I just want to just be in a flow of hearing God, the best thing is just to have some spontaneous instrumental music going, it just really helps you. It's quite surprising. So those are some things, but free up your spirit, whatever it takes.

The second thing is: you need to focus your attention, or fix your thoughts. Most of us, our mind wanders all over. If you're going to hear the voice of God, it requires you centre, or fix, your thoughts on Him. I have noticed an interesting thing, that when I'm ministering to people, that if I fix my thoughts on trying to meet their need, I shut down in my spirit. If I fix my thoughts on myself, I shut down in my spirit; but if I actually just consciously begin to think, and meditate, that Jesus is there, I begin to see Him as a wonderful shepherd, see Him as a friend; my spirit opens up, and I can start to receive. Just learn a very simple thing: fix your thoughts. Fix your thoughts on Him; so you can use scriptures to create pictures of Him, but you've got to get rid of your external distractions, and internal distractions, and focus or fix your thoughts; and the best way is with a picture. If you're not good at a picture, try to perhaps meditate on a scripture, but focus your attention on Him. In order to see something from the Lord, you've got to look, or listen. You want to hear something, you've got to be listening, actually be attentive.

So the next thing is faith; I need to expect that God will speak. I need to expect God will give me something. I should expect God to do something. Why? Because He said: My sheep hear My voice; so there's a place of expectation, and that God will give something, that there'll be a quickening. How would it come, if God spoke to me? Well, it'll come just as a spontaneous picture, a spontaneous thought, just comes up into your thoughts, just like that - wow, where did that come from? Or a spontaneous word or an impression, just have an impression, or you may just have a feeling, an emotion. Sometimes in a meeting I'll be praying, I'll just be worshipping, and I'll feel this emotion come up. I think: oh, that's interesting. What's that emotion? What's causing that emotion? Then I begin to track what God's wanting to say; so you have to then identify what those sensations are you pick up. Of course if you're just a busy, busy person, you spend all your time on the internet, all your time chitter-chatter, all your time on the phone; and you don't develop the discipline of slowing down, and being still, and listening to your heart, you won't develop a walk with God that sustains you. You'll live out of highs and lows of experiences and meetings, rather than actually learning to yield to the voice of the Spirit.

When the spirit of God speaks to us, He'll never speak contrary to the word of God. It'll always align with the word of God. It'll always be very, very simply - it'll be aligned with what God's word said, and never violate the written word; so if you're getting things that aren't in the word of God, then beware, be cautious; because if it's contrary to the word of God, why would the spirit of God give you something, that He wrote something different about? It makes Him a liar; so if anything you receive by revelation is contrary to the Bible, then it's contrary to the spirit of God. You're getting it from somewhere else. Just shut it down, stop listening to that stuff.

The second thing it would do, is it always brings a fruit in your life of peace. When God gives you something, there's a witness in your spirit, there's a peace in your heart. It's always like that. The third thing is, that when God gives us something, it usually: comforts, edifies and exalts us. It lifts us up, it builds us up. It never condemns, and puts you down. He just doesn't do that. He says: I do not condemn you, I come to save, not condemn, not to judge. He does never condemn us; so if you're hearing condemning thoughts, they're not from God. Someone prophesies a condemning prophesy, that's not from God either - bless you brother, but I don't receive any word of it. You know, it's as simple as that. Why should you receive something that's contrary to scripture? Someone says things that are condemning and putting down, that's not God. He's not going to treat you that way. He'll talk with you with love, encouragement, and He'll tell you the truth, and He'll show you what to do to move forward; so things that come from God are very, very clear. Very simply, they're in line with the word of God, and the character of God; they produce a fruit of peace, and good results in our life. They witness with our spirit, they tend to edify and to build us up. They tend to strengthen us.

If someone prophesies, or there's some word you get about something in the future; if it comes to pass, it most likely was God. There are many reasons that things don't come to pass, and one of them is that we don't respond to them; so here's the thing then, very, very simple. It's not hard to hear the voice of God, not hard to move and to listen to God, but you've got to go quiet, and still your heart, and listen. Free your spirit, focus your attention, faith, expect God to speak to you and give you something; feel or identify what you have; and then respond and act on it. It really helps if you're identifying things to journal them, write them down. What did God say to you?

So let's just close our eyes right now. Father, I just thank You that You are speaking to us, even today, as again in every Sunday, you have been speaking to us. I want you just to close your eyes for just a moment. I want to ask you two questions. What impression, what impressed you in today's service? What impression came into your heart? You may have not thought of it as being God speaking to you. It could have been during the worship, during something someone said, or did, during the meeting, or during this message. But what did God speak to you? What impression did you get that touched you? What impressed you today? Think about that. The second question is, what will you do about that?

So I want you just to think about that. What did God say that impressed your heart? What impression did you get? It could be totally unrelated to anything I have said, but nevertheless there was an impression you got, so have a think about it. If you can't answer that, then slow down and say: I wonder why I didn't feel anything, or sense anything? So just talk with the person next to you, and share what impressed you, what impressed you. My sheep hear My voice - what impressed you? Secondly, say what you're going to do about it. Have a think about that. You may not even know Jesus. You may not be a Christian yet, but God can still have spoken to your heart.

How many people, you can identify clearly, what it was, God was speaking to you in the service today, you know God spoke to you about something? Well that's a lot of hands up here; okay then, very, very good. Okay, how many of you know what you're going to do as a result of that? That's fantastic, wonderful, great. Okay, take it away, and remember to do it. How many of you, it was a bit of a struggle; in fact actually, you found a bit of a struggle over it, you felt a bit under pressure, and nothing seemed to come? Just put your hand up if that was you? Some of us will identify, let's just be honest. Okay, there's not so many, okay then. So what I'd like to do over the next season in the church, is at the end of our message each time, just ask the question: what did God impress you with today? What was impressed on you? What were you touched by, in the service today? What impressions did you receive, identify what they are; and then ask the question: what are you going to do about what God was showing you. Then we'll finish up our service.

If God says by His spirit: He says take heed what the Spirit is saying to the churches; it'd be really great for us to be aware what God is saying, articulate it, and then know what we've got to do to respond. Amen. My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me. In other words, believers hear, and can identify what God is saying, then do something to put it into action.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Mk.1:17-18 ““Follow Me and I will make you become fishers of men. They immediately left their nets and followed Him”

· Each of us is called by God to be connected to Jesus and to “Follow Him”.

· Foundational to following Jesus is hearing and responding to Him speaking.

2. Communication is Essential to Relationship

· Jn.10:27 “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”.

· If we belong to Christ we have the capacity to hear Him speak to us.

· Communication is essential to cultivate and develop relations.

Communication = active listening and responding.

· Without communication relationships wither and die, they become sterile.

· When did you last hear God speak to you?

What did He say to you?

What are you doing about it? – How are you responding?

· Jesus cautions (i) Gospels: He that have ears to hear – let him hear (8x)

(ii) Revelations: He that has an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches (7x)

· Mk.4:23-25 “For whoever has (ears to hear) more shall be given”.

· God speaks to us individually and corporately we must listen and respond!

· When we are no longer hearing the Holy Spirit we become passive, spiritually asleep.

· Two helps (i) Sundays: Bring Bible – take notes – listen for the Holy Spirit

(ii) Small Group: Ask one another questions – What is the Holy Spirit saying to you? How are you responding?

3. What does the Voice of God sound like?

· 1 Cor.6:17 “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”.

· We are joined spirit to spirit with Jesus – constantly connected to Him.

· He lives within our hearts and desires to reveal Himself within us.

· The more we become aware of His presence the easier to hear His voice.

· He is not some nebulous force but a person with thoughts, feelings, personality.

· Jn.7:37-39 “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”.

· God’s spirit within us “flows” like a river = is spontaneous, moving.

· Western lifestyle focus on the mind and reason – Bible focus is on being Spirit conscious.

· The movement of the Holy Spirit is flowing, spontaneous words, thoughts, pictures, impressions and feelings.

· God’s voice is like a still small voice within us (1 Kg.19:12).

4. Common Hindrances to Hearing God Speak

· Listening to God =- listening in to spontaneous words, thoughts, pictures, impressions, feelings within. These are easily blocked or hindered.

· Common Hindrances:

i) Hidden sins iv) Having “mind-sets” or idols in the heart

ii) Disappointment with God v) Over dependence on mind and reasoning

iii) Unresolved grief and offence

vi) Demonic oppression

· Inner impressions that we receive can come from three different sources

(i) Self – selfish

(ii) Evil Spirits – evil, demanding

(iii) Holy Spirit – good!

5. Keys to Hearing the Holy Spirit speak (Hab.2:2)

(i) Free Up Your Spirit

· If your spirit is weighed down there is little or no flow.

· Speak in tongues – activate your spirit (1 Cor. 14:14,4)

· Soft music can help.

(ii) Focus Your Thoughts

· Fix your thoughts upon Jesus – use a picture from Scripture.

· Remove external distractions.

· Press through internal distractions by focussing/fixing your thoughts.

· In order to see you need to look – fix your mind on Jesus the Source.

(iii) Faith – Expect to Receive

· Expect to receive spontaneous thoughts, words, impressions, pictures, feelings as you still your heart and look.

· It is easy to think that God won’t speak to me.

· Faith is based on what God says “My sheep hear my voice!”

· Voice =NT5456= Phone = sound, frequency, tone, voice, words.

(iv) Feel – Identify the Impressions You Receive

· Identify the flow of thoughts, ideas, words, pictures, impressions.

· Value them as being a flow of the River of God.

· Write them down (journal) expecting more to come.

6. Process What You have Received

Test it Respond to It

· Agree with the Word of God? What must I do?

· Edify, Comfort or Exhort?

· Open to the Counsel of Others?

· Exalt Jesus or Self?

· Fruit of Peace?

Hearing the Voice of God (4 of 6)

Sun 25 Nov 2012 PM  « Back to Top

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Adam heard God speaking to him when he was in the Garden, even though he'd sinned and walked away from God. People can hear the voice of God. We need to learn what it's like and how to recognise it. Once you become a believer Jesus expects not only would you hear His voice clearly, but you would actually respond and follow Him. So for a believer the number one thing that I would say if you have to learn anything in your life, this is the thing you'd want to learn; how can I build a relationship with Jesus and hear His voice consistently?

It was some years ago, we had a bit of an old car, a station wagon. You know, in those days you just jammed all the kids in the station wagon; and we were going through a time or a season in the church when we were facing tremendous spiritual pressure. A lot of bad stuff happened, and I had this case with - my file with the police was very, very big. Anyway we were home one night, and I looked outside, and my car's gone, and apparently the kids had seen it drive down the drive and go, but they didn't think it was anyone else, but someone had stolen our car. They'd got into it, and started the thing up, and drove the station wagon off; and I remember thinking: we've got no way of replacing this thing. This is a disaster for us, and I remember just thinking: Lord, what do I do about this. So I rung up the police, and I reported: hey, my car's been stolen. I gave them the number plate; there's this Ford Falcon station wagon, and it's our family wagon, and here's the number. They said: oh, you'll never get that back.

You know something rose up inside me, and I said: we'll see; and I got off the phone, and I felt the Lord impress in my heart that scripture when David had been ripped off, and the Lord spoke to him and said: pursue, overtake, recover all. So Joy and I just stood in prayer, and we agreed. We agreed on certain things, so we said: Lord, we just speak right now, we forbid the stealing of our car. We command that car to be returned. Father, we pray the police will discover the man, we pray the conviction of the Holy Spirit will come on him, and that we will end up better at the end, than we have at the beginning. So we stood in prayer, and then went to bed. It was about 11 o'clock at night I suppose. We woke up at one, and there's a phone call, and I thought: oh, who's ringing me at one? This is a bad time to ring. It was the police, they said: we found your car. I said: really? This is the car that wasn't going to be found, that was gone, going to be broken up for parts? They said: yep, we've found it.

So anyway we were able to go get the car, and have it restored, and got it back home again; so number one, now I had a look at the petrol tank, and blow me down it had been empty when it had been stolen, and he couldn't drive it. Now it was full of gas - so I'm one up already. Anyway, so the next day, you know, the police go through their thing; so next day I'm out there cleaning the car, and trying to tidy it up, thinking: I wonder how the kids allowed this to be pushed down the drive, and someone steal it like this. I heard this sort of shuffling around behind me, I looked around and there's a young guy there, and I said: hello, how are you? What can I do for you? He said: I'm the young man who stole your car. I said: really? Wow, I'm glad to meet you. I hear they caught up with you. He said: yes, they did, but when I found it was a Pastor I felt - I've been tormented all night. He said: I haven't been able to sleep all night. I've felt so bad all night, I just haven't been able to sleep; so he said: I've never done it. I've stolen a lot of things in my life, and I've never done this before. He said: I wanted to apologise for taking your car.

I said: apology accepted. I said: I believe, we're a Pastor, we pray, and we've been praying for you. We prayed that God would touch your life; and I began to ask him some questions, and his story. We took him in, and he had a meal with us. This is the guy that stole the car - so we had a meal, introduced him to all the family, and that was I think Saturday. The next day, he was in church on Sunday, and we led him to the Lord, and his life was blessed, so it was actually able to turn it around completely. Now not all stories end like that. I've had other thefts that didn't turn out that way, but on the other hand, God is able to turn everything around for our good. Do you reckon that? The other big thing is, to keep your attitude sweet.

Alright then, I want you to open you Bible with me in John, Chapter 10. I want to share with you tonight, what I shared this morning, on hearing the voice of God; because of all the things, it's the most important for you to be able to do in your life, is to know when God is talking to you. God talks to us, it's got to be important. In fact, I can think of times God spoke to me, and my whole life changed. Just one example, I can remember like it was yesterday, standing doing my lawns and I was in Dannevirke. There I was with the lawnmower, chundering through all the lawns, a huge amount of lawns we had to do then, and in the middle of this [dok-dok-dok] with the mower, I heard God speak to me. He began to speak to me, and talk to me, about what He wanted for my life. I wasn't praying, or doing anything much, just praying in tongues a little bit. It was a sunny, hot day, and I'm doing the lawns, not really thinking of anything very spiritual. Suddenly in the middle of it, God's voice came; and He began to speak to me about what He had for me, about Him calling me to be a Pastor, calling me to lead His people, calling me to a place of leadership. I had no desire for such a thing at all. I said: I don't think so, I've actually got other things I'm really busy doing, I don't really want to be the leader of a church at all; and I'm really quite full, doing what I'm doing already.

He said: no, this is what I've called you to do. I'm going to make it happen. I said: well You'll have to make it happen, because I'm not putting myself forward; and I watched. It was about three months, from when He spoke to me doing the lawns, and I was ordained and sent in as Pastor of the church, and I didn't do a thing. It just all seemed to happen. It unfolded, and unravelled, and it was because of many other things of course, but here's the point: my life changed the day I heard God speak. If you were to hear God speak to you, it could change your future. It could change your future forever; so I want to just talk to you about hearing the voice of God, so we'll just have a look at a couple of scriptures first of all. Let's have a look in John, Chapter 10, Jesus talking about thieves and robbers and good shepherds. Verse 27, He says: My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. My sheep hear My voice. Here's the deal: You can hear the voice of God. Now even if you don't know Jesus, even if you're not saved, you can still hear the voice of God. You have the capacity to hear God speak to you.

Adam heard God speaking to him, when he was in the Garden; even though he'd sinned, and walked away from God. People can hear the voice of God. We need to learn what it's like, and how to recognise it. Once you become a believer, Jesus expects, not only would you hear His voice clearly, but you would actually respond and follow Him. So for a believer, the number one thing that I would say, if you have to learn anything in your life, this is the thing you'd want to learn: how can I build a relationship with Jesus, and hear His voice consistently? Think about this: All relationships depend on communication. If there's no communication, then what happens to that relationship? It just begins to diminish, and wither - I see you nodding over there it's right. It's right, isn't it. Relationships wither, if there's no communication. Communication requires that I have a heart to listen, to hear and respond to the other person; so communication's always two-way. What kind of relationship will we be having with God, if all we do is talk to Him, and we never hear from Him? What kind of relationship is that? See, God wants you to have a relationship, and one of the greatest things to cultivate, is your capacity to hear Him speak. So we want to have a look. Notice what He says in John, Chapter 10. We'll read it in another couple of verses. It says in Verse 4, it says: the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice. When we were in Dannevirke, we had a pet sheep. I didn't know anything about sheep, I was from the city, so we decided we'd get a pet lamb. We got the pet lamb, the farmer gave us a pet lamb, we thought it was a cute little lamb, and I found out all the problems with cute little lambs - that grow up. Finally we had this sheep, and here's an interesting thing about the sheep: it recognised my voice.

I would walk home from school - I was just over the road, living over the road, and the sheep would be around the back, and all I would have to do was call out, Sheepy - or Christmas dinner! [Laughs] I'd call out Sheepy, and what would happen is, immediately, it would just roar around the side of the house, and come up to where I was. If I just whistled, that was all it took. It would come around, it would come up, and it would come exactly to where I was. That's the problem, if you've got pet sheep, they just become very, very friendly, but they learn to recognise your voice. They know who you are, they recognise the voice. My mother came to look after the children at one stage. Her voice, they did not know, the sheep did not know; so my mother had no control over the sheep whatsoever, just couldn't get it to do anything. It was just a menace for her, and pooped all over the beans; but however the thing is, that the sheep learn the sound of the voice.

That's what Jesus said. He said My sheep hear My voice. In other words, they recognise the tone, or the frequency, or the sound, of Me speaking to them and they respond. So what I want to do is to open up for you just some very simple things on hearing the voice of God. Here's an interesting scripture. I want you to have a look at this one here, before we go on and give you the practical keys, in Mark, Chapter 4 and Verse 24, he said: take heed what you hear, or how you hear; because the measure you use, it will be measured to you; to those who hear, more will be given. Whoever has, to him, more will be given. So here's what he's saying. He's talking about having an ear to hear. About eight times in the New Testament in the gospels, Jesus says: have an ear to hear. In other words, it's important to learn to listen and recognise God speaking, and respond; and this is what he says. To those who respond to what God's saying, He gives you more, and you have abundance. If we don't respond to what God says, then what we think we have, we lose; or what he's saying in another way round, putting it a different way, he's saying this: your relationship with God will increase and deepen and grow, if you continually respond to what you're hearing Him say; but if we ignore what He's saying, then our ears and heart become dull, we don't hear so much any more; and we think we're doing well as a believer, but we're not really at all.

So here's a couple of questions. When did you last hear the voice of God? When did you last hear God speak to you? What did He say to you? Have you done what He said? Have you responded to what He said? When we respond to what He says, it unlocks blessing, and the flow of His spirit in our life. So if it's a long time since you've heard God, then you've got a problem in your relationship with Him. You say: no I haven't, I don't think I have, I'm coming to church and I go to a meeting. No, no, no, no, coming to church is good, but it's no substitute for personally connecting with God.

In 1 Corinthians 6:17, it says: he that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit with the Lord. We are joined to the Lord. When you become a believer, the spirit of God enters your life, you become one spirit. You and the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of God, are joined; so that means it's possible for you to receive all the time, input/communication from the Holy Spirit. He is within you. Jesus, when He left, He said: now I'm going; but He said: I will not leave you an orphan, I'll not leave you alone, I will give you another comforter, the Holy Spirit, spirit of truth. He will lead you into all truth. So the spirit of God has come to live inside us. We are joined one spirit to the Lord, so here's the first key. The first key we see is, if I'm going to hear God, I will hear Him within my spirit, because that's where I'm joined to God. That's where I'm joined to God.

The second thing it tells us is this. It says in John 7:38-39, Jesus said: out of your innermost being, will flow rivers of living water; and He was speaking about the Holy Spirit, and the ministry of the spirit. So here's the second key: The movement of the spirit of God to speak to you, comes as a flow like a river. Now we need to understand, that if we're going to hear God, we're going to hear Him from our heart, from our spirit, from our inner man; so if you are looking for God to guide you from outside, you're going to be mislead very easily. If you're looking for God to guide you by circumstances, you're going to be mislead very, very easily, because good circumstances do not mean we're in the will of God. There's a story in the Bible, where the weather looked great, everyone thought it was good to get on the ship, but Paul, hearing from God, said: no, I perceive that if we continue this journey, it's going to end in disaster. But everyone believed the captain, and the good conditions, and the good circumstances, and the story is history of course; the boat sank, and they lost the whole cargo. It cost them a lot of money not to listen to the voice of God, so circumstances looked good, but actually it was going to be a disaster.

Just the same, circumstances can look difficult, and look against us, but that does not mean God is not leading you that way. So you can't look outside you for guidance. You've got to learn to look within, and look into the word of God, and listen to the spirit of God, if you're going to let God guide you. So there's some very simple things: number one, that we're joined to the spirit, guidance will come from the spirit within; secondly, it'll come like a flow. Now we need to understand this. God has designed you. You have a mind and a brain, you can think. How many can think clearly? There's one or two - there's three people can think clearly, the rest are quite confused. Okay, alright - but we have a capacity to think and to reason, work stuff out. So the language of your head, and the language of your heart, are very different in nature. The language of your head, is quite different to the language of your heart. If God is going to speak to you, He'll speak from your heart and spirit, and the way He'll speak will be different to the way, or the language, of your head.

The language of your head is like this. First of all, it's very logical. We tend to reason, so: hmm, I'm facing this problem, what should I do? So we get into reasoning mode, we try to figure it out. So the language of your mind, or thinking, is a language of reason, it's a reason of logic. It's a language where you try to work things out, one, two, three. Well if I do this, then that may happen. If I do something different, then this might happen. It's about reasoning and figuring things out. How many know what I'm talking about here? In fact actually if you are doing some figuring things out, scientists say that the left side of your brain is incredibly active and busy, because that's where you process, and your thoughts come. So when we're listening to the language of our head, it's a language of structure, a language of order, it's a language of thoughts, one after the other. It's reasoning, but we can't reason our way into divine guidance. You can't reason your way, into the things of God.

We need to receive by revelation, and we receive from our heart; so the language of your heart is quite different. The Bible says: it is a flow. It is a flow; that means it's spontaneous. If you ever watch a river, rivers don't sort of go: one, two, three, four. Rivers sort of flow, and move, and they bubble, and they're full of life, so He's using the language of a river, saying that the movement of the spirit of God within you, to speak to you; one, it's like a river, it is spontaneous, it comes as a movement or a flow, from inside you. What kind of flow does it come as? It comes as a flow of pictures, or images; it comes as a flow of words; it comes as a flow of thoughts, or ideas; it comes as a flow of impressions, where you sense something or feel something. It comes as a flow, sometimes, of emotions; let me give you an example. How many of you have been in a movie, and there was some certain point in the movie, maybe there was someone and he was an underdog, and finally he comes and he wins some great - he rises above all circumstances, and he suddenly achieves and he wins and he gets a great breakthrough? Often it's very easy to feel emotional.

You feel something rise up, and you think: I wonder why I'm feeling tears; or we see one of our runners in the Olympic Games, and they run the distance, and they pass everyone there, then you see them on the dais, and they put on the medal, and they play the New Zealand anthem. You feel your heart sort of - you feel emotions rising up inside. In other words, the picture of someone achieving and winning a prize, stirs something in the heart; so emotions can be evidence of movement in your heart. Thoughts and spontaneous pictures are evidence of movement in your heart, so we need to understand, if God's going to speak to me, I've got to learn how to tune into the flow from my heart. There's a verse in the Old Testament, it's found in the Book of Habakkuk, Chapter 2, this is what he says: I will stand on the watch, or I'll set me on the watch, and I will look to see what God will say to me. So in other words, notice this, he said: I will position myself.

He's a watchman. He's a man of prayer, so when he says: I'll set myself on the watch; he's saying: I will position myself, and then I will look to see what God will say to me. In other words, he's implying that many of the ways God speaks to us, we see something; and then how I'll respond when God speaks to me. So let me just give you first of all, some simple reasons why people struggle to get something from God, so we just get that out of the way; and then I'll give you just the very simple steps, or process, that will help you. You begin to practice these things, you can begin to start to flow, and hear the voice of God. I'd love you, at the end of the meeting, to just in a few minutes, just to open your heart to see what God is wanting to say to you. What an amazing thing, if you can go away, and you say: God spoke to me in the meeting tonight. Then I'd love to pray for a few of you, and we'll see what God will say to you - we'll listen to God.

So here's some of the reasons that we get blocks. Remember, if we're going to hear from God, it will come as a flow from inside; so if you have sin in your life, you have deliberate things wrong, what that will do is, it'll tend to give a voice of condemnation. You'll hear constantly, you're reminded about what's wrong. Hidden sin blocks, or hinders, the flow of the spirit of God talking to you, because what God's wanting to tell you about is your sin, and if you don't want to deal with your sin, then there's kind of like this block inside. God says: I want to talk about that sin. I want you to get out of it. I want you to repent, want you to get right, want you to get flowing with me again; and you're saying: I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to even go there. So if I'm going to hear the voice of God, I've got to make a decision that things that offend Him, I'll remove them consciously, as I'm aware of them. So the first thing is, hidden sin can cause a block in our heart.

The second thing that can cause blocks to us hearing the voice of God, the second thing. very simply is: if I'm disappointed with God. I've found many, many Christians are not hearing God anymore, because they had a difficult situation in which they were hurt and disappointed. When we're disappointed, there's a grief and a pain gets in our life; we don't understand why this happened like it did. We feel God somehow has not been fair to us. Now how are you going to hear God, if you've got an attitude to Him? You know if you meet someone, and you've got a bit of an attitude and you're disappointed in them, you feel the wall go up the moment you see them. You notice with Adam, the moment God came to him, he went and hid. So if we are disappointed with God, and holding grief in our heart, it can block hearing God. What you're better to do, is just face your disappointment, and say: God, we've been needing to talk for a long time, and I've been disappointed, and I shut down my heart, and I drew back from you. I've just been going through the motions of being a Christian, but I'm not connected. Then begin to talk to Him about your disappointment. He already knows about it - you're the one who won't face it and admit it - so disappointment.

The other thing is griefs and offences, grief and offence. So we can have situations which cause grief or which offend us; we get an attitude in our heart. Those things can be just blocks, like a stone in the heart, like they harden up your heart, and build a wall that stops you receiving. So if we're going to come near to God, the Bible says: when you come to pray, forgive; so don't come holding things against people. That creates issues or blocks in the heart, it creates like a lot of noise, that stops you being sensitive; because remember, if we're going to hear the voice of God, we're going to have to listen to our heart; and if you don't want to go there, that's going to be a problem. I was talking with one person who asked for prayer, and the person was wanting to be prayed, ministered; and I began to say: well you know, one of the things you need to do is to face some of the feelings, some of the issues of conflict you've never faced before; and her whole face screwed up - she didn't want to do it. I said: well what you're wanting is for God to solve your problem, without you being willing to look at your problem, and talk to Him about it. You'll have to talk to Him about it. You'll have to bring out what's in your heart to Him.

Another thing that stops us hearing the voice of God, is a mindset. Now a mindset means, you've fixed your thinking; so therefore, anything that's contrary to that, you're not going to hear it; you've got a mindset. If you've got a mindset that all Arabs are terrorists, you know what's going to happen when you meet an Arab? Immediately, he's a terrorist. In your mind, he's a terrorist. Now, of course, not all Arabs are terrorists. This is just actually a mindset; but what it'll do, it'll stop you connecting with that person. It'll create a block immediately, because you've got this mindset; and so many times, one of the reasons we struggle to hear from God, is because we have a mindset about how it will happen, or what He needs to say, or what we want Him to do; a mindset, or we have something we've already set on. So for example, I've had people come, and they want to share with me about a relationship; but when I try to point out the problems in the relationship that need to be addressed, they don't want to hear. They've got a mindset, that blocks everything contrary to what they think; and so they reject counsel, they reject the voice of God, to pursue what they want to pursue. I've had that over and over and over again, and so this is a problem. Mindset is a fixed way of looking at something, and people have many mindsets about God, and about life, and about all kinds of things; finances. If you have mindsets, then you have literally constructed a wall, that stops you receiving anything contrary to it. That's something that can block you off. You can have a mindset about men, a mindset about women, a mindset about finances, a mindset about who you are, you can have all kinds of mindsets. So these are some of the things that can just create blocks, and we need to just be aware of them.

Of course the last two, one of them can be demonic oppression. Sometimes the reason you can't hear God is you're too oppressed, just got too much heaviness. Have you ever noticed if you get depressed, you don't hear God? Every noticed when you're depressed? Some people don't get depressed, but many of us have experienced depression at various times. When you're depressed, there's like a spirit sits over your mind, and your mind clouds, and you can't receive from the Holy Spirit. Until you break that depression, you don't hear God; because it's a demonic spirit, that's influencing your mind, instead of the spirit of God influencing your mind. Then the last one, and one of the major reasons people don't receive, or hear from, the spirit of God, is they just lean into their own reasoning all the time, and try to work everything out. We have to learn to shift, and make changes, to hear the voice of God.

So having shared those things, how many can identify with at least one of those things; you can say: man, there's one of those I've struggled with, one of those I've wrestled with? That's great, that's very honest; so the question then would be: if you've identified one thing blocking you to hearing the voice of God, what will you do to address it? What will you do to address it? I need to hear God's voice. Why? Because my life is committed to Him. I'm walking with Him. I'm in a relationship with Him. I need to know Him speaking to me. I need Him to encourage me, I need to hear His voice, I need to get His perspectives, I need to know what I should do. I need to know those things, and if I've got blocks that hinder that, I need to address them. So what will you do about the block you've got? When will you do it? You want to write down if you're taking notes, write down this is the block, I'm aware of it, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to deal with it, and I'll just start on it this week. If you need help, get some help, just deal with it, get it out of the way.

Okay then, so let me give you several simple ways that we can receive, or hear, or recognise the voice of the spirit of God; and then I want to give you some checks, some things because I know a lot of people say: well God told me this, God told me that, and I look at them and I think: you are weird, weird plus! So we want to be able to hear God without the weirdness factor, okay? So I'll give you several checks to stop the weirdness factor creeping in.

So if I'm going to hear the voice of God, here's several practical things you can do. Number one, free up your spirit. If you are going to hear the voice of God, it's going to be from within, it's going to be a flow. You need to literally free up the flow, from within your spirit. Now what are the ways you could do that? There's quite simple ways you can do it, it's not very hard. Speaking in tongues is a way of freeing up your spirit. You just get a flow, when you speak in tongues. Your spirit is flowing, your spirit is praying. Here's another thing you could do, is you start to begin to thank God, and begin to recognise and remember the blessings, and begin to express gratitude to Him. Gratitude will cause your spirit to lift up, see? That's another way. Begin to start to praise Him, your spirit starts to come up; so there's several things I can do, that will free up my spirit. Sometimes the reason your spirit is uptight, and there's no flow, is because you've got a conflict, or something you're anxious about, so when you try to listen to God, you just hear this thing talking, and yelling in your mind.

The voice of God is gentle. It's quite light. It's easily stopped, so if I've got noisy, noise in my mind, and distracting, dominating thoughts, I have to literally aggressively cast them, push them out of the way, otherwise I'm not going to hear from God. So number one, free up your spirit. Number two, there's a need to focus your thoughts, or to fix your thoughts, towards God. So how do you do that? You are literally having to eliminate distractions. Now how do you fix your thoughts? One of the best ways you can fix your thoughts, is with a picture. If you were to take a scripture, and the Bible says that Jesus is ever before me; and you were to begin to picture, I wonder what it looks like for Jesus to be before me? I'll just begin to picture Him standing there, He is my friend, and He's near me, and I will fix my attention on Him, that He is near me. Then what will happen is, the fixing of your attention with a picture, starts to cause everything else to just diminish, as you fix your mind; so you fix your mind on Jesus, the person. It helps to put a picture there, but it's not the picture we're focussed on. It just helps you focus your thoughts.

The third thing is, when you focus or fix your thoughts on Jesus, there needs to be faith. You need to expect Him to say something to you. You need to expect Him to speak to you. Faith means: I believe what God says. He says: My sheep hear My voice, so it shouldn't be hard for me to hear His voice. Probably, I doubt it, because it seems so easy; and it seems to be such an easy thing, I doubt that it's really God. When people are listening to the voice of God, here's the thing. It will be like an impression, or gentle flow of thoughts. It's so light, it can seem as though it's your thoughts, and that's because they are your thoughts in your head, but they've come from the Holy Spirit. There are lots of thoughts can get in your head. Other thoughts that are centred, or come from yourself, they generally are focussed on yourself. Thoughts that come from demons, generally are very demanding and pressuring, and they're often evil in intent; but the thoughts that come from God are usually gentle, and life-giving, and quite easily stopped. So I need to fix my mind on the Lord, expecting Him to give me something, for something to begin to come.

Then the fourth thing, here's a simple key. Feel what you're thinking, feel or identify what you're getting, what you are receiving. Identify the impressions you get. For example, how many of you have read through a chapter of the Bible, and one verse is kind of lit up? It seemed like it just seemed to stand out to you, you just noticed it? You looked at the whole page, and then one, you just seemed to be drawn to it, didn't know anything about it, but seemed to be drawn. How many have had that experience? Okay, alright. I'll tell you what that is. That is the Holy Spirit drawing your attention, He wants to speak to you out of that verse. So even though you've looked at, and read the whole chapter, the one that you felt the draw to, that is where the spirit of God wants you to go to, and take time to ponder and think and dwell in it, because He wants to speak to you from that. It's in fixing your mind on it, and allowing yourself to think about it, you begin to open up to the thoughts of God, and the insights from the Holy Spirit. That's how it comes to you. It's how I get messages together.

I can do all the study, but study is using your natural mind, your logical processes; you look up a concordance, you look up a dictionary, you look at the verses, you find this, find that, blah blah blah, but all of that's just logical. What is needed, is the flow of the spirit, to illuminate what's important; put together what you haven't recognised before, to connect ideas with it, you haven't seen before. That requires a flow of the spirit to do that; so to do that, I've got to stop being in the study mode, and actually get into a pondering, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to me through His words. I often find that works in the shower. Why does it work in the shower? I can hear God better in the shower, than in the study. Well it's really quite simple, because in the shower, you're relaxed. In the shower, you don't have books and things around you, you've just got what you've got in you, and you have a chance to just ponder while you relax.

So I'm just relaxing in the shower, and thoughts start to come, oh my! I just see exactly what it is. Sometimes I've found just going to bed at night, thinking about something from the word of God, that God was drawing my attention to; I wake up the next morning, and as I'm waking up, ideas are coming to my mind. They're coming from the spirit of God. Now remember this, it's so gentle and light, it feels like your own thoughts. It feels like it's just from you. You've got to learn to recognise the thoughts that come from God, so it helps if you write them down, and as you write them down or journal them, you can often get in a flow of writing. It helps if you act on what God says, because He says: if you'll act on what He gives you, He'll give you more. So if you're reading a chapter, and one verse comes to mind, and you take time and attention to look at it, God promises He'll give you more. He'll start to open up what He's wanting to speak to you, out of that situation.

Now it's very gentle. It's a very gentle flow. It's so gentle, it hardly feels like anything. That's why you've got to silence all the noise inside, free up your spirit with gratitude and praise, letting things go to God, focussing your attention on Him, expecting for Him to give you something; and then identify the impressions, the things you feel. I will sometimes, when I'm even studying or looking for messages, or things like that, I'll just feel no life on something. It's good but there's no quickening, no life on that. Wherever the spirit is moving, there's something comes alive, so you could have a whole page of things you're reading and look at, but there's just one you feel you're drawn to. That's where the life will be. That's where the spirit is leading you, and so it's very, very simple. Now this is not just something that happens once, or often, or when you're in a prayer meeting. This is something you build a daily relationship with God, time in His word, time in prayer, looking for God to speak to you; and if you're serious, you write down the things God's saying to you.

I have in my iPad, as I've been seeking guidance just recently; I have every little piece of guidance that I felt God giving me, is itemised in my iPad under 'Guidance.' Why? Because each little thing itself may not be very much, but together they form a consistent, and compelling, direction from the spirit of God. Are you getting the idea? Remember, it's not in the big; it's in the little. Jesus said: the kingdom of heaven is like the sower that sows the seed, if you don't understand the power of the seed, the devil will take the seed away. I believe that many of us, God has sown seeds to you, and given thoughts and ideas; but because you didn't understand it, and thought it was so little, you let the devil take it away, didn't understand it's significance in changing your life. This is one of the problems. When God gives us things, it's very, very little; but when we give ourselves to dwelling on it, pondering on it, thinking about it, asking Him for further insight, it grows. Within the seed, is a tree; so in all aspects of our life, within the seed is a tree. It's in the little thing, if you'll give yourself to it, and develop it, it begins to grow - - so hearing the voice of God.

Now let me just finish on how not to become an idiot at the end of it - we'll probably put it under that heading - or you could put it down under the thing of guidelines as to whether you heard the voice of God; but how not to become a spiritual idiot, how about we put it that way? So there's a few ways that people become a spiritual idiot, let me just give them to you. These are cautions about impressions you receive. Number one, here's the first question: does it agree with the word of God? If what you're receiving, is just contrary to what the Bible says - the Holy Ghost's not going to contradict Himself. I had some people say: oh, I just feel I prayed, and we feel it's right to move in with one another, and live together; and I say: what, you mean you're going to be having sexual relationships? How can the Holy Spirit be leading you to do that, when He says: abstain from fornication? Come on, help me understand how the one who wrote the Bible, now is telling you a different story,, and it's your story, it's so different because it's about you?

Actually this is what He says, so don't say that's guidance from God. That's coming from your own heart, it's all about you. So if it doesn't agree with the word of God - I hear all kinds of weirdness come, and people say: God told me this, God told me that, God told me, all kinds of things. I think: this is just weirdness. You're hearing from yourself; or you're hearing, even worse, from demonic spirits. If it's from the spirit of God, it'll never contradict the Bible. It may highlight things we haven't been aware of, and it may bring understanding of things, but it'll always have a reference base in the Bible, so your spiritual experiences need to be anchored back to the word of God. Getting the idea? How many can think of some weirdness already? [Laughs] Okay. Here's the second thing: what you're getting, does it edify, and exhort you, and stir you up, and build you up; or does it put you down?

If it lifts you up, then it's probably the spirit of God. If it puts you down, it's probably demonic in origin. That's quite simple isn't it? God does not condemn; He lifts us up. Now sometimes the things He speaks to us are a little bit painful. I remember when I was having some time downloading to God, because I was in a very painful situation; and then there was a silence, and I know that silence, He's about to talk to me; and He said this. He said: I'm not committed to your comfort, I'm committed to your character. Then He began to nail me on something. He said: what you did was wrong; and I knew that was God. I didn't feel condemned. It was specific. It was exactly about something I knew what I'd done, and it gave me hope that if I changed, I would see something happen. I remember being in a meeting one time, I walked in there, there was this guy in a wheelchair. I looked and I thought: oh no, a guy in a wheelchair, oh no, no, I don't like wheelchairs. I felt my heart sink with unbelief. As I walked to my seat, the Lord said: you've got a bad attitude. He just said it: you've got a bad attitude.

Now that's not putting me down, that's just saying: you have an attitude, it's a bad one, and I needed to repent. I just said: Lord, I just repent straight away. He said: now this is what I want you to do. I want you to meditate in healing, and I want you to picture and see that man healed. I want you to believe for Him to get up tonight, and come out of that wheelchair; so I spent some time through the service while worshipping, meditating, then faith suddenly came into my heart. How did it happen? I suddenly - now I was doing this, meditating on him being healed by Jesus, Jesus coming over, touching him and being healed and stepping up. I was imagining it in my imagination, and then suddenly, the picture of God just suddenly flashed into my mind, and I saw him stand up. Whoa! Heal and walk. I got very excited, because I'd never seen that happen before; and we got praying for some people, then eventually I prayed for him, and sure enough, he got up, he not only walked, he ran! [Laughter]

Now, notice the things in there: the correction from the Lord was quite straight, and quite specific, but it was for good. It never gave condemnation. It gave a clear directive how to get out of it. Not only that, it produced a good fruit, so I know it came from God. Okay, number one, the word of God; number two, it edifies, exhorts and comforts. It does you good, lifts you and blesses you; third, here's a good one - it's open to the counsel of others. Now this is where a lot of people go off the rails, this is where they become just spiritually stupid, and do crazy stuff. If I've got something from God - in James 3 it says: the wisdom of love is teachable, and approachable, and open to reason, it's open to being talked about it; so if you've got guidance from God, it should be able to stand in the light with spiritually mature people. So if God says He's told you to do something, and you put it out before some spiritually mature people, and ask for their counsel; if it's God, it'll stand the test. If it isn't God, they'll say: no, we don't think that's God. Now that doesn't mean they're against you, or they're not hearing God. It means you counsel is getting the light of day, it's getting scrutiny.

One of the most common ways I've seen people go off the rails, is this; they just have no one to run their counsel by, because they don't build relationships with people that could give them advice. This is crazy nonsense. In the counsel of many, plans are established; do in getting direction that's another area. A fourth one: it brings a fruit of peace in our life, and it exalts Jesus and lifts Him up. So there's just some simple things. Now I want you just to close your eyes for a moment. I want you just to stop for a minute now, just stop, now we're just going to finish the service up and I'm going to pray for a few people; but here's the first thing I'd like to ask: What impressions, or wha impressed you tonight? As you think about tonight's service, was there some point where something impressed your heart? You felt something stir, because of what was said or done or happened? What was that thing that impressed you? Try and identify it right now.

How many of you felt, as you felt that impression, quite clearly, you were to learn something, or God was getting your attention about something? How many felt God's trying to get your attention about something, just put your hand up, while our eyes are closed. Okay, lots of hands going up, very, very good. Okay then. Here's the next question then: what will you do, about what that issue is? What will you do? What will you do? What action will you take? What steps will you take, to respond to what God said to you tonight? Now here's a wonderful thing: God is accessible all of the time. He's accessible all of the time.

Praise the Lord. I'm going to just pray for a few people, then we're going to have an opportunity for you to receive prayer. Well just close your eyes, look up to the Lord. Don't look to me - I want you to look up expecting Jesus to speak with you; and He's able to speak to you without my help at all, able to speak to you inside in your spirit; but I'm going to, just myself, reach out to the Lord for something for you. So I'll just be relaxed, and have my spirit free; and as I'm doing that, I'll be fixing my attention on Jesus, looking to Him about something He wants to say to you. I'll expect He'll give me a picture, a thought, it'll flow spontaneously, and if I'll speak about it, I believe the spirit of God will just flow and touch your life.

Well I just thank You Lord, thank You Lord, You just love her, You know her. Thank You Lord that - well there it is, and immediately I see it. So let me just share with you what I saw. I just saw a picture drop into my mind of a boat in a storm, a boat in a storm; and it feels like your life, you are in a storm. There's many things, are coming up all around you, and it's stirring up a storm in your emotions, and in your thinking, in your soul, and it's kind of like that picture of the storm, the boat is filling with water, and the waves look big, and the wind looks big. You're thinking: I just think I'm going to sink, I feel like I'm being overwhelmed by it all. But the Lord is with you. He wants you to see that He is with you in the midst of your storm. You need have no fear, because Jesus is with you, He is standing with you, He is alongside you, He wants you to have no fear about what is happening.

He wants you to understand, that the storm you're in, is an opportunity to stand up. It's an opportunity to believe, it's an opportunity to hold on to God's promises in your life. God is healing things from your past. It's like Lazarus. He kind of called Lazarus out, and the cave was opened up, out come this man; but oh my, they were grave clothes, and they're all the smell of death. It's like God has reached into your life, drawn you out into salvation experience, and now there's all these grave clothes, old things, old things clinging to yo,u that other people put on you. Jesus wants you to know, He's going to take them all off. Don't be worried about the storm, don't be worried about the grave clothes, don't be worried about the trouble in your emotions. Jesus said: I am with you, I will never leave you, focus on Me in this storm, and look to Me to show you, and I will teach you how to walk through the storm.

Now Lord, I'm asking that You would bring Your peace, that You would calm the storm in her soul tonight. Every spirit that troubles you, we forbid its operation. Now Lord, just let Your peace come, here it is, just coming right now, just like that, see? Just coming out of heaven, flowing over your life, because with God's words, come His peace and His presence. Touch her Lord, touch her, [blows], Holy Spirit, come on her now. Holy Ghost come. Praise the Lord.

So all I did was free up my spirit, focus my attention on the Lord, look for a picture. I got the slightest picture, and I just began to talk about it, and as I talked, it grew and became something that was real, and touched her life. That's how simple it is. So I thought you know, you must have - no, it's no big thing, it's just remaining quiet inside and listening. This is a lifestyle. It's a habit you develop, waiting in the presence of God, meditating in the scriptures, and asking Him to speak to you. Imagine if God was speaking to you every day, imagine if He was talking to you about your day, and starting to share with you things He wanted to do in that day. Wouldn't that be wonderful? It can happen for you, but you have to position yourself for it.

Thank You Lord. Father, I just thank You for Mel, Mel again, just close your eyes and look up to Jesus, because He's the one that is wanting to speak with you. He's the one who's wanting to speak with you. Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord. Now again, as I just stay relaxed, and just reach out to the Lord, and just stay focussed on Him - I'm not trying to get any answers. I'm just reaching out, and saying: Jesus, You love her. She's Your daughter. Show me what You want to say to her, so as I was doing that, I just felt something very, very simple happen. You know what I saw? I saw a path. It was kind of like a steep gradient, and you were on that path. It's like you're climbing up hill, and it feels like you have been climbing up hill. You know when you're walking on a flat path, it's quite straight forward; when you're walking on a down hill path, it's even easier; but when you're walking an up hill path, there's an effort in every step. I feel the Lord showing me that you're having to take an effort, conscious effort with every step you're taking. But I see you coming to the top, and there's decisions you're making, then it goes down the other side. It's a lot easier.

The Lord wants to encourage you, keep your eyes fixed on Him. He's got your hand. You're not going to falter, you're not going to fall and roll back down hill. You're going to make decisions, and you'll go over the top of the mountain, and start to come into a place of enlargement. The Lord says: it's okay. It's okay to make decisions. It's okay to change your mind. It's okay to have new thoughts. He's with you. He knows the journey you're taking, and He's helping you. Now Lord, just come and touch her right now, pour out Your presence upon Mel. There it is, presence of God coming now. Holy Spirit [blows], just touch her, come from heaven upon her, rest upon her and bring peace into her heart tonight, in Jesus' Mighty name.

Always with words from God, there comes a peace in a person's life. [Laughs] Holy Spirit come, there it is, thank You Lord. I think there's a great presence of God to speak to people tonight, be great if others could hear God's voice speak.

Sezzy, can I pray with you? Praise the Lord, thank You Lord, come, come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit. Well of course, it's not easy just to pray for you, because I know something about your plans; but if you just fix your eyes on the Lord, and I fix my eyes on Him, I just know He's going to show us something. Now as I'm doing that, I'm just consciously removing all awareness. Sarah's my daughter, I notice the decisions she's making right now, I've just got to push them all aside. I just begin to look to Jesus, and I see what Jesus has done, and then I'll just give words to what I'm seeing. Now this is what I see. I see Jesus, and He's holding a box, a treasure chest, and it's very big, and it's full of treasure; and I see you have reached your hands out to Him, and you've got hold of one side of the box, He's got hold of the other. What He wants you to know, is He has invested great treasures within you, He's built within your life, many treasures; well beyond what you realise, well beyond what you understand, but you've had a hunger for things of the spirit, and God has built and imparted and put into your life many things which are treasures.

There are natural treasures, but there are spiritual treasures, and God has put spiritual treasures in you; and that box, as I'm looking at it, is a closed box, meaning that at this point in time, it's sealed up, and people can't see what's in it. But then as you go forth with the box in your hands, I see the lid opening, and you're beginning to explore the treasures, then you're beginning to distribute the treasures. There's just many, many, many, many, many, many people, many, many different people. I see some of them are incredibly poor, some of them are incredibly poor. I see orphans. I see children. I see poor people, desperate people, and you're opening your hands, treasures of the heavens are flowing into the lives of people. I feel the Lord saying: don't forget your destiny, because He hasn't forgotten. Your destiny is to carry His word, His spirit, His life, to carry healing miracles, and a flow of prophetic revelation from heaven; expect it to increase, not diminish. Take the treasures one by one, explore them, use them, employ them. The Lord says: He's going to open the doors for you, one after the other, after the other. You will be amazed. This is something God's called you to. I know you're connected, and I know as a couple, you're going into a place (Zimbabwe), but God's wanting you to know there's something He has through you, and I see it connected with the children, to those who are in poverty, those who are poor, and I see miracles flowing through your hands. I see gold dust on your hands, I see a flow of the river of God from heaven, touching people's lives.

I see you having prophetic visions, I see you bringing people and they're standing there, and as they lift their hands they're coming to encounter God. Just there's many of them, all at once, hundreds upon hundreds. I see you standing there and heaven opening, and the rain of God coming on people, and them experiencing Him. This is your legacy. These are the treasures, and God has given you a little taste. You've seen little bits of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of something else, but they've all been accumulating over many years, and now the Lord says: the box is yours. Now begin to explore the treasures within, and release them into the lives of others. Here it is. In a moment, there's going to be a handing in to your life, into your spirit, of many, many treasures; and particularly the whole area of visions, revelations, insight to heaven. It's going to increase, not decrease, but guard it, because it's treasure. It's treasure we have within an earthen vessel, Christ in us. Here it comes, here it comes, heaven opening over your life right now - oh, look into heaven, look up, there it is, right now, and see, as He gives to you. Stay in that place of looking. It'll unravel for you without me doing anything, just stay in that place of looking. Praise the Lord.

I wonder is there anyone here tonight that doesn't know Jesus, it'd be a great night to receive Him, to ask Him to be your saviour. There may be others tonight, if you want to receive Jesus Christ, I'd love to just pray with you, come up and just let me know and I'll pray with you. There may be others tonight, and what you're needing is just us to lay hands on you, and just to release a fresh flow of God's spirit moving in your life, to speak to you. If you'd like that tonight, why don't you come on up here, but don't focus on who's praying for you. Just come and stand, lift your hands. If you know God was speaking to you about something tonight, and you've decided to act on that, just make your way to the front. We're not going to find out all what it is, we'll just lay hands and endorse it, and just bless you. I feel tonight there's an impartation, come on people. Would you do that tonight, just come, come, people tonight needing to come. Let's just stand together, let's stand. You know God spoke to you? Make your way to the front. If you're wanting a release of this flow of anointing, of the spirit of revelation, make your way to the front.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Mk.1:17-18 ““Follow Me and I will make you become fishers of men. They immediately left their nets and followed Him”

· Each of us is called by God to be connected to Jesus and to “Follow Him”.

· Foundational to following Jesus is hearing and responding to Him speaking.

2. Communication is Essential to Relationship

· Jn.10:27 “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”.

· If we belong to Christ we have the capacity to hear Him speak to us.

· Communication is essential to cultivate and develop relations.

Communication = active listening and responding.

· Without communication relationships wither and die, they become sterile.

· When did you last hear God speak to you?

What did He say to you?

What are you doing about it? – How are you responding?

· Jesus cautions (i) Gospels: He that have ears to hear – let him hear (8x)

(ii) Revelations: He that has an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches (7x)

· Mk.4:23-25 “For whoever has (ears to hear) more shall be given”.

· God speaks to us individually and corporately we must listen and respond!

· When we are no longer hearing the Holy Spirit we become passive, spiritually asleep.

· Two helps (i) Sundays: Bring Bible – take notes – listen for the Holy Spirit

(ii) Small Group: Ask one another questions – What is the Holy Spirit saying to you? How are you responding?

3. What does the Voice of God sound like?

· 1 Cor.6:17 “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”.

· We are joined spirit to spirit with Jesus – constantly connected to Him.

· He lives within our hearts and desires to reveal Himself within us.

· The more we become aware of His presence the easier to hear His voice.

· He is not some nebulous force but a person with thoughts, feelings, personality.

· Jn.7:37-39 “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”.

· God’s spirit within us “flows” like a river = is spontaneous, moving.

· Western lifestyle focus on the mind and reason – Bible focus is on being Spirit conscious.

· The movement of the Holy Spirit is flowing, spontaneous words, thoughts, pictures, impressions and feelings.

· God’s voice is like a still small voice within us (1 Kg.19:12).

4. Common Hindrances to Hearing God Speak

· Listening to God =- listening in to spontaneous words, thoughts, pictures, impressions, feelings within. These are easily blocked or hindered.

· Common Hindrances:

i) Hidden sins iv) Having “mind-sets” or idols in the heart

ii) Disappointment with God v) Over dependence on mind and reasoning

iii) Unresolved grief and offence vi) Demonic oppression

· Inner impressions that we receive can come from three different sources

(i) Self – selfish (ii) Evil Spirits – evil, demanding (iii) Holy Spirit – good!

5. Keys to Hearing the Holy Spirit speak (Hab.2:2)

(i) Free Up Your Spirit

· If your spirit is weighed down there is little or no flow.

· Speak in tongues – activate your spirit (1 Cor. 14:14,4)

· Soft music can help.

(ii) Focus Your Thoughts

· Fix your thoughts upon Jesus – use a picture from Scripture.

· Remove external distractions.

· Press through internal distractions by focussing/fixing your thoughts.

· In order to see you need to look – fix your mind on Jesus the Source.

(iii) Faith – Expect to Receive

· Expect to receive spontaneous thoughts, words, impressions, pictures, feelings as you still your heart and look.

· It is easy to think that God won’t speak to me.

· Faith is based on what God says “My sheep hear my voice!”

· Voice =NT5456= Phone = sound, frequency, tone, voice, words.

(iv) Feel – Identify the Impressions You Receive

· Identify the flow of thoughts, ideas, words, pictures, impressions.

· Value them as being a flow of the River of God.

· Write them down (journal) expecting more to come.

6. Process What You have Received

Test it Respond to It

· Agree with the Word of God? What must I do?

· Edify, Comfort or Exhort?

· Open to the Counsel of Others?

· Exalt Jesus or Self?

· Fruit of Peace?

When God Seems Silent (5 of 6)

Sun 2nd Dec 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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Most of us would have had an experience where you really need God to give something to direct you but nothing happened. You sought the Lord, you prayed, read your Bible and nothing seemed to happen. It can be very troubling. You ask God to help you, He doesn't seem to help you; ask God to guide you, He doesn't seem to be guiding you, you don't seem to hear anything and it seems quite disturbing. It seems like at times heaven seems to be silent about the things that are really important.

John 10:27, Jesus said: My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. So one of the things is, it's possible for any person to hear the voice of God. Whether you're saved or unsaved, God has got no trouble speaking to you. He can get through to you. He's got a way of doing it, and even if you're unsaved, people don't always recognise it's God, but many times they understand, actually that's God trying to get a hold of my attention.

But for a believer, this is what Jesus said: if you're My sheep; two things - one, we hear His voice; two, we respond, we actually do what Jesus said, we follow Him, or we make choices to act on what God said. Last week we shared with you some very simple keys on how you hear the voice of God. We talked about the flow of the spirit within you, how Jesus said that the spirit of God would flow like a river from within. We shared that the voice of your head is different to the voice of your heart. The voice of your head is logical, rational, one idea after another in an order. The voice of your heart is spontaneous, with pictures, and it flows. We saw that the spirit of God when He speaks to us, speaks to our heart, brings witness in our heart; and this is not something you just take for granted. It's something you cultivate. It becomes a way of life, of learning to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and you'll save yourself a lot of hardship if you listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. How many felt unease or something was disturbing them and they ignored it, then it turned out really bad for them? How many have had that experience? See, we've all had that experience at some point; so what happens of course is that if you override or ignore the directings of God in your life, there's a consequence of it; so neither does God want us to be just a puppet, where He tells us everything; so there's this balance of human responsibility, of thinking and working out how to interact, and work my life out; with God working with me, to guide me and direct me. The two go hand in hand.

One of the most common experiences that people have is this: What do you do, when God doesn't seem to be talking? What do you do, when God seems to be silent? Now He's never silent, He's always speaking, and He's always available to speak; but there are times in our life, when God seems to be silent. How many of you know a time like that, known a situation; and it's very, very challenging! In Psalm 28, David knew this. Let's have a look at it in Psalm 28, a time when God was silent. Of course, if He's silent all the time, you've got a problem, you're disconnected. Psalm 28: To You, will I cry O Lord, my Rock; Do not be silent to me, lest if You are silent to me, I become like those who go down into the pit. So David is saying, or the Psalm is saying, he's saying: I need You to talk to me God, I need You to speak to me. I put my life in Your hands, I'm facing pressures and difficulties, I need You to talk. So he's saying: if you go silent on me, and give me the silent treatment, I'll end up in the pit of hell, pit of depression, pit of despair.

So let's just talk a little bit about what happens, when it seems like God is silent. Most of us would have had an experience where you really need God to give something to direct you, but nothing happened. You sought the Lord, you prayed, read your Bible; and nothing seemed to happen. It can be very troubling. You ask God to help you, He doesn't seem to help you; ask God to guide you, He doesn't seem to be guiding you, you don't seem to hear anything, and it seems quite disturbing. It seems like at times heaven seems to be silent, about the things that are really important. How many know that kind of situation? I hate that kind of situation. I have learned some things about it, so when God seems to be silent, there's always a reason behind it. There's always something we need to learn from it, when God seems to be silent; but you can go through many different experiences, and unfortunately many Christians don't respond the right way. Some get very angry and resentful, that God is not talking to them; some get offended that God's not talking; some just feel depressed, or feel what's the use, and actually feel like: well, I'll just get on with my life, and they kind of park it.

But it's of concern to us, if we're talking to God, and there's no response. Something is not right. We need to figure out what to do in situations like that, and at times God seems to withhold from us, the very thing we need to make a decision, or the very thing we need to get us out of a fix. When that happens, it can be quite distressing, unless you know what to do. One of the things to understand, is that when God is silent, there is always a reason for it; and sometimes that silence, can just be to let what's in your heart, rise to the surface. There's a king called Hezekiah, and it says: God withdrew from him for a while, to see what was in his heart; to test him, let what was in his heart, come to the surface. That's found in 2 Chronicles 32:31; so King Hezekiah was a godly man. He walked with the Lord, God blessed him and guided him; but there was a period of his time, when it felt like God had withdrawn from him. Now did God leave him? No. Does God leave you? No, He doesn't leave us, but it feels like He's not there. It feels like other things are really there: the pressures of finances, the pressures of a family situation, the pressures in a marriage, the pressures of your work situation, the pressures of a decision you need to make.

It feels like those are there, but God isn't there. The reality is: He is there, He is never going to leave you, He is always with you. The challenge is: how you handle that time, when it doesn't seem like God is responding. I want to give you just some things NOT to do, some things not to do; and we'll just give you some Bible examples on it, some things you should not do, when God is silent, and you just really do need to get some direction from Him. Now there's a lot of areas, that it's not clear what the answer is. We actually need the spirit of God to speak to us; decisions you make about your work, where you live, who you'll marry, decisions about family, there's a lot of things you can't actually, easily read, and find an answer exactly for it; so we actually have to position ourself, to let God talk with us. So what do we not do when God is silent?

Now I'm going to give you an example of a person who did this very thing, and every one of these people that did this thing, got themselves into trouble. So here, not necessarily in order of importance, but here's my number one. It's found in Luke 24:13. There were some disciples, after the resurrection of Jesus; now remember Jesus had died, He'd been buried, He'd risen from the dead, but He hadn't spoken to them. In other words, they had a period of silence, when God was not talking to them; and the Bible says that the two disciples headed out of Jerusalem, the place where they were called to be, the place where they were called to remain, the place where they were called to pioneer, the place where God had positioned them; and they began to go to Emmaus, which means literally the place of hot pools, the place of comfort. They began to withdraw, away from the placing that God had given them.

So one of the things that people do, when they feel God isn't speaking to them, or coming through, is they pull back from church and fellowship, that's what people do. They don't know why, they just do it. It's actually because, to come into fellowship, or to come into where people are, they're reminded of this conflict or pain or grief that they have, and don't want to be reminded of it; and rather than resolve it, withdraw from where they can be reminded of it. So the disciples went that path, and here's the thing that happened to them. When Jesus began to talk to them, they couldn't even recognise Him; so I have observed over many years, when people have faced disappointments and struggles and pain, that they withdraw from their connection to the body of Christ, or from relationship with people. When you do that, when you withdraw, you make a serious mistake, because now your problems will increase and get greater. The voice that'll be stronger will be the voice of the world, and your own feelings, not the voice of God.

One of the things I've learned is, when you're in pressure, in difficulty, as much as lies within you, bring it into relationship and connection; don't withdraw. How many of you know someone like that? Oh yeah [laughs] okay then. Here's another one, number two: Don't harbour resentment; don't harbour resentment and blame in your heart. Now if we read in John 11:21; Martha, when she heard Jesus was coming, went and met Him, and Mary was sitting in the house. Martha said to Jesus: Lord, if You'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Now you've got to realise what's happened. Martha and Mary are sweating it out, over the sickness that the brother has. They've sent a message out to Jesus, and guess what? Jesus doesn't reply. He not only doesn't reply, He doesn't do anything either. He just remains where He is, and refuses to respond; and it seems to them, or it seems to Martha anyway, Jesus doesn't seem to care about her. It seems to her like, He's just ignoring her. It seems like He's rejecting her, and this is their time of need. Remember they're the friends of Jesus, He's been in their home, He's been for meals with them, He's stayed with them, they are His friends - and yet when they need His help the most, the one who healed everyone else, didn't heal their brother. In fact he died, they'd had a funeral, he was buried, and they were all in the grieving stage.

Now you can understand, for her, God was silent; and now Jesus turns up. She's not exactly very happy, and what's in her heart comes out of her mouth; she said: if You'd been here, then he wouldn't have died. Now notice this, she's putting blame on Jesus, that the death of the brother came about, because He failed to do something. There's resentment and blame in her heart. When we get knocked around or disappointed, or suffer a grief in our life, and God does not seem to be talking to us; it's very easy, out of the grief, to them want to blame someone for what's happened. So the moment Jesus came, they started to blame Him. Don't blame! Blame leaves you a victim. Blame stops you actually exploring: what is it, I need to do or grow in, this particular time.

Here's a third thing then, here's another one. Luke Chapter 7:20-23, and this is John the Baptist. John the Baptist went through a bit of a painful situation, and he was cautioned by Jesus. Now in this particular situation, John has gone out preaching the gospel, he's gone out proclaiming Jesus is the coming saviour, He's the lamb of God, he's had this revelation about who Jesus is; and now he's stood up, and he confronted Herod and his wife, that their marriage was wrong, and it was out of order; and for his speaking the truth, he's thrown into jail. So he's sitting there in jail, and he's awaiting death. He knows now he's stuck in jail; but the messiah is here, Jesus is here, and here's the problem: He's not speaking or doing anything. Now you can understand, for someone who's in prison who's facing death, when God does not seem to be speaking or doing anything, that is very distressing. Here's the warning that Jesus gave. Jesus spoke, and told the disciples, in Verse 22: tell John the things you've seen and heard - the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them; and blessed is he, who is not offended because of Me.

Now why did they go to Him? They went to ask this question: are You the one we've been looking for? Now John knew that Jesus was the one, he got revelation; but he became hurt inside, that Jesus had failed to get him out of jail. He become upset that God had not rescued him out of a difficult problem. In fact actually, the Bible makes it very clear, he ended his days in that jail - his head was taken off. Now here's the thing: For him, he fully expected that Jesus would rescue him somehow out of the jail; and when Jesus didn't, the warning that came to him was this. Here's the warning, because he was starting to doubt the revelation he'd received. He's going, and now instead of saying this: is the one; he's saying: are you the one? So when we are in a difficult situation, and God doesn't seem to be speaking, it is very easy to harbour these two things: to harbour doubt about what God last said to us; and to feel offended, that He hasn't responded to our need; doubt about what God last said. Remember, he got revelation about who Jesus was. Now he's doubting the revelation he got. It's very easy, when you're in a difficult situation, it seems like you're in prison, it seems like the walls have closed in, it seems like there's no way out. It's very easy in a situation like that, to begin to doubt what God has been speaking to you; and easy to become offended with God, and build a wall of resentment or resistance. Don't harbour offence!

Here's another one, another one that took the wrong way round. I'll give you two more, and then we'll show you just exactly what you need to do. It's found in 1 Samuel, Chapter 13. This is King Saul. Now here's what - Saul has actually had a word from God, and this was the word: I want you to go to this place, I want you to wait there until I come. Now here's what's happened, and we read in Verse 6 of 1 Samuel 13: the men of Israel saw they were in great danger. They were in danger, because in Verse 5, the Philistines gathered together to fight with Israel, 30,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen, people like the sand which is on the seashore, for the multitude came up and encamped at Michmash, at the end of Beth Aven.

The men of Israel saw they were in danger, and so they went and they hid in the caves, the thickets, the rocks, holes and in pits. Some of them followed crossed Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, and the people were following him, trembling. He waited seven days, according to the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come, and the people were scattered. So he said: bring a burnt offering and peace offerings, and he offered the burnt offerings. Now it happened, as soon as he'd finished presenting the burnt offering, Samuel came, and Saul went out to meet him, that he might greet him. And Samuel said: what have you done? He said: I saw the people were scattered, you didn't come, the Philistines had gathered against me; and I said: I just need to go and make an offering to the Lord, so I forced myself, and did this offering.

He said: that's very foolish, you're going to lose your authority, you'll lose your kingdom, as a result of this. Now notice here, don't harbour fear or anxiety, and act in a reaction to what's going on. Don't hold on to fear and anxiety. Here's the problem with Saul. The problem was, he was insecure. Now what was the reason he was insecure? He was insecure, because he saw all the problems, but he didn't see how big God was. He was insecure because he saw the people leaving, and he didn't see God was still with him. He was insecure because he had no current word from God, except the last one to go on, and he's waiting for something to happen, so here's what happens. In the face of pressure, anxiety and fear took over him, he shut down, and he said: I know what I'll do, I'll make something happen to get my way out of this. How many have known what it's like to be in a place like that, where you've been tight, it's been difficult, it's been tense for you; and instead of actually waiting for God to give you directions, and show you what to do, you actually had to force yourself; but you tried to make something happen? When you do that, it always messes up. It always ends up like that.

That's the tendency we have, is we want to get back into control again, and feel safe; rather than actually leaning, and trusting, on the Lord. My experience has been God sometimes talks quickly, sometimes talks specifically, sometimes very directly; and sometimes He's incredibly silent, and it's distressing. You can go through all of these feelings, and want to try and do something. Here's the last one we'll look at it. It's found in Genesis 16, and this is Sarah. Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne no children - Verse 1 - and she had an Egyptian maidservant, whose name was Hagar. So Sarah said to Abram: see now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Notice she blames God for the situation? Please go into my maid, or have sexual relations with my maid; perhaps I'll obtain children by her. And Abram heeded the voice of Sarah. Then later on, Verse 11, the Angel of the Lord speaks to Hagar, and says: behold, you are with child, and you'll bear a son. You'll call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction; but he shall be a wild man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him. He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

Now get this one here. Every day you look in the papers, one of the things that you can't help but notice, are the troubles going on in the Middle East. You'll notice that the primary area of the troubles is around the Arab nations, the descendants of Ishmael; and when you look at those problems, what you need to be aware of is, those problems would never have occurred, if Abraham hadn't done this foolish thing. In fact the earth would have been free of all of that current conflict around there, if he hadn't done this. The dilemma, generationally, of his mistake, was enormous. We're still experiencing the consequences of it today. Notice what it says of Ishmael, he said: he'll be a wild man, he'll be like a wild ass you can't reason with. Dave was sharing some of the stuff over there in Pakistan, he said they use the term 'donkey brain', because people get so stubborn, and fixed, and set, you can't shift them out of it; and this is exactly what the Bible said. He said the generations that will come out of Ishmael, they will be like a donkey brain, you can't reason or talk to them. They're just stubborn and they're set; and notice this, he said: they will be all against one another. They'll be in conflict, one with another. How's this all happen? Now you've got to consider this, that Abraham had got a promise from God: I am going to give you children, I'm going to create out of your seed, all the nations will be blessed. He got that in Genesis 12. Now what you've got to realise is, ten years have passed, and God didn't speak to him and tell him too many things, so when God said to him: I'm going to bless you, I'll make your name great; and out of your seed, all the nations will be blessed. He didn't tell him about a great famine, that was coming in the land that He sent him to.

He sent him out into the land of Canaan. He didn't tell him there was going to be a famine there, or what to do in the famine. He didn't tell him that: yes, I'm going to give you children, but there's going to be some delay in this process. So after ten years in the land of Canaan, going through a famine, going back to Egypt, coming back out of Egypt up there; there he is, he still hasn't got a child. Now he's thinking: I need to help God out; and his wife, who's lost her faith in God can actually work in her, to give her children, thinks: well the only way it's going to work out, can't be me this promise is for, it must be just Abraham. So in her reasoning, she's trying to reason out the prophesy. She's trying to work out how God is going to make it happen. So she's thinking: well I'm not having any children, and he's going to have the children; it must be through someone else, so she starts to get into the reasoning process, how God will work it out, and comes up with the grand idea: won't you have sexual relations with my maid? Of course, this is where Ishmael came from.

So what can happen is, when there's a delay, and God isn't working out what we are looking for Him to do, it's very easy for us to think: how we can help God out, to make this come about. We try and reason it, and work it out. When we do that, we have an Ishmael. Ishmael's are horrible - they're painful, and they cause a lot of conflict. How many have had an Ishmael in your life? You've tried to help God out over something? One or two. The reality is, we've all tried to help God out with something or other; and when we did it, what came out of it, was not good at all. We have a better idea that God's; so people have prayed for a partner, prayed for someone for life, and rather than actually build their character, and walk with God, and build great relationships, they kind of hurry the process up a little bit, get someone that God never intended them to have - then it's a mess. You'd be better single, than with someone God never intended you to be with. Come on, think about that. A lot of people - all the counsellors say: yes, that's true. [Laughs]

We've all counselled people: mate, that was a bad decision, what were you thinking? I wasn't, I just wasn't. I know, I won't go there [laughs] I just wasn't thinking clearly, and a lot of guys just don't think clearly. There'll be people here today, just not thinking clearly; because what you're doing, instead of trusting God, and building into your life the path, and the journey with God, to get you where you're supposed to go, you just want to take the shortcut and get a quick answer. It doesn't work that way, so what can I do? What can I do, if God does not seem to be answering? How many in that place, you need an answer from God for something in your life right now? One or two, actually I'd say a lot of people are needing an answer from God, and sometimes He's real quick to give it, sometimes there's a bit of a delay, sometimes it's a long time.

So I want to share with you, what you can do, in the time when God is silent. I can assure you this: He will not stay silent forever. He will speak on it, even if it's not right now; and one of the things I've found frustrating is, the one thing I want Him to answer, and He's not saying anything; but He's talking about a lot of other things, the trivia [laughs] the little things in your life, the little things in relationships. He's talking about what seems to be trivia, and you've got one big main elephant sitting there, waiting to be dealt with; and it's like He's just pretending it isn't there. You know that situation? We have that, and it happens like that; so you've got to learn how to handle that, and to deal with it, otherwise you get overwhelmed. So since it's easy for us to be overwhelmed with painful emotions and feelings over that and so on, we need actually to deal with it, so here we go.

If you've got some important decision, some important thing, God's not talking; or you've got some painful thing. and God's not helping in some kind of way; it's very easy to become disappointed, so here's some things you can do. Now these are not just: hey, here's a one, two, three, four, do this, and it guarantees. Here's the first thing you've got to realise is: you can't make God to anything, you just can't. He is in control, not you. You can't make Him do anything, so this is where a lot of Christians get really disappointed. They think: well, if I just praise loud enough, then He'll do it. If I just read my Bible enough, He'll do it - and He doesn't do it. I'll pray in tongues for an hour a day, and He still doesn't do it; so you start to get into this scheming thing: how I can make God give me what I want. Until you've come to the end of all of that, you're not going to get anything. It's like He refuses to be pressured that way. I hate that when it's like that, because I've tried everything at times, then you end up just crying, then you get angry, and then you get sulky, and then you withdraw and don't pray. Then you stop reading your Bible, then you get back up again, because you've still got to get an answer; and you get connected again and start again, all over the same thing. How many know what I'm talking about? We've all had that, all been down that route. Tell someone, you know what that's about don't you? You've been there.[Laughs]

Okay then, so what could we do? What are some things that we can do? Here's a few things. The first thing you can do is, I found always: strengthen yourself in the Lord. Focus on strengthening your life with God, because negative emotions and fears or issues can surface very quickly. 1 Samuel 30:6, David was facing a major crisis, of everything gone wrong for him, and the Bible says when everyone else panicked, and become afraid, and began to blame and wanted to kill him, he strengthened himself in the Lord. So what would you do to strengthen yourself in the Lord? You need to just face, and let the emotions come out, that you've got going on there; because when you've got a lot of emotions stewing around inside, you can't build in your spirit on top of that. You've got to be honest about the feelings and struggles, pour them out before the Lord. What else you can do, start to remind yourself or remember the victories you've had in the past, where God answered you. Remember them, go back over them, how God came through for you; so you remember the track of the victories you've had. These are some simple things you can do. Meditate on the faithfulness of God. Go and take pictures of people in the Bible, and read about the crises they were in, and how God came through; and meditate on it. In other words, do some work establishing and strengthening your trust; because if you lose trust, and stop trusting God, that's when things start to really fall apart.

So the first thing I found it's helpful to do, is rather than trying to get the solution of make God speak to me; work on strengthening my inner life, getting the emotions out of the way; and starting to remind myself of the promises of God, and building the spirit man. I tell you one thing, if you're going to hear God, you will hear Him in your spirit; and if your spirit is being strengthened, and there's adversity: one, you'll come out the other side a better person; two, you're more likely to hear; so there's the first thing is - strengthen your spirit man. That involves praise and worship. Now a lot of people come into church on Sundays, and they've struggled through the week. They've struggled through the week for a whole range of reasons, and no one blames that people struggle. Struggle's a part of life. It's what you do in the struggles, and the tendency in the struggles, is instead of building and strengthening your inner life, and learning how to praise God and thank Him, and lift up the atmosphere around them; people tend to just go down, and withdraw, and shut down. I watch, I kind of see in church, and I watch the level of participation of people; and I can tell that many people are shut down, because when we are building an atmosphere, where we're actually giving something to God, that is a place you can break through; when everyone else is with you, and they're rising up, you begin to praise God - yeah, well I don't feel like it. This is not about feeling, it's actually about: this is what I choose to do, in my adversity.

You have a think about, for example, Paul and Silas, in Acts 16. In the middle of their adversity - they'd been beaten up, whipped and put into jail for doing good; and then they began to praise God, lift Him up, begin to exalt Him, sing songs, and actually just magnify God; and that is when they got an answer. They got an answer - then. You think they knew they were going to get an answer then? No, they did not. In fact actually, they could have remained in prison; but what they knew to do, was to magnify God in the midst of the difficulty, by thanking Him and praising Him. I've found a lot of people don't do that. When we come into a Sunday meeting, no matter what you feel like, no matter what you've been going through; make a decision you'll stand up and you'll begin to give praise, give something to God, give the honour to Him. Of course when you try to do it, if you're offended inside, it will surface quite quick; and you can then resolve it, and push it out of the way, because praise and gratitude will always surface this other stuff that's in your life. Getting the idea?

So I come to meet with God. I don't come to actually end up depressed at the end of the meeting. Now here's the thing. If we have say, 300 people come in, and 20 are excited and give themselves to God; then there's all these others, the 280, that are bringing a spirit of heaviness and depression; and 20 people have to shift that off everyone. That's not God. That's not the way to do it. The way to do it is, we come and we gather to give something to God, and we then give it to Him. I give Him the very best. I get into those songs, I come in, and I like to be the strongest, loudest, most vocal worshipper of God. Why? Because I have learned, no matter what I'm feeling, if I will do that, my spirit will energise and arise and lift; and other things take perspective. Getting the idea? But it's a choice, it's a choice to do it, and I've practised it enough now that I can arise in my spirit, quite quickly; so one thing, strengthen yourself in the Lord.

Here's the second thing you can do. You can examine your relationship with the Lord, to see if there's things in there you need to face. Sometimes there are things to face. Sometimes there are issues to face. Sometimes, if God hasn't been speaking to you, God's silent, maybe there's compromise; maybe there's an area that God had spoken to you, you've done nothing about it, and so it's all gone quiet, on the God front, in that area. Maybe there's an area where you actually are violating God's principles in some way? You know, you're sleeping with someone, and then you're wondering why you're not hearing from God. I know what you're going to hear from God, I'll tell you it right now. So if you are, if you're in sexual sin, or sexual immorality, this is what the word of God is: STOP IT! Simple. Stop it, because you're grieving the spirit of God. It's as simple as that. Don't grieve the spirit of God. Don't quench the spirit of God. Don't grieve Him, just stop the sin, turn from the sin, quickly get back into God. Why? Because then you'll hear about it. Who knows what you've got in, already got such a mess, it's unlikely the thing's ever going to work out properly; so stop it, that's it. You don't need lots of words. We need to hear what God says, so if there's compromise, sin, there's something in our life we know is wrong; and in the time when you get in that atmosphere of worshipping God, that's when you start to remember it.

When you remember it, deal with it quite quick. Did God say something to you? What did He last say? Did you do it? What was the last thing God said? If you can't remember, you're in trouble. See, you're in trouble, in your relationship. Now the problem is, we substitute activities, for authentic heart relationship. Authentic heart relationship requires communication. So remember this, that we can be going to church, I could be giving, I could be serving, I could go in in the prison, I'd be going down the community, all kinds of things. But if I'm not hearing God, or I haven't heard Him for a long time, it's very easy for everything to reduce down to just church, and Christian busyness; and we don't carry a presence of God around our life. We're just doing good things. Now we need to be more than that. Don't stop doing the good things; but just re-engage with God again, so the good things you're doing carry His presence into them.

So when did you last hear God speak? Keep a journal, keep a diary, write down what God is saying; because if you don't write it down, you forget it. Oh it's getting very quiet. [Laughs] These are really, really important things, aren't they? So we don't know what to do, we haven't heard God for a little while. Now I believe you need to be proactive. You have to be proactive in seeking God, not just a victim, and passive: oh well, God's not talking to me, He talks to someone else, doesn't talk to me. Don't be a victim, be proactive! Seek for answers, seek for answers. You've got to be proactive, so we need to seek answers. So how am I going to seek answers when I'm not hearing God? The Bible tells us very clearly, to seek wisdom. Wisdom is the principle thing. Wisdom is knowing what to do. I don't know what to do, God, show me what to do, so how would I go about seeking that wisdom, if I'm not hearing much from God, and I'm overwhelmed by the problem? Well there's a number of ways you can go doing it. Start to search the Bible for some principles that might apply. For example, if you were choosing someone to marry, there's no verse that says: marry this person; so now you've got to look at the principles that would be appropriate for that. Is the person one spirit with me? Are they joined to the Lord? Are they a believer? That would be a good thing to ask them, because if they're not a believer, you've got some big problems, division right at the beginning. Principles - have we got similar values? Can we walk in unity? Well they'll be principles in the Bible; so you can start to look for principles in the Bible to help you with those decisions. You can seek wisdom.

Here's another place you can seek wisdom. You seek wisdom from wise people. Now there's lots of foolish people, don't seek wisdom from foolish people. [Laughs] Seek wisdom from wise people; so if someone has got a track record of failure in their life, that is not the person to seek wisdom from. You want the person that's got some success track in their life. I'm surprised how easily people are seduced by nice words that people have, and how they don't actually stop to see what is the fruit in that person's life. If a person has failed in their finances, and has nothing, they've failed in their marriage, failed in their relationships, and they've got a track record that things are not working out; that's not the person I want to ask: what do you reckon I should do. [Laughs] You're going to get a bad reply - well I think... Well I don't really want to know what you think. I really want to have someone, who actually has done the track record of wisdom. Now someone's - their marriage broke down, they've gone through all the difficulties and pain. Now they've rebuilt and they've got a great marriage, probably a person like that will have a lot of experience that they'll be able to bring to bear. Go to people that have got a track record. We've got some people that have got great track records, but often they're the last ones to be sought out when it comes to getting advice. I'm amazed how people seek the wrong people. You seek a friend who's on drugs, you're going to end up down the same route they are. You've got to think it through. Now not all people that are wise, are Christians. I think there's a lot of people who've gained great wisdom, that are not Christians. I think there's a lot of people that have got some good experience and wisdom to bring to bear; but seek someone, who can give good advice. You say: well why would I do that? Because sometimes God wants to talk to you through people.

Here's a question you could ask: has God already been talking to me through someone, and I just didn't even recognise it? You see, we all want to just have the hotline with God, and I believe we should all hear directly from God; but there are times when God will speak through another person, and the reason He'll speak through another person is two-fold: one, you're not listening to Him directly, because you've got your agenda; and two, because this person now gives you a chance to deal with your pride in your heart, whether you'll receive from a person or not. I get people say: it's just me and God, and I'm hearing all this from God. Well okay, who are the people that you run your wisdom by? Who's speaking into your life, that will actually have the right to be able to talk, and give you some practical wisdom? One of the things we've been able to build in the oversight team, is the ability to speak into one another's life, very openly, very freely; but it starts when you are willing to do that.

Think about this: when Jesus came, His own town didn't receive Him; because they said: that's just a carpenter's son. Who's He? Doesn't know anything. You understand, you can miss God speaking into your life, when someone who's a person in the flesh, says something you don't like, in a way you don't like; but it may still be God. I had to learn early in my Christian walk, that sometimes the way people presented things to me was pretty appalling; but it didn't mean there wasn't some truth in it, I needed to hear; and it's very easy to get offended when God's trying to talk to you through a person, by the vessel, and miss the message that God's trying to speak to you. How many of you can think of an experience, where you've turned away from someone speaking to you, it turns out that was really God trying to get a hold of you? There'd be heaps of us like that.

Okay, so here's the last one you could think about. One of the things I think really helps, is to continually affirm my trust and confidence, that God is leading me. I declare this over you. Thank You Lord, today I hear Your voice clearly, and I instantly obey. Continue to affirm your trust, God leads. His job is to lead, ours is just to follow; so I pray the 23rd Psalm: Thank You Lord, You are my shepherd, and I go through the verse - You lead me in right paths, for Your own name's sake. So I begin to declare it, and acknowledge it, and make my default position: hey, God is leading me, whether I'm aware of it or not, whether it sounds clear or not, I'm convinced that God is directing me, and leading me. Thank You Lord, You are leading me. This is my declaration, I follow You. When You speak, I instantly obey. I thank You today, I hear Your voice clearly.

Start to frame the spiritual environment, by speaking out. Silence doesn't build anything. Speak words that build, so that you affirm and build up. Then the last one I found is: follow the plan. Follow either: the last thing that God told you to do; or what you had written down in your plan. So if you've got a plan for building your finances, and you're struggling on the way a little bit, just stick with the plan, follow the plan. Don't make a big swerve. God spoke to you about something, don't make any changes. Just follow that, until you've got through on that area. Don't be without some sense of direction; so God requires us to make plans, and to listen to Him. Put the two together: you make your plan, you pray over your plan, and then stick with it. Just stick with it; then if God is not speaking, that's okay. If He wants to change the plan, He'll speak to you at some point on the way; but at least don't just sit there passively, waiting for something to happen. We need to be quite proactive in this business of seeking God, listening for His voice. Can we say Amen to that?

Alright then, this is what I want you to do, before we finish up. I'll minister and pray for a few people in a moment, but what I want to do is this. I want to ask you two questions. Here's the first question: How has God been speaking to you, in this last half an hour to 45 minutes? What has God been saying to you? In other words, what impressed you? Now take it right back through the beginning of the meeting. Ten o'clock we came in to meet with God. Now what touched you, impressed you, spoke into your heart, in that last hour and a half? What? Try to think about it for a moment. What is it touched you? What is it impressed your heart? What is it you would say: perhaps I felt God speaking to me, touching me about something? I felt a stir, I felt a pressure, I felt perhaps: oh, that's a challenge, I felt something really go right into me, I just felt something inside me leap? What is it that you felt? What is it that God did?

Then here's the second question. What steps will you take, to act on that? If you can't answer it, just sit still for a little while, and just listen to the voice of your heart, listen for a thought to come up. Let's practice listening to God. You may not know the Lord, but something may have touched you and impressed you today. What did you feel God was saying to you? What will you do about that now? What steps will you take to act on what God showed you?

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Jn.10:27 My Sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”

· We all have the ability to hear the voice of God.

· To follow Jesus we must be able to hear His voice, recognise when He is speaking.

· He speaks to us in many ways, and through may different channels.

e.g. Bible; Messages preached; People; Counsellors; Circumstances.

· We can develop and cultivate our ability to hear His voice in our spirit.

2. What Happens When God Seems Silent?

· Ps.28:1 “…Do not be silent to me, lest if you are silent to me, I become like those who go down into the pit.”

· God always responds to us but not always what we want or when we want.

· It can be “very troubling” when you asked direction – but no reply

You listened for His voice – but no response

You need help – but God seems silent

· When God seems silent and does not seem to respond to us it is very easy to:

Wonder if you have missed his direction

Feel angry and resentful

Think God has rejected or abandoned you

Become discouraged and maybe depressed.

· 2 Chron.32:31 “God withdrew from him in order to test him to know what was in his heart.”

- God does not leave us or abandon us. We are joined to the Lord. (1 Cor. 6:17)

- Sometimes we may not be aware of His presence or voice.

- In times when God is silent issues in our relationship with Him surface.

3. What Not to Do when God Seems Silent

(i) Don’t withdraw from your assignment

e.g. Luke 24:13

· Disciples were full of grief and disappointment

· They withdrew from their place of calling

(ii) Don’t Harbour Resentment and Blame

e.g. Jn.11:21 “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”

· Martha full of grief over her loss – blames Jesus for his delay and Lazarus’ death.

· She failed to see the bigger picture and the greater outcome – resurrection.

(iii) Don’t Harbour Offence against God

e.g. Lk. 7:20-23 “Blessed is he that is not offended in me”

· John expected God to move – expected Jesus to get him out of prison.

· When God does not do what we expect it is easy to be disappointed and harbour offense.

(iv) Don’t Harbour fear and anxiety and act presumptuously

e.g. 1 Sam. 13:4-11 “When I saw …. I felt compelled and offered a burnt offering”

· Saul faced mounting problems, loss of support, delay in God speaking.

· Out of insecurity he asked presumptuously – fear and anxiety dominated his emotions and he tried to control the situation.

(v) Don’t Strive to “Help God Out”

e.g. Gen 16:1-3, 11-12 “You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. shall be a wild man”

· Consider the problems in the Middle East – the descendants of Ishmael.

· Abraham was 10 years in Canaan waiting for promised child.

· God gave direction but didn’t speak about famine (Gen. 12:10) or delay.

· Abraham was 86 when had Ishmael (Gen.16:16) and 100 when had Israel (Gen. 2:5).

· He came up with his own idea to help fulfil God’s purpose.

· The consequences of our Ishmaels are painful.

4. What to Do when God Seems Silent

(i) Examine Your Relationship with the Lord (Is.59:1-2)

· Any sin? What did God last say? Doing it?

· Any compromise? God spoke but thought it was only a person

e.g. Acts 27 – Paul

(ii) Strengthen Yourself in the Lord (1 Sam.30:6)

· Pour out your heart, feelings, pain, struggles

· Remember past victories and experiences

· Meditate in the Word of God on His faithfulness

(iii) Seek Wisdom (Eph.5:15)

· When not hearing from God and Bible not clear on the issue : seek wisdom

· Counsel of wise friends (proven track record) (Prov.12:15)

· Continue to ask God for wisdom (Jam.1:5)

· Set aside time in the presence of God to wait on Him.

(iv) Affirm Your Trust in the Lord (Prov.3:5)

· Don’t draw back – constantly affirm your trust in His faithfulness.

· Follow the peace in your heart. (Col.3:15)

(v) Stick with the Plan

· For a time doing the last thing the Lord said.

· Follow through your own plans – don’t be passive

· Application

1. What did the Holy Spirit speak to you about today? – what impressed you?

2. What steps will you take to respond to this?

3. Pray for one another.

Evidence of Your Discipleship (6 of 6)

Sun 16 Dec 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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By this shall all men know you're My disciples: your love for one another. If you won't let me wash your feet, you won't have a part with Me. I am a foot washer. Those who follow Me are foot washers. Sometimes Jesus doesn't do the foot washing directly, He does it through a member of the body, so we need relationships, connections.

I want you to open your Bible at John, Chapter 13. We've been speaking on following Jesus, and I still feel that that's what God is speaking about: following Jesus, listening to Him. We talked about hearing His voice. Everyone is following something. We're either following Jesus, or we're following something else, or someone else. The challenge of our life is to follow Jesus, and to finish our course passionately following Him, and following His lead. Jesus said: if you follow Me, I will make you to become a fisher of men; so we get the picture straight away, if you are followers of Jesus, you will be vitally interested in people. It just goes hand in hand.

But I want to speak today, and just share a message on: the Evidence of Your Discipleship. There's probably a lot of things that give evidence we're disciples of Jesus, but there's one that He actually makes unmistakable; and I want to get this right out there, so we could put a checklist: am I a disciple of Jesus? Am I a disciple of Jesus? How many would say: yes, I am? Okay then, well let's look at what Jesus said it meant, to be a disciple of Him. So we look in John 13:34-35, He said: a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; in the same way I've loved you, you love one another. By this will all know you're My disciples: if you have love, one for another.

So Jesus clearly, unmistakeably, identifies the evidence you are a disciple of Jesus Christ. Now notice some of the things it is not. He does not say: anointing and authority indicates you're a disciple; because you can have a gift, and be totally disconnected from Jesus, just operating in faith. He does not say: position or title means that you are a disciple of Jesus. You can be a Pastor, and still not be a disciple of Jesus. Think about it. He does not say: healings and miracles following you, indicates you're a disciple of Jesus; because He said to those in Matthew 7: we did signs and wonders in your name; He said: I never knew you. It does not mean that if I'm being blessed and prospering, that I'm a disciple of Jesus, because there are people in many countries suffering, enduring hardship, losing their lives. They are not being blessed, as we would measure it, in terms of finances and external things.

It does not mean Bible study and prayer; so you can be studying your Bible and praying, and still not be a disciple of Jesus. It does not mean spiritual experiences, visions or angelic encounters. You can be having all of those, and still not be a disciple of Jesus. You're just having experiences - wonderful experiences; but I remember in revival, some of the people had the most powerful experiences. I remember two of them at least, ended up in jail, because of the terrible things in their life. They were not followers of Jesus. They enjoyed experiences with Him, but were not followers of Him, they were not His disciples. So we look at all of those, so how can you tell? Here it is. It's so clear. This is how you know. There's only one way you can know: that you love one another! It's really quite simple isn't it, that you love; so in other words, how we relate to the person next to you, and others in the body of Christ, and how we treat them - that's how you know if you're a disciple or not.

You can call yourself a Christian, but in the Bible, the term Christian was reserved for disciples. We've gone and got this loose thing now; but you see, Jesus made it very clear, it's actually the one thing that speaks more than anything is this. It's the quality of the relationships, and the way we treat one another. This is where the evidence of discipleship is seen; because sin fractured relationship with God, relationship with one another; the evidence of the work of Christ in our life redeeming us, is in our relationships, and treatment of one another. Last week we had a message, a very powerful message on unity, on how you grieve the Holy Spirit, or we can stop Him moving totally; and become anti the Holy Spirit, not through our worship necessarily, or our Bible studies or meetings; but by how we treat one another.

Okay, so let's move on. Notice it says 'one another.' Now He's talking about fellow followers of Christ; not talking about the world now. He's saying: the way believers treat one another, is the evidence of whether they're a follower of Christ or not. Isn't that amazing? Treat one another. Jesus spoke to Paul, in Acts 9:4-5; He said: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? Now what we tend to do is this. We separate Jesus from His church; and we say: it's okay to love Jesus, but I can treat people like I like. It doesn't work that way. Jesus said, when Paul was persecuting the church, He said: you are persecuting Me. Can't get it clearer, so think about this. You can love on Jesus on a Sunday, but if you're horrible to a believer on Monday, you're not a follower of Christ. There's a shallowness to your walk with God. There's no overflow, or evidence outwardly, that Jesus is looking for. This is the fruit He's looking for. He's looking for changes in how we treat one another.

Now we're in John 13, so let's have a look at the key passage I want to go through, and I want to show you something about what loving one another might look like. Now there's a whole heap of one-anothers in the Bible. We're just going to look here, at one in particular: I want to look at the aspect of foot washing. Love is incredibly practical. Love washes feet. Now we're not going to get into bringing a bowl out, and washing someone's feet, so don't worry about that, it's not going to happen. I'll tell you why in a moment - so John 13:1, and it says: before the Feast of Passover, when Jesus knew His hour had come, that He would depart from this world to the Father - now notice this - having loved His own, that were in the world, He loved them to the end. Now what He's going to do now, is what love looks like, so watch what He does.

And the supper being ended, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him. So without any doubt, Judas Iscariot has already got betrayal in his heart, he's already got demonic seed in his heart; and then it says: Jesus, knowing that the Father had given everything into His hands, He had come from the Father, and was going to God. He was secure where He came from, where He was going to, and in His identity; He rose from the supper, laid aside His garments, took on a towel and girded Himself. After that He poured water in a basin, began to wash the disciple's feet, and wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. Then He came to Simon Peter, and Simon said: Lord, are You washing my feet? And He answered, and said: what I'm doing, you don't understand now, you will know this afterwards. Peter said to Him: You'll never wash my feet; and Jesus answered Him, He stood up to him, and said: if I don't wash you, you have no part with Me. Now notice that's a very important statement.

Then He goes on, He said: he who is bathed, needs only to wash his feet, he's completely clean. You are clean, but not all of you; for He knew who would betray Him. So, see He said: you're not all clean. And when He'd washed their feet, and taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them: do you know what I've done? He said: you call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for that's what I am. But, He said, if I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet; then you also need to wash one another's feet. I have given you an example, that you should do, as I've done to you; so assuredly I tell you this: a servant isn't more important or greater than his master. The one sent, is not greater than the one who sent him; and so He said: if you know these things, you are blessed in the doing of it. Not knowing it, doing it. It's in the doing, that the blessing flows; so let's just pull the passage apart, because there's some important things.

Now the first thing you need to see is, love does not focus on position, or title, or role, or function. Love focuses instead, on serving. It's the nature of the king. Notice what it says. Notice there, where the people were, they'd come in; and of course they didn't have nice roads and cars like we have, just had dusty roads, and people walk with sandals; so they would come in, and the one part of everyone's body that got very, very dirty was the feet. The feet got dirty, so you could imagine what it's like. Any of you have had a day out there, and you come back in, take your shoes off and get a whiff of it, you know what dirty is like. Now they would walk, and they had animals on the road, so they'd pick up all kinds of animal droppings, they would pick up dust and mud and grime and everything. They'd come in, and their feet are dirty and messy; and so it was normally the custom that there would be a bowl of water provided, people would wash their own feet; or the lowest gentile servant would come and wash their feet for them; so that was the normal custom.

So you notice that this was the lowest job. Now here's the interesting thing. Jesus had revealed His power and authority. See, up to this point, they've seen the miracles: people raised from the dead, oh great! See water turned to wine - oh great! Oh, we've seen the bread multiply, oh, that is fantastic! They've seen all kinds of miracles, all kinds of healings. What they hadn't seen, is the nature of the King; what moves it all. See people see power, and miracles, and signs, and these are wonderful, I love them - but you've got to look past that, and see what the core nature of the kingdom is. The power - the Bible doesn't say: God is power. It says: God is love. Power, is how He expresses the love; but that's not the only way love is expressed; and so now Jesus does something that stuns them. He exposes the pride, and the carnal way of thinking they had, about positions and titles and so on. What He does is, He reveals to them, and this is what He did, He washed their feet. He revealed the nature of the kingdom. The kingdom we're part of, is a foot-washing kingdom. Now I'll get to what that means in just moment. It's a foot-washing kingdom. He gave up heaven, and came to earth, and just served. Now He just takes off His clothing, His outer clothing, puts on servant's clothing. He's the Lord, He's the master, He's the rabbi, He's the miracle worker, He's the one everyone comes to; yet He takes it all off, and just goes and washes their feet.

This is a total challenge to thinking. Now you think about this. How could God, come to earth, and wash my feet? Jesus said: the things I do, are what I see the Father doing. How could it be, that an amazing or powerful Almighty God, would not only create the world, but when my life got into a mess, into sin, into all kinds of uncleanness and defilement, He would come and wash my feet? It defies belief, because it's so contrary to the way we see authority and power; and how we see it manifest in the earth. It is completely different. God is not interested - He has ranks and titles and so on - but that is not what the kingdom is about. It's about a nature of love, that shows itself through serving, and entering people's world, where they're dirty and messy; and doing something to help their world become a better place. It's not about literal foot washing. The foot washing part was of the culture of the day. It's not what we do today, but the foot washing that He was - He was trying to teach them something. He didn't say: do what I did. He said do 'as' I did. In other words, understand what is behind this, moving it, and then do that. Getting the idea?

Okay, so number one, love focuses on serving; not on position and title. He wasn't concerned about that at all. Secondly - now get this one, this is a really good one: love is not selective, in its foot washing. This is a very big one. This is a very big one for the church. Love is not selective in the foot washing. Most of our foot washing, we're selective. I'll show you what I mean by 'not selective'. Notice this: position-minded people are incredibly selective in who they serve. So I will come, and I will serve this person, if it looks like serving them, will get me ahead. I will come and I'll serve - no, I won't serve this person. I'll come and serve this person; that's a Pastor, now that might help me, that might help me get ahead. See? Or whatever, yeah. So what happens is, people judge the value of others; and whether serving them, will help them get ahead, and get me an advancement. I've seen it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again; people using their serving, as a way to advance their own case, and their own position. Literally, in other words, their serving has got a self-centred agenda, to get them ahead somewhere; and you'll find with people like that, that the moment you cease to get them ahead, they will stop serving you; because the serving never came from love. It always came from: I want something from you.

It was never love; it was trading. I give you, you give me something; and even if they never said: you give me; there was always an expectation. Now notice this, when you look into the story - I've read it clearly, and tried to highlight as I was reading it - did you notice that Jesus knew who would betray Him, that He absolutely knew Judas, not only that he was a thief, and he was stealing regularly and ripping the money off from Him; but he had it in his heart, right there at that point in time, that he'd already consulted, and he already had it in his heart, to betray Him. Now you ask yourself this: most serving is done to get someone somewhere; or, it's because people deserve it. We may not serve just to get ourselves somewhere, but usually we think: we'll serve and do something nice, if the person deserves it. If they deserve it, I'll do it; if they don't deserve it, I don't do it. Now did Judas deserve what he got? He got God Himself, in the flesh, came and knelt at the foot of a betrayer, and washed his feet; knelt at the foot of a thief, and washed his feet. How can you do that?

I mean sometimes people do the slightest little thing, and we get so tiffed-off and so upset, we don't even want to know them anymore. Jesus was able to go to them, and washed his feet, knowing there's betrayal in his heart. Not only that, He was able to take a piece of bread and dip it, put it in a pot, dip it and then give it to him as a sign of friendship; and give him another chance to come clean, that there was treachery in his heart. When you look through the Bible, the Bible speaks about many, many sins, and of course people kind of got them all ranked; and there's many different ranks of sins, but the number one sin, that is the biggest sin of all in the Bible is this - in my opinion - and this is what it is. It is covenant-breaking, breaching covenantal relationship. That is the number one, in God's eyes. You can get away with a lot of things, but you don't get away with that. God is a covenant keeper, not a covenant breaker. Now this man Judas was in connection and relationship, it was a covenantal relationship. He breached it by stealing; he breached it because stealing and lying to together, by lying; and then he breached it by finally selling Jesus out. Yet Jesus washed his feet. That's what love in the kingdom looks like. It still can go to people who are messed up, and are doing things that are bad for you, and show kindness to them. It still can serve people, in spite of the fact that you see right through them, and see what's going on in their life.

Most of us, if we see something in a person, then we avoid them or turn away from them; but Jesus came and washed their feet. Notice what He's saying: this is the example I want you guys to get a hold of. This is what the church needs to get a hold of; instead of looking at what's wrong in people's lives, and seeing the things that are lacking and faults; and then deciding whether they deserve this, or deserve not. We should actually come to the conclusion: I love, because that's who I am; that's what I've got out of my relationship with God. I'm a loving person, I'm a generous person. Never give because people just have a need, or because I feel good; always give because that's what I am - I'm a giver, it's who I am.

Jesus was not selective. Can you serve a person, knowing they've been speaking behind your back? Can you serve someone, knowing that they've done something unkind to you? See, think about it aye? Can you serve someone who's talking to your enemies? Can you? What stops you? This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus; it's overcoming all that stuff, and drawing from Him. Now you'll see the significance of His next statements that He made, so Jesus was not selective and partial. He's serves everyone, and this is the thing that church people get stuck with. We think that God's just nice to the nice people; and He's judging, and He's got a down on the bad people - not at all. He loves every person, and He does actually some wonderful things to people who don't even know Him. It's something we could learn from isn't it aye?

Okay, so loving service. When you love like this you uncover pride. Notice what Peter did? He said straight away: Lord, You're washing my feet, stop it! You'll never wash my feet. So notice this, that pride - see when Jesus went down, and He knelt at Peter's feet, and began to wash his feet, Peter's got two problems come up, and they've all got pride around them. Number one, Jesus is throwing out His leadership paradigm. He's thinking: leadership means power, position, high, up, up, up and he's looking to get up, up, up, up and higher with Jesus. Now Jesus has blown it all out, and He's taking the lowest role, and He's washing his feet. He couldn't cope with it, because it blew out his thinking, of what it is to be great.

The second thing is, because of pride, he couldn't receive. Pride will stop us receiving other's ministering to our needs. We would rather be independent, go it alone. Now a lot of men know this one, when it comes to asking for directions. [Laughter] No, no, I can find the way, I'll find the way. She knows you're lost, and haven't got a clue; but you still won't consult the map. That's just pride: inability to actually admit there's a need, and have someone minister to it. See, so that's what he did, and notice Jesus held His ground. So pride loves recognition of position, and looking good before men, but you see pride resists the uncovering of it's dirty feet, and having someone serve it. I wonder what part of your life is dirty. I wonder who's got dirty feet; there's some part of your life that's dirty, but you're resistant to opening it up to anyone to help you. That's tragic. It's as good as Peter saying: no, no, no, no, no, I'll do it myself, leave it to me, no.

Okay, here's the next thing: Love is actually revealed in the foot washing. Notice what Jesus said. He said there straight away, He said - notice this statement: if I don't wash you, you've got no part with Me - number one; two, He said: you call Me Teacher and Lord, and it's well, but if I your Lord, have washed your feet, you ought to do that one another. I've set the example and the pace, so here's the first thing: will you let Jesus wash your feet? Now when we say 'Jesus washing your feet', He's not going to get a basin and come down, not that at all. Basically, will you let Jesus have access to the dirt in your life, to bring cleansing? Now it's impossible that we don't get dirty feet. You walk out of there, you'll just have the TV on, something will come up, you'll walk past and there's something advertised; and then someone gives you a bad mouth or a bad attitude, someone swears at you. Listen, you can't go through life without being dirtied. That's how it is.

Jesus said: you're already clean, you don't need everything else washed, just need your feet. That's your walk. It's your day to day life. Now most of us find we have experiences, you get hurt, you get disappointed, you get upset by people, you get let down by people, you have negative encounters with people. You have people with tough attitudes, negative attitudes, bad attitudes; and you pick up dirt. You go out there, it's impossible not to be exposed to some sexual uncleanness. It's just there everywhere, so wherever we go, we get out feet dirty; and Jesus is saying this, He said: if you won't let Me wash you, wash your feet, you can't be part with Me. Now He's not saying, you can't get to heaven. He's talking about the fruit that comes out of being a follower of Christ. Following Christ means we let Him have access to the dirt.

Here's the part that's a bit harder to take. You see, sometimes Jesus doesn't do the foot washing directly, He does it through a member of the body; so now, can I open my dirt to Jesus? Yeah, well I talk to Him about my problems. Alright then, so I'm not shifting in my life. Now can I go to a person in the body of Christ, and expose my dirty feet, and let them serve me and minister to me? That requires humility, accountability, openness. You won't let me wash your feet, you won't have a part with Me. In other words, He's saying: your portion of what God has intended for you to bring forth, in terms of fruit and blessing, will not happen as it would do, if you let this happen. That's the first thing.

Second thing, so will you open your life? [Laughs] Let someone speak into your life? Are you accountable in any way? I've got relationships with people where they speak into me, where we can put anything on the table, we can talk about anything, and they can talk about anything to me. I've got that set in my life. It's the most wonderful thing to have happen, most wonderful thing that happens. It's a safe place to be in, and I've welcomed them speaking in you see, because what it does, it means they can wash my feet, they can say what I didn't see, or point out what I'm overlooking, or don't want to face.

See, it's not just about Jesus washing your feet. He washes through His people, so we need relationships, connections. If you're a solo Christian, your running, and you're not connected to a group of people, in a meaningful relationship of building together, you probably are not having your feet washed. Ooh, getting quiet, okay - here's the last one then. Okay [laughs] well then, so now the first one, He said: if you don't let Me was your feet you're in trouble. Now what He says is: I've set you the example. I've set the pace. I am a foot washer. Those who follow Me, are foot washers. He said now listen, He said: I'm the master, is that right? Everybody say: Jesus is the Lord? [Yes.] Okay, if the Lord can serve and wash feet, what excuse does the servant have, not to wash feet? That's what He's saying there. If the Lord of the house can wash feet, what excuse do we, who serve Him have, for not washing feet? None whatsoever; and then He puts it a second way. He said: the sent person, is not greater than the one who sent them; so we are first of all servants of the Lord, and we are sent. We are sent, into a body; to serve and foot wash in the body. We're also sent into community, to serve and foot wash in the community; and we're not greater than Jesus. If anyone is, let me meet him - we'll appoint him the next senior leader, be great. [Laughter] It'd be great - but it's not so.

So what He is saying, simply is this: I've set the pace what it looks like in My kingdom, and that is, you become a foot washer. Now let's just look at what that looks like. I'll finish with this, and just ask you to think about this: How are you serving? By foot washing, it means you actually become available through relationship, through interest, through commitment, to connect into where something is dirty and messy, get involved with it, and serve to make it better. So that at one level could be just: do you have any people that you're connecting with, about the issues of their life, which are messy and dirty and painful, and grief; to actually engage them, and encourage them, and love them, and help them? Oh not my problem, I'm not a counsellor. Okay, alright, no foot washing, alright, okay. See? Have you moved on from serving? Now many have moved on. Well I've moved on now. Really? What have you moved to? [Laughter] See you can't move on from serving, when serving under-girds everything in the kingdom. Well I've moved on into my ministry. Oh really? What about ordinary serving, and washing feet? Well I've moved on, I'm in prayer now. Oh really? Well what about meeting people, and serving, and washing their feet? Well I've moved on. I've moved on.

Well what about the children, that need someone to invest in them, and to sow into their lives? Well I've moved on, that's not my thing. Well what about the young people, that need someone to help them and engage with them, and listen to them and talk with them; find out what's going on in their life and help them through engagement? That's not my ministry, I've moved on. Oh, well what about just greeting at the church, and making people feel welcome? It's not my ministry, I've moved on, I'm into deeper things brother. [Laughter] Well they're too deep for me I'm afraid; too deep, far too deep. You see never, do we ever lose the capacity, to just wash the feet. You know I make it a practice: I just go wash dishes, clean the toilets; because we never lose being a servant. If you lose or promote beyond that, you've lost what it takes to be where you are, anyway. You're now in a position in a thing.

One of the things that people found hard to fathom me out on, one issue is that I can let go a position or a role. I've been leader of a movement. People could not understand why I let go the leadership of the movement. I said: well it's simple - Jesus called me to serve, and now He's told me to do something different, it's quite simple. I picked it up, and did it with all my passion; now it's time to change, and I put it down again. It's quite simple. My life is not in the role. My life is in Him. It's not so hard to do that, and then what about other things? Well you can still help people, and go clean up for them and fix them up, or go round and help them with a meal, or do something. See, none of us can move away from foot washing. If you've gone beyond foot washing, you are too far out there to be any use to anyone; and here's one thing we can absolutely declare: you are not a disciple of Jesus.

To disciple, to be a disciple, means an imitator and a copier of a teacher; and He's just put it out there real clearly. He gets busy in people's lives where it's messy, dirty, not pleasant. It's difficult, there's hardship, heartache, all kinds of messes; and He engages them and serves them. What a challenge for us! Are you a disciple of Jesus, or did you slip and move on beyond the foot washing? Maybe today, we could just in our heart, make a decision: I'm coming back to foot washing; and this is why you need Jesus to wash your feet, because we do get attitudes, we do get uppity, we do get disappointed, we do get tired, we do get all these things come in. Then we just stop washing feet. That's why, if you don't keep coming to Him, and let Him wash you; you don't have what it takes, to wash the feet of others. You think: well, they don't deserve it anyway, I'm not going to do that. See, rather than saying: oh, I've just come out of the presence of an Almighty loving God, and He touched me! Oh, that thing He gave grace, and love to me; I have got to overflow to someone!

Here's the thing. I'll finish with this one. If you can't do it in the church you're a part of, I don't think it's going to happen anywhere; because here's the deal: we've all got grand ideas, but at the end, it's the person next to you; like this one, and this one here - I'm not going to wash his feet, no. [Laughter] You see immediately, I've missed the point. It's actually the people around us here, it's our children, it's our single parents, it's our widows, it's our older people, it's out there in the crèche, it's out there in the car park. It's just very, very simple, but all of us need to say: I'll be a foot washer; and I can take my gift, and use it to bless someone. What about your ministry? Here's the thing. Whatever ministry you have, if you haven't got foot washing in your heart, it'll never succeed greatly. It can't. It's missing the empowerment of the servant heart. Amen.

Father, we just honour You, thank You. We thank You for this day. We thank You for all You're doing in our lives, and we just ask Lord, that you help us to come back to the place, of firstly letting You wash our feet. Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, maybe someone here who doesn't know Jesus, this would be a great day to open your life, to let Him in to the mess that's in there; and to allow Him to bring forgiveness and cleansing. Maybe you're here today, and it's been a long time since you let Jesus wash your feet, or let anyone talk into your life; in fact you've got all this stuff going on in your life, you haven't talked to anyone about it. It hasn't changed, so you think, that you're bringing it to the Lord, and praying about it, is going to change it. If you've been doing that for years, and it hasn't changed, I don't think so. I think you need to talk to someone else who you can trust, and say: I've got something in my life, I need to bring out to the open, and I'd like you to pray for me and stand with me, and believe with me, and help me. You know I would pray that there'd be many people would say: well I'd count it a privilege to walk with you, and wash your feet. Maybe there's some today need to just come back to the place, out of that place of pride, and say: God, I've just lost the foot washing out of my life. Lord, restore it again.

Maybe for some of us here today God's spoken to you about serving, about in some way washing the feet of the saints, ministering to people, using your home, using your gift, using whatever you have. Find a way that you can engage in the work of serving God's people. That's where it starts. By this shall all men know you're My disciples: your love for one another.

Father, make Your spirit just rest on us. We thank You for each person here. So my last question to you is this: what did you feel impressed you today, that you felt the Holy Ghost was speaking to you? What will you do about it? I'd like you just to pray with someone next to you, and just share what God was speaking to you; and just pray with them, as they share with you, what God was speaking to them. Let's pray and agree together, that God would help us, become outstanding at foot washing.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Jesus calls each of us to follow Him.

· Mk.1:17-18 “Follow Me and I will make you become fishers of Men”.

· How could we know we are followers of Christ? His disciples?

2. Love: The Evidence of Our Discipleship

Jn.13:34-35 “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

· Jesus identifies clearly the evidence that we are followers of Christ.

· Note: Not anointing or authority Not Bible Study or prayer

Not position or title Not spiritual revelations or experiences

Not healings or miracles Not visions, dreams, angels

Not blessing or prosperity

· The Evidence: How we relate to and treat “one another”

· Love flows from humility of heart and is seen in practical acts of serving and kindness.

· “One Another” = fellow Christians – members of the same church body, wider church.

· Acts 9:4-5 Saul, Saul – why are you persecuting ‘Me’

Jesus identifies closely with His people – Do to them = do to Me!

3. Love is Practical – Love washes Feet

(a) Key Passage: Jn. 13:1-17 “He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”

(b) Love focuses on Serving not Position and Title

Jn 13:1-5 “He laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded himself.

· All the roads were dry and dirty where people walked.

· Feet were usually the dirtiest part of a person’s body.

· Foot washing was the lowest job in the household – kneeling to wash feet.

· Either water was offered and people washed self or a Gentile servant did the job.

· Jesus had revealed his anointing and authority – impressive miracles and power.

· Now he demonstrates the character and nature behind the power and authority.

· He again exposes the pride, positional thinking of His followers.

· He gave up heaven to come to earth – soon he will give up His ministry.

· vs1 He loved them till the end – Love washes feet!

(c) Love is Not Selective in Foot Washing

Jn.13:2,11 “He knew who would betray Him!” Also vs 25-26

· Position minded people are very selective in serving.

- Can you get me ahead? - Do you have influence I want?

- Can you benefit me personally? - Can I use this serving to impress you?

· Judas betrayal caused personal turmoil for Jesus vs21

· Can you serve a person - who harbours evil in their heart?

- who cannot be trusted with money or friendship?

- who is in communication with your enemies?

· Jesus washed Judas feet; Jesus dipped bread and gave it to him.

· Jesus washed the dirt off Judas feet and demonstrated friendship toward him.

· Love is Not Selective and partial – Love is a decision to serve the undeserving.

(d) Loving Service uncovers Pride

Jn 13:6-10 “Lord are you washing my feet? – “You shall never wash my feet!”

· Jesus knelt at Peter’s feet, exposed the dirt and began to wash his feet.

· Peter reacted and resisted Jesus serving him.

(i) Peter’s leadership paradigm shattered – Jesus the leader stooped to the lowest job.

(ii) He was unwilling to submit and receive – “You shall never wash my feet”.

· Jesus held his ground and refused to back down on foot washing.

· Pride wants recognition, position, wants to look good before men.

· Pride resists uncovering its dirty feet and receiving from another.

(e) Love is revealed by Foot Washing

· Love gets involved in the dirt in people’s lives and generously serves.

· Jesus revealed the nature of His Kingdom and its requirements.

(i) Will you let Jesus Wash Your Feet?

v8 “If I do not wash you – you have no part with me!”

· Not literal “foot washing”

· Will you let Jesus have access to the “dirt” in your life?

· Dirt – anything foul, filthy – mud, grime, dust, excrement.

· Dirt – grief’s, disappointments, hurts, offenses, attitudes, defiling words, bitterness and hardness of people, sexual uncleanness.

NB Will you open your life daily to expose to the Holy Spirit – repentance, confess

NB Will you open your life to Jesus in his people washing your feet?

- Speak into your life, correct, confront, hold you accountable.

(ii) Will You Wash the Feet of One Another?

Jn. 13:14-17 “You also ought to wash one another’s feet, for I have given you an example…”

· “I am Lord, I have washed feet – are you greater than Me? Paraphrased

· ‘Foot washing’ is part of being a servant, part of being sent.”

· How are you serving? How are you serving our local church?

· Are you selective? Serving only if it is “deserved” or an advantage personally?

· Have you “moved on from serving” and become self-important?

· Are you involved with the dirt in others’ lives – washing their feet through words and acts of kindness, speaking the truth?

Are You a Footwasher?

Fig Leaves and Other Coverings

The church of Jesus' day had the Bible, had the promises, had all kinds of things; but they did not have the heart of God for broken, damaged people.

Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan to actually confront what the church of His day was like. It was not connecting to those who were wounded, and desperately in need of healing.

Why is it we need to learn how to move in the spirit, and prophecy, and operate in the gifts of the spirit? So when we engage people in need, we have something to give to them. Why do you need to get trained, to flow in the gifts of the spirit, and the anointing of the Holy Ghost? So you have something to pour into people God is sending you to.

God is sending every believer, every believer, God sends us somewhere into this community to influence people; and to do it, you have to enter their world.

So what about these religious people? They had too many hang ups, and things in their life, and so they did not catch the heart of God. They actually hid away from being involved with the broken. They disconnected from the broken.

Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (1 of 4)

We're going to look at some stuff that stops us actually being authentic and moving forward. Your personal testimony of what God has done, and is doing, is going to impact the people around you. That's why it has to be fresh. You can't live out of something from yesterday. We have to be current with God. So if I asked you what has God done, or has been doing, you should be able to tell me something reasonably recently, and if you're going back three or four years, then it's time you got near to God again, and believe to see good things happening in your life

Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (2 of 4)

Weird things we do in church, that make us hard to relate to. If you're going to love anyone, you have to connect meaningfully with them. With God we grow and mature to have power and impact the community. We can all make a difference in someone’s world.

Becoming Authentic (3 of 4)

God sees the heart that responds and work with it. Holy Spirit speaks to an open heart. We won’t go forward if we don’t grow. Be able to receive grace, don’t beat yourself up. Ask God to help, guide, show you, and enable you to get up – have a heart good to God. Ask forgiveness, help – grace and goodness will come to the humble. You will then be able to show grace and minister to others, to enter other people’s lives. We need to take responsibility to grow and change otherwise we don’t have anything to give to other people. Authenticity with God is to be passionate and wiling to grow. Don’t stay where you are, step forward, move on, step up.

Developing Intimacy with the Holy Spirit (4 of 4)

You're consumed with trying to control your world. To slow down means you have to say this: God is control, and I don't need to be in control of the world. It was here before I came. It'll be here after I leave, and I am not God, I don't have to be in charge - so I can stop. I can let God take care of the world, while I just connect with God.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (1 of 4).mp3

- Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (2 of 4).mp3

- Becoming Authentic (3 of 4).mp3

- Developing Intimacy with the Holy Spirit (4 of 4).mp3

Notes

- Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (1 of 4)

- Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (2 of 4)

- Becoming Authentic (3 of 4)

- Developing Intimacy with the Holy Spirit (4 of 4)

Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (1 of 4)

Sun 9 Nov 2008 PM  « Back to Top

Notes»  Audio»  Paperback(1)»  Website»

We're going to look at some stuff that stops us actually being authentic and moving forward. Your personal testimony of what God has done, and is doing, is going to impact the people around you. That's why it has to be fresh. You can't live out of something from yesterday. We have to be current with God. So if I asked you what has God done, or has been doing, you should be able to tell me something reasonably recently, and if you're going back three or four years, then it's time you got near to God again, and believe to see good things happening in your life

I want you to just open your Bibles with me in Luke, Chapter 10. I want to just talk over a couple of Sundays on Fig Leaves and Other Coverings, particularly Christian coverings. You can put the word 'Christian' if you like on the title, but we're going to look at some stuff that stops us actually being authentic and moving forward. Its ways that people carry on in church - you're aware that so often in the church, the condition of marriages is not a lot better than it is out in the world. There's something really wrong there, wouldn't you say?

So often people are struggling with the same message people in the world are struggling with, can't seem to get a breakthrough. That's not very helpful in terms of our witness, and so we want to look at two levels; firstly, where God wants to take us. We want to look also at removing some of the obstacles, and we're going to share a few things on that. Here's an interesting scripture in Luke Chapter 8, where Jesus had delivered this man who was totally demonised. His life was totally a mess. The man wanted to follow Him, and Jesus said this to him. He said: go to your home and testify the good things God has done for you. In other words, He said: the first thing I want you to do is, I want you to go into your home environment, and into that area where people know the kind of person you were, and let them know about how good God is, and let them see how your life has changed. Let them know it.

The Bible says that that region there was so oppressed by demonic powers, it implies it through the scriptures there, and the people so filled with fear, they actually asked Jesus to leave. Then when this man got testifying, it was so changed when Jesus came back, everyone wanted to hear him. One man - he's a Christian for one day, and his ministry overflows and impacts a whole region, and everyone turns around. How did he do it? It wasn't because of all his Bible knowledge. It wasn't because of a lot of things. It was because he had a testimony of a life experience with the Lord, that no one could challenge, and that became the weapon God opened up a whole area. So your personal testimony of what God has done, and is doing, is going to impact the people around you. That's why it has to be fresh. You can't live out of something from yesterday. We have to be current with God. So if I asked you what has God done, or has been doing, you should be able to tell me something reasonably recently, and if you're going back three or four years, then it's time you got near to God again, and believe to see good things happening in your life. Amen.

A couple of weeks ago we shared our own testimony, and shared on two key principles in our own testimony: the principle of honour; the principle of humility. When we shared just what God had done in our lives, there was hardly anyone that wasn't affected, because testimony has power to change you. We didn't share about all our successes. We just shared about where we were broken, and Jesus helped us. Not how good or how great or what giftings, or how much anointing or what experience. What we did was share about the goodness of God in people who've failed and broken lives. That is what touches hearts. It gives hope something could be different, so we're going to look in this parable. It's the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we'll get to the fig leaves part hopefully. This gives you the overall setting of where I believe God wants us to move, and why we need to address the things in our lives that stop us carrying the life of God, and the enthusiasm, the joy, and the passion of the Holy Ghost.

Let's have a look in Luke, Chapter 10. You know the story, and a lawyer had spoken to Jesus. He said to Him: well teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life? He asked him: what's in the law, what do you read? He said: you shall - now look at this - love the Lord your God with just your mind? No, he says: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind, everything; and your neighbour as yourself! He said: you've done right, do this and live.

Now notice what Jesus identified was the primary thing above all things. Number one, this one, if you're doing this, you're doing okay. He says: love the Lord fervently, every part of you. Your mind has got to learn how to love the Lord. Your emotions, love the Lord with your emotions; love the Lord with your body; love the Lord with your spirit; every part of us. We tend to re-read it. We read it like this: love the Lord with your spirit on Sunday. But that's not what it says. It tells us that the commandment is, the one commandment that sums the whole Bible up is: passionate love, wholehearted love, your heart, that's your emotions, your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, your body, your strength - passionately loving God. You can understand then, if there's no passionate expression in a service where God's people are gathered, there is something wrong! It's not fulfilling what Jesus said is the number one thing to do - to love Him.

We love Him because He first loved us, so we need to begin to experience His love, and as we experience His love, we allow His love to bring healing, restoration, change in life; and we express something. We must express something, and it's not just - notice Jesus didn't say it was all about God word. He said: it's also about touching people. Listen, loving people is the number one indicator of how you're doing with God. Now how mature you are, how really you've caught the heart of God, it must come into our interactions with people. Spirituality, without engaging people, does become totally disconnected, and irrelevant, and part of the problem. God calls us to engage Him, to have encounters and experiences with Him, and then to overflow with what we have to people, who desperately have need. Jesus made it very, very clear: God loves us passionately!

Now God is not some person up there who's heavy, and serious and grim, who's got a big stick, and He's looking at you. He's not like that. The Bible says: He rejoices over you with joy and rejoicing! God is passionate. We are made in His image and likeness. Jesus was a passionate person. You say: oh that's not me - well you're messed up. There's something wrong. You're missing out on life. You're missing out on something, because Jesus, we're designed by God to reflect what He's like. If you look at the life of Jesus, He was an amazing person. He represents fully what God is like, and He was very passionate. He rejoiced. That means He laughed, and celebrated, and rejoiced. He wept openly over the grief of His friends. He prayed, He prayed with strong crying, that's passionate, and with tears - that's emotion.

When He was facing oppression, and a struggle, and the greatest challenge of His life; going into the garden, knowing tomorrow He's going to die, He wanted friends to be with Him - and He was sad that they wouldn't stick with Him. Before He came into this experience, He wanted them to come with Him; He wanted friendship. We just don't see sometimes, how full of expression Jesus was. Kids loved Him. Kids like smiley faces. Anyone who knows kids - they like smiley faces. You've got a serious face, they don't respond. They just see - the body is saying it all - heavy face, keep away. Adults are pretty much the same aren't we? See, so God is full of expression. Look at the expression and everywhere you look, there's expression, so God wants us to have expression, learn to be able to do that.

Now as we read the story here, you're going to see where Jesus is now illustrating, what He's talking about. Now of course when we read this parable of the Good Samaritan, you're going to put yourself somewhere in that story you know. Even as I read it out, you're going to mentally put yourself somewhere. Now maybe you're the guy on the road beaten up and dying; I'm bleeding to death, someone help me or even notice me. Maybe you're thinking: oh, I'm a bit like the Good Samaritan you know? Every now and then I help people out, you know? But almost no one will say that they're the priest, or the Pharisee, or the Levite. We don't want to be that, yet more often than not we are. That's why He told the story; it's to talk about what loving God passionately, and loving your neighbour as yourself really looks like, okay? It's more than just being in a service, and being excited on Sunday.

He said a certain man - Verse 30 - went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down the road, and when he saw him, well he passed by on the other side. He's got to get to a prayer meeting you know. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the same place, he came and he looked - so they both looked, they both saw him, you see. And he passed by on the other side. He crossed over the other road, so he wouldn't have to go there; listen, I'm busy mate, I've got a meeting, I've got a Bible study to do, I've got my home group to get to. You just don't understand how busy I am, I've got to get to things! I'm sorry, you know? But a certain Samaritan - now Jesus is using the Samaritan. It illustrates, of course, Him. Samaritans were despised. The priest and the Levite were spiritual people supposedly. And he went to him, and he bandaged his wounds, pouring on the oil and the wine; he set him on his own animal, took him to an inn and took care of him.

The next day, when he departed, he took out some money, gave it to the innkeeper, and said to him: take care of him; whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you. Who do you think was the neighbour, to the one who fell among thieves? And he said: the one who showed mercy; and Jesus said: well go and do likewise. Remember the original question is: well who's my neighbour? Jesus reverses it, and said: listen, that commandment's not about finding who's your neighbour. That commandment is about BECOMING a neighbour! Turn to someone and say: howdy neighbour! [Laughter] Okay, now you notice in the story here he talks about, he's trying to explain or bring a message out, to a certain kind of people. He's talking to church people here, not talking to the unsaved. He's talking to church people, about what true, mature spirituality looks like - and so there's a priest.

The priest was one who actually ministered in the presence of God; and you and I are all called to be priests to God. He was a Levite, a Levite served in the house of God; so a Levite was also a special person, set apart. You could say that the priest and the Levite could easily be us, because we're all called to be priests, and to minister to God, to worship Him, praise Him, be in His presence, experience Him, love Him. And the Levite, the Levite represents a person who was serving, or involved in serving. So no matter how spiritual you are, it fits almost everyone who is a believer here today; we're in the house of God, we're serving, we're worshipping, we're doing something today. Now it says there's certain things that they did. It says - you notice the things that they did. They looked, and they saw the guy, and they actually would not engage in helping him. This is the point Jesus is making.

Now if you have a look at those people, automatically in our heart we say: well I wouldn't be those people; I'm not like that. You know this is the kinds of things they did, let's tick them off: one, they knew the Bible and read the Bible, okay. Number two, they went to church regularly. They were actually really committed people, probably more committed than some here today; and third, they fasted - yhey fasted every week - more fasting than some people here do; so they were pretty good people weren't they aye? And what else did they do? Well they tithed. They tithed of everything, very diligent about their tithing, probably more diligent than some of us are, and so they did these things, and they actually had really good behaviour, so if you looked at them, well, they're all really well behaved church-going people, see?

Now here's the problem. Their spirituality didn't go into the heart, and didn't change the way they lived their life. In other words, they had their experiences, and their programs, and their things that they did on Sunday and through the week; but it never overflowed to what God intended. You've got to understand that when God created us, He had an intention. The first intention is that we be an ambassador, a child of God, one of His representatives, His family to represent Him in the earth. The second is, that out of that position, or relationship of friendship, sonship with God, we would then bring His life into the earth, and change the environment. Now what He's showing here is, here's some people who are caught up in church world, but there is no overflow to any person who's in need, no overflow! They are preoccupied and busy with church, and there is no overflow from their life to a genuine person in need, and this is what Jesus is really looking at.

Now what they did was their focus was spiritual matters; oh I need to pray; need to go to church, got a meeting to take; got a lot of things to do. They were absorbed in their own world, their religious world, their world of spiritual things, their world of church activities. Now it's great to be involved in church activities. I'm all in for building the house of God, but Jesus is trying to point something that's missing. He's not saying any of those things were wrong; the problem is, they didn't actually understand what the heart of God was. Notice, that in all of their spirituality, they avoided people in need. Notice both of them saw him, and one actually crossed the other side of the road, to avoid him. Now the last couple of weeks of course, we've been having a simple exercise just getting people to be friendly. What I've been watching is to see who avoids who. Come on - to see if people are actually avoiding talking to people; and if we are, we need to realise we're missing something.

We've come to church. We're all in the right environment, but something is missing at the core of understanding of the heart of God, and that reflects a change we need to address in our lives. Now you see on a Sunday, there'll be people come who are part of the family of God; you're regular here, you come in and you enjoy what God is doing. There's others who come, and they're visitors, they're enquiring, they're new people. My concern firstly, is for every new person, the stranger in our midst; and then I look and I see: is this in your heart to stretch across to them; and smile and say: hello, it's great to see you. Now we actually do extremely well as a church. I reports continually of how friendly we are, but when I look around I see there are numbers of people, who for whatever reason, you've chosen are not stepping up to engage people. This is the lesson Jesus is talking about. People are in need.

This guy here had started out on a journey. He represents anyone in life, and on the way the thieves, that's a picture of demonic powers, came and wounded him and stole what he had. So this is a picture of any person, who has started out in life and ended up in turmoil, pain, conflict, hurt, wounded, broken, and they're bleeding, and they're in need of someone to represent God and come to them. This is what we are called to do. We're called to first of all be in relationship with our Father; and as sons, represent His heart. That's why Jesus is bringing this parable out. The religious people proposed that they represented what God was on about, but in their activities, actually didn't carry His heart. That's what He's trying to show up, what loving God passionately, and loving your neighbour as yourself, is about. It's not saying: don't pray, don't read your Bible, don't come to church, don't tithe. It's not saying any of those things.

Jesus actually reinforced all of those things, but He said: they need to lead to carrying the life of God to people who are broken; and there's not one of us doesn't meet people like that. You cannot go through a week, without meeting someone who is on the side of the road broken, wounded, bleeding; and if you know what to look for, you can see it easily. It's everywhere, and you and I, are we so busy with our life that we can't engage these people; or have we got something of the heart of God, and we're just looking for the ones God has called us to minister to? That's where we're going to move in the coming year. We'll be actually equipping, and stirring, and mobilising the church, to begin to become aware of its responsibility in the community, its responsibility to bring the life of God to people.

I've just been so thrilled too just at the works of Celia and Sargin and others have done, just going out into - even just out into the show grounds and moving prophetically. They've actually brought God to people, and they wept when they felt God, but every one of us can do that. Every one of us can do it, in all kinds of different ways - so you notice that they were disconnected from people and opportunity. They actually didn't even see opportunity when it came. I mean there's the guy right there, lying there on the road, and they were disconnected from people, disconnected from opportunity, disconnected from the heart and the purpose of God. Not only that, it just revealed that they were broken people themselves. The biggest reason that we don't engage and get involved with people, is because we're afraid that we won't be able to cope with their problems, and cope with them; which means there are issues in our own life we need to sort through, so we can enter the world of another, and not be overwhelmed by their needs, and just be able to just say: no, that's yours. This is how much I help.

You see the principles of this beautifully in the story of the Good Samaritan. It's absolutely amazing how it's done, but the thing is these guys had missed their purpose. They'd missed the divine design, and that's the issue that God is speaking to the church about, worldwide at the moment, in different ways. You'll hear it in all kinds of different ways, different language, different terminology; but in the end, it's the same thing. It's the church arising, and beginning to enter and engage the community, with the power and the presence of God; and to do that we've got to get honest about where we're really at, in terms of our equipping to do it, relationally and spiritually. Notice what this man did, the Samaritan. I love this guy here. Now these guys were religious people, but this guy here demonstrated really what the heart of God is, so we'll look at this, here it is. Notice the first thing he said: a certain Samaritan. Now a certain Samaritan came where he was, and he saw him, and he had compassion. He felt something, when he saw a person in need.

Now if you lack compassion, ask the Lord to give it to you, ask the Lord. Begin to pray: God, give me compassion, help me to feel the struggles of people, and equip me to be able to minister to them. I can't deliver every demon out of the people in this city - you've got to do it. Think about it. The next thing he did - so the first thing was, a feeling thing. Notice the other guys had no feeling at all. They looked, and they saw, and said: it's not my issue, keep out of my life. Now that's actually a culture that's come through the western world: don't get involved. We've got to change that. That's not - we're not called to represent that culture. We're called to bring the culture of God. The culture of God is get engaged, get involved where He leads you - not everything, you can't meet every need. You've got to know your limits, and that's part of what we'll talk about as well.

So here's what he did. He felt something, and then he initiated connection. Now people don't turn up. I don't sit in an office waiting for people to come to me. I've got more people who want to come to me than you could ever imagine, but they can't all come to me. Usually I've initiated contact in some way. The majority of people I get to minister to, I initiate the contact with. You've got to learn to be an initiator, to actually: here I am Lord; now I can't meet every need. I'm not even going to try to meet every need, but there's something I can do today to help someone, and I'm going to do it - it may even just be a smile, whole heaps of ways we can do it. We need to learn some of those ways, and whatever level we're at, we can all get engaged, you can all initiate connection with someone who is hurt. Now that means - it may just mean getting up out of your seat, going to someone who's sitting on their own, say: hi, how you doing? Can I just talk - can I buy you a cup of coffee afterwards? That is what this is about, initiating connection.

Here's the next thing he did, he went to him, and then he identified where he was broken. Now that takes a bit more skill. We need to learn some skills how to do that, but he basically - he had to go there, and he had to look at the guy, and find out where he was bleeding. Now he didn't sort of stand away - ooh, I wonder where he's bleeding. He actually went there, and inspected him and checked him out, and found out where he was hurting and in pain. Now you have to do that by being able to be a good listener, and a good talker, and you can grow in that area, but most people if you listen to them, will open up and tell you where they're hurt, if you really care about them. Then the next thing - I love this bit - he said: he poured in the oil and the wine. Now the oil and the wine always in the Bible speak of the ministry of the Holy Ghost. Now remember this is what true love is about. It's not just doing practical things to help people; it's actually carrying the anointing of God, and having something supernatural to put in someone's life.

To have that oil and wine, he must have brought it. He must have paid a price, to have the anointing of the Holy Ghost at work in his life; so when he went to people, when he found out the needs, when he saw what the problem was, he had something he could put in. He had that anointing of the Holy Ghost, a word of comfort, a word of encouragement, deliverance, healing, ministry of some kind. Every one of us, you've got the Holy Ghost to do that work, and if you don't know what to do, commit in the coming year - get trained. Get trained! Learn how to bring God to people, and also be willing to face what stops you going to people and engaging them. That's an internal thing. The other's easy to learn, and it's a part of a lifestyle. This is what Jesus talked about, this is it, this is the thing see? Notice here, poured in the oil and wine. Now I love that part, because that's all the apostolic commission. That is all about the apostolic commission: go into the world, as a sent person, sent by God.

If you start to think: where I live, where I work, where I go to school - that is where God sent me. I am apostolically commissioned to go there, and to discover those that God called me to minister to; and then to engage them, by initiating the connection, find out where the needs are, and bring something of God to them. Every believer is called to do that. You cannot hide in a prayer meeting, and fulfil the call of God. The prayer meeting, we engage God, we build with Him, we draw from Him, we experience Him. Then we fulfil the great commission, by going and touching people with what we've experienced. We've got to learn how to do that - so that's the apostolic commission. Now the second part, is in here as well, is the area of pastoral care and discipleship. Now here's the thing that's interesting. The guy knew his limits. He knew he could not do it all himself; and one of the great skills you've got to learn, is where your limits are. You can't do it all yourself, and neither does God expect you to. We've got at times learn to draw lines, and say: no more; even if people want more.

There's others can carry it on, so what he did was the next thing you see, the pastoral care and discipleship. He took him to the Inn. The inn, in the Bible here, is a picture of the local church, a community of believers. He took him to a place, and connected him with other people who could help him. You don't have to have all the answers, you've just got to be willing to have a good feeling for people, and when you see them in need, go to them, and do what you can. Then attract them to where someone else can carry on the job. Notice the next thing he did; he provided resources to ensure that the man's recovery took place; and then he checked up, and followed him up, to see how it was. Now Jesus said that's what loving God with all your heart, and loving your neighbour as yourself, is all about. It actually is revealed, not in the Bible school, not in the worship service, not in any of these things. It is revealed in the way you connect with, and touch the lives, of people.

Now it doesn't mean that the others aren't important. They are vitally important. Is it important to pray? Yes. Is it important to worship? Yes. Is it important to engage God? Of course, this is where the source is. But if you access the source, and never fulfil the purpose, you've frustrated the plan of God. He said in Acts 1 verse 8: you shall receive glorious power from on high; visions, dreams, revelations, prophecies, all kinds of wonderful things! And you can just wallow in them, enjoy them like a pig in a hollow. [Laughter] He didn't say that, did He? He said: no, you get them; and He said: then that's what equips you, to go to Jerusalem, the local town where you live, Judea, all around us in the Bay and in Samaria and beyond, everywhere. He said: that is the purpose of the Holy Ghost! It's given to you, to get you out there, so you can be a representative of God, and minister God to people! That's what it's about.

It's not about meetings. Meetings are about encouragement, engaging God, being built up, but actually our life call is about engaging God, allowing Him to shape us, so we can represent Him in the community; and you know what He is like? He even left heaven, and came to a grubby, dirty, sinful world, and engaged it. Does that cost you something? It sure does. Does that hurt you a bit? Ooh ooh, just look at the nail prints! Do people like you for it? Not always! Is it messy? Incredibly! Do you have times when people let you down? Just believe that! That's why the Holy Ghost is given to you, so you can be healed of your hurts, and carry on with the fire of God, and minister to people.

That's what Jesus said this is about. That is the church He's building. That's what He had in mind, a spirit filled, Holy Ghost, blood clean, people who are passionate for God, expressive of God, and not ashamed to tell God they love Him, and encounter Him, and spend time in His presence! But then when they get out of the meeting, they're in the mission field, and they're ambassadors. They're apostolic company of people, anointed by the Holy Ghost, and they've got some changing to do around them, got a mandate to shift something. The trouble is, years ago the church got into a rapture doctrine, and most Christians are waiting for Jesus to come, and hoist them out of it. It's all a lie. He's called you to get into it, and mess in with it, get rolling around in it; and do you get hurt? Yeah, you'll get a bit hurt! Have a look around, it's the history of the church, gets hurt - doesn't it? Have a look how it started. Have a look at the founder - but that's what we're called to do.

We're called to carry a glorious mission, to live out a great cause, that our community would change, that the people around us would be impacted by Jesus Christ, that God's power from heaven would come into the earth, passivity would be overcome, that negativity would be overcome, apathy overcome, sickness overcome, oppression overcome. Something changing, because God's people woke up to why He put them on the earth! [Applause] And said: yes Lord, I will be like the Good Samaritan. I'll pay the price for the wine and the oil. I'll pay the price, to get my life touched and experience You, and then look out world! I'm just waiting for someone to pour the oil and the wine into! That's the shift God is making worldwide. It's always been what He intended, it's just sometimes we get caught up in all kinds of other stuff. Let's keep the main thing, the main thing: engaging God, and bringing God to people, and seeing their lives changed.

Will you be part of that? You better believe it. That's where we're going, that's where God is leading His church, worldwide. It's not just what we're doing here; it's where God is leading His church world wide! World wide! This gospel, this great news of Jesus Christ, and the kingdom of God and the power of God; it must, it MUST be proclaimed, to all the ends of the earth! It must be! Will you be part of that? Will you prepare yourself? Will you break out of whatever restricts you? If you can't go to people, ask God: what is wrong with me, help me to break out of it. Get into some course and get delivered or healed; learn some relationship skills; learn how to get the anointing of God to flow through you; and then go for it and make a difference! Go for it and make a difference!

Oh I tell you something, there's no limits to the person that says: I am here for a purpose, to reach the world for Christ, to make disciples of Jesus Christ, and advance the kingdom of our glorious God and Saviour. Can you say Amen to that? Let's stand and give the Lord a great clap. Come on, let's stand and give Him a great clap [applause] halleluiah! This is our destiny! This is what we are called to do! This is the church of the living God! Sons and daughters, carrying the heart of God, and the capacity to minister the life of God to people. My goodness, come on church, let's clap, let's rise and shake the dust off us. Stand up on the inside, begin to believe I can make a difference! My life will make a difference! I no longer live in that place down there. I'll stand and fulfil my destiny!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Luke 10 – The region was oppressed by demonic powers, they asked Jesus to leave.

· One man, a Christian for one day, testified of the life experience with God and how this impacted the people of that region.

· Draw near to God to see good things for testimony. Testimony has the power to change us, to share about the goodness of God. It gives hope to something that is different.

· Luke 8:39-40 - “Return to your house (home) and tell (testify) what great things God has done for you!”

· The Power of Testimony – Telling others of your experience of the Goodness of God.

· A whole city was impacted – not by preaching but by the testimony of a changed life.

· Our Personal Testimony:

i) Humility – openness about our failures, struggles, pain, freed others to admit them.

ii) Honor – acknowledging the Goodness of God brought hope to others.

· Sin always has consequences – bad choices have bad consequences.

· Forgiveness removes the guilt and establishes the connection with God but a person will still experience the consequences.

· Christians have the tendency to cover their struggles and remain broken and alone.

2. The Great Commandment - Fervent love:

· Luke 10:27 - “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself”.

- The priority of fervent loving relationships is declared by Jesus.

- We are human beings created to reflect and carry the image of God.

- God loves passionately – He is expressive.

· How we express something in connecting/loving people is the number one indictor of how our relationship with God is.

· Spirituality without God = disconnected with people.

· He rejoices over you, He is a passionate God.

· We are designed by God to reflect what He is like – He is full of expression.

· Jesus is full of expression e.g. prayed in the garden, strong tears flowed and He wanted friendship.

a) The Religious Spirit is devoid of Compassion:

· The parable of the Good Samaritan – verse 30 – 37.

· The wounded man represents any person in life.

· Priests and Levites represent religious people.

Priest = we’re all called to be priests, to minister, to praise, experience and love.

Levites = served in the house of God as we serve in the house of God.

=> They knew the Bible, fasted, go to church, they tithe, have good behaviour. Good behaved spiritual church people – but it never overflowed to what God intended - it didn’t flow through their hearts. They are so caught up in church flow that there is no overflow to other people in need, they cross to the other side of the road. Don’t want to get involved. In their activities they didn’t represent God.

· Religious People – supposed to be Godly representatives:

· Focused on spiritual matters.

· Self absorbed in their own life.

· Avoided people in need.

· Disconnected from people and opportunity.

· Revealed their own brokenness covered in spiritual fig leaves.

· Had no concept of Divine Design to be God’s ambassadors.

· 1 John 3:14-18

· Becoming a neighbor is not just to love a neighbor.

· Samaritans were despised by people.

· Carry the life of God to people who needs it. Are we too busy to see those people? It is our responsibility to bring the heart of God to people.

· The Priest and Levite missed an opportunity. They missed what God wanted to do. They have issues in their own live they have to deal with. They missed their divine design.

b) True religion/Spirituality is revealed by Relationships with People:

· The Good Samaritans’ actions revealed his spiritual maturity.

· Compassion, ask God for it.

· Feeling, Initiated connection. Apostolic Commission

· Identified the man’s brokenness, he (Reaching out to the Lost) went there and inspected. Good listener and good talker.

· Poured in oil and wine, carried anointing of God, something supernatural given to others, anointing of the Holy Spirit. Pastoral care/Discipleship

· Took him to an Inn. (Healing and Restoration)

· Provided for his ongoing healing.

· Recognized healing is a process.

· Embraced the need for others to help.

· It’s for the Church to arise and enter to engage the community to equip and connect relationally.

· Go into the world as a sent person - wherever you go. Every believer is called to do this.

· So often people are part of a Church body but are unable to heal others because their own lives are broken and they won’t admit it.

· So often there is a gap between beliefs and experience (how to live life)

· Pastoral care and discipleship, he knew his limits. (Can’t do it all yourself). He took him to an Inn, (Church) – where someone else can do the job. He also provided resources.

· To access the source and never give out leads to frustration.

· Acts 1:8

· Engage God, allow Him to shape us and give back to others. It comes at a cost.

· The Holy Spirit is given to us and heals us when things go wrong. We will get hurt, won’t be liked, it won’t always be fun, it will get messy, it comes at a cost like the oil and wine came at a cost to the Samaritan.

· We are called to carry a Glorious Mission, people around us impacted by Jesus and to see how their lives change.

· It must be proclaimed in the entire world. Will you be part of it?

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Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings (2 of 4)

Sun 23 Nov 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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Weird things we do in church, that make us hard to relate to. If you're going to love anyone, you have to connect meaningfully with them. With God we grow and mature to have power and impact the community. We can all make a difference in someone’s world.

I want you to open your bible with me in Luke 10, and I started a message, didn't get very far on it, but we'll see if we can do a bit better today, and we're looking at Fig Leaves and Other Christian Coverings. Weird things we do in church, that make us hard to relate to. We're just going to read in Luke Chapter 10, and Jesus has been asked a question: what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said: well what do you reckon the Bible says? He said: you shall love the Lord your God - Verse 27 - with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself - and Jesus said: you've got it, you've got it. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength. In other words, that is a passionate, expressive, dynamic relationship with God; and He says: it doesn't finish there. You love your neighbour as yourself. It's one big package. Its one big package; loving God fervently, passionately, and then overflowing to express that, and represent what God is like to people.

This is the core of it. Now listen, notice this, that if you're going to love anyone, you have to connect meaningfully with them, so if we're going to love God passionately we must establish a connection, a vital connection with Him, a prayer life, an act of faith, believing, reaching up to Him, talking to Him, listening to Him. If we're going to love our neighbour as ourself, we need to actually connect with what's going on in our life. A lot of people are unable to love, and express love well to people, and help people and enter their life, because they themselves have got too much junk, too much unresolved stuff, and God is wanting us to get cleaned up, not just so we can be better people, but so we can have greater impact in the lives of others. He said: love your neighbour - you can't love your neighbour unless you connect with them, by entering their world. If we're going to fulfil what Jesus said is the great command, where everything in the Bible is summed up, and we're going to love Him passionately and then begin to love people, we have to learn how to connect into their world, how to reach out to them.

That's why Jesus told the story, to illustrate what He meant. You know the story of the Good Samaritan, I'm not going to go through it all. I just want to pick up one verse in it. I think its Verse 27. It says: because the religious man, the priest, had gone by; saw the man in need, desperately wounded, desperately broken. He looked, and he was aware there was a problem, but he would not get involved. The Levite, he also went by, came over and looked at the man, saw him, crossed the other side and would not get involved. Now Jesus is trying to speak to the church of His day, in the same way He's trying to speak to the church of today; that not getting involved is not an option. You notice what He says, He talks then about the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans were despised. He's painting a picture of himself, as the one who was despised. He was despised, because he connected with people, connected with sinners, connected with tax collectors, connected with prostitutes, he connected with broken people, and his critic's main criticism was: he hangs out with the wrong kinds of people.

For most Christians, it won't be said of you that that was true. It's true, because once you've been in church for a little while, you begin to forget the lost, begin to forget the people who God has sent us to reach out to. Jesus then talked about this man, and it says this. I won't take it any further than this, then I want to go into Genesis 3 - and notice what the man did. It says: he saw him, his heart was touched and moved. Here is a man who has the heart of God. The heart of God is for people. God loves people, He loves the world, He loves Hastings, loves Napier. There may be many things wrong, but God still loves the people that live here; and this man was moved by the plight of the man, went to him, and entered his world, found out what was wrong, and did what he could to minister to him. Listen, Jesus told this, to illustrate that this is what the heart of God is like. This is what spiritual maturity looks like.

Spiritual maturity looks like: going to people, and bringing the love, and the compassion, and the anointing of the Holy Ghost; and pouring it into their lives. That's what spiritual maturity looks like. It doesn't look like: you prophecy well. It doesn't look like: you do all kinds of church things well, that's family business, but it looks like: you go to people, and you help people who desperately need help. That's what spiritual maturity looks like. That's what the heart of God looks like. That's why Jesus told this story. I just kind of feel to hang out in this story of the Good Samaritan, I'm just getting so much from it. So what about these two - the priest and the Levite? Well they were the church of the day, and the church of the day walked past the broken, the needy and the wounded; and would not cross over, and be engaged in being part of the solution.

The church of Jesus' day had the Bible, had the promises, had all kinds of things; but they did not have the heart of God for broken, damaged people; and so Jesus told the story, to actually confront what the church of His day was like. It was not connecting to those who were wounded, and desperately in need of healing. Why is it we need to learn how to move in the spirit, and prophecy, and operate in the gifts of the spirit? So when we engage people in need, we have something to give to them. Why do you need to get trained, to flow in the gifts of the spirit, and the anointing of the Holy Ghost? So you have something to pour into people God is sending you to. God is sending every believer, every believer, God sends us somewhere into this community to influence people; and to do it, you have to enter their world. So what about these religious people? They had too many hang ups, and things in their life, and so they did not catch the heart of God.

They actually hid away from being involved with the broken. They disconnected from the broken, and I want to just touch on that for a couple of weeks; and we're going to go into Genesis, Chapter 3, and pick up this whole theme of fig leaves. I want you to see something about the fall; Genesis, Chapter 3, Verse 7. After Adam and Eve had sinned - before they sinned, they were able to relate freely one to another; then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and so they did something. They sewed fig leaves together, and covered themselves up. They became conscious of something. They became conscious of themselves. There was no self-consciousness before then, no shyness before then, no bad relationships before then. They covered themselves with fig leaves, then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God.

Now I want you to see two things in there; number one is, they put on fig leaves. In other words, they covered up what they were truly like. They covered themselves, and withdrew from intimate connection, or heart connection, one with another. A consequence of the fall, is a struggle we have in being genuine and authentic, and connecting with people just as we are. We tend to want to cover ourselves up, put on a good front, an image - but God is not interested in image. He's not interested in fig leaves. He is wanting you to be authentic. He has a provision for you, where you don't have to cover up your life, you can live an authentic life, and authentic people are able to connect with others. People who are covered up, and all of their life is damaged, broken and they're living with most of their life covered, cannot enter into close relationships. Notice the second thing they did, they hid. They avoided connecting. When God came, they avoided connecting, so what they did was, they constructed a world in which they could control their connections.

They began to control how closely they got to one another. They began to control how closely they got to God. They tried to control their world, and avoid getting near to anyone. Now here's the problem: when we cover ourselves up, and draw back from intimately connecting, to save ourself and control our world from being hurt any further, this is what happens - you become lonely! Church is full of lonely people, and if you're lonely, the problem's right within you, and the answer's right within you too. It's not about anyone organising something for you. The problem lies within us, because of what we have put to cover ourselves from living authentic relationships. The fig leaves, I'm going to try and identify some things that we do. We do some stuff in church. Every church does it. You'll probably recognise some of these, you might like to tick a bit off, and then you can actually say: well Lord, perhaps I can abandon my fig leaf, because the problem - you see God wants to make a provision for you.

God is a Jehovah Jireh, the Lord our provider. God makes provision for our lives to be restored, and made whole. There's only one uncomfortable hitch, that is you've got to take off the fig leaf first. Ooh, is there any other way? No. Oh anything but that! Anything but letting people know, or letting God know, what I'm really like, see? But God wants us to be authentic. He's not worried about mistakes, failures, things you've done wrong, anything that's going wrong. He's not worried about bad attitudes. He's not worried about any of that kind of stuff to tell the truth. The devil just leaps on your back and accuses you, and makes you think God's upset with you - He isn't. He loves you. He loves you, and while you're a sinner, He sent Jesus to die on the cross. How much more, when anything you need now, He'll provide; but you see Adam believed a lie. He thought God was going to hurt him, so he hid from God. Now how can we actually invade the world, if we're hiding from God, and hiding from one another? How can you fulfil your mandate in the world, if you're life is covered/concealed, you're hiding your life, and you're not free on the inside? How can you do it?

Well you'll try to do something, but it won't ring authentic, and people are looking for authentic. People need to see authentic. Authentic doesn't mean perfect. Authentic means: you blow it once in a while, but you know what to do when you blow it, you know how to be upfront and talk about it and put it right, say: I'm sorry. That's a good word: I am sorry. They're hard words to say those ones. You'd be surprised how hard it is to get it out of people, they choke rather than say it, but it actually helps. It's very helpful. Okay then, so they became isolated, alright. So now notice the difference now with the Good Samaritan. The religious people wouldn't engage the man's world, the Good Samaritan did; and this is what Jesus is pointing out, that when we become connected to Him, He begins to grow us and change us and help us mature, and the evidence of maturity is our capacity to enter the world of those who are lost and broken, to help them and love them.

Will that hurt? Too right it'll hurt. Will you get knocked back? Too right you'll get knocked back. Will people misunderstand - oh yes, they will, but aren't we called to follow Jesus Christ, not the Pharisees? We're called to be like the Good Samaritan, not like the ones who crossed the road. How many have crossed the road, come on? Yeah, we've all done it some time, crossed the road. Sometimes I've crossed the road when I saw some Christians. [Laughter] They were that bad. I'd prefer not to talk to them, because they were so weird. [Laughter] They were. You don't know how weird it was, when they first arrived here man, there was some shocking stuff going on downtown - weirdness plus. I can remember someone standing up preaching the gospel, and I thought that's great, I'll go and talk to him. He didn't want to talk to me. What kind of weirdness is that?

Then some others were there, blowing trumpets, doing some weird stuff, and I crossed the road. They were an embarrassment to everyone, caused most of the preaching of the gospel out in the street to stop - it was such an offence. That's not how you win the world - to win people, you've got to be wise. To win people, you've got to be wise. You've got to allow God to work in your life, and develop authenticity, so that you can enter the world of others; and not put them off by religion, not put them off by weirdness, but actually engage them, so they see you have something they really want.

So we've got some amazing things we do in the church, so let me just throw a few things out, because if we're going to become whole, it helps if we actually see what it is we do that covers up our life. A lot of Christians, we substitute activities, we substitute activities for authentic relationship. We just get busy doing stuff, and so we do church stuff, and now we feel real good, because we're doing stuff for God. Well it's right to serve the Lord, it's right to do things for God, but God wants an authentic relationship first. He puts relationship over doing.

Doing flows out of relationship, so some people do stuff, and in church we've got a whole range of weirdness of our own. You can't believe it. When you hear some people talk, you haven't got a clue what they're talking about. It's very spiritual. [Laughter] Too spiritual for me, I can't understand. Neither can anyone else, so how does that help anyone? It doesn't, it's just a fig leaf, over someone who's broken on the inside. It doesn't help, and so church is full of these kinds of things that we do. We get very, very busy, and serve, serve, serve, serve, served and help and that's right to do serving and helping, but we don't neglect our relationship with the Lord. Other times we have, kind of like, God talk, you know? After you've done the God talk stuff, people think: whoa, I don't know much, I don't know anything. So think about that; if people walk away from your God talk, and they feel that they actually don't know anything, or nothing much, you're projecting pride and ego, and they're feeling put down. This is not good. This is not the way to win the world! This is the way to weirdness.

It actually totally removes you from the heart of God; so we have to look, and guard, that how we talk, how we connect, how we communicate, what we do with one another, actually genuinely and authentically connects with people. Ooh, you know it's the other one beside you isn't it aye? Of course exaggerating what we've had - now experiences in God are necessary. We can only share with people what we have experienced. We have to have revelation of God. We must have experience of God, but our experience of God is to lead us to represent Him, not to make us look important. It's so very, very modest - and then of course the other thing we do in church is, we just apply bits of the Bible we like, so we don't do the other stuff. Now I'm really going to hammer this one on the Good Samaritan, because I know this is one people don't like. See, we like to go to church, and do the ministry, but actually ministry is about serving people. It's kind of like this: what can I do to help you?

It's not complicated. You don't have to be rocket scientists to help people, but you do actually have to be authentic, and have some skills to enter their world. If we're broken, and we don't have the skills, our impact is limited; so why do you need to grow as a Christian? Why do you need to develop? Why do you need to grow? Here's the reason why: so you can enter into deeper relationship with the Lord, and you can represent Him better to people, and have greater impact with people. So if your life is broken, and the only people you can connect with are Christians, you should do something about it, because you're sidelined and irrelevant, irrelevant to what God is up to. Come on, think about it. That's what the Pharisees and religious world were like in Jesus' day, irrelevant to the nation of their day, and Jesus showed what a man full of the Holy Ghost does. He gets involved with people that people don't like, and get upset about, and He ministers to them, and upsets them as well, all kinds of stuff.

Here's another little thing we do in church. We divide our life up into natural and spiritual. How we've got an amazing ability to do that; this is this compartment, that's the God bit, so Sunday's the God bit. The rest of the week, well I've got to go out there - so we come in on Sunday, and we say: oh, oh! Thank You Lord for Your wonderful love! And on the way home we're cursing someone who cut us off. [Laughter] What's all that about? When we come in, oh praise the Lord! All I have, I surrender all! Then during the week we're trying to rip everyone off, and we're just as sharky in business as anyone else - no difference, see? Or we come and we say: oh Lord, I love You, and then we go home and berate the husband for his weakness, [laughter] and we're convinced we're doing God a favour. It doesn't work. It doesn't work, and so that's dividing your life up.

Listen, God wants to come to every part of our life. You say: well listen, if you're going to survive in the business world, you've got to be tough. Is that right? How are you doing then? You see, one thing that's happening in the world now, is the world's getting a great lesson on how greed and corruption actually doesn't work, inherently doesn't work! But integrity, and service, it does. Think about that. See the principles of God work. The problem is, we've got to learn how to live in a world culture, and be able to represent God's values in there, without being religious; and one of the values of the kingdom is service, excellent service, see? Think about this, so when we divide our life up, and we keep God for Sunday, but the rest of the week it's kind of we've just got to get on as usual; listen, that's one of the clever coverings we make for the fact to hide, we are not authentic, and we are irrelevant.

For the church to have impact, it must actually break through these mentalities, put off these coverings, and find ways to actually connect into and touch the community we live in. That's what the Good Samaritan did. He had the oil and the wine, yeah you can have the oil and the wine, but if you can't talk to people, they're not going to want your oil and wine. You've got to find ways to bridge into their world, and enter their world, find ways of serving them and help them. Man, I was impressed this last week. They had these t-shirts - you ever seen that thing iPhone and it's got an 'i' with a big dot on it, phone afterwards or they've got 'i' and it's information. They had 'i' serve. Well that's good, wasn't it aye? In case you didn't understand what that meant, on the back they had 'can I help you?' [Laughter] Okay, because we don't always get it, do we aye?

Okay, here's another thing people do in churches - we hide our emotions, hide our emotions. I get really excited, I cry in church, I cry when I'm in the presence of the Lord, I get excited when I'm in the presence of Lord, want to dance when I'm in the presence of the Lord! [Laughter] And if I can't dance, I feel a bit - that wasn't a very good service, didn't sort of get happy and expressive. So part of the problem is, we don't understand that our emotions and feelings, they are part of how God has designed you. He's made you to be a feeling person, made you to be an emotional person. You were created in the image of God, who has feelings. He gets angry, He is loving, He has compassion, He has mercy, He has joy, He dances, He's got all of these emotions, and He gives them to us as well. So we need to know what to do with the emotions, how can you love the Lord with all your soul, if you don't include your emotions?

You try and love your wife passionately: I love you. [Laughs] There's something wrong with that picture. The words sound okay, but it's more should be like the Italians: ooh I looove you! You know? Now that's more like it, now we've got the expression, and the warmth, and the hands, and whoa! Yay! Now that looks more real! So emotions are part of what God has given to us. In John 11:35, Jesus wept. He openly expressed His emotions, He cried, He rejoiced, He was angry, He was stirred, He was grieved, He had all kinds of emotions. He was lonely. [Laughs] He was burdened. He had many emotional experiences, and we have them too. If you're a human being, you will have all of those things. You will have sadness and happiness, you will have times when you're puzzled, disturbed, lost, don't seem to know where to go, feel heavy, struggling. This is being a human! But sometimes we think when we get into church that all that will just change, and so we get into a church culture and then, well we're not authentic anymore, because now we're trying... Well praise the Lord brother, praise the Lord, ra-ra-ra! All going well - and you know that life's falling apart, absolute mess.

We just bury all the grief, bury all the feelings, and try and control the emotions. Well when you do that, you dishonour yourself, because God gave these things to you. Now we're not to be controlled by our emotions, or led by our emotions; we're to be led by the spirit of God. But to be authentic in your relationship with God, you must identify what you feel, because it tells what's going on in your heart, and if you're going to talk with God, you've got to talk from your heart; I feel Lord, I'm struggling with this, Lord I'm afraid. Lord, I just am so sad, I feel overwhelmed by this thing. We've got to learn to be authentic with God, authentic with Him. David was like that, poured his soul out; when I remember these things, I pour out my soul, and there was a weeping as he talked about the reality of his life, and he just expressed it passionately to the Lord. After he's expressed his emotions, he was then able to stir faith; but if you don't express your emotions, it's very hard to access what's going on inside your life.

So often in church, people control emotions, shut things down; oh, you shouldn't feel like that! Oh, shouldn't I? I guess not. Inside, I feel very angry - well you shouldn't feel angry! Well the Bible doesn't say that; the Bible says: be angry, but don't sin; but it's translated: you shouldn't feel like that. Well I'm sorry, but I do, I feel really ticked off, and I don't mind telling you. You understand? Now that's more authentic than saying: oh praise the Lord brother! [Laughter] Going home, you know, like cats when you annoy them. [hiss] Like that. That's what some people are like on the inside, a lot of the time, because they don't know what to do with their emotions. Can I tell you I'm angry? Can I tell you I'm really depressed? I'm not sure, so I'll hide it. Can you understand? So it requires an environment where it's okay to be human, it's okay to be human, human being, not a human doing, a human being, have feelings.

So you see me up here, so it's like praise the Lord, ra-ra. You don't see me other days! But there's emotions and feelings, and things that are poured out to God, and struggles, and trying to work out what to do, trying to listen for the voice of God, when there's so many other voices. This is reality of life, so if we're going to be authentic it doesn't mean you're a perfect parent, it doesn't mean you're a perfect husband. In fact I've known people who were attracted to the faith in a Christian couple, because they saw them have an argument, and they saw them make it up. They said I want some of that, because that, that is accessible to me. But being a perfect little Christian, that's just - ooh you're weird, I can't relate to that at all. You understand? That was the problem with the Pharisees.

They were sort of perfect, dressed right, went to the right places, spoke right, paid tithes, prayed, did blah blah blah blah blah, but Jesus said: oh you're like a painted tomb, there's bones on the inside, corrupt all the way right through to the core! Nothing authentic, see? So God wants you to be authentic. To be authentic, well there are some days: WHERE IS GOD! Some days you're struggling. Some days you're doing well - that's actually what the Christian life is like; but in the middle of it, we can express our feelings, our struggles, our concerns to God. We hear the voice of our heart. We begin to understand our beliefs and what's happening. We can begin to receive encouragement from the Lord. He desires truth in the inner parts, so it's not you let your emotions all hang out everywhere, [make sobbing sounds] all over the place, no. There's appropriate places, but in worship, we should be able to express our joy, our freedom, our - Calinda was amazing. Calinda had a back condition, really in pain, didn't even want to come to church, came to church then got dancing and got healed as she danced! Now that's what faith will do, do you understand?

It doesn't mean you ignore your pain; it means you actually, in the midst of it, do you express faith in God? Okay, another thing that goes a bit like that is, you notice what Adam said: I was afraid, and so I hid; so the other thing we do is we tend to hide our weaknesses. Now this is a funny thing hiding weaknesses. The interesting thing is that a person is very, very difficult to relate to if they're a perfect person. I don't find perfect people easy to relate to. You become conscious you seem to be leaving a mess on their floor. [Laughter] You've been into some houses like that, and it almost feels the moment you walk in, you've started to bring a mess with you. You know if you eat anything, and no crumbs are going to get on the floor, you just know you're going to spill the cup - there's tension all the time you're there. You get out and you're exhausted, just trying to behave right. [Laughter] It's hard to relate to people like that. Real people make mistakes, and they make them almost almost every day of their lives. That's what real people are like - including me.

I have a great message of grace. The reason I've got a great message of grace is I've made so many mistakes - I desperately needed God to help me - and the grace I've got comes out of being so grateful God forgave me. I've got a very big heart to forgive people, because I've been forgiven much. You understand, it's like God doesn't call us to be perfect in our behaviours. He calls us to have a heart that's right, a perfect heart towards Him, responsive to Him. Now you see this thing of trying to look good, act good, perform good, and be a goody-goody-two-shoes Christian, and then try and make your children the same - well that doesn't go down well at all. One, they'll either rebel against you, in which case you've got a battle on your hands all the way; or two, they are compliant, but inside they're rebelling. They're saying yes on the outside, but inside they're standing up; and one day it breaks out! Oh! Where did that come from? How did that happen? Well you've just shut them down all your life.

See, we've got to watch that we give grace and space for our children to actually be normal people, who make mistakes, and funnily enough in some families some kids are really nice, and really easy, real easy. Some kids are really soft, really easy to train. Others are like - where did this monster come from? [Laughter] How - what did I do in my last life to deserve this? [Laughter] And the rest of the church, oh tut-tut-tut-tut-tut, there must be something wrong, yeah, must be something wrong with your parenting. They've got no idea what struggle's going on there, with the strong-willed child; and while you're raising them, and trying to deal with them, you're aware everyone's looking. [Laughter] Looking at you, looking at the goody goody kids, whoa! Like that - and while you're struggling with that child, you remember that you were just like that when you were growing up. [Laughter] The full circle of life has come around, and you are reaping what you've sown! [Laughter] Everyone can see it now! [Laughs]

I can remember one of my grandchildren, I looked into her eyes when she was very little, and I said ooh! You are going to have some fun with this one! [Laughter] She is just like you - and I'm thinking oh oh, it goes round! [Laughter] But this is all part of life you know, there's no perfect families, no perfect people, no perfect world. It's a messy beat up world, with all kinds of sin and problems, and grace is what changes it, so we have to receive grace for ourself if we're going to give it to anyone else. Getting the idea? We'll give you a couple more, then we'll just wind it up - getting the idea? [Laughs] So concealing, covering up.

Okay, another thing which is related to it, which people tend to do, in Luke 9:23, you've heard the scripture; Whoever wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself. Whoa! Lyn, you would have had that scripture, take up the cross! Ooh - and so what happens is, you already had a low esteem, and now it just got worse, now I'm a nothing, a nobody, and you're struggling, never good enough. The problem is, we often give up the wrong things in church, [laughs] give up the wrong things, and what happens is we bury the gifts of God. Now listen, God put in you desires. Desires in you can be very evil, desires can be very good. The desires God gives are very good. He puts desires in your heart. He puts dreams in your heart. He puts gifts in your heart, so don't bury the gifts, don't bury the dreams, desires, longings, yearnings, the goals. Don't bury them all down, don't bury your life. Don't bury the things that God says: these are valuable. I find, I look in the church, I see so many people, the goodness in them is all buried, because they're so burdened over all the things that are wrong.

Listen, the things you put aside, and the things you bring to the cross, are pride and arrogance and independence, all that kind of stuff. But listen, the dreams, desires, longings, gifts, this is part of who you are. You have to call them forth, and connect with people that'll help, say: boy you'd be good at that; otherwise we have a covering over our life, and no one sees what we really are, or what we could be. Church is to be a family, where sons and daughters are encouraged to step out and do stuff, try stuff, and if you make a mistake, well good on you, you had a go. You can't exist in a culture where you can't have a go. Just have a go. I've had a go for years. You know almost everything I've learnt, I went somewhere, and I had a go, tried it out. All the things I learnt pretty well in the supernatural I've developed in, I went somewhere else, and I practiced and had a go. I thought I can leave and go home and then [laughs] and took risks, took terrible risks, but it's helped me grow see?

So here's another couple of things, and then we'll just finish them, I'll just finish. Here's a couple of goodies that Christians cover up, and one is, we cover up our background, and won't admit that our background is affecting how we live our life today - cover up our background. Now listen, if you think about your background, your background is about how you were raised, it's the values you got, how you thought about money, how you thought about family, how you thought about conflict, how you thought about emotions, how you thought about anger and handling anger, how you thought about handling disappointments, how you handled success in life. Most of the values you have, they were formed as you grew up in your family, and of course if we grow up in broken families, we need to face the reality that a lot of our thinking is wrong, and needs to change.

The only way you can do that, is being willing to let the Holy Ghost help you resolve your past, and to bring revelation truth about how you live your life and become effective. So I need to be willing to face - I've had to face things, I'm still facing stuff. It'll never stop, it's just a journey of walking with God, and layer by layer He opens our life, we face things that are painful, we talk with Him. He shows us the truth, and we begin to move on with our life. It's a journey. It's okay to be on that journey, but don't just pretend that your family was perfect. Don't sort of say something lik,e I heard someone say when I was counselling: well I've moved on. That's my past, all behind me, it's at the cross. I said: well you seem to have brought a lot with you. [Laughter] It looks to me like it's all just happening, just like it was in your family. It helps you to have a think about how you saw things in your own family, and how they're happening in your family right now. Chances are they're the same - unless you've actually been healed in that area, and allowed the Lord to bring truth to you.

The last one is the issue of conflict. One of the big issues, that is a problem for us, is the issue of conflict, handling conflict; and either spiritualising it away, or hiding it away, or putting it under a carpet hoping it'll die; but it's usually like cancer. It just spreads, it doesn't get any better, and one of the areas that Christians have to learn to do, is how to engage one another when there are differences, and learn how to enter into places where there are conflicts. It's not easy to do that, and we're going to share a session just related to that at some point, on how Jesus, interestingly enough, stirred up conflict wherever He went. What He did was He demolished the false peace, by exposing what was really happening, and when He did that it made room for change to take place. In some places, He actually said things that provoked out to the open, and created a huge conflict. So life has got lots of conflicts in it, and in church, we're not good at that.

I know for me growing up, conflict was a thing of tremendous emotional pain. It was an evil - you don't have it if you can avoid it, but actually you can't avoid it. You need to engage it. That's the truth, but sometimes we need to be healed in order to do that. If we're going to go out and have effect in the community, in a greater level than we have now, there will be conflict; and if you're unwilling to get enter into it, you'll be at a great disadvantage. You'll be beaten up, spat out, and you'll say: evangelism's not for me. I think I'll just carry on down to the church, and I'll cross by the other side of the road, and I won't be bothered about getting involved with those people. It just hurts too much. So God is calling us to grow up emotionally, spiritually, become mature, so that we are empowered to have greater impact in the community - so one and the other go hand in hand.

As you go to the community, as you touch the lives of people, you become aware of what's in your life, and you grow. As you grow, you do it again, and try different things. Listen, we're living in a great hour worldwide. We were just at a conference, 20,000 people, and I looked and I saw every province in China was represented there. I realised I had personally trained every one of those people in how to move in the power of God, and bring God to people. Even though at times it's been very difficult, you see what impact you can have. Thousands can be impacted, or just a few, or just one or two; whatever it is, we can all make a difference in someone's world. But let's not have a look, tut-tut-tut, and cross to the other side, and go to another church meeting. Let's make a decision: God, I want to grow in my maturity, emotionally and spirituall,y and I want to be engaged in reaching people that need You. I present myself to You to do that.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Luke 10:27 - “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself”.

· God’s plan is for each of us to grow, mature and fulfill the calling of God.

· Most people are unable to love and connect there is too much junk/stuff in their lives. The problem is that the Priest and the Levite, who represent the church, didn’t want to get involved. To not want to get involved is not an option. They walked past the man; they didn’t have the heart of God for broken damaged people.

· Love

= passion, energy, wholehearted, fully engaged.

= connect meaningfully with God and people/neighbors.

1) Connect with God – who He really is – not our image of Him.

2) Connect with Self – who we are – what is really happening within us, our strengths, weaknesses, desires, pain.

3) Connect with People – able to enter their world and serve them.

· Verse 33 - The Good Samaritan entered the world of the broken man, he did what he could. He was moved with compassion, he entered the broken mans world to find out what was wrong and ministered to him.

· This is what spiritual maturity looks like, it brings love and compassion into peoples lives, it helps people who need help. This is the heart of God.

· Religious people avoided, hid from people in need, from the true calling of God.

· Samaritans were despised by religious people as they hang out with the wrong kind of people.

· We engage the Holy Spirit; we get trained so that we have something to pour into people. To be able to do this, we have to enter into their world.

· The Church today is disconnected from broken people. We have to be authentic, authentic people are able to connect to others.

2. Adam, Eve and Fig leaves:

· Genesis 3:7-10 - Behavior of Adam and Eve – spiritual and emotionally damaged.

· Fig leaves = covering who I am, identity – presenting an image.

· Hid in trees – avoiding connection from the presence of God.

· Adam and Eve constructed coverings and avoiding behaviors to conceal the true condition of their world = causes pain.

· To cover up, draw back and control will cause people to become lonely. The answer is within you. It is covered because of drawback, control and not be authentic.

· The fig leaves must come of for a person to be authentic. Adam believed a lie, hoe can a person fulfill God’s mandate in life if they cover up and hide?

· Walls we build to control our world – hinder us fulfilling our purpose.

1) Become lonely – isolated, fearful.

2) Cannot enjoy relationships.

3) Cannot fulfill purpose – enter world and be an ambassador for Christ.

· Fig leaves are works and activities and behaviors that conceal who we really are so we do not have to face pain and need for change.

· Authentic = you blow it once in a while but you know how to correct it e.g apologizing.

· Good Samaritan

= engaged the world of broken people and changed it.

= demonstrated what maturity looks like.

· What are the ‘Christian Fig leaves?’

3. Fig Leaves and other Christian Coverings:

1) Substituting Christian activities for Authentic Relationships:

· Luke 10:38 - Martha buried herself into working for the Lord.

· People bury self in spiritual activities but ignore areas of life that are difficult and God wants to change those areas.

· People hide behind ‘God talk’ creating an illusion that is spiritual but unwilling to face personal flows (defensive).

· Exaggerating spiritual experiences to appear important before others.

· Applying the Bible selectively – ignore truth requiring changes in attitudes, personalities and relationship e.g. workaholic or spiritual flake.

2) Dividing Life into Natural and Spiritual (dualism):

· John 10:10 - “I have come that you may have life – abundantly”.

· The life of Jesus is for every aspect and area of our life.

· People divide up life: (1) Christian activity (2) Natural – rest of week

· Church sings about love – curse drivers on their way home.

· Business men worship God – dishonest during the week.

· Christian trust God – won’t pay bills.

· Christians focus on spiritual – but won’t face the natural (carnal).

· God calls us to represent Him in every area of life. Represent God without being religious, with excellent service and integrity.

· We connect to Jesus, He grow (raise to maturity) us so that we can impact the world around us. We are called to be the Good Samaritan.

· Wisdom = win people, not religion or weirdness.

3) Burying Painful Emotions:

· We are created in the image of God with emotions and we have them too.

· John 11:35 - Jesus wept.

· Feeling and emotions are part of being human, in image of God.

· If unable to express emotions – dishonor yourself. Be authentic with God; pour out your soul to Him. Express passionately and then stir faith.

· People express anger, pain, loss, grief, fear, sadness. It is ok to human. You can’t be a perfect Christian. He desires truth in the inner parts.

· Christians seems to bury and conceal the emotion or sin.

· Listening to the voice of the emotion enables us to understand our inner world.

4) Concealing Weaknesses and Failures:

· Genesis 3:10 - “I was afraid – hid”

· Grace changes; if you receive grace for yourself it will be easier to give grace to others.

· God doesn’t call us to be perfect in behavior, but to have relationship with Him.

· People feel pressure to present their image as strong and together.

· Bible is full of broken people David, Noah, Moses, Peter, Jonah, Jacob.

· They all had faults, when these faults were out in the open they have experienced the grace of God.

5) Burying the Gifs of God:

· Luke 9:23 - Disciple = “deny self, take up the cross and follow Me”.

· People, who have been rejected, low esteem, misinterpret.

· We are not called to bury desires, gifts, dreams, passions, laughter, music, art, beauty, recreation – these are gifts of God.

· Every person is designed uniquely – to represent God.

· Need to discover what God has put in you, not for you to kill it.

· Die to self = put to death defenses, arrogance and judging others.

6) Denying the Impact of their Past:

· 2 Corinthians 5:17 - “Behold, all things have become new”.

· Past life continues to impact how the church relates to each other – we must change.

· People try to ‘move on’ = pretend their past never happened.

· Check out how the family handled life! E.g. money, conflict, sex, grief, expresses anger, family, relationships, feelings and emotions.

· Past patterns continue until revelation of New Culture – Family of God.

7) Spiritualizing and Avoiding Conflict/differences:

· No one like conflict but conflict is everywhere.

· John 4:16-18 - Jesus’ life was filled with conflict, He created it! He disrupted ‘false peace’ -refused to minimize.

· People see conflict as bad, something to fix or avoid.

· Result = blame, attachments, dishonest, silent, give in, avoid, with-draw.

With God we grow and mature to have power and impact the community.

We can all make a difference in someone’s world.

Becoming Authentic (3 of 4)

Sun 30 Nov 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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God sees the heart that responds and work with it. Holy Spirit speaks to an open heart. We won’t go forward if we don’t grow. Be able to receive grace, don’t beat yourself up. Ask God to help, guide, show you, and enable you to get up – have a heart good to God. Ask forgiveness, help – grace and goodness will come to the humble. You will then be able to show grace and minister to others, to enter other people’s lives. We need to take responsibility to grow and change otherwise we don’t have anything to give to other people. Authenticity with God is to be passionate and wiling to grow. Don’t stay where you are, step forward, move on, step up.

I want you to open your Bible with me in Luke, Chapter 10. We've been looking at fig leaves, or how people cover up, and stop being authentic and real, and being a great pretence. There's a heap of people are - you could probably call them this: The Great Pretender. [Laughter] God doesn't want the church to be full of great pretenders. You know at Christmas we celebrate that God sent His Son into the earth to represent Him, and so now when Jesus left He said: as the Father sent Me, now I send you; and He doesn't send a heap of pretenders. He sends a heap of real people to represent what God is really like, to be authentic.

Last week we were looking about how Jesus had described what it means to love, and to be a mature believer, it means there's a spiritual dimension, emotional dimension, physical dimension. Every part of our life is engaged in passionately loving God, and it always overflows to those around us, so we can see how authentic, how mature we are in the way we deal with the people around us. Well unfortunately many aren't doing too good there and Christmas time is a great time for people not to treat one another too well. They get busy all year, bury all their problems, get together at Christmas and they're all on holiday, then they start to get upset with one another. It shouldn't be like that should it really? It doesn't need to be either.

Notice here there's a man who's been beaten up in life and been wounded and it says of the Good Samaritan - Verse 34 - he went to him, bandaged up his wounds - that's the word trauma. He went to him, he initiated action to go to the man who had been traumatically impacted by what had happened to him, pouring on oil and wine; set him on his horse, took him to an inn and took care of him. So this man entered the world of someone who was traumatised, found out what was wrong in his life and then brought the life anointing of the Holy Spirit to impart, to heal and to bring restoration to him. All of us believers are called into this ministry. Jesus said the spirit of the Lord is upon Me. He's anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor - that's to bring people into an encounter with the living God, become saved - but God's got much more for us than that.

He's anointed Me to heal the broken hearted. That means God wants to heal brokenness in our lives so we can enter into meaningful relationships, because without relationships you don't have a life. It's true isn't it? Without relationships you don't have a life. People who've got no relationships, you know you kind of - he hasn't got a life has he really? Got no friends, got no - you're just buried in something and many times we substitute - I know people that substitute model trains for relationships. Watching it go round - wonderful hobby I suppose but not my thing. But usually it's a substitute for having genuine relationships. Some have a pet instead of a relationship, have a relationship with a pet. Well that's a strange thing really. Nice to have pets, they're wonderful, part of God's creation - but we're made to relate to people, made to relate to God so we've got to learn to have a relationship with God.

So the anointing on Jesus is to heal those who are broken hearted and many times we saw people cover over what they're really like, so in this story here we saw genuine love, the love of God. What God is wanting to do with us is to put into us a love and to grow us so mature that we can actually enter into the world of others and help them. Now the trouble is how can you enter the world of other people very successfully if you won't even enter your own world? How can you be authentic to other people if you're covering up who you really are and what's really going on? The biggest complaint against church, although it's often unfounded but there's some truth in it, is they're hypocrites. They play. They're nice on Sunday but the rest of the week you want to see what they're like pastor. I don't know whether I do - rather be in denial and look at all these happy faces and say aren't they all wonderful. The reality's a little bit different though isn't it?

The reality is that many people, their walk daily is actually inconsistent with what we believe and so God wants us to grow and mature, to grow up. Growing up isn't easy. It's got some challenges with it and I want to share with you today some keys to help you grow. In Genesis 3:7 we saw that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together, made themselves coverings. In Verse 10 he said I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself, so Adam and Eve as a consequence of the fall hid themselves from painful reality. To actually come into the presence of God meant to face what was really happening in their life and Adam said I was afraid. That means he had deep feelings, bad feelings, bad vibes and he said because I was naked and so I ran away and hid.

We saw how Adam and Eve as a consequence of the fall concealed their identity, covered themselves up and then hid and we see here a pattern; their behaviour of hiding came about as a result of them feeling fear and believing God was going to punish them. So when we look at people's lives you see the outward part which is like the tip of an iceberg on the surface, but below that outward part is where people really live. So if I'm going to grow as a believer and grow in my relationship with God and ability to represent Him, I've got to change on the inside. I've got to explore my inner world and discover what is in there. Now you don't have to become introspective, looking into yourself all the time, but the Holy Spirit is given and He dwells inside you and His job is to bring to your awareness where you need to grow up.

[The Bible said Jesus said 00.06.01] in John 14, I won't leave you orphans. I won't leave you without a Father, so if you've been without a father in your life or been under poor - perhaps your parents weren't able to function, your father wasn't able to function as God intended to, nevertheless the spirit that God puts into you, the Holy Spirit of God is a fathering spirit. It is to speak into your heart direction, correction and to bring about maturity so you discover who you are and how to relate and live your life and how to fulfil a purpose. That's the role of a father, one of the major roles of a father - so Jesus said I will pour My spirit into you and the Holy Spirit I put inside you will be a witness you belong - that God is your Father, but also that spirit, the Holy Spirit in you is to bring you to face realities, to face truth. If we keep covered up and hiding our life and don't want to go there or pretend we've moved on when we haven't moved on, or minimise what's happening in our life, we miss out on the opportunity to grow and fulfil what God called us to do.

It's very difficult to enter into anyone else's life very deeply if you're very shallow yourself. Can God use you? Of course He can. You can encourage someone, you can show an act of kindness to someone, you could visit them, you could ring them, you can connect with them, give to them. You can do all sorts of things, but there's a dimension of reaching into lives to really authentically help people which won't be yours unless you're willing to grow. So God wants us on a journey. Now how does God get us to grow when many times we don't want to face the areas which are damaged, nor address them? We want to just to push them under and get going. Well God's got a great strategy and that strategy's called pain. Pain - you notice if you hit your thumb and you're in pain the one thing you notice is your thumb. You notice nothing else. Your whole world is filled with THUMB! Isn't that right?

So whatever you're in pain about will always get your attention, so God has got a strategy. If you don't want to face changes in your life and He's committed to changes in your life, how's He going to get your attention? Well a whole heap of ways, but one of them is pain. Now does that mean God causes pain? No, no, no, no. No, we do stupid things that cause ourselves pain, but God allows us to go through a journey where we have to stop and have a look at what's happening and if you can develop a lifestyle where you develop your inner world and begin to mature and grow in your inner world, your outer world will change dramatically. Most people I talk to are wanting God, they're praying God change this; God change my husband, God change my work, God - now what they're doing is they're trying to get exterior changes and not looking how should I be changing on the inside so I can become the kind of person that's needed, see? Change on the inside, your exteriors will change quite quickly.

So you know for a young man the key question is not well where's a good looking girl? Listen, there's heaps of them around. The big question you can answer is what kind of man will I be? Will I be the kind of man that a good girl, a Christian, a believer would really want to follow or will I be some unreliable person? I need to work on myself. If you work on yourself you'll be surprised how quickly God will bring someone into your life. Okay, in Deuteronomy 8, Verses 2 and 3, it says Moses is reminding them; he's saying remember the way the Lord your God led you all the way through the wilderness and allowed you, he humbled you, he allowed you to suffer hunger and go through all kinds of different things and as a consequence of that the purpose of that was that He might know you. See, read it there - I'll read it. So He humbled you and allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you didn't know nor fathers know, that He might make you to know man shall not live by bread alone; but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.

So God led them. Now you understand the heart of God. God has got a people that have been in bondage. That's the picture of us when we're unsaved before we come to Christ. Then God has got promises, promises about marriage, about family, about finances, about a future, about a destiny, but how does God get them from one to the other? He takes them through a period or an experience called a wilderness experience. So it was God's idea that the wilderness would last them about 10 days. They made it last 40 years. How did they make it last 40 years? Well they just refused to face what they needed to face and grow and change. God was trying to get rid of the victim mentality, this poor me, I can't do anything and someone come through for me, and to raise up a generation who had faith and courage, who would go and make things happen. So He allowed them to go through some experiences which were painful - so they went out in the desert, after a little while there was no water. Then the water they did find was a bit bitter, so what did they do? They had an opportunity to grow.

Did they grow? No, they didn't, they blew it, just complained. Then He took them another place, they got no food. What did they do; did they have an opportunity there to grow? Yes, they did. Did they grow? No, they didn't, they just complained and this went on so long in the end they demonstrated they were unable to enter into all that God had for them. Now begin to think of that in your personal life, of God having many things He wants you to have and to enter an experience, but He's allowing you to walk through a few experiences to help you come to grips with your inner world and change. If you continue to resist changing and doubt that God is good and God can bring you through and what God says, what happens is you delay your life actually ever progressing and accomplishing all God wants. That's why many Christians after years have accomplished little or nothing. They're still in the same place they were years ago.

As a church it's the same. Corporately God wants us to move through difficulties, pressures, stresses, at times opposition, in order that we grow as a corporate body because He has many things in this city, our nation and beyond. So whatever level we look at it God still always does not change how He operates; He allows us to go through some difficulties in order that faith might grow, believing God. In the midst of it what happens is, it says He humbled them that He might know what was in them. Now does that mean God doesn't know what's in you? Not at all. He knows exactly what's in you. If you've got a deep-seated fear He knows it's in there. If you've got a deep-seated grief or bitterness or you're twisted up inside God knows it's there. The problem is you don't. We just blunder through life causing problems all around us, blindly unaware of what's going and just praising God. Isn't that right? You've seen heaps of people like that see?

So God knows but He has to take us through experiences where what's in us surfaces. It's like the refiner refining gold. They heat it until it melts and it's only when it melts you see what was in it, so God knows just how to get you up until you melt and usually that means you lose your cool: I'm losing control! Good, maybe there's going to be a control transfer here. Maybe there'll be a trust take place, because what you fear will control your life so when you feel you're about to lose control it's just the point where you've got the chance to grow in your faith, your believing, your trust in God. Okay, now in order to do that then you've got to look in your inner world, so God uses a bit of pain sometimes and real change requires we be a bit honest. Now what I've observed in my life and other people over years is our preference, our preferred choice is to control and manipulate our exterior life so we won't have to face the inner stuff. Is that true? Tell someone next to you I think he's talking to you about that one. [Laughter]

See how easy it is to put it outside us? It's not me, I'm okay mate, see? So we'd prefer to try and get control over what's around us. God wants to transform what's in us and change the ownership of what's in us, so how do we do it? How do we do it? What are some keys or what are some things I can build into my life that will help the process of change so I get deeper with God and get to know myself and begin to start to grow in my awareness of God in my life? There's many things. I want to talk primarily today about beginning to connect with the things which are inside you which you may not be aware of and I guarantee as you just take a little bit of time over the next couple of weeks you'll find all of these things surfacing, especially around the Christmas time.

Okay then, the first one is develop an awareness of what you're feeling and doing. Develop an awareness. Awareness means you're conscious of what you're feeling and what you're doing - develop an awareness or consciousness of what you're feeling, what you're doing. Now it's easier said than done because most people don't want to feel bad stuff inside. In John 13 and Verses 3 through to 5, it says this. It says Jesus, knowing He was, where He'd come from, where He went to. Let's pick it up here; Jesus, knowing the Father had given all things into His hands, knowing He came from God, He was going to God, rose up and laid aside His garments, took a towel and then He began to pour water into the basin and wash the disciples feet and wipe them with the towel that He was girded with. Now you notice here that Jesus knowing, He knew some stuff. What did He know? He knew His identity. He knew where He came from, knew where He was going. He actually was fully aware of who He was and fully aware that He's the creator, the king of glory, He's able to bend down and wash disciple's feet. That's a pretty amazing thing.

He had no need to keep up a show, a pretence, or say listen, I'm in charge here. Listen, you guys need to do something. No, He did it you see, so He was very secure because He was fully aware of who He was. Jesus was very secure in His identity. The second thing is Jesus was deeply aware of what He felt and was unashamed to express it. He was very aware of His emotions. The Bible says in John 11, I think Verse 33, Jesus wept. There's other places He got annoyed, angry; other places He was furious, other places He was astonished, other places the Bible tells us He prayed with strong crying and tears. So Jesus was a passionate man, connected to His feelings. When you're moving and flowing with the Holy Spirit one of the most common ways that we experience the Holy Spirit is we feel an impression inside, but there's many other things we feel inside too and that's in our emotional area.

So Jesus was connected very strongly to His emotions. Because He was aware of His own feelings He could be aware of the feelings of others. I've found when people are disconnected in their own life they're disconnected outside as well. In Mark 1, Verse 41, the leper came and the leper was desperate. He was emotional, he was in terrible need and the Bible says Jesus was moved with compassion. He felt the pain in another's life and it moved Him to enter their life and help them. We can walk by people, we can be sitting beside people, we can relate and talk and be totally unaware of the pain they are carrying in their life. We carry on like everything's just perfect. We live life at a surface level, but if you want to make impact in people's lives you have to be able to go beyond the surface to what's really happening in their life.

One of the ways you do that is you develop this journey in your own life. You get past the surface and you begin to discover what's really going on inside you; how do I feel? How do I think? How do I behave? What do I really believe? See we all believe in Jesus - Glory to God! Okay, but when you're faced with a pressure what feelings surface, what do you really think? What is going on and how do you really behave? So everyone in a church meeting feels good. The musicians create a great atmosphere, we all feel good, lift our hands, praise the Lord, oh that was great! Then tomorrow, down the road and now we face a pressure and we feel other things and those feelings are telling us or indicating to us what is really going on in our heart, the conflicts, struggles, the belief system that's inside us. If we're not willing to connect with it we can't change. As you believe in your heart, that's how you'll live your life.

So we can come to church on Sunday and in all sincerity lift our hands, praise the Lord, tell Him we love Him, but on Monday live a very unloving life, unaware of what is really going on in our inner world and part of the growth to maturity is becoming much more aware of what goes on inside you, why you do what you do. So the first level of changing, you've got to become aware of things and scientists have worked out there's a number of emotions we have and not all of them are pleasant: anger, sadness, fear, these are common emotions people have. These are feelings people have. It's okay to be angry, it's okay to be afraid, it's okay to be sad, but when you're a Christian somehow you think I shouldn't have that. But Jesus had them all. He didn't have the fear one but He was angry at times and He was sad at times, He was astonished at times, He was joyful at times, He was amazed at times and He was totally connected to His feelings. How connected are you? See, how connected you?

So we need to recognise then we have feelings and we need to identify what they are. If I can [be aware of 00.20.12] what I feel it's like an indicator on a dashboard. It tells me the conflicts, turmoil or whatever's going on inside my heart, so you have a look - for example you're driving down the road, someone gets in front of you, you start to get irritated. Let's define irritated, it means angry okay, so we've got little angry, a little more angry, angry, very angry. Most guys can't tell you anything, they just bang the door and you're angry. No I wasn't! Because of disconnection. We need to actually become aware what is it really going on because the first way to get victory over your inner life is to acknowledge what's there and name it. God brought all the creatures to Adam and He named them. Naming them is a part of having dominion over things. If you don't identify and name things it's unlikely you'll have dominion over it. You'll just - I just feel down. Come on, well let's talk about that, what do you mean by that? How long has it been like that?

You begin to enquire and then you begin to feel actually I'm angry, I'm depressed and it's because I didn't get my way. I believe I should have got my way. I believe they should have come through and done what I wanted them to do and they didn't and they disappointed me. But because I want them to like me I never said anything and now I feel really down and bad about me as well. That's what goes on in the inner world of some people and you ask them how are you doing? Oh FINE! Okay then, so we need to explore and look, so one of the things about feelings is that they're given to us by God as part of being a human being, part of being in the image of God, so with feelings you just need to name them and identify them, be aware of them and then name them. Now one way you can become aware of it is you watch your body. When your stomach feels knotted up there's something going on, there's anxiety or fear. If you find you're grinding your teeth there's something wrong. It's sending a signal to you you know? Just like when you feel hungry, it's sending a signal I'm empty, I need food.

So your feelings or tensions in your body, some people clench their jaw or clench - you watch people, watch yourself most of all. Begin to discover what you're doing and it'll tell you what's going on in your inner world. The other time you can start to discover what's happening is as you pray. You're praying about your journey, you're praying about situations in your life and as you're praying in tongues and you begin to picture those things you begin to feel and become aware of things. Try to name what you feel because how many people have had an experience like this: you really felt a reserve or something, no peace about something but you didn't say anything and later on it turned out it was real bad? How many have had that experience? We've pretty well all had that. Well why didn't we listen to the inner thing? See we tend to live life at the surface and in the head rather than actually in the heart and spirit.

If you're going to be a spirit person you have to learn to examine what you feel, what's going on in your inner life and it's not that you focus on it, it's just you label it and name it so you then know what to do with it. Otherwise you'll do what a lot of people do, oh, going to push it down, stuff it down. Well after you've had years of stuffing down your body breaks down. Bodies break down because unforgiveness grew into resentment and bitterness and then the body became poisoned. After a while physically they got sick, so some people have got arthritis right through their body and the core prime reason is they've accumulated bitterness and resentment. They never dealt with anything; oh, I just moved on or I got over it. No, you didn't get over it, it's manifesting in your body. I've prayed for so many people and the moment, the moment they came to a place of recognising their anger and resentment and unforgiveness and forgave, immediately the spirit tormenting them was able to be cast out and they were instantly healed.

So your body signals what's going on in your inner life as does your feelings, so you've got to learn to connect with them. What am feeling? What am I sensing? Sometimes you just feel I feel a bit off. What does it mean, off? I just feel a bit down. How long have you been feeling like that? So the first thing is become aware of what you feel and how you're behaving, so for example you see someone and then you look away. Why did they look away? What did I feel? Oh, felt like upset. What do you mean upset? Actually angry. Oh okay, you're angry. How long have you been angry with that person? Can you understand? So your behaviours and your emotions will trigger what you really believe and what's really going on in your heart and if we don't observe our behaviours and notice what we're feeling, identify and search for what's going on, we'll never grow.

We'll never discover what we believe and where our belief system is totally at variance with what God's word says could be ours. A person for example who's experienced a lot of pain of rejection, they've got a lot of emotions inside, grief and stuff they've never resolved and they begin to believe after a while well no one ever wants me. They walk into a church, walk into any group, someone looks the other way and immediately they feel rejected. It triggers off their belief - oh I knew it, I knew it, there's no love in this place. Now they're starting to get wound up and angry and walking down the street fuming about the church - but it was never about the church. It was actually a lot of unresolved stuff and when the feeling came up they just got into an old bad habit and never dealt with it.

The country's full of immature Christians doing all this kind of stuff. Someone thinks different, does a bit differently, next thing you know they're all wound up and got an attitude and there's [fear 00.25.48] - all kinds of stuff going on. Gossip goes around. You've got to be bigger than that. You've got to grow bigger! Don't stay little. If we're going to be a bigger church you've got to grow a bigger person. We've all got to grow bigger so we've got to look at out inner world and grow, so first thing is become aware of what you're feeling and what you're doing; second is ask questions. Ask yourself some questions; what's going on? What's going on in here? Why am I doing what I'm doing? What am I feeling? See, how long have I been feeling that? Why am I feeling that? What am I doing? What's going on inside? See, if I'm avoiding someone well why am I avoiding them, what is that all about?

You begin to search your heart and what you're looking for is the truth and fortunately Jesus said I will send you the Holy Spirit and He's the spirit of truth, meaning nothing's covered over in front of Him. So the Holy Spirit will help you in your journey of growth. How does He help you? One way He helps you is He helps you face things you don't want to face. If you won't face it by listening to Him and developing a devotional life where you hear the voice of God, then what'll happen is you'll find He'll get your attention through someone else. You got the idea? So like Jesus did this with the disciples. In Luke 24 He joins the disciples on the road to Emmaus, He says hey you guys, what's up? What are you talking about? Hey, you're looking sad, what's going on inside there? He began to explore their inner world and they just opened their heart, talked about their inner world, then He nailed them over their beliefs because why they were moving from the call of God, why they were feeling disappointed, why they were doing all these things was because of what they believed, see?

Why did Adam hide? Because he believed a lie. What if he'd believed instead of believing that God was going to punish him, what if he believed God was a good God and God was compassionate and God would show mercy and he acted on that belief and ran to straight to Him, saying God come to me, I've really blown it. Help me now, I really have messed up here. What if he'd done that? You see what he believed was reflected in how he outworked his life. You've got to realise we're all the same. All of us are the same, so we want to journey through growth we've got to be willing to develop and deepen our inner life, firstly becoming aware of ourselves, secondly becoming aware and conscious of God. We'll share about that another time, how to do that - so ask questions: what on earth's happening inside me? What am I feeling? How long have I been feeling that? Where's that come from? What does that mean I probably believe, see?

The third thing is welcome feedback. You've got to welcome into your world some feedback because the reality is most of us don't want to face the things we're in pain over and so you're not listening to the Holy Ghost. You don't want to even go there. Don't go there God! I don't want - and He'll talk about your attitude to a father or attitude to some person, your attitude to your finances - hey, don't go there! Just want you to bless over here, want the exterior and God wants you to look at the interior and so if He can't get your attention that way He's got a heap of ways of getting it. One way is your whole financial world collapses and inevitably if it collapses God has been talking to you for months before that happened - no listen. He probably sent people to you to talk to you - no listen. So welcome feedback into your world. If you want to grow in your inner life, one, practice becoming aware of what's happening and what you're feeling, what your body's saying, what you're experiencing inside; two, ask questions so you explore what's going on. Begin to look at what's happening in your inner life. What do I believe? What does this mean? Why am I like that? And then welcome others to come into your world.

In Proverbs 15 and Verse 32 it says the person who refuses instruction or feedback despises his own soul. He who hears reproof gains understanding. So the person who won't allow anyone to come into his life, won't allow anyone to speak into his life, that person's not only very alone, they actually despise their own soul. They've got real issues of rejection. Proverbs 19:20, he that hears counsel and receives correction that you may be wise in your latter end, so hear counsel. Listen to advice, allow people to speak into your world, so here's three questions: Number one, how much do you tune in to what you feel and what's happening in your inner world? How aware are you what's going on in your inner life? Two, do you probe to find out why you're doing what you're doing? Three, is there anyone you've got that can talk into your life and give you some feedback? The feedback they'll talk to you about is your behaviour and attitude.

I've observed over the years of being a Christian that many people get offended the moment you give them any feedback that isn't telling them they're a wonderful person: you're wonderful, you're beautiful, you're magnificent! You're beautiful beyond description, too marvellous for words. People like that one, but actually you say listen, I didn't like that, that attitude was bad and it's really quite negative. Oh, who do you think you are! [unclear 00.30.38] get like this, get all offended all of a sudden. Well that person's a fool because the Bible says the person who can't be corrected or won't receive or welcome correction in their life, that person despises their own soul. They're destroying themselves. They're missing out on the opportunity - so when did someone last speak into your life? Feedback would need to be specific; hey there's this behaviour, this action, this attitude, this is what I noticed.

It needs to be in a way that you can actually make a decision to change, so you've got to respond to it by not being defensive. When God confronted King Saul he said I've sinned, but look I want it to look good in front of the people so can you come on out and just make it all look good? See, he's still trying to cover up. When David was confronted, you've sinned, he said I've sinned against the Lord! - immediately repentant. He was not defensive like Saul was. Saul was very, very defensive, raised a wall, you couldn't talk into his life, you couldn't say anything. So when was the last time someone gave you a little bit of negative feedback or talked to you about something you needed to change? How did you react? Did you walk out of that ministry, walk out of that church, walk away from that person, walk out of that thing because you were offended? Or did you be like a wise man, welcome correction?

Now here's the thing. If the Holy Spirit is a teacher and brings us into truth and He speaks to us internally, He also speaks externally. Now if I will adopt the position and an attitude I welcome feedback and welcome the input; now the feedback you want is mostly from the people who are near to you, someone you rely on because they know you, love you, got a vested interest in you. Others have got all kinds of attitudes, but in all feedback there's something you can often get help from. It's just a matter of actually getting your attitude right. I had some strange person or a stranger, a person I didn't know sent me an unpleasant email and I looked at it. Initially my first thought was [dread 00.32.28] and I thought I wonder why I'm reacting? Stop and have a think about it - I think actually what's going on in this person's life? Oh, I can see what's going on. I can actually do something to help them, so I'll make a response that will help them. Understand? Otherwise you just live life at the surface and it's very ineffective.

Then finally you need to commit to the process of change. You must commit to the process of change. You want to grow and change you have to commit to growing. How many people are beginning, you just said oh God, I want to grow, I want to change, I want to really grow? That's it, a few people did. I think most of us did. When you come into next year, the beginning of the year, oh! I want to change! Okay, so Jesus always requires us to get some ownership [of this thing 00.33.08] so in the man Bethesda, Jesus said to him do you want to be made whole? Do you want to change or are you happy to keep doing the same stuff you're doing this year? I think no way, I've got to change, I've got to grow, got to get bigger. Come on, think about that. Do you want to change? Unless you say yes to that you're going to stay the same - maybe have a few crises on the way. [Laughs]

Okay, do you want to change, number one, you must want to change; number two, you invest in relationships that encourage growth. Invest in relationships that will help you to grow. In other words none of us grow too well on our own. You get a bit bizarre on your own, get a bit weird. You need other people around you to talk to you and so no matter how spiritual you are you always need someone near you to talk to you and tell you some truth. Sometimes it'll be your wife. Often it is, [second Holy 00.34.05] Spirit you know? They can see things you don't see and if you welcome that input and feedback you could change a lot. I know I have over the years, changed a lot. I had to wake up my ideas on a whole number of things, see? So you have to have relationships.

Notice with Lazarus he got a miracle and he was brought into new life, but it took others to unwrap him and so here's the thing. One of the keys to you growing and changing is you must have relationships which stimulate growth, so I don't like being in a group which is a social club. I can just go in and visit a group and have a bit of a social time, that's wonderful, but I really need to be with people that stimulate me to grow. Have you connected in that kind of way? If you're in a team are you welcoming connections that will help you and stimulate you to grow? You've got to welcome it into your world. You welcome it. People can do it but you've got to welcome it, otherwise they get a bit nervous about it because you suddenly turn into a monster the moment someone says something to you. That's not very helpful you know.

Okay then and here's another couple of things. Be courageous and face truth. Be courageous and face the painful truth. In Proverbs 28:13 it says if you cover your sins you shall not prosper, but if you confess and forsake them you find mercy [if you cover them. 00.35.23] So if we cover our failures everyone sees them anyway. Cover your weaknesses, hey, people aren't silly, they see them anyway. If you cover up stuff it's seen. It always has an effect in your life. The Bible says if you cover it up or conceal it or clothe it, dress it up so it looks better than it really is; if you try and have a life that's a pretence you can't prosper or go forward. Now believers, we are called to go forward, to grow from one degree of glory to another. That means one degree of believing God, trusting God to another. To do that we can't cover over where we're failing, making mistakes.

We need to actually do what the Bible says to do, but if we confess and get rid of it, if we confess and deal with it then we experience mercy coming to our life. Now that word 'confess' is the word 'yada', the same word Adam knew his wife Eve, he was intimate with her. In other words if I am aware of where I'm missing it and I consciously own that and address it and put it off my life, I will always encounter mercy from God and from people, tremendous promise. Kindness, graciousness, willingness to give you another go, but the key thing is you've got to actually own it so the word 'confess' there is a word if I'm aware of where I'm going wrong and do something about it to change, then I'll always experience grace. In the New Testament the word 'confess' is [homologa 00.36.53] meaning if I will say about my life what God is saying about it and then change, He will give me grace.

But if I will minimise or defend myself or cover the thing, or try and say it's better than it is, if I will do that I won't find grace. I won't prosper at all, see? So that's a key to growing. You've got to be able to be willing to face painful truth and it's often embarrassing, you cry and you weep. I remember more than one time in my journey being on my knees weeping before God over seeing and perceiving my failure and how it hurt people, things in my life that were broken that needed to be repaired, things that I was lacking in. I've wept many, many times in the secret place before the Lord over those things and then worked to try and change. When you do that you find God pours out grace. God will help you. God will walk with you. Some people say how can he get away with all those things and God hasn't smitten him from heaven? Say simply because there's humility and there's a brokenness and God is working because God's not looking at how bad it is. God's seeing the heart that'll respond and He can work with that heart. God can work with that.

David murdered and committed adultery, lied, did all kinds of things, but God sees a man after my heart; I can work with someone who'll respond like that. Understand that? Don't have to be perfect with God, [you 00.38.12] have a perfect heart which means I'm open to respond and tender when the Holy Ghost speaks to me. When you do that that's when your life can really begin to shift, but if we're resistant and walled and hard and God speaks to you or speaks to the church and you're just walled off, it's not changing your life in any kind of way, then you're not growing at all. You're not going forward.

The last thing is we need to be able to receive grace, need to be able to receive grace. That's the kindness and help of others, the kindness and help of God, see, be able to receive it. If you're going to grow you need to receive grace. Don't beat yourself up if you've made mistakes or there's things are not right. Just face it, deal with your part of it and receive grace from God. [Come to Him, 00.38.57] say Lord help me now, give me the strength I need, give me the wisdom I need. Show me how to handle this situation. Help me again, oh God, I've blown it again. Lord, I have blown it again, I realise what I did Lord, help me - and God will pour His spirit out on a heart like that. He will enable you to get up. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. In other words God knows all about the fallings over but the Lord upholds him and gets him back up again. Why? Because of a good heart towards God and when your heart is good towards God, not superficial, not shallow, not taking His grace for granted, but when you've done something you realise, oh Holy Ghost forgive me! Forgive me for wounding and grieving, I am so distressed about this. Lord, forgive me. I'm reaching out for grace, help me to change and grow. Help me to learn the lessons and grow.

Boy I tell you something, God will come on that person. He will give grace to the humble. He will lift you up. He will help you go forward and while others are just locked where they are, step by little step you're progressing forward, growing, growing, coming up more aware of yourself, more aware of God's grace and goodness, more able to enter into the lives of other people. When someone blows it you don't stand aside and look at them and cross to the other side and say well not might fault, it's their problem, their mess. You will say God, I know I could help that person. I've got something in me that could minister into them. I've been in that place. I know what that place is like and you showed me grace. I can show some grace to this person.

I tell you when you let God work in your life there's a graciousness comes. There's a grace to minister to others and in the church and all around us there are people every day you meet who are needing God's grace to enter their life through people who know Him, people who have grown, people who have broken through. There are people in this city waiting for you to break through and if we won't take responsibility to change and grow and break through we've got nothing to give them and we just repeat an old familiar religious cycle, instead of progressing glory to glory to glory. I love it and I'll finish with this. David wrote in the word of God, it's something like this. He says Lord, forsake me not when I'm old and grey headed. In other words he's saying when I get older in life I do not want to get set in my ways, I want to continue experiencing the goodness of God and not be full or prejudice. He said in order that I might show your power to this generation and the one that is coming and raising up to replace them.

Listen, what a cry David had. He had a passion to make a difference with his life but to do that he had to become a person of the spirit, a person who built an inner world where there's not chaos and brokenness and denials and coverings. There's an authenticity with God out of which there's a flow of reality to others. We've got to grow there and I know there are many and perhaps you're stuck in some part of your life. Why don't you say God, I'm stuck in this thing. I need to do something. I need to do something different to what I've done before or I'll just be the same next year.

As we come out of this year we're coming into enlargement in this year. I felt the Lord speak a word, advance. Advance means don't stay where you are! Make decisions that in each area of your life you will take a step forward. If I was John Cleese I could do that better with those big legs he has but [laughter] you know what I'm talking about. Father, we just thank You that You're a God who moves us on. We don't want to mess around in a wilderness of brokenness, a wilderness beyond the promises of God. We want to step up into the things You have for us and we know Lord it requires we make a decision to change and to grow, make a decision to position ourselves for those things that must happen in our life for us to receive Your blessing. Father, I pray Your great grace upon my life, upon Bay City, upon every person here to enter into a season of changing and growing.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· How authentic and real are we with people? The way we act shows how we grow, how mature we are and how we respond to Him.

· Some people have relationships with their pets and their hobbies rather than people.

· How can you enter another’s world if you can’t be real and authentic? Walk daily and be consistent in life.

· God’s plan is for us to grow, mature, represent him, and advance His Kingdom in society, not to be great pretenders but to be real, authentic.

· Luke 10:33-34 - This is what maturity looks like!

· The Good Samaritan entered the world of the broken man and did what he could.

· Jesus still enters the world of broken people to minister healing and freedom.

· The anointing on Jesus – heals the broken hearted – Luke 4:18

· Often people cover and conceal their brokenness and never mature.

· Genesis 3:7 - Adam and Eve – sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

· Verse 10 - “I was afraid (bad feelings) because I was naked and I hid myself”.

· Adam and Eve conceal, cover up then hid from the painful reality of their condition.

· Behavior = ‘hiding’

· Feelings = ‘fear and shame’

· Belief = “I will be punished”

· What if they had believed the truth? God is Good! What if they’ve behaved differently?

· With the Holy Spirit in us, we need to face the truth and realities, if not we can’t grow and we’ll miss the opportunity.

2. God often uses Pain to get our Attention – How God causes us to grow:

· God allows us to go through a journey to change and to be able to change causes pain on the inside. Change inside and the exterior will change quicker.

· Deuteronomy 8:2-3 - Remember the way the lord your God led you all the way through the wilderness that he might know you.

· God desired His people to grow, to mature! So they could possess their inheritance.

· God’s people needed to break free of old patterns formed in slavery in Egypt.

· God allowed His people to experience pain – to draw out what was in their heart.

· God led them, allowed them to go through painful experiences and to get rid of the victim mentality that faith might grow. Israel demonstrated that they were unable to enter the promised land – if you resist change, you delay your life from progressing to a higher level.

· Unless there is sufficient pain, most people will not take an honest look at themselves.

· Many people change when pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.

· He knows exactly what is in us. We don’t, we are unaware of what’s going on inside. Experiences bring it to the surface. We could loose our cool, loosing control. What you fear will control your life.

· The first step to change is to develop ‘awareness’ of ‘inner personal world’.

· Awareness of behaviors, of feelings, of beliefs and motivations.

· Most people would prefer to control and manipulate their ‘outer world’ than explore their inner world.

· Real change requires painful honesty! Change, be honest. The preferred choice is to control the world around us, but God wants to change our inside to influence the outside.

· How do you look beneath the surface? Begin to change.

3. Keys to Change:

1) Developing an Awareness of what I am Feeling and Doing:

a) John 13:3-5 - Jesus was fully aware (knowing) who he was and what He was doing.

· Knowing = 1492 = eido = to see, become aware of, to perceive by senses.

· He was secure in His identity = able to break free of expectations from people.

b) Jesus was deeply aware of His feelings and expressed them openly. No need to pretend. He was a passionate man.

· John 11:33 – Jesus wept.

· Jesus felt and expressed emotions: joy, anger, astonishment, longing.

· There are 8 main groups of feeling/emotions: Anger, Sadness, Fear, Shame, Disgust, Enjoyment, Love, and Surprise.

· Every person has feelings – part of being made in the image of God.

· How connected are you with your feelings?

c) Jesus was deeply aware of His feelings for others.

· Mark 1:41 - Jesus moved with compassion. He felt the pain in others life.

· Empathy = ability to be aware of and sensitive to the feelings of others.

· To impact people is to be aware of how they feel. To be able to do this we need to be able to be aware of what we are on the inside, our heart, conflict, belief systems.

· What you belief you become.

d) Practice paying attention to what is happening within you.

· E.g. your body – tension, stomach knotted, clenched arms.

· Become aware of your own feelings – identify them;

- when you experience them

- when you pray in tongues

- when you meditate

· This is the road to maturity.

2) Ask Questions:

· Once you become aware of what you are feeling, what you are doing ad ask questions. Why?

· What am I feeling?

· Why am I feeling that?

· Why am I doing that? E.g. late? Avoid? Putt off? Dreading meeting?

· Jesus entered the world of other by questions, e.g. Luke 24:13-17 - Disciples - ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Why so sad?’

· Don’t make assumptions – take for granted without checking to see if it is true.

3) Welcome Feedback:

· Proverbs 15:32 - “He that refuses instruction (feedback) despises his own soul. He that hears reproof gain understanding”.

· Proverbs 19:20 - “Hear council and receive instruction that you may be wise in latter end”.

· Feedback = to receive information from others about you behaviors and attitudes that enables you to become aware and make adjustments. Respond and not to be defensive.

· Feedback needs to be given:

i) Specific, not general

ii) Descriptive, not subjective or judgmental.

· Feedback needs to be received:

i) Without becoming defensive (Saul)

ii) Welcomed as a friend (David)

· When you are open to feedback and welcome it, everybody can teach you something.

· The Holy Spirit teaches in spirit and in truth – welcome feedback and what you can get help from, get your attitude right.

4) Commit to the process of Change:

i) You must want to change and grow.

· John 5:6 - Do you want to be made whole?

· You must take personal ownership of your life.

iii) Invest in relationships that encourage growth.

· John 11:44 - “Loose that man and let him go”.

· Lazarus needed the help of others to remove the old coverings.

· We grow best in relationships when others who accept us and give feedback.

iv) Be courageous and face painful truth.

· Proverbs 28:13 - “Who ever covers his sin shall not prosper…confess, forsake and find mercy”.

· Cover = 3680 = conceal, clothe.

· Not prosper = 6743 = push forward, break out, become mighty.

· Confess

OT = yadah = to know intimately, to throw, to praise.

NT = homologeo = to speak the same word.

· It can be very painful to face the truth about ourselves.

· Become free to share failures, weakness, needs, admit wrong, apologize.

v) Believe in the Goodness and Grace of God.

· Proverbs 28:13 - “he that confess and forsake shall find mercy”.

· Grace = strength and encouragement from God to empower and change.

· Mercy = 7355 = to love, show compassion, have tender affection.

· What does God’s word say about me? About Him? Embrace it. God will pour out His grace.

Note: Adam and Eve removed their coverings and received God’s provision.

- removed their ‘Glittering Image’.

God sees the heart that responds and work with it. Holy Spirit speaks to an open heart. We won’t go forward if we don’t grow. Be able to receive grace, don’t beat yourself up. Ask God to help, guide, show you, and enable you to get up – have a heart good to God. Ask forgiveness, help – grace and goodness will come to the humble. You will then be able to show grace and minister to others, to enter other people’s lives. We need to take responsibility to grow and change otherwise we don’t have anything to give to other people. Authenticity with God is to be passionate and wiling to grow. Don’t stay where you are, step forward, move on, step up.

Developing Intimacy with the Holy Spirit (4 of 4)

Sun 14 Dec 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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You're consumed with trying to control your world. To slow down means you have to say this: God is control, and I don't need to be in control of the world. It was here before I came. It'll be here after I leave, and I am not God, I don't have to be in charge - so I can stop. I can let God take care of the world, while I just connect with God.

I want to finish a series I've been doing, talking about Fig Leaves and other kinds of coverings people put up. How many found that there's been some fig leaves around, you've discovered in the last couple of weeks? That's right, we suddenly find we're covering up all kinds of stuff. The Holy Ghost of course, is a sign to uncover everything; but let's just go back and pick up where we were, and then I'll just draw this to closure today. In Genesis 3 Verses 7 to 10, and it says: then the eyes of both of them were opened. They knew they were naked, and now they made a choice at that point. They had done wrong, they felt guilt and shame, and they were aware their condition was not what God intended. They'd sinned and fallen short of what God had given to them, in other words they were aware of failure in their life. They were aware of a mess in their life.

Now at that point they had a choice, here's the choice: run to God; run away from God. When something's gone wrong in your life, there's a mess in your life, you have a choice: run to God; or try and control your world, run away from God. It's always the same, it's never been any different. When you're in pain, when you're struggling, when you've got difficulties, pressures, you'll make a choice: run to God, or run way from Him, and try and control your world. We see of course, if they had run to God and asked for mercy, they would have been forgiven, this whole deal wouldn't have happened like it has. Instead they covered up, they covered themselves, and drew back from being true and authentic with one another. They then, when they heard the voice of God, they ran and they hid themselves among the trees. Notice awareness of God caused them to run and hide.

You notice, when you begin to talk about God with people, immediately they go into hiding; or angry reaction, which is another form of hiding? They don't always talk openly about what's going on, and this is a legacy of the fall. We would rather control our life and our world, than surrender and acknowledge our need for God; and this is the core of what this whole thing's about. I've counselled people in these last few weeks, where issues like this are coming up. I've counselled over years. It's always the same. We choose to run to the Lord in our pain, brokenness and need, and discover His way of resolving and working our way out of things; or we try and control the pain, and take control of our own world. It always was down to that, so inevitably when it comes to facing issues in your life, whatever those issues are, the core issue at the bottom of it will be fear and shame, and attempts to control your world.

So God wants us to be authentic. We started off we were looking at the Good Samaritan parable, how the man went and entered the world of others. If we're going to enter the world of people, we need to have some awareness of our own life, and awareness of what God is doing and has done, and we also need to be able to enter and be aware of where other people are at. When you've never let God work in your own life, you don't really have a lot of sensitivity, awareness of people; and notice in Genesis 3 Verse 21, in spite of all that happened God, still made provision for them. It's always in the heart of God to provide for our nakedness, lack, brokenness and pain. This is the heart of God. God wants to help. Whatever you're going through, God wants to help; and not only that, God makes provision, but inherently in God's provision, there is a cost.

Notice He made skins for them: something died to yield up the skin; so whenever God works in our life, inevitably there's a cost. There's something you have to face. There's pain involved, and always there's the price of what Jesus paid at Calvary, to bring healing, deliverance, freedom, release for us. So that's where we've been in this last couple of weeks, and we saw that if we wanted to get out, or make changes in our life, one of the first keys was to just become aware of our life. You need to develop an awareness of what you feel, what you think, how you behave, how you react. Many people are unaware. If you're not aware, ask someone to give you feedback, and then they'll make you aware of things that you're not aware of. You may not want to hear it, but if we want to grow, then let someone around you talk into your life. Make them welcome, welcome their feedback, start to notice what you feel, what you're facing, what you're experiencing.

The second thing is, we have to commit to the process of change. Change is always a process. Although God does a miraculous part, there's the part we have to work out in changing our thinking, owning our mistakes, becoming honest with people. Sometimes there's confession, we need to come free and talk to someone about what we've done. Sometimes we need to put a relationship right, and always we need to change how we think. But then the third aspect of this process of change is, we need to develop intimacy with the Holy Spirit, and that's where I want to go today. God made a covering. His covering for us is found in a relationship. What Adam lost was relationship and dominion; what Jesus came to restore to us was relationship and dominion. Notice what Jesus said in John, Chapter 14. We want to just look, in this one session, on developing intimacy with the Holy Spirit. We need to do more on that next year, but right now we'll just do one, just to get you started.

So Verse 16: I will pray the Father, He will give you another Helper or comforter, that He may abide with you forever - the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it doesn't see Him or know Him; but you know Him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. Notice what Jesus has made a promise. He's about to go into heaven, and He said: now I'm making a promise to you of this. Here's the promise: you will not be orphaned or abandoned, and have to do life on your own. Now of course, one of the problems of the fall is, we do life on our own. We build walls around us, fig leaves around us. We hide from relationship, and we do life alone. How many people understand what that's like, you've had to find your way through life, and to really work at things, and find out many things the hard way, because there wasn't anyone to coach you - you had to do it on your own? How many found that? A lot of people like that aye? A lot of us like that.

But Jesus said: you don't have to do life on your own. I'm promising you a comforter. That word 'comforter' is one who is called near, to be an intimate friend with you; so God's answer to our dilemma in life, is to bring and impart to us His own spirit, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God - not some force. The Holy Spirit's a person. He's a person that Jesus has given to you, in order that you will have a friend, a comforter, someone to coach you through life. So one of the great challenges as a Christian, is to come to love and respect and to be aware of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, very clearly, that this was the promise that He's made for us.

So if I just identify three things about the Holy Spirit, just so you become aware of that; number one, it says there: He's the spirit of truth. That word 'truth' means nothing's covered over, so you have the Holy Spirit with you, He won't leave anything in your life covered over. If you will listen to Him, He will uncover the deepest, darkest areas of your life, in order that you can face them, and be healed and restored, and come out into the light; instead of living hiding away in the trees, where no one ever really knows you.

The work of the spirit of God is to bring us into revelation of truth, not just doctrinal truth, but truth, all truth; truth about our behaviour, our attitudes, our thoughts. Truth about Jesus Christ, truth about our destiny. He's the spirit of truth. He doesn't leave anything uncovered. If you'll give Him room, He will come to every part of your life; your finances, marriage, family, relationships, your secret desires or lusts or fantasies. He'll come into every area if you'll let Him, and He will tell you exactly what's going on; and if you won't listen, He will stir someone else to come and talk to you, so you get the message. He is the spirit of truth, therefore you want to walk with God, you have to walk determined you'll not lead a covered life. You'll lead an open, authentic, genuine life - can't walk with God without that.

The second thing the Holy Spirit is, it tells us in the Book of Romans, He's the spirit of adoption. That means it's the Holy Spirit who places us into a relationship of sonship with the Father; and it's the Holy Spirit's job to mature us, and grow us up, so we can receive everything God has for us. So it's the work of the Holy Spirit to leave nothing uncovered in your life that would leave you immature. It's the work of the Holy Spirit to coach you, and help you grow, so you don't remain an immature, self-centred, disoriented believer. He wants you to be a productive ambassador of the kingdom of God - that's the work of the Holy Spirit. The third thing it says: He's called the spirit of grace. That means it's the Holy Ghost who empowers you to do the hard things. He is the one who imparts grace, the strength to overcome sin, to deal with issues in life. The Holy Spirit is given to you, a friend, someone nearby, someone to tell your life like it is, someone to bring you into maturity, as a son of the Father, to reveal the Father, see experiences, love someone, to help you grow and to get to be the victor in life. What a great person the Holy Spirit is. Man, that's only a little bit about what the Bible says.

We need to know the Holy Spirit, need to know Him, know Him. Notice what else it says, it says: He will be in you. Now that's interesting. He said: He was with you, but He now will be in you. That means - get this - if you're going to grow as a Christian, you must develop your inner life; so if you're covering over your inner life, how can you develop your inner life? The Holy Spirit is given to dwell within us. In Ephesians 3:16, Paul prays this prayer, he says: that you might be strengthened with might, in the inner man. So how are you going to get the ability to stand up in life? It'll come from within you. Don't be waiting for some great thing to come from heaven; heaven is going to come forth from within you. The Holy Ghost, the anointing, abides within you; to teach you, help you, strengthen you. You've got to learn to develop a strong inner life with God, that the love of God might dwell in your hearts.

So the Holy Spirit wants to help us to deepen our relationship connection with God, to face the issues of life, so we are able to express from our life, greater dimensions of being more productive, showing the love of God. That's the work of the Holy Spirit, so if you don't listen to what's going on inside you, you're missing God all the time. If the only time you're listening is Sundays, you're missing God most of your life. Every day the Holy Spirit is there to talk with you. Every day the Holy Spirit's there to show you stuff. Every day the Holy Spirit's there to show you where you went wrong, or where your motive was wrong, or whatever; to get you so that you stand up and you walk right. Every day when you wake up, He's already ready to empower you for the day; and if you're going to build a great and a powerful life, you can't do it by just trying to be a good person - it's impossible. If it was possible to live the Christian life just by being a good person, you'd have never needed the Holy Spirit in you. You need the Holy Spirit to give you the energy, oomph and drive and empowerment to do what the word of God says.

So if we're going to become powerful Christians, you can't have your life all covered up. You can't. You actually have to deal with stuff, so walking with God involves developing our spiritual life, and developing an inner life, that can carry that. Now here's an interesting thing. I've observed over the years, many mighty men of God do great and mighty things for God, so I realise you can develop your faith life, and see great things for God. I've seen people move in the spirit very powerfully, and I realise you can develop spiritual sensitivity, and how to flow with the gifts of God. But then I've also seen many great men fall - well that's a bit weird. If they're so close to God, and do all these things, how come they fell over? How come the wheels come off them? How come they fell over, and got involved in immorality? It's very simple, because to be able to walk with God, to be productive, is not just about developing the spiritual side of us. We must develop the character, our emotional area, the soul area. We must prosper in our soul as well.

So if your soul's a mess, even if you can prophecy, over the course of your life, you may be able to do miracles; your life will not produce great fruit, because the way you do life will undermine the ministry you have. It doesn't matter where we are in life, you can be so gifted in business, but I tell you if you get involved in adultery, man oh man that costs you big bucks. It'll cost you half, if not more, of everything you own; plus it'll also cost you reputation, cost you emotional damage, you'll wound yourself, all kinds of stuff. There's huge implications of not building a strong inner life, so we must be committed - so I'm on about this, I'm passionate about this, because I've been around a long time, and seen many, many great men of God, and they never finish their course well. All that went wrong was there was a brokenness, a coveredness. There were fig leaves in the soul, and they did not get whole; so the great call of God was undermined by the brokenness in their soul. Hence we need to develop a great inner life, and the Holy Spirit is one of the - He's the major asset we have - in being able to develop a great inner life.

If I'm going to walk in the spirit, be productive as a believer, I must become familiar with the working of the Holy Spirit. So let me give you a few simple keys on intimacy with the Holy Spirit. Intimacy is a feeling of being close, so if I wanted to find out how close you feel to God, it's very simple. I just put someone in front of you, and ask you to pray for them, bring a word from God for them; and immediately, if you are living a long way from God, you'll feel immediately uncomfortable. You'll become conscious of how far you are from God, when you have to bring something from God to a person. That's the thing that brings - that's why a lot of people don't want to minister to people. Next year we'll run four equipping seminars. If you'll come to all of those, you'll have a great range of skills, both the knowledge and the practical, on how to minister to people. But in order to walk that life, you've got to live a life open to God.

So here we go, let's have a look at some keys. Here's the first key. Now this is one of the simplest ones, yet the hardest one, and here it is: number one, if you want to develop intimacy with the Holy Spirit, number one, slow down! Slow down! The faster the boat goes, the shallower it gets in the water, and some of you are going at high speeds, and you're very shallow, so there's no substance or depth in your life and relationships. Anyone who's been married a while will realise, you can have no true sexual intimacy without taking time. Isn't that true? Some are like: I don't know what he's talking about here! [Laughter] I know you don't know what I'm talking about! Okay, well we could talk about that next year too, that'd be a good thing to get on wouldn't it aye? Be a good subject wouldn't it? I can already feel the nervousness.

Okay, let's go back into Luke Chapter 10, and it says - notice here, I'll just pick up a couple of thoughts out of this. Notice it said in Verse 38: it came to pass as they went into a certain village a certain woman named Martha welcomed Jesus into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who also - so she made Him welcome - but she also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word. Martha was distracted with much serving, so she came up to Jesus and said: Lord, don't You care that my sister has left me alone? You tell her to help me. Jesus said: Martha, Martha, you're troubled and worried about many things, but there's one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen that good part, and I'm not going to take it away from her. Now if you're going to create awareness of what is going on in your inner life, you have to slow down. That doesn't mean you stop altogether, or lazily sit around. If you're going to develop sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, you have to slow down.

If we're going to love the Lord our God with all our heart, there have to be times we slow down, because if you don't slow down, you find you can't become conscious of the presence of God. One of the biggest issues in being conscious of the presence of God, is slowing down the busyness of your soul, and enabling yourself to become quiet enough to hear His voice. Notice with Mary, she was busy, she was pressured, she had lots of: I have to get this done! I've got to do this! I've got to do that! She was driven by the demands of the tasks, and there's nothing wrong with having a great list of tasks. That's wonderful to have a great list of things to do. In fact, if you're walking in the call of God, you should be a very busy person. Jesus said: be busy until I come; but this is a matter of prioritising, so our busyness flows out of our being in the presence of God. So Martha's issue was this - you notice she said: Lord, don't You care that my sister left me alone, and now I've got to do all this work? Why don't You tell her what to do? You tell her. Why didn't she just say: I need some help?

So you see the pressures of having to do so much, caused her to be unable to rest and enjoy a special moment; and so she was troubled, anxious. Notice what happened, she's begun to accuse the Lord, You don't seem to care about me, and her sister, well I'm resentful about her, and she's left me alone. I'm feeling all alone. Notice the loneliness and disconnection that's in her life, because she's chosen, or hasn't prioritised her life right. So Mary, in contrast, was seizing the opportunity. She made Jesus welcome. There was an opportunity to enjoy Him, to enjoy Him and to listen to Him, and she chose it. Now that's what intimacy is about - it's making the choice to enjoy the presence of God, and to listen to Him personally. That's what intimacy's about. It doesn't have to be a big long prayer time, it's about making the choice to slow down, enjoy the presence and become conscious of His presence, and listen to what He has to say. That's what intimacy is about. It's not a very big thing is it? Hard to do though. How many find that hard to do? Hard to do because it's so much pressure on you, every demand, the demand. So we have to actually practice slowing down.

When you come home, how present are you with your family? Are you there, but you're not there, your mind's somewhere else? You're busy in your mind, your body's there, but you are not present and engaged in connecting, so children feel father is still out to lunch, he's out at business. Your wife feels you're not there. Why? Because you haven't actually come home yet. Your mind is elsewhere, there's no attention being given, there's no focus on the people who are there, so you don't enter their relationship, they don't enjoy your presence, and you don't enjoy theirs either. You've got to make a decision on the way home to start to slow down, so you can enter your home and enjoy it. It's the same in the workplace. We get so busy in the workplace, we actually miss the people around us that God called us to minister to. We're not aware of them. We're aware of our task list, and this is the pressure the world brings on, and the Bible says in the Book of Daniel: it'll get worse in the last times, so we're living in a day of accelerated pressure, and in that you have to learn how to slow down, and become aware of people; aware of those around you that you love; aware of yourself, what's going on inside me.

Some people, when there's stuff going on inside them, they just distract themselves with more busyness. They don't want to face what's in them, but if you're feeling pain, you need to acknowledge it. It's your pain. If you're feeling disappointment, it's your disappointment, it won't go away. You've got to face it and resolve it. If you're feeling pressure then you need to acknowledge it and face it. If you're feeling a struggle or discouragement, or you don't know what to do, or you're a bit lost, don't just get another DVD out and watch it, don't just open another bottle of wine, don't just do the things to distract you. Face what's there, and come to the Lord instead of trying to control the pain by controlling your world. We need to learn how to connect with what's happening. If you want to find out what's going on, you've got to listen to the what's happening inside you, and become conscious and aware of what's going on in there, so you can talk to the Lord about it, get His wisdom, get His help. Otherwise you just carry on, and so many believers carry on, and never stop to look at the inner world, so they get full of resentment and anger and manipulation, all kinds of stuff, and never stop to look at what is going on.

The Holy Spirit's wanting to grow you up out of that stuff, but if you won't slow down, He has to build a wall in your way, so you hit the wall head on, and then when your nose is bleeding and you're feeling the pain, then you stop and say: maybe there's something wrong. As soon as it stops bleeding, you don't feel the hurt, hey, back again, we're on that rush again; and that's how some people live their life. They're just in a cycle of things happening that never change, because they never stop to find out what's going on. Then the third one, of course we need to become aware of, we need to become aware of the presence of God. Slow down and become aware of God. If you don't slow down, you can't become aware of God. You're not a human doing, you're a human being. You're not a machine, so you've got to love and value yourself, and enjoy the journey. Are there pressures? Heaps of them, but what you do is what counts, on the inside.

Some people live their life - and I'll just put it in a simple nutshell - you're consumed with trying to control your world. To slow down means you have to say this: God is control, and I don't need to be in control of the world. It was here before I came. It'll be here after I leave, and I am not God, I don't have to be in charge - so I can stop. I can let God take care of the world, while I just connect with God. That's kind of deep isn't it, but it's actually where people are. Even though you haven't really thought it through, what we actually do is, we carry on like we are in charge of the world, and we're determined to control that world, because you never know when it'll fall apart! Something around us might happen, so we're driven by fear, and the belief God can't be trusted, and we are the only ones can be trusted with our world - so now when people disrupt our world, we get angry, get upset, we lose our cool, all kinds of stuff is going on, because we are God!

Well actually if you haven't realised it, you're not made to be God yet. We're made in His image, but we can't do His job, you know? Like that movie - what was that movie, that one with Jim Carrey in it? It was brilliant - Bruce Almighty, and that was great, what it's like when you're trying to play God. It really is very difficult. It's better to resign from being God, and say: actually I've got limits on what I can do. It's okay for me to have limits, and one of the things I've determined to do is, I'm going to build my closeness with God, very simple. So how are you going to do that? Here's a few simple keys for you. We need to fellowship with the Holy Ghost, and intimacy means talking, listening and enjoying the presence. So talking, listening and enjoying someone; so if I'm going to be intimate with someone, I need to be able to just enjoy them. I know we have some fast songs, they're to get you from being apathetic. Once you've jumped up and down a few times and loosened up, get willing to get going, you don't need those songs any more. It's just to get your body moving, and out of the apathy.

Really the thing is to actually engage in our heart with the Lord, be able to enjoy Him. Some people are too busy, they can't enjoy silence. They can't enjoy it. It requires solitude to build intimacy with the Lord. Solitude is a crucial part of building intimacy with the Lord. You must have time to be alone, and being alone means you shut out the world, no one has access, you're alone. Wherever that place is, okay, you just choose but you've got to have solitude. In Mark 1 Verse 35 it tells us that Jesus rose up very early. He had an early prayer life, He got up early in the morning, so intimacy with the Lord requires a number of things, but let me give you a couple of simple things.

Number one, you need to build daily time with God, build an altar to the Lord. Make sure that you build some time, when you are alone with God, there's a time when you're praying in tongues, stirring your spirit man, time when you're worshipping Him, time when you're reading the word of God, time for when you're journaling, those things that make up a daily devotional time, most of you are familiar with. But I want to share with you something else that will actually lift this level to another level altogether, and it's what I call 'praise pauses'. So you've got daily devotion; you get up in the morning, have a time with God. I encourage you to think about doing praise pauses. In Psalm 119 Verse 164, David seven times a day, stopped to become aware of the presence of God, and to just praise Him. Daniel in 6:10, Daniel three times a day, stopped to become conscious of the presence of God. Now he managed a country the size of the United States, and yet three times a day he stopped, to become conscious of the presence of God.

So to praise pause means simply stopping, to centre your attention on the Lord, and enjoy Him. That's all it is. It's just a pause, anywhere you want it in your day, to just praise the Lord, and enjoy being with Him - that's all it is. It takes a bit of energy to do that. I can tell you. You have to make a decision to do it. and some people call it practising the presence of God, any kind of way you want to call it doesn't worry. It's just actually. you've just got to stop. [laughs] got to stop for a moment. So let me just give you a few things that make it up. and then we'll finish up. How can you do this? The first thing you've got to do is just stop, got to make a conscious decision somewhere in your day, preferably two or three times through the day, you'll just stop what you're doing, let the world carry on without you. With all its messes, its problems, it does not need you. It will carry on after you're gone, with almost no one aware you left, except those immediately around you.

So just for a matter of input, just practice stopping: shut the door, be alone, just stop for a moment. Stop the phone, turn off your cell phone, turn off your computer, turn off anything electronic, make sure you've got no one to interrupt you. Just stop, so you've got unhurried time to focus on the Lord. Second, you begin to praise Him. Just begin to start to speak, speak language of thanksgiving. Psalm 22 Verse 3 says: as we praise Him, His presence begins to come; so you can actually do this as you're driving in the car. You can do it if you're in your office, just shut the door. You can do it just in a moment you can have alone. Just begin to quietly praise the Lord; and thirdly, you need to focus. The Bible says in Psalm 46:10: be still and know I'm God; so I've got to still myself. That means getting rid of distracting thoughts, and allowing my mind to be just centred, that God is here with me, the spirit of God is dwelling within me. I become conscious, it's focussing your attention. Now that means stopping your mind going all over the place.

Of course if you've got a busy mind, and need to be in control, your mind will remember 103 things you have to do; you've just got to sit still, breathe quietly, close your eyes, just begin to talk to the Lord, and begin to become aware of Him. Gaze on Him with your eyes. Begin to see Him, picture Him. Thank You Lord, You're here, You are with me. Allow all of your inner mind to just begin to focus on Him, and to reach out and just embrace and enjoy His presence. Once you start doing that, you don't need to do much more. You can begin to lock into becoming aware of the presence of God, and then listen to Him. He may drop something into your heart, He may have something to say, you know, just have words of love. He may just have reassurance, and you know all of this could take three to four minutes, five minutes, something like that. That's all.

But what you're doing is, you're just stopping the pressure of the world, saying no to it; and you're withdrawing for a moment, to just refocus your inner man, that I am connected to God, and He loves me. So you begin to gaze upon Him, begin to fix your mind on a scripture, fix your mind on Him, just begin to picture Him as your friend, there to listen to you, to love you, and allow all of your inner man to just reach out and embrace Him, and refuse the distractions around you. Now it's a discipline to develop. Initially when you try to develop it, it's a bit of a challenge, because you just realise how busy you are, and your mind just goes everywhere; but I encourage you, if you would just over the next week or two, apart from having your morning time with the Lord, just through the day, just stop everything you're doing, begin to just start to become still, praise the Lord, become aware of His presence, begin to love Him and receive His love.

What will happen is, you start to become very conscious of the presence of God, like right now, just as I did that, I was suddenly aware of the presence of God, suddenly become aware. See if you just stop - it's the hardest thing of all to do, because the moment you stop, all the noise that's inside you, you become aware of; and so that causes you to have to resolve it, but it's not hard. Thank You Lord, I just thank You Lord for Your presence with me now. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord for Your loving presence. I just begin to set my mind to see Him there. He's my friend - become aware of the spirit of God is within me, and I love You Holy Spirit. I just embrace You. I thank You You're there to strengthen me and help me. Just become aware of His presence. The presence of God comes. He just suddenly comes upon you. You suddenly become aware of God very, very simply, very easily, and then God's able to speak with you. God's able to do things.

Dot, just come here a moment. Can you just stand there, just want to close your eyes - so I've just got Dot to just stand beside me. I'm just going to put my hand upon her shoulder now. I'm not going to try and pray and minister to her, but I'll just do exactly the thing that I just shared. I'll just stop, and I'll have to talk what I'm doing, so you understand what I'm doing; but the first thing is I stop. I'm no longer interested in the message and preaching, I'm just interested in connecting strongly with the Lord. I begin to still my heart, and get rid of all distractions. Everyone here, I'm just closing my eyes and shut you out. Even with Dot, I just close my eyes, and just distance myself from her for the moment; and just inside, I just begin to focus that Jesus is here, the spirit's within me. I become aware of His presence, and His love is beginning to overwhelm me. I can feel His presence now, and of course Dot will be beginning to feel His presence too. You begin to feel the presence of the Lord, and the anointing will just be sitting upon her. Someone's holding her up - just the presence of God, she becomes aware.

Now we have to learn how to connect quickly into the presence of God; and if you live a busy life, and you never stop, then when you do stop, you won't be able to stop the noise. There's just too much noise. Remember all that noise is the world yelling: we're important! You have to serve all of us! There's another voice in there, a very quiet voice called the Holy Spirit, and He's just waiting to connect with you. The world outside you will be putting a demand on you: you've got to come through, you've got to do this, you've got to get that done, you've got to - it's just demand, demand, demand, demand, demand, and inside there's one coming and saying: I love you. I've got things to show you. I want to encourage you, you're doing well. What a difference. We need to stop more often, just pause. Maybe you want to do it, just going to the park, just stop. You can be walking along, or just sitting in the park, you just become aware of the presence of God; and as you begin to practice doing that, it becomes easier and easier and easier to be in the presence of God. When you're in the presence of God, then you find you receive things from Him, to minister to others.

Lyn, quickly come, come right now. Just as I looked over to you - just stand over here - I just received something from God for you. You say: what is it? I don't know. All I know is, I got something; so I'm just going to step out now - Father, in Jesus' name I just thank You for Lyn. Well this is what I see. I just see that there's been many burdens hanging over you, and the difficulty you've had is feeling like you always have to fulfil all these burdens and pressures, and the Lord's just going to teach you in these coming months how to release things to Him, so you don't have to carry them. This goes back over years, when I just see like a yoke laid over you when you were a young man, and you felt this belief formed in your heart: I've just got to do stuff. I've got to do this, I've got to do that, I need to do this or I need to do that. If I don't do this, then things are going to fall apart, and it became a burden that has crushed you over your life.

God today, right now, in just this moment, is breaking the yoke off your life. He's breaking the yoke of loneliness and grief, and the pressure of having to do things to be accepted. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I just break that yoke now! Loose this man in Jesus' name! I break the words of expectation over your life in Jesus' name. I break the bitter expectation: you'll never be good enough. I break your agreement with the lie: I never do enough. I break that now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. Now see he's weeping, because the spirit of God has deeply touched his life, and that came out of me taking three minutes to stop and listen. That's the kind of life God called us to live: a stopping, listening, encountering-God life. It's not hard to do. It's not just for me, it's for every believer, to carry the presence of God.

Let's close our eyes now. Father in heaven, we just thank You. We have become so aware of Your presence, so aware of Your presence, so aware of Your presence. Listen, there may be someone here today who doesn't know Jesus. You've never had a relationship with God, and you can feel presence here right now. Listen friend, you need to respond and become a Christian today. Don't put it off any longer. A Christian is a person who has opened their life to Jesus Christ, acknowledged that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and rose again; and that person has opened their life to be led by Jesus Christ, to discover their purpose, to discover their destiny, to walk with God. What a great life that is. Is there any person here today ready to receive Jesus and become a Christian?

How many people here today have felt God challenge you about pausing, praise pauses, stopping just to experience God? How many here felt God: say - good on you. How many people would be honest enough to admit, you are driven, and stopping is going to be one of the hardest things in your life you've ever done? There's a lot of people here today. Father, I just pray for each of these ones here. Listen, just before I pray, someone somewhere, some time ago, out of pain and distress, you got the message I have to perform, I have to do things. If I don't do stuff, I'll never be good enough. Long after those conditions changed, that message is driving your life. I would encourage you to stop, and to reflect over the next months, where and when that thing got into you; and to actually reject the lie, and allow the Lord to bring healing, and the truth to you; so you're not driven. You're still passionate, you're full of energy, you're still busy, but there's not a drivenness. Drivenness comes from the demonic realm, drivenness comes from the flesh realm, when we're broken and hurt, and have got fear and pain inside. Look, you owe it to yourself to actually stop and to talk with yourself, to talk with someone, and get to resolve that thing.

Father, I just pray for each person here today that's just driven like that. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we stand against every deceiving demon, we break your power off these loved ones, we release them to hear the voice of God, we release them to walk in freedom from the fear and the need to be in control, the drivenness that's challenged their life all these years. Father, I pray that this year will be a year of advancing and changing and growing, in an amazing way, in Jesus' name. Father, I pray for every believer in the church, that this will be a year of advancing in our intimacy with the Lord, and growing in the things of the spirit. Everyone said [Amen!] Come on, give the Lord a great clap. [Applause]

Summary Notes

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Fig Leaves and other Christian Coverings – Part 4

“Developing Intimacy with the Holy Spirit’

14 December 2008

1. Introduction:

· Genesis 3:7-10 - Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

· They could have chosen to humble themselves and receive god’s forgiveness. They had a choice, run to God or run away from God and be in control of their own world.

· To run to God brings forgiveness and mercy.

· Run away from God = hide, angry reaction, not talking or opening up. Rather control own world; fear and shame operating.

· Fig Leaves - coverings we use to avoid facing pain, failure, and brokenness.

- our own attempts to control our world and prevent further pain.

- Our resistance to receiving the help and provision for Adam and Eve to be covered.

· Keys to Change:

i) Develop awareness of life: feelings, behaviors, reactions, repeated patterns. Let someone else give you feedback.

ii) Commit to the process of personal change and growth. Be honest, confess to people. Change how you think. Let God work in your own life then you will be open to other people.

iii) Deepen intimacy with the Holy Spirit. God makes provision, He wants to help, He works in our life, it comes at a cost and pain is involved.

2. Intimacy with Holy Spirit:

· John 14:16-18 - The Promise of the Holy Spirit.

· God’s Promise: You will not be orphaned, not be left abandoned and alone, you don’t have to do life on your own.

· Comforter = 3875 – paraclete one who is called alongside as lack, legal assisted.

· Holy Spirit is:

· Spirit of Truth – John 14:17 – nothing is covered over; He will uncover the deepest darkest area of your life. He will bring us into revelation of all truth. He will tell you what’s going on, if you don’t listen, He will send a person.

· Spirit of Sonship – Romans 8:15 – Spirit of adoption. The work of the Spirit is to coach and help you grow. To be a productive ambassador, He won’t leave you immature.

· Spirit of Grace – Hebrews 10:29 – He brings you to maturity to be a son of the Father and to bring you into a greater area of life.

· He will be in you – ‘I must connect and deepen my inner world’.

· You must develop inner life. God impart in us the Holy Spirit, He is given to us, a friend, comforter and coach.

· Ephesians 3:16 - “Strengthen with might through His Spirit in the inner man”. From within you, the love of God will dwell in our heart, be more productive in showing the love of God.

· Intimacy = feeling of being close together.

= feeling of being in a close loving relationship.

· Love, respect and be aware of the Holy Spirit.

· Everyday the Holy Spirit is ready to empower you for day. Just to be a good person doesn’t empower you.

· To work with God, we must prosper in our soul as well, if not, life won’t produce great fruit, won’t have a strong inner life.

· Fallen people = they covered themselves, had fig leaves on their inner life that weren’t uncovered and dealt with.

3. Slow Down:

· E.g. Boat: ‘The faster it goes the shallower it gets’.

· To create awareness and familiarity with the Presence of God you must slow down!

· Luke 10:27,38 - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart”.

= be constantly conscious of His presence and love.

= slow down the business of the soul, demands and tasks.

· Pressure on time will increase in the last days.

= People get busy, preoccupied, disconnected, electronic busyness, demands.

= Loneliness and disconnection sets in.

· Key issue is slowing down to pay attention to God. Prioritize, enjoy Him and listen. Make a choice to enjoy the Presence of God and listen to what He has to say. Be aware of people not just the tasks list also be aware of self, where you are at.

· Luke 10:38-42 - Mary and Martha.

a) Martha - busy, fragmented, pressured, lost of ‘have to do this’.

- irritable, anxious, lonely, disconnected, demanding.

b) Mary - being with Jesus, enjoy His presence, attentive to His words.

· Slow Down!

a) At home – to be aware, attentive, connect with loved once.

b) At work – to be aware attentive of staff and co-workers.

c) Personally – Pay attention to what is happening within you, the Holy Spirit brings you to maturity, to grow up.

- People get busy to avoid pain, disappointment, discourage.

- When avoiding facing inner life it breaks out, often in sin.

- Need to become aware what’s happening within. The Holy Spirit wants you to grow up.

- Journal

- You are not a machine, a robot, a human ‘doing’ – a person worthy of love.

- To slow down is to recognize God is in control. God can be in control of the world as I connect with God.

- Fear = God can’t be trusted; we need to control the world. You can’t be God. We’ve got limits.

4. Deepen Connection with the Holy Spirit – Become aware of God:

· Philippians 2:1 - the Fellowship of the Spirit.

· Fellowship = 2842 = koinonia = associate, communicate, intimacy.

· Intimacy = talking to, listening to, being with – enjoying presence.

= engage in your heart to God. You must be alone with God. Have solitude.

· How can I Develop this?

i) Daily Devotion – Mark 1:35

*Prayer *Word of God *Journaling

ii) Praise Pauses - Psalm 119:164 - David, 7 times a day.

- Daniel 6:10 - Daniel, 3 times a day.

· Praise Pause = stopping to centre your attention on the Lord and be with Him

· Also called ‘Practicing the Presence of God’.

· How can I Develop that?

i) Stop - surrender control of your world to the Lord.

- cease from all activity – including phone, computer.

- Unhindered time to focus on the Lord.

ii) Praise - Psalm 22:3 - “He inhabits the praise”.

- Begin to quietly praise and thank the Lord.

iii) Focus - Psalm 46:10 - “Be still and know that I am God”.

- still = to sink down, relax, let go.

- Know = intimate with.

- Sit still; close eyes eliminate distractions and distracting thoughts.

- Direct your thoughts/imagination to the lord.

iv) Gaze - Lash steadily on, intently with pleasure, wonder.

v) Embrace - to take into the arms with affection, cling to.

vi) Listen - pay attention to inner voice.

- 1 King 19:12 - “The still small voice”.

- Still = whisper

- Small = very quiet, very low, whisper like.

As you become more aware of your inner world and to the voice of the Holy Spirit, your life becomes more at rest in the presence and love of God.

Romans 5:5

Wilderness Wisdom

The Bible tells us, that of the people of Israel, the majority of them, God was not really pleased with. He loved them. He saved them. He got the Holy Ghost on them. He did miracles for them. But He was not well pleased with them, it says in 1 Corinthians 10.

It takes faith to please God. Why was God not so pleased with them? Because they were overthrown in the wilderness. When a period, which God designed for their benefit, came into their life, instead of responding in a godly way and understanding what God wanted to do, they fought, wrestled, and eventually fell and failed in that wilderness experience.

Jesus had a wilderness experience, it must be important. It can't be just an Old Testament thing. 1 Corinthians 10 says: it's a warning, a learning exercise, it's something for us to learn from, and it says: make sure you don't make the same mess ups that they made.

Wilderness Wisdom (1 of 4)

Jesus, after He'd experienced the Holy Ghost and had this great encounter, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. If we want to become great in anything, there's always a season of preparation. Most of us want to just get the dream and we're there now, but it never works that way. Nothing in life works that way. There's always preparation. No one is born a great concert pianist, they had preparation. Everyone has preparation, and preparation's not nice.

Wilderness Wisdom (2 of 4)

It helps if we just understand that the wilderness was God's idea, that that difficult season was His idea. All major men in the Bible had times or seasons which you would call a wilderness. A wilderness was a very dry place, full of wild animals, it was very difficult. It represented a very difficult season, a difficult time.

Wilderness Wisdom (3 of 4)

If you're walking with God, you will find yourself quite frequently in transitions, changes. It's part of walking with God, because He's continually moving us on. You don't just get saved, and that's the end of it. He journeys you, because He has an assignment for your life, and He wants to develop you, or mature you, or prepare you for that assignment.

The Bible speaks of transitions all the way through, and transitions are very uncertain times. They have their challenges, and have their difficulties, but God loves us to embrace the process of the transition and learn what we can, because it's your chance to prepare yourself for the next season. Many believers totally frustrate God's destiny for their life, because when God was trying to change them, they wouldn't transition.

Fighting the Good Fight (4 of 4)

Every believer, whether you like it or not, is engaged in a spiritual conflict. The earth is a spiritual battle zone, and you're either in the fight winning, or you're in the fight and beaten up. The Bible calls it a fight of faith - its a fight about what you believe.

The only thing that can move the hand of God is that we are in faith, that we are agreeing with God about what God says. We take His side in life, and we begin to learn how to live and move by faith.

Just because you have a need, does not mean God will meet it. He knows the need. He looks for faith, and faith can be developed and cultivated. Faith has an evidence in our life, so when you're operating and living by faith, it is evident.

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- Wilderness Wisdom (1 of 4)

- Wilderness Wisdom (2 of 4)

- Wilderness Wisdom (3 of 4)

- Fighting the Good Fight (4 of 4)

Wilderness Wisdom (1 of 4)

Sun 18 Apr 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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Jesus, after He'd experienced the Holy Ghost and had this great encounter, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. If we want to become great in anything, there's always a season of preparation. Most of us want to just get the dream and we're there now, but it never works that way. Nothing in life works that way. There's always preparation. No one is born a great concert pianist, they had preparation. Everyone has preparation, and preparation's not nice.

I wonder if you could open your Bible in Luke Chapter 3, and I have something on my heart to just share, and I believe it'll be a help, called a Wilderness Wisdom, or Wisdom from the Wilderness. How many people ever flunked a test? [Laughter] It's a shocker isn't it when you flunk a test? I remember my first year at university, my first maths test. I got four. [Laughter] I couldn't believe it - four. It wasn't quite so bad because I got four out of 50 which meant I did a quick sum, and turned that into eight out of 100, so in a moment I had eight per cent! I'm thinking dear Lord, I've come here to try and graduate, and I've four marks out of 50. It was dreadful, but that wasn't the end. I graduated and majored in maths, [laughter] so a flunk [applause] doesn't mean the end, and particularly flunking a test in God doesn't mean the end.

I like that about God, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, though he fall, he shall never be utterly cast down by God, because the Lord will lift him up, and get him up again! That's what the word of God says - just got to believe it. Don't lie down there. No, don't lie down and stay down. I want us just to read a few verses. I'm going to read two. You know with a sandwich, you know you've got the bread of the sandwich, and there's a bit of meat in the sandwich? We're just going to look at the bits of bread first of all, because we like the carbohydrate. [Laughs] So we look in Luke, Chapter 3, Verse 21. When all the people were baptised, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptised. He submitted to the move of God that was in His generation, in preparation to bringing in a fresh move - and then it says: while He prayed, heaven was opened. Oh, that's good - and the Holy Ghost came on Him in a bodily form like a dove, a voice came from heaven which said: You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased. What a wonderful encounter and experience; an open heaven, anointing of the Holy Ghost, God speaking verbally from heaven in a way that could be heard by everyone. That has got to be a great experience.

Okay, here's another good one. In Luke, Chapter 4 Verse 14: Then Jesus returned in the power of the Holy Ghost to Galilee, and news of Him went out everywhere, mainly because of all the miracles He did. Now don't you just love that? He had this fantastic encounter with Almighty God, the spirit of God on Him. What a great meeting that was! The presence of God came on Him, then we see Him with the power of the Holy Ghost. Now most Christians like those two verses. They like that part, but there's a little bit in the middle which is actually quite significant and important, and it goes like this in Chapter 4 Verse 1: Then Jesus, after He'd experienced the Holy Ghost and had this great encounter, and He returned from Jordan, He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Well many people know about the acts of God, so we like meetings where there's miracles and great things happen, feel inspired and stirred; not so many people learn the ways of God.

Unless you learn the ways of God, you will become frustrated in your Christian life, because you'll be always reaching out for something that others seem to have, but it always seems beyond you. You're reaching to get something that seems available and seems promised, but it doesn't seem to come to you. It seems to come to others and there's this little thing in here which is really the meat in the sandwich, because between Jesus' experience of being filled with the Holy Ghost, and actually having manifestation of power, there was this period called a wilderness experience. I want to talk about that, because some of us are going through that wilderness experience now. It's important you understand what its purpose is, otherwise you'll get overwhelmed in it, discouraged. The Bible tells us, that of the people of Israel, the majority of them God was not really pleased with. Did He love them? He loved them. Did He save them? He saved them. Did He get the Holy Ghost on them? He got the Holy Ghost on them. Did He do miracles for them? He did miracles for them.

But He was not well pleased with them, it says in 1 Corinthians 10. It takes faith to please God. Why was God not so pleased with them? Because they were overthrown in the wilderness. When a period, which God designed for their benefit, came into their life, instead of responding in a godly way and understanding what God wanted to do, they fought, wrestled, and eventually fell and failed in that wilderness experience. Jesus had a wilderness experience, it must be important. It can't be just an Old Testament thing. 1 Corinthians 10 says: it's a warning, a learning exercise, it's something for us to learn from, and it says: make sure you don't make the same mess ups that they made. Two billion people died so you could learn and expensive lesson, so it's quite good to read and learn the lesson isn't it aye? So the thing is that tests always come in the kingdom. Now when I went to university I had a test, but you always knew it was coming up, and you could prepare for your test. You swotted up, and then you went into a room, and then it was basically you'd learned. They did the test, they posted the marks the next day - so you knew about when it was coming, and what it was about, and you knew how to get ready.

But the tests with God don't work like that. [Laughter] What a shame. When God brings tests around our life, He doesn't advertise they're coming. They come when you don't expect them. You're probably in the middle of one right now - and when they come, they are not about head knowledge. They're not about how many books you've read, they're not about how many sermons you've listened to, they're not about how many iPod downloads you've got. They're not anything about how much knowledge you may have, and that is a dilemma, because for many of us we have a lot of knowledge. We've sat and listened to lots of wonderful preaching, but it's actually about what experience you have. It's about what is built into your life, in your walk with God. It is about the kind of person you really are on the inside, and in the initial phase of our Christian experience, often everything goes absolutely wonderfully. It's like we've - man, we've got cake, and we've got icing as well. It's just wonderful, we're having a glorious time.

Then next thing you know, you're eating bread with no butter or nothing, and it seems like it's a different deal. Now what happened? Where did God go? We don't understand that God actually designs a path for us. You know the Bible tells us that there is a scroll written with your destiny on it, and how your life will unfold, what God has prepared for you, but you have to open the scroll a little at a time. You've actually got to unwind it. It's not like a book, you'd read the end of the book like that. With a scroll you've got to take it, and unwind it bit by bit. God prescribes for us, He knows exactly what we need. So the purpose of the wilderness training, or wilderness seasons in our life, is essentially it's for preparation. It is preparation. If you are facing a season that you might call a wilderness season, I can assure you, it is your time of preparation. It is a time God has set aside for you, to be prepared for the things He's planned for your life, so it's important that you respond to God properly in the season of preparation.

If we want to become great in anything, there's always a season of preparation. Most of us want to just get the dream and we're there now, but it never works that way. Nothing in life works that way. There's always preparation. No one is a great concert pianist, they had preparation. Everyone has preparation, and preparation's not nice. I was with some men on a ship, musicians. I asked them how long do you practice? They said eight hours a day. I couldn't imagine sitting at a piano practising eight hours a day, that's what they did - so people in the Bible, all through the Bible you'll find any great man of God, not only had encounters with God, which we all love by the way, but they had wilderness experiences. We don't want to hear about those, but they are the way of God, to get you from your encounter experience, and your revelation, into your destiny; so you have to go through preparation.

Moses had 40 years in the back side of a desert, Israel did 40 years in the wilderness, David had a season in the wilderness, Goliath faced the nation for 40 days and 40 nights. Elijah, why does Elijah suddenly turn out, and turn the nation upside down? Where was he before that? In a wilderness, in an experience that was preparing him. John the Baptist, where was John the Baptist found? He wasn't found in a church. He was found in a wilderness, and the Bible says: the word of the Lord came to him in the wilderness. Everyone else had titles and positions; he got God's word speak into him - a big difference. You can have whatever position you like, whatever title you like. It matters toot in the kingdom of heaven really. What counts is, whether you're hearing from God, and flowing with what God wants you to do. So anyway, God has a system of testing. It's helpful to know what that system is. It's called the wilderness.

Now have a look at it in Deuteronomy Chapter 8, and I'll give you just a few simple lessons out of it. It's always, always a place of preparation, and always God has something in mind for you, so let's have a read in here. We're going to look at it here, Israel, then we'll look at it quickly with Jesus, then I want to show you how to certainly flunk the wilderness, keys to flunking. I've learnt the keys because I've done many of them you know, at one point or another - but then God doesn't leave you down there. He lifts you up, and then you can learn how to succeed, so I'll give you some keys to succeed too. Here it is in Deuteronomy, Chapter 8. And you shall remember - Verse 2 - the Lord your God led you this way, these 40 years in the wilderness. Notice that word 'led' you. God led you in the wilderness - to humble you, prove you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, fed you with manna - allowed you to hunger! What kind of God is that? Oh my - fed you with manna that you didn't know, or your fathers didn't know, that He might make you know, that man shall not live by bread alone; but man shall live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Verse 16: He fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers didn't know or hadn't experienced, that He might humble you and test you - now notice this - to do you good in the end. God's got a plan for good. So let me give you just a few simple things about the wilderness that may help. You notice the first thing is, God led them there. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, so God leads people into a wilderness. There are experiences you have in life; it's not the devil, and it's not because you've stuffed up or messed up in a big way. It's God's leading you into a difficult season, that's all. Oh why would God want to do a terrible thing like that? I just want it all to be sugar and nice and spice. Don't talk to me about crosses and things like that - I want blessing! I want anointing! Oh come on, get a life, get real. See, the anointing comes after the cross. Cross gets you to heaven. Cross is a way of life. Cross is always a part of this deal, so the first thing to realise is, God leads you into the wilderness. It's God's idea.

It's God's idea to get you into a wilderness time, so - a wilderness time. A wilderness experience is for preparation, not destination. A wilderness experience is preparation, not destination, so whatever experience you may be going through now, that you might like to call a wilderness, believe me it is preparation, not destination. It's a place God wants you to move through, not stay there. Don't stay there, and definitely, don't die there. [Laughter] Definitely don't die there! It's just a preparation for the destination God has for your life, and God has to prepare us. See, it's like children growing. You'd love to give them lots of things, they have to be prepared. So the wilderness is a place of humbling. The wilderness is a place of humbling. The Bible tells us to humble ourself, but not many of us want to do that really, and so God allows us a few experiences that bring a great humbling in our life. You may have been led into such an experience. You didn't want to go there, you just were following Jesus, and next thing you find, there you are, you're in a wilderness, and it's incredibly humbling.

So what kinds of things - notice the thing about the humbling is, you suffer lack? Now He calls you to suffer lack. He didn't leave them hungry, He still fed them. He said He tested them, said allow them to suffer lack, allowed you to get hungry. Hunger is a good thing, if you hunger for the right things. So He allowed you get hungry, so what kind of experiences - now this is what they include. This is probably not an exhaustive list, but this is a list of some things that you could call a wilderness experience. You might like to tick one or two of them: Pressure, tremendous pressure coming on your life. It could be financial pressure, family pressure, pressure of ill health, pressure of all kinds of things. It could be lack of some kind, you don't have enough. Lack of ability, lack of skill, could be a lack in some kind of area - you're running a ministry and you've got a lack of people. You've got a lack of resources.

Injustice is another wilderness experience, nothing after you've been through what is perceived was an injustice. Of course we just look at it through our eyes, so we say that's NOT FAIR! [Laughter] God says: I'm just trying to prepare you! It's not fair - meaning I don't deserve this. Of course you don't, but God's preparing you. You have to learn how to handle injustice. How would you be able to understand the cross, which is full of injustice, so an unjust experience can bring you to the cross, where Jesus suffered great injustice, and you can understand how to deal with injustice. Most people just become angry when there's injustice, and they're not going to have an answer when they're angry. You have to have compassion, and so God has to take us through some experiences. When you've been through injustice, you can understand people who have suffered injustice, and instead of saying: oh just get over it, you have compassion, because you've worked through it yourself.

Misunderstanding is another wilderness experience. Moses thought they would understand the call of God on his life; I am called to deliver a nation don't you know! No they didn't know, and they didn't care, and they chased him out of town and put a reward on his head. He ended up in the wilderness. What went wrong? I was so sure it was God, for me to deliver the nation. How come I'm here looking after sheep? Misunderstanding. Most of us want to be understood by people. When you feel misunderstood, now don't you get upset - welcome to your wilderness. You don't need to have people understand you. In fact when you walk with God, people won't always understand you, and you've got to live with that. How will you live with that? Well you have to experience it, and learn how instead of that natural desire of wanting to be understood - but you need to understand! I've got to explain! I've got to - no, you just need to lean on God, and let God sort it out. It's not an easy test, the one of misunderstanding.

Another one is opposition, where you have tremendous opposition, it doesn't seem fair. Another one is apparent failure, everything you've done seems to have fallen apart, and there it is, you look a mess. It happens. Probably the best way to describe a wilderness - if I want to use a word picture to describe a wilderness experience, it's a fruit tree in winter, bare sticks, doesn't look good. I like them in autumn, when they've got the beautiful leaves and fruit everywhere, it's wonderful. But there are times in our life when we look like we're a tree, there's no fruit, not even any leaves. All you can see are the bare sticks, and we live in an area like that. But one thing I've noticed about that, it's always followed by spring with the budding - and I notice it's followed by fruit bearing again as well, so it looks a bit like that, so that's the wilderness for you. Temptation is a wilderness experience.

What is there about a wilderness? Wilderness is a place where you feel alone. It's not you are alone, because God doesn't leave you, you just feel alone. You feel all on your own - all on my own! God, where are you? Of Hezekiah it said: God left him alone to test him, and see what was in his heart. God didn't leave him. It's just God withdrew the manifest presence, and it didn't feel like God was there. God was there, it just didn't feel like God was there, and in that didn't feel like God was there, then he had to make decisions what to do, because when you feel God, well it's great when you feel God. I mean you're in church, you feel God woah! Then you get out in the car park and someone upsets you, and suddenly you don't feel God anymore. That's what happens. Welcome to life.

So notice when temptation comes, it doesn't feel like God's anywhere near. It feels like He's a long way off, and that temptation's real close. That's the nature of a wilderness experience, it doesn't feel like God's so close. How many know those kinds of experiences? They're horrible. I hate them. Fortunately I know that they prepare you, so no one likes a wilderness, but there are some wonderful things about the wilderness. It's a preparation, not a destination. It's a place of testing, and that word 'test' means, to prove the kind of quality, character that you have. So it's an opportunity for God to put on display, the kind of character, the kind of person you are, and the depth of your relationship with Him. So interestingly when Job was walking down the - notice that God spoke to the devil and said: do you notice my mate Job, what a good kind of guy he is? Then God's pointing out and showing off His servant. The devil says: oh, I tell you what, let me hit him a bit, and then you watch him complain. He said okay, have a go - and he did, and Job never complained.

God said: do you notice my servant down there, he's pretty good isn't he aye? [Laughter] Well you just let me smite him with boils, and you watch, he'll curse You! Okay - but you look at the end of Job, and you find the end of Job, he was doubly blessed. He came out with double portion anointing. Now of course everyone wants double portion anointing. I tell them get away from me, I want it myself. There's a way to get it. You have to go through some experiences with God. People say oh, lay hands on me, I want the anointing, want the anointing! Welcome to some wilderness time. Get alone with God, and begin to find your way into God in the midst of difficulty, and you'll come out in the power of the Holy Ghost. People want the soft thing - come up the front, and I believe in altar call, believe in laying hands, impartation, but my observation over years is most people lose it within a day. Why? Because they never played their part in the season of preparation, and there's important things to recognise in those seasons of preparation.

So pressure reveals what's in our heart. Notice what God says: He brought you into the wilderness, that He might know you. Does that mean God doesn't know you? Of course He knows you. In other words, He wants us to have an experience together, where our heart is exposed. This is intimacy. The word 'no' there is the word 'yada', meaning intimate love connection, so the wilderness is a time of intimate love connection with God. Oh, I thought you said it was a tough time? Well it is kind of a tough time, but it's actually designed to get your heart out to the open where God can see it, you can see it particularly, and a chance for you to become intimate with God, because in the wilderness God formed covenant marriage relationship with Israel. In the wilderness God encountered them. In the wilderness God helped them. In the wilderness God provided for them, in fact they never lacked in the wilderness at all. It was a place of encountering, experiencing God, and deepening character and relationship with Him.

He said: that He would know you, what was in your heart, and that you might know man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. But He said you need to experience the reality that the life you're going to live in the world, is a life of faith, depending on God. What we want is to have the smooth life, and get all the blessings. God wants the faith life, and faith doesn't necessarily feel good. You don't feel any great anointing on you when you're going through a wilderness experience, but that doesn't mean God isn't there. You've got to hold onto His words. You've got to trust His character, and when you see what comes up in your heart, in the wilderness time, you can be shocked. I've been through a few wildernesses - pressures, and the wilderness reveals what's in our heart, and so sometimes in the wilderness I've felt I wanted to have a drink. It was all I could do to stop thinking about having a drink. It wasn't a way to solve the wilderness, but it looked like it could solve it. [Laughter] Have a few drinks. Have one - have a couple, have three. Have the whole bottle, you'll feel a lot better. [Laughter] I did too [laughs] but that's alright, you learn to get out and grow and become a bit different. Don't tell me you haven't tried that either. [Laughter]

But all sorts of things come out in the wilderness - quite surprising, there you are on your own, doesn't feel like God's around, and suddenly this pressure's on you. Bitterness comes up, if it's in your heart. Offences come up, if they're in your heart. They all come out on display. Pride comes up, if it's in your heart. Whatever's in your heart comes up in the wilderness, just shows itself. People see it. If you've got judgement in your heart, that'll always come up too; critical attitudes, oh they'll all come up too. If you've got a victim mindset, that'll come up. You know what also gets dealt with in the wilderness? Soulish attachments, the things that we love that comfort us, and we prop our life up with. Well those, they get shown up for what they are too. Sometimes God takes them away, sometimes He calls you to repent and let them go. He wants us to trust Him, wants us to walk by faith, and so wilderness experiences help us deepen the quality of our relationship. Isn't that lovely?

Fears come up in the wilderness. All your world's falling apart, you'll be surprised what depth of fear can be inside you, surprised. It grips your belly, and there you are, you love God and you're worshipping God, and you've got this deep fear gripping your belly, that you've got to face and overcome. That's wilderness time. It's possible to overcome these things. That's what they were for. They were to grow the people, not destroy them. Now notice here's the last thing; the wilderness is tailor made by God for you, so no one has to prepare one for you. God makes it for you, and it's tailor made for your enlargement, and for your blessing. Notice God's plan: if you are in a wilderness now, and you're walking through a wilderness, God's plan is to do you good, because He's a good God, and He doesn't mess up. You say: well you don't know what I'm going through. No, welcome to your wilderness. What's out the other side of it for you though, the joy ahead? You've got to keep thinking it's a faith walk, and so everyone, if you want to be a leader, great. Welcome. You'll have a wilderness experience sometime - may have more than one, and you'll just want to give up, but you can't.

In the wilderness people do quit. People quit in the wilderness. I've watched over the years, I've seen many - I've seen pastors, I've seen leaders, I've seen congregation members, quit God in the wilderness. You watch their life - they had many reasons for quitting, many reasons for leaving, but in the end I watch their lives what happens. It's not good, because you are called to greatness, and when you fail and draw back from God, He says my soul has no pleasure in him that draws back. You do open your life to all kinds of other problems, so escaping the pressure, the best way to escape is to run into God, never to run away from God. He will always give you the option, so I think God: I'll run, I'll place my hands in the hands of the Lord. [Laughs] Okay, let's have a look here in Luke, Chapter 4. Then the spirit Jesus was filled with the Holy Ghost, and He returned from Jordan, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Oh my God, the devil's in the wilderness! [Laughter] It's full of devils! Predators! That's what a wilderness was like. It's full of scorpions and snakes. Fortunately God has given us authority over serpents and scorpions, and all the power of the enemy, nothing shall harm you. You don't have to be scared of it.

So notice this - And the devil said to Him: if You are the Son of God, command this stone become bread. And He said: it is written man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So then the devil took Him up a high mountain. Ever thought how he did that one? That is a high level spiritual encounter, transported from one place to another, by the devil. Man, that'd freak you out, wouldn't it? And the devil said: all this authority I will give You, and their glory, for it's been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I want. If You worship me, it'll all be Yours. Get behind Me Satan! It's written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said: if You're the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here, for it's written: He'll give His angels charge over you, to keep you, and in their hands they'll bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. He said: it's written, you shall not tempt the Lord your God; then the devil finished temptation, he departed from Him until a better opportunity presented itself.

In other words, Jesus gave the devil a whipping! How did He do it? Was it with the anointing? Think about that. He used the word of God, in His mouth, a sharp two-edged sword. You've got to have the word, can't just have experiences, got to be grounded in the word. Now you notice what the pressure - the pressure came on three areas. Now when we go back to the experience Jesus had, this is what God said to Him. He got the touch of the Holy Ghost on Him, got the anointing of the Holy Ghost on Him, then God spoke into Him these words: This is My beloved Son; or in other words, this is who You are, You are the Son of God. That's who You are. You're the Son of God, and not only that, I love You. I love You. You're precious to Me. That's what He got from heaven. That was a revelation. Now what does the devil say? Oh really, Son of God? If You're the Son of God, if You are who You say You are, You have to do something to establish it.

See, so who are you? Underneath all of that, who are you? Well if we ask the question, who are you, most people say something like this; I'm an accountant. No, no, I asked who are you? Er, this is my name. No, who are you? If you keep asking the question after a while, you find a lot of people say actually, I don't really know, I don't really know. So notice the devil tempts Him to put on a mask, or to establish His identity, who He is, in three different ways. The first one, you notice what he says. He says well change these stones into bread. The first one is the performance trap: I am what I do. Who are you? I'm an accountant or I'm a teacher, I'm a preacher. What if you're not preaching, who are you then? Oh I don't know. See preacher, that's what you do. You're not what you do. You are who you are. Who are you? Ooh, I don't really know. Well we need to find out who we are in Christ, or we'll define ourself by what we do. So the world pressures you, well what have you done with your life? Ooh oh, not very much. Conclusion: well you're not much of a person, you must be a failure.

That trap, traps many people; well you're not doing much, you can't be much then, can you? Can you, I mean really? I mean if you were something, you'd have done something with your life. Oh what a mess you've made of your life. Really what have you done? I haven't really done too much at all. Really you've wasted what you've done, you've failed, and here you are, this age, and what have you done? Notice it's attaching your identity to what you do, and when you attach identity to what you do, you'll become a driven man, and you can't stop doing what you do. You can't give up what you do. Why? Because your whole identity is attached to it, and someone talks about or criticises what you do, you will erupt and defend. Why? Because when they touch what you do, they touched who you are. Jesus rebuked it with the word of God.

The second thing is possessions: I am what I have. So he said: look at this, look at this. I'll give it all to you. You can have it all! You can have it all! Little wee catch, just got to bow down. It's not too much, you can have it all. Now notice what it is; identity there is attached to possessions. Well, what kind of car have you got? Oh, I see, an old Ford aye, oh okay. What car - ooh a BMW! Ooh, you must be something! Oh, an old heap, you must be nothing. Notice people do it? They attach value or identity to possessions: so what do you have? Oh, well I have a lovely two storey house out in Havelock North with a pool and two cars, and one of them is a Jag. Oooh you must be special! And who are you? Oh well I live out at Flaxmere, and I have a small house, and we don't have a car, we have bikes, we get around on bikes. Oh! [Laughter] You got the idea? We had our season as pastors. We had no car, and we had bikes for the whole family - you, a Pastor? You don't seem to have much. No, we don't really, but we have one another, and we love God. It doesn't really matter does it? [Applause]

So we had to go through that wilderness, didn't have a thing. I wonder how we're going to get by - but you know what? We found God in it, and it didn't matter. You can have it, and give it away, so I have no attachment really to things now. Have them, we give them away, just like that, give them away. The reason is because I'm not defined by what I have, I'm not defined by what I do. When I was leading a movement of churches, and they said they couldn't get over why I'd resign off that and let it go. They could not understand it. I said: well I'm not what I do. God called me to do that, now He's said: let it go, so I've let it go, it's no big deal. But for others it was a big deal, because the position was very important. Are you defined by your position, title and what you do, or what you have, you know, your possessions and lovely body ra-ra-ra? What if it gets old and saggy, oh! [Laughter] You don't have much do you. Unfortunately that's the route we're all going to take, you know? [Laughter] We need all the help we can get to make it look good. [Laughs] But we're not defined by what we have!

Okay and here's the next one. The devil tried to define Him by popularity: Oh, I am what people say I am! I am what people think of me. That's not bad is it? So you end up living to please people. What do you think? There used to be that Yes Minister programme on TV, and his whole thing was defined by what are the people thinking. You can't worry about what people think. They're going to think what they think anyway. If they think you're a nerd, well they're going to think you're a nerd, you know, so what? They're allowed to think what they like. But you understand, if we define ourselves by what people think about us, it's a real problem, because you can't be true to yourself, and you can't be true to what God says. You can't be true to your destiny, and you can't be true to the things God's put in your heart; the desires, dreams, gifts, passions. The problem is when you become a Christian, suddenly there's almost all this pressure and expectation comes on. Now you have to do this, you have to do this, you have to be this, you have to - and it's like this huge pressure to conform. Where did it come from?

It didn't come from God. It's often a manifestation what's already in your heart, the need to feel accepted, or fit in in some kind of way, a need to please people. When we please people, we can't be the servant of God, and so the issue of identity is a crucial one. That's what the devil pushes on, and wilderness testings, test our attachment to things, what we own, to positions. They test our attachment to people. Basically they test where your identity is found, whether you are founded and grounded, that even if I have nothing, and have lost everything, am doing nothing, look like a failure, and people think I'm hopeless, nevertheless I am who God says I am. Moses didn't look too good in the wilderness after he had a warrant out for his murdering someone - but he was a man of God. David didn't look to good in a cave hiding out with all his desperate men who were failures and losers - nevertheless he was a king. Jesus didn't look too good hanging out on the cross - He was the king of kings. There are times you don't look so good, but listen, they're followed by times when God does something really great, if you can respond right in that time. You've got to respond right.

So notice that everyone had expectations on Jesus, just like they've got expectations on you. Now here's the thing: Jesus never lived out of expectations of people, or to please people; and so as a result, He upset everyone at some point. He upset His parents. He upset the people in His home town, they got offended with Him. He upset His disciples. Some didn't follow Him anymore, and all of them ran away, and one betrayed Him. He upset the religious leaders, when He didn't do what a rabbi's supposed to do. He upset the king. When the king wanted Him to do miracles, He wouldn't do a miracle for him. He upset the people, he upset everyone at some point, but you know what? He lived true to who He was, and this whole politically correct thing is all about trying to please, and look nice, and make people happy and feel good. It's got nothing to do with being a godly man or woman, and to do that, you have to face times when you may not look at all; or you may find you're going through a stripping and you're like a tree in the middle of winter. Nevertheless you have not changed. You are still who God says you are. You are still going where God says He's taking you, IF you keep hold of Him. It's a wonderful season, [applause] great season to be in. So how to flunk your wilderness test. [Laughs] How to flunk it in some - five easy lessons on how to flunk a test. Here it is, I'll give you them quickly because I want to get to how you succeed, but I thought flunking, you might recognise the flunkers - or you're perhaps sitting next to one you know, never know. [Laughter]

Anyway here we go, you'll know as soon as I read them out. Let's just go into Numbers, Chapter 6:14. Fortunately the Bible tells how to flunk the test, and the Bible's full of examples of people who flunked. I like that. I love that about the Bible. It doesn't worry about whether you look good, because almost all the great men of the Bible didn't look good at some time. At some point they look really, really bad - like Abraham, the great man of faith, the father of our faith. Someone says is that your wife? Aah no. [Laughter] It's my sister. [Laughter] Oh really? Well I might take her into my house then. Yeah, yeah, okay. [Laughter] It doesn't look good does it? It isn't good is it either - but he's still called a man of faith. See, so God never worries about the fact we've got weaknesses, lacks, flaws and difficulties and shortcomings. See, trying to be perfect, it doesn't work. Just God gives us grace, and He gives us two things; one, He gives us grace; grace to grow, change and be who we're called to be, but not grace to be what someone else wants you to be. If you try and be what someone else wants you to be, you'll be frustrated and burdened all your life. It's so crucial to discover who you are, and fulfil it, what you're called to do and your destiny, and that you don't run to someone else's whistle. We listen to the Holy Ghost, and live out our life as God calls us to, learning how to do that.

Well anyway they flunked the test, look at this. So Numbers, Chapter 14: So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, they wept all night. I've done that - and then all the children of Israel complained. I've done that. [Laughter] The whole congregation said: if only we'd died in the land of Egypt! We should have died in the land of Egypt! We should have died in this wilderness! Why has the Lord - why Lord have you brought us into this land to fall by the sword, and our wives and children should be victims? Better to go back to Egypt? So they said: let's select a leader, we'll return to Egypt. Notice here there's a number of things of people flunking the test. There are all the signs they're flunking and the first sign is weeping, full of self-pity, why me? We've all done that too, have a pity party, and you're the only one there. [Laughter] It's a grand party, goes on - sometimes it can go on for days. Heaviness, depression, sad, poor me, and it's really bad, no one notices how bad it is for me. Why don't you all notice? You don't care, all that kind of stuff. It's all part of it - and complaining. So of course a sign you're flunking is when you're complaining.

Complaining is usually a statement of unbelief, that I don't believe God works all things together for my good, so I'll complain. So complaining is a big problem, complaining, negative talk. Complaining - and who'd they complain against? We've got to find someone to blame, so you find someone's who's visible; you look like you're a leader, I'll complain about you! It's your fault. You brought us here. It was all your idea, sat there in the back of the wilderness, dreamed up this whole idea to get us to where we are now. Look at the mess we're in. You! That's what people do. You're flunking, blaming others. See, you've got to find someone to blame when you're going through a hard time. You're flunking. When you blame someone else, you lose total power, because someone else is holding the responsibility for your life. Don't blame anyone else, just reach out to God and find out how to step up, and what you can do to make the thing different - but blaming, you're flunking. See? You'll have to repeat it again.

Victim mindset, notice our children and our wives will be all victims. Actually they had a total victim mentality. They lived like slaves, and God wanted them to become mighty men of faith that could take a land; but to move from being slaves, thinking victim thinking, blaming, mindsets of self pity and angry, and blaming this and that, He had to shift that stuff out of them, to get them saying: God is with us, we can do it! We'll take that land! We'll slay those giants! How do you get it out of you? Well not by someone laying hands on you. You've got to go through a bit of tough time, and you then choose, as you see what comes up, to respond to the word of God, the word of God. That's why you've got to be in the word, otherwise you'll have very little substance. You'll live out of feelings. So there it is.

Then finally they rebelled and left. Let's get another leader. [Laughs] We don't like this leader. We'll leave, and we'll go back to Egypt. Now putting it simply, what it means is, people stop coming to church. We go down and have time in the pub instead. They're never happy down there either, because actually they've been overthrown in the wilderness, so they're not happy there. They're full of offence and hurt. They've been overthrown in the wilderness. God would help them get up, but it requires repenting of the unbelief, and letting go the disappointment, all the stuff that got into the heart. Over the years I've seen people get all kinds of things in their heart, all kinds of perceptions, and they often got things wrong, they had partial information, they never really found out what was going on. They just assumed and judged, all kinds of things - end up then out in the dark, in the cold, and angry and bitter, and still blaming someone else. There it is, it's all there: flunk! Flunk!

You say how are you getting on to moving to your destiny? Oh flunked! My bones are here, bleached in the sun, in the wilderness. That's what happens, then you want to feel better, so you've got to find some way to fill the pain, so you've got to fill it up with this, fill it up with that, fill it up with something else: work, busyness, buy some things, do this, do that, pleasure, all kinds of things. We've got to fill up the pain, but the deal is - you flunked. When the test God allowed you to go through, to prepare you for your destiny, when it came, you didn't see it for what it was, and you just let your old nature, unbelief rise up, and flunked in the wilderness. Terrible thing to do isn't it? Bet you know some people who did that. You haven't done that, but you know people who did that don't you? I don't want to do that, I think dear God, I've been close to it a few times, but however I didn't. God's grace, God... so how do we get through?

Here it is. We'll give you the simple keys how to get through the wilderness. My servant Caleb, he had a different spirit to everyone else. He has wholly followed Me. He believed My word. So we'll just pick it up, 1 Corinthians 10. You'll find out here's the keys. You want to memorise this verse: There's no temptation overtaken you which is not common to man; but God is faithful, and with that temptation will make a way of escape, you may be able to bear it. I know that verse. I've memorised that verse. That's a powerful verse. Here it is, here's the simple keys out of that verse. Here's the first thing. One, other people have experienced it too. You're not the only one you know. There's nothing new under the sun. Whatever you're facing, someone else is going through it, gone through it, is going to go through it. All stuff we face is common. Everyone goes through this kind of stuff.

The second thing is God is faithful. He will never abandon you, He'll stand by you in the midst of whatever you're going through. Here's the next thing: He says He will make sure you're not tempted beyond what you're able, so here's one of the best things you get from that. He will make sure that whatever happens to you, is not beyond what you're able. You know what that means? You've got the capacity to come through winning. It's like He can measure just how much you get. He knows just how much it takes to shift you, and no more. Now when you're on the other side, and when you're getting this stuff - aah! My life is falling apart, I'm a mess. No, it just knew how much to melt you, until you opened your heart at a different level and leant on Him. Notice the last thing He says here, make a way of escape that you can bear it. God will always provide an avenue to walk through it. He will provide strength and direction, absolutely certain. He will give strength and direction, see?

So here's a few things you could ask in the middle of your wilderness. You could ask: what is the actual struggle that I'm facing? What is the issue that I'm facing? What is it really that's going on that's causing me the trouble? What am I learning in this? What's being revealed about me, or about God in the middle of it? What is it I need to let go of or change? Now what word do I need to hold on and believe? Now there's no shortcuts to becoming a man or woman of God. There's no Bible school you can go through, that'll make you a man of God. There's no leadership course you can do that'll make you a man of God, or necessarily a great leader. You have to go through God's wilderness times. See, we look at Ian Clayton. Ian is travelling the world now, and been asked to conferences all over the world, so how come someone from Hastings that no one's ever heard of is now speaking all over the world, and in demand all over the world? Well Ian had a long wilderness experience, and he used it well. I want what he's got. Oh, well welcome to the wilderness then. [Laughter] Just teach me, lay hands on me, tell me all you know. I can't, you have to learn this.

I think of Lyn, who carries a tremendous anointing to heal and to touch people's lives, and you say lay hands on me, I want your anointing, I want your anointing! Welcome to the wilderness. I know what she had to experience to carry what she carries, some of it anyway. You see people want things, but there is a way that God brings them to us, and God has ahead for you, a land full of amazing promises, amazing blessings, amazing abundance - but will you qualify yourself, by responding when God is touching heart attitudes? Will unbelief rise up, or will faith, and a right attitude? When the people of God faced this problem in the wilderness, they complained, cried, sat down, complained, did all kinds of stuff. This is what Caleb did: he said listen, God's with us, He's going to help us. These giants are bread for us. Don't rebel. Don't quit, don't resist. Stand up! God's best days are ahead for us.

That day when he said that a line was drawn, who will agree with that? Who will agree with the evil report? Two million people agreed with the evil report, and perished in the wilderness; two men stood strong in what God said. If God said He can do it, He can do it, and those men went in. Joshua, Caleb and all the generation under 30. What a great thing. God has great things ahead for us. He definitely has great things ahead, not only for us, for His church. Globally the best days of the church are ahead, but there'll be lots of reasons why you could stumble right at this time. There'd be lots of reasons to fall over, fail, quit and give up - but don't do it! Get your eyes fixed on the Lord! Get a hold of the word of God, and in the midst of it, let God help you grow. Then you will be prepared for the things He's about to pour out.

I believe God will pour His spirit out in a great measure on the church. I believe we're coming into an hour of the saints ministry, an hour when the church worldwide is going to break out, and burst out, and go in and possess the land, and carry the supernatural. But if God was pouring out the supernatural, would you have the character and faith to carry it? There's the question, not whether or not God wants to give it. He's already said He's going to do it. The glory of the Lord shall fill the earth - and God spoke that, at the very time a generation failed, and two stood up and said: we're going to hold on to God and believe for Him. I'm believing for great things in God, great future, better future, bigger things, different things. It is a new day, it's a great new day, but oh my, I want to be ready. I want to be fully ready for it when it comes. I want to embrace all the things that God's doing and saying, and get into His presence.

In the middle of the wilderness, is a place to know Him. In Song of Solomon, in the last chapter, it said: who is this, coming up out of the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her beloved? Glorious bride that Jesus prepared. Where was she coming? A wilderness, a difficult time, difficult season. What was she doing? She was in a place of faith, leaning, leaning into God. You know maybe you've gone through your wilderness time, and have failed and flunked. Don't worry, God saw that coming too. He said to Peter: Peter, you're going to flunk. No, I'll never flunk, I'll never flunk, you can trust me. Peter, you're going to flunk, He said but its okay, I've prayed that your faith won't fail, and after you've flunked, and you get back up on your feet again, then you can strengthen others. So isn't that good? You can't miss. You can't lose. All you can do is lie down and not get up, but God wants you up. He wants all of us up. Come on, let's just stand right now shall we?

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

Luke 3:22 “… the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove…”

Luke 4:1 “When Jesus being filled with the Holy Spirit … was led by the holy Spirit into the wilderness”

Luke 4:14 “Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit …”

· ‘The wilderness’ is a place of preparation for your destiny to be fulfilled

· The Kingdom has a system of passing tests to qualify you for enlargement

· Tests in the Kingdom are about leaning to trust God and develop character

The Purpose of Wilderness Testing:

a) Wilderness Experiences are a preparation for enlargement/fresh move of God

· Bible examples: Moses, Israel, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus

· All the great men of God had experience to prepare them for their destiny (Word picture – a tree in water)

b) Lessons from Israel’s Wilderness Experience:

Deut 8:2,3,16

i. God led them into the wilderness v2. Wilderness = 4057 OT = uninhabited place; solitary, desolate. The wilderness journey was God’s idea – it was a journey not a destination

ii. The wilderness experience was for preparation not destinations

iii. The wilderness was a place of humility – of experiencing lack. Wilderness experiences include: pressure, lack, injustice, misunderstanding, opposition, apparent failure, temptation

iv. The wilderness is a place of testing. Test = to prove or examine the quality of our relationship

v. Pressure reveals what is in our heart (know = yada = to be intimate) Bitterness, offense, pride, critical, judgmental, motivations, attitudes, soulish attachments, fears, unbelief

vi. The wilderness is Tailor made by God for our enlargement and blessing v16 “to do you good at the end”

vii. The wilderness is a place of deepening intimacy and trust

3. Jesus’ Wilderness Experience:

· Luk 4:3-12

· Pressure came on Jesus in 3 areas related to His identity

· “If you are” => a challenge to His identity

· Key issue: Who are you? How do you define your identity? Will you put on a mask and play a part?

i) Performance Trap v3 “I am what I do”

· What have you achieved? What do you do?

ii) Possessions Trap “I am what I own”

· What do you own? You are nothing unless possess you things

iii) Popularity Trap “I am what other people think”

· When you live to please people you cannot be true to who you are and your calling

· Everyone had expectations that they tried to put on Jesus

· Jesus lived true to himself, and his calling, identity and disappointed people constantly e.g. parents, members of his hometown, disciples, religious leaders, crowds

Note: The Word of God was the weapon He used to vanquish the accuser

4. How to Flunk your Wilderness Test:

· Israel flunked the test God gave them 1 Cor 10:5-6

· Evidence of flunking Num 14:1-4

(i) Weeping – self-pity v1

(ii) Complaining v2

(iii) Blaming other v2

(iv) Victim mindset v3

(v) Rebelling and leaving v4

· They flunked because the believed the negative reports instead believing God

5. Graduating with Distinction:

Num 14:24 “My servant Caleb because he has a different spirit in him and has wholly followed me … I will bring into the land”

1 Cor 10:13

a) 4 Things to remember in your wilderness

· Other people have experienced it too

· God is faithful, He will stand by me

· I have the capacity to handle this

· God will provide strength and direction to get me through

b) 4 Things to Ask in your wilderness

· Whet is the struggle/issue I am facing?

· What is being revealed about/in me?

· What do I need to let go of/change?

· What “Word of God” do I need to hold o to/believe?

· How are you doing in your wilderness testing?

· What promise of God is shaping your response and destiny

· Peter – “When you are converted, strengthen your brethren”

Wilderness Wisdom (2 of 4)

Sun 2nd May 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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It helps if we just understand that the wilderness was God's idea, that that difficult season was His idea. All major men in the Bible had times or seasons which you would call a wilderness. A wilderness was a very dry place, full of wild animals, it was very difficult. It represented a very difficult season, a difficult time.

Could open your Bible with me in Deuteronomy Chapter 8. I want to just continue another thing related to what I was sharing. About two weeks ago I shared a message on Wilderness Wisdom, how to respond when you're going through a hard time - hard times come don't they aye? But they don't last. They're like everything, these too pass, so hard times come, and just because you're Christian doesn't mean it's not going to happen to you. the big decision, and the only decision you have, is when a hard time comes, when a tough time comes, when misunderstandings, difficulties, pressures, setbacks, all kinds of things like that come, here's the one question: how will I respond? Will I respond towards God, discover what God is saying, doing, and wants me to learn in this situation? Or will I harden and become bitter? That's the only choices we really have.

So I want to just look at one incident in Israel's life, but first of all I want to just get you a little perspective on it. In Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, it says you shall remember - Verse 2 - that the Lord your God led you these 40 years in the wilderness. Now notice they were in the wilderness for 40 years. It should only have been about one month. It lasted 40 years, because they didn't really learn the lessons - to humble you, test you, know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, fed you with manna which you did not know, and your fathers didn't know, that He might make you learn experientially, you can't live just by external things. Man will live by every word proceeding from the mouth of God. Now notice this in the end of Verse 16, it said: God did this, that He might do you good in the end.

It helps if we just understand that the wilderness was God's idea, that that difficult season was His idea. Through the Bible we saw people, all major men in the Bible, had times or seasons which you would call a wilderness. A wilderness was a very dry place, full of wild animals, it was very difficult. It represented a very difficult season, a difficult time. Jesus, after He was anointed with the Holy Ghost, and before He returned in the power of the spirit, went through a wilderness experience. Wilderness experiences are written about in the Bible, and listen, the Bible explicitly says 1 Corinthians 10: this was for us to learn from. So whatever they did is a great learning experience; best that they learned it, paid the price. We just read this story and learn the lesson.

Now if you can understand that this is what was going on, in Egypt - Egypt represented bondage and sin. It represents your life without Christ. Coming out of Egypt, God did it all. All they had to do was just respond. God had in mind that they would go into a land full of promises. He also has promises for you, promises for your marriage, promises for your finance, promise for business, promises for an inheritance, promises of all kinds. But between coming out of Egypt, where God did it all, they just stepped into the blessing; and going over here, here in the Canaan, the land of promises, they had to learn to walk by faith. They had to learn to possess. In fact, while the walked through the wilderness, God gave them supernatural provision every day. As soon as they got in the Promised Land it stopped. Now they had to operate kingdom principles, so Canaan represented kingdom lifestyle.

Canaan represented our life advancing the kingdom of God. It represents the church going into the community, making influence in the community, but for all of us, individually and corporately, we have to change how we think. So when they were in Egypt they were in captivity, they were in imprisonment, they were in hard bondage. In order to operate, and make an impact, and possess what God, they had to change mentalities. Here's what the wilderness is about: it's about changing how you think. It's about changing heart attitudes. It's about changing on the inside. That's what the wilderness is about; and so the purpose of the wilderness was to uncover their heart attitudes and mentalities. The first thing that happens when you're under pressure, what's in your heart comes up. Isn't that true? Isn't that true - so it's to uncover it, not to condemn, but so we can actually grow and change. So the first purpose of the wilderness was to uncover what was in the heart, and in the thinking - the mindsets; because in order to enter the land, and possess the promises, and walk by faith, they had to have certain mindsets.

They had to have an overcoming mindset, a conquering mindset, a Joshua mindset. They had to have a different mindset, so how do you shift the mindset after living in Egypt in bondage and slavery and all kinds of slave mentality? How do you shift that mentality, from there, to becoming someone who's got a faith life that can now make a difference? Well you have to have changes, so God just allowed a few tests to come on the way - 10 of them to be exact, the fullness of testing. So He allowed 10 situations, to explore their heart and how they would respond, and what God was looking for was that they would learn to trust Him, and develop these two things: one, that they would develop a life of faith trusting God; and secondly, that they would develop inner strength and character, because you have to be tough to advance the kingdom of God. It's not for sissies. There's always resistance, always difficulties, and so a church of sissies isn't going to make a difference.

See, God wants us to grow, and become strong on the inside, strong in Him. Isn't that right? Okay, alright then, so let's go and have a look at one little example. This is the first test. Now notice this is after all the victories, so they've had all these victories. They've seen the 12 plagues, they've seen God deliver them, they've seen God open up the water, they've seen the waters close on their enemies - absolutely marvellous. Then three days later, they're in trouble; so we read it in Exodus, Chapter 15, Verse 22. It says: Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea. They went out into the Wilderness - here it is - they're in the wilderness, and they went out just a few days, three days to be exact. That's all it took to change them from laughing, celebrating, and praising God, to now having stress and strife and trouble, so that's Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, about the middle of the week in other words.

So from praising God on Sunday to the middle of the week, that's about all it was, and so the middle of the week, three days, they had no water and when they came to Marah, they couldn't drink the waters at Marah. They were bitter, so the name of it was called Marah. Should have given it away shouldn't it? And the people complained against Moses, what will we drink? He cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. So He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them. And He said: if you diligently heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what's right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep His statutes, I'll put none of the diseases on you, which I have brought on the Egyptians. I am the Lord who heals you.

There's a lot in this, and we can't do all of it in one session, but we'll just pick up - I want you to learn just a very simple lesson in this. You notice first of all, what is the experience they've had. The experience they've had is one of tremendous victory, that's three days ago, and then for three days they're without water, which means all their water supply dried out. Now remember although they're in the wilderness, there was a cloud over them, so it's not like they're under raging sun. They've actually got God with them, so every day, they can see the cloud of God's presence - so after three days the water's run out, so they're looking for water. There's an expectation of water, and the water that they get is bitter. In other words, they got their hopes up when they saw the water, then their hopes are dashed.

So it represents an experience where we struggle, and we have a season where perhaps the presence of God isn't so strong, where things are a bit difficult. We suffer lack of some kind, and then we got our hopes up that something's about to happen - and it doesn't happen! Isn't that a common experience, where what you expected, didn't come about; and what you didn't expect, happened? Well you know, you expected the bill to be paid, and it wasn't paid. It's a bit nasty when that happens isn't it? You expected something to come through, and it didn't come through. You expected this to happen, it didn't happen so your expectations were dashed. So here's the thing. You notice they were in this place called Marah. Now it tells us in Exodus, if we just take a quick look in Chapter 1, I want to read you a couple of verses there. I want you to understand the nature of the test, and what happened inside them.

It says in Exodus, Chapter 1, in Verses 13 and 14: The Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with hard bondage, or bitter or rigor. They made their lives - notice this - they made their lives bitter with hard bondage - in mortar, in brick and all manner of service. In all manner of service, they made them serve. Now what has happened is, the people have had to serve, and they've been under cruel masters. This is our life before Christ, cruel demonic masters. Sin is a cruel master. We lived in sin, and when we live in sin and in broken relationships, and we just try and do the best, we suffer; and people have various backgrounds, but everyone who comes to Christ has a story. You have a background, and your background is made up of a whole range of experiences, much of it in bondage to sin - and not only your own sin, but the sin of others. So we are impacted, not only by what we have done, and the demonic torment of that, but by what others have done to us, and our failure to resolve it. So we carry with us baggage into our Christian walk. It's in the soul. You got saved, and your spirit was saved, but your soul wasn't saved, and you've still got all the baggage.

So you notice it tells us there their lives were made bitter. What happened? They were rejected, they were put down, they were used, they suffered injustice, they were treated cruelly; so their life in the world in Egypt was a life of put downs, of rejection, of injustice, of lack, of hardship. It's like, in many ways, the life of people before we come to Christ. There are many areas we suffer, or go through difficulties and experiences in, and of course what happened was, as a result of their bondage, they didn't resolve it - they became bitter. They were bitter in their heart. They were bitter because of their background, bitter because of their experiences. I know growing up, coming up out of my background, I grew up bitter. Bitterness is very easy to get into our heart. There's an injustice, or something happens that hurts us, it maybe repeats itself, and gets into our soul, we begin to feel resentful about it, angry and resentful about it.

If we don't forgive, and deal with it properly like God wants, it goes down deep, and begins to crawl its way down, and gets roots in our soul, roots of bitterness. I didn't feel bitter of course, no one usually really feels very bitter. Ask a person: are you bitter? They'll never say yes. I've rarely heard anyone say yes - but bitterness has a way of revealing itself, and it reveals itself when God takes us through circumstances in life which push on us, just challenge us. So one of the things is, the Bible tells us, that a bitter root defiles relationships. In Hebrews 12:15 it says: take heed lest anyone fall out of the grace of God, and there's the clue as to what the answer is: grace. It says: and a root of bitterness springing up, many are poisoned or stained. Isn't that interesting, that you could stain your relationships, that you could poison your relationships, that we could defile our relationships?

So how does that happen? Well it happens when there's bitterness. Bitterness in the heart is a root that grows, and produces its own fruit. Usually when people are bitter they make judgements, and when we make judgements rooted in bitterness - well men, this is what men are like, or this is what my father, this is what people will treat me like - or we make judgements about ourself - well I'll never get anywhere, this is what's happened, this is the kind of person I am - we begin to judge people. We begin to judge ourselves, we begin to judge others. When those judgements start to form in our heart, they're rooted in bitterness, and they create almost like a bitter expectation, that whatever situation I'm in, this is what's going to happen to me. So people brought up in poverty for example, or financial hardship, you often have a real deep root of bitterness, that they'll suffer financial lack; and then every time a little bit of lack comes up, which is normal anyway in life, it just reinforces the pain: yeah, I knew it, you know?

There's this bitter echo from inside them, and bitterness can grow very deep, and it stains us, and affects our relationship. A woman marries a man who's bitter against his mother, and against women. Very soon, she will have a major problem in her marriage. He will defile the marriage by the bitterness. A woman who's bitter against her husband, because of the way her father or some other men treated her, will find herself in the end defiling the husband; and he will begin to take on the very thing she expected, because of the bitterness. Bitterness has a way of defiling and influencing everything around us, so we need to have a sweet spirit. Isn't it interesting, that after all those years of bitterness and defilement, that they've got bitterness in their heart? It's not surprising, after the way they've been treated, that they're bitter - it's not surprising at all. A girl comes up out of a home where she's been sexually abused, why would we think it's a surprise she's bitter? A person comes up, and their father's abandoned them. Why would we be surprised that they're bitter? Of course they're bitter.

A person's gone through injustice and hardship, and bad treatment, of course they're bitter. When you don't have Christ you don't know what to do. You just take it into yourself, and in the end you form judgements, and these roots go down into the heart, but they don't disappear when you get saved. When you got saved, your spirit was saved. Now you have to journey with God, and in order to come into the promises of a great marriage, a great family, great prosperity, we've got to let God work in our heart, to shift those old mindsets, and those old things that would hinder us becoming the people of God. So if God is wanting to shift you, or shift your marriage, or shift the church, He's got to shift us in our heart, shift us in our beliefs, shift us in the way we are. So of course the way He does it, sets up a few things to press on us a bit.

The Bible says that if we judge others - Matthew 7, Verses 2 and 3 - if we judge others, we ourselves will reap with the judgement. So if I judge others in a certain way, very soon I'll find I'll be experiencing those things in my life. You know, you start to find you judge people: oh, that person's such and such a person, this kind of person, pretty soon I'll be finding, I'm reaping that very thing in my life. So the Bible says first of all get the beam out of your own eye, and you can see clearly. Here's the problem with judgement. When you judge a person, that means you look at their behaviour, you look at that person, and then you pass a sentence on it: well this is what I think! Some people just call it - its opinions. But when we have opinions based on appearances, and judgements on appearances, this is what happens is, your eye is so full of blocks, you can't even see anything clearly - so it says first remove the judgements out of your life, the log out of your eye, then you can see clearly to help the other person.

Very often when we look at other people, we evaluate and judge them on their behaviour, what you see. The Bible says: God doesn't look on man from the outside; He looks on the heart. We tend to judge people by what we see, how they turn up, their appearance, their behaviour. We've got no idea what's going on. We've got no idea the pain that's going on in their life, got no idea what they may be struggling with, we just see how they behave, and come to a judgement. Usually it's a judgement that passes a sentence upon them. When we do that, we're now positioned to reap the same judgement in our own life. We now have become blinded to reality. You can't see clearly unless you've actually got judgements out of your heart. You imagine, if you've got a little spec in your eye, and someone says please let me help you get that speck out of your eye, I know exactly what to do. As they lean over with a little wee scalpel, to get this thing out of your eye, you observe that their whole eye is blocked by a big beam, and that they can't see at all. You won't let them near your eye.

Why won't you let them near your eye? Two reasons: one, they can't see; and two, they've got no sensitivity to what you would need to be set free. So when there's judgements in our heart, it's impossible for us to really help anyone. The reason is because one, we can't see the true issues, we're looking superficially, and we're blinded by our own heart; and two, we have no sensitivity and compassion how to deal with the person's heart. One of the great things that's needed in our life, is for the Holy Ghost to bring grace to us, to remove bitterness, so we can see clearly and have compassion for people. Then you're positioned to help them. So what is the first test God takes them to? Isn't it interesting, it's the waters of bitterness, the bitter water. So what does He do? He just gets their hopes all up, there's some water there. First of all He suffers a bit of lack, there's no water, then there is water, and then it's bad water. In other word,s at first we're struggling, then there's a glimmer of hope, and then it just sinks.

Now immediately that happens for you, something will emerge from your heart. What emerges from your heart, is the very thing that reveals what's going on in your heart, see? So there's fruit; whenever a person's got bitterness in their heart, there's always a fruit. There's always a fruit for the root. So if you ask someone - how many people here are bitter? Well you'd probably say no one's bitter, they're all lovely people in here. We've just been worshipping Jesus. [Laughs] It'd be wonderful if we had no bitter people here - but actually I've picked it up in myself at times. I've picked it up in a whole number of ways really. Let me tell you some of the ways you can pick it up. You can pick it up - it's always got a fruit, got a fruit, you can see the fruit. Here's the thing, you'll see it in a person's countenance. If a person's bitter, you'll see it around their face, particularly around the mouth. It shows in the mouth. The mouth begins to twist, and become tight, and you'll see it on the face, etched into the face. Bitterness eventually etches itself into a person's face.

Another place you'll see it is in the words they speak, the most common way is the words they speak. Usually what you'll find is, they'll be very negative; negative or critical, fault-finding. Now you see fault-finding, there's no faith in that. Fault-finding does not advance the kingdom of God. What advances the kingdom of God is faith. See faith sees what could be, and calls it forth; fault-finding says: you've got this wrong with you, we've got to fix it up before you can go forward. Actually it's not how God works. He never worked that way, He says: come to Me, and just respond to Me, and let Me put something into you, and you'll grow and you'll change. So fault-finding, judging, condemning, these are the kinds of things - here's another thing that bitterness shows up. Bitterness shows up in the inability to be thankful to people, or to express gratitude. Now you have a think: who has blessed your life? Did you show them gratitude? Did you, at any time, say: thank you, when you did this, it was such a blessing to me?

People who are bitter can't say thank you. They never say thank you. It's just impossible to say thank you. Why? Because bitterness won't let gratitude flourish; and so relationships, always there's a demand, that somehow you've got to provide - somehow you've got to fix this thing up, because the bitterness is rooted in injustice, and a demand that you've got to do something. So it can't be fixed. It can't be fixed. The person has to repent, and be changed, so what does God do? God takes them to the waters of Marah. Now notice what happens, two responses here at the waters of Marah. First of all the people's response - what was the first thing they did? They - what did they do? Complained. Who did they complain against? They complained against Moses. He had nothing to do with it. It was God's idea, the wilderness; and the waters of Marah - he had no control over that whatsoever; but people who are bitter, have to find somewhere to put the poison on. You just have to. You can't put it on yourself, you can't even dare to look at yourself. You've got to put it out there, so you don't look inward, and so what they did was they complained.

That word 'complain' means - it's the word from which the modern Hebrew word 'hotel' comes from, to lodge overnight. So in other words, they had a resentment and a grudge that hung around overnight. They actually got resentful. They were resentful - first of all they had their hopes up, then their hopes are dashed, now they're looking for someone to blame. The bitterness manifests: Moses! and they begin to complain, and become bitter; and they've got to find someone to be bitter against, so they're bitter against Moses. Actually they were bitter against God, because what they're saying is: God, You don't know what You're doing, You're messing up. Actually the cloud was with them all the time. You would think they'd know that God was there. There's a cloud by day, and fire by night, it's there every day and every night - the presence of God is there every day, yet they're complaining against Moses, that Moses has somehow stuffed it up.

Now what Moses did was different. See now Moses, in the midst of a pressure like that, did the thing you can do, which is to reach out to God, so he cried out to God. I want you to see three things that happened when he cried out to God: number one, he got revelation. You see when you're going through a difficulty, the one thing you need is God's perspective - God, what are You trying to do in this situation? God, what do You want me to learn in this situation? Now I find it surprising, when people are going through difficulties, how few actually become God-oriented, and ask God: what are You wanting to teach me? What do You want me to learn? How do You want me to respond? What is showing in my heart? Now that's the response of a man of God, or woman of God, but I find people look for someone to blame, or they get angry, they criticise, they fire up, go and have a drink or any kind of thing, but the one thing that's missing is just to come near to God and ask Him.

Now when you ask God for wisdom, He'll show you, give you wisdom - so notice he asked God, so God gives him three things. Three things happen: one, he gets revelation. If you're going through a trouble right now, what you need is revelation, and God can give it to you. What do you need to learn? What is the purpose of this experience? What is God wanting to teach you in it? What do you have to change in your life? What's showing up in your life? How does God want you to treat that person? Only God can show you those things. The second thing is, that God gave him revelation specifically of the cross. Notice He showed him a tree, that when the tree was put in the waters, the waters change, and the bitter becomes sweet? Now the only tree I know, that changed bitter waters to sweet, is actually this one here in the Old Testament, and the cross of Calvary in the New Testament.

You see in the midst of a difficult situation of injustice, suffering, pain and whatever, the one thing you've got to find is revelation of how the cross has dealt with this thing, and can bring you through to resurrection and life on the other side. You notice the cross is to deal with my issues, not someone else's. I don't bring someone else to the cross, I bring myself to the cross. Now you notice, He needed to bring the cross into the water, to change the water from bitter to sweet. What does that look like? Well here's an example of that. When Joseph - remember Joseph was treated terribly by his brothers. He brought a bit on himself, pride, and the way he carried on; but you know he was treated so badly by everyone, but he ends on top. He ends up out and he's filled with promises of God. He's had his 13 years wilderness, he's now in the place of destiny and guess what? When the brothers come notice what he said: It wasn't you who sent me here, it was God who sent me here.

He's not only forgiven them, he's got rid of all judgement. He's saying: listen, get over it guys, don't be hard on yourselves. Don't judge yourselves, because God was in it, behind it, and I look and I see how God has used us to get me exactly where I need to be, fully fulfilling the dream of God. Whoa! Thank You God for working through this situation. Now you notice the bitter has become totally sweet. See, that's how God can do it, but you know to do that he had to forgive him, had to let go his judgements, and had to recognise actually, that was the tool God used to get me to where he needed me to get. Now you see we love the visions, dreams, desires and all that kind of stuff, but anyone who's started up a business, and had a dream for a business, will tell you that between the dream and the reality, there's an awful lot of suffering, pain and difficulty goes on, see?

So we love the dreams and desires, but there's a journey of growth, of experience, of learning a few things, to bring you to the place, where you actually now are fulfilling what God called you to do. There's a preparation. The wilderness is always just time for preparation, so you see how he cast it, and the last thing you see there is he had to cast it in. He actually had to apply the cross to the water, so God gave him the revelation. The revelation was one of the cross, but he had to actually apply it. If you're facing a bitter experience, God wants you to see how the cross, how the injustice sufferings of Jesus Christ, have fully paid the price, to totally set you free from all that bitterness, all those judgements, all that pain. This experience is just bringing it to the surface. Now you can really deal with it, so you can move on; and so you have to apply it. No one can apply it for you. You come up in altar call, no one can apply the cross to you. You have to actually apply it yourself, by faith.

No one can repent for you. No one can turn from sin for you. No one can confess your bitterness. You actually have to own your stuff; and so what happened was when the pressure came, instead of Israel owning what was in their heart, coming and responding to God's provision, they just found somewhere to dump it, so they didn't have to face it. In the midst of every wilderness experience, every setback, every disappointment in life, the first thing is: God, what is coming up in my life? God, what is coming out of my mouth? What is in my heart? What are You wanting to teach me? How can I grow, and how can I respond to this thing, and bring forth Your will into that? And that way you grow. That's how men of God work, and this is what he did.

So I wonder where we're at? What bitter experience or disappointing experience are you facing? What trouble, difficulty, setback are you facing? Think about that; what is it? It'll be a situation of some kind, and then when you think about it, what is manifesting in your heart? What kind of response are you making? Do you hear praises to God, and gratitude to God? Do we hear gracious words flowing out of your heart; or is there a bitterness flowing out? There's a judgement, there's a demand someone else has got to do something, someone else has got to change, something else. Is there a demanding thing that comes through? What is coming out of your mouth? And if there's bitterness in your heart, you just need to face it, say: God, cleanse my heart from every trace, every root of this bitterness. Lord, heal me - and you notice what He said. This was for the healing, and God reveals Himself, not only as the one who saves people, but the one who heals the bitter lives, the lives that have been wrecked by bitter experiences. He's the God who heals the broken heart, He's the God who heals people of their diseases, He is the God who is the healer.

So they experienced of His God, their saviour. Now He says: but I can heal you. I know you've been through some tough stuff. You've had all this bondage, and people have abused you and done terrible things, and you've got all this bitterness and grief and sorrow, but I can heal it. That healing is by way of the cross. You've just got to be willing to come to the cross.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Kingdom of God has a process of development to qualify you for enlargement

· “Wilderness Experiences” are seasons of learning to trust God and develop strength of character

· Jesus: Anointed -> Wilderness -> Returned in Power

· Deut 8:2-3 Israel experienced a wilderness season – time of transition and preparation

· Transitions are Uncomfortable

1) Egypt – God did it all

2) Canaan – Israel had to arise and exercise faith to possess

Israel needed to develop faith and strength of character to possess the promises

· Purpose of their wilderness experience:

1) Expose and remove slave mentality

2) Develop faith as sons of God

3) Develop strength and character

Adversity is an Opportunity to Grow :

a) Israel’s first Wilderness Experience: Ex 15:22-26 The waters of Marah

· 3 days without water in the shadow of the cloud of god

· Their hopes were raised and then disappointment at Marah

· Marah = Bitter

b) Bitterness is a heart response to injustice: Ex 1:13-14 They made their lives bitter with hard bondage

· They were forced t work as slaves under task masters

· Serve with ‘Rigour’ = cruelty, severity, to break apart, to fracture

· ‘Afflict’ = 6031 = to put down, to humiliate

· Israel were cruelly treated and deeply wounded by their slavery. Reactions, abuse, sorrows, bondage

· When negative experiences are not resolved they develop deep bitter roots. Hurt/injustice = resentment = offence = unforgiveness = bitterness

c) Bitterness is a heart response to injustice:

Heb 12;15 “ … lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by this many become defiled”

· Bitterness is like a sour root that defiles the soul and pollutes relationships

· ‘Defiled’ = 3392 = contaminate, unclean, defile, pollute, stain

· Bitterness often results in inner judgments against God, self and people

· Judge = 2919 = to try, condemn, pass sentence upon

· Bitter root judgments defile relationships, set off a cycle of sowing and reaping

· The judgments people have in the heart affect capacity to see clearly

· Matt 7:2-3 “Remove the beam (judgment) from own eye that might see clearly”

· People don’t feel bitter but the heart knows Prov 14:10 and fruit appears

d) The Fruit of Bitterness:

Lk 6:44 “Every tree is known by its fruit”

· The fruit of bitterness is easily seen and identified

i) Facial expressions

ii) Critical

iii) Faultfinding

iv) Blaming

v) Inability to be thankful

vi) Condemning

vii) Judging

viii) Controlling and manipulate others

e) Adversity Exposes Bitterness:

Ex 15:24 “The people complained against Moses saying …”

· Complain = 3853 = to lodge oversight, grumble, make accusations, to hold a grudge or resentment against

· Adversity presented a choice – respond in faith or react in bitterness and unbelief

f) God’s Remedy for Bitterness – Grace:

Ex 15:25-26 “Moses cried out to the Lord”

· Faith response

i. God gave him revelation- insight and wisdom

ii. Tree = The Cross – the grace and power of God to save

iii. ‘He cast it” – Moses applied the tree by faith, the bitter became sweet

· The Cross reveals the response of God to injustice and bitterness

· The Cross is the Power of God to overcome injustice and bitterness

· We need revelation of how to apply the Cross to our situation

· Beyond this experience was water in abundance v27

3. Application:

· What ‘bitter’ experience or disappointing experience are you facing?

· How are you responding? Your countenance? Your attitude? Your words?

· What does the Lord want you to address in your heart?

· Will you bring it to the Cross and believe for the bitter to become sweet e.g. Joseph: Gen 45:7-8

· Response to Bitterness:

· Acknowledge

· Forgive

· Renounce Judgments

· Saw Grace

Wilderness Wisdom (3 of 4)

Sun 16 May 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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If you're walking with God, you will find yourself quite frequently in transitions, changes. It's part of walking with God, because He's continually moving us on. You don't just get saved, and that's the end of it. He journeys you, because He has an assignment for your life, and He wants to develop you, or mature you, or prepare you for that assignment.

The Bible speaks of transitions all the way through, and transitions are very uncertain times. They have their challenges, and have their difficulties, but God loves us to embrace the process of the transition and learn what we can, because it's your chance to prepare yourself for the next season. Many believers totally frustrate God's destiny for their life, because when God was trying to change them, they wouldn't transition.

A couple of weeks ago I brought a message just about the wilderness; a couple of messages on Wilderness Wisdom. How many found that was a help for you? It was a help for me [laughs] and wisdom, when we're going through a journey or a season of transition and change. The wilderness that we spoke about was an experience that the people of God had in the Old Testament. It was an experience we'd call a transition experience. Transition is where you move from one thing to another, you move from one place to another place, you move from one job to another job. You move from one experience to another experience, or you move from one assignment in God, to another assignment; you move from one situation God's got you in through into another situation. There are many examples of it.

So transitions are natural. We have natural transitions - seasons, right now we're in a changing season, and it's absolutely wonderful, but it's quite unpredictable and you get weather that changes. You have all kinds of things. You get equinox winds. It's an interesting time, I love these changes in season, particularly love the season right now - and so we have natural seasons like that. We also have seasons in our life; you change from being a baby; then you've got to get up and you've got to go to school. It's a change - very uncomfortable going to school for the first time, then you have to go to high school and it's very uncomfortable. You leave school and go out, perhaps university training, go off to university. I remember it was very uncomfortable for me making that transition, and I've observed with natural transitions they're never easy. They always have challenge.

I just was reading something that said that in the process of giving birth to a child, the period of labour is the period of transition. From growing the child within the womb, to the child being manifested and born into the world, is a transition and it's got of course birth pains. So we see natural transitions around. What escapes us sometimes is that God also transitions us from one experience with Him to another, and your Christian life, if you were living your Christian life, walking with God, I can tell you now, if you're walking with God what will happen is you will find yourself quite frequently in transitions, changes. It's part of walking with God, because He's continually moving us on. You don't just get saved, and that's the end of it. He journeys you, because He has an assignment for your life, and He wants to develop you, or mature you, or prepare you for that assignment. So for example, if we have one level of job, and then we want to go to another level of job, we must qualify for it. You don't get promoted without some kind of success in the level you're at.

So in the Bible there are many transitions. The Bible speaks of transitions all the way through, and transitions are very uncertain times. They have their challenges, and have their difficulties, but there are some things are absolutely certain, and that is, that there's a process and God loves us to embrace the process of the transition and learn what we can, because it's your chance to prepare yourself for the next season. There are many believers who totally frustrate God's destiny for their life, not because they didn't believe or hope or have some kind of plan. It's just when God was trying to change them, they wouldn't transition. They wouldn't transition; and I want to show you - we're going to go back into that arena of looking at the wilderness journey, but I want you to see it from the point of view of transition. I want you to be thinking it from the point of view of God shifting them from one thing to another, and what He was requiring of them was to embrace the process of transition, and let God change them in the middle of it.

As we look at this particular transition [Mike retiring, looking for a new leader], you'll see some challenges. Now here's an interesting thing about transition. When God's taking us through transition, He usually informs us, usually let's us know. As a church we've probably had prophetic word about two years ago, God was going to bring some changes. Don't we love the prophetic word? Love the idea of it. It's just the reality of it's a little uncomfortable wouldn't you say? Very uncomfortable. It's one of the most difficult times I've had during this transition, but that's okay. The second thing is, that in transition, God requires of us that we change the old ways we thought; the old mindsets we've had, the old ways of doing things. In order to be different, or to move into new things, you've got to change; so it's change usually the way I think. Most people think that life will go better for them if something outside them happens, when I win the Lottery, or have a breakthrough or something.

God wants to bring the change inside first of all, so all transitions, God expects us to be willing to change on the inside. So if you're going through a transition right now, there will be a challenge to re-think what you believe and what's going on, and look at what's going on in your life, and God's got His own way of getting that to come up into your attention - which I'll explain in a moment. Then the third one is, He calls us to be courageous. So for example when Joshua was going through transition, God called him: be strong and of a good courage, don't be afraid, don't be dismayed, I'm with you. He called him to position himself emotionally, with courage in his heart. Now courage doesn't mean that you don't feel fear. You can be terrified, and still be courageous; so to be courageous means you draw on the strength of God, and no matter how you feel, you face that fear, you face that difficult situation, you face that challenge, and you stand believing God to help you through it - then you come through it.

So God three times says: be strong, be courageous. Why? Because in transition, it requires you have inner strength and courage, because it takes courage to change. Many people don't change because they don't have courage to face the pain, don't have courage to face their fears, don't have courage to face the difficulties, the issues that were never faced before. Someone sent me a text this week. They said: Christianity's not for wimps. It isn't, because God calls us to courageously face things that most other people don't want to face; to face what's in our heart, to face how we react, the face how we deal with life, and to grow. It's a wonderful thing, absolutely wonderful. So transitions; when God's taking us through a transition, the first evidences of it are that there's pressure comes on your life, or that there's lack in some area, or something goes exactly how you didn't expect it, or didn't want it to go. So during transition, there's all sorts of uncertainties, and things are not quite - we can't quite predict how they'll go, and we love to predict how things will go.

So there are what I'd call transition giants. In a season of transition in your life, there are some giants to face. So for example if you're a young person going to university, and you leave home and you go to live in some other city, a big city, and then go to study there, there will be some giants you will face. There will be challenges you've not faced before, just because you're in transition. After you've been there a while, you've kind of got to work it all out; or the giants have overcome you. So if you're facing a change in any part of your life, there will be some giants to overcome. We're going to see them, and we'll see them manifest in the lives of Israel in just a moment, but let me just give you them. So one of the giants is bitterness and resentment and offence. That's a giant to overcome, because in transition or change it's easy to become offended and resentful and bitter. Another giant to overcome is a giant of fear; because fear causes us to try and control, or hold together our world, and manipulate everything around us, so we feel safe. That's a giant.

Another giant is the giant of complaining; what we do with our voice, what we give voice to. Will we give voice to heaven? Will we give voice to fear and negativity and unbelief? What will we give voice to? Of course another problem that comes, or challenge that comes, is that we just go off on a wrong track, and we do something in order to try and control our world that gives birth to an Ishmael. Now when you look in the Middle East right now, all that fighting over there came about because in transition, someone had his own idea how to solve the problem and help God out. That was Abraham, and so Abraham, instead of believing God, and holding onto the promise of God, had a change in plan, took hold of Hagar, had a child through her and all the Arabs were birthed. All the conflict in the Middle East was birthed, because one man didn't handle transition well. Think about that. I wonder what turmoil is generated in our lives because we didn't handle our transitions too well. Other people get affected you know.

Okay, now let's have a look at a great transition. We're in Exodus, Chapter 15. See, you all know what I'm talking about here? Okay, good. I notice everyone getting a bit quiet. Okay, well let's go now, have a look and lighten up a bit, and go there to the place in Exodus, Chapter 16. We were looking in Exodus 15. They had trouble because - here it is - and I want you to have a look at it. See, from the people's point of view, they were in bondage in Egypt and they got saved. Hurray, we're saved! Then suddenly, the enemy's behind them, mountains on either side, water in front - oh no, we're trapped. Hurray, we're saved! You think God was caught by surprise by the water and everything? He had a plan to get them through it. Then they get in the desert, they sing and they dance, and they have tambourines. Then they go three days, there's no water - boo, it's not going well. Then what happens is, the water they get is bitter - oh no - and so they start to murmur and complain.

But you know right beyond that, was a huge well. There were wells of Elim, there were wells and palm trees, there was huge provision. So from the point of view of Israel, they just had to journey it one experience at a time, and had to decide how they would respond to each experience. But from God's point of view, God saw from the beginning to the end. He said: hey look, I've got a whole place here full of water, full of palm trees, a lovely, cosy place. Yeah, yeah, I know there's a couple of tough spots on the way. There's one over there, no water for three days. And look here, there's some tough spots too. There's some bitter water, but I've got the answer. I know what to do. Don't worry, just trust Me. I can get you there. So from God's perspective, He's just got blessing in mind. From the perspective of those journeying, it doesn't look good. It actually looks bad - three days, no water, it's real bad. Then its bitter water, and we can't drink it. That's really bad - so how will we respond? That's the only thing you have power of choice over: how you will respond when you face difficulties in transition times. That's what you have power over.

You don't have power over the situation; you have power over how you will respond to the situation. You have power how you'll respond to God in this situation. You can choose whether God reveals Himself as your mighty healer, your mighty provider, your mighty source, and you walk out of that tough time, and you've got a testimony in miracles. Or you can choose whether you walk away bitter, critical, negative, and reinforced in your thinking. You choose. No one chooses that for you. You have to make that choice. So the thing about it here is, that Israel's in transition, and they're in transition from where God is providing everything for them. They're actually in a welfare mentality, a victim or slave mentality, into a warfare mentality, where they actually have to arise and fight and possess the land. So God's got all this land of promises ahead for them, and He says: but I've got to get you to change your mentality, because you're going to need a mentality of faith! You're going to need a mentality of courage! You're going to need a mentality of perseverance, if you're going to get all I've got for you!

So how am I going to get that into them? Have an altar call? I don't think so. That's not how He gets it into them. He says: we're just going to allow a few tough spots on the way, and then we're going to give you a chance to see what's in your heart, so you can then respond and grow. So here it is, Exodus 16, let's read what happened. So they journeyed from Elim, and Elim was a cosy place; 70 palm trees, 12 wells of water the Bible says, a great place, plenty of provision, plenty of shelter. Everything's just nice. Then God says: you've got to move on. They went from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the wilderness of sin. Sin means to be thorny, to be full of thorns. It's near Mount Sinai, which means a thorny place. When the Bible's talking about thorns, it's referring to the curse that came upon the earth as a result of the sin of man, that brought frustration. Remember He said" the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles, and you'll labour, but you won't get all that you're supposed to get from it, because the ground is cursed. So you'll be frustrated, you'll work hard, you'll have disappointment and difficulty.

So this whole wilderness of sin, the wilderness of thorns, was to bring to their attention they were now going to experience some difficulties, frustrations, some challenges, where they're not getting what they want, and in the midst of it, God is going to reveal Himself. He revealed Himself just before; He's the God who heals. Now He wants to reveal Himself as the God who provides - so it says: what happened there was, the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained. Oh, isn't that lovely? Complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. Then the children of Israel said to them: oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when they ate bread in full! Forgot about the slavery and the taskmasters and stuff, and the bitterness. You brought us out into this wilderness to kill us, the whole assembly with hunger.

Then the Lord said to Moses - see, when you read in that chapter there, you find out that the issue of complaining is mentioned about four times, look at it. Verse 7: In the morning you'll see the glory of the Lord; He hears your complaints against the Lord. What are we, you're not complaining against us? Verse 8: You're complaints against the Lord. Verse 9: Come near before the Lord, He heard all your complaining. Verse 11: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: I have heard your complaining. Oh, I didn't think when I complained, God heard it. Four times see, four times He makes it very clear, that when we complain, He's listening. In fact the whole spirit world's listening to what comes out of mouths in the midst of a difficult time, and we have a choice what comes out of mouth, because what comes out of our mouth's in our heart, so whatever comes out of our mouth reveals the heart issues we're struggling with, as we go through a difficult time. That's a great thing to think of, so what's been coming out of your mouth recently? Can you remember very, very angry words? Bad words? Yeah well, we have those days.

Actually they're a heart response to a difficult situation, that's all. They show what's in your heart - it comes out of your mouth. Want to find out what's in the heart, listen to the mouth, every time. Sweet, blessing, faith, confidence, boldness, courage, defeat, negativity. Whatever it is that's in the heart, will find it's way out. It doesn't come out on the good times, it comes out in the difficult times, because - there's a reason for that in a moment. Okay, so I want you to see their responses to their lack of food. Now first they lack water, and God sorted that out for them. Now they're lacking food. Don't you think God can sort that out as well? God sorted the last one, He can sort this one out. Okay, now I want you just to read again what they said. They complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and said: oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, and when we ate bread to the full! You brought us out to this place to kill us, and this whole assembly, with hunger.

Now I want you to notice four things that emerge out of their mouth. There's four things come out of their heart, and you can read this very easily. Now these are things that are very common to people, common. I've had to wrestle with them, have to continually ensure my heart's getting free of them. It's just so easy. The first thing is bitter judging. You notice what they say to Moses: You, you brought us here, to kill us. Now that is a judgement, and it's a judgement rooted in deep bitterness of heart. You brought us here to kill us. It's the same, Moses later on, when God said stand aside, I want to kill them, and he said: no, and he interceded for them. [Laughter] Don't kill them Lord, see? So this is the first thing that came out. Here's the second thing that came out; they complained, the whole congregation complained. They complained about Moses and Aaron. Now I want you to have a look here. The word complaint means to stop overnight. It means to stay permanently. It means to find fault. It means to protest against something that's been judged to be wrong, to make an accusation. Isn't that interesting?

So they judged and found something wrong, made an accusation, and found fault. That's what they did. We wouldn't do that of course. We would never do such a thing - and notice it was against Moses, so it always finds itself expressing itself against people. You notice this, they have actually - now who got them out of Egypt? God? Come on, give me a break. God required a man to get them out. Okay, now who's leading them through the wilderness? A man, okay then. So what do they do? Now it's like when David had his trouble, they want to kill him. Now you notice what's going on in the heart, that it's a heart issue. Moses says: who are we? We're nothing. We're nobodies, not really. He said the struggle you've got is not a struggle against people, it's a struggle against God. It's a struggle in the heart, with heart issues about God. That's the true situation.

Now notice they positioned themselves against Moses. In order to get what they needed to get, they needed to positioned right, and now they're positioned completely wrong. They're actually against, so what has put them against Moses? What's put them against God? What has caused them to be in a position where they're going to go nowhere, they're going to die? What has caused them? Here it is very simply: bitter judging in the heart. That's what brought them there. They made a judgement. Don't think judgements aren't important. They're a huge part of our life, they affect us. Then the next thing you notice, that they manifest as a result of that, is accusation, a critical word. You did this. You're the one to blame. You brought us out here to kill us. That's very bitter. Okay, and then the next thing you find is: bitter resentment and despair; oh, that we'd died in Egypt. You notice they then bring God into it. They said: the Lord should have killed us there; so what are they thinking about God now?

They're not thinking faith. They're not thinking trust. They're not thinking God is helping me. They're not thinking that at all. What are they thinking? They're thinking: You God, yuck! You've just left us. See, what manifested was the bitterness of their previous experience in slavery. It just flushed up in a hard time. Now God knew it was there, but what happened was, they had a chance to see it and deal with it. So what happened was, they went through a difficult time. In the difficult time, the unresolved bitterness of their slavery in Egypt, the hurts, the resentments, the offences, the bitterness that went back over all their known lifetime of being under oppression, of being victimised, of being powerless, of being treated unjustly, treated wrongly, all that they'd suffered under the taskmasters of Egypt, it's all there in their heart. Yes, they're glad to be saved. Yes, they're glad to be under the Holy Ghost. Yes, they're glad to be having God with them, but you know what? They're still bitter in their heart. They've never resolved this stuff from their past.

So as God is wanting them to come into a position where they can actually be valiant warriors for Him, He wants them to deal with the heart stuff, get rid of the heart stuff, sort it out. Notice they judged God. Isn't it interesting, when something goes wrong, how people say: how come God caused that to happen? How come God let that happen? See, someone in our congregation just died. You know what comes up in the mind of many people? How come God let that happen? Why didn't He heal her? You know what that means? You've just judged God; found a fault with Him. Think how difficult it will be to step out in faith to believe for a healing in the future. See, as soon as you ask the question why, you enter into judgement, because you're looking for motives. Basically all we know is this: she died. That's all we know, and God calls us to respond in a certain way. Why did that happen? I don't know. I've got to just know that God does heal the sick. All I know is this time He didn't, that's all I know.

So I can't come to any conclusions. Once you start to ask the question why, then you'll go down a whole kind of root. You'll go down a root about well why does God allow others, why does got allow that, and you start to judge God, question God's motives, and judge Him. Then you find yourself arrayed against Him and your life in God can't prosper, so it's a real area that we have to deal with. So you notice here that they had a death wish, they just wanted to die. Now isn't that interesting, that when we're in the deepest struggles, often if there's roots of bitterness in the heart, and despair has come into the heart, often the thing that manifests is: I just wish I was dead. If you've had situations in your life where you've been in deep grief, deep pain, and it's been very bitter, and you just wished you were dead, in a time of stress and pressure, it will come up to the surface like stones in a paddock. There it is for you to deal with again, except now you're not without hope. Now you have hope, because our God is the God of all hope, who can fill you with joy and peace, believing that you can resolve that old thing.

So in the journey with God there's stones and rocks and hard places, the resentments and bitterness just surface in our life. How do they surface? They're seen by how we respond when pressure comes on us. You know I'm talking about someone next to you aye? [Laughs] Tell them: listen up, this is for you. Okay then, let's just move on. Now you're getting the picture on that one. Now let me just go through. Here's the thing; your heart determines how you see and interpret life. Your heart determines how you see and interpret life. Think about this, your heart determines it. It's not what happens to you, it's how you interpret it, and how you respond to it. That's what determines what happens to you, and so in Proverbs 17, Verse 20, it says: the one who has a deceitful heart finds no good. Deceitful means distorted or twisted or crooked or perverted, so if our heart is not right, we don't see right. We can be as smart as we like, but we still don't see right, if there's something wrong in our heart. The Bible says for example in 1 John 2, it says: if you've got hatred in your heart, hatred, you can't see where you're going, and you keep tripping up.

You have relational issues you can't figure out, but you have a reason why they're like that, and that reason usually means, you've judged someone else as being the cause of the problem. But the real problem lies in the heart. Deal with the heart stuff. Let it come up, let it come out. Let God help you and heal you. Notice what Jesus says in Matthew, Chapter 7. Look what He was here. He says: judge not, do not judge. Do not judge. Do not judge. Don't judge. Judge not, because - why is that? You will be judged. Now there's something about judging that creates problems for us. The moment you enter into judgement, you start off a cycle of suffering for yourself, and we'll explain that in just a moment. Now with what judgement you judge, you'll be judged, so if you're harsh with people hey, they're going to be harsh with you. The measure you use will be measured back. In Luke, Chapter 6, it says: not only do you get it back, it comes around. What goes around comes around. The problem is, it comes around, and you get more of it than you expected, more of it than you gave out.

Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and don't consider the plank or beam in your own? How can you say to your brother ooh, you've got an issue? Let me remove the issue from your eye - but however, look, there's a huge beam in your own eye. Hypocrite - first, first priority, remove the plank from your own eye, and you'll see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Well that's a great thing aye? So judge means to make a decision. It means to call into question someone's motives, make a decision what they are, pass judgement, and then sentence them. So whenever we look at situations or people, and we make a judgement: this is why that took place, this is why they did that, we now have made a judgement, and in making a judgement, you set yourself up higher. You notice in a Court, if you've ever been to Court - I suppose there'd be one or two people here been to a Court. You go to a Court, you notice the judge sits higher than everyone. When you become a judge, you seat yourself higher than everyone. I wouldn't do that, I'm actually in charge here judging; and you're down there, you're the condemned, and here's the list of accusations against you. I find you guilty!

That's what judging is, it's a heart issue. See judging, now here's one of the things. You notice Israel was very quick to judge. It is true in life, that if you have been through many painful experiences in your past, or have suffered abuse or wounding, the question you tend to ask constantly is: why? Why did they do that to me? And now, that you've asked why, you're going to enter into a process of judging. You'll come to some conclusions. Here's your conclusion: oh, they must hate me; or men will always do that to you; or women will always be like that; or I must be a bad person - judge yourself. Or God must dislike me and hate me. You notice the question 'why' triggered off all of those judgements? When you have experiences in life, we often don't know why they happen. Why is not a good question to ask? We should actually observe the situation, and ask the question: how do I handle this? What do I need to do? How can I make good choices in the middle of this, because once you start asking why, you're going to start to judge.

When you judge, there's a whole lot of things begin to happen. For example I've had things as silly as this. I walk in and I'm preoccupied, I'm just thinking about the meeting, and someone's rung me before I got here, and I've got a few things on my mind, so I walk in, and walk right past someone. Now you know what I did? I was just preoccupied, walked past someone, that's all I did. That's all that happened - but that person looks - he walked past me. That's an observation. What does that mean? Now he's about to enter into judgement: he doesn't like me. Now that's judgement. It's got nothing to do with reality, it's your conclusion about what it means. Why doesn't he like me? I only tried to do this, I only tried to do that, and now I'm angry. Now you notice I'm angry, not because someone walked past me; I'm angry because I judged. My judgement has unleashed all kinds of resentment: I always have this trouble everywhere I go! People treat me like this. Before you know it, that person's wound up, and they can't worship God, and they're in a mess.

Don't think that's an exaggeration, I've seen it happen. People come up: why did you walk past me? I said: I don't know, I didn't even notice. I was actually full of - I'm so sorry, what? But they're actually full of something, so when you start asking why, then you try and find all the reasons.

So the Bible just tells us this: don't speak evil of one another. Whoever speaks evil of his brother is judging his brother. When you hear someone running someone down, they are judging them; and they're about to reap a huge cycle. If you don't watch out, you'll come into agreement with it, then you'll reap the cycle too. [Laughter] Think about it. So here's some insights. As soon as we decide why someone did something, we end up judging them, so here's the thing. When we judge others, we set ourselves in the place of God. Why did they do that? Hmm, he doesn't like me. See, so that's a judgement of someone's motive. It's got nothing to do with reality, it's just how I assessed what happened to me, and that will determine then some things, and away it goes. So when we judge others, we can't see clearly. That's what Jesus said: you can't see clearly. It's like you've got a beam in your own eye. Your own eye is so blocked, you can't see clearly. Can you imagine someone who's got a big hunk of wood in their eye, and they're trying to use a pin to get a speck out of your eye? What's going to happen? They're going to do immense damage, so you notice the thing is, we can't see clearly.

Jesus' concern is that we see clearly. Notice He doesn't say we shouldn't help others. He just said: don't judge them, and He said: you need to get the plank out of your own eye, then you can see clearly. In other words - and the context is one of judgement. In other words here's the deal; when you judge someone, you now cannot see at all clearly them or the situation. If you want to see clearly, you have to get the judgement out of your heart. You have to repent of it, renounce it and let it go. That's the deal, have to let it go. You notice then, not only that, we can't deal with issues in our heart. Why? Because we're looking at the speck in someone else's eye: look at that, look what he did, look what they did, look - and you become obsessed, so obsessed with someone else's faults and failings, you can't see what's in your own heart.

Now of course we do this all the time, and we reap a judgement that comes on us. So judging ends up in fault finding, and criticism, and resentment and bitterness. It ends up in all kinds of horrible, horrible things. In fact actually, you notice unsaved people - a Christian meets unsaved people, you know what they tend to do? Tend to judge them: oh, they're going to hell. How do you know? How do you know their state of heart? Why did you set yourself up to judge where they're at, and where they're going? How did you know that? Oh, well it looked like it, and I concluded that. Oh - now what happens of course we see someone, and we immediately look through what's in our heart. We filter what's there, and we judge it in line with what's in our heart; so you see someone, and maybe they're just dressed a little bit untidily, or they're dressed in some way that you disapprove of, so ooh, that person must be such and such. How do you know?

You're making a judgement on something you know nothing about, and the problem is, Christians judge unsaved people, and judge one another, and judge God, and judge themselves, and wonder why there's no power in their life. How can you have power in your life to influence people if there are judgements in the heart? Jesus said this: I have not come to judge anyone; but we who are much wiser, who represent Him, feel we're free to judge all sorts of people. We can judge pastors and leaders, we can judge other churches, we can judge one another, we can judge the unsaved, we judge the government. We've so set ourselves up, because of bitter roots in the heart, and a judgemental attitude. What it ends up in, you end up religious. You end up religious, having the form of Christianity, but no power in it. How can there be power in it? God's not into judging. He said: I didn't come to judge anyone! The Pharisees judged. Here's a woman caught in adultery; well you can't get it clearer than that, she's caught, we caught her. We caught her! That means they caught the man too - however we'll just overlook that for the moment. It's not convenient, because we actually want to focus on the woman, because that's the source of the sin! You getting the idea?

See, the whole Pharisaical spirit, and judgemental attitude and pride, and: we're better than, oh we'd never do that. Jesus just refused to judge her. Did she sin? Yes, He didn't judge her though. Did she get caught? Yes, but He didn't judge her. He just exposed the judgements in the others hearts, and then when they walked away He said: who's here to judge you? Well no one. He said: I'm not judging you either, but she was caught - but she was caught in adultery! Don't you understand, she was caught in adultery! You must pass sentence on her. She's got to be punished some way. We think that way, but that's not how God thinks. Jesus took all the punishment. He's not into judging people, and we're called to represent Him. Oh and the harshest people in the world, when someone fails, is a Christian. It's because of Pharisee spirit, pride, judgementalism, harshness. You have to repent of that. How can you bring the love of God, how can we manifest what Jesus is truly like? He doesn't judge people.

That's why every sinner, unsaved person felt really happy in His presence. Why? He never judged them. Did He have standards? Yes. Did He speak the truth? Yes. Did He try and fix their lives? No, He didn't. So you notice this person here, who has judgement in the heart, they're obsessed with fixing up someone else's fault. You notice he said: let me help you get the speck out of your eye, because I can see you've got a speck in there. There's a speck there, it needs to be removed, and I'm just the one to remove it; to which the reply is: well get the beam out of your eye first and, then we'll be able to have a go here. In other words: stay away from me. Your attitude makes it impossible for you to help me. Do you understand that? So we're not called to fix people up; we're called to love them, not judge them. They're responsible for their lives. The moment you try to fix someone, you've already judged them. You know what you've judged them? You are lacking. You are a mess. You need sorting out. That's just full of judgement. It's full of judgement, and who better than me to fix it! See, it's full of judgement, full of judgement. No love in that.

This is what surfaced in their hearts, so how do we deal with it? How can we deal with all this stuff? Everyone's gone a bit quiet. You know it's someone else I'm talking to don't you? You're thinking: dear God, why did I come this morning, should have stayed in bed. [Laughter] But it's okay. God wants us to hear this one. I've been hearing it all week, and I discovered some things in my heart that I needed to repent oh. Don't we all? I think for me, I grew up with many struggles over feeling rejected, and so when you live that way, and you're wounded inside, you live full of judgements. Your whole life is a judgement: do they like me? Do they not like me? Am I accepted, and yet your life's a mess. The strongest judgements were about myself, finding fault with myself, and judging myself. I had to repent of that. God, where are you? Judging God, see? Then you're figuring out other people, and judging other people. My life was riddled with it, come out of a religious background, riddled with it. I had to work to get my heart free of it. It's a constant effort, because it's easier to go into judgement and bitterness, than it is to go into grace and love and truth.

I'll just show you quickly what Jesus didm because you want to follow Jesus' example in the middle of this, so we'll have a quick look and just read this out in Mark, Chapter 6. In these few verses here, we've got an interesting story, and its some people who don't have any food, and I want to see how Jesus dealt with that. Here it is. So we find it in Mark, Chapter 6 Verse 31. Get the context - the disciples had just come back and talked to Jesus about all the things they'd done. He said come on out by yourselves into a deserted place, let's rest. There's so many coming and going, they didn't have time to eat, so they departed to a deserted place in a boat by themselves. In other words they wanted to have a holiday, but then the crowd saw them and they came, and Jesus was moved with compassion. He ministered to them, then it got very, very late in the day, and they need something to eat. Well what more could they expect? I've given up my break, I've given up my meal, I've preached to them all day. Send them home! That was the disciples, judged them: send them home.

This is what Jesus said. I want you to see what Jesus said. He just did this, He said: well you do something about it, and they got really upset about that. Then He said: well how many loaves do you have, go and see and they found they had five and two fish, commanded them to get them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. They sat down in ranks in hundreds and fifties - now here it is, Verse 41: And when He had taken the five loaves and two fish, He looked up to heaven. The words 'to look up to heaven' is exactly the same word that's used when it says of Jesus' ministry: He came to open the eyes of the blind. When you look up to heaven, you are making a decision to open your eyes to the possibilities of God, in the midst of lack and pressure and difficulty. Remember He had the demand of 5000 or more people on Him, everyone's there needing food and all hungry, and now what am I going to do? They expect me to find - it could easily have been a response of bitterness and anger and resentment. Instead He looked up to heaven.

The first thing we have to do, is to open our eyes to God's perspective. Why are we here? Why are all these people here wanting me to feed them? No, no, no, no. Look up; God, show me Your perspective on this situation. The biggest problem we have is, we don't have God's perspective. We see through the eyes of judgement, but to get God's perspective, you've got to look up to God, look up: God, show me Your perspective on this person, Your perspective on this person, Your perspective on this situation, Your perspective on this problem, Your perspective on this need. Show me Your perspective. Open my eyes to see it like You see it, and then I can operate in wisdom. You need your eyes open. So when you are facing a pressure and a problem, you just need your eyes open to the bigger picture. See, we only see the little bit, and remember they only saw that bit there where there was no water, and then there was bitter water. They didn't see there were wells coming up. They didn't see God as a God who heals.

Then they run out of food, and all they can see is they're out of food. They don't see God as a God who provides. They just don't see. That was the problem. Why couldn't they see? Because of bitter judgements - and so what happens is, Jesus looked up to heaven. So first thing is, we just - heaven is full of abundance see, so if you look around here you see huge lack. You look at people and see huge need. You look up there, and God, help me to see the abundance, help me have Your perspective on this situation, and how You want me to engage with You, to bring heaven into earth in this situation. That's the first thing.

The second thing, He focussed on God's love and goodness. How do we know He did that? Because He said what I see the Father doing that's what I do, so He made the focus of His looking into the heaven, and to looking to God's perspective, on the goodness, the nature of God. God is always good. If God is always good, He's going to provide. If God is a provider, Jehovah Jireh provider, He'll make a way. I don't know what it is, I don't know how He's going to do it, but that's okay. He'll make a way. He'll make a way. Why? No, He'll make a way. You focus on God's love.

So of course when you face yourself in a situation that's really hard, really difficult, first thing to do is to look up to God, to get His perspective on it, to look to the love and the goodness of God; and then resolve your issues, resolve your stuff. Do you know what comes up when you're going through a hard time? Bitterness and anger and judgement, all kinds of things. Well just resolve them, repent of them, bring them to the Lord. Let them go. Forgive, let it go, release it, let it go. Then what He did was, He took what was available and He spoke blessing over it. He blessed it. He didn't speak critically, He spoke well. He spoke life! He spoke into it: increase, provision, enlargement. He echoed what He saw in heaven, and He saw something come as a result of it, and He acted in faith. God's miracle came, and the whole crowd were fed, an amazing miracle of God.

See now what do we do? Well we're just like the Israelites so often; something goes wrong, we get upset and angry and frustrated and flustered, get all kinds of things in our heart, and we're going to make judgements, then try to control the world around us, control everyone. Hey, abandon that! When something's going on, look up: oh God, this is the situation. Show me it from Your point of view. Show me how You want me to respond. Show me heaven's provision, and Lord, by the way, I got a bit negative there on the way. I was saying some dumb stuff. Lord, I repent of that right now. What is in my heart? Take it out of my heart. Let my heart be healed, renewed of the bitterness, and those things that are in there. Lord, I'm going to speak Your word over my situation. I'll speak Your word over that person. I'll speak blessing over them. I'll speak increase over them. I'll speak the love of God over them. I will bring heaven to earth. I will bring Your heart into this earth. It's a choice.

We're called to follow Jesus, and this is the example He set. Isn't it interesting, it said - now what happened in the wilderness was an example for us to learn from. All of those people who continually got bitter and judged and complained, not one of them who did that entered the provision of God. They never transitioned to the provision that God had. I want to transition fully into the new things God has for me. It'll take courage. You do too, I know you do, but why don't you just in your heart say: God, what has been coming up in my life? What has been flushing up out of my heart? As I face difficulties, what's come to the surface? Lord, I'm turning to You. I'm turning to Your love and Your grace, Your absolute wonderful goodness. Lord, forgive me for getting my eyes on people, and trying to figure them out and judge them all. Lord, just let me get my heart back in line with You, and Lord, into a place of grace, so my words I speak are full of grace, full of life, full of blessing.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Transition = a period of time between two seasons or phases in your life

· Natural Transitions – seasons of weather, seasons of life

· Walking with God involves transitions – processes and times of change

· God is concerned about the process –it brings about His purpose in our life – maturity, repositioning

· When God brings us through transitions:

i. He informs us of an season of change (listen)

ii. He requires we change old mindsets, paradigms and ways of doing things

iii. He calls us to be strong and courageous to journey

Courage - No fear, strength of God to face fears ad change

· Transitions bring pressures, uncertainties, fears, and surface what is in your heart

· Key things we must recognize and overcome during transitions (Giants)

(i) Bitterness, resentment, offense, judging

(ii) Fear that paralyses and seeks control

(iii) Murmuring and complaining – what w do with our voice

(iv) Giving birth to an Ishmael – plan of own making

· Israel was an example 1 Cor 10:6,11 – transition from Welfare to Warfare

· Change the way you think, an inside change. Other people get affected by the way we handle our transitions

· Se things from God’s perspective: He’s got blessing in mind

· You have the power over how you respond in a situation; you don’t have power over the situation.

· Have a mentality of faith, courage and perseverance

Transition over Heart Issues :

Ex 6:1-11 Israel came to the wilderness of sin = Thorny, a thorny place

God is a God who provides. Complaining has been mentioned four times. What comes out of the mouth reveals our heart attitude = the heart responds to a difficult situation. This doesn’t come out in good times but in bad/difficult times.

· They had experienced lack of water – bitter waters. Revelation God is a healer – abundant waters

· Now they experience lack of food – transition pressure and uncertainty

· Responses of Israel vs 2-3 Heart Attitude

(i) Bitter judging – “You have bought us to this wilderness to kill us”. Deep bitterness of heart

(ii) Complaining = “The whole congregation of Israel complained against Moses. A heart attitude expresses against people.

· 3885 = to stop overnight, to lodge, to stay permanently, to complain

· Dictionary = to find fault, to protest against something, judged wrong, to make accusation

· Against = in opposition to, hostile to, resistant to

· They positioned themselves in opposition to and critical of Moses

(iii) Accusation/critical spirit - “You have brought us here into this wilderness to kill us”

(iv) Bitter resentment and despair – “Oh that we had died by the land of the Lord in Egypt”

· They judged God – and expressed the bitter judgments against God and against self

· Death wishes are rooted in bitter judgments against God and against self

· Their words were full of emotional manipulation and attempts to control

3. Your Heart determines how you see people and circumstances:

Prov 17:20 “He that has a deceitful heart finds no good”

· Deceitful = 6141 =distorted, twisted, crooked, perverted

· The way we see and interpret life is strength to the filters and beliefs of the heart

· If we have a heart that is bitter and judgmental we will have a critical eye. Matt 7:1-5 “Remove the plank from your own eye and you will see clearly”

· Judge = 2919 == to make a judicial decision, to call into question the motives, to be of an opinion, to pronounce judgment and sentence

· Judging opens the door to much suffering and pain

· It is not just what we experience, it is how we see and interpret that experience that impacts

· Let the issues come up and God will help you deal with it.

· Luke 6 What goes around comes around

· A judge set himself higher that other people and also higher than God

· Why? = enter into judgment, question God’s motives, then come to conclusions

· Not ‘why?’ but ask ‘How?’ can I handle this.

· Stones and rocks surface when pressure comes up

· Your heart determines how you see and interpret life = how you respond

· People with a low esteem or value are full of judgments – they want to know why

· Judge = You know why someone did something

· Identifying what someone did, is not judging, it is just an observation. Concluding why someone did something is judging them

Jam 4:11 “Do not speak evil one of another, he who speaks evil of a brother and judging his brother...”

Rom 14:10 “Why do you judge your brother?”

Matt 7:1-5 Insights:

· When we decide why someone did something we are judging them

· When we judge others we set ourselves above them as God (pride)

· When we judge other we cannot see clearly – our view of life is changed

· When we judge others we become focused on what is wrong with them

· When we judge others we cannot see or deal with the issue of our own heart

· When we judge others we reap increasing judgment in our own life

· Judging leads to:

Faultfinding Torment Self-righteous Criticism

Justifying self Manipulate Controlling Offence

Religious Pharisaical behavior Bitterness

John 12:47 “I did not come into the world to judge the world but to save the world”

· We cannot fix people or change them, we must love and serve them so the Spirit and life of Christ is manifested through us

· Times of transition/pressure will surface what is in our hearts

Example of Jesus:

Mk 6:41 “When He had taken the five loaves and two fish He looked up to heaven”

· Jesus had every right to feel resentful, pressured by the needs of people and their demands

How did He respond?

(i) He opened His eyes to God’s perspective:

· “Looked up” = to recover sight that was lost Lk 4:18

· Heaven is full of abundance, there is not lack and pressure in heaven

· We are called to bring heavens resources into earths lacks by faith

· Open your eyes to God’s perspective for that person or situation. Look up to God and open your eyes to the bigger picture.

(ii) He focused on God’s Goodness and Love - Jn :19

· Whatever you focus upon grows greater in your life

· If focused on negatives then they captive your heart

· We are changed as we focus on the Glorious Person of God – who He is!

· See heavens provision. Speak blessing. Bring heaven to earth. It’s a choice

(iii) Resolve bitter judgments /offenses by forgiveness and repentance:

Mk 1:15 “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand repent and believe”

· Repent of patterns of judgment and harboring offences, resentment and anger

(iv) Speak blessing over people and circumstances:

Mk 6:41 “He blessed, broke and gave”

· Blessed = 2127 = to praise, celebrate with praise, speak well of, release grace

(v) Expect the Spirit of God to move on the people and situations

Jesus didn’t come to judge anyone

We are called to represent Him not judge others

We are not called to fix people, we are called to love them.

Fighting the Good Fight (4 of 4)

Sun 30 May 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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Every believer, whether you like it or not, is engaged in a spiritual conflict. The earth is a spiritual battle zone, and you're either in the fight winning, or you're in the fight and beaten up. The Bible calls it a fight of faith - its a fight about what you believe.

The only thing that can move the hand of God is that we are in faith, that we are agreeing with God about what God says. We take His side in life, and we begin to learn how to live and move by faith.

Just because you have a need, does not mean God will meet it. He knows the need. He looks for faith, and faith can be developed and cultivated. Faith has an evidence in our life, so when you're operating and living by faith, it is evident.

Why don't we open our Bible in 2 Corinthians 10. I hear you've had a great time since I've been away, great meetings last week, and great youth service, Shane Willard preaching fantastically. Isn't that great to see young ones rising up like that? Man, that's what we want to see. Isn't that right? That was a pretty weak response. [Laughter] I hope that wasn't jealous old people being quiet. [Laughs] Come on, you want to see young people rise, rise up. [Applause] If you're in the 50-plus age bracket, it's crucial you be excited about the next generation rising up, or you'll be missing totally what God would want you to do in this season, which would be part of encouraging them. You see, there's always something for us to do, but if we're focussed on me, we miss what we're called to do.

We have to see what God wants us to do in the different seasons of our life, then embrace that, and so if you're 50-plus there are two things, at least two things, you need to be aware of. One is that within the next decade, there's going to be huge increase of people in that age group, all needing Christ, and so there's a huge harvest field in Hawkes Bay emerging in this next five to 10 years, of people over 50 needing to be won to Christ. Who will reach them? Will it be you? See, will it be you? So you've got to think that one through, will it be you, and if it isn't you, then God has to raise up someone, who will stand in the place you were called to fill. Think about it. Then the second thing is that God's wanting to cause a young generation to emerge, that can begin to pick up the baton of ministry and the baton of leadership, and begin to emerge and become a very strong voice. We have to be a part of helping that happen and see, we have to be part of that. Why? Because in this coming decade, probably about 50-plus per cent of the whole earth will be people who are under the age of 20.

So it's a real need for us, individually and corporately, to see where we're positioned in life, and to fully embrace the part we have to play in it. We'll talk more on that a little bit later as we go through the year, but I want to just carry on, and just do one more message on the wilderness, then I want to get out of that wilderness. [Laughter] My goodness, I want to get out of that wilderness, but anyway, it was a season of growing, so just going to give hopefully my last message on the Wilderness Wisdom; about fighting a good fight, fighting the good fight. So let's just read here, first of all in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 10, Verse 3: For though we walk in the flesh - that means we're in a physical body - we do not war according to the flesh. We don't struggle or fight with people - for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal or human, but they are mighty through God! Mighty through God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing exalting itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought into obedience of Christ.

Every believer, whether you like it or not, is engaged in a spiritual conflict. There are no exceptions. If you want to have the absence of conflict then you need to die and go to heaven. It's the only place I know without conflict - but we're in the earth, and the earth is a warzone. The earth is a spiritual battle zone. You see it everywhere. You read the papers, no matter where you look, you can't escape that we are in a battle zone. The battle zone is between the kingdom of darkness, which controls and rules through the thoughts and the behaviours and the attitudes and sin patterns in people; and the kingdom of God, which God wants to expand, to bring hope and light and life into our community. His agent for doing that is the church of Jesus Christ, so for us to advance the kingdom, it requires we understand there is a fight that we fight. There are no exceptions. You're either in the fight winning, or you're in the fight and beaten up. If you're beaten up, then you need to come up the front, get healed, get delivered, start to get discipline in your life, start to grow in your Christian faith, start to get foundational patterns of living established, and then begin to win, because God has called us to win, not to lose.

There's no such thing as losing in the kingdom of God. God has never lost a battle yet, but we lose them, and we lose them when we lose sight of God, and when other things control our life. So there is a battle, and it's not a battle against something you see. Your fight and struggle is not with people. We think it's with people. It is never with people. People were called to love and reach out, to show the loving kindness of God, but there is a spirit world that manipulates, controls the environment, influences people, and also influences you. So the battlefield is a spiritual battlefield, and the place it's fought out is primarily in your soul. Your soul is the place this battle, or this fight of faith, takes place; and notice what the Bible calls it. It says it's a fight of faith. In other words, the key thing is, what do you believe? What do you believe in your heart to be true about your circumstances, about people, about God, about finance, about the feelings you have, about the thoughts you have? What do you believe? It is a fight about what you believe.

The only thing that can move the hand of God is that we are in faith, that we are agreeing with God about what God says. We take His side in life, and we begin to learn how to live and move by faith. You have to understand, just because you have a need, does not mean God will meet it. He knows the need. He looks for faith, and faith can be developed and cultivated. Faith has an evidence in our life, so when you're operating and living by faith, it is evident. It's evident in how your attitude is; it's evident in how you think, it's evident in what you say. If unbelief is in our life, it's evident by complaints. Complaints are the evidence that my heart is responding to unbelief, and I have a wrong perspective on life. The Bible says: in everything give thanks. Well that can't be true, how could I give thanks in everything? Because I know that God is making everything work together for my good, so giving thanks in the midst of difficulty is an act of faith, an act of warfare. Complaining is an act of belief. Negative speaking, pessimism, critical thinking, judging, all of those are the actions, or the out workings, of a heart that is not in a place of faith with God.

So in this next season I was really thrilled - I picked up what Brydon spoke, and don't know how many of you picked it. He was talking about just in the finance area, but he said: its faith; and we're in a season of faith, of actually stirring faith in our lives, so we need to be fired in faith! Amen. God is for us! Notice it says: the weapon, so we're not powerless. You've got something you can do, just got to do something with it. The weapons of our warfare; there is a conflict, it is your warfare, and here's something good about your warfare. One is, God has never failed in a battle yet, so He'll help you. The second thing is that it's your battle, not mine - so I hope you're winning it. You know one of the things is, you can actually tell when people arrive in church, whether they're winning. You can tell when you shake hands with someone, whether they're winning. It's all over their face, and in their spirit, and in the atmosphere that they carry, a winning attitude; or a defeated attitude.

So when we come to praise the Lord of course, some days the poor old song leader has to get into perspiration, and a sweat, and just about exhaust themselves trying to encourage people to respond to God; but you see the Bible tells us to give a sacrifice of prayer, so if it's not going well then give them a sacrifice, costly only when it's not going well. That's when it's a real sacrifice. If it's going well for you, easy to praise the Lord. It's not a sacrifice then is it? [Laughs] Okay, let's move on. So what we want to do is, we're going to go back, and we're going to look because when God took people out of Egypt, He had in mind them going into a land of promise, so He took them through a few situations where they experienced lack. Now if you're experiencing lack, that's okay. The key thing is, how will you respond? Everyone has lack at times. We all have lack at times, and there's times when you go through, and all your resources are less than the challenges you face. That's life, and it happens seasonally, you have those pressures.

I look around the world, it's like it's happening all over the world. Euro used to be strong and now look at it. They're all talking about pulling in the belt, and starting to cut back, and having to stop their spending. So when you're going through lack, it is the time to reach out to God, and to ensure that you're in a place of faith, and you do what you can do; then declare what's going to happen in your future, and call it into being, got to operate in a faith way. Okay then, so we're going to look into this Old Testament. I want you to see the first battle, because God actually let them go into a battle; and the battle, because it's the first one, it means it's a significant one. It forms a foundation for understanding how all battles will be fought, so we're going to look in Exodus Chapter 17, Verse 8 through to Verse 16, so let's just read it right now. We can't lose the battle. We can't lose the battle unless we give up faith in God. If you give up faith in God, well you can't win, can you?

So now Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Now Rephidim was the place where God had provided an abundance of water. In fact they had so much water, it gushed out and formed a great river, so it was a great place Rephidim. But at that same place, which was a great place of blessing, now became a great place of conflict. So the very place that had been a place of blessing for them now was a place of huge conflict, and they had to face it. Now Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua: choose us some men and go out and fight with Amalek. Fight! Don't roll over, fight. Don't pray, they won't go away. Fight them! Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. And so Joshua did as Moses said to him, and he fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron and Hur went up the top of the hill. Nice for them up on the top of the hill isn't it? And so it was - not down there fighting the battle you know? Top of the hill, I suppose if they're going to hurl arrows, the ones on the hill will be the ones to spot.

So when Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. And Moses' hands became heavy, got tired, and so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on either side, and the other on the other side, and they held them up because they were smart. They noticed something. They noticed when his hands were up, we're winning; when his hands are down, we're losing. What does that mean? People are losing their lives, getting cut, and arms slashed and legs slashed, and limbs being slashed off, so it's a good idea to help this fellow hold his arms up. There's something about holding his arms up that works. And so Moses' hands became heavy, so they supported his hands, one on the other side and one on the other side, and hands were steady until the going down of the sun - so it was all day this battle was fought, it wasn't a short battle.

So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. What's good? A sword, edge of the sword, you know - and the Lord said to Moses: write this for a memorial. So isn't it interesting, so this is the first battle which means it's significant. There's something to learn in it. The second thing is, God wanted them not to forget it, so He said: write it down. I want you to write it down, record it. I don't want you to forget this. Write it for memorial in a book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, and I will utterly block out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. So He said: this battle is not over yet. You've won round one, but this is going to be ongoing, He says: but don't you worry, because I'm going to clean it up, and you're going to have a total victory, and there'll be no trace of Amalek left. How about that? That's a good promise from God isn't it?

So maybe you're just on round one of your fight. Don't worry. God says He's going to clean it up for you, if you'll just stick with the battle aye and learn from it, learn the strategy. Okay then, so they did that; and then He said: Moses built an altar and called its name, The-Lord-Is-My-Banner, and he said: because the Lord has sworn - the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. So we're going to just have a look at the battle because one, it's the first one, and that's always significant in the Bible. Everything that's first is very significant. The second one is because God said He's going to want them to remember it, not forget it, because God doesn't forget stuff. He wanted specifically to remember, so there's some keys in here. I'll get to the keys shortly, but I want you to understand the battle, because if you don't understand the battle and what actually they were up against, it's a little difficult to understand why it's so important to follow the strategy.

So in this passage there is a strategy given for warfare, it's a divine strategy, and so that's why it's important. So when you face battles and face pressures, there is a divine strategy to follow to ensure success and we want to succeed, we want to win in the battles we face. No matter what our battles are worth, we want to succeed in them, so I want to just talk firstly a little bit, spend a little bit of time so we just understand Amalek, and you just have a little understanding of where they came from, what they were all up about. Now in Genesis 36, Verses 10 through to 12, it tells us that Amalek was a descendant of Esau. In fact he was Esau's grandson. Now why is that important? His grandson - because in the Bible generations are connected, and so therefore where someone originates from tells you the DNA, tells you the nature of that person, where they've come from. So he descended, or he was the grandson by a concubine, so it's an immoral relationship of someone who's seeking to gain influence by being connected into the family of Esau.

So there's immorality in the background. There's agendas to try and gain influence, not through a right marriage, but through just being a concubine, trying to get in on Esau's family. Now why is this? What's so significant about Esau? Why all these interesting things about Esau? The thing is that Esau was the firstborn son; so Abraham, and then Isaac, and then Esau. Now of course immediately you think that's not right; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. No, but it should have been Esau, but you see Esau made bad choices. Esau did not value spiritual inheritance. He did not value, he did not understand, or get the importance of, blessing flowing down from one generation to another. He did not understand the significance of the blessing on Abraham being a generational blessing. He did not understand fully the power of that blessing that came, by being connected to Abraham: In Abraham I'll bless the nations of the earth. I will bless you, and you'll become a blessing. I will bless you financially, bless you in your marriage, bless you in your family, bless you in your relationships, bless you in your work. I will bless you - and Abraham was blessed. He was a multi-millionaire, a very rich man.

See Isaac also was a very rich man, so it should have been Abraham, Isaac and Esau. However, Esau despised, or did not see the significance of, spiritual values. He was a very worldly man, man of the earth, and so he valued just meeting his immediate needs. He was more interested in just having a good time, or filling up; and so the Bible calls him in Hebrews 11: a profane man. That word 'profane' means literally to open up or to create a door of opportunity for something to come in. It's the same word used when the Bible says: don't give a place to the devil, so this man Esau, he didn't place value on spiritual blessing, and the flow of spiritual blessing down a family line, didn't place any value on it at all. In fact actually what he did do, was he traded his blessing for a meal. I won't get into the issue of trading, but what he did was, he made an exchange. He exchanged something that was worth millions to him, for one meal. He compromised, in other words, and traded away what God intended, or he could have had.

The Bible says Esau have I hated, Jacob have I loved. Now Jacob wasn't exactly a very honest man, in fact he was very manipulative and he lied, deceived, did all kinds of things. Nevertheless, he had this that was good, and this is what God looked at. See we look at the lying and cheating and deceiving and manipulating, all that kind of thing and think oh man, what a guy, you know? But God looked him and saw: here's a man who has true values, eternal values. So Jacob was a man who loved the blessing God.

So this descendant of Esau, the whole thing about Esau was that one, he despised the blessing, and then he hated Jacob when he got it, so the roots of this Amalek are this. It's about despising, and holding of no place or value, your spiritual inheritance in Christ; trading it away for something that'll just get you by today, and having resentment against those who walk in that blessing - hatred actually. Hatreds manifest by accusations, judgements, back-biting, all that kind of stuff there, so that's the spirit behind it. So what does Amalek actually mean? That's its source and its origin. It means to dwell in the valley, but it means actually this. It comes from a word - I looked up the Hebrew meaning, so I just tried a different source. I found it really quite interesting what it means. It means literally this, it means: to toil, and it's combined with another word meaning: to remove spirit life. So this is what Amalek means: to remove, or empty out, your spiritual life, through seasons when you're under pressure, where it's difficult and you're struggling.

So Amalek then is a demonic power that comes to steal away your spiritual life, to steal away the blessing, to steal away your life with God, and he comes at times when you are going through struggles, difficulties, misunderstandings, pressures; and you're feeling weary and toiling and straining a bit. Does that sound familiar? See, sounds familiar, okay then so that's what it means, to lose your spirit life, the life of God, the vital relationship with God, the dynamic expression of life that God's called you to, through a season of toil and difficulty and pressure. That's what it means - so what is the nature of it? They were nomads. They never settled anywhere, so they were like Cain. Cain was cursed, so he never settled anywhere. Many Christians never settle anywhere. You can't ever be productive if you don't settle; and so they were nomads, they had no commitment, no roots. They had no place they were planted. They built no lasting relationships, they just wandered.

You can't be fruitful, productive, or have great spiritual inheritance unless we're planted, form relationships, become committed somewhere. Wherever it is may not be perfect - it certainly won't be, because we're there [laughs] but however, we need to be planted somewhere. We need to build relationships. The church is not just about a big body of people gathering like this. It's about actually the connecting and forming of relationships. If we don't form relationships then we'll never really come into our full inheritance. We can't because Christianity's never about walking alone. It's about a body, and most of the promises God made are to His body. Because we're western in thinking, we're very individual in thinking, so we just take it all for ourselves and don't worry about you mate; but actually it doesn't work like that, because there are so many scriptures that talk about our need to consider one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, love one another, so Christianity is about a community of people experiencing God together. Relationships are vital. People feel lonely, and then they become nomadic. They become like Amalek, wandering around from this place to that place.

But the real problem is actually your difficulty in forming relationships, open relationships, where we can talk and enter in and engage one another, and share our struggles, and have people pray for us. You know that's the kind of Christian community that God is building. That's the church He's building, where we can be in a small group, we can share our heart, and people will stand with us through our troubles and difficulties. So Amalek comes to steal away all of that, so this spirit would come to try and stop you forming any relationships, and to end up hating people you should be loving. So God calls us to love one another, and to love the community, love the people who are unsaved. Why? Because He does; not to judge or find fault, but to love and engage, and bring the life of Christ to them.

I had an interesting experience last week, quite interesting really. I had a guy who was a Buddhist and he was - I won't describe him in a way that could be known by anyone, but he had been in politics. He was in a very high position in politics, and now he was going through some very, very difficult season of litigation, and all kinds of accusations were against him. So I was asked if I could counsel him, and I sat down and he got talking a little bit about the problems he was having and whatever. Suddenly the Lord just opened up to me to understand, one, exactly what the nature of the problems were; and two, that I didn't need to lead him to Christ for God to bless him, so I just shared with him. I said: the Lord's showing me this is what your problems are, da-da-da-da and he began to weep and weep and weep, and I shared with him. I said now I want to pray and we just prayed and rebuked the things, prayed for the peace of God to come in his life, and the guy, I mean he looked transformed afterwards, totally transformed.

Did I lead him to Christ? No, not at that time, but he's got relationships there. He will eventually come to Christ, no doubt about it. But one thing you could see was, he walked away having had an experience of God that was good, and so here it is, a Buddhist serving some other God, yet God was good to him, so he walks away - God was good to me. Sometimes this is what we do. We mentally judge people, you're not a Christian. God can't bless you. I've got to lead you to Christ before God can bless you. It doesn't work like that. God's good to the just and the unjust, so many times the best miracles happen for unsaved people [laughs], because God is so good. We just need reminding He's so good, isn't that great? God is good. Tell someone God is good. [God is good.]

Okay then, so now the interesting thing about these people is that they were not in a territorial battle, not trying to steal someone's territory. They just hated Israel! No cause, just hated them. They were totally agin them. In fact when you look down the Bible, Haman, who had a plot to get rid of all Jews, he was one of these guys. He was a descendant of the Amaleks; and you look down to Herod, who killed all the children. He also was a descendant of these Amaleks, so everywhere you see this Amalek spirit, it hates God's blessed people, so it tries to come in all kinds of ways to destroy God's people, or to put them under such labour and toil they give up their spirit life, and they're no longer walking in blessing. You've got to keep your spirit life, got to keep in a place of faith. We've got to fight this fight and win it, so we walk in light no matter what we're facing! No matter what struggle you have, God wants you to walk through it, with peace and joy and life - and you can do it! You can do it! You can do it if you choose to. That's wonderful!

So what else do we find? Read in Deuteronomy 25 we find the strategy. So how did Amalek attack? Well it's helpful to know how he did it. It's interesting how He's recorded it all; write it all down, so no one ever forgets. In Deuteronomy 25 Verse 17, Moses says: remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt, how he met you on the way, attacked your stragglers or the people at the rear, and all the stragglers at your rear, when you were tired and weary, and he didn't fear the Lord. It shall be when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies, in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you will blot out remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Don't forget.

So God's quite important - tell them don't forget. Listen, these guys, they've got to go. Anything that comes against your inheritance, your blessing, the vision God's given you, it's got to be dealt with. God has put vision in your heart, and destiny in your heart, something in your heart. Believe me, this is what Amalek comes to steal - your destiny, steal your vision, steal your hope, steal your dreams. Why? Getting out of the realm of the spirit, getting into just caught up naturally, trying to just live a good life and get by. The Lord wants us to have a strong life, a powerful life in the Holy Ghost inside! So what did they do? They came up and they attacked. Now that's interesting, they come up unexpected. They come up from behind. They didn't sort of line up like a normal battle was; you declared war, you stood out the front, this one lined up here and this one lined up here. They stared one another down, and shouted and argued and whatever, like did the haka to one another and that kind of stuff, and then they took one another on. It was always like that.

But this group were different. They just sneaked up behind, when no one suspected; so the nature of Amalek, it's a sneak attack. It's a terrorist attack comes up on you when you're not aware of it. Notice where it came, the rear ranks. The rear ranks were the people furthest away from leadership, that had the most distance relationally. We can be separated in all kinds of ways from one another. We can lag behind, we can have all kinds of struggles. See offence will make you tired and weary, offences. If you harbour offences, you'll get tired and weary, and you'll straggle a bit, spiritually, see? Distrust will cause you to straggle, doubts will cause you to straggle, negative thinking will cause you to straggle a fair bit. You lag behind. You can't make movement when you're, you know? See the stragglers were the ones who were lagging behind, so they were sort of slowed down and burdened and weary, and so in a sense what happened was, they were sort of lagging back, and the enemy whip in and take them all out.

So that would probably be the elderly and the children and women. They just kill them mercilessly, take all the goods. They were just plundering what they had. They were plundering, what they wanted was the blessing, we'll steal it away, take the life, steal the blessing. So people who struggle with loss of strength, loss of vision, if you start to lose your vision you'll straggle. You lose momentum in your life, don't have a dream to hold in your heart. We lose momentum. We haven't got something we're looking towards, and moving towards. As that goes further out, we just straggle back. We begin to slow down in our Christian life. They were tired, they were weak you know, and perhaps they're - the word there 'tired' means to be crushed; or they actually had wounds or difficulties or challenges because of their journey. Now all of us at times have crushing blows come against us. I'm no exception. We have times when blows come against us, which crush you in your spirit, or hit your soul and affect your soul, so it slows you down.

When you're slowed down like that, that's when the enemy comes to pick you off. That's the nature of this thing, and so when we get hit or knocked or whatever, and we begin to slow down, and our spiritual life's slowed down; we begin to lose our vision, get a bit fuzzy and whatever or get offended or get hurt; or don't know what God's doing or feel a bit lost and everything. When that happens that's when this enemy comes to steal out and take your life, take your spirit life and get you to stop praying, stop being in your word, stop fellowshipping, stop connecting, stop giving, just stop doing the things that will engender spirit life. So one of the things I think in the coming season, I feel God's just been stirring me that we get the basic disciplines going back, the foundational things we need to be doing, to see that we're established in them. So if you haven't got a regular prayer life, you'll be lagging behind; if you haven't got time in the word, you'll lag behind. See, if we're not fellowshipping, connecting, we'll lag behind. There are many things that are basic disciplines. If we don't do them, then we begin to lag behind and get weary, just worn out and tired.

So what was the impact? Now the impact was horrendous, and if you want to see a little bit more about Amalek and how it operates, go look in the Story of Saul. I won't go into there, I'd rather just finish and give you the strategy for winning! A strategy for winning - let's go and have a look back in Exodus 17. Now Moses said to Joshua - notice this, a clear direction given: choose some men and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God. So Joshua did as Moses said; so here's the first thing, right positioning. Everyone had to be positioned right. Moses needed to be on the mountain, on the hill, holding up the rod of God. He needed those around him, who would support him. He needed someone in the battlefield, who would lead the army. See, he needed people to be aligned in the army, so they could fight and engage the enemy. In other words, everyone had to be in their right place. One of the key things to getting victory in spiritual conflict is to be positioned right.

You have to be positioned right. The Bible tells us God sets members in the body, as it pleases Him. In other words, He puts us into a body of people, and He has a place for us to fit. He has a part of the church to fit into. Sometimes we don't find it so easily, but there's a place for you, there's a place for you in the body. Then there's a positioning spiritually in your relationship with God. You know we were singing: we walk in the freedom Christ has won, so I need to be positioned in my walk with God so I am standing boldly, confidently, no guilt, no shame, standing in the presence of God, able to draw on His resources and speak on His behalf as an ambassador, as a king into the earth. King Saul had a destiny, a dream, a vision, an anointing, a call of God, to be a king in the earth; just like you and I have an area we're called to be king, to bring the life of God into, but this is what happened to him. He was called to go up against Amalek but he compromised, lost the battle against Amalek, and lost his positioning. Very, very important your positioning. I'll go onto that in another session, but we need to know where and how God has placed us.

If you're the husband, God has called you to be spiritual head, to stand up in a place of prayer and responsibility in the home. If you've got a leadership role, God calls us to stand up and be positioned near Him, hearing Him, following His directions. So positioning is everything. Positioning is one, about our spiritual positioning, our relationship with God; two, it's about our connection with other people, and where we fit. If you try and get somewhere you're not supposed to be, you'll find yourself out of God's protection, you can't win the battle. It's very important to be positioned right. Positioning - interesting, think about this. God made a place or position for Adam, before He made Adam. Think about that. He made a place for him, and He had an assignment for him; so before Adam was created, God already had a place for him prepared, and a job for him prepared. Think about that - so the man had to come into the place God had for him, in order to fulfil the assignment God had for him. That's why it's so important for you to know what God has called you to do, and to be, and where He's positioned you to be, who He's positioned you to fulfil that with - very, very important. Very important.

So our assignment is what God called us to do. Our positioning is who He's called us to connect with, and where, in order it might be fulfilled. Let me tell you this, the devil will do everything he can to get you out of positioning. If you're out of positioning, you can't fulfil your assignment. Think about this: when Adam sinned, he was then taken out of his position. He lost his position spiritually and physically. He was removed. Now I have seen many people, over years, see their whole family spiritually destroyed, because the position God had for them, and the place God had for them, they actually got offended or something went wrong, they couldn't handle it or didn't handle it or whatever; and they withdrew with offence. They were so wounded it actually cost their whole family their spiritual inheritance. I've seen it countless times. Positioning is everything.

You know I've had many offers to go to different places. I have them currently there. There's like offers to go do this, do that, whatever. Here's the thing I've realised a long time ago. The only great place to be is where God called you to be. That's the place of His will, it's the place of His prosperity, it's the place of His blessing, it's the place of your destiny. You can't guarantee, if you go outside that, you'll be able to ever do what you think you could do. I remember knowing a pastor - I'll have to be careful not to identify him - but who had a very good church going in New Zealand. He went to Australia thinking all things would be big in Australia, and now I look, he has not got - he had a church that was very big for its hour and time, and now he's got almost nothing. He's the same guy, trying the same things, but it's just not working for him. He's not in the right place, not in the right positioning - so positioning. Alignment is the second thing. You notice they were all united. They had one thing in mind. They were united around a common purpose, a common vision, a common goal, and you know Jesus has made that clear for us; our common vision, purpose and goal, you can put it in all kinds of words. At the end of the day, it always comes down, it's to go into the community and change it. Everything else, Jesus wrote it down so we wouldn't get it wrong. I like the fact He wrote it down: GO! Make disciples! Say well I'm not that, I'm not called to do that. We could argue with the Bible, or scratch that bit out of your Bible, or do something with it, but don't just leave it there, because Jesus gave every one of us a mandate to enter the community, to influence it. There's no way around it, and we can have great meetings and have great conferences, do all this kind of thing, but at the end if it doesn't overflow to the community, we miss the number one thing. Good thought isn't it aye, get aligned? [Laughs] Nice to be aligned isn't it aye? [Laughs]

So that means every person who comes who's a visitor, well you reach out to them. Why? Because you're aligned with our goal of gathering up people to Christ. Wherever you go, you're reaching people to show the friendship of God to them. Why? Because that's what we're here for, it's what we're here to do. People in your sphere or metron, you're reaching out and doing something actively to reach them. You say: well I do car park, or I do prayer, or I do administration - nonsense. That's nonsense. That's just a specific function. We're all called to the big purpose, which is people. It's always about people. It's always about people. It's always about people, and the moment you forget it's about people, you've missed the point, you've missed the purpose. You're not aligned. Okay then, so God will be working on us to get us positioned right, and aligned right, focussed right in this coming season. It's going to be exciting and it'll be good.

Here's the next one. Here's a good one now - and so you notice that Moses held up the rod of God! That is a picture of persevering prayer! He didn't just hold it up, and He had the victory. It was nice, because he held it up one day there, and the waters opened up. Then he went whoosh, and the waters closed. It was nice to just do whoosh like that. It would have been nice to stand there and go whoosh! and get rid of all the enemy. It didn't work that way - he had to remain in a place of passionate persevering prayer, upholding the authority of God, his hands lifted to heaven, lifted to throne of God, from where his power and his source comes. Listen, if we don't connect with heaven, if we don't connect with God, if we haven't got strong prayer coming out of an engagement with God, you can't win the battle! If you lose in prayer, you lose it altogether! You haven't got what it takes.

Here's the thing. For the church to change a community, you have to have what it takes on the inside, so that the community doesn't change you. For most Christians, the community changes them. We think, talk, act and behave just like the community does. Why? Because we haven't got enough inside us, and the inside us part is the discipleship, that the growing and the basic disciplines, basic walking with God, the routine stuff that keeps you strong and alive and in God, so you can be like a Daniel. Daniel went into the world of Babylon. Daniel was over all the magicians. This is a hard one to handle. Think about this: that Daniel was over all the occult practitioners. That was his position in the world. Of course we love to think of Daniel being a nice person, and a man of God; but how do you be a man of God, and be over all the occult practitioners? That's your cell group. [Laughter] I've got all the occult practitioners, and they're all still into it, and I'm supposed to be in charge of them. Come on, think about that - and you think your job's too hard. Go back and have another read of it.

But he had such a presence and life of God in him, spirit life, the life and presence of God. He rose to the top. Why was he over all the occult practitioners? Because what he had from God was better than them. He had more wisdom, more prophetic insight, more words of knowledge, more revelation. He had more than any of them. Shame the church doesn't have that these days. It has to come back to what we need to come back to. See, so we can actually have influence that way. A smart boy that one, and so he would have had to all dress up and wear eye make up and all kinds of stuff to live in Babylon in those days. You want to read the history of what it was like there - would have had face painted and all kinds of things, and eyes and rings and stuff like that. He'd look quite bad. He's over the practitioners. I think if we saw Daniel today, if you had a chance to step into time and saw him, you'd write him off. [Laughter] Doesn't fit what we think of as a man of God, doesn't look right aye? Your cell group's all the occult practitioners, I can't - come on now - and you're leading them? Eternal burn? Now no, no, no, that wasn't it. He actually showed he had better than them. I think he probably won them all to the Lord.

How about this? When the king was going to kill them all, he said: give me a chance, I want to save them all. Think about it. Think about it. Anyway that's just an aside - so persistent prayer, fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man releases great power! James 5:16, Luke 18:1, pray without ceasing. Don't give up, don't quit. Men ought always to pray, and not get weak. You hear that one? Actually I don't like the way Jesus said it: Men ought always to pray and not quit. He did, He said that, and Paul wrote it too: I will that men, men everywhere, pray with hands lifted up, free of wrath and anger. If you have a prayer meeting, there'd be a lot of women there. It's wonderful, filling in for the men who aren't there - just the thing. You want to win the battle, you've got to pray. Listen man, if you don't pray, how can you win? How can you be spiritual leader in your home? How can you stand and deal with demonic powers that infest your home life, if you don't get in the spirit and pray? We must be able to do that. If you don't know how, get along and get someone to teach you how. This coming few months we'll get people up and praying strong!

The last one, so you notice it's a two part thing - so up here is where it counted. If you haven't got it with God, you'll lose it on the ground. If you don't maintain strong, effective prayer, engagement with God, flow of the life of the spirit, you can't win in life. That is the message. Whenever his hands got tired and came down, whenever there was a weakening, a lessening of prayer pressure, that's when the battle went backwards, and so I like it on the ground there. Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword, so finally it's the word of God, sword of the spirit's the word of God. The Bible's clear about that. So he defeated him with the sword. What does that mean? That means it requires faith. You can't get anything to shift supernaturally without faith. That means: I believe what God says about me in my circumstances. I will speak and proclaim and declare what God says about me in my circumstances. Then I'll act, and do what God says to do. He says: overcome evil with good - okay, I'll overcome evil with good. Just think about that.

If someone's done you evil, what's your first response? Overcome it with good! [Laughter] Shake your fist at them and grrr! Get angry, or some kind of thing like that - no! Overcome evil with good! Pray without ceasing! In everything give thanks! This is the life of faith. It's a great life that causes people to win in life. Hold the word of God. See today, how many of you are praying? How many of us are praying, and holding God's word over our personal life, over our family, over our marriage, over our finances, declaring: it shall be to me, according to God's word? I am blessed. There may be recession, but I am blessed. I'm a seed of Abraham, the blessings of God on my life, I am blessed when I come in and when I go out! I'm blessed in my marriage, blessed in my family, blessed in my work! Everything I put my hand to is blessed! I am a blessing to everyone today!

You've got to get it in your heart and get it in your mouth. That's what faith looks like. That's what faith talks like. That's what faith sounds like. You can always tell if someone's in faith. It looks like they're in faith, it sounds like they're in faith, and they do something that shows they're in faith, see? You can't believe and do nothing, you know. The demons do that, so join the crowd of demons, believe and do nothing. They believe and do nothing, can't be saved. You can't - see faith steps out. Faith acts on what God says, so on the one hand there was strong prayer, on the other hand there was a holding to the word, the promises, the destiny of God. You notice what it says in Joseph. Joseph had a dream. Joseph had a great destiny, but in all of it, he had to hold the word of God! When he's being sold as a slave, when he's standing naked on the slave block there, and they're casting bids for him, nevertheless it shall be done to me, according to what God said to me! When he's framed and put into jail for rape, a false charge of rape, nevertheless it shall be done to me, according to the word of God! When he's in the bottom of the prison, nevertheless, it shall be according to your word Oh God.

The Bible says the word of God tried him, and then his time came, and then he's out and you know what? It was just like God said, but he held that word over his life until his circumstance changed and aligned with what God said - faith!

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

2 Cor 10:3-4 “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God …”

· Every believer is engaged is a spiritual conflict against spiritual powers

· The battleground for the warfare is the soul – through life, emotions and choices

· The issue at stake is knowing God and fulfilling the call and destiny of God

· God is for us – our weapons are mighty through God – powerful, capable, and supernatural!

· Today we look at Israel’s first battle – recorded for us to learn from 2 Cor 10:11

Israel’s First Battle:

(a) Key passage: Ex 17:8-16

(b) Who is Amalek?

i) Origin of Amalek

Gen 36:10-12 Amalek was a descendent of Esau

Esau did not value his spiritual inheritance – no value upon the blessings of God

Esau focused on meeting his present needs rather that spiritual inheritance

Esau traded the inheritance, right of firstborn for a meal Heb 12:16

Esau is being described of being profane = accessible, able to get foothold in him Ep 4:27

Esau hated his brother Jacob because of the blessing Gen 12:41-42

ii) Name and Meaning of Amalek

Amelek = 6002 = to dwell in a valley

= Root = to toil = to remove spirit life

= > loss of Spirit life through labor, toil, weariness

iii) Nature of Amalek

Amalek were nomads – wanderers – not planted anywhere, like Cain

No commitments, no roots, never connected, joined, became accountable

Carried a bitter hate against the people of God who walked in blessing

There was no land or territorial dispute – just hatred and desire to destroy

Note: Haman was a descendent of Esau Esther 3:6,10

Herod was a descendent of Esau

Both carried the same spirit of hatred for the seed of God, promise!

iv) Strategy of Amalek

Deut 25:17-19 “.. he met you on the way and attached your rear ranks, all the stragglers at your rear when you were tired and weary”

Amalek came up from behind, unexpected, no warning, people not looking

Attacked:

i) Rear ranks – ones furthest from leadership, loss of strength

- people who lagged behind, loss of vision

- offense, doubts, negative thinking

ii) Tired – ones who were weak, lacked strength, vulnerable, shattered emotionally

iii) Weary – Worn down by journey, difficulties, demands, pressure

Impact of Attack of Amalek is seen in Saul’s behaviour

1 Sam 15:1-3 Mission from God – destroy the stronghold of Amelak

Instead of destroying the Stronghold – he spared the King

v) Traits 1 Sam 15

· Compromise – seduced away from what God called him to do

· Disobedient – refused to deal with issues, and didn’t obey directions of the Holy Spirit

· Unrepentant – full of bitterness, resentment, blame shifting, refusing responsibility

· Fear of man – desire to please people rather than God

· Control – desire to look good, appear good before man

· Loss of vision and destiny – he forfeited his kingship, right to rule

· What has God called you to do?

3. Strategy for Winning:

Ex 17:9-13

(i) Right Positioning:

· Every person was positioned according to gifting and calling

· Positioning is important to winning in life

· We are positioned in Christ to enforce His victory

· We also must know how/where God has positioned us in Christ 1 Cor 12:18

(ii) Alignment:

· There is complete unity of purpose = one purpose, one vision

· Every person was aligned to accomplish the one purpose

· There is power in agreement and unity Ps 133, Matt 18:19

· Aligned with God – with His Word – with Vision – with People

(iii) Persistent Prayer:

· When Moses held up the ‘Rod’ – the authority of God of Israel prevailed

· There were demonic powers operating in the unseen spirit realm

· When the authority of God and His Word is upheld we can always win

· Jam 5:16 Effective, fervent prayer = Prevails!

· Luk 18:1 Men aught always to pray and not faint

(iv) Word of God:

· Sword = Word of God Eph 6:17

· We must hold onto and use the Word of God

· The Word was framed – created and formed by God speaking

i) Believe the Word of God Mk 9:23

ii) Speak the Word of God Rom 4:17

iii) Act upon the Word of God Jam 2:22

· What issue is God calling you to face?

Purpose & Destiny (2011)

Desire, Dreams & Destiny (1 of 7)

God has put eternity in the heart of man, so no matter where you're born in the world, no matter what culture,or education you've received, something in the heart and spirit of a man knows that we have come from somewhere, we're going to somewhere, there is a purpose for our life. There's a desire to make our life significant, or to count, and a desire that somehow we wouldn't end in the grave,

Destiny Hurdles (2 of 7)

You have to run the race that God has set before you. This is your life and you only have one of it. This is your destiny. This is your life that you're running right now and as you place value on your life and value on the time that you have, you'll start to consider more carefully I wonder why I'm here and what I'm really called to do with my life? No one wants to die with an empty life or a life that's been unfulfilled in some kind of way, so it's like a marathon race.

Desires & the Will of God (3 of 7)

You don't need God to tell you everything. He wants you to use wisdom, common sense. God doesn't want you to be a slave, so you've got to connect with your heart, and you do your homework. You've got to identify your desires, and make plans, seek counsel.

The Cross and the Kingdom (4 of 7)

The common misunderstandings people have is that somehow there's some force that forces everything to work according to a certain pattern and you have no control over it. Sometimes people have this idea God is sovereign, God's in charge of everything, so whatever happens God's to blame for it and we can't really do much about that. Now these are very wrong concepts. In fact although God has planned a life and things for us to accomplish, He gives within it a great deal of creativity for us to partner with Him, rather than just be robots and slaves.

Dream Killers & What to do About Them (5 of 7)

Complaining is the sign of a loser. You are losing because you can't see what the purpose of the difficulty is, and how it's not meant to destroy you, it's meant to help you grow. When you start complaining, you're dying and perishing and losing. You see if you complain, you're saying this; God, I don't trust you to use this for my good. God, I don't believe you'll help me. I'm just ticked off. God does not choose that outcome, you do. if you don't develop character, you'll never fulfil that thing God put in your heart.

Dream Thieves - Delays & Disappointments (6 of 7)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. In other words when you have a dream, an expectation, something you're looking forward to and it's continually delayed, put off, doesn't happen, your heart grows sick. That means to be weak or be in grief. When our heart is in grief it affects all of our life. It affects your motivation, so whenever we have a dream and then it's delayed, we begin to wonder about what our life could be like.

The Holy Spirit & the Will of God (7 of 7)

what is the will of God? How many people have wondered that? God, what is Your will? Oh God, what is Your will? There's so many decisions we face - God, what do you want? You don't know what He wants, because somehow it's very quiet. Paul in Colossians 1:19 says he was praying that we'd be filled with knowledge of the will of God, so clearly it's God's plan you know his will and two, that you actually be filled with understanding and have a sense of knowing what to do at any point in time. Yet that's not what most of us experience, so I want you follow - so how can I find the will of God?

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Desire, Dreams & Destiny (1 of 7).mp3

- Destiny Hurdles (2 of 7).mp3

- Desires & the Will of God (3 of 7).mp3

- The Cross and the Kingdom (4 of 7).mp3

- Dream Killers & What to do About Them (5 of 7).mp3

- Dream Thieves - Delays & Disappointments (6 of 7).mp3

- The Holy Spirit & the Will of God (7 of 7).mp3

Notes

- Desire, Dreams & Destiny (1 of 7)

- Destiny Hurdles (2 of 7)

- Desires & the Will of God (3 of 7)

- The Cross and the Kingdom (4 of 7)

- Dream Killers & What to do About Them (5 of 7)

- Dream Thieves - Delays & Disappointments (6 of 7)

- The Holy Spirit & the Will of God (7 of 7)

Desire, Dreams & Destiny (1 of 7)

Sun 22 May 2011  « Back to Top

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God has put eternity in the heart of man, so no matter where you're born in the world, no matter what culture,or education you've received, something in the heart and spirit of a man knows that we have come from somewhere, we're going to somewhere, there is a purpose for our life. There's a desire to make our life significant, or to count, and a desire that somehow we wouldn't end in the grave,

In Ecclesiastes 3, Verse 11, it says He has made everything beautiful in it's time - and here it is - He has put eternity in their hearts. So God has put eternity in the heart of man, so no matter where you're born in the world, no matter what culture, what country, whatever and no matter what education you've received, something in the heart and spirit of a man knows that we have come from somewhere, we're going to somewhere, there is a purpose for our life. There is somehow an invisible God that one day we will meet, and in the heart of every person there's a desire to make our life significant, or to count. No one wants to get to the end of their life and die full of regrets about what they could have done, or should have done, but there's a huge journey in getting from that place to to fulfilling the destiny that God has for us.

I want to talk a bit about that today, so this desire that your life would count, this desire that somehow we wouldn't end in the grave is written into you by God. It's a God-written thing. It's written into your whole DNA, that life does not end at the grave, that somehow there is an eternity, and within every one of us there is a longing that somehow my life would count, that I wouldn't just accomplish nothing with my life. So you have a destiny and people have - when I use the word destiny there's all kinds of concepts people have, so I want to look at concepts that people think. When you think the word destiny you think destination, some place I'm going, so I looked it up and essentially the majority of people have an idea of destiny's something like this, that destiny - they look at it in two ways. They look at it, destiny is a future that was predetermined for you. In other words someone, somewhere, had this plan, they called it destiny, and it's sort of a plan for your life. It's all worked out, and you don't have much to sort of - it's just going to happen, no matter what.

Sometimes people use the word destiny, they think it's some kind of force, an impersonal force, and it's controlling your life, and somehow this is your destiny. You know in the movie Star Wars, Darth Vader talks to the guy Luke, and he says this is your destiny, you know, as though somehow he's got no choice about it. So in the presentations, often you hear from the world perspective, destiny has something to do with an impersonal force that runs your life, so they use words like fate, or they use words like karma. There's all kinds of words to describe it, but the thinking behind it is that somehow, something, somewhere, has got something worked out for you, and basically you'll be kind of, almost like a puppet walking your way down, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen out anyway. The consequence of that thinking, first of all it's completely wrong. There is a personal God, but the second consequence of it is of course, is that people tend to become a bit passive, and they get oh well, que sera sera, whatever will be will be, you just kind of journey and do your best, and then it's all over.

Now that kind of passivity, that kind of thinking, is totally ungodly. It's without God in it anywhere. It comes very much out of a Greek thinking. Now the problem is when people become a Christian, they bring into their Christian walk a mixture of belief systems from the world, and then bring it in upon their Christian walk, without really understanding what God says. When we do that, we have something like this, and unfortunately many of the thinking that Christians hold is rooted in Greek thinking. The Greek thinking was that there is this impersonal force called destiny, and no matter what you do, you're going to end up working this thing out, or walking this out. There was a movie that came around a little while ago, in fact I think there were two or three of them, about these guys and somehow they cheated an accident, but destiny eventually caught up with them all. It's a way of thinking that there's this impersonal force runs your life, and makes decisions, and you can't do much about it.

So when people become a believer, we then begin to get immersed in some like spiritual language, and we don't ever stop to think through whether what we believe really is what the Bible says, or whether it's just thinking patterns that we've always got used to. Sometimes the teaching that people receive is not balanced, and it actually reinforces this view, so when a person becomes a Christian, we would understand all Christians would believe that God has a plan for your life, so we'll call that plan destiny. God has worked out - I'm going to show you this in a little more detail shortly, but God has worked out a destiny for your life. For some Christians it's limited. They would think well I'm going to heaven, that's my destiny. No, no, no, no, no. No, that's where you finish this apprenticeship, and you go on into your destiny, see? So right now, you're on the apprenticeship for your destiny, and what you do is very, very important, so people come up with this idea that God is sovereign. How many know God is sovereign? God rules over all! God is in control! How about that? You know all of that? All agree with all of that. Now just follow the thinking down a little bit, because you'll see where this ends up.

I believe the Bible teaches very clearly, that the kingdom of God rules over all of men, that God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. No matter what rises and falls, God rules over it all, but you've got to think through what that means, and how you apply it to your life. So when people say God is in control, or they use the words God is sovereign, they think something like this: He's the one who causes everything to happen, so whatever happens, God caused it to happen. Now this is really bad thinking, and it's totally incorrect - or they think: He's the sole originator of all thoughts, and decisions, and actions. So if something goes wrong, you notice even the world will say, they call it an act of God, in other words, God is to blame when things go wrong. We don't give Him credit when it goes right, but we will blame Him when things go wrong, so again, many Christians bring into their Christian walk this concept that God is in control of everything, and therefore I can just trust Him. I don't have to worry about what I do.

Actually that's only a part of the truth. A part of the truth can be just as wrong as if you got the whole thing wrong, because what it leaves out is the part you and I must play, by relating to God, and exercising faith. So if we're going to walk into our destiny, we have to understand what God has done, and then we have to understand our part in it. If you don't know what God has done for you, you'll live your life without any sense of how precious it is, how important you are, and how precious every minute of every day is. If you don't understand what part you have to play you'll pray, I leave it up to God, put it in God's hands. It sounds wonderful, but it absolves you of responsibility to co-labour and walk with God as a friend.

In our early years of Christianity, we came in and had quite some teaching, and it was all correct, but it was unbalanced, and so it left you at the end of the day, you just lay down everything, and you just served this plan that God's got worked out for you, rather than understanding what we have got is a loving Father with a destiny planned out for His children, which we have a vital part in fulfilling, and not every detail of it is worked out for us. We have to actually participate in the working out of it. When you start to clear these thoughts, you'll begin to start to be able to understand, that there's a connection between what God has planned for us, and what He has hardwired into us, and I want to over the couple of weeks show you the connection between the will of God, and what is already hardwired into you, otherwise you'll find you'll reject what God wants to do in your life, because you're driven by what you want to do, or you'll forget what's the desires of your heart, in order to lay everything down to do something someone is telling you to do. All of this does not lead to happy people at all, so we want to help in that.

So in Jeremiah 29:11, God says something like this. He says now I know the thoughts I have for you, plans for good, not evil, to give you a future hope, something to look forward to. So this is when people are in bondage, and God says even though I know you've sinned, even though you've done all these wrong things, I know that the reason you're in this mess is because of what you're done; nevertheless, my thinking to you is all good. I don't think evil towards you at any time. I think good. The thoughts I have for you are good, not evil. The plans I have for you are good, not evil. Why? So that if you understand God is continually planning good for your life, not evil, you'll stop blaming any evil that comes as being caused by God. It's a tendency for us to blame God when stuff goes wrong, so if you're a Christian who strongly stands on the sovereignty of God, you'll do something like this: well I can't understand why that's happened, well it must be the will of God, and it must be something to do with my character, and I must need to grow through it, or some kind of thing.

Now all of those things are partly true, but what we need to understand is, God expects us to vitally participate in the outworking of His plan in the earth, and so that kind of religious concept, it breeds passivity, and a kind of well, I'll pray and God will work it out, and somehow God is in control. Yeah, God is in control, but God has delegated responsibility, and if we don't realise that we are called to be kings in the earth, we're called to be stewards of the gifts of God, and He requires initiative and participation, then we'll just miss - we'll be passive and shut down, and not discover the joy of all the possibilities that could come about as a result of your life. You're not here to sit and fill in time you know, you're here to make a great difference in life. So God does have a plan, and a purpose, and a destiny. I want to show it to you very clearly, so you would absolutely be clear in your mind, that God has a destiny, and here's the thing that's interesting to find out, that the destiny or the plan or the purpose God had for you, He formed that before He formed you.

Let's go and have a look at a few scriptures on it quickly. Have a look in Judges, Chapter 13. So you may have all kinds of ideas and issues about how you came into this world, about your family and about your background. God says that's your perspective on it, which is a limited perspective. From God's point of view, He had the plan, He knew how you were going to arrive. He said I knew all about it. It's not a problem to me where you come from, because I had a plan figured before you even came, and it was no surprise when you came, or how you came, what family you're born into, what country you're born into, what situation happened. None of that was any surprise to God. In fact actually He says it's within this kind of framework of things being negative, I can raise you up and demonstrate My glory. See, so have a look. We won't go into these in detail, I just want you to read each one so you see it. In Judges, Chapter 13, Verse 3; The Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said her, you are barren. You're barren. You've got no children. You will conceive and bear a son. Notice this is future, she hasn't conceived yet.

Verse 5 - and behold you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor will come on his head, the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb. He shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines. Now notice this - before His parents have even had anything happen, not even a conception yet, God already knows who the guy is. God's set him apart and God has a plan, an assignment, something for him to accomplish in the day he lives. So the assignment came before the person, so before they were even conceived, before mum and dad have even got busy, this person has already got a plan written in heaven for them to accomplish in the earth. Okay, now have a look at another one. Here's one in 1 Kings, Chapter 13. So you think well that was just a coincidence, perhaps just one guy like that. That wouldn't apply to me. Well let's try another one, 1 Kings, Chapter 13, and we'll read down in Verse 1; And behold a man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Then he cried out against the altar, and he said by the word of Lord, Altar, altar! says the Lord. Now notice this - Behold, a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David, and on you shall he sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men's bones will be burnt on you. He gave a sign that this would be so.

Now, you've got to realise there were 630 years between him saying that, and Josiah appearing. There's no one alive who remembered the prophecy. The parents wouldn't have remembered, so 630 years before Josiah turns up in history as a reformer, God already has got the destiny - I've got a man coming, he's a reformer, and his name will be Josiah, so God knew his name, God knew his destiny and God had it all worked out at least 630 years ahead of him coming into being. So do you think your arrival was a surprise? [Laughter] Only to your mum and dad. [Laughter]

Have a look in Jeremiah, Chapter 1 - so for all of you who had surprises, we had heaps of surprises, wonderful surprises - seven of them, one named after every birth control method that didn't work [Laughter] but all beautiful, and all welcome. So Jeremiah 1, Verse 4; Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying to Jeremiah - now notice what He said - Behold, before I formed you in the womb, I already knew you, and before you were born, I already set you apart, and ordained you to be a prophet to the nations. Now notice this - before he's created, before God formed him, so God actually claims He is responsible for the shaping and forming of the person in the womb. The parents have a part to do in that of course too, but there's also a part that God plays. God hardwires into them desires, passions, certain kinds of gifting, certain kinds of areas into their life. Why? Because He's already got a plan worked out, so before the child's born, God's already genetically put into him some of the things, that will put into him the desires, to fulfil a certain course in his life. If you think about it from God's point of view - we'll get to this in a moment - if I've got a plan sorted out for you, how on earth am I going to get you into my plan, especially since you've got a free will to choose what you want to do? So God outwits us completely.

He anticipated sin would come in and we might have a mind of our own, but He planned for that still, and so what He did was build into our genetic DNA, aspects of desire, passion, gifting, and orientation of our personality and life, that would incline us towards what He had for us. That's why you can't ignore those things. You can't put them down, because they're part of how God wired you, to make you a specific gift, with a specific destiny to fulfil see, but there's another part to it of course; if I don't connect with God, I'll find my own way of expressing that, and it'll be a lot less than what God has. So God says, my ways are higher than your ways, my thoughts are higher than your thoughts, so we're going to see how the two need to come together, what's in my heart that God has hardwired, and my connection or prophetic revelation from God, need to come together and then to be worked out.

If you don't understand that, and just go God's sovereign, God's in control, you won't know what to do with your desires and dreams, so you'll suppress them, and be unhappy, and live like a slave, waiting to be told by God what to do with your life. Think about that. Okay then, so God created us, so He imagined you, and He imagined your life, and He worked out what you could accomplish with your life, far more than you realise, and far more than the people sitting next to you can see. People around us see us only as we are, and where we've been. God sees what you could be, so when people looked at Peter, he's just a rough coarse fisherman that swore and all that kind of stuff. God said, I see a rock on which I can build a church! I see a man, who can preach to multitudes. See, when people saw David, he was so unimportant they didn't even invite him into the meal with the prophet, so they just saw a little shepherd boy. God said, I see a king, and it'll be such a great king, he'll transform a nation. Others just saw a little boy. You see, God's destiny was already worked out for this young man.

Moses - Moses was an angry man and a murderer, but nevertheless he had something in him. There was something in him, something burned in him. You see, God saw a deliverer. Others saw him as a criminal, so the problem is that life, and people, tend to not see the perspective of God for us, so you have to be responsible for your life, to discover what God has put into you, that no one else but you can accomplish. You are responsible. Now we'll see the role of the church in just a moment, but church has a part to play in it, but the church is not the kingdom. The church grows people to participate in kingdom life and fulfil destiny. Think about it, so wrong thinking about the church and it's role, will cause you to settle down and deny what God has called you to do, and put into your heart to accomplish. Now of course we take a big risk if we fire you up with all this stuff, then what on earth will you do? Well isn't that good - what on earth might you do?

You might find yourself doing things you never thought of doing before, just suddenly the dream came alive, and hope came back again. So we're in a season now, God has done a lot of adjustments in the church. We're in a season now where dreams and desires and hopes and aspirations are going to start to emerge. I want you to just - I'm not going to hurry it, I'll just take it long enough so that I can feel you start to rise inside, and begin to see man, I can do more with my life, and it's up to me to do something - then the how to's of course the thing we need to - what do you do to get from here, your desire to your destiny.

Okay, have a look a look now in Ephesians, Chapter 2, Verse 10. This is a great verse, and it says we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus under good works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. So who's he saying? We. Who's talking? Paul is talking, we are believers so believers - so make it personal - I am His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that I would walk in them. Notice three things that come up in this. Number one is identity; God says who I am - I'll explore that in a moment - I am not a nobody, a nothing. I am God's workmanship, and everything God works on, He says it is good. You are good. God's working on you. He's recreating you, forming you. He says you're good. You do bad things at times, wrong things or have immaturity of course, but God says you're good. Why are you good? You're My workmanship. I ain't finished on you yet, you're a work in progress, so there's a part of our destiny that is connected to our identity, who we are. God's plan is to conform us to be like Jesus so we can represent Jesus to the world, so He is interested in our growth and our maturing, and if you don't, you can't come into your destiny. So the first thing He talks about is identity.

The second thing He says is, created for good works. That's the works, the things I'm called to do, so notice this, that God prepared them before you came into the world, and the funny think about them, they're works only you can do. I don't know what the works only you can do are. That's your job to find out, but they're ones only you can do. Why? Because God prepared them for you to do, not for me, so every person sitting in this church, and any other church, God has prepared things for you to do. It's your responsibility to connect with God, and discover uniquely what you're called to do, and then go through the journey of the preparation and application of what's needed to accomplish those things. That, as you do it, becomes your destiny unfolding. It's not controlled by God who's sovereign and telling you everything to do, He gives freedom in it. Neither is it you're waiting around for something to happen. Next time I preach, I want to share with you some mindsets and view points that totally stop you going forward in this area, and I want to share with you some things that would stop you progressing even from this point, going on into your destiny. The Lord was just downloading them into me just at the beginning of the meeting, so He must figure it's pretty important.

The other thing too is, Psalm 139, Verse 16 - because the question is, what is it? What is it God wants me to do? Well don't ask me, you're the only one that can find it out. Okay, let's read in Psalm 139, Verse 16. Now notice this, David's writing this. This is what he says; now your eyes - that's God's eyes - saw my substance being yet unformed. In other words, when I was just an embryo in the womb, you saw me. Now he says, you saw my substance. Of course there's not much substance is there, just a seed, but in the seed there's the tree, so when people see a seed they dismiss it, but everything in the kingdom comes by seeds, everything. Jesus said the parable of the sowing of the seed, everything in the kingdom is about seeds. You think how you get a word of knowledge. You just get a seed thought. The moment you begin to speak it, it opens up, you get more and suddenly heaven comes into the earth. You get a prophetic word, you just get a seed, you just focus on it, give yourself to it, it begins to open and expand, becomes a tree.

Everything in God starts with a seed. Life begins with a seed. Everything God has for you begins with a seed, and so don't despise the smallness of what is there. So most people dismiss the smallness, because they're waiting for the supernatural spectacular, and then miss the little that's in you, that could be a tree of destiny. We'll share some about what holds that back, so you notice what he says; And in Your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. So God has a book, and what is written in the book? The days on earth that God fashioned, shaped or created, within which you would fulfil your destiny, and you weren't even born yet, and God already had a book with every day of your life written on it. Think about that, see? Just read it again, because I see some of you are gasping about that one.

Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed. Now of course, that really raises the thing - what was the substance that God saw? Was it something physical? I don't think so. See? Faith is the substance of things hoped for, so He saw from the realm of the spirit, what it is you're created and designed to accomplish, before it actually took on any formation in the earth, so God saw the substance. See, we tend to think of substance being this, this is substance, that's substance, the building's substance. From the realm of the spirit, just look from a different view, so by looking from the earth point of view, this is substance. I've learned all my life that's substance. Now I take a view from the point of view of eternity. From eternity's point of view, if you can see it, touch it, it's temporal. It'll pass away, therefore it's not substance. From the eternal realm, what is substance is the things that are eternal, so what is substance is your spirit man, and your soul, because they will go on for eternity.

The house you're in will disintegrate. It's temporal, therefore from a spiritual perspective, it's not substance, so God saw my substance. He saw my spirit man, with it's DNA and design, before any formation of a house to put it in took place, He saw my substance. Then it says, and in your book were written all the days that You fashioned, or prepared, or moulded into shape, like a potter moulds the clay, so in other words - see every day of your life is important. Every day has been fashioned by God, as an opportunity to grow, and move forward into destiny. That's why we should treasure every day. Money comes, money goes, time just goes by and you can't get it back, so time then for us is very important, because it's the season within which you can accomplish preparation to fulfil your destiny, so don't waste a day. Don't waste a moment. Why would I waste a moment? Because I don't know what I'm called to do, and I'm just filling in time being distracted and feeling good.

See without focus of destiny, purpose and a clear direction to get there, we just fritter away the opportunities. We consume them up, and it's like money burning, except I can't get it back, just can't get it back. How many older people here wish you could get your years back? The reason we wish we could get our years back, is because we've learnt a lot more in that time we've been alive, and we think man, I'd love that chance again, I'd have done much more with my life. So what we're really saying is, I regret I didn't accomplish more now, based on what I see. How important it is then, for those who are mature people of God, to then mentor the younger generation to come into their God-given destiny, instead of doing what we did, frittering away years of our life on unproductive activity, so part of your destiny is mentoring the next generation into theirs, based on what wisdom you've gained. Getting the idea?

Okay, we just better finish - I'll give a little bit more. Are you getting that? So you notice you've got some days fashioned. Dear God, you don't know how many days you've got left. How many think they've got a lot? Oh, that's right, okay. Well read the paper and you'll find a lot of people there in the obituaries thought they had a lot too, and it wasn't a lot. Here's the reality; unless you know what God called you to accomplish, you can't at all be sure of that, but when you know the things God's given you, you know today - I'm not going to die today, I'm not going to die tomorrow, and I'm not going to die on this next trip. I'm not going to die. Why? Because there's too much for me to accomplish that God has set in place.

That's why Paul could say, don't worry about the ship sinking, I've got too much yet to do. God showed me I'm going to preach up in Rome, so no matter what the ship looks like, I don't care if the ship is sinking, and the storm is overwhelming. God has told me what I'm doing with my life, and I have yet to appear in Rome! See, so he's not worried about what's going on. Everyone else is thinking, it's over for us - no sense of destiny, no sense of purpose, no connection to Almighty God. So having that sense of destiny causes you to walk completely differently. You're not fearful, and afraid, and ashamed, and all that kind of stuff.

Okay, I'll give you a few more things, then I'll finish. So Ephesians 2:10, let's go back into there. I want to throw a couple more things out and then we'll finish - Ephesians 2, Verse 10. So you notice in Ephesians, Chapter 2, of course it's a part of a book of six chapters, none of which were there. That's all been added in afterwards, so when you have a look at it Ephesians 2, Verse 10 is right in the middle of statements like, God chose you, Chapter 1, Verse 4. God destined you, so you've got all these statements like, God joined you to His spirit, put His spirit in you. You find as you look through, you see the things God is doing. First part of it - and it says, God wants you to have a revelation of the hope of your calling, what you're called to do with your life, so Paul is talking about all the things that God is wanting to do our life.

In Chapter 2 he says, now He's raised you up, so you now access the realm of heaven, so he's full of excitement about the great things God has done. Then Verse 10 comes, and then if you follow after that then he says, now also you're part of a family. It's called the family of God, the house of God, the bride of God, the army of God. You're part of a family - oh, and guess what happens in there? Ephesians 4:11, there's people there to help you to do what? Get fed every week so you get fat? No! To discover what work you're called to do. Not do the work. The work you're called to do, Ephesians 4:11, oh - then what comes straight after that? See, that sets it all up, then straight after that's what comes. Now you need to learn how to walk with God and fight a fight, because if you're going to accomplish your destiny, you're going to have to walk with God, and fight a fight, because every devil in hell will try and keep you out of what God has for you. For many of us, perhaps he's already succeeded, and you're living with a lie, living some kind of mental barrier, some kind of hurts, some kind of disappointments, some kind of habit, some kind of issue, and some devil's got a hold of you, because he can see your destiny, so I've got to stop him! I've got to stop him! So you have to learn to walk with God, and fight the fight. That's why we teach you how to walk in the spirit, and fight the fight of faith. If you don't, you can't fulfil your destiny. You want to learn how to do this!

Let's just finish in this area of workmanship - so you're His workmanship. That word means something beautifully created by God. Another way it goes like this, it means to bring into existence something that's unique, and is designed for an assignment that could never take place by itself, so you are something uniquely created by God, especially for a unique assignment, and this could never have taken place accidently. You are a creation of God, absolutely unique. Your DNA is unique, your fingerprints are unique, there's many aspects of you are completely unique. Why is it so hard to think that my assignment and destiny are unique as well? So you get into a group, and into a church, you want to be like someone next to you. Why would you want to be like someone next to you? They've got problems you can't see anyway, got issues, you know? Anyway, what they're called to do, you're not called to do, so mind your business, focus on your business - trying to copy someone else and be like someone else. I've seen people cloned, they end up talking like the person. You think what happened to you? Where did you go? I don't know. [Laughs] I don't know who I am! I'll copy Lyn and be like Lyn and speak and preach like that, all that kind of stuff, see? Or like Ian or like this one - you're called to be yourself! You can't be successful at being someone else. Have a look at Peter Sellers, he ended up crazy at the end, because he acted so many parts he didn't know who he was. [Laughter] Just lost sight of who he was. Like many people isn't it really?

So you're His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. So notice this, that God ordained before, in other words, God made all the preparations before you were born, that you would have what you needed to fulfil your assignment, works that God prepared for you, that's you, each believer, God has prepared an assignment, things for you to accomplish. No one else can do it but you, and God took a lot of time to think through what it would it would be. You know why it suits you? Because it's wired to your background, it's wired to your DNA, it's wired to the desires of God for you, it's wired to the desires in your heart. It's wired to your passions, it's wired to your giftings, it's wired to everything that's unique about you, and He prepared it for you. So destiny is about discovering why God has placed me in the earth, what He's uniquely called me to do, and there are two aspects to that - or many aspects I suppose, but here's the thing.

Notice it says that you should walk in them? Now it doesn't say that God is going to bring it about automatically. It says you've got to walk in these things. Walk means you must take personal responsibility to co-operate with God in His destiny being outworked in your life, that you would walk in them. It's a day by day choice to connect with God, and begin to unravel and outwork in our lives what God called us to do.

So for that there are two things that are needed; number one, you need to connect with God and listen to God. Why? Because otherwise you'll be very, very limited in what you accomplish with your life, because you'll think at too low a level, but the moment you connect with God we then find a place of empowerment in Him, of connection to Him, of endorsement from Him, of bigness of thinking from Him that we wouldn't normally have - but the other place you've got to look, is in your own heart, how has God wired me? What desires are there? What dreams are there? What passions are there? What things are in my heart? In other words if I could accomplish anything I really wanted to accomplish what would it be? What do I desire more than anything? We'll go into those aspects, and how you outwork that in your life, and how you connect the desires of God with the will of God, so it's neither one nor the other. God knows what He's got for you, it's bigger than your thoughts and your desires, but within it He gives you room to have freedom to create.

Here's one of the things you'll learn with God, although He has the big design for you, and He knows the details of it, and foresees the details, He gives to you responsibility for initiative. What is called initiative is faith; I actually get to do something, and make decisions, and make choices, and make plans, and commit my plans to God, and outwork my plans. So you notice - we'll just finish with this quote - in Luke, Chapter 19, when the king went to the far land to return with his kingdom, there's a picture of Jesus Christ coming again, He gave something to all of the servants, and notice what He said to them to do. Occupy, be productive, take initiative until I come, so if the master says take initiative, why do you have to ask Him to tell you what to do all the time? Only young believers have that issue, because they're having to learn to obey. As you walk with God more and more, you are in touch with what's in your heart and in the heart of God, and you delight yourself in the Lord, and the desires in your heart He begins to give you. That's how it all works together.

Father, we just thank You and that You have designed us for greatness. Some of it is in this life, and most of it is going to be in the ages which are to come, but today is a great day for every one of us, an opportunity to connect with the living God, to discover what you put in our heart, to develop those things and to find a way to fulfil that call. Father, I ask that every person in this congregation today would feel the stir and challenge of Your spirit, to awaken and listen to the desires of the heart, to begin to awaken to the dreams, the possibilities that you will put into us. We open ourselves Lord to break out of limitations, religious limitations, theological limitations, cultural limitations, background limitations, world view limitations. We open ourselves to break out of all of those things. We want You to expand our vision and dream, and lift us to a whole new dimension. Father, I just pray that you would in this next few weeks begin to stir a fire that would burn for people to draw near to you, and to begin to discover and search what is in the heart.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, the first journey to destiny is to recognise that God has put eternity in your heart, and to make a decision to receive Jesus Christ. You may watch it on television, you may be sitting here today, but today is a day for you to make a decision to receive Jesus Christ. When you receive Jesus Christ you are forgiven, you are connected to heaven, the spirit of God is within you. The kingdom of God has begun like a seed in your life, to be nurtured and to be grown until there's a manifestation in a great way, of the life and kingdom of God through you. What a day to make that decision right now. I'd like you to follow me in a very simple prayer. This prayer is the sinner's prayer, and this prayer would help you to make the first step in a change to walk into your destiny. You've already taken some steps but didn't know it, but today you could make the most important step to begin partnering with God who designed your destiny. I wish someone could tell you what you're made for and what you're called to do, but only the one who made you can really do that. Why don't you join with Him today?

Let's just pray the sinner's prayer together. Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus' name. I thank You for loving me, for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins, for preparing a destiny for me. I turn away from sin, a life without You. I turn to You, the living God. Jesus, I receive You as my Saviour. I receive forgiveness for all my sins. I receive Your spirit into my heart and I give You my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and my friend forever. Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Ecc.3:11 “…He has put eternity in their hearts…”

God has built into the heart of every person an awareness of eternity.

People long for a sense of purpose, destiny – to make their life count.

God has written this desire into the hearts of men.

2. You have a Destiny

(a) Common Ideas of Destiny

Destiny = a future that is predetermined for you and you cannot change it.

Destiny = a power that determines the course of your life.

e.g. “Fate”, “Karma”; Star Wars Movie “It is your destiny”.

(b) Christians have their own idea of destiny

Many of the ideas, thoughts Christians have are rooted in Greek ideas.

God is Sovereign = the one who causes all things

= He is the sole originator of all thoughts, decisions,

actions

= When something goes wrong God is to blame.

If God orchestrates every detail of our life then all we can do is align with His instructions to be told what to do = passivity or reaction.

God is a personal, loving, caring God.

Jer.29:11 “I know the plans I have for you, plans for good not evil to give you hope”.

God has a plan, purpose, a destiny for us – but He invites our participation and initiative in this plan.

3. God’s Destiny for you was planned before you were born

(a) Samson – Destined to be a deliverer

Jud.13:3-5

(b) Josiah – Destined to be a reformer

1 Kg. 13:2 – Destiny foretold 360 years ahead of his birth.

2 Kg. 21:24

(c) Jeremiah – Destined to be a prophet

Jer.1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, I ordained you”.

God created us long before He forms us.

God imagined trees – created seeds – every seed is potentially a tree.

Before Jeremiah conceived – a destiny was formed by God for him.

(d) You and Me – Destined by God for greatness

Eph.2:10 “We are His workmanship – created in Christ Jesus unto good works which

God prepared beforehand that we would walk in them”

Note:

· Identity – who I am

· Works – what I am called to do

· Time – a period of time to accomplish works. Ps.139:16

4. You were created by God for a Purpose

Eph.2:10

Notice the background or context for this verse:

(i) Chosen by God (ch.1:4)

(ii) Destined for Son-ship (ch.1:5)

(iii) Joined to Holy Spirit (ch.1:13)

(iv) Needing revelation of calling (ch.1:17-19) + purpose

(v) Raised to realm of Kingdom (ch.2:6)

(vi) Belonging to a body/people – church (ch.2:19) (4:12)

(vii) Needing to learn how to walk with God (ch.4:11)

(viii) Needing to learn how to warfare for destiny (ch.6:10)

“Workmanship” = 4161 = something uniquely created by God.

“Created” = 2936 = to bring forth, construct, fabricate.

= to bring into existence something that is unique, is designed for an assignment, that could not evolve by itself.

You are uniquely designed by God to represent Him and advance the Kingdom.

“Before Ordained” = 4282 = to make all the necessary preparations ahead of time.

Before you were formed in the womb and birthed into the world God made all the necessary preparations for you to fulfil His call and purpose.

“Should Walk” = 4043 = to tread all around, to walk at large.

= to be occupied with, to fill your life accomplishing.

= to trample on path, tread underfoot, conquer a territory.

We are called to walk out daily our destiny.

5. You are “Hard Wired” for your Destiny

How does God get you to your destiny?

(i) God speaks to us – must learn to hear, respond, walk.

(ii) God has hard wired us with desires, passions, dreams.

Prov. 4:23 Out of heart flow issues of life.

You must choose to believe what God says about you.

(i) You are a King (Rev.5:10)

(ii) You are one spirit with God (1 Cor. 6:17)

(iii) You are a winner in life (1 Jn.4:4, 5:4)

(iv) You have power (Acts 1:8)

(v) You have an inheritance – territory to possess (Jn. 14:12)

(vi) You are blessed to bless others (Gal. 3:13-14)

(vii) You must take initiative (Lk. 19:13).

Destiny Hurdles (2 of 7)

Sun 5 Jun 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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You have to run the race that God has set before you. This is your life and you only have one of it. This is your destiny. This is your life that you're running right now and as you place value on your life and value on the time that you have, you'll start to consider more carefully I wonder why I'm here and what I'm really called to do with my life? No one wants to die with an empty life or a life that's been unfulfilled in some kind of way, so it's like a marathon race.

Alright, let's read in Hebrews, Chapter 12, so we're going to speak today on destiny hurdles. I could have talked blocked destiny, or challenges in destiny. I thought destiny hurdles, and you'll see why. Just have a look at this verse here; Therefore since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that does so easily ensnare us, and let us run with patience or endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy, the desire, the dream, the destiny set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has now sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Let's pick up the thought there, let us run the race, or run the race with endurance that is set before us, keeping our eyes fixed on the Lord. So your life and my life is likened to a race, a long distance race. For some it may be shorter than others, people like Bill it's been over 90 years, but the real race only began about 65 when he got saved. But there was a race through his life, and there's a race for all of us. All of us, we saw last week that God, before we were actually conceived in the womb, already had a destiny, a plan for our lives. We shared with you many scriptures that are very clear, before you arrived, and no matter how or why or what the circumstances of you getting here, God already had a destiny planned for you. It was worked out, and we saw - we're going to go to this verse again in Ephesians 3:20, that God has things for us to do. So our life then is like a marathon race. Here's the thing about the marathon race - only you can run your race.

I wish I could run your race for you, but I cannot. You have to run the race that God has set before you. This is your life, and you only have one of it. This is your destiny. This is your life that you're running right now, and as you place value on your life, and value on the time that you have, you'll start to consider more carefully, I wonder why I'm here, and what I'm really called to do with my life? No one wants to die with an empty life, or a life that's been unfulfilled in some kind of way, so it's like a marathon race. Now the thing is that in that marathon, I kind of was thinking about a hurdle race, and I was thinking have you ever seen racers running a hurdle race? There it is, you've got this big track. Usually it's a long race, quite a long distance they've got to run, but as they run around it, every now and then you'll come across a hurdle, and this hurdle has been set up and here's the thing. If you don't jump the hurdle, you won't complete your race, so it's quite a funny thing to watch. They're running there and suddenly AAGH! and they're straight up and over the top, then they run, run, run - AAGH! up over the other one and you watch and it's quite hilarious to watch it.

I was thinking about it, and I was thinking well, what happens if you don't clear the hurdle? You go kadoompah! flat on your face, and so I began thinking about our life, and our destiny being like a race which has got hurdles on the way. So rather than look at all the blocks to our destiny, I want us just to consider the hurdles you must jump if you're going to run your course, and the goal of running your course is that you run and finish it well. Saul in the Old Testament came to the end of his life and he said, I have played the fool. He realised that he'd made serious mistakes and gone right off course. Paul, at the end of his race in 2 Timothy said, I have run my course or I've finished my race, I fought my fight, and now there's a crown made up for me. So you notice that Paul had an eternal perspective. He was thinking not just of the things that happen in this life, but he was thinking things happen in this life have a bearing on eternity, and so running your race well, fighting your fight to win, is crucial for your destiny to be fulfilled.

I can't run your race, and I can't fight your fights. It's your race to run. These are your fights to fight. All we can do is help, so I want to identify today some of the destiny hurdles, some of the things that will present themselves. I started to look around, and started to research, and I thought what I'll do is, I'll write down what I have observed over many years of ministry, that I have seen people who started well fall, because they failed to jump these specific hurdles. I hope it'll be helpful for you. It'll be quite practical, and so let's go into Ephesians 3 and Verse 10. I want to just pick up a little bit about Ephesians, Chapter 2, Verse 10 and I want to just go back there into the whole connection between your desires and your destiny, because this is an area of great confusion.

Last time we talked about understanding that although God actually is the king of kings and Lord of Lords; although Jesus is the king of kings, Lord of Lords, although He actually sovereignly rules over everything, He calls upon us to engage with Him proactively. So if you get a concept that God is in charge, God is control, you tend to slump to passivity; well whatever happened I guess God meant it, and you know, my grandmother used to say something like this, well, it was meant to be - which is a fatalistic, passive, lacking faith response to life. A lot of things, it's not meant to be. It's just, this is what happens in life; how are you going to respond to what happens in life? So in Ephesians 2 and Verse 10 and I know the verse. It says that we are His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ under good works that God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them. So we see there, that you are a unique creation. We looked at this last week, how you are a unique creation. How are you unique? Well your DNA for one, the genes, the genetic design and code that makes you up, is absolutely unique. Your fingerprints are unique. Your voiceprint is unique, your eyeballs are unique. They can identify you by any one of those things. See, you are absolutely unique. There is not a copy of you.

When God made you, He said I won't do that again, I'll just break the mould and make something different, so you're absolutely unique. But there's other ways you're unique too. You and I are unique in that God has designed something only we can accomplish. No one else can accomplish it, because no one has the sphere of influence that you have. You have your network of friends, connections, contacts, where you live in the community, where you work, all those kinds of things. You have a unique call of God into that area or region to do something. No one can fulfil it for you. I can't fulfil it for you. This is something God placed you in that job, placed you in that community, placed you in this area. He placed you, and because within that placement, lies something He wants you to accomplish.

It's always to do with things He's wired into you, and it's always to do with representing Him, and advancing His kingdom, so notice we are His workmanship; He is working on our lives to shift, change and enable us to be Christ-like, so love flows out of our heart. We're actually loving people, and nice people, and people like to be with you, because you've developed a nice nature walking with God. But it says also, His plan works for us to accomplish, only we can do them, so the first thing then to realise is, God has created a unique destiny, notice it says these works that we would walk in them. That implies this; you are responsible to be proactive in walking with God, and discovering what you're called to do. It's a walk. It's a way of living. When we use the word walk, we're talking about getting somewhere, going on a journey, so let me just say this again. It is your responsibility to discover how to walk with God, and what God has uniquely called you to accomplish.

I wish I could help you discover it. I can give insights, we can get prophetic ideas and directions, but ultimately it's your responsibility to discover what God called you to do. Why did He place you in that school, in that class with those people? Well only God can help you answer that, and part of the key to that is hearing God, but part of it is discovering what He's put inside you already, because I believe that you are already hard-wired. That means God designed you so that you would naturally gravitate to what you're called to, see? How does He do that? Well He puts in you desires. How many have got desires, things you'd really - oh, I'd love to do that? I would just love to do that. We've all got them, see? Got dreams - oh man, dreaming these things. So how many of you have got passions, things when you do that whoa! That's me! Come away, I'm energised, you know? Of course if you compare your passion with someone else's it'll be foolish because you've just got your passion. That's what God gave you. He didn't give it to anyone else, so if they don't get fired up about your passion don't worry.

You may be passionate about making magnificent cakes, and you wonder why no one shares that passion. It's because it was given to you. You've just got to decide why God gave you that passion, and how to use it to represent Him, show the loving nature of God and to fulfil your destiny. Maybe you'll have a cake shop, and make the best cakes of all, and make a fortune selling cakes, who knows, but that's the part you've got to discover. What God puts in you is the passion, and when you start to flow in what you're passionate about, YOU ENERGISE! You just come alive! People say how can you do that for so long? Oh, it's easy, because as I do it, I come alive! See? Now unfortunately, I can't tell you what makes you come alive. You've got to find that out. It's part of your responsibility in life.

See, your family and God's family can help you, but you've got to discover it, and when you discover it, then THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE CALLED TO DO! DO IT MIGHTILY, with all that's inside you, and be enthusiastic, and everyone you get to talk to, talk about those magnificent cakes, and how people would want those cakes, how lovely those cakes - just be overindulgent with enthusiasm, about what you're excited about it. See? People love to see that. You talk with Colleen about art. Man, once you start talking art with Colleen ooh oh ooh! You can't believe what she's passionate about. She's passionate about art. I mean I'm hopeless at art, really that's not what I'm gifted to do - but Colleen, I've watched her grow into it, become a [wizz] like that. So it's wired in. It's already hard-wired in. Now here's the thing is our future is open. In other words, God has not worked it all out. You've got to walk with Him, and discover how to journey this journey. What you're going to find in a moment is, it gives you a lot of freeway in it.

Now when people say well, God told me to do this, and God told me to do that, God told me - I think well, what the heck's wrong with you? Why don't you grow up? God doesn't need to tell you what to buy at the shops. This is ridiculous. Search the cupboards, make up your list, go to the shops - God doesn't want to be telling you to do little things. That's what you tell kids to do. Here's the list, go do everything. When they grow up, they can go check the cupboards, find what they need, make up their own list. They don't need God for that. God gives us room in our life to be responsible, be creative and show initiative. In fact, what you'll see is that God expects you to show initiative, so God gives a huge amount of space, and here's the thing. Although God has a destiny and a plan for your life, actually you're the one who makes the choices as to whether you fulfil it or not. It's your choice. You choose and you choose every day.

So okay, here's the second thing then, that God wants to co-labour with us, not control us. God wants to co-labour. In Genesis 2, Verse 19, you notice that God created the animals, brought them all to Adam, and He brought them to Adam to see - notice what the word says, to see what he would name them. Now Adam had been given by God dominion over all the animals, so God made all the animals, and brought them to him to see, what are you going to do? Here they all are. Now I've done my bit, I've made them. Now you name them, because that's what you have dominion over, so you ascribe a name to them, and you represent them by that name, so you bring your creativity to this whole animal business. Lion, elephant, giraffe and so on - so in other words, place your own creativity on what I've created, and then that's how we'll work together. It's definitely a co-labouring. He didn't bring them all and say now Adam, I want you to sit down. I've got a lot of animals here, and I want you to listen up and I want you to remember that is a giraffe, that is a lion. He didn't do that.

He said I want you to have a look at them, and come up with creative ideas on what they would be called. Calling something is to have dominion over it. Think about that - so within the realm of God's destiny for you, there's this huge scope of creativity. God expects you to co-labour with Him, not ignore Him, nor wait to be told everything to do, but to be creative, to take initiative. Quite surprising isn't it really? Okay then, so God brought the animals to see what he would name them. That word see is this; so God brought all the animals to Adam - you know what it is? To see means, to look on with great enjoyment, so God wanted to look on how Adam would participate in this process, and what he would bring to the process of dealing with the animal kingdom.

Now if you think about your destiny, God brings to you, or puts you in the place, puts you in the arena, puts you wherever in the family, in the place He wants you to be. Now He wants to see what you will bring to the table. What will you bring by way of initiative? If you have an area of ministry, if you wait to be told everything to be done, then you're not showing initiative. God wants you to bring your creativity, your initiative to what you do. Okay, so there's another example, and it's found in the Book of Mark, last verse of Mark. There's the Great Commission. The Great Commission we know, go into all the earth, preach the Gospel, make disciples, and these signs shall follow them that believe. Notice believing. Now at the last part of that, the very last verse it says this; and the Lord worked with them. Now that's an interesting thing. That word means to co-labour, or to work alongside in partnership with someone, so God set out, this is what I want you to do, reach the world. Now come up with some initiatives, and my part will be to bring the supernatural bit in. Your part will be to get engaged with people, and start up some initiatives.

Well I'm waiting for God to tell me what to do. He already told you what to do; go, preach the Gospel. Well it's not my ministry. We've really got a problem here, because we're not actually understanding, we're called to co-labour with God in this world to change it. You understand? It's a way of thinking. Okay then, so we see then God worked with him, so God does the supernatural bit. That's His bit. The creative bit is your bit. You've got to become creative, and think how you can innovate. How are you going to do that? Well of course, it'll be your desires - I just love to do this! Well maybe God is in that. So for example in Acts 7, Verse 23, now we know the story of Moses, and your desires help guide you, or position you, in the path of your destiny. That's why they're so important. Your desires are really important. Now we can have some bad desires, but they're usually pretty obvious, but there are other desires, which are either neutral, and they're just have some fun in life, I'd like to do some skiing. Great, go skiing. You'll feel much better afterwards. I'd love to do some jet skiing. Oh, I love it! Do it! Just do it! What's stopping you? Well I might fall off the boat if I... you know, all that kind of stuff. Just go out and do it! Don't live such a dull life, that you do nothing that really challenges you.

Joy and I got on a jet ski. We went around the bays, we travelled kilometres on the jet ski, mostly at full rap. [Laughter] She was on the back, I was on the front, and we were screaming! It was great. I want to do it as soon as I can again. I love it. Now that kind of - do they advance the kingdom? No, but they're having fun with God, they decide, they're quite alright. Don't be so spiritual and religious you can't just enjoy life. Go out and enjoy life and have some fun you know, and see a lot of Christians are so boring, because they don't actually - they've got things they'd like to do, but they're too timid to actually get out and do them, or even identify what they are.

But life is for living! Jesus come to give us abundant life, so there's some things you'd love to do. Well don't die without doing them! I just wish I'd done that. Well that's foolish, why didn't you? Oh, I don't know. So I'm sure Andy and Janine will help you pull some of those things out. So notice here in Acts 7:23, that when Moses was 40 years old, notice this statement - it came into his heart to visit his brethren. He wanted to visit Israel. Notice where it came; it didn't say God told Him. He just got it in his heart. Something that was inside - I'd really like to go down and - and we've got to remember he's living in a palace, he's trained as a soldier, he's trained in leadership, he's trained in communication. One day he's got this little desire in his heart, I'd like to go down and visit these slaves, and see how the slaves are doing. Where did that come from? It was in his heart. Why was it in his heart? It's part of the wiring that God put in him, to lead him inevitably to what God had planned for him, so if you ignore the little promptings, the little desires, the little things of your heart, how can you ever discover who you are, and what you're uniquely called to be? You can't ignore the little things inside you.

Here's the thing; in the kingdom of heaven everything begins as a seed, everything is little - a little desire, a little urging, a little longing, a little this or that. If you just bury it and squish the thing down, how can you ever discover what you uniquely are, and what you're called to contribute to life? You're loaded with all kinds of stuff, and the world is here, and you're to bring forth all of you. Now of course you need a little bit of modifying on the way, because I think we're a bit selfish in it, but on the other hand you notice this. See your desires, your passions, your gifts are all a part of who you are, and part of the destiny God has for you. There's only one of you, so don't hide it all. Discover it all. Develop it all and deploy it all. See, you've got to think about that - so if you don't, you'll be waiting like a slave to be told by God what to do next, and He doesn't want to operate that way. He wants to operate as a Father, not as a slave master, so you've got to come to the table with yourself. That's what intimacy with God really is about. You can bring you and your stuff to the table with God, okay?

So you notice in Psalm 37, Verse 4, it says delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Well how about that? He will give you the desires of your heart - but the first condition is delighting yourself in the Lord, and that delight means to be pliable, to be soft, to be yielded. In other words have a relationship with God where you're sensitive and open to Him, you're walking with God. To be yielded or pliable means you're walking in a relationship with God, and what happens as you walk with God, you begin to find out who you really are, what you really desire, you get those desires out, you have to identify them. The Bible says God's okay about giving you desires of your heart. If you don't think God can give you desires of your heart, or wants to give you desires of your heart, then you better scrub the verse out, and a whole lot of other verses with it, like Mark 11:23, when you stand praying, whatsoever things you desire when you pray. Better scratch that one out too, make it something like this: when you stand praying, whatsoever things you've discovered is totally the will of God for you, and the sovereign will of God for you, pray for those things you get them.

Notice He talks about our desires. We are very important to God, so what our desires and our passions - sometimes I've prayed some of the things, oh, I'd really like that Lord, and just like that, without even verbalising it, God just brought it, and it happened. I really love that. I really like that Lord, I just thought it. Other things, nooo! Didn't come - and that always frustrates me but however, I have learnt that the simple little prayers I pray sometimes, and God will just do it, because He likes to do it, He likes to make you happy, likes to enjoy us. Now notice this, here's the thing about our desires. You do have to own your own desires and longings, and then walk them through in relationship with God. It's interesting, in Philippians 2:13, it says, now God is at work in you, or energising you - notice this - to will, and to do, of the things that really please Him. See, that first word will means to desire, and to decide, or determine, or long in your heart for, so God is already at work in you in the area of your desires and longings, to bring them to align with the things that He's really happy with.

As you walk with God, you should expect more and more the things you desire, have really got some significance to them, have got some value to them and that actually God is working in you to bring these desires up, otherwise you bury all the desires, you just grow weary of walking with God. You actually end up rejecting God, and becoming fallen away from God, and not passionate about Him. Why? Because you've had to lay down all your desires, so all His desires could be done. That's not a really good deal. That's a slave mentality. Getting the idea?

Okay, well you're all quiet. Now here's the thing. God raises our thinking. In Isaiah 55 and Verse 9 it says this; as the heavens are higher than the earth - is heaven high? Yeah, high high! Okay - so are My ways higher than your ways, and also My thoughts than your thoughts. Here's the thing. Notice that God's saying - He says ideas and His scope of thinking. Let's put it like this - My perspective is really much higher than yours. That's why you've got to be expanded in your thinking, because you're not going to think high enough, and you're not going to think big enough. So if I just leave you to yourself, you won't think big enough. Let me just show you how to connect it. I'll give you a few examples I just felt come to mind.

First of all, when Moses went down to Israel he saw a guy beating up one of the slaves. His desire was to deliver the man. God's desire was to deliver a nation. He was impulsive, and he was not prepared to deliver a nation, and so he really blew it on the first one, but nevertheless God still had his plan, and never forsook him, got him there in the end. Hannah - think of Hannah. Hannah desired a son. She really wept, she really cried, she really went all through the sweat about not having a child. God wanted a prophet for a nation, and as soon as her desire and His lined up, woo! She got the son - actually she got heaps of sons, and God got the prophet to the nation. So that's how you collate it with God. God has got something He wants to accomplish through you. It's connected to your desires, but His perspective is a lot bigger. That's why you always want to connect with Him. He's got a bigger perspective, not destroy the desire, but give you a bigger scope of realising it.

Think about Peter. Peter really had a desire to catch fish. He loved catching fish. He went out, he had a business fishing in the end. God wanted him to catch men, so Peter wanted to catch fish, God wanted someone to catch people. So He took the man who caught fish, and raised Him with a bigger vision. Oh man, fish, fish? Even I can buy fish in the market. People - that's eternal. This is big stuff. Peter's thinking, I'd love to just feed my family, and make a bit of profit here, and do up the house, add some things on, get a nice chariot. God's thinking man, I want to change your world. You see how God took the desire, just lifts it to another level. Here's another one. Think about David. David desired to be a shepherd. He wanted to shepherd sheep, just walk with God and shepherd sheep, but God's desire was for a shepherd for a nation, so God took this guy who's training as a shepherd, and has raised the level of his shepherding up. Ooh, never thought of that did you! My ways are higher than your ways.

Here's another one; Abraham. Think about Abraham. Abraham desperately wanted a son and an heir. He wanted someone who could inherit all he'd got. God wanted a whole nation who could inherit, so how does He get together? Well God just eventually works with Abraham, and Abraham's desire and God's desire gets connected together. Next thing you know, Abraham's got his desire, and God's got His desire. Abraham gets Isaac after messing around with Ishmael, but God gets a whole nation to inherit the nations of the earth. So I see it that God's perspective is higher than ours, but He doesn't ignore ours. He takes into account our desire, and out of intimacy with Him, it comes up in many instances to something far greater than we would ever have thought of.

See, I remember talking with one lady, and she liked knitting and making up these little beanie things, then she ended up making heaps of these beanies for people who were orphans in another nation. So God's plan was to provide for the orphans by providing warmth and covering; her plan was to make some beanies, and God got the two linked together. Next thing you know, she's passionate and she's doing something that actually is a wonderful thing in the kingdom of God. You see how it works? But you've got to front up with what you are, and who you are, and what you've got going on inside you.

So what are some of the things that would hinder you going forward in your destiny? I've come to the conclusion there's never one cause of success, and there's never one cause of failure. There's heaps of them, so let me just list a few of them. I'll just list them out there, won't go into a lot of them, but these are some of what I call the destiny hurdles, that when you come to one, you have to JUMP IT, or you'll fall on your face, it's as simple as that. So here we go, I'll just give a few of them. They're not in order of importance, but they are definitely things I have observed over years that have stumbled people I know. Okay, I'll just go through them one after the other, and they're not a list of do's and don't s. They're just things that I would say, this is a hurdle; when you come to face this hurdle, see it as something to jump over. It's not a big deal. It's just something you have to make the decision to elevate and move over that, not pretend it's not there, or take another course. You have to do this. Get the idea? Okay then, so don't react as we give you some of these.

Number one, you must take full responsibility for your life. [Inhales sharply] No! I just wanted to put it all in God's hands, and leave it all up to Him! No, it's your life, you've got to run it. Sure, put it in the Lord's hands, but you've got to take full responsibility. What does that mean? You've got to own your desires, own your passions, own your gifts, own your thoughts. They're your thoughts, they're your thoughts. Own your feelings, they're your feelings. Own your choices, they're your choices. I take full responsibility for my thoughts, feelings, choices, desires, how I come through in life. See the problem I've noticed is, many have a victim mentality. They don't take responsibility, so whenever anyone challenges them over how they're coming through in life, or how they're behaving, it's poor me, you don't understand, it's not my fault. It's my father and my mother's, my background, I'm Maori, I'm Cook Island, I'm Pakeha, I'm Irish - it doesn't really matter what it is, it's just a lot of foof, foof, foof, foof, foof.

The first hurdle - [sound effects] If you won't take responsibility for your life, who's going to? I'll tell you - the devil's really ready there, to gain access to your life in every area you won't take responsibility. So number one, you've got to own and take responsibility for your life. No one else is to blame. You are what you are, you are who you are, you are where you are, because of choices you've made. Don't go blaming God, don't go blaming the devil, don't go blaming anyone or anything. Take full ownership; I'm here, and this is who I am, and I'm going to own it all, then I can do something about it, okay?

In Romans 14:12 it says we must all give account of our lives to the Lord. I guess then, you need to plan and set goals. I know some of you won't like that - but I flow. Well, everywhere in life success comes about by planning, and being specific in your plans, knowing exactly what you want, and having a plan to get there, and some steps to get there. That's how life works. Why does it work that way? Even unsaved people know it works that way, and even if you haven't got them all written down, people who are successful have always got them anyway. The ones who are more successful, usually write them all down. Ecclesiastes 5:3, a dream comes through much activity. Proverbs 16:9, a man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps, so here's the thing. The man's heart plans - we have to plan our way, so if you're going to develop or go anywhere in life, plan your finances, plan your relationships, plan your career, plan your studies, plan, plan, plan, come up with a plan. Set some specific targets and goals in mind. Why? Because if you don't have them, you'll swerve off course and get distracted, so goal setting, planning is a hurdle to jump over. If you fail to do it, you will waste the journey. You'll do a lot of things that actually never got you where you really needed to get.

Here's another one. I told you these would be a bit practical. I'll get the spiritual one towards the end, because I know you just need this more than the other. Here's one; work hard. Oh! Work hard! That's a good one isn't it? A lot of people don't understand hard work. Proverbs 13, Verse 4, the soul of the lazy man desires - I've got all these desires and dreams but nothing's happening - but he has nothing. Why does he have nothing? He's too lazy. It requires work to get anywhere in life, hard work. Hard work. Proverbs 21:25, the desire of the lazy man kills him. He refuses to work. Notice this - a lazy person is someone who won't put in the effort. They won't put in the hard yards to develop their life, have the discipline, do the study, lose weight, gain strength, whatever they need. They just won't put in the hard yards. Now did God abandon them? No, God didn't abandon them. God still love them? God still loves them, God's just a bit disappointed. You could have done more - I mean you're better than that. I had much more for you, do a bit more, do a bit more. What you actually engage in is, faith without works is dead, so true faith, true trust in God, actually shows up by you doing something and usually, from my experience of years of ministry, it's a lot of hard work. Hard work, hard work.

Here's another one; persevere. Don't quit! Never quit! Don't quit. Hebrews 10:35 to 36 it says, don't let go your confidence, you have need of patience, that after you've run your race, and done the will of God, then you'll get the promises. So one of the things I've learned in life is, just don't be a quitter. Be a finisher. Whatever you start, finish it. The road to ruin is paved with people who never jump the hurdle of perseverance - just wouldn't quit. I think thank God for the grace I never quit. I got real close to it many, many times but just never quite did. Couldn't bring myself to quit. [Laughs] Couldn't quit do it. I wrote a resignation one time, but then God didn't answer it, so then I couldn't quit you know? God called me into ministry, and I resigned from it and said well there it is, you know, but it didn't do any good. I woke up the next day and I'm still there, still the Pastor, so He didn't listen at all. He knew I was capable of better things than that. See, don't quit.

Here's another thing, now this is another hurdle. Now I'm going to get a bit more personal now, so here's this. You need to resolve personal issues from your past. You must resolve issues in your life. Over the years, of all the things I have noticed that stumble people is, they get to a point of pain in their life, where there is some personal stuff to deal with, and they quit. Listen, I don't care how much pain it takes, or what it takes; if you've gone through abuse in your life, you've gone through some kind of issues in your life, unresolved pain and hurts and bitterness, they all have an impact and here's what they do. Bitterness will stop you building relationships where you trust, and as you'll see in a moment those are the kinds of things you need to succeed in your destiny. So bitterness will always keep you reserved, guarded, emotionally distant and safe in relationships. It defiles your relationships, in fact, so my observation over years - Lyn would bear witness to this as well, as well as would Joy - over many, many years we've watched many, many people and I can tell you this, that the most common reason they did not succeed in life was because, when God brought them to the point of facing a painful issue in their life, they actually ran from the pain, rather than face it. They ran from the pressure to resolve it, rather than actually come up with a plan, or get some help to deal with it, so you need to do it.

Now I'll give you an example. There's a woman - David's wife, Michal, is a classic example. She was destined to be a queen, destined to rule with David over a nation, and leave a legacy of children to the nation. Did she? Well she got to the queen bit, but did she leave a legacy? No. Bitterness stole away all her marriage joy and love, and she remained barren, queen but barren, there but no legacy. These are things to learn. They're in the Bible everywhere, but I'm just laying them out, because these are things I've observed with people.

Here's another hurdle. You need to develop your core belief system. You need to develop your beliefs about yourself, and about life. We all have beliefs, in fact the Bible tells us Proverbs 4:23, it tells us that out of our heart flows our life, so what's in your heart, is what will really turn up in your life. What you believe about yourself, about various things in life, that will eventually be what you attract, and what you outwork. I can tell you now. I've learnt it. I become to realise that I was attracting undesirable things into my life, because of what I believed about myself, for example if you have been shut down, suppose there's been a very, very bad, harsh, severe family situation, and you were just always bossed over, dominated, pushed down, you will, in the pain of it, come to believe certain things about yourself.

I realised in my own background, that some things that had happened to me had caused me to believe I am of no value. Now, you put that in a religious environment where you lay your life down for the Lord, and there came with it huge difficulties to connect with my desires and hopes and longings and yearnings. Why? Because they are of no value. So if you believe I am of no value, your desires won't be either, your dreams won't be either, your needs won't be either, nothing about you will be of value, and you'll always put someone or something before. It may look good in a religious or church setting, you're doing these wonderful things, but actually in God's eyes, He sees that there is a core belief driving you, which is unhealthy. Now I could give you many other core beliefs like that, but core beliefs like that will ultimately sabotage you coming into your destiny.

Think about this - if I'm of no value, therefore my desires are of no value, so I'm waiting to be led, or I'm doing what I should do, but the thing would create the passion, the energy and the fire, which is the desire, is not being explored and developed and grown. Think about that one. Think about that one. Okay, so we need to develop our - I can't give the details of this today of course, but I'm just giving you the hurdles to jump, so one of the things that it will require of you, to become that person God dreams of and wants you to become, is you must shift your internal core beliefs to become that kind of person; I am a generous person. I am a valuable person. I don't let people devalue me. I am a loved person, and I love people. I'm an accepted person, and I can accept people, but I don't let people walk over me. Understand? So your internal life is incredibly important, or you live by external duty, and the law, or what's expected by the crowd, or the church culture. You've gone really quiet - feel a bit uncomfortable now. [Laughs] That's alright, I'll give you the last couple, the last two or three.

Let me just give them to you now, and one of them's going to hit you. Another one is, you need to develop your skills and talents. You must invest in yourself. If you're going to fulfil your destiny, you must pay the price of investing in yourself, whether it be by reading, by study, by going to a course, by getting teaching. Whatever it takes, you are responsible to invest in yourself. No matter how talented you might be as a musician, if you don't develop your gift, you can't realise your full destiny. You have to do something to develop yourself, and so that's an important one.

Here's another one; develop supportive relationships. None of us can make it into our destiny without the help of other people. The sooner we realise that, the better, hence why I need to resolve issues of the past that would stop me forming relationships where someone can speak into my life. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Do you have a friend that can wound you in love, and help you grow? See, if you've got that, then you are a blessed person. If you haven't got that, it's possibly because you have such walls of distrust and bitterness around your life, you don't trust anyone but yourself, you won't let anyone get that near to you, and you become defensive if they try and talk. I'm sorry, you just fell over a hurdle. The trouble is with these hurdles, no one sees them, you just fall and wonder why you're down, and not getting anywhere. Here's the last two.

Develop a devotion and delight in the Lord. Develop deep relationship with God, where you love Him, and delight in Him, and enjoy Him, and enjoy His word, the word of God. You can't just live off a buzz on a Sunday and some great meeting and experience of God. We've got to delight in His words, and delight in Him, and build something around our life of that, because my destiny ultimately will be very limited if I just follow the dreams and desires of my heart. They'll get me so far, but they won't take me to the bigger perspective that only God could give. And here's the last one. You need to develop a kingdom world view. Let me just do it very briefly. A kingdom world view - a world view is the way you look at life. Now you've all got a way of looking at life, you just may not know what it is, and so to have a kingdom world view is to understand that the kingdom of God is here now, the kingdom of God is advancing, we're called to advance the kingdom of God in the earth, and one day the kingdom will come in full manifestation.

Now many people in church have different viewpoints of that. Some of you may have come from a background of what I call the rapture teaching; we're waiting for Jesus to return, and there's many verses about us waiting eagerly for His return, expecting His return. There are many scriptures like that, but the core of it is this. We are waiting. What are we waiting for? That great day when Jesus returns. Now there's an element of truth in it, but here's the problem. If that's your perspective, you'll just be waiting, and you'll not only be waiting, you'll be waiting for God to whip you out, and you'll be waiting for the world to be burnt up and judged. You will be irrelevant to changing the culture. See, you can't fulfil your destiny which is in the earth, if you actually reject the people of the earth, and the people in the world. We can't do that. If we see them as sinners, and we see them as God's judgement on them, God's going to burn them, and then there's something happens, there's some prophetic declaration - the judgement of God - I wonder what God do you serve? It's more your own judgemental heart that's come with that kind of stuff.

Here's another thing. I'll just share this one carefully, because I've been a part of it for so long. [Laughs] Another one is what I call a revival mentality, and here's what we do. Now there's many things about the Lord pouring out His spirit, and we see Toronto, we see a whole range of places around the world. Here's what comes up. Here's what you end up doing - our great hope in what we are waiting for is, one day God will move. What a great day that will be when God moves, so what will we do? Well we'll pray. We'll wait and we'll pray and we'll pursue God. What about the world? Well when revival comes, lots of things will happen then, but our hope is revival coming. Now listen, all of these perspectives have an element of truth in them, but here's God's perspective. Jesus' message was the kingdom is here now. The kingdom of God is within you! It is here now waiting to break out into the earth, through men and women who have discovered their desires, discovered their passions, discovered their giftings, discovered what's in them, and aligned themself with heaven to enjoy the journey of advancing the kingdom and representing our wonderful Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and enjoying the journey!

Now any time you come up against one of these hurdles and don't leap the hurdle successfully, I'm afraid you will find yourself on your face, a bit flat and wondering why you're making no progress. It's hard to progress on your face - better jump the hurdle! Here they are again: jump the hurdle, take full responsibility for your life, start to plan and set goals, start to work hard and apply yourself to grow, develop, to be a better person. Persevere, don't quit when it's hard, tough, people criticise you, people against you. Resolve your issues. Face them, get them sorted out, go to a retreat, read a book, get some help. See, develop your core beliefs. Develop a belief system that supports you being fully who you are. See, develop some supportable relationships that will help you get forward.

You know, the "Lone Ranger" is a weird stranger, I'm afraid. Really, he's probably got a Tonto somewhere around too, Indian fellow there, following him around, but listen. You don't want to be one of those. You want to be a wonderful kingdom person - develop your devotion to the Lord, and develop a kingdom mindset. Go and search the scriptures about the kingdom of God, and what it means to live in the kingdom, how the kingdom operates, the principles of the kingdom, the values of the kingdom, and when you go out you're a kingdom ambassador, a kingdom representative and my, you're walking into your destiny! Why? Because you've started to own it and started to walk and live in it. We say Amen [Amen!] Amen.

Father, we just honour You today. We thank You for what You're teaching us. We thank You Lord that although there are many destiny hurdles to jump You have said You'd help us every time, if we'll just step up in faith. Our stepping in faith means we make some choices, and make some decisions. Listen, I want you just to close your eyes and bow your heads right now. If there's any person here who's never come to know Jesus Christ personally, never given your life to Jesus Christ, I can tell you, you can't fulfil your full potential separated from the God who made you, who wrote your destiny for you. A great decision today would be a decision to receive Jesus Christ. What is holding you back? What is stopping you? Is it your friends and what they'll think? Listen, they're going to think whatever they think. Your destiny's not in their hands, or in what they think; your destiny's in your own choices.

Listen, what's stopping you? Jesus said everyone who received Him, He gave power to become a child of God, even those who believe on His name. Listen today, why don't you make that decision I'm going to believe and trust my life to Christ? I will give my life to Jesus Christ. Well you may say, I've just gone to church for a long time. Listen, going to church isn't where it's at, it's about a relational connection by faith. Are you born again? Has Jesus Christ come into your heart, you put your life in His hands, and started that great journey of your destiny with Him? If you haven't, today would be a great day to start. Raise your hands and let me know Pastor, I want to give my life to Christ today, I want to give my life to Jesus, I want to become a Christian.

This is an important decision to make, put your life in God's hands, to trust Him, and then walk with Him and discover what you're called to be and do. I wonder if there's any today, and you realise that boy, one of those hurdles you've fallen over big time, and you realise that you're just on your face after that hurdle, and you hadn't even realised what you'd stumbled over. You just stumbled. You say God, I just know I've stumbled. I've sort of stopped going forward, and now I realise exactly why I've stopped going forward, and I'm just saying today Lord, I'm just turning to deal with that issue. I'm going to choose to face that issue today.

Well Father, I just pray for each person here that made a choice to respond to You. I ask Lord for Your grace to come upon their life. I wonder if there's anyone here today when I said that core belief, I'm of no value, boy that really hits you, and you realise man, that's in my life. It's really stuck inside me and it's hindering me. I need to address that. We want to just pray, I believe God wants to help us. He wants to help us. You are of great value.

Would you follow me in this simple sinner's prayer. It's a prayer to receive Jesus. Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. Thank You for loving me. Thank You for accepting me. Thank You for valuing me. I believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins, and that He rose again from the dead. Today I turn away from sin. I turn to You, the living God. Jesus, I receive You as my Saviour. Please forgive all my sins and failures and give me a fresh start. I receive Your spirit into my heart. I give You my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and my friend forever. Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Heb.12:1 “..Let us run with patience the race that is set before us looking to Jesus …”

- Our life is pictured as a marathon race with a prize to be won at the end.

- Every person born into the world has a unique God given destiny and a race to fulfil it.

- Hurdle = a barrier in a race that each contestant must leap over in order to complete the race.

- Today we want to identify some of the “Destiny Hurdles” to recognise and leap over.

2. Your Desires and Destiny are deeply connected

(a) God has created a unique destiny for each of us

Eph. 2:10 “You are His workmanship – created in Christ unto good works which God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them”.

We are uniquely designed by God to represent Him and advance His Kingdom.

God planned out a unique work for each of us before we were born.

“Walk” = we have a responsibility to co-operate, co-labourers with God.

Our future is open – no all predetermined – we have the power of choice.

(b) God wants to co-labour with us not control us

E.g.Gen2:19 Adam

Adam was invited by God to create and place names on all the animals.

Naming = given responsibility to have dominion over.

“See” = to gaze on with enjoyment, to discover, to have an enjoyable experience.

E.g. Mk.16:20 apostles – “God working with them”

The apostles took initiative – Faith always takes initiative – never passive.

Balance of taking initiative and being yielded to the Holy Spirit e.g. paul Acts 16:6.

(c) Your Desires help position you to fulfil your Destiny

Act.7:23 “…Now when he was 40 years old – it came into his heart to visit his brethren…”

A desire arose in Moses heart .. that desire was connected to his destiny.

Your desires, passions, gifts, are all part of who you are and what you are called to do.

Ps 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart”

Delight = 6026 OT = to be soft, liable, easily shaped.

Without a connection with God our desires and dreams are self oriented.

Connected to God our desires have a totally new perspective. Phil.2:13

(d) God raises our Vision to Align with His Plan

Is.55:3-9 “As the heaven is higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts”.

E.g.

Moses desired to deliver man – God desired to deliver a nation.

Hannah desired a son for herself – God desired a prophet for the nation.

Abraham wanted a son for an heir – God wanted to raise a nation to inherit.

Peter desired to catch fish – God desired to catch multitudes of men.

David desired to shepherd sheep – God desired a shepherd for a nation.

All these men had desires and dreams that were connected to destiny.

3. Leaping over Destiny Hurdles

There is never one cause of success – or one cause of failure.

God is able to make every aspect of our life work for good when we exercise faith.

Here are some Destiny Hurdles:

(i) Take Full Personal Responsibility for your life (Rom. 14:12)

· Must discover and own desires, passions, thoughts, actions, mistakes, feelings.

· Victim Mentality – someone else is responsible, someone else is to blame.

(ii) Plan and set goals

· Ecc.5:3 A dream comes through much activity.

· Prov. 16:9 Amos heart plans his way but the Lord directs his steps.

· Without focus of goals we become distracted and sidetracked.

(iii) Work hard – apply yourself

· Prov. 13:4 “The soul of the lazy man desires but has nothing …”

· Prov. 21:25 “The desire of the lazy man kills him for he refuses to labour”.

(iv) Persevere – Don’t Quit!

· Heb. 10:35-36 You have need of endurance.

· Persevere when there is pressure, pain – keep focussed on dream.

(v) Resolve Personal issues from your Past

· Heb. 11:15

· Unresolved hurts, grief’s, bitterness hinder destiny.

· E.g. Michel – David’s wife was bitter – failed to enter destiny as Queen.

(vi) Develop Your Core Beliefs

· Prov.4:23 “Out of heart flow the issues of life”

· Prov.27:3 How/what you believe determines how you interact with life.

(vii) Develop Your Skills and Talents

· Invest in yourself – in training and personal development.

· Mt. 13:24 Kingdom of heaven like man who sowed.

· Everything starts small – must be nurtured.

(viii) Develop Supportive Relationships

· Prov. 27:6 “Faithful are the wounds of a friend”.

· Need relationships – connections to fulfil destiny.

(ix) Develop Devotion and Delight in the Lord

· Ps. 37:4 Delight self in the Lord

· As we take delight in Him and meditate in the Word of God – blessing and favour.

(x) Develop a Kingdom World View

· Mt. 11:12 Kingdom of heaven suffers violence – violent possess by force.

· Rapture/Revival mentality = people waiting for God to move.

· Kingdom is here now – we must advance it in our area of influence.

Desires & the Will of God (3 of 7)

Sun 10 Jul 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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You don't need God to tell you everything. He wants you to use wisdom, common sense. God doesn't want you to be a slave, so you've got to connect with your heart, and you do your homework. You've got to identify your desires, and make plans, seek counsel.

Today I want to just talk about your desires and the will of God, your desires and the will of God, how these things work together. Ephesians, Chapter 2, Verse 10 - we are His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works, that God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Every person longs for a sense of purpose. We all want to have meaning for our life, and being disconnected from God it's very, very difficult for people to find a purpose for their life that satisfies that deep need in the soul. That's because disconnected from God, we can never really discover and enter into the fullness of what we were designed and created for. There's an emptiness, which can only be met by relationship with God, but you notice in here it talks about things that God created beforehand.

It talks about destiny. Your destiny is not just a fate, something that happens, a power that moves and you can do nothing about it, that it's just going to happen anyway. A lot of people have that passive Eastern viewpoint that you know, destiny is just going to work out. There's a plan been worked out for you, and you have really nothing except to just find yourself in the middle of it, and try and understand it. That's definitely not a Christian position. Many Christians also are waiting for God to tell them everything to do, so we need to try and find the balance in this whole area. Notice in Ephesians 2, Verse 10, it says that we are created by God to do something, to do something that's got eternal value and benefit. We're created for things, and the Bible says, God prepared them before we were born, and it's a walk, it's a lifestyle of walking with God, we will begin to discover the things we're called to do, and some of those things are very natural.

So some are called to be a wife, a mother, a husband, a provider, a teacher. There's a whole range of very, very natural things, and all of that is part of our walk with God. We tend to think of the works of God being some great thing, but mostly the works of God are just worked out in our life quite easily, but here's something for you to see. If you look up in Verse 1, 2 and 3, it says - of Ephesians, Chapter 2 - it says God has made you alive, you were dead in trespasses and sins. So before we came to Christ we were cut off from God, dead in trespasses and sins, so the power of sin gripped us, and with that, self-centredness. Now watch this - it says, and once you walked - now notice we've just read how our destiny is walking with God and discovering what He wants for our life, but before we come to Christ, we walked a different way. What was the way we walked before we came to Christ? It says here we walked according to the course, or the track of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.

So notice it's saying that, there is a course, a path that everyone in this world follows. It's got many different aspects of it, many different pictures, but it's still the same path; I do what I want, it's all about me. So it says that, that is the course the world follows. It's a self-centred, all about me and about my welfare, that's the way that we all walked, and notice it says that there is a spiritual power influences all people who live without Christ, to walk the same way, so no matter how good people look, you'll find nevertheless they are still walking, and there's a self-centred dimension around their lives. Then it says, and we also walked, and we once conducted ourselves among them in the lusts of our flesh, or desires of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and mind. So it says that the way we used to live was one, we just copied the way the world lived. We had the same value systems, pretty well sought after the same things everyone else did, we were just like all following like a herd down the same path. There was a spirit operating over that, and the way it worked was in the desires of our flesh and our minds.

In other words, there's an area of desires that control the way we lived before we came to Christ. We wanted something, just went to pursue and we wanted to do what we wanted to do. So notice it says that, we walked according to desires, so what you desire you're going to seek after, and if you're seeking after something, it's because you really desire it. So if we watch how we live and walk, pretty soon we can find out what we really desire, so coming to Christ, something needs to change, and here's where you get a little bit of confusion around this area. So I want to talk a little bit about your desires and the will of God. How are your desires connected to the will of God? Secondly, how can you discover the will of God in your life? Alright, so the first thing to understand is this. I'll read a verse here in Proverbs, Chapter 4, Verse 23. It says keep your heart with all diligence. Why? Because our of your heart flows direction, the value system, the emphasis, the priorities, the goals, the activities of your flow from whatever is in your heart, good or bad. Whatever is in your heart will direct how your life goes, so the Bible says to guard our heart.

So here's the thing. God has wired into your heart certain desires, certain giftings, certain passions. There are some things before you were born God hardwired into you, and they are to help you begin to discover what you're here to do. You see when we're born into the world we're without God, but we still have desires, passions, gifts. Not all of them are bad, and not all of them are good. Some are good, some are neutral, some are bad, but some things God has wired into us, and as we begin to pursue our desires and our passions, we begin to find ourselves moving in a direction in our life, and you notice if you go into a walk with God, one of the things you will need to do is to discover what He's wired into your heart. Why? Because it's out of heart your life will flow. God is not going to tell you everything to do. He wants you to own your life, connect with what He's put inside you.

If you have a passion, a desire, a gift or some kind of thing, it was put in by God to enable you to fulfil His plan for your life - so some are creative, some have music. You know it's wonderful you have a gift of music in your life, but you do know you never earned it. You never learned it. You actually got it. It was gifted, and then what you had to do was to own that I have a gift, then begin to develop the gift, and begin to put it to some constructive use. So one easy way - there's several easy ways you can find some of the desires of your heart. What is it you really love to do? What is it you really love to do? You'll find there are some things you love doing. Now don't dismiss as though they're not important. If you love to do it, it's because God's probably wired it into your heart. Some people love cooking. Well whatever you love to do, if you love cooking, then make cooking the way you love people. Use it to love people with. Some people are great at helping, and they love to help. Well then love people by helping them. It's not really complex or complicated.

What sorts of things get you very angry or upset or stir you up? Well those are probably things you're called by God - He's wired it in you to do something to change those things, so don't put your hand up in the air and say, why isn't someone doing something about it? Maybe God called YOU to do something about it, and the fact you're reacting is because God wants YOU to step up, and do something about this thing that others don't feel anything much about. Maybe it's - what do you feel passionate about? When you do the thing that God's wired in you, you start to fire up, you become passionate, you get enthusiastic and you begin to find yourself being highly energised when you do the things God has put into your life to do. Some people, you see them and they just come alive when they're doing what they're called to do. It's just the energy flows, and they can go long hours, doesn't seem to drain them, because they're flowing out of what's designed and what's built inside them.

So what is it that you're good at? Sometimes the things you're good at give you a clue to what God's wired in your life. What do other people say you're good at? Those can give you a clue to some things that God has put in your life that you should recognise, develop and this is part of discovering what God has for your life. It's quite simple and quite natural. What stirs your compassion? Do you weep over anything? Do you feel strongly about something? Probably God called you to move into something in that area, and to do something about that area. Now you notice we haven't talked about prayer yet. We've talked about you engaging your own heart, because in your heart God has already hard-wired some of the things that will outwork in fulfilling His will in your life, and many times many people have such a low esteem that they don't value what's inside them, and don't take the time to discover, recognise, draw out and develop what God put in their heart. Out of your heart flow the issues of life, so there'll be some things you desire which are really good - those are the things to cultivate by focussing on them. Some things you desire may be of the flesh. They need to go to the cross, need to just deal with them by not focussing on them, bringing them to death on the cross.

So separated from God, we tend to be very self-centred, and even when we come to Christ, most of the time we start off thinking what's in this Christian life for me? What am I going to get out of this service? What am I going to get out of the message? What am I going to get out - in other words, the orientation when we come to Christ still often is very similar to what it was before we come to Christ. We're just looking what's in this for me, what do I get out of it? How can I get blessed? And if we don't change that way of thinking, then what happens is we become incredibly immature, and never fulfil the course of God in our life. So here's a scripture for you, in James 4, Verse 1 to 4. James says where do wards come from? Where to conflicts come from? How come we've got conflicts in marriage, and conflicts in relationships? Then it gives you the answers, because you lust or desire and you don't have, so you fight to get what you want. So self-centred desires always lead us into conflicts with people. We end up in conflict, we end up in difficulties. Without Christ, we tend to be quite self-directed, so we're really looking after our own interests.

Look at this scripture here, in Matthew, Chapter 16. This is true of all of us. We come to Christ, what can God do for me? Then gradually we come to the point where we say, what can I do for God, and how can I heal my life ,and discover what He wants for me to do? So there is a connection between the desires God's put in your heart, and the will of God, but if you just follow what you want to do, you'll never find the will of God and if you just wait for God to tell you, you'll never find all that He has for you either. You actually have to become responsible to walk with God, and bring your part to Him, some to be put right and sanctified, and some to actually enhance because that's how God wants you to fulfil His purpose for your life. Look at this in Matthew, Chapter 16 and Jesus, Verse 21, from that time Jesus began to show His disciples, He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. So Jesus is quite focussed all His life, what He's called to do. He knows exactly what He's called to do. Did He show creativity in it? Yes, He did, but He knew all the time what He was called to do. He had a very clear focus for His life.

Now you notice here, He's just announcing that I'm called to lay My life down sacrificially for the cause of God, and immediately there's a response from Peter. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying have pity on Yourself, or save Yourself, this shouldn't happen to You. Now notice what Peter is doing. Peter is with Jesus. Peter is walking, He's enjoying ministry, enjoying the miracles, enjoying the crowds and then Jesus begins to explain actually there's a death I have to face, and it'll be followed by a resurrection. This is the path of God's plan for My life, and his immediate thing is, if Jesus dies, what happens to us? So notice what he does. Straight away he tries to press on Jesus to change the plan and he says have pity on Yourself, or hey, save Yourself or look after Yourself, and Jesus saw exactly where that kind of thinking come from. Notice the rebuke that Jesus gives Peter. He says get behind Me Satan, you're an offence to Me. So Jesus identified that feeling sorry for yourself, protecting yourself, saving yourself was a demonically inspired impression or thought, that was trying to take Him off course.

I have found of all the things that have been hardest in fulfilling the call of God on my life, is people have come with that kind of thinking. It is the hardest of all, when your life is committed to lay your life down, to sacrifice for Christ, and others encourage you to take an easier path and avoid the cross. There's no resurrection life without the cross, none whatsoever. If there was an easier way for us to be saved, Jesus wouldn't have had to die, so not only is the cross the power of God to bring salvation. The cross is actually a principle at the heart of God, Jesus lay His life down for the Father's purpose. The Holy Ghost served Jesus and fulfilled, empowered Him to fulfil the Father's purpose. You notice in all of it, that God is working, and the principle of the cross worked right through Jesus' life. If we have a Christianity with no cross, I guarantee you haven't got a Bible Christianity. You've got to help yourself, do good, feel good, gospel which has no power to change lives, so notice that. So let's have a look on - so connected to God, then our desires change. In Psalm 37, Verse 4, it tells us this. Delight yourself in the Lord. Delight in the Lord and notice what do you do? He'll give you the desires of your heart. Now that's an amazing thing. Many, many scriptures, God says He'll give you the desires of your heart - but you've probably got lots of desires and haven't seen any of them come about.

Well notice the thing that comes first, He says delight yourself in the Lord. That word is to remain pliable, soft, like Bluetack that you can squeeze and shape and move it around and make it into a shape. In other words, have a relationship with the Lord where you are soft and yielded and you have His interests at heart, and out of that relationship with Him, He will ensure the desires of your heart get fulfilled - maybe not the way you think, but He certainly will enable it to happen. So He tells us then to delight in the Lord, and as we delight in Him and are soft in His hands, then we begin to discover what parts of our desires are interacting, connected exactly to what He wants us to do. The most amazing thing - so how can you discover the will of God? That's a key question isn't it? You look at Jesus' life, in John, Chapter 5, Verse 38, He said I've come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of My Father, so He was very clear that His whole life was centred around advancing the kingdom of His Father. In John 17, Verse 4, he says I've finished my course, or I've got to the end of my life. I've glorified You or honoured You with my life - notice this - I have finished the work You gave me to do. Now that is a key to a successful life. I honoured God, and finished the work God gave me to do. Notice, it wasn't the plan of people.

Jesus many times stood in conflict against the desires of others for Him, His core driver to be a success in life, His core driver to be successful was, I want to advance the kingdom of My Father, My life is fully available for that. My resources are fully available for that. This is what motivates Me. That is the core of the gospel. That is the core of a successful life. Listen, you may look successful to the world, but how do you know that you're successful? Because you did what you wanted? Because you achieved these great goals? Because you fulfilled these great ideas? No, no, no. Jesus said very clearly, He said I've brought glory to My Father. Why? Because I discovered and found what He wanted Me to do, and everything He gave Me to do, I've done it. That is success in life. So you can look good in church, you can look good in a ministry, you could look good in business, you can look good in all kinds of things, as though you're successful, but only God really knows what He planned for you to do, and it's only by connecting with Him, and discovering that work He called you uniquely to do, you can really find success. The world, remember, has got it's own way of measuring success. For the world success is money, but Jesus died with no money, so He wasn't a success, see?

The world's thing of success is popularity and position, but Jesus died as a criminal, so I don't think He was a success there either. The world's concept of success is, you know, people are following you, responding to you, you've got lots of friends, but Jesus' friends all abandoned Him, so it doesn't look like He was much success does it? You notice the world's concepts of what success looks like, are absolutely contrary to God's idea of success, and only God can speak into your heart, and help you discover what success will be for your life. Now motivational teaching will encourage you, and you can read - I've read lots of books. I've got a whole shelf there of books of motivational speakers and motivational teachers of all kinds, and they're all very similar, and they all encourage goal setting, dreaming. They all encourage a whole range of things which are incredibly effective and practical and I can tell you now, if you want to make some movement in life you do want to get a hold of some of those things and get to start to practice the principles. They work.

Here's the problem. You'll notice in all of them, they have one thing in common, apart from how to succeed, and how to set goals, how to manage your time, all that kind of thing. This is what they have in common: it's all about me. There's no cross, there's no Christ, there's no eternal kingdom. It's about me, doing what I want to do with my life, and the Bible says, notice we read that verse in Ephesians 2, that we once walked in that path before we came to Christ, fulfilling the desires of heart, being under the prince of the power of the air. Now we're under the influence of the spirit of God, we go through a transition process of sifting our desires, sorting out our goals, sorting out our motives and priorities. Why? Because now we're citizens of another kingdom, there's another value system, there's another way of doing things, there's another set of priorities, there's an eternal reward. Everything begins to shift, and there is a process in doing that. There's a journey to maturity in doing that, and part of that is discovering the desires of your heart, setting goals, making plans - as we'll see in just a moment. Getting the idea? Alright, you've gone all quiet now about it so [laughs] I must be hitting it very clearly.

I had some dreams inside. You know what I wanted to do, because I was really keen to be a teacher, trained to be a teacher, and did the kind of training that meant I could get a job anywhere I wanted. What I wanted to do was get a job in Warkworth, which I love the boats up there. I love the boating up there, I love the harbour up there, I love the whole area up there. I love the climate up there. I just wanted to live there, get a boat, fish and enjoy my life.

So left to myself, my desire, I would be up there, and I'd be still teaching in one of the schools up there, and I would have a boat, and we'd be out there - and I'd be wasting my precious life. See, but God had something different, and so when the will of God and desires of God came into my world, I had to start to realign my desires and my will, and to not let go what I liked, but to actually yield to God's bigger plan, and within that I'd be able to find the things that God called me to do. Getting the idea? Okay then.

So how are some of the ways you can find the will of God? I'll give you a few. We all want to know the will of God, and it's so hard to find sometimes, and so I'll give you some practical keys. They're pretty simple keys, and it's not all of them. One or two of them will be enough to do it, but you know there are a lot of things that the Bible doesn't tell us, like it doesn't tell you what job to get. It doesn't tell you where to live, it doesn't tell you who to marry. It's got lots of things it doesn't tell you, and those are things you really want to know, and it's - you go and open your Bible, you're looking everywhere and what job, you know? It doesn't say anything about computers in here you know? I can't find an answer to the things I really need, and so there's a confusion lots of people have, over just discovering the will of God. It's not that easy at times, and that's partly because God doesn't just tell you everything. When people say God told me this, God told me that, God told me this, see that's just nonsense. That's immaturity. You're acting like a little baby, who's been told what to do. You go do shopping, make a shopping list. You figure out what you need. You don't wait for God to tell you what to buy, just go figure it out for yourself.

So often we hear people say God told me this, God told me that, and it confuses us, because they put the authority of God over their own decisions and choices, as though somehow God has endorsed it all, and there's often confusion around this. I just think it's much easier - we'll just give you a few practical things, and then I want to give you a couple of areas that can really hinder you discovering God's will for your life. Now these are quite important ones too. I'll just give them out one at a time then. So first of all, one of the practical ways, what's the passion and desire of your heart? One of the things you've got to do is, discover what's in your heart. Now if you just want to go out and just do all kinds of stuff and look after yourself and spend money on yourself, this desire needs to come to the cross at some point. You need to learn to live bigger than that, but you know Moses, it came into his heart in Acts 7, Verse 23, it came into his heart to visit the people of Israel. In other words, it was something he felt in his heart, a stirring he had in his heart.

In Judges 14, Verses 1 to 6, Samson felt it in his heart to go down and get this woman to be his wife. It says here that his parents didn't approve of it, but they did not understand God was using this to provoke a fight with the Philistines. Now how did he get to find the will of God? He didn't hear anything. He just had something in his heart - I like that woman, go get that woman for me - but he found himself in the will of God, following just that desire of the heart. Jacob in Genesis 30, Verse 30, said I'm sick of working for wages, you rip me off. I have a dream of providing for my household. I want to actually go out and be an entrepreneur. How did he - he had it in his heart. So many of the people in the Bible were motivated by just a desire of the heart. Sometimes we make it all very complicated.

Jesus, in Luke 2:49, He was down there at the age of 12 in the temple, and the parents said to Him, what are you doing here? He said don't you know, I must be about My Father's business. He had a desire in His heart to learn the word of God. I don't think there's any big spiritual thing. I think it's just desires of the heart, and so you've got to learn to tune in to your heart. So if you block your heart off, and block what goes on in your heart, and block because of all kinds of things, issues of your heart, you won't ever hear what it is God's put in your heart to do. Who knows, you might be called to something really great, that no one else has ever done before, but you're the only one could ever know that. How would you know it? It must have been put in your heart by God, so sometimes God will directly put it in, sometimes it's just a desire. Then you find when you flow in your desire, you just can't help but do it, it's just part of you. It's who you are. So one thing is the desires of your heart.

The second thing is, here's a good question to ask, what is the desire of my heart? Here's another one you can ask, what does God expect me to be responsible for? Now I'm not going to tell you about everything in life. He expects you to think it out. Which school should we send our children to? Well go and have a look around, find what's a good school, get some report back from the parents, commit your decision to the Lord and make a decision. You don't need God to tell you everything. He wants you to use wisdom and if we don't grow in wisdom - another word for wisdom is commonsense - that God doesn't want you to be a slave, so you've got to connect with your heart and you do your homework. You've got to identify your desires and make plans.

Notice this in Proverbs 16:9, in his heart man plans his course, so you are responsible to plan your life. Don't just wing it, make a plan. Plan your finances, plan how to build a good marriage, plan how to build a good family, plan, plan, plan, plan. You're called to plan. God's not going to plan for you. He wants you to plan, set goals and that comes out of know what you want. What do I want for my marriage? What do I want for my family? What do I want for my life? What do I want in our finances? You've got to ask what you desire and then form a plan, use practical wisdom. Don't wait for God to tell you everything. You've got to do your part. Another scripture like that in Proverbs 16:1, to man belongs the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue. In a heart man plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps, so God expects you and me to plan. He will actually direct whether the plan goes according to plan or not, so you need to have a flexible plan, able to adjust.

Paul had a plan where he was going. He announced to everyone, I'm going on a mission, and imagine this; we have a missionary, and we announce they're going to a particular country, and then they get over there, and they say no, God changed His mind, we're going somewhere else. So God does change the plan. They had the plan, God changed the plan. Why? Because God's perspective was bigger, so you've got to be flexible enough having made your plan, to get God change it on the way, and adapt it on the way. This is quite straight forward. Here's the thing; does it agree? Does what you're planning agree, or contradict, the word of God? Now there's many things in the word of God, it tells you exactly what to do, what not to do. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't have sex before marriage, there's so many things it tells you what to do, why would you need to hear God personally about that, when the Bible tells you what to do? Husbands, love your wives. Don't pray about this, and about that, just love your wife.

The Bible is very - in everything give thanks. You don't have to pray about it, or complain, just do what the Bible says to do, so that's why you've got the Bible. It's to help you make wise and good decisions. There's a lot of wisdom in there, and then of course there's some situations there's no answers at all, but God can use it to speak a quickening for you. So do your choices align with the word of God? Here's another one. Do you have peace in your heart about the thing you're choosing to do? Colossians 3:15 says let the peace of God rule in your heart, or be an umpire in your heart, so if you feel agitated, a reserve of some kind - notice when people get married we say, have you come here freely, no one made you, and without reserve? In other words, this is the time to say if you're having some second thoughts.

Most people overlook the reserves, men particularly. Men get so excited about the project, that when their wife raises a little reserve, they just shout it down, and usually later that little reserve turns out to be a major problem, and men find it very hard to say, you were right and I was wrong. That's just one of the things in life I've observed. [Laughs] So the peace of God in your heart, so if there's a lack of peace, or if you're husband and wife and you wife has a lack of peace, then I guarantee something's wrong with it. I tell you now, something's wrong with it because God called you to be one. If the other half is feeling unhappy, don't go ahead, you'll regret it. [Laughter] See, the will of God. See, I haven't even brought God into it very much, have I? I'm just teaching how you discover the flow of the will of God in your life, it's not so hard, but it is challenging at times. Most of us overlook these kinds of things.

We had a group of women who were unhappy with their marriages, had unsaved men, and we asked the question, did your father have any reserve about that marriage, and every one put their hands up and said yes. Well therefore, you should then repent, because there was a lack of peace, and you refused to get wisdom and counsel from someone else, so that brings us to another thing. Have you sought counsel from someone, or opened to get counsel from someone else about your decision? Proverbs 11:14, where there's no counsel people fall, and the multitude of counsel is their safety.

Here's a good one, Proverbs 12:15, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he that heeds counsel is wise. So this is what amazes me - Christians who've been around Christians for years, they ask the wrong people. How stupid! I've watched over and over again, people ask the wrong people for advice. If someone has no track of financial success, do not ask for help from them about your finances. Someone's got no spiritual track record of any commitment, steadiness, perseverance and faith, don't ask them what to do. You're just being ridiculous, you're being foolish. I'm amazed how many people make decisions without consulting, and getting spiritual wisdom from someone who has the experience, and cares about their welfare. Many times people will come and they'll, oh well, I've decided to do this, what do you think? What I think is, you've decided to do this. Simple as that. You haven't come asking for any advice, you've actually made your mind up, and what you're trying to do is get my fingerprints on the smoking gun. [Laughter] It's true. That's what goes on, and people make foolish, foolish mistakes, over and over and over again, financial mistakes, relationship mistakes, marriage mistakes, family mistakes, because they don't seek counsel.

Counsel is just that, it's advice. You're still responsible. I'm not talking about counsel that controls you, that's not counsel at all, that's ungodly. So here's another thing you could ask yourself, even just two or three of these if you've got them lined up, you'll probably get the right decision. How does this, or what is the impact of your desire, or plan, upon others? Now that's an important one. What is the impact of your plan or desire on others? So if you're planning that I've got a great dream, I'll go and climb Mount Everest - how much is that going to cost your whole family, you doing that? Have you thought about the impact of that desire? Now have another think. If it's going to have all that impact, really, should you be doing that? In other words, we're not to live our life for ourselves. We're called to liberty and freedom, but not to use it as an occasion in the flesh, but by love serve one another, so when you have all these desires, and you're fulfilling all these desires, and doing your own thing, and the family finances are running down while you just go out and do your thing, that is ungodly. It's self-centred, it's selfish, and it won't build good relationships. It's not very wise either. Getting the idea?

And of course, you could pray and ask God to tell you. Sometimes He does, and sometimes He doesn't. Most of the time, He'll just give you peace in His heart, but sometimes He'll give you a rhema, a quickened word, and you'll know it's exactly what I'm called to do. Listen to this. There has not been a single major decision I've made in my life - now you don't make many major decisions in your life. There's never been a single major decision I've made since I've come to Christ, where I did not get a rhema from God. If it was big enough to be a major decision, I always figured I'm not smart enough to see the consequences, I need God to speak to me. So that's where, at the core there's this thing, where I'm here to fulfil God's purpose, but I've got to participate wholeheartedly in it. I've got my part to do, and see many Christians are waiting for God to tell them what to do, or they think God's telling them what to do, and it's really their own thing, but there's a balance of human responsibility, and I've given you some what I call practical steps of how you discover what God wants you to do, a whole range of very simple things.

I'm going to give you a few things, and I want to just throw this out, because this will set you off course every time, and I won't develop them. I'd like to, but I won't develop them. Here's the first one. These are hindrances to discovering what God's called you to do, or wants you to do. Number one is, you ask God, but you have an idol in your heart. You ask God for direction, but you've already got your intention made up. This is what makes it difficult when you're asking God about a marriage partner, because often you've already got your own idea made up, and you're not going to listen anyway, so all you want is - and here's what the Bible says in Ezekiel. God's speaking and He says, now they have idols in their heart, so this is what He says, so when they come to me asking for direction, what they will hear is the idol in their heart. If you come to God looking for direction, and you've already got a mindset, your mind made up, you've already got something you've determined to do, He is not fooled one bit. You're not coming to ask Him for direction, you're coming already with your mind made up, or something in your heart you want to do, and you never hear the will of God in that, or rarely. What happens instead is, you hear what you want to hear. You hear the voice of your own idol.

There's a great story in the Bible and you can look it up in 1 Kings 22 of King Ahab. King Ahab wanted to go down to battle, and so Jehoshaphat came with him, and they got together, two kings sat in their thrones and Jehoshaphat said, shouldn't we get a word from the Lord? So Ahab brought all the prophets together, and the prophets all said oh, and they did these great prophetic actions, and they got these bullhorns, and they woo, you're going to go there, and you'll beat up the Syrians, and you'll knock them all down, and you'll smite them. You'll come home victorious, and they all did the same things see - king's very happy. But then the king said well listen, what about a word from the Lord? Is there anyone else who's a true prophet of the Lord? So they bring out Micaiah, and before Micaiah comes on, the man says to him listen, all the prophets are saying man, the king's going to have a victory. He should go down to the battle - so make sure you bring the same word. Now notice this - the king had already made up his mind what he wanted to do, so when the prophet came, you know what? The first word he heard from the prophet, according to the idol in his heart. The prophet said go down, you'll succeed. How about that?

In other words, when you come to God for guidance, and you've already made your mind up what you want, you don't get guidance. You just hear from your own heart, you hear the idol in your own heart, because you have not just yielded to God, and come to a place where whatever God was directing you, and you're happy with it either way. I've found the hardest thing in major decisions, is to come to a place where your personal agenda is, you let go of it; the grief of letting go of something, you let go, and you come to a place where you can just be at rest, whatever God wants to direct you into you're happy with that. When you come to that place, usually you hear very quickly from God. When I came to come up here, I did not want to come here. I did not want to. I came here, I cried all the way home from seeing the church, and the terrible mess it was in. All the way home I cried. I said God, I do not want to go to that place, it's miserable and I hate Hastings. I'm from Napier - and so that's it. [Laughter] So that was my seeking guidance.

So I decided it really was a major thing, and so I decided I better take time to seek the Lord. What a good idea! So we went away for a couple of days to the beach to pray, and here's what seeking the Lord consisted of: most of the time, weeping, and being willing to let go, and listen to God. Feeling the pain of loss. If God was to speak in a certain way, and in spite of feeling the pain, being willing to let go, lay everything down, put everything on the altar and say God, I'm your servant. What you want, I'll do it. It took me at least a day and a half. The moment I came to place of surrender, immediately I heard the voice of God, immediately, and I'm glad I heard it, otherwise I'm still in Dannevirke, and I wouldn't have a son in Pakistan, and I wouldn't have a church here, and we wouldn't have mission things all over the world. We wouldn't have all of those things. Understand? So you've got to get your heart clear, and this is a big challenge for us.

The second thing is immaturity. If you're just immature, you often don't hear God right, that's why you need some counsel. In 2 Timothy 4, Verse 3 it says, in the last times, people heaped to themselves teachers, having itching ears, following the desires of their own hearts. So very simply put, it was like this. It's saying in the latter days, people have itchy ears. You got something itchy, you want to scratch? So what they're saying is this; people want to hear a certain thing that pleases them, and so they'll go to the people who'll tell them what they want to hear. I've had people come to me, and they get my advice, and then they go find someone else, until they find the one that tells them what they want to hear, then they follow it. That's what the Bible - itching ears, following their own desire. In other words, they're just wanting to get what they want.

Last couple of things that'll hinder you is - an important one, is the influence of a controlling relationship. If you are in a relationship with someone who's a very strong controlling person, the soul tie to that person, and the control over their life, will influence your thinking, and you don't think clearly. I'll give you a classic example of that. King Jehoshaphat, who was with Ahab said, I want a prophet of God, so the prophet of God came. He said go up, it'll do well, and the king said to him, I've told you you tell me the truth. You're lying to me - tell me the truth! The guy said okay, you're going to fall and die in the battle, and it's going to be a major defeat. Oh, I knew it! You never said anything good about me! Now notice this. The truth has finally come out, the true word of the Lord. This is going to be a failure, this whole campaign, and Jehoshaphat was closely allied in relationship with Ahab, who was married to Jezebel, and therefore under a controlling spirit. You know what? He's a godly man, but he went to the battle anyway, and nearly lost his life. So you notice this; he heard what God said, but the influence of the controlling relationship hindered him responding to God's direction, and he nearly lost everything. Very sobering that, isn't it? It was only because he cried out to the Lord in the heat of the battle that he survived.

I've seen many people that are in controlling relationships, and when they come to trying to hear God, there's too much confusion in their life, until they resolve the issue of control in the relationship. Getting the idea? Okay, well I think that's probably enough, we've covered enough. [Laughs] But the last one is, you can't be passive if you're going to find the will of God. How are we going to discover the will of God? Look at the passions, desires in your heart, the things God's put into you, the things that move you, create stirrings of passion, whatever in your life. You want to find the will of God, well what does God expect you to be responsible for? Lay your desires out, set some goals, lay some plans out, and then bring your plans before the Lord. He doesn't want you to be a slave. Does this agree with the written word of God? Have you sought any counsel on this? Do you have a peace in your heart about it? Are you open to consider that the timing may not be right? A lot of people say, I got called to minister, called to ministry! Yeah, yeah, I did too, and you know it took me years to ever fulfil it. You know calls of God, there's a preparation time. Don't think because God called you, you're going to jump up and do something great tomorrow. Start with something little today. Okay then.

Consider how the impact of your desires will affect the people around you, and also, are you open to the counsel of people? These are good things to learn aren't they? So desires and the will of God, the will of God is deeply connected to the desires of your heart, but you have to learn to bring your heart into alignment with God's heart, and then you'll eliminate some desires as being trivial. Some things, which car you're going to buy, hey - you choose! But if you borrow too much, you're going to be in trouble. It's as simple as that you know? Which house you're going to live in, where you're going to live, in Havelock, Flaxmere? Well how much have you got in the bank? Use wisdom. There's a lot of decisions in life are about actually using wisdom, and then listening to God's word deep in the heart, or direction on the way. Amen. [Amen.]

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Eph.2:10 “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”.

People long for a sense of purpose – destiny. God has written this desire into our hearts.

Destiny: Not fate, karma, something that is predetermined and you cannot change it. God invites us to relationship with Him and to discover what He has called us to do.

God has prepared unique works for you to do – it is a walk with God representing Him.

Eph. 2:2 “You once walked according to the course of this world … fulfilling the desires of the flesh and mind …”

Before we came to Christ we lived and walked in the values, lifestyle of the culture. This culture is influenced by demonic spirits. We did what we wanted – desires of flesh and mind. Now we are joined to Christ we begin to develop new values, new desires, world-view.

2. Your Desires and the Will of God

Questions

How are your desires connected to the will of God?

How can you discover the Will of God for your life?

(a) The Will of God is connected to your heart’s desires

· Prov.4:23 “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life”.

· God has hard wired desires, passions, gifts into your life.

· Discovering desires, passions and gifts = discovering who we are – what designed to do:

· e.g. What do you love to do

What are you good at?

What are you passionate about?

What do others see in you?

What stirs you up – makes you angry?

What stirs compassion in your heart?

· Don’t argue with how God has made you – He didn’t make a mistake.

(b) Separated from God our desires tend to be self centred

· We tend to protect self, avoid painful experiences, memories, emotions.

· We tend to be self centred

Obtain our goals/desires at expense of others – Jam.4:1-4

Put our interests/welfare ahead of others – Mat. 16:21-23

Resist unexpected demands on time and resources.

(c) Connected and Yielded to God our desires change

· Ps.37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

· Delight = 6026 = to be soft, pliable, yielded, easily moved or shaped.

· Walking with the Lord brings change in desires and priorities.

· He delights in giving us our hearts desires – our responsibility is to monitor desires.

· Col.3:1-2 “Set your affection on things above not on things of the earth”.

· Our journey our walk with God requires we change our world-view – way we see life.

· Our Desires

o Can be just matters of interest/preference – wisdom.

o Can be destructive and harmful to self or to others – bring to the Cross.

o Can be deep motivations for life’s purpose – cultivate.

3. How to Discover the Will of God

This is a key question for every believer.

Jn.17:4 “I have glorified you on earth, I have finished the work which you have given me to do”.

Jn.5:38 “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me”

Practical Keys

(i) What is the desire, passion of your heart?

e.g. Moses Act 7:23/ Samson Jud.14:1-6/ Jacob Gen.30:30/Jesus Lk.2:49.

Find what you love – make it how you love.

(ii) What does God expect me to be responsible for?

God doesn’t want you to be a slave – wants you to be a Son.

Connect with heart and identify desires, make plans and interact with God.

Prov.16:1 “To man belongs the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes reply of tongue”.

Prov.16:9 “In his heart man plans his course but the Lord directs his steps”.

You cannot remain neutral or passive – Mt 25 – Talents – initiative.

(iii) Does this agree with/contradict written Word of God?

Many choices in life are laid out in principles of the Word of God.

Act. 7:11.

(iv) Do you have a peace in your heart?

Col.3:15 “Let peace of God rule in your heart”.

Rule = 1018 = to arbitrate, govern, be an umpire.

(v) Are you open to consider timing, readiness, preparation?

You may have a desire but preparation is needed.

Prov.3:3-5 “Trust in the Lord”.

(vi) What will be the impact of your desires/plan upon others?

Gal.5:13 “You are called to liberty, but do not use liberty as an occasion of the flesh but by love serve one another”.

(vii) Are you open to the counsel of wise men?

Prov.11:14 “Where there is no counsel the people fall – but in multitude of counsel there is safety.”

Prov.12:15 “Way of a fool is right in his own eyes but he who heeds counsel is wise.”

4. Hindrances to Hearing the Will of God

(i) Having an Idol in your heart – mindset! Ezek. 14:7, 1 Kings 22:4-22 Ahab.

(ii) Immaturity or disobedience - 2 Tim.4:3.

(iii) Influence of Controlling Relationships - 2 Chron. 18:1 – Jehosophat.

(iv) Personal agenda – Self Preservation - Mt. 16:21-23

(v) Passivity – waiting for God to do something - Jer.29: 13-14.

The Cross and the Kingdom (4 of 7)

Sun 17 Jul 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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The common misunderstandings people have is that somehow there's some force that forces everything to work according to a certain pattern and you have no control over it. Sometimes people have this idea God is sovereign, God's in charge of everything, so whatever happens God's to blame for it and we can't really do much about that. Now these are very wrong concepts. In fact although God has planned a life and things for us to accomplish, He gives within it a great deal of creativity for us to partner with Him, rather than just be robots and slaves.

I want to share today a message called The Cross and the Kingdom, The Cross and The Kingdom. We've been doing a series, and the series has been about the area of desires, dreams and destiny. We looked at the area of destiny, and the common misunderstandings people have is that somehow, there's some force that forces everything to work according to a certain pattern, and you have no control over it. Sometimes people have this idea God is sovereign, God's in charge of everything, so whatever happens, God's to blame for it, and we can't really do much about that. Now these are very wrong concepts. In fact, although God has planned a life and things for us to accomplish, He gives within it, a great deal of creativity for us to partner with Him, rather than just be robots and slaves.

So last week we looked at the area of desires and destiny. In Psalm 37, Verse 4, we found, delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart, so clearly it's God's joy to give us things that are in our heart, the things we desire. We found that in discovering God's purpose for your life, one of the keys to it are, what are the desires that you have in your heart, what sorts of deep longings, deep desires, what gifts do you have? What passions do you have, what yearnings do you have? What is it that fires you up, and gets you really going? This is most likely connected to how God has wired you for what you're called to do with your life. Most people, if they begin to discover what they really desire and are passionate about, and begin to do it, their whole life comes alive.

We found also God not just leads us by the desires of our heart, but also He will speak and give revelation, so He speaks to us - for example, I love teaching, and so I got to teach in a high school, until one day I was mowing the lawns, and God spoke to me. God interrupted my plans, and my desires, and all the things I was thinking about, and He spoke about calling me into pastoral ministry. It was quite a clear voice from heaven. It was God speaking, saying I know you've set the course out where you're going, but I've got something higher for you, you wouldn't have thought about. So God, by revelation, can enlarge our thinking, so we think out of the box, and higher than we would normally think.

So one guide to direction in your life are the desires and dreams that you have in your heart, the dreams, the passions and gifts. Another is listening to God, and having God speak to you, but you have to operate out of both, because as many of you would realise, God doesn't talk to you all the time. It doesn't seem so anyway. Most of us, there's a bit of time between God saying one thing and saying the next. It's not like He tells you all the things you have to do. He gives room for you within that to do. Then the third part of finding direction in our life is applying the principles of wisdom. In other words, God doesn't want to tell you everything. He wants you to learn wisdom from the word of God, and apply yourself, so you run your life according to sound principles, so you're not always needing a miracle all the time - not good to run your business needing a miracle all the time. You need to run it on wisdom. See, you need to build your marriage on wisdom.

We need to build our life around wisdom, which is found in the principles of God, and God says if you lack wisdom, you don't know what to do, or how to handle the issues of life, come to Him. He gives freely wisdom for every situation in life, and He gives it freely, but in James it tells us that in Chapter 1, it says ask in faith, not doubting - if you doubt, you don't get anything. So we need to be confident that all that we need for life, God makes available, and if I'm not sure what to do, I need to ask Him sincerely, and as I ask, believe He will give me the insights I need. Many people pray and ask, but they don't persevere in believing God will give them the answer they need. We'll talk about that in another session, I'll talk about answered prayer. So that's how God guides us.

Now within the will of God, God gives us great freedom to take initiative, and right through the Bible initiative was always encouraged. I want to go and talk about what I'd call a key issue. I have read lots of motivational material, and I found it's all very good, very positive, but there's one thing runs right through it, and that is it's all about me, and it's about me getting ahead. There's no place for Christ and his kingdom, or the cross at all, so today what I want to do is, just as we're looking at the area of desires, dreams and destinies, I want to just highlight for you the place the cross has in all of this, otherwise you'll get very disappointed, because you won't understand why God isn't doing what you expect or - and He seems to be frustrating you, or you're waiting around and nothing much is happening, or you get out there, and you find after you've done all these things, that your life is quite messy, and you've got no idea why.

So I want you to have a look with me in Ephesians, Chapter 2, Verse 2. I want to just talk a little bit about the kingdom of self, the kingdom of self. We're all part of that kingdom of self, we've all got a part of us that likes to be a bit selfish - I want the biggest bit. That looks good, I'll have a second one. We've all got that part that likes to be a bit selfish haven't we, and - tell the person next to you, it's you he's talking about. I'm just not like that. I'm so sweet and loving, I would never be like that. Reality is [laughs] I grieve over how selfish I am at times.

Okay then, notice this. It says - Verse 1, now He's talking about how we've been changed by coming into relationship with Christ. Now you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins - so we once were cut off from God. Because of sin, and because of errors, and doing our own thing, we cut off from God completely. Now I want you notice the lifestyle of a person cut off from God. There are many verses on it, I'll just use this one. It says, in which we once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, whom we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling desires of the flesh and mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

So what He's essentially saying is that the world is governed by a certain principle that operates. Notice He said, the course of the world, that's the world, the age of this world, the order of this world, and it operates a certain way. It's quite interesting to notice this. He points it out very clearly - the world operates a certain way, and it's governed by the principle of self-interest. What's in this for me? What do I get out of this? So you find if you look behind a lot of the political dealings with nations, where a generosity often has an agenda behind it, and it's all about advancing me. So you find often help and aid that's given into nations looks like it's very kind, but behind it actually there are strings attached, and the true agenda is it's being used to get some nation ahead or to gain influence, so the principle of the world - it doesn't take you much to figure this one out. Children are pretty selfish as they grow up. It's all about me. They learn that when they're one and two, and it's hard to get it out of them, the rest of their life [laughs] isn't it aye? Me! No! I do it! So you find there's this whole thing as children grow, it's all about me and my world, and somehow in your life you need to learn it's not all about you.

Much of the modern child training, centres the whole child training around the child, and it's needs. What folly is that? That's the course of the world, it's not the course of God. It's not the course of the kingdom, and it produces a terrible fruit in people's lives. So you notice it says - I want you to see two things here, that the world is governed or runs on a principle of self-interest, what's in this for me, what do I get out of it. That's how it thinks, and most decisions are made around how can I advance myself? What can I get? How can I get ahead? How can I advance myself? That's not entirely all wrong, however it says that there's a spirit that is at work in that thinking, so self-centred thinking is governed by a spiritual power, and when you look at people and how they run their lives, you see most of them are pretty self-centred and self-directed and basically they run their life around the principle of what's in this for me. If there's nothing in it for me, then I'm not going to do it, so there is a spirit behind that. That's called the course of this world, and there's a spiritual power, and there's a reason that spiritual power is there.

Notice it says here, that spirit power that works in the children of disobedience. That word works means to energise, so self-centred thinking is energised by demonic powers, so this is not how God designed man. We were never designed to operate that way. This is the current fallen condition of the world. Now if you go through the education system, you'll find there's a whole generation coming up now, and their whole frame of thinking is, what is in this for me? What can I get out of this? How can I use you to get ahead? I'll connect with you, you can help me, then I'll get ahead, then I'll leave you - and all of that kind of thinking is totally contrary to the principles of building a sound and successful life according to kingdom principles. It just doesn't work. What it does is, it uses people to promote ones self, and when you use people to promote yourself, you actually increase self-centredness in your life, you don't tap into the supply God had for you, and you hurt people on the way.

It's horrendous. People get hurt and used and people say I feel used, so we have to deal with that kind of stuff. So where did this culture originate? You find it's found very clearly in the Garden of Eden, so found in Genesis, Chapter 3. In fact, it actually began earlier than that, but let's just see it manifest in Genesis, Chapter 3. So you notice that Adam and Eve had everything they could want, and they were placed in a garden. They were given room and responsibility, given great privileges, they were given great opportunity, but God said I want you to respect My right to rule creation by not eating the fruit of that tree. Everything else you can have - that one you can't have. It's like saying don't touch the wall, there's something in us wants to touch it [laughs] so that was the deal.

Now you notice how the devil came. It says the devil came like a serpent. Verse 4, the serpent said to the woman hey, don't worry, you won't die if you eat that fruit. Now notice this, notice this: God knows in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, you will be like God, you'll know good and evil, and when the woman saw it was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took it's fruit and ate, and gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then their eyes were opened. They changed. They saw things that they were never intended to see. Now I want you to notice that the devil was the originator of this whole self-centred process of thinking. It's found in Ezekiel, where he said even though I'm an archangel, I will arise, I will ascend, I will exalt my throne above the throne of God. In other words, he refused to accept his place in the kingdom of God and self interest, he sought to advance himself.

Now here he is in the garden doing the same thing, and notice the thinking. Here's the thinking in here; you can't trust God to supply your needs. If you're going to get ahead, you've got to look out for number one, you've got to look after yourself, so don't worry about what God says. Don't worry about Him talking about sin and consequences, that's a lot of nonsense. You're not going to die. Here's the deal; God is holding out. You can't trust Him with your provision for life, you need to rise up and begin to act in your own interests. You need to look after number one. This is the core of the fall, so the core of the fall is not just about sins and some bad things. It's actually about the whole self-centred way of life, rejecting God's right to rule. Instead the kingdom of self emerges; I will rule myself. Now this is where it originated. Now when you come to Christ, it doesn't mean necessarily that automatically all of that changes. In fact when people come to Christ, they've come into experience a new life, but the problem is most of the way we think and run our life and operate out relationships and everything are still shaped by the old model of thinking, paradigms we were in, so it take a while to shift, and start to understand the principles of the kingdom of God, that lead to a happy life, relationships and fulfilment.

So really the core of it was, what's in this for me? How do I get ahead? You can't trust God. It's all about me and my interests. That is the core of the fall. Now you understand that getting saved is not just about getting your sins forgiven and getting back to heaven. Getting saved is about changing the core of your being, from being a self-centred person, to being a love-centred person, where you can reflect what God is like. His kingdom is a kingdom of loving and serving, of advancing the interests of others. That's His kingdom - so selfish ambition always is a gateway for demonic spirits. Let's have a look in James, Chapter 3. So whenever people don't address this issue, they find themselves with all kinds of problems in their life, so you could be a Christian, still have havoc in your life as we've so often observed.

In James, Chapter 3, Verses 13 to 16; Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works that are done in meekness of wisdom. Now you notice here it is - but if you have bitter envy and self-seeking, self-centredness, selfish ambition in your heart, don't boast, don't lie against the truth. That does not come from heaven. It does not come from above. Rather the self-centred way of life, what's in it for me, it's all about me, what can I get, how can you get me here - it says it's earthly, it's sensual and it's demonic. Very simple. When you go down that route, no matter how nice it looks, it opens the door for demons - for where envy and self-seeking exists. Envy, that means we look what others have, and we want what others have. You have a look at the advertising, advertising works on that principle. You see other people are happy, the conclusion is if you want to be happy you buy that, and so we begin to want what others have. Then we begin to do things financially that create stress in our lives.

If we have a look at the world economic system, it's stressed out, because people out of envy, just ignored basic success principles in finances. You spend more than you've got coming in, then you're going to have some trouble. It just makes sense doesn't it really? Okay, notice here it says that confusion in every evil thing are there, so the fruit of selfish ambition is confusion in all kinds of activity, and the core of it is that I believe that I can rule my life better than God can, so I'm going to run it my way rather than run it God's way, see? Now have a think about for example in Genesis 13, Abraham and Lot. Now Abraham was told by God, see this whole land, I'm going to give you the whole land. Now did he have the whole land? No, he didn't, but God said I'm going to give it to you, so he had a word from God, had a promise from God. So he had his nephew Lot come along with him, and in the end they were so blessed and everyone was being blessed, then there come a quarrel between Lot's herdsmen and Abraham's herdsmen, because they'd been so blessed there was now conflict over resources.

So Abraham, notice how Abraham deals with it. He says let's have no conflict. Let's not have conflict. Conflict comes - in James it says - when you desire but don't have, and then you fight for it, so he said let's have no conflict. He's a man of peace, so he said here's what it is. Now listen to this. This shows you him operating in kingdom principle. He says see, you choose what you'd like and you can have that, and I'll have what's left. Lot, not understanding kingdom principles, looks down and what looks best to him he takes, that and ends up destroying his whole future. If he'd walked in the principles of honour, he'd say something like this; Abraham, that's very kind of you but I realise I'm blessed because of the blessing of God on you. I will defer, and let you make the choice, and show me what you'd like me to do.

In other words, he did not operate out of the kingdom, he just operated out of what's best for me, and it looked good but it cost him his marriage, his family. It cost him his character, cost him his finances, cost him his reputation, so the self-centred way of life looks good, seems right to a man, but ends up impoverished in various ways. Getting the idea? It's all quiet today, goodness me. [Laughs]

Have a look in Matthew, Chapter 16 and you'll see again how Jesus exposes that, behind the self-centred way of life, there is a demonic power. I want you to have a look with me, we referred to this the other day, Verse 21 in Matthew 16. So Jesus spoke, and from that time, Jesus began to show to His disciples He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, be killed and be raised on the third day. So notice what He's saying; I'm going to suffer. I'm going to die, and then I'll rise from the dead. That's quite a good deal isn't it really - if you focus on rising from the dead. But here's the thing. Peter, as he heard Jesus say that, immediately his mind goes into overload, what will happen to me? So this is what he says. He said pity Yourself Lord. He began to rebuke Him, he took Jesus aside and said now listen, don't You go talking cross. Don't You go talking about death. Don't You go talking about suffering, be it far from You Lord, or pity Yourself Lord, this shall not happen to You. Now notice behind it there's an agenda, because if Jesus dies, what's going to happen to Peter? His whole plan of being next to Jesus in the kingdom is going to be ruined, so he looks at Jesus' clear statement of the will of God, and it's just foreign to him, because when we walk in the ways of God, they just are crazy compared to the self-centred way of life.

You know in the world you grab as much as you can, save as much as you can, hold on to as much as you can, you'll get ahead. The kingdom of God, it says learn how to sow, learn how to give, learn how to be generous, and it'll be given to you. No, well that doesn't make any sense at all, so for the natural man thinking from a natural perspective, he will run his life totally different to the spiritual man, who thinks from a kingdom perspective. Our challenge is, as believers, to shift and trust God, and begin to learn to live out of kingdom principles. Okay then, so notice what Jesus says straight away. He turned and said to Peter, get behind me Satan, you are an offense to me! Now notice, what Peter is doing is he's advancing his own agenda, and Jesus says what's behind that is demonic, and it's a stumbling stone to me, because it's so easy to go down that route. So He said, if I listen to you, if I listen to your good plans about saving myself, and come up with an alternative plan, I will miss totally why I'm here. This was a major destiny question for Jesus; I know what I'm called to do, and if you're trying to tell me to feel sorry for myself and back up, you are a stumbling block to me.

When you set out to seek God and to walk with God, there will be times when people near to you will quite oppose the decisions you make. They will be just appalling to them, because their frame of reference is completely different to yours. You would think that when I left school teaching and become a Christian school teacher, Dannevirke Christian School, that people would be very happy with that. They were not happy. The ones around me, family, were not happy at me doing this. When I got called into pastoring they were not happy about me pastoring, not happy at all. Their perspective was, this goes against how we see life ought to be done. We're not thinking from a kingdom of God and eternal perspective. Getting the idea? Okay, so you all know someone who has this kind of issue don't you aye?

So what Jesus did was, He revealed that the cross is at the core of the way of life of the kingdom of God, that when you walk to fulfil the things of the kingdom of God, there'll be times when the purpose of God crosses your will, clashes with your will and you have to choose whether you'll trust God and yield to a bigger plan, or whether you'll just do what you want. Now was this difficult for Jesus? Yes, it was difficult for Jesus. We read in Matthew, Chapter 27 and also in Luke 22, it said when He went into the Garden of Gethsemane He prayed like this, and He said Father, if it's at all possible, let this depart from Me, I don't want to die. So how did He feel about suffering and death? I don't want to do it. He said Father, strengthen Me, if this is the only way that You can accomplish Your purpose, then not My will, but Your will be done. So you find there, right in the Garden of Gethsemane, a huge clash over the desire to save self and to look after self, with embracing the will of God, which at times involves suffering and death.

You'll find every one of us who walks with God, there'll be times when we face painful situations, and everything in you wants to back up and then it's a matter of well who's will, who's kingdom with prevail? Will I save myself, or will I trust God and yield to Him, and go through a painful experience, trusting on the other side of it is His resurrection life, because crosses, it never ends at the cross. The other side is resurrection. We want the resurrection without the cross - but there isn't any way to get that, so we have found, and I've noticed in like say for example, a principle in the world; in the world it will tell you, you can have it now, pay for it later. In God it never works that way. In God it's exactly the opposite; you pay now, and the blessings come later. It's just so totally different, so in God's kingdom it works completely different to the world or secular or self-centred kingdom. We have to understand that.

So - you're all getting really quiet - so the cross then, is a key to walking in the kingdom of God. We can't escape the cross. Jesus said in Matthew 16, He said if anyone's going to follow Me, he will have to deal with the issue of self, take up his personal cross, face the challenges that will come into his life through following Me, and then follow Me. So how about this? We want a Christianity which is blessed, and good, and everything's great, but we keep the cross out of it? But there's no way you could keep the cross out of it. The cross is central to the life of discipleship. What does that mean? We don't have to go and hang on the cross like Jesus, He's done all of that for us. What we have to do is face that the cross is where my will, and my ambition, and my desires, come into conflict with what God is revealing He wants me to do, and I surrender and yield and do what He wants me to do.

Anyone who's been a Christian for some years would understand, this is a part of walking with God. If any man, any man wants to follow Me, he must deny self, take up the cross, and come follow Me. That doesn't mean you let go all your desires, and your dreams, and all the things you've got in your heart, and now there's nothing left. No, it's not that at all. What He's saying is, there'll come a point where your ambitions will conflict with God's plan, and you need to learn to yield. Getting the idea? So here's the thing. If I just get you all revved up about desires and dreams and destiny, get you all excited, and now you'll be getting up all kinds of ideas, and coming up with all sorts of things, and away you go and you're on your track now. See the problem with that is, it's all driven by ego and self, so just because you've got a lot of desires, and got a lot of dreams, doesn't mean that God really wants you to go down that route. There might be a cost, a disastrous cost to fulfilling it. What we have to do is apply wisdom and revelation to it, and that may mean I have to yield up some things I like, in order to live the life God called me to live. It's not either/or, it's just that there is an embracing of the principle of the cross. The cross is central to the kingdom of God.

Listen, God so loved the world He gave - notice the cross is the whole core of the kingdom of God. The Father loved, and He released His Son, sacrificed His Son. The Son loved the Father, He sacrificed His life. The Holy Spirit yielded His life to make this all happen. This is the core of the godhead is sacrificial, self-sacrifice and giving and generously serving. That's the core of it. Think about it. Jesus is having His last meeting with His disciples, and He bows down and He washes their feet, and of course everyone's saying well You're the Lord, You're the big shot. You shouldn't be doing the foot washing stuff. He says no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand the kingdom. In the kingdom, if you want to be great, you have to serve. If you won't let Me engage you like this, then you haven't got what it takes to advance the kingdom. Foot washing is part of the nature of God. Jesus said, I do what the Father says, so when Jesus washed feet, it was the Father washing feet. Imagine God washing your feet. It's hard to understand. How can someone so big and powerful descend to such things? Because it's the nature of the kingdom, it's not about me, it's about love being manifest.

Now you see you've got to understand that our whole culture, including much of the church culture, is filled with self-centred, self-advancing, self-promoting agendas. Now we've got to come to a decision that this is not biblical Christianity, that if it has no cross in it anywhere, and just a historical cross of Jesus, something is missing in the core of the message. The cross is the power of God to salvation, so when I yield at the cross, that's when God's power is released to me. So what are some things that we can yield, and let go at the cross?

Now I'm not going to look all these verses up, I'll just give them to you to have a think about, but the Bible says that Jesus was crucified on the tree. In the Bible there are exactly seven references to what's called an oak tree. The word oak or terrapin means to be strong, strength, to have strength, to be mighty. So I went through the Bible and I began to look at every reference to an oak tree in the Old Testament, and when they referred to the oak tree, usually something happened at the oak tree. The oak tree is quite a picture prophetically for us of the cross. It's the tree where our will intersects with the will of God, and we yield, and things leave our life, and we receive something from God. The core of it is I must trust if I let go, God will fill me up. If I yield to Him, He will supply for me. If I surrender to Him, He will give to me. It's an issue of trust, so here's a few of the things. I want to throw them all out for you and I'll just list them and then we'll finish up this message.

Okay, here's number one. Number one, in Genesis 35, Verse 4; the first mention of the oak tree was the place where idols were buried. An idol is a substitute for God, so one of the things that the cross does is, it's the place where we make a decision to let go the substitutes for God. If your career is a substitute for God, you need to come and put this thing before the cross. I remember I used to love old cars. Man, I was into V8s big time - I still love them. I turn my head every time I hear a V8. I love V8s. I love it, it's still in me - I'm a petrol head see, and I love it, but there was a time and I had an old V8, 1934 V8. Boy, it was a great beast, but it was a beast, and God said it's actually an idol.

He said you've got to deal with your idol, because at this season in your life, this is not going to help you in your serving Me, nor in your marriage, nor your family, nor your finances. It needs to go - so I had to bury the idol, and it just meant going to the cross. It meant kneeling down, saying God, I'm so sorry I've let this be the substitute for You. Lord, I embrace Your plan for my life, I release it and let it go. I said God if You, you know, You just bring someone in. I'm not even going to try to sell, just bring someone to me. Within four days someone walked in and said I heard you've got a '34 Ford V8, can I buy it? I said yes, you can, one condition. Everything I got with it goes. Oh really? So yes, throw out a price. He threw out a price, it's gone, and it was just like that. I never regretted it, but there's a place of burying idols, things that have got in our heart, that are substitutes for God.

In Genesis 35, Verse 8, the cross is also the place of grieving over disappointments and losses. The world is full of disappointment, and loss, and broken dreams, and shattered expectations, and there's a real pain. When you have pain in your heart from those things, you have to come to the cross. It takes something from you to admit that I'm hurt, and broken, and grieving, and in pain. It actually crosses our world, because we really want to look good, but when you come to the cross, it really deals a blow to self to just say God, actually I'm hurt, I'm broken, I'm grieving, I feel deeply disappointed, and release those disappointments at the cross, weep them out and receive His joy, His strength as a replacement.

The third thing about the oak tree is in 1 Chronicles 10, Verse 12. It was where Saul was buried, and Saul had great potential but he failed because he just followed his own will, his own way. He just did what he wanted to do, so the cross is also the place to bury our failures. We all have failures, but if you don't deal with your failures, then they just continue to remain a source of eroding confidence and strength in you. We need to take our failures to the Lord, so we come to the cross and admit, actually I really blew it. It's really hard to say I'm sorry sometimes. It comes against your self will. It comes against your pride, but that's what the cross is about. I come and say Jesus, I'm so sorry I have failed, I really blew it. I really said things I shouldn't have said. I was acting hasty Lord, and I bring and bury my failures at the cross. He'll never bring them up again if I bring them at the cross. The cross is core to success in the kingdom.

See, here's another place in 1 Samuel 17, Verse 9 and it's the place, the Valley of Elah meaning the Valley of the Oak Tree, was where David slew Goliath. See, now what was the problem with Goliath? Goliath was a giant that intimidated everyone. Everyone was afraid, and so what did they do? They all looked after themselves and fled. David slew the giant of fear, so it's a place of facing and overcoming our fears, and trying to preserve our life. See, so there are some times God will want you to do things, and you're afraid to do them, so we come to the cross, we just admit God, I'm afraid, I'm afraid of what will happen to me. It's all about me - so you begin to yield your fears to the cross, and draw strength from Him. So the cross is the place we can deal with our fears, and bury our fears, slay our fears.

Here's another thing, in 2 Samuel 18, Verse 19. Absalom was slain, and he was in the oak tree. Now Absalom was a man full of pride, but he was full of self ambition, and what Absalom did was this. I've known people over the year who do this to me. It's a very, very painful thing but it's just part of the walk with God and you've got to learn to handle it, and that is Absalom stood by the gate and he said oh, what's your trouble? He said oh, man, that's a big problem isn't it. Well it's too bad the king hasn't really got a provision for this, but you know if I was king, then I could actually deal with this for you. So what he was doing was he was promoting himself, and speaking erosively of King David, and eventually he created a huge sedition in the nation of Israel, and many lost their lives as a result of it. So Absalom speaks then of pride and hidden agendas, trying to promote yourself. Now there are times we've just got to come to the cross and say Jesus, I need to deal. I've been trying to really get ahead. You see, get this - if you intend to be a Christian leader of any kind and don't deal with ambition, selfish ambition, you will use God's people to further your ambition. This is not the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is about me loving people, and helping them fulfil what God called them to do, not about me using people to fulfil my vision and ambition. There's a huge challenge I think, facing the church in the western world at the moment, over models of church, and style of church, that actually uses people to fulfil something, but actually doesn't activate and release people to fulfil the call of God in their life. I believe this is one major issue. I've had many contentions with various leaders in different places over this kind of thing, and I believe that God is calling the church to prepare people for their destiny, not to use people to build some great thing. That make sense to you? And so there is a point where our hidden agendas need to come to the cross.

Over the years and particularly now, it's a lot easier because I've got very strong prophetic people around me, and I've got a relational team where we can talk openly about things, but hidden agendas don't ever - they're not really a big problem now, because the prophetic people around me can spot them a mile off, just speak, hey, this is what's going on there, so that's wonderful. It's very secure to have that, but hidden agendas are where a person comes to you pretending to be something, and says all the nice words and the right things, but actually what they have is a plan to use you to get somewhere. Now this is the spirit of the world, and when we do that, that's deceptive, and it betrays relationships. We should have no agendas except to honour Christ, to honour His kingdom and that means I've got to bring my selfish agendas just to the cross. I've got to trust God to sort them out, got to trust God to work them out. Will I apply myself? Yes, I'll apply myself, however I've got to trust that I'm not going to ever have to use people to get where I want to get. I can actually love and serve people, and God will help me to get where I need to get.

Okay then, the last couple then, in Joshua 24:26 the cross was the place where Joshua covenanted that they would be the people of God. So the cross, we come and we make commitment; God, I will be Your child. You will be my God, and I will honour You with my life. Now you see selfish ambition has only a very temporary perspective. It's what can I do to get me ahead, whereas covenant relationship with God, I'm looking at eternity. The life is just going to go by real quick, and then there's eternity. I want to build right while I'm building my life; build my marriage right, family right, business right, finances right.

And the last place in Judges 6:11, guess what? Gideon encountered God at the oak tree, and God spoke to him and said, you're not going to be doing this threshing wheat anymore. I have a destiny that's much greater than that. So it was at the place of the cross, surrender to the plan of God, that he discovered what God had for him, and even though he was afraid, he rose, and he touched a whole nation. So the cross is core to the kingdom of God. There's no advance of the kingdom of God without embracing the principle of the cross in our life. There are times when it's wonderful, there are times when we have to come on our knees and just repent.

Now I'll just give you one last thing just to finish up, then we'll just have our time of Communion. Every one of us has to deal with self-centredness. I wish I could help you. I'd love you to come up and I'll pray for you, but it's not going to work, because you'll go back, you'll be just as selfish. It's not going to work that way. It's the principle that runs our life, and it only comes when we come to the cross, so we're going to have Communion in just a moment. Let me give you just a last thing. Most of you would know the Parable of the Talents. Now get this, this is a tremendous insight to the kingdom of God. One of them five, and you notice what he's told; go out and trade. Now notice what he's given - passions, abilities, giftings and God says just go out and make something happen, so God gave him total initiative how to do it. He went and he proffered it, because he wanted to be a blessing to his master. Now notice when he comes back, the master comes back, he said your talents have got this. So in other words he was continually thinking about how he could be productive with what he had.

The one with two did the same thing. Now the one with one, which is the majority of people, did this. He buried the talent, and this is it, listen to this. He buried the talent, because he was looking after himself, and had no heart for the master's interests to go ahead. The master said oh really? Well you're wicked. You have a negative, bad influence. You're very lazy. All you're seeking to do is look out for yourself, and I'll take from you what you had, that opportunity that you had, and it'll be taken from you, given to the one who had five. Now this is a very clear - this is a Parable of the kingdom, that God gives us gifts and talents, He expects us to take lots of initiative, risks and to try things out. But self-centredness will always frustrate us from advancing in the kingdom of heaven, until we actually come to the cross and say God, you gave your life for me. All of my life is in Your hands. I'm trusting You that if I walk with You, and follow Your ways, You in turn will bless every aspect of my life. And even if I don't see it, I still trust You. Amen.

Okay, let's just bring the Communion out now and just set the Communion.

I want us just to open our heart to the Lord. Father, we just thank You. We just take the bread and take the cup right now - thanks very much. Just take the bread, take the cup in your hands. Take the bread and take the cup. Peter said Lord, don't You go to the cross. It's going to mess up all my plans to get ahead. Jesus, don't You go to the cross, it's going to mess up our ministry here and what about all the miracles? Jesus, don't You go to the cross, we've just got a great thing going here. I really don't want You to go to the cross. I don't want You to mess it up for us. Jesus said get behind Me, He said because I know what My Father's called Me to do. The Bible says for the joy ahead of Him, He endured the cross. Most of us we think of the cross, think of something you've got to give up, but Jesus didn't think that. He thought that the joy ahead, I've got blessing out the other side. I've got resurrection life. I've got to a place where I overcome everything, so when He went to the cross it says for the joy that was ahead of Him.

He was continually thinking of the benefits for you and me, and the kingdom that would come into this world. He was looking at the power of sin and selfishness being broken. He was looking at the Father's will being done. He was looking at people of every generation being saved, and coming into the kingdom of God. He said it's worth it. I know you want me to hang on here and just keep up this nice ministry, but He said actually, I've got a bigger plan. The bigger plan is, I go to the cross and afterwards you guys all do it. Oh Lord, I don't like that plan, we don't want to lose You. Well Peter, that's not how it's going to be, because I'm surrendered to the kingdom of My Father. I've come not to do My own will, but to do the will of My Father, so Peter you're going to have to let this go. You're going to have to deal with this issue in your life.

I wonder what area today that God wants you to deal with in your life, an area where there's self-centredness, selfishness, agendas, where your life's gripped by fears, disappointments, failures, griefs? There's so many things that can hold us back, and so we don't trust God, we try and preserve ourself. But today, as we take the bread and the cup - here, listen to this, listen to this - these are symbols to remind you and me of the extent of God's love and commitment to us. No one you know ever gave their life up for you, but Jesus did. As you take the bread and take the cup, let's remember now that God has demonstrated His love in providing everything we need. The only honourable response I can make is to yield my life to Him today.

God, help me to deal with the principle of self-centredness. Help me Lord to embrace that via the cross, the resurrection power of God will flow in my life. Lord, help me to deal with self-centred agendas, to not hold on to pains and griefs and disappointments and failures and trying to protect myself, but to Lord bring them all to the cross and walk in the freedom and liberty that comes the other side. Let's just eat and drink together shall we?

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Ps.37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart”.

Delight = OT6026 = Remain soft, pliable, yielded, easily moved or shaped.

The desires, passions and gifts in our life are connected to God’s purpose for our life.

To discover God’s purpose we need to identify desires/passions.

God guides us by (i) Desires of heart (ii) Wisdom (iii) Revelation – He speaks.

God gives us great freedom to take initiative e.g. Mt. 25:14+ Talents.

2. Kingdom of “Self”

(a) Culture is governed by principle of self interest

Eph.2:2 “…you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that spirit now works in the children of disobedience”.

The world is governed by the principle of self interest - “What’s in this for me?”

Course = NT 165 = Age period of time, or path of successive ages of time.

= value, culture, cares, temptations

This path or way of life is governed and influenced by demonic powers.

Works = NT1754 = to energise, empower something to happen.

(b) This Culture originated in the Garden of Eden

Gen.3:4-6 “You shall be as God…”

The heart and core of Kingdom of Satan is self interest – I will ascend, I will be like God.

The temptation was to abandon trust and alignment with God and to advance own interest.

What’s in this for me? How do I get ahead? It’s all about me and my interest.

Adam and Eve abandoned commitment to the King and His Kingdom for self promotion.

(c) Selfish Ambition activates Demonic Spirits

Jam.3:13-17 “…bitter envy and self seeking = confusion and every evil thing”.

Selfish ambition – getting ahead at the expense of others is destructive.

The fruit of selfish ambition is confusion and demonic activity.

E.g. Mt.16:21-23 “Get behind me Satan”.

Jesus outlined God’s purpose for His life – suffering and death on the Cross and resurrection.

Peter’s response came out of selfish ambition

Jesus identified the energising power behind this thinking as demonic.

Jesus affirmed the need to deal with selfish ambition – using others to advance self.

Jesus revealed the Cross is at the core of His Kingdom – it is a way of life.

(d) Jesus wrestled to Overcome Selfish Ambition

Mt.27:39 “Oh my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”.

Lk.22:42-44 “He being in agony prayed more earnestly”.

The natural man always resists pain, suffering, sacrifice – Jesus wrestled to gain victory – surrender to the Father’s Will.

His personal desire – avoid the Cross. His life commitment yield to the Father.

3. The Cross is the Door to the Kingdom of God

Heb.2:2 “Looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame”.

Jesus focus was on the resurrection life released by surrender to Father on the Cross.

Bible: References to Oak Tree – prophetic picture of the Cross.

Oak = OT424 = strong tree, to be strong.

(i) Place of burying idols – substitutes for God

– Gen.35:4 Jacob buried idols.

(ii) Place of grieving over disappointments and losses

– Gen.35:8 Jacob buried wife.

(iii) Place of burying our defeats, failures, pride

– 1 Chron.10:12 Saul.

(iv) Place of facing and overcoming fears, self preservation

– 1 Sam. 17:19 David slew Goliath.

(v) Place of bringing to death selfish ambition, hidden agendas, bitterness.

- 2 Sam 18:19 Absolum slain in tree.

(vi) Place of decision whose voice you will listen to

– 1 K.13:14 Young prophet – listened to voice of old prophet instead of personal revelation.

(vii) Place of decision to covenant to serve God.

- Josh 24:26.

(viii) Place of calling to fulfil God’s purpose in life.

- Jud.6:11 Gideon – received call to nation.

Each of us must face and deal with the core issue of self centredness.

Recognise and reject the common world view – what’s in this for me?

This mindset uses people and God to advance own interests.

Mt.25:14 – Parable of servants

All servants were given gifts, abilities.

The expectation on all was the same – be productive.

Successful servants

1) Took initiative )

2) Took risks ) = commended

3) Had the interest of the master in their heart ) increase

One Talent servant

1) Took no initiate/risk

2) Had his own interests in mind

3) Rebuked for being a negative influence and lost opportunities.

Dream Killers & What to do About Them (5 of 7)

Sun 31 Jul 2011  « Back to Top

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Complaining is the sign of a loser. You are losing because you can't see what the purpose of the difficulty is, and how it's not meant to destroy you, it's meant to help you grow. When you start complaining, you're dying and perishing and losing. You see if you complain, you're saying this; God, I don't trust you to use this for my good. God, I don't believe you'll help me. I'm just ticked off. God does not choose that outcome, you do. if you don't develop character, you'll never fulfil that thing God put in your heart.

Proverbs 29, Verse 18; Where there is no revelation, where there's no prophetic insight or direction, the people perish. Or literally, people miss opportunities that come into their life, because they haven't got prophetic insight, or revelation from God, or a sense of God given purpose and direction. Every person has some kind of thing in their heart. Now you may not know what the dream is God put in your heart. It may be locked up because of various restrictions in your heart, fears, insecurities, doubts, wrong beliefs. All kinds of things can lock up the dreams, but I can tell you now, that God has put something in your heart for you to accomplish that has eternal benefit. It's very clear in Ephesians 2:10. It says we are His workmanship, created in Christ for good works, which God prepared before we were even born to walk in them.

So every person here, God's put something in your heart that you need to accomplish with your life. No one wants to end up their life and we've done nothing with it, or we've filled our life with trivia, so the dream you have or vision is your future. If you have no dream you're drifting like a boat in a storm with no kind of rudder, so all of us need to have a dream, or have some kind of focus and direction and be able to articulate it and be moving our life consciously towards it. Now you can have all kinds of dreams of course, and you can dream of a great cruise on a ship. I dream about that a bit, I like those kinds of things, so dream on a ship. You could have a cruise, or you might be dreaming about a new job and that would be nice, get a promotion and do something better, a bigger wage. You might be dreaming of setting up a business, so everyone's got some kinds of things and if you will keep your dream in focus and work, gradually your dream will come about, because what you hold in your heart, you'll move your life towards.

So there's all kinds of dreams. There's dreams of a new house. Some people dream about a new house, some dream of living in Havelock, all kinds of dreams people have. But most of those dreams are about your personal fulfilment. The world's motivation style is all about personal fulfilment, but we have something greater than that. We're called to the kingdom of God, and so there are dreams which I would say are in your heart, they're wired into you and they can be great, they can be little, they can be small, they can be insignificant, and many of them are just about your personal fulfilment. They're about well, I enjoy this; I might have a dream of getting a boat and going fishing. I think having a boat and going fishing's a wonderful dream, I think it's an absolutely wonderful dream - but it's mainly about personal fulfilment. God wants to lift everything we do so we have something that's got a bigger bigness about it. See, God doesn't want you to be small. He's a big God with a big kingdom. He doesn't want us small, so therefore God puts into our hearts what I call God given dreams, and God given dreams are not about your personal fulfilment. They're about destiny fulfilment. It's a different thing.

Most of the people I meet primarily are concerned about their personal fulfilment. What they don't understand is when you link with God and begin to discover the dream God has for you, it'll shift you to destiny. Your whole life will be fulfilled in a different way, and the eternal benefits will be immense. So here's the thing - when God gives you a dream, I can tell you two things that'll always be a part of it. Here's one of them. One of them, it'll always be about the kingdom of God, and the calls of Christ being advanced, always. If your dream hasn't got that anywhere in it, well it's primarily your personal fulfilment. That's okay. Good for you, do it - but there's something greater that all of us can live for, and that's the dream that our life could count eternally and significantly, by advancing the cause of Christ in the earth. Now there's multiple ways it can be done; through business, it can be done through the media, it can be done through teaching, it can be done through education, government. There's many ways to advance the cause of Christ, many callings, many different ways, but at the core of it every one of it is this: number one is it's about advancing Christ's kingdom and His cause, and seeing people changed.

The second thing is, it can never be fulfilled without the Lord helping you. Now all the other dreams, many of them you can just do in your own ability if you have enough motivation, drive, a great goal setter. You can learn the techniques of fulfilling it, but the God given dreams cannot be fulfilled without God standing by you and helping you. They'll always have an overflow that advances the kingdom, so when people talk to you about dreams and visions, just run this thing by them - is it about personal fulfilment, or is it about the kingdom of God and the cause of Christ? If it's about personal fulfilment, the primary one that's going to be fulfilled and honoured and glorified in it is you. If it's a God given vision, the primary one that'll be honoured and glorified will be Christ. That's the difference.

So it helps if we are very clear between what I call dreams and desires, and things which are about personal fulfilment, and dreams and desires which originate in God, and have to do with our eternal destiny, reward in eternity, and making an impact with our life. They are different, and they come in different ways, so what I want to do is - dreams can be lost, so maybe you have a dream, or you don't have a dream. I want to talk over the next couple of weeks about what kills dreams, and there are a number of dream killers. I'm going to pick up one today which over the course of my ministry life I have observed without exception kills dreams, without exception. I can guarantee if God put a dream in your heart, and God's put some great thing in you to accomplish with your life, I guarantee if you miss this one it will cancel you out. It'll actually kill and destroy the dream, so dreams can be lost, dreams can be stolen, dreams can go in all kinds of ways, and we'll share some of those ways.

But dream killers are like a terrorist. You don't see them coming. You don't see them coming. You don't line up and there's the dream killer in front of you. Actually it sneaks up on you, and blows you up, and everyone around you if possible. You have a think about some of the great men in the world, who had great influence, and yet had a moral failure that literally shot down and destroyed their legacy. Think about that. Think about the men in the Bible, great men who had a major character failure, and it destroyed what they could have been and could have done, so the number one dream killer I want to pick up today is an undeveloped character. Most people don't realise that your character is incredibly important. Notice that verse in Ephesians 2:10. We looked at the last part of it, you know, you were His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before, you would walk in them. In other words we're focussed on doing something or fulfilling a purpose in God, but look at the first part. It says you're His workmanship. In other words God is wanting to build your life. God is wanting to develop you. God needs to build you, so you can be big enough to do the big thing He wants to do.

Here's a thing to understand, is your gift is bigger than your character. Your gift will open doors for you, but only your character will keep you there, and so you can have great giftings and talents - my observation over years is the most talented, gifted people I saw at high school were not the most successful people in life. My observation is over years in the church, and years working with Christians, is the most talented, most gifted people often are not successful, and there has to be a reason for it. We look at talent, we look at gifting, it's impressive. It dazzles. You think wow, we need that person! They've got such a gift on their life - but listen, what is their character? Because only the character can keep the person in the place and produce the fruit God intended, so if we're not committed to develop our character and understand God's process of developing character, no matter what your gift and dream is, at some point you'll derail because your character disqualified you from the dream, the thing you were trying to pursue. Very, very important this kind of thing.

See so your character - here, I'll give you a definition; your character is who you are, when no one but God is looking. See over the years I've found many people try and impress me, try and impress me with their gifts, their ability, they try and do all kinds of things. They try and put on a good show, but what really counts over the long term, is what is this person really like in their inward life? What kind of person is there? What sort of world view do they have? What values do they really have? What kind of attitudes do they have? What sorts of choices do they make when they're under pressure? How do they treat people? That's a big one - how do they treat people? Are people someone that I can use to get where I want to get, or are people someone precious to invest in, because God values them?

So motivation in the world, and particularly with this younger generation, is use everyone and everything to get where you want to get and fulfil yourself. Believe me, that's the path of destruction. The path that God wants us to walk on is quite different to that, and involves the shifting and changing of who we are on the inside. See, the world is concerned with what you look like - God is concerned with what you are like. World's concerned with image and appearance, so it's all about dressing right, being with the right people, connecting to the right people. I've even seen it in the church. I've seen Pastors - I'd look at it and I'd shake my head, I've seen them deliberately try to get near someone, so they can influence them, someone important, someone anointed, so this thing's everywhere. It's something in the heart of people, but God wants to teach us how to grow, and how to develop - so your character's who you really are, how authentic you are. It's who you are when no one's looking.

So let's have a look then at how God develops your character, and then we'll look at one example and I want to show you, this guy and man, there's this great guy. This really is classic, but most of the time we look at guys in the Bible, we say that couldn't be me - but actually it's there to teach us. So here it is in James, Chapter 1. How does God develop your character? Well actually God provides help, you actually develop your character. God provides you the help, you're the one who develops the character. Here it is, James 1, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing the testing of your faith produces patience or courageous endurance. But patience, let patience develop in your life or do its complete work - now notice this - so you may be mature and lacking in nothing. In other words what God's saying is that there is a process to get you from where you are to where God wants you to be. Lovely to have the vision and the dream - don't let it go. Develop it, plan it, work towards it, but there is a journey to get from where you are to get to where you want to be.

In that journey, unfortunately there is a thing called trials, pressures, difficulties, set backs, pains, griefs, disappointments. Believe me, if you're alive today, that's part of your life. There wouldn't be anyone in the room hasn't griefs, disappointments, set backs, frustrations, things not happening like you planned, like you wanted, people doing all kinds of weird things, people letting you down, people doing all kinds of crazy stuff. All of us face this. This is life, so if you're going through pressures, trials and difficulties, then welcome to life. Everyone has that life, including Christians. In fact Christians often have some additional pressures, trials, difficulties and hassles just because they're following Christ. Never wanted it, it just happened, you know? Talk to Paul.

So it tells us here, two things to do in the face of pressures and difficulties. The first one we realise is that pressures, trials and difficulties are used by God to develop courageous endurance inside you, to develop character that can stand and last the distance. That's the point of them. They produce something in your life. Notice it says, notice the trying of faith works. It actually produces something in your life, so the trying of your faith is where you are tested to see the quality of your trust and walk with God. How authentic are you? How deep are you? How committed to God are you? Do you walk out your faith? Is it something you do on Sunday, come and sing a few songs, look nice, feel good, go home? Or is this something that day by day you are walking out, trusting God?

So it tells us in the midst of it, rejoice or count it all joy. I don't know about you, but most people I notice don't count it all joy when they have trouble, not at all. The Bible says to count it all joy. Why is this? Because we have knowledge that God can use it to develop our inner man to get us to where He wants us to be. If you didn't know that, you'd be frustrated, and trying to avoid it all. If you know that, you can rejoice. Here's the second thing. If you don't know what to do when you're under pressure, ask God. He is willing to help you in every situation. He'll give you the wisdom, which means help you discover what to do, how to respond, how to face this thing, and the ability to do it. So God tells us that testings, trials, difficulties, pressures in life are good for us. Tell someone next to you stop complaining, this is good for you. Stop complaining.

Now what happens when difficulties and pressures and trials come, my observation with what most people do, including most Christians is this, is they complain. Complaining is the sign of a loser. You are losing because you can't see what the purpose of the difficulty is, and how it's not meant to destroy you, it's meant to help you grow. When you start complaining, you're dying and perishing and losing. You see, if you complain you're saying this; God, I don't trust you to use this for my good. God, I don't believe you'll help me. I'm just ticked off - that's saying it sort of nicely. I have said it worse than that. So when people face difficulties they do a number of things. One is they kind of what can I do? Powerless, helpless. Maybe I'll just say a prayer, maybe that'll help. Believe me, it won't, not if you've got that kind of attitude, that passivity. Other people say well it's just I guess I'm reaping what I deserve, what goes round comes round. I must've done something somewhere and I'm getting it back on me. Other people, they kind of get angry and resentful. Anyone got angry and resentful during trials? No, you see there's no one owning up.

No, well I'll own up. I tell you I've got really angry, I've shouted out some bad words at times I tell you. Lyn confined in me she had too. So I know the rest of you do! Don't try and hide it - so all kinds of ways we react with pressure and problems. We can blame people, we can be bitter, we can grow resentful, we can try and promote ourselves, try and use people, try and manipulate people. Or we can actually just grow in character in the trouble. Here's the deal - the choice is yours. I know that there's many people facing and feeling all kinds of pressures. The thing is it doesn't last, but will you last? Will you come out better or bitter? Will you come out like a lemon, twisted up - church, God, people... or will you come out sweet and gracious and better? That's really the question, and you know what? God does not choose that outcome, you do. You do. It's called development of your character.

I think it's great to have wonderful dreams. We need dreams because they're our future, but believe me if you don't develop character you'll never ever fulfil that thing God put in your heart. It just really requires something, so let's have a look at a guy called Joseph. Now here's a dreamer. You'll love this guy, Joseph. You know where we're going and I want to show you a couple of keys in his life and I want to show you what he actually walked through. Now Genesis, Chapter 37. Here's a great man, the example of Joseph and this is how God prepares someone to rule a nation. This is how God prepares a world changer. I hear you know we sing songs of being a world changer, destiny maker, it's lovely stuff, ra-ra-ra ra-ra-ra! But when you leave the church now, will you become a world changer? It starts with your world. See? If you can't change your world, you can't change the world, so it starts with your world. So here it is, here's the young boy.

Now this is the story - Verse 2 - the history of Joseph. Joseph was 17 years old, so he's 17 when he gets the dream. He's a teenager, this is good, good news for teenagers. You can get dreams from God about greatness in life when you're a teenager. He got a great dream from God, so there it was. His father loved him and it says, Verse 4, when the brothers saw that his father loved him more than his brothers, they hated him, so he was the sweet little youngest boy, couldn't do anything wrong, and they couldn't speak peaceably to him. Verse 5, now Joseph had a dream so he told his brothers and they hated him. So it tells he has dreams. It tells us also again, Verse 8, they hated him even more for his dreams and he still dreamed a dream, so Joseph had dreams.

Now they weren't the dream of, I'd like a boat, I'd like to live in a bigger house, not that kind of dream. This is God given dreams about making your life count for something. Now you notice that all he got was some of the sketchy details, he got a picture, an image, some of kind of sketchy detail, that you will be a ruler. So he being very young, a teenager and very immature, announced I have a call of God! I am going to rule over all of you! You will all bow down to me! That's really smart when you're the youngest in the family to say that kind of stuff. So he lacked character, so the vision was God given, the vision was authentic, but what was lacking in him was the character, the bigness to be that kind of man that could fulfil the dream God had. Are you big enough for the dream that God has for you? My observation is a lot of Christians are not big enough. They're small, petty; little things annoy them, irritate them, offences shut them down and they easily shut off. Even the weather can stop them praying.

Destiny makers? I don't think so. It's true. It's true. If you get put off praying simply because it's cold, or because it's winter, and you can't praise God in the winter as well as the summer, you haven't got what it takes to be a world changer. I'm sorry, you haven't. You need to shift and change and not be weather dependent. Come on, we can't be weather dependent and circumstance dependent. It's cold, I don't feel like getting up. Come on now! Okay then, so - oh, you'll all be picking this one up. So he had the dream, and notice he's undeveloped in his character. Now he had to face some things, so I want to show you he faced three lots of problems in three different areas. The first problems he faced were in his home, being a dreamer. This is great when you have people at home - notice it said they hated him, and couldn't speak peaceably to him. That's not very nice, so if you are a dreamer here's the thing. Here's the thing I've found. People attack someone when they've got a dream, because they haven't got one themselves.

You know this thing called tall poppy? It's about having a dream and being big, and it's about everyone else trying to pull you down, because they haven't got a dream, and they're not big. That's what that's about, so you've got to be able to overcome that kind of deal, and stand up and be tall in the field, and not fill in with the crowd. So notice the first thing that happens is judgement, criticism and hatred by his own brothers. So here's the thing; you have to face this. This is what he faced. This is the preparation God had. The first thing he faced was they judged him, they criticised him, they couldn't speak peacefully to him or about him. In other words everything they spoke was seasoned with a negative attitude. Hello! Negative attitude, speaking critically, judging, ooh oh, it abounds! Losers. People who are envious, people who aren't confident in what God put in their heart - that's what that's about.

But you know if you're a dreamer, and if you've got something great in your heart, you have to be able to handle hatred and criticism. Notice it says they hated him. If I said do you hate your brother, you'd say no, no, I come to church, I'm a Christian, I love my brother. But what do you say behind their back, and what do you speak about them? Speaking about a person and running them down and judging them, criticising them behind their back is hatred. I'm sorry, just because you didn't feel hatred, doesn't mean it wasn't hatred - it definitely wasn't love. So he experienced hatred, and here's the good side of it. Experiencing judgement, criticism, negative reactions from other people to you and your dream is a part of the pain of growing to be big enough, because if you're going to have a big dream, not everyone's going to be happy about you and your big dream. Not everyone's going to be on your side. You'll have a lot of people who will speak against you, and the more successful you are, the more they'll speak against you, so you've got to be able to handle this thing and not get hurt, crumple underneath when someone speaks critically of you.

The next thing they did was they betrayed him. They sold him as a slave into Egypt, sold their own brother. They totally betrayed him. One of the paths on the journey to being a man of God, woman of God, is you'll experience criticism and judgement and hatred and people will betray you, so when you've trusted them, they do the dirty on you - which is okay if they were unsaved, you could handle that. It's just they're a Christian, that's what makes it so hard to handle, but that's part of your growth. That's part of your growth, so God in heaven is watching how do you respond when people treat you that way, what comes into your heart, and what comes out of your mouth. How do you respond? Have you got bigness growing in you, or are you going to stay little? Will all it take is someone's criticism to shut you down? What will it take to stop you from pursuing greatness in your life?

So the next thing that happens is, so firstly he had problems in his home. There's always difficulties and challenges in our home life to fulfilling the dream. That's where the first place you experience the problems, so if you're overwhelmed by the issues in your home life, the relationships in your home life, believe me that's the first place to work on yourself, in order to prepare yourself for big things. Anyone who's had teenagers will know there's difficulties - so the next thing that happens is in Egypt, he got sold to Egypt. Egypt is often a picture of the world, a place without Christ, a place of bondage and slavery, a place where people are driven, a place where people are held, slavery, captivity to all kinds of things and here's the thing that happens there.

The first thing that happens, in Genesis 39, Verse 7, is the master's wife starts eyeing him up, so she starts dressing in scanty clothes, and starts persuading him, saying every day, every day, day after day after day, come on, lie with me, come on, let's have sex. My old man will never know. That's what was happening - every day temptation, so here's what will happen to you too, on the path of your dream. There'll be temptations to take you off course. There's always going to be temptation. There'll be some other woman if you're a man come into your life to take you off course; if you're a woman there'll be some man that you get a crush on or whatever. There'll be always something, somewhere, pushing on you to draw you away - and he had the courage to stand up against it and guess what happened. Then, when he stood up against it and refused to fall into temptation, next thing is he's accused falsely of attempted rape on this woman. So false accusation, then the master doesn't even give him a hearing, so no one even hears his side, he doesn't get a fair trial, doesn't get any trial. The master just gets angry and throws him in prison, and now his reputation is totally destroyed. That's pretty hard stuff, but this is the preparation ground of kings.

This was how God prepares kings. You may have had not a dramatic thing like that, but sin and temptation is near the door for every one of us, compromise in some little way, give up, pressure financially, all kinds of areas we face pressures and temptations. Many times when you stand up and do what's right, people will falsely accuse you, and treat you unjustly, and you'll find yourself with your reputation being knocked, and you know what happens when that happens to us? You know what's in every one of us? You want to vindicate yourself, stand up and prove I'm right, you're wrong! Character. If you need to vindicate yourself, you're going to be too small, too small for the job God's got for you, and you have to learn how to let God vindicate you, just walk in integrity. Walk in integrity. Keep your mouth shut, stop trying to defend yourself, learn to just stand fast and trust God in the midst of those kinds of challenges. I've had many of them. You know the hardest thing to do is to keep your mouth shut, when everything in you is screaming to try and defend yourself.

Jesus, when they accused Him, said not a word. When you're being falsely accused, when you're being blamed unjustly, most people arise, they're angry, defensive and react and miss the character opportunity. You're too small if your button can be pushed that easily. You're not big enough for what God has yet, so you've got a little longer before you'll get to that dream, and you'll have more of the same until you can kind of get a handle on actually, God is using this to develop me, because He loves me. I need a different perspective on this thing. It's about character, and growing in character, then the next thing that happens to him, the third thing that happens, in prison where he helps some guys out, and you read it there in Genesis, Chapter 40 I think it is, he helps a guy out - Verse 23 - helps the butler and some other guy out, and they didn't remember him. They forgot him.

Here's another thing that's always a test of your character and that is when people are ungrateful. You help them, you poured yourself, you gave it all this stuff, and then they turn on you and were ungrateful, never said thank you. Ooh, a lot of people can't handle that. A lot of people can't handle someone not thanking them and appreciating them. That's a character one too. If you need people to thank you, you're missing the point. Here's what's going to happen - they won't. Sometimes they will, and that's wonderful when it happens, just don't expect it. Be glad to do it for the Lord, knowing that the Lord rewards everything, because He sees in secret, and He promotes us. See there's a part of life that you've got to learn just to do things, because that's who you are. It's got nothing to do with whether people are grateful, or how people respond, this is the kind of person I am, that's character. I am a generous person, I am a giving person, I am a loving person, I am this kind of person, I'm a strong person. I can stand up in the midst of pressure. This is who you're becoming, this is about your character.

So if God is wanting to prepare a ruler - now get this - the dream that God gave to Joseph was not about him just having some ego trip, just being over his brothers, and they're all bowing down to him - which if you're the youngest and being picked on is a good dream - it's not about that at all. It's actually about the plan that God had to rescue Israel, and make provision for them for 400 years. It was always about God's bigger plan and about salvation and about the cause of Christ being advanced. That's always what these dreams are about. Okay, so how then can you handle it? See, he had a delay. Here's the last one that he went through, is a test of delay, so I'll give them to you again just so you've got them all clear.

Number one is hatred, criticism and judgement, people talking behind your back about you; Number two, being betrayed by people that you trusted; number three, false accusations and injustice, treated unfairly; number four, ingratitude from people you help and number five, delays, when things you expect don't happen, and you've got this unusual delay and you're frustrated. See, now this is God's preparation to make a man who could change a nation, so even if you're not called to change a nation, we're all called to change something around us, so if we're called to change something around us, God will want you to become big enough to do that. To become big enough to do that, if you can't become big enough, your gift will get you there but you'll fall over, because someone will treat you unjustly, criticise you, won't be thankful to you, betray you, all this kind of stuff and you'll get knocked over and disheartened and discouraged and lose the dream, because you got in too much pain.

Pain is part of life. It's how you handle it, so we choose in the midst of trials and pressures whether we step up, begin to rejoice and praise the Lord and look to Him for wisdom and strength and grow in our character, or whether we find a way out. In the midst of pain we turn to alcohol, turn to fantasies, turn to sexual relationships, turn to all kinds of things to avoid the pain we're walking through. It's your choice, and if you got involved in all those things then go to the freedom thing and the restoration course in the coming months so you can get freed up in your heart to fulfil the dream God gave you. We don't run these courses for nothing. They're run to set you free from the junk that holds you back, and keeps you reacting wrongly in the midst of difficult situations.

Okay, so how did he get out of it? Let me just share with you quickly how he got out of it, and we'll finish up. First of all, number one, what did he do? Here's something just before I do that - here's the interesting thing, if you read the story of Joseph and get this, this is what I love. No matter what scene he was in, he was never a loser, he was always a winner. In his home he was the favourite, he was a blessed one in his home. When he got to Egypt, he starts off as a slave, he ends up he's so popular, God is with him, they can see the hand of God on him, everything he does prospers, the guy gives him charge of everything and totally trusts him, never even holds him accountable, he's got such good character and favour on his life. He's a winner. When he gets his reputation blown and he ends up in prison, guess what happens down there? The same thing happens down there, well blow me down! They see the Lord's with him, he gets favour in the place, and he ends up running the prison. Get this - wherever Joseph was, he rose up and ran it, and he ran it well, and people could see God's hand on him.

I find it strange when people fail in life, and they think they've got a call to ministry. What's that about? Ministry's got horrendous problems and pressures. No one would take it on unless you were called, and I'll tell you this, if you're not handling what you've got well, you're not ready for your next promotion. It's really that simple, so I don't know what you're facing and what you're handling, what you're walking through right now, but develop an attitude that rejoices and praises God and trust God and hold His word in the midst of it, because this is preparing you for enlargement internally, so you can be large externally. See I've found in church, people want a position. Why would you want a position? Now what's that all about? I don't want a position. It's not about positions. It's actually about having the character in you, and the heart for the work God wants. Positions come and go, they don't mean a thing. They actually are irrelevant. What counts is what you carry in your heart and in your life which is a character issue.

If you've got the right character and got the life of God flowing in you, you'll pop up to the top everywhere you go. That's the story of Joseph. He popped up to the top, didn't matter what happened to him. He's back up the top, he's like a cork - hold him under and [psst!] up he comes again! So what most people do is, they say but that was Joseph, I'm not like Joseph, and you don't understand my troubles. Now listen, that's not true. Joseph is there for our example. Don't think God did all of this to get him there. It was his choices that got him there. His choices got him to where he got. He didn't get to be ruler over Egypt, a mentor and spiritual father to the Pharaoh, and a financial guru that caused a total economic reform. He didn't just arrive there because God did it. What are you thinking! You don't just arrive somewhere because God does stuff. You arrive there because you work with God, developing your character and your capacity to be able to manage your life, and manage your responsibilities.

So what did he do? Here's number one. Number one, he held the word of God, he held the dream, and never quit on the dream. In Psalm 105 it tells us, in Verses 17 to 19, even though they hurt him and afflicted him and put him in chains in prison, the word of the Lord tried him, which means literally this: he had a conflict between what God said, the dream, and what he was experiencing, the life. In the middle of it, what showed up was this: he praised God, had confidence in God, confessed the word of God, held the dream in the midst of adversity, and in the midst of the prison he held onto to God's promise - you gave me a dream. We know he was in jail at least two years, probably longer, and it wouldn't be a nice prison. He was falsely accused of attempted rape on the wife of the senior military commander. Mate, he would be in the bottom of the prison. That would be a bad place to be, bad treatment, yet he rose up. Why? Because of choices he made in how to handle his pain.

It said they hurt him. In Genesis 49, Verses 22 to 24, it says now Joseph is a fruitful tree planted by a well of water. In other words he's saying Joseph grew, flourished, prospered everywhere he was. How's that? Because he's got a well of water; he's got life from God coming into him, and it says the archers have shot at him. They hated him, and they sorely wounded him. Now that tells us he felt pain. He experienced terrible pain, terrible hurt, terrible grief, terrible anger. He actually suffered deeply - but it says this: his bow remained strong, or in other words his spirit and his heart, that's where your life flows from, remained flowing and alive and right with God. He never let the poison of his circumstance get into him. He kept his character sweet.

See, his strength remained in him because God gave him strength, so what most people do in problems is they groan and complain, ring, talk to this one, that one. What he did was he turned to God, praised and rejoiced, held the promise of God and then held onto God. God, you are my strength. Paul wrote, he said in my first mission, he said everyone left me, but the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me. David, when everything was going against him, everyone's complaining, his leaders want to kill him, he strengthened himself in God. There is a capacity we have, if we will reach into God he'll put strength in your spirit! You can handle whatever comes to you! You are a winner in life, because the spirit of God is in you, but you've got to have a winning attitude, and a winning attitude doesn't complain, doesn't groan. It doesn't mean you don't get hurt. There are times I've been deeply hurt, I've wept and wept and wanted to be out of what I was in, deeply wounded, deeply, deeply grieved, deeply in pain, sobbed with the pain and stood up and found God and kept going.

See, that's what character is about. That's what God wants to get in you. You've got to choose in the midst of your pain right now, the midst of your struggle, in just whatever it is, whatever life has hurled to you, I can tell you this. You've got the potential to be bigger than it! Whatever's come at you, tell them greater is he that is in you than he that's in that world. I tell you, hold the word of God! Hold it and speak it! No matter what you see down there, see it in the spirit, see and hold your dream, hold what God said over your life. Speak it out over your life until you shape your world by the words God gave you. He held a dream God gave him and never quit, never quit, never quit, never quit! Did he doubt? Of course he doubted. Did he have down days? Of course he had down days. Did he get depressed? Yes. Did he get hurt? Yes. Did he get angry? Yes. Resentful? Yes. Bitter? Yes, all the above. But he held God's word and held onto God, and then this is what else he did - he allowed the Lord to help him resolve the grief and anger and resentment and bitterness. How do we know that? Because when you meet him with his brothers, in Genesis 45, Verses 4 to 8, this is the amazing thing he says, and we'll just finish with this. I could share more but we'll just leave it with this.

He said when he revealed himself to his brothers, he said guys, don't be angry and don't be grieved and don't be upset, and don't fear that I'm going to pay you back. Now what kind of heart and spirit is that? You've been put down for 17 years by your brothers, hated by them, put down every day and then finally betrayed and sold as a slave in Egypt. What kind of grace do you need in your life to treat people who've treated you badly that way? See, this is what makes a king. He's got a big heart. They're not petty, don't hold resentments and bitterness. They let it go real quick. You get hurt? Yeah, of course. Come to God with your hurt and pain, find strength in God, and then resolve it by forgiveness ,and bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you. Jesus told us how to do it, it's not hard. It's just you've got to do it, and that's what makes the difference between big people and little people.

It's not your life or your circumstances or how someone treated you, or what's going on. It's how you are responding to what life is dishing up to you. Come on, think about this. So the first thing you notice is his grace towards his brothers. The second thing he said, guys, it wasn't you who sent me here. God sent me here, because he had a destiny of saving the whole of Israel and the family of Israel, so he had a strong grip that all the pain he'd gone through was a preparation for a bigger kingdom purpose of advancing God's purpose and cause and kingdom. How about that? He saw the big picture, not the little one. He said guys, don't blame yourself. Look, God set this whole thing up. He's just allowed all this to happen. He said listen, God has put me here.

Here's the last thing he said. He said God has promoted me. God has promoted me. Now you see you can either let God promote you, or you promote yourself. If you promote yourself, you're full of pride. Pride always promotes yourself. Why? Because it doesn't trust God to do it. I have to promote myself, I have to speak about myself, talk about myself, project myself, make an image, have to do all these things. Why? Because I have no faith that God can get me where He wants to get me. See? He said God promoted me, God got me here. He said what got me to where I am now, you know what he says, I'm ruler next to the pharaoh over this nation, I have influence over the financial destiny of the nation. God's given me wisdom to be able to handle and manage a financial catastrophe. The Bible says money failed, they had a financial collapse in that part of the world, total. And Joseph manoeuvred and found wisdom to find a way through it, and benefited from the financial recession. He ended up with all of the money. Think about it. Where did he get that from? He had to get some wisdom from somewhere. He'd learned to get wisdom from God on how to handle life and the little stuff. He said God has made a spiritual father to the pharaoh. How can a 17 year old boy be a spiritual father to the greatest nation in the earth? Simply he held the dream, he held onto God and he let his character grow through the adversity by forgiving his enemies, blessing them, praying for them, and allowing himself to extend grace when what he could have extended was judgement. You know when he got next to the pharaoh he could have dealt to Potiphar and his wife, he could have dealt to his brothers, he could have punished everyone who'd hurt him on the way, but there wasn't an ounce of anger and resentment or bitterness in him. He was full of grace, and that's just the kind of man you need to lead a nation, someone with character, someone with no selfish agenda. See, look at America's financial situation. Everyone's got selfish agendas. They can't reach something good for the nation. It needs a great godly man.

So God has a plan for your life. You all know that. Maybe you haven't got it clear what it is, but I can tell you one thing is, whatever you're facing now, is preparing you to be the person to fulfil that. Stop complaining. Stop moaning and groaning, stop looking and allowing negative emotions and heaviness and depression get on. Learn to rise up and rejoice, your life is in God's hands. Hold His word. Hold His promises, hold onto Him and keep your heart sweet, and what you'll find is God will get you where He needs to get you. He can do it. Joseph went from prison the palace in one day. Don't you think God can promote you? Don't you think God can get you there? The problem is are you big enough to be in a palace and no one can choose that but you.

Today I know many here are facing challenges. I don't know how you're handling them. I don't always handle mine too good. Sometimes I shut down in the pain and try and distract myself from the pain, and watch television or something like that, try to cope with the pain. Then eventually I come to my senses, come before God and just pour the heart out and let God give grace to stand up and to move into the next level. You could do that, it's just a choice.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Prov. 29:18 “Where there is no vision the people perish”

Everybody has a dream, vision implanted in them by God – a hope of what can be and do.

Your dream is your future – it is what your life moves toward.

Dream: Cruise, new house, new job – these are about personal fulfilment.

God given dream: This always is about Kingdom of God advancing – people changed.

Dreams can be lost, stolen – without dream (God given revelation) opportunities are wasted.

Dream killers – are like terrorists, guerrillas – stalk you, try to destroy your dream and future.

2. Dream Killer #1 – Undeveloped Character

Eph. 2:10 For you are His workmanship – God is working to develop your character.

Success is not always accomplished by most gifted, most talented.

Your gift is bigger than your character – your gift opens opportunities for you.

Your character is like a rudder on a ship – without character end up on rocks.

Character Who you are when no-one but God is looking.

Your values, your world view, your attitudes, your choices, motivations

World is concerned with image – looking good, positioning self, appearances.

- God is concerned with character – who you are, substance, positioning in heart.

- Bible abounds with gifted people whose character failed – demonstrating consequences.

- Character: Who you really are! How authentic are you?

3. How God Develops Your Character

Jam.1:2-5 “..knowing the trying of your faith works patience…”

God sets up circumstances so we have opportunity to grow in character.

In every trial = NT1383 = to put to the test to examine quality – God provides wisdom.

Every person faces difficulties, pressures, frustrations, challenges, pain in life.

Generally people do not welcome these – they respond poorly.

e.g. passive – fate; must be reaping what deserve; escape – fantasies, drugs, suicide, anger and resentment; blame and bitterness; pride and self promotion.

God wants to teach us patience and maturity through challenges we face.

“Works” = NT2716 = to accomplish, to prepare or equip you.

“Patience” = NT5281 = endurance, courage, character – unmoved from purpose.

Choice: How do you respond to difficulties, pressure, setback,

disappointment, pain?

Rejoice and trust God? Or React?

If you don’t know what to do – ask God for wisdom.

4. The Example of Joseph – How God prepared a Ruler

Gen 37:5 “Now Joseph had a dream”

- God put a dream – prophetic dream in Joseph’s heart – life purpose

- Joseph was not clear about how dream fulfilled.

- Joseph was only 17 and undeveloped in character and wisdom.

- Joseph’s dream was bigger than his character.

Joseph faced several painful situations in which his character was developed.

What Joseph Experienced:

1. At Home

(a) Judgement, criticism and hatred of his own brothers.

- Gen.37:4 They hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.

People don’t easily recognise hatred – comes as judgement, criticism, ‘words’.

- Gen.37:5,8 They hated him more for his dreams and his words.

(b) Betrayed by his brothers – sold as slave to Egypt

- Gen.37:19-20

2. In Egypt

(a) Temptation daily

- Gen.39:7 “…the masters wife cast longing eyes on Joseph and said – lie with me”

During temptation God seems far away and the temptation looks so attractive

Temptation tests your character

(b) False accusation, injustice, imprisonment

- Gen.39:19-20

“..his anger was aroused, then Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison.”

In the face of false accusation and injustice it is easy to become defensive and angry

3. In Prison

(a) Ingratitude from people Joseph helped

- Gen.40:21-23 “The chief butler did not remember Joseph but forgot him.”

When the people you help are ungrateful it tests your motives and reactions

(b) Delay of release from prison

- Gen.41:1 “Then it came to pass at the end of 2 full years.”

Delay does not mean God has forgotten you

When your dream is delayed it is easy to become impatient and try to “help God out”

Each of these experiences were deeply painful but were opportunities to develop character.

5. How to Develop Character in Adversity

In every situation Joseph was in he grew and prospered and the favour of God.

His home, Egypt, prison – the Lord was with him.

Gen.39:3 “The Lord was with him and made all he did to prosper in his hand”.

Gen.39.23 “The Lord was with him and whatever he did the Lord made it prosper”.

N.B. You must learn how to prosper where you are! Your character is holding you place.

People who fail in life situations often think they are called to ministry!

Keys to growing in Character:

(i) Courage: Joseph held onto the Word of God (the dream)

· Ps 105:17-19

· Hurt = OT6031 = afflict, humiliate, cause great pain and grief, mistreat.

· Word of God tried = OT6884 = to refine gold, test the quality, smelt.

· He faced a conflict between what God had promised and what he was experiencing- He choes to hold and confess God’s Word

(ii) Loyalty: Joseph held onto his Relationship with God

· Gen.49.22-24

· Loyalty in adversity is an evidence of faith

· “Bitterly grieved” = OT4843 = to enrage, make bitter by ill treatment.

· Joseph experienced deep pain, grief, anger, bitterness through his experiences.

· “Archers” = Baal – Lord of Arrows = to chop to pieces, pierce, wound.

· Bow remained strong = OT386 = ever-flowing, steady flow, enduring.

He never lost his inner flow of life with God through his experiences.

· He was strengthened by God – He turned to Him in crisis and pain.

(iii) Purity:Joseph resolved the deep inner pain of his experiences

· Gen.45:4-8 Joseph speaks to his brothers.

· He had experienced deep pain at his brothers hands Gen.42:21

· He had grown in character by resolving the pain of his experiences

· v5 His heart was full of grace – free from anger, resentment and desire for revenge, full of love, compassion for his brothers.

· v5 He acknowledged God used pain to prepare him for rulership

· v7-8 He acknowledged God promoted him to his position of rulership. It was not by his skills or by self promotion

(iv) Serving People: Joseph served diligently and was highly productive

· Gen.39:21-23..and whatever he did The Lord made it prosper

· In every situation, no matter how difficult Joseph prospered in all he did

· He did not serve reluctantly but with passion and diligence

· Serving is a key to greatness in The Kingdom of God Mt.20:25-28

· If you cannot serve where you are and be productive how can God promote you?

Questions:

· What dreams do you have that God has put in your heart?

· What areas of character do you need to grow in to be “big” enough to fulfil this dream?

Dream Thieves - Delays & Disappointments (6 of 7)

Sun 7 Aug 2011  « Back to Top

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Hope deferred makes the heart sick. In other words when you have a dream, an expectation, something you're looking forward to and it's continually delayed, put off, doesn't happen, your heart grows sick. That means to be weak or be in grief. When our heart is in grief it affects all of our life. It affects your motivation, so whenever we have a dream and then it's delayed, we begin to wonder about what our life could be like.

Okay, I wonder if you can open your Bible with me in Proverbs, Chapter 13 and Verse 12. We've been looking at a series on Desires, Dreams and Destiny. We're looking at having direction, having a plan, having some kind of focus for our life, and last week I looked at, and just talking about dream thieves, things which steal your dreams, steal your hopes, steal your aspirations, steal away your life. The last one we looked at - that's the very first one in that part of the series - was the whole area of an undeveloped character. When we fail to grow our character, there's no way we'll ever enter into the dreams God has for us. We looked at the issue of dreams, and talked about two different kinds of dreams. We talked about dreams which were what I'd just call personal dreams, dream of having a cruise, having a new house, shifting out to Havelock, shifting to a house by the beach, having a boat or some kind of thing like that, a new job, making money. You can have all kinds of dreams like that. Most of those dreams are concerned with our personal fulfilment, and they require something of us. They don't just come into being.

Then we looked at God given dreams, and the things about a God given dream, there's several characteristics. One is it's always concerned about the kingdom of God advancing, always concerned with the kingdom of God advancing. It's always concerned with people hearing the gospel and coming to Christ and it always requires God's ability coming into our life to make it come about. Many times in the Bible, God will match up a personal dream with His dream, so they interlock with one another. I'll just give you a couple of examples before I move on, for example Hannah had a desperate passion for a child, yet she was barren. There was a huge delay she experienced, and apparently nothing. In the process of that delay, there came a deep, deep cry, a deep brokenness in her heart, she surrendered her life to the Lord, and God had a need for a prophet in the nation. So her need was for a son, she was being mocked and belittled by the other wife, Elkanah, and continually humiliated because she had no child, she was barren. But God had a need in the nation for a prophet, and so God's need intersected with her need, and she broke through to a place of surrender, and the child that was born to her was surrendered to the Lord. She got a son, God got a prophet, and the nation prospered. That's how God dreams and natural dreams intersect. Think about it.

There's many examples in the Bible - Abraham had a desire for a son. He wanted a son, he wanted an heir, he wanted a legacy. God wanted to raise up a nation of people that would bring forth His son, Jesus Christ and so Abraham went through a long season of delay, and there was a tremendous grief, but then God gave him a promise. In the end God's promise and Abraham's desire linked together. Abraham got the son of promise, and God got a son of promise, a nation through which he would bring His purposes into the earth. You can just go through this many, many different times in the Bible, how a personal dream and God's dream can intersect. So some dreams are just personal, they're just about our being fulfilled, having a nice life, having great experiences, enjoying our life and they're great, they're wonderful. Why not enjoy those things - but there is a higher call. We must live with eternity in mind, so there is a different kind of dream and that always involves God and always involves advancing His kingdom. Where possible our personal dreams should intersect with God's and sometimes He calls us to lay down personal dreams so that we can intersect with His purpose for our life. So that's how these things come together.

Now last week we just saw about dreams, how dreams can actually be lost and stolen. I want to look at two other dream killers today, and just what to do about them. They're very common and so here, we find the first one, I want to look at two dream killers. The first one is delay, and the second one is disappointment. Now notice these are external, but the response we make is internal, and in the end it's not the delay that causes the problem. It's what goes on in us. It's not the disappointment that causes the problem, it's what goes on, and how we process it. So all of us have experienced delays, and all of us have experienced disappointments. It's part of living life. It's what you do with it makes the difference between whether you come into the God given dream or whether you don't.

So let's have a look here at Verse 12 of Proverbs, Chapter 13. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. In other words when you have a dream, an expectation, something you're looking forward to and it's continually delayed, put off, doesn't happen, your heart grows sick. That means to be weak or be in grief. When our heart is in grief it affects all of our life. It affects your motivation. You get a child, and a father promises the child they'll have some time together, or take him to play ball, or go and watch his match, and the father repeatedly just doesn't turn up or doesn't make it, the dream or hope the child has is delayed. Finally in the end, there's a sadness comes into the child's heart. They lose hope it'll ever happen. They accept dad's excuses, but their heart shuts down and dies a little, and a part of their dream about time with their dad, relationship with their dad begins to die. Now this is what happens. Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick.

So whenever we have a dream, and then it's delayed for a whole number of reasons - and I'll look at some of those reasons in a moment - whenever it's delayed, we begin to wonder about what our life could be like. Sometimes in marriage when things don't work out, and the marriage you dreamed of isn't taking place, you wonder what could have been if you'd done something different. That's what people do. When you go down that route you'll end up in deep trouble. You actually have to stay with the dream, and persevere with the dream, so a delay in accomplishing a dream can lead to the heart being full of grief and disappointment, and then withdrawing and giving up, resigning itself this dream will never take place. This is very, very common, so the heart grows sick. So delay causes people to become discouraged. We start to doubt the dream.

If you've got a God given dream, and God's put something in your heart, and then for some reason it delays; now the Bible's full of dreams being delayed. I wish God wouldn't delay dreams. I don't like dreams being delayed and put off. In fact I get disappointed, I tend to like it to happen now. There's a sort of a saying - there was a song. Remember that song that came out a while ago, I want it all, and I want it now! That's kind of the spirit of the age isn't it really - I want it all, and I want it now! The whole of the marketing culture, it all is wired up to, you want it all, you need it all and you need it now, and we can help you. [Laughter] No deposit! No interest! No repayments for 36 months! Then you'll be paying for the rest of your life. Long after the dream has faded, that object you bought is now marked and old and tatty, and no longer an object of desire. You will be plugging away, paying for that dream that you got impatient about. If you have a think about it, the world is in trouble now because of that very process. God's way is always pay the price up front, and then get the benefits. The world's way is always you can have it now, don't worry, come on, sign up man. Sign up man, it's only $20 a week, it'll be no problem. You can handle that - and so you get sucked in, and before you know it the $20 a week, the $1000 item turned into a $2000 item and you didn't even notice. This is what goes on of course isn't it? We all know that.

So dreams delayed, now here's the thing that when people have their dream delayed, they get discouraged, in other words lose courage to stay the course. Israel, when it got very difficult and very hard, and Numbers 21, Verse 4 it says their heart became discouraged, because they experienced difficulties and delays. What they wanted to get didn't come and when we get discouraged it always comes out your mouth. What's in your heart will come out your mouth, listen to what's coming out of your mouth, and when discouragement is there, you will complain and become quite negative. You'll hear it out of your own voice, so recognise it's just a delay, and I'll talk a little bit about what to do about your delays.

The second one, which is the one that I want to push on, is the one where people get impatient, where they get impatient. Now young people get incredibly impatient. We have a whole generation that is very, very impatient, it just wants it now and the world is wired to give it to you now. You have instant coffee, instant access, instant messaging, and we can't not be without the phone, we can't be without the instant messaging. I've got to talk NOW! I know I'm talking to you, and we had an appointment to talk, but I've also got to talk NOW because someone's putting a demand on me. So there's a whole culture has built in the society we're in now, which wants things now, and becomes impatient if it doesn't get it now, and won't do what needs to be done. Here's a good example in Genesis, Chapter 16. Let's have a look at this example in case you don't think godly men get impatient have a look at this one. Abraham is the father of our faith, so he's a really godly person. He's the father of our faith. If you're a man of faith, he's the great example, the great leader in faith. Now - Verse 1 - Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. Now that was a very sad thing, that he had a promise from God that he would get children. God promised I would have children! But it says he had no children, and that went on for years, went on for year after year after year, and the problem is, when it goes on for years, you're getting older, you start to lose passion and desire and almost you think, well maybe this is never going to happen.

So time went on, and so Sarah came up with an idea. She had a maid called Hagar and she said now the Lord, notice now she is blaming the delay on God, and she said now the Lord has delayed me from having a child, but this doesn't mean to say your promise shouldn't come about. Why don't you have a child by my maid, and he listened to his wife's voice. Now most times it's good to listen to your wife's voice. This was not a good time to be listening to what she had to say. She's proposing that he has sexual relationships with someone else, so they can get the child. Get what the thing is; there's a passionate desire for a dream. It's a God given dream, a God promised dream, but circumstances seem to be working against it, time is running out, and he just got impatient. When you get impatient, you try and make it happen yourself. You kind of think, God needs a help to get this to work. I need to help God out in this matter, and so what Sarah and Abram did is they helped God out in the matter of getting the extra child.

Of course what happened is, the moment she got pregnant, Hagar began to despise Sarah. There was a conflict came in the home, and now Abram who was having this great idea of having sex with the maid and having another baby, she gets pregnant and gets ready to have the baby, now he's got turmoil in his home. His wife is extremely unhappy. His maid is getting pretty proud, and putting her down with her comments, and so in the end there's such a major conflict - get this - that Sarah drives the maid out, and so later on the Angel Lord appears to Hagar and says - now get this - you are with child, Verse 11, you'll bear a son. You'll call his name Ishmael, because the Lord heard your affliction. He will be - now get this, this is what happens when we help God out. Now remember, every time you turn on the news and you look at the Middle East and you see Arabs fighting, you see people fighting one another, and you see the conflict around Israel, you see all the kinds of stuff that's going on, just remember this. All of that was because one man was impatient - and so he helped God out.

So he said, he shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he'll dwell in the midst of his brethren - be a wild man, or like a wild ass. In Pakistan they call it donkey brain, because it just gets such fixed mindsets, and so Abram had this great idea, I'll help God out. I know - well you know, you need to do something to fulfil this dream, and I've got to help God out, and it's not working through my wife. I've got to have another plan, so he abandons Plan A, now he's got Plan B, now he's got a huge mess and he still has to wait. He waited until he was 100 I think, somewhere around about that and she was in her nineties, until all hope of having a child had gone. And then God came through. Isn't that amazing? God came through. He always said He'd come through. He did come through. The problem is, in the time between Him saying it, and Him coming through, we wonder what on earth God is up to, and whether He really knows what He's doing, and we'll help Him out a little.

We come up with all these Ishmaels. I think in business, people come up with lots of Ishmaels. They cost you a lot of money. They're wild, they cause contention and problems, and people have all kinds of Ishmaels in their life. If you get involved in Christian ministry of various kinds, well then Ishmaels abound. Everyone had this good idea, and over the years I've seen wonderful good ideas. People are going to set up this thing, oh my goodness me, and the mess that these good ideas created, absolutely horrendous.

Anyway, so there's a good idea. So here's another one; 1 Samuel, Chapter 13. Here's another guy - now remember this is Abraham, this is father of faith. Here's another guy, and this guy was a king. Now Abraham created a huge problem. He still had to wait. In the end, God gave him the promise and he grew in his faith and remained steadfast, so steadfast that God could be relied on, that when God said offer your son he didn't flinch, because He said even if I offer Him, God's got to figure out a way to get him back, because God said this is the son through which I'll have a nation. So he had a promise before he had the son, and when he gave up his son, he still had the promise. That's why he was able to go and offer up his son in the way he did. Now have a look at this one here. Here's a guy called Saul. Now Saul is a man who's come to a place of leadership very quickly. He's very tall, he looks good, very attractive, highly gifted man, but he has a word from God, and here it is. We read in 1 Samuel, Chapter 13. It says the Philistines - Verse 5 - gathered to fight against Israel, 30,000 chariots, 6000 horsemen, people like the sand of the seashore came up in a multitude encamped against them. They camped in the place Michmash in the east of Beth Aven. When the men of Israel saw they were in danger, of course they got upset and they hid in caves, in thickets, in rocks, holes and pits. Some of the Hebrews crossed over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, all the people followed him trembling.

And he waited seven days according to the time set by Samuel, but Samuel did not come, and the people were scattered from him. So he brought a burnt offering, peace offerings. He said, I'm going to offer them, and as soon as he did it, Samuel came. Saul went out to meet him that he might greet him, and Samuel said what have you done? He said I saw the people scattered, you didn't come in the time appointed, the Philistines gathered against me, so I felt compelled to offer an offering. Now here it is, test of impatience. Now you notice Saul has been given a word. Here's the word - I want you to wait at this place. I will come, and you will have further direction, and so he waits. Now in the period of waiting seven days which is a perfect number, a complete time of testing, and what happens is this, is multitudes of Philistines came against him, thousands upon thousands, or putting it in modern language, the problems he was facing multiplied. It just became overwhelming, so what he was looking at was multitudes of enemies.

Now the second thing that happened was, the supporters around him were losing heart. They were getting afraid, they were intimidated, they were fearful, and the moment he turned his back, they slipped off out and ran away, so while he's watching, daily the problems are increasing. The second thing is, daily his resources are diminishing, and God hasn't come, in spite of the fact saying wait seven days and I'll come, you notice it wasn't just on the seventh day. It was late in the seventh day that he freaked out, and then he become impatient and thwarted himself. So putting it in a modern context, very simple, problems are increasing. Pressure, could be financial pressure, marriage pressure, family pressure, work pressure - pressure is increasing around your life. Your resources are diminishing. Your ability to deal with it day by day is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, until you wonder it's about to overwhelm you and God - oh, won't answer. You've all been in that place. We've all been there and in that place, what is tested is whether you can handle delays.

Now there is a reason for delays. I'll show you exactly what it is in a moment, and there's a part of God's planning for your character development and your life that always involves an aspect of delay. That's why the spirit of the age, which wants it all now, can never build Godly men. Godly men have to learn how to handle delay. In fact actually even as a simple principle in life, say for example in finances, if you will learn to manage your money carefully now and put off buying until later, if you put off gratification, you will succeed financially. Most people don't succeed because they want it now, they want to feel good now, and so they make actions and decisions that get them into a mess now, so they feel good now. Then tomorrow they feel worse, because the new problems come up, so in God it's always there's this issue of being patient. Now impatience is the inability to endure steadfast until God's timing. It's the inability to endure steadfastly until God comes through, here's the time.

1 Peter 5, Verse 6, it says humble yourself under the mighty had of God - notice that humble yourself. So this is something you have to do. Humble yourself has to do with trusting God, with doing what God's calling you to do, and then in due time He exalts you. So I've found that in life God can lift you up, God can promote you, but there's always a due time - kairot, an appointed time by God. Now you can't hurry God's appointed time. In the Book of Acts, Jesus spoke expressly, wait until the power of God comes on you. I'm going to give the promise of the Father, you're going to be filled with power of the Holy Ghost. He told that to at least 500 people, but when the day of Pentecost came, there was only 120 there. The 500 had quit on the way. The 10 day delay was all it took to cause the majority, four-fifths of the whole group to disappear, so instead of there being 500 or more, there was only 120 on that upper room on that day. Delay always has a way of pressuring us, so there's a due time. Now you can't hurry God's timing for things. Harvest time will come. If you sow there will be a harvest. You just can't hurry the harvest.

One guy was telling me, he said he started to plant some kind of vegetables in the garden, and he wanted to see how they were getting on, so he kept digging them up to have a look at how they were going and putting them back in the ground. Then he'd go back a few days later, dig them up to see how they were - oh, they're not doing too badly. They were potatoes. He found after a while, when finally the time of harvest came, he found at the end of the harvest came there was almost nothing there to show for all his labour and all his work. When his wife said I can't believe that this didn't work out, what on earth went wrong, he admitted to her he'd dug them up to have a check on them, see how they were doing. She said well you can't dig stuff up. You've got to just sow it, plant it, wait and the due time will come. There is a time of harvest, you can't do that.

I want you read with me in Hebrews 6, so the answer to delays is very simple. It's found in two words, two words that a lot of people struggle with and the words are faith and patience. Faith and patients. Hebrews, Chapter 6, look at this. It tells us don't be slothful. Rather - here it is, Verse 12 - do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. So it tells us two things. It says don't be sluggish. That word means lazy, inactive. It actually also refers to someone who's a little bit thick, not thinking right. They're a little bit slow on the uptake, so it's saying don't be slow on the uptake. Don't be a slow learner. Don't be a lazy person, but understand this, that it is through faith and patience - through. In other words the vehicle that the promises of God come are faith and patience. The way God's promises come are faith and patience. That's how things get to you - faith and patience. Well we'd like the faith bit, but the patience bit's the hard bit. See faith and patience, see? So patience means a constant steady confident advance. You remain confident, and you continue to do what you need to do. Patience is never passive. Biblical patience isn't well, I'll wait around until something happens. A lot of Christians wait until something happens. This is a problem. We're never to wait until something happens. We must persevere, doing the thing God wants us to do, until something happens.

So it's never, never passive. You notice it says, be an imitator of men of faith, so if you study the lives of men of faith, you'll see something really common in all of them. No matter who they are, they had faith, they trusted God, and their faith in God turned into steadfast doing what God told them to do, and not quitting until the promise came, even if there were delays. You've got your part to play. Think about a pregnancy. Pregnancy, you go through and you've got the idea, got the seeds in there and it's all great and all exciting, great news. Then you wait and nothing seems to happen, looks like nothing's happening whatsoever. Then there comes a period - you just don't sort of get pregnant then have the baby, there's this period where everything begins to change. I watched my daughter. She was so very, very happy during the pregnancy, very, very happy, and she was one who was very conscious of her appearance and whatever. But during the pregnancy she loved the pregnancy, and she was happy. She would watch how big it comes, she'd say oh, now I'm spreading out like this.

Now when God puts something inside you, you have to grow and change and expand to be able to handle what God wants to bring through you. Then when the time comes, then you go through pain and turmoil and distress and you can't wait to get it all over with, then there's the baby and you've forgotten all about stretch and grow. It's now how can I contract and stop this thing and shut right down on the inside again. So that's why - now, so patience is never passive. You don't just wait around for something to happen. All the time a baby's growing, there's a nurture going on. A smart parent will be speaking into the child, making sure they're rested, providing - they actually focus on providing an environment that's really good for the child, so when the child comes out, it comes out with a great start. So it's the same in our lives with the promises of God.

When we have promises of God you've got to stick with it, believing it, holding onto God. In Hebrews 12, Verses 35 to 38 it says, you have need of patience, that after you've done the will of God, then the promises come. I watched Neil with the patience he had when he got cancer, standing on the word of God for week after week after week after week. He didn't just get a miracle like pop, someone prayed and it was all over. He actually held the word of God around his life, and persevered in faith. In that season of persevering in faith there was a delay when God's not showing up, and doesn't seem like you're getting better, you're getting worse - and this is the thing that produces results. We have to hold on to God. It's a challenge to do it. Now there are reasons dreams are delayed. Here's the number one reason; number one reason - it's not the most important one - devils interrupt our dreams. So you find that through the Bible it tells us very clearly, demons try to obstruct things on the way, but you and I have been given authority to deal with it, so demons are not a problem. Tell someone demons are not a problem, demons are not a problem. All you've got to do is rebuke them, they then leave, and away you go, and you carry on your merry way, so demons are not a problem to us.

God's given us stuff. Then there's divine delay, when God has appointed a time, and nothing you do will make it faster. You just have to wait. Now I'll show you what you've got to do when you're waiting, but you have to wait. You're not going to hurry God up. You can pray all you like, cry all you like, scream all you like, shout all you like, jump up and down, intercede all you like. You can't hurry God up. He just won't be hurried up. He just won't hurry up. I hate that part, but He won't hurry up, and I've had to accept it. HURRY UP! I've waited for seven years trying to get a piece of land in Dannevirke. HURRY UP! You know we had a school, and they told us they had to give up the building the school was in, and hand it over to someone else at the end of the year, and I still had no land. HURRY UP! Can't you see I'm in trouble here! That's kind of the thinking that goes on in our mind, you know? We kind of get a bit distorted, and think God doesn't notice you're in trouble, that God doesn't care about you're in trouble. It seems that way to you, but actually it's not true. It's just an illusion in your mind as you're starting to lose nerve.

So we had delay after delay. I did two years of applications to try and get a piece of land, and every two months it would be delayed by some more bureaucratic red tape; had to get permission from the Hospital Board, had to get permission from the Council, had to go to the Ministry of Works, had to go to the Ministry of Health, had to go to someone to value the land, and then the guy died in the middle of it. It just went on and on and on and on. This went on for over a year, and of course I'd think GOD, HELP! Then the Baptists said, you've got to get out of the building by the end of the year, and time went on, we still got no land, nothing's happened. I've got to get out of the building in January, and we've got to get a school up, and a school in place, and I hadn't even got a piece of land, so by about Maybe HURRY UP! Oh hurry up! Then we had to change the plans, because sometimes you have to change what you've got, to take into account that God is not doing what you want, the way you wanted it.

We had this grand plan for a great big building, but it was not to be. I had to change the plans, and so it got down to about October - HURRY UP! Then I changed. When I changed, I changed in October. In November we got the land. [Laughter] I was sorry it took me seven years to change. It was mostly impatience, and frustration, and feeling a failure, and all the stuff that goes with that. It's a bad track you go down when delay goes, you know that. But you've just got to come to a place where there's surrender in your life, and you learn how to wait on God, and hold God's promises over your situation. I did everything. I did everything, but I know it was all a trick, and it was all my attempts to make God do it in my timing - and He refused, He said, because I'm interested in making you into a certain kind of person, you've got to hang in there. So it went on and on and on and on. We did five years with one piece of land, went right through to the Privy Council in London and still we got turned down. I mean this is years of battle to get a piece of land, then two years to battle to get another piece of land, and you know what? In November I got the land, at the end of November, 30 November. The 1st of December I had bulldozers on there to get this land underway, and we got a whole team in, we built the whole school in the space of six weeks.

It was a shock to everyone that we could ever get the thing up in such a time. No one believed we could do it, but we did it, and it just was God working through all the people having a heart to work, and to get it done. It was just astonishing how people came together, even people from other churches came and helped us, we got this whole thing. So I'd gone seven years without being able to solve this problem, and in two months God got the whole thing done. I wish I'd known a bit more in those days, I didn't know too much. So divine delay, the purpose of divine delay is to make you a bigger person, so what are you doing when the delay is on, that is crucial?

Here's the last thing is, the reason that dreams are delayed is because you're actually failing to do what you need to do. Now let's face it, dreams don't come about because you dream about them. You've got to do something, and this is about faith always has action. In the kingdom of God no one is passive. In Matthew, Chapter 11, Verse 12, he says the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, violent pressure. There's a certain measure you have to be assertive to bring things from heaven to the earth, so waiting for God doesn't mean you're doing nothing. You have need of faith and patience that after you've done something - you've got to be doing. There has to be a doing, so there are some things we're doing, and notice Joshua's told you've got the Promised Land, wonderful, now go in and fight, and every bit of it by the sword. How about that - and he said not only that, I'll put some enemies in there, just so you can learn how to war. By the way, I want you to learn how to war.

So God leaves obstacles and difficulties, you and I must arise and begin to do things. So Joshua's told meditate in the promises of God, speak the promises of God, hold the promises of God over your life, and begin to do what God calls you to do, and things will happen. See, the Great Commission is a mandate to change the world. It's still in effect by the way. No matter what the world is looking like, the mandate to change the world is still in effect, but here's the thing. Although God's heart is to change the world, it requires we actively co-operate and participate in it. It'll never happen by itself. It actually requires we get into prayer, and we engage the loss in a meaningful way, building relationship to see them drawn, so what do you do when there's delay? When there's a delay you need to look at, what I need to develop in my character. Do I need to develop faith? Do I need to be holding the word of God, meditating in the word of God, speaking the word of God? What is it I need to be doing? Are there areas in my character I need to grow, or do I just need to hang in there until God does this thing?

See, so no dream comes about without perseverance and without doing something. Here's the last one, I'll just cover it quickly and that is disappointment. Disappointment's a major issue in dreams, and I've struggled with this at times. Disappointment is what you expected doesn't happen, or what you didn't expect does happen, and you end up with a very deep grief and pain in your heart. People can disappoint us, life circumstances can disappoint us. You may for example have a dream about your family, and in that dream about your family - you have dreams. I mean all of us have dreams about our kids. We dream about their first day at school, we dream about them going to high school, we dream about them going out and getting a job, we dream about their careers, we dream about them getting engaged, we dream about them having a wonderful wedding day and family. Even if you don't have a concept of it, you do think about those things. Then what happens when you get a teenager who goes on to drugs and all the dreams you had just seem to die? What happens when you have a teenager and they go off the rails, perhaps they're assaulted or there's sexual assault and now their life is broken and damaged, and everything you had hoped for them is suddenly stolen away, and your heart is full of grief and disappointment?

What about you have a child that commits suicide, and you can't understand all the dreams you had for that child are all gone? This is the real world we live in. This is the things that happen, and so often dreams meet with real disappointments in life. Marriage can have it's disappointments, can have disappointments in business and finance, and so life faces us with things that we didn't expect. This is part of life. I love it when everything's going well, but my reality is, there are times it goes well, and times of great disappointment, and if we don't deal with disappointment, it will hold us back, and you lose heart for your dreams. What happens is grief will cause you to lose your dream; grief caused by disappointment causes you to lose your dream, and we don't have to hold onto that. Some of you today will have lost dreams because of grief. In the Bible in Genesis 11, Terah lost his son, and he never resolved the grief, so he walked with Abraham until he got to a place that reminded him of the grief of a lost son, and he just wouldn't budge. He just stayed there and never moved on. Many people in life have a dream, and they get a disappointment, and they get stuck and don't move on. They just lose heart and lock down. You don't have to do that. There are other choices. There are many other choices we can make when dreams fail.

In 1 Samuel 30, David had a dream. He had a dream of being a king. He had men who believed in that dream, and one day he was late getting home and when he got home his house was burned down, his wife and children taken, all his finances taken. He'd had a financial and family collapse in just one day, but not only him, all the men he led experienced the same thing, and now they lost hope because of their grief. It says they wept bitterly, then they wanted to stone David. They wanted to attack the one way, the one person who could get them out of the mess. David strengthened himself in God. If you have a dream - he knew that God had spoken to him, and he would be the king. He held the dream in the face of the deepest setback you could possibly face; you've lost everything that was precious to you, and in the face of that he held the dream. It says he strengthened himself in God. What do you do to deal with disappointments? They do come to all of us. What do you do with it? If you don't do something about it your vision will go, your dream will go.

In Luke 24 the disciples on the road to Emmaus were full of disappointment and grief. Their dream had gone and notice this - they left the very place Jesus told them to stay and wait for empowerment. In other words, they totally let go of their vision and dream, and as they walked to Emmaus they saw Jesus. They didn't even recognise him. See, grief and disappointment will blind you to what God is doing, you can't see it. You actually are just - all you want to do is go back where you feel comfortable, what's familiar again. I feel God speaking to many people about that right now. Going back to what's familiar, what's comfortable, what's secure is not the answer. You have to deal with the issue, and so Jesus helped them deal with the issue. This is what He did. He talked to them and drew out their feelings, the pain and disappointment and disheartenment. He drew out their dreams and what they were, and then He adjusted the dreams, and adjusted their thinking, and put fresh hope back in them again.

So if we're faced with a situation where there is disappointment, at the end of the day, the first thing you've got to do is just acknowledge how deep the disappointment is. I've found because I'm a quite motivated person, that often when disappointments come I don't acknowledge them as I ought to, or as quickly as I ought to, and they just sit in my heart. Then I feel the loss of energy, and eventually I come and push into God, then it starts to come out in a deep grief, and you actually have to let grief go. There's a process to release grief. To think Christians don't have grief is foolish. We have it, and to pretend it's not there, to try and tough it out, that's not God's answer. God's answer is to take the griefs and sorrows of our heart, acknowledge them, feel them and just let them go, then look at the believing, what thinking is in behind it? Sometimes we need to make some changes, so the remedy then, if there are disappointments, number one is resolution of the pain, and number two is refocusing your life again. So when Jesus faced the disciples with their disappointments, this is what He did. He helped them express it and resolve it, then put fresh vision in them, and they went back with a new life, a new hope again. You could do that. I know you could do that.

Sometimes you have to adjust personally. It's not going to be like before, and that can be a grief. Sometimes you have hopes and dreams, and then it seems it changes, not the way you thought it would work out. You have to be willing to let go, and let God change you on the inside, as you deal with the grief. Sometimes you've got to change your plan. Sometimes you have to change your expectations.

There may be people here today, I can feel in the spirit now, and there's been delay and you've got discouraged or there's been disappointment and you've become disheartened. God wants to help you today. He will help you. You've just got to acknowledge it. Just acknowledge what's happened. If the problem is delay, go and meditate in the word of God, get your hope back and faith back in God, God is faithful. So begin to meditate in the promises of God, speak the promises of God, and do what you need to do to get where you need to go. If there's disappointment, take the time to get alone with God and acknowledge the pain, acknowledge the grief, and then adjust your life again around this change.

Why don't we just close our eyes right now. Holy Spirit, come. Holy Spirit, come. Spirit of God, fall upon the church. Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, if you're here today and don't know Jesus Christ, this is a great day to receive Him, to receive Him as a friend, to receive Him as a Saviour, allow His spirit to come into your life and heart. Jesus loves you, and died on the cross for you, so you could actually enter into a life walking with God, free from sin, free from pressure of demonic curses, able to walk into the destiny God has for you - but it does require decision to respond. If that's you today, and you want to come to Christ, give your life to Christ, please just raise your hand wherever you are. I'd love to lead you in a prayer to receive Jesus. Anyone here today? I wonder just while I was talking, I felt the spirit of God start to come on the issue of discouragement and disappointment, and if that's you today, rather than just do nothing, it's not really about us praying for you. It's actually more about you make a decision to acknowledge actually there's been delays, and I've become discouraged. I need to acknowledge it, and come back and represent myself to the Lord again, come back into a place of faith, patience, enduring and walking out the dream.

If it's a disappointment I need to come and acknowledge that I'm in pain, make a decision to open the pain to the Lord, allow Him to heal me, allow Him to adjust me and to grow me and re-set my focus again. If that's you today, why don't you just come out of your seat and just come, I'm not going to pray for you, just come and lift your hands before the Lord, say God, I'm hearing you speak to me today. I'm just coming forward to worship you and acknowledge you are speaking into my heart. Just come out of your seat, just make your way to the front, just stand, hands lifted up. I'm not going to pray with you or alongside you, just going to pray a general prayer over everyone here - but coming up is like a faith action, saying I know God's talking to me today. I've got such deep disappointment, I need God to touch me in the area of disappointment, disappointment in marriage, disappointment in children, disappointment with family, disappointment in finance, disappointment in business, disappointment in ministry of some kind. It doesn't really matter what it is, just coming up is an act of acknowledge that God, You are speaking to me and I will respond.

See, faith always has got actions. If you believe, you'll do. If you're doing, I know you believe. Just come, just come today, just come and just lift our hands to the Lord, just lift our hands to Him right now. Whatever that disappointment is, whatever that set back, whatever that delay, God is here. He loves you. He saw it coming, and He can help you. When the disciples were disappointed, Jesus talked to them. Why are you so sad? What's going on in your life? He got them to just share with Him, and I guess they wept as they talked about broken dreams, hopes, aspirations and Jesus listened and walked with them. Then He spoke into their hearts, and those men rose up and literally ran back into the assignment God had for them, and on that day of Pentecost they were there. They were there. They were restored, the dream was back again. This time, every one of them laid their lives down for the sake of that dream. That's right, God is here today. Are there any others with broken dreams, disappointments? Just lift your hands to the Lord right now.

Father in heaven, You love us, You believe in us. You have thoughts towards us. You know plans that You have for us to do us good, not evil. Give us a future and a hope, but right now we acknowledge before You, that through the delay of those dreams the heart has been affected, hope has been lost. Through difficulties and disappointments grief and sorrow has weakened our resolve, so Father we ask comfort our heart, restore our hope, restore our dream, adjust our lives so we're aligned with what You have for us. Lord, come and touch us.

We feel Your presence here. Father, I just pray Your spirit to move and comfort people, strengthen people, strengthen in our heart to resolve and we will never give up, but we will hold the word of God, the promises of God over marriage, over family, over children, over loved ones, believing to see them saved, restored, built, established, over finance and business, over areas of responsibility, over lost loved ones. Father, today we thank you for grace in our lives, to resolve disappointment and grief, to stand up again and run again with the message of the gospel, to run again with the dream. Yes Lord, Halleluiah! We love You Lord.

Some of you standing here today, got very deep grief, find a deep pain in your heart, please feel free to stay on, just worship the Lord. You may want to just process it at home, just go and take some time alone with God, some worship music, remember what it is that you expected, what disappointed you, and just grieve before the Lord, let the tears flow out from your heart to the one who'll comfort you, strengthen you and listen for His voice to speak fresh direction, fresh hope into your life. Father, we thank You for this body of people. Father, I pray increase enlargement, I pray a river of the spirit of God to bring healing to our community, lives to Jesus Christ and Lord, we give you all the honour and all the glory. Amen. Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Your dream is your future – it is what your life moves towards.

Personal Dreams: Cruise, new home, new job – these are about personal fulfilment.

God given Dream: This always about Kingdom of God advancing – destiny fulfilment.

Dreams can be lost, stolen and opportunities lost – life drifts.

2. Dream Killer #2 Delays

Delay = What you expected does not happen when you expect.

Prov.13:12 - Hope deferred makes the heart sick – but when desire comes it is tree of life.

When time passes and dream does not eventuate – feel life is ‘on hold’, ‘just a dreamer’.

May begin to think about life could have had if hadn’t listened to God – discouraged.

“Sick” = OT2470 = weak, grieved, in pain.

Delay can cause people to become:

(a) discouraged – lose the courage to stay the course (Num. 21:4).

(b) Impatient – irritated by delay, restless, resistant to delay.

e.g. Gen.16:1-12 “You shall call his name Ishmael … He shall be a wild man”

- Abraham became impatient – listened to poor counsel – produced Ishmael.

- His impatience hurt his marriage and produced two nations at war.

e.g. 1 Sam.13:5-8 “Then he waited 7 days according to the time set by Samuel but Samuel did not come”

- Saul became impatient, under pressure of conflict, people leaving and God delaying.

- His impatience cost him his leadership. Vs14.

Impatience = the inability to wait until God says we are ready.

1 Pet.5:6 “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time.”

· Due Time = NT2540 = Kauros = a set time, a time that God has appointed.

God has exactly the right timing for doors to open, promotion to come.

Keys: Faith and Patience

Heb.6:12 “Be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises”.

· “Through” = NT1223 = Dia = whatever follows this is the method through which the promises of God come.

· Patience = NT3115 = constant steady confident endurance.

= ability to remain confident in Christ and continue on course.

· E.g. Pregnancy – period of change, preparation then pressure/pain to birth. We need time to change, grow, develop readiness, stretch.

· Patience = Not passive, waiting for something to happen.

e.g. Mt.1:12 The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence.

= persevering in believing, changing, doing what is necessary.

e.g. Heb.12:35-38 You have need of patience that after you have done the will of God you may receive promises.

· Exhortation in Heb. 6:12

(a) Don’t be slothful = sluggish, lazy, dull, illegitimate.

(b) Be follower = mimic or imitate men of faith.

· Why Dreams Delay:

(i) Demonic Resistance – easily overcome.

(ii) Divine Delay – must co-operate with process of change.

(iii) Failure to take action – must co-operate in fulfilment of dreams.

· There is no God given dream fulfilled without our participation.

· N.B. Doing nothing guarantees delay.

- Josh.1:3 – Joshua required to physically enter and possess the land.

- Mt.28:19-20 – Great Commission requires our participation.

· Don’t delay the dream by refusing to do your part. (Heb.2:1-3)

3. Dream Killer #3 Disappointment

· Disappointment What we expected does not happen.

Unpleasant or painful things happened that didn’t expect.

· People hold dream in heart for marriage, children, finances, career. When the unexpected happens can have painful setback, trauma e.g. child – drugs, accident, suicide.

What happens is inconsistent with dream – experience grief.

· E.g. Gen.11:27-32 - Terah never resolved disappointment and grief – settled down and did not pursue dream or vision.

· E.g. 1Sam.30:4-6 - David and followers experienced immense disappointment and grief.

Impact on David’s men was to lose dream and vision.

E.g. Luke 24 - Disciples on road to Emmaus – full of disappointment and grief.

· When experience grief/disappointment it is easy to entertain doubts.

(a) about God (b) about self (c) about dream

· Remedy: Resolution and Refocusing

· Heb.11:23-25 - God is faithful who promised.

(a) Acknowledge grief, disappointment – express openly to God.

Take time to resolve this grief.

· Lk.24 Jesus drew out the disciples to express their grief and lost hopes.

(b) Refocus on the faithfulness of God.

- Take time to meditate and remember the dream v32.

- Choose to rejoice in the Lord 1Pet.4:12-13

- Adjust personally

- Adjust your plan

- Adjust your expectations.

The Holy Spirit & the Will of God (7 of 7)

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what is the will of God? How many people have wondered that? God, what is Your will? Oh God, what is Your will? There's so many decisions we face - God, what do you want? You don't know what He wants, because somehow it's very quiet. Paul in Colossians 1:19 says he was praying that we'd be filled with knowledge of the will of God, so clearly it's God's plan you know his will and two, that you actually be filled with understanding and have a sense of knowing what to do at any point in time. Yet that's not what most of us experience, so I want you follow - so how can I find the will of God?

Why don't we just turn in Ephesians, Chapter 5. I'm full of the Holy Ghost today, absolutely, up praying, getting full of the Holy Ghost. It's good to be full of the Holy Ghost, otherwise you're full of something else usually, you know, depression and heaviness and fears and anxieties and worries. God wants us to be full of the Holy Ghost! Full of the Holy Ghost! I hope before you go out today you get filled up. You'll open your life and get filled up, and we've been doing a series on desire and destiny, but there's one more thing I had just burning in my heart that I just wanted to share, and I want to talk about the Holy Ghost and the will of God, because all of us want to know well, what is God's plan for my life? So we're going to go searching all our desires and whatever, and we want to find out what God's plan is.

Of course you'll notice if you read the Bible you can't get answers for everything you want. It's just like there's some things He didn't talk about, so kind of left there, so we need to get some help on that. We're made for God's pleasure, and God has wired certain things into our heart, so one way of finding God's purpose for your life is to connect with the desires of your heart. Now one of the things we have to realise though is we live in a culture which is very, very self-centred. Had you noticed? It's [laughs] and it's fuelled by instant everything, so I want it all and I want it now! This is not a good culture, a good environment, to be a godly person, because God doesn't give it all, and He doesn't give it now. He gives it all, but not now, and that's the dilemma, because in the world you want it all up front, so there's a challenge that the generation arising has, that in the west it's all a very 'me' centred culture, that community and responsibility - community is broken down, and actually the prevailing culture is, what about me? It's all about me - what do I get? What do I want? How can I get ahead?

So even in the universities the flow of education is towards what's in this for me, what do I want? How can I get ahead? Then that overflows to well, how can you help me get ahead? I will have connection with you while you help me get ahead, and after that then, if you don't help me get any further ahead, goodbye. This actually totally violates kingdom culture, so there's a spirit operating in the world today, that affects us without even thinking, that it's all about me, and my fulfilment, and my desires, my destiny, but actually it's not about that at all. The Bible says we're made for His pleasure, and so just following your desires isn't enough. It's a great way to identify things that God's put in you, but left to that alone, you'll be caught in the spirit of the world and the spirit of the age, just do what you want to do, and you'll find yourself very, very far from what God has planned for you, which is much better.

I won't go into all these. The Bible talks very clearly in the last days, in 2 Timothy 3, it says challenging or difficult times will be in the earth, and one of the reasons is because people love themselves. They're wrapped up in themselves. It said that they're truce breakers, or in other words, they don't enter into committed relationships easily. They're ungrateful and unthankful, and have got issues with their parents. Sound familiar? It's very true. We're having a breakdown in culture which is very well described in the Bible. It says, God calls those days perilous days, and so when people are wrapped up in a culture or in a mentality that it's about me and my fulfilment, then what happens is, we miss the best part of God's work, which is always concerned with something bigger than just ourselves.

So the Bible says many things. In there it says that, there be lovers of pleasure, in other words hedonistic, or just seeking to get something that makes me feel good, so if I can get what I want, and my desire, I'll feel good. Get the idea? I'm getting on to where I'm going shortly. Now I just was thinking about this the other day, and the Lord just began to drop into my heart the names of a whole number of people in the Bible who had desires, and their desire totally blew it in their life. Let me just give you a few, I'm not going to look them all up, but I'll give you a few of them. Eve had a desire. She desired the fruit on the tree. Oh boy, that's good, that'll get me ahead. Yeah, right! See, it violated what God had for her, and in doing so, that desire to get ahead, that desire to fulfil herself, that desire to make her way in life without reference to God, actually is the core of the human problem. That's what led to the problems we have in society. Now you start to follow it through. What about the problems in the Middle East right now? Where did they all come from? Well they came from one man, who had a desire to have a son. He thought it would be a good idea with have sex with his wife's maid. So he desired her, and he desired a son. Now get this; God had promised a son, so he can kind of frame it up, well God's got a plan for me and it's not working out here. I'll try this. Of course now we have all this conflict - wild man.

What about Israel? Israel desired a king like everyone else, so what did they get? The ended up with Saul, they got the king they desired, and had years of sorrow and conflict and pain and problems in their nation - but they desired, that's what they wanted. They desired that. It's just, their desire wasn't so bad to have a king, but it's just outside the order what God had planned. They settled for less than what God planned, because they followed their own thinking, and their own desire. Here's another one; Isaiah desired the priesthood. He thought man, I'm a king but boy, to be a priest, that'd be fantastic, great offer of sacrifice - so he desired to be a priest. What happened to him, he ended up his life in leprosy, in defeat, trying to - he desired something that was not what God intended for him.

Now we can go through, there's heaps of them there. What about Josiah? Josiah wanted to go down and get involved in a fight. Josiah's a good man, he brought revival into the nation, had victory after victory, but he wanted to get involved in the fight, and the king said it's not your fight, stay out of it. But he desired to go to the battle. He went. You know what happened to him? He had a premature death, because of his desire. He just missed what God was saying to him, because his desire just was not tempered by finding what God wanted. I'll give you another one there; what about Jehoshaphat? Jehoshaphat desired to strengthen his relationship with King Ahab, and King Ahab wanted to go down the battle, talked him into going to battle, then they got a prophet, and the prophet said no, no, there's going to be a big defeat if you go there. But did he go? Yeah, he went anyway. So even though he'd had prophetic word, even though there was indications from God this wasn't the right thing, because of his desire for this relationship, and this affinity between the two nations, he went to the battle. He nearly lost his life.

These are written in the Bible. There's heaps of them. They just go on and on. What about Ghazi? Well, he desired that his ministry be rewarded. He thought well, I'm serving Alias, I should get something out of this you know, there should be something in this for me. So when the Syrian got healed, he thought man, I should get a bit of dough out of this, so he followed him after and said listen, we need a bit of money for our ministry, how about you give us some? He got some money, but then he got leprosy as well. His desire brought leprosy and shame, not only on him, on his whole family. Isn't that interesting?

In Mark 1 it tells us the desire - the disciples were in a midst of a revival Jesus was having. You know what they wanted? They wanted Jesus to come back out and do the same stuff He did yesterday. He said no, actually we've got a bigger plan, and it involves the rest of the nation. We're not going to stay where you want me to stay. What about Peter? Peter desired that the ministry influence he had would expand, and extend right through the nation, so when Jesus started to talk about a cross, he said forget crosses, crosses aren't in the deal. Man, we're just pumping. We haven't got room for crosses in our ministry direction. We're so set on success, we can't see where crosses fit in anywhere. Jesus said, get behind me, and rebuked him as having a demonic source operating, through his desire to look after himself. This is what goes on, so there's so many of them.

What about David? David had a desire to build a house for God. God said plainly no. What about the desire; was it a good desire? It was a good desire. Was it a godly desire? Oh, it was a godly desire. He wanted to build a great house for God to dwell in. God said no, you can't. Someone else is set to do it - it's not going to be you. He accepted that, and he co-operated with God's plan, harnessed his desire, and provided all the resources. So your desires sometimes can actually be out of sorts with what God wants. How about this one with Paul? Now this is a good one. Paul wanted to go on a mission journey, to a place he'd been commanded to go and preach the gospel. He wanted to go, he'd been commissioned and sent out, and he tried to get to the place, and the Holy Ghost forbade him to go there. Now what do you make of that? It was a great desire, great dream, great vision, but it's just not in what God had. God had a bigger plan, so all of these things are written in the Bible, so that we can understand just because we desire something, doesn't mean to say that that's in the plan of God for our life. You have to temper it with something else, and it's the something else we want to find out about. Amen, okay.

You notice even Jesus, in Mark, Chapter 14, notice His great prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Father, all things are possible to You. In other words, oh God, You're a great God. You can make anything happen. He said, take this cup of suffering from Me. What I really want is, not to go through with the cross. Then He adds in, but if it be Your will, not My will, but Your will be done. We're here because He did that. What was His desire? His desire was to not have to go to the cross, naturally no one would want to do that, but through prayer and surrender, He found and obtained the will and mind of God, and actually then had a much greater impact. Now these are the kinds of things you need to see. We live in a culture where people do what they feel, do what they want, come into church, and then want to use God to fulfil their own desires and whatever. Now you've got to match this with finding what God - God is still God, and so we've got to match this one up.

Okay then, so let's have a look in Ephesians 5, and we'll get started, Verse 15. See then, that you walk wisely or carefully, not like a fool. He's talking to Christians - but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. In other words he's saying, this is about how you run your life, and he's saying what I want you to do, is to run your life wisely, not like a foolish person, and that means you need to understand the importance of time and using your time, investing it in the right things. Now notice what he says; therefore because of that don't be unwise, but understand what the will of God is. To be unwise is to be without a mind, to be ignorant, to not have any idea whatsoever what the will of God is, and he's saying don't be unwise, but I want you to understand or have insight to what God's will is for you. So very clearly he's saying, don't be a dummy! Christians, don't be a dummy and walk foolishly! Man, you've got one life, don't blow it with foolish decisions that take you off course. Rather, you need to know what the will of God is.

Now that's a dilemma; what is the will of God? How many people have wondered that? God, what is Your will? Oh God, what is Your will? There's so many decisions we face - God, what do you want? You don't know what He wants, because somehow it's very quiet, and Paul in Colossians 1:19 says he was praying that we'd be filled with knowledge of the will of God, so clearly it's God's plan you know his will, and two, that you actually be filled with understanding, and have a sense of knowing what to do at any point in time. Yet, that's not what most of us experience, so I want you follow - so how can I find the will of God? Well I know you'll give me the common ones, you'll give me the common ones - will you read the word of God? Now this is true. The word of God is the manual, so there are many decisions in life related to all affairs of life, which if you'd read the word of God, there are very clear directions how to succeed and to prosper, so it gives input on money, on marriage, on family, relationships, body life, the gifts of the spirit, the purposes of God - it gives this whole wealth in the Bible.

So the first thing is, we need to be students of the word of God, to discover what God has to say about a whole range of things in our life, so when a problem comes up, you know exactly what the word of God says. We need to study the word of God. I notice lots of people don't have a Bible, don't seem to read a Bible. Let me ask you this; how are you going with the will of God? How are you doing? If you're not sure how to read a Bible or find out what's in a Bible, why don't you come and ask and say hey listen, we'd like some help, I don't even know how to start. That'd be an honest place - I realise I need, but I read it and I don't get anything out of it, I don't even know how to start. We can help you with that, real easily. Okay, so that's that.

Now the other thing too would be - and the Bible's very clear on it - is to get the counsel of wise people. Now many people get the counsel of the wrong people, so if you're going to get counsel of anyone, you want to get counsel of someone who has succeeded in life in that area. That would be a fairly wise person I'm sure, and get counsel of someone who's also got spiritual insight, otherwise you'll gain a wisdom that's of the world, and it'll fill your life with strife. But that would be two things, and the Bible says a fool follows his own way, and everything that's in his own heart, but it says a wise person will draw on the counsel of those who have success in their lives, so we need to learn to do that.

Now those are the most obvious ones. What I want to do is, I want to focus on this area of what the Holy Ghost does to help us, because here's the wonderful thing is, God gave you the Holy Ghost to talk to you! When Jesus left He said, I've got a promise for you. It's a promise of being filled with the Holy Ghost - and I want to show you how you can draw on Him. I'm going to show you two or three things, very simple, just a matter of whether we do them or not. So here's the first thing. Now there's a lot of areas in life where you don't know what to do, because there's no verse in the Bible tells you where to live, what job to take on, whether to do this, whether to do that, what person to marry. There's a whole realm of life where there is absolutely no direction in the Bible whatsoever, and so in that area, in that arena which we face all the time, we operate on two principles. One is the principle of wisdom, godly wisdom, gained by spending time in the word of God, and not doing stupid things, or if you do, then learning from them. The other one is revelation; in other words the Holy Ghost speaking directly to us, and showing us what to do. Now we need both. If you only just rely on one, you'll end up there's a lot of things God's not talking about, and you'll be making up things in your head you think He's saying, so we need the balance of wisdom.

There's a lot of things God won't tell you, because He expects you to do it. He won't tell you what to put on your shopping list. He doesn't tell you, because it's your job to figure out the shopping list, but He can tell you if you forgot something. I remember on my first missions trip I got down about as far Chesterhope Bridge, and the Holy Ghost just shouted into my ear - you forgot your passports and tickets! Aaagh! I'm looking at the time thinking oh my God, I'm not going to catch the plane. I rebuke this thing in Jesus' name - look, I just spoke and commanded the plane to be grounded until I could get my tickets. My first missions trip, first time anyone paid for me to go anywhere, and I was dependent on that plane to catch the connecting - it was a connecting flight to catch the main one overseas. I did not want to have my first day turn up late, so I flew back home as fast as I could, and then drove to the airport. Yes, I drove to the airport and blow me down, when I got to the airport, the plane had been grounded. It had been grounded. It was grounded a full half an hour, and I was able to get on my flight, but you know it was the Holy Ghost told me.

I don't think He tells you everything, but He does tell you things at times that you need to know, so we need to figure out how to hear that. Now notice what it says in - I want to keep reading on. Notice he says, be not unwise, and understand what the will of God is, and don't be drunk on wine which is foolishness, but be filled with the Holy Ghost. Now you notice it's talking about not drinking wine. Now we could go into all kinds of stuff on that, but here's the thing. Being filled with the Holy Ghost is deeply connected with knowing the will of God, and he jots in there this thing about not being drunk with wine. Now here's the deal about it. What he's saying is, don't come under any other influence that would cloud your thinking, your mind and ability to make decisions, whether it's drink, drugs or any other kind of thing; don't let your mind senses be dulled. But rather be yielded to the Holy Spirit. It's a different spirit. It'll quicken your mind, He'll give you ideas, quicken you with energy in life. Yield to the Holy Ghost.

Now people get all hung up, and they forget the big thing there is, get filled with the Holy Ghost, so everyone gets worried about wine? Well if you want to drink, the Bible says those who are dying, and those who are in trouble, drink wine, because they need it to feel better. That's what it is, to feel better - I'll be sociable, so I won't go into a big thing about wine. The Bible just says don't be drunk, but it does say get drunk on the Holy Ghost, and I'm more interested not whether you're drinking wine, but whether you get drunk on the Holy Ghost, and when's the last time you got drunk on the Holy Ghost? Filled with the Holy Ghost - ooh, Holy Ghost, wow, MORE! Because that's connected with knowing the will of God, be filled with the Holy Ghost! Many Christians don't get filled with the Holy Ghost, and if they do, they don't stay that way, but you see the Holy Ghost helps us with the will of God, and I'll show you just some simple things you can do, because God has put within you a power, the ability to consistently day by day, actually be filled up with the Holy Ghost, and have the life of God flowing in you.

It's real simple, and discover on the way what God wants to do. Let's have a look, Philippians 2, Verse 13. Look what it says here. Now it says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling - notice this - for it is God who works in you, both to will, and to do, for or of His good pleasure. Notice it says to will, that's the word desire, so God even helps you get the right desires. It means to desire, to will or to determine, so it says God wants to help you with your desires, and to help you with your doing. God is at work in you, both to will and to do of the things that please Him, so here's the thing; we're not on our own. The Holy Ghost has been given to us, to help us with our desires, so our desires align with heaven's desires, and also to help us and empower us. Notice that word, God is at work - that word work is the Greek word energetic, or energayo, from which we get energetic, like the Energiser battery. God is energising you. God is empowering you. Now let me ask you this; where's He empowering you? At an altar call? No, no, no. God is at work in you, so you have to activate the movement of God within you. If you don't activate the movement of the spirit within you, then there's a problem, because that's why the Holy Spirit's given for you to work with Him. So it says, He's at work in you, both to will, and to do, and the word do there is the same word, energetic, so God is energetic, helping you get your desires right, and then so you can be energetic with the things of God, the same word. God is at work, and you get working, and the thing that is the key is the desire, so the Holy Spirit is going to help you with both your desires, so you'll end up discovering what God wants, and end up doing it. There is a power at work within you.

Ephesians 3:20 says, now the might power of the Holy Ghost inside you, but people don't experience that. They just have [in monotone] I got the Holy Ghost when I believed. [Laughter] Then I got baptised in the Holy Ghost. Life has been difficult since then. [Laughter] Where's being drunk in the spirit! Where's being so full of the Holy Ghost, that you are full of life and bubble and zim and zeal, and it starts to flow out of your personality? They say boy, you been on the drink already? I remember when God first spoke to me about alcohol, and man I used to drink a fair bit, then and God just spoke to me, tip the whole lot out. Then I said well God, if I'm going to go to parties I don't want to be a wowser. [Laughter] You're all drinking, you know? Sort of that sort of look, you know? I said God, every time I'd get invited to a party and the invitations dropped off after people found I didn't drink, but I still went to some anyway - but every time I'd go to a party, I'd say now God, I want to be filled with the Holy Ghost! I want to go there full of the Holy Ghost, so I'm more alive than anyone there, and I'm laughing and having more fun than anyone, and I come home and I have no headache. I wake up and worship God tomorrow, and it'll be great! God would fill me up, I'd get there and I'd find I'd laugh and have fun and be joking. People say what are you drinking? I say well here it is. You know, they can't tell what I'm drinking at all - drinking the Holy Ghost!

That's why Jesus gave you the Holy Ghost. He said don't even think of trying to change the world without the Holy Ghost. Don't even think about it. He said DON'T THINK ABOUT IT! Just stop until you get filled with the Holy Ghost, so they prayed, they sought, they got filled with the Holy Ghost. I don't know, we've been talking the Holy Ghost out of the church ever since. That's the problem. We need the Holy Spirit. You need the Holy Spirit in your life. You need Him in your business. One of the great keys - you talk to Steve, you'll find he has the Holy Ghost in his life, operating in his business. There's a lot of others like that too.

Romans 8:26, now the Spirit helps us with our infirmities. He helps us with our infirmities. Why? Because we don't know what to pray. I don't know what to pray, what will I pray? I need to pray, I don't know what the will of God is, what to pray, you know? So people get stuck in that kind of rut, so we don't know how to pray, what to pray, or how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Ghost helps us. So notice, helps us with our infirmities. That word means we're a bit without strength. It means we have a struggle, a lacking, we don't quite have the ability to do this, but the Holy Ghost helps. Now the word help there, is a word meaning to take hold together with someone else, so you pull together in the same direction. Now you notice that someone has to be pulling first, before the Holy Ghost comes and helps. So for most Christians, because they don't know how to pull in the spirit, then they don't have the Holy Ghost working with them. That's His role is to work with you, not for you. For you means it's someone else doing it for you, you don't do anything. I just come up, lay hands on me and just get blessed. Great. But you know when you go away, you've still got to get up tomorrow, now what will you do that will inspire the Holy Ghost to arise within you, and begin to take hold with you, and begin to start to bring something into the earth? That's the deal and it's part of our responsibility is to do that.

So the Holy Ghost will help us. So God gave you the Holy Ghost. He's going to help you to get filled with the spirit, so notice here it says don't be drunk with wine - Ephesians 5 - don't be drunk, don't be - that word is metho-o.Don't be a metho. Don't be a metho. It's quite good not to be a metho. Don't be under the influence of anything that gets around your mind, your senses and dulls you down, so you don't know what you're supposed to be doing, how to fulfil the will of God, but rather get full of the Holy Ghost, speaking to yourselves. Now that's an interesting thing. It connects the will of God to being full of the Holy Ghost, to speaking to yourself, and speaking certain things.

Speaking to yourself, so - and we're going to show you exactly where this comes in - speaking to yourself. Now when a person prays in tongues they speak to God, but they also speak into themselves, speaking to yourself. Paul - I'll show you in a scripture in a moment how Paul taught himself, and he taught himself by the gift of praying in tongues, filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking to yourselves, psalms and hymns and spirit, spirit songs. What is a spirit song? Glad you asked, we'll go into 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14. Spirit songs, now it's talking about the gift of tongues. Now notice they spoke in tongues, as the Holy Ghost infused into them the language to speak forth, so when you got filled with the spirit, you were baptised in the Holy Ghost, you got a gift given to you. Now that gift is a powerful gift. It's one of the most neglected gifts in the church is this gift of speaking in tongues. Paul said, I speak in tongues more than everyone, and he also said I get more revelation that everyone as well. There's a connection between revelation, insight to the word of God, and speaking in the spirit, speaking in tongues.

In 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 14, if I pray in an unknown tongue my spirit is praying, so your spirit, you can energise, activate your spirit consciously every time you pray in tongues, your spirit is praying, the Holy Spirit, who knows the mind of God ,starts to infuse language into your spirit, in harmony with the will of God, and you're now praying the perfect will of God as you speak in tongues. Most of us say well, I don't understand it, don't know really what it's about, so we don't really value what it does, but your spirit is praying. So he says, I'll sing with the spirit, sing with understanding, otherwise you're blessed with the spirit held another person who don't know what you're saying, say Amen at your giving of thanks. Notice we're blessing, we're praying, we're giving thanks, because you give thanks well when you do it with tongues. So he said in Verse 18, I speak in tongues more than you all, yet in the church, I'd rather speak five words with my understanding, that I may teach others also. Why does he say also? Who else is he teaching?

See, one of the things the Holy Spirit's given to you for is to teach you, is to teach you the things of God, to teach you the mind and heart of God - so we don't know how to find that mind and heart of God, so begin to speak in tongues. You say well, I don't know what I'm saying, my mind isn't connected to it. No, but when you speak in tongues, you are now directly opening the communication with God. Now the Holy Spirit is directly imparting to your spirit, you have an open communication line with God in your spirit. You try praying in tongues for a few minutes, and then suddenly stop, just go psst, stop! Holy Ghost will keep going. You find your mind filling with the language, it just overflows. It's a flow from within that fills your mind, so when you start praying in tongues, you start to open up your spirit, the part of you that's connected to God, and as you begin to flow in tongues, the spirit of God begins to energise your spirit, begins to impart words and language for you to speak. So what words and language are we speaking? Well one thing we know, we're blessing God, thanking God, we're praising God. We know we're doing all those things, but if you look in Verse 2, it says he that speaks in an unknown tongue speaks not unto man but unto God - and listen to this - how be it in the spirit he speaks mysteries. Well there you go.

When you're speaking in tongues, you're speaking mysteries. Most people look at that, and they'll say it's a mystery to me, what does all that mean? How could that work out for any good? That's a mystery. It's all a mystery. I don't know why I have to do it, so you've got to look at other parts of the Bible. In other parts of the Bible, every time the word mystery is mentioned, with all exception but one, where its mentioned first in the mystery of ungodliness, it's talking about things of the spiritual realm, the eternal realm, so each time it speaks of mysteries, it's speaking of God's design, for His kingdom to advance in you, and through you. So the mysteries you are declaring as you speak in tongues, are actually a download of what God, by His spirit, has purposed for you, in you, and through you. You say, why do I have to do it in tongues? Simply this; because your head would get in the way of the will of God, and you'd argue with Him [Laughter], because you'd have your own mind. You'd be praying something like this; Oh God, change that wife of mine! I want you to turn her into a loving person who doesn't control me [Laughter] and the Holy Ghost, as you pray in tongues, if we could interpret it, would be saying something like this; Father, help me to change my heart attitude, so I can be more loving and sensitive and kind to my wife, and not be so passive, but be more responsible. If you heard that, you'd argue and shout it down straight away [Laughter] so God puts it in another language, so you can't understand, and it's called the mystery of God. Not bad aye?

See, that's how it works. So when you're praying in tongues mysteries, you're praying directly the things God intends for your life, to work in you and through you and accomplish through you, so when you're speaking in tongues, you're not only energising your life, and opening up a direct communication with God, you begin to start the flow of the spirit in a way that enables you then, you're in the same communication flow, that you hear from God. You've got to learn to practice it. The more you pray in tongues, the easier it is to feel the flow of the spirit, and then you start to hear the voice of the spirit, the impressions of the spirit - not if you just pray a little bit once. But what if you were to make it your lifestyle, that every day you'd be praying in - [Prays in tongues] You don't have to pray that loud, but let me shout out loud. I pray quietly under my tongues [Prays quietly in tongues] Now the trouble is, when you go around doing this [Prays quietly in tongues] people hear you talking, they think you're crazy, so I've found it easier to sing in tongues, because when you sing in tongues, people don't know what you're singing, but they just know you're singing, and they say oh, that's nice, a happy person. But otherwise they go [tounges] like Ian does - [Prays in tongues] - oh! What's that? What's going on there? But you can pray in tongues all the time. You can pray every day. Here's the deal - you can call forth the will of God as much, or as little, as you like. You can grow yourself in your spirit as much or as little as you like. You choose how much you build your life with God! You choose how much you yield to the Holy Spirit, or put it another way, if you go to a party, you can choose how many drinks you have. Have one - oh, that was nice. Like chocolate, you can have one. I can't eat one piece of chocolate, I just know now I have to have the whole flipping cake. [Laughter] I don't know where it went, it just vanished just like that - empty wrapper. If you look under my desk you'll find empty wrappers of chocolate. It's not healthy, but it's good.

I don't know how I get to eat a whole cake. I just start, and just can't stop. It's partly because you get a taste for it. I tell you something, when you get praying in Holy Ghost, ooh you get a taste for it! You get a taste for the feel of His life pumping in you, of the clearness in your head, of the life of God flowing. You may go out and have a few issues, come back a bit beaten up, but get praying in the Holy Ghost. Remember, the moment you decide you'll pray, He takes hold with you! You get full as you'd like, full of the Holy Ghost, full of the spirit of God, see, speaking to yourself. That's not just talking to yourself, that's actually speaking in tongues the mysteries of God, speaking and building your spirit man. I tell you, we need a church that every person's full of the Holy Ghost. You pray in tongues. I look in the meetings sometimes, I see some people standing there, and they're like this - oh my! You're at a party, and you're not drinking, that's so sad. You know, to be a wowser at a party's a terrible thing really, just sitting there looking serious, while everyone else is drinking. It's not very good really is it aye? Everyone notices it too. Have you noticed? They all notice you. What's up with you? Ooh - let me drink! Drink! Come to a meeting, drink! Get up in the morning, drink! Start the flow of the spirit of God, get that anointing flowing inside you. That's who it is - it is a person and that person flows through you, your life gets energised.

You start to build this into your life, day by day build it, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes then through the day. [Prays in tongues] Praying in tongues. You know what will happen? You'll start to come alive on the inside, then you'll start to hear things from God. You'll start to know things. You say how do you know that? I don't know how I know, I just - I don't know, I just know. I don't know how I know. That's what Steve does in his business. How did he know what house to build? How did he know they were going to give him the contract? Because he saw in the spirit. How do you see in the spirit? Well I guess he prays in tongues a fair bit, that be right Steve? Pray in tongues, pray in the spirit every day? See what happens is, the benefit is, you start to get into a flow of revelation, and things that God has purpose for your life, so you may have lots of desires, but one desire to cultivate is the desire to pray strongly in the spirit, to let the life of God begin to flow through you! Why? Because what will happen is, your head will clear, your spirit will become strong, and gradually you'll begin to form in your spirit the things that God is wanting to birth.

Gradually they'll start to form in your spirit until they give birth, until finally there comes a point where these things start to happen. There's other factors in that of course, but at least do the ground work, because God gave you the Holy Ghost. He said don't try and live the Christian life without the power of the Holy Ghost. You say well, I'm not so good at praying in tongues. Why don't you give yourself to it? If God gave you the gift, why don't you just give yourself to it? Well I'm a quiet person. No, no, no, no, that's a mistake. That's quite an untruth. You're not a quiet person, you're a wild radical person. I've seen you at parties, I've seen you at the dances, seen people up here last night ... you know? They get into it, we sing a song, you know, Y-M-C-A [Laughter] we're doing all this stuff there, but on Sunday why? Why God, you know? Come on, get the whole song, get the whole song! [Applause] Really get into the whole song, and start pumping you know? Got to really start pumping in the Holy Ghost, get fired up in the spirit!

For some people there's just a demonic block, a demonic thing, and you're yielding to the demon, rather than yielding to the Holy Ghost. Man, we need to have a whole lot of Christians that are pumped up and going. I saw it last night, I was at the party. I saw what some of you were like. I watched you on the stage last night dressed up, what you were like, and then I watch you this morning [Laughter] How can wearing a few clothes make you suddenly become free? What on earth did it shift in you? Why don't you just shift that every day? Just shift that every day? Just shift that - that's what the Holy Ghost came to do, so you could [Prays in tongues] Halleluiah! We need to pray in the Holy Ghost, start presenting your body to the Lord. You know, that's the whole thing. Start, present your body to the Lord. When we're up there and we're dancing - I saw people up there doing the hokey tokey last night. [Laughter] I watched. It's like these quiet church people, like a group of mad hooligans [Laughter] just grabbed hands, and they ran at Lyn! More hokey tokey tokey! I thought this is brilliant - now why can't you do that in church? [Laughter]

See, it's actually just, you just made a decision to let go of inhibitions, and to express fun, because we're made for that, but that's what the Holy Ghost has given, not to make us more religious, not to make us ooh, deeply spiritual... No, no, no! Get you full of life so you're uninhibited, and don't need a drink or a party. You can actually be happy, and people say why are you happy? What's going on? Have you been drinking or something? Yeah. What kind? That's right, that's right - I've got the Holy Ghost, got the Holy Ghost! God gave me the Holy Ghost! I'm full of the Holy Ghost, oh oh! I'm feeling the spirit of God right now. Come on over here quick and let's just - quick, someone to catch them, they'll fall over for sure - I'm so full of the Holy Ghost! [Laughter] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait [Laughter]

Lift your hands up, just lift both hands up there like you have a good drink - are you ready? Drunk in the Holy Ghost! Fill him Lord! Ready? Power of the Holy Ghost! Just come around - Holy Ghost, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, full of laughter, Holy Ghost, quick! Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Are you ready? Come on, touch her, quick! She's going to stagger full of - she's a drunk woman, drunk in the Holy Ghost, filled with the Holy Spirit, whoa! Full of the Holy Ghost. See, we need a lot more of that don't we Jill? Come on Jill, come on out here, quick, have a good drink. Why don't you reach up - now listen, someone get behind her quick, begin to pray in tongues. Pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Holy Ghost - see, she's already getting full of the Holy Ghost. See, the Holy Ghost is here. The Holy Ghost is here, so you've got to stir up the gift inside you.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

We are made for God’s pleasure – not all about me, my personal fulfilment.

Great trend in the West towards self idolatry – all about me and what I want.

Fuelled by demand for everything now – instant coffee, communication, answers.

Without cause to live for the Next Generation: How can I get ahead? Loyal only to self.

Bring that mentality into the church: What can I get? How can you get me ahead?

· Paul wrote 2 Tim.3:1 Perilous times = 5467 = Hard to deal with, difficult, dangerous.

2 Tim.3:1-7 Lovers of pleasure – form of godliness.

2. Following Desires can head to Failure

e.g. People in the Bible who followed desire of heart and ended with disaster:

Gen. 3:6 – Eve

Gen. 16 – Abraham and Hagar

1 Sam.12:13 – Israel and Saul

2 Chron.26:16 – Uzziah and priesthood

2 Chron.35:22 – Josiah and battle

1 K.22:32 – Jehosophat and battle

2. K 5:20 – Gehazi and money

Mk.1:35 – Disciples and revival

Mt.16:22 – Peter and Jesus purpose

2 Sam.7:4 – David and House of God

- All had desires, good ideas that they pursued – in conflict with the will of God.

- Did not recognise the will of God – clouded by personal desires for fulfilment.

e.g. Jesus

Mk.14:32 “Father all things are possible with you – take away this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will…” (desire, determine, be inclined towards)

3. God Wants You to know His Will

· Eph.5:15-18 “Be not unwise but understand what the Will of the Lord is…”

· Unwise = NT878 = to be mindless, ignorant, acting recklessly.

· Understand = NT4920 = to comprehend, have insight into, come into ones mind.

· How can I find the Will of God? (Col.1:9 “…filled with the knowledge of His Will”)

(i) Word of God … principles and instructions.

(ii) Counsel of experienced godly men (Prov.12:15 .. hearken to counsel is wise)

· Many areas need to make decisions – no reference to it in the Bible. E.g. Where to work? Where to live? Who to marry?

4. God Helps us to know His Will

a) Phil.2:13 “It is God that works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure”

· Will = 2309= to desire, to will, to purpose, to determine.

· Works =NT1754= energeo = to be active, effective, put forth supernatural ability.

· Do =NT1754= energeo = to do, be active.

· God is at work within you – He has put something in you to help.

· There is a power that works within us (Eph.3:20) to help us.

b) Rom.8:26 “The Spirit helps us with our infirmities for we don’t know what to pray.

· The work of the Holy Spirit is to help us.

· Help =4878= to take hold together with, to help in obtaining, participate with.

· Infirmities =NT769= weakness, to have not enough strength.

· Groaning =4726= to sigh = deep expressions of Holy Spirit with us interceding.

e.g. Jesus: Mk.7:34 Looking up to heaven He sighed – man healed.

Mk.3:12 Sighed deeply in His Spirit – left Pharisees.

5. The Work of the Holy Spirit and the Will of God

a) Eph.5:17-20 “Be not drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit.”

· Context = knowing the Will of God

· Drunk = NT3182= Meth uskoo = intoxicate, under the influence of alcohol.

= subject senses and mind and emotions to influence of alcohol.

= deaden and dulls pain, deadens senses to cope with life.

· Filled with the Holy Spirit = come under the influence of the Spirit and Word of God.

= subject senses and mind and emotions to another influence.

= Present your body, life, soul, to Holy Spirit and to the Word of God.

· Speaking to yourselves = overflow of the Holy Spirit operating.

· Note: Spiritual songs, thanksgiving – as much as you like.

b) 1 Cor.14:14-19

· Speaking in tongues = spirit is praying, Holy Spirit is imparting to spirit.

· You speak – Holy Spirit takes hold with you and imparts to your spirit.

· You open the part of your spirit where God connects/communicates.

· E.g. pray in tongues – stop – words keep flowing into your mind.

· Revelation of God’s will comes the same way.

· Vs.2 Speak mysteries =mystery= hidden purpose and plans of God to advance His Kingdom in and through you.

· As you speak in tongues you speak forth the purpose of God. You strengthen and energise your spirit.

· Listen with spiritual ears to the overflow – words/pictures.

· Rom.12:1-2 presenting body and soul to the Lord – yielding to the Holy Spirit so you can hear instruction from the Spirit of God = surrender to Him.

· In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus yielded to the will of God then prayed to bring forth that will.

· 1 Cor.2:12 we have received the spirit of God that we might know.

Action:

· Commit to Praying in Tongues daily, strongly to develop spiritually.

Breaking Free from Victim Mentality

Victim mentality is a way of viewing yourself, and a way of viewing life, that causes you continually to fail in relationships and life.

The person will not take responsibility. Instead they choose to make excuses for why life is like it is, and to find someone or something to blame.

When you blame someone, you leave yourself powerless, and resentful at how life sucks. This is a way of thinking, it's an internal choice in your heart.

You can be a Christian with victim mentality, and no matter how much preaching you get, you never break out or change your patterns. We need to identify and change these heart beliefs, so we can unlock the potential and fulfil the destiny that God has for us.

Victim Mentality (1 of 2)

Victim Mentality is a way of viewing yourself, and viewing life, that causes you continually to fail in relationships and life. You can be a Christian with victim mentality, and never break out or change your patterns. I'm very concerned about the patterns of lifestyle, the patterns of believing and thinking, that we change them, so we can unlock the potential and fulfil the destiny that God has for us.

Developing a Kingly Mentality (2 of 2)

Paul had some difficulties: beatings, stonings, shipwrecks. If God was on His side, you'd think that He could have at least told him to catch the right boat, but three times the boat he was on sank. He's there in the water, holding on to pieces of wood. Not nice - but he never, thought like a victim.

In prison, chained to a Roman soldier, he never, thought like a victim, or as one imprisoned. He said: In all these things we are more than conquerors! Whatever you're facing in your life, believe me, you have got it in you, you are more than a conqueror. Of course if you don't believe that, if you think you're a victim, you're in trouble.

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- Victim Mentality (1 of 2)

- Developing a Kingly Mentality (2 of 2)

Victim Mentality (1 of 2)

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Victim Mentality is a way of viewing yourself, and viewing life, that causes you continually to fail in relationships and life. You can be a Christian with victim mentality, and never break out or change your patterns. I'm very concerned about the patterns of lifestyle, the patterns of believing and thinking, that we change them, so we can unlock the potential and fulfil the destiny that God has for us.

I want you to look with me in Romans, Chapter 8. Last time I was up preaching I just shared with you about slave or son [Kings Arise series], and we've touched on the whole area of an orphan spirit; we touched on the area of God's desire for us to be sons, and there's a lot of that found in Romans, Chapter 8. So I want to read first of all from Verse 34, and today I want to just talk about how to break out of victim mentality, how to break out of victim mentality. I've read on the Internet and searched around, found there's a lot of secular material on it, and it's very helpful. Much of it's very helpful in identifying victim mentality.

It's a widespread phenomenon that's absolutely devastating, devastating to relationships. People who have this mentality cannot succeed in forming emotional intimacy in relationships, so many times people suffer in their relationship and have got no idea why. They just put up with something less than what God intended, but every one of us has a yearning for intimacy, every one of us has a yearning for something close in the area of relationships. So notice here - so victim mentality as we'll see in a moment, I'll define it - is a way of viewing yourself, and a way of viewing life, that causes you continually to fail in relationships and life. You can be a Christian with victim mentality, and you would live your life in such a way that no matter how much preaching you get, you never break out or change your patterns. I'm very concerned about the patterns of lifestyle, the patterns of believing and thinking, that we change them, so we can unlock the potential and fulfil the destiny that God has for us.

But notice this in these verses, Verse 34: Who is it that condemns us? Is it Christ who died, and has also risen, and at the right hand of God who's making intercession for us. Obviously not, He doesn't condemn us - so then, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword? Now that's a lot of difficult, challenging situations. Now you may have had a few of those of course, tribulation, tremendous pressure, financially, relationships and so on, distress, persecution - I doubt it but you might have had some; famine - I doubt it. Everyone looks well fed; nakedness - oh I don't see any of that around; peril - well maybe there's some of that; the sword - well, who knows what goes on, you know? There it is - as it's written: For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are counted as sheep to the slaughter.

Now you notice he's describing a number of extremely painful experiences the church were having. Now - notice what he says - but in all of these things, we are more than conquerors through Christ Jesus, who loves us! Now that's not a victim mentality. What he's saying is, the early church suffered persecution, were victimised, hunted down, treated like criminals, were put on display, and fought with animals and destroyed by animals. Nevertheless, he says we are - actually we're not just conquerors. We're 'more than' - see? More than conquerors. That means we gain decisive victories in life. That means we vanquish totally the things that come against us. It means a surpassing victory, whatever situation we are in. Now that's the kind of life that Christ died for us to have - surpassing victories. I can see that's going down really flat. [Laughter] It's not resonating yet, because often our experience - this is what happens, the moment you hear a verse like that, of surpassing victories. Inside your heart measures up my life experience against that scripture, and concludes something is wrong here, between what I experience and what this is saying.

But the life Jesus called us to, is a life of being a victor, of being victorious. Does that mean everything looks good? No, sometimes it looks as though we're terribly defeated and in difficulty, for example the early martyrs, and people right down through history who gave their life for Christ. Were they victors? Yes, they were. Why? Because in the face of opposition, they never quit. They stood up for what they believed in, and that was a victory. Some conquered nations, so the Book of Hebrews is full of people who by faith won victories, victories over lions, victories over enemies, victories of all kinds. The Bible abounds with people who dared to believe God, and broke through - but for most of us the difficulties we face are far more mundane, far more subtle. They creep up on us, and they're difficulties and challenges around family and marriage and finance and relationships, the economic climate and business and so on. But in all of these, God says we can have victory.

Does it mean it'll always work out good? No, it may not work out so good. Sometimes we go through very difficult times, but God uses it all to work about a great good, so we can have a positive and a strong attitude. So victim mentality is a way of seeing yourself, and a way of looking at life. A victim mentality is a mindset, and a heart belief system. If it was just the way you think, it would be easy to deal with. In fact you could go on the Internet and find some keys that are very, very helpful. However it's deeper than that, it goes right into the heart. So a victim mentality has to do with heart beliefs, and ways of thinking that continually sabotage your life and relationships - and we'll give you a few keys so you can recognise it quite soon. The essence - a victim is a person who was abused or hurt or oppressed, and has no power to do anything to change that. They are the victim of it.

A victim mentality is when a person has a mindset, a certain way of thinking, where they refuse to take responsibility for their life and their emotions and what they're going through, and instead they put the blame on someone else. They put it somewhere else, so it's a way of interpreting how people come across, what to make of life, what to make of relationships. So as a man thinks in his heart, so he is, so there are some examples of it of course, and I want to move through this quickly so we get to solutions, but do you remember in Exodus, Chapter 15 - let's have a brief look there in Exodus 15. The people of Israel had been in slavery for 400 years. Now they had been delivered, they are no longer slaves. Although they're physically no longer a slave, although physically they are free, in their mind they still think like a slave, so - Verse 23 - they came to Marah - which means bitter - and they couldn't drink of the waters of Marah because they were bitter, so they called the name Marah, bitter.

And the people - now here's what they did. Notice instead of looking for a solution, instead of reaching out positively to God in expectation of a solution, the bitterness of their victim state rose up, and you notice what they did, one of the first evidences of victim mentality, is they complained. Complaining puts you fair and square in the mentality of a victim. When people complain, they are just pouring out their grievance, injustice, and hurt, and not taking responsibility they could do something about this situation. Sometimes it's easier to complain, than to look what could I do about this? What are my options? So they said what'll we drink? They complained against Moses. Usually when people have a victim mentality, they find a way to blame someone who is over them, a parent, a boss, a teacher, someone in authority anywhere, in their workplace. So when you hear people bitterly complaining, you know they're infected with this kind of mentality. It brings disaster on people. As a result of their complaining, Israel failed to enter their inheritance, a lesson for us, if we don't shift mentality, we cannot enter all the good things that God has planned for us.

So the remedy, notice what the remedy is, and I won't go into it in this session. The remedy is, God showed Moses a tree. Now clearly there's a lot of prophetic symbolism in that, but essentially God showed him a tree, that when he put it in the water, the bitter became sweet. It's an amazing picture of God, the solution to victim mentality is a revelation of God's love and the healing power of the cross. It's interesting the first thing that they came across flushed up their victim mentality, and the first thing that came up is associated with bitterness. When people have been hurt, abused, suffered, experienced injustice, pain, grief and various things, they often instead of resolving it, become bitter. Bitterness reflects in complaining, and so there's a remedy, and the remedy is revelation, revelation I'm not a victim. I have a Father who loves me! I have a Father who's got the answer for every situation! I've got a Father who can show me what He accomplished at Calvary, and I can respond in faith and be delivered and healed and restored, and develop a positive mentality, and experience resurrection life.

We'll give you a few simple things on that afterwards - but isn't that amazing? That's the first experience they had, and it was to bring to the surface their victim mentality. Now the other one we looked at was this. It's found in Luke 15, and this is the elder brother, the Elder Brother Mentality. Now of course there are a lot of Christians who are an elder brother. You could be a sister, and still be an older brother. The older brother is this story. Now this is the story, we'll just quickly cap on it, then I want to show you some solutions.

You remember Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. They have challenged Him, and their challenge they gave Him, in Verse 1, is this: You eat with the wrong people. You're eating with sinners, You're eating with prostitutes, You're eating with all kinds of BAD people, and you're making them all Your friends. They like You, they gather around wherever You come. You've always got a riff raff, a rabbly crowd of broken people. If You were a man of God, You wouldn't do such a thing - so they were critical of Him. Jesus then told the three stories; first one reveals the work of Jesus, the shepherd; second, of the Holy Spirit; the third, of the father. So these three stories are all one story, to show God values people and loves them. The last story is the story of the father, and the father had two sons - you know the prodigal son, and he said: dad, I don't want to live with you. I want to be out, give me the money. In other words, before you're dead, give me the money, I want my inheritance now.

He went out. You know he had a bad life, a rotten life. He blew it all, and then he came to his senses, turned around and he went back to his father with a repentant heart, and when he did that he was welcomed. No matter how much he stunk of the pigs and smelt and was broken and wrecked his life, God loved him. This is the heart of God. He loves people. You say well I've got to get my life right, before God will accept me. No! The story absolutely blows that. That's a religious mindset. God says: I take you like you are! If you can receive My love, and connect with Me, I can pick you up and journey you to where you need to be. It was God, it was the father who restored the son. It's the father who put clothes on him, the father who gave him authority. It was the father's extravagant love. We need revelation of his extravagant love.

Now of course the elder brother came in from the field, and he said: what's this party going on? Now isn't it interesting that associated with people's lives being changed, heaven celebrates, heaven parties! Churches need to celebrate. We need to have laughter and fun, and perhaps move the chairs, and get rid of all the chairs and get you to run around and jump up and down and celebrate a bit more. It's very healthy to celebrate. Sitting in pews is not healthy really - about one or two hours and that's it, you're done for a week pretty well. But God wants us to celebrate, and so you notice here, he had a great celebration. Now this is what the boy did. Now notice what he did. Now he portrays a victim mentality, notice what he does. Here it is - he said: he was angry. He was angry, and notice what he did, he isolated, pulled away from relationship, pulled away from his father, pulled away from celebration, pulled away from connection.

Then it says this: his father came and he pleaded with him. He pleaded with him. In other words his pa entreated him to shift his heart attitude, and open his heart and welcome his brother back in, and of course the boy said - you're familiar with it - oh! I've been here all these years serving you. I never did anything like he did. You never gave me any of my goats, I could have fun with my friends and a party with my friends. As soon as this son of yours comes, devoured his livelihood with the prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him. What kind of father are you? What kind of justice is this? And he said: son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. How come I haven't got the fatted calf? Simply this, you've got a bad attitude. You haven't got an attitude that can receive a fatted calf. You're in the house, but you're not receiving what God wanted for you. Why is that?

He was in the house. Come on, we'll just get - let me just - he was in the church! He was among God's family, and he couldn't access what he wanted, because of the way he thought. He had a victim mentality, and it's amazing the way it showed up. Interestingly enough, he substituted works for relationship. He just worked hard for his father, but never knew his father. He had no emotional relationship with his father, and had no understanding of his father's heart. That's what his problem was. He substituted for relationship, being good and working hard. Lots of people do that to be loved. He developed a victim mentality in many areas of his life. When we substitute works for relationship, we are convinced we're right, and we can't receive the things we want to receive from God.

I very much have had to wrestle with this myself. When I grew up I was emotionally quite disconnected, a major effect on my life from quite young, so the way I dealt with it, instead of connecting I isolated ,just like this older brother did. What I did was go into a world of fantasy reading books, and here's the other thing, working hard. I got the diligence prize every school I went to. Why did I get the diligence prize? Because I worked hard. Why were you working hard? Oh, I want you to ask me that. I might have to look at what motivated me to work hard. Actually I was trying to find approval and love, that I didn't feel I had, and so I had a wrong belief inside me that went something like this: If I just work hard enough, I'll be noticed and approved and loved - and would you believe it, there was another belief in there as well: I'm unlovable. So no matter how hard I work, I'm never going to get the love I want. Isn't that amazing?

So year after year I work, work, work, work, work, work, work and I never had the emotional connection with my father that I was longing for, and I hoped would come with the work, because here's what had happened. When I thought I'd done really well, he would look at what was wrong, and see it could be better. What it does is it increases the pain, and then leads you to view life in a certain way. Now here's a question to ask - so of course the thing is, as I've journeyed I've had to try and deal with this stuff, and here's the thing that's interesting. When I became a Christian, it didn't change. I wish it had. It didn't change. It just changed form, got very busy serving God. Same driving mentality: I'm unlovable, if I just do enough, God will love me. Did I know God loved me? I had it in my head, but the problem is, it's not in your head that it counts, it's in your heart. If your heart is programmed with I'm unlovable, you will remain a victim, and you'll always look and see all the reasons why things don't work out. You'll have every kind of excuse, every kind of reason. You'll blame everyone and this and that, even blame the devil. The devil will be the persecutor, Jesus is going to be the rescuer. You have a whole victim cycle operating in your life, and you don't learn to grow and become a son, who learns how to partner with God in life.

This is what God's wanting the church to grow up to our son-ship, so we learn how to partner with God in life, so the temptation is then - and particularly if you're in a prophetic flow - is to wait for God to tell you everything, and you just do what God tells you to do, when God wants you to grow in wisdom and intimacy with Him as the source of wisdom, so you'll learn not to run everything off prophetic flow, but to balance prophetic flow with wisdom and how to make life work. Ooh, you probably know someone like that, and I was like that. For me, to tell the truth, it's been a journey to get rid of all of that stuff. I've had some decisive moments in my Christian life, where I encountered the love of God as a Father, and major changes took place in my heart.

I can remember one time just weeping for two hours as I experienced His love in my office, and felt the touch of God as a Father for the first time. It's tangible, it's real, you can experience it, and when you do, it changes you. Now I'm ready for another dose. I believe God's got much more, so I'm positioning my heart for more - so victim mentality sabotages everything, and here's how it sabotages it. Because the thinking is: I'm the victim, it's not my fault you know. It's not my fault, it's someone else's fault, I'm right! That's the way a victim will think, I'm right, and I'd rather be right than have a relationship, so I'll be right and I'll have a breach, rather than actually be vulnerable and declare maybe I'm not right, and even if I am I really want relationship. So victims view life through someone else is the cause of their problems, and so they're the victim. The second thing is, a victim has to blame someone, so a victim says: you're my persecutor, it's you. You did this to me. You're doing this to me. It was that boss of mine did it - and so victims always have got someone to blame.

You can listen and it won't take long, and they'll find someone to blame. Israel began to blame Moses, but they were really blaming God. The elder brother began to blame the father - notice his language is a little careful, but at the end there it is: this son of yours, and you gave him all this money. He's wasted the money, spent it on prostitutes would you believe, and now you have a party. Hey, what's up with you? So he sees the father as being the source of his trouble, so a person who has a victim mentality will have two other groups of people in the world; one are people to blame, persecutors, people who're against him - they're agin me. Now of course church gets that, and they get to start to think like the world's agin me. No, the world isn't agin me; the world's lost, the world needs us. The world's not against us. Come on, start to think right. We have the answer for the world. We're the light of the world. The world needs us.

So the other thing that a victim has is a rescuer. They must have a rescuer. Someone has to come and help me out of this mess. I need you to come through, won't you help me? Then when I've manipulated you into helping me, then I turn to someone else who'll meet the next level of need. So what happens is relationships become extremely unhealthy. Victims cannot develop an emotional closeness with anyone, and this of course - you'll have a look in this thing tonight - is one of the key things. There's no possibility that relationship could work. It's doomed from the start, because of the nature of it - so victims, it's easier to play a victim than to be responsible, so here's some simple steps to get out of it.

So I want to share with you some simple keys, and it's a journey. I wish I could just say we could get you up in an altar call and pray, we could fix it all up. It would be wonderful if we could do it. We can pray and break some things over your life. We can pray and impart some things into your life. We can lay hands and let you experience the flow of God's love, but essentially the journey out of victim-hood, is a journey of opening your heart to become vulnerable, and to experience God's love, and to change. It's a path of being vulnerable, instead of building walls. The evidence that you have passed from death to life, is in your capacity to love, and celebrate, and embrace people. Any time you draw back from people, your love is growing cold. The issue is one of love. Oh, well you don't understand what they did. No, no, no, no, actually I'm not worried about what they did. The issue is your love is growing cold. Take ownership what's happening in you, as you are isolating and withdrawing.

Okay, let's give you a few simple steps. The first thing is to become aware of the pattern, become aware of the pattern. If we're not aware of the pattern - so here's a few things you could think about. Here's a few questions you could ask yourself, and just as I go through these things I know you'll think of someone who's just like this, and they really need help. Actually you'd be the one to help them. You could become their rescuer, then when you don't come through for them, they'll turn on you, see? We have to - actually Jesus is the only saviour. He is the only saviour. He's the only one who can save people, so we have to lead people to Him, because in Him they find the love of God. In Him they find healing. In Him they find deliverance, in Him they find all they need - not enough, so we can give a little bit. Okay, here it is: number one, become aware of the thinking patterns, so let me ask you a few questions. Just tick these off, just perhaps it might be you.

Do you have patterns in your relationships where they turn and go ugly? Do you have a history of hurting people, or being hurt yourself? I'm hurt, I seem to get so hurt in relationships - ooh oh, you've got a problem inside you. Okay then - do you blame yourself, or blame others? Do you find you've got a blame thing going on in your life? That usually means a victim mentality. Do you find you're often frustrated, angry, resentful? You've probably got a victim mentality, and are not recognising you're operating out of: I'm powerless, I have no choices, when you really do. Do you feel smothered, or have you felt smothered and unimportant in your family life? Usually what that means is, you bury your feelings, bury your opinions, bury your desires, and you just do what you're told, and inside you believe you're powerless. It follows you all through life - it's one of the biggest things I've had to come to face.

What about some childhood experiences? Have you grown up with yelling and abuse in the home, and you've learnt to yell, and people have yelled at you? It's almost certain you'll have a victim mentality going on in your life. If there's been sexual abuse, or physical or verbal abuse, if there's been rejection or abandonment in your background; all of these things - or even a life-threatening emotional trauma - all of these things, the emotions associated with it, cause people to come to a conclusion, and it's that conclusion they reach, and how they handle it, is what determines what goes on next. So a person who sees, say a marriage breaks up, and the child's at the age of five, he interprets it as terrible pain, a lot of pain. He interprets it: this means I'm unlovable. Dad has abandoned/rejected me. People are going to reject me. Now once that's locked into a person's heart, their life will begin to cycle around that trauma, around that belief system, and believe it or not, it just keeps happening and happening and happening and happening and happening and happening. They pray and they ask God to bless them, but the cycle keeps happening and happening and happening, because it's rooted in the heart in bitterness, emotional trauma, grief and judgements made about fathers or about men.

I have seen this. Lyn would have seen this, Cecelia, all the people who counsel have seen this happen, and so there's a need to understand that the patterns often were formed in trauma or events when we're very young, so have a think about some of that. Here's the second thing is, that once we become aware man, I do behave a bit like a victim, I tend to blame others and don't take responsibility. I'm not willing to face up to things in my life and get proper ownership of it, and look at choices, and actually I don't really do too close in relationships. Men don't do that you know? Men are pretty tough, you don't get close, that's sissy stuff for girls. Now all that kind of nonsense - that's all it is. It's just a lame excuse for the real brokenness and inability to be intimate.

So how do we get free? Number one, just become aware there's a problem. That's the biggest thing. Second is to take decision I'm going to own it and start to change. You've got to own it: It's my stuff, I've got to deal with it. There's no freedom unless I make a decision: it's my stuff. You can blame people for all your life, but until the day you say: I've got stuff, it's time for me to face up and get to own my stuff, you can't change. You can come to church as much as you like, pray as hard as you like. Until you own I've got stuff, you don't change. You've got to say man, I've got some things to face. It's why we run these courses, restoration, deliverance, freedom, and various kinds of other courses. They're to help you own your stuff, start to think about how you think, start to begin to look at your belief system, how you work with finances and so on, how you work with relationships.

So you've got to own your stuff, so what is it that I feel? What is it I really believe in my heart? What issues have I got that I've never faced? Is there someone I avoid, or I have a reaction to when I'm with him, or shut down when I'm with him? You know, you start to ask that question, you're going to start to get insight where the problems are. The third thing, ask the Holy Ghost. Ask the spirit of God to help you to uncover what lies there. Sometimes you need to talk to someone, and they'll help get you - Lyn is like a razor when she does it. She goes straight down prophetically and [makes a sobbing sound] before you know it your tears have come. You're determined you weren't going to go there and cry - then you cry. Why are you crying? Because you've blocked off from your heart the true issues of your heart, and the moment someone puts a word on it, or puts the truth into it, immediately the pain will surface. We don't need to be afraid of pain or isolate from pain, or just go into our own world or medicate the pain. We need to recognise pain is part of life. There's a place of healing, connected to people and connected to God, where we can actually resolve it, through talking about it, releasing forgiveness, repenting of our reactions.

What do I need to do? I need to yield to the Holy Ghost's direction. How many of you have felt the Holy Ghost talking to you about something, about a relationship, about an attitude, about something that keeps happening in your life, but you kept pushing it aside? He was trying to help you face something that's holding you back. Oh but it's just too painful, I don't want to go there. Well okay, don't go there, but you're going to cycle through the problems until you do go there. Going there means having the courage to face your pain, bring it to the open in relationship with someone or with God, and then get to grips with what you need to solve, whether it be a bitterness, whether it be unforgiveness, whether it be some judgement. Whatever it is, God wants to heal you. He loves you. He went out to get the older boy and bring him back in. How come the older boy didn't get into the party? His own attitudes kept him out. He would rather be right in his own mind, than enter relationship and celebration. He would rather stay in a place of anger and resentment, than to move out of that into party time in the father's house!

That's what God has in mind - party time in the Father's house, where people are filled with His love, filled with the extravagant love of the Father - but you've got to open your life for that. So yield to the Holy Ghost. He'll tell you what to do, and then it may be that you've got to spend a bit of time renewing how you think, and how you act. We'll teach some things on that next year, how you think in relationships, how you interpret life, when you feel something, what am I feeling? Where's it come from? What do I believe? What does God's word say? It takes time to reprogram your thinking, but you can do it with the word of God. The truth is you're loved, truth is you're accepted, truth is nothing can separate you from the love of God. Now let me just show you something, and I'll finish with this.

When you go through adversity, affliction, difficulty or pain, the first thing you feel is unloved, and what comes out of your heart is what's in there. If you believe you're unlovable, then you'll struggle with the pain and isolate, but God loves us, and when we're in pain and difficulty, He wants us to come near to Him, and near to one another, not run away. If we can start to change those patterns, God's going to bring such a river to here, right now there's a river flowing through the church, to heal hearts, to heal broken relationships, particularly men. I want to tell you now there is a river flowing. It's been flowing for some months now, and it's been touching man after man after man, to heal broken hearts, restore lives, and start men connecting in a different way. That's why we're having this breakfast coming up. It's to start talking about that journey that men need to make, to move out of isolation and into being connected and whole.

In this last few months God has moved in the church. You just ask Lyn, man after man has come and broken down in a presence, weeping as God has put the finger on the issues that block relationship. I've been facing and experiencing these things happening. I've had people come to me, same thing; men weeping as God touches their heart. This is a time in the house of God, when God is doing something fresh to connect us. The biggest reason people are disconnected is this: we've got blocks in the heart from being able to love, and we need a revelation of God's love, and a removal of the blocks. God doesn't want you to think like a victim! He says no matter what happens, so someone messed you around and betrayed you? Oh, we're more than conquerors through Christ Jesus who loved us - and notice it's not self-help stuff. We're conquerors through Him, through a person, through a person who loves us, a loving person see?

And so someone rips you off, someone hurts you, someone betrays you, yeah, we're more than conquerors through this Jesus Christ, we have access to this person who loves us, who reveals the Father's love. We have access to Him, oh, we're going to be turning to Him, we're going to open up to His love. The riches of His love will grow in our life, and we'll become overcomers in a greater way! You don't have to stay in a place of defeat all the time. Why should you? You're not called to that. God has brought you out of the bondage of slavery to fear, and into knowing Him as a Father, into His wonderful and glorious life. Who would turn away from that? Who would prefer to stay like the older brother in the house, bitter, resentful, angry, twisted, unloving, cold, unable to connect with the JOY of what God is doing in other's lives? Ooh, don't stay there. Those were the religious people, the Pharisees of the day.

Jesus said: this is a day of great rejoicing, when there are two groups of people, those who don't know Him are coming to know the Father's love, be restored, and it's time to celebrate, and there are those who are in the house, who don't know the Father's love, coming to be restored, and together celebrating the goodness and love of God. What a great God we serve, Amen. [Amen] Why don't we give Him a clap right now? [Applause]

Father, we thank You for Your amazing love, where with You have loved us, and given Your Son, and hold nothing back from us. Father, we open our hearts here - just close your eyes for one, two more minutes. I wonder is there any person here who's not yet received Jesus Christ, and positioned yourself, opened your heart to have your sins forgiven, and receive a flow of the love of God from heaven. Well this is your day to do it. This is a great day to do it. Jesus said: to everyone who received Him, He gave power to become a child of God. Is that you today? Why don't you put your hand up and say Pastor, I'm going to give my life to Jesus today? Perhaps you may have fallen away from the Lord, you say I need to come back to Him today, I've got lots of other things in my heart. That fire is no longer burning.

Perhaps today God has spoken to some of you about isolation and distance. You may not have understood all I said, but when I talked about being isolated, and working hard but never feeling you're good enough or making it, something registered with you; just raise your hand, say that's me. God bless, many hands. When I began to talk about thinking like a victim, and it's not my fault, always someone else's fault, and when someone tries to help you and adjust you, you just react to them and say: you're attacking me. Why are you attacking me, why are you putting me down? And all they're trying to do is help you see something you can't see. If that's you, you've got troubles. Why don't you say: God, You're speaking to me today? That's right, God bless, God bless.

Father, I just thank You for each person's responded today, there would come a revelation, a river of Your love to bring healing, restoration. Father, we want to live in the love of God. Whatever our circumstance, whatever's happening, we open our heart for an increasing awareness of Your love. I can feel His presence just coming upon us right now. I could feel it from the beginning of the service. Just lift your hands, open your heart, just do something, say Father, I receive Your love. I receive Your love. Whatever blocks me from receiving more, show me, show me. I want to journey into intimacy with You, knowing You, experiencing You, becoming secure so I can actually represent You well. I don't want to be dysfunctional in my relationships, blaming, accusing, reacting. I want to be whole. Lord, I receive Your love. I can feel His presence and love here right now.

Musicians are just going to sing that song they're doing now. What I'd like you to do is reach out to someone next to you, and let the love that God has given you flow out of your heart into their life. Don't be stiff or awkward, just: can I pray for you? Ask their permission first. If they say no, respect that. It makes it safe for them. If someone doesn't want you to pray that's okay, you don't have to. You need to respect them, but just ask the person: can I pray for you? I'd really love to pray for you and bless you. I want you to know God loves you.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Romans 8:34-39

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us”

Paul lists a number of different situations but also a decisive outcome.

“More than conquerors” = to gain a decisive victory; vanquish totally; gain surpassing victory in every situation.

We are no longer victims to circumstances or tragedies – we are more than conquerors.

God’s love expressed in our heart – the Love of the Father – frees us from victim-hood.

2. Victim Mentality is a Way of Seeing and Relating

Victim is a person who is abused, hurt, or oppressed by another and is unable to break free.

Victim Mentality is a person who refuses to take responsibility for their life and blames others for what they are experiencing in life.

A way of thinking and interpreting life that comes from unresolved offences, grief, bitterness and heart beliefs.

Proverbs 23:7 “As a man thinks in his heart so he is”.

· Example of Israel – Slaves in Egypt (victims under a harsh taskmaster)

Exodus 15:22-25 “The people complained against Moses”

Their temporary hardship and difficulty caused their bitterness to show.

They looked for someone to blame.

The remedy – God revealed His Father’s Love that healed their situation.

· Example of the Older Brother – Slaves in the Father’s house (slaves to the law)

· Luke 15:25-31 “He was angry and would not go in”

· The elder son served – worked hard but had no revelation of the Father’s Love.

· He substituted works for relationship and believed he was right.

· Personal example:

Emotionally/relationally isolated – (past unresolved).

Worked hard to gain approval (heart belief).

Developed “Victim Mentality” in many areas of life.

Journey of revelation of Father’s love and healing.

Key issues:

– breaking patterns of isolating in pain and resolving heart pain.

· Elder Brother

Isolated Blamed Justified self Bitterness

Closed spirit Judged Wrong beliefs Anger

3. Victim Mentality sabotages Relationships

“Victims” interpret life/relationships through their heart’s bitterness

(i) I am a victim = not my fault, hurt, I am right, withdraws

(ii) You are my persecutor = it is your fault, you are against me, attack

(iii) I need a rescuer = someone must come through for me, meet my needs

· “Victims” are unable to develop emotional intimacy because they believe they are “unlovable”.

· It is easier to play the role of the victim than to assume responsibility.

· Note: A person with a victim mentality will play all 3 roles.

4. Steps out of the Victim Mentality

(i) Become Aware of your Thinking/Behaviour

Questions to ask yourself -

· Patterns of relationships that is ugly?

· History of hurting or being hurt?

· Blame self or others often for things going wrong?

· Frequent feelings of anger?

· Childhood experiences?

(i) Yelling

(ii) Sexual abuse

(iii) Struggle with feelings, openness, over-ridden

(iv) Rejection, abandonment, other types of loss

(v) Life threatening emotional experiences

· Felt smothered or unimportant in the family.

(ii) Ownership of Pain and Vulnerability

· There can be no freedom without responsibility

· What are the feelings? What are the beliefs?

· What are the expectations?

· What events in the past have been some of these issues?

(iii) Ask the Holy Spirit to Uncover the Roots

· Painful experiences that impact and how they relate?

· Personal reactions – anger, bitterness, judgements?

· Beliefs, expectations and inner vows formed in the heart.

(iv) Yield to the Holy Spirit’s direction on how to resolve them?

· Personal ministry and counsel?

· Repentance

· Forgiveness

· Renouncing judgements and inner vows

(v) Work on Renewing the Beliefs

· What is the old belief?

· What is the truth?

· Meditate – embrace – confess the truth – ask the Holy Spirit to reveal love.

(vi) Practise Giving and Receiving Love

· Refuse old patterns of isolating

· Connect and practise giving and receiving love

· Romans 8:14-15

Developing a Kingly Mentality (2 of 2)

Sun 12 Dec 2010  « Back to Top

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Paul had some difficulties: beatings, stonings, shipwrecks. If God was on His side, you'd think that He could have at least told him to catch the right boat, but three times the boat he was on sank. He's there in the water, holding on to pieces of wood. Not nice - but he never, thought like a victim.

In prison, chained to a Roman soldier, he never, thought like a victim, or as one imprisoned. He said: In all these things we are more than conquerors! Whatever you're facing in your life, believe me, you have got it in you, you are more than a conqueror. Of course if you don't believe that, if you think you're a victim, you're in trouble.

Look with me into Romans, Chapter 8. Last week I was sharing on Breaking Free from a Victim Mentality, and I want to just pick it up because there'll be some who weren't here, and move from there into developing a kingly mentality. No use just breaking out of one thing; you've got to put on something else, and develop a different way of thinking. I'll share with you some things, some practical keys, but I want to just pick up where we were last week. We looked in Romans, Chapter 8 and it says in Verse 34: who is it that condemns? Christ who's died and is risen, is at the right hand of God. He is there making intercession for us right now. He is praying you and I will succeed. Who will separate us from the love of Christ then? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword?

Verse 37: In all these things, no matter what life dishes up to you, and Paul had a few things dished up; beatings, stonings, shipwrecks. I mean you'd think if God was on His side, you'd think that He could have at least told him to catch the right boat, but he had three times the boat he was on sank. He's there in the water, holding on to pieces of wood. That's not very nice - but he never, never, never, never thought like a victim. There he is and he's in prison, chained to a Roman soldier, but he never, never thought like a victim. He never thought as one imprisoned. He said: no, no, no, no! No, no son. In all these things we are more than conquerors! Whatever you're facing in your life, believe me, you have got it in you, you are more than a conqueror. Of course if you don't believe that, if you think you're a victim, you're in trouble.

But the reality is, the truth of God is, you have got all it takes through Christ. Notice the key thing in there? It says: in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him. It is your vital union with Jesus Christ. It's your connected with Him. He has already won the victory. He has already faced every challenge of life. You and I as we connect with Him can arise with His life. When you put off your struggles and put them on Him, and begin to learn how to draw on His life, you are more than a conqueror. I like that - more than a conqueror. That means to gain decisive victory, to have a surpassing victory in every situation. So whatever you face in life, from the little mundane things in family life, marriage and finance, to work, to major challenges, you have got it in you to win, if you hold on to Jesus Christ. You are designed to win. There's no way God planned your failure.

Can you imagine God planning your failure? It's not what He does. He plans your success. I know the plans I have for you, plans for good, not evil, that you would prosper and be positive and be filled with hope about your future. So let's have a look. I want to just pick up there this aspect of victim mentality. I want to touch on it again, and we're going to go over this time into Numbers, Chapter 13 - going to find two different mentalities in Number 13 and 14. We're going to find a victim mentality, and the way it operates and it's consequence; we're going to find a kingly mentality, how it behaves, how it thinks and acts and we'll talk about how to shift.

So in Numbers, Chapter 13, we'll pick it up there in maybe Verse 25: And they returned from spying out the land after 40 days. That's the 12 spies. Now they departed and they came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And then they told him and said: we went into the land where you sent us. Truly it flows with milk and honey, and here's the fruit.

Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; we saw the descendants of Anak there, the giant. The Amalekites are in the South; the Hittites, the Hebusites, Amorites and other ites in the mountains; Canaanites by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan. Then Caleb quieted the people - shhh! Let us go up at once and take possession. We're well able to overcome it. But the men who had gone up with him said: we can't. We're not able to go up against the people, they are stronger than we. And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land they'd spied out, saying the land through which we've gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, the people we saw are men of great stature. We saw the giants, descendants of Anak which came from the giants, and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so were we in their sight.

Now a victim mentality will steal your Godly inheritance. You have to understand what's at stake here. The promises God holds for your life, the destiny He wrote for your life, the good things He planned to accomplish in and through you, all depend on you adopting an attitude of faith. If you stay in a victim mentality, there is no way you can rise into, and experience, the things God has planned for you. God has planned financial breakthroughs, breakthroughs in your personal life, breakthroughs in relationship. He's planned not just breakthroughs; He's planned breakouts, where you start to influence people, win people, see answers to prayer. However a victim mentality will steal away all the good things that God has planned for you. This is why it is important to shift from a victim mentality to a kingly mentality.

I must shift the way I see life. I must shift in my heart and in my mind, in my words and in my actions. I must make a choice to change. No one makes it for you. No one makes it for you. Wherever you have been, no matter how bad, tragic, no matter what bondage, whatever slavery, whatever problem you have been in, God can use it as a stepping stone to get you up into your destiny, and as He redeems your past, you begin to see how it prepared you for the things you have ahead - but you make the choice.

Now I want you to have a look at this thing; first of all just redefine the victim mentality. A victim mentality is a way of thinking. It's a way you think. It has to do with your thought life. It is a way of looking at life and interpreting it. It is a belief system in the heart, so it's a whole way of thinking and believing, the way you approach your life.

If you are in the secular world, then the motivators would begin to show you how to think differently. As you think differently, they'd say you'd have a different life, which is partly true. Definitely if we think good thoughts, as you'll see shortly, your life will change. So a victim then, a victim mentality is a mentality where the person - now notice this - they will not take responsibility. That's the bottom line. They refuse to assume responsibility. They choose rather to make excuses for why life is like it is and to find someone or something to blame. When you blame someone you put responsibility on them, you remove it from yourself and leave yourself powerless and resentful at how life sucks. This is a way of thinking, it's an internal choice in your heart. Every situation that comes to you, you can approach it as a king or as a victim. No one chooses the response but you. Think about that.

So a victim mentality then is a way - it's blaming others for why I feel like I do: You make me feel so mad. No, I don't make you feel so mad, your feelings are your feelings, they're not my feelings. OWN your feelings. They're YOURS! You can go to the grave with them if you wish, or you could choose to change. You have to understand this is a very, very important thing, because New Zealanders as a whole, there's a widespread victim mentality sits on many people. It's in the culture, but in the culture of the church we want to shift you to have a kingly thinking, where there's nothing in life that isn't too much for you. Amen! Amen! I can see there's resistance going on but that's alright, we're going to keep going there, and I want to share with you something at the end that'll be an insight that'll really help. So let's have a look at Israel, and how they viewed their situations.

I want to do three things; how they viewed their situation, how they responded and then what it cost them. I want to show you how God directly connects their failure to get His promises, to the way they thought and behaved. So you can be in church, saved, redeemed but if we don't make a choice to shift our thinking and believing and living, we actually live substandard, and below what God intended for us. So first of all how they viewed their situation, what their belief system was, how did they see themselves first of all? They see themselves like grasshoppers: I am a grasshopper. It's called an inferiority complex. I am a grasshopper, I'm small, problems are big. That's a belief system. The second thing is how they saw life's challenges, Verse 31 and 33: Oh, the giants in the land are too big for us. Oh, you mean that God allowed something to come into your life that was too big for you to handle, and you weren't ready and prepared to deal with it? Oh really? I thought He was more in control than that. The giants - everything is a giant to a person with a victim mentality. It's a problem they're burdened with.

The next thing is their inheritance, well how they saw the promises of God: Oh ooh! It's a land that devours its inhabitants. There's a lot of problems. Finally, how they saw God - look at this. Look at this. Read in Chapter 14, Verse 3, how they saw God, and here's where the real problem is, how you see God. It says: why has the Lord brought us to this land? We're going to be killed by the sword, and our wives and children - notice this - should become victims. Isn't that amazing? They have lived - wouldn't it be better to go back to Egypt? Where was Egypt? Egypt was the place where they were victims and they were slaves. They'd lived there, they felt like a victim, thought like a slave, and when God got them out and was trying to bring them and prepare them to move from His direct provision into the principles of the kingdom and advancing the kingdom, they resisted and said: God must hate us. He's brought us out here to kill us. We're better to leave Him and go back. Whoa - so how they responded, because of those things they believed - notice the seeds of things they believed, the way they saw themselves, the way they saw life, the way they saw the giants, the promises of God that God Himself - notice what they did.

Here's what they did, how they responded. Read it in Chapter 14: So they lifted up their voices and cried and wept. Number one, self pity, they cried and they went: oh it's not fair, life isn't fair, too tough... They just had whinge. All night they cried. The second thing you notice they did was they blamed, Verse 2: All the children of Israel complained. A complainer is a victim mindset, a complainer, a person who complains, has got a victim mindset. Why? Because he's putting the blame out there, that's why he's complaining: well you did this, you did that, and they're complaining and complaining - now what that is, it's actually putting my life is bad because of what you did, rather than actually I have power to choose what I do with my life; I can grow through the experience and become a better person. I can change my life around, and I can shift what's happening. You notice they complain.

The other thing you notice there is bitterness. There was deep bitterness in their hearts. Notice what they said, Verse 2: If only we'd died! That's a very sad person isn't it, very sad. So they had bitterness in their hearts. They had judgements. Notice they judged God: He's brought us out here to kill us. God's made life so unfair - and finally you notice they had rejection and unbelief in their hearts, Verse 4: said let's select a leader, and let's go back to where we were, or putting it another way, let's stop following the Holy Ghost. Let's leave church and just go back. We'll go back and start to party again and sing again and go into the pubs and just do what we used to do, it was a lot easier then - but where were you when you were there? You were in slavery. You never found freedom there; you found freedom in Christ, and He's wanting to bring you into great things. He wants you to grow.

So you notice there, God wanted them to change. Victim mentality cost them an inheritance. Look at this, Numbers, Chapter 14, Verse 21 through to Verse 23: Now truly as I live - this is the Lord speaking - all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. In other words, God's saying: even though Israel failed in it's purpose, I have in the future a generation I will raise up, and they will manifest the glory right through the whole of the earth! Then He says: because these men, now these ones, now He's talking about these ones - because - notice this - they saw my glory. They experienced the glory of God, had glory times, fire - it was visible, tangible. The signs I did in Egypt in the wilderness, they put Me to the test 10 times, and wouldn't believe or obey My voice. They shall not see the land. Notice the word 'because'. They had such opportunity, but did not believe. He said: they can't go in.

Hebrews 3, the last verse says: they failed to experience God's provided provision for them because of unbelief. A spirit of unbelief keeps you out of the supernatural life flow and provisions of God, and it's connected to the way you view life, and view God, and view yourself. It's connected to your heart condition. As a man thinks in his heart, that's how his life goes. Think about that. Now we read it, and mentally we separate ourselves away from these people, and think: that's not us, that's them. But this is written, it says in 1 Corinthians 10, for the church not to make the crazy mistakes and suffer the same consequences. Over the years I have seen many, many believers let go of God, because in the circumstances of life, their heart did not embrace God in His truth. Their heart stayed frozen in the bitterness and judgements and the lies of their past. This is why we have in the church, processes for healing and restoration, because it's vital to shift that junk out of your heart, so you can arise and begin to believe God. You can't build over rubbish. If you want to build a building, you clear it good and put a good foundation down, getting deliverance and healing and changing the belief system of your heart.

Now to change the belief system of your heart is called this, it's called repentance. Repentance. Foundational to the life of God is repentance. Jesus said: repent, the kingdom is at hand. In other words, I have so much to offer you, its right at your doorstep, but to enter it requires repentance, a change of heart view, of heart belief, of heart approach. God has many things for us, but repentance, changing our belief system, is crucial to entering it. It's not about an external performance; it's about the heart welcoming truth, embracing it, and experiencing it. We'll share a few keys on that just shortly.

So you notice there, they were burning with bitterness, resentment, unbelief and judgements. They needed to get their heart clear of it. That's what the wilderness was about. It was about an opportunity to get freed up of the baggage of the past, come into a place of recognising over and over again, God is loving, God can be trusted, God provides. Now I can learn to arise, be responsible, and partner with Him in taking the land. So in your initial Christian experience, God shifts a lot of things out of your life, but then it's to prepare you so you can begin to walk with Him, begin to dream and explore desires, begin to discover your destiny, and begin to flow with Him into fulfilling your destiny. But if you remain stuck in the baggage of the past, then your belief system doesn't come up far enough to get you into what God has. So changing or repenting requires recognising the patterns of thinking and believing. You've got to be aware of it and recognise it first of all, taking responsibility that the root issues are mine, and I'm going to take and embrace the process of change.

It involves resolving grief and anger and bitterness and judgement. You've got to resolve this stuff, or it just keeps operating in your life. It's like a garden with weeds that have never been weeded out. It involves renewing the patterns of thinking, and beginning to start to recognise and confront old patterns when they come back, and making a decision to change. I guarantee you, you change in your thinking and believing, you'll change in the friendships and the people you've got around you. You will, because changing in the heart changes what's outside you.

Okay, now let's have a look at a kingly mentality, and the kingly mentality is found in Caleb. Let's define a kingly mentality, a kingly mentality. That's what God wants us to have, a kingly - so a kingly mentality is a way of thinking. It's a way of thinking like a king would think. It's a way of viewing life like a king would view life. It's a way of interpreting the experiences you have through a kingly dominion mindset. It's a way of thinking, and so we have to change our way of thinking.

So in 1 Corinthians 6, Verse 17 it says: he that's joined to the Lord is one spirit. So a kingly mindset is a way of viewing life, I am joined one spirit with the Lord, God and me are one, and wherever I go God is with me. This is a winning team! God, Almighty God, who never lost a battle in His life, is with me! That's a kingly mentality see? Kingly mentality means I take full responsibility for my personal life, my thoughts, beliefs, emotions, responses, words and actions. No more blame game - you! No more! Kings don't get the blame game going. Kings stand up and own their life, and then govern their life, then govern beyond them. They have influence because they've shifted. Romans 5:17, a person exercises faith to manifest the life of God, so a kingly mentality is something like this. I'm connected to God Almighty, who loves me, is with me, means good for me, and He has called me to represent Him on this earth and to extend His kingdom, so my prayer is: Father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth in me and through me just like it is in heaven. That is a kingly mentality. It's a whole way of looking at life, so a challenge comes up; it's an opportunity to bring the life of God to change it.

The life of God changes things. Last night in the park, when we had over 100 people there singing and worshipping and just singing the Christmas carols, but you know what? They released a spiritual atmosphere into the place, so people fell, cried, were touched, their hearts started to turn back and remember God. What is all that about? That's heaven starting to come to earth. It's people joined to God, flowing as one, bringing the life of God out to where people are. It's the most amazing thing - so the example of it is Caleb. Here it is in Numbers 14, Verse 24: But My servant Caleb has a different spirit. He's got a kingly spirit, kingly spirit. He's followed Me fully, I'll bring him into the land where he went and his descendants with him. So whenever you hear the word Caleb, at least three times in the Bible it says: oh, My servant Caleb, who has a different spirit! What God needs is people with a different spirit, not the spirit of the world, complaining and victim and orphaned and alone, but a different spirit, a spirit of the king! The king of kings inside us, a spirit that says: God is with me, and I'm aware of Him, and I can work with Him, and we'll do some things together.

The name Caleb means literally this: Caleb means to be forcible, to have a bit of push and grunt; or it means not to be a sissy and a pushover. [Laughter] So Caleb means no sissy boy here! No pushover here! It also has the meaning to be a dog, like a dog would fiercely attack - so I kind of thought of him being like a Doberman. [Laughter] You imagine yourself being a Doberman, my goodness they're scary dogs aren't they? You look over a gate and see a Doberman, there's no way you're going there. Wouldn't that be right? No way you're going into any place where there's a Doberman. You look there, and their ears go back, and the teeth begin to bare - you're gone! There's no way you're going to hang around. Now that's what the devil wants to see, is a church full of Dobermans. [Laughter] See? So when they go grrrr grrrrr the devils flee! We're not like that to people, we're like that to the devil see?

This man here was a forcible man, so how did he see his situation? See, what I'm concerned about is more than just his name. His name is prophetic of the type of the person who has a kingly mentality, and arises and gets God's promises, but there's things that he had in his heart. In the Book of Joshua, Chapter 14, he said: I brought word back as was in my heart. When a person shares what's in their heart they're revealing their beliefs, who they really are. They're actually being quite open and transparent. Now I want you to see the contrast of Caleb's heart, and what he really believed, and the heart of the people of Israel. Here it is, let's have a look at Caleb, how did he see God. Look in Numbers, Chapter 14 and Verse 9: And the Lord is with us. See, how did he see God? Almighty God is with us! He didn't see God as being someone far off, distant, uncaring, unloving. The Mighty covenant God, and I'm in covenant with Him. I belong to the tribe of Judah. I belong to a tribe connected to Him! God is with us! What a difference it would make in your life if everywhere you went: GOD IS WITH ME! - Now don't yell that out, they'll think you're nutty, but [Laughter] - well you may want to yell it out but, you know?

But you need to know it experientially on the inside, to feel that truth, God is inside me. Almighty God is with me. Wherever I go, God is with me. I'm not alone in life, I don't have to struggle in life. God, my Father is with me, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is in me. Now you see when we get to believe that in our heart, it begins to fill the mind and you begin to talk that way, it just comes out of you. You talk that way. Notice the way he saw himself; Numbers 13, Verse 30: Caleb shut the people up, and said: let us go up, we're well able to overcome it. Notice the way he sees himself? We are well able. He included everyone else, which is quite generous of him. What he's really saying is: I can do this, I can do it, I can do it because God is with me. I can do it. So how did he see himself? He saw he's an over comer.

Do you see yourself that way, or see yourself as a victim? See, no victim mentality here, we can do it, we're over comers. Paul said the same thing: I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me, Philippians 4:18. See, it's the same thing. Whatever God calls me to do, I can do it through Christ who strengthens me. See, it's the way you see yourself. You're a winner. Tell someone next to you, you're a winner. [You're a winner.] Well no one likes to call themselves a loser do they? I mean imagine if you turned around - see the bubble that comes when you say: you're a winner, but imagine if you turned around and said: you're a loser! Man, you'd probably get a poke on the nose. There'd be slapping, there'd be aggro, there'd be all kinds of stuff go down there.

Hey listen, the devil tells you you're a loser every day of your life, 24 hours of the day. He's always telling you you're a loser. He wants you to believe you're a loser; God wants you to believe you're a winner. You've got to choose who you're going to listen to. You've got to listen to God and what God says: you're a winner! The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is within you. You must be a winner! That same spirit energises your body. You don't have to be tired when the spirit of God is available to flow through your body. Come on, think about this. See, we choose our attitude when we get out of bed. Ooh, another day, oh no. [Laughter] Oh glory! Another day! It's an effort and a discipline see? How did he see the challenges? So he didn't look like a victim: oh no, giants, this is so bad, what kind of mess am I in now? He didn't look at it like that. This is what he said, Numbers 14, Verse 9: Don't rebel against the Lord, don't fear the people of the land. These giants are bread, their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us.

How did he look at Giants? How did he look at giants? He said they're bread for us. Giants are the food of kings. Giants are the food of kings! They're the bread of kings. It's one thing to feed on the bread, the word of God, but there's another bread that gets you strong, and that's feeding on the giants! Feeding on the giants - not fleeing the giants; feeding off the giants. Giants are bread. You see I can feel the unbelief rising straight away. [Laughter] You think well I hear what he's saying, but inside I don't believe that at all. [Laughter] No way. Well okay, you can believe what you choose. I guarantee your giants aren't bread. Your giants actually hurt you, wound you, defeat you consistently, because you don't see them as bread, as part of God's provision to grow godly people, great champions, great kings. Kings have to be grown, they don't just turn up. You sit in church and listen to a message and then you become a king? I don't think so. [Laughter] You've got to be doing something the rest of the week you know, and so when you go out there, God's got a giant for you to face.

Instead of looking, thinking oh how you doing today? Oh ooh... Oh, I see you've got a giant! Oh ho ho! You've got a giant! [Laughter] And you're a grasshopper. I can feel grasshopper emanating out of you! Come on, see? It's the words coming out of your mouth; it reveals what's in your heart - grasshopper or giant slayer? See, Caleb said at 85: you remember that mountain where all the giants were, and the majority of people had a whinge and a whine, and complained and wasted 40 years? I want that mountain with those giants! See it doesn't register does it; see 85 someone asking for a challenge. Most people at 85 just want a rest home, [laughter] someone to wheel them around, take them for an outing, feed them and wipe up the dribble. [Laughter] But we're not like that! [No!] We can remain strong and vibrant through Christ's life within us - but you have to have a mentality like that. I'll show you why in just a moment. Anyway so there it is, giant. Giants are bread.

Notice what he says: Their defence is departed from them. What he's referring to is this. The demonic realm that empowered the giants, and made them look so fierce and gave them such authority, God has already caused it to be broken over their life. That's why you can win the victory. They may look big, but actually their defence is departed from them, their demons are no longer operative. We have something more operative. Now you come to the cross, Colossians 2, and it tells us very clearly now God, Christ has disarmed principalities and powers so you would not fear spirits but rather walk in dominion over them. You've got to believe it though, have to believe the truth, repent of the old stuff, the unbelief that stops you getting the victory. So he saw the challenge as their bread, and notice how he saw the land: it's flowing with milk and honey. Man, have we got a good life ahead. So we ask how's it going? Oh, not too good. How's it going? Man, God is providing challenge after challenge for me to grow, I'm looking forward to the things He's bringing into my life! Bread, milk and honey is ahead for me, milk and honey!

You say oh, but you don't understand, we're in a crisis. There's no crisis in heaven. It's only in your mind and heart. Now I know it's in the physical reality, but God takes people through crises. So how did he respond? So when a person's got this kind of faith in their heart, notice he brought word this was in his heart. The big thing is how he saw God: God is big and great and loves us. He's a covenant God. He's with us. We can't lose. We can't lose - and even a setback is just that, it's a setback. Even a failure's just a setback. We can't lose. We can't lose, because why? Because God said it, and God doesn't lie. See, He's based on the truth. Remember they'd all seen the glory, they'd all seen the miracles, all seen fire. They'd seen all manner of things, but what they needed was faith in their heart - which comes by believing the word and character of God.

They needed to shift and begin to be believers - so what happens next? So how did he respond? Well this is how a person who's got faith in their heart responds, in Numbers 13, Verse 30. He shut up the critical negative talk. Now believe me, if you listen to critical, negative talk, and don't say a word, you're in agreement with it, and the spirit behind it. You've got to understand if you listen to negative, critical talk you have come into agreement with the spirit behind it. What you say and do is important. If someone starts being negative and critical, you need to do what Caleb did, and shut it up! He silenced the people! He refused to dwell among people that were critical and negative. He stopped the negative talk, and spoke into it. That's what faith does, that kind of stuff see? The second thing is, he rejected the negative attitude - Verse 9 of Numbers 14: Don't rebel. Don't fear. Don't get a bad attitude. God is with us.

You've got to realise that negative words and negative attitudes are infectious like a plague. They're like a spiritual disease. If someone had leprosy, or some kind of aids and the sores were everywhere, I can't see you going up there and giving them a hug. You'll just stand back a bit and you'll have a bit of caution going on in there, don't want to catch what you've got. But when someone comes near with negative words and a negative attitude, it's very easy to wrap them in our arms and hug them and love them and get into agreement with it and the spirit behind. He just cut it out completely, and challenged the people to think and believe differently. He rejected the negative attitude, and he boldly declared the word of God. We are well able, God is with us, their defence is departed, they're bread for us. This is it, we can do it.

Now understand, this was his heart, and God says he's got a different spirit, different heart attitude, a kingly dominion heart attitude. You know why the others couldn't go into the land? Because it required faith to inherit the promises, and two men had it. Those two, God said: I'll bring you in, but the others can't come in. Why can't they come in? They haven't got what it will take. They just can't make it. That's why God may have lots of things for you, but if you don't prepare your heart and shift your thinking, you can't make it. We can't make it in there, because it requires faith to access the promises of God. There's got to be a heart belief, so notice he had a big heart belief, and so God says man, this boy I'm bringing in. Not only him, all his family as well. He's got another spirit, a kingly spirit. Okay, so how can we get that kingly heart attitude in us? Let me give you a couple of thoughts, and then we'll finish up.

Battles are won and lost in the mind and heart. The battles of life are won and lost in the minds and the hearts, because the Bible says - Proverbs 23:7 - as a man thinks in his heart so he is. Now that word 'thinks' is an on going present continuous word. In other words, as a man is continually thinking in his heart, then that's how his life is working out. Why? Because of the thoughts, and what thoughts do. I want to share with you something I discovered through a little bit of research just recently. As you continue to think, you are building your life, so your thoughts are building the life you'll have on the earth. Your thoughts are like bricks, and you're putting them in one after another, and so the way we think and view life begins to build into us, and program in us, how we're going to be in the future. You have to understand that.

Now there's been some research done on thoughts, and thinking processes, and here's some interesting things you may not have realised. I don't have a picture I could show you but thoughts are actually can be measured. In other words they occupy space in your head. A thought is not a nothing. See, a thought is something. A memory is something. We don't tend to think that way, but it is something. Now what is it? Well it's actually neurons going through a path. There are chemicals released, and there's some pathways formed in your mind, so there are electrical impulses, neurons, and chemicals released - see for example, if I just got everyone, now it's nearly half past eleven now, so if I got everyone beginning to think about a beautiful lunch - oh, there it is. Chicken, ooh, I can see it now. I can see the gravy on it, all that seasoning, and the potatoes and - oh it's looking good. Now immediately I'm starting to feel hungry. [Laughter] My body - not notice this, I want you to get this - my body and feelings responded to my thoughts. So as I began to think, there was something happened in my body and emotions, same with yours.

If you begin to think about a painful experience for a little bit, and you begin to remember that experience, begin to imagine it and picture it, very soon there'll be feelings come, emotions will come, and you'll begin to enter into that experience - sometimes tears come. I found one certain piece of music I just played the other day, as I played the music, I found tears come. I thought that's strange. The music is triggering off thoughts, and they're connected to emotions. Because I've got emotions, I must have thoughts; I wonder what they are? So they're all interconnected. Now here's the interesting thing. They've been able to study the brain, and here's the interesting thing that happens. When you think, thinking involves electrical impulses, neurons connect, and you form like a tree in your brain.

Can you imagine a tree with lots of branches? Now the more you repeat certain kinds of thinking, the bigger the tree grows in your brain - so if you begin to think say, negative thoughts about yourself, and continually repeat them, there grows like a tree in your brain, of neurons connected to one another, and the connections grow thicker and stronger and deeper. It becomes set in your brain. So a person for example who continually looks at pornography begins to develop in his brain memories or trees, neuron trees, which grow thicker and thicker and thicker, and there are paths. It triggers off chemistry in their body. That's how God has designed us, it's a physical thing - and so God designed us. Now here's the thing. If a person begins to change how they think, they've observed on the electron microscope, that the trees that hold the memory or the patterns of thinking begin to shrink and dissipate, and if you stop thinking those thoughts they eventually vanish, as though they were never there. Isn't that amazing? They've discovered that in science. I was reading it in a book recently.

If you start to develop different ways of thinking, then new neuron paths form up, and new trees begin to form within your brain - so imagine that, that within your brain are registered the ways you've thought all your life. If you will stop thinking certain ways, and begin to develop new thoughts, there will be new neuron paths formed, new connections formed, and old ones will wither and die away. Think about that. Isn't it amazing? Now here's the thing about those thoughts. They are connected to emotions, so if your thoughts are negative, you unlock bad chemistry in your body; it affects your DNA and your health. So our body is not wired to cope with things like bitterness, judgements, resentments, self pity, unforgiveness. All those toxic thoughts create memory trees, neuron trees in your mind, that every time you go there they get stronger, and they unlock toxins in your body. Think about that - so what is very true is this: You can be transformed totally, as you will renovate your mind.

You'll be transformed totally by the renovation of your mind. Now I wish I could have you come up and lay hands on you, and renovate your mind [laughter] but as you all know with renovation, you've got to remove and strip out the whole room, everything that's in there, and systematically replace it with something else, systematically replace it with something else. What we have to do is called renewing of the mind, and Joshua was commended to do it before he went into the land. One of the biggest instructions God gave him is this: meditate, ponder, picture, imagine, get into the feelings of My word, so My word begins to build neuron trees and begins to shape the way you think. Declare My word, because that'll reinforce it in your life. Begin to act on My word - notice what He says - you will make your own way to prosper. In other words prosperity outside us, begins with change inside us.

Kingly manifestations outside, begin with kingly thinking on the inside, and no one can do it except you - so that requires these sorts of things, becoming aware of how you think. In other words, notice what you feel, because behind a feeling is a thought, or a belief. Evaluate it, judge it. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, bringing every thought and every imagination into captivity, these things that exalt themselves against knowing God. So many of us are limited in our experiences and knowledge of God, because we have thoughts that resist and oppose and continually frustrate God's revelation flowing into our life. Renew the mind and it begins to change. How do we do it? We need to picture, imagine the truth, see the truth, begin to imagine what that feels like, the truth: God is in me. When Clark was here he shared a brilliant message, just of what it took for him to meditate that Almighty God was in him. This God that made creation in me, every day meditating on it, so wherever he went he could minister the power of God, because he felt immediately the presence of God with him.

Meditate, ponder, imagine, picture, begin to let it affect your feelings, begin to speak it and embrace it, declare it over your life, begin to live out and act according to it, and you'll begin to find old memory patterns start to shift, new memory patterns start to form, and your life begins to change. I've determined in this coming year to work on some different areas of change. What about you?

Let's just close our eyes right now. The core of it is repentance, a change of mind and a change of heart, and that's where every one of us stands today. If we want to see more of the kingdom of God in our life, let's turn from old, unproductive thinking. Abandon it, reject it and put it off, and let's be renewed in our mind, and put on whole new ways of thinking and living that make us productive and fruitful, and make us think like a king, talk like a king, act like a king and experience kingly advances in our life.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed is there any person here today doesn't know Jesus Christ? This would be a great day for you to turn from an old way of thinking, an old way of life, a life in bondage, slavery and alone, into a life connected to Jesus Christ. At the cross Jesus died and broke the power of sin in your life so you could be free.

Is there anyone here today right at that place of decision? I wonder how many others today, as I've spoken today you realise that much of what you're experiencing in life that makes you unhappy, is a result of wrong thinking, of issues in the heart unresolved, and God's been speaking to you today about putting off the victim mentality, dealing with the victim issues of the heart, and beginning to put on a kingdom mentality - no more blame, standing up, and beginning to take hold of what God says about you. Day by day meditating in the truth, rejecting the lies, evaluating your thoughts as they come in - does this line up with the word of God? If it doesn't - I reject that thought, it's an ungodly thought. I hold the truth in my heart, I confess the truth, meditate on the truth, embrace the truth, until I see it manifest in my life.

I believe there are many people today, God's speaking to you about that. Would you raise your and say: God's really challenged me to have a kingly mentality. Father, I just thank You. Father, I pray today for your grace to flow in the house of God, to break old victim mentalities, and to begin to raise up a new breed and generation with kingly thinking, thinking like a king, thinking as You've called us to think, standing and confronting ungodly thinking, rising up to do new things. Father, we just honour You today. We thank You, You've made us one with You, and Jesus, we give You the honour. Shall we give the Lord a clap today? [Applause]

Summary Notes

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Developing a Kingly Mentality

12 December 2010

1. Introduction

Romans 8:34-39

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us”.

“More than conquerors” = to gain a decisive victory, gain surpassing victory in every situation.

We are no longer victims, powerless, at the mercy of circumstances – we are more than conquerors.

“Through Him” = we are joined to the King of Kings, the one who has overcome the world.

2. Victim Mentality Steals Your Inheritance

(a) Victim Mentality = a way of thinking, of seeing and interpreting people and experiences.

Proverbs 23:7 = A person who refuses to take responsibility for their life, excuses their actions and blames others for what they are experiencing and feeling in life.

(b) Example of Israel (Numbers 13:25-33)

(i) How they viewed (thought) their situation – their beliefs!

· How they saw themselves – “like grasshoppers” (v33) – “not able” (v31)

· How they saw life challenges – “Giants – stronger than us” (v31, 33)

· How they saw inheritance (future) – “Land devours inhabitants” (v32)

· How they saw God – “bought us to … become victims” (14:3)

(ii) How they responded/reacted

· Self Pity - “cried, and the people wept that night” (14:1)

· Blame - complained against Moses and Aaron (14:2)

· Bitterness - if only we had died in the wilderness (14:2)

· Judgement - Why has the Lord brought us…to become victims

(14:3)

· Rejection/unbelief - “let us select a leader and return to Egypt” (14:4)

· They refused to deal with victim mentality and to believe (trust) God.

(iii) Victim Mentality Cost Inheritance

Numbers 14:20 – 23

“They have seen my glory … they certainly shall not see the land …“

· The people saw and experienced the Glory of God and the miracles.

· Their experience did not change their heart beliefs – they did not develop faith.

· They did not connect spiritual experience to a life of faith and trust in God.

· They lost their inheritance through unbelief – Hebrews 3:19

· NB Blaming is evidence of unbelief, resentment, judgements and bitterness in heart.

· God desired them to change to repent and come into faith (agreement with God).

· Change requires:

(i) Recognising patterns of thinking and behaving.

(ii) Taking responsibility for the root issues and for process of change.

(iii) Resolving heart grief, anger, resentment, roots of bitterness.

(iv) Renewing the mind of old patterns of thinking and relating to

experiences.

(v) Embracing and believing God’s Word – Truth.

3. Kingly Mentality Claims Inheritance

(a) Kingly Mentality = A way of thinking, of seeing and interpreting people and

experience.

(1 Corinthians 6:16)

· Person sees themselves joined to Jesus Christ the King and Conqueror.

· Person takes full responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.

(Romans 5:17)

· Person exercises faith to manifest Christ’s victory in and through them.

(b) Example of Caleb

· Numbers 14:24

“My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him, and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land where he went … inherit it”

· Caleb OT3612 = to be forcible, to attack like a dog

(i) How Caleb viewed his situation

· How he saw God “..the Lord is with us” Num. 14:8,9

· How he saw himself “..we are well able to overcome”

Num. 13:3

· How he saw the challenges “..they are our bread, their protection

has gone” Num. 14

· How he saw the land “..flows with milk and honey” Num 14:8

(ii) How Caleb Responded

· He silenced the negative talk – Num. 13:30

· He rejected the negative attitude – Num 14:9

· He boldly declared the Word of God – Num 13:30/Num 14:9

· He had “another spirit” – a kingly spirit- the spirit of faith!

· Josh 14:7 “…I brought back word to him as it was in my heart”.

· To wholly follow the Lord we must embrace Christ and His Word in our heart.

· Caleb and his family possessed the dreams and promises of God.

4. Developing a Kingly Mentality

(a) The battles of Life are won and lost in the mind and the heart.

Proverbs 23:7

“As a man thinks in his heart so is he”

· Thinks = present continuing process of thinking

· As you continue to think you are building your life one brick at a time.

· If your thoughts are the bricks what are you building? Victim? Kingly?

· Rom. 12:2

“… be transformed by the renewing (renovation) of your mind”.

(b) Thoughts are measurable – they occupy space!

Thoughts (good and bad-toxic)

Are electrical impulses, chemicals, neurons

They form in brain like a tree with branches

As thoughts grow = more branches, stronger connectors

As change thinking – some branches vanish and others form, the strength of connectors change, memories network

Positive thoughts – correct chemicals are released

Negative thoughts – chemical imbalance which affects the body

Memories and thoughts are connected to emotions

Behind emotion is a thought or belief – Joshua 1:8 meditate – speak – do

Picture- imagine truth

Feel the thoughts

Embrace the truth

Speak the truth

Repent

Challenge thoughts

Freedom Conference

Too many Christians limp through life, carrying things from their past that Jesus has set you free from. Too many believers struggle with addictions, habits, fears, phobias and infirmities carried over from a life before Christ.

Its time to break through into FREEDOM, its time to deal with the devil defeated, its time to walk into the fullness of the new life Christ purchased for you on the cross.

“For this purpose the son of God was manifest to destroy the works of the devil” 1 John 3:8

Pastor Mike Connell has a powerful international deliverance ministry. He is in demand all over the world and operates in this dimension like few other people I have ever seen. Too many Christians put up with stuff that Jesus has set us free from.

Stop struggling, stop justifying, stop rationalizing and make the decision enough is enough- freedom is mine, that’s why Jesus died on the cross... To purchase my freedom! Its yours- stop allowing the enemy to steal it from you.

Freedom Conference (1 of 4)

Powerful demonstration of the Deliverance Ministry at a 4-day conference in San Diego, based around a detailed explanation the Biblical foundations. This is an important commission for all believers to understand and experience. Mike Connell has a wealth of experience and understanding in this area, and provides exciting teaching and demonstrations.

Freedom Conference (2 of 4)

You've got an issue. Your issue's unforgiveness. It's YOUR issue. You've got to deal with it and people - but that's not fair! So unfair! And so we say we have to forgive - that's unfair, you know, because we're locked in self-pity and locked in the issue of injustice. We're not willing to bring injustice to the cross and move on, so we've got a key to all freedom.

Freedom Conference (3 of 4)

Pastor Joy shares a personal trauma, and how that has negatively impacted her many years later, and then how she found freedom from that.

Pastor Mike then teaches on a list of areas that can give spirits access to our life, such as: Trauma, Abuse, Soul Ties, Controlling Relationships, having a Death Wish, making Inner Vows, curses and agreement with words spoke over our lives, burdens of responsibility, and secrecy pacts.

Freedom Conference (4 of 4)

Honour your father and mother - the first of the ten commandments that comes with a promise. It's unusual because it carries a blessing that God has described and notice the blessing is in two parts. It says that it will be well with you and you'll live long on the earth. Now the implication in that is if you violate that commandment by dishonouring your mother and your father it will affect your physical health, it'll affect your life expectancy and it will affect your life will not go well for you.

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Powerful demonstration of the Deliverance Ministry at a 4-day conference in San Diego, based around a detailed explanation the Biblical foundations. This is an important commission for all believers to understand and experience. Mike Connell has a wealth of experience and understanding in this area, and provides exciting teaching and demonstrations.

We're just looking forward to what God will do, so just a few things, just a few practical things and people coming tonight, some of you will have no idea. You've just come because someone told you to come and kept asking until you said yes. And then you're sitting thinking, I wonder why I'm here [laughs] and what might happen, and some of you will be thinking well, when's the exorcism begin! [Laughter/applause] so there'll be all kinds of thoughts about different things.

So the first thing to realise is our journey into freedom and wholeness, it's a journey, it's a process, not just a one off. So if you're just looking for a one off, I think you won't get what you're looking for, but if you just say God, I'm opening my life this weekend in a whole new way, I'm expecting to come and receive, Lord just begin to speak to me, and what I will believe will happen is God will help you where you are. And the second thing is that the things that are supernatural are not necessarily spectacular, so don't look for the spectacular. Just look for God to come and touch you and help you in some way, and someone next to you may be spectacular and spin around and fall on the ground and scream and yell and all that, but it doesn't have to be you, okay? It'd be good if it was you though. I would really like that. I like it when it gets action packed and there's a lot of stuff happens, but it doesn't need to.

You don't have to have any major manifestations to get set free. So during the time of sharing - I always want to lay a word foundation so you have understanding about what's happening, otherwise you have an experience with a little understanding of what's going on, and the part you play in it, so for example we know Jesus died for every person in the world, but there's a part that we have to play in order to get saved.

And so we know that on the cross, Jesus paid the price for every person to be forgiven, but to be forgiven there's a part you play in the process. It's not just like, you know, if God was going to save everyone, they'd all be saved now - so there's the need for people to hear the word of God, for faith to arise, and a response to be made. Jesus constantly said, according to your faith, there to be done to you. So coming tonight, you'll be in different levels of faith, different levels of expectancy, and that's okay to be where you are, and I just encourage you to just take the next step, whatever that happens to be for you, in your journey into freedom.

Now when we're sharing and what'll happen is, there's a flow of anointing starts to come, and you may start to find yourself feeling uncomfortable, so spirits can manifest anytime in a meeting, and I'm never sure when they will, or whether they will, or what. I just never know. It's one of the great unknowns, and I actually love it when it happens, but sometimes it happens and suddenly something will - someone will begin to - the spirit that's in them will begin to manifest it's presence, because of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and they may not have known that they had a spirit. They may never have realised that, and then suddenly they find that there's something happening in their body that they've got no control over, or little control over.

So if you experience something like that, or something like that happens, like for example I had one meeting in Singapore, I was up there. I just started to talk about the Holy Spirit - I hadn't even got preaching - started to just talk about the Holy Spirit and the cleaner walked in, and she walked in up the top there, and she had a broom in her hand, and she just shook her fist at me; said why you come here? Why you do this to me? And I'm thinking woo! I'm only just barely getting started - but she was actually - the spirit was manifesting, and so sometimes we have that, and that's why I love going up to Asia, I have a lot of that happen up there [Laughter] but sometimes in the atmosphere of the presence of God, spirits will manifest. I'm going to show you a story in the ministry of Jesus where exactly this happened, so you realise it's not just some wild thing or something stirred up. It's actually something that's in the Bible, and so when spirits manifest - if I was to ask, have you got a demon, you'd probably say no, because demons don't normally come in and announce I'm here! You know, they don't sort of do that you know. They come in by stealth, and the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God's a kingdom of light. We know who we are opening our life to. We know the Holy Spirit's the one coming in, where it's a kingdom of light.

The kingdom of the devil's a kingdom of darkness and deception. Now if you never know how or when you opened your life, all you do is have a problem that you got used to living with, and think that's just me. And so there's a deception, so part of what I need to do is just open the word of God for you for a little, so you begin to start to think about your life, and you may begin to realise hey, that thing that I think is just me, actually it's a spirit operating, and that area where I was involved in before I got saved, I've opened my life to some things, and so I want you to just allow God to help you understand that.

Now what can happen is then, spirits can get stirred up inside people, even while I'm just talking like this, and what happens is the presence of the Holy Ghost comes, and the demon which was hidden begins to get frightened or angry or hostile at what's happening, and begins to start to manifest within a person. So what you might feel, for example, during the meetings you may feel at some point in the meetings, either while I'm speaking or while we're ministering, you may start to feel highly agitated inside. That's not you being agitated. That's a spirit being agitated - or you might find you suddenly feel a tremendous fear grip you. Now that's not you being afraid, that's a spirit being afraid, but expressing it's feelings in you, so you think it's your fear, but actually it's the spirit that's terrified.

You may feel like you've just got this panic thing; I've got to get out of here, I've just got to get out of here - I've got to get out of here! And yet you can't somehow get out of there. That's not you that's wanting to get out of here, that's the demon. I encourage you to stay and let the demon leave [Laughter/applause] That's a better way of doing it aye? Or you may find as I begin to talk, you start to get very angry, and you're angry at me. You think I think I should kill that man and [Laughter] I know, it's happened. It's happened. I remember going into a meeting, and sitting down at a meeting in Taiwan, just sat down and I turned around and looked at a guy, and as soon as I looked at him I thought oh, he's started to manifest, and he said “I want to kill you”! [laughs] I said you'll have to get in a line mate, there's others before you [Laughter] but he actually couldn't speak any English at all - it's the spirit, see. He had no words of English whatsoever. It was the demon.

So when you're not used to spiritual manifestation - all you've got's Hollywood's model - then you kind of just haven't got a clue really. So if you have some of those feelings take place inside, you feel agitated, you feel fear or panic, want to run away, you feel like you want to attack me, or you find that your thoughts like a hand just grips your head, and you suddenly feel frozen and you can't think or focus on much of what I'm saying, that is a spirit manifesting, and we'll give an opportunity for you to be prayed for and ministered to, get set free of whatever that is. Often there's not just one; there's often a group of them together, and so deliverance can be progressive, and over two or three sessions, so tonight we will have an altar call, but I won’t try to fix up everything. Over tomorrow we'll have several altar calls, after I've just laid out a little more foundation, and I encourage you just to come up and let God do whatever He wants to do in your life. Let Him help you, and you might be quite surprised what happens.

It's that person next to you's got the issue haven't they? Yeah, yeah. Tell them - turn to the person next to you. Say you need to listen to this, I'm thinking it's about you, you know?

[laughs] Is this ringing bells? [laughs] Great. Well we're not going to be all spooky and oooh like that. We want to just stay in the flow of the life of God, and the joy of the Holy Ghost, so I'll get to share a couple of stories on the way; got heaps of stories and stuff that you'll love, but let's just get started, open the word of God first of all. I want you to look with me in Acts, Chapter 10, Verse 38 and I want to look just at the ministry of Jesus, so you understand a little bit about what He did. Then when you see it and understand it, you realise oh, it's not such a big deal after all. It's just something I haven't been aware of. Verse 38; now God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. Notice He's describing the ministry of Jesus, the ministry of the anointing of the Holy Ghost. Notice what He says; He anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and power; the power of God came on him as a result of prayer, fasting, and prevailing and establishing his dominion over evil spirits. He had a season where he was anointed with the spirit, then a season of prayer and fasting, and as the outcome of that he returned - Luke 4:14 - in the power of the spirit. And God wants us to have the power of the spirit in our life, and to do that we need to be free of the other powers that are around. It said He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him.

Now the word oppressed is a Greek word that means something like this: to use spiritual force or power and hold someone down. To use spiritual force or power and to hold someone down.

One of the most common things that people feel after they've been delivered, they say oh, I feel much lighter, meaning there was something holding me down, it's lifted off me right now. That word comes - it's the word [canadenisco,] which means - comes from the word down, to hold someone down, and the word [denisco,] coming from a word where we get dunamis or spiritual power, the Holy Ghost calls supernatural power. So we're called to be filled with the dunamis of the Holy Ghost, the supernatural power of the Holy Ghost. Jesus was anointed with the dunamis of the Holy Ghost, but it says here that the devil oppressed or uses spiritual power, dunamis, to hold people down - so we desperately need the power of the Holy Ghost in our life if we're going to carry the Gospel into a culture which is infested with demonic operations.

So Jesus had in mind that they were going cultures where idolatry was open, where they would have encounters with sorcerers, all kinds of occult things; they needed the power of the Holy Ghost, and power to be able to overcome another power. Now you can't overcome demons with medication. You can't overcome demons with willpower. You can't overcome demons with just trying hard to do good, you just can't. You need the power of the Holy Ghost, and so He healed or He addressed the root causes in people's lives, so that they were freed from the power of spirits that held them down.

Now I want to just touch on this just for a moment. I want to just use a word that often people equate - they think about the New Age when they think of this; I use the word spiritual energy. I want to describe what it's like when a spirit is operating in your life. There are many ways this happens, but I want to describe - because you get asked the question well, how would I know if I have a spirit? And there are many ways you can know, but one of the most obvious ways is this, it's that when a spirit is in a person's life and is operating, one of the most obvious ways it does is that there's a spiritual pressure that seems to restrain or restrict them or drive them.

In Ephesians, Chapter 2 and Verse 1 and 2, it says that before we came to Christ we were dead in trespass and sin. We separated from God - and then it says - now notice this; it says we walked - that's how we lived our life - according to the course of the world, according - now notice this - to that spirit which works in the children of disobedience. That word 'work' is a word [energayo], meaning to energise, or a spirit energising something in your life, so many of the struggles and problems that people have, they come because sin works in their life, or demons energise things in their life, so that there's a pressure and you can't seem to get over it.

Now there's a number of uses of that word, for example - I'll just give you a couple of them, just to give you some examples of it; it says in Philippians, Chapter 2, Verse 13, it says it's God who works in you, to will, and to do, of His good will. That's the word energise. God energises you, so the operation of the Holy Spirit is called energising you, to be able to do the will of God, so when an evil spirit is inside you it energises you to violate the will of God, to actually live in bondage, and live restricted, and restrained. And so every time you see that word [energayo] it's the word energise, so evil spirits energise something in your life. Now they have to have something to work with, and so they work on an unresolved issue, a sin, an inequity, a cursing. They work on traumas. They work on unresolved barriers or walls or conflicts in the heart, and we'll identify those tomorrow for you. I'll identify and give you a list of them, so you become aware of the kinds of things that they energise, so part of the issue is getting the person delivered, the spirit out of them, but you do that by coming to deal with the thing that it is energising. So for example, if you have in your heart a deep hatred against a - perhaps it's a woman been abused by a man - and so as reaction to being hurt, she develops a deep hatred in her heart, then a spirit energises the hatred, and so you have hatred the sin, and you have hatred a spirit of hate, and the spirit of hate energises the sin, so it becomes something the person can't seem to break out of, and they feel trapped in this bondage they can't seem to break out of.

They are held down or captive by this evil spirit, and so in dealing with the person, you have to not just get the spirit out; you've got to deal with what it energised inside them, which was the sin issue that was in their heart, and possibly the grief and the pain and the anguish of what happened to them in their life. So all of us face many different experiences, and all of us have had painful experiences in our life, and it's often in those trauma or painful experiences the demons ride in and get into your life, and use them to energise your heart, so that you're held in bondage to that thing that happened in your past. So all of us have got a history, all of us have got a past, and it doesn't all get dealt with when you become a Christian. Potentially it is, at the cross, but it has to be realised by appropriating it through faith, and so we've got to step up and take hold of it by faith. Getting the idea?

Okay then, so Jesus healed all who were oppressed. Let's have a look at a guy in Acts, in Luke, Chapter 4, Verse 33. Now here's a guy that Jesus delivered, so we're going to look at an example of Jesus delivering a person. Then we're going to look at what He taught about deliverance, and so here it is; Jesus is in a synagogue. A synagogue was a place where believers congregated, so this is a place of believers. Many Christians struggle with the thought that a Christian could have a demon. Their thinking is well, you know, Christians are temple of the Holy Spirit, got the Holy Spirit in you, demon can't live where the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit won't live where the demon is, therefore you can't have a demon and be a Christian - or you can't be Christian and have a demon. But if you - it's faulty and flawed thinking, and it shows lack of understanding.

The Holy Spirit is joined to our spirit, and He is one spirit with us. When demons occupy your body and your soul, that's where they find their place of access, and they don't just stop because you become a Christian. They stop when you drive them out. They stop when you remove the issues associated with them. So here's a guy now for example, so he's a believer. Jesus said deliverance is the children's bread, in other words He said - in Matthew 15 He said deliverance, being set free from demons, is the children's bread or in other words it is the right of believers, it's the privilege of believers to have the experience of deliverance.

So if we deliver someone who's got a demon and they're not saved, the demon's just going to come straight back in. Deliverance is not so much just about casting a demon out. It's about establishing the kingdom of Jesus Christ in the person's life, so they have to come under another king, and bring the part of their life that's out of order into kingdom order, and when it comes into kingdom order, then deliverance is very easily brought about. Getting the idea?

Okay, so here's a guy who's in church and so - Verse 33 - in the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon, and many times Jesus cast demons out of people in church meetings. And so Jesus is in a church meeting, so He's preaching away and sharing the word of God, and here it is - a man with an unclean spirit. So we've got a spirit, most likely a spirit of lust, and he's tormented inside, in his mind and emotions, tormented with sexual thought, sexual images, sexual desires and most likely breaks out and commits sin from time to time.

He's in the church, indicating his desire is to serve God, but he's tormented. He is not free. He's in the body of believers, but he's tormented in his life, and he's living only a measure of freedom. There's a greater level of freedom, or like a new level of normal, that he has to come into this day. So he's in the church, and as he's in there, Jesus begins to speak, and the anointing flows. Now notice what the demon does. He cries out with a loud voice. Now what's happening is this, is the demon is aware of who Jesus is. Now when we look at one another we see only the external, so you look and you see the house the person lives in. The real person is the hidden man of the heart, so the real you is the spirit man with the soul inside the temple - that body that you live in. When we look at one another, we see the outside. From the spirit world, they see what the real man is like, so the demon recognised Jesus immediately, knew exactly who He was. The people in the congregation didn't know who He was, but the demon knew who He was, recognised Him straight away. And so the demon was highly agitated and afraid, so notice what it does - begins to yell out. Now I've had that happen a few times in church. I've had it happen on more than one occasion in church, and I've had it happen out in the community, had it happen in restaurants [laughs] had it happen in public places, and especially when we've been in a flow of doing deliverance, and people suddenly will just yell out, with no reason at all.

I had a friend of mine and he was standing at the airport. He was just waiting for somebody, he was watching people coming in, in and out and he just saw this woman come - nicely dressed, power dressed, you know, briefcase. He looked in her eyes and the moment he looked in her eyes a spirit flushed up, and she came over - now get this, this is in the airport, public place. She just came over, went [hiss hiss hiss] and then she walked off, just like that [Laughter] like nothing had happened.

I was in a hospital one time, and Joy and I had been talking and sharing with someone about the Lord. We were walking just down a corridor, and an old man walking - nice suit, hat, everything - and he walks - and he got about as far as this guy in the orange shirt is from us. Then he started yelling. He started yelling and yelling and yelling and yelling. We're thinking whoa! What is this? He just walks by, and the moment he walked by he stopped yelling and carried on like nothing had happened. See, the spirit was manifesting - and so that's what happened here.

Notice what the demon says; leave us alone! Ha ha. What have we to do with you Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy one of God. So you notice some things. There's the demon recognises who Jesus is, recognises He's anointed, recognises He's the Son of God, knows exactly who He is, just as demons know exactly who you are, and they know exactly the faith level that you have. They see you. We'll see this in a moment - and so they cried leave us alone! The demon's prayer - leave us alone! They're tormented by the authority, the anointing that Jesus carries. It frightens them. He terrifies them, and you need to understand that, when you go as a representative of Jesus Christ, in the anointing of the Holy Ghost, they don't see you. They see Him and they're terrified of Him [Applause] They're terrified of Him.

He overcame them in His ministry on the earth. He overcame them at the cross in the most amazing way - so leave us alone! What are we to do with you? Have you come to destroy us? So demons know about their future. They're terrified of it, absolutely - and he said, I know who you are, the Holy one of God - so the demons are aware of people. I remember when I was just beginning out in deliverance ministry, and this guy was manifesting and I went round to his house to kind of get him free, and I brought one of the guys from church with me, thought that's a good move. So I took him around with me, and so we met the guy and he's a very big guy, a wrestler, a very - you know, he could've pulled us apart quite easy really. And he immediately - you know, I looked him the eye, the demon manifest - come straight up and he begins to start to challenge me, so I just stared straight in at him, and he began to threaten me and he showed unusual strength.

He picked up apple, said I'm going to crush you like this apple and he just took an apple - now you know how hard this is - got an apple in his left hand and just crushed it, and it become pulp, you know? And I said I come against you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he picks up a chair and said I'm going to pull you apart like this, and he gets a chair and just goes [creak] pulls it apart. I just stayed confident - I come in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and so he backed up. Then he looked at the guy that was next to me, and he looked - now the guy next to me sort of whoa! What is this, you know? [laughs]

And he looked at him, and I saw him look and he looked again, then he just began to laugh and he read the guys mail about what was going wrong in his life. See, so I realised then spirits can see the condition of your life, and I'll show you it quite clearly from Jesus' teaching in a moment. So you may be able to - you know, you could run but you can't hide. [Laughter] We are open and vulnerable to the spirit world. We actually are visible to them, in a way that we're not visible to one another, and so therefore if there are legal grounds for demons to access your life, they know it and exploit it, a legal ground. So many people think well, you know, does God punish people and all this kind of stuff? Actually God has set laws in place, so He doesn't have to intervene on everything. There are natural laws that govern the natural world, like laws of gravity, well we rely on those laws to live our life, but there's also laws that govern the spirit world as well. One of the things is that the consequence of violating one of God's laws is always that there's a spiritual death, there's a separation, or disconnection in our life takes place, always. There's no escape. There is no escape. God has declared: here's the consequences - you've got the choice of what you do, but the consequences are always going to be there, so Adam and Eve were told freewill choice, but here's the consequences if you break the law of God. So there's always a consequence that we reap in our life, as a result of sin.

The second thing is that evil spirits are empowered to operate. They are lawfully - they have a realm that they operate in. It's the realm of darkness. It's the realm where the laws of God are broken, so wherever the laws of God are broken, whether you knew it or not, is irrelevant. They operate in those places. So for example, you go down the road and it's, you know, a 50 mile per hour area, and you go 65 and the cop stops you and you say I didn't know; it's not a defence, understand? The law is still the law. Whether you knew it or not is not relevant. You broke the law, there is a consequence. So in the realm of the spirit, when we break the laws of God, whether ignorantly or deliberately, there is always a consequence, and one of the consequences is we reap what we've sown. There's a consequence immediately inside us. There's an eternal consequence and also, demonic spirits have access to our life because of those actions, so while I live in the light they don't have access to me. When I go into the darkness, or break the laws of God, they have a realm where they can gain access, and this is what's happened in this guy here.

This demon didn't just arrive in his life. There was a door opened in his life by his actions. He did something that opened his life up. Think about that. He did something that gave a legal right for the spirit to come in, and as a result of that, now he's tormented, and probably he's sinned more and more and more and now he's got this major bondage in his life. Notice how Jesus deals with it; Jesus is not afraid of the demon. He just rebukes, then speaks directly to it. He rebuked the demon, spoke straight to the spirit. So when we come to ministering to people, we will speak directly to the spirit, so sometimes I'll be talking to you, and when it comes to ministry it'll be speaking directly to the evil spirit, and when we speak directly to the evil spirit, they know we're speaking to them. They know it, you know and that's when they begin to react and so on - so usually I'll speak with a different tone of voice. When I'm speaking to a person, speaking more gently; speaking to a demon, it'll be straight and strong - see, firm. Notice Jesus rebuked him - be quiet, come out! And the demon threw him on the ground. It protested. It did not want to leave, it was reluctant to leave, but it had to leave, because it was facing a superior spiritual authority.

So the spirit world recognises your spiritual rank and authority. Think about that. When we come, we're coming representing Jesus Christ, and they already understand that, they have been defeated by Him. All they'll do is, test out if you're going to pray for people, whether you believe it or not [laughs] right? So then the guy - it says straight away after this, it didn't hurt him. He came up, and he wasn't hurt at all, and he just - so sometimes when we pray for people they manifest, they fall on the floor, can be shaking, crying, screaming, yelling. It can be fighting around on the floor, it can be all kinds of things, but most of the time people get through quite easily, once the root system has been dealt with in their life. Amen.

Okay, have a look in Matthew, Chapter 12. I want to show you something else - do a couple more scriptures and then hopefully some of you are starting to wriggle [Laughter] Not the person next to you. That's you, I can see it [Laughter] Oh we'll be surprised just what God is doing just here, while we're talking right now, and so some of you are looking and smiling and others [fearful sound].

I'm glad you came, because God wants to set you free, so don't be worried about those things [Applause] you know, let's be open to the Holy Ghost. So we're just trying to learn about deliverance, because some of you come from cultures, or church cultures, where there's no teaching on deliverance, and so therefore it's sort of something weird or found in Hollywood only, and we need to have understanding this is just a part of Jesus' ministry that He entrusted to the church. He's entrusted this to the church, so we need this kind of ministry. So anyway, let's have a look and see what Jesus said.

He's just delivered a man in Verse 22, and then He gets a reaction from the religious people who hate this kind of stuff, and He responds in Verse 28; If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God is come upon you. Now notice what Jesus said; He said if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God is come upon you - so deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom of God, being superior than the kingdom of the devil. It is a prevailing of the kingdom of God. It is the kingdom of God coming in the earth, as it is in heaven. No demons in heaven, so when deliverance takes place, the kingdom of heaven comes, and begins to be established in a new way, in an area of the person's life they were not free, and notice the second thing; He says if I cast them out - so deliverance also requires some person to act as a representative of heaven, to speak, address and command the demons to go from the person's life. If I cast them out by the Spirit of God - so there's a co-operation. It requires the anointing of the Holy Ghost. We can't do deliverance without the Holy Ghost. You can go through all the motions, you can shout, make all the noise you like. If the Holy Spirit doesn't come, there isn't going to be any deliverance.

Now here's the thing to realise; you can come up for prayer and have someone lay hands on you or pray for you, but God knows your heart, and He knows the readiness of your heart to be set free, and so if we are open to Him, and the Holy Spirit is come upon our life, we will get delivered. There's absolutely no doubt about it at all. But if we just come, we say well I'll come up to see what happens, there's no faith for anything to happen, probably very little will happen. He said according to your faith, it's done to you, so deliverance is a co-operation between a person, the Holy Ghost, and also requires the co-operation of the person being prayed for. Many times He's said, according to your faith let it be done to you, so when you recognise hey, this is the problem. Jesus, I know exactly what I've got to do to position myself for freedom, then freedom will come. It's absolutely certain.

So Jesus then teaches a little bit about it, and teaches something very interesting. He gives an insight to the spirit world. When we talk about the spirit world, we live in a western culture. People don't think of a spirit world. They tend to think primarily of a natural world, but there are many cultures in the world where actually their world view is a spirit world view, and so Jesus teaches about the spirit world. Notice what He said; when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest but finds none. What He's saying now is a demon is a spirit being. It's a spirit being. You are a spirit being. You live in a body. You're actually anchored to one place. You live in a body. You are a spirit being. Now as a spirit being you have access to the realm of the spirit, you have access to God. You can open your life to all kinds of things, so your body is the house, you as a spirit being live in.

Now when a demon comes into the person like that, it says the unclean spirit goes out of the man, he goes through dry places seeking rest. So when a spirit is cast out of a person, it can move from one place to another - in fact generally they move really quickly when they're cast out - [vroom] gone like that! And so demons will move, and what they do is they go a dry place, that's a place where there's no movement of the Spirit of God, and they look for a place of rest. It doesn't mean that they're looking for some place to lie down. They're looking for some place they feel comfortable in. They're looking for some place or person that's in agreement with them. They're looking for an entry into another person's life, so when an evil spirit comes out of a person, it goes through - it walks and travels in the spirit world, but it's looking for some other person they can enter into, looking for a place to enter. Now demons can occupy or come into a building, they live in a building, particularly a building where there's been a trauma, a murder or some kind of violent thing, where there's been idolatry of some kind or spiritism of some kind. Spirits can live in a building, and when people come in a house - perhaps you've been in a house, you bought a house, and then you find that once you're in the house many troubles come while you're in the house. There's conflicts, there's coldness in the house, there's a funny atmosphere in the place, people get sick; all of that indicates most likely a spirit is in the house and - or you may even see the spirit manifest, which we had in one of the first school houses we went to live in. Spirit manifested one night when I went to bed, and I saw it. It freaked me out completely, but it made me determined to get to deal with these things, because I saw they're real.

So spirits can move around. They seek a place they can go into, a building, go into objects, they can go into animals, but mostly they want to get inside a person, so they can express their nature through the person. You are designed by God to express His nature. Demons want to frustrate that and get into you, and express their nature by holding you down in bondage, so you continually have a problem you can't seem to get the victory over; fear, lust, hate, bitterness, unforgiving, a whole range of things like that.

Okay, notice it said, he said he goes to the place seeking rest. He can't find a place to go. Then he says - so demons can speak, and they can think. They have a memory, they have a personality. He says I will return to my house from whence I came, so the demon remembers where he was. He can actually remember, and he calls a person my house so [laughs] that's a freaky thought isn't it aye? We're called to be the temple of God, not a haunted house [Laughter] Ooh, scary! So he says I'll return to my house, and says when he comes, he says he finds it. Now that's an interesting thought. If we cast the demons out, and they go out, and he can't find another place to go, he thinks I know where I should go. I should come back to my house. I'll just come back - and notice, here's the interesting thing; you can run, you can't hide. They can find you. Jesus taught it. The demon finds the person again - and notice the other thing is, the demon can see clearly what the condition of the person is. How about that! He finds the house empty. Notice it's empty, not filled with the Holy Ghost, just empty, cleaned up, looking good, but empty.

So the remedy is not just that I get set free of a demon. I need to become filled with the spirit and flame of the Holy Ghost, that part of my life - so he finds him empty, and then he says, he takes seven of the wicked spirits - spirits more wicked than himself. They enter in and dwell there, and the last state is worse than the first. So notice now if a demon has been cast out, it can come back, it can see the condition of your life, and it can re-enter, and it can communicate. Spirits communicate with one another. They've got their own spirit internet. They can communicate. They talk with one another, and they'll work as a group to come in and to bring a person's life into bondage, so what's the answer then? The answer is that the person needs to get their life filled with the Holy Ghost, and a change in life. If I want kingdom life, I need kingdom order, I need to bring my life into a flow of the new. So it's not just a matter of getting the demon cast out. I've got to shift now in how I do my thinking, how I do my life, and letting the Holy Ghost work in my life in that area, so I've got to put on the new, not just cast off the old. There's no neutrality in the kingdom of God. You're either going forward with God, or you're going back, and you're going into darkness, so if we get delivered out of darkness, we must purpose we're now going forward in that part of our life with God. We're growing with God. [Applause] We're enlarging. Like Jurgen said, there's a new normal, see.

So this gives an insight then to deliverance, what deliverance is all about, and you get an idea then of what spirits are; demons are spirit beings. They don't die when the person dies. They can move from one generation to another. They sometimes live in family lines going from one generation to another. They can move about, they can talk with one another, they communicate with one another, they think, they have strategies, they have a memory. They know where they've been, and they can find that person and go back into them, if an opportunity is given. So in Ephesians 4:27 it says give no opportunity to the devil. Don't give a foothold to the devil. Don't create in your life by your choices, an opportunity for evil spirits to come in and put your life into bondage.

Now notice the context. This context, He's talking to believers. He's saying be angry, but sin not - don't let the sun go down on your anger, so do Christians get angry? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right they do. He shows how to deal with anger, and then straight after that, in the same flow of teaching, neither give place to the devil. Don't give the devil a place to come into your life. So a person can by their choices or their actions, make room for a demon to come into their life, and so the question then is well, what are those doorways the demons would come in? And if a demon comes in, what would I experience inside? And there are a whole range of things you could experience. For some of you, if you've been involved in the occult or there's been occult involvement in your family, you may find that you are troubled by fears, confusion. You may find that there are things move in your bedroom. You may find that there are things you see at night, premonitions you have, terrible dreams you have. You may wake up choking, coughing. You may wake up feeling like someone's trying to kill you. You may see things move in your room, may have objects move in your room. All of those indicate there's an occult realm is operating. There's a familiar spirit operating around your life. If you have any of those kind - some of you may have had an experience where it felt like you were pinned on the bed and something was touching you or molesting you. That is an evil spirit that comes from a realm where either you or your family were involved in the occult. Those things happen, and normally people won't talk about it, because they feel too embarrassed to talk about it, that if I say something no one will believe me. I believe you, because I've prayed for many people, and we've seen them set free from those kinds of spirits.

So when spirits come into our life they can afflict us in many different kinds of ways. They can afflict you in your mind with tormenting thoughts, tormenting memories, tormenting dominating thoughts in your life. They can torment you in your emotions with fears, all kinds of pain and trauma. They can affect you in your body with physical sicknesses. There are many ways they can afflict us. They can afflict us by constantly bringing difficulties and setbacks in our life. So these are ways that spirits come and affect people's lives.

I want to just - I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this. I want to just give you just a brief rundown of some of the doors of entry and then we're going to start to pray for some people. We'll just finish up just praying for a few people, and I want you just to have - I felt like before I finish tonight, I just want to list the doors of entry, just to get you thinking before you go to bed about your life. Now you don't need to come just tonight in the altar call. If you'd really just prefer I'd like to think about this, and pray about this overnight, and just take what I've heard, that's fine. We'll have altar calls tomorrow. There'll be more than one, and I'll be quite specific what we're praying for - but let me just give you some of the doorways that spirits enter people's lives, and tomorrow we'll develop them just a bit more.

The first one is generational, coming down through your family line - generational, coming through your family line. Just as sicknesses can run in the family, also spiritual problems can run in a family. There can be spirits just pass from one generation to another, especially if there's been occult, sexual sin, sexual perversion, those kinds of things. People are just born with spirits in them, and they start to operate often when they're young, sometimes when they're teenagers and sometimes when they're older. But this is generational. We're called to carry generational blessing, and we can pass generationally physical characteristics. We can pass spiritual characteristics as well, so if a demon has come into a family line - now you think about this - the victory that you secure for yourself over this weekend changes the dynamic in your family line, okay. [Applause] Someone is depending on your breakthrough! Someone is waiting for you to break through! If you're a single person, and you haven't got married, no children yet, then your family ahead of you are waiting for you to break through. It's interesting. Jurgen was speaking tonight about the [Gatereen] how Jesus crossed the waters to get to Gatereen]. The other part of the story is that man's testimony so influenced the whole region, that when Jesus came back, the whole region turned to Him. Isn't that fantastic?

Okay, so one of them is generational inequity, bondage has run down through family line. Another one is involvement in the occult, any kind of occult activity, any kind of engagement activity with the spirit world. We'll talk a bit more about these tomorrow. Another is the area of sin patterns or habits in your life, repeated patterns of sin such as bitterness, forgiveness, hatred, anger, those kinds of things. These create doorways for demons to come, and Jesus even taught it, Matthew 18, that a person who will not forgive from the heart, will be delivered to tormentors, see. And the reason is very simple, is when we come to Him, He extends grace to us. To stay in grace, we have to extend grace, see. To stay in grace, you have to extend grace, so if I extend grace to others, and are forgiving, then I stay in the grace of forgiveness in my own life. Jesus made it very clear, you know, when you stand, pray and forgive, you'll be forgiven. You won't forgive, then you're not forgiven.

The man in that story, Matthew 18, remember how he was forgiven, and then later on the forgiveness seemed to be revoked, and he's now tormented. Why is that? The only reason I could see it is he came into grace, and it was expected of him he would extend grace to stay in grace. So we need to live in grace, not judgement. Okay then, so habits, sin patterns in our life; another is sexual sin. Sexual sin is one of the unique ways and we'll talk about that a bit more tomorrow - is one of the unique doors that opens the way for spirits to come in and torment people. Just as you can get a physical disease when you sleep with someone, have a sexual relationship with them, you can also pick up or open your life to demonic spirits. I'll give you a simple key, and it is very simple, two become one. So legally - see God spoke that. It's not my idea. He said two become one, so when you are sexually joined to someone, God says two become one, so whatever was in the other person's got legal access to you. Think about that - and you have also, if you had a sexual relationship outside marriage, you've opened yourself up to be bonded to someone in an ungodly way, and demons have a right to access you, just because of that.

So people who have been in sexual relationships often live incredibly tormented and don't live in freedom, and of course one of the most common places you become conscious of it is in a worship service. You've come to worship the Lord, and you start to find in your mind, unclean thoughts come - there's someone on the stage, someone here, someone there. You start to find thoughts come back and again, we'll touch on these a bit more tomorrow.

So trauma, trauma is another, when people have gone through an emotional trauma or a frightening experience, near death experience, traumatic experience of some kind, an assault or an abuse of some kind, then that can open the door for spirits as well. Inevitably it does, and there'll be some of you here who have been abused. We'll talk about that more tomorrow. I don't want to hurry you into the process, because there's some parts to it you need to understand, but when people have been traumatised, they often are soul-tied to the abuse and the abuser, and it's like they cannot get rid of the thing. Most people will try to then block it off, but they're not healed. Generally what the church has said, you need to move on. You need to just get over it, or you need to forgive. And the person been abused is thinking, forgive? I feel I'll kill you, you know? You don't understand what happened to me. So we'll touch on that a bit more tomorrow, because that's quite a major area.

So the area of rejection, where people are rejected in different ways creates huge issues in the heart, and spirits use it to manipulate and to push on people, so they live rejected, and in fear of rejection, unable to step out into things, because of immense fears around their life, so that's another area; where there's been abusive or controlling relationships, this always leads to deep bondage and deep mental torments, and we need to pull apart the structures that the demons used to get the person under control. So I'll share about some of those tomorrow. I'll share some of the bondages of the heart which are quite common, and you'll mentally tick them off just oh wow, wow, wow, wow - I've got to deal with that. See?

If a person has an abortion - an abortion in the Old Testament, they offered their children up to Molech. Abortion is a modern variation of offering your children to Molech, and it opens the door to spirits of death, and that's why if a woman has an abortion, not only should she suffer for the rest of her life, but very often there's a problem with the next conception, there's a problem with miscarriage, a problem with bleeding, problem with cancers - or the next child is - when the child's born - suffers with demonic spirits, because they were in a womb that now had been opened for the access of a spirit of death and murder. A child in the womb feels and is aware of spiritual sensation, even though the brain isn't developed. Just think about this; when Mary came to Elizabeth and she began to speak prophetically, John in the mother's womb, probably six months old, leapt in response to the prophetic function, so children in the womb are very, very sensitive to the moods of the mother, the spirit of the mother, the emotions of the mother, and any spiritual influences that are around.

So we have found that when a mother has rejected a child in the womb because it was untimely, out of wedlock or unwanted or whatever, the child often then struggles to bond with the mother, and has rejection issues all their life, and behaviour problems which can't be explained unless you say it's actually a demonic spirit that's come upon the child while they were still in the womb. Getting the idea?

See, this is why Jesus said, you know, preach the Gospel, heal the sick and deliver people [Applause] This is the problem. It's a problem. Okay, so why don't we just stand up and let's begin to just pray in tongues shall we? We want to finish about nine o'clock tonight, so why don't we just stand up and just turn around a little bit; there you go, shake up the demon. [laughs] Why don't we just begin to speak in tongues now, just begin to speak and speak out strong. Come on, we can do better than that. Come on, just rise in our spirit! [Speaks in tongues]. Now when you're praying in tongues, your spirit is praying. You are stirring your inner man. This is helpful for your deliverance. [Speaks in tongues] We honour you Lord. We bless you Lord. We praise you Lord! [Speaks in tongues]. Thank you Lord. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your power in this place. Thank you for your desire to deliver us. Thank you for your mighty presence here tonight! We thank you Lord, you are with us, you are for us, you will help us tonight! [Speaks in tongues]. Wonderful Jesus, wonderful Jesus.

I want to just pray for just a few people tonight. There's one particular woman, and when I began to describe those things that happen at night, of spirits coming to torment you and choke you and create terrifying dreams and fears in your life, you said that's me. That's been happening to me for as long as I can remember. Who was the woman that has that issue? There's a woman here. Oh wow, look at that. Okay, there's another one. There's another one too, I can feel it in my spirit. There's another woman - when you were quite young, it's been coming on you since you were quite young, and you had these terrifying dreams that come at night. Would you like to just come, like to come, terrifying dreams, you wake up and it feels like I'm dying, I think I'm dying. What is going on here? That's right. It's alright dear, it's okay dear. Now what's happening is the spirit's starting to manifest. That's okay. Alright.

Now when we're praying for people, if I'm not praying for you, I'm praying for someone else, I want you to reach out your hand to them. We're all in this together. We've got a common enemy, and we've got a loving saviour, and whoever's here tonight that God is touching, let's be on their side and for them. So you've got someone behind you to stand with you, and we'll help you in just a moment - when I mentioned to you that there was someone here, and when I was talking tonight about feeling like you're pinned down on the - there's something there - you said that's me, and if you could just have the courage to come forward we'll pray with you. God will set you free of that. There's two people, at least two people have got that issue. If that's you just would you come? You felt like you'd been pinned on a bed and - it's alright dear, come, come. Come, hold on to it. That's a spirit just manifesting. That's right. That's right, it's okay. Just leave her there. She'll be alright there. Don't worry - no need to worry about the fact that that's happening. It's been happening for some time by the way. She was manifesting from about the beginning of the meeting.

Is there anyone else? Alright then, okay then. Now what you're seeing now, just a spirit manifesting, and in many of the different ones here you'll be starting to feel something. What you'll be feeling is an agitation from inside. Now this is how I'm going to minister; I'm going to just lead you to just make a confession of your faith in Christ, to renounce any occult bondage that's over your life, and ask the Lord to set you free. After that we'll lay hands on you and pray for you. When we pray for you, stop praying and just breathe out or cough and you may feel something just rise up from inside you. You may feel your hands wanting to shake, whatever it is and you may feel tears - whatever it is don't worry. If you want to scream you can scream. We're not worried about that.

Now already some of the spirits are starting to manifest. You can see it over there, and just also with the girl here, if I just come near her, then the shaking will increase in her life. Now that's just because there's a spirit there. It's alright, you don't - it's the spirit that's afraid, not you, and we'll set you free in just a moment. Right, this is what I want you to do - church, you stretch your hands to the ones who are up here. Ones who are up here, if it's possible for you at all to pray this prayer, just please pray this prayer with us. Joy, would you like to come up too dear? Want you to pray...

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, from all occult powers, from the power of every evil spirit. I am redeemed. I belong to Jesus Christ. I renounce now every agreement in my family with evil spirits, with occult powers. I renounce them now, in Jesus' name. Lord, I ask you to forgive me, and to set me free tonight. I release forgiveness to family members who opened the door to these spirits. I forgive them and bless them. Now Lord I claim freedom, in Jesus' name. Satan, go from my life now in Jesus' name. Okay, let's begin to worship the Lord together.

Freedom Conference (2 of 4)

Fri 27 Jan 2012  « Back to Top

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You've got an issue. Your issue's unforgiveness. It's YOUR issue. You've got to deal with it and people - but that's not fair! So unfair! And so we say we have to forgive - that's unfair, you know, because we're locked in self-pity and locked in the issue of injustice. We're not willing to bring injustice to the cross and move on, so we've got a key to all freedom.

[Pastor Jurgen] Halleluiah, how many people come expecting ... [Whistles and applause] ... I'm telling you, I can feel it. We're going to sing that song again. We're going to pray in just a moment, but the reason that it's so important to engage your heart in worship and it just kind of came to me on the front row, there's a story in Mark, Chapter 5, of the man from Gadarenes and he had a legion of demons you know? Can be anywhere up to like 5,000 in a Roman legion, demons living in this man. The Bible says that night and day he lived amongst the tombs and he was cutting himself. If there's ever been an epidemic, anybody who's been involved in youth industry knows that there's been just an epidemic of people cutting themselves, a self-hatred thing. Kids blame themselves. Mum and dad got divorced, kids blame themselves for the divorce.

If maybe I was different. It's me, I'm the one - cutting themselves. Break up with boyfriends, girlfriends - cutting themselves. He cuts himself and he cries out night and day but it's amazing when you read this story what you see is the demons not only torment him but they isolate him. He's alone. He's disconnected and the Bible says that when Jesus comes near, it says Verse 6 and when he saw Jesus from afar he ran and worshipped him.

It's amazing. I took a photo of the worship just to put the words and post it on Instagram and felt the Holy Spirit say you know, worship always precedes breakthrough. ... [Applause] ... I'm like - well, you know - no, no, when Jesus comes He precedes - God says no, no, worship - listen, when you worship you're opening your spirit, you're opening your heart. You're actually created to worship God. You are created for connection, divine relationship, divine - like a divine two-way street of flow, correlation, entwined in, lost in worship with God and when you do that there's a purity, there's a beautiful spirit that flows between you and heaven and it cleanses. It delivers. It sets you up to have all the things that torment you, all the things that isolate you - just like the guy comes in. The first thing he does is worships. The next thing that happens is he gets delivered, so I want us to sing this song one more time.

I couldn't think of a greater song to sing guys, fantastic choice. You guys have done such an outstanding job ... [Applause] ... Every song has been fantastic. But you know Jesus moves in an atmosphere where he's worshipped. If you want to see Jesus move in great power, bring great worship. The next chapter, Mark, Chapter 6, Jesus delivers this guy - the very next chapter, Mark, Chapter 6, He comes to his hometown and He can't do any mighty miracles in His hometown, can't do any great works in His hometown because of their unbelief. So He walks into an atmosphere where people have got their arms folded and go yeah? Well we'll see what He's got and it shuts down His power.

Here the guy worships, gets completely set free. Can I just tell you, you know today we can look at Pastor Mike and Pastor Joy Connell, say well let's see what they can do today - but I'm telling you, it's Jesus who's the deliverer. ... [Applause] ... Jesus is the deliverer. As you lose your heart, as you engage with Jesus today, I'm telling you you can be delivered so come on, let's sing that again. Let's sing it from the top, I don't mind. Come on, let's sing it one more time, come on guys. ... [Music and song to 00.36.07]

Halleluiah, come on, one more time let's give Him a mighty hand of praise! A faith praise that what He's doing, what He's going to do, what He's about to do Oh Jesus! Deliverance! Freedom belongs to you, our great deliverer! We worship you today! Amen, amen, amen. Give someone a high five and just say get ready, get ready, get ready! ... [Get ready, get ready, get ready.] ... Fantastic. You may be seated.

A couple of really quick announcements. Tonight, 5pm is our normal Saturday evening service time. It is open to the public and it is going to be capacity, but the conference really is going to culminate tonight so you'll find that each of these meetings, the anointing will just kind of keep building and keep building and keep building so people that may not have made it here today, get on the blower. Let's bring them here tonight and the Holy Spirit, He is just wanting to move, He's wanting to break out.

I saw last night, it was just such a beautiful reminder why we need to be a word and Holy Spirit church ... [Applause] ... Like if you ever needed a kind of stark reminder - because what happens if you only preach the word - I'm all about the word of God. I love the word of God. God framed the universe with the word of God, the word of God holds everything together. Jesus healed them with the word. I'm all about the word of God - but you need to understand that the word and the spirit work together.

The Bible says the disciples preached the word; God, confirming the word with signs and wonders following, so the Holy Spirit works in a confirmation, in a partnership with the word of God and what can happen is if you just become a word church - brother, we're just a word church ... [Laughter] ... what happens is you preach the word and you teach the word. People receive the word. They respond to the word and then what ends up happening is that they try to live the word, they try - just they're going to pump themselves up, they're going to motivate themselves, they're going to focus this year - this is my year - and what ends up happening, they end up living - the first thing that happens is we keep failing. We keep failing and so we feel like well, you know, we start living in condemnation and then guilt, then we think I don't want to live here so we just put on masks and then we become - you know, we wear these religious masks; how you doin' buddy? Oh, blessed and highly favoured! ... [Laughter] ... The truth is everything's falling apart but we can't kind of let down the mask and that's why it's so important to actually have a church where the Holy Spirit can move, where He is free to move, where He is free to minister - because what He will do is everything that the word teaches, everything the word instructs, He comes and confirms and He delivers.

One touch from the Holy Spirit, you know, just the moving of His hand, just His presence falling on your life sets you free, breaks things. I can remember - gosh, I think I was a Christian about a year. I got saved when I was 18, on a beach through Christian surfers and about a year later I remember being in church and it was kind of towards the end of the service. The church that I was going to had a really powerful communion. In fact they would finish with communion, so they had communion. One of the ministers was sharing communion and I remember taking the little cup with the grape juice and the little kind of biscuit thing, the little bread thing and I had it in my hand. Then the minister said I just want you to close your eyes. I want you to just picture Jesus hanging on the cross - and when I closed my eyes for this incredibly sacred holy moment - I had the cup, I had the bread in my hand, the blood and body - I closed my eyes to see Jesus hanging on the cross, but instead of seeing Jesus hanging on the cross I saw the most disgusting pornographic images.

I remember just kind of opening my eyes thinking oh man, what is that! So I said oh God, not here, this is a holy place. What is wrong with me? And so I went to close my eyes again and there it was again. It was just this thing - it had been with me all through my childhood. I didn't realise that it was something that dad passed down - probably passed down from his dad. You know, the Bible says that I will visit the inequities of the third and fourth generations, so you can be living with stuff that great-granddaddy opened himself up to and it's a little gift just kind of passed down. It's one of those things - I don't want this, but it's too late. It's an unfair inheritance.

I remember just being in church thinking man, what is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? About a year after that I got baptised with the Holy Spirit. When I got filled with the Holy Spirit what was so amazing was when they were praying for me nothing seemed to be happening, no tongues, no other languages were coming out, but I felt a knot in my stomach and then I felt it rise through here and then I felt like my face contort, my fists clenched and then I felt a freedom and from that moment on never again was I tormented by it. I just thought it was normal. I just thought oh everybody just lives with these constant graphic images that I couldn't control but all of a sudden I was free. All of a sudden I was free.

At that point I'd been a Christian for two and a half years. Jesus sets you free. Jesus sets you free on the day you're saved, but that freedom is outworked. The Bible teaches this. See you and I are trapped in time. The Bible teaches that God is outside of time, God is a trinity, the whole universe is built in trinities and what I mean by that is you are saved, you are being saved and one day you will be saved. The Bible says when He comes back we will be saved. The Bible says those of you who are being saved, the Bible says that we are safe so there's this triune outworking so you are delivered, you are being delivered and you will be delivered. You are free, you are being freed and you will be free. ... [Applause] ... It's an outworking. Jesus already accomplished it on the cross. It's already accomplished on the cross, but now you and I are outworking and the Holy Spirit, He is so gentle. He's so gentle. He's not going to come and just rip everything out at once. He may have to come and do a series of little operations, but week by week, month by month, year by year you'll enjoy new levels of freedom as you walk with God.

That's why to me, I personally as kind of the Pastor of this church and the shepherd of this church responsible for lives, feel that I have to - I need to have Pastor Mike come every January. I just know for me [laughs] ... [Laughter] ... I kind of hit ceilings every year thinking man, why I can't I break through this thing? Then you realise it's this dominant thought, this insecurity, this fear, this - you know, junk and I'm just thinking I've got to - we've got to bring - and so you know fasting will open stuff up. But I just want you to know today, today you're ready to go to a brand new level of freedom ... [Applause] ... in this house, so without any further ado, now that you've sat down I want you to stand up again one more time. Would you welcome the amazing Pastor Mike Connell all the way from Hastings, New Zealand, Aotearoa! ... [Applause]

[Pastor Mike Connell] Halleluiah, we give you the honour Jesus! We give you the glory for the victories this weekend and in this coming year! We open our hearts for all you want to do to receive breakthroughs in our lives and we say holy, holy, holy are you Lord! We give you all the honour. Amen. The spirit of God, we welcome you to come. You know what we need. You know the help we need, you know how it needs to be done and so we just invite you to come into the service, every person, those around us, in front of us, behind us that Lord, every one of us will experience the power of God touching us, be different people, free people, rise to new levels. Lord, we give you the honour today. Amen. Amen. Give someone a hug before you sit down will you.

What awesome musicians. That was fantastic worship. ... [Applause] ... I loved it. It's hard to want to start a meeting when you're in worship like that.

Well yesterday we laid some foundations of deliverance and just to give you some insight so you understand evil spirits. We saw that a demon is a spirit being. We saw how they operate. We saw how they try to get into people's lives and once they're in people's lives how they begin to affect them and influence them and today we want to go a bit further and I want to spend quite a bit of time in ministry to people today, but I found that ministry is often built on your faith level being opened up by the word of God. So I always want to just lay a few things out, so this session I want to just talk about the foundations for freedom and then begin to go back into that list of those things to be freed from and we'll have some altar calls and just believe for God to move.

Our second session, I want to just teach on bondages of the heart and I want to share some of the ways that our heart gets into bondage and how you could recognise that and what to do about it and then we'll start to pray into some deeper areas that for many of you it'll bring a release well beyond what you've ever expected and it's going to be fantastic. So first of all I want you to come with me and we're going to look in Colossians, Chapter 2 and I want to show you what Jesus did for us. Then we're going to look at what we've got to do, the part we play because there's the part He's done but there's a part we play in working out our salvation, in journeying with Him.

Let's have a look in Colossians, Chapter 2 and in Verse 13, 14 and 15. Now we saw that part of Jesus' ministry was to bring deliverance to people. When you look in Luke 4:18 you see the full breadth of Jesus' ministry is to bring the gospel to the poor, to reconnect people to God, to heal the broken hearted, to deal with the issues of the heart that stopped us being intimate with God and intimate with one another, to set the captives free, to in other words open people's lives and set them free from evil spirits, to bring vision and direction for our life, to lift off oppression and every limitation and to empower us to live out our destiny. That's basically the message that Jesus proclaimed was His ministry and yet so often the churches just limited it to preaching the gospel and praying for the sick, rather than realising there's a whole dimension of the spirit realm that we need to understand. I want to share a little bit more on that in the session tonight and get you activated again in your life, but we saw in Jesus' ministry how everywhere He went He confronted people who were demonised, confronted the demons, got the demons out. So you find a balance in His ministry of preaching the word, healing the sick and delivering spirits and He made it very clear, there was an intention that His disciples operated in this ministry so He empowered the 12, the 12 delivered people; He empowered the 70, they delivered people. Then He empowered the whole church. He said go, make disciples. These signs will follow those who believe, in my name they'll cast out demons, so He expanded the ministry of deliverance to all believers. So why we would leave this ministry out is beyond me, except that something's been stolen from the church. It's time to have it restored back into its right place again. ... [Applause] ... Amen. Amen.

Okay, I want you to have a look with me in Colossians 2. I want to look first of all what Jesus has done and then how we apply it to our life because this is a very vital part of it, otherwise you just get caught with the spirit dimensions and you don't have a strong base of what we're really trying to do and why we're doing what we're doing. Okay, so let's have a look in Colossians, Chapter 2; And you being dead in your trespasses and uncircumcision of your flesh - He's talking about what we were before we came to Christ. We were spiritually dead, disconnected, walking according to the course of this world, under the influence of demonic spirits - and it says He has made us alive together with Him. Now look what He's done - having forgiven you all trespasses - all. All. That's all that's been in the past ... [Applause] ... all that's here now, all that'll happen in the future - having forgiven. So at the cross, one of the things He accomplished, He forgave all trespasses. Notice what else; and then He wiped away the handwriting of requirements that was against us, that was contrary to us, took it out of the way having nailed it to the cross.

In other words what He did was He took the lists of accusations in the spirit world against you. Now the spirit world - I can't develop it very much today, but in the spirit realm there is a place called the Courts of Heaven and there's a dimension there where the devil stands as the accuser. You know, in Revelations 12:10 it says he accuses us day and night before our God, so therefore there's a dimension in the spirit where the devil acts as a prosecutor, as an accuser and he's worked constantly. He's accused us before God and so not only do we suffer that he accuses us in our mind and heart - like Jurgen was sharing how he was tormented by this unclean spirit, but straight after the unclean picture would come in, straight after that would come the accusation - what's wrong with you? In other words something's wrong with you - so the devil acts as an accuser and he accuses you directly, reminding you of your faults and failures and shortfalls and he acts as an accuser before God demanding legal right to oppress you.

So the grounds for demonic spirits to gain access to people's lives is always the broken laws of God. The Bible says in the day you sin you'll die. There's a consequence of sin and we shared last night that ignorance does not free you from the consequences of your actions. In fact in the Old Testament there was an offering for sins of ignorance. Isn't that interesting? Why did they make an offering for sins of ignorance? Because there was a real impact spiritually on people of breaking the laws of God even if they didn't know it and it needed to be addressed. God has got a way of addressing sin, so what He set out very clearly - it's a very simple principle. He said you are responsible for your life and the decisions you have, you have a free will what to do with your life but you have no choice over the consequences. There are always consequences for sin, but there's also a remedy for sin. So God has provided a remedy for sin. If sin gives the demons access to a person's life, God has provided a remedy and part of the remedy is how to deal with the list of accusations that's against you.

So many people who have become a Christian find for a lot of their ministry of their Christian life they don't stand in a spiritual freedom. They live constantly there's something wrong with me, I'm not good enough. They live actually under the law, they live under judgement, under accusation and so notice it says that one of the things that Jesus did was He wiped out the list of everything that has been written in the heavens or written or recorded by the devil against you as an accusation against you, Jesus by His blood cancelled or blotted out the whole list ... [Applause] ... and it says - notice what else. He said He took it out of the way - in other words it was against you and contrary to you, so while there are things undealt with the devil can continue to come, access you, torment you, invade you, accuse you - unless it is dealt with. So it says Jesus took it out of the way, so when He died He died as our representative taking every sin, every failure, every area of inequity, He took it all to the cross.

Now notice in doing this He disarmed or He stripped evil spirits of their power to harm us. See? So that tells us that the power that demons have to harm you and to afflict you lies in you having a list of things in the spirit world against you. But if that's removed, then the power of the demon is taken away. It's got no place to anchor in, no place to lock in ... [Applause] ... no place to fight in Amen! Having removed, disarmed principalities and powers He made a public spectacle over them, triumphing over them in it. So when Jesus died on the cross He didn't just die for your sins. There was a great cosmic battle taking place where He actually totally dealt with the demonic realm and what it used as a weapon against us. He literally overpowered it.

The Bible says if the demons had understood the cross they'd have never crucified Jesus. They didn't understand what He was doing, but He acted as a representative for us and when He shed His blood, His blood, the blood of a king, the blood of the Son of God - when He shed His blood He legally made it possible now for everything against us to be taken out of the way so we could be totally free from demonic power AND have authority over them as His representatives - so when He died we died with Him. When He rose we rose with Him and now we represent Him in the earth. We have authority and dominion over evil spirits, so this is what He has done - but what do we have to do?

So you will recall these scriptures. Let me give you a couple of scriptures - just go in Leviticus, Chapter 16 and 17, and then I'll just spell out just what it looks like specifically that is our part in contributing to this journey into freedom. If you look in Leviticus, the Old Testament, Chapter 17, Verse 11; For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls. It's the blood that makes atonement. The word 'atonement' has the meaning of covering over or paying fully the price needed to rescue you from the power of something that's got hold of you, so whenever we use the word redeem - my redeemer lives - what it means is it's the one who has paid the kidnap ransom. It's the one who fully paid the price to set me free and so the Bible tells us very clearly that blood must be shed to deal with sin. There's no remedy apart from the shedding of blood, so in Exodus, Chapter 12, when the people came out of Israel for example, what they did when they came out of Israel was they had to take the blood of a lamb and they had to apply the blood - apply the blood to the lintel, apply the blood to the doorpost, apply it in three places.

Now notice what it says here. Let's go back into Leviticus 16, Verse 21 and it's talking about how sin is dealt with. Now Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess - notice this - confess over it. So once a year on the Day of Atonement High Priests would go in. Every year he'd have to do this because this could never totally deal with sin, not like Jesus' offering did - once and for all Jesus' offering has done the job for us, but in the Old Testament they had to go every year to do the same thing. Aaron - notice this - he would lay his hands - that means he would identify with this animal and he would speak over the animal three things; 1. The inequities of the people of Israel, 2. The transgressions of the people of Israel, and 3. The sins of the people of Israel.

Now for most of us we can't even begin to distinguish what those are, but it must be important if it's written in the Bible. In the New Testament often it just used - we use the word 'sin' and used this kind of general word 'sin' but actually the Bible's quite specific. There are three different kinds of issues that the blood deals with. The first one is inequities. Inequities is the tendency, it's the crookedness that gets into a family line or gets into a person's life that tends to twist us away from God. It's the inclination towards sin. Inequity is the root cause of the outworkings of sin in our lives, so when inequity gets into a family there maybe say adultery starts to run down a family line and inequity is in the family line, a crookedness, a twist or a bent towards sin. So inequity is the crookedness in our heart that inclines us towards particular kinds of sin.

It could be a lust in a family so in a family line you may find that generation after generation there's promiscuity, there's lust in the family so there's an inequity of lust. There's a twist towards lust and there's a familiar spirit that drives and powers it. Get the idea? So inequity is the twist or bent towards sin.

The blood dealt with inequity. Jesus was bruised for our inequities. Bruising is an internal wound. You don't see it. Inequity is an internal thing, something that just works on the inside inclining us constantly towards sin, so the blood of Jesus dealt with inequity. The second thing it dealt with was transgression. Transgression was a deliberate intentional breaking of the law of God. That means when you know it's wrong but you do it anyway - a deliberate violation of the law of God and so the blood deals with our deliberate going against what we know to be right and the word 'sin' in the Old Testament referred to breaking the laws of God in ignorance. So you notice the three things: breaking the law of God in ignorance, breaking the law of God deliberately, and then the root inclination towards a certain kind of sin.

Notice that he confessed over them inequities, transgressions and sin - he brought the whole lot out and the blood dealt with all of them. The blood dealt with all of them. Notice in the Old Testament they had to apply the blood to the lintel, to the inequities, the doorpost, transgressions and the sins. They had to use God's remedy. You can imagine this: imagine being in a family and it's the night that the Angel of Death comes over the family. You would be real keen dad did this right ... [Laughter] ... especially if you're the eldest son! You'd be really keen - Dad! Make sure it's covered those spots in the lamb! Make sure you get all the blood! I don't think there's enough on that lintel. Put some more up there! ... [Laughter] ... I mean this is really, really important if you're the eldest son. And then you make dad do a good job on this thing! They'd all check the thing out, make sure that lambs got no spot. Jesus was checked out four times - no spot. Four different people checked Him out - no spot, no fault, they gave a false accusation against Him. He is truly the lamb without a blemish, see?

So they put the blood up there on the lintel, on the side of the doorpost. Then they had to come in and stay behind the door or under the protection that the blood offered and the Angel of Death could not help them. Now we tend to use the kind of term well plead the blood, but people often don't have a clue what that means. It's like making the sign of the cross, it's just a Pentecostal version alright, you know ... [Laughter] ... whatever, of the same kind of thing, you know? Rather than actually understanding, to plead the blood really it means this: I HAVE FAITH that the blood of Jesus Christ has dealt with my inequity, transgressions and sins! There is no accusation against me. I stand fully, freely and boldly in the presence of an Almighty God! ... [Applause] ... No devil can touch me today! The blood of Christ covers my life!

That's a very strong thing. It's very important to learn how to apply the blood and you apply it by confession. You have to declare and agree with it, so you notice that although God made the provision for them their responsibility was to apply the provision, see?

So now if they hadn't applied the provision the blood would have done the job but because it wasn't applied it wouldn't have had any benefit for them. You actually had to take God's provision. You have to take God's provision. You have to take what God has provided, so in other words if you want to get free you get free God's way, not your way. His way, not your way. If you just want someone to come and lay hands on you and pray for you and fix you up, it doesn't work like that. I wish it did but it doesn't. There's a part you play - YOU play, see? According to your faith it'll be done unto you.

So now let's have a look at the part that we play. I want you to have a look with me quickly into 2 Timothy, Chapter 2. What is the part I have to play? Well we get an insight to it in the scripture here where it talks about setting people free, then I'll list it for you specifically what your part is because I've found many people want to get free but they don't want to meet God's requirements for freedom. They don't want to get it God's way. You know there's only one way to be saved, by faith in what Jesus Christ did for you. There isn't any other way. You either take that way or you're not saved, it's as simple as that and that's because God set it out that way. You have it on God's terms, not ours, see? Freedom comes on God's terms, not ours and so the word 'saved' by the way means not only to rescue someone. It means to deliver them from an oppressor, so when we use the word saved - in the Hebrew use of the word sozo it carried the full meaning, to rescue someone, to deliver them from the hand of an oppressor, to heal them, to restore them. So healing and deliverance and salvation are all wrapped up in that word 'saved'.

Okay, now have a look in 2 Timothy, Chapter 2 and it says in Verse 24, the servant of the Lord must not quarrel or strive but be gentle to all, able to teach patience, in humility correcting those who are oppose themselves. If perhaps God will grant them repentance so they may acknowledge the truth and they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

Now it's talking here about people being set free and the process of a person being set free and you notice in this process there is the servant of the Lord. We're told what's required of us to minister freedom and so notice what it says: don't argue with people or strive with people or contend, don't fight with them but rather be gentle and teach people. That's why you notice when I do deliverance ministry I take some time to do teaching, because it's Biblical to do. It's what the Bible tells to do, to lay a foundation of the word so faith comes up, see? Okay, able to teach patience - you've got to be patient because sometimes people aren't ready for ministry so the tendency is to want to run in and fix people up. Actually no, I'm here to represent Christ, to bring you to Him and He will do in your life what you are ready for at this stage. It doesn't mean everything is done. It means what you are ready for, so in a group like this there'll be some who are right open ready. I could have just jumped up, start praying for you straight away, stuff's going to happen and I have to discipline myself not to do that. I'd love to do that but I've just disciplined myself over time not to just run in and do that because there are many who just need a little more time to understand what this is all about so that they can actually open their heart and respond to God. That's why I have to be gentle and patient. [Laughs] Me - I want to get into it, claw people straight away ... [Laughter] ... Gonna' get demons screaming, you know? That's what I like. ... [Applause] ... And I've been known to run amok in meetings and have hundreds screaming all at the one time - I can tell you now, so I've learnt to just be a bit more systematic. ... [Laughter]

So 2 Timothy, Chapter 2. So notice here that there's the person who's trapped and the person who's trapped, notice it says that they are taken captive. That means taken a prisoner of war. A prisoner of war is a person who's engaged in a battle but now they've been captured and neutralised. Many Christians have been neutralised. They're not on the aggressive or advancing the kingdom. They've actually been taken prisoner of war. A prisoner of war's got a limited amount of freedom, but actually they're still inside a camp and they're still locked up and they can't get out and they can't really go out and make their mark in the world. They've got limitations around their life. They live in limitations all the time - been taken captive by the devil to do his will. We talked about that, how evil spirits, when they've got a doorway into your life energise areas or issues in your life, energise sin, energise areas of brokenness. They create turmoil and increase the pressure and you feel you can't break through or can't get free, so that's what they do. They do that.

Notice how it says there's a process here where the person is taught and it says if God grants them repentance to acknowledge the truth, so here is core foundations to getting free. We have to come to repentance and acknowledging the truth, see? It's very clear and that's something that God gives you. It's something comes from the spirit of God touching a heart that's hungry and you begin to see oh my! What have I done? I just so hate that sin I've been involved in. I'm just turning from that with all my heart. Lord, I am so distressed at what's happened in my life and what's happened in my relationship with you. God, I want out of that thing and I acknowledge the truth now about this thing - so repentance and acknowledging truth are the keys out of this thing. So I'll break it down and just give you it in some steps, some simple things that are a part of what that looks like.

Notice it says if God grants him repentance to acknowledge the truth and they come to their senses. Now that word in the original Greek means they sober up again. It's like a person who's been drunk. A person who's drunk is under the influence of alcohol, under the influence of drugs or they're under the influence of some kind of a thing and so they don't think right and they don't have proper judgement. They don't have proper balance in their life. Their life is out of control because of what influences them in their life and it's saying here that when a person comes to repentance and acknowledging the truth, they break out of that influence of the demonic spirit and now see clearly and have a different perspective and judgements in their life. Getting the idea? So freedom is not about just us commanding demons and whatever. Freedom is actually about there being a turnaround from what you've been involved in, breaking free of the demonic and starting to walk with a changed life so your head's clear. You say man! I'm never going to go back into that again. That's no where I live! This is who I am, see? So let me just break it down into some parts to what that might look like and I have found this is quite easy to remember this, but let me just give it to you really quite simply and here it is.

Number one, we need to recognise and take responsibility for problems in our life. We need to recognise and take responsibility for issues in our life, so if you don't recognise you've got a problem it's unlikely any freedom will take place. We need to recognise - actually I've got an issue. I've got something going wrong in my life. There's stuff here, there's a place I'm not free. I've got this thing that's in turmoil. I've got these oppressing thoughts. I seem to be struggling with this - just can't - see normally we think that's just me. Actually no, there's none of this depression in heaven so why should I accept it here on earth? ... [Applause] ... There's none of this torment in heaven. As it is in heaven, let it be done in my life - so we need to recognise actually I've got an issue or problem that I need freedom in and we need to take responsibility, it's my problem.

A lot of people want to blame someone - blame this one. I blame my father, I blame my mother, blame this one, blame that - but God always holds you responsible for what's going on in your life. You say well it was the church! Yeah, maybe the church or maybe someone did something to you, but you are responsible for what's inside you. It's your issue. It's not theirs and often deep unforgiveness, deep bitterness in people's hearts can keep them locked into something that happened years ago and their mental and emotional focus is what someone else did to me and the bitterness and the hurt and anger and all that goes with that - and they can't realise actually what they did happened a long time ago.

You've got an issue. Your issue's unforgiveness. It's YOUR issue. You've got to deal with it and people - but that's not fair! So unfair! And so we say we have to forgive - that's unfair, you know, because we're locked in self-pity and locked in the issue of injustice. We're not willing to bring injustice to the cross and move on, so we've got a key to all freedom. You can't have authority over what you don't take responsibility for. I may get a chance to speak on another area that every area that God has given you responsibility for where you've failed to have dominion, demonic spirits will occupy that and use that base to give you a hard time. Think about that.

So whatever God gave you responsibility for, if you abscond from your responsibility something will occupy that seat of authority and use it against you. This is why - I'll just give a hint on this one - this is why many men live very passive and shut down because at the core they haven't understood and recognised and stood up in the spiritual responsibility God gave them, so a demonic spirit enters that office and uses it against them to keep them oppressed. You've got to understand that's how it works. Either you're in the place God called you and you're guarding and governing it, or something else is and it's using it against you. There's never a vacuum. Something is always there. Okay, we'll just keep away from that for the moment. ... [Laughter] ... So number one, you need to recognise - [Laughs] Wives, I saw wives go [motions] Listen up! Listen up! This is for you. ... [Laughter] ... We'll get onto that - so just if he doesn't take responsibility for it don't try and push it. You listen! You get the tape on this one, you know. Don't go that kind of thing... [Laughs] Moves into witchcraft you know ... [Laughter] ... so recognising your need means just stop pretending, stop covering, just face what's there. You have what you have. If it stays in the darkness you have no power. Bring it to the light. That's what I love about Jurgen he just is transparent about things in his life and you know what happens? As soon as you bring stuff to the light it just breaks its power. Its power lies in secrecy and darkness. Okay?

So you take responsibility - it means you stop making excuses, minimising it, stop blaming someone else. You stop thinking like a victim - it's not my fault, I'm just like this. I'm Irish, we all drink, you know? ... [Laughter] ... You can't get into that sort of stuff. You've got to take responsibility you know. It's my red hair - that's why I'm so angry all the time. ... [Laughter] ... You can't use this as an excuse. Just call it what it is and face it, say I need to deal with my anger. Okay.

So second thing is we need to repent of sin. We need to honestly in our heart repent of sin. We need to repent of sin. Proverbs 28:13, whoever covers his sins won't prosper, but if we confess and forsake them we'll have mercy. Proverbs 28:13, if we cover we can't prosper, but if we confess and forsake - so covering. Covering leaves you in bondage and there is a covering God has provided. The covering He's provided is the blood of Jesus Christ and it's applied by bringing the issue to the light. If we walk in the light as He's in the light, then our relationships - we have fellowship with one another and the blood cleanses us. We've got to be transparent about the issue, just straight up. God's not condemning you. He's made the provision and wants us to come out of the darkness. If you hide you can't prosper because that's where demon spirits have their power.

They operate in a kingdom called the kingdom of darkness. What's in the dark has power. As soon as you bring it to the light a lot of it's power's broken. Getting the idea? So we need to repent of our sin and that means we just abandon - we've got to abandon what we're involved in. Now for many people that's a problem because sin's a great comfort. They've got issues and stuff, secret stuff going on and so it's a comfort to them, so we turn back to sin because of a comfort zone. It could be alcohol, it could be all kinds of things, we go back to comfort - we've got to actually turn from it, got to abandon finding comfort and refuge in sin and come and say God, this is the new life I want to live now. You've got to turn right around and so make a stand against it, so you've got to stand against things.

So the third foundational pillar in the freedom is this and that is I must release forgiveness. I have to release forgiveness to people that hurt me. Now this is a bit of an issue for people, but let me just give you a couple of scriptures just to help you understand this. When you've been deeply traumatised - suppose you've got a very abusive family situation or a have been in a violent physical or verbal or sexual abuse, people are traumatised by that and they've got to save themselves and they're deeply hurt, deeply wounded. One of the worst things you can hear or the most painful things you can hear is some Christian saying well you've got to forgive, you know. You've got to forgive brother, you've got to forgive. You hear that and you think forgive? I think I'll smash you in the face, you know? ... [Laughter] ... right now - because yes, it's true that the person must come to the place of forgiveness, but often coming to a place of forgiveness is preceded by acknowledgement of pain, acknowledgement of exactly how this has impacted me.

So for example if Jurgen said to me hey Mike, look I just damaged something of yours and it's just broken. I hope you don't mind - and I say yeah, yeah, no problem at all. Now you notice I haven't actually asked what it was. I haven't discovered what it was that he did, so then I say oh by the way, what was it? And he says oh it was just nothing, it was that pen you left me, I broke it. I say oh, it's nothing, don't worry about it. Notice it's a little thing that's of no consequence or impact on me - but what if he said well you know you let me have your house to live in. We had a bit of a fire and it's burnt to the ground ... [Laughter] ... and there's no insurance because we weren't supposed to be there. Now I'm dealing with a different issue. Now what is different about it? The difference is the impact on me, so the impact on me has to be considered when processing forgiveness, and one of the problems people get stuck in as Christians, we kind of know you've got to forgive - you know and there's scripture there that says when you stand, pray and forgive, you offend against anyone, you forgive them. If you don't forgive them your Father won't forgive you and you see that and oh blow, I've got to forgive and I don't want to forgive! Oh in Jesus' name I forgive. ... [Laughter] ... but it's not coming from the heart.

The heart is still angry. The heart is functioning under law and it's not functioning under grace so it's not free when it's like that, and so many Christians are stuck and they say I've forgiven it, I've moved on - and actually you can tell from the tone of voice they haven't moved on at all. ... [Laughter] ... They're still stuck way back there and they're still very upset and angry and still reacting just like they were, like it's still alive inside them. The only thing that's changed is they've denied that they've got an issue ... [Laughter] ... but everyone else can see it you know? Everyone can see it - and the problem is they think that they've forgiven because they said I forgive in Jesus' name. But that didn't do it because in Matthew, Chapter 18, Jesus makes a very - now I want you just to read this just quickly with me - Matthew, Chapter 18, and it's the story of the person - how many times should I forgive? You remember this story very well. It's about the servant who was forgiven much and forgiven millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars he was forgiven - equivalent to tens of millions of dollars - and he was forgiven because the master was moved with compassion towards him.

So because of compassion - not because he deserved it - because of the master's compassion, because he's compassionate, he released him. So he gave grace that flowed out of love and compassion, okay? Now the guy goes out and meets someone who owes him just a few bucks and then he begins to throttle him and says pay what you owe. The guy pleads with him and there's no compassion and so he judges him and puts him into prison and it comes to the master's ears and the master's told about this and notice what it says - the master - Verse 34 - was very angry. Why was he so angry? Notice it says in this, Verse 33; Should you have had compassion on your fellow servant as I had compassion on you.

So here's the deal. God has compassion, because He's compassionate He forgives us not because we deserve it but because He's compassionate and that is called grace. But if you want to stay in grace you have to extend grace to others, so what He expected was that He would extend the grace he'd received to others, not sit on the little offences he had and so what happens then, it says the master was angry - notice this - he delivered him to the torturers - whatever that means. It doesn't sound nice does it? You think of - chained in there and your fingernails being torn off ... [Laughter] ... feet burned and all that kind of thing. I mean it's torturous. ... [Laughter] ... I know it's a sensitive topic in America but there it is - torturous. I don't think it's just water torture either you know? They really knew how to do it in those days. ... [Laughter] ... See - until he should pay everything that was due so they're just torturing him to extract what's owing. See, he's come under law. Come under law - has to pay what's due see?

Now we all know that parable but here's the punch line that's really hard to walk away from. He said so shall my heavenly Father do to you - what? I thought He was compassionate? He is, it's just for you to stay in his compassion you must live in compassion. Whoa! I just wanted to be forgiven. I don't necessarily want to forgive anyone else! I mean what they did was really bad. You wanna hear what they did - man, give me a few minutes to tell you. See, now you understand the heart hasn't got free at all and He says my Father will do to you if from your heart you don't forgive everyone each of his trespasses and they used the word 'trespasses' there - things or faults against us.

So you notice now I'm required to extend forgiveness so sometimes there is a bit of a process in coming to the place of forgiveness. It's a decision. It's always a decision from your will to release the person from the debt they owe. You owe me, you've got to pay me back. You've got to say sorry or something, whatever it is. You know wives and husbands get like that. They'll have a silence, no speaks. No speaks is really just a demand you pay me back. It drives a husband crazy. What's up? Is anything wrong? NO! There's a heap of hurt and unforgiveness there, so you notice that sometimes what is needed is to sit down and have a think what happened to me and how did it affect me? I need to be honest with what I really carry in my heart and if I find that there's huge amounts of grief and huge amounts of anger and I really am very bitter about what's happened, I need to come out in the open and process that stuff with God. Then forgiveness becomes effective because I now know what I'm actually forgiving. I know exactly what it is I'm letting go. It's my demand or right to extract justice from them, to extract punishment, extract a repayment. I'm releasing my rights. I'm putting my rights at the cross. I'm letting Jesus deal with this and so I will bless those who cursed me. I'll forgive those who despitefully used me, pray for them.

Can you see what you're called to do? So we're all called to forgive but it can be a process and sometimes the journey requires sitting down and acknowledging before God and to yourself how deeply things have affected you. What we tend to want to do is to control the pain and block it into our heart and not admit how deeply this has impacted me. If you've got the fruit, you've got the root. That's how it is - and if you don't deal with the root, the demons - now you've got to understand this - if you don't deal with the root then the demons have a legal ground to afflict you. Of all the areas I have found that consistently invite demonic spirits to come into people's lives, it's the issues of bitterness and unforgiveness. It just is an open door for demons to come in.

If you're harbouring bitterness and unforgiveness you have an open door where spirits can come in and manipulate your life and affect your current relationships, so your current relationships become polluted by what you've been in the past that you never dealt with. That's why if you're getting married and you've got a history of some broken relationships with your parents or broken sexual relationships, you need to resolve them or you're going to reflect your baggage to your spouse and defile the marriage. Getting the idea? Demons use this. They ride in on the back of that. Well that's enough on that. Okay, so give someone a dig and say you need to listen ... [Applause] ... to that one, that was for you.

So sometimes when we're dealing with a person who's been abused you've got to actually take a bit of time to hear their story and let them grieve and weep and feel the pain, then allow the Lord to come and heal the pain and bring the process of forgiveness. It is a bit of a journey. Sometimes I encourage people to write an anger letter, sit down and write a letter, write to the person, acknowledge what's good about them, what you appreciate, what you value and then write down what they did, how it's affected your life. Be really brutally honest and then release forgiveness after you've grieved and felt the feelings of it - but don't post the letter whatever you do, you know. ... [Laughter] ... Don't post the letter and don't even leave it lying around or someone else will post it. Just burn it up - you've got to the end of it. ... [Applause] ... It's about you engaging your own heart, not about using it as a chance - I hate you! you know? I've had people do that. They come up - I've had a bitterness against you for three years! I'm thinking really? I'm so blessed you told me that. [Laughs] It's all I can do not to say well I didn't feel a thing you know, but ... [Laughter] ... I've been getting on with my life. [Laughs] I usually just have to say I'm really sorry that you didn't process this earlier. It would have been so easy to have saved yourself a lot of pain. ... [Laughter]

Okay, so the next phase - so pillars: recognise, take responsibility, repent of sin, release forgiveness and then renounce bondages that are in our life. We've actually got to learn to speak things off our life. We've got to use the power of confession, renounce bondages, agreements you've made with evil spirits and various kinds of things, bitter judgements, inner vows. I'll talk about that next session, but we need to speak off our life what we came into agreement with, so if you come into agreement with an evil spirit you need to speak that off your life - I break that agreement. I break that bitter judgement. I cancel my agreement with that spirit right now. We need to break those things, to speak it off your life. What you're doing is you're agreeing with God I'm no longer in agreement with that devil! Devil, I break my agreement with you. I'm in agreement with God! I'm walking with God, see?

Sometimes they've got to speak it out and when you speak it out you then make it effective. Remember in the Bible the first use of words in the Bible was to create something from the spirit or to bring something from the spirit world into the physical reality, so one of the most powerful tools we have is our tongue to bring from the spirit world realities into our physical world, so we need to speak things off your life. Speak words of release. Speak words of forgiveness, speak words of blessings, speak - speak, speak, speak, speak. Speak! Learn to speak, declare, because Jesus is the High Priest of our confession. He takes what we speak and it starts to become effective in the spirit realm and manifest in the physical realm. Getting the idea?

Then finally we need to reach out in faith. You need to reach out in faith. There's got to be an extending my faith to believe that Jesus will set me free, so if I will meet His conditions He will help me. In James 4, Verse 7, it says submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. How easy can it get? You submit. That means - the word is the word hupotasso - hupo, to place yourself beneath and tasso, to position yourself. So when it uses the word 'submit' it's a word - position yourself in alignment with God under His leadership, so together you can do the next thing and get a victory. The next word is resist the devil. The word 'resist' is the word anti tasso - so hupotasso, position yourself under the leadership and authority of Christ; anti tasso, stand against or position yourself against the devil and his activities. You've got to make a stand. Make a stand - a stand for the Lord, reaching out to Him and a stand against evil spirits and we usually do that by speaking, by our words and by our actions.

So those are the foundational things for being set free. Got it? I've got to recognise I've got an issue. I've got to face it and take responsibility it's my problem, even if someone contributed to it. I've still got to own it so I've got empowerment to start to address it and change it. See? Second thing, I need to repent of any sin, anything that I've participated in that gave rights to demons to be in my life, I've got to get rid of it. I've got to acknowledge it, confess it, turn from it. Thirdly, I need to release forgiveness. I've got to make a decision I'm letting go and even if I have to work that out over a little period of time, God will hear my heart cry I'm letting it go today. Today I make my stand and let it go, even if that has to be worked out over a period of time and it's got some difficulties around it. Nevertheless God does hear that cry, today I let it go. Today I'm letting that judgement go. I need to speak things off my life, renounce bondages, agreements I've made. If I've come into agreement with any demonic power in any kind of way, then I need to renounce and cancel it - and finally to reach out, Jesus, you're my saviour. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Jesus, I'm reaching out to you! Otherwise we tend to look and - I want Pastor Mike to pray for me! You know? He prays for me, I'll get free. Oh, it didn't work. I'll go to Pastor Benny Hinn, he'll pray for me. I'll get forever ... [Laughter] ... and we start to jump from ministry to ministry and don't realise the real problem is not the ministry and their authority and power. The real issue is your responsibility to align ... [Applause] ... with the Holy Ghost. Getting the idea?

Come on, let's give the Lord a clap shall we? ... [Applause] ... HOLY GHOST! We love you Lord! We love you Lord! Bless God.

Well we want to have a couple of altar calls and I want to just get stuck in now and pray. Let's get things stirred! Let's get some demons out. Why don't we just stand up and start praying in tongues and get ourselves wound up and stirred up and start to claw some demons! Why don't we get the musicians up and do that song we did again. That was just such a great atmosphere comes with that song and what I'll do is I'll just have some altar calls and each altar call I'll just give a brief explanation of what it's about. If that's you just come on up, put your hands up and say God, go for it - I'm here! [Laughs] What I'll do is I'll lead you through a prayer and if you understand the prayer is actually about acknowledging who you are in Christ, owning what's the issue, repenting of anything you need to repent of, forgiving, renouncing and claiming freedom - then reach out to the Lord for your freedom. It's not about someone laying hands on you. People get free without even getting prayed for, you know? They just say whoa! That's me, I'm outta here! [Laughs] Thank God.

Come on, let's just flow into that song, sing that song, then I'll start to have some altar calls, we'll start to pray for people. That is such a great song, I love this song - get lost in it. Halleluiah! Don't you love Him? Oh, I love this Jesus. I love Him so much. ... [Applause] ... My saviour and my deliverer.

[Music and song] Come on, let's lift our hands. Let's worship Him. ... [Music and song to 01.36.07]

I want you just to close your eyes, lift your hands. Just stay in that place of worshipping and just let me just talk to your heart for a moment. I'm going to just name two doors of entrance and if this applies to you then won't you just as I talk, just make your way to the front and lift your hands to the Lord. First one is generational inequity. The Bible says in Exodus 20, Verses 1 to 6, it says that if people are involved in idolatry, spiritism, engagement with wicked spirits of any kind, then the inequity will be visited from generation to generation for three to four generations. You see the punishment for idolatry was death, but if you kill the people then there's no more generations and so God spread the weight of the inequity, the burden of this over three or four generations. It was not hey, this is a mean God. It's more actually God, in your compassion, you've spread the consequence so the generational line doesn't vanish and so inequity. So if people have been involved in occult or freemasonry - freemasonry starts off very simply but it ends up with the worship of Lucifer as god. If you have freemasonry in your background, your father, your grandfather been involved in a lodge or there's been a female lodge, what happens is it opens up areas of spirits of death come into the family. There are spirits of infirmity and sickness come into the family and there's emotional hardness, coldness, so the men are cold and hard and shut down emotionally and women feel hated. They actually feel they can't come forward, so a woman in a family where there's been freemasonry, there's no love and intimacy. It doesn't come easily. There's actually a wall of hardness and coldness and there's a spirit comes against them.

So if there's freemasonry in your background it will create religious confusion, difficulty in memorising scripture and getting a hold of spiritual things. So if your family's been involved in any kind of idolatry or spiritism, then the doorways been opened for an inequity to flow through the family - so have a think back in your family. There are patterns that repeat generationally. Have there been spirits that come in and torment? Has there been breakdowns with adultery generation after generation? Has there been hidden secrets and lust, incest, all kinds of things that go on in the family background? Has that been present in my family background? Have I been struggling? Has my family been struggling with that - or maybe there's a pattern of sicknesses just comes down the family line. Maybe there's a pattern of premature death, that so many people have died unexpectedly. Did you ever look at the Kennedy family? There's clearly a curse is operating in the Kennedy family, just one after the other just unexplained deaths.

There's many families that are like that - unexplained accidents, unexplained deaths, mental breakdowns, family and relational breakdowns. It's like something is operating like an invisible force and it affects - for a woman, if a woman's in a family there's been occultic background or these kinds of things from the occult, what she would experience would be problems in her womb, menstrual problems, growths, pains, miscarriages, all of these kinds of things come often out of a - the Bible says in Hosea, those that worship idols - I'll cause the womb to miscarry. How about that? There's a direct connection between idolatry and the miscarrying from the womb, an inability to produce. It's a cursing that comes upon a family line, so if you find that you're infertile, unable to bear, it could be there's something in the family line. It could be a physical thing in your body, could be something in the family line, a cursing and in a moment of time you could be set free.

Maybe the second area that I want to just talk about is the occult. People don't understand what that means. The word 'occult' means covered or hidden. That's because the source of power behind the activity is concealed, so the word occult refers to two groups of activities. One is divination. Divination is fortune telling, looking to spiritual powers to find the future, to find out about how my life with go. Will I be blessed? What will happen to me? So there's a whole range of activities. You may have been involved in some of these. If you've been involved with an Ouija board and calling up spirits, then you've been involved with spirit divination. If you've been involved with séances, calling up spirits, been involved in visiting a séance or a medium, then you've got involved - you've opened a direct door to evil spirits. You'd need to come up because you've made an alliance with an evil spirit.

So there's many, many avenues for divination, fortune telling, trying to find the future by various ways. The other branch of the occult is sorcery. Sorcery's magic. It's using spiritual power to change people and circumstances and today's culture's full of magic. It's always been full of magic, just it's more open now and so sorcery is various kinds of magic spells, charms, calling on spirits, invoking spirits to do things to help people. Harry Potter movies are full of sorcery. So many of the modern movies are full of sorcery. One of the things that opens the door to sorcery that we found are some of the modern video games. I'm not against video games and games on the internet, but I have prayed - I was in a Bible school, Kong Hee's Bible School when one young man came up on a word of knowledge and he'd been playing the World of Warcraft had taken the role of a wizard and so he was playing this 24 hours a day. He was really addicted to the game and he was well into this identity of a wizard and he was gaining power by destroying people, but what he didn't realise, he'd opened his mind and imagination into the realm of the spirit and opened a doorway for an evil spirit to come in. He was under a bondage to sorcery and when we asked him to renounce the identity in the game he manifested. That day 200 students serving God, loving God, in Bible school but privately opening their lives through these games to sorcery and hatred and murder and bitterness - and they come up and there was massive deliverance that day.

If you've been involved in these kinds of things, you're addicted or it's a bondage around you, then you need to come up and say God, I want to be free of this thing. I want to be free of all these things - magic, sorcery, generational cursings. I want these things broken off my life in Jesus' name. Halleluiah.

This is what we're going to do now. I'm going to get the musicians just to sing this song through one more time and while we're doing that I want you to quietly pray, whatever you've been involved in just confess it and repent it to the Lord. Name it. Name it. Lord, I was involved calling up spirits. Lord, I made covenants; I've cut myself and called on spirits. I've made covenants with demons. Lord, I've been involved in various kinds of activities - just name what it is. Just talk - bring it to the Lord, confess it to Him and ask Him just to forgive you and cleanse you. Just do that right now. After that I'll lead you in a prayer and we'll start to pray for you to get you set free.

Are we ready? Okay, musicians. Holy Holy. ... [Music and song to 01.44.52]

I want you to just lift your hands to the Lord right now. I'm going to lead you in a prayer. I want you to follow me in the prayer. You are reaching out to Jesus for Him to deliver you. After we've finished the prayer, you just begin to worship Him. Keep your eyes on Him and someone's going to come along, will come and lay hands on you and pray to break bondages. When we lay hands on you you just stop praying. Stop praying, but we're praying for you. That's when you receive and when we command the spirits, most commonly they come out by coughing or breathing out and you may just feel that you have to do that or whatever and there may be a manifestations, may not. We're not worried about manifestations. You can get free without any manifestations at all, so I'll lead you in the prayer, you follow in the prayer. You reach out and worship the Lord and when we come and lay hands on you stop praying and just receive. Whatever's inside you, you resist it. It's got to go from you. You arise. This is your body, your temple. You take your dominion over it - don't let that thing stay there anymore. ... [Applause] ... Follow me in this prayer now.

[Repeated by audience] ... Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, from every evil spirit, from the power of sin and inequity. I am redeemed! I belong to Jesus Christ, spirit, soul and body. I renounce now every generational curse, all agreements my family have made with evil spirits, with freemasonry, with sexual sin. I renounce it now. I cancel those curses in Jesus' name. I put the cross of Christ between me and my family line and cancel all curses. I forgive my family for opening the door to these spirits and Lord, every way I've entered into this I ask you to forgive me now. Satan, go from my life NOW in Jesus' name!

Now let's begin to worship Him. [Speaks in tongues] In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break curses of freemasonry. I break generational curses of freemasonry. I break the curses, I break the agreements and covenants with evil spirits. I break the power of witchcraft, divination, fortune telling. I break the hold of spiritual witchcraft. I break them now in Jesus' name. I break them now, spirits of death, spirits of death, spirits of hell, tormenting spirits, spirits of hate. GO in Jesus' name. I break your hold in the name of the Lord Jesus. ... [Music and song to 02.25.01]

[Pastor Jurgen. 02.24.48] Well come on, let's give the Lord a great shout for what He's done, what He's doing. This is what we're going to do. I understand people are still being ministered and there is such a beautiful presence of God and you know, you kind of put programmes together and you put times and everything else, but we don't want to ever interrupt the flow of what God is doing. But what we are going to do is just because there's a level of longevity that's required as well is in just a moment we're going to be dismissed. We're going to have a 10 minute break. Actually let's make it a 15 minute break, then we're going to come back. This is not the last altar call, so if you came forward and you haven't been prayed yet, don't worry. There's going to be another one and another one and then this afternoon at our 5pm service there's another one. In fact the whole weekend is going to be filled - this is a freedom weekend so ... [Applause] ... so - and don't be afraid. I think I've been up on about two or three myself so just as the Holy Spirit leads make sure you're responding, but we're just going to just pray for the last few people right now, let Mike and Joy get refreshed, come back in 15 minutes for the next session and if you didn't get prayed for in this session we'll make sure that you're the first to get prayed for in the next session. So let's do that, let's go ahead, have a 15 minute break. If you're still out here just be sensitive to the fact that people are under the power of the Holy Spirit. They're being set free. They're being delivered. Just be really, really sensitive. If you can use the back door that would be ideal. If you're kind of up - go through that way. Obviously if you're on the ground just go this way, but if you're up there that'd be great - 15 minute break. It is 11.25. Let's come back at 11.40 for the next session. Praise God.

Freedom Conference (3 of 4)

Sat 28 Jan 2012 PM  « Back to Top

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Pastor Joy shares a personal trauma, and how that has negatively impacted her many years later, and then how she found freedom from that.

Pastor Mike then teaches on a list of areas that can give spirits access to our life, such as: Trauma, Abuse, Soul Ties, Controlling Relationships, having a Death Wish, making Inner Vows, curses and agreement with words spoke over our lives, burdens of responsibility, and secrecy pacts.

[Joy Connell] Thank you for your great welcome. I would like to take this opportunity to share part of my journey. I give God the glory for what He has done in my life, and the keys He has showed us to bring healing and freedom.

Firstly, I became aware of generational traits. I realized that in my family of origin, we did not discuss feelings very much. I was unskilled at identifying and expressing my feelings. I usually carried on like I didn't have emotions, or buried them. My father was excommunicated from the Exclusive Brethren church in his teenage years, when he discovered other followers of Jesus at High School, and shared life with them. This was forbidden, but he couldn't deny his experience. The end result of standing for what he believed involved not being able to eat with his family. I’m sure this segregation deeply affected him. His mother was from a well educated English family, who were proud of their intellectual capacity and rational thinking – mind seemed to rule over emotions. Dad was reluctant to talk about feelings or hug. He showed his love by good deeds, and I tried to earn it by academic achievement. When I recognized this generational trait, I repented of my own idolatry, of rational thinking and pride; and invited the Holy Spirit to use visions and dreams to speak to me.

Within a week of that prayer, I had a vivid dream of a traumatic experience, which had been buried deep in my life for over 30 years. I was 11 years old in the dream, and I was in a serious car accident, where my 13 year old sister was killed. My mother was the driver, my Nana, and a younger sister, and I came out of shock on the side of the road, and was then taken home to Dad and 3 preschoolers! The whole family was hugely upheaved, and all tried to cope with grief in isolation. My coping behaviour was to become ‘Super Joy’, who had no needs or feelings, but rose up to help others. I detached from the pain, and carried on like I had it all together. In fact, this became a false identity, which I wore for years and years, until this dream surfaced the doorway to this trauma. Here I was now, a married woman, a pastor’s wife with 6 children, and the Holy Spirit had me on a scary journey of facing buried grief, unhealthy coping strategies, and agreements with lies. I eventually faced the truth that I did have needs, and the Lord wanted me to own them, and express them, and allow Him (and others) to meet them. I stopped being independent, isolated and alone, and allowed the Lord to come into this area of my life. He took me through a journey of healing, and showed me my way of coping – denial. Is 28:15 says that when we make lies our refuge, we come into agreement with spirits of death and hell, which isolated me, and caused emotional numbness.

The Lord continued to direct me, mainly through scriptures, on this journey. I read “hide not yourself from your own flesh”, and I knew this meant connecting and talking with my family about this ‘no-go zone’. I went on a 3 day visit to my parents. On day, one of my parents opened up photograph albums of the funeral and burial. I vaguely remembered the funeral, but had no recollection of the burial, and didn't even want to look at the photos. It was so incredibly painful, I’d rather stay in denial, but it was time to go there with the Lord. I revisited it, expressed my grief, and walked through the “valley of death” with the Lord, allowing Him to love, heal and restore me. Finally, on the third day, Mike took me to the accident site and grave side, where I finally let her go, and he broke the soul tie to her. I had a fresh vision of her, in the galleries of heaven, cheering me on, with the biggest smile. That was the start of my journey of revisiting trauma, and unlocking areas of bondage. I realized the ‘Super Joy’ identity had been well established - facing crises alone, burying pain, being strong but not real.

The next major crises came after 7 years of dating Mike. He was from a strong Irish Roman Catholic family, and I was from a strong evangelical (but legalistic) Brethren background. We loved each other, but faced strong religious resistance to marriage, so it was a heartbreaking on and off relationship. Eventually I discovered I was pregnant, and was gripped with fear and shame. Earlier I had made an ‘inner vow’, that I wouldn't face the judgment and condemnation other single pregnant Brethren girls had faced, so old strategies of self reliance kicked in. I decided to keep the pregnancy secret from family, and adopt out my baby. The enemy gives us all sorts of “easy” solutions to pain, but the end result of hiding under secrecy, suppressing my emotions, and giving away my first baby was hugely damaging to my soul. When we came before the Lord in repentance, and opened this part of our lives to Him, He poured in His grace, and has restored her to us.

He has been so good and so faithful to us. That first daughter came back into our lives when she was 18, and has been part of our family ever since. Mike even conducted her wedding ceremony; we prayed for them to have a child, led them to the Lord, baptised them, and took them on a mission trip in 2012. The stupid choices I made in sin and covering of secrecy, God has redeemed, and brought a wonderful testimony of His amazing grace. Our God truly does heal the broken-hearted and set captives free. He can do that for you! [Applause]

[Mike Connell] Praise the Lord. I want to just share with you just some things about bondages of the heart, and there's a whole area we could teach about it, so I'm going to have to just condense it and just give you some things that just get you think. While I share, I ask you just to be open and let the Holy Spirit drop back into your mind, if you have actually built a wall in your heart. In Proverbs 4:23 it says: keep your heart with all diligence, or be a watchman over your heart. When it's talking about the heart, it's not the physical heart, it's your inner man. Guard your heart. Guard the core motivator. Guard your inner life - and there's a reason that we're to guard and protect that life, because He says out of it flow the issues of life.

So in other words, the life you're living now, flows out of not just what you think, but what is alive and operating in your heart. Most people think if they could just change their circumstances, they would change their life, but actually the circumstances reflect the issues that are in your heart, so we need to change our heart, and that changes the way we interact with life, and how life comes to us, so it's vitally important we deal with the heart. Religion will only deal with the outside, so whenever you come under religion or under the law, the law will always attempt to modify your behaviour, but that's contrary to God's way.

God's way is to change you from the heart outward, not the outside inward. It's a different process, and so we're to guard our heart, because out of our heart we have imaginations, we have dreams, we have desires, but we also have other things that can get in our heart. I want to just list for you some of the bondages that come upon people's life, and they're very simple. I'm going to give you the heading, and define what each one is, and just give you an example of it, just so you can think about it in your own life, things that cause us to be locked up, bondages that cause us to be locked up. So let me just give you some of them now because if we don't get free of these bondages, own them and recognize them, we remain locked up, and evil spirits have the power.

Remember I shared with you last night in Ephesians 2, Verse 2; it says we walked according to the course of this world that spirit, the prince of power of the air, that spirit that works in or energizes the children of disobedience. So whenever we choose to control our world, or control our life, or try to run it our self, we open the door then for bondages to come into our life, and the Bible used the word energize or creates spiritual energy or bondage in our life. So if you have an issue that there seems like there's a block, probably there is a block. If there's a pressure that drives you to do something you don't really want to do, then there's something is active and operating inside your life.

Sin is not just a thing. Sin is actually a spiritual power that works in us, see. It energises things that we don't really want to do, and so it's a power that works in us. The Bible tells us that the spirit of life in Christ sets us free, or overcomes the law of sin and death, so there is a law of sin and death that works in us, but there's another law, the law of the spirit of life in Christ. So let's just give you some of these areas of bondage now, and what they'll be is, they'll be forms of spiritual energy or blockage that you will face in your life, and they will affect all kinds of things. They'll affect relationships. If you're married, they'll affect your degree of intimacy, they will affect your ability to connect with God, they'll affect your ability to flow with the Holy Spirit. They will continue to arise until you face them, and they're cleaned out, and your heart becomes free to the flow of the spirit. Make sense? So I could teach on each one of them, but what I'm going to do is just name each one, and just identify it clearly enough that you can understand what it is, okay?

So the first one is a soul tie. Soul ties; ungodly soul ties, ungodly soul ties. The Bible tells us that God designed sexual intimacy so that when we're involved sexually with someone, the two would become one. In other words, there would be a bonding or a joining between two people, so sexual intimacy is one way that a bonding, or a soul tie, or the two become like one, and so the Bible teaches that sexual intimacy creates a bonding between two people, where the two are linked together, and so in order to protect intimacy, God requires that we have a covenant with that person, where we will give ourselves and seek their welfare, seek not to harm them, but to do them good, be committed to them for life. Then within that framework of a commitment you can be intimate, without fear of the damage that will be caused by being intimate, and then having the relationship breached.

So when people are intimate sexually with one another, and there's no covenant of commitment and it breaks up, there is an ungodly soul tie has been formed, see? God said that two become one, so there's a joining, but now it's an ungodly soul tie, and the spirit world will recognize it, and use it as a platform into the person's life. There are a whole number of ways that ungodly soul ties can form. If you've been sexually involved with another person, then inevitably a soul tie, an attachment, is formed with that person, and so how it would affect you is this way; if you're a man, you'll have memories of that relationship keep coming back into your mind, even years later, even after you're happily married, times you're being intimate with your wife, the memories of previous partners will keep coming back. They will keep flashing back into your mind, because there's a demonic pathway direct into you to keep this gate open.

If you're a woman, you'll have the same kind of thing happen, these unfortunate - these images, these pictures, these memories. The connection is still there. If a person has been sexually abused, unfortunately that soul tie also happens. This time it's not just a soul tie of sexual joining, but it's a soul tie also of trauma. It's a traumatic thing, so when people go through a traumatic experience, often their soul gets locked into - it's like the soul gets shattered, and tied into the event, and the person has to try and control the pain some way, so they usually block it, and they remain with a demonic gateway into the heart, around the trauma that they've had.

So no matter how you try and control it, it keeps producing fruit in your life. That's one of the reasons that sometimes great men of God fall, and it catches us by surprise, but if you check you'll find inevitably in their background they've had unresolved issues, and there was no one to show them how to be healed or whole, so they had to try then to operate under the law, and restrain it by the power of the will. You can't restrain spirit things by the power of the will. You have to overcome spirit things by spiritual power. Remember we saw that, that was what Jesus came to do, to set free those who were held down by the devil. So soul ties can form through sexual intimacy. They can form through traumatic experiences. They can form through controlling relationships, so that's why often a woman who's under a controlling man, she finds it so difficult to break free, because often there's a strong soul tie as well as the demonic operation that comes through that.

So soul ties can be good. They can be healthy; a husband and a wife, parents and children. They can turn ungodly where there's sexual intimacy outside marriage, or where it's an abusive relationship, or it goes over the boundaries and becomes a controlling relationship. So those are some areas. People can be soul tied to animals - an animal became a source of love and affection and intimacy in their life, they become soul tied to the animal. People can become soul tied to the dead. They've bonded to someone. They never processed the grief, so they've got a trauma in their life and they're locked in to that person, and they can't seem to move on in their life, so unresolved grief can be the soul tie too.

So these are areas of the heart which are very, very common. People have been through trauma, through sexual sin, through sexual abuse, or through some great loss in their life. They often remain - it's like in their emotions frozen in time, back there when it happened, and they've never moved on past that point. It's just locked up, and the person's tried to control the pain rather than actually recognizing I've got something to deal with here. I've got grief to resolve, and I have a soul tie; I need to be delivered from the spirits that rode in on the back of that particular soul tie. Getting the idea?

So now you can imagine if a person's been promiscuous, or had many sexual relationships, then they can be soul tied to many different partners, and the effect in the marriage is to be quite scattered in the soul, and unable to form a deep intimate relationship. The person's got too many connections elsewhere. Once those connections are broken, then the person becomes free in their mind and imagination, and there's no longer the power of these things operating. I haven't got time to develop just how you can deal with some of the things in your imagination, but one of the most simple ways, most people when they have negative memories, or negative pictures come back into their mind, most people handle it this way; oh, I shouldn't think that thought.

Now the language of that tells me you've immediately come under the law. You've used the word shouldn't. In other words, you've already judged it as wrong, and judged yourself as failing, and you've put yourself under the law, see? Now there's no power to be free - so I've got to stop thinking about that. So notice you're now trying to overcome a spirit thing in the flesh. There's no way you can ever deal with it that way. I haven't got time to deal with the discoveries. There's been a huge number of developments and discoveries of the way the brain works, but if I just put it in a simple form, that your brain, the memories actually occupy a physical space. They are formed of synapses that are joined together, and it's like a tree, so when memories in your mind are recorded as a tree, neuron trees in your brain, and if they're negative experiences, or negative patterns, they're thorny trees. If they're wholesome, then they're a different kind of tree, so it's embedded physically in you - let alone the demonic spirit elements that go with it. So the power of the blood - so most people try to just overcome it by saying: I shouldn't. What's better to do, is to say: oh, I see, I had that negative thought there. Well I hold the blood of Jesus Christ, and just see the thought, and begin to paint it out with the blood of Jesus Christ - just apply, with your imagination, the blood of Jesus Christ to it. You'll be amazed how negative images in your mind can just literally disappear and vanish as you apply the power of the Spirit. [Applause]

So soul ties. Another way that people cope with pain, is by making a death wish. A death wish is - it can be twofold. It can be against yourself, or against another person, but a death wish, let's talk about one thats against yourself. A person goes through a period of pain, this tremendous pain, with the conclusion they can't handle the pain anymore. They often come up with a statement in their mind like this; I just wish I were dead. I wish I could die. So when people start to say I wish I could die, they are coming into agreement. What they're saying really is: I don't believe God is able to help me in this. What I really believe is that I should die - so they come into agreement with the spirit of death, and when a person makes a death wish, they're making an invitation to the spirit of death to come into them. It's very, very common when people have been sexually abused; I feel so ashamed I just want to die. I wish I could die - and so, when people have been sexually abused, physically abused, verbally abused, emotionally abused, or if there's been some painful season in their life, people just feel: I just wish I were dead. I'd be better off dead.

When doing that they open their heart, they make a death wish, and come into agreement then with the spirit of death, and that stays alive until you actually renounce it - I choose life. I renounce it, I choose life. I break my agreement with death and choose life. So spirits always are ready to come in when we give them an opportunity, okay. Another area or way that people cope with pain is by making an inner vow. A vow is a solemn commitment. It's a commitment to do something, so an inner vow is a vow you speak into yourself. The Bible warns us against making foolish vows, because the spirit world is watching. Now remember, when you speak, you are created as an ambassador of heaven on the earth, and are called to speak God's word into the earth, so when we make foolish statements and make declarations or vows, the spirit world can use it against us.

So if you make an inner vow - so a woman's been hurt by a man, she says I'll never trust a man. I'll never open my life to a man. That's an inner vow - or a man might say: I'll never trust a woman. I'll never let a woman know what's going on in my life. I'll never let anyone get near me. I'll never let any pastor get the better of me. I'll never let any church do this to me. I'll never let any person in authority treat me this way. When a person makes that, what's happening is, they're in pain, and they're making a vow, out of their pain, to manage and control their life.

What happens when they do that is they give a demonic spirit the power to energize that, and literally it continues to outwork all your life, so you may have made the inner vow when you were 15 and went through some bad deal; 24, you're married, but that same inner vow is now operating in your marriage, and eventually you find, initially you're drawn and attracted, then you've got what's called a wall or a block, and you can't figure out how to break free of it. It's like there's no flow, from inside your spirit, to the spirit of the other person, because in your soul, there's this inner vow. There's this vow, no one's getting into me like that. I'm not going to open up.

If you make that kind of inner vow - I'll never let any man near me - well then the one person you most want to come near you, can't get near you. They feel walled out, and they are walled out, by the wall in your heart. You've got to renounce those inner vows, you know? Break the inner vows, break your agreement with that, and open your life to be free, see?

Another area, that's a very common area, is where people make bitter judgements. Bitter judgements are horrendous things really. It's a judgment, or a decree, or a decision, made out of hurt and pain and offence, and that's why it's called a bitter judgment. It's usually made because the person is bitter and they come to conclusions, and the conclusion is not correct. It's usually a generalization, usually takes the form of well, you can never trust any men, never trust a woman, and it's like a generalized thing, or people have bitter judgements of themselves. You know, I'm no good. I'll never amount to anything. That's a bitter judgment against yourself - or I'm unacceptable. Who told you that?

Isn't it interesting? Adam and Eve hid from God, and God said: where are you? It's a relational question. It's like, you know, where are you? Where are you hiding? Adam's hiding. Now listen, God knew where he was. God just wanted to connect with him. Where are you is a relational question. He said, well I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. Notice what He says; who told you that you were naked? Who have you been listening to? Who's been speaking into your heart and judging you? Who have you come into agreement with?

So what happens is we make a judgment based on partial information, or just a perspective, so for example, a child may see the parent's marriage break up, and they come to the conclusion: marriages are never going to work, see? Never get married - that's an inner vow - because marriages don't work out, or don't have kids because it's going to cause a lot of pain. See, that's a bitter judgment. What'll happen is, years later, you've forgotten and tried to move on, but now it outworks in your life. Let me give you an example of it.

I went to pray for a woman one day, and I was a bit distressed going to pray for her, because she was having her fifth miscarriage, and she'd come and she'd asked for prayer. We'd prayed for her, and now I was going because they're having the miscarriage, husband and wife asked me if I'd come out to just be with them. So I went out, and I'm going out there, I'm thinking oh God, what do I do? We'd been praying, you know. What's the story? Help me Lord. Just help me - and then the Lord dropped two things into my mind. First one He said, well this is a boy. Every one of the children she's lost is a boy. I said: really? Immediately as He said that, I knew she'd got an issue with men, and then He said one more thing. He said to me: get her father to pray for her. Tell her to ask her father to pray for her. So I went there and comforted them both as a couple, and then I said look, you know, tell me what you think the child is? She said I think it's a boy, and she said: actually, I think all of the ones I've miscarried are boys.

I said how do you get on with your dad? She said oh, I'm his favourite. I said oh really? Tell me a bit more about that. I'm thinking whoa, where are we going? Let's see what's going to happen. She said oh no, I was the favourite, and the youngest one was the favourite with mum, and I was the favourite with dad. Yeah, no, my dad and I are really close. I said really? Why don't you get your dad to pray for you then? No way! I said: really? There's a lot of energy in that, you know, the way you said that. Why would you say to me that you're so close, and yet you don't want him to pray for you?

Then she began to open up, and actually the marriage was dysfunctional, the father downloaded to the older daughter, and eventually shut her down and controlled her life. The mother took over, and shared things that should have been only in marriage with the daughter, and this older daughter had said to herself: I'll never carry a male child. She made an inner vow, spoke to herself, I'll never carry - I said to her, have you ever spoken into yourself, I will never carry a male child? She looked shocked. Her face went white. She said yes, I remember clearly doing it. I said: can you see the connection that your inner vow, you've literally cursed your own body, so that your body is now responding to the vow you made, and it's rejecting male children? I said you need to actually repent of that inner vow, and forgive your father. You need to deal with this issue that's going on in your heart, about his control over your life.

So inner vows are very powerful, and we make all kinds of inner vows: I'll never tell anyone. I'll never talk about things, you know, so there's all this kind of stuff. Another source of bondages of the heart is this - it's the area of word curses, where people speak words over your life. Words have great power. It's a whole topic of its own, but words that are negative or destructive - you're an idiot, you're a fool, you're a slut, you're this, you're this, you're this. Those kinds of words, especially coming from an authority figure, can actually lock into your heart, and what happens is, if you come into agreement with the word, then the spirit behind it is able to operate freely, and bring that about in your life.

So many people, instead of being blessed by their parents, have been cursed by them, or cursed by authority figures, even cursed by pastors. You know, sometimes - for example you have the situation like this – well, if you leave this church and go to another church, you'll be out of the will of God, you know? And you'll have trouble. Boy, and some trouble that comes up, and immediately you’re tormented; I wonder if this is because I'm out of the will of God, so the curse, the word spoken has power. God has designed us to be His ambassadors on earth to speak words, and so when authority speaks words they have power, so word curses can affect you, words spoken by parents, by teachers and words that you come into agreement with can afflict your heart and hold you in bondage.

The last one I'll share is the area of what are called burdens, where people place a burden on you. A burden can be a number of kind of - a number of them; one of them is false expectations, where people have an expectation of you, or demand something of you, that's unreasonable. This places a burden on you, and you feel I've got to do this, or I've got to help, or I've got to do this, or I've got to do that, and often the person feels a sense of responsibility; well if you loved me, you'd do this, and you feel I love you, but I don't want to do this. Then you're caught in the burden of it, so people carry this burden, a false burden of expectation. Sometimes the eldest child in the family can have that. Sometimes if a mother's an alcoholic or father's an alcoholic, the eldest child feels a sense of responsibility, and they carry the burden of the family and they become a parent, when they should be just living out the life of a child.

Later on, they then can't - their whole childhood's been stolen, and they end up then feeling great regret, bitterness about life - life's cheated me and wronged me, but every relationship they're in, they feel like they've got to carry the weight and responsibility of someone else. So if you're a woman who's risen up and carried the responsibility, you'll marry a man who doesn't want to take responsibility. You'll find that person feels comfortable, they fit with you, but you're dysfunctional, and you've got another dysfunctional person attracted in, to keep your dysfunction in place, until you deal with the burden. Does that make sense?

Again, these are all things we can teach a lot on but I just give you the highlights so you've kind of got it. Another form of burden is where - you ever heard the thing called the “black sheep” of the family? To be the black sheep in the family means you get the blame for everything, and so one of the black sheep in the family was Jeptha. He got the blame for everything. He was just different, and so when a person is scapegoated like that then what happens is, they begin to feel they're to blame every time something goes wrong, and so demons accuse them all the time; anything goes wrong, it's my fault. So something happens, that's just a normal thing in life - it must be my fault - and that thing, it's my fault, that's a demonic accusation, that's come out of being scapegoated, or being put to blame, or taking on shame in your life.

Another one which is a very powerful one and this takes place in many families where they have a code of silence or secrecy; we don't talk in our family. We don't talk about stuff. Now this is very common when people have been sexually abused. If you say anything, you'll be responsible for destroying the family - and this is what's called a code of silence or secrecy, and many times when people have been sexually abused what's holding them in darkness is this threat that if you say anything, you'll wreck the family. You'll be responsible.

Now this is actually a demonic bondage that someone's brought - it's actually a form of witchcraft and control, and it becomes a huge burden, where the person has to carry a secret in their heart they should never have to carry.

So these areas we've come across are burdens that people carry in their heart, and we need to be free of them. We need to be free of those burdens. How do you get free of them? We have to acknowledge them first of all, have to acknowledge this is what I've done. This is how I've saved myself - got to be willing if there's pain and grief there, let God come into that part of my life. I need to release forgiveness, see? So I need to acknowledge it, repent of agreeing with those things, renounce the agreement, release forgiveness, let the Lord come in and bring healing around that part of my life.

Now you can see that there's cases where there's been sexual relationships, many times there are death wishes, inner vows, bondages of the heart. There's been sexual abuse, many times secrecy, bondage in the heart, inner vows, death wishes, all of these kinds of things, and the person wonders then, why they're not free to flow intimately with God, or intimately with others. We can get free of that. Acknowledge it, actually recognize it, repent of our agreement with those things, then renounce the thing that we've come into agreement with, forgive the people, and ask the Lord to set us free.

So we want to pray for people now, want to get into an area of ministry to people, and just say all of those areas, every one of them, there's quite substantial teaching around it to help you understand it, but you've probably got enough to know hey, that's me. How many know that God was talking to you during that session? Whoa! Oh wow! I thought it was just Jurgan but ... [Laughter] ... Why don't we just stand up again, to worship God again, and what I want to do is I want to pray for people where there's been sexual sin in your life, there's been sexual sin of various kinds - could have been adultery, could have been fornication, could have been incest, could have been involvement with animals, could have been involvement with pornography. All of these things open your life to defiling spirits. They bring you soul ties. If you've been involved with pornography, you'll be soul tied to websites, soul tied to images. You'll actually be captured by those images, and the spirit of aversion behind it. You need to repent of it. You need to let the Lord deliver you from that thing, and help you build a different life.

Maybe there's some people here, and you've been involved - you've been abused, could be a young man, you were abused when you were younger. There's a huge shame and defilement comes in. If this was a serious and prolonged abuse, you may need to get special help, and today may be just the trigger to get stuff off your life, but you may need to get some further help to deal with the thinking patterns in your life. Maybe a woman's been abused in various kinds of ways; could have been verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. We want to let God set us free. Or maybe you've been through a trauma in your family, and you know exactly you made these inner vows, you made these death wishes, agreements with death or you came to these judgements about men, judgements about women.

If you know that's you, this would be a great time to get it all right with the Lord. We're going to sing a worship song. You make your way to the front and do some repenting and doing business with God, and then we'll get to have a time of ministry.

Listen, just before we go any further, just in making the altar call now, what would just be helpful is if I just get women on one side, men on the other - just makes this a little easier to minister, if we have the women here on the right side, men on the left side. There'll be issues of sexual sin or sexual abuse. It just is helpful if we just make that separation, just while we're doing this. It may not be that, but just come on the women's side if you're a woman, on the left if you're a man. It just helps us, just in the ministry area. Women can spread right out across to the right here, make a bit of room so you're not all jammed up. Okay, are we ready?

If you know there's been sexual sin, sexual bondage, sexual abuse, there's been some kind of trauma, you know you've got these inner vows, death wishes, why don't you come up and say God, I want to be free today. I want to be free. Let's worship while you just work with God and repent, confess these things now.

Oh Holy Spirit come, begin to touch our hearts, begin to touch us now Lord. Thank you Lord.

Okay, just listen now. That's right, just lift your hands to the Lord. You can just feel the turmoil that's in the spiritual atmosphere now because what's happening in your heart is so very painful. It's okay to weep. It's okay to let the Spirit of God touch you. He loves you. When Jesus died on the cross He was terribly, terribly abused, violently abused and He hung on the cross naked for all to see. The Bible says He carried your shame, the shame you've had of the things that were done to you, things that you didn't want to happen, He took that shame. He took your grief and sorrows. The Bible says He was acquainted with sorrows, acquainted with rejection and so He carried it somehow on Himself so you could be free - and your part is just to open your heart and let Him come in.

You've tried all these years to contain the pain, and now it's letting Jesus to come in. There'll be some of you women here who've been abused by men, and the trauma of it, and the pain of it's very, very deep and that person may never ever put it right with you. They may never be taken to justice, but God is able to deal with this. God is able to bring justice to this situation, if not in this life, then in eternity. What I want to do is this: it's so important that you are able to, from your heart, let go forgiveness, not because the person deserves it. They don't deserve it at all. This is about breaking free of your past. This is about moving on with your life, and so what I want to do is, I want to stand on behalf of any man who has abused you, dishonoured you, used you and then discarded you like a doll that was unwanted. I want to stand on behalf of those men that did this to you, and I want to say what I did was wrong. What I did was destructive. What I did dishonoured you. What I did brought shame to you. I stole from you, and of course pain that's followed you all these many years. I ask you to forgive me. I ask you to let go the sin. I ask you to release this bondage of your heart that I created.

Let's reach out to the Lord right now, reach out right now and bring this to the cross. Just start to bring it to the cross right now. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I come against the spirits of death. I command spirits of death, spirits of perversion, unclean tormenting spirits, spirits of hatred, spirits of self-hate and self-rejection, spirits of shame, I command you GO in Jesus' name. Spirits of perversion, spirits of pornography, I command you to go in Jesus' name. I break the ungodly soul ties. I break the ungodly soul ties. I break the soul ties of sexual sin, sexual abuse. I break them in Jesus' name.

Come on, let's just begin to worship the Lord as He begins to minister to people right now. Thank you Lord.

Freedom Conference (4 of 4)

Sat 28 Jan 2012  « Back to Top

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Honour your father and mother - the first of the ten commandments that comes with a promise. It's unusual because it carries a blessing that God has described and notice the blessing is in two parts. It says that it will be well with you and you'll live long on the earth. Now the implication in that is if you violate that commandment by dishonouring your mother and your father it will affect your physical health, it'll affect your life expectancy and it will affect your life will not go well for you.

Thank you very much. You feel so welcome and loved here. Come on, let's give Jesus the honour for what He's done so far; breakthroughs, miracles, deliverances. Hallelujah Lord! We honour you and praise you and give you all the glory today! Thank you Lord. Hallelujah.

We invite you to come Holy Spirit to help us. We're determined to fulfil the destiny you have for us, whatever needs to move, shift, change in our life today, move it. Move it. Let it move in this session. Father, I just thank you for those who've come whether it's for the first time - pray Lord that what you are doing, they'll hear and feel it in their spirit, be able to quickly reach in and receive what you want to do today. Lord, we open our hearts to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Go on, give someone a high five before you sit down.

Well awesome, thank you worship team. You've been so great. Let's give them a clap. ... [Applause] ... They've been fantastic and thank you for staying the course. You know, it's a big commitment but it's also an investment in your life and even in this session there'll be things happen for many. I just really appreciate you've called it a Freedom Conference rather than a Deliverance Conference because it gives me room to move and one of the things that Pastor Jurgen has said was just flow with the Holy Ghost and what He puts in your heart to do. So today we had many, many people set free just last session - powerful move of God to just touch so many, many people but as I got to work with some, some we just prayed for and others we were talking to and there were some issues started to come up and there was recurring issues started to come up, so I want to talk about - message I want to speak about is honouring your father and your mother. I want to show you some things on this or an insight related to this that will really bless and help you.

Let me just start with a story - good way - I had a woman and I can't remember, I think it was in Taiwan and she came for counsel. I don't know why it happened that way but anyway, they brought her in for counsel, asked me to talk with her and I asked her what is your problem? She said well I don't really know what to do. I have this man wants to marry me. I said oh, tell me a bit more. She said well - and so she explained what had happened; she'd had a relationship with this man. He was an unsaved man, and she had a child with this man. No, she had a relationship with the man and it broke up and then she had a fling with some other guy and had a child to him and so now she's a woman with a child and this first guy wants to now marry her. The other guy's unhappy and she's in this turmoil in a mess and many times you find that people have turmoil and a mess, they can't pull it apart and see what the issues are inside.

So I asked her, well, you know, is this guy a Christian? She said no, he isn't. I said well tell me then a little bit about why the relationship broke up. She said well while he was going out with me he also had two or three other relationships going on the side. I said so you're telling me you're thinking of marrying someone who was already demonstrating unfaithfulness to you? I said why would you do that? She said well, I kind of have something in my heart for him.

Then the Lord just dropped this into my heart; ask about her father. I said tell me about your father and your relationship with your father. She said oh, well I don't see him. I said why is that? And she said well my parent's marriage broke up. I said really? Why did it break up? She said well he had two or three other women on the side that he was having an affair with and so the marriage broke up.

I said just stop right there. I said I wonder if you can see that this is no accident or coincidence that your parent's relationship broke up because he was unfaithful and this first guy you've had a relationship with has also broken up for the same reason. She couldn't see the connection. I said well the Bible's very clear; if you judge your parents you will reap in your own life the impact of that judgement. You have judged your father for his failure. You've held unforgiveness and bitterness and judgement in your heart and you're in the process of reaping in your own life what you never resolved with your father.

I wish I could say in that particular case she could see it. She just refused to see it. She didn't want to see it and so I said I'm sorry, I can't help you anymore because you're not facing the root problem which lies in your heart. You have an undealt with issue with your father and until you deal with that you will continue to have this kind of problem coming into your life.

When we counsel people in marriage there are probably two significant areas that we would look for. One is what sexual kind of relationships or situations have happened with you prior to your marriage, but the other one which is the most telling of all is tell me about your relationship with your parents. You would be amazed how many times an unresolved conflict with a parent reproduces in the next generation and represents itself waiting to be resolved. It's like there's a magnetic attraction that pulls into the person's life some person that will outwork the same thing that they tried to run away from and there has to be a spiritual dynamic behind that and there is. So I want to just show this to you through the scriptures.

So firstly we'll just start and I want to just go through a few scriptures and then I want to show you how to break out of this, because in some of the counselling that I did just with two or three people the same issue reappeared. They had an unresolved conflict with a father and the situations they were facing directly connected to that unresolved - in fact it was traced back to that unresolved root and I did send them away with homework to do to actually resolve the conflict and the judgements that were in their heart.

They were directly reaping the outcome of walking away from home with issues unresolved and so we can leave home physically, but not leave home emotionally or spiritually. We bring the baggage with us into the next season in our life and what you ran away from with re-present in your family life until you face it and it'll keep re-presenting. If some of you were to look back into your family you'll find that the same kinds of problems seem to come generationally and one of those reasons is because of inequity in the family. Another reason is because of familiar spirits, but another reason is because of this thing called bitter judgements and I want to just talk about it. I want to give you several scriptures and just open your understanding to this and then show you quickly what you can do. Then we'll have an opportunity for you to think about your own situation and what God's speaking to you about what you need to do, okay?

So let's have a look in Ephesians, Chapter 6 and Verse 2 and 3; Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. Honour your father and mother - now notice this - the first commandment with a promise, so He highlights this commandment is unusual because it carries a blessing that God has described and notice the blessing is in two parts. It says that it will be well with you and you'll live long on the earth. Now the implication in that is if you violate that commandment by dishonouring your mother and your father it will affect your physical health, it'll affect your life expectancy and it will affect your life will not go well for you.

Now one of the problems about spiritual issues is we seldom connect the problem we're facing to a choice we made or a sin that we committed way back there. We just don't get the connection and that's because sin is deceptive and we can't see that sometimes the problem I'm facing now is rooted back in an issue I never dealt with. I'm just playing out something that's going on in my heart. Remember we shared in that last session, out of your heart flows the issues of your life. Now so I want to just look at this, first of all this issue of honour - honour your father and mother - which is the first commandment with a promise. We have found if life is not going well for someone I check out what's happened in their family background, for example I had one guy I counselled and I started to ask him a few questions. He'd actually just had a row with his boss and had given up the job he was in, so now he was starting out a new job and the reason he was coming to see me, he's had a conflict with one of the cell group leaders you see, so I started to ask him then about his relationship with authority figures in his life.

I found, well, he'd just had a falling out not only with the cell leader. He'd also had a falling out with his boss. I said well how did you get on in the last job? Same thing happened. I said well before that you were in the army, how'd that work? He said oh, I love the army. I said but how did you get on with those who were officers? Oh, well, you know, I never got on with them. I said oh really, how did you get on at school then? He said oh, I never got on with the teachers, you know, they were always picking on me. I said is that right? I said tell me about your father. He said well I had a row with him, he kicked me out of the home. He said anyway, it wasn't my father. I was adopted and I said I wonder if you can see that the problem that is representing itself over and over in your life is that you have an unresolved conflict with your natural father and mother who for some reason adopted you out. You've never resolved what's in your heart with them. It's replayed with your adoptive parents and it's replayed in every situation involving an authority figure in your life.

Now whenever we encounter authority figures or people who have a realm or sphere of authority, whether they fulfil it well or badly or however they do it, they represent the authority of God. So the first people you meet in your life that represent God to you are your parents and they may completely misrepresent God, not necessarily because they want to or because they didn't set out to do their best, but because they were broken themselves. How you respond to these first representatives of God in your life sets you up for how you'll respond all the way through your life until you deal with it. So I want to just show you a couple of scriptures. The first one is found in Psalm 100.

First let's look at the word honour and interesting, Jurgen was just talking about it; it's to place value on someone. Now I want to just show you two scriptures that are connected in relationship to your walk with God. In Psalm 100, Verse 4, it tells us specifically how to engage with the presence of God. It tells us specifically what to do and notice it tells us here to come into the presence of God and in Psalm 100 it says - Verse 4 - enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise, be thankful unto Him and bless His name for He is good.

So it tells us then that if we are to come near to God we come near firstly with gratitude in our heart and appreciation for what He's done; secondly, we honour Him so to praise Him is to lift Him up and so forth. It is to give honour to Him. So honour and gratitude enable us to enter the presence of God. Honour and gratitude attract the presence of God to us.

Now I want you to have a look in Romans 1, Verse 21. So whatever you place honour and value upon will be attracted to you. Whatever you dishonour and disrespect will move away from you. Now notice in Romans 1 and Verse 21 and it says because although they knew God they did not glorify Him or honour Him as God, neither were they thankful but become futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. So it's talking about people who once knew God and notice what it says they failed to do; they failed to be thankful and grateful and they failed to give Him honour, so you notice what happened. When that happened there's a darkness came in the thinking or putting it another way, the way they related to God changed.

So we see there in two scriptures, one tells us that coming near to God we need to honour Him and thank Him and be appreciative to Him, so the primary authority in our life which is God Himself to come into His presence requires honour and respect and gratitude. That's how you approach Him, see? Now you notice it says when we are ungrateful and when we dishonour Him we draw away from Him. It's our thinking about Him changes and if you follow the pattern there it goes in a downward spiral, completely away until people are totally alienated from God. So notice how honour draws us into the presence of God, but dishonour moves us away from the presence of God and brings our life into darkness.

Now, parents are your first authority figures in your life to represent God in our lives. They represent the nature of God and they're to represent to us the various aspects of God's character, so when parents fail and we choose to disrespect, dishonour, harbour bitterness and judge them then we move away from them, but more than moving away from them there is a darkness comes in our heart that begins to affect all other relationships. I want to show you a couple more scriptures related to this and then we'll just finish with a story in the Bible that shows you exactly in one couple how they both faced an abusive authority figure and both responded differently. One responded with judgement, the other responded with grace and the one who responded with grace became lifted up and the other one who responded with judgement actually ended up in darkness. So these are principles in the Bible. You can't break them. You just prove that they exist. See, you just prove that they're there, that's all.

So notice then it says to honour. If we will place value on our parents - now if you're going to honour someone there are three primary reasons you pay honour to someone. Not necessarily in order of importance but one, we honour people who achieve greatly, so if someone makes a great achievement we honour them, we'll place value on them. They were great, they did well, it was a great achievement. Today we honoured someone for his achievement in serving and the honour was due him because he did something, see? Okay then, so the second reason we honour people is because of their character, so someone who's been courageous, someone who's shown bravery and a great character, we honour them because of who they are, the kind of person and what character they have demonstrated.

Then finally there's another area we honour people. We honour people just because of the positioning they hold so for example people in America honour the office of the president. Now regardless of their personal opinions or feelings about the president and about his performance, nevertheless there's an honour comes on the office and therefore the person and its right to do that. So okay then, so having got that - so it may be in a family often things don't work out kind of like what we expect and because of inequity parents tend to repeat the sins of their parents. There are often strife and conflict, sometimes the foundations of the marriage are not good. We're living in a age which has lost fatherhood, it's lost the whole dimension of how families need to be and so we have multitudes of people coming and perhaps you're one, that come from a family where it wasn't loving. It broke down, there was violence, there was abuse, father abandoned the family, all kinds of things have happened and gone on. So of course children get hurt. Children get deeply hurt by this. Their whole world blows up when the parents divorce. Their whole world that should be supportive and foster their growth to maturity is wrecked, so the children suffer and this is often what people don't realise is that that action of the parents now has got a generational impact.

So you may have come from great parents, a great family, or you may have come from a family where it was extremely painful - could've been a harsh abusive father, a passive shut down father. In my case my father came back from the war, Second World War and his emotions were shattered by the experiences he'd been through. He'd been on the frontline for four and a half years. In the end seeing all his friends killed and blown apart, it just in the end was overwhelming for him. He came back and he was a different man from the man that went over there - very difficult for my mother. They'd only been married one year, but how it worked out for me was that he could never express love in a verbal way or a physical way. He was unable to do it. It wasn't that he wasn't loving, just he couldn't express because he was shattered in his soul, his family background and through his war experience. But for me it felt like he could never express love and affirmation to me, so as a young person it was quite hurtful to find no matter how hard I worked it was never good enough, so there was a constant - it seemed like I could never do enough, it was never good enough and it bored in me a driving to try and perform so I could get affirmed in love and never was it ever good enough. So it had quite some major issues inside me out of hurt and rejection. I actually became quite bitter inside, just put a wall in my heart and so what happens, the Bible tells us in Hebrews 12:15, beware lest a - it says let any man fall from the grace of God and a root of bitterness spring up and defile many. So when we are hurt or offended or for whatever reason we have offence in our heart and we let it grow and a root of bitterness comes, it has the capacity to defile all the relationships that you live in.

Are you aware it's defiling them? Not at all. It's a flow from your spirit of poison and usually it comes out of the spirit man, out of the eyes - the glares, the words, the criticism, all of this kind of thing flows out of the heart which has got bitterness inside it. The word bitter means to be sour - and so a root of bitterness in our heart will defile all relationships. How does it do it? I'll show you in a moment. Let's have a look in Matthew, Chapter 7. Often bitterness in our heart is connected to judging and let me show you here in Matthew, Chapter 7. Whenever we face offence, whenever we face disappointment, hurt, or any kind of circumstance that's negative in our life, we can approach it and release grace into it or we can release judgement into it. If we release judgement into it there are consequences of that. If we release grace into it there's different consequences and we're called to bring the grace of God into situations. So notice what it says in Matthew, Chapter 7. These are the principles of the kingdom and it says here, notice in Verse 1, do not judge because if you judge others you will be judged.

Now that doesn't mean we just put up with all kinds of nonsense because later on the Bible tells us spiritual man discerns all things or judges all things, but He's talking about judgement in your heart. That means to find a fault with and condemn and then punish in some kind of way - so it says don't judge that you be not judged, for the judgement you judge others it will be measured back to you. Now notice what it's saying there. If you come to a place of judging of a parent, father or a mother, for their failure in their role as a parent, then what'll happen is that judgement you've put against them, that having come to make a decision why they did what they did, what this must mean - my father hated me, my mother rejected me. That's a conclusion or a judgement. You don't know that's true. All you see is how they behave. It's your conclusion about it that's the judgement. What does this behaviour mean? So for example a child can be in a family and maybe the husband and the wife or the mother and father are bitterly angry and there's just this tension and anger and criticism.

The child looks at it and they feel pain and anxiety and tension grow and they ask the question, what does this mean? And they come to a judgement; this means they hate me. This means it's my fault - and so what happens is when you start to form bitter judgements in your heart like that, then you start to find you'll start to draw and attract into your life a repetition of this kind of thing. It's like a magnetic thing. It just pulls it into your life, so judgements in the heart are an invitation to demonic spirits to torment you and bring about what you have concluded. It just seems to just repeat cycle after cycle after cycle, so if you for example have come to a conclusion you've looked at something in the family and concluded in your heart it's my fault, it's my fault my parents broke up, if only I hadn't done this or if only I could have done this. Then what'll happen is this - oh I see, if I hold the bottom of the mic it cuts out ... [Laughter] ... hold it in the middle. Thank you very much. This is a great help to me. ... [Laughter/applause] ... Wonderful. Isn't that great. There we go. Well done. Isn't it great to have people that can tell you how to hold a mic? After all these years I'm still not holding it right. Praise the Lord! ... [Laughter] ... I never get it right! I always get it wrong! ... [Laughter]

Okay, so what happens is we can come to conclusions or judgements in our heart and interpretation of what something means. When you come to a conclusion about that, then you begin to reap the cycle of that in your life so if you come to the conclusion it's all my fault they broke up - what happens in any conflict situation, you know what? It's all my fault. You'll keep reaping it in your life and then you'll find you start to attract blame into your life. It's your fault this happened - and so the Bible's very clear. It says why do you look at the spec in your brother's eye and don't consider the plank in your own? How can you say to your brother let me remove the spec from your eye and there's a beam in your own eye? Hypocrite. First of all get the beam out of your own eye. Notice this; then you'll see clearly. So when we have judgements we can't see life properly. We just can't see life properly. We think we see and we come to conclusions, but we can't see properly because the judgement in our heart filters how you see things. I'll just give you a simple example. Suppose I'm standing here with someone else and Pastor Jurgen comes in and he's on his way to the meeting you see, but he's had something come up just before the meeting. He's got a lot of things on his mind, so he just walks in, sweeps in, he's just preoccupied with what he's got to do and the two of us stand and as we go by we say good morning Pastor Jurgen you see and he doesn't even acknowledge - he's so busy, didn't even hear it. He's just focussed on what he's got to do, away he goes.

Now I look at it and I think oh well, you know, I guess he's busy or something. I'll catch up with him later. See, I have no judgement about what his walking past me and not responding meant, no judgement, see? The other person, they've already got a judgement in their heart that they're not loved, so immediately they look at it and say he doesn't like me. I knew he didn't like me, look at that. He walked right past. I've just said hello to him. He doesn't - and actually I think he hates me.

Now this is the weirdness that goes on in people's lives and so then they live in torment with this judgement going on in their heart and actually they have made this judgement themselves. They've got no idea what his actions meant whatsoever. They've just placed a judgement on it and then reaped the consequence of it, of torment inside their own life. And so when we form bitter judgements in our heart we begin to - it's like a negative faith. It begins to attract in repeated cycles of the same kind of thing happening in our life and we have found counselling people that when they have a bitter judgement against their father, if it's a girl has a bitter judgement against her father she will magnetically attract a man in who'll repeat the same behaviour until she resolves the issue. If he isn't like that he will become like that because her bitterness will defile the relationship eventually. It just is - see, this is why - see you can't - there are principles of the spirit and demons know them and they just lever them or use them to get in and make life tough and hard and put burdens on us.

For me one of the things that was the changing point, because I'd just long for my father to express love and one day the Lord said to me, He said what you're wanting him to do is like asking a crippled man to run. I said what? He said if a man had a broken leg you would not expect him to be able to run. You wouldn't blame him that he couldn't run. You'd understand he just couldn't run because he had a broken leg. Why can't you understand your father is damaged in his emotions and he can't do for you what you want? It doesn't mean he doesn't love you. It doesn't mean you're not valuable. You've placed meanings on this and judged him. You need to repent of those judgements or it'll turn up in your own children and you'll face it again with your own family. He said you have to deal with this stuff - and so I had to come to the area of actually being willing to number one, forgive and release where there are disappointments and number two, to renounce any judgements I'd made of what this meant. What does this mean? What you make it mean is your judgement of it and Jesus said I don't judge by what I see, I judge by what I hear. So we tend to jump to conclusions and jump to judgements and then live in the torment and reap the penalty of those judgements until we learn not to make them. You just don't know why people do stuff. You just don't know why they do stuff and so you may have come from a family where there's all kinds of turmoil and the father abandoned the mother and abandoned the family and of course you're deeply hurt and of course it's unjust, but you don't know why it happened. Once you start going into the judgement area, now you've set yourself up to reap the cycle of that.

We can't afford to judge. God wants us to be in a place where we honour and bless our parents, because He says if you honour them it will go well for you. You say well they don't deserve it. My mum didn't deserve it. She's an alcoholic, she drank, did this thing. She really caused a lot of pain and problems. I know she doesn't deserve it because of her behaviour or deserve it because of her performance or her character, but she is your mother. You came from her. Part of her is in every cell of your body. If you are dishonouring her you are actually dishonouring your source where you come from, you're dishonouring yourself. You will live with rejection in your life. You dishonour your father, you're dishonouring where you've come from. But you don't understand! He was this, he was this, he was this. Yeah, well you don't know what he has been through, how broken he is, what mess he's had. We're not excusing it. We're not saying it was right. We're actually saying it's destructive and what he did was wrong, but nevertheless God says place value on him because you have come from there. When you honour your father and your mother you're honouring God who they're called to represent.

God will sort out that they didn't represent him well. That's His job, not yours. Your job is to do what He says and become a person who gives people the gift of honour, so we don't honour our parents because we're trying to manipulate to get something out. You honour your parents because that's part of walking with God. That's part of walking in kingdom blessing. You remove dishonour and you start to honour; honour becomes the kind of person you are. You honour people whether they act honourably or have got honourable character, you still treat them as people of value. Honour has a way of unlocking relationships. Dishonour has a way of distancing them and making them worse. Let me give you two examples. I was visiting Europe somewhere - where's Mark and Michelle? Where were they? Copenhagen, that's right and we'd been to a wedding and I came out of the wedding, we're going to catch the train back and I'm standing on the train station, I'm looking across. Now there's electric lines, electric trains and stuff and we just stand, I'm looking across at the other side of the station, across about four railway lines or five railway lines, something like that. I looked over and I looked at this guy and I caught his eye and the moment I caught his eye I saw him manifest and I thought oh no! We've got someone's going off here and so I quickly turned away, thought I don't need this right now ... [Laughter] ... and so I turned away and I'm looking out of the corner of my eye and I see him staring at me. I just try not to engage his eyes and then I saw him go to the edge and I thought oh, we've got something going to happen. Sure enough he hops down off the railway lines, he comes across - now these are electrified lines. This is dangerous stuff. He is manifesting - so he come across and he climbs up onto the platform. I think I'm going to have a scene in the platform in a moment and he comes up to me and of course he's got broken English, he's European of some kind of nationality. He starts yelling he's going to kill a policeman. Now he's really yelling and ranting and raving. His eyes are wide - full manifestation mode and I'm thinking oh man, what do I do here? I've got family around and you know, you're still trying to work out whether there's an escape route somewhere to run to. I'm thinking about this and he's yelling. It's hard to understand so I tried to just calm him down because I didn't know whether he carried a weapon, didn't know how violent - this could have been really dangerous for us.

Then he turns from me - I just talked calmly and quietly to him - and then he turned and he started yelling at my son-in-law and he's yelling he's going to kill a policeman. I could see Mark was quite frightened and so he turned away from my son-in-law and I said Jesus, you've got to help me. What am I going to do? I don't want to start ministering to him because he'll manifest. It'll look like I'm in a violent conflict with him, we'll both get arrested. This is not going to be good - and I've had that before, not being arrested but having laid hands on someone in public places and they go crazy, berserk and stuff happens and no one really knows what's going on, you know? And - we won't go there ... [Laughter] ... so I just learned to be a bit more discreet now, you know? The old days - there's an demon! Let's get the demon, you know, but ... [Laughter] ... it doesn't ... [Applause] ... I'm just a bit more wise now, you know? You can create some scenes.

I've been in a restaurant [laughs] the whole table got overturned and this guy's nutting off and yelling and screaming and you know, so I didn't want any of that. Then the Lord just dropped into me what to do and I went up to him and said sir, I have a gift for you. I reached in my pocket and I'd been to the wedding and I'm a bit of a chocolate fan you see and I have a couple of chocolates I'd nicked on the way out of the wedding ... [Laughter] ... not beyond doing that still, you know - so there I was, had the chocolate in my pocket and I said I have this to give you. All I had was two chocolates. I just gave him - I opened his hand, put them in his hand, gave him the two chocolates. You know what? Whatever spirit was on him just left immediately and he reached out and he put his arm around me and he hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks and then he just quietly went back over the other side. Honour had changed the whole atmosphere around this person. Honour has results. Honour gets results, see? Honour gets results.

Let's have a look at some of the Old Testament, have a look quickly, last scripture and then I'll give you one more story. This is a great story and it's true which is better still. In 2 Samuel, Chapter 6 - then I'll share just a little personal testimony. We'll finish and I want to give you an opportunity to think and let the Holy Spirit speak to you, because I think He wants to help some of you get free. I think He wants to set people free from bitterness and anger and terrible grief over what's happened in your background and to get you to take steps to actually become a person of honour so that your future and that of your offspring is much different, aye? So look, I want you to have a look with me here and this a revival move in 2 Samuel, Chapter 6, Verse 14; David danced before the Lord with all his might and David was wearing a linen ephod and so David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the trumpet. Now David has a wife called Michal and Michal is the daughter of King Saul. King Saul dreadfully manipulated her and used her to try and bring about the death of David, but Michal loved David. She was passionately in love with him. She found a way of protecting him, finally got him out of the city and what Saul did was Saul - notice this is David's father-in-law, a person who should have actually been a person who loved him and valued him and helped him prepare him for his destiny. Instead of that he was dishonouring and abusive and so when you follow the story you find that Saul declared David a national fugitive. He sent the armies out, he pursued him all over, one place to the other, drove him out of the country in the end into a neighbouring country and had virtually a kill on sight warrant out on him, destroy him on sight.

So David is living with his father-in-law against him all the time. He had more than one opportunity to kill his father-in-law. In fact those around him said boy, God's given you the opportunity you can get rid of your problem now and David said I won't touch what God has anointed, or in other words this is an authority that God has placed in my life. The fact he's abusive is not my issue, this is God's issue. I'm not going to arise and come against him and dishonour the office that God has given him so I can get my life to become easier. Twice David was put in that same situation. Twice his friends urged him to kill King Saul and he said no, I can't do this because this would be to dishonour God if I was to do such a thing. I just need to trust God with my life and leave Saul to God to sort out. I won't rise up and dishonour him.

So that was David's heart. David then comes into his destiny and now he's restored, he's now king of Israel without having to try and kill Saul. He's king of Israel. His wife - now his wife had her journey too. Soon after King Saul had chased David out of town, King Saul forced her to marry another man. Imagine what it's like being forced to marry someone - you love your husband, he's been driven out by your father and now you're forced to marry and have sexual relationships and live with another man, all the time yearning for your husband to come and get you and he never turns up. He's a national fugitive. Can you imagine the trauma and the terrible hurt that she must have suffered?

David also suffered the hurt of knowing this had happened, knowing his wife is with someone else, knowing his father-in-law's responsible. Both of them suffered injustice at the hands of the same man, but David arose and instead of bringing judgement brought grace into it. He said I'm going to leave it to God to sort out. I will maintain honour because God has put him in this role in my life. Did he stay connected to him? No, he ran away from him and we're not necessarily - if someone is a violent abusive person, honouring them does not mean you have to stay around them, you understand that? You know, honouring does not mean you stay around them. Honouring them is an issue of the heart. It's the issue of placing value on the office or role that they have because in doing that you're honouring God. It takes faith to do that, see? But to do that you've got to overcome the tendency to hold unforgiveness and judgements in the heart, see?

So David kept his heart pure and so when the presence of God comes into the city he's dancing and whirling and leaping and - just like Jurgan you know? ... [Laughter] ... You know, with a [dances] You know, the way he does it? You should see him do that with the leather shorts, you know. It's just something else to see it ... [Laughter/applause] ... I mean it really is something else to see, the Jurgemeister do one of these German sort of you know, with the leather shorts on. You want to get him to do it sometime, it really is something. I mean you know he's German, you know and he's got this in him. So there it is, he knows how to do that - I can't even work out how to do it but he was showing me the other night how he does it, you know. It'd be a great item for the church one time wouldn't it aye? ... [Laughter] ... You can have a family concert and there it is. Anyway, the leather shorts.

So David's dancing before the Lord and he's unashamed and he just - now, I want you to see now what Michal says. Now it says as he came in the city of David, Michal, Saul's daughter - notice she's not called David's wife - Saul's daughter looked through the window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord and despised him in her heart.

Now she's in a place of bitterness and judgement; bitterness against her father, judgement against her father, bitterness against David, judgement against David and the natural thing is then she can't help it coming out and so you notice what it said. He comes home and he's about to bless the people and he distributes among the people and he comes home to bless his own household - Verse 20 - and Michal, the daughter of Saul - there it is again - came out to meet David and notice what she says; Oh, how glorious is the king of Israel today. Look at you dancing around in those leather shorts and clapping and slapping and carrying on like that, you know. Shameless! Absolutely shameless, okay and ... [Laughter] ... it's sort of the revised version of it, you know? ... [Laughter]

And David said to Michal it was before the Lord who chose me instead of your father and all his house, therefore I will play music before the Lord. I'll be even more undignified than this and then it says therefore Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. Now you notice here's a couple who both had to deal with the issue of a parent who abused them and misused them and treated them badly. One responded and retained honour in his heart for the role and position and office the person had and trusted God to work it out and kept their heart free. That's David. David is able to enter into a tremendous season of blessing and enlargement in his life.

His wife though, bitter, judgemental and she becomes barren. She's unable to produce. She's absolutely fruitless. In fact later on there were children entrusted to her and they were put to death. It's a horrendous story of a young couple in love with a destiny of ruling a nation and one failed to draw near into the grace of God. It requires grace to do this. You don't need to approve of bad behaviour or abusive behaviour of a parent. We don't approve of that. In fact actually sometimes it needs to be confronted and sometimes it needs to be brought to the light, brought to the authority, whatever it needs to be done. We don't have to put up with it, but it's the issue in the heart of whether you retain a free heart or a bitter heart and a heart of judgement.

If you have a heart that's bitter or unforgiving or judgements in your heart, you will set up a cycle of reaping what you have judged. It will turn up in your next set of relationships and you'll have to face it there and you probably won't recognise what it is and this is the dilemma that I find often in counselling people; the current problems they're struggling with go back into family issues they never really left home emotionally and spiritually. We need to deal with the baggage in there.

Let me just finish with this story and then I want to give you just while I'm sharing this story just an opportunity, have a think about where you've come from and have a think about relationship, your relationship with your father, your relationship with your mother. If they're - now neutral is not honour. There is no neutrality in the kingdom, see? The Bible says we've passed from death to life when there's love flows out of our heart, see? So there's no neutrality, so if you're in a place where you've got this wall of reserve and you're kind of neutral and you're sort of avoiding a parent and there's a wall in your heart and as you pray for them you don't even really want to pray for them because as you pray for them it's a bit difficult to pray. You know, I got that stuff that keeps rising up - say oh, God bless 'em, you know? When you try to come to God as a father - well I relate to Jesus, I don't kinda connect with the father too easily you know?

You see this plays out over and over in our life. It just keeps playing out. It just - there's no end to how it plays out in your life, so if you recognise there's reserve, there's a withholding, I don't actually hold my father and mother in my heart and say thank you God for them, I see that they were damaged, I see that they were broken. They just did all that they could. That's all they did. At least I will honour them because they were the first representatives. I'll leave it to you to sort it out but as for me, I'm going to retain a heart that's free from bitterness. I'm going to walk and extend grace to them and honour to them. Honour is my gift. I will value them and I'll start to communicate and connect in a different way. Think about that. I know there's all sorts of variations of that and you have to figure out what God wants you to do in all of that. I'm talking about today getting your heart free.

Now let me just share with you. [Pauses] Joy shared the testimony yesterday and she shared a number of things, but one of the things that - I remember I said that I'd judged my father in my heart. This was something I had to come to grips with and to repent off and renounce the judgement and in the end I was able to honour him, value him. We were able to honour him in very special ways and my whole relationship with him changed towards the end of his life when my heart become free, but we had made mistakes also and one of the big mistakes that I made in my connecting and relating with Joy was that we become involved sexually before we were married. We had a pregnancy- for those of you who weren't here when we shared the testimony - and a daughter was born. I never got to see her. Joy just shut down her emotions on it. She had the pregnancy, had the baby and the baby girl, Josephine, was adopted out. In those days the laws were so totally - they just shut down any possibility, any possibility of ever being able to reconnect again and within about a year of that I had repented. I'd come to Christ. My heart had changed and one of the things I had to deal with was the dishonour of my daughter and I came before the Lord and I deeply repented that I had failed to embrace her, to celebrate her, to take responsibility for my mistakes, to actually stand up and give leadership to Joy at that time.

So I repented deeply of that. I repented of any bitterness that was in my heart. I made a commitment before the Lord. I said God, I know you're a God who does miracles so I know one day you will restore our relationship, that one day I'm going to meet this daughter again. So I covenant before You that on that day, whatever position, role or whatever I have in life, I will not deny her existence, dishonour her by rejecting her. I will actually make her welcome and make it public - and I had no idea there was a call of God on my life. I had no idea I'd become a Pastor, no idea that 18 years later I'd be pastoring a church and we ministering and so on and God spoke to us to write a letter in because the law suddenly changed. We were doing a marriage renewal and we'd talked together for the first time about this issue. We'd resolved it between us. We'd got it out into the open. It'd been sitting there defiling our marriage all those years and Joy had judgements against me and I had bitterness in my own heart and we just put it all right, got it out in the open and opened up our hearts to be free.

So what happened then, the law changed so we wrote a letter in and a letter came from her parents at exactly the same time and we were able to start to connect and communicate and suddenly the reality of meeting this daughter become not something that was a way off. It was about to happen and so we just didn't know what to say. It's hard to know what to say, but I was determined in my heart not to dishonour her, so we testified to the church the week before she came and let everyone in the church know of our background, of our failure, of what God had done to restore us and of the great miracle God was doing. So she came and it was just a most amazing time and she started to connect with us because there's now six natural brothers and sisters and we just kept loving her and honouring her and making her known to everyone.

It was a bit funny for a while because people ask how many children have you got and Joy would say six and I would say seven and they'd look at us and - but I had determined I'm not going to disown her again. Joy was still struggling with some aspects of denial and pain over this issue, so anyway as we journeyed with her we watched her make a number of mistakes in her life but we just never judged her. We just loved her and made her welcome and then eventually we were able to give her advice and help her and a couple of years ago I was able to take the service where I married this daughter and there was considerable tension on the Friday night at the practise, because we had already met her family, met her parents, but it was an awkward situation and we had, because we'd loved her and gained her trust, been able to help her in how to set up a service. We talked about the issue of honour and how honour works out and how it looks out and so on and we were able to give her advice what to do.

So she determined she's going to have me take the service and boy, I went home from that practise, I just wept. I said God, this is so hard, I can hardly bare to do this. The tension is so difficult. Show me what to do. How do I break through? So we got to the service and the Lord had given me an insight what to do and we came to the service and of course you've got her family and their friends and our family and our - so you know, then there's other people there as well as their friends and you can feel the tension; this is the natural father. What is he going to say?

The couple - she came down the aisle. It's quite - it's just so unbelievable really that God could do such a thing and the Lord had spoken to me and said do this. He said I want you to honour her parents and so she came down and stood there and we just welcomed everyone, just broke the tension a little bit, but it's still there and I spoke to the parents. I said today I want to honour you for caring for this girl of ours for so long. I want to thank you and honour you for all you've put into her life, the education you gave her, for loving support for her, for standing by her and for being willing to allow us to be a part of this day which is an important day in your lives. So I gave them honour. You know, as I put honour upon them the whole atmosphere just shifted; presence of God came. God loves honour. Its part of the kingdom and you know, the atmosphere changed and there was a tremendous response as we took them through the wedding service.

We went to the reception. I'm thinking God, how's this going to work out here and when we looked out she had set it up so we had the main table and she had a whole lot of round tables and she'd put her parents, natural parents on one side - that's us - and put her adoptive parents just in almost the same positioning. She'd placed honour on both of us. She was not going to have us minimised. Now we had never tried to impose anything on her. We just honoured and valued her like we made the commitment to and in return honour came back and so she spoke and she honoured her adoptive parents first and then she honoured us. People just started to weep. You could feel the presence of God come and her adoptive mother who was not going to speak at all stood up and she began to speak. She began to talk about how grateful she was to this woman she'd never known who'd carried this daughter and had given her up for her. She said there wasn't a year went by when she didn't think of that person and thank them for the gift of the daughter.

The presence of God came into that place. People began to weep and cry, just an amazing touch. Within a year we had a chance to pray for them and they were able to conceive a child and this last year they sat down with us at Easter and said we want to become Christians, can you lead us to the Lord? ... [Applause] ... We baptised them. Honour! Honour! Honour!

So I had dishonoured her. We'd dishonoured her in rejecting her and adopting her, so in that sense we had really grieved and broken her heart and hurt her. But because we chose to honour her she in turn was able to really honour us and she's now part of our family and she's come into faith in Christ, come into eternal destiny. See, honour works. You can't afford to keep bitterness in your heart. You can't afford to keep bitterness in your heart. You can't afford to have those judgements.

You say but it's not fair what happened. Well there's a lot of things in life aren't fair. Why don't you take the injustice to the cross and say God, today I want to extend grace to them. I want to extend grace. Lord, as you give me grace and forgive me, I'm going to extend it to them. I'm no longer going to judge and find fault. I'm just going to find a way to honour them with words, actions. I'll just do what you lead me to do that will demonstrate I have shifted, I've changed and this cycle finishes with me.

Can we close our eyes right now and feel the presence of God here. I sense there's many people here and you've got issues that you've run away from in home and in family. Why don't you just stand up as God has spoken to you, make your way to the front and say God, I want to deal with this issue. I've got anger, I've got hurt, I've got grief, I've got bitterness. I've made judgements against my father and all men. I've made judgements against my mother and all women. I have got these things going on in my heart - I want to put it right tonight. I want to end this cycle of judging and bitterness and dishonour and I want to build honour in my future, so today I'm purposing to open my heart for the grace of God. I'm opening my heart to repent of bitterness and judgements and dishonour and I'm asking you Lord to give me grace to learn how to honour my father and honour my mother.

Maybe your father's died. You can still in your heart honour his memory. You can still thank God for the things he did give to you. For some of you this may be a bit of a journey. You may find that you need to sit down and begin to think of the ways that you have been grieved and had your heart broken, write a letter, express your feelings, play music. Let what's in your heart come out and come to a place where your heart is free and there's just grace there. Say now God, what can I do? Don't look for them to change. Remember, it's quite possible that your parent is like the person with the broken leg that can't run. Just let them be. It's not your job to change them. God just says just honour them. Find a way to value them. Find a way to make them of value in your life and in your heart.

I can feel the presence of God and I feel a lot of grief in hearts. God wants to touch you and help you right now. Just let God help you right now. Begin to think about your father, think about your mother. Begin to let whatever's in your heart come up. I'm going to lead you in a prayer and it's a prayer to repent of judging your parents, finding fault and criticism. It's a prayer to forgive them. It's a prayer to release them. It's a prayer to make a decision: I'll be a man or woman of honour. I'm going to be a person of honour. I'm going to walk in the principle of honour towards my parents. I'll find a way.

You'll be amazed. Maybe for some of you you have to go and apologise and put something right; mum, I haven't been what I've needed to be. I haven't represented God properly to you. I've been dishonouring of you in so many different ways. Will you forgive me? Will you forgive me? It's an important thing to deal with these issues. You say well, but what about all that they did? Hey, it's not about them. It's about you walking with God. It's about you building a legacy of honour and grace and so sometimes we just need to go and say, you know, God has been speaking to me and I realised there's many different ways that I've dishonoured you with my attitude, with my words, with my actions. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me?

You know it's amazing what it does to change a person's heart. I'm so sorry. It must have grieved you that your own child treated you that way. You see you don't know where they've come from. You don't know what they've experienced. You don't know what battles they've faced, but what a joy for your parents to have a child that honours them in spite of their mistakes and failures.

Thank you Lord, we thank you for your presence here right now. Want to just lift our hands to Him and just worship Him. There's a real gentle spirit here. This is a deeply personal thing. Thank you Lord. So you just begin to worship the Lord, begin to just repent in your heart. You know what ways you've dishonoured a father and mother, could be all kinds of ways, all kinds of ways. You've just done things, acted independently, spoken against them, reacted angrily to them, all kinds of ways. Say God, help me today. Help me today. Help me today. Help me today.

Perhaps some of you here, your father has abandoned you. Perhaps your father - marriage broke up and you're still living with the consequences of his irresponsibility. Just bring it to the Lord. Come on, bring it to Him, grieve over it and let it go. Let's just flow in a prayer together. Father in heaven, I come to you. I thank you love me, you have a destiny for me and it included my parents. Lord, today in my heart I confess to you now I've dishonoured my father and mother. I've judged them, found fault with them and harboured anger and unforgiveness in my heart. Lord, I repent. I release forgiveness. I release forgiveness now. I renounce every judgement I have made against my father. I cancel that judgement now. I break the cycle of sowing and reaping. Lord, I renounce every judgement I made against my mother. I renounce it and cancel it now. I break the cycle of sowing and reaping. Lord, I bless my father. I bless my mother. Today I choose to honour them. I give them the gift of honour. It is my gift to them and as I honour them I am honouring you. My life will go well. I will live long and be blessed, in Jesus' name. Thank you Lord. Let's begin to worship Him now.

Authority in the Family

But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)

God showed Adam a big garden, representative of the possibility of inheriting the whole world, if he handled it right.

He said: I want you to dress it, keep it, cultivate it, so it becomes productive - be a watchman over it, guard that garden. You have to cultivate your wife, so she becomes a beautiful woman. Take her out, and buy her something nice, look after her; speak words to her.

Headship is Male (1 of 5)

The source of all power and authority is God, who has entrusted it to 4 specific places on earth: Government, Church, Family, and Individuals. Spiritual authority in the home is Gods design, and a source of releasing power and blessing. Everything God established, the enemy has tried to destroy and curse. Rather than react out of your own opinions or experience, open your heart to God, our creator. See what God calls us to do, acknowledge it, learn how to co-operate with God, and enjoy the results.

Headship and Responsibility (2 of 5)

God has set spiritual laws and natural laws in place - we can't shift them, they are upheld by His power. Our only response is to recognize them and align ourselves with them to flow under His blessing, or resist. Resisting the laws of God (even in ignorance) opens a legal doorway for demonic spirits to gain access to our lives and bring destruction. This teaching will help you become aware of your positioning and help you move forward.

Guard that Garden (3 of 5)

In Genesis 3, God gave man a clear mandate (area of responsibility), with instructions to "dress it" and "keep it". How does this apply today? What does it mean? This session practically unpacks this - how to work it out in marriage? What happens if we don't? What am I responsible for and what am I not responsible for? How does it affect the spirit world? What are the broad principals? Is there room for personal initiative?

Because of the Angels (4 of 5)

The whole reason for divine order in the home is because of the reality of a highly structured spirit world, that recognizes chain of command. No-one should engage spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6) without being properly positioned (Ephesians 5). Modern society rages against divine principles, and has become increasingly demonized, as demons have access wherever God's laws are violated. To regain spiritual authority and blessing, we must come into agreement with God's order. We choose our positioning, the consequences follow.

Loving Leadership (5 of 5)

God never uses His power to get His way in our life, His loving-kindness attracts us to follow Him (Jeremiah 31:3). What does this look like in marriage? This very practical session unpacks 5 principles that will empower your leadership in marriage: Principle of Headship, Principle of Bonding, Principle of Partnership, Principle of Honour, Principle of Loving-kindness.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Headship is Male (1 of 5).mp3

- Headship and Responsibility (2 of 5).mp3

- Guard that Garden (3 of 5).mp3

- Because of the Angels (4 of 5).mp3

- Loving Leadership (5 of 5).mp3

Notes

- Headship is Male (1 of 5)

- Headship and Responsibility (2 of 5)

- Guard that Garden (3 of 5)

- Because of the Angels (4 of 5)

- Loving Leadership (5 of 5)

Headship is Male (1 of 5)

Thu 15 Jul 2010  « Back to Top

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The source of all power and authority is God, who has entrusted it to 4 specific places on earth: Government, Church, Family, and Individuals. Spiritual authority in the home is Gods design, and a source of releasing power and blessing. Everything God established, the enemy has tried to destroy and curse. Rather than react out of your own opinions or experience, open your heart to God, our creator. See what God calls us to do, acknowledge it, learn how to co-operate with God, and enjoy the results.

We've been sharing how to build and draw your marriage into unity, by turning the hearts, one towards another. We found that when hearts are directed towards one another, then there comes a tremendous flow in a marriage. Otherwise if the heart has got barriers, and walls, or defilements in it; you find that no matter what you try, you can't build that sense of unity. We shared a couple of weeks ago, about how people can be free from defilement, and many people were prayed for, and began to acknowledge things that come into their life, previous relationships, defiling thoughts. One of the things that happens so frequently, is that people find that their mind is troubled by memories or pictures, which are very powerful and very vivid. It's important to know what to do with those things.

The first thing is to realise this, is that pictures and memories associated with previous relationships, we need to reject totally any hope of that relationship, any desire for that relationship. We need, within our heart, to totally reject that which we were a part of in the past, which was not right. Without that, you can never be properly free and separated from those things. The second thing is that breaking soul ties, or prayer ministry, can literally break the links in those relationships, and bring a great measure of freedom in the mind. However some people find they still struggle with thoughts and pictures that come back to them, pictures that re-invade the mind, even though they've turned their heart against it, and they've been prayed for.

Let me give you then another key that will just help you, a very, very simple key. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 10, Verse 5, it tells us: we are to bring into captivity every thought into the obedience of Christ. So there's actually something we can do, and that is: take every thought captive; making it a prisoner of war. A prisoner of war is a soldier you captured and disarmed, so it says: thoughts which are ungodly thoughts or pictures, are like enemy soldiers that come against us to hurt us; and we must arise inside, and take them captive, or prisoner of war; and disarm them. Well of course how do you do that? Well it says this, it says: you take the thought captive into the obedience of Christ. There's something Jesus has done, there's an area where Jesus has been obedient; that you and I can take our thoughts, and make them submit to what He has done. Now you say: how do I do that? That's what we really need to know, how do I actually make it work? I can share with you testimony of how it works.

In my life, I have found things that from my past have come up at times; and they've been quite vivid pictures, that have been hard to displace. Whenever they come I used to fight them. Now of course as you fight them, they become more attractive. The sign that says 'don't touch the paint', of course you want to touch it straight away. If I put a box down the back, 'do not open this' it'd be sure to be opened more than a dozen times before the service is over. [Laughter] It's just how it is. When we see the law 'don't do it'; you feel you want to do it. Knowing you're not to do it never gives you any power, it just draws you to get more attracted, makes the sinner alive. So I've found that when you fight negative thoughts, you actually end up empowering them; so I found a very simple way of dealing with it - very powerful, it works very effectively. As the thought comes, I begin to identify the thought, I see it. Then I consciously just take another thought, the cross of Christ. I consciously meditate on the cross of Christ, and superimpose it over the picture that is coming to invade my mind; and hold it there by faith, until what is beyond it, begins to just disappear.

I've found, if I have separated in my heart from all desire for that thing, and it is invading me as an unwanted thing; then if I will just see the thing for what it is, and lift the cross of Christ against it; so I'm looking through the cross at it, believing for that cross of Christ; His obedience to break it's power. I find within a short time I literally - the power of the thing is lost and it goes. Then I just redirect my thoughts somewhere else. But I have found sometimes just trying to redirect your thoughts, the thoughts keep invading, so I have found it very helpful to consciously meditate on the cross of Christ, His obedience on my behalf, and push it upon that troubling picture, until I see the thing vanish and go. I've found it to be very powerful, taking every thought captive, or prisoner of war, into the obedience of Christ; not to my obedience but His obedience. It's very simple. I've found it works, and I'd encourage you to try it if you're struggling. How many people struggle with these thoughts that invade them, they can't seem to get rid of them, they seem to push against them? How many people have experienced that? See, many.

Well I encourage you, over this next week or so, to consciously do that. Instead of fighting the thought, just superimpose a picture of the cross of Christ, believing for that to destroy that image. I literally picture it, disintegrating and fading away, and then its power is broken. I've asked the Lord, over the years, to bring everything up to my mind that has still got resident power; and as it comes up, I bring the cross of Christ, and declare its power broken, and gradually watch it disappear. It's been very helpful - so that's just not my message today but, it'll be helpful because the difficulty is we know what the scripture says, we don't know how to do it.

I want to share with you something else, 1 Corinthians, Chapter 11 and Verse 3. I want to move from where we're going, about building oneness; and I want to take a different tack. Now over the next three or four weeks I want to talk about "headship in the family"; and we're going to talk about God's order and government, and I want to open this area up. As we do it I want you to be very open to let God teach you something. The Bible says: he that has ears to hear, let him hear. Now when we listen to things, many times what happens is, we don't actually deny it; we just quietly lift our thoughts up against it, compare it with what we think, and then quietly go on our own way, and our thoughts remain unchallenged. The Bible calls that "hardening of heart". You can never grow, if you don't let the word of God into you, to transform you. Another reason that we resist being changed, is because when we hear the word of God, it requires something of us. We need to respond, and do something we didn't do before; and many times we just quietly nod our head: oh I wish so and so was here, this was a good message for them; and we don't actually let it get into our own heart.

Now I want to talk over the next few weeks just about Headship in the Family, and some of the areas we're going to touch will rattle your cage a little, and I'm deliberately going to do that. Today's subject is Headship is Male. If you don't like it, I won't change it one little bit. Headship is Male, and we're going to push on this area, because if we get the men thinking right, then I think we can make some major changes. So we're going to focus our attention on the men, but also bring it together. Now I can't in one session answer every question. Clearly there are specific situations, such as: what happens when a couple separates; what happens if there's a single parent situation; what happens if a couple divorce, what happens? We can't answer them all just at the moment, but what I want to do is, rather than look at the exceptions, which seem many; and your particular situation; I want to lay out first of all the principles, because if we build our life around the principles, then we will find our life will begin to start to be empowered by God.

If you want to try and build it into your life - the Bible says: unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build. In other words, you've got a heap of work, then and it doesn't get anywhere. You're frustrated and disappointed how little outcome you've got, but when the Lord builds our marriage - how does the Lord build your marriage or build your relationships? Why this: He lays out principles, He lays out ways of operating; and when I understand those ways, and come into agreement with them, His power's released, and things happen that I don't have to make happen. How many are tired of making your spouse change? [Laughter] Not very many, okay. [Laughter] You're still hardened in commitment to get them to change. You will never get them to change, I can tell you now, not by doing it that way. No, there's another way that we can influence our spouse powerfully, and we need to understand the principles of God in this area.

I want you to have a look with me in 1 Corinthians 11, and if I don't answer all the questions you have, that's quite acceptable. Over two or three Sundays we will actually get into quite a few areas and they will help you. Now if you're a man; how many men have we got here today? We'll get all the men to stand up. [Applause begins] Okay, now this is it - no, don't clap them yet. I want you to say after me, right - is any man sitting down? Grab him by the scruff of the neck and pull him to his feet. [Laughter] Okay, we've got the men. Okay men, I want you to say after me, come on: headship is male. [Headship is male.] Headship is male. [Headship is male.] That means me! [That means me!] Good, okay, sit down. You've just come into agreement with God. Come on, let's give them a clap. [Applause] Then all the sisters pray for them hard, because we're going to get into them over the next two Sundays; get all the men standing up inside, not just standing up on the outside.

But let's read in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 3: I would have you to know, that the head of every man is Christ - that produces a challenge straight away for the men, how you're getting on with God. Are you a man of prayer, or is your wife carrying the prayer? If your wife is carrying all the prayer load - you're irresponsible, and you need to actually get back into the place God has called you to be. The head of every man is Christ - now here it is - the head of the woman is the man. If you didn't get it before, the head of Christ is God. Now in Ephesians 5 verse 23, it says: the husband is the head of the wife. Headship in the home, headship is male. If you are male, you are the head of your wife; and we'll talk about what that means. Now as we begin to go through this, of course the difficulty is, most people today do not recognise headship, or God's order and authority, or there's a tremendous attempt to overthrow it.

We live in days, when people are trying to overthrow all truth, all authority, everything that God has set in place; over this last three decades it has been subtly undermined, through the education system. It has been subtly eroded through society, through media; until now people have got no idea, and there's this sort of thing where we're all equal or whatever. Now there are two extremes, that are a problem here; which we want to identify straight away. They are two complete opposites, and the truth lies somewhere between there; and that's what we want to focus on - what God has to say. Here's one extreme. One extreme is when a male is dominant, and abusive, and oppressive over a woman. This is an evil in God's eyes, and He will deal severely with that person who is like that. Many men are abusive, they are self-centred, they have unresolved conflicts from women in their background; and they misrepresent God, and they misuse and abuse what God has entrusted to them, in relationship to their wives and children.

This area we want to deal with, we're going to look at areas like: headship and responsibility; what the responsibility is; and how you go about doing it. So that is one extreme, the other extreme is when men just give up all their responsibility, as a reaction to avoid God's order altogether. So the extreme on one side is male chauvinism, an attitude that comes from fallen, sinful men, of despising, belittling and hating women, and using or misusing their authority over them. This is godless, it's anti-christ, it produces tremendous spiritual problems in the home, and reaction, and hurt, and bitterness right through the family. But the other extreme has a similar result. It's exactly out at the other end. It's called feminism. It's where women who have been hurt, reject God's way, God's standard; and begin to try and rise up and equalise it, or even reverse it. Both extremes unleash spiritual powers into families, that cause immense harm, and immense destruction. Both, equally, are evils.

Now what we want to understand is, we want to see how God put things together, and how I can co-operate with what God has set in place; because every time I agree with what God says, and I understand what He wants me to do, and I do it, I will get results. Not only that, the Bible, as we'll see in a moment, makes it very clear, that God upholds His order. The way He set things in place is actually sustained by His power; so everything that's out of God's order, you're fighting against the power of God - you'll never win. You can't win if you try and fight against God, it's like trying to overcome gravity by leaping up in the air. You'll just go so far, then you'll fall down, gravity will again master you. You can't get out of the hold of that law. Now I want to just talk before I get into headship is male, I want to look first of all at the order that God has set in place. Look in Colossians 1, and then we'll look in Romans 13.

Colossians 1, I want you to see something that the Bible tells us. God is a God of order. He has constructed the universe clearly in an ordered kind of way. Everywhere you go, you meet God's order. You can't get away from it. You can pretend it's not there, you can pretend there's no God. It won't make any difference; He's still there, it's still ordered; and you will experience the result of ignoring His laws. Verse 16: for by Him - Jesus Christ - were all things created, those that are in heaven, and those on the earth. So He's saying now, there's some things in the realm of the spirit that God has created. They're invisible, you can't see, them but they're there. There's some things in the earth that God has created, they're visible, you see them. He's created them both; and it says here, whether they be visible or invisible - now He talks about what He's created. He's created positions of authority, or areas of influence and responsibility - thrones, dominions, principalities and powers. All of the things were created by Him, and for Him.

So we understand now, that God has created certain realms of authority in the spirit world, which the church and Christian believers are called to arise and to fill. He's created also in the earth, certain structures and forms, and He's put it all together. It says not only that, that He created it, it was created by Him, it was created for Him, and it is upheld by Him; so that in Him, He will have the pre-eminence everywhere. Now when we look at the natural world, we see a thing like the law of gravity. Scientists cannot tell you why the law is there. They can't explain how the law operates. They can only describe the law. They can't really work out how come the thing works, but what they can do is describe what it does; and the Bible tells us that these natural laws are upheld by God's power. God is the power source that keeps it all working. He upholds it all.

In the realm of the spirit there are laws and principles, and the power of God upholds them. You have to understand that, that the power of God upholds the thing. In other words, when I co-operate with it, work with it, the power of God is released in my life. If I try and go against it, it's like pushing water up hill; so I need to understand the order that God has set. Now have a look in Romans 13, and it tells us about authority, whether it be natural, or whether it be in the spirit realm; it's source is the same - Verses 1 and 2: let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be, or the powers that are in place, are ordered by God. Whoever therefore resists the power, resisted something God has put in place; and those that resist, shall receive judgement against themselves.

Now let's just take it through piece by piece. The Bible tells us that there's an order in the human world, and in the realm of the spirit. Everywhere you go, you encounter an authority of some kind; like for example, if I just step off here now, I will encounter an authority, a law that operates, the law of gravity. If I go out on the road, there's road rules. If I break them, I encounter the law. I go and try and put something on the side of my house and build it, I come into a conflict with the authorities in the town. If I try and do various things, I come into conflict, or I find that there are authorities everywhere. Go to the school, I cannot just walk into a school, there are authorities established there. I might have my child in a class, I just can't walk in and interrupt the class, there are authorities there. Everywhere you go, there's order in society; and if that order is violated, or if the boundaries of it are violated, terrible problems take place.

So the Bible tells us, that there is no authority except it comes from God; so that word there 'power' is the word exousia: a legal or delegated right to act or exert power. That word 'power' there means literally, in the original language: something delegated to you, that gives you a legal right to act. So if for example you buy a house, if you go to that house, you can do what you like with it. You can tear it down, you can renovate it, you can paint it, you can change it, you can add to it if you get the right permits, you can all kinds of things. Why can you do that? It's your house, you own it. You've got legal title to it - but if you went into someone else's house, and said: I don't like this house, it's been annoying me for a long time, I think I'll paint it a different colour. Now you would very soon find that now you are moving outside your authority. You're moving into someone else's area of authority, and they would be right to resist you very, very strongly. [Laughter]

You could drive down the road, and you see a car, and you say: oh, I like that car. That's very nice, I've always wanted one like that. You get in and drive it away. After a little while, you get arrested. Why? Because you have violated an authority boundary; it does not belong to you, you have no right to act. But if someone said: here's my car, borrow it, you could drive it and it would be alright - within reason. You understand that? You need to understand: what I am responsible for, I have authority over. What I am responsible for, I have authority. Now God has set in place four authority structures in the earth: one is civil government. This is what it says: all authority comes from God - here it is - all authority comes from God, the powers that be. So whenever you encounter authority, guess whose authority you're encountering? You're encountering [God's] God's authority. Now a lot of people say: Jesus is law; but friend, where the rubber meets the road, is the first time you come into conflict, or encounter an authority, then you'll find out whether He is Lord or not; because to resist, the Bible says: whoever resists the authority, is resisting what God put in place; and God will sort them out.

When you go down the road, and you deliberately and wilfully violate the traffic laws, you are violating the authority of God; and He sends someone along to sort you out. [Laughs] You get a ticket, or a picture, smiley picture. [Laughter] There was always disagreement in our home over who was the one entitled to the picture. [Laughter] We would always get the picture, and then when it came, we'd put it on prominent display, so the criminal could be seen - pay the fine. So it tells us here four distinct structures, so one is government; and the Bible tells us that government has a certain role in society. It has some things it's given responsibility to do, to fulfil what God wants. As soon as it steps over that, it becomes oppressive, invasive, and we have a right then to resist. Understand that? Of course you pay the price if you do, but you still have a legal right to; and for example in the New Testament, we find that the apostles were gathered up before the religious leaders, who were also political leaders in their time.

They said: don't preach about Jesus; and they spoke with a respectful attitude: well you can decide what you wish in this matter, but Jesus has clearly commanded us to take the gospel to nations, and we will continue to preach in His name. So a clear command in the Bible given to them could not be violated by authority over them. Authority has very strict limits on what it can do. The second area is the area of the church. Now the church is an authority structure God has set up; and it's not just a bunch of people, all equal in God's eyes. Each one is of equal value, you have to understand that. We have equal value, but we have different roles; and there is authority related to the responsibilities that God has given. Also there are areas in the family. The family is an authority structure God has set up. God ordered it, God set it in place. Guess what? God's power backs it.

Whatever God set in place He stands behind it, His power; now you want to get the power of God released, you've got to find out how God ordered it, and then play your part in that order; and the power of God is released. A lot of people are striving and struggling to make things happen, because they don't understand how to align themselves with God's order, and then see and experience His power being released. So they're trying in their own effort to make something happen, instead of enjoying see the power of God flow, because they've aligned themselves, and just did what God said to do. We'll talk about what those things are. Finally, there's the authority of the individual. Every one of us has got personal authority. How do you know that? Because you have your own life you're responsible for; and therefore if you have your own life, you're responsible for, you have authority over your own life, you are directly accountable to God. You'll give account to God, not to me.

So we understand that there are four principle authority structures God has set in place. Every one has something God told it to do. It is to function in a certain way, so God's order can be developed and built in the earth. When we pray: thy kingdom come, thy will be done - it happens through the structures God's set in place. God is an ordered God. You stay on the earth because He set a law of gravity in place, otherwise you'd fly off the earth. Everything in creation, natural and spiritual, is ordered. Now spiritual powers, the powers of darkness, are extremely limited in what they can do. They are limited in where they can operate. You know where they can operate? They can only operate outside the law of God, where it's dark; so their mode of operation is this: firstly they recognise authority structures, which God has set up. A couple goes and forms a new family, then the spirit world recognises: there's a new headship, there's a new unit, there's a new person in charge - the husband, the man. The Bible says it: the man is the head.

The spirit realm will try then, to get that man either to: abuse what God has given Him; or to neglect what God has given him. Every authority structure that's set up, the spirit world must recognise it; so what we do on the earth - for example if on the earth, I acknowledge Jesus Christ is Lord, a new authority structure is set up in my life, and demons must acknowledge it. So what I do on the earth can cause things to happen in the spirit world. Now we understand that many of the problems that people have, is because of ignorance of the spirit world, and how it operates; so we just go our merry way doing our merry thing thinking it's right: well that was how I was brought up, I can't see what's wrong with that - and we have no power of God released. We've got tremendous demonic infestations in marriages, and families, and personal lives.

Now this is what the Bible says. It says: ley every soul; how many are excluded under that? How many are excluded? [None.] That's every one of us - let every soul. It doesn't even talk about Christians there. Every soul is, every soul who's subject to the higher powers. That word 'higher' is literally one that has got a higher level, an increased authority; so in other words, every one of us, in our life, needs to discover where we fit in the piece of things. It says: let every soul be subject. That word 'subject' is a military term, it means to subordinate, or literally this: recognise your rank, and where you fit in the big picture, and acknowledge those who are over you in the right kind of way. For example, if I am a sergeant I look down, I am a sergeant. That means I've got to salute the captain, and the major, and the general, and I get commands that come this way. However, I've got people under me. I've got the corporal, and the lance corporal, and the privates; and they all look up, and they give me a salute. Do you understand that there is a chain of command?

Now God will not violate His chain of command. You are directly responsible to God. The church is responsible to God. The family, the head of the family is responsible to God, and the government is responsible to God. Any time they start to go over their boundary lines; church cannot interfere within family, family cannot interfere with individuals, government cannot interfere with the church or family. When they do, great problems occur. Now let's just pick up the headship of the family, the man, and I'll just give you a couple of key points, then we'll finish here. So this is what the Bible tells us. Go back to 1 Corinthians 11 again, and we'll see why it is, that the husband is the head. Is it because he looks better? [Yes.] Is it because he's smarter? [Laughter] See, we have to tear down these wrong concepts. [Laughter] Is it because he's more gifted? We've got some real male chauvinism here, I can see. [Laughter] Alright ladies, just come next week, and bring them along next week, because we'll be going into it a bit there.

Is it because men are superior? [Laughter] I see we've got a lot of repentance to come. [Laughter] Here it is, this is what the Bible says. It says this is why. It says - Verse 4 - gives four reasons why the man is the head, and they all point to one single reason. Here it is, number one, here's the first one. Now He's quoting the Old Testament, and He's saying here: the man is the image, and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. In other words, He's saying: God has made the man to reflect what He is like, in his government and leadership in the home; and the woman reflects what the man is like, in his government and leadership of the home. If the woman is depressed, defeated, down, neglected, rejected, looks plumb ugly => he has done a very poor job. [Laughter, applause] Blame him!

So when we want to see how the man is really doing in his leadership, you don't look at him, you look at his wife. Does she look beautiful and radiant? Is she lifted up, because of his love, and his service, his honour and his value, his esteem, and his laying his life down for her? Or does she look as though she has to run around and do everything, she's burdened? [Laughter] You can tell whether he's doing his job or not. I think you're already getting the picture: love; and they're missing the mark altogether. Here it is, macho male, independent male, this kind of thing that's in our culture. We've got to get rid of that, and understand what it means to be the head. Okay, here it is, so the first thing is: the man is the image of God; but the woman's the glory of the man. Here it is, second reason: the man didn't come from the woman; but the woman came from the man. That's why the man is the head, because why? He is the one who God first made. Sorry, we can't change it, God made it that way.

He made a man, and then said: he needs a woman; so he took part of him out. So the woman came out from the man, that's why the man is head. The man is the head, because he's the glory of God; and the woman is his glory. The man is the head, because he came first, and the woman came second. I can't help that, it's just how it happened. It's how the Bible says it. Come on now, it'll get better. [Laughter] Now look at this. Come on now - neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman was created for the man. That's why the man is the head. She was not created to run her own life, and have an independent life from his; she was created to be a helper for him. [Laughter] I know you're not going to like some of this stuff, but you've got to get the truth of God's word.

See, this is the danger, is we'll go on in what we've been used to, and won't change; but if you can let God's word change your thinking. Today, an independent lifestyle is cultivated. You get two people together, haven't got a marriage, they just learn how to live together, but they haven't learnt for her to bring her goals in life around so they are in harmony with his, and they work as a team. The woman was created for the man. That's why the man is the head. That's what the Bible's telling us here. Oh, I can see some of you are getting upset already. Remember we've got several weeks to work on this stuff. I'm sure our thinking will come around. Now here's the other reason, here's another one. Verse 10: now for this cause, ought the woman to have a covering on her head, as a sign she's under the power of her husband; because of the angels, or the spirit world.

Now here's the other reason. This is why the husband's the head. This is why the woman needs to recognise it: because of the spirit world. Now a lot of women think: because they've been hurt, they can get away with all kinds of things. What you don't understand is, that's exactly what the spirit world wants you to think, in fact it came from there. It's a demonised idea, to bring you out of God's plan for your life, so the oppression can continue, and the bondage can continue in your life. That's what the Bible says: the husband is the head of the wife. Now I'll just explain in a moment what that means, and then we'll finish and develop it more next week. Here's the good part. You notice here it says: having stated God's order - He's making a statement. He's just saying see the sky? It's blue. See the man? He's the head. You can't make it be any different. Its how God set it up. God said: let there be blue sky, there's blue sky. God said: let the man be the head, he's the head.

Now he never has to try to be the head. It just is. It just is that way. The Bible isn't saying: he's got to try and become something; the Bible just says: that's how God said it to be. You either agree with it, or disagree with it. You either co-operate with it, or you rebel against it; but you can't change it. It's like saying gravity is gravity, there it is, you can't do anything about it. So the husband cannot make himself the head of the home, he is already. All that is needed, is that both he and his wife recognise it, and learn how to work with it. If he tries - well I've been to a men's convention, I'm going be the head of the home - he will mess it up very, very bad. She'll say: is that right! [Laughter] It won't work. No, I won't go there. [Laughs] It won't work. It won't work. You've got to realise, we either agree with what God has said; now headship is male. The man is the head of the woman. It doesn't say he's the head of the home, it says: he's the head of the woman. It has to do with the relationship. What it means is, her life comes into harmony with his goals and purpose in life. That's why it says: Christ is the head of the man. He better be listening to God, so he's going in the right direction; not causing the one who's following his leadership, to feel grieved, burdened and oppressed.

Headship - let me just describe it. Headship is a position of authority. Men, God has given you a position of authority. You need to learn how to exercise it, and you can stop demon attacks on your whole family. Secondly, headship is a position of responsibility. Men, because you are the head, you have a greater responsibility in the home, than your wife. You better not neglect it, because God requires more of those, to whom much has been given. When the day comes to sort it all out, God will look to the man, He says: because you're in charge, the buck stops with you. If it ain't going well, you're the one I want to talk to.

If something's going wrong in a business, you don't go talking to the guy on the front desk. You go to the manager. When a firm is not going well and gets taken over, guess who they get rid of? The manager. In a home that's not going right, the one who needs to take the rap, and take the ownership, is the man. He's got to be responsible. Headship is a position of authority. Headship is a position of responsibility. Headship is a role of leadership, in relationship to his wife. It's a role of leadership. There needs to be a leader. Although you work as a team in partnership with one another, the man is called to give leadership in the home. We have a nation without leadership, we have homes without leadership, we have families without leadership. It's no wonder it's in such a mess. It's because we have men who do not know their role, or are unwilling to stand up, and fulfil the responsibility God has given to you.

That is why our nation's in such a mess. That is why there are so many people in jail, so many drug addicts, so many problems. It is because, the heads of the home, are not in place. The heads are not functioning like they ought to. Finally understand this: that headship is male; simple as that. Now what God calls us to do, is acknowledge it, and learn how to function in it. God calls wives to recognise the role God has called your man to; and instead of criticising him, uphold him and lift him up in your prayers, that God would give him the wisdom to fulfil a role, he probably feels inadequate, and certainly not prepared to fulfil.

Men, your wife should not be the key prayer in the family. You are called to be. How could Christ be your head? How could you say that He is head, the leader, the ruler over you; and you don't even talk to Him, and listen to any instruction? How unsafe it is, for all of those under you. Now you don't need to have a dramatic prayer life, or you don't need to actually have some great spiritual thing. You can be a very practical person who has a regular prayer life, and God will give you wisdom. In fact what I've discovered, God so honours this principle of headship, even an unsaved man will be given by God, wisdom for his family to protect them. Now we'll touch on that a little bit later. There's situations where the husband is unsaved, or the husband is struggling in his own Christian life, or the husband is not there at all; these are difficult situations, but God will give us wisdom how to handle it.

Next week I want to talk about headship and responsibility. I want to talk what this means to the man, what it means you are called to do, what it is God gave you to do; and if you don't do it, there is a hole in the spirit realm, the demons come through. There's a gap in the umbrella; and your family, your wife, your children and loved ones, all are subject to difficulties and pressure. Friends, God wants us to accept this order, and come into harmony with it. Why don't we just bow our heads right now. I don't want you to be condemned, or feel guilty. If you're reacting to what I'm saying, there's some hurt, there's some unresolved concepts in your mind, that need to be worked out. I encourage you to stay open.

Father, I pray that every man in this place; and every person, every male, that hears the tapes of this message, will be challenged to come before You and fulfil the responsibilities you've given us; that we might sense in our heart our fulfilment as a man, by being exactly what You wanted us to be. I pray for every man here, that you'll help us break out of the intimidation, of feeling inadequate, and the resistance to assuming responsibility; and that men in this church will arise and stand up, and be all the leaders that You've called us to be.

Father, I pray for every woman in this place, particularly those who have suffered hurt, and heartache, and pain, because of abuse and neglect, and abandonment by a self-centred husband. I pray that they will arise, they will obtain Your grace to break out of those limiting hurts and wounds; and that Lord, You will bring them to recognise Your order in the home; that they would stand up and support Your order, and Lord, find the freedom and security that they've never known, that comes out of being in the order God called us to be.

Father, I just pray for any person here today, that has never come to know Jesus Christ; that Lord today You put it in their heart, I want to become a Christian. Everyone said: [Amen.] Amen. If you've brought someone with you today that doesn't know Jesus, talk with them quietly and ask them if they'd like to know the Lord; invite them to come up and I'll talk with them, and share with them, and pray with them, to become a Christian.

May the Lord bless you. I encourage you to think about and meditate on what I've shared. I'll give you some more next week and the week after. Let's get our thinking around what God wants us to be. If you're a single person this will help you. Single people, let me just say this, before I finish. Today the trend is for single people to leave home. When you leave home, you come out from under authority, and you're in a very vulnerable position and place. I have many young people come to me, and they're: oh, I believe so and so is the right person for me. I think this is just the most wonderful man, wonderful person, whatever. I ask one question, and you see all the stars go out: what does your father think of this relationship? You'd be amazed how many don't want to talk about it; and that tells me immediately, they're out of the order, and the blessing, and the protection that God could give them. We need to talk into these areas. We need to understand, there is a hostile spirit world, committed to destroying you; and God has provided roles and functions and connections. We find our place in those. When we play our part in them there is an immense security, and protection from demonic attack, comes.

I believe that God going to; whether you're single, whether you're a parent, whether you're a solo parent; God is going to challenge you over these next few weeks. Be open to it, and let God re-order your ways. These are some of the most important concepts you could ever learn in your life. When you understand authority; and begin instead of reacting, rebelling and fearing it, find your place in it; you will exercise great authority over demon powers. You will see the power of God released around your life, in a way you've never known before; and you'll find the security inside, and a confidence: God will help me through every situation. Who wants that kind of thing to happen in their life?

Summary Notes

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HEADSHIP IS MALE

1. DO YOU HAVE EARS TO HEAR?

· Mk.4:23-24 If any man has ears to hear … more shall be given.

· The Word of God is like a seed - it grows within and has power to change your life.

· You must receive and respond (yield) to the Word of God for it to benefit you.

· There is much confusion and emotion about issues of authority, government, submission.

· God’s Word sets out clearly the principles of authority and how we are to respond to it.

· Rejection of truth is not always open - often it is a quiet resistance and holding your own thoughts.

· Clinging to your own thoughts that resist God’s truth make you unable to hear.

· You must overcome the tendency to reject what you don’t want to hear.

· When you accept, embrace and agree to act on God’s Word - the power of God is released.

2. THE MAN IS THE HEAD OF THE WOMAN

· 1 Cor. 11:3 The head of every man is Christ - the head of the woman is the man.

· Eph. 5:23 The husband is the head of the wife - as Christ is the head of the church.

· Questions arise: What is headship? How is this applied? What about …?

a) The Problem Of Extreme

· There are two equal but opposite extremes or errors related to this verse:

i) Domination and oppression of women.

ii) Denying or opposing the truth of headship.

· Prayer understanding and applying this truth releases God’s power and blessing.

b) God is a God of Order

· Col. 1:16 - 18 …visible and invisible…

· God has constructed the universe to operate according to laws and principles.

· God upholds or sustains these laws with His power.

· The natural world operates according to laws and principles e.g. gravity, sowing and reaping.

· The Spirit world operates according to laws and principles.

· God has set authority structures in place in the natural world and in the spirit world.

· All spirit beings (angels and demons) are required to recognise these structures.

c) Authority originates from God

Ro. 13:1-2 Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, there is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordered by God.

· Power = exousia = legal or lawful right to act, delegated right to act.

· Higher = one positioned above another or at a higher level.

· The source of authority is God himself.

· God has established four distinct authority structures in the earth. All exist by God’s design to fulfill a purpose He has planned.

i) Government (1Pet. 2:13-14) - this includes various levels of local authority.

ii) The Church (Heb. 13:17) - This includes leadership and various ministries.

iii) The Family (1 Cor. 11:3) - this involves authority of both husband and wife.

iv) The Individual (Ro. 14:12) - this includes various gifts and talents entrusted.

· Each of these authority structures have clear God given responsibilities.

· They also have boundaries or limits beyond which they have no authority to act.

· Each of these authority structures is recognised in the spirit realm and upheld by God.

· The violation of one authority or the boundaries of another unleashes evil spiritual forces.

Note: The word of God states our responsibilities in relating to authority:

i) “Every Soul” - God’s laws of authority apply to every individual.

ii) “Subject” - 5293 = Hupotasso = subordinate; arrange and position self underneath i.e. we are responsible to recognise and position ourselves into right relationship and attitude.

iii) “Whoever resists” = 498 = Antitassomau = to arrange and position oneself against.

§ Whenever a person positions themselves to resist or oppose God’s ordered authority they are resisting what God has set in place and are resisting God himself.

§ God requires that we position ourselves with right attitude to this authority whether it is directed or delegated.

§ Authorities themselves are accountable to God directly.

d) Headship is a Role Relationship

1Cor 11:3 “Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman”

§ The Bible simply states the relationships that exist e.g. The sky is blue.

§ The Bible does not tell us to force this relationship into being – it reports the fact.

§ God has established the order or role of the man in relationship to the woman.

§ The order is unbreakable – either flow with it or rebel against it.

§ The man does not have to try to become the head (results in a mess!)

§ The man is the head of the woman i.e. he has a role in the relationship.

§ Gods plan is for the woman’s work and home management to be bought into line and harmony with the direction and course the husband is going (“help meet”)

e) Headship is Part of Gods Design in Creation

1Cor 11:7 – 10

i) Wrong concepts

· Women are inferior (male chauvinism) - godly women extremely capable (Prov. 31).

· Women are less spiritually gifted - men and women both gifted (Gal. 3:28).

· Women are less valuable - each person is of equal value.

· Society male dominated in the bible - this is not the reason for headship.

ii) God created “Headship is Male” 1 Cor. 11:7-10

· Man is the head because God created it that way in the beginning.

· God gave man clear responsibilities and authority in relation to his wife and family.

· Greater authority - greater responsibilities - greater accountability.

· The spirit realm recognises the authority structures God has set in place.

iii) What Headship is:

· It is a position of spiritual authority.

· It is a position of responsibility

· It is a role of leadership in relationship.

· It is a manifestation of the headship of Christ.

Response: Recognise and embrace.

Headship and Responsibility (2 of 5)

Fri 16 Jul 2010  « Back to Top

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God has set spiritual laws and natural laws in place - we can't shift them, they are upheld by His power. Our only response is to recognize them and align ourselves with them to flow under His blessing, or resist. Resisting the laws of God (even in ignorance) opens a legal doorway for demonic spirits to gain access to our lives and bring destruction. This teaching will help you become aware of your positioning and help you move forward.

Romans 13: Let every soul be subject to the hard delegated authorities, for there is no authority but of God, He's the source of it. The powers that be, or the authorities that God has set in place, they are ordered or set in place by God; so whoever resists the authority, resists what God has ordered; and those who resist, receive for themselves His judgement. For rulers, or those in authority, are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Are you afraid of authority? Do what is good, and you'll have the praise of the same; for he is the minister of God to you, for good. But if you do that which is evil, you have every reason to be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the minister of God, to bring and to execute God's judgement upon all that do evil.

Father, I'm asking that you'd bring divine order into homes and families, particularly today that you'd open our hearts to understanding of Your government, Your order; and You'd cause a willingness to come into our hearts to respond to it, in Jesus' name. Everyone said [Amen.] Amen.

Let every soul be subject to higher powers. The Bible makes it very clear, that every one of us has a choice, how we will respond to authority. The Bible tells us that the powers that be, whatever that means, are ordained or set or ordered by God. Now everyone loves to come to God like a great Santa Claus, and to receive blessing from Him; but God wants us to actually understand that He has set things in order in the spirit world, that operates by principle. The natural world operates by principles and laws, and God upholds what He has set in place. He's created an order in it all, and so the Bible tells us this. It says that the powers that be, or authorities - that word there is a lawful authority, or someone who has been delegated a legal right to exert power or influence. The Bible tells us, that wherever we go in life, we will encounter authority. We encounter it in the physical realm and the natural laws. You cannot change those laws, you just accept that they're there and work with them.

If you are driving a car fast, and you slam on the brakes, everything unattached will fly forward. You can't stop that. You just understand it happens. It's called the law of inertia. It's a law, God set it in place. If you step off that decking there, what will happen is, you'll fall down - the law of gravity operates. So in the spirit world, there are laws as well; and the Bible tells us that God has set some things in order. He says there are some authorities that God has established. An authority is someone with a lawful right to act, because they're given responsibility. Authority and responsibility always go hand in hand, so when God gives someone responsibility, He says: you've got the right to act. If it's not your responsibility, you've got no right to act. If that's your house, you've got the authority to change the colour of it; if it's not your house, you've got to leave it alone, you can't go painting. It's as simple as that. If that's your car, you've got the authority to run it the way you like. If that's not your car, you keep your hands off it and leave it, it's not your right to do that.

So wherever you have responsibility, authority is closely attached. Authority is the legal, or lawful, right to be able to act, or exert power, or to run something. So the Bible tells us there are higher authorities. There are some that are different levels, they have a greater level of responsibility. You have lesser responsibility, lesser authority; greater responsibility, greater authority; and the Bible tells us where the source of that is. The source of it is God, and it tells us how we are to respond, whenever we encounter this. You're going to encounter it everywhere you go in life. You go out on the roads, you'll encounter authority. You go into the tax department, you'll encounter authority. You get your rates demand, you're encountering authority. It may not all be good in the way it's done, or run, or we may disagree with how it operates, however the Bible says we're going to encounter it, and it's there to bring order into society. We found when we looked last week, there were four authority structures God has set up, that affect us directly. One is the authority of government. Government is given certain responsibilities, given certain authority. If it goes beyond its responsibilities, it becomes oppressive.

We found also that God has set up the church. The church is given certain responsibilities, concerning the salvation of souls, and exerting influence in the spirit dimension, and touching the hearts and lives of people; so God gives us authority to do that job. The church is the only body of people that has authority over demons. Church is the only body of people that can deal with spiritual forces and influences. The Bible tells us also that there is set up the family. In the family there is a divine order, which we're looking at in this part of the series we're doing, and we found that in the family there is a certain authority structure that God has set in place, all related to the responsibilities. Then finally there is the individual; you have responsibility for your life. You can choose to spend a life serving God, you can choose to spend a life serving the devil, you can choose to spend a life serving yourself. You have authority to do that.

God has given you responsibility for your life, therefore you have authority for your life as well. You can choose what you do with it. You can misuse your life, you can use it well. You can invest your life so it serves God; you can invest your life so you cause great havoc to the cause of godliness in the earth. You choose. You have authority because you have responsibility - but everyone gives account one day, everyone, no exceptions. Romans 14 tells us: every one of us, no one excepted, will one day give account of their life, and what they did, before the source of that authority. So if you've been given a lot of authority, you'll be required to give more account. If you have less, then you'll have less to give account for. It just works quite simply and quite straight forward. Now the Bible tells us: let every soul; turn to someone and say: that means you, talking about you right now. Let every soul be subject to the higher power; and then it says: for whoever resists the authority, resists what God has set in place.

Now you have two choices whenever you face an authority. You have a choice of resisting, or a choice of subjecting yourself, it's as simple as that. So we've got the first one, resisting. Whoever resists - that word is an interesting word in the original language. It means like this: it means to put yourself in a position, where you are opposed to, or against, that authority. So it says: if you put yourself in a position, where you are opposed to, or resisting, or standing against, what God has set in place - you are opposing God, simple as that. Whoever resists the authority, resists what God has set in place. Now of course, some authorities misuse and abuse their authority. You have to confront them. Sometimes you have to withdraw from them, for your own safety. There are situations, and the Bible says that. Jesus said: if they persecute you, flee to another city; so you don't have to stay. When you're being persecuted, you can get out of it. Not only that, sometimes we need to set a strong boundary where there's oppressive leadership, in order that we can be saved, or safe, from being hurt or wounded in some kind of way.

So we have to understand that God has got some safeguards around this area, but remember we're just trying to find what the principle is, before we go looking at all the exceptions, and the misuses. So those who resist the authority find themselves fighting against God; now why is it that people resist? Basically, it's one of usually three reasons: one, they're ignorant of what God has set in place, and because we're ignorant, we just fight against it. As soon as we use the word authority or submission, people have got great emotions rise up. Most people have very negative emotions. They have negative feelings, because they've never understood God's proper use of authority, how it works for protection and blessing and good; and the experiences they've had with people with authority, have been very negative and painful and hurtful. So whenever the word authority comes up, then we have negative feelings about this. Whenever the word submission comes up, we have negative feelings about that; and we're going to try and take away some of those things during this session, to help you understand that authority, rightly used, is for your blessing, benefit and to build you up, never to destroy you. That's how God has designed it.

God's power is used to uphold things for our benefit, not to hurt us. All good things come from God. The Bible says you meet a person in authority, they are God's minister, on His behalf, for your good, not for your evil. So when God has a thinking, or He's thinking about authority, He's thinking about how He can have order, and release blessings upon people; and we'll see that rightfully used, any person who carries responsibility and has authority has ability to release blessing into that area he's responsible for, if he knows what to do, and how to do it. Men have a unique capacity to release the power and blessing of God into their marriages and family. They also have a unique ability to destroy and mess it up, so one reason that people resist God's authority, or resist God's ordering, is because of ignorance. If we don't know what God expects, then we will find ourselves standing against Him in some kind of way. Now you can be a Christian, you can pray to God, and still never experience the blessing of God in your life, because you actually, inside yourself, are resisting and fighting against the order of God.

So for example, now I'm not going to go here too far, but I just want to throw something out. When we think of giving, most people's concept, immediately, is one of resistance. They think someone's trying to take money away - there it is, the church is trying to get my money. But that's not the concept at all. You see the Bible teaches that we sow, and then we reap; so when you give, or sow, in faith, you are positioning yourself in harmony with God's purpose, so the blessing of God can be released. When you give reluctantly, or don't give at all, you're positioning yourself against God's way of blessing you, simple as that; then you can complain all you like, how come they're blessed and I'm not blessed? You've got to position yourself, so you can flow with the release of God's power. Whenever a person positions themself in harmony with God's order, they find the power of God will uphold them, and bring blessing and benefit far beyond what they could achieve themselves. That's why we want to get in the place where you get blessed.

The second reason people resist the order of God, is just by neglect. The person just fails to do what they know to do. This is one of the most common problems that is faced in marriages, and in families ,and throughout society - people neglect the responsibility. Today the cry is: what rights and privileges; everyone wants their rights, kiddie's rights, women's rights, this rights, that's rights, but the Bible speaks about responsibilities before it speaks about rights and privileges. Rights and privileges go with responsibilities. When you are responsible - every parent knows this - this is the big beef they have with their teenagers. As you show more responsibility, you get more privilege, you know that they go together. If you are irresponsible, you lose your privileges. This is how life works. Even life itself teaches you that principle, for example when a child is born, they have no responsibility for feeding themselves, for cleaning themselves, for anything. They have no privileges either. They just are there, are someone's looking after them.

As they grew they learn to feed themselves. As they become more adult - adult means taking on more responsibility, they get more privileges. But if, as an adult, you break the law and lack responsibility, you lose your privileges, you're in a room, you're locked up, you can't even say when the light goes off. You lose all your privileges. Privileges and responsibility go hand in hand, so one of the reasons that people find themselves resisting, or positioning against, God, is by neglect. This is the most common one in our society today and the third is basically our thinking's wrong, we don't think the right way about God's order. We've got our own thoughts, thank you very much, and we'll follow with what we're used to. We find ourselves in our thinking resisting God. I want to just turn that around, and we want to begin to find ourselves positioning ourselves, so we can come into blessing with God. It's so hard to make it all work without God's blessing. God wants to bring favour, blessing, help, grace, make it easy; so you put a little in, and get a heap out.

The Bible says: unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain; you put a lot of sweat in, you don't get much result. How many know that's hard yakka, when you put a lot of work in, and get little results? It's true, so God wants us to flow in the principles of His blessing, and that comes firstly through relationship with Christ. When a person connects with Jesus Christ, receives Jesus Christ as their saviour, becomes connected and joined to God through a personal relationship with Christ, they are positioned where they can come to blessing. However, there is something else needed, and that is that we have to bring our life into harmony, or co-operation, or agreement with God, so that His blessing can flow. In other words, you can say all you like you're a Christian, but if you position yourself against what God has set in place, you're pushing water up hill. It won't work, and so you can't just pray for God to bless you, unless you're willing to bring your life into harmony with His way of doing things. That make sense?

So we can choose to resist, or stand against, what God has set in place; or we can choose to submit, or subject, ourselves to that. Now let's look at that word there. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, that's every Christian. You notice now, in that passage, it's not talking about men; it's talking about men and women, both, every person. Every one of us must learn to recognise the position that God has given to Jesus Christ, and bring ourself into harmony. It's your choice. You can either co-operate, and receive the blessing of God; you can position yourself against it, and you miss out; it's as simple as that. It's not as if God sort of is personally favouring this one, personally doesn't like this one. It's nothing to do with that. It's just, both people love the Lord, but those that actually bring their life into harmony with Him, find the release of blessings, it's very simple. So what does it mean to subject? The word to subject yourself means literally this, it's a similar kind of word to the one before. The other one was 'position yourself against', this one is: 'position yourself beneath'; so it says: you do it yourself. You position yourself in a place, where you recognise what authority God has put over you.

Now that's a choice every person must make. The first time you ever do that, is when you recognise who Jesus Christ is, that He died on the cross, that He loves you, and that one day you'll give account to Him. When you subject yourself to the word of God, then you become born again, the power of God is released to your life. Every time you subject to the word, and order of God, the power of God is released. So the start point for our walk with God is recognising who Jesus is, and submitting to that. Now the word subject means literally this: it describes an order in a relationship. It does not mean that one is more superior to the other. It does not mean one is inferior to the other. It is actually: this is how you put it together; and it's put together like this, in order that as a team, you can accomplish a purpose. That's what it's about. This one subjects to the leadership and direction of the other one, so together they can accomplish a great purpose. That's what 'subjecting yourself' is about. It's about team work. It's about knowing where you fit. It's about accepting your placement in God's purpose and structure of things, and out of being an equal person, you take your role; and your role is, you look to the one above you, for leadership and direction. That's how it works.

So when the Bible is talking about this, it has in mind team work; and I'm going to show you the illustration of this in a moment, very powerful illustration. Now to be subject, you can be obedient without being subject, but you can never be subject without obedience being a part of it. Why? Because I can do what you want me to do, but inside I'm saying: no way, no way! I'm going to go slow, reluctant resistance. If I'm subject, I actually recognise the right that you have to give leadership direction, and I co-operate with it. So to be subject means these kinds of things. It means to have respect, or to honour, or to value the role that person has in my life. It means to listen to their directions in my life. It means to co-operate with them, in the purpose they have, which is God's purpose for me.

So when the Bible tells me to be 'subject' to those over me, it means I should have an attitude of respect and honour, because God has placed them in that role, and I'm in a lesser role, a different role, less responsibility. Two, I am to be open to the direction and correction in my life, because God gives them a bigger perspective than I have; and three, we work together to accomplish common things. That's how it works. That's God's order. Now God's order absolutely works wonderfully, and I'm going to give you an example of it in a moment. I want you to have a look with me in 1 Corinthians 11:3.

Now these kinds of things create a lot of antagonism, to talk this way, because people either: neglect authority; abuse authority; or try to reason it all away. I want you just to have a look in this scripture here, in 1 Corinthians 11:3. I want you to know, that the head of every man is Christ; the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Now how many people are described in there? There is God, Christ, the man, and the woman. How many of them are given a position or a rank as being head? How many out of the four? Three. Have you noted that, three? So the Bible tells us: God is the head of Christ. He's talking about a whole lot of relationships here, and how God has ordered them so that it works. The one at the top is God, the Father; and He says: He is the head of Christ, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now is Jesus Christ any less of a person, or any less value, than the father? No. The Bible says: these three are one. They're equal in value. They work and flow as a team.

However, Jesus Christ submits Himself to the Father's purpose. He said: the man, Christ is the head of the man. Now the only way that Christ can be the head of the man, is if the man acknowledges it, and it begins to outwork; so a person who comes to Christ, acknowledges Christ is my source of life, He is the one who gives direction, He is the one who has rightful authority over my life; he submits to that, and it becomes effective in his life. Finally, it says: the man is the head of the woman.

I want you to see, this is actually an order in relationships. Now I want to just show you how well it works, because it describes who has the leadership role, and who has the follower-ship role. Now I want to ask you this question, before we look at this, and you'll see how wonderfully God has intended that this works; and how it only works if we actually submit ourselves to the Lord, and allow His spirit to fill us. I want to show you how it works. Let me ask you this question first of all: Who is the one man, that was born into this world, that has been honoured by God, above every other man or person ever born? Who was that person? Jesus Christ. You know that. The Bible says: He has been exalted, or lifted up, and given the name above every other name, far above every principality and power; that at the name of Jesus Christ - everyone shall bow, everyone acknowledge Him. Now is that a high place or what! Is that about as high as you can get or what? How did He get there? How did He get there? You see, when He came out of heaven, He left it all behind. He left all His authority, all His power, all His glory, all His majesty, all His influence behind, and He left it, and He was just born like a helpless baby in the earth.

Now here's how headship and followership works as far as God has designed it. God's heart, and God's desire, and God's plan, is that Jesus should be raised up, and have a higher place of honour, and value, and esteem, and share in the rulership over all that God has created. That's His plan. That's His desire, and Jesus submitted to that. The Bible says, of Jesus: I am the Father of One, I'm One, We're One, I'm One with His purpose. I never get out of agreement with Him. The second thing He says: I've got no independent agendas. Whatever the Father shows to Me, He wants Me to do, I do it. In Jesus' life on the earth, there was a total oneness of relationship; and out of that, a total co-operation with the Father. He said: I don't ever start anything off My own back, just like in a marriage relationship, husband and wife, I'm submitted to whatever the Father's purpose is. The Bible says that's how God has ordered it.

Now, Jesus became obedient or submitted Himself to the Father's plan; having a trust and confidence that God, the Father, had the very best plan for Him. When He did, when He co-operated, and laid His life down in service, loving service, God has lifted Him up and given Him a higher place. It was always part of the plan of God, that Jesus would be elevated to the highest place. He just called on Him, to submit to His way of getting there. Now He had two choices of how to get there. The devil offered Him the other choice: you fall down and worship me, I'll get You there right away. You can exalt Yourself. You can compromise. You can just go Your own way. You can either lift yourself up, or let God lift you up; but let God lift you up, it'll take you to the cross. You don't want that, that's painful. It doesn't sound very nice does it? It might be a bit of inconvenience and pain there, but if you just lift yourself up - that's the devil's talk. You lift yourself up. You get ahead, you go for it, you go for it, look after number one! No one else will look after your life. That's all the devil's talk.

God says: no, if you co-operate with Me, I'll lift you up. You can either lift yourself up, or let God lift you up. Jesus let God lift Him up. You can't get a higher place than He is now. So what did Jesus have in His heart? Well, He had in His heart, the church. He had in His heart, a body of people; and what was in His heart, was that He would lift the church up, and that by the church, to all the principalities or powers, we may know in the wisdom of God. His heart was to lift the church up, and bring it into a place where one day it would rule over all that He had. It would share in governing over all that He had. His plan for you and for me is that we be lifted up and exalted to a place of rulership, stewardship over everything He's created, to the point where even the angels are subject to us. How about that? How do we get there? That's the problem. You either lift yourself up, trying to get there; or you submit to God's way, and He'll lift you up. God's way always means that you recognise the headship of Jesus Christ, and you flow in harmony with His order in life, and you lay your life down to serve Him, and He lifts you up. That's how it works.

Now what did God have in mind for marriage? Well He had a marriage, and what He had in mind in marriage, and the way it would work, was this: exactly the same as the relationship between the Father and His Son, exactly the relationship between Jesus and the church. In fact the Bible says, that the way Jesus loved the church, husbands should love their wives. In fact it says: marriage is like Jesus and the church, in what way? Well this is the way; Jesus had in mind that the church, He would lift it up, elevated it up. He would love the church. He would serve. He would pour out His life. He would fulfil the will of the Father. He would accomplish all the purpose of the Father, and lift the church right up beside Him, into a place of great honour, great esteem, great glory, great value. The church, in turn, submits to Him; and allows Him to lift us up.

Now what He had in marriage in mind was this: that the husband, being the head of his wife, would love her, and would invest his life in her sacrificially as Jesus did for the church; that he would have in mind she would be lifted up, she would be esteemed, she would be valuable, she would come up right beside him in a place of great honour, alongside him, sharing all that he had, a partner that he had; brought up into that place because of his love, and his giving of himself to her. Her part, well she needs to recognise her role: that he is the leader, and co-operate, and not run an independent lifestyle; to flow with him in accepting God's purpose, a help made for him. That's how God's intended it. Of course you can understand, when you look at how God intended it, how much we've messed it up. It's been badly messed up, because people haven't understood. People have either - men have either neglected their leadership, or abused it; but Christ is the model and example. You follow Him, you see how to lead. Men are called to lead, look what the Bible tells us here. The man is the head of the woman. It makes it very, very clear.

Why is the man the head of the woman? Well God created it to be that way, it's an order. Is he more important? No, he's not more important. Is he more gifted? No, he's probably less gifted in some areas; but in the area of being the head, or the leader of the home, God has uniquely called him to be that. Did you realise that, that when a father comes down the aisle with his daughter, that it symbolises that he is the covering, the authority, the protector of her. Now he hands he,r or gives her hand - who gives this woman in marriage? I give her hand in marriage. What is the father doing? The father is giving his authority, his role, his positioning that God gave him over his daughter, over to another man. What does that other man do? He takes the hand in marriage. Why is he taking the hand in marriage? He's assuming responsibility to be the leader, God's head over a completely new unit; so God says: you've got to leave your home, and you cleave to your wife, and you love her, and you lead her as Christ loved, and has given leadership to the church.

That's God's plan, and that's the symbolism that's involved, in the father coming down the aisle with his daughter; symbolising that she's still under covering, still under his protection, still under his headship and authority. And he's handing over the daughter, indicates he approves of that man. He gives this relationship his blessing, and now releases his daughter to come under the headship of some other person. Believe me, you need to choose the right one, if you're going to submit to someone else's leadership. It's got nothing to do with feelings. People mistake the feeling of being bonded together. God has put a law in place, that when two people open their hearts, and share intimately with one another, or sexually with one another, that their hearts bond. The feeling of bonding has got nothing to do with whether that's the right one. People make that mistake, young people make that mistake, over and over and over again. Young women, if you are going to marry some man, hold yourself back, and make him earn the right to lead you; and if he won't earn the right to lead you, by loving you, and looking after you, and honouring you, before you ever get to marry him, it certainly won't do it afterwards, absolutely certain. Don't cheapen yourself. Don't sell yourself cheap, because you want to feel good, or because there's a vacancy, or a lack in your life, because of something in the home. Never do that. Find healing and wholeness in Christ, so you can stand up and be a whole person, and let that man prove he's got the gumption in him to be a leader; because I'll tell you something, you will regret it, all the rest of your life. You'll be working hard, trying to change him to be something you hoped he would be, and end up even more frustrated and hurt. You can't do that, so wait. If the guy hasn't proven he's got it before you get married, don't marry him.

You know one of the people that would be the key person to ask what he thinks? That would be your dad. If he doesn't like the guy, there's something wrong. You better liste,n because that's the person God has appointed, as head over you, to give protection to you, spiritual discernment over the whole deal; and if he's very, very unhappy with this, there's probably very good reasons. You've got a good reason to have a double think about what you're doing. It's such a mockery of this whole thing, when a man brings his daughter down, she's been living out of home, and living in a relationship with someone else. To go through this whole - it's hypocrisy. This is not what marriage is about at all. It's about God's plan to bring people into committed covenant relationship, and into divine order; where the husband is the head, and loves her, and he leads her. If a man can't lead you morally before you're married, believe me, he won't lead you morally after you're married either - unless he comes to a great heart change. Ooh, getting all quiet now. This is true, this is how it is.

Because we don't understand God's way in this matter; men, if you're a man who doesn't know how to love a woman, and lead properly, then you're just failing as a man. You want to be a good man, want to stand up and be proud of who you are, and others proud of who you are? Then be a Christ-like man, submit to Christ, begin to get a holy, clean life; instead of using women, learn how to love them, and to lead them well. You will be a great candidate to be a husband. Ooh, you've all got so quiet. [Laughs] We're biting into the bone now aren't we? Okay then, now let's get to it here. It says: I would have you know, the head of every man is Christ, every man needs to get a relationship going with God. If you're a man here today, and you don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, I want to give you a chance, at the end of this meeting to do it - it'd be the best thing you could do to get your life right. He's the greatest lover. He can change a hard heart, He can melt your heart, He can heal your heart. Not only that, He's the only one who can help you do a good job of what you're called to do.

Now this is what the Bible says. It says: the man is the head of the woman. Now I want to share with you three problems that come related to this. No man can be an effective leader until he settles these issues in his heart. Men, you'll never lead your home, unless you get this really settled in your heart: number one, God has designed you to be the leader. Two, He has appointed you, to be the leader; so you better agree with Him, that's His order. If you don't accept He made you up - a man has been created by God. He has certain things in his make up, that actually equip him to be the leader in the home. He has things in his make up, that are different to the woman, that enable him to carry the weight. That's why so often, you know, she might be having some trouble with the kids, he comes out, one word from dad [growl] [Laughter]

So there's an authority. God has given something, if the man knows, understands; if you're a man, I have been ordained, or appointed by God, to be the leader of the home. Not only that, He's got something in me, to enable me to do it. Even if I haven't realised it yet, it's in there, I can do it. I can do it! I can do this job! God would never ask me to do something, unless He enabled me to do it; therefore, something in my make up will embrace this job. When I've embraced it, I'll feel I'm being fulfilled as a man. It's true. Any man who actually neglects his responsibility as the leader of the home, feels bad about himself. You get a man who fails to lead his home, he'll always have low esteem problems; and all the prayer ministry in the world will never fix it up. You've got to stand up on your feet: I'm a man, I'm called to lead, take the responsibility into your heart. Then begin to find out ways to love and to serve, learn how to do it. So God's power is released, only when you assume the responsibility; so if you're going to make a mark in the home, you actually have to own the responsibility.

Who does the buck stop with, for the spiritual life in the home? Come on now, don't think because your wife's such a great prayer, and spends hours in prayers, that it stops with her. It stops with you! It stops with you! You are responsible for the home, you're responsible for the marriage. You have to understand that, no matter what anyone tells you, or anyone says; when you get to heaven, if you've been a married man, He will ask you not only about your personal life, He'll ask you what you did about your marriage and family. You will give account, so if I assume responsibility, it's at the point of assuming responsibility, power begins to flow. Until you own the responsibility, until you carry a sense - most men go out, do their thing, they think their wife will run all the home. Friend, that is wrong. You've actually got to own responsibility for the thing. Once you've taken on that, you'll find that in your heart, the power of God will start to arise. You'll feel a surge, something begins to change inside, you when you take ownership of responsibility.

Now God will hold every man to account, believe me. Who does God hold to blame, for the entrance of sin into the world? It wasn't Eve. It was the man! Why did God hold Adam responsible? Because when you read in Genesis, Chapter 3, that the serpent gave the fruit to Eve, Adam being with her. What on earth was he doing, letting the devil talk to his wife? What on earth was he doing, saying nothing, while the devil proposes all this great scheme for her to get ahead, self promotion scheme? He was doing what a lot of men do - ooh, nothing! [Laughter] It's true. He was silent. When he should have spoken up, he was silent. When he should have protected, he was silent. When he should have actually confronted the devil, he was silent. The silence of Adam, caused sin to enter the world; and the silence of men today, causes sin to enter marriages and families, and destroy them. Men must stand up on the inside. There's no government can heal our nation, only God can do it, as men arise, and take their rightful place. We have to understand that, it's crucial.

So God held Adam responsible for the entrance of sin into the world. Now one of the reasons that we see overall, that God talks about male/female roles, is for this reason. It's the most common thing in the world for men to just avoid their responsibilities for leadership in the home; and two, it produces tremendous harm and damage in the home, when the man is not the spiritual and proper leader of his home. It produces weights on the wife. It produces problems with the children. All kinds of things come into the home. The woman gets subject to spiritual attack, that the husband is capable of dealing with, but is refusing to. I want to show men how to deal with that. A man can stand in a place of prayer, and protect his wife and children from immense amounts of demonic attack; but he's got to own responsibility, and position himself in prayer in the role God gave him. When he does, literally a shelter comes over the family.

I believe that the reason we've got so many break downs in families, are men who have lost understanding of what their role is, and what they're called to do and to be in their family. Because they've lost understanding of it. This has been about 30 years of reaping what's been coming into our education system. I can remember when I went to Teachers College, they ruined me for teaching for quite some time, until I got godly principles into my life; because educational philosophers had taken humanism, and were pouring it into the Teachers College and it's education institute, through a guy by the name of Drury. All of this teaching came in, and it literally removed absolutes, and replaced them with relatives, until there were no standards left. Today, basically the common thinking - I won't go down this line too far: if it feels right, then it's true. There's no connection between truth, reality, and what people feel any more. If they don't feel like it, they feel bad about it, then there must be something wrong with it; so men must take responsibility to lead.

Let me tell you what'll happen, two things that'll happen, when a man stands up to lead. When a man actually understands, God has called him to be a leader, and stands up and is willing to embrace the responsibility, there'll be two things I guarantee will happen: one, the power of God will start to flow to his life, to help him; but it starts with ownership of responsibility, and that means if you've failed, you've got to own the failures as well. If your marriage and family are in a mess, you'd better own that as well; because my experience has been, that whenever a business goes wrong, you don't look for the clerk in the front desk. You go to the boss, and say: what's gone wrong? You're responsible. That's how it works. Something wrong in the family - men, better have a good reason why you're not doing what you need to be doing. I don't think God will listen to too many excuses though. It's time for men to stand up, and take that ownership and responsibility, and learn how to lead with love, their family.

Now you can't just suddenly stand up, and start to go bossing everyone around. That'd be the wrong thing to do. That'll create more problems. You can't swing from one side, doing nothing; to the other side, doing a lot. You've actually got to first of all take a sense of ownership, and come to a place of repentance, where you've neglected or failed or let the family down. To be the head of the family, means to take responsibility for the marriage, and the family. You take responsibility. You take responsibility, and if you fail to take responsibility, you've failed to fulfil God's role, and there's a problem in your home because of it. Now you could have all the excuses under the sun, but God will not listen to any of them. Adam - hey you did this. Hey, don't look at me, it's my wife. [Laughter] God didn't listen to any of that. The Bible records: by one man, sin entered the world. When we look at your family, it'll be recorded by you, the man, sin entered the family. Won't be able to blame your wife, won't be able to blame the kids. You're responsible, because you're in charge.

Now we start to take ownership and responsibility, the first thing that happens, is the power of God comes to us. Immediately a man takes responsibility, the power of God will come to his help, what to do? To give him ideas. It's God working in you, to will and to do what He wants. He'll give you ideas, He'll give you insight, He'll give you wisdom. He'll give you perspective, He'll give you ideas, He'll give you ability to make decisions, in consultation with your wife - add that bit in there, just in case you think it's all a one man thing. [Laughter] We'll talk about the partnership later on. The second thing that'll happen is, you'll find intense pressure and resistance come from the spirit world. Everything, every devil, will try and stop you taking your place in God's order; because you can say: Jesus is Lord over your family until the cows come home. A parrot could say it, and it'd have about as much effect.

At the end of the day, Jesus becomes Lord of your family, when you take your position as head of the woman. That's when the lordship of Jesus becomes established, when you submit to Christ, and you take your rightful place of assuming responsibility. Once you embrace responsibility in your heart, and you begin to pray, you begin to walk out those responsibilities, God's power comes into the whole deal, the whole deal. You can change people, without even having to do too much, once the power of God is flowing on your behalf; but to do that, you've got to stand up. Every devil in hell, will stop men standing up. Every demon of witchcraft - as we'll see a little bit later - will come and try and stop a man standing up and praying regularly, consistently for his wife and children, standing up and taking responsibility of the home. The devils will come, they'll try and push on you, to make you feel inadequate, as though you've got no ideas, you're useless, you're hopeless. They'll push everything against you; but friend, if a man will stand up and hold the position God has given him - you've got to understand this, that spiritual warfare is about getting you out of two places: one, out of your relationship with Christ; and two, out of the position God called you to be.

The battle is to just stand up, and believe what God says, and to embrace that call, that responsibility to give leadership to your home - not to lord it over them, but to lead them, as Christ led. He loved. You know, He washed the disciple's feet. Perhaps some of the men, it'd be a good idea if you went home and offered to wash your wife's feet. [Laughter] Be a change of attitude, of sitting there and waiting for her to come round and wait on you. A lot of men come home, they expect their wives to wait on them. God says: you're the leader, you're the servant leader; so you not only give direction, you learn to serve. You pick up some of the responsibilities. You help around the place. You get involved, you don't just: well I've done my bit out there, I come home, you do it all here. That's an ungodly thing, that comes out of culture; it's got nothing to do with the Bible.

I can wash my disciple's feet, which is the lowest job. You can do a few low jobs around the place too. We'll talk a bit about how to put this into practice [laughter] - all the women are going ha ha ha! Men are sitting down in their seats - but you know something? Let me just finish before we get onto the other side of the coin. We'll get the flip-side of the coin in another session of course. [Laughter] Even though a man embraces the responsibility in his heart, the fulfilment of his leadership requires his wife accept him in that role, and release what she's been carrying to him. You can either release it wilfully, or you can go with a fight. [Laughter] I can remember the day when my wife released the finances to me. She came in with a cheque book, threw it down on my desk, and said: there, you do it. [Laughter] I said: yes I will, and I did it ever since. It was as simple as that. But you understand this, that in order to give leadership, you have to assume responsibility of the person who's following. That's why God says: husbands, you be the kind of leader a wife would easily submit to. Wives, be in submission to your husband, and don't be fearful of doing this, because God will help you. You don't have to change him. You don't have to manipulate. You don't have to do this and that. If you will just take your right place, and do what God says to do, His power will come on their heart, and move him.

Why don't we just close our eyes right now. The first step is to come into relationship with Jesus Christ. I wonder is there any person here, who's never actually ever admitted, that Christ died on the cross for your sins. Your sins have cut you off from God. Jesus died for your sins. Your sins will leave you in eternity without God, eternity without hope but friend, Jesus died for your sins. If any man, any woman, any person would acknowledge what Jesus Christ has done, and who He is, and open their life to receive Him, and make Him welcome, then that person will be changed.

Are you here today and you want to become a Christian? Why don't you raise your hand right now, say: I want to become a Christian, there's emptiness in my life. There's something lacking, there's a God dimension lacking. I want to receive Christ today. Why don't you raise your hands now and say: that's me, I want to become a Christian, I want to receive Christ.

I wonder how many of you, as men today, have felt God speak into your heart, and say: son, you have not represented my headship well by your life, by your example, by your love, by your words. You've been absorbed in yourself, and like so many of the men of this nation, passive, resistant, laid back; and the role of headship in the home is no longer occupied by you, but your wife has had to carry the responsibilities, responsibility for the children, for the discipline, the order, for the prayer, the spiritual direction. You are a rebel against God. You are resistant of God's order. Whether it's because you didn't know it, because you just failed to do it, or whatever it is; at the end of the day, none of those things will count. Demon powers have been able to access your marriage and family, because you were absent without leave, you were AWOL.

Today God's speaking to men, saying: men, you need to stand up and take your right place, your right place in the family, the right place in the marriage, the right place in the church, the right place in the community; the place God gave you, a place of headship, a place of leadership. If God's speaking to you today, and you're saying: Lord, I have neglected my responsibilities; today my first step is to own my failure, own my neglect and self-centredness, and to actually turn to you and say: Lord, I want to carry responsibility for my family, for my marriage. Are there men here today who would say: that's me, why don't you just stand where you are. I don't want you to come to the front, I want you just to stand where you are, say: God is speaking to me today. I need to stand up on the inside, and begin to shoulder responsibility. Men, come on, just stand, stand where you are. Let God's spirit come on you, and the change that you need. My experience has been, in so many marriages, it's the woman who carries the weight. Men - God bless, there's men standing. Father, I just thank You for these men now. Other men need to stand too, other men who could take that responsibility; to protect, to love, to lead, to give direction, to set standards, to bring spiritual life.

Father, I thank You for these men that acknowledge their need, they've acknowledge their need of You Lord. Today I'm asking for the power of Your spirit to come on them, to raise them as godly men; that Lord, You will dispossess the demon powers that have hindered them, and held them down; and that they will arise with great strength and vigour in their families. Help them to recognise and put right what was wrong. Help them to love their wives and children, humble themselves, that they might Lord be lifted up by You.

I just wonder right now, how many others in the church today, and as I've been speaking you're aware that your heart has been hurt and broken, because in your family men have failed. Men have failed to lead, or men have been abusive in their leadership, and it's left a deep wound inside your life. You say God, I need You to help me to forgive and release these things so I can take my right place. Why don't you just stand right now, just do it right now. It could just be women, it'll also be men, men that have been abandoned by their dads, and men that have been abused by their dads, women that have been abandoned, and women that have been abused. Could be many. It's one of the most difficult things for a man to lead, is because he's been under an abusive leader himself, controlling, self-centred man; or a passive, self-centred, self-absorbed man, who won't take responsibility. What a tragedy. What a tremendous hurt and heartache in the family. Father, I'm asking for each of these ones today, for the anointing and the power and the love of Your spirit to come around them, to heal and restore and to raise them up. Father, I ask that the grace of God to forgive would come around our life, that they could move past their hurts, and into a place of accepting Lord, their role.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, those of you standing, just keep your eyes closed. I'd like others in the church to go to the ones who are standing. I'd like you just to pray for them, encourage them, bless them. Put your arm around them. Some of them have tremendous pain and hurt. Let's just believe that God will come and help them. Tremendous pain when fathers do not do what they're supposed to do. Just come, put your arm round him, say: I'm with you brother.

Now Father, in Jesus' name, we break the power of abusive words. We break the power of critical words, that found fault. We break the power of violence and hatred. We break the power of abandonment. We break the hold of those things that have locked up the hearts of these men and women. Father, we release Your love. We release Your anointing. Father, I pray Your spirit would touch the family, every man, every woman and stand up in a new role.

Summary Notes

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HEADSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY

INTRODUCTION

(a) God is a God of Order

Ro. 13:1-2. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers and for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordered by God.

· God has established an order in the spirit world and an order in the natural world.

· Authority originates from God. He is the source of it.

· Power = exousia = legal or lawful or delegated right to act.

· Higher = one positioned above another or at a higher level.

· There are four distinct authority structures God has ordered – each has distinct responsibilities.

i) Government (1Pet.2:13-14)

ii) Church (Heb. 13:7)

iii) Family (1 Cor. 11:3)

iv) Individual (Ro. 14:12)

(b) Response to God’s Order

Ro. 13: 1-2. Be subject … or “Resist” (Only two responses possible).

· Resist = anti tasso = to arrange or position oneself against.

= military term to arrange oneself in battle against, opposition to.

· People resist what God has ordered because of ignorance – not knowing what is expected or required of them, because of neglect; because in their thinking are opposed to what God has ordered.

· Subject = hupotasso = to subordinate, arrange oneself in order beneath. This does not mean one person inferior; or imply oppression or control. This refers to the order in a relationship in which one person looks to the other for direction. The purpose of this order is to allow those in relationship to function together in unity.

· E.G. Jn 5:30 I seek not my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.

Jn 17:22 That they may be one even as we are one.

· Subject means much more than just obedience.

· E.G. Honour, respectful, responsive to direction; co-operating with anothers purposes.

· All Christians are call to “be subject” to authorities.

2 HEADSHIP IS MALE

1 Cor. 11:3 Headship: God Christ Man Woman.

· The headship of man is a role in relationship to his wife.

· This headship is part of a series of headship relationships involving both headship and submission.

· These roles do not imply inferiority but are part of divine order.

· Reason given: Creation design.

· Man was created first and had already begun his God given work.

· Man stood alone – God’s representative ruler in the earth, designed to lead.

· Woman was made out of man designed to be his helper and companion.

· Woman was the glory of man as man was the glory of God.

· Examples of God – Christ

Phil. 2:9

· God’s purpose and desire = to exalt Christ to share rulership with him over all He created. Father gave direction – Son subject o.

· Father loved and gave leadership – Son subject to this!

3. HEADSHIP IS LEADERSHIP

(a) Recognise God’s Design

1 Cor. 11:3 Headship Responsibility /People want rights and privilege – God’s design = responsibility.

· No man can be an effective leader in marriage until settles the issues in his heart.

(i) God has appointed him as leader/spiritual head. (1 Cor. 11:3)

(ii) God has creatively designed him for this task – not his wife (Gen. 2:18; 1 Pet. 3:7).

(iii) God’s power is released only as he assumes a sense of responsibility for leadership. (Eph. 3:7) Headship is not just a role it is a position of responsibility and authority.

(b) God holds Men to Account

· Rom. 5:12 By one man sin entered the world.

· Eve ate the fruit but God held man responsible for allowing sin to enter.

· Adam failed to fulfil his leadership responsibility – remained silent Gen 3:6.

· Male/Female roles are emphasised in the Bible because:

(i) Common for males to abdicate spiritual leadership responsibilities in home and the church.

(ii) Male irresponsibility and passivity frustrates and creates immense damage and ruin in families and churches.

(iii) Male abdication of headship – refusal to submit to God’s order and design.

(iv) Every husband and father will be held to account for his marriage and family. 1 Cor. 4:2 – required of stewards a man be found faithful.

(c) Men must assume Responsibility to Lead

Whenever a man arises to assume responsibility for leadership.

(i) Experiences strong spiritual pressures against him to –

Undermine his confidence and ability and fill with feelings of inadequacy and intimidation.

Push him to yield up his responsibility and spiritual position.

(ii) Heavens power is released to stand behind him and impart wisdom, direction and help him make decisions.

4. LEADERSHIP MEANS SERVING

· God is for leadership – oppression, abuse, neglect not His will.

· The line between evil oppression and true leadership is in the heart. Mt.20:25-28.

(i) King Mentality – man assumes ‘King’ mentality when seeks his wife and family as subjects existing for his purposes and convenience.

(ii) Servant Leader

· Husband sees role as servant existing for benefit of his wife and family to fulfil the purposes of God.

· God’s principles of leadership are based upon serving.

· Serving begins with attitude of heart – sense of responsibility for and willingness to give self to those you lead.

· Servant leadership

(i) Purpose

(ii) Example – standards

(iii) Direction

(iv) Provides

(v) Protects – spiritually and naturally

(vi) Unites family to relate and work together.

Guard that Garden (3 of 5)

Sat 17 Jul 2010  « Back to Top

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In Genesis 3, God gave man a clear mandate (area of responsibility), with instructions to "dress it" and "keep it". How does this apply today? What does it mean? This session practically unpacks this - how to work it out in marriage? What happens if we don't? What am I responsible for and what am I not responsible for? How does it affect the spirit world? What are the broad principals? Is there room for personal initiative?

Romans 13. I've just been thinking of 1 Corinthians 11:3; the man is the head of the woman, and Christ is the head of the man; so we're going to get into that area today. Don't get all reactionary on me. I want you just to listen, open up your heart. It'll help you. It'll give you some understanding and insight of some dynamics in relationships.

[Aside:] One of the things we need to understand, is that God calls us to bless and to give to one another, and to help one another; and sometimes people can feel a tremendous burden inside. I know that for single parents that are living on about $40 a week, and they feel a tremendous burden with these things. I encourage you though, to let your faith be in God. I've discovered, it didn't matter really how much I had, it was never enough; but when I just honoured God, it was amazing how He made what I had increase. But a vital part of that happening is that the body of Christ, we give to the Lord - the Bible says: as you give, then it's given back to you, shaken together shall men give unto you. So basically, when things come back to you, they come through people; but if the people, who God has called to be responsible for helping you, won't do it, then there is a lack. Do we understand that?

In other words, in the body of Christ, in this local church, God calls us to be responsible to help one another. That's why we put you in cell groups, and encourage you to connect together; so that where there are needs, you become aware of them, and you can bless and minister to that person. So an important part of God's provision for us, is our giving and supporting and helping one another. So I encourage you in thinking: if you have, then learn to look out for those who have not, and bless them. What it does is, it produces a tremendous reassurance, that God has heard their prayers. They begin to thank God, and they begin to open their hearts to God, in a new and fresh way. So we've made it a practice, wherever we can, whenever we can, to just bless and give to people that we encounter, that are less positioned than we are. Now if you have a look at yourself, if we drew a line, and over there is the person who has the least resources, over there is the person who has the most resources, then you are somewhere in that line. Would that be true? Okay, now here's where the difficulty is.

Most of the time, we look up the line, at everyone who has more than us, and envy them; quiet grief, and reluctant acknowledgement they have more than us. What God wants you to learn to do is this: to thank God for where you're positioned, and look down the line and say: I could really bless someone. Isn't that great? That's how I've learnt to do that; so what it does, it stops you being full of envy, and you begin to - because you're in position - you begin to bless all of those who have less than you. What you do, you actually come into a place where God can expand you. Before you know it: hey, my position in the line has altered. [Laughter] It's true. See most people focus on altering their position in the line. God says: fill the position you've got; and He'll alter your position in the line. That's not hard is it? So there are times when we lived on very little, had six kids and $120 a week to pay everything, including school fees, and every other kind of thing, so we had to learn just how to take what we had, which was very little. So we learnt all about you know, cooking our own fish and chips, because we couldn't afford to buy any - but you know what? I just got the newspaper, and wrapped it all up, and it was just like we bought it. [Laughter]

We got others to come around to our home-made chips, and our home-made fish and chips. You see it's not [I like it!] how much you've got, it's what you do with what you've got; and you could be up here in the line, and be a miserable, poor person. You can be down here, have very little, and be very rich! It's not anything to do with how much you've go - it's got to do with what's in you, attitudes. It's a great thing to be set free of having to have lots of things. One of the things the Bible says is: as goods increase, they increase that consume them. [Laughs] So if you've got lots of things, there's a lot of problems come with it. So one of the things we need to understand in this area of giving, wherever you stand in the prosperity line, thank God for what you have, and use it to bless someone who has less. Isn't that a good principle? And the Bible says: no one will be in lack, if we all do that. There'll be not a single person here in need, if we all purposed we would do that; and the Bible tells us: we need to do more than just love God, who we can't see; we need to love the person, who's a member of the body of Christ, His representative on the earth, who we can see. That brings a lot of releases of things to us. Amen. [Amen] Well that's not the message today, but that was a good one anyway, so [Laughter] I had it on my heart, and I've got to say that.

Main Message I want you to have a look with me in Romans, Chapter 13. We've been looking at God's order, and how God wants to order the home, and order the family. Now I know there are single parents here, and you'll be bucking and whatever, over some of the things I'm saying. There'll be women whose husbands are not saved, and they'll be [grrr grrr grrr] but let me just say this: most situations that are out of order, are out of order because men failed somewhere. If you're a single parent here, let me tell you this: I know there's a man who failed. He failed to be a man, he failed to protect you, he failed to honour you, he failed to make commitment to you; and part of the reason you're in the place you're in, is because a man failed seriously. It doesn't mean you're not responsible for your situation, but it does mean: a man failed. When marriages break up, guess who God holds responsible? The man! This is where I'm aiming for, I want you to understand, if we want things to work right, we've got to discover God's order, and find out way into God's order, because it works.

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 8:4, where the word of a king is, there is power; and who can say to him: why are you doing it that way? Where the word of a king is, there is power; and who can say to him: how come you're doing it that way? So Jesus is the king that we serve. We come to know Him through a personal relationship, we receive Him as our saviour, and now we have access to a whole new realm of living. We don't live our life according to the way we were raised, according to our culture, according to the society around us. We have a whole new realm to learn how to live. It's called the kingdom of God, it's got its own value system, it's got its way of working; and God has set in place laws in the spirit world, as well as laws in the natural world. The Bible says: He upholds them, or sustains them, and makes them work; so there are principles He set in place, I can't change the principles. I can't say: well how come You set it up like that? I can't just say: well God, I disagree with the man being the head of the woman. I don't like that doctrine, I don't like that teaching at all.

It won't make any difference. Where the word of a king is, there is power. He doesn't say: He's going to make it that way, He just says: this is how it is. He says: the man is the head. It's a position God has given to him, which he is required to be responsible for fulfilling. Now I want you to have a look in Romans 13, and I want you to see - again we'll just recover a couple of points, so we pick people up who weren't here. In Romans 13: let every soul be subject under the higher powers. It's talking here about our attitude to people who occupy roles of authority, or delegated influence somewhere - for there is no power or authority but of God, and the powers that be are ordered, or set in place, by God Himself. That means: He arranged it, and set it up. It doesn't mean they're doing a good job at it, it just means that God arranged it - so it says: whoever therefore resists the power, resists the ordinance of what God has set in place; and those that resist, shall receive to themselves judgement.

Let me just read that part again. Let every soul be subject; whoever resists, resists what God has ordered; and those that resist, receive to themselves, a judgement or sentence passed on them, because they failed to respond right. God has created order in the natural universe, and the spiritual universe. He just set certain things in order. Now the devil has got very limited realm to move. People have a big devil, and a very little God; but you don't understand that the devil can only work in the area God has let him work in. The area God has let him work in, is the area outside the law of God; so when a person responds to the law of God, they automatically remain in the place of light and the blessing of God. When a person violates the laws of God, they're automatically in darkness, where the devil then is allowed to operate. The Bible says to you and I, it says: do not give the devil that kind of opportunity in your life. In other words, let your life be in order, as God wants it to be, and you'll walk in a river of blessing and of life, and the devil can't touch you. That's why it says: those that overcome the devil, they are strong, because they exercise, and because they have practiced in this area, and the word of God is in them. They know what God wants and expects of them.

Now in this area, the verses that we've been looking at, the Bible says: God has set certain things in order, or set them up in a way He's arranged it. Now no one can tell Him: why did You do it that way? No one can say: I don't like it that way, and change it. You can't do that. If you do that, there's only two ways you can handle the word of God, or the order God has set up. The first one, is to be subject to it. To be subject to it means literally, it's the word hupotasso: to position myself underneath, or in the place God has appointed for me in the scheme of things, assuming all the responsibility of that role; and if I do that, the blessing of God flows. So to be subject to authority means - I'll put it in other words - position yourself in right relationship, so God can bless you; because they're not for evil, they're for good, to bless you. So my responsibility is, wherever I go, find out what God has set in place, and position myself so I can receive, by having a right relationship and attitude. That's not a hard deal.

Now the only other position you can take is this one: he that resists the power. That is the word anti-tassomai, meaning literally to stand against what God has ordered; in other words, to position my life, my attitudes, my thinking, my actions, so that instead of being in harmony with what God has planned, I am now ordered myself against what God has planned. You can only be in one place or the other, you can't be in both at the same time. You're either positioning yourself so that God can bless you, because you've come into His order; or you position yourself against it. Now you may do it ignorantly, but ignorance doesn't make any difference. If you position yourself against it, God can't bless you. Now God's concern is this: He wants to bless you. He wants you to be positioned, so the maximum good, and blessing, can come on your life. Most people, when they think of these things, think: the Lord God's going to restrict me, or God's going to limit me; but friend - God wants to bless us.

Every good gift comes from Him, so when God says: Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman; He's describing an order, which if I position myself in that place of order, God's blessing starts to flow unhindered around my life, and around those under me. So when God says: the man is the head, it means God has ordained, or ordered, or positioned, that a man must stand and accept full responsibility for leadership of his wife and family. If he doesn't do it, he's positioning himself against what God has ordered, and many problems come as a result of that. You can't be in two places, you can only be in the one place. You've either positioned yourself in harmony with it, or positioned yourself against it; and we want to talk about that. So headship in the home, literally, is the man accepting the responsibility God has given to him, and all that goes with it.

Now Jesus is the classic example of it. Jesus gave up all the authority and goodness and glory that He had in heaven, came to earth, and He was the model example of a servant leader. He loved the church. He gave His life for the church, He gave direction, He led, He released the power of God - how did He do it? Because all the time, He fulfilled Romans 13:1, He was subject, or positioned Himself in harmony with, the positioning God had for Him. Now to position yourself in harmony means this: you learn, or understand, or get to know, and you ask this question: what has God made me responsible for? If you can't answer that, it's almost certain, that at least to some degree, you'll be positioned against what God has planned; and be out of the blessing of God. Now you can pray all you like, it won't change anything, until you change. You must position yourself in harmony with what God's planned, then you can receive.

Now let's just pick it up and go a little further. I want you to look with me now in - where will we go? We'll go over into 2 Corinthians 10. Now I'm just going to keep talking just about the area of responsibility. Headship is a role, or a function, that God has set in place, so He can get a job done. Wherever you've got a group of people, someone must carry the weight of it seeing the jobs get done; so God says to the man: you're the man. You're the man here. God says: you're the man! And you know what? You are wired to carry responsibility. God has made you, so something in you thrives and grows and comes alive, when you carry responsibility; and something inside you dies, when you don't. Sin will cause you to do one of two things: either be passive, and refuse to take responsibility; or to misuse your responsibility and authority, and damage and hurt others around you. God wants us to learn how to handle it right. Whoa! [Laughter] [They're all excited] So to do that, I've got to know what it is. My biggest problem was: I just didn't know, and I had role models that didn't help me either.

I want to just talk to you now about understanding your responsibility, or your metron. Headship means you just assume the responsibility God has given you, and start to fulfil it. Here it is, 2 Corinthians 10, and Paul is writing, and he says in verse 12: we dare not make ourselves of this number or group of people, nor compare ourselves with some that are commending themselves. That's saying: look how good we're doing - but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. That means they're foolish. So what he's saying is, he's talking about his ministry, and he's just saying: I never look what anyone else is doing, to worry about that, and I never compare myself with what others are doing, and say: well I'm doing real well. He said: I don't even look at anyone else, I just look at what God has entrusted me. Comparing with others makes you stupid, because you're different, and at the end of the day, you'll only ever be successful if you do what God gave you to do. To do that, you've got to discover it. You've got to get connected to Him, and find what He gave you to do, read and study the Bible, learn and listen, and say: what does God want me to do? Why am I here? Where am I going? What have I got to do? That's all the questions we ask.

Now let me just read here the next thing, this is the bit I want to pick up. He says this: because God, we want those things outside our measure, but according to the measure of rule or influence God has distributed to us, a measure that reaches even to you, we do not stretch ourselves beyond our measure. Now the word 'measure' there, is literally like that, it's a measure. The Bible uses the word 'metron', which you get the word 'metre', a metre. We used to have a stick called a metre-stick. Now if you want to know how long something is, you actually take out a measuring stick. If I wanted to find out how high I am, the best way to do it is to get a measuring stick; not look and say: well I'm really good, I'm higher than him - or stand next to my daughter in platforms and [laughter] I'm shorter than her! So what the Bible is saying is: you can't use people as your measure. God says: you've got to use a measuring stick.

Now for example, if you want to make a cake, you don't just put any ingredients, in any quantities; you measure the quantities: this measure of flour is what's going to make it go, but if you put too much or too little, it doesn't work. You put too much of some ingredients in, it doesn't work. It just doesn't go properly, so you measure it. Now that's what the Bible says: measure. Now when the Bible's using the word 'measure', a measure refers to the responsibility God has distributed to you. What has God measured to you? You've got to ask that question. Let me give you some principles related to that. I'm just going to go through them, and then we'll apply it to a man, and to the dynamic in a marriage, when you don't understand what your responsible for, and pass the buck. There's some big problems happen [laughs], so this is what God says. The word of God says: we don't boast things that are not ours, but according to the measure of influence that God has given to us; and He says: it actually involves you as well. Here it is...

The first thing is, every human being has their own measure of responsibility, your metron. God has given you something you're responsible for; for example, I'm responsible for my life, for my money, for cars - two of them now. One was bad enough, two is more responsibility; for a house, for a wife, for children, for ministry responsibilities here, for responsibilities to other churches. I could actually list them all down, and these are the things God has entrusted for me. They're not for you. You don't compare yourself, because God's only going to ask you, He's going to hold you to account, only for what He gave you to do; and you might have just a little bit, but you were just so dynamic and great, and filled it so good, that when you get to heaven, God says: wow, well done! When I get there, I've got all this stuff, He says: well you didn't do so well. I gave you more, I entrusted more, you didn't do good enough, not compared to that one over there. Do you understand? It's nothing to do with how much I'm responsible for, but everything to do with owning the responsibility, and doing what God wants me to do with it. So if God's called you to do one thing, and you're doing something else, it doesn't matter how good you're doing at it, it doesn't cut it with God. We're going to be responsible to Him for our lives.

Okay now here's the second thing, so for example a different thing - a businessman. His metron includes not only his own life, and marriage, and family and whatever, it's also his business. When I was teaching, my metron included a classroom; so a policeman, they have a measured area of influence, so a policeman can only operate in a certain area. Everyone, God's measured something to you, so you need to ask yourself: what am I responsible for? Today the cry is: give me my rights, give me my privileges! The rights of this, and the rights of that, and all kinds of rights, but God says: no, find out, and inquire what you're responsibilities are, because with that comes privileges and authority. Now let me share a couple more things about your metron or your responsibilities. Your metron ends exactly where someone else begins; so I'm responsible for my stuff, but if that's their stuff, they're responsible for it - it's none of my business. I've got to be responsible for my bit, not for someone else's bit; so in a marriage, the husband is required to be responsible for certain things - but not everything.

He's not responsible for his wife's feelings, they're her feelings. She's got to own them, do something about them; otherwise he'll always feel: what have I done to upset her now? Why is she never happy? [Laughter] Do you understand? There's some things you're responsible for, some things as a Pastor I'm responsible for certain in relationship to members of the church; but then there's an area where it stops, and your bit begins. I can't come in there and tell you what to do in that, that's your thing. I can offer counsel advice, but you are responsible; and the problem comes, if I invade your areas of responsibility, I become dominating, overbearing, and all kinds of problems happen; or if I don't actually fulfil my responsibilities, another problem happens. In New Zealand, our difficulties with men are either: they control and dominate, and the women are left very weakened and never come forth; or they're very irresponsible and passive, and the women are forced to carry things God never intended them to carry. It affects them negatively, and that is a major problem in New Zealand - passive men; partly because of the spirit dynamic of the nation, partly because of break-downs in family roles and whatever. But at the end of the day, none of those things cut it. If you're irresponsible, you're irresponsible, full stop. There are consequences for it.

So as a Christian, we're called not to just drift along in the way we were, and the way we were raised, and carry on the sins of the fathers. We're called to discover what God called me to do, and then do my best to do it, to fill it. That make sense to you? Turn to someone next to you and say: I think he's talking to you. [Laughter - I think he's talking to you.] It can't be me, I know I'm doing okay! [Laughter] There's usually with these kinds of areas, everyone thinks: well I'm doing okay, it must be someone else. I wish so and so was here, to hear this message. [Laughter] I know someone who really needs to hear this. [Laughs] But it's for you. See, I wouldn't be bringing - it's for me too, for all of us. It's what God's trying to talk to us about. Okay then, so whatever is your metron; here's another thing you need to understand about your responsibilities is: whatever God has given you responsibility for, He permits you to take initiative. He expects you to take initiative, and be creative in what you do with it. I better say that again. Whatever God has entrusted you to do, you don't have to pray about it all. He expects you to be creative, and take the initiative. You don't have to talk to Him about it all the time, because you're in charge.

If you're in charge, you do it. He lets you do it. You got a house, you can paint it whatever colour you like, as long as you're happy to live in there, and you can do it when you like. You don't have to pray: now God, I wonder could you lead me and guide me, when should I paint my house? If the paint's peeling, paint it! [Laughter] Some people are just so impractical in this area. If your car's dirty, clean it; if the lawns are overgrown, cut them. [Laughter] Look after what God gave you. Treat it like it belongs to God. You've got a lot of ways of doing it; for example, I could go out with hand clippers and cut my lawns, but it would be a very long, slow job. I could get a motor mower and do it. I could buy one of those sit-on mowers and do it - be a bit of overkill. I could ask one of my sons to do it, or I could pay someone else to do it, whatever. There's a lot of ways you can get the job done. My deal is, God didn't say: you've got to cut the lawns; He just said: you're responsible for them - either way, get it done. Be creative, take initiative, make it happen. Do you understand that?

So every area, you'll find God will give you the principles, but you figure out, you've got to be creative how you make it outwork. That's why we can't tell one another, what you ought to be doing in your marriage, what you ought to be doing in your family, you ought to do it this way or that way. You can't go doing it, because God's knitted couples together differently, so they'll have a lot of ways of handling things. There's a lot of ways, so God gives the principles, you've got to figure out how to put this thing into practice, and be creative, and take the initiative; and you ask God to give you wisdom. Then He expects you to think about it, and to talk it over, to ask ideas from this one and that one; then to do something, just do something. Passive men, oh my goodness me. I feel tired just even talking about it. [Laughter] Now you notice here he says: we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure. Now this is the apostle Paul talking. Now you think: here's someone, I've got the mighty power of God, there's all these miracles - but you notice this inside him. He says: I will not go out beyond what God has entrusted to me. I will stay within the boundaries God has given to me. He said: that, someone else is responsible for, this is my bit; and you notice the bits that he's responsible for, are the ones he has relationship with.

So one of the problems that comes, is where we try to take on things God has not given us responsibility for. You'll be burdened. There'll be no grace to do it. You'll be meddling, and you'll create many problems when you do that. What I need to do, is to know what's my business, and do my business. The Bible says in 1 Timothy I think: study to be quiet and mind and do your own business. If we had people minding their business, it would be a lot happier world to live in. We wouldn't have so many people [tap-tap-tap] who have made it their business to be in everyone else's business. [Laughter] The Bible calls them: busybodies. It says, about busybodies, it says: stop being a busybody, and wandering around talking about everyone else's business. Mind your own! Get busy working on what God gave you to do, and let others do what they're going to do; but don't meddle and busybody - you create a lot of problems that way. 1 Thessalonians talks about that, 2 Thessalonians talks about it. Actually it's very clear about men being responsible. This is how clear it is. This is how clear it is: if a man doesn't work, let him starve to death. That's how serious the Bible is. If he shan't work, let him not eat. Well you can't go on long not eating before you want to work. If you connect eat/work together, work/eat together, then you actually get your thinking right, see?

Today we want to have eat, eat, eat, eat and work [Laughter], but you notice that God gave man a work to do, then He said you could eat. Every tree of the fruit of the garden you can eat - except that one. He got into the garden, gave him the work first, and after giving him the work, then He said: do the eating. We seem to have got it all the other way around. Now you see the problem is, our society has actually stripped away responsibility, and when there's stripping of responsibility, you become disempowered. Friend, every time you assume responsibility, there's an empowering takes place in your life; provided it's what God gave to you, and not what belongs to someone else. If it belongs to someone else, then unfortunately, you will empower demons to operate, because they operate outside the law of God. So for example, if I assume the responsibility God has given me, I not only rise up on the inside, I have authority over that area, I can protect that area. I can do all kinds of things in that area, but demons can't get in there, because I'm in there.

But if I let go that responsibility, then they can get in; and if I go somewhere where God didn't authorise me, I'm standing against what God put in place, they can get in there too. Witchcraft is connected to rebellion, resisting what God has ordered. That's all. Whenever you resist what God has ordered, you open up the way for demons - they are authorised to act. It's like the law of gravity, it's just there, pulls everything down. It's got some good in it. Where's the good? It holds you on the earth, so you don't fly off out into space. It's a wonderful thing - gravity, but not so if you fall off a building, or off a bank like I did one time. [Laughter] Horrible feeling to be looking straight up in the sky, as you fall. There's just this very long, long half second. Whoa! Done! I didn't like gravity that day [laughter], but that didn't change it. Whether you like it, or don't like it, it's still there, and it has its place. Do you know what its place is? To hold me on the earth; and so when God sets laws in place, they're to bless us. If you violate them, you have all kinds of consequences; so don't go outside what's your business. So if it's your business - you've got to discover what your business is, and mind your own! Turn to someone next to you, say: I know he's talking about you now! [Laughter]

So once you know your business, once you know your responsibility, it stops you manipulating and controlling someone else. That's their job, let them do it. If you pick it up, it'll burden you, and you'll have all kinds of problems; so this is what God calls you to do. First of all you position yourself. How do you position yourself? See, remember what we said? You submit to what God has ordered, so this is what you do. Where's God positioned me? Well if I'm the wife I'm here, if I'm the husband I'm over here. This is good, I'm up higher. I'm higher than you, no doubt I'm better than you. You'll do what I tell you! That's not positioning yourself. That's arrogance, and pride, and all kinds of horrible attitudes. You know what will happen? She'll just rise up against you, and rightly so; because when a man shows pride, the woman will counterbalance it. She'll expose it. You'll look an idiot, just in a moment; grandstanding, and then his wife gives him 'the look' [laughter], and he's gone, just in a moment - poof! Like popping a balloon, poof! Gone like that. It's all over for him.

So if I'm up here in the scheme of things, that means: all that's down there, I'm responsible for. Now you understand this, that if a man fails to take responsibility, he goes down the end of the line. [Laughter] Becomes an overgrown flippin' kid, has to be fed, looked after - but where does that leave his wife? She's carrying the responsibility. She's in a position God never intended her to be in. She's exposed, carries pressure, has assaults on her, and all because of that man. [Laughter] Think about this. The Bible says this: by one woman, sin entered the world, and death through sin. Does it say that? [No.] What does it say? Who got to listen to the devil first? The woman. Who ate the fruit first? [Woman.] Who did God hold accountable for this whole deal? [Man.] Why? [Laughter] It's not fair! She did it! [Laughter] In case you got it real clear, the Bible says: by one MAN, sin entered the world. God would not let him off the hook; I put you in charge, this is where you're supposed to be, up here. So what's he got to do? He's got to position himself. How do you position yourself? You understand where God has placed you, and you accept and embrace full responsibility; this is my job, my business, and I've got to mind my business.

The second thing you do, is you fill up the area of responsibility. This is how God said it to Adam, in Genesis 3:15. He brought Adam out. Now there was no Eve around, no woman around. He brought him out, and He showed him a big garden, representative of the possibility of inheriting the whole world, if he handled it right. In other words, Adam didn't start out in charge of everything. Adam started out with a piece of the pie, and if he could handle that well, God had in mind to give him a heap more, like He always does. If you can handle your bit well, God's going to give you a lot more. Now so here it is, He said: Adam, this is what you do. I want you to dress it, and keep it. Dress it means, I want you to cultivate it, so it becomes incredibly productive, and I look at it and say: oh wow! The second thing He says: I want you to keep it. I want you to be a watchman over it, to guard that garden. Don't let any enemies get in, don't let anything get in that'll mess it up - and Adam was busy doing that before He even arrived. That's why Adam's the head, because God set it up that way. He's at the beginning, He started it.

So Adam's a bit lonely, tired of doing all his work, so God said: I'll bring someone to him, brings Eve out, oh! Eve - so Adam even named her. I'll call her 'woman' - just a little bit of ego in there already I think [laughter], because she came out of man you know. [Laughter] God said: I brought her here to be a helper for you, so you're still in charge. You've still got responsibility. You've got to make this thing work. You've got to dress the garden and keep it, and now its not just the garden, you've got to look after your wife as well; so you've got to cultivate her, and you have to protect her. So that means when I come back and have a look, oh wow! What have you done with Eve? She's looking beautiful! So that's the role God's given to man. You have to cultivate your wife, so she becomes a beautiful woman. If she's looking an old hag... [laughter] I've got to really ask: it's your fault! Take her out, and buy her something nice, and look after her; speak words to her, and get her some make up, and take her down and get her hair all done nice. Take away special and look after her. You've let the garden go mate! [Laughter]

Come on now, who was responsible? She's responsible for her own life, but you've got to understand that cultivating means to invest into it, and become a husband, until it becomes a beautiful, productive thing. So God has in mind not that the woman be inferior in any way, but she be a partner for him in life, and that through his ministry to her, she would become beautiful. The trouble is, many have been abandoned by men, who failed to fulfil their responsibility for some reason. Come on, you've got to get a hold of this thing - and God called him to protect her. So this is what he's got to do: first of all, he's got to embrace the responsibility; two, he's got to fill it, and cultivate it, protect whatever. Then he has to trust God to help him do the job he's called to do, because it needs God's ideas; and if he embraces it, and sets his mind to actually do those things, then he can expect that God will give him lots of ideas on how to do it. If you just set it in your mind: you're going to work at making your wife a beautiful woman, I know you'd find a lot of ways to do that - and it wouldn't be nagging her either. Usually it involves sacrifice. That's how Jesus did it. He sacrificed Himself, He gave Himself; He loved the church, and laid down His life for it.

Then He said: in case you think that being a leader, or being the head of the home, is a big deal, He took off His garments in John 13, He became a servant, and He washed the disciple's feet. Wouldn't it be wonderful, if some of the men just go their wife, and just said: honey, sit down there. Now let me get a little basin, just going to wash your feet, and I've got the meal all cooked all ready for you. [Laughter] See I can feel them manifesting all right away [laughter] saying [mutter mutter] - but Jesus did it, why couldn't you? He says: if I am your Lord and master, and I do this, why couldn't you do something like that? I can see this is shocking [laughter] the serious Kiwi male. But a woman is wired to respond to that kind of loving, and you'll feel good when you do it; that's right, instead of exploiting her, or allowing her to carry the weight, and being an overgrown kid with mummy. [Laughter] [I know that feeling!] Come on, it's what it's like in New Zealand. Not in every home, but in many homes, we've got some overgrown kids, that want their wife to be mummy a lot of the time, and the rest of the time their wife, usually at night time in bed. [Laughter] It's true. There are other times it's mummy - shocking, mummy's boy. Isn't that dreadful?

Does it command respect? It doesn't, does it. Why? I'll tell you why it doesn't - you know why everyone gets revolted by that thought? Because it's out of God's order. God's order is extremely attractive. It is extremely beautiful when it operates right, and it produces the goods, because God upholds it. As soon as we resist what God's ordered, there's just no end of problems. They just never stop, so that's why you've got to actually address things at the root. That's why we're focussing on the men, for a little while, because that's where the source of much of the difficulties lies. Is that true? Ooh! How are you going to distribute the responsibilities in the home, who'll do what? Now the Bible doesn't tell you who does what, it just says: the man is responsible to make sure it all happens, so how are you going to see? Well you see what usually happens is, we put things together based on: well in my family, we did it this way. She says: well my family, we did it this way; well I'm from another culture, and we did it this way. But once you're born into the kingdom of God, and you become married, you actually have a new culture, a new kingdom, a new way of doing things. You've got to work it out [applause], and make some adjustments around here.

My wife, she came from a family where her father was a great gardener. She automatically assumed I would be a great gardener too. [Laughter] I have an aversion to gardening. I tried one attempt at it. I was very good at doing the oxalis [local noxious weed], oxalis just multiplied and increased and filled my garden. The tomatoes, I just didn't know whether I wanted to eat them or not, black spots, and small and green, and had things that sort of got around - I just thought: this is hopeless. Then inspiration came! I got my mower out, and mowed the garden [laughter] and turned it into lawn, and I've bought vegetables ever since. [Yay! Laughter, applause.] She couldn't understand that. She said: we had chooks; we had chooks for a while too. We've done all kinds of things to try and figure out how this thing goes. In the end, I said: listen honey, I'm too busy for all of that kind of stuff. God's going to find another way of getting - I'm going to focus my energy over here, and we had to adjust. You understand that? You've got to adjust the way you do it.

So the Bible doesn't actually tell you how to do it, He just gives you some principles. I'll give you the principles. Here's some of them, they're very, very simple things. Number one, the man carries the final responsibility. He's got to just actually, be in charge. Someone's got to do it, someone's got to carry the can, carry the buck, and just make sure it gets done; and then be responsible. There's a difference between delegating, where you stay in charge and responsible; and advocating. Now this happens with money - ooh, we get into that in a moment. Let me just give you this in case I forget, and get off track. The one who's most gifted, is the logical one to do the job. A man's got big muscles, why shouldn't he chop the firewood? [Laughter] Why not? Wife out there [laughter] digging the garden. So you've got to work out where it is, and we've got to break through traditions, and just find whatever - whoever's most gifted. Some women are wonderful with resources and finances. The Bible says, that in Proverbs 31: a godly woman, she's very skilful in business, all kinds of things; and some men are not so skilful in that area - but you can't just hand it all over.

Some situations you get, where the man actually doesn't run the finances at all. He doesn't even know what's going on. Don't know what's going on, the wife runs it, she's got the purse. [Laughter] Well you can't have that! Here's your allowance for this week! [Laughter] Believe me, there are some here, who know what I'm talking about. [Laughter] I'm not looking at anyone right now. [Laughter] I dare not. You'll say: ooh ooh! Usually you know after a little while, it manifests. Now this is not right. He is responsible. If she administers it, and facilitates it, that's one thing; but being in control of it, is another. She's actually usurped his role, or he's absconded from his role; either way, it's out of order. He must stay in charge. He must know what's going on, and you get good reports on how it's going. You pray together, you hold the responsibility in your heart, you pray God's wisdom, and you seek counsel, and you work it out. This area's a big deal, so you get two extremes: one is where the man won't give anything to his wife. It's appalling how some men treat their wives, have to give account to everything, treat them like a little kid, what's wrong with you? Give her something to spend, don't ask where it went. She'll figure out what to do with it. [Laughter] You don't have to ask.

You won't have to ask to buy every kind of item of cosmetics and things like that, just give her some, say: that's for you. Don't be mean. Don't be mean. Even if you haven't got a lot, just give something that's hers. You won't believe what it'll do, just to have something that she's got to look after. The other extreme, is where the man just gives out - don't know what's going on. I was like that for a long time. Then one day - it's quite interesting how responsibilities can change - my wife came and handed me the cheque book, and said: it's all yours now. [Laughter] I said: okay, and I did it. That'll lead to another thing in a moment too, how if one person picks up responsibility, it'll create a loss of responsibility, and sense of responsibility, in the other; and here's the danger. See women will mean well, and they'll pick up that, because they feel a sense of responsibility, they'll pick up, and pick up, and pick up. The man becomes more, and more, and more irresponsible, because there's a dynamic inside the marriage.

God's brought you together, and He will do everything, His power sustains the thing; so if one person picks up something beyond what the other has, it causes it to go out of balance; so you find that where a woman starts to pick up responsibility, the man loses his sense of responsibility more, and more, and more, and ends up very childish. Or if the man picks it all up, it leaves the woman feeling very demeaned, as though she has no value in the home; so you've got to work the thing out. It's quite an area to talk out, and to work through, so God doesn't tell us how we're going to do it. He just - these are the principles: one, the man's responsible; two, use the best gifted person; three, team work. Just work to get the job done the best way you can, and that may mean you just alter the roles and things around. We had strict things: the men's work was outside; women's work's in the home! [Laughter] That's how I was raised up, and it didn't work. [Laughs] I don't know where it came from, but there's no example of it in the Bible just like it. It's a very cultural kind of thinking that, and so what you need to do is work out something that works, so sometimes I would do meals, and I would work things, and do cleaning, and do this and do that.

In fact, one time I said to my wife: why don't you go away for the weekend, and leave me with it, so I find out what it's like to be in your shoes? So she went away - for four days! [Laughter] Guess who was waiting to see her back? [Laughter] A whole new appreciation! [Laughter] It's a great way to get appreciation, is when you've got to do it all. Now whoever feels the sense of responsibility, usually is the one that picks it up. The final key is: servant leadership - there needs to be a heart of a servant, just to be willing to fit in whatever's needed. Now what happens is, if a man doesn't take up his responsibilities, there's a terrible thing happens. There's an imbalance starts to take place. Someone will fill it. Firstly, if a man won't pick up his responsibilities as the head of the home, usually that often takes place in finances, or in spiritual matters. Oh well the wife's a good prayer, let her do the praying. Yeah, let her fight off all the demons. [Laughter] You rotten, miserable person. God wired you, and equipped you, to be a warrior, to be a fighter; and now you're a couch potato, leaving her to fight the demons. I think it's terrible, shocking.

She's the spiritual one around here... No, you're the lazy one. You need to stand up, assume God's role - protect the family. You know what happened, you know why Eve got into the mess? If you read in Genesis 3:6 it says: the devil gave the fruit to Eve, her husband with her. What's he doing with her, letting all this happen? [Laughter] So she's contending with the devil, he's leading her off track, and Adam says nothing; nothing to say, silent. Because he was silent, this problem emerged. That's why a lot of problems emerge in families, silent men. What do you think dear? [Laughter] It's up to you, you work it out, sort it all out. We've got to realise, God has designed men to carry this weight, and when they do it, there's some things happen. Now if they don't do it, this is what happens - I won't develop this, I'll just list it for you. Number one, God's order is violated. If a man won't carry his responsibility, God's order is violated; therefore, he's not positioning himself to be blessed, and his family is robbed of what God's best is for them.

Here's the second thing: he loses his authority, and ability, to protect his family, in that area. Often men don't give it up in every area, they just give it up in one or two. The third thing is, someone else feels that sense of responsibility, picks it up, and it's usually his wife, and she feels burdened by it. Sometimes, in some families, both parents abscond; and one of the eldest kids is picking it up. I've prayed for many kids, and you know what? I've said: I'm going to talk into this area - I've prayed for a lot of kids, out of families where both parents are sat down drinking down the pub, and they've left one of the kids to look after all the other kids, and they've done it regularly. You know what happens? It's quite a common problem, and what I've found is this. The kids grow up, and their childhood is robbed. They become angry, resentful, and dysfunctional in handling their family responsibilities. They have many marriage problems, and relational problems. I have prayed and seen women just weep and weep and weep, because their childhood years were stolen, being a parent instead of being a child. They were forced to grow up and carry a weight way beyond - a reasonable amount of responsibility's okay, but when the parents abscond, demons come in and torment the whole family. It's as simple as that.

Here's another thing. The man feels a deep sense of guilt. He actually knows in his heart he's not doing right. His pride won't let him admit it, but he actually knows in his heart he's not doing right - his esteem goes down. His wife becomes burdened, and because she becomes burdened, she usually feels resentful; and that resentment, if it isn't dealt with, what happens is it overflows. She's really supposed to be standing here, he's supposed to be standing here watching over, protecting, cultivating it, sharing out responsibilities. They work in a partnership. If he just lets go, he positions down here, now she's up carrying the weight. Now she begins to feel resentful of him. She's positioned where she shouldn't be, by default, and she carries a huge weight. Do you know what happens then? She begins to question the man in other areas. She begins to feel insecure, and doubt his competence in dealing with other areas. She begins to be negative, and starts to nag on him, [nag-nag] you know, and this creates many, many problems in the marriage, because she's feeling insecure and burdened. She doesn't like it being like that, but she doesn't feel safe to let it go.

Now many times what you find, for example a widow, and they remarry. The hardest thing for them to do is to let go that sense of responsibility, and let the man pick it up. A woman's been a solo parent, very hard for her, when she remarries, or when she marries, to let go that sense of responsibility - but this is what needs to happen. There's almost like a dynamic of a see-saw takes place. If one carries extra responsibility, the other feels less responsible; so suppose it's the man, and here's the man. He's away, way out there; hey, you don't have to worry about all the finances. I've got it all under control - and she's seen a few of those bills unpaid there, and she's feeling a sense of responsibility. He just makes all these statements: okay, go on, don't worry about it, whatever. What's happening is, she's getting more and more nervous, because she knows he isn't hearing; and so she feels more responsibility. The responsibility goes on this side, she feels even more responsible now, so she begins to talk [nat-nat-nat] and so the more she talks, he says: what are you worrying about? God will provide, everything will work out. She gets more burdened - you brought religion into it. More burden now!

What he needs to understand is, the more he moves this way in becoming irresponsible, the more she'll move the other way and become responsible. It's like a see-saw thing, for example if a man becomes very passive his wife, will become very active, to compensate. If a man is introverted and sits alone, she'll become quite a spark, a live spark and really become extrovert. If the man is a very tightwad, she'll become very generous, to compensate. If the man doesn't discipline the kids, she'll feel the need to, and actually get involved in it. Do you understand? It's like a dynamic, and of course she feels resentful of the burden, and goes: why don't you? You never do this... Well now you can see it's getting bad. He says: ...you're always on my case, you're never happy... but the problem is, he's being irresponsible.

Now here's what he needs to do. If it's bad, he's got to do something. Here's what he needs to do: he needs to first of all, listen to his wife's concerns, so she feels she's had a hearing; secondly, he needs to assume the responsibility that he's failed to assume - honey, I'll take this thing. I haven't been doing it. I'd like to pick it up, and work it out. Third, he needs to develop a track record of consistency, so she feels safe; and the other side of the coin, she needs to be willing to let it go, because if she won't let it go, she'll hold it, and you'll never be able to be the leader. Now in many families, the man cannot be the leader, because the wife won't let go the carrying of responsibility. She feels hurt, and feels distrust or whatever, but at some point, the dynamic has got to change; and it can't just change with one, both have got to do this. The Bible says: you pick up a person, and carry their burden for a while, but once they're going then you actually - they've got to carry their own burden, Galatians 6:5.

So for it to work, there needs to be both move towards the centre, otherwise they both polarise. If you see your wife reacting to something in you, it's almost certainly you've gone out too far in that area. Listen to what she's saying, and try to come back in, so she stops reacting so much to it. It's like you've got to work the thing out. There's a dynamic balance in the spirit. Now if we fail to fulfil our place, demonic powers are authorised to come into that area, and create havoc. Many families are in trouble because demon powers operate in the family, because the man does not assume his responsibilities. Whatever God has given for you to do, take it in your heart, and assume it fully. Begin to plan how you'll work the thing out, and expect God to help you in doing it. Talk it over, so that there's a change takes place.

In our family married life, things have changed, sometimes very dramatically - like with the money - yours! Fine. Now when I took it over, I ran it differently to Joy, and that's okay. She had to be willing to let me do it differently. It got done, and she feels safe. There are other areas I had to pick up too. I didn't realise, just how passive I was, and in need of picking things up. Now for the woman's sake, you're praying for your husband, you're not taking up responsibility. It'll end up in conflict and confrontation unless you can actually let go that sense of responsibility to him. Many times what happens, is as soon as you let go trying to carry it, and just let it go, supernaturally the weight of it will fall on him - if you'll let it; because you'll think: well what if nothing happens, what if it gets a mess? Well maybe it'll get a bit of a mess for a while, but the weight will start to sit on him. As soon as you pick it up again, it transfers, and he becomes more irresponsible; so always you've actually got to be willing, if it's not your thing, find a way in God to let the thing go, there is sense of weight of responsibility.

If you need to carry it for a little while, because he's in a growth part, do it with joy rather than feeling a burden in it. If you see your man starting to respond to God, don't suddenly download or dump on him. Encourage every step he makes to rise up and become responsible. Stand behind him, and maybe you're holding on to things for him, but that's alright, let it be until he rises - as he rises up, encourage him to go forward and do that. It will help you. Amen. [Amen.]

Father, I just thank You, You're bringing divine order into lives. I thank You helping us, men and women, to take up responsibilities that God, You've entrusted to us. Father, I'm praying for divine order to take place in families, in marriages, in this church. I pray for every man that's here today, that a spirit of encouragement and faith would come, and that where men have struggled in these areas, that God, You'd cause him to stand up, and shoulder weight and responsibility to protect the family, to bless, and to cultivate, and to protect what you have entrusted us. Father, I pray for every wife who's carried burdens, every single parent, every widow that's here that's carried burdens, You'd help them let go those things in their heart to You, and get free of resentment and anger, and be able to Lord, let the burden be carried, and not have to be weighed themselves. Father, let Your spirit come.

Just while we finish, is there any person here who's never made the first step, which is to connect to Jesus Christ by faith, and allow Him to be the leader of your life, to give you direction in your life, to save you from the weight of sin, to lift you up, and to give you a whole new beginning? If that's you today, why don't you raise your hand, say: I want to become a Christian. I'd love to become a Christian today. I want to actually be the kind of man or woman God's called me to be, and I really know I need God. Is there anyone here today, saying that's me, I want to do that? Just raise your hand quickly now.

I wonder just while we're here, I wonder as I've spoken today, how many women have felt something rise up inside you, because you've carried a tremendous weight of responsibility. You've felt it's been unfair, and it's been like a crushing weight. Today you say: God, I want to let this thing go to You. If that's you today, would you just raise your hand, women that are feeling that way - God bless many, many, many.

One of the best ways that single parents could be helped, is if men who carried responsibilities, would reach out and extend grace and help them. There's no one man can do it, but several men can help fill that gap. I wonder if there's men here today, God's spoken to you about standing up, and assuming responsibility, would you just raise your hand, just be honest before God, say: that's me, God's been speaking to me? God bless, good on you - some guys. For those men who haven't felt touched and challenged, I encourage you to talk to the Lord, and then to talk to your wife; say: honey, do you feel like you're carrying things that I need to be involved in or need to carry? Ask openly and honestly, and she'll tell you - if she knows and can trust that you won't get angry and reactive. She'll say: yes, I'm feeling burdened about this, could you lift the weight of it? What a great change would take place in your marriage, if you just humble yourself and do that.

Father, touch the men of this church, raise up mighty men in Jesus' name. Everyone said [Amen.] Amen, God bless.

Summary Notes

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DEFILEMENT THAT DIVIDES

1. Introduction

· Eph 5:23 - let everyone of you love wife as himself and wife, see that she reverence her husband.

· Marriage = covenant relation – designed to reflect relationship of Christ and the Church.

· When working as God intended – dynamic flow of 2 lives together – heaven or hell.

· Very act of joining and flowing together surfaces hidden unresolved attitudes/walls.

· Prov 4:23 “Out of heart flow issues of life”

- Unresolved treasures – pain, resentment, reaction overflow and must be resolved.

- Reconcile = change thoroughly. Definition – bring into harmony so sound together in unity.

- Most focus on the impossible – trying to change their spouse!

· Key Problem Area – point of focus = bad habit, character flaw, personality trait. Come to point of intolerance or alternate between:

i) Demand change

ii) Give up – what’s the use

Never solve problems by trying to make the spouse change – resentment, discord.

2. Defilement that divides

· Heb 12:14-15 “Follow peace, looking diligently less any man fall from grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up many be defiled.”

· Follow (1377) To pursue, follow hard after

· Peace (1875) To join, set at one again, oneness

· Defile (3392) Contaminate, pollute

· Trouble – to annoy, crowd in

Example – David and Michal

1 Sam 18:20,28 Michal loved David – deep affection and attraction for David

1 Sam 19:11-12 Michal had deep loyalty to David – even at risk of fathers anger

2 Sam 6:16 Time of revival, presence of God strong – season of fulfilment of promise

Michal unable to enter or participate or unite with her husband - defiled

i) Distance: separated herself from David so remained distant and aloof

v16 “looked through window” – to lean out, gaze at spectacle, passively look.

ii) Despised:

v16 “despised him in her heart” – to condemn, judge, look down upon, think to scorn.

· Harboured inner feelings and sat in judgement of David.

Rom 14:10 “Why judge your brother or set at nought your brother, for we shall all stand …”

· Judgement and criticism are rooted in pride and law, person did not measure up to our standards.

iii) Defiled: polluted within by own attitudes and feelings

v20 “How glorious was the King of Israel today!”

· Harboured anger and resentment in heart - look and words – sharp, scorning.

· Life in turmoil because of unresolved reactions.

a) Father: 1 Sam 25:44 – Saul had given daughter to Phalti – forced into adultery.

b) Husband: Failed to rescue her – unmet expectations.

· Anger is a powerful destructive emotion – crushes, damages, releases demons.

· Anger à resentment and bitterness – must address what fuels it – unmet expectations.

Example:

a) Desire for fulfilment through external things – people, circumstances.

b) Unrealistic expectations – perfect world.

c) Unfulfilled dreams, hopes – disappointments.

d) Inability to meet expectations of others – struggling for approval

· Michal - angry at father, angry at David, felt helpless – overflowed in reaction

- blind to blessing of God

- defiled

iv) Demand:

· Behind the look and scorning words was a demand for David to change!

· 2 methods changing people – seen in way God has dealt with people.

a) OT – Law: “Thou shalt”

· Law = requirements or demand to live by à reward if obey, consequences if don’t.

· Law à spouse distances self and demands change à will reward if change occurs.

· Result: spouse sets self up as judge and demands/withholds.

· 2 consequences:

- person forced to change feels rejected, lacking, pressured to perform, resentful.

- marriage is under a curse. Gat 3:10 under works of law - curse

· unhealthy patterns, denial/victim/control

b) NT – Grace

· Grace = God accepts, loves, forgives and becomes one in spirit with those willing to trust.

· God exposed His heart and opened Himself for personal relationship even at risk.

· Ro 2:4 “The goodness of God leads you to repentance”

· Grace: Accept spouse as they are. Ro 15:7 Receive one another as Christ.

· When try to change spouse, therefore a demand, pressure to use own strength, will power.

· When 2 people become one there is an interflow of life supernaturally.

Note: Exception – God does not join Himself to every person

- when person won’t respond to grace then law is needed.

- 1Tim 1:9 Law is for lawless

- Ro 3:20 By law = knowledge of Son

- some situations require demand for change or consequences follow

Note: Michal

2 Sam 6:23 Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul was barren – desolate

3. Removing the roots that defile

· Trying to change spouse:

- is sign heart attitude not right

- creates demands and pressures within relationships

- leaves you resentful and focused on negatives

i) Prayer: Draw near to God for grace for personal change

Heb 4:16 “Come boldly … grace to help in time of need”

cf - Michal – husband “Phaltiel” = God is my deliverer

ii) Humble Self:

Ja 4:6 “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble”

Grace = power to live a godly life

· Must deal with own heart attitudes – hard?, uncaring?, judgemental?, fearful?

· Are there unresolved issues? – bitter judgements?, inner vows?

· Repentance of own ungodly reactions and hidden walls.

· Renounce destructive reactions – silence!, bitter judgements.

iii) Accept spouse as they are:

· Face realities and let go unrealistic expectations

· Release blessing

iv) Commit self to unity: Activate law of bonding

· Do things together

· Communicate honestly – share personal feelings, struggles, without blame

Because of the Angels (4 of 5)

Sun 18 Jul 2010  « Back to Top

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The whole reason for divine order in the home is because of the reality of a highly structured spirit world, that recognizes chain of command. No-one should engage spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6) without being properly positioned (Ephesians 5). Modern society rages against divine principles, and has become increasingly demonized, as demons have access wherever God's laws are violated. To regain spiritual authority and blessing, we must come into agreement with God's order. We choose our positioning, the consequences follow.

Over the last few weeks I've been speaking about authority, God's order, and particularly we've been looking at this whole issue of authority as it relates to the home. I'm aware, of course, that there are some who are single, and there are some who are single parents, there are some who are divorced. There are people in a whole range of situations. What we need to understand, is that over the last 30 years, there has been a tremendous push into the community of teachings and philosophies that undermine confidence in the word of God.

Around about the '60s there came the emergence of the feminist movement, and they had a lot of cause to want to stand up and speak. Much of their cause was justified, in that there had been tremendous abuse and misuse of women. However, what they attempted to do, was to change an order that God has set in place. We have to understand that while God treats everyone as being equal before Him - the Bible tells us in Galatians 3, it says we are all one in Christ. It tells us that there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek. In other words, racial distinctions, or gender distinctions, do not count in the eyes of God. When it comes to receiving Christ as your saviour, when it comes to receiving God's favour and blessing, when it comes to receiving faith to operate in the gifts, we are all on the same basis in that area. However, God makes it very clear that people have different roles.

We understand that people can be equal, but have a different role and function. The movement that's taken place, as a result of humanist philosophies, through the Teachers College and our society, has been one to promote equality and rights; whereas the Bible does not promote equality. It says that people are equal before God, but they have different roles and responsibilities that must be recognised; so the Bible very much teaches concerning the roles we have, and the responsibilities that go with that. Over the last three decades, there has been an erosion of biblical standards, and ways of thinking, that has come into every part of society; and so as we teach in the areas of the word of God, you have to understand this, that what I'm teaching is directly contrary to the flow of what's happening in society; that as you embrace this teaching, it will upset and disturb people around you, who understand that you think and act this way.

I was talking to one young man, and he said that even now, two years after he got married, his people at work are still manifesting over his wife vowing that she would submit to his leadership in marriage. You understand that a spirit of rebellion and lawlessness, an anti-Christ spirit that opposes what is godly, is at work, and under the guise of: firstly men and women being equal; then it goes on, and it begins to start to promote this equality teaching all the way through to demanding rights, demanding equality; whereas the Bible's perspective is: responsibilities and roles. So we do not have the same roles, we do not have the same responsibilities. God causes us to be quite distinct in these areas; and so you have first of all the women's rights, then it comes to gay rights, then it comes to kid's rights, animal's rights, the rights of the trees, the land rights. It actually just goes beyond all sense, and underneath it, what you've got to understand, is a spiritual power working to erode our confidence in the word of God, so we doubt; like the devil came to Eve and said: hath God said this?

Now many of you will be the position: hath God really said this; and so as I share and speak, it will certainly up heave and upset some things. I can't deal with it all in one meeting, but one of the things that's interesting in our society is this. It's that people take the exception, and then they build a case for the whole thing on the exception; and so you find for example, there'll be large numbers of parents who will be correctly using corporal punishment in their homes. They use it sparingly, they use it in a right attitude and spirit; but there'll be some who are abusing their children, and so people take the situation of abuse, and then make it a rule that covers all; and it takes away even the rights of those who are actually walking in the way that God has told us to walk. So you find all over society, rules and laws are being bent, so that the exception then sets what the whole rule will be. In trying to put things right, you've got to go to how God set it in place the first time. As I talk, I can't address in one session all of the issues that will arise out of this. All I can say is, if God is speaking to you, listen to what He is saying, and let Him adjust your heart and your attitude. Ask Him for wisdom to know what to do.

There will be many situations I can't address, but I'm trying to lay the principles, because if you get the principles, you can then let God show you how you apply it to your specific situation, in your specific area. Do not get legal about it, but ask God to show you, as you hear His word, how to respond to His word in your life. This is the way to do this. Now we will find as we're speaking in this area, one of the reasons God is talking on these issues of authority, is because over the last three or four decades, there has been a restoration in the church of various areas of ministry. There was the restoration of evangelists around about the '48 through to '50s, the restoration of healing ministries, pastoral ministries, teaching ministries. In the '90s there came an emphasis in the church of prophetic ministries, so all over there's prophetic conferences for this and that, and there's an awareness that God is wanting to restore the prophetic gift (in office) into the church. But now, as we enter the 2000s and this decade, God is speaking worldwide about the restoration of apostolic ministries in the church.

So because of that, there will be changes take place, that we will need to understand. One of the things the apostles are interested in doing, is establishing the foundations right, and getting the order right; so in the next decade, you will find an increasing awareness of God's order, of how God wants things set in place, and you'll find the church will go through changes in how it's operating and organised. This is because God is calling it to be this way. He is restoring these giftings in their authority, their office, and in their direction into the church; and so with the apostle, there will come measures of anointing, that will cause disruptions in the spirit atmosphere. They will cause exposure of demonic powers. Everywhere you see the apostles ministering, there is great exposure of the works of darkness; and there was an ordering, and a setting into place, in a way that the church could properly be built. So God is doing that in this decade.

Now one of the areas you and I need to understand, is the area of authority, and how authority works, mostly because of the abuse of authority - that's all we ever hear about. You hear about the misuse, or abuse, of authority, and the reactions that come with that. All over the world, that's been very, very clear. However, you can't look at the exceptions, or the misuse, and build a way of thinking and relating on that. You must go to the word of God. What did God say? How does this apply to me? What must I do in my life, to adjust to what God is saying? Does that make sense? [Yes.] So as we begin to speak into these areas, this important teaching concerning spiritual authority, I could speak for weeks and weeks on it, because it covers every aspect of how we live, and move, and operate in the spirit.

One of the things that God has helped me to understand is, because of an involvement in deliverance ministry, I've had the privilege of seeing things happen that most people have not seen. Because of that, I've come to understand how some things operate in the spirit world, that people generally do not understand. Because they don't understand, they find themselves positioning themselves in a way that God can't bless them, so over these next months, we'll keep the issue of authority in mind, as we address various areas of how we walk with God. At the moment we're looking at the area of man, and his headship in the home, and I've been pushing it for a few weeks for this reason: one, that most of the problems that you can trace in our society, directly come back to the loss of men fulfilling the proper role God gave them, and designed for them. The second one is because there is tremendous brokenness and damage in the lives of people, and misunderstandings about this area; and thirdly because, as a result of this, demonic powers have set themselves into marriages and family situations, creating havoc and destruction, and they're able to continue to do so, because men do not understand their role, or understand the authority God's given them, or know how to use it properly.

I want to touch particularly on that today. Finally the final reason I want to keep pushing on it is this: my observation after preaching on this area for about three weeks, is that there is a general unresponsiveness in men, that no matter what I'm saying, it's not bringing change. Now there's only two things that can be the cause of that: one, there's a real need for deep repentance, and an understanding of the truth, and a turning of the heart; or two, that demonic powers are holding men in bondage, so that they are unable to see, grasp and arise in this truth. The third is the need for models of how to do it.

Now women, I encourage you to be patient as I speak into this area, because if you get it right at the head, it comes right everywhere. I'm not in any way saying that women are not of value. What I'm trying to do is to get God's order into place, and the problems many of the women here have today, are because men fail to function properly, and continue to fail. God is wanting to address that, and alter the dynamics in marriages and families, and also alter the dynamics of how church operates, in order that the church can be a safer place, and that there be an increasing apostolic authority over the church. Does that make sense?

If the church is going to exercise authority, men who are appointed by God as heads of their home, must stand up and fulfil the responsibility God has given them. The women must encourage them, and stand behind them, and give a loud shout every time another one stands up. You understand that? Because the pressure will come off you. Let me say this: If the man fails in this area, the weight does come on the woman, and God has not designed you to take it. So what happens is, you are stressed and pressured, and taking pills and tablets and having nightmares, because men aren't doing what they ought to do. I believe God wants to bring a significant adjustment in the church, not only here but in other places, so that we can get this breakthrough. Now just before I get on to preaching the message, I want to share another thing.

Some years ago I gathered the church into spiritual warfare. We began to teach on how to address spirit powers, and what to do in the spirit. Now we had tremendous results. You could literally predict the kinds of miracles we would have on Sundays as a result of that, but an unusual thing happened. I found within the space of three months, I had major breakdowns in marriages and families occurring, and I asked the Lord about it. He told me a very simple thing. He said: Ephesians 5 comes before Ephesians 6. You think: well that's pretty simple, but it's very, very deep. Ephesians 5 has to do with right order in relationships, or as we see it, positioning yourself in battle array so you can win. Ephesians 6 has to do with the battle, but if we don't position ourself in a winning position, we can't win the battle. So the only way the church is going to be able to ever bring revival into a region, is if it takes seriously what Jesus says about order in relationships, that is: husband and wife, parents and children, bosses and workers, leaders and followers. God addresses each one specifically in Ephesians 5, and through into Ephesians 6, so that we can launch into spiritual warfare and be safe.

I get tired of having a lot of casualties, because casualties take a lot of time to repair. You don't need to be a casualty. You can be a victorious soldier. That is God's plan for us - but if you're going to do it, you've got to abide by the rules of engagement, so I want to go into the word of God again, and I want to push again on the husband's role. I'm going to start off by looking at why God says for a wife to be in submission to her husband. Now we're not going to go into all the hows of that. I know the men were starting to get excited by that teaching, but no, we're not going to go there. [Laughter] I just want to actually today address the area of understanding, and I want to call this message: Because of the Angels. I want to give you insight to the spirit realm, that I've learned after ministering in deliverance, that will help you see why it is important; whether you're a man, a woman or a child, that you get yourself under the covering God has ordained for your life, so you can be a winner in the spiritual conflict. That make sense? Okay then, well let's go to 1 Corinthians 11 and pick it up there.

Verse 3: I would have you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. So the head, the one person that is not designated head, is the woman. Did you notice that? God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman, and the woman is not the head of anything. But yet many women are burdened, because they are occupying that role, and they're occupying that role because men fail to do what God said to do, so we've got to get this into perspective. Now of course, there'll be situations in single parent families, where the woman, because there is no man there, is the head of that family unit, the spiritual head of that family unit. However, if she's wise, she'll find a mature Christian man who can stand in agreement with her, and provide a measure of spiritual covering for her. If a woman is single, normally she's under the headship covering of her father. That is why the father takes his daughter down the aisle, because his daughter is under his covering.

Most women today have left home, gone here, done this and done that, and they live a life outside that protection and covering. They've got to have many problems come with it. We won't go there, we'll just stick with what the Bible says in this area. As I say, there's a lot of side tracks I could take [laughter] but I'll just throw them out to you, and if it pricks you, well then ask God to show you what He wants to say. So the head - now the head is a role of leadership. Your head directs your body. If your body operates without the direction of your head, you are generally considered worthy of being locked up somewhere, or given medical attention to sedate you. [Laughter] In other words, your head should direct where the rest of your body goes, and so the head is a positional role of leadership and authority that God has designated to the man. Now we don't have to pray it into being, God just said it, this is how it is. God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman.

Now what you understand is, the head means a role of leadership and authority, spiritual authority. It is a positioning of authority. It carries weight in the spirit world, that the spirit world recognises; and when a man stands up in it, he can accomplish more in his praying than his wife can, if he exercises the authority of the office God's given him. Now the Bible tells us very clearly, that authority does not mean that he has greater value. It doesn't mean that at all. Both the husband and the wife are of equal value, but what it does mean is this: that the husband in the relationship has a particular role, of greater responsibility, and generally it goes like this. The one with the greater authority, is required before God, to protect those of lesser authority; so if God has designated the man to be the head of his wife and his family, then he is responsible to protect all who are under him. If the man fails to protect his wife and his children spiritually, then they will come under demonic attack, and all kinds of problems will enter into the family; so the man has a responsibility to use his authority, in order to protect his family, his wife particularly.

The authority is just literally how God organised the roles, so the family could function as a unit; so God has got a father, husband and a wife and children, and God says: this is how it'll operate. The husband will be the head. He will give the leadership, and carry the greater responsibility, greater authority. His wife will be a partner and co-heir with him under his authority, and a partner with him. Together they will have authority over their children, and as the children abide under the authority of their parents, and the wife under the authority of her husband, and the husband under the authority of Christ, they have great spiritual influence, and can minister and release the power and blessing of God. That's how God set it up. So the man is the head, very clearly, and the woman is designed to be his help. In other words, God put the man first on the earth, and gave him a commission and a job; then created the woman to come alongside him, and help him fulfil the destiny that God had given him. So when a woman marries a man, you marry into the destiny of that man. You come in under his authority and leadership, so you better check out you got a good one [laughter], and not let insecurity and some other kind of goofy reason get you involved.

If those around you, including your father, say: this isn't the right one; you had better listen. You are about to become a partner in someone's destiny, a helper provided by God, to help him fulfil his God-given call. But if you're a man here, you better stand up and find out what your God-given call is, so that when a woman comes along, you're able to give her leadership and direction, and know where you're going, instead of hanging around, waiting for something to happen. Now I want you to see - Verse 9, it says: neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman was made for the man. That's what it is, so now it says: for this cause, because the woman was created for the man; it says: for this reason, then the woman ought to have power on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord. In other words, it's saying in Verse 11: they're a team; but in Verse 10, it says: now the woman ought to; or is - that word 'ought' means is obliged to, is indebted to; needs to, or it is of great benefit to her, if she does this thing. It says: she ought to have a power on her head, because of the angels. What an unusual thing to say.

Now of course in some churches, the women wear hats; and so they sit there with their hats, and others have little things that sit on their head, and they sit there. They think that they are fulfilling the biblical directive by having their head covered, and naturally, they may well be, but the heart could be full of all kinds of rebellion, resentment, all kinds of other things. This is primarily not to do about whether you wear a hat, or not wear a hat. It's about being positioned in a place, where you are covered or under authority, so you can be victorious in battle. So it says: the woman ought to have her head covered, a power over her head, because of the angels. That word 'power' is literally this. It's the word meaning: a delegated authority. The woman ought to have a person of delegated authority, someone with legal right to stand in that role, ought to be over her. Why? Because of the angels? What on earth could that mean? Yet that term, because of the angels, is full of spiritual significance, and not only spiritual significance, practical significance, as you'll see in a moment.

Now when he says 'because of the angels', there are two kinds of angels he could be referring to: those angels who come from God, to fulfil God's bidding, and they are able to operate where God's order is being established; and demonic spirits, or demonic angels, or fallen angels under the governorship or leadership of Satan, who operate where God's order is violated. So it says: you ought to position yourself in a place, where you're under spiritual protection, because there is a whole spirit realm out there, and either blessings or assaults are launched upon you, depending on how you position yourself. We're going to have a look at how you can position - there's only one of two options you have, in positioning yourself. They have to do with your heart attitude. Now the word the Bible uses is the word 'submit' - terrible word, people don't like it, full of emotion, but it's because they don't understand it. Now 'submit' and 'obey' are two completely different terms.

Submit is the word in the original language, hupotasso. Tasso is to position yourself in battle array, or arrange yourself in the rightful position you ought to be. Hupo means under, so putting it together, it means this: you position yourself under the authority God has delegated over you, so you can be in battle array, and fulfil what God has called you to do; and there are only two positions you can take: under, hupo; and anti, against. There's no in-between ground. In these issues, you are either in your right place, or you're out of your right place. You have positioned yourself, God will not position you. He just tells you how it's to be ordered; you position yourself there, or you position yourself against it. There's no in-between ground, can you understand that? There's no in-between ground. It's either: we're positioning ourself so God can bless us, and protect us, and we can flow with authority and power; or we position ourselves against it, where Satan has legal rights of access to our life. That make sense? Okay, I know where I want to be positioned. I tell you, anyone who has a revelation of the kingdom of God, and the authority structure in it, wants to be protected. You just want to be in the right place. You don't want to ever find yourselves out there as a rebel, and demons have free access to your life, to bring all kinds of havoc and torment.

So it says here: because of the angels. Now it says that the woman needs to position herself, because of the spirit world. Now I want to talk a little bit about the spirit realm. I want you to have a look with me in Psalm 8:4-6, just three verses there. Now I have found some interesting things in deliverance work, that a lot of people don't understand, it's quite interesting. I'll share them with you in just a moment, but let me just - I want to share with you something here about the order in the spiritual world. Now I'm sharing this, I'm not going to go into a lot of Bible study on it, because I want to get to the real issue, which is: the man, occupying the place of spiritual gatekeeper. However let's just touch on some things here. It says here: what is man - Verse 4 - that You are mindful of him? In other words, how come You think about men all the time - and son of man, that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honour, and You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands. You have put all things under man's feet, all sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field.

Now God is a God of order, and so there is order in the universe. God has created rules that govern the natural world, and the spiritual world. Everyone abides by them. Now one of the most important rules, is the rules which govern authority relationships, and we'll see in a moment, the devil is required to submit to God's rules. He just can't run around doing what he wants. He actually has to obey what God has set down. Now all, everything that God has created, He's ordered in ranks of authority. They're not just lots of people all over the place; so for example, the angels of God - we won't go into the scriptures on it, but the angels of God are ordered in a hierarchy. The Bible describes at least two of them by name, the top ones are the archangels, and it tells us Michael is responsible for Israel; and Gabriel, who visited the earth at one point there, announcing the birth of Jesus - archangels. There are cherubim and seraphim around the throne of God, and then there are various levels of angels. In the demonic kingdom, the Bible tells us there's Satan, an archangel; then there are, in Ephesians 6, Verse 12, principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in the heavenly, or the spirit, realm. In other words, ordinary demons, occult demons, and then lower-level demons, so that's structured. It's like an army, in battle array.

So you have an army on one side, in battle array; an army on the other side, in battle array; and both are required to submit to the terms that God has lain down. That's extraordinary, because God has chosen man out of all His creation - now man also has to submit to the rules God set out, so God has set rules of authority governing the government, home, workplace and the church. There are set things God has set down, and so one of the most important things you can do, is find where you are in the order of things; and then you are empowered to bless all those below you. Does that make sense? To be a greater authority, is to have greater responsibility. That means you're a greater servant - why Jesus said: if you want to be great in the kingdom of God, it's not about bossing people around. It's actually, those are all the people you serve, so you want to climb up the ladder? No way, you're going down, you've got a heap of people more to serve, and you've got to lay your life down for them.

That's what Jesus said, Matthew 20:24-28, He said: in the world they will boss over one another, but in the kingdom of God it's not like that. You become the servant of more, so if you want to be great, get to serve a lot more people. That's how you get to be great in the kingdom of God, but before you start doing that, make sure you're doing what you've been given now. Be responsible for what you've been given now, and fulfil that. So now the Bible makes it very clear that human beings shall judge angels, so we need to understand that God has positioned us only a little lower than Him. We are made in the image of God, and our destiny is that we will govern all of God's creation. How about that? We will rule over angels, but it's not quite like that at the moment. So when a person is outside of Christ, he has no authority in the spirit world at all. He is under the dominion of darkness. When a person gets saved, he comes out of the kingdom of darkness, by acknowledging allegiance to Jesus Christ. Now he enters a new realm, and out of his relationship with Christ, he can be positioned to have dominion over demons and over spiritual forces, to release blessing and to protect, so here's some of the guidelines that operate it.

Number one, Satan as a created being, must abide by God's guidelines. He can't just do what he wants. He's confined to work in darkness, outside the law of God. That's where he's confined to. He can only get into your life if he deceives you, and you don't believe the word of God. He's got to find a way in, and we'll see how he does that in a moment. Now God has created laws that govern the natural world and the spiritual world, and he upholds them. The greatest laws of course, are concerning authority. Now you have one or two positions you can take, in relationship to spiritual authority. You either position yourself under it, as you recognise it; or you resist it. If you position yourself under it, it tells us in Romans 13:1-2, then we are able of course to actually flow with God, and be blessed and protected by those God's placed over us. But if we resist it, then we receive into ourselves the consequences of that, and we'll see what those are.

Now one of the things that we need to understand, is that the spirit world recognises all authority relationships, so the spirit world recognises the authority of a husband. Now I had a situation that vividly pointed this out. I had a deliverance situation, where there was a woman who'd been involved in the occult. What had happened was, she had been intensely involved, and through a number of perversions had entered into unlawful marriage relationship with a demon power. So years later she's in terrible bondage, and there's a problem in their marriage, so I got the husband to stand up as the head of the home, and I showed him how to pray. As he began to pray, this situation had been covered for 30 years, exposed itself; then when I tried to minister to her, she didn't want the husband to be there. I just allowed it to be for a little while, although I didn't feel quite right about it, and we got to a certain point when this demon was exposed, and was manifesting, and I couldn't get it out. It was very hard to get it out, just there was a resistance. I don't carry on. I've learnt that if it won't come out, it's got a ground to stay there; and if it's got a ground to stay there, you've got to get rid of the legal ground.

That's why it's not a matter of being delivered, you've got to walk in holiness. You've got to walk with God, otherwise demons come back again. So what happened was, I got the husband, I said: now listen, your wife doesn't seem to want you here, but I'm going to get you to come anyway. I'm the pastor, and you're the head that God has appointed over her. I want you to be there, so we're going to direct it. So I said: get in the next room and pray in tongues, and when I call you, this is what I want you to do. I want you to walk straight in behind me, I want you to come over, I want you to lay your hands on your wife's head, and I want you to speak very strongly and clearly to the demon in her, and say: as her lawful husband and the head of this marriage, I take authority over this unlawful marriage, and break it; and I command the demon afflicting my wife to go. So I said: now just do it when I tell you, so we got praying, and the woman manifested. I had another woman with me, and I told her: now you just keep praying for her, and keep that thing manifesting up near the surface for me, and I'll be back in a minute.

So she was lying on her face, with her feet to the door, her face away from the door, face down, so she couldn't see what was going on. Now I went out the door, got the husband, came back and as we walked through the door, and the woman - she can't even see what's going on - the demon yelled out. This is what he yelled out: what's he doing here! I thought ooh, I like that. [Laughter] I said: you'll find out in a moment. [Laughter] He went straight over, and he laid hands on her, he stood in his office as the head of the home, took dominion over the demon unlawfully connected to his wife, and I laid hands on top of him as the pastor - immediately it went out, just like that. I learnt something that day. I learnt that in the spirit world, this thing counts; and if it counts that much, then there's a big problem if men don't stand up, a big problem, because they recognise it.

Now let me tell you something else. Demons can discern the condition of a person, whether they have grounds to access them or not. Now you might think you're smart, and you can hide from me and from everyone around you, but you can't keep hidden from the spirit world, your heart condition. The Bible says in Ephesians 4:27, do not give a legal ground, or a foothold, for the devil to access your life. Don't do it. Now it wouldn't tell us that, if it wasn't possible; and it's in the context of people being angry with one another. Wow, He's got some things to say about anger, and how it unleashes demonic forces against the person you're angry against. In Matthew 5 (you can read that some other time). So it says: don't give place, or position. I want you to have a look with me quickly in Matthew 12:43-45. I want to show you a verse that makes it very clear, demons can discern when a person is open for them to come in. In other words, if you've created the right opportunities, they can get in.

Verse 43: When the unclean spirit's gone out of a man, he walks through dry places seeking rest, and doesn't find any. The demons are looking for a place. They're not looking for a place to lie down; for a demon, the place of rest is the place he feels comfortable in. That's a person, especially the sin area in their life. He says: I will return to my house, from where I came out, and when he has come, he finds it empty, swept and garnished, and he goes and he takes with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself. They enter in, and the last state of the man is worse than the first. I don't want to go through all of that, it's related specifically to deliverance, but let me just bring this out of that: that a demon knows people, because he goes back, and says: it was my house, I was there. It can come back, okay. If it can come back, it was there originally. It looks at the person, and this is what it can do: it can actually tell whether a person's open and exposed and vulnerable, or unprotected. It can tell, because it says: look to the house, so I'll go back in there. He says: I know what else I'll do, the demons can talk to one another. They work together. They can work together, to come in and invade a person and destroy their life, and through them destroy the marriage, destroy the family - if we give them opportunity. How about that?

No wonder the Bible says: better get under covering, because of the angels. You can't hide from the angels, you can't hide from the spirit world. You're fooling yourself thinking you can. You can't hide from God either. God can see your condition. He says: what you sow, you'll reap. Now you know why He's so certain that that'll happen? Because He set a law down. If you step outside the law, you're exposed, you'll reap some consequences. Now does that mean God doesn't love you? No, it doesn't mean that at all. He loves you. He's a holy God too, and He's a righteous God, and there are consequences for walking in ungodliness, you understand that? There are consequences. That means bring your life into divine order. Why? Because you position yourself to get blessed. God says: I want to bless you! But He says: I'm also a holy God, and I've got to make sure this deal works right, and it doesn't go out of control, so I'll set down the laws, I'll set down the principles, I'll set down the guidelines, and if My people will walk in My ways, then I will bless them and heal their land. [Amen.] But if they step out of My ways, all the calling on the name of Jesus won't do you any good. You've got to get to repentance.

He says: I've exalted My word above My name; so you can call on the name of Jesus, but if you don't do it out of a repentant heart, you won't get the breakthrough. Does that make sense? This is wonderful. This means, if I can let God teach me... You say: well I'm not very good at learning. He says: I'm giving you the Holy Spirit to teach you! You know it in your heart, and if your heart says: don't go there, don't go there! This principle of covering is so important. I understand this, because I moved in this realm. People who don't move in the realm, don't understand it. We've moved in this realm for years, and I know that if we get out of line, or my children move out of the covering, they get hit. If I get engaged in warfare, the devil will come and assault me, and I've got to know my position, otherwise we get hit bad, runs of accidents, and all kinds of manners of problems and things. You've got to know your spiritual positioning. All very great to think to think you take on the world, but if God wants you just to stand up and learn how to bring our lives into order, into God's order, wives in proper relationship with her husband, husbands in proper relationship, taking up the responsibility God's given you, which is to protect everyone in your family.

If your family's demonised, probably the major reason is, you did not protect them. Now we've got to understand that's how it is, and coming to church on Sunday won't do it. This is a lifestyle of the man being the head, the leader, taking responsibility in his home. He must do it. He must do it, and the failure to do that, because men - and I don't want to be too hard on men, I'm just trying to push on you for your responsibility - the reality is, over the last two decades, all of society has bombarded the whole idea and concept of men being the head of the home, and torn the thing to shreds, so men today are confused. They don't know where they stand, or what they do, but this is truth. This is going to help you to stand up on the inside and position yourself. I questioned for years why it was people go to marriage seminars, and their marriages never change much. I asked the Lord, and one day He told me. I thought that makes sense to me - He said: because they never deal with the spirit powers, that have already encroached into their marriage, and into their personal lives. If you get him to deal with that, then all the other stuff will work properly.

I went around the country for about three years. I went into cities, and we did massive campaigns for men, crusading to get men to stand up. I went around preaching about witchcraft, unlawful authority, which gets established in a marriage, whenever a man gives up his responsibility and becomes passive. I showed men how to stand up, and take that responsibility back, and how to stand in prayer and fight; and I tell you something, I had reports from all over the country of people who were set free, because they began to content with one of the prevailing spirits over our nation: the spirit of witchcraft, which makes men weak, effeminate, passive, irresponsible. They hide behind their wives. They allow, like Ahab, they allow their wife to run the whole show. It's a spirit power. If you found it was hard to stand up, it's because you're dealing with a spirit power, and if you don't use spirit weapons, you can't defeat it. You've got to get free, in your own life, of the grounds it has to stay there; and then begin to war and push that thing out of the way.

I had all kinds of demonic attacks and problems, all kinds of manners of things - but man, we had some mighty breakthroughs in men. Those tapes are still circulating. You know we stopped those conferences after a while - we called them a Heroes Conference, but when you hear the word 'heroes' you think of the gay parade up in Auckland! But we had that name, and we were using it around the nation, and then suddenly you know, it was just as we were about to enter Auckland, that was our next place to go for a Heroes Convention, and we'd built up a rapport around the place. Next thing we know, the first gay parade called Heroes Parade - what a misrepresentation of what a hero is. What a total bizarre distortion - they'e got heroes, but it's perverted, it's against what God's order is. It's trying to say that two men enter into a relationship, it's the same thing that's destroyed men being the leaders of their homes, the same spirit. When you come against it, you get an angry reaction, believe me - not just a disagreement. You get hostile reactions, hostile reactions when you declare that the word of God is very clear, that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. [Laughter, applause] Very clear. Man oh man, okay, let's move away from there.

So demonic spirits can see a person's condition, and they co-operate to bring them into bondage. Now I don't want you to be condemned. If God opens your eyes and you become uncomfortable, ask God to show you what your next step is. Don't react. Let the word of God help you break through; and so the Bible tells us, very clearly, that a man can give up authority in his life. God has given you authority and responsibility, man, woman and child. You can yield that up to God, and His authority increases in your life. You can give it up to the devil, and establish agreements, and his authority is increased in your life. You have the choice which way you go. When you give your life to Christ, and establish allegiance to Christ, and obedience, His authority is increased. His power flow increases in your life. Whenever a man aligns himself with the will and word of God, all the heaven's power stands behind him. But when you align yourself - see a lot of men have got involved in the Masonic lodge, and they've opened the doorway for demons to come, or they've got involved in various kinds of things, and they've created a legal ground.

Now here's the last thing about the spirit world I want to tell you about. There's lots of other things of course, but this is the other important thing, is that when a person in leadership yields to demonic powers, everyone under his leadership gets hit. It's like having an umbrella full of holes, you're standing under it, everyone gets wet. They all complain: why did I get wet? Because there's holes in the umbrella! When a man yields his life to demons... Now in Luke 4:6, the devil came to Jesus, and said: all this power of these kingdoms, I'll give to You, if You'll worship me; and he said: because they have been delivered to me. That word 'delivered' means this: to yield up, to hand over, to betray. That's what it means. It's actually the word 'betray'. All this has been betrayed, by Adam, to me. When Adam disobeyed God, he came into agreement with the devil, he betrayed his wife. He betrayed all the generations that came after him, and he handed authority over to the devil, who's been beating on humanity ever since.

Jesus Christ came into the earth, He was the last Adam. He did what Adam didn't do; He obeyed the Father, even to the point of death, wherefore he has now authority over all demons, and He's exalted to the highest possible place, the place God always intended for man, right next to God, sitting in the throne, ruling over all that God has created. That's what God intended for us. When you come into alignment with Jesus Christ, you then, as you submit and give allegiance to Him, and obey His words, out of a heart of faith, you are empowered to have dominion over demons. So few Christians do. They just huff and puff, and nothing happens - demons don't take any notice of them. It's quite distressing really, but however, we can learn, and make it a lot different than that. Now this is one of the worst things. In Exodus 20:4-6, it tells us, that when a man opens the doorway for demons, they can go from generation to generation, and he will do it. But we can stop this whole show, dead in its tracks, stand up and take dominion over these kinds of things. I want you to look with me, I'm just about finished - Ephesians, Chapter 5. Well I've got heaps more I could tell you, but I'll just give you a little more. I want to get to this verse here, particularly, then I want to just put a couple of practical keys on it for you.

Ephesians, Chapter 5: submitting yourself to one another in the fear if God. Wives, submit yourselves unto the husbands, as unto the Lord. Now I don't want to go there too much. You can read it, it's just what it says - for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and the Saviour of the body. That's what I want to link to. The husband is the head of the wife, as - now that word means like this. In the original language it's stronger than just 'as', it means this: He says the husband is the head of the wife, and that's exactly the same thing as what follows, which is: Christ, the head of the church, and the Saviour of the body. So you've got to understand this, that if you relate to Christ with respect and honour and reverence, and you follow His direction for your life - now that's the same deal with your husband. That's how it should be. That's what God intended. Now it says that Jesus is the Saviour of the body - look what that word 'saviour' means. It means literally this: it means to deliver, to protect, or to make safe. So a husband's role, he must Deliver his wife and family from demonic powers. He must Protect them from demonic attacks, and he must make it Safe for them in the relationship, in the family. How about that?

He can't save his family from their sins, but he can fulfil those meanings of the word 'saviour' - to protect, to make safe, or to deliver. Now one of the basic needs a woman has, is to feel secure; so the husband is given the role to make her feel safe under your leadership, by loving her. I'll give you a few things a man can do to help this thing happen, because we've got to get some practical things on it, in a moment. I just want to just take it a little further, just bear with me just for a moment - so then the Bible says: now the wife, be subject to her husband, or place herself under his leadership, so as a unit you can flow together, and fulfil what God has called you to do together. What an amazing thing. Now if the husband loves and serves his wife, that's not a big deal. If the husband doesn't do it the way God said, it becomes hard for her, she reacts to him, she pulls herself away from being committed to him, and under his authority and leadership. She becomes exposed to demonic attack, has all kinds of problems mentally and emotionally, and so she reacts even more at him, more resentful because of his lacks and failures. He sees it, and reacts against her, not realising he's in charge - DO SOMETHING!

Adam stood by, and allowed his wife to be deceived by the enemy. God held him responsible for that thing that was going on in there, and the same he does with the men in the home; so the man is given the task of protecting his home, and those who are more vulnerable than he is. Because he's the head, do you know what it means? Men, you are to be the covering for the home. Now each person in the home must get their own relationship with Christ, but you are to provide a spiritual covering over the home, that makes it safe, it protects them, and defends them, when there's demonic attacks. How does a guy do that? Let me just finish with these practical keys, then I'm going to ask a question of men. I want to ask you to do something, just want to ask if you're willing to do one little thing - it won't be too hard, one little thing. You better believe it won't be easy. [Laughter] Okay, here it is. So how do you do it? Now this is how a husband, or a man, gives spiritual protection.

Now if the men properly protected their marriages and families, they would be in a good place to offer that protection to some of the single parents, and some of the young singles, who come from broken families. In fact if men in the church would just arise and do what God says to do, you'd be amazed the peace that would come into the church, and into families. Do you realise that? Do you realise how much it would - you know something? The men in this church ought to protect the sisters, the women, from any scumbag man who comes into the church, who wants to take advantage of them, and get them in bed. The guys ought to stand up and say: listen, that's one of our sisters. You don't treat her like that. You treat her like that, you're out! [Yeah! Applause] You understand? You got it? That's what the man's role is to do, makes the church safe for the women. Instead you get these guys coming in, now they come in, they've got problems from the world, but what we really want is to get into repentance, get their life cleaned up; and so the men, you talk into them. You see someone, and they're conning some girl up in the corner, go talk to him, say: listen, we look after girls here. We don't believe in all this messing around like they do in the world, this is a safe place.

The men have got to do it. If you don't do it, you've got girls come into the church, they get upset, because the very place that they should be protected, they're just treated the same as they are in the world; because of young men in the church got the same worldly thinking, of getting advantage of the girls, and not making commitment and being responsible. You ought to get stuck into the guys. Same with the girls - you find some girl come in, and she's dressed all in hot pants and short tops, and starting to show eyes for the guys- get alongside them, and tell them how to walk godly. The Bible calls church a family, brothers and sisters. You don't let someone come in and do that to your sister. I remember when one of our girls had some trouble with one young man, all the boys rose up and wanted to beat him up. [Laughter] Part of me said: yeah! [laughter] Yeah! [Go for it!] I almost got into a scrap outside the church, down the other place there, because this guy come into the church, and he was - I'd done a bit of background on him, and he was trying to get one of the girls in the church into bed with him, and he's sitting in one of my seminars.

I said: what on earth are you doing here? Come outside. So I got him outside, and I said: what are you doing here? He said: I've come to the seminar. I said: no you're not. He said: yes, I have. I said: I know where you're from, you've got this background in all this kind of stuff, and he started to get a bit upset. He said: oh I've changed, I've repented. I said: you haven't changed one little bit. I said: two nights ago, you were trying to get one of the girls in our church into bed. Let me tell you this, you're not welcome in this place. You don't come to my - you stay out. Well we were just about ready to square off then, it was good [laughter] and I was getting stirred up, I can tell you. The guys need to get stirred up. You need to get responsible in this area, don't just accept it. Don't accept it. Don't accept what God forbids. God says: don't defraud one another sexually, don't do these things, because God is the revenger. He will deal with those things very strongly, and if you despise it, you're despising God. We've got to get our lives back in order, so church becomes safe for people who are broken and damaged, they come and they say: hey man, there's strong standards in here.

Now parents you've got to get your thinking different about dating in the family, not encouraging the young girls to get sexual before their time, and get involved dating. You've got to make those stands. You're their parents, you've got to protect your family from it. A whole generation's been lost by it. We can at least stand, and raise another generation of men who are different, another generation of young women who are different; men who know how to love and honour and value women. That's what God wants to do! I tell you, it's good. I haven't met a woman yet, that didn't love it when a guy honoured her, and valued her, and treated her right, and made her feel a wonderful person. Women are made to respond to being loved and honoured. Guys, learn how to treat the women properly. Okay, let me just give you the practical things then we - ooh! We're getting wound up now. [Laughter] Well you know we're hitting something that's really important, you know we're hitting something that's really important, and you've got to really realise, as God begins to move to straighten the standards in this area, there'll be a lot of people get upset about it; say you're too hard, too tough. No, you've been saturated with the world, so much you can't see the wood from the trees.

There's no reason to be dating, or going steady, until you're ready for it. Get on with your life! Grow up, and develop your skills and talents, instead of spending all your teenage years, all immersed in an emotionally entangling, physically, sexually, spiritually binding relationship; and then you end up at 20 and haven't done anything you ought to be doing. See, you understand? Okay, let me give you the practical keys. Number one, the man must do these things, just lay it out in two areas: spiritual and natural. Number one, in the spiritual area, there's three things in the spiritual area the man needs to do. Number one, get a relationship with Christ. Get connected to Jesus Christ, and in that relationship [laugh] you need to be connected to it, and getting His direction, and getting your act cleaned up. God doesn't want you to just be a religious man. He wants you to be a man of the Holy Ghost!

You only get the Holy Ghost - He comes, and the first thing He does, convicts where you're going wrong; so men who aren't praying, are irresponsible spiritually. They're leaving their wife vulnerable. Men ought to be the strongest prayers, strongest intercessors, should be punching at the devil! It's really the truth. Why? Because you know when they have a war, they don't call up all the ladies. [No, they call the men.] [Laughter] Let the men stay home and look after the home... they call the young men! It's only recent years they've given women equal status. I believe it's completely wrong, and out of God's order. [That's right.] It actually aborts the role God gave them. Why would a woman want to be in the front row of a military engagement, and exposed to everything like that? It's just bizarre, shows how far everyone's thinking has gone away from what God intended. God intended for men to protect the women. The women have it in their heart to protect the children, so you get the men protecting the women, women protecting the children; family becomes a safe unit.

Okay, number one, man needs to be a man of prayer; connect to God, get connected. If you're not connected, find someone who can help you. If you're not listening to God, and getting some direction, find someone who can show you; but don't say: I don't know how, and don't live with it being different. Okay, so there's the first thing.

Number two, he needs to hold his wife and his children in his heart. You hold them in your heart with a sense: I'm responsible for them; so you'll lift them up with gratitude and value, and you pray God's blessing over their life. You release and speak God's blessing. When a dad releases blessing, they are blessed. Now it doesn't mean mums can't, but dad has got a unique role in this area.

The third thing, he needs to exercise spiritual authority, speak into the spirit world, and take dominion over demon powers. Forbid them to attack your children and your wife, and say: any demon, you listen to me! I come against you in Jesus' name. I stand here as the head of my home, I forbid you to attack my wife, attack my children. Listen, you want to do any business, you do it with me. That's how it ought to be. Speak that way. They're very real, and they do hear you, and you start speaking that way, then they'll see what you're made of. They'll push on you, and mess with your mind for a day or two, see whether you really mean it or not. I can tell you, I can tell you now.

I told one guy to do this, he come back a week later, I said: how you going, are you still praying? He said: no, it doesn't work. I said: what happened? He said: oh, it got worse. My wife went crazy, and I had real problems, it doesn't work. I said: listen mate, you just rolled your sleeves up, and waded into the battle, and got a black eye - get back in there! Don't stop. Get going. Okay, so spiritually, he needs to do those things: connect with God, hold the responsibility in his heart, so he's listening to God; praying for them with gratitude and thankfulness, not focussing on all their faults and failings; and he needs to speak to the spirit powers, forbidding them to attack his wife and family.

Now he needs to do some practical things as well, practical, okay now I'll just give it quick, here they are. Number one, he needs to hold his covenant commitment he will love his wife and family no matter what. Well you do this, then I'll do that? Well you didn't do this, I'm not going to do this? That's not the deal. The deal is: you love, even as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself sacrificially for it. You need to hold fast in your heart, your commitment to love and honour and value your wife.

The second thing you need to do is this, 1 Peter 3:7, you need to listen to your wife. This is a big word, listen. 1 Peter 3:7, dwell with your wife, with understanding. In other words, it says: live together, not apart. Don't live in separate rooms! [Laughter] We won't go there - live together. [Laughter] Live together, with understanding. Now how can you understand your wife? That's a good question for men. They all look, they say: I don't know. [Laughter] When we started out, I thought it was a bloke with women's clothing you know, and then sort of - women's body, but I found it's a totally different being. There's only one way, and this is how you do it: you've got to listen to her concerns, and her thinking; and don't be surprised, it'll be different to yours. She'll come from another view altogether. It doesn't mean it's wrong, it doesn't mean it's right, it's just different - so if you're going to dwell, if you're going to exercise spiritual leadership, you've got to listen. How can you lead people, if you won't listen to them? Find out what they're concerned about - I'm going to finish with that one again. I'm going to come around there in just a moment, okay.

He needs to honour her. 1 Peter 3:7, it says: honour your wife; otherwise - this is what God says - I'll see your prayers are messed up. You won't get anywhere with your praying. If you're praying for getting finance, it won't happen. If you're praying to get that raise, it won't happen. If you're praying your workplace will really go well, it won't happen, I'll see to it. Why? Because you're not honouring your wife. 1 Peter 3:7, you read it - to honour, it means you give her value, you bestow esteem on her, you speak words of comfort, and value, and love, and you treasure her. You don't run ahead of her, you walk alongside her, and you open the doors for her. You treat her like someone - this is an important person, written on her: V-I-P! [Laughter, applause] Some of the guys are looking around [laughter] you come from another planet or something? No, just the word of God! The problem is, if you haven't seen it, and you've never done it, this is all bizarre. Get into the word of God, and say: God, teach me how to honour my wife, begin to look at her again. See you're looking at her through the wrong eyes; you're looking at her through the faults, and the failings, everything's wrong. Stop it. Forgive her. Let grace go in there instead of judgement, and then you begin to start to do what God says for you to do, and she will become a very beautiful woman! [Laughter]

You see men get a lot of their value out of what they do, and their assignments in life; women get a lot of their value out of their relationship with their man; and if you don't value them, they become depressed and full of rejection, and we're praying and casting demons out every week. Sometimes instead of casting demons out, I should find where's the husband? [Laughter] You come and cast the wretched thing out, then apologise for letting it get in there, in the first place! [Laughter] Goodness me, now this is really where the rubber meets the road. This is where it really counts.

Okay, here's the last one. You need to give direction into your home, give it direction. Give it direction. That means, you set out who's going to do what, who's responsible for this thing. Some men, work, that's my thing; home, that's all yours. No, you take some initiative and involvement, see that there's responsibility. Set some values. What do you value in your family? Set some priorities. Now we've got some things we value and things we love to do, and we do them. They're there because I've set them in agreement with my wife, and we're fully in agreement with some of these things. There's many family holidays and times together, family nights, things like that; because you never build a family, if you don't stand for something.

Okay and the last one is, you need to preserve unity, particularly with your wife. You need to give yourself to protect the family unity. That means confront problems, sort things out on the way. Look, we've covered quite a bit. I just need to finish now. Let me just - here's one thing, and this has made people uncomfortable, I can see already. I've been trying to mess with the men, to get them to be men, because this is a godly man, is a Christ-like man, who does these things, now here. How many men felt challenged, a little, by what we've said? There's a few hands gone up, isn't that great? Okay then. Now let me say this. I wonder if you could take it the next step, one more step. We've been talking about the men's role: protect, deliver, make it safe for his wife. Now here's the thing I want every man here, who's game enough to do it.

I want you to take your wife, and give her a nice treat or something nice, and then ask her this question; and then I want you to zip your lip for the next half an hour. [Laughter] Just take down notes. You can let a little tear come in your eye, but no words in the mouth; because she'll only answer this one, if she feels it's safe; that you're not going to get huffy and puffy, and all defensive. Okay, here it is, here's the question you ask her. You take her out for a nice cup of coffee, a nice dinner, take her somewhere nice, you sit down and look in her eyes. You say: God's been speaking to me through these teachings on authority in the home, and I just wanted to ask you this: is there anything [laughter] that causes you to feel unsafe and insecure? She'll look at you, and she'll be thinking this immediately: I wonder if I dare tell him? [Laughter] Can he handle it?

Some will lie, and say: no. Unfortunately that'll be the truth - so men, won't you have enough gumption to find out how it really is, get a reality check; and give her a chance to say what really worries her; because we're tired of counselling your wives, when you ought to be doing it, teaching her the word of God, and loving and listening to her, and praying for her. That's why so many churches are burned out. It's time men stood up, and did the right thing. Are you game to do that? Take her out and ask her; just write down and take a note of the things, and think through how you might start to work on them one by one, to help her feel safe and secure. Let's just bow our heads.

Father, we just thank You for this time together, You're teaching us and helping us. Father, I pray for every man here that's never seen true manhood modelled; and who's struggled in this very area, and feels so inadequate. Father, I pray that in the coming weeks they will begin to stand; and Lord, we will all arise to a new level of positioning in the spirit of responsibility, of warfare for our marriage and family; and of capacity to love our families and wives and be responsible. Father, I'm praying for the women who've been hurt and damaged by irresponsible men, that You will cause a great wave of healing to flow; and a new sense of safety come in the church, as families and marriages begin to orient around Your will and purpose. I pray for the single women here, especially those who are mothers, Lord, that You'll help them stand up in their own right, to take dominion and authority, to stand in the place of spiritual warfare, confident in their power that You have given to them. I pray You'll add senior men in the church, who'll come alongside them, and say: would you like me to pray for you? Would you like me to stand with you in agreement? Can I offer you some help and advice?

Father, I'm praying that men in the church would arise, and they'd begin to protect the young women from lustful men, intent on doing nothing but destroying young women. I ask Lord, the young women begin to arise, speak straight to the other young women, about the attitudes of their heart to men. Father, I'm asking over these next months, that the church would come to a whole new dimension, in divine order in this area, in Jesus' name. Everyone said [Amen.] Amen.

I feel a tremendous sense of the presence of God, of His great compassion for people who are really hurt and broken. There'll be some women here who will desperately need some help and advice what to do. Just go over the tape, and go over the teaching, and ask God to show you. We've got counsellors in the church who can actually sit with you and talk with you, and pray with you and walk with you, through some of these situations, or help you make your stand. Men, put into practice what we've talked about. God will be with you all the way because He's chosen you to represent His leadership in the family. Amen. [Amen.] Why don't we give the Lord a clap offering and thank him [Applause]

Summary Notes

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BECAUSE OF THE ANGELS

1. Introduction

· 1 Cor 11:3 Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman.

· Head – role of leadership: authority God has designated to the man.

· Authority – greater value. Both husband and wife are of equal value (Gal 3:28)

· Authority – how God has organised the roles to fulfil His purposes.

- responsible to protect those of lesser authority.

i. Man is the head (1 Cor 11:3)

ii. Woman is his help meet (Gen 2:18)

· 1 Cor 11:10 “For this cause ought the woman have power on head because of angels”

ought 3784 - to owe, is indebted, under obligation; benefit, gain advantage.

power 1849 - delegated authority, it is lawful.

- person delegated authority or legal right to exercise power.

· God calls the women to come under the leadership order He has established.

Submit – hupotasso – to arrange self in order or battle array beneath delegated authority.

· “Because of the Angels” – reason that women needs to position self.

Angel can be:

i. Angels of God

ii. Messengers of Satan (2 Cor 12:7)

2. The Interaction of Spirit World/Human World

a) God has created an ordered universe

Ps 8:4-7 “You have made him a little lower than the angels”.

· God is a God of order – created an orderly universe.

· Rules and principles govern both natural and spiritual worlds.

· One of most important rules is one governing authority relationship.

· All created beings in universe are ordered in hierarchy of authority.

i) Angels - Archangels (Michael/Gabriel) Cherubim, Seraphim, angels.

ii) Demonic Beings - Archangel (Satan) Principalities, powers, rulers, demons.

iii) Human Beings - to government; work; home; church.

· Humans have been created to rule over the angels (1Cor 6:3)

b) Rules that govern conflict in the natural/spiritual world

· Satan is a created being – required by God to strictly obey rules (Job 1), he is confined to work in darkness.

· God has created laws and principles that govern natural and spiritual realm and he upholds them by his power.

· There are only 2 positions you can take in relation to what God has ordered. Rom 13:1-2

Submit - hupertasso - arrange self under

Resist - antitasso - arrange self against

· Spirit world recognises all authority relationships – that God has established and must yield to the lawful exercise of that authority.

· Demonic spirits are able to see the spiritual condition of any individual and identify any legal grounds to attach (Matt 12:43, Acts 19)

· Human beings can yield authority over their lives either to God or to Satan.

(Luke 4:16, Rom 6:14)

· Allegiance/obedience increases the authority/power of God or Satan in persons life.

· Whatever a leader (head) does with their authority affects every person under their care.

eg Luke 4:6 - Disobeyed to God automatically yielded rights to Satan.

- When person yields authority it is used by Satan against them.

eg Exodus 20:4-6

· Any commitment, dedication, curse or blessing entered into by a person in one generation may give authority over that persons descendants. Eg, Adam, Abraham, David, Acham, Eli.

· If such curses, commitments not cancelled they pass generation to generation.

3. The Husband is the Spiritual Gatekeeper

a) God calls men to provide protection.

Eph 5:23 “Husband is head of wife as Christ is head of church and He is the saviour of the body”

· “As” – in just the same manner as follows.

· Saviour – to deliver, to protect, to make safe.

· Subject – to place oneself in battle array under the leaderships direction of husband so as to flow as a team and fulfil the purpose God intended for the man.

· Note: Eph 5 – order in relationships precedes Eph 6 – spiritual warfare.

b) A gatekeeper controls the entrance

· Matt 16:18-19 Gates – place of entrance, authority.

· OT – elders sat in the gates – made decisions, exercised authority.

· Whatever spiritual influences enter family come as a result of the exercise of authority of the man.

· Man can allow demonic activity or allow Holy Spirit activity.

· Man has greater authority – greater responsibilities. ie, man assigned task of protecting those more vulnerable, not taking advantage in the home/church.

· Key principle in exercising authority is service. (Matt 20:25-28) Motivated out of love.

· Purpose of that authority:

i. Protect

ii. Bless (nurture) Gen 2:15

4. How a Man can Protect his Home

· He must fully assume God given responsibilities and exercise authority in love.

a) Spiritually

i) Personal relationship with Christ – connected, receiving guidance, resolve personal issues.

ii) Holding wife and children in heart – shouldering responsibility.

iii) Exercise spiritual authority – speak into spirit world to forbid/release – break spiritual attacks on wife.

b) Naturally

i) Hold fast his covenant commitment. Mal 2:15 (wife attached in security)

ii) Listen to his wife – needs, concerns. 1 Pet 3:7 (wife attached in loneliness)

iii) Honour and value his wife. 1 Pet 3:7 (wife attached in low esteem)

iv) Give direction in home – values, responsibilities, priorities. Josh 24:15 (wife attached in burden)

iv) Maintain family unity/agreement. Ps 133, Matt 18:19, Matt 12:25

Loving Leadership (5 of 5)

Mon 19 Jul 2010  « Back to Top

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God never uses His power to get His way in our life, His loving-kindness attracts us to follow Him (Jeremiah 31:3). What does this look like in marriage? This very practical session unpacks 5 principles that will empower your leadership in marriage: Principle of Headship, Principle of Bonding, Principle of Partnership, Principle of Honour, Principle of Loving-kindness.

We spoke about leadership, about headship, and what we did was stir up a heap of stuff in both men and women. Women, it's okay, it'll all settle down after a while. We've only just given part of the picture. Today I want to talk about the man's leadership. This is the last thing we'll do related to the man, the man's leadership and I've called this message Loving Leadership. We want to just pick up this macho man, aggressive man, dominant man thing today, and really show a man how you can lead your wife in such a way that she will love to follow you. It'll probably be different. I want to share with you today five principles, that will empower your leadership in your marriage. The ways they're outworked vary from person to person, but as you take the principles and begin to effectively work with them, then you'll find your marriage will change.

Not only that, these five principles will give any single women something to look at, in terms of when you're looking for a prospective man; if some of these things aren't there, you've got a problem coming up, big time. Okay, so we'll both get something out of it. So I want to first of all look in Jeremiah 31:3. We need to understand that when God says that there's an order in the family, the purpose He has is to bless us and protect us, so we'll be benefited from that order; so when God says that the man is the head of the woman, He's not saying he's more important, or that he's always right. He's just saying: there's an order to get the function in the family working right. One of the things you understand about God, God never uses His power to get His way in our life. God always influences us through His love. Never ever did Jesus use His power to dominate, control or direct people; He always used His love to influence them. So we spoke of headship, we're going to describe it and touch in on it briefly, but let me just read this in verses here, because you need to get the heart of God, if you're going to be an effective leader in the home.

The Lord has appeared to me of old, saying I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built up, O virgin of Israel. You shall be adorned, and you shall go forth with the dances of them that make merry. Now does that sound as though God's going to do some good things to His people? It says the result of His leadership of them, is they will dance and they'll be happy, so when we want to see the effect of God's work in a person's life - happy! Joyful! Dancing! So think about that. Husband, your wife is your glory, so if she's happy and smiling and dancing, you're doing a fantastic job; but if she's sad and depressed and gloomy and withdrawn, you really need to step up. Okay then, so let's have a look, and we're going to go through this verse, and I'll give you these principles. Are you ready? Okay, it says: I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you. That word 'loving kindness' means this, I'm going to explain it a little. It means literally: for someone who's in an elevated position, to stoop down, and bend down, to someone in a lower position, and lift them up, and treat them like an equal. How about that?

It means literally: to bend over, and lift someone up, so you treat them like an equal; so God says: I have loved you with an everlasting love, with loving kindness have I attracted you, or drawn you; so in other words, He says: I don't display My power, and My greatness, and My might, but I reach down, and I place such value on you, that I lift you up and I look into your eyes, I treat you like an equal. Now we're not actually equals, but His heart is to lift us up, as someone of great value to Him. Then He says: with loving kindness I have drawn you; or literally: I have drawn you along, I have handled you, I have touched you, or I've opened up your life - so how does God open up our life? How does God lead us or draw us or attract us? Oh, it's not with His power. His power gets our attention, but it is His loving kindness that attracts us to follow Him. It's the demonstration of God's loving kindness that draws us out of ourself, and we are attracted to it like a magnet, like bees to honey. We are drawn to the loving kindness of God.

No one is drawn to the judgements of God, they scare you. People are drawn to the loving kindness of God. That word 'loving kindness' is these kinds of things. It's very hard to get that word, in the original language, into English language, because there's no word describes it. You've got to use several words to try and get what they meant, so let me give you the several words, that when God says: with loving kindness I've drawn you. One of the meanings of it, means generosity. Generosity is very attractive. I've found people like generous people, and they hate misers. Have you noticed that? Generosity attracts us, so He says: with great generosity, have I attracted you. It means also personal involvement, and commitment in relationship, beyond any legal requirements. In other words, He said: it's a heart involvement in relationship. It draws you out, because I get personally involved in your life, with an interest in what's happening. It also means steadfast love or devotion, that never fails or stops. Now that's what attracts people to the Lord - His steadfast love and devotion, His personal involvement in how our life is getting on, and His willingness to build relationship with us, His generosity.

It also means His mercy, His willingness to overlook, or to put aside the faults and failures, and lift us up into a place of great value. Now who wouldn't be attracted by that? That's how God attracts people. Now if that's how God attracts people; men, guess how we want you to attract your wife? This is what He wants to use. I'm going to show you that very clearly in scripture. I'll give you a scripture just related to that, in 1 John 4:19. You know what the Bible tells us? It says: we love Him because - can anyone finish it? [He first loved us.] We love Him because He first? [Loved us.] So what response does God's love bring in our heart? [Love.] We love Him. So He never uses His power, He uses His power to get our attention, but the thing that attracts us to walk with Him, and have a relationship, is His love for us. The more you get exposed to the love of God, the more you love Him. He says we love Him, why? Because He first loved us. We don't love Him because we've got the letter of the law. We don't love Him because we saw judgements on this and that. We don't love Him for those things. We love Him because we experienced Him reaching out, taking the initiative, to love us. Oh husbands, if you could just get a hold of that one. Your wife will love you, if you will take the initiative to love her - and I mean love her. Love her. We're going to explain it, because some people don't understand what that means, so we need to make it really as clear as we can. [Laughs] Okay then, so God's love influences our life, and brings us, or attracts us, into relationship with Him.

I want you to have a look with me in Proverbs 19. The women are saying: already this is getting better. [Laughter] Our message on headship was worrying me, but now I'm feeling safer now. There'd be a few women shaken by some stroppy men over the last week or so, but it's alright. Don't worry. They're just getting stirred up to take the leadership, but just need to learn how to do it, that's alright. You don't always do things right when you start out, but they're moving in the right direction, that's the big thing aye? Praise God for that. Okay, praise God for that. They may make some mistakes on the way, but we're moving in the right direction.

Okay, now we want to look now at the principles that empower a man's leadership. The first principle I'm going to look at, just shortly I'll give you five of them, but I want you to have a look at this. It says: the desire of a man is his kindness; or literally putting it in what it means: that quality in a man, which makes him desirable, is loving kindness. Now you'd never get that in the pictures, and the movies, or the television, or the videos, or in society anywhere. [Rock hard abs.] That's right, rock hard abs is what you get. [Laughter] The rock hard abs, yeah, that'll do it! But you know I haven't met a woman yet who didn't get touched when a man showed loving kindness to her. All the other stuff is image, but loving kindness flows out of a heart attitude, that genuinely cares and is concerned; and God has wired women, so when a man is kind, it becomes irresistible. All the other stuff passes away, but the loving kindness always touches a woman's heart. That's why God commands man to love, because He knows: one, man will forget to love; and two, woman is wired to receive love, and respond to it. That's why it says: love. It's quite simple isn't it?

I had a group of men, and I told them to read Ephesians 5, and they all came back with the same verse: wives submit to your husbands. I mean, what a crazy verse that is, why would you want to read that verse? See what the first word is: wives. It doesn't apply to you. So the men, you can just cover that one up and leave it, because it's actually not directed to you at all. It's none of your business. Just forget that verse, because it says at the front, 'wives' and we've kept away from that one, because I know all the men are wired to that one. I've kept away from it as long as I can. We'll get to it now, but we've got to get the men's thinking right on this one, because that's the only verse they hear in the Bible: wives submit to your husbands. I had a whole group of about seven or eight guys, and out of that, all but one, the only verse they could see in Ephesians 5 was: wives, submit to your husbands. See, it's the only one that does not apply to you. I said: I can tell now, all of you guys have got problems - but here's the one that applies to you: Husbands - husbands! Is that you, a husband? Or are you a wife? You know, I had to tell the guy, you check. You've got to check. [Laughter] Is this a men's group or what? We've got some women in here, then we've just got to sort this one out right now - but no, I said: no, men, husbands love your wives; so we had to get that kind of clear.

So God wants us - that which is attractive in a man, is loving kindness. You become very attractive if you're a kind person. Now Jesus, so anything that's harsh, severe, authoritarian, legal, demanding, all of that is ugly. Men, say it: ugly. [Ugly.] It's ugly. Angry men, harshness - it's ugly, very ugly. We don't need it. We want to have a gentleness. David said: thy gentleness to me has lifted me up and made me great. That's how it really works, gentleness. A servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle to all men; see, because that's the character of God, is to treat us gently. Wow, takes it all away doesn't it? Makes headship now understandable. Now you have a look at how Jesus influenced people. He did not influence them by saying: I'm the Son of God, and I've got power boys! You get in my way, I'll fire you! [Laughter] Now His disciples thought that way though. They'd go into a village, and they'd say: we don't want You Jesus, get out of here. The disciples said: ooh just give us the word Lord, and like Elijah, we'll just call fire, fire burn, smoke them up! [Laughter] That's the spirit of many men, and that's not God - He says: you know not what spirit you're of.

He said: I've not come to destroy life, but to give life; just the wrong spirit, wrong attitude, wrong approach altogether. However they were Jesus' chosen disciples, so Jesus' chosen disciples had this thing of calling fire down, and judging everything. We've got to learn to get the heart of God, loving kindness you know? So when Jesus met lepers, He touched them. He didn't have to touch them. He touched them because of kindness. When He met women, He lifted them up and forgave them, He lifted them up and brought them. He entrusted the gospel to them. The first person to get the word to preach was a woman - the first person! Have a look at Jesus' ministry, forever He was lifting up women, and actually establishing that God values them; but everywhere else in the world, from the fall of Eve until now, every other place in the world, you find every other religion, every other nation, there's this oppression and a putting down and a hatred of the devil against women. We're going to get into that in another session - and men get infected with that, for a variety of reasons, and they carry that spirit of darkness, and oppress and hurt. We have a nation full of abused, hurting, suffering women, because they've never seen men who know how to be loving and kind, and take the lead.

What the church needs, and the nation needs in this hour, is men who learn how to be godly men, and stand up and make a difference in the church and in the community, by having a whole different approach. You don't get that in the world. You won't get it off TV, you won't get it off videos, you'll only get it in the word of God. We have a generation that have risen, that have no fathers, so there's such a desperate need for men to learn how to put these principles into practice, and then to raise up another generation that doesn't repeat all the same mistakes - and we can do it. We want to do it. That's what God wants to happen too, so when I start speaking in about men, women don't get nervous. It's because, if we get this one right, everything else starts to come right. It's not the only thing we talk about, but we do need to push on it, because it's such a problem in our nation.

Okay, now let me just give you five principles, that will help a man to lead his wife, to lead in his home. Two of them we've covered already in some detail, so I'll just touch them briefly, and I'll bring up the other three; but the first one is - and these are principles, so there's lots of ways you outwork a principle. A principle is just like a guideline, and within that guideline, you figure out what that involves, and how you outwork it, and you've got to work that out very personally. So the Bible gives us the principles, but it doesn't give us the outworking, because it has to be outworked in each culture. So God's principles never change, it doesn't matter where you are, they're the same principles.

Okay, now here's the first one, principle of headship, 1 Corinthians 11:3. I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. In other words, there is an order that God has set, in creation, a governmental order, where God is at the top, Christ is subject to Him, the man is subject to Christ, and the woman is subject to the man. It's a divine order, for blessing and protection. Now who was the most exalted man, in the whole of the world? There is no man been exalted more than this man. Who is that man? Who exalted Him into that place? [God.] And how did He get exalted like that, into that place? He submitted. In other words, He took His place in order. The Father planned how He could exalt the Son, and the Son submitted to the Father's plan, and now the Bible says: every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The wisdom of God's plan, is that submission is not a problem, it's God's pathway to elevation; and when Jesus submitted to the Father's plan, it resulted in being elevated to the highest place possible. It's no wonder the Bible tells us: men, use Jesus as your example. He submitted to God's plan.

So when we're talking headship, the first thing the Bible tells us is, there's an order that God has set in place. It's for our blessing, and for our benefit. Now Jesus, His plan, is that He will lift up His people, into the highest place. He has the same kind of plan, so it says: now the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man. Most men can't get past that bit. Let me get you the first thing about headship. The first thing about headship, is that God wants every man to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. He wants every man to recognise, he can't make it in life on his own. There are areas and dimensions he's incapable of fulfilling and achieving, without a relationship with Jesus Christ; so the first aspect of headship to understand, is that man must open his life to Jesus Christ. He must be born again. He must receive Jesus Christ into his heart and life, and trust Him, and begin to surrender his life to Him; because whatever you have, whatever you've done, all of it you'll leave behind, but all you'll have in eternity, is what you've built in a relationship with God. So the number one part of headship, for a man, is: do I have a relationship with God? Do I talk to Him, read the Bible, and listen to Him for directions, and submit by plans to Him for guidance?

It's very easy for a woman to follow a man who prays and listens to God, but it's a very scary thing for her to follow some egocentric man, who thinks he can make it through life without needing God, and he will make his own life - I'm my own man, and I'll do it myself. Don't worry, I have it all under control. You know that it's only a matter of time before there's a major problem; but when a woman hears her man kneel and bow before God, and says: Father, help me to love my wife, to love my children, and to lead my home - that inspires confidence. It inspires women to follow. The second aspect of headship, is leadership. To be the head of the home, or to be the head of the woman, you must assume responsibility to lead. Headship is about assuming the responsibility to lead. Now what does that mean? It means taking initiative, taking the initiative. Don't wait for your wife to do everything. Have a look around and take the initiative. It means listening to her, finding out her needs and concerns. How can you lead someone, if you don't know what their needs are? You've all got so quiet. Turn to someone and say: I think this is speaking to me right now. [Laughter] Before you get all - everyone gets very, very quiet and serious. [Laughs]

That's it, taking the initiative. It means setting a personal example. Men, let me just ask you this. Does the way you conduct yourself, inspire a woman to follow you? The way you speak, and act, and carry on - is she embarrassed by you? Is she embarrassed to be with you, because of how you handle yourself? Do you make a fool of yourself, your attitudes, the way you conduct your life, the way you speak? Are you setting an example for your wife and your family to follow - because that's what leadership is? You've got to take initiative, you've got to take responsibility, got to set an example, set the pace. If you're not a prayer, why would anyone else pray? Just letting the weight fall somewhere else. Be an example in these areas, so begin to ask, think about your example, and we're going to get more specific in some of these areas - oh I can see the men now, you'll think you've got a case of worms you'll feel so uncomfortable but its okay. [Laughter] A dose of the word of God will fix you up wonderfully. You just need drenching, that's all. [Laughter] Come from the farming community, when the sheep get troubled, they get drenched, it sorts out what's inside. Next week we're going to do that, we're going to talk about men and women being reconciled to one another, and it'll be a good chance to drench out all the worms that get inside us, and give us funny attitudes to one another, that stop us flowing together.

So first the first principle, the principle of headship; now the second principle, Ephesians 5:31. We've already touched on this one, so I won't go too far with it. It's the principle of bonding, God's principle or law of bonding; so let me describe it, and we'll see how it outworks. So for those women who are single, if you're looking for a man, find one who'll take responsibility. Find one who's connected to God and prays, because if those things aren't there, how's he going to lead you? How will he lead you in God? How will he give leadership, if he doesn't know God, he doesn't pray to God, he doesn't talk to God? How could he lead you? If he won't take responsibility for his mistakes, he's too proud to admit he made a mistake, how will he take responsibility in the home? You'll be the one to blame for everything, so look for a man who takes responsibility, and connects with God. That'd be a good start to look for, wouldn't it?

Okay, here's the second quality. This is the principle of bonding. It says, Verse 31: this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, the two of them shall become one flesh. And this is a mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Now He's talking here about God's law of bonding. Now God has set a principle in place, because we're not just body and soul, we actually have a spirit, it is possible for two people's lives to begin to flow together, and begin to bond together. Spiritually, we can bond, we can come connected by certain things. God has designed certain things, so that when we do them, we begin to bond with people, and then this applies. It's just a law, and one of the things that God has set in place, is when two people are involved sexually, they become bonded to one another, soul-tied to one another, connected to one another. So sexual intimacy is an important part in marriage, of maintaining a bonding, or a closeness. Sexual intimacy will actually strengthen the bonding of a husband and a wife.

Now the Bible tells us in this, there's another thing that we can do that helps us bond as well. The Bible says: a man must leave, and then cleave; so before you can cleave, you have to leave some things. One of the things you've got to leave, you've got to leave some things behind from your home. You've got to leave unresolved issues. You've got to deal with issues with your parents, because if you've got attitudes against father and mother, you carry baggage in, and you'll have trouble connecting with your wife. So we talked about a man needing to be freed, and leave behind the defilements of previous relationships, sexual encounters, and things that have come through from his family background, generational things that defile him, and stop him cleaving to his wife. If a man has been involved sexually with others, it's hard for him to bond intimately with his wife, because he's got all the junk in his life; but when he comes to Christ, opens his life for ministry, and begins to renounce and put off those things - that means you get rid of the photos, you get rid of everything, so you can cleave and become one.

That means you don't have any secret pictures, secret books, secret videos, secret chat rooms on the internet. You have no one else but your wife, as the one you will bond to; and of course we have to guard because today, there's so many pressures and temptations to bond elsewhere. We shared quite a few ways that could happen. Now in order to bond with your wife, one is regular sexual relationship; but the other is that you open your hearts to one another, because the Bible tells us in Matthew 6:21, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. So when you begin to take what is precious to you, and invest it into a relationship with someone, you begin to bond. That law of bonding works, you get two people working together and they share their hearts, their struggles, their fears, their concerns. They begin to bond. Some guys in the military together, they have to stand together, they have to connect together, they flow together, have experiences together, they begin to form a bonding, that sometimes lasts for life.

So the law of bonding becomes activated the moment you invest, treasure - invest those things into your wife, you make a sacrifice, because with that sacrifice, there comes a treasure investment into your wife. So putting that simply, here's a couple of things you need to do, here's the first one: you need to have time together, you need to have quality time together. That's not sitting watching the TV or reading a paper or anything like that. It's actually time to talk, and meet, and interact. One thing that can help do that, is you actually do something together, go for a walk together, begin to play a game together, go out on a date together, how wonderful. We went up and stood by the fountain and watched the lovely lights change [laughter]. We went up onto Bluff Hill. You have to do something you know, it just doesn't happen by chance. You actually have to make time and sacrifice, so go dating together. I used to have a date with my children, because we had pressure of ministry, I had six children, it was very, very difficult, so each child had a day, and we had a time together so you begin to look forward to it, and you plan what you can do together. You begin to build anticipation, then you invest time and you begin to share. Now you've got to actually share something you both enjoy doing together, so we found there's a variety of things that the kids liked and we could do that.

Now you begin to bond as you do things together. You get tenting, it's a bonding form, so you go on family holidays, bonding forms in those things. Have family meals, it's to bond. It's because if you don't do it, you'll fly apart. You fly apart, not because you want to, but just because you're neglected, so it requires sacrifice. You can't build a unity, and a bonding in a relationship, without a sacrificial giving. You have to invest into it somewhere, and that means giving something that's precious, and so it maybe a gift. I gave my wife a lovely anniversary gift, and as I gave it to her - it cost me heaps - I felt a deep love for her arising [laughs] in my life. [Laughter] She's wearing it today. But see, it's that it represents something of you. You give it, and it produces the bonding, but with that there needs to be talking, and that means sharing beyond superficial, sharing your heart and your feelings, beginning to take enough time that you open up. Now a lot of guys don't do that. [grunting sound 00.26.47] That's all you get out of them. That's not good enough. All some wives get from their husbands, is grunts, [makes grunting sound 00.26.56] That's a shocking thing.

She depends on you, for a source of stimulation in her thinking and emotions, and all you go is [makes grunting sound 00.27.07]. That's not good enough! Yes, that's right, turn off the television, light a candle, have some supper together. Sit next to one another, whatever it is, those kinds of things. You've got to think about them. Be creative. You don't need to have a great amount of money, but you do need to be creative, and anyway, what it does involve, is that you do things together. So I remember when we were dating, we got up early and went fishing, and had breakfast on the wharf. Isn't that lovely? Well I thought it was lovely anyway, I had a great time. [Laughter] We used to do all sorts of things. I used to take her out to a place called Selenis, where they have some violin played at the table, any song you like. It was wonderful. I still remember it - violins still move my heart. Why? Because there's an investment.

It just doesn't happen. You can pray all you like, but you've got to do other things as well. You've got to guard that intimacy, so you've got to guard that no one else gets in your heart, and so one of the things today that's broken a lot of relationships, interesting things that's dragged a lot of women into adultery, is chat rooms on the internet, because they get talking, and the man on the internet says things that the husband ought to say, but he's too busy, or doesn't give her attention. It's like watering a plant, you water it with words, and if you don't water your wife's soul, then she dies, and then you have a problem. So we want to build bonding, okay, we've gone far enough. It's already getting too tense. Let's just go to the next principle. [Laughter] Let's go to Genesis 2, we'll see if we can do better at the next one - so we don't flip the cards up, and give 1/10, or 2/10 or whatever. Just nod your head. The wives all knew this was true, the men are just finding it out, and the men will encourage one another to do all these things.

Genesis 2:18, The Lord God said: it's not good for man to be alone. I will make him a help meet (suitable) for him. It's not good to be alone, so here it is, the principle of partnership. It's not good for you to be on your own. God wants you to have someone to be with, to work with, walk with, those kinds of things. Now this is a relationship where the man and the woman begin to fit together, and flow together, with mutual giftings. Now it didn't mean that the woman just did her thing, and he did his thing; it's actually a partnership in life. In 1 Peter 3:7 it says: heirs together, of the grace of life. You are partners in life, and partners carry something into it, which is different. Now of course the things that are in my wife, that I was attracted to, were the differences - but afterwards they become the irritations. [Laughter] Until you realise, that she's got her strengths and weaknesses, and I've got my strengths and weaknesses, and when we put them together, they just seem to fit just like that. It works wonderfully, if we just flow together. She's great at some things, and I submit to her in those things.

The Bible says - it's an interesting thing - there's only two passages that tell us about the headship of a man, and I know the men all gloated and rejoiced when I told them those passages; but I hope you read the Bible, and read what else was in there, in which case you'd find in both passages, either just before or just after, it tells us: submit to one another. In other words, that there is a mutual receiving of one another's giftings and strengths in the relationship. So these are some practical ways of putting this principle of partnership into practice. There's some simple things to it - you've got to flow as a team, biggest thing is team. The first thing is, quite very simple: accept your wife's differences, or your partner's differences, and celebrate them. Don't get down on them, and try and change them. You don't want a clone of you, you want someone different; so accept the differences and the strengths, and rejoice in them. What my wife is good, at I'm not; so I celebrate she's very good at it, and I draw from her strength in that area. It helps me to grow in that area.

The second thing is, share responsibilities in the home, according to the giftings. Now that's a new one, because a lot of people have got rigid ideas how the home is run. Now when I was raised up in an Irish family, and the man's role was outside the home; so he did the garden, the garage, the car, and the work. When he came home, that was it, it was over, he was home, sat down. Now in the home, the woman was king; and so she ran everything in the home, that's how it worked - two separate worlds. But that's all changed now, and that's cultural, and it happened to be for that era, but there's nothing biblical about it. It just happened to be the way they did things in that time. The common sense thing with any team is, find out what each one is gifted to, and drawn to, and deploy them in that area, so that means you can share what you do. Now for example, some people think: well a man's got to run all the finances. Now in some homes, that would be a disaster! [Laughter] He can't even balance the cheque book, but the wife's great at it - so let her do it, and don't feel bad about it. But if she takes control of it, ooh that's another thing. There's a difference between managing, something under a leadership; and taking control of it, and usurping leadership.

There's a difference between letting your wife run something, as part of a delegated flow, recognising a gift and deploying it; it's another thing to cop out all together. Do you understand that? When the man cops out, she feels the weight. When he takes responsibility, and they make joint decisions, then it works out just great. Does that make sense? [Yeah.] So it's very, very simple, so you work it out. So everyone's got to work it out differently; and so you know, maybe the men have just got to run around, and if you don't like the home being untidy, well go round and tidy it up, simple as that. If you feel strongly about it, you do it, or get one of the kids to work with you in doing it. It's no big deal, no big deal. It's no big deal if you do anything in the home, just do it, if it needs to be done. I found, after we had two children, that we had to have major changes in the home. Actually I'll correct that - major changes in me. [Laughter] I had to change, and so I used to think: well work's work, and the home's the home. Joy's got the home, and I've got the work - then we had two children, then it all changed, and I had to really get my act together, and wake up and start to get involved. Then I realised that between five and seven, if the man wasn't around when you've got a young family, this is very baaaad! [Laughter] Oh it's a bad time. You can be away any time you like, but not between five and seven when there's meals and there's a baby, and there's baths and there's getting this one ready, that one ready and the phone's going, all that kind of stuff. That's just the time - how many men know what I'm saying now? Yeah, that's right. You be there then - two hours then, will couch you for the whole day just about. But if you're not there, you can't make up with it with a whole day! [Laughter] So you've just got to work a partnership thing in this area, and figure out who's got the strengths. So women have strengths to bring into the relationship, that need to be accepted, celebrated and listened to.

Now that's the third part of being a partner, you need to listen, and don't react when your wife shares her cares. I want you to look with me in 1 Kings, Chapter 12. I'll say it again: listen, and don't react, to her concerns and cares; honey, I'm just concerned a little bit about this. [mutter mutter ] don't worry about that... Don't be like that, it won't work. If this is going to work, you've got to realise your wife will have the heart of the home. She will sense what's going on. She will feel things you don't feel. Men see the big picture down the line, but they often miss what's under their nose; but the wife knows exactly what's under your nose, and she will tell you. So you need to listen to her cares and concerns. That's how you work as a partnership. If you're going to lead, you've got to listen. Here it is in 1 Kings, Chapter 12:7, and this is a time when King Rehoboam is about to take over the nation of Israel. He's about ready to take over. His dad's died, and he's going to be the new king, and it's a huge nation, a wealthy nation, a prosperous nation, and he's about to take over; so he asks for some advice from the old men. This is the advice the old men give him, because he's a young buck, who's just become king. He's really wanting to make a mark.

So this is what they say: If you will be a servant today - now he didn't want to hear that - if you will be a servant. But I'm the king! King! King of the castle! They said: if you will be a servant, and will serve them. Now he says: and answer them, and speak good words them, they will be your servants forever. He said: if you want these people to follow you, you've got to have a servant heart, and a servant attitude, and a servant spirit, and give consideration to their needs. That words 'answer them', means literally to eye them, or to look, so that you become aware of what their needs are, and then speak kindly and encouragingly to them. So he says: if you will be a servant, minister and meet their needs that they have, be sensitive and aware with what they're going through and facing, and speak encouragement to them, do you know what'll happen? They'll just love to run after you and follow you. Now men, wouldn't that be a great verse to put into practice? If you just started to do those things - but you think: well - it's not me! Well that's what the young man said, he said: that's not me!

Listen to the young men, they said: now listen, don't listen to those old fellas there, what would they know? Listen, if you're going to be a king, you've got to show them who's boss. What you want to do is just get tough! Now listen, round here, you've all got to line up! So he did that, and guess what happened? He lost 10 out of the 12 tribes. He was left with just a little wee handful following him, and it's written in the Bible to learn from: if you want to lead people, you must have the heart of a servant. You serve the purpose of God by ministering to the needs of the people under your leadership, and seeing that you're sensitive to them, aware of them, care for them, and that you speak encouragement to them, not harshly or hardly. That's written in there for us to learn from. Now so many men just carry on like that, right in their home. How can you ever expect your wife to follow you? You'll teach her to hate you, resent you and rebel against you; and you'll teach your children to mistreat women. We've got to get out of that spirit. It's the spirit of the world.

Jesus said, in Matthew 20, about 26, He said this. He said: in the world, they lord over and dominate one another, and boss one another around. He said: it shall not be so among you. You always want to remember this, your wife is also a sister in the Lord, and she's a joint heir with you, so you treat her with respect and value, and you listen to her needs and concerns. The Bible says of Jesus, when He came to the disciples - John 13 - it says: He took off His garments, and He got out a basin of water, and He washed their feet, which was the job of the lowest slave. Wouldn't it be nice if all the men after they went home - remember last time I sent you home, someone manifesting as they went [grumbling noises] [Laughter] and I asked you to ask your wife this question: Are there things that I do that make you feel insecure and unsafe? I could see some of the men [grumbling noises 00.38.22], some of the women saying just ask, just ask [laughter] and is it safe to tell? If I tell him what will happen?

I know one guy, he went home immediately, he listened to his wife, and did some things straight away. Now here's one for today. I wonder what it'd be like if you went home and said: honey, I'd like to do what Jesus did, I'd like to wash your feet. She'd be shocked for days. [Laughter] You see, it's the heart of a servant to minister. It's not the washing of feet, it's the serving. It's the serving. It's the heart - like God, His loving kindness doesn't look down; but rather He stoops down Himself, and lifts us up, and treats us like an equal. Isn't that amazing? Now who could not follow that kind of leadership? Hello, people getting quiet. You've got that stare-y look again! [Laughter] Turn to someone and say I think you ought to be washing someone's feet. I think that's you he's talking about there. Okay, so husbands who won't listen are in for a big problem. Okay, here's the next principle, we're going to get through this now, two more principles, I'll give them quite quickly.

1 Peter 3:7, and then we'll show you just how to get started, because we could just about - you know, the men are getting lower and lower in the seats [laughter], and they see the wives sitting up higher and higher. Your turn will come. [Laughter] We should not gloat over someone else's struggles. We should encourage and pray for our men, that they will arise up, because that's what we want. 1 Peter 3:7, this is what it says: Likewise - in other words it's talked about the women - it says you husbands. If you're a husband, this is for you; but if you're a woman looking for a husband, have a look for a man who carries on like this. He'll be a good catch if you can find one - hard to find these days though. We're very rare, very rare, because they don't know to do these things. Feminism has taken them all away. I heard this thing I read somewhere, and this guy was on a bus, and he stood up for a woman. She was obviously pregnant. She said: you don't need to stand up for me, because I'm a woman. He said: that's not why I'm standing up, I'm standing up because I'm a man. [Applause!] That's not bad is it! I thought, that was pretty good.

Okay, here it is. Likewise you husbands, dwell with them, according to knowledge. In other words, learn how to understand your wife, a lifelong calling, understanding your wife [laughs], giving honour unto your wife, as to the weaker vessel, lest your prayers be hindered. So it says: give honour - here's the principle: honour your wife! Otherwise your prayers will be shot down. There you are, praying for your business to succeed, God shoots them down. God watches - no, he's not honouring his wife. Boof! Those prayers, I don't even listen to. You're praying for your business, your money to come right, and God looks how you're treating your wife. He says: forget it. You're praying for wisdom and direction, and you're wanting God to help you in your life, He looks how you treat your wife - ah forget it. In other words - now that gives wives a great confidence, because what you know is this, that you can trust that God will sort this guy out big time. When God gets on his case, He can really, really get this thing sorted out. So the Bible says: husbands, honour your wife. Now to honour means to prize, to value, or to invest value in a person, so they have great honour and great value.

Now I read an interesting story about a man up in the Solomon Islands, and in the Solomon Islands, they pay a dowry for the women. This particular woman he wanted to marry, and she wasn't very a very attractive woman, and they used to pay a dowry of one cow or cattle beast if a woman's pretty. That's what they do, still do that sort of thing up there. If there was three, the woman was really I mean quite something, and this woman was not all that attractive, and people never thought: she'd get married. This man wanted to marry her, and so he considered how he could get over the reproach that everyone would have: oh you've married this woman, and she's not very nice. So this is what he did. He got 10 or 12 cattle beasts, and he paid them for the dowry, and everyone went [inhales sharply] wow, even the best we've ever heard of is three. Twelve! Oh. They looked with great respect now - she hadn't changed one bit, but he had invested value in her. He'd honoured her. He'd put honour on her life, and so honour is something you choose to do, you choose to value.

Now let me give you a few things you can do, to honour a woman. Now women, if you're looking for a good man, you want one who'll treat women right. So here you are, first one: treat them with respect. Respect means they listen to their thinking, and listen to their opinions, listen to their feelings. They include them in the decisions. How do men make decisions without including their wife? That's very dishonouring to her, treats her as having nothing of value to contribute. You make her feel special, give her a rose, give her a flower, honour her. Find ways to treat her, so she feels special. Give her a single red rose, I love you. Little notes, I love you. Isn't that wonderful? Those things - I've still got in here a lovely note that my wife wrote to me. I keep it in my Bible, because it means a lot to me. I've got draws full of notes from the kids, they're special - so treat her with respect.

Manners - now here's a good one, manners. Now one way you can honour a woman, is by having manners. Manners means, you open the door [Applause]. That shows the general state, if you open the door, open the door to let her in. Open the car door, and let her in. You pull the seat out for her to sit down. It seems too good to be true, doesn't it? They used to do it a few years ago. It's just this culture has taken it all away. Wouldn't it be good if we had a generation of men, who honoured their wife, and treated them like they were the Queen - honoured, valued, esteemed, did things like that. Women, would you like that? Would you find a man like that hard to follow? [No] It wouldn't be hard to follow would it? [No!] Is there one there, that's what we want to know? Is there one such as that? Is there such a man? Well you choose to be that kind of man, you just make decisions, you'll start to honour women, value them. You'll have manners, you'll give eye contact, hold their hands. One way is, you don't walk ahead of them - that's what I've got to watch, that one. Hold their hand, and walk together.

We were over in Fiji having a lovely honeymoon experience, and I looked over and I thought, what the heck is wrong with you two over there, two people sitting there, and they're in Fiji, sitting by the waterfront. The candles are there, the music is playing, and we're holding hands having a very intimate romantic moment - and the two of them are sitting reading books. [Laughter] It was all I could do, not to go over, and grab the books, and say: relate to one another! [Laughter] What's wrong with you? It's honour. If she wants to talk, give her your attention. Another way you honour your wife is by faithfulness sexually, you're not looking at other woman, or allowing your heart to go towards other women. That's dishonours your wife. Ooh, getting quiet again. [Laughter] Just think about these things, how do I honour my wife?

And finally the last principle, Ephesians 5:25, husbands, the principle of loving kindness. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself. It attracts women, if you show loving kindness. How do you show it? Well you extend grace to their differences, and their failings, and you forgive them. You don't let your harbour anger and bitterness. You offer practical support and help. You show acts of kindness, and you speak the truth. One of the things that helps build a loving relationship, is sharing out of your heart, and talking honestly and openly about things, instead of having it all come up. Most men have trouble speaking about their feelings. My wife comes to talk to me about feelings, and she'll ask me a few things, and I have moments when I disappear into a cave, after I work it all out. [Laughter] She says HELLO! You still there? [Laughter] And the voice from inside the cave - only just. [Laughter] Then I worked out, that I didn't have to work it all out. We could just interact, and start to share what we felt, without feeling I had to have an answer, or fix it up. You don't have to fix it up men, you just need to connect, and express loving kindness. That which is desirable in a man, is loving kindness.

Why don't we just bow our heads right now. The most loving and kind person I've ever known is Jesus Christ. What a wonderful person - loved us, forgave us, went to the cross for us. It'd be hard to resist His love. I wonder, is there any person here, who is at a point in your life where you say: I am ready to receive Jesus Christ. I've been living a life cut off from that love, that life of God. I've been running my life myself, my own way, but today there's something in my heart is saying: I want to become a follower of Christ. I want to receive Jesus Christ. Inside there's a struggle going on, perhaps you've had people talk to you about the Lord. You've had Christians talk to you, and as you're here today, God has drawn you, and you're thinking in your heart: I really do want to know God. The Bible says, Jesus said these words: I stand at the door and knock. If any man open up I will come into him.

Jesus desires to put His spirit in your heart, and change you on the inside. He just wants you to say yes. The Bible says: to as many as received Jesus Christ, He gave power to become children of God. God, you have to be born into your family of God, by a relationship with Christ. I believe you're ready to make that decision right now. I want you just to, while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, I want you just to lift your hand and say: I'd like to become a Christian. I'm not concerned what people think of me, or what the world thinks of me, I just want my relationship with God to come right today. I want to receive Jesus Christ. Is that you friend? Why don't you raise your hand right now, just say: I want to become a Christian, I want to give my life to Christ.

Every relationship starts with a step, a step of opening our life to another person. Today that's the step I'm asking you to take, that you'll open your life up to Christ. He died on the cross for your sins. He won't hurt you, He'll never abuse or use you. Jesus Christ loves you. Is that you today, say that's me, I want to become a Christian. I wonder today how many men have felt God really spoke to you and challenged you. You said: God, you've been talking to me today. Perhaps it's in the area of taking responsibility, of initiative. Perhaps it's in the area of bonding and connecting with your wife intimately, far more. Perhaps it's in the area of honouring her, and valuing her. Perhaps it's in the area of sharing and partnering together. Perhaps it's in the area of just a kindness towards her, God's speaking to you today. Why don't you just raise your hand and say: God's been talking to me today, and I want to make some changes?

Let me just give you how you can start. It's very simple, you do this: you take one thing. You ask God, and your wife, what you could do that would help implement that; and then day by day, you just take that one thing and work at it, until your life starts to change. Say God, help me to grow in that area. We'll be working with men to do this. I want to raise up a generation of men that know how to love and honour women. I think that'd be a great credit to the Lord, wouldn't you? I think that would raise up godly women too, because women being honoured, it would help them overcome so much of what's happened in their life.

Summary Notes

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LOVING LEADERSHIP

1. Introduction

· Headship – teaching on this subject stirs up reactions in both men and women!

· God’s order is for the blessing and benefit of the family, not an exercise for domination.

· Putting the principle into practice requires understanding the heart of God.

Jer 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you”

· Lovingkindness (2616) – to bow to an equal, show self merciful, steadfast.

· Drawn (4900) – to draw along, draw out, handle, sow.

· Lovingkindness – generosity, personal involvement and commitment in a relationship above and beyond any legal requirements, steadfast love and devotion.

· God does not use His power to control us but extends love to influence us.

· 1 John 4:10 “We love Him because He first loved us” ie, God’s love so influenced our life it brought forth love and commitment and submission to Him.

· Ps 103:11 “As the heaven is high above the earth so great is His mercy to them that fear Him”.

2. Principles that empower man’s leadership

· Prov 19:22 “The desire of a man is his kindness” ie, that quality which makes a man desirable, longed after is lovingkindness. Harshness, authoritarianism, selfishness, all destroy a mans influence. Jesus – the model man – influenced people by His loving kindness, His mercy.

i) Principle of headship

1 Cor 11:3 “ The head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man”

Headship – means:

a) Submission to Jesus Christ – to know, follow Him.

b) Assuming responsibility for leadership

Leadership:

· Having direction and purpose.

· Taking the initiative.

· Setting a personal example that inspires.

· Awareness of the needs and concerns of wife and children.

· Protection from destructive influences.

ii) Principle of bonding

Eph 5:31 “These two shall become one flesh”

· God’s law of bonding is activated whenever 2 people turn their hearts towards one another with desire and longing.

· Leave (2641) – to let go, leave behind, forsake all conflicting attachments. Man must let go all emotional and sexual attachments so he can cleave to wife.

· Cleave (4347) – to glue to, adhere to, join self to.

The bonding or cleaving process is activated by:

a) Sexual intimacy.

b) Turning heart consciously towards his wife through romance and intimacy.

Examples:

· Time together or common activity.

· Communication – sharing your heart – thoughts, feelings, (date).

· Sacrifice – giving something that costs you, Matt 6:21, (gifts).

iii) Principle of partnership

Gen 2:18 “I will make a help meet for him”

· This is a relationship where man and woman fit together perfectly and complete each other.

· Not co-dependent but distinct, different, fitting like clasped hands.

Application:

a) Accept and celebrate the difference in giftings, personality, backgrounds.

b) Share responsibilities according to gifting not culture.

c) Listen, don’t react to her concerns and needs.

I Ki 12:7 “If you will be a servant to this people and will serve them and answer them”

· Answer – to eye, to pay attention to, respond, show sensitivity to their needs.

· Note – 2 passages speak of man’s headship – both also speak of interdependence. 1 Cor 11:3, 11 and Eph 5:21-23

· A proud insecure man won’t listen because it threatens his leadership.

· Only as man listens to his wife can he be successful in all areas of life.

· Husband who acts independently – deceived by own pride, misses warning signs of destruction.

iv) Principle of honour

1 Pet 3:7 “…giving honour unto the wife…that prayers not be hindered”

· Do you want your prayers hindered? - (1465) cut into, impede, frustrate, neutralised?

· Honour (5099) – value, price, ie, show her respect and treat her as valuable.

· Honour – (i) give her special place in heart – (ii) communicate value to her.

Application:

a) Respect – listen to opinion; include in decisions, especially $’s; make her feel special; speak kindly; don’t compare or treat disrespectfully.

b) Manners – door open; walk together; seat; eye contact; hold hands.

c) Prayer support – practical help with home; children; encouragement and praise

d) Faithfulness – commitment to purity in mind, heart, speech.

v) Principle of lovingkindness

Eph 5:25 “Husbands love wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself”

· Jesus did not use power over people but to demonstrate lovingkindness.

· Jesus draws people to follow Him because of lovingkindness.

· What makes a man desirable – lovingkindness.

Application:

a) Extending grace when there is lack or failure rather than judgement/criticism.

Col 3:19 “Husband love your wife and be not bitter against her”

· Pray for wisdom.

· Refuse to harbour anger, blame.

· Release forgiveness.

· Speak gentle words.

b) Speaking the truth in love.

Eph 4:15 “Speaking the truth in love we grow up”

· Be honest with feelings.

· Face issues one at a time.

· Talk through issues where necessary.

· Be direct.

· Don’t conceal important facts.

c) Practical kindness that meets her needs (Jn 13 – footwashing)

Matt 20:25 “He that would be great, let him be your servant”

· Small regular practical kindness.

· Give yourself – invest, costs you.

Burnt Stones

Stones are a picture of people. Once a stone was burnt and crumbled, it was easy to pull it out of position. If you've been burnt, it's easy to be removed from of the wall of destiny, where God has positioned you to grow. When we walk through a difficult season in our life, it's what the Bible calls a 'fiery trial'. At stake is your destiny, what's being tested is the quality of your faith in God.

Burnt Stones (1 of 4)

Stones are a picture of people. The church in its early days was filled with glory - it changed the Roman Empire, and influenced nations. Then it went through a dark season - but we are in days now when God is rebuilding His church, and the Bible says: the glory of that latter house will be greater than the glory of the former!

An indignant Moabite mocked the Jews, saying: will they offer sacrifices and complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, stones that have been burned in the fire? It's a picture of demonic spirits arrayed against us, arrayed against God's purpose & plan, scorning & belittling you, saying: is it possible for God to raise up people whose lives have been burnt?

Once a stone was burnt and crumbled, it was easy to pull it out of position. If you have ever been burnt by the fires of pain, disappointment, offence, it's very easy for you to be removed out of the wall of destiny, out of where God has positioned you to grow, to be planted, and to become successful in your walk as a Christian. When we walk through a difficult season in our life, it's what the Bible calls a 'fiery trial' - a trial by fire. What is at stake is your destiny, and what's being tested is the quality of your faith in God.

Burnt Stones (2 of 4)

There is no believer in Christ who's not called to restore burnt stones. True religion is to visit the widows and the orphans in their affliction, to visit the burnt stones and comfort them. You cannot have a vibrant, vital spirit life and not minister to burnt stones. That is the heart of God - people, ruined cities, burnt stones, devastations of generations. God wants to heal and restore them.

Passionless religion is a curse. It's not Biblical. Conservative, passionless, expressionless religion does not change anything. God wants a fire ignited in our hearts, a fire for the lost, a fire for burnt stones, a fire that's not just come out of human concern and sympathy, a fire that's ignited out of the place of prayer and fasting!

God gives every believer an axe head - it's the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It's your responsibility not to lose the flow of God's power and presence. It's your responsibility to keep that axe head sharp - to learn to listen, hear, and respond-to to the voice of God, to do the things God's showing you to do, wherever it might be. We're all called to be an axe for Jesus Christ.

Burnt Stones (3 of 4)

When Nehemiah looked around and saw the broken lives, it was in his heart not to judge or condemn, but to be part of the answer.

Every believer is called to be a builder, because a true Son is a "builder of the household name". When you catch the heart of the Holy Ghost, something in you will resonate, will feel concern, will rise up on the inside. I want to be a builder for God! I want my life to count for something! Every believer is given spiritual gifts (1 Cor 14:12), but let it be to build up the church - desire to excel in building up people.

Isaiah 61 - "the spirit of the Lord is upon me" - it's all to do something. It's to open blind eyes. It's to heal broken hearts. It's to restore the desolation of previous generations. He wants people who are broken, disconnected and cut down to be restored and lifted up, doing something useful.

Burnt Stones (4 of 4)

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Burnt Stones (1 of 4)

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Stones are a picture of people. The church in its early days was filled with glory - it changed the Roman Empire, and influenced nations. Then it went through a dark season - but we are in days now when God is rebuilding His church, and the Bible says: the glory of that latter house will be greater than the glory of the former!

An indignant Moabite mocked the Jews, saying: will they offer sacrifices and complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, stones that have been burned in the fire? It's a picture of demonic spirits arrayed against us, arrayed against God's purpose & plan, scorning & belittling you, saying: is it possible for God to raise up people whose lives have been burnt?

Once a stone was burnt and crumbled, it was easy to pull it out of position. If you have ever been burnt by the fires of pain, disappointment, offence, it's very easy for you to be removed out of the wall of destiny, out of where God has positioned you to grow, to be planted, and to become successful in your walk as a Christian. When we walk through a difficult season in our life, it's what the Bible calls a 'fiery trial' - a trial by fire. What is at stake is your destiny, and what's being tested is the quality of your faith in God.

I want you to open it with me in Nehemiah, Chapter 4. I want to speak today on a message called Burnt Stones. I looked in the paper on Saturday night, and I couldn't believe it - that Hettinga Estate on fire. Man, how many saw that fire? Man, what a blaze! Nearly burnt to the ground, and of course, occasionally you have houses catch fire, buildings catch fire. One of the things I've seen, I've been to buildings that have caught fire, and they are burnt out or gutted out, and one of the things that you find often the next day, is you find people walking through the charred ruins, looking for something of value. What hangs over the house is a sense of a dream, or a life, that has been shattered and broken - suddenly, without warning. So a burnt-out building is a horrendous thing. The smoke, the ruins, the water, the ashes, the dust, and then every now and then, you'll find something that survived the fire, but it's a heartbreaking thing, ever to go to a house that is burnt down.

I want you to see something that really was heartbreaking for God, and it's found in Nehemiah 4, and that's when the city of Jerusalem and the walls were beaten down, broken down, and the city was burnt with fire. Jerusalem in the Bible is a picture of the church of Jesus Christ, and so there's an Old Testament picture, it's a picture of the church once glorious, once invincible, once being the centre of influence in the world, once being the centre of God's glory shining out to touch nations. The Bible says: people came from round the world, Sheba came [Queen of Ethiopia], to see the glory of God in the house of God - the church in that day was a great and a glorious place. Then it fell into ruin, it was overtaken. The armies of its enemies came, it sacked the city, burnt the city out, burnt the walls, tore down the walls, burnt the city, burnt down the temple, plundered the people, killed the people, destroyed the people. It was a horrendous time.

You find in the last part of the Book of Chronicles, where the city was burnt down; but God is always ready to restore! And whatever has happened to people, whatever's happened in our lives, whatever may have happened to the church over the centuries, I tell you something: God is a God who restores and rebuilds! God is a God who puts hope, you can walk through the abandoned tatters of a building that's burnt to the ground, and see nothing of value there, but God is able to build something great upon those ruins. I tell you something, the church in its early days was filled with glory. It changed the Roman Empire. It influenced nations. Then it went through a dark season, but we're in days when God is rebuilding His church, rebuilding His people, and the Bible says: the glory of that latter house will be greater than the glory of the former! [Yeah!] And we are living in such days of rebuilding and restoration! What a challenge to respond to God! In Chapter 4 Verse 1, we're going to pick up where the building has started, and I want to just move through this, and just bring out some things for you, that I felt God put on my heart. I felt very, very deeply touched by the Holy Ghost as I began to study and look into this.

It came to pass that when Sanballat... Sanballat means strength, he was a Moabite. He was an unclean person. He was an enemy of the work of God. When he heard we were rebuilding the wall, he was furious and very indignant, and he mocked the Jews. It's true that the devil continually is indignant, angry, and absolutely furious when we set out heart to build lives, to bring people to Christ, to see them saved, water baptised, filled with the Holy Ghost, starting to get equipped, trained, restored. The devil gets furious. He gets furious. Notice what it said he did: he mocked the Jews, or he despised, laughed, and he scorned them. One of the strategies of the enemies, that comes against every person, is he will belittle, despise, and scorn you, as being of no value whatsoever. It says: he spoke before his brethren, and the army of Samaria, and said: what are these feeble Jews? They're weak! Will they strengthen themselves? No way. Will they offer sacrifices and complete it in a day? Will they call on God? Can God make a difference? And he said: will they complete it in a day? This is where I want to pick this up from. Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, stones that have been burned in the fire?

It's a picture here of demonic spirits arrayed against you and I, arrayed against God's purpose and plan, scorning and belittling and saying is it possible for God to raise up people whose lives have been burnt? Their lives are just like: they're a mess, in a rubbish heap, their marriages broken, their lives have failed, they're addicted, they're in a mess. Is it possible for lives like that to be built? Is it possible for God to do something? I don't think so, and they mocked and laughed. Is it possible for people to be discipled and the cities changed, the atmosphere changed, the very nature changed? My, the devil despises you even thinking about it! One of the things that we find, is the devil constantly pressures our mind, to doubt that God can raise someone up that you are praying for, that can raise someone up that may be addicted, they may be in bondage right now. They may be living in sin, they may be in defeat, they may be a hardened person; and you look at them and you think: man oh man, that's hard to get that person saved. It's like you've taken up the mocking of Sanballat in your mind, saying it'll be too difficult for such a person to be saved. It's NOT too hard for the Lord to save! Not too hard for the Lord to save!

It's not too hard for the Lord to save, and revive burnt stones, that were once great stones, part of a mighty city, part of a purpose and a destiny; but now burnt and reduced to ruins, smouldering, charred ruins. God can take a life like that, and make something out of it. That's the God we serve. You've got to believe this. You've got to believe Him, so God uses a picture from the Old Testament, and this picture's a vivid picture, and it's to put into our hearts a hope: that what God could do in the lives of people you know, what God could do in your life. Notice: rubbish, the rubble of a city that was once great; dreams that were once there, hopes that were once there, now all there is is rubble. You can hardly believe or comprehend the scale of the rubble, when a city's been reduced. If you saw pictures of Berlin after the Second World War, burnt out buildings, great magnificent buildings, reduced to rubble; just rubble, rubble, rubble. You could hardly make your way through it, and so it was with this city here.

So when we're talking about Burnt Stones, what do we mean? In the Bible, the walls and the buildings were made not of wood, they were made of stone. The stone that was used to build the city of Jerusalem had to be quarried. It had to be cut out, it had to be shaped, and then it had to be fitted. They were great stones, the Bible tells us; so when they built the wall, they had to cut out limestone, they had to pull it and drag it together, and they had to piece each part, every part fitted perfectly. So when limestone is burnt by fire, it begins to become crumbly and powdered. Then it's very easy to break down the walls, and break down the buildings. You wonder how great buildings can be broken down; very simply they just burn them, and then the stone starts to crumble, and then they can smash them down - just use great poles, and they push and lever, and smash them down. So when Jerusalem was overtaken by its enemies from Babylon, what they did was they burnt the city. They just burnt the city from one end to the other, burnt the house of God, killed people. There was blood from one end of the city to the other. They set it on fire, and then they set about destroying the city, so it could never become great, ever again.

What a picture for us, of how the devil desires to destroy the church of Jesus Christ, to burn out everything you and I try and build that's good and right and holy, or would leave a legacy; and to raze it to the ground, so all that you see is rubble. And so that was what it was like, and the burnt stones were easily removed from their positions. Once a stone was burnt and crumbled, it was easy to pull it out of position, easy to remove it from the wall of destiny. If you have ever been burnt by the fires of pain, disappointment, offence, it's very easy for you to be removed out of the wall of destiny, out of where God has positioned you to grow, to be planted, and to become successful in your walk as a Christian. So stones are always a picture of people.

Let's read a verse in 1 Peter 2:4-5. It says Verse 4: coming to Jesus, who is a living stone; rejected by men, but chosen by God, and precious; but you also as living stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So if we can just pick up this, God uses pictures to describe people, so He says you are a living stone, not a dead old stone. You may have been that way before you come to Christ. We were dead in sin, stony hearted, hard hearted, insensitive, unloving, self-centred; and when we come to Christ, the spirit of God comes in us, and we become living, alive and vibrant; the Holy Ghost is in us, and God wants to build us up, to build us, shape our lives, and fit us together to become a great house of God. Notice what it says, if we look in Ephesians 2:20. Ephesians 2 picks up the same picture in Verse 20. It says in verse 19: now you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you're fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being brought carefully together, grows into a holy temple. You also are being built together for a dwelling place in the Holy Ghost.

So you notice that God calls us a living stone, and He desires to shape our life. The shaping of your life is called discipleship. It's called the forming of your attitudes and your lifestyle, so you become possible to be used by God in a great way, and God doesn't just leave us as individual stones. In the Bible, Christianity is about a body of people, it's not just about individual lives and destinies. It's about God working through a body of people, so He builds us together. One of the surest ways to recognise we're quite dysfunctional, is our inability, or reluctance, or resistance, to forming close relationships. Close relationships help us sort out the rough edges on our lives. Close relationships are part of what God wants us to do. Many people in church find themselves quite lonely. I want to just put it to you, to think about what a possible reason is, that perhaps you've got a lot of rough edges on you, and you have not developed the skills, nor the commitment, to build successful relationships. It takes effort, and it takes skill. They don't just happen.

That's why God uses the picture of a building. You don't just throw some stones together and have a building; you carefully shape the stones, carefully insert them, and then lock them or cement them together - a picture of us standing together in committed relationships. You can't have Christianity as being a McChurch, you walk in, walk out, have a meal and go. That is not church. It's not church. It's just a modern version of non-committed relationships; God wants to locate us. So when the Bible talks about positioning, and being positioned, God's talking about your physical location, He's talking about your connection in relationships, and He's talking about your mind set, being positioned or having a certain attitude, way of thinking. So let's follow this thought there with these stones. Notice what the challenge is. He said: will they revive the stones? Is there any chance of restoring stones that got burnt? Well you know the houses that formed a great building of a city, all of these stones, now they're all burnt. I want you just to try and picture just a place full of rubble. You can't recognise the streets any more, the buildings are all broken down. The walls, great stones charred, broken, stones fractured. If you've ever been to the ruins in Pompei, you can see there houses which were once great houses. Now they're shattered, broken down, stones are broken, columns are broken down, nothing like its intended or former glory.

So how is it that we become a burnt stone? How do we become a burnt stone? There's probably four reasons, or four ways that I've considered, that you and I can become a burnt stone. One of the greatest pressures that I have had personally in my Christian life, it's the pressure to let go being positioned where God wants me to be. It's the pressure to let go the commitments I've made to the Lord. It's the pressure to withdraw, in the heat of battle, from that which God called me to live out, and to do. That has been, of all the things, the greatest pressure; and the pressure comes the most when you get burnt in a fire. Fires happen. Some fires are ordained by God, some fires are lit by other people, some fires are lit by the devil, but fires are inevitable in life. We will all have fiery experiences; so the Bible talks about the fiery testing of your faith, so when we walk through a difficult season in our life, it's what the Bible calls a 'fiery trial', or a trial by fire. What is at stake? What is at stake is your destiny, and what's being tested is the quality of your faith in God.

If you think about the difficulties we had we talked about in the wilderness journeys, here's what you would have remembered: that each one of those difficulties, was to bring them to growth in their faith - except they didn't handle it right, and in the end, they totally lost their positioning, and never ended up in the promised land - another generation did. And so what causes this? Well there's a number of things can cause you to get burnt, and when you get burnt, there's a tendency to want to withdraw from the place, or the relationships, or the mentality, or commitments, that God has called you to hold to. You think about a marriage going through pain and difficulty. Why do people quit? Well they quit because they got burnt, they lost hope, and then they get levered out of position. That couple that once stood at the front, and made a commitment for life together, for better or for worse; now find themselves burnt stones, and their marriage is burnt as well. What happened? They got burnt in the fire and in the heat of the fire began to crumble, and then were levered out of a commitment they once made. That's what it is, that's what burnt stones look like, not very nice.

I'm going to give you some examples of burnt stones that God restored in a moment, so here's some of the things that burn you, and then lever you out of position, not necessarily in order of importance. One of them is actually spiritual pressure, and spiritual conflict. The Bible says: we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. The world of the spirit, the realm of the spirit is real. You're either going to win in this dimension, and walk in the spirit; or you will get knocked around. We're a spirit church, so we engage levels of things in the atmosphere, that others perhaps don't. That's why, when I send people out of here, they just go to places and demons fly out of people everywhere. Why? Because in this location, we've learnt how to stand up, and to build an atmosphere, and to build a strength of spirit, that enables us to displace demonic spirits, at a certain level. But you come under pressure, and in my time as a pastor over the years, I've had seasons where there's been immense spiritual pressure, attacks by what are called witchcraft spirits.

I don't blame the demons, I just understand, that when you go through a season of witchcraft attack, it knocks you around. It affects you with fear, it affects you with grief, it affects you with confusion, affects you with uncertainty and discouragement. Elijah got burnt by that thing. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah got burnt when he got attacked by one of those spirits that came against him. It came against him from Jezebel. She sent these messengers against him, and he got burnt, and he lost his positioning in the spirit to lead a nation into victory. Now the Bible is full of these stories if you know how to look at them, so a burnt stone remember, a stone is a person. A burnt stone is someone who's been through a fiery painful experience, and then they've crumbled, and become dislodged from what God called them to be part of, and to do. So one of the things is spiritual conflict and pressure. We become weakened, and burnt, and then withdraw.

A second thing is painful experiences in relationship in life. Now relationships aren't all smooth. I don't think anyone would doubt that. You think you're going on a great thing, and then suddenly all these problems come, and difficulties come, you never expected before. Relationships don't always go smoothly. Relationships have conflicts; conflicts are a part of life. If you don't understand how to deal with, and handle the conflicts, deal with communication, learn how to communicate properly, you will get burnt in the relationship. People come into church with this idealistic view, that everyone here's perfect, and it's going to be heaven on earth. It isn't heaven on earth, if you haven't found out. Heaven is up there you know? When we die we go to heaven. Here we have people, and people are very irritating! You being one of them, and I being another! And so we have difficulties. Now in the midst of our relational difficulties, we can get burnt. You can be hurt when people betray you. You share a confidence, and someone gives it up - it's a burning experience. If someone offends you, it can be an experience where you get burnt by that offence. Someone you thought was your friend, walks out and leaves you, you get burnt by the experience.

So there are many situations in life which can burn us, situations of grief and loss, betrayal, people judge us. There are many experiences where you can get burnt. Here's the thing: if you don't deal with getting burnt, what will happen is, you'll crumple, and then get dislodged out of what God called you to be and to do. This is where the dilemma lies, and I've seen over the years, hundreds of Christians dislodged when they got burnt; so God's got a plan for burnt stones. His plan is to revive them, and restore them, get them back in position again.

Okay, a third way is through broken promises and dreams, when our dreams are shattered. Now there's many reasons that that may happen. It could be just simply that we were believing God for something, like a healing, and it didn't happen; we believe in God for a marriage, and it still broke down; we believe in God for a child ,and they got worse, their situation got worse. Broken dreams, where God doesn't come through the way we expect Him to, can be a cause of many believers getting burnt. They get offended, and an offended person is a burnt stone. An offended believer is a burnt stone, blackened and charred by the experience they've been through, crumbling, and about to be dislodged.

So these are some of the things, and sometimes God has a good idea of just allowing us to go through a fire. Have a think about Job - where did the idea come from to let Job go through a bit of a fire? Well Job went through a fire, but at the end of it he came out, and he came to twice the blessing - he came to an expanded positioning. He came to twice the blessing he had before, because he handled the fire right. Think about Joseph. Joseph went through a fiery trial. He went through a betrayal by his brothers, he went through imprisonment, he went through false accusations and judgements against him. He went through a season of delay, when God didn't answer his prayers. He went through a whole range of things, but when he came out, he came out and was positioned, and he wasn't a burnt stone. He was a living stone. He was a living stone, because in the middle of it all, the Bible says in Psalm 106:19, it tells us: the word of the Lord tried him, until the time for all the promise for be fulfilled, and then that word released him into his promise. So he never let go of his trust in God, no matter what external circumstances. He never allowed what was around him, to scorch him and burn him. He never held offence, never held bitterness, never held judgement, never held things that would hold him back. So when he came out he was able to say to his brothers: it wasn't you sent me there, it was God sent me there. Don't blame yourselves. His heart was expanded by his fiery experience. He was not a burnt stone at all!

So let's go back into Nehemiah. I want you to have a look in Nehemiah, Chapter 1. I want to share with you something there about God's heart for burnt stones, because right now, you might be a burnt stone yourself. I was thinking God, is that me, a burnt stone? I'm thinking: flip, I can smell smoke. That's not me! We always think it's the other person that's burning don't we? Turns out it was us! Nehemiah 1:3, he got a message. Nehemiah got a message, and it said that we're in distress and reproach, Verse 3. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, the gates burned with fire. When I heard these words, I sat down, wept and mourned for many days, and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. So notice here, Nehemiah means: Comfort of God. Nehemiah is a picture of the Holy Spirit, and Nehemiah has a burden, when he hears there's burnt stones and broken walls. The heart of God is to restore. God sees what you could be. He sees the possibility in a burnt stone. Someone else sees just a drug addict, someone else sees just a prostitute, someone said: it's a no-hoper. God says: I just see a burnt stone, and I can fix up the burnt stone. I can put it back into the wall of destiny, and I can give it significance and purpose! God is like that, so Nehemiah, who is a picture of the Holy Spirit, who carries the heart of God, grieved - grieved over burnt stones.

When we get burnt, displaced, shifted out of our function, cast aside and we feel like our life is just a pile of rubble - God grieves, because He has a destiny, a plan. He has somewhere He wants to get us. He wants to restore us! He wants to reposition us, so we're back in the wall of destiny, we're doing what God called us to do. Well God can do it. He never abandons burnt stones. Christians often do, but God never does. He never does, never. I've watched over many years, doesn't matter what happened to people, I watched God pursue them. The Holy Ghost grieves over the burnt stones; so look in Chapter 2:17. Nehemiah's gone and had a look at all the damage. He's seen the walls, and everything's broken down, the stones; then he gets everyone together and he says to them, in Verse 17: you see the distress we're in, how Jerusalem lies waste, it's gates are burnt with fire. Now come, and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no longer a reproach. And I told them of the hand of my God, which had been good upon me; also the king's words, which he had spoken to me. And they said: let us rise up and build, and sent their hands to this good work. Wow, fantastic!

What does the Holy Ghost do? The Holy Ghost helps us get up. Notice what he says. He has a look at it, and he says: you can see it's a mess. You can see that life is broken down. You can see the church isn't what it should be. You can see faults, breaches, gaps, burnt stones everywhere, but he said: Let us rise up and build! The Holy Ghost, I love Him. This is what the Holy Ghost does. He helps us get up. He rebuilds our dreams and puts us where we can be successful. That's what He does - He inspires hope! He said: you see what it's like? Come on, let's build it again. Let's get this thing back up again! Let's get the stones restored and in place.

The second thing you notice that he does, he tells them, with a hand of God on him, draws attention to the hand of God, and the words of the king. He draws attention to the word of God, and the power of God, which are able to change our lives. The word, and the power of God; the power of the Holy Ghost, and the word of God. They're able to rebuild you. They're able to restore you. You need both.

You need the power of the Holy Ghost, that person-presence of the Holy Ghost, coming upon you, touching and restoring your life. You need the word of God, come in and rebuild, strengthen, lift you up again. It's how your life gets build. Finances may be a mess, you may be a burnt stone, creditors are coming in like hungry wolves. God is able to rebuild, He's able to get you out of that place. The cross is about forgiving debts. It's about getting out of debt, getting to a place of prospering. That's what God wants to do - so how does God do it? Notice the desire of God to do it, but how does God do it? Let me just give you some quick keys, and I want to give you a name of a person associated with each key. Number one: you have to want to be restored, if you're a burnt stone. If you've been burnt by life, burnt by circumstances, hurt, disappointed, let down, betrayed, felt man, that's bad, boy I'm really burnt - you can smell the smoke in your life. You know you're not functioning right, you're not connecting with God right, not connecting with His people right, you're not functioning where you ought to; and you know I am a burnt stone! Listen, God wants to get you back up again, get you going again, get you into the right place, right positioning, right - he wants you to fulfil your destiny. What do you have to do? You've got to want to change. You've got to want to come back to God. You've got to want to. You've got to want to. You've got to want to.

Jesus said to the man: what do you want? I want to be healed! Okay, we can do that... A good example of that is Naomi, in the Book of Ruth. In the Book of Ruth, Naomi in a time of famine, when there was a time of lack - you can have natural famines, spiritual famines, it's a time of lack, when it feels like there's no resources, you're drying up, you're dying; and you think: if I stay here, I'm going to die. So in the time of famine, what Naomi and her husband and family did, they went out, and they went to Moab, which is a forbidden land. It's a picture of a believer in a time of stress, struggle, difficulty, pressure, lack - and they walk away from God, the position God had for them, the place God had for them. They walk away into an unclean place. If you see what happened to them, it was disaster for them. She came back - no, she woke up one day; I've lost my husband, I've lost my sons, I've lost my future, I've lost my support, I have lost everything. She's a burnt stone. She says: don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, bitter. I'm a bitter, burnt stone.

But you know what she did? She heard that God was moving back in the land, and she said: I'm going to position myself back where God is moving. I'm going to get myself under the flow of the Holy Ghost again! I'm going to get myself where God is moving. Why? Because I'm hoping, believing, that God can do something for me. She was a burnt stone, that was restored when she made a decision: I want to be restored! Second, you have to face the reality, and take responsibility, of where you are. That's a hard one - its easy to come up in altar call and get someone to pray for you, but actually, that doesn't really do the job - I wish it did. If your finances are a mess, coming laying hands on you isn't going to fix them up. See, people look for quick fixes. God isn't a God of quick fixes; He's a God of process, and encounter, together. Encounters start to shift our internal - they impart to us, and prepare us, and empower us, to begin to embrace process of change.

The process is what takes place; so you notice here with David - a good example is David in 2 Samuel 12:13, and David got weary in the battle. The Bible says: when he should have been out fighting a battle, he stayed at home; so instead of being in the battle ground, he was in the bedroom. Instead of being out at war, he was watching the girl in the nude. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He was not doing - notice this - he was out of position. He was called to war, and he wasn't fighting. He was resting, and that's when he got into trouble. He nearly lost his destiny, it cost his family, it cost hundreds of people, cost some of his best men their life, and it cost him years of suffering and sorrow. He became a burnt stone; but when God put His finger on it, he said: I have sinned! I've done wrong before the Lord! He was just straight up, took full responsibility, and embraced fully the hand of God in restoring him.

So it's important if you're a burnt stone, one, that you must want to be restored, and make your way back to God; two, you take full responsibility for reasons for which you are a burnt stone. If you've got unforgiveness in your heart, then you're a burnt stone. That's your unforgiveness. Got bitterness in your heart - you're a burnt stone, it's your bitterness. You've got to take full responsibility, got to actually own the stuff. We've got negative attitudes, they're our negative attitudes. We've got to actually own what we've got, bring it to the Lord, repent of it, and position ourself for God to shift us. He faced reality. He was burnt by sin, and he repented of his sin.

Third thing you must do is: receive healing, and the restoration process of the Holy Ghost. We must welcome the restoring process, and healing power, of the Holy Ghost. We have to welcome it. See, it doesn't just happen. If it just happened, you'd be right now. You've actually got to welcome the Holy Spirit Himself, and the process. A great example of this is Peter, and we find in John 21:15, remember Peter? David's problem was just being weary of fighting, and he just wanted a rest; but Peter's problem was different. Peter's problem was pride, self confidence, trying to put a good show on for everyone else. He was confident in himself, over-confident, and then the pressure came on him, and he ran. He ran and he left Jesus. He left His side, broke his own word, broke his own promises, his own commitments; and he wept bitterly over his failure, his personal failure.

You know what? When Jesus saw him, Jesus invited him to a meal, and then just restored him. He said: Peter, do you love Me? Do you love Me? And he wrestled with it quite a bit, but he had to open his heart to receive the loving, restoring presence of God back into his life again. Sometimes when we've broken our lives, or damaged our lives, or we've failed, sometimes the hard thing to do, is just to be open to be loved again, and he let God love him again. Love binds up the broken heart. He let Jesus love him, restore him again, and Jesus began to reposition him. He said: I know you've blown it, I know you've really messed up. I know you had a big mouth, and you haven't lived up to what you said. I know you've really blown it, but you know what? I've really been praying for you, that even when you were burnt in the fire, that you'd be converted; and when you got repositioned again, that you'd strengthen everyone else; so I was watching you even through that burnt fire experience, and I've got My hand on you. The hardest thing for him to do, was to just let Jesus love him.

You know it's important we receive love. Now sometimes the love of God comes through encounter, sometimes it comes in our devotions, but you know when it many times it comes? Many times it comes through people; and you know, if we won't open our lives to people, it's hard to be restored, hard to be healed, because let me say this: if you're a stone that's burnt, and been pulled out of position, God wants you not just to get healed; He wants you back in position, relating and connected, and sometimes we need people to come around us and love us. I know in the Restoration Retreats and many encounter meetings I've had, that one of the greatest healing things, was just to put arms around someone, and love them; and just say: we love you, no matter what. We know what you've done, we know what's been going on, we love you anyway. That is such a healing thing, to come through people.

And finally, we must choose to be repositioned. A classic example of that's in 2 Timothy 4:11 with Mark. Mark was a young apostle of Jesus Christ. Mark went on a mission trip with Paul, and in the middle of the trip, it got too much for him - the conflict, the spiritual pressure, and he quit. He just gave up, because it was too hard; and Paul later on said: listen, he's just a loser, just cut him lose. We're not having him in the team. Barnabas got alongside him, and encouraged him, and finally there came a point where Paul was able to say: I want him back in my team. Now you imagine how difficult that was for Mark, having walked away from an apostolic ministry, to actually then come back to say: I'm sorry; and to commit himself to walk in that difficult path with Paul again, knowing that there was hardship, difficulties, all kinds of stresses, being committed to the cause of the gospel. So you notice the four steps in the process, or four key things in the restoring of a burnt stone.

Number one, we've got to want to be restored, not to stay a burnt stone in a pile of rubble, which once was our dreams. The second thing is: we must be willing to acknowledge our part in being burnt, and what we need to face in order to come out of that place, and be repositioned. Thirdly, we must be open to the love of God, through the Holy Spirit and through people, to heal, restore, and bring us back into connection again. Finally, we must be willing to commit to actually being repositioned in what God called us to be positioned in. For some that will mean shifts. For some it will mean the role you play. For some it will mean relationships being restored. It means different things for different people, but it always means one thing: that God has changed our life, and that we're back again in the wall of destiny, fulfilling our course, and fulfilling our part.

Jesus said: I'm building a church made of living stones. People that were discarded by life, burnt by religion, burnt by failure, burnt by troubles, burnt by disappointments, burnt by every circumstance of life; but I saw what was possible in them, and I'm raising them up, to become an army to change the world! An army to change the world! An army to change the world! An army to change our community.

Why don't we just close our eyes right now. I saw a video clip - I have it, but I won't show it right now, just because of the time - and I was stunned. There was a man who lost his leg as a child, and a woman who lost her arm in a car accident; and together, together they flowed as a team to do ballet. Isn't that amazing? They overcame the circumstance that burnt them, and began to flow together.

Prelude Visit with Pastor Kong Hee, Singapore.

Thank you for your prayers the last two weeks. The first week we were in a church in Singapore. They're going through a huge transition and change in the church, and the pastor was away on stress leave, but however we had a wonderful time with them all. God moved powerfully. It was a great time, and we were able to help them. The second week we went to City Harvest. City Harvest is also going through a very difficult time. Their pastor's having stress leave too, in some respects, forced stress leave! What's happened is, in the last few years they've been saving and believing God for a big facility in the centre of the city, been meeting right out at the airport, huge convention centre out there that seats about 8,000 at a time. We've just been recently.

They had a big conference out there, and there were about 40,000 people came to the conference, just amazing the work City Harvest is doing - touching all of Asia really, people from about 30 different nations I think were there. They've recently been able to work with a group of businessmen from the church, to purchase what will be called a landmark building in Singapore. It's an amazing building, a group of four buildings, called Suntec City. It's got a magnificent fountain of life. It's just like a landmark in the city centre, but the moment it was announced they bought it, there have been difficulties ever since; and so there's been tremendous upheaval in the city and the nation, tremendous upheaval in the newspapers, criticism, judgements from left, right and centre all over the place. So they felt in light of the criticism, they would go to the registrar of charities and say: well look, we just want you to understand we're open and accountable about everything we do. They laid out all their books for him to go through. He said: no, it's alright, we're okay with it all.

Then just immediately after the Asia conference, Pastor Kong was sitting with Yonggi Cho [Pastor of very large Korean church], and the authorities came in and detained him, and a whole group of his key leaders and Board members all at the same time - took them away individually, no phone, no lawyer, no contact, and then a constant barrage of accusations, for eight to 14 hours. It's been relentless. It did not stop. Of course the media had a frenzy, and Pastor Kong's had to lie low for the last three weeks or so, out of sight because of the frenzy that's created in the media. Even his associate pastor, the photographers have been coming and getting photos of their kids, anything they can get, to get a photo. So the stress and potential difficulties are immense, so they did ask that we pray for them. I've never seen Pastor Kong under such pressure in my life. I know what he's like, and I know right now he is struggling to believe, in the midst of everything that's risen against him, false accusations, judgements, the scorn of a nation against him, to hold onto God in the middle of it, that God would be the vindicator and deliverer.

So I encourage you just to think of him and pray for him. We've connected with him over many years, from when they were a church of 300. When I went in there, they used to have the security service in the meetings every Sunday. He'd have to give his newsletter every Sunday, and then he would be called in without a moments warning to answer questions about why he's got so many young people in his church, what's his intention, where's he going. Now they've got about 33,000 people in the church, it's just risen to a whole new level now; and in Singapore it's not fully a democracy like we know it, so legally you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent. So he faces all kinds of potential challenges in the future, and at this stage none of that is certain what's going to happen. It's a matter of standing in prayer and believing God, so he appreciated that I was able to come to exhort the church, exhort the leaders, be there to help people, and also to minister into the Bible school. We had a fantastic time in the Bible school, 700 students. God moved, man it was great. We had a couple of outstanding sessions where, without laying hands on anyone, the presence of God just filled the place, and people began to weep. They just began to weep out loud, as they got revelation of the cross of Jesus Christ. Then they began to manifest, just coughing going on all over the place, and then just a great move of God to set people free.

We had that twice during the week, once as we brought them to an encounter with the cross, and the last time as we brought them to understand the love of God as a Father, and His willingness and ability to heal the broken heart. Of course we'll do this in the Freedom Retreat coming up soon, and I encourage you to come along, if you haven't been to a retreat. I don't know why you'd want to keep your demons, they don't help make life easy, and we do have the retreat for a specific reason. It's because we understand that people who come to Christ have issues and things in their life which need ministry, which need deliverance. A third of Jesus' ministry was deliverance, and so it's a part of submitting ourself to God, as we open our life, to be free of the things that come around our life, to be delivered and to be healed and restored. We have a Restoration Retreat later in the year. I encourage you to open your heart, open your life, rather than stay where you are. We don't want to stay where we are individually, or corporately, so let's make decisions to move in our life.

These Encounter Retreats are powerful points of time to engage God. They really work the best if you've prayed, fasted, and determined you're going to reach out to God to set you free. However they're not standalone events. They're part of a bigger process, where there is a need for us to walk with God, discipline our life, shape our thinking, change our attitudes, our behaviours and so on. So there's a bigger picture of disciplined life and following Christ and obedience, being connected to people; and there is also an encounter, and I love encounters, so it'll be a great time, great weekend. I know you're going to enjoy yourselves.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

a) Example of the devastation of a Fire – Hettinga Estate

· Building ravaged by fire, blackened, smoke shared ruins

· People wander through ruins of the building, dream, hoping to find something value

b) Bible Example of Jerusalem

Neh 4:1-3

“Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish, stones that are burned?”

· Intense opposition to the work of God.

· The Jews were mocked, despised, laughed and scolded

· Bitter hate and ridicule of the people, God and of the building materials

· Picture of demonic spirits arrayed against the people, the work of God, His purpose and plan

· Is it possible to make a difference? It is not ‘too hard’ for the Lord to save and revive burnt stones

· “Revive” =2421 = to bring back to life, restore strength

· “Rubbish” = 6038 = rubble of a destroyed city, worthless material discarded

· God is always ready to restore and to rebuild, also His Church.

· What a great thing to respond to God?

What is a Burnt Stone?

a) Buildings in the Old Testament

· Walls and buildings were made of great shaped stones – limestone blocks

· When limestone is burnt by fire it gets softened, loses strength and vitality and begins to crumble to powder

· Burnt stones are easily removed from their position, alignment and cast aside as worthless

b) Stones are Pictures of People

1 Pet 2:4-5

“You also as living stones are being up a spiritual house…”

· Believers are living stones – quarried and shaped by God for a purpose

· “Stone” = root 1129 = to build, establish

· Eph 2:20-22

“You are also being built together for a dwelling place of God”

· God shapes us and positions us for His purpose to be fulfilled

· “Position” = place, location, an attitude, way of thinking

i. Where God locates, plants, connects you

ii. Way of thinking, mindset

· God calls us a living stone, desired to shape and position us. Building us together.

c) Stones can become Burnt

Neh 4:2

“Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish, stones that are burned?”

· These stones once formed part of a great building of God

· Now they are burned - softened, blackened, charred, lost vitality and strength

· They had been burned by fire and broken down by the enemy

· How do stones become burnt? The believer goes through painful experiences

i) Spiritual Conflict and Pressure

· People attacked by wicked spirits = offended, angry, hurt, weakened

· People become weakened, burnt

· Kings 19 - Elijah got burnt and lost his position in the Nation

ii) Painful Experiences in Relationships and Life

· Betrayal, judgments, conflict

· People become burnt by grief, disappointment, offence

· God becomes dislodged by people getting burnt

iii) Broken promises and Dreams

· Unexpected loss of a dream or hope

· Dreams you had in your mind and ‘not seeing’ it come to pass

iv) Refining by God

· Painful experiences in life that God permits to develop our character or faith

· Josephs’ experience: betrayal, slavery, false accusations, prison

· God restored the burnt stone and positioned him in a place of honor

· He kept faith during the fire Ps 106:19

3. Can God Restore Burnt Stones?

Neh 1:3-4

“I sat down and wept and mourned for many days”

· “Nehemiah” = Comfort of God = picture of the Holy Spirit

· God does not abandon burnt stones. The heart of God is to restore

· God sees possibilities in stones burnt, charred, disfigured by pain, failure and disappointment

· God grieves if we get displaced

· God can restore a burnt stone and set it back in the wall of destiny and purpose

Neh 2:17

“Come and let us built the wall of Jerusalem”

· Rise up and build – Inspired by the Holy Spirit

i) Holy Spirit inspires fresh hope = He helps us to get up, rebuilding dreams and fulfilling purposes

ii) The Holy Spirit draws our attention to the Word and Power of God

iii) The holy Spirit imparts vision for people to build and restore

4. How Burnt Stones are restored

i) You must want to be Restored

· Ruth 1:6-7 Naomi returned

· Famine – she and her husband left the land of promises, they went to Moab, a forbidden place

· Burnt – suffered grief, loss of husband and both sons

· Must maintain right attitude in famine – believed God, returned to the Lord, her place of destiny

ii) You must Face Reality

· 2 Sam 12:13 David – “I have sinned against the Lord”

· David weary of battle – he left the battlefield for the bedroom, he left the war for watching woman

· David endangered his destiny, family, ministry

· David was burnt by sin – many lost their lives

· He had to face reality take responsibility

iii) You must Receive Healing and restoration of the Holy Spirit

· Welcome the Holy Spirit and the process

· John 21:15 Peter – “Do you love me? Feed my lambs”

· Overconfidence and Pride – Peter fled

· Burnt by failure and broken promises

· He had to receive forgiveness and the love of God

· The love of God may also come through people many times. Relate and commit.

iv) You must Commit to Being Repositioned

· 2 Tim 4:11 Mark – “Take Mark and bring him with you”

· Mark acted in fear – Mark abandoned Paul’s ministry Act 15

Acknowledge your part in being burnt, come back and get repositioned.

God has changed our life; get back into your destiny.

Become and army to change the world

Burnt Stones (2 of 4)

Sun 25 Jul 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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There is no believer in Christ who's not called to restore burnt stones. True religion is to visit the widows and the orphans in their affliction, to visit the burnt stones and comfort them. You cannot have a vibrant, vital spirit life and not minister to burnt stones. That is the heart of God - people, ruined cities, burnt stones, devastations of generations. God wants to heal and restore them.

Passionless religion is a curse. It's not Biblical. Conservative, passionless, expressionless religion does not change anything. God wants a fire ignited in our hearts, a fire for the lost, a fire for burnt stones, a fire that's not just come out of human concern and sympathy, a fire that's ignited out of the place of prayer and fasting!

God gives every believer an axe head - it's the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It's your responsibility not to lose the flow of God's power and presence. It's your responsibility to keep that axe head sharp - to learn to listen, hear, and respond-to to the voice of God, to do the things God's showing you to do, wherever it might be. We're all called to be an axe for Jesus Christ.

I want to share on burnt stones; Nehemiah 4. And so it happened when Sanballat heard we were rebuilding the wall, he was furious, and very angry, and he mocked the Jews. And then he spoke before his brethren, the army of Samaria, and said: what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they strengthen themselves? Will the offer sacrifices to God? Are they going to complete it in a day? That's too big a task. Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish, stones that are burnt? And so this is a story, or picture, from the days of Nehemiah, when the city of Jerusalem had been overtaken, broken down. The city had been burnt, the people taken out and born into captivity. The city had been destroyed by fire; fire erodes the stones, then they levered them all out. Walls were broken down. It was desolate. It was not a city you could live in any more.

And God intended the city be rebuilt, so here we have a picture; we've got Sanballat, who's a picture of Satan, and Sanballat is mocking the work of God. Sanballat is looking at the city of Jerusalem, he's looking at the plan of God, he's looking at the purpose of God. It is always in the heart of God to go to cities that are ruined. It is always in the heart of God to reach into people whose lives are broken. It is always in the heart of God to build and restore, restore lives, restore marriages, restore families, restore people who've been broken down by the thief that came to destroy. This is the heart of God to restore, and so as Nehemiah arises to go and restore, he faces demonic opposition. The devil doesn't want people restored, he doesn't want your life on course, he doesn't want you fulfilling a purpose and destiny. He wants you to remain in bondage, in defeat with the walls of your life broken down, with your heart full of bitterness and resentment. He wants to come into your life. He wants to burn up everything you have.

But God is able to take burnt stones and raise them up. As we see in this story here, we see the Bible talks about piles of rubbish and burnt stones. Burnt stones are a prophetic picture of people. The Bible uses the word stone to describe people, so a burnt stone is a fire-blackened stone. It is a person who's been through fiery situations, situations of pain, situations of betrayal, situations of injustice; and their life, that once had potential, has now been blackened by the fire that they've gone through. Their heart has changed. Now instead of there being love and kindness, there's anger and hurt and injustice. There's bitterness, there's fear, there's conflict and turmoil. Burnt stones lying in a pile of rubbish, but God has a heart to reach into the piles of rubbish that are in our city, and to find stones and restore them! This is what our God is like. This is why Jesus came into this world. He came into a world full of rubbish, full of burnt stones, that He might raise them up and heal them and restore them, and position them into their place of destiny, and put them in a place they could be useful to God, useful to the purpose of God.

A burnt stone is someone who's saying in their heart: I don't think God could ever use me again. My life is in ruins. I feel stripped of everything. A burnt stone is someone who's been displaced out of the place and call of God. A burnt stone is someone who's saying: I don't think I could ever trust again, I don't think I could ever love again, I don't think I could ever reach out again. I don't think I could ever be used by God again. That's a burnt stone, and God sends Nehemiah to find the burnt stones, and to pick them up and restore them, and put them back in place. God wants to do it to your life, and to the friends around you, to your family. He wants to do it in our community. Our city is full of burnt stones. You don't have to walk far to see them, lives that have been shattered by abuse and alcohol, and God is wanting to raise them up. God is wanting to restore them, and He uses a man called Nehemiah.

Let's have a look at Nehemiah 1:2. Hanani and my brothers came with the men from Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews which had escaped, and survived the captivity. They hadn't died. And I asked them concerning Jerusalem, and they said to me: the survivors that are left, from the captivity in the province, are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down. The gates are burnt with fire. When I heard these words, I sat down and wept, and mourned day and night, and fasted and prayed. Nehemiah, whose name means the comfort of God, Nehemiah is a picture of the Holy Ghost; and you'll find when you look in the Bible, Father, Son and Holy Ghost all have one mind and one heart. It's a heart of love. It's a heart of compassion for people. God raised us for a purpose. When God designed man, He designed us to represent Him as ambassadors, to be creative, to change the world that we were born into. He raised us up for a purpose and destiny, but when the devil came in, he burnt God's plans. He broke God's plans, he damaged God's plan, and yet we see the heart of God.

Notice what Nehemiah does. He asks them - God is always enquiring. God is always searching, to find where people are at. When God came into the garden of Eden, He said: Adam, where are you? Not that He didn't know where he was; His heart was broken, because the relationship was fractured. He said: Adam - this is a relational question - where are you? How often, or how infrequently, we have people come up and ask you the question: how are you doing, what's happening in your life, with a heart to know you. That's what Nehemiah does. He asks the question: how are the people of God who survived the captivity? What is their condition? What is the city of Jerusalem like? He asked questions to find out the problem - = because you know, the way you want to find out what's going on in people's lives is to ask questions. You'd be amazed, if you have a heart to hear, a heart that loves people and cares about them, and you begin to ask questions, they'll open up how they're really doing. I'm surprised how often people break down and weep, as they begin to talk about the turmoil they're facing, and the loneliness that it brings.

So few people would come alongside, and find them, and say: how are you doing? How can I help? And that's what Nehemiah does. That's his heart. Notice then he sat down. When Nehemiah sat down - sit down means you're no longer able to stand up. It's a picture of the grief that the Holy Ghost feels. The Bible tells us the Holy Spirit is incredibly sensitive. He feels things deeply and passionately, and so the Bible tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit. The Bible describes in Ephesians, Chapter 4, it says we grieve Him through bitterness. We grieve Him when there's anger, we grieve Him when there's hatred in our heart. We grieve Him when there's malice, when we harbour resentment, when we harbour things in our heart - we were never designed to operate like that. You can't run your life like that, but when that happens, when there's these things in our heart the Bible says the Holy Spirit is grieved.

And so it says: he sat down. He was grieved, and the Bible says: he wept. He poured out his heart. Nehemiah, the man, felt the anguish of God. He felt the pain of God's heart. The spirit of God came upon him, and he began to feel what God feels about people who are burnt stones, about people who's lives are broken, young men, young women who've been abused, who've come from broken families, whose lives are damaged. This is the heart of God - He weeps. When did you last weep over someone? When did you last experience God putting a compassion in your heart, so when you heard of something, you felt, you just sat down and began to weep for their condition, and pray for them, and begin to fast for the breakthrough? So often it's not like that. We hear of what's happening and we begin to judge, and wall in our heart that person away, but God doesn't do that. Nehemiah didn't do that. He began to weep and weep and weep, day and night, the anguish of God's heart, the compassion of God came on him. He felt God's heart, and all he could do was weep and weep and weep.

If you've ever had that experience you can understand it. I've known times when I felt the spirit of God come on me, and I just wept uncontrollably. It was not about something I had done, or a mistake, or a failure; it was about the condition of people, and how God felt about them. When you walk through the Bible, you find how the heart of God is to restore broken people. The heart of God is filled with compassion. I encourage you to read, and find how many times compassion caused Jesus to do things. You find a number of stories in the Bible - let me just throw a few out. There's a leper came to Jesus in his broken condition, his damaged condition. He was a burnt stone, burnt by this horrible loathsome disease, and rejected by people. But when he came to Jesus, Jesus was moved with compassion, and reached out and engaged him in his horror, in his sickness, and touched him, then healed him. If we're going to help people, you have to let the compassion of God move you to engage them in their sickness and pain, and not be disgusted and turned off by it.

You know another example is found in Luke 7, where there was a young man, and the young man had died. The mother's grieving, and the mother's a burnt stone. Her husband's gone, her son has gone, her life is gone, she's burnt; and He reached - He was moved with compassion, and brought life into that situation. God wants to move us with compassion, to bring life into people who are in a place of mourning and death. Jesus stopped, went over, and got involved with them. He touched the dead man, He touched that dead man. You don't touch dead things, they're unclean, but Jesus didn't have a care about that. He carried life to change it. God wants you and I to have His heart, to carry His life, and engage people who are broken. Jesus saw the multitudes. He was moved with compassion.

Now I want you to see this. It tells us very clearly in Matthew 9:35-36, the first few verses, that God's response to seeing multitudes of broken stones is to raise up labourers to minister to them. You can't just pray for God to do it all. God has chosen to work through people, and so God is looking for people who will have His compassion. It's not about having a good idea. Good ideas won't get you to last in the call of ministry. Good ideas don't cause you to overcome injustice. Good ideas don't cause you to overcome betrayal, or people who show lack of gratitude, when you've done all you can, and they just walk away. No, you have to have the compassion of God. This is what Nehemiah had; and Jesus, when He saw the multitudes who were desperately in need, this was His strategy: raise up people, make them living stones, and send them out in their positioning, in their rank and their order, to bring healing and wholeness. You're such a stone.

Let me say this: there is no believer in Christ who's not called to restore burnt stones. You which are spiritual, restore a person overtaken. If you call yourself spiritual, call yourself any kind of believer, then the burnt stones are our ministry. People are our ministry, people who've been burnt in the circumstances of life. It says: if you are spiritual, then restore people that have been burnt. It says: true religion is to visit the widows and the orphans in their affliction, to visit the burnt stones and comfort them. You cannot have a vibrant, vital spirit life and not minister to burnt stones. That's the heart of God is people, ruined cities, burnt stones, devastations of generations. God wants to heal and restore them. The Bible talks about Father; you see the Holy Ghost in the form of Nehemiah. You see Jesus' ministry, and you find the Father in the book where it talks about the prodigal son. The prodigal son begins to return. The Bible says - the Father - what does it say about him? It says: while he was a long way off; in other words, his heart was after the son. Is your heart after people who are lost and broken, back-slidden Christians? Do you care about them, or do you find a reason to find fault and judge them; oh, look what they're doing now. That's a judgement. Well I don't know how they could be doing that, they call themselves Christians - that's a judgement.

How easy it is to judge, but the Bible says: the Father was moved with compassion, a heart of compassion; and it says: he ran to the son, and he hugged him and he wept. God is passionate! Passionless religion is a curse. It's not Biblical. It's not the heart of God. Jesus stood over Jerusalem, that great city in all its fineness and splendour, and He wept. He wailed aloud with grief, with longing and yearning for the city. Conservative, passionless, expressionless religion does not change anything. God wants a fire ignited in our hearts, a fire for the lost, a fire for burnt stones, a fire that's not just come out of human concern and sympathy, a fire that's ignited out of the place of prayer and fasting! In Isaiah 58 it talks about the fasting before the Lord, and the outcome is to become a repairer of the breach, a repairer of broken lives, a restorer of people. There's none of us here not called to be restorers of lives; but if your life is damaged, and you yourself are a broken stone, a burnt stone, and you're in the pile of rubble, and your life is preoccupied just trying to look after yourself - how will you ever rise up, take your position in the work of God, and begin to restore others!

You must make the commitment: I will not stay a burnt stone any longer. I will do whatever it takes to get up out of this situation, be restored, be full of the life of God, full of passion, full of fire! I want the fire of my first love back again! I want to be alive in God again! I want to be serving God passionately! God, come upon me and ignite that fire! See prayer is the place it's ignited, prayer, God wants to restore the burnt stones. You see Nehemiah in Nehemiah 2:17 he says to the people, he says can you see the distress we're in? Can you see the condition of lives and families? He said let us rise up and build. Let's rise and build. Let's arise on the inside and become builders. God is wanting builders. God is wanting builders.

I want to just share with you just some simple steps to restoration, and then we'll just finish up with a little clip I want to show you. In 2 Kings 6, it shows you five simple steps of restoration. I won't develop them, I'll just throw the seeds out for you, but you find it in 2 Kings, Chapter 6. I love the prophetic stories in the Bible, but every one of them contains insights that are very relevant for us. In 2 Kings 6, it's the story of an axe head being restored, and it says: here the sons of the prophets said to Elisha - Verse 1 - the place where we dwell with you is too small for us. In other words, they're feeling contained. They were feeling limited. They were feeling restricted. We want something big, and he said: can we go to Jordan, let every man take a beam from there. Let's make a place where we may dwell; and he said go. Then one said: come with your servants. He said: I will go; and he went with them. When they came to Jordan they cut down the trees. Notice everyone was a builder of the house, everyone went with an axe, everyone went with a purpose to build. There wasn't one of them who wasn't determined to build.

But one of them, as he was cutting the tree, the iron axe head fell off into the water, and he cried out and said: alas master, it was borrowed! So the man of God said: where did it fall? And he showed him the place, so he cut off a stick, and he threw it in there, and he made the iron float. And he said: therefore pick it up for yourself. He reached in, and he reached out with his hand, and he took it - an amazing thing. You notice now we see the lost axe head, and so there's a need for restoration.

Why is the axe head important? The axe head speaks of a life, flowing in the Holy Ghost. If you've got an axe, and it's got no axe head, you can't cut a thing. A Christian with no power of the Holy Ghost flowing through them doesn't really achieve much at all. That's why Jesus said: wait until you get the Holy Ghost, get the Holy Ghost on you, get filled with the Holy Ghost. You will be an effective witness for Me. So we need the flow of the Holy Ghost; so a wooden stick is a picture of the man. The axe head is a picture of the cutting edge of the Holy Ghost, the anointing of the spirit of God flowing through you, energising your thoughts, giving you creative ideas, causing you to hear the voice of God, causing you to have a heart for people, causing you to reach into lives, and see the way into them to cut into their hearts, and to penetrate them, and to see them changed.It's the anointing of the Holy Spirit, God gives every believer an axe head. He gives every believer the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It's your responsibility not to lose the flow of God's power and presence. It's your responsibility to keep that axe head sharp. It's your responsibility to learn to listen to the voice of God, hear the voice of God, respond to the voice of God, do the things God's showing you to do, in your work, in your school, in your home, wherever it might be. We're all called to be an axe for Jesus Christ.

In the Book of Jeremiah He describes His church, the whole church as being His mighty battleaxe. In other words, in the hand of God, it cuts down the armies of the enemy; in the hand of God, it subdues demons; in the hand of God it shuts down the gates of hell. That's the church of the living God. You're called to rise up like that! Here this poor fellow started out well, then he lost the axe head. Notice without the axe he can't do the work. Without the flow of the Holy Ghost, you can't do the work of God. You can have a program, you can do some good works, but you won't see the fruit, that only the Holy Ghost can bring. You need the Holy Ghost!Every area of the church needs the Holy Ghost. We need that reviving fire of the Holy Ghost in every part of us! You need the Holy Ghost in your family. We need the HOLY GHOST! We need the power of God! A church with no power cannot be effective. We need God's presence filling our lives, filling and empowering us, so you burn with passion. People will come and see you then. A person without passion has got not much interest for anyone I don't think.

So you notice it was borrowed, so it wasn't something he owned. It was something he was a steward of. You are a steward of your walk with God. You are a steward of your relationship with God. If you have compromised, if you've walked away from God in your heart, if you've let your heart be filled with bitterness and anger, then you've lost your axe head. A heart filled with bitterness and judgement, religiosity, has got no cut, got no fire, got nothing to make a difference. God's calling the church out of that place, wants the axe head back, wants the axe head back on the church. He wants the axe head back in your life. He wants us to rise up, and begin to start to challenge powers of darkness, and enter into the community, and see people set free!

So what happened? Notice the first thing. He said: he cried out; and said: alas master, for it was borrowed. So the first thing you have to do if you are a burnt stone, if you've lost the fire of God, if you've lost the cutting edge with God, you have to admit there's a problem. The worst thing is to carry on trying to cut trees, and you've got no axe head. But most of the church does that, uses a wooden stick to try and cut down trees, and haven't noticed it's not got an axe head on it. Many churches in New Zealand would not know if the Holy Ghost was there, or not there. It literally would not make a difference, and that means, for the most part, they're using a wooden stick to try and chop down trees. We need the axe head of the Holy Ghost. We need His presence flowing through out life; so if that's not so, we need to admit it. You'd need to admit it. Deception's a powerful thing - we think we're doing better than we are. There's nothing that God can't solve, but you've got to really admit they've got a problem first of all. We can blame others. Blaming others is wonderful, it's a great way - there's a guy Benjamin Franklin said this: He that's good at making excuses, and blaming others, is seldom good at anything else. That's not a bad one is it, aye? He that's good at making excuses, is seldom good at anything else; so I don't want you to be good at making excuses aye. So what is the issue that God's speaking to you about? I want you to admit it: God, I need to deal with this issue. I need to face it right now.

Here's the second thing: he was willing to go back. Notice the question was, where did it fall? Where did you lose it? Where did you get burnt? When did it happen? Where was the place? What happened in your experience, that caused you get burnt? Maybe for some, it's way back when you were a young boy, a young child, and now you've been burnt and burnt and burnt and burnt; and now God's saying: wow, where do I start? Go back to where it first started. Go back, get into right back there, where the thing started. For some it started in your family line, some it started as a young person, some it started last year. Wherever you got burnt go back; where did it fall? So you've got to overcome shame and embarrassment, just go back to where I lost it; got to admit the problem, go back to where it is. Where'd you lose the axe head? How did the problem come? The place where the problem began, is the place you go looking for the solution: the root of unforgiveness, the root of resentment, of disappointment, injustice, anger. That's the place you go back to. Just go back to it, and then you apply the cross.

Notice what he did: he cut down a stick; and the Bible often, when the Bible's using the word stick or tree or anything like that, it's talking about people. People are likened to wood or trees or whatever; but in this case, the stick is the cross of Calvary, because Jesus died on that tree; and when He died, He died for your failures. He died for your hurts, He died for your offences, He died to deal with stuff. He died to set us free of iniquity, He died to heal the broken hearted. He died to get us set free, so you need to learn how to bring the cross, how to come to Jesus Christ, how to come to the cross where offences were dealt with. The cross is the power of God to salvation, to all who believe! There's no problem you can't get out of, no failure you can't rise up from; not if you bring the cross of Christ, and His blood into it.

Notice what he did, you have to apply the cross. You've got to take those injustices to the cross. God can deal with the bitter waters of your life. God can deal with the blackened part of your life too, make it really quite different. So the next thing is, you need to expect something to happen. If I come to the cross, I need to come expecting God to do something, fully expecting He will change my life. He will resolve this thing. The sin will be forgiven; the hurt will be healed, the injustice will go away, the pain will just vanish. I'll begin to start to walk out of it. I've got to have faith that God can do it. Got to have faith.

Finally you notice here, he said: the axe head floated up to the surface. Now that's a miracle isn't it? That's where the supernatural comes. There's something about when you come to the cross, that the anointing is released. You notice, it floated up to the surface - so this is a supernatural moving of God; and when we come to the cross and deal with our sin, deal with our failures, deal with our injustices, hurt and grief then what happens - there's something about the Holy Ghost, just begins to come again.

Now notice what he had to do. He said: stretch out. You've got to stretch again, and pick it up, and begin to go back to the building. You see one of the hardest things is, its one thing to come to the cross and release forgiveness; it's another thing to stand up and then start to love people. You have to stretch out to do that. You may have an injustice or some kind of offence; it's one thing to bring it and share it with Jesus. It's another thing to stretch out into the Holy Ghost, and begin to express the love of God to that person, to walk past that injustice like it never happened, and to begin to start to flow again. You can't influence people powerfully if there's no flow of the Holy Ghost, so you've got to make a decision that: I'll love, I'll honour where I've been dishonoured. I will love where I've been cursed. I'll bless people, I'll start to speak well - in fact, I will own my own life. I will stretch into God, and stretch out to people, and see God move.

One of the most common things that burns us, is conflicts and things that happen in relationships, and always it's the same thing. If you've lost the flow of God, your cutting edge, you come back to the place you lost it, to the situation you lost it in. You come back to the cross. You come back, and are willing to let it go to the Lord - let it go. It doesn't matter if it never gets solved, doesn't matter if no one ever owns up to anything. What matters is that you let it go at the cross, the greatest injustice of all; and then stretch out to go back into the work God called you to go into. There'd be many perhaps who've got all kinds of issues. You're a burnt stone in the pile, and God wants you to find out: well how did I become a burnt stone? I need to come to the cross and bring the cross into it; and then stretch out, and start flowing with the Holy Spirit again. The Bible says be kind, tender hearted, loving one another. That's when the axe head's on your life, when you're able to do that. Well what about that person? It doesn't matter what they're doing. Will you be an axe head for God?

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

Neh 4:1-2

“Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish – stoned which are burned?”

· Rubbish = 6038 = rubble of destroyed city, burnt stones, discarded and cast aside

· Revive = 2421 = to bring to life, restore strength and vitality

· What is a burnt stone?

· Prophetic picture of people, people who have gone through painful experiences – burnt

· Fire blackened, charred, disfigured, crumbling and out of position for their destiny

· Heart broken by grief, disappointment, offense, injustice and pain

· Stone charred with bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, judgment, blame

· People who think God could never use them again

· People who since their fire declared Never to Trust, Never to Love, Never to Speak again

· God walks through the rubble of Jerusalem, looking for stones He can restore

The Heart of God for Burnt Stones

Neh 1:1-4

“When I heard their words I sat down and wept and mourned”

a) Nehemiah – Comfort of God, picture of the Holy Spirit, of Jesus the builder of the Church John 14:16

b) “I asked them” – longing to know the condition of God’s people, City of God

c) “Sat down” = the Holy Spirit can be grieved, wounded, He is very sensitive

Wept = overcome by the anguish of God for his people

Great sorrow of heart as he felt the heart of God

Grief = sign of the assignment that God is giving you

Crying/caring = evidence of the problem God has called you to solve

d) Restoration is birthed out of feeling the heart of God and being overwhelmed

Jesus was moved with compassion

Mark 1:41 He touched the leper – burnt stone!

Luke 7:14 He raised the young man - burnt stone!

Matthew 9:35-36 He fed the multitudes - burnt stones!

Matthew 10:1 He raised and sent builders - burnt stones!

Father God is involved with compassion

Luke 15:20 - He ran and embraced and wept over and restored prodigal son – burnt stone!

Luke 19:41 Jesus wept over Jerusalem - Burnt stone!

e) The heart of God is passionate about the burnt stones and broken cities

Jer 8:21

“For the heart of my people I am hurt, I am black”

Moves of God are birthed out of passion, feeling heart of God not by good ideas

Where is the passion? Where is the weeping? Where is the fasting and prayer?

Is 42:22

God wants to restore burnt stones

Neh 2:17 “You see the distress we are in, let us arise and build!”

God loves you and wants to restore you, fill your heart with passion, restore 1st Love

Burnt Stones (3 of 4)

Sun 15 Aug 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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When Nehemiah looked around and saw the broken lives, it was in his heart not to judge or condemn, but to be part of the answer.

Every believer is called to be a builder, because a true Son is a "builder of the household name". When you catch the heart of the Holy Ghost, something in you will resonate, will feel concern, will rise up on the inside. I want to be a builder for God! I want my life to count for something! Every believer is given spiritual gifts (1 Cor 14:12), but let it be to build up the church - desire to excel in building up people.

Isaiah 61 - "the spirit of the Lord is upon me" - it's all to do something. It's to open blind eyes. It's to heal broken hearts. It's to restore the desolation of previous generations. He wants people who are broken, disconnected and cut down to be restored and lifted up, doing something useful.

Nehemiah, Chapter 2. I want to just pick up about pushing through the difficulties; Nehemiah 2:17-18. Nehemiah came and he said: you look at the distress that we're in, how Jerusalem is waste, the gates are burnt with fire, gates are burnt down. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, so we're no longer a reproach. And I told them of the hand of God, which is good upon me, and the king's words that he had spoken to me. So they said - this is what the people said. This is what happened inside people, when the Holy Ghost begins to move upon them; and Nehemiah, whose name means the comfort of God, and he came and he looked at the city which was in ruins. He saw burnt stones, broken stones, he saw rubble everywhere.

But you know he saw something beyond that. He saw, through the eyes of faith, what a group of people can do - to change a city, to change lives that are broken down; and when Nehemiah looked around and saw the broken lives, it was in his heart not to condemn. It's in his heart not to judge. It was in his heart to be part of the answer. God calls you and me to be part of the answer to our city, part of the answer to the younger generation, part of the answer to the broken lives; not to just fall off and sit in a retirement home, and do nothing for the rest of our lives! My goodness! What a waste of our life.

We're called to be BUSY in the king's business, busy in advancing the kingdom of God. There's no exceptions, not one. All are called to arise and build. You know when you catch the heart of the Holy Ghost this is what you'll catch inside: something in you will resonate, something in you will feel concern, something in you will say I want to rise up on the inside. I don't want to live in the dust of defeat! I don't want to live in the rubble of my past life. I want to be a builder for God! I want my life to count for something! A lot of people they think the anointing is just to feel good and shake and fall over and see visions; but you read Isaiah 61, "the spirit of the Lord is upon me" - it's all to DO something. It's to open blind eyes. It's to heal broken hearts. It's to restore the desolation of previous generations. Read it for yourself.

The anointing of the Holy Ghost, that same Holy Ghost that God gave you, is for you to DO something! It's to influence lives! It's to see people saved! It's to see them get filled with the Holy Ghost, and begin to get vision and purpose and destiny - and this is what Nehemiah had in mind: restoring burnt stones, once living beautiful stones, burnt by warfare - now restore them, and reposition them in the wall of destiny. That's what God has for people, He wants people who are broken, disconnected and cut down to be restored and lifted up doing something useful.

You know the Bible tells us very clearly: every believer is called to be a builder. I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says a Christian is called to be a sitter, not at all; sit at the feet of Jesus, but then get up and do something. The word Son in the Bible, the Old Testament, is the word Ben, meaning: a builder of the household name. So when you come to Jesus Christ, you're not an add-on, and you're not a servant; you were born into His family, His spirit comes in you and changes you; and then you're called to be a builder, because a true Son is a builder of the household name. A true Son is a builder of the family, and so the Sons of God, those who are lead by the spirit of God, become builders of lives.

It doesn't take any faith to criticise, it doesn't take any faith to tear anyone down; it takes faith to see a burnt stone, a broken life, a drug addict, an alcoholic, someone whose marriage is in tatters - it takes faith to see in that burnt stone, a restored stone, back in the wall of destiny. You and I are called to be those kinds of people, to do that kind of thing. So the Bible tells us we're to build. We're to build lots of things - but you're to build your personal life, and 1 Corinthians 3:9 it says: you are God's building; so the first part of the building is yourself. You are responsible for your personal growth, not someone else. I can't make you grow. You have to choose whether you'll grow. You'll choose whether you're going to build your life or not. You'll choose whether you waste the opportunities or use them; but all building requires a commitment and we're called to build. Jude 20: building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, so you can build your spirit. I can't do that for you!

You can build your character - I can't do that for you either. You can build your capacity - I'm sorry, I can't do that for you either. You can build and develop your skills, so you have more to contribute to the work of God - we can help you with a bit of that. We can help you with all of those things to some extent, but actually you have to make a decision: I don't want to be a weak Christian, who's ineffective for God. I want my life to count. I want to be a builder. You have to make that decision every day when you get up: I'll build my life. I'll build an altar to God, and place a prayer - time in the word of God; time beginning to lay before God my day, and starting to think: how will I walk with God today? You're called to build your life, because everything takes effort to build. It takes commitment, it takes perseverance, and there are obstacles, there are enemies, and we're called to build the house of God of course, called to build. 1 Corinthians 14:12 it says: if you're zealous for spiritual gifts, and love the power of the Holy Ghost, wonderful - but let it be to build up the church, desire to excel in building up people. Isn't that amazing aye?

1 Corinthians 14:12, so every believer is given spiritual gifts. Some don't even realise that, and some don't operate in them. However God gives every believer spiritual giftings - and there's only one reason for them: they're for building up people. Get words of knowledge, prophesy for people - it's all for building people up and encouraging people. Pray for the sick and get them healed - it's all to encourage people and build them up. Get them delivered is to build them up! Don't focus on the devils, we focus on building a house for God. See, don't focus on a haunted house, focus on the temple, what the temple could look like filled with the presence of God. So we're all called to be builders. You're called to be a builder, you are a builder, it's just a matter of whether you're busy in what you're building - or whether you're smoking on the job. Having lunch, long lunch. A lot of Christians are having a long lunch - just out to lunch some; but you know we're not like that. We're here to work on the house of God and to build people, encourage people.

Everyone's called to be an encourager, to be a builder of people. You can do that and it works through relationships. In Ephesians 4:15-16 it tells us that what we have to contribute, flows through from one member of the body to the other, through joints - so you have to build relationships. You may have some great call on your life, but if you don't develop that and build relationships, it can't come about. We have to build relationships. It's through relationships that the gifts in life of God flows, and relationships are challenging to build. There's often difficulties in building relationships; but on the other hand, it's through relationships that you have a chance to minister to people. If you want to see people saved, you've got to build a friendship with them, build a connection with them. Don't start talking to them about Jesus, take an interest in them, and begin to find out where they are, and what's going on in their life. Think that's a burnt stone there. They don't know it, but I know it, and in a short time after I've asked a few questions, and listened, I'll begin to find out just the extent to which that life is damaged. I'll be able to offer help and support, or maybe just practical kindness. Most people, its just kindness will open their heart, for you to connect into them, so then you can be a builder of their life.

So one of the dilemmas of course, is we get too busy to build relationships; but we have to build connections with people, through which we can bring the life and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Every believer's called to do that. Don't say you're too busy, that is the job. It is the job. Building relationships, bringing the life we have to someone else; and in those relationships, also receiving from others in the body. None of us can do without the others. I need what you have, and you need what I have - we need one another; and so relationships in the body, we're not meant to be just independent of each other, and self-sufficient, and I've got all the anointing I need and I don't need you. That's nonsense, spiritual pride. The Bible says: we can't say we don't need one another - we do. We need one another; and so through relationships, the life flows.

But this is the thing about building. In case you didn't realise it, the devil gets hostile when you try to build something for God. Look at this in Nehemiah, Chapter 4: so it happened when Sanballat - he's the enemy - he heard that we were rebuilding the wall. He was furious! Very angry, and so he had a number of ways he tried to stop the Jews. First he began to mock them and belittle them, and so he said: oh, these feeble Jews, what are they going to do? Going to fortify themselves? They going to offer sacrifices? What do they think, God's going to help with something? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, the stones which are burnt?

And Tobiah, who was beside him said: Ha! Ha! These feeble Jews, what are they doing? It's so pathetic what they're doing. If even a little fox jumped on it, the wall would fall down. Your life is so pathetic - a little problem comes along, you'll fall over. Can you understand, one of the key strategies of the enemy is to belittle us, to mock and laugh at us, to point out how weak we are, to point out in our life where we lack. Why? He wants you just to be discouraged, so you won't build - and its here in the Bible. You want to see how Nehemiah dealt with it, and you'll see how to deal with these issues. There will always mockers and despisers, and scorners and laughers. If you're going to do anything - and I mean anything substantial or different - there will be mockers and scorners and laughers. If you want to build something for God, there'll be mockers and scorners and laughers. If they don't do it to you directly, you'll find demonic spirits will do it - they'll laugh at you, belittle you, and laugh at what you're doing.

In your dark moments, when you're wondering how to go forward, then they push in hard, to make you feel like you have nothing, and you're going nowhere. You have to fight them off, and so this story is about these kinds of weapons, what happened - and so he just got to prayer. Verse 6; we built the wall, and the wall was half way up, and of course when everything's half way through the job, that's when it gets a little difficult doesn't it, you know? We all start well, but we don't always finish well, and so half way through there were some problems; and Sanballat, Verse 7, got very angry. Verse 8, they came and they conspired to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion. Nevertheless we made our prayer to God. Notice prayer keeps coming through - and so we set a watch against them day and night. And Judah said: the strength of the labourers is failing, there's so much rubbish, we're not able to build; and our adversaries said: ha, they won't know or see anything until we come in the midst and kill them, and cause the work to cease. So it was, the Jews who dwelt near the enemies, they told us 10 times: whatever place you turn, they'll be on you mate. Look out! What negative, pathetic people they are, aren't they?

Now you notice what happens here, is once God's people decide they're going to move forward and build; once you decide you're going to build your life with God; once you decide you're going to build your marriage in a Godly way; you're going to build your family in a Godly way; going to build your finances; you're going to build your business; whatever area you are going to purpose in your heart to build - you have to understand there will be resistance. It will come in a number of ways, and it came in a number of ways here. Every lot of building that we do for God has some opposition. So first they want to create confusion, so initially the opposition was external. There were people outside just trying to confuse them, fill them with fear; but there's a number of weapons that we used against them. The first thing that happened you notice, there were external enemies pushing against them; but then they had enemies in their own heart. The devil's really easy to handle; it's what's in your own heart's a little harder, because you've got to dig in and let God deal with it. I've found it quite painful sometimes.

Notice what they're saying. Judah said: the strength of the labourers is failing, there's so much rubbish we can't build the wall. So often when we're trying to do something great for God, fatigue sets in. You start off well, but you get tired on the way. You have unexplained setbacks. You have disappointments, you have difficulties. You become fatigued. You have spiritual conflict that leaves you tired. When I get involved in doing a lot of deliverance, I get very, very tired - got to really watch my energy levels, because after you're tired, that's when you get disheartened and discouraged, and all kinds of other problems can come. So when we set out to do something, fatigue is always a problem, because it can lead to discouragement; and it can come because you've had setbacks and difficulties. It can lead to some kind of discouragement. The second thing that happens is frustration. Notice what they said: there's so much rubbish. They looked around, all they could see was all the rubbish that was around.

Now we can deal with fatigue. There's a place called the Rest of God. We need to learn how to come in, and rest in God and prayer. It's not hard, you've just got to slow down, and just take time from the busyness to just worship the Lord, and allow His spirit to refresh you quietly - not a lot of noise, you know, in quietness and confidence you rest - that's where you begin to discover your strength again. Sometimes we're too noisy, and we don't have time, or don't slow down to hear God, and let Him speak in, and put strength back in, and put the energy back in. The other thing is where we get overwhelmed with frustrations. Notice what they said: there's so much rubbish. They began to look around and man, the problems, the rubbish, the debris and the mess, it looked impossible to do it. Perhaps your business looks impossible to break through. Perhaps what you're doing looks impossible to get where you're trying to get. It just looks like there's so many problems. Sometimes families look that way. You'll have this vision of raising great kids, and then on the way there's all these difficulties. You just wake up and there it is; the house that was tidy last night, there's debris everywhere. Where did it come from? Who knows? Just open the door of the car, and you can feed someone for a week out of what you find on the floor there, you know. It's quite bad sometimes.

So it's very easy to get disheartened and discouraged. We have to continue to keep our vision. Notice they've got their eyes on the rubbish, rather than on the vision. They've got their eyes on the problems, rather than seeing what God was wanting to build. You've got to keep your eye on the vision. I'll show you what Nehemiah did to fix it in just a moment; and then the final thing you see there is fear - so fatigue and frustration and fear - key things that stop us working and building. Now there's always someone tries to oppose the work of God, but the first thing is, demons will oppose the work of God. You'll always have pressure on your mind and heart, but the worst kind of discouragement is the discouragement that comes - notice the Christians, the Jews who live near the enemy. Believers, who live compromised, usually are cynical, critical, negative, about the work of God. I'd hope you wouldn't be one of them. Notice what it says, the Jews who lived near the enemy - believers whose lives are so compromised, and so far from God, that all they can report is negativity.

Notice 10 times they said: oh, oh, like the Scotsman in Dad's Army, ooh, oh, you know - just always doom and gloom! We're doomed! That's the kind of message they come up. For some people, that's all they come up with; and you notice the way it's put: they. I don't know who 'they' are, but 'they' are saying: it can't be done. They, all of them are saying that. Lots of people are saying this. That's the way it goes. You just ask the question, well who? Goes very quiet. Goes very quiet. We don't need negativity. Negative people are already defeated. They're the Jews next to the enemy. I don't want to be the Jews next to the enemy; I want to be building the house of God. I don't want to be living in that kind of stuff. We need to have our life so we're free from that kind of stuff, and we're living in faith. I want you to see what Nehemiah did, because he did a very, very simple thing. I'll just finish with just simply what he did. He's very, very good.

Nehemiah looked at the scene. He realised: man, I've got to do something! I love the way he doesn't react, he just looks at the deal, and then he makes a decision: I'm going to solve the problems. God wants you to be a problem-solver, not a problem-pointer-outer! A lot of people are problem-pointer-outers. We should go for a walk through the city, and point out the problems - but actually we're not called to do that. We're called to provide solutions! The Holy Ghost is a source of solutions!

So he did three simple things: number one, he got them reconnected. He positioned the men, so notice what he did: positioned the men behind the lower parts of the wall, set the men according to their families. He got everyone reconnected, just got people connected. One of the things when you're discouraged and down - just get connected to other believers who are positive. Get connected to people who love you. Notice, he put them in family groups - where there's love, and there's care, and there's nurture? We need to be connected to people who care about you; but you know something? It doesn't happen unless you follow the Holy Ghosts direction - and get connected. You've got to make the connections. Get on the phone. Get into a small group. Go somewhere where you've got people who know you, love you, and if you're down they can say: what's going on? Can we lift you up? Can we encourage you?

The second thing he did was - restore their focus. He said to them: remember the Lord. Don't be afraid of the enemy (verse 14) remember the Lord, great and awesome - and fight. Get some fight in you. Don't lie down, be a beaten up Christian because, you've got some troubles. Get insight, get back, and get remembering God. One of the greatest things you can do is begin to remember the past victories of the Lord, remember how God has touched the lives of other people, remember the stories in the Bible, remember! Get back into your mind how great God is! Then the rubble starts to get smaller, and smaller, as we get a bigger God in our mind. You get focus back on the Lord.

When David faced his defeat - he remembered the Lord. Psalm 77, David's in defeat there - he remembered the Lord. All through the Bible, they just got focus back on God, and God lifted their faith, lifted their spirit, and they carried on in the job. Isn't that fantastic? They carried on in the job! They returned to the work. Listen, every opposition of the enemy is to stop you working to do the work of God. The enemy will do anything he can, to get you just to pull out of being involved in building the people of God, and the house of God. If he's got you to pull back, you're basically a stone who's burnt, and who's out of the wall and neutralised. And God's desire is to get you back up again, get you back in, get you into place. God's got a great way of doing that; He connects us in families, connects us together in small groups, puts us together, gets us refocused back on the Lord again, and then encourages us to make a stand, begin to rebuild again.

I want to show you just a simple little clip, we'll just finish with this, really quite inspiring actually and it's about Nehemiah.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

Introduction:

Neh 2:17-18

“Let us arise and build”

· Nehemiah = “Comfort of God” = Holy Spirit

· The Holy Spirit stirs the people of God with vision of a city rebuilt

· The Holy Spirit calls them to arise and build – become the answer to the problem

· Holy Spirit issues the same challenge to the church in every generation

· “Arise and Build!” Restore the beautiful stones; position and build them into the wall of destiny

Every Believer is A Builder

‘Son’ = OT1121 = ‘Ben’ = to build, rebuild, establish, build the family name

Every believer is born into the family of God and called to build the house Is 6:4 Purpose of Anointing

a) Build your Personal Life:

· 1 Cor 3:9 “You are God’s building (architecture)”

· Jude 20 “Building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying”

· You are responsible to build, establish your life in God

· Build your faith, your character, your capacity, your skill level

· This takes commitment, perseverance, courage, a plan

b) Build the House of God:

· 1 Cor 14:12 “…you are zealous for spiritual gifts, let it be for the edification of the church that you seek to excel”

· Every believer is given spiritual gifts to build the people of God

· Eph 4:15-16 “ Relationships are the channel for gifts to flow and build”

· Neh 4:6 “So we built the wall for the people had a mind to work”

3. All Spiritual Building faces opposition, Problems – Expect it!:

· Neh 4:1 “When Sanballot heard we are rebuilding the wall he was furious”

· Neh 4:8 “All of them conspired to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion”

· Spiritual powers seek to attack and create confusion and discouragement

· Opposition was external (enemies) and internal (within and among themselves)

a) Fatigue

· Verse 10 The strength of the laborers is failing, (stumble, totter, be feeble or weakening)

· It is very easy to start a project – hard to finish

· They were half way through the project

· The personal cost was higher than expected and every one was fatigued

· Fatigue and loss of strength can lead to discouragement

· Conflict, setbacks, difficulties, spiritual pressure, long hours without adequate rest can lead to discouragement

b) Frustration

· Verse 10 “There is so much rubbish”

· There was so much garbage, broken rocks, debris that they felt overwhelmed

· They lost focus – lost sight of what they were building, the big picture

· Easy to become discouraged and lose focus as you see so much rubbish

· Must continually look ahead – in marriage, family, finances or it can be overwhelmed by the negatives, destruction of the past

· Ezra 4:4-5 They had councilors against them to frustrate their purpose

· Frustration: Leads to resentment, anger, stress, anxiety, discouragement

· The pressure of the needs can bring immense frustration – reaction

· This eroded their confidence “We are not able” Num 13:30-31

c) Fear

· Verse 11 ‘Our adversaries said”

· Here is always someone opposed to what God wants to do

· What voices are you listening to? Impact, atmosphere, fear or faith

· Evil spirits will oppose – despise, belittle and attack

· Verse 12 “The Jews who dwelt near them told us 10 times”

· There are Christians living under demonic influence, unresolved issues

· People constantly spoke negatively, critically, cynically

· “They”; “Lots of people say” – gossip fear

· Who is influencing your life? Encouraging or faultfinding?

· These were attempts to fill with fear and intimidate those working

4. Overcoming Discouragement:

i) Don’t react ii) Think solutions iii) Ask questions iv) Take responsibility, initiative

· Nehemiah was proactive in restoring courage and faith and hope

· Rom 15:13 “Now, the God of all hope fill you with joy, peace and believing …”

i. Recognize and Reconnect

· Verse 13 “Therefore I position men … I settle people …”

· He changed his approach to meet the challenge and did not quit and run

· He connected people in family groups with people who love and care

· We need to be connected to people who care for us and stand with us = comfort and encourage

ii. Restore Focus

· Verse 14 “Remember the Lord’

· Where you focus affects your confidence and courage. Focus on the Source

· He focused on the Source of their assignment – returned focus on the Lord

· Joshua, David, Psalm 77 ; Is 40:29

· Jesus declared – “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall nor prevail”

· Heb 12:2-3 “Looking to Jesus, hope set before him, endured…”

iii. Return to the Work

· Verse 15 All of us returned to the wall. Verse 18 “Everyone of the builders had a sword girded at his side as he built”

Burnt Stones (4 of 4)

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Introduction:

Neh 4:14

“Do not be afraid! Remember the Lord, great and awesome and fight …”

· Nehemiah = “Comfort of God” = Picture of the Holy Spirit at work

· The Holy Spirit is constantly at work in the earth

God Speaks to Every Generation:

2 Chron 16:9

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him”

The Holy Spirit searches the whole earth

a) He seeks men and women who will hear His voice:

· …who have a heart after God

· …who cannot be satisfied with the status quo

· …who look for an eternal purpose – a cause to live for

· …who look for something worthwhile to spend life on

b) The Holy Spirit wants to Show Himself Strong – working through yielded lives:

· Deliverance

· Healing

· Breakthroughs

· Influence

3. “Do Not be Afraid!”

a) Fear is a Spirit - 2 Tim 1:6

· Fear is an evil spirit, a destroying demon

· Fear stirs the emotions

· Fear paralyses the will

· Fear shuts down your giftings

b) Fear is a Giant – 1 Sam 16:10,11,17

· Fear rises up like a giant

· Fear mocks and defies us

· Fear intimidates and belittles

What do you do!

· Fear of failure?

· Fear of what people say?

· Fear of circumstances?

· Fear of being different?

· Fear of being rejected?

c) Fear is a Thief – Matt 25:25

· Fear comes in to steal

· Steal: your Dreams, your Hopes, your Future

“Do not be Afraid!”

· Jesus constantly spoke – “Do not Fear”

‘I am with you always’ – Matt 28:20

Men, setbacks, obstacles, pursuing dreams

4. “Remember the Lord”:

a) Remember the Lord Great and Awesome!

· Broke the power of Egypt

· Parted the Red Sea

· Appeared in the Fire on the Mount

· Broke down the walls of Jericho

· Threw stones from heaven

· Destroyed armies

· Born into this world

· Challenged the religious and political system

· Healed the lepers

· Opened the eyes of the blind

· Raised the dead to life

· Delivered men from demons

· Forgave His betrayers

· Gave His life for us

· Arose Mightily from the Dead

b) Remember the Lord Great and Awesome!

· Who will one day come again

· Will come with armies of heaven

· Will come in power and majesty

· Will subdue the devil

· Will call men to accountability

· Will reward those who knew and serve Him

c) Remember the Lord Great and Awesome!

· Call men and women to follow Him

· Calls us to a cause - of Christ

· Calls us to make a stand

· To live a godly life

· To advance the Kingdom of God

· To challenge the gates of hell

· To set captives free

· To win men and women to Christ

· To change a city one person at a time

Remember the Lord – Great and Awesome! Fight!

5. Fight!

a) Not called to a life of ease

· Not called to live like others

· Not called to a life of comfort

· You are called to a cause – a fight

b) Called to Fight a Spiritual Battle, to fight for Him

· Not against people

· Against wicked spirits

· Against temptation

· Against lukewarmness/apathy

· Against offenses

· Against distractions and discouragement

c) Called to Fight Daily

· To take up the Sword of the Spirit

· To put on the Armor of God

· To engage in war – in battle

· Battle with eternal consequences

· Battle for the souls of men

· Battle for destinies of men

· To engage in war against darkness

· To be valiant, courageous and strong

d) Called to the Fight of Faith

· Believe God is Good

· Believe God can be trusted

· Believe Gods Word is true

· Believe Gods Word has Power

· Believe all things are possible

· Believe that the Weapons of Warfare are Mighty

6. What will you do!

· Will you be a spectator?

· Will you watch and comment how the battle goes?

· Will you be strong, strong in the Lord, strong in His Word

· Will you arise and build? Arise and fight?

· Will you engage in the work?

Neh 4:15-17

· All of us returned to the wall – everyone to his work

· Everyone of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built

The Prayer of Kings

When Kings Pray (1 of 2)

No matter what I've gone through, no matter how hard it is, I know this; my life is in God's hands. I know that God is about His business of bringing me into my destiny, and I know whatever He dished up, whatever came my way, whatever troubles I had, whatever pain I had, whatever setbacks I had, he said it is working for me. It is helping me to grow into the fullness of what God wants me to be. It's bringing about in my life an increasing knowledge of Christ, an increasing awareness of His power, and His anointing in my life. That's a fantastic attitude to have isn't it aye? That's a faith attitude! That's the attitude of a king. It's a positive attitude based on the word of God.

The Prayer of Kings (2 of 2)

How many know you're royalty, you're born into a royal family? When you and I give our lives to Jesus Christ, God puts His own spirit and DNA into us. We become changed on the inside through experiencing Christ. We become royalty, part of a kingly family, and of course we need to keep remembering who we are. That's why he keeps saying here you are, you are chosen, you're a generation chosen by God. You're not a nobody, a nothing. No matter what happened last year, no matter what struggles you had, what pressures, what difficulties, what challenges, today is a new day for God's chosen people. Today and this year is a year for great things for you. I can tell you for certain as you start this year, God has great things ahead for you. He has great things ahead for us. Whether they come about, of course, relies on us making good decisions, and connecting with Him.

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- The Prayer of Kings (2 of 2)

When Kings Pray (1 of 2)

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No matter what I've gone through, no matter how hard it is, I know this; my life is in God's hands. I know that God is about His business of bringing me into my destiny, and I know whatever He dished up, whatever came my way, whatever troubles I had, whatever pain I had, whatever setbacks I had, he said it is working for me. It is helping me to grow into the fullness of what God wants me to be. It's bringing about in my life an increasing knowledge of Christ, an increasing awareness of His power, and His anointing in my life. That's a fantastic attitude to have isn't it aye? That's a faith attitude! That's the attitude of a king. It's a positive attitude based on the word of God.

I want to share something called The Prayer of Kings. It's a prayer I want to put in your heart, that as you exit this year it'll be something that you'll begin to pray, and I'd love you just during the holidays to begin to get this prayer in your heart, a very simple prayer but it's a prayer concerning your coming year and concerning your future.

How many have found this last year a bit of a challenge aye? How many had some personal challenges? Yeah, they weren't very welcome were they, however the Bible says to welcome them as friends. I want to read you a scripture before we get started, then we'll read. In 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4, Verses 16 through to 18. It says: therefore we do not lose heart. How about that? See, we don't lose heart - in spite of any kind of difficulties. Now Paul is writing after having one of the most difficult ministry seasons in his life. He was under tremendous pressure. He felt resistance from everywhere, people had abandoned him, and he stood alone in Asia against all kinds of demonic powers, and all kinds of opposition and resistance. Yet having talked about how bad it is, then he ends up incredibly positively, and he doesn't deny that there were difficulties.

He said: I was so pressed down, I thought I was going to die. Now that's the apostle Paul saying he's had a bad time. He said he was so pressed down he was - this is what he says now. He says: but we don't lose heart! Even though the outward man is perishing, the inward man is renewed day by day. In other words he's saying: I might have gone through some difficulties. I had a couple of boats I took, and they sank unexpectedly. I spent two or three days in the water, treading water, holding onto driftwood. He said even though it was a bit hard, and my outer man got a bit of a bashing, he said nevertheless, I am stronger as a result of those things, than I was before. How about that? That's not a wimpy kind of response to life is it?

I hear so many people, and they go through troubles, and they get full of self pity. You can either be full of self pity, or full of faith. Here's where you get your faith. Look at this, look what it says here. It says: this light affliction which works is just for a moment, so he said: what I've gone through is only temporary. He says: it's working a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Now what he's saying is: no matter what I've gone through, no matter how hard it is, I know this; my life is in God's hands. I know that God is about His business of bringing me into my destiny, and I know whatever He dished up, whatever came my way, whatever troubles I had, whatever pain I had, whatever setbacks I had, he said it is working for me. It is helping me to grow into the fullness of what God wants me to be. It's bringing about in my life an increasing knowledge of Christ, an increasing awareness of His power, and His anointing in my life. That's a fantastic attitude to have isn't it aye? That's a faith attitude! That's the attitude of a king. It's a positive attitude based on the word of God.

But you notice it's got a condition attached? He says it depends all on where you're looking. He says while we look not at the things which are seen, for the things which are seen are temporary. But while we look at the things which are not seen, for the things which are not seen are eternal. He says the key to growing in times of difficulty and adversity is not to fix your eyes on the problems, not to fix your eyes on the things you can see, feel, taste, touch, experience. If you set your eyes on those things, then you will be overwhelmed with trouble and pressure and difficulty. He said: we set our eyes not on the things which are visible, but on things which are invisible. In other words, there are some things you see, but they're temporary. There are some things which cannot be seen, they're invisible to the naked eye, but they're real, they're there, they are eternal. It's the word of God, the promises of God, the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God. While I fix my eyes on those things he said, then whatever's happening for me is working for my good.

You can have a lot of bad experiences in life and become angry, hurt, grieved, bitter, fall out of church, fall out of relationships, fall out of God, all kinds of things can happen in your life. But I'll tell you what, it's all because of where you looked, when you were in the trouble. You look to the Lord, you look to His faithfulness, and you say: God, I don't care what I'm going through. No matter what it is, You will use it to grow me, develop me, bring me to another level. When I come through this, I'm going to be verified, I'm going to be like a diamond. See, it's all about where you fix your eyes, and he said: it's important we fix our eyes on things which are not seen. That's a crazy statement isn't it? Should be looking at things which are not seen? No, no, no, no - he's talking the eyes of your heart, and where your focus is, where your attention is, set it on God and His promises and His word.

I want you to look with me over into 1 Chronicles, Chapter 4. I've called this The Prayer of a King, Prayer of Kings. I'd love us to get it in our spirit and it's about - you know this, you'll have heard it called something different, called Jabez Prayer. I want to put it in the context of what we've been looking at, on being kings, being kings. Interesting when Jesus was born, you know the religious world loves to look at it and see a child in a manger, but the announcement came: where is He, that was born king? Kings may be infants, but they're still a king. He was born a king. You were born into the kingdom of God, you're born a king, and a priest under God - got to learn how to grow up into it. Now Verse 9, 1 Chronicles 4; Jabez was more honourable than his brother, and his mother called his name Jabez. Jabez means sorrow, grief, pain. Imagine having a name like that. What's your name? Pain. [Laughter] Come again? Pain. Really? Pain. Why are you called Pain? I was a real pain to my mum when I was born you know, she was having a really hard and miserable time, and so all she could do was think to put that name on me.

Well people are called lots of things, but what people call you is not as important as what God calls you, and what He says you are. He says this man was more honourable, and his mother called his name Jabez, because I bore him in pain. So it doesn't tells us whether it's physical pain, or whether she was going through a tragedy, through a difficult season, could have been a time in the nation, where the nation was going through trauma, trouble, invasion by its enemies. Whatever it was, we know her personal experience was one of pain. It doesn't say anything about the father. It was normally the practice of the father to name the child, so the chances are, the father had died or was killed, or there'd been a break up in the marriage. But whatever happens, the mother who spoke over his life, spoke the word sorrow, sorrow and pain, and so that's not a great way to start life is it, with sorrows and pains, because often what happens is that when a mother carries a child, the emotions of the mother affect the child. What the mother carries in her spirit can be imparted to the child.

We know from the teachings on generational curses, how things which are around a mother, in carrying a child in the womb, the child will pick up. Interesting when Mary spoke, the child within Elizabeth's womb leapt. It responded to the prophetic voice, so children in a womb can respond to the prophetic voice. They can respond to the voice of adversity and circumstances and demonic spirits. They are sensitive and can respond, even though the mind isn't developed.

So this boy was birthed or came into the world surrounded by sorrow, but I want you to see the Holy Ghost identifies him and says some things about him. It says he was 'more honourable'. That word is the same word where we use the word glory; God, show us Your glory! Kebab, weight, goodness, glory, virtue, who you are. So when the Bible is referring to the glory of God, it's referring to the name, the nature of God. The Holy Ghost calls on this, and points this man's got a whole genealogy of all these names, and then right in the middle of it the Holy Ghost said stop! Wait, wait, wait. This man here called Sorrow was much more honourable, had much more glory. There was something about him, that makes this man stand out and be distinctive.

Then it explains exactly what it was, and it was his prayer, The Prayer of a King. He never let his circumstances determine what his future would be, but rather something in him rose up, and he got hold of the promises of God, and he rose up and he prayed a prayer, it's a fantastic prayer. It's The Prayer of a King. Here is the prayer. Jabez called on the God of Israel, so he was aware or had learnt, probably from his mother who'd taught him the word of God, that he had a legacy, an inheritance. He belonged to a nation singled out by God, to influence the world, influence the nations. He realised that as a descendant of Abraham, he was entitled to blessings from Abraham, and so faith rose in his heart, and this is his prayer. I call it The Prayer of a King, because notice what it is. He says: Oh God, bless me truly. Bless me in great abundance. Secondly, he said: enlarge my territory - that's kingly talk. Oh, let Your hand be with me, the power and the might and the hand of God on me, and keep me from evil that I would not cause pain. Now notice that statement, that I would not cause pain.

What he's saying is: at the beginning of my life there was difficulty, there was pain, there was adversity. I've even been named that, but he's saying God, I believe that You can take someone who's come out of pain, adversity, difficulty, trouble, hardship and You can raise them up, and their life does not reflect where they came from. Their life does not multiply the pains and sorrows. I've found so often what happens when people have grown up with broken families, and abuse and all kinds of things, they get infected with it in their heart and spirit, bitterness and anger and hurt and grief come in. What happens is, they then begin to multiply the sorrow. They do exactly what he prayed wouldn't happen. They cause other people to be in pain. In my own life, as I've become aware of areas of brokenness and lack and areas where I have not processed things in my own life, I realised to my grief, the pain it has caused those around me I love - great revelation that is. It's still a revelation.

So often we don't have relationships close enough where people can talk you honestly, and tell you the things you need to hear about your life. It costs you something to have that kind of relationship, where people know you well enough, and love you well enough, and you're open to them, and can trust them, and they can talk into your life, and share with you the things in your life that need to be adjusted, areas of immaturity, areas of brokenness, areas of lack, areas that are blind spots. Every one of us has blind spots. You have areas of your life you can't see - but believe me, everyone around you can see it. Anyone who gets married, realise you have lots of blind spots, and they all come out, and they're now visible spots when you get married. I think when you're about to get married, you're just completely blind altogether. [Laughter] I don't think you see too much at all, you're bedazzled by the beauty, and the hope of something together. Then afterwards you have to work it all out. When you work it all out, suddenly you see things you weren't aware of, and you see things in yourself because your wife tells you. [Laughter]

You see things in her, and you try to tell her. [Laughter] And so it goes on. You wonder what his prayer was, keep me that I might not cause pain, so he was aware that there was every possibility that his life would overflow, and hurt the people around him. It's very easy for that to happen. I think it'd be a great thing if we determined the coming year to cultivate relationships, where you invited someone to speak into you, and tell you things you need to hear. Wouldn't that be good? Well that's a very quiet response isn't it aye? [Laughter] Well carry on causing pain then. [Laughs] You know, it's much better actually to have a relationship, where people can tell you the truth. I tell you, you really distressed by it - someone says well look, we need to talk. Lyn good at that, we need to talk. [Laughter] Have you ever had Lyn beckon you, and say we need to talk? [Laughter] Well there'll be a bit of pain will follow that, that's for sure. [Laughter] There'll be some tears, and then you'll come right, and then you'll be very glad you had the talk - but anyway this was his prayer.

I don't want to cause pain. I don't want my life to multiply grief and sorrow. I want my life to be a blessing he said, so God, I want You to pour Your spirit on me. I want the blessing that came on Abraham to rest on me. You know the Bible says: we're redeemed from the curse, that's the curse of sorrow and sickness and failure and pain and grief. Galatians 3:14, that the blessing of Abraham would come on us, that we might receive that great and wonderful Holy Ghost, that would bring us to not only be blessed in our life, but become a blessing to others. God wants you this year to be a blessing to your family, a blessing to your community, a blessing to your workplace, not a pain. [Laughter] You know, quite good to get a report from people back on, well, what are they like to work with? Oh, he's a pain. [Laughter] Well you need feedback on that one don't you? [Laughs] Get someone to tell you why you're such a pain, what can you do to deal with it?

Here's his prayer, this is the bit I love, and this is the bit I want to just focus on for a few minutes. He said: that you would enlarge my territory. Now that is the prayer that kings pray. That is the prayer I'd love you to pray, to begin to start to get it into your prayer life day by day; Oh God, today bless me abundantly and enlarge my territory. That word enlarge is the same word that God spoke over Adam, when He said: go forth and multiply. It's not just hey, give me a bit more territory. He said: I want to be multiplied - so what is this territory? Well for him probably it was a piece of land, but for us your territory is your life, and the influence it brings on others. Your territory is your life, and the influence it brings on others, so your prayer then, oh God, pour out your spirit in abundance, bless me in every aspect of my life, and let my life grow greatly, and be an incredibly positive and great influence on those around me.

This coming year, as result of Bay City's generosity and giving, our influence in the world is about to multiply. I'm talking multiply here. In past years we've been able reach out to thousands upon thousands of people. Now through the media of television going through to the 10/40 Window [middle east and asia, where most of the worlds population live], we will multiply what has been done. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, having real influence. See? But that also applies at a personal level as well. Your territory is invisible and visible. Your territory is - part of it's invisible, you can't see it; part of it's visible, you can see, and what you can see is the reflection of what is in the heart, what you can't see. The invisible part of your territory is your inward life, so the prayer to enlarge my territory means God, I want my inward life enlarged. What does that mean? It means I need change in my heart beliefs. I need to resolve wrong beliefs in my heart, and begin to let my heart be renewed to believe the word of God about me, and who I am, and what God's called me to do.

Some people struggle, and I've struggled over many years, in early life particularly over a sense of judgement in myself as being inferior and lacking. That judgement in the heart was a negative belief that limited what I could accomplish in life, so change in the exterior, or change in the outer life, required a change in a heart belief, and a repenting of the bitter roots in my heart. So to enlarge your territory means two things; one, it means dealing with the issues in your heart, the giants in your life that block your growth, and then looking how you can extend your influence in every area of your external life. So the invisible parts are your heart beliefs, your attitudes. If you have a victim - we've been on victim mentality recently. Kings don't have a victim mentality. They think positively, and they're proactive, so if you have victim mentality or thinking, you'll have to get rid of it, if you're going to expand your territory.

Your emotional area - some people are locked in their emotions. Well if you're going to expand your territory, break free, find out what locks up your emotions, what's got hold of your heart, what are the strongholds and giants, and face them. Get help. We'll run retreats next year, you would want to book in. Don't say oh, I had something on, I had a football match on that weekend. I'll say well too bad, I trust that you really grew and changed through your football match. [Laughter] But you know, in fact it won't help you. It's great entertainment, but entertainment can be a distraction from destiny. Never miss your destiny moments, by being distracted by entertainment. There are certain moments when God will meet with you, and those times you just need to be present. You've got to present yourself, and be ready for change. We kind of think you can just turn it on and off, but there are times when the spirit of God will move, for example, in a church He'll move in seasons on a particular area, and in that particular season, it's real easy to get to change, then He's moving on something else. You've got to remember that.

Okay, so there's one thing. So then the exterior area, well there's other things then you could do which are external, so what about your marriage? What could be built - how could your marriage grow this year? How could your family - how could you change or influence your family? How could you grow your finances, and develop your finances? Now to develop your finances requires inward change of thinking, followed by outward doing something different, so there's an internal part, there's an external part. What about being involved in serving? If you want your world to enlarge, why don't you choose to get involved in something you've never done before? Get involved and stretch out, to serve in a way you've never served before. That would enlarge your territory. You know when a stranger sits down beside you, you can stay in your own world, or you can say God, enlarge my territory to include him, and then reach out, show hospitality, friendship and see that person influenced.

So God can do this far more exceedingly abundantly than you think or ask, so here is your prayer: God, bless me! Oh, multiply Your blessings on me today. Let them come from heaven, and be in the earth. I'm blessed in my body. I'm blessed in my mind. I'm blessed in my marriage. I'm blessed in my family. Begin to start to get into your mouth the promises and words of God, and begin to shape your world in the invisible realm, and see things change in the practical realm. Begin to start to shift: what you say, what you believe, then what you do. There's some practical things you could do; one, pray consistently over that issue of enlarging. Write it down, underline it, God, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory. Enlarge my territory. Now the next thing you need to do is, clarify what it means for you to enlarge the territory. Is it a problem you need to overcome? Is it a bondage that holds you back? Is it an issue in your finance? Is it something that's been around your life for years, and you've never broken free of it? Is it something to do with the area of serving? Is it something in business? What is it that you - that's what I want to grow in?

Identify it, and then what do you need to do, for that to grow this year? What will you need to do, because you've got to boil it down to something you're going to do. If it doesn't come down to something you're going to do, you walk out the door, feel good, you'll be no different. Feeling good doesn't mean I've changed. Doing something different means I'm on the path to change, and we need to be careful we don't just enjoy messages, but just don't let it get into the heart, to change what we say and what we do. So make it specific, think what you need to do, set some new priorities. Now for example, you may find you're just spending hours and hours and hours on the television, or hours and hours on the internet, whatever. Well change the priority. Just cut it out, and do something different; invest in learning a new skill, invest in learning some new things that you've never learnt before, invest in yourself. Then you'll have more value to give, and your influence and territory will grow.

Finally, face your giants. All of us have got giants to face. Here's what I love. I just love - it's funny how people respond - I love this one, where Caleb says: the giants are bred for us! Isn't that good? I spoke that to someone a couple of weeks ago, and they said: bred as a giant for me? Really? Can I go on a fast? [Laughter] No, you've just got to deal with the internal things, so every one of us has got a giant. I wonder what has intimidated you, and kept you contained. If you were to just put a name on it, and begin to ponder and ask the Holy Spirit to show you how long that giant has been in that territory in your life, how long has it been ruling there? How long has it been walking up and down, defying you year after year after year, keeping you contained? And God is saying: take that giant, it's bred for you. Why don't you name that giant, and begin to think through the strategy to deal with it. Maybe you need prayer, maybe you need some counsel, maybe you need some help, maybe you need to fast, maybe you need to just shift the way you think. Maybe there's an issue to resolve, but face the giant, they're bred to enlarge you, to go somewhere else, and become increased in your influence.

I love the challenge that Caleb had right at the very end, when he got to 85, and you think flip, he's ready to lie down and retire, or go to a home and just watch movies and go on outings. This is what he said: You know the word I had in my heart 40 years ago when I went into the land, and you know the word I brought back. And you know the promise of God, and I've held that promise for 40 years, been a long 40 years, watching people die all around me in unbelief. He said: I got that promise in my heart, he said: now give me the mountain that has got the giants in it, that everyone else said 'you can't do it'. Give me that mountain - and God gave him what he requested. God gave Jabez what he requested, so what Jabez requested, obviously was in the heart of God, and that same thing is in the heart of God for you, and for me. I don't care what sorrows you've been through, what difficulties or tragedies you've had, and you may have a life that's marked by sorrow, and you may be a pain in the butt to lots of people, but it doesn't end there.

You can make a decision, God, bless me abundantly and enlarge my territory. My life's changing. My life is going to get better. My life is on the increase and improved. My influence is going to increase this year. Can you say that? Can you say that today? Come on, let's give the Lord a clap and thank Him today. [Applause] Father, we just thank You for all the challenges we've had last year, but they were all working a better way to glory for our lives, and in this year Lord, this is our prayer. My God, pour out blessing and abundance; my God, pour out grace and abundance; my God, enlarge our territory, enlarge our influence. Oh God, keep us from the evil one, keep us from the destructive strategies of the devil, surround us with Your angels, and my God, that You would keep us from all harm. In this coming year, enlarge our territory, enlarge our territory, enlarge our territory. This is The Prayer of Kings oh God, enlarge our territory, our influence, our capacity this year. Lord, we give You all the honour.

Come on, can we stand together shall we? Why don't we just as we're finishing this year, why don't we honour God in our singing and reach out today and pray that prayer, not only today but each day. My God, pour out blessing and abundance, enlarge my territory. Get your pen out before the end of the year and write down what will that mean in 2011, what is it you've got to face, what is it to change, what is it you've got to do, what is it you're going to commit to?

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

2 Cor. 4:16-18

“We do not look at things which are seen but at things which are not seen…”

Many people in 2010 experienced pressure, pain, challenges, and unexpected difficulties.

Each of us chooses how we respond – this prepares us for the next season.

Pressure and pain can lead to great personal enlargement.

Those things are “working for us” – to fashion, shape, and make one prepared.

What do you focus upon? Pain or Possibilities?

2. Prayer of Kings

1 Chron. 4:9-10

“Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory …..”

(a) Jabez Prayer

· Jabez = 3258 = Sorrow, Grief – named because of the sorrows around his birth.

· Honourable = 3513 = Kabad, glory, to be weighty, substantial.

· Jabez stood out from circumstances and people because of heart attitude.

· Lord enlarge my territory; Lord expand my influence and dominion.

· The prayer of a King – cry for God’s favour in abundance!

· Enlarge = 7235 = to multiply (Gen 1:22) to increase in abundance.

· Kings long to expand their territory and influence – extend their Kingdom.

(b) Your Territory = your Life and Influence

· Your territory is invisible (your heart and inner life) and visible (your influence).

· Your territory includes {It belongs to you; your authority is recognisable; you have freedom to operate.

· Invisible - Heart Visible - Skills

Attitudes Family

Emotions Relationships

Hesitant Finance

Service

· Eph 3:20 “He is able to do more exceedingly abundantly than we ask or think”

· What areas of your life will you determine to possess and enlarge territory?

(c) Simple Keys

i) Pray consistently for enlarging territory – Mk 11:24

ii) Clarify the areas of your life you desire to enlarge

iii) What must you do to make these changes?

iv) Set new priorities – develop new skills

v) Accept new opportunities to serve e.g. Caleb – Josh 14:12

vi) Fall your giants – “Bread for us” Num. 14:9 Caleb

vii) Recognise and respond to Holy Spirit promptings

e.g. Moses – Exd. 3:3 “I will turn aside and see …”

e.g. Philip - Acts 8:29 “Then the Spirit said to Philip .. so Philip ran ..”

The Prayer of Kings (2 of 2)

Sun 2nd Jan 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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How many know you're royalty, you're born into a royal family? When you and I give our lives to Jesus Christ, God puts His own spirit and DNA into us. We become changed on the inside through experiencing Christ. We become royalty, part of a kingly family, and of course we need to keep remembering who we are. That's why he keeps saying here you are, you are chosen, you're a generation chosen by God. You're not a nobody, a nothing. No matter what happened last year, no matter what struggles you had, what pressures, what difficulties, what challenges, today is a new day for God's chosen people. Today and this year is a year for great things for you. I can tell you for certain as you start this year, God has great things ahead for you. He has great things ahead for us. Whether they come about, of course, relies on us making good decisions, and connecting with Him.

I want you to open up your Bible with me in 1 Peter 2, Verse 9. I want to just start here, then we'll go back to where we were last week. I want to talk about - here it is - The Prayer of Kings. I want to do The Prayer of Kings, I want to look at particular prayer in the Old Testament, but let's just have a look at see our identity first of all in 1 Peter 2, Verse 9: But you, you are royal priesthood, chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvellous light. And now you were once not a people, but now you are the people of God. We are the people of God. We are the people of God. Notice the key thing I want to bring in here you are the people of God, a royal priesthood.

How many know you're royalty, you're born into a royal family? When you and I give our lives to Jesus Christ, God puts His own spirit and DNA into us. We become changed on the inside through experiencing Christ. We become royalty, part of a kingly family, and of course we need to keep remembering who we are. That's why he keeps saying here you are, you are chosen, you're a generation chosen by God. You're not a nobody, a nothing. No matter what happened last year, no matter what struggles you had, what pressures, what difficulties, what challenges, today is a new day for God's chosen people. Today and this year is a year for great things for you. I can tell you for certain as you start this year, God has great things ahead for you. He has great things ahead for us. Whether they come about, of course, relies on us making good decisions, and connecting with Him.

So you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood. So this year God has things for you to do. He has relationships for you to build. He has things for you to accomplish. He has giants for you to bring down. This year it's all out there - God has got many opportunities planned for you for this year and I love that. I love coming into a New Year, and we need to be continually reminded as we come into a New Year, who you are in Christ. You are a chosen generation, you are royalty who has access to God - here it is - you are a king, on assignment from heaven, in the earth. I want us during this year to have our minds set on who we are. You are kings, on assignment from heaven, in the earth. You are a king on assignment, a role to serve and advance the kingdom of God this year.

So the question is: what will advance this year, because of your efforts, and because of mine? I want you to turn with me in 1 Chronicles, Chapter 4. Our assignment is to make Jesus Christ known, make Jesus Christ known. You may think your assignment is to make a lot of money, but the purpose of making a lot of money is to make Christ known, to make Him known. Let's look in 1 Chronicles, and I want to pick up just two verses we're going to look at, and I want to share with you just five simple things out of those two verses. Here it is, it's a list of genealogy and it's going through a whole list of names. You could look through it and think it's boring, and turn over and say I'm bored, but then in the middle of Verse 9, suddenly the Holy Spirit stops, and draws attention to one particular person. In other words, not only was everyone significant, but one stood out from among everyone else. Now Jabez was more honourable. He was more weighty, there was something about him that was distinctive.

He was distinctive, and he stood out above all his brothers. His mother called his name Jabez, meaning pain or sorrow, saying because I bore him in pain - so her pregnancy no doubt was filled with some kind of sorrows and pains. There's no mention of the father; presumably the father died, was murdered or had an accident or something happened, but the mother carried this child, there was tremendous pain, and so she never got over it. She never handled her pain, so she put it on him. She labelled him pain or sorrow. Now it's not a very good way to start life is it, you're called a bit of a pain? You're an inconvenience. You arrive, you upset everything. We had our financial plan, and then suddenly my wife got pregnant and the plan was over, what a pain, you know? We weren't married and she had a baby and what a pain. I mean there's many, many ways you could put this out, but at the end of the day there was something of great grief and sorrow in the family at that time.

The thing that makes him stand out was, he was unwilling to stay in a place of pain. He was unwilling to stay in a place of sorrow. He was unwilling to stay in a place of negativity and defeat. The Bible says he was more honourable than all those around him, because he rose up and he dared to believe that God could take the adversity of his past, the failures and the pain and the grief, and do something in his life that would make him stand out and be distinctive. Now do you believe - that's what made him distinctive of course, was not only that he believed in his heart and rose up in faith, but he actually got what he asked for. It says God gave him what he asked for, so God must have liked his prayer.

I pray that this year, this will be the prayer on everyone's heart, and here's the prayer he prayed. He called on the God of Israel, oh, bless me indeed. God bless me abundantly. Every area of my life, I want to see Your manifest presence and blessing. Oh God, that You would enlarge my territory, increase my influence, give me influence that goes well beyond what I've ever had, multiply the extent of my territory. Oh God, that You would keep me from evil, Your hand would be with me, You would keep me from evil.

I want to just go through and pick several things in there, and this is the bit I like, he said: God granted him what he asked. God granted him what he asked, and I pray that this year that you will have things you'll ask God, and that not only will you ask God, that you'll break through in your prayer, and by the end of the year you'll be able to say and testify very boldly: hey, God gave me what I asked for this year! God gave me what I asked for. Jesus said: that's how you glorify God, by answered prayer. God is glorified when you have breakthroughs in prayer, and you see heaven come into the earth. That brings great honour to God. If we're going to bring honour to God, we need to see His supernatural provision come into the earth. See, this man here, he says God gave him something. He got hold of God, and God gave him something that he never had before.

I wonder if at the end of this year you will have things in your life you've never had before, because you dared to believe and rise up in prayer, aye? What a great thing. Have you got some things to pray for? We've got a season of prayer and fasting come up. I encourage you, before you even get into the three weeks of prayer and fasting, that you take time to identify what is it this year I want to believe God to break through in. Let me just give you a few things that he said, because obviously God liked his prayer. I want to share with you five things about this prayer. The first thing is, it's incredibly personal. Notice what he said, look, it seemed selfish didn't it? Oh bless ME, enlarge MY territory, Your hand with ME, keep ME from evil. Notice 'me' turns up four times there. Now you could say what an extremely selfish man, he's just praying for himself. No, in fact actually it's completely the opposite.

I have found an interesting thing, that when people have rejection in their heart, when we don't see ourselves as God sees us, when we don't agree with what God says - you're a son of the living God, you're a child of the living God - then our heart gets filled with unbelief, and we don't rise up. We can pray for the world. It's easy to pray for the world, you don't need faith to do that. You can pray for someone else to get blessed. It's a little bit easier to pray for someone else to get blessed, than to actually dare to believe in your heart, God desires to bless you personally. I believe many people do not pray, because in their heart they're so gripped with rejection and low esteem, they are filled with unbelief, and don't dare to believe God wants to bless you. Let's say it: God wants to bless me. In this year, God wants to bless me - so what are you going to believe for? It's personal see, it's very personal.

He wants to bless me. He wants to bless me. Get it in your heart. This is a personal prayer. It's easy to pray for this one and that one, and pray for someone over there who needs help and whatever, and it's right for us to do that. That's called intercession, praying for others. But there's an area where you need to learn how to pray for ourself, that we could be increased in capacity, in territory, in influence, in favour, and presence of God. I want us at the beginning of this year as a church, to get it in our heart, this year God is going to bless ME. I believe if we've got five, six, seven, 100 people in this church, and God is blessing every one, the whole church has got to be blessed - let alone the community as well. So number one, notice the word 'me'. Without faith, you can't please God. There's got to be a part of our prayer life where we begin to believe and meditate on what God says about me, what God says about you, what God says about your positioning with Him.

You are accepted in the beloved. You have access to the throne of grace. If that gets into your heart, then when you stand and pray, it's not going to be prayers riddled with guilt and shame. It's going to be prayers - oh God, I come boldly into your presence. As a son of the living God, I stand before You, yielded to You. See, your prayer life changes when you believe that God wants to do something for you, so make it personal. So what are the heart issues that you need to break through? What are the beliefs, that hinder you believing God would do something for your life? I tell you what it is most of the time, it's because we prayed and had a disappointment. Then you prayed and had another disappointment, then you had another disappointment, then after a while you got to believe in your heart, well God doesn't really answer my prayers, but I know He answers other people's prayers, I'll pray for them.

No. Determine you'll move past your sorrows and pains and regrets. That's what this guy did. He refused to believe that no matter how bad things were, he refused to believe he couldn't have a great future. Your future is what you choose. It's not dependent on what someone else said or did. It depends on what you and I choose to do with ourselves this year, and the greatest person you can invest in is yourself, invest something in yourself this year. Invest in growth, invest in prayer, invest in your relationship with God. Start to invest in yourself this year, so that you don't stay limited where you are, but begin to grow and increase. So what areas do you want God to manifest some things in your life?

The second thing is: oh, that You would bless me, and not only bless me, indeed bless me in abundance! What he's saying is: God, I want Your presence, I want Your person, I want to know You, I want to experience wherever I am, I want Your blessing on my life. Joseph was a blessed man, and the Bible says: you could see the blessing on him, because everything he did came to life. When God's hand is on you, blessing you, things that you do have life in them. When God is pouring His blessing out over you, and it's manifested in the earth in a tangible way, it shows up at home, it shows up at work, it shows up in the community. It shows up in your relationships. When your life is in bondage, and restricted by fear or unbelief or other kinds of things, what happens is, there's a lack of flow from your life to others, so oh that God would bless me - because this is an Old Testament prayer in Galatians 3, 13 and 14, it tells us: Christ has redeemed us already from cursings, so that we can experience blessing, and get the Holy Ghost, so the blessing God has for you, is to be filled with His spirit, and that Holy Spirit reveals to you what is freely yours.

If you don't ask the Holy Spirit, you won't know what God freely says is yours, this year. 1 Corinthians, Chapter 2, says the Holy Ghost tells us and reveals to us the things freely given to us by God. Think about that. In Ephesians 1, Verse 3, it says now God has blessed us with every blessing in heavenly places, in Jesus Christ. That's a wonderful scripture, and people read it and say: isn't that nice. What he's saying is this; everything you have need of for a blessed life has already been given. You don't have to beg for it. That's the difference between that Old Testament prayer, and a New Testament position of a believer. We now are blessed because everything we have need of is available through relationship with Jesus Christ, and you and I have received the spirit of God. We are connected to Christ. We need to learn how to access the realm of heaven, the realm of faith, to be able to receive things God has for us.

He has already provided for every area of your life. The question is not whether God has blessed you or not. The Bible tells us, He's already made blessing available. The key is whether you can arise inside in faith, and access it through prayer and believing prayer, otherwise you end up - and here's one of the challenges around Jabez prayer. Remember it is from the Old Testament, they didn't have the Holy Spirit in them. They were crying for the blessing of God. You and I live in the day when we are already blessed - that's why you can get up everyday and say: I am blessed! [Sings] I am blessed every day of my life, I am blessed. When I wake up in the morning, when I lay my head to rest, I am blessed, I am blessed! - see, you can do that every day. Otherwise you wake up in the morning, say oh dear God, another day, what a hangover. I was up too late last night. [Laughter]

You choose what day you're going to have. You choose to believe God - I'm blessed. You know, be a great way to start every morning rising up, saying I'm blessed. Sing the song, I'm blessed. We'll sing it at the end if we can pick it up. Sue can hum it, you'll get it by the end of it I'm sure. It's such an easy song isn't it? I am blessed, I am blessed. Every day of my life I am blessed, when I wake up in the morning, when I lay my head to rest, I am blessed. I am blessed! Well now if you're blessed, a blessed person will behave and speak and act and think in certain ways. They'll speak and act like a blessed person, not a poor person see? So how can I get that overflow into my life? Well very simple; I need time in the presence of God, meditating in His provision. You meditate in the Word, you begin to picture it, roll it over in your mind and heart, beginning to embrace it, like you see it. Then you welcome it into your heart, you meditate on it - this is mine. I have this. Thank You Lord - until you begin to make it real in your life.

See, the things of heaven come into the earth when we meditate, and faith rises in our heart. Then it comes a point were suddenly it's a revelation to us, and it's ours. Then it begins to flow into our life, so without a life of prayer, you can't see blessing manifest. Prayer, then we've got to act like blessed people. So another aspect of it is, not just time in the presence and meditating in the word, it's beginning to declare it. Declare it. That's what that song is, it's a declaration song, and often Christians seem to have prayers that are always asking God for stuff. The Bible says: He knows what you need, He's already given it to you. Reach out and dare to believe it's yours. I am blessed! I am blessed! I am blessed! Oh, I am a blessed person. Who are you? You're a blessed person. Who am I? I'm a blessed person, oh I'm blessed. My God is with me. He is blessing me. Everything I put my hand to, God is with me. Even when I goof up, God is helping me - I even learn from the goof up, and become better. Oh, I can't lose! Come on, that's the kind of mentality to be thinking, otherwise you live scared of making a mistake.

God says the steps of a good man are ordered by the law. Though he fall over, the Lord lifts him up again. Aye? How about that? So why worry about falling over, because God's just going to lift you up again - if you dare to believe you're a blessed person. See, Righteous falls seven times, and the Lord lifts him up every time. In other words what he's saying is, no matter how many times you fall over in this coming year, God's just waiting there to pick you up. He wants you to be blessed. Ever seen kids trying to walk? They fall over all the time. They don't sort of sit there and say well this is hopeless, I'm staying down, I'm never getting up again. [Laughter] Here's the thing. All of you overcame that one! [Laughter] Except Ian's needed a bit of help over here [Laughter] but every one of us overcame that. Every one of us overcame it - think about that.

So think about every time you fall this year - and I'm sure there'll be mistakes and fall overs, here's the thing. Just acknowledge you've fallen. The worst thing is to be fallen over, and won't even admit you've fallen over. Everyone else can see it. Everyone else can see what's going on, and you're the last one to admit you've fallen over. You're eating the dust, it's all over you, and you can't see it. Hey listen, we need friends around to say: you fell over. [Laughter] And then say come on, get up. Get up, don't stay down. Whatever you do this year, don't stay down. You may have gotten down and stayed down a little last year, but don't stay down this year. I'm blessed, I'm getting up, I'm going forward in the presence and person of God, so what will you do this year, that'll increase the flow of God's blessing, that's the question. What will you do to walk conscious that God is with me, I'm a blessed person?

Here's the last couple of ones now. Notice he says enlarge my territory. That's about provision. See, the first one was personal, second one there was about presence, and now it's about provision - enlarge my territory. Jesus said the same thing, a similar kind of thing. He said: give me today my daily bread, give me what I need, so what his prayer was - enlarge my influence. Now one of the things about enlarging influence is, there's always a giant in the land. Now when the Bible talks about territory, it was a physical land they had, which God said was theirs. Unfortunately there were giants in it, and God says interesting things. He says in Exodus 23, He says: I'm going to drive the giants out of the land, hooray! He says a few minutes later, now you will drive the giants out of the land. Oh, I don't like that!

Now what He's saying is, little by little will I drive the giants out of the land. In other words, I have promised you territory, I promised you blessing, and there are giants, giants of fear, giants of doubt, giants of unbelief, giants of disappointment, giants of grief, giants of rejection - there are things to overcome if you want to expand your territory, expand your influence in this coming year. But He said - notice this - I've already achieved it for you. You have to arise, believe, and go and contend with it, and they'll fall over. Interesting when you read this story, that God sent in hornets in there. Now I hate wasps and bees of any kind - hornets are dreadful. I've been in a place where they had hornets. They're like a magnified wasp. I remember seeing hornets over in Fiji, with blimmin' great legs hanging down off them. They're just like flying terrors - so the Lord sent hornets in, to drive the giants out of the land.

Listen, whatever faces you, at the cross of Calvary Jesus defeated your giants. He calls you and I to arise up to the cross, see what He's done, bring to the cross those issues, and walk in the victory He's won for us. Oh my, what a great year this year - giants! So He said here's the thing is, God requires you participate. There's nothing passive in Christianity. If you want to see growth and enlargement this year, you can't be passive. You can't be passive. Let's not be passive. Let's make a decision - now here's what you need to do, set some goals. What is it you're going to accomplish? Set out a plan how you're going to do it, start to pray over it, and then look at then persevering until you can break through in that area. Quite simple isn't it aye? See, so I wonder what areas you want enlargement this year - God, that you would enlarge me.

Here's the thing that the Bible says in the New Testament. The Old Testament they wanted land; in the New Testament Jesus said this, He said: go into all the nations, preach the gospel, make disciples of nations for the church, the territory God has for every one of us, are people. People that come into your world, people that come into your area of influence, people in your work, people in your community, every person that comes in your field of influence, say: God, enlarge my territory to include that person. This year God's enlarging our territory to include millions of Muslims in Pakistan, but right here in Hastings He wants to enlarge our territory to include the people in your world, and the one who reaches them is you. Every person that comes in, God, give me access to their life. God, give me entrance to their life! Great or small, God, give me a doorway into their heart, to reach them and let them know they're loved, and I could show the love of Christ in a practical way to them. It might be just as simple as saying to them: how can I help you? What can I do for you? Is there any way I can help you, anyway I could show value on you? Just think about that this year, and increase your territory.

The last couple very simply that your hand, that's the power of God, might be with me; and the last one, that you would protect me, that you'd keep me from evil. Sin causes not only pain for us, but it causes pain for everyone else as well around us, so his prayer was God, I want to be blessed, I want blessing to flow in my life, and I'm positioning myself by my prayer in a place where You will bless me. God, I want to be enlarged. I want my influence to grow and increase. I want to have people this year, that have responded to my influence upon them. God, I want Your hand to be upon my life, I want to see Your power flowing. Listen, the Bible says: the gifts of the spirit are given to every person. If you're not flowing in it, ask yourself why. There's people here trained, and have trained, and continue to train. The big thing is whether you will stretch out and do something. You don't wait until you feel the power of God, you sometimes have just got to go step out and pray for people, see?

Father, we just thank You that this is a great year, a New Year. Father, I cry out our prayer is oh my God, that You would bless us, You would increase the blessing flow in our lives. It would flow like a river through us into our city, into our community, into our neighbourhoods, into the schools, into the hospitals, everywhere we go, everywhere we are! Give us territory. Give us influence on the lives of people, my God that the miracles of God be with us, my God that Your hand be upon us to keep us from demonic oppression, demonic assignments, and sins and temptations. My God, this year increase and enlarge us - and God grants their request. I'm believing it's going to happen this year. Why don't we stand and sing together that song: I am blessed! I am blessed! Oh I am blessed, yes, I am blessed. Every day of my life I am blessed. When I wake up in the morning, when I lay my head to rest, I am blessed, I am blessed.

Make it personal - I am blessed! Yes Lord, I am blessed. Every day of my life I am blessed, yeah! When I wake up in the morning and I lay my head to rest, I am blessed - one more time, declare it over people around you, you are blessed!

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

1 Pet 2:9

“You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people that you may proclaim the promises of Him ….”

Last year was filled with challenges, pressures, opportunities – that is now over.

God has new possibilities waiting for you in 2011.

Tasks to accomplish, people to meet, relationships to establish – opportunities to serve.

Peter reminds us who we are: Royal Priesthood – Kings with assignment to serve.

You are a King on assignment – Make Christ Known.

2. The Prayer of Kings

1 Chron 4:9-10

“Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil that I might not cause pain.” So God granted him what he requested.

Jabez stood out from his background and his generation.

Prayer has power to open heaven and change your year, your destiny.

Key characteristics of Jabez prayer.

(a) Personal

· Notice how many times the word ‘Me” appears – 4x

· Heb 11:6 “without faith it is impossible to please God ….”

· God has a purpose and destiny for you – he has plans for good for you.

· Jabez arose above his past pain and rejection – trusted the goodness of God.

· Make it personal! Rejection and sorrow are often roots of unbelief.

· Whatever has happened God is good and desires to bless and enlarge you.

· What heart issues, beliefs hinder you arising to believe God and see His promises manifest in your life.

(b) Presence and Person of God

· V10 Oh that you would bless me indeed = bless in abundance.

· Blessing = favour and prosperity in abundance upon life and relationships.

· New Testament –

Gal 3:13-14 “Redeemed … so that blessing of Abraham come …”

Eph 1:3 “He has blessed us with every blessing in heavenly places …”

· You are blessed - Jesus has positioned you to walk in blessing.

· Blessing is the overflow of intimacy with the Holy Spirit – reveals what is freely given.

· How can you walk in and see blessing revealed?

§ Time in the presence of God – Worship

§ Meditation in the Word of God

§ Decree and declare His Word over life, relationships and circumstances

· What will you do in 2011 to increase the flow of blessing?

(c) Provision

· V10 Enlarge my territory …

· Territory = land to be possessed by driving out the giants, dispossessing them.

· There are always giants standing between you and God’s provision.

· Exod 23:30-31 “… I will drive them out … you shall drive them out…”

· God requires that we participate actively and not to be passive.

· God promises to provide – our part is to take faith actions.

- Goals; Planning; Sowing; Persevering; Overcoming.

· What areas do you desire enlargements in 2011?

· What part must you play in co-operating with God?

(d) Power

· V10 … that your hand might be with me ….

· Hand of God = Power of God manifested in tangible way.

· = Person of God intervening and manifesting supernaturally

· God desires to demonstrate His power – supernatural life

· Eph 1:19 … revelation …. of the exceeding greatness of His power to us who believe.

· Biggest hindrance to power of God flowing is unbelief – “not me!”

· All believers are called to experience and manifest supernatural life of God (1 Cor. 12:7)

· Power in the New Testament is connected to evangelism – making Christ known (Acts 1:8)

· What stretch will you take in 2011?

(e) Protection

· V10 … that you would keep me from evil ….

· When participate in sin – others are hurt by our sin e.g. King David.

· Demonic opposition and temptation are reality daily!

· Mt 26:40 “Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation”.

· What areas are you vulnerable? – besetting sins?

· What strategy will you form to overcome? – to resist?

· 2011 - Year of arising as Kings in faith, in prayer, in action.

Year of enlarging territory personally, locally, globally!

Unashamed

Shame is an Identity Thief. It steals away who we are. Sin disconnects us from God, and puts shame around our life; but God wants us to be connected, so I can be myself, I don't have to wear a mask. I can actually just be true and authentic and genuine, but I have to learn the skills of building good relationships as well.

Unashamed (1 of 6)

God created man in his image and likeness: strong, loving, relational connections; confident in his goodness and identity; and very creative. He was clothed with God's glory. When man sinned, we lost the glory - shame and fear came in, as a thief stealing our identity and intimacy, by changing how we think. We are still a child of God, but damaged and needing repair. It is time to break the power of shame, address the root problem, and life life again, according to God's original design.

Unmasking Shame (2 of 6)

The message of shame is: I am damaged, I am different, and I am in danger. In Genesis we see man's response to this message, still acted out today: cover (wear a mask); hide (maintain distance); blame (transfer shame to others). Examining a detailed list of the fruits of shame will help us recognise the root. Owning the truth is the first step to freedom. What is worse - falling over, or refusing to believe God wants to get you up again? Whoever believes on Him, shall not be ashamed.

Sources of Shame (3 of 6)

Shame has 3 main sources: Our own sin; Satan 'the accuser'; and the shaming actions of others. Shame is internalised, creating an ungodly belief. Looking at examples of life situations will help us recognise the shame message we have agreed with. These are powerful keys for breaking free. The first is coming to Christ, who bore our shame, and understand our suffering.

Breaking Free of Shame (4 of 6)

A second key in breaking free is to identify our own type of covering, by checking out a range of common 'false identities'. Only when the mask is removed, can we become honest with ourselves, and how we were affected. What was my experience of shame? How did I feel? What message did it give about myself? How did I cover myself? As long as I stay covered, I am open to demonic spirits; but the truth sets us free, through Christ we can break all agreements, attachments, intimacy to shame.

Changing what you Believe (5 of 6)

Entrance of shame into the world came through believing a lie. If we doubt that God is good, we can't really trust Him, and our relationship is lost. Reconnecting with God involves removing our own covering, and putting on God's covering. God's provision for shame is to clothe us with righteousness, and put His spirit/glory back within us. Freedom comes by embracing the truth, from the heart.

Changing Your Behaviour (6 of 6)

We are not powerless or victims. Our lives are the consequence of our beliefs and choices. You decide how you think and react in relationship, and opt in or out. Discover 6 practical keys to change your pattern, and follow the examples of Jesus.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Unashamed (1 of 6).mp3

- Unmasking Shame (2 of 6).mp3

- Sources of Shame (3 of 6).mp3

- Breaking Free of Shame (4 of 6).mp3

- Changing what you Believe (5 of 6).mp3

Notes

- Unashamed (1 of 6)

- Unmasking Shame (2 of 6)

- Sources of Shame (3 of 6)

- Breaking Free of Shame (4 of 6)

- Changing what you Believe (5 of 6)

- Changing Your Behaviour (6 of 6)

Unashamed (1 of 6)

Sun 24 Feb 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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God created man in his image and likeness: strong, loving, relational connections; confident in his goodness and identity; and very creative. He was clothed with God's glory. When man sinned, we lost the glory - shame and fear came in, as a thief stealing our identity and intimacy, by changing how we think. We are still a child of God, but damaged and needing repair. It is time to break the power of shame, address the root problem, and life life again, according to God's original design.

Great. Well we're in for a great, great day today and it started well, enjoying the presence of God. I want to just share with you something. We started off this year talking about how God wants you to grow. How many people in their heart really understand God wants you to grow? No growth without a bit of pain. It means something will change, and it won't change until you identify what is going to change. So we looked the week before last at a message on breaking through your limitations. We identified a number of areas that your life could be restricted or limited. How many believe you've got limitations in your life? Distinct areas, it can be in the area of finance, a financial limitation, it can be an emotional one, there's issues in the emotions haven't been sorted out. It could be a relational one, a spiritual one, there's a whole range of ways. It could be just a skill limitation you know, and I find like in working Word documents, I've only got so much skill on it, and then when I start to try and get these things to line up they all re-number, re-label and reline and it drives me crazy. I want to hit the computer - so that's a skill limitation.

There's no use staying there. You just make a decision to actually take the actions that'll change that; get someone to show you, practice it and come up in another level of skill. So if we want to grow in the capacity that we have to serve God, we have to make a decision to change. We may need to get others to help us in that changing. Let's go back to that scripture in Isaiah 54. I want pick it up and just look at a specific area I want to help you change. I want to actually help us all change. I want to break through in this area to a new level too and in Verse 2 it says: enlarge the place of your tent. You enlarge, enlarge - and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare, don't hold back or place limitations. Lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes - and here's why we have to prepare, because you will expand to the right and the left. So expansion requires we demonstrate faith that God will do it, by making stretches in our personal life, so if we go down here it says: for you shall expand to the right and left, your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited.

Now this is the part we're going to focus on here, because these are some of the limitations that people have, all of us have it. All of us have it. If someone says they don't, tell them come on, you're dreaming and you're in denial. We will establish clearly these things are an issue, so do not fear. Do not fear. How many people at times have felt afraid? How many have felt that sort of gut-pulling fear, when you're knotted up inside, and you're almost paralysed in your mind? I've had that a few times too - we've all had that, see? So fear, fear is a spirit from hell, and it says: fear not, neither be ashamed, neither be ashamed. How many people have felt at sometime, something about you wasn't good, you didn't like it? If you could change it, you'd change it. Okay then, sometimes you have a look at the movie stars, we think they've got it all together, but I'm curious as to why if they've got it all together, they have to do so much surgery to change what it looks like. It means they're ashamed of what they are like, ashamed of what they are.

So fear and shame are extremely powerful spirits that work to limit us and restrict us. I felt the Lord put it on my heart over two or three weeks to begin to help us face this area so that we can become enlarged, so if I said that this is a problem for the majority of the church, most people would think it's the guy next to me, but I want to over two or three Sundays just help us see how it is actually an issue for all of us individually, and it is one corporately as well. I want to show why it is, and then how you can get out of it. As I was thinking about this series and what to do and how to just speak about it, I felt the Lord tell me well, don't focus on shame, focus on the theme unashamed, shame free, unashamed. So rather than finish up with that bit, I'm going to start with that bit. I want us to today get a little bit of a picture about how God designed us to operate, and then what actually changed all of that, then what it'll look like when we've shifted again. Then in the subsequent weeks we're going to look at the issue of how shame and fear come in, and then how you can recognise them, because if you don't recognise it, no doubt you'll never change.

There are many of us have lived in what I'd call a toxic shame-filled family environment where - probably if I use this word - put downs are regular. See, now if you've been in an environment where put downs are regular, the chances are you've already accepted the message of shame, you're living with it in your life, and you can hardly recognise it when the put downs come. So we want to shift all of that, so that the church individually, and therefore corporately, becomes a people committed to build others up, because we ourselves are built up on the inside, we ourselves are unashamed. A person with shame in their life will shame others. They will use it as their way of dealing with issues in relationships, so we want to help you address this. I will share at some times some things from my own life, the struggle with this areas of both shame and fear, and how I've been helped by the Lord in a major way, yet still now feeling like it's another layer come up, another level, and so I purpose well, I'm going to work with these areas to just come up to a new level, unashamed see? Can you say that, God wants you to be unashamed? Tell the person next to you, God wants you to be unashamed, shame free! Glory to God.

Okay and notice what He says in this verse. This is His promise to us: You will forget the shame. That means it won't be in your mind, shame thoughts any more, and you won't remember the reproach, so whatever's happened in your life in your past, whatever ways you've thought about yourself, you will not remember that stuff. You've changed how you think. It's an internal change. I want to show you the process of change as well, because it's a process. Now of course I know you'll all love to come up and get hands laid on you and get it all fixed up - if only! [Laughter] Shame was built a block at a time, and you'll have to tear it down a block at a time as well, and I want to give you the keys and the tools how you can do it, so then you'll stand up, unashamed. Now I'll get to it shortly what unashamed will look like, but you have to understand this, it will start this off. When you stand up unashamed, you will stimulate and stir and provoke a reaction against you, from those who are full of shame, who will say: who do you think you are, and try to shame you to going back into your cave again.

Church, it's time to come out of the caves we've hidden in aye, become shame free, unashamed, unashamed, unashamed as God intended us. Shame is a demonic, devilish thing, from the one who has been shamed more than anyone. God has got no shame to put on you. Unfortunately the church, the church corporately or speaking of the bigger picture, often is a toxic shame centre, and so we have to recognise - this is one area, if you can over the next two or three Sundays, begin to get a handle on this area and the process of change, and make a decision in the course of this year, I will break through all issues of shame God shows me, and I'll begin to tackle the fears around my life, I guarantee your life will change in almost every area, absolutely in every area. Something will be different about you, and you will start to stand up and emerge, and I'll tell you this too: all existing relationships you have will begin to change, because people who were used to the shame-filled person living in a cave now don't know how to relate to this one who can't be shamed back into the cave. Good stuff aye? Good stuff. Come on, want to stand up.

Let's go back and have a look now, that God's heart for us is to be totally unashamed. It's the heart of God for you to be totally shame-free, and so we're not going to go too much into shame today. I want to stick on unashamed, I want to look on God's original design, so let's have a look at Genesis, Chapter 1. God's original design for us, unashamed. Now if you want to know how life ought to be lived, don't look how others around you are living it. Find out how God designed it to be lived, go to the source. You've got to go to the word of God. You've got to see what God says about you, and about life, as He designed it. He designed us to function in a certain way, and so we're going to look at the original design. We're going to see just a little bit about how it shifted, and what caused it to shift. Particularly I want you to see in the initial stage the primary shift that took place, how it took place, and then later on we're going to look in another session how to get back into that place of being absolutely shame free.

Alrighty then, let's have a look in Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 26: Then God said: let us make man as a little bug. [Laughter] He didn't say that did He? An insect - no, a worm. He didn't say any of that. What did He say? Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion. God made man in His own image, a reflection of what He is like: loving, expressive, passionate, full of dreams, creative. That's what He made us to be like! You say I'm not like that. Change! You're living below what you're designed to do. Come on, you've got to continually go back to the standard God set, first when He did it first, and secondly, when we look at Jesus Christ who is the only standard. Most people look at someone else and say I'm doing better than them, I must be alright. Don't use that.

Notice this, it says: He made us in His image and likeness. God made you with emotions. He put emotions in you, so you've got some men are pretty staunch! Too bad, you're real broken up you know. You can't live life like you're supposed to. There's something wrong in you, you're damaged. Staunch is a fig leaf to cover what's wrong. God is a passionate God. Jesus loved, Jesus wept, Jesus was angry, Jesus had all the range of emotions. If you hunt through the Bible, you'll find God's got things He loves, things He hates, things get Him riled up, things that touch His heart. He has compassion, He has anger, He has all range of emotions, and He's real happy to express them. He designed you, not only as a spirit being capable of working and living and moving in the dimension of the spirit; He designed us to represent what He's like, so if your emotions are messed up, you cannot represent properly what God is like. How can you?

You will reinforce the image most people have, that God is cold and unemotional, instead of loving and passionate. So we have to not be driven or out of control in our emotions, but understand they have a part of expressing who we are as people, as God has designed us. God has caused you to be creative - you say well I'm not the creative type. The moment I use the word creative, you will automatically think of someone who does art or makes craft - oh, they're creative. You have put a mindset that limited creativity. Is it true that God is creative? You're made in His image? By design you are creative. Now whether you are creative in your expression, has a lot to do with whether we're functioning right, see? Now if I'm not functioning right, I won't express creativity.

Listen, I'll show you how - we'll get onto it a bit another time, but let me just give you the tip on this one. Whatever God gifted you to do, He will enable you to be creative in that area, see? In other words, to come up with ideas that others haven't thought of, but of course if you're full of shame, you'll want to copy what everyone else wants, and you won't want to be different. That's why we've got to deal with the lies of shame, so we can actually dare to be different, dare to be ourself, dare to be creative. Creative people say: oh, I've got a great new way of doing that! Shameful people say: we've never done it that way before. They shut down the creative gift. We've got to stop that. We've got to actually make room for the expression of the gifts and creativity that people have in their life, and that's why you've got to deal with shame, because shame will shut it down as we'll see in a moment. I'll tell you what it does, I'll tell you two major things it does to us, and then we've got to work on how to get out of that, and be what God called us to be, Amen.

So God has emotions given expression, we're designed to represent Him. We're designed to represent that God is a good God, so when people see you, do they see in your life God is really good? God is good, He is good. Here's the second thing that the Bible tells us very clearly there: notice in Chapter 1, Verse 31, when God saw everything He'd made, indeed it was very good. So when God looks at you, what does He see? Very good, ooh very good! Whoa! Like those lions are pretty good, but look at this man I've made! Whoa! Very good! See? Those fish - well the fish are pretty good, but oh look at the man I've made, very, very, very good! God's basic looking at you, is that you reflect what He's like. You're very, very good. The core of your identity is I am very, very good. Why am I good? Not because I'm doing good things - because I'm made in the image of someone who's really good. But you see already I can feel it rising up: what about sin? What about, you know, all have sinned?

That's true, but let me just give you this thought here. Suppose your little child - here's your beautiful little child, and the child has had an accident, fallen off something, and now your child comes running to you and as you look, now that beautiful child that went out to play now is looking quite different. The child now has got a bone sticking out of the arm here, the skin is broken, there's blood and there's this terrible sight there and the first sort of reaction is oh! You don't want to even look at it - but then you go basically it's still your child, just your child's damaged. Now you're not going to reject your child. You're not going to abuse your child - you just can't do anything now can you! You're really bad! You don't treat a child that way because their arm is broken.

They're your child, but they're damaged, and they need your help to be repaired to their original condition. That's how God sees us. Now if you can get that concept in your mind, it'll change how you relate to God. God is not there ready to beat on you because you have a broken arm in some part of your life and there's a bone sticking out. He's not there to beat on you. Jesus said: I've got no condemnation to give. What He came to do was to restore us, so we could function like God intended us to function. You've got to understand that when Jesus came, He came to actually address the root problem and then to restore us, so we can live life like we're supposed to live life. The trouble is many Christians only get a bit of the way. We give our lives to Jesus and never embrace changing to become what He called us to become, and to fulfil the destiny of representing Him in the community, hence the church is withdrawn from society, and has meetings instead of being stirred in God to change the world we live in, bringing creativity into it, in a way they've never seen before.

See some people, they have issues over a number of things of course. One they have issues over is getting buildings painted and done up nice and oh there's money, money, money. Now that's a wrong thinking. How will people know that the God we serve is excellent, if we don't present ourselves individually and corporately in an excellent way? It confirms the wrong impression they have - don't get near God, you lose all you have. You'll become mean and miserable and bitter and twisted and you'll be a hypocrite like all these other people we've seen. Do you understand? It's a concept that people have got a hold of, they want to believe it of course, because they want to come near God, but actually what they're looking for is to see, have you got something for real that I need? Has your marriage got something different? Have you got something different? That's why we need to become unashamed, and you'll see just in a moment.

So God - very good, so when God looks at you He's still saying: very good, very good, very good. You say what about this is wrong and this is like this? Yeah, I know - but you're still very good, you're made in my image. Your value comes not from whether you did well. Your value comes from who you are. Who you are is? Made in the image of God! That's why evolution and all that goes with that devalues you as being made in the image of God. You cannot ever, ever base a person's value on what they're doing. It has to be based on what God says - good! God is good, and what He's made is good. God doesn't make any junk. He didn't make junk when He made you. You've believed a lie, and we've got to change that lie this year, okay? Whatever God makes is good.

Here's a third thing now. God clothed man in His own glory. I'm going to explain what that means in a moment - just keep your finger there in Genesis, Chapter 2 and look quickly in Psalm 8. Now we're looking at the original design, because if you want to see how something should function, go look in the manual and how it was made, then see what needs to be done to repair it. Okay then, in Psalm 8, Verse 4, the Bible says: what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You visit him. You have made him a little lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honour. How about that? You've made to have dominion over the works of Your hands. Look at that Verse 5: You have crowned him with glory and honour, crowned him with glory - now what does that mean?

The word glory means - you see the Bible uses words and we say oh, crowned with glory and honour and ooh, that's nice, that's really good. What does it mean? See, so when God designed man, man was made slightly lower than the realm of God. What is man, that You continually think about him, or the son of man, that You come to visit him and meet with him to relate with him. You have made him a little lower than elohim, God Himself. God has created us a little lower than Himself, but we're of the same stock. We're children of the living God by faith in Christ. He says you've crowned him with glory - to be crowned means literally to be positioned for a role of ruling - and what did God do to man to position him for this realm of ruling or having dominion, whatever all that might mean? He crowned him with glory. Well what on earth is that? What would that look like?

Well the word glory has a number of meanings, but it referred to the tangible presence of God, the tangible presence of God. I think in Psalm 104 it says: God is clothed with light, so when in the Old Testament God made Himself visible, many times what they saw was, they saw what they call a shekinah glory, so if you went into the holiest place of the tabernacle, the house where God physically manifested Himself, it was a totally dark room, no natural light - but the brilliance of God's presence lit it up. It just lit the place up! You just about needed sunglasses to go in there, and the presence of God was so powerful, if you didn't do it right, you would fall down dead. So He was clothed, God was clothed in light. The Bible says He is clothed in light and immortality, so when Adam and Eve first were born, they didn't look just like us. They actually had a clothing of God upon them. There was a manifestation of light, of glory - in Exodus, Chapter 33, Moses says: show me Your glory, and God says: I'll let all my goodness come before you. So they were clothed with the manifestation of what God is like. Their bodies glistened with light. They were glorious bodies, bodies that would not die, would not get sick, would heal themselves, and the goodness of God radiated out of their life, so that anyone seeing Adam and Eve were seeing the image of God, exactly as God made them to be in the earth. Come on, think about this. You've clothed them with glory, so they were covered with a life of God. Even now, when you get in the presence of God, and the presence of God begins to fill you, there is a joy and a life and a brightness and a light on your countenance.

You get to have a look in India and some of these places where people have a dark skin and demons have got a hold of them; they look dark and they look black and when they get saved and the light, the glorious light of the gospel of Jesus Christ comes into their heart, their faces shine. You look different when God is in your life. Your countenance looks different when He's coming forth. There is a difference, there's something inside flowing out, come on, so they were crowned with glory and honour. That word honour means literally, they were given - they looked majestic. They looked amazing. They looked extraordinary, so if you came into the world in the days when Adam and Eve were here, the highlight of everything that you saw, no matter how beautiful it was - [inhales sharply] Ooh, what is that! Ooh, it's my son and daughter, carrying my glory and majesty, and reflecting me into the world I've made. You see, that's why when the Bible says: all have sinned, most of us hear that bit.

What we miss is the next bit - have fallen short of the glory of God. That word falling short means we've become inferior, or we've come and slipped well below what God created us to be like, and to function like. Amazing isn't it aye? That's how God designed us. Now, now you'll understand why it says: the man and his wife were naked, and they were not ashamed. So how did God design us? Unashamed. What was the key to being unashamed? To have no self-consciousness whatsoever, to be conscious and filled with the presence, glory and wonder of what God is like. Now that is how He started. Do you think He's going to finish with something different than that, see? You see what happens is, mentally what you'll be doing is this. Mentally we look at what is, and that's our measuring stick, and you've always got to shift that measuring stick and say: what did God intend? That's my possibilities. That's my future, if I can believe for it.

So when we get to this issue of shame, you're going to begin to see that shame was never part - see they were not ashamed, UNASHAMED! Ha! God's my father. He's put me in charge of it all - look at the glory, oh! Unashamed, expressive, creative. Adam was extremely creative. Listen, if we brought every animal in the world to you, and you didn't know any of their names, and we said give them all a name, you'd be struggling. Why? Because we've fallen short of that creative realm that God originally put into us, but even though we've fallen short of it, it's still there because that's who we are. You can't change the child who's your child that broke it's arm, all it means is he can't function properly, but he's still your child, and he's still valuable. If you can get the arm fixed up he'll begin to function again just like he was designed to do, and so we've got to see that God's plan for us is to become connected to Him again, and then to learn how to function like He intended us to function, in our marriages, our families, our finances, our business, our life, wherever God's called you to be, being creative and unashamed!

Now of course you're going to find the moment you get like that, there's going to be the big put down, who do you think you are? So you've got to deal with shame in your own life, and then learn how to handle shame around you. There's no way we're going to get away from actually exposure to shaming of various kinds, so unashamed. Notice in Proverbs 3, Verse 35, it says: the wise inherit glory, but shame is the legacy of fools. That's an interesting statement. I looked up words where glory and shame were together, and I found there's a whole heap of them. I'm only going to give you that one - it says the wise, yeah, the wise, haha! The WISE! The wise man says yes to God, see? He is full of glory. He shall inherit glory. In other words, if we connect with God, the one thing He wants to put in our lives is His glory, His goodness, His creativity, His passion, His desires, His life, and He wants you to truly come alive and live life, see? It's religion's the problem, see? It says: the fool inherits shame, so got to understand this: shame is for God's enemies, not for His family.

Shame has little or no place in the family of God. God has not called us to shame, He's called us to glory, but His enemies - all through the Bible it talks about His enemies being covered with shame. Who's His key enemy? Lucifer, the angel once moving in heavenly realms, who by rebellion against God, sinned and fell short of his former glory and became a demon. So if an angel can become a demon, what could we become if we let go of God? There's no limits to how bad we can become, but we are still at the core of our being, made in the image of God. It's just damaged by sin and our yielding to sin, so if we can address this kind of stuff we can get out. Man, we've got some possibilities here haven't we, some good possibilities here, see? Good possibilities here, possibilities. See sometimes whole cultures can live in shame, whole nations can live in shame. Families can live in shame, marriages can be filled with shame, individual lives can be filled with shame. Shame is a demonic entity that comes to stop, it comes to steal some things. Let me just show you how the shame came in.

I'm not going to deal with it much, I want just to tell you this: shame is a thief. Jesus said: the thief came to steal, kill and destroy; I've come to give you life. Let's look in Genesis 3. I don't want to go into all the dynamics of it. I'll pick it up in a little more depth. I just want to show you a couple of things that happen. See, now notice here it says in Genesis, Chapter 3, the serpent was very cunning, more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. He said to the woman: has God indeed said you'll not eat every tree of the garden? And so he had entered into a debate with her you see? And eventually, you know the story - it says Verse 6, she gave to her husband with her and he ate, and the eyes of them both were opened and they knew they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, among the trees of the garden.

Then the Lord said to Adam: where are you? And Adam said: I heard Your voice in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked - remember he was naked and unashamed, now he's naked and shamed? And he said: and I hid myself. He said: who told you you were naked? Where did you get that information from? Who have you been talking to? Who were you listening to? Oh, you weren't listening to that old shame-filled devil were you by any chance? He will fill you with shame. That's all he's got to give. I will fill you with goodness, that's all I've got to give. So we'll just have a look in here, I want to just pick up a couple of things about this. The first thing you'll see is that the moment that they sinned they became self-conscious, they became conscious of their condition because something left them: the glory. Now before there was no awareness at all.

Have you ever seen little kids growing up, they're young, you can bath them together, there's no awareness at all of anything different between a boy and a girl? Then there's comes an age and suddenly they know! Now you've got to separate them, can't bath them together. See - and you think what happened? There's an awareness or a knowing of something they didn't even know about. Now before they didn't even think about it, it was a nothing issue. Now it becomes an issue, they become aware of something. So when Adam and Eve fell they experienced guilt: I have done something wrong, and with that fear - what if I'm found out? What will happen to me? And with it shame - something is wrong with me. Now Adam and Eve really had a big dose of shame, because they lost all of that glory. Now I don't know whether Eve - I was wondering how this may have happened. Since it doesn't tell it clearly we can't speculate, but you imagine Eve takes the apple and eats it, or whatever the fruit was that she ate - probably wasn't an apple, a something. Anyway whatever it was she ate, imagine just eating of that fruit, and then gradually the glory vanishing off her - and the shock to Adam perhaps.

It doesn't actually tell whether the glory left them at the same time or not, but suppose it left off her. He's in a dilemma, do I walk with her or do I step away and lose her? It says he deliberately did it. She was deceived. He deliberately made a decision to do the same as his wife and ate. He rebelled, and therefore was held responsible for everything. He was silent when he should have spoken up, and he ended up losing everything for all of us - an incredible thing. It said immediately they got fig leaves and they covered - now notice this, what they covered. They covered what made them different and unique. That's what shame will do. It will cause you to conceal what makes you different from the person next to you, and unique in God's eyes. For you to be unashamed, you must be able to live with being different, and be able to embrace how unique you are. Now you start to see the depth of the problem? Can you see the problem now, because mostly in our culture we don't want to be different? If you're a teenager it's almost paranoiac to be different - I've got to go with the crowd, got to flow with them.

I love it when I see teenagers standing up and they are different. Remember out in the door there, and two girls who were talking to this guy there and the hair - I'd never seen hair like it in my life. Man, he had the - I don't know how they even do what they did with it. It was colours, it was all kinds of stuff, and the girls obviously had an attitude about it, and they said to me: what do you think of this hair? I said: awesome! [Laughter] And they obviously didn't expect a Pastor to pass that kind of opinion about it. I said: do you want me to tell you why it's awesome? They said: yeah, why? I said: it's because he's got security and confidence enough to be himself, and to present himself as he'd like, without fearing what you think. [Applause] Oh! See? It's one of the ways if people are different, they're different. It's not wrong, it's not bad, it's just different. Who says our way's right? Come on, it's just different. You go to another country, eat different food, good on you. Just eat the food, don't complain about it, don't compare it or anything like that.

They became ashamed and conscious of themselves, and you see the shame, the terribly painful feeling something's wrong with me. So the message of shame is like this: there's something wrong with me, and I'm different - and that's bad. Actually there's something different about you, and God loves it, because it's why He made you, and you're good. You getting the idea? So that's why you've got to be unashamed - so you see the problem that happened of course, when they hid from themselves, they hid from God, and there was tremendous pain. Now there were two things that came about; one - and you've got to see this - shame will steal your identity. Shame, when it gets on your life, will cause you to be afraid to front up for who you are. The first thing that Adam did was, in standing in front of a person, his wife who he loved, he felt ashamed, and concealed his maleness. She likewise concealed her womanhood from him.

So shame will cause you to conceal who you are. If you have shame on you, the first thing that will happen is, you can't be who you are, you will put on a mask. You will present what's acceptable, so unfortunately church, which should have the answer to shame, often people - this is the one place they put on more masks than any: I got to look good! Ooh, it costs a lot to look good, a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of emotion. God doesn't want you to look good, He wants you to be right before Him. If you are right before Him which He calls righteous, then you can be who you are, and you don't have to be ashamed at all. I can be me! I can be ME! I don't have to be someone else! I've resigned from being someone else! Now you see this is what happens is when shame gets into an environment, a relationship, a family or into your life, into a culture, then no one can be themselves. They've now got to put on a mask and be something - I don't know, what are we supposed to be? I don't know, I'll ask him? No, he's not too sure either - I'll ask her? No, oh I'm blowed if I know what I'm supposed to be, but the people that speak loudest to me, I'll be like them. [Laughter]

We can never be ourselves when there's toxic shame, so the first thing it steals is your identity. The first thing to be restored is your identity. Who are you? Who are you? I don't know. I don't know, I was told you shouldn't think that, you shouldn't feel like that, you shouldn't do that, you're a naughty boy, and I was so filled - I don't know who I am any more. I got lost years ago. I've got to discover in Christ who I am, what He made me to do, and fulfil that course, see?

The second thing you lose is - so shame will steal intimacy. It will stop you have intimate relationships. A person filled with shame can never enter into intimate relationship. You know why? It's so obvious of course, because I so hate what I'm like, I can't show you it. If I can't show you who I am, if I can't show you my feelings, I can't connect with you. If I can't show you my ideas, my thoughts, my dreams, my passions - these are all part of who I am by the way. If I can't show you those things for fear you'll reject me, I cannot be intimate, and you can never know me.

Sitting in the church today are multitudes of people who've never got shame off their life to become unashamed, so they can't become intimate anywhere, intimate with God, intimate with one another, intimate and open in a family environment - and that has got to change. It's not God's design. God wants us to be free of that toxic kind of shame that stops us being who we are, and connecting like we ought to connect, in ways which are open and transparent. Hello! See, so if I'm going to enter into a relationship, my feelings are part of who I am, I've got to be able to talk about them. If I can't talk about them, share them, be open about them because they're mine, because it might make you unhappy, then now this fear of what you may do is shutting me down from connecting authentically. I must, in order to present Christ, I must be authentic in my personal life, so I've got to break free of shame and all the fear it brings.

Right, so unashamed - let me just give you three things that unashamed would look like. I just didn't go looking in a book. I thought man, I just need to get the handle on this: God, show me what it would look like, and I've come up with some things. Number one, you are a connected person. I'll explain these terms in a moment. Number two, you are a confident person; number three, you are a creative person. Now there's probably lots of other things. I kind of nailed those three down, because I think that's what God wants to shift for us, connected first of all, connected instead of being disconnected. I'll explain that in a moment - confident in what I am, and what I can do, and creative. Now let me just explain each one, I'll give you a couple of examples as I go with it.

Number one, connected: that means I can remove all the masks, and live out my true identity as a child and representative of God. See, connected means I can actually connect with myself, connect with God and connect with you. I can be true to who I am. If you don't like it, that's not my problem. See, I'm not going to be shamed or afraid of what you think, or what you're like. I can be me! Don't like it, it's no problem, I don't want you to like me. See, God likes me, loves me, and I'm content to draw from that. The other's inconvenient and hurtful at times, but we can get over that, see? That gets you to be a connected kind of person, see so shame causes us to cover and conceal ourself. We can't connect properly, can't connect for one another. Often church is a very lonely place because of shame, people can't connect.

Okay then, so that's the first one. Now let me give you an example. Unashamed means I am free to live out my true identity. I can be ME! A great example of it is found in 2 Samuel 16:6. It's King David, and David is absolutely uninhibited, unashamed, expressive. He can just be himself in front of the whole, whole nation. He goes out there, and they've never done it before. They've got trumpets, they've got musicians, they've got everyone out there, and he just girds himself up, and he's leaping and dancing and not worried about anyone, don't care what anyone thinks - but that's David. Jesus was called Son of David, so Jesus must have been quite expressive too. In fact with the religious people, when they saw everyone yelling when Jesus came into town, they said stop - stop, stop, stop, stop! See, religions don't want you to be expressive. It thinks that's irreverent. Oh give me a break! It's not being irreverent. It's actually expressing - Jesus said this. He said listen, He said you shut the kids up, even the stones will yell out. I wish they'd shut the kids up, have the stones all yelling, banging together, man!

So David was totally uninhibited. He could be free and expressive. He didn't worry what anyone thought. He was free inside to express his joy, his life, his feelings. Jesus of course was free as well. He could weep at the tomb of a friend. He could laugh with His friends and His disciples. He could have fun with them, He could be straight up and angry. He could express His emotions freely, so one of the things is, when you're unashamed, you're free to be who you are. When I asked that question years ago of myself, I was shocked. I couldn't answer it. I thought I'd got so lost - when did I get lost? When did I just get lost, and I didn't know who I was, or what I really wanted, see? So the first thing is, if you're unashamed, you're actually free to be who you are, and don't worry what people are thinking of you. If you're not controlled by what they think of you, you can just actually express, you become very expressive.

Now a lot of people are unexpressive because actually it's demonic bondage. It's demonic bondage. They've been shamed, and what for them is normal and they think that's me, actually I'm sorry, I have to inform you - gladly inform you today - that that uptight, staunch, locked up, emotionless person that you project out as who you are, is a broken, damaged, fallen short of the glory of God person, that God loves and values, and wants to lift up and heal that broken part of your life. So what? So you can be free. Now you'll express the life different to me, but you'll still express it. There are many ways we can express joy, but it should show on the face.

Okay, second one is you'll be confident: I can confidently fulfil God's assignment, and be free from the fear of people or their opinions. How many believe God has a purpose or an assignment for your life? Well you should be confident doing it then, see? Because everyone else has got a plan for your life, but you need to be confident in what God called you to do, able to do it without any - shame causes us to compare ourselves, and then we try to be like everyone else, and do what they want. See David - notice in this - when David was doing all his celebrating, and this is the bit I love, immediately his wife looked out the window, and she tried to toxic-shame him: who do you think you are? You just want to be the King of Israel, that's what you're doing, blah blah blah. He says ha! You thought that was something? You watch in the next round-up, I'm going to be even worse.

Now he refused to be shamed. He was able to stand up at what he's called to be, and the next day he got up, you know what he did? He said this is what we'll do now, we will now have 24 hours of this. He said up courses of musicians, never been done in history before. He sets up 24 courses of musicians, or 12 courses of musicians around 24 hours. He's setting up all of these courses of musicians to praise, worship, do stuff before God - no one had ever seen it before - oh, we've never done it that way before! Well I got this creative idea from God, I got this - what are you on about? No, don't put me down, I'm moving forward with these great things that God's given me to do, see? In the area he was called to serve, he became incredibly creative. That brings you to the last one.

See, creative means, in the area that you serve, you come up with ideas no one has ever thought of before. You don't follow the crowd, you become the crowd leader. You're free to express the creative wisdom of God through your gifts and abilities, so you've got to value those. Shame will cause you to not value them. What did Gideon do? Gideon changed a nation, but you know how he started? God said: oh Gideon, you mighty man of valour - and Gideon manifested shame. I'm the youngest in the family, haven't got much education. I can't fight, and we don't have much money, we're a small family. God said: when you're finished! [Laughter] YOU are a mighty warrior. I will use you to save a nation. Oh really? He needed a little bit of persuading to get out of his shame, but once he got the word of God about who he was, he got God's perspective on who he was, and agreed with God's perspective, and he did what God called him to do. It's brilliant to see it.

All kinds of guys in the Bible did the same kind of thing. Now you're not called necessarily to go out and conquer an enemy army out there, but wherever you're positioned in this city or region, God wants you to be unashamed, confident in who you are, and what you're called to do, and creatively do something no one else really else thought about doing it that way before. When Solomon got on the throne, he did it too, and he became so famous that people came from all round the world, what to see? The creative wisdom of God. They were smarter, sharper, better, had it working better, and people came and said: [inhales sharply] that's something else! That's what the church is called to do. Now by the church, the manifold wisdom of God will be revealed to the principalities and powers who sought to shame us, hold us down, stop us standing up, and living in a place of fear, and short of the glory of God, now by the church, by you and me, God wants to reveal His wisdom - and you can't do that if you're full of shame. You've got to come into agreement with what God says about who you are, what you're called to do, and what you've got inside you to help you to do it. That's the agreement.

I will share with you over the next couple of weeks just what shame is, how you can actually recognise it, because many of you here will be just taking in the concept in the initial stage, but you won't realise how deeply it's in your life and relationships, and you won't even realise how much the people around you are shaming you, and reinforcing that. But once we uncover what it looks like, feels like, and how it manifests itself, you will start to recognise it, and then we're going to begin to talk about how you get yourself out of it. There's a process to get out of it. It's not just a prayer, there's some steps you take that change your life, and I want to show you what they are, so all of us can step up and move out. How many people, when we did the series on offences, then began to recognise them just like that? I'm believing God will be the same on this one of shame. God wants us to arise, be bold, and be who He called us to be - full of His glory, so Paul says: Christ in you, God put His spirit in you, and it's the hope that you will manifest the goodness, the life, the light, the glory of God. Come on, let's stand up and give the Lord a clap!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Isaiah 54:1-5 - “Enlarge the place of your tent…do not fear for you shall not be ashamed”.

· Whenever Go speaks to us, He also empowers us if we respond and take faith-action.

· God desires to help us grow through the limitations placed by fear and shame.

· To overcome personal limitations we must face them and plan how to work with God on it.

· God’s heart for us is that we live without shame and fear – be unashamed.

2. God’s Original Design – “Unashamed”:

1) We are made in the Image of God:

· Genesis 1:27-28 - “let us make man in our image, according to our likeness”.

· God made us in His own image – beautiful, loving, creative, spirit beings.

· He made us with emotions, dreams, passions, creativity, ideas.

· God has many emotions and he created us to give expression to them.

· We are designed to represent God in the world – God is Good!

2) Whatever God makes is Good:

· Genesis 1:31 - “God saw everything He had made and indeed it was very good”.

· God is Good – whatever He makes or does is good.

· God’s view of the man He created – “Very Good”.

· God does not make trash – ‘I am not trash’ – ‘I am unique’ = “very good”.

3) God clothed man with His Glory:

· Psalm 8:4-6 - “You have crowned him with glory and honour”.

· Glory = 3519 = Kabod – tangible manifest presence of God –

Psalm 104:1-2 = “Light”.

· Exodus 33:18-19 = “Show me your glory…I will make all my ‘goodness’ pass before...”.

· Adam’s whole body radiated the presence of God’s glory.

· Honour = 1926 = hadar = magnificence, majesty, splendor, highest value.

· Man stood out above all God’s creation because of glory and honour of God.

4) Man was Unashamed:

· Genesis 2:25 - “They were both naked, the man and his wife were not ashamed”.

· Adam drew his identity and life from his relationship with God.

· He walked with no fear, no shame – totally unashamed.

· The presence and Glory of God empowered him to live “unashamed”.

· Proverbs 3:55 - “The wise inherit glory – shame is the legacy of fools”.

· God has prepared man to share His glory – shame is for His enemies!

3. Shame is a Thief:

John 10:10 - “The thief does not come except to steal, kill and destroy…”.

Genesis 3:1-10 - “Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord”.

When Adam and Eve sinned they lost their glory and changed.

They became focused on self – ashamed – conscious of something wrong.

Shame can only arise from consciousness of sinful or wrongful conduct.

Adam and Eve became tormented with guilt, shame, fear of God.

Verse 10 - “naked” = made bore, lost their clothing or covering.

Verse 11 - “Who told you” = Satan had ridiculed them and pointed out their condition.

Satan accused them both and belittled their condition.

Shame = painful feeling when conscious something wrong, dishonorable, lack, inadequate – something is wrong with me!

Shame was never part of God’s design – God wants us unashamed.

Shame is a thief:

1) steals identity

2) steals intimacy

4. Unashamed! What does it look like?

· Note: People who are unashamed will experience shame attacks from those in shame bondage – “Who do you think you are?”

1) Connected - I can remove all masks and live out my true identity as a child and representative of God:

· Shame causes us to cover and conceal who we are, live behind a mask.

· Shame causes us to be disconnected from self and from God and others.

· 2 Samuel 6:14-15 - King David, emotionally expressive. Totally able to be himself, total freedom emotionally/physically.

· David was connected with God – himself – his men.

2) Confident – I can confidently fulfill God’s assignment to me, free from fear of people or their opinions”.

· Shame causes us to live comparing ourselves to others and fearful of being different.

· Unashamed = I am free of what people think or say”.

· 2 Samuel 16:22 - King David refused to be put down by Michal.

· David was able to withstand her shaving words.

· David expressed his freedom boldly.

· Acts 4:13 - Peter refused to be intimidated by religious criticism.

· Peter stood and acted boldly –verbally bold and assertive.

· He stood up in his calling and assignment of God.

3) Creative – I am free to express the creative wisdom of God through my unique gifts, abilities and creativity:

· Shame causes us to place low value on what we are and have to give.

· Shame keeps us mediocre – following the crowd, copying.

· Unashamed = I am free to discover and develop my unique capacity boldly, confidently and creatively.

· Gideon – changed a nation – Judges 6:12

· Paul – proclaimed gospel – Romans 1:16 – “Not ashamed of the Gospel”

· David – music, songs – e.g. Jesus

It is Time to Break the Power of Shame – be Unashamed!

Unmasking Shame (2 of 6)

Sun 2nd Mar 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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The message of shame is: I am damaged, I am different, and I am in danger. In Genesis we see man's response to this message, still acted out today: cover (wear a mask); hide (maintain distance); blame (transfer shame to others). Examining a detailed list of the fruits of shame will help us recognise the root. Owning the truth is the first step to freedom. What is worse - falling over, or refusing to believe God wants to get you up again? Whoever believes on Him, shall not be ashamed.

Okay, let's have a look in the Bible at Isaiah 54. We started last week a message called Unashamed. How many people have started to get stirred and challenged by that? Come on, that's right, come on into freedom, challenged into freedom, and right now the Holy Spirit is moving in the church as a result of us in fasting and prayer for a season, just lifting the lid off a whole number of things in people's lives. So if you're finding you've got all kinds of feelings and struggles, or things happening around in your life, don't be ashamed of it, other people are going through the same thing. It's part of growing; first you feel uncomfortable, then you begin to address the things you need to change.

We're reading in this Verse in Isaiah 54, and God is speaking in Verse 2: Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch out the curtain of your habitations. Don't hold back, don't spare. Lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes, for you shall expand. So God's speaking about expanding, growing, increasing, and increase happens externally. Increase firstly must happen internally, and so then He goes on, He says: Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; neither will you be disgraced. You will not be put to shame; you'll forget the shame of your youth, and not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore. So notice He uses these words: fear and shame. You won't be put to shame. God has got no shame to put on you. Not only that, He's got no fear that He wants to put on you. Fear and shame are limiters in our lives, and we looked last week at some aspects of how God made us.

We found we are made in the image of God, and what God made is good. We may be a bit damaged, but we're still good. We're made in the image of God. There is something good about every person. They're of a unique value, because we're made in the image of God, and we saw that when the original man and woman were made, they were clothed with the glory, with the goodness of God. There was a supernatural presence of God upon their lives, and so they were able to be naked, physically unclothed, but absolutely no shame, no awareness of shame. They never knew what shame was, and that was their condition. We saw that when people are unashamed, there's a number of things happen. We saw that when people are unashamed, they can become connected in relationship; when we're ashamed we disconnect in our relationships. We saw also that when people are unashamed, we can be confident, absolutely outspoken and confident, because we're unashamed, not ashamed of who we are, not ashamed of our thoughts, our ideas, what we have, who we are, where we stand.

Many Christians are ashamed, and shame will stop us being effective, got to push against this thing. We saw that when people are unashamed, then we can become creative in expressing how God has wired us and gifted us. We saw last week that God's desire and heart is to be unashamed, absolutely unashamed, so we're going to follow that through in recognising the fact that many people, many of us have and do struggle with shame. I want to over this today and the next couple of weeks begin to address - firstly we want to look at well, how would I recognise shame? If I'm going to beat something, I've got to recognise it. So you say well I'm doing okay, I'm not ashamed. Well we'll see, we'll see. If you don't know what it looks like, you'd never recognise if it's in your life, and the first phase of any changes in our life is to actually recognise where we're at, then how we got there, and detach from how we got there, then begin to build different things into our life so our future's different.

So to get free of shame, it's not a matter of simply come up the front, we pray and break something off you - if only. Now you can be prayed for, and lots of shifts can take place, but essentially, if you don't understand this whole issue and how it affects your life, you won't take the steps needed to move yourself out of it, and so I want to today just look at this whole area of shame. We want to look at the area of unmasking shame, get the lid off it, okay? So let's go have a look in Genesis. We'll have a look in Genesis, Chapter 3. Let's see where shame first came in, then we're going to try and have a look at what its message is. When shame is talking to you, it's saying something, so we're going to talk about what shame is saying, identify what it is, and how it impacts us. Then we're going to have a look then at just some examples of its fruit in your life, so I want you by the end of today, if shame is operating in your life, and affecting the way you run your life and relationships, I want you at least to be able to say: I'm recognising it. I've got a handle on it man! Man, oh! I thought I was doing alright but oh, there's something there I need to shift.

So let's have a look first of all at the entrance of shame, Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 25. They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Okay, now Chapter 3; Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: has God indeed said you shall not eat every fruit of the tree? And the woman said to the serpent: we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said you shall not eat it, nor touch it, lest you die. [Laughs] The serpent said to the woman: you won't die. God knows in the day you eat, your eyes will be opened - partial truth - you'll be like God - not true - knowing good and evil - true. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and was desirable for the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she gave to her husband with her - I've often wondered why Adam never spoke up when all of this was going on, the silent husband.

And he ate, went along with it, went along with his wife's plan. Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. Then they heard the sound of the Lord God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said: where are you? - not meaning He didn't know where he was. He's trying to get him to come out into the open and enter relationship, but he's so cloaked with shame he said: I heard Your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. And the Lord said: who said you were naked? Who told you? Have you eaten the fruit of the tree?

So we see here the entrance of shame. Sin introduced two or three new emotions; here's the first. Sin introduced a deep sense of guilt, followed by a sense of shame, followed by fear. Sin brought it in. That's the entrance of shame, and of course sin continues to keep it there. Some families get so full of shame, that it literally travels from one generation to another. Cultures can be full of shame, organisations can be full of shame, relationships can be full of shame - but shame entered firstly here as a result of sin. So when they sinned, they broke the boundaries God had set them, and immediately something left them. You see when they sinned they became separated from God who was the source of identity. Now think about this: if God was the source of our identity and we become separated, we've got to find it somewhere else. The answer truly is in not finding it somewhere else. The answer is in finding our relationship with God again, so sin caused a breach. The Bible says: all have sinned, and when Adam and Eve sinned, not just was their relationship broken and their intimacy broken, but something departed from them which they previously had. It was called glory. It was goodness. It was a manifestation of the life of God upon them, that allowed them to live free of shame.

Now as soon as that left them, suddenly they became conscious of themselves. That's the first thing that shame does; it causes us to become focussed inward on ourself. We become aware of ourselves, and of course the problem with sin is that all have sinned - notice what the Bible says - all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. Let me put it another way. All of us enter this world with a broken relationship with God, and we don't carry the glory of God on our life. We're aware we're somehow lacking, and so we're vulnerable to being shamed. It's the condition of every person, so notice it says: the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew. That word 'knew' means to be intimately acquainted, or to experience something, so as soon as they both sinned, immediately they had an experience inside. They became conscious of something they never were conscious of before. It was a feeling they had. It was a bad, bad feeling, and notice what it says in Verse 10. He says: I was afraid. He was filled with fear - we're going to look at this in a moment.

He was filled with fear, because of my condition. I was ashamed of the condition I was in, fear overwhelmed me, and so I did the only thing I thought I could do, which was to hide myself. So shame always will have with it, fear and hiding or covering over, so shame is firstly an intimacy thief. It stops me coming near to God. Secondly, it's an identity thief, it caused me to hide who I am, and cover what I'm like, so I wear a mask and you don't really know me. That in turn, because I'm wearing a mask and you don't know me, I can't be intimate with you either, and here's the dilemma. We have in church many, many people who are lonely. It's not because God isn't here. It's not because there aren't people around you, who don't love you. There are. God has come in many ways, in healing and touching and His presence in all kinds of ways, people connect in groups and whatever. Yet still in the middle of it people feel alone, and that loneliness that's in there is the consequence of shame and its work in your life.

Unless you recognise it you can never break out, because shame caused them to be afraid, and then to cover up, and unless we address that in our personal life, and learn how to change the way we see ourselves, and the way we work with people, then we're going to live in this bondage of being - or held inside this area of being alone. I know exactly what this feels like. I've worked on this considerably in myself, and I feel now God's saying come to another level, come to another level, see? Come to another level. Now there's a difference between guilt and shame. You need to be very clear about them. Guilt has a completely different message to shame. When there is guilt, the message of guilt is simply this: I did something wrong, so I sneaked up and stole those lollies. I did something wrong. I went around there and spray painted the back of the building. I did something wrong, I've broken some acceptable standard or law - guilt. Guilt means I did something wrong. It has to do with my actions or my behaviour, but shame is a different message.

Shame says to you: there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with me. Shame has to do with your identity, who you are: somehow I am lacking, somehow I'm inferior and inadequate to the people around me. Shame is a message: something is wrong with me, I'm weird, I must be a loser or some kind of thing like that, or I don't fit. That's all shame talking, shame. Now shame is a very powerful, powerful spiritual enemy. If you don't confront it, it will affect the way you live your whole life, what you do, how you run your relationships. So shame then is a painful emotion, it's a painful experience, It's a feeling you have. It's a feeling you have, it's also a belief, and it's associated with something being wrong with me: I'm not acceptable, something's wrong. So the shame message is - and I'll put it in a way that's really easy too, I'll put it in three words that are really easy to remember. Then when you remember these things, then you'll be able to identify that's shame. Here's the message of shame. The message of shame is: damage; difference; and danger - damage, difference, danger.

Okay, the first part of shame is I'm damaged, something's wrong with me. The second part of shame is I'm different, I'm not the same as you. You notice the first thing that Adam and Eve did was they covered up - presumably they covered up their private parts, the parts that were different. So when shame is talking to you, its message is damage - you're damaged goods. You're different. You're different, you look different and difference is bad, see? Actually God made us all different, and difference is good, but shame will tell you difference is bad, you need to cover up the difference, so you can be alike. Now you can understand that if we don't get a touch and get connected back into relationship with God, we'll end up being religious, because religion will cause you to fear being - it'll never address the shame of your condition. It'll cause you to leave the place where you feel ashamed of, who you are, and be ashamed of being different; whereas God says: I MADE EVERYONE DIFFERENT! HA! When I made you I broke the mould! There's no one like you!

And you see shame will tell you you're different, you need to be the same. God says no, I made you different. I want you to be different, because every person will differently express what I'm like into the world. I want you to be different! I want you to be unique in who you are, your giftings - but there's some areas I want you to be alike, and that is like my Son and His character. I want you to be able to represent Me, and My character and desires in life, but to express it differently. So a religious culture always will be a toxic shaming culture, because it'll point out something's wrong with you, you're different and difference is bad, you need to co-operate and conform. So typically when religion abounds, or the spirit of religion abounds, and a new person walks into the church, immediately what's noticed is their difference, which is what is unique about them.

So someone comes in, and they've got this punk hairstyle, and their ears are full of iron and their nose is full of iron - of course they're different. Difference is neither good nor bad. You say aah what, that's bad. No, it's different, it's just different. Why not celebrate they're different? They may change their ideas and thoughts about the whole area of all the iron and metal and stuff and the hairstyle, but it's not up to you to change that. But religion will conform, or push a conformity, to behaving the same as everyone else, so if you behave differently, or are different, or are not the same as everyone else, you're different - and difference is bad! Of course that fills you with fear, what's going to happen to me if I'm different? You getting the idea?

So the first part of shame is that I'm damaged, something's really wrong with me, and I'm different to everyone else, and now danger; I'm afraid they're going to do something to me. I've got to get out of here, or I've got to conform. Can you see the whole package of shame, and you can see how it robs you of intimacy, it robs you of your identity, and it robs you of dominion? It robs you of all of those things. Just think it through now; firstly is I am damaged, therefore there's something not right about me, I better cover it up. I better put on a mask - that robs me of my identity. I can't be me. I can't even tell you that I'm damaged. What the heck will you do if you know I'm really damaged? What would you do if I told you just how damaged I am? Can you see? So the thing of being damaged on the inside, which we're all damaged by sin, and by the sin of others and sin of our own, we're all damaged to some extent. If I put a mask on, I cannot be authentic, so my identity is concealed, I sit in a group having a mask on. It's the mask of Bible Knowledge - I know all the Bible, but you will never know me, see?

There's many masks. We're going to look at a few of them in a moment, but the mask that covers you stops you being who you are - see, damage, damage. I'm different, I'm different. If I'm different that means there's something wrong with me, it's bad to be different. So now you see first my identity was sold, now I can't be intimate with you, because I'm different so I'll hold back. Then finally because there's danger to me, now I've got to put up some mechanism to defend myself. I'm going to find a way of stopping you hurting me. There it all is in a package - shame. It all goes together: I'm damaged, I'm different, and I'm in danger because you could hurt me, and I'm going to make sure I don't let that happen. And what are the consequences of all that? Well I don't know really quite who I am, because I can never be that, and I'm a bit frightened to actually come out in the open and get connected to anyone, in case they do some bad stuff to me, because it's happened before you know, so I'm in the church and I'm lonely.

The key thing is not to change your environment. The key thing is change what's inside you, and that we want to look out over the next couple of weeks about how to change what's inside you. If you don't change what's inside you, and gain God's remedy, then what happens is this thing just keeps cycling, and we're forced to wear a mask and can't be authentic. The thing we long for, intimacy, connectedness with God, connectedness with people, being able to be ourselves, discovering the giftings we have, being encouraged - it all eludes us, because shame has cloaked us. The Bible talks about shame being like a garment. It's not for us, shame is for our enemies. Shame is for God's enemies, see? We were never designed for shame. We're designed to be... [Unashamed] ...and when you're unashamed you're functioning right; when you're full of shame you're malfunctioning, something's wrong, it needs to be addressed - not by putting on a different set of clothes, not by conforming in behaviour, but by actually changing what's on the inside, and that's what Jesus came to do.

So the shame message is: damage, different and danger, and so we were not designed for this kind of thing. So the core message of shame we've said is damage, different and danger, but the next thing is, is there an emotion that comes with it, a motivation? When people - notice what Adam said. He said: I was afraid. Now what was he afraid of? He was absolutely filled with terror, and I know what that fear is like. This is what it is; it's the fear of being exposed. It's the fear that the lid will be taken off and there you are! Probably some of you have had dreams, and in your dreams you're naked in the middle of a crowd, and trying to find some way to escape. It's actually a shame thing talking to you. That's what it is, and the fear, the wanting to run away, can't get away, see? So we see there that fear, the fear of exposure, and then once you're exposed, then you'll be rejected or punished in some kind of way, so it's a driving fear inside people: if you could really see what I'm like, I'm terrified of what you'd do to me.

And see people just get covered in, and so the core strategy, how do people decide they'll fix it? Well you can see it with Adam and Eve.

They fixed it three ways: number one, they covered themselves so made fig leaves and covered themselves, literally got some coverings, put it over, now you can't see me. That was smart. Okay, fig leaves. Fig leaves meant a covering of self. The second thing they did was, they went into hiding. They actually hid themselves from genuine, authentic intimacy. This is ridiculous. I mean God comes there, and He's walking and talking with them, and then they take a hike, they hide away in the trees. Then when God was saying: where are you, He's not asking where are you like I don't know. He's actually saying: I know that my relationship with you has been breached, I'm coming looking to you. Will you talk to me about your condition? I wonder what would have happened if Adam had come out and said: Lord, I've just blown it, will You forgive me? It would have been totally different.

Here's the third part of shame then, we tend to blame everyone else, the final seal on it. Lord, that woman You gave me! In other words implicit in that is: listen, don't blame me! It's not my mess. Who thought up the idea of the woman aye? Come on. Come on. Who made the woman aye? [Laughter] Who brought her to me? And who's messed it all up for me? So don't talk - just talk to the hand, you know, it's You and the woman can sort this out. It's nothing to do with me, see? Of course you see, now he's not in the position now to actually take any responsibility. That's how he lost his dominion, he would not take responsibility for the things he could manage, so shame is an identity thief, it stops you being who you are; it is an intimacy thief, it stops you connecting in relationships, and it's a dominion thief, because it stops you taking responsibility to manage your world. It stops you being accountable, the blame game - be heaps of people here in the blame game.

I hear it. Every time I hear it, shame is talking, because the moment you blame someone else, you have made a decision not to be responsible for your life, to play the victim card, and this is not how we have dominion in life. To have dominion in life, we must be responsible, so becoming responsible for my thoughts, my emotions, my choices, my actions, is a part of having dominion, and shame will cause me to actually withdraw, and try and find someone somewhere to blame. Well it was Prime Minister, well it was the white people, well it was the Government, well it was the police, well it was my father, it was my mother, it was my background, it was the bottle. Whatever it was, listen: that stops you becoming responsible to build a different future. So there can be no place for shame in my personal life, nor can I tolerate it in my environment, and so in dealing with the issue of shame, we want to first recognise it.

Then we want to learn how we can overcome it personally, then of course since we live in an environment which is full of people shaming us, you've got to learn how to handle being shamed, and to also handle what you do with people. I even heard that expression this week: oh, shame on you! I thought where did that come from? My goodness me, that's straight out of hell. God has got no shame to put on people. He wants actually to restore us so we know how to walk, and if you fall over to get up quick without carrying shame. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, though he fall, though he fall, though he fall, though he fall, though he fall, he'll not stay down, cast down by shame, the Lord will lift him up - so God is committed to lift us up. Why? Because we're the apple of His eye! Why? Because He loves us. Why? Because He's not ashamed of us! He wants to lift us up, wants to get us up again!

Which is worse, falling over, or refusing to believe God wants to get you up again? Come on, think about that one. Most people think the worst part is I fell over, I did this, I did this, I did this. Listen, the worst thing is, you don't believe that God will help you get up again. That's a more important thing - not you fell over. Here's the message of the cross: Jesus died for all the sins that brought shame onto people, so that every person could be free of their shame, and not stay down, so if you get knocked down get up, push your shame aside, walk with God again! If you fall over again, get up again! WALK WITH GOD! I will not receive shame! [Applause] Jesus has got no name. He carried it for you, and He actually learned how to handle it when people tried to shame Him. You've got to understand this: the devil will seek to shame you. His first and primary attack on you, is on your identity. If he can shame you - well who do you think you are? That's the message see? If he can shame you, or if he can say something like: well if you're something, why don't you prove it and do something? If he can just get you working to establish that you're good enough then he's nailed you.

The beginning of Jesus' ministry, the devil attacked His identity by shaming Him. At the end of His ministry when He's hanging on the cross, the devil attacked His identity again and tried to shame Him. He learned, He knew the keys how to deal with shame, and we'll deal with that a little later. When you get shame, when things come against you, you need to know what to do, because around you you will find people - this is their way of relating. They're so full of shame themselves, that what they do when you try and raise an issue, or there's something happens, they'll try and shame you and put you down. You've got to recognise it, and learn how to stand up and defeat the thing, so for example you see it even in the biggest scene in the nation; someone stands up and expresses an opinion, and immediately now, what they've shared is not spoken about, but the person is attacked and shamed and put down.

The message of shame is a put down, put down, put down. Everyone hates to be put down. Everyone is called by God to stand up. Amen. Okay then, so we've got that impact of shame, and so the core strategy is hiding. We hide away, hiding, so they covered themselves, they hid themselves, and then tried to blame someone else. Okay, let's come down, I want to have a look in Luke Chapter 6, and I want to see if we can unmask shame in your life, want to just see if we can just pick up some things. In Luke Chapter 6 it says this. in Verses 43 and 44: If you want to know a tree, have a look at it's fruit. If you want to know a tree, have a look at its fruit - Luke, Chapter 6 - for a good tree doesn't bear bad fruit, and neither does a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree is known by its own fruit. You want to know a tree - fruit, look for the fruit. If the fruit's there, the root's there. You see an apple on a tree, either someone's conning you and they pinned it there, or that's an apple tree. Is that right?

If you see an orange, and you say well either someone's conning me, or that's actually an orange tree. Now we already learned, we know that from the trees - but what about if you looked at your own life in a mirror, and started to look and see, and you started to find the fruit of shame. What would you conclude is happening in the root system of your beliefs and inner life? That shame has got a grip, shame is working, and you're just not even aware of it, because that's the nature of the kingdom of darkness, is to work unaware. So if we want to have a look at shame operating in our life, then we need to see how it affects us and impacts us. I've jotted down some things which are all fruit of shame, when inside I am damaged, I don't like what I'm like, I'm different. I'm different to everyone else - man, difference is bad and whoa! I'm in danger, something will happen to me, I'm afraid.

Then we're going to do some things to try and deal with it, and it's the things you do to deal with it which are the fruit, so if I look and see the fruit in your life, I absolutely know that shame is there. I'm NOT ashamed! Now listen, come on, if the fruit's there - if it's orange there it's an orange tree, is that right? Okay, here's some of the fruit of it. Okay, let's go for a few things, alright then. I've got a heap of them so I'll just throw them out, and just every time these things come up, I look and think oh my goodness, there it is, there it is again. Okay, shame - anger, especially when there's injustice. Now if you've ever experienced injustice in your life, you will have felt ashamed. You'll feel shame, you were badly treated, and sometimes the shame is shame at being powerless: I couldn't do anything about it. You know what will happen the next time you see someone treated unjustly? There'll be an anger rise up in you that's beyond anything that's relevant to the situation. It's an anger that's coming up out of the fact that you were shamed and treated wrongly, and so anger is a fruit.

Performance is a fruit. Now God wants us all to be motivated, wants us all to work hard, and I'm not talking about working hard or being diligent which biblical. We're talking about being driven, so your life can't even be balanced anymore, you're like a workaholic. Workaholics have shame operating on the inside of them. They don't like who they are. Someone shamed them - maybe they just told them: you'll never amount to anything. I'll prove it! And so the shame of that condition that they have, they rise up, and then they're driven by the shame, and when a person's driven to perform by shame, they actually lose all perspective and balance in their life. They get out of balance everywhere, and it's basically because inside they don't like who they are. They need to actually get shifted in a different way.

Another thing that comes as a result of shame is control. Now by control I'm talking about ungodly control. See when a person's got shame they're afraid, so what they try and do then is they try and control all the relationships around them, so you can't possibly hurt me or shame me or show me up. And so a person who's got deep shame in their life, will then begin to try and control everyone around, so you can't make me look bad, okay? And so parents who have shame in their life will try and control their children, so their children don't make them look bad. Now you've got to understand this about human design: God made us to be unashamed and free, and here's the thing. When someone tries to control another person, that person may apparently submit, but they become incredibly devious and creative in finding ways to rebel and find their way. There's no way you're going to tell me what to do. Even if you try to, and even if it looks like I'm doing it, I might be sitting down on the outside, but inside I'm standing up!

It's extraordinary when control comes, how people can find a way around it in various ways - so control, lost identity and living identity through others, some women who are ashamed, live their identity out through their children. Some can live it out through being in a position - I remember we used to catch a bus from Napier to Hastings. There was a guy there, insignificant man really in many ways but he had a uniform on. Well you can't believe what that uniform did. He became a Nazi - immediately a little bit of power! The uniform has changed him, and now he's got a world of young people to control on the bus! No way is it going to work of course, however it was an attitude he had, a little bit of power, you know? So some people with no identity, or shame, will struggle in that kind of area. Shame will also cause people to put down others, and I recognise in my own life a couple of aspects of shame; one was being very negative. You know, you'd see eight positives and two negatives - man, I'd get obsessed with the negative, couldn't get over the negative.

Another area was the area of putting down, of comments or remarks that were hurtful to others. It was actually shame-based. It came out of an originated shame on my own life. Another area is no sense of belonging, that's another one I really struggle with. I can be in the middle of a crowd and feel like I didn't belong. That's because shame has isolated you, and you have no connectedness. When a person has a strong sense of identity, they're known for who they really are. They have good intimacy; it's a sense of belonging and being connected, but when you have shame around your life you don't feel you belong, and you don't feel you're connected. Now that's why a lot of people in church don't feel they belong. It's nothing to do with what's outside you, it's internal. It's a shame message talking to you. You need help to get out of it, need to actually face the thing, and do what's needed to break out of the thing.

Another area that shame does, it causes people to be withdrawn. They'll be a shadow, and they're present but they're not present. They project nothing of their spirit into the immediate surrounding. They're there, but it's like they're not there, and you can actually learn how to do that; shut down so you're almost like you're not there, and funnily enough you can be in the group, and no one even noticed you were there, because your presence was not manifest. You never opened your heart and spirit to connect with people. One of the keys of releasing the power and presence of God into an environment, you have to be free of shame, so your spirit can open up and release your inner life, and what God has put in there, into the area around you. We'll share that with you when it comes to ministering - when it comes to ministering to people for example, when you minister to people, God expects you to give what you have, in other words not stand back remotely, and say: oh God bless that person, they need help, but rather what I have I release to you. Something you have, you give. Shame will stop you giving what you have, cause you to withhold it and be shy, withdrawn, and then come to agree that's what I'm like, and I'm different - and that's bad.

See, we've got to break these things off us. Hopelessness, self-pity - man, I used to wallow in self-pity, pity parties, no one else was invited to and it would go on for days. Terrible thing self-pity, but self-pity is an evidence of shame, embarrassed and shamed about what we're like; suicidal thoughts, hypersensitive to criticism. If someone says a little thing and next thing oh, what did they mean by that? What did they mean by that? Blah blah blah blah - and you obsess with what people are thinking about you. That's shame talking. That is shame talking to you and paralysing you with fear. Distrust, people who have got shame can never trust anyone, can't build healthy relationships. They become self-focussed, in other words, I think they're talking about me, I KNOW they're talking about me! I know this is ALL about me! That's the message of shame, it's all about me. Well get out of that place.

See, fear of relational intimacy. Some people are emotionless. They're ashamed of their emotions, so they shut down their emotions, and now they have no emotions, and somehow they're more male because they have no emotions - not so. They've now become very difficult to relate to as a woman, because they're ashamed of the emotions and they've shut them down, they can't talk about them. Addiction is another one; alcoholism, sex addictions, work addictions, all of these kinds of things. All of them are a desire to somehow make me feel better, because I just think I'm damaged, and I don't like what's going on inside me. Now if you don't understand that shame is driving it, you can't get out of it. Shame - we need to look at it in another session, how shame comes into our life, and how we actually receive it without even realising it's there, and then it's manifesting, and what we can do to start to break out of that cycle. We need to be able to break out of this thing, we don't want it around me.

I can remember as a young boy, and we'll see it next week when we look at some of these how it enters in, but often it enters in when you're quite young. Sometimes it enters in through family, but I can remember for me as a young child growing up, at about the age of five. I'd just started primary school. We didn't have any pre-school stuff in those days, so I'd just started primary school, it was actually Marewa School over in Napier there. I started over there and I was probably about six months into it, and I got something wrong in my hair. Of course it's easy to treat now, but in those days they couldn't treat it. It was called ringworm, which is basically I must have handled some cat that had this thing and scratching my hair, I'd got this thing in my hair. Now in those days they couldn't deal with it, so the only way they had to deal with it was, they shaved off all your hair, and what they couldn't shave off they used a piece of tape and pulled the rest all out until you were left absolutely bald.

If that wasn't bad enough, now you've got to go to school bald, so my mother thought she'd protect me. Lovely mum, she wanted to do the best so she made some kind of thing to put over me. Well that made it even worse. Nowadays of course - this was before Cojac. It was alright see if Cojac had been he could have saved me you know. I could have just said oh, Kojak! But he hadn't been around so bald is weird and different. Then of course I became the jeering of people there, and then I was assaulted more than once, with people wanting to actually expose this condition. You can't imagine at five years old what you believe about yourself, and how you feel about yourself, and so I struggled with two other areas which are natural areas. One was lack of co-ordination physically when it came to ball games. You can't believe what that does to you, when you can't do what everyone else can do - something is different, something is wrong with me.

Then I was short sighted as well. I wear glasses now. I never took glasses on until I was in Sixth Form. Because I was so filled with shame about my weakness I never admitted it. See, shame causes you to conceal and cover yourself. I was ashamed about my weakness, I was ashamed about my vulnerability, I was ashamed about who I was. I withdrew. I could not handle school relationships very well, and so I was extremely lonely because of shame, and the fear that goes with it, the paralysing fear someone will find out. Now you understand that? That shaped my whole growing through high school years, and those are the years when you're impressionable, when your life is being formed, when the way you see yourself is being shaped, so I understand the message I'm talking about. So I tried to compensate in a number of ways, so if you'd seen the fruit, you could easily tell what it was; number one, I over performed. I struggled and just buried myself in work, and separated from people. You could tell.

Second, I went away into a place where I didn't have to connect with people. You see the identity's lost, intimacy's lost, dominion lost. It's a terrible place to be, in the place where shame dominates your life. I never knew about the devil and what he could do. I never knew about Jesus and what He did. It was years later when the Lord helped me to face and address this issue of shame. Let me just finish with you a couple of scriptures. One is found in Romans I think, Chapter 9:23, and it says: Those who put their trust in the Lord will never be ashamed. Now does that mean, well we'll put our trust in the Lord? What does that mean, that we'll never be ashamed? Well those who trust Him in their walk, God will never, never allow them to be disappointed and ashamed in the long term, but do we still suffer with shame? Yeah. We need Jesus to help us.

Let me finish with this story. We don't need to read it, it's found in Mark 1. I love this story, and the Lord drew my attention to it this morning and I saw it a little differently. There was a man who was different, and was damaged. He was a leper. In other words, he had a totally disfiguring disease that was visible to everyone, and he was separated from everyone, because lepers had to be separated, so there was no intimacy. His identity was not you are a valuable child of God; you are a leper, stay away. So here's this man. What is he going to do? A man absolutely helpless, covered with the shame of leprosy, with the feeling of being different, the feeling of being damaged, the feeling of no power and he heard about Jesus Christ. It says he came to Him, and he fell down on his knees imploring that Jesus would help him. I just saw this morning something I hadn't seen before, the significance of the touch of Jesus. This man had been isolated. This man had no touch. This man was struggling with who he was, and Jesus didn't - before He even healed him, before He addressed what was the outward problem, He came near to the man, and He touched him, and looked into his eyes. He accepted him just as he was, and then He healed him.

Most people think that you've got to get your life right before Jesus will accept you. It's definitely not true. He just wants those who know they're a leper, to come to Him. He's not ashamed to reach out and touch your leprosy. Perhaps your leprosy's pornography, maybe some bad sexual relationship, maybe an addiction, alcoholism or gambling. Maybe there's all kinds of things in your life you're so ashamed of, you don't know what to do - then you're a leper, covered with shame. But instead of holding up a sign 'unclean' and avoiding, why don't you come to Jesus Christ, and let Him reach out, and let you know you're of value to Him? You're of value to Him. Everyone around you may be communicating messages: you're damaged, you're different, you're of no value, but we are of great value to God. That's why Jesus came. It was God in the flesh, coming to communicate the message, that in spite of the shame of our condition, we're still of great value.

You are of great value. Maybe you've been put to shame by what others have said and done to you, an abusive father, critical people, teachers, life's failures, but you don't have to stay there. Whoever will come to the Lord will never be put to shame. He'll never reject you, He'll never abandon you. His commitment is a covenant-al commitment to stay with you no matter what you're facing, to keep reaching out to you, no matter how many times you fall, and to keep telling you you're of value to Me. The message most of us have carried in our life is we're not much value, and we've got to prove ourselves. We've got to work hard, get money, get this, get that, get whatever. The message Jesus brings is: I value you without any of that stuff; can you come to Me?

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Isaiah 54:4 - “Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame, for you will forget the shame of your youth…..”

· Last week:

1) Man is made in the image of God.

2) Whatever God makes is good.

3) Man was clothed in the Glory of God.

4) Man was designed to be unashamed.

2. The Entrance of Shame:

a) Key Passage: Genesis 3:1-11

b) Sin introduced with it, new emotions = “Shame and Fear”

· Genesis 2:25 - “..they were both naked….the man and his wife and they were not ashamed..”

· Adam and Eve were clothed with the glory / goodness of God and had no sense of shame.

· When Adam and Eve sinned – they broke the boundaries God had set them, they changed.

· Sin separated them from the source of their identity and changed them.

· Genesis 3:7 - “Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked.

· Knew = 3045 = yada = to be intimately acquainted, experience, deeply conscious.

· They were ashamed of their personal condition.

· Genesis 3:10 - “I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself”.

· Their shame was accompanied by great feelings of fear.

c) The Massage of Shame:

· There is a difference between guilt and shame.

· Guilt: “I have done something wrong” - my behaviour.

· Shame: “There is something wrong with me” - my identity.

· Definition: Shame = emotional pain associated with having done

something wrong and lost the respect of others.

· The Shame Massage:

1) “I am damaged – something is wrong with me!” - no value.

2) “I am different – I am not as good as others!” - different is bad.

3) “I am in danger – I am afraid of being rejected!”

d) The impact of Shame:

· We were not designed for shame and fear – we were designed to be unashamed.

· Adam and Eve were deeply impacted by experiencing shame the consequence of sin.

i) Core Massage: Shame = Damage + Difference + Danger

verse 10 – “I was naked”

- Adam and Eve became ‘self focused’, self centered.

ii) Core Motivation: Fear….verse 10 - “I was afraid”.

- Adam struggled with feeling damaged and different, he was filled with fear.

- Fear of being exposed – fear of being judged – fear of being rejected.

iii) Core Strategy: Hiding…verse 10 - “I hid myself”.

Notice Adam’s response – his strategy for concealing the shame he felt.

a) Cover Up – verse 7 - They made themselves cover up.

- there was a loss of identity => putting on a mask.

- Identity = characteristic by which a person is known.

- Shame is identity thief – “I can’t be myself”

b) Hiding – verse 10 - “…they hid themselves from the presence of God…”

- There was a loss of intimacy – hide = to conceal, withdraw self.

- Intimacy = feeling of being close and belonging together.

c) Blame – verse 12 - “The woman you gave be with me, she gave me…”

- there was a loss of sense of responsibility .

- Responsibility = accountable for something within ones own power.

Shame is a Dominion Thief - “It is someone else’s fault, I am like them”.

· Who told you that you were naked? - Genesis 3:11

· The devil loves to take advantage of our damaged condition to accuse and condemn us. He is the accuser – Revelation 12:10

· The devil loves to shame people because he himself has been stripped of all his rank and privileges as an angel and clothed with shame – Ezekiel 28.

3. Unmasking Shame in your life:

Luke 6:43-44 - “Every tree is known by its own fruit”.

The presence of shame in your life can be recognised by the fruit it produces.

Trying hard to perform better is not the solution – the root of shame must be removed.

Examples:

* Anger, esp. injustice

* Shame/Put Down other

* Hopelessness

* Self focused

* Performance

* Constant comparisons

* Self Pity

* Fear of relationship

* Control

* Consistently focused on negative

* Suicide

* Emotionless

* Lost identity - live through others/positions

* No sense of belonging – always on outer.

* Hypersensitive to Criticism

* Addictions

* Arrogance superiority

* Withdrawn

* Distrust

* Blaming

People clothed in Shame can never fulfill their destiny and purpose.

Shame:

= Wear a mask, create a false self (identity).

= Maintain distance – unable to be intimate.

= Transfer the shame onto others.

Where there is fruit – the root is present.

Romans 9:33 - “Whoever believes on Him (Christ) shall not be ashamed.

Mark 1:40-42 - Leprosy – shame of identity, loss intimacy, powerless. Jesus touched him and renewed his strength.

Sources of Shame (3 of 6)

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Shame has 3 main sources: Our own sin; Satan 'the accuser'; and the shaming actions of others. Shame is internalised, creating an ungodly belief. Looking at examples of life situations will help us recognise the shame message we have agreed with. These are powerful keys for breaking free. The first is coming to Christ, who bore our shame, and understand our suffering.

Well I want you to open your Bible, look in Genesis, Chapter 2. We're just doing a series on shame, I want to pick it up now, want to begin to look at the sources of shame, and we want to just have a look then at the steps that we can take to break out, because there's steps out. I don't want to do it all at once, want to just do one step today, then we're going to look and progress over a couple of Sundays, how you break this thing off your life. Let's just have a look in Genesis 2, and just revise where we were for those who are perhaps here for the first time - Genesis 2, Verse 25; They were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed. So God's original design was we should be unashamed. Unashamed means you can be who you are, there's nothing at all that you feel embarrassed about, about your life, about your ears, your nose, your height, your hair, your anything. You're just happy to be who you are.

We saw that when people are unashamed as God designed us, then people can be connected in relationship. We become confident, and also we're able to apply what we've got to life. We can be quite creative in our various areas of life, but when shame comes around our life everything changes - so let's have a look in Genesis 3, what happened when shame came in - Verse 7. Then - that's after Adam and Eve had sinned - then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew were naked. They became conscious and aware of something they didn't realise before - and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves coverings for their loins. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God in the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him: where are you? And he said: I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself. The Lord said: who told you you were naked? Who told you? Who have you been talking to?

You see what happens now as Adam and Eve sinned, as they broke their relationship with God, something that God had imparted to them was lost. The Bible tells us very clearly that man was made to be clothed in glory, so we see that the original Adam and Eve were covered with the life of God. Their life radiated the presence of God. We saw that they were very good, part of God's creation, but the moment sin entered in, something changed. They actually became different. They became separated from God, and different on the inside. The glory, the life that they had, the beauty that they had, now had disappeared, and they became very self-conscious. Before they had not been self-conscious or self-focussed at all; now the presence of something wrong - we saw that shame, the message of shame is: something is wrong with me, I'm damaged. The message of shame is: I am different, and now I'm in danger that I will be exposed, rejected and hurt, I have to do something.

You notice when God came to Adam, what he said to Him was this: Adam spoke to God and he said: I was afraid. I felt deep fear come into my life, and he said: because I was naked, because something was wrong and damaged, and so I hid myself. We saw the two things Adam and Eve did as a result of fear; one, they concealed themselves one from another, and we saw that shame, when shame is around your life, you will cover over who you are. You'll try to put on a mask and be something you're not, and we saw also that they hid from God, they hid from an intimate relationship with God. We saw that shame is an intimacy thief, it stops you connecting intimately in any relationship, because you can't really reveal who you are. If you showed who you are, well you might be exposed and shown up, and rejected or judged, and that's extremely painful. The Bible says they said: we were afraid. They'd never felt shame, never felt fear, never run away and hid before, and now the moment they've sin, something has changed in their life.

So we saw that these were some of the impacts of shame. We want to pick this up and take it on a little bit further now, and what I want you to pick up first of all in Genesis 3, Verse 21, it says for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. So we see Adam and Eve had covered themselves. When shame is around your life, you just are terrified someone will get to know you. That's why people who are covered with shame will always avoid the prophetic. They don't want to be around anyone who's prophetic, because they feel immediately, that prophetic person is looking right into their life, and can see what they're really like, so they avoid them. The other kind of people that people with shame hate is people who move in deliverance, for exactly the same reason. They fear that you can look into their life and will see what they're really like, and so they avoid you.

One of the experiences I've had over many years of ministry is, ministries avoid me, because once they hear I work in deliverance immediately they don't want to know me. And some, because I work in prophecy, the same reason - they will immediately avoid me. They'll just take a step back, and I know as a result of that that there is shame in their life. There are things covered and hidden they don't want me to see, and the only way to get out of that is to withdraw from that person. Now you notice also this, that when Adam heard the voice of the Lord, so even though he had sinned, he could still hear the voice of the Lord. When he heard the voice of the Lord, he ran away and hid. Now one of the things that I've found that happens is when people have got things in our lives that we're ashamed of, we want to hide from God, so we stop coming to fellowship. One of the first signs there's shame on a person's life, if they've been a Christian walking with God, and something's gone wrong, they will immediately withdraw, because the presence of God brings to mind this painful condition.

So when you come into church for example, if things are going wrong in your life, how many people would say this: you feel like everyone can see right into you, and see what's going on in your mess? Is that true? Yeah and you don't want to be there, so you try and find a place to hide in the middle or hide in the back, or just don't come or go get busy doing something. That's true, it's what people do. It hasn't changed a bit. When people feel ashamed, we hide. We just find ways, clever ways, sophisticated ways of hiding and covering what we're really like. Some become over-cocky, some get over-confident and arrogant, some people tell lots of jokes, some people withdraw and hide. Some people get very busy and work, some people show off the stuff they've got, but all of it's fig leaves and hiding, all of it. It all stops them connecting authentically, and God wants us to be helped.

So you notice here in this scripture here that God helped them. The first thing that God did, after confronting the condition and laying out the consequences of it, the next thing He did was this: He actually made provision for Adam and Eve to have a covering, and it was actually a temporary covering until the day of Jesus Christ, when we could receive what He really wanted us to have back. So we see that it says: He made skins, He made clothes for them out of skins, so some innocent animal had to die, shed its blood in order that Adam and Eve could be covered, so right there in Genesis, you see a picture for us of the path out of shame. We have to actually come out of our place of hiding. We need to let go the coverings we've covered ourself, and receive God's provision, God's covering.

I'll say it again, it's very simple. We need to come out of the place of hiding, out of the trees, so maybe you've been hiding in business, hiding in family, hiding in your hobbies, hiding in this, hiding in that. God calls us to come out of the place of hiding, to a loving God who cares about us. He calls us to come to a place where we can then remove what has covered us, and receive from Him what He's provided for us, and when you have God's covering around your life, security comes. You're not worried if anyone finds you anymore. You're not worried if anyone finds out what's going on anymore - there's nothing to be found out. There's something has changed on the inside. We're clothed with something that God has provided, so we're going to move that way and end up there today. I want to just have a look and start to just open up some areas of how shame comes into our life.

I want to just talk about three sources of shame. I'm going to focus on one of them particularly. Here's the three sources of shame - the source is where it comes from, so the first thing it comes from is: our own sin, our own sin. When we sin, we feel ashamed of what we've done. The person who sins messes up their life, does something foolish, we feel ashamed, so there's a certain measure of shame comes because we blew it. In Proverbs 14, Verse 34, it says: righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. Sin brings shame. Now you can try and pretend there's no shame in it, but there is. When people blow their lives and get caught up in alcohol, drugs and they find themselves in a mess, there's a shame about it. You can tell there's a shame. People try and hide it all the time. Whenever we sin, there's a sense of shame, something is wrong with us, something has broken us, and so the Bible tells us everyone has sinned, so the first thing is fairly self-evident.

Our own actions can bring shame on our life, so one of the pathways out of shame, is to begin to live in God's wisdom, so you don't goof-up and do stupid things. You begin to live a life that's very productive. The second source of shame are demonic spirits. Notice what the Lord says in Genesis 3:11. Who told you you were naked? Who told you you were naked? It implies in this scripture, although it doesn't directly state it, that someone had told them they were naked. Someone had mocked them, ridiculed them, and laughed at them. It doesn't record that part, but God does ask: who said to you that you were naked? How did you actually know you were naked? Who's been talking to you? Who have you been listening to? So one of the things we see about the devil, and the Bible describes it in Revelations 12 and Verse 10; he is an accuser. The devil himself was once an angel clothed in light. He was cast down, and his angelic coverings and beauty was taken away, and he is clothed with shame and dishonour.

So what he seeks to do, is to point out everything wrong in your life, so you'll find one of the major strategies the devil has, spirits of shame, spirits of fear, all kinds of tormenting, accusing spirits; they attack us, and try and point out where we lack and where we fail. You have to be aware, there is a spirit world around you, and demons will come, and if possible attach to your life, then begin to whisper into your ear. If you begin to listen and take on-board their lies and come into agreement with them, after a while you are in agreement with the spirit of shame. The problem is when you are in agreement with it, it's empowered to operate in your life, and you don't even know that there's a demon there. Imagine walking around, and you've got a demon walking, he's with you all the time, and it's just talking into you all the time.

Any time anything happens, immediately he shames you, and these terrible, painful feelings rise. You feel guilty. You feel ashamed of yourself, feel vulnerable, you feel afraid. You want to run away, want to hide, you begin to bluff and bluster and try and put out a front that you're something different to what you are, in reaction to this demonic assault. So this happens to people, it happens to everyone. No one is exempt from those attacks of shame. No one is exempt from the attacks of the accuser - even Jesus, when He began His ministry. In Luke, Chapter 4, it tells us that the devil said to Him, immediately, he said: if You be the Son of God prove it. In other words I don't really think You're the Son of God, I don't think You are who You say You are. You better do something to establish Yourself. When Jesus was on the cross: if You're the Son of God, come on down, prove You're something, prove You can do it. Do you understand that this is an attack of the devil against people's identity?

Let me show you another example of it. It's found in Nehemiah, Chapter 2. Nehemiah - his name means the comfort of God. He's very much a picture of the Holy Spirit, but he was a builder. He had a mission in life to build, rebuild the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and demolished, and as with every work of God, immediately you begin the work, the devil comes to do certain things. Notice what he does here. We'll pick it up at Verse 18. I told them of the hand of my God, which had been good upon me, and also of the king's words he'd spoken to me. They said: let us rise up and build. And they set their hands to the good work - so they've got a vision together of building something great for the Lord.

Then it says: but when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the Ammonite the official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said what's this thing you're doing? Will you rebel against the king? Let's just stop there. The moment they tried to build something for God, the Bible tells us the enemies, the enemies of God, the enemies of His work - in your version if it's King James it will say this: They laughed us to scorn. They mocked and ridiculed. They belittled us. In other words they were shaming them. They were saying words to cause them to feel inadequate for the task that was ahead of them; who do you think you are? We think you're going to rebel. Who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing?

They were hurling abuse, and actually mocking and laughing at them, and that is the way that these demonic spirits of shame and fear and so on work together. They mock and ridicule and belittle, they belittle YOU. They try and make you feel small. They try and make you feel inadequate. They try and make the task seem too big, and your efforts absolutely insignificant. They actually use shame to disgrace you to giving up what you've started out to do. That's why it's a powerful weapon, and we have to learn how to defeat this enemy of shame, how to break it off our life, and be unashamed. Now look what Nehemiah did. And Nehemiah remember is a picture of the Holy Spirit. He said then I answered them and I said: the God of heaven Himself will prosper us. We are His servants. You notice how strong he is, in who we are. We serve a great God, and He will prosper us, and we are His servants! You, you've got no place here. Get out of here. [Applause]

Notice the strong, unashamed response to demonic attack, a strength coming out of relationship with God, a strength coming out of knowing who he was, and an absolutely intolerance for any shaming by anyone else. So as we take this journey out of shame to become unashamed, one of the things you have to develop in your life is a great confidence in this God we serve. He is a great God. He is an awesome God! He is a good God! He is a faithful God! He is a mighty God! Oh, and I'm one of His servants! See, you need to know who you are, need to know your value to God, and so we'll see that the journey out of shame involves changing how we see God, changing how we see ourselves, and changing how we relate to others, because most of the shaming that comes, comes through people. So there's partly the shame we have to deal with, the shame of our own sin, our own failure and the demons that come with all of that, but also there is a shaming that comes through people, and that's the other area I want to talk about.

I want you to be able to recognise it. Maybe you'll recognise one or two things here, and then we're going to look at the path out, and I want to break it down into some steps out of shame, just how you actually break the hold of this thing around your life, until you change the way you live your life. It will affect your relationships, because there's some things you're not going to stand for any more. There are some things you won't put up with any more, and it may be that some people that you've hung out with, who keep shaming you, you won't hang out with them any more. You've just got to make a decision - I'm going to be who God called me to be, I'm going to walk with the Lord, and I ain't taking shame from no one. You've got to get that sort of thing inside you, see? So let's have a look then.

I want to just list for you some ways that others shame us. When people shame us, when people deliberately by words, or their actions against us, cause us to feel damaged, or different, or something's wrong with us, initially you feel tremendous pain. I'm going to give you some examples of it, and you may identify with some of them, but what happens is we begin particularly when children are very young - children who are very young are very self-referenced. What they do is whatever's going on around them, they tend to think that I'm somehow the cause of it, so if mum's angry, somehow I'm the cause of it. They tend to blame themselves. Later on as they grow up others tend to shame them in different ways. I want to list for you now a few ways that people can be shamed.

The first one is when a child is born out of wedlock, often the mother feels tremendous shame. She feels embarrassed about her condition, and she carries with her a sense of shame that can be imparted, so that the child even from birth, feels shame around their life, something's wrong with me. I wasn't wanted, wasn't expected, there's something not right about me. So a person can grow up not even being aware, that this thing has been in them right from the core of their being, right from when they first began. The truth is, God always wanted you, and your birth was not a surprise to Him. The lie is: you were never wanted, and with that powerless to change that thing, the feelings of shame, something's wrong with me.

The second area of course is that of physical abuse. When people hit, or beat, or slap around a child or an adult, the person feels very vulnerable and they feel ashamed of themselves, feel ashamed of being weak and vulnerable. Physical abuse inevitably leads to shame and fear. It always does, so it's a major doorway into people's lives. Hitting, beating, especially if there's anger, strong anger, so many parents will discipline their child in anger, and the message the child gets, is not what you're trying to get them to get. The message the child gets, is there's something wrong with me, they're angry at me, and they don't even connect the behaviour very much to what you're saying or doing; they've picked up the anger and the way they're being disciplined, and they take on a message of shame. They feel humiliated and walk away, and they start to begin to get feelings and beliefs of shame around their life.

Another one is verbal abuse. Verbal abuse is a major one. Verbal abuse is where people begin to shame someone by calling them names: you're stupid, you're this or you're that, or where they call them a name - Big Ears. You're just Big Ears, so the child gets a name, and that name associated with something they're powerless to change, causes them to feel tremendous shame about a part of their body, so all of us at some stage would have experienced shaming, where it came from whatever source, over words spoken to us, name-calling, where you were called a name. Sometimes a nickname is given - it's rarely ever to your credit. It's usually a nickname that's derogatory and shaming, and when you take that on-board and allow yourself to be called by that, you've allowed that shaming to come upon your life - very hard to live differently then. You have a name, use your name. Don't let people put a nickname on you that's shaming to you, or highlights some lack in your life - so verbal abuse, name-calling, scolding, labelling, and constant criticism, constant belittling: you're so this, you never do this, or you're this.

See those kinds of statements speak in and cause the person to become ashamed of themselves, and shame gets around them, then they begin to internalise it, then they begin to feel that way right through life. No longer is the person abusing them, but they still feel like they're getting it everywhere they go, and they react angrily. Sexual abuse also causes people to feel tremendous shame. There's almost nothing like sexual abuse to cause a person to feel ashamed. Sexual abuse means they were exposed to seeing something they never wanted to see, hearing something they never wanted to hear, being touched in a way, or forced to do things that they never wanted to do. That causes the person to feel a deep sense of shame around their life. Tamar in the Bible, in 2 Samuel, was assaulted and sexually abused by her stepbrother or half brother, and she said: where shall I cause my shame to go from me? The Bible says: she was desolate. The shame came around her life, and she couldn't hold her head up, she just covered herself and hid, and could not function properly in life as a person, because of the way she had been shamed.

This is the horrendous thing about sexual abuse, is the shaming it brings around people, and the child or as an adult then becomes covered over. They can never enter into intimacy, because there's this deep shame that grips them, if you see what I'm really like, and what was really done, and what I was a part of, then you'll reject me. Sometimes, because of the way the child responds when they're being abused, they then feel even more ashamed about how they've responded in the abuse, and feel more guilty. Most times an abuser will put the blame on the innocent person, so they feel as though somehow it was all my fault. Now when you get some cultures where sexual abuse is extremely rife, and no one's saying or doing anything about it, then the whole culture becomes riddled with shame, the whole family becomes shame-based, because of the way it operates.

I've been around some families, and the name-calling, the name-calling that goes on, I've just literally cringed at the words that I've heard people called, by someone who's supposed to be their brother or sister. It goes on all over. I've noticed among Maori people quite often when I've been with them, I've heard the most horrendous shaming of one another, see, when we should be building one another up, instead of putting one another down - and words shame people. Words have death and life, words have power to shame. It's not just in that culture, it also exists in our culture in various forms, different forms, that same putting down, those words.

Another way that people are shamed is in the area of emotions. How many have heard this statement, boys don't cry? So what happens you get exposed to that, after a while you begin to believe inside, you're embarrassed about you're emotions, so you begin to shut the emotions down. You have many men today, and they cannot express healthy emotions in marriage or relationships, because they were shamed about their emotions; it's something wrong with me if I have emotions. Many young boys exposed to that whole Kiwi thing of rugby, racing, and beer, and they're perhaps more gentle or creative and sensitive, they become shamed about what they're like, and become very vulnerable to homosexual relationships. Shame is a very powerful thing. I remember being at school, if you didn't play rugby, what's wrong with you? What's the message you get - there's something wrong with me that I don't play rugby. What if I just don't like it, and don't want to? That's got nothing to do with it, there's something weird about you. Do you understand that? There's a shame message goes with it, it's in the culture. It's in our culture, very strongly in our culture. If we don't recognise it, and then begin to learn how to deal with it, both in stopping it coming around our own life, and standing up and not shaming others, we're going to find it'll happen continually to us.

See, unfavourable comparisons - why can't you be like your brother? That shames you. You'll never be like your brother, you'll never be like your sister, you'll never be like someone else. You're unique, but the belief that comes with it is: you should be like them. Well actually, no you shouldn't, because you're unique, you're different. See the lie of shame is: I'm different and that's bad, but the truth is: I'm different and it's good! Can you understand that you get that lie builds in, so you'll see that in dealing with shame you have to start to deal with the lies that people build up, we build up in our heart as a result of it. Manipulation and control - if you love me, you'll do this. You know what happens is people begin to perform to get the approval, and then they feel ashamed that they gave up what they really thought.

What happens in so many relationships, and I've seen this, I've actually had to deal with it in my own life quite in a major way, of so much wanting to approved, that you actually don't say what you really think when you should be speaking. You're silent, because you feel ashamed that your view, your thoughts, your ideas are different to someone else's. Now of course as a believer, our thoughts and our lifestyle and lots of things we do are different, so we've got to be unashamed of that difference, because that difference is unique. It's good, and actually the difference that we can bring to the world is what will make it healthy, amen. Okay, come on, I'll give you a couple more. You're getting very quiet about this.

Constant blaming and criticism - blaming, people who have got shame in their life will blame everyone else. Remember when Adam, first thing he did, hey God, You, You're the trouble, and that woman You gave me. See, blaming is an evidence or a reaction of shame, so you get some families where people are always being blamed. When you get a culture of blame, people feel ashamed, they always feel something's wrong with them, I can never do it good enough.

Rescuing, where a parent takes up the role of the child well beyond what they should do, and they begin to take their responsibilities on. The child feels I'm not good enough, I can't do anything right, so rescuing, where a parent over-rescues a child creates a huge issue in them.

Here's another one, financial poverty. Poverty in a family or poverty in your background can bring great shame, because often when you go to school you see these kids with all this stuff and then they begin to point out or make fun of, or ridicule you and what you have or don't have. Tremendous shame can take place. A lot of people have been driven to success in finances, well beyond what they should have, because they were shamed as a child at school - recognise that one? It's a major one that one.

Here's another one, a teacher's ridicule in front of peers. Many times in schools teachers instead of actually being able to encourage, lift and build, they ridicule or they say words that make the child belittled in front of their peers. I can remember being belittled in front of my peers. I can remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday, that's how vivid it was. A teacher standing over me at the age of 17, shouting at me, because I couldn't understand something. You don't forget it, it shames you. Because they're yelling, the whole classes attention is on who? On you and your lack of ability in some kind of way. It's appalling, absolutely appalling. People are shamed and belittled, and then they struggle to overcompensate and try and cope with what they've taken on-board see, so ridicule in front of peers.

Another place it takes place is peer ridicule at school, one of the worst places. That's why if you can build a strong young people's culture, and you've got two or three of you standing together, you can be quite supportive in school. But often in school kids are merciless. They will pick on a physical defect, and they'll ridicule the person. Maybe there's some kind of mental handicap or disability. They pick on it, and they're merciless. Maybe it's because of your colour. Kids are shocking the way they'll do this. They'll speak, and then the child becomes ashamed of who they are, and then don't want to go to school, hate it.

Some people are shamed because of their gender. I know and have prayed for many women who are ashamed to be a woman. If only they were a man, they would be treated different in life. If only they were a man, their dad would have really connected with them, and done something with them, and invested into their life, so people can be totally ashamed of being a woman. A woman's ashamed of being a woman, she will then conceal her femininity, her true identity is covered over, as she tries to compensate. You probably know people like that.

Divorce can cause great shaming. In the era when my father grew up, if a divorce took place, it was put in the newspapers, and advertised as a shaming public ridicule, see? It's got a lot less now, it's become more acceptable, but there's still a tremendous shame that children feel when their parents break up, and they're caught in the middle of the conflict and fight between one and the other. They live with shame, something's not right about me, I probably am to blame for this. Getting some of the ideas? There's a whole heap of them. Male chauvinism's another one. Male chauvinism's a major one in our culture. Male chauvinism is an arrogant pride by insecure males. They try to make out they're better than women and women feel it; sexist comments, sexist treatment. All of this, actually what it does is, it devalues and dehumanises the woman. It makes them feel like they're a sex object, rather than a person. That means they're being shamed, and women feel that deeply.

I've prayed for many women who wept and wept and wept, feeling shamed, because they were treated just like a sex object. Many men who do not value their wives, or learn how to cultivate love, cultivate intimacy in marriage, then just have a sexual relationship with their wife - she feels cheapened and used by that, and feels shamed by it. This is what goes on in our society, this is what goes all around, and we need to recognise this invasion of our lives by shame, where it comes, how it comes, and then begin to work to deal with it. When I was in Taiwan, the Lord spoke to me how there was something they did in the culture there, which shamed people. I began to just speak prophetically about it. Before I knew it, I had about 80 people up there weeping and waling, because they had been shamed by being scolded.

In an Asian culture, they scold them often, to correct them, and when the scolding is very angry, and very strong put down, and the person becomes ashamed, so shame is used to control the person in the family. It happens in churches, and I've picked it up in some churches. I said you can't talk that way, that's not how you talk to the children of God. They're children of God, just like you and I are. You can't do that to them, it's an evil, and so what we did then was I ministered to them. Well you can't believe the demons that came out of everyone, because they'd been scolded: spirits of death, spirits of hate, self-hate, spirits of shame, all kinds of demons came out of people. They screamed and - I haven't seen such a spectacular display in a long time, but it was over the issue of being scolded, by someone trying to control their behaviour.

Many times in families, people try and control the behaviour of others by shaming them. Another kind of shaming is ethnic shaming. The Bible tells us God has made us out of every tribe, kindred nation, every ethnic group has made one people, yet what happens is, we think that we're somehow better than others. Usually, to put it bluntly, the ones who are in the majority, think they're better than the ones who are in the minority. The ones in the minority feel shamed, because they're not accepted, valued or received like everyone else. It's true, and the church is somehow going to have to get a grip with this one, because the church is growing now - in this coming decade, it's going to become multicultural, and it's going to have to face the issue of how to cross not only the gender gap, but particularly the cultural gap between different cultures.

So cultural shaming means we think that we're better than someone else, our way is better, see? So there's a shaming comes on the minority group, until the minority become the majority, and it turns out they think just like us, that our way is better. Now we're in the minority, and now we're shamed. That's what goes on. That's what happens. Rarely does a group of people coming into a nation to settle there, think their way of doing things is less than the way of the people in the nation. They think it's more important, or its better, and when they've got enough numbers, then they become the predominant culture, and they shame the other culture. But Jesus has called us to be of one culture. He calls out every tribe, every nation, to become one culture. Kingdom of God culture, it'll have tremendous variety of expressions, depending on the culture people have come from, but it's still a kingdom of God culture, and it's not a western individualistic culture.

We have a western mindset, which we think is normal. It's completely anti-biblical. The Bible's concerned about family, about community. We're all about looking after me, number one, and getting ahead, and that breaches the whole concept of what God has built into His own culture, which some cultures in the earth really welcome that. Hey, you're getting all quiet. [Laughs] Don't get too serious on me. Interesting isn't it aye? Here's another area where people get shamed, and that is through the media. The media shame us. Now how do the media do it? Have you ever sat in front of a TV and watched some of the adverts? You'll notice they do the same thing, that in order to be happy, you need such-and-such a product! [Laughter] They're extremely clever - you can't be happy? How can you possibly say your life is right, unless you have da-da? And so we need all kinds - your kids get in front of the television, you know, to be happy they've got to have that latest toy. Get them away from the tele, you won't have half the expenses. [Laughs]

Okay then, so then of course the other place that shaming takes place is in the area of the church. Church is one of the worst at shaming people. Jesus has entrusted us the keys of releasing people from shame, and yet often what happens is through a judgemental attitude, we cause people to feel ashamed about being different. You see that judgemental attitude, Jesus confronted continually. The Pharisees of His day failed to recognise that the call of God encompassed all nations of the earth. They had gender prejudice, they had religious prejudice, they had racial prejudice, or ethnic prejudice, and when Jesus confronted it, they just wanted to kill Him.

You read Jesus' first ministry, first message that's reported Jesus preached, and you find what happens. Found in Luke, Chapter 4, He preached, they said: what a lovely preacher, what a nice man and then he began to tell them how God had blessed the Gentiles. That was it, they were up, they wanted to kill Him. Do you understand that Jesus confronted these things, continually confronted anything in the society that brought shame to people, and eventually they crucified Him for doing that - so then we get some idea now on shaming. How many people have come in, and you felt like you didn't fit; there's something wrong with me, and you felt shame because there was a judgemental attitude? People are sensitive to that. It resonates with what they've already got struggling inside.

Okay, how are we going to get out of it? So let me just define it, and then show you the steps out of it, then we'll get started on them. Looks like I won't get started too far today, but let me give you the keys. I want you to see where we can go on this. So we begin to recognise these doors, so shame is an accusing spirit that torments people. It's an emotional wounding, and pain that people have, and shame is also a deep belief: how I see myself, and how I see the world and God. So it's a belief, it's an emotion, it's a spirit, and if we're going to get free of shame, I've got to recognise what's needed to get rid of what, and there's different things needed to get rid of different things. If you had a learning disability, chances are you have tremendous shame, and you've tried to cover your inability to read all these years, ashamed it'll be found out. I couldn't believe it, it's the first time I'd actually ever met people who couldn't read, was when I went to Dannevirke.

It never occurred to me people couldn't read, just never occurred. It was quite a surprise for me, and then I found it was actually quite common. Then I found that God helped people who couldn't read - found one man there, amazing man, he never could read, and he asked God to help him, and he could read the Bible. Couldn't read anything else, he could read the Bible. I heard him read it, many times fluently - couldn't read anything else, so God gave him grace to do it, but he used to hide the fact that he couldn't actually read anything else, and he had to get his wife to do everything. He become ashamed of it. Okay, how do we get out of shame? So let me give you the four parts of getting out of shame, or four things I've identified are crucial, and we'll see if we can get one started.

Number one, how am I going to get out of shame? How am I going to get this thing, that's wrapped around me, so I don't like who I am, and I want to hide from you, how can I get that off my life? Here we are, number one. Number one, I must come to Christ, the shame-bearer. I need to come to Christ, and I'll open these parts up for you, each one of them up and develop them. But the first thing I need, Christ carried my shame at the cross. He is able to take shame off my life. He is able to totally set me free, not only set me free from shame, but restore what originally got us shame, which is being separated from God. He is able to put His spirit in me, so the glory that was originally there in man, now has come back inside man, and we carry the glory of God within us.

So the first step to getting free of shame is nothing cosmetic on the outside; it's a deep, transforming change, coming to Jesus Christ, who took our shame on the cross. He took the shame as He hung naked upon a cross, and then by faith in Him, I can receive His spirit into my life, and the Bible says then: I become a new creation. I become a different person. I'm one of God's kids now. I have a new identity. Now the dilemma of course is to shift your thinking to embrace the new identity - that's where we'll get to in just a moment.

The second thing I need to do, is I need to break my attachments to shame. I need to break free from any attachments to shame. I need to break free of them. I'll show you how to do that, and we'll share that next week. I need to break free of any place shame has got attached on my life. Maybe it was some parent shamed me, maybe it was the family background, maybe it was where I was in school, maybe it was failure, whatever it was that was done or happened that caused shame to get a hold of me, I need to break that thing and cancel it's power. I need to let go, what's held me there. I need to forgive the people involved, bring the grief and pain of it to the cross. I have to deal with that.

Then the third thing I need to do, is begin to change the way I think. That's the bit that takes the effort and the time. I need to change by inner beliefs, how I see God, and how I see myself. If you don't shift how you believe, the Bible says: as a man believes, that's how he lives his life - so if you don't shift what you believe about yourself, you will live out of the old shame-based belief system. So it's not a matter of just getting delivered. It's not a matter of just becoming a Christian. I need to shift totally the way I see myself, to agree with how God sees me now, and that's where many of us have not shifted. We still think of ourselves as we were before we came to Christ, and you can tell because of the shame that still lingers.

Finally, the last thing I've got to do, is I have to learn or change, I have to change the way I relate to people, have to change the way I relate to people. Number one, come to Christ, the one who took our shame; number two, break my attachments to shame; number three, shift how I see myself and how I see God, and four, change the way I relate. In other words, I need to learn how to refuse being shamed by people. I've got to learn how to do that, and we'll share some things, show you how to do it. I've got to stop shaming other people. I've got to stop shaming them. I've got to change totally how I am on the inside, and I've got to stop comparing myself with anyone else, start to celebrate who I am. So comparing with others leads to shame, because always, you'll compare the best in another man, with the worst in yourself.

So we've got to stop that kind of behaviour. I've got to change how I connect with people, so if they shame me, I've got to learn how to confront it, push it away and separate from that kind of people. If I've been one who's shamed other people, I've got to stop shaming people, otherwise it'll just come back, I'll reap what I've sown. So you getting the idea now? So to shift out of this thing of shame, the first place is to become attached to Jesus Christ, the one who carried our shame. I'll develop these things over the next couple of weeks.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Genesis 2:25 - “They were both naked, the man and his wife and they were not ashamed”.

· God’s original design for man – to be unashamed – connected, confident and creative.

· Shame is an enemy that attaches to people and steals their identity and intimacy.

· Genesis 3:7-10 - “I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself”.

- When sin entered Adam lost his covering of Glory – he was damaged by sin.

- Adam became conscious of being different – he was ashamed.

- Adam and Eve covered themselves - with fig leaves – verse 7

- Concealed themselves – amongst the trees of the garden – verse 8

· Genesis 3:21 - “Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made garments of skin and clothed them”.

· Adam and Eve had to remove their covering to receive what God provided.

· God provided a suitable covering for them.

· God’s covering required the death / shedding of blood of an innocent animal.

· This is a prophetic picture of God’s willingness to remove our shame by the Cross.

2. Sources of Shame:

1) Our own sin:

· Proverbs 14:34 - “Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people”.

· Reproach = to put to shame, humiliate.

· Our own actions can be a cause of embarrassment and shame.

· Romans 3:23 - ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.

2) Demonic Spirits:

· Genesis 3:11 - “Who told you, you were naked?”

· Adam and Eve were vulnerable because of their sin and changed condition.

· Most likely the devil came and exposed them to ridicule, pointing out their nakedness.

· Satan made them aware of their nakedness and impending judgment.

· Revelation 12:10 - “The accuser of the brethren …who accused them day and night”.

Satan = one who hurls accusations against us to shame and belittle us.

· E.g. Nehemiah 2:19-20 - “The enemies of God’s people shame and ridicule them. Nehemiah arises and Unashamedly throws of the shaming”.

3) Shaming Actions of Others:

· When others shame us the pain and grief is usually internalized.

· We begin to agree with the shame message: ‘Something is wrong with me’.

· Examples:

1. Unborn child – takes on the shame of his mother.

2. Sexual abuse – something forced on them which they never wanted.

3. Physical abuse – hitting, beating, hair-pulling, slapping face, angry hitting (child takes on the shame as if it is his/her fault).

4. Verbal abuse - name calling, scolding, labeling, constant criticism.

5. Shaming emotions - ‘boy’s don’t cry’, ‘you shouldn’t think like that’.

6. Unfavorable comparison - ‘why can’t you be like your brother’.

7. Manipulation / control - ‘If you love me you will’.

8. Constant blaming / criticism

9. Rescuing - taking too much responsibility for others (e.g. parents rescuing children, overprotect)

10. Financial neglect or poverty - personal value based on $

11. Teachers ridicule - in front of peers.

12. Born wrong sex - girls never properly valued, compared unfavourable to boys.

13. Divorce - children can feel shame of broken family.

14. Male Chauvinism - dishonoring and put down woman, treat as sex object.

15. Ethnic shaming - treated as inferior or with prejudice.

16. Media shame - constant communication of inferiority – appearance, possessions, positions, e.g. Barbie Dolls.

17. Church shaming - judgmental attitudes, pride and superiority.

· Shaming = making people feel they are damaged, lacking, inferior.

3. Breaking Free of Shame:

· Shame is:

a. An accusing spirit that torments.

b. An emotional pain and bondage.

c. A way of thinking, viewing God and self.

· Keys for breaking free:

1. Come to Christ - the One who bore our shame.

2. Break the Attachments to Shame.

3. Change the Inner Beliefs;

- How you see God

- How you see Yourself.

4. Change the Way you Relate to people;

- refuse to be shamed

- refuse to shame others

- refuse to compare with others

Key 1 - Come to Christ:

· Jesus bore our shame, He understands our suffering.

· Isaiah 50:6-7 - Jesus chose to pay the full price for shame.

· Hebrews 12:2 - Jesus despised His pain.

· Matthew 27:27-31 - Jesus was cruelly shamed by soldiers.

- Jesus was stripped – abused – shamed – ridiculed.

- The Crucifixion was a means of death and of public shame.

- Jesus’ shame was labialized in 3 languages – for all to see.

- Jesus bore our shame on the Cross. John 1:12; 2 Corinthians 5:7

Breaking Free of Shame (4 of 6)

Sun 16 Mar 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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A second key in breaking free is to identify our own type of covering, by checking out a range of common 'false identities'. Only when the mask is removed, can we become honest with ourselves, and how we were affected. What was my experience of shame? How did I feel? What message did it give about myself? How did I cover myself? As long as I stay covered, I am open to demonic spirits; but the truth sets us free, through Christ we can break all agreements, attachments, intimacy to shame.

Today I want you to be open for the spirit of God to change your life, and over the last few weeks we've been talking with you about shame and recognising shame, how shame enters, what it is, what it speaks to you. We're going to today, I want to just start the keys on how to get out of it. We're going to just summarise what we shared last week, and then begin to go and open up some keys for you. Keys are not just something you know about. Keys are something, unless you stick it in a door and turn it, it doesn't happen, and the dilemma in the Christian church on the whole is people continually think if I know it, that means I know it, but biblically the only way you know something is if it's operating in your life, when you've actually experienced what you know about. You understand the difference between - suppose we talk about flying a plane.

There may be this man over here, and he's read all the books on flying, he knows how to fly a plane. Then there's someone else who's gone through a training school, and has actually flown a plane. Now we wonder which one you would commit yourself to? [Laughter] Which one would you commit yourself to? Well you see in the western culture, we commit ourself to the one who's read the book, and we become book readers and not flyers, but if you really want to fly, you've actually got to get the handles of the thing and do it. So if you wanted to learn how to fly, you really want someone who's had experience with it, and you actually have to gain experience yourself. Most of what we did yesterday was giving people a chance to have experience with God, because once you've got that experience, it's never taken away.

Let's go back into the Bible, Isaiah 54, and we were there on that scripture, we started the year off with growth, growing, enlarging. I want to pick up Verse 4: Do not fear, you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced, you will not be put to shame, for you will forget the shame of your youth. You'll not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore. And so God's telling us not to be afraid, not to have a heart that's gripped with fear, and about five times in different ways, He talks about this issue of shame. He says: you'll not be put to shame, in fact you will forget the shame of your youth. When He's talking about the shame of your youth, He's talking about things when we look back into our life, we're incredibly embarrassed about, one, what we did, and two, what happened to us. Remember some things in your past you're very ashamed of, the shame of your youth, goofy stuff you wish you'd never done it, and it was incredibly embarrassing.

Of course there's shame associated with many experiences we have in our younger days, and He says this. What the Lord says, He said: you won't remember the shame of your youth. It will actually go out of your mind, you won't be aware of it, it won't come back to you. You'll actually be free of it. This is a promise to be free of shame. He makes a promise to us, to be totally free of shame, and then the fear of being exposed that goes with it. If you have a fear constantly gripping your life, that somehow you'll be exposed, uncovered, people will find out what you're really like, you have got a great deal of shame in your life. Shame and fear go hand in hand. With shame comes the fear I will be exposed, someone will find out, and if you're trying to control your world, trying to prevent yourself being discovered, then you have some major issues with shame.

We saw that shame is an identity thief. It steals away who we are. What it does is, it causes us to put a mask on, and hide who we are. Adam and Eve hid themselves; they covered themselves with fig leaves, they pretend, they put on a mask, so you never see the real person. The real person can never come out, and if the real you can never come forth into life, your identity, who you are, has been stolen from you. You are acting a part, but not authentic, and that's going to affect every relationship, so that brings us to the second thing we saw with shame. Shame is an intimacy thief, because if you've got a mask on, so no one can see you, and you're afraid of exposure, you can't get near anyone either. You can't actually get near anyone. You can be around a table with them, you can talk with them, you can share with them, you can go on holiday with them - but they never know you. They never can know you, and you can never be known while you've got that mask on, and while you can't be genuine.

We saw a whole number of ways that shame entered, and one of the areas that we talked about was how some people are ashamed of the feelings they have. Many people are ashamed of their feelings. Men are often ashamed of their feelings, so to feel sad, to feel hurt, to feel uncertain, to feel anxious. Men don't want to let anyone know what they really feel, because men usually are raised in a shame culture, where for any man to admit weakness, they will be immediately mocked and belittled, so men have a fear of being exposed, the fear of being vulnerable. For a man to cry, mostly in growing up, as you're a young man growing up, if you cry, it's perceived as a sign of weakness, and you are mocked and ridiculed as a cry baby. So what message do people learn? Don't let your feelings get out, then they become ashamed of their feelings.

Right now in the season in the church, many of you are beginning to experience feelings surfacing - don't be ashamed to have feelings. God's not ashamed of your feelings, He gave them to you. He doesn't mind you having feelings. He doesn't mind you crying, laughing, weeping. He doesn't mind you being angry, upset. He's quite happy about all of your feelings, and what He wants to do is to actually engage you in what you're feeling, and to help you walk through it; but if we bury our feelings, hide our feelings, cover our feelings, then we can't actually - we've got a shame thing around our life. Many men have struggled. I've struggled in that area for years, so I took some time to break through that, to be absolutely unashamed, to weep and to laugh, and to be open about feelings, because I grew up being ashamed of what was going on in my life, and tried to conceal myself.

So shame is a terrible thing. It steals away your life, and Jesus promised we can be free, so let's go back into the steps out of it. I guess you can find many books about it. I shared with you four steps that I think actually bring us out of shame: number one, we need to come to Christ. Two of them I'm going to develop today - number one, we actually need to come into connection with Christ. You must attach to someone who carried the shame, and I'll explain that in a moment.

Number two, we need to resolve or to break the attachments we have in our life to shameful experiences or people who have shamed us. I'll explain that in a moment too; we need to break the attachments. If you are attached in your life, and I'll show you how that happens in a moment - if you are attached to shame from your past, or people have shamed you, you're still attached to it, those attachments have to be broken.

The third thing, and this is now - so we're going to deal with two today. We're going to deal today with how I actually break out of shame, then we're going to look next time round at the changes I need to make, and how firstly change my inner beliefs, what I see God like, how do I see God, and how do I see myself. You have to change how you see yourself. If you don't change what you see yourself being like, and agree with God, you can't come forth and be the new creation man He called you to be.

Finally, we need to change how we relate. By that I mean how we relate to ourself with our weaknesses, struggles, pains and feelings and so on; how we relate to others, when they try to shame us, and how we relate to others in not shaming them. So you need to learn how to recognise and to deal with those things, and that's the journey out of shame. Attach to the Lord, the shame bearer; break with the past, with the shame; begin to renew how I believe and think and see myself, and begin to change how I live my life. Getting the idea? Yeah, great stuff, okay then.

Well let's go on and have a look at the first one then. I want you to look with me in Isaiah, Chapter 50. So the first step out of shame is to embrace Christ, the shame bearer. We need to embrace Jesus Christ as our shame bearer, and I'll show you what that means in a moment. Look what it says in Isaiah, Chapter 50. It says - Verse 6: I gave My back to those who struck Me, My cheeks to those who plucked out my beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting, for the Lord will help Me; therefore I will not be disgraced. I have set My face like a flint, and I know I will not be ashamed. We have to see here that Jesus personally experienced shame. He said: I did not hide from shame. He could have actually vanished. There were many instances where Jesus just moved right away from people, He fled to the wilderness, He walked through the crowd. He did not have to endure this being shamed, but the Bible tells us very clearly, He did not hide His face from it. He didn't hide His face from the shame and spitting.

It's talking here about His walk to the cross, and as He walked to the cross, people yelled at Him and abused Him, spat on Him, and then they pulled out His beard. Now I don't know if you've ever had a beard - women wouldn't know what I'm talking about here, but the men would know. If you had some whiskers, and someone's pulled them and tugged them out, that hurts. See, ask Clive see. [Laughs] It hurts! But the thing is, they spat on Him, they treated Him with contempt, and He said: He didn't try and hide or conceal Himself from any of it. He set His face like a flint; I am doing this, because I know people in the 21st Century in Hastings, New Zealand, who need to be free of shame, and I will take the shame so they can be free, see? So He didn't hide from the shame. He determined not to hide Himself. He did not draw back from the shame of dying on the cross like a criminal. You understand this, we'll look at the cross in a moment. The cross was a criminal's death. It was like a public hanging. It was a criminal's death. It was actually not about just execution. If they wanted to kill them, they could kill them quite easily, they could just stick a sword through them. But they didn't want to kill people that way.

What they wanted to do was to have them die slowly and painfully, and be exposed to public ridicule. You probably would have seen some things in the French Revolution, and they used to have the guillotine, and they'd bring people out, and then the whole crowd would watch, and they would revel in someone losing their life and being publicly humiliated, who was aristocracy. In this situation with Jesus dying on the cross, the crowd gathered around to publicly ridicule, and mock, and shame Him. They treated Him shamefully. He took our shame. He carried our shame, and He refused to allow Himself to be shamed, but He took our shame on Himself, amazing thing that scripture is. He took the shame on Himself.

In Hebrews 6, Verse 6, it tells us Christ was put to an open shame, He was exposed to public humiliation. I don't know if you ever thought about it, because all the pictures you see of Jesus on the cross, they have His private parts covered, but that's not actually what happened when they were hung on the cross. That's to preserve modesty for us, who are very sensitive. Actually He hung naked on the cross. He hung naked, and totally exposed to be ridiculed. When you are in a place where you feel powerless, even more you feel the ridicule and the taunts. When you're in a place where you are exposed, even more you feel the ridicule and the taunts, and He was exposed to die like a criminal on the cross, a slow, painful death, drawn out over hours.

I want you to read with me in Matthew Chapter 27, the death of Jesus on the cross. Just look what it says about Him. It says the soldiers of the governor took Jesus to the Praetorium, and gathered the whole garrison around Him. These are hard, rugged, hardened soldiers - and they stripped Him naked and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they twisted a crown of thorns they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. They bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, or they taunted Him, and said: Hail, the King of the Jews! Then they spat on Him, and took the reed and struck Him on the head. When they'd mocked Him, then they took His robe off Him again, and put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified.

Verse 33: And when they came to the place called Golgotha, which is to say the Place of a Skull, they gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink, but when He had tasted it, He would not drink. Then they crucified Him, dividing His garments and casting lots, that it may be fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet. They divided My clothing among them, My clothing they cast lots. Sitting down, they kept watch over him and they put up on His head an accusation written against Him: This Is Jesus, The King Of The Jews. Even the robbers were crucified with Him, one on the left and one on the right, they taunted Him. Those who passed by, wagged their heads - ah you just destroy the temple and build it up, save Yourself if You're the Son of God! If He's the king of Israel, come down. Can you see the mocking and belittling of Jesus? A number of things happened with Him on the cross. He was stripped naked and exposed to public ridicule, three times the soldiers stripped Him naked, put a garment on Him, then they stripped Him naked, put His own clothes, and they took Him to the cross, stripped Him naked.

He was hung in front of men, women and children to die a shameful death on the cross, gasping to breathe, in terrible, terrible torment, carrying our shame. No matter what shame you've experienced, Jesus carried that shame. Have you been abused? He was violently abused, physically abused. He was verbally abused, He was mocked and ridiculed, and He took our shame on Himself. He experienced shame, so you could be set free of shame. He took sin on Himself, so we could be free of sin. He took our sicknesses on Himself, so we could be healed. He took the penalty of the curse on Himself, so the curse could be broken; all that we could come into blessing. God's plan is that He designed us to be unashamed. When sin entered and man became ashamed, and covered with shame, Jesus made a way that the shame could be taken away. You should not live with it. You must not live with it. You can never fulfil your destiny living with shame. Jesus has made provision, we can throw off that shame! Someone put it on us, we accepted it, and began to wear that beggarly garment. We can put it off - but to put it off, I must come and bring the shame to someone who understands, someone who stood on my behalf, someone who conquered the shame! I need to bring it to Him, and throw it off onto Him who carried it by an act of faith!

How do I get rid of my sin? I confess it to Him, and let it go to Him, and believe He carried it, and supernaturally the grace of God enters, and I am clean and know it! It's the same with your shame. It's like an old beggar's garment that you put on, and it cloaks you and covers you, but you've got to let it go! Throw it off and release it to the Lord! Do NOT let it come on again! When we look at next week, or the next time round and we teach on this, we'll be looking at how you change what you believe, so you begin to believe differently. Every time that shame comes again and tries to cloak you, PUSH against and put it off! You don't take the shame. You're not to take shame. Shame will cause you to not even know who you are. You'll have a mask on - so the first step in breaking free of shame, there is someone who God sent into this earth, to help me be free. I need to come to Him. He's not ashamed to call you His brother and sister. Isn't that amazing? He's not ashamed of us. Sometimes we're ashamed to come to Him.

Do you know what happens when we know something's wrong in our life? We do just what Adam and Eve did, we cover up and hide from God, run away, instead of just coming to Him, no matter what it's like, no matter how bad it is, no matter what you're ashamed of. No matter what you've done or has been done to you, He is not ashamed of you. He loves you. He came to get rid of the shame. You've just got to come to Him - make a decision: I'll come to the one who bore my shame. Jesus said: come to me all you who are heavy, who are burdened and heavy laden. Shame is a heavy burden on people's lives. We become secretive, covered, alone, a terrible burden. He said: come to Me, come to Me. My yoke's easy, my burden's light. See, very, very good.

Okay, let's have a look. The second thing we need to do, is to break the attachments to shame. In other words, even though I've come to the Lord, there are some things I need to recognise that cause shame. There are mechanisms cause shame to cling onto me, and many would have just come to Jesus, and told Him they loved Him and given their life to Him, but still the shame seems to cling. There can be some reasons for this. In Amos 3, Verse 3, the Bible says: can two walk together, except they be agreed? If I want to walk with God, I must be agreed with Him, I must come into agreement with what He says about me, see? I must agree, if I want to walk God. I can't walk with someone, and I think totally different to them. I mean if you don't have people - normally the people we are friends with, or walk with, actually have similar interests and similar ways of thinking. God says: you can't walk with Me, unless you come into agreement with how I see things. He says: you see it from My point of view, we're in agreement, you're now able to represent Me in the earth, but if you've got your own ideas and your own ways of thinking, and you've got your own things about me, He said: you can't walk with Me.

So to walk with God, I must actually come into agreement, and that word agree is the word Yadda. It means to be intimate with someone, with a view of reproducing life, so if I want to walk with God, I must come into being intimate agreement with Him, with a view that His life will start to flow in me, and flow out from me. It's intimacy. I must come into agreement in my heart with Him. I must actually yield to Him. So intimacy in a marriage, then there's a yielding to one another. There's an engaging one another. You can't be intimate in marriage if you've had a great row, it's just impossible. You actually have to come to yield to one another, and so He uses this process of walking together as us yielding to the Lord, yielding to what He says - so for example, let's just give you an idea.

I have found many times if I've looked into a person's eyes, and I've talked to them about how valuable they are, and what great qualities they have in their life, often they begin to react. What they're reacting to is, they can't agree with me over what I've said about them. Now God has many things to say about you, but if you won't agree with Him, you will react to what He says, instead you'll attach to what you've been used to thinking about yourself. That's why our belief systems must shift. So there are reasons why we may be like that, let me just give some of them, so I'll show you how to actually break the agreements. Number one, I need to remove the mask, I need to remove the mask and become honest. The first step out of shame is you've got to remove the mask. You've got to remove the mask, and there are lots of masks that people wear. Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:7, the moment they become aware of their shame they covered themselves, they put some fig leaves on. I wonder what fig leaves you've got on?

Then when God came they just ran away and hid see, so the hiding. Now there's many ways we've got of hiding, but let me just ask you a few questions, just for you to think about. What experiences of shame have you had in your life? What did you feel when you had those experiences? What did you feel? What message did it say to you? The message of shame is that I'm damaged, something's wrong, I'm different and I'm in danger, I'm going to hurt, someone's going to expose me, see? More important, what did you cover yourself with, to try and cope with it? I started to think of a few things as I was thinking about this this morning. Some people have a mask on. I didn't have one at home, or I'd have worn it, and you wouldn't have been able to relate to me with a mask on. You'd hear my voice - that sounds familiar, but you wouldn't connect with me if I was wearing a mask, because what you're seeing, and what you know, are completely different.

You can go down into these shops, you get a mask - have you ever got a mask on? How scared kids get when you wear a mask, even adults. Get a big ugly mask and put it on, you come near someone, they freak out. They know it's you, but they still freak out, because they see the face, so the face that you present, is actually the way people identify you, see? So what face are you presenting? Well of course people have got all kinds of ways to cope with shame. I've just listed a few, and you might recognise one or two. It won't be you of course, but there's someone probably sitting in this church. [Laughter] There's the witch face, and when they put on the witch mask, then very sharp, very critical. Probably you know a few old witches, you know, very sharp, very critical. Then there's the Arnold Schwarzenegger mask, [laughter] tough and independent, and nobody messes with me. Some people wear that, everywhere you go, but there's a frightened little person inside there.

Some people wear the clown mask, the Joker, so the moment you try to relate to them, they're joking. You can't get past the jokes. Me thinks he jokes too much! I can't get to know who he is. I've been there. Okay, then there's other kinds of masks: the Lone Ranger mask. The Lone Ranger, if anyone's seen the Lone Ranger, Lone Ranger comes and rescues people, and some people are the Lone Ranger. No one really ever knows them, they're a Lone Ranger, but they have a mission. I will rescue people! Someone's in need, count on me, I'll help them out. They're in there to rescue, and they've got all these people they've rescued, and they're so grateful to the Lone Ranger, who's feeling much better about themselves, because I am the Lone Ranger, and I rescue people! [Laughter] It's who I am! Of course the Lone Ranger often has a nervous breakdown, [laughter] so unfortunate that, but because you can't know who they are, you never do see them when they're having their nervous breakdown. It's usually when they're alone, and they took the mask off, see? There's all kinds of things.

Then there's another one I was thinking of is the princess mask. Oh, some wear the princess mask. That's a lovely one. Everything has to be just right for me, everything has to be perfect, just perfect for me - so they control all their environment, try to make it all just sweet, just perfect, just nice. It's very, very nice. Then there's another one I thought of called the genie mask, you know the genie in the bottle, the genie comes out: Master, what can I do for you? So the genie mask - the person who's the genie, now their mission in life is I just serve everyone. I have no life of my own, I just serve. A lot of mothers put on the genie mask. They have no life of their own, lost who they were years ago: Master, what can I do? So they're serving, and they look so wonderful. They are wonderful people to have around. Do you know why they're wonderful to have around? Because they just help you, but in the midst of their helping, they're trying to find their identity.

Do you know what happens? They become very hurt, very resentful people. Do you know why? Because in all their serving, there was an agenda: I want to feel better about myself, I need you to say some nice words to me, and you never said them. Well we know about those ones? Whoa, a few of them - of course it's further down the road. Then I was thinking about some others, I was just trying to think of different kinds of masks - the fairy godmother. [Laughter] Comes to Cinderella, fairy godmothers have no needs of their own, they just know what to do, and they tell everyone else what to do, take over control of their life and make it happen for them. [Laughs] I'm sure you can think of many other masks. I was thinking of the Kiwi, and what a timid, shy bird that is, and some people wear a Kiwi mask. They just run away and hide, you can't see who they really are. You never really see them, you never really know them. Come on, think about some of these ones.

Some people are like a beaver, they're just buried in their work - work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Work, work, work, work, work. Who is that person? I don't know. Work, work, work, work, work. [Laughter] They have breakdowns too. In fact most of these people have breakdowns. You know why they have breakdowns? Because there's a big gap between who I am on the outside, and who I am on the inside, and there comes a point in your life when you begin to ask: I wonder who I am? Then you hate that there's such a gap, and it's very stressful, so take off the mask, be who you are. I don't know who I am! I just don't even know. See, that's the problem. When you try and take off the mask, at least you can identify the mask and take it off. The bigger issue is discovering who you are, and we'll deal with that again, when we look at changing how you believe, and what you believe about yourself.

You've got to stop wearing a mask, and stop trying to be someone. You're a Christian, you ought to be this! Oh, the Christian mask! [Laughter] Come on, burdened and having a breakdown inside. Really we're hurting, but they've got to be this lovely Christian. That's not real. The world wants you to put on your Christian masks, that's what they expect, but when you actually become authentic, they don't know how to handle it. [Laughs] But you're supposed to be a Christian. You're not supposed to have problems! Welcome to my world! [Laughter] Same as yours! [Applause] You know, come on, that's how it is, got to get that mask off. So how many could think of someone else, today as I gave out a list of a few masks? I'm sure you could come back next week, and bring up a few masks of your own. You probably have a whole - start to think about them and you'll start to recognise them: little beaver masks, and the genie masks, the Lone Ranger masks, and all kinds of masks.

You know what happens with quite a few of them? They end up helping people. They're lovely helping people, doctors, nurses, teachers, Pastors. [Laughter] Pastor mask! [Laughter] This is what life is like. I've been around, I've seen them everywhere. One of the problems when you move in the prophetic and deliverance, you tend to peel off the masks. [Laughs] Then you'll see that same person that had that - I remember being at one church there, and I started to pray for two people; one was a man, one was a woman, and they went down on the floor, rolled around, growled like dogs, and the woman Pastor was very shocked. She said are those demons? I said yes. [Laughter] She said: but they can't be, that's my Chief Deacon, [laughter] and that's my Head Intercessor. They're going wah-wah like this. They'd worn the masks to long, the demons got in and filled it all up in behind. [Laughter]

So anyway nothing like the prophetic and deliverance - so the Bible's very clear in Proverbs 28, Verse 13. It says: if you cover what's going on in your life, you can't go forward or prosper. You just actually have to confess and forsake. You've got to get rid of the masks. You know in Isaiah, I think 30, it says: woe to those who cover up with a covering that's not of Me. God has got a provision for you, but to get it, you've got to take off the one you've put on. When Adam and Eve put the covering on themselves to get God's provision, they had to take off their one, so first step is take off your covering, take off the mask. Whoo whoa! Oh, that Lone Ranger mask is a very good mask. Okay anyway, so the second thing is, we need to break our agreements with evil spirits.

We need to break our agreements with evil spirits. Oh dear, what do you mean agreements with evil spirits? Well some people have sat down and written out a deal with a demon, actually with more than one demon. I don't recall doing that. Well it looks like you have, the way you live your life, you must have. How did I do that? Well the Bible fortunately, actually explains how we do it. Look in Isaiah 28, Verse 15 - look at this. We have made a covenant with death - that's a pretty strong agreement. We're married to the spirit of death, and with hell we're in agreement, that tormenting demon, yes, we've come into agreement - latter part - four - this tells how we did it - we made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves. My goodness me, that's how you get into agreements with demons. You cover yourself with lying, you cover yourself with a mask, cover yourself with pretences. When we do that, we're virtually giving agreement to a demon, to come into our life, and to trouble us.

The devil's very keen to do that, so it may well be that when a spirit comes to you, and whispers in your ear: you're no good, you're nothing, no one wants you; and you agree with that, you've given it power over your life. So part of getting out of shame, I have to break agreements with any accusing spirits, any spirits that shame me. Any spirits that put words or voices or thoughts into my mind, concerning shame, I have to break the agreement with them. I have to refuse to accept their lies any more, have to refuse to accept them. Sometimes we need to make a stand against them, and repent them. Jesus has given us total acceptance, so any demon that says: well nobody loves you - actually usually the way they say it is like this. The demon stands alongside you, or he's actually probably in you by that stage, and he just says something like this: nobody loves me - and you pick it up. Oh, nobody loves me. Nobody cares about me - oh, nobody cares about me, I'm all alone. Yeah, I'm all alone - and you begin to listen.

Some people are having this dialogue with demons, listening to thoughts that come out of hell. You've got to break those agreements. You've got to not agree with any of those thoughts. You've got to agree with what GOD says! I LOVE YOU! I care for you! You are Mine! You are special to Me! Cast your cares on Me, because I care about you! Oh there's heaps of scriptures. You've got to get the scriptures into your heart, and shift what you do - so break the agreements with demons, and the last part here, let go the grief, and the reactions to being shamed. Let go the grief. We've got to abandon the reactions, and the grief, of being shamed. When we get shamed we're hurt. I shared with you some experienced I've had that were incredibly shaming, and as a result of that there was tremendous pain inside, great pain. Now what are you going to do with it, just pretend it isn't there? I know what I'll do, stuff, stuff, and put on the Christian mask! [Laughter] Praise the Lord! Now this doesn't buy it, because you've still got it inside you. You've actually got to be honest with your feelings. Sometimes that can take a little while. How do you really feel about that matter, how did it really affect you?

One of the ways you can deal with this area, is you can begin to write out, and remember what you did. Another way is as you worship the Lord, you begin to allow your mind to go back and remember what happened, remember what it felt like, remember what it felt like inside, and as you do it, the Holy Spirit just brings this stuff up, then you feel a lot of pain. Now most people when they feel the pain, just want to get out of the pain, and so they push it down again. If you're male, you may have quite a strong problem with this area; the moment you start to think about anything that caused you pain, immediately you block it off, and minimise it, say it's nothing, don't worry about that, you know? So what happens is, we don't engage what's really in our heart. So as we worship with the Lord, David was absolutely abandoned. He shared his distresses and troubles with the Lord, and the Lord set him free. He can set you free too.

So the first part is, I need to allow the feelings to surface, and just release them to Jesus, the grief carrier. It says in Psalm 84: blessed is the man whose strength is found in the Lord. He turns to the Lord with an open heart, and he said: he makes the valley of tears into a well, that others can be blessed in. So there is a part of your pain and your shame, that if you can bring it to the Lord and weep over it, you let the feelings go. I remember praying over people that have been abused, and they just wept and wept and wept, with the grief of being so shamed and embarrassed. Some cultures, the shame is so deep, that when it starts to surface they just weep and weep and weep.

The second thing we need to do is forgive. We've just got to let go, from the heart. Forgiveness is more than just a prayer, just 'I forgive'. No, it's actually - there's the heart feelings as well as the will, and so in forgiving someone, I need to actually remember how it's affected me, and allow myself to feel the reactions, then make the choice to forgive. Some people forgive, it's just from the head. Jesus said in Matthew 18:34-35, forgive from the heart. I've got to let it go, let it go, let it go. Unforgiveness locks you to the past, grief locks you to the past. These things keep you there. To move out of shame, I've got to let them go. I've got to just be willing to let it go, grieve over it and move on, and we don't like doing that because it's a bit messy. You feel a mess, you feel you're falling apart, but it doesn't last. You just grieve, you release forgiveness, start to bless the people, thank God He can use it to make something great in your life, and then you come free of it. It's a process as well as a decision, can take a little time to do it - or it can just take place in a very quick time.

Have you let go the people who've shamed you? Have you really let them go? Have you really let them go? Have you let them go? You don't need to stay back there, you need to move on. This is the time to move on, time to let go. People shamed us - let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go because it stops you fulfilling what Jesus called you to fulfil.

And finally, we need to deal with the hidden reactions in the heart, where I've reacted about being shamed. By reaction, reaction's the way you respond when someone's really hurt you deeply, and there's many ways we can respond. Some people respond by making an inner vow - I'll never, I'll never let anyone get near me. I'll never let any woman, I'll never let any man - and so inner vows are vows you speak into yourself, that harden your heart, so you can't be shamed any more. They put a wall up, they keep you distant, and so there you are, you look tough, you've got it all together, and inside there's just a broken little person, fighting to try and hold the wall up. That's what people do. People do it everywhere. They're at your workplace, they're all around you, but church is a place we can find healing and restoration. We don't have to stay in those places. So we may have made inner vows, and may have made judgements, and may have just wanted to die; Elijah wanted to die, he felt ashamed of the whole thing. He'd run his course and there it was, he still hadn't made a change in the nation, and so he just wanted to die.

There's many reactions. Whatever reaction you've made, just repent of it and bring it to the cross. We need to do that so we can move on, so here's where we get out of shame, four steps out of it. We've given you two today: the first, I need to personally come to Christ, who carried my shame. He understands my shame. He's carried it. I can come and talk about it to Him, and bring it to Him. Secondly, I need to separate or break the attachments to people or things that caused me shame. I just need to get the mask off and be honest with Him, face the emotions that are there, and grieve over them, release them to the Lord. I need to get rid of the reactions that are inside me, and make a decision, I'm going to stand up now, and begin to change the way I view myself, the way I view God, and the way I live my life. It's an important decision for us to make.

I think there are many people here sitting on stuff - why don't we just close our eyes, and bow our heads right now. This is a time for you to make a step. Some powerful things can happen in an altar call. Altar call is where you make a decision that you've come into agreement with God, you've heard His word, and you are agreeing with God. Change is a must. You're saying to yourself: I'm not going to hold onto this stuff. Maybe you're ashamed of failure, maybe a family broke down, maybe a parent died, maybe someone abused you verbally, someone abused you sexually. Maybe you were humiliated in school, humiliated by teachers. Remember I was chosen here, a local high school, grew up here, and I was chosen to speak and represent the school at a speech contest. So I had the speech all ready and all prepared, all memorised, and I remember going into the - it was over in Napier, and they had all the inter-schools, everyone was there, parents were there, everyone was there. I got a good number, I was up number three. I thought that's quite good, not number one, number three - so I got up there all prepared to really do my best.

When I stood up there, I got started into this speech, and I was starting to get going on it, and then suddenly it began to rain, and it didn't just rain, it really pounded down on an iron roof. There was just this loud noise, and it distracted my attention, and I froze, and forgot everything. I can remember to this day the pain and the shame, of standing in front of everyone, representing our own school, and I got a mind blank. I got prompted, and I got through it, but the feeling of that time didn't leave me. Years later when I become a Pastor, I would have to have everything written out. I was still living in the shame of such a defeat publicly, and for a long time I had everything written out, could never take a meeting or enter any meeting, if I didn't have everything written out. I was gripped by the fear this would happen to me again. It was just a teenage experience of shame, that brought fear, and then attempts to control and protect myself.

I had to make a decision at one point to face that, to let it go, and to begin to trust God. So the Lord put me with children, so I could get experience and success, without that fear around me, and then I was able to come and stand at a platform and preach. I can do it now without any notes, without any reference to notes. I have only the barest of notes most of the time. I don't need them, because I've tapped into the One who loves me, and said: I'll be with you, I'll give you things to say.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· Isaiah 54:4 - “Do not fear, you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame, for you will forget the shame of your youth…”

· God’s design for man was to be totally unashamed – sin caused shame to enter.

· Shame Message: ‘I am damaged’ – ‘I am different’ – ‘I am in danger of exposure/rejection’.

· Shame is an identity thief – shame is an intimacy thief.

· God promised us that we can be free pod shame and reject being shamed.

· Forget = 7911 = to cease to care, cause to wither, put out of mind, pay no attention to.

· Keys for breaking free of shame:

1. Come to Christ.

2. Break attachments to shame.

3. Change inner beliefs.

4. Change how you relate to people.

2. Christ bore our Shame:

· Isaiah 50:6-7 - “I did not hide my face from shame and spitting”.

· Jesus Christ personally experienced shame – He understands our suffering.

· He determined not to hide from shame – chose to pay the full price for shame.

· He did not draw back from shame of dying a criminal’s death on the Cross.

· Christ was put to an open shame – Hebrews 6:6 - exposed to public shame and humiliation.

· Matthew 27:27-31,35

· Jesus was stripped naked and exposed to public humiliation three times.

· Jesus was physically abused, verbally abused and mocked.

· Jesus’ crucifixion was more than means of death, but means of public shame.

· Jesus shame was public and universal – labeled in 3 languages for all to see.

· Without complaint Jesus bore his shame and our shame on the Cross.

· No matter what shame you have experienced Jesus understands and made provision for it.

· God promises to make remove our shame and even the memory of it.

· Matthew 11:28 – “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest” – acceptance and love.

3. Breaking the Attachments to Shame:

· Amos 3:3 - “How can two walk together except they be agreed?”

· In order to walk with God I must come into agreement with Him.

· Agreed = 3259 = yada = to be intimate with in order to reproduce.

· I must break all my attachments, agreements and intimacy with shame.

Remove the Mask and become Honest with Myself:

· Adam and Eve covered themselves to hide their shame – Genesis 3:7

· Adam and Eve had to remove their covering to receive God – Genesis 3:21

· What experienced of shame have you had?

· How did you feel?

· What message did it give you about yourself?

· How did you cover yourself? – What mask did you put on?

· Mask:

*Witch – sharp, critical

*Lone Ranger – rescuer

*Princess – want the best, perfectionism

*Genie – please and save everyone

*Arnold Schwarzenegger – strong independent

*Clown – joker

*Fairy Godmother – no needs, know what to do

*Kiwi – timid, shy, intimidated

*Beaver – buried in work, business

· Proverbs 28:13 - “he that covers his sins shall not prosper – confess and forsake => mercy.

· What have you done that you are ashamed of? Repent and Confess.

· What have you experienced that brought shame to you? – admit it.

Break you agreements with Evil Spirits:

· Proverbs 28:15 - “We have made a covenant with ‘death’ and with ‘hell’ we are in agreement …for we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves”.

· While we remain covered and hidden we are open to demonic spirits.

· Accusing spirits – accusation, shame, abandonment, rejection and fear.

· Romans 8:1 - “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit”.

· Jesus offers us total acceptance, no condemnation based on our agreement with what He has done for us upon the Cross.

· Make a stand against accusing spirits of shame – familiar and tormenting.

· James 4:7 - “Resist the devil and he will flee”.

Let go the grief and Reactions to being Shamed:

a) Grief:

- remember what happened and how you felt.

- Allow the feelings to surface and express – God is interested in your feelings.

- Jesus carried our grief and sorrows – Isaiah 53:3-4

b) Forgive:

- Let go from the heart the resentment and anger at people.

- Forgiveness involves the emotions and the will.

- Unforgiveness keeps you attached to showing experiences.

- Matthew 18:34-35 - “Forgive from the heart! Let go the demands!”

c) Reactions:

- Repent and break the agreement with ungodly inner reactions to being shamed.

- Adam and Eve reacted to their shame and fear – covered, hid.

- How did you respond to experiences that shamed you?

- Inner vow?

- Bitter judgment? We are responsible for our reactions

- Death wish? Repent, change by bringing it to the Cross.

· God promise to “roll away the shame of Egypt” – Joshua 5:9

· Our part is to come to Christ in faith – expose our shame and let go the attachments to it by faith.

Changing what you Believe (5 of 6)

Sun 6 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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Entrance of shame into the world came through believing a lie. If we doubt that God is good, we can't really trust Him, and our relationship is lost. Reconnecting with God involves removing our own covering, and putting on God's covering. God's provision for shame is to clothe us with righteousness, and put His spirit/glory back within us. Freedom comes by embracing the truth, from the heart.

Had a break over a couple of weeks and I'd like to really draw in this message on Unashamed into a close and we shared a whole number of things about it. We'll just pick it up and just get your mind back focussed again on what we were sharing. I want to share with you something that will be a major help for you, be a help for you if you do it. If you do it it's just another meeting, but if you actually start to put it into practice in your life it can change your life completely and so we were looking in this series Unashamed, how God created us to be unashamed, to be connected relationally - that's part of being unashamed.

So sin disconnects us from God and puts shame around our life, but God wants us to be connected so part of being unashamed is I can connect with people. I can be myself, I don't have to wear a mask. I can actually just be true and authentic and genuine, but I have to learn the skills of building good relationships as well, so we're dealing at the moment with the issue of shame and we found that when sin entered in that shame came on people and Adam and Eve covered themselves. They put on a mask, they clothed themselves up, they covered themselves and they hid and we saw over that series that shame is an identity thief. It stops you being able to be who you are because you're not too sure who you are and so we refer to what's outside us to define who we are; I am a businessman, I am this or I am that. But we don't actually define who we are according to what God says and today we want to talk about redefining ourself, want to talk about shifting our belief system, shifting our belief system.

Okay then, so we talked then about how Adam and Eve when they drew back and they covered themselves and shame covered their life, they became disconnected, they lost their confidence and we saw that their lives were dramatically changed. I want to pick this up and pick up this truth that God has made provision for our shame. I want to talk with you, the provision He's made and how we begin to take that provision around our life, so we'll have a look back into Genesis, Chapter 3 and just pick up the verses there in Genesis, Chapter 3. We're going to have a look at the entrance of sin. I want to pick it up in Verse 1. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent we can eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God said you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.

Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. In other words he denies that there are consequences for sin - and then he said, now here's the one I want to pick it up at - for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be - notice - you will be, you will become something. This is identity - you'll be like God. Actually he already was like God. He was created in the image of God. Now you notice how sin entered in, notice the entrance of shame into the world came through believing a lie and if you continue to believe lies shame will continue to cling. It doesn't matter how many meetings you go to, it doesn't matter how many songs you sing, how many passages of the Bible you have learned or memorised or whatever. If you continue in your heart to believe this lie, then what'll happen is shame will continue to come around you. Notice what the lie was. Have a look at it here. It says God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.

Now notice what he said. He sowed the seed of doubt, God is not good. You can't really trust Him because He holds out on you, that's what he's saying, God is not good. And that's actually the core issue that we struggle with is whether we really believe God is good, whether we really believe God can be trusted. Now if God is good and I can trust Him then I can lean my life on Him in every area and be secure in Him and not having to worry what people are saying and doing around me. Now notice this: he implied that God is holding out on you. If you actually were to just set out and run your life your own way, then you would actually have revelation and understanding and you would be something. You would become something. You would become like Gods, so notice how the devil has tempted him. He sowed a lie into him, God is not good, God can't be trusted, God is holding out on you. If you'll do what God says you'll miss out on something. [You're tired, 00.04.58] well you'll miss out, God will take your money, see? If you withhold having sex before marriage well you're going to miss out. That lie pervades civilisation today, always there, just there. God is not good, God can't be trusted, God is holding out on you. Now if you just break out you can really make something of your life, you can become something.

So rather than resting in his identity as a child of God he took onboard those lies and those lies formed the foundation for him running a life independent of God. If we are going to come out of the path of shame and out of shame around our life and become who God says we are, we have to come back to a foundational faith in our heart, God is good, God can be trusted. God loves me. He's got my very best interests at heart, so no matter what He says, even if it doesn't look right, God still is good. If someone dies unexpectedly God is still good. If something goes wrong in my life God is good. God can be trusted. Something happens I didn't expect, God is good, God can be trusted. Now you understand this, the foundation of our Christian walk depends on us believing in our heart God is good all of the time. He can be trusted all of the time. His word is reliable. He is reliable and if I trust my life into His hands I won't miss out, I'll actually become everything He wants me to become. You see that's the core of how this thing of shame entered in. They believed lies.

So if we don't deal with lies in our life, if we don't shift our heart beliefs, then what'll happen is we have a form of Christianity but we have no living connectedness to God and His power. Listen, if you have doubts about someone's goodness how could you trust them? How can you lean on that person if you are not really sure they can be trusted? This is the problem that so many believers have, is we really do doubt that God is good and can be trusted and so we give a measured trusting, so long as I keep within what I can control. But God calls us to abandon ourselves to Him because He's trustworthy and you see here what Adam and Eve have done, the moment sin came in immediately the glory of God left them. They became damaged and their first response was to hide. God came and He came walking in the - the Bible says they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden.

Now notice God's first question to Adam: Adam, where are you? Now what kind of question is that? Is that an information question? Adam, I can't figure out where you've got to, you're not in the normal meeting place. Where did you go? How come you didn't turn up on time? It's not an information question. It's a relationship question. God's primary concern with us is relationship. He wants you to have a relationship because out of relationship you then begin to arise and you have dominion or you represent Him out of your relationship with Him. So His first priority is relationship. Even though Adam had failed in sin God still loved him passionately and we can see that God had not changed because Adam sinned. Look at this in Genesis 3 and Verse 21. Now Adam had become ashamed, he'd lost his identity as a child of God. He had lost his intimacy with God because shame is an intimacy thief and identity thief. Now I want you see what the Lord did and I'm going to look at God's provision that He made, the provision that He made for shame, in Genesis 3, Verse 21.

Also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. The Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. Now you notice the thing that God does. He demonstrated first of all - Adam, where are you? He demonstrates He's a relational God, He's looking for where we are. He's looking for where we're hiding. He's looking to engage you at a heart level, where are you really? Where do you live? What is going on in your life? What is really happening in your life? I made you to be my friend, what's happened to our friendship? Where are you living your life? Is it in friendship with me, or has something happened? So the passionate desire of God always has been a love relationship, intimacy, connected with us. Sin and the shame it brings disconnects us, so notice now what God does. God shows He's good: Adam, I see in your own efforts you've covered yourself, but I tell you I'm still good and I've got a better covering than the one you've made.

So a result of shame is we conceal who we are. We put on a mask so no one really knows us because we're not happy about what we're like and what they'll do if they see what we're like. We put on a mask and then we hide ourselves, so we get busy. Some people get busy in their work and they pour themselves into the work, never stopping to realise that maybe all the rest of their life is totally out of balance and not as God intended. The work has now become a covering for the insecurities and other things in their life - or we pour ourself into our children. It's right to work, it's right to invest in your children, but some people, some women, their life and identity is in the children. Life is not to be found there, life is to be found - my identity is I'm a representative of God. If your life is found in the children how can you train them? How can you correct them? How can you endure them being disapproving of you? How can you stand up to them as teenagers and correct them and they go angry and it doesn't affect you too much? You have to be secure in your identity, in who you are in Christ, see?

So what God did is God came to him - notice this - first thing is God demonstrated He's still a good God: I still love you. I see there you've got fig leaves on - well I don't know, I made caterpillars and caterpillars eat fig leaves so that's not a good thing to have on. [Laughter] I've got something better for you, you know? So this is what He said, notice what it is: He made tunics or He made clothing. God made clothing for him. How did He do it, did He go [unclear 00.11.22] there they are, some designer Armani! [Laughter] He didn't do it that way did He? How did He do it? Some innocent animals had to lose their life to provide the clothing, so right now God is foreseeing - centuries ahead of time He's foreseeing the tragedy that would be in the earth as a result of this sin and He's picturing and prophetically foretelling that He is going to make a provision that will break the power of sin and shame and enable people to live free again.

So an innocent animal is going to lose its life. It's a prophetic picture here of Christ. The second thing you notice, that He made tunics. God created something from that innocent animal's death. He created something of value that could be used to clothe them. The third thing was they had to remove the clothing they had - it's not comfortable to wear fig leaves underneath sheepskins. Fig leaves don't make good underwear. [Laughter] See, they had to remove what they'd provided for themselves and they had to receive and apply God's provision. Now in that you begin to start to see that in spite of all the impact of sin God's heart is still good, God still loves Adam and Eve, He now has provided for them and this is the prophetic picture of something that Christ would do for us at Calvary, something He would provide for us. So we want to have a look now what happened at Calvary.

I'm going to have a look at a brief part of it. I want to show you something dramatic that happened at Calvary and then we're going to look at just some key truths you need to put on in your life if you want to walk free of shame, okay? So let's go and have a look in Matthew, Chapter 27, Verse 50. We're looking at the death of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. We'll read it from about Verse 45 through to about Verse 54, okay. Now it was the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was a darkness all over the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice - notice that, a loud voice. I'm going to come back to that in a moment - saying Eli, Eli, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? And some of those who stood there, when they heard that said this Man is calling for Elijah! Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. The rest said let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come and save Him.

And then Jesus cried out again - notice here a second time, a loud voice - and then He yielded or He gave up His spirit. Then - now I want you to see something here. Jesus has been taken, He's been unjustly accused, He's been mocked, He's been shamed, He's been ridiculed. They stripped Him of His clothing. They beat Him, they cut Him with the whips, they put the crown of thorns on Him and all of this, He endured the shame and humiliation of this so He can provide a powerful remedy for sin and shame in our lives. Now notice this, it says Jesus cried with a loud voice and then something happened the moment He yielded up or He gave up His spirit. Now Jesus had power to do something we didn't have power to do; He had power to yield up His life at the time He was ready and the Bible says He yielded up or He surrendered His life at that point.

Then I want you to see something that God did, some things that the Lord did. I want to just draw your attention to three things that were dramatic. The first one here was it says behold or look, this amazing thing. The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; number one. The earth quaked and the rocks were split, and Verse 52, the graves were opened and many of the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. And the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly saying truly this was the Son of God!

Now God has done something at Calvary for us. Remember when Adam and Eve sinned and fell and they covered themselves and God prophetically showed them that He had a provision for them which one day would come into the earth; it would require Jesus Christ laying down His life. It would require the innocent dying for the guilty. Now I want you to see something, when Jesus surrendered His life He didn't do it with a whimper. Now most people when they die, their voice starts to fade away. Their voice becomes very weak, but twice right at the very end it said Jesus - now you've got to remember He's been tortured, He's been whipped, He's been crucified, hanging in pain for three hours. Now He says with a LOUD voice, He cries out with a LOUD voice. He is actually proclaiming His total victory over what sin has done, His total victory over the power that the devil had held people in bondage, in sickness and shame and death for all of those years. He cries out with a LOUD voice, it is a shout of triumph! It is a shout of victory that He has won and immediately it is answered from heaven.

Now listen, a lot of people shout but there's not many shout and there's an answer from heaven! You have to understand that when Jesus let out a loud shout it was a shout against His enemies. It was a shout of victory, of total victory over sin and shame and sickness, cursing, poverty, everything that could come into [the earth, 00.17.34] everything the devil used to hold man in bondage. He cried out a shout of victory and heaven answered and it answered in three ways. It answered by dramatic bursts of power from heaven into the earth. Jesus' death was not normal. Listen, you've got to imagine - right now at that very time when Jesus died, the High Priest was offering the Passover Lamb, the natural lamb just like the lamb that was slain to give a natural provision for Adam and Eve. Right then he was about just in the process of offering that sacrificial lamb, there was a huge thick curtain that held people back from being able to access the presence of God and suddenly two hands come from heaven, tear it from top to bottom and God has now made that place open! You and I have access freely to God.

Shame stops us being intimate with God. Shame stops us being intimate with people. God removed the veil and said it's now possible wherever you are, you can have access to Me through faith in this thing that Jesus just did on Calvary. You have right to come right in where you could never come before, into the very presence of Almighty God. That is a privilege given to us by that death on the cross. The second thing that happened was it says the earth shook and the rocks were split. That word earth refers to the whole countryside, the very ground on which everyone stood. There was literally a shaking of everything. Remember when Adam fell the earth was also brought into bondage and God shook it. It was shaken so hard by the power of God they couldn't stand up. People fell over on the ground. Whoever was around there that was standing proudly, laughing and mocking at Jesus' death, listen, they would have fallen over because an earthquake that shakes the land and can split open rocks, you can't stand in that.

If you had been here in the earthquake in '31 when the ground shook and things began to split open you couldn't stand. No one could stand. The earth literally shook with the power released. In other words - then the third thing that happened is the graves opened and people rose from the dead when Jesus also rose. By this we have an incredibly clear witness what Jesus did was accepted by God as totally sufficient. Now if you try to make yourself right with God by working hard, reforming, trying to become something by striving, by doing all kinds of things, listen, you will end up just striving and striving and striving. You end up in bondage. Jesus wants us to understand through this that the work He did has provided acceptance for us. Religion means you want to become accepted by God. Religion is man's way of working and doing stuff so I'll be good enough for heaven, so I'll be good enough to be accepted by God, so God will be pleased with me and not be mad with me. That is the core of religion.

Christianity is completely different. In Christianity God did the work through Jesus Christ. God said this is good enough for Me, this makes people totally acceptable to Me. There is something Jesus did for us that provides a clothing, a covering for us. In the Bible the Bible uses the word 'righteousness' which refers to this: it means to be declared or to be announced judicially clean, clear, not guilty. It's a pronouncement in the legal system of heaven, not guilty, innocent, there are no charges that stick. Shame will cause the charges, accusations to stick. Righteousness is God's clothing and answer for this issue of shame. I need to know I am a righteous person. Now of course because we don't use the word righteous very much except in church people in the world haven't got a clue what it means really. Righteousness, well a righteous person I suppose is sort of some churchy person I guess. We don't have much concept of it, but the original word meant to be declared or decreed and announced to be innocent and free of all charges. Now if you are innocent and free of all charges you have nothing to be ashamed of. There is no reason for any shame.

Not only are you announced as being free of all charges, you now have privileged access to come in as a child of God into the presence of God. Who am I? Am I sinner? No, I'm a child of God. I'm a child of God. Religion will keep calling you a sinner. Religion will keep focussing on your faults, your failings, it'll make you conceal them, cover them and work trying to get over them, but Christianity, the word of God declares now you can become the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ! Now you can be clothed with all His goodness and free from being ashamed about anything lacking in your life - so God does two things; one, He pronounces those who come to Christ clean, clear, innocent. Now you've got to not just have that as a head knowledge. That has to get into the heart because the problem is most Christians have been around a while or two, they actually believe that scripture. They know [unclear 00.23.19] I'll put it this way - they know that scripture, see? But the problem is believing it.

To believe it I've got to believe it in my heart. It has to get into my heart. It has to get in my heart I am righteous, but I've got these weaknesses and lacks - I am righteous. I am righteous. I actually have to bring my heart into agree with what God says about me in spite of the flaws, the lacks that may still be apparent externally or in my life in some areas. I need to agree with what God says about me - righteousness. Look at this in Romans, Chapter 3. I'll get it down and I'll bring it to where it becomes incredibly practical in just a few minutes. Romans, Chapter 3, we'll pick it up in Verse 21. Now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. There is no difference; for everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but they are made just freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ, whom God set forth as a mercy seat by His blood through faith.

Notice it's continually through faith; demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness. Now these words are hard to pick up. They're hard to get a handle on, but let me just give it to you in a kind of a really simple way. God has made possible for us to be absolutely declared innocent of all failings, of all mistakes, of everything that we have done. He's made that possible. There are two ways that you can try and get this. One is you work for it, you strive for it, you try hard to be a good person, try hard to run a good life. You try and the works of the Lord - you try to do things to satisfy this thing of righteousness - but there's another way and this is the way that the Bible says we can be made righteous, by faith. I have to put my heart trust, no matter what my mind and feelings are telling me, that what God has said is completely reliable and legally I can come into His presence.

I'll show you how you apply this into your life because unless it gets us a working thing in the heart it's just kind of words in the Bible. It has to move from words in the Bible to actually I know who I am and where I stand before God. You notice that the key path in there is the word faith, to him who believes, him who believes, I must believe. In Romans 10, Verse 10, by faith, we are made righteous before God by faith. I have to believe. Well what do I have to believe? I have to believe that all that Jesus Christ did is totally accepted, it's made me accepted to God. I'm going to just share with you a couple of things and then we're going to look at three or four practical truths related to this. First of all look in John, Chapter 8.

So we understand that in the Old Testament God made a provision for their shame, provided a covering. In the New Testament Jesus died on the cross and His life becomes our covering. If I will come to Him I can be accepted by God and this makes Christianity unique. Romans 10:10, with the heart man believes unto righteousness. Now look what it says in John 8, Verse 31. Jesus said to the Jews who believed in Him, if you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Notice this - He says truth has the power to liberate you and change your life. Truth has the power to free you from things that held you in bondage, so if my life has been in bondage to guilt and shame or particularly shame and I feel there's something wrong with me, I'm not good enough, not acceptable, the truth of God's word has the power to set me free.

But for it to set me free I must know that truth and that word know is the word in the Bible meaning to be intimate with someone with a view to reproducing something. When Adam knew his wife Eve there was sexual intimacy, or there was a oneness with his wife with a view to bringing forth children - so Jesus said you shall know the truth. So for the truth to set me free it's not just a matter I've heard the verse and someone told me; I actually have to become intimate with it. It has to get into my heart. It's not enough just to actually say yeah, yeah, I know that verse, yeah, I agree with it, it's right. See, the truth that sets you free is not just the truth in the Bible, it's the truth in the Bible that you now know by experience in your heart. Now what happens in the west is we tend to try to get lots of knowledge, but biblical knowledge always involves experience and outworking in your life, see?

Notice then the righteousness comes by faith. The word faith means to believe - alright then, but believe to us means yeah, yeah, I believe that. Yeah, I believe there's a God. Listen, believing there's a God does not save you, it doesn't change you a bit. The devils believe and they tremble - but it doesn't save them. Do you understand, biblical belief is not just mentally agreeing with something? That's where many of the churches in the west particularly have come undone. We're so filled with Greek way of thinking that we think if we know about it that's when we know it, but actually in the Bible the biblical belief, biblical faith, I have to have it working in my life or I don't know it at all. So in other words biblical knowledge was always experiential. The Greek invasion of the church in 300AD and the Greek thinking invading the church caused us now to become we just think if I know about it then I know it.

Well see you can know about tithing but it actually does you no good unless you position yourself and you begin to start to tithe regularly. You begin to see God break through for you. You begin to know the truth has actually done something in your finances. You've all got quiet now, yeah. This is true, this is how it works see, so if I know Bible verses but am not working them I don't really know them at all, I know about them. The only truth that changes my life is the truth I become intimate with, embrace and I allow it to change how I live my life. That's the truth we know, so we may have heard heaps of messages, heaps of sermons, but the only truth you really know biblically is the one that's actually working out in your life. If I see it working in your life then it is - you've got the truth and you'll stand up and testify, that's what Jesus did. It's experiential. Are you getting the idea?

The trouble is then we have so much that we know about in the head, I've got to get it from the head to the heart. It's the getting it from the head to the heart, see? So let's give you an example. We'll read a verse and then we'll just give you a couple of questions, see what [you do. 00.30.50] Romans, Chapter 10 and Verse 10; with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame. So you notice now there's a confessing with your mouth, believing in your heart. Now what part of you must believe? What part of me believes? It didn't say if you believe with your head. It says if you believe with your heart; that means an experiential knowledge. See in Paul in writing to the Corinthians said I don't want you to be ignorant of how to flow in the gifts of the spirit. In other words he's saying I don't want you to be without experiential knowledge how to do this - so here's the challenge. How can I get it from my head knowing about the scripture into my heart?

So I'll ask a couple of questions. How many believe that scripture? Let's start off with that scripture there, that with the heart man believes unto righteousness, how many believe that's true? Okay, believe the word's true. How many then have said man, I believe [what Jesus Christ has saved me. 00.31.56] I believe and now I'm righteous before God. How many believe that? Okay, that's a fair few. The others think it's a trick question and you're not righteous before God at all, you're in real trouble. [Laughter] Okay, now here's the question I want to really ask see - how many feel righteous? See, that's where the dilemma comes because what you feel is what you're experiencing in your heart and your life and so what happens is you have many and there'll be many of us here today and this is what the struggle will be: I know that scripture, if I will believe in my heart that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins and was raised from the dead I'll be right before God. I believe that scripture but I don't feel righteous. I feel something missing and lacking. I feel incomplete. I feel as though something is not right, so when I come to stand before God, when I come to worship then I don't feel quite right and I don't know what to do. Perhaps I'll sing louder, perhaps I'll clap louder, perhaps that'll do it.

But the real struggle is the internal one, see? When shame cloaks us we're disconnected. When shame is removed and we are righteous before God we can connect and so when we come in to worship we come the Bible way which tells us enter His gates with thanksgiving, into His courts with praise, and then it says know, know this, that the Lord is your God and you are His people and reminds us who we are, our identity and then it says and now if you'll hear His voice don't harden your heart and talks about worshipping Him. So there's a progression of how to access the presence of God. Now the problem is everyone can clap and sing songs, that's the easy bit. We can all sing the songs. We can all shout and clap our hands and do that part, but the real key part is the connecting intimately with God. If there is something in your heart that causes you to doubt, if there are accusations, if there's shame, if there's anything in your heart that's resident there and has a hold there, when it comes to access the presence of God you won't do it. You'll feel I'm not right, I just had a bad week this week. I had this, I had this, this - all kinds of stuff comes up instead of being able to enjoy the presence of God.

So services become shortened because the majority of people don't know how to stand and stay in the presence of God. Moses, the people said they saw the cloud. They said Moses, you go there, talk with God, you just come and tell us something. This is not what we're called to do. We're called to be intimate with God and out of intimacy with God, then we overflow in our life, we have an incredible life. But this issue of intimacy with God, now if you have shame you are clothed with something's wrong with me, you can't be intimate so when you stand before God do you feel there's something wrong with you? Do you constantly remember things that are wrong? What things are going through your conscious awareness? What are you feeling? Well, I need to know that I'm righteous. If I know that I'm righteous I can stand there and I can feel absolutely accepted and in His presence and I can enjoy Him, so to get it from the head to the heart there's a key. The Bible's very clear on how to shift things from the head to the heart. I have to meditate in the truth.

I must meditate in the truth until my heart embraces that it's true, see? I must meditate in the truth until my heart welcomes, receives and produces the fruit of it, so if you come before the Lord and you're consciously aware something's not right with me and you feel a bit ashamed about your life, then the truth of your righteousness is not operating. If it's operating I can actually come boldly into His presence like the Bible says. That's why the Bible says come boldly, come boldly into His presence. Let us come boldly to the throne of grace where we'll obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need! God says come boldly into His presence - but you see if you've got shame and guilt you won't come boldly and then you may put a religious thing over it and say well actually we're not into this clapping, shouting thing. We'd rather be reverent before God - but that's actually a lie. It covers completely the truth, that in fact that person is not right before God. They don't feel right before God and they're trying to put on a religious cloak to make it appear as though they are.

Constantly the Bible tells us how to come near to the Lord. It is always with strong expressions, praise, gratitude, thanksgiving, declarations, all of those things and then bow down and be intimate with Him. We can come with the bold expressions because our heart is right. We can come with bold expressions, there's nothing hanging on me anymore. People can't pin one on me anymore, I'm free, I'm right before God! So how can I get the truth to shift? It shifts through meditation. It shifts as I will meditate. Now how am I going to do that? Well meditation, you can say well [unclear 00.37.08] but it's nothing like that. Meditation is quite different. Meditation, biblical meditation means taking the word of God and imagining it, picturing it, using your imagination.

Your imagination is like a screen on the inner man and that's where the impressions from God, the revelations from God come. It's also where impressions from the outside world come and so our imagination we have to renew. We need to actually use the imagination God's given us. How do we do that? We take the word of God and we begin to picture it and then imagine what that truth looks like. God says I'm righteous, what does it look like to be righteous? What would it look like in standing before God? What would it feel like? So you imagine what it looks like, you imagine what it feels like. You are imagining, picturing inside yourself the truth. It's not trying to make up something, not trying to make up some weird thing or make up things in your imagination. It's taking biblical truth and repeatedly picturing it and embracing that picture, welcoming that picture until that picture begins to settle in the heart and you become conscious I'm right before God.

So when you come to pray for someone whatever your conscious of will immediately arise, so if I bring you up to pray for someone, get someone with a need, bring you to pray for them, this is what'll happen: the moment you come near to pray for them the first thing you'll be aware of is whether you're close to God or not. If you're not aware you're close to God and God is full of love and He's a good God and He will supply, immediately you'll start to fear because you have to perform. Now I've got to do something, see? The reason you have to do something is because you're not conscious that you're standing near to God, that God is the One who does something. You are just the postman who delivers, receive, deliver, receive, deliver. You don't have to be smart to be a postman - oh here's the letter, okay, just deliver it.

So ministry to people is receive, deliver, receive the letter, post the letter, well it's your number, there it is. Now that actually is what ministry really at the core of it involves, but the key part is being conscious of the presence of God, being aware of His presence. So to become aware of His presence I must take time to meditate, to continually reflect on the truth. I'll give you three or four truths you can reflect on in just a moment, but I need to not only imagine it and see it, imagine how it feels, I allow the feeling of that to rise - it's good. See, for example if you look back over your shoulder and you see all the rest of your life behind you then what do you see? If you're a forgiven person and you know you're forgiven you look back, there's nothing to see, it's wiped away, see? If you know that you are a forgiven person it's a revelation for you, you're not going to feel bad about any of that stuff in the back. But you see if you're not sure about that you'll start to remember all the things you did, you're going to feel bad about them and that stops you accessing the presence of God.

So we have to know we're righteous, know we're righteous, right before God. How do I know that? I begin to meditate, meditate, meditate, meditate, presence of God with me, presence of God with me, see? And I have to meditate on what the Bible says is true and as I do that it becomes established in the heart. Now the biggest thing is people don't want to take the time to do it, but if you'll take the time to do it your life changes and you're free of shame, see? If you take the time to do it your life changes. Your life changes. You begin to experience God, you begin to encounter God, you begin to experience Him as someone who loves you passionately. You begin to enjoy the experience of being in His presence. You begin to feel His love flowing into your heart. You begin to have that encounter and that experience, it becomes a part of your life, but there's a process to it and that process is called meditation, embracing the truth, holding the truth, imagining the truth, declaring the truth until I feel it sink into my heart. When it does you change. You actually then are unashamed, you can come before God [unclear 00.41.31] unashamed. That's why David did it - absolutely unashamed and danced before the Lord. Absolutely unashamed to be himself, not worried what anyone thinks. I don't care what anyone thinks, it's about me and God and oh! You can imagine the joy he had in his life after all the years, now God has fulfilling the promises. He's excited about the Lord, unashamed about loving the Lord.

See, a lot of people are hung up, can't lift their hands, can't dance, can't [unclear 00.42.00] can't do anything. It's like they're held back. Now that's - see shame - God's wanting to get us free out of all that stuff, not so you can have a personality like mine but so you can have your own personality and be expressive totally about how you love the Lord, passionately expressive and loving of God. So meditation plants the truth in your heart. It plants the truth I am right before God, I'm accepted before God, I am loved by Him. There are several truths you need to have put into your heart. The first truth is that God loves you. God absolutely and totally loves you. That's a good truth to put into your heart. Well you say well I know that one. Really? Really? You see you know the words - God loves you, see? But has it become a revelation, see, that I am loved? If I am loved I don't have to go hunting everywhere else for it. I am absolutely loved by God.

Here's another truth: God has made us to be righteous, or He's made us accepted. Well here's the truth: I am accepted totally before God. I can come before Him blamelessly. That's a good truth to know isn't it, see? God is good and I can trust Him. See, that's a good truth to have in your heart. God has made me unique, to be a representative of Him. I'm an ambassador, I can represent God uniquely. [I have to 00.43.34] compare with anyone. I can be myself. I'm called to represent Him by being ME! But you've just got to live in the heart, it lives in the heart. I can give you scriptures for all of these things but it's got to live as a truth in the heart. It's got to become truth in the inner man and when it becomes truth, that's when you begin to find your life changes.

Now of course the dilemma is it requires some time working on your belief system. Now listen, your belief system is your belief system. Most of our belief systems were formed out of the environment, circumstances around us and we've got many things we believe to be true in our heart which are not true at all. You see as the Holy Spirit helps you identify those truths which are not truths at all, they're wrong beliefs, and you begin to work on them and change what you believe, your life changes because as a man thinks in his heart so he is. So for example if I have struggled growing up in a financially impoverished background and I believe life's real hard and you've got to really work hard for everything you get and man, there's not much to go round.

If I believe there's not enough to go round for me, so suppose I was the last in a big family, wasn't much to go around for me and here I am and I'm thinking there's not much for me; now when it comes to God, you know what? I'll be thinking there's not much for me. Everyone else gets blessed but there's not much for me - and it reflects how you run your life, so I need to actually have that God has an abundant generosity to me. I've got to change the belief and we can't change beliefs just by getting delivered of a demon. You change beliefs by uncovering what you really believe to be true. You'll talk it. At some point you'll say it. It'll be seen in the way you run your life. People can say I trust God with my finances, then I'll look how they run their finances - it's not true, you don't trust God at all. You actually trust yourself and you're impoverished and you're in fear of failure in this area. That's why the thing's covered and secretive, you're ashamed of it. Whatever you're ashamed of you cover.

In covering it you're hiding it and it's got no power, but if I can actually bring it to the light - a lot of husbands and wives struggle in their marriage in this area of finances. They have wrong beliefs about finances and then it's covered over the finances, then there's division between them on finances. To get this thing right you've got to deal to the heart belief system, not just change the outward behaviours. There should be openness and transparency see, because that's the fruit of being unashamed now, it's out in the open. You've all gone real quiet now. [Laughs] Okay, let me just finish. We'll just share with you - I'll just give you the scriptures for some of those things and then I'll just finish up. I just want to pray for one person and so here it is.

So God loves me, 1 John 4, Verses 7 to 10, I am loved by God. I am loved by God. He has made me accepted. I'm accepted. Ephesians 1, 3 to 6, God is good. Romans 8, 15 to 17 and Exodus 33:6, I'm a unique ambassador, 2 Corinthians 5:17 and 20.

Okay then, so I need to get this into my heart: I'm unique. I'm unique. I'm made to represent God with my gifts, with my life and I can walk with God. I don't have to copy, don't have to copy. I can be original! See? Otherwise you're comparing all the time. You compare what you earn, you compare what someone else has got, compare this and that. When we connect, God made me different, different is good! Now I've got something to give because I'm different, see? Otherwise religion will make you a clone, you'll all turn up the same, you'll all look the same, carry on the same. God doesn't make clones, He makes unique people so we can be different, so we can express our giftings and be unique in what we have - it's wonderful! But do you realise, do you believe that? If you don't believe it you know what'll happen? You'll be totally vulnerable to the pressures of everyone around you to conform to what they want for your life. Is that right?

Let me just pray for Ron here. Ron, just come here, just stand up. Okay, just give me your hand, that's right, just stand there, that's right. Just stand facing me, that's right. Okay, just lift your other hand up to the Lord. Now this is what I want you to do Ron. I want you just to with your eyes closed now, I want you just to be conscious [of 00.47.58] what you're feeling and what you're sensing and I've linked my hand to your hand, I'm holding onto your hand right now, so whatever I begin to start to reach out and touch with God you'll begin to experience it because we're connecting. So you don't have to do anything at all, just have your eyes closed and your heart really open to receive. I want you just to receive and to feel what I begin to experience now. This is what I'm going to do now, what I'm going to do is this: I will just close my eyes and I'll just begin to meditate on the truth, that I'm accepted and I am loved. So what does that look like?

I begin to imagine Jesus right before me. His eyes are full of acceptance and love. He's got so much joy on His countenance of seeing me. I just open my heart to Him. Thank You Lord. As I meditate upon Him I'm just totally conscious, I fix my mind upon Him being there. I begin to feel His love flowing. Thank You Lord - ooh. And so as I meditated I began to access what I could see in my mind, see? Meditation puts the truth in your heart so it becomes living and then you can access God through the truth you have, see? So what I did then was I began to just imagine the truth of being loved and accepted. I saw Jesus standing there and very glad to see me. I see His eyes are ablaze with life and ablaze with love. I just began to embrace what I could see with my imagination and allow it just to flow into me. As I let it flow into me I began to access His presence.

What did you feel Ron? Just stand up, I'll just pop this microphone here so we can hear you. Stand up, just put it...

[Ron] Felt a real warmth and it looked like Jesus was standing there and reaching out His hand. I could just sort of - as Mike was just saying what he saw I just feel it coming right across into me.

[Pastor Mike] Yeah, so as I was describing what I was imagining, then it become real not just for me but also for Ron. There was a flow from heaven just came in. That's why I did it, demonstrated it this way, because if I just talk meditating I know you just - you'll nod and say yes and won't do it. I had to spend a lot of time to do that, to actually encounter the Lord personally through meditating. Now whenever I do that I just feel His presence, just is there, it's always there. He's always there, He's always good, He's always there, He always loves me, He's always willing to welcome me. He'll always pick me up, He's always there - but it took time to get the truth in. If you'll get the truth in it will change your life. Tania, won't you come and I'll just do the same thing.

Just come, just hold my hand, just stand here, just face towards me, that's right. Just hold my hand so we make a physical connection. You don't have to do anything, want you to close your eyes and I want you to allow yourself just to receive. You're just going to receive. Now I consciously have to stop thinking about her there, so all meditating is is focusing your thoughts. It's making a decision to eliminate other thoughts, so I just eliminate all thoughts she's there with me and that you're looking at me and I'll totally fix my mind that Jesus is my friend and with me. He loves me. Thank You Lord. You can take a moment or two, just begin to connect and suddenly I begin to feel His love just flowing in. She'll be starting to feel it at the same time, love of God just flowing like a river - ooh! Do you feel the presence of God? What did you feel?

[Tania] Shaky and jelly, yeah.

[Pastor Mike] Shaky and jelly, right. So meditation is how the truth gets into our heart. If we're too busy we have no time to meditate and busyness is in our heart. We have to make it a priority to get hold of what God's provided so we can stand unashamed in His presence and enjoy Him. From then you begin to change how you relate to people, the way you work with people, what you do with people. You begin to refuse to let people devalue you. There's a whole number of things you can do now to walk shame free, but it starts with my experience of the Lord, not just knowing that verse but experiencing the verse, accepted, loved, close. God is good. You can feel His presence, you'll all pretty well feel His presence now.

Okay, I want you just to finish this way then. I want you to stand right just for a moment, stand and just lift your hands to the Lord. Just lift your hands to Him. We're not going to draw this out very long, only take a few moments, be about one minute to one and a half minutes, then it's over. As you're standing there I want you just to begin to activate your imagination and we're going to imagine the truth. Most of the time our imagination's full of all kinds of other stuff, but right now for a few minutes we're going to imagine the truth. The truth is God is near to me through Jesus Christ. The truth is He loves me. The truth is I'm accepted. I want you just to picture Jesus standing right in front of you - about six foot I guess, bright piercing eyes full of love and acceptance. They're ablaze, they look right into you. Focus on His eyes. There's not a hint of any judgement - you are loved. He's full of joy, countenance shines. His arms are reached out like a friend to you because you are His friend. You've believed in Him. As you reach out to Him begin to imagine now, imagine what it feels like to be loved by Him. Feel the love just flowing into you, just receive it. If you feel like falling over there's a seat behind you will catch you. [Exhales once gently 00.55.03] receive in Jesus' name. Receive right now in Jesus' name.

Lord, we thank You for Your presence. Thank You for Your wonderful love. We can stand unashamed. You're not concerned about our failures. You're not concerned about things that went wrong in our life, but You love and value us. You've always loved us. You've never stopped loving. You passionately desire that You would have room in our life and heart. Thank You Lord. Thank You Jesus.

You feel His presence - some people it may be just a little hard to focus your thoughts. You get distracted. You can start to do that at home, take time to just meditate, welcoming the truth like it's your friend. Then you know the truth and the truth sets you free. I'm loved. I'm acceptable. God is my friend. He is good to me. He is always good. I don't need to be concerned about what other people think or say or do, or what is happening around me. I am complete in Him. Amen. Amen.

Feel His presence here? [Meditating.] Meditating on the Lord opens the door to His presence, meditating on His goodness. Many areas and many ways we can meditate, but unless that truth rests in the heart and today whatever touch you got came because you just began to position yourself to do that. If you'll do it day by day until the truth is in your heart and as you become aware of Him you may become aware also of things wrong, but His great love overwhelms you. You repent of those things, you put them right quickly and you just have no sense that He's going to reject you because of things that are wrong. What a great thing. I wonder if there's anyone here today doesn't know Jesus? If you're here today it'd be a great day, you felt His presence, you've heard the word of God, be a great day for you to just do one thing. The Bible says very clearly to everyone who received Jesus, who believed on His name, He gave power to be a child of God. It requires you do something to receive Jesus and put your trust in Him.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· The entrance of shame into the world = Adam believe a lie.

· Genesis 3:5 - “God knows that in the day you eat of it – eyes opened – be like God”.

· Adam believed lies: God is not good; God can’t be trusted to meet my needs; I must act on my own behalf to establish my own identity!

· When Adam sinned – guilt, shame, fear, ‘hiding’ all entered.

· Adam experienced: 1) Loss of identity (mask) 2) Loss of intimacy

2. God’s Provision for Shame:

a) In the Garden – Skins.

· Genesis 3:21 - “Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them”.

· God demonstrated His kindness and goodness to Adam.

(1) Innocent animal slain by God.

(2) Skins to cover were provided by God.

(3) Adam had to remove his own covering.

(4) Adam had to receive and put on God’s covering.

· This was a prophetic picture of what God would do at Calvary.

b) At Calvary – Righteousness.

· Matthew 27:50-54 - “God accepted Jesus as the offering for sin”.

(1) Veil of the temple rent – All may have access to God.

(2) Earth shook, rocks split - The devil’s power over creation broken.

· Earth = the entire earth, all of the land, entire creation shook in violent response to the shedding of the Saviour’s Blood.

· Shook = to agitate, tremble, come in cosmic disturbance, throw into tremor.

· Rocks split = to divide, rend, tear, split apart.

· A power confrontation in the spirit realm – Colossians 2:14-15 - cause of the devil to loose his hold on creation.

(3) Bodies arose from the dead - Jesus offering accepted, consequence of sin overcome.

· Romans 3:21-26

· O.T. Righteousness = to be right morally, to be declared to be right

= legal term involving process of justice.

· Man who is just is cleared of all charges and accusations.

· N.T. Righteousness = to approved acceptable to God and declared innocent.

· God’s provision for Shame to clothe us with righteousness and put His Spirit (His Glory) back within us.

3. Freedom comes by embracing the Truth:

· John 8:31-32 - “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”.

· Know = mental understanding or agreement to truth.

= experiential knowledge of the truth.

= to be intimate with so as to reproduce.

· When truth is in your heart and spirit your life is changing.

· Faith = not just meaning ‘to believe’ – give mental agreement to.

= to put you trust in and to lean on from within the heart.

= trusting from the heart in such a way that your life changes.

· Romans 10:10 - “With the heart – man believes unto righteousness”.

How can Truth get from the Head to the Heart?

Meditation – creative to repetitive use of imagination.

Meditation = repetitively picture and embrace the truth by imagining it.

Your imagination is a gateway to your heart and spirit.

Gateway of imagination must be cleaned and used properly.

Imagine the truth - picture how it looks.

- How it feels

Imagining and embracing the truth allows it to conceive in heart.

As you do this, the lies that are held in the heart may arise in reaction:

- identify them

- speak and break their power

- dwell on the truth – embrace and confess it

NB - I am who God says I am!

Key Truths that Free From Shame:

i) God loves me - “I am loved!”

· 1 John 4:7-10

· The major remedy for shame is to know the love of the Father.

· God loves you passionately and desires connection with you.

ii) God has made me righteous in Christ - “I am accepted!”

· Ephesians 1:3-6

· Because of what Christ did I am totally accepted.

· Acceptance becomes reality as I trust and lean on truth.

iii) God is good and can be trusted - “I am a child of God!”

· Exodus 33:6

· Romans 8:15-17

iv) God has made me a unique ambassador - “I am an ambassador of Christ!”

· 2 Corinthians 5:17,20

· Shame causes us to focus on self.

· Now – new focus = God – representing Him, serving people.

Changing Your Behaviour (6 of 6)

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We are not powerless or victims. Our lives are the consequence of our beliefs and choices. You decide how you think and react in relationship, and opt in or out. Discover 6 practical keys to change your pattern, and follow the examples of Jesus.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

· The result of shame is distance and hiding from relationships.

· Shame based behaviour can be changed by the personal choice to change.

· John 21:21-27 - “Lord, what about this man? ….What is that to you, you follow me!

- Peter’s focus was on the other person.

- Jesus directed him to change his focus – become responsible for his own life, decision.

- Often in relationships our focus is upon other people and their faults, failures, irritations.

- We must choose to shift our focus: “You follow me”.

2. The Power of One:

a) Key facts about our design:

· You are made for relationship – no choice whether to participate or not, only how to participate.

· You are made with the capacity to choose – what will you choose? Help or hinder?

· You are made to take responsibility for yourself – thoughts, feelings, beliefs, actions.

You decide how you think and react in relationship.

b) You are responsible for your choices:

· Romans 14:10-13 - “Each of us shall give account of himself before God”.

· Each of us is held responsible for ourselves – how we think, act, and behave.

· You can change your life by becoming responsible for your life’s choices.

· You can behave like an Adult – person capable of accepting responsibility, fully accepts personal responsibility.

· You can behave like a Child – person capable of accepting responsibility, but refuses to do so.

· 1 Corinthians 13:11 - “…when I became a man I put away childish things…”

· You can choose:

(1) Not to hide, be covered – choose to be honest.

(2) Become respectful of others and commit to connect.

· One person can change the cycle of shame and shaming.

· Are you that person?

3. The Shame Intimacy Cycle:

· Genesis 3:7-13 - “The Lord God called to Adam and said…”Where are you?”

(a) “Adam heard the voice of the Lord”….Adam and his wife hid themselves.

· The presence of God triggered feelings and thoughts – pressure.

· Adam made choices:

i) Avoid the relationship – hide.

ii) Refuse responsibility for his choices.

iii) Blamed Eve and God.

· Blame cycle: Pressure -> opt out -> blame, shame, defeat -> separation -> back to start.

· Intimacy cycle: Pressure -> opt in -> stay open, honest respectful -> address issues -> become bonded -> intimacy continues and relationship build.

(b) “Adam, where are you?’

· This is a relationship question to bring issues to the open.

· God was hurt by Adam’s action

· God made choices.

i) Value the relationship – connect

ii) Value the person – give opportunity to explain.

iii) Assigned responsibility - verse 14-19

iv) Continue to love – verse 21

· Ephesians 5:1,2 - “Be imitators of God…and walk in love as Christ also has loved us”.

· Under pressure you can choose how you respond.

A: Opt into Relationship

-Identify Personal feelings

-Identify Beliefs, Expectations, Assumptions

-Gain Gods Perspective

-Connect and communicate value

B: Opt out of Relationships:

-Controlled by feelings and beliefs

-Blame other person

-React by shaming or punishing them

-Disconnect: anger, silence, evidence trying to appease without dealing with the issue

· There is a moment of decision – a point where you choose the road to take.

4. Practical Keys to Changing patterns:

i) Take responsibility for own feelings, thoughts, expectations, assumptions, judging.

· Galatians 6:5 - “Each one shall bear his own load”, (responsibilities)

ii) Surrender to the Lord all expectations that people or things can bring you lasting fulfillment.

· Matthew 20:28 - “The Son of man came not to be saved but to serve and give His life”.

iii) Believe everything that happens can be changed with something true.

· Romans 8:28 - “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”.

iv) Define what you are responsible for.

· What are you fully responsible for?

· What do you have no responsibility for?

v) Forgiveness.

· Forgive other person (Matthew 6:12) - Pardon them and care for them.

· Seek forgiveness (Matthew 5:23) - Take responsibility and ask their forgiveness.

vi) Choose to serve – demonstrate the love and character of God.

· Romans 8:29 - “…He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son…”

5. The Example of Jesus:

· John 13:1-17

· Key issues: heart attitude and turning

· Jesus personal identity secure

· Chose to demonstrate the Love of God – serve

· Positioned Himself as a servant – not controlled by His own feelings and concerns

· Went in love to help them ‘face the dirt’ on their feet

· Most want to expose the dirt and shame of others

· Servant loves and washes the feet

· Peter’s response:

i) Tried to stop – verse 8

ii) Overreacted

· Jesus response:

i) Necessity of receiving washing to maintain relationship

ii) Personal example for us

Extravagant Love

Keep Yourself in His Love

One of the most painful experiences in life, is experiences where you're ‘unloved’; or where people: react against you, speak against you; or where there's physical or emotional violence.

You experience, over a period of time, a deep sense of ‘lack of value’; that I ‘don't belong’; or I'm ‘not valuable’ to anyone. You come to the conclusion in your heart that: I'm unlovable

The Great Commandment (1 of 6)

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: love your neighbour as yourself. Love God passionately, love people fervently - including yourself.

God’s Extravagant Love (2 of 6)

Christian life is a response to God's love, a continuing response. We love Him because He first loved us. Meetings aren't enough. I must meet with God. I must feel His presence, encounter His presence and I must learn how to respond.

If you love Me, you'll trust that what I say will work out good for you, and you'll do it. Many Christians want to come into an experience someone else creates, rather than a lifestyle where they walk and enjoy God. The measure of your maturity, is not your experiences, it's what do you do with people

Keep Yourself in the Love of God (3 of 6)

Jude 20: Keep yourself in the love of God. Why do I have to guard, or protect, or watch over this area of encountering, experiencing, and walking in the love of God?

There's an enemy that wants to keep me from it. The devil brings spiritual pressure around us. You've got to guard against isolation and loneliness.

As You Love Yourself (4 of 6)

God's calling the church, every person, to serve. Love always serves others; but if you're unhappy about who you are, you'll use the serving as a way of fulfilling an unmet need inside.

God wants us to place value on ourselves. I want to focus on 'as you love yourself.' What do you believe about yourself? When you look in the mirror and you look there, you look at that person there, what do you think?

Loving Yourself (5 of 6)

Loving yourself is not the same as being self-centred, it's not about being selfish. It has to do with placing the appropriate value upon your life that God has placed.

It's coming into agreement with Him, so our relationships with others are not affected by the way we see ourself. You are valuable, you are a special person, you are important to Him.

Love your Neighbour (6 of 6)

Love is incredibly practical. We've looked at spiritual dimensions of it, the need to experience God, to hear his voice - that's the fuel for the fire; but encounters with God are always to lead us to mission.

Love always has an outworking, or a practical expression. Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Keep Yourself in His Love.mp3

- The Great Commandment (1 of 6).mp3

- God’s Extravagant Love (2 of 6).mp3

- Keep Yourself in the Love of God (3 of 6).mp3

- As You Love Yourself (4 of 6).mp3

- Loving Yourself (5 of 6).mp3

- Love your Neighbour (6 of 6).mp3

Notes

- The Great Commandment (1 of 6)

- God’s Extravagant Love (2 of 6)

- Keep Yourself in the Love of God (3 of 6)

- As You Love Yourself (4 of 6)

- Loving Yourself (5 of 6)

- Love your Neighbour (6 of 6)

Keep Yourself in His Love

Mon 26 Mar 2012  « Back to Top

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One of the most painful experiences in life, is experiences where you're ‘unloved’; or where people: react against you, speak against you; or where there's physical or emotional violence.

You experience, over a period of time, a deep sense of ‘lack of value’; that I ‘don't belong’; or I'm ‘not valuable’ to anyone. You come to the conclusion in your heart that: I'm unlovable

Now let me just start with a story about a person I met in Wellington some years ago. I was going down to speak at Promise Keepers, and I came out of the airport and waiting around, wondering who's going to pick me up, and this old drug rehabilitation van pulled up outside. So the transport was the drug rehabilitation van, and there was a fairly big Maori fellow there, with tattoos all over him, and he's sort of standing out there, and he said oh, this way bro'. I said okay, this must be the one. So I got in there with him, and anyway I got talking to him, found out his name was Peter and I said Peter, tell me a bit about yourself.

So he began to share about his background, and he'd had a very hard background; abusive father and family, and it was a very, very difficult painful background. It was quite distressing to hear about it, and he got involved in the gangs, he was then dealing drugs. He was the drug dealer, he was the one - and even while he's in the prison, he's got the deals going through his wife in the home. Anyway I said well what happened to you?

He said well, someone must have been praying for us. He said I got in here, and he said, you know, he said I started to feel so depressed after a while, and you know it's a tough place, hard to live in a prison. He said I started to feel very, very depressed and down, and he said I had a cell on my own, and he said there was one night there and he said I was just at the very end of myself, so actually what I did was I just put up my hands and said God, if you are real, Jesus, if you are in - because he said what had happened was, he'd had one of the other prisoners give his heart to the Lord, as a result of a team coming into the prison, and he thought the guy was a wimp. He wanted to beat him up, and he really was reacting, and the guy would not react back to him.

So this night he just got in the prison cell. He said God, if you're real show yourself to me, and he said it was like a light went on in the prison, and he said he felt the love of God. He felt the person - he didn't see anything, but he said he felt as though someone was standing there in front of him. He knew exactly who it was, that it was Jesus, and he said he began to feel love flow into his heart like he had never experienced in his life. He said it came over him in waves. He said I could not stop. He said here I am, I'm tattooed all over, I'm a gang leader and everyone's scared of me, I'm a hit man, and he said there I am on my knees, just blubbering like a baby. I sobbed.

I said well what happened? He said I just cried and cried and cried and cried. He said he couldn't stop crying. He said I cried for ages. It was loud. Everyone heard it, and they all figured I was having a breakdown, so I just stayed there, and he said the presence of Jesus so touched me in that cell. When I felt His love, all I could do was respond to Him. He said I received Jesus into my heart, alone in the cell, because I encountered the love of God, and he said I then wondered how on earth I'm going to live in prison, you know. Now I love Jesus, what's going to happen? I won't be tough anymore, and I'm not going to beat anyone up. So he wondered how he'd get on with his wife.

Anyway, his wife come in to see him the next day, and he was just wondering how he could break the news to her, that what had happened to him in the cell. Then she spoke up; she said honey, there's something I've got to tell you. He said what? She said well you know you've been asking me to deal all these drugs while you've been in jail? She said I went to a church meeting, and I gave my heart to Jesus. My life has changed. I got rid of all the drugs - and she's sort of waiting for the punches to start flying, and instead of that, you know, they both wept together, that in a place where both of them were in prison, one in the prison, and in chains in his heart, the other outside the prison, and in chains in her life; Jesus met both of them, and they were touched with His love, and both were changed.

He said we've been working with the drug rehabilitation ever since, and I've been able to speak to people in schools. I've got a purpose for my life, and it started when I connected to the love of Jesus Christ. His life was transformed by that experience, and I want to talk to you, because that same Jesus who loved him, is here to love you as well.

I want to share with you a verse that'll just help you, and I want to just speak to you about just a couple of things out of this verse, and I want to give you a couple of practical keys, very, very simple practical keys and I want us to read if you've got a Bible with you, and read in Jude which is a one page book, just before the Book of Revelations, so it's not very hard to find, you know. Let's see if you can find it there and it says - this is what it says. It says in Verse 20, but you beloved - so it's talking then about people who are mocking, walking in ungodly lust, sensual people having divisions and whatever, He says but you, He said you - notice what it tells us here - He said building yourself up in your most Holy Faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking expectantly for the mercy of Jesus Christ. Keep yourself in the love of God.

One of the things that's one of the most painful experiences in life, is to go through experiences where you're unloved, or where people react against you, where they speak against you, or where you're in a home which is hostile, where there's violence, verbal violence, physical violence, emotional violence, and you actually experience over a period of time, a deep sense of lack of value, that I don't belong, or I'm not valuable to anyone. This is one of the most painful experiences.

You come to the conclusion in your heart that I'm unlovable. It becomes a very, very deep pain that people live with in life, and one of the ways people try and cope with the pain, is to find relationships that will minister to the emptiness in their heart. We see it today, a generation where families are broken down, there's no fathers, and there's a struggle among young men and young women to feel loved and of value. It's hard for a young person to feel of great value when their father has abandoned them or abused them. It's hard to feel of great value when you've been through painful experiences in life.

Now most people come to the conclusion I'm not much value, and so they go looking for something to fix it, looking for something. The most common place is in relationships. Let me tell you this young people; if you go into a relationship looking for someone to meet the need in your life to be loved, the relationship will fail. It can never succeed, because you're trying to draw something out of someone else to meet a need in your heart, that can never be met just through that relationship.

The Bible tells us God is love. We're made for a dynamic relationship and connection with Him. If you don't discover the love of God personally, and learn how to take hold of it day by day in your life, you will look for a substitute. The substitute could be a relationship. I've seen so many young girls ruin their lives, some boy drew them in telling them he loved them, and all he wanted to do was lust after them. This is not going to work, and what happens is the person's left even more sensing and believing they're unloved, unlovable, because of the shame they carry in their life.

Listen and we've prayed for - Lyn's prayed for many, I've prayed for many. Heaps and heaps of people that have just gone through these terrible experiences, and really the issue is something that only God can sort out in your life, only God can meet that need in your life. So people turn to drugs. Why are they looking for drugs? They're looking for a hit to feel good. Why do they want to feel good? Because something is missing in their heart. People turn to all kinds of things. Some of them turn into competitive sport, some turn into different kinds of work, some just get busy to try and bury the pain.

Listen, I remember praying for one man. He was in his 60s and he broke down - this is a businessman, a successful businessman - he broke down and wept and wept and wept. Even though he'd worked hard to succeed, nothing could stop the pain in his heart, that I'm actually unlovable. He thought that if he worked hard enough, he would be lovable. So God wants to help you with this, and in this verse I want to share with you, just some simple keys that'll help you just understand how to deal with this issue.

You can't find what you're looking for. There's no one out there will meet your need to be loved, and so here's the thing; you've got to actually establish that in your own heart. The Bible says that if we are rooted and grounded in the love of God, in Jesus Christ, then God fills us. Our life begins to have purpose and impact. Isn't it a very, very simple thing? Let me just talk to you then. I'm going to give you a couple of reasons why it is that people struggle so much, and this is something that many of you struggle with.

I know we've talked with, and counselled with, so many young people, so many broken relationships. I've watched people go from one relationship to another, and it's like the same thing keeps breaking down, breaking down, breaking down, because at the core of their being, they're not established in Christ, and in the love He has. And I want to help you in just a moment how to do that. One of the first things to see is why is there such a struggle? Why is it I struggle to feel love? Why is it I struggle in my heart to be lovable? Why do I have that struggle? Why is it that at times in the middle of a crowd - and I can remember it when I was a young person in university. I can remember being in a crowd in a party one night, and everyone's drinking, the music's all raging and pumping, and then right in the middle of that party - and I'm drinking. I probably had too much that night, and I'm right in the middle of the party.

Suddenly overwhelming loneliness and feeling unloved came into me, and I thought this is crazy! I'm in the middle of a whole group of people. What is this thing that seems to come against me? So let me explain to you what it is, and then how to deal with it very quickly, with some just simple keys to help you deal with it.

The first thing to realise is that you have a personal adversary, the devil, who wants to lay on you all his rejection, and all his resentment, and bitterness, because once the devil actually walked in the realms of God and experienced personally the love of God, but when he sinned he was totally, totally rejected, and if there's one thing is his mission in life it's this; it's to put on you his rejection, so you feel totally unloved, and begin to ruin your life trying to find a way to heal that need in your heart.

In John 8, I think Verse 44, it says that the devil is the father of lies, so if demonic spirits were attacking you which they do, they don't come and announce I'm attacking you. You don't have a spirit sort of just turn up and say well I think I'm going to pick a fight with you. It doesn't work like that - they operate invisibly, and so you live in a physical world with physical relationships, but you also live in a spirit world. In the spirit world, demonic spirits come to attack, so how does the spirit attack you? How would you know if something was attacking you? Very, very simply, when a spirit comes, it comes near. It draws near, just like I'm drawing near right now, and when it becomes near, it begins to fill your mind with certain kinds of thoughts, begins to fill your emotions, with certain kinds of feelings.

So when a spirit comes near, it will invade you with its thoughts, and its emotions, and you'll think they're mine. You won't discern necessarily that this comes from outside you. You'll think that's me - and so demonic spirits, they torment people, and Jesus made it very clear. The devil is the father of lies, so what he'll do is, he'll come near to you when something happens in your life, and he'll just sow a seed in your mind of thoughts and things, oh, that must mean I'm unlovable.

So when does he come to do that? Well he comes not all the time. He comes periodically, in waves, and I'll show you what to do with it, because I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced this. You'll have sudden times when this thing suddenly overwhelms you. You feel like all - no awareness that God is here. All you're aware of, is just the emotions and turmoil you've got inside. So when do these things come, when do they attack you? I'll give you some examples when they attack. They attack you when you sin and fail. They'll come immediately in to accuse you, condemn you and cause you to believe in your heart, you can't be loved.

When we sin sexually, that's the time they come the most strongest, and they push on you an accusation, and a condemnation, you're unlovable. There's nothing good about you. Look at what you have done. Demons come this way. That's how they work. They fill your mind when you've failed, when there's pain in life. Perhaps you have a disappointment, and a setback in life; suddenly there'll be this pressure come on you out of the spirit world. Your mind and emotions will begin to fill up, and you begin to think that you're a failure, or you may have a difficulty in a relationship - which is normal, because all relationships have difficulties - and then suddenly in the midst of that difficulty in the relationship, you'll have these overwhelming thoughts and feelings come into your mind; oh, I'm just not acceptable, unloved and this is not working out. I need to get out of here.

Or you'll have a situation come in your life where a disappointment has come, and suddenly your mind and heart become overwhelmed and invaded with thoughts, feelings, emotions. That is a spirit pushing on you. It is the father of lies, and what he is doing is sowing into you right at that point, a lie that you are not of value, that you are not loved.

Now here's the deal. If you will accept that lie, if you will believe what he says, and put it in your heart at that moment, he has power to torment you, and keep you in torment. I've seen heaps of Christians - it's been just a heartbreak for me over years to watch so many Christians. God has given you access to His love, and His presence, and to be able to live in that presence, and to actually feel and experience that love day by day, yet most people don't. What they experience instead are all kinds of turmoil, and their emotions and soul feeling unloved, not of value.

Listen: you better get real on this. There is a fight for your life, and your destiny, and you've got to decide you'll stand up, and who you're going to believe. You've got to do the things that will position you to experience the love of God consistently, and to be able to recognise and overcome those things when they come against you. Listen, this is a number of ways that the devil comes I'll share - let me just show you how you can deal with it, very, very simple. It's not very, very hard. When he comes, it's always the same way, comes through the same avenues, and he comes ,and you end up with the same thoughts.

Here's the core of the problem. In Proverbs 4:23 it says, guard your heart with all diligence, because whatever you believe in your heart, is going to flow out in the rest of your life, so what counts is what you believe in your heart. If you have a judgement in your heart, that formed when you were younger, I'm unlovable, I'm of no value, I have to work hard or I'll never make it; if you have judgements in your heart about yourself, those judgements will sit there, and demons will use them and continually torment them, until you break your agreement with those things.

You are of great value. You are loved. The Bible says nothing can separate you from the love of God and Jesus Christ, nothing, nothing. Failure, nothing! Jesus paid for all your failures. Disappointments, nothing! Nothing can keep you from the love of God. Nothing will cause God to change His mind about you. Nothing you do - well you don't understand, I've done this or I had an abortion, I had this. No, no, no. Nothing you can do, will change God's view of you! He is love. He loves you unconditionally. He wants you to be filled with that love. Don't listen to the lies of condemnation. Don't listen to the judgements in your heart. Learn to recognise the voice that comes from God, the voice that comes from demonic spirits pushing you down and depressing you, because the moment you start down the track of beginning to start to doubt that God loves you, to doubt the reality of His care for you, to doubt the reality of His watching over you - as soon as you go down that track, then depression and all kinds of things come around. Then you're looking for a way out of the pain.

Now listen, you don't have to live like that. You can live differently. We're called to live differently. We're called to live, and walk, and enjoy the love of God, and it tells us some simple keys in there how to do it. It all has to do with you believing. It tells us you beloved, you're different, so praying in Holy Ghost, praying in the spirit, praying in tongues is a great gift to energise, and make your spirit man come alive, so you are aware of the Holy Spirit, because when you're praying in tongues, the Bible tells us your spirit is praying, the Holy Ghost is rising up inside you. The spirit of God is expressing through you, so every time I pray in tongues, I'm aware the spirit of God is with me, and if I pray in tongues, my spirit will start to arise above the conflicts of the soul.

So number one, you need to start to do some time with God, and these are the sorts of things you can do, very simply. You spend time praying in the spirit. Secondly, you begin to meditate on what God says about you. Imagine it, what it would feel like to have God with you, loving you, being near to you. I took some weeks imagining the reality of God with me, God near me, His friendship to me. I just took time to imagine it. I didn't feel anything except a bit stupid at first, and if I'd stopped when I felt stupid, I'd have never have come to where I have in life now. Someone had said a great thing to me. They said if you knew that by pushing against this problem and resolving it, your life would change, wouldn't it be worth it?

I've looked all over. I've ministered all over New Zealand, but one of the most common problems I find right through New Zealand is simply this: people struggle with rejection, and believing they're unlovable, and when they give way to those thoughts and emotions ,they become depressed, lose connection with God, and then they just become religious. We've got to know and walk in the reality, I am loved by my Father. So how can it happen? Well I took time to meditate in it, so for probably three to four weeks, every day I'd rise up, pray in tongues, speak and declare those demons are defeated, and then meditate that God loves me, and His presence is with me, and I would meditate and meditate. I'd imagine standing there, and God is with me, all the love that I would feel. I began to meditate in those things. You know what? It took me about three to four weeks, and then one day, I suddenly experienced God's love in the most very powerful way. It started to flow over my life, through me. I broke down and wept and wept and I had an encounter and experience with God, so I've practised re-meditating on that regularly.

What happens is, you begin to establish in your life, a pattern of feeling the love of God in your life. You have to allow your imagination to go there, and allow yourself to imagine what would it feel like to be totally surrounded by the love of God, and to stay there until you've been to experience it. So that's a simple thing you could do.

Second thing I found I needed to do was this; I needed to break my agreement with the lie that I'm of no value, that I'm unlovable. If you hold that in your heart, it will continue to trouble you. You see, you're responsible for what's in your heart, even if it's a lie, and if you've got a lie in your heart, the devil will just use it to constantly torment you. He'll leave you alone for a while, and then something will go wrong and next thing you know you feel this weight and pressure around you, and your emotions and in your spirit. You've got to push it away, and see it for what it is, just a tormenting spirit.

And so number one, spend time with God establishing the truth that you're loved in your heart, through meditation, acknowledging Him, praying in tongues, but mostly through meditation and confession of the word of God. It does it. I can tell you now, I can absolutely guarantee it does it. I can go and take time alone, and then very quickly start to feel His love flowing to me. I couldn't do that one time. I can do it now, and second thing that we'll share is, deal with what's in your heart. If you've got resentment and bitterness, if you've got judgements in your heart about yourself, then repent of them. Just break your agreement with them, and then every time one of those negative thoughts come, just see it for what it is. Something like this will happen, because I remember being in a situation, two young men at the door there and - I may have shared this with you before - and one of them had quite a deep root of rejection. He felt unloved, unloved by fathers, and unloved by men, and I happened to walk in very, very busy and I was just a bit preoccupied. They both said hi, how you doing Pastor? I didn't hear it because I was involved in something else.

One of them just shrugged it off, oh, I'll catch up with him later. The other one, this is what he thought; that Pastor doesn't like me, and so all through that, he'd turned out to the church service to worship God and enjoy God, and all he could do was experience torment the whole service, because he'd taken hold of a lie, and the lie now was tormenting him. See, you've got to make decisions what you let live in your head. Your head is the most valuable real estate you have. It is.

You go to Auckland. It costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy property. Believe me, your head is very valuable property. You be careful what you allow to get in there. You let the lies get in there, it'll affect the way you think, the way you see God, the way you run your life, the way you run your relationships. You're better than that! You're better than that. God absolutely and unconditionally loves you. The Bible's very clear. Nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God and Jesus Christ. Nothing. My failures, not my failures. What if I really blow it? No if I really blow it. It makes no difference. What if I sin? That makes no difference. Oh, maybe the devil will piggyback on it and condemn me a bit, but it doesn't change God's view. He says I've dealt with all your sins. Why don't you believe me? Step up, get forgiven, and get on with being loved, get on with walking with me.

Listen, you've got to assert yourself to believe God. If you believe in those things that come around you, which reject you, they'll govern your life. Why not make a decision? How many know what I'm talking about? How many struggle with these kinds of things? There's so many people. Why don't you make a decision, I will never again receive into my mind and heart any thought that I'm unloved and of no value. I will not harbour such judgements against me, but I will hold the truth that I am totally loved by God. I'll spend time to meditate in that truth, and that truth, when I embrace it, will set me free.

It's not something that you just do it once, it's over and done with. It becomes a lifestyle, and there are times when things will be just really good and you'll have a breakthrough for a while, and then a pressure will come again, and you'll have to stand up and hold the truth of God's word in your life. I guarantee that almost certainly in this coming week, you'll have some experience where something goes wrong, and the moment something goes wrong, you have a setback or disappointment or someone hurts or says something about you, in that moment of time you'll have an emotion flood your soul. You just stop, and look at what it is, and ask what I really see, and what am I thinking about that? I reject the lie there's something wrong with me. I believe I am totally accepted in God's eyes, and I'm going to walk in that freedom. I will not be put down. I will not be devalued by life, but I believe God will use life circumstances to make me a great person. It's a choice.

The Great Commandment (1 of 6)

Sun 12 Jul 2009 AM  « Back to Top

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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: love your neighbour as yourself. Love God passionately, love people fervently - including yourself.

I want to just start another series, and I want to look at Extravagant Love. That's a good one, Extravagant Love - trying to think about what I could call this series, Extravagant Love. So we're going to do some messages just related to that, and I want us to start in this particular passage here, in Matthew, Chapter 22. Jesus asked a question, in Verse 36, Teacher, what's the great commandment in the law? What's the most important thing in the Bible? And Jesus said to him - here it is - You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. He said this is the first and great commandment. Second's like it: love your neighbour as yourself. So notice there, love God passionately, love people fervently including yourself and so we're going to look at this series on Extravagant Love but this particular time we want to look at the love that God has for us, because most people when they think about being Christian they think well, there's lots of things you have to do now, and lots of things you're not supposed to do now.

It seems like life's more complicated, but Jesus never came to make life complicated. He came to make it abundant and He came to make it abundant by introducing us to a relationship, a personal relationship with God. So you notice what He says here the whole of the Bible, everything is summed up in passionately loving God. Notice all your soul and all your mind and all your heart. That's not sort of an inexpressive thing, that is a passionate thing. I was watching an interview with that New Zealand group Flight of the Conchords. You know Flight of the Conchords? These Kiwi guys and they're just trying to [speaks in a monotone] talk like this you know. One of the guys says those guys talk funny and this is what they said. They said oh no, that's just a New Zealand accent. I laughed and laughed when I saw that, but what it was, they were just highlight the monotony and lack of expression and passion.

When you have a look a lot of people are like that, no passion, no passion! God is a passionate lover of people, and we're going to look and see that the whole key around us loving God passionately is first of all experiencing Him. You can't make something like that just happen. It can't be done unless God doesn't first ignite something in our life by touching us, so before we look about loving extravagantly, loving God, loving people, love ourselves, before we go down that track we want to focus today on just the passionate love that God has for us because people have all kinds of concepts of God. The way you see God, is how you will approach Him, so if you have wrong concepts of God, it will affect how you can connect to Him, so for example if you believe someone's angry at you, you're going to steer clear of them. If you feel guilty that you've already failed someone, let them down, you probably won't want to meet Him.

If you feel that someone is really heavy and demanding of you, you won't enjoy being around them, but if you know someone loves you and celebrates you and welcomes you, accepts you no matter what's happened in your life, they're not fazed, they're not changed, they're not disturbed, that they can totally be relied on to embrace and celebrate you, you could easily connect with a person like that. The problem is we don't have many relationships like that, and so we project the pain of our own relationships into the relationship with God, and then avoid Him. I want to just show and open up the Bible and show you just the extremely expressive, passionate manner that God loves people. It's extraordinary and it's pictured all through the Bible, just how passionate God is, and so we're going to look at that. In 1 John 4, Verse 19 it says this. It says we love Him because He first touched us with His love. So this love that Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, love Him passionately, get into God. Really be engaged and love Him passionately, and then let it overflow to love people. He said, that is the response that comes when we experience something with Him, so the thing is not to try harder to love God and love people. The thing is firstly fuel the fire of your experience with Him. We love Him, because He first loved us. We respond to Him, because He first initiated reaching out to us. Now when you begin to see that, when your capacity to live the Christian life diminishes, take time to get near and experience the love God has for you. It will ignite the fire again. Get in His presence.

So let's look at this. First thing I want to look at is 1 John, Chapter 4 and Verse 16. God is an initiator of love. God is the initiator. Many people think about God as being someone who's very demanding. He wants us to do this and doesn't want us to do that, but this is what the Bible says. Now God is love, so it tells us the nature of God, He is a loving person. He can never change. That's His nature is to be loving, to be compassionate, to be gentle, to be merciful, to believe in us, to look for the very best in us, to be very patient in working with us. That's the very nature of love that's described in 1 Corinthians 13. That's what God's like. He's patient, He's very, very compassionate, He's willing to reach into us and encourage us and lift us up. He's willing to help us, and He longs to invest Himself. He's an initiator of love, He starts it off, and we'll show you just with a few things in the Bible, and as you think about your own experience, that God always is an initiator.

How many people just woke up one day and decided they're going to become a Christian? You don't. God has sent people into your life. He's pursued you. He's always the one who initiates. When you look through the Bible, we find from one end to the other, God is the one who initiates relationship. Why did He make people? I mean with all the mess that people have made, why did God create people? Very simply this. Love must find an expression. Love must have an overflow. Love must outwork in a practical, tangible, verbal, emotional and spiritual way - can't just say I love but its real deep down. Sorry, that kind of love doesn't work, it's buried, it's dead. It's not active, vibrant love. That always overflows and has expression. If you bury your love, your relationships wither, so God has designed us for a relationship. He designed people for relationship with Him. He designed you and I to experience Him, not just to know about Him but to actually experience a touch of God from the realm of the spirit, touching us because we are spirit beings. That's what God is like. Have a think about that. That's how we are; God has designed us to be a relational being, to be a spirit being.

Now here's the thing about God is, He loves you. We find that hard because we find that love for most of us has been an experience where we experience love when we did right, and we experienced something else when we didn't do right, so people's love for us most of our lives, has been conditional on our performance, so we tend to think that when we come to God that His love for us is also based around our performance, so people reduce Christianity - well you've got to do this and you're not allowed to do that. That is not what Jesus came to give us. God loves you exactly as you are. You may think well my nose is too big. Well He loves that, it's the way He made it. Don't give up on it, see? You may think well I don't like my ears, they stick out. Well God loves those ears of yours. He allowed you to be designed that way. You may think well I've got some faults and lacks in my life. Well don't worry, God is not fazed by that at all. He sees the potential in your life and what you can be, because He loves you.

You may think well you know, I've really messed stuff up in my life. Well don't worry, God has made a provision for you to overcome that, to learn from it, and to become a better person at the other side. God loves you in the morning when you wake up, God loves you and is watching over you. I'll show you it in the scripture in a moment. When you sleep at night God is still watching over you. He doesn't sleep. During the day, God is watching what you do. He wants to invade your world, and to invade the world of others around you, so when you look in the Bible how God came to people, He came in unusual ways; He came to Moses in a bush, came to the disciples in an upper room, came to people in all kinds of different ways and He still does. All kinds of different ways God is willing to reach into your world. If you will look and reach out for Him, you'll experience Him. Trouble is so often we just get so busy that we just forget.

I want you to have a look at a scripture here in Psalm 139, it's an amazing scripture. This is one that David wrote. I won't open it all up but I want to just draw your attention to just a couple of things in it about how God looks upon you. See, God is an initiator of love. We'll pick it up at Verse 13. You formed my inwards parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. Now what he's saying here is he's saying that - see, what happens in a mother's womb is the physical body is formed, a child begins to grow and develop. But what David is saying in here, is he's saying that I was actually a spirit being, and You have covered me with a physical body, so You were watching over me even while I was being formed in the womb. Notice what else it says. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me. So David is saying this; he's saying that while I was still in the womb being formed, while I was experiencing things in my mother's womb, You were watching over me, and as I came forth, You wrote down in a book a destiny, a plan, something my life was called to accomplish, a purpose for my life. What an amazing thing.

In Jeremiah 29, Verse 11, it says I know the thoughts I have to you, thoughts of good, not evil. So every day God is thinking about you. He's thinking thoughts that'll give you hope. He's thinking how your life can go forward. He's thinking how you can prosper. He's thinking how you can be encouraged. He's thinking how you can succeed. The Bible says the Lord delights and takes pleasure when we succeed and prosper. He loves it. He doesn't sort of rejoice over us failing and falling over, He lifts us up. The steps of the good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, he'll not be utterly cast down or abandoned by God. God will lift him up and get him going again. This is the nature of God. He initiates love, He initiates reaching out, He continually thinks so God's absolutely passionate about people.

I want you to go with me in Song of Solomon. There's a whole number of ways in the Bible where God seeks to express what He's like, so if you just read it as a book you kind of miss it really, but if you realise that this book describes the experiences of men who encountered God; they weren't perfect people. The Bible's full of people with lives that were full of holes and mistakes and failures, yet God loved them and worked powerfully through them. Many of them changed their generation, yet they were full of holes and faults in their lives, but God loved them. He's not overwhelmed by your failures and lacks. He'll help you get up. I want you to have a look in Song of Solomon here, and it tells us about the love that God has. Now Song of Solomon, guys don't tend to like this book too much, and it kind of looks like sort of a romancey sort of book - well it is, and what it is, it's actually like an allegory. It's like a picture, a story of a relationship between a groom and the bride, so all through the groom talks, the bride talks, and so that's what it is. It's all full of that and it's full of talk of romance and love using picture language, but actually it is to describe the nature of what God's feelings and desires and yearnings are for people, particularly for those who have responded to Him.

Look what it says here in Song of Solomon, Chapter 8, Verse 7. It says many waters cannot quench love - so waters in the Bible speak of adversity or difficulties or setbacks, and notice what it says. It's God's love for you, you can't quench it. You can't put it out. You can't take the flame out, you can't diminish it in any kind of way. His love remains consistent. It's not dependent on our performance, so what happens is we tend to respond based on our performance, and the Bible says no matter what we're going through, no matter what difficulties, hardships, whatever struggles, failures, God's love for you doesn't change - unquenchable. He loved you at the start, He loves you now, He'll continue to love you - hard for us to understand it, so we're going to look at just a few more expressions of it. The Bible's full of it. Once you start to look for it you'll find throughout the Bible God trying to show how He loves people, and His willingness to engage in our lives in a positive, life-changing way - if we will respond. He's yearning for us to respond.

Let's have a look at another one in Song of Solomon - Chapter 4. Now this one here, this is going to be tough for the guys, but here it is. This is a man talking you see. Now guys, we kind of keep the love down deep, but it's not good enough you see? God is a passionate lover, He's a passionate person, so when God loves, He loves passionately. He's absolutely extravagant in all He does, so you think about creation for example, and you look in creation, and you look at just get on a clear starry night and just look at the magnificence of everything there. See, God is so creative. Have a look into creation, the whole variety of animals, they're still discovering species. In spite of all the species there is God's - you know, if you and I were told to make a few animals for the earth we'd probably come up with about three or four or five and that's about it - a couple that fly, a couple that go in the water and a few on the land we could eat, and there it is. But God is extravagant! Look at all the animals, all the different kinds of species, the variety. Look at the big ones, look at the little ones, it's absolutely diverse. That's God - extravagant.

Look at the colours. If you had to think about the colours, if you were going to create a world and put colours you'd probably pick one or two of your favourites and that'd be it. Well God's got favourites - blue I think, then green - but there's all kinds of colours. God is diverse. You think about - look at the people around, how diverse we are. See, God is extravagant in His expression, so don't try and copy someone else. God doesn't want you copying someone, He made you like you are, He likes you like you are too. He likes you like you are. He likes you. He loves you. You are special to Him, you are valuable to Him. The world around you takes away your value, but God always values you. He never changes. Now look at this, now this is the groom speaking, and so these words here are a picture of God speaking words to people, to His people that have responded to Him. You have ravished my heart my spouse; you have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes. How fair is your love, my spouse! How much better than wine is your love. Now that's pretty - that's good stuff, we won't go any further, you'll just get all distracted. But see?

Now notice that word ravish. It means to fill with strong passionate feelings and emotions, because something is very attractive. In that verse it's saying, when people look to God with love and desire for Him, His heart is filled with expressive emotions. He loves that. He designed us for that. He designed us for an intimate expressive relationship, you're wired for it. You'll malfunction if you don't have it. The Bible says you all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory; sin's just we're separated from God and we can't function like we're supposed to. We still function in some ways, but not in the fullness of what God has. Look at that one there. I'll give you another verse here, try in Songs 6 and Verse 4. O my love, you are as beautiful as Tirzah - that was one of the most beautiful fruitful cities everyone wanted to go and live in, in Ephraim. You are beautiful. Now that's God speaking. Can you imagine God saying that to you? You are beautiful. You see you're struggling with that already, but that's what the Bible says. You see, you're struggling because you've got your own ideas about God.

God is not unwilling to say to you in My eyes, you are beautiful, and I love you. When you respond to Me, My heart is stirred with deep emotion. See, that's what God is like. He's not wanting us to keep laws and keep rules and stuff like that. He's wanting us to have a relationship. His heart yearns for the relationship and you see He gave us a free will so we can choose whether you'll enter into that relationship and become a lover of God, or whether we become a lover of the world, and fill our life with substitutes. But when we turn our heart towards God and begin to respond to His love, then He in turn begins to find fulfilment. He says He's made us for His pleasure, made us to enjoy us, and us to enjoy Him. That's the way we're designed. Wonderful isn't it aye? The guys are starting to choke now so - but you see, you know we carry wrong concepts of God, and most people bring out of their family background and their experiences, all kinds of ways of viewing relationships and love, and particularly God. If you don't actually find what the Bible says, you'll have an image of God that's not correct, that's not right and you can't relate to something that's not really Him. You've got to relate to Him, and He says you're beautiful, I love you. I'll give anything - and He has. He's given His only son, Jesus Christ.

So all the Bible you find God pursuing people, pursuing them, chasing them, trying to bring them into relationship, overcoming all kinds of things. We've got a whole number of things like that, so God pursues us. Think about in Genesis, Chapter 3 and Verse 9. Now God has made Adam and Eve for relationship with Him. Imagine every day God would come, and they would feel His presence, and He would talk with them, and they'd talk what they had done and would enjoy Him. Now things were beautiful and they made a dumb decision, they're going to go their own way, and so when God came again into the Garden, it says they heard His voice and felt His presence, and they ran away in fear and hid. Now what did God do? Well watch this - lightening bolts are for you! See, but that's the concept people have. It's a wrong concept. It's a religious concept, it's a false concept. Does God deal with issues? Yes, He does, but love always rejoices over judgement. God must uphold justice and judgement, but love is much higher than that, and so what did God do?

He said Adam, where are you? That's a relationship question. Adam, I know what you have done, and you have broken my heart, that you choose something as a substitute for Me. Can we meet and talk about this, and put this matter right? That's what God was doing. That's the response of someone who still loves, and Adam, instead of owning up and facing up, blamed someone else, and then because he made the choice not to own up and not to go back into relationship, he had to face then the consequences of that, and hence sin entered the world, and all the issues we've had since then. Eve did exactly the same thing, but that didn't stop God providing them with clothing and still being good to them. He still loved them. He still talked with them. You see we don't understand the passionate love that God has, and the depths to which He'll reach out over and over and over again to find ways to enter into our life and help us, see? You find it all through the Bible. Luke, Chapter 19 and Verse 10 it says this; the Son of Man came to seek, and to save that which was lost. So all through the Bible you find God reaching out to help people, to touch people's lives, to make Himself known in every kind of way, and then finally He came out of heaven and the person of Jesus Christ, entered the world to show what He is like.

Jesus said this is why I have come. This is why I left heaven. This is why I left the majesty and the glory of heaven and became very humble and came just like everyone else. This is why I did it; because I have come to seek, to pursue, and to get back something that's very precious and valuable. That's why I came. So all through the Bible God visited the earth, and kept showing His compassion and His power and His willingness to help people, then finally He sent His only Son. If I send My Son they will respond! Instead men crucified Him - even that didn't stop God loving. See? God doesn't stop loving. That's the thing that's amazing. You look at Paul on the road to Damascus and Paul, he's a religious nutter - too much education for his own good, so he's full of education, full of religion. He thinks he's doing God a favour killing the Christians, and so you'd think - now you imagine you're a Christian, and this guy's stirring up all of the problems and causing everyone to go to jail and be beaten up and people killed and families broken up, homes broken into. What would you be praying about that guy? Well probably different to how God turned it.

God just suddenly BOOF! and He interrupted him. He just interrupted him and then changed his life with one encounter, and that guy that caused so much destruction, God raised him up and made him the greatest builder of the church in the New Testament. That's God, passionate pursuer of people. He chases people. He looks for people. You think about how you came to Christ. Someone came to you, and probably not one, probably several people, probably people would - God put it on their heart to pray for you, and all the time they were praying for you you're saying no to God, no, no, no. He's not upset by that. He keeps pursuing. We give up quick - oh well, there you are, that's their choice. That's harshness. God's not like that. He never treated you that way. His love is passionate, expressive and it pursues people. I've observed when people fall away from God, they feel condemned, they don't feel good enough. They do what Adam did, run away and hide. Where do you hide? Well you stay out of church, because if you come here you'll feel exposed. People run away from God.

I remember going to a pub one time. We'd gone out for a meal and we had a lovely meal, it was a wonderful meal and I enjoyed it. Then I heard the sound of all the music next door, and I thought let's go in there. I said there's bound to be some people who've fallen away from God in there. What are you going to do when you fall away from God, no more music? No, we're going to find some other music, go out there to the other music. No more Holy Ghost love to touch our life. We'll go out and drink something or whatever. So we went in there and sure enough I see a guy there and he was once walking with God. I said you watch this, and I went over and he was up at the bar there, he was ordering these drinks, had his whole hand with drinks. I just waited until he got his drinks, he was doing something busy, so I didn't interrupt him.

Then when he got all his drinks I tapped him on the shoulder and said hi, how are you doing? He sort of - holding all this armful of drinks and stuff [laughs] and he said what are you doing here? I said I've come to talk to you. [Laughter] God sent me to talk with you. He loves you, knows you've been through some hard stuff, but that doesn't stop God loving you. All you're doing is hurting yourself, finding substitutes for the real. You need another round, of course you will, see? Because you've lost what you needed, the touch of God, the presence of God, the love of God living and alive in your heart. Man, it was great we saw him at church that Sunday, it was good. I got so excited I thought I might go around all the other pubs so we did, we did a pub crawl, went in all the other pubs. Would you believe it, in every pub we found someone. Went up to them too, the same way, it was great, I loved it. I haven't done a pub crawl for a while - must get out and do it again. Should take Lynney with me. You'd be safe to take would you Lynney? [Laughter] Would she Leon? [Laughs]

Anyway, but you see the point is here that God pursues people, doesn't quit on them, doesn't give up, never gives up. He keeps believing in them, reaching out and He'll find someone to come and get you, just when you're - I can remember when I was in Dannevirke and started my first year teaching. It was disastrous. I remember coming home, it was so disastrous one day I came home, and I just sat down and cried, this was disastrous. I had the worst day, it was just terrible, and I thought my life was finished about that time, my career was finished. So I said that's it God, I'm getting out of here unless you send someone to help me! Now I had hardly finished saying the prayer, and knock, knock, knock at the door. I thought who the heck could that be interrupting me, feeling sorry for myself? I opened up the door, it was a Pastor was there. I said oh [Laughs] He said I felt God put it on my heart to come and talk with you. God pursues us, loves us, doesn't ever give up and He wants us to be the same kind of people you see? He's wonderful, a wonderful person.

Notice this in Romans 5, Verse 8, it says now God demonstrates His love for us, that when we were dead, had no interest in God, in fact anti-God, then He sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins. Now you can't get better than that. That is passionate, determined, pursuing of people. God was determined to make it possible for us to get a relationship back, no matter how we treated Him. That's amazing love, amazing, extravagant that He would give His own Son to die on the cross, that we could have a relationship. Wow, that's amazing. See, so that's God see? Now a human heart can never be filled without God. In Proverbs 20, Verse 27 it says now the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. That word lamp is like a candle, lamp that has to have oil in it, and has a little wick and it has a life, and it says you and I are spirit beings, so we're a spirit being. God is a spirit, we're made in His image, we're a spirit being living in a body. We have a soul, mind, will and emotions and whatever, but our spirit, until we receive Jesus Christ our spirit is dead.

The Bible says, like a person taking a light and bringing it down and lighting an oil lamp that was not working, he said that's what God does to our spirit. When we receive Christ we receive the love of God into our heart, it ignites something inside us. Isn't that wonderful? God ignites love inside you, then it's your job to keep it going. In the Old Testament God shows it everywhere in the Bible. Here's one example they had in the Old Testament. God said make an altar for Me. He says I want you to prepare an offering for Me, and give something to Me, then fire came from heaven. He said now you just keep the fire going, keep that fire of love burning, see? So God loves us, and there's a part of us can never be satisfying unless God satisfies us, so it says in another one of the Proverbs, it says in Proverbs 18:28, you will light and ignite, and set me on fire. How do we do that? When we receive Jesus Christ, when we experience God's love, we start to ignite on the inside. Now God has designed you with a number of thirsts or longings inside. It's interesting, everyone's got them, doesn't matter where they are, what colour, what race, we're designed with these needs.

One of them, there's a thirst in our heart for security. Every person longs to feel security. It's built into us, it's a longing see and we're longing to be loved unconditionally, not to have to work and never be sure whether we're acceptable, receive love that's unconditional and acceptance no matter what we've done, we're secure in that relationship. We need that. People enter into relationships hoping they'll find security, but if we don't find it in God, what we'll do is we'll find a substitute, so people enter into all kinds of relationships looking for security and then hurt themselves, because they need to find it in God. The second need we have, is the need for self-worth, to feel we're a person of value, so we try to find it apart from God; well we'll get lots of money, we'll try and become important people or get significant positions and whatever. But at the end of the day, none of those things satisfy. The money goes at the wrong time when you need it the most, the position fails and falls over and you get fired and something changes. There's no security in it. There's nothing lasting in it, but God never changes. He will always tell you how much He values you.

You look back at the cross, you see His value expressed in a very tangible, practical way - but right now we can experience Him. You can have that. There's another need we have, it's the need for significance, the need to have a sense of purpose in our life. There's a need to think that my life is not nothing but it counts for something, and God is the only one that can give you that, so if we don't find it in God we'll find it somewhere else, in thirst for adventure, in thirst for love and intimacy. But you know if you don't find some of those things in God, what you do is you try to find something that'll fill it, so guys get real excited about man stuff, and get excited out there and watching a match and getting all excited. But actually there's an area of adventure that God wants to put in your hearts called the walk of faith, where He takes you into situations, gives you opportunities to take risks and show courage and trust in Him. All the other stuff's a substitute - so this is God, this is what He's like.

So God wants to reveal His love for you. I want you to have a look in Song of Solomon. Guys are going to find this one a bit hard too but here it is, it's there anyway. So most guys just overlook this book - I'd rather go into the Kings you know, and read about the kings and the battles, and fighting the battles and won great victories and whatever, but that's only part of life you know. You can't live all your life like that, so Song of Solomon was put in there to show us the nature of the loving relationship God wants with us. Now look at this, now here it is. Song of Solomon's, which is Solomon's and remember it's just a picture and now here's the woman. Now remember she's speaking about the Lord; Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. Whoa! Now if you've ever been kissed, you remember what a kiss is like, first kiss. You don't usually forget it. My first kiss was a long time ago - I remember it. [Laughs]

The first time I kissed Joy was a long time ago, but I remember where we were, I remember it exactly. Didn't you remember yours? Young people, you don't know anything about this, that's okay. One day it'll happen, it's alright. Don't be in a hurry, because kissing's like drinking wine. Once you start, it's hard to stop. [Laughter] That's what it says. Your kisses are sweeter than wine see, now have you ever had a sweet wine? Well, you want more. Now some of you don't know about that, but I can tell you now from experience [laughs] once you start you want more, and you have just a little bit first of all. Oh, well that's a nice wine, I'll have a bit more of that and then something changes once you've had a few wines, have you noticed? Well you've probably seen people like that, but Lynney knows, isn't that right? Yeah, you have a few wines, you know, it's [Laughter] well life cheers up! Life gets very, very cheery. The first one you have, if you haven't drunk much wine, it's whoo! I feel whoo! Ha! So you say hey get me another one, and then you start to loosen up. [Laughter]

Now you've forgotten about all the problems, yeah, it's good. The jokes are flowing and you're laughing and there's a whole new area of - you know, all that control is all starting to go now, and stuff's starting to come out, so when people drink often they'll talk loud and they're all over the place and they'll laugh a lot, or they cry and get angry a lot - whatever's in their heart will come out one way, but that's what the drink does. It says now love or kisses - his kisses are sweeter than wine, and they're better for you too. Now what is it talking about? Now this is picture language, it's trying to give you something that you do know, so that you can understand something you don't know see, so it talks about kissing and wine, and when they go together it's a bad mix. [Laughter] Too much wine and it'll be [laughs] lots of kissing, that's for sure see, so he says your kisses are sweeter than wine. See, so there's something about kissing you can never - it's like eating chocolate, you can't stop with one see, once you've had one. So when the Bible's talking in this verse about kisses and about the kiss of God, it's talking about a touch of God's spirit coming into our spirit, and we feel His love and acceptance and it ignites something in us, just like kissing does. Well you know what kissing ignites in you, well this is the same, it ignites something, we get touched by God you know. Here it is, the kiss of God, the touch of God's spirit. What it does is it softens your heart when God touches you, it melts your heart. If you've been hard or disappointed or angry, and then God starts to touch you with His love, most people just cry. They cry or they become soft.

I've seen people when we have encounters with God, and the presence of God fills the place, the love of God was so tangible you could feel it filling the whole atmosphere, and when it was like that no one wanted to go. They wanted to hang out and it changed. We were in a Bible school and had people from all these different cultures and races and nations, and when God set them free of demons, then they felt His love, the whole environment and culture of the college changed. The nations united when they experienced the passionate, consuming, delivering love of God, see, kiss of God. That's what he said, he said this is better than wine see, because wine will just leave you with a hangover. It'll pick you up and then let you down. He said when God touches us and keeps touching us in our spirit, then our lives ignite with fire, we become free, we become overflowing.

Later on in the year I've got a guy called Jason Westerfield coming here. [Yahoo!] Now you're going to enjoy Jason. You're either going to love him or hate him, it'll be one or the other, but the one think you'll have to admit, he's freer than you are, see and so when people get uptight I like to bring someone in who's really free, because when you have someone who's really free you feed off it yourself, it opens your own heart. He's just a passionate lover of God, and God's presence comes. It comes anywhere, out in the community, in the coffee bars, all over the place - wonderful what God does, the miracles God does. It's going to be great. Look him up on the internet and you'll find some of the stuff he's been doing, it's great. He's coming here to stir us up to love God a bit more.

So when God loves us we feel very, very special. So how does it happen? How does God do that? How does He come upon us? Well normally - see one of the things I've found is God can do it at a most unexpected time. He'll often touch us when we never expect it, like I was just sitting there meditating in the word of God yesterday and suddenly the presence of God just filled the room, I just began to weep, feel His love. It's just like whoa! What? Who did that? It's like someone turned on the lights. I didn't go into my room thinking that's likely to happen. It happened. Sometimes I've been in a car just driving to work and played a CD and one song, I thought I like the words of that, I like that song so I went to play it and suddenly the tears, I begin to feel the car fill with the presence of God, so God can touch us through meditating in His word. He can touch us through a song, He can touch us through an act of kindness that someone does to us. It so touches your heart.

We had a very difficult situation in Cambodia. We've got a team going out in 10 days time or something, and a war has broken out on the boundary between there and Thailand, and the guy who's arranging everything had to go immediately up there. There was all sorts of uncertainty around the trip and everything like that, and then he was feeling we didn't trust him.. so we'd given money to him and we were trying to work out how the money can be released for the mission and what can happen. In the middle of it he began to be kind of feeling like we didn't trust him. I said we just need to give him this money. It's not a big sum, let's give it to him because he's doing a great job over there, just tell him we love you, we trust you, we want to just bless you. You know what? He wept. He just broke down and wept at a tangible act of kindness that expressed God's love to him. People need that, but it's ignited when we encounter the love of God for us. It's ignited by God.

So how does God do it? Sometimes someone shares a testimony and as they share their testimony, oh, you just feel like you want to cry. Suddenly you - how many have found that? Someone shared something with you, and you just felt the tears welling up? Of course if you're a guy you'll try and hold it in. Have you been in a movie - you know, now I like to go to movies. I went to Transformers. Well Transformers, there's no soft tender stuff in it - well only a little bit, about three minutes and it's over. Get onto the action. There's stuff going on all the time. It was a great movie you see, boy's movie, but you can't live your life on that stuff because actually, although it - it just is a temporary fix. What you really need you've still got to have relationship, so you get into another story, and I remember going and watching The Notebook. Oh oh, oh my goodness me, I had to turn it off. I think oh, I can feel tears coming - why are the tears coming, you know? But there was something in the story that triggered something deep in my heart, and I thought what is it about that movie that's touching something in my heart? What is it in my heart it's touching?

Most people just watch the movies and don't think of anything, but many times you'll be in a movie, and then suddenly you'll just feel your heart open up, because the Bible says deep calls to deep. God uses many ways to engage our heart, to stop us and get us think about real values. Have you ever watched New Zealand at the Olympic Games when we have our man up there? Now you may not even be into sport of any kind but boy, you watch our man up there on the stand and he's got the gold and they're singing our anthem, it's hard not to cry. You think what on earth is that about? I'll tell you what it's about. It's about somehow someone breaking through and defeating everything that was against him, and rising up and becoming a champion in the world. That connects with purpose in our heart, deep calls to deep because secretly we want that to happen to us.

See, so God's got many ways of touching you with His presence and His love, of igniting you to come back into relationship with Him. Maybe it's a prophetic word someone brings, maybe you have a prophetic encounter or visions or dreams. Perhaps it's God just touches your spirit at some time, or maybe just you felt someone pray for you. I was in my office and a guy came to me and he'd been without the touch of God for about 18 months. I just talked with him and showed him what to do and I said in about 10 to 15 minutes you'll experience God again. Sure enough, the presence of God just came and filled the room, and next thing he said well I'm glad you're leaning on the chair, I can't even stand up. Can I sit down? God reaching out to touch him, and he went away ignited, and so God wants to ignite something in you, wants to ignite fire in you.

When did you last have a touch of God? When did you last experience Him? When did you last open your heart and acknowledge that yes, you've filled your life with substitutes and really you need God? Well God tells us in His word that God so loved the world He sent His Son, gave His Son. One of the most wonderful pictures - I'll just finish with this last picture from the Bible of the passionate, expressive love of God. It's found in the story of the Prodigal Son, and the son virtually said well I wish my father was dead, I want the money now and I want out. I want to go my own way. So his mindset was I've got a better life without God, than with God, and then later on his life was messed up, ruined, it's character so broken down, his friends that he had because he had money have gone, and everything's gone. He's been abused, and now his character's broken down, his heart's been broken. He despises himself, he smells like the pigs.

In the middle of it he remembers that there was goodness in his father. He remembers, comes back to his senses the Bible says, that actually God is good, and he makes a decision he'll come back. So I guess all the time he's coming back he's a mess and smells and his clothes are tatty and whatever, went out a proud young man with a lot of money and all these hopes and aspirations. Now his life's a mess - but what will my father be like. As he gets there the Bible says, in one of the verses it said this. While he was a long way off the father saw him, and the father was moved with compassion - not judgement. He didn't say well look what you've done and you've messed your life up. He felt compassion; it's my son and I love him. It says the father ran. He ran to him. He put his arms around him and hugged him, and he wept over him and kissed him.

That's passionate pursuing love. That's what God is like. That love is what Jesus came to reveal. His final prayer as He prayed in the Garden was something like this; Father, I have enjoyed Your love, and it's enabled Me to accomplish all these things. Now the relationship I have with You, I want them to have also. See, that's what Jesus came to give us, was that, but we accept a substitute. Why don't we make a decision in our heart just to open our lives again, or maybe for the first time, to experience the love of God?

Summary Notes

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Introduction – The Great Commandment:

· Matthew 22:36 - What is the greatest commandment of the law?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, you shall love your neighbor as yourself”

· All the requirements of the law hinge on passionate love for God and for people.

· Passionate = expressing or showing strong feelings and expressive action.

· Passionate love for God is a response to experiencing His passionate love for us.

· 1 John 4:19 – “We love Him because He first loved us”

· Christian life is designed to be a passionate life giving relationship – love affair of heart.

God is the Initiator and source of Love:

· 1 John 4:16 - “God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God and God in him”.

· The nature of God is love – it is core to who He is.

· Love always seeks to find an expression – someone to express love to.

· God designed us in His image – to receive love and to express love.

· God loves you - Not just tolerates you

- Not waiting for you to grow up

- Not waiting for you to get life right

· God loves you uniqueness.

- Your appearance, with all your blemishes, He loves you.

- Loves you when awake, loves you when asleep, He made you for His pleasure and enjoyment and loves to accompany you.

- Loves talking to you, touching you, watching you Revelation 4:11

· Psalm 139:13-18 - “How precious are your thoughts to me”

· As soon as you were born God was thinking of a relationship with you.

God is Passionate about People:

· Song of Solomon is a metaphor – picture of the relationship and love of God for us.

· Song 8:7 - “Many waters cannot quench love”

· Gods love for you is unquenchable – nothing can put it out or overcome it.

· Song 4:9 - “You have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes”

- ravish = to fill with strong emotion, captivate, enthrall, make heart beat faster.

· Song 6:4 - “Oh my love you are beautiful as Tirzah” (beautiful city)

· People carry wrong concepts of God or incomplete picture.

People see him as demanding, trying to discipline us, angry, distant.

· He passionately loves us and wants to reveal that love to us.

God Pursues us with Passion:

· Genesis 3:9 - “Adam, where are you?”

· This is the call of God’s heart reaching out to people He loves.

· Even when we sin God still pursues us to restore us.

· No matter what has happened God’s love is not quenched or changed.

· Luke 19:10 - “Son of man has come to seek and save that which was lost”.

· Seek = 2212 = to search for something very vulnerable and precious until finding it.

· Save = 4982 = to rescue from danger or destruction, heal, deliver, make whole.

· Throughout the Bible God is the first to initiate and pursue.

· God has pursued you even when you didn’t realize it.

· Romans 5:8 - God demonstrates His own love towards us – while we were sinners Christ died for us.

The Human Heart is never fulfilled without God:

· Proverbs 20:27 - “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord”

· The Human spirit has thirsts:

i) Security – to be loved and accepted unconditionally

ii) Self worth – to be valued

iii) Significance – to have purpose and meaning

· Proverbs 18:28 - “You will light my lamp”

· Only God can meet the deepest needs of the human spirit.

· Without God we find substitutes, ways to fill needs without God.

· They never satisfy us – we always thirst for more and more

God wants to Reveal His Love to You:

· Song 1:2 - “Let Him kiss me with the kisses from his mouth”

· Song of Solomon = revelation of the passionate affection of God for His people.

· “Kiss of God” = not literal, metaphor – picture

= deep touch and impact of God’s love on human spirit

= softens out heart and empowers the heart to love

· Very few people talk to us to really know who we are – to connect and affirm that we are loved, valued and special.

· “Kiss of God” = imparts to our spirit tangible feeling of love and value.

How does God Communicate “Devine Kiss”:

· Meditate in scriptures

· Testimony of person

· Song we hear

· Book we read

· Scene in a movie

· Prophetic revelation

· Impression on heart

· Ministry of people

· Act of kindness

· “Deep calls to deep” – we feel the presence of God and our heart is touched and moved.

· When did you last feel the Kiss of God and your heart was moved?

· Passionate love for God is ignited and kept alive by constantly experiencing His passionate love for us in a tangible way.

· Luke 15:20 - “He arose and came to his Father, and when he was still a great way off, his Father saw him, and had compassion and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him”.

· John 3:16 - “God so loved you … He gave His only Son”

God’s Extravagant Love (2 of 6)

Sun 19 Jul 2009 AM  « Back to Top

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Christian life is a response to God's love, a continuing response. We love Him because He first loved us. Meetings aren't enough. I must meet with God. I must feel His presence, encounter His presence and I must learn how to respond.

If you love Me, you'll trust that what I say will work out good for you, and you'll do it. Many Christians want to come into an experience someone else creates, rather than a lifestyle where they walk and enjoy God. The measure of your maturity, is not your experiences, it's what do you do with people

Okay, why don't we just open our Bible then, Matthew, Chapter 22, Verse 36. We started last week on a series called Extravagant Love, and I began to share with you about the passionate love of God. I happened to share a verse out of Song of Solomon and some of the young people got that wrong. They thought I was talking about kisses and wine; I wasn't talking about that at all and the Bible says His kisses are better than wine. In other words he's saying that the touch of God in our life is more intoxicating and has better effect on our life than wine drinking would have. But the Bible abounds in God's expressions of love and we saw last week this verse, how God calls us to love Him and that's what we're going to focus on today, is on loving God, whole-hearted love of God.

Last week we were looking at how we love Him as a response to being loved first of all. In other words God starts it going. God always sends people into our lives. God sent His Son into the world, God continually initiates bringing us into relationship with Him, and we saw that God's love is extremely passionate. There's feeling and emotion and we saw how He loves people. It's not the concept of God that many people have, but we looked through some verses in Song of Solomon and it explained how deeply passionate God is. I love that. We serve a loving, passionate God who desires to communicate, but also requires and calls us and invites us to make a response. Isn't that fantastic? Last week we looked into the story of the Prodigal Son, one of the most vivid New Testament stories to show what the heart of God is like, and I have a picture I got off the Internet, it's a picture by Rembrandt. How many know who Rembrandt is? Some people there, all the grey headed people know Rembrandt, the others haven't got a clue. Well if you had one of his paintings you'd be pretty wealthy actually, they're worth millions and this is a great picture if they can just get it up there for me. Can you get it? It's up, it's on the sides, okay then, great.

Okay then, now we saw last week how Jesus wanted to show people or talk to people what the Father was like and so He shared a story of a lost sheep, a lost coin and then a lost son. You remember in the story of the Prodigal Son how he decided he wanted a life independent of his father so virtually what he said is dad, I'd prefer you were dead, give us the dough, I'm out of here. That's what sin is like. We say hey God, we want to carry on our life like you're not around. We just want to enjoy what you've given us, and do our own thing, so sin is like that. So this young man went out into the world and he had a great time, then he used up all his money. There was a famine, an unexpected famine and he ended up in such desperate lack; all his friends that he'd made with the money - because when you've got money you've got friends, you've got no money, not many friends, only authentic friends. He lost all his friends. He ended up so desperate that he got a job working for a pig farmer and even they didn't pay him any money. They just exploited him and said if you want pay, eat the food the pigs have got, so he was fighting with the pigs for the food. Then the Bible says he came to his senses, and the thing was that turned his life, his life turned when he remembered the kindness of his father.

The kindness of his father turned him back when he remembered it. In other words we respond when we experience the goodness of God. See, our love for God is birthed, it's a response to someone expressing God's love to us. Someone came to us, God sent them. Someone prayed for us, God called them to pray, and then He got us to an environment and we began to feel the love of God. Before you know it you're up the front, your hands are up, you're praying and you're crying and you're wondering how you got there. You weren't clever and thought well I'm just going to go to God today. God began to draw you and then you were touched by His love and wanted to make a response to that love, so the Christian life is a response to God's love, a continuing response. Jesus wanted to show what God is like and so He used this story of the Prodigal Son.

In the picture that's up there it's a picture of the encounter of the Prodigal Son with his father and it's when he's come back to the household and you can see the father there, you can see the son his knees before the father. You can see the older brother on the right and you can see the servants in the background. This shows - firstly you see the Prodigal Son and there he is, he's broken. His life is damaged. He smells. There's nothing loveable or attractive. He's got no friends, but there is one person who loved him and loved him passionately and that was the father. So you see if you look at the father, he's bending over his son. His heart is very tender towards his son. The Bible tells us that when he saw his son he was moved with compassion and ran to him and hugged him and kissed him. You see the father there and his hands are over the son's shoulders and he's bending over him and there's compassion and there's joy. He's welcoming his son back. He's opening his heart to him.

That's what Jesus wanted to convey and Rembrandt has tried to convey that. Hundreds of years old the painting, but nevertheless you can catch the feeling on it when you look close in the face of the father. You can see the emotion on his face, and on the side there you can see the older brother. He had no revelation of the heart of God, and so there was pride in his heart and resentment in his heart, and he looked down and he judged his brother. If you don't have a revelation of the heart of God, you tend to despise others who are weaker than you, and he despised the younger brother, looked down on him. He probably despised his father and judged his father. He was angry with his father and despised his brother. Finally he left the scene altogether, and this man represented the religious people of the day, who had no understanding of how much God loves people. They were supposed to represent the love of God to people, instead they just condemned them, judged them and put burdens on them.

So you see the son proud, standing on the right looking down on the brother, and this painting illustrates something of that story. In the background you can see the servants and they are amazed. They're like the angels in heaven who watch the love that God has for us and sending His Son and are amazed, what is there about humans that God would love them so deeply? So there's the story. Well that painting's worth millions, and that's the painting. How much more must the reality be worth, the reality of God's love, the reality of God's compassion, the reality of His heart to reach out and put His hands around you no matter what you've done? You need to keep that in your mind all the time, otherwise you'll suddenly slip, that if I just am good enough God will like me or love me or I can get a blessing from God, whereas God has a heart that's abounding and generous. He immediately transferred sonship rights and responsibilities back to this young man and restored him. What an amazing God we have.

We love Him because He first loved us. We love Him because He first loved us. If any of you have experienced God loving you and putting His arms around you when you've failed, then you've felt His love and forgiveness and gentleness and grace, then you love Him. The Bible tells us very clearly we love Him because we've experienced His love, so if we're going to walk with God we have to continue to experience Him. Meetings aren't enough. I must meet with God. I must feel His presence, encounter His presence and I must learn how to respond. Have you ever noticed in a relationship and you can look at human relationships, that when in a human relationship a person does not make any response, then very often the other one stops reaching out. Well God will never stop reaching out, but He wants us to respond to Him, and so we want to talk today not so much about the passionate love God has for us, but we want to talk about whole-hearted loving Him back in response.

You can imagine the older son there, how he lived in resentment that the father would so bless this younger son when he didn't deserve it. Now that's the interesting thing about extravagance, it's giving you something you don't deserve, giving you something you're not entitled to but going beyond what you would expect. What a wonderful thing. What a wonderful thing. I just love it. I love that God is like that, I love that God is so open and so caring about us. That's God. That's what He's like. Aren't you glad? [Yes.] Aren't you really glad? [Yes.] Amen.

Why don't we just lift our hands to the Lord and just begin to pray in tongues and let's just express our gratitude to Him, express our thanks giving to Him and just honour Him. What a great God we serve, what a great God that we serve, halleluiah. Lord, we thank You, You're extravagant. You're extravagant. You go what's beyond reasonable or what's deserved and You love us and we want to thank You for that. Thank You for loving me Lord, thank You for forgiving me, thank You for giving me a purpose and destiny. Thank You for surrounding me with wonderful people, thank You Lord. What a wonderful thing. So we love Him because He first loved us. Now notice what Matthew 22 says. They were asking what's the great command, and He said love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength, and then there's a second commandment, love your neighbour as yourself and this sums up the whole of the Bible, Matthew 22. Isn't that amazing?

So God is saying that the whole of all He requires for us can be summed up very simply, in a whole-hearted loving of God, and then an overflowing fervent love for people. They are deeply connected to one another. You can't have one without the other, you know? It's great to have talent, but if you don't create anything with it then it's pretty well useless. It's dead talent. It's very good to have a love for God, but if you don't do something with it, it's not really an active love, it's a dead love. Great to say you have faith, but if you don't do something with your faith it's not an active faith - so we can say I love God, but He calls us to do something with that, to express it in various ways, and so we want to talk about whole-hearted loving God. Now notice He says love the Lord with ALL your heart, that's all your spirit, all your inner man, your desires and affections, all your soul, your emotions, all your mind, your thoughts. So God doesn't want a half-hearted kind of thing. Half-hearted means I'm indifferent, I don't really care. Half-hearted means there's no passion in it. Half-hearted means I'm someone passive and shut down.

Now God is not looking for a people like that. God is wanting you to respond to Him. You know when Jesus came into town and everyone was shouting and praising and the Pharisees, the religious people said tell them to be quiet, it's not respectful. He said if I shut them down, even the stones will yell out. All creation yells out praise to our God, so God is looking for a whole-hearted response to His generous extravagant giving to us. He wants us to respond and we want to look at what that will mean, and what that would look like see, so I want to be whole-hearted. I don't want to be half-hearted, nothing half-hearted pleases me. You ever had someone do a job for you that's half-hearted? Never a good job and you're never happy with it. Had a tradesman do something for you? It's half-hearted, it doesn't please you at all. It never quite makes it, but it costs you, and you have someone in a relationship and they're boyfriend got a half-hearted response to you? Well I don't think you'd be too interested. See, think about that.

Marriage; the husband's half-hearted towards his wife, I don't think that marriage is going to be going to well. Would you think not? That's true see, so what God is looking for is that we keep a whole-hearted love for Him alive. Now you've got to keep it alive. I've met with couples and prayed with couples who were married many years, and in the course of many years they've gradually drifted apart. You know it was not one thing, it was lots of little things, and then suddenly they found themselves where they shouldn't be. What happened? The extravagant love was lost on the way. The things, the little things that made the relationship work were lost, and so I want to share with you three key aspects of loving God. Now I'm sure there's others, these are three I looked at and thought of, and felt the Lord drop into my heart, so I want to just share these three things with you. These, we can say well I love God, come into church, well I love You Lord! We sang and I love God. Wonderful.

Now I want to just share with you three aspects to loving God, so loving God is not just about words. We engage Him in our heart and spirit and also it overflows to the world we live in, and you'll see very clearly from the Bible that loving God has not just a spiritual eternal dimension to it, it has an overflow right now where we live and how we live. Loving God has to be expressed, to find it's fullness it has to be expressed in both ways, so here's the first one. Number one, if I'm going to love God whole-heartedly I must choose to pursue His presence, to pursue Him. You have to make a decision to pursue Him, to pursue, engaging and connecting with Him. It's a decision to do that. You know in Mark, Chapter 3 and Verse 14, the Bible says this. It says Jesus chose the disciples to be with Him, and then to send them into the world to preach the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons. Notice the priority. The first priority was, He wanted them with Him, to know Him, connect with Him, understand Him and to catch His heart and spirit.

When the apostles were doing miracles in the New Testament, Acts, Chapter 4, the Bible tells us that the people looked at them and said these guys, they're fishermen and ignorant people. They haven't even been to university, haven't trained, haven't done any stuff. Oh, they've been with Jesus. There was an overflow of His courage, boldness and the dynamic of His life into them, and they could see it manifested in them. They saw they'd been with Jesus. They saw they'd been in His presence, so an important part of loving God but not the full thing is, I must make a decision to pursue connection with Him. What are some simple ways that I can pursue connection with God? It's always very simple. Here's the first one; very expressive praise. Very expressive praise is a way of opening our body, soul and spirit whole-heartedly, so that's one of the reasons we have very expressive praise is because it's biblical and because it's part of whole-heartedly loving God.

Have you ever been in a group of people and you're trying to get them to sing a song and they just were half-hearted? It's actually better if they didn't sing at all, it's so bad. Don't you feel embarrassed, sort of awkward? There's something really flattening about something like that, but oh and everyone - I was sitting there in the game there watching the cricket and the Indians are there and the Irish there. The Irish have all got their green on and singing. It was stirring. It was really stirring and you see, so praise. Now the Bible says in Psalm 47, Verse 1, it says clap your hands all you people! Shout unto God with the voice of triumph! Praise Him, Praise Him. Clap your hands all you people! We should do that shouldn't we? One, two, three [Applause] Halleluiah, Praise the Lord [Applause] Oh yes, yes, yes Lord! You're simply the best. Oh that's good, that's why we do it. It's in the Bible. David did it and David was a great king. David even did more than that, he danced mightily! Whoa! See? Some of us can barely get a foot up you know? [Laughter] Just need to get going you know and praise the Lord mightily, see? Praising shifts the atmosphere around us and one of the ways that we are whole-hearted in loving God, not the only way but one great way of doing that. The Bible says for everyone to do that.

Another is tender worship. In John 4:24, God is a spirit a spirit, they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit. I must let my inner man open out and engage with God, have to make a decision to pour my heart out to Him. Now for many people whose emotions have been shut down, that takes some challenge. Sometimes we need to be healed or delivered or released so our inner man can flow towards God, not just sing songs and enjoy an atmosphere, but allow our spirit by faith to connect with the one who loves us. There's a woman in the Bible, I think in Luke, Chapter 7 and she had an alabaster box. She came in, and the Bible says she loved much because she was forgiven much, and she probably had a very broken life and Jesus had forgiven her and touched her. She comes in, there she is, she doesn't worry about anyone else. She's extravagantly loving Jesus, and Jesus commended her and said that what she did will be rehearsed for generations. The half-hearted worship was never recorded for generations. In fact God says He doesn't like the half-hearted thing. They come there with their lips but their heart's far from Me, He said I'm not into that at all.

God wants passionate worship, passionate worship, passionate fervent worship and we have to learn to do that, have to learn to speak words of love and words of affection for Him, speak in tongues, speak in the language God's given and let your heart flow to connect with God, not just sing songs and have a service. Connect and love Him. It's a person we're loving. We need to express that love. He wants to enjoy the relationship with us. Another way we can develop that expressive love for God is by meditating. Meditating's one of the most powerful ways that you can open your inner man to connect fully with God. You take the word of God and you begin to picture it and use your imagination to see scripture, to see the stories of men encountering Jesus, to look into it and allow your heart and emotions to feel the truth. When you do it, you begin to connect with God and you become touched and changed.

Over this last week I've seen people encounter God and He's stepped in as they did exactly that, just opened their life to meditate and allow their imagination to go into the word of God, and they began to encounter God. The most wonderful thing to see people weep and hear God speak to them, and God touched them and set them free. See, that's something we do. Now of course everything is competing for your time, so if you're going to love God with all your heart and soul and mind, you have to take time to let your mind be trained to focus on God. It's a discipline. Most people can't sit still for just a few minutes. It's a discipline for my mind to remain connected to and focussed on the Lord, until I begin to engage Him and there's a life flow comes. So the strong praise breaks the heaviness and control of your body and your soul's heaviness. The tender worship and affection expressed, you begin to connect with Him but as you begin to meditate you become conscious of Him and you start to experience loving Him. It's the most wonderful, wonderful thing to just experience loving God and most people don't do it. They're too busy. They close their eyes and see bad pictures, so we've got to paint those pictures out with the blood of Jesus and allow our heart to focus and connect with God.

You need the experience of God, not just knowing about Him, and as you begin to discipline and allow your life, train your life to picture truth, you can take scriptures - you could take this one with the Prodigal Son, and begin to just meditate on it and begin to put yourself in the picture, see it and imagine what that must have been like. Begin to look for the details in it, ask the Holy Spirit who reveals Jesus to reveal the heart of God in that story, and then see yourself like that son going to the father. It's extraordinary how scripture, as we meditate in it, can just come alive and begin to engage God. It's wonderful. I've been in some of these scriptures then just began to weep. I could feel what that man felt and see, so if we're going to love God whole-heartedly I must train my mind to focus for periods of time and meditate so I can engage with God. What you focus on, you open yourself to. We live in a culture which is full of technical wizards really, all sorts of wizardly, but here's the problem. It dilutes your capacity to imagine and to see and to connect in a very real way with God.

One of the things perhaps some might fast off is all TV, all kinds of visual stuff and then just take time to be with God, reading the word of God, then allowing yourself to meditate and engage God. It would be a good thing to do. It really would be a good thing to do. I find every now and then I just have to cut everything out, so that I can just sharpen my attention again, and begin to increase the presence and awareness of the presence of God, a wonderful thing to do. Another thing you need to do in pursuing God is to deal with issues very promptly. You know in any kind of relationship that loves dies if you don't nurture it, and it dies by little things, little disappointments, little offences, little worries and anxieties, little distractions, little diversions. It just goes quickly, so you have to deal with them very quickly. Martha was very, very busy and doing things for Jesus and she got so busy doing things for Jesus she ended up stressed out, and Jesus had to quietly put her right and say, there's something more important than just being busy with your life. You need to learn to prioritise time with Me, personally hearing from Me. How many of you are living off someone else's messages? How many of you are hearing God speak and then when someone preaches, oh the joy that what they said confirmed what God had already been saying to you? Oh, that's another area isn't it?

So loving God involves firstly our pursuit of Him and engagement with Him from the heart and spirit. Okay then. Now the second aspect of it which is also very important is my response to the word of God, and you cannot disconnect or you can't separate loving God, from how you respond to His words, so heartfelt obedience to the word of God is the significant way we demonstrate that we really do love Him. If you say you love someone but you don't listen to a word they have to say and ignore them completely, you can't really say that love is very deep. You can imagine in a marriage you know, if they say they love one another, but neither actually listens to each other and they certainly don't co-operate together, that can't be a very deep love relationship. Why would you think that you can build a deep relationship with God, without actually learning His word and being in His word and hearing what He has to say, about how to make your life run?

Jesus made that extremely clear. Let me just give you a scripture which would be very helpful - in John 14, Verse 21, He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one that loves Me. And My Father will love him, and we will manifest Ourselves to him. So loving the word of God - you say well I'm not a good reader. Well get one of them on CD and just play it over or download it onto your iPod and start to play the word of God. Let the word of God come into your life and into your mind and into your heart, and begin to find out what - let God speak to you about how to adjust your life. You know the Bible tells us very clearly, in all the New Testament, how to live our life successfully. I've found when I look at why people don't succeed inevitably they violate God's ways, so if you were to begin to say take just a simple scripture, honour your father and your mother that it may go well for you, so you begin to meditate in that scripture, begin to think well what ways could I be dishonouring to them? What ways would I honour them? What will this enable me to do in the relationship? What can I expect God to do? See, it's very, very good.

Look, you know there's a lot of decisions people pray about. You don't have to pray about it all. The Bible says what to do, and Jesus said if you love Me, then your heart will trust Me, that when I describe things in the Bible and describe things in My word, that's actually how life works and how you can succeed. If you love Me, you'll trust that what I say will work out good for you, and you'll do it. Now that's a key thing. Got a lot of Christians don't read their Bible very often or very frequently. A lot of Christians don't take much notice, but God wants the Bible to be worked into our lives, so for example you take a scripture, you know, be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication make your request known to God, and the peace of God will keep your mind and heart. Whatever things are good, lovely, just, true and beautiful, of good report, think on these things - in Philippians 4. So the Bible says don't get uptight or anxious. I find a lot of people uptight and anxious. God says don't do that, do something else, so what does it say to do then?

It says cast your cares on Him, talk to Him, make your needs known, and start to thank Him and think positively. If you did that you wouldn't need much counselling, because you're doing what God says to engage Him. It says if you will do what He says, you're showing and demonstrating and manifesting your love, and you'll increase the dimensions of His presence working in your life. You can't separate - see the trouble is many Christians want to come into an experience someone else creates, rather than a lifestyle where they walk and enjoy God. We must be diligent with the word of God. Here's the third thing then is the area - and this is a really good one - and that is tangible kindness to people, tangible kindness to people. Look at this in 1 John 4 and Verse 20. Now love that isn't tangible in its expression is really not a living love, see? So look at this in 1 John, Chapter 4, Verse 20, here it is. It says if someone says I love God and hates his brother he's a liar, for the one who doesn't love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he's not seen? Isn't that interesting?

God connects loving Him with loving people. Why is that? Well you're okay, but people are pretty, you know, just - they're a problem. Now you see what God is saying is something like this; you can't see Me, but you can see people, and they're in your face, especially the ones you live with. How you treat them, reveals the dimensions of love you have inside you, so if you react to them and you're unforgiving and you're resentful and angry and in conflict with them, you show you haven't got much of My love inside you. You say well I love God, you see? Well I love the experiences of God so I'll get in praying and I'll get in doing this and I'll spend hours in prayer. This is wonderful to do that, but the measure of your maturity, not your experiences, your maturity is what do you do with people? If you withdraw from people you show immaturity, not spirituality. If we react and upset and we're always abrasive with people, then we show our immaturity. We show that yes, we say we're in love with God but we actually are broken and damaged and not manifesting much of it. We need to change see, need to see people like He sees them. Great scriptures in here aren't they? I love these scriptures in here - 1 John 3, Verse 14; We know we've passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. You don't love your brother, you abide in death. Well how about that?

So how can you know that you're in a place of life? How you treat people, so people who are in a place of life with God, there is something overflows that positive, encouraging, nurturing, lifting, believing in and activating people - not judgemental things and all that kind of stuff. See, we have to understand that the dimensions of maturity we have are always reflected in how we treat people. If I want to know how deep your connection is with God, I don't need to listen to all your revelations. What I really need to see is how you connect with people, how you treat people. Is there a continued flow of kindness, generosity, abundance to people? That is the measure of the outworking of what you've got with God.

I've known many people over years and particularly people who had a great revelation from the word of God, great insights to the word of God, but there was a bit of a problem. I found that when I was with them, it always felt like I never knew anything. It always felt like I was sort of inferior, and they were sort of so spiritual gurus. I used to feel a bit put down by that and then one day we said why don't we have a group and we'll just meet together and we'll talk about how to make marriage work, so we got the group and we brought out some material that would help make marriage work. They all said it was carnal, and not spiritual and they refused to come. Then I got a revelation, that for all that they knew in the word of God, their knowledge of God and maturity was not deep, because they actually could not outwork this in real life. This is one of the troubles that we have, is that we can have great experiences with God, great insights from the word, but where the love of God is outworked is with that person next to you. That is the only way you can really measure in a tangible way, what dimension of maturity you have in God in your life. Think about it.

I've met other people who've had wonderful experiences, but you know what? Problem was, they didn't know how to love people and they hid in the experience from engaging and loving people, just as the other ones we were connected with some years ago, hid in the doctrine from engaging and loving people. The bottom line is do we manifest the love of God, or do we manifest religiosity? Now when Jesus told a story and He said there was two men went into the house of God to pray; one was a tax collector and the other one was a Pharisee, one of the religious people. The religious man said oh, I thank You God I'm not like that other fellow over there, drunken boozer. I don't know why you've let him here, he smells of booze. The other one said Lord, I'm broken and damaged, Lord, please forgive me.

Jesus asked the question - who do you reckon went home that day right with God? The man who had a struggle with alcohol, or the man who had a struggle with pride? The man who had a struggle with pride couldn't see his need. He was blind, and didn't demonstrate the love of God, he demonstrated a superiority that looked down on others and found them lacking. The other man captured the heart of God when he said God, I know I'm broken, I know I'm damaged, but I'm reaching out to You to forgive me. That man who was forgiven went away loving God very much, and that's what Jesus wants. He wants us to be able to bring our experiences of Him, our knowledge of Him into the reality of how we engage one another, and the culture around us. So often people come, they have a wonderful thing and hold their hands up on Sunday, and Monday they're a monster. That's not Christianity. It isn't. It's just not coming to grips with the core of what Jesus said to us; love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, not just on Sunday - ALL your soul, that's your emotions and your mind, ALL your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. It should flow to where people are and engage them.

I wonder what overflow is out of your life. I wonder if we connected with the people around you, whether they would say that what you show on Sunday, you show on Monday through to Friday. Why don't we close our eyes right now. Thank You Lord, the greatest thing we could do, any of us could do, would be to receive Jesus Christ, to open our life to the love of God. Jesus made it very clear that we're born into this world separate from God because of sin. Sin is just going our own way, doing what we want, but our life is always empty and something's missing. Jesus came to reveal that love of God, to show us what God is like, then He died on the cross, to show us God is willing to remove every obstacle if we will just turn to Him in love, and in trust. You might be saying well I have to get my life alright. No, you don't have to. You just come to Jesus. He's paid the price to make your life right. You may say well I've been coming to church for a while. Coming to church doesn't make you a Christian. What counts is your personal connection by faith with Jesus Christ.

You may say well I've been trying to live a good life and trying to do the best I can. Well listen, you probably recognise if you think about it that, the best you can has still got lots of things lacking in it, and God called us not to just do the best we can. He wants us to be changed through a personal connection with Jesus Christ. Jesus said you must be born again. You must be born again. You must be born by the spirit of God in your inner man, or you can't enter the kingdom of heaven, or even see it. I wonder if there's anyone here today and you're right at that place of recognising I've been running my life without God, just trying on my own efforts and strengths. That kind of life often is quite self-centred. We succeed, we feel real good and a bit proud. We fail, we feel quite guilty and condemned. Jesus said I want you just to be able to enjoy Me. I wonder is there any person here ready to receive Jesus Christ, to experience the life-changing power of God in your life.

Would you raise your hand and let me know if you are? Just let me know I'm ready to receive Jesus, become a Christian. Please just raise your hand and let me know I'd like to give my life to Jesus Christ, just raise your hand and let me know if there's anyone here today, I want to receive Jesus Christ, want to become a Christian, give my life to the Lord and be changed on the inside. Is there anyone here today just at that place of decision? Thank You Lord. I wonder if there are others here today and, as you're thinking about it and have listened to me today, or even just prior to this, God has been just disturbing you. You realise that you have drifted and become not extravagant and abundant in your walk with God, but quite indifferent, and quite passive, and just you need to renew your commitment, you need to come back into relationship with Him. Perhaps you're struggling with people, and you blame them and are angry at them, and God's saying you're just exposing how much you need My love and grace operating in your life.

Isn't it amazing, we want to grow and become all God wants, but in doing so we have to deal with people, and they show us up. Often they show up just how self-centred we are, and maybe you're discovering that today. Why don't you just say Lord, I need Your grace to help me. I want to come near to You, I want to express my love more openly and I want to learn to love people. I want to learn to show loving kindness consistently. If that's you, you felt God speaking to you today, I want you to just raise your hand and say I know God's talking to me today. God bless, hands going up, God bless them. Father, I just thank You.

Well the most simple way you can really tell how mature you are, is how you react when someone disagrees with you, or points out something you did wrong. That's a very simple way of showing your maturity. Many of us have a good struggle and react with that. We say God, help me, help me to overflow with a passionate love for You, and a fervent love for the people that You have sent me to, and have brought into my life. May I continually be a blessing to them. May I show them and demonstrate to them, Your love and Your kindness and Your goodness. May my life abound with goodness and kindness. Lord, I ask that You will increase my influence upon the people around me, by increasing Your presence in my life, in Jesus' Mighty name - and everyone said [Amen.] Amen. Why don't we just stand and finish with that song we were singing before, that wonderful song, Jesus I Love You.

Summary Notes

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Introduction – God’s Extravagant Love:

· Matthew 22:36 - What is the greatest commandment of the law?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, you shall love your neighbor as yourself”

· All the requirements of the law are summed up and fulfilled in extravagant and wholehearted love for God and for people.

· Jesus came to reveal the passionate love that God has for us and to impart it to us.

· Luke 15:20 - The Prodigal Son returns to his Father.

“… the Father saw him, had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him”.

· Extravagant = Going beyond what is reasonable or deserved, abundant.

· Passionate = expressing or showing strong emotion or feeling.

· We love and respond to God according to the revelation we have for Him.

· 1 John 4:19 - “We love Him because He first loved us”

Wholehearted love for God – 3 Key Aspects:

· Wholehearted = fully or completely sincere, enthusiastic, unreserved.

· Matthew 22:36 - “Love the Lord with all your heart”

- God is seeking a response from us – a heartfelt response.

- Religion is about laws, duties – God seeks a relationship.

· Halfhearted = having or showing little enthusiasm, indifferent, passive.

· No one enjoys or is blessed by the halfhearted involvement of others.

· Wholehearted love for God is the overflow of personal experience of Him.

· Wholehearted love for God is revealed in 3 key ways:

(i) Pursuing His Presence – Pursuing Him:

· Mark 3:14 - He appointed 12 that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach.

· Jesus’ primary concern was to develop love, intimacy, relationship.

· The disciples’ success was connected to being in the presence of Jesus.

· Acts 4:13 - “…they realized they had been with Jesus”

· Personal pursuit of God is fuel for relationship.

(ii) Heartfelt Obedience to the Word of God:

· Ephesians 6:6 - “Not with eye service as men-pleasers but as bondservants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart”.

· Revelation of God’s love for us awakens the desire to please Him.

· Obedience birthed out of revelation of love for us produces the strongest commitment.

· Obedience based out of fear or duty is lifeless and dead.

· John 14:21 - “He who has my commandments and keep them, it is he who loves me.

· John 14:15 - “If you love me…keep my commandments”.

· The reality of our love for God is revealed in how we respond to His words.

· You cannot separate loving God from loving and keeping His Word.

· Love God = align life with the word of God – Do what God says!

· Many people like to experience the presence of God but love for God requires a response to His Word e.g. finance, relationship, priorities 1 John 5:3

(iii) Tangible Kindness to People:

· 1 John 4:20 - “If someone says he loves God but hates his brother he is a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”

· Wholehearted love for God is revealed on how we treat His family.

· Our interactions with people give opportunity to reveal self-centeredness and to grow in love.

· Some Christians become so focused on personal spiritual experiences that they become unaware just how self-centered and immature they really are.

· Our spiritual maturity is displayed in how we relate to and treat people.

- Our attitude (e.g. Priest Luke 10:31, our actions, e.g. Samaritan Luke 10:33)

· 1 John 3:14-18 - “Let us not love in word or in tongue but in dead and in truth”.

· Wholehearted love for God = overflow of tangible kindness to people.

Pursuing God:

· Matthew 22:36 - “Love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul, and all your mind”

· “All” = no reserve or holding back, no half-heartedness.

· What does this look like? How does this express itself?

i) Expressive Praise:

· Psalm 47:1 - “Clap your hands all you people, shout unto God with a voice of triumph”

· Samuel 6:14 - King David danced with all his might.

ii) Tender Worship:

· John 4:24 - “God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth”

· Luke 7:37-48 - Woman with the alabaster box.

· Forgives much = loved much = express affection and love.

iii) Meditate in the Word of God:

· Use your spiritual imagination to picture and ponder the Word of God.

· Picture scenes from scripture = see the details, consider the feelings.

· Prodigal Son being reunited with his Father

· Leper being touched by Jesus.

· Allow your imagination to picture truth and embrace it within.

· Repeat over and over until the Holy Spirit writes it into your inner man.

· Return to that truth during the day to become conscious of God.

iv) Deal with Issues Promptly:

· The heart is easily distracted and divided Proverbs 4:23

· E.g. offence, disappointment, love for other things

· Luke 10:41 - Martha – issue of priorities in life.

Keep Yourself in the Love of God (3 of 6)

Sun 26 Jul 2009 AM  « Back to Top

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Jude 20: Keep yourself in the love of God. Why do I have to guard, or protect, or watch over this area of encountering, experiencing, and walking in the love of God?

There's an enemy that wants to keep me from it. The devil brings spiritual pressure around us. You've got to guard against isolation and loneliness.

Well we're just in a series now on the Extravagant Love of God, and I want to just do the third in this series. We're sort of breaking it up into three parts, so this is the first part, and Jesus was asked remember in Matthew 22, what's the great commandment? He said well the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, all your strength. Then the second one is love your neighbour as yourself, and on this is everything of God's requirements, the law of love, and so He laid it out. So we're looking at three aspects and three different sections we're going to cover. The first is loving God passionately, and the first we saw was that God is a passionate lover of people. He expresses His love in a whole variety of ways. You may not have experienced it, doesn't mean He hasn't expressed it, and we looked at that and we saw not only that we respond to being loved by loving Him.

The Bible says we love Him, because He first loved us. Our loving God, our passion for God, is an overflow of responding to what He's given us with hunger and appreciation and longing for more. So this part of what we're doing is the first part, loving the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. We've covered two, the passionate love of God, and loving God with a whole heart. Today I want to speak about keeping yourself in the love of God, keeping yourself in the love of God, then following that we're going to look at a couple of messages around loving yourself. Jesus said love your neighbour as yourself, so one of the challenges in loving people, people can be difficult, people can drain us, people can be disappointing, all kinds of things can happen when you work with people. It's only to be expected you have all these challenges, but if we're going to move to touching the lives of people and impacting them, we need good foundations.

One of the foundations is a passionate love of God, that we ourselves are continually being fuelled with an experience of God's love, His abundance, His care, His support, His strength, His wisdom. We need to have that, so that's what we're focussing on at this stage but if we don't have a source then we'll look for that elsewhere, so people tend to look to meet the needs that only God can meet, they look for it in other things. So the source of addictions, whether it be pornography, alcohol, gambling, workaholism or whatever it is, the source of that is a deep rooted sense of feeling unloved, so unless that's addressed, the addiction can never be solved. Some people pour out their need to be loved into helping people, so helping people can be more a means to get my own needs filled than actually overflowing the love of God. So it's very, very important, one, that we develop a vital spiritual life, so we have inner resourcing to be able to accomplish things for God, and two, that we have a proper value on ourself, neither at the one end, so self-centred everything's about us and what we can get, nor at the other end, where we have such little value on ourself that people walk over us, we're exploited, taken advantage of, and we burn out.

Burning out is the consequence of being unable to set good boundaries that define who you are, and recognise what you can give, so we'll look at that in another session. So I want to finish the first of the three on loving God whole-heartedly. We started the whole passionate love of God, now I want to look at keeping yourself in the love of God, so we need just a few things as we talk about the love of God. The first thing is it's the nature of God to love. It's His nature. That's who He is and heaven, heaven is filled with love. It's an atmosphere, it's a spiritual reality. It's the life of God, when it manifests itself people feel embraced and celebrated and loved, for example if you're going into a place where there's people you can feel the atmosphere. If you are not welcome, you feel you're not welcome in lots of little ways, or when you go to a place where you're celebrated and welcomed and affirmed and gathered up, you feel something come around you. You feel welcomed. There's an environment that nurtures your connecting, and so in heaven there's a spiritual environment full of the love of God. The trouble is that's in heaven, we need it here.

So to get it here requires that we learn how to receive and bring that life into the world around us. Firstly you've got to receive it for yourself. You can't give someone what you don't have. I've been in meetings where people have been touched by the power of God, set free, particularly our freedom seminar where I've done in Bible schools, we've been there for a while and we've done seminars here, or even in Lyn's restoration seminar. Then there's always a part where suddenly the place becomes filled with the atmosphere of God's love, and it's a spiritual reality, and people just cry. They just feel so touched on the inside. They feel loved, they feel alive. I've been in some meetings where people, the atmosphere of God's love was so thick no one said a word nor moved. They just sat weeping, feeling the love of God. It's a spiritual reality. You may not have had much, you may not know how to access it, but it is available for you as we'll see today. It's our responsibility to learn how to access it.

Now we're just going to have a look into Ephesians, Chapter 3, and I want to just read two or three verses here. It says now - Verse 16 - that God would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with His might, through His spirit in the inner man. This is Paul's prayer for the Ephesians believers - that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now notice what he's praying. He's praying the end result that believers would be filled with God. Isn't that interesting? Filled with God, and he says a key to it is being strengthened in your inner man, in your spirit man, by the Holy Spirit and being rooted and grounded in the love of God. So the love of God is like a soil within which a healthy spiritual life grows.

The love of God is a foundation upon which you can build a strong life that can touch the lives of others, so love of God is very, very tangible. When God's love manifests, it's tangible, it can be felt and experienced. Love of God is also incredibly practical. God so loved He gave His Son, and we read the life of Jesus, that's the practical love of God, meeting needs, touching people, entering people's lives, developing and calling forth the potential of people and finally, sacrificing His life for every person. That is tangible, absolutely tangible. So there is a spiritual dimension to it, the manifest reality of God's presence and then there's also an incredibly practical dimension to it. You can't have one without the other. They both go together. Now notice here it says being rooted and grounded in love. The word rooted means to become stable, or to have deep roots like a big, big tree going right down into the ground, and so have you ever seen a little tree in the wind? It gets blown over. See a big tree, and it stands strong in the storm. It's usually got an extensive root system, lots of little wee things that have gone down, and so it's saying that our life needs to be like that, internally rooted or drawing from the love of God.

It uses another word to create a different picture, a picture of a building going up, and the thing that makes a building stable is a foundation. So you don't see the foundation, but it supports the building. It said founded or built upon a strong foundation, the love of God. So what He's speaking of in here is that, for us to manifest the life of God, we have to deepen, strengthen the foundations and root systems of our inner life, your connection with the Lord. How that outworks of course is quite simple. We'll share with you about that, but it does open us up to start to think; well how can I get deeper rooted in God? How can I strengthen that? See, this is a core thing in the Christian life, is your personal access to being loved, valued and spoken to and affirmed by God Himself. That was what motivated Jesus' ministry in life. Paul said that's what motivated him, in 2 Corinthians 5. He says this, he says the love of Christ motivates me or compels me to go out and do things. He had such a passion burning love of God in his life, it moved him to do incredible things. I'll share with you a little bit about that tonight.

So let's have a look at another verse. I want you to have a look with me in Jude, Verse 20, just before Revelation. It's a little wee book right at the back there. You can just about miss it if you don't know where it is - Jude, Verse 20, it's only got one chapter, and I want us to read Verses 20 and 21. Now you beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto eternal life. Notice what it tells us now. It says keep yourself in the love of God, implying no one can do this for you. This is your responsibility, is to discover, nurture and hold onto the reality that you are loved and valued by God. If we don't do that, we will look for substitutes, or be overwhelmed by lacks and problems and issues. It's something we're responsible - notice it says you do it, you keep yourself in the love of God. Keep means to guard from being taken away or losing something, to guard yourself or literally it means, focus your attention on this so it doesn't get taken away from you.

Now that's an extraordinary statement, because the Bible says the love of God is unchangeable. God is unchangeable, God doesn't change. Today He loves you as much as He loved you yesterday, and He'll love you the same tomorrow. He is unchangeable in His love, but our positioning to receive and to walk in the reality of it can change. We can feel very close or very far. We can be enjoying that love, or we can be missing that love. We can be longing for it, or we can be overflowing with it, and if you're longing for it, that's a thirst inside you that you're going to have to fill somewhere, and as Jesus spoke to the woman in the well, she filled that thirst for being loved, with ungodly relationships and with trying to desperately find some man that would meet the need in her life. All of us are designed to have this thirst met through relationship with God, so that raises a number of questions. Here's the first one. How can I experience the love of God? What can take my awareness of that away? What have I got to watch out for that would steal that from me? Then how can I keep myself in the love of God?

When you're reading scripture it always helps you to ask questions, so the first thing I want to look at is just the area of how can I experience the love of God, or can I experience the love of God? What is involved in that? I want to share with you just a passage that will just help and it's found in John, Chapter 17. There are two things I want to draw your attention to that are quite vital in helping us come to grips with being loved as a person by God, then we'll look at some of the things that we struggle against sometimes. Let's read in John 17 and this is Jesus' last prayer as He finished His ministry.

Verse 20, He's praying for the believers. I don't pray for these ones, my disciples alone, but for everyone who will believe in Me through their word. He's praying for us, you're a follower of Christ. Now here's what He's praying, that they all may be one as You, Father, are in Me and I in You; that they may be one in Us, so that - there's the outcome - the world may believe You sent Me, and the glory You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them and You in Me, they may be perfect in one, that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that those whom You have given Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me from before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world has not known You, but I have known You, and these have known You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.

Now when you look at it initially, it's just not easy to get to grips with it. There's a lot of things that Jesus says there that's recorded, but I want to pull it apart and just bring out some very simple things in it. Jesus is praying, and He's concerned not just about His disciples. He's concerned about every person who would believe in Him, because of the disciple's mission, in other words us. He's really praying two things; number one, that the disciples, the believers, would experience intimacy and the love of God. That's His prayer, you would experience the love of God for yourself. That's the first thing. The second thing is that His followers would express the love of God in such a way to one another, that there would be unity in the church, and that people would see how they love one another, and would recognise only God could do something like this. So in other words notice what He's doing. He's saying His prayer is that believers would experience love, not just know about it but to feel, experience it in such a way, it would change how we relate to one another, that the outcome would be unity and connectedness to one another and a love for one another that is visible, that people can see and say man, God has got to be here, look at what's happening in these people's lives. That's His prayer.

Experiencing it, and expressing it see, and it's virtually the core of the law isn't it aye, that you love the Lord your God and experience His love, and also you love the people that you can see, so that's the core of what He's doing. So how do believers experience such a love that impacts them, and unites them, then they begin to overflow? How do you do that? So He says there are two aspects to that, and I want to just look at the two aspects of it, then we'll break it down very, very practically. So I want to go in and first of all look at the second aspect, and the second aspect which is mentioned here is this. You notice what He says, Verse 26, I have declared to them Your name. I have revealed what You are like, and will continue to reveal what You are like, and here's what the outcome of Me revealing what the Father is like, that the love that You have for Me will also be in them.

So the very same relationship Jesus had with His Father, the very same love that sustained Him in every adversity, He wants you to have it, and He said the way it comes, is by it being revealed to you. You can't have something you don't know about, so He says I have made Your name known, or literally, I have revealed what You are like, so how does Jesus reveal what God is like, and continue to reveal what God is like? Simply through three main ways. One way that Jesus has revealed what God is like is just through creation. The Bible tells us Jesus created all things. When you go out into creation, you get alone and away from all the busyness and you take a few moments of solitude and look at maybe the universe, the sky, the stars, you look at the sea. You become aware of how vast and great God is, and yet He's interested in you, so creation itself tells us what an awesome, amazing, incredible God and I'm connected to Him.

The second thing is about the life of Jesus. Jesus' own words reveal what God is like, so if you want to know what God is like, you've got to look at the life of Jesus Christ and become connected to Him, so the first way that we experience the love of God is by developing an on-going personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That means that we see what He's made and appreciate it, that we listen and read His words and we begin to dwell on them and let them change the way we view life, and that we draw from His life and what He did to others reveals to us something about what God's like, so for example how did Jesus handle an adulteress? Well look at what He did to the leper. How did Jesus handle the woman at the well? How did Jesus handle people? That's what God is like, so if I read the word of God, and begin to study the life of Jesus and open myself to Him, then I begin to start to access the life that God has through personal relationship. There's another way too, and notice what He says here in Verse 22. I'm going to make this very practical. He says - now notice this - He said, the glory You gave me I have given them, that they may be one - then Verse 23 - the world may know You've sent Me, and have loved them, as You have loved Me.

Now notice here He says that I have not only made You known through life and teaching and whatever, I've also given to them the same glory You gave Me. Well I wonder what that means and I wonder when He got it? You've got to ask questions of scripture, otherwise you sort of read it and it doesn't impact your life - so He said the glory You - that's the Father - gave Me. Remember He left everything behind when He came to earth - the glory You gave Me, I have given it to them, and the purpose of it is to unite them, so that they may experience Your love, and people will obviously see it. So here are the two things; one is the personal life of Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him. The second one is this one here, it is prayer, and openness to the Holy Spirit revealing God to us, openness to the glory of God, whatever all that means. So if I encounter or experience the glory of God, it changes me. I begin to feel touched by the very character of God, the very life of God. I begin to experience the very life of God, the same way Jesus did, and that changes me, just as building relationship with Jesus, getting into His word and seeing His patterns of life and teaching and applying them to my life, also do that.

So both things are to accomplish the same end: having an experience of the glory of God, whatever that all means; and secondly studying the life and ministry and accessing Jesus by faith, and allowing His life to begin to become the pattern we build our life on. Those things make it possible for us to experience the love of God. Now here's a question then. The glory You gave Me; when did He receive that glory? What did it look like? I'd like to know, because He said it's for you, and for me.

So the answers are found in scripture. You've got to compare one scripture with another, so if you look in 2 Peter 1 and Verse 5, it tells us when that happened, then in Matthew it tells us what actually happened. Verse 16 - 2 Peter 1 and Verse 16 sorry. We did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of the majesty of what He will be like when He comes again, for He received from God the Father, honour and glory. When did He get it? When there came a voice to Him, from the Excellent Glory: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice which came from heaven, when we were with Him on the holy mountain. I won't go into this too much, but just pick up the obvious here, that He received glory from the Father, when He was in the mountain, when He heard the voice. So if I can come into such an experience and hear the same thing, then I can have an impartation of the glory, goodness, character, life of God. It tells us when He got it. When we go and look at it, we see what He got, and we have right and privilege to access that ourselves.

Okay, let's have a look in Matthew, Chapter 17. In 2 Peter, Peter was describing what he experienced. We're going to read what he experienced. He said we experienced what it will be like, we saw what it'll be like, when Jesus comes again. We saw what He will look like. Now what is he describing? He's describing what happened in Matthew 17; after six days He took Peter, James and John his brother, and led them up the high mountain by themselves. Verse 2, He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, His clothes became as white as the light. Now just stop there. As He was praying, it tells us in Luke, He began to change. Something in Him began to like a light bulb brightening up, began to rise and began to glow until it was like there light shining out of Him. He totally was changed, everything about Him radiated life and light and power. Now this is Jesus in a human body like yours, so what was the hidden life inside? It was the spirit of glory, it was the Holy Ghost. It's the same spirit given to you. It's the same spirit that will quicken your body, and raise you from the dead. That same spirit was in Him, but at that particular situation, the spirit of God began to radiate forth. It's like the light breaking through the cloud of covering and showing what was really inside Him.

It says it doesn't yet appear what we shall be. In other words you can't tell looking at us now what we're going to be like, but when He comes we shall be like Him, that same life, that same Holy Ghost, that same glory inside you - so there's a glory God has imparted in you, when you receive the Holy Spirit, and all the virtues of God are in that inner joining with God.

You have to build your inner life if you want to be filled with the life, the energy, the vitality, the revelation of God. You build your inner life through prayer and other things I'll share with you shortly. Okay, now if we go down there was something else happened, so not only did He shine like someone flicked the lights on inside but something else happened. It says - Verse 5 - While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. Hear Him! Let's stop. Now this is a different manifestation of glory. This is God's glory coming down upon. Now when we look at it you see bright cloud. Well most people then think of a nice sunny day and there's a cloud up there and it was shiny bright. That's it. That's about all we get, would that be right? How many thought that when you read that, it was a bright cloud? Okay, I guess it was a bit sort of a cloud. Of course the thing is, well you know we've all gone over to Taupo and climbed up the mountain there, and as you go up there then you come into the clouds, and go down the other side, so we kind of think it's a bit of that with some sun on it. It's nothing like that.

This was not a natural cloud. This was a cloud, a manifestation visibly tangible. It's a visible manifestation of God. That word there where it says 'bright' cloud, the word means literally to emanate out rays of light, brilliant, shimmering rays of light filled with gold. It was a manifestation of God Himself, but notice this; it says out of that cloud came some words - this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased, hear Him! Now notice this. The glory that God has given Jesus Christ, the Father gave Jesus Christ, He wants us to have, so how do we have it, and what does it do? Well first He puts His spirit, the spirit of glory inside us, to begin to renovate us, and illuminate us on the inside, and one day it will come to its fullness. Also, we can experience God, and when we experience God, now he experienced a tangible glory of God, same as they had in the Old Testament, which came down inside the tabernacle. I've heard reports in meetings around the world at times of like a mist, a shimmering mist coming into the house of God, the glory, but here's the bit I wanted to draw your attention to.

He said he received glory when he heard the voice see, so what did he get when he heard the voice? Now this is the bit he got, otherwise you get caught up in all the manifestations of shimmering lights and lightening and stuff like that. This is what he got; he got words. He got words that were powerful, spirit filled, energising words, that formed a part of the foundation of his life. Notice what he heard; this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. He got words of identity, who I am. Now most people who I am is measured by what I own and who likes me and what positions I have, but our identity is to come out of what God says about us. I am a child of God, born again by the spirit of God! God is my Father. Who am I? I'm a child of God. You've got to be able to answer that.

Notice the second thing is, My beloved Son, I belong to Him, My, My, My beloved. You and I need to hear God say, you're My beloved, you belong to Me, I belong to you. You're loved and valued. That imparts to us the things we can't get enough of in the world see? And then the final thing, it says I'm well pleased, words of affirmation, how valuable I am. Now people starve for these things, people starve because we don't know - we starve spiritually and emotionally. Because we are not sure of who we are, we become insecure because we're not sure who's we are or who we belong to. We feel uncertainty about who we are, and what we have, and we don't know how valuable we are in God, if we don't receive from God, then we're going to look for it somewhere else, look for it in your job, you look for it in a position, look for it in possessions, we look for something to meet these core needs - but the glory God gives us, is the glory of being a son of God, of having access to a Father who is an eternal Father. He's got great plans for His family. What a privilege. What a privilege to have these things, see?

How do I get into that? I have to pray and pursue God. Jesus went up on a mountain and pursued His Father and out of pursuit He experienced what the Father had for Him. I guess we'll have it the same way. It's the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal God's glory, God's goodness, God's love, so the Holy Spirit comes in, you have an anointing within, you have to learn to grow internally in your capacity to carry, and be sensitive to the anointing of the spirit of God. You have to learn how to pray in such a way, that you begin to encounter His experience, but ultimately it comes down, that you have revelation to your heart that reassures you, strengthens you, gives you vitality as a loved, vital, important person with something to contribute to this world. You're unique. I've got about three or four clips of a Christian guy, I'm going to show one of them tonight, who was born with no limbs. He wrestled continually with feeling he's of no value, and he couldn't do this and he couldn't do that, he couldn't do whatever, until he got perspective in Christ, and saw there's no limits for me - unless I decide there's limits.

So now he supports 60 orphans himself, travels the world. He's got no arms and no legs, and I'll show a little clip on him tonight, and you'll hear a little bit about just the spirit of the man. I'm so impressed with that man. See, he can swim, he can do all kinds of stuff, and I saw him there, a video clip of him walking down one of the streets with distressed people, and he's got a mission out there to preach all around the world. He said I've got a dream in my heart to do these great things. There's no limits! He's writing a book at the moment called No Arms, No Legs and No Limits. Don't you like that! But he got revelation of his value to God and arose inside. He's able to do great things. Just like Jesus, he had a revelation of who he was, was able to rise up and do great things.

Okay, so if the knowledge of the love of God comes by revelation and by connecting to and studying and focussing my life around the kind of person Jesus was, then what will take away the love of God, the awareness or consciousness of His presence? There are several things. In Jude 20 it says keep yourself in the love of God. Now why do I have to guard or protect or watch over this area of encountering, experiencing and walking in the love of God? Very simply there's an enemy wants to keep me from it. The foundation for our life, the foundation for our walk with God and to be able to make an impact is to know we're loved. Now what can take it away? Well very simple; the devil brings spiritual pressure around us. He puts pressure you either intermittently in seasons, or constantly. Some of you today may be under tremendous pressure. Now how do evil spirits bring pressure around us? What happens inside us? What goes on? How could I know that I'm under attack and that there's every chance if I lose my focus that I'm loved by God and don't come into that experience of Him, I'll go off track?

Several things - number one is constant feelings that go like this: I'm not good enough. I don't feel good enough. How many people have had some of those feelings? See, right, well that's a spiritual pressure to cause you to feel not good enough so you let go of being loved by God and don't go there for Him to meet that need. He says your good enough for Me, based on the work My Son did. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are very common, but that's the result of a spiritual pressure that comes around us, to disconnect us and cause us to feel God isn't near me, people aren't near me, no one loves me. It's a terrible place to get. It steals away revelation of the love of God. You've got to guard against isolation and loneliness. There's a place for quietness and being alone with God and having time of solitude, but we're talking about the feelings of being alone and not wanted.

Awareness of personal lacks - how many of you have struggled with awareness, an overwhelming sense that I lack? This is a pressure comes around to get your mind so it shifts away, actually all that God called me to do I can do it. Everything I need I have. All I've got to do is to trust Him and engage with life, but when you're obsessed with your lacks you withdraw, and you go below your limits. Another way enemy presses us is nagging accusations, continued accusations, pointing out your faults, what's wrong with this and that and what you did. When that stuff comes around you, it pressures you so you don't feel as though you're loved by God. You draw back from fellowship and everything else. These things have to be overcome. Temptations to find a substitute, so most temptation is around finding a substitute for the reality of a connection with God. That's all it is. This will fix you quick - but after it's fixed you up, then you feel bad again, and you need more, and you feel guilty as well. See, so none of the things that are at the other end of sin can satisfy us. The pleasures of sin only last a season. It feels good, then you feel bad see?

So stirring up wrong beliefs inside us - so all of these are things that happen. They come around you. Now the reality is, I experience all of those like you do, all of those things, feelings of inadequacy, feelings of lack, feelings of loneliness. I mean I go through the whole deal of all these things, but I've learnt that there are some things you can do that will get you so you can subdue those attacks of the enemy, and keep repositioning yourself to be filled again by the Lord. Now the thing is, no one's going to do it for me, just like no one's going to do it for you. You have to decide to do this for yourself. You do have a real devil and he is committed to sabotage your whole life and your destiny. It's your responsibility to learn how to access God regularly, so that the inner tank of His love is filled, and you have a security in your life. I know people that are just workaholics. You know what a workaholic is? It's the same as an alcoholic, absolutely destructive to their marriage, their family, their loved ones. It's the same deal. It's just an 'aholic. There's sexaholics as well, there's all kinds of - sportsaholics.

Basically it's an addiction to a substitute, because I can't stand the pain of what's really going on inside me, of feeling so terribly unloved. That's at the core of it all. It is at the core of it all, so you can tell someone to have balance in their life but if they've got a driving need to be loved and they think it's going to be in their work, they'll never stop working like crazy. Long after they've just ruined everything around them, and they're still driven by work, they still can't see what they're doing - like a person drinking can't see what they're doing. A person gambling can't see what they're doing, until their world falls apart, that it's a substitute for the reality of God's love in a personal relationship leading to a balance in life because you're not driven anymore. Getting the idea? You've gone all quiet - I know I'm talking to someone next to you.

Okay, so how can I keep myself in the love of God? Let me just give you a few practical things because we need to just get some simple keys, how can I keep myself in the love of God. Well you notice that in Jude 20, the whole environment for keeping yourself in the love of God, is an environment of prayer. Prayer is the key factor in it. Notice praying in the Holy Ghost, building up yourself in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. Prayer in the Holy Ghost is to energise our spirit man, but there's some things we also need to do. Here's number one. Number one is we need to constantly expect and anticipate and welcome God's mercy and forgiveness, looking for the mercy of God, looking for it, expecting it. Now a lot of people when they've failed don't expect God, they think they don't deserve it see? I don't deserve that mercy. Well God gives it to you, whether you deserve it or not see, so God is wanting you to believe, and if you blow it and fall over quickly get up, quickly come back, expect mercy, get it over and done with, move on, see?

So if I want to keep myself in the love of God, I've got to deal with failures and mistakes and errors, and just humbly admit they're there, confess them to the Lord, put it right and then move on. Don't beat yourself up for the lacks and failures. Stop doing that. That's not how you keep yourself in the love of God, beating yourself up all the time because there's this and that wrong with you. Just get over it, because God has, at the cross in Calvary, see. So the second thing is we need to meditate in the love of God, need to take time to allow your thoughts and your mind to centre around and focus on the person of God and how much He loves you, so you need to picture it in a very real way. Use your spiritual imagination and allow your life to meditate on scriptures until your mind - see what your mind meditates on, you'll begin to become aware of and you'll begin to feel. Thoughts and feelings are very closely connected. If we talk about food right now, and I described some food to you, very soon you'll start to feel incredibly hungry. That's all you'll be able to think about, because as your mind fills with thoughts and they become like pictures in you, then emotions start to come and even your body starts to respond.

So meditation, consciously using my imagination to dwell on, embrace and see the love of God, very tangibly the person of Jesus Christ welcoming me, loving me and to meditate on that, to see it over and over, to imagine how it feels. If you just ponder the truth of it, and do it regularly - now you only have to do it just in moments through the day. Take a minute break and stop, just quieten down, and just take a moment to become still inside, become conscious God is with me. Now initially that may take some discipline, because many minds are so busy, but it's a discipline to train your inner life, to just refocus and centre back on the love of God, the person of Jesus Christ. See, so you meditate, you repeat that over and over so it constantly goes back, Jesus is my source. Go back to become conscious, I'm loved, He values me, thank You Lord. Begin to dwell in that, I start to become aware of His presence again.

Now you see it's a discipline inside. Now most people want to fill their outside world with stuff to satisfy the inner needs, but if we will build our inner life, our outside world will change. Consciously, as you change on the inside, things around you change as well. Here's another thing we need to do is manage your emotions and your thoughts. Now your thoughts and emotions go together, so thoughts that aren't right, quickly address them because they'll lead to emotions and feelings and old ways. You know, you think about someone, the injustice someone did you, you'll start to feel angry. You begin to think about how much you lack, and how much trouble you have, and you start to feel sorry for yourself. You have a choice what you'll set your thoughts on, and we have to choose to think the things that are good. If you start to allow your mind to go to all the things you have to do, you start to feel anxious and divided, and you lose consciousness that God is with you.

Here's another thing. I'll give you a couple of other things. They're also quite simple, so those are all internal things, consciously and quickly expecting God to forgive me, rushing back into His presence when I've blown it, meditating on His love and dwelling on that, beginning to build an awareness that God is with me, disciplining thoughts and emotions. Those are all very, very simple things you can do, and there's a couple of other ways we can actually experience the love of God. One of the ways is learn to receive from other people. Jesus also lives in a body of people, and so He calls us to love one another, and sometimes people feel so far from God, that what they need is someone who can represent God to them, someone who can actually - it's like God in a skin, coming to them. We need to be able to open ourselves to receive being loved, valued and supported by other believers. Oh, well I'd rather go it alone with God. No, no, no, we're not called to go alone with God.

One of the evidences that the glory of God is growing in our life, and that we're becoming stable in love, is we begin to engage people and connect with people. Why is that? We'll see that just in a moment. So God reveals His love through people sometimes. I remember in my first year teaching, how I was just absolutely desperate. It was really not going good for me, and I got to the end of myself one day. I said that's it Lord! I've had enough of this. This just sucks, I'm out of here, so I'm going to put in my resignation, we'll leave and go somewhere by a beach where I can fish like I always wanted to anyway. I got the place in mind, I got the magazine out, had to have a look at it and see the job away up there Warkworth way, I could just see myself. I pictured there at the beach, out there loving - oh man, don't go there. [Laughter] Maybe for a holiday, you know?

Anyway I said but Lord, You know You brought us here, and so if I'm going to shift well, You've got to help me out here to keep me here, so I'm out of here unless You help me. What I want You to do is send someone to help me, strengthen me and support me, encourage me. You know I hadn't even finished - I don't even know whether I prayed it out loud, or just thought it out loud, but anyway whatever it was there was a knock at the door as soon as I finished. I couldn't believe it. Who the heck could be coming here, it's the middle of the day, I'm home and no one expects me home - and it was my Pastor. He said I felt God put it on my heart to come around and see you like you needed encouragement. I've come to pray for you. I thought oh, I just swallowed it! I just cried like a baby. [Laughter] Now I received the love of God through a person, and it strengthened me, so don't just think you go it alone and get it all from God. None of us goes it that way. Even Jesus said to His disciples, come and join Me, this is a very difficult hour for Me, come and join Me in prayer. I really would like your support.

Now people don't give us everything and they do fail us and they don't come up when we expect, but nevertheless, they are a way God brings His love to us. Don't underestimate how God can love you through people.

One man - I've probably shared this story, it's still a good one to tell - first year pastoring, and one of the young men in the church, we had a boy who was a bit older, he used to play with our kids, and play with Peter. Then he had a baby, and we were so excited about the baby, and three months later I got a call in the night, he said our baby just died. I couldn't even believe what I was hearing. How could a baby die? I mean how could a baby die! I didn't know anything in those days, and I went out there in the car to see him and God, what do I say? I don't know what to say. How do I pray? I didn't know what to do, and the Lord said don't say anything. I want you just to go to him and hug him. As I went to him, I began to think I wonder what he's going through, and began to think of my own children as I was going there, and I began to start to feel what it would be like to lose a child.

I went there and I got to the house and he saw the car pull up because the lights were on and so on, so he came out to see me. I went over to him - we walked together and I still remember as clear as it was yesterday - put my arms around him, and I just hugged him and we both cried. I didn't know what else to say. We just got our way through it the best we could, and got through the service and everything. Years later he told me, all my life I'd been so shut down I never was ever able to experience being loved, but that day when you said nothing and just hugged me, I felt the love of God for the first time, and he cried. It changed his life. He became trained later and become a Pastor. Isn't that amazing? Amazing, just the love of God, so it's got a very spiritual dimension to it, and it's got an incredibly practical part to it as well.

I can remember one time, we were very low in our life in ministry and I'd been through tremendous stress and pressure, and we went away for a break and a holiday. I didn't actually have enough money to get back, and I said well I'm going Lord, if you want me back You've got to provide the dough. That's it, so I'm out of here. So we went there, and we were looked after up in a camp up in Whangarei. Anyway, one night someone said hey, won't you come around for a meal? I said that sounds pretty good, and so we'll come round. We got around their place, they said well actually it's a surprise and you're not coming with us. There's something else we've got in mind, it's a surprise. Oh, fantastic, so they said well follow these directions to this house. Oh wow, that's mysterious. Followed these directions to this house, and got to this house, and there were lights on and we came in, the door was open and there was a sign up, welcome Mike and Joy. I thought that's unusual, and I guess that means we should go in - knocked on the door, no one answers, we came in, and there's music and there's soft lights, and this table set for two people, and there's a meal laid out.

We had a note with a scripture of encouragement, saying we'll come and we'll give you coffee later on at 9.30, but we want you just to enjoy the meal the Lord's provided for you both. So the practical - they said later on, they said God has put it into our heart to help couples under stress by just putting on a special meal. He said the only condition is, you can't tell anyone who we are. We sat at the table, and just wept that someone we didn't know, cared for us, and we knew that past that and beyond that, it was God showing His love through someone, so that's over spiritualised. We are all people, and we need the love of God through one another, as well as through personal encounter and sometimes when you can't get it through personal encounter, it comes the other way. God loves us, and we can become a community that love people.

That brings us to the last one, if we want to keep in the love of God, we have to practice loving people. John 14 tells us that Jesus said if you love Me You'll keep My commandments and here's the one, God commanding you to love one another. He said oh Lord, He said well if you'll do this My love will abide with you, we'll manifest ourself. He said well how - we'll love one another, well that's not so easy Lord you know? Some people are pretty nasty, not very nice. He said well you know, when you love, you'll learn to forgive them. How are you going to learn to forgive? Because love forgives. I'm going to send some people and they're going to offend you and upset you, and you've got a chance to learn what real love is, and to grow in forgiveness. There'll be some people upset you, and you'll get irritated, and it'll be a chance for you to grow in patience. There'll be some people and they don't deserve anything and you'll give them kindness, and you'll learn what it is to grow in kindness, so it's impossible to grow mature in love, without some people to practice on.

So Jesus revelation that we could experience the love of the Father, is deeply connected to our relating with people, and overflowing and interacting with them. You just can't have one without the other, so right now just as we finish, let's just close our eyes, want to just bring your attention around one of the greatest, the most practical gifts of all, and I'm going to just get you to - it'll take about one and a half minutes and then we'll finish. I want you just to meditate for a moment, on how great you are loved by God, how valuable you are. The Bible says see what manner of love the Father has, and while we were sinners Christ died for us. I want you just for a moment, just to allow your mind if you can focus for a few minutes more, allow your imagination just to picture what I describe. As you picture it, allow your heart to arise in response.

I want us just for a moment to just travel back in time 2000 years to a small place, a hill outside Jerusalem, where there was a man crucified, because He loved you. As you kneel in the rocky hard place, and look down you can see how they've dug a hole out in the ground, and the post, the wooden post that He's hanging on has been inserted in the ground, and some rocks pushed into it to keep it stable. You see the dark stain in the dust, the blood of Jesus Christ which was shed for you, because He loves you. As you look up, you look at the cross, you can see the blood running down it, freshly running down it, still running down it. This blood was for you, to cleanse you of every failure, every mistake, and make you perfectly acceptable to the Father in heaven. If you lift your eyes a little more, you can see His feet, huge spikes, spiking them to the cross, so He can't move them, and if He tries to move them, nerves just shriek with pain. This blood was for you.

Begin to look up His body, His legs, His torso, you realise that a cruel whip of a Roman soldier has literally lacerated and torn deep welts, deep gashes in His legs, His back, His sides, stripped the flesh off and cut it right open, some places to the bone. He did this because He loved you and me. His blood was for you. If you look towards His arms, you can see huge spikes holding His wrists to the cross, right through the nervous area. Of course in that position He has cramps in His body, and so He has to pull Himself up on those spikes to try and breathe, and then drop back down again, so it goes on for hours, terrible, agonising pain, struggling to breathe, and gradually the lungs filling with water and blood. This was for you, because He loves you. You can't get more tangible than that. As you look at His head, you see a crown of thorns, huge, deep, long spikes beaten in, and you can remember when you had a little prickle and how that hurt - what must this be like? The mockery, the abuse, the hurt, the pain, and as you look in His eyes, there's no accusation, no condemnation; Father, forgive them, they didn't know when they sinned what it would cost to redeem them.

That's how much He loves you. God so loved you He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ. He practically and willingly gave up His life on the cross so you could be joined back in relationship with God, discover that relationship with all it's depths, discover the purpose it has for your life and live a life rooted in the love of God for you. If God was willing to do that for us when we didn't even know Christ, and walked in hardness of heart and sin, how much more now will He give you everything you need? Father, release Your love, a revelation of Your presence and love into the heart of this church, that it will overflow in love and unity for one another, will overflow to connect with our community in a greater dimension.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· 1 John 4:16 - Love is the Nature of God. Love fills the atmosphere of heaven

· The Love of God is constant and unchanging- it is His nature, who He is

· The Love of God is tangible – it can be experienced, it can be felt as spiritual reality

· The Love of God is practical – it can be experienced through acts of loving kindness John 3:16

· Our love for God is a response to first being loved by Him 1 John 4:19

· Ephesians 3:16-19 - God desires us to be rooted and grounded in the love He has for us.

Ø Rooted = 4492 = to become stable, strengthened with an extensive unseen root system

Ø Grounded = 2311 = to lay a foundation or lay a basis for a lifestyle

Ø The Love of God for us stabilises and strengthens us to serve God, act as ambassadors 2 Corinthians 5:14

· Jude 20 - “Keep yourself in the Love of God”, look for the mercy of the Lord Jesus

Ø keep = 5083 = to guard from loss or theft by keeping the eye upon e.g. focus

It’s something you and I have to do, our responsibility

Ø 3 Questions:

i) How can I experience the love of God?

ii) What must I guard against? What can take it away?

iii) How do I keep myself in the love of God?

How can I Experience the Love of God? Can I Experience the Love of God?

· John 17:20-26 - Jesus prayer for believers – experience the love of God.

· vs 23 - “…world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me …”

· vs 26 - “… that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them …”

· Jesus prayer:

i) Followers/Believers imitate the love of the Father and to experience it.

ii) Followers/Believers express that love in ways that are evident to the world.

· How do Believers experience the love of God that invites and reveals Christ?

i) Personal Relationship by Faith in Jesus Christ:

· John 17:26 - “I have declared your name…” = to make known who Christ is like. Jesus revealed what God is like.

· How?

I) The Works of God – creation, miracles

II) The Life of Jesus – words, relationships, sacrifice

III) The Body of Christ – receiving the kindness and encouraging words

· Develop an ongoing relationship with Christ and the Father. Open yourself to Him, get access to what He has to offer

ii) Prayer and Openness to the Holy Spirit:

· John 17:22-23 - “the glory which you (Father) gave me, I have given them” = unity and love for people to see.

· Jesus has given to believers the glory which the Father gave Him.

· When did the Father give Him glory? What did He experience?

· 2 Peter 1:16-18 - “… he received honor and glory when such a voice came to him…’

· Matthew 17:1-5 - “… a voice came out of the cloud saying: This is my beloved son in whom I’m well pleased. Hear Him!”

· Luke 9:28 - As Jesus prayed the glory within Him was manifested

· Also the glory upon Him was manifested, radiant life and power

· Bright = to be composed of light, to shine forth rays of light

· There was a visible and audible manifestation of the glory of God

· Note the words:

I) Identity – Who I am

II) Love – Whose I am

III) Affirmation – How valuable I am

· Prayer opened the way to experience the glory of God.

· The work of the Holy Spirit is to reveal the glory of God to us so that we are filled with God

· Learn to grow and pray to encounter God, have revelation who you are, unique, one and only. There are no limits unless you decide there are limits

What must I guard against? What will take the Love of God away?:

· Jude v20 - “Keep yourself in the love of God” - make it a focus of your life.

· We have a personal enemy who seeks to steal God’s abundant love for us.

· How?

Ø Spiritual pressure on the mind, emotion, spirit

Ø Constant feelings - “Not good enough”

- “Loneliness and isolation”

- Awareness of personal lacks, short comings

Ø Constant nagging accusations in the mind

Ø Constant distractions – cares of life e.g. Martha Luke 10:40

Ø Temptations to find substitutes for God

Ø Stirring up wrong beliefs – acceptance based on performance

· Evil spirits keep up relentless pressure to distract and sabotage our life.

· Must choose to keep self in the Love of God.

· No one can do this for you, it’s a daily personal choice!

4. How do I keep myself in the Love of God?

Jude v20 - “Keep yourself in the love of God”

What are the keys that enable me to be conscious of the Love of God?

i) Constantly expect mercy from God:

· ‘Looking for’ = 4327 = to receive for one self, receive into companionship

· ’Mercy’ = 1656 = kindness, goodwill, deserve to come alongside and help

· Keep short accounts with God – expect to receive forgiveness and mercy Hebrews 4:15

ii) Meditate on the Love of God:

· Use your spiritual imagination to picture the truth of His love

· Use your imagination “to feel” your thoughts

· Constant repetition with expecting establishes a path in mind

iii) Manage your thoughts and Emotions:

· Guard your thought life – what are you focusing on, you open yourself to

· Identify emotions and challenge the thoughts that stir

· Choose to believe and embrace and speak what the Word of God says

iv) Open self to Receive Love from People:

· God reveals His love through acts of kindness and words and presence of people

· Don’t be limited at how God can touch you

· Allow God to love you through His people – connect – receive!

· Receive but don’t depend

v) Practice Loving People:

· John 14:21; John 15:10-12; 1 John 4:12,16

· It is easier to love God whom we don’t see than love people who we do see

· People have a way of uncovering our immaturity and lack of love

· Loving people defines that we are the children of God and challenges us to depend on Him

As You Love Yourself (4 of 6)

Sun 16 Aug 2009 AM  « Back to Top

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God's calling the church, every person, to serve. Love always serves others; but if you're unhappy about who you are, you'll use the serving as a way of fulfilling an unmet need inside.

God wants us to place value on ourselves. I want to focus on 'as you love yourself.' What do you believe about yourself? When you look in the mirror and you look there, you look at that person there, what do you think?

I want you to have a look in your Bible in Matthew, Chapter 22. We were sharing a series on the Extravagant Love, and we started off with the love of God. We looked into it, and we'll just start up where I was at, then I want to pick up and just do something to get you to think about your own inner life, and how to actually change on the inside.

In Matthew 22, Verses 36 to 40, we read this. Jesus was asked, Teacher, what's the great commandment in the law? He said you will love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And so for three Sundays, we shared first of all on God's extravagant love for us, and how we can connect by faith to that; the second one, we began to share on how to express love to God, various ways we can do that, a number of ways we can express our love to God. Love needs to be expressed. You can't just have it, and not give it away. Doug was talking about that today, about having lived in a family where there was love in the heart, but no expression, and this is always a problem if there's no expression. You don't know how to interpret no expression - then we shared also about how the Bible tells us to keep ourself in the love of God. We talked about what kinds of things can separate you or take you away from experiencing and walking in that love, and then what to do about that.

I want to pick up now the next verse, and it says now, the second is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. That's an amazing statement isn't it? Notice He says that we're to love two people; we're to love our neighbour, and we're to love ourself. The word 'as' in there means in the same manner as what is following, so let's read it again. Love your neighbour in exactly the same way as what follows, the way you love yourself. Now you can understand then, if you have difficulty loving and valuing who you are, you will have difficulty loving people. In fact one of the foundations for properly building relationships, is that we have a true sense of value, a clear sense of identity, then we can actually love and value who we are. If you don't like who you are, what are you going to bring into a relationship?

If you are hiding on the inside, because you don't like what you see, what are you going to bring in and give into that relationship, because people will connect with you, they'll connect with what you communicate, so Jesus makes it very clear. Love, that word love means to hold in extremely high regard, to treat as something precious. How about that? Hold yourself in very high regard, consider yourself to be something very special, or very precious, treat as a special prize. It also means to take pleasure in. Isn't that an interesting thing, that we are to treat ourselves as a special treasure, consider ourself that way, to particularly place value upon ourselves? In other words we have to properly treat ourselves, the way God wants us to be treated, the way He sees us and treats us. This forms a foundation then, for stepping out into the world of relating to other people, so if you have a very low esteem, a very low value on yourself, if you have a lot of unresolved issues about yourself, they will all defile relationships you have when you step out to help other people.

Now God's calling the church, calls every person, to serve. Love always serves others, but if you're not happy about who you are, you'll use the serving as a way of fulfilling an unmet need inside, so God wants us to place value on ourselves. So I want to focus today on 'as you love yourself.' So what do you believe about yourself? When you look in the mirror and you look there, you look at that person there, what do you think? Quite an interesting question to ask isn't it? A lot of people don't like what they see - in fact they don't look at the mirror too long, they're trying to change everything straight away. See, when you look at yourself, do you like what you see? Are you happy with what you see, or is there much unresolved conflict about who you are?

If you have a lot of conflict about who you are, and what's going on inside your life, you will have major issues in relating to people, and also in loving your neighbour, because everything you do will be affected by the way you see yourself. This is why we had a Freedom Retreat. It's why we have Restoration Retreats, it's why we have courses like Search for Significance. There's a reason for it, because you need to get to grips with the truth as God sees it, about who you are, to be freed from defining yourself by the experiences you've had, or by the way people have treated you. If people have treated you badly, you'd come to the conclusion I must be a bad person. If people abuse you, you come to the conclusion there's something wrong with me. Now if you walk through life and there's something wrong with me, and you've got all this going, you're going to actually have a very big challenging time building successful relationships, because you don't know where you start and where you finish, you don't know what's yours and what's someone else's.

All your relationships will be affected by that, and we'll show you how just as we go through, so we want to talk then about properly loving yourself. I can't do it all in one session, but we'll have a go at laying some foundations. So the first thing to look at is, where do you find your value as a person? Where do you find your value as a person, your sense of esteem, and your worth? Well you're either going to find it inside you, on the basis of what God says about you, or you find it outside you. So your value as a person, you're either going to find it and establish it internally, based by faith in what God says, or you'll try and establish it outside yourself. Let me explain what I mean by that.

If you try to establish it outside yourself, you think something like this; well I've got a lot of money, therefore I'm a very important person, or I'm very valuable. But of course if you've got a lot of money, and your value's based on your money, and your money falls over tomorrow, then you are in a problem, because your value's attached to your money. If you value position, and so a lot of your struggle in life is to get recognition and position, and having a position and a title is a wonderful thing, then that position, you lose it tomorrow, where are you going to be left? You'll be very hurt, very angry and you'll have a lot of issues internally. People do this. They use possessions, they use property, they use their positioning. They use all kinds of things - performance, we work hard. If I work hard and do it perfectly, I'll be valuable. Now when people think this way, they're wired for failure in their relationships, because they're trying to establish their value from what's outside them, rather than having it firmly established inside them.

If it's outside you, where your value is found, in success, in family, in marriage, in every other kind of thing - when that goes wrong, you've got major issues inside you. But if your value is established inside you, you are able to enter into relationships and be much more whole, and much more able to enter into great relationships, so we need to base our value on what God has to say about us. We need to base our value, our esteem, the way you see yourself, you need to base it around what God says. This is what God says. There are two aspects of God's value on us, and here's why you're so valuable. I'll point out to you, now I don't care whether you've got a problem with alcohol, a problem with pornography, a problem with drugs, a problem with your marriage, a problem with relationships, it doesn't matter what kind of issue you've got going on right now, I can tell you, you are still valuable. Here's why you're valuable. It's got nothing to do with the problems you have in your life. That's all about your performing. It has to do with what God says about you.

Now here's two things that God says, and the word of God says; number one, in Genesis 1:26, God made man in His image and likeness. You are a spirit being, an eternal spirit being. Everything you see around you is going to pass away, is going to disappear or change, but you have an aspect of you which goes on for eternity. Therefore you are more valuable than anything around you. You are valuable, because you're made in the image and likeness of God. You are a spirit being. Of all of God's creation human beings are spirit beings. We're uniquely made to represent God in the earth. You are valuable, because you're a spirit being, because you're made in the image of God. You think well yeah, yeah, but what about sin, you know? Sin came in and messed it all up. Yeah, but think about this: a car that's had a bit of an accident is still a car, and if God created you in His image and likeness, and sin has come in and marred it, all it's done is damaged you, but you're still made in the image and likeness of God. It's just you're damaged, and you have to come back through relationship with Christ to be restored into what He intended.

So you find your value - to find your value that way, you have to begin to meditate in that, and begin to start to draw from the word of God the reality that I am loved by God, because I've been made in His image and likeness. He loves people. He made us to enjoy, so I'm a person that is loveable by God - not because I've got everything right inside me, but because God is loving, and He loves me. I'm a loveable person, see? So it may be I don't get on so well with people, I've got some glitches in my character, but it doesn't stop the truth, the reality spiritually is, I am absolutely, totally loved by God, and so are you, all the time. It doesn't change. Sin didn't change it. God just provided a redeemer. Here's the second reason that you are so valuable and so important and such a precious, unique person, found in 1 Peter 1, Verses 18 and 19. It says we are not redeemed by things which are corruptible such as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

Now here's the second reason that you are so valuable. It is because of the price that God was willing to put on you. Now it says silver and gold, well if we had a bit of silver and gold we'd be really happy. We kind of like the silver - give me the gold! We kind of love to have a bit of gold, I like gold you know, but the Bible calls it corruptible stuff. Heaven's paved with it, it's just they use it for the roading up there. [Laughter] You walk on it, see. That's how important it is in heaven, see? But He said you were purchased or redeemed. That means someone paid a price to get you out of captivity, and it was more precious than all the gold. There's not enough gold in the world to pay the price for you to be redeemed. It took God Himself to come down from heaven in a human form, and to give His life, and shed His blood, and that blood is precious, more than all the gold, more than all the silver! That's the price He put on you!

Did you ever see that road show auction thing they have, and people bring out their junk, and then the guy goes and has a look at it, and what looks like a piece of old junk to you and me and the guy says oh, well that one there's worth about £4,000. You go what! How can it be worth so much? You think how can it be worth so much? Because someone's willing to pay that much for it, it must be valuable. Oh, I didn't think much of it, I would have thrown it out, thought it was old junk and it's true, people do that. They don't understand the value of things. Now the value placed on your head, if you were wanted alive, is the blood of Jesus Christ. You are valuable because of that, so if you meditate in those truths, and start to separate your value from being around you, and what you own, what people say about you, and what you're doing, and start to be begin to internalise through meditation as we've shown you, that you are valuable to God, a unique spiritual being, absolutely unique. There's no one like you. You're a unique production from heaven, an eternal being, with an eternal purpose in God. How more valuable can you get!

So while the people down there don't think I'm very good, at work they don't think much of me, okay, they're entitled to their opinions. That doesn't change spiritual reality, so you have to build a foundation in your life of a spiritual reality, who I am, what I am, I am what God says. I don't feel like it - doesn't matter what I feel. What God says is the truth and about me and you! So we need to get into that - so on what do you base your value? We have to base our value on what God says. We need to learn to get inside us the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, the almighty power of God is in my spirit, I am joined to the eternal God - need to become conscious of that, so my value continually is referenced to what God says. Now that provides a tremendous foundation for you to live out your life, and to engage relationships.

We're going to get a little more specific soon, because there's some things you'll need to get on to, so we need to base ourself on the word of God. Now humility, Bible humility means to agree with God, so to be humble biblically speaking, doesn't mean you're not bold and strong and all that, doesn't mean you walk around oh, oh, you know, sort of down - that's what we kind of think it means, but humility, biblical humility, means I agree with God. If God says I'm an over comer, I'm an over comer. If God says I've got it in me to win, I've got it in me to win. I will agree with God. If God says that's sin, it's sin. Now that's humility agreeing with the word of God. That's why you cannot just live your life from experiences, you must have a foundation of the word of God that develops your experiences into some substance in your life. So many people just live out of the latest thoughts that come into their head, and they don't ever stop to think whether that thought was God or not.

You have to have the word of God to be able to do that see, so now I want you to have a look at this in Romans, Chapter 12 and Verse 3. The Bible tells us the way we're to think about ourselves. This is good. You'll probably think of someone this applies to. Here it is - it won't be you of course, but you'll know someone here I'm sure. The moment I read this verse you'll think I know someone like that. Verse 3, I say through the grace given to me, to every who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to everyone a measure of faith. Okay, let's go there. Notice the words there are 'to everyone.' Now is everyone here included, or are you excluded on that one, see? Because it says here I'm saying, through the grace given to me, to everyone among you. This is for everyone, and here's what He's saying. One is a don't do, and the other is a do do, okay, so the don't is don't think of himself more highly than he ought. How about that. In other words, to overly be opinionated about who you are, to have a picture of yourself that's way out of touch with reality, all puffed up, a lot of wind and not much substance. Don't be puffed up in your mind thinking about yourself, so in other words, having wrong value. Now you see you've got to think well, what do you really think about yourself?

What do you think about yourself? See, usually the thoughts go into one or two extremes, neither of which agree with the word of God, so you can call them both humility although they - both of them equal pride, even though they look different. So you know one form of pride, and that's the superiority, arrogance, better than thou, and when you're with someone who's got that arrogant pride sort of thing, actually what you know is they don't feel loved, they're trying to huff and puff up a bit, trying to impress everyone. When you're around someone like, that they look like they're very big, and you feel like you're very small. They may puff up over their money, or puff up over business, puff over all kinds of things, or ministry, it doesn't really matter what it is. It's all a smokescreen for a very small person, but they puff up, because they're projecting out, I'm very important. Well see, if you're accepted in the eyes of the Lord, you don't have to prove to anyone you're important.

Why are you going to all that effort to let everyone know how important you are? It must mean you don't believe you're important, and you need them to say oh, you're important. Thank you, it's what I needed. Why? Because it wasn't internal. That's the problem you see, so that's one form of pride. Of course people like, that are preoccupied with themselves, it's all about me. Not only that, they're insensitive to others, and they tend to invade and go in over everyone's boundaries and injure them, so you can't think like that and have good relationships, because you've got a trail of destroyed people behind you, or dependent people, who think you're wonderful. That's what happens. Okay and the other side of course is - which is a very common one in New Zealand - is the issue of inferiority, which is exactly the reverse. But inferiority is, I believe I'm inferior to everyone, and if I believe I'm inferior to others, so as I stand beside you, and I look at what's very good in you, and you're so good at this, and I feel so bad at that; now what is my reference point for my value? Is it inside me, or outside me? It's outside me.

I've compared myself unfavourably with you, so people either compare themselves and puff themselves up, or compare themselves, and don't need other people, or they compare themselves, and judge themselves. Usually if we compare we take the strongest thing in them, and match it with the weakest thing in us, and we come out bad. Oh, I'm not much good. Now you see, now you understand, this is not humility. This is actually pride, because it's still got you preoccupied with yourself, and you can't form good relationships like that if you have low esteem. You actually have to agree with what God says, so what people like that are like is, they neglect themselves. Some of them even despise themselves. Some people even hate themselves.

I was talking to one person, and when he got into huge stress, he'd start to hit himself. I said you've got major issues from your family background of self hate, so when conflict comes, you're beating yourself up, because you believe you need to be punished. Where did you get that from? You didn't get that from God. Someone told you that. Someone treated you that way. A lot of people who are in church, who are Christians, who are believers, carry all this kind of baggage, and so they're able to experience God when there's a strong anointing present, but not easily walk with Him. They're able to enter into relationships, but not hold them, because these issues keep coming up. They're not resolved, because their value is wrongly measured. It's measured by what experience told them, their family background told them, or other people told them, and in the end no one told them the truth. You've got to get what God says, and so that's why you get into these courses. I've had to face many things in my life - still facing things, things that I've believed, which turned out they were not true, you know? Things about myself I believed, I thought actually that's not true at all, but I believed all my life and it's affected my relationships.

You have to repent of those kinds of things, and their strongholds in the mind, attached to a hurt, an emotion. You've got to pull it all down. Why? Because you've got to love yourself, as God loved you. Why? Because you've got a mission, to have to go out into the world and minister to people, so you need to allow God to get in and work in your life, because God is not just wanting us to win the world and influence the world. He also wants us to become Christ-like, to become whole on the inside, so Jesus is the model. So we'll look at that in just a moment too, so getting the idea? So of course on the one hand, if you've got superiority, which is one form of pride, and you walk all over people, invade their boundaries and hurt them; if you've got inferiority and rejection, then what happens is people walk into your life, and walk over you and hurt you, or you become dependent on people. Either way, you don't have a healthy relationship, and when you come to serve people you get burned out.

You get burned out, because you're in it for the wrong reasons. You need to get something back, instead of just seeing serving as something you do as an overflow of your life. See Jesus came to give His life, not to be served, so when He approached people, He approached: there's needs, and I can help. He didn't come thinking listen, I need you to worship me, so I'm going to do a big thing and die on the cross, then you'll have to! There was nothing like that. He just loved people, and ministered to people, and served people. Why could He do that? Because He was very, very strong in His personal identity. He could withstand the crowds. He could withstand even His closest people leaving Him, and He said you'll all leave Me, but I am not alone, My Father is with Me. See, He's defined in His identity around a relationship with the Father, and you have to build your life that way. That's why you have to build a God-centred life, otherwise everything else falls over when the pressure comes on.

Now notice what it says; don't think more highly of himself than he ought, but think soberly. That's not a bad word, sober, because any of you who've had a drinking problem will know what that means. You know when you're sober, and you know when you're drunk. When you're drunk, you're under the influence of another thing, and you stagger round, and you have poor judgement. You fall, you make a lot of goofy - you wish you'd never done these things. The next day you think oh my God, did I do that? Oooh. See, your judgement is impaired, you make poor decisions, and you have no balance when you're under the influence of drink, or under the influence of alcohol. Notice it says, think soberly, or think with a sound mind. Now how do you get a sound mind? According to what God says about you, so when you believe what God says about you, you're thinking soberly. When you believe all that other stuff, you're under the influence of another spirit, you're drunk under the influence of something, so you speak and act crazy. That's why relationships get in so much trouble, people speak and act crazy, and they think weird things. They perceive things, you know, having a few drinks, and you start to even see things that aren't even there.

You know when you're under the influence of spirits, you see things that aren't there, and they look like they're real, but they're not there, they're all in your head. That's why you've got to - it says, think soberly, and how do we think soberly? Soberly means I agree with God about my value. I'm very special, I will treat myself like God treats, as something special, of value, a highly prized possession. See, I'll treat myself right, and this is based on faith, what God says. So I need to read what the word of God says, and meditate on that. I need to listen what the Holy Ghost says, and sometimes God speaks to you through people. He gives you feedback through people, and He says some good things through prophesy that encourage you, and He says some other things that help you realise where you need to shape up, because you're not coming through too good. So God's got a lot of ways of talking to us. We need to get faith in our heart to believe God about our life. Isn't that true?

Now notice this. Here's another scripture now, because sometimes you find scriptures seem to be quite contrary to one another, but they're not, it's just a matter of getting the perspective. Look at this one, Philippians, Chapter 2, and it says - Verse 3 - Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others, better than himself. Let each of you look out not for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now notice He starts of by saying, He's talking about pride, thinking of yourself the wrong way. He says don't do things out of ambition. Ambition means I'm driven by my personal desire for fulfilment, and I'll use you to get it. You can't build well that way. He's saying don't do anything out of that motive, and He says but rather do something different. He says in lowliness of mind, let each esteem the other, better than himself. Now you think well what's that about? This is what it means. It means first of all, get a good grip on your own personal value. When you've got a good grip that you are valuable, then when you see other people, they're really valuable too. Lift them up, and put them higher than you, so you can serve them.

In other words, have a good value on them. Place value on other people - but of course, if you don't have personal value yourself, you'll have trouble valuing people. You tend to end up, and you're using people to build what isn't being built into your life, so we need to place a right value. Jesus had that kind of right value, so let me give you some key aspects then, of actually a way, looking at loving yourself, loving yourself. Remember love your neighbour as yourself. It means to regard the welfare of, to hold in high regard, to treat as a prize possession. Let me give you some very practical things, and they're quite simple. Actually Jesus operated in all of these, every one of them, so we can too. Here's the first one. The first one is, you need to discover who you are. How can you turn up in life and really enter into good relationships, if you haven't got a clue who you are?

So what I mean by knowing who you are, well you've got to know what God says about you, first of all, otherwise you'll live out of your life before Christ, full of condemnation, guilt, grief, disappointments, sadness and accusations, all that kind of stuff. You've got to know what God says. I'm a child of God, I'm forgiven, I'm an ambassador of heaven, I'm a representative of God, I'm filled with the Holy Ghost. I've got to get that into me. I've got to discover what the word of God says about this new creation man that I am, otherwise I'll live out of the old creation, the way I used to be. So because we've lived that old way so long, it's like a default setting, and you just go back into it, but God wants you to shift, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so as I renew my mind with what God says about me, then I'm beginning to discover the new man. But there's other things I need to discover as well, and they're quite a practical sort of thing.

You need to discover not just what God said. You need to just find what are your feelings? Do you have feelings? Are you able to identify your feelings, and own your feelings? What about your thoughts? Are you able to identify what your thoughts are? Are you able to, you know, this is what I think? What about your attitudes; do you know what your attitudes are, because these are the things that'll govern how your life goes. Do you know what you like? What you don't like? Do you know what desires you have in your heart? Do you know what dreams you have in your heart? Oh well I just want to serve God. God's put some dreams in your heart. What are the dreams He put in your heart? Serving God will outwork what He's put in you, and the way He's wired you. You've got to discover those dreams. What do you really like? What do you really hate? What gets you fired up with passion and energises you? What drains you of energy?

You start to ask these questions, you begin to discover who you really are. A lot of people don't ask that, and then they're always living in vagueness about what they're really supposed to be doing with their life. Usually these things show up very young, and parents can help you. What are your values that you live by? Do you have any things you value? Now we need to ask these kinds of questions. You ask these kinds of questions, you discover what you are, and what you'll find is, some of your thoughts are good, some of them not so good. Some of your feelings, you need to work out how you got into that state, but in all of it, you need to actually bring these things by the word of God, and allow the word of God to be the measure as to whether these things come from God, or come from just out of your old life. It's not hard. A lot of people, every thought that comes into their head, they think it's God. It isn't always. It comes from the devil sometimes, comes from your old life sometimes. You've got to actually run it by the word of God.

So Jesus made it very clear in speaking - now here's an interesting thing - with Peter. One minute Peter's getting revelation; oh, You're Christ, the Son of the Living God. Next minute he's saying, pity Yourself, and Jesus rebukes him and said, that's a devil. The devil's manifesting through you. How could he shift from one to the other like that? Because he never filtered his thoughts with the word of God, never actually thought through what his thoughts were, and maybe where they were coming from, and whether they needed to be changed, so he just reacted naturally. So one of the ways we discover about ourself, and discover who we are, we begin to discover what we're good at, what we're not so good at, what we're gifted at, what we're not gifted at. This is an important part of your life discovering these things, discovering how you're wired, how God has set you up. When you discover these things about yourself, then the things that need to change you can begin to work them; things you need to develop, you can develop, but if you don't ask these questions, you don't know who you are.

A lot of people live their life completely covered over, so you never know who they are, and sometimes they don't even know what's going on in their own life. They're frightened to ask the questions, because some of the feelings that might come up are so bad, I can't do that anymore. Why do you work so long? Why do you work so hard? Why are you doing this? What is motivating that? What is driving you, that your whole life's out of balance, you work like that? What is driving you to that addiction? What is going on? Who are you? What is going on inside you? See, these are questions you ask, and you discover about your inner life, and some of these things need healing and restoring, but the interesting thing is good and bad, God loves you all, and He's able to live with the good and bad, and help you journey through. He'll just accept you, and give you grace, and then help you grow and change, but if you don't actually look into these things, you'll never know who you are, and what kind of person you are. See? You all got so quiet. Well, there you go.

The second way, I need to learn to communicate that to other people, need to communicate who you are to others. First of all, sorry, I didn't give a scripture. John 13, Verse 3, it says that Jesus, knowing He was come from the Father, knowing He went to the Father, and what the Father had given Him, then He served. He washed the feet of everyone. Isn't that amazing scripture? He knew His identity. He knew exactly who He was. He knew His value, and knowing His value, this is what His value was. He came out of heaven, came down on the earth, He gave away all His glory, He was the creator of it all, and yet He come along and washed people's feet! How can you wash people's feet when you're so important? Very simply, He had a good esteem. He found it in the will of God, and in His relationship with the Father, and He could then serve people. That's why you've got to get whole on the inside in your thinking, so you need to also communicate.

In John 6, Verses 63 to 66, Jesus said a few things and the crowd left Him. They walked away. They just rejected Him. But you know something? He communicated truth, He communicated His values, He communicated what He believed. He communicated, and then people could choose, take it or leave it. Many of them left it. Some of them said well, you've got the words of life, we'll follow you. So many times Jesus spoke things, and people didn't like them. Some loved it, some hated it, but He did speak it out. He had the uncanny knack of speaking up, and speaking, and He actually catalysed people, wherever He went. Now of course most Christians, well we like to be too nice, we don't want a lot of upheavals or anything around, but you read and look in the Concordance, and find how often again there was division because of Him.

He said I come to bring a sword, so He brought a word that would cause people - you know sometimes whole crowds argued over Him. Some say He's the Son of God, some said He's the devil. There was always arguments going on around. Why? Because He lived His life out there, and expressed and shared, and was quite open. He even was open about His feelings. He openly shared His feelings anywhere. He was really sad at the death of Lazarus. He shared His grief; I need you to come and be with Me. I want you to be with Me, in this moment of darkness. When I go to the Garden to pray, come and pray with Me, so He was very, very able to speak out what was going on in His life, and what He believed. So if you're going to do that, you have to learn to speak differently see. You need to say things like I think, well this is what I think, rather than well, lots of people think. Is that right, lots of people think that? I can't work with lots of people. What do you think? Lots of people, is a way of not saying what I think, see?

So you've got to start to learn in your communicating to actually start to be more forthright, who we are; I think this, I feel this, I'm disappointed in this, I'm struggling with this, I need this, I desire this, this is my goal, this is my dream. No, I can't do that. Yes, I can do that. Yes, I will. No, I won't. Now that kind of language articulates very clearly, who you are, and where you live. When you do this, this is what I feel, this is how it affects me. This is all communicating in a way that brings you right out front, and out in the open - hard to do, isn't it aye? But that's part of loving yourself. See if you love yourself, and have proper value on yourself, you'll learn that you just can't conceal who you are, what you believe, what you have, and what's going on. You can't conceal it, or you then find yourself struggling. You're dishonest, there's one world out there, and another world inside here. That's not loving yourself.

What happens is, you start to melt down with the struggle of living an outside life, and a different life on the inside, so loving yourself means, I actually have to value what's inside me, and I have to learn how to express it and communicate it to the world around me. Here's another thing then, and that is, you need to invest in your personal growth. In Luke 2, Verses 42 to 47, the Bible tells us Jesus was down there in the Temple at 12, debating with the teachers. Now how could He debate at the age of 12? Simply, He'd spent time memorising scripture. Over all the years up to 12, He'd memorised possibly the whole first five books of the Bible, which many of them did, then He was entering into discussions and debates and whatever with the religious leaders. But here's the point - He was growing and developing. He invested in it. He spent time there doing that.

Then Luke 2:52 it says, He grew in wisdom and stature, and the knowledge and the favour, with God and with man, so He did something. Now if you love yourself, invest in yourself. That doesn't mean buy a big screen TV. [Laughter] To invest in yourself, means to develop what you've got going on inside you, so if you've got a musical gift, go get some teaching, training, learn how to develop the gift. If you've got a calling to do something, then invest in the training needed. If you're going to get married, invest in learning how to communicate. Why? Because you'll need to. You'll have a miserable future if you can't. A lot of people, they just all get thinking about their wedding day. Listen, the wedding day's one thing, but having a marriage is a completely different deal. We really want to have good marriages, not great weddings. Great weddings are wonderful, but you know, tomorrow you wake up and oh my goodness, what's happened! [Laughter] Very true. The fog clears, and suddenly it's a different - oh, what was I thinking! I didn't know that about you! No, all is revealed now. [Laughter] More than you'd imagine [laughs] see?

So your skills, what about developing your character? What about getting into a group where you work on character growth, and you become accountable? That's an investment in growing your character, because you grow that, you become capable of carrying things more in life. What about your skills, various skills you have? What about education? A lot of families don't value education. Education is very valuable, because if you invest in yourself, what you do is, you take the potential, and you enlarge what you're capable of, and therefore you improve your value to your employer. Think about that one - so if you want to really be on a track to success you make growth, personal growth is a lifelong journey. You never stop learning, and not only that, you put that value in your children. You value education, not as an end in itself, but as a way of developing, and calling forth the potential that's inside. That's loving yourself isn't it?

Well, you're thinking, now we're all thinking. You know, we're all thinking aren't we, thinking God I wish I'd heard this 20 years ago. [Laughs] Well I wish I had too. This is the first time I've ever taught on this, and it took me a lot of time to get this thing clear in my own head, love yourself. Oh no, loving people, that's what - love yourself, what's that about? It's quite hard to get a handle on that. It raises some issues then doesn't it aye? Oh, move on, next point. Got to take personal responsibility for your choices. If you're going to love yourself, you must take responsibility for the choices you make, and you find in John 17, Verse 4, at the end of His life Jesus said Father, I've finished the work You gave Me to do. He set His priorities, and His choices, around fulfilling God's call in His life, so there were lots of pressures, there were lots of things He said no to. He took responsibility for His life. He made choices. Now one of the things, we live in a victim culture, where people would rather blame someone else for why they are where they are, like they are, and having the experiences and feelings they have.

So you may be feeling terribly frustrated. Well this is to blame and that's to blame, all kinds of things. Hey listen, that's all outside you. You've got to change what's inside you. You've got to make choices about what you'll do with your negative feelings; Well you made me angry! Well yeah, that may be right. Maybe I pulled a trigger, but you're the one who's got the bullet. You're the one who's fired up. You're the one who has the anger. What about actually coming to grips with that side of it? You do it all the time you know, or regularly you nut off, you know? So face what's going on in your life. Take responsibility, rather than blaming someone. Now it's easier to blame, than it is to take responsibility, because as soon as you take responsibility, then now you must do something about your life. It's much easier to blame someone for why I am like I am, than it is to take responsibility, and yet if you love yourself, don't play the victim, because if you play the victim, you're powerless. Then you get resentful and your life is messed up. That is definitely not treating yourself well.

If you're going to treat yourself well, as very valuable, then take ownership of all that's yours. In other words whatever's yours, take ownership of it and then you're empowered. You can do something about it. That's loving yourself, taking responsibility. Now of course the thing is that, you'll find if you give yourself to discovering who you are, and you begin to find lots of things, then when you connect with people, you're really interested to find out about them, and all the things in their life. Most times we just ask, what do you do? We define people by what they do, rather than actually finding out who they are, so if you're able to communicate who you are to others, you'll also probably be able to listen and find out from others what they have to say about themselves. If you invest in your personal growth, you'll be interested in investing in the growth of others. If make decisions and you take responsibility for your choices, then it's likely you'll hold others to account for their decisions. You'll relate differently.

If you are a victim person, who doesn't take responsibility for your own choices, you're not likely to hold anyone else accountable for theirs, so you'll be out of control. You'll be in a powerless situation. The last one is, you need to learn to set limits or boundaries. If you love yourself, you have to set limits. There are limits on what you can do, set limits and set boundaries. Boundaries are what you let come in, so if you have a house, you have a property - most of you have got a property - you know that if some strange group of people step across that property line, you're going to be concerned, why. They were fine walking down the street, but when they crossed over that property line, they're in you're property. Now there's a possibility it'll affect you. Now you have ownership, you can do something. If something goes wrong, you know, you can cut your grass, don't have to worry about the guy next doors. Boundaries are very good for defining what we're responsible for, and what we're not responsible for.

Jesus put limits on things. He said no. Mark 1:35, they came to Him and they said listen, we have a great revival, let's get out there and do some more, have more miracles, lots of people here. He said no, I've got to go to another city. I've been up praying, and My Father's given Me different directions. In John, Chapter 11, they said hey Lazarus, your mate's dying, you better go over and heal Him before He gets to die - and he said no. How many times did Jesus walk in and out of the temple, and pass that man who was crippled, and never healed him? See, He didn't do everything. He actually defined His life around what God had called Him to do, then set boundaries, and He lived within them. Interesting, there's one place in the Bible, where the disciples would go I'm too busy, and they had nothing to eat, and He said let's stop and go aside and let's begin to have time to eat and refresh ourselves, put boundaries around the ministry, and helped them put the boundaries as well.

So what an amazing thing, He just set limits. Now if you can't set limits on yourself, and boundaries on yourself, you won't set them on anyone else either. It's part of loving yourself. When you love yourself in these kinds of ways, it affects how you relate, and what kind of relationships you build with other people. You can make some changes I'm sure, see? If someone's irresponsible, you have to set limits. You have to say no, and there's consequences for your behaviour. When you do that, you're loving and valuing yourself. When you don't do it, their irresponsibility comes in and invades your life. Now think about this. If you were to get involved in serving and helping and suppose particularly get involved with some drug addicts or some alcoholics or some gang members. The first thing you'll discover with them, if you haven't already discovered it, the first thing you'll discover is, they have no boundaries in their life, and their life is out of control, there's a chaos. See, they don't like themselves, and they're medicating the condition rather than solving the problem, and so their life is in chaos; no boundaries, because they have no value on themselves, so they can't form good relationships.

Now here's the thing. When you start to serve them and help them, and they come into your world, and you go into their world, what happens is their world threatens to engulf yours and absolutely bring chaos - unless you can hold boundaries, see? Then one of the problems people face in wanting to reach out to the world is, you've got to be able to define who you are, clearly and strongly, and then hold boundaries that you hold other people to, otherwise their problems will engulf you, and your life falls apart, and you can't hold together your marriage, your finances, anything. Everything falls apart, because you're trying to do some things in the name of Jesus. It looks good, but it's chaotic, because the chaos has come out of an internal wiring that's not right, I need to do this, so I'll feel good about myself. You can't be motivated that - we're moved by the love of Christ. He loves us, and we're valuable, and as we become whole, we give more and more, and we learn how to build better and greater relationships. We can serve much better. Our capacity grows much more.

How many felt God speaking to you this morning? Man, He spoke to me. I was pretty wiped out by my own message. I've been up since two this morning, over it and over and over and over, thinking oh Jesus help me. Then I repented. It's good for me, good to repent, good for us to repent. Why don't we just close our eyes right now. Perhaps there's someone here today, and you haven't even opened your life yet to Jesus. The Bible tells us that God loves you very deeply. Doug was talking about you being so very loved by God. You know it is true, He loves you, and it's something you can experience, very tangible, but the first way we experience it is when we come into a meeting, we sort of feel that something's here, and it touches us. Maybe we feel a bit tearful. It's just the spirit of God, but the reality is this, that you are separated from God, that God is on the outside of you, not on the inside. That's because you're living your life without God, but Jesus made a way for you and I to come near to Him, and a very simple way. He said everyone who believed in Him, believed that He died on the cross and rose again, believed that He died for our sins, every person who put their trust in Christ, and gave their life to Him, He gave them the right to become a child of God.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Matthew 22:36-40 - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart … love your neighbour as yourself”

· The benchmark for loving others is … ‘as you love yourself’

· ‘As = 5613 = in the same manner as the one following

· ‘Love’ = 25 = to regard the welfare of, to take pleasure in, to treat as a special prize

· How you relate to and treat yourself greatly impacts how you relate and treat others

· What do you believe about yourself? Are you lovable? Are you acceptable?

· What you believe about yourself will be revealed in how you live your life in relationships

The Foundation of your Value as a Person:

a) Base your personal value on the Word of God:

i) Genesis 1:26 - “You are made in the image of God”, good

· You may be damaged by sin but you are still of great value – made in the image of God

ii) 1 Peter 1:18-19 - “You are redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus”

· Redeem = 3084 = to ransom, to pay a price to release someone from captivity

· The value of something is revealed by the price to purchase it – someone willing to pay

· What do you base your value as a person on? What God says about me (internal) or hat people, circumstances say about me (external), how I performed?

b) Humility means to ‘Agree with God’:

· Romans 12:3 - “I say through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly as God has dealt with each one a measure of faith”

· This is addressed to everyone

i) “Don’t think of himself more highly than ought to”

· ‘Think’ = 5252 = to esteem oneself over much, be vain or arrogant, more high than is

· How do you think about yourself?

· Pride has two phases:

1. Superiority, arrogance = preoccupied with ‘self’ – ‘all about me’

= insensitive and unaware of others

= override the boundaries of others

2. Inferiority, false humility = neglect or despise or reject self

= overly sensitive to everyone else

= let others override your boundaries

· In both situations the view of self is distorted – not agreeing with God

ii) “Think soberly”, clearly

· Soberly = 4993 = to be of sound mind, moderate, not under the influence of drugs

· Think soberly = agree with God about your identity and value

= regard the welfare of, treat as a special prize

· Based on faith – what God says about you in the Word, by the Spirit and the Feedback of Others

· Philippians 2:13 – “… esteem others better than yourself”

· ‘Better’ = 5242 = to excel, hold in a position above eg Jesus

· Place a right value on yourself – then value others more highly, when you are secure in your own value, then you can place value on and serve others. Otherwise – serving + loving is motivated by intent to gain personal value

· Think and know what God says about you. You are valuable and of much value

Key aspects of ‘Loving Yourself’, not to be full of yourself:

· Love = to regard the welfare of, take pleasure in, treat as a special prize

i) Discover who you are:

· John 13:3 - Jesus knew who He was – he was clear in his identity, and able to serve

· Who are you? Most people define themselves by their role eg teacher, businessman

· You need to discover who you really are!

- what God says - your choice - your loves

- your feelings - your hurts - your hates

- your attitudes - your giftings/talents - your values

- your behaviours - your desires - your dreams

Evaluate in the light of God’s Word and the promptings of the Holy Spirit

eg Peter

· When you know these things about yourself you have a good sense of who you are

· If you bury or hide these things about yourself no one really knows you

· What do you want?

ii) Communicate who you are to others:

· John 6:63-66 - Jesus communicated who he was and what he believed

· You must learn to speak openly and directly to people

- I think - I want - I won’t - I don’t know - I will

- when you... - I need - Yes/No - I feel - I’m sorry

· When you communicate directly you value and prize yourself

· When you do not communicate you do not value yourself and remain isolated

iii) Invest in your personal growth:

· Luke 2:42-47 - Jesus cultivated his inner life and knowledge and skills to fulfill His purpose He invested in His own personal growth and development. He took 30 years of preparation before 3 years of ministry

· Love yourself = value yourself enough to invest in personal growth

· Luke 2:52 - Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men

· Invest in skills, develop, character, communication skills, relationships

· Develop your knowledge, thought life, health and fitness, spirit life

· Invest in resolving inner conflicts – Romans 12:2

iv) Take personal responsibility for your choices:

· John 17:4 - Jesus took responsibility for his life – fulfilling his call

· You are who you are because of choices you made – reaping

· Love yourself = stop blaming, thinking and acting as a victim

= take ownership of choices, good and bad

= take ownership of what is in your soul – it is yours

· Once you take ownership you can take control of your choices – what you do

· External circumstances are not under your control – your response to them is

· Romans 14:12

v) Learn to set limits or boundaries:

· Mark 1:35 - Jesus resisted the pressure of the crowd

· Mark 6:31 - Jesus set limits and boundaries

· A boundary is a property line – defining where you end - what is yours

· It is up to you to set boundaries and limits or what you accept so you protect yourself

· When others act irresponsibly you can set limits

Boundaries define who you are:

· No one can devalue you unless you agree with defining value by how people treat you

· People can treat you badly = ‘I have no value’

= ‘They are behaving badly’

· If you allow yourself to feel devalued = you have defined your value outside rather than inside

· If you define yourself externally – possessions, people, performance, then when these things change your value and identity changes

· What to do:

1) Guard your thoughts

2) Feedback to the person how you feel, change

3) Refuse the behaviour as it happened

4) Withdraw

· ‘Love yourself’ then love others as you love yourself!

Loving Yourself (5 of 6)

Sun 23 Aug 2009  « Back to Top

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Loving yourself is not the same as being self-centred, it's not about being selfish. It has to do with placing the appropriate value upon your life that God has placed.

It's coming into agreement with Him, so our relationships with others are not affected by the way we see ourself. You are valuable, you are a special person, you are important to Him.

I want you to open your Bible with me in Matthew, Chapter 22. I want you to look in Verse 36, and we're sharing about the Extravagant Love, and I shared about loving God passionately, then last week I shared just on loving yourself, which is a bit of a difficult thing for many people to do. We just want to carry that on, and just go a little further with that today. Loving yourself is not the same as being self-centred, wrapped up in yourself, it's all about me! It's not that. Loving yourself is not about being selfish, me first. It's nothing to do with any of that. Loving yourself has to do with placing the appropriate value upon your life that God has placed. It's coming into agreement with Him, and what I've observed with people is that if people don't value themselves, and don't actually love and respect and treat themselves as Jesus treats us, then what happens is relationships are affected by that, and the way we see ourself, it defiles or comes into other relationships, so people with a lot of rejection either are dysfunctional in their relating, or they use relationships to get a need met.

God wants us to grow whole on the inside. One of the ways you grow whole, you have a great self-esteem, you begin to agree with what God says about you. I was talking to one of the teachers we had in our church a while ago, and she was working out at Flaxmere. She was working with low achieving students, and she said she consistently got higher achievements out of them. She was called to Wellington to have a look. She's actually down there now working with Wellington in head office, shaping policy. I said what was the key to raising the achievement, and she said it was a very simple one. We had to raise their self-esteem, the way they saw themselves. With a low esteem it was impossible to achieve, because every time anything happened in the work, it would immediately resonate inside, well I'm a failure, I'm no good anyway. Then they would give up and not progress, so she said the key to shifting them was to get the esteem or the value, or just to change their way of looking at themselves, so they actually valued themselves. Isn't that an interesting one aye? Very interesting.

So it works out practically. If you don't agree with what God says about you and you listen to someone else's voice about you, you will have a wrong perspective of yourself and it'll be a wrong perspective of life. So I want to share with you just some things and ask the question well what do you believe about yourself? Where are you getting this information? Are you getting it from outside you, or are you getting it from an internal source? So how do you see yourself? I've noticed very quickly that when people are rooted in rejection it flushes up very easy. You pay them a compliment, they can't receive it. You give them a gift, they find it troublesome to receive. You acknowledge and honour them, they actually find a lot of emotions come up, very, very difficult to handle it because inside they believe I'm not really valuable.

So we want to just show you some keys again how to shift that, so here's some practical keys of what you can do that will actually work at addressing this area of your life. The Bible says love your neighbour as yourself. Well love yourself like God loves you. Amen - so here's the first one; number one, agree with God about your identity and value. Agree with God. Agree with God and what He says, you are valuable, you are a special person, you are important to Him. He is a Father and you are His child. In 1 John 3:1 it says, see what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, or just given us, that we should be called the children of God! Another verse says, we know and have believed the love which God has for us. So in this verse, here it's very clear, God values us, and He calls you a child of God, so when you describe yourself, who am I? Well I'm a plumber. No, no, no, I am a child of God!

When you define yourself all the time by what you do, you're not defining your identity in who you are, and your value around what God says. He loves you. You are more valuable than all of creation. God provides for the birds; how much more will He provide for you, who are of more value, Matthew writes. You are of great value. Of course the world and life around us tends to strip away our value, but I need to actually get into my heart an agreement with what God says about me. I'm a child of God. I am accepted. I am acceptable. I am loveable. I am loved by God. The spirit of God stays in my life, and God is my friend continually. I need to get that inside me, it needs to be the voice that talks, strong agreement with the word of God. In Romans 8:15, you have received the spirit of God, not the spirit of bondage to fear, and be in bondage, but you've received the spirit of adoption, and it's come into your life, and placed you into the family of God, and that spirit bears witness with your spirit on who you are, a child of God. Fathers love their children. You are loved.

Now you and I need to get clearly in our mind we are loved. We have not received a spirit of bondage, or a spirit of fear, to end up in bondage. People who are finding their identity and their resourcing outside themselves, if someone else has got to say words to you to make you feel good about yourself, you will live in fear of being rejected. If relationships are where you get your identity and affirmation from, then if they fail you, you will end up with issues in your life. So people end up in fear, because they're attached to the wrong things. Jesus wants us to be attached to Him, so our identity, we define ourselves by who we're attached to. I am attached to the living God, who created heaven and earth, see? Now when you're attached to God, and of course that has to be something you experience by receiving Jesus Christ as your saviour, and then by building a life with God, whereby you know firmly in your heart I'm attached to God, and God is with me.

How does it get to be like that? There are two primary ways. One is by meditating in the word of God, the other is by confessing the word of God. You need to speak, to speak what God says about you. He says I have a wonderful plan for your life. I know the plans for you, they're plans for good, not evil, that you might live with hope in your life. So if we get God's word into our heart you have to meditate on it. Why do you need to meditate? Because meditating, or rolling the word of God around in your mind repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, reprograms your inner man to agree with God's word. If I was to ask for you to tell me, how much is two times three, well almost before I've finished it you know the answer. How many found it bobbed up in there, you got 12? Oh okay. [Laughter] Sorry. How many got six - two three's, that's right? Two three's, okay. You got six, is that correct? How many got it straight away? It was programmed in. How did you get to learn that? Well learned it by heart. What does learning by heart mean? Oh, you repeat it. You have to repeat things to learn them by heart. After you've repeated them enough, then it's inside you.

So we know it works with times tables, but we somehow miss that some of the truths of the word of God will only come into our heart if we actually meditate repeatedly upon them, and embrace them, welcome them, celebrate them until they're written inside us. Then two times three is? [Six.] Six, of course it is six, that's right. It's always been six, but you know what happens is that we are wired in our identity, most of us, that two times three isn't six. We've got a different thing comes up when you ask the question, well what are you like? Who are you? We find there's problems in answering some of those things. We need to agree with what God says; I am who God says I am. I can do what God says I can do, and I have what God says I can have. We say well, you don't have much. Yes, but I have what God says I can have, and as I have a belief in my heart, eventually I'll see it. You understand that we have to believe to experience things, see, we have belief in our heart, so you've got to change and reprogram how you think. Most people don't take time to do that, because you do have to take - how many love learning your tables? Yeah, three ones are three, two threes are - what was that, two threes again? Oh, two threes are six, that's right. Two threes are six - you know, it takes time doesn't it. You have to invest.

Now if you love yourself, practice agreeing with God, and take the time to reprogram your thinking, so you agree with God. You do something wrong, normal thing if someone does something wrong is, they feel bad about themselves. What a believer does, they don't feel bad about themselves; I did something wrong. I am not a bad person, I'm still a good person, I'm still a child of god, and so I apologise, I ask forgiveness, I get over it, I move on. That's how we walk. We don't accumulate baggage. Fortunately many have come in, we've got a lot of baggage, so we've got to work on that - number one. So number one, practice agreeing with God, embracing His word into your mind and heart, and speaking it over your life, day by day, through the day.

The second thing, boundary or limit destructive influences. Put a boundary around anything that's destructive to you. If you love yourself, don't let yourself be destroyed. If you love yourself, don't let negative influences into your life. If you love yourself, put up a boundary. That means put up a fence, put up a barrier. That means actually, when it gets on the ground, just saying no. That's what it involves. Now a lot of people don't think they can say no. They've got to love, and so on and so forth. It's true we love, but it's also true we say no. If this is destructive to me, I will say no. Now that's loving yourself. A lot of people, because they can't communicate what they really want to say, allow things to happen and flow in around their life, and therefore they feel low esteem and low value, because they haven't stood up, a child of God speaks the truth in love. Therefore in love, I will say what I need to say to put the boundary up. You have to do that, see how it goes.

A boundary's a wall or a barrier that defines what you're responsible for, so if you permit destructive influences into your life you are not loving yourself. Loving yourself means you actually identify things that are negative coming into your life, and confront them. That's how you love yourself, see? Interesting that one. I need to agree about what God says, and learn to say no, no thank you, no. I met one guy, he had real trouble saying no. I said every day when you get up, and stand in front of the mirror, and in about 20 different ways smile and say no. No. No. No. Thank you very much, but no. Some people, they can't say no. Is that true? [Yes.] [Laughter] I'm sorry, that was a bit mischievous wasn't it aye? [Laughs] You have to put up a boundary, stop those influences okay, so basically they fall into two categories really. One falls into the category of destructive influences by people, destructive influences by people. In Psalm 1, Verse 1, it says blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, sits not in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law does he meditate day and night. He shall be like - now you understand it actually is making a stand about ungodliness.

I'm not going to walk with sinners, not going to sit in the seat of the scornful, and point the finger at other people, and mock what they're doing. It's actually about making a stand, of setting boundaries around your life. Now many people that come into our life, we can love them, embrace them, we can welcome them, we can talk with them. We can help them, but we cannot let their negativity, and their negative influences, come in and invade our life, so you'll find people that you come across who are very negative. When you talk with them they complain, continue to complain. They're critical. They're running someone, or something down. They're running the boss down, the government down, they're running the church down, they're running all kinds of things down. You find people who are demanding. They're putting pressure on you, you've got to do this, got to do that. You meet people who are bitter. Sometimes you can see it on their face, but you definitely hear it in their words.

Sometimes you engage people who are angry. Sometimes you engage people who are seductive, or defiling. Now when you meet people like that, there's a spiritual influence flows that will impact you. I talk with people who are doing phone counselling. I said when you get off the phone, just stop and pray in tongues, and reflect what you're feeling inside, what you're left with after that conversation, and if it's bad, then start to pray and push it away from yourself. The Bible's very clear you know, that bad communications corrupt your lifestyle, so you've really got to watch communications, and make a stand about things that are destructive - so there are some people - now how do you do that? Well it's not such a hard thing. You just if someone's complaining you say well, have you spoken to the person about that? Well don't download the complaint on me; go where someone can help you. If someone's critical you say well, have you checked your facts out, do you know if that was really the case? Is this hearsay? Have you talked with the person? What options have you got apart from just criticising and complaining?

There's always some ways you can stop things - or if they're talking about someone behind their back, say just stop, no, listen I'm not comfortable at all with you talking about someone behind their back. They're not here, I'd rather you didn't do that in my presence right now. You just push back, now that's loving yourself. It's just saying, I am not a trash can, I come up to you, and you push the thing, and drop your junk into me. There's no way that's going to happen, but you've got to put that boundary up, that no one flips your lid unless you say yes. Getting the idea? You've got to say no to some of these things. That's loving yourself. If you love yourself, you'll set boundaries about what you'll receive and accept into your life, in terms of the way people treat you. Now that doesn't mean you just walk away. It means you have to communicate, speak the truth in love, and connect over the issue. That's always a challenge, but we are to do it. It's one of the most difficult challenges we face, but we've got to make a decision we're not going to live in fear. We will do this. We'll start to push against those things.

If you speak up and say something, then what you do is you put the boundary up, and you get an understanding between you; You may like to complain, I don't like to receive complaints. We've got a problem here, so how about when you're with me, you don't complain. It'd be quite simple wouldn't it? I'm sure there are wonderful, good things. Now when you complain of course, you'll have negative feelings and emotions. Why don't you start to actually look at all the things that you could be positive about, and grateful for, and start to develop an attitude of gratitude? You'll find your life changes. So anyway, there it is.

The second area you've got to put a boundary against destructive forces, is the area of visual influence, visual influence, the media, entertainment, books, TV, computers, internet, all that kind of stuff, because it can so easily defile. You get a spirit comes behind it. Much of this stuff is empowered by demonic spirits. I think these are all wonderful inventions, but you've still got to guard what you allow your eyes to see, because Job said, I made a covenant with my eyes, not to look upon a woman. Why? Because where my eyes go, my heart will go - so if you've got to love yourself, just make a commitment to yourself that you will begin to guard what you allow to come into you, around visual media, otherwise what'll happen is your standards will lower, and be eroded. You won't even know what you've got - you're not loving yourself when you do that. Actually you're abusing yourself when you do that, because your value isn't going up, your value's coming down. Why is it coming down? Because what God gave into you, is now being eroded out.

What God gave us is very, very important. He gave us holiness, see? So we need to do those kinds of things. Well you know I'm talking about the person - tell them to listen up, it's probably all about them. [Laughs] Okay, just two more now, two more. Here's the next thing is, you need to resolve negative influences inside you, or that operate in your own life, resolve negative things that operate in your own life. If you love yourself, then be committed to personal growth. Let's show you just in 2 Chronicles, Chapter 29, been reading about Hezekiah. Hezekiah was a great reformer, and it says this. It says in Verse 3, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. Verse 5 he said, now hear me you Levites! Sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, carry the rubbish out of the holy place, for our fathers have trespassed, and done evil in the eyes of the Lord our God. See, they shut up the doors, put out the lamps, haven't burned incense or burnt offerings.

I can't do all of that, but just go down to Verse 16; so the priests went to the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and brought out all the debris they found in the temple of the Lord, to the court of the house of God. Now this is reaffirmation, now here's a young man, and when he became king, in other words when he stood up in the authority God had given him, his first priority was to deal with the house of the Lord. Now you and I are the house of the Lord, so what did he do? The first thing he did was repair the gates. He looked at the areas where access comes in and out, and he repaired them, covered them all with gold, restored them,, and covered them with gold. He restored the glory of God's presence into that place see, so he restored the gates. The gates are always a picture of the entrance ways into things. Then he went into the inner place and cleansed out what was in there, in the very same way in our own lives we need to resolve things which are going on in our life, some of which have been there for years.

If you love yourself, care for yourself enough to look at the areas you need healing. Now most people, if you drop a hammer on your foot or you accidentally bang your thumb, normally every part of your body yells, it yells protest and probably you'll say a word or too as well. Something will come out I'm sure, but you know there's pain there, there's something not right, so we can see that with a physical thing. Often with the wounds in our soul, we're not so aware of the damage that's been caused, and so we don't usually take the effort to do anything. The Freedom Retreat, the Restoration Retreats and some of the Care Force courses are designed to help you get the baggage out of your life. God loves you enough, He's made provision for that to happen. Love yourself enough, that you roll up and let the thing happen to you, you begin to open your life and say I'm on a journey of change. I'm on a lifelong journey of change. Okay? So what kinds of things would you need to look at?

Well are there inherited curses, family patterns, that are operating in your family, that need to be sorted out and brought to the cross? Are there offences you've been holding for years, you need to actually remember what happened, and bring it out into the light, and deal with it? Are there fears that cause you to feel intimidated? Bring them out, and get them sorted out. Someone spoke cursing over your life? Get that out, and bring it to the cross, and let it get sorted out. What about trauma and things that have affected you emotionally? Get them out, and get them to the cross, get the stuff out. Why? Because you value yourself. God valued you, and He made provision for that to be dealt with. He made provision for your griefs to go, made provision for every area of our lives to be healed and restored. It's His plan to restore us, so if I'm going to agree with God that I'm valuable, also agree with God He's provided for my wholeness, and I will therefore pursue it. Isn't that a good thought to do something like that?

Need to deal with sexual sin, if sexual sin's taken place. Let me just show you something here in Genesis 49. This is Reuben, one of the sons of Jacob. Genesis, Chapter 49 describes the last words he prophetically spoke over the various sons, so he gathered the sons together - Verse 3 - and said Reuben, you are my firstborn, My might and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power. But unstable as water, you shall not prosper or excel, because you went up to your father's bed and defiled it, and went up into my couch. Now what you've got to see here is, he is making a prophetic declaration, he's speaking words that will impact the destiny of this man, and this man had a tremendous call on his life. He was the firstborn, and so God's intention for him was this, for multiple blessings. Firstborn blessing meant double portion of inheritance, and the leadership in the family. Second blessing, my might, and the beginning of my strength. In other words, his calling in God to carry on the work of Jacob, to be strong, and walk in the ways of God. The excellency of dignity, he would carry honour and be recognised by people, and the excellency of power, he would have supernatural help, to actually advance and to prosper. What tremendous blessing this man - this was his destiny.

Yet - this is what it says - you will not excel, and there's a reason you won't excel. It's because of something you did 20 years ago. You got involved in sexual immorality, thinking it wouldn't be noticed, it wouldn't count, and now today it's beginning to count. This is the problem with sexual sin. It feels good, but the Bible warns us about it, because sexual sin brings something into your body, into your inner man, that causes you to change, and it always has a legacy. You may think you get away with it, it's done in secret, doesn't affect anyone, no one hurt. But listen, what it'll do is destroy your destiny. It'll take away the legacy. It'll leave you bitter and sorrowful, so why not deal with the thing. If you love yourself, deal with it. In James 1:22, now beloved receive with meekness the engrafted word of God, which is able to save your souls. To shift in these areas, we need the word of God, the anointing of the Holy Spirit to help us. People around can help you.

We don't need to go into all of that today, but here's the principle. If there are negative issues eroding your life, love yourself enough to get out some help, ask someone to help you and bring resolution to it. Why live in defeat and bondage when you don't need to? An interesting thing in the Old Testament, Numbers 33, in 52, God said drive these enemies out of the land, because if you don't, they'll be a prick in your eye, and a thorn in your flesh, so what you leave unaddressed in your life after you become a Christian becomes a prick in your eye, it affects your vision; becomes a thorn in your flesh, you're preoccupied always with things that you should not be preoccupied with. Amazing isn't it? Love yourself enough to deal with issues, see? Then the last one here, this is a crucial one. Make God your friend. Make a decision to build friendship with God. Why would we make that such an important thing of loving yourself? Because your friends influence what happens in your life.

The Bible says if you go with someone who's angry, you'll become angry, so the people you're hanging out with, or people you associate with, and make your friends, they influence you. So if you were to make God your friend, to take the time to build relationship with God, to become intimate with Him, to listen to Him, to build a life that pleases Him, to discover from the word of God, what He hates, and what He loves, and begin to love the things He loves, and hate the things He hates, begin to align your life along that path, and make God your friend. What happens is, you begin to receive the love of God, and then we love and feel loved. We feel loved, why? Because we have a source that no one can see. It's an invisible source. Now God can also love us through people, so we need to be connected to people who are positive, people who are encouraging, people in the body of Christ who are loving, and who can help us and encourage us. We need those kinds of relationships. Why? Because that's one way God loves you, helps you to feel of value.

Let me just give you a couple of scriptures. In Luke 10, Verse 41, Jesus speaks to Martha, and says Martha, Martha, you're troubled and uptight and anxious about many things. And she got so uptight, her esteem went down, and when her esteem went down, she starts complaining; Lord, you don't care. My sister's left me. Now that's a bit of a whine isn't it aye? Put a bit of cheese with that one, see? It's really quite a grizzle, and a whine, and a negativity, and a complaint; left me to serve alone. Oh poor you! Why don't you tell her to come and help me? Why don't you go and talk with her, and ask her for help yourself? So notice what happened, that because she didn't prioritise her life right, and receive personal revelation from her own connection with Jesus, that's what she didn't do. That's the choice that Mary made. Now it's wonderful to come to meetings and receive inspired teaching, and prophetic teaching or whatever, but you need to get near God, and find from the word of God, words for yourself, personal words, God speaking directly into your heart.

Have a devotional diary, and write down the things that need to be written down. Write down the things God is saying, write down things God is talking to you. Why is that? Because the rhemas that God speaks to you, will give you faith, and change your whole life, so make God your friend. If you make God your friend, then you'll become more and more like Him, as you talk with Him and interact with Him, a most wonderful thing. What happens when you encounter God and have experiences with God is, the DNA of God gets downloaded into your spirit, and you change. Some areas that we struggle to change - now I'm all into process. I believe processes are important to grow, but encounters with God can download spiritual DNA and empowerment into you, that just shift you immediately. It just changes you immediately, and you become a different person.

Remember Jacob? Jacob wrestled and he fought. There was a whole struggling over issues in his life, and then out of that encounter, he was changed completely. They even changed his name. Encounters with God change you. Love yourself enough to make God your friend, and seek encounters with Him, and particularly that you hear His word for yourself. Got that? Then part of this whole dimension is that we learn to walk with the people of God as well. In Hebrews, Chapter 11, Verse 24 the Bible tells us - I think its 24 or something like that, near enough. Anyway Hebrews, Chapter 11, Moses, it says see he saw the Lord, he had an encounter with the Lord, and it changed a frightened man into a brave leader that touched and changed a nation. Then it says he identified with the people of God. He identified with the church, to walk with them and bring them out of bondage and into liberty. Why did he do that? It wasn't easy. They moaned and groaned and complained and rebelled and all kinds of things.

But listen, he did it, it said, because he saw Him who was invisible. His encounters with God kept an energy in his life that enabled him to influence a whole generation. What a tremendous thing, that you would love yourself enough to agree with what God says about you, who you are, and what you can do, and what the possibilities are for your life, that you would love yourself enough to put a boundary up and say no to people treating you badly, or to other things happening which are negative, that you'd love yourself enough that you'd say no more, to some of the things which are affecting your life, and you're beginning to deal with them; that you'd love yourself enough to say, I want to be friends with the most wonderful person, because I want to become like Him. As you do that, you begin to find your life changes, everything in you changes. You see yourself different, you see people differently. It all starts with a choice doesn't it, to love yourself.

Just close your eyes right now as we just finish. Father, I just thank You for Your wonderful presence here today. We just so love Your presence. It's just a great joy to sit in Your presence. As we just wait upon You and worship You, we can feel that You are here, angels are here.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

Introduction:

· Matthew 22:36-40 - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart … love your neighbour as yourself”

· The benchmark for loving others is … ‘as you love yourself’

· ‘As = 5613 = in the same manner as the one following

· ‘Love’ = 25 = to regard the welfare of, to take pleasure in, to treat as a special prize

· How you relate to and treat yourself greatly impacts how you relate and treat others

· What do you believe about yourself? Are you lovable? Are you acceptable?

· What you believe about yourself will be revealed in how you live your life in relationships

Practical Keys:

a) Agree with God about your identity and your value:

· Agree = to say the same thing that God says

· What do you say about yourself?

· 1 John 3:1 - ‘See what manner of Love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God

· I am a child of God and I am loved and accepted

· Almighty God is my Father and I belong to God

· God places immense value on me – do I agree with the Word of God

· Romans 8:15 - You have received the Spirit of Adoption whereby you cry Abba Father. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit, we are the children of God

· Define yourself by who you are joined to, connected to and not by what you do eg family name – who you are

· What does God say about who I am in Christ

· How can you do this?

a) Meditate in the Word of God and what He says about you

b) Confess and agree to the Word of God and what He says about you

Boundary of Limiting Destructive Influences:

· Boundary = a wall or defense or barrier that is erected, brings limits

= defines who is responsible for what

· If you permit destructive influences into your life not loving yourself

· Agree with God about your value and learn to say ‘no’

· Most destructive influences enter the eye gate or ear gate

· Loving yourself is to identify things that is trying to come into your life that is destructive

i) Destructive influences of people

· Psalm 1:1 - stand against ungodliness 1 Corinthians 15:33

· Negativity complaining bitter controlling seductive

Critical demanding angry unclean defiling

· Value yourself – love yourself set a boundary to this behaviour

· Think through your response – how will it communicate in body and consequences

· ‘Am not a trashcan, someone flips the lid and drops trash in it’

ii) Destructive Visual Influences:

· Media and Internet Psalm 101:3

· You are abusing yourself when you allow negative influences to come into your life

· Surround yourself with people who are loving and supportive

iii) Resolve Negative influences that operate in your life:

· 2 Chronicles 29:3-16 - Hezekiah’s first action as king was to cleanse the House of God

· When you resolve negative influences from your past and present you love and value yourself

· Numbers 33:52 - ‘Drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy their engraved, those whom you let remain shall be the inhabitants in your eyes …’

· What kind of things you need to resolve: Inherited curses; fears; trauma; offences; word curses; sexual sin Genesis 49:3

· You love and value yourself when you commit to the process of growth and change

· James 1:22 - ‘Receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls

iv) Make Relationship with God your First Priority:

· Luke 10:42 - One thing is needed and Mary has chosen that good part. Martha complained about the word and didn’t focus on relationship building with Jesus

- You love yourself and value yourself when you make connecting with God a priority

- What you focus your life upon you become like

- When you worship and focus on God He becomes the predominant influence in life

- An encounter with God downloads DNA into your spirit that changes you and shifts you immediately

- Draw near to God and get personal/rhema word from Him as your friend

· Hebrews 11:24-47 - Moses

· Moses chose to identify with God and to commit to His purpose

· Moses chose to commit to the people of God – their welfare and deliverance

· Encounters with God increase your personal ability to influence others

· The world cannot be won without the presence and power of God in our life

· Relationship changed a frightened man into a leader, out of bondage into liberty. He changed a whole nation

· You are valuable and lovable – chose to agree with God!

Love your Neighbour (6 of 6)

Sun 30 Aug 2009  « Back to Top

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Love is incredibly practical. We've looked at spiritual dimensions of it, the need to experience God, to hear his voice - that's the fuel for the fire; but encounters with God are always to lead us to mission.

Love always has an outworking, or a practical expression. Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Okay, let's have a look in Matthew, Chapter 22 and we've been sharing on Extravagant Love, talked about loving the Lord, loving your neighbour as yourself. We want to look at loving your neighbour now, loving your neighbour, and remember the verse that we shared, Matthew, Chapter 22 - should just about know it by heart now - what is the great commandment? Thou shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. This is the first and great commandment, and then the second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. So Jesus said then, all the law and the prophets are summarised in those two commands, in other words, the Bible is about love. It's about revealing the nature of God, and we did two or three sessions on loving God, God's love for us, and our love for Him in response. Then we talked over the last couple of weeks about loving yourself, about treating yourself as God treats you, placing value on yourself, agreeing with what God says about you, listening to what God says about you, opening your life to receive God's love, and then standing with boundaries around your life, so your life actually becomes whole.

I want to just move from there into sharing about love your neighbour as yourself. We're just moving to that. I want to share a number of things on that, but today we'll just do one message, and I want to just do an overview of where we can go. If you look with me in 1 John, Chapter 3. Love is incredibly practical, so we've looked at spiritual dimensions of it, the need to experience God. It's important we experience God, not just know about Him but encounter Him, experience Him, have encounters with Him where we hear His voice, He shows us things. We need that. That's the fuel for the fire. That's the fuel to keep us alive, but encounters with God are always to lead us to mission. Love always has an outworking, or a practical expression, so we read in 1 John, Chapter 3, Verse 16, by this we know love. How do we know love? Because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay our lives down for the brethren. That's the person next to you.

And whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know we're of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. So you notice he talks then about the example of Jesus Christ. This is what love is about. Love is seen in what Jesus did. Jesus, the Bible tells us, filled with the love, filled with the compassion of God, but you can't have a heart full of love, and nothing overflow. If you've got the love of God in you, there must be an expression of it some way. Jesus overflowed. How did He express the love of God? He expressed it tangibly. He ministered the anointing of the power of God to minister to needs of people. He connected with people where they were. He demonstrated acceptance of people, He discovered needs people had by listening and interacting with them, and wherever He met with people, He allowed His life routines to be interrupted, so that the needs of people could be met.

In other words, He demonstrated what love looks like. Love is incredibly practical, and it gets involved with people. Finally, He loved us so much He lay down His life for us, sacrificed His life in giving for people. So notice what it says now; if He laid His life down, that's the model, that's the example, we ought to lay our lives down for our brethren. So we're called to follow Jesus' example, not to just listen to words, but to do what He did. In Ephesians 5:1 it says be followers of God, even as Christ loved us and gave an example to us follow His example. Now what we tend to do is, we look at what others are doing; well, he's doing this, or he's not doing this, or this is what's happening. This is reality. We need to define our Christian walk using Jesus as the model; as He walked, that's how we'll walk. As He handled people, that's how we handle people. God is wanting to reveal what Jesus is like through you and me, and He can't do it unless we engage with people.

You'll find that our experiences of God are vitally connected also to our experiences with people, and how we interact and work with people. Notice what it says here; whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? Notice the key issue here, is seeing someone in need. Now there are more needs than you can minister to, so take a break. You don't have to minister to every need there is. You're not responsible to meet every need. Even Jesus didn't meet every need. He walked in and out of the temple week by week, and nevertheless there was a cripple there. He never healed that cripple. He was motivated and directed by an inspiration from His Father. Nevertheless, He met needs, so if anyone sees his brother in need. Most time when we see someone in need we say well, someone ought to do something about that, that's wrong. Someone ought to do something about that. Actually, you're right. The someone who ought to do something about it is you, because you have seen the need. Well I don't know what to do, I don't know quite what to do. Well there's always something we can do.

We're not required to meet everyone's needs. We're not required to meet all of their needs. What we are required is, to not shut up our heart when we see a person in need. To shut up your heart means to wall yourself off. One of the problems with TV and exposure to TV, if you watch a lot of TV, if you see a lot of world news and the violence and the destruction and all the difficulties and things that happen to people, or if you watch too much violence on TV, you watch too many games where people are being killed and things like that, what happens is you become a spectator and your heart becomes hardened. You can look at need and not be touched. So the Bible tells us that love, the love God is looking for, is not just about lifting our hands in worship. It goes beyond that. It actually overflows where you see someone with a need, you begin to start to take initiative to connect with the person and help them.

Notice what it says; if you see the brother in need, and you have something that can supply that need, and you shut your heart up, then how can you say that the love of God is manifesting in your life? Isn't that interesting? I've been to meetings, and I've experienced deeply the love of God, and felt full of the love of God, but at the end it comes down to this. When you see someone in need, will you connect with them, and then begin to manifest practically some answers to the problems they have? Very clear - don't shut up our heart against a brother in need. The key issue is shutting up the heart. It's important for us to maintain good works. In Titus, it tells us in the last chapter of Titus, it says be careful to maintain good works, in order that you be fruitful. In other words, God wants us to ensure that we're not just talk, we actually on the ground level are doing things that change the lives of those around us. Be careful to maintain good works. Be careful to be involved doing things. Isn't that interesting?

You say oh well, you know, it's not all about good works, it's about intimacy. Intimacy results in good works. Jesus was intimate with the Father, and He abounded in good works to people. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. Notice what it says, Acts 10:38, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit, and He went around doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. So our love, our relationship, our intimacy with the Father is to lead us to overflow and connect with people. The interesting thing about that of course is, our connections with people are where the reality substance, and the maturity of our Christian life is revealed, so spiritual experiences need to be connected to practical action. You see Isaiah had an encounter with heaven, saw the throne of God, the glory of God, heard the angels saw and felt and experienced heaven. Then coming out of that encounter he captured the heart of God, whom shall we send? He said Lord, send me, I want to be part of the answer in meeting the needs of people.

The most powerful overflow of our spiritual experience is that we begin to engage people in a different way. Spiritual experiences, revelation from the word, revelations of spiritual things must lead to encountering and working with people. Paul said I had more revelation than anyone. Nevertheless I had pressure and afflictions come against me, lest I be lifted up in pride. So one of the problems that comes with the greater the spiritual experiences and revelation we have, the greater responsibility we have to engage with people. The dilemma I have seen over the years is when we have experiences, and in the end they don't lead to practical action. It leads to pride and elitism. I've seen that years ago, always concerned me that the revelation was not matched with a humility that met the needs of people. So love that's practical, real, the real experience with God, the tangible experience of God, is to direct us to people, and one of the things that happen is when you meet with people, you find that they're difficult.

They have problems, and they're messy. Have you noticed that? Well it's one thing to say, I'm full of the love of God, that's wonderful. Now let's see what happens when we put a messy person in front of you, a person and they irritate you, a person and they've got holes and all kinds of things going on in their life. What are you going to do? Well what you'll do is, you will manifest the level of maturity of God's love that you carry. If you're impatient, you don't have much love, because love is patient. If you're unkind, you don't have much love, because love is kind. If you're harsh, then you don't have much love, because love is gentle, see? So the check mark for our spiritual experience and walk with God is the people that God brings into our life. Don't you just hate that teaching!

What it does, it brings responsibility. It brings responsibility, that we don't just talk and engage alone with God, but we actually overflow to start to engage with people, and share what God is really like. Over the years I've been in church, I've found people - and I included - I love spiritual experience. I love time with God, away from all those people. [Laughter] Isn't it lovely? But you know it's to lead us to engaging people at a different, and a deeper, and a more impacting level. Look at this. He says - let's just pick it up there in Verse 20 of 1 John 4; If someone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. Whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? So see what the trouble here is, that we feel full of the love of God - oh I love the Lord! I love the Lord! Then God brings someone in front of our life, that really shows us up. It really shows the level of love we have.

God wants to increase the tangible manifestation of loving people. The bottom line, whatever spirituality we have, must show itself in love for people, gentleness and kindness and forgiveness and mercy and grace. You know, this is a key part of what Jesus said was required of us. You notice it's a command. [Laughs] It's a command. This commandment we have from Him, that he who loves God, must love his brother also. So have a look around then near you. Even right now if you were to have a look around, you'd probably see some people, well you'll probably avoid them on the way out of the church see, and you think, I wonder why that is? Well it's because your heart is walled off for some reason, could be all kinds of reasons. You may be hurt or whatever, but that's not love flowing. See there's a thing called cold love. We look at this and we say well, if anyone hates his brother, well you know, we're not conscious of hating someone. What we do is just build a wall, and shut them out, and any of you who have been with someone who shut you out, you didn't feel embraced. You felt barely tolerated, but actually the coldness of it actually is wounding. It actually impacts us quite negatively.

Well that's their problem and their issue, but nevertheless cold love is not real love at all. Cold love ministers a different spirit to people. God wants us to learn how to open our heart and celebrate, and make people welcome in our life. I remember when we first started the church here, at one point there there was a whole lot of things happening. It was all exciting and wonderful and was a bit wild. Then in the midst of all the wildness, we had about eight Mongrel Mob from Auckland came into the meeting. That was a bit of a surprise. You don't see that every Sunday do you? It was quite fun really. I thought oh yeah, this is good, you know, all the gear and the tattoos, every kind of thing on and whatever. It was quite exciting you see, and we preached the gospel, and they got saved. We had people come up and they got saved, and then at that time there I had some people in the church, and I had one person there; the thing he said, well I'd love to be used in ministry, but I don't want to get involved with these guys.

I looked at him in the eye and I said, if you won't get involved with these guys, I don't think this church is the place for you, because we're involved with them. If you want to be involved in ministry, you can't pick and choose who you minister to. You need to learn to embrace who God brings into your life, see? So you need to love them, reach out and love them. So we reached out, and we had a really wonderful time - they flogged the offering but - you know that offering box that's down the back there? Well that walked out the door with them one night. [Laughter] But I went and talked to them, and they brought it back. We got it back as you can see, we got it back, but the point is this, is that the religious spirit over some people, will not permit them to love people that God wants to impact. It divides the world into those who are acceptable, and not acceptable, those who I like and reach out to, those who I won't get involved with. The heart of God is to reach out to people wherever they are, whatever's going on.

See, you start to think about that. Think of what are the chief criticisms that Jesus' opponents had, that He ate with all the wrong kinds of people, sinners and messed up lives, all the kinds of people that the good people wouldn't mix with. But Jesus mixed with them, because He came to demonstrate the love and the heart of God. Isn't that fantastic? Don't you love that? Love initiates action to do something! Let's have a look in Luke, Chapter 10. I want to have a look at where the same issue is raised again by someone else. It's a lawyer this time, trying to trap Jesus and ask Him the question, well you know, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And He throws it back at him in Verse 26, said what do you read in the Bible? He said you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, and all your might, and love your neighbour as yourself. He said well done. You've answered rightly. We'll do this and live - but he wanted to justify himself, so he said to Jesus who is my neighbour? Jesus answered and said, well a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves. They stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. He saw him, and he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, he came and he looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and saw him, and had compassion. So he went to him, bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, took care of him. On the next day when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave it to the innkeeper and said, whatever more you spend, when I come back I'll repay you. Who of these three, do you think then was neighbour to him, who fell among the thieves? He said the one who showed mercy, and Jesus said go and do likewise. Notice the question, who is my neighbour? Jesus reversed it and said, who is a neighbour? So the lawyer's trying to trap Jesus and catch Him out over the law, and Jesus makes it very clear, it's not a matter of trying to identify who around you is your neighbour. What counts is, are you a neighbour to those around you in need? Are YOU a neighbour?

A neighbour gets involved. A neighbour engages with needs. A neighbour does something. So let's just go through this parable. I want to just highlight a few things which I'll develop at a later time, and notice here it says, a certain man went from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves, they stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, departed leaving him half dead. So here is a story of a man in need, and this man had set out on a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. That area is notoriously dangerous, full of thieves and robbers, and he was set upon. He did not expect that before he got to the end of his journey, he would encounter so a violent attack. Thieves set upon him, they hit him and beat him up, stripped him of his clothes, left him wounded, left him half dead. They abandoned him.

Notice the things that happened here. This man fully expected he would walk through the journey of life, and he would not have such a thing happen to him. He is like many people around us. We meet them every day. They're in school. Some of you teachers are like this, some of the students in your class are like this. You meet them in business, you meet them in the community. I have never gone anywhere I didn't meet people who were just like this person here. They have had experiences in their life where they were set upon by demonic powers, set upon by thieves. The Bible says the devil is the thief and a robber, been wounded in some kind of way. That which was good in their life that God destined them to have was taken from them. They were abandoned in some kind of way, and left there barely struggling to make it through life. This is the condition of many people. You meet them all the time. They're around you all the time. Some will be sitting here. Some turn up in our Freedom Retreats, some come to our Restoration Retreats, and always that person that looks so nice worshipping God, there they were, broken, wounded, half dead on the inside, beaten up in the stories of life.

The Bible tells us they were wounded. That word for wound is trauma, traumas, emotionally painful experiences, divorces, abuse, addictions, all kinds of things. This is the world we live in. Everywhere we go, we meet people who are like this, everywhere we go there are people around exactly like this. Now I want you to see what the priest and the Levite did. The priest there came and saw him, and then he just crossed and passed by on the other side. He did not want to get involved. Notice he saw him, and then shut up his heart against him. It's not he didn't see the need. It's not he wasn't aware there was something wrong. He just closed up his heart. The Levite went, and he not only saw him, he went over and looked closely. Oh man, what a mess - and he shut up his heart, and he left him as well.

Jesus brought this out to show us this is what religion is like. Religion does not have a heart for people. Religion shuts up the heart, and will not get involved with people. These people were dedicated. They went to church, they went to meetings, tried to obey the law, tried to do everything that was right, but they did not have the heart, the spirit, that which captivates what God is like. God calls us to an intimate relationship, and out of that, the flow of life, and presence, and anointing, and the love of God to touch people. These people shut up their heart. They closed their heart. They held their heart in. I've found that religion will cause people to divide their world up, those who are acceptable, those non-acceptable. There's a judging attitude, a superior attitude. There's something that you feel when you meet it. We're not to be like that. We're called to be something different.

Jesus was demonstrating the impotence of religion, and showing how the church of His day had lost the heart of God, and lost the purpose of God to connect His people, with the community, to be a channel of life, and healing, and power. Then He begins to talk about the Samaritan, He talks about the Samaritan. The Samaritan of course, was someone that they all hated, so this really was a poke in the nose to the religious people of the day. You know something? God can raise up anyone to meet the needs of the community, and He will do. He'll raise up anyone who is willing, and for us to stay with what God is doing, we have to be willing to engage with the needs of people. You can't just have experiences and worship, without actually catching and moving with the heart of God, which is to meet people.

I want to show you several things out of this next passage on the Good Samaritan. I want to just highlight for you several things that we'll open up and look at a little bit further, but I want you to see this guy. There's a certain Samaritan journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, had compassion. He went to him, bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper and said take care of him. Whatever more you spend, when I come again, I'll repay you. Notice first thing: he came where he was. So one of the first things that God is - God's heart is that His people be like the Samaritan. God's heart is WE be like the Samaritan. God's heart is for YOU to be like the Samaritan, so the first thing we need to understand, the church that Jesus is building is apostolic. Every believer is sent by God on a mission.

Every believer, wherever you are in the community, you are sent by God, so the first thing is, that we embrace our calling as a sent person. Where you are, you are empowered to minister. Wherever you go, you're called by God to be a minister. You're called by God to be His ambassador and representative. We are sent people. See, it says here he came where he went. Well every one of us meets people. I guarantee that within this week, if you were to position yourself with an open heart, and begin to look for the opportunities, God will bring someone to you who's battered, wounded, half dead, got issues inside their heart, waiting for someone who will not just cross to the other side, but will actually engage them, and reach out to them. I had a group of guys, at one point and I said, why don't you this week - I taught them just about asking questions and listening. I said don't talk so much, ask more questions, and listen. If you'll do that, people will open up their heart and tell you what they really are concerned about, and what is really happening.

But if you shut your heart up, and just want to talk about yourself, and be interested in yourself, you'll miss the opportunities. You've got to look for them. This man came where he was. Now in your life God is going to bring you to where people are wounded. You will come where they are. Why? That's God's plan. His plan for an apostolic church is that wherever people go, they will go where people are wounded, hurt, damaged, whether it's the businessman, who looks so good and seems successful, but his heart is broken, his marriage is failing, got all kinds of issues in his heart; whether it's some young person at school, whether it's some teacher. It doesn't really matter where we go. God sends us to people who are in need. Notice he saw him and had compassion. The second thing God calls us to do is to manifest the heart and the compassion of God. When we see people we feel moved. How do you feel moved? Because God's had compassion on you, because you're vitally connected to Him. You're actually open in your heart, and you feel needs, you feel the compassion.

One of the things I've learnt about flowing in the gifts of the spirit, is whenever I feel compassion for someone, I know God will give a gift of the spirit to operate. As soon as I feel the compassion, I know God's going to do something. As soon as I sense a heart for the person, I know God is about to do something. When you see someone, meet someone, begin to discover a problem or an issue, and you start to feel compassion in your heart, God is stirring you to do something so compassion, we need to manifest the compassion, not close our heart but be sensitive in our heart to the needs of people. Now you don't have to meet every need, as you'll see this guy didn't either. Jesus definitely didn't - said he went to him, he went to him. So here's the third characteristic. We need to be able to engage and enter, enter and engage, the world of unsaved people.

Now to enter and engage unsaved people, you must be able to get rid of religious clutter, and jargon, and funny ways of doing things, and talk in language, and realities, that unsaved people can understand. We've got to be able to enter their world without any judgement, enter their world and understand, people who are sinning do crazy stuff. We need to understand where they're coming from, what's going on. Today the next generation that's emerging has got immense needs. I was looking at a study related to the Gen Ys, and concerning the baby boomers, those who are married or - were married, permanently married at around the age of 24. There was something like about 70 per cent of the Gen Ys, which are the younger generation now, only five per cent at about the same time - a huge drop, over two or three generations, disillusioned with relationships, disillusioned with all kinds of things, unable to enter into commitments.

The world around us has changed rapidly, so the church has to change, and the way it does it's business, to engage with a culture that has shifted, now that's a challenge because of course, if you're from my generation you tend to think in certain sorts of ways, but the young generation and the people today think and operate radically differently. In order to engage them, you've got to be willing to enter their culture without judgement, and begin to understand how their culture operates, and connect with ordinary people who are quite wounded and need someone. The needs are the same. The answers are the same. It's just the wrapping is different, that's all. But the church over the decades has been notoriously slow to engage culture at where it is, with the needs it has right now. We need to do that. We need to do that.

Notice the next thing he went to him, so he entered his world. Can you enter the world of unsaved people and begin to even understand them, and find out what's going on? It requires a measure of conversational skill and ability. It requires a heart to listen, it requires a willingness to be non-judgemental. Next thing you notice it says, he bandaged his wound; he connected to and identified the wounds in the man. He bandaged his wounds. Now you can't minister to someone's needs, unless you connect into and identify what they are, and usually that requires listening with a heart to hear, ability to ask a few questions. I've found people will open up, they will share their heart. You say, well I don't know what to do. Well do what you can. If God put a touch, and brought that person around you, why don't you do what you can, see?

The next thing you notice, he poured in the oil and the wine. Well God calls us to be ministers of the Holy Ghost, the oil and the wine. Notice that the religious people lacked oil and wine, they lacked the anointing, the flow, the presence, the activity of the Holy Spirit. But this man here had that anointing, had that flow. He had what was needed, to bring soothing and healing to the wound, and he did what he could at the time. Gifts of the spirit are for every believer. God calls you to operate in giftings so He can bring a word of encouragement, word of prophesy, word of healing, bring ministry at the level you're able to, and whatever level you're able to, grow in it. Get more oil and more wine. We'll talk about that another time.

See next thing it says, he set him on his animal. What he did then was, he adjusted his priorities around his mission. Jesus continually adjusted His time, and His scale of doing things, around mission. When people came to Him in need, He made adjustments, and met the needs. When people came to Him with faith, He stopped to listen to them, and meet their needs. People with needs come at the most inconvenient times, so one of the things about the Samaritan was, he was willing to reprioritise his life. It's incredibly inconvenient if you're riding a horse to get off and put someone on, and start to walk. To be engaged with the needs of people is inconvenient. It requires we adjust what we do. I found every time anyone's come with a need or I've spotted a need, it never was at a good time. You notice people don't even die at a good time, they just die at a most inconvenient time. [Laughs] Yet you've got to step off on whatever you're doing, and get involved with that. It's part of what ministry is like.

Let's have a look at the next thing. It said he brought him to an inn. One of the things we need to learn how to do is how to bring people into the house of God, into the body of Christ, to begin to connect with them. None of us has all the answers, not one of us, but together, we can actually provide healing, and hope, and help for people. So he didn't just fix him up on his own, he just did what he could. So another thing he did was, he knew his limits. When you're working with people you need to know your limits. You can help to a certain extent, then it needs others to help. Sometimes we recognise the needs are beyond what we can do, then we have to refer to someone else who can do the job, but we can at least reprioritise our life, connect with the person, help them actually make the next step.

The next thing he did was he took care of him. When you bring someone to church, there's a way of actually drawing people in. Many times we try to invite someone to church who's hurting and needing, and they desperately need the touch of God, but we haven't sown into their life. We haven't invested kindness in their life long enough, for them to be willing to make a response. Notice this man invested healing and invested energy and time into him, and that then laid the way for him to respond. He was able to bring him into the inn, bring him to the house of God - but there's a way of bringing people into the church, there's a way of linking people into the church. He brought him to where others were, brought him to a place where there was vitality and life. Notice there he took care of him, he followed him up. If you bring someone here on a Sunday, then look after them, follow them up, check out how they're being looked after. You look after them, make them a priority, and if you didn't bring anyone, and someone else did, well then you as a part of the general people that are in the inn, go to them, and make them welcome, make them feel like they're very special, feel like they're very important. Make them very welcome.

Finally the last thing is, he released finances to do what he couldn't do, the on-going care. One of the things we're all called to do, is to release what resources we have. For some it may be just a little - well a little is just very big, if it's in God's eyes see? Or it may be a lot more, it doesn't really matter. The key principle here is, that resources are released so that God's work of ministering to people, and bringing them to wholeness and activating them again, can take place. This is what Jesus did. This is what love looks like. That's what love looks like. That's what it looks like. Let's have a look at it again. Love, love embraces the calling, as a sent person to the community. Have you embraced your calling as a sent person? Love is sensitive to the heart of God, and manifests the compassion of God. Do you feel that sometimes, and let that rise up when you see people with needs?

Love enters the world of unsaved people, engages them, begins to build a bridge and a connection across to them. Love identifies, and begins to recognise the needs people have, because once you've found a need, and you begin to meet that need, their heart opens up to you. Love ministers the anointing of the Holy Ghost. Love reaches out with the gifts of God, the flow of what you got in worship, what you've got from God begins to flow out, and touch that person's life. Love reprioritises the life, so you can fulfil what God called you to do. If you are in a business or in a workplace that place you're called to be the missionary, the pastor of that place, so you're the one responsible then, and God will open the opportunities.

See, what else did he do? He brought him to an inn. We're called to connect people to the church, the local church, the body of Christ. We're called to connect people. Do you connect people? We're called to follow them up with some personal care, one on one care. No one thrives without personal care. You're here because someone cared for you. I'm here because someone cared for me. I'm here because someone showed interest in me. And finally love, true love, releases resources, that the work of God can be much bigger than we are. That's what love looks like. No wonder Jesus taught this parable, it's one of the most brilliant parables I've recognised and seen and gone through in the New Testament. In it contains wonderful gems about what love really looks like. That's the kinds of people God wants us to be.

Let's just close our eyes right now. Father, we just thank You that You loved us. You do love us, You continue to love us, but Lord, with our receiving that love comes a great responsibility, a responsibility for the house of God, that it be built and made strong, a responsibility for the community, that Christ is made known through our personal lives. Father, we thank You for such a great call. We thank You Lord, that increasingly your church will arise and engage the community in different ways and different levels, and broken people will be restored, and that we want to be such a people that will do that.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, is there anyone sitting here today that's never actually made that first personal connection with Jesus Christ? This would be a great day to make that decision. Trying to be a good person isn't enough. Just coming to church isn't enough. It needs a personal connection to Jesus Christ. Is there anyone here today, right at that stage, where you want to give your life to Christ, receive forgiveness of your sins, a connection with God, a beginning of a new life? Why don't you just raise your hand if that's you today. Is there anyone here this morning right at that place to receive Jesus Christ, right at that place of decision? Don't put it off. Make that decision today, I will open my heart to the Lord, I'll open my heart to Jesus Christ. Is there anyone here today at that place, that position, just raise your hand and let me know.

While our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, I wonder how many people you felt God challenging you today, challenging you not to be like the priest and the Levite, who saw the need and closed your heart, but to be like the Samaritan, and wherever you go there's a channel of life flows through you. If you felt God speaking to your heart about that this day, just raise your hand just right now, say God's speaking to me. God bless, God bless, God bless. Father, we just thank You, pray for a flow of Your spirit around our lives, around ministry. Father, we pray that from this body of people many will rise up with great boldness to make Christ known, great boldness to reach the lives of people around them, great boldness to interact in a creative way with the community, great boldness to interact with people who are desperately empty and need you.

Father, we just pray that ministry of the Good Samaritan, that flow of love and compassion, to begin to flow like a river through this church to touch people who are in need. Jesus, we give You all the honour and all the glory. Some of you have got great gifts in this area. I feel the Lord saying there's some, your gift has been shut down for whatever reason. Some you are disappointed, someone you've invested in, a lot of energy, a lot of time and then they didn't come through, they didn't respond as you thought they would. This is the same thing that Jesus experienced of course. We invest in people because it's an expression of love, and representing God, and they don't always respond well, but you have to let it go. You're responsible just to sow the love, the goodness, the kindness of God. You're responsible to speak to them and speak the truth. You're not responsible for how they respond.

Maybe some today here and your heart is shut down and you've stopped giving out, stopped reaching out because you've suffered some rejection or knock backs or setbacks or some kind of injustice. You need to let it go today, just let it go, let it go and say God, I will give myself to reaching out to people around me. I will give myself to engaging people where they are. I will give myself to making you known. Amen.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Matthew 22:36-40 - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart … love your neighbour as yourself”

· Love the Lord Passionately is the first command

· Love yourself as God loves you – value yourself as God values you

· Love your Neighbor! This is the 2nd command

Love is Practical:

1 John 3:16-19

a) Example of Jesus:

· Jesus laid down His life for us

b) Follow Jesus’ example

· Lay down your life for the brethren> this means practical action

· Ephesians 5:1 - ‘Be imitators of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also loved us and given himself for us.’

· The love of God for is is a spiritual substance that can be experienced

· The love of God for us is also very practical. He meets our needs

· Passion for Jesus needs to overflow in an a extremely practical way, practical involvement with people

· Engage with real people, real needs

· Jesus was constantly criticized by His religious enemies for His practical involvement with sinners (Lk.15 1-2)

c) Love is Practical

· Love connects with people and meets needs of people

· Key issue: Shutting up heart = refusing to connect and help

· Abiding love is manifested in practical ways

· It is important to maintain acts of love and kindness

· What manifestation of the love of God flows through you to others?

· If you see a brother in need how do you respond?

- “Someone ought to do something!”

- “Its his problem not mine!”

-“I don’t know what to do”

· All these responses are “shutting up the heart from him” they are NOT a manifestation of the heart of God but of self preservation

· Jesus did not meet every need of people on earth. He was Holy Spirit led

· Love manifests as compassion and willingness to engage and do what we can

· Titus 3:14 - ‘Let out people learn to maintain good works, meet urgent needs that they not be unfruitful.’

· Spiritual experiences must be connected to practical action

· Eg Is.6:8 Also I heard the voice of The Lord saying “Who shall go for us?”

· Spiritual experiences without practical expression = pride and elitism

d) Reality of Relationship

· 1 John 4:20 - “love brother whom he has seen’

· Command = to Love God is that you must love your brother also

· Someone with needs standing in front of us in need exposes the reality of our love and spiritual maturity it reveals what’s in our heart. How will you react? How will you respond? What response will you make?

· The person who you see in need reveals the quality and substance of what is unseen within you

· Spiritual encounter and experiences with God lead to mission or pride and elitism and judging begin to operate

· Closing the heart =Cold love = wounds and isolates people

Love is Proactive – it initiates action:

· Luke 10:25-37

· Question posed by Lawyer = Who is my neighbor?

Reply presented by Jesus = Who is a neighbor?

· Experiences with God are to prepare you to represent God

· To represent God you carry His Heart, His compassion and do what He does!

Parable Of the Good Samaritan

a) Man in Need:

· Thieves – demonic powers

· Stripped – took what belong to him, left him vulnerable and exposed

· Wounded – imposed blows upon verse 34 – ‘trauma’

· Abandoned – left isolated and alone

· Half dead – struggling to stay alive

· This is the condition of people we all meet every day in every area of life

· Often they do not realize their condition but their behaviors reveal it

b) The Priest and the Levite:

· Saw – passed by on other side

· Saw and looked – passed by on other side

· Religion is cold and powerless and has no heart to help people

Religion

· Busy for God in spiritual matters

· Close heart and compassion to people in pain and in need

· ‘Cold Love’ – tolerates, little overflow

· Pride – self reveferential, Judgment, Faultfinding

· Irrelevant to the community and its needs

· Obstructive to the Kingdom of God

· 1 Corinthians 13:1

· The religious spirit doesn’t manifest the love and heart of God, It builds systems and places burdens upon people that hinder spiritual and relational growth

c) The Good Samaritan: Key Lessons

· ‘Came where he was’ – Embrace your calling as a ‘Sent One’, wherever you go you are an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, engage people and needs

· ‘Saw and had compassion’ – Manifest compassion of God. When you see people you are moved by their condition

· ‘Went to him’ – Enter the world of the unsaved. We are to be proactive-to go to people and personally engage people in their world

· ‘Bandaged the wounds’ – Connect and identify the needs of people. This requires skills of listening and asking questions with a heart to discover where people are and how you can help them

· ‘Poured in oil and wine’ – Minister the Anointing of the Holy Spirit. Moving in the Gifts of the Spirit when interacting with someone, This requires a personal prayer life and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit

· ‘Set him on his animal’ – Prioritize your life around Gods priorities. He changes his plans to accommodate the new opportunity that he had to reveal the love of God

· ‘Brought him to an Inn’ – Connect people to the Local Church family. We do not have all the answers to people’s needs. We must connect people to the community of faith where there are other gifted people

· ‘Took care of him’ – Follow up people with personal care. Every perso we bring into the church we must follow up personally to ensure they are connecting and forming relationships. We recognize our personal limits in meeting the needs of people

· ‘Give money to the Inn keeper – Release finances for the Kingdom of God. For lives to be changed and touched there is a need for finances

· This is what Love looks like!

· The Good Samaritan is Jesus Christ Himself who calls us to be imitators of Him

· Experiences with people act as a mirror to the level at which our lives are full of the love of God

· Spiritual experiences lead to a changed life, manifesting the heart of God to people and influence community and people we meet.

· Where do you fit in? The Priest, Levite or Samaritan? Or the wounded man?

Hosting Shane Willard (2013) (Shane Willard)

Turn off the Dark (Shane Willard)

Sermon on the mount: don't get what you need by judging others, or by manipulation - simply ask, seek and knock - be clear. Be aware of how your concept of God affects how you treat others. "Knowing God" is directly tied to how you treat other people. Don't follow teachers, whose teachings destroy your life - if it isn't working, then dump it.

Jesus assumes a community that can talk through darkness, with the sole purpose of bringing light to it. Gossip makes us consumed with self-preservation, and destroys that necessary environment of openness and honesty. When we neglect correction, we are on a slippery slope to destruction. You don't have to fall on purpose; you just have to live with no feedback, and destruction will be a natural part of your life.

Live with Purpose (Men's Breakfast) (Shane Willard)

Ghenna was the town rubbish dump (a present reality), and Hades is an afterlife (a future reality), in English its Hell. When we think of Hell, we tend to think about: them (in the future); but in the vast majority of Jesus' teachings, Hell was: us (in the present). Heaven & Hell are both true, and both occupied, in the here/now. They are also both true of another place in the future, which is also occupied, by real people. Jesus' emphasis was far, far, far more on one, instead of the other. When you take care of the poor and the afflicted, that is what it means to know God.

Your intentions are just the starting point. Pure motives, and consistent obedience, mixed with focussed intentions, will lead you to a life that cannot be shaken. What are you rationalising today, that you'll regret tomorrow? One yes requires a thousand NO's. You can never beat sin by fighting sin. Instead you beat sin by empowering something else. The power that you give something else overcomes the sin. Have you ever lost your ability to enjoy what God's given you, because you've compared it to somebody else? Can you clearly define what you want?

Are You Worthy (1 of 2) (Shane Willard)

There are four verses in the Bible that say homosexuality's wrong. There are 2000 verses in the Bible that tell us to love each other, so maybe we've got our emphasis wrong? Who is worthy to break the seals, and open the scrolls? But no one in heaven - so there's people already in heaven, who aren't worthy - no one in heaven, or earth, or under the earth, could open the scroll, or even look inside of it.

Jesus' invitation was not to be a certain way, in order to go somewhere. Jesus' invitation was to allow what is somewhere else to be established in you right now. The "Flames of Heaven" is God's relentless pursuit, to make you the best you can be in His kingdom, without taking your free will away. Hell will let you stay greedy, heaven won't; Hell will let you stay racist, heaven won't - lots of fire in heaven.

Jesus' message for His followers is this: get in line with God's kingdom today, as fast as you can, urgently. I urge you to do this. The whole world's at stake.A disciple is someone actively participating with God, to establish His kingdom on the earth

Are You Worthy (2 of 2) (Shane Willard)

Grace, by definition, isn't fair. Heaven consumes in flames any ideas of rank. To avoid the flames of heaven, we have to die to the idea that God must be fair. If heaven invaded your life today, who would you have to accept, that you now see as unacceptable? Jesus described heaven as tormenting to those who don't forgive. Jesus is at the centre, and everybody's equidistant around Him, because no one was worthy to begin with. There's always someone that's done less than me, but Heaven includes us all in a circle.

Heaven is not created by the exclusion of imperfect people, but by the inclusion of imperfect people - by grace cleaning them up, purifying them with the flames of heaven. If heaven invaded our life today, we would be overwhelmed with how much it's not about us, and not care where we ranked; we would simply be overwhelmed with God's presence. Why not let that part of heaven be established in you right now?

Be the Salt and Light (Shane Willard)

There are 6 mentions of fire in hell, but 229 mentions of fire in heaven! If you walked into heaven tomorrow, what parts of you would be burned up? 15 of 18 of Jesus mentions of hell, was about us, here, now. It's about: what are you bringing to the earth? How's your lust problem? How's your anger problem? Do you call people fools? How is fear of man instead of fear of God? What are you bringing to the earth?

Audio

- Turn off the Dark.mp3

- Live with Purpose (Men's Breakfast).mp3

- Are You Worthy (1 of 2).mp3

- Are You Worthy (2 of 2).mp3

- Be the Salt and Light.mp3

YouTube

- Be the Salt and Light.mp4

Vimeo

- Be the Salt and Light.mp4

Turn off the Dark (Shane Willard)

Fri 15 Mar 2013 PM  « Back to Top

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Sermon on the mount: don't get what you need by judging others, or by manipulation - simply ask, seek and knock - be clear. Be aware of how your concept of God affects how you treat others. "Knowing God" is directly tied to how you treat other people. Don't follow teachers, whose teachings destroy your life - if it isn't working, then dump it.

Jesus assumes a community that can talk through darkness, with the sole purpose of bringing light to it. Gossip makes us consumed with self-preservation, and destroys that necessary environment of openness and honesty. When we neglect correction, we are on a slippery slope to destruction. You don't have to fall on purpose; you just have to live with no feedback, and destruction will be a natural part of your life.

Matthew, Chapter 7. This is the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is preaching a sermon. I started to get fascinated with Jesus as a sermon preacher, because I became friends with some atheists - agnostics really. What I found, once I became their friend, is that they hadn't rejected Jesus at all; they had just rejected the image of Jesus that was presented to them. There's a big difference by the way; and so as I got talking to them about this, the way I had to approach Jesus with them is: Jesus as a teacher of a way to live; because they really weren't buying the whole: He was born of a virgin thing. They really weren't buying the whole: He's the Son of God thing.

That didn't make much sense to them, and the reason it didn't make much sense is partly because, when they were kids, the way it was presented was horrible. So they sort of learned away from that, but they were totally willing to look at someone's philosophy of living, and what I did when I sat down with them is, they got so fascinated with Jesus' way of living, that they now have both submitted their lives to living the way Jesus lived. They came to me and they said: if Jesus is as nice as you make Him seem, then He won't mind us living the way He wants us to live, while we work out the whole God thing. I said: no, He won't, that'd be great.

So it's very important to look at the Sermon on the Mount as a sermon. It's very inappropriate to pick one thing out of a sermon, and make it say something that the sermon isn't saying. So that's very inappropriate. Let's say in his life, he had to give one of his children 12 spankings okay, just in their whole life - 12 spankings, and they needed it right, so he had to do that. Let's say I was there for all 12 times, and I took a video of it right; then someone later said: hey, do you know this guy? I said: yes, I know this guy. Well, what kind of dad is he? I say: you know, I don't know what kind of dad he is, but I have video - let's check the video. So I plug the video camera in, and on this video camera is all 12 spankings that he gave his kid. Is that fair to him as a father?

[No.] No, no, because it doesn't take into account the reason why, the context. It doesn't take into account what he was trying to prune off his kid's life, so they don't ruin their life at 30. It doesn't take into account that he's up at 5am every day blessing his children; doesn't take into account that his children love him to this day; it doesn't take into account all of these things - so it's totally inappropriate when people do that with God all the time. They take this one little scripture out, and they make it everything; like it is inappropriate to preach Josiah 1 without Josiah 3. Josiah 1 says: I will break your back. You will regret the day you were ever born. You are never going to be my people. I will never forgive you, you will surely be cast off from my presence. It sounds horrible!

That's Josiah 1, but Josiah 3, says this: To those of you I said: you're not My people - you're My people. To those of you I said: I'd break your back - I would never hurt you. To those of you I said: I would never forgive - I'll forgive you. To those of you I said: I'll hold your stuff against you forever - I will never hold your stuff against you forever, for I am a God, and not a man. By Josiah 11, He says this: oh how could I ever have turned My back on you, oh Israel, for you are My people. You cannot preach Josiah 1 without reading to the end, and at least giving that credence. And so this is one of those scriptures that gets taken by itself, and it becomes horrible. This is the end of the Sermon on the Mount, and this is what it says:

Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few will find it.

Now if you grow up in white-people church, you instantly when you read this, get images of what two things? Heaven and hell. The problem with that is that there's no mention of heaven anywhere in this sermon; nor is there a mention, anywhere close to this, of anything resembling hell. To make this statement about heaven and hell, you have to remove the statement entirely from the context of the sermon He was preaching. You can't do that - and if you do that, Christianity's message gets entirely uncompelling. All of a sudden, our message becomes: unfortunately, most of the world is doomed. Oh, join us! That is such a positive, uplifting, hope-giving, love-inducing message: most people are doomed, unfortunately. No! Of course not! This is a part of a sermon. Now to understand the sermon, you have to understand the euphemisms, and the figures of speech within the culture. First: light, life and increase. Light, life and increase, these are three synonymous words, that are used in Hebrew culture, that talk about anything that brings your life to: wholeness, abundance and shalom. It is synonymous to a realm of living that means you're choosing God's ways - life, light and increase.

The second group of words is this: death, darkness, decrease. Death, darkness, decrease is a realm of life that brings you away from wholeness, and towards disrepair okay? Away from wholeness, and towards disrepair. Death, darkness, decrease. In the Torah, you were given choices all the time. It says: I give you this day two choices; choose life instead of death, blessings instead of curses, increase instead of decrease. It wasn't talking about literally dying. It's talking about: choose to live in God's way, so that you enter into the realm of life. Choose away from death, and towards life. Choose away from destruction, and towards wholeness. Jesus is simply making an observation about life, and He's simply saying: most people don't have what it takes to stay on the high road. Most people don't have what it takes; and that's true of every area. How many people, percentage-wise are winning financially? Very, very few. Very, very few. As a matter of fact, one recently survey in US News World Report said: that for every dollar we make, we're spending $1.02, which that means this: normal is broke. Most people aren't winning financially.

What percentage of marriages are mutually enriching, mutually edifying, mutually uplifting? What percentage of marriages are actually thriving? Very little. If your marriage is thriving - you are awesome, that is great! You are in a blessed minority. 50% of marriages end in divorce, another 25% are just holding on. You're talking about a one in five proposition! Jesus is essentially stating the obvious. He's saying: this life I'm talking about, most people do not have what it takes. Most people don't have what it takes to bless their enemies. Most people don't have what it takes to de-escalate criticism and strife. Most people don't have what it takes to be a peacemaker. Most people don't have what it takes to always forgive. Most people don't have what it takes to turn the other cheek. Most people don't have what it takes to do what I'm talking about doing. Most people.

This is a sermon. What I find fascinating about this sermon, is that there are thousands of people in attendance, and He does not end it with an altar-call. I find that fascinating - He does not end this sermon this way. He doesn't end it by saying: now here's what we're going to do at the end of this sermon. I'm going to give you an opportunity to come forward, and accept Me in your heart as your Lord and saviour; and we've got this specific prayer that hasn't been made up yet. If you'll just pray it, you'll have your ticket-punched, and one day you'll get to go somewhere else. That's not how He ends the sermon. As a matter of fact, He doesn't give an altar-call at all! What's wrong with Jesus? Does He not care about people's souls? He's got thousands of people in front of Him, and He doesn't do that? What's wrong with Him?

Instead, He ends the sermon with a question - He simply says this: If you hear these words of Mine, and you put them into practice, you'll find that it's going to solidify your life; and no matter what storms in life you face, you're going to find that you're going to land on your feet. But if you hears these words of Mine, and do not put them into practice, you're going to find that it's going to make your life very shaky - like a sandy foundation. No matter what storms you face in life, you're going to tend to land on your face.

Essentially He's saying: the people who listen and do - they face the same obstacles as people who listen and don't do; but the people who listen and do, tend to land on their feet. People who listen and don't, do tend to land on their face. He ends the sermon with a choice: feet or face, rock or sand? He ends it with a lifestyle choice.

Now here is the basic flow of thought, every sermon has a basic flow of thought. So essentially this is Jesus' outline okay, so this is this scripture in context. First thing He says in the flow of thought is: don't get what you want from others by judging them. Judge not, lest you be judged. In other words, don't try to get what you need from others by judging them; a good wife would do this! Don't you love it when your husband says that to you? Because now that you feel like total crap, you'll just do what he wants, and love him? Of course not, that doesn't really work right? He says: don't get what you need by judging. Then He says: don't get what you need by manipulation. Once people figure out you're manipulating them, they'll turn on you and eat you alive - don't do that.

Then He says: simply ask, seek and knock - be clear. So the first part of His sermon He says: don't get what you need by judging. This is directly tied to how you treat other people. The second thing He says is: don't get what you need from others by manipulation. This is directly tied to how you treat other people. Third thing He says is: when you need something from someone, just simply ask, seek and knock; in other words be clear. Just, if you need help - just ask. There's a big difference between saying: sweetie, I really need help with the dishes, would you mind helping me? And: I wish SOMEONE would help me around here! Those are two different things - one is manipulation, one is clearly asking, seeking and knocking.

Then He says: be aware of how your God-concept affects how you treat others. Essentially He says: when you ask your heavenly Father for a piece of bread, does He give you a rock? No, God doesn't play those games. Essentially the point He's making, is that it's very important that we become aware of how our God-concept affects how we treat other people. Jesus' disciples dealt with this.

There's this story in Luke 9, where Jesus sends His disciples to the next city to prepare the way, while He finished up in one city; and then as He was going there, they meet Him on the way out. He says: what happened? They said: well unfortunately, these people won't accept You. Would You like us to call down fire from heaven and destroy them now? And it says that Jesus rebuked them for their heart attitude. In other words, it would be a horrible thing if followers of Jesus ever thought Jesus' goal was to destroy people who don't accept Him. The Jesus I read about forgives His enemies. He turns the other cheek. He even prays, and blesses, and forgives people who nailed Him to a cross, and beat Him half to death on the way there. That's the kind of Jesus I serve; but if I believe that Jesus wants to destroy people, then that's how I'll come across. It will affect how I talk to other people. He says: be aware of this - be aware. If God tortures people, then you're going to think its okay for you to torture people - and by the way, in the 1860s, the church condoned the beatings of black people, because they were less human in America. I'm sure that didn't happen here. I'm sure there's no racism in New Zealand right? No, that doesn't happen here. If God's a racist, then it's okay for you to be a racist. If God does things then it's okay, see?

It says: don't get what you want by judging. Don't get what you want by manipulation, that's how you treat others. Simply ask, seek and knock - how you treat others. Be aware of how your God concept affects how you treat others. And then He says: broad is the road that leads to destruction; narrow is the way that leads to life. Does it stand to reason, that it might be talking about how you treat others, considering that everything before that is talking about how you treat others? But it keeps going, gets better. Then He says: don't follow teachers whose teachings destroy your life. If it isn't working dump it. Essentially He says: if what someone's teaching you, is leading your life to a bad place, then dump it. If it isn't working, don't keep doing it. It's Jesus being a First-Century, Middle-Eastern, hippie Dr Phil! Then He says: many will say to me in that day - Lord, Lord; and I'll say - I just don't know you. So Jesus then indicates, that at the end of the day, there's a lot of people who think they're in - but they're actually out!

Then He gets really scary, because He goes on to describe Pentecostal leaders. He says: these are people who've called Me Lord; they cast out devils; they perform miracles; and they prophesied. These are the people who are in trouble. Eeesh! Sounds like me, sounds like you, sounds like Pentecostal leaders. I mean honestly, Baptists from Cleveland, they're safe right? He says: many will say to me in that day - Lord, Lord; and I'll say: I just don't know you.

The problem is, there's only one scripture in the whole Bible that defines what it means to know God, and that is Jeremiah 22:16. It says: he took care of the poor and the afflicted, so it will go well for him. Is this not what it means to know Me, declares the Lord your God? So once again, knowing God was directly tied to how you treated other people. In the New Testament it's the same. 1 John 4:7 - Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God. So knowing God in the New Testament was directly tied to how you treated other people.

Then He just says this: Don't just hear these things - they're obvious - Do them! And He tells this incredible story about a guy that builds his house on the rock, and no matter what comes against him - the house stands. Then He tells a story about a guy who builds his house on sand, and no matter what comes against him - the house falls down; and He says: this is what your life will be like, if you hear these words of Mine, and then don't do them. But if you hear these words of Mine, and put them into practice - it's going to solidify your life.

So here's the flow of thought: Don't get what you want by judging (that's how you treat other people). Don't get what you want by manipulation (how you treat others). Simply ask, seek and knock (how you treat others). Be aware of how your God-concept affects how you treat others (it's how you treat others). Broad roads and narrow ways (talking about how you treat others). Don't follow teachers whose teachings destroy your life (directly tied to how you treat others). Please be in a pursuit of God (totally tied to how you treat others); and then don't just hear these things - they're obvious - do them!

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another - just as the Lord, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. How obvious is that advice? Pretty obvious! How much better would your life be if you did that all the time? A lot! How many of you wish people treated you like that all the time? Everybody! How many people actually do that? Very few, even though it's obvious.

Broad is the road. There's lots of things in life where, everybody seems to be going right, and you just know you need to go left. Essentially Jesus is teachings are simply this: if everyone is doing something, it's a good sign you should be doing something else. Most people aren't on the right road.

Now what I want to do now is, I want to talk about something very important to becoming a Christ-follower. I want to talk about a narrow-road thing. Now before we get into this, I want to be very clear: most people cannot do this. You have to be pretty special to put this into practice. Most people will find themselves on the broad road with this - and I'm okay with that - because it was true in Jesus' day, it'll be true now, it'll be true 3000 years from now. Most people cannot do, what I'm fixing to tell you to do.

However, that doesn't mean it's not the best thing for your life; and it doesn't mean that the people who are doing it, aren't experiencing something, that people who aren't doing it cannot imagine. This is something Jesus speaks about, that He is urging His followers to do. Let me put part of what Jesus is saying into context. Do you reckon you're going to enjoy heaven? Really? I challenge you to go back and re-read every single thing Jesus ever said about heaven, and ask yourself the question: would you like it if you went there tomorrow? For instance Jesus said: in heaven, all the secret conversations of your heart will be revealed for all to see. You want to go there? So right now, if you're thinking: this guy's so boring, I can't wait to go home and watch NCIS - if we were in heaven, there would be a billboard up where everybody could see it. If you're a racist, and you die and you go to heaven, and you wake up at a table with every tribe, tongue and race - are you in heaven or hell?

When Jesus talked about heaven, He talked about it confrontationally. Essentially Jesus' invitation was not: here's how to go somewhere else. Jesus' invitation is: here's what heaven looks like, and the good news is that heaven is going to come to earth one day, and that is a blessed hope that we all look forward to, because death does not win. So heaven's going to come to earth one day. Here's what heaven looks like. I'm urging you to go ahead and align your life with it now, so that when you do walk into heaven one day, you don't get whiplash. That'd be awesome! The goal isn't to go to heaven one day. The goal is: if you walked into heaven tomorrow, what parts of your life would survive, and what parts of your life will be burned up?

This is one of these broad roads and narrow ways things. This is one of these areas where Jesus is describing the kingdom of heaven, and it is so challenging. Here's what He says: If your brother or sister sins, then go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. We're already on a narrow road aren't we? How many people can get hurt, and physically have the courage, and the faith, and the discipline, to just keep it between two people? Very few! Jesus said: this is the best life - just between the two of you. And if they listen, then you have won them over, but if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. I love this.

He's like: if someone hurts you, deal with it between the two of you; and if you can't come to agreement, bring two or three other people; because sometimes when people's feelings get involved, your objectivity goes away, and sometimes it helps to bring people in who aren't emotionally connected to the situation. Sometimes those people can bring great wisdom to it. It's good to do that, right? He keeps going: and if they still refuse to listen tell it to the church. If they refuse to listen to the church treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. Now which leads me to this question. How did Jesus treat pagans and tax collectors? He was their friend. That was the Pharisees biggest problem with Him, was that He loved tax collectors and sinners.

So essentially He says: if someone hurts you try to keep it between the two of you. If they won't listen to you one-on-one, then go get two or three at most, and sort of keep it within a small group of people. But if that doesn't work, then take it to the church. By the way, in those days big churches like this didn't exist, mostly because of resources and transportation issues. Churches in those days were roughly 20 people, and they were meeting under one roof, and I'm glad we've progressed to this. I mean, this is a good thing; but back then, taking it to the church does not mean announcing it to the front of the stage. Taking it to the church meant: take it to the people you're journeying the closest with, and this has to come out of relationship. If you don't know their children's names, then you have no right to speak into their life okay? So He says: take it to your small group, and if they won't listen to them then treat them like tax collectors and sinners. If someone hurts you, keep it one-on-one if possible. If not, take it to two or three; and if that doesn't work, take it to your small group of close knit friends, who are journeying with God together. If that doesn't work, then love them to pieces. Treat them like tax collectors and sinners.

See if you read "treat them like tax collectors and sinners", and your instant thought is: cast them out, then to hell with you! I hope you like fire! If that is what you think when you read this, that tells me a lot of about your God concept. It tells you that deep in your heart, you think God wants to destroy people. Jesus was a friend to tax collectors and sinners; so Jesus is saying: hey, if this doesn't work - then love them.

He keeps going: Truly I tell you - whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven. In other words, before time God's kingdom rules; after time God's kingdom rules. The beginning of time centred around a tree; the end of time centres around a tree. In the beginning of time, everything is submitted to God; at the end of time, everything is submitted to God. In the middle, God gives men their own kingdom, and the problem is that He gave you a kingdom, and me a kingdom, and hopefully our kingdoms don't butt up against one another.

So for the time being, He's essentially saying: you're in charge of what your environment is like. If you don't handle this properly, you're going to find your environment getting very chaotic - and it's not My fault, and it's not Satan's fault - it's your fault. Again, truly I tell you, that if two of you on earth agree about anything, and ask for it - it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. If two or three gather in My name, there I am in the midst of them. Now a couple of really big basic understandings. Alright first, to understand this you have to understand the Hebrew concept of Ahad. Now I'm not going to go through this too much, because I've taught it here before, but Ahad is essentially the teaching that God is unity in diversity. It's a special word that means unity in diversity. It's from Deuteronomy 6:4 - Hear, O Israel, The Lord your God, the Lord is one! Ahad - that God is lots, but He's also one. A later writer was trying to figure out where Christ was, and where Christ isn't; and finally he threw his hands up in the air, and he says: for I have concluded that Christ is all, and is in all things.

And so sometimes we make God very narrow, whereas the writers of the Bible make Jesus very, very big; and so Ahad is essentially unity in diversity - that everything out of God is one, but it's also diverse. Creation is out of God, therefore it's diverse, yet it's one, and every small part affects the whole. If ocean temperatures heat up nine degrees - what would happen? There'd be a global meteorological disaster! The ocean temperatures have to co-operate with the rest of the earth; and if all of a sudden the earth decided to give up four per cent of its oxygen - what would happen? You would get light-headed and start to faint, then eventually you would lose your ability to maintain life on this planet. Every small bit of this planet has to participate with the rest of creation. That is Ahad. You are made in the image of God, therefore you are Ahad. Let me prove it to you. Anybody here ever had kidney stones, alright? You had kidney - somebody had kidney stones right? Did you go to work that day? No. Why? It's only one part of your body that's this big, are you a wimp? What's wrong with you? No, it's just this little bit. Everything else is fine, but your kidney goes sour - and you stay out of work. Everybody understands that. Why? Because if one small part of the body goes, it affects everything else. Ahad, this is unity within diversity.

Hebrew people believe that unity, or Ahad, was the force holding the universe together. The Bible says it this way: that God is holding the universe together. So if God is Ahad, and God is holding the universe together, then what force is holding the universe together? Ahad. So the principle is: you can't come against the very force that holds the universe together. Anything you're doing, that sets itself in opposition to Ahad, is setting you in opposition to the very thing that holds the universe together - and you can't do that.

That's the problem with adultery. The problem with adultery is not sex, for goodness sake. Two consenting adults, coming together in a pleasurable way - honestly, is that really the problem with adultery? No. The problem with adultery is, you're setting yourself in opposition to someone else's unity; and when you set yourself in opposition to someone else's unity, you're setting yourself in opposition to the very force that holds the universe together. If you set yourself in opposition to the force that holds the universe together, does it stand to reason that you yourself will be torn apart? That is Ahad.

The other thing is light and dark, which we already talked about. Light is anything that brings you to wholeness, and away from disrepair; Darkness is anything that brings you towards disrepair, and away from wholeness. Now let's look into this further. John 17:20, He says this: My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message - that's us - that all of them may be one. Ahad. Father, just as you are in Me, and I am in You, may they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. I love that. Father, as you are in Me and I am in You, let them be in Us so that they can have great church services. No! So that they could have powerful meetings. No! So that they could have great Bible studies. No! He says: as You are in Me, and I am in You, let them be in Us, so that the world might believe. For followers of Jesus, our focus has to always be outward.

Now there's another problem with this. If we are Ahad, and all of us are living in this unity, then if one person goes awry - it creates a problem with our community doesn't it, just like in your body. If one part of your body goes awry - it's a real problem. Paul uses the body as an example, in Corinthians. He says: we are all like one body, and if one part suffers, the whole part suffers; and if one part wins, the whole part wins. So we have to look at ourself that way.

So here's the problem in that. When someone is acting in such a way that destroys their life, and someone says: I need to talk to you about this, you're destroying your life. If your response is: it is none of your business, it's just between me and God, it's my problem, then are you right? No. No. It's almost never between you and God. If it's just between you and God, then do whatever you'd like - God can handle you. It is never between you and God; it's between you and God, and your wife, and your children, and your co-workers, and your family, and your fellow church members, and your fellow believers in Jesus Christ, and the people close to you. It's between you and God, and everyone who touches you; that the ripples of it go further and further and further. If darkness is encompassing you, then it's affecting the entire environment of which you're in. Now if it affects you, then it affects them. Now let's talk through this, because these are some big concepts; so let's talk through it, and break it down to something that's more workable.

The life Jesus speaks of, in terms of establishing the kingdom here, assumes a couple of things, one being that people are willing to engage the darkness of others, without judgement or perpetuity. That you are so connected with fellow followers of Jesus, that you can openly talk about your faults, and vice versa. That there is a humility, and heart, to restore everyone - never judgement and hypocrisy - but love, for we are commanded to treat people as tax collectors and sinners - even in the worst case scenarios - which means to love them and be their friend.

What if we did this tomorrow? What if our life - now once again these are narrow-roads stuff - that people are willing to flood light into darkness with the purpose of restoration. If Jesus assumes a community that's so open, that when we see each other operating in darkness, that there can be an open dialogue between two people - and it's not for judgement, and it's not for elitism, and it's not for powering-up, and it's surely not for putting on Facebook or Twitter. Jesus assumes a community that can talk through darkness, and with the sole purpose of bringing light to it.

Now this requires three things: 1) it requires someone willing to engage someone else's darkness, with full commitment to help them fix the problem. 2) it requires a person who is open and teachable; and 3) it requires that both of them don't gossip and slander the other behind the other person's back.

Have you ever shared a secret with someone, and then heard it again? How do you feel when that happens? I shared a deep personal pain once, with someone I thought was my good friend, and then three months later I was asked about how I was going - from someone I had not told the problem to. So I asked her: where did you hear this from; and she said: oh, well they told me - they figured that was okay. The truth is, I probably would have told this other person myself, but the fact that they took that liberty violated me.

This life Jesus is talking about requires this: in order to establish the kingdom in your heart, this requires you to be open to being taught, corrected, disciplined; to be open to the feedback of others; to be open to someone else's point of view. You have to be open to that, and it also requires other people to be willing to engage the darkness, with full commitment to make it right. You're not engaging darkness just for darkness sake; you're engaging darkness to bring light to every single situation. It requires those two things, with both people with the heart attitude that we're not going to gossip, we're not going to perpetuate this. We are here to bring light into darkness.

What if we created an environment that was less focussed on fixing everyone, and more focussed on everything being in the light? What would happen to sin, and the power of it? Grace is far more harmful to sin than judgement; because grace lets it all come into the light, and then it loses its power. Judgement punishes sin; and creates an environment of hiding and strongholds, because you have to protect yourself. Grace says: we are all in this struggle together, let's all put our crap on the table, right here in the light; and through whatever level we are allowed to be genuine and expose our darkness, the darkness loses the power, because it's exposed in the light. What would happen then?

Let me say it another way. What would happen if we created an environment where we could confess what we wanted to do, before we actually did it; instead of waiting until we did it to confess our sins? What if we did that? What if we were allowed to mutually engage in each other's darkness to that level? This is where AA is my hero. I find AA so Christ-like in this one area. They create an environment where people can confess the sins they want to commit, even before they commit it, so that the sin loses its power. People who have a friendship circle like that tend to win. They just tend to win.

Let me read this scripture to you, this is Proverbs 25:2. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; and to search out a matter is the glory of kings. Two thoughts there: it is the glory of God to conceal a matter. When someone hurts you, you are giving glory to God if you keep it to yourself. That is powerful. To search out a matter is the glory of kings. Let's look at this even further: so 1) the life Jesus assumes, is that people are willing to engage the darkness of others, without judgement or perpetuity; 2) that people are willing to flood light into darkness, with the purpose of restoration, and not any other reason; 3) that you investigate the matter.

If you go back and look at the scripture, it says: if your brother sins; 'if' they sin. Circle it a hundred times in your Bible, circle it. IF they sin; it is very important that kingdom people make commitment to search out the matter. In other words, don't go on rumour, or story, or on any version of the truth. Go talk to the only person who could give you the straight story. That people that follow Jesus listen, and that people that follow Jesus are becoming the type of people that listen, when people kindly talk privately about their faults. Jesus followers actually crave this environment, and are willing to commit with the other person to help them solve it, and bring light to that situation, with no fear of their stuff being spread all over the place. Gossip is just terrible.

How about this: if people are willing to listen, and they crave engaging suffering and darkness, in order to make it right. So this requires us to ask a few questions about ourselves. 1) have you ever made poor assumptions about someone; and 2) has your judgement ever changed, when you got more information?

I mean we do this a lot. There's a lot of space in the head. As a matter of fact, subatomic, you know, quantum physics people say that you're actually 96 per cent empty space - so if someone ever calls you an air head, it's actually true. There's a lot of empty space in the head, a lot of room for imagination.

Has your imagination ever run wild? Like if your daughter's 15 years old, and you tell her to be home by midnight, and its 2.15 and she hasn't called - does your imagination go to the best case scenario, or the worst? It gets even sillier, like how active is our imagination? They haven't returned my call! It's been eight minutes. Is there something up? They're late. They haven't returned this email. Are they ignoring me? Maybe they didn't get it. We always assume the worst. They said something mean, and it has to be about me. It can't be the stress from the medical test their daughter is waiting to receive, it has to be that they're mean to me - imagination, assumptions.

Have you ever made a poor assumption about someone, and then your judgement changed when you got more information? Emerson Eggerichs tells this incredible story of a scenario he was in, where he was on a bus. This bus was full, and travelling by bus is not very good anyway, and so this bus was full. It was a long bus ride, and this single dad or - he didn't know if he was a single dad, he was just a dad by himself with three kids - they got on the bus, and these kids were awful. Hey, like awful! Like the spawn of Beelzebub, awful! They're running up and down, and making noises, and it was just horrible - which by the way, let me make an observation. If no one else will tell you this, I will tell you this, because I love you. No one thinks your children are as cute as you do right! Can I get an amen on that right? Nothing worse than a parent sitting there, letting their kids run roughshod over everything, acting like nothing's going on, and the kids are disturbing every single thing in the environment. No one thinks your kid is as cute as you do!

So you're on this bus, three kids running roughshod over everything, screaming, yelling, BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! And everybody's looking at the dad like: when is he going to do something; and dad's just sitting there, sort of glaring into nothing. The kids are throwing food, yelling out, going nuts, its 2am, people are trying to sleep. Everyone's looking at the dad. Now what assumption was the whole bus making about the dad? He's a horrible dad, he lets his kids run roughshod. So finally someone said to the dad: excuse me sir, can you get your children under control please? And the whole bus said: amen! The dad snapped out of it, and he said: oh, oh listen, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. Their mum just died and we just came from her funeral, and I'm a bit lost at the moment, and I'm sure they are too. I know they're being annoying, and I'm going to control them, so please forgive me.

Now how many of you, your judgement just changed, just like that? Right, more information - our judgement changes. Jesus is inviting us to a narrow road decision that says: I will choose to investigate the matter, instead of assuming the worst all the time; because when we assume the worst, we almost never keep it to ourself. Before we know it, the problem is roughshod over the entire environment.

Lets look at it another way. Jesus says to them: don't let assumptions and fragments sit. They become something not even close to the truth. Let's say it this way, there's a big difference between: what were they thinking! ...and what were they thinking? I'm actually curious to sit down and understand.

You know what, I know you're going to find this surprising. I spoke in 13 nations last year; two of the nations I required a translator. I did 480 one-hour preaches in 12 months last year. It was unbelievable. Now because I did 480 one-hour preaches, in 13 different cultures, there were occasions where people misunderstood me; and I know that's very surprising, because I'm so crystal clear in everything I say, and here's what I appreciated the most. In three different situations last year, pastors loved me enough to sit down with me, and say: Shane, we know your heart. We know you love God, but this is what some people thought you said. Can you help me understand what you meant by that?

So instead of making assumptions on fragments of information, they loved me enough to sit down over coffee, and have a conversation to fully investigate the matter. And when guys love me enough to do that, I feel comfortable enough with them to openly share what they were looking for. I didn't feel like I needed to protect myself. I didn't feel like any of that. Why? Because they were engaging in behaviour that Jesus is talking about. You do not perpetuate rumours, and fragments of information; you be mature enough to fully investigate the matter. Find out what they were thinking. Find out what they were thinking.

The key in Matthew 18 is this: if they listen. Now this is a Jewish euphemism, the idea is: to get it. It's not just to hear it; it's to get it. Jesus brings it back later at the end of the sermon. He says: if you hear these words of Mine, and you put them into practice, it's going to solidify your life. Jesus' invitation to us is this: If you will make a commitment to conceal the matter, as well as investigate the matter for the purpose of restoration and redemption, you will find that you will perpetuate far less darkness. Therefore darkness will far less be perpetuated on you, and you will find abundance and wholeness and shalom coming to every part of your life - but it's a narrow road thing.

Jesus says: the best possibility of them hearing you, is that you are talking to them. If your goal is to be heard, the best possibility of being heard, is actually that you're talking to the only people who can fix the problem - not to everybody else. The opposite of this is gossip. Gossip is when you fail to engage darkness with a commitment to fix it. You engage darkness with the purpose, intended or not, to perpetuate it. That's gossip, it's the obvious.

So this life Jesus talks about requires two things; 1) it requires someone willing to engage darkness; and 2) it requires someone being willing to be taught, to be teachable, to be disciplined, to allow correction to come on us. Now let me let you look at some scriptures around this because this is very important.

Proverbs 12:1, whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid. Whoever hates correction is stupid. Let's look at another one. The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice. I love that scripture. The way of fools seems right to them - of course it does. People say: well you always think you're right! When have you actually done something you thought was wrong, before you did it? We all learn from experience. The way of someone always seems right to you, unless you're a psychopath, like of course it does. The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.

If you're smart, you ought to seek out someone who already has what you want, and then listen to every single thing they say. If you're wise. This is a narrow road thing. Most people won't do this. You'll listen to this, and then you'll go home, and won't think nothing else about it - and that's okay, because that's broad road stuff. Most people won't; some people will. The people who seek out people who have what they want, and then listen to everything they say - they tend to win at life. Foolish people think that what they're doing is right, but wise people listen to advice.

How about this one: Where there is strife, there is pride. In other words, if there's tension in your environment, someone is putting them self bigger than they should; ...but wisdom is found in those who take advice.

How about this one, Proverbs 15:10. Stern discipline awaits anyone who leaves the path. The one who hates correction will die. Obviously a euphemism, not talking about physical death. It's obviously talking about entering into the realm of death, disrepair, darkness, decrease. Not everyone who hates correction, drops dead of a heart attack immediately. If you hate correction, you're on a path that's going to lead you down the road to destruction.

How about this one: those who disregard discipline, despise themselves; but the one who heeds correction gains understanding. It's an interesting take that Solomon has there. Those who disregard discipline - who do they despise? Do they despise the person giving the discipline? No. They despise themselves. Essentially Solomon's wisdom is: if someone's trying to speak correction and truth into your life, and you despise it, you think you despise them, but in actuality you despise yourself. In actuality you're just hating yourself.

It's interesting, those who disregard discipline despise... the root word in the original language for despise means to profane. To profane means to treat something that is sacred, as if it's common; like to profane the Bible - if you walked out there tonight, and someone had a Bible and set it on fire, how would you feel? You'd feel sick right? Why, is there something special about a leather-bound book with pages in the middle? No, it's because of what that book represents. That book is sacred, and you're treating it as common - and so when we do that that's called profanity.

Essentially what Solomon is saying is this: if you hate correction, and discipline the sacred part of you, you're treating it as if it's common; that God has something so much bigger for you, but what God has for you requires you to be open to feedback. It requires you to be open to other people's correction and ideas and truths. It requires you to be willing to listen to someone else's point of view about you; and if you despise that, you're only hating yourself. You're only treating yourself, who is a sacred person with a God idea around their life, you're only treating that, as if it's common. Oh, by the way, if you're mean, you could take what I'm saying here, and use that as a license to beat people up, because you're the guarder of truth or something.

This has to be out of relationship. If you can't tell me their children's names, you have no right to speak into their life. This has to be out of relationship. It's not meant for anybody to powering-up on someone else. Let's talk through some of these things. All of us have blind spots. A blind spot, by definition, means you cannot see it without someone else's help; so even if you went to a counsellor. the counsellor wouldn't be able to help you with it, because if you don't report it properly, the counsellor doesn't know what to do. It's a blind spot. There are things in all of our lives, that the only way we can get over them, is being open to the feedback that the people closest to us see. It's creating an environment, where you have friends that you could look at and say: come on, tell me what you see. Tell me what you see, come on, tell me what you see, I'm open to it.

Now you have to be very selective with this. Do not start a Facebook blog for this purpose; and you've got to be very careful who you tell your darkness to, depending on the darkness. For instance, if I were you, I wouldn't tell your wife that you have a lust problem. Don't make her carry that. She doesn't understand it. She'll be very hurt by it. I've been taking Krav Maga, which is I've been doing personal training to stay in shape, and I've been doing Israeli Special Forces up-close fighting training. It's called Krav Maga, and the week before I left Brisbane, they were teaching us how to defend knives. If you're going to admit to your wife you have a lust problem, I would suggest you take that course first. You don't want to do that - but you ought to have four guy friends that you could talk to about it. You ought to be open.

It's a fool is open to everybody, but I could tell you this. If you don't have four people in your life, who know all of your darkness, then darkness is overtaking you. If you don't have four people in your life, that know everything about you, and still like you, then darkness is overtaking you. If you're so guarded, that there's not four people you can name, who know everything there is to know about you, then darkness is overtaking you. I have four guys in my life at least, that are all old enough to be my dad, and all of them know everything about me.

The reason was, I was so guarded; because I'm a bit, you know - when you're up on stages all the time, you get all these personal questions, and then you get more and more and more guarded. You would not believe the questions people ask me about my personal life. You could not believe it; and so you get more and more and more guarded, and what I realised was that was slowly starting to destroy me. So I purposely, and with full intention, set out and I found guys, that are all old enough to be my dad, that I could be open and honest and tell my darkness to. I could confess the sins I wanted to commit, before I actually did them; and what I found was creating environments like that allows that sin to lose it's hold of my life, because I'm putting it into the light over and over and over and over again. It's a very powerful, powerful thing.

Sometimes you can't see the things that are closest. Golf's a great example of this. If you're a golfer you understand this - you cannot tell where your golf club is, without someone else looking at your golf swing - you can't. That's why every golfer in the world thinks he looks like Tiger, but his ball is going everywhere. It takes someone else giving feedback. That's why millions and millions and millions of dollars of new golf clubs are bought every year, because people are convinced it's not the golf swing, it's the golf club. I used to have PINGs, and then I started hitting them bad - and it couldn't have been my swing, because my swing was like Tiger - so I switched from PING golf clubs to Callaway golf clubs; and I hit them worse because Callaway golf clubs are less forgiving than PING golf clubs.

It was like I left a good woman for a crazy person who yelled at me, and just was an awful person; and then I went back and called the other one: please take me back; I went through my garage and I talked to my PING golf clubs. I said: please would you have me back? The PING golf clubs said: no, you've left me for another one, and I cannot have you back. So I've just mourned the loss of my PING golf clubs, and eventually I was very nice to them, and they took me back.

But when I saw my swing on video, I realised it wasn't the club at all. It was me! We all need these things in our life, all of us, but it has to come out of relationship. It is not your right to speak to someone else's life, when you don't have a relationship with them; and by the way, everybody hates it when someone does it to you! How do you feel when two guys in the same uniform, wake you up at 9am on Saturday morning, asking you to switch religions because they've got a new book written by Jesus? You don't even know me! Go away!

Don't laugh too hard - we were guilty of that too. I don't know how the church survived the '70s - I don't. It's the pure grace of God. Our entire evangelism model was this: [makes sound of knocking on a door] Hi, I'm Shane, and you don't know me, but I'm from the Bay City Outreach Centre, and I just want you to know that unfortunately you're an abomination under God. But the good news is, I have a magic prayer that we made up, and if you pray this prayer, you could be like me - instead of an abomination under God. That was our whole evangelism model - and people bought it! Why? Because God is relentlessly pursuing His creation, regardless of the flaws of His people.

But slowly, we've got to be careful that our message never becomes: be like us to be saved. It has to be: live like Him to have life. Those are two different things. The message of the church is always: live like Jesus to have life; and not: become like us to be saved. You have to have relationship. We have to have that.

Let's say it a couple of different ways. The person walking in God's light and love, can take correction, and actually learns to love it. A person walking in God's light and love can actually take correction - but actually it goes past that - they actually learn to love it. This way is difficult, and why few find it. It's a broad road versus narrow way issue. The flip-side of all this is gossip. The one thing that will destroy this environment in your life, and in your church, is if you can't keep a secret - if you tend to spread people's darkness after they've shared something.

Listen to this: They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. They have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God's righteous decree, that those who do such things deserve death - they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them. I want you to notice that gossip is in the same list as some pretty awful things, like hating God, and murder. Gossip and slander is right there! Why? Because gossip and slander destroy the necessary environment of openness and honesty, for people to become what God designed. They destroy it. It's like the environment necessary for you to realise the kingdom in your life, cannot exist in the presence of gossip.

Gossip makes us consumed with self-preservation. Once an environment is okay with people gossiping and slandering, then we have to be consumed with self-preservation, because people are attacking us. When we are so consumed with self-preservation, that we can't own and get help with our own faults, we can't become people who establish God's kingdom. When we're so concerned with protecting ourselves from being exposed, it ruins the truth that if you have a close group of people, that you're totally open and honest with, and you're open to correction, and they're committed to bringing light to your situation - it ruins it.

Gossip is verbal pornography. It gives you a quick easy hit, with no commitment to engage in the suffering and darkness, in order to bring light. When you engage in gossip, it is no different than you engaging in pornography. Pornography and gossip are the same psychological mechanism. They both give you a quick hit with no commitment. When you gossip, when you see someone engaging in behaviour that ruins their life, and instead of talking to the only person who can fix it, you spread it around the internet, or you spread it to the girls at the coffee shop, or you do whatever you do. When you turn your back on them, and spread it over here - you are engaging in the darkness in a way that can't possibly fix the problem. You're getting the quick hit that comes from engaging the darkness with no commitment to actually fix the problem.

The life Jesus assumes, is when you see darkness, you will come alongside someone with no judgement, no perpetuity - with full commitment to them to help them solve the suffering - and gossip ruins that. It ruins it! When we neglect correction we are on a slippery slope to destruction. You don't have to fall on purpose; you just have to live with no feedback and destruction will be a natural part of your life.

What if there was an environment we could create, where correction was a natural part of life, because everything was so open? Once again AA does this the best. What if we were constantly helping make each other better, without thinking we were better? What would happen if that happened, if we were constantly making each other better, without thinking we were better? How could we begin to create that?

There's one question I want to leave you with tonight: how can you start creating that environment in your own life? Maybe you're here, and no one knows your darkness. I'm telling you, darkness is overcoming you, if no one knows. You need to have three or four people who know everything about you, and are there to bring light to that situation. You need to start personally, then you could look at it corporately. There's so many things that we could do.

Now let me quickly tell you the difference between a sermon and a declaration. A declaration tells you what you already believe - and you should say amen. Jesus loves you... Amen! Right, that's a declaration. It's meant to be agreed with or disagreed with. A sermon is meant to be phrased in the form of a question. It's not meant to be agreed with, or disagreed with - it's meant to be thought about. So any time anybody says: I disagreed with that sermon; well it's not a very good sermon if you can disagree with it. A sermon is just meant to be thought about okay? A declaration is meant to be agreed with or disagreed with okay, so let me give you some thoughts to think about, and I want to challenge you to begin the process of living this way. It will be very important for your life.

Here is the manifesto of a kingdom person. 1) I will talk things out openly and honestly, with observations and not judgements. If you believe that this would be the best thing for your life say amen. [Amen.] This is going to take some work, I mean this is narrow road stuff - most people don't do this. 2) I will be brave enough, to talk it through with the person involved. 3) I will be open to correction myself. 4) I will operate in the disposition of messiah Jesus - the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God.

That's the disposition of messiah - that when I talk things out I will be humble and kind. That is the disposition of messiah. Let's keep going. 5) I will give the benefit of the doubt if they sin - there's always an 'if'. Understanding, get all the information first, and I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

Don't assume your husband is evil in his heart, he might not have heard you. Chances are he didn't, especially if you asked him: does the dress make your butt look big. He doesn't know what to say. He'll just keep clicking, okay. Give him the benefit of the doubt. By the way, you like it when people give you the benefit of the doubt, correct? So if you like it when people give you the benefit of the doubt, does it stand to reason people will like it, if you give them the benefit of the doubt? So give people the benefit of the doubt.

6) I will keep it between me and them, without triangulation. It doesn't help to bring somebody in, if the problem can be solved between two people. Let's say it this way: I will have one conversation, instead of five. It's always easier to have one conversation, instead of five. The life Jesus is assuming assumes that with every problem, you can fix it with one conversation, if both people are open.

Lets ask some questions, not to agree or disagree - these are to be processed:

1) What is your initial response to correction? Is it defensiveness or openness? And likely it's never one or the other all the time - it depends on the topic. Some people are open to correction in some areas, and not so open in others; and so it likely depends, but the life Jesus assumes, is that we're open to feedback from good-hearted, genuine people, trying to bring light from darkness.

2) How open are you to the strength of feedback?

3) How many marriages in this room could benefit from a third party asking questions of it? The answer is most. The question is: could yours? And if your marriage could benefit from it, why aren't you doing something about it? You think it's just going to magically get better?

4) Have you considered bringing in another person's perspective to your business? Maybe there's a question you haven't thought of? You know who this happened to? Campbell's Soup. Campbell's Soups profits declined eight straight years, and they couldn't figure it out. They kept making the soup better. Finally they brought in an outsider, who wasn't intimately connected to Campbell's Soup, and they simply asked the question: why are you packaging it in a can? This generation uses microwaves, and cans don't go in microwaves. What if you packaged it in microwaveable-safe bowls, what would happen then? Good question!

5) Do you have a gossip problem? Do you tend to spread darkness, with no commitment to fix it? Listen, if you're not committed to fix the problem, then close your mouth. Do not make it worse. If you're not going to make it better, whatever you do, don't make it worse. Shut up! Can I get an amen? Flippin' heck. Hush your pie hole. Shut your cake hole; and either engage the problem with full commitment to bring light to it - or don't speak. You're making it worse, not better.

6) When is the last time you said something about someone else, without talking to them first? This is what Jesus is talking about - when you enter into behaviour like that, you're killing an environment that's necessary to make everybody their best. Jesus is assuming a much better place.

7) How did it work, when you did that? What were you trying to accomplish? Here, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, you had a reason I'm sure, for talking evilly about someone else, without speaking to them first. I'm sure you had good motives - what were you trying to accomplish? Did it work? If you're speaking with no motive - what is that? That's witchcraft.

8) Can you ask God for the guts to go talk to them - to speak the truth to the only person who can fix it? Are you willing to at least God for the guts to act this way? I know this is a broad road and a narrow way thing. I know most people can't. Are you willing to ask God to, by faith, give you the strength to do this?

9) Can you give them the benefit of the doubt? Can you do that?

10) are you willing to become brave enough to become this kind of person? Are you willing to be brave enough to become this kind of person?

Let me tell you something, I'm going to be open and honest with you. I'm going to share one of my darknesses. I'll model this a little bit. I have a very high IQ, and an almost-photographic memory. I'm horrible with names, but if you have a name-tag, I can take a photo in my brain of your face with your name tag - and then never forget your name. In some sense it's a gift from God, and in another sense it's a curse, because some things you want to forget, like seeing your granny naked. I can't get it out - see it's there right now - I saw it! I just - unbelievable, there she is. I graduated summa cum laude from university, and here was a problem I had: I thought I was smart, and I equated brains with wisdom. I had on three different occasions that come right to the forefront of my brain, on three different occasions, I stand before you today and I confess to you, that I was someone who despised discipline - and therefore hated myself.

On three different occasions, men in my life who were men of God, full of wisdom, who were all old enough to be my dad; on three different occasions they told me: Shane, we don't feel right about the path you're taking here. On all three occasions, because they couldn't explain to me why, I ignored their advice. I said: why do you feel this way? We can't tell you, it's just inside - we just know; and all of them were telling me the same thing, but because all of them couldn't tell me why, I stood back and said: well you guys don't know what's best for me - and I despised their correction, therefore I despised myself. I can tell you that in all three instances, in all three instances - it nearly destroyed me. It nearly destroyed me!

Look at my head! I was asked out a few months ago by a 58 year old woman. I'm 37! Just to be clear, my mother's 59! And to make this clearer, she was - to be fair to her - she was a good looking 58 year old woman, and she wasn't weird. She wasn't one of these people who "God told" was going to marry me or something. She actually thought I was in her age bracket; which led me to all kinds of questions like: how old do I look? Look at my hair! You know what this is from? Despising correction! Three different times - was I a bad person? No. Did I enter into some horrible sin? No. I just made bad decisions that almost destroyed my life. Why? Because I despised correction.

Was it because I was bad? No. I was 27, and there's no such thing as a smart 27-year-old. I chose to ignore the guidance of the people in my life, that God put there with wisdom and correction, and they were there for my blind spots. I couldn't see it. They were trying to help me see it, and I just ignored it - and look what it did. I'm being that open and honest with you to tell you this: I made a decision six years ago to never ignore their advice again. Even if I don't get it, I will blindly obey them - because they do not abuse their power. They're my dads. I'm encouraging you to be open to correction, and teaching, and discipline. Don't ever hate it - unless you want your head to look like this. Be open to teaching, correction and discipline; but also on the flip-side, when you see darkness, be willing to engage it; not in a way that just talks about it, but in a way that comes alongside of it, and commits to it, and says: we are going to make this right together. That's what the kingdom of God is about. You want to be a kingdom person, we have to establish these things in our heart. Let's pray together.

Lord, You're wonderful and we love You. We honour You, and we proclaim You're king. There's none like You. Lord, we submit our hearts to You again today. Why don't you pray a prayer, just right there underneath your breath, why don't you just pray this prayer if you mean it. Lord, give me the courage to see things differently, and the irresistible urge to respond to what I see. Lord, put people in my life that are these kinds of people. Let me be this kind of person. May we create this environment here at Bay City Outreach Centre, in Jesus' name, amen.

Grace and peace be to you, God bless.

[Mike Connell] Man, wonderful. Well if you just took away that one message and applied it your life would change. I've been around a long time, and seen exactly this principle at work. I can remember very early in my ministry one of the - our life would have gone completely off track, except it came to a point where I actually listened to the feedback, sought the feedback of a senior leader. It was completely contrary to what I thought. I just recognised, that if I honoured what he carried, and just submitted to it, then I'd be safe; and so I changed what I was doing, and it turned out we were safe. If I'd followed it through, we'd have ended up in another city, under a ministry that went off the rails and collapsed, and we'd have ended up away from God. It was just coming to a heart decision, and it wasn't about the person. There were so many holes in their life, I could easily have reacted to them. It was just recognising within the kingdom, when you align with God, when you align with Him and His authority over your life, you then automatically look to align yourself with people who can speak into you. It's just part of understanding the kingdom, yet it requires a decision to do it.

I can think of a number of decisions, choices we've made, where it was the counsel and advice of someone else that helped me not make a terrible mistake. I just encourage you, if you did nothing else this weekend, and I hope you'll come to the other meetings because, this is going to build from one thing to another; take that, get the tape of it, download it, buy it, whatever and go through it. There was so much he went fairly fast and so in the end it's hard to take it all in, but some of those points, just go right through them and say: wow, I want to put that in my life, I want to put that in my life, I need to put that in my life. Lord, who was talking to me, and I never listened? What a mess that turned out. Who came to me, and tried to tell me something and I wouldn't listen, and that really turned out a mess. Boy I paid a price for that. The dilemma is: so often we just walk on and on and on, making the same mistake. Don't make that mistake. Get this, this is a powerful message, and I want to thank you Shane for bringing that message today, just very, very powerful. It can help change every aspect of your life, if you'd apply it. Let's listen and apply it, amen. How many know God was talking to you tonight, had your number tonight? That's fantastic.

Live with Purpose (Men's Breakfast) (Shane Willard)

Fri 15 Mar 2013  « Back to Top

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Ghenna was the town rubbish dump (a present reality), and Hades is an afterlife (a future reality), in English its Hell. When we think of Hell, we tend to think about: them (in the future); but in the vast majority of Jesus' teachings, Hell was: us (in the present). Heaven & Hell are both true, and both occupied, in the here/now. They are also both true of another place in the future, which is also occupied, by real people. Jesus' emphasis was far, far, far more on one, instead of the other. When you take care of the poor and the afflicted, that is what it means to know God.

Your intentions are just the starting point. Pure motives, and consistent obedience, mixed with focussed intentions, will lead you to a life that cannot be shaken. What are you rationalising today, that you'll regret tomorrow? One yes requires a thousand NO's. You can never beat sin by fighting sin. Instead you beat sin by empowering something else. The power that you give something else overcomes the sin. Have you ever lost your ability to enjoy what God's given you, because you've compared it to somebody else? Can you clearly define what you want?

If you want to know the things Jesus said would 'ruin your life', all you've got to do is do a simple study on Hell.

Because there's only one English word Hell, we tend to get confused that, when Jesus talked about hell, He was talking about two realities: one was called Gehenna, which is essentially hell now; and one was called Hades, which is essentially hell then (post-death).

Both are true, and ones not necessarily more important than the other, but Jesus' emphasis was far, far, far more on one, instead of the other. But when we tend to think about Hell, we tend to think about them/then; but the vast majority of Jesus' teachings on hell were us/now.

Heaven is true that way too. Heaven is true here, and it's occupied; heaven is true there, and it's occupied. Hell is true here, and it's occupied; hell is true there, and it's occupied.

The word for hell here was Gehenna, and essentially Gehenna was the town rubbish dump. It was a place where hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus, they used to burn children to the god Molech there, and so the land was essentially useless, so they used it as a town rubbish dump, because you couldn't use it for anything else.

The problem they found with that, when the wind shifted from that direction, the smell of that place went into the city, so they had to come up with a solution. Their solution was a sulphuric mixture of fire.

It's the same principle as a match; if you have a bowel motion, and it's particularly horrible, you can simply strike a match, let it light up for a second, and then you put the match out, let the smoke go through the room, and it will actually deodorise. If you didn't know that try it okay, I might have just saved your marriage.

So they kept this fire going all the time there. It was also a burial ground for poor people, so if you couldn't afford a tomb, they would throw your body on Gehenna. It was also where all the stray animals would scavenge for food and stuff. So in the First Century, if you went to Gehenna, you would smell sort of the fire and brimstone sort of mixture. You would also see poor people's families having funerals for them, and you would also hear the sounds of barking and biting and animals scavenging for food.

So Gehenna became known as the place where the fire doesn't die, and there's weeping and gnashing of teeth - and so that was hell HERE. Hell THERE was a place called Hades.

Jesus said the word hell 18 times; of the 18 times, 15 of the 18 was hell here; three of the 18 was hell there; so roughly 87.7 per cent of the time when Jesus talks about hell, He's not talking about a future reality. He's talking about a reality that's right here.

He said that six things will send your life to hell, six things, and these things are this: 1) Not controlling your lust issues. So He says: you don't get those things under control, it endangers your life (of the garbage dump). 2) Anger, holding anger in your heart. If you tend to not be able to let things go, and you hold bitterness in your heart because people have done you wrong - if you don't get that kind of thing under control, you run the risk of putting your life (on the garbage dump).

3) Calling people idiots. He says: if your pattern in life is calling someone a fool, you're endangering your life (of the garbage dump). Obviously that one's talking about hell here, otherwise we're serving a God who tortures people forever for calling someone an idiot, and we're all screwed okay, so you don't want to do that. Essentially He's saying: listen, you know, you don't want to make a pattern of doing that. So He says: your lust issues, your anger issues, and your tendency to think you're smarter than everybody else - those are the things you have to handle.

4) Fearing man instead of fearing God. He said: that'll hurt you. That will eventually endanger your life of the garbage dump. 5) Unforgiveness in your heart will eventually endanger your life of the garbage dump... 6) ...as well as greed.

So greed, unforgiveness, fear of man instead of fear of God, calling people fools, lust and anger; those six things are the things that destroy a man's life, to the point of putting you in the garbage dump.

When you think about it in those terms, what you think about is, you start looking at yourself; or if you're a narcissist, you start thinking about somebody else who needs to hear this.

So you go: well okay, I could see where this lust issue in my life has hurt me. I could see where my tendency to power over people has hurt me. So if I was going to talk to you about how to be an over-comer, what I would simply do is go through those six issues.

I want to even step back further from that, and give you a principle that actually is ubiquitous to the entire lot of it. If we don't master this, then we can't deal with anger, and fear, and lust, and calling people idiots. We can't deal with those things if we don't deal with this - and I think Jesus deals with it brilliantly in the end of the Sermon on the Mount. This is what it says, in Matthew 7:13.

Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the road, that leads to destruction, and many wander through it. But small is the gate, and narrow is the road, that leads to life, and only a few will find it.

Just to be clear, that has nothing to do with heaven and hell. That has everything to do with the fact that, in life, most people don't have what it takes to make a decision to make their life better. Most people just do what everybody else is doing, and find themselves completely unravelling.

When you see euphemisms in scripture like death, darkness, decrease, destruction, it's not necessarily talking about being literally dead, or literally dark. It has to do with a realm of life that is destroying you; light/life/increases, a realm of life that's leading you to life.

He says: watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you'll recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

In other words, if what they're doing is working, they're likely a good piece of tree. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut off and thrown in the fire. Thus, by their fruits, you will recognise them.

Not everyone who says to Me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father who's in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day: Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out devils, and perform miracles? Then I will tell them plainly: I never knew you.

So this is very challenging to us, because to Jesus, calling Him Lord isn’t enough. If I ask someone: why are you saved; if their only answer is: I believe in Jesus; believing in Jesus, really, is that it? Honestly, believing in Jesus only qualifies you to be a demon with skin on. Demons believe in Jesus. What does that have to do with anything?

Wait a minute. Jesus says: people who've called Me Lord, and cast out devils, and prophesied, and performed miracles - it doesn't necessarily mean that they know me - and that is very scary, because then the question is: what does it mean to know God? I thought that's what it meant to know God. What does it mean to know God?

The only scripture in the whole Bible, that defines what it means to know God, is Jeremiah 22:16. It says: when you take care of the poor and the afflicted, that is what it means to know God.

In other words, when you do something for someone, who can't possibly do anything in return for you - that is when you get to know God, because that is exactly what God did for you. It's that sort of principle; and He keeps going. It says: it's all about how you treat others. This is where He keeps going:

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine, and puts them into practice (hearing/doing), is like a wise man who builds his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine, and does not put them into practice, is like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand. The rain come down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at His teachings, because He taught as one who had authority, and not as the other teachers of the law.

Now let me read one more scripture to you. This is Deuteronomy 30:19, that has the same sort of principle that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. This would have been the Bible in Jesus' day, maybe this was His key text, before He preached this.

It says: I call heaven and earth as a witness against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, that you and your children may live; and that you may love the Lord your God and listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him; for the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

This thing that you keep seeing through scripture is, you have two choices: life, death; blessings, curses; darkness, light. Choose life, that you might live. Choose to be in the light, as He is in the light. Jesus is simply using the same principle, with a different example.

He says: there are many times in life where you're going to come to a fork in the road. If you ever in life are faced with a decision, where most people are going one way - chances are, you should be going the other. Some of this is just common-sense.

What percentage of people do their finances actually work? Very few! Statistically most of you are broke; and I don't know you, but statistically most of you are broke.

According to US News and World Report, 63 per cent of every single person over 60 does not have $1,000 in the bank. How is that even possible? That is totally trying to live on accident, with no plan at all, and waking up one day at 68 and going: oh no! The truth is that most people live like that, according to US News and Word Report. I find that statistic hard to believe, but they printed it, so may as well use it.

What percentage of people are living pay-cheque to pay-cheque? Most. What percentage of guys in this room - and don't answer me, I'm being rhetorical here - how many of you actually have financial peace - where you sit in your chair at night, and you're not wondering how you're going to pay your bills? My guess is: not very many. My guess is: most people don't experience that at all.

What percentage of marriages actually work? Somewhere around one in five! If you have a great marriage, hold onto it, because it's really, really rare - about one in five, one in five. Fifty per cent of marriages divorce, another 25 per cent of people are just holding. One in five are like: she's my best friend, he's my best friend, we're going through - this is awesome! Very few!

Jesus is saying something that's very obvious. He says: when you look at life, and you look at people winning, and you look at people losing, most people are losing; but the reason most people are losing, is because they don't have what it takes, to make the choice to stay on the high road. They don't have what it takes to stay over here.

So one principle about this that is very, very important - there are three images Jesus gives, and they all have a different message to speak to us.

The first image He gives is gates. He says: broad is the road, and narrow is the way, that leads to life. So there's a broad gate, and a narrow gate.

Now in Jewish literature, this is a metaphor for the city. This is a metaphor for the city. What they did in all of Jewish literature is, they used Jerusalem as the example of attaining your goal. So instead of saying: hey, have you met that goal; they might say: hey, have you made it into the city with that? It was a euphemism, it was a metaphor for doing that; and the problem with that is, is that as you got closer to the city, the road got narrower; so you had to, with full intention, try to make your way into the city.

You couldn't just accidentally make it to the city. You had to with full intention. That's why, even in the Bible, when it talks about Jesus going to Jerusalem, it always adds adjectives that don't seem necessary, like: and Jesus resolutely set out to Jerusalem. Why would you add that? Why not say: well, Jesus intended to go to Jerusalem? No, no, no. He resolutely set out to go to Jerusalem. Why?

Their idea, in all of their literature, was that if you're going to make it to where you want to go, you can't try to get there accidentally. You have to live with full intention!

In other words, if you don't know the road that you're on, and where it's taking you, it more than likely is leading you to destruction. If you're trying to live accidentally, it just doesn't work.

I'm not going to do this to you, but if I did, you should be prepared. If I just pointed you out, and said: quickly sir, tell me where you want to be, financially, in six months? If you can't do that, then you're losing financially.

People who are winning financially, understand that they have to have a goal, and a plan, and a strategy; and the only thing that gives them the power to say no to frivolous spending, is that they're saying yes to financial abundance.

If you can't tell me your goal in six months, for where you want to be financially, I can tell you you're losing; and so what I'd do is: go home today, and sit down at a table, and take 30 minutes, and write out a six-month goal. Write out a year goal. Write out a plan to make that goal.

I just hired a director of charity for my ministry, because the product sales were going so good, that we were giving so much to these orphanages, that my lawyer said: it's actually irresponsible for you not to have someone looking after this. So I went to the Board of Directors, they agreed, so we ended up hiring this girl.

Now the problem was, we knew who we wanted to hire from the get-go. The problem was when she was 19 years old, she made some really, really, really, really, really, really, really bad financial decisions, and so she was sitting there with a mound of debt.

So what happened to her, is when she was 24 years old, she'd had enough, and she said: I will end this now! She made a plan, and her plan was that by December of 2012 that she would be completely debt-free; and the power of that goal, the power of keeping that vision in front of her, the power of every day waking up saying: today I'm going to be more debt-free than I was yesterday, tomorrow I'll be more debt free than I am today.

Every single day was an effort to get the debt taken care of. You know what happened? The power of yes, gave her the power to say no to frivolous spending, to doing things that didn't meet that goal; and what happened was, by October 2012, she was completely debt free!

By December 2012, she had $6,000 in the bank, and now she's fully prepared to be a missionary in the world, without the financial pressure of paying debts off, to pay for drinks she bought six years ago on a credit card.

Now she's standing tall, and she's got a fully-funded emergency fund in case something happens; and that is the power of strategy, and intention, and fully intending to make a goal, and go for something.

Jesus, in one sense, is teaching us that - that most people fail, not because they're bad. Most people fail because they fail to plan, the fail to make a strategy, they fail to make a goal. They don't live with intention.

They wouldn't even know, if they got what they wanted, if they had it - because they're not even sure about what they want. Most people live willy-nilly, sort of like a fire. If a fire is broad, it can sort of burn down a lot of bush; but if you harness the same fire into an acetylene torch, it can cut through steel. That is the power of desire, and intention, and living with full goals, and full intention; instead of trying to live accidentally.

That's gates. Gates is a challenge to keep in mind our role in the world: to be light and darkness, and choose the higher road; but the only thing that gives you the power to choose the higher road, is to live with full intention to do it.

Nobody wakes up in the morning, and accidentally chooses the higher road. Nobody wakes up in the morning, and just accidentally forgives. No one wakes up in the morning, and just accidentally chooses to feed the poor. No one wakes up in the morning, and chooses to live for the betterment of others. No one does that.

That requires full-fledged intention. There are a lot of good people who are living selfishly, a lot of good people. Let me prove it too you. In the last 30 days, whose life is fundamentally better, because you're in it?

How many orphans have you fed in the last 30 days? How many blind kids in the Third World, are not blind now, because you went to Fred Hollows Foundation.com, and gave them $30 to take the cataracts off their eyes? What's the last thing you spent $30 on? Was it more important than a four year old girl seeing? How many of you would believe, with all your heart, that we should be engaging in things like that? Right - oh everybody? Wow, good! How many of you have actually done it? Oh good, half, good. So what's wrong with the other half of you? Are you bad? No, you're not bad.

It's just what happens is, that if we don't live with the full intention of doing something, the urgent things right in front of us take precedent, and we lose sight of bigger-picture things. It's not that you're bad.

You want to beat fear in your life; you got to make some intentions. You want to beat guilt in your life; you've got to make some intentions. You want to beat anger in your life; you've got to live with full intention to do it. You want to beat that tendency to call people idiots in your life? You've got to make full intention to do it. You want to quit fearing man, instead of fearing God, you've got to make full intention to do it. You want to beat that unforgiveness thing in you, you've got to make full intention to do it. None of these things handle themselves accidentally. It's a broad road, and a narrow way. It's a broad road and a narrow way, so the first image is gate.

The second image is fruit, which is a challenge to us, to be honest about the way we're living, and is it working? I love the Bob Newhart counselling thing on YouTube, where the person says their problem, and he says: is it working? No. Stop it! It amazes me the number of people who keep doing the same exact thing, and it hasn't worked yesterday, and it's not working today, and it for sure won't work tomorrow, but they just keep doing it.

Essentially Jesus is saying: it ain't working? Dump it! Change something! Change a plan. Shake things up. Do something with your life! Do something - at least be honest enough to say: is the way I'm thinking, actually producing what I want it to produce. At least be honest enough to do that.

I've always been taught that a marriage works this way: Okay, but is it working? If it's not working, you might want to change something. Is it just possible, that what you were taught your whole life, is wrong? Is that even possible? That maybe grand-pappy was wrong? Maybe your mother, as good hearted as she was, she was wrong. Jesus says: sometimes you've got to just step back, and be honest enough to evaluate these things.

So the first image is gates, which has to do with our intentions. The second imagery is fruit, which has to do with an honest introspection to see things for what they are.

As a counsellor, you do this all the time - that before you can help anybody, you have to step back and go: okay, listen, I need you to own the fact, that what you've been doing, is not working. You see Jillian Michaels do this all the time.

You ever watched The Biggest Loser? Does that come on over here, The Biggest Loser? It's a show dedicated to people losing weight, and she's just beaten the dog-stew out of somebody, and they're crying, and they're like: this isn't working; and she's like: this isn't working! Look at you! What YOU'VE been doing isn't working; and then she's just nailing them, and then they cry more. Then they get their second wind, and at the end of the show they hug. It's that.

The third image He gives us is foundations; so the first image is gates, second image is fruit, third image is foundation. The foundation was a challenge to us, to stay sensitive to God's voice, and be willing to submit.

Essentially what Jesus is saying is this: if you can hear God saying something, and you have the ability to walk away and do nothing about it, you're in real strife.

If you ever get to the point in your life, where you know, you just know, this is what God is saying; but you have the ability, even knowing this is what God's saying, to walk away and do absolutely nothing about it, then your life is getting shakier, and shakier, and shakier.

Essentially what He's saying, without any myth or illusion of being perfect, that the person who stays sensitive to the voice of God - and is willing to not just hear it, but to do it as well - those people's life get more and more solid.

I could sit here and talk about specifics all day long, but if you don't deal with that tendency in all of us, to be able to hear the word of God, and then walk away and still live the same, nothing I say will ever work.

Essentially He says your choice in life is this: do you want your life to be solidified on a rock; or do you want it to be shaky on sand. And by the way, in this sermon, it has nothing to do with what you believe.

People say: well my life's on the rock. How do you know that? Because I believe in Jesus. Really? Once again, believing in Jesus only qualifies you to be a demon with flesh on. Are you kidding me, you believe in Jesus? Oooh.

When Jesus talks about your life being on the rock, instead of the sand, it has nothing to do with what you believe, and everything to do with how you behave.

It has everything to do with your ability to keep adjusting, keep responding. I hear God saying this, and I'm going to respond.

He doesn't even end the sermon with an altar call. He's got thousands of people in front of Him, and He doesn't say: now who wants to go to heaven? Who'd like to pray a prayer, to ensure that you have a ticket punched to go to heaven when you die? He doesn't do that. He's got thousands of people in front of Him, He doesn't do that. That's very telling.

His invitation, at the end of the biggest sermon He ever preached on recorded record was: I'm asking you to do an internal stock take. When you hear the word of God, are you willing to respond with action; or are you just going to keep living how you've always lived? Because if you respond with action, it will solidify your life. If you do not, it will make your life very shaky.

So He has gates, which has to do with intentions; fruit, which has to do with being honest enough to ask ourselves: is the way we're living working; and three, foundations. If it's not working, and you hear a better way to live, are you willing to be courageous enough to change it?

I did not choose where I was born, and I could still be choosing to live that way, to this day. It would have been not that hard of a choice to choose that; but I realised that that was not me - I was challenged by God's word.

I know this is going to sound funny, but the day I realised Jesus wasn't white, was unbelievable to me. I thought to myself: flip! He's not white! I mean, we all pray to the Jesus we picture, so for me it was: dear blonde haired, blue eyed, cleanly shaven or lightly bearded Jesus, who smells of sweet lavender and dove soap. Like, it was that.

When I realised Jesus wasn't white, it was like: flip! I had a choice. I could either keep going my way, or I could make a choice to do something else. I was 14 years old when I realised, that God had called me to love all people, and to treat all people with the dignity afforded to them, because they're all made in the image of God; and all, every living soul, belongs to God.

I remember having to make that choice, but if I had the ability to hear that, and then walk away and still live a different way, it makes your life shaky. You think about it.

We could go around the room, if I said: what's your story? What's your story of when God rocked your world, and you were given a moment, a critical moment, to make a decision to change things? When is that story? Every one of you, who were winning in life in any direction, you have a story that you could tell. You have a story. You have something. You say: oh look, I was this, and now I was this.

I remember the day, I remember where I was sitting, the day I decided that I would live debt-free my whole life. It didn't matter if I drove a piece-of-crap car, I will live - I choose to drive a cheap car over having debt in car payments. I just choose to do it. I remember where I was sitting that day.

I remember all my friends making fun of me, because my car was so horrific, like the floorboard actually had holes in it. I had to put a two by four between the console and the door, to make sure that my feet didn't go through the bottom of the thing. The ceiling felt was coming down, and all my friends, they're like: Shane, what's wrong with you? Everybody has a car payment; and I'm like yeah: but if everybody has a car payment, and by statistics, everybody is broke, maybe this is the better way to do things.

While they were paying $400 a month, with interest, on something going down in value, I was paying the same $400 a month to a savings account that I'd created, called Shane's Car Fund. Within a year I had $4,800, and then I went and bought a $4,800 car, which was by far much better.

After that, I still put the same $400 in the same account. Two years later I traded in the $4,800 car; took the $9,600 I'd saved up, and bought a much nicer car. So five years later, their six year old Ford Focus was now paid off, and I was driving a much nicer car, because I had a plan.

Now I have a paid for Cadillac Escalade, and people look at me and go: you're so lucky! Lucky? No! I made a strategy, and a plan, and lived with full intention. I chose to live without debt. I can tell you, I never regretted it, never - but it took guts.

It takes guts, when you know God's challenging you to do something, and then you have the ability to walk away and not do anything. That's easy, and it will shake your life up; but when you have the guts to do something about it, it makes your life more and more solid.

What three key decisions have you made, in the last five years, that have changed your life; and it's because of a challenge God gave you. How many of you regret ever doing it? We never do. We never regret when we respond positively to God's voice, never ever ever.

Let's say it this way. Your intentions are just the starting point. Pure motives, and consistent obedience, mixed with focussed intentions, will lead your life to a life that cannot be shaken.

It's not just the attention of your heart that is the starting point. It's also making sure that your behaviour matches up with your intentions.

If you intend to be financially secure, yet you go to the mall every other day, and buy things you don't need, with money you don't have, to impress people you don't like - that is not a good plan. It's not a good plan!

If you're goal is to have a happy marriage, it's probably a good thing to, with focussed intention and strategy, sit down and talk to your wife, on a daily basis. It's probably good - probably.

If your goal is to be this; you have to say NO to that. Let's say it a couple of different ways: one, you cannot live on accident. At best, you'll be disappointed with life; at worst, your life will be destroyed.

When I was a counsellor, any time someone came to me and said: I'm just so discouraged with my life; and I go: oh, why? I just don't know. I don't know why. Can you help me explore the reasons why I'm so disappointed with life? One hundred per cent of the time, it's because they were trying to let life come to them on accident.

They wouldn't have known if they got what they wanted, if it was standing in front of them, because they had not clearly defined it. You have to clearly define your life. You cannot live on accident. Where do you want to be in six months? Where do you want to be financially, relationally, vocationally? I want to start a business. Great! Great, then let's go do that. Let's make a plan. What equipment do we need? What's our market? How are we going to market ourselves? What are we going to do?

Let's live with full intention. This is a whole lot better than watching the next episode of NCIS. This is great. We're living with purpose, and intention, and power. We can do it! You cannot live accidentally. At best, you'll be disappointed; at worst, you'll be destroyed.

Two, people do not fall suddenly. They were on the road for a long time, and didn't realise it. What seems like a sudden fall, is only a sudden fall because it's you. Anybody observing your life could tell, that the road you were on was taking you over the cliff the whole time.

It's never the intention of your heart that leads you where you want to go; it's the road that you're on. If you get on the highway, wherever the highway is around here, if you get on the highway going north, with full intention of getting to Wellington, you're never going to make it. Even though every intention of your heart is I - where are you going? I'm going to Wellington. By faith, I speak that out; oh yes, by faith we call it into being. Oh yes! We're going to Wellington.

Yeah, but the road you're on is taking you to Auckland. Yeah, but we're going to Wellington; by God, yes we are, yes we are! So you get to Auckland; it feels like suddenly Auckland has appeared. No! Auckland was at the end of the road all along, you just didn't realise it.

Your intentions aren't enough to lead you where you want to go - which leads me to this question: What are you rationalising today, that you'll regret tomorrow?

When you're travelling, if your goal is to make it through today - if that's your whole goal in life - I want to make it through one day, do whatever you want to do. If every day starts over new, just do whatever you want to do, who cares?

But if you have any wisdom at all, you're thinking down the track; and when you're thinking down the track, however far out you're thinking, is how important your decisions are here.

One degree - I played golf at Cape Kidnappers yesterday. It was awesome by the way, pretty awesome. Had a guy here from Brisbane who treated me to it. He said: I just want to bless you, you blessed me. I want to take you up to Cape Kidnappers, it's my treat. I was like: this so fantastic!

So if you're aiming 250 metres down a fairway right, how important is one-degree off-centre here? It's pretty big. One degree, that's not very much, one degree. It would take a high-speed, frame-by-frame camera to see the error, one degree off centre here, is 20 metres off-centre at the target. At Cape Kidnappers, it's the difference between the centre of the fairway, and off the cliff. One degree! Now a 20-foot putt is different. On a 20 foot putt, one degree - one degree here is four inches, which still misses the hole, but it's a tap-in later.

So the shorter out your goal is, the less important it is your decisions here; but if your goal is long-range, then little things here make huge differences there.

If there's a builder in the room, maybe you could tell me the answer to this: if you're 1/32 of an inch off square at the bottom, how important is that? Well, if it's a one-storey house, not very important; but what if you're building a 60-storey building, and you're 1/32 of an inch off-square at the bottom. By the time you get to the top, it's just leaning. See, little things here, make big differences there.

What are you rationalising today, that you'll regret tomorrow? I know in a room this size, full of men, I need to say this: stop calling her! You're rationalising it today, but tomorrow it's a disaster! But Shane, it's just a phone call - today. Tomorrow it'll be coffee, the next day it'll be lunch, the next day it'll be supper, and the next day my husband's out of town, come over. Stop calling her! If you're sitting in your seat right now, hoping that I'm not fixing to go prophetic on you - it's you! If your heart's beating right now, fast - it's you! What are you rationalising today, that you'll regret tomorrow?

Three, you do not have to fall on purpose, you just have to live without one, and destruction is imminent.

I could tell you that statistically, most of you would report in an anonymous survey, that you're dissatisfied with your life; and the issue normally isn't that you're bad, or evil, or in sin, or anything like that. For most people, it's simply: I haven't clearly defined what I intend to do, and so no matter what you're doing, it's not satisfying, because it's not meeting what you're intending. You don't have to fall on purpose, you just simply have to live without one, and destruction is just going to be a part of your life.

How about let's say it this way: When we do not have intention towards life, destruction is just an inevitable part of our experience. When we don't live with full intention, full focus; what do I intend to do with my life today? Tomorrow? In six months? In a year? Where am I intending to go?

If you don't live your life that way, I'm telling you, five years goes by, and those five years just pass by, and you're still in the exact same spot going: what's wrong with my life? It's a challenge to us.

Let's say it this way. One YES, always requires 1,000 NO's. One YES, requires 1,000 NOs.

The only being that gives you the power to say no to destructive things, is that you're saying yes. You can never beat sin, by fighting sin, ever. You only empower what you resist. You can never beat sin by fighting sin; you beat sin by empowering something else; and the power you give something else, actually overcomes the sin.

Let's say it this way: one yes requires 1,000 no's; so here's some examples: To be a yes-person on forgiveness, means no to grudges. You don't beat grudges by fighting grudges, you beat grudges by fully intending to live as a person of forgiveness. When you fully intend to live as a person of forgiveness, the grudge loses its hold. You can't possibly say yes to this, and yes to that. The power of yes is so much better than the power of no, so much easier than fighting it.

How about this: to be a yes-person on edification, means no to gossip. To be a yes-person on giving, means no to hoarding. To be a yes-person on humility, means no to powering-up. To be a yes-person on rest, means no to urgency. To be a yes-person on our profession, means no to laziness.

If you say: I fully intend to start a grass-cutting lawn-care business, great! What's your plan? Well I'm going to buy the equipment, I'm going to do this, I'm going to that, I'm going to market, I'm going to do this. If you intend to start a grass-cutting business, then that means saying no to sleeping in. If you're starting a grass-cutting business, and I call you at 9.30 and wake you up, you are not going to win. There's only so much daylight, and you've got to cut so many yards to break even. To say yes to this, means no to that.

Let's say it this way: to say yes to being a person of purity, means no to temporary pleasure; but the way to fight temporary pleasure is not to fight it. The way to fight temporary pleasure is to say yes to purity, with all your focussed intention. One yes, requires 1,000 no's.

To say yes to financial abundance, means no to frivolous spending, and $6 coffee. There's no way you can win financially, paying $6 for something that costs 30 cents - there's just no way. These guys are masters. They've figured out how to market a drink, that costs 30 cents to make, including the labour - and they sell it to you for $6. This is genius! This liquid is so amazing, if you drink it, it will give you a slightly more alert feeling, for roughly 12 minutes; and then 15 minutes later, it will turn into urine. I just drank something, and it's coming out the other end - this is so cool!

Let me just give you some math okay. It doesn't affect my life, but I can tell you this: if you were 25 years old, and you plan to retire at 67 - if you drank one $6 coffee a day, that sounds like $180 a month. The average stock market rate of return from 1919 until now, including ups and downs is 11.7 per cent. If you invest $6 a day, at 11.7 per cent, from 25 to 67, you're worth $1.1 million. I hope you liked the coffee! .

If your goal in life is to drink good coffee - then do it. You've gotten what you want, but you can't drink $6 coffee, and then go: I have no money. Well of course you have no money. I had these young people in Australia go: we have no money; and I said: how many coffees do you drink a day? Two. That's $12 a day, times 30 days a month. You're spending $360 a month in urine, and you wonder why you have no money?

Is it Satan? Is he attacking your finances? Well look, if your goal is to drink good coffee, have at it; but if your goal is to live with financial abundance, then you have to make a decision to build a distaste for $6 coffee, and drink coffee at home! Hello!

You can't say: I want this; and then act in a way that does that. Jesus says: that's very shaky. If you know what you want, and then you don't behave that way, that's very shaky, and it's going to feel like you fell suddenly - but you did not fall suddenly. You've been on that road the whole time. That road was leading off the cliff the whole time.

How about let's say it this way: to be a yes person on our dream, means no to spending time on things other than our dream - even if those things are good.

People who win are focussed, and intense, and they're living on purpose - fully intending to meet their dream and their goal. To be a yes-person on purpose, means no to anything that moves us away from it. It's not that what you're saying no to is bad; it's just it's not leading you where you want to go. But people who have no clear definition of where they want to go, they have no power to say no, because who knows?

Why would I say no to that, I have no goal, I have no dream, I have no vision. The Bible says it this way: where there's no vision, people perish. Was that literal, like if you don't have a dream for your life, you're going to die? No. It's a euphemism. It leads you to disrepair. Actually, in the original language, it says this: where there's no vision, people cast off restraint. In other words, the only thing that gives you the power to say no to something is that you're saying yes to something else at a greater level - which leads me to this question.

What are you saying yes to? You want to be an overcomer? Here's my first question: What are you living with full intention to accomplish? What are you giving your life to?

I only slept in my own bed 38 days last year. What gives me the power to do that? What gives me the power to do that is I have a dream, and I have a vision, and I have a mission, that I want to spread the gospel throughout the nations; and even more so than that, I want to feed the poor.

I want to restore dignity to those who don't have it, and for me to do that requires me to speak a lot. It requires me to do that. The Lord put it on my heart, He challenged me. He said: I want you to work one month a year for the poor; so from June 15 to July 15 this year, everything I'm going to do is for them.

So it's a dream in my heart, it's a vision. It's a passion, it's an energy, that drives me here, so that I could say no there. I have to. I have to.

Let's say it this way: some patterns of life are obviously destructive, leading to darkness and disrepair and death. Things like: hoarding riches and chasing after it; things like comparison; these things are obviously destructive, yet - and we know that right? Is that even controversial, that chasing after riches will destroy your life? It sounds pretty much like Jesus, correct? So then if we know that, why do we spend millions of dollars doing it?

There's a website called uglypeople.com. It's a website that is dedicated to random - some of it is people doing it themselves - but it's dedicated to random photographs, of picking on people who are ugly. Now as soon as I say that, how many of you, you're sort of like: that's nauseating right? That's as bad as that drink right? If we all believe that, then how is it that the owners of uglypeople.com are multi-millionaires?

We know it's destructive, yet we engage in it. We know chasing after riches is destructive, yet the top reality TV show on Network Cable is: Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Listen to the title, Keeping Up with them - that's our goal in life. Really? Have you ever seen the show? Anybody want Bruce Jenner's life? Are you kidding me - and a house surrounded by high maintenance women, oh my God! Who would want that? No. No.

See when we engage in things like this, it's just evidence. It's not that you're bad; it's just that you're not yes to something more important. The way to do it is not to beat that. It's to say yes to this.

Jesus has said that there are times in life where everyone's going left, and you just know you need to go right. That's what it takes to be a kingdom person.

Everybody holds grudges, true; but everybody is leading their life to disrepair. That's a broad road. If everybody holds grudges, chances are, a kingdom person is choosing to forgive. Everybody has a car payment. Everybody's making payments on something going down in value. Everybody's doing that. Is that true? Yeah, pretty much true, but if everybody's going right, it's probably pretty good evidence that we should go left, left.

Everybody does business dodgy. Everybody cheats on their taxes. Is that true? Pretty much, but if everybody's going right, chances are a kingdom person is going left, yeah. Everybody does this, everybody, everybody, everybody - I know, yeah, you're right.

I had a teenager one time tell me: everybody sleeps around. Is that true? Statistically yes, 87 per cent of teenagers are sleeping together, sleeping around. 87%, 9/10 - is that true? Yeah, sure - but if everybody's going right, chances are that the kingdom and the best life is found by going left. Are you going to be a crowd-follower, or are you going to be a Jesus person? That's a massive decision we have to make.

Now this has huge implications alright. One, when we live intentionally pursuing the narrow gate, we are more grounded, and less anxious. There's something about living with a clear intended purpose and dream that keeps you from worrying about other things.

My friend Kyla Alexander, she's a 39 year old lady, who's my hero. She's given up her dream to be married and have children, because God has called her to restore dignity to mentally-handicapped orphans in China, and she's given her life to that instead.

Kyla doesn't sit around worrying about: oh, where's the next man going to come from? No, she's given her life to 140 children; and the power of yes has helped her beat this.

When we live intentionally, it takes away anxiety. The cure for anxiety is not prayer, although it might help. I'm not against prayer. The cure for anxiety, long-term, is living with intention toward something else; and when you put all your energy into something that is focussed and intentioned, that when you live for your dream, it actually takes care of the anxiety on its own.

It's the same with anger. People with an anger problem, they don't have an anger problem, they have an energy problem. People with an anger problem, they have too much spare energy. They're not giving their life to something beyond themselves, so they're all just stoked up with all this energy, and have to do something with it. People who are living with full intention and purpose, they don't have anger problems.

Can you imagine if I had Kyla here today, and you started telling her the things that stress you? She works with mentally handicapped children, hoping to have enough money to feed them, every single month; and what's stressing you? You were born in New Zealand? I know. Your road system still sucks? I know. I know. I've been coming here seven years, they're still fixing the same road. I don't understand. Kingdoms have risen and fallen; you guys are still fixing one road. I know! You drive to a store, that pre-packages food for you, and you have a hard time finding a park? I know. That is so stressful. You get your trolley full of food, that was pre-packaged for you, and you wouldn't believe how slow the cashier in the store is. I know.

Kyla would be like: what? You have roads? You have a car? So you get into a motorised vehicle, that takes you to a store, that pre-packages food for you, and you live in one of the top five greatest nations in the world, and you're stressed? What is wrong with you! Is it that you're bad? No. It's just that we don't live with full intention. Full intention cures that.

Number two, because we're intentionally pursuing our purpose, we're not concerned about, or in prison to: worry, discontentment, and most importantly comparison.

When you're living on full purpose for what God's called you to do, you will not be concerned with what other people have. It doesn't matter what they have, because you're pursuing what God has YOU to do.

Comparison's a killer man, it's a killer! We get so wrapped up in 'er', how can I be rich-er, smart-er, thinn-er, pretty-er, talented-er, more important-er. We spend money, and energy, and time, and resources, doing nothing but trying to be better than the other person.

We fail to see the flip-side of that: that if I'm smarter, that means I think someone else is dumber. If I'm prettier, that means I think someone else is uglier; and at the end of the day, all that does is make me feel superior, which doesn't work. Listen, comparison never works. If you're better, it doesn't help you. If you're not better, it doesn't help you. Either way, it's a horrible exercise to go through. Have you ever been stuck in the land of 'er'?

Let me say it this way: have you ever lost your ability to enjoy what God's given you, because you've compared it to somebody else?

Have you ever lost the joy of your own children, because they're not achieving as much as the other person? Have you ever been convinced that your six year old is the smartest six year old in the world, only to go a first grade function, and realise that wasn't true?

Have you ever been convinced that your six year old's the smartest six year old in the world, then you go to their six year old party, and there's some Asian kid there doing the Pythagorean theorem? Then you look around for your kid, and your kids got a bucket on his head, beating it against a wall? Someone says: whose kid is that? I don't know, and before you know it you're disowning your own kid, because he's not as high achieving as this.

Do you realise that for a lot of couples in the world, your kid is their miracle? They would do anything to have a child, and they can't; and so what you're now discontented with, because he's not as high achieving as the Asian kid doing the Pythagorean Theorem; what you're discontented with is, someone else's goal in life.

Have you ever lost sight - have you ever done this to your wife (sideways glance)? Have you ever become discontented with her, because someone else was prettier?

Do you realise that there are some people, who your wife would be like the best thing that's ever happened to them; and you're losing sight that your wife is the best thing that ever happened to you, because you're comparing her to somebody else? You go get the other person, and you realise that she's pretty on the outside, but behind a closed door, she is horrible, and cantankerous, and just a terrible person. Then you're just calling the other one, it's a comparison. If you're called to be married to the woman you're with, it doesn't matter what someone else has. Have you lost the ability to enjoy what God gave you, because you're comparing them to something else?

How about your car? Have you ever been perfectly content with your car, until you get into someone else's car, and their car is so much nicer than your car; then you get back in your car, and you're like: this stinks? Do you realise that if you own a car, you're in the richest eight per cent of the whole world? That means 92% of people in the world would love to have what you have.

What about your house: have you ever been perfectly content with your nine-foot ceilings, until you visit the home of someone who has a 12-foot ceiling? You're like: wow, this is amazing! Then you back to your house, and you're like ducking, because you're all cramped.

When you're living on purpose, it doesn't matter what other people have, because you're pursuing what God has for you. There's nothing more imprisoning that comparison. I'm telling you, if you don't beat this, you'll never be an over-comer. If you don't beat your tendency to judge yourself by looking left and right; if you don't get your worth from pursuing what God has for you; if you don't beat that sense to get stuck in 'er' - the problem with 'er' is that there's always an 'est'.

If you make a million dollars this year, are you richer? Yup. Are you richest? Nope. You know that there's a guy in the world worth $68 billion - and he still goes to work every day trying to make $69 billion. It's amazing. Do you know the difference between $68 billion, and $69 billion is? It's more money than all of us will ever see in our whole life, and this guy's trying to make one more - it's 'er'. It's in prison. It's not living at all. It's not living at all.

How about this: no one forgives; gives and feeds the poor; or serves others; on accident. You have to live with full intention, so let me close this out with questions, because I want you to take what I'm saying, and I want you to be able think through it in your small groups, and apply this; because if you hear it and don't do it, it just makes your life sandy.

How about this: if you live accidentally, it will lead to destruction; so here's my questions for you. What do you desire? Can you clearly define what you want? Can you clearly define what you want; and if you can't, I would urge you, over the next seven days, to spend some time alone in a room with the Holy Spirit, and ask God: God can you reveal to me what I even want out of life? Do you know what you want?

Let me say it another way, I'll ask it this way. How would you know, if you got what you were looking for? If you got what you were looking, for how would you know? What does that look like?

Let's say it this way: starting on a daily level, what are you willing to purpose in your heart to do today? What's your plan today, what's your goal? Are you going to go home and watch TV or something - what's your goal? Is your goal today, to get the yard taken care of? Is your goal today, to grow in relationship with your family? Is your goal today - and there's no bad goal.

If your goal's to watch TV go in - I make that goal sometimes. Some days I put aside and I just watch movies all day, because my brain needs a reset button. All I do is study and write. I love to lose myself in a movie, nothing wrong with that - but at least I'll know if I attain it.

What's your goal today? Starting on a daily level, what are you going to accomplish today? If you didn't wake up this morning with full intention of doing something, the day will end, and you won't even know what you did! What do you intend to do today?

How about this: is there anything in your life that's not leading you to wholeness? Is there anything you're rationalising, that's actually slowly but surely leading your life to disrepair? Is there anything you're rationalising?

Next one: is your life working? Why not? What obviously needs to change for you to have life, light, and increase - and why not make that change now? What are you going to do, just wait another year? If you need to lose weight, I could tell you this: it's much easier to lose five kilos, than to wait until you need to lose 50. Why not go and lose the five? What are you waiting on?

Everybody has their alarm bell day, you know, with weight. It's like they step on the scale and go: okay that's it, I'm losing weight now. What is that for you? You watch the biggest loser, and here's what I can't believe about the biggest loser. You have people who are on a show dedicated to obese people losing weight, and then they're all surprised they're obese? Like, I don't care what you weigh, as long as you're happy with yourself, it doesn't matter to me. Weigh whatever you'd like, as long as you're happy with yourself - but don't go on a show dedicated to obese people losing weight, and then be surprised you're obese.

They all stand in their underwear on a scale, and it goes beep-beep-beep-beep-beep and then it comes up however many kilos they weigh, and they all respond the same. It's amazing to me, 24 out 24 they all respond the same. [Boo hoo] Then the host has to do a good TV show. The host says: can you tell me what's going on in your heart right now? They all say the same thing: I can't believe this happened to me.

It happened to you - what are you talking about? Your blood type is chicken gravy, what do you mean? I mean like, are you serious? Look, nothing bothers me about how much people weigh, as long as you're happy with yourself. I think that's great, but don't have a blood type of chicken gravy, and then be surprised. This didn't happen to you!

Like one contestant I saw was 5' 1" and 180 kilos, and you're going: where's your alarm button there? Like what were you thinking at 140? I had a guy come see me once, and he said: this is a disaster, I'm in an emergency. I said: what happened? He said: I'm $60,000 in debt. I was like: today?! What did you buy?

The truth is, he had been accumulating debt all along, but $60,000 was his button. Where's your panic button financially? Everybody has an internal-angst point. Everybody has an imaginary number, and you know it, yours is different than mine. Everybody has a number, that if your bank account gets below that number, it feels like zero to you. What is that for you, and does it need to be adjusted?

I met a guy whose panic button wasn't until negative $60,000. I couldn't live with that guy. The guy's a maniac! That's crazy stuff to me. My zero point's way, way higher than that. What do you need to change? What obviously needs to change, and what are you waiting on? Are you waiting to need to lose another two kilos before you start? I mean what are you doing? What are you doing?

Let's say it this way. Are you willing to be a do-er, or are you okay just being a hear-er? Are you willing to be a doer; or are you okay just being a hearer?

My last question to you is this: rock or sand? Do you want to land on your feet, or do you prefer landing on your face? Rock or sand - the choice is yours.

I urge you to be guys who overcome; but you cannot overcome unless you live with full intention to overcome. This thing will never happen accidentally, ever. I urge you to be men of the kingdom, who seek God, and seek His purposes with full intention, full focus, full dream, live with full clear desires. I urge you to be people like that. Lord bless us and help us, give us the bravery to see things differently, and the irresistible urge to respond to what we see. May be we be doers and not just hearers. May we respond today. Amen.

Are You Worthy (1 of 2) (Shane Willard)

Sat 16 Mar 2013 PM  « Back to Top

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There are four verses in the Bible that say homosexuality's wrong. There are 2000 verses in the Bible that tell us to love each other, so maybe we've got our emphasis wrong? Who is worthy to break the seals, and open the scrolls? But no one in heaven - so there's people already in heaven, who aren't worthy - no one in heaven, or earth, or under the earth, could open the scroll, or even look inside of it.

Jesus' invitation was not to be a certain way, in order to go somewhere. Jesus' invitation was to allow what is somewhere else to be established in you right now. The "Flames of Heaven" is God's relentless pursuit, to make you the best you can be in His kingdom, without taking your free will away. Hell will let you stay greedy, heaven won't; Hell will let you stay racist, heaven won't - lots of fire in heaven.

Jesus' message for His followers is this: get in line with God's kingdom today, as fast as you can, urgently. I urge you to do this. The whole world's at stake.A disciple is someone actively participating with God, to establish His kingdom on the earth

Everybody here is mature enough to hear something they might not have thought of before, right? Oh good, so we're all open, and flexible and non-argumentative.

It's important, for a learning environment, that all of us are springs and not bricks; because if you come into a learning environment as a brick, you're going to leave the same, and that would be tragic.

It's very important too, to understand the difference between a sermon and a declaration. A sermon asks a question, and should get you to be introspective. It's not meant to be agreed with, or disagreed with. A sermon is meant to get you to think, and change, and challenge modes of thought. A declaration tells you what you already believe to be true; and you ought to say: amen; so today I'm coming in the spirit of a sermon.

Some of what we're going to talk about today has insinuations for what happens after we die, and let me be clear: anyone who tells you they know exactly what happens after you die, is full of crapolla okay? They don't know, they've never done it, and so we're guessing; and really the insinuations about what happens after you die are not important at all.

If I read Jesus correctly, the main focus of Jesus was: why are you waiting for what happens after you die? Why not allow heaven to be established in you right now? I want to talk to you about heaven in that notion okay? I'm going to just ask a few questions about it.

Was Jesus' main message: how to go to heaven? [No.] Would everybody agree with that? Then why is our main message that? It's a sermon, not a declaration, I'm just asking. Why is the number one question I get, when I travel the world: who's going to heaven, and who's going to hell? As if that's in my pay-grade, or yours; or was anywhere even close to Jesus' primary focus? Jesus is preaching to thousands of people, in what's called the Sermon on the Mount. He doesn't even give an altar call - hmm.

At the beginning of the Bible, what is God doing? He's making a new creation (where?) on the Earth. So in the beginning God, is making a new creation on the earth, and everything is submitted to that. At the end of the Bible, what is God doing? Revelation 21:5 - behold the lamb shouts from the throne, I make all things brand new, and there's a new city.

Heaven is coming down from God, out of heaven and invading earth. So at the end of the Bible, who's going to heaven? No one. Whatever is in heaven is coming down. This is not a denial of heaven. Heaven is a wonderful truth - because if heaven's not true then death wins, and that would be terrible.

But the goal isn't to get to heaven; the goal is: whatever is in heaven is coming down. So when Jesus framed thoughts on heaven, His thoughts on heaven were: hey, what I'm describing to you is coming to earth at some point, and that is a blessed hope; and My invitation is that you establish that in your heart now, so that if it happened tomorrow you'd be ready.

There was this urgency in Jesus' teaching. He told stories about virgins not being ready, and there was this urgency; and the point of the virgins not being ready is not: well some are in, or some are out. No, there are certain people who take establishing the kingdom seriously and urgently, and then there are other people who always say: oh, I'll get to it later, and they never do. Then they find themselves 'on the outs' in the kingdom, and it's not because they weren't in - it's just because they weren't ready.

So at the beginning of the Bible, God's talking about making a new creation on the earth. At the end of the Bible, God's talking about making a new creation on the earth; and everything in the middle of the Bible is about... God making a bunch of new creations on the earth, to prepare the earth for the new creation coming to the earth. Yet somehow our message became: how do you go somewhere else? How did that happen!

The point of Christianity was never: hey, let's get a bunch of people to be like us, so one day they'll go to heaven. The point of Christianity was to establish the kingdom of heaven in every place we see hell right now; that God wanted to multiply Himself through a body, to establish a kingdom on this earth, to prepare the earth for the kingdom coming to the earth.

The best question may not be: will you go to heaven when you die. The best question might be: if heaven invaded your life tomorrow, what parts of you would survive, and what parts of you would be burned up?

I started getting fascinated by this from one question. An older friend of mine, he's a pastor, and he asked me if I reckoned I would enjoy heaven. I said well of course I'm going to enjoy heaven, you can't stuff heaven up right? He said: I'm not so sure for myself. He said: the Holy Spirit's challenged me to do something that's changed my life forever. He said: I'd like to challenge you to do it. I said: sure. He said: go back and re-read everything Jesus said about heaven, and ask yourself if you would enjoy it - and be honest. Be honest! Read Jesus' descriptions of heaven, and then ask yourself if you would enjoy it. For instance, Jesus said: in heaven all the secret conversations of your heart will be revealed for all to see. Are you ready for that?

Jesus said: heaven is a table with every tribe, tongue and race; so if you're a racist, are you ready for that? Jesus said: in heaven, what God gave you that you used to change this world will be celebrated and multiplied; but what you buried, will be uprooted and given to someone else. Are you ready for that? What are you doing with what God gave you? If that happened tomorrow, what would be buried, and what would be celebrated?

Jesus said that in heaven, whether you started working at 6am or at 5pm, you get the same wage. Are you okay with that? I realised I wasn't. I started looking at these descriptions of heaven, and I asked myself the question: if this happened to me tomorrow, would I be okay?

Jesus' invitation was not: be a certain way, in order to go somewhere. Jesus' invitation was: allow what is somewhere else to be established in you right now. So if there's something He's describing that's going on in heaven, that I'm not okay with, then there's a problem in my heart today.

I realized that central to discipleship, and becoming a follower of Jesus, is not just believing the right things, and doing the right motions. It's actually participating with Him to establish the kingdom on the earth, to prepare the earth for the new kingdom coming to the earth.

Let me ask you this. How many mentions are there of fire and hell in the whole Bible? Depending on your translation it's somewhere between zero and six. Okay, let's go with the mean one, let's go six okay? So there are six mentions of fire and hell in the Bible.

How many mentions are there of fire in heaven? 229 - so how many sermons have you ever heard on fire in hell? Lots, grrr! How many sermons have you heard on fire in heaven? None. How did we do that? How did we pull off something that's emphasised 229 times, versus six? How did we emphasise the six, over the 229? How did we do that?

Of course we do it with a lot of things - there are four verses in the Bible that say homosexuality is wrong. There are 2000 verses in the Bible that tell us to love each other! So it’s okay for me to hate, because they're different, and it's wrong, and it's a sin! Wait a minute! Hate? God doesn't love them? What? Wait a minute, wait a minute. Maybe we've got our emphasis wrong.

229 mentions of fire in heaven, six mentions of fire in hell; so if your main goal in eternity is to avoid fire, then maybe hell's your better choice?

Hell will let you stay greedy, heaven won't. Hell will let you stay racist, heaven won't. Lots of fire in heaven!

If this group was smaller today, I would do this rabbinically, and I would say: somebody tell me of a scripture that talks about fire in heaven. Because there's so many of them, stuff would start going off; but the main one that come to my mind immediately is 1 Corinthians 3, where it talks about: if any person builds their foundation on the Lord Jesus Christ - right, that's a saved person, correct?

If any person builds their foundation on the Lord Jesus Christ, whether they use wood, hay and stubble, or gold, silver, costly stones, they're still on the foundation of Jesus. I like that.

In other words, whether you're rich or whether you're poor, if your foundation is Jesus, it's the same alright?

Then it says: no matter what you use to build your house, in that day it will be revealed with fire. Hang on a second - are we talking about saved people here? Yes. Are we talking about fire? Yes. Fire and saved people - does that go together? Yes.

It says: that day will reveal it with fire; and what the builder built that can remain in God's kingdom will be celebrated; but what he built that cannot remain in God's kingdom - it will be burned up. The builder himself will be saved, yet only as one escaping through the flames of heaven. Hmm…

So here's my question: if you entered into heaven today, what parts of you would survive, and what parts of you would be burned up?

I'm talking to people who've given their Saturday to study God's word right? I don't need to lead you to the Lord right? So now that you're like forgiven and "in", my question is: now that you're in, what on your life will last?

The question isn't: are you going to go to heaven; it's obvious the builder's saved, and he's saved to the end. It's not that the builder's not saved. He himself is saved, yet as only one escaping through the... flames of heaven.

Dallas Willard, the great Christian philosopher, calls that passage the Flames of Heaven. One rabbi says it this way: that the flames of heaven is God's relentless pursuit, to make you the best you can be in His kingdom, without taking your free will away.

The invitation of Jesus, and at the epistle writers, is this: whatever's on your life right now, that cannot exist in heaven, I urge you to go ahead and get it off your life now.

It might help you to understand, that in the New Testament, the word translated "judgement". When I say judgement, what images come to your mind immediately? A guy, normally a white guy, in a black robe with a wig, correct? And he's got a gavel, and he's pronouncing people guilty or not guilty. Is that not the image we get, when I say: the judgement is passed?

Any time you're reading a piece of literature, you have to ask yourself three questions: who wrote it; who was it written to; how would they have taken it, at the time?

Was that the image of judgement in the ancient Hebrew culture? The word translated judgement in the New Testament is actually an apple-farming term that means "to prune an apple tree, in order to increase fruitfulness". The word is Colossus.

In December you've got three times as many apples. You've got all these small apples, and you might think: well, if you leave them all there, you've got three times as many apples; but if you do that, there are not enough nutrients in the tree to make proper sized apples; so you would have three times as many apples, but no one would buy them. They'd be small, and they'd be soft; so what you do is you cut the excess apples off, and it drives the nutrients in the tree to the rest of the apples, which gives us proper-sized apples that we eat. That is the word colossus.

So in the ancient world, when the word colossus was used, they didn't think of a black-robe-wearing judge with a white wig and a gavel; they thought of a farmer with pruning shears. What's on you that is hurting you, and I'm going to cut that off. Think about how Jesus talks about judgment. He says: in that day I will sit as a vine dresser, and you're the vine; and whatever branches on you are not bearing good fruit - I'll cut them off. In other words, I'm going to look at your life and whatever's on your life that's hurting you - I'm going to prune it.

So think about the scripture Jesus said. In English it says: judge yourself here, so you won't be judged there. A better way to say it would be: prune yourself here, so you can avoid pruning there.

In other words, whatever's on your life that can't exist in God's good world - go ahead and get it off now - that way you avoid God pruning it off of you anyway.

That for followers of Jesus, our end goal should not be: to be forgiven. It's sort of like: phew, I'm forgiven, I'll just sit around and wait to go to heaven. That is the exact opposite of Jesus' message.

Jesus' message for His followers is this: get in line with God's kingdom today, as fast as you can, urgently. I urge you to do this. The whole world's at stake. Come on people, come on! We need to establish the kingdom of God on this earth.

Jesus died, and rose from the dead, and He came back from the dead, and how much did He talk about heaven? None! How much did He talk about hell? None! That is amazing, considering He just preached there. I find that amazing. What I find more amazing is: no one asked Him. Jesus comes back from the dead, and no one asked Him.

You guys know me. If I died today, and you came to my funeral on Wednesday, and then I showed up here next Sunday and ruined your service, how many questions would we get through before someone asks: what actually happened? No one did that, though. Jesus comes back from the dead, and no one says: hey, what's heaven like? What's hell like? I heard You preached there, how was Your altar call? How did that go? When you rose from the dead, it says: tombs emptied up everywhere - was that Your altar call? Are You going to write a book about Your 23 minutes there, and make a billion dollars? That would be awesome if You did that. NO! No one did that.

Jesus comes back from the dead, and this is their response: oh great, You're back. Are we going to take over Rome now? That's an odd response, unless they thought He was about establishing the kingdom on the earth. Jesus is not about getting a whole group of people somewhere else. Jesus is about taking what is somewhere else, and getting it to the earth, and He's entrusting us to do that.

So here's my question: if that happened tomorrow, where would you fit? You say: well I'm forgiven. Good. Good! Yes, amen - but then what? Then what? How would you go with the flames of heaven?

If you're the builder, what part of your life would suffer loss, and what part of you would be celebrated? By the way - that's a question, not a statement. I'm not looking for you to agree with me. I'm just asking the question.

There are all these images. Ever read Malachi, Chapter 2? It says: and who can stand the day of His coming? Who can stand the day of the Lord, for He will purify His people with a refiner's fire, or a launderer's soap?

By the way, these are metaphors. God is not literally setting people on fire. As a matter of fact, in Leviticus, He commands His people not to do it. So if He commands His people not to set people on fire, does it stand to reason He would keep His own rules? God is not a 10 year old boy with a lighter, a magnifying glass, and daddy-issues.

Because white people are weird - you start talking about flames and heaven, people go: whoa! Well I don't want to go there! I don't want to be set on fire - that would hurt. No, come on. The word translated fire is the word pure, p-u-r-e, pure. All forms of the word purity come from this word.

Essentially it's what the rabbi said: that the Flames of Heaven is God's relentless pursuit to make you the best you could be in God's kingdom, without taking your free will away.

In other words, there's all these images; Malachi, Chapter 2, the refiners fire. In Jeremiah he says: he will complete you, like a potter does a clay pot. Hang on, how does a potter finish a clay pot? Fires it up! Obviously a metaphor - none of you look like a pot.

Isaiah 42, he says: I will consume them with my fire, yet they will not understand it. Once again, obviously a metaphor - if you douse someone with gasoline and set them on fire, the main concern should never be: do they get what you're saying? These are metaphors! Euphemisms! Analogies!

So I started looking at this, and I wanted to be brave enough in my own life to be a disciple. I knew that if I was going to be a disciple, I had to be willing to allow heaven to be established in me today.

If you're not willing to ask this question – its okay, I don't think any less of you. I just have found that this has really changed my life, so I want to share it with you, and that is this:

Where are you allowing heaven to be established in you today; and where are you resisting it?

Only you know the answer to that, but I'm going to share the one I had the biggest problem with. I looked at the situation, and I was actually honest enough to ask myself this question, and then I asked my four closest friends: was this true about me - because they'll be honest.

I asked my four closest friends: would I sit down at a table with every tribe, tongue, and race, without having racist thoughts? They all told me: yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you could do that. I felt like I could.

I said: if I entered into an environment where I had to be honest and genuine, would I be okay? They said: Shane, we feel like you would be okay, and I felt like I'd be okay. I've got things to work out there, but I feel like I'd be okay; and then I said: well what about if account was taken on how I was using what God gave me, what do you reckon? I feel like my ratio could get better, but I feel like I'm on the right track. How do you feel? And they said: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you'd be okay.

But when I got to this one, I didn't even have to ask them. So I want to share that one with you, because if it bothered me this bad, I'm sure it would bother you, and let's just see where we stand with this. This is Revelation, Chapter 1, then we're going to look at something Jesus said okay? This is what it says:

Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne, a scroll with writing on both sides, and sealed with seven seals, and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice: who is worthy?

Now if you're taking notes, you want to note that phrase: who is worthy. The question I want to ask in this session is: are you worthy? Are you worthy?

Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scrolls? But no one in heaven - so there's people already in heaven who aren't worthy - no one on earth, nor under the earth. That pretty much covers it right? No one in heaven, or earth, or under the earth, could open the scroll, or even look inside of it.

Now let me walk you through some history here, okay. Somebody with some confidence, tell me who wrote the Book of Revelation? [John.] John. Who was ruling the world, when John wrote the Book of Revelation? Romans, the Roman Empire was ruling the world. Now look at this first verse:

Then I saw in the right of him who sat on the throne - hang on, who was sitting on the throne, when John wrote the Book of Revelation? Domitian (in real life). Domitian was the emperor who put John on the island of Patmos.

Domitian was famous for something in the Roman Empire. He said he was the son of God, which was nothing new, because all the Caesars said they were the son of God.

But the centre of the Roman Empire at his time, was a place in Ephesus called the Agora. The Agora was the centre of mercantilism for the entire empire. Anybody who was coming from the East, from India, they could come to the Agora and meet with people from Spain, and they would come together, buy and sell, and then go back to their home town - so this was the centre of mercantilism.

So the advisors to Domitian said: you ought to take advantage of this, and you ought to put a special tax on the Agora. Domitian resisted this idea, and he said: no, I'll lose my popularity with the people; but here's what I'll do.

I'll make them give an offering to me, as the son of God, for the divine privilege of having me be their leader; and he proved his son-of-God-ness by entering into Ephesus. In Ephesus, there was this huge place where all the gods were, with big columns and stuff, and what he did was he put a ceiling on top of the gods; and then on top of the ceiling, he built a statue of himself over the top of the gods.

He said: this is obvious that I'm God, because the gods didn't stop me from doing this; and I'm not only God, I'm the greatest God. He put himself over all the gods, and so in Ephesus in the Agora, whether you were coming by land from the east, or by sea from the west, the first person you saw was the statue of Domitian.

So the Jews called him: the beast who comes from land and sea. In one sect in Jerusalem, they called him the dragon; but in most places, they called him: the beast who comes from land and sea.

So he set up Ecclesias - churches. He set up Ecclesias, and he's poking fun at the Jews. What he did was, he had his mighty deeds inscribed on stone tablets, and hung in the churches. Well hang on, if you're a Jew, what was written on stone tablets, that's very important to you? The Ten Commandments. In other words he's like: you've got your stone tablets, I've got mine - and mine are more visible than yours. Yours is in a crate buried somewhere, no one can find it. How about this! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, right?

And so he put his mighty deeds on these stone tablets, and he had his underlings there; and the rule was that: before you could buy and sell in the Agora, you had to come make an offering to Domitian as the Son of God, just for the divine privilege of having the Son of God rule over you.

The problem was: how did you enforce it? How did you know who had given their offering, and who didn't? So he had his underlings there, and if you gave your offering to Domitian, you were given a mark on your forehead or your forehand, and that told the people in the Agora that you could now buy and sell.

So in 85AD, in Ephesus in the Agora, what did you have to have on your forehead or your forehand in order to buy and sell? You had to have the mark of the beast, the mark of the beast.

So Domitian was a narcissist, and obviously he built a statue of himself over the top of the Gods. So every year he had something called the Domitian Games - which is very creatively-titled to honor him - so the Domitian Games took place in the Roman coliseum; and the Roman Empire was divided into 12 regions.

Have you guys ever seen the Hunger Games? If you've seen it, it's exactly that okay; where you had 12 regions sitting in a big coliseum, and he would stand - think about the language of Revelation. He would stand before the Roman Coliseum, and he would make region one stand up, and he would say: this I have for you, but this I have against you; and this I have for you, and this I have against you.

When you walked into the coliseum, you were given a white robe and golden crowns, in order to make a giant, massive choir, to sing the praises of Domitian. They would sing the same hymn every year at the Domitian Games: Worthy are you oh Domitian, oh son of God. Worthy are you to receive honour and glory and riches and blessing. Worthy are you, oh Domitian, oh son of God. Worthy are you, to receive honor and glory and riches and blessing. They would stand and they would sing this song to honor Domitian, and they would cast down their golden crows around the feet of Domitian. Think about any movie you've ever seen about Roman Empires. When the Caesar is standing in the coliseum - what's happening? People are throwing gifts at his feet.

Then the Domitian Games would happen, and there was all this death and carnage, and hatred and terror.

The way the Domitian Games ended was the people would stand, and they would sing another song: Worthy are you oh Domitian, oh son of God - you who are worthy of honour and glory and riches and thanks.

And the final character of the Domitian Games would come out, and his job was to clean up all the dead bodies, and his name was Hell, Hades.

Hades - so think about Revelation, Chapter 4 - and I saw the new kingdom and Jesus is sitting on the throne - not Domitian. Jesus is sitting on the throne, and we're all wearing white robes, and we're casting down our golden crowns around the glassy sea, and we will sing to Him a new song.

In other words, the revelation that John has of heaven, is that Domitian's not in charge - Jesus is. It was hope for the oppressed. It was: there's a new day coming.

So Domitian, think about when you see ancient pictures of Caesars. What are they always holding in their hands? Scrolls.

Here was the rule: they would have scribes follow them around, and they would write their mighty deeds in these scrolls, and they would seal the scrolls. In order to read about the mighty deeds of Caesar, you had to be deemed worthy by Caesar to open the seal.

So John's taking a jab at Caesar here, he's saying: then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne, a scroll with writing on both sides, and sealed with seven seals.

In other words, your guy's good enough to fill up one side of a scroll; our guy is so awesome it takes both sides. Ha ha! It was sealed with seven seals!

Then he does something that's very common to the Roman Empire, he says: who is worthy to break the seals, and open the scroll? Who is worthy to get close to this king, in other words. Who is close enough to know him? Watch what the answer is:

But no one in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth could open the scroll, or even look inside of it.

So in John's initial revelation of heaven, who makes it? Nobody! In his initial revelation of heaven, he doesn't think anybody's going to make it, and watch his response:

So I wept, and I wept, because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll and look inside of it.

So hang on, so John's initial response, to knowing that no one was going to make it, was that he wept? Let me speak frankly to you. As Christians and followers of Jesus, if we ever think about someone not making it, and we lose our ability to weep over it, we've missed the point. If we ever come across like: oh yeah, they're not going to make it, and good on them, God can get them - that is not the point.

When John thought no one was going to make it, he wept, and he wept. Here's my question: have you lost your weep? Have you lost your passion for the lost? Have you taken sort of aah-whatever, and then underneath all that there's this elitism that makes this nauseating? Let's keep reading.

Then one of the elders said to me: do not weep! See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed!

Any presentation of the gospel that does not end with God getting what He wants is not the gospel. Jesus gets what He wants. He wins. The root of David has triumphed! He is able to open the scroll, and its seven seals. Questions that we need to ask ourselves:

1) If the kingdom of heaven invaded your life today, what part of you would survive, and what part would be burned up?

2) If you walked into heaven today, would you recognise it as heaven, or would you think it was hell?

3) Are Jesus' descriptions of the kingdom of heaven congruent with your life? Where would your life struggle to live in that environment today?

This is all what it means to be a disciple. Discipleship has nothing to do with: I believe in Jesus. Believing in Jesus only qualifies you to be a demon with flesh on. No, no. It's: are you LIVING it? Are you establishing that? That's a disciple - a disciple is someone actively participating with God to establish His kingdom on the earth.

Maybe the better question is this:

4) What pruning needs to take place in your life now, so that the kingdom can be established in you today?

In other words, what's holding you back? Where is heaven not already established in your heart? Now with that as the backdrop, this is the one that bothered me the most. I looked at everything Jesus said about heaven, and I realised that I had darkness in my heart on this topic. I realised there was a black spot in there as big as Australia, that I could not get away from it; and once I was brave enough to look at it with the Holy Spirit, I realised how sick I was making myself. This was nauseating to me.

Now when we look at Jesus' descriptions of heaven, all sense of worthiness will be burned up. In other words, if there's anything in you, that thinks you deserve heaven more than the other person, then that's going to get burned off of you. That's going to get burned off of you! This is how he describes heaven.

This is how he describes heaven: For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner, who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day, and sent them into his vineyard.

Okay, so it's early in the morning - let's say sunrise, 6am and he agrees to pay this group of people one denarius to work in his vineyard for today. In those days, one denarius was considered a fair day's pay, so he's being fair.

He says: at about nine in the morning, he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing; and he said: you also go work in my vineyard, and I'll pay you whatever's right.

So they went out; and he went out again at noon; and about three in the afternoon; and did the same thing at about five in the afternoon. He went out, and still found others standing around, and he asked them: why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?

Because no one has hired us they answered; and he said to them: you also go work in my vineyard - so are you following the story? 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm and 5pm he is hiring people.

The first people he said: I'll give you a denarius; then as he hired more people, he doesn't tell them what their pay is. He just says: I'll pay you whatever's right; and so the assumption is that: if a denarius is a whole day's pay, then there would be a sliding scale alright. Watch what happens.

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foremen: call the workers and pay them their wages - beginning with the last ones hired, and going on to the first.

Hang on, if you were the first one hired, how do you feel about that? He's paying the people who only worked an hour, before he pays you. You would hate that right? I mean, can I get an amen on that, like we're all in the same boat there, alright? But then you'd rationalise it, and you'd say: well that makes sense, because he's going to pay them less, so it's easier to work out their pay - because he's going to pay them less.

Watch what happens - and the workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came, and each one received a denarius. Whoa! Wait a minute! A denarius is what the people who agreed to work all day are going to be paid right, so if you'd worked from six in the morning until night, and you saw someone who only worked an hour get paid a denarius, what is your assumption? You're assumption is: you're going to get more. Well, if they got a denarius, and I worked 12 times more, there must be 12 denarius coming my way right? Watch, it doesn't work that way. Watch what happens.

So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more, but each one of them also received a denarius. Whoa! Oh - and when they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner - as you do.

These who were hired last, worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us. You have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden, and the work of the heat of the day.

So in this story, followers of the landowner are angry with the landowner, because he pays people who do less work the same wages he paid them - ooh! And I knew I wasn't okay with this.

I was just like these people, like I feel like I've worked hard for God, travelled 170,000 miles last year, spoke in 13 countries. Last year they had to do surgery on my legs, because the blood was pooling in my feet, because I was sitting in economy class too much without proper hosing, so the blood - my feet were turning colors. They had to do a $12,000 surgery on my feet, in order to reroute the blood in my feet, to get back up to my heart properly - and you taught Sunday School, ooh!

Oh, you work in the parking lot - ooh! You come to church twice a month, ooh! And I realised that there was something in me that really believed that I deserved more of heaven than you - because I was working harder than you. That is a horrifically dark spot that I knew I had to deal with. I knew that I was the same as these guys. How about you?

Is there anybody that you can think of right now, that you believe you deserve heaven more than them? What if they're not like you? Is there any group of people, that you think you deserve heaven more than them?

See in heaven, no one's worthy, so everybody's there by grace; so if we start comparing who's better, we're just comparing levels of unworthiness, and that's just silly. Is this getting to anybody yet? Are we dealing with something here?

Check this out: but he answered one of them; and said: am I not being fair to you friend? Like, Jesus isn't mad at him; He's like: you're my friend. I don't understand your complaint though. Didn't you agree to work for denarius? It's like, he's confused. He's like: look, I don't understand. You said you'd work for a denarius, and I gave you a denarius, and now you're upset? What's the matter?

And what's the obvious answer? Well you paid them more, and Jesus is like - watch what happens - He says: take your pay and go. I love this - I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. In other words, why are you paying them more than us? Just 'coz I want to. Why are you paying the same as us? We've borne all the work in the head of the day, why are you doing that? I just feel like it.

In other words sometimes God doesn't have to explain Himself. We love for God to explain Himself, but we have to own the fact that sometimes He just won't.

God, why did you give someone with that much character flaw, so much gifting? Oh, I just wanted to. Why are you paying them the same as us? Just felt like it. Watch what He does - and in true rabbinical style, He ends this story with two questions that are so relevant to us:

1) Don't I have the right to do what I want to do with my own money?

2) Or, are you envious because I'm generous?

In other words, Jesus says: I can only see two conclusions here; you have a problem, that I paid someone that you think works less than you. I'm giving them the same wages I'm giving you - and you have a problem with that; and the only possible reason that you have a problem with that, is that you really don't believe I can do what I want to do. If that's not your problem, then you're envious, because I'm generous. Need I remind you, that none of you were worthy to work for me to begin with; so whatever you got was by grace anyhow?

So let's deal with these two questions: 1) Can God do what He likes; or does He have to run it by you first? Could I get an amen, that He could do what He likes at least? [Amen!]

Alright, so your problem isn't that God can't do what He wants - although I think you might have a problem with lots of what Jesus did. I'm convinced no Christian today would have followed Jesus back in His day - He was too radical. I'll give you a couple of examples, like there was this one time, where there's this prostitute, and Jesus is speaking to her - problem one.

Jesus is talking to this prostitute, and this prostitute is so moved by the compassion of Jesus, that she kneels down and washes His feet with her hair. Remember the story? And what does Jesus say to her? You're sins are forgiven! Is Jesus allowed to do that? She didn't pray the prayer. She didn't ask Jesus in her heart. She didn't believe in her heart and confess with her mouth - and Jesus forgives her sin. Is He allowed?

What if you had been there, and He asked your advice, what would you have said? What if He'd have turned to you, and this lady's washing His feet, and He would have said: man, what do you reckon I do with her? I don't know Jesus, what do you reckon? I think I'm going to forgive all of her sins. Would you have said: well Jesus, it's your world, do what you like; or would you be the person giving Jesus all the scriptures as to why He can't forgive her without a sacrifice, or a sinner's prayer, or something else?

Because if you're number two - you're annoying, right? Can Jesus not do what He likes? Is He allowed to forgive someone's sin, because she washed His feet with her hair? Is He allowed - because He did. Or is He a heretic?

Aren't you glad that's not the rule, right; like can you imagine meeting her one day sir; her saying: how did you meet the risen Christ? You say: I came to Bay City Outreach Centre, and God moved on my heart, and at the end of the service the pastor gave me an opportunity to respond to Jesus, and I prayed a prayer and asked Jesus in my heart, and it changed my life forever. It's the greatest thing I ever did - ever. How would you feel if she looked at you and went: what? You didn't wash His feet with your hair? Oh no, I'm in, you're out; I'm right, you're wrong. I mean with all respect to all of you - for you to wash his feet with your hair, you'd have to be turned upside down and used like a buffer. Is Jesus allowed?

Hey, like there's this one time Jesus has this encounter with this guy in a tree, and he says: Zacchaeus, I think I want to eat with you. Zacchaeus is so moved with the compassion of Jesus, that he says: look, I'll give half of what I have to the poor, and Jesus says: that's it, salvation has come to your house! Whoa! Is Jesus allowed? Oooh! He hadn't done anything, except for to express that he was going to give half what he had to the poor. Can you get saved that way? Are you allowed? Is Jesus allowed?

And what if you could have been there and He asked your advice. What if there was this guy up a tree and this happened, and He turned to you and said: hey, what do you reckon I do with this guy? I don't know Jesus, what do you reckon? I think I'm going to call him saved, but I'm not just going to call him saved, I'm going to call everybody in his house saved. Would you have said: um, oh, well that doesn't make sense to me, but it's your world Jesus, and You could do what You like; or would you be the person giving all the verses as to why Jesus can't do something?

Can I not do what I want to do, with my own money? There was this one time - is Jesus allowed to do what He wants? Do I still get an amen on that? [Amen.] Or are we questioning ourselves now? Oh good.

There's this one time Jesus is having a particularly bad day, and He ended up nailed to a cross right - pretty bad day right? I know, you think your day is stressful, but not much compared to that. Jesus finds Himself nailed to a cross, it's a pretty stressful day, and He still finds Himself thinking about other people. He's still up on the cross going: oh, forgive them. Yes, forgive them - and then there's this guy on a cross next to Him, that's having an equally bad day; and I don't know what you know about crucifixion, but it's very difficult to breathe. He looks at Jesus, and he says: um, ah, please remember me? And what does Jesus say? Well Bo, you better hurry up and say the sinner's prayer, or they're not going to think your saved in 2013. No! What does Jesus say? He says: today you will be with me - in paradise. Hold on, where did Jesus go that day? Hell - so is heaven and hell in the same room? Umm, is Jesus allowed? What if you had been there?

What if Jesus was hanging on the cross, and this guy says: please remember me? Jesus says: hey, what do you reckon I do with that? You go: I don't know Jesus, what do you reckon? I reckon we're going to call him in, how about that? Would you have said: well Jesus, this is Your world, do what You want; or would you be the person giving Him all the scriptures as to why He can't let the guy in - because Romans 10, 9 and 10 clearly says: you have to believe in your heart, and confess with your mouth! Is Jesus allowed to call that guy in, just on a request: please remember me? Is Jesus allowed? Don't I have the right to do what I want to do, with my own money? Could Jesus do what He likes? Everybody instantly says: yes; but hang on, would you be okay with that?

My personal favorite, there's this one time Jesus was preaching, and it says: the house was full, and there was a paralysed guy outside and couldn't get in, so his friends took him to the roof of the house, and took the roof off.

Now I was wrong about this: I used to picture like a straw roof, and they would cut a hole in it - that's actually not true. I had a history expert from Israel correct me on this. He said: in that region, because of the climate, they had to have stone roofs; and so to remove the roof of the house would have required moving an entire slab of stone. That's why it would have taken all four of them, and so they removed this entire slab of stone, and they lower the guy in. It's one of the most chaotic scenes in Jesus' whole ministry. They lower him in from the roof of the house; and it says this: and Jesus saw the faith of his friends, and proclaimed his sins forgiven. Is Jesus allowed? And what if you were there? What if He asked your advice: hey, what do you reckon I do with this? I don't know Jesus, what do You reckon? I think I'm going to forgive his sins. But Jesus, he has no faith! I know, but his friends have faith, we'll count that.

Would you be saved today if you lived back then; or would you have ran from Jesus - because He's not allowed? Is Jesus allowed to do what He likes?

You say: Shane, what do you do with that scripture? I don't know, but I do know this: if you're a mum, and you're believing for your unbelieving children - you keep doing that. Jesus sees that stuff somehow. A later writer said it this way: The faith of a saved wife, can save her unbelieving husband. Do we believe that? Was Paul allowed to write that? Would Paul be allowed to preach in churches, if he said that? What do you do with that? I don't know.

Somebody asked me: so Shane are you saying you can go to heaven if you marry the right woman? My answer is this: I have no idea. Who goes to heaven, and who goes to hell, is outside my pay grade. What I do know, is that if you marry the wrong one, you will live in hell today! Like really past the far depths of it!

Is Jesus allowed? Can I not do what I want to do with my own money? We have to deal with this belief system. Any belief system in us that says: God has to conform to the way we see things, has to die, for heaven to be established. Can Jesus not do what He wants to do?

Hey, my personal favourite: there's a rich guy. Any time a story in the Bible starts there's a certain rich guy, with no name - it ends poorly right. There's a rich guy, and this rich guy came to Jesus and said: what must I do to inherit eternal life? Remember? What does Jesus tell him?

Well buddy, you've got to ask me in your heart - everybody knows that. There's this prayer you've got to pray, and you've got to ask me into your heart, to be your Lord and savior - that's where eternal life comes from. Is that what Jesus says to him? No. Somebody tell me loud with confidence, what does Jesus say to the guy?

Sell what you have, give it the poor, and eternal life will be yours! Woo-hoo! Is Jesus allowed to say that; or is Jesus a heretic too? And what would happen if someone preached that?

What would happen if, on a big enough stage, someone said: it's possible to inherit eternal life, by selling what you have, and giving it to the poor? What would happen to that guy? What would he be called? Heretic! There'd be websites dedicated to his honor!

So how far has Christianity come from Christ, that a direct quote from Christ is now heresy? Is Jesus allowed? Is someone responding to Jesus by being generous - is that not appropriate? Is someone responding to Jesus by washing His feet with their hair - is that not appropriate? Is someone responding to Jesus by going: please remember me; is that not appropriate? They all respond to Jesus, but they respond to Jesus their way.

See people like to say: Jesus is the ONLY way, Shane, Jesus is the ONLY way. Is that true? Is that okay to say that? Yes, that's okay to say that. I'm not tricking you people, like I don't know; like yes, of course that's okay to say that - probably not with that face... but - yeah, don't say it with that face. It's ugly, don't do that, but Jesus is the only way. But there's a big difference between saying: Jesus is the only way; and saying: my way to Jesus, is the only way to Jesus. That's two very different things. Does everybody have to get saved like you?

What if there was a 17 year old Mongolian kid, who was taking a nature walk, and that day he sees a river flowing into a stream. He looks at it, and something goes off in his heart; and he looks at the sky, and he says: whoever made this - I can't wait to meet you one day. I think You're amazing, and anything I can do to meet You - I would love to; because I'm assuming You're the same guy made the stars and the trees, and I just find You fascinating.

What if that 17 year old Mongolian kid dies early, and he meets Jesus, and Jesus says: hi, I'm the way. The Mongolian kid says: are You the guy that made the river? Yeah, that was Me. You're amazing! I am so glad to meet You, let's have dinner, let's have some coffee, I've got tons of questions to ask You. I find You fascinating! The stars too? Yep. Trees? Yepper, that was Me. Oh great! When do we get to have coffee? This is going to be fantastic!

What is Jesus' response to him? Is it: yeah, but did you pray the prayer? Prayer, what prayer? Oh, I know, I sent Baptist missionaries to your village, but unfortunately their car broke down on the way there, and you didn't - please tell me you said the prayer before you died? Oh no, I didn't know, whatever, I'll do whatever You want me to do now.

Oh unfortunately, it's just too late - there's this torture chamber I've built for most people, and you're just going to have to go in there, because you have to. Really? Really? Really?

Is the Mongolian kid's response to God just as valid as yours? He's doing it with the light he's been given, are you kidding me? Is God allowed to do what He likes?

What they believed in Jesus' day was: one sacrifice, per family, per year. That's what gave you forgiveness. Jesus shows up and says: one sacrifice, for the whole world, for all time. How many of you were here last year when I preached a message called The Goat Has Left the Building? Yeah, okay, that was the one sacrifice, per family, per year; so Jesus comes in and goes: ah no, don't worry about that, we'll just do one sacrifice for the whole world for all time. That'll do it, that'll be good. Would you have followed Him, or would you have run from Him?

Jesus is amazing. I find Jesus so amazing, and to be a disciple of just Jesus requires us to have views of God that are bigger than what we thought. Maybe, just maybe God is nicer than what you think.

So two questions: one, does God have the right to do what He wants to do? Can I get an amen on that? [Amen!] Alright, so if we've established God can do what he likes, then our problem must be number two: are we envious because He's generous?

N if you don't believe God can do anything He wants, then keep working on number one; but if you believe God can do anything He wants, and you have a problem with God giving others the same wages He gives you, even though they've done less work, then the problem is that we are envious because He's generous.

What about - and this is where I had to stop, because I firmly believe God can do what He likes; like I have no trouble with God saving a Mongolian kid through a vision in a star. I have no problem with that at all, and here's why: I just think God does that, number one.

Number two, there's this passage in 1 Corinthians, it's either 1 or 2 Corinthians, Chapter 10; Paul is telling the story of the Exodus to Corinthian people, and he says: there's this one time where Moses got water out of a rock, and the rock was Jesus Christ. So is there ever a moment where Jesus can take the form of a rock in the desert? And if He can take the form of a rock in a desert, what else could He take the form of?

I have no trouble with God appearing to people. I have no trouble with God working in the hearts of people. I have no trouble with Him doing it outside the Bible. In some ways, I think that might be easier. I'm serious, there's no bias, there's no - you have a vision of a heavenly being, it's a bit more compelling than an intellectual argument. I have no trouble with that at all.

Oh, you want to hear something cool that I experienced recently? I don't have my iPhone but trust me, I have it on a picture. I went to the Smithsonian Institute, and in the Museum of Natural History they have a mummy exhibit.

What they explained to us, was that in those days in Egypt, that they believed that if you died for instance - and let's say that we were your pastors - that we were supposed to write what kind of life you lived, on the inside of your coffin; and on the other side God would open your sarcophagus - we'll just say coffin, because sarcophagus is just ridiculously long to say.

So God would open your coffin, and He would read what your life was like, and go: okay, you're alright; or okay, you're not; and so it was based on what we wrote about you, right? And so then we were held accountable by God to being honest, because if He lets a jerk into heaven - that would just be terrible right?

This is how primitive their view of God was right; and so they have a preserved mummy's tomb there from 2200BC, from a town called Giza. Of course they write it all - on the inside of the sarcophagus, there's all these hieroglyphics about what his life was like. So they had a hieroglyphics expert translate it, and this is what it says.

Now you guys know Matthew 25 right - for when I was hungry you get - okay, right. This is what it said. By the way, 2200BC, this is before the Torah, this is before Abraham, or any of them came to Egypt. This is before all that. This is what it said:

I said, and repeated good things; I said what was just, I did what was just. I gave food to the hungry, and clothing to the naked, and I sought to restore dignity to all those who don't have it. I was kind to my mother, and respectful to my father. I did not speak with a malicious tone to anyone, because I desired to be a person of good character, so that I would be noticed by the one true God, and by people, forever.

What! Where'd he get that? Oh wait, there's more. Check this out:

I said and repeated good things. I said what was just, I did what was just. I gave food to the hungry, clothing to the naked. I restored dignity to the broken. I was kind to my mother, I was respectful to my father. I never said anything with malice intent towards anyone, because I desired to be a person of good character, so that I would be noticed by the one true God and by people forever.

How did ancient Egyptians write? Hieroglyphics. Do you know what the picture to “say and repeat good things” is in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics? It's a head under a cross!

It means: to say and repeat good things; so I asked the hieroglyphics person, I said: what is this? He said: oh, the symbol to say and repeat good things, is: to submit your thinking to a higher authority of the cross!

It was before the Roman Empire, there was no cross! Where did he get that? Where did they get that? So I asked the guy there, I said: where did they get this? There's no Roman Empire! He said: maybe God meant what He said, when He said He was writing His ways on the hearts of men. Maybe God doesn't need your help?

So in 2200BC, there's this guy that died, and on the inside of his coffin he had written, that he submitted his thinking to the authority of the cross. Does anybody want to make a case that he's burning in hell today? Is God allowed? Maybe God's been at work in the hearts of people for a long, long time. Can God do what He likes? Yes!

I had no problem with God doing what He liked; so if I have a problem with God giving the same pay to people who've done less work, my problem must be number two: are you envious because I'm generous? What, about the generosity of God, threatens me?

I always find it amazing when I talk to groups of Christians who're convinced they're in; so I've got a group of people, all of you would think you're in right - like when you die, you're going to heaven, correct? Everybody will think they're in? Okay, good. So I agree. I'm with you. Amen right. But I'm always intrigued when I preach in front of a group of people, who all think they're in, that if I make God nicer than they think, they're threatened by that.

If you already think you're in, and I make God nicer than you thought, does that not just further solidify you're in-ness? Why would you be mad about that? There must be something in you, that doesn't like the thought that God's going to treat other people just as nice as He's treating you, because something inside of you thinks you deserve it more.

Are you envious because God is generous? See there's two flip-sides to this; heaven is beautiful, and here's why. Here's one of the things about heaven that's so beautiful:

Heaven delivers me from the notion that I have to outdo Mother Theresa to make it.

Right? Like heaven, the environment Jesus describes of heaven is: it frees me from the notion, that I have to outdo Mother Therese to make it; but it also forces me to give grace to people who haven't done as much as me.

If you get your worth by looking left and right, you're going to always find that there's someone who's done more than you, and that there's someone who's done less than you.

Jesus says: that's not heaven. In heaven, heaven is an environment where everybody realises they're not worthy, and they get all their worth from the one in the centre.

I realised - this part of heaven is not established in my heart. I still was on a hierarchy, so are you envious because God's generous?

Are You Worthy (2 of 2) (Shane Willard)

Sat 16 Mar 2013 PM  « Back to Top

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Grace, by definition, isn't fair. Heaven consumes in flames any ideas of rank. To avoid the flames of heaven, we have to die to the idea that God must be fair. If heaven invaded your life today, who would you have to accept, that you now see as unacceptable? Jesus described heaven as tormenting to those who don't forgive. Jesus is at the centre, and everybody's equidistant around Him, because no one was worthy to begin with. There's always someone that's done less than me, but Heaven includes us all in a circle.

Heaven is not created by the exclusion of imperfect people, but by the inclusion of imperfect people - by grace cleaning them up, purifying them with the flames of heaven. If heaven invaded our life today, we would be overwhelmed with how much it's not about us, and not care where we ranked; we would simply be overwhelmed with God's presence. Why not let that part of heaven be established in you right now?

I want to give you stuff that is much more deeper food-for-thought okay? On the way out today, if you'll stop by the table, you can get this full discussion in my series: The Flames of Heaven. You can also - the follow up to this is in my series called Winning at Life, where I talk about how to develop a sense of worth. Once again all that goes to our main mission in the world, which is to take care of the poor, so just check all that stuff out.

Alright, so let's ask ourselves these questions: Are you envious because God is generous? If you have a problem with God giving someone the same wage as you, even though you don't think they deserve it as much as you, then there's two options: 1) you don't believe God can do what He wants to do; or 2) you have an envy problem. Who was the famous fellow, he said that all atrocities in the world are birthed out of human envy? Or you have an envy problem.

Let's ask it a few ways: if you hear someone talk about the generosity of God - do you get angry? Would you rather hear a message on God judging people? Of course any message I've ever heard on judgement includes the imagery of a white guy with a black robe and a white wig - not a farmer with pruning shears, so what is that? If you hear someone talk about the generosity of God - do you get angry? To avoid the flames of heaven, we have to die to the idea that God must be fair. Grace, by definition, isn't fair. Let's say it this way: heaven consumes in flames any ideas of rank. Heaven consumes in flames any idea around rank.

We're going to get to that in a second okay, but let me just ask you simply this question: how much money, energy, resources, and time have you spent trying to be 'er? Richer, smarter, thinner, faster? How much time, energy, resources have you spent trying to keep up, trying to rank better? Is the motive of your Christian service to rank better in heaven? You know what we used to be taught, is that in heaven, God pays people different; and we're going to talk about that tomorrow by the way. I'm going to handle the other side of this, about what you bury and what you use, and how it's important to do that.

I'm not talking about method - you should be doing things to establish the kingdom; but if the motive of your heart is for God to like you better, now you're entering into witchcraft, this subtle sort of thing. Heaven consumes rank, it frees you. Do you know that last year, Europeans spent $11 billion on cosmetics? $11 billion trying to be prettier - did it work? Do you feel better about yourself? Of the $11 billion, $3 billion were spent by men - what are you doing? That surely isn't working! There are now whole sections in department stores for men's cosmetics. What is wrong with us? You know $11 billion would put clean water and sewer in the whole world? What are we doing? What are we doing? Are you trying to rank better? Heaven, if heaven invaded your life tomorrow, it wouldn't matter how well you rank. You would just be overwhelmed with God's presence - but there's something about no one being worthy, and all of a sudden you're consumed with the presence of this ultra loving God who lets you in anyway. It doesn't matter who's righter, it just matters that you're there.

Can you imagine standing around Jesus in heaven and someone having the gall to go hey this is all great and all but I can't wait to ask Him who was right and who was wrong between me and you? [Laughter] No, it just won't matter - which leads me to this question. Is there any place in your life where you've lost the privilege of being overwhelmed with God's presence at the expense of being right? Is there anywhere in your life that you've lost the privilege of being overwhelmed with God at the altar of [unclear 00.04.55]? Let me ask it this way. Would you rather see someone healed or would you rather understand healing? I'd rather see someone healed, I don't really care how He does it really. Remember there was this story in Luke, Chapter 9, where the disciples say Jesus, we saw a man casting devils out of people and we tried to stop him because he wasn't doing like we do. Now hang on a second, in my experience the less devils the better right? So if you're getting devils out of people do whatever you want to do, I mean that's fantastic. That's fantastic.

Would you rather see someone delivered of a devil; or would you rather understand all the ways that deliverance works? Would you rather see deliverance, or would you rather understand it? Both would be nice, but you'd rather see it. Sometimes we lose our privilege of being overwhelmed, because we have to figure it all out. A great example of this, is a great magician. I was in Las Vegas, and I went and saw Penn and Teller. Penn and Teller are ridiculous! Here was their first trick. This is how they warmed the crowd up okay. I just thought it was icebreaker for the crowd. They come out on the stage, they throw ping pong balls into the thing. Obviously one is marked. Somebody gets the marked ping pong ball, some random person. They said: sir, do you have a cell phone? Yes, I do. Would you come up? Have you ever met us before? No. So you testify to all these people you've never met us before? Yes, absolutely. Alright, so you have a cell phone? Yes, I do. Can we see it? Yes. Alright, put it back in your pocket.

Then what they do is, they talk to him, and in the course of talking to him, they pick his pocket; and I thought that was the whole thing, because people were still walking in. I just thought it was like, we're having a laugh at this guy's expense, and they're doing it in a hilarious way right - like they are making a fool of this guy in just a hilarious way. Like it's less than a minute. Forty seconds later, they say: where's your phone? He said: oh, and so he can't find his phone, and so they say your whole job in life was to bring your phone, and you've lost your phone right? Of course he's going: well I - and so I thought that was the whole joke. I thought that was the whole thing. They said: my goodness, do you have a friend? Yes, I have a friend. Where's your friend? Sir, would you - do you have a phone? Yes. Would you call the guy please? Yes. So the guy picks up his phone, rings the guy's number. A box underneath a seat in the 25th row starts ringing. They say: oh, there's a box ringing, bring it up here, because they're not going to go get it, so they pass the box up. So everyone in the audience handles this box, so you could see it's a real box right.

They handle it all the way up. It's a Styrofoam box that's taped shut. They take a camera, and put it on the box, and put it on the big screen. They take a knife and cut open the box. Inside that box was a block of ice, with a fish frozen solid inside the block of ice. They took a hammer and broke the ice. They had the guy call the phone again, the fish was ringing. They took a knife, they cut the head off the fish, and pulled the guy's phone out of the frozen fish. All this took place in two minutes - so I sat there and went YEAH! That's awesome! But there were people around me, who lost the privilege of being overwhelmed at a skill very well-practised, because they had to know how that happened. How did that happen? Who cares how that happened, that was - did you see - that was brilliant. That was unbelievable! That was awesome!

And Penn Jillette is the most vocal about: there's no such thing as spiritual power; like he says: anybody in Vegas claiming to have true spiritual power is a criminal.He said: these are well-contrived, well-practiced illusions, that we have practiced hours and hours and hours on, over 38 years, so we don't get caught. If we showed you how we did it, you wouldn't be that amazed. The amazing part is not how we did it; it's that we don't get caught doing it.

So I thought yeah, yes; but there were people around me who kept saying: how did they do that fish thing? I'm like, I don't know how they did the fish thing, but I'm not going to lose my privilege of being overwhelmed with what they just did, at the expense of needing to know how they did it. And all night long they did stuff like that; and the people around me were like: how did they do that? I'm like who cares! Did you see? That's amazing! I think we need to be more like that with God. We see someone delivered of demons, and instead of having a theological discussion on how that happened, why can't we just go: oh, thank God they're delivered of seven demons! That is awesome!

You see someone healed miraculously, and instead of sitting around having theological discussions on how did that happen; why can't we just go: that guy was sick, and now he's made whole - that's amazing! That's amazing! Have we ever lost our privilege of being overwhelmed with God, at the expense of having to be right, and figure it all out? If He's God - anybody know what the second commandment is? The second commandment, what is it? Go ahead. Don't have idols. Is that all it says? No. It does say: don't bow down to idols, very good; but it also says: and don't make any image of Me. In other words: don't bow down to them, and don't make any image of Me. Essentially, the way the rabbis teach it is this: if you can think it up, it's not God. If you can conceive it, it's not God - it's not.

If I drew a circle on the whiteboard, and that circle represented everything that can be known about God, and I handed you a pen and I said: what percentage of the circle do you know, how much would it be? A dot? Right, can I get an amen on that? So how is it possible, that a group of people who would readily admit that all we know is a dot, would get adamant about anything? You've just admitted, all you know is a dot, and you're adamant? About what, your dot? God's infinitely bigger than your concept of Him, and if we ever lose the privilege of being overwhelmed with what He is, at the expense of being right about who He is, then that is bad - that's flames of heaven stuff - it's worthiness.

Let's ask a couple more practical questions, here we go. Are you at risk of walking out of heaven, because those people can't be there? Is there anybody, if you saw them in heaven, you would be convinced you were in hell, and you would walk away? I could tell you, when my granddad got to heaven, and saw black people at the table - he struggled. He probably thought he was in hell! He probably thought: the preacher was a liar man, he told me I'd avoid places like this. In my granddad's concept of hell and heaven - heaven's full of white people. There's like a white people section. Let's ask it this way: if heaven invaded your life today, who would you have to accept, that you now see as unacceptable? Maybe there's someone in the church that you just always have problems with, and Jesus is inviting you to go ahead and accept him now, flaws and all, because heaven - they're going to be there. You're going to have to eat a meal with them at some point, so why not now? If you're going to have to do it some day, why not now?

Here's one of John's revelations in heaven, and don't forget Domitian when I read this okay? Don't forget all that stuff I did on Domitian. Surrounding the throne were 4 and 20 other thrones, and seated on them were 4 and 20 elders. They were dressed in white, and had crows of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumbles and peals of thunder. And in front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing (a menorah). In front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing - these are the seven spirits of God. Remember what the seven spirits of God are? Wisdom, understanding, counsel, power, knowledge, fear of the Lord - it's the menorah. The middle candle is the servant. No anointing lights, without the heart of a servant. Wisdom, and the anointings of God, have to be tempered: wisdom, understanding, counsel, power, knowledge, fear of the Lord. If you have wisdom without the fear of the Lord - you're a jerk. If you have knowledge without understanding - you're useless. If you have power without counsel - you're mean. They're tempered with the heart of a servant; and also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. So in this vision of heaven, where is Jesus? He's in the centre, and everyone is sitting around Him. So then we can say it this way, that heaven challenges this notion of God: that Jesus is at the top of a pyramid, and everyone's fighting to rank the best, so that they get the closest to Him.

Heaven challenges this notion of God. Embrace this notion of God: that Jesus is at the centre, and everybody's equidistant around Him, because no one was worthy to begin with. Heaven forces us to start with the starting point that says: no one's worthy anyway, and so if I think I'm more worthy than you, I'm just simply comparing levels of unworthiness, and that's just silly. Heaven is so full of grace, that a bunch of unworthy people - see in Jesus' notion of heaven, heaven is not created by the exclusion of imperfect people. Heaven is created by the inclusion of imperfect people and by grace cleaning them up and purifying them with the flames of heaven. The flames of heaven is not judgement, not in the way we see it. The flames of heaven is grace. The flames of heaven is pruning. The flames of heaven is God's relentless pursuit, to make you the best you can be in God's kingdom, without taking your free will away.

Maybe we could say it this way. Look at this, Mark, Chapter 10. It says: then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him. Teacher, they said, we want You to do for us whatever we ask - which is a very loaded question - it's like they were 10 years old. What do you want Me to do for you, He asked, and they replied: let one of us sit at Your right, and the other sit at Your left. In other words, in their concept, they were still struggling with the fact that God wasn't at the top of the heap, to get there. They were struggling with that thought. Now where in human history do you see this concept of government? Everywhere; Caesars. You wanted to get the closest to them, because the closest to them had the power. They knew Jesus was going to establish a kingdom; where? In heaven? No. On the earth; and they say: if you take over Rome, can we be the guys sitting closest to You? Jesus is like: no, no, no, that's not what My kingdom looks like. My kingdom looks like this, and you're just going to have to deal with that. We're going to do away with rank - and if you're honest, all attempts in your life to rank better have caused you pain anyway. Why not do away with it? What are you trying to do? You want to keep the pressure of being prettier, thinner, smarter, richer? You want to keep all that? No, let's do away with that.

See, heaven delivers me from the notion that I have to outdo anyone, to be okay with God, but it also makes me treat someone who hasn't outdone me with grace because there's always somebody that's done more than me. There's always someone that's done less than me. Heaven includes us all in a circle. They replied: let one of us sit at Your right, and the other at Your left, in Your glory. Have you ever had someone ask you a question, and then make it about something that it wasn't? What about this question has anything to do with the glory of God? Nothing, this is about the glory of James and John. You don't know what you're asking! Can you drink of the cup I drink, or be baptised with the baptism I'm baptised with? I love the fact that Jesus' disciples, who walked and talked with Him - they struggled with this too. It makes me feel a little better. As a matter of fact, particularly Peter and John, they had this competition going, as to who could expose the other ones faults better. I'll give you an example.

Who cut off the servant of the high priest's ear, when they came to arrest Jesus? Who did that? How do you know that? Matthew, Mark and Luke say a certain companion of Jesus - John. Matthew, Mark and Luke say: oh, one of Jesus' friends cut off the servant of the high priest's ear; John's like: it was Peter man! Throw that mug under the bus. It was Peter - and then if you think about it, in John 21, John throws in this stab at Peter that's very subtle. It says: so Jesus cooked Peter breakfast over a fire of burning coals. When was the last time Peter stood over a fire of burning coals? When he denied him, so at Peter's restoration, John subtly recreates the denial - like John's grrr.

Maybe we could ask ourselves a few questions: if heaven invaded our life today, we would be overwhelmed with how much it's not about us. Is there any place we're sitting in the wrong chair? Is there any place you're sitting in the centre? Is there any place you're obsessed with how well you rank? How much energy do we spend trying to rank properly? How much energy do we spend trying to rank properly? We ask ourselves: am I thin enough, smart enough, tall enough, rich enough, fast enough, social enough? Do I own enough? How much energy do we spend comparing rank? How much energy do we spend trying to be richer, smarter, skinnier, happier, hipper, prettier, taller, shorter, thinner, bigger, important-er, talented-er? Are we stuck in the land of 'er? Heaven delivers us from that. Heaven delivers - the problem with 'er, is that there's always an 'est. There's always someone who has more. You'll never get to the end, ever. Heaven delivers us from that.

How does this notion translate into how we see God? If heaven invaded us today, we would not care where we ranked; we would be overwhelmed with God's presence. And Jesus' calling is to allow heaven to be established where? In you, right now. So if you were in heaven you wouldn't care how you rank, you'd be overwhelmed with God's presence. Why aren't we just being overwhelmed with God's presence, and ceasing to care with how we rank today? What's stopping us? Why not let that part of heaven be established in you right now? What has it done for you lately anyway? It causes a lot of strife and division, and agony and arguing.

16,900 children are going to die today of starvation, and Christians are arguing about verses. What!

How about this: how easily are we offended? Jesus described heaven as: tormenting to those who don't forgive. That makes a lot of sense. If you're forced to eat at the same table, and watch someone get the same wage you did, and you won't forgive them - that's going to be tormenting. Oh by the way, the word translated torment there, is the word basanizo. It just simply means "to test the purity of something". It's a touchstone - if you were selling me gold in the First Century, and I wasn't sure if you were being honest, then I would take the gold, and I would rub it against a touchstone to see if it was pure. So when the word - I don't know where they got torment from. It just simply means: they'll be purified - they'll be rubbed up against the touchstone, until they come up pure. In other words: there's things, until you deal with it, it's going to keep coming back on you. That's so true, so true.

Five, where have we abandoned the dignity of others, in the central nature of the throne, in the name of ego? Where's Jesus not in the centre? Where's Jesus not in the centre? Maybe we could say it this way: if heaven invaded our lives, we would not be impressed with any of our righteousness - no one would be worthy. We would simply be overwhelmed with God.

We're talking about discipleship today - as a disciple of Jesus Christ, your biggest calling and opportunity is to allow heaven to be established in you right now. In heaven, you will not care who was righter; you will only care about being overwhelmed with the presence of God. My invitation to you today, is to allow that to be true now. Why not? Jesus' invitation was allow heaven to be established in you now. If that's the way it's going to be in heaven, why not make it true now, and let this world reflect what heaven is? Can I get an amen on that?

Be the Salt and Light (Shane Willard)

Sun 17 Mar 2013 AM  « Back to Top

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There are 6 mentions of fire in hell, but 229 mentions of fire in heaven! If you walked into heaven tomorrow, what parts of you would be burned up? 15 of 18 of Jesus mentions of hell, was about us, here, now. It's about: what are you bringing to the earth? How's your lust problem? How's your anger problem? Do you call people fools? How is fear of man instead of fear of God? What are you bringing to the earth?

Revelation 21:1, this is the end of the Bible. It always helps, if you want to get a good picture as to what the whole book is about, it always helps to read the beginning and the end, so here's the end.

This is what it says: And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And the sea no longer is. The sea, in ancient Jewish literature, is a euphemism for unbelief; so essentially its saying: finally everybody's on the same page. Nobody's sitting around arguing about who's right and who's wrong. This is finally, finally everybody's come together here, the sea no longer is. And I, John, saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.

So at the end of the Bible, who's going up to heaven? No one, no one! I get so concerned with everybody, we just can't wait to get to heaven, we just can't wait to get there, and the idea is we're going up; oh we can't wait to go up! God's idea is: He's coming down; and I'm scared that people are going to pass in the middle you know?

Let me be very clear about this okay? I'm going to say this very slow, because I want to be very clear. When Jesus talked about heaven, He talked about heaven as a present reality, as well as a future reality. Let's say it this way; heaven is true here, and it is occupied with people. Heaven is true there, and it is occupied with people.

Hell, when Jesus talked about hell, Jesus only said the word hell 18 times; 15 of the 18 was talking about hell being a present reality today, three of the 18 was about hell being a future reality later, okay? So let's be clear about this: Heaven is true here, and it is occupied. Heaven is true there, and it is occupied. Hell is true here, and it is most certainly occupied. Hell is true there, and it is occupied as well; but the primary emphasis of Jesus' teachings was not how to go to heaven someday. His teachings were primary the emphasis was: hey, how can we take whatever's in heaven, and bring it right here to the earth?

The issue is, why would you wait to go to heaven, when there is a clear opportunity to allow heaven to be established right here, now, today? The end of the story is that heaven is coming down, and God is going to be people's God, and they will be His people. Everyone's going to be on the same page, and we hold to that blessed hope. In Revelation 21, the picture you get is: everything in heaven is coming to the earth.

Here's my question. If that happened tomorrow, would you be okay? Do reckon you'd like heaven? Be very careful before you answer that; before you answer that, at least go back and read everything Jesus said about heaven, and ask yourself: would you enjoy it?

Like for instance, Jesus said that: in heaven, all the secret conversations of your heart will be revealed for all to see. Ho ho! You want to go there? So if, right now you're thinking: what an idiot, it would be on a billboard over your head! So if your lifestyle is dodgy, and manipulative, and secretive, you're going to find heaven very challenging.

What if you're a racist? What if you know a racist, because there wouldn't be any racism in New Zealand right? So what if you know a racist, and let's say this racist has two minutes to live, and he's in the hospital; and so we send a white person to go lead him to the Lord right, because you can't send Sargin for goodness sake, the guy's a racist right? So as Sargin walks in he's like: get OUT! You know, so we send Mike or myself or Ian, we're all the right colour you know.

So we walk in there, we say look, you've got two minutes to live mate, seriously. I urge you please, I urge you to sort things out with Jesus, right now; and the racist goes: I think you're right, will you please help me? Please help me. This guy with all sincerity prays some sort of prayer, which says something like: Lord Jesus, I have stuffed my life up. Please be the Lord of my life for the rest of it, all 20 seconds, right?

And so he looks at you, and he's never been to church, he doesn't know anything about the Bible, he doesn't know anything. He says: I've only got 20 seconds to live, why - what does that even matter? Why did I do that? And you've got one sentence - you can't open your Bible, he's dying in 10 seconds. You've got one sentence so you say: umm, aah, ah you did that, because when you die here in a few seconds, you're going to wake up in heaven, instead of hell. The guy goes: that is fantastic! Four seconds later, he dies. Where does he wake up? Heaven, right? I'm not trying to trick you! People: I don't know, I don't know. Where does the guy wake up? [Heaven.] Heaven!

So this racist wakes up at a table with every tribe, tongue and race. Is he in heaven, or hell? To the racist, heaven IS hell. The question isn't so much: will you go to heaven when you die? What if a better question is: if heaven invaded your life tomorrow, what parts of you would survive, and what parts of you would be burned up?

Why would you wait - if Christianity ever became a group of people who were waiting to go to heaven one day, they would be horrible, elitist, societal, tribal people, who thought they were better than everybody else. Aren't you glad we escaped that!

Christianity was never called to be a group of people who got as many people as possible into heaven. Rather, they were called to be a group of people who partnered with God, to establish the kingdom right here on the earth.

None of Jesus' followers ever took Him that way. You never see Jesus showing up, and people going: oh great, you're here! We get to go to heaven now! No.

Jesus died, and rose from the dead. You've got to admit that's pretty impressive, considering He called His shots, right? He dies, rises from the dead. He comes back from the dead, and how much does He talk about heaven? None! How much does He talk about hell? None! I find that amazing. What I find more amazing, is that no one asked Him!

If I died today, and you came to my funeral on Wednesday, and then I showed up here next Sunday, and ruined your service and they gave me a mic. They said: Shane is back from the dead! We need to ask questions. How many questions would we get through, before someone said: hey, what actually happens? Of course it would be like, the first question right? But no one asked Him!

No one asked Him: Jesus, You're back from the dead - that's amazing - what was heaven like? What was hell like? I heard you preached there - how was your altar call, did you clean out heaven? You know, when you rose from the dead, it says: tombs everywhere emptied. Was that your altar call? Are You going to write a book called 'Three Days in Hell', and make a billion dollars, because people are scared of it? That would be amazing!

No one even asked Him! Jesus comes back from the dead, and here's His follower's response: oh great, You're back! Are we going to take over Rome now? Why would they? Why would they think that? Because that was His message all along, that we are going to establish the kingdom right here on the earth; and in their mind, to establish the kingdom on the earth, we're going to take over Rome? They were misguided, because that wasn't God's goal.

God's goal was to establish His kingdom through a body of Christ; not through taking up of arms, but through a body of Christ, who would duplicate God throughout the world, by establishing heaven right here; never to be a group of people waiting to go to heaven someday.

Although we hold to the hope that heaven is true someday, and it absolutely is, that is not the main goal of Christianity. Your goal is not to get to heaven someday, your goal is to reach into heaven, and bring everything in heaven right down here! That's what it means to be a disciple. To be a disciple of Jesus means to be actively participating in establishing heaven on the earth.

So I went through, and I looked at everything Jesus said about heaven. I found it so challenging. Let's talk through some of these things. When we think of images of judgement, which by the way, the word judgement - the word translated judgement in the New Testament is the word colossus, which means to prune an apple tree.

If there are apple farmers here, they could tell you that half way through season, there's a lot of little apples; and so you have to go around, and you've got to knock off a lot of the little apples, so that the nutrients of the tree will go to the rest, so it makes big apples. It's that - its cutting excess off. It's cutting what's not going to bear fruit off, so that things that do bear fruit have the nutrients to do it, okay?

So the word judgement in the Bible, is not a guy wearing a black robe, with a white wig and a hammer. It's more a farmer with pruning shears. Think about how Jesus taught about judgement. He said: I'm the vine dresser, you're the vine. Whatever parts of you are not bearing good fruit, I'm going to cut it off, because it's not helping you. It's called pruning; so when Jesus said things like: judge yourself here, so you will not be judged there; essentially it is pruning. Whatever's on your life that can't exist in God's kingdom, go ahead and get it off of you now! Why would you wait? Don't do that. It's ruing your life.

He said it this way, in one place: it's better to throw yourself on a stone, than to have a stone hurled upon you; which essentially is a First Century parental euphemism. It just means this. Boy, you sort this out, or I'm going to sort this out; and you would much rather sort this out yourself - it's that.

So here's my question: If you walked into heaven tomorrow, what parts of you would survive, and what parts of you would be burned up? That is a better question.

The problem with having hell, fire, and brimstone being our issues and judgement, is that those words tend to, always in our mind, be about other people. When we talk about hell, we talk about ‘them’ and ‘then’, but that's only three of Jesus' mentions of hell.

15 of 18 mentions of hell, was about us, now. It's about: what are you bringing to the earth? How's your lust problem? How's your anger problem? Do you call people fools? How is fear of man instead of fear of God? It's not so much about them then; it's more about us today, what are you bringing to the earth now?

The problem with that, is that in the Bible there are 6 mentions of fire in hell - six! Six times it talks about fire in hell. There are 229 mentions of fire in heaven - 6 mentions of fire in hell versus 229 mentions of fire in heaven. Aaargh! How many sermons in your life have you ever heard on fire in hell? Lots. How many of you heard of fire in heaven? None. How did that happen?

229 mentions of fire in heaven, 6 mentions of fire in hell; so actually if your goal in eternity is to avoid fire, hell might be your better choice. Hell will let you stay a racist, heaven will not. Heaven will not. Lots of fire in heaven.

Now because we're westerners, I have to say this, because white people tend to take things very literally; and so: God is not setting people on fire. As a matter of fact there are several commands in the Bible where He commands people never to set people on fire, so it's like a pretty good idea, right? God is against setting people on fire alright? I know that comes as like a shock, but it's all over Leviticus, Deuteronomy, it's all over the Prophets, that you should not set people on fire right, it's a pretty good idea. These are metaphors!

The word translated 'fire' is 'pure', all forms of the word purity come from that word. They translate it fire, because in their world they used fire to purify things; so one rabbi said it this way: that the fire of heaven is God's relentless pursuit, to make you the best you can be in His kingdom, without taking your free will away.

God is relentlessly going to purify us. That is the deal. Now let's look at some questions then. Here's a question we want to ask ourselves today:

1) If the kingdom of heaven invaded your life today, what part of you would survive, and what parts of you would be burned up?

In other words, be brave enough to take note inside: is there anything on my life that could not exist, if heaven happened today? Whatever that is, go ahead and get it off your life. Why would you wait? It's hurting you! Why would you do that?

2) If you walked in heaven today, would you recognise it as heaven, or would you think it was hell? Is there any part of Jesus' descriptions of heaven that you go: oh, I hope not?

3) Are Jesus' descriptions of heaven congruent with your life? Where would your life struggle to live in that environment today?

4) What pruning needs to take place in our life now, so that the kingdom can be established in you today? Today, why would you wait?

Now let me just quickly read a couple of scriptures to you, which sort of exacerbate this. First Corinthians 3:11 says this: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw - I love that.

In other words, if your foundation is Jesus; whether you're rich, whether you're poor, it's all the same foundation.

That is great - their work will be shown for what it is, because that day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. Now is this talking about fire in hell, or fire in heaven? It's fire in heaven obviously.

If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; and yet will be saved, even though only as one escaping through the flames of heaven.

The idea is, it's an invitation from God, to do stock take of our life and say: if I walked into heaven tomorrow, what parts of me could thrive in God's kingdom, and what parts of me would have to be burned off? That's the flames of heaven.

How about this one: but who can stand in the day of His coming? Who could stand when He appears, for He will be like a refiner's fire, or launderers soap - once again a metaphor.

A fire, and a soap, are not the same thing, unless you're using it metaphorically. This is a cleaning agent. He will sit as the refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify the Levites, and refine them with gold. Hang on, how do you purify silver and gold? Yeah, you heat it up.

How about this one: for the Lord, your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. How about Jeremiah 23:29: Is not My word like fire? Obviously a metaphor. Have you ever picked up your Bible and then when OW! That's hot! No, no. Come on, it's a metaphor.

It's saying that the word of God has a purifying agent in it. When you submit yourself to it, it purifies you; and like a hammer that breaks a rock into pieces; in other words, there is something about the word of God that breaks us up, so we can be put back together more whole, more complete. These are metaphors.

Jeremiah also talks later about God finishing His people, like a potter does a clay pot. How do you finish a clay pot? You heat it up. You heat it up. There it is there, Jeremiah 18. It says: the word of the Lord came to me. He said: can I not do with you, Israel, as the potter does, like clay in the hands of a potter, so are you in My hands - once again a metaphor.

Here's another one, Isaiah 42: So He poured out on them His burning anger, the violence of war. It enveloped them in flames, yet they didn't understand it - obviously a metaphor. If you set someone on fire, you're concern is hardly: do they get what you're saying? In other words, they didn't understand that God was trying to purify them. It's the flames of heaven.

Now as I was looking through all Jesus said about heaven, and being so challenged, this is one of the most challenging things I saw, and that is this. All when Jesus talked about heaven:

Everything that's buried will be unearthed. Now I want to unpackage this with you, and leave you with a big challenge. Revelation 22:12 - and behold, I'm coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to each, according as his work is. Revelation 22, that's the end of the Bible.

Now let's go back to Matthew 25. Jesus is talking about heaven. He's closing out His ministry, and He's leading up to this incredible sermon about sheep and goats; and right and left; and people who are in, and people who are out. He defines it all by being defined as generosity, but this is part of the lead up to that. He's talking about heaven.

It says this: for it is as if a man was going abroad, and his servants he gave them his goods. To one he gave 5 talents, and to another 2, and to another 1, to each according to his own ability. And he went out abroad at once; and the one who received the 5 talents traded with them, and they made another 5 talents; and likewise he that received 2, also gained another 2. But he who'd received the 1 talent, went and dug in the earth and buried it, and hid his Lord's silver. And after a long time, the Lord of those servants came and took account with them; and he who'd received the 5 talents had come and brought another 5 talents, saying: Lord, you delivered us 5 talents to me. Behold, I've gained another 5 above them.

And he said to him: well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler now over many things. Enter the joy of the Lord.

So in this passage he's talking about how your faithfulness, with what you've been given on the earth, determines your role there.

It's not that everybody doesn't get the same wage, because earlier he said that in heaven, whether you started work at 6am or 5pm, you get the same wage.

There's a big difference between wage and reward; but in the beginning of the Bible it was in a garden, and even in perfection Adam had work to do, a job to do. At the end of the Bible it centres around a tree, and its imperfection, and we will have work to do.

I can't stand these images of heaven, that were actually invented in the late 1700s, of all of us wearing white robes, sitting on clouds, playing harps, and singing in perfect pitch to 1780s hymns. That sounds like hell to me, right?

When I was a kid, I asked my pastor: what's heaven going to be like? He said: heaven is like an eternal church service; and I thought: flip, that is horrible! Who would want that! How terrible is that?

Of course, people have the same image of heaven today. They picture a singing 'Jesus culture' in heaven, and of course if we got in a time machine, and went back to 1780 and said: look, this is actually the rock music we're going to be singing in heaven, those people would be like: OH NO! Like nooo.

This is about God establishing something, and our role in it, so essentially Jesus is saying: how you're living here is just going to continue. If you're faithful here, you're going to be faithful there; if you're not faithful here, chances are you're not automatically going to be faithful there; and so there's this correlation that's going on.

Let's keep going. And he who had got the two talents did the same, and he said to him: well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, now I'll make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of the Lord.

And he, who'd received the one talent, came and said: Lord, I knew that you were a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the earth. Now you have it back.

His lord answered him, and said to him: you evil and slothful servant - you knew that I reap where I did not sow, and gathered where I didn't scatter. Then you should have at least put my money to the exchangers, and coming I would have received my own, with interest. Therefore take the talent from him, and give it to him who has 10 talents; for to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will abound. But from him who has not, even that which he has, will be taken away from him.

Now that is Jesus' teaching on heaven - that's one of them. Are you okay with that? What if that happened tomorrow? Does that even sound like Jesus - to take from people who do not have; and give it to people who have more? Sounds like the exact opposite of what He spent His whole life giving Himself to. Why?

Because it's a metaphor! This isn't talking about money. This is talking about: in heaven, account will be taken for what you did with what you were given. If you were faithful with what you'd been given, then you'll be trusted with more things. But if you were not faithful, then whatever you were not faithful with, will be given to someone else.

Let me explain it this way. On the surface, it's just saying this: God's a good businessman. Let’s say I'm a contractor, and you're a subcontractor, and I give you eight jobs. So today I give you eight jobs, and at the end of the day I say: hey, how did the eight jobs go?

You say: well I got to six, I didn't get to two. Alright, so tomorrow I give you eight jobs, and at the end of the day you get to six, you don't get to two; what if I give you eight jobs on the third day, and you get to six and you don't get to two? Then on the fourth day I give you eight jobs, you get to six, you don't get to two? What if on the fifth day I give you eight jobs, you do six, you don't get to two?

How long is it going to take me to start giving you six jobs, and then taking the two you're not getting to, and giving them to someone who actually has the capacity to do it?

Jesus says: heaven's like that - that God's going to establish His kingdom, whether you like it or not; and if you're not going to participate in it, then the grace that He gave you to accomplish, He's just going to give it to someone who will accomplish it, because God's kingdom is going to be established.

Now let’s make a couple of observations: 1) the one who buried his talent has a skewed view of the master.

The view that God is a hard and vengeful God only holds us back. Who really wants to work for a crazy maniac, who you don't know whether you're coming or going, you don't know if he's going to like you today or yesterday? Who really wants to do that? It only holds you back. So many people don't try anything with God, because they're so afraid of God, that they're scared of giving it a go. That is dreadful.

The question is this: are we using what God gave us to bring heaven to earth; or are we burying our talent?

Maybe we can say it this way: if heaven invaded your life today, you would find out if you used what God gave you for the common good; or if you buried it.

What have you done with your talent? Have any of you ever been at work, and one of your co-workers says: how could your God be real, with all the suffering in the world? Anybody ever heard that argument, like: how could your God be real? There's all this suffering. Is your God not powerful enough to do something? Your God's a failure. Even if your God is God, He's a failure.

Has anybody ever heard that, and you're sort of like: man, don't talk about my God like that, right? Like you're all just jacked up and - right? But then you walk away, and you're like well: man, that makes sense actually, he's got a point. Have you ever thought like that? You want an answer to that? Okay, here's the answer. The answer is actually not in the Bible. The answer is in Forbes Magazine. Let me explain.

In October Forbes Magazine, every October they put out a celebration of the 400 richest people in the world. It's called the Forbes 400 okay? The 400 richest people in the world combined have $1.27 trillion dollars. 400 people, have $1.27 trillion dollars. Roughly the same numbers of people in this room right now, have $1.27 trillion dollars.

Let me tell you how much money that is. That's enough money to put clean water and sewerage in the whole world; that's enough money to vaccinate the whole world against disease. That's enough money to set up perpetual education for the whole world; and enough money to start the perpetual production of food to end world hunger; and still leave them all billionaires! And God's the failure? Really?

Or it's enough money to run the US Government for five days! I can't believe how much people trust their government to take care of them. It never works. Even with Joseph, Joseph was a righteous man, and when he tried to set up the government to take care of the Egyptians, by Genesis 47 it says, that he reduced the entirety of Egypt to slavery; because he took their grain and stored it up, and then instead of giving it back, he sold it back. It has a price!

Your healthcare's not free! I'm telling you, I don't know about your government. Everything the US Government touches goes broke. It took over the Post Office, it's broke. They took over Amtrak, which is our train system, it's broke.

They took over the Mustang Ranch. The Mustang Ranch was a brothel on I40 in New Mexico, halfway between Dallas and LA, which was meant to provide prostitutes and liquor for truck drivers in the desert.

They got done-in for tax evasion, and the government looked at it and said: they're making millions. We're not going to shut it down, we're going to take it over to provide revenue for the government. They took over the Mustang Ranch, and it went broke. When you can't give away prostitutes and liquor to truck drivers in the desert, your business plan sucks! And God's the failure?

Let me ask you this: has God withheld the resource necessary to fix the world? It's within the power of 400 people to put a huge dent in it, a huge dent. You mean to tell me there's not a lot of government waste in New Zealand? Really? And God's the failure? No, someone buried something, that's the problem.

When I tell you stories like that, if I say: there's 400 people that have $1.27 trillion dollars, what is your immediate gut response? It's like flip, they should do something, right! Are you right? Yes? Are you wrong? Yes? It's none of your business what they do!

Here's my question: if 400 people could accomplish that, what could the top 400,000 do? What could the top 4 million do? What could the top 400 million do?

If you drove a car here today, I don't care what kind of car it is, you're in the richest 700 million people in the world. What are you doing about it? What would happen if all of these people pooled their resources; they said: we are going to unbury our talent, and use it for something? God is calling us to establish heaven on the earth, and part of doing that is being willing to unbury our talent.

According to the World Health Organisation, 16,900 children are going to die today of starvation - today! They're going to die today. There's another 16,900 that are starting to feel the final hunger pangs, and fixing to die tomorrow. And that's true the next day, and the next, and the next. 16,900 children are going to die today; what does your refrigerator look like? Could you not feed one?

Considering the New Zealand dollar is very powerful over the Chinese Yuan, or the South African rand, or - do you know what one New Zealand dollar can do when you send it overseas? Somebody buried something, and I think that someone is us.

Why couldn't, just because of this room, why couldn't that figure be 16,500 children by next year? I mean there's, I don't know, if you count everybody in the building there's probably 400 or 500 people here. Why can't we feed one a piece? What are we doing? Somebody buried something.

I was down in a place called Gore right, Gore! What a great name for a town; where do you live? I live in Gore. From my understanding - you guys live here, but my understanding, Gore is the richest city in New Zealand per capita; so per capita, they're the richest people in the whole place. The problem is it's the town next door to Gore, which I can't think of, is the poorest; so in New Zealand you have this situation where the richest people are living next door to the poorest people.

There is a friend of mine down there, who has become one of my heroes. Her name is Pam Highsted, and she looked at one of my teachings, and she got moved in her heart. She said: you know this is not okay; so she started an after school program for underprivileged children in the town next door. She said: please, you were the inspiration for this. Would you come and speak to these kids, which I'm horrible at speaking to kids. I don't even know what to say. I look at them, and I like tell them Hebrew words. I don't know what to do, so I said: yes, I'll do it, right.

Now let me paint the picture for you. It was in July, and it was one degree, it was blowing rain sideways, so I don't even know where to go. So I'm looking for the room, and its blowing rain, and its freezing, and a seven year old comes running by with no shoes on. I said: I'm going to follow him right, because he obviously knew where the room was, so I sort of followed him.

Once we got in the room, I figured someone needed to be an adult, and I said: hey look buddy, it's freezing outside, and you need to put your shoes on. We don't want you to get sick; and he went: shoes? Who has shoes? I thought to myself: does he not have any shoes? So I asked Pam. I said: does he not have shoes because they choose not to wear them, or can his family really not afford shoes? She said: likely his family can't afford shoes; and it was at that moment she said: look around the room. I looked around at this room full of kids, and only half of them even had shoes on their feet. I thought: we're in New Zealand, flip! Somebody buried something. Somebody buried something, they absolutely did.

God's not the failure by the way - we are. God has entrusted all of us with a certain amount of talent. What are you using, that God gave you; or what have you buried?

Every year we hear stories of people freezing to death, homeless people; there's a homeless shelter in my home town, I went down there to see them, because they feed a lot of people.

I said: hey, how can I help? I said: I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go around to restaurants, and I'll try to get them to donate more food. The guy went: NO! No, no. We don't need more food, and I thought: dude, you're homeless shelter, you're feeding people, you need more food. He said: no, no, no, we have more than enough food that comes in every day, because food will spoil, like we have more than enough food that comes in every day. What we need is more hands to feed the people.

Our limitation isn't food, our limitation is hands to feed it. So I said: you mean to tell me, that you have more than enough food; your problem is, you don't have enough people to serve the food to the people coming in? He said: yes, that's right.

I thought to myself: when you're serving lunch in the middle of the week, you mean to tell me there's not 12 people watching the end of The Price is Right, waiting for The Young and the Restless to start? Are you kidding me? Somebody buried something. You mean to tell me there's not 12 people choosing to watch TV, instead of feed someone who can't eat? Come on, somebody has buried something.

God is not the failure. We are the failure. You know what the leading cause of blindness in the world is? Dirty water! Kids drink the dirty water, their gut adjusts to the parasite, but the parasite in the dirty water causes cataracts over their eyes, and they're blind by four. There's a guy in Australia, he's an eye surgeon (Fred Hollows). He said: this is not okay. This is just not okay, and so he decided to give the rest of his life to restoring sight to blinded kids.

Do you know what it costs to restore sight to a blind kid? $30! Thirty bucks! Do you know what it costs to have cataract surgery in America? $15,000!

Somebody's burying something. Somebody's getting rich, and profiteering on people's health, and that is not okay. $30 will restore sight to a blind kid. Let me ask you this: what's the last thing you spent $30 on? How does it compare to the sight of a blind kid? Somebody buried something.

See, when we hear stories of burying, there's something inside of us - if you're not moved right now, I'm questioning whether you have a soul. 16,900 children are going to die today. If you have the ability to walk out and go: what are we eating for lunch; what is wrong with us! I mean go enjoy your lunch, but not at the expense of not helping someone else. That is not what we're called to be.

We're called to be Salt and Light, and establish the kingdom of heaven on the earth. When we hear stories of people who unbury their talent, it moves us.

One of my heroes is a girl named Kyla Alexander. Kyla is 39 years old, and she's given up her dream of being married and having a family, because she chose, she went to China. In China they have a one child policy, so that leaves a lot of problems when a child is born mentally handicapped; so she went to the Government Welfare Office...

These were not bad people at all. They were not. They were just understaffed, and you had 2 people looking after 40 mentally handicapped children, and they just couldn't do it. So for their own safety, there was children shackled to - like they had to leash them, to make sure they didn't run off. It wasn't that they were being mean, they just could not possibly keep up.

Kyla said: this is not okay, and she's given her life to restoring dignity to mentally handicapped children in China. I was just there, are you ready to get mad? Ready to get mad, here we go, I'm going to make you mad. It made me mad. I was just there, and I said: Kyla, what can I do for you? Anything within my power to do, I'm going to do it.

She said well, we've recently had to cut everything back, because we lost our biggest supporter. I said: what? She said: yeah, there was a church, they were our biggest supporter, and they cut us off. I went: oh, I'm sorry, you know, economic downturn, churches go through hard times, they have to make tough decisions. I'm sorry that happened. She said: no, that's not the reason. That wasn't the reason at all actually.

She said they sent a missions team here, and I told them that they could not force the children to say the sinner's prayer, because we were in Communist China; and so when they left, they cut our support off, because they said: what good is what you're doing anyway, if all of them are going to burn in hell. So that's our story? God is torturing mentally-handicapped children now? We're sticking by that?

I said: what's his name? What? What's the pastor's name? I haven't opened up a can on somebody in a very long time. I said: Kyla, that's not okay, and Shane Willard Ministries will do everything they can to make up the downfall, that you just suffered. We are not going to let these children suffer, because somebody else thinks that people are going to burn in hell, because they're too mentally handicapped to say a specific prayer.

He just summed up the whole problem with Christianity, right there in one sentence. No, it's not okay. We're going to help kids. You hear Kyla's story, you go YES! Go Kyla! Stick with it! Come on girl, you're doing a great job. Something inside of you does that.

There's a friend of mine in South Africa named Brandon Eckert. He's one of my heroes. Brandon was a 26 gang member, bad dudes, and he got saved. He came to the Lord listening to my message, the Authority of the Rabbi. Now there's a revival in Pollsmoor Prison, because he'd been allowed to take the DVD of the Authority of the Rabbi in there and show it to them, that the head of the 26s wrote me a letter. The guy, the head guy of the 26s wrote me a letter to say that he'd given his heart to the ways of Jesus.

It was really cool, because he started out: hi Mr Willard, my name is Bones. I was like: hi Bones; and so Bones, he said: I don't even know what it looks like to give my heart to Jesus as the head of a gang, but I'm willing to give it a go. He went and led his number two guy to the Lord, and so I got to meet him. His name was Colin, and so there's thing going on in Pollsmoor Prison.

So Brandon gets out, and Brandon says: this is not okay, this is not okay. I'm going to do something to change the cycle of poverty in my city. So he started a ministry that gets drug addicts and prostitutes and gang members off the street, and what he does is he gets them high school educated. First he gets them off drugs; second he gets them high school educated; third he gets them in job training, so he can break the cycle of poverty.

The last time I was in Cape Town, the District Attorney of Cape Town asked to meet with me - which made me nervous. Why is the District Attorney calling me to Court right? It's an odd feeling, so I go into Court, and this District Attorney says to me, she says: I just want you to know, because I know you're pouring in tens of thousands of dollars into this from America, and I want you to know that it is working.

He is now recognised by the South African Department of Justice as a viable option to Pollsmoor Prison, so that if people commit crimes, and we're going to send them to Pollsmoor Prison, instead of sending them to prison, they can have the option of going with him. If they complete his program, it counts as their prison time; but if they do not, they go to prison - so far 100 percent success rate!

When you hear that, don't you go: YES! Go Brandon! When people unbury their talent, it's so moving.

All of us know the famous ones like Heidi Baker, and taking care of orphans in Mozambique. You look at these stories, these incredible stories: Mother Theresa, what she did for lepers. This lady, she's going to shave her head for lepers. If a woman's willing to shave her head for lepers, give her $10 - flip! There are several hundred of us here. Why couldn't she raise $3,000 for lepers today? She's shaving her head, for lepers, and we're going to go: oh, well good you. I mean what! No! Come on. Unbury - you mean you'll miss $10? Come on, no!

We hear stories like this, and something in us goes: YES! And my question to you is: why not you? What does your refrigerator look like? What could you do? Where have you sat on your laurels; and the truth is, there are a lot of great people who don't do anything for anybody else, and it's not because they're not good people. It's because they don't intentionally set out to do it.

You're not going to wake up in the morning, and accidentally do this. You have to wake up in the morning with full intention to make someone else's life better.

Here's my question: whose life is better, in the last 30 days, because you were in it? If you can't think of anybody - and right now, if you're a narcissist, you're thinking: well my wife's life is better, because I'm in it! No, that's not what I'm talking about. She would likely disagree with that. I'm talking about outside of your family, outside of your four walls - whose life is better because you're in it?

All of us would know that Jesus honours this sort of behaviour, but how many of us are actually doing it; and it's not because we're bad people, it's because we think it's going to happen accidentally.

It will not happen accidentally. You have to, with intention and focus, unbury your talent. Bay City Outreach Centre is one of the greatest churches I go to in the whole world, and I've travelled the lot of it, okay. You have an incredible opportunity, but Bay City Outreach Centre cannot keep on existing, with people burying their talent.

There's so much talent in this room that God has given this place. God has entrusted this place to be a part of the redemption process of the whole city. What are you doing sitting on the fence? What are your options?

Well, I need - I can't miss NCIS. Are you kidding me? Get a DVR, watch it without commercials later. It's better that way anyway, plus it comes out in America first. Let me ruin it for you. Gibbs gets the bad guy! He's amazing!

Bay City Outreach Centre is going through transition as an organisation. Now, more than ever, it needs its people to stand up and unite, and unbury their talent, and say: let's go do what God asked us to do in this city!

Let's establish: may we never be people waiting to go to heaven someday; but may we be people determined to bring heaven to every place we see hell on this earth!

The quality of what you're living for is only determined by what you're willing to die for.

What does your life revolve around - temporary pleasure; or God's redemptive will for all of creation?

What's the last thing that made you angry enough to get your shovel out, and unbury your talent? Or maybe a better question would be: what's the last thing that just made you angry, period?

You know what I find, is that Kyla Alexander doesn't get angry over road works. I know, I know, that they're still fixing the same road. I know. I've been coming here seven years; they're still fixing the same exact road. Kingdoms have risen and fallen, Nigeria has changed empires seven times; New Zealand is still fixing the same flippin' road. I know, I know, it's so annoying. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

You know what made me mad? I went to a grocery store the other day, and the cashier was really slow. Grrr, man. What makes you mad? You know, if I told Kyla that; Kyla would be like: so you have the luxury of living in a country where you can drive a motor vehicle to a store, that pre-packages food for you, and you still find a reason to be upset - over the slowness of the cashier? Ooh, I know, that must be so tough!

What makes you angry? Shane, you don't understand. My husband left his underwear on the floor for the 17,000th time. I know. You know that guy that you would expect to die for you, if an intruder came in, that guy? Yeah, must be tough. It must be tough living with someone who would die for you. I know. Shane, my wife falls asleep too early. I know. I know; that's annoying.

What makes you angry, and how does that compare to what God's doing in the world? Sometimes we just need some perspective.

What I find is that people with anger problems, they don't really have an anger problem. They have an energy problem. They're not giving enough of their energy away, so they have too much of it.

The cure for anger's not prayer. The cure for anger is giving your life away to something so much, that you don't have any energy to be angry about stupid stuff.

So you might be saying: well what could I do? What could I do? If you can't think of anything to do, go to FredHollowsFoundation.com, just Google them and give them $30, and at least give sight to one blind kid. By the way, I get no royalties from them, I just believe in them. On your way out today, you can purchase a set of CDs or a USB, and you can know that when my Director of Charity goes to China in a few months, that it's going to be given to mentally handicapped children in China. You can do something.

You could call your pastor this week, and go: hey, I've been sitting on the fence. I've been burying my talent. Where can I get involved in this place? What can I do to help you bring the kingdom of heaven to the earth right here in Hastings? What can I do? You could do that, but you have to set full intention of doing it. It's not going to happen by accident.

I've got a friend who left church; and I asked him: why did you leave church? They said: well, we're just tired of the church being so selfish and self-centred. I said: well I get that, but leaving's not going to fix it; but they left. You know what their life looks like today? They get up in the morning, they eat breakfast together. They each go to their different jobs, they come home, they have some sort of afternoon tea, they eat supper, they watch two episodes of Modern Family and one episode of NCIS, they go to bed. Then they wake up the next day and they repeat it. What a life.

So she left the church because it was selfish, but now her life has become what she hated in the first place. Is she a bad person? Absolutely not, she's one of the best people I know, but the truth of it is is that when you don't intentionally set forth to be salt and light in this world, it will not happen by accident.

In the kingdom - this is so important - it's not the summation of what I've done, like addition; it's the measure of what I've done, based on what I was given. How's your ratio look? How's your ratio?

Your reward in heaven is not determined by what you've done; it's determined on the ratio, of what you've done versus what you've been given. What's your ratio? What have you done with what you've been given?

When heaven hits earth, it will reveal whether your life was built on something that matters, or something that will be burned up. Do you have an intense sense now, that your life is about something bigger? If not, why not?

Listen, no matter what decision you make today, God loves you the same. It's not about God loving you. It's not about being forgiven. If your goal's to be forgiven, just, I don't know, go ahead and die, whatever, you're forgiven. But if your goal is to live the fullest life, and bring heaven to every place we see hell on this earth, then there is so much opportunity for us to unbury our talent. I'm urging you not to be people who just sit on the fence, and don't do anything at all.

I'm urging to be people who reach into your pockets, who look at your hands, who do something to unbury what God's given you, in order to make this world a better place. I'm asking you right now, to make a 30 day commitment to do that, once a day. It might be something small. It might be a quick encouraging email; it might be you go to Fred Hollows, give them $30; it might be buying something there. It might be finding an orphanage or you know of something; it might be helping this lady that's going to shave her head for leprosy. It might be something, but why not once a day, I'm not going to make it undoable.

All I'm asking you for, is a commitment for 30 straight days, to do one thing a day to make someone else's life better outside of your family, just one; just once a day, for 30 days. Once a day for 30 days; and I promise you, if you live 30 days like that, at the end of 30 days, you will not be able to imagine living any other way - so much good that can be done. You will find it will help your worry problem. You will find it will help your anger problem, you will find it will help your anxiety, it will help your grief. It will help the pain of whatever you've been through in the past.

When you give your life to something else, it solves all those other things. I'm urging you, and I'm challenging you, for the next 30 days. Thirty days, will you do something once a day, for someone else outside your family, just 30 days? After 30 days, ask yourself: do I want to do another 30? All I'm asking you for is 30 days, 30 days.

Now if you will do that, I want you to make a commitment before the Lord right now, simply by bearing witness and raising your hand, I will do this for the next 30 days. Okay, now I want you to look around - keep your hands up - look around. I want everybody to know that you're able to hold these - just have fun with it. Don't be judgemental, have fun. Just ask each other: hey, what did you do this week?

Maybe someone who knows what they're doing with Facebook- because I don't - maybe you could start a Facebook blog on Bay City Outreach thing called Salt and Light, or whatever you want to call it, and just have it there for people to put their stories: hey, I was here, and this is what happened. You won't believe what God did. Hey, I was here and this is what happened, you won't believe what I saw God do, and then when we start telling stories like that, it creates energy; and I promise you, I promise you, this is what God has called Bay City to be. Regardless of who's standing up here, this is what Bay City is: a group of people bringing heaven to every place they see hell on this earth. I urge you to be that. Let's pray together.

Lord, You're wonderful, we love You, and we honour You. Lord, forgive me for the places I've buried my talent. I want to be someone who uses what You've given me, to establish Your kingdom here. I'm going to pray a prayer with you, if you mean it. I'll tell you the prayer first, and then we'll pray it together. If you mean it, I want you to get in on it, and the prayer goes like this:

Lord Jesus, give me the courage to see things differently, and the irresistible urge to respond to what I see. So if you mean that, right now under your breath, say: Lord Jesus, give me the courage to see things differently, and the irresistible urge to respond to what I see. If you're here today, and you've never received what Jesus did for you before the foundation of the world, and you just want to get onboard, you want to start your journey with God, you could say something like this: Lord Jesus, I have no hope of saving myself, so I ask You to be the Lord of my life. I choose to trust Your version of my story, instead of my own. Thank You Lord. Amen.

Hosting Shane Willard (2011) (Shane Willard)

Light, Life & Increase (Shane Willard)

Forgiveness was never the issue. The Torah was given so forgiven people would know how to live, in order to be blessed. Your forgiveness was unconditional, but your blessing was conditional. You could live your whole life forgiven, saved to the bone, born again, child of God, I'll see you in heaven one day - but yet miss the whole blessing; that you live in darkness, disrepair, death. May you never say again: it's because my father ate sour grapes that I'm like this. No, when someone eats sour grapes, they are the ones whose teeth get set on edge.

Fish and Storms (Shane Willard)

God is generous with His grace, but He's also thorough with His discipline. Jonah did not need to be saved from the fish; the fish was prepared by God to save him. God sends storms in our lives - never to pay us back, but always to get us back. Distress is the force that overpowers intellect, theology, rationale or resistance, to drive us back to the person. Sometimes storms are the very thing that save us.

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- Fish and Storms.mp3

Light, Life & Increase (Shane Willard)

Sun 17 Apr 2011  « Back to Top

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Forgiveness was never the issue. The Torah was given so forgiven people would know how to live, in order to be blessed. Your forgiveness was unconditional, but your blessing was conditional. You could live your whole life forgiven, saved to the bone, born again, child of God, I'll see you in heaven one day - but yet miss the whole blessing; that you live in darkness, disrepair, death. May you never say again: it's because my father ate sour grapes that I'm like this. No, when someone eats sour grapes, they are the ones whose teeth get set on edge.

Ezekiel 18, but before we get there, we have to understand some terminology. Any time that you're looking at any piece of literature, any piece of literature, you want to ask yourself a couple of questions: 1) Who wrote it? 2) who was it written to? 3) how would they have taken it? Are there euphemisms, idioms, figures of speech in the text, that mean something different to them, than it would to us? To put 21st Century English definitions over the top of ancient Hebraic terms, and then say we're right and everybody else is wrong, is ridiculous.

So there's terminology in every piece of literature. We just happen to be studying the Bible today. Now before we get into Ezekiel 18, we have to understand a couple of pieces of terminology. The first piece of terminology is: Light, Life and Increase. In general, in the Hebrew scriptures, these are euphemisms about a realm of life that leads you to wholeness, abundance, completion, shalom, peace - wholeness without one broken piece. This is described with terms like light, life and increase.

In general, it has nothing to do with heaven; like heaven someday, someday we'll get to go somewhere else, and then we'll experience the life of God. No, no, no. The writers of the Bible are always bringing us back to this light, life and increase is available to us here, now, today. In general it's a realm of life described by a decision to live within God's ways - that if you live within God's ways, it brings light, life and increase to you. As a matter of fact, the centre root of the word Torah is the word Ora, which is light. It's: thy word is truth, thy word is light. Light, life, increase.

Deuteronomy 28: I set before you today blessings and curses, life and death. Choose life that you might live. It's not a literal thing, because people who break the Torah, they don't die; and then if they choose not to, they don't come back. It's a euphemism for a realm of life, where life is working for me, and not against me. The universe is pointed in my direction in a favourable way. That's light, life and increase.

The second group of terms that we have to understand, to understand this passage, is: death, darkness and decrease. So life, light and increase is a realm of life that leads to favour, abundance, wholeness without one missing piece - shalom. Death, darkness and decrease is the opposite of that. It has nothing to do with hell. When Ezekiel is writing this passage of scripture, the idea of an eternal hell did not even exist yet. That did not come around until later okay, now don't panic. I'm not taking hell from you okay, I believe in hell alright? It's fair enough. I'd hate to take hell away from a group of people going to heaven, that would be horrible - so just everybody relax right.

But death, darkness and decrease has nothing to do with hell. It has to do with a realm of life that leads you to a pattern of disrepair, in other words: things are unravelling. Things are coming apart. Death, darkness, decrease; they're used interchangeably, so if you see: choose to be in the light, as He is in the light; choose life over death, choose light after darkness. It's not: choose heaven over hell; it's: choose the easier life.

A lot of times we get confused between forgiveness and blessing, and so we think that in the Old Testament they were forgiven by keeping the Torah. They were not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. If you take the whole Torah, it didn't matter. Paul said it this way: Can any person be justified by keeping the law? Absolutely not. He wasn't coming up with something new - he was affirming orthodoxy. The mosaic covenant was never intended to provide forgiveness of sins. They were forgiven, in the Old Testament, through faith in God's faithfulness in a lamb. You are forgiven now, through faith in God's faithfulness in a lamb. It is the same exact thing.

Forgiveness was never the issue. The Torah was given so forgiven people would know how to live, in order to be blessed. The Abrahamic covenant was unconditional, based on faith in God's faithfulness. The mosaic covenant was conditional, based on obedience. Your forgiveness was unconditional, your blessing was conditional. In other words you could live your whole life forgiven, saved to the bone, born again, child of God, whatever word or nomenclature you want to put on it you could live your whole life forgiven to the bone, I'll see you in heaven one day, but yet miss the whole blessing; that you live in darkness, disrepair, death. The realm of these things come over you; whereas light, life and increase was the opposite of that. Now with that in mind, let's look at Ezekiel 18:1. We're going to work through probably the whole chapter, so we're going to do it fast.

The word of the Lord came to me. What do you people mean, by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel? You've got to hate it when God starts a passage that way. What do you people mean, by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel? "The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge". As surely as I live, declares the Lord your God, you will never quote this proverb to Me again.

Now quick question: The father eats sour grapes, so it sets the children's teeth on edge. Couple of questions: 1) what did this mean? 2) why is God so ticked off about it? Just to understand where these people are, this is the Book of Ezekiel. The Book of Ezekiel was written to the children of Israel while they were in Babylon. The reason they were in Babylon, is because they were in slavery. Now you've got to understand their history to understand the depth of this. The children of Israel started in slavery. They were slaves in Egypt for 430 years, and then God chooses to rescue them; and He tells them: I want you to be a kingdom of priests for Me. In other words, I want you to show the whole world what life would be like, if God was in charge.

Now to these people, God was someone who frees slaves; so God is calling them to set the captives free. He's calling them to free people from slavery. He's calling them to be a beacon of light, life, and increase. Did they do that? No! This is what 1 Kings, Chapter 10 says. It says: this is the account of the forced labour, that Solomon forced to build the temple to the Lord. So here's a guy who has a heritage of freed slaves, forcing slaves to build a temple, to honour the Lord who frees the slaves.

He failed to see the hypocrisy in it, so God says: no, no, no, no, this is not happening. So they end up back in slavery again, and here's what they were taught: the reason you're in slavery, is because David's son - they wouldn't even say his name at that time - is because David's son failed. Remember the Queen of Sheba came to Solomon and said: you have been placed over Israel to maintain justice and righteousness to the poor and the oppressed. Did he do that? No.

So what they told themselves in slavery was: we're in slavery today, because David's son failed. David's son failed, and that's why we're here; so a proverb ensued: My father ate sour grapes, so it sets my teeth on edge. In other words, the only reason I'm where I am, is because my dad messed up. Interesting, they were in slavery for 430 years, then they were free for 430 years, and then they end up back in slavery; and the prophets, while they're in slavery, start saying things like this: Don't despair, take heart, God is going to send a new son of David!

Now you understand there's a gap between the gospels - the Old Testament ends with them in slavery. There's 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament; and then Jesus starts His ministry at 30, so 430 years later the new son of David comes around. Do you understand now why there's beggars and stuff, sitting on the side of the street, going: son of David! Son of David! Have mercy on me. You're reading that, and you're going: well Jesus' dad was named Joseph, and His heavenly father was named Yahweh. Where do they get son of David? What they were talking about was: are You the one that God is supposed to send to minister to the poor? You're that one? If You're the Messiah, You're here to preach the gospel to the poor - and hello, I'm poor!

Son of David - so what was going on in Babylon was this: the present generation was blaming their circumstances on the previous generation. My father ate sour grapes, so it sets my teeth on edge. In other words, the only reason I'm where I am, is because my dad messed up. Ezekiel is bringing something around that's never been said before. Up until this day, it was common knowledge that if your father sins, you have to pay for his sins. If your father messes up, you're stuffed. You're done. It was common knowledge, and Ezekiel says: we're not going to do that this way any more. Ezekiel's pointing out that God is saying: I don't want to ever hear this again - that the reason you're where you are today, is because your dad messed up. It's not true! The reason you're where you are today, is because you refuse to change the pattern your father set up. The reason you're where you are today, is because you refuse to do something about it.

So the exiles, were blaming their exile, on their parents. Is that any different than us today? My parents made destructive choices, so I suffer. My parents chose a path, so I'm paying for it. My parents set a financial path, so I'm suffering. My parents gave me nothing to start with, so I have nothing. My parents were angry, temper-tantrum sort of folks, so I have an anger problem, and I throw temper-tantrums. My parents performed dishonest business, so I'll perform dishonest business. My parents were drunks, so I'll be drunk - and it just sounds... I'm a counsellor by trade. I've heard it 100,000 times, and because I have a counselling background, I could sit with you for an hour, and you could tell me your story about why you are the way you are, and I'll understand. I will. I'll listen to it, and I'll say: you know what? I understand that. Oh, your dad was this way, that's horrible. Your mum was this way, oh that's horrible. Oh so you grew up in this circumstance, oh that's horrible. I understand how you developed to be the way you are. Here's the problem: you're 40! How's that working for you?

Look, you might say: my family had issues. My dad had issues. Well - all dads have issues. If they've got flesh on, and they have to pull their pants up one leg at a time - they've got issues. My dad was a great man, up every day praying for me at 4.30 in the morning, every single day praying for me at 4.30. He had issues. He loved to scare us. My dad was a Vietnam vet, and I think he sniffed something over there that hurt him. My dad would do things he thought it was hilarious to scare us. He'd do things like hide under my bed - I was eight! Eight year olds think the bogey man lives under their bed anyway. Little did we know that the bogey man was actually a white red-neck dude! My mum would come get me up in the morning. Sometimes I'd sit on the side of the bed, and dad would be under there, and he'd reach out and grab my feet! Issues!

My dad has progressively gotten up earlier through history. When I was a kid it was 5.30, then it went to 5.15. Now he gets up at 4.15. I swear if he lives 15 more years he's going to have to eat breakfast the night before. My dad - he got in my closet. My closet opened like this you know, there's a sliding door. He put himself in my closet - on a crucifix. So I get up in the morning to choose my clothes - and there's dad. Issues!

One time dad dropped me off at junior high camp, and there were 108 of us going to junior high camp. That's two full length buses full of seventh and eighth graders. He pulled up next to the buses, and he said: son, I hope you have a really good time, I love you. I said: I love you too dad, and so he leaned over to give me a kiss, and I said: dad, not here, not in front of my friends! He said: okay buddy, have a good time. So I get on the bus, and I think everything's well. Well the whole bus is full, and next thing I know I'm towards the back of the bus, and I look up and my dad was walking onto the bus. What he had done is, he had pulled his pants up about this high. He had shorts on. He pulled his socks up like this, and he had his hips out, and he's walking funny. He grabbed the mic to the bus, and he said: this bus isn't leaving until my Shaney-Waney comes up here and gives me a kiss! So the whole bus started screaming: kiss him! Kiss him! Issues.

You say my dad was a certain way - I understand! You say: my family had tension in it - of course it did. You have a man and a woman trying to live together! Are you kidding me? Like men and women, they're just - I mean you take something like marriage; I mean the Bible has all this advice about it, like there's one place where the Bible says: a person who finds a wife, finds a good thing. There's another place where it says: he who marries doesn't sin, but he's signed up for a life of pain. So Solomon, you've got a guy with 1,000 women going: this is fantastic! You've got Paul going: why bother? Why, because men and women are just different. Even if there's basic mental health, and basically good-hearted, they're just different. Our language is different. A woman cooks a meal, and she tests it before she serves it up, and she's not real happy with it, but that's all we've got, so she serves up the meal, and she says: this is the worst meal I've ever made; and the man says: no it's not. He's trying to help. He's good-hearted.

The woman says: can you believe how much weight I've gained over the holidays? This dress makes me look fat. Doesn't this dress make me look fat? I could tell you - men have no idea what to say. If we agree with you - it's bad; if we disagree with you - we're invalidating your feelings. So we just... So we hear this, and so this good hearted man goes to the Christian book-store, and he's browsing around, and he's looking around and he sees a book: Lose Weight God's Way. He thinks: I'm helping! He brings home the diet book - of course if a woman brings a diet book home to her man, he looks at it and goes: that's nice, what's for dinner? It doesn't bother us at all. If a woman brings a diet book to a woman - what do they do? They make a workout plan, and they work out together.

Men and women aren't wrong typically, they're just different. Language - a woman says: I have nothing to wear. The man says: you have three closets full of nothing to wear, what are you talking about? But every woman in the room knows what she means. When a woman says: I have nothing to wear, what she means is: I have nothing new - let's go shopping. When a man says: I have nothing to wear; what he means is: I have nothing clean, please do the laundry. Two totally different things, same words.

You take something like smells - women like sweet smelling things, flowers, perfume, things like this. You hand a woman a bouquet of flowers, she sniffs it. You hand a man a bouquet of flowers, all he sniffs is $80. It smells like $80 to me, what are you talking about? Two women can go to a candle shop for an hour and a half, and sniff wax and call it fun. It's weird - you never see two men doing that. Hey Leroy, check that out, that's that new chrysanthemum smell, check that out man, that is sweet! Never! Why? Because men like stinky stuff. Women like sweet-smelling stuff, men like stinky stuff - nothing funnier to a group of men than something stinky happening. That's funny. To women - that's disgusting.

If a man plays a rugby match, and he gets all bloody and nasty and muddy; and because he's got to run to a meeting, he puts the clothes in a plastic bag and seals it up, puts it in the boot of his car. Three months later, he's looking for something in the boot of his car, and he finds the bag. Every man in the world knows what he's going to do. He's going to open it up, and he's going smell it. Men do this. Women, you notice if you get your husband to put his clothes in the hamper, if you watch him when he takes his dirty clothes off after a day at work, especially the socks before he throws them in the hamper - he'll sniff it. It's like we have to prove that we've worked for the day. We have like three levels of it too; like we'll sniff it, and we'll go: hey, I think I can get one more wear out this Betty, this is pretty good. Then we've got another level that's sort of like: wheweee! Then there's a third level, that's sort of like: you know what, I think three minutes in the dryer is going to do this just fine!

That's us, because we like stinky stuff, and every man knows if you get the bag of dirty clothes out the boot of your car and you sniff it - if any of your friends are around, they owe you to smell your stinky things. They have to - oh check that out! That is something! We all share, and then whoever smells my stinky thing - when they have a stinky thing, I owe them a courtesy sniff, to smell their stinky thing - and men do this. That's why, if you're ever in downtown Hastings, stuck at a red light; and you see four men in a car, and three of them have their head out the window, and the last one's in the back seat just laughing - he just cashed in on his courtesy sniff. That's all that's happened.

So when you say: my family had tension - of course it did. You had a species that was designed by God to like sweet-smelling things, trying to coincide with a species who loves stinky stuff. There's tension. Men and women are just different. Your mum had issues, your dad had issues, there was tension in all of our homes; but at some point - this is what Ezekiel's saying - at some point, we have to make a decision to live in the light and not in the darkness. You can't say: my father ate sour grapes so it set my teeth on edge - forever. Where does that lead you? Where does that go?

Next verse, Verse 4. For every living soul belongs to Me, the father as well as the son. Both alike belong to Me, but the soul who sins, is the one that will die. In other words, the one who goes away from God's ways enters the realm of death. It's not a question of: who belongs to God, and who doesn't belong to God? That's not the issue. Every living soul belongs to God. You want to know if you belong to God? Are you breathing? Yes. Are you using God's name to keep you alive? Yes. Are you held together by His word? Yes. So whether you realise it or not, you sort of belong to God right? God says: the whole universe belongs to me. The question isn't: who belongs to Me and who doesn't? It's the one that will choose to receive and enter into My ways - the ones who do that, will live. The ones who don't, don't. The soul that sins is the one that will die; and there's this long explanation that we won't read, but there's this long explanation. Let me just summarise it in Ezekiel 18.

It says: let's suppose there was a righteous man, and that righteous man entered into the ways of God, and entered life; but that righteous man has a wicked son, who does detestable things. Will that man inherit the righteousness of his father? No. For the sins he's committed, and for choosing to live outside of God's ways, he'll enter the realm of death. But if that wicked man that has a righteous son, and that righteous son turns away from the wickedness of his father, will he inherit the wickedness of his father? No, he will surely live for choosing to live God's ways.

So Ezekiel says: if there's a righteous man, he enters the realm of life; and then if he has a wicked son, he enters the realm of death. If he then has a righteous son, he enters the realm of life - but you are not stuck. In other words, the question is: am I predetermined, or can I make my own way for my life? Can I make my own choices? Can I choose life over death, or is death and life chosen for me? Ezekiel says no, no, no, you can choose.

See, one of the arguments you hear is: well its common-sense, that's just how we do things. Listen, if you ever use the excuse "that's just how we are", it's never for a good thing. You never hear: I'm just funny, that's just how I am. I'm just kind, that's just who I am - deal with it. No, it's always: I have an anger problem, that's just who I am. It's the stuff we do. Sometimes common-sense is very helpful, and sometimes common-sense is destructive. We wash our dishes around here - that's helpful. We bathe once a day - helpful. If you're here, and you don't bathe once a day, try it, be great. We pick up after ourselves, we talk to each other a certain way.

Sometimes common-sense is destructive. Everyone does shady business, everyone does that. Everyone cheats on their taxes, everyone does that. Everyone sleeps around, it's the weekend right, hello! Everyone sleeps around. Oh everyone gets wasted on Saturday, everyone does that. So any time you're using words like this, we have to determine: are they light, or are they dark? Are they life, or are they death? Are they increase, or are they decrease? Then he goes into this incredible explanation, that I could not say any better than him, so I'm going to read it, Ezekiel 18:18.

But his father will die for his own sin, because he practised extortion, robbed his brother, and did what was wrong amongst the people. Yet you ask: why does the son not share the guilt of his father?

Now you've got to understand, it was common knowledge in that day: if the father sins, the son shares the guilt. God says: we're not going to do it that way any more. Why does the son not share the guilt of his father? Since the son has done what is just and right, and has been careful to keep all My decrees, he will live. The soul that sins is the one who will die. In other words, when you make a choice to exit God's ways, you enter into the realm of death. If you make a choice to enter into God's ways, you enter the realm of life. The son will not share the guilt of his father, nor will the father share the guilt of his son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked man will be charged against him - but if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he's committed, and keeps My decrees, and does what is just and right, he will live, he will not die. None of the offences he's committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he's done, he will live.

Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord. Rather am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live. I love it. He says: no matter how far down the road you think you are, no matter how far down the road of darkness, death, decrease, no matter how far down that road you are, you are one decision away from entering light, and none of that being remembered, and the universe working for you, that life, light and increase can be released over your life - because God takes no pleasure in people staying in darkness.

It's not like God's in heaven looking at a train wreck fixing to happen, and thinks: I can't wait for this happen. No! He wants us to change tracks so that we can live - but if a righteous man - Verse 24 - but if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin, and does the same detestable things the wicked man does, will he live? No. None of the righteous things he has done will be remembered. Because of the unfaithfulness he is guilty, and because of his sins he's committed, he will die. Yet you say: the way of the Lord is not just. Hear O house of Israel, is My way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust?

If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin he'll die. For the sin he's committed he will die; but if a wicked man turns from his wickedness he's committed, and does what is just and right, he'll save his life.

Obviously this is euphemisms, otherwise you'd have people dying and resurrecting all the time. He's saying: look, listen, no matter how far down the road of righteousness you get, you can't ever rest on your laurels. You have to die daily, pick up your cross and die daily, stay in the light. But no matter how far down the light you get, you're one decision away from entering back into darkness; and no matter how far down the darkness road you get, you're one decision away from entering back into the light. Stay in the light. Choose life that you might live. May you never say again: it's because my father ate sour grapes that I'm like this. No! The reason we're like this, is because at some point we made a choice to perpetuate the horrible darkness that had been perpetuated, and we chose not to stand against it.

Because he considers all the offences he's committed, and turns away from them, he will surely live and not die; yet the house of Israel says: the way of the Lord is not just? Are My ways unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust? Therefore house of Israel I will judge you, each one according to his ways - in other words: not your father's, yours. Repent. Repent is a word that just means to turn. It's the word Shuv. It just means to turn. Repenting is less: I'm sorry Lord; and more: I will not tolerate this from myself one more day. It's turning back to God's ways. Turn away from all of your offences, the sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourself of all the offences you've committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the sovereign Lord. Therefore repent and live! Look at Verse 31 again. Rid yourself of all the offences you've committed and get a new heart and a new spirit.

Let me close this out this morning with a couple of application points.

1) all of us are shaped by our history and our heritage. All of us are. All of us are shaped by our history and our heritage. This theme of getting a new heart, and a new spirit, is a theme all through Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 11:18 it says: they will return to it, and remove all of its vile images and detestable idols. I will give them an undivided heart, and put a new spirit in them. So all of us are shaped by our history and our heritage. All of us, our thoughts are formed about what's normal and what's acceptable. Why is it that some people grow up with certain things totally unacceptable; and other people can do the same thing, and there's no heart to it at all? It's because of how we grow up. We're shaped by our history and our heritage, but all of us are faced with an opportunity to choose light, life and increase; instead of death, darkness and decrease. We have to be brave enough to take our family history, and put it up against the mirror of God's ways, and ask ourself the question: how is it working for us?

We must take responsibility and repent from these things, so that we can enter life instead of death, light instead of darkness, increase instead of decrease. See this is something that is different. Ezekiel's different than any other writer, and you can see that all through his life. He did crazy things, like lay naked on his front lawn for 140 days - 70 on one side, 70 on the other, so his tan was even - unbelievable the bravery. One time God told Ezekiel to make food with poop; and he said: well if God said it, let's do it. So Ezekiel's better than all of us, because if I came in here today and said: I've had a word from the Lord, and we've got a project, and the ushers are handing out buckets... like it just isn't going to happen right? Ezekiel's different than a lot of other people. What we tend to think is, and I say amen to this in some cases, we tend to think: if I could just get spiritually-healed, then my behaviour will line up; and there are a lot of cases that that applies.

If I could just get spiritually healed, then my behaviour will line up, and come into the light. In other words, I need to get spiritually healed first, and then my behaviour will come around. Ezekiel - and yes, amen, there are a lot of good applicable things on that - but Ezekiel has an entirely different take on it. Ezekiel says: if you rid yourself, and by faith trust that God's ways are the best way to live; that the reinforcement found in that behaviour is going to give you a new heart and a new spirit anyway.

In other words, to other writers it was: get a new heart and a new spirit, and then your behaviour will line up. Fine, you can make a good case for that, and sometimes that's very applicable - but Ezekiel brings hope for those of us who might be struggling in that other area. He says: oh, you want to get healed? Here's what you do: by faith, step out and choose to live in the light. Choose God's ways. Choose by faith to let your behaviour line up, and when you by faith let your behaviour line up with God's ways, God is faithful to give you a new heart and a new spirit.

So to Ezekiel it's not: get healed, and then your behaviour lines up; it's actually: by faith living God's ways, and taking responsibility for your own actions, that there's something that's healing inside that action itself. I love the heart of God here.

Remember that the setting is exile. These people would have been marched from Jerusalem to Babylon. Anybody under the age of 25 would have been castrated, because you don't want people reproducing too much. You don't want slaves reproducing too much. Their king's eyes would have been pulled out, and their temples would have been destroyed - these people were in pain.

Some pain that you go through, you just can't get healed from. Now I want you to hear me, what I say about this. Some life situations are so horrible - get healed from that, really? Some betrayal is so disorientating, healed? Come on. Some abuse is so bad, healed? Some financial situations are so - healed? Don't think so, and that's what Ezekiel comes about, that gives so much hope. Ezekiel is saying: God doesn't want to heal your heart; God wants to give you a new one.

In other words, He doesn't want to patch something that's broken, and put it back together. He's just going to take the whole thing out, because some things - can we be honest - just need to be thrown out and rebuilt altogether. He says: if you want your life rebuilt, here's what you do: by faith, take responsibility, and choose to live God's ways; and when you choose to live God's ways, then light, life and increase gets released over you. And when that gets released over you, the reinforcement of the behaviour itself will give you a new heart and a new spirit, for God is faithful to do that.

May you never say again: my father ate sour grapes so my teeth are set on edge. May we quit making excuses, and laying blame on the previous generation; or for that matter, anybody else. No, when someone eats sour grapes, they are the ones whose teeth get set on edge. Just because someone else ate sour grapes, does not mean your teeth have to be set on edge.

I bless you today to have the courage to step into the light, to have the courage that no matter what your family tree says, that you can step out of darkness and into light. You can call darkness 'darkness', and let God deal with that; and let God give you a new heart and a new spirit. By faith, may you have the courage to step out, and behave and live in God's ways; and may life, light and increase dominate your days for the rest of your life.

I bless you today to handle your money God's way. I bless you today to handle your tongue God's way. I bless you today to handle your actions God's way. I bless you today to be people of integrity. Come on now, you guys can do it. I speak motivationally, I speak prophetically into your spirit. If you're here today, and you don't know if you could do it: yes, you can. I set before you today blessings and curses, life and death - choose life, that you might live!

It doesn't matter if your father ate sour grapes. It doesn't mean your teeth have to be set on edge. Light, life and increase are therefore yours for the taking; and if you're here today, and you need a new heart, there's a way for it.

Let's pray together. Lord, we honour You and we love You. We proclaim You are king. We're humbled by You. Jesus, I stand before You now on behalf of all of us, and say: here's my heart, and here's its darkness - I choose light. Now would You honour Your promise to give me a new heart, and a new spirit. Would you mend it all up, throw it out, and just put a whole new one in there. We love You Lord. If you need in on that prayer, I just pray that you just lift your hand or open your heart up to God, Lord I believe and I agree with every person for a new heart and a new spirit. We choose Your way. Amen.

Prelude For those of you who don't know me, I've had the incredible opportunity to be mentored by a pastor who just happens to have his rabbi training for the last 10 years, so we come at it from that bent. I also have a master's degree in clinical psychology so if you're sort of messed up in your head come back there as well, we've got something for you. We use the profit from that to help us with our mission for Tsedaka, for generosity, for taking care of the poor and the afflicted, and also ministering in places that can't afford it.

So if you come back there to the resources table afterwards, I'll be back there today to say hello, and you could pick something up that will change the way you look at God forever, and in so doing you will also help me put food in people's bellies that can't eat, so enjoy it back there. We also have our online mentoring up and going, so if you'd like to come into an online classroom, and learn how to see the Bible like my rabbi taught me, we've got that up and you can pick up a flier at the back.

Fish and Storms (Shane Willard)

Sun 17 Apr 2011 PM  « Back to Top

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God is generous with His grace, but He's also thorough with His discipline. Jonah did not need to be saved from the fish; the fish was prepared by God to save him. God sends storms in our lives - never to pay us back, but always to get us back. Distress is the force that overpowers intellect, theology, rationale or resistance, to drive us back to the person. Sometimes storms are the very thing that save us.

Jonah, Chapter 2. I really got into the Book of Jonah, and as it pertains particularly to Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. It's the day that they realise that all of their sins are forgiven, and so it's the holiest day of the year; and yet on Yom Kippur, the Book of Jonah was the required reading. You can learn a lot about yourself in there. I landed on something this afternoon from there, which I'm going to share it tonight, and this draws from my series: Running From God.

I want you to turn to Jonah 2 - it's the story of Fish and Storms. Now let me just give you some quick introductory observations about the Book of Jonah in general. When we run from God, we run to the strangest places. We never run from God to something better. We never run from God to something good. We tend to run from God to very strange places. I ran from God, and I entered a life of drugs and alcohol, and it ended up ruining my life. Yeah, not good. I ran from God and I got into this that ruined my life. I ran from God and I ended up in jail. I ran from God and I did this. It's never good stories.

Typically it sounds something like this: I ran from God; and when I ran from God, I also ran from everyone in my life who was a source of wisdom and truth. I also ran from every place in my life that was a source of wisdom and truth, so we all run at times. A couple of things we learn in the Book of Jonah is this: God is patient, but He's also pragmatic.

Another lesson from the Book in general is that: God is generous with His grace, but He's also thorough with His discipline. The judgement and the discipline of God is a reality. The problem with it, is that we a lot of times miss the heart of it; that throughout the scriptures, the judgement and discipline of God was always meant to bring about fruitfulness. It was always meant to somehow save the soul at the end of the day. Even Paul in the New Testament - give him over to Satan. That sounds pretty bad. Give him over to Satan, so that his soul might be saved in the end. Sometimes God lets us feel the consequences of what we're doing fully, so that ultimately we come back to Him.

Ezekiel 14 - this is scary - if you approach God with an idol in your heart, He'll answer you according to the idol. Whoa! In other words, if you approach God already knowing what you want Him to say, and you're approaching Him in a manipulative sort of way, then He'll answer you according to the idol, so that you may experience what that idol brings, and ultimately be brought back to Him.

In the New Testament, the person in heaven, it says that his works were burned up. His soul was saved, but yet through fire, that God's judgement is always intended to bring. I could give you 25, 30 scriptures, that even with Sodom and Gomorrah, when you think of Sodom, I mean God never destroyed something so permanently as Sodom correct? I mean you talk about burning up, sulphur, fire and smoke rising. Yet in the Book of Ezekiel it says that God restored Sodom - so the judgement of God is never intended to be permanent. As a matter of fact, God says: My anger will not contend with man forever. Because why? Man couldn't handle that. Isaiah 57, He says: I saw the ways of man, I was enraged by his sinful greed, and I hid My face in anger from him - yet he kept on with his wilful ways.

In other words, I saw the ways of man, I hid My face from him in anger, yet man kept on with his wilful ways. Then it goes on; I have seen his ways, but I will heal him anyway. The discipline and the correction and judgement of God is always thorough. But the discipline, correction, judgement of God - it's always an attempt to get you back, without paying you back. God is generous with His grace, but He's thorough with His discipline. Now with that in mind let's read Jonah 2:1.

From inside the fish. Now at the end of Chapter 1, it says that God prepared a fish. The word prepared in Hebrew there is Manah, which means this: what comes from something as one kind, continues from the same kind. What comes from something is one kind, and continues in the same kind. Let me make it a little more living bible-ish.

Well before Jonah was prepared for God, God was prepared for Jonah. In other words, in order to maintain our sanity, one of our God concepts has to be that God is smarter than us - that He's always out-fought our rebellion; that whatever plans A, B, C, D, E, F and G, whatever we can come up with, God always has the answer. He always has a way back. He always has a fork in the road we can take. He always a plan to rescue us; so God prepared.

The tone of the Book of Jonah is humour - it's meant to be a joke. Jonah thought he could flee from God... (Laughter). Jonah ran from the presence of the Lord, and so the writer here, whether it's Jonah or whether it's a narrator, says: but God was prepared all along. So from inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God, and he said: in my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and He listened to my cry. You hurled me into the sea, into the deep, into the very heart of the seas. The currents swirled about me, all Your waves and breakers swept over me. I said: I have been banished from Your sight, yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.

See the pattern: I've been banished, yet there's going to come a time where I can come back again. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down, the earth beneath barred me in forever. There's the concept - the earth beneath barred me in forever.

Was he in the belly of the fish forever? No, he was in the belly of the fish for three days. The concept of forever in the ancient Hebrew world did not exist, and this is what I mean by that. The concept of forever meaning: hour after hour after hour after hour after hour. The word translated forever is the word Olam, which is an intensity of an experience. It's to the vanishing point. I got to play golf at Cape Kidnappers Friday and that was really cool. When I was playing Cape Kidnappers the time flew by - that's the word olam, like it's an intensity of experience, where it just seemed like you got lost in time.

It's also true negatively, like have you ever been sitting in class, and it was so boring that the second hand just seemed to never move? So essentially Jonah's saying this intensity of experience was huge. It buried me forever. But you brought my life up from the pit oh Lord my God. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered You, and my prayer rose to You, to Your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs, but I with a song of thanksgiving was sacrificed to You. What I have vowed I will make good, for salvation comes from the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

Now there's a lot going here. Just a couple of initial application points and observations...

1) we all want others to live God's way. There's something inside of us, that we all want other people to live God's way. When we someone backing away from God's way, there's something in us that goes: no, no, no, no, no, that's not right. We all want other people to live God's way - compassionate, merciful, honest, have integrity, be nice to people, generosity. We all want to see people act that way, and although we want others to live that way towards us, there are times when we live outside of God towards them. Sometimes our heart is to have everyone else within God, when we ourselves are not doing that as well. So an initial application point is to ask ourselves: where do we want other people to treat us differently than we're actually acting? That's number one.

2) Sometimes we schedule our surrender to God for: after our plans are done. You ever done that? Sometimes we schedule our surrender to God for: after our plans are done. That's what Jonah did. It wasn't that Jonah didn't believe in God. It wasn't that God wasn't his Lord. It wasn't any of that. God asked Jonah to do something that he wasn't willing to do. Jonah says: you know what I'm going to do? I'm going go to Jaffa, and then I'm going to go to Tarshish. Tarshish was at the end of the known trade route. It would have taken one whole year to go to Tarshish and back.

To travel the world for a year, you have to have money, you have to have means, you have to have opportunity. Jonah's saying: listen, I hear You Lord, but I've got some plans, and after my plans are done - then I'll come back and surrender to Your plan, or at least I'll consider it.

Maybe you're on that journey as well? Maybe you're on a journey with or from God, and you're having to turn down the volume of your conscious so you can cope? Is there any place that you know you're running from God, and can know this; if it's any place in your life that you have to turn down the volume of your conscience just so you can cope with it, that's where we find these moments.

These moments normally lead us to a moment where we can't imagine the chaos, or manage it, and we have to quit running. We know the day of reckoning is not escapable. We know that the direction of our lives is bringing it to a head. It's not that we don't believe in God, it's just we have some deals that we're going to do, and after that we'll get in alignment with our values. So we schedule our surrender to God for: after we're done with our plans.

In Jonah's situation, it's not that he doesn't understand. He hears, he understands, he says no. He was called to Nineveh, he went to Tarshish - a year long journey. Now a couple of thoughts:

1) God is generous with His grace. You look at the story of Jonah, and every single step of the way God was stepping in, whether it was to provide a fish, or whether it was to command the fish to vomit up, or whether it was to turn the hearts of the Ninevehvites back towards God, so they didn't skin Jonah alive when he showed up. Whether it was anointing the worst sermon ever preached in the history of the prophets, whether it was providing a vine, whether it was all these lessons - God was generous with His grace.

2) God was thorough with His discipline.

3) God sends storms in our lives - storms and fish - never to pay us back, but always to get us back.

Now let's look back at the scripture, and I want to sort of break down some of the key ideas. From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God - this is Verse 1 - and he said: in my distress I called to the Lord. How many of us are driven back to God in our distress? You're staring at a pregnancy test? Are you thinking about money? Are you thinking about pursuits? Are you thinking about plans? Are you thinking about dreams? No - what are you saying when you're staring at the pregnancy test? Oh God, help me! You're dealing with something. You've been hiding something, so you pick up the phone to dial the number to confess something, before someone found out what you've been hiding all along - dear God. You're waiting on the results of a medical test - oh God. You're walking out of the job office with a pink slip. See distress is the very force that overpowers intellect, theology, rationale or resistance. We can have all of our arguments lined up about: why God is this, or why God is that, or why God isn't this, or why God isn't that. Sometimes all it takes is a little distress to get us out of all that, and drive us back to the person Himself.

So in the Book of Jonah, God listens and responds to the desperate cry, of desperate people, who are in desperate circumstances of their own creation. How nice is God? He listens to the desperate cry, of desperate people, in desperate circumstances of their own creation, that's how nice He is. This is something we miss about God. We think that there's no way we could come back to Him, given how we've treated Him and ourself; but in the Book of Jonah, as well as the rest of the Bible, there's a constant invitation: come back, return, repent.

Repent and return are the same exact word. Return, repent, come back; there's a better way to live, no matter how far down this road you've gone. There's a better way to do things. Some observations about storms and fish:

1) unexpected crisis in our lives reveal who we really are. This is a conclusion to the story of a man who was going to the end of a trade route of the day. It would have taken him a year. He had options. He had money. In Jewish history, he had means; so here's a man with means, money, some sort of power, a bit of a name, and God tells him to do something. He says: I want you to deal with this. I want you to deal with this darkness. You don't have to fix it; just go there and name it. He says: I'm not going to do that. The word Jaffa means beauty. The word Tarshish means wealth. Jonah ran from what God told him to deal with, in a pursuit of beauty and wealth.

He had options, but in the belly of the fish there were no options. He ends up in the belly of a boat, and then gets thrown into the belly of the ocean, and ends up in the belly of a fish - this does not turn out well. In the belly of the fish, Jonah doesn't have wealth, or at least it doesn't matter. He doesn't have prestige, at least it doesn't matter. He doesn't have a name. In the belly of the fish, in Jonah's case, the storm and the fish drove Jonah to a place where it was just him and God; and that forced him to deal with things about who he really was. It forced him to stick in there, and forced him to answer hard questions. Storms reveal the real you.

2) Storms also change the perspective of the value of things. Storms, fish - they change your perspective on the value of things. The Rabbis teach that all of us can find ourself in the Book of Jonah and isn't that true? Have you ever gone through something that, after you got through it, what you thought was important before, actually wasn't that important any more? A good friend of mine was here this weekend, and he just came through throat cancer, and he's completely clean and in full remission. He had stage four throat cancer. He couldn't speak for 18 months. Part of the treatment for the throat cancer is: he has no saliva for the rest of his life; so right now all of you can draw saliva up into your mouth. If I was to say: I want you to picture a nice lamb shank, with good mushroom gravy, and maybe some lamb, mint sauce - you can draw that into your mouth. We take it for granted, because we've had it our whole life, until it's stripped away from you. We were talking about it, and he said: when I was in that hospital bed in the Gold Coast, and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it or not, all kinds of things came into perspective that weren't there any more. I used to think this was important, and now I'm realising it's not important at all. So in one sense, unexpected crisis can force us to deal with who we really are. In another sense, unexpected crisis actually re-values things in our life, and sometimes we need that to happen.

3) Unexpected crisis exposes a lack of faith - a weak point maybe we need to deal with. Sometimes we might think we have faith, until we face something bigger than it. There's this incredible story about Jesus and the disciples - this storm comes up, and Jesus is sleeping. The disciples wake Him up, and they say: don't You even care if we perish? Don't You even care if we perish? In the Hebrew version of that gospel, this is what it says: Don't You even care if we're eternally separated from God - which is a bit of an exaggeration don't you think? But in the middle of the storm, we tend to overreact. We tend to be irrational. We tend to make something big out of something small. All kinds of things start going on physiologically.

I've told you this before, but it bears repeating. In crisis and moments like that, if we get angry, or panicked, or anything like that, an enzyme is released in our brain,, and it tells all the blood to go to our major muscle groups to prepare for a fight, or to run. When that happens, we lose 25 per cent of our IQ. When you lose 25 per cent of your IQ, you're really close to retarded! You can't make a decision. You can't complete a sentence. You do things that, when you look back on it, you go: what in the world was I thinking! If you're here tonight and you're married, and you get in an argument and things escalate, both of you get angry - essentially you have two mentally-retarded people trying to solve a problem.

It's bad!

So the fish and the storm, they: make us deal with who we really are; they change the value of things; they expose a lack of faith. What about when we someone else is going through something, and we see the faith they exhibit? It's moving! Think about the last person you knew who fell unexpectedly ill, but even in the middle of a disease, they used words like: I just feel peace; I have joy; I have confidence. That's moving, and it motivates us. It motivates us to do what? It motivates us to put our list away. Have you ever seen something on TV, or heard someone's story, and it made you think: what am I complaining about?

I saw a guy on Dr Oz the other day, and he didn't have health insurance, which in America is a real problem. He didn't have health insurance, which means he couldn't afford treatment; and it started out with a little lesion on his lip, and then it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Finally, when he was on Dr Oz, this thing was like this on his mouth, and it was lip cancer. It was cancer in his mouth right there, and you should have seen this guy. It was not fixable by the time he got there. I saw that, and I thought: what am I complaining about? There was a woman - my dad runs a grief group. My dad's wife, her daughter died very prematurely. She died of a brain tumour. She was diagnosed on a Friday, and she died on a Monday - it was that quick - my stepsister, and so as a result they now minister to people in grief. So they run this grief group, to help people deal with the pain of grief, and try to get them internally healed, and help them deal with the emotions involved in that.

There was a lady in my dad's last grief group that had lost four of her five children, and you look at that and go: that's not normal; and you think: wait a minute, I might need to put my list away. I was in Port Elizabeth, and there was this single mum, and we were handing out food. We ran out of food to hand out, and this lady came and we had no more food. I told her, I said: listen, we have to find you something, so I was looking through everything, and I looked through everything. What I found in the back somewhere was a quart zip lock bag of peas, and that's all I could find. I came out, and I handed her this quart size zip lock bag of peas - tears welled up in her eyes. She had six children behind her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she said: thank You Lord, we can eat tonight. I thought to myself: what's on my list? What's on my list? There's always stories. There are these motivational speakers - have you seen the guy with no arms and no legs that can make a sandwich? Pretty cool!

There's this preacher named David Ring. Early in my life, he changed my life. He was born with cerebral palsy, and you look at someone's story, and you ask yourself: what are we complaining about? Sometimes unexpected crisis in our life does things to us, but unexpected crisis in other people's lives, and we see how they handle it, also does something in us. There's something that's healing in suffering. In other words, don't miss the opportunity to make the most of a good crisis! I listened to these stories, I saw these people, I saw the guy on Dr Oz, I'd heard about this lady in my dad's group. Then I asked myself: what kinds of things do we complain about? Someone didn't speak to me, they were mean. The Cable guy is late. The trady didn't show up on time. They never fixed that road in a way that doesn't hold up traffic. The things that we complain about, the things on our list get exposed in the middle of fish and storms.

So storms reveal a lack of faith, by showing the faith of others. Have you ever seen someone's faith, that revealed your lack of it? Have you ever seen someone's generosity, that exposed your greed? There's been times when I've been working on generosity in my life, and building it around my life, and being more of a giver, and more of a giver, more of a giver. There was a moment last year where I thought: man, I'm feeling pretty good about where I am with this. Then I turned on the TV one night, and there was a show called Extreme Home Makeover in America. I don't know if it comes on here, and there was this couple up in Pennsylvania, and they were feeding like 15,000 meals a week out of their back kitchen, and like their floor was falling through the ground. Their children were having issues with holes in the walls and all of this stuff, and Extreme Home Makeover came in and they started asking the guy, they said: how much do you make a year? He said: oh, we make $140,000 a year - which is hardly poor - and yet there were holes in the floor.

They said: $140,000 a year, why wouldn't you fix this floor? Why wouldn't you fix that hole? He said: if you saw what comes through here every week - if I fix this floor, that's hundreds of meals I can't feed. Someone's going to go hungry so I can have a floor, are you kidding me? Where would my priorities be? When he said that, I went - I'm just going to go faint now. So here's a guy on $140,000 a year, and his family was living on $40,000 and they gave $100,000 of their personal income to feed people who can't eat. That is righteousness, so as much generosity as I had thought I had built around my life, when I saw that, it exposed some existing greed still left in my heart. Sometimes fish and storms expose the things that need to change.

So fish and storms, unexpected crises reveal who we really are. They change the value of things. They expose a lack of faith, and they expose flaws in our perspectives. Jonah's prayer's very interesting. When you read Jonah's prayer, it's all direct quotes from different psalms. I cried to You in my distress; that's Psalm 18 and Psalm 120. Waves and breakers were coming over my head; that's Psalm 132. I was deep into the realm of the dead; that's Psalm 120. Up from the pit You brought me; that's Psalm 30. Salvation's from the Lord; that's Psalm 3. Jonah at least had his word down. He's in the belly of the fish, and where does he turn? He turns to the word. He turns to the life-giving; he turns to light, life, increase. He turns to this, and he begins to repeat this over and over and over again, and when he wrote or narrated this, he said: this was the essence of what I prayed. All of these things are direct quotes from psalms.

I think this might have been Jonah's last prayer, but it was hardly his first. I think when you're thrown out of a boat into an ocean, you get swallowed by a big fish, the first words out of your mouth aren't necessarily inspired of God. But when he knew he had to write it all down, he gave a compilation of his best effort; but nonetheless his prayer - think about prayers. We have all kinds of prayers. We have thanksgiving prayers. You could think about this in terms of giving grace for a meal. What is it, to say grace for a meal? There's a couple of aspects to it: 1) bless this food; in other words, if there's anything poisonous in it, let it go good in my body - which doesn't mean so much in New Zealand, but in Fiji it takes on a whole new connotation, right? In some places you go, it's like: wait a minute, hold on, let's get this out. The other connotation of blessing the food is what? We're eating Lord, may we always be aware that there are people who aren't, so thank you. There's a thank you, sort of.

There are also petitions, like asking God for things. This prayer - other kinds of prayers are screams for help, but think about this. This is how eloquent Jonah wrote this: Father, I've just been swallowed by a large marine mammal. I am smelling things that you can't imagine. I'm going to be passed through its bowel shortly, which is going to be quite unpleasant. Please, if it be Your will, rescue me Lord, save me from this hot, dark, smelly dungeon, oh great and powerful God. Do we pray like that? No. In the belly of a fish, we scream incoherent thoughts for help with God. Sometimes the belly of the fish is the very thing that helps us get real. We quit saying things like: oh bless you brother. Isn't God great? We quit doing things like that, because unexpected crisis forces us to get real. It forces us to say things like: you know what, I'm in so much pain last night, I didn't think I was going to make it - and it actually helps us deal with darkness.

Sometimes the fish is the very thing that helps us deal with those things. We tend to think that Jonah needs to be rescued from the fish. That's how it's taught: God rescued Jonah from the fish. Actually when you read the story, it was the fish that rescued him. The fish, the storm, the crisis, is what saved Jonah from himself. It made him deal with himself. It put things in perspective in his life. It changed the value of things. It changed his perspective. It drove him back to the word. Jonah did not need to be saved from the fish; the fish was prepared by God to save him. In Jonah's prayer, it's not a prayer of lamentation, or really help. By the end of it, it's a prayer of thanksgiving. It's a thank you for the salvation that God had brought him. In reality the fish brought him salvation.

See we tend to want to be rescued from storms and fish, but often times they're the very things that rescue us. They save us from ourselves, and they save others from themselves. In the Book of Jonah, it starts out with two wills: God's and Jonah's. By the middle of the Book of Jonah, you've got one will: God's. By the end of the Book of Jonah, you have two wills again. Essentially, the Book of Jonah ends with a question: should I not be nice to 120,000 people, Jonah? The Book of Jonah starts out with two wills, God's and Jonah's. In the middle it's just one will, God's. By the end it's back to two wills. Essentially the Book of Jonah ends with a cliff hanger: are we going to have part two? Do we need to go through something like this again, so that we can lose ourself, that He might increase?

Sometimes storms are the very thing that save us. Perhaps the lesson is not: God, get me out of something; it's: God, thanks for saving me from me. It's: God, thank You for going through this with me. How many of you have said: Lord, save me from losing my job. I don't want to lose my job! Actually losing your job could be the best thing for you. What if losing your job is what propels you to start your own business, and you end up doing well, that you would have never had the guts to do yourself? You know why I'm here today? I'm here today because I lost my job! Actually I was in a very unfortunate situation, where a church hired me and then couldn't pay me; which is really unfortunate, because they offered me quite a good salary, and then I went to pick up my pay cheque and... ah we don't have it; to which I said: do you have some of it? Nope, we were just believing God brother. I'm going: well that's nice. Does your belief have food attached to it?

They were not bad people. It was just an unfortunate thing, and it put me into a very unexpected crisis - no job, $1,600 in the bank. The place that I had left had already replaced me; and I'm driving back across the country, not knowing what in the world was coming next. I got six hours down the road. You know how far it is to drive across America? Very far! Had a lot of time to think. I got six hours out of California, and my phone rang, and it was Clark Taylor. I hadn't talked to Clark in, I don't know, five years. He says: is this Shane Willard? I said: yes. He said: Shane, this is Clark Taylor. I said: hey Clark. He said: listen, about three weeks ago, God started dealing with me about having you come and be the keynote speaker at my pastor's conference, and I'm sorry it's taken me a little time to get to you. I just wanted to see if you were free, to which I said: yes, I'm quite free!

He said: it's my first pastor's conference, I don't know what the turnout's going to be, so you're going to have to pay your own way here, and we're going to believe God; and I'm like: that'd be fantastic! I had $1,600 in the bank, the plane ticket was $1,580. We put that in there, flew across the sea with $20; and there were 70 pastors there, and they all but one booked, and here we are. So I tell that story to say: what I thought was a disaster, was actually God saving me from something. It was actually God providing!

So the prayer: God, save me from losing my job! Well okay, I'll go there with you; but maybe losing your job might be the best thing for you. Save me from this family crisis. Maybe the family crisis has saved you? Save me from this divorce - well maybe it saved you. Lord, save me from this idea of moving away from my home town. Umm, maybe actually it saved you.

See storms and fish are a lot like fleeing from the presence of the Lord. Jonah was trying to get away from the presence of God, yet the whole rest of the book is about Jonah and God - so did Jonah succeed? Listen to Verse 3: You hurled me into the deep. YOU hurled me into the deep. Hang on, think about the story. Who hurled Jonah into the sea? The sailors. Jonah has clarity in the belly of the fish. He says: no, no, no, it wasn't the sailors that did it, YOU did it. Jonah sees clearly in the middle of a storm, in the middle of a fish, sometimes that's when you see things the most clear; which leads me to this question. When did Jonah actually repent of where he was going? Like was it in mid-air over the side of the boat? Was it when he actually hit the water? Was it going down the gullet of the fish? The answer is: I don't know; but you do know this: it was way before three days. Jonah changed his tune way before three days. God is generous with His grace, but He's thorough with His discipline. You start looking at the discipline of God - wander for 40 years in the wilderness. At what point in that 40 years do you think they said: we got it Lord, can we go back now?

Seventy years in exile, all kinds of things. Good parenting is equating rebellion with pain. My dad had a belt and - don't feel bad for me, I needed it. And trust me, all of us wish yours would have done it more, probably. Okay, so he would do this. He hardly ever had to hit me, hardly ever. Every now and then he gave - well in general he never gave me a spanking I didn't deserve, and it was never over the top. It was appropriate discipline, but what he did is, he attached pain with bad behaviour. Once sufficient pain was attached to bad behaviour, there were moments where I'd start to cross the line, and all he had to do was take his belt off and set it down, and before he ever had to discipline me, I changed right then! Can I get an amen - how many of you know what I'm talking about right? The belt itself, not the act of discipline but the belt itself, brought about the change in behaviour.

See sometimes we need storms and fish to act as belts in our life. Essentially it acts as those moments that go: umm, ahh, do we need to pull this out? We have to start though with the supposition that God is kind, and He is loving, and His judgement and discipline is never forever. It's always meant to bring about correction for greater fruitfulness, just like a dad. It's called classical condition. God's discipline sometimes goes far beyond what is necessary to teach the lesson, so that we'll never go there again.

Verse 8: Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You. What I vowed, I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. See Jonah is pointing out something: in the middle of unexpected crisis we cling to God, not to the things that we were pursuing other than God. We don't cling - in the middle of a fish, in the middle of a crisis, in the middle of a storm, we don't cling to the plan. We don't cling to the money, we don't cling to the position, we don't cling to Jaffa, we don't cling to Tarshish. We cling to God. What we pursued instead of God is not worth what we lose.

In our distress, we do not cry out for what we were pursuing - the person, the standard of living, the deal we were working, no - we cry out for God. Sometimes the storm and the fish is what we exactly need. It's not that we need saving from the storm and the fish; it's that the storm and the fish is what's saving us. The storm and the fish is actually saving us. Let me close this tonight with a couple of application questions:

1) Is there any place in my life that I need God to rescue me from? Is there any place in my life that I look at, and I say: God, I really feel like I need You to rescue me from this?

2) Is there any way that it is actually rescuing me? Is there any sense of it, that it's actually rescuing you? Maybe it's forcing you to deal with the real you? Maybe it's forcing you to name your darkness? Maybe it's bringing things to the surface, maybe it's bringing emotions up that haven't been brought up for years and years and years, and you're not going to go forward in wholeness without bringing it up. Maybe this thing you need rescuing from, is the very thing God is using to rescue you. What do you need rescuing from? Is there any sense that it's rescuing you?

3) is there anything in my life that needs to be value-shifted? Don't feel bad - Jonah was one of the heroes of the faith, but everything in his life needed to be value-shifted. Jonah was a racist bigot. He was not a very nice person. He actually wanted God to destroy a group of people, four days after he was rescued from the belly of a fish - not very good. You can't celebrate your deliverance from a fish, by hoping other people get swallowed! Come on, that doesn't work - and the whole reason he didn't want God to be nice, was because the Assyrians weren't Jews. He's a racist. What in your life, is the fish or the storm trying to value-shift? In other words, don't go through the fish and storm without getting out of it what you need to get out of it. What is God saving you from? What needs to be value-shifted? Where does your perspective need to change?

Let me ask one last question. Is there anything in me that needs to be swallowed, in order to become new? Jesus equated Jonah's three days in the fish, with His three days in the tomb. In other words, sometimes things need to be swallowed, in order to be made new. Jesus said it this way: If a kernel hits the ground, unless it dies, it can't come up new.

I came here this week with a progression of thought, a way of hopefully moving this congregation to another place. I hope that it's been a blessing to you. I hope that we were willing to relearn the love of God, and we sort of saw Genesis in a new light - that we don't owe God anything, that we don't have Babble. I hope we learned some things about how we handle our money and our treasure. I got a tremendous response this morning about light and dark, and choosing light, and not blaming other people for where we are.

My last question to you is this: whatever you're going through, in terms of fish and storms and unexpected crisis, what are you going to get out of it? What needs to change? What needs to be moved? What needs to be swallowed, so that life can become new for you? What are you believing God for? What are you believing God to do in you - not in the circumstance, circumstance of whatever - what are you believing God to do in you? Are you willing to name it now? Just between you and God, are you willing to name it? Are you willing to tell God: this is what I need, this is what I want to be made new. I want to be made new in this area. This is darkness in my life. This is disrepair. Lord, I thought the fish was what I needed saving from; actually the fish is saving me. This is what I need to deal with.

I bless you tonight, with the courage to deal with those things, in a way that some places call it an exhortation. I exhort you, I challenge you, to take a moment, look deep down in side, and don't waste the crisis. If you're not in a crisis right now, good. When the next one comes, don't waste it! Likely you don't need to be saved from the crisis; likely the crisis is saving you. I bless you tonight to be able to find the love of God, even in a crisis. I bless you tonight to deal with your darkness.

Let's pray together. Lord, we love You and we honour You. We proclaim You're king. Lord Jesus, I give you my life fresh and anew. I ask You to be my Lord. Forgive me for the places in my life, that I've turned down the volume of my conscience, to deal with it. May I never turn down the volume of the voice of Your spirit. Lord, let Your spirit speak strongly. Right now across this room I ask that Your spirit begin to speak to the hearts of people. May there be a bravery that comes over this place, to name the darkness, to deal with it, so that we don't keep going through fish and storms over and over and over again. Let's deal with it.

There's a real sense of the presence of God in here. Lord, just right now, I pray you would speak quietly into the hearts of people: this is what needs to be made new. A later writer said it this way: God makes all things new. Just right now let a spirit of newness come over you, a new heart, a new spirit, a new commitment to live in the light. Let that rest over you - a new commitment to be more aware of the needs of people around you, a new song, a new dance, a new story, a new life, a new everything.

If you get on this prayer, maybe you want to just whisper this underneath your breath: Lord, I give You my heart, I give You my spirit. Would You make all things new? Would You make all things new? Lord, thank You for my fish, thank You for my storm, thank You for my crisis. May I get the most out of it. May my suffering or crisis, or fish or storm, may it inaugurate something of creativity, and life, and newness in spirit, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Hosting Shane Willard (2010) (Shane Willard)

Leaders Meeting (Shane Willard)

Pashat, Drash, Remez and Sod (1 of 4) (Shane Willard)

The Hebrew people interpret the Bible through four levels. Pashat is: simple; plain meaning - the cleanest, plainest meaning of the text. Remez is a hint, or an allusion, to something before before it. Drash is a life application, that whatever you find in the Bible, if you cannot apply it, then don't talk about it. Sod is mystery, a realm of Bible interpretation that only the Holy Spirit can reveal to you.

Hebraic Definition of Kingdom (2 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Shane Willard 2010 (3 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Shane Willard 2010 (4 of 4) (Shane Willard)

The Cross and the Resurrection (Shane Willard)

Jesus died on the cross for you, not to just forgive you of your sins, but to empower you to be nice to other people. There's a cross that Jesus bore for us, that we could not bear; and at the same time, there's a cross that He called us to bear, because we can. We look at the case for believing in the resurrection, and then look closely at some of the imagery - the Passover Lamb; and the mixture of blood & water that flowed from Him; the Folded Napkin; and the Dirty Roman Sponge. From Eden, a river called Hope flowed through a land called Suffering. Colloidal Gold gives water a red colour, symbolising that hope.

What do Kingdom people look like? (Shane Willard)

A study of the Beatitudes - Jesus first sermon. A popular new Rabbi, he presents a yoke that is easy, and a burden that is light; He emphases heart attitudes over keeping all the laws. There are a lot of people at the end of the day, who think they're in, but they're actually out. Tzedak (Righteousness) always produces Tzedakah (Generosity, or righteousness-revealed). Jeremiah 22:16 "He took care of the poor and the afflicted, so it is well with him. Is this not what it means to know Me, declares the Lord, your God". The happiest people set their passions on meeting the needs of others.

Audio

- Leaders Meeting.mp3

- Pashat, Drash, Remez and Sod (1 of 4).mp3

- Hebraic Definition of Kingdom (2 of 4).mp3

- Shane Willard 2010 (3 of 4).mp3

- Shane Willard 2010 (4 of 4).mp3

- The Cross and the Resurrection.mp3

- What do Kingdom people look like?.mp3

Leaders Meeting (Shane Willard)

Thu 22 Apr 2010  « Back to Top

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Leaders Meeting Shane Willard 22.04.2010

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[Shane Willard] Well I love being here. I purposely scheduled this as my last - I've been three weeks in South Africa. We went to seven different places in three weeks and then I was in Australia for three weeks, and now I'm here. I purposely made this my last stop because this is a place I can come and I don't have to manufacture energy, because there's a natural energy that is around the place anyway and so it makes it easier on me. I really appreciate your church. I think your church is a church of strength and it's a church of energy. More than anything I think that the feeling - take this okay, take this for what it's worth as someone who travels the world and is in different places every week. When you're in different places every week you can gauge certain things and so as someone who travels the world and is in a different place every week, this is one of the most loving places that I've ever been to in terms of the environment that people would feel when they come in.

So that's a big testimony to you, so what I'm going to share - I had it in my heart to share something with you today and I spent some time preparing it, my last days in Brisbane and then you know, looking at it. This is the first time I would have shared this, so give me some sort of creative leeway here because I'm still working some of this out too, but I felt to share something with you because the environment of this church is so precious and it's so particular and it's so unique that it's up to you to maintain it. So what I want to talk to you about today is the state of your heart. It's the state of your heart. I entitled the talk State of the Heart Leadership. Every year someone does a State of the Union address, the President of the United States does a State of the Union address and it's very important at that point to get his perspective on where things are. So I want to talk to you about how important it is to on a regular basis - everything we're going to talk about today is not a one time decision where you go to an altar, you get prayed for, you get delivered from something.

It's not a one time decision; it's something that I think we'll find that we have to deal with on a regular basis, because the tendency with European Christian is when hear something like this they ask themself the question, well which one am I? Like for instance the parables [unclear 00.02.32] where Jesus says okay, people's hearts are like this. When someone scatters the seed of God's word it either falls on good ground or stony ground, or thorny ground or hard ground, so the tendency is to say well which one are we. Which one are we? The answer is yes. The answer is you're all of them, depending on the topic okay and depending on where you are, and depending on what kind of pressure you're feeling. Pressure does things to people. Pressure does things to people that other times it wouldn't. Stuff comes out and it's inappropriate. Listen, it's inappropriate to judge anybody's heart based on how they're acting under pressure, just like you wouldn't want someone to judge your heart in one moment of you lose your mind right?

So with that in mind I want us to investigate some things here. This is a scripture from Matthew 15:17 through 20. This is Jesus, He's speaking to a group and the context of this scripture is - okay, let me give you the context of the scripture first. So the context of the scripture is the Pharisees are having a moment with Jesus where they're being very critical, and if you've ever been a communicator you understand how frustrating this. Every now and then - it doesn't happen often, but every now and then I'll get done with a meeting and you've worked hard to - the emotion it takes to really do a meeting well, you work hard to do it. After the meeting some self-appointed church prophet who is the guy in charge of whatever's true and whatever's an error in the church comes up with his Bible open wanting to tell you why everything you said was wrong. That's very annoying. It's very, very annoying because what he's saying is he's right and everybody else is wrong and anyway, so testing grace.

So anyway they're coming in and they're doing this and it's like a rapid fire sort of thing. Finally they run out of things to criticise Him for and this is what they say: Jesus, don't You notice that Your disciples, they don't even wash their hands before they eat? And Jesus, it's like He's at the end of the road with this, like if you're going to criticise that - now as a communicator this is so important. As a communicator when you're communicating with a group of people the most important thing is your starting point. You have to back up until you have some kind of common ground, so in this passage of scripture Jesus has tried to go this way and they were critical. Then He tried to go that way and they were critical, then He tried to go this way and they were critical. Jesus continually backs up until He can find some common ground, and once you can find some common ground and says okay, can we at least agree on this, then you can go forward. That's Communication 101.

You have to start with something everybody's on the same page with and then move somebody somewhere that way, so this was the common ground. This is what He says: Don't you see that whatever enters your mouth goes into your stomach and then eventually out of the body? So Jesus backs up to the point where He says okay, you guys aren't agreeing with anything so let's try this. When you eat it goes into your stomach, and then you eventually have a bowel movement. [unclear 00.05.48] That is a - [laughter] you don't get much more safe than that, like can you imagine being a Pharisee? You're trying to criticise everything so finally Jesus backs up and goes okay, when you eat something it goes into your stomach and eventually you have a bowel movement. The Pharisees would have been like well you can't really argue with that can you, right? [Laughter] So now He's finally got His common ground and then this is what He says. See its okay, so we do agree on that: eat, stomach, bowel movement. It's all connected.

Okay, then He says but the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and these make a man unclean, for it is out of the heart that comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander. These are the things that make a man unclean. So He's whacking their entire idea of unclean and clean. They had created an incredible system to define people as unclean or clean. They had this massively complicated system. There were 613 rules in Leviticus, 613 commands to live the best life, and it had nothing to do with salvation. It had nothing to do with forgiveness. All you had to do to be forgiven was put your faith in a lamb on Yom Kippur, so in the Old Testament they were saved by grace through faith, [unclear 00.07.12] faith in a lamb. In the New Testament we're saved by grace through faith in the sacrifice of a lamb - no difference. In Leviticus there were 613 commands to live the best life. The word Torah doesn't mean law, it just means God's teachings and instructions for the best way to live.

So there were 613 commands, but that wasn't hard enough. There's something in people that wants to make God harder to live with, so they made 3,000 more rules on top of the 613. Now why would they do that? Why would they do that? Because in the Old Testament if you broke the Torah what did you have to do? You had to bring a sacrifice and it had to be a spotless sacrifice. Well if you didn't have a bunch of spotless lambs hanging around and you needed a sacrifice where would you get it? Conveniently you could buy it from them, so isn't it convenient that the people you could buy the lambs from actually made it harder to keep so that you would need more lambs. Now why would they do that? So that they could make money. They were getting wealthy on religious guilt. We would never do that would we? So what they did is then they said well because of our rules we've never murdered somebody. We've never committed adultery, we've never done this, so they set themself up as something bigger.

So Jesus shows up and wrecks their entire concept of clean and unclean. He shows up and goes you're impressed with yourself because you've never murdered somebody? Well that's not very impressive. How many people actually murder people? Not very many. I'm going to ask you do you hate people? Is it in your heart? You're impressed you've never committed adultery? Well woopty-do. I mean how many people could say I've never committed adultery? A lot. My question is what's come out of your heart; do you lust? Jesus wrecked everything. I mean He shows up - He even wrecks their ideas of salvation right, like I'll give you an example. There's this one time there's a paralysed guy that gets lowered in from the roof of a house and this is - now listen. I was raised Pentecostal, I was discipled Baptist, I went to a Presbyterian Reform Seminary and I've been mentored by a Pentecostal rabbi for eight years and I'm telling you, this story doesn't fit any system of theology I've ever heard but it's right there in the Bible, it's in Red Letters.

It says that a paralysed guy got lowered in from the roof of a house and it says and Jesus saw the face of His friends and proclaimed his sins forgiven. Jesus saw the face of His friends and proclaimed his sins forgiven. Now can you imagine the reaction of the crowd? You can't call him forgiven! What did he need to be forgiven? He needs a lamb. He needs to take the lamb to the temple. He needs to talk about his sins to the priest. The priest needs to offer the lamb as a sacrifice for his sins. Everybody knows that's the only way to be forgiven, everybody knows that! Jesus goes no, no, no, there's something else going on in his heart, it'll be okay. It'll be okay - and He was whacking their concepts of salvation and He was whacking their money making schemes. He started to make everything about the heart. Now this has huge implications for leaders. The first implication is this, is that the condition of your heart will determine the atmosphere of your leadership. The condition of your heart always determines the atmosphere of your leadership. Let me give you an example what I mean.

You could always say the right things, but you can almost never hide the tone of how you say it. I'll say it this way: you can be right but be wrong at the top of your voice. This is true if you're having relational conflict, you know, those of you who are married, you guys understand what I'm talking about. You love someone with all your heart but there's still conflict and so in that conflict there are times when you can be right but everybody in this room, whether you're married, single, whatever, everybody in this room has had relational conflict where their side was right but actually they were wrong because of their tone. In being right they were actually wrong. Here's another thing you can't hide, intensity. Intensity. The true test of ministry in the First Century was something called the Disposition of Messiah, the Disposition of Messiah. The Disposition of Messiah was found in Exodus 34:6. He is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness, so that when someone's heart is right concepts and principles that someone knows almost never change. The tone and the intensity of which it's communicated is what changes, so when your heart is doing well the tone and the intensity of your leadership is a Disposition of Messiah tone. When your heart is not doing so well it changes the environment of which you lead okay, so that's number one.

Number two, the condition of your heart will shape the environment in which you lead, so the first thing [unclear 00.12.27] will determine the atmosphere of your leadership. The second thing follows on, that will eventually shape the environment in which you lead. Unhealthy leaders create unhealthy environments. Unhealthy leaders create unhealthy environments. Unhealthy environments are taxing and draining because unhealthy environments eventually fill up with unhealthy people, because unhealthy people are comfortable in unhealthy environments. It is normal for them. In an unhealthy environment all healthy people either get unhealthy or they leave. In an unhealthy environment all healthy people either leave or become unhealthy. Creating healthy environments is the key to drawing healthy people okay? The condition of your heart will eventually be the factor that draws the moral and ethical environments around what we're doing. It'll draw the values around what we're doing. It'll actually determine who's going to be comfortable around you, who's going to be comfortable.

Listen, if you're surrounded by nutcases there's something to be said for that. There's something to be said about being compassionate and wanting to help people, but if you are surrounded by them all the time it might be saying something about you. [Laughter] If you look around and go well just everybody around me has got a problem, the problem actually might be you. It actually might be you. So Jesus is talking about how important it is to guard a heart. Now I've written down there are four leading causes of heart disease, four leading causes of heart disease and once again when you listen to these your tendency is going to be well, which one of these am I? I would say yes, it depends. It depends. The first type is guilt, guilt. Now guilt, if someone is struggling with guilt, something in secret okay where someone's struggling with guilt you will notice this in their leadership, because underlying guilt is simply this: it's an attitude that says I owe you, I owe you. I owe you.

Let me give you some traits of a guilty leader. First, the guilty leader finds it difficult to trust other people. A guilty leader finds it difficult to trust other people. Why? Because in themself they don't trust themself. They know that they're not acting trustworthy, so therefore no one else is acting trustworthy so they can't trust anybody. The find it difficult to trust. Number two, the guilty leader builds walls instead of communities. Why? Because you need something to protect your secret, so they build walls instead of communities. Number three, the guilty leader comes across distant and distracted, distant and distracted. Now once again your tendency here is going to be two things; which one of these am I? And the other tendency is going to be wow, I hope such and such is listening right now, right? [Laughter] I would encourage you not to take that. I would encourage you to actually sort of step out and investigate yourself. The guilty leader comes across as distant and distracted.

Number four, the guilty leader often overreacts to people who share their weakness, so what I mean by that is listen, if you ever see a preacher on TV who is focussing very hard on one particular sin, I promise you somewhere deep in their heart they struggle with it. [Laughter] You always preach your weakness, always. I preach my weakness. You guys have heard me enough. What would you think my weakness would be? And I'll be just open with you? My weakness is that legalistic sort of wondering if God likes me because I've done bad things sort of thing. I grew up old school Pentecostal. In old school Pentecostalism if you sinned God left. You had to get re-saved. You lost your salvation every time you sinned. My granny got saved five times a day. [Laughter] She did, five times a day and here was a woman who never cut her hair in her whole life. She died at 90 and on her death bed, on her death - she just died back in August. On her death bed she was worried that they might have to rush her in to surgery and cut her hair. Why? Because her pastor told her if you cut your hair you're offending God and you're endangering yourself of hell.

So here's a woman who never cut her hair in her whole life. She'd never worn make up in her whole life, never worn jewellery in her whole life, never wore slacks in her whole life, never went to a movie in her whole life. If she knew that I was at the movies she would pray earnestly that Jesus would not come back while I was in there [laughter] because Jesus would never go in there to get me out. [Laughter] She got saved five times a day and the reason she chose five times a day is she broke her waking hours into three and a half hour spans. Every three and a half hours she would have a moment where she would confess the sins of the last three and a half hours to God so that she wouldn't run the risk of forgetting any. This was a crazy sort of bondage system. I was messing with her on her 85th birthday. I said listen granny, I'm taking you out for your birthday. I used to take her out on a date. I'd take her on a date about once a week or so because she was by herself. Granddad had died. I work for myself so I could organise things so I'd take her out on a date in the middle of the day.

I'd take her into a nice restaurant and I'd tell everybody this is my date and she's smiling and you know, she's got her walker and [laughter] she's in there. So one time I said granny, after dinner I'm taking you for a makeover. She said what! I said I'm serious, I've got it all set up. They're going to give you a nice hair cut, they're going to spruce everything up, got you some jewellery organised, I've got you a nice outfit. This is going to be fantastic granny! The fear of God came over her! [Laughter] She said no! No, no, no, I can't do that. She said I wouldn't want to send myself to hell and she said maybe someone else too. I said granny, how are you going to send anybody to hell? She said I'd hate to give a man a lustful thought. [Laughter] I'm like you're 85! Like nothing's in the right place, are you kidding me? Like a lustful thought? [Laughter] So here's someone who - and being around my granny, granny was hypersensitive to people who struggled with those things. Why? Because we preach our weakness, so I grew up in that environment. So somewhere deep down in my heart, somewhere deep down in my heart if I messed up bad enough when I lay my head down at night I wonder if God likes me. I wonder, I struggle with that hard so when you listen to my preaching what does it focus on? It's a lot of grace and a lot of wait a minute, Jesus is nice and a lot of this stuff.

I sort of go over the top with it. I sort of go over the top with it. Why? It's because of my own weakness and my own guilt. Now is focussing on the grace of God a bad thing? No, if you're going to focus on anything that's probably a pretty good thing to do, but everybody ministers and everybody - this is my point: everybody ministers and everybody leads out of their weakness. So whatever you're feeling guilty about secretly, I promise you it's coming out in how you're leading. If anybody's paying attention they can tell what you're struggling with by how you lead, by how you lead. You cannot hide this stuff because it's coming out of your heart alright, so guilt has the attitude of I owe you. Now here's a consequence of that. The consequences of that are this: number one, a culture of suspicion, a culture of suspicion. Everybody's wondering is someone out to get me? Is someone - what's their motive there? And this could be simple things. This is where on a staff in a church this will kill a church, this will kill an organisation.

If Steve says today Dave, I'm going to go meet with so and so in the church. I'm going to have lunch with so and so in the church, so Steve leaves and then Dave calls a meeting with you three and you and says Steve's going out with this guy. Now I wonder what he's trying to do? I wonder what his motives are? Once we start assuming that Steve has improper motives we destroy the unity in the organisation. Now listen. If you've fazed out listen here, this is so important. The Hebrew concept of unity is this word: ahad. Ahad. That is a Hebrew word that means compound unity, compound unity. It's a special word. For something to be a - I'm not a scientist so forgive me if I'm using the wrong words here - for something to be a homogenous sort of thing where it's one [that's one thing, 00.22.19] but for something to be compound, in other words it's got many parts but it comes together as a whole, that's the idea of ahad. It'd be like saying the All Blacks played together as one okay? You've got however many people are on a rugby team and they're playing together as one. That's ahad.

Now this is so important. One of the three primary scriptures in the Torah that the Jews focussed on is Deuteronomy 6:4. It's called the Shema and it just says this. They would do this morning, noon and night: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, ahad. Ahad - so that the Lord is unity inside diversity. He is compound unity okay, He's compound unity alright, so unity inside diversity. So God is ahad. We are made in the image of God alright, so if God is unity in diversity so are you, and everything about you is unity in diversity. Think about it, you're three in one right? You're spirit, soul, body, and each individual part is its own individual part. At the same time each individual part affects the others. If you get depressed does it affect your physical body? Yes, you lose your appetite, you sleep more, this, that and the other okay, so if you get sick in your physical body does it affect your soul? Yes, absolutely.

Then each individual part is ahad, for instance how many parts are in your body? Thousands and thousands and thousands and if only one part gets sick it affects the whole body, for instance have you ever had kidney stones? Anybody ever had kidney stones? You have. Did you go to work that day? [No.] You wimp, what's wrong with you? It's just your kidney, a stone about that big right? It's just like that. You ever had pneumonia? Anybody had pneumonia? [Yes.] Did you go to work that day? What's wrong with you? The whole rest of your body's healthy, just that one little part is filled with fluid and you can't work, you wimp? [Laughter] Like what's wrong with you? Why? Why is this? It's because your body is ahad; it's a lot of different parts but they all affect one another. Your soul is ahad. Your soul and your body react ahad. The universe, the Bible says this, that God holds the universe together. God holds the universe together [unclear 00.24.42] this is just transitive property.

If God is ahad and God is holding the universe together, then ahad is one of the forces that holds the whole universe together. This is true. The relationship between ocean temperatures and climate, the relationship between - there's a guy, I can't think of his name - but he came up with and found what they call the Butterfly Effect. Do you guys know what the Butterfly Effect is? It wasn't just a movie. The Butterfly Effect was a guy that was studying meteorological patterns and what he did, he was at MIT which is the top engineering school in America. He created an algorithm for wind pattern and he was playing with it on a computer program. Well the long and the short is, the story goes that he went into his algorithm one day and he was in a hurry and he left off the final three decimal points. So you've got to understand his algorithm, let's say - I don't remember the actual number but it was something like this: [unclear 00.25.45] okay. So something like this and when he got in a hurry he left those three numbers off, he just typed in that. And so he left and he came back an hour later and what he found was that the effect of those numbers being left off in the wind patterns had dramatic climate devastation 100 miles away. So they asked him, they said well what does that mean? He said well what it means is those numbers in terms of wind is the equivalency of the wind that is created by one puff of a butterfly's wings, he said so the logic goes if a butterfly puffed his wings in the wrong direction at the wrong time it can cause catastrophic effects 100 miles away in weather patterns, so he coined it the Butterfly Effect, the Butterfly Effect. That's ahad.

Do you realise how ahad the universe is, when God has to keep His hands on the direction of the butterflies' wings? That's ahad. That is holding the universe together. If the world quit spinning on its axis properly we'd all die very quickly, like these are all ahad ideas. Now listen, ahad is the force that's holding the universe together, unity in diversity is holding the universe together. Listen to me. When the universe faces an ahad breakdown the universe starts to break down. When your body faces an ahad breakdown, your body gets sick and you get disease, this kind of thing. Listen, if the universe cannot handle a breakdown of ahad this church doesn't stand a chance. You with me? [Yeah.] When the universe - like if the ahad of the universe starts breaking down you would have catastrophic effects, catastrophic effects and this organisation, as good as it is, is nowhere near as strong as the universe. If the universe cannot handle a breakdown in ahad then this church won't stand a chance. The organisation won't stand a chance.

You have to create an environment that does not tolerate sabotaging ahad. Listen, mistakes - yes, as a leader this is my philosophy. I've let my leaders make as many mistakes as they could, like without destroying something. I would let them make as many mistakes as they could. As long as they were journeying with the right heart I didn't care about their mistakes, but when they started sabotaging ahad that's when I'd cut their head off. Like I was on staff at some big churches and the only people I can remember ever having to step down out of leadership, it wasn't for adultery or addiction or anything like that. When someone was messing up, if someone messed up and they came to us and said listen, I've messed up, we always helped them. That was no problem, but when we started hearing people talking about other people, when we started hearing slander and gossip and things that break down ahad, no. No, we can't tolerate that here.

My pastor that trained me, there were a lot of guys in leadership who messed up with pornography or messed up with whatever and he would always help them. He wouldn't expose it - because they wanted help. [unclear 00.29.16] as long as you want help I'll help you and I will not expose you, and that's healthy. That's healthy but man, when that guy got word that there was this group of people and they were downing this group of people and it was breaking down the unity of the organisation, he would cut their head off. Why? Because the universe can't handle it. How much more can an organisation not handle it? So this is the effect of having guilt in your heart is a culture of suspicion. Number two, a culture characterised by professional courtesy rather than genuine community. Okay, let me say that again. When we're leading with guilt in our heart it's a culture characterised by professional courtesy, rather than genuine community.

Number three, the consequences of having guilt in the heart: very surface relationships because you're insecure about people knowing what's for real. [Yeah, that's right.] So my question to you before we go any further in this is do you have any secret things that you're dealing with that is affecting how you lead? Is there anything in your heart that only you know that's affecting how you lead? Is there anything where this guilt is entering into your leadership? Alright, then the next one is this. First is guilt, second one is anger, anger. Anger has the underlying heart attitude you owe me, you owe me. So guilt is I owe you and that's unhealthy; anger is you owe me. Now here are the traits of angry leaders: angry leaders overreact to unmet expectations. Angry leaders are prone to fix blame on individuals rather than systems, so instead of looking at the system of the organisation and how we can change that we fix the blame on one particular person or this particular thing. Typically it's not true. Typically it's a system problem.

Angry leaders punish failure and more often than not someone with anger in their heart, they refuse to accept responsibility for their own failures. So here's the consequences of that. When that's going on in our heart here's what it looks like in leadership: one, a culture of fear where you're scared to mess up all the time; a culture of cover up so then you have a lot of secrets which produce more guilt, then you've got a real mess; a culture of fear, a culture of cover up and then a culture where right - listen, a culture where right is defined by what pleases the boss instead of what's the best for the organisation. You don't ever want a culture that's defined by what pleases one man. You want a culture that's defined by what's best for the organisation alright. So the next one, first one is guilt, second one's anger, third one is greed. So guilt is I owe you, anger is you owe me, greed is I owe me, I owe me. Here are some traits of a guilty leader and if you find this to be true about yourself we're going to have to deal with this okay.

Greed. Here are some traits of a greedy leader and if you've found traits of this in yourself we'll have to deal with this. If there's any growling Mike will handle it, okay so [laughter] the greedy leader is reluctant to share the credit. A greedy leader is reluctant to share the credit. If there's something in you that you find it hard to share credit with somebody else, there's something in your heart needs to be dealt with and listen, that doesn't make you bad. It makes you normal okay. Everybody deals with this stuff. This doesn't make anybody bad. This is normal stuff that we all deal with. Number two, the greedy leader is reluctant to share the rewards of success, so they want to sort of hoard it to themself. Number three, the greedy leader will change the rules in the middle of the game to suit them - nothing's more frustrating than that in anything. Let's take a marriage for instance. A marriage, whether you realise it or not, starts out with a basic agreement between two people.

It has basic tenants to it like I will love you, you will respect me. It's a pretty good idea right; I will love you, you'll respect me. And inside that it has even more tenants to the basic agreement, like it's a pretty good rule stated or unstated that your husband should not come home and greet you with a punch in the mouth every day, pretty good rule right? Like if he did that he would be breaking his basic agreement alright. [Yeah.] Pretty good idea for you not to address him with obscenity-laced tirades, probably pretty good right? So pretty good for the wife not to address him like that, pretty good for the husband not to address - and whether you've stated it or not stated it these things are understood agreements. Every relationship like that that you have understood agreements about sexuality, you have understood agreements about how we're going to handle money, like it's a pretty good idea for one of the two not to go out and borrow $50,000 without consulting the other person right. Like this is a pretty good idea.

Now in Hebrew culture when you broke your basic agreement it was called marital unfaithfulness okay, marital unfaithfulness. So in a leadership culture as in a relational culture we have to keep our rules and our agreements consistent. It doesn't mean that we don't change our rules; it means that when we change the rules there's a general agreement that that's the best way to do it. You don't change it in the middle of the game okay. Number four, the greedy leader will sacrifice the good of the organisation for the sake of personal gain alright, that's the heart. Now here are the consequences of that. Here's what the culture will look like if we don't deal with that: number one, it's a culture where decisions are made with the good of the leader in mind rather than the good of the organisation; number two, if you want to know if there's some greed in our hearts in terms of leadership - I'm not talking about in terms of money. That's a whole different one. I'm talking about in terms of leadership. If your culture ever becomes defined by turf wars, if the culture of your organisation is ever defined by turf wars somewhere there's greed in our heart that needs to be dealt with.

So if the children's guy is fighting with the youth guy, so if the children's guy is fighting with the teen's guy you've got a turf war. Now in this church's situation if the children's guy is fighting with the teen guy it's a case of schizophrenia because it's the same guy okay? [Laughter] He's fighting with himself. Okay, so this is MY side of the budget. This part of the money should be this, MY department, so there's no sort of consideration to wait a minute, hold on, what's best for the organisation? Any time your organisation starts struggling with turf wars there's greed in some people's hearts that needs to be dealt with, needs to be dealt with. Number three, a culture of secrecy. Why? Why is there a culture of secrecy? Because I don't want you to know everything that is going on, because I want the bigger piece of the pie. See the guilt, the secrecy and guilt is this: I don't want you to know what I'm secretly dealing with. The secrecy and greed is I don't want you to know what I'm doing because ultimately I'll get a bigger piece of the pie that way. It's a scarcity mentality as if there's not enough to go around.

Alright, the fourth type of problem here is jealousy and I don't mean here, I mean in this talk okay. I'm sure that all of us deal with this all the time, jealousy. Jealousy has the underlying thought, it's an entitlement thought. It is God owes me. I deserve something. Let me ask you a question. Do you ever get secretly offended when you're not noticed? Do you ever get secretly offended when you're not noticed? That's a sign of jealousy in your heart. The jealous leader is quick to point out the failures of others. Why? Because they think they're entitled to the promotion, and if someone else doesn't get the promotion then they will. They're quick to point out the failures of others. Number two, the jealous leader is reluctant to facilitate someone else's success. They're reluctant to facilitate someone else's success. Although the spiritual principle is this: whatever you make happen for others God makes happen for you. So actually if you want God to bless your side of the ministry, the best thing for you to do is to partner with someone else in a different department and help them win. That's the spiritual principle. If you're a car salesman the best thing you could do is help someone else sell cars. God will handle the rest for you.

Number three, a jealous leader is threatened by talented or popular people in the organisation. You see this a lot in transition, like when an organisation goes through transition and someone else comes in and their gifts are obvious, boy the jealousy comes out. Listen, when someone walks in and they're obviously more gifted in a certain area than you, if you get jealous - that's where it challenges the jealousy in your heart. That's when it does that. When you have a transition of personnel jealousy comes out. When you have a transition of authority rebellion comes out. Why? Because someone who has rebellion in their heart, once the authority structure is set someone with rebellion in their heart will figure out a way to manipulate the system in order to get what they want. When you change the authority structure now those same people have to come up with a new way. They have to start all over and that's bad. It's bad.

Number four, the jealous leader measures success in terms of other's failures. So the variable in a jealous leader's thing of success is how is everybody else failing, not how is the organisation winning. Now here are the consequences of that: a culture filled with negativity. Why? When there are turf wars and there's all of this stuff and you don't want anybody else to win because if they win it means you lose, then it's filled with negativity with everybody pointing out the problems of everybody else. Two, a culture void of leadership development. The reason you can't develop new leaders in that culture and that environment is because no one wants anybody else to win, and listen, I'm telling you something. Someone with a real leadership gift will not tolerate being in an environment where it's impossible for them to win. They won't do it. They'll leave. They'll leave. Number three, it's a culture that does not recognise and celebrate high achievers. They don't recognise and celebrate high achievers. Okay, now we talked about a lot of the negatives. Let's get at least one solution for each one okay.

So here are some solutions, four habits of a healthy leader. These are four heart diseases; let me give you four habits. The cure for guilt: the cure for guilt is to confess. Within the realm of reason, like let me tell you what I mean by that. There are certain pastors in the world that I would never tell them what I'm struggling with, never ever in a million years. Why? Because I'd look the next day and it would be on their internet blog. [Laughter] It would, and in their heart they would think they were protecting the body of Christ, when in actuality they're just jealous of the gift of God on my life and they're trying to bring me down. So there are certain people I would never tell my stuff to and it is wisdom not to be an open book to everybody. However if your organisation can't be set up in such a way where the people in this room at least are safe, then the organisation's going to suffer. This organisation, for it to be most effective, you ought to be able to be struggling with something and you share that with her and know that it's not going to go out there. You've got to.

The only way to be healthy as an organisation is to be able to take things that are in darkness and put a big lamp on it. It's the only way to do it is to bring stuff out into the open so it can be dealt with. It's the only way to do it - and the only way to do that is to create an environment of safety. Like if you're struggling with drinking 17 shots of Whiskey every night [you look like that would be 00.43.15] [Laughter] I mean you ought to be - if you want to deal with that, for this church to be healthy if she wants to deal with that she ought to be able to deal with that without fear of losing her job. [That's right.] She ought to be able to go to Mike and say Mike, you don't know this about me but I want to put a big lamp on something here. I struggle with alcohol, like I'm not talking about I have a glass of wine at dinner. I'm talking about I have a bottle in an hour. I'm talking we've got massive problem here. Huh? [unclear 00.43.54] Yeah, I don't know. [Laughter] So it depends on who you are. [unclear 00.43.59] But she ought to be able to say this thing is controlling my life, I need help, and she needs to know that if she's that open and that honest that she is in no fear of losing her job over it.

And she's in no fear of it being talked about from the stage, and she's in no fear of it going through the whole church. She's in no fear of getting an email from a church member three days later that goes I want you to know I'm praying for you with your issue. [Laughter] We have to have an environment where people can confess and put big lights on things in order to have health okay. Listen, we are hesitant - listen, this is so important. We will all, all of us will follow leaders who make mistakes, all of us will. Every person in this room if you're healthy will follow a leader who makes mistakes, but none of us in this room - well let me say it this way. All of us in this room will follow leaders who make mistakes, but all of us in this room equally are reluctant to follow leaders who cover up their mistakes. [Yeah.] We're all okay with making mistakes because why? Because we all make them. It's when there's a light on something we're all okay with that. If there's a light on something it's okay, but when someone's covering something up that's when we're reluctant to follow people. Alright, so as long as there's a light okay.

Number two, the cure for anger is not prayer. Listen, I believe in prayer, I do, but I could pray for you 'til Jesus comes back and you're still going to be angry. The cure for anger is not prayer. The cure for anger is forgiving people. Now prayer might be the catalyst to get you to forgive somebody, but it's got to somehow end in you forgiving somebody. Listen - and I'm talking about this in terms of leadership. The people around you cannot grow without failing. You can't grow without failure. You can't help them grow if you're not willing to forgive them. There's an awesome story, a guy named Tom Watson Senior, he's the founder of IBM okay. In the middle of IBMs big growth they hired a new junior executive and within three months that junior executive made a decision and he made a mistake. He made a huge mistake and that huge mistake cost IBM $10 million okay, so $10 million this junior executive made a mistake.

Tom Watson Senior who is the founder of IBM asked to meet with him the next day, and so the guy for sure thought he was going to be fired so he walked in with his resignation letter and all this and he was deeply apologetic and repentant and that kind of stuff. He said it was a mistake, I'm sorry Mr Watson. I'll offer my resignation. I apologise to you, and Tom Watson Senior said man, I don't accept your resignation, nor was I calling you in here to fire you. I'm not going to fire a man that has just cost me $10 million to train. [Laughter] That would be dumb. You don't fire someone who's cost you $10 million to train; you forgive them, help them learn from it so that they can grow. See we have to create a culture of forgiveness. We have to create a culture of forgiveness. To forgive - this is how you forgive. You must identify what has been taken from you, and then cancel the debt. [Wow.]

Rabbis, including Jesus - this is so important on forgiveness - rabbis, including Jesus, define forgiveness as cancelling debt, cancelling debt. They do not define forgiveness as pretending like it didn't happen. They do not define forgiveness as forgetting. They do not define forgiveness as pretending it didn't hurt. If someone hurts you you could actually say listen, you hurt me real bad. It did hurt. It did hurt. What you did was wrong and it hurt me really bad - but here's what forgiveness is to Jesus. Forgiveness is you don't owe me any more. [Yes, that's right.] Whatever I feel like you owe me, you don't owe me. I have felt in the past like you owed me something because you took something from me, but from this point on it's not that what you did wasn't wrong, it's not that what you did didn't hurt. It's just from this moment on I cancel your debt. You don't owe me one more thing. You don't owe me one more thing. That is forgiveness. That's forgiveness.

One of the scariest verses in scripture is when Jesus said - He talked about this in Matthew 18. You guys know the story, it's the guy that owed more than he could ever pay the king and so the king cancelled his debt. Then the guy goes out and he finds a guy that owes him 300 denarii or something and he chokes him, and he has him put in prison until he could pay his debt back. Then word got back to the king and the king then pulled him in and said I forgave all that debt of yours and you didn't forgive this guy for his small debt? Are you kidding me? Then Jesus says so the king hands him over to the torturers to be tortured until he could pay his debt back and [unclear 00.49.05] then this is scary. Jesus said this is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. Yi-yi-yi right, because see here's the point of it. Here's the point. It is cancelling debt frees you up, like most of the time when people hurt you they couldn't pay you back even if they wanted to.

In extreme cases you really see this, like I had a 40 year old woman come to see me in my counselling office and her dad had sexually messed with her her whole childhood. Then her dad at 74 years old gets saved, 74, gives his heart to the Lord. He comes to her and asks for forgiveness for what he did, and he said to her I wish I could give you your childhood back. He wanted desperately to pay her what he owed her but could he? No way, he can't give her her childhood back, so even if he wanted to pay it he couldn't pay it. So what's the best thing for her to do? Cancel his debt. Why? Because if she holds - listen, if you hold a debt over somebody that they can't pay even if they want to, all that's going to do is torment you because they can't pay it. They absolutely can't pay it. It's forgiveness. It's forgiveness. Listen, it's very important. The story seems to indicate that one of the most important things about forgiveness is remembering what you've been forgiven from.

It's very important never to lose sight of what God delivers you from, very important. If you ever lose sight of what God delivered you from you'll look down on people who haven't been delivered from that thing yet. I'll give you an example of this from my personal life. I am - how can I say this? I am follicly endowed okay, I'm hairy okay so [laughter] and look, I tried to deal with this. I've confronted my mother on it okay. [Laughter] [unclear 00.51.18] Yeah, I know. I said mum seriously, seriously, what was my dad? Not who, what? [Laughter] I mean if I took my shirt off it looks like my mum shopped for men in a zoo okay. [Laughter] I was like you know, mum, I mean did you have a one night stand with an orang-utan? I mean what happened? [Laughter] What happened to me, seriously, because my brother's not hairy and my dad's not hairy and I've got this right, so I'm going - you know. And I missed it totally when in the late '80s a hairy chest was cool and of course in the late '80s I was in the sixth grade so I didn't have a hairy chest.

Then it got uncool and then this happened [laughter] and then now by the time it's cool again I'll be old and no one will care. It's just weird. I just got a bad deck of cards with it, so anyway I was getting my hair cut one day and I was wearing a t-shirt. I don't have a whole lot of hair on my back per se but I had some at the top right here and then at the bottom. At the bottom it looked like an upside down Christmas tree going into my pants. [Laughter] It was weird, so anyway the girl who was cutting my hair, she's a friend of mine and she's cutting my hair and she says oh Shane please. I said what? She said you are far too good looking to have this. I said what are you talking about? She said there's hair on the top of your back coming up out of your shirt. [Laughter] I said that is not the top of my back, that's the bottom of my neck. [Laughter] She said no, it's the top of your back. I said no, it's the bottom of my neck. Now if you ever struggled with being hairy you understand there's a huge difference between the bottom of your neck and the top of your back. [Laughter]

She says please let me take care of it, please? Shane, please? I said whatever. She said I'll do it for free. I said yeah, whatever, so I was expecting a bzzz-bzzz kind of thing. Next thing I know I feel this warm sensation going across. [Laughter] And once it's on there's only one way to get it off! [Laughter] So she rips it and then I've got this bare spot, so she goes oh this is going to look stupid. Now I've got to do all of it. [Laughter] So she does the whole thing, including the Christmas tree right [laughter] and for the first time since I was like 16 I felt the feeling of cotton on my back. It was weird. So like three days later I was going on vacation, so three days later I'm sitting around by a pool and this guy walks by. This is only three days later. This guy walks by and he gets by me, he's got hair on his back and I went that's disgusting! [Laughter] You ought to take care of that! [Laughter]

Now what happened? In three days I had forgotten what I'd been delivered from. [Laughter] Once you go through that once you've got to keep it up. Now I get it done all the time right and my back is hair free which is really quite nice. [Laughter] But I always remember what God delivered me from. [Laughter] Listen - [unclear 00.54.54] No, no, no, I got it. [Laughter] There's no Christmas tree there. [Laughter] Now listen, in your leadership it's very important that on a regular basis because you will never arrive at this, on a regular basis that you stop and become aware of this question: where would my life be if God hadn't touched my life? [Yeah, that's right.] Where would my life be? If you ever lose an awareness of where your life would be had God not touched your life, then you will take away from other people their right to fail with a good heart.

Now listen, you should never put up with someone purposely sabotaging ahad, and the reason is because your organisation cannot handle it. It can't - but someone making honest mistakes, as good leaders we have to give people the freedom to fail. That's the only way to grow people okay. Listen, this is so important. This is so important. Private grudges always result in corporate chaos. [Wow.] Anything you do in secret always manifests in public. Private grudges always result in corporate chaos. Jesus said it this way about your prayer life. He said when you pray go to your Father who is in secret and say this: My Father, who's as close to me as the air that I'm breathing, hallowed be Your name, okay. Later, in John 17, He said Father, I have manifested Your name, so what Jesus hallowed in secret He manifested in public. Anything you hallow in secret - to hallow means to render, acknowledge or become aware of. If you want to know what you're hallowing in secret, if you want to know what you're hallowing period, ask yourself this question: when you're alone where does your imagination go?

The last three imaginary conversations you had, what was the topic? Who was it with? What happened? That's what you're hallowing in secret. Listen, we love imaginary conversations. We do. All of us love imaginary conversations, and the reason is because we never lose right? You never lose an imaginary conversation. If you lose an imaginary conversation get your head checked. It's your imagination, you can win okay? [Laughter] So if you lose an imaginary conversation you've got different problems. You can always win an imaginary conversation, always. But if you want to check the state of your heart ask yourself this question: your last three imaginary conversations, who were they with, what was the topic and who won? Who won? And those are things that need to be dealt with. Private grudges always result in corporate chaos. What you hallow in secret you'll manifest in public. If you hallow in secret the fact that people don't like you - well, they're just not going to like me. If I got off that plane yesterday and thought gee, I have a good relationship with this church but this time it's going to be different. They're not going to like me - how ridiculous is that?

But if I hallow that in secret you realise I'll do something that will bring that out of you. What you hallow in secret always manifests in public. If you hallow depression in secret you'll be depressed in public. If you hallow rejection in secret you'll be rejected in public. If you hallow in secret you'll be angry in public. Private grudges always result in corporate chaos. Why? Because of ahad. Listen, if you can just be mad - see this is where the lie is. People say well my anger's between me and God. Listen, if that's true fine, do whatever you want to do. God can handle you. I'm serious. Do whatever you want to do that's between you and God, but the problem is it's never between you and God. It's always between you and God and whoever's in your organisation, and then the broader reaches of the organisation. You could actually sabotage - just like the Butterfly Effect, your anger, your breath of anger in the wrong direction can have catastrophic effects far away from you, always. Why? Because of ahad, so we have to deal with that.

So the cure for guilt is to confess, put a big light on something. The cure for anger is to forgive. Number three, the cure for greed - that one's obvious - is give, give. The cure for greed's writing a cheque, not prayer. I mean of course prayer can be the catalyst to it, but it better end in that. Generous giving, both strategic and spontaneous, breaks the power of greed in our life. Generous giving forces us to face some of the deepest fears we have as a leader, which is not having enough. Generosity is so important to God. I'm going to preach this at some point this weekend because it's so important. [unclear 01.00.11] Developing - I will probably end the whole thing on Sunday night with developing a generous spirit, because I want to move - listen, when you're preaching there's a way you can preach because you have to and some of us do that - all of us do that at times. But there's a way you can preach because you actually have something to say, and there's a way to preach because it's Sunday but there's also a way that you're preaching to move people. I want to move people this week and I want to move into - let me just give you a taste real quick of this. This is how important generosity is okay.

Here is the word righteous in Hebrew. [unclear 01.00.47] That's the word righteous. Here is the word generous. [unclear 01.00.59] It's the same exact word. This is the verb form of this. It means to reveal it. You put a ['he' 01.01.32] on the end of any word, it means to reveal it. So righteousness revealed is generosity. There are 2106 verses of scripture that talk about the righteous' responsibility to be generous. In Hebrew it becomes obvious because it just says [tzedak 01.01.55] people do tzedakah. Like Psalm 111, Psalm 112:5, a righteous man deals generously. Out of all the adjectives that He could use to describe righteousness He calls them generous; a righteous man deals generously. Listen, there's something that nourishes your soul when you do something for someone else without expecting anything in return. I want to tell you something, it does something to you. It does something to you.

The rabbis called it - I don't want to preach the whole message because you'll hear it Sunday night. The rabbis called it this, [tzakute. 01.02.27] The rabbis said that it is possible to know God even outside of the Torah if you're practising tzakute; that you know God when you give without any expectation of return. I may as well go where no man will go. I'll do it Sunday night - unless you tell me not to - but this is something the Lord showed me recently. You guys can handle this right? [unclear 01.03.00] There's this scripture that always scared me to death, always did and it says this - Jesus is talking: Many will say to Me in that day Lord, Lord, and I'll say I never knew you. So Jesus seems to indicate that there are a lot of people at the end of the day who think they're in but they're actually out. That's scary right? [Yeah.] Why? Why is that scary? Because you think you're in right? [Yeah.] So what's separating you from them? They've cried out Lord, Lord. Have you, right? So they argue. They say hold on, You're mistaken. Remember us, we've cast out devils? We've prophesied. That's us.

Now here was my problem with that scripture. I could not find a separation point between me and them. Could you? Can you? What separates you from them? Have you cried out Lord, Lord? Yes. Have you cast out devils? I have a couple of times right. I mean if it happens here I'm just handing you off okay, but [laughter] I mean I've done it a few times. Have you ever prophesied? I have. So my problem with that scripture was what separates me from them? It scared me. It did, just being [introspective of it. 01.04.21] I've cried out Lord, Lord. Jesus seems to indicate there there are a lot of people at the end of the day that think they're in but they're actually out, and the people He's describing sound like Pentecostal leaders. So I went to my Bible College professor - he has this doctorate in theology. I said what do we do with this? This was his answer: It doesn't apply to you. That verse doesn't apply to you. I said why? He said because you're saved, that verse doesn't apply to saved people, [some are 01.04.50] unsaved people. I said well dude, with all respect they thought they were saved. He goes yeah, but it just doesn't apply to saved people. I said man, that doesn't cut it. He said it's going to have to cut it, it's the only answer I have. [Laughter]

The question becomes it seems to me - I'm just giving you my journey okay. It seems to me in that scripture that the central question is what does it mean to know God? Then the question is is there any way in scripture that God defines what it means to know Him? [Yeah.] Right? Because we could make up anything we want and you know what? Fifteen years I've prayed prayers like this: Lord, if I'm in that category please be nice enough to tell me. Then I found an answer. I was studying something else and the Lord showed me a scripture where He actually defines what it means to know Him. Then I started looking and I can't find another scripture anywhere else in the whole Bible. It's in Jeremiah 22:16. This is what it says. I'll quote it directly because I've put it in my memory. This is what it says, this is God talking: He took care of the poor and the afflicted, so it will go well with him. Is this not what it means to know Me, declares the Lord your God.

So God defines knowing Him as having a generous spirit toward people who can do nothing in return. When you have a generous - and you think about it, how well does that fit in with the rest of Jesus' teachings? Who is the only person in Jesus' whole ministry that Jesus said went to hell? The only person, there was only one? In His whole three and a half years that Jesus actually proclaimed that guy went to hell - who was it? The rich man who overlooked the poor man. Jesus deals with everybody nice, everybody: a woman caught in the act of adultery - ha, you'll be okay. A divorced five times, shacked up with the sixth one - He's like can I get you a drink? You look like you need a drink. [Laughter] Thieves on crosses - no, okay. People throw a dice for His clothes - Father, forgive them too. Prostitutes, washing His feet with her hair - He says oh your faith has healed you, yeah, your faith has forgiven you, it's fine.

But there was a rich man who overlooked a poor man. That's the guy that goes to hell. Yi-yi-yi. Who's the only person in Jesus' whole ministry that did something so horrible God killed him? There's only one. It says that God blessed all the work [from this guy's hands 01.07.33] and Jesus said hey, there's a lot of hungry people out here. What are you going to do with all your spare food? The guy goes I've got this great idea. I'm going to build bigger barns and store it up for myself. Jesus said God's going to kill you. Tonight God's going to kill you actually. Wow! Who are the only other people in the Bible that God killed, in the New Testament that God killed? Ananias and Sapphira. What did they do? They stole the offering to the poor. Is this not what it means to know Me declares the Lord. Listen, the greed in our heart has to be taken care of. In the Bible there are 2106 scriptures that connect righteousness with generosity, that when someone journeys to a generous heart that's when they know they're righteous.

1 John 3:16 says this. It says - give me some ability to paraphrase here. 1 John 3:16 says let us not love in word only, but in word and in deed. So if any of you have material goods let him share with those who have material need, for it is in this generosity that we can know we belong to God. In other words there is something in developing a generous heart that is equated in the scripture to righteousness; 2106 scriptures talk about generosity and righteousness going together. There is almost an equal amount of scriptures that talk about wickedness and greed going together - generosity/righteousness, greed/wickedness. Jesus said it this way: The outside of your cup and platter are clean, but the inside of you is full of greed and wickedness. He could have easily just said wickedness; greed and wickedness, they go together okay, so we have to handle that part of us. Alright, so the cure for greed is to give. Now number four, the cure for jealousy is to celebrate. The cure for jealousy is to celebrate. We need to go out of our way to celebrate publicly the things that threaten us privately.

If we celebrate publicly the things threaten us privately it breaks its hold on our life.

I heard a guy talk about this in America. He pastors a huge church and well actually, I don't mind telling you his name. You guys have heard of Andy Stanley, Charles Stanley's son? [Yes.] He pastors a huge church. Have you guys heard of Louie Giglio? [Yeah.] See, you guys have more heard of Louie Giglio than Andy Stanley. Now Andy Stanley was talking about this once and he talked about how he had to get a point where he dealt with something. Louie Giglio and Andy Stanley were friends from childhood. They are the two that got together and started North Point which is now running well over 40,000 people okay, so on many different campuses. So they got together and did this. Well in that Andy was the senior pastor and he was the speaker; Louie would share the pulpit with him. But what started to happen was Louie Giglio started a singles ministry on Tuesday night called 722, so this was on Tuesday night and it was for singles only, so you're really sort of limiting your base.

Tuesday nights, singles only, he was drawing 4,000 people, okay, 4,000 people which Andy was fine with. Well one night all he heard was how it was so packed it was standing room only, it was this, that and the other. Well one night he had to cover for Louie and so they announced hey, this Tuesday Andy Stanley's going to be at 722, so Andy gets there and when he gets up to speak - this is after the music was over and everything, so everybody had time to get there. When he got up to speak he said there was huge gaps in the auditorium. There was way less people there than were normally there, and he said something got in him about Louie Giglio's success. Something got in him and he knew that if he didn't deal with it he could lose his friend and it would damage his organisation, so here's how he dealt with it. On a weekend service he gave Louie the pulpit and he got up and publicly celebrated the success of Louie Giglio. He said as he was doing it it broke the hold of jealousy on his life. The cure for jealousy is to publicly celebrate things that privately threaten you, to publicly celebrate things that privately threaten you. Celebration will break the power of jealousy over your life.

So my question to you is this, is who - and it will be different for everybody - who threatens you privately? In your private thoughts who in this organisation right now threatens you privately? And I want you to make a plan to celebrate them publicly, celebrate them publicly. Even if it's in the form of an email, even if it's the form of a letter, even if it's the form of just talking him up, talking her up, whatever it is. I want you to go out of your way. This is not about right and wrong; this is about breaking the power of something over your life. Listen to me, this is my conclusion here, listen to me. Four things that are true of you as a leader: number one, you want, in your heart you want to follow someone who is willing to acknowledge that he or she has failures. You want to follow someone who will acknowledge their failures. You also want to follow someone who won't hold your failures against you, so you want to follow someone who will acknowledge their failures; you want to follow someone who won't hold your failures against you. You want to follow someone who will share the credits and rewards of success with everybody, and you want to follow someone who will publicly celebrate your victories.

Let me restate that. You want to follow someone who will acknowledge their failures. You want to follow someone who will let you fail and won't hold that against you. You want to follow someone who's willing to share the success of it with you, and you want to follow someone who will celebrate your victories in public. Now if that's true about you wanting that, then wouldn't it stand to reason that other people want that as well? So if you want a leader like that the best thing for you to do is to become a leader like that: one who acknowledges their failures, who lets other people fail, who's willing to share the reward for success, and who celebrates people's victories publicly. When you share people's victories publicly and handle their failures privately they will die for you. When you handle - listen. When you handle their victories publicly and you handle their failures privately, those people will be loyal to you to the grave and that will create a healthy organisation, because it gets greed and guilt and anger and jealousy out of the question, and never ever, ever tolerates a breakdown of ahad.

You have to handle quick. When your body breaks down ahad you get sick. I got strep throat in South Africa and do you realise that, I mean I was travelling that day. I was starting to get sick the night before and then I had to travel the next day. Thank God that the worship leader at the next church was a physician because I simply said to him I'm really feeling bad, like I'm really feeling bad. He took one look at my throat and he went eergh, and I had to speak that night. He said can you push through that? I said yes. He said well after tonight come to my house, I've got something. We've got to start you on something tonight or this is going to get bad. What's the point I'm making? The point is that if we turn a blind eye to a breakdown of ahad all it does is multiply the problem. When it comes to ahad breakdown you have to handle it quick, swift, with a razor knife okay.

Well that's what I had to share this morning. Sorry I talked so long, that was over an hour. I apologise, but that's what I had to share so I'll just - if you want to discuss or whatever, I'll cut this off now.

[File ends 01.15.42]

Pashat, Drash, Remez and Sod (1 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Thu 22 Apr 2010  « Back to Top

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The Hebrew people interpret the Bible through four levels. Pashat is: simple; plain meaning - the cleanest, plainest meaning of the text. Remez is a hint, or an allusion, to something before before it. Drash is a life application, that whatever you find in the Bible, if you cannot apply it, then don't talk about it. Sod is mystery, a realm of Bible interpretation that only the Holy Spirit can reveal to you.

Science tells us that no matter how good I speak tonight, by Tuesday you'll only remember four per cent of it, unless I put some graphic image around it, that'll help you remember. So a couple of ground rules for the night... Number one, we have to have fun. Number two, we have to admit that if we're going to get the most out of this, we have to admit that we're wrong about God. If you define right as without error, wouldn't you agree with me, that all of us are all wrong? That actually God is too big to get our heads around?

I want to give you principles from God's word that makes Him even bigger than ever before, and not just that. I want not just to make Him bigger than ever before to you; I want it to change our lives, to where we more and more and more will partner with the leadership team at this church, to build the kingdom of God right here. That's what we're looking to do and I want us to change our life.

Christianity lost a lot of its credibility in the Middle Ages, because there was a shift in Christianity. That shift in Christianity made it all about going to heaven one day. It all became about: hey, come to an altar, pray a prayer that we made up, and when you do that you're born again, and you'll get to go to heaven one day.

Now is there truth in that? Sure, there's truth in that. Should that truth be celebrated? Sure. Is it the main thing? No. It's the start of the main thing. See God wasn't just looking to get a group of people into heaven. God was looking for a radical new culture; that is going to show the whole world what life would be like if He was in charge of it today. It's about bringing a kingdom to earth, not waiting to go to heaven one day; and so we're going to explore a lot of these thoughts.

If we're not careful, we teach the cross as primarily a mode of forgiveness. Is it a mode of forgiveness? Of course: behold the lamb of God, He takes away the sins of the world. Of course it was. Is it just a mode of forgiveness? No.

In the First Century if you asked people: why did Jesus die on the cross; this is what their answer would have been: Jesus died on the cross to defeat the devil, the enemy of our soul, and his entire way of living; that the cross was an in-your-face confrontation to a way of life. It wasn't just a method by which we put our faith in something, so we can suffer and then one day die and go to heaven. The cross was an in your face confrontation to an entire new way of living. It was the defeat of one way living in favour of another.

The writer of Hebrews calls Jesus' death on the cross the culmination of the ages. Does that sound like somebody died, and you put your faith in Him, and say a prayer, then you suffer and then you'll die and it'll all get better? The culmination of the ages, that sounds like a rock concert doesn't it? Where'd you go last weekend? I went to the culmination of the ages! It was awesome! [Laughter] You should have been there man - it was the culmination of the ages.

See we aren't just meant to wear the cross around our neck. We're not just meant to put the fish on our car, or to wear the armbands. You know what, it's Thursday night. You're giving a Thursday night to come to church and seek the face of God. I have no doubt in my mind that you're a believer in Jesus Christ. My question isn't: are you a believer in Jesus Christ. That's not my purpose tonight, my purpose is: now what?

So you've been recreated in righteousness and true holiness. Okay, now what? So you're learning your identity in Christ. Great, now what? I'm not so interested in: are you going to heaven one day. I'm interested in: are you saved when your husband leaves his underwear on the floor? I'm interested in: what that does to your life.

I'm really not interested if you're saved in here. It's easy to be saved in here; it's easy to lift your hands in here; it's easy to pray in tongues in here, it's easy to be in alignment with God in here. What I'm more interested in, is when you go out there. Are you saved when someone cuts you off on the road? Are you saved then? Are you saved when you stop by the grocery store on your way home from work, and you've had a stressful day, and you end up in the line with the slowest cashier in the store? Are you saved then? Are you saved when you stop by the retail store, and everybody who works there knows nothing about what you want? Are you saved then? Are you saved sir, when your wife falls asleep a little bit too early? May as well be real - are you saved then?

It's easy to be saved, if saved is just: hey, say a prayer one time, and you get to go to heaven one day. That's easy, but is that all the salvation in Jesus was talking about?

Every preacher at times preaches because he has to. There's a meeting on, and you've got to preach right? But sometimes there are those of us who, when we're preaching, we're not preaching because we have to. We're preaching because we actually have something to say. Over the next few nights I actually have something to say. As a matter of fact I have so much to say we won't get to it. I do. I do, and my point for the next few nights is not to give you information.

But we can't talk about these things without talking about humility, and here's what I mean by that. Every one of us, to get the most out of God, we have to walk with awareness that we're wrong about Him, that there's constantly something new He could teach us, that you've never cornered the market on truth. Are you saying Shane, that there's not absolute truth? No. There absolutely is absolute truth - but you absolutely don't know it. Are you saying that you've arrived at it?

Let me show you what I mean by this. If this circle represented everything that could be known about God, and I handed you this marker and I said: I want you to come up, and I want you to colour in the part of God that you understand. If this represents everything that can possibly be known about God, then how much of it do you know? What would it be? A dot! Like here's mine right, and would yours be much bigger? Alright, so yours - and yours would overlap with mine a little bit right?

So if we went through the whole room and I handed you a pen, anybody in here want to be so proud to say they'd colour in a big portion of it? I mean truly, so if I handed it out, a lot of our dots would overlap, so at the end of the night we might have that. Then for the one self-appointed prophet of God in the room, who thinks they have all the truth, and everything that comes off the pulpit that doesn't agree with them, well that person's in error - we'll give you that just for the sake of argument. We'll give you a line - but at the end of the night, there's still a lot of white matter isn't there? We are constantly in a journey with God.

Let me prove to you what I mean. How many of us good-hearted people, who are journeying towards the heart of God, how many of you have a greater understanding of who God is today than 10 years ago? Absolutely, so your circle - it grows. How horrible would it have been for your life, if 10 years ago, you would have decided: I have learned everything I need to learn about God, and anything that doesn't agree with what I know now, cannot be true?

If you're a computer and you shut your system off to any outside input, the computer becomes irrelevant. Do you realise that this is true all the way through the Bible, that for the Bible to even have been formed like it is, it required men of God to be humble with what they thought they knew? Do you realise that the revelation of God progressively got more gracious?

Before Leviticus was written how did you please God? How could you please God before Leviticus was written, how did they do it? They guessed! They didn't know - they guessed.

Here's what they knew: that gods required sacrifices, and gods required self-mutilation. If you want an incredible read on this you could read “A History of God” by Karen Armstrong. An Orthodox rabbi gave it to me to read on a plane, so I would quit talking to him, because he wanted to sleep. A History of God - and I devoured it. It's a historical treatise of what they believed about gods, and things like this.

Here's what they all believed about gods: gods were far away, and they lived where? Up in the sky, somewhere up; so if you're going to please a god or a goddess, who lives somewhere in the sky, how do you do that?

Two things: you offer sacrifices. How much sacrifice? You didn't know, you had to guess. So you would offer a sacrifice. If it worked, you thought: well I got that one right. If it didn't work, then you had to do what? Offer more, it obviously wasn't enough. So you were constantly escalating your sacrifices, and there were a lot of cultures who escalated their sacrifices to the point where they were sacrificing their children.

So what would you do? You would kill the sacrifice. Where would you kill the sacrifice? You would take it to the highest place you could find. They were called the “High Places”. Why? Where did god live? Up; so you wanted to get as close to god as you possibly could, and you did that by going up. When you killed the sacrifice, what did you do with it? You burned it. Why? Because when you burn something, where does the smoke go? Up; so they did this over and over, and the escalation was unbelievable - the stuff they did to please the gods and the goddesses.

They wanted sacrifices and self-mutilation. You see this with the prophets of Baal. What did they do to get god's attention? Cut their arms! You see this in the radical Catholic church a long time ago. Some of the monks, they would do what? They would flog themselves. That was no different than the ancient gods and goddesses. Sacrifice and self-mutilation.

There's this one story, there was this goddess named Kibela; and she morphed later into a goddess named Diana, who later morphed into a goddess named Artemis. Their headquarters was in Ephesus, but the following was all over the place. Kibela, Diana, Artemis, they were all the same goddess. They were very sexual in nature. She had six sets of breasts, and just very, very provocative and sexual.

The teachings of the goddess Kibela was that you can find the most enlightenment, by how many different ways you can express your sexuality. So the temples to the goddess Artemis, Diana and Kibela had temple prostitutes, that you would buy and take them in. You would explore your sexuality in order to worship the goddess Kibela.

Now originally Kibela was the goddess who was in charge of hunting, so she was in charge of making sure that men when they went out to hunt could find food. She was also in charge of the protection of small animals, which was a bit of a conflict of interest! Now there was this recorded famine - a three and a half year famine, in an island called Sardis. Well what they did is, they called a meeting, and all the men of Sardis got together, and they said: obviously we have done something to offend the goddess Kibela. There are 5,000 men there, so they asked: what should 5,000 men do, to show Kibela that we are submitted to her, and are willing to do her will? What do 5,000 men do towards a woman, to show that they are committed to her?

So 5,000 of them self-castrated, they took knives and they castrated themselves, and they threw them on the altar. They burned them up as an offering to Kibela - 5,000 men went through this procedure that day, so that Kibela would be pleased with them. Actually if you go visit Sardis today, that altar is a tourist attraction; so if you're ever walking through a tourist walk in Sardis, and you see an altar - don't sit on it!

So what they did to please the gods and goddesses got worse and worse and worse. Finally, God appears to a man named Abraham, and He says: Abraham, My name is El Shaddai. Now you've got to think about this in context. The Bible does not take place outside the space-time continuum of human history. It takes place within a story, so there's a guy named Abraham. Who did he worship? Lots of idols, but you know - he worshipped the sun during the day, and the moon at night. If you worship the sun during the day, and the moon at night, and you have all these other idols, what question are you left with? Who's in charge? Who's the God in charge?

How does God reveal Himself to Abraham? Abraham says: what's your name - you're the only God talking? What's your name? And He says: My name is El Shaddai; which translates: I'm God Almighty. In other words, I know that deep inside your heart, you're wondering who's actually in charge. I'm the one in charge - that's Me.

You see this in the New Testament as well. Paul shows up at a place called Mars Hill, and it says: I see outside that you have a statue to a God, and it says under it: to an unknown God. He said: I'm here to declare to you who this is. In other words, God didn't show up to Abraham and go: I am the one true Almighty God. No, He says: hang on, you've got a bunch of gods, you're asking a question, who's in charge. I'm just here to tell you: I'm the one in charge. Abraham says: great, well at least you're talking. Tell me - what do you want from me?

Now think about it, think about our discussion. What two things did the gods want from their people? Sacrifice and self-mutilation; so what did God tell Abraham to do? He said: I want you to circumcise yourself - self-mutilation - which would have been an interesting conversation wouldn't it? Abraham's like: well the other gods want us to cut our arm. You want me to do what? With what? So God's first command, to a 90 year old man, was to circumcise himself with a rock.

So God's first command to a 90 year old man was: rock; swing hard; don't miss. Imagine the shaky 90 year old man - oh God, oh God! He definitely wouldn't want to miss. So He says: I want you to self-mutilate. What's the other thing He asked Abraham to do? Sacrifice his son.

Now do you notice that there's nothing interesting about that at all to Abraham. That is totally normal, except for the part of the body. He says: You want me to self-mutilate, and You want me to sacrifice my son? Yes! That's no different than the other gods and goddesses.

You notice Abraham in that story- he doesn't have to ask how. It says: so Abraham took Isaac to a high place. How did he know to do that? Well he knew to do that, because that's what the other gods and goddesses asked for, so he takes Isaac up to this high place. He goes to kill him, and you guys know this story, what happens? God stops him and actually provides the sacrifice.

That is the first time in the history of the world, that a God was recorded to stop a sacrifice, in order to provide one? So there was something different about this God. This God wasn't a taker - this God was a giver.

The Talmud tells the other part of the story. The Talmud says that when this happened to Abraham, he was so moved with the compassion of God, he immediately went home, and he took an axe and a stick, and he destroyed all the idols in his house except one. He left the biggest one standing, and he put the axe in its hand. So the next morning, Abraham's father comes in, and says: Abraham! What happened here? Abraham says: isn't it obvious? There was a fight amongst the gods, and that one obviously won! His father said: that's impossible because I made them with my own hands; to which Abraham said: then why do you worship them?

Let me ask you a question. How long was it, between God talking to Abraham the first time, and Abraham destroying the idols? 20-25 years? A long time, so God journeyed with Abraham for 25 years, and it took 25 years of Abraham journeying with God for Abraham to get the guts to destroy his idols.

God was patient enough to allow it. Why? Because God's not insecure. God's infinitely more secure than the average Christian. He's not threatened with other people's journeys. Do you realise how humble Abraham had to be, to journey with God? Can you imagine if Abraham would have said: nope, this is what I know to be true about God - gods are takers, not givers. I'm killing my son anyway!

Do you realise that these people journeyed until the Book of Leviticus was written. In Leviticus, which is the book we call the law, it's like the harshest book in the whole Bible; it says: Leviticus was the most gracious book ever written up to that time. Why? Because it was the first time in the history of God, that a God said: this is exactly what you have to do, to be close to Me. Up to that time they were guessing, so they were offering more and more and more and more and more.

In Leviticus it says: for the forgiveness of sins, once a year on Yum Kippur, each family must bring a spotless lamb. So in Leviticus it says: to have your sins forgiven, this is what it takes: one sacrifice, per family, per year. Do you understand that there would have been people there going: there's no way God's that nice! There's no way God is that kind! There's no way God wants us to be with Him so bad, that He's willing to make it that easy. There's no way it can possibly be that simple - one sacrifice per family per year? Unbelievable!

It's not that easy - so here's what they did. This group of people created an oral tradition. There were 613 commands in Leviticus. These people made an oral traditional that added 3,000 commands to the 613 given by God. Why? Because they needed God to be harder than that!

Jesus comes along and begins to wreck everybody. Jesus comes along and He says: no, no, we're not going to do that. One sacrifice per family, per year, that's too hard. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to do one sacrifice, for the whole world, for all time - and people couldn't handle it.

No, no! That's impossible! That doesn't match what we know about God, so they killed Him - which is actually what provided the sacrifice, because Jesus showed up and he wrecked their ideas of unclean and clean. He wrecked their ideas of who was in and who was out. As a matter of fact, Jesus said to one group of people: at My banqueting table, many will come to Me from the north, east, south and west - but you who actually think you're in, will be the ones shut out!

So Jesus seems to indicate, that at the end of the age, the dangerous place to be, is the one who thinks they're in. Whoa! He comes in, and He wrecks their ideas of clean and unclean. He comes up to prostitutes and goes: oh, your heart's okay, you're clean. They're going: what! You can't call a prostitute clean! Oh yeah, I can see her heart, she's okay. She's okay. Her faith has forgiven all her sins, it's alright. They're going crazy!

Like there's this one time, there's this tax collector in a tree, and there's 5,000 people behind Jesus. The one thing the 5,000 people have in common is: they hate the guy in the tree. He walks up to the guy in the tree, and He says: hey man, you come down, I'm coming to your house today. And it says Zaccheus was so moved with the compassion of Jesus, that this is what he said: Hey, I'll give half of what I have to the poor.

Jesus said: that's it, salvation's coming to him. Can you imagine their response? No! You can't say salvation's come to him. What do you have to have to be saved? You have to have an animal. You have to go to the temple. You have to talk to the priest about offering this for you. This is what you have to have to be saved.

Jesus is like: no, his heart changed. He gave half what he had to the poor; his heart had to change so salvation's come to him. They're like no! You can't say salvation's come to him. He didn't get saved our way! We would never do that would we? You have to pray OUR prayer, at OUR altar; and if you don't pray OUR prayer, OUR way, at OUR altar - then we're in and you're out.

Jesus was dealing with the same things, like there's this one time - you want something that'll change your life? Go look through every salvation experience in the New Testament. It's unbelievable the humility these people had to have. How did Paul get saved? Light appeared, knocked him off his donkey, and what did he do? He looks up and says: what must I do to be saved? Jesus said: finally you are; so Paul simply asked a question. Zaccheus gave half of what he had to the poor.

There was a lady caught in the act of adultery. They brought her out, and said: Jesus, the Torah says: stone her. What do You say? He says: okay, the Torah says stone her; I say stone her - but I also say: you can't throw stones unless you're perfect. So everybody gets tired of holding their rocks, and they put them down and they walk away. He waits until they all walk away, and He says: hey lady, where are your accusers? She says: they're not here. He said: then I don't condemn you. I don't condemn you. Why?

Because the Torah said: you had to stone someone caught in the act of adultery, but the Torah also said that you have to have two witnesses to condemn somebody. Jesus couldn't make her sin go away, so He simply made the witnesses go away - which automatically declared a mistrial - quite brilliant really.

So she answers a question; Paul asks a question, Zaccheus gives half of what he owns to the poor; the centurion says: surely He was the Son of God. There's another guying saying: be merciful to me, a sinner oh God. There's one prostitute who washes His feet with her hair. He says: your faith has forgiven all your sins.

I was raised Pentecostal. I was discipled Baptist. I went to a Presbyterian Reform Seminary, and I've been mentored by a Pentecostal rabbi for eight years. I've covered the gamut, but this story - nothing in the whole theology I've ever seen fits it. It says that Jesus was preaching, and it says that a paralysed guy got lowered in from the roof of the house, and this is what it says: and Jesus saw the faith of his friends, and proclaimed his sins forgiven! So can you get saved by having the right friends now?

The crowd there went: you can't call him saved! You can't call him forgiven! You can't do that - not based on someone else's faith. He says: so that you'll know that I have the authority to do what I want - get up and walk! Jesus is brilliant! Can you imagine if the writers of the Bible went: that doesn't fit OUR method of salvation, so therefore it can't be true, so we'll hold it out from the whole world. No, it just doesn't work. We have to be humble.

You've got to understand that European Christianity is filled with largely white men, who think they're smart enough to take a European English concept, and place it over a Jewish theological truth, then try to call it true. And these men, as big as God is, they write books called Systematic Theology, which means this; we have figured out a system that God always works in! Really? You've figured out God? Isn't that something! You're a real trooper!

God is not able to be figured out. He's too big. His word is too multifaceted for us to get our whole head around it - no way; and you know what? Aren't you glad about that? Like seriously, if we were serving a God that we could get our measly head around, wouldn't you be worried you were serving the wrong one?

Here are some good examples. You guys came for some revelation; here's a revelation. The Torah says don't touch your own poop. Pretty good plan right? Why? Because if you're going to be the light of the world, a city set up on a hill, you can't be known as a group of people fiddling with your poop. Right? Pretty unhealthy. Don't touch your own poop. Good idea.

And the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel saying: I want you to cook food, and use poop as fuel. People there would have said: God would never say that - but He did once. And the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel saying: I want you to lay naked on your front lawn, 70 days on one side, 70 days on the other - to get your tan even. God would never say that - but He did.

The Torah says: don't marry Gentiles; and: stone all prostitutes; and the word of the Lord came to Josiah saying: marry that Gentile prostitute. The Torah says: don't eat bacon. In Acts, Peter shows up at the first assembly of God in Jerusalem with a barrel of pork rinds. They say: Peter, you can't do that! Why? Because the Torah strictly forbids it! He said: but Jesus told me I could eat whatever I wanted. They said: did Jesus tell you you could eat whatever you wanted when He was walking this earth? He said: no. He said: I had a dream last night, and Jesus appeared to me in a dream, and said I could eat pork now - and we make a doctrine out of that. Do you realise that with current European Christianity thinking, he would have been cast out as a heretic?

For the church to regain a lot of its credibility, we have to lose our addiction to being right. When you're addicted to being right about something, you are setting yourself up for a disaster. Let me tell you what I mean. Let's say we're Gods, for the sake of example, and let's say I'm a Chairman of the Council of the Gods. Let me say to you: I am bored with you, so I move that we create people. Let us create people and let us use this board to create people with, so we create people on the board. He has a giant head this guy. [Laughter] Okay, let us call them Joe and Jane. For the sake of relevance and time let's say we make them in our image and our likeness. Let's say we give them a similar mental capacity as we do. At the end of the day here's the problem with Joe and Jane; Joe and Jane cannot possibly fathom our world, because they're stuck in two dimensions.

Everything about their world is two dimensional, so let's say I said let us write a book. We will call this book the Bible because we want Joe and Jane to know about us Gods. Let us tell them about our world. Do you realise that even the simplest things in our world blow their mind? For instance, what if I said: Joe, you wouldn't believe my world. In my world I can extend my arm out. Joe says no way! Unbelievable! Jane, God says in his world he can stick his arm out. That is unfathomable!

What if I said: Joe, in my world I can be in front of you and behind you, all at the same time? Joe goes wow, it begins to blow his mind. Do you realise these are the simplest things in our world? What if I had somebody who understood say physics. What if I had somebody who understood physics explain nuclear trajectory to Joe and Jane. Their heads would come off. Everything I do, anything I do to them; if I stick my hand through their world what would they see? They would see my hand in two dimensions which what does that look like? Five circles coming at roughly different times, followed by a series of dashes. Five dots followed by a series of dashes.

Joe says to Jane: did you see that? That was five dots followed by a series of dashes, and then it disappeared! Jane says: you know what? I think it was bigger than that. I think it was the hand of Shane! Joe says: are you smoking crack?! That was just five dots, followed by a series of dashes. Who's right and who's wrong? Both.

It's just their perception of God in two dimensions, and if I'm a loving, caring God, I'm not thinking they can ever understand me. What I'm wanting them to do is engage me. The rabbi said: if we talked for two hours tonight about God, if most everything we said was wrong, God would still be pleased - because we spent a night talking about Him, instead of something else - it's the heart of God.

Every dimension, mathematicians call it a degree of freedom. Let me show you what I mean by that. Give me some artistic margin here. If this is a puzzle space, and this is the piece that's supposed to go in that puzzle space; if all you have is two dimensions, can you ever twist this around enough to get it in there? No. What do you have to have to do that? You have to have a third dimension. You have to be able to pick it up, and put it over the top, and drop it down. That's called a degree of freedom. Every dimension you live in, adds a degree of freedom.

That's why if I tried to explain this to them - what is this in two dimensions? It's a circle. What is this in two dimensions? It's a rectangle. What if I wrote to Joe and said: listen, in my world the same object can be a circle and a rectangle, all at the same time. Joe goes: unbelievable! How's that possible, a circle and a rectangle at the same time? Of course it's very easy. All you need is an axis to turn something on. A salt shaker, anything changes shape if you can turn it. That's a circle, that's a rectangle, any way you look at it. You just need something to turn it on.

Now listen, these are the complications that exist when a 3-dimensional person tries to communicate with a 2- dimensional one. How many more complications exist?

How many dimensions does God live in? A lot! I mean He could be everywhere, all the time; at least 3; and maybe 300 more we haven't thought of. How many complications exist when an infinitely-dimensional God tries to communicate with 3-dimensional people? Huge, and in order to journey with that God, what does it take? Large doses of humility! Everything we're going to talk about this weekend requires, at the end of the day, humility.

The First Century rabbis called it: the Disposition of Messiah. It's from Exodus 34:6. It was the basis of all prayer and Hebrew thought. God consciousness around His character, He is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness.

He is the Lord, the Lord; He is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness; that we must be filled with humility; that when we're dealing with other people, that we need to have an attitude, a disposition, a countenance, that is: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness.

That if we're going to be kingdom people, we have to know inside of our heart, that our journey with God is just that - it's a journey; that we never arrive at it, until we get to glory. At the end of the day, we're just Joe and Jane. We're just 3-dimensional people, trying to make sense of an infinitely-dimensional God, and that leads us to the heart of our God.

One of the interesting things that I learned, any time you're looking at a piece of literature you have to look at a couple of things, and the Bible is no exception. First, and in no order of importance: you have to look at the historical truths that were true of that day. If you know about when something was written, you can go back and read the history around that day, to sort of figure out what was going on. It's very important to understand what they're talking about, so the first one is historical truths.

The second thing you need to look at is euphemisms; or idiomatic expressions. An idiom is any figure of speech that is particular to a certain culture. So New Zealand would have their idioms - I know Australia does. Australia has fair-dinkum. No one else in the world uses that language that I know of.

A euphemism is a figure of speech, which is used to say something softer. Let me give you an example. Someone died – we say someone “passed away”. That's a euphemism. In Australia they have a horrible euphemism for death, they say: “carked it. Oh, that guy carked it! What is that? Like would you rather die, or cark it?

Figures of speech are very important, and they're very important to interpreting letters and books and things like this; for instance let me give you an example of how important a figure of speech is. Let's say I gave Allie a gift here. Let's say that I find this gift that I know she'll like, and I write her a letter and put it with the gift, and at the end of the letter I say something this: Allie, I really hope you like this. It cost me an arm and a leg, okay?

So let's say Allie is a pack rat, and she goes and she puts that in some draw somewhere, and 2000 years from now some archaeologist is excavating where she used to live. Under about eight levels of earth they find this desk, and inside this desk they find this preserved note. They find this note and it says: Allie, I hope you love this. It cost me an arm and a leg. Can you imagine the guy going: how romantic is this guy? He was willing to have his arm and his leg chopped off, in order to give her something!

Of course we know it's a figure of speech for: it cost a lot; it's expensive. So we have historical facts; figures of speech; euphemisms; idiomatic expressions – and also literary style - any sort of style that is particular to their writing. Also you have to ask yourself: how did they interpret their own literature? Now these are rules that govern the interpretation of any piece of literature. We just happen to be talking about the Bible tonight okay.

Now the Hebrew people interpret the Bible through four levels: Pashat, Remez, Drash and Sod. Interesting the acronym on it is PRDS, which is where they got their idea of paradise. In other words, they said: if the Lord reveals to you all four levels of a scripture - you are entering into Paradise.

Pashat is: simple; plain meaning; the cleanest, plainest meaning of the text. My theology professor in college told me this: if the plain sense of the Bible makes sense, then seek no other sense. He was my hermeneutics professor. If the plain sense makes sense, then seek no other sense. That is a very Greco-Roman, Greek, Western way of looking at an Eastern book. They honoured the plain meaning of the text; but they also understood that there were three other levels underlying it – and they would seek those senses.

This whole session is an introduction to what we're doing; that we have to humble, servant minded, disposition of messiah. For the rest of our time together I'm going to say: well, there's a Drash on that; and there's a Remez here; and I want you to know what I'm talking about.

Remez is a hint, or an allusion, to something before before it. Let me give you a great example of this. John 21, there are so many remezes in there, it's unbelievable - I'm going to pick one. John 21, you have seven disciples going fishing. Jesus has risen, but they're out fishing. Jesus decides to show up and cook breakfast for them on the beach; and it gives some details there, that aren't necessary to the story, so you've got to ask yourself a question: what's the author trying to say?

It says that He was standing over a pit of burning coals. One of the disciples named Peter jumps out of the boat, drags this net of 153 fish ashore - which is another remez - dragging a net of 153 fish ashore; he comes up to Jesus, and it says that he stands there with Jesus over the burning coals. Why would the author include that? When was the last time Peter stood over burning coals? What was he doing?

He was denying Jesus. The last time Peter stood over a thing of burning coals, he was denying Jesus. Now he's standing over a pit of burning coals; and Jesus doesn't even bring the sin up. He simply says: Peter, do you love Me? Peter says: yes, I do. He says: let's go then, let's do ministry together. So Jesus restores Peter, over the same picture of which Peter was denying Him - without bringing it up. See, these are hints alluding to something in the past.

Drash is a life application. No matter what you ever find in the Bible, if you cannot apply it, then don't talk about it. That was sort of their thing. You always look for life application, and you apply with questions. It is never your place to tell someone where they are in God. It is only your place to ask the right questions, so that they sort of discover it - Jesus did this all the time.

Sod is mystery. This is a realm of Bible interpretation that only the Holy Spirit can reveal to you - and they honoured that. Whereas western hermeneutics says: oh, if you just let the spirit reveal anything to you, it can get way off there and wacky. Are they right about that? Yes. They're scared that if you let that go - it's a slippery slope to nowhere; but the truth is that you can't throw all the baby out with the bath water. You have to be mature enough to let people journey; so what they said was that scripture was so huge, and because God is so big, He limited Himself to the language of men.

They said scripture was like a diamond, and it had 70 facets to it; and it depends on how you turn it, as to how the light goes through it. So every scripture has 70 different ways for light to go through it - with four different levels of meaning. So when any pastor or anybody says: hey, I was studying this scripture, and I nailed the real meaning... Wait a minute Joe and Jane. Hold on. We're dealing with something that is living, and active, and is sharper than any two-edged sword.

Let me just prove it to you, with something very practical. Have you ever read a scripture and then three years later read it again, and it meant something else to you? It's living! It's active! It's sharper than a two-edged sword.

So in our journey we have one more session tonight; and two sessions tomorrow. We're going to journey with the heart of a servant, with a heart of humility. We're going to journey into some great things in God's word, that hopefully will help us establish the kingdom of God; so the next session we'll start talking about the Hebraic definition of kingdom, and how we can establish that in our lives.

Hebraic Definition of Kingdom (2 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Thu 22 Apr 2010  « Back to Top

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Shane Willard 2010 (2 of 5) Shane Willard 22.04.2010 pm

[Shane Willard] Very good. We'll be done by nine o'clock tonight. You can spend some time looking at our resource table again. I appreciate you coming back there. It's the only way that we fulfil what our mission is in the world and I just appreciate you being a part of it. A couple of things about it; we've got some new stuff, one on the beatitudes will come out throughout the whole week. It will sell out by Sunday so if you want it I'd go and get it, and also the Jewish Roots of Easter as well. Those two will sell out pretty good. Let me tell you real quick about something we've done that I'm very excited about. I and my brother, we have started a - my brother developed it and I'm just showing up in there. He developed an online classroom where I can go in there and my goal is to teach people the same things my rabbi taught me, and so once a month, it's only once a month for one hour I'm in there to sort of teach people to enhance their Bible study. It's not meant to replace a Bible college or [unclear 00.01.06], it's not meant to replace anything. I definitely don't want to be your pastor. [Laughter]

What I'm offering is - [unclear 00.01.14] - I know I don't, you've got a good pastor - amen. What I'm offering to do is to teach you guys or whoever wants to be in there the very things that my rabbi taught me all the way from the beginning. We've already done it; we've done two sessions. Anything you've missed is archived. All you've got to do is click on it, you can listen to it and catch right up no problem at all and so I'd love if that's something you'd want to do, I'd love to have you in there. You can check out website out, it's just right on the front page of our website, shanewillard.org and you can check that out. Our next class will be somewhere around the second week of May. What I do is I do several classes every month that are time zone specific, so we have like a South Pacific time zone one, we'll have an American time zone one and a South African time zone one. Of the three or four you'll find something that fits your schedule. If you can't find something that fits your schedule change your schedule - I'm just kidding. [Laughter] If you can't find something that fits your schedule then it'll all be archived. All you've got to do is click on it at your convenience anyway okay? So you could check that out.

Alright, now what I want to do now is I want to talk to you about euphemisms, idioms, things like this that'll make the Bible come alive. We won't get through most of them tonight. We'll have to come back tomorrow because there's just too many to do and so the first one I want to talk to you about is the idea of kingdom, kingdom. In the Bible when you see things like kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, let me just give you a couple of phrases that mean the exact same thing: kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, or they sometimes use this phrase: inherit the land or inherit the earth. The kingdom of God had nothing to do with going to heaven one day, nothing. The phrase the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, inherit the earth, things like this, these were all synonymous of what life would be like if God was in charge now. Jewish Christianity, rabbinical Christianity was nothing about going to heaven one day. It was all about what can we do to bring heaven to earth. It wasn't about a journey into something; it was about bringing that something to us and to everybody we encounter.

It was a summary statement of the things God is for coming over the top of the things that are absent of what God is doing. It was a summary statement of what would life be like. See it was all about bringing something to earth. The birth of the church, which we'll talk about later - not tonight, at a later time - the birth of the church was all about creating a community of people who are a radical new culture that's going to show the whole world what God would look like if He were living it out. It's not so much a group of people who are on their way to heaven. That's ridiculous - as much as it was a group of people who were bringing heaven to a community. Are you with me? Its two totally different things. Even their concept of hell was mostly - if you want a whole teaching on the Jewish concept of hell, which is nothing like what we think, it's back there. It's called All Access Pass - but their concept of hell was mostly hell on earth, like let me give you what I mean.

There were two words for hell that Jesus used; the first word was this, Gehenna. The second word was this, [unclear 00.05.07] and to teach hell properly you have to teach both. Jesus used the word hell 18 times; 15 was this one, three was this one. Of the three two were figures of speech. Only one time, once, did Jesus use this word in terms of a person and a place of fire, only once. Now Gehenna was an actual place in Jerusalem. It found its origins - here's what happened. Here's the history of Gehenna in a nutshell. There were some bad kings and they started sacrificing children in fire. You can read about this in the Book of Jeremiah. It says there was a place called Gehenna and it was called the place of Topheth. Topheth means place of burning and what they would do essentially is they would burn the children in fire to the god Molek okay. Don't quote me on this but I think it was the first born 10 year olds, so the picture of Gehenna is you have a bunch of reluctant first born 10 year olds being dragged to Gehenna to be thrown into the fires in order to appease Molek.

Along came a king named Josiah. Josiah decided we're not going to burn children in fire anymore. The reason is because he was eight okay, so it wasn't going to bode well for him alright, plus he has a bunch of second grade classmates going come on man, throw me a bone here, you're the king! [Laughter] So he changes this, which leaves the king in a bad place. What he did is he had the sages search the annals and they found Leviticus, and in Leviticus it says you shouldn't throw your children in fire so he says this is who we're going to go with. We're going with this god. Now the problem is if you're the king and you're responsible for how to use all the land, if you have a piece of property that has been used to sacrifice children what's the matter with that property? It's now useless. I mean can you imagine if you're here and you're in real estate, can you imagine trying to sell a house on a piece of property that was used to sacrifice children for three generations? It just wouldn't work. Can you imagine; hey, we're developing this new piece of land. It's called Poltergeist Acres. [Laughter] It's too spooky. It has this Children of the Corn feel to it doesn't it? [Laughter]

So they couldn't do anything with it, so what Josiah decided to do is he said well since we can't do anything else with it what we'll do is we'll make it the town garbage dump. We'll make it the town garbage dump. Now here's the thing; garbage stinks, so what they had to do in Gehenna was they had to keep the fire going all the time so that the smell of the garbage wouldn't reach the city. It wouldn't reach Jerusalem. So they kept the fire going all the time to drown out the smell. The other thing they used it for was for a tomb for people who could not afford it, so they would use it as a tomb so all the time there were funerals going on. You'd see people throwing people up into fire, so there were funerals and tears and things like this. The other thing was is all the stray animals - where do stray animals come to get food? Garbage dumps, so all the stray animals would come in and they'd scavenge for food so all night long you would hear them barking and biting one another, trying to stave off each other so they could eat.

So in Jerusalem Gehenna was called the Place Where the Fire Doesn't Die and There's Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth. So when Jesus says these things endanger your life of Gehenna, what's He saying? Is He talking about if you do these things you might go to hell one day? No. To Jesus hell, 15 of 18 instances of hell - I think that's like 86 per cent - 86 per cent of the time Jesus said the word hell it wasn't talking about hell one day, it was talking about hell now. Every time He uses the word Gehenna He's talking to Christians, so see to Christians what do we talk like - how do we talk about hell? Hell is for who? Them. When? Then, right? So hell is about other people in the future right, but to Jesus hell was about me now. It was mostly about me now. He says hey, here are some things that send your life to hell. Jesus said the word hell, Gehenna 15 times, hell on earth 15 times, and He said six different things will send your life there. Six different things will send your life there: one, holding anger in your heart; two, calling someone an idiot; three, fearing man instead of fearing God; four, unforgiveness; five, pride; six, greed.

He said these six things - that's the only times He ever used the word hell - was about people who struggle with holding anger in their heart. That has nothing to do with us does it? People who at times think they're better than other people and call them a fool. We would never do that. People who actually think they're more important than they are - really? People who hold unforgiveness in their heart, people who are greedy and overlook the poor. These were the things - in other words what's He saying? He's saying if you live like that you're endangering your life of the garbage dump. You don't want your life on the garbage dump; you want to live a fuller life. Now the other hell was Hades. Hades was the hell you really wanted to avoid. That's the one we think of as the one beyond the grave. He only uses that word once. He uses it three times; twice as a figure of speech, for instance the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The only time He uses it in terms of someone going there is who? [unclear 00.11.47] Exactly. There's a rich man and he overlooked a poor man. That's the guy that goes to hell. Amazing - out of all the sinners Jesus dealt with; a lady caught in the act of adultery. He's like it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. How nice was God to that lady? What does He say to her? I don't condemn you, now go and sin no more.

Don't we say it backwards? We say it go and sin no more so God won't condemn you. Well no, that's backwards. Jesus is saying since I don't condemn you now go and sin no more. See we read those lists that Paul makes; see to it that none of you do this, this, this, this, this, this, for this is not behaviour becoming of saints. Paul says because you're saints don't do this. We say don't do this so you'll be saints. We even talk about repentance that way. We say - I'm not saying you do, I'm talking about in general. We say repent so God will be kind. If you repent God will be nice to you. I would suggest to you that God's nice just because He's nice. I would suggest to you that your actions don't do anything to affect God; it's actually your revelation of who God is the whole time that changes everything. It's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. God's nice to everybody. Jesus was nice to everybody - except for He said there's this rich guy and he overlooks a poor guy. That's the guy who goes to hell.

It's amazing that even in hell - you think about that story. Even in hell the guy's in flames - it's a weird story - it says he's in flames and he looks up and he sees Abraham and the beggar. You mean out of all of heaven those were the two people who happened to be standing there? So he looks up and he sees Abraham and the beggar, and he says Abraham, I realise that's the beggar. Hey, do me a favour. Send him here to give me some water. This guy's in hell and he still thinks he's better than the beggar. Abraham goes what? No, that's not how this works. I'm not sending him to hell for you, what are you talking about? He goes okay, then send him back to earth to serve my family. Abraham says no, that's not how this works. It just doesn't work that way, and the rich man says no Abraham, let me tell you how it works. That's when Abraham goes someone who's this far gone, in other words if you're on fire and you still think you're better than other people there's no hope for you even if someone rose from the dead. No, no. No, it's not [unclear 00.14.27] so my question is this before you dismiss yourself from that conversation, you realise we are the rich men?

If you drove here tonight in a car and it has like a motor okay, [laughter] I don't care if it's a 30 year Hyundai. Listen, if you drove here tonight in a car you're in the richest eight per cent of the whole world. If you left your other car at home, like you and your wife, you each have a car, you're in the richest one per cent of the whole world. If your car is sitting at a home that has a concrete foundation and wood is it's basic building material you're in the richest one-tenth of one per cent of the whole world. We are the rich man. The question is what are we going to do about it? See the kingdom of God, we lose it's meaning when we make it about going to heaven one day. It's not about going to heaven one day. It's about conquering hell's hold on the places in this earth. It's about looking around and seeing the places devoid of what God would want it to be like, and then doing something about it. That's what it's about. It's about establishing a kingdom on earth, a radical new culture that'll show the whole world what God would look like, what God would look like if He was here living this thing out. That's what the kingdom of God is about.

There are all kinds of euphemisms and idioms that we're going to spend some time going through that help us understand this. The first one - there's no order of importance. First euphemism, Hebrew euphemism, the first one: binding and loosing. Binding and loosing. Now listen, I am all for deliverance and I am all about getting people free from the spiritual things that are running their life. And listen, if you're here and you can get devils off people which I know you can, and I know that your pastor is great at it. If you can do that I say great, okay. I'm not the best at it alright. Actually all that growling scares me okay [laughter] but I'm - they start growling and...

[Mike Connell] That's just your own stomach.

[Shane Willard] Yeah, I know. [Laughter] No, it's not - you know. The first time I ever tried to get a demon out of somebody I didn't know what I was doing. I was 19. I still wouldn't know what I was doing, but I really didn't know what I was doing then, so I didn't know but I was the only pastor in the room and this woman started growling and going on. I saw her throw a 240 pound man up against the wall and I thought wow, we've got to do something here. [Laughter] I didn't know what to do, so these men tackle her and hold her down and they look up and they say Shane, do something. So I got up over her and this is all I did. I said you loose her in the name of Jesus, and this is what she did. She went NO! Okey dokey, I don't know. [Laughter] I don't know. That's my ace of spades, I don't have anything more than that. I don't know. [Laughter] Just kidding. [unclear 00.17.34]. Huh? [You got it right. 00.17.36] Yeah, so I sort of got scared - sort of nothing, I got scared. Then something came over me that was bold and so I sort of grabbed her and I just said you WILL loose her - because then it hit me, demons can lie. Like it's okay, like demons just lie so she could say no. It's like a three year old; go to your room. No! No, you are. Yes! [Laughter] So we were able to help her. We got her completely free. About seven or eight of them came out of her that night and got her completely free.

So whatever, if you're delivering somebody whatever you need to say to get them out say it. If it helps you to say Mary had a little lamb to them and they come out, fine. [Laughter] It's fine. Seriously, like do whatever you've got to do. [You're a worry Shane.] [Laughter] I know, but the phrase binding and loosing at it's core is simply this. It is a specific rabbinical phrase that talks about what a rabbi would allow, what a rabbi would loose, would forbid or allow in his way of life okay. So it doesn't necessarily - it has applications to deliverance but it's not limited to deliverance. You with me? A demon is a repetitive thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ. A demon is a spiritual force that rules your behaviour when you keep giving into it, so when you're talking about deliverance what you're typically talking about is getting someone to resist that way of living, come against it, renounce it and then the devil flees. You turn on it, right, so it has applications but it has further reaching applications.

It has to do with what we allow and what we forbid in our yoke, what we allow and what we forbid. A rabbi's way of living is called his yoke okay? That was his way of living, his way of interpreting scripture and this included the things that he binded and the things that he loosed, binding and loosing.

Now I've got to be very frank with you. I'm assuming I'm talking to mature believers okay, so if you're not a mature believer just shut me out for a second, but I'm assuming I'm talking to mature believers. This is so important. This is a very important facet of establishing the kingdom of God in your life. This is a very important facet of creating a new culture that's going to show the whole world what God will look like. This is an important facet of Bay City Outreach Centre. This is an important facet of what this church will look like in this community exhibiting the kingdom of God. It has to do with binding and loosing. Let me tell you what I mean by that. People who look up to you take their cues on how to behave from what you bind and what you loose. Binding and loosing was a very common thing. Let me give you an example. The Torah says don't work on the Sabbath. Do NOT work on the Sabbath. Well that has some questions left doesn't it? If I say to you don't work on the Sabbath, it's a commandment of God, what's your first question? Somebody said it - what's work? Can we define what work is and what work isn't?

So it was the rabbi's responsibility to bind certain things as work and to loose certain things as not work, so there were certain things you were allowed to do on the Sabbath, there were certain things you weren't allowed to do on the Sabbath, based on your particular rabbi's interpretation of what it means to work. It's binding and loosing. This is such an important thing. Let me give you an example of how powerful binding and loosing is in a negative way. My grandmother has gone on to be with the Lord now. She was 90 when she died. She has never cut her hair in her life, never worn make up in her life, never worn jewellery in her life, never wore slacks in her life, never went to a movie in her life. If she knew that I was at the movies she would pray the whole time I was in there that Jesus wouldn't come back while I was there, lest Jesus would not come in to get me out of the movie. She got saved five times a day; every three or four hours she would take a second and confess all the sins of the last three or four hours so that God would not leave her. This was binding and loosing they believed.

Why did she do that? Is it a sin to cut your hair? Not to you, but to her would it be? Yes, because it would have gone against her conscience. Like to cut your hair meant - her pastor told her if you cut your hair you'll go to hell right. If you colour your hair you go to a different level of hell alright? [Laughter] So like ah hell, hell. [Laughter] Oh my Lord! [Laughter] That's a different level of - there's a level of hell that you just can't imagine and she's bordering on it. [Laughter] If you were at the grocery store and you even looked at a glass of wine, done, hell. Why? Because her pastor said if you do these things I bind you from doing these things. I forbid it. The Bible - and nobody says 'I' forbid it, they say scripture does. They come up with proof texting. They come up with their conclusion and then they find scriptures to prove the point they want to make, but how powerful was this on my grandmother's life? This is how powerful it was.

On her death bed she was worried that if they drew her into surgery that they would cut her hair. That's binding. That bound on her conscience. I was messing with her once; I said Granny - I took her on a date all the time. She was a widow so when I was home I'd once a week or so I'd go out and take her out on a date you know, it was pretty cool. So I'd take her to a nice restaurant and I'd tell everybody she was my date. Of course everybody got the joke and they'd play it up with her. They'd say oh, you must be a billionaire, you got you a good looking man! [Laughter] She'd go I know, I know and you know, so here's this old woman walking in there and it's going, you know - this is how binding it was to her. One time it was negative six degrees, negative six. I almost fainted. I picked her up - I knocked on the door, she opened the door and she was wearing her normal dress like she always did. But underneath the dress was a pair of track pants, underneath her dress. I'd never seen my Granny's legs covered in a pair of pants like that and I went - she went Shane, could I ask you a question? I said yes. She said you're a pastor right? I said yes. She said it is freezing. It was negative six Celsius - I said yes. She said do you think God would mind if I just put the pants underneath my dress because I'm just that cold? I said I promise you Granny, He's not going to mind.

See this was the [guy that 00.24.52] I was messing with once. I said Granny, we need to get you all made up, need the make up, jewellery, the whole kit and caboodle. She said oh no, I'd hate to send myself to hell, maybe someone else too. I said how would you send someone else to hell? She said I'd hate to give a man a lustful thought. [Laughter] I said you're 85 years old! [Laughter] Lustful thought?! Like - look, I accidentally saw her naked once. I mean - forgive me Granny - [laughter]. I accidentally saw her naked once and y'all, it changed my life [laughter] like seriously, like - I don't know - like, like nothing was in the right place. [Laughter] She looked like a hound dog in a shower cap. [Laughter] It was unbelievable! [Laughter] She could have worn a bikini to a sex addict's conference and cured them all. [Laughter] Like what in the world - lustful thought? Forgive me Granny. [Laughter] That's the power of binding and loosing. You've got an 85 year old woman worried about giving a man a lustful thought. That's heavy.

This same group of people - I grew up in the south in America. These same people who thought they would go to hell for touching wine; they thought they would go to hell for having their hair cut, they thought they would go to hell for wearing slacks. Those same people could hate black people with no conscience at all. How does that work? How is that possible? To be forbidden from make up but loosed to hate people who look different from you - what? That's the power of binding and loosing. It's important. Listen, if we're going to establish the kingdom of God here in Bay City, come on, would you agree with me that's what needs to be happening on a continual basis; not - Bay City does not need to be known as a group of people going to heaven one day. That will take care of itself. Bay City needs to be known in Hastings as the place in this community that is bringing heaven to every place hell is. [Applause] If we're going to do that it's going to partly come down to binding and loosing, binding and loosing.

Let's do a couple more. Rending the garments, rending the garments. There are a lot of images around the cross and things like that that are very meaningful. One euphemism or idiom is rending the garments. Let me tell you what it had to do with. Jesus said it this way: Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. It's a direct quote from Isaiah, Chapter 61 and 66, that those who mourn in Jerusalem will be comforted. Now the concept of mourning in Hebrew culture was very important. The concept was this: to establish the kingdom of God on earth one of the things that has to happen is you need to be willing to identify with the suffering of others okay, so here's what would happen. Let's say that Dave is a friend of mine and let's say that someone close to him dies. It is my responsibility as his friend to set up sitting shiva. It's just the word 'sitting' and then this, ['shiva'. 00.28.27] It means to sit for seven days. So I would organise seven days of mourning for him and what we'd do is we would take shifts and we would sit with him for seven days. It was called sitting shiva and here was the rule. In sitting shiva I was not allowed to speak to him unless he spoke to me, which is so awesome. It takes all the pressure off of me for having to comfort him in a situation that you can't comfort him.

It also takes all the pressure off of him for having to entertain me when he needs to be mourning. What I was doing was simply setting it up where we could just simply be together so he didn't have to be alone. They even took the identification with suffering one step further. Have you ever seen someone grieving? How ugly is it? It's ugly. What does a person who's grieving the loss of a loved one, what do they look like? What do their eyes look like? Puffy, red. How about the muscles in their face? Do you realise that when someone needs to cry and they're trying not to there is a crux point where you lose control of the muscles in your mouth, so they look sort of distorted and their eyes are puffy. It's not a pretty look at all. So here's what I don't want: he's my friend and I know he needs to mourn right, but I don't want him to be the centre of attention. I want him to be not alone and I want him to be free to mourn. I want to identify with his suffering so here's what I would do.

The first thing is I would put on sackcloth, and in putting on sackcloth it's taking off my nice clothes, putting on nasty ones. I would put on sackcloth so as to draw attention to myself and away from him, so that he's free to mourn yet I'm still there with him. It was my way of saying I identify with your suffering. The next thing I would do is I'd put on ashes. I would take ashes and I'd put it on my face. Why? So that his face isn't the ugliest face in the room, so that when people walk in they won't notice his distorted face. They'll actually notice the fact that there's a guy sitting there with ashes, and that sets the attention off of him enough so where he can feel free to mourn. How loving was that? I mean how awesome is that? The last thing I would do at the end of the sitting shiva, the last thing I would do is I would rip my clothes. I would rip my clothes. I would rip my garments. In other words it was the ultimate identification with suffering would be to expose myself. I would just rip my garments.

I want you to think about this. When Jesus died God would have mourned the death of His Son, which means He would have ripped His garments. In the heavens what is God clothed with? Light, so when God mourns the death of Jesus what happens? The whole world became dark. The darkness that came over the earth was simply a result of God keeping His own commands and mourning the death of His Son by ripping His clothes. On earth what were God's clothes? The temple veil. It's what held God back from being exposed to the world, so when Jesus died what did He do? He mourned the death of His Son by ripping His clothes, and the temple veil tore from bottom to top and it exposed the glory of God to the whole world so that now we, we are free to experience the glory of God as a result of God mourning the loss of His Son. Blessed are those who mourn for they'll be comforted, that when God mourned it actually brought comfort to the whole world.

See we talk about the cross as if it was free. We use language like the cross, the glory of God is a free gift. Okay, is that true? In part. Free to who? You, me. It's free to us - but it cost God everything and if we ever lose sight of what it cost God we'll take the glory of God for free and make it cheap. There's a difference between free and cheap. It is free but it is also priceless because it cost God everything, see? Now what's the drash here? What's the life application? My question to you is this: if we're to be the hands and feet of Jesus, if we are to be what God would look like to the whole world, where are you willing to identify with the suffering of others? Is there any place this week that you saw the legitimate suffering of other people and you were able to turn your back on it without another thought? That's not the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is when you see suffering - I'm not talking about laziness. I'm talking about suffering - that when you see suffering that you do something about it. The birth of the church - see, I'll talk about this later in detail, but the birth of the church, people when they look at disasters what do they always ask? The Haitian crisis, the tsunami, what do they ask? Where's God? Where's God?

Where's God is the wrong question. The question is where are you? You're the body of Christ. You're the kingdom of God. You are the picture of God to the whole world. When people say where's God it's like God's going no, no, no, no, where are you? Where are you? It's not like God is given any doubt as to what He's called us to do. He has called us to take care of the poor and the afflicted and the down and outer and the marginalised and the people going through disasters. He's called us to do something about it. He didn't call us to go to heaven one day. He didn't call us to be right. God did not call you to be right; He called you to be kind. He called you to look around and say hold on, there is an issue here of hell on earth and the kingdom of God is the answer to that. What am I going to do about it? Where am I going to identify with the suffering of others? One more and then we'll close for tonight, one more euphemism.

The cutting off of the ear, the cutting off of the ear. There's a story - you guys would know it well - it says they come to arrest Jesus and it says that - it's interesting. In Matthew, Mark and Luke it says a certain companion of Jesus cut off the high priest's servant's ear, so in Matthew, Mark and Luke it says there's a certain companion of Jesus and he cut off the high priest's servant's ear. In John it says Peter cut off the high priest's servant's ear.

[Mike Connell] [unclear 00.35.37]

[Shane Willard] Yeah, so Matthew, Mark and Luke are like we're going to protect Peter here. We're going to leave some area of doubt. John's like no, we're throwing Peter under the bus. I can't have the whole world thinking it's me right? [Laughter] John's just throwing Peter right under the bus. So it says he cut off his ear and what does Jesus do with that ear? Puts it back on. What's going on here that is of deeper significance? There's a plain meaning there; Peter gets mad, cuts off the guy's ear, Jesus heals the ear - but there's a bunch of ramezes here. There's a bunch of hints and illusions. To understand the New Testament you have to have a working understanding especially of Leviticus. It moulded their culture okay, and you can understand this scripture by looking at Leviticus. If you have your Bible turn to Leviticus 21. If you don't just listen. Leviticus 21, this is going to open this scripture up to you big time. I've got five minutes and this is hugely applicable to establishing the kingdom in our life okay, listen to this.

Leviticus 21:18, here we go. For no man in whom there's a blemish shall draw near: a blind man or a lame man or disfigured man or deformed, or a man that is broken footed or broken handed, or a crookback man or a crushed one, or one who has a blemish in his eye or scurvy or a scabbed person, nor anyone with crushed testicles. That was a problem back then okay, that was a problem. The reason is because when another king took over another area they didn't want them reproducing past him so they would take the young men and they would put them through a procedure where they would take two rocks and [makes the sound of banging the rocks together 00.37.22] crush them together okay. That would keep them from reproducing, so if that happened to you you were disqualified from doing what God's talking about here. No man of the seed of Aaron the priest in whom there was a blemish shall come near - it doesn't mean they can't come near to anything. What does it say? Oh good, here we go - that shall come near in order to offer the fire offerings of God for he has a blemish. He shall not come near to offer the bread of his God, but he shall be able to eat the bread of his God, the most holy of the holy; only he shall not go into the veil, nor shall he come to the altar because he has a blemish.

Now here's the problem. In that culture you were a rabbi because you earned it. You were a priest by birthright, so priests and kings were born into their position. Rabbis had to earn it. Now any time you have a system where you're born into something you have the potential for bad eggs. Look at their kings. Their kings were godly, godly, godly, ungodly, ungodly, godly, ungodly, godly, sort of medium godly, ungodly, godly, godly, ungodly. They'd got through these patterns. Why? Because you were born into it. There wasn't any proving ground or development okay, you were just simply born into it. So how do you handle it when a priest is a bad egg? Well God says listen, if they have any physical blemish you can't starve them. You have to let them live among you and they can eat the bread, even the holy bread. They can do that, but they can't offer offerings and they can't go into the veil if they have a blemish. So what they would do to keep the bad eggs off of the ceremonial parts is they would sneak up behind them and they'd clop off the bottom of their ear. They'd take off their ear lobe okay.

The book of Josepha which is a Jewish historian, he talks about this practice of lopping off the ear lobe okay, and the reason was is once someone had a physical blemish it kept them from offering offerings and from going into the veil. So the servant of the high priest, if you're the servant of the high priest what are you studying to be? The high priest. The servant of the high priest is actually leading the charge against Jesus. Peter takes his knife out and cuts off his ear. What's he doing? He's saying this: If you are going to kill the real temple then you have no business serving in the temple made with the hands of men, so if you're willing to kill - if you're so blind and so stubborn that you're going to kill the real temple, I'm going to make sure that you never serve in the temple made with the hands of men again - and he cuts off his ear. In other words you'll never be able to serve there again, never ever, ever. Ever never. What's Jesus' response? He puts his ear back on.

So in the [unclear 00.40.30] what's He doing? He's restoring physical appearance, He's restoring hearing, He's taking away pain, but there's something way bigger here. What's He doing to the high priest's servant? He's restoring him back to his office. He's saying no, no, no, I'll restore you back [to ministry. 00.40.47] Let me give you a revelation of the kindness of God here. Jesus is restoring to His ministry the man who is leading the charge to kill Him. That's how nice God is. Let me ask you a question. You want to establish the kingdom of God in your life? One of the questions we have to deal with is this: why is it that our tendency is to cut people's ears off? Why is our first response when you see this much weakness in a minister, why is it, why is our first response to find any reason to cut their ear off? Why is that? What is it about us that finds that fun? Why is our first response to cut people's ears off when the one we're supposed to be duplicating is actually the one putting people's ears back on?

Let me say it this way. Is there any place in your life where you want mercy for yourself, but justice for everybody else? Is there any place in your life where you're at the foot of the cross saying Lord, I've messed up, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy! But you look around the cross and you see other people who are asking for mercy and you go no, God get them - or if You don't get them I'll cut their ear off to make sure they don't serve You anymore. That's horrible. If we're going to establish the kingdom of God one of the first places we need to start is with our own and we need to make a habit of being people who put people's ears back on when possible, that we need to make a habit of putting people's ears back on instead of making it our first response to take people's ears off. Notice Jesus' response; what does Jesus say to Peter? Peter, put your knife away for if you live by the sword you will one day die by the sword. In other words if you make a habit of disqualifying people one day someone's going to disqualify you.

What was fixing to happen in a couple of hours? What was Peter going to do? Deny Jesus three times. Maybe Jesus was setting the precedent to save Peter's ministry as well, because if Peter carries out the judgement that he has to be judged by the same standard with which he judges. Jesus is like don't you understand? If you make a habit of cutting people's ears off one day someone's going to cut yours off and no one's going to be around to help. But when you have a reputation for mercy, then blessed are the merciful for they will obtain mercy. If we're going to establish the kingdom of God in this place and in our life we have to be people who look for opportunities to put people's ears on and not take them off. That will start our journey. Let's pray together.

Lord, You're awesome. We love You and we're humbled by You. We proclaim You are king. Lord Jesus. Would you right now in this moment, just in this moment would you to take a second and I want you to become aware of everything you've been forgiven of. Ask yourself this question: where would my life be today had God not touched it? Ask yourself this question: how many times has Jesus put my ears back on? Now I want you to ask yourself this: is there anywhere in my life, is there any person in my life that I can help put their ear on? Any word of encouragement, a letter, a reinstatement, something? I want you to ask yourself is there any place in my life where I'm forbidding things that are hurting people and I'm loosing things that are hurting people? Is there any place in my life that I need to identify with the suffering of others? Are there some kids I need to feed? Some orphans I need to clothe? Is there injustice that I need to bring justice to? I don't Lord want to be a person who's just on their way to heaven. I thank You for heaven, but I don't want to be a person just on my way there. Lord, would You use me as a vessel to bring heaven to every place there's hell.

If you'd like to join in on that prayer with me would you just put your hands out in front of you and say Lord, use me as a kingdom person. Lord, establish Your name over my life. The Bible teaches that the name of God can actually dwell over people or over a place, so let's begin to pray - let's do this actually. Let's get our head off ourselves. Would you begin to pray for the person on your left. Just say a prayer for the person whoever's sitting on your left; Lord, let the name of God dwell over them. Let the name of God dwell over them, the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God. Let the name of God, the environment of that name, let it dwell over them. Let it dwell over them. Let the kingdom be established right there in that person. May this person not be a person on their way to heaven, but rather be a person bringing heaven to everywhere there's hell.

Now would you begin to pray for the person on your right, begin to bless them as a dwelling place for the name. Let Your name dwell - the Book of Deuteronomy says the name can dwell a certain place. Let the dwelling place for Your name rest on this person. May they be compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love people. May the kingdom be established. May it be established right here. Now let's pray for this church. Lord, we pray for our church. Lord, let the kingdom be established here. Let this place be a dwelling place for Your name, the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God. May this church not be a people who are going to heaven one day, but also be a people who bring heaven to hell right here on earth. Lord, may we be an establisher of Your ways over the top of something that is hell on earth. Lord, we give ourself to You again in Jesus' name. Amen. [Amen.]

Well thanks so much for being a part of what we're doing. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow night. I hope you guys were blessed by that. Thanks for letting me be your guest. [Applause] God bless you real good. [Applause]

[Mike Connell] Wonderful. That was fantastic wasn't it? Tomorrow night we'll start to take up offerings for Shane to bless him, sow into his ministry but hope you've enjoyed it tonight. It's been really good hasn't it? A real [whizz. 00.47.39] Man, I love it, just opening up about lopping off ears, that's brilliant stuff so thank you. Let's get away quickly so we can get back tomorrow night. God bless you. Thank you sound men, lights and camera man, appreciate your work.

[File ends 00.47.51]

Shane Willard 2010 (3 of 4) (Shane Willard)

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Shane Willard 2010 (3 of 5) Shane Willard 23.04.2010 am

[Mike Connell] ...His inner spirit into your presence. We come with thanksgiving and praise in honour to You. What a great and mighty God You are, an awesome God who continues to amaze us. We honour You tonight. [Prays in tongues 00.00.12] Come on church, let's pray. Come on, lift our voices. Let's lift our voices and give honour to Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, king of kings. [Prays in tongues 00.00.25] Lord, You're so good to us, so good to us. We thank You Lord tonight. [Prays in tongues 00.00.41] Wonderful Jesus. Father, we pray Your anointing to flow powerfully through Shane tonight, great liberty, great release, great freedom. We thank You for Your servant, for bringing him here. Thank You Lord for the wealth of the word and the depths of the word he carries. Let him feel and sense the flow of Your spirit tonight, leading, directing as he opens up the word of God to us. Lord, we just open our hearts to receive, to be fed, to come alive and to change and we give You all the honour and all the glory. Let's give the Lord a clap shall we. [Applause] Amen. Let's give a great big welcome to Shane as he comes tonight. Fantastic.

[Shane Willard] Awesome.

[Mike Connell] Great to have you here.

[Shane Willard] It's awesome to be here. You guys are awesome. Very good. You can be seated. We're going to take a journey tonight in scripture. I know exactly where I feel like the spirit of the Lord wants us to journey tonight and we'll get part the way there in the first session; we'll get all the way there in the next session. I get excited as a communicator when I have a clear direction, I know exactly where I want to move a group of people and we started this last night and this will culminate Sunday night. Sunday night will be the most important message I would preach probably in the world now and so it's something else. The whole week we're talking about how to establish the kingdom of God in your life, and so last night we talked about how the kingdom has nothing to do with like heaven and hell. It has more to do with what a group of people are deciding to do to bring heaven to earth, and so if we're going to be kingdom people a couple of things are true. One, we have to be flexible. We have to be humble enough to say wait a minute, we're just Joe and Jane. We have to be flexible.

We have to move when God moves. I mean if you think about the history of God and the history of things, Christian history is moulded by people courageous enough to do something different. Christian history is moulded by people courageous enough to do something different. Think about it. When Moses was talking to the burning bush and he asked the burning bush, You're God, what's Your name, what did the burning bush tell him? My name is Jehovah. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Well hang on, to Moses who was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? El Shaddai. Jehovah did not reveal Himself to Abraham; a God named El Shaddai did. So this burning bush says My name is Jehovah, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so Moses says no, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was El Shaddai. The burning bush says I revealed Myself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by My name Jehovah they didn't know Me. They didn't know Me.

Now do you understand that if Moses is a Pentecostal theologian we don't even get the Book of Exodus? Do you understand that if he takes the stance with the burning bush like we would have; no, no, God is one, God is El Shaddai, God can't have more than one name and still be one, that's impossible. But because he was able to be flexible and sort of move with what God told him we ended up getting greater revelation of who God is, because did God's name stop with Jehovah? No. He said I'm Jehovah Rapha, Jehovah Tsidkenu, I'm Jehovah M'Kaddesh, I'm Jehovah Rohi, I'm Jehovah Nissi, I'm Jehovah Shammah, I'm Jehovah Shalom, I'm Jehovah Jireh. All of these names of God begin to be revealed and do you understand that every time He revealed His name He was just revealing another part of His character, but if you had some staunch theologian there going no, no, we have figured it all out about God. Nothing else can be done, then we miss something.

The name of God continually revealed Himself until Jesus came along, and then one writer said it this way, that God saw fit to give Him the name that was above every other name, whether that name be written in heaven or written in earth or under the earth, that the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. That the nature of journeying with God requires us to be flexible and humble - listen to me. I have something on my heart for this church tonight. I want you to listen to me very carefully. If this church is going to be a kingdom church then you have to move with what God's doing. There are churches in this world that were kingdom churches that are no longer kingdom churches, and it's not because they're bad people. It's just they quit growing. They quit moving. It's just because they quit moving with what God was doing. Listen, what worked yesterday is not going to work today and what works today for sure will not work tomorrow. In any corporation, any business, anything you're doing you have to challenge the process constantly in order to change what's going on. Change, transition, things like that are good and listen, you guys all have your own walk with God. You all have your own walk with God and so you guys journey with God and if God tells you something different you go with what God tells you.

But I'm telling you this; in the next 15 years the happening, relevant churches will be churches that are defined by two things. One is the supernatural move of God; two is social justice. Those two things will define the next relevant church. Relevancy has been the buzz word in the church. What do we do to be relevant? There's churches all over the world trying to be more and more relevant, so what do they do? They build prettier buildings. What do they do? They make rules about the age of people on stages. What do they do? They start changing how they dress, as if the shirt you wear makes you relevant or not. It doesn't make you relevant at all. It has nothing to do with relevance. What it is is good hearted people seeking to be more relevant, and I'm telling you I know this as sure as I'm standing here. The churches that the next generation are going to flock to are not churches with the most sophisticated programs. They're the churches that have the supernatural power of God and are focussed on making other people's lives better, the down and outer, the people who have less. Those churches will be the most relevant churches in the next 15 years.

Now you can take that as a prophetic word. You can take that as wisdom from a teacher, or you can take that as a thought from a redneck from South Carolina. However you want to take it you take it, but I'm telling you it's the truth. For us, for us to be kingdom people we have to be determined to bring heaven to every situation and not rest on our laurels that we're going to heaven one day. We have to be determined to bring heaven to every situation and not rest on the fact that we can come here on Sunday morning and have great praise and worship. Is it good to have great praise and worship? Sure. Is it good to stand up and pray in the spirit and worship God? Absolutely. Is that the end of anything? No. It should be the beginning of everything, that the church found it's origins at a place called Sinai. We're going to talk about that later. The church found it's origins at a place called Sinai. At Sinai God told them this. God said I want you to be a kingdom of priests. Now these guys were already forgiven. They were already delivered from Egypt. They were already in covenant with Abraham. They were already all this stuff.

He said this is what I want you to do. I want you to come regularly and meet in My presence so that you can take what you get out of My presence and make everybody else's life better. It wasn't an end-all, be-all. It was I want you to be a group of people who are determined to show the whole world what God would look like. The whole world needs to see what Jesus would look like, and this is going to ultimately bring us to a generous spirit which I'll talk about later. But to be kingdom people we have to constantly ask ourself the right questions, and so there's some scriptures tonight I want to look at with you that bring up some questions about what sort of kingdom person am I, what sort of kingdom person am I. So I want to start tonight with the story of the Alabaster Box of Perfume, the story of the Alabaster Box of Perfume. There are actually two instances where Jesus - because it's in different gospels it looks like there's only one instance, but when you read it close enough you realise there are actually two.

There's a lot going on here historically and there's a lot going on here that'll challenge our heart. Okay, the first one is in John 12:1 and then following. We'll read through for the slide guy, we'll read through to Verse 8 okay, John 12, Verses 1 through 8, so here's the first instance. It says this - it's going to come up on the screen. Jesus therefore, six days before the Passover - so when did this take place? Six days before the Passover - so six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made Him supper there and Martha was serving, but Lazarus was one of them reclining at the table with Him. Mary took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, who was intending to betray Him said why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor people? Now he said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief and he had the money box, and he used to pilfer what was put into it. Therefore Jesus said let her alone, so that she may keep guard of it for the day of My burial, for you will always have the poor with you but you'll not always have Me.

Okay, so we'll come back to the basics of this story because the same basic story happens four days later. The next instance is in Mark 14, Verses 1 through 9. The same thing - it's almost word for word, the same thing happens four days later, two days before the Passover. Here's what it says. Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking at some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill Him. But not during the feast they said, or the people may riot. While He was at Bethany reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the leper - so in the first instance six days before He was at Mary and Martha and Lazarus' house. In this instance He was at a man named Simon the leper - a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume made of pure nard. So here's that same pure nard perfume again. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on His head, so in the first instance where does she rub the perfume? On His feet. In the second instance where do they rub the perfume? On His head.

So the first instance is a rubbing of the feet with the pure nard; the second instance is a pouring on the head of the pure nard. Something is relevant here. So some of those present were saying indignantly to one another why waste the perfume? Now here Judas Iscariot's not the one protesting, its other people standing there and it says some of those so there's a plurality of people going she's pouring pure nard on His head, this can't be right. It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor, and they rebuked her harshly. Leave her alone Jesus said. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to Me. The poor you will always have with you and you can help them any time you want, but you will not always have Me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on My body beforehand to prepare Me for My burial.

So in both instances, whether He was rubbed on His feet or rubbed on His head with this pure nard, His defence of the person doing it was they're preparing Me for My burial. They're preparing Me for My burial, so in both instances He defends the person that other people are attacking. He says I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her. Now what's going on here? What's going on here? First of all you have to understand history. Remember last night we talked about peshat, remez, drash and sod? There's some plain stuff here to Hebrew people that isn't so plain to us. In that culture it was hospitable if I had you as a guest in my house, it was customary for me to provide water in a bowl for you to wash your feet. Why? Because you just walked. Where? Through Israel which is really dusty okay, so I would provide water in a bowl for you to wash your feet, so that your feet feel better and my house stays cleaner okay. So it was customary to provide a bowl.

The second thing it was customary to do is to provide droplets of perfume. Why? Because you just walked in the heat, you stink, so it will make the entire experience tonight more pleasurable if we have perfume. Now what happens here is something very different. In the Torah it gives many commands about not being wasteful and remember last night we talked about a rabbi's yoke and what they bound and what the loosed. So according to the command not to be wasteful what the rabbis decided was this, that in hospitality circumstances when you are celebrating someone coming to your house it is okay to use perfume, but it is not okay to use pure nard. It is not okay to do that. They saw using pure nard as a waste, so if you were wasting resources then you were violating a command of the Torah. They said when you're celebrating someone coming to your house you can give them perfume because that's customary, but you cannot use pure nard because that's wasteful, so the fact that she uses pure nard in both instances, the fact that that happens, the fact that they protest is actually okay because it would have been according to rabbinical yokes that no, you couldn't use pure nard.

So the fact that the writer's saying she's using pure nard, he's telling you why they're protesting. In one instance Judas is protesting because he's actually greedy; in the other instance there's a group of people protesting because she's actually breaking with tradition. She's actually doing something different. Here was what the rabbis said. You could not use pure nard to celebrate somebody, but you could only use pure nard if celebration was not the motive. You could use pure nard if celebration and rejoicing was not the motive, because that was seen excessive and luxurious. Jesus defends both instances by saying what? They're not rubbing the pure nard on My feet and on My head to celebrate Me; they're rubbing pure nard on My feet and head as an act of mourning for My burial. So He defends them by saying this is not an act of celebration and rejoicing. This is an act of mourning, and since it's an act of mourning it fits in with the law. Okay, you with me? So He says since it's an act of mourning and not rejoicing it fits the law.

Now who knows what the lady was thinking. The lady might have been going huh? But Jesus was saying this to sort of make it clear, so let me make some surface observations about this story. Number one, this story just like all of Jesus' stories, Jesus was called a Master of Haggadah which was a teacher with parables and different stories. All of Jesus' stories revealed truths about kingdom people and so we're going to find ourself in this story. This story exposes the religious tendency in all of us to criticise and judge people who do things differently than us. It exposes something in all of us - and it's in all of us. None of us are done with this - that judges and criticises someone who does things differently, especially if they worship God differently, especially if they lead differently; well if your leadership doesn't match my concept of leadership, then I'm right and you're wrong. It's our tendency to do that. When we engage in this behaviour we tend to disguise it with spirituality.

Do you notice in both instances they pick a very spiritual thing that Jesus majored on, giving to the poor. Does Jesus care about giving to the poor? Yes! A whole, whole lot, and so they used the main tenant of Jesus' ministry as their crux point of their criticism, so they disguised their greed and their critical spirit under the guise of spirituality. We would never do that would we? [Laughter] Would any - no one wanted to ask the question, would anyone else there have been willing to give a year's wages to Jesus. I mean they went and found something worth a year's wages and in one moment gave an offering to Jesus for it. No one seems to bring that up, but no one else there was willing to do that, no one else there. So let me just ask some questions real quick and then we're going to get into some historical truths about it. Is there any place in my life that I do exactly what the critics did; that I look around and I try to find anything wrong I can find with how someone else is worshipping or leading or something?

Is there anywhere in my life where I find myself looking around and trying to be critical, anywhere? Because if we do that we're missing a major kingdom principle, a major kingdom principle. When I do that am I disguising it under a disguise of spirituality? Maybe I'm just trying to help? [Laughs] Let me ask it this way. Do I need Jesus to set me free from my addiction to being right? Very good, someone admits it - either that or she's thinking about somebody else [laughter] which means she's doing exactly what I'm talking about. [Laughter] Now let me break this down historically to you. There are two different words - in both these stories there are two different words for anointing. The first one is [alafo 00.20.03] and the other one is [merizo 00.20.04]. Let me write those down - alafo and merizo, alright. Alafo and merizo. This one is the first one. It means a rubbing of the feet, and this one is the second one. It means a pouring on the head. In both instances Jesus says they're anointing Me for burial. Now what in the world's going on here? What in the world's going on here? In order to understand this you have to understand Passover lambs, because Jesus was the Passover lamb. Let me explain some history behind this.

Passover lambs had gone through two anointings; the first one is this. Passover lambs were chosen six days in advance so that they could be brought in and inspected for five days, so Passover lambs were chosen six days in advance so they could be brought in and inspected for five days. They were anointed on their feet at this time to proclaim that they were inspected and free from blemish on the feet and the ankles, because lambs would get scratched up from the rockiness so when they found a lamb the first place they would check for blemishes is the feet and the ankles. Most of them were disqualified right then, and once they were declared six days beforehand they said oh, these feet and ankles are clean, they would take anointing oil and they would rub their feet and their ankles with it to say these can be now inspected for five days. Now five is very significant. It's the number of divine strength in the midst of human weakness. In Hebrew five is the number of divine strength in the midst of human weakness. It represents favour, acts of loving kindness that perfects us by Jesus' help in our weakness.

The number four speaks of man's weakness. The addition of one to four is the addition of Yahweh's strength and power to overcome our weakness, for instance the Torah contains five books, the sum acts of His loving kindness to create the world and establish His ways in man. Abraham's name was originally four letters. When it was changed the letter 'h' was added and it became five letters. David took five smooth stones. The ministry of the elders in the church is a five-fold ministry. Israel departed Egypt in military ranks of five. Five days passed between the triumphal entry of Jesus and Passover day when He was crucified. During that five day period of loving kindness and our heavenly Father was revealed in the preparation of the Son to be the Passover lamb, no greater love than for something to lay down His life for something else. See the number five was very significant, so the Passover lambs were brought in, chosen six days before in order to be inspected for five.

When they were chosen six days before the only thing that was inspected was their feet and - well they have four feet so the feet and the ankles, so what they would do is they would anoint their feet and ankles with this oil that would say they had been now marked. So in six days before the Passover Jesus is at someone's house and they anoint Him for burial by doing what? Rubbing pure nard on His feet and ankles, on His feet and ankles. That was the first anointing. Now the second anointing happens two days before Passover. They were anointed a second time on their head to announce that they were free from disease or blemish, so the second time they were anointed on their head; first time on their feet six days before. There was a period of inspection, and then the second anointing was on their head, [note that 00.24.00] Jesus is the Passover lamb. So what happened to Him? He was anointed first on His feet and then later He was anointed on His head. The second anointing said no, they've been inspected again and they are free from blemish, free of blemish.

So Jesus' head was anointed two days before He was crucified, the costly spikenard all running down His body. It was a sign that He was well, without sickness or defect. It would maintain the status in the inspections given by the priest, the Pharisees and the scribes, He was found without blemish, a perfect lamb of God fit for His scourging and crucifixion, taking the sins of the world upon Him in His innocence and redemptive purpose. So first anointing was on the feet six days before, second anointing was on the head two days before, and then they were sacrificed. The Passover lambs were sacrificed on Passover at exactly the ninth hour. Passover happens on this, Aviv 14. That's the month, that's the day okay, Aviv 14 at exactly the ninth hour, so at the ninth hour. Now according to the rabbis the ninth hour was the exact moment that Adam and Eve were created. Think about it. It says that on the sixth day they were created on the eve of the Sabbath. The Sabbath would have started at sundown so it says that they were created between the evenings. Well in Hebrew culture evening is what we would call afternoon, somewhere between 12 and six, and so what they believed was and what was past down orally was that Adam and Eve were created at exactly the ninth hour.

So every year on Passover they sacrificed the lambs at the exact moment and the anniversary that Adam and Eve were created, so the first Adam was created on the ninth hour; the second Adam was sacrificed on the ninth hour. There was a lot that went on at this ninth hour. Every day in Israel they would have an evening prayer. The evening prayer happened at exactly the ninth hour. They would go from three to four, the first 30 minutes in silence, the last 30 minutes in praise and thanksgiving. In the first 30 minutes they would begin to offer their prayer, after the evening sacrifice for our sins was made. This happened at exactly three o'clock. After the sacrifice was made the priest would go into the altar of incense and offer the prayers up as incense to the Father as the sweet smelling savour. This all happened at the ninth hour. This was all going on on the other side of the mountain at the same time Jesus was going through His. The Passover lambs were killed on Aviv 14. The number 14 is also very significant.

The rabbis break the Bible down into sections. Those sections are not books like we are used to. They break the Bible down into sections called [taldof. 00.27.11] A taldof is a record or a genealogy. That's a taldof. There were 13 taldofs in the Old Testament, 13 sections. What they believed was that whoever the 14th taldof was about, that would be the messiah. So there were 13 taldofs in the Old Testament. How does Matthew start his gospel? And this is the record of Jesus of Nazareth, the messiah, right. He's starting - he uses the word taldof. He's saying this is the 14th taldof. This is the One. This is the One - very interesting. They actually had a belief that was called the Doctrine of [ben David ben Joseph. 00.28.03] It just says that whoever messiah is has to be the son of David and the son of Joseph all at the same time. How many times in the New Testament do you hear people addressing Jesus, son of David, son of David have mercy on me? Here's how you write David in Hebrew. [unclear 00.28.21] It's how you write David in Hebrew.

Now every Hebrew letter is a picture, every Hebrew word's a comic strip. Also every Hebrew letter is a number. They don't have numbers in Hebrew. Every Hebrew letter is a number, it's like Roman numerals. So every name has a numeric value. Go and learn what this means: they will become an antichrist and his number will be 666. That's very common to them. Every Hebrew name has a number. [D 00.28.57] is four, vav is six, [D 00.29.01] is four, so the number of David is 14. So the 14th taldof was about the son of David who happened to be the Passover lamb killed on the 14th of Aviv. Matthew makes a point of this. At the end of his genealogy he says - remember he's talking to Jewish people. He says so you see there are three sets of 14; there are 14 generations between Adam and David, 14 between David and Babylon, 14 between Babylon and Christ. Now what's the three in Hebrew culture? The number of complete witness; two is a beginning witness, three is a sure witness, so he says so you see we have a sure witness of 14. We have three sets of 14. Well how would he have written that in Hebrew? He would have said we have a complete witness of David. We have a complete witness of David.

Fourteen times three is 42 which is how you write Joseph, so he says so you see the 14th taldof is about the messiah who is the son of David and the son of Joseph, and one day He'll be the Passover lamb who is going to be killed on the 14th of Aviv. It's almost like these people had help writing all this. [Laughter] So the subject of the 14th taldof was the son of David and was slaughtered on the Passover lamb at the 14th of Aviv. So here's my question. You say well Shane, what's the drash here? That's really nice historical insight and that makes the Bible sort of come alive, but when I walk home tonight what does that mean for me? Well it means a lot of things. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Number one, where do you need God to demonstrate His loving kindness to you tonight? Given the assumption that God has shown you loving kindness, what have you done to respond to it? If we're going to be kingdom people we have to respond to God's love. The Bible says it this way, that God commended His love towards us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

God commended His love toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Do you realise that the whole story of the cross, the whole thing was God saying I love you first. Do you know how crazy that is? Listen, whoever says I love you first is taking all the risk. If you're in a dating relationship right now you know exactly what I mean. If you're young enough to remember your dating life you know what I mean. Who - yes. [Laughter] Whoever said I love you first is taking all the risk. You know what I'm talking about. Why? I love you. What are the - whoever says I love you first, what are the possibilities? What if they say I know? [Laughter] What if they say that's great, yeah right? What if they cry and run into the bathroom? [Laughter] Like there's all kinds of options. When I was a junior higher I wanted to ask this girl - in those days - I don't know what you call it now but in those days we called it going together. So I wanted to ask this girl to go with me. Her name was [Lesley Sherburger. 00.32.30] [Laughter] You might laugh but she was a babe. [Laughter]

So I made two critical errors. My first error was I told my friends I was going to ask her. Bad decision. Second critical error was I decided to do it before school which gives you a huge time limit, so as the bell was coming up to ring my guys started razzing me and that sort of thing, so I finally had to take the long walk across the school yard. You're walking across the school yard and your heart's going boom-boom, boom-boom. Your eyes get a little more focussed. Everything gets blurry around it. See my brother asked a girl to go with him once and she ran into the bathroom and that didn't go so well, so this was in front of the whole school and so I asked her to go with me. Now you understand that in that situation I was taking all the risk because her response was her decision, but my heart was already out there. That's true. One of the messages of the cross is this, is that love is risky. Love is risky. [What did she say?] [Laughter] Oh, she said yes. [Oh good.] [Laughter] Yeah. [So you ran in the bathroom.] Yeah, I ran in the bathroom, I was scared of her. [Laughter] Yeah, then I realised it was summer and she was likely going to see me with my shirt off and that wasn't going to work out too well [laughter] so - so listen, this is a principle of the cross. Jesus didn't just die on the cross so we could go to heaven one day. Jesus died on the cross so that those of us who'd been hurt, we can love again and the reason we can love again is because we can risk again.

Look, I'm a counsellor by trade. I've had heaps of counselling stuff and in general when you're dealing with a basically good hearted person who's basically mentally healthy alright, so in a marriage for instance; if you're dealing with two basically good hearted people who are mentally healthy, when they come and see you and they say we don't love each other any more, that's typically not true. What typically is true is that it's not that they don't love any more, they're just too scared to risk any more. So you have two people who aren't willing to risk with each other any more and as soon as you can't risk you can't love because love is risky by nature. So really part of the cross is setting us free to love again because it sets us free to risk again. Now my question is this. God has commended His love towards you. He's waiting on your response. Have you responded? If not, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? You say how do I respond? Well you show love to others. You tell Him you love Him back, He says great, go love My people. Go love My people.

Let me ask you this question. Where have we lost the big picture because of criticism and jealousy? These people were Jews. They knew that He was the Passover lamb. Some of them were His disciples. He was explaining this the whole time. They knew He was the Passover lamb. Hold on, they knew all this - six days before she's anointing His feet, two days before she's anointing His head, and they lost the big picture. Why? Because of their tendency to be critical and jealous and judgemental. So is there any place in your life that you're losing the big picture that God in store simply because of criticism, jealousy and judgementalness? What has Jesus' sacrifice rescued you from? Listen, it's very important. This is so important, one of the most important things I'll say. If you want to be a kingdom person you always have to remember what God has delivered you from. You always - if you ever lose sight of how much you've been forgiven, if you ever lose sight of how much grace you've been given, be it by God or other people or other people through God, God through other people, whatever it is if you ever lose sight of what God has delivered you from you will miss the kingdom of God.

I don't mean you'll miss heaven. I mean you'll miss His best on earth. You'll miss His best on earth. Let me ask you a question. Where would your life be today had God not touched your life? And if you ever lose sight of that - and we all need to think about that every day. Every year - in Deuteronomy 26 it talked about this. Every year when they gave their first fruits offering, it says they had to give their first fruits offering; they would lift it high in a basket, place it into the hands of their priest, but when they did that they had to proclaim in a loud voice my Father is a wandering Aramean. My Father's a wandering Aramean. In other words my Father is a homeless refugee slave. In other words I am wealthy now, but without God I would still be homeless. They reminded themselves all the time of what God had done with them. Why? Because if you ever lose that you'll look down on other people. Let me tell you a story that illustrates this well.

I'm hairy. [Laughter] I'm hairy. I'll just be very personal with you. If you saw me with my shirt off you would think my mum had a one night stand with an orang-utan. [Laughter] It looks like my mum shopped for men in a zoo. I don't know what happened. [Laughter] Honestly, I've had to confront her. I was like mum, what was my dad? Seriously, before God what was my dad? Be honest with me. I mean it's not like I'm Italian or something, but it's bad and I have a pretty hairy chest and quite a hairy [back 00.38.11] and then what started to happen was I started - guys, you'll know what I mean. Have you ever woke up in the morning and the night before there was nothing, then you look in the mirror and there's like a four inch hair coming off your shoulder [laughter] like somewhere over here? You know what I'm talking about? You're like that wasn't there last night.

Well this started happening and I started to get a patch of hair at the bottom of my back right here, and a little patch of hair at the top of my - the top right here. So it was awful looking, I mean it looked like with my shirt off it looked like I had an upside down Christmas tree coming up out of my pants right. [Laughter] I couldn't have that so one day I was at the hair cutters and I was wearing a t-shirt. The lady who cut my hair said oh Shane, please. I said what? She said you are too good looking for this, please. You've got hair on the top of your back that's showing out of the top of your t-shirt, and I said that is not the top of my back. That's the bottom of my neck. [Laughter] She said no, it's the top of your back. I said no, it's the bottom of my neck. She said no, it's the top of your back. Now if you're hairy you understand there's a huge difference between the top of your back and the bottom of your neck. [Laughter] She said Shane, please let me take care of that, please. Please me take care of it. I'll do it for free. I said well whatever, so I expected a bzzz-bzzz. The next thing I know this very warm sensation went across [laughter] my back. [Laughter, applause] And once it's on there ain't but one way to get it off. [Laughter] So she goes rip-rip [unclear 00.39.59] [Laughter]

But see now there's this big bare spot so she's got to do the whole thing. [Laughter] So she does the whole thing, Christmas tree and all right. She does the whole thing and for the first time since I was like 16 I felt the feeling of my shirt on my back. [Laughter] It was fantastic. I was going on vacation so like three days later I'm laying out by the pool and this - this is like three days later. This guy walks by and he's got hair on his back and I went that's disgusting. [Laughter] You need to take care of that. [Laughter] But see three days before I was that guy. Listen, if we ever lose sight of what God's delivered us from [laughter] - you think you're better than other people. Sometimes you have to remember you're deliverance cost you the hair off your back. [Laughter] Sometimes you have to remember, hold on a second, hold on a second. Listen. When my tendency is to judge and criticise the answer to that always is a problem within me, so if I step back and go what about this threatens my value system? See we like to guise it with spirituality: this is violating the Bible almost never, almost never. Almost always it's violating the value system you've developed around the Bible, almost always.

So when we have a tendency to be critical or I don't know, just jealous or critical; when we have that tendency the cure for that typically is to step back and go hold on a second, this is threatening something in me. Where have I forgotten what God has done for me? Even if they're making a mistake then at that point I let them be free to make that mistake because forgiveness and mercy reigns over justice - always. Alright, let's do another one. Thirty pieces of silver - this is so cool. This will take us up to our break. Thirty pieces of silver. This is what it says in Matthew 26:14 through 16. This is the NIV this one. It says then one of the 12 - the one called Judas Iscariot - went to the chief priests and asked what are you willing to give me if I hand Him over to you? So they counted out for him 30 pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand Him over. Now what's going on here? You've got a - why not just say a bag of silver? Why not, you know? Look, Jewish people don't waste words okay. They don't waste words, so when they start talking about specifics and they start using numbers you have to go back and ask yourself is 30 pieces of silver anywhere in the Torah?

Is the idea of 30 pieces of silver anywhere in the Torah and the answer is yes. In Exodus 21:32 this is what it says. If a bull gores a man or a female slave, the owner must pay 30 pieces of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull must be stoned. If the bull gores a male or female slave the owner must pay 30 pieces of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull must be stoned - so 30 pieces of silver was the redemption price put on the head of a slave. Thirty pieces of silver was the redemption price put on the head of a slave, so when the priests and Judas Iscariot get together and they say what is His life worth what do they say? Thirty pieces of silver. What are they saying? They're saying His life is worth the same as a slave, so to Judas Iscariot Jesus was not his Lord. Jesus was his slave. In Judas Iscariot's mind he treated Jesus like a slave instead of like Lord. Now do you do that? If we're going to be kingdom people the right sign has to be over Jesus' head. Is Jesus your Lord or is Jesus your slave? Before you're quick to answer let me ask you this. Your last 10 conversations with Jesus were you talking to Him like a slave or were you talking to Him like a Lord?

Did the conversation go like this: Jesus, do this for me. Jesus, do that for me. Jesus, handle this. Jesus, make this happen. Jesus, make that happen. Jesus, fetch this. Jesus, do that. Is that a slave or is that a Lord? That's a slave. So maybe even in our prayer life we're guilty of exchanging His life for 30 pieces of silver. Maybe we're saying hang on, I say He's my Lord but in actuality I treat Him like a slave. See it's very important to be kingdom people that the guy that we're following is actually king. He's actually the king. His way actually rules. Listen, whether you're talking about Jesus as a rabbi, Jesus as a prophet, Jesus as a priest or Jesus as a king, the same rule applies: His way goes, even if it doesn't match what you think is right. Like let me give you some revelation here. This is so - this is deep revelation. You ready? Here is the whole nutshell of Jesus' way in one statement. Ready? Be nice. Christians, be nice. When you're trying to decide what the right thing to do is be nice first. Be kind. Be generous. Do other people better than yourself. Be nice.

The king has requested that you be nice, that you forgive people, that you give people freedom to make mistakes, that you do these things. Is He your slave or is He your Lord? See Pilate entered into this discussion and this is so cool. I'll close this session out with this. Look at the Book of John, Chapter 19. He'll be able to pull it up on the screen, but if you want to flip there you can. You might want to take notes in your Bible. John 19:19 through 22, it says this: And Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened it to the cross and it read Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, and many of the Jews read this sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city. The sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek and the chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, do not write the king of the Jews, but that this man claimed to be the king of the Jews. Pilate said now what I've written I've written. Now here's my question. To Pilate who was the king of the Jews? Caesar. Caesar was the king of the Jews, so for a man to say He was the king of the Jews, when he writes over the cross here is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, was he being serious or sarcastic? Sarcastic.

You would think that the Jews would have wanted to enter into the sarcasm. Why? Because yeah, you said You were the king of the Jews yet look at You on the cross. It was Rome's way of saying if anyone proclaims themself king other than Caesar this is their fate. Pilate wasn't even being religious with it - so why are the Jews so upset? Well here's what would have happened in those days. Let me just show you the four words first. Here's Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. That takes four words to say, here they are. [unclear 00.48.37] Okay, it says it was written in Aramaic, Greek and Latin. [unclear 00.48.45] Now that's a lot to write in a piece of paper over a cross right, so what typically would happen is when someone put a message on the cross they would write it out in the most common language of the day. The most common language of that day would have been Greek because it was the Roman Empire, so he would have written it out in Greek and then in the other languages they simply used an acrostic okay. So if they used an acrostic on these four words what would it be? Y, H, V, H.

So over the cross Pilate writes this: here is Yahweh. Here is Yahweh. Do you see why the Jews got so mad now? Here is Yud, He, Vav, He. Here is Jehovah. Here is Jehovah. So interesting the name of God, so interesting. Did I talk about this last night, the name of God and the pictures on it and - okay. My meetings are crossing in my head. Every Hebrew letter is a picture, so every Hebrew word is a comic strip. First of all the letters Yahweh, they don't go together phonetically. You can't say them, so when Moses said what's Your name God? I want to know Your name. See in Egyptian culture if you knew your God's name you could control him, so God knew that so Moses said what's Your name? In other words Moses is saying how can I control You? Yahweh says My name is Yud, He, Vav, He, which phonetically doesn't - it'd be like me going my name is [Shishmenovshevhaminuman. 00.50.41] [Laughter] It's like what, that doesn't even make any - what, excuse me? Shishmenovshevhaminuman - I just turned Swedish - so anyway, so it just sort of wait a minute, hold on, that doesn't - come back at me again? No, Yud, He, Vav, He - Yud, He, Vav, He? Can you spell that? Yeah, Yud, He, Vav, He.

So the rabbis said well what is this name of God? What they came up with was that if you listen to it it's not how it goes together, it's how you sound it. Yud, He, Vav, He. They said the name of God was actually Breath, Yud, He, Vav, He. A later writer said the name of God holds life together. Isn't that true? What's the last thing you do before you die? You take your last breath, so when you quit saying the name of God you quit living. What's the first thing you do when you're born? You breathe. You have to say the name of God, so in order to sustain your life you have to continuously say the name of God over and over and over again. Isn't it interesting that if you met at a coffee shop with an atheist tomorrow, the very breath it would take him to say he doesn't believe in God he would be actually using the name of the one he doesn't believe in to sustain his own life? And yet God is kind enough to let him do it. How nice is God.

Oh, also if you look at the letters, remember every letter's a picture so every word's a comic strip, the picture of Yud is an open hand. The picture of He is an open window. It means to reveal something or it also means grace. The number is five - remember we talked about that earlier? The Vav is a nail or a hook, it depends on how you wrote it, and the other He would be an open window again which means to reveal grace. So the name of God is this: an open hand of grace is nailed to reveal grace. An open hand of grace is nailed to reveal grace, so over His cross Pilate says here is the open hand of grace that is nailed to reveal grace. Here is Yahweh. Now here's my question. What sign do you have over Jesus? Is He the guy that you have your quiet time with every day? Is He the guy that you spend your 30 minutes of quiet prayer with? Is He the guy you go to when you need an answer? Is He the guy that you ask to take of all these things in your life?

Are any of those things necessarily bad? No, but if all of that isn't under something that says wait a minute, at the end of the day this is my Lord. I will not trade His life and make Him a slave. I want to be a kingdom person - listen, Jesus is not there to serve you. You are there to be His hands and His feet to the whole world. You are there to be His hands and His feet. May we be people who die to our judgemental and critical attitudes in order to be kingdom people by remembering what God has done for us.

Let's take a 15 minute break. We'll come back and continue this thought.

[File ends 00.54.23]

Shane Willard 2010 (4 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Fri 23 Apr 2010 PM  « Back to Top

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Shane Willard 2010 (4 of 5) Shane Willard 23.04.2010 pm

[Shane Willard] A couple of quick things. Some of you have come back to our table and you've asked me this question; which ones are the good ones? [Laughter] Listen, you cannot travel the world and market yourself poorly. Now it's not all about marketing but listen, I have preached tons of bad sermons. I just choose not to reproduce them [laughter] you see, because then people say listen, everything we get from you is good. That's because for every one up there I did 10 [laughter] and that's what you market so listen, some of the best places to start okay - people say where do I start? This is the best place to start if you don't have this. It's an all day seminar called How to Read the Bible Like a Hebrew okay and it will go through all the basic stuff. It'll really set you up well okay, so you could start with that one.

Another really good one back there is Jesus' first sermon. It's very important what someone says first in Hebrew culture, so I do a whole rabbinical thing on the beatitudes okay. It's called Be Happy. It looks like this - you won't forget it right? And the other thing that's very basic that will help you see the Bible a lot differently in a lot of areas is one called The Tabernacle of God where I go through all the pieces of the tabernacle. All of this stuff comes back through the whole Bible okay, and we've got plenty of these because most of these are fairly new. I've got plenty of these because I sent enough here for here and for Invercargill which is where I'm going in a month's time. But if we sell out I can get more from Brisbane. That would be a good problem to have okay, so you guys go back there and you can get as much as you can. It'll change the way you look at God forever. It also helps us to fulfil what we feel is our mission to the poor okay, so it's a pretty good trade; you give me something that helps me feed people, I give you something that helps you revolutionise the way you look at God. Pretty good deal okay, so you guys check that out.

Also I mentioned this last night but I'll mention it again tonight. We've started an online eMentoring program where once a month for one hour I'll be in an online classroom teaching people what my rabbi taught me. It'll be a little bit deeper than this because you've got to go back even further, but if that's something you want to participate in you can just check out my website and it's up there. Okay, let's keep going because I have somewhere I want us to get tonight and I'm just warning you already I'm setting you up, okay? I've been setting you up all night, because we have to deal with these things. These things are the things that are destroying the credibility of Christianity, is this idea that the kingdom of God means going to heaven one day. The whole world can live in hell, it doesn't matter as long as I go to heaven one day: that's the most selfish Christianity I've ever heard in my life. It's not what God called us to be.

Okay, Mark, Chapter 10. It's another imagery from Jesus' life that talks about what it's like to be a kingdom person, and the imagery is casting aside your garment, casting aside your garment. Mark 10:46 through 52, it's a very common story but there's an interesting verse right in the middle that we can read over if we're not careful. It says this: And they came to Jericho. As He was with the disciples and a large crowd went out to Jericho, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting on the side of the highway begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth he began to cry out and say Jesus, Son of David - there's that Son of David, Son of 14, so it could mean either one. He could have been saying Jesus, Son of David, or he could have been saying Jesus, Son of the 14th [taldof. 00.04.05] Either way it's the same thing. They're calling Him messiah. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! And then he warned him that he should be quiet, and he cried a great deal more; Son of David, have mercy on me!

And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. They called the blind man saying be of good comfort, rise up, He's calling you. In other words hey man, it's your lucky day. It's your lucky day. Now here's the word verse: And casting away his garment he rose up and came to Jesus, and answering Jesus said to him what do you desire that I do to you? Now I want you to understand. Look at the sentence structure again: And casting away his garment he rose up and came to Jesus, and answering him Jesus said to him. Has the blind man said anything to Jesus yet? No. What did he do? He cast aside his garment and casting aside his garment was some sort of statement that Jesus knew required a response. It says in answering Jesus said to him what do you desire that I should do to you? The blind man said to Him my Lord, that I can see again and Jesus said go, your faith has healed you and instantly he saw again and he followed Jesus in His way.

Notice that in the First Century when someone got saved, when someone got converted it wasn't just a prayer belief experience; no, it was a decision to follow His way of life. It was about bringing the kingdom to something - but in the middle of this here's basically the story. Blind guy, crying out Son of David, have mercy on me! Son of David, have mercy on me! Son of David, have mercy on me! Finally Jesus says would somebody bring him to me? They say look, it's your lucky day. Jesus is calling you, and the blind man's first response was to throw aside his garment. Now you look at that in the natural and you would think that Jesus would think well you're a little too excited to see me, you know what I'm saying? Like if you got so excited to see me you started stripping off your clothes [laughter] I'd be like hang on, hang on, hold on right? And that's sort of the picture you get here, a guy getting so excited to see Jesus he starts throwing aside his garments. It's like whoa dude, put it back on! [Laughter] But you have to understand some history here to really get what he's saying.

It says that the blind man threw aside his garment. Well what was true - was there anything unique about a blind man's garment that wasn't true of anybody else's garment? Anything? Of course. In First Century Jewish culture you had to have a license to beg. You couldn't just sit out on the street and beg. You had to have a license to beg okay, so you would go through a legal process by which you proved your validity as a beggar, that you couldn't make money any other way okay. They would put you through some sort of test and different things to help you decide well can you actually make money another way, or are you relegated to begging. Once they knew that there was no other option for you to beg they would give you a license to beg. Now what's the problem? Especially for a blind person you can't display your license to beg right, because all it takes you to do is take your hand off it for a second and someone could snatch it and replace it with something else, play practical jokes on you, all kinds of things they could do to you.

So your license to beg, what they did is they gave you a different coloured tallit. Everybody else's tallit was a certain colour but yours would be a different colour, so a different coloured tallit - a tallit was the prayer shawl that was the outer garment. So it says that when Jesus called the blind man, it says the first thing the blind man did was cast aside his garment and that action demanded a response from Jesus. Jesus says what do you want me to do for you? That's faith right there. Why? What was the blind man doing? He was throwing away his license to beg before Jesus ever did anything. He was throwing away his license to beg before Jesus ever did anything. Jesus said now that's faith. That's faith. When you're willing to throw away your license to make money because you're so sure that you're fixing to be healed, that's faith. That's faith. You say what does that have to do with me? Everything. Is there any part of you that's holding on to something that all it takes is for you to throw that away for Jesus to touch you? You say well what do you mean? Well let me be very practical.

Is anybody in this room going to a job that they hate every day, and deep in your heart, deep, deep in your heart you have a deep desire to start your own business? You have a deep desire to start your own business and you've been dreaming about it and dreaming about it and dreaming about it. You want to start your own business. You want to start your own business, but you keep going to the same job you hate every day. What's stopping you from stepping out in faith, casting off your garment and giving it a go? That's what this story's about. This story is about those critical moments in all of our lives where we have to make a hard decision to cast off a former identity in favour of a new one. This is a story about how kingdom people respond to opportunity. This is a story - not opportunity because most opportunity isn't of God, but this is a story about how kingdom people respond to Jesus. This is a story about people who say I want what Jesus has for me so bad that I'm willing to lay my license to do something else down in order to enter into something better. It's a story about that.

It's a story about a church who's willing to reinvestigate how they used to do things in order to enter into God's next season for them. It's a story of bravery. It's a story of courage. It's a story of a man who is willing to say you know what? The former things are going to pass away here. All things are fixing to become new for me and I'm going to be brave enough to enter into it. It's a story about that guy. This isn't just a story about one blind man throwing off his tallit to get to Jesus, no. It's a story about me and it's a story about you, and it's a story about what would happen to our life when we're willing to be brave enough to leave former things behind in order to press on to something better, to something newer, to something that Jesus is calling us into next. It's a story about not hanging on to tradition. It's a story about - and the Bible and history's full of these people. Martin Luther was this guy. He was. He was. Now the people who followed Martin Luther, they quit journeying and they slowly but surely became irrelevant. Why? Because they thought they'd found the end - it's never the end-all, be-all. It is what is God calling you into next.

Every one of us has a garment to throw off. What is it? What is it? Every one of us. Every one of us. Maybe you're the guy here and you're 48 and ever since you were 40 you dreamed of owning your own business, but you're still working for the same guy and you hate it. You feel deep down inside you're missing something, and all it takes is you to throw off your garment. Maybe, maybe as a church, maybe God's calling this church to investigate that the pieces of garments they might still be holding onto that's keeping them from the next step of what God's calling us to in the kingdom, this is a story - listen. When you hold onto your garments it keeps you blind. You can't see the next stage of vision. Listen to me. If you're struggling with seeing God's vision for your life maybe it's because of the garment that you're keeping around you. Maybe all it takes is not even releasing it but a willingness to release it in order to see the clarity that God has for us. It's casting aside garments, casting aside garments.

Now here's one more and then I'm going to bring us to where I wanted to get to. Whitewashed tombs. Whitewashed tombs. Jesus tells a group of Pharisees, He says you're like a bunch of whitewashed tombs. You traverse land and sea to make one convert, but after you get the convert you make him twice the child of hell that you already are. It's a pretty harsh statement. Whitewashed tombs - what's going on there? Well to fully understand this we have to understand Leviticus. Leviticus says that it is unlawful for a person to knowingly walk into a place where a dead body is. To knowingly walk into the presence of the dead makes you unclean, so Jesus tells these people you're whitewashed tombs. You're actually tombs but people can't tell you're tombs, because they're so clean. You're so clean on the outside but the inside of you is very unclean, so that your mere presence makes other people unclean. [Laughs] It's a pretty staunch statement.

He's like you're whitewashed tombs. In other words the outside of you looks pretty, but the inside of you, actually your very presence is making people unclean, unclean. It leads us to a question. You want to be kingdom people, you want the kingdom to be established. Let me ask you a question. Do you have any secrets? Is there any time where on a Sunday morning you come in here and your being is simply a whitewashed tomb? Everything looks good here, but the inside of you is dying and you don't want anybody to know? This is a story about what destruction looks like. It's a story about when you do that it doesn't just affect you; it affects everybody around you because it creates atmospheres and environments that no one can explain. When you're hurt is not dealt with, when your pain is not dealt with, what that does is it creates an environment of a whitewashed tomb. Everything on the outside looks clean and put together and all of that, but on the inside it's bad.

Listen, I pastored at a church of, I don't know, several thousand and my office was upstairs. I used to sit up there, I would watch people come into church. I'd see it. I'd see the husband and wife addressing each other with obscenity-laced tirades, then walking into the front door of the church; hi pastor. Why? Because they're struggling with something they don't want anybody else to know about. There's a character issue that is not dealt with and what happens is everything out here looks nice, but on the inside they're simply a whitewashed tomb and their very presence is affecting the atmosphere of the whole place. Listen, every now and then churches, families, everybody, everybody has to scratch the surface of the whitewashed tomb to see how much dead stuff is actually in there that needs to be dealt with - and that's kingdom. That's kingdom people.

Now the last thing I want to talk about tonight, and this is sort of my main point for the night is this - and everything I've talked about deals with this principle. There's a Hebrew principle of studying the Bible called [unclear 00.15.50] - I'll write it in English, light and heavy. Light and heavy. Every scripture has a light side and a heavy side. Light and heavy was a principle of rabbinical interpretation. It was said to help people live the best life. It was also meant to decide what do you do when the Bible contradicts itself. What do you do when the Bible contradicts itself, which we're going to talk about that here in a second okay? Like for instance Jesus said if your eye offends you pluck it out. Well if you're one of these people who takes everything in the Bible literally good luck! [Laughter] Shane, I take the whole Bible literally. It all is literal and it [unclear 00.16.35] I take it literally, I'm a literalist. Very good. Jesus said if you look at something sinful pluck your eye out. Go for it!

You never see any of His disciples - like He travelled with 12 men for three and a half years. Do you not think there was one lust issue amongst 12 men? [Laughter] And you never see His disciples showing up at the camp fire with a pencil with their eye on it; Jesus, I'm so sorry. [Laughter] In rabbi school these were light and heavy statements. Jesus is saying - what He's saying is that if you handle the sin issue when it's light it'll keep it from becoming heavy, but if you wait until it's heavy it's harder to deal with - light and heavy. Light and heavy. Jesus used these phrases all the time. You have heard it said don't murder but I say to you don't hate - light, heavy. Why? There was a group of people who got proud of themselves for never killing anybody. Jesus says you haven't murdered anybody? Well woopty-do! How many people actually murder people? I'm not concerned with the murderers; I'm concerned with how much hate is in your heart, how much stuff looks nice but on the inside you actually hate people. So to Jesus the heavy sin was hate; the light sin was murder.

You have heard it said don't commit adultery, but I say to you don't lust. The heavy sin was lust; the light sin was [not 00.17.56] committing adultery. You have heard it said this, but I say to you this. This is light and heavy statements. Another way you lose light and heavy is you would use light and heavy in order to decide what to do when the Bible contradicts itself, because light and heavy was so important. You want to handle something at the light so it never gets to the heavy. To understand this we have to understand a Hebrew definition of sin. There are three levels of sin in the Hebrew culture; first level is iniquity, second level is sin, third level is transgression. Now to understand this even further we have to understand the pictures on the Hebrew word iniquity. The Hebrew word iniquity is the word - let me write it out. Okay, [avon. 00.18.51] Avon, like the make up company right, okay. The old Pentecostals love that right. You see, I told you, even the word for make up is sin! [Laughter]

Okay, so avon - three letters, three pictures. The picture of the 'a' is an eye, the picture of a vav is a hook or a nail, and the picture of the nun is fish multiplying. So when a Hebrew person read the word iniquity this is what they read: whatever your eye hooks to multiplies. Whatever dominates your focus becomes very large. Listen to me, when problems are in clear view those problems are actually bigger than they actually are. In a mirror it says objects appear closer - objects in a mirror are closer than they appear okay? It's the opposite here. When something is a problem and that problem is in focus, the problem becomes bigger than it actually is because whatever your eye hooks to multiplies. Whatever your eye hooks to multiplies. I have seen a lot of people in good situations leave those situations because the problem appears big. I'm a counsellor by trade. I can't tell you the number of husbands who have left good women and four months later regret it, and all it was was the problem got bigger than it actually was. The wife leaves a good man and four months later she regrets it. Why? Because in actuality it's just the problem became the focus and whatever your eye hooks to multiplies. It got bigger than it actually was.

This is the concept of iniquity. Iniquity is whatever your eye hooks to multiplies. There are three levels to it. Let me see if I can explain this. Let's say I wanted that phone and so iniquity is my eye hooks to the phone and my need for it multiplies, okay? That's iniquity. Now in the Old Testament could you prosecute me for iniquity? No. Why? Because you don't know that I'm thinking it. Now here's sin. Sin is this. It says that a person sins when he's drawn away by his own lust and enticed, so as I look at the phone my need for the phone becomes bigger. At some point it creates a lust. Once it creates a lust and entices me, now I'm in sin - and let me just - if I could blow away some theology here and I haven't done anything yet. I've simply thought it, it's multiplied, my eye hooked to it, it became a lust and I'm enticed by it. That's sin. Transgression is when I actually take it, so I actually transgress the law. Now in the Old Testament could you prosecute someone for iniquity? No. Could you prosecute them for sin? No. Could you prosecute them for transgression? Yes, as long as you had two or three witnesses. So you had to have two or three witness of somebody transgressing the law. That's transgression.

Now this should give us a really big revelation of grace. Why? The prophet Isaiah says this: We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. In other words Jesus doesn't just forgive you for what you've done; Jesus forgives you all the way back to your eye hooked to it. In other words Jesus forgives you for the light, and then the heavy takes care of itself. But in terms of your life, in terms of living the best life, we have to handle things at iniquity so it doesn't get to transgression. A later writer said this: Fix hook your eye to Jesus, because whatever your eye hooks to multiplies. What would happen if we could dominate our own imagination and keep it from wrapping around things that God wouldn't want us to have? What would happen?

Listen, every affair, every affair that's ever happened starts with flirting - not every but most. It starts with somebody flirting with another, and then it takes the other reciprocating the flirt. That's where they mostly start. Now is that iniquity, sin or transgression? Iniquity. It's iniquity. You haven't actually committed adultery yet, you're just starting the process of becoming inappropriate. So if you handle it at the light it never gets to the heavy - you with me? That's just life wisdom. Now the other way that light and heavy was used is to determine what do you do when the Bible contradicts itself, and I want to stop here tonight by investigating a scripture because Jesus answers one really well. You might say well I thought the Bible never contradicts itself. You're right if you're talking about historical fact, but you're wrong if you're talking about commands. Often times commands put ourself in situations where you have two contradictory commands. There are books this thick written on it, it's called ethics okay, like what do you do in these situations.

Alright, let me give you an example what I mean. Leviticus says do not touch someone who's bleeding out. Do not touch someone who's bleeding out. Leviticus also says do not leave someone for dead. Can you see where you could be in a situation where that could contradict itself, alright? Let's read one. This scripture is a parable Jesus told - it's very familiar, out of Luke 10:25 to 37. I want to take 10 minutes or so and break this scripture down, and then I want to apply it to our lives. We're going to find ourself in this. It says this: On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the Torah, He replied, how do you read it? And Jesus - oh, I'm sorry - Jesus answered him, what's written in the Torah? How do you read it? And he answered love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live, and he wanted to justify himself so he asked Jesus a follow up question; And who is my neighbour?

In reply Jesus said a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of some robbers and they stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away leaving him half dead. And a priest happened to be going down the same road. When he saw the man he passed him on the other side, so too the Levite, when he came to the place and saw him he passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan as he travelled came where the man was and when he saw him he took pity on him. He went to him and he bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to the inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him he said and I will return. I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have had. Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? And the expert in the law replied the one who had mercy on him, and Jesus told him go and do likewise.

Now there's so much going on here. Any time you read a Hebrew parable you have to understand how they interpreted it. Hebrew people read parables for identification, not primarily for content okay. Hebrew people read parables for identification, not for content. Here's how it worked. Jesus was called a Master of Haggadah which was the ability to teach with parables. Now it took some skill to do it because this was how they thought about it. Any time you're reading a Hebrew parable the first question you ask is this: who is asking the question? Two - so who is asking the question? Two, what question is he asking? Three, who in the story would he identify with? The answer to the question is found in whoever the one asking it identifies with in the parable. Okay, does that make sense? So if I'm asking a question and you're my rabbi and you say let me answer you with a parable, I would be listening intently for whoever I would identify with in the parable and that would be the answer to my question, alright.

So there's at least two things going on here. The first thing is this, is Jesus is giving us a light and heavy interpretation of what do you do when you find someone left for dead, touching them versus helping them? What do you do? If you touch them you're sinning; if you leave them for dead you're sinning. Which one's the worst? Alright, so Jesus is doing that. The second thing He's doing is He's answering this guy's question, so let's go through this. Who was the one asking the question? Who is it? An expert Pharisee, so a top end Pharisee alright, so expert Pharisee. Okay, what question is he asking? Who is my neighbour. Why is he asking that? He comes to Jesus and he says what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus is so rabbinical, Jesus says um I don't know, how do you read it? You're a Pharisee, tell me your yoke, right and the Pharisee says okay, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus says that's it. If you do that you'll inherit eternal life, okay. If you do that you'll inherit eternal life.

So the Pharisee says well hold on then, who's my neighbour? In other words if I have to love my neighbour like I love myself, then let's define who are the people I have to love this way. So essentially he's drawing a box and he's saying in this box are neighbours. Who is in here? Now there are a lot of answers aren't there? Isn't there a lot of possibilities? Couldn't Jesus have said okay, just Jews. Just Jews. The Pharisee, okay - maybe He could have said only clean Jews. That would have even been better. What if He said only Pharisees? What if He only said the guys who live on your street, those neighbours? Like there are a lot of potential answers here and it's a very important thing because Jesus is talking about something called eternal life. He's saying if you want to inherit eternal life you've got to love your neighbour as yourself. The question is who's my neighbour? In other words who are these group of people that I have to love like I love myself? So Jesus says let me tell you a parable to answer this.

Now as soon as He said that the Pharisee would have been listening to the parable for who he identifies with in the story. In a Hebrew parable there are three characters as you see at the end of the parable Jesus said, so which one of the three acted like a neighbour, okay? There are three characters okay, so Jesus sets him up. So He says there's this guy that gets left for dead, okay. There's three people are going to walk by him. The first one is a priest and he walks right by him. Now two questions: one, would the Pharisee have identified with the priest? No. Priests were Sadducees. Pharisees and priests did not get along because they disagreed on what made up the scriptures. The Pharisees said that the Torah and the prophets made up scriptures; the priests said that the Torah only was the scripture, so they didn't get along at all. So as soon as Jesus said there's this priest that walked by the Pharisee would have been like okay, go on.

The second observation is this. Our tendency is to say bad priest, bad priest, you walked by. But maybe that priest's rabbi, maybe he said listen, it is a better thing for you to walk away instead of touching a person bleeding out. Why? Because the priest would have been going to offer sacrifices. If he touches the guy bleeding out he becomes unclean, which costs him his ability to offer sacrifices, so maybe that priest, if he touched the guy it would have cost hundreds of people their forgiveness that day - so it's totally plausible that the priest walked by. He says okay, the second guy's a Levite and the Levite walks by too. Now here's the question: if you're a Pharisee do you identify with the Levite? No, same reason. Levites were priests. Levites were Sadducees okay. The Levites believe that the Torah only was the scripture. The Pharisees were about two per cent of the population who believed that the Torah and the prophets were the scriptures. They were actually - I know this goes against some things - the Pharisees were actually the progressive, visionary thinkers. They were the ones who would look at our Bible and go that's plausible.

The priests of that day and the Sadducees would have said no, you've added too many books. Ezekiel, no way. Isaiah, no way. Joshua, no way. No, Matthew, no, no, no. It's got Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, that's it see? So the Levite walks by, same reason right. So here Jesus sets him up so good. In a Hebrew parable when you're answering a question, if you're not the first and you're not the second then you're automatically the third, so the Pharisee would have been on his toes - oh! Oh! Who am I? Who is my neighbour? Jesus says the third guy is a Samaritan. [Laughter] The Samaritan actually is the kind one. He picks him up and he takes care of him and he does all this stuff, and then Jesus asked him the following question. He says who acted like a neighbour? The Pharisee can't even say it, he can't even say Samaritan. He says the one who had mercy. Jesus said that's right, go and do likewise, you'll inherit eternal life.

So what's He saying? A couple of things, light and heavy. The first thing He's saying is this, is that when you're faced with a situation of touching someone dying or walking away to offer sacrifice, He says the light sin is always having mercy. The heavy sin is leaving someone for dead. Later He said this: I desire mercy more than sacrifice. In other words if you're act of mercy takes away your ability to offer sacrifice, I understand your heart. That was the light and heavy part. What was the other part? So in this parable what is Jesus' definition of a neighbour? Who does He tell the Pharisee is his neighbour? The Samaritan. In other words Jesus is saying your neighbour is the person you hate the most. He's saying if you want to inherit eternal life you have to grow in your kingdom mentality to where you can actually love the people you think you hate. He gives him a follow up tool to do that. He says the way to do that is don't ask how restrictive can we make this box. Don't ask questions like how restrictive can we make this box. Here's a better question to ask. A better question to ask is how can I be a neighbour to someone else? How can I actually make someone else's life better?

What's He saying? He's saying you're getting so caught up in the light you're missing the heavy. You're getting so caught up in who's my neighbour that you're missing all your opportunities to be a neighbour. Listen to me. When the spirits and the demons and the enemy of our soul, the things that can control our thoughts in a negative way and can sort of drive behaviour, listen, they typically are very subtle. They don't come in [unclear 00.35.15]. They come in very subtly and they get a foothold and a stronghold. One of the primary ways they do that in the church is this, is they make the church lose sight of the heavy in favour of the light. They take an organisation and they get everybody in the organisation so focussed on the light that they lose sight of the heavy. The get so focussed on questions like who's my neighbour? Well let's apply it to what we're doing. They get so focussed on questions like what songs are we singing? Is our lighting okay? How's this? How's that?

They get so focussed on the light that they lose sight of the heavy. People are starving. We need to feed them. People are oppressed with the demonic. We need to be a hand in delivering them. People's lives are going to hell day by day by day, and we need to be a part of bringing heaven to that situation. There are single mums here who have four children. Their left eye twitches uncontrollably and all they need for heaven to come to their situation is for a group of people to watch their children once a week just so they can have four hours alone of peace and quiet. That would bring heaven to that situation, and we walk by it. Why? Because we're worried about systems and songs and lights and fog and programs and all of that. We lose sight of the heavy in favour of the light and when the enemy of our soul can get us to focus on the light instead of the heavy, he wins.

Now listen, I'm all for details and being organised and all that. We should focus on the light. That is something we should do, but any time we get so focussed on the light that we lose sight of the heavy then the devil wins. There's a group of people in Charleston, South Carolina who are so focussed on women not cutting their hair or wearing slacks, or wearing make up and not going to movies, and making sure people don't take a sip of beer that they're willing to hate people of a different race and not feed hungry people, and not clothe naked people and not visit prisoners. They've gotten so focussed on the light that they lose sight of the heavy and when that happens the enemy wins and the kingdom suffers. People say oh, it's just between me and God. No. Listen, if it's just between you and God do whatever you want to do. God can handle you. It's the problem is it's never between you and God; it's always between you and God and it affects a whole lot of people.

May we be kingdom people who are focussed on the heavy. May we be people - and you know what? All of us, all of us struggle with this. Why? Because it's the devil's primary strategy. He had this guy who had memorised the entire Bible. The guy had - the Pharisees had memorised the whole Bible, the whole thing. He had a guy who had memorised the whole Bible, yet he was missing the point. How did the devil accomplish that? How did he accomplish that? Here's all he did. He said wait a minute, let's see if we can restrict this and ask the wrong questions. When we start asking the wrong questions the right questions go to the side and we lose our effectiveness. Listen, we have got to step back and get the bigger picture. The disciples who watched the alabaster box lost the heavy in favour of the light: she's pouring pure nard on Him! That's against the law! Jesus says do not lose the heavy for favour of the light: she's preparing Me for My burial. Can you keep the bigger picture here? We're six days away from Passover. I'm fixing to have the worst week of My life. Can you at least journey with Me?

Like no one ever got it. Jesus said you know, I'm fixing to suffer and die but when I die don't lose hope. I'll rise again. Like one time He had this very special moment with His disciples. He said look guys, I've got to tell you. This is going to get really bad and when it gets really bad don't lose heart. I'm going to come back, and one of them goes when Your kingdom's established can I sit at Your right hand and not Your left? Jesus goes [unclear 00.39.31] [laughter] you're focussed on the light. Please keep the perspective on the heavy. Please keep the perspective on the heavy. Listen, all of us need grace from God to be heavy-minded people, bigger picture people. Listen, until all the starving people are fed I don't think He's worried about 80 year old women giving men lustful thoughts [laughter] or wearing hats or pants or whatever.

Until all the starving people are fed I don't think He's really concerned about the length of your hair - men. Until all the starving people are fed I really don't think that Jesus cares that you watched a movie with a swear word in it. Until all the starving people are fed I'm not real sure, I'm not real sure that Jesus cares about all the gossip and opinions that go on in a typical organisation. Until all the starving people are fed and all the naked people are clothed, and all the sick people are healed and all the demon oppressed people are delivered, I think we've got our hands full. Can I get an amen? [Amen!] May we never lose sight of the heavy to criticise the pure nard. May we never lose sight of the bigger picture in trying to keep the smaller things. May we be kingdom people, determined, determined to bring heaven to everywhere we touch.

Lord, we give ourself to You again with all humility. Would you just quietly underneath your breath pray this prayer, or something like it. Lord, give me the grace to stay focussed on the heavy. Lord, give me the grace to stay focussed on the heavy. Lord, may I lose sight - may the light never be multiplied in my eyes. May light things never be multiplied in my eyes. Maybe you want to say something like this underneath your breath: I renounce any thought that has me focussed on the light. I repent from my focus on the light. May I turn back and focus now on the heavy. Just repent from those old thought patterns and step back in to God's best. Lord, we love You and we humbly say would You use us to build Your kingdom. May we be the hands and feet of Jesus.

[File ends 00.42.13]

The Cross and the Resurrection (Shane Willard)

Sun 25 Apr 2010  « Back to Top

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Jesus died on the cross for you, not to just forgive you of your sins, but to empower you to be nice to other people. There's a cross that Jesus bore for us, that we could not bear; and at the same time, there's a cross that He called us to bear, because we can. We look at the case for believing in the resurrection, and then look closely at some of the imagery - the Passover Lamb; and the mixture of blood & water that flowed from Him; the Folded Napkin; and the Dirty Roman Sponge. From Eden, a river called Hope flowed through a land called Suffering. Colloidal Gold gives water a red colour, symbolising that hope.

Genesis, Chapter 2. What I want to talk to you about today is a very important topic. I got enamoured a couple of months ago with the whole cross, and the crucifixion, and the resurrection. I went back and I read it, and I started looking for all kinds of Hebrew pictures and idioms and things like this, and anything I could find in there that made the story come alive.

The Cross and the Resurrection is about forgiveness: Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; but it doesn't end with forgiveness. The cross and the resurrection is also a story about a public defeat of a way of living. One writer later in the New Testament says that Jesus defeated the ways of this world publically on the cross, so in other words the cross wasn't just about forgiveness. The cross was about me and you living something differently.

There's actually two crosses. There's a cross that Jesus bore for us, that we could not bear; that we owed a debt we could not pay. Jesus paid that debt for us. There is a truth about that. There is a cross that He bore, and the reason He bore it because we could not. At the same time, there's a cross that He called us to bear, because we can. He called us to pick up a cross daily, so here's my question, as we start this out: Is there any place in your life where you've embraced the cross that saves you, but you've neglected the cross you've been commanded to pick up?

Is there any place in your life that you've embraced the cross that forgives you; but you've neglected the cross that says: we need to give mercy and forgiveness to other people? Is there any place in your life where you want mercy for yourself, but justice for everybody else? Is there anywhere you find yourself at the cross going: God, give me mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy - but then you look around and you see other people at the same cross, and you say: God, get them!

So do we want mercy for ourselves and justice for everybody else? This is not what this was about. This was about a lifestyle. This was about a lifestyle of mercy and grace and forgiveness. This was about a lifestyle of generosity. This was about a lifestyle of giving yourself for other people. This wasn't just about going to heaven one day.

Christianity has lost a lot of its credibility because of this. Christianity has taught salvation as: come to an altar, say a prayer, suffer through life, die - it'll all get better then. That's how we do it. Come to an altar, say a prayer, suffer through life, die and you all get to go to heaven then - and so we made salvation all about getting to heaven one day. Is there truth in that? Yes. Is that the whole truth? No, salvation to these people was not just going to heaven one day. Salvation was living slave-driver-free today. It was about being delivered from the things driving your life; not so that you could just be delivered, but so that you could share that life with other people.

Let me summarise it in a nutshell: Jesus died on the cross for you, not to just forgive you of your sins, but to empower you to be nice to other people. Now that's some revelation. You got out of bed this morning for that one! That Jesus died to empower us to be who we really are. See any time you're put in a situation, where something is trying to force you out of what you really are, it's very uncomfortable. Any time you're put in a situation where you're forced to put on an image - you have two choices really. You can live out of who you really are, which Jesus recreated you in righteousness and true holiness, which means the real you is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness - that's the real you. Or you can live out of an image that you've created to impress people you don't like. You can live out of an image, and anything that forces you to live out of an image is uncomfortable.

This is a story about a journey from slavery to freedom, from anguish to relief, from bondage to freedom, from darkness to light. Salvation isn't just one day; it's here, now, today - and when we begin to see it like that, it changes our whole perspective in our life. Now let me start this morning by answering a question. Did the resurrection and the crucifixion, did it actually happen? Did it actually happen? Well of course you say yes, you're in church on Sunday. Listen, somebody challenged me on this, and it really helped my life. This is what they said. They weren't a believer obviously, and they said: Shane, let me get this straight - so you believe that God sent His Son on a suicide mission, but it didn't worry Him, because He knew that He would rise again on the third day? And you believe this, just because the Bible says so? And I thought to myself: this guy doesn't understand; but you know what? I realised that most of us couldn't give an answer to that without looking stupid, so let me see if I could help us with that.

That statement misses two important things: 1) it totally discounts the fact that the Bible has historical validity. It treats the Bible as some spiritual book that's all written on a level of analogy - that's what it treats it as. Any time you're dealing with a book that's dealing on a level of analogy, you can manipulate it here and there; but it totally discredited the historical validity of the Bible. 2) it infers the fact that the Bible is one document. So what he was inferring was we have this one book called the Bible, and the beginning seems to indicate that we need a saviour, and the end seems to indicate we need a saviour, so they manipulated the middle to make the beginning and the end fit. You know what? If the Bible was one book, he would have a good point; but here's what he's missing - the Bible is not one book; and let me help you with something. Christians do not believe in the resurrection simply because the Bible says so. It's not that simple, because the Bible is not just one book. The Bible is 66 books. Its 66 books, and it has historical validity.

When you send your children to school, they study history - hopefully. All of our world history books come from mainly two sources: the Gallic Wars and Tacitus' work. So you've got an historian named Tacitus, who wrote about the Caesars for them; and you've got a guy who wrote the Gallic Wars. The Gallic Wars, we have five copies of those manuscripts, and our world history books are based on them. Tacitus' work, we have nine copies of his manuscripts, and our world history books are based on them. Now let me ask you a question further. If our world history books are based on Tacitus' work, and Tacitus was employed by Caesar to write about the Roman Empire, do you think it's possible that some of his writings would have been biased in favour of Caesar? Why? Because he'd have got his head cut off otherwise right? So we have five manuscripts of the Gallic Wars, and nine manuscripts of Tacitus' work; we base our entire world history based on them, and no one questions whether or not it's valid. Yet Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts - we have 5,000 manuscripts of them, and they all say roughly the same thing, and it wasn't about a Caesar. It was about a Jewish carpenter who happened to be a rabbi.

So these things survived. If you put the resurrection on trial, and you were the jury, and I was the lawyer, here would be my case:

1) you have seven sworn witnesses that it happened. In the New Testament, seven different men wrote in their writings that they either saw what happened, or they talked to enough people who saw what happened, that it was credible. Here were the four men: you've got Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James and Peter. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James and Peter, so you have four businessmen, Jesus' brother, a Jewish theologian, and you have a medical doctor. All seven of these people said that there was clearly enough evidence; either they saw it with their own eyes, or they'd heard enough testimony to say: wait a minute, no, this happened.

2) Of these seven witnesses, 5,000 of their manuscripts survived. Now if you talk to anybody about textural criticism about any piece of literature, if you have 5,000 manuscripts that did survive, you've got a ton more over 2,000 years who didn't survive. So the fact that 5,000 manuscripts survived, about the witness of seven people, actually bodes very, very well. It bodes very well.

3) They were not predisposed to believe in the resurrection. None of them were predisposed to believe in it; so it wasn't like they wanted to believe it so bad, that they had to go find it. It wasn't that at all. As a matter of fact, it was the exact opposite. Every time Jesus tried to warn them that the resurrection, and the crucifixion, and all of that was going to take place, every time - they just didn't get it. It always says: they didn't understand what He was saying; like there was one really embarrassing time, where Jesus is having a real sort of gut-wrenching moment with them. He's like: don't you understand that the son of man is going to suffer at the hands of men? It's going to be horrible! He's going to die - but when you see these things, do not fret, because He's going to rise again.

He's just having this heart wrenching moment, and one of the disciples goes: can I ask a question? Jesus says: yes. When we're in heaven one day, can I sit at Your right hand, instead of Your left? Jesus goes: you don't get it. See none of these people were predisposed. They were surprised when Jesus rose from the dead. As a matter of fact, all the disciples fled when He died. They weren't like: they're sitting there, and there was two guys who buried Jesus - it was Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Where did they bury Jesus? In a tomb. Why? Because they thought He was going to stay dead. They didn't believe that in three days He was going to rise again; or they'd have taken Him to His house ,and sat Him up at the table like Weekend at Bernie's. A bit awkward, but you have guests over to your house - oh don't mind Him. He's dead, He'll get up in three days - just sort of stretching Him out. Why? Because they believed He was going to stay dead. They weren't predisposed to believe this stuff.

4) All of their writings got them killed or exiled. It wasn't like they became popular because of this. They were either killed or exiled, and in some of their situations, history tells us that they were given a chance to keep their life, if they would just say that they didn't see what they saw. So they believed what they saw so much, that they were willing to die or be exiled for it. Do you see what I'm saying? It's not as simple as saying: I believe it, just because the Bible says so. If you're a Christian here today, and you believe it, it's not just because the Bible says so. It's because there are seven different witness, who in their writings declared: this is true; four businessmen, a Jewish theologian, the Lord's brother, and a medical doctor, gave written testimony that this happened. They weren't predisposed to believe it, and their testimony got them killed. If they would have just recanted, they would live; so the idea that this happened is true.

Now why did it happen? Did it happen just so that you could be forgiven? No. It happened so that we could live a different form of life, so that this church could be a place in this community that shares the light of what the life of the cross is all about. That's what it's about.

Now in that there's some serious imagery that comes around. In John 19:33-34 it says: but when they came to Jesus, and found that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. Instead one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water - a sudden flow of blood and water. Now there's a lot of imagery here. The first imagery is - you have to understand Passover lambs, which Jesus was. Passover lambs - it's outlined in the Mishnah how they treated them, and when they prepared a Passover lamb, they did so with two stakes - two wooden stakes, a vertical stake and a horizontal stake. They did that - you had to prepare a Passover lamb in a way that broke no bones, so they would put him on the vertical stake in a way that broke no bones. They would then insert a horizontal stake that would spread him out. Why? Because the Torah said that when you cook a Passover lamb, you have to cook it in such a way where the fluid doesn't bubble up on the meat.

So they would spread him out in such a way where the fluid would naturally fall off of him. They would lacerate his side with stripes, so that it would open up his side, so that the extra blood and water would flow out. They would take the entrails of the Passover lamb, and they would make a crown, and put it on the Passover lamb's head. This is all outlined in the Mishnah, way, way, way before Jesus. The last thing they would do, when a Passover lamb was being cooked, is just to make sure that all the extra body fluids were out of its body. They would take a knife, and they would puncture its side in a way that broke no bones. They would puncture its side, and pierce the heart, and any excess stuff in the heart would then fall out.

And so all of this was going on to say: wait a minute, this is the Passover lamb! So there was that aspect to it, but there's a specific imagery of blood and water, that I think really speaks to us today. This imagery goes all the way back to Genesis 2:10-12. It says this: A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, and from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first was called Pishon, and it wound through the entire land of Havilah, where there was gold, and the gold was perfect. Now there's a lot going on here. The word Pishon means hope, so it says this: out of Eden flowed a river called Hope, and that river wound through the entire land of Havilah. The word Havilah means suffering. So when a Hebrew person reads Genesis 2:10, what they read is: there's a river called Hope, that's always flowing in the land of Suffering.

In other words, if you're in the land of Suffering, there's a river called Hope flowing somewhere in it; you've just got to go find it. The Talmud says that Adam and Even spent 40 days with their feet in the river Pishon, after they were thrown out of the garden. Why? Because they were in the land of Suffering, and they needed to remind themselves that Hope was flowing through it. One of the ideas of the cross is that hope flows through suffering. Hope always flows through suffering. Any time you're in the land of suffering, the land of transition, the land of the wilderness/desert, any time you're in places like that, there's always a river called hope flowing somewhere in it - you've just got to go find it.

The problem is that there's more than one river in those places. There's a river called Give Up. There's a river called Blame Everybody Else. There's a river called Get Critical. There's a river called, you know, Just Spread as Much Turmoil and Chaos as You Possibly Can. There's a river called all of these things, but those aren't the rivers you're looking for. The river you're looking for is the river called Hope.

It says: you can know that you've found the river of Hope, because there's perfect gold there. Now this is so unbelievably cool. When you put gold, perfect gold in water, it makes a colloidal suspension, and it turns it all blood red. I was preaching something like this in Perth, and there was a scientist there, and he was moved to tears. He took me to his lab and he did it for me. He took four or five nanoparticles of gold - a nano-particle is a billionth of a gram - he took four or five nano-particles of gold, and he put it in a colloidal suspension of water, and he put it in a vial, and it looked like I was carrying my blood sample around with me. I used to carry it with me to preach something like this, but I was landing in a plane once, and the pressure blew it up. It just went poof, like this - but it looked like red cordial. It looked like a deep red Kool-Aid. It looked like a blood sample, so think about this. If the river called Hope is winding through the entire land of Suffering, how do you know which one is the river of Hope?

Well if the river of Hope has gold in the riverbed, what colour's the river? Red. The world gold is interesting. Every Hebrew letter is a picture, so every Hebrew word is a comic strip. There are three letters in the world gold. The first letter is an eyeball; the second letter is a man harvesting supply; and the third letter is a house, or a house of God. So you've got an eyeball, a man harvesting supply, and a house, or a house of God. So when a Hebrew person reads the world gold, this is what they read:

Behold, the one who brings us substance for survival, brings it to us in the house of God.

So when a Hebrew person reads Genesis 2:10, this is what they read: Hope flows through Suffering, because behold, the one who brings us substance for survival, brings it to us in the house of God, through a river of blood. Hope flows through suffering. When the water is turning red, it means that hope is flowing.

Fast forward - this same group of people end up going through a series of hugely unfortunate events. This same group of people end up as slaves in Egypt. There's a bunch of them, millions of them. They end up as slaves in Egypt. God decides to rescue them from their suffering, and it says: they cried out to God in their suffering, and God chose to rescue them from it. It says: they cried out to God in their suffering. What was the first plague? God puts 10 plagues on the Egyptians in order to let His people go. What was the first one? All the water turned to blood. To the Egyptians that was a curse, but to the Hebrew people there would have been a buzz in the camp; hey, did you hear? Water's turning red. Hope's fixing to flow in our situation! Hope is fixing to flow in suffering. Hope is fixing to flow in our transition. Hope's fixing to flow in our wilderness experience. Hold on a second, hope is on the way! Through a series of events, these people get out of Egypt. What do they have to walk through, to get out of Egypt? The red sea, hope flows through suffering. Red water, red sea - hope flows through suffering.

They get to the base of Sinai. Have you ever seen Mount Sinai? It's quite large. God calls Moses up the mountain. It's about a three and a half, four hour walk. God calls Moses up the mountain. Moses walks up there; God says: oh, I forgot to tell you to bring Aaron, go back down and get him - which that would have been an interesting conversation. Moses could have said: You're God, can't You like, you know, beam him up here? Can you pull some Obi-Wan Kenobi thing and just - I mean that's a long walk. Anyway, so he walks back down to get Aaron, and what does he find? He finds that they have already made a gold cow; and he gets so angry, he beats the gold cow into powder. He takes the gold powder, and he throws it into the water coming out of the rock, and what does he make them do? He makes them drink it for the remission of their sins. When he put the gold into the water, what happened? It turned red - hope flows through suffering.

Think about when a baby is born. A woman goes into labour, into suffering, and what mixes together? Blood and water. When blood and water mix together, no matter how bad the suffering is, there is a bundle of joy at the end of it. The imagery is endless. Later there's a rabbi comes along. People are wondering if he's the one. People are wondering: wait a minute, is this the one? He shows up - now there's a law in Hebrew Hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is just a way of interpreting literature, a way of interpreting life, so there's a law and it's called the Law of First Mention. What it simply says is that the first time something's mentioned, defines all other mentions of it; and so it says that He shows up at a wedding to perform His first miracle. So His first miracle is going to define the purpose of all the other miracles. He shows up to do His first miracle; what was His first miracle? He turned all the water into wine. What was His purpose? What was His point? Was His main point to provide adult beverages for the party? No! His main point was to say to a group of people: you were living in suffering, hope is on the way, I am here now. Hope flows through suffering.

Three years later, they kill Him! They kill Him, and at the end of His life they stick a spear in His side. Why? Because He was the Passover lamb, but what came out? Blood and water; so at the foot of the cross is a steady flow of blood and water. What does that mean? At the foot of the cross, it's more than about going to heaven one day. It's also about hope flowing through whatever suffering you're going through. If you're in the wilderness, hope flows through suffering. If you're being rejected, hope flows through suffering. If you're going through a divorce, hope flows through suffering, at the foot of the cross. If everything in your life seems to be in turmoil, hope flows through suffering. If you don't know what the next assignment from God holds, hope flows through suffering. If you don't know where you're at, if you're completely lost inside, hope flows through suffering.

One of the messages of the cross is this: you don't have to wait to go to heaven one day. The message of the cross is that wherever you are, the water's turning red - hope flows through suffering. Bring yourself to the foot of the cross, and hope can flow in whatever situation you have.

The next image is this. It's called the Folded Napkin. Let me read this from John 20:6-7. They had buried Him in a tomb, and so people came to check on Him. John 20:6-7 it says: then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb, and he saw the strips of linen lying there. Then it makes an extra point: as well as the face cloth that had been around His head, and the cloth was folded by itself, separate from the linen. Now this is huge imagery, huge Hebrew imagery.

In First Century Hebrew culture, if you invited me to your house for dinner and I came there, at the end of our night you would know whether I wanted to come back or not, based on this. At the end of our night, when I'm done, I would take my facecloth, and I would scrunch it. I would fold it up, scrunch it like this, and then I would place it on top of the plate; so that when you came around and collected the plates, you would see a scrunched napkin. It would say: hey, he wants to come back, he enjoyed his time here. He wants to continue business with us, whatever your purpose was. But if I did not want to have any more business with you, I would actually take the time to neatly crease and fold my napkin, and I would lay it to the side of the plate, separate from everything else; so that when you came around and picked up the plates, you would see the folded napkin, and you would know he has no interest in ever doing business with us ever again. His business with us is now done, and it was my way of telling you that, without being confrontational - without being confrontational.

So that was the custom of the folded napkin; so when they go into Jesus' tomb, and it says that they find His burial clothes here, the strips of linen; but it says that the burial cloth that was around His head, His facecloth - they call it the shroud now - that the facecloth was folded neatly, and placed to the side. It was specific imagery that all of them would know. What was Jesus saying? Jesus is saying: My business with the grave is done, I'm never coming back here again. I don't have any more business with this at all.

A later writer uses this to make fun of the grave. He says: oh grave, where's your victory? Oh death, where's your sting? Don't you know that Jesus has no more business with you? He has conquered and taken away all of your power, all of your power. One of the messages of the cross and resurrection is this: that death has no sting, grave has no victory. Any place in your life that looks dead, any place in your life that looks dead, it either: should be dead; or a resurrection's guaranteed - either one. Either it's something you need to release; but if it's something that God wants in your life, nothing in your life that God wants in your life can die, because Jesus has done business with the grave. It has no power over you at all.

That has obvious implications for, if you're here today, and you've lost a loved one, and you're grieving. If you've done that, I would simply say to you that one of the stories of the cross is this. It's not just about: that your loved one is in heaven one day; no, no, no. It's about: that you can take hold of the fact, that the joy and the peace that comes with Jesus conquering any power of the grave, is the folded napkin.

The last imagery I want to talk to you about this morning is this: the dirty Roman sponge. There's this one place, one time, in the crucifixion that just doesn't make any sense; like it truly doesn't make any sense, when Jesus says: it is finished. Now in the movies, like in The Passion of the Christ, it looks like the cross was six foot in the air. They weren't. Crosses were roughly one foot in the air. Why would they be this high off the ground? Well a couple of reasons: 1) less work for the Romans; 2) less work to get them down; but 3) they were now close enough to the ground, where the people they hurt could come by and spit, and ridicule, and taunt, and do all that sort of stuff. They could strip them naked, throw dice for their clothes, things like this okay. So they would have been about one foot off the ground.

Well there's this one part in there, and it doesn't make any sense. It says: Jesus said "I'm thirsty"; and someone at the foot of the cross said "I'll go get You something to drink". Now why doesn't that make any sense? What have they been trying to do all day? Kill Him, the worst way humanly possible. So they've spent all day trying to kill Him, and yet at the end of it He goes: I'm thirsty; and they go: we'll try to find You something. That doesn't make any sense.

Then it says: someone went, and they found a sponge on the end of a stick, and soaked it in sour wine and vinegar, and they placed it up to Jesus' mouth for Him to drink. Jesus turns it away; and then that is the moment He says: It is finished. It doesn't make any sense, and it's the only place in the whole crucifixion story - have you guys seen The Passion of the Christ? Yes. Did you see it twice? No, why, you don't handle that right? Like there's just beatings and beatings and beatings and beatings. But for some reason, when someone went and got the sponge filled with sour wine and vinegar - for some reason, that is when finally the people at the foot of the cross, the Romans, they go: no! Stop that! He's had enough. Leave Him alone. That makes no sense. They're trying to kill Him all day; someone goes to get Him a drink, which makes no sense; then they offer Him a drink; and someone stops them and says: you've crossed the line there, don't do that. Don't do that. What's going on there?

When I found out what was going on there - it broke my heart - and it's going to break yours; because the story of the cross is two-fold. The story of the cross is about us receiving mercy, receiving hope, receiving our hope flowing through suffering, receiving forgiveness. But the cross is also about offering something back, about living a life that's different. Here's what was going on there.

In the First Century, they had public toilets, just like they do here; and look, all of us, even driving cars, have had moments where we just couldn't make it home right, and you have to find a toilet really fast. The same would have been true back then, because they walked everywhere, and they ate lentils all the time. Okay, so when they did this, a public toilet was somewhere - I could show you a picture of it. I have it on my machine. A public toilet was about as high as this stage is off the ground (3 feet?), and it was made of stone. Where the corner was, they would cut a hole this way around the flat part, and they would cut a hole this way around the bottom part so you could do either one with ease, okay.

So what would happen, every three or four feet was another hole - and this was all out in the public, like this was just right there in public sight. They had no shame about this okay. Now here was the problem. If you had to go and do something serious, like let's - we're all adults - if you had to have a bowel movement, how would you clean yourself? You really only had four options: you had a fig leaf, which isn't very absorbent right? You could find a handful of moss, and give it a go that way. That's kind of disgusting and messy right? You could use your left hand, which is equally disgusting, alright? Okay - or what happened was, is the beggars found a way to make extra money with tips; and what they would do is, they would find sponges, and they'd put them on the end of sticks. They'd come up behind people and after they were done, they would clean their rear ends for them. Now here was the problem: One sponge, 100 rear-ends - you've got a problem right. I mean seriously, can you imagine the guy at the end of the line: hey, can you at least turn it around? Can you do something?

So you had all kinds of problems; so what they did is, they found a way to sterilise the sponge between uses. They used it with spoiled wine and vinegar. They would mix spoiled wine and vinegar together in a bucket; and between uses, they would put the sponge into that bucket, and the bucket would kill the bacteria, and it would sterilise it okay. So when Jesus said: I'm thirsty; someone was cruel enough at the foot of the cross to say: You're thirsty? I'll get You something to drink; and he went to the public toilet, and he found a sponge on a stick, that was soaked with sour wine and vinegar. What did that mean? That it was a used one! They went and found used toilet paper, soaked it in sour wine and vinegar, and they shoved it up toward His face. Do you see now why someone had enough compassion to go: leave Him alone, that's enough? Do you see why now that is the moment where Jesus went: it is finished, I can't do anything more?

Let me ask you a question: Is there any place in your life, where you're receiving the benefits of the cross, but your offering back to Jesus is a dirty Roman sponge? Listen, when you come to the cross with a humble heart, wanting what the cross has to offer you, and deeply desiring to give that message to the world - then hope will always flow through suffering. But the way the Jews thought is this: any time you're at an altar, it's about what the sacrifice can do for you - but it's also about what you're offering back.

My question is this: is are you receiving mercy for all of your sins, yet your offering back to Jesus, actually is a dirty Roman sponge? If I could show you the imagery of it - if you take a dirty Roman sponge, soaked with sour wine and vinegar, and put it on the end of a stick, and you lift it up to Jesus, and shake it in His face, all it does is come back on you. That's all it does. When your offering back to Jesus stinks, it only affects your life. You still get the effects of the cross. These are the people that Jesus is going: Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing.

Those are the same people that God is forgiving completely, but the question is this. Is there any place where you have received the forgiveness of the cross, yet when you look at your life, it's simply a dirty Roman sponge being offered back to God? One of the messages of the cross is this: may our life be a sweet-smelling offering in His nostrils. That's what they wanted.

Jesus died at exactly the ninth hour. At the ninth hour of every day, the priest would break incense through the temple, and proclaim: Lord, let our life rise as a sweet-smelling incense in your nostrils. In other words, Jewish people wanted their life to smell right before God. This is an incredible imagery. One of the imageries of the cross is this: let your life smell sweet to Jesus, not like a dirty Roman sponge.

I would challenge you today, to not just receive the benefits of the cross, but actually allow the kingdom of God to be established in you, so that our offering back to Him is sweet, and not a dirty Roman sponge. I bless you today to be a group of people, fully aware that no matter where you are, no matter what suffering you're in - hope is on the way. The water is red.

Listen to me. Bay City Outreach Centre as an organisation - hope is on the way. Your mission is not over. Your mission is simply stepping into something greater and greater and greater. In the next two years you will look back on these moments, and you will see what God was doing all along, was increasing your influence - not just in Hastings but in the world. Water's turning red.

Let me speak to your families. No matter what your situation is in your family, you might have given up. You might be as a husband blaming your wife for everything. You might be as a wife blaming your husband for everything. You might be being critical, you might be looking around and seeing all the problems with everybody else. You might be doing that, and I would say to you: stop! That is cutting off your hope flow. You go find the river of hope. There's a river called Hope flowing somewhere in your situation. You've just got to go get it.

I would also say to you, that when you find the river of hope, may you keep the fire of gratitude lit deep in your heart. Pastor Mike brought up this earlier about Leviticus. It says that the altar in the tabernacle - God gave the fire; but then it says: but the priest had to keep it going. In other words, God is only responsible to give you the fire once; the rest of it is your responsibility to keep it going, by keeping the ash cleaned out. See we don't want to offer back to Jesus a dirty Roman sponge.

Now what I want you to do now is I want us to have about a 60 second moment with God. If you're here today, and you're a believer in Jesus Christ, I want you to take the next 60 seconds, and I want you to do business with God. I want you to get this thing settled inside of yourself. I want you to become aware of blood in the water, and hope & suffering; but I also want you to have a moment where you repent, and renounce any actions or attitudes that is really a dirty Roman sponge.

While they're doing that, if you're here today, and you've not yet made a decision to follow Jesus Christ, I would encourage you to do so. It's not the words of any prayer that will ever save you. It's the response to God in your heart, and right now you could feel God knocking on the door of your heart. You could sense it, and you know: I need to respond to this kind, loving, compassionate, gracious person. While the believers in Jesus Christ are doing their business with God, if you need to respond to that today I'd love to help you. I'm not going to embarrass you in any way, I'm simply going to pray for you, right where you are. Is there anybody that says: Shane, I need to make that decision this morning? If that's you, would you raise your hand? It takes a lot of bravery to raise your hand, even though it's the only decision you'll ever make that everybody will be happy for you - it's still brave. I'm proud of you. This is very serious business - I could feel God just calling me, and inside my heart I need to respond. It's the best decision you'll ever make. It's the start of your journey.

Great. What I want us to do is, I want all of us to pray this prayer out loud after me, with some 'go All Blacks' gusto okay? Alright, no shyness. This isn't a shy place. Let me just tell you something. I love this place. There's something about this place that nourishes my soul, and part of it is the energy in it; so I want all of us to pray this prayer out loud, after me. It's not the specific words of any prayer that'll ever save you, it's the response to God in your heart. I just want to put some feet around it okay? Everybody's going to pray this prayer out loud, and you just join in, because this is your prayer, your moment, your time.

It goes like this: My Lord, Jesus Christ, thank You for coming. Thank You for dying for me. I confess that I'm a sinner. I have no hope of saving myself, so I ask You Lord to forgive me, cleanse me, come into my life, be the Lord of it. And Lord, now I ask that You would bring hope to every place I'm suffering in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now I want to take a second, let's pray for each other. Would you grab the hand of your neighbour? If you feel comfortable with them, grab their hand. If they creep you out - don't worry about it. Alright, grab the hand of your neighbour, and I want you to begin to pray for the person on your left. Would you pray for the person on your left, that hope would flow in their situation. Whatever they're going through, let hope flow into it. Would you believe God for them, if they're sick in their body - speak hope. If their family's in turmoil - hope. If they're looking for a job - hope. Peace, love, hope flows in their situation. Now would you pray for the person on your right? Let hope flow in that situation.

Lord, we pray for this church. Let this church be a dwelling place for Your name, the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God. May this entire community be touched by the environment that is in this place. Let the environment in this place multiply through this community, through every person sitting here. Lord, we renounce any criticism against this place; any criticism, we speak death to those words, any criticism against any leader here, any scandal, anything like Lord - we speak death to that. We will not allow those things to be spoken. We will live a different way. May the demonstration of our behaviour, may it show forth into this community, that this place is in fact a dwelling place for the name, in Jesus' name. Bless us with that. Amen.

Thank you so much for letting me be your guest this weekend. It has ministered to me, as much as it's ministered to you, maybe more. I love this place. As long as they see fit to keep having me, I'll keep coming back and it's because I journey in the spirit of this place. I travel the world okay, I'm in a different church every week. There's something about the environment in this place that nourishes the soul. You won't know it, until you didn't have it.

Sometimes you don't know what you do have, until you don't have it; and when that happens, you take something for granted - it's normal. Moses parted the Red Sea, turned around and destroyed the entire mightiest army in the world in one swoop. Three days later the people forgot what they had, and they were going to kill him, simply because they were hungry. When you forget what you have, you lose sight of things.

Now listen to me. I travel the world. I know what I'm talking about. I am not an expert in many things, but I am an expert in church environment and in pastors. I can tell you you have one of the greatest churches in the world right here in Hastings, New Zealand. There's something about this place, that if you allow it, it nourishes the soul. Never, ever, ever, lose sight of the grace that God's given you, simply by the fact that you're sitting here.

Now I'd like to invite you back tonight to be our guest. I've been speaking all week, and it's leading us up to one moment tonight. Tonight is the single most important message I ever preach in the whole world, and pastors all over this world are telling me: Shane, that has to go out. That has to. It's changing the way we're doing life, it's changing the way we're doing church.

I'd like to invite you back. Please do not miss tonight to stay home and watch NCIS okay? Listen, let me help you with this. Gibbs gets the bad guy - always. He always does. He's very clever Gibbs, okay? Very, very clever alright. You've got TiVo, you've got all kinds of stuff now, you've got DVRs. If you don't have a DVR - go get one, its 2010 okay. You could do that, and record your program. I'm telling you, tonight will be the single most important message I could ever preach to you. I'd like for you to be my guest. Thank you so much for letting me be a part of your life this weekend. I'll turn this back over.

[Mike Connell] Praise the Lord, come on, let's give Shane a great clap. Shane, we just love you. Thank you for coming. Enjoy your ministry, my goodness. What insights we've been getting about the cross. Every time I hear new things about the cross, I feel very deeply touched, very deeply touched. Father, we just thank You, You love us. Thank You for what You're doing in our midst. Thank You for the river of your spirit that flows in this place. May we be strengthened, built and enlarged by it to become the people You want us to be and to influence the community as Your representatives. Father, we thank You for Shane. We pray You'll bless him, nurture him, encourage him, strengthen him. Lord, we give You the honour. Amen.

What do Kingdom people look like? (Shane Willard)

Sun 25 Apr 2010  « Back to Top

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A study of the Beatitudes - Jesus first sermon. A popular new Rabbi, he presents a yoke that is easy, and a burden that is light; He emphases heart attitudes over keeping all the laws. There are a lot of people at the end of the day, who think they're in, but they're actually out. Tzedak (Righteousness) always produces Tzedakah (Generosity, or righteousness-revealed). Jeremiah 22:16 "He took care of the poor and the afflicted, so it is well with him. Is this not what it means to know Me, declares the Lord, your God". The happiest people set their passions on meeting the needs of others.

We're going to take a journey in scripture tonight, starting in Matthew 5:6-8. This is a series of messages called the beatitudes. It's a series of statements that Jesus made. It was Jesus' first sermon. The beatitudes just started to amaze me. Part of the reason that the beatitudes amazed me is because, this is Jesus' first sermon, and yet the crowd was so big, that He had to climb a mountain to get away from them enough to talk. So in Jesus' first message, they had to climb a mountain to get far enough away, in order to talk to the people.

Now look, I've been preaching for years, and Mike's been preaching for years, and you're a fair-enough good-looking group of people, but I hardly have to climb a mountain to get away from you. So what would possess a group of people, to be so enamoured by this new rabbi, that they would flock from all over the place to see Him? You might say: yeah, but He was the Son of God. They didn't know that. As a matter of fact, because He claimed to be, they ended up killing Him anyway, so that was not the issue. What was going on here?

Here's what was going on. Jesus was the new rabbi, with something called S'mikah. So being the new rabbi with S'mikah meant He had authority. There were two rabbis with authority in Jesus' day: Rabbi Hillel; and Rabbi Shammai. They both died when Jesus was around 18 years old, and so the nation was waiting on the new rabbi with s'mikah, with authority. So everybody in Israel was either under Hillel, or under Shammai. Jewish historians called Jesus the Rabbi with the Third Way. In other words He had the authority to create another yoke; so rumour had it that this rabbi's yoke was easy, and His burden was light. His yoke was easy and His burden was light; so people would have flocked from all over the place in order to hear His new way of living.

So in the beatitudes, Jesus is identifying attributes of kingdom people. He's actually - the beatitudes are a rabbinical commentary on Isaiah 61 and 66. It's a commentary, not on how to be saved, in the sense of going to heaven one day; but how to be saved in the sense of being a kingdom person now. How do you do that? I love the beatitudes.

The first one is this: Blessed are the poor in spirit. That's the first one, and it's interesting that the literal translation is: blessed are people who are short on wind! So essentially He says: blessed are people who choose not to be long-winded. Blessed are people who don't like to hear the sound of their own voice. Blessed are people who don't have to be the centre of the party. Blessed are people who aren't secretly angry when they're not noticed. Blessed are people who do that; so all of these beatitudes are describing the same type of kingdom person.

Now in the middle of that He gives us this. In Matthew 5:6 it says: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they are the ones that will see God.

Now I want you to notice something about the structure here. This is written in a form of literature called a chiastic structure. It's very, very familiar in Hebrew writing okay. Basically a chiastic structure says the same thing twice, and then sandwiches the main point in the middle. So in this: blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness; and blessed are the pure in heart. They're the same people. This is the same exact person, and it's saying exactly the same thing. I want you to notice something, that to Jesus, righteousness comes from hungering and thirsting after it - never attaining it. That actually when you look at Jesus' writings, and Jesus' teachings - those who thought they had attained righteousness, were the ones who didn't.

It was actually found in a heart that said: no, no, we'll never arrive at righteousness. We're going to constantly pursue it - so blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they'll be filled. Blessed are the pure in heart. What is the difference between someone who's hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and someone who's pure in heart? Nothing. It's essentially the same thing and this is a very common literary structure, and it's called a chiasm. So you have: blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are the pure in heart; and the main point of it is to be a person who is full of mercy.

Now a couple of things I want to unpackage, particularly Verse 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. The first thing we want to understand is the idea of blessed. What does it mean to be blessed? Well you've got to understand in the Hebrew language there are two words for blessed. The first word is the word Baruch. Baruch is a blessing from God to you; or from you to God; so you could say: Baruch ashem el shaddai - blessed be the name of the Lord - that is a blessing from you to God; Or you could say: God blessed me, and you could use the word baruch - God baruched me - he blessed me. So it's a blessing from God to you; or it's a blessing from you to God.

The other word for blessed is the word Ashri. Ashri is happiness, as a result of right decisions. Both of them are translated 'blessed' in the Bible; so whether it's Baruch, or whether it's Ashri, it translates to blessed. Let me give you an example, Psalm 1 says this: Blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of mockers, for his delight's in the law of the Lord, and on his Lord does he meditate day and night. The word there is not Baruch, that word is Ashri. In other words, happy is someone who chooses to keep the right company.

Another scripture says: where there's no vision, people perish; but he who chooses to keep the Torah, that man is blessed. Again, the word is not Baruch, its Ashri. In other words, happy is someone who chooses to do things God's way. Happy is someone who chooses to do these things. It's not like there's some magical thing, that God just all of a sudden blesses people. No, that is true, and we ought to thank God for that, sometimes God just blesses us; but more often than not, God has set the laws of the universe in motion, and when we keep those things, we are happy as a result of it.

Now in Matthew, in the Hebrew version of Matthew, the word he uses for bless there is Ashri (and for all the beatitudes); so in other words, he says: happy is someone who is poor in spirit. Happy is someone who chooses not to be long-winded. Happy is someone who chooses not to love to hear the sound of their own voice. Happy is someone who chooses to mourn. Happy is someone who chooses to identify with the suffering of others. It says: happy are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. This one he says: happy is someone who chooses to hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they'll be filled.

Now there are two concepts here: 1) what is righteousness; and 2) what is pure in heart? So let's cover the 'pure in heart' one first. Now to understand pure in heart, there's two words: Tumah and Tahor. Everybody's either Tumah or Tahor in this culture. Tumah means: unclean, contaminated or impure; Tahor means: clean, sanctified or pure. So here's the basics of Tumah and Tahor:

There were 613 commands in Leviticus. Now those are what made a person unclean or clean; and when you were unclean, you had to have a sacrifice then, to become clean. So what did man do with it, and what was the point? The point was is that we need a saviour. We cannot save ourselves. Something else has to be sacrificed for us - that was the point. What did man do with it? Man made it into a complicated system of laws, that told people who were in and who was out - and that was never the point. They made 3,000 extra oral laws, to go on top of the 613; and so here was the problem - when you broke any of their laws, then you were considered Tumah. How did you become clean? You had to have a sacrifice. Where could you get a sacrifice? Conveniently, you could buy it from them; so the harder they made it to be clean - the richer they got. So what they did is, they used religious guilt, in order to make money. We would never do that would we?

So they used religious guilt in order to make money. Jesus shows up and begins to turn the whole thing upside down. He shows up, and a prostitute washes His feet with her hair. He says: oh, you're faith has forgiven all your sins; that turned this upside down! There's a paralysed guy lowered in from the roof, and it says that Jesus saw the faith of his friends, and proclaimed his sins forgiven - so that turned that upside down. Why? What did they need to be forgiven of? No, you've got to go to the temple, you've got to have a sacrifice. Your priest has to do all this for you. Jesus said: no, I see their heart. He began to turn their concepts of unclean and clean upside down. He blew apart their idea of who was in and who was out. As a matter of fact, in one place He was talking to a group of people who thought they were all in, and He says: hey, listen, at My banqueting table, many will come from the north, the east, the south and the west - but you who actually think you're in, will be the ones shut out.

So Jesus seems to indicate, that at the end of the day, the people who think they're in, are actually the ones in the most danger. This is a radical new concept. This is a concept that Jesus is coming, and He's blowing away their ideas of clean and unclean. He's actually making it more about the heart, than He is about behaviour or status. He comes in and He does this, and He begins to publically defeat this. Ultimately He publically defeats it on the cross.

You understand that the cross was a radical new way to live. It wasn't just about forgiveness. It was about a radical new way to live, because the revelation of God progressively got nicer. It went from: not knowing what to do to please Him; to bringing a sacrifice, one sacrifice per family per year; it went from that to that, then Jesus shows up and says: no, it's one sacrifice, for the whole world, for all time. So the revelation of God progressively got kinder. It progressively got nicer, and all along the way there were people who did not want God to be nice. Something about that threatened them.

So when Leviticus was written, there was a group of people who said: no, God cannot be this nice. We've got to make it harder - and they did. Then Jesus comes along and goes: no, no, it's even easier than that. The writer of Hebrews, he says: didn't you know, that all along, it was impossible for the blood of sacrifices to take your sins away? In other words, he says: didn't you know God didn't need that all along? He simply set it up, because you needed your conscious appeased. In other words, you thought you needed it, so God set it up so you would need it; and that made you feel closer to God, but all along God didn't need it.

Then the writer of Hebrews goes on to say: didn't you understand that Jesus died at the culmination of the ages? The culmination - does that sound like something boring? No, no, no. The culmination of the ages - that sounds like a rock concert doesn't it? Like where'd you go last weekend? How was the concert? Man, it was the culmination of the ages! It was awesome! We went to the culmination of the ages - that's what it sounds like.

Jesus shows up, and He begins to revolutionise their ideas of righteous and unrighteous. What does He do mainly to revolutionise it? This is what He does, He says: your righteousness really has nothing to do with your status, or even your behaviour, as much as it has to do with what you're hungering and thirsting for in your heart. He begins to turn it upside down.

So what did it mean to have a Tzedakah spirit? Matthew 5:20 says this - this is Jesus now, He's really messing with people. He says: for I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, and the teachers of the Torah, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. He's being sarcastic. He's saying - because these were the most righteous people on earth. They made all the rules, and then kept them; so He's saying listen, if you want to attain righteousness that way, if you want to go that route, you can go that route - but here's what I'm telling you. If you choose to go that route, your righteousness has to surpass theirs, or you're not going to make it.

What's He saying? It's impossible to be righteous that way. There has to be another way, which leads us to a question. What does it mean to develop a righteous spirit? We've been talking all week about establishing the kingdom of God in our lives, and this message tonight is the culmination of that. It is the life application of: what do kingdom people look like. I want to talk to you for the rest of the night about what it means to develop a righteous spirit.

Now what is righteousness? Righteousness - this is not a word about withdrawing from evil. That's what I was taught. I was taught that if you didn't drink, you didn't smoke, you didn't chew tobacco, you didn't dress immodestly, you didn't watch the wrong movies; for women, if you didn't cut your hair, you didn't wear make up, you didn't wear the wrong kinds of jewellery, you didn't want to give men the wrong idea, you didn't learn to do any of this stuff, you didn't swear or curse or anything like that. Alright, so if you didn't do these things, then you were righteous.

Of course we made up what was righteous and unrighteous. In the south, in America, you couldn't wear jewellery, make up, slacks; you couldn't drink wine, you couldn't do any of that. If you didn't do those things, then you were righteous; but you could hate black people - that was okay. So our concepts of righteousness started to be jaded around things we withdrew from; so if you withdraw from the wrong evils, then you're righteous.

The word righteous in Hebrew has nothing to do with withdrawing from evil. It has everything to do with something you enter into. It has everything to do with entering into something; largely and namely to make other people's lives better. All through scripture, there is a connection between righteousness and generosity. Listen, there are 2,106 scriptures in the Bible that talk about the righteous' responsibility to be generous. All through the Bible righteousness and generosity are connected; and greed and wickedness are connected. All through the Bible, righteousness/generosity, greed/wickedness - 2,106 scriptures about this.

This is even in the language itself. The word for righteousness is Tzedek. This is the word that would always be translated: righteous; or righteousness. Remember now, every Hebrew letter is a picture, so every Hebrew word is a comic strip. In the picture Hebrew, the first letter is a fish hook with bait on it. It means: what lures you, what's the desire of your heart. The D is an open door; and the Q there is the back of someone's head, which means humility. So in the picture Hebrew, the word righteousness is this: the desire of one's heart, opens the door to humility. I want you to notice again, what is the starting point of righteousness? The desire of your heart. It's not your behaviour per se; it's that you're hungry and thirsting for something. We're hungry and thirsting for righteousness - so that is the word righteousness.

Now the word generosity is the word Tzedakah. Now so righteousness is the word Tzedak; generous is the word Tzedakah - it's the same word! It means: to reveal righteousness; so to them generosity was righteousness revealed. It begins to make sense as to why 2,106 times in scripture, more than heaven, hell, faith and prayer combined, the writers of scripture combined the ideas of righteousness and generous. Do you realise that to a rabbi, it is impossible to be righteous and greedy - you cannot do it. It doesn't even fit in the word; like to say someone is Tzedak, without producing Tzedakah, would be false - you can't say that. One writer said it this way: faith without works is dead. Are you really going to depend on dead faith to save you? I mean come on, so Tzedak always produces Tzedakah and that makes sense.

Let me just show you some scriptures around this, that really start to make this make sense. Matthew 6:22-23, its Jesus. He says the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore, your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? Now you've got to understand Hebrew imagery to understand this. In First Century Hebrew culture, to say someone had an eye full of light meant they were generous. To say someone had an evil eye - it meant they were stingy. The etymology of the phrase "don't give me the evil eye", means "don't be stingy with me". So Jesus said: if your eye is full of light - in other words if you're generous - then it'll bring favour to everything you do. If your eye is full of darkness - if you're stingy - then it'll bring darkness to everything you do; and then He qualifies it. He says: but if the light that is in you, is actually dark, now you've got a real problem. In other words, if your generosity has greedy motives - you're going to run into a real problem.

In the same passage, later He says: where your treasure is, there's your heart is, because you can't serve both God and mammon. In other words, if your heart, if your eye is full of light; if in your heart, you're hungering and thirsting to have a generous spirit; then this will create favour for your whole life. If you're stingy, it won't; and please be sure that you're generosity isn't greedy in its motives.

Check out this scripture, Jesus, He's saying this: be careful - Matthew 6:1 - be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men. In the Hebrew version of Matthew, what do you think that word is? Tzedakah, acts of righteousness, to reveal righteousness. In this context, He's talking about feeding the poor. He says: don't give to the needy before men. Don't do your acts of righteousness to be seen by men. If you do, you'll have no reward from your Father in heaven. Once again, Tzedak, Tzedakah, generosity.

Listen to this scripture, Psalm 37:25-26 says this: I have been young, and now I'm old, yet I've never seen the righteous forsaken, or his children begging for bread. All the day long, he deals generously and lends freely, and his seed is blessed. What's the connection? The writer of Psalm 37 is saying: listen, I've lived a long time, and I've never seen the righteous forsaken. Out of all the adjectives he could use to describe a righteous person, he doesn't say: a righteous person doesn't drink, smoke, chew, dress immodestly, go to the wrong movies, or say the wrong words. He doesn't make it about behaviour. What does he make it about? He says you could tell a righteous person is righteous, because he's dealing generously always; and you've got to understand, in the language, it just makes sense. He would have said: Tzedak people do Tzedakah.

Look at the other one, Psalm 112:5. A righteous man shows generosity and lends freely. He guides his business with fairness. Once again, in Hebrew all it would say is this: A Tzedak person shows Tzedakah. It has a ring to it. Now "the Righteous" is written "Ha tzedak", so its: Ha tzedak shows tzedakah. In other words, the righteous are the generous. It's developing a generous spirit.

How important is this, to develop a righteous spirit, a generous spirit? Very. I'll go where no man will go - I'm leaving tomorrow anyway, alright, so there's this one scripture, if I could be just totally open and honest with you - which I can - that scares me to death. If you have a heart beating in your body, it should scare you, because it's in red letters, and Jesus is pretty serious. This is what He says: Many will say to Me in that day Lord, Lord, and I'll say I didn't know you. Anybody scared yet? Why? Because many sounds like me, right? Sounds like I could be in there, right? Many will say to Me in that day Lord, Lord, and I'll say I didn't know you. They'll say: hold on, no, You must be mistaken. We're the guys who cast out devils, and we're the guys who prophesy. He said: yeah, but I still don't know you. So these people called many - that's a lot - these people called many, not only had cried out Lord, Lord, but they had operated in a bit of power. Now here was what scared me.

I could not find anything that separated me from them. I couldn't. Had I cried out Lord, Lord? Yes. Have you cried out Lord, Lord? Yes. Okay, well that fits. Have you ever cast out devils? Yes, I've done it a few times. Have you ever prophesied over someone, have a word of knowledge, things like that? Yes. So have I - so I and you sound like them. The people, it seems to me, that in this passage Jesus is saying: there are a lot of people at the end of the day, who think they're in, but they're actually out. They're actually surprised that He doesn't know them, and who is He describing there? Pentecostal leaders, people who've thrown out devils, people who've prophesied, people who've cried out Lord, Lord; yet He still didn't know them. That scared me to death. Why? Because I'm them, and 90 per cent of the people I minister to, fit this description! It was terribly scary, so I went to my seminary professor.

He has his PhD in theology, so he should know; so I said: listen, what do we do with this? This was his answer: Shane, that scripture does not apply to you, because you're saved; to which I said: look, I respect that, but with all due respect, they thought they were saved. These people He's describing, they are totally stunned, dazed, amazed and confused that He doesn't know them. He goes: yeah, but Shane it doesn't apply to you, because you're saved. I said: man, with all due respect, that doesn't cut it. He said: it's going to have to cut it, because it's my only answer. I said: well fair enough, he's just - okay, so am I right? We're just all - so for 15 years I've prayed a prayer like this. Lord Jesus, if I'm in that category, please be kind enough to tell me - like at least give me a chance here. I don't want to be totally dazed, amazed, stunned and confused, alright?

But doesn't the central question seem to be: what does it mean to know God? Is there anywhere in scripture that God says: this is what it means to know Me? You know what? I was studying something else, and I found it; and then I tried to find another instance of it. To me, I cannot find it. I'm not saying it's not there, I'm just saying I can't find it. I can't find any other instance, in all of scripture, that defines what it means to know God, other than this one, and it comes from Jeremiah 22:16. Listen to this. He took care of the poor and the afflicted, so it is well with him. Is this not what it means to know Me, declares the Lord, your God. So God defines knowing Him as having a generous spirit towards people, who can't possibly do anything to pay you back. Doesn't this seem to fit with Jesus' world, and His message?

Think about Jesus' message: Who is the only person, in Jesus' whole ministry, that Jesus actually said went to hell? Who was the only one? The rich man who overlooked the poor man; like Jesus dealt with all manner of wicked people - a lady caught in the act of adultery, He's like: I don't condemn you, it's going to be alright. There was a lady divorced five times, and she was shacked up with the sixth one. He's like: can I get you a drink, you look like you need a drink, right? There was a tax collector in a tree, and the tax collector in a tree gets so moved with Jesus' compassion he says: look Lord, here and now, I'll give half of what I have to the poor. Jesus said: that's it, salvation's come to you. That's it - he's got it!

Who was the only person in Jesus' whole ministry that Jesus said: God is going to kill you? There's only one. It said there was a guy that God blessed all the works of his hand, and he had all this extra food. Jesus said: hey, there's a lot of hungry people outside, what are you going to do with your extra food? He said: you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to build bigger barns, to store it up for myself, so that my soul can have peace, and I'll know I'll always have food. Jesus said: that's it - God is going to kill you. God's going to kill you! It just seems to fit His whole modus operandi. Is this not what it means to know Me, declares the Lord.

Check out this scripture, Isaiah 1:15-18 says this: When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I won't listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash and make yourself clean. Take your evil deeds out of My sight. Now listen, this is God having a rant. Now what do you think this rant would be about? Idolatry? Homosexuality? Something really bad like that? Well watch what it is. Watch what it is. It says: stop doing wrong, learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the orphan, plead the case of the widow. Come now, and let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they'll be white as snow. What caused the move in God's heart, from "you wicked people" to "though your sins are like scarlet, they'll be white as snow"? What caused it? Generosity - it was all a generous spirit.

There was this one time, there's this guy, His name's John the Baptist. He's a Baptist! And you guys know Baptists, like they just don't have people skills. I can say that, because I was raised Baptist. Okay, so anyway John the Baptist is out in the desert - like he had no people skills. You read the stories about him, and you go: how did this guy build a ministry? This guy did things like eat bugs, don't bathe, things like this. So he has this rant in Luke 3:7. And John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him: you brood of vipers, who has warned you to flee the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and don't begin to say to yourself: you have Abraham as your father, for I tell you, out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. Is that a way to build a church?

These are people coming out to be baptised by him, and he greets them with this: You basket of snakes. You fatherless people. There's a word for that, starts with a 'b', you don't want to call people that right? This is not really nice. Out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham - and it gets worse. Watch this: The axe is already fallen to the root of your trees, and every one of you that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into fire. This guy's not a Baptist - he's a Pentecostal on speed! It's like: fire, all of you! You fatherless basket of snakes, every one of you, you're on your way into fire! Now what do you think that whole rant was about? You would think, once again: idolatry, sexual immorality, the big one - homosexuality. You would think it would be something huge like that, but what was huge to them? The crowd says: um, what do you want us to do then? And what's His answer? That whole rant, this was His answer: Let the man with two tunics, share with the one who has none; and let the man with food, feed those who don't have food - it was all generosity.

This seems to be true all the way through the Bible. There's this one time, in a place called Sodom and Gomorrah where - Ezekiel 16 - it says: for the sins of Sodom I destroyed Sodom. Now what do you think the sins of Sodom would be? Sodomy, like we named it after the place. I mean listen, when your name becomes a verb, it's a bad day right? You don't want that right? If you walked out of here tonight, and go: man, he Shane-Willarded me - I don't even know what that means, but that's bad. You don't want your name to become a verb. It says: for the sins of Sodom I destroyed Sodom. You would think the sin would be homosexuality, but you know it didn't even make the list? This is what it said. For the sins of Sodom I destroyed Sodom, and her sins were: pride, apathy, laziness, gluttony, and overlooking poor people. It's greed, selfishness, thinking you're better than other people, eating more than you have to, when someone else is starving. It was refusing to be a kingdom person, to bring the kingdom to this world - it was that.

Check out this scripture, Matthew 25:31. Matthew 25, this is Jesus' last sermon. It's His last words - right after this, He gets arrested. Now when someone gives you his last words, it's very important to listen to what they're saying, and Jesus is saying: at the end of the age, when I'm judging the whole world, here's how I'm going to judge them. Pay attention, because I'm the one doing it. Matthew 25:31 - but when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He'll sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations shall be gathered before Him, and He shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd divides sheep from goats. And indeed He shall set the sheep on His right, but the goats on His left. Listen, when you're standing in front of Jesus one day, you want to be on His right; so move to your left okay?

Then the King shall say to those on His right: come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then He tells them why: for when I was hungry, you gave Me food. When I was thirsty, you gave Me drink. When I was a stranger, you took Me in. When I was naked, you clothed Me. When I was sick, you visited Me. When I was in prison, you came to Me. Now look at the next verse, look at the wording. Then the righteous - now 2,106 scriptures talk about righteous people have a generous spirit, so you could easily say then the Ha Tzedak, the people doing tzedakah, the people feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, and this kind of stuff. Then the righteous shall answer Him: Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You a drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? When did we see You sick or in prison, and came to You? And the King will answer them saying: truly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you did it to Me.

Then He will say to those on His left: depart from Me you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Why? For when I was hungry, you gave Me no food. When I was thirsty, you gave Me no drink. When I was a stranger, you didn't take Me in. When I was naked, you didn't clothe Me. When I was sick and in prison you didn't visit Me. Then they will answer Him saying: when did we see You hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, prison, and did not minister to You? Then He will answer them, saying: truly I say to you, in as much as you did not do it to the least of these, you did not do it to Me. Here's the last line of that sermon: And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.

So in Matthew 25, His criteria of judgement was Tzedakah. Let me ask you a question. If you had to face Jesus today, would you be on the right, or would you be on the left? I'll ask another way. He took care of the poor and the afflicted; is this not what it means to know Me declares the Lord. Do you know Him? How important is it to develop a righteous spirit, a tzedakah spirit? Listen, this is from Matthew, this is Jesus. I love this. He says: when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites in the synagogues do on the street, to be honoured by men. I tell you the truth, they've received their reward in full; but when you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand's doing, so your giving is in secret. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. It's so important. He's talking about how even generosity can sometimes have a bad heart; so He says: you don't want your light to be darkness.

He said: here's how you can make sure your light's not darkness - when you give to the needy do it privately. Don't do so, as one who sounds the trumpet. This is such cool imagery. See, sounding the trumpet was something that would happen. Every weekend in their synagogues, they took an offering; but every day on the street of the synagogue, they had offering baskets available for the poor, and they would have them bolted down okay? The offering baskets had the opening to it was very broad at the top and very narrow at the bottom. Why? So you couldn't get your hand in there to steal it right, so money only went one way. You with me? But because it was broad at the top, and narrow at the bottom, it had the shape of a trumpet; so sometimes people would come by with their alms to the poor, they would take their coin and put their hand all the way down in there, and quietly drop it in. But others would come by, and they would throw their coins in, and the noise would reverberate down the street, and people would look, so that they would know that they had given to the poor. They called that practice sounding the trumpet, sounding the trumpet.

So Jesus says: when you give to the poor, don't do so as people who sound the trumpets. Every day they had a group of men who were responsible for collecting it. They were called the Gobey Tzedekah (Gobey means to collect). It means: the collectors of righteousness. So when people gave alms to the poor, what was it called? Righteousness, tzedakah; the collectors of righteousness. The word tzedekah is where we get the word Deacon from, the tze-dekah. The deacons were originally people who were supposed to collect alms, and make sure that the strangers, orphans and widows got fed that day. Jesus says: when you give, when you give your righteousness, when you do your acts of righteousness - don't do so as one who sounds the trumpet.

Now let me stop right here and give you some practical advice. The way they gave to the poor, was through reputable organisations, where they knew it was going to help people. So they had men in charge of distributing it. They were not against - listen, if you see a beggar out here, or a homeless person - they were not against you buying them a meal, or giving them money as the Lord led; but the primary place that you would give your offerings to the poor, are through reputable organisations, where you know that something good's going to happen from it. Like there's so many of them, if you don't know of any there's plenty. I just learned about one called Fred Hollows. There's this group in Australia, and the primary cause of blindness in the Third World is dirty water, and they can fix that, because it causes cataracts. So there's this guy named Fred Hollows, and he's going into places, and he's making blind people see for $30! It's like: what!

So you mean I could go to Hogs Breath tonight, and spend $35 on a steak; or I could take that same $35, and I could give sight to the blind. Are you kidding me? If you want to go to Hogs Breath - go to Hogs Breath; but done do so at the expense of taking care of the less fortunate. So you don't feel guilty if you go to Hogs Breath; just don't use money that God meant to bless other people to do that. Its reputable things. This church is a church of generosity. It's a church that does things all over Indonesia and Malaysia, they have a Ugandan orphanage. If you don't have anywhere to give your poor offerings, see these guys - they're doing the job. They're doing the deal, and I'm telling you, it's the Gobey Tzedekah. It's the acts of righteousness. Don't do so, as one who sounds the trumpet, but may we develop a tzedakah spirit. See this life of the cross, this kingdom life was all about making others lives better. If you want the kingdom to be established in your life, you have to make an internal heart commitment, not be perfect - this is not about being perfect. It's not about making up a mistake. It's not even about making 1,000 mistakes.

It's about having the heart that hungers and thirsts for righteousness; hungers and thirsts to make other people's lives better. Now to fully understand this, we have to understand a Hebrew concept. That Hebrew concept is called Zekute. Let me read you a definition of zekute. This was a common word in their language. It says this: Zekute is kind and generous acts, that God notices we do, that are not done out of obligation or result of a command, but out of free will, in order to show the love of God to someone else. The rabbis taught that there was a way to know God, even if you've never seen a Torah; and that way was through Zekute. Where did they get that from? Jeremiah 22:16 - He took care of the poor and the afflicted. That's what it means to know Me, declares the Lord, your God.

So what they believed, is that if someone was practicing Zekute - they actually knew God; and God, who saw their heart, would be determined to reveal Himself to them. In the New Testament, can you think of anyone who was counted righteous by God, simply on their generosity to the poor? Of course you can - I can think of two; Cornelius; and Zacchaeus was the other one. Zacchaeus gets so moved with the compassion of Jesus, what does he do? Look Lord, here and now I'll give half of what I have to the poor. Jesus said: that's it, he gets it, salvation's coming to his house. He understands what we're talking about now. He understands the kingdom.

There was a guy named Cornelius - you can read his story in Acts 10. Cornelius was a Roman centurion. Now let me tell you what that meant. If you were a Roman centurion, who had to be Lord to you? Caesar. Cornelius had other Gods as well. If you guys know the story, he has this dream where Peter comes to him in his dream. He doesn't know who Peter is, he just has this dream that Peter comes to him. So one day Peter actually shows up, knocks on his door, and Cornelius opens the door and Peter's there! You guys know the story; what does Cornelius do? He bows down and worships Peter. Peter has to correct him: No man, get up, I'm just a man. Don't do that. Get up! So here's a guy, who had proclaimed Caesar as Lord, and he didn't know it wasn't right to add Peter to his list of Gods. Would you call him saved? Is he saved in any systematic theology book in the world? No way. No way, but he asks Peter: Peter why are you here? Peter says: because God chose you to pastor the first church. The first gentile church Cornelius, congratulations, it's going to be yours! People are going - I mean would you want him to be your pastor? He just got up off the floor bowing to another man. Cornelius asks what you're asking: Why me? This is what Peter says: Because God has counted you righteous, because your generosity to the poor has went up as a remembrance to Him. In other words, Cornelius showed a tzedakah spirit, and God was faithful to draw Cornelius to Himself. Why? Because that's what it means to know Him. It's so important, Zekute.

Let me show you this one more scripture, 2 Corinthians, Chapter 9. It's a famous offering scripture that people use all the time, but I want you to see something maybe a little different in it. 2 Corinthians 9 says this: But I say this - He who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully. Each one as he purposes in his heart, let him give not of grief nor of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that in everything, always having self-sufficiency. In other words, God wants to take your generosity, and make it to where you don't lack anything - self-sufficiency.

Now watch this: that you may abound to every good work. In other words, He wants to take your generosity, make you abound to self-sufficiency, so that more tzedakah can take place. As more tzedakah takes place, there's more self-sufficiency, which abounds to more tzedakah; which brings more tzedakah round which brings more self-sufficiency around, which brings more tzedakah around. It's an endless cycle. Watch the next verse. This is new testament ya'll - As it is written: He has scattered, he has given to the poor, therefore his righteousness remains forever. He scattered, he gave to the poor, his righteousness remains forever. Now he who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for the eater, may he supply and multiply your seed, and thereby increase the fruits of your righteousness. Do you see what he's saying? He's saying: when you give generously, it's called righteousness, and there's a fruit of righteousness called tzedakah. May God multiply your seed, so that the fruits of righteousness be increased.

Listen to the last verse: That you, being enriched in everything to all generosity, which works out thanksgiving to God through us. In other words, does God appreciate it when you say thank You to Him? Yes. Does He appreciate it more when you show you're thankful, by making other people's lives better? It's a heavier matter. There's one scripture, I didn't have it written down, it's just coming in my head now and there's so many of them. There are 2,106 to choose from. 1 John 3:16 - everybody knows John 3:16. 1 John 3:16 says this (give me some leeway to paraphrase this). He says: for let us not love in word only, but in word and in deed. For if any of you have material gain, let him share with those who have material need, for it is in this generosity that we can know we belong to God.

My question is this tonight. Do you want the kingdom to be established in your life? If you do, let me ask you a couple of questions: 1) do you know Him? Do you have a tzedakah spirit? 2) if you faced Jesus today would you be on the right or the left? Can you know that you're a part of this idea called the kingdom?

Here's a summary statement of Matthew 5:6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they'll be filled.

Here's the Shane Willard exegesis of it: The happiest people set their passions on meeting the needs of others. When someone lives to be generous to others, he's living for zekute; to show God's heart to restore all things back to his best. In that, God will determine that he shall be filled in his stomach as well as his spirit.

Do you know that in Matthew 5:6 it says: blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they'll be filled? The word filled there is the word to fill your stomach. So in other words, Jesus is saying: happy is someone who chooses to meet the needs of the down-and-outer. Happy is someone who chooses to meet the needs of the poor and the afflicted. Happy is someone who chooses to enter into a righteous tzedakah spirit. Happy is someone who chooses to do that; and when they do that, they'll never have to worry about food in their own stomach ever, ever, ever - like His kingdom people.

So let's apply this with a few questions. It's not my place to tell you where you are, it's my place to ask.

1) Are you generous? I don't know if you are. Only you know if you are. Are you generous? Is your eye full of light? Is there any place in your life right now that you've turned your back on the needs of others? Is there any place in your life right now that you've told yourself it's not my problem? It IS your problem. Who else is going to handle it? The body of Christ is the hope of the whole world. It is our problem. It is our problem.

2) How have we defined righteousness that needs to change? Have you been guilty of defining righteousness by not doing certain things, and thereby fooling yourself into thinking I'm a righteous person; when in actuality, righteousness is defined by a heart condition, that hungers and thirsts to make other people's lives better?

3) Let me ask it a better way. You're saved right? You're saved? Now what?What are you going to do with that? You're on your way to heaven? Well good, you've got 50 more years to live. What are you going to do? Whose life are you going to make better? Where are you going to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the whole world?

I'm standing up here, now please hear my heart. I have left my guts on this stage tonight, trying to communicate this. Please understand my heart. I come to you with the most humblest of spirit right now, that we're all in a journey. We'll never arrive at this. There's no one righteous, no, not one. Why? Because we will never arrive at this. It's a constant daily thing, a choice to say: I, I will, I will hunger and thirst to make other people's lives better. It's about entering into something.

How can you believe God for seed? The Bible says God provides seeds to the sower. Listen to me, God provides seed to the sower, not to the hoarder. He is duty bound to provide seed for you. He is not duty-bound to provide fruit. He's only duty-bound to provide seed, and how you sow your seed determines your fruit. How can you believe God for seed? I'm telling you, whether it's your household or your church, or your organisation or whatever, if you begin to live by your seed, instead of by your fruit, the fruit will take care of itself.

4) where can you practice zekute today? Is there anybody in your life right now, that you could make their life better, even tonight? This takes the form of all kinds of things, not just money. There are hungry people in this world that need to be fed. There are naked people in this world that need to be clothed. There are people who are in desperate, desperate need, and sometimes money can fix that problem. There are blind people that $30 can help them see. There are - but you know what, there might be a single mum in here, and she's got four children, and she's about to lose her sanity. Maybe zekute for her, is you calling and saying: you know what, this Saturday I'm going to watch your kids for four or five hours, and you don't have to do anything. You can go out, see a movie, go shopping. You can be on your own. You can go sit at the banks of Hawkes Bay, and look over towards the mountain, sit on the water, and just clear yourself, reset your batteries - and you would be practicing zekute, because there's nothing she could ever do to pay you back. That's zekute. That's making other people's lives better.

It IS your problem. What else are you going to do, watch Super 14? I mean what else are we going to do, watch the next re-run of CSI? Come on, what else are we going to do? What are we going to give our life to? Are we going to give our life to striving not to do certain things so we're righteous, or are we going to give our life to hunger and thirst to make other people's lives better?

Listen to me, the next generation of church will be defined by churches that live Zekute - it'll be defined. Listen, not my generation, but the generation after me - they do not care what you believe. Your doctrine is useless to them. They want to see a kingdom of God. They want to see a body of Christ that's actually meeting needs. My dad's generation, they were a mind generation - teach me doctrine, teach me truth, teach me this stuff. The next generation after me, that'll be important, but it won't be the most important thing. They want to know where does your doctrine feed the mouths of hungry people; where's your doctrine make other people's lives better? Does it work?

I bless you tonight to know, that you can be a church of the kingdom. You can be, and it comes down to each individual person, choosing to practice zekute. I bless you tonight to know, that the fate of New Zealand is not found in people in Wellington. The fate of New Zealand is found in the individual families represented here today, who will make a choice to live by Zekute; and it will go well with you, for this is what it means to know Me declares the Lord, your God. May we be kingdom people.

Let's pray together and I will say one more thing to you. I've taught you a lot okay; Thursday, Friday, today. I actually need to go away for about a year and read some books, so I can have something new to say. But listen to me. If you learned your brain full of stuff tonight, and through the week, but yet by Wednesday it hasn't changed your life - I have done nothing. It does nothing. So what if you know stuff? I want to know what are we going to do about it. One scripture says: let us not be hearers of the word but... [Doers].

Let's pray together and the first question I want you to ask yourself, between you and God: Lord, where can I practice Zekute tonight? This week? Where do we need to sit down and make a commitment to constantly do it on a regular basis? Where do we need to make this a lifestyle of giving stuff up so that other people's lives can be better?

Hosting Shane Willard 2008 - Hell/Ghena (Shane Willard)

Session (1 of 4) Hell (Shane Willard)

We are not called just to go to heaven one day, but to be a minister of the power of the kingdom of God, to everyone you come into contact with. Sometimes the greatest miracle is someone who is angry, and now they're peaceful. You can bring a miracle of kingdom power to your home tonight, by being calm.

Session (2 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Session (3 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Session (4 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Audio

- Session (1 of 4) Hell.mp3

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- Session (3 of 4).mp3

- Session (4 of 4).mp3

Session (1 of 4) Hell (Shane Willard)

Wed 16 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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We are not called just to go to heaven one day, but to be a minister of the power of the kingdom of God, to everyone you come into contact with. Sometimes the greatest miracle is someone who is angry, and now they're peaceful. You can bring a miracle of kingdom power to your home tonight, by being calm.

Introduction

First of all, we have to be springs, and not bricks. What I mean by ‘bricks’ are, people who think they've already figured it all out; so they've got their theology worked out - and that's it - we're not willing to grow. We're going to be springs okay, which means we can stretch. We can grow. We can expand. We can do all of this stuff.

The second thing is, we've got to be okay about being challenged. Let me make one rule about being challenged: I am not the big guy up here, who's figured all this out. I'm simply someone on a journey with God, and God's challenging me; so I'm inviting you to join in on this challenge with me, because it's miserable being challenged alone!

Main Message

I want to talk to you tonight about the topic of hell, and I want to challenge us with some major questions. There are no right or wrong answers to this, it's just: where you are?

Where have we embraced a cross that saves us and forgives us and heals us; but we've neglected the cross we've been commanded to pick up every day?

Where have we been guilty of living a Christianity that's all about getting to heaven someday, versus bringing heaven to earth here?

Where have we wanted mercy for ourself, but justice for everybody else? Where have we wanted mercy?

We love to embrace this cross that saves us and forgives us and heals us - because Jesus bore it for us; but we neglect the cross that Jesus commanded us to pick up, which says things like: don't gossip about people - that's a serious thing. Don't slander; don't worry - just let stuff go. It's a glory to overlook offences, versus living offended.

Where have we been guilty of embracing this and not embracing this; that actually the main call of God on our life is not to go to heaven one day - although we're all for that right? Come on, like heaven/hell, let's go to heaven right? And that's real - and if it's a choice between heaven and hell, let's go to heaven okay. And if that's all it was, then it's all still a pretty good deal - but its way bigger than that!

Isaiah 49:6, and I'm paraphrasing, says: it is a light thing for me to forgive you, and restore you back to the land; but I'm going to go one step further than that, and I'm going to make you a light to the gentiles. Isn't that something? It's a light thing. This is God, talking to the nation of Israel, and He says: it is a light thing. It is a light thing.

Forgiveness, being brought back - how big is that? God is saying: compared to the plan I have for you, to bring heaven to earth - it's a light thing. It's a light thing.

Psalm 115:16 says “the highest heavens belong to God, but the earth He's given to man”.

Later He was teaching His disciples how to pray, and He said things like this: when you pray, say: your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is already is in heaven.

The highest heavens belong to God, but the earth He has given to man. In other words, it is not just our responsibility to go to heaven one day; it is our responsibility to bring heaven to earth - today.

Does the girl at KFC know that you're saved - even if she messes up your order? If someone cuts you off in traffic, do you point your finger at the sky, because they didn't get the memo that where you're going is more important than where they're going?

Does your husband know you're saved - even if he leaves a wet towel on the floor? I'm a counsellor by trade. I have had women in my office who were seriously degrading the intelligence of a man, that they would expect to die for them if need be - over a wet towel on the floor.

I mean for us men, come on, pick up your towels; but really if we leave it there, is it that big of a deal? Is it worth degrading the intelligence, and being disrespectful, to a man that you would expect to die for you, if an intruder came in the house tonight? Does your husband know you're saved, even if he does something stupid - because we need to know that.

Does your wife know you're saved even, if she disappoints you; or do you withdraw, and not talk for two and three days at a time? So a woman who's supposed to be the love of your life, that you want to do life with forever - you punish her because she disappointed you, and she has no idea what she's done. Does your wife know that you're saved, even if she disappoints you?

The alternative is that we live a life where we're on our way to heaven some day, and there's this some day, some day… the lion and the lamb; some day… the no sickness, dying, crying, sadness.

There’s this some day aspect to salvation, and if we're not careful, as Christians we paint this picture of salvation as: hey, get saved, and one day you get to die, and it'll all get better. We don't want that!

No, a far better calling would be to be known as a group of people who are bringing heaven to earth to everybody they come in contact with now! That we are to be ministers in this kingdom - the kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost; that the kingdom of God is not up and down, or this way and that - the kingdom of God is actually in the last place you looked for it, which is inside of you. We are called to minister that.

So I was sitting around with a group of people, and we were brainstorming about: how can we bring heaven to earth. This brainstorm we had all kinds of answers, all the typical Pentecostal answers you know, like ‘press in’, ‘break through’, ‘pray more’, ‘fast more’. All those are right - not right or wrong - but in my infinite creativity, this is what hit me: the best way to bring heaven to earth, is to avoid hell.

The best way to bring heaven to earth, is to stop bringing hell to earth.

So I started doing this study on hell, and I realised that when I just looked at what Jesus said about hell, that I had it all wrong. Can I share it with you? No one's going to get mad at me?

Like there are three different words for hell - three different words that translate ‘hell’.

1) One of them is fairly irrelevant to us - it's the word Tartoro. That word is only used one time in the whole Bible, and that's in 1 Peter. Tartoro was a Greek mythological word, about a place the Greek gods created to punish disobedient angels.

Jesus only used two words for hell. He said the word ‘hell’ 18 times, and there were two different hells. The first hell was called ‘Gehenna’ and the second hell was called ‘Hades’.

2) Now Hades was only used by Jesus three times - and this is the hell you really, really, really want to avoid okay! Hades was the hell ‘in the unseen place’, like it was the hell of the grave. It's the hell you go to after you die. This is the hell that gets thrown into the lake of fire.

In Revelations it says: “and death and Hades gets picked up, and thrown into the lake of fire”. So this is the one you don't want to go to, because this is the one that ends up in the lake of fire. This is a bad plan. This is in the unseen place.

Jesus only used that word three times. The first time He says: “woe to you Capernaum, how can you escape the condemnation of Hades”?

The second time was, He had His disciples at a place called Caesarea Philippi, headquarters to the goat god Pan. They had built a temple to the goat god Pan on top of this mountain, on top of this like rock. It cracked - the weight of the temple cracked the rock, and it went all the way down. It made a hole where the rock and the road met, and then it cracked the road. 24hrs/day, 7 day/week, there was steam coming out of this hole, and they called it ‘the entrance and exit to Hades’.

So Pan was a goat god, and he received worship through people being intimate with goats. So 24/7, there were people on the street, around this mountain, being intimate with goats, in order to keep the goat god Pan from opening up the gates of Hades and swallowing them into it. They didn't want to go there, so they would do this all the time.

Jesus took this group of people there - and He has to refocus His guys. I mean you can imagine that? He takes them into a city where everybody's being intimate with goats, and He says: hey Peter, who do you say that I am? Peter says: You're the Christ, the Son of the living God. He says: that's right, and upon this rock we can build a church, and not even the gates of Hades will prevail against it.

He's standing over the gates of hell saying: this doesn't have any power. Everybody around here was being intimate with goats to keep this thing from swallowing you up; but now it’s: I am in charge - you don't have to do that anymore.

3) The third time He used the word ‘hell’ was, there was a rich man who overlooked a poor man - and that guy went to hell, Hades.

There’s only three times Jesus used it, and we're going to talk about the rich man and Lazarus, and what it meant Hebraically; because when it's the only time that Jesus uses the word Hades, in terms of somebody going there, we might need to know what it meant - that's pretty important.

So out of 18 times Jesus only says ‘Hades’ 3x; the other 15x was all ‘Gehenna’, ‘Gehenna’.

Gehenna was an actually place in Jerusalem, and the origins of Gehenna comes from 2 Chronicles 28:3. Let me give you some history there…

There's this evil king that takes over the place; and he says: we're going to start sacrificing children in the fires of Gehenna. Gehenna just means the ‘valley of Hinnom’, so we'll just call it Gehenna because it's easier to say.

2 Chronicles 28:3 – “He burned incense in the valley of the Sons of Hinnom, Gehenna, and burned his sons in fire, according to the abominations of the nations who Jehovah has cast out before the sons of Israel”.

So there's this evil king, and he instituted child sacrifices, in a place called Gehenna. I think (if memory serves) you had to sacrifice your first born son at the age of 10; so the picture is: you've got very reluctant 10 year olds, being dragged behind their father, to be thrown into fire, in a place called Gehenna. Now this goes on for years and years and years and years and years - it becomes a way of life, until somebody steps in and stops it.

In 2 Kings 23:10, there was a king named Josiah; and Josiah steps in and he stops all the child sacrifices. Now why does he do that? Because he was eight!

So he becomes king when he's eight, and this isn't going to work out too well for him… So what he does is, he has the sages search the annals, and he finds out that they actually come from a lineage of people who believed in a God called Jehovah, who wrote a book called Leviticus to teach them how to live.

In the Book of Leviticus, it says: it is unlawful for someone to throw their child in fire; so he says: we're going with that. Mm, this is going to work out better for him…

So he takes the army of Israel out to Gehenna, and he rips all the place down. He makes a royal decree: from this day forward no one, no one, will sacrifice their children in the fire of Gehenna, ever again.

In 2 Kings 23:10 it says: “and he defiled Topheth”, which means ‘the place of burning’. He defiled the place of burning, in the valley of Gehenna, so that no man might make his son or daughter pass through the fire of Molech again.

So this King Josiah comes out and he defiles Gehenna; so for years and years and years and years and years they've been sacrificing children in a place called Gehenna - and he rips it down.

Now what's the problem with that? If you're the king, and you go and you defile a place where they've been sacrificing children, what dilemma are you left with? The dilemma is simply this: now the land is worthless.

What are you going to do with it? You've been sacrificing children there for say 100 years; what are you going to do with that land? Okay, so you've made it impossible to sacrifice children there, but now you still have a piece of land that is spooky!

Are you going to build houses on it? Hey, would you like to buy a house? It's Poltergeist Acres!

It has this ‘Children of the Corn’ feel to it doesn't it, like it's just odd. To this day, this place is spooky. It has a spooky feel to it. You wouldn't want to live there, and so what did they do? What do you do with a piece of land that is now worthless because of a sin that you guys have committed?

They made it the town garbage dump! So everybody in Jerusalem took their garbage to Gehenna, and to keep the smell of the garbage out of the city, they had to keep the fire going. So they'd keep the fire going all the time to keep the smell of the garbage inside Gehenna, instead of outside Gehenna.

It was also a place of crying, because anybody who could not afford a tomb, they would have their funeral at Gehenna. So if you couldn't afford a tomb, your loved ones would take your body, and they would throw it into the fire of Gehenna to burn you up there, because you couldn't afford a tomb to be properly buried. So all the time in Gehenna, garbage was being burned up and there were people standing around crying, because they had to throw their loved ones on the fire.

Also when you've got a big open garbage heap like that, all the stray animals from the area would come around, and they'd scavenge for food. So you had animals, foxes and wolves and all kinds of things; you'd have them scavenging for food everywhere, and they'd be fighting, and they'd bite each other. They'd be barking.

So the people in Jerusalem called Gehenna “the place where the fire doesn't die, and there's weeping and gnashing of teeth”.

So any time Jesus used the phrase “the place where the fire doesn't die and there's weeping and gnashing of teeth”, or if He used the word “Gehenna”, no one thought: that's where we go when we die. Everyone thought: that's the town garbage dump.

I had this whole belief system built around hell, and Hell was a place that people go when they die. Who goes there when they die? Not us! It's always somebody else is going to hell, in the future, for something they're doing now. That's how we think about hell, and we use phrases like that all the time: oh, I hope they get that straight, because they could go to hell for that one day.

Hell was always about: YOU will go to hell for something YOU'RE doing. That's how we talk about hell; but as I looked at what Jesus said about hell, He never used it that way.

He only used the word ‘Hades’ three times, so in terms of somebody going to hell one day, He only used it that way three times. Two of them are euphemisms; only one time was He talking about: hey, there was a rich man, and he overlooked a poor man, and that guy went to hell.

Out of all the sins He faced - He met someone caught in the act of adultery - He let her go. He met a lady who'd been divorced five times, and was shacked up with the sixth one - He offered her a drink of water. He lets this thief on the cross into heaven. Like the people who killed Him, He's like: yeah, forgive them too. We're talking about all kinds of things: murder, thieving, dishonest business practices, divorce, adultery, fornicating, like all kinds of things like this, and Jesus was just kind, and He's like: hey, can I help you? Can we get this straight?

But He said: there was a rich man who overlooked a poor man - and that guy went to hell.

That's kind of telling isn't it? I mean, the people who put nails in His hands, He's like: yeah, forgive them, forgive them too. You say: yeah but Shane - they didn't know what they were doing! Listen, isn't the sin of all mankind: we don't know what we're doing? If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't be where we are. Isn't that true?

Like anybody besides me fall in love in high school? Everybody falls in love at high school right? 999 times out of 1,000 - what happens? We love God, and we get all broken-hearted in high school, and we're like: why God? Why God? Why God? Then you go to your 20-year reunion, and you're like: THANK YOU. Thank You God!

There's this Garth Brooks song that says: and I thank God for unanswered prayer. How many of you thank God for unanswered prayers sometimes? Yeah, like you think you know what you want but you don't.

Jesus was kind to all these people, and He only used the word Hades three times; and the one time that it was with a person, it was a rich man who overlooked a poor man. The rest of the time, He only ever said the word ‘hell’ was this word ‘Gehenna’, the town garbage dump.

I found a couple of things and I'm fixing to read you all the times Jesus said Gehenna. I'm going to read them all to you right? I took out all the repeats and I'm going to tell you every single time Jesus said the word hell, then let's see if they line up but there's a couple of observations before we do:

1) Every time Jesus said the word ‘hell’, He was talking to followers of Christ! When we say the word ‘hell’, we're always talking about 'them' - those people, not us. When Jesus said the word hell, 100% of the time, He was talking to people who were followers of God.

2) There is a sense that hell is ‘one day in the future’, but 15 of 18 times, 87% of every time Jesus said ‘hell’, He was talking about now.

I had always made hell about somebody else in the future; but Jesus makes hell about me today. Hell to Jesus was a present reality, with future implications: Gehenna. It was the place where the fire doesn't die, and there's weeping and gnashing of teeth - it was the town garbage dump; so with that as the backdrop let's look at what Jesus said…

Matthew 5:21-22, this is the first mention of hell - Gehenna. Hades is something else; this is Gehenna. It says: “You have heard it said ‘do not kil,l and whoever shall kill will be liable for judgement’. But I say to you, that whoever is angry with his brother, will be liable to judgement. And whoever shall say to his brother ‘Raca!’ shall be liable to the Sanhedrin, but whoever should say ‘you fool!’ will be liable to be thrown into the fire of Gehenna.”

We like the big sins: you could go to hell for that… that's how we talk about hell.

Jesus is mentioning hell for the first time, and He says: how's the anger in your heart? Let's not talk about them. Let's not talk about the people not like us who like to blow themself up. Let's leave that to God. Let's not talk about them. Let's talk about your anger problem…

When was the last time you called someone an idiot? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about your tendency to be critical and judgemental when people don't do things exactly the way you think they should be done. Let's talk about your self-righteousness, in other words. Let's talk about your anger problem; your self-righteousness; and your tendency to be critical when your husband leaves a wet towel on the floor!

When was the last time you called someone an idiot, when they made a weird traffic move? So inside your car, with the windows up, you scream: you idiot! As if they can hear you - so really who's the one with the intelligence problem?

Anger is not an emotion you can afford to have. You lose 25% of your IQ when you get angry - which would make you retarded! Yes. Most people can't afford that. If you're here tonight and you're married, and you get in an argument and both of you get angry, you've got two mentally retarded people trying to solve a problem.

Has anybody here ever said something you've regretted when you were angry? Do you remember anything you've said that's smart, when you're angry? Why? Because you don't even have the capacity to think. Any man - don't raise your hand - any man in here ever put your flesh and bone fist into a brick wall or something?

Jesus is saying: if you want to talk about hell, let's talk about hell. Let's talk about hell. Let's talk about you today. Let's talk about the anger in your heart and why that's keeping you from being a minister of the kingdom power. Let's talk about your tendency to be judgemental, and critical, and self-righteous; and call someone else a fool just because they don't do things the way you think they should be done, as if you've cornered the market on truth. Let's talk about that, because that is putting your life in the garbage dump.

Some of us are going: man, I wish such and so was here to hear this! That hell is never about such and so. Hell is about you, and your heart attitude.

Are you bringing heaven to earth; or are you bringing Gehenna?

Are you bringing heaven to where there's Gehenna, or are you perpetuating the Gehenna, by perpetuating an anger problem, or a self-righteous, critical attitude? Jesus makes hell a whole lot more challenging for us.

2) The second mention of hell is in Matthew 10:26 (and again in Luke).

Matthew 10:26 – “therefore do not fear them”.

The Romans were ruling the world at that time. They had this thing where they could just come in your house, and they would tell everybody to get their coins out. So everybody would take out a coin, and on the coin it would say: “Caesar is Lord”.

Now if you're a good Jew: Jehovah is Lord, and there's no God but Jehovah. So these big Roman soldiers with spears and swords and shields and armour, they'd come in your house and they'd say: get out your coin. You'd get out your coin, and they'd say: can you say that? And if you would say that, they would make you a slave; but if you would not say that, they had five men outside nailing a cross into the ground, to put you on, in front of your neighbours.

There was one Roman general named Varus who went into a town called Sapphirus in 14AD. This entire town of Sapphirus decided: we're not going to say what's on the coin, we're not going to do that. Varus decided to make an example of them, and he crucified 2,000 people in one day, at one time, in 14AD.

Who was 14 years old in 14AD? [Jesus.] Where did Jesus grow up? [Nazareth.] Sapphirus is only about 800 metres from Nazareth; so Jesus, when He was 14 years old, would have heard the screaming of 2,000 people being crucified in a day, and Jesus says: do not fear them.

“Do not fear them, for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and nothing hidden which shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear, proclaim that from the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body, but are not able to kill your soul. But rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.”

In other words, if you want to talk about hell, let's talk about hell on earth. Let's talk about your anger problem. Let's talk about your self-righteous, critical attitude, and let's talk about your tendency to fear men instead of fearing God. That is Gehenna.

3) The next time He mentions hell is in Matthew 18:1. It says: “at that hour, the disciples came to Him, saying: who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Verse 2 says: “and Jesus called a little child to Him and set him in their midst. He said truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever shall humble himself like this little child, this one is greater in the kingdom of heaven.”

It's always about humility - not thinking you're better than other people. Jesus was very hard on people who thought they were better than other people. There's this one place where Jesus goes into a village in Galilee, and this group of people from this village come up to Him and said: “Rabbi, are only a few people going to be saved?” Jesus gets mad at them!

I thought: why would Jesus get mad at them; until I realised that in that region in Galilee, there were a bunch of strict Orthodox Jews. They thought that they were the only ones going to be saved, because they were the ones keeping the Torah the best. They actually called themselves the Elect, like the true bride of Christ or something. Jesus shows up, and they say: are only a few going to be saved?

Have you ever been asked a question by someone who wanted to know the answer? That's vastly different to being asked a question by someone who already knew the answer, and they just want you to agree with them. Totally different. They said: are only a few going to be saved? Jesus says: (I'm paraphrasing) just the nature of your question tells me you're not.

He says: at the marriage table, many will come from the north, the east, the south and the west; but you who actually think you're in, will actually be shut out. Why? Because they thought they were better than other people. They thought they were in, and everybody else was out. Can we find ourselves in that story anywhere? Pride.

He keeps going… In verse 5 He says: “and whoever shall receive one such little child in My name receives Me”.

Matthew 18:6 He says: “but whoever shall offend one of these little ones who believe in Me, it would be better for him that a donkey's millstone were hung around his neck, and he be cast into the depths of the sea. Woe to the world, because of offences, for it is necessary that offence comes, but woe to that man by whom the offence comes. So if your hand or your foot causes you to offend somebody else, cut it off and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than have two hands or two feet and be cast into Gehenna.”

In other words, living in such a way, that it doesn't matter if what I'm doing offends you - you'll have to deal with it, it's my freedom. I have the right to act however I want to act; and if it offends you, too bad for you. Jesus says: with that heart attitude, your life will end up in the garbage heap.

So to Jesus, Gehenna was all about my anger problem, my tendency to: be angry; to think my way is the best way; to fear man instead of fear God; to be proud, and to offend people. That's what Gehenna was about that to Him.

We can keep going… “If your eye offends you, pluck it out and throw it from you”. So He says two different stories. He says: if your hands or feet offend you do that; and also if your eye offends you, or causes you to offend, throw it away from you.

This is not a statement about looking at sinful things. You can make a case for that in a lot of other places; because for a First Century Hebrew rabbi to say: “if your eye is offensive”, it meant if you were greedy. To have an “eye full of light” meant to be generous; to have an eye full of darkness meant to be greedy - so to have “an eye that blesses” meant to be generous. To have an eye that offends meant to be greedy.

The word was yetzer hara, or yetzer tov. Yetzer hara meant “the eye of evil”; yetzer tov meant “the eye of light”. It meant “the way you look at things”; that the way you look at things actually leads people to completion, or it unravels completion - and greed unravels completion.

So Jesus says: if your eye is offensive, cast it from you. It's better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, and be cast into the fire of Gehenna.

Let me give you two more… Matthew 23:13, it says: “but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against man, for you neither go in, nor do you allow those entering to go in”.

Verse 14: “woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you devour widows' houses, and then pray at length as pretence”.

In other words, you come to church, you raise your hands, you shout, you sing, you go through all the motions - but when you walk out, you would take a widows' home right out from underneath her, because of your greed. Therefore you will receive the greater condemnation.

“Woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees, for you compass land and sea to make one convert, and then when he is made, you make him twice the child of Gehenna that you are”. Gehenna.

The only other instance He says ‘Gehenna’ is in Matthew 23:33, same chapter, just way at the bottom. He kind of summarises it by saying: “you serpents, you offspring of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of Gehenna?”

That is every single time Jesus ever said Gehenna - every time Jesus said ‘hell’ was right there. You are now complete theologians on Jesus' theology of hell; and let me ask you a question:

Did you find other people in there; or did you find yourself?

Is hell more about them, then; or is it about us now?

My first question, as we start this whole series of meetings is this: are you committed as a child of God, not to just go to heaven one day - are you committed to bringing heaven to earth now? To bringing heaven instead of Gehenna today?

You say: how can I do that? We can start by dying to our anger problem. Quit being retarded - it's just not worth it!

The Book of James says that “anger never ever leads to righteousness”. So if something will “never lead you to righteousness” we may as well just die to it.

The problem with anger is it's one of the few sins, where the Bible does give us one ‘out’ with. The Bible says: “do not even associate with one easily angered”. It says all these horrible things about angry people; and then there's this one scripture that says that it's possible to ‘be angry, and not sin’.

So then, what people have done through the ages is this, is any time they're angry they think: its righteous anger! Why? Because we always think we're right!

What is righteous anger? Being angry at the things God would be angry at: poverty, injustice, oppression, slavery, things like this.

It's not: a wet towel on the floor. It's not: the girl at KFC messed up your order. That's not righteous anger - so how can we bring heaven to earth? We can die at our anger. We can die to our critical, judgemental, self-righteous spirit, which thinks that it’s okay to call other people fools, if they don't do things the way we think they should be done.

We can develop a fear of God, instead of a fear of man. We can develop humility. We can be generous. We can be forgiving.

To the Hebrew people, it was all about their smell. They wanted to smell good before God - you see this all through the Bible:

“Let our voices rise like incense; let it be a sweet perfume. Let our praises fill the temple.”

It was always about fragrance; so to a Hebrew person, God was constantly smelling their life. They wanted God to smell their life and go: aah! They didn't want God to smell their life and go: what did you eat last night?

They wanted God to smell their life, to the point where there was this festival called the Feast of Tabernacles. It was the last feast of the year; and on the last day, of the last feast of the year, at exactly three in the afternoon, everybody in the whole nation would break incense at one time.

You're talking millions of people breaking incense at one time, and the priest would say out loud: “my God, at this very moment, would You smell our lives as it smells right now, regardless of what we've done”.

What the rabbis said, at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the Feast of Tabernacles, was the greatest moment of faith for the entire year, for the Hebrew people, because everybody believed that their life smelled good before God, and they could approach Him. It was all about smell.

So when Jesus talks about Gehenna, this is what He's saying: if you're constantly offended, and you can't forgive people, then your life actually smells like hot garbage; if you've set yourself up as better than other people, your life smells like hot garbage; if you're so set in your ways that you ruin another person's journey, your life smells like hot garbage. If you pray for pretence, and yet you overlook deeper issues like kindness and generosity, then your life smells like hot garbage. If you live a life of fear of the wrong things - if you're a man-pleaser, a worry-wart, a person consumed with fear, its hot garbage. If you're greedy, it's hot garbage. If you are the most important person in your world, it is hot garbage.

Closing Prayer

I bless you, and I challenge you with these thoughts: that you are called not just to go to heaven one day. You are called to be a minister of the power of the kingdom of God to everyone you come into contact with today; starting with the girl at KFC; starting with your husband, wife, children; starting tomorrow with the guy at work, that you wish God would just go ahead and take to heaven - that guy.

You are called to be a minister of the kingdom power that we're talking about, and the only way to do that is to come to an awareness inside yourself, that we make a decision tonight: I will bring heaven to earth, and not hell.

Sometimes the greatest miracle is someone who is angry, and now they're peaceful; that you can bring a miracle of kingdom power to your home tonight, by being calm. You could bring a miracle of kingdom power to your home tonight, by being peaceful. You could bring a miracle of kingdom power to your office tomorrow by ministering forgiveness, kindness, generosity and peace; instead of anger, contention, criticism, judgementalness and self-righteousness. We can be a minister of kingdom powerm with just what is in our grasp to do, starting tonight.

I bless you tonight to know that God believes in you, more than you believe in Him. I bless you tonight to know that you're called to be a minister of kingdom power, and it starts with making a decision to avoid hell, and bring heaven. Where can you bring heaven to Gehenna? It's easy to see the faults in others, but how are you being the light of the world?

Application Questions:

1) How are you being the light of the world tonight? Where can you bring heaven to Gehenna?

2) What is ruling your life right now, that smells like hot garbage?

Jesus only spoke of six things would send your life to Gehenna, and it's not the things that we think it is, but the things we overlook - the small things. What's ruling your life right now and it smells like Gehenna?

3) Will you make a decision tonight, to journey with us over the next two weeks, to learn how to be a minister of the kingdom of God, no matter what it takes? I promise you it'll change our life forever, if we get our heads around what Jesus said about Gehenna, and avoid it at all cost.

Session (2 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Wed 16 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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You won't open your Bible and find the word ‘Gehenna’. You'll find ‘the Valley of Hinnom’ (which is Gehenna); but in the New Testament in particular, you'll find the word ‘hell’. They translate the word Gehenna as hell; and they also translate Hades that way too.

Exodus 3:7 says: “And the Lord said: I have indeed seen the misery of My people in Egypt, and I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering, so I have come down to rescue them”.

The word ‘rescue’ there is the same word we get the word ‘salvation’ from, or ‘saved’.

“I have come down to save them from the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land.”

So there's this guy named Abraham, and Abraham was a sun-worshipper, very wealthy. God shows up to him, at like 90 years old or something, and He says: I want you to leave everything you've worked your whole life for, and I want you to go someplace. Abraham says: sure, where am I going? God says: I'm not telling. You're just going to go.

Abraham says: well, is there anything You can tell me You want me to do? God says: yes, as a matter of fact - I'm glad you mentioned that. I want you to circumcise yourself with that rock! Which would have lost me right there! Like, don't miss! Which would have probably, at the end of it, been gracious; because can you imagine, they're like 100 okay.

If you look at a trek of where they walked, it was like 2,000 miles? Imagine 2,000 miles on the back of a camel, with a 100-year-old wife. How many times would she have said: are you sure Abraham? Yes, I'm sure. Are you sure, you're sure? Yes, I'm sure I'm sure. How sure are you? Woman, I'm so sure - I circumcised myself with a rock! Well, you win.

So this guy ends up some place, and he has a son named Isaac, and then God tells him to kill that son. Then God spares the son, and then that son had a son named Jacob; and so three generations later, the promise that he would be a great nation is still only one person - which is a good principle: God's not in a hurry. Aren't you glad that God's not in a hurry? Sometimes we want God to be in a hurry, but if God was in a hurry, because He doesn't change, He'd have to be in a hurry all the time. If God was in a hurry with you, we'd be a disaster, and if God was in a hurry with me - thank God He's gracious and kind and patient.

He is the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God. Thank God He isn't in a hurry. Thank God He can choose people called: James and John, the sons of thunder - you don't get that nickname going to Sunday school - and He moulded them into something.

Thank God that He chose people like Moses, who was a premeditated murderer: “I look this way and that, and seeing no one, I killed the man, and hid him in the sand”. The problem was, the next day the sand shifted, and this guy's leg's sticking up out of the sand! God used him to write the Torah.

God uses messed up people. Isn't that good? Why is that good? Because we're all messed up. No perfect people allowed! If you read the heroes of the faith from Hebrews 11, it's like everybody, to be a hero to God, you have to be really jacked up beyond all recognition at one point in your life, don't you?

Abraham gave his wife to Pharaoh's harem - and he made it in that list. If CNN, and the internet would have been around back then, what would you have said about Abraham? How could he be saved, and act like that - yet he was the hero of the faith. If Abraham actually was available to preach here next Sunday, would you let him - or would you talk about his past?

Isaac did something similar; David committed adultery, he gets the woman pregnant, decides to kill her husband to cover it up. He kills 17 men in one day trying to cover up one thing. God said: you'll do. If David was available to preach here next Sunday, would you let him, or would you talk about what he did? If CNN and the internet would have been around back then how would you have responded to a man who already had 700 women at his disposal, taking the one that wasn't his? What would you say about him? Would you say: mm, there's a man after God's own heart; or would we say something else?

Samson was sleeping with prostitutes on his wedding night, because he got depressed, because his best man stole his wife. Those are the kinds of people God chose, so God is not in a hurry with us. So Abraham ends up with Isaac, and Isaac ends up with Jacob, and Jacob has 12 children, so now we finally are getting some multiplication here. Those children sell one of their brothers to Egypt, and then there's a famine. They end up in front of him, because they need food, and so they come down; and Joseph is now a powerful person. He gives his family the best land in Egypt, and then they multiply, because there was no prescription birth control back then.

They multiply and multiply and multiply and multiply, until the point where they intimidated Pharaoh. So Pharaoh decides to do something horrible. He decides to kill all the baby boys, and he decides to enslave them; so for 430 years, they were enslaved to this man named Pharaoh.

They were just living where their brother had given them the land; so they cry out to God, because all of them were in a covenant with this God named ‘God Almighty’. His name was ‘El Shaddai’, God Almighty. He was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The problem with ‘God Almighty’ was, He wasn't doing anything about it. Finally in Exodus 3 He says: “I'm hearing the suffering of My children in slavery in Egypt. I'm going to come down and save them”- but in this story it's just the beginning. It's not the end.

For us to get saved, to get moved out of slavery and into freedom; it's not the end of the story. It's just the beginning.

In this story, which is about us, it isn't just about people who were slaves, and now they're free. This is about the start of our journey from slavery to freedom. Our journey from slavery to freedom only starts with an encounter with God; it ends with something far, far broader than that.

Exodus 19:3-6, the same group of people, and God is talking to them. He says: “then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called him from the mountain and said: this is what you are to say to the house of Jacob, and you're to tell the people of Israel: you yourselves have seen what I did in Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself. Now if you obey Me fully, and keep My covenant, then out of all the nations you will be My treasured possession. Although the whole earth is Mine, you will be for Me a kingdom of priests”.

In other words, you're not just going to be saved. You are going to be a kingdom of people who shows the rest of the world what God looks like.

Isaiah 49:6 – “It is a light thing that I have forgiven You. I will go one step further and make You a light to the Gentiles”. God's biggest idea was to have me and to have you be replications of Him to the whole world.

In Romans 12:1-2 it says: “I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is holy and acceptable unto Him.”

Now Paul, who wrote Romans, was a rabbi; so Paul would get his connotation of a “holy and acceptable sacrifice” from the Book of Leviticus. In the Book of Leviticus 1, 2 and 3 it says: “for these are the sacrifices which are holy and acceptable unto God.”

Three things had to happen for a sacrifice to be holy and acceptable: 1) their head had to be cut off; 2) their legs had to be cut off; 3) their inner parts had to be clean.

So Paul, who had memorised Leviticus by age six, is saying: I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice - to have your head cut off, your legs cut off and your inner parts clean - for this is a reasonable act of worship. Wow!

The ‘function’ of having your head cut off, what is that? The function of someone's head is their thinking, their authority. If I was to say: you're the head of your house, it doesn't mean you have the largest head in your house - it means that you are the authority there. So Paul is saying: I beseech therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you lose your authority, and grow up into Him, who is our head. Ephesians 5 - that we all as one body grow up into Him, who is the head.

This is all about me and it's all about you becoming replications of Jesus Christ. The only way to do that is to lose our head and take on His, take on His. Jesus talked about this in one scripture. He talked about His head. He said foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. Foxes do not sleep in holes. Foxes have babies in holes. Birds do not sleep in nests. Birds sleep in trees. The only thing a bird does in a nest is lay eggs, so Jesus is saying foxes have a place to reproduce themselves. Birds have a place to reproduce themselves, but as of yet the son of man does not have a body to put his head on in order to reproduce himself. See this is not about just you getting saved. There's this song I heard recently. I think it was written by Joel Osteen's guy, can't think of his name - having a brain moment.

Anyway Joel Osteen's guy, you know Joel Osteen right? You're a champion, God loves you! [Laughter] Yeah, you don't let that devil get in your head and get you all negative. You tell him to go on back to hell where he came from. Me 'n Victoria, we's talkin' the other day about what daddy used to say about y'all. [Laughter] Anyway, okay so - he's got the biggest church in America. I just love him. [Laughter] But he wrote this song called Say So and the words to the song go like this. What does it mean to be saved? Is it more than just a prayer we pray, more than just a way to heaven? What does it mean to be His, to be called in His likeness, to know that we have a purpose, to be salt and light to the world, to be salt and light to the world. For let the redeemed of the Lord say so. In other words the best way for the redeemed of the Lord to say so is not necessarily to get a bunch of tracts and go out and tell people they'll go to hell without Jesus.

The best way for the redeemed of the Lord to say so is to actually meet people's needs first - and then it gives us credibility because we're replications of Jesus Christ, to grow up into Him who is the head; that we are called to be a kingdom of priests. God is using us to replicate Him. We are the flesh and blood message to the world. This isn't anything new. Exodus 4:16, Pharaoh - God tells Moses you will be like God to Pharaoh. You'll be a God-like one to him. In other words you're going to be My voice, you're going to be My mouth, you're going to be My hands, you're going to be My feet. I could do it Myself but I'd rather use you. God's plan hasn't changed. The girl at KFC, who is the hands and feet of Jesus to her? You and me. The girl at Subway making your sandwich, who is the hands and feet of Jesus? Who is the hands and feet of Jesus to your husband? Who's the hands and feet of Jesus to your wife? Who is the hands and feet of Jesus to your co-workers? It is us, for we are called to be the body of Christ, a part of God's biggest idea; to be replications of Him to the whole world by bringing heaven to earth instead of hell. That's what we are called to be.

I think in that there's a couple of movements. There's a couple of transitions that we have to make, that as a body of Christ we have to transition from doctrine. Doctrine is good. All of these things I'm writing are good. Doctrine is good. It is good to know your word. It is good to know what it says. It's good to have doctrine, sound doctrine. But we have a real problem when doctrine turns in from doctrine into a statement that says I know everything that you don't know. Doctrine misses the point if it ends at doctrine; that we have to move from doctrine to yoke. There's a huge difference between doctrine and yoke. A yoke was a rabbi's way of life. It was his way of interpreting scripture. It was his doctrine lived out. It was a rabbi's teachings on how to talk to your wife, how to talk to your husband, how to discipline your children, how to give, how to receive, how to worship, how to walk a daily walk out, how to respond in adversity.

A rabbi's yoke was his way of living. One rabbi came along and he said his yoke was easy and his burden was light. He was a rabbi with shmeka which meant that he could make up his own yoke. A new rabbi with shmeka, the word would have gotten around and he would have drawn crowds of say 5,000 to 10,000 people in a city without any cars or roads or things like that like we would have. People would have come from all over the country to hear this new rabbi's yoke because maybe his yoke was easier to live than the rabbi they were currently under. It wasn't just doctrine. It was a way of life - two totally different things. How many of you realise that it is perfectly possible to believe in something that you do not care about? We cannot do that as a body. It has to be yoke, but you cannot care about something that you don't believe in.

Like let me say it this way. How many of you believe with all of your heart - I'm not tricking you, this should be all of us. How many of you believe with all of your heart that God has forgiven you of every sin? Sure, we believe that with all our heart. What's that called? Doctrine. That's called doctrine and that's good, we should believe that. But how many of you who believe that God has forgiven you of every sin, how many of you have felt guilty in the last week? So you mean you believe you're innocent, but you still feel guilty. [Laughs] What's wrong with that picture? Because how many of you know if you feel guilty you'll act guilty? If the truth is innocence then the truth is innocence. How many of us would believe - don't raise your hand to this. This is a rhetorical because if you know your Bible this is - yes. How many of you would believe that Jesus honours taking care of the poor? Of course we do right? We believe that with all of our heart. That's called doctrine.

But how many of us have a yoke that honours taking care of the poor first with all of our finances? That's the difference between doctrine and yoke. How many of us believe that Jesus said don't slander and say false things or true things about other people that aren't edifying - as a matter of fact Jesus said things like don't let any corrupt communication come out of your mouth. In other words everything that comes out of your mouth edify. Jesus actually said it one more way. He said if it would hurt you don't do it to somebody else. That's called what? Doctrine, but yoke is living it out, actually caring about what Jesus said, actually living it. That's what will give the church credibility. Wasn't it the Dalai Lama that said that he liked Christ but he didn't like Christians? That is the difference between doctrine and yoke. It is perfectly possible to believe in what Jesus said and not live it.

How many of you believe that Jesus looked at someone caught in the act of adultery and said I do not condemn you? In John 8 it says it. Jesus, dealing with someone caught in the act of adultery; I do not condemn you - but how many of us could look at somebody and say I do not condemn you? It's the difference between doctrine and yoke. How many of us believe - there's 100 examples to this - how many of us believe that Jesus said do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will have enough worries of itself? Ha ha. How many of you believe that, but how many of us have a worry problem? [Laughter] Is it doctrine or is it yoke? How we respond to people, is it doctrine or is it yoke? Jesus was the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God. What we believe in terms of doctrine and yoke will determine what we bind and what we loose.

Let me be very clear about this. I am a total believer in deliverance. Folks have demons and it needs to go, absolutely. In today's language to say I bind a devil is perfectly appropriate, because that's English and that's how we use it and it's used appropriately. In First Century Hebrew culture binding and loosing didn't have anything to do with devils. Jesus was the king devil caster-outer guy. Like Jesus - I got to sit on a plane with a rabbi from LA who is an expert in Kabbalah okay and I love this kind of stuff. So I'm just sitting there with him and he goes you follow Jesus? I said yes. He said He was the greatest Kabbalist ever. Now I don't have to agree with him to have a conversation with him. I said oh, tell me about that. What makes Him that way? He said that guy went around and built a reputation for setting people free. I said yes, how did He do that? He said He threw devils off of people. He said do you realise that in those days very few people would even attempt that?

That's why Jesus ran across people who'd been demon-possessed for 18 years and stuff, and He's just going oh yeah, that's enough of that. Jesus mastered setting people free. I am all for that - but binding and loosing had everything to do with yoke. Binding and loosing had to do with what you allow in your yoke or what you forbid in your yoke. Jesus said whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. So what does that mean? If you think about this what we bind is what we forbid people to do. What we loose is what we free people to do, and that is based on our yoke okay. And what we bind on earth does bind people's consciousness in heaven. It does, but let me prove it to you. My granny. My granny is a godly woman who grew up in just a wonderful weird system.

My grandmother has never cut her hair in her life. She's 80 - I think she's like 108 or something, but she's never cut her hair in her life. It's all pulled up into a bun that pulls all the wrinkles out of her face. [Laughter] She's never worn slacks in her life. Like to my grandmother to cut your hair meant you would go to hell, so hell, hell, hell. Remember hell's about somebody else, to them it's - yeah. To colour your hair is like a different level of hell. [Laughter] My grandmother has never worn slacks, never worn jewellery, never worn make up, never cut her hair in her life and never went to the movies. Like if I go to the movies to this day she'll pray the whole time I'm in there that Jesus would not come back while I'm in the movies, because He would never go into a movie theatre to get me out of it. [Laughter]

I was messing with my granny once. I said granny, let's get you - it was her birthday. I said let's get you all made up. Let's get you some jewellery, get you some make up, get you a nice hair do, get you a good outfit. She said oh no babe, I'd hate to send myself to hell [laughter] and maybe someone else too. I said how would you send somebody else to hell? She said well I'd hate to give a man a lustful thought. [Laughter, applause] I was like lustful thought! No worries there! [Laughter] Like nothing's in the right place. [Laughter] When you create a system that binds a woman to guilt around having a lustful thought from a man at 90 years old, you have created slavery! [Laughter] And the whole point of salvation was setting people free. It was not forgiving sins. Forgiveness of sins was the start. The finish was that sin won't have mastery over anyone any more; that salvation to a Hebrew person was not about getting to go to heaven. It was about being slave driver free today.

You know whose hands are in that? Us, and it has to do with our yoke. Do you realise that the world around you looks at how you live and determines binding and loosing from that, like what's okay and what's not okay. As teachers if there are any pastors in the room, there's double responsibility because what we say actually binds people to certain things and looses them from it. Let me give you an example. Is it a sin to go to the movies? Is it a sin to go to the movies? Most people are saying no, but the answer to that is it depends on what's been bound to you. Is it a sin for my grandmother to go to the movies? Absolutely yes, because if she goes she'd be being rebellious to what's been bound to her. Is it a sin to cut your hair? No, but to my grandmother it is because she'd be going against what has been bound to her; that our yoke actually binds people to certain things. Do you realise the power that's on your life to free people up or bind people up?

We need to be asking the question: do we bind people to what Jesus binded them to, and loose people from what Jesus loosed them from, and just trust that His way is the best way for our life? Are we replications of Jesus? As a culture in the church we've become so hard. Stuff that Jesus would allow we don't even allow. Do you realise that there are churches in that according to their constitution and bylaws would never have David preach in their pulpits? As a matter of fact I had a pastor once in a pretty big city at a pastors meeting stand up and say this out loud: If King David was coming to preach in my city I would stand against him because of what he did. I had to refrain from calling him a fool lest I be in danger of Gehenna. [Laughter] It's binding and it's loosing. What are we as a church - I assume most of you go to church here. What are we as a church binding people from and loosing people to?

Are we loosing people to act in such ways that is destructive and bringing Gehenna? Are we binding them to things that Jesus would never bind them to, because this creates faith, what we can believe for. There's this pastor in America that gave this illustration that helped me so much about faith. I want to end tonight with it and then we'll pick up with this tomorrow okay. But this helped me so much and if it helped me I'm thinking it might help you, but this pastor in America, when he did this I was like that helped me so much with faith. Let me share it with you okay? [Silence while drawing illustration 00.28.08 to 00.28.16] This is Joe and that's Sally. Joe and Sally are stuck in a two dimensional world. They live in two dimensions, and in a two dimensional world what is that? It's a rectangle. What's that? A circle - so that's a rectangle and that's a circle. In a two dimensional world it cannot be both. It can't be both. It's either a rectangle or a circle. It has to be one or the other. You can't - that's a rectangle, that's a circle.

For me to get up here and say this could be a rectangle in certain situations cannot be in a two dimensional world. In a two dimensional world this has to be a rectangle. But in a three dimensional world if all we do is add one dimension, is that a circle? Yes. Is that a rectangle? Yes. So in a three dimensional world if we just add one dimension, they're stuck in two dimensions - if we just add one dimension it can actually be both. So what would happen if I was God and I'm trying to communicate? Now I live in four dimensions, so what if me in four dimensions tried to communicate with Joe and Sally who are stuck in two? So what if to communicate with them, what if I took my ring off and I said I know, I'm going to get their attention. I'm going to slide this ring through their world, so I slide it through their world. In two dimensions what would they see? The would just see a dot that turns into two dots, that turns into three that does - it would just look like that. That was a very bad ring, but you get the picture.

It would just look like that, and so Joe goes Sally, did you see that? Sally goes yeah, that was nine dots. Joe says no, that's the ring of Shane man! She goes no, you're crazy, that's nine dots. He goes no, I'm telling you, that's the ring of Shane! So what if I wanted to mess with them further and I took my hand and I stuck my hand through their world. What would they see? They're stuck in two dimensions; what would they see? They would see five dots that enter at slightly different times, with slightly different circumferences, at slightly different angles. Those five dots would be followed by dashes - it's a two dimensional world remember. So Sally goes did you see that Joe? That's five dots just appeared, followed by a series of dashes. [Laughter] Joe says no man, that was the hand of Shane man. So what if I wanted to mess with them even further and I took my face and put it really close. Joe says do you feel that? It's almost like it's the face of Shane, and Sally goes no, it just got a little warmer, that's all. He goes no, I can sense his presence.

Now that's what it would be like if a four dimensional creature tried to communicate with a two dimensional world. That's what it would be like. How many dimensions does God live in? Thousands - so what would happen if a thousand dimensional person is trying to communicate with four dimensional creatures, and those four dimensional creatures are so proud that they think they can figure God out? [Laughter] So they call themself theologians and they go it's predestination, it's predestination, it's predestination. God predestined us. He predestined us. Then there's a whole other group of theologians that go it's free will, it's free will, it's free will. It's got to be free will - no, it's got to be predestination - no it's got to be free will - and God's like um, it could be both maybe. Like if we just add say one dimension to your thinking you would see it fuller, but what if you could see things like I see things? This would all make sense. Would you just be humble, give people the grace to journey and be replications of Me. That is the bigger issue.

It's all about kindness and generosity. Don't tell me what you know about theology until the girl at KFC knows that you're saved even if she messes up your order. You need to see the marker trick, that whether you're Joe and you believe it's the hand of Shane, or whether you're Sally and you believe it's five dots, both take faith because you just don't know. What we're called to be, we are not called to be the moral police for the whole world. What we are called to be is to be replications of Jesus Christ to the whole world. We are not called to be the moral police. We are called to be a group of people who are known to be compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, who meet other people's needs first and in that we will become ministers of the kingdom of God, in a decision. That takes faith, which is three things to the Hebrew people: tefillah, teshuvah, tzedakah, that all across this world people with white skin, people from Europe - and I can say this because I'm white. [Laughter]

People with white skin, if you asked them why will you go to heaven when you die, 99 per cent of all of them will say this: because I believe in Jesus. There's a problem with that. Is there anybody in Hades - not Gehenna - anybody in Hades who believes in Jesus? Heaps! The devil, all the angels, the demons. They all believe in Jesus but yet they find themselves in Hades waiting to be thrown into the lake of fire. Belief in Jesus is never enough; faith in Jesus is and Hebrew faith versus western belief are two different things. Hebrew faith is tefillah, teshuvah, tzedakah. I'm going to leave it right there and we'll pick up right there tomorrow night, on tefillah, teshuvah, tzedakah.

Lord, would You seal something in us tonight that would make us closer to You. Lord, we proclaim that You are the king of the universe, You are. You're the king of the universe. Lord, You are the king of the universe and we are not. Would you just stop right where you are and be still and know that He is God. Be still and know that He is God. Lord, would You give us the faith to bind and loose only what You bound and loosed; to live Your life, not to just believe it but that it would be a yoke, that it would be a yoke; not a system of beliefs but a yoke, a way of living. May we be replications of You to this entire community. May we be a people who are known to be people who bring heaven to earth and leave hell to the wayside. We say death to Gehenna and hello to a life of bringing heaven to earth by putting other people first. Bless us tonight and bring us back tomorrow to challenge us and change us more. Amen.

Thank you very much for letting me be your guest tonight. I hope you were blessed by that. Please come back tomorrow, bring some friends. I promise you it's going to get better and better and better and better. We just laid some groundwork, it's going to get better and better and better. God bless you. I'll turn this over [unclear 00.37.20]. [Applause]

[Speaker] Fantastic! Come on, let's give Shane a big clap, that was absolutely brilliant. [Applause] Don't forget to come back tomorrow night and remember, tomorrow night we'll be taking up an offering and also check out his merchandise table. That'd be great.

[File ends 00.37.40]

Session (3 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Thu 17 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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Session (3 of 4) Hell Shane Willard 17.04.2008 am

[Shane Willard] [Applause] Very good. Very good. I'm glad to see you came back. It meant last night wasn't too terrible and we'll just keep going forward. I hope you enjoy these nights and this is all I do for a living. I live completely by faith and I do submit to the authority of three different pastors and I also have a Board of men that I submit to. But in terms of a living, this is all I do. I just travel and I live completely by faith, so the offering we'll take up later, that's going to determine what I live on this week after I pay my plane tickets and pay to get all that stuff here and all of that stuff. So it's a faith thing and we also take care of an orphanage, we do all kinds of things that help us minister to people all over the world. So the primary way we support ourself is through the love offerings as well as our resource table, which the lovely and talented Nicky Lay is looking after for me.

So we'll be back there and obviously these messages are just one message for one moment at one time. There's no way we could cover everything we wanted to cover, so if you wanted to check some of those things out, like last night's first session is in a series back there called All Access Pass. Then tonight's stuff is in a series back there on how to be a minister of the spirit, and a thing called Phases in the Master Plan, so we've got things back there that help you just keep this in front of you. So we can make a trade and you can help me go all over the world, which I think you would agree that these messages need to go all over the world, and it helps you to keep this stuff in front of you. We have a thing back there on how the Hebrew people do their money; we've got all kinds of new stuff. I've got a five disc series on the eight basics of the faith from a Hebrew perspective. We've got a thing on leadership. We've got all kinds of things, and so anyway I just commend that to you and we'll go from there, alright?

Alright, you ready to go? Ready to go? Numbers, chapter 15. I've got to revisit some topics tonight that I visited last time, but this particular topic I visit with my folks in Charleston. I visit with them twice a year with this because it's something so important that we need to keep it in front of us twice a year. How many of you were here last year when I talked about the tassels? Okay, that's about half, I'm guessing about half - so about half this will be new but about half of you, you've heard this a year ago which means you remember almost none of it [laughter] so we'll just go for it again, because what we're going to talk about tonight, last year when I talked about the tassels I talked about it from the context of healing. Tonight I want to talk about it from a little different context, about the context of what it means to minister healing, what it means to be a minister, what it means to come at something as a minister of the kingdom of God.

So in Numbers 15:37 and following; God is setting up their way of life and He's establishing how they're going to live. He says something like this in Numbers 15:37 and following. It says and the Lord said to Moses, speak to the Israelites and say to them throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord running through each tassel. And you will have these tassels to look at, to remember the Lord your God and not prostitute yourself by going after the lust of your own hearts and eyes. And you will have these tassels to remember that I am the Lord your God. So what they would do, there's a couple of very important words in that passage. The first word you have to know is the word tallit. I wrote them up there - is the word tallit okay. This is a tallit. Okay, this is a tallit. It's commonly called a prayer shawl. One like this is what they would wear. This was one of their outer garments okay.

Now they saw the tallit as the presence of God. Later on in the second session I'm going to talk about some steps in a Hebrew wedding. We visited that last year a little bit too, but it was only to about 30 people and we have to - to be ministers of the kingdom of God we have to understand tassels and the fact that we're a bride, and what that meant Hebraically. So we're going to have to revisit those things and I want us to revisit them, like it will change our lives forever. So tallit was the presence of God. They would use this for all kinds of things. Primarily they would wear it around them like this and then they would take the tassels and they would wrap their hands in the tassels, so they would take the tassels on the end of the garments and they would wrap their hands in it. They saw the tallit as the presence of God. One of the main uses of the tallit in that culture was at the fifth step of a wedding was called the [chuppah 00.05.14], the chuppah. What would do, they had two chuppahs and we're going to talk about this in the next session.

The second chuppah was actually this and they would take this and they'd make a canopy over the marriage bed. They would take four stakes, they would plant the stakes in the ground. They would secure the stakes around the marriage bed and they would take the tassels and wrap the tassels around the stakes so that this thing made a huge canopy over the marriage bed, so that when the husband and the wife consummated their marriage for the first time they did so underneath the presence of God, okay. So they would do this, so they saw this as the presence of God and where they got that from was in Exodus, when it describes the veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies. It's a big one of these, so what they did was they made a microcosm of one of those big veils and they said we're going to wear it all the time, because that is wearing the presence of God.

You see this all the time in Hebrew writings. You see Paul saying things like put on the garment of praise, put on Christ, put off the old man, put on the presence of God. They would do this sort of stuff and so there was all this really cool imagery with the prayer shawl. I'm going to get a little higher so maybe you can see this, because this is small but if you could see that, there's five knots in that tassel so there's one, two, three, four, five. There's five knots in that tassel, one for each Book of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. So effectively what they were commanded to do is they were commanded to tie the word of God to the presence of God that they were wearing. Now this is so important, because how many of you realise that we can wear the presence of God in all kinds of different ways? So what it was doing was it was putting boundaries around how you wear and present God; that you can only present the presence of God in a way that He establishes okay?

Otherwise you'll present God in your own way which perverts everything. I mean come on, this is not just about the Jews. This is about me and about you and our tendency to even take God and make it about us. I mean come on, alright, so there was five knots, one for each Book of the Torah. There were four spaces between each knot and those four spaces stood for the four letters in the holy name [Yahweh, 00.07.41] yud, he, vav, he. So there was the word of God and there was the name of God attached to you, so you would wrap the word of God and you would wrap the name of God around your hands and you would wear it. Also to tie a tassel properly took 613 loops. There are exactly 613 loops - there's exactly 613 commands in the Torah, so you had the word of God, you had the name of God, you had the ways of God. Also when you tied the tassel properly it came off at the end with eight strands; eight is the number of grace. It's the number of new beginnings. If any man be in Christ he's a new creature; the old is gone, the new is come.

It was the number that they walk when they made a covenant, they would walk a figure eight to signify that every day before now is now gone and all the newness has come. So you had the word of God, you had the name of God, you had the ways of God, you had the grace of God. You had everything attached to you. Also when they tied it properly - I don't know if you can see this but there are eight strands that come off, four on each side and on each side it's three white strands and one blue strand, three white strands and one blue strand. So you have three and one, so you have the nature of God, three in one and it was on both sides, so what they said was is that on both sides of eternity God is still the same. He doesn't change - so they had the word of God, they had the name of God, they had the ways of God, they had the grace of God, they had the nature of God all attached to them, and they would wrap their hands in these tassels. Why? So that they would remember God.

They would remember that God's way brought me from darkness to light. God's way brought me from slavery to freedom. God's way brought me from Egypt to Israel. God's way brought me from slavery to the Promised Land. God's way is the best way for our life; that as gracious as God is and forgiving as He is, you could do anything and get forgiven with a sacrifice. Like I mean they'd just bring a sacrifice and the forgiveness of God has never really been the issue; it's the best life, that God's way is the best way for our life. That way - and they would wrap their hands in it to remind themself. Why would they wrap their hands in it? Because they would do that because we're tactile beings and it's very easy when you're going through your every day life for something to stress you out in a moment, and all of a sudden you abandon everything you believe.

Am I the only one that's ever done that, where in a moment - like do you believe [doctorally, 00.10.21] do you believe that it's proper to be self controlled over your anger? Of course. Has it moved to yoke yet? Hopefully to a certain - but even if it's moved to yoke, if someone presses the right button, am I the only one that's ever abandoned everything I believe and just blew up? So they would have these tassels to help keep them from doing that, so any time before they sinned with their hands, specifically sexual sin, what did they have to do? They had to unwrap God. They had to unwrap God and so in other words it's not that they didn't have God, it's just they chose to step away from His tassels. There are all kinds of imagery to that so you've got tallit, you've got kanaf. The word kanaf is the word corners, so they had to sew tassels on the corner of their garment. The word [tzitziyot 00.11.23] is the word tassels, so you had tallit, kanaf - now the word kanaf meant corners, borders, hem or over time it started to mean wings. It started to mean wings.

The reason is is because when they would bless people they would - let me just show you real quick, when they would bless people how kanaf started to mean wings. [Unclear 00.12.02] you see how that started to mean wings, so there was all kinds of this cool imagery around this. Like under the shadow of His wings, it means under the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God, the grace of God and the nature of God. Has anybody ever heard of going into your prayer closet? This is what they do. They would place themself underneath the authority of the name of God, the word of God, the ways of God, the grace of God and the nature of God. Remember there was this one place where Saul was chasing a guy named David. He was chasing - he was trying to kill him, and it says that Saul went in to use the toilet. He went in to use the bathroom. The actual Hebrew there is he went in to cover his feet - which is disgusting. I guess you'll get that in a second [laughter] so he goes in to cover his feet, and it says that David sneaks up behind him and he cuts off the corner of his garment.

Well if Saul is the king of Israel, what is attached to the corner of his garment? Tassels: the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God, the grace of God, the nature of God. David cuts the tassels off. Saul finishes using the bathroom and he puts his garment back on and he walks out and he has no tassels. David is standing in the distance going hey man, umm - in other words I've got your anointing now. What you used to be called to do, I am called to do and there's nothing you can do about it. I've got your anointing - and so it had nothing to do with David could have killed him and just didn't. It had everything to do with the anointing, with how Saul was carrying God; that Saul was carrying the presence of God without the disposition of messiah, which was the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God, Exodus 34:6-7. The Lord, the Lord, He is the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God.

Now an interesting thing happened in regards to Jesus. There was a prophecy. All these prophecies were given about messiah, but one of the last prophecies - it probably is the last prophesy in the Old Testament - about who messiah would be, it says this. It's in Malachi 4:2 and you'll recognise it as soon as I start saying it. There will come from God a son of righteousness, with healing in his wings. The word is kanaf. There will come from God a son of righteousness, with healing in his kanaf. Now if the messiah is a Jewish messiah what would he have attached to his kanaf? Tassels, so whoever messiah is there'll be healing in his kanaf. There'll be healing in his wings. Now follow me here. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is not this way or that, or up or down, but the kingdom of God is actually within you. So you can look this way, you can look that, you can look up, you can look down and you'll never find the kingdom of God, because the kingdom of God is actually in the last place you'll look for it. It's actually within you.

A later writer said that Christ in me is the hope of glory, so where does Jesus live today? In us. He's in all of us. He's replicating Himself - we talked about that last night. He's replicating Himself to the world through us. So if there's healing in His tassels and He lives in us, then does it stand to reason that if we will commit to wrapping our lives in the tassels, there'll be healing in our hands as well? That the potential to be a minister of kingdom power comes only from a decision to have our life wrapped in the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God, the grace of God and the nature of God; to have our hands wrapped in the disposition of messiah, the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness God. Does it stand to reason that if we have Jesus living inside of us and there's healing in His tassels, that a simple decision to have our life wrapped in the tassels, that the only thing that we have the authority to serve is the tassels. Everything else that we serve in our life is a result of us unwrapping God.

Let's get real practical here. Do you have a right to serve anger to someone who disappoints you? No, you've just unwrapped the tassels. Do you have a right to be judgemental and critical towards somebody? No, you've just unwrapped the tassels. Do you have a right to turn your back on the cry of the hungry? I'm talking about legitimate needy people who absolutely will not eat without your help. Do you have a right to turn your back on that if you have the means to do it? Absolutely not. You have to have your life wrapped in the tassels. Everything we do has to be wrapped in the tassels, so let's ask ourself a hard question tonight. Where in our lives have we rationalised unwrapping God? Where have we done that? Where have we - I don't know - bought into the yoke of our denomination? Where have we bought into the yoke of a certain belief system? Where have we bought into the yoke of our father, the yoke of our mother, the yoke of some binding and loosing that took place that doesn't fit with the tassels?

Where have we wrapped our hands in God and where have we rationalised unwrapping them? I guarantee this; wherever we have unwrapped the tassels, in those areas in our life there's chaos and incompletion, that in those areas in our life we're actually journeying away from wholeness; that God has called us to lead people on a journey to wholeness - including ourself - and the areas in our life where we've rationalised unwrapping God for whatever reason. I've had a stressed out day. Don't you know it's okay for me to be angry today? I'm stressed out! Wherever we - don't you know - I sat with a guy once. He was 52 at the time and we were praying for him. It was a lady who did deliverance and I'd never met this lady before but she was very good and very much the real deal. She had never met this man before and I was with this guy. He was very close to me, 52 at the time and this man had been put in hospitals, three and four, five times in his life for clinical depression.

You just don't know what to do at some point and so she came over to him, never met him before and she said when you grew up you grew up in a yellow house with old wooden panelling. I'm seeing you curled up in the floor over by the stove in your den area. You're curled up and your father, you're nine years old and you father came in and he said this to you and she quoted something his dad had said to him when he was nine. This man who I knew very well and he's the real deal, he started breaking down and I'm talking crying to the point of stuff coming out of his nose, out of his mouth, everything. He got healed that day. He got healed that day. See one of the big temptations of unwrapping the tassels is this: we tell ourself it's just between me and God, and God will forgive me. It's never - if it's just between you and God do whatever you want to do. God can handle you, but it is not just between you and God. It is between you and God and everyone you come into contact with.

That man's dad was a good man and he likely when he walked out of the room, he told himself oh, it's just between me and God and God will forgive me. But he ruined a nine year old for 43 years. It's not between you and God. It's never just one more beer. It's never just one more drink. It's never just one more phone call. It's never just one more piece of cake - I may as well just throw that in. [Laughter] Yeah, it's never one more credit card purchase. It's never one more thing you can't afford. I mean am I the only person who unwrapped God because I wanted to impress somebody? Am I the only person that's ever bought something I couldn't afford with money I don't have to impress people I don't like? [Laughter] And then at the end of all that, when we pay for that with consequences, we sit back and we go God, why isn't there wholeness in my life? Oh God, why isn't there wholeness in my life? And the truth is it's just because I've unwrapped the tassels, that I've taken the word of God, the name of God, the grace of God, the nature of God and the ways of God. I've taken that off of me to do my own thing.

In the Book of Numbers, chapter 15, God says I want you to have tassels so that you'll never go after your own way. You will stay after Mine. Why? Because My way is the best way for our life. So what would happen - I'm not telling us to wear tassels. I obviously don't walk around wearing this. I'm talking about in your heart, what would happen if you had something that reminded you every day Jesus' way is the best way for my life? And if I want to be a minister who brings wholeness and healing to every situation, I promise you if you just do a mental inventory right now, every place in our life where we keep our hand wrapped in the tassels, every person you touch in that context actually gets whole. Every place in your life where we rationalise unwrapping the tassels, that's where there's chaos, strife and envy and all those other things; turmoil, strife, stress, anxiety. All of those things are coming somewhere from us or somebody else. I mean how many of us have ever been a victim of strife and stress because someone else unwrapped the tassels? [Laughs] Well the same thing is true with us.

Look at Mark 5. So over the years this legend developed that this messiah would come and there would be healing in his tassels. In other words there's healing in the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God and the grace of God as it is attached to messiah. In other words the way Jesus wore the presence of God brings healing, and the way you can wear the presence of God can bring healing too if you wear it this way. It's the disposition of messiah and I'm not talking about just healing. I'm talking about wholeness. I'm talking about emotional wholeness without one missing piece. If you look at Jesus, Jesus was concerned with people's physical healing and He dealt with that, but bigger than that He spoke to their emotional health. Why? Because one day we're all going to die anyway and what's a few years extra life in terms of eternity? Why would God want to give you 15 more years? Although He does that to people, why would He want to give you 15 more years? Is it that important to God? Not really, it's that important to you, because the truth is we're going to spend eternity with Him anyway.

What Jesus is more concerned with is that the life you live now has quality emotional health. Okay, in Mark 5 - this is so cool. Mark 5:21 and following. I'm just going to tell this story. You can kind of just know where I'm at by this. It starts out with saying that there was this guy named Jairus okay. Jairus came and asked Jesus to come pray for his daughter. Jairus was a big time synagogue ruler and Jairus comes and he says Jesus, I want you to come pray for my daughter. She's on the point of death. So Jesus says okay, this is what we'll do. I'll go pray for your daughter. Now all of Mark 5 is all about Him going to Jairus' daughter. It's all about that. Now what happens on the way to Jairus' daughter is so spectacular that a lot of times we stop there, but the whole story is about Jesus going to Jairus' daughter so it's very important that we understand that Jesus is going to Jairus' daughter, because we have to know He's going to Jairus' daughter. Am I being clear enough? [Laughter]

So where is He going? Jairus' daughter. I'll say that again - Jairus' daughter. So Jesus is walking along and He's on His way to Jairus' daughter and He gets interrupted. He gets interrupted, which is a good lesson for us because sometimes the greatest moves of God come in interruptions. Sometimes the greatest move of God comes in an interruption, that if we're so task oriented that any little thing that throws us off our schedule, if we get stressed out by that sometimes we miss God's greatest grace. Jesus is on His way to Jairus' daughter and there's a whole big crowd behind Him. It said that there was a lady there who had an issue of blood for 12 years. She has an issue of bleeding for 12 years. Now we have to understand something. Two words you have to understand in this passage or you can't understand the chapter, and that is tamei and tahor, tamei and tahor. Tamei meant unclean, t-a-m-e-i. Tamei meant unclean. Tahor means clean, so you had tamei or you were tahor. Everybody was either tamei or tahor.

Lepers had to walk through town saying tamei! Tamei! Tamei! Unclean, unclean, unclean. The problem with tamei was it was very contagious. We define sin so poorly. If I was to give a survey in most churches and I say would you please define sin in one sentence, you would hear mostly things like this: sins are the bad things that we do that are against what God would want us to do. That's not a bad definition of sin, it's just not complete. Is sin the bad things we do? Yes, but it's much bigger than that. Sin was anything that wasn't perfect. Sin is anything that isn't perfect. In the Book of Leviticus it says it's a sin for a person to have dandruff - so check your neighbour out, see if they're in sin right now. [Laughter] Just kind of check them out. Yeah? Sin to have dandruff, yeah. It was a sin to have [dim 00.27.23] eyes, so if you need eye glasses it's tamei. [Laughter] It's unclean. It made you tamei to have a period, so if you're here tonight and you have a period every month that would make you tamei.

You say well goodness me! It was a sin to give birth. It was a sin to give birth, yeah. In Leviticus 12:6-7 it says something like this. I'm paraphrasing, something like this. It says after a woman gives birth she has to bring a sin offering to atone for her loss of blood, yeah. Because why? Because to give birth the way we give birth was a result of sin. Did God intend for you to have hard labour in birth? No. No, He didn't intend for that. So it was a result of sin. It made you unclean. It was a sin to touch someone who was on their monthly period, so if you just bumped into someone who was on their monthly period it made you tamei as well, because tamei was very contagious. So if she has dandruff, if I just touch her, now I am unclean and I have to go offer sacrifices to make myself clean again. If someone's on their monthly period and I touch them I actually become unclean. Like what did you do, wear a sign? [Laughter] What would you do?

Like it was a sin to touch furniture that a woman who had had a period in the last three days had sat on. [Laughter] Yeah, like it was a sin to touch furniture where a married couple had been intimate in the last three days. Like what did you do, put a sign up? [Laughter] I was teaching this once at a pastor's home and he made everybody get off the couch. [Laughter] He was like 76! [Laughter] I was like good for you! [Laughter] Yeah, you're 76 and you're still having sofa sex, that is so great! [Laughter] It's just fantastic isn't it? So everything made you tamei, like all these things made you tamei and tamei was so contagious. You could catch it at any moment. Now understanding that about this culture, you have a lady who's had an issue of bleeding for 12 years. What does that make her? Tamei, so she's elbowing her way through the crowd. What's happening to every person she's touching? They're becoming unclean. Now I want you to understand the emotional ramifications of having an issue of bleeding for 12 years in that culture.

Once people found out she would be declared tamei and would not have been allowed to be purposely touched in 12 years, so for 12 years when she walked into a room people would have put their hands behind their back and walked away. Can you imagine the emotional rejection? Most rabbis would have given her husband a certificate of divorce, a right to divorce her simply because he could not touch her without becoming unclean himself. Therefore he had a right to leave, so likely in 12 years she would have been divorced. She would have been not purposely touched in 12 years. Can you imagine the emotional pain she would have been dealing with? The rejection. She elbows her way through the crowd to a man named Jesus who is on His way where? [Jairus' daughter.] So she's going to disturb Him and she reaches up and it says she grabs the hem of His garment.

So if He's the messiah what is found in His tassels? Healing, so why would she grab them? This was a culture of people who memorised everything about messiah. She knew if this is the One He's going to have healing in His tassels, and if I can just get a hold to them I'll be healed. It was a faith move. It was publically saying this is the One, so she reaches up and she grabs the tassels and Jesus breaks form doesn't He? Like when Jesus healed people what did He normally say? Shh-shh-shh-shh, don't tell anybody. Like that was His whole marketing strategy: tell people not to say anything and He knew they would. [Laughter] [Reverse psychology.] Same thing, same thing today. But here He breaks form doesn't He? What does He do? He's like WHO TOUCHED ME? WHO TOUCHED ME? POWER HAS LEFT FROM ME - which totally breaks form doesn't it?

Doesn't it totally break form with Jesus? WHO TOUCHED ME? WHO TOUCHED ME? That doesn't sound like Jesus. That sounds like Obi-Wan Kenobi! [Laughter] WHO TOUCHED ME? WHO TOUCHED ME? POWER HAS LEFT FROM ME. Everybody look over here! This lady with an issue of blood, she just touched me! Why would a rabbi do that? Why would a First Century rabbi draw attention to the fact that an unclean person had just touched Him? What will everybody think of Him? Everybody will think He's unclean. Now it's important theologically to know she got healed immediately, so did Jesus become unclean? No. Did everybody think He did? Yes. It's very important, and so He turns to the lady and He speaks to her. He doesn't speak physical healing to her. Although she was already healed, He says go in peace. In other words shalom; in other words go in wholeness without one missing piece.

Let me say it this way. Lady, go and be whole. Go and whoever your next husband is, don't make him pay for the rejection this one did to you. Lady, go and don't be bitter about the way people treated you for 12 years. Lady, go with peace in your heart, go in shalom. Now where was Jesus going? Jairus' daughter, so while He's still speaking the people from Jairus' house show up and they say - what did they say to Jairus? Do you guys know the story? They say Jairus, your daughter is dead. Why bother the rabbi any more - which is a bit insensitive isn't it? Jesus was on His way there. This crazy lady with an issue of blood for 12 years stopped Jesus, interrupted Him and now my daughter's dead! Jairus, your daughter is dead. Why bother the rabbi any more - which is totally insensitive, unless you understand that according to Levitical law it was against the law to knowingly walk into a room where a dead body was. You could not knowingly walk into a room where a dead body was without becoming unclean - unless you were already considered unclean by the public.

Jesus was smart. WHO TOUCHED ME? Everybody look over here. WHO TOUCHED ME? This lady with an issue of blood, she just touched me! Why? Because He needed everybody to think He was unclean so they'd let Him in the room. He was one step ahead, but He covers His bases doesn't He? He says oh, she's not dead, she's just asleep. [Laughter] Wink wink. And it says but they all laughed at Him, so He put them all out except for James and John, or Peter, James and John. It says they put them all out except for Peter, James and John. Now I want you to look at your Bible and look at verse 40, Mark 5:40. And they laughed and jeered at Him, but He put them all out and taking the child's father and mother and those who were with Him, He went in to where the little girl was lying - so they let Him in the room. And He took her by the hand. Now we have a real problem don't we? If it's against the law to walk into a room where a dead body is, is it against the law to touch one? You better believe it.

If she doesn't get up immediately then Jesus' whole mission on earth is hurt, because He can't be an unclean sacrifice. So if He took her by the hand and He's following their Torah, what does He have wrapped around His hand? There will come from God a son of righteousness with healing in His wings - so He takes her by the hand and look what He says. Wait a minute, first look up here, look at the words: tallit, kanaf, tassels, tallit. Look what He says: And He took her by the hand and He said to her [Talitha kum! 00.37.42] In other words let me say it this way: Little girl, My child, the presence of God is here. Talitha kum! My child, the presence of God is here, get up and she gets up. As ministers in the kingdom of God it's our only right to serve the tassels. It is our right. It is my job tonight to look at you and say Talitha kum; My child, the presence of God is here. Get up. And it is my job and it is your job, it is our responsibility that tonight to our husband and our wife, tomorrow to our co-workers, to anybody who comes in our contact, that our hands stay wrapped in the tassels.

As our hands are wrapped in the tassels, there's still healing in His wings. Is the message on your life Talitha kum? Does everybody who comes into your contact, do they get the message the presence of God is here, get up, it's going to be okay. You're going to make it - Talitha kum. My child, the presence of God is here; that in learning to be a minister of the spirit of God the most basics of all - before I could teach anybody how to pray for people, before I can teach any of that, we have to come to a place inside of ourself where we realise that our sole responsibility is keeping our hands wrapped in the tassels. So where are you tonight? Are your hands wrapped in the tassels, or where in your life are your hands wrapped in something else? There's a later place where Jesus is teaching in Peter's home and they lower a paralysed guy in by the roof, by the four corners of his mat. They tie ropes to the four corners of his mat and they lower him down.

Now knowing what you know now, why did they do that instead of just lowering him down by his hands? Because they couldn't touch him. Why couldn't they touch him? Because they'd be tamei. It was tamei to be crippled, so He's standing there and this guy appears and Jesus says your sins - in English it says your sins are forgiven. In Hebrew He would have said let that which is tamei be made tahor. Let that which is unclean be called clean - and remember how crazy they went? You can't call him tahor! He's crippled. It's obvious he's crippled! So Jesus said what's easier to say; let that which is tamei be made tahor, or get up and walk? Obviously it's easier to say let that which is tamei be made tahor, obviously, because who really knows? But if you say get up and walk Jack, somebody's going to know and it says so that you may know that I am who I say I am. It says He reached down and He took him by the hand. What would have been wrapped around his hands? Tassels. He took him by the hand and the guy got up and walked.

One touch from Jesus Christ makes everything that is tamei tahor. Why? Because Jesus can't touch an unclean thing. We are His hands. We are His feet and if we're the hands of Jesus Christ, if our hands stay wrapped in the tassels then there's healing in His wings. Everybody with me? Let's go before God now, let's have a moment with God and then we'll take a break and come back for our second session. But I want to close this out just with a moment with God, between you and God. What I'm going to do on the break is I'm going to leave this up here and maybe you need a moment with the tassels. I do it regularly, not because there's anything special about these tassels, but it just reminds me that God's way is the best way for my life and my best life is found in living a compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love way. So sometimes because I don't wear this, this will be in my closet, in my wardrobe and I'll be getting dressed and something will be irritating me.

I'll start to get angry or anxious or whatever and I'll be looking for a shirt. I'll look up and the tassels will poke themselves out [laughter] and I'll remember that whoever I'm fixing to meet with that is under my skin, that I have no right but to wrap my hands in the tassels and to deal with them with a compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love way. That our life, if our life can be defined by the tassels, then we will be made whole and we will be an instrument of God in making people whole; that we can go tonight in shalom. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we come to You and we proclaim that You are the king of the universe, that You're the king of the universe and we are not. And Lord, right now we just ask for forgiveness for where we've unwrapped the tassels, where we've rationalised being something other than what You called us to be. Forgive us Lord.

Right now I just want you to ask the Lord, I want you to ask just right there under your breath, just quietly before you and God; say Lord, what would my life look like if it was wrapped in the tassels? What would my life look like if it was wrapped in the tassels? Where in my life right now have I unwrapped the tassels? Where do I need to wrap them back? Compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. Where do I need to serve wholeness? There's healing in His wings. I proclaim to you tonight as people of God talitha kum, the presence of God is here. Now we can go in shalom. I pray that you would just minister that peace over this - I can just feel the presence of God now and it comes all the way through this place, yes, you can. You can just feel that presence. It's just coming through this place. God is letting you go in shalom tonight. Would you just let that settle over you. As we take our break tonight we'll make the break - last night we made the break 15 minutes. Tonight we'll make it somewhere around 20 to 25, because I'm ending a little early because I want this to be the case.

If you just want to go to your break that's fine, go with the Lord. But if you need a moment with God up here and if you need to have a moment maybe on your knees or standing, you need to have a moment with the tassels to remind yourself that God's way is the best way for your life. I want you to be able to have a private moment with God. So with that in mind Lord, I pray You'd send us to this break, bless the food and the tea and just anything we're going to drink or eat. Would You just bless it to our body. Thank You so much for being a provider and You're just the best. You're just the best. Thank You for making us tahor, in Jesus' name. Amen.

[File ends 00.45.57]

Session (4 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Thu 17 Apr 2008  « Back to Top

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Session (4 of 4) Hell Shane Willard 17.04.2008 pm

[Shane Willard] [Laughter] Okay. I was glad that God was doing some things around the tassels up here for us and hopefully that gives you some imagery that will change the way you look at God forever. Hopefully you'll never forget the tassels as long as you live - hopefully. Hopefully. So I want to talk to you for the rest of the night about being a bride, being a bride. This applies to men too, because we're called the bride of Christ. I want you to realise that our whole life with God is about one big wedding. The whole of the Bible ends with one event called the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Everything is leading us to a wedding and a Hebrew wedding had five steps to it. The first step was called lakah, the second step was called segullah, the third step was called mikveh, the fourth step was called ketubah and the fifth step was called chuppah alright, so you had lakah, segullah, mikveh, ketubah and chuppah. Let's say those together okay? Everybody say lakah. [Lakah] Segullah. [Segullah] Mikveh. [Mikveh] Ketubah. [Ketubah] Chuppah. [Chuppah]. Everybody say chuppah! Chuppah! [Eeba! Eeba! 00.01.24] [Laughter]

So when God's biggest idea started He was talking to a group of people who were marginalised, oppressed slaves. He gets them out of slavery into freedom and He says this is the light part of it. Now that sounds like the heavy part of it. Jesus says no, no, no, this is the light part of it. The big plan is coming next and what's going to happen, now that you were slaves and you've been made free, what I'm going to call you to do is to set people free. I'm going to empower you to do that by marrying you. I'm going to give you power of attorney on My name by marrying you. And so the Book of Exodus, if you turn in your Bible to the Book of Exodus and I'm going to take you through a tract, because the whole Book of Exodus is just one big marriage proposal. It's God taking a group of people from slavery to freedom by marrying them. Now for the purposes of this I need a girlfriend alright, so I need a girlfriend. Cecilia? Cecilia will be my girlfriend - who doesn't mind being my girlfriend. I guess Cecilia will do, Cecilia you be my girlfriend. You are fine! You are just a fine young thing. [Laughter] Alright, so... [Alright if I sit here?] Yeah, you can sit.

So this is my girlfriend and so we're dating now. We're dating now and how many of you remember dating? You remember dating is horrible? It's quite horrible actually because there are all these awkward moments in dating and it starts out with asking them out, like that's really awkward. One of the axioms - and I have a whole message around this if you want to hear it. It's in my message series on the cross, about love is risky, that love is risky; that one of the messages of the cross was not about us going to heaven and hell. One of the messages of the cross is everyone who's been hurt is free to love again, because you're free to risk again, because Jesus took all the risk in love. He commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us; that whoever says I love you first is taking all the risk aren't they? Because what if you say I love you and they say I know? [Laughter] What if you say I love you and they say thanks? [Laughter] Eee! Like you're taking all the risk, so we're past all that now. I've taken the risk to ask her out. What if I ask her out and she says no?

Every step along the way in a love relationship is risk and by the way, just as an aside, this is not what this is about tonight but if you're here tonight and you're married and there's been some hurt between the two of you and both of you are now protecting yourself and you're refusing to risk, you'll convince yourself that you've fallen out of love. But you haven't fallen out of love; you've just convinced yourself that you're not going to risk any more. As soon as you quit risking you quit loving, so the answer is if somehow you can get the courage to risk again, because if you can risk again you can love again okay? Alright, so we're dating and things get past all the normal dating stuff. It gets into chemistry and now like we've really got something. We really want to spend the rest of our life together, so once that happens she would be longing to hear a word from me called lakah, lakah. This is the first step in the Hebrew marriage process. It's called lakah - and so one night we went on a date and we were comfortable with each other.

So we've eaten stuff and we're even past all the normal, normal dating, like it's okay to even like have gas in the car or something okay? [Laughter] And so we're past all that and so I'm standing on her front porch and I've got melted pizza cheese coming off of my mouth. [Laughter] I've got oregano in my teeth and there's just this moment. There's this moment at the front door and everything just feels right. Everything just feels right and my heart starts pounding - boom boom, boom boom, boom boom. I think I can say it now. I can say it, I can say it, so I look at her and I say Cecilia, lakah. [Laughter] And so then there's this moment on the front porch and she can't keep her hands off of me [laughter] and there's all this stuff. She's trying to act calm on the inside, but I just said lakah to her so she goes inside and she calls all of her girlfriends and she's like he said lakah to me! He said lakah to me! Oh my God! He said lakah to me! [Laughter] This was lakah. Lakah meant I want to make you my own. [Oh, awe.] I want to make you my own, all mine. [Laughter] How can you resist this! [Laughter] My Lord! [Laughs]

So in the Book of Exodus 6:7 there's this group of slaves and God has gotten them out of Egypt and He's moving them to freedom. So this group of people who've known nothing but for 430 years they've been slaves. Four hundred and thirty years, that's a long time. I don't know how long New Zealand's been a nation but I doubt it's 430 years. That's twice as long as America's been in existence. Four hundred and thirty years is enough time to develop a whole culture around slavery and oppression and victim. He's talking to this group of people and here's what He says in Exodus 6:7; And I will take you as My own people. If you look that word up in Strong's it's lakah, lakah. So this group of Hebrew slaves who knew this whole process, the God of the universe looks down from heaven and He says lakah. Can you imagine how they would have felt; a group of people that would have felt less than - they had been told that they're less than human. They would have been killed. They would have been tortured. The would have been all of this because they were told they were less than human.

The God of the universe is actually - can you imagine? Everybody would have been saying did He just say lakah? Did He just say what I think He said? Like did He just - does He want to marry us? Like does He want to make us His bride? Like did He say He wanted to make us My own? That is lakah - and He starts the process in Exodus 3 by getting them out of slavery. Then He starts the process again in Exodus 6 by saying lakah - so we're dating and I've said lakah and she's called all of her friends. Now how long - once she hears lakah, what is the next word she's longing to hear? Segullah. She really wants me to say segullah, and how long does the euphoria of lakah last? Maybe a month, maybe two, but after two months her girlfriends will be calling her during the day: girl, has he said segullah yet? Has he said segullah yet? He needs to - where is he? Is he scared of commitment? [Laughter] He needs to step up to the plate. It is time. He has been sitting on lakah far too long. [Laughter]

So one night we go out on a date and we eat, I don't know, fish tacos or something. [Laughter] We're in the car on the way home and there's just a moment. There's a moment and I get her to her front porch and everything feels right, and she's got a piece of that fish taco hanging off of her lip. [Laughter] I look and I think oh yeah! [Laughter] You're the one for me! [Laughter] And just the right moment I take her by the hand and I say segullah. Well now she really can't keep her hands off of me! She's trying to act calm but inside her heart's fluttering. She runs in and she calls her girlfriends and she's like he said segullah to me! He said segullah to me! Oh my God! He said segullah to me! [Laughter] Segullah meant - it took lakah one step further and it meant treasured possession. The girls love this message. [Laughter] I've been asked to preach this specific message next year at a national conference for women. They're going to go crazy. [Laughter]

Treasured possession, treasured possession. It took lakah one step further. It meant I don't only want to make you mine, like Cecilia, I don't want to just make you mine. I want you to be my treasured possession. Everybody loves that, and so in Exodus 19, so the children of Israel, they heard lakah from God. So what would they be longing to hear next? Segullah, so Exodus 19:5, so this group of people, they're just journeying with God from slavery to freedom. They've been in lakah for a little while, I think like 11 days or something and they're standing somewhere and God says this to him: Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My commandments and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me. In the NIV it says a treasured possession. The word special treasure there is segullah, segullah. So they'd be standing there and it would be like wait a minute, did He just say segullah? Did God - He said lakah and I think He just said segullah - I think - does He really want to marry us? Does He really want to marry us?

Now next, once you heard segullah what would be the next thing you'd long to hear? Mikveh, mikveh. Now mikveh is a little bit more blunt and not as romantic. So we have a night, we go on a date, we go to see Rambo Four. [Laughter] Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies - okay, so we go to see Rambo Four, yes and then afterwards we go and we shoot possums in a field. [Laughter] And there's this moment, I take her home and there's this moment and she smells - she shot a possum and she went and got it, then it used the toilet on the front of her. [Laughter] There's this moment; I'm thinking this is the woman for me. [Laughter] So I look at her and with the longing of a treasured possession in my heart I say to her mikveh, mikveh. Mikveh means go wash. [Laughter] Like good Lord, you stink! Mikveh is what they baptise people in. They baptise people in a mikveh. It was a baptismal pool. It also meant go wash. It was very important that you were not tamei for your betrothal, because you wanted to be able to be touched for obvious reasons, okay?

So you wanted to be tahor, so it was very important to the man that the woman was tahor, clean - was tahor for the betrothal because he wanted to be able to touch her. If she was tamei could not touch her, so he would give her a warning that the betrothal was coming by saying mikveh, go wash, go wash. The Hebrew people found this very important, like remember Ester? What did she do before she went and saw her husband? She bathed in perfume for a year - which is a bit overkill I think. [Laughter] Like can you imagine the man waiting, like oh man, that's the longest bath in history. Would you come on! [Laughter] Of course he had like 1000 wives so it didn't matter to him, but she bathes in perfume for a year to go see him. Mikveh was go wash, a betrothal is coming. Now in Exodus 19:5 He says treasured possession; in verse 10 He commands them to prepare themself for three days and to wash their clothes. The word is mikveh, wash, to go wash, so consecrate themself and let them wash their clothes. In other words we're going to be clean because a betrothal is coming.

So here is a group of marginalised, oppressed slaves and God is saying lakah, segullah, mikveh to them. So what would they naturally be expecting next? Ketubah. Now Ketubah was a very important part of this process. This is where we get real serious. I'm going to ask her to marry me, but before I ask her to marry me we have to work out a ketubah. We have to work out a ketubah okay, and what would happen in that is this. [Laughter] They're all ratting somebody out over there, like it was her! It was her! Ketubah was your marriage contract. Let me give you some negative connotations of it. It was a pre-nup. This was a marriage contract. It wasn't so much a pre-nup as how we think of it, but it was positive. Every marriage had to have a ketubah and can I be honest? Every marriage today needs one - not a pre-nup. Every marriage today needs an agreement between the husband and the wife as to what boundaries are going to define our marriage. When I do premarital counselling now or when I do marital counselling, I always sit down and I'll say what is your ketubah? Of course they never know what that means, so they say what's a ketubah? Then I explain it.

Then I say what is your ketubah? I can't tell you the number of married couples who have no idea what their basic agreement is, so I would sit down with Cecilia. It would be me and my father and her and her father, and we would sit down and we would make a ketubah. I could put anything in the ketubah I wanted and she could put anything in the ketubah she wanted, so long as we both agreed because how can two walk together lest they be agreed? It was at this point that we determined what our deal breaker was. What are our deal breakers? You wouldn't believe the stuff that goes on in marriages. They end up in my office so I know. Like you wouldn't believe the stuff, the ways that wives address their husbands. It is unbelievable. The ways that husbands talk to their wives and treat them, unbelievable. These would have been deal breakers. We're talking about ketubah, a basic understanding of the boundaries that will define our marriage.

We would talk about money, we would talk about sex, we would talk about power, we would talk about interpersonal communication boundaries. We would talk about expectations on both sides and we would put it in writing, and we would make an agreement, a handshake agreement, yes, we will live this way. This will be what our life is defined by, and once the ketubah was set and signed that was the definition of our marriage covenant. This teaching that says marriage is a covenant, is it true? Yes, but the part of the teaching that is not true is this; because marriage is a covenant you should have to just put up with anything on earth. That is not true. It is dangerous. Every covenant had a deal to it, a basic set of agreements - and I'm not talking about no grace. I'm talking about basic expectations and basic agreements, like let me give you something that was in every ketubah okay, on the man's side. It was called the Doctrine of Oil, Bread and Shelter, which means it was the man's responsibility to keep the family warm, fed and dry okay? So if that man turned into a lazy bum who laid around drinking all day, they would have him for breaking his ketubah because he promised that he would keep the family to the best of his ability warm, fed and dry.

If you broke your ketubah they had a word for that. It was called marital unfaithfulness because you're being unfaithful to your deal, yeah and you would confront that. You would have to confront that one on one, like if I was breaking my ketubah she would have to come to me one on one. Then if I didn't repent she could go to me two on one with her dad, because he witnessed the ketubah. Then if I didn't repent she would go get her pastors and they would confront me with a group on one, and if I didn't repent then they would flog me. [Laughter] If I still didn't repent they would say you've done everything you can do, this is marital unfaithfulness. And on the woman's side and this won't be as popular but like withholding sex was in there, like you couldn't withhold. Like Paul makes that very clear, New Testament, Old Testament, all of it, like he says don't withhold. It causes bitterness. A man will lose his mind. [Laughter] And anybody here who's been married any length of time, they know that husbands love, wives respect, don't withhold sex and put children in their right place, that's the way to do a marriage. That was Paul's way thousands of years ago. That was [His 00.20.45] way too.

So this ketubah would get worked out. Everybody understand what ketubah is? They had spiritual authority there too by the way and the ketubah between me and my dad, her and her dad, and a spiritual authority there to hold us accountable that what we were putting down as a ketubah was realistic, yeah. I want sex three times a day. [Laughter] Yeah, probably not happening right? I want him to build me a mansion on whatever. These were - you were supposed to have realistic expectations that were mutually agreed upon, where two people could journey through life with a mutual agreement to what was basically going to rule their life on an everyday basis. It's not that we never waiver. It's not that. It's just basic lines that say this is how our life's going to be defined. Does that make sense? Okay. Now check this out. You're going to love this.

After the ketubah was signed we would stand up and face each other, and I would say I go to prepare a place - no, no. I would say will you marry me? And of course she would say at that point - you've done too much work - she would say yes. Then I would say I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there you may be also, and she would say well when you come back to receive me under yourself? I would say I do not know the day or the hour, but when my father approves the wedding chamber I'm building then I will come back and receive you under myself. Does any of that sound familiar? It's all wedding talk. All of this was happening all the time in weddings. It's all wedding talk - so I would go away and I would build the wedding chamber. Then my father would approve it and then we'd come back and we'd get her. We'd take her to the wedding, which is where step five is and that's called chuppah, chuppah.

Now there were two chuppahs. There was chuppah at the wedding altar - you guys know what a chuppah is? It's a marriage altar. Have you guys seen Meet the Parents? Oh come on, don't be so - nooo, we have never seen that. Remember the friend, the rich friend in Meet the Parents? He made the handmade chuppah? Yeah, it was a wedding altar. In western cultures we have lattice, like you have an archway kind of thing, yeah, that's chuppah. What it meant was, it meant to be covered in God's presence. So all everything that's fixing to happen, God - because to have a covenant which marriage is a covenant, so to have a covenant you have to have a deal and you have to have witnesses. So all of this was happening. That's why we do weddings today; you're making a deal in front of a group of people who are going to hold you accountable to that deal. That's what's supposed to happen, but that doesn't happen in western culture because we're too private. We don't want people to know everything and part of that's good, part of it's not good.

So the people who witnessed your wedding, they have no right in western culture to hold you accountable to the deal you made, so you could start acting like an idiot and everybody just says well that's their life, they need to work it out and they're in covenant so you have to put up with whatever. No, see in Hebrew culture if one or both started acting like an idiot the whole community banded together and held them accountable; you signed a ketubah. We were there. You're breaking your ketubah - and it was in front of us and it was in front of God. You can't break your deal. So you would make this deal; they would read the ketubah and you'd have this whole wedding thing. They'd read the ketubah and basically do you? I do. Do you? I do. Then they'd have the salt ceremony where the groom would have a baggy of salt, the bride would have a baggy of salt and the priest would have a big empty baggy. They'd take the groom's baggy of salt, they'd take the bride's baggy of salt and then he would take it and he would mix it together. He'd go what God has joined together, let no man tear asunder. Then he would take the mixed up salt and sprinkle it on their hands. It was called the Covenant of Salt.

So after the wedding, after the wedding's over then we go to the second chuppah, which is my personal favourite! [Laughter] The second chuppah was in the marriage bed and it was this. They would take the four stakes and they would make a canopy with this over the marriage bed, so this is what would happen. The groomsmen would march me and my new wife to the door of the marriage chamber I'd built, and then I would catch my bride up. Do you guys do that here? Like it's a good plan for some, it's not so good for others. [Laughter] So I would catch my bride up which was called rapture. [Oh! Laughter] Okay, the word rapture means to catch your bride up alright, it's where we get the word rapture from okay. So I would catch my bride up, I would walk her into the marriage chamber. The groomsmen would shut the door behind me and they would wait outside [laughter] while we consummated our marriage under the chuppah. Like they weren't near as ashamed of their sexuality as we are, like if you read particularly the Old Testament, they wrote things about themself that I thought I wouldn't have shared that. [Laughter]

So they're all waiting outside while we're - you know? Yeah, you know. Then we'd come out and we'd have a party and that was a wedding. So the Hebrew people, they heard lakah, they heard segullah, they heard mikveh - that's Exodus 19. So what happens in Exodus 20? Ketubah. And what happens in Exodus 20? What's in Exodus 20? The Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments is a marriage proposal. The Ten Commandments are not 10 conditions for God to love you; it is 10 proofs He already does. You're not proposing to people you don't love. Now think about the Ten Commandments from a marriage proposal standpoint. You should have no other Gods before Me; well that makes sense. In other words if we're going to be married I'm going to be number one and let me tell you something, just from a psychologist standpoint okay? If you took God out of the picture, if the Bible had not been discovered yet okay; if we had no instructions from God on how to live I can tell you as a psychologist that for a marriage to work the man has to be number one and the wife has to be the treasured possession. That's the only way for a marriage to work.

So God's like I'm going to be number one, you're not going to have anybody ahead of me. Is that fair enough? Yes, okay. You're not going to carry graven images or any likeness or anything okay? In other words if we're going to be married you're not going to have pictures of your old boyfriends. [Laughter] Oh, and you're not going to use My name in vain. In other words you're not going to sign cheques that I wouldn't sign. [Laughter] Yeah. You're not going - saying God's name in vain has nothing to do with saying you know, oh God or something - although it's probably distasteful and we probably shouldn't do it. It has everything to do with using God's name on something He wouldn't have used His name for - oh, and one day in seven it's just going to be Me and you. [Unclear 00.28.21] be a Sabbath, one day in seven. God had a way to keep His marriage together and what He did was one day in seven, seven times a year, it was just Him and His spouse. That's what happened.

That's how He tried to keep His marriage together with Israel - one day in seven and seven times a year, and they still were maritally unfaithful to the point that His anger burned against them to where there was no remedy. In the Book of Ezra it says He divorced them and He married the Gentiles, which should mess some of our theology up, yeah. So He did everything He could do and yet they were still maritally unfaithful, everything He could do. So this ketubah comes down and it's a marriage proposal, so what happens after the marriage proposal? Chuppah. Look at verse 18, this is so cool. It says now all the people heard - the actual word there is heard - they heard the thunder and the lightning and the sound of a trumpet. And the people saw the mountain filling in smoke, so they see - excuse me, they see thunder, lightning and billows of smoke, and they hear the sound of a trumpet.

They see thunder, lightning, billows of smoke; they witness thunder, lightning, billows of smoke. They see it. The word is see, we saw thunder and lightning. Now my question is how can you see thunder? You can't, so I went and looked it up. The word thunder is the word [kole, 00.29.59] which everywhere else in the Bible is translated voices or languages.

So the people are standing at the base of the mountain and they saw the mountain filling in smoke, chuppah. So they're standing there and a chuppah appears. They've already had lakah, they've already had segullah, they've already had mikveh, they've had a ketubah, and now they're standing there in a chuppah, a giant chuppah appears. They look up and they see languages inside lightning or fire. They see voices inside fire. The Talmud says that on this date in history God proposed to the entirety of creation through 70,000 tongues of fire. In 1856 there was this English sociologist that went to Rangoon, Burma to study the people there. This was before electricity, before phones, before internet, before cable, before any of that. He went to this tribe of people in Rangoon, Burma and he said who is your God? They said we serve a God named [Yaw 00.31.07] who proposed to us from fire in the sky.

So they're standing there and a chuppah appears and these languages of fire sit over top of them. What are the voices saying? Will you marry Me? Will you marry Me? And they reject it. They say no, Moses, don't let God speak to us anymore lest we die. You speak to God. We want somebody to go between us and God. We're not worthy. We're not worthy of this. We can't have this, so God instituted a feast every year on this day to commemorate it. You can read about it in Leviticus 23, we don't have time tonight. It's called the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of Pentecost, because when you're standing at the base of a mountain and you see the thing fill up with smoke, and you see tongues of fire over their head, where do you see that happen again? Acts 2, which is the Day of Pentecost, which is the exact same day as that. It's just the anniversary of that day years later - so every year on that day they had to come together and they had to celebrate this day that God proposed to them.

On that day in Leviticus 23 it's the only place in the whole Bible that they were commanded to bring bread made with leaven. Everywhere else it had to be unleavened bread, but on this day it was different than all other days. They had to bring bread made with leaven. What they would do is they would offer this leavened bread to God as an offering. What was that saying? God, we're leavened beings and You're unleavened beings but You're willing to become one with us, thank You. So the priest would say something like this: I thank You my God that Your unleavened life is willing to become one with my leavened life. He would give thanks and then he'd bring the leavened bread down and he'd break it. He would take oil, symbolising the Holy Spirit, and he would fill the leavened bread with oil. After he filled the leavened bread with oil he would say now the Day of Pentecost has fully come. Now the Day of Pentecost has fully come.

So one day, one year they're all together celebrating this. They're all together and some of them would have been just going through the motions because they had to, and some of them would have been truly lamenting the decision of their ancestors not to follow God. Some of them would have been into it, but the priest, he says now the Day of Pentecost has fully come and says when the Day of Pentecost had fully come they were all together in one accord. The whole room filled in smoke and over their head they heard the sound a trumpet and they saw tongues of fire. It's the same exact event on the same exact day at the same exact time. What are the voices saying? Will you marry Me? The only difference is this time they spoke back, which is the birth of the church, which is the bride of Christ. Pentecostals for years have said you've got to get the leaven out of your life for God to use you. You've got to get the leaven out of your life for God to use you, and hear me clearly. You need to get the leaven out of your life because God wants you to have the best life, but God always uses imperfect people.

The thought that you're not worthy to approach God because you've got issues is a problem. The whole point of Pentecostals for years, you've got to get the leaven out of your life for God to use you! You've got to get the leaven out of your life for God to use you! But the whole point of Pentecost is oil flows through leaven - and aren't you glad? Come on, how many of us are glad about that? [Yeah!] Oil flows through leaven. In other words let me just say it this way; God wants to marry you, leaven and all. God wants to marry you, issues and all. Do you realise that God was proposing to a group of oppressed slaves? All they knew was slavery for 430 years. How much issues do you think they had? He was proposing to a group of people that He later had to say to them don't have sex with your mother, it's a bad plan. [Laughter] That's issues. When you don't know it isn't proper to have sex with your mother, when God has to tell you that, you've got problems.

He had to later tell them don't throw your children in fire. Like these people had issues out the wazoo [laughter] and He still wanted to marry them, leaven and all, because He knew if He could become one with them every part of their life that's tamei would be made tahor if He could just get a hold of it.

I bless you tonight to know that you are called to be the bride of Christ; that He wants to make you His own. He wants to make you His treasured possession. He wants to clean you up and give you the best life possible, that He's called you. He believes in you more than you believe in Him. He has called you to wrap your life in the tassels and take these tassels to this whole community and ultimately this whole world; to surround everybody in your contact with the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God; to let the whole world know [Talitha kum, 00.36.35] My child, the presence of God is here. That is what we are called to be and that is connecting the kingdom power, and that is taking this kingdom message to the world. I bless you tonight to know that God wants to marry you, leaven and all. He wants to take your leaven and turn it into something so awesome, so what's your story? Who needs to hear your story? What are we doing about it?

I bless you tonight to know that God believes in you more than You believe in Him. He has an incredible - He wants to be one with you. He wants to marry you, leaven and all. Lord, would You send us away tonight with Your blessing and Your touch. Would You send us away tonight with the tassels wrapped around our hands, that we are called to be peacemakers, that we are called to bring heaven to earth and not hell. Would You make us ministers of the kingdom of God in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now on Sunday, tomorrow I'm off I think - Sunday, I will be here Sunday morning and Sunday night, then next week we're going to continue this, these seminars. It has a different name. It says leadership on it. Let me tell you, it's going to be - I'm just going to continue right on from here and I'm going to tie these kingdom principles into our everyday lives. It's going to get better and better and better. I'm just going to keep going, so you don't want to miss next week. It's going to build up and it's going to build up and it's going to build up until next Sunday night, it'll be the most important message I've ever preached in the world. So I look forward to journeying with you over the next few days and I think we can believe together that at the end we'll be changed and different people, more into the image of our Almighty God. God bless you tonight. Thank you for having me as your guest. [Applause]

[File ends 00.38.36]

Hosting Shane Willard (2008) (Shane Willard)

Who is Your Slave Driver (Shane Willard)

Jesus didn't die just to forgive us; Jesus died so we could be slave driver-free: here, now, today. Something is ruling my life other than God; and God steps down, without me deserving it, and He takes the slave driver away.

My only responsibility in that is: faith, and repentance; to change my mind, so that I don't keep going back to the slave driver, over and over and over; that I don't keep opening up my life to the same slave driver.

The Days of Caesar (Shane Willard)

Luke 2:1 - “In the days of Caesar Augustus there went out a decree that: all the world should be taxed.”

What was going on in the world, when God chose to reveal Himself in Jesus?

Bowl or Birthright (Shane Willard)

The most hated man in the whole Bible, by far the most foolish man who ever lived. This guy was basically an honest, hard-working man, who traded everything he could be, for one meal - just beans.

Becoming Less Important (Shane Willard)

Even in Hell, the rich man still thought he was better than the beggar: send Lazarus here to serve me in Hell; send him back to Earth to serve my family.

God is not looking to make ‘rich men’, but a nation of ‘wealthy stewards’, who use their money as God would have them use it - for the glory of God and the kingdom of God.

God would want every one of us to be so wealthy, that other nations would call us ‘blessed’ - but it's not wealth for our sake, so we could build bigger barns to store it, but wealth to take care of the people who can't take care of themselves.

Audio

- Who is Your Slave Driver.mp3

- The Days of Caesar.mp3

- Bowl or Birthright.mp3

- Becoming Less Important.mp3

Who is Your Slave Driver (Shane Willard)

Sun 20 Apr 2008 AM  « Back to Top

Audio»  Website»

Jesus didn't die just to forgive us; Jesus died so we could be slave driver-free: here, now, today. Something is ruling my life other than God; and God steps down, without me deserving it, and He takes the slave driver away.

My only responsibility in that is: faith, and repentance; to change my mind, so that I don't keep going back to the slave driver, over and over and over; that I don't keep opening up my life to the same slave driver.

Introduction

I started thinking about the cross a while back one of the questions I asked myself is this:

Where have I embraced the cross that saves me, but I've neglected the cross I've been commanded to pick up every day?

We love the cross that saves us, and forgives us, and heals us, and lets us into heaven. We love that cross, because Jesus bore that cross for us, and we don't have to do anything, so the pressure's off in that sense. We love that cross, and we should love that cross - we get to go to heaven; and not go to hell. We get to be forgiven instead of guilty - that's a preferable thing. Heaven/hell - choose heaven.

But the bigger deal is this: where have we embraced the cross that saves us; but there's a second cross, that we've been commanded to pick up, and we neglect that one?

Let me ask it this way: Where have we wanted mercy for ourselves, but justice for everybody else? We stuff something up really bad, and we're like: oh God, have mercy, oh God have mercy, oh God have mercy; but someone else messes up, and we're like: God will get them for that!

What part of us enjoys the fact that, when major men of God fall into sin, that it's all over the internet, and we read it? If we had done the same thing (some of us have done the same thing, we just didn't get caught) - we want mercy; but why do we want justice for other people?

The Bible says: judgement without mercy will be given to all those who aren't merciful, for mercy triumphs over justice. So where have we embraced the cross, that saves me and heals me and forgives me? Where have we put a fish on our car? Where have we done that; yet over here we degrade the intelligence of someone who disappoints us?

Does the girl at KFC know we're saved, even if she messes up our order? When someone cuts you off in traffic, do you point your finger at the sky? Then when you go around them the second time, they see the fish on your car. Does your husband know you're saved even if he leaves a wet towel on the floor? Does your wife know you're saved, even if she disappoints you?

Where have we embraced the cross that saves us, but neglected the cross that says: don't gossip and slander people; or the cross that says: to take care of the poor is a high honour?

Main Message

In Exodus 3:7-8, the Lord is speaking to a group of people who've been enslaved for 430 years. That's a long time - twice as long as America has been a nation. This group of people were oppressed, marginalised, slaves - make bricks, make bricks without straw. These people were oppressed horribly, and this is what it says:

“The Lord said I have indeed seen the misery of My people in Egypt, and I have heard them crying out because of their slave-drivers.”

Note the words slave-drivers. To a Hebrew person, salvation was not just about going to heaven one day. As a matter of fact, for the first 1,500 years of church history from Acts 2, if you asked anybody: ‘why did Jesus die on the cross’, no one would have said: Jesus died on the cross to forgive us of our sins.

Although that was true, and that's part of it, and we say: yes, amen; we're all about individual forgiveness, aren't we? The bigger issue is this: people said - Jesus died on the cross to defeat the devil, the enemy of our soul, and his entire way of life; that the cross was not primarily about heaven and hell, although that's what we've made it about.

That is true, we do get to go to heaven; we get to be forgiven, absolutely. But a bigger issue in that Jesus didn't just die to forgive us of sins. Jesus died so that sin could not be our master anymore.

Jesus didn't die just to forgive us; Jesus died so we could be slave driver-free: here, now, today.

If you take a Strong's Concordance, and you just do a word study on the word ‘salvation’ or ‘saved’, or ‘rescued’ or ‘delivered’, some 90% of all uses of those words have nothing to do with heaven and hell - it has everything to do with being ‘slave driver delivered’.

Something's ruling my life other than God; and God steps down, without me deserving it, and He takes the slave driver away. My only responsibility in that is: faith, and repentance; to change my mind, so that I don't keep going back to the slave driver, over and over and over and over and over again; that I don't keep opening up my life to the same slave driver.

Every time I open up my life to the same slave driver, Jesus shows up, and He delivers me from it, because His mercy is new every day; but when I choose to truly repent, that salvation is actually here.

Sometimes we can be guilty, in a western culture, of teaching a salvation that's ‘some day’. Some day: the lion and the lamb; some day: no sickness, crying, or shame; some day: no more tears.

It has this aspect to it, and yes - how many of you know that ‘some-day’ is true, that is a true thing? But if we're not careful, we're guilty of teaching a salvation that says: hey, get saved, get saved, get saved - and then one day you'll get to die, and it'll all get better?

The salvation that Jesus is talking about is all about being slave-driver free.

It says: I'm concerned about their slave drivers, and I'm also concerned about their suffering, so I have come down to rescue them. The word ‘rescue’ there is the same word that we get ‘salvation’ from, or ‘saved’.

“I have come down to {save them, rescue them, deliver them} from the hand of the Egyptians; and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

So in this passage, Egypt represented suffering. This is not just a story about a group of people who've been in slavery for 430 years. It is about them; but it's also a story about me and you, and about our tendency to suffer under slave drivers.

It's a story about suffering, about crying out to God, and about God hearing you in that situation.

When we're in the land of suffering and crying out, we think God doesn't hear us there - that we've done something bad, so God doesn't hear us. Actually, when we're in Egypt, and in suffering and in crying out - that's the exact place that God does hear us. It's a land of slave drivers. It's a place where something is driving our life other than God.

Maybe that driver is anger. How many of us suffer with a slave driver at times of anger? Anger is not an emotion you can afford. When you get angry you lose 25% of your IQ, because all of your blood leaves your brain, and goes to the major muscle groups to prepare for a fight. You also exert a certain enzyme in your brain that helps take away 25% - which for the average person in the room would make you retarded! So if you're married, and you get into an argument, and both of you get angry - you've got two mentally-retarded people trying to solve a problem!

Maybe your slave driver is rejection? Maybe your slave driver is impulse-spending to cope? Has anybody besides me ever bought something you can't afford, with money you don't have, to impress people you don't like? And like a month later the newness wears off, and you're like: I'm still making payments on this, what am I doing!

How about the slave driver of just one more piece of cake? How about the slave driver of debt?

One of the messages of the gospel is that: hope can flow in situations like that.

Genesis 2:10, this is in the Garden of Eden, and it's kind of making a description of this.

“A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, and from there it separated into four headwaters. The name of the first river was Pishon, and it wound through the entire land of Havilah, where there was gold. The gold of that land was ‘perfect’, and the gold of that land was perfect.”

So ‘out of Eden’, the Talmud says that when Adam and Eve fell, when they were kicked out of the garden, they spent 40 days with their feet in the river Pishon. Now the word Pishon means ‘hope’, so it says: there was a river called Hope, and it wound through the entire land of Havilah. Havilah just meant ‘suffering’. To a Hebrew person, any time you're in the land of suffering, there's a river called Hope somewhere - you've just got to go find it.

The last thing you need to do is give up. To fail, in a Hebrew mindset, is just to quit trying - because if you're in the land of suffering, there's a river called Hope somewhere in it - you've just got to go find it.

When you're in the land of suffering, how do you know when you've come across the river of Hope - because there are lots of rivers in the land of suffering? Some of them are going to take you to places you don't want to go. How do you know when you're in the river called Hope?

It says that you can identify the river of Hope, when there's perfect gold in the riverbed. There's going to be perfect gold in the riverbed. Perfect gold - I think it's called [zebarrelim] gold, it's actually not a gold colour at all - it's a clear substance, and very soft, very soft. If you hold it up to perfect light, only the shortest wavelength of light can get through it, so it looks blue. I've been taught my whole life that the colour of heaven is blue - perfect gold and perfect light looks blue.

It's also very soft, so you can shave it down into powder. You can shave it down into little sprinkles, and if you take one little tweezer, and pick up one little piece of perfect gold, you can drop it into 100,000 parts of water, and it'll turn all of the water blood/ruby red. When perfect gold and water bond, it turns the water blood red (colliodal gold).

If there's a river called Hope, and it's flowing through the land of suffering, and you want to be able to identify the river called Hope, and the river called Hope has perfect gold in the riverbed, what colour is the river? Red!

The Hebrew language originally was pictures. The word gold is three letters; the first letter is the picture of ‘an eye’; the second letter is the picture of a ‘harvester, harvesting supply’; and the third picture is the picture of ‘a house’, or ‘house of God’. So when a Hebrew person read the word ‘gold’ they saw: “Behold, the one who brings us substance for survival, brings it to us in the house of God.”

So a Hebrew person would read: Hope flows through suffering, because behold, the one who brings us substance for survival, brings it to us in the house of God, through a river of blood. To a Hebrew person, when water turns red, hope is flowing through suffering - that is the river Pishon.

Now fast-forward way later: same group of people - they've just gotten larger, and they're in slavery and in suffering in Egypt. They're in the land of suffering; and they cried out to God, because of their suffering, and God decides to do something about it.

The first plague: all the water turned to blood. To the Egyptians that was a curse - a slap in the face of their gods; but to the Hebrew people there would have been a buzz through the whole camp... Did you hear? Water's turning to blood. Hope's fixing to flow through suffering! Pishon, hope is here!

Salvation is not some day; salvation is here now, today. Hope is flowing through suffering.

Moses leads them to the banks of the Red Sea - hope flows through suffering. The waters part, they go through, the waters come down, destroying the biggest army in the world in one swoop - which changed the course of world history; because you can't take the biggest army out, and not replace them. If CNN and the internet would have been around back then, the whole world would have swooped down on Egypt.

So they get through that and then they end up at Mount Sinai, and Moses goes up, which is like a three and a half hour trek up that mountain. Then God sends him back down to get Aaron; then He sends him back up - like this is like an all day thing going on. Moses comes back down with the Ten Commandments and what have the people done? They have made a gold cow! Moses gets so angry that he takes his staff, and he beats the gold cow into powder.

They had to throw it into the water from the rock, and drink it for the redemption of their sins. If you take perfect gold and throw it into the water from the rock- red; hope flows through suffering. Pishon is flowing through Havilah; the water is turning red.

Fast forward way later and there was this rabbi - pretty important to us. He was a rabbi with authority, which meant He could make up His own yoke. This new rabbi with authority would have drawn crowds of say 5,000 to 10,000 people, in a place where there were no automobiles. People would have come from all over the nation to hear this new yoke, which they heard might be easy, and might be light - it would be easier to live. He shows up at this wedding, and He performs His first miracle: turning water into wine - hope flows through suffering. Water is turning red.

His first miracle is for a whole group of people, and He's communicating to a Hebrew audience, with Hebrew ideas. He makes water turn red - hope flows through suffering.

Fast forward way later, and Jesus had the worst day ever. They beat Him. They mocked Him. All His friends had deserted Him - everything that would mess us up psychologically for a long time!

They beat Him, mocked Him, spit on Him, put crowns of thorns on His head, strapped a tree to His back, make Him walk up the thing; and since they can't have people hanging around on Sabbath on crosses, they break everybody's legs - except His, because He was already dead. The Roman centurion says ‘make sure that He's dead’, and they stick a spear in His side, and blood and water flowed. In other words, in the greatest suffering man has ever known, hope still was flowing.

It's almost like Jesus, at His death, gave anybody with any glimpse of hope, hope. He said: look, even in My death, blood and water is going to come together. Hope flows through suffering.

One of the greatest messages of the cross is this: no matter where you are, no matter what you're going through, there's hope for your situation - there's blood in the water. Hope flows through suffering, because: behold, the one who brings us substance for survival, brings it to us in the house of God. Through a river of blood, hope can flow through suffering.

I was sitting with my mentor, and another pastor that I went to Bible College with. He's very solid, he's pastored for years, and we were sitting around talking, and he said: I've got a question: what must I do to be saved? If all you had was Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, the historical narratives of the Bible; what could you tell me?

In other words, if we looked up every time Jesus, or Peter, or Paul, or somebody important like that said: ‘salvation has come to you’; ‘you've been forgiven’; ‘you've been made righteous’ - what would salvation look like? What do you have to do to get saved? What must I do to be saved?

So I started looking at this, in the sense of ‘hope flows through suffering’; and there were all these really cool stories in the New Testament, and none of them were the same, yet all of their salvation experiences were legitimate...

Zaccheus was a tax collector in Jericho, one of the richest cities around, a resort town. He would have been hated by everybody; and Jesus was walking along, with thousands of people behind. Jesus stops the whole crowd, and gets him out of the tree, and He says: I'm coming to your house to eat with you today. Zaccheus is so moved by the compassion of Jesus Christ that he says: look, here and now - I'll give half of what I have to the poor. Jesus says: that's it, salvation has come to your house today. Whoa!

So what must I do to be saved? Do I need to give half of what I have to the poor? Most of us would say: man, I hope not!

Paul was an expert in the law - a master Pharisee, and he's on a donkey, on the road to Emmaus. This light appears, and knocks him off his donkey; and he asks Jesus a question: what must I do to be saved? In essence, Jesus says: you already are, I've prepared a man...

Zaccheus gave half of what he had to the poor; Paul asked a question.

There was this one lady (John 8) who was caught in the act of adultery, like in the act! Torah said you were supposed to stone her. The Mishnah, which was the Jewish compilation of civil and religious law, said that you could rough her up: you could strip her from the waist up to shame her, bring her out in public, and then stone her - so if they followed their culture, they would have beaten her up a bit.

Stripped her from the waist up (probably wasn't necessary, because they caught her in the act), and then they bring her out to Jesus. They needed Jesus - someone with authority to pass judgement; and they said to Jesus: the Torah says to stone her - what do you say?

He says: The Torah says stone her. I have to fulfil the Torah, so I say stone her; but I also say that you can't throw stones unless you haven't sinned - which is brilliant. So everybody's sitting there, and they get tired of holding their stones. They drop their stones; and it says: He doesn't say another word until they all leave. After they all leave, He asks a question.

He says woman, where are your accusers?

She says they're not here, they've all left. He says that's right, then neither do I condemn you. The Torah did say to stone adulterers; but the Torah also said: you have to have two witnesses, to condemn somebody. Jesus couldn't make her sin go away, so He made the witnesses go away - which automatically declared a mistrial. [

Therefore, there’s now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Christ's yoke rules heaven. Hope flows through suffering.

So what's the answer? Is it to give half of what you have to the poor? Paul just asked the question; this lady just answered a question (my accusers aren't here, and salvation came to us.)

One guy was a Roman centurion, which meant that he had to publicly proclaim that ‘Caesar was the son of God’. After he ordered all the beatings etc, and he saw Jesus took it without one word, he looks up at the crucifixion and he says: surely He was the son of God.

So what's the answer? Give half of what you have to the poor? Ask the right question? Give the right question? Make the right confession?

The thief on the cross (the guy next Him), in the middle of this horrible day, the thief on the cross looks over, and he... prays the sinner's prayer? No - He looks over, and he says: please remember me (likely the only thing he had breath to say). Please remember me - and on the basis of a 3-word request, Jesus says: that's it - today you will be with me in Paradise.

Another centurion that came to Jesus on the road - his daughter was sick. Jesus said: sure, I'll go pray for your daughter; and the centurion said: no, no, no, I don't want to waste your time. Just speak the word; if You speak the word, I know she'll be healed. Jesus said: I've never seen such faith in all of Israel.

There's another time... and this happened, and it's in Red Letters, and I can't make any theology work with this, I don't know the answer - I just know it's there, and we need to wrestle with it. This guy was paralysed, and his friends picked him up on the four corners of his mat. They lower him down through the roof, and Jesus looked at him and said: your sins are forgiven. It says: Jesus saw the faith of his friends, and proclaimed his sins forgiven!

So what's the answer? Is it ‘have the right friends’ now?

Jesus ‘saw the faith of his friends’, and proclaimed his sins forgiven. You say: Shane, what does that mean? I already told you - I don't know! Like, we would have no problem it said: Jesus saw his faith - and proclaimed his sins forgiven; but for Jesus to see the faith of someone else - and count it to this guy as righteousness, whoa! I can't make any theology work with that. I can just tell you it happened, and we can wrestle with it.

If I was here today, and I was a mother, and I had been believing for my unbelieving children - I would keep on doing it. Yeah! Jesus ‘saw the faith of his friends’ and proclaimed his sins forgiven.

So what's the answer? Ask the right question? Answer the right question? Give half of what we have to the poor? Make the right confession, or the right request? Is it to have the right friends?

There's this one guy in the temple, and he's so broken about something he's done - you don't know what he's done. There's this Pharisee by him, and the Pharisee says: oh, I thank You my God that I'm righteous, and I'm not like this sinner. And it says: the sinner in the temple beat his chest, and said: oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner - and Jesus said: surely that guy left righteous.

So is it to make a confession, some sort of request for mercy?

There's one they call the ‘Philippian Jailer’ - and his job was torturing people. It says there was this one time, where he came in to Paul and Silas' cell, and he bandaged their wounds. In the bandaging of their wounds, Paul said: today salvation has come to your house.

He was just kind.

In Luke 11:39-41, a Pharisee comes to eat with Jesus; and the Pharisee says: Jesus doesn't wash His hands before He eats. Why don't You wash Your hands before You eat? Jesus says to him: you fool, you make the outside of your cup and platter clean, but the inside is full of greed, and all manner of wickedness. To Jesus, greed leads to all manner of wickedness - it was all about greed.

He says: you keep the outside of your cup and platter clean, but the inside is full of greed which leads to all manner of wickedness. Don't you know that the one who made the outside of the cup, made the inside of the cup also? Then there's this implied question from the Pharisee (not written, but it's implied) - what should I do to fix this?

Jesus says: begin to give alms of all such things as you have to the poor, and your whole life will be made clean for you.

So is it: be generous with the poor?

There's this guy named Cornelius, in Acts 10, who was chosen by God to start the whole gentile church. Cornelius was a centurion, which meant he had to publicly proclaim that Caesar is god. When Peter shows up at his house, Cornelius bows down and worships Peter. Peter has to say: no, no! Get up! I'm just a man. You don't worship a man. That's like Christianity 101: don't worship men. Is that a guy you'd want to pastor your church? But Jesus chose him to start the whole gentile church. Cornelius asks: why me? Peter says: because your alms to the poor have gone up as a remembrance to God - and He has counted you righteous.

So once again, is it generosity to the poor?

In Acts 2, Peter was preaching to the crowd, and he said: “repent, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ - and anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”.

So what's the answer? You can't make a case that each individual case is not a legitimate salvation. You've got {Jesus, Peter, Paul} proclaiming people {righteous, saved, forgiven}. These are all legitimate salvation experiences - so what do we have to do?

Give half of what we have to the poor; ask the right question; answer the right question; beg for mercy; make the right confession; make a request; have the right friends; bandage people's wounds? The answer is yes.

Three things were true of all of these salvation experiences: 1) they were legitimate salvation experiences; 2) every one of them had an encounter with God and responded; 3) every one of them made an active move away from their slave-driver, and salvation came to them.

I'm not even necessarily talking about heaven and hell salvation; I'm talking about being slave-driver free.

Zaccheus' slave driver was greed; so He became generous, and money lost its hold on him - now he's slave driver free and salvation came to his house.

I believe in prayer and deliverance; but if your slave driver is greed, I could pray for you until Jesus comes back, and you'll still be greedy. The cure for greed is not prayer; the cure for greed is writing a cheque. When you write a cheque, and you release it, money loses its hold on you - and salvation can come to your house; because you're slave driver free now.

Paul's slave driver was: knowing everything. He knew everything, knew all the answers, and he finally admits: what must I do to be saved? In other words, I don't know what I'm doing; and Jesus said: okay, now you are. Hmm.

The lady caught in the act of adultery, her slave driver was: guilt and condemnation; and Jesus makes all the witnesses go away, so there's no guilt and condemnation - and the slave driver leaves.

The Philippian Jailer - his slave driver was cruelty. He had to be cruel; so he becomes kind, and cruelty loses its hold on his life, and salvation comes to his house.

The thief on the cross moved away from his slave driver by responding to God, and salvation comes to his house.

No matter where you are, hope can flow through suffering, because there's blood in the water. There is a way out of your slave driver; no matter how deep imbedded in that slave driver you are - hope can still flow.

You're serving a God who's not just interested in you going to heaven one day; He's interested in bringing heaven to your hell today. He's not just interested in you spending eternity with Him; He's interested in spending your life with you.

There's a river called Pishon, and it's flowing through the whole land of Havilah for your life; that whatever in your life is causing you suffering, whatever slave driver is causing you pain, hope can flow through suffering. Salvation is here.

I love that song: I know my God saves the day, and I know His word never fails, and I know my God makes a way for me, because salvation is here. I bless you today to know that hope; there is still blood in the water, and you and I can live slave-driver free.

Closing Prayer

I wonder if we could just do some business with God right now, and just be honest, because it's just between you and God.

1) What is your slave driver? Is it rejection, anger, bitterness, rage, malice, slander, filthy language? Is it a tendency to go back to the same thing? What's your slave driver?

2) Have you cried out to God because of it; or have you hidden it?

Just admit to God, and own whatever your slave driver is. Lord, I struggle with this, and it rules my life sometimes. Please help me. Just go and tell Him again. You'll feel better - get it off your chest, you just feel better. Say: Lord, I struggle with rejection and worry; sometimes worry just rules my life, it rules my thoughts at night. Oh, you'll just feel better.

3) Are you saved in the sense of your going to heaven, but you still go back to your slave driver?

If heaven and hell isn't the issue, is Jesus still worth following? Of course He's still worth following, because He has the best way of life. If you could go to heaven without Jesus - you can't, but if you could - He'd still have the best way of life. Where does salvation need to come to your house today?

The Days of Caesar (Shane Willard)

Sun 20 Apr 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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Luke 2:1 - “In the days of Caesar Augustus there went out a decree that: all the world should be taxed.”

What was going on in the world, when God chose to reveal Himself in Jesus?

Introduction

Sometimes we need theological teaching, and sometimes we just need a reminder of what God's word says about how to make a sandwich, you know what I'm saying?

I realise that in my walk with God, we needed to start challenging folks to not be a group of people on their way to heaven one day - although that's true.

Instead be a group of people who reveal God to everybody that comes in their contact, who actually minister the kingdom of God everywhere they go.

That tonight after church, if you were to go to KFC, that everybody who works at KFC would know that they've been touched by the power of God - not because you went in there and went weird; but because you went in there and were kind and compassionate, gracious, and slow to anger, and abounding in love.

I'm just challenging us as a collective people; what would happen if your city thought: they meet people's needs; like, they reveal God!

Individually, the sign that we wear around our neck, determines how people treat us; and the sign you wear around your neck corporately, will determine how people respond to you.

How many of you know people, and they have a sign around their neck that says: don't mess with me? You don't mess with them! Then those same people, a lot of times, get mad because no one talks to them!

I was hanging out with some rich people, at this really expensive art gallery, and I was like a fish out of water man! I looked the part, and I dressed the part, and I was with the social group that was the part... but how many of you know, once you're in it, it's kind of like: this is so obvious I don't belong?

The artist/salesperson was going around person to person, and they were trying to sell us art for our living rooms, and they'd walk around - it was very high pressure. I was listening to what they were saying, and they were using words and stuff I didn't understand. There was this real high pressure situation; so I'm looking at one of the pictures, and it said ‘3600’ so I assumed that was $3,600 (and not $36.00). So I'm going: oh man, what am I going to do here? I'm going to have to tell this lady no - and then she's going to be mad at me. I thought: can I pretend?

I thought: how can I get this lady off my back? She had never heard me talk before; so she came over said: hi, do you like this picture? I said (in a Southern accent): Hi there - Is this picture $36.00 or $3,600? I had this wild look in my eye - and she went: um, $3,600 - for a picture! You gotta be evermore kiddin' me!

She said: well sir, this would be a nice accent to your living room I'm sure. I said: listen here lady, I'm from Goose Creek, South Carolina; and I said: I don't know much about acrylics or oils or water colours - I know crayons!

I said: I'm gonna tell ya somethin' - I need somethin' for my living room. You got a big deer head stuffed full o' somethin' I can hang up? Or maybe a Budweiser sign or somethin' I can just hang right there in my livin' room? She said: no sir. I said: well that's alright then, I'll just look around.... She never messed with me the rest of the night - because of the ‘sign I was wearing around my head’ which said 'uneducated redneck'!

So my question to us tonight, the thing I want to challenge us with, is this: are we people who are content with going to heaven one day; or are we people who are committed to bringing heaven to earth to everybody around us?

One way we could do that, is with the sign around our neck - and I want to talk about one aspect of that tonight, by looking at the Christmas story in, Luke 2:1.

Main Message

Luke 2:1 - “In the days of Caesar Augustus there went out a decree that: all the world should be taxed.”

I started going back and looking at what it meant to live ‘in the days of Caesar Augustus’. What was going on in the world, when God chose to reveal Himself in Jesus? What was going on in the world around Him?

Well, the world was being ruled by the Romans; and the Romans had done something spectacular. They had established an empire that stretched from Spain to India. With no electricity, no internet, no phone, no massive way of communication, they established an empire that stretched all the way across Europe, and straight into India. It was one of the biggest leadership marvels ever.

But the problem with their empire was in the way they ruled it. There's a couple of ways that you can try to rule the world, but the way they chose to rule the world was through terror and oppression.

For example, there was a Roman general called Germanicus, who conquered the entire east side of the Roman Empire. The way he did that was by enslaving anyone of a different race - so if the colour of your skin was any different than the Romans then they would enslave you. Some say he took as many as 30 million slaves. He went in with swords, and if you agreed to be their slave – fine; but if you didn't, they would just kill you.

There was another general named Pompey and in his tenure as a Roman general, he took 12 million slaves. There was another general named Titus, who conquered Jerusalem, and took 500 people a day as slaves. One of the things Titus for amusement (because his men would get bored) is, they would put crosses up, and they would nail people to crosses in weird positions for amusement.

A Roman general named Cassius enslaved 30,000 people, in a town called Magdala. Then he changed the law in Magdala, and said that Magdala was going to be the headquarters of the Roman soldiers. Every person (particularly women) were now ‘Roman property'; and the Roman soldiers could do anything they wanted with those women, without any fear of recompense or consequences.

Can anybody think of a disciple Jesus had, from Magdala? Mary Magdalene! She'd been raped and used so many times by the Roman soldiers, that when she finally shows up to Jesus, she's completely full of devils - until Jesus sets her free.

In the days of Caesar Augustus, there was a Roman general named Varus; and in 14AD, Varus went into a city called Sapphirus; and Sapphirus determined that we were not going to bow to the wants of the Roman Empire. So he took his platoon in there, and what they would say: get your coins out everybody!

So everybody would get their coins out, and on the coins it would say: Caesar is lord. They'd say can you say that; and you're a good Jew? There's no God but Jehovah - so if you can’t say ‘Caesar is lord’, then they would just enslave you. Cassius had people outside putting crosses in the ground, so if you could not say ‘Caesar is lord’, they would take you outside and crucify you, in front of your whole neighbourhood.

This was the Roman general Varus, but in 14AD he went into a town called Sapphirus, and Sapphirus decided: we're not going to do that. There were 2,000 people living there, and Varus went in and crucified 2,000 people in one day, because they wouldn't say ‘Caesar is lord’.

Can you think of anybody who was 14 years old, in 14AD? Jesus - and He grew up in a town called Nazareth, which is only 800 metres from Sapphirus! So when Jesus was 14 years old, likely He would have heard the screams of 2,000 people, and the panic in His own town, of 2,000 people being crucified in a day, in the days of Caesar Augustus.

In 18AD Varus burned down a town called Emmaus; so when Paul was on the road to Emmaus... Just a few years before, Varus had burned that city to the ground, because they refused to bow to the Roman Empire.

So the Roman Empire was ruled by these generals, who were ruled by the Caesars. The Caesars were ruling the Roman Empire, and the first Caesar was a guy named Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar said he was god.

By the way, you'll see a running pattern here: all the Caesars said they were god. You cannot rule the world with just political power. You can't rule the world with a gun. Everybody's tried it - it's never worked, ever.

In order to rule the world, you have to have: a political power; and a religious power - you need to have both to rule the world; so these guys tried to combine both - and obviously we know that the one combination of all those is Jesus Christ, because He is both: prophet, priest and king.

He will rule the world one day fine, because He will combine: the political power, a kingly anointing; with that of a priestly anointing - and that is what it takes to rule the world.

Julius Caesar was on to this, Julius tried to do this, so he said he was god. The problem with all the Caesars saying they were god is: eventually they all died, which made them lose their credibility - and the Roman Empire fell.

Julius Caesar said he was god; and he also invented salad!

Julius Caesar died in 17BC, and so there's this funeral for him; and when Julius Caesar died, his son Octavius changed his name to Augustus Caesar, and became Caesar.

Augustus Caesar, which is ‘the days of Caesar Augustus’ - this is when Jesus was born. Augustus Caesar was the first guy to really unite the whole world under one leadership.

Augustus Caesar said that: since Julius was god, then he was the son of god.

So in 17BC, there was a guy who started making claims that god became flesh - and he was in fact the son of god. There were no Christians back then, but Christians everywhere would have been reacting to this. The church notoriously overreacts to everything - we just do!

Like there was this movie out about a year ago, and I don't even remember what it's called, but people were saying to me: You've got to tell people - don't go see the movie, Shane. Shane, we need to hear your voice from the stage - you've got to tell people: don't go and see this movie!

I'm going: what's wrong with the movie? This movie, it's trying to make a case that there is no God; and I'm going: aah, like God has never heard that before - and as if He can't handle it! Plus, you don't know anything about me. If I tell people: don't go do something - the first thing they do is: go do what I told them not to do!

So we overreact; and in this situation, this worked out good. God let the Roman Empire finance the propaganda throughout the known world, that it was possible for God to have flesh on. He said: we'll let the Romans do all the advertising, and then we'll show up with the real deal - because their guy is going to die... but we'll let them give the idea.

After Augustus Caesar, then you had a Caesar named Tiberius, and he was the guy that ruled during Jesus' ministry. In Josephus, it talks about Tiberius being the Caesar who was in charge of Pilot, who ordered Jesus' crucifixion.

Then you had Caligula - who was known for his debauchery and terror, extortion, and exposure of women. That was Caligula's claim to fame.

Nero was a particularly great one - he tortured Christians. One of his claims to fame was: he never wanted the light in his garden to go out, so he would use Christians to light his garden.

He would kidnap Christians, and have them in a line around his house. He would take a wooden stake, and stick it into their rectum, and he would plant them alive in his garden. Then he would douse them with fuel, and set them on fire, so that the light in his garden would never go out. When one burned up, the next one was then taken, so that the light would continually go.

The Bible was not written in a political vacuum. This is the stuff that was going on, when Peter wrote things like: respect and honour those who have the rule over you - for they are put there by God, for God's purposes.

Vespasian was another Roman emperor - who said he was god, and then he died by falling down and hitting his head. Titus, he's the guy that conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. Then of course you had Domitian.

Domitian was emperor between 75AD to 95AD, somewhere around there, and Domitian said he was god - just like everybody else. But he took it one step further, and said: since I'm god, I should be worshipped. People should not be allowed to live, until they worship me.

So he set up ecclesiae or churches. He set them up all around with monikers to himself, and he demanded that people come and give him an offering, before they could go buy and sell. So before you could go buy your weekly groceries, you had to go make an offering to Domitian as god.

The problem was, in an empire that big, how would you know who made the offering and who wouldn't? So they set up these ecclesiae, and then when people came in and made their offering to Domitian, in order to determine who gave the offering and who didn't, the people in charge of these worship centres would give you... a mark in your forehead or in your forehand.

The Jews didn't like this too much, because there's no god but Jehovah; so the Jews called Domitian “the Beast who comes from land and sea”. In 85-90AD, in order to buy and sell - you had to worship, and then take the mark of the Beast. This is about the time when John was in exile on the island of Patmos and started writing about the end times. He's using a present day reality to express a future implication, in the days of Caesar Augustus.

Caesar Augustus - in 17BC, his dad dies, and he ruled the whole world. He was the first person ever to unite the entire world. Since Julius was god, that meant Augustus was the son of god - who ruled the world, and should be worshipped. This is what he said about himself.

He had groups of people engrave his accomplishments on big stone tablets and monuments, and he hung them in the churches all around the empire, so that when people went to church to worship whatever god (there were a lot of different gods around), ultimately the one they saw was Caesar. He put his accolades in worship centres, and he hung them on stone tablets.

The sages called him: the one who was to come, in order to bring salvation, peace on earth and goodwill to all men. They said that he would establish a kingdom of peace, who would free men from all fear. This was all written about Caesar Augustus in 17BC.

In 17BC, a strange star appeared in the sky; so there at his father's funeral basically, and this strange star appeared in the sky. In those days, they employed people to do nothing but look at stars, so when this huge strange star appears in the sky, there was no question that people would notice it. He is at this big party, he has all of these witnesses, and they say: look, there's a strange big star appearing in the sky - and then it shot off.

Caesar Augustus said: that's proof that Julius Caesar was god, and he's ascending to the right hand of the gods. I am the son of god, and therefore now I am god, and should be worshipped. Caesar Augustus substantiated his claims to his god-ness by a strange star in the sky, which appeared in 17BC. His logic went like this: since I am the son of god, therefore I should be worshipped; so he established a 12-day celebration of his birth, which he called ‘Advent’.

At the end of the year, there was a 12-day period of time, where you had to go to celebrate the birth of the son of god, at a season called Advent.

At Advent, Caesar Augustus offered a few things to his followers: first was forgiveness of sins; second was a fresh start, a clean slate for the next year; and third was the opportunity to bring homage and gifts and worship him. Oh, and also everybody put on green and red sweaters with snowmen on them!

Caesar Augustus sets this thing up. Are you following me here, that the historians of that day, that are writing about the belief system of that day, are saying that: Augustus Caesar was the one who would bring salvation, peace on earth, good will to all men, a kingdom of peace who would free men from all fear. He would offer forgiveness and a fresh start to all of his followers who worshipped him. This was the days of Caesar Augustus.

Why wouldn’t God choose these days to reveal Himself in Jesus? For 17 years, He let the Roman Empire shoulder the financing of such horrible and huge marketing propaganda - that there's such a thing as ‘God’, existing in a man - and it went through the entire world!

If you lived in 17BC, and you wanted to get a message out from Spain to India - there's no printing press! There's no internet, mass email, TV, or any kind of mass media. There are town-criers, but that would be a far cry to get it from Spain - by the time that message got from Spain to India you'd have it all messed up.

If you wanted to get a message out to the entire empire, the way they did it was: they printed it on coins. They printed it on their money - because money would find its way through the whole empire very, very quickly.

As people living in 17BC, any time you wanted to know what the government was trying say, you would read your money - and there were messages on the money all the time from the government. It was kind of like a local news bulletin. They'd print it on the money, send it out, and then you'd read your money, and that was the message the government was trying to get you to see.

So they wanted to print a message on the Advent coins; and that message said: Caesar is lord, and there is no other name on earth by which men might be saved. Then they send these coins out everywhere.

Also historians say that the people believed that Augustus Caesar would be the bringer of peace on earth, goodwill to all men, a kingdom of peace, and he would also be a ‘multiplier of bread for his followers’. Do you see how, if Jesus is living and teaching in the days of Caesar Augustus - do you see how, a lot of what He did in His life, was not just teaching for a living - it was actually a political revolution.

The people believed that: Caesar Augustus is god, and this was substantiated by a large star in the sky, and that he would be a multiplier of bread for all people; then all of a sudden you have a rabbi who was born - and kings from other nations saw a large star in the sky to substantiate His birth. Then one of His first miracles is, He's standing in a place, and He has five loaves and two fish - and He multiplies the bread for His people.

This is not just meeting people's needs and letting them eat. This is a political revolution, that's saying: they've told you that the Caesars are god; but I'm here to tell you they're not the real deal - I am. My birth was established by a large star in the sky too, see? It was God one-upping everything they were trying to do.

Now what was the problem with this? They said that he would establish a kingdom of peace, but did Caesar Augustus establish a kingdom of peace? No, He ruled with fear. He didn't rule with peace, he had a giant army, with men with 70-pound packs, who could go into a town called Magdala, and rape every woman there without any fear of consequences. That's how he ruled the world. He ruled the world by teaching Roman soldiers to degrade people.

In those days, everybody had two hands: the right hand was the clean one! This was the one everybody wanted to sit at - the right hand of... something. It was the clean hand. The left hand was the dirty hand, primarily because they didn't have toilet paper – the same in India (and other places) today.

In those days, if I wanted to challenge you to a physical altercation - if we were socially equal, I would slap you with my right hand, because it's my clean hand, we're socially equal. We're socially and economically on the same page.

But if I saw you as a slave, or somebody underneath me, I would hold you with my right, and I would slap you with my left - essentially hitting you in the face with my poo-poo hand!

So it wasn't just: I'm slapping you; it was a degrading, you are below me. Remember when they came to Jesus, and they said: teach us how to live; and He said: if someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other cheek?

In other words, there's two ways to respond, if someone slaps you on your right cheek. You can attack them back - which that's going to get you killed; or you can just cop it - which that's going to take your dignity away.

Historians called Jesus the ‘Rabbi with the Third Way’. The third way to handle it is to ‘turn the other cheek’. A Roman soldier attacking a Jewish person would use their left hand, because they saw them as slaves.

If I'm going to slap this man on his right cheek, I use my left; so Jesus says: if someone slaps you on your right cheek, the answer is not to fight back, but to turn the other cheek. Make them slap you with their right hand.

A Roman soldier would have died before he would have slapped a Jew with his right hand, because it would have meant they would be declaring publicly: we are socially equal.

Jesus is saying: make it to where, if you hit me again, you're going to slap me as equals; and they won't hit you, in the days of Caesar Augustus.

It was also totally lawful in those days, that big Roman soldiers could come in here, and they had these big 70-pound packs. They could say: we've got 10 miles to walk today, so you're going to carry my pack. They never carried their own packs - they would make the Jews to do it. They'd say: you're going to carry my pack the next mile, then you the next, and you the next, and you the next - so I need 10 people. We've got a whole platoon of us here, so everybody's going to carry our packs a mile.

It was lawful for a Roman soldier to ask a Jew to carry his pack a mile, but more than a mile was cruelty - because when you're raping and pillaging the whole world, you have to worry about being cruel.

So Jesus says: if someone asks you to carry their pack one mile, go two. Get a reputation for going above and beyond.

Roman law, according to Josephus, says that if a Roman soldier was caught making a slave carry his pack more than a mile, he would be court marshalled, and docked a week's pay. So Jesus says: you want to get one-up on the Roman soldiers, next time they ask you to carry their pack a mile, gladly do it - and at the mile mark, take off running. You'll have a Roman soldier chasing you down, trying to get you to stop! Jesus was brilliant! He was brilliant, in the days of Caesar Augustus.

Caesar Augustus was said to have established a ‘kingdom of peace’, but instead he established a ‘kingdom of fear’. Caesar Augustus got followers through forced confession. He'd have big guys come in and put crosses in your front yard. The Ku Klux Klan did not make that up - Roman soldiers made that up: a cross in the front yard - ultimate intimidation, forced confession.

He financed his kingdom with oppressive taxes, extreme taxation on folks. Some historians agree that in Galilee, which is where Jesus grew up - in Galilee, between temple tax, wages tax, goods and services tax, that they were all paying about 80% of their wages to taxes.

People were losing land, which had been given to them since the Book of Judges. The people couldn't maintain the land, so a very few rich people would come in, and they'd buy the land off these people. Then they would either: make them slaves on their own land; or the people would leave, and go to another town, and pick up a trade.

How many of Jesus' stories are started by saying the kingdom of God is like a group of people, and they're working this land that they don't own, but they really care about it? Everybody had been standing there going: that's us - He's talking about us. We're the kingdom of God.

How can we be the kingdom of God? We're slaves. What's going on here? People were losing everything, so they had to go make a living somewhere else. Now with that as the backdrop let's look at Luke 2, and it happened in the days of Caesar Augustus...

Everything we just described, that the entire world should be taxed, as if they weren't doing that enough. This taxing was first made when Quirinius was governor of Syria; and all went to be registered, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee (to be taxed), out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David - which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David.

So what does that tell you about Joseph (Jesus' Father on earth)? It meant that he had lost his land, and now he was forced to work as a carpenter in Nazareth – this vastly affected him.

He took Mary, his betrothed wife, being with child. While they were there, the days for her deliverance was fulfilled, and she brought forth her Son, the firstborn and wrapped Him and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

“In the same country, there were shepherds living in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came on them and the glory of the Lord shone around about them and they were grievously afraid.”

In Hebrew culture, an angel did not invoke comfort. We like to think about ‘guardian angels’ and stuff - it makes us feel good; but to a Hebrew culture, they did not want to see angels - it meant that death was imminent.

The first angel in the whole Bible was an angel set to guard the tree of life in the garden - and if you came by, you would be killed. There were angels over the mercy seat, and even if the high priest went behind that, he would be killed. There were angels sewn into the veil that separated the Holy place from the Holy of Holies - angels were sewn into there! The statement was: get back, get back! Death is imminent!

They put 30 foot-wide angels over the top of the Holy of Holies, on the outside - communicating clearly to people: back off. The only place I can find in the whole Bible that describes what an angel looks like is in Ezekiel 10, and Ezekiel has this vision. It says: 'wheels-within-wheels.

The word is: ophanim-within-ophanim; ophals - like ophthalmology. It was the word for angels e.g. cherubim, seraphim and ophanim.

He said: I'm seeing these cherubim, and they've got ophanim all around them; and in his description of what an angel looked like, it said it had ‘four faces’. So you've got this creature with four faces, with eyes all over their body, eyes all over their wings, eyes all over their backs. Four faces - so you can't sneak up on them; and wherever an angel moved, the faces and the eyes went with them; and when the angel lifted his wings, there were eyes, within eyes, within eyes, within eyes. If you saw that on TV - you would turn it off before your children saw it! But this was an angel!

Remember in Isaiah, an angel appears to him; and it says that he fell down and pretended like he was dead? Like, no need - I'm dead already!

Any time an angel appears to a man, it always invokes immediate fear - and they always start the same way. If they're going to kill him, they're just going to kill him; if they're not going to kill him, what do they always say?

“Fear not, for I bring you good news”.

In other words: fear not - I'm not here to kill you (it was the exception to the rule). When an angel appeared to you, you thought you were dead.

So there's this group of shepherds, and this angel appears, and the glory of the Lord shone around about; and it says: they were grievously afraid - and watch what the angel says...

Now remember, in the days of Caesar Augustus - this is what the angel says: “And the angel said to them: do not fear, for behold, I give you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour - and His name is Christ, and He is Lord.”

In other words, Caesar isn't Lord - Jesus is. To the shepherds, living in the days of Caesar Augustus - Caesar Augustus was Lord; but now you have angels appearing in heaven, and they're saying: Caesar isn't Lord, Jesus is.

The shepherds would have got excited, because Caesar had promised ‘peace on earth’, and ‘goodwill to all men’ - but he didn't deliver. He delivered fear and oppression, and 80% taxes - and ultimate fear of losing land that had been in your father's possession since the Book of Judges.

He was not a good king; and now, from the sky, it's being announced that there is another king. This is a sign to you: you will find a Baby wrapped lying in a manger. Suddenly there was an angel, and a multitude of heavenly host praising God, and saying:

”Glory to God in the highest; and on earth, peace and goodwill to all men!”

God is saying: if you want to substantiate yourself with celestial signs, I'll give you celestial signs - I'll give it to you! I'll put a large star in the sky; I'll get kings to come from other nations; we'll put up a multitude of heavenly hosts; witnesses everywhere!

How fast do you think the word would have spread: listen, there's a new king in town!

This threatened Herod, who was the token king of the Caesar. Herod ordered that all the baby boys should be killed.

That tells you who the real God is. If I say: I'm God; and you say: you're God; then whoever the real God is - He's the one that's not scared! He's the one that's not threatened!

Even later in His life, they were saying of Jesus: You say You're the king of the Jews? You say this? He goes: yeah, it is what you say. He goes: ah, whatever. Essentially, at Jesus' trial, this was Jesus' answer to everything: whatever. At the end of the day, I'm going to win, you're going to lose - do whatever you want to do. Like, whoever the real God is, isn't afraid;

“And it happened, as the angels departed from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another: indeed, let us go to Bethlehem, and see this thing which has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. And hurrying they came and sought out both Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in the manger. In seeing, they publicly told about the words spoken to them concerning this child, and all those who heard marvelled about the things spoken to them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things in her heart”.

Sometimes the best thing to do, when God shares something with you, is to keep it in your heart. Sometimes people can't handle it.

“...and the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen.” - because they were living in the days of Caesar Augustus.

Caesar Augustus versus Jesus Christ:

Caesar Augustus ruled with violence; Jesus Christ ruled with peace.

Caesar Augustus ruled by ruling and oppression; Jesus Christ ruled by serving.

Caesar Augustus said my way of life says: you gain authority by oppression; Jesus said, My way of life is: you gain authority through generosity.

If someone asks you to go one mile, go two; you'll be in charge. If someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other cheek; you'll be in charge. That authority is never through oppression, but through generosity and serving.

Caesar Augustus was all about government care: who's going to take care of the poor? The government will - it's the start of socialism. Jesus Christ said: no, we need to have community care, where we all meet the needs of other people together.

The biggest difference between Augustus Caesar and Jesus is: one is dead; and one lives.

I don't have to tell you, history tells us, that the Jews and the Romans came together, and they killed Jesus. They thought that by killing Him, they could ruin His way of life.

I can imagine the conversation between Jesus and Satan in hell. He'd be like: man, you thought that you could end My way of life by killing Me, but let Me tell you what I'm going to do:

I'm not going to get even at anybody who wronged Me - I'm going to forgive them all. I'm going to actually cook breakfast on the beach for the very people who abandon Me, in four days time. Four days later, Jesus is cooking breakfast on the beach, for the very people who disowned Him at His time of need - and He didn't even bring the sin up.

He just said: do you love Me today? They said: yes. He said: let's go!

What does this mean for us? It means that Jesus is Lord - and He gets the last word; Caesar doesn't get the last word, Jesus does.

Who is the Caesar in your life? What's ruling your life, other than God? What's causing you to feel driven by something else? What represents the entity in your life that takes you down the road you don't want to go to - the road of sadness, and shame, and guilt?

The message of Luke 2 is this: there's a new Lord in town - and He's the real one. He's going to live - the other's going to die. Jesus gets the last word, not Caesar.

Anger doesn't get the last word - God does. Lies in your head don't get the last word - God does. Unforgiveness doesn't get the last word - God does. Feeling disheartened doesn't get the last word - God does. When you're doing all you can do, and it still doesn't work - God still gets the last word. Greed doesn't get the last word - God does. Failure can't have the last word - God does. Rejection can't have the last word - God does.

Is Jesus the Lord of your life; or is the oppressor? Where have we settled for the oppressor, instead of the lordship of Jesus Christ? The oppressor rationalises sin, and keeps us in bondage. The oppressor tells us you can't do what's right. The oppressor tells us that your feelings rule you; just don't do anything you don't feel like doing - your feelings rule you. The oppressor tells you that you're in bondage to your emotions now. The oppressor tells you that you're the most important person in your universe.

That's what the oppressor says - but that doesn't get the last word. There's a real Lord, and He's come to town - His name is Jesus Christ; and we are called to reveal Him to the world, and not the Caesar; we're called to be a group of people who reveal the lordship of Jesus Christ, not the lordship of our slave-driver.

So let me just end this with a couple of application questions:

1) What's oppressing you?

2) Is Jesus Lord, or is the oppressor lord?

In my last prayer this morning, I talked about building a throne, and there can only be one king. The Bible says that as we worship, we build a throne, that God is enthroned upon it.

Do you realise that in a kingdom. there's only room for one king; so wherever Caesar is lord in your life, when you build a throne for Jesus Christ in it, there's only room for one king - and the oppressor leaves.

Who's oppressing you? Is Jesus Lord, or is the oppressor?

3) Who are you oppressing? Who are you guilty of being Caesar in their life (maybe by our apathy)?

The last question I want to ask, and this is the most important question is:

4) What does your coin say? What does the coin of your life say?

If I was to ask the 10 closest people in your life, if you could sum up the motto of that person's life in one sentence, what would it be?

Does your coin say: my oppressor is lord? Does your coin say: my anger is lord?

Let me ask it this way: if a Buddhist monk from China, or Cambodia, an educated Buddhist monk, who had memorised all the teachings of a rabbi named Jesus (just because he wants to be educated) - if he looked at a video of your life, would he know that you're a follower of Rabbi Jesus? Or would he think you're a follower of: anger, rage, resentment, malice, slander, filthy language?

If we looked at a video of your life, what does your coin say? Does your coin say: anger is lord? Does your coin say: rejection is lord? Depression is lord? Emotions are lord?

What does your coin say, because the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is: those things don't get to be lord - Jesus gets the last word.

Whatever the coin of your life says, is what is getting passed around your community - and that is what is affecting everybody else.

We can be a group of people that our coins say: Jesus is Lord - and not just lip service; our lives say: Jesus is Lord - and in that, we become kingdom people; because Jesus gets the last word, and not Caesar.

I bless you tonight to know that in Luke 2, when Jesus decided to be born in one of the worst times in human history - Jesus conquered death, hell and the grave. But bigger than that for us today, Jesus conquered Caesar.

Do you realise that 100 years from this point, Christians are ruling the place? By Constantine – Constantine is going: yeah, Christianity is the only way.

Christianity, the way of Jesus Christ, conquered not just death, hell and the grave - but it conquered every oppressor in our life.

I bless you today to know that you can go home tonight, knowing that whatever your coin said before, it doesn't have to say it now. You can be delivered from all those things, because Jesus is Lord, and He wants that to be on our coins. Let's pray together.

Closing Prayer

Now Lord, You're the best. You're the best, like truly the best.

We just stop and we repent for having something else on our coins. We repent Lord, for living life in a way that: we get to go to heaven one day; and phooey on everything else. No, You called us to a better life.

Forgive us God, for not being the people who carry the coins that say: Jesus is Lord. May the coin of our life communicate to the world around us that Jesus is Lord - not by necessarily tracts and witnessing and all that stuff - but by our lives, the way we respond, the way we talk, the way we act, our compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love light. May that be the case God.

Lord, I pray for whatever's oppressing us, that it would be released now. If there's someone who's being oppressed of the devil in his entire way, I pray that just right now, as I'm talking, that You would release them from that hold, that that stronghold would be released from their life, and a deep inner knowing, of knowing that Jesus is Lord of this situation - that deep inner knowing, would just settle over us now.

Bowl or Birthright (Shane Willard)

Sun 27 Apr 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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The most hated man in the whole Bible, by far the most foolish man who ever lived. This guy was basically an honest, hard-working man, who traded everything he could be, for one meal - just beans.

Introduction

I want to talk to you this morning about the most hated man in the whole Bible - Genesis 25:27-34.

I want to talk to you about decisions that we make, and what a lot of things come down to. The Bible is full of awesome things; people fulfilling great potential, and doing great things for God - like the stories of David and Goliath.

Normally when we retell (or illustrate) the story of David, we make him a small, little boy. David was like a trained assassin - he killed a lion and a bear with his bare hands! This was a guy that you just wouldn't want to run into. He just happened to be the youngest, the runt of the litter, so to speak, in terms of age and hierarchy. However, he goes up against Goliath; so no matter how bad David was - he was the underdog.

Instead of following the crowd (of the whole armies of Israel), he steps up and says: I am going to make a difference; and He steps out to do it. Something happens inside of us, when we read stories like that, and we go: yes!

Like Noah standing against the whole culture – he would have been ridiculed, and made fun of. I loved Evan Almighty, because it retold the story of what would have happened if a person in power started building a boat proclaiming there's a flood.

Yet you read it, and you see it all work out, and you're like: yes! This is incredible! The Bible's full of stories like that; about people who kind of make their way and get free.

Mary Magdalene, and Peter, and guys like James and John - the sons of Thunder - you didn't get that nickname going to Sunday school; and Jesus takes people like that and He moulds them into something bigger.

But then there are also sad things; and that starts in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve have oneness with God; and they trade perfect oneness for likeness - a chance to be like God - which is a really bad trade.

They traded: oneness with God; for a chance to have their life defined by how well they navigate good and evil.

No matter which side of the tree of knowledge and good and evil you pick from, it's the wrong side, because ultimately it messes you up. If you make 100 decisions in a day, and 98 of them are good, and 2 of them are evil, you go to bed thinking about the evil. It just messes us up - no matter what side of that tree.

So you have pictures of people all through the Bible, that God had these great plans for; and then, for whatever reason, they sold it out for something way, way cheaper.

Main Message

I want to read you one of these stories from Genesis 25. This guy is the most hated man in the whole Bible. All through history, the rabbis have called him: by far the most foolish man who ever lived.

You would think that this guy would have been a child-sacrificer, or an adulterer, murderer, fornicator, or some kind of big sin. If they'd had heroin back then – then heroin! But this guy was basically an honest, hardworking man, who traded everything he could be, for one meal.

“The boys grew up, and Esau became a skilful hunter, a man of the open country”.

You guys think I'm a redneck? Ya'll are rednecks! I mean what I was seeing those guys do back there last night - that's redneck. They were eating with no forks! I made my plate, and I said: where are the forks? They said: this is a men's meeting - we don't need forks. I was like: oh, right, yeah! Rednecks!

So in this culture we like that. We like this guy already: Esau, a skilful hunter - a man of the open country; while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents - which is basically staying at home.

Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

You've got this basically honest, hardworking guy - a skilful hunter, a man of the open country. He has one brother, and the other brother is basically a mama's boy, a homebody - and you get a clue as to why. Jacob loved the older brother more; and Rebekah loved the younger brother more.

So you have this family dynamic, where the dad loves one son more. How many of you know that it's messed up already? The dad loves one son more; so the mother compensates, by loving the other one more.

Jacob's name meant: deceiver, or liar. The Hebrew idea of Satan was ‘arch-deceiver’, so the Hebrew idea of Satan is actually: arch-Jacob; or King Jacob.

So Jacob's name meant liar, deceiver. Imagine that; go to bed liar, get up liar, do your chores liar, come to dinner liar, like all his whole life.

So this boy grew up with a dad who he knew loved his brother more; and with a mum who loved him more; and his whole life he was called liar. Over the course of time, it messed him up, as you can imagine.

It says: once when Jacob was cooking some stew... and that’s homebody, mama's-boy stuff. I mean look - there are men today who can't cook stew!

Jacob was cooking some stew; and Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob: quick, let me have some of that red stew, because I'm famished. That is why today he is called Edom - that's a slam. That's a joke that they're making at him.

Jacob replied: first sell me your birthright. Look, I'm about to die, Esau said. What good is my birthright to me? That's the key phrase in the whole passage: what good is my birthright to me?

But Jacob said: swear to me first; so he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave him some bread, and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, then he got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright.

There’s all of this imagery, and this isn't just a story about two brothers in the ancient Near East; it’s a story about me and you. Where do you find yourself in this story? Who are you in this story?

He's just hungry, and he says: quick, give me some of that red stew. Now in Hebrew he just says: “Edom, Edom”. They didn't have any adverbs, so if they wanted to say something with exclamation, they would just say it twice (or three times). So if they wanted to say ‘peace’, they would say ‘shalom’; but if they wanted to say ‘really serious peace’ they'd say ‘shalom shalom’. If they wanted to say: ‘a peace that surpasses all understanding’ they'd say ‘shalom shalom shalom’.

So when he goes in he says: 'edom, 'edom; which just means: the red, the red.

King James version says: give me some of that red, give me some of the red. They add stew in the NIB, because it doesn't make sense otherwise. Let me just say it this way: give me some of that red stuff, that red stuff. I really, really, really, want the red stuff - 'edom, 'edom.

The Hebrew word for red is 'edom; and the Hebrew word for blood is dam. Blood was a mysterious substance to the Hebrew people, because if you ran out of it, you died - but you couldn't see it. It was a life source (the life is in the blood).

So he comes in and he goes 'edom, 'edom, give me some of that red stuff, that red stuff. Give me some of that life source, that life source; and you see the imagery played out in his dialogue. He says: I'll die if I don't get the red stuff, I'll die.

Jacob sees that his eye has hooked to the red stuff, and it started multiplying, to the point where he convinced himself he would die if he didn't have it. Has that ever happened to us, where we thought wanted something so bad that we would die without it? It is the 'edom, 'edom.

In that moment, there was a decision created, and that decision was this: there was a bowl, and there was a birthright.

Jacob says: sell me your birthright first. Then Esau makes the stupidest statement in the whole Bible, saying: “what good is my birthright to me, if I'll die without what's in the bowl”? What good is my birthright to me?

It says that he despised his birthright, meaning to profane it. It's the word profane, where we get the word profanity. It means to take something that was sacred, and treat it as common.

He treated his birthright as profanity, taking something as sacred as: God's call on his life; and he traded it for a bowl.

They make fun of him, and throw in a slam. Moses said: so that's why, from this day forward, they called him “Edom, Edom”, which means “the red man”.

The Edomites came from the red region - they were descendants from the “red man”.

From this day forward, everybody reminded him of this one decision he made, to trade everything he could be for a bowl of 'edom, 'edom.

Birthright, first of all, was: the carrying of the family name for survival. Birthright was everything. They were nomadic people - all related. Everybody picked up tents and just went; and their aunts and uncles lived next to them. Your carrying of your family name was huge for the survival of the surname - symbolic of everything your family stood for; it reflected on the whole family.

Birthright entitled you to twice the inheritance - a double portion - compensation for all the responsibility you had as a first born.

He said: what good is my birthright to me?

A birthright was a summary statement of everything a person could be, a destiny, a family tree, everything they could be; and he traded everything he could be, for one momentary urge - the 'edom, 'edom.

Have you ever traded God's best for your life, for one momentary urge? Has your eye ever hooked to something, and even though it wasn't of God, it wasn't a part of God's plan for your life, you convinced yourself: 'edom, 'edom - I'll die without what's in that bowl?

Satan always says: yep, trade me your birthright first; then I'll give it to you. He never lets you taste what's in the bowl first. Trade everything you could be; then I'll give you, what you think you'll die without.

How many can attest, that once you trade everything you could be, for one urge - once you have the urge, it wasn't worth it? It just wasn't worth it. Some of us have made decisions so poor in this that every day we're reminded: I traded what I could be, for one bowl. I traded everything I could be for one bowl. The Bible is full of stuff like this.

Exodus 3:10-11 , God is talking to Moses saying: now go. I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring My people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God: who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? So God says: Moses, I have this huge plan for you, this huge birthright, this huge destiny. I want you to be responsible for getting 3-5 million people out of slavery into freedom. That's huge - and I've called you to do it; and Moses says: why me?

Exodus 4:10-12 the conversation goes on for the whole chapter. Moses said to the Lord: O Lord, I have never been eloquent - neither in the past, or since You have spoken to Your servants; I am slow of speech and tongue. And the Lord said to him: who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight, or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go. I will help you speak, and I will teach you what to say.

God is saying: Moses, I've got this plan for you, this huge birthright; but Moses trades it in for a bowl that says: I'm not qualified. God is saying: I have this huge plan for you; and he said: yeah, but I got a 'C' in public speaking. Moses is essentially saying: I don't have the skill.

In Judges 6:14-16, the Lord turned to him and said - go in the strength you have, and save Israel out of Midianites hands. Am I not sending you? Gideon asked: But Lord, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least of my family. The Lord answered: I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites.

The same group of people gets out of slavery; then ends up in slavery again; and God shows up to a man named Gideon. He says: Gideon, I want you to go get all these people free; and Gideon's like: yeah, have you seen my family? They're white-trash (or olive trash)! Like, have you seen where I come from?

I'm the least of the tribes, the least of the clan, the least of the family - this isn't me! Once again, an excuse - so one excuse was: I don't have the skill; the other excuse was: I don't have the heritage.

Jeremiah 1:4-8 - the word of the Lord came to me, saying: before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as the prophet to the nations. I said: Oh sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a child; but the Lord said to me: do not say ‘I'm only a child’. You must go to everyone I send you to, and say whatever I command you to. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you, and will rescue you, declares the Lord.

Once again, I have this huge plan for you Jeremiah – huge; but Jeremiah says: yeah, but I don't have the maturity. We're always making excuses. The 'edom, 'edom. How many of us at times have traded everything we could be, for one momentary urge?

Matthew 23, Jesus is mourning over Jerusalem, because Israel was called to be a light to the nations.

Exodus 3 - God chose to rescue these people out of slavery, and put them into freedom; so God's big idea started with taking a group of oppressed, marginalised people, and moving them out of slavery and into freedom.

Isaiah 49:6 says it is a light thing, that I would just forgive you. The heavier thing is you being a light to the nation.

So in Matthew 23:37-39, here's a group of people who have had this huge destiny on their life, to be a light to the nations; but if you know the history of Israel - they didn't do it. They didn't measure up.

Jesus is mourning, and He says: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who have killed the prophets, and stoned those sent to you! How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen would gather her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look! Your houses is now left desolate; you will not see Me again until you say: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

Israel, I've got this huge plan for you – huge; but you were not willing. You've chosen the bowl, instead of the birthright. You had this huge birthright, but you chose the bowl. You chose the urge to kill the prophets, because they were challenging your thinking. You chose the urge to live for yourself, instead of living for your birthright. You chose the bowl instead of the birthright.

Colossians 3:5-10, Paul says this: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived; but now you must rid yourself of all such things: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off the old self with its practices, and put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge of the Creator day by day.

Paul is saying: you used to live with a bowl. You used to live from urge, to urge, to urge, to urge, to urge. You used to live that way - but now I want you to live for the birthright. Will you live for the bowl; or will you live for the birthright?

The huge part of this is that: forgiveness is not the issue. Does God forgive sexual immorality, impurity, greed, lust, malice, slander, anger? Does God forgive all those things? Yes.

Jesus said: every sin a man commits will be forgiven him - except for unforgiveness, and blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Of course He forgives him. It's not a matter of forgiveness; it's a matter of: your birthright or your bowl.

It's a matter of: are you living for your best life. Will the story of your life read: my life was defined by my destiny; or, my life was defined by my bowl?

Hebrews 12:16-17 mentions Esau again:

“See to it that no one is sexually immoral, or is Godless - like Esau”.

Esau was really just an honest, hardworking guy, who made one bad decision to eat stew - and he sold it for his birthright. That's all he ever did.

Hebrews 11 is that list that we call the Hall of Faith - heroes of the faith. Abraham gave his wife to Pharaoh's harem; Isaac did something similar. Samson was sleeping with prostitutes on his wedding night, because he got depressed, because his best man stole his wife. Jephtha sacrificed his own daughter on an altar he created, because of a rash vow.

David committed adultery, got the woman pregnant; and then to cover it up, decided to kill her husband. In trying to kill her husband, he ended up killing 17 men in one day, trying to kill one to cover up a sin he did. He made it into the heroes.

Moses, a premeditated murderer: I looked this way and that, and seeing no one: I killed the man, and hid him in the sand - hero of the faith.

Somehow they all worked it out, to where they were heroes of the faith; but then you've got a guy who was an honest, hardworking guy, who just came in one day, and was so hungry he thought he would die without the 'edom, 'edom.

He traded his birthright for one bowl and now everybody picks on him: See to it that no one is Godless like Esau – who, for a single meal, sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son.

Afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind - even though he sought it with tears!

The word ‘Godless’ there, we also translate ‘profane’, or ‘despised’, in the Old Testament. He's saying: why did they hate him so bad?

These other guys, they made awful mistakes; but in their hearts, they were men after God. You could be a man after God, and make a horrible mistake, but what they say about Esau is this: in his heart, he lived as though there was no higher purpose for his life than a bowl.

What good is my birthright to me? Are you kidding me?

In other words, there's no higher purpose in my life than my urges. Nothing else matters, except for my urges.

1) Do we live as though there's no higher purpose, profaning our destiny?

If you were to do an honest self-assessment of your life today, do you live for the birthright; or do you live as if there's no higher purpose than what you want and feel like doing today?

This is some pop psychology man, I'm telling you, I'm a trained psychologist, and I have heard psychologists tell clients: you don't have to do anything you don't feel like doing.

Hello! How's that going to work? Put that into a marriage: Wife, you don't have to do anything you don't feel like doing. Husband, you don't have to do anything you don't feel like doing. Of course, they only tell the wife that one; Men just have to suck it up!

Do we live like there's no higher calling for our life - a higher calling to be called into the image of Jesus Christ, to live what His destiny is for us?

2) This pattern simply leads us from living from urge to urge.

Is your life defined from living from bowl to bowl; or is it defined by something larger? Do you find yourself giving in to the bowl, all the time? Do you find your eye's getting hooked to things, all the time? 'edom, 'edom - and then when that wears off you get another 'edom, 'edom. Then when that wears off you've got another 'edom, 'edom, red stuff, red stuff, red stuff, red stuff, red stuff, red stuff?

Some examples: sexuality, walking too close to the line of urge to urge. The hunger drive and the sex drive are the two biggest drives God gave us; but it can also be a bowl.

How about: the urge to talk about other people badly, to slander other people, to talk about all the negative things people are going through? We profane them, when God made them in righteousness and true holiness; and they're going through something, but we profane them. It's an urge that we have.

How about taking no regard for what we put in our body? One more piece of cake, it's an urge - it's the 'edom, 'edom. Yeah, I'll start my diet tomorrow, 'edom, 'edom. Red stuff, red stuff - I'll die without that piece of cake!

And how many of us have ever been in that situation where you resisted the piece of cake - and you actually felt so much better that you did? Once we eat the piece of cake, we always say: I shouldn't have done that. When I take something into my body, which can rob me of my birthright, we simply live from urge to urge.

Esau failed to live with a sense that there was something greater to his life. Esau was convinced, and what we get convinced about is: we'll die without it! It's the 'edom, the red, the life source - I'll die.

What good is my birthright to me? I have to have what's in that bowl! He was so convinced he would die without... beans! After he sold his birthright, Jacob gave him some lentil stew - Lentils are beans

A teenage girl came to my office, 16 or 17, and she thought that if she crossed the line sexually with him, it would make their relationship more meaningful; because she was convinced she was in love with him; and he was in love with her; and she thought by crossing the line sexually, that it would make their relationship better - and plus the normal urges, the 'edom, 'edom - and so she crosses the line with him sexually. Then after it's over, she looks over at him and thinks... beans! It was just beans!

Anyone who's ever lived for the next hit in an addiction - you live for it, the 'edom, 'edom - I've got to have it, I'll die without it. Then you have it, and after it's over, it's just beans.

The husband who thinks he might die without the next drink, so he takes it, and he ruins his family - and it's just beans. The mum who thinks that they have to yell, and talk down to their child to get things off their chest - they yell, and they desecrate their child, and they take all their dignity away - but at the end of that, it's just beans.

The person who has to just have the new car; I have to have the V8. Chicks dig the V8. I have to have it, so you go to the car lot. If you're a car salesman, listen - I grew up around the car business, I’m not making fun of you. I'm just telling you, at the car lot, car salesmen are trained professionals at 'edom, 'edom.

You NEED this car! Chicks dig the car! You deserve reliable transportation, 'edom, 'edom, 'edom. You trade every bit of financial peace you have, to buy something that's going to lose 50% of its value in three years - and you're going to pay 9% interest on it. Whoa!

Anybody ever had car fever besides me? The car salesman's can smell car-fever. They have a car-fever thermometer! They just don't tell you that it’s rectal! It's 'edom, 'edom, 'edom!

They put the payments off for 45 days, so it has time to wear off; then the first payment comes due, and you look in your garage, and you're like: I'm paying how much for this; and it's going down how fast in value? That was beans!

The impulse buyer, who just has to put it on a credit card... We buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't like!

I have a friend who's still paying for a beer he bought in 2001! He went through this season, he'd got partying a lot, and he's stupid, so he'd go out and say: everything's on me! He's still paying for that on his credit card – beans!

That person who just has to tell you all the news about 'x' person; so if you're going to be spiritual, you could pray about it. After they get it off their chest, after you've listened to it, you feel dirty, and it's just beans.

The church member who just can't resist the urge to be critical about their pastor - beans. The person who just has to be negative and critical about their husband - beans. The person who has to withdraw, and be mean to their wife - beans.

Amnon convinced himself he loved Tamar so much, that he said he became sick, and he thought he would die without her. She wouldn't have anything to do with him – but since he was so convinced that he'd die without having her, he raped her. After he raped her, he hated her more than he loved her - beans. Trading everything you can be, for a bowl of beans.

Luke 9:23, this is Jesus talking, and this sentence makes perfect sense without one word – “then He said to them, if anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. That sentence makes more sense without ‘daily’, but Jesus adds the word daily.

Today there's a paragraph written about your life, and you're the author; and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day. What Jesus wants us to avoid is this: getting to 75 years old, looking back on our life, and realising my life could have been so much more; but I allowed my life to be defined by a series of urges.

We can live our life from urge to urge, and it'll be defined by this thing - which is just beans; or we can take up our cross daily, and remind ourselves every day that there's a destiny that God wants us to fulfil, such a higher purpose in my life - that my life doesn't have to be defined by the bowl. It can be defined by the birthright.

You serve a God who believes in you more than you believe in Him.

You have a God who has a birthright for you; and if you've given your life to the bowl up to this moment, He's willing to forgive you, give you a clean slate and go forth. There's a birthright for you. You can live as though there's a higher purpose.

To live as though there's no higher purpose than your urges, is profaning God's destiny for you. Say NO to the bowl, and enter into the birthright.I promise you this: If you eat what's in the bowl, at the end of the day, it's just beans.

Closing Prayer

Is there anybody here today that hasn’t made a decision to follow Jesus Christ?

My life has been defined from urge to urge. I'm at a point in my life where I realise how meaningless that is, and I want my life to matter. I need to start that journey, by crossing the line, and accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord; and accepting Him I want to be in His plan. That is the best way to live.

It's not the words of this prayer that save you, it's the response you've already made in your heart. You've made a decision in your heart to respond to God and that is so fantastic, but we're going to all pray this prayer with you.

“My Lord Jesus Christ, thank You for coming. Thank You for dying for me. I confess that I'm a sinner. I have no hope of saving myself, but You Lord, I ask You to forgive me, cleanse me, heal my heart, forgive me for my bowls, and enter me into my birthright, in Jesus' name. Amen.”

This has no power on you anymore! You don't have to live from urge to urge. Jesus died so sin doesn't have to be your master, that there's a bigger calling, a bigger birthright.

Becoming Less Important (Shane Willard)

Sun 27 Apr 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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Even in Hell, the rich man still thought he was better than the beggar: send Lazarus here to serve me in Hell; send him back to Earth to serve my family.

God is not looking to make ‘rich men’, but a nation of ‘wealthy stewards’, who use their money as God would have them use it - for the glory of God and the kingdom of God.

God would want every one of us to be so wealthy, that other nations would call us ‘blessed’ - but it's not wealth for our sake, so we could build bigger barns to store it, but wealth to take care of the people who can't take care of themselves.

Philippians 2:3 – “Let nothing be done through strife or vanity; but in humility of heart, let everyone consider others better than themselves.

Let everyone consider others better, consider others better. Now if we're honest, we have a problem with that. We have a real problem with that.

We have no problem saying: someone's better at something that me - he's a better singer than me; but to say somebody's ‘better than me’ - now we've got a problem.

But Paul's yoke, when he was summarising the way we're supposed to live, he says: consider others better - and I think, in one sentence, he summarises a successful life.

If we really considered others better, can you imagine what that would do to stress? 90% of the time we get stressed out, it’s about... other people. If we consider them better, it takes away our stress.

What would it do to anxiety and anger? What would happen to our anger problem if we simply could consider others better? What would happen to your job? What would happen with your relationship with that guy at work, you know, the one that you just really believe God should just go ahead and take him to heaven? That guy! What would happen if we could consider him better?

What would happen to road rage, when someone cuts you off on the busy streets of Hastings? This illustration works better in LA, but what would happen if someone cut you off in traffic? Do you point your finger at the sky - because he didn't get the memo, that where you were going is actually more important than where he's going? And then you drive by, and you have a little fish on you.

Does the girl at KFC know you're saved even if she messes up your order? Do we consider others better? Are we committed to bringing heaven to earth, or are we simply a group of people who are committed to going to heaven one day? Are we committed to bringing heaven to earth today? What would happen to our life, if we consider others better?

Could you imagine a marriage, where that was the case? Where both people were committed to considering the other one better?

Wives, what would happen if you committed inside yourself, to consider your husband better - to meet his needs first, whether he deserved it or not? It would be happier, and a lot less stress. It's pretty simple; we have like two needs (three if you count food). Both of our needs are free, and relatively enjoyable to you.

Husbands, what if you considered your wife better, and you made a commitment to meet her needs first? She has like 100 of them... So what if you husbands made a commitment to meet her 100, and she makes a commitment to meet your 2? I can tell you this: if you meet those two needs consistently, and predictably - that man will serve you, and die for you. Shout me down if I'm lying - am I telling the truth, men? Everybody say Amen!

Men, what if we could make a commitment to meet our wives needs - if we could get in there, and figure out what they are? That stuff will make you go crazy! But what if we did? What if, in our heart, we considered the other person better?

It's a summary statement of a successful life; of peace in our heart; of what it would be to overcome anger, of having peace in our home. It's a summary statement of a happy marriage; happy parenting; being happy in our job.

I want to talk about two aspects of that, and it's from the most disturbing passage of scripture that Jesus ever taught, in Luke 16. This is the only time that Jesus used the word ‘Hades’ in regards to somebody going there.

There are two mentions of hell; the first hell was called Gehenna - and that was hell on earth. There was a Gehenna hell, and it was an actual place in Jerusalem. Jesus used the word hell 18 times; 15 of the 18 times was Gehenna.

Gehenna was the place in 2 Chronicles 28, where they sacrificed children in fire. King Josiah in 2 Kings 23 desecrated it, and he said: we're not going to sacrifice children in fire any more. The problem was, the land was now worthless, and so there was this place of land called Gehenna in Jerusalem that was worthless - so they made it the town garbage dump.

They kept the fire going, and they threw dead bodies that couldn't afford a tomb. There were wolves and stuff, that would scavenge for food and they'd bite each other; so it became known as: the place where the fire doesn't die, and there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. It was an actual place on earth.

15/18 times He used the word ‘Hell’, it was Gehenna - hell on earth. 3/18 times, it was hell in the afterlife, Hades. This is the one you really want to avoid.

Hades is the one in Revelation. Death and Hades get picked up thrown into the lake of fire. This is the eternal one - and He only used this word three times, and only one time in regards to a person going there.

The 2 other times: one was when He said: woe to Capernaum, how can you state the condemnation of Hades?

The other was when He took His disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi, the place of worship of the goat-god Pan. The goat-god Pan received worship through intimate acts with goats. There was a temple to the goat-god Pan on top of this rock, and the weight of the temple cracked the rock. There was a hole at the bottom, and they called it the Gates of Hades. People in Caesarea Philippi believed that if you didn't worship Pan properly, that the gates of Hades would open up, and you'd be swallowed into hell.

24 hours a day, seven days a week, there were people around the road, around the temple of the goat-god Pan, having intimate acts with goats, in order to keep Pan from swallowing them up into the gates of hell.

Jesus took His disciples there, and He stood over the Gates of Hell, and He said: upon this rock we can build a church, and not even the gates of Hades will prevail against it.

He only used the word Hades one other time, once - so it's really worth investigating.

Luke 16:19 – “There was a certain rich man, who was customarily clothed in purple and fine linen, and making merry in luxury every day.”

So there's this guy, and he's dressing every day like only special people get to dress once or twice (7 times a year) – “...and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, who was laid at his gate, full or sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. But even the dogs licked his wounds, and it happened that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side; and the rich one also died, but was buried.

“And in Hades, he lifted up his eyes, and being in torments; and he saw Abraham afar off, with Lazarus at his side. And he cried, and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me - send Lazarus - that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I'm tormented in the flame.”

“But Abraham said: son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil - but now he is comforted, and you are tormented. And besides all this, there's a great chasm fixed between you and us, so that they desiring from here to you cannot, nor can you pass from there to us”.

“And he said: I beg you therefore father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment. Abraham said to him: they have Moses and the prophets - let them hear them.”

“And he said: no Father Abraham, but if one should go back from the dead, then they would repent; and he said: if they do not hear Moses and the prophets they will not be persuaded - even if one raises from the dead.

What an odd story. Jesus is totally breaking His modus operandi, totally breaking the way He normally does things. He's using the word Hades instead of Gehenna - that was breaking the mould. He's actually using the word Hades in terms of somebody going there.

His disciples, anybody standing there, who knew His teachings, would be going: that's a first! He starts the parable by saying: there's a certain rich man... so you it's not going to end good?

It's very easy for us to say: oh well - it's a rich man; I'm not rich. No, no, no - we're all rich.

If you drove here tonight, you're in the richest 8% of the whole world. If you have two cars you're in the richest 1.5% of the whole world. If you have two cars and a house, you're in the richest 0.5% of the whole world. We are the rich man - the rich man is us. This isn't a parable about a certain rich man and Lazarus and Abraham; this is a parable about me and about you; and about our basic attitude toward other people.

So the beggar gets laid at the rich man's gate, because people figured that the rich man could help him. The beggar was so helpless, he could not keep dogs from licking his wounds; but the rich man made a decision on earth, and that decision was this: I am better than him.

I do not have to engage that problem - I'm better than him. He kept Lazarus outside of his framework, outside of a gate - so the rich man on earth isolated, and elevated. He considered himself better. He thought he was better than Lazarus, and that he didn't have to engage a beggar who could not keep dogs from licking his sores.

The Bible says that in the afterlife, what you make happen for others, God makes happen for you. The rich man, who made hell on earth happen for the beggar - he ends up in torment in the afterlife.

On earth, the rich man chose isolation and elevation; so in the afterlife, God gave him exactly what he chose on earth: isolation and elevation. He became the centre of his whole universe - and that is called Hades, or Hell. To a Hebrew person, Hell is a place with no boundaries. It's a place where you can treat me any way you want.

In this story, Hell is a place of isolation and torment; but heaven is a place of feasting and fellowship. To be at “Abraham's side” is a Hebrew euphemism for “feasting”, because they leaned on each other's side to eat.

On earth Lazarus, cannot keep dogs from licking his wounds; but in the afterlife, he's feasting, and having a party in heaven with Abraham.

On earth, the Rich Man had his feasting, partying, and fine linen. He had his two cars, a boat, and a house. He had those things - but in hell he was isolated and tormented. That is the basis of the story.

Then there's this interesting dialogue between Abraham and the rich man. The rich man looks up, he notices Abraham and Lazarus, and he makes this series of requests.

Abraham says: there is a great chasm, which exists between me and you, so that people from here can't go to there - as if that was a problem (enough heaven, let's go fry); and people from you, can't come to us.

1) What kind of great chasm exists, that you can talk across?

2) What kind of great chasm exists, that you can recognise the face of somebody on the other side?

How big is this chasm? It can't be that big! It's not big enough, that the rich man can't say: hey, I think that's Abraham - I've seen pictures; and hey, there's the beggar - I remember the beggar, He was laid at my gate.

My first question is: what was the chasm? The focal point of the whole story is this chasm: we can't get to you; and you can't get to us. What is this chasm, that you can have a normal conversation across, and recognise the face of someone on the other side?

The clue is to be found in the rich man's requests. His first request was what? Have Lazarus dip his finger in water, and come stick it on my tongue - which is an odd request, isn't it? Have you ever had a conversation with somebody on fire? How about: HELP! PUT ME OUT!

To make a request for somebody to put one drop of water on his tongue - it makes no sense. Why? He's on fire!

1) It wouldn't solve his problem - he'd still be on fire

2) It wouldn't help at all! One drop of water on your tongue is not going to help!

What is this about; and how does this give us a clue as to what the great chasm is?

On Earth, the rich man's problem was: he thought he was better than the beggar. He thought: I don't have to engage that, I'm better than him. He is in hell now. This is only time Jesus used the word Hades, in terms of somebody going there.

He is in Hell - and he still thinks he's better than the beggar! He's in hell - he's on fire. This man is on fire - and he's still saying: Abraham, that beggar beside you, can you send him to hell to serve me. That's his place.

I don't care that the decisions I'm making, are going to cause that man to come to hell. It doesn't matter - send him to hell to serve me. This man is on fire, and he still thinks he's better than the beggar. He still doesn't get it!

Finally, for the first time in the beggar's life, somebody stands up for him. Abraham says: no, it doesn't work that way. We're not doing that.

So what was the rich man's second request? Send him back to earth - to serve my family. Now how's that going to work out for Lazarus?

Lazarus lived in Hell-on-Earth, for far too long - couldn't keep dogs from licking his wounds; and now the rich man is on fire, and he's suggesting that Lazarus be sent back to earth - to serve him. Once again, I don't care how the decisions, that I'm making, affect him.

This man is on fire, and he still doesn't get it; so Abraham stands up for him again - and finally he argues with Abraham. He says: no Father Abraham, that's not how it works. Let me tell you how it works...

How are you going to argue with Father Abraham? The man has his own song - kids all over the world today are singing it!

Plus, in this story, who appears to be in charge? Abraham appears to be in charge - and he's arguing with the guy in charge!

On earth, this guy thought he was better than everybody. He didn't have to engage the cry of the hopeless, because he was better than that - and in hell, his heart still hasn't changed.

His heart is still full of Pride, and Greed - those two things. Pride - where he puts himself first; and Greed - where he isn't generous. He still wants Lazarus to come to hell to serve him.

On the surface, this story on earth, it appears that the poor man needs the rich man's help. They lay him at his gate - and it appears that the poor man needs the rich man's help; but in reality, the rich man needs the poor man's help. The poor man needed the rich man to feed his stomach; but the rich man needed the poor man to humble his heart - and the rich man responds very poorly, which cost him an eternity.

This is a story all about our tendency to be selfish and greedy. This is a story all about, what the Hebrew people called, the Yetzer Hara - our evil inclination, our inclination to put ourself first.

In Jesus' whole ministry, the only person that Jesus talked about going to Hades was this guy - and Jesus' ministry was full of sinners!

I'm talking about: people caught in the act of adultery; thieves on a cross - and the people who murdered Him by nailing Him to a cross; a woman who was divorced five times, and shacked up with the sixth one; all kinds of evil, nasty stuff was going on, but this is the only guy that Jesus thought was worthy of Hades.

The only person in Jesus' whole ministry, who did something so unspeakably heinous, that God killed him - was the guy who built bigger barns. He had more than enough food, and instead of sharing it with the hungry, he built bigger barns for himself.

Jesus said: that's it – God is going to kill you tonight. Like this is serious, serious stuff.

Greed was people who say: there are no big sins and small sins - that's true in terms of consequences and ramifications; and that's true in terms of heaven and being saved. It only takes a small bit of uncleanness to send you away from the presence of God.

In terms of ‘the sin that leads to every other sin’, it was greed. Jesus said: the love of money is the root of all evil. The #1 sin to Jesus was greed; and this is a story about putting yourself first, and being greedy, and the ramifications of that in eternity.

This is all a story, and a challenge from Jesus, for us to examine our heart and say: Who are we in this story?

Whenever Jesus starts a story with “there was a certain rich man”, it never ends well, which is kind of disconcerting. Jesus once said: it is impossible for a rich man to go to heaven - which is disconcerting isn't it, because we're rich?

It's kind of hard to deal with, so I asked the Lord about it. I spent some time with the Lord on this, and the Lord asked me: who is the richest man in that story?

There are 3 characters in the story: the rich man, Lazarus and Abraham. Abraham is the richest by far - and Abraham makes it! The Lord spoke to me and, He said: Shane, I am always against rich men; but I am always for wealthy stewards.

God is not looking to make ‘rich men’, but a nation of ‘wealthy stewards’, who use their money as God would have them use it - for the glory of God and the kingdom of God.

God would want every one of us to be so wealthy, that other nations would call us ‘blessed’ - but it's not wealth for our sake. It's not wealth so we could build bigger barns. It's wealth so we can take care of the people who can't take care of themselves.

You might think that the poor people need you. No - you and I need them! Yes, we do!

I'm going to read through a bunch of scriptures, and I want us to ask ourselves: where are we with this tonight?

Leviticus 19:9-10 – “When you reap the harvest of your land do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien, for I am the Lord your God.”

So when God was designing the Hebrew people's way of doing finances, every field was a square. He says: when you reap your field, don't reap the corners, reap a circle. If your whole life is a square - only live on a circle; give the corners away.

A circle in a square is 79% (pi/4), and if you look at the Jewish way of doing money, they have certain offerings that they give. If you add it all up, its 21% (part of which is to yourself) so built into them this attitude. God set it into their culture, into their mind, into their hearts that when you think about your life - you put other people first; not because they need you, but because you actually need them.

Deuteronomy 24:17-18 – “Do not deprive the alien, or the fatherless, of justice; or take the cloak of a widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there, and that is why I command you to do this”.

Once again, generosity - and it's not generosity because the poor people need it. God could rain down gold from heaven for the poor if He wanted to. It's not generosity because the poor people need it; it's generosity because we need it.

There's something that happens inside of us, when we take care of somebody who can do nothing for us in return, that reminds us in our heart, that God did something for me when I didn't deserve it. That is priceless.

Isaiah 10:1-2, God says: “woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, and to scribes who write lies; those who turn aside the needy from judgement, and steal the right from the poor of my people, so that widows may be their prey, and they rob orphans - woe to them.”

Generosity or greed?

In Luke 3:7-15 there's this guy called John the Baptist - and he has no people skills. He eats locusts, he eats bugs. This man eats bugs - and doesn't shave, and dips locusts in honey. If CNN and the internet would have been around back then, he'd have been like: the ‘Weirdo with the Beardo’ Guy.

Luke 3:-7-15, there was this group of people who came out to be baptised by him - and this is how he responds:

“And John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him: you brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves: we have Abraham as our father; for I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”

That's not really how you grow a church is it? These people are coming out to be ministered to by him, and he says: you basket of snakes! Who has warned you to flee the coming wrath? You fatherless people! He's calling them ‘fatherless’. There's a bad word for that, which starts with a 'b'! Not really the best thing to call somebody, but it gets worse...

“The axe has already fallen at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into fire!” This guy is a Pentecostal pastor on speed!

Now that whole rant - you fatherless people, you basket of snakes, you brood of vipers, the axe has already fallen at the root of the tree, and every one of you are going to be thrown into fire and burned - what do you think the sin was?

You'd think the sin was idolatry, adultery, child sacrifice, burning people - something heinous, something horrible. What do you think the sin was? This is what he says...

“What should we do then, the crowd ask? You're really wound up - what do you want us to do? John answered:

“The man with two tunics should share with him who has none; and the one with food should do the same.

It's Generosity! That whole rant was about having more than we need, and not taking care of people who don't have enough.

Luke 19:5-10 has a cool story about a man named Zacchaeus, and he's a tax collector. He's a bit of a shyster, but he has this encounter with Jesus. He's so moved by the compassion of Jesus, that he says: “here and now, I'll give half of what I have to the poor”. Jesus said: that's it - salvation has come to your house now. It's generosity.

James 1:26-27 - “If anyone considers himself religious, and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, then he deceives himself, and his religion is worthless. Religion that God, our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” - Generosity.

Luke 11:34 – “The light of the body is the eye” - which is a Hebrew reference for generosity.

In First Century Hebrew culture, if you said that someone had an ‘eye full of light’, it meant yetzer tov, it meant they were generous. If you said somebody had an eye of evil it was called yetzer hara, which meant they were selfish or greedy. So the phrase ‘don't give me the evil-eye’, its root is found in: don't be greedy with me, don't be stingy with me.

Therefore, when your eye is ‘full of light’, then the whole body is full of light; but when your eye is ‘dark’, your whole body is dark. In other words, if you're generous then it gives light to the whole body; but if you're greedy, then it corrupts the whole body.

“Therefore take heed that the light in you is not darkness.”

“Therefore if your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the shining of the lamp enlightens you. As He spoke, a certain Pharisee asked Him to dine with him, and He went in and reclined.”

So Jesus is doing this whole thing about light-eyes and dark-eyes, and the Pharisee says: can I talk about that with You?

When the Pharisee saw it, he was amazed that He did not first wash His hands before dinner. And the Lord said to him: “now you Pharisees, you make the outside of the cup and platter clean, but the inside is full of greed and wickedness” - greed and wickedness.

“You fool! Did not He who made the outside of the cup, also make the inside? Then Jesus gives him the solution in the next verse.

“But begin to give alms of all such things as you have to the poor, and behold - all things will be made clean for you” - Generosity.

So Jesus is telling this guy: become generous and your life will be clean.

There’s something about a regenerated heart, that when it manifests itself in putting other people first, everything else just seems to fall in place.

In Acts 10:25-31, this is a story of the start of the Gentile church. You're actually here tonight because of this. God chooses this guy named Cornelius to lead the Gentile church; and Cornelius was a Roman centurion, which meant that he had publicly proclaimed that Caesar is god.

This odd thing happens - when Peter shows up at his house, Cornelius bows down to Peter. The man has publicly proclaimed that Caesar is god, but he didn't know it wasn't right to worship a man. Would you want him to be your pastor? Yet God chooses him to start the whole Gentile church - watch what He says...

Acts 10:25-31 – As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him, and fell down at his feet in reverence; but Peter made him get up. He said: stand up, for I am only a man. Talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people; and he said to them: you are all well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile, or to visit him; but God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean, so when I was sent for, I came without raising objection. May I ask why you sent for me?

Cornelius asked: four days ago, I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me, and said: “Cornelius, God has heard your prayer - and your generosity to the poor has gone up to Him as a remembrance” - Generosity.

Here's a man who'd proclaimed Caesar as god, and didn't know it wasn't right to worship Peter, and God said: remember him, because of his generosity to the poor.

It was all about greed or generosity to Jesus, and you follow this all the way through from the Old Testament, from Leviticus 19 all the way to Revelation - it's about generosity or greed.

Application questions:

It is not my place to tell you where you are; it's my place to ask, and then you work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling.

1) What have we isolated ourselves from? Where is there hell on earth, that we've chosen not to deal with, even though we could?

2) Who is in our life right now, that we could bring heaven-to-hell for? It could start in your home - maybe your husband needs a little heaven brought to him; or your wife needs a little heaven brought to her. Maybe your children, co-workers, neighbours - and then we could spread out. Who in your life right now could we put first?

3) Who in our life right now do we really think we're better than them? Is there anybody in our life right now - and we think we're better than they are, and we actually think they should serve us?

4) Where in our lives do we have clean outsides, but greedy insides? Only you can examine your heart with that.

5) Who are we oppressing, by our apathy? If I just asked the question: who are we oppressing; people might say: nobody. But who are we oppressing by our apathy?

When was the last time you saw something, and you knew you had the money in the bank to do something about it, but you turned your back, so that you could say to your soul: soul, have peace of mind? You turned your back on it, and therefore, you become the oppressor by apathy?

6) Can we be honest about who is oppressing us? What is our slave driver? What's bringing hell to earth for me?

I have one more application question, but I want to let Jesus ask it - because you can't get mad at Him, because He died for you.

Matthew 26:1-2 – “And Jesus knew the time for His betrayal was at hand”.

Jesus knew that it was His last go, so Matthew 25 is His last public sermon, and after that you’ve got a Passover; a betrayal; a false trial; a real trial; then a beating, a crucifixion, and a resurrection.

So Matthew 25 is His last words, His last go; and if you read Matthew 23, 24, 25, it's like a Gatling gun. It's like, Jesus is under so much pressure, He knows the weight of the world is fixing to be put on Him - and He's trying to get all these words out.

He's like ooh, um - there's like this fig tree; and if you're going to be a fig tree - be one that bears fruit, because a fruitless fig tree gets cut down... And oh - and I'm going to come back on a day, that no man knows the day or the hour of... And oh - at the end of the times there's going to be all these wars, and rumours of wars, and all this stuff...

And oh, there's this guy, and he had talents, and he made more talents for the kingdom of God. He became a wealthy steward and that's great. There's this other guy who had talents and he hoarded it to himself, and he buried it in the sand - and that guy was cast out in outer darkness.

He's trying to get all of this stuff off of His chest - and then He ends with this. These are His last words to everybody, and here's what He's doing. He's saying: at the end of the age, I'm going to judge the whole world - and this is how I'm going to do it. He's letting everybody in on how He's going to judge the world - pretty important, so watch what He says:

“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He shall sit on the throne of His glory”.

This is obviously talking about at the end – “...and all the nations shall be gathered before Him, and He shall separate them one from the other, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. And indeed He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on His left.”

“And the King shall say to those on His right...” - which by the way, when you're standing in front of Jesus one day, that's where you want to be! When you stand in front of Jesus one day, move to your left - kind of inch your way that way!

“Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”.

So He says: you guys on the right - come on in. It's been prepared for you since the foundation of the world. This is why: for when I was hungry, you gave Me food. When I was thirsty, you gave Me drink. When I was a stranger, you took Me in. When I was naked, you clothed Me. When I was sick, you visited Me. When I was in prison, you came to Me.

Now watch the heart of the righteous...

“Then the righteous shall say to Him Lord: when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and took You in, or naked and clothed You? When did we see You sick or in prison and came to You?”

In other words, they're going: we didn't know You were there! We didn't know that by putting other people first, You were there. We didn't know that You were the hungry guy, or the sick guy, or the naked guy, or the guy in prison - we didn't know that! We were just doing it because it was the right thing to do - to put other people first.

Jesus says to them: “And the King will answer, and say to them: truly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you did it to Me.

Then He shall say to those on His left: “Depart from Me you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

There's the lake of fire - not Gehenna (Hades). Death and Hades get picked up and thrown into the lake of fire.

Depart from Me you cursed, into everlasting fire - prepared for the devil and his angels. In other words, it was never My will for you to go there - tt was prepared for the devil and his angels, and this is why they get sent there:

For when I was hungry, you gave Me no food. When I was thirsty, you gave Me no drink. When I was a stranger, you did not take Me in. When I was naked, you did not clothe Me. When I was sick, or in prison, you did not visit Me.

And then they will answer Him saying: Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty, or a stranger or naked, or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You? Then He shall answer them saying truly I say to you inasmuch as you did not do it for the least of these you did not do it to Me.

Now here's the end of this sermon: “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life” - and He ends it, and He goes off and has Passover.

So let me ask you a question tonight. Search your own heart. Don't think about anybody else, just search your own heart. This is the most powerful question I could ask you:

7) If you had to face Jesus today, based on this passage - would you be on the right, or would you be on the left?

Closing Prayer

Now Lord, You're the best; and we're so challenged and moved. The Lord spoke to me last night about this particular sermon and He told me that healing would come in repentance.

If you've been paying attention tonight, no one could possibly think that we have all this together. If anybody is thinking: yeah, I've arrived at this - actually that's evidence that you haven't - that healing would come in repentance.

So for those of us who are walking with God, we would say: Jesus Christ is our saviour. I want to give you a moment with God, that you I and need, to repent. It's to repent for all the places in our life where we don't put other people first. It's to repent for the times in our life where we're the rich man who could meet the need of somebody else, but yet we choose not to. It's not that we don't have it; it's just we just choose not to.

It's a time for repentance, for all of us who, instead of living on a circle in a square, we live on our whole square - and wonder why God isn't blessing us. It's a repenting for a greedy heart, for a heart that doesn't put other people first.

While you're doing that, I'd like to talk to those of you who might say: I don't know that I'm right with God. I don't know that I've ever made a decision to even make Jesus the Lord of my life. I don't know that I've ever made that decision to make Him in charge of what I'm doing - and I need to make that decision. I need to cross the line, and make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life.

It goes like this: My Lord Jesus Christ, thank You for coming. Thank You for dying for me. I confess that I'm a sinner. I have no hope of saving myself, but You Lord, I ask You to forgive me, cleanse me, heal my heart, be the Lord of my life in Jesus' name. Amen, welcome to the kingdom of God!

Now Lord, we just step into that place that is You - the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God; and we feel Your grace Lord. We feel Your grace to present a message like this to us, to let us know what is really important to You.

Now Lord, we repent. Yes, we repent Lord. Forgive me for my evil heart. Forgive me for that tendency inside of myself to put myself first. Forgive me for the evil inside of me God, the greed, the selfishness that tends to want things my own way.

Lord, help me see the opportunities that You've put in front of me to bring heaven to earth for people. May I be a person who puts other people first. May I be a minister of the kingdom of heaven.

I repent for my wicked ways Lord. I repent for that side of me that always wants to serve myself, and Lord I commit to being You to a world that needs You, to be a generous, kind, compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love person who meets the needs of others first.

May I not be the rich man, but yet be a wealthy steward.

In Jesus' name I call on that word you gave me, that healing would come to repentance and Lord, across this room tonight as true repentance has taken place, wherever there was true repentance, I pray that healing would come, peace would come, wholeness would come, healing would come to bodies. Healing would come to minds. Peace would come into homes.

Lord, for every place that repentance comes, I pray that right now for every husband that made the decision to put their wife first, for every wife that made the decision to put their husband first, for every couple who made the decision to take care of the poor and lonely and widows and aliens, for every person where true repentance comes - I pray that in those homes, peace would come.

I speak and proclaim over those homes ‘peace’, that when these married couples go home tonight and put each other first, that it would be reinforced with peace and sanity and peace where there was chaos before. I pray that the serenity and prosperity would come over this whole place, not to make rich men but to be wealthy stewards, to put other people first.

“Blessed to be a blessing” - in Jesus' name.

Lord, we are Your people, kingdom people - and we truly repent for the greed in our heart. Seal this decision in us. Seal it in us Lord. May we be generous for the rest of our lives, and when we stammer back, may we pick up the cross again, and go forward to bring heaven to earth for other people. Lord, You're the best. You're the best in Jesus' name. Amen.

Hosting Shane Willard (2007) (Shane Willard)

Hallowed in Secret, Manifested in Public (1 of 4) (Shane Willard)

To develop the Disposition of Messiah, Hallow it in Secret; because what you hallow in secret, you will manifest in public.

What it means to be Born Again (2 of 4) (Shane Willard)

View salvation in a whole new light, as Shane unlocks Hebraic understanding, and what Jesus was trying to communicate to others, on what it truly means to be born again.

The Authority of a Rabbi (3 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Examine the basic concepts of rabbinical authority, our role in coming under the authority of Jesus; and how this authority affected the disciples and Jesus' life.

Healing in the Tassels (4 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Num 15:37 - Throughout the generations to come, you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at, so you will remember all of the commands of the Lord your God; that you may obey them, and not prostitute yourself by going after the lust of your own hearts and eyes.

Audio

- Hallowed in Secret, Manifested in Public (1 of 4).mp3

- What it means to be Born Again (2 of 4).mp3

- The Authority of a Rabbi (3 of 4).mp3

- Healing in the Tassels (4 of 4).mp3

Hallowed in Secret, Manifested in Public (1 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Sat 28 Apr 2007  « Back to Top

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To develop the Disposition of Messiah, Hallow it in Secret; because what you hallow in secret, you will manifest in public.

Prelude

Pastor Mike has a worldwide reputation for being a man of love, and a man of restoration - he is a restorer. To me, that's all I need to know.

Paul said: “let him who is spiritual, restore gently those who have fallen”.

People that have issues - which is most of us, the other ones have denial issues! We need a father figure to be around, to restore us when we get our head all messed up, and you've got a great man over this place. It's an honour for me to be here with you.

Introduction

I want to talk about your life with God; and I want to share my own story, to allow some insight.

Matthew 6. Jesus is talking, and Jesus' is a First Century Jewish Rabbi, so He's coming from that perspective. There are all kinds of innuendos, different things that they would have seen and thought of immediately.

One of the common things, if you were a rabbi's disciple - you would ask him things like: what is the summation of the Torah? The Torah was so big and broad and wide, you couldn't get your head around all of it; but they wanted to please God, so they would ask the rabbi: can you just sum it all up in one or two sentences?

They would ask Jesus things like this; and Jesus would say things like: “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; love your neighbour as yourself.”

They would ask Him things about money; about marriage and kids; how to walk with God. On one occasion, Jesus was teaching people how to walk with God, and about Prayer, and He said this:

Main Message

Matthew 6:5 - “When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners, to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full; but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret..”

That's the key I want to talk about tonight is: what is done in secret

”... your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you”.

When you pray, do not keep on babbling like the Pentecostals do! For they think they'll be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them - for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

I'll walk with God - for me that cut out 90% of my praying, at the time, because my praying was just ‘making requests’. I needed a paradigm shift, and there's so much in this.

He says: “This then is how you should pray - Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name”.

There are all kinds of Hebraic innuendos here; Hebraic concepts of ‘Father’, which I don't have time to go into; and a Hebraic concept of ‘Heaven’, which you have to translate as plural - ‘Heavens’.

The most common translation of that word would be: ‘air that we breathe’. Our western world has a concept (from translations) that: God's way up there; and we're way down here.

Surely Jesus wasn't saying: when you pray, say “my Father - who is in a place I have no idea where it is - hallowed be your name” - because where's heaven?

The idea of Father was a ‘supplier’, or ‘generator’ of something.

So He was saying: “My supply, which is as close to me as the air that I'm breathing - hallowed be that name”.

The word ‘hallowed’ is the word ‘Hagiastheto’, which means to ‘render’, ‘acknowledge’, or ‘become aware of’.

John 17:6 - He's praying again, and He says “Father, I have manifested your name.”

I have become everything that you are, to a group of people - I've showed them everything You can be.

Whatever you hallow in secret, You'll manifest in public. Jesus hallowed the name of His Father in secret; so therefore, in public He also manifested it.

In the First Century, when a ministry was judged (particularly prophetic ministry), the first judgement concerned whether or not it was delivered in the Disposition of Messiah. Was it delivered in a: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding-in-love way.

Exodus 34:6-7 – “The Lord, the compassionate, gracious, slow-to-anger, abounding-in-love-and-forgiveness God.”

Psalm 103 - “Bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His Holy name; and forget not his benefits; who heals all of your diseases, and forgives all of your sins.... He's the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God - who does not treat you as your iniquities deserve, but gives you mercy that's new every morning.”

Disposition of Messiah - the compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love God.

Do you minister in the disposition of Messiah?

You can minister well - and be outside that.

In those days, you could give a prophetic word that was spot on; but if it was delivered in an un-compassionate, un-gracious, not-abounding-in-love way, then it was considered false prophecy - because first of all, it has to be delivered in the Disposition of Messiah.

The way to develop the Disposition of Messiah is to Hallow it in Secret, because what you hallow in secret you will manifest in public.

I grew up old-school, with Pentecostal-holiness. Like my grandmother is 87 now; and she's never cut her hair in her whole life - so she wears it all up in a bun! She's never worn slacks; she's never worn make up or jewellery – never. She still to this day gets saved five times a day, because every time you sin - God leaves.

I was then discipled in an independent, fundamental, pre-millennial Baptist school - which left me very confused about God. Those two people only agree on two things: how to be saved; and: everything's a sin! Everything!

Every Sunday I got saved, because every time you sinned, God left. I couldn't make it through a week without sinning right? So in 1981, the Pentecostal holiness salvation numbers were up - because I got saved every week, so that’s 52 salvations - right here with me! The Pentecostal-holiness church – you’d have a church with 80 people, with 5,000 salvations on the book - because people got saved all the time, it was that kind of system.

In the Baptist school however, you couldn't lose your salvation - but God would just get mad! So if you sinned in the Pentecostal church - God left; but if you sinned in the Baptist church - God got mad. He let you into heaven - but you get to spend eternity with a mad God!

So this is what my life looked like: I would get saved every Sunday; then on Monday we'd have chapel in the Baptist school - and you couldn't get ‘resaved’, but you could ‘rededicate your life’ - so I would rededicate my life.

On Wednesday we'd have chapel again, and I would rededicate my rededicated self; then on Friday I would rededicate my rededicated, rededicated self. Then on Sunday I'd get saved again - and pray to God He didn't come back on Tuesday or Thursday because I wanted to make it! Like that was bondage man! It was bondage!

I was messing with my grandmother once; I think it was her 81st or 82nd birthday. I was messing with her, and I said: granny, let's go get you made up - get you a good hair cut, some make up, some nice pants - just get you all dolled up?

She said: oh no babe, I'd hate to send myself to hell - and maybe somebody else too. I said: I can see sending yourself to hell; but somebody else - how do you get that?

She said: I'd hate to give a man a lustful thought!

Like no fear there! You could show up in a bikini to a sex addicts conference - they'll be okay. Like come on - there hasn't been a lustful thought about you in years! Nothing's in the right place! Come on! It's bondage.

Its bondage; so I started hallowing all kinds of things in secret. Like the Bible says: “be still and know that He is God”. You know what I did? I would be still - and know that I am bad! In a way, there should be a sense of: “be merciful to me, a sinner, o God. I have no hope but You”.

In a way, that's healthy - but in another way, what I hallow in secret, I'll manifest in public. When I hallowed guilt - I acted guilty.

We always hallow things - has anybody besides me ever hallowed anger? Anger is not an emotion you can afford!

I have a master's degree in clinical psychology. I can tell you that when you get angry - the average person loses 25% of their IQ! It’s because the blood leaves your brain - it goes to the major muscle groups, to prepare for a fight.

The average IQ is 100 points; and dysfunctionally-retarded is 70; so when the average person gets angry... they are this close to being retarded!

Have you ever said anything that you've regretted when you were angry? Have you ever said anything smart when you're angry? No!

Some men get so mad they can't even complete a sentence, so they grunt. I know of men that have gotten so mad they put their fist into a wall that doesn't move. Brilliant!

If you're married, and two of you get mad - you've got two mentally retarded people trying to solve a problem! Diminished capacity at the best!

But we hallow anger... Has anybody (besides me) ever been in a conflict situation; and after you walked away - you thought of everything you could have said? We love imaginary conversations - because you never lose. If you're losing imaginary conversations - get your head checked - because it's your imagination!

We hallow anger; and we hallow ‘getting our way’. Has anybody (besides me) ever hallowed depression? Anybody (besides me) ever had a successful depression? It's brilliant!

Anybody (besides me) ever hallowed rejection? Somebody broke our heart, and we convince ourselves that everybody's going to break our heart from now on - and we hallow it and we build it around our life.

Anybody (besides me) ever hallowed insecurity - what if they don't like me? What we hallow in secret - we manifest in public. We create our own sort of atmosphere, which draws it to ourselves, and with God

I hallowed my own guilt. I hallowed this thought that God didn't like me very much. I had this thought in my bed at night, that God really didn't like me very much. He was mad at me. If I did 98 things right, but two things wrong - I'd go to bed thinking about the two things I did wrong.

It’s total sin-consciousness - I hallowed it; and I thought: maybe by hallowing it, I could make myself feel worse about it - which would maybe make God like me just a little bit more. But what I found is: the more I hallowed it in secret, the more I manifested it in public.

I realised that I was having a real problem relating with God. It wasn't God's problem, and it wasn't an intelligence issue, or a study problem, or a lack of discipline.

I made a deal with God I'd get up at five o'clock every morning and pray for an hour - as if God's more impressed with somebody who prays at 5am, versus somebody who prays at 9am; as if God is impressed with anything really. God is impressed with Jesus - that's about it.

So I made this deal with God. I would strive and strive and strive, and it was all because I was hallowing something in secret, so I was manifesting it in public.

I had to learn to change my imaginations around God. I had to learn to change my thoughts around God. I had to learn to start thinking about truth in a different way, because it wasn't working. My life wasn't working.

I was becoming a minister, and I had all the talent in the world - but I wasn't ministering in the Disposition of Messiah, because I was putting things on people that were really my issue.

I was putting my guilt on people when I preached. It's very dangerous when you have a talent because, with the gift and calling of God, without repentance - you can mess it up like nobody's business - and God's gift is still on your life.

You can really mess some folks up. I got myself into a situation where I could minister powerfully, yet walk away, and I knew that I had missed God, because there was something missing.

What it was missing was: the compassion, the grace, the slow-to-anger, the abounding-in-love God. I was ministering in the same way that the old school Pentecostals used to minister to me. I'd walk away feeling guilty and bad, and it was the only think I knew; I hallowed it in secret and manifested it in public.

One of the things that really helped me change my imagination around that was this: starting to see the Bible through the filter of a wedding. The idea that: God actually wants to marry me.

He calls us the ‘Bride of Christ’ and that's just a concept; but actually the whole Bible is like a wedding manual. It's a wedding proposal - God desperately, desperately wants to connect with me!

I'd never really had that thought. How many of you know if we make a theological bullet point out of something, it's far different than making a heartfelt belief.

Do you realise that Hebrew people ‘feel’ thoughts; Greek people ‘think’ thoughts?

We're all ‘Greek’, because we all come from Europe - and we have an ability to make bullet-point doctrines out of anything.

When I was in Bible College, I wrote my final paper on the attributes of God. I was sitting there writing a paper about the power of God; but all I could think of was: I was hungry - because it was just a bullet point to me.

If we're all ‘saved’, how many of us believe that we've been forgiven of all of our sins? Ok, so all of us believe that - but how many of us have felt guilty in the last two weeks? So we believe something - guilt about something in our past; and we believe that God's forgiven us. We believe it's been wiped off our record; but instead of feeling innocent, we still feel guilty. That's because Greek people think thoughts, Hebrew people feel thoughts.

When a Hebrew person read a scripture like: “you've been recreated in righteousness and true holiness”; they would stop and say: God, what would I feel like, if I could feel innocent in Your sight?

This started changing my imaginations with God. To this day (today, this morning) when I woke up, I didn't get out of bed until I asked God this question: God, what would I feel like today if I could feel innocent before You?

If I hallow innocence in secret, then I'll manifest innocence in public.

I asked God this question this morning laying there (I used the covers as a visual aid). I said: God, what would I feel like, if I could feel You covering me now? If I could feel Your presence wrapping around me - if I could feel that You were as close as the air that I'm breathing? What would I feel like, if I could feel it?

It changed my life, just by doing that every day, because I knew: if I could change my hallowings in secret I could change what I was manifesting in public. I needed to learn to feel that God really liked me. I knew God loved me, but I didn't know that God liked me.

There are 5 steps to a Hebrew wedding process. I'm going to say them in Hebrew; and show it to you in the Bible, and hopefully that’s a tool that will help us. If I'm sharing my story, and it's not helping anybody but me - fair enough, this is good therapy okay!

1) Lakah - the stage of the relationship where somebody declared: “I want to make you mine”. In the '70s I think they called it ‘going steady’. When I was a teenager we called it ‘going together’.

2) Segullah - the stage of the relationship where I actually declare: not only do I want to make you mine; but “you are my treasured possession”. You are the apple of my eye. You are the most important person in the world to me.

3) Mikveh - the part of the wedding process where they washed, they cleansed. To think of it spiritually, it's: getting all your stuff straight before you say "I do".

4) Ketubah - the wedding contract. Every Hebrew marriage had a marriage contract, called a ketubah.

Let's say you and I are getting married - and you're way out of my league, but that's okay, alright? What would happen is, if we’re getting married - I would declare Lakah. In Hebrew, I would just say ‘lakah’ - a declaration of: ‘I want to make you mine’. At some point later, I would say ‘Segullah’ - and in her mind, she'd be like: we're moving along here! The next step would be Mikveh - and that's when you know I'm real serious, when I say: okay, it's time to wash.

When they baptise people, they baptised them in a Mikveh. It was a public declaration. They baptised people any time they changed social status; so any time they went from ‘unclean’ to ‘clean’, they would baptise them in a Mikveh, to declare in open public they can be touched now without being contaminated.

The next step would be: my family, and her family, would get together and make a Ketubah - a marriage contract. We can put anything in this marriage contract that we want; so as long as we both agree - such that the boundaries and expectations of our marriage are set in place on paper, and it's signed by both of us - Ketubah.

There would be a bride price in there - your family would charge my family for me to marry you.

There would be a doctrine of ‘oil, bread and shelter’ in there, which basically says that I'd have to support her.

There would be things in there around sexual expectations - all kinds of things in there. Ketubah was the clearly-set-out marriage expectations.

When we both agreed on it, we would sign it; then we'd stand up and face each other. As the groom-to-be, I would say: “I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there you may be also”.

She would say back to me: “when will you return, to receive me unto yourself?”

I would say: “I do not know the day or the hour, but when my father approves the wedding chamber, he will send me back”.

It's all wedding language, so every Hebrew person listening to Jesus say that would go - He's talking about a wedding! This was wedding language - it happened every week, of every year, in First Century Hebrew culture.

5) The last one was called Chuppah - it's a Jewish marriage altar. It was a covering. They thought of it as a ‘covering of God's presence’.

The Ketubah would be signed; we would do the little: “I'll go to prepare a place for you” thing, I would go back and I would make a marriage chamber. When my father approved the marriage chamber, we would come back to get the bride; and we'd go to the place where the marriage chamber was, to have a wedding.

This wedding ceremony would happen, and after the wedding ceremony - we still weren't married! I would then take my wife to the entrance to the wedding chamber, and I would catch her up. Do you do that in New Zealand - carry your wife under/over the threshold? Yeah, it's a good thing for some; and a bad thing for others... you know!

I would carry her under the threshold; and the groomsmen would have taken a prayer shawl - which they thought of as ‘the covering of God's presence’ - and with four stakes, and they would make it over the bed. That's a Chuppah!

They would leave, and then I would ‘catch her up’ (that's where we get the word ‘rapture’ from). I would take her into the marriage thing, and we would consummate our relationship - with everybody waiting outside!

So everybody's waiting there like - and then we would come out, and now we're married! Now the wedding party could start! That was the basic process.

Exodus 6:6 – “Therefore say to the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with mighty acts of judgement. I will take you as my own people” – Lakah. “I will take you as my own people” - Lakah.

Exodus 19:5 – “If you obey me fully, and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession” - Segullah.

To the Hebrew people, you didn't have to explain to them: this is a wedding. They're like: Lakah? Segullah?

For a girl to hear: “I want to make you my own” - it's kind of like aaawe! “I'm going to make you my treasured possession” - double aaawe! This is like romantic sort of language.

Exodus 19:10 – “And the Lord said to Moses: consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes”. “Wash” - Mikveh.

We've got: Lakah, Segullah, Mikveh – next comes the Ketubah. We're in Exodus 19, and in Exodus 20 - the Ten Commandments - which would be a Ketubah.

The Ten Commandments are not conditions for God to love you. They're proof that He already does. It's a marriage proposal. You don't propose to people you don't love already. This is proof that God already loves us, and wants us to have the best life.

He's proposing to a group of people that hardly have their stuff together. He later had to tell them: don't throw your children in fire - that's a bad plan. He had to later tell them: don't have sex with your mother - it's a bad idea! Read Leviticus, and you'll see the things that He had to make clear to them. You're like really - that was a problem?

These people did not have their stuff together - and God was proposing to them anyway - because God wanted to marry them, and then clean them up. God wanted to marry them, and then spend a lifetime journeying with them to make them clean and whole. So if we look at the Ten Commandments as a marriage proposal, it really helps us.

“You should have no other Gods before me” - that makes sense. If we're going to be married - I'm going to be it. I'm going to be the ‘one and only’.

“You're not going to carry graven images, or any likeness of anything under heaven or under earth.” You're going to marry me, I'm going to be the one and only - and you're not going to carry pictures of your old boyfriends.

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy”. If you're going to be married to me, I expect one day in seven to be just between you and me - which is good marriage advice. One day in seven is just between you and me.

And the marriage feast - there's this feast, the Seven Feasts; it says: “these are my appointed feasts”.

In Hebrew it says: “these are my rehearsal feasts”. Before you have a wedding, you have wedding rehearsal. The Bible ends with the “marriage supper of the lambs”! He's like: seven times a year, we're going to practice this: once a week; and seven times a year - we're going to get together, and it's just going to be Me and you. It's going to be our weekend together - which is really cool.

“Don't use my name in vain”. If you marry me, you've got a Power of Attorney to sign my name - but don't put my name on things that I wouldn't. So this ketubah comes down.

In Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments are given; so if we've got: Lakah; Segullah; Mikveh; and Ketubah - then next comes... Chuppah!

Exodus 20:18 - “When the people saw the thunder and lightning, heard the trumpet, and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear!”

They're seeing 3 things: Thunder; Lightning; and Billows of Smoke; and they're hearing 1 thing: Trumpets.

How do you see thunder? You can't! In Strong's Concordance, it's the word ‘Kole’ - which in every other instance in the Bible is translated: ‘voices’ or ‘languages’. So they look up and they see: ‘languages’; or they see ‘voices inside lightning’.

The word ‘lightning’ is the word ‘glorified fire’. It's the same word that is used with the burning bush.

So they look up and see ‘languages inside fire’. We see this again in Acts 2 - on the same day, just way later.

They see ‘languages inside fire’; and it says they saw ‘billows of smoke’ – spelt with the word ‘chuppah’.

They're standing at the base of the mountain, the Ketubah comes down; then God creates this giant marriage altar, and they look up and they see languages from the sky. Those languages are saying: “will you marry me”?

They stayed at a distance and said: “speak to us yourself Moses, and we will listen - but do not have God speak to us, or we will die”. After hearing the Ketubah - they didn't think they could live up to it. They said: no, no, no, we don't want this. We can't live up to this. We'll die! We can't do this!

The rabbis taught that at this point: “God proposed to the whole of creation through 70,000 tongues of fire”.

In the mid 1800s, there's this sociologist from England, who went to Rangoon, Burma. This is in the mid 1800s - like before electricity okay. When you're studying a social group of people the first question you ask normally is: “who is your God?” - because you've got to learn their belief system. They said we serve a God named ‘Yah’ who spoke to us from fire in the sky thousands of years ago. Like whoa! 70,000 tongues of fire - but they rejected the proposal of God.

They rejected it because they thought they weren't worthy; so God said: every year, on this day, you've got to remember this - and it was called the ‘Feast of Weeks’ or the ‘Feast of Pentecost’.

It's the only place in the whole Bible that they were commanded to bring an offering of bread made with yeast. Every other place in the bible, they had to eat unleavened bread; but on that day, they had to bring an offering of bread to God - made with leaven.

The priest would take the bread, break it, and lift it to God; saying something like: “Thank You God, that Your unleavened life is willing to become one with our leavened life. “

Then he would drop the bread, and cover and saturate it in oil - which is symbolic of the anointing. After he did that, he would say: “now the day of Pentecost has fully come”

So years later, they're standing in this (upper) room; and they're celebrating the Feast of Pentecost, like they did every year. Some would have been there just because they had to - just ‘going through the motions’. Some would have been truly lamenting: why did our ancestors reject the proposal of God?

Every year on this day, the guy running it would have “given thanks to God for His unleavened life being willing to become one with ours”. Then he covered it in oil, saying: now the day of Pentecost has fully come... but this time, something different happened!

This time they got a second chance! It says: they're standing in the room, and the whole room filled with a “billow of smoke” - Chuppah. They looked up and they saw “tongues inside fire”, “languages inside fire”.

This is the same day! It's the same thing that happened! The only difference is, this time they spoke back - which is the birth of the church, the bride of Christ.

The whole point of Pentecost was that:

1) God wants to marry you, leaven and all.

2) God trusts His Holy Spirit enough to saturate your leaven, and make you useable.

3) God trusts Himself enough that He knows: if He can put Himself in you - He can clean you up from the inside out.

This was a revelation that came, and it changed my imaginations about God: that God is in me - and He likes it. That there's no place I'd rather be than in God; and no place God would rather be than in me. He chose me before I chose Him. He chose me! He made the first move. He took all the risks.

In love, the one who takes all the risk is the one who ‘puts it out there’ first. When I was in junior high, I wanted to ask a girl named Lesley out - and I made the mistake: I told all my friends I was going to ask her out before school. Everybody was standing out in the school yard and I took that ‘long walk’ across there. I made two mistakes: I did it before school - and I told all my friends first.

So I'm walking across that whole big school yard – boom-boom, boom-boom - what if she says no? If she says ‘no’ - I'll be humiliated! They'll make fun of me the rest of the day. Luckily she said ‘yes’ - but the one who walks across the school yard is the one taking all the risk.

The Bible says that God demonstrated His love for me, in that He died for me, while I was still a sinner. In His life with you (and in your life with Him) - God took all the risk. That's how much He loves you. He loves you enough to take all the risk.

He's in you - and He likes it; and no matter what your leaven is, God is willing to work that out with you. He is faithful to complete anything He starts. God wants to marry you, leaven and all.

Closing Prayer

I bless you tonight, as leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ (God's biggest idea), to be reproductions of Jesus Christ in this whole community.

To be ministers of compassion, grace, slow to anger, abounding in love God - that we are to minister in the disposition of Messiah.

To be able to hallow that in secret - so you can manifest it in public.

To know - I mean KNOW deep down inside of you, DEEP down inside of you - that God Himself is in you - and He likes it. That God is comfortable in you. God likes you; that you are clean, clean, clean - washed with the oil of the Holy Spirit; washed with the blood of Jesus Christ. There's not one sin on your record. There's no guilt that you need to put on people. You can be a minister of Messiah, operating in His disposition.

The spiritual language you used earlier (praying in tongues) is actually God's ‘love language’ to you. It's your pillow-talk with God. You're actually letting it out of your spirit, the things that God whispers into your spirit, in the private times with Him. It's the language that God uses to tell you the secrets that He has for you, that you don't know yet - but He had destined for your glory before time began.

In the Old Testament, because they rejected God's marriage proposal, He spoke to them in ‘dreams & interpretations’. Now we have ‘tongues & interpretations’! We are able to speak what they only had the grace to see.

I want you to be still and know that He is God. Just take a second, and be still and know that He is God. Let your mind and your spirit, wrap around how big He is.

What would I feel like, if I could feel His compassion for people? (even just a tenth of it; 1% of it)

How would I feel Lord, if I could feel innocent in Your sight?

How would I feel Lord, if I could feel the truth - that I'm a vessel that You wanted to be with; wanted to marry; wanted to come into and live with, and have an intimate relationship with? I am a person that You desire to be with. I am Your treasured possession God - what would you feel like, if you could feel that?

If you could feel the truth now, that there's not one sin on your record; if you could feel the truth now that anything you struggle with - it's a process that God's working you through to make you whole. It's not that He doesn't love you; it's that He does.

What would you feel like if you could feel the bigness of God coming on your life? What would you feel like if you could feel just a smidgen of the calling He has for you; that He loves you so much He's whispering mysteries into your spirit?

What would you feel like, if you could feel the healing power of God coming out of you onto somebody else? How would you feel, if tomorrow somebody's coming through the doors of the church, and just by shaking your hand they can feel the love of God because you're that in tune with Him? Peter was so in tune with God that even his shadow raised somebody from the dead. What would that feel like?

I want you to be still and know that He is God. Let yourself become completely aware of His presence now - His presence is here.

What it means to be Born Again (2 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Sun 29 Apr 2007  « Back to Top

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View salvation in a whole new light, as Shane unlocks Hebraic understanding, and what Jesus was trying to communicate to others, on what it truly means to be born again.

1 John 4:7 – “Beloved, let us love one another - for love is of God; and everyone that loves, is born of God.”

People are fickle - they'll say “Hosanna, Hosanna” one minute, and the next minute they're nailing you to a cross! That's just people okay, but here's what I know:

If the church worldwide could ever get back to the point where it has a worldwide reputation for being loving - you couldn't stop it! We're made in the image of God - that's in love - and we're made in the image.

We naturally seek out the environments of those we're made in the image of. Before anybody gets too critical - we are getting better. Yeah, 500 or 600 years ago, we were chopping people's heads off, for disagreeing with us about statues and sanctuaries. We're getting better, historically! Now we just gossip at lunch...

But if we ever get back to the point we have a worldwide reputation for being loving, you couldn't stop us. It says: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loves is born of God.

1 John 5:1 – “Anyone who believes that: Jesus is the Christ, is born of God”

Christianity is not English. It's not New Zealand; Australian; American; Fijian - it's not any of those things. Christianity (in its base) has Hebraic culture in its thought; and this idea of being ‘born of God’ is found throughout the Bible; but in the New Testament, it's primarily stitched with the writings of John. In 1 Peter it says: “we're born again of an incorruptible, indestructible seed of the word of God” - but they're primarily stitched with this writer John - and I think it's because of an encounter with a man named Nicodemus.

It’s Sunday, so all across the world today, there's going to be pastors standing on stages, saying something like: “You need to be born again”. That's a great thing to say (and we ought to say that); but in Jesus' whole life - 3 and 1/2 years of ministry – He only said ‘born again’ one time. One time; to one man; at one moment at one time.

He said: no, no, no, you need to be born again! Everywhere else He said: repent and believe in Me. Who do you say that I am? Repent, believe in Me. But to one man, at one moment at one time, He said: no, no, no, no, no! You sir need to be born again. Why? What was so important about that man? What was going on there?

In a First Century Hebrew culture, there are only two types of people: firstborns; and second-borns. If we're going to be a First Century Hebrew culture this morning, we need to identify who our firstborns are. If you're the firstborn child of your family - I want you to raise your hand. I'm one. Everybody look around - those are the ‘church of firstborns’ okay. Just realise: these people are in trouble man!

The only other type of people is second-borns. If you're not a firstborn, you're a second born. If you're a 9th born - that means you're a second born. Everybody look around - these people are spoiled! Anybody not raise their hand? Okay - these people are deaf!

So we've got firstborns and we've got second-borns. Now in ancient Hebrew culture, firstborns always get justice okay. Firstborns get Justice! In Hebrew culture, second-borns get mercy. Firstborns get Justice; Second-borns get Mercy.

Has anybody ever read the Old Testament, and you saw this thing that the firstborns get called a ‘double-portion’? Anybody besides me ever prayed for it?

Nobody wanted a double portion - nobody did; because to get a double-portion meant you had to be a firstborn; and to be a firstborn - you had to get justice. The double portion was a compensation for all the responsibility that the firstborn had to do.

For example, the firstborn had to be the judge for the whole family. These were nomadic people - they moved around a lot. When a fire moved - they moved. When a cloud moved - they moved; and somewhere along the way, Aunt Sally stole Aunt Suzie's pot. Somebody had to be the judge for that! Would you want the responsibility of having to be the ‘judge’, to settle all your family's squabbles?

Because of that - they also had to be the judged - so they were responsible for the sin of their whole family. So if I'm the firstborn, and my little brother kills somebody, and he makes it to a city of refuge - they could still come get me! How would you like to be responsible for the sins of your siblings?

There's a principle in Hebrew culture that says: in order to be the judge, you also have to be the judged. You have to be willing to take the justice, in order to be the judge.

There this was Rabbi named Jesus, and He said: “Judge not, lest you be judged”. If you step into the place of a judge, you also have to take on the place of the judged - because only firstborns were allowed to judge.

That's why Jesus is the only judge of the universe - because He became the firstborn for all creation. Not only can He be the judge - He's also the judged - He took the justice.

They also had to be the “Kinsman Redeemer”. If I'm the firstborn, and my brother dies - I have to marry his wife! If they don't have a son - I have to produce children with her until a son comes; which means I would get to sleep with my sister-in-law! Obviously you haven't seen my sister-in-law. I'm just kidding.

Now think about this: if I had eight brothers and sisters okay - if I had 15 brothers and sisters - and by a series of unfortunate events, if they all die - then I have to marry all of their wives!

Do you see where the double portion doesn't go to me? It goes them all! It goes to supporting all these people that I'm now responsible for taking care of. Nobody wanted the double portion - because the double portion was a compensation for what the firstborn had to put up with.

Joseph had this vision from God; and in his vision these haystacks were bowing to him, and these stars were bowing to him. Now Joseph was an 11th-born (which makes him a second born), which means he gets mercy.

So he has this vision from God, haystacks and stars bowing to him - so he calls a family meeting. That’s the job of a firstborn, to call a family meeting - so Joseph's out of line already!

He says: I've had this vision from God, and in my vision: I'm standing and you're bowing. They wanted to kill him! No one likes a vision where: you're standing; and they're bowing. It's good leadership actually - a good leadership principle.

So they take him out, and they're going to kill him. They beat him up, and they threw him into a pit, and it says: “they ate, and drank, and made merry - and when they were done they were going to kill him”.

At the end of the day, they didn't kill him. Reuben talked them out of it - because he's the firstborn. He would have have been responsible for the sin!

That's why the firstborn out of every womb of every animal had to be sacrificed - in order to redeem all the others. In Egypt, when God heard the suffering of His people, in the last plague, He sends the death angel over - and if the death angel saw blood on the door, he passed over; but if he didn't, he went in and killed the firstborn. Firstborns get Justice; second-borns get Mercy.

The Bible says: when you were born, you were born in Adam - for Adam is the firstborn. In Adam you get justice, because you're born in Adam, and Adam is the firstborn.

But the Bible says in the Book of Colossians: when you get saved - you get moved from ‘in Adam’ to ‘in Christ’ - for Christ is the second Adam.

In the first Adam you get justice, but in the second Adam you get mercy - that's what it means to be ‘born-again’, or ‘born of God’.

I have been moved from a position of Justice, to a position of Mercy - that you now have a firstborn who's responsible for your sin.

In Matthew 1, it's the genealogy of Christ. All of them are second-borns, like Isaac, Jacob, David was a seventh born; so the ‘great second-born’ came from a long line of second-borns.

There were five women mentioned in Jesus' genealogy. In Hebrew culture, if they mention a woman in a genealogy, they're trying to tell you something - because they weren't allowed to do that. There are five women mentioned in Jesus' genealogy; one was Mary obviously, but the other four you have Rahab the... [Whore.]

Whore? Ease up! I heard: prostitute, harlot, WHORE! There's some raving mad Pentecostal over here - Rahab the WHORE! She was a whore!

So you have: Rahab the whore; and you've got Bathsheba - there's a woman of virtue! You have Ruth the Moabitis - who laid naked at Boaz's feet to get his attention (a woman of virtue).

Towards the beginning there it says: “and Judah begat Perez through Tamar”. Has anybody ever read this story? Has anybody besides me ever thought: I come from a dysfunctional family? Jesus' family was the most dysfunctional of all time I think!

This guy named Judah - Jesus said: “I am the Lion of the Tribe of... this guy”. Judah has three sons, and he goes and finds Tamar as the wife for his first son. Through a series of unfortunate events - his first son dies. Now the second born has to become the firstborn - he has to be the Kinsman Redeemer and marry her.

So he marries her and through a series of unfortunate events he dies; so Judah understandably goes: woman, what is the matter with you? Every son I give you dies. I'm not going to give you my third son. You're going to have to live like a widow - which was against the law, but that's the way he set it up. So she's living like a widow.

Fast forward some time; Judah is walking up the road to shear sheep. Now everything I'm fixing to tell you is a direct quote from the Bible, it's just the Bible sometimes is R-rated okay? So he's walking up the road to shear sheep, and he's with his servant - and Tamar is sitting on the side of the road, dressed up like a prostitute. And it says: he did not know it was Tamar, he simply thought it was a prostitute.

Now my guess is: this is not Judah's first go at prostitution okay. So he's got his man-servant with him. He sees the prostitute on the side of the road, and he walks over to her and he says: hey, can I come into you? That pick-up line does not work anymore.

She says: of course - if you pay me. He says: I don't have any money. She says: what do you have? He says: I have a goat. She says: I'll take a goat. Women's standards have changed! Now they want things like ‘commitment’, and ‘diamonds’ and stuff.

So he says: I don't have a goat with me - it's up the road, but let's do what we're going to do; and then I'll go up and get the goat, and bring it back to you - I promise. She says: do I look stupid to you?

She said: you have a ring, you have a staff and you have a cord - which is a whole other message. She said: give me your ring, your staff and your cord - and that'll be collateral. We'll ‘do what we're going to do’ - and I'll trust you to bring the goat back.

Judah must have been in a bad way!

There are two emotions you cannot afford - one is anger. I have a masters degree in clinical psychology, and I can tell you that the average person loses 25% of their IQ when they get angry - which for the average person would make you retarded!

When was the last time you ‘solved a problem’ or ‘said anything smart’ when you were angry? No. Men do things like: put their fist into walls that don't move! They get so mad - they can't complete sentences, so they groan.

If you're married, and both of you get mad, you've got two mentally-retarded people trying to solve a problem. It's always best to calm down and try to solve something.

The other emotion that causes you to lose 25 per cent of your IQ is sexual arousal. In anger, all the blood leaves your brain, and goes to your major muscle groups to prepare for a fight. In sexual arousal, all your blood leaves your brain and - yeah, okay. [So you actually become retarded in that state as well!

How many good decisions have been made in that state? Lots of promises have been made that couldn't be kept in that state okay - so we become retarded. Ever been angry and aroused at the same time - there's platypuses with greater IQs than that!

So Judah must have been retarded, because he gives his ring - which in Hebrew culture was his signature - it was his ‘Power of Attorney’!

He gives THAT to her, for one moment there; they do what they're going to do, and he goes up to get the goat as promised... He sends the goat back down with his servant - and guess who's not there? The prostitute!

So we've got a real problem don't we? We've got a prostitute running around Israel with his Power of Attorney. Can you imagine the feeling in his gut, that he would have lived with?

It gets worse... She gets pregnant by this encounter; and four months later you can't hide it anymore, so the people come to Judah, and they say: Judah, your daughter is pregnant by prostitution. What do you say we do to her? He says: burn her at the stake.

This is all in Genesis 37 & 38 - I'm not making any of this up. They bring her out to burn her at the stake; and like any good feminist, Tamar goes: excuse me, before we go burning anybody... I've got a ring, and whoever's ring this belongs to is the dad - and it was Judah's ring! So Judah lets her off the hook - because he'd have to burn himself.

It gets worse. She's not just pregnant with one baby, she's pregnant with two – twins!

What happens next is very weird. It says: the firstborn's name was Zerah and he was birthed with his arm first. Pop! And it says: the doctor tied a red cord around his arm. You've got to know who the firstborn is, because firstborns get... Justice; and second-borns get Mercy.

So this firstborns arm comes out, and the doctor marks his arm as the firstborn. The second-borns name was Perez - and his arm came out too (pop); and it says they wrestled. Is this weird?

Perez won the wrestling match, and pulled the firstborn's arm back in the womb. Then it says “he birthed himself” - the one with the legal right to mercy took the form of the first born.

Why would they put that in Jesus' genealogy? Isn't that what Jesus did? Jesus was perfect - the second Adam. He had the legal right to mercy; but He considered Himself of no reputation, and did not consider equality with God something to be seized; but took on the form of Adam. The one with the legal right to mercy, took the form of justice - in order to become the firstborn for all creation!

“Any of us who are in Him...” - Hebrews 3 says that: “God placed Him as the Son over His house”. The ‘Son over our House’ is the firstborn! God placed Him as the “Son over His house” - whose house we are in, as long as we continue to believe in Him.

If Jesus is your firstborn - that means you're the second born - which means He takes the Justice; and you get the Mercy.

It also answers the question of: can we continue to sin, and grace will cover it?

Jesus said: “every sin a man commits will be forgiven him”.

Paul said: “wherever sin abounds, grace abounds more”.

In Hebrews it says: if you continue to sin, after you've come into a knowledge of Him - it's like you crucify Him over and over and over again.

Somebody still has to pay for your sin. You do get the mercy - but somebody's taking the justice; and if you love your firstborn, you don't want to do that to Him - because He gets the justice, you get the mercy.

What's true of the firstborn is true of the whole family. What's true of Jesus is now true of you. It's actually fused to you - He actually put Himself in you; because you get the mercy and He gets the justice.

If He's anointed - you're anointed. If He's righteous - you're righteous. That's why the Bible says: “you've been recreated in righteousness and true holiness”. That's

1 Corinthians 6:17 – “Christ has fused Himself to your spirit”.

2 Corinthians 5:17-18 - “If any man be in Christ - he is a new creature. The old is gone and the new is come”. For we have been given this ministry of reconciliation - that God is reconciling the world to Himself, through Christ, by choosing not to count men's sins against them.

Are you born again?

Nicademus was a Pharisee - and all Pharisees were firstborns. That's why He said to Nicademus – “you've got to be born again”. You can't be a firstborn and make it into heaven. You can't be responsible for your own sins. Somebody has to be responsible for you.

Remember how excited Nicademus was? He's like: ooh! Just tell me! How can I get back up in my mum's womb, and be born again? Now that's an excited person! Quite over-zealous!

Jesus said: no, no, no - you can be born of water; and of spirit - and that counts as a second birth.

The message of Jesus is that: you're in a position of mercy, not of justice. He's offering to take you out of a position of justice and into a position of mercy.

The Bible says that when you get born again - there's a covenant between you and God.

In Hebrew culture, to make a covenant, we would: declare before you this day our intention to make a covenant. You need to have witnesses to make a covenant.

First we would trade coats. In New Zealand culture - this is to keep you warm okay. In Hebrew culture - this represents everything you are.

Remember when Elijah chose Elisha - he came behind him, and he threw his coat on him? In Hebrew culture, to give somebody your mantle meant: I give you everything I am; and you give me everything you are - in front of witnesses.

Everything I am I would put on him; and everything he is he would put on me.

So when you get born again - you give everything you are to Christ, everything - all of your unrighteousness; every place you've never measured up; every place you feel insecure; every depression, every rejection, every abandonment.

You give that to Christ; and you also give to Christ all of your righteousness, which is His ‘filthy rags’. In heaven, there are two lists on the audit form: sin; and filthy rags. We give Him all of our unrighteousness, and we also give Him all of our righteousness.

You know when a child does something he was proud of... Daddy look! Daddy look! If he'd have done something bad - you couldn't find him! We're all like that. When we think we do something right - when we keep our prayer life right - we do that. Something inside of us thinks Gods impressed; so we're like daddy look! Daddy look!

It's almost like God's like: don't you understand - I'm not impressed with that. I'm impressed with Jesus. You don't have to create your own righteousness - I'm simply giving you Mine. You don't have to create your own holiness - I'm giving you Mine. You don't have to create your own anointing - I'm giving you Mine. You don't have to live out of your own coat anymore - you can live out of My coat.

If you witness the coat exchange, then say “I do”. This happened all the time in Hebrew culture; and this was the imagery that God was using.

Next we would trade belts! In New Zealand culture, the belt is a fashion statement - and it's also meant to hold up the pants - and it's supposed to match your shoes!

In Hebrew culture - it was all of my weapons! So I just put all of my weapons at his disposal - in front of you all; and he just put all of his weapons at his disposal on me - in front of everybody. We're saying: anybody who comes against him now, is not just coming against him - it's coming against me and him -- even if I deserve it!

So if I kill one of her family - and she riles all those people up, and says: let's go get him - then he's still binded by covenant to stand with me see.

That's why Jesus said: “no weapon formed against you can prosper”. Any time the devil comes against you - any time anybody comes against you - it's not just you; it's you and him. It's all you've got; and all he has

If you witnessed the belt exchange, say “I do”.

Next we would stand before you, and we would quote all the blessings and curses from Deuteronomy 28! We would declare that if we break our covenant – “let all the curses come on us”; and if we keep our covenant – “let all the blessings come on us”

So if you come against -and he doesn't show up to help - our covenant is now ‘null and void’ - and he's heaped curses on his life.

A covenant wasn't a carte blanche thing, where you could act any way you wanted to act. A covenant had stipulations - and he had to live by the belt; he had to live by the coat!

If you witnessed the ‘blessings and curses’ thing say: I do.

Next we would kill an animal. I always forget the ‘killing the animal’ part, because it's strange to us - but to them it was like talking on a cell phone - it was that common.

We would take an animal, place it between us - and we'd cut it right down the middle; from the base of its skull, all the way down the middle. One half of the animal will fall on my side, and one half of the animal will fall on his side. In the middle would be a big pool of Blood.

Next we would walk in a ‘figure-of-eight’ around the blood. Eight is the number of new beginnings. It says: anything in my life, or his life, before now - is now gone. It's a brand new life, me and him.

“If any man be in Christ he's a new creature; all the old is gone, all the new is come” It's like Jesus has walked in a figure-eight around His own blood with you - and He's made everything new, everything new.

Next, I would take a knife - and cut his hand right down the middle; and he would take a knife - cut my hand right down the middle; then we would hold hands over the covenant animal - lock elbows; and our blood would mix and mingle with the blood of the animal.

I you witnessed all that say “I do”.

If he cuts me down the middle of my hand, and it heals, then a scar will be left. The sign of covenant is a scar in the palm of the hand!

The bible says that when you get saved - He writes His name on your Heart; but He writes your name on His Hand.

When the accuser comes to Jesus about you, he says: let me at Shane! No - his name's written on My hand. Yeah - but do You know what he did! Yes, I do - but his name is written on My hand. I'm in covenant with him - I have to stand with him. Y

But he put you on the cross! Still, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. The sin of all mankind is: we don't know what we're doing - we really don't know!

Anybody besides me ever fall in love in high school? Anybody got their heart broken in high school? I did - very sad; yeah. And I loved God in high school, I was a youth pastor; and these teenagers would come to me and say: “oh Shane, I love her”; or “oh Shane, I love him - and my heart's broken”.

Why would God do this to me? Oh why God? Then you go to your 20-year reunion, and you're like: Thank You God!

We don't know what we're doing. God's written our name on His hand, so when the accuser comes to Jesus about you - Jesus tells him to ‘talk to the hand’.

If you witnessed the hand-thing say “I do”.

Next we would trade surnames. So ‘Neil Clow’ would become ‘Neil Cloe-Willard’; and I would become Shane Willard-Cloe.

That gave me Power of Attorney on his name - so now I can write cheques on his bank account; and he can write cheques on mine. I can sell his house; he can sell mine. I could sell his children; he can sell mine. This was a major act of trust - complete Power of Attorney.

That's why Jesus said: “Anything you pray in My name...” You have the power to use Jesus' name - invoke His name.

The stipulation is: “Don't use His name in vain” - don't put His name on things that He wouldn't put His name on. Don't forge His name.

In covenant we've been given: his life; his coat; his belt; the sign in the palm of the hand; the new start with the figure eight; and we've been given his name.

If you witnessed that say: “I do”.

The last thing kind of offends ‘western masculinity’ a bit! The Bible says: “Greet each other with a holy... hug? Men in western culture - we are very serious about our masculinity - we beat each other when we hug; and it's always three pats. There's this whole subliminal thing going on: I'm not gay. Me either. I'm glad. Whoo-hoo! We men are strange creatures.

Actually, they would feed each other bread. I would take bread from my house; and he would take bread from his house. At weddings here - do you guys feed each other wedding cake? That's something we do in America - it's kind of similar to that.

I would take a piece of bread from my house; he would take a piece of bread from his house - and I would actually feed it to him - which is a bit feminine too...

This was the imagery: Now my life is not just on him; my weapons are not just around him; my name is not just with him; my mark is not just on him - but my life is actually now in him.

God had a problem. It says: the Old Testament was perfect. It was - God came up with it – and it was perfect. The Old Testament was perfect; but at the end of the day God - still found fault with man; and here's the problem with a covenant...

If he breaks his side of the deal - it's gone; if I break my side of the deal - it's gone. That's why they had to renew their covenant all the time. They had to bring an animal and re-sacrifice an animal all the time - because man couldn't keep their side of the deal - they couldn't do it!

God said: I'm going to solve that problem. I'm not going to make a covenant with man anymore. I'm going to send My Son - I'm going to put the spirit of My Son in them - and then I'm going to make a covenant with Myself!

Since He could swear by no greater - He swore by Himself. So now your covenant with God is as secure as the spirit within you - because He gets the Justice; and you get the Mercy.

Your job is to: continually respond; continually have faith; continually move into the life that's provided to you in Jesus Christ!

The Authority of a Rabbi (3 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Sun 29 Apr 2007  « Back to Top

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Examine the basic concepts of rabbinical authority, our role in coming under the authority of Jesus; and how this authority affected the disciples and Jesus' life.

Introduction

One thing Paul said in his writings, he said: “its Jesus we preach”, and tonight I want to preach Jesus to you.

I focussed on the regeneration of the spirit last session; now I want to talk about your soul; and next session I'm going to talk about the healing of our bodies.

Main Message

Matthew 4:18 – “As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; and they were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen”.

It says: “...for they were fishermen”.

Jesus said: “Come, follow Me - and I will make you fishers of men”. At once - they left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John, and they were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their needs.

Jesus called them, and immediately they left their boat, and their father, and followed Him.

Mark 2:13 – Once again, Jesus went out beside the lake, and a large crowd came to Him, and He began to teach them. As He walked along He saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus sitting at a tax collector's booth. “Follow Me”, Jesus told him; and Levi got up and followed Him.

You have this incredible phenomenon, which we can tend to read over; and because we know the end of the story, it's kind of easy to work out the beginning of the story.

But what if we didn't know the end of the story? We've just seen Jesus convince men - who have families, wives, children, land, homes, jobs, boats - He's convincing them, on the sales pitch of two words; to leave everything they know and do, and follow Him.

The first two, maybe they were just down on their luck, having a midlife crisis... but then He continues up to 12 for 12, convincing them to leave everything and follow Him.

It's one thing for a man to leave his wife; it's a whole different deal when he leaves his boat - that's serious! He's convincing these men to leave everything they know - they're leaving their jobs with no notice, no promise on how to make money, no claims of fame, or promises that 2000 years from now, there'll be huge buildings in Europe named after you. Just two words: “Follow Me.

James and John, son of Zebedee - they do the same thing. What was Zebedee thinking? His whole workforce just quit with no notice. Imagine Zebedee going home that night to his wife, trying to explain that the sons have left home to follow a guy.

This is what was going on. Every Hebrew boy longed to be a rabbi - it was the highest calling - the coolest thing, the best of the best.

It's kind of like in New Zealand, how many boys grow up wanting to play rugby? But how many actually get to play for the All Blacks one day?

Every boy wanted to be a rabbi, but at some point, 99% of them were told: I'm sorry - you just don't have what it takes to be in ministry. Only the best, of the best, of the best made it - and here's how they started to weed them out...

You had to memorise Leviticus by the age of six. Not every home had scripture; they read scripture communally - so you had to memorise Leviticus based on your father's memorisation of Leviticus, and him quoting it to you (which is a whole other message).

If you memorised Leviticus then you graduated; but when you were 6, you graduated to what was called the Beit Sefer, which is Hebrew for ‘the School of The Book’. Beit Sefer lasted from 6-12, and they memorised the whole Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy - word for word, the whole thing.

When they were 12 years old, they graduated from the Beit Sefer by having a Torah exam, with the teacher's of the law that day. They weren't graded on whether they knew the answers; but on whether or not they asked the right questions.

It says in Luke, that when Jesus was 12 years old, He was wowing the teachers of the law with His questions.

Hebrew scholars were not noted for their answers - they weren't noted for coming to a destination, or for a putting a theology into a system of bullet points.

They were noted for their ability to keep the discussion about God going longer. They were noted for their ability to ask the right questions - and you've got to be far smarter to ask the right question than to have the right answer.

Hebrew people lead with questions. I can tell everything I want to know about you, by the questions you ask, and the stories you tell, everything.

Questions reveal values; and questions reinforce values.

If you say to your child: all I want you to do is ‘do your best’, but then they come home, and the only question you ask is: what grade did you make - what do they assume is important? The grade!

So if they wowed the teachers of the law with their questions, they graduated into what was called the Beit Talmud, which means ‘the School of Disciples’. Talmud is the word for disciple; it's like discipleship school.

If you didn't wow the teachers of the law with your questions, you were told: I'm sorry - you're disqualified from ministry; now go back and earn a living at your family trade. I'm sorry, you just don't have what it takes to be a rabbi.

If they got too far behind in their memorisation of the Torah: I'm sorry, you just don't have what it takes. Go back and earn a living at your family trade. I'm sorry - you're disqualified. You're a good guy, but you just don't have what it takes to be a rabbi.

But if the best, of the best, of the best, of the best - the ones that were wowing teachers of the law with their questions, they graduated to the Beit Talmud.

Now the Beit Talmud was 18 years long, from ages of 12- 30, in five stages. Has anybody ever wondered why Jesus disappeared from 12 to 30? Then He comes out, and everybody's calling Him rabbi? He was in the Beit Talmud.

You would go through stage one, and have an exam. If you passed your exam, you got to go to stage two; otherwise you were told: I'm sorry, you're disqualified from ministry. Now go back and earn a living at your family trade.

Stage five was called Shmekah (rabbinical authority). There were only two types of rabbi: rabbis with Shmekah; and rabbis without i.e. rabbis with authority, and rabbis without authority.

A rabbi's interpretation of Torah/scripture, or his way of life, was called his yoke.

Jesus said: “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me - for My yoke is easy and My burden is light”.

The key to understanding that is in the word 'My'. For Him to say ‘my yoke’, He had to have authority - because this was the difference.

You spent 18 years learning the yoke of a rabbi. 18 years in the Beit Talmud, spent sitting at a rabbi's feet, saying: teach me your yoke.

When you became a rabbi, you were in charge of taking that rabbi's yoke to the next generation. However, 99.9% of all rabbis did not have authority. They did not have Shmekah; only the select of select did.

Sometimes they could go two and three generations without any rabbis with Shmekah.

So what would happen is, for a rabbi without authority - they were still a rabbi, but they had to teach the yoke of their rabbi.

But a rabbi with Shmekah could make up his own yoke.

This is how they determined if a rabbi had authority or not. When you graduated from rabbi school, they would baptise you - because they baptised you anytime you changed social status. Specifically if you went from unclean to clean, they would baptise you, to declare you can be touched now, without contaminating people.

This is why we get baptised today - it’s a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ; but bigger than that, it is publically declaring: I was once unclean, and now I am clean.

If you went from non-rabbi, to rabbi, they would baptise you – and at the baptism, we've got to decide who has Shmekah, and who doesn't. Here's how they decided that:

You had to have two verbal witnesses at your baptism. Two people would speak out for you, at your baptism, which was basically ordination.

It says when Jesus was 30 years old, He went out to the desert to be baptised - so Jesus is graduating from rabbi school.

He goes into the water, and John says: “Behold, the lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world; whose sandals I am not worthy to untie! That was witness #1.

John baptises Him; and Jesus comes up out of the water, and He's a regular rabbi without authority - until a second voice speaks. The second voice came from heaven - and it says the whole of the crowd heard it.

So now, Jesus isn't just a rabbi - He's a rabbi with Shmekah.

He then spent the rest of His life wrecking everybody else's yoke!

This followed Him His whole life - “You do not teach as the other rabbis teach; but You teach as one with authority”.

It meant: we've never heard a yoke like this before. You must have authority to teach this yoke; otherwise you don't have any rights to teach this yoke. So where did you get your authority from?

His reply: from the same authority John the Baptist had - because John the Baptist was the one that witnessed Him.

So Jesus isn't just a rabbi - He's a rabbi with authority.

The first thing a rabbi would do is: he had to have disciples - because a rabbi without disciples was not a rabbi. So where would you get your disciples from? From the Beit Talmud - the school of disciples.

The rabbi would go back to the Beit Talmud, walk through the Beit Talmud, and he would look for the right student. The question wasn't whether or not the student knew the word, because remember: everybody in the Beit Talmud had memorised the Torah; and had wowed the teachers of the law with their questions.

It wasn't a matter of competency, or knowing the word. The rabbi would walk through the Beit Talmud with one question: do I believe that he can do even greater things than me?

If the rabbi believed that the student could do even greater things than him, he would ordain him as a disciple in his rabbi school with two words: Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.

Every Hebrew boy longed to hear the words of a rabbi saying “follow me”, but most of them only heard: I'm sorry, you don't have what it takes. You're disqualified from ministry. Go back and earn a living at your family trade.

So Jesus has to get Himself some disciples. Now you would think that being a rabbi with authority, He would go get the best students from rabbi school - but He doesn't!

He goes to the banks of a lake, and He finds some fishermen, and He says: Simon, Andrew - follow me.

These guys have longed to hear the words of a rabbi saying “follow me” their whole life, but instead they heard: I'm sorry, you're disqualified from ministry.

The fact that they were fishermen meant that they had been disqualified.

The yoke of our Rabbi chooses men, that other people say are disqualified from ministry, to change the world.

That's the yoke of our Rabbi. That's why men were jumping out of boats. The yoke of our Rabbi is so cool!

Then He goes and He gets James and John; so He gets four fishermen - four people who'd been disqualified from ministry, four people who the religious leaders say: you don't have what it takes; and He says: follow Me, follow Me, follow Me.

I want to teach you My Yoke. I want you to carry My Yoke to the next generation.

The fifth disciple was Matthew, who was found at a tax collector's booth, by the lake. If you're sitting at a tax collector's booth, by the lake, then what are you taxing? Fish!

So Jesus says: Simon, Andrew, James and John - we're going to find out right now - are you willing to forgive, and face your issues, with the man who's been robbing food off your family's table for years?

The yoke of our Rabbi says that you face the people, who've hurt you, with honesty and sincerity - and you forgive them, and you move on. That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

When you decided to join a rabbi's tutelage, it wasn't just to know what he knew - you wanted to be what he was; take on his whole life. You wanted to treat people like he treated people. You wanted to have a philosophy of marriage, and children, and giving, and all this stuff. You wanted to be what he was.

They even wanted to walk like their rabbi; so the rabbi would teach them to walk like him. They'd line them up, and they'd tie a rope around their neck (one rope around), and the rabbi would hold the rope, and he'd walk in front of them. When they learned to walk behind the rabbi with a rope around their neck, they were said to be walking in what was called ‘Ahad’, which is translated ‘one accord’.

Then he would take the rope off of their neck; and they would learn to walk behind their rabbi without the rope. What rabbinical tradition says (and this is not in the Bible, but you will recognise it) is that as they were learning to walk behind their rabbi, if only one student got out of line, the rabbi would stop the whole line, to get the one back in.

“The kingdom of God is like a shepherd with 100 sheep, and one got away, and He left the 99 to get the one” - that's the yoke of our Rabbi.

He was teaching them a new yoke, a new way of life. We say we're ‘Disciples of Jesus Christ’, which means that we are ‘Carriers of His Yoke’.

In John 8, this lady gets caught in the act of adultery – like, in the act. It's kind of embarrassing.

Now the Torah says what do you do with such a person - Stone them. The Mishnah, which was like another book they honoured, said that: you could beat her up; you could strip her from the waist up, and bring her out in public to humiliate her - and then stone her.

So if they followed their culture, they would have beaten her up, they would have dragged her out, they would have stripped her from the waist up (which probably wasn't necessary because they caught in the act) - and they drag her to the feet of Jesus.

They throw her at His feet, and they say: Moses says to stone her. What do You say? Essentially, what does your Yoke say about this?

Jesus is in a conundrum isn't He? Does Jesus want to stone her? No, but does Jesus have to follow the law? Yes.

So He says: okay - My Yoke says ‘stone her’. The Torah says to stone her, so my yoke says stone her - but My Yoke also says that you can't throw stones unless you're perfect. Brilliant!

They're all holding their stones, and they don't know what to do, so they drop them. They brought her to Jesus, because they needed someone with... Authority. So they all drop their stones, and they leave one at a time.

Very important - it says: Jesus doesn't speak until they all left. After they've all left, there's this lady - topless, beaten up, ashamed, laying probably in the foetal position, covering her head waiting on the stones to come.

Jesus gets her attention, and He says: lady, where are your accusers? She looks around and she says: they've all left. Jesus said: then neither do I condemn you. Why? Because the Torah said: stone her; but the Torah also says that you have to have two witnesses to condemn somebody.

Jesus couldn't make her sin go away, so He simply made the witnesses go away - which automatically declared a mistrial.

That's the yoke of our Rabbi, which is why there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

It's not that you don't sin; it's just that according to the yoke of our Rabbi, there will never be enough witnesses to condemn you.

Then I had to ask myself this question: could my yoke say what His yoke said? And it couldn't! He looked at a lady who was caught in the act of adultery, and He was able, with compassion, to say: I don't condemn you.

My yoke (the yoke of my denomination) said: ostracise her, cut them off - that's it! That was the yoke of my denomination, but it was not the yoke of my Rabbi - and I had to repent. Could your yoke say that? What would your yoke say?

There's this one place, where this guy was hanging on a cross, and Jesus was having a really bad day. They had arrested Him in the middle of the night; put all these false charges on Him; and remember that at Jesus' trial - they couldn't get two people to agree - which is really interesting.

But they end up putting together these lies; and beating Him with such a beating that 7/10 people would have died from. They put a crown of thorns on His head; they slap Him, gossip about Him; spit on Him. All of His 12 best friends leave Him.

This is just a really bad day; but we call it Good Friday! Jesus is hanging on a cross, after nails have been shoved through His wrists and His feet. He knows He's going to die; but there's a guy next to Him who says three words: Please remember me.

Jesus said: that's enough for Me, you can go to heaven. That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

He says: and while we're at it, let's forgive the people at the foot of the cross too. Forgive them - they don't know what they're doing. That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

The yoke of our Rabbi was so full of compassion and grace, and slow to anger and abounding in love - it was even present in the Old Testament.

In Hebrews 11 is what is called the Hall of Faith – heroes of the Faith.

Abraham gave his wife to Pharaoh's harem. Imagine if CNN and the internet were around back then? All the Christians would have been saying: I don't even think he's saved. How can he be saved and do stuff like that?

Isaac did something very similar. Moses was a premeditated murderer – “I looked this way and that, and seeing no one, I killed the man, and hid him in the sand”.

The problem was, the next day the sand shifted - and you've got this leg sticking up into the air! God looked down and said: you'll do. I'll use you to write the Bible!

The yoke of my denomination, said: a premeditated murderer gets cut - they're disqualified. God says: no, no, no, the yoke of the Rabbi gets in there, and with grace restores their life, and uses them to write the very Bible we preach from.

Samson was sleeping with prostitutes on his wedding night, because he got depressed, because his best man stole his wife. Hero of the faith, because when God steps in on a person's life, He restores their life.

Solomon had 1,000 women; and God said: I'll use you to write the book on wisdom.

David had 700 women - and still went and got the one he couldn't have - committed adultery and premeditated murder. He didn't just murder one man. The Bible says that 18 men lost their lives that day, from him trying to kill one. He killed 18 men in one day, trying to cover up his sin, but he got the woman pregnant. He kills 18 men trying to cover up that sin - and he ends up marrying her.

If CNN and the internet were around back then, what would your yoke have said? My yoke says: you cut him off. It did! God restored David, and used him to write the Bible - but we think we're good enough to say: you're not good enough to preach what God said you could write? I sat in my room and I became broken, because I realised that my yoke was different than the yoke of my Rabbi.

I said I was a ‘disciple of Jesus Christ’, but you've got to understand that Hebraically, you're only a disciple of the rabbi who's yoke you follow. How many times did Jesus say: they will know you're my disciple, by keeping My commands? The yoke of our Rabbi.

Peter denied Him three times in open court, and cursed His name so bad that the Roman soldiers blushed. Five days later, Jesus is cooking breakfast for him on the beach, and didn't even bring the sin up. He just said: do you love Me? That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

There's this one place where Jesus was between customers, and so He visits this prostitute. This Pharisee was following Him around, and thought to himself: this man can't be the messiah, because He should know that this woman is unclean. What is He thinking - being the guest of a sinner?

Then it gets worse, because the lady bends down, and cries on Jesus' feet; and takes her hair, and begins to wipe His feet with her hair.

The Pharisee says: I can't believe this!

Jesus, knowing his thought, looked at him and said: go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

The yoke of our Rabbi took all 12 men who deserted Him (11 of the 12, since one killed himself) - and restored them the next week to ministry, because He believed in them that much. That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

In Matthew 16, Jesus went to Caesarea Philippi, which was the headquarters to the goat-god Pan. In the middle of Caesarea Philippi, there was this mountain; and they built the temple to the goat god Pan at the top of this mountain, because they wanted the temple to be at the highest point of the city.

When they built the temple to the goat god Pan, it actually cracked the mountain; from the top of the mountain, all the way down to the road, and then it cracked the road.

So for 24hrs/day, 7 days/week, there was steam coming up from the crack in the road - and the people of Caesarea Philippi believed that it was the entrance and the exit to hell. They believed that if you didn't worship Pan properly, he would open up the gates of hell, and swallow you into it.

The problem was, Pan was a goat-god, and he received worship through intimate acts with goats! So 24 hours/day, there were people all around on the public street, being intimate with goats, in worship to Pan. Jesus took His youth group there!

He said: look around. Who do you say that I am? Peter says something like: You're the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus says: that's right, and upon this rock we'll build a church, and not even the gates of hell will prevail against it.

Jesus is looking at the gate of hell, and He's standing over it, saying: bring it on. That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

When they were learning to walk behind their rabbi, the best student of the day got to be the line-leader. As they were walking behind their rabbi, the rabbis wore these shoes with these flaps; and it was a dusty region, so the best student of the day was the one walking closest behind him. You could always tell who that was, by the one who got covered in the dust of their rabbi. They would get covered, from their waist down, in the dust of their rabbi.

But when they went back to the temple, it wasn't dust you wanted to wash off; it was dust you wanted to show off - because it meant you were the best student of the day. It was an honour to be covered in the dust of your rabbi.

Remember there was this one place, where it says that Jesus couldn't do any miracles; so He taught them to shake the dust off their feet? He wasn't telling them to curse anybody. He was saying: bless them with the best blessing you can give them. It was an honour to be covered in the dust of your rabbi.

We define sin as bad things that we do - and it is; but sin is far bigger than that. Sin is anything that isn't perfect. Paul said: we were given the law so we would know what sin is.

If you read Leviticus, you'll find that it's a sin to have dandruff. Look at your neighbour and see if they're sinning! No ma'am, he's bald! It was a sin to wear eye glasses. It was a sin to have a period. It was a sin to give birth.

Leviticus 12:6-7 says that after a woman has given birth, she must bring a sin offering, to make atonement for her loss of blood. Why? Because you were never intended to have hard labour in childbirth - that was a result of sin; and anything that's a result of sin, was sin.

The point is that we need a saviour; that we can't live it; and the problem is that sin was very contagious.

There were two words” Tamei and Tahor; which meant unclean and clean. The problem with ‘unclean’ was that it was very contagious; so if somebody here had dandruff, all I had to do was touch them, and I would be Tamei. If a lady here was on her period, all I would have to do is touch her, and I would be Tamei.

Like what did you do back then - wear a sign? It made you unclean if you touched furniture, where a husband and wife had been intimate in the last three days. Did you put a sign up?

I was teaching this in a pastor's home one time, and he made everybody get off the couch! He was like 78! See, the yoke of our Rabbi cleansed us from all uncleanness.

There's one writer that says: if we say we're without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth isn't in it; but if we confess that we're sinful, that He is faithful and just to cleanse us of all of our uncleanness.

The Hebrew word for Iniquity was Avon; three letters: ayin, vav and nun. Ayin was written as an eye; vav as a hook; nun was ‘fish that were multiplying’ (1 fish became 2, 4, 8). So when a Hebrew person read the word iniquity they read: “whatever your eye hooks-to, multiplies”.

There are 3 levels to sin in the Hebrew people: iniquity; sin; and transgression.

Iniquity was when your eye hooked to something, and it multiplied. Sin was when you're drawn away by your own lust, and enticed. So if my eye gets hooked to that jacket I just: oh, I want that jacket; I desire that jacket; it builds a lust inside of me for that jacket.

Now once I'm drawn away by my own lust, and enticed, now I'm sinning.

Transgression, the third level, is when I actually take it.

The Bible says: “we all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has laid on Him the Avon of us all.”

God doesn't just forgive you for what you've done; God forgives you all the way back to where your eye hooked to the wrong thing. That's the yoke of our Rabbi.

I used to kick box; but don't anybody take me on - you'll win! I'm not mean enough to fight, I haven't hit anybody in 16 years, but I was quite good at one point; and when I thought about Jesus standing over the gates of hell, and saying: not even the gates of hell will prevail against Him - bring it on! Our yoke is so good, that not even this can win.

I used to kick box, and I actually got to fight in a US Open one year. I won the South Eastern Regional's two years in a row, got invited to the US Open three times in a row, got invited to the World Championships once, and I had these huge trophies.

All the neighbourhood kids were at my house, and they were looking at my trophies, and this guy came over. His name was Kenneth, and Kenneth was one of those kids that were about my size in the 8th Grade! This guy was shaving in the 4th Grade sort of guy!

He walks in, and in front of everybody he goes: Shane Willard, I think I could whoop you! I said: I think you're right. He says: come on, let's fight! I said: I'm not fighting you - you're twice my size, I'm not stupid! He said: I brought boxing gloves. I said: oh boxing gloves - let's go; because I knew if we put boxing gloves on, he couldn't grab me...

So we go outside and all of our friends made this boxing ring, and they're standing around it, and there's: fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

So I get in the ring with this guy, and I beat him to death. I'm talking - he couldn't touch me, I was too quick for him; just pow, pow, pow. I wasn't hurting him, he just couldn't touch me, and he started to get a little bit agitated.

So he finally got mad; and when you get mad, you do stupid things, because you become mentally retarded! And ya'll, he decided he was going to throw a punch to try to knock me out. Let me just show you how fast it came. This is in real speed, here it is... I actually had time to think: I'll move now. He left himself in about this position, so I thought: I'll end this now!

I bent my knees - ya'll, I've never hit a human being, as hard as I hit him this day. I came from down here, and it was one of those punches where your hips twisted at just the right moment, and just everything came up, and with all my weight, and with everything I had - I hit him right on the base of his chin!

His head snapped back. His knees buckled, and he stammered back three paces, then he caught his balance, and he looked up - and now he was mad! His face turned red, and he looked up at me, and he said: boy - is that all you've got! And it was!

How many of you know, when you take the enemy's best shot, and you're still standing - you win? He won that fight, because he took my best shot, and he took it and stood there, and came back at me. In my heart I said: he just took my best shot. I can't beat him. I can't beat him.

One day they came to get Jesus, and Jesus' way of life was so different. Peter, who didn't quite get it, he pulled a sword out and he cut the guy's ear off; and Jesus said: no, no, no! He picks the guy's ear back up, and puts it back on. He says: Peter, we're not going to live like this anymore. We're not going to live by the sword, and we're not going to die by the sword, one more day.

This issue of always having to win, and one-up, and get my rights, hear my way, and all this stuff - no, no. That's not the best way of life.

The best way of life is: blessed are the peacemakers. He said: I willingly crawl up on a cross and die, so that none of us have to live this way anymore - and He did. He took Satan's best shot: cat o'nine tails lashes; nailed to a cross. You can't do anything more to somebody than kill them; publically humiliate them; make a complete spectacle out of them.

He sat on that cross, and He took all the rejection, all the gossip, all the slander, all the hate, all the anger, every bit of bad thing in the world. He took Satan's best shot, and it killed Him. He descended into hell, and He looked at Satan right in the eyes, and He said: boy, is that all you've got? Not even the gates of hell can prevail against this yoke.

Closing Prayer

I bless you tonight to know that you follow a Rabbi who believes in you more than you believe in Him.

Let me challenge you. Unless you've been given Shmekah - which you haven't - you can't make up your own yoke.

Even the parts of Jesus' yoke that don't make any sense, like: in order to be first, you've got to be last; in order to be great, you have to be a servant; in order to get, you've got to give; in order to live, you've got to die - even the parts of Jesus' yoke that goes: that's not what my daddy said; that's not what my granddaddy said; that's not what my denomination said.

When the Lord showed me this, I sat for three months before I could speak of it, and I repented. I said: God, the yoke of my denomination, is not the yoke of my Rabbi.

I'd been taught to be hard on people; and the Lord spoke to me and He said: Shane, you will either be covered in the dust of your Rabbi; or you will be covered in the dust of your own issues. If you're covered in the dust of your Rabbi, then you will cover people in the dust of your Rabbi; but if you're covered in the dust of your own issues, then you will cover people in the dust of your own issues.

And I had stood on stages, and I had made people feel guilty. I had put condemnation on them. I had done things that my mentors, some of them had told me: it gets good altar calls - that's what you do.

But I had ruined people because I did not cover them in the dust of my rabbi; I covered them in the dust of something else. I had to repent. Are you covered in the dust of your Rabbi? Or are you covered in the dust of your dad?

Are you covered in the dust of past hurts? Are you covered in the dust of anger and resentment? Are you covered in the dust of rebellion?

How about your home? Husbands, when you go home tonight, is your house ruled by compassionate, grace, slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiveness? Or is your house ruled by your iron fist, because that's how your dad said you rule the home? Do you rule your home with the dust of the Rabbi, or do you rule your home by the dust of your own stuff?

How about you wives: is your behaviour towards your children dominated by the yoke of your Rabbi; or is it dominated by the yoke of your own issues? Do you talk to them the same way your mother talked to you; or do you talk to them how Jesus would?

Jesus died, not so that just we could go to heaven; Jesus died so we could have the best life here, now, today.

Jesus, Your way is the best way for my life.

Healing in the Tassels (4 of 4) (Shane Willard)

Tue 1st May 2007  « Back to Top

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Num 15:37 - Throughout the generations to come, you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at, so you will remember all of the commands of the Lord your God; that you may obey them, and not prostitute yourself by going after the lust of your own hearts and eyes.

Introduction

If you turn your Bibles to Numbers 15; unless you've been raised in 1st Century Jewish household, because you'd have this memorised, but since we probably don't...

I can tell you that, to the yoke of all the rabbis, the number one evidence of somebody's salvation was that they were generous.

Remember when Zaccheus came out of the tree, and he said: I'll give half of what I have to the poor? That's all - he didn't say a sinner's prayer; he didn't confess all his sins. He just said: I'm going to get generous; and Jesus said: that's it – today, salvation's come to your house. Generosity was the key to everything really.

Greed was the key to everything not good. Jesus talked about hell 15 times; and all 15 of them were about greed.

He released somebody who was caught in the act of adultery – they actually caught her in the act. He let her go; but He said: there was a rich man that overlooked a poor man - and that guy went to hell.

There was a guy that had a talent, and he got so scared of losing it, that he hoarded it to himself, and he buried it. That guy was cast out in utter darkness; but the thief on the cross was let in.

You can't figure God out. God, but I know this: God honours generous people. He loves a cheerful giver.

Main Message

Numbers 15:37 – And the Lord said to Moses, speak to the Israelites, and say to them:

Throughout the generations to come, you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel.

You will have these tassels to look at, so you will remember all of the commands of the Lord your God; that you may obey them, and not prostitute yourself by going after the lust of your own hearts and eyes.

Then you will remember to obey all of My commands, and will be consecrated to the Lord your God; for I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God, for I am the Lord your God.

God is commanding the people to sew tassels on the corners of their garments. This is a Tallit, which to a First Century Hebrew person, and to these people, was symbolic of the presence of God.

It was a microcosm of the Holy Veil, which separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place.

If you read Exodus 34, it gives the dimensions of how they were supposed to do the curtain, and they had to sew these tassels on the corners. The word for ‘corners’ is ‘Kanaf’ - corners, border, hem, things like that.

It says: you should sew tassels on the corners of your garment. The word for ‘tassels’ is the word ‘Tsit Tsiyot’. You have to sew tsit tsiyot on the kanaf of your garment.

There are five knots in the tassel - one for each Book of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

There are also four spaces between the five knots: one for each letter in the Holy name Yahweh - Yud, He, Vav, He. It was just four letters that didn't even go together phonetically; so the Jews tried to work out how to even say that name, and they quit actually saying it. If they said it, they would cover their heads, because of the reverence of it. It's because God was speaking. This was God's way of life.

So they had five knots: one for each Book of the Torah; and four spaces between each knot: one for each letter of the Holy name Yahweh; so they were ‘tying to themselves’ the word of God, and the name of God.

It takes 613 loops to tie one of these, and there are exactly 613 commands in the Old Testament. So they had: the word of God; the name of God, and the ways of God tied to them.

When the knot was finished, on each side there would be three white strands, and one blue one; then on the other side, three white strands and one blue one - three in one, so you had the nature of God there.

So you had the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God, and the nature of God, all tied up on you - all tied to His presence.

When they tied the tassel correctly, it would end up with eight strands. Eight is the number of new beginnings, which is the number of grace.

So you have the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God, the nature of God, and the grace of God, all tied to you.

Moses commanded people, saying that throughout generations to come, you are to make tassels on the corners of your garment. To this day, in certain Jewish circles... like I've seen this.

I was at lunch not too long ago with a guy, and he wore this undergarment underneath his shirt, and coming out from the undergarment was tassels sewn to the corner of his garment. He didn't walk around with this, but he had an undergarment with tassels sewn to him.

Why would God do that? Why would God tell us to? It's because God knows that we're tactile imagery people, especially First Century and Ancient Near East people.

They would wear their prayer shawl; and when they wore it, they would take the tassels, and they would wrap it around their fingers; because that way, before you sinned, any time you sinned, you had to unwrap God.

It was a reminder that God's way is the way of life. God's way brought me from darkness to light. God's way brought me from slavery in Egypt, to freedom in the Promised Land.

God's way, God's name, God's grace; it has nothing to do with me, for by grace I have been saved, through faith and not in myself. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. God's way is the way of life. God's way is the way out of slavery. God's way is the way to wholeness. God's way, God's path, is the best life to live.

One time this guy named Saul was chasing this guy named David around. It was like, not fair - Saul and a bunch of guys against David. Saul was on his way to get David, and he had to go to the toilet.

In English it says: he goes into the cave to relieve himself; but in Hebrew it says: he went into the cave to cover his feet. That's disgusting - you'll get that later I guess!

Saul goes in there to use the toilet; and it says that David snuck up behind him, and cut off the corner of his garment.

Now my Sunday school teacher, who meant well, said that David was doing that so he could show Saul that he ‘could have killed him’ but he ‘decided not to’ - but that's not what it was about at all.

Saul was the king of Israel, so he would he have been wearing tassels on the corners of his garment. So if David cuts off the corner of his garment, David cut off his anointing. That's why Saul saw it as a reproach, and that's why later David got so guilty - I can't believe I've touched God's anointed.

Saul gets done doing what he's doing, and he walks out. He faces his men, and he doesn't have tassels; and David is off in the distance going: hey, I've got your tassels. In other words: you're not the man anymore. You're not the one with God's favour on his life - I am.

Have you ever heard of going into your prayer closet? It wasn't the place you kept the broom! They'd wrap these things around their hands, doing it on both hands, and go into their prayer closet.

This one place, the word kanaf means corners, borders or hem; but over time it started to mean ‘wings’. The reason is because, when the priest would bless the people at the end of the service, he would say: the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

In the Psalms, David writes things like ‘under the shadow of your wings’, which means: under the shadow of the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God, the grace of God, the favour of God, the nature of God; under the shadow of those things - that's where I will abide.

In other words, in my prayer closet, in my prayer life, under the presence of God Himself, that's where I will abide, and that's where peace is found.

Malachi 4:2 says: there will come from God, a Son of Righteousness. This is a reference (prophesy) about Messiah. There will come from God a Son of Righteousness - with healing in His wings (the same word, ‘kanaf’).

In other words, whoever Messiah is - there is healing in His tassels.

Whoever Messiah is, there's something about how He carries the name of God, the word of God, the ways of God, the grace of God, the nature of God. There's something about the way He carries the presence of God on Himself that brings healing from the very tassels that He's wearing.

An interesting story happens in Mark 5:21. When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered round Him while He was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus came there.

Seeing Jesus, he fell at His feet, and pleaded earnestly with Him: my little daughter is dying, please come and put Your hands on her, so that she will be healed and live. So Jesus went with him.

Jesus is going to a man's house named Jairus, who's a synagogue ruler. This is like a master-teacher of the word of God. This is like the senior executive pastor of a huge place, and his daughter is sick and is dying. He comes to Jesus and he says: please my 12 year old daughter is dying. Please come and put Your hands on her, so that she might be healed. Jesus is moved with compassion, and goes with him. In the context of Mark 5, He is going to Jairus house to pray for his daughter. This is where we're going.

A large crowd followed Him, and pressed around Him; and a woman was there, who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors, and had spent all that she had; yet instead of getting better, she grew worse.

Jesus is on His way to Jairus' house, there's this huge crowd pressing in on Him, and this lady (who's had an issue of bleeding for 12 years) starts elbowing her way through the crowd. Don't you like her already? Like she's throwing a few elbows, she's being proactive, she's being pushy - and she's had an issue of bleeding for 12 years.

There's a principle of Tamei and Tahor (unclean/clean). A leper, if he got diagnosed with leprosy, would have to walk through town going tamei! Tamei! Tamei! Unclean! Unclean! Unclean! Tamei was very contagious.

Sin is anything that is not perfect. If you read the Book of Leviticus, you'll find that to have dandruff is sin; eye-sight problems is sin. To have any physical deformity at all - if you had eczema on your wrist it was considered Tamei, any kind of skin disorder was tamei.

For a woman to have her period was tamei, and for a woman to give birth was a sin. If you gave birth, you had to bring, according to Leviticus 12, 6 and 7, you had to bring a sin offering to atone for your loss of blood, because when you gave birth you lost blood. You were never intended to lose blood. That was just a part of the curse of sinfulness, so you were then tamei.

The problem with tamei is how easy it was to catch it. She's wearing eye glasses, and assuming she's got skin imperfections somewhere, all I have to do is touch her, and now I'm tamei. So this tamei-ness was very contagious.

Now once you were declared tahor, which means clean, you were baptised in a mikveh in public. They would baptise you to say this person can now be touched again.

If a lady had an issue of bleeding for 12 years, that made her Tamei, which has huge implications. She would not have been purposely touched in 12 years. She would not have been purposely hugged in 12 years. When she walked in a room, people would put their hands behind their back, so as to avoid having to touch her.

Can you imagine living a life for 12 years where nobody purposely touched you? Can you imagine the rejection, the abandonment, the feeling of: I've been wronged?

Has anybody ever felt like God gave you a bad deal? Can you imagine that feeling? Can you imagine the times, on her bed at night, where she would have wondered: what did I do to deserve this? How many of you know, you don't have to ask that question very many times, to come up with some ideas?

She would have thought about all the sin she's ever committed. She'd have thought about things that she did - maybe God is mad at me. I'm sure there was some lovely Pentecostal preacher there to remind her that God might have been mad at her.

Remember when they run across this guy, and His disciples say: Jesus, who sinned, that he became like that? Jesus said: nobody, why does anybody have to sin, for somebody to be like that? See, it's just in us to automatically think: if something's going wrong, there's got to be sin somewhere.

Anybody who touched her, it was treated like the plague. Now if you touch her, you're tamei - now you've got to go and be cleansed. You've got to be re-baptised. This would have been a major, major problem.

So she elbows her way through the crowd - can you imagine that? Everybody she's touching now is becoming unclean. She elbows her way through the crowd, and the Bible says that she grabs the corner of Jesus' garment - which is a bit weird.

This is where the story turns weird. Jesus says: who touched Me? Power has left from Me - which let's be honest, doesn't that have like a Star Wars flavour to it? Like, doesn't Jesus go a bit Ohi-Wan Kenobi on us there? WHO TOUCHED ME? Power has left from Me - which leaves us with a couple of questions.

Did Jesus know who touched Him? Of course, He was Jesus. So then why would a First Century Jewish rabbi make a public spectacle out of a lady with an issue of blood touching His clothes? Why would He do that? He wouldn't do that. Like this is so important.

Hebrew people always think function; Greek people always think form. It's all about function. It's not about the tassels; it's about what it represents. It's about the faith that it draws. It's about the remembrance that it brings.

There's nothing magical about it. It's just a faith, a response, a function. There's a Son of God coming, with healing in His wings, and this lady pushes through, so everybody's tamei.

Laying on of hands has nothing to do with this. Would a rabbi have touched a sick person? No chance, because they would be unclean – tamei; but did rabbis lay hands on people? Yes. It just has nothing to do with touching people.

To lay hands on somebody came from the concept of Yom Kippur, when they killed the goat. They would have the scapegoat; and they would also have the other lamb, that was slain for the sins of the nation. They would bring the lamb in, and lay the lamb on the altar. The priest would lay hands on the lamb, which was called malah. He would take the sins of Israel, and place it on the lamb. Rabbinical tradition says that the pressure of the sins of Israel going onto the lamb would cause the priest to have to turn his head.

At exactly the ninth hour, the priest would say “it is finished”, and he would cut the lamb's throat. When God put the sins of the world on Jesus, at exactly the ninth hour, the Lamb of God, and the High Priest of the World said: “it is finished”.

The priest would then catch the lamb's blood in this cone-shaped cylinder. He would shake it ,because the blood had to stay alive. He would shake it to keep the blood moving, and he would scream all the way to the Holy of Holies, don't touch me! Don't touch me, for I have not yet offered the blood of the sacrifice. He would go into the Holy of Holies, sprinkling blood in there before him; then he would come out and wash, and then he could be touched.

When Jesus rose from the dead; there were these two women, and He greets them and goes: don't touch Me, don't touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father. The reason is because, if He'd have been touched before He offered His blood in heaven, He'd have had to go through it all again. You can't do that.

The next picture has Him showing up, and He's pulling up His shirt sleeves saying: you can touch Me now. In other words, the offering has been accepted, for all time. Let that which is tamei be called tahor.

So are we tracking on tamei and tahor? Okay, so she reaches up and she grabs the hem of His garment; and Jesus makes this huge show: WHO TOUCHED ME? WHO TOUCHED ME? Basically it's kind of weird, like it's very un-Hebrew. He's like going: WHO TOUCHED ME? EVERYBODY LOOK! Somebody dirty touched Me!

And this lady comes out. It's very important theologically to understand that Jesus never became unclean; but if she touches Him, and is not made whole, is He unclean? Yes! But instead she touches Him, and instantly that which made her tamei, was made tahor.

But Jesus still makes a show of it. WHO TOUCHED ME? WHO TOUCHED ME? Now a lady in a village who had an issue of bleeding for 12 years, how many people would have known it? All of them! So everybody standing there thinks of Jesus as Tamei. This is very important, because Jesus is going to Jairus' house.

He says to her: “go in peace”, which for us, peace is the ‘absence of conflict’; but for Jesus, peace was a concept called shalom, which is: the presence of wholeness without one missing piece.

The issue of bleeding was one thing; but the bigger issue for this lady was 12 years of rejection, 12 years of abandonment, 12 years of not being touched, feeling like an outcast, being treated like an outcast, being gossiped about, knowing that people in the next room are saying things like: what's wrong with her? Physical healing is one thing, but you need to go in shalom.

Salvation to Jesus was about far, far more than heaven and hell. Salvation to Jesus was about wholeness, here, now, today - and there's healing in His tassels. There's healing in the word of God, the name of God, the ways of God and the grace of God as it is attached to Messiah Jesus. There's healing in His wings; and it's not just healing for your physical body.

Some of you need a touch from God for your physical body, and we're going to believe God for you for that; but bigger than that, it's: are you whole?

Go in shalom, because if we're not careful, as the church of Jesus Christ, we're guilty of teaching a salvation that's about heaven and hell. Let me be honest: it is about heaven and hell, and if that's all it is, it's still a good deal. Like heaven/hell - who wants to go heaven? I mean hell's a dumb decision; but salvation is about far, far more than that.

If we make it just about heaven and hell, we become guilty of teaching a salvation that sounds something like this: Hey, hey, hey, get saved, get saved, get saved - and you can come along with us, and one day we're all going to die, and it'll all get better.

It's even in the songs that we used to sing! It will be worth it all when we see Jesus. Life's trials will seem so small when we see Christ. It's kind of like: this life stinks, I can't wait for heaven. No! Jesus died so you could have the best life here, now, today.

But there's still healing in His wings. Go in shalom.

So everybody standing there now thinks He's tamei. Verse 35, while Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. Your daughter is dead, why bother the rabbi anymore?

That's a very insensitive thing to say. Your daughter is dead, why bother the rabbi anymore? Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler: don't be afraid, just believe.

He did not let anyone follow Him except Peter, James and John, the brother of James. He just heals this lady with the issue of blood, but He doesn't declare her healed, does He? He just says: your faith has made you well; go in shalom. He doesn't make a big deal about her being healed, He just: says go in peace - this is a bigger deal.

Why? Well He's going to Jairus' house, and the people from Jairus' house come to Jesus and say: Jairus, your daughter's dead already, why bother the rabbi anymore? Now that sounds very insensitive, until you understand this, that it was against the law for a rabbi to knowingly walk into a room where a dead body was - unless he was already considered tamei.

WHO TOUCHED ME? WHO TOUCHED ME? EVERYBODY LOOK! This lady with an issue of blood, she just touched Me! Now the world thinks He's tamei. Why bother the rabbi anymore?

Well, now He's allowed in the room; but Jesus covers His bases doesn't He? He goes: she's not dead, she's just asleep – wink, wink.

When they came to the house of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion - as you would - with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them: why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead, but asleep - but they laughed at Him.

After He put them all out, He took the child's father and mother, and the disciples who were with Him, and He went in where the child was, and He took her by the hand.

Is it tamei to touch a dead body? You bet! Do you realise that if she doesn't get up - Jesus can't die for you? This is a huge act of faith; and tradition says that Jesus wrapped His hand, because He would have been walking like this anyhow - had His hand wrapped in His own tassels; and he reached down, and He took her by the hand - because He's still the Son of Righteousness, with healing in His wings.

“...and He took her by the hand”. You've got kanaf (corner), you've got tassels, and the whole thing is called Tallit, and it's seen as the presence of God.

And He took her by the hand, and said to her: Talitha kum - Little girl, the Tallit's here. Little girl, the presence of God is here. Little girl, get up.

Closing Prayer

Tonight that power of God is here. Jesus is standing here tonight, saying to this church: My child, the Tallit is here. Talitha kum: My children, the tallit is here, arise. There's still a Son of Righteousness with healing in His tassels.

Where do you need to touch the tassels? Where do you need a resurrection? For some of you, the touch of the tassels comes in the form of some kind of physical need. For others, it's somebody here who was violated as a child, by someone who was supposed to protect them; but instead of protecting them they violated them, and it created all kinds of emotional holes. A touch of the tassels for those folks - it's more about being able to lay your head down at night in shalom; and that's just as much healing as anything else.

There's somebody here whose husband left you, and talitha kum for you is somehow coming to a place where you know that you're still worthy, and that you weren't the total responsibility for your husband's bad decision.

There's somebody here whose wife made a similar decision, and the tassels for you represent the wholeness that God can bring to restore your life.

There's somebody here who made a decision in their past, and sometimes not a day goes by, definitely not a week goes by, where you're not haunted by the consequences of that decision. At those moments, you just can't get over the guilt. Talitha kum, Jesus would say to you. There comes from God a Son of Righteousness with healing in His tassels. Today there's still healing in the tassels of God.

Legacy

Legacy (1 of 4)

The next generation can receive without paying the price. However, they pay the price to expand and increase it. They can walk into that legacy, or they can lose it. God brings people into your life that you can draw from

Receiving Legacy (2 of 4)

A legacy is about creating memories and experiences together. It can be intentional; or it can be just by chance. Every person is going to leave a legacy. The only thing you can make a decision on is: what it will be - whether it will be stumbling stones for the next generation; or blessings, and a way that they can go ahead.

Leaving a Legacy (3 of 4)

A good man (or a good woman) leaves an inheritance to his children's children - Proverbs 13:22. One of the greatest legacies you can leave your children is to unconditionally love and value every one of them. Bless them - speak words over every child. Connect emotionally. Leave a legacy of Faith - prayer, devotions, a relationship with God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom - Psalm 111:10

Our Legacy in Christ (4 of 4)

"Go make disciples..". Leave a legacy of your walk in Christ. Impart what you have to other people, intentionally. You are created for good works. God has designed you to accomplish something meaningful with your life.

In the Old Testament, the inheritance given to God's people was a physical piece of land in the Middle East - but they were required to possess it. Jesus left us: His example, His Words, and the Holy Spirit; but you have to arise, and by faith displace what holds you back from enjoying it. Jesus wants us to stir up and possess.

"...you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance (just a deposit), until the redemption of the purchased possession... (payment in full)"

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- Receiving Legacy (2 of 4)

- Our Legacy in Christ (4 of 4)

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Legacy (1 of 4)

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The next generation can receive without paying the price. However, they pay the price to expand and increase it. They can walk into that legacy, or they can lose it. God brings people into your life that you can draw from

I want to share a series called Legacy - what we leave to the next generation. Genesis 13:15.

Has anyone ever been to the reading of a Will? It's kind of mixed feelings, because you're sort of sad - but there's a good part to it: Something has been left. Whenever there's a Will, someone died, and there's something to receive - and that's what we call the new covenant. The new covenant - someone died and left something for us to receive - so we're all participators in a new covenant.

Jesus said: “To whom much is given, much is expected”. In Genesis 13:14, God spoke to Abram: “Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are - north, south, east and west - for all the land which you see, I give to you and your descendants forever”.

Key words: “Lift up your eyes...” (and look). Get vision!

“... all which you see”. You can never come into something you don't see - you have to see it before you'll enter it.

“...I give it to you and your descendants”. When God is thinking about you, and putting something in your life - it's not just for you.

He's the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - God thinks generationally. He thinks in terms of: what is given to you growing, and being passed on to the next generation - growing and expanding.

Throughout the Bible, inheritance is extremely important. It was so important that every 50 years they had the Year of Jubilee - if you lost your inheritance it came back to you, and you had another chance again. You were set free. You got your land back, and you got a fresh start.

That's how important inheritance is from God's point of view, and He wants us to understand our inheritance. He wants us to understand the things that have been provided for us through what Jesus did on the cross.

I want to make it quite a lot more personal as we walk through this. So God intended that the inheritance that was to be passed on to Abraham would be passed on and cultivated, so each generation would expand, or receive increase on, what had already been given. That's how God works. He always works that way. He wants to increase

Notice that Abraham had to see it; then he had to arise and walk into it. Its one thing to see what God has provided for you; but it requires a decision to step up and make it your own.

Abraham never had to fight for it. He had to believe God for it; and walk - change his life, to appropriate what God had given him. That's what inheritance is about (spiritual inheritance).

The process of transferring that spiritual inheritance is called Discipleship. Jesus did not say: “Go and build a big church”. He said: “Go and make disciples”.

He didn't say: go - and I'll make you famous; go - and I'll make you rich; go - and I'll give you a comfortable life; go - and I'll promote you, and do all these things. He said: go and make disciples. So the process whereby, what one person has, is passed on to another (spiritually), is called Discipleship

It's precious when someone passes on to us something that cost them, or was an important part of their life.

Deuteronomy 29:29. “Now the secret things belong to God; but the things which are revealed belong to us - and belong to our children forever.

Same principle: if God reveals something to you, it's not just for you - it's for your children. That's literally your own family first.

We have a mindset that: we leave the training our children up to the church - but that's only an hour or two hours a week - it's never going to work. We actually have to take on the responsibility of the discipleship of our family ourselves. God intends that whatever's revealed to you as a parent - it is passed on - it belongs to the children.

It says here: “...belongs to the children, so that we may do the works of this law”.

A legacy is firstly just property, or money, or something that is passed on from one generation to another; or one person to another. You could have a watch that's passed on, that belonged to your grandfather - something that was handed down to you.

Legacies can also be intangible, such as family traditions. You may have a legacy of family traditions - and some of those are good; some may not be very good at all. Family traditions, or family ways of doing things, or family values - these are things that can be transmitted from one generation to the other.

I look at Aaron and Julie, I look at their family, and I see a strong legacy imparted into their children. It didn't just happen. It was intentional, and their children are children to be proud of. They've risen up, and they're achieving at high levels. This is a great thing, to have a legacy passed on like that. That's a great sign of success as a parent.

Revelation is something that God reveals to you, and shows to you - and here's the thing to realise: God reveals it to you - that's free; but growing it and giving it to others will cost you something.

Anything that God reveals to you is intended to change how you live. It's not so you can come in and say: “this is a great teaching - this is great...” No, no, no, no - it's actually to change our life.

The teaching of the word of God needs to change how we live and do life; what you value, what you do. If you walk out of a meeting, but never stopped at some point to say: “God, what are You speaking to me about; and how do You want me to change? What do You want me to do...” – then you're not applying the word of God.

It says in Genesis that the inheritance was something that they should “walk into”. “...that we might do all the words of the law”.

God intends whatever He shows you to be passed on – the next generation can receive without paying the price.

Joy and I travel globally. We touch literally hundreds of thousands of people every year. We minister in many different countries. I have more invitations than I can possibly accept; and have the potential of increasing greatly what we do. That is not an accident; or something that ‘just happened’ because we're ‘special people’. There was a journey we took with God and this is the consequence - so going back to Aaron again...

Aaron has taken a journey with God; and the result of many decisions - Aaron's children are where they're at; and his marriage is where it's at. One of the things I notice about both Aaron and Julie is their faithfulness and diligence in every aspect of their life - it's carried on to their children.

The next generation can receive without paying the price. However, they do pay the price to expand it and increase it.

I can impart to you what God has given to me - I can show you what I've learned. I can show you things in an hour that took me years to learn. If it took me years to learn - and you can get it in an hour, then you've got something given to you, that cost someone else a price. However, for you to carry it, and bring it out to someone else - that will cost you.

So the purpose of inheritance is: God wants inheritance (or legacy) to go to you; and then you increase it, and enlarge it, so that it expands – that will cost you something.

For you to sit in the church, and receive the word of God week after week after week, and never touch a life with it means: you're squandering your legacy. You're not what God called you to do with it - to influence and impact the lives of people.

Jesus said: “Follow Me”. We can follow the world - opinions, offences, culture, values, family, parents; but Jesus said: follow Me.

He said: I will “make you”; or “you will change” – to become a person who is a “fisher of men”. He didn't say: an evangelist; He said: a person who can “impact people's lives”; or “attract people into the kingdom”.

Who am I attracting into the kingdom of God? Who am I intentionally reaching out to - to attract into God's kingdom? That means: the legacy I've been given - I'm starting to expand it; because legacy is expanded, or developed, as you pass it on into the lives of others.

I think of someone like Elaine Morrison, and Elaine doesn't have a high profile in the church, but I know her passion for evangelism, and just so many people over so many years that she has discipled in her home. She's taken what was given to her, and she has expanded it, by sharing it with someone else.

What God gives you is to be passed on; and the process of passing on or expanding what God has given you is called Discipleship and Growth.

Jesus said: “follow Me, and I will make you”. If you'll pursue Me, you will grow; and in your growing, the things which make you unattractive, the things which turn people off, are going to be stripped away from you; and you'll become a person who actually can influence people positively, in a way that helps them change their life for the better. If you're not attracting people to Him, then who or what are you following?

It says that: “the legacy is for children”. That word ‘children’ there is an unusual word, meaning: “the builder of the family”. Inheritance or legacy passes through families from one generation to another; but from a biblical point of view, it passes on to those who are ‘sons’ or will ‘build the house’ or ‘build the family’ of God.

One important foundation for receiving and growing legacy in the things of God is that you are committed to become a builder - become a son. That means to have relationships. That can be a bit of a shock to the church, because we tend to think of church as a place we just come, attend, hide in the crowd and walk away; but actually for legacy to be imparted to you, and to grow - requires connection and relationship.

Have a look at the men in the Bible who received great impartations. Elisha inherited a ‘double portion’, but there was a unique relationship between Him and Elijah, and there was a spiritual discipleship going on.

Think of the apostles who went out - they were discipled by Jesus. Paul and Timothy: Timothy carried the same anointing, same mantle, same flow, same ways that were on Paul - Discipleship. Silas did too.

However, church in the 20th Century has often centred around meetings, rather than around the intentional exchange of life, and changing how we do life; doing life together, and shifting how we do life, so we start to impact people.

That's one of the big shifts that'll take place in the future, because a fatherless generation desperately has needs of fathers and mothers from the body of Christ to help them grow.

Legacy passes on. I have watched hands being laid on people over the years. The conclusion I come to is that, in the majority of cases, whatever they got is gone in less than a week. However, where there's strong connection and relationship, they tend to carry what was given to them - not because of the hands being laid on, but also because of the connection and the relationship.

Timothy had received a gift through the laying on of hands; but his gift had become dormant - and it was his relationship with Paul, which allowed Paul to speak into his life, which got the gift active again. Without someone speaking into your life, it's likely that the gifts in you will become dormant. Even if you receive, it's likely to become dormant without the stimulation of relationships in a small group, and being positioned so someone can speak into your life - so you are stirred in your walk with God, and stirred and activating what God has put in your life. That's how it works!

I've watched people come up (for laying on of hands) - and believe me, it's a great thing to come up and get the hands laid on; but I have seen over the years, very few carry what they went up for - and there's a reason for it. We want to try and overcome that reason, and we want to help you by sharing out of our own journey.

Legacy can be lost. Legacy that was purchased by parents, can be lost in the next generation. Esau lost his inheritance. He was the eldest son, and entitled to inheritance; and the Bible says he lost it, because he did not place a value on what was his by legacy.

I wonder if you understand what God has built into this church, and into our lives; that you could eat of, and take, and it could be your legacy - because if it's not valued, it is lost, just like that. The next generation has to discover it all again. That's a terrible thing to have happen. God wants for us, in our season of life - our greatest challenge is to be able to pass on, and have others carry the things we carry.

Inheritance can be lost. Many children, when they get money from their parents, blow it! Parents have saved up all these years, pass the money on, and the kids’ just blow the dough, and it's a mess. You realise then, that while they were left a physical inheritance, they didn't have the value system needed to make it grow - so they just blew it all away, because they weren't thinking right - hadn't been really discipled or trained.

Next I want to share on some of the movements that God has made (historical movements), to show you that the things are revealed are ours - and then our next generations. If we go back through each major move of God, historically - God revealed things to people, to His church.

He wanted the church to receive it, change, and then carry it to the next generation. When He moved again, the next generation would receive it, change, and take it to the next generation - so God is in a journey of the church receiving; changing; and then moving on to the next flow that God wants to do. That's how it's always been.

Martin Luther came forward, and he spoke forth the truth that was revealed to him - that “the just shall live by faith” - that man is justified by faith, not by works. You've prayed the sinner's prayer, and you got saved - you were justified by faith. So what for him created an upheaval - the threat of prison, fear, the loss of life, and for many people, persecutions and death; for you - you just walk in, walk up the front, and receive it like that. It didn't cost you anything.

Think about the next move of God – Anabaptists. The Anabaptists taught that: after you've been justified by faith, you need to be baptised as a follower of Christ - baptised by immersion. Therefore, ‘infant baptism’ (sprinkling) doesn't count - you need to follow Christ, and express it like that. Many of them died for that truth - but you walked in the church, and no one threatened to kill you if you get baptised.

That was just something that you walked into, because someone paid the price. You walked into the legacy that someone bought - they paid the price. They could have believed it, done it secretly, and never expanded it - but when they started to share it, preach it, proclaim it, and take it out to give it to others - then they paid the price.

Always it's in the expansion of the legacy that you're given, where the price has to be paid. To get it isn't hard; actually to get it's incredibly easy - getting it is part of the legacy, part of your right, when you're connected properly with the Lord.

Consider the Holiness Movement - John Wesley. John Wesley brought a truth about holiness/sanctification - and there was a great move of God. He set up the Methodist Church. He was so hated and banned, that the only place he could stand to preach at one time, was on his father's grave. He stood on his father's grave; hundreds gathered around - and he preached off the father's grave. People fell out of the trees - slain in the spirit - the power of God came, and there was a huge upheaval against him. People paid the price for the holiness movement.

Think about 1906, the move of God; and Pentecost - outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Now you come into the church here, get baptised in the Spirit, speak in tongues - no problem to you at all. No one threw you in jail. No one locked you up in an asylum - but that's what happened to all the people in that move of God. They were criticised, they were told they were mad, they'd gone insane. They were locked up in insane asylums - all kinds of things happened; yet all over the world, there was this move: you'll be baptised in the Holy Ghost; speak in tongues; and flow in the things of the Spirit. For them, they used to wait on God for hours. We can just get it in just a moment's prayer - boom, it's ours! Every one of the generations had to pay a price.

In 1948 there was another move of God. The churches we would know: Apostolic, Assemblies of God, etc, came out of the 1906 move; but another group of churches flowed out of a move of God in 1948. That was called the “Laying-on-of-Hands Revival”. People who were in that laying of hands revival were treated as heretics. They were abused, they were put out of churches, they were criticised.

Nevertheless, God established whole new truths about the laying on of hands; of Fivefold ministry; the restoration of the tabernacle of David; the restoration of sons of God; adoption (spiritual adoption); impartation - a whole range of truths. They paid a price, so we can come into that real easy. However, to grow it - you've got to pay a price; because you've got to take what God has given and develop it.

There have been other moves of God, moves of the Spirit - and most of them have been quite local. There was the charismatic move (which was a global one), and that restored again the flow of the Spirit, the gifts - the home group ministry all fired up under that.

That become a very pastoral movement, and it was meant to change the churches; but in the end, with a lot of these movements when they come - some receive and go on; while others fight it. There's a conflict; then you find a parting of the ways, and something new starts.

In the last 50 years, God has been moving much more quickly; so in the 1950s what He started off (what was birthed out of the 1948 revival) was a restoration of the Five-fold ministries - the truth of it. In the 1950s, a whole group of evangelists began to rise up, globally - all over the world evangelists rose up - healing evangelists, great crusades. In America, and in every kind of country, there were great crusades; evangelists preaching the gospel; people being saved, miracles, wonderful miracles.

In the '60s, there came the whole pastoral movement - cell groups; and some of the charismatic men become the big thing. If you're in church, you went into a small group, you were in a cell group, and there was sharing and so on.

In the '70s there was the teaching movement, so people had teaching. Every church you went to there were teachers, you just got imbedded in teaching. What tends to happen is that church exaggerates the thing that God has given, and then loses perspective, or ends up polarised - that that's the deal and there's no more.

In the 1980s the prophetic movement started, so prophets began to emerge. There were prophetic conferences, prophetic training sessions, all kinds of things like that began to emerge. Then everyone thought the prophets were the big deal.

In the 1990s the apostles started to emerge - church planting, church pioneers; so it's quite clear that God has been doing something over 50 years.

The question you've got to ask is: what next? If you don't look and see what He's been doing, then you won't think He's doing anything. You'll just think: I'll turn up on Sunday; and you'll have no perspective. Without perspective you can't make good decisions.

We need God's perspective to make decisions and choices; so if God has been moving in that kind of way over the last 50 years - what is it moving towards?

Ephesians 4:11 – “He gave those ministries for equipping of the saints for the work of ministry”.

The big shift is not about apostles and prophets and pastors and teaches - it's not about them! It's about the people they're supposed to raise up - it's about you.

The next great move is the Day of the Saints - it's the day of God's people getting out of the church and doing something. That's where God is moving; that's what God is on!

You could say: “I just want to hold back and have lovely meetings, have prophecies and laying on of hands, and blah blah blah.” Go back to the '80s! If you want to stay there that's fine - but God moves on; and we become irrelevant - totally irrelevant.

Are we blessed? Yes - but we're not in the river of God, not in the flow where God is moving. God is clearly, making it clear globally, that in this hour - it's about visions and dreams; about people being equipped; going into the community; about works of mercy and compassion.

It's about going into the various pillars of society, and starting to make an impact where you are. It's about actually taking the life of God out of the church; so the church is about where you come to worship God and be equipped - and out there is where you do ministry.

There will be ministries - there are always needs in the family, chores to be done in a family; but the great work, is the work you do most of the rest of your life, which is out there with people - engaging with them. Are you a fisher of men, attracting people to Christ?

That's what God is on; so don't hanker for what He was doing. Begin to build on what He's done; start to move forward - start to get a hold of where God's moving, and say: “I want to be fully part of that!”

This is not age-dependent – the young ones resist it just as much as old ones do. The moves of God have never been dependent on age; so when God talks about a ‘new generation’, He's not talking about ‘how old you are’ - He's talking about your thinking!

You can be young, or be old, in your thinking. You can be young; but set in your thinking. You can be old; yet fresh in your thinking, sensitive to God, and say: man, I see what God is doing - bring it on!

Do we need change? Yes; but bring it on! Bring on what God is doing. That's the way we want to live; not fighting what God is doing, and standing against it (because in my opinion – “I don't agree with it”). That's what people do!

The Church is not the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is bigger than the church - so let me just give you some perspective....

If someone leaves our church, and goes somewhere else - God's kingdom didn't diminish! Wasn't that good?

It may not necessarily be good for them, because where you're a part of is important for your spiritual development. If you don't understand the legacy, and what you can get hold of, and position yourself for it - then it doesn't matter where you go.

When I come back into this church, I just love the presence that comes - and the worship. There is something about it, every time - it's like water to me. I've been in great churches; but when I come here, God does something here for me, that I don't get anywhere else - and I love to be here and be back in it.

I want to share a scripture; then list some key things God has built in our life; and ask firstly whether you've made these part of your life; and secondly whether you're communicating any of these things to anyone.

Hebrews 13:7 - “Remember those who rule over you (or who lead you), who have spoken to you the word of God”.

Bring back into mind (or start to think again) about those who lead you; and who have brought you God's word. That's a pretty clear instruction, isn't it? You may not like that - but God says to “think about it”.

It says: “...whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct (or their life)”. The word ‘consider’ means: take another close look at. God wants you to closely look at people who lead you. Look at the end result of what flows out from the way they live their life. Look at every aspect of their life. It's not about the message - it's about the person.

The Bible commands us to follow people of faith; not people of offence - so how can you tell a person of faith? Do they just say: I love Jesus; I just brought this great prophecy; or preached a great message? No, that's not how you tell a person of faith.

You have to consider their lifestyle; and what, over a period of time, has resulted from it. Then that will indicate whether they're people of faith.

You're not called to necessarily follow a person. We're to follow Jesus Christ; but God works through people, and the thing you look for in the people is their faith. It says: imitate someone's faith - if they're a person of faith.

I was in one season of my life, and I looked around, and I said: God, I don't know where there's any men of faith - because every time I go to this conference, that we're a part of this movement - they all talk about people who: fell in immorality; failed in finance, this happened, that happened - I'm sick of all of that! Where are men of faith?

Someone told me about a man; and I listened, and I heard, and I heard: that's a man of faith. I need to connect - so I can grow in my faith! Faith has to do with you believing God - and experiencing His reality working in your life. So you look not just at whether the person has got a great personality - you look at the outcome of their life.

What has God built into our lives? God put into us is a legacy, which can become part of yours. I remember I was in a meeting in Indonesia, and there were about 2000 people; about 1000 come up in the altar call, it was just Dave and me there, and I'd asked them: please set it up so we do training first. After the training - then we've got leaders - more people to pray in the ministry team, then we'll get going...

There was none. They didn't do it. They just set it up so there's 1000 people there for prayer, just Dave and me. I said: okay Dave - this is your great day! I'm going to pray for half of them - you've got to do the other half. Here's your 500, here's my 500 - there's the line down the middle there.

Anyway I got praying, and there was a great move of God - the power of God came, people were being delivered - all sorts of things happening! I thought: oh Dave - I wonder how Dave's doing? I looked around and WHOA! People are down everywhere; and he's kept up - about the same level I am - and people are going down under the power of God, demons are coming out - people screaming.

I'd never seen him do that before; and I talked to him about it afterwards. He said: I realised three months ago, and began to pray, that what is on your life would become - it's my inheritance and I've a legacy in that. It can be on my life; and so he said: I began to pray for it to rest on my life. He saw the truth of legacy.

It comes not just to natural sons and daughters; it comes to spiritual sons and daughters. It comes to those who are connected in right relationship, who allow God to work through a person (or a man of God) to help them.

You're not to actually copy the person - you have to be yourself. God wants you to be unique; but we need people with skin on, to show us what faith looks like in real life.

We need people who model the life of Christ; so you can say: man, it’s good to be around that person! They're just pumping with faith - and I see the journey they've taken - and boy, there's something there! You can't explain it - it can only be God.

There are people who influence our lives. In another session, I'll talk about who those people were; and what we had to do to receive from them and grow it. I have taken what they gave - and made it bigger, expanded it, and greatly increased it. What they gave me was free to get.

I remember sitting in a meeting with a group of people, and I was the only one who took away what that leader had. It took time, I had to learn what to do, but God showed me what to do. I can share with you how to receive and grow what God wants to put in your life; but your part is to pay the price of developing it, and expanding it to others.

In this new season, my role now has to shift to be an equipper of people, but not leading activities and things in the church. Someone else needs to do that - who can motivate and mobilise. The next season is pulling up all the gifts that everyone has - finding out what God put in you, finding out the dreams and the visions in you, getting you to start to think about what God has put in you - and then to grow up so you can fulfil it.

Just because you've ‘got a dream’ doesn't mean you can do it. You do have to be prepared, and helped, and discipled in that; or grown into that. That is the next season - that's what God is doing.

Saints are being matured - you don't mature on your own. Lone Rangers become unusually weird strangers! They don't usually attract people very easily, because there's something ‘a bit strange’.

We work out our relationship with Jesus in the context of a small group, of connection in the church - that's why we all need to be connected into a group.

There are things which are built into our life, which are part of who we are. If I were to go somewhere else, and have to build another work, these things would all turn up there - because they're in me. It's DNA. It got in; and I want to share about (in another session) how it got in; how it got to grow; and how I managed to keep it, when most people lose it.

You've got to take the legacy. I can share with you what God has in this house for you; but your part is to receive - position yourself to get it; and grow it; and make it become your own.

I look at Pete Kirsten, who was in our church in Dannevirke - and now he goes out with his wife, and he carries strong faith; prophetic flow; and healing in the heart - he carries lots of things. He carries something that goes out into the world. Are they busy doing something in the church? No - because they've got a call into the world, to shape something in nations.

Sandy's up there now in the Philippines, where there's been the big storms. She's ministering up there to people in trauma. They have something to give - but you've got to learn to receive and build.

Here are some of the core things that got built into our lives; and they were built a certain way, they came a certain way.

1) Strong worship and praise; and 2) love for the presence of God. Wherever we go, I'm concerned about the presence of God, and about strong praise and strong worship. This is very high value - and it was built in. Our church has highly valued worship, and the flowing of God; strong prayer, strong and fervent prayer.

I learnt that - It became a part of my life. I got into prayer meetings where people prayed for an hour - and I could only do three minutes and I was gasping - but I stuck with it and learnt. We got it ‘built into us’ to pray strong prayer.

3) Hearing the voice of God become a vital truth. It was imparted - I've learnt how to hear the voice of God; not only how to hear it, but actually how to share with others how to hear it. So that's taking it from: hearing it myself; to actually knowing how to tell, and train, and minister to others. Hearing the voice of God is a crucial part - how can you do God's work, if you don't hear what He's saying?

4) The prophetic ministry. The first thing that I came into was the prophetic ministry. I look back, and every minister I was ever under was: prophetic; hearing the voice of God; or operating in the supernatural. I never served under any ministry that wasn't operating in the supernatural.

That's why the supernatural, the presence of God, hearing the voice of God, worship, praise, prayer; this is why this is important - because we paid a price to build it into our lives. You get the benefit of it, but don't necessarily understand that certain things that were built over time, that have been built into our lives - that's what's flowing in the house.

5) The ‘Father’ heart of God. I got revelation of God's father heart, of His immense love; and now wherever I go in the world, I carry the ‘father heart’ of God.

6) The whole area of kingdom authority, and rewards in eternity is one of the key drivers and motivators in our life. That's an invisible thing, because you don't see that, and I haven't talked a lot about that; but I'll show you that legacy is made up of firstly internal things - the drivers and motivators that make you do what you do, and get you going.

Also the external, which is the ministry - people see the ministry, and eat the fruit of your life - but they don't always know what motivates you to be that kind of person. You can eat the fruit of our ministry; however you need to know what motivates the kind of life, and values, and choices, that undergird being able to carry that.

Many people we've seen over years, they receive something, but they either can't hold it; or they fail, and fall, and go off the rails - because they haven't built a life with God, to hold what God wants to put in them.

That's why Jesus said: “Follow Me” - pursue Him – “I will make you...” I'm going to grow you. My desire is that you influence people, through the power of My Spirit, and the nature of My Spirit - but some things have got to come off your life.

You've got to change and shift and grow. You've got to deal with some stuff. You need to shift, but you don't have to wait until you've shifted to do something. Start now, and on the journey I'll grow you.

7) Developing the inner man. How to cultivate and develop the life of the Spirit - strengthen and develop the inner man for deliverance and healing. Wherever we go I minister on the ‘inner man’; on ‘deliverance and healing’; ‘inner healing’; ‘physical healing’; ‘Heart faith (faith of the heart - not just head knowledge). These are the things we built into our lives.

8) Spiritual warfare. We've had years of spiritual warfare. We've walked through things to build this church, which you would have no idea of, unless you also had engaged in spiritual warfare. I can teach you about those things, how to recognise them, what to do with them.

9) Global mission. Mission was birthed in us before we came here. It was birthed through an encounter and experience with God. It was birthed when I went to India for the first time. Ever since then it's something everywhere - it's in my heart. I love our city, and our community - but I have the world in my heart.

Dave and Kate will focus on the local community; but we still have the world in our heart. It's just not right that we contain our time here, when there are multitudes in need - and they take it and run with it so quickly.

That's why I'm raising the issue of legacy, because I've come to realise my time is short and valuable, and it needs to go where it'll produce. You will be thinking the same way too - especially if you're a bit older!

10) Grace. God has given to me a great understanding of grace - and a measure of grace and generosity. Grace and generosity are a part of our lives.

Here's the thing: those things that I mentioned to you - they are built into our inner make up; so wherever we go, they flow. I don't have to think: shall I do this, or do that?

I'm always thinking: kingdom authority; eternal perspective. I'm concerned about the presence of God, whether it's there or not. I'm concerned about demonic spirits coming in and creating havoc, and causing people problems. I'm concerned about the heart of people, and getting them set free; about people being in faith, and not just being ‘church people’.

All of those things I listed - they are part of who we are; and what is the heritage or legacy for this house. That's what gives it a flavour.

How many times have I run seminars on gifts of the spirits? Heaps of times - but how many of you flow consistently in it? How many times have we taught on Hearing the voice of God - but how many of you actually consistently are hearing the voice of God? How many times have I run a seminar teaching on Healing; and healing of the broken hearted; and deliverance - but how many of you actually are applying it, and are showing these things to someone else? We've taught you about prayer - but is your prayer life is almost non-existent?

Legacy is something you get free - because someone else paid a price. Being productive with what God gave you is where you pay the price.

In the coming season, the church will move from being centred around a strong ministry gift; and into the church arising and emerging into the community - with the saints beginning to arise in their gifts and their callings. This is where God is moving. This is where the life will be. This is where we need to move.

Not everyone will want that. Some prefer church where you've got a little kingdom - and we're important in that little kingdom; but that's not what God wants to build! He's doesn’t want to build important people in the church.

Jesus said: “Follow Me”. He didn't say: I'll make you to become an important person in the church. I'll make you very rich. I'll make you very famous. I'll make you very successful. He said none of those things.

He said: I will make you an attractor of people - someone who attracts people into My kingdom, because they see the life you live. They see the fruit of what God is making you; and they say: that's sweet - I would like some of that! How do I get some of that?

God wants to grow us; and break off our life stuff that causes people to be turned off. People don't want legalism; judgemental, religious people - they don't want any of that stuff.

They want to see Christ in you! That's why the Holy Ghost was put into you. The day is on us now, for the church to begin to arise and say: what has God put in my heart? What is God making me to be? What am I becoming?

God has raised ministries like Peter and Sandy, to help set people free in their hearts - but it's not all about healing. That's just a little bit to get you awakened, so you fulfil what God called you to do.

For some, they're drawn to that - well multiply it! Others will get the benefit of it. Eat it; then find what God called you to do - and passionately do it. Let the kingdom of God grow.

Don't be religious. It's about a life, a hidden life with God, that is impacting people - and you're called to it. It's in you to do it. Take hold of it!

Matthew 6:33 – “Seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else will be added to you”.

Luke 4:18 – “Oh the Spirit has anointed me”.

These are core things in our lives - and we live them; I want you to live them too. If you can't live them, then enjoy the fruit them - and invite someone else to eat the fruit too; but its better if you learn to live them, and reproduce them.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just come before You; we thank You for the great joy - that the Holy Spirit would come and live in our hearts; to make us great people - followers of Jesus; to inspire us, put visions and dreams; begin to empower us - so we can have an influence.

Our life can count - so when we get to the end of our life, we don't look back full of regrets. We look back and say: “Praise God for His faithfulness!”

What legacy are you building? What are you building to impart to someone else?

“A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children” - so the good man's thinking generationally.

It may be you're just putting some values into your children - but don't wait until you're old. If you're just a young couple, start to think through what legacy you want to build in your marriage. If you've got a first child - begin to think what family values you're wanting to build.

Those children that come into your life are going to leave your life; and when they leave your life, will they look back and say: man, I thank God for mum and dad! They kept us on the right track. They built Godly values into us; or will they shake their fist at you and say: we really resent you for the way you've treated us - put everything else first?

Legacy has got many dimensions to it; and the first place is practical - in the family; it's financial; your values; what you're intentionally putting into your children.

If you're a parent, and your children are growing up, and they're in teenage years - don't leave it to the schools, and the church, to try and do the job God called you to do. Invest in your children.

I'm starting to put time in my grandchildren now, because it's valuable - they're valuable to me. I want them to have relationship; because out of that, there's impartation.

What are you building? Who are you sharing your life with - your life in Christ?

Are you in any group; or any connection - people that you share with, and have anyone speak into your life? Have you made it possible for anyone to help you in your journey to grow? Have you got anyone you're intentionally reaching out to?

Will it be said, at the end of the season, that you had such an opportunity to learn so much in God - but you never made any of it your own? What a tragedy!

Some of you may look back, and you made a lot of mistakes. It’s okay - God can redeem your mistakes if you're just honest - confess them to Him, and say: God, I've been so selfish. I've done so many things that were dumb. Lord, there's a lot of pain, but help me now to build a different future.

Think about your workplace. How many of you are thinking about what legacy you will leave in your work? When you finish up in that job; will they say: oh well, he's gone; or will they say: oh, what a loss! He brought such a river of life into this workplace - we loved having him here!

There was something different about him. He's a bit religious - we can't work out that side of him; but there was something really different, and good, and we liked that person. Influence the life of God.

Father, I just pray that in these coming days, that what we've laboured many years to build, will impart progressively and more deeply into people here; and the church will grow out into the community.

We pray Lord for grace on Dave and Kate, as they lead the work, and begin to find their feet and their strength; that Lord they will go much further than we did, and take what we did and take it where it needs to go - out there; that Lord the price we paid wouldn't be in vain, and they'll run with those things, inspire the church, carry a message of hope to our community. Amen.

I'd like you to pray for the person next to you, if you're comfortable to do that. Pray for a need, if they have a need - they could tell you the need; but why don't you pray that they will begin to grow like they've never grown before. That this next season in their life will be a time of growth, expansion, enlargement, increase. That God's hand would be on their life - giving them grace to do it. God bless you.

Summary Notes

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Legacy 28/01/14

1. Introduction

Gen.13:15 " Lift up your eyes now and look from the place where you are….for all the land that you

see, I will give to you and your descendants forever"

God is an intergenerational God…He thinks and plans generationally.

God intended the inheritance that was given to Abraham to be cultivated and passed on

God even established laws that ensuring inheritance was restored if it was lost. Lev.25

Both Old and New Testament abound in references to legacy.

The process of passing on spiritual inheritance is called discipleship 2Tim.2:2

2. Legacy: what is it?

Dt.29:29 "The secret things belong to The Lord, but those things that are revealed belong to us and our

children forever, that we may do all the words of the Law.

God establishes and builds His Kingdom by revelation…whatever He reveals to us ISPs to change that

way we live and to be a legacy to be passed on generationally

2.1 Definition:

Legacy is anything that is handed down from the past as a gift to us

Legacy can be tangible…money, property, buildings, accomplishments

Legacy can be intangible….wisdom, values, beliefs, experiences

Revelation…things that are revealed to us by the Spirit of God are eternal in nature and are intended to

benefit us personally and also for the benefit of others.

2.2 Spiritual legacy

Truths that God reveals are intended to change that way that we live our life

Revelation is not just for us , it is for successive generations

Jesus lived his life with the vision of a legacy left for all generations to come

2.3 Generational building

The next generation can freely receive what the previous generation built by their efforts, sacrifice, and

hard work.

The next generation must pay the price to build on, and enlarge what they receive.

Gods intention is that we give the next generation a head start…they build upon our shoulders

2.4 Legacy is for descendants

Children= OT 1129…. Builder of the family name

Every believer is called to be a builder….to advance the Kingdom of God.

God gifts all believers with spiritual gifts with this in mind 1Cor.12:7

Every believer is called to build our heavenly… fathers family. Sons are builders!

Relationship is foundational to legacy natural and spiritual

You build upon what you have received from being spiritually fathered

2.5 Legacy can be lost

Gen.25:34 "…sold his birthright to Jacob….thus Esau despised his birthright"

Gen.27:34" …he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father..Bless me - me

also oh my father"

Financial legacies can by easily lost by neglect or poor management

Spiritual legacy can be despised and traded away when it's value is not recognized.

Many fail to recognize and value the legacy passed on by natural and spiritual parents

They enjoy the blessing but fail to honor the source and build upon what they have been given.

Loss of legacy can lead to great bitterness and grief (Esau)

3. Movements of God in history

Acts3:21 " heaven must receive(Christ) until the times of restoration of all things which God has

spoken by the mouth of all His prophets since the world began"

3.1 Revivals

Progressively through history God has brought revivals. In all the major revivals truth was restored to

the church.

Eg. Martin Luther 1500s ,

Anabaptists. 1700s,

John Wesley1800s

Pentecostals 1906,

Laying on of hands 1948

Charismatic Movement 1960s

Christians paid a price to receive and live out those truths.

Many were tortured and put to death for the very truths that we can accept so very freely

Eg. Salvation by faith, water baptism by immersion, baptism in the Spirit

We need to see what God is doing in our hour and build forward upon the sacrifice of previous

generations of believer

3.2 Restoration

Eph.4:11 "and he himself gave some apostles, some prophets, some,evangelists, and some pastors and

teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of

Christ"

Progressively in the last 50-60 years there has been a restoration and emphasis of different ministries to

the Body of Christ

1950s Evangelists

1960s Pastors

1970s. Teachers

1980s. Prophets

1990s. Apostles

The next great move in the 21st Century is the day of the saints.

God is moving to release his people into the community to bring Heaven to earth in the different

mountains of culture

It means change! It means activating the people of God into their callings

The church is not the kingdom….it is a community that prepares people to represent Christ and to

advance his kingdom

Problems arise when believers:

a) think the church is the kingdom

b) think they have fulfilled Gods requirements by attending church

c) become consumers expecting Church to meet all their needs

d) consume the legacy won by the lives of others instead of being productive and advancing .

4. What God has Built into Us

The things that God has built into our lives over years become our spiritual DNA and legacy

It is made up of the seen and the unseen. What is seen are the blessings and river of gods favor and life

that flows out to touch many

What is unseen is what is built into our life over years choosing to respond to God

4.1 Inward Motivation (Unseen)

Matt.6:33 "Seek first the Kingdom of God…."

Values….beliefs….attitudes….habits

4.2 External ministry (Seen)

Luke 4:18 the Spirit of The Lord is upon me…"

The ministry flow to others that comes from the secret life with God

We paid a price for this to be built into our lives….a price to obtain and to hold and build

It didn't just happen! We made choices some big, but most small and daily.

We received from men of god and build upon what we received and enlarged it

Cf. Matt.25:8-9 " the virgins….go and buy from them that sell"… pay the price

4.3 Dimensions of the Spirit that we carry

Praise and worship Deliverance and healing

Strong prayer Developing the spirit man

Hearing the voice of God Spiritual Warfare

Faith Global missions

Prophetic ministry Grace/generosity

Father heart of God. Kingdom Authority

5. Personal Application

1. What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about in this session?

2. What have you received by way of a natural legacy? Eg. From family?

3. How are you building this into your life?

4. What have you received as a spiritual legacy from other believers?

5. How are you developing this, and passing it on to others?

6. What sacrifices have you made to hold and develop spiritual legacy?

Receiving Legacy (2 of 4)

Sun 2nd Mar 2014 AM  « Back to Top

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A legacy is about creating memories and experiences together. It can be intentional; or it can be just by chance. Every person is going to leave a legacy. The only thing you can make a decision on is: what it will be - whether it will be stumbling stones for the next generation; or blessings, and a way that they can go ahead.

Introduction

A legacy is about creating memories and experiences together. It can be intentional; or it can be just by chance.

As a family, we’ve valued building family experience. We've just had a week together, mother and sisters - and it's a bonding experience, an experience which may never repeat, but it'll last a lifetime.

The Bible tells us that good people plan inheritance (or legacy) to leave on to their children; so it can be intentional or unintentional.

I'll just explain legacy again; then I want to talk about how you receive something to pass on; and the ways that we can go about doing that. They're quite easily defined, and I want to share them out of my own experience.

Review

Every person is going to leave a legacy. The only thing you can make a decision on is: what it will be - whether it will be stumbling stones for the next generation; or blessings, and a way that they can go ahead.

Whether you give them a stepping stone, help the next generation forward; or whether your life is a reproach, and an offence - and when your name is mentioned people are embarrassed. We always make decisions about this.

The Bible tells us that a good person (or a righteous man) will plan and consider how he will leave a legacy - not just to his children, but beyond them to the next generation. I want to encourage you, as we're looking through this series, to think about your life; and what you will pass on, or what you will leave, to the next generation. Every one of us will leave something.

A legacy is what you stood for. It's how you lived your life; what you accomplished, or did with your life.

Every person who comes into this world is born with a plan and a purpose, designed by God; that you would leave something in this world, as a result of being here - not just bones in a box buried somewhere, but that your life would count for something - that your life would accomplish something.

The challenge is to discover: why did God place me on this earth; then bring me into relationship with Him? What am I called to accomplish with my life? What legacy will I leave behind me? Every one of us has to answer that decision; no one can decide this for you.

You decide what you will leave for the next generation. What we leave behind for the next generation can be tangible – property; money or shares; or personal items that were a treasure to you. You can leave some things which are tangible.

Maybe you've accomplished some great things - tangible accomplishments. When I depart this world, one accomplishment we have is a building, and a church that was not here, but has been built and established - that's a tangible thing.

The intangible ones are what have been built into lives - that go on and change them, and affect them forever. You can’t see it, but it's there and it's real nevertheless.

It can be values - certain kinds of values you stood for: integrity, honesty, hard work. Those are intangible, but they're very real. You can't see them, but you can see the impact that they leave.

Your reputation, or your character, is an intangible but very real legacy that you leave. Your name, the Bible says: “a good name is more to be desired than silver and gold” - the reputation. When people hear your name what do they think? What words come to mind when they hear your name?

Think about this: when you gossip about someone - you are stealing from them. You are stealing their reputation, and their name. You are a slanderer - and God requires an accounting for those kinds of things; so it's important that we consider the things that we're going to leave, and what we're going to establish in the lives of others.

The intangible things are how you lived your life, the values, the experiences. For us, it has been important in our family that we establish experiences together, that create memories that go on through into life. Things that you buy come and go, but the experiences you have together become lasting memories of shared life. They become a legacy to leave.

God's desire is that every one of us coming into this world leaves a legacy. He has gifted you to do that; and the great movement of God in this coming decade will be God's people arising, and beginning to make a mark with their lives, and leave an imprint in society - an imprint on the lives of others, by bringing the life God gave them creatively into wherever they live.

Main Message

I want to look at how you receive a legacy; and we're going to look at it from two points of view. Firstly, from the perspective of the people that God brings into your life - given to you as a gift, to help you get ahead.

If someone has built up an estate of $1 million, and they leave it to you, you've got a head start in life; so God knits us to people, and connects us to people, who have already obtained something from Him - and we can draw on the legacy, that it cost them something to get.

You don't have to pay the same price as I had to pay, to be able to operate in the things that I can move in. What took me 30 or 40 years to build and develop in my life - this generation can get within a year or two. It doesn't take long to pick it up; but it's the life that I live underneath, that carries, and contains it, and enables it to grow.

Today we want to focus not just on the legacy we leave; but also how you draw from people to actually receive something, that you can then grow and develop - and it becomes a legacy you can leave to others.

Most people think that you just get things straight from the Lord. We get an immense legacy from the Lord; and I want to spend a special session focussing on the legacy Jesus has left you. Whether you get it is another thing; but He has left you a legacy and a most amazing rich legacy - and every believer must discover and reach into and take hold of the legacy, which Jesus paid a price for you to have. It will give you everything you need for life.

God not only gives it to us through a direct relationship with Jesus; He also ministers into our life through other people, who have laid hold of God. We don't have to do the hard work they did - we can get it much easier.

There are two groups of people that you can receive from; and I'm going to focus particularly on the second group, and today we're focussing on receiving.

God has put people in your life to impart something into you; and I’m going to break these into two main groups:

1) People that you just can learn from – information that you're taught; or it's an example you see.

This group of people are not people you're in relationship with; but you can listen to their CDs, and you can learn from them. They share what they learned; and what took them years to learn - you can learn it in one hour.

Learning has to do with putting it into your life. You can go on the internet, and you never have a direct relationship with them, but nevertheless you can draw on their experience that they have in life. The difficulty is in learning how to apply it; so God wants us (and expects us) to learn from people that have gone ahead and to make the effort.

1 Corinthians 10:11 - Jesus said: all of the people in the Bible, all of Israel's journeys - they were written as an example for you and me - forewarning us, or instructing us, about life.

The Bible is full of people who walk with God; and it tells their success, their failures - and God expects you to apply yourself to learn from the people. The Holy Ghost wrote down the story of these people for us to learn from; so very clearly, God expects us, even though we have no relationship with Moses, to learn from Moses.

When Jesus was teaching one group of people, in Luke 16 He said: “they won't listen to Moses; and they won't listen to me either”. He expected people to apply themselves to learn what men of God in other generations had discovered.

So when you go through the Bible - it's not just lots of boring stories; it's actually God's story, in the lives of many, many different people; and the lessons are there of success and failure that you can learn from and draw from.

All of them have left a legacy. This legacy is one that's written down. If you want to find out about King David, what made him great; and about how he fell and failed - it's written in the book. God's grace and mercy to him - it's written in the book.

Without direct connection with anyone, God provides for us the Bible - a huge resource of people that you can learn from, and grow in your life; and leave something from your life to come into the lives of others.

The Holy Spirit will help you to apply what you learn from those people into your life - so we have a coach to help us.

2) People we are in relationship with.

When you sit in a meeting you are taught something; but when you share life with someone - you catch something (or something is caught). So we can either be taught and we get information; or we can be catch something - it can be caught from people. God's plan is that you catch things from people.

You need real life living models, to show you what it looks like when someone is walking with God. Every one of us needs that. People we connect with, who are walking with God; who can show us how the life of God works out in real life - in marriage, family, relationships, finances, the workplace - we need examples.

We can Google information; but to apply it to my life - I need to draw from people with wisdom, experience and vision - to help to get direction for my life; to help to apply what I'm learning. I need to see it, and have it imparted to me - otherwise it's just information; and I can't work out what works in my life, and how to make it work. I need connection with people for this to take place.

So this group of people are the ones that you have a direct relationship with. They could be a father, mother, grandparent, teacher, or someone who's your leader in some area of life – a pastor, or leader of a small group. It could be some person that God has put into your life - a coach or a mentor.

God wants you to be connected to people; and in a place where you are receiving from them for your own life. The purpose is that you ultimately will give out to other people.

Usually in those kinds of relationships there is a bonding, a connecting of some kind - and there's vulnerability. The very same father or mother that you are bonded to, and vulnerable to, can make a huge impact - positively or negatively, in your life. In some families the impact is so negative, and the legacy so destructive, that it can take years for the person to recover; unless they encounter the power and presence of God.

So families always leave a legacy. You've just got to decide what to do with it. No matter what has been left to you - God can turn it for your good, and use it to get you where He wants you to go anyway. God can take the rubbish, and bring life and resurrection out of it; and use the very failure, or the pain or problem to get you where He wants you to go

Hebrews 13:7 – “Remember those who rule over you or who lead you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct or their lives”.

My own life has been deeply impacted by men of God - both positively and negatively.

It says to “hold in mind” people God has positioned in your life, to bring God's word to you; and it says ‘follow’ (or imitate). That word ‘follow’ meant literally ‘mimic’ or ‘imitate’ - not to imitate them, but imitate their faith. Imitate the life they have in God - that's what we're called to imitate.

God doesn't want you to be a clone of some other person - He wants you to be absolutely unique; but we are called to imitate (or to model) - to use people that we see walking with God, to apply what we see in their life to our own life.

It says: copy their faith; their trust; the life they have with God. It tells you what to look for. Don't look for the gifting or charisma. It says: considering the outcome of their life.

If you're weighing up someone whose faith you want to follow, consider the outcome, or consequence, or outworking of their life. Consider their marriage, family, finances - how they are living out their life in community with people.

The word ‘consider’ means to ‘take a close look at’ and ‘inspect’ it. That's a bit daunting for a leader - and that's why people say: you should not really hurry to be a teacher, because more is required of you. It says: have a look at their lifestyle.

If someone has a broken marriage, broken family, broken finances - it doesn't really matter to me what great gifting they have on their life. Something at the core is not right.

We tend to look for charisma and gifting, and get a bit overwhelmed by how gifted someone may be - without looking for: what is their marriage, family, relationships, finances, and their reputation in the community?

T the reality is of course, that the people that we connect with - no one's perfect. We would love to have someone perfect! The only one who's perfect is Jesus; so we have to find people that we can draw from, and learn how to receive - and over the years I have drawn from some people - I'll just identify them...

Neville Johnson - when I first met him, it was the first church I ever went into where there was a move of the spirit, a move of God. From him, I become aware of, and awakened to, and experienced the supernatural. I'm indebted to what that man did.

Duncan Graham - a Methodist minister, and he showed tremendous love. I learned about love; family and connection; and relationship and small groups. I learned about the prophetic; and about deliverance in that place.

Ross Davies - I was under him for two years; in connection with another man, who had a deep impact on me - and from him I learned about spiritual fathering. I learnt about praise and worship; about the value of (and love for) the word of God. I learnt about the necessity of being non-religious, and to get rid of all the junk. I learnt about strong prayer; about the prophetic gift, and how to work in the flow into it. I received immensely from his life in ministry - and it's still in me, being developed to this day.

Clark Taylor - from him I got faith; I learned what faith is, what it looks like; how people live and move in the dimension of faith. I learned about moving in the supernatural, and the gifts of word of knowledge; and developing the whole area of the power ministry. He made a huge impact in my life.

Mark Virkler gave me a clear understanding about how you hear the voice of God; how you work with God, and listen to His voice. He brought clarity to that for me, and that impacted my life, and I've carried those keys for all of my life.

John and Paula Sandford came to Hastings in 1986, brought in by a Catholic charismatic group; and I went to that ministry, and they deeply impacted me. My life changed being under, and opening my life to, that ministry.

When I look at the ministry I have, which now touches thousands upon thousands of people every year, I can trace elements of what I do back to each of those different people; what I learned, what I drew from them.

Of all their followers, I probably got the most out of every one, because I learned what to do to receive from someone, and to hold it in my life.

Was it all good? No, it wasn't - not at all! The first one I was under fell into immorality, quite extensive immorality. It was a huge shock and a great disappointment to me. A second one fell in immorality, and a total betrayal of the trust - I'd stepped out and taken up a role pastoring, pioneering a school; and the same year I did that - he left the church, abandoned the church, abandoned me, abandoned all the ministry; and went and planted another church, and concealed that the true reason he'd gone was that he was involved in adultery.

I had to face, and work through, abandonment and betrayal by two ministries. Then a third one did the same thing; and not long after we'd committed to become part of Christian Outreach Centre, I discovered that Clark Taylor had fallen in morality, and his ministry was brought into shame and reproach.

Again I faced the same experience of having to deal with the humanity of people; and the challenge that leaders are not perfect - they sometimes fail in little ways, sometimes fail in massive ways - but not one of these people that failed me, did I let it overwhelm me, and stop me going forward in God. I still drew from what they had, and carry what they have until today.

You have to make decisions on that; so I value and honour each of these men. Even though some of them failed in different ways, every one of them added something to my life; and every one of them paid a price for what they had - and I am grateful to them, and honour them, and honour what they have done - what they've put into my life. I maintain a place of honour; not focussing on the failures, but rather focussing on what I see they gave into my life, which has been of immense value to me - which they purchased at a price.

The keys to receive are all heart attitudes.

When Jesus came to His home town, there was no anointing released to do any miracles - the most anointed person, that ever was on this earth, was unable to do miracles (Mark 6:4), because of the heart attitude that the people had to Him.

No matter what person God brings into your life, how you deal with the relationship with that person is crucial for whether you receive anything or not.

God is going to bring people into your life, to help you accomplish what He called you to do. In order for that to happen, you have to choose how you relate to the people God has brought into your life; and the way you relate determines how much you receive.

These are the things that I did, that helped me receive; and I walked away from every one of these ministries, and I received something that affected my life, and it became a legacy to pass on to other people; so I want to share them with you.

1) Honour and Respect people: honour is something you choose to give to someone; respect is an attitude of approaching someone, where you see that person is of value to you, value in your life.

1 Thessalonians 5:12-13 – “I urge you, brethren, to recognise those who labour among you, who are over you in the Lord and admonish you; to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. Be at peace among yourselves.”

The attitude that you have towards people will determine what you receive from them. Whatever you disrespect will move away from you.

If you disrespect money, then money will move away from you - poverty will come. If you disrespect people, the relationship will deteriorate. Whether you do it intentionally or unintentionally, disrespect for people shuts down their contribution to your life, stops them giving to you; there's a decrease in relationship, and you can't receive the benefit of that person God put in your life.

Respect or honour is always going to attract people to your life; so each of the men there that I have mentioned to you, I honour them to this day; and I show the honour and respect in different ways, even though I haven't been under Clark's ministry for many, many years - ever since he fell. I've not been under his ministry; nevertheless, after he was restored, we were the first church in New Zealand to receive him back in, and to receive his ministry.

I had an opportunity for the whole breach to be put right. Last year when I was speaking at a conference, he was there - so I publically honoured him, and sowed finance into him - because I respect what he put into my life.

This is a principle of the kingdom. Honour and respect - it's a choice that begins in the heart.

2) Welcome feedback and correction. Welcome the person to input to your life.

1 Thessalonians 5:12 – “we urge you to recognise those who labour among you, and who admonish you”.

God brings people to your life to help you; but also to warn you, or to speak in your life when you're not going right. They can't do that, unless they have relationship with you, or connection with you

Proverbs 15:32 – “The person who refuses correction despises their own soul”.

When people have very low esteem, it's very difficult to correct them; because the moment you try to talk to them about behaviour, they take it as an attack on them personally - and react.

People who are like that cannot prosper, because the feedback they need in their life to help them - they've shut it down by pride, and angry reactions. You need to ask yourself then: do I welcome any kind of correction into my life? Do I make it easy; or do I become defensive?

Each of the men of God that I had relationship with, or connected with, or was under their ministry - at one point in time I opened up my heart to receive their input, correction, adjustment; because it's much easier for someone outside you to see what's going on with you, than it is for you to see it.

That's why it's good to welcome your spouse to give input and correction, because they can see stuff - they live with you. So that's a principle of being open to correction; open to learn about where we're immature, and lack; where our behaviour affects people negatively.

3) Guard and protect the relationship. You need to guard relationships. Relationships are very fragile. They're not static - they change, and they can break down. When they break down there's a huge grief comes with that; so we need to guard and protect our relationships.

Solomon 2:15 – “Catch the little foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vine”.

“Little foxes” are offences. You can get offended with someone, and then shut your heart down. A ‘brother offended’ has got walls in the heart.

Sometimes the people over me made decisions I didn't understand; but I had to learn that whether I understood or not, was irrelevant. All I had to do was just guard my heart attitude; not be offended, or make assumptions or judgements.

Sometimes people who lead you make decisions that you don't have the full information on - and they can't share it either. That's why they're in leadership - they have to make decisions. So guard your heart from making assumptions or judgements. That keeps your relationship open, enables you to receive.

4) A fourth thing I've found, that I did in practice all the time, was: ask questions.

Proverbs 20:5 – “Counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water, and a man of understanding will draw it out”.

People have more in them that you realise, but you've got to draw it out - by asking questions. The disciples did that. Every time Jesus ministered, He would gather with them privately, and they would ask Him questions - they drew stuff out of Him.

I don't know all that I've learnt. If I had to sit down and try and explain what I learnt about this or that, I'd have to rack my brains to try and think.

But I've found that when someone is in a heart attitude, or relationship, of respect and value, they start to enquire - there's an anointing flows, and all the things I've learnt, which are part of my life, start to flow out like a river.

I have found that as you respect and honour what God has put in someone’s life, you can draw on them; and as you start to ask questions, suddenly there's flow of anointing, and all manner of things come out - exactly what you need for where you are. God put them in there for that purpose, and you're now connected, and you're doing the thing that God wants you to do - just what the disciples did to Jesus: asked questions.

It's crazy in church when people don't ask questions. It's even worse if people react when a question is asked, or get evasive and angry and defensive, and shut you down, because questions are the way we learn.

The Hebrew way of learning was by asking questions - that's how you learn. I remember with Ross, I could not get over how he could communicate with people in all different age groups, from teenagers right through to adults, every kind of group. He seemed to be able to get right into their heart, and I'm a teacher at a high school (at the time) - I wanted to learn how to do that.

I used to stand and watch him while he was interacting with people, and afterwards I'd say: why did you do this? Why did you do that? How come you did this? How come you did that? I wanted to learn. I'd just ask questions, and that's how I learnt.

If you don't ask questions then you're missing the opportunity for a unique flow that can come to you out of a person.

Remember, it says that wisdom lies in the heart of a man like a well, but a person of understanding will dip in and draw it out - and you draw it out by honour and value and respect, and by asking questions. You have to ask questions.

Most people don't mind responding to questions; they're glad someone enquired, and you learn.

5) You have to apply the things that you're learning. If you don't apply what you're learning, you don't really learn anything at all. You're no different than a person who didn't hear it at all.

You can be in meetings, and hear words of God preached, all kinds of revelations are preached - but if you don't do anything, it's just the same as if you weren't there at all - never heard it.

James 1:22 – “Be doers of the word, and not just hearers, deceiving yourselves”.

You've got to put it into practice. From a Hebrew perspective, you only know what you're doing; so if you learn how to hear the voice of God, you haven't really learned it until you're doing it - regularly. If you've learned how to prophesy, then you haven't really learned it, unless you're doing it and operating and moving in it. If you've stopped moving in it, then you need to go and relearn it, and get back into it again. Doing the word!

6) The area of serving. I notice that in the Bible, the major occasions where the Bible records a massive impartation and legacy left to someone - the person served.

Joshua received a great legacy from Moses, but it says that Joshua was the servant of Moses. He ministered to him, and served. He was in a serving role, until his time came to enter into his own ministry.

Elisha poured water over the hands of Elijah - meaning he served and he ministered. Serving is the way that you grow into ministry – serving.

Luke 16:12 - If you've not been faithful, in that which is another man's, who will give you your own?

Timothy served Paul; and Paul was able to write it, to say about Timothy: I don't know anyone who would care for you, like I've cared for you, he does - because everyone else (most of the other people) - they want to use you for some purpose; but he said: I know this boy. He's got my heart, and he'll love you like I've loved you.

You don't get that out of a book. You get that out of relationship, and connecting and catching the heart of a person. You can't catch the heart of a person fully in a meeting, where you hear them preaching or ministering, or you're listening to something. You've actually got to connect, and watch, and interact - it's caught, not taught.

The way that we leave legacy to others, is what we share of our life with them, and impart to them. Serving and helping them succeed, without an agenda.

The ones I’ve learnt the most from, served me with no agenda. The ones who had agendas – I seldom learnt anything. Their motive was just to get ahead, rather than their being to learn and honour. You can't get violate the principles of God.

7) You have to deal with the humanity of leaders, or people who you're drawing from. You have to be able to deal in love and truth.

This is the challenge, because God uses imperfect people. With Moses, we think: great man of God. Actually, he blew it so badly with his anger, which he never resolved, that he didn't even get in the Promised Land. Moses - but God has made him a hero of faith, so God can still manage people who are imperfect and use them.

That was a hard thing for me to understand, because I thought when I met someone who's a great man of God, and I saw God working through them - they were almost like they were Jesus Himself - until I got close. Relationship enables you to get close, you suddenly go: oh wow, I don't like that! Whoa! You know? You start to see the imperfections or the humanity of people, and it can create a problem.

David, was a great man of faith (Jesus was the ‘Son of David’), yet David committed adultery, he had a problem with lust, he didn't manage his household well, all kinds of issues. But God calls him a hero of faith.

Paul was a very hard man, and so hard on young Timothy, that Timothy fled, saying: I can't handle it - it's too hard working in your team. Paul said: we're getting rid of that boy, because he's a wimp, and he doesn't handle the tough times. I wouldn't have liked being in Paul's tough times either - he got beaten and whipped, and all kinds of things would happen to him.

Mark left, and Paul said: I'm not having him on my team - he's a quitter; but Barnabas said: let me work with him - he's a good boy. He was able to raise him up, strengthen him, and he was productive later on.

All of these leaders have holes in them. Every one of us has holes in us; so what are the things you have to guard ,and what have you got to handle?

1) Guard against idolatry. No one can take the place of Jesus in your life. It doesn't matter how anointed a person is, how gifted or charismatic, they can never become an idol in your life. You have to deal with idolatry; Jesus must be first.

2) Deal with offense. Sometimes people fail us, and we need to be able to handle offences, and not hold them in our heart.

Absalom, David's son, held offence in his heart; and in the end he betrayed him in a very deep, and personal, and hurtful way. We need to guard that we don't get a rebellious attitude in our heart, a reaction.

In Genesis 9, Ham uncovered his father - and as a result of that, his life became cursed. There were demonic powers unleashed, because he became dishonouring of his father.

1) Keep focus on Jesus Christ. Anyone else pales in comparison. Anyone else that God sends into our life, whether it be a father, mother, teacher, leader, Sunday school teacher, pastor, some kind of person, they're all secondary to Jesus Christ. He is number one. Jesus is the measuring post - however we can learn and draw from Godly men and Godly women.

2) When they do fail, and you see things that are wrong or lacking in their life, make a decision to forgive, and extend grace - just like Jesus extended grace to you. That will keep you in a place of relationship.

3) Look for an opportunity to be able to speak, in love, the truth - to talk into the person, and appeal to them.

I can remember a very, very difficult situation I faced with a leader, but I went to him, and appealed to him, that his reputation was struggling and suffering because of a certain thing he was doing, and just begged him to consider the affect on his ministries. My heart was for him, and his welfare; not to point out a fault - there's a big difference.

4) Sometimes we need to establish personal boundaries, to protect our heart. With one leader, I could see a major difficulty and a disagreement I had, over the pathway he was taking. I took a stand and said: I'm sorry - I love you, and respect you, but I can't walk down this path with you. This is the path God wants me to take.

I didn't go saying all the things I could see that were wrong, and why it was so; I just said: I can't agree to go down that route with you. This is the path God's called me, and I need to follow God's path for my life.

So I put a boundary. It was very, very painful, because instead of allowing me to do it, there was a huge reaction, and a shock of grief and breached relationship, which I suffered from for quite some time, until I got ministered and free of it.

So God brings people to our lives to help us, and without those people, we're going to have to learn everything from start; but with those people, we can get a head start - so welcome the people that God puts in your life, who can impart to you, and help you go to another level in fulfilling your destiny.

I've given you the six or seven keys on how you connect, relate, and what you do to draw from that person's life. Also the boundary you need to guard, and the things to watch against: idolatry's probably the worst. In the Book of Acts, it says that when the people saw the miracles that Paul and Barnabas did - they called them gods, and wanted to sacrifice to them.

We don't do that! We just think that this person is almost like Jesus Himself, and when something happens that disappoints us, we get very angry - and our whole faith stumbles.

Jesus will never tolerate idolatry. Whatever is an idol in our life, whether it's a person, a child, a ministry, a business - whatever it is, God will always confront it. He loves us, and wants us centred back on Jesus Christ, so every one of us can receive.

The question is, whether you intentionally are making it your purpose to receive what you need for your life, and your call, and your ministry; and to outwork it in your life, so you have something to give.

I am where I am today because of these great men of God who loved me, imparted to my life, who I connected. Where there was a personal relationship, they imparted something to me that changed my life.

I encourage you to consider who, around you, God has put in your life, which you could draw from. Here we have many gifted people who can add something to your life. They won't add everything you need; they will add something you need.

Your responsibility is to look for them, connect with them, build the relationship, and honour them; and by questioning, draw out what God has put in them, that can help you move forward.

Closing Prayer

Father, we just thank You for the great price You paid, that each of us would come into an inheritance. Help us Lord to value the people that You've placed in our lives.

As I've preached and spoken, is there someone that imparted to your life, that God is speaking to you to appreciate them, to thank them for what they did? To express the appreciation for what they put in your life?

It's no use holding gratitude in your heart - it needs to be expressed. When you express it, you actually show value that you place on what that person gave.

Is there someone in your life that you've become offended with, and drawn back from, that you need to deal with that quickly? It doesn't matter who's right or wrong; what matters is the relationship is kept open, so you can receive.

Is there someone in your life that is (or has been) in leadership around you, and you need to place a boundary because what you see is flowing from that person's life would hurt you, hurt your life, and your call in God?

Politely and respectfully set the boundary, so you protect what God has put in your life. That can happen in a family, it can happen in a marriage, it can happen in a ministry, it can happen in the workplace. We need to be responsible to protect our heart and our future.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you right now? Are there people that you need to draw to, that would help you go forward in your life? Make the decision, take the initiative. Who are those people; and what initiative will you take?

Sometimes people just can't invest the time you'd like, but just over a cup of coffee... When I came to Clark, the first thing I ever had was a cup of coffee with him. I took him out for a meal, when no one else was available. It was answer to a prayer, and I sat down and I just said: God, I want to draw from this man, and the faith he has, and the anointing he has. Let me use this time well.

I've done that with a number of people, sat down and had a meal or a coffee with them, and asked them questions that helped me. I went away, wrote it down, kept notes, tried to put it into practice in my life. Some I got it from a CD. I just listened to the CD until I caught the spirit and the heart of this man, and then my life changed.

Every one of you is leaving a legacy. You just decide what it is you'll leave - a legacy of offences; broken promises; things that you quit on - or a legacy of standing firm in God, walking before the Lord honourably with Him, and influencing your family, your relations, your people around you for the kingdom of God.

Father, I just thank You for this moment right now. Father, I pray everyone here would in this coming year come to a whole new level in You, new relationships form, new connections form, existing ones strengthened and valued and Lord, a release of anointing, in Jesus' mighty name.

Summary Notes

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Receiving Legacy 02/03/14

1. Introduction

• Prov.13:22 a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children

• Every person on this earth leaves a legacy…like a footprint in the sand

• Legacy=what you stood for!what you accomplished with your life

= what you leave behind for others

a) tangible: money, property,possessions, personal items,

b) intangible: values,reputation,character, family traditions,

ie how you lived your life and the impact that it made on people

• You can choose whether you are a blessing or a burden, stepping stone or a stumbling block

• Eph.2:10 " …you are created in Christ Jesus for good works…." To leave a legacy!

• Gods purpose for every person is to know Him, represent Him and leave a great legacy

2. People we can receive from

The primary person we must position ourself to receive from is Jesus Christ

God places people in our lives that we can learn from and receive from

2.1 People who teach us. (Taught…information)

There may be little or no personal relationship with this group

We can learn from their lives, and their teachings or writings what they have learned

Eg. Meetings, CD's, DVD's, books , articles, testimonies.

God expects us to learn from people that we may have no personal relationship with.

1Cor.10:11 " All these things happened to them for examples and they are written for

our admonition…"

Jesus himself learned from Bible examples and expects up us to do the same

Holy Spirit is given to help us apply the lessons of others lives to our own.

2.2 People we are in relationship with (Caught…formation)

These are people we are in direct personal relationship with

Eg. Father, mother, family, teachers,leaders, pastor, coach

Usually the is a bonding and vulnerability because of relationship

We can see and observe the persons lifestyle and relationships…how truth looks

This group of people powerfully impact us, positively or negatively

The Bible instructs us to seek out and observe godly lives and learn from them

Heb.13:7 " …whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their lives"

Follow= NT. 3401 to imitate, to mimic,

Consider= NT.333. To look again closely at, to be a spectator

Notice it is their faith we are called to imitate, their trust in God and his Word

We are to observe closely not their gifts or charisma or personality, but how their relationship with God is expressed in their personal life, marriage, family, work.

3. Keys to Receiving from a Man of God

3.1 Honor and Respect

1Thess.5:13 " and esteem them very highly in love for their works sake

Your attitude to people determines what you are able to receive from them.

People in Jesus hometown were unable to receive anything from Him because of their judgments and attitudes towards Him(Mark 6)

Respect will attract people towards you…disrespect will always repel people

Honor and respect is a choice…it begins in the heart and shows in attitude, words and actions

Familiarity can breed disrespect that then chokes your ability to receive from that person

3.2 Welcome feedback and correction

1Thess.5:12 "Know them which labour among you, and are over you in The Lord, and who admonish

you "

Admonish= NT3560 = to caution, gently reprove, warn

Make it easy for others to speak into your life…those who love and value you

Resist the tendency to be defensive…be open to receive,enquire, evaluate

Prov.15:31-33 "He who disdains correction despises his own soul"

3.3 Guard and Protect the Relationship

Song.2:5 "Catch us the little foxes…the little foxes that spoil the vines"

Relationships are vital to personal growth and must be guarded from damage and erosion

Little foxes= misunderstandings, assumptions, offenses,disappointments

Place value on key relationships…some are vital for you to fulfill your destiny

3.4 Enquire- Ask Questions

Prov.20:5 "Counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water, a man of understanding will draw it out."

Make a point of asking questions….this is how you draw out what people know.

Ask questions that probe for insight,motives, reasons, experience learned.

Jesus asked questions…………..Lk.2:46

The disciples asked questions Mk.9:28

When you ask questions you can draw out from the person a flow of the Spirit of god that gives exactly

the wisdom that you need for that time

3.5 Apply what you learn

Jam.1:22 " be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Put into practice what you learn or you haven't learned it at all

You only know what you live out in your life. If you stop doing it you have to learn again.

1Tim.4:15 Paul exhorted Timothy to meditate on and apply what he had received

3.6 Serve- help them succeed

Lk.16:12" If you have not been faithful in that which is another mans who will give you your own?"

Serving is foundational to progress and greatness in the Kingdom of God

Eg. Joshua served Ex.24:13, Elisha served2K3:11, Timothy served 1Cor.4:17

Serving was foundational to them receiving and emerging in their own destiny

3.7 Deal with their humanity in love and truth

God uses imperfect and flawed people to advance his Kingdom. The Bible reveals their flaws

Eg. Moses..anger, Samson..lust, David ..adultery, Elijah..fear, Peter…fear

When you get near to a leader in relationship, their personal flaws become more visible

Three areas to guard your heart against:

a) Idolatory…Acts14:11 Lystra…putting the person in a place that only Jesus can occupy, expecting that they will be perfect and will meet the needs that you have.

b) Offense….2Sam.15 Absalom….holding personal hurt or grudges in the heart, and becoming critical and fault finding

c) Rebellion…Gen.9:20-25 Ham….delighting in uncovering and exposing the leaders weaknesses or failures to others, eroding their reputation

How do you Guard your Heart?

a) Focus……………Keep the focus of your heart and faith on the person of Christ

b) Grace……………Extend grace…forgive and withhold judgments

c) Truth……………Look for opportunity to speak truth in love

d) Boundaries….Establish personal boundaries to protect your heart

Personal Application

1. What is the Holy Spirit speaking to you through this message?

2. Are there people who impacted you, you need to appreciate?

3. How do you respond to feedback or correction?

4. Do you enquire, or do you hold back and tend to make assumptions?

5. How is your passion for serving? Where are you serving?

6. Do you have issues with leaders that you need to resolve? What are they? How will you resolve these?

Leaving a Legacy (3 of 4)

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A good man (or a good woman) leaves an inheritance to his children's children - Proverbs 13:22. One of the greatest legacies you can leave your children is to unconditionally love and value every one of them. Bless them - speak words over every child. Connect emotionally. Leave a legacy of Faith - prayer, devotions, a relationship with God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom - Psalm 111:10

Review

Ephesians 2. I've shared two messages on a theme called Legacy.

Legacy is what you leave behind after you. First we shared about legacy, and some aspects of it. Then I spoke on receiving legacy from others, and how that, not only does God directly give to us, but He gives to us indirectly through people, and He brings people into your life that you can draw from.

We shared how to draw from someone, who has obtained something in God, which can give you a head start. You don't have to learn everything from the start; you can get near to people who can impart to you things that they have learned.

Introduction

Now this time I want to speak on Leaving a Legacy, and then lastly Your Legacy in Christ - what Christ has made available, for you and me to take hold of.

Main Message

Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”.

I love this scripture - before you were thought of, before you came into this world, God had already planned some unique things for you, to accomplish with your life. Think about that.

You may have come into a troubled background, difficult circumstances, but God had designed you for some unique things to accomplish with your life. He prepared them for you.

Everyone here has the power to influence people. Everyone can make a mark on the life of other people. Intentionally or unintentionally, you are leaving a mark on the people that you are interacting with day by day.

Your legacy is what you leave behind to others. When you get to the end of your life, you think about your life, and people will say things about you.

At funerals, people say all sorts of wonderful things - sometimes exaggerated. It’s better if you were actually told those things on the way through; and better still, if you thought ahead what kind of legacy you want to leave - what sort of mark you want to make with your life.

I saw one exercise, they said this: Imagine if you were at your own funeral, what do you want your spouse to say about you? What do you want your family to say about you? What would you want your friends to say about you? What would you want your workmates to say about you? In other words what you want left behind? Think about it, then apply yourself to living that kind of life.

We see in this scripture here, that God has created us to accomplish something.

Another scripture in Matthew 28 - Jesus' last words to the church, I'm going to paraphrase it: Leave a legacy of faith.

Leave a legacy of faith - because if you don't, the church will die out.

“Make disciples of all men, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you”.

The mandate to the church is not a suggestion. This is a mandate to us: leave a legacy, of the life you live, in the lives of others. Be intentional about sharing your life in Christ with those around you.

I want to share three areas you can leave a legacy...

I was reading an article by a nurse, she has done bedside care for dying people, and she recorded the five wishes that were most common in people that she nursed, who were dying.

Over many, many years, she'd cared for people who were dying, and she asked them this question: “If you could live your life again what is it you would change about your life? What regrets do you have; or what do wish that you could change?”

At the end of people's lives, they become clear about what's important; and these five things she recorded were the most common answers. In fact one of them was spoken almost every time by men.

1) I wish I had the courage to be true to myself, and not live the life others expected of me. I wish I had the courage to be true to myself.

Most people live their life to fulfil the expectations of others, and never stop to examine the dreams, desires, and the destiny that God put in their hearts.

When you get to the end of your life, if you've never discovered what God put in your heart, and fulfilled it, one of the regrets you will have is: I wish I had lived my life, to fulfil what God put in my heart, and I hadn't lived just to please people and their expectations of me.

2) This was the one universal of all men: I wish I hadn't worked so hard - that I'd spent more time with my wife and my family.

I wish I hadn't worked so hard, or poured so much of my life into work, and trying to get money and resources and so on. I wish that I'd spent more time with my wife and my spouse.

3) This was a very common one: I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings; instead of living my life just to keep peace with everyone.

I wish I had had authentic relationships; instead of just being shallow; and connecting, rather than building relationships, yet never sharing my life with people.

4) I wish I'd stayed in touch with friends, because now I see the value of these people in my life, and I regret that I never followed through the friendships, and made time to keep them up, and to be with them.

5) Last, and also a very common one: I wish I'd let myself be happy. I wish I'd let myself be happy; or had more fun.

People realised that happiness or joy is a matter of choice. No matter what comes in life, you can choose to rejoice; or you can let it come on top of you, and live under the feelings, and the circumstance.

They said: I just wish I'd had more fun. I wished I lived a happy life - or chosen to be happy.

At the end of their life, they've come to the stage: I've got this regret, and I wish I had done that.

You and I don't need to get to the end of our life and say “I wish”. We can get to the end of our life - because we've still got life left in us - and we can make some decisions today that we're going to live differently, and choose our life to be different than what it was.

I want you to consider three possible areas that you could leave a legacy:

Proverbs 13:22 – “A good man (or a good woman) leaves an inheritance to his children's children”.

A good person considers how to leave an inheritance to their grandchildren; so very clearly in the Bible, the Bible affirms that you should think generationally; think ahead concerning your family, your children, and your grandchildren, and consider what you would leave to them.

1) You can leave finances, or leave some kind of asset, or resources.

Some people don't leave assets - they leave debts! When the person dies, the family is burdened - they've got to pay debts before they can even celebrate.

2) Family - you can leave a legacy of family. What will your family remember you for? What have you invested in their life?

3) A legacy of faith.

A legacy of finances; a legacy of family, which can mean natural and spiritual; and a legacy of faith - how will your relationship with God be remembered?

Some of you are thinking: I'm past being able to do anything about that now... No one is ever past making a change!

That's the great hope of the gospel: you can change today! The past can be overcome.

We still have time to do some things in the future, so I want to just give some practical things on developing a legacy for your family.

Proverbs 19:14 - “A house, and riches, are the inheritance from a father”.

Isn't that interesting? One of the biblical guidelines, or one of the things that the Bible talks to us about, is that fathers would leave something behind financially for their children.

So how do you manage your finances? A lot of people live just week or week, or don't even think about how they're living their life. We've been concerned, as we've travelled a bit and met with people, how many baby boomers just want to spend up all their money - and leave nothing for the next generation.

They're not thinking about how they could use their assets to help the next generation forward - not to meet all their needs, but to just give them a step forward. So in thinking about that, every one of us can consider what we will leave in the area of physical assets, or physical wealth, or finances, or whatever. I'll bring some balance to this in a moment, but here are a few thoughts about it...

It's never going to happen if you don't plan, and manage it; so if you're young, why don't you think now - think ahead about growing wealth and having something that you can invest in the next generation?

Because there will be, for you, a next generation. All these old people here were once young like you, and if they were to look back they'd say: I wish I'd handled my money better - I would have a different life now; I'd have more to give.

When the Bible's thinking about wealth, and the gathering of resources - it's not just that we accumulate it for its own good, but rather that we can invest in others, invest in family, and invest also in advancing the gospel. So plan and manage it.

Think about this: one of the best things you could do would be to just take a percentage, whatever it is, of everything you get coming in, and put it aside to save, and you will have a legacy to leave for the next generation.

Shane spoke of how his father talked to him about putting 10% aside, from when he first earned; and that 10% was always for investment. At this stage in his life, he is now quite wealthy, because he's built investments for a next generation – from putting aside a percentage.

Think about: guarding the issue of debt. One of the greatest issues that people have to face today is the pressure to have everything now, and to get into debt to do it. Most people, when they get into debt, don't think what it really costs them.

I remember talking to one young guy who'd bought a car; I said: what did it cost you? He told me the price; but when we worked out what it was going to cost him - it was unbelievable. He was paying nearly twice what it had on the lot, when he took into account all his time-payments.

So as much as it's possible, live without debt; or reduce debt, or get rid of debt. Live a simple lifestyle. We've found that if you just live a simple lifestyle, you'll find in the simple lifestyle, you can make tremendous savings in all kinds of ways.

We've observed different people, how they run their family, how they run their finances; some people I can think of right now have a lot of money coming in, but it all goes, because they don't think about just living simply, doing things simply.

Honour God in your finances; it helps bring it all into a place of godly order. It's not the only thing to do, the regular giving to the Lord, but it's a part of building finances in our life.

Don't think you can't do that; believe God you can - that you could leave a legacy in some way, by applying yourself.

Just to balance that up, I want to bring another scripture...

Proverbs 22:1 – “A good name is to be chosen, rather than silver or gold”.

There are two things that are more precious in God's eyes than silver and gold: a good name; and good favour.

In that verse, a good name is to be chosen, rather than great riches; and loving favour, rather than silver or gold.

A good name means your reputation - how you lived your life, your character, what people say about you. The Bible says that a good name is more important than money.

Many people compromise their reputation and character; they cheat, they lie, do all kinds of things, and in the end they have neither a good name, nor money; because there's something about corrupt behaviour that causes money to flee from you.

When your name is mentioned, what do people think?

When you think of Abraham, immediately you think: faith. With Moses, we think: deliverance; or bringing the nation of Israel free. Noah lived a godly life in his generation, and had an impact. Paul – when you think of these names, you think of something.

Mother Theresa - you think of some things; not about her life, and all that she lived, but what she did with her life that left her great reputation - because she did what she could to advance the kingdom of God.

Nelson Mandela, every one of these names, the moment the name is mentioned - something about that person comes into your mind.

Notice it's not the money? Abraham was extremely rich, but when we think of Abraham we don't think of the money. We think of what got him the money - his faith.

Mandela, he was President of South Africa - but it was more than that. At the mention of his name, you think of his character - that coming out of prison he had a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Oscar Pistorius - that's a guy accused of killed his wife; so associated with a name is usually some kind of characteristic. If you think of Hitler, immediately you think of someone who committed genocide.

So your name, when it's mentioned, will conjure up something in people's minds. They'll have thoughts of what you were like, or how they have experienced you. So when people talk about you, and your name is mentioned, what comes up?

Is it your godly lifestyle and godly choices that come up? Not everyone's happy about that of course, but does it come up?

Apart from a good name, the second thing to be desired is: favour; or: loving kindness with God and with people.

Luke 2:52 – “Jesus increased in favour with God and with man”.

That is to be valued more than silver and gold: loving kindness; and favour with God and with people. He increased.

Philippians 2:9-10 – “God has exalted Jesus, and given Him a name which is above every other name”.

At the end of His life, Jesus had a good name, and loving favour. He sought out a good name, by obedience to God and living the life of faith; and He sought out loving favour by walking with God. He found favour with God, and favour with man.

Did people hate Him? Yes, they did. Did they put Him to death? Yes, they did. But what name gets you into heaven? The name of Jesus!

What do we remember when we think of the name Jesus? We think about the things that He did, the life He lived, what He left, and the legacy that He has left us.

The second one is family experiences...

Proverbs 24:3 – “Through wisdom is a house built”.

Making good and godly decisions is how you build a family life. The Bible says, concerning a house: “unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build it”.

Trying to build family life is incredibly difficult. Bringing God into the centre of it makes a huge difference to the outcome.

One of the things that I learnt from my father-in-law was: the value of family experiences - of building experiences into your family that leave memories, and thereby leave a legacy.

When you think about your parents that went before you, most people don't think of the house or the money that was left to them. They think of the experiences, how they experienced that person.

When you have left this world people will remember how they experienced you. Were you known for kindness, faith, serving God faithfully; for integrity?

So we can build some experiences into family life. Here are a few things that you can do

1) One of the greatest legacies you can leave your children is to unconditionally love and value every one of them.

They're all different - they've all got different personalities, different challenges; but if you can find ways of expressing that you love them unconditionally, and they're of great value - that is a huge legacy to leave behind.

A small house, with love in it, is much better than a big house, if everyone's in conflict and tension. So building or sharing a heart that just accepts each of the children, and sees their uniqueness and their value.

2) Words spoken. Bless them - speak words over every child.

I remember an encounter with the Lord one time, and He spoke to me about a particular man in the church, who was dying. He said: tell him how much I love him; and speak to him to bless each of his children, and speak words into their life.

It's never too late to speak words of value over each of your children, your spouse - to use your gift of language to say what people mean, and how you see them. It's an incredible thing, especially if you’re a father - it has power to change lives and to leave a huge legacy, if you can speak: I believe in you, I'm with you, I'm for you.

3) Another way you can build a family legacy is to connect emotionally.

I work with many Asians, and one of the biggest challenges is for the fathers to connect emotionally. To connect emotionally, you've got to share your feelings and your heart with your family; you share what you feel - to be able to connect when they're going through times that are difficult; to be able to put your arm around them and speak into their life and heart.

That sort of thing builds family experience. Why not plan some family experiences together?

So here are some very simple things again: why not turn the TV off and the phone off and have a meal together - every day? In that meal together, talk and connect and interact, and build family experience together.

Many people just don't understand the value of that - they've let it all go. But what happens is, they've left no legacy of family meal, eating together, laughing together and having fun - everyone trying to talk together.

Family holidays together. It doesn't have to be complex. At one stage we had no car, but it didn't stop us going on a family holiday. Joy's family had a place on the beach. We caught a train, and got help to get there and help back. We found a way to do it, and those family experiences were all without anyone else there, so we could just connect as a family. When you do that, you leave memories, you leave a legacy.

Think about celebrating events. We have a tradition of celebrating birthdays, and Christmas - and make it a big fuss, make it something that people remember, because it communicates value. The value's not in the birthday cake, or in singing Happy Birthday, but in placing value on that person - letting them know you are special, we love you, we value you, and you're a great part of our family.

It's in the internal things, not the external. It's how can I place value on my family? What can I do?

So laughing together, having fun together. I remember we made a conscious decision for a season to have no television. What do you do with no TV? Well, every Friday night I'd cook fish and chips - couldn't afford to buy them, so I cooked them myself. We wrapped them all up, like you'd by them from town, so they'd look the same as anyone else; and we had an area in our lounge which was a big one with a bay window.

So every Friday night was family time, and there was acting. We'd act out Bible stories, and there were puppets, and all kinds of things like that.

It was part of building family experiences together. You don't need a lot of money to have a lot of fun. It's all in making the best with what you have, and making the focus on the togetherness; not on whether you've got something, or not got something; and then affirming the value and uniqueness of every child.

You actually speak into their heart their value, and so we're doing that now with our grandchildren. We're intentionally building a legacy of memories and experiences with grandchildren. Why? Because at the end of our life we want them to have known us, caught our heart, and been able to have an ability to speak into their lives and help them.

You can be intentional about leaving a legacy. Jesus wants us to leave a legacy!

4) Finally, the legacy of faith - and this is the one that really counts.

Psalm 111:10 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The fear of the Lord... The greatest legacy you can leave is the legacy of how you walked with God; whether you were a person of faith, or just religious.

A religious person comes to church on Sunday, makes the kids all go to Sunday school; but there's no substance in their life, relationship with God - and kids see the hypocrisy quickly, and that's why they turn off God.

People turn off God because what they see is very religious, and lacking being authentic - so be authentic in your faith. Cultivate your own life with God. Cultivate your walk with God. Cultivate a passionate life with God, because when you do that, you'll leave a legacy that nothing else can substitute for - your legacy with God.

What is your prayer life? How do you handle prayer? Kids will watch this in your life. Do you pray? They watch you praying.

My kids would hear me praying, because you can't pray out loud the way we pray - in strong prayer, so people don't hear you. When people hear you pray, they hear your heart for God. They hear how you pray; and learn how you pray. Often in homes, we don't hear prayer at all.

How do you worship? Do you engage in worship? Do your family see you engaging with God, and absolutely being a lover of God?

What about the word of God, the Bible - do they see you engaging in the word of God, and sharing the things that you have learnt?

Your family watch how you handle people, how you treat people, how you talk about people. Those are the kinds of things that leave a legacy.

One of the things when I went to Joys family was, I noticed that Joys mum seemed to gather up all kinds of unusual people, and she just loved them all - and I see it's a legacy. It's a legacy, just to show kindness to people, that perhaps were having a struggle in life - and that's a legacy that's been passed from Joy's mother to Joy - and she carries that. She loves people, and so she's always helping people, all kinds of people. It's a legacy passed on.

I drew from the legacy of Joy's dad quite heavily, because I saw how he did family devotions. I saw how he had family time with the grandchildren - family holidays. I learned a lot from just watching him, and drew from what he built over years.

Your family watch your life with God. You cannot hide from your family, the life you have with God. They see it, and what they see, they'll either want it; or they'll look at it and say: it isn't real, it's not there.

A second thing you can do, in building a legacy of faith in your family, is deal with generational inequity. The Bible says in Exodus 20 that generational curses and sin have an impact and an influence in the family - so take responsibility and deal with it in your own life, so the legacy of blessing continues to be passed on to your family.

A third thing you could do, to build a legacy of faith, is cultivate your family spiritual life. Don't leave it to the church to raise your children. Your children are your children. You invest in them - so start by setting up a family devotion. Have a time to read the Bible and pray together.

We used to do it every morning, without fail, every day. Read and pray together; and in the evening time, pray when children go to bed. These are simple things, but it's only in the doing of them that you see the blessing.

Have times of worship in the family, times to share what God has been showing you. Teach them how to hear the voice of God, and share what God is speaking to them. This is how you build an atmosphere in the home. Use your home for hospitality, so your family see other people coming in, and there being a generosity with what you have. That helps build and cultivate something godly in your family.

Have people in who are men of God, who can share and pray with your kids. Take them on a personal experience to mission somewhere. Almost all of our children have gone with me to the mission field at some time. It didn't happen by accident, it cost us, but it was intentional to help them see what God is doing on a global scale.

Think about praying for them when they have a need; teach them to pray about their needs, and pray for one another. These are simple things, but if you don't intentionally do it, you'll drift into leaving church to fill the needs that only you can. The church, in one or two hours, can never substitute for a spiritual life, and an atmosphere in the home.

If you're going to build a successful spiritual life, you'll need to actually set some boundaries in the home. My children didn't always like the boundaries - I remember one time, one of my teenagers said: you've ruined my life; you've ruined my life completely! I said: no, I haven't ruined your life. I just said ‘you can't go there’ - and we rung up to make sure that there were some boundaries around it. We did those kinds of things.

And here's the last one: be connected, and committed into the local church. Why? Because it's God's family, and your family watch how you interact and talk about the church.

I have observed this: when people love the church, and are engaged in it, something is imparted to their family. We've actually got three generations serving in the church at the moment. It didn't happen by accident. It's an intentional thing.

They worked on building a love for the house of God, and they showed it by example. People listen when you start to talk, and criticise, and run down - they quietly listen, and they make a decision: I'm having nothing to do with this. They become offended, in a way that they need to be protected from.

Are there difficulties in church? Of course there are difficulties, but don't let your children be offended and defiled by difficulties that they're not up to handling. You've got to teach them a great attitude.

Jesus loves His church. Even if it's imperfect, He's committed to make it perfect, and He's going to do it, so we need to just keep great attitudes.

You can intentionally leave a legacy by considering: finances; family experiences; and building a life of faith in the family, and in your own life. Those are some key areas that every one of us could consider.

For those who perhaps say: my family's grown up, and I missed all of that. I should have had this 20, 30 years ago. Nevertheless, here's the great thing about the gospel: we always get a new chance.

Maybe we've lost some old ones, but if we pray, we can put many things right where we failed. Sometimes it's a matter of prayer, and when you get your heart right with God over the areas of failure, and you start to believe God, something happens in the children that turns their heart.

It's never too late. It's never too late to do something - and for all of us, we have people in our community, waiting for us to impart a legacy of our faith into them. It's called discipleship. It's called advancing the kingdom, and every believer is called to build at home, in the local church, and into the community where God has called us to be.

For those of you who've come from a family where actually it was just a total mess, and a disaster, and you've been left with tremendous pain, think about this: that God can restore you and heal you. You can recover from that damage, and there are still people you can leave a great legacy to.

There are people you can choose to invest your life in. We'll get on to that a little bit later – first, I want to talk about what Jesus has given to us; so no matter what was left to us from our family, you and I can rise up, and we can make a difference with our life. Our life can be different. Our life can leave a legacy.

Some of the greatest men of God came from some of the most disastrous situations, but God is great in mercy; and His great love, with which He loved us, can raise us up and give us new chances.

That's the great message of the gospel. Next time I'm going to share about the legacy Jesus left to us. One of the biggest things is: you all get a second chance - and another second chance, and another second chance. Everyone gets a chance to get it go again - and we should take that chance.

Closing Prayer

Father, I just thank you for every person here. I pray for those who are parents; I pray Lord, that the impact of what I've shared would touch their heart, and their life; and that they would begin to resolve, and think through, and plan how to grow a great legacy for their family.

Father, I just pray for those who have wrestled with family failure, family damage, family wreckage, the iniquity of previous generations bringing destruction. Father, I pray that peace would come to them, that Lord you give them a new day, a new chance, a new opportunity.

Father, I pray for each of us that we would not live for the moment, and live for this day and live for ourself, our life being just one selfie after another; but rather we would begin to catch a vision of a next generation needing to hear the gospel, people around us in desperate need.

Father, I pray that there'd come a fresh revelation: that we have what we have, because men died and gave their life for it. Help us honour the roots of our faith, and leave a great legacy for the next generation.

Just as we finish tonight, now I just ask you to identify what the Holy Spirit is speaking to you about. What did God challenge you on today? What will you do about it? Is there something to repent of, something to put right? Is there something to decide to do? When will you do it? Make the decision: today is a new day.

Our Legacy in Christ (4 of 4)

Sun 6 Apr 2014  « Back to Top

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"Go make disciples..". Leave a legacy of your walk in Christ. Impart what you have to other people, intentionally. You are created for good works. God has designed you to accomplish something meaningful with your life.

In the Old Testament, the inheritance given to God's people was a physical piece of land in the Middle East - but they were required to possess it. Jesus left us: His example, His Words, and the Holy Spirit; but you have to arise, and by faith displace what holds you back from enjoying it. Jesus wants us to stir up and possess.

"...you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance (just a deposit), until the redemption of the purchased possession... (payment in full)"

Introduction

Deuteronomy 15:4. I want to finish the series I've been doing on Legacy. I want to talk about our Legacy in Christ.

Review

We talked about legacy; and about intentionally constructing a legacy for the next generation; thinking about what kind of life you live, what impact you'll make.

We saw that legacy was what you leave behind for others. Legacy is the imprint you left in this life, because you were here.

Yesterday at the funeral, we heard many different people talking about the legacy that Graham had left, and not all of it was good; but in the latter years as he came to Christ, he was able to intentionally work to overcome many things that had happened earlier in his life - and there was just great honour on him yesterday.

Everyone will leave a legacy - in fact we're called to. The Bible says: you are created for good works. God has designed you to accomplish something meaningful with your life; so when we connect with God, and begin to start to outwork His plan in our life, we start to begin to form a spiritual legacy - something that is from God - for others.

So legacy is visible and tangible; or intangible. If we think about Jesus' last mandate, His last words, which is the first priority for the church: “Go make disciples - teaching them to obey all things that I've commanded you.”

I'm going to rephrase it: He's saying to the church: this is not an option; this is a mandate: Leave a legacy of your walk in Christ. Impart what you have to other people, intentionally.

Main Message

Another word that the Bible uses, which is like legacy, but not the same word, is the word inheritance, inheritance.

Legacy consists of everything you leave behind, which is intangible as well as tangible. When we think of inheritance, we think then of property, that is passed on from a person who has now died, and goes to their rightful heir, or those that are mentioned in their Will or testament.

So inheritance is part of a legacy; but a legacy is bigger than just the inheritance. The inheritance is the part that you give to someone else.

For example, if I was to die, and I own a house, that house is an inheritance for family. It's passed on to family. It's something tangible, but my legacy is much bigger than the house. My legacy consists of my life, and the impact it's made for Christ.

Deuteronomy 15:4, in the second part of the verse: “the Lord will greatly bless you, in the land the Lord your God is giving you, to possess as an inheritance”.

He's saying: “the Lord your God will give you…” - there's the first word, ‘give’; “…the land for you to possess”.

We're talking about a physical inheritance - in the Old Testament, the inheritance given to God's people was a physical piece of land in the Middle East. Notice it was given to Abraham, and all his descendants.

1) It is given.

2) It is an inheritance. It is part of something Abraham passed on, because God gave it to him.

3) They were required to possess it.

To possess means you have to arise, and drive out something that occupies it, or resists you getting what God wants. If you think about the Middle East, contention has been there for hundreds upon hundreds of years, over the piece of land God gave to Abraham. There's been a contention to possess it, for the people of Israel - who are model for us.

God said: there's the land, your inheritance - it is yours by right, I have given it to you. You own it, it is yours, your possession - but you can't just sit back. You have to arise, and by faith, displace what holds you back from enjoying it. That's the story of the Old Testament.

It will be the same when we define the inheritance is that Jesus has left for us – you will begin to find the same things….

1) It's something that comes to us by inheritance - the death of Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to receive something, if we are connected to God, through faith in Christ. So when you give your life to Christ, you become joined to Jesus Christ, and therefore you become an heir of everything He took hold of. Everything given to Him, becomes part of the inheritance you and I can receive. Jesus obtained for us an inheritance, as a representative of humanity, and in Him we are entitled to it.

2) God gives it to us, but you can't just sit around hoping good things are going to come. You have to make a decision to believe, and arise, and take hold of what Jesus purchased for us, and left for us.

Nothing in the kingdom of God comes and just drops in your lap. It's given, but a response is required. God will do His part, and He's done His part; everything you and I have need of, for life, is now provided for us. We are not beggars; we are rich in Christ. However, much of the church as a whole lives as a beggar, and do not appreciate, or take hold of, the treasures of the inheritance available.

So Jesus wants us to stir up and possess. I want to have a look in John 14…

What is this inheritance He's given us? The more I looked into it, the bigger it got; so I'm going to take one part of it, which is the important part, and if we will take hold of this part of it: treasure, possess and use what we have been given - then you'll get everything else.

John 14:16. Jesus' come to the end of His ministry. Jesus has been filled with the Holy Spirit, and He has lived out three years of His life, demonstrating what God is like. Jesus said: if you've seen Me, you've seen what God is like. Look at My life. If you want to know what God is like, don't keep praying that God will reveal Himself. He already revealed Himself in Jesus Christ - do some work; get into the Bible - read what Jesus is like, and you'll begin to see what God is like; and choose to believe that applies to you as well.

So in John 14:16 He says: “I will pray the Father”. He said: “I'm about to leave you”, and He says: “it's a good thing I leave you”. Here's why it's a good deal: because I'm going to go to My Father. I'm going to obtain an inheritance - and you'll get what I've got. I'll buy it all for you.

He says He's going give. He said: “I will pray, and the Father will give you another Helper, or comforter, who will abide with you forever. You'll never lose this. The Spirit of truth”. He identifies it's the Holy Spirit, whom the world can't receive.

Here's one of the key purposes that Jesus came into this world. I know we focus on the cross - Jesus came in and died on the cross; and when He died on the cross, it was actually to remove something, that's a problem to us getting something. It's the getting something that really counts.

Imagine if you had a block to receiving something; getting rid of the block is not the big deal. That's to prepare you to get something - but what a tragedy if you didn't get it see?

Jesus came, He died on the cross, to deal with the issue of sin. He arose from the dead, showing the power of God over sin, that sin's power's broken. He ascended into heaven, so we now have a representative, our representative in the very throne room.

He went there, and He had this in mind: that He would send His Holy Spirit to you, “…that where I am, you will be there also”.

So the inheritance, the legacy of Jesus, is bigger than this; but the inheritance He speaks of - and I'm going to show you two or three scriptures that make it absolutely clear, that part of your inheritance in Christ - is the Holy Ghost. It's the Holy Spirit.

Jesus' legacy consists of a number of things, so I'll explain what they are, but we're going to focus on one of them….

1) His legacy was His example. He lived a life that we model our life on. I like to be like Him. God wants me to be like Him. God's plan is for you and me to be like Him; so He left an example, rather than a book, or anything else.

He actually came and He lived out a life. He showed us how a man filled with the Holy Ghost lives their life! Don't you go fussing over what other Christians are doing - they do all kinds of stuff. If you focus on them, you'll be offended, disheartened, discouraged.

What you're called to do is: to be a follower of Christ, who set us an example: that we would follow in His footsteps, be imitators of Him.

So one of the greatest legacies, He shows what it looks like, on earth. Read the gospels again, and see what it looks like to be a man filled with the spirit - how you treat people, how you relate to God, how you handle pressures, how you handle conflicts, how you live out the life of the kingdom.

So the first thing is: He left us an example. An example leaves an impression!

2) He left us His words.

A powerful part of your legacy is what you say. One of the things I encourage people to do: speak words into your children - words that impart destiny, and hope, and life into them. It's a powerful legacy you can leave to your children: what you see in them.

Jesus left us pages of His words, which outline the principles of the kingdom He was living in. Nicodemus came to Him, and He said: no one's ascended into heaven, except the Son of man, who was in heaven. That's a weird statement.

He's saying listen: even though I'm physically standing in front of you, I'm connected by the Spirit of God to the unlimited resources of heaven; and as I speak ,I share with you the words, the life, the values, the attitudes, the principles of that kingdom – His words. That's why some Bibles have them marked in red, they're that important.

3) He left us His Holy Spirit. He left us the power to live and become like Him.

Without that power, without the person of the Holy Ghost, you have religion. Religion is what is left when the Holy Ghost is gone.

A lot of people striving and struggling, working hard, frustrated, failing, and feeling guilty about it - and trying to smile, “praise the Lord, brother”; but there's no life, in reality. The only way you can get the life, in reality, is through the life and reality of someone in you. That's why He's called our inheritance! How about that?

So Jesus' legacy was simply: His example; His lifestyle; the words He spoke; His death and resurrection, which set us free from sin; and here it is: the gift of the Holy Ghost.

In Galatians 3:13-14 it says this: “Now He has redeemed us, or purchased us - paid the full price to redeem us from all the curse of the law…” What for? He paid the price of the cross, but it's all to get something else to happen. It's the ‘something else happened’, that's the big deal.

The death and resurrection is to remove the problem of sin. God is not worried about your sin; you are, and religion is, the devil is - he will hound you about your sin, and your failures, and your lacks, and try to get you to live like you're not born again. But Jesus said: “the word says: He's redeemed us”, totally redeemed or purchased us, rescued us out of the curse, out of all the consequences of sin - and now we're positioned to get something.

“…that the blessing of Abraham”. I thought the blessing of Abraham was some land. No, no, no - that's just a prophetic picture. The land was a gift to be possessed.

Now there's another gift to be possessed. He is called the Holy Spirit, and we are to take hold of this gift that God has given us, that we might receive the blessing of Abraham, even the promise of the Spirit.

So what did Abraham get? He got the power of the Holy Ghost on him - that's why he got all the other stuff. You look at all the land, and the silver, and the gold, and the riches and everything else - that's the outworking of something else.

That's just the tangibles in his life showing up, because he had blessing on his life. He was blessed! Are you a blessed person? Some are not sure - because we're living out of the old life before Christ, which was a life of struggle, and lack, and scarcity, and pain, and setbacks.

But the Bible says that when you come to Christ, and identify with Christ - one way you do it is you get baptised into Him, and when you're baptised, now I've got a new life, and it says: now I am blessed! I am blessed.

It doesn't say: I'm blessed if I pray. Yeah, that'll happen as well, but blessing is about what Jesus has positioned me for. I don't, and you don't, have to fight to be blessed. You are a blessed person. It’s time you started to say it: I am blessed - blessed in the morning, blessed in the evening, I am blessed! When I fall over, I'm blessed, because God will pick me up. Make a mistake - I'm blessed, because I'm already forgiven!

You see you've got to think like that. It's a way of seeing your new life. If you don't see it that way, you live out of the old: I'm still a mess. Pray for me, deliver me, do something to me. But when I declare: I AM BLESSED! I'm repositioned for something great.

Now I want you to have a look with me in Ephesians 1. Let's get excited about the Holy Ghost. I am excited about the Spirit of God! Living years in religion, condemned, ashamed, beaten up - oh! Then the Holy Ghost oh-ho-ho! I wouldn't go back to that other stuff. Dear me!

Ephesians 1:13-14 – “In Him you trusted (Jesus Christ), after you heard the word of truth, and that was the gospel of your salvation”. He's saying: you heard the gospel, and then you trusted in Jesus.

He said – “…in whom, after you believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.”

After you responded to Christ, something was put on you. In Acts 19, Paul come to the church and said: “I know you believe, and you've been baptised - did you get the Holy Ghost”? And they said: “no, we didn't even know about the Holy Ghost”. He said: “well watch this, and he laid hands on them, prayed, they were filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak in tongues”.

They were sealed with the Spirit of promise. That word ‘seal’ - he said: you are sealed. When you come to Christ, you are sealed. In those days they used a signet ring, or they had an engraving, and it was the seal of ownership. Tey would get some wax, put it on it, and then stamp the seal on it; then everyone who saw that stamp would know who owns it.

You are sealed, or stamped, with a mark - that's why the demonic world knows exactly who you are. You can't hide it, because there's a mark on you - you are marked! People all get wound up about being marked with the Beast, but I'm mostly preoccupied with being marked with the mark of God - on my life, in my mind, and in my works.

He said you were sealed with the Holy Spirit - which is the earnest of your inheritance. Our inheritance is the Holy Spirit. God Himself is your inheritance. You say: well I kind of wanted silver, and gold, and jewels and promotion… Listen, in Christ you get everything you need. Colossians 2:10 – “you are complete in Him”. So when you're in Christ you have access to all you need. If you don't feel like that, it’s because your perspective and way of looking and thinking and speaking is not right.

Most people, they say: yes, oh that's great preaching, oh that was good; but actually the reality doesn't become established in their life. You are sealed with the earnest of your inheritance, the Holy Ghost.

Notice the word ‘earnest’. It means simply this… Say you go and buy a house, and you decide: that's the house - I want to own it. They say: that's good, but you have to front up with a deposit. The word ‘earnest’ means ‘a deposit’, something given as a guarantee that there's more coming. There will come a day when they will ask you pay the full price, and the house will then be yours - that is the language of this passage.

You are sealed with the Spirit of God, the earnest of your inheritance, until the day of redeeming of the purchased possession. God wants to stamp you, and mark you, and distinguish you from every other person in this world. The way He does it is, He stamps you with the anointing and presence of His Holy Spirit; and what you get is just the down-payment, of all of the rest of the payment, which is more of what you got.

So if we paid a deposit on a house, and its $1,000 then he's got to front up with the balance, which is all the rest of the money. So he gave money; but there's more money to come. That's what the scripture's saying - when you got the Holy Ghost, you got the pledge, you got the down payment, the first instalment.

If there's a ‘first instalment’, then there's got to be second, third, fourth - and then one great final pay off. This is what God wants you to be excited about!

For most people, their baptism in the spirit happened years ago, and it's not very relevant to what they're doing now, because they don't understand the value of what you have, and how to draw on what you have, so you overcome in life.

Jesus was so excited about giving you the Holy Spirit, because He said: this is what you will need to win in life. Greater is he that is in you, than he that's in the world. You don't have to live fearful of devils and demons and beasts and marks and all kinds of stuff…. This is just a lot of nonsense, coming out of Christians who ought to know better - breeding fear in the sale of books.

What is needed is that we capture God's vision for a people arising, filled with the Spirit of God! You've got to get a hold of what this is. In the Old Testament, you read about Moses, and we say: man, I'd love to go back there, the glory came down and filled that tabernacle with shimmering glory of God. Isn't that amazing! Oh - and they couldn't stand up, they all fell over - but that wasn't God's plan, that's only a bit of it. That's just a heads-up that something better is coming.

David had a tabernacle, and it was tent. They had worship going on all around it, and the presence of God like a shimmering glory came into it, and people fell over and got touched by the presence of God. And God said: that's pretty good isn't it aye? But He said: that's not it... But wait, there's more!

Solomon's temple, they put the temple up, they began to pray, and oh the glory of God came out of heaven, came into that temple. There it was. They fell over. How wonderful. They were impressed; and God said: but wait, there's more. This is not it! This is just to give you pictures, so you might get it.

Then Jesus came, and oh! He said: this is the temple of God! God don't live in a house. He doesn't live in buildings anymore. Hey, they're nice, but this isn't the house of God. He said: the house of God, and God's resting place, can never be a building, because it can't handle it.

The only suitable resting place for God is a person, and a body of people related to Christ, and connected to one another. He demonstrated what that looked like, and they followed Him around - miracles, presence/power of God, people being touched by that - and then He said: I'm going! I'm leaving here, I'm going.

They said: You can't! We're just on a roll. He says: but wait, there's more… He said: if I stay, then you can't get what I got; and God's plan has always been to give you what I've got. I've just modelled for you. I've left you an example. I've taught you about it. I've shown you the life, I've revealed what the Father's like.

Now I've got two more things to do; 1) go to the cross, and remove this problem of sin that you worry about so much; 2) get you back to where we've always intended you to be, from before time began - filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with all the fullness of God, rooted in His love, demonstrating His life and His power.

That is what He said: “that glory that was in the Old Testament came and went, but this one will not go”.

Notice what we read in John 14. “He will abide with you and not leave you”.

In the Old Testament, it was always habitation. God would come, and they would pray for God to come, and God would come and show up. Now Jesus says: “I am the temple”. This is what it looks like. Everywhere I go, God is coming with me. Everywhere I go, because the glory is inside. He took him up on a mount one day, and He prayed. Then suddenly He turned into this brilliant searchlight - face began to go white, His clothes grew brilliant, and they saw the glory.

Why didn't they see it before? Because it was hidden in an earthen vessel. The earthen vessel just concealed what was in Him, the treasure. Here's the thing: did you get anything different to that? That's why God came. He gave them a glimpse.

You know what they wanted to do? Why don't we stop, and build a building, and stay here in this place of glory? No, no, no, no! No Son. We've got to go down there! There's work to be done! There's a whole world to get this. I don't want You to stay up here enjoying this glory. I want You to get out there, because shortly, I'm going to commission You, and before I commission You wait!

Wait! Wait, wait, wait! They said wait? We want to get going now. No, no, no. He said: you need this glory within you. You need the glory of My Spirit within you. This man that God created to carry His glory, and manifest His glory in life, now by faith in Christ is restored back into His presence, back into relationship, and the glory comes again to reside within us.

That's why it says in 2 Corinthians: “we have this treasure, Christ in an earthen vessel”.

If you can only see how bad you are, and where your problems are, and all that's wrong with you, then you can't experience the glory within. You have to make changes. God intends us not to be waiting around for Him to come, but to understand who we are in Him, and what He's put in us that's so valuable. Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Christ - that's the glory of God, is in you, but that's only the down-payment; there's more to come. More, more, more, more! Why don't you treasure that? Why don't you get to know that, and understand it? The New Testament church didn't have a Bible; they just had the glory within, and they lived from that glorious Holy Spirit working within them - a personal relationship. God connected that with never going to go away.

If you're lonely, rejected, depressed, struggling with all kinds of things, then you're living out of the old man that Jesus said: He crucified it, He buried it. There is a new man, and there's glory inside you. Why live like you're not saved! That's what He's saying.

1 Corinthians 2:11-13 says: “you have been given, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God.

You're given the Spirit of God. Why does He give it to you? So He can explain to you, everything God has made available to give to you.

You say: well I don't feel like God's got much for me. It's because you're living out of the bondages of your old life, and you're not living out of the new man in Christ. You actually need a renovation in the mind; and in the heart, a change - and that's what we want to do. If you don't shift in your heart beliefs, then you can't realise it; you just hear it, get excited, and then walk away.

So why is it we have so little? Why is it, if God has given so much, most believers have so very little? There's a number of reasons, I won't develop them, but let me just throw some out for you.

1) Despising our inheritance. Esau despised it. He just sold out, because he despised the gift of God, and just did stuff that made him feel good at the time. Now isn't that a lot of Christians? Despising the Holy Ghost. It's about a person, and having right attitudes to Him. You know when we speak evil of others, we grieve Him. That's definitely not respecting Him, and definitely doesn't help us get filled.

2) We don't see it. We actually live out of a wrong perspective. We live thinking we're still unsaved, and we've got hang-ups. You say: well the reality of them is there. Yeah, but there's another reality there too; that is Christ is in you. The treasures of Christ are in you. You've got the bank full of money, and yet you're standing there saying: I'm broke. The treasure house is full, but you're saying I've got nothing.

You've got to actually see what God says about you - that you're a new creation! That the DNA of God is in you! God's life is in you. I've got to confess and declare that! I want to hold in my vision who I am in Him now, I've changed. I'm a new person.

So one issue is our perspective, we just don't see it, and so the Holy Ghost work is to help reveal it, but you've got to choose to shift your perspective.

3) We've got mindsets. We think out of old ways, so if someone comes and they hurt you, immediately - there's a stronghold in your life erupts, demons start to operate, feelings start to come, and thoughts start to come. You're in a place of deep rejection, deep depression.

The truth is: I'm accepted in Christ! People can accept me, or reject me, but I'm accepted by God! I am accepted in the Beloved! But oh, I feel so depressed. They're so nasty to me, they hurt me. Well, don't live agreeing with that. Resolve it! Deal with the issues of the heart, the strongholds, belief systems that stop you accessing what God says.

If it's a choice between what God says, and what you're feeling - choose what God says, and ask the question: how do I move from where I am, to what God says? How do I bring my experience up to what God says, instead of: ‘God can't be true’ or ‘the word can't be true’ because this is not what I'm experiencing.

This is what the life of faith - this is why it's something to possess. The life of God is in you, but you must make a decision: I will learn how to draw and live from that life. Jesus said: “I'm the vine, you're the branches. If My words abide in you, then you will ask what you will.” In other words, there's this issue of drawing on the life within.

You say: well I don't feel like that. No, you're living out of your feelings, rather than living out of what's the reality, which is true: God's spirit is in you. There's an overcoming spirit in you. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives within you!

I don't feel it. No, you won't either, until you start to decide I will agree with what God says: body, stop whinging; Spirit, start rising…. and begin to draw on that life. If there's something I can't overcome, something that continually disempowers me, then Holy Ghost: show me what the block is, because that's part of your job description.

Show me where the block is. Show me what's in the heart. Show me what the thing is I need to deal with, someone I need to forgive, something I need to renounce. Whatever it is, I need to remove out of my heart - Holy Ghost show me.

If you don't hear from the Holy Spirit, just go to someone who can help you find it, and then remove the block, and get on with where you're supposed to be, rather than accepting that's how it is. That is not how God has planned for you and I to live our life; plan to live our lives full of the Holy Ghost, full of the Spirit of God.

First step: receive Christ, and become joined one spirit to the Lord; get water baptised, so that old life has passed away. You're a new person, a new creation. The DNA of God is in you. Greater is he in you than he that's in the world. Then make a decision: I need to get filled with the Holy Ghost. I need to be stamped with that sign of God's ownership on me! I want the Holy Ghost, so I need to come and ask Him: Holy Ghost, come!

John the Baptist, the greatest prophet (end-time prophet in fact) - the spirit of Elijah was on him. You know the two revelations he had of Jesus? The first one was: oh! Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!

He saw Jesus as the lamb who would remove this issue of sin. Most people carry on like that's all he said, but this next bit is the important bit, because this is where it gets to…

He said: he will baptise you, immerse you, dip you, plunge you, put you into the whole realm of Holy Ghost living - and that's why he's come.

We get caught the other side of the cross, hung up with condemnation, hang-ups, failures, guilt and all that. That's all demonic, and it's all the flesh just moaning and groaning - and we live under that, we're defeated. Jesus said: “he's the Lamb of God, who removes the sins of the world”. If He's removed your sins and failures, why live like you're still living in them?

If you're a new person, why live like the old person? “I don't feel very happy…” However, I'm a new man, a new creation in Christ. Therefore I will rejoice in the Lord always. Today I choose to rejoice.

Coming into church, I come here to meet with God, so I turn up on time, because it's an appointment with God; and I don't come waiting, drawing on all the musicians and everything they have. I come to bring something from my temple. I want to flow with the Holy Ghost.

We were singing a song, something about being overcome by the Holy Ghost. Most of you wouldn't become overcome by the Holy Ghost, because of attitudes in the soul and the heart. It's easy to be overcome by the Holy Ghost. It's all about just being able to yield, and release, and let go. It's only the things in our mind and heart that stop us from receiving. He's here. How about if we were to just worship in His presence and just start to let go trying to control our world, and allow this loving God to fill us.

1) Come to Christ

2) Get filled with the Holy Ghost

3) Sustain the life in the Spirit.

We've got to learn to live from our spirit. When I come in here, I'm not always in the best place to tell the truth. Sometimes I've had a lot of things go on in my life - pastors have these things happen to them, but I've determined: whenever I come in, I've come here to worship God, so therefore I will front up on time. I'll stand up inside, and I'll give my very best.

I've found an interesting thing happens all the time: that as I give my best, the anointing flows. If you wait until you feel like it - nothing will happen. Do what you need to do, and let the Holy Spirit come on that.

I know we need to address issues of the heart, but there's a whole area of decisions - of the will to do what God says to do. Let's come and offer Him a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and then begin to enter and participate - take what you have, and make it available to God.

You say: I'm not like you; but you just have no idea how hung up I was before God got a hold of me. You see, I've still got stuff to get over, but at least I'm aware of it now, and I'm working to live out of the new man; instead of out of that old man, who was so totally rejected.

When you live out of the old man, you don't realise and experience that I'm a new person – that was not me! This is who I am: I'm a loving person. I'm a kind person. I'm a generous person. I've got the nature of God in me. I'm a persevering person, because I've got the nature of God in me. I'm an overcoming person, because I've got the nature of God in me.

It's living out of who God says I am, and what I choose; not out of reactions to life. When you live out of reactions to life, you live in the flesh. You have to choose to live out of your spirit.

You say: but I don't feel like loving that person. That's true, but the Holy Spirit has love for them, which you can manifest, if you choose to draw on it.

You say: well I don't feel very happy about this situation. No, but the Holy Ghost is full of joy, so if you'll draw on that well within - joy can flow. Even though your feelings are down - they will change, as you let the Spirit of God flow through you.

Well I don't feel like forgiving them - in fact actually quite the opposite! I feel like laying in wait for them. However, the Holy Ghost, who's a forgiving spirit, will say: forgive, and let My forgiveness flow, let My love flow. Begin to see them as I see them - that's drawing on the life of the Spirit. We're all called to do that.

It's a glory within, so don't keep waiting for some great thing to happen one day, when God has put His glory inside you - let it rise up! Begin to change how you see things, so you see from God's point of view; how you think about it, so you think God's way.

Begin to change how you speak. Speak in tongues a lot more, and then learn to speak God's word. I thank You Lord, Your word declares this… Begin to hold that word, and picture that word, and see that my life will align to what God has to say.

If there's anything inside you that resists it, then face it - find out what it is, and root it out, and become filled with the Holy Ghost!

Don't be drunk with wine! It's actually a good feeling to be drunk with wine - it's actually very nice, especially if you have a lot of problems. Sit down and drink some wine, and before you know it, you're very happy. You laugh a lot; but you wake up with a headache - that's not so good; and you lose control - which is even worse.

Here's the thing: it's pleasurable, because it provides a release from the pressures of life. The Bible says: “Don't be filled with wine, wherein there's excess, and all kinds of bad behaviour. Rather be filled with the Holy Ghost!” Halleluiah! Give way to the Holy Ghost! Let Him have room in your life - by speaking, and singing, and magnifying the Lord in your heart - that's how you get filled with the Holy Ghost!

I think there are people need to get saved and filled with the Holy Ghost today. I think a lot of people need to get filled with the Holy Ghost - get a lot more life in them; a lot more joy in them; and a lot more happiness in them; and a lot more wholeness in them. If you want some of that, come on out….

Thank You Holy Ghost, You're here. Are we the temple of the Holy Ghost; or not? Therefore, if I just take her hand like, then the power of God should just flow into her. Isn't that amazing?

Now are you full of the Holy Ghost? We're called to be carriers of God! Carriers of the life of God! Have we forgotten our roots? Have we forgotten where we've come from? It's like Cinderella - needs a kiss to wake her up! We need the kiss of God to wake up again, to remember who we are.

Closing Prayer

Is there any person here that needs to receive Christ, to give their life to Christ, and make the first step out of sin, and to forgiveness of sin?

We need some more people filled with joy before we finish. I wonder how many people here today not been stamped with the Spirit, marked with the Holy Ghost - speaking in tongues?

If you're here today, and you say: God, I want that, I want that stamp on me! I want to get filled with the Holy Ghost. If that's you today, just put your hand up right now, wherever you are.

Summary Notes

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Our Legacy in Christ

6 April 2014

1. Introduction

· Legacy = What you leave behind for others – the imprint and impact of your life.

- Can be physical/tangible or intangible = example, values, experiences, teaching.

· Every person has the power to influence others, to leave a legacy.

· Mathew 28:19 “Go therefore, make disciples!”

· Inheritance = property passing at owner’s death to the heir, those entitled to succeed.

· DT.15:4 “… the Lord will greatly bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance”

OT - The land of Canaan was given to Abraham by God and to his heirs.

The land was an inheritance – part of Abraham’s legacy to successive

generations”

The land given, had to be possessed, and then held onto and cultivated.

· “Possess” =OT3423= to occupy by driving out, overcoming previous occupants.

· Jesus also left us a legacy, an inheritance as a gift to be possessed by faith.

2. Jesus Promise to Each of Us

Jn 14:16-18 “I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth …”

· One of the key purposes of Jesus coming was to send forth the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would bring unlimited access to the presence, life and power of God.

· Jesus Legacy (i) His Example – Demonstrated what man filled with the Holy Spirit is like.

(ii) His Words – Shared insights to the Kingdom of God.

(iii) His Death/Resurrection – Broke the power of sin, death, curses.

(iv) His Gift – the Holy Spirit – God in us – we become house of God.

· Gal. 3:13-14 “Redeemed … so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”.

· The land Abraham received is a picture of the true inheritance we receive – the Holy Spirit.

3. God Himself is Our Inheritance

· Eph. 1:13-14 “… you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise who is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.

· “Sealed” = NT4972 = to ??? with a signal or private mark for security.

· “Earnest” = NT728 = pledge, deposit, part of the purchase money given in advance as a security of the rest of the payment.

· “Inheritance” =NT2817 Heir-ship, to receive a legacy.

· Sealed with the Spirit = the baptism of the Holy Spirit – power of God coming upon us and filling us with the life of God.

· Eph. 1:18 “That eyes of understanding being enlightened, that you might know what is the hope of your calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the Church.

The inheritance is within us – the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

· 2 Cor. 4:7 “We have this treasure, Christ, in earthen vessels …”

· OT Num.18:20 The priests did not receive land – God was their inheritance.

· Our Inheritance

(1) Given to us by promise (2) Holy Spirit indwelling and empowering (3) To be possessed – there is resistance we must overcome to access this inheritance.

· 1 Cor.2:11-14 “We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

- One work of the indwelling Holy Spirit is to reveal and to give us access to all the things God has provided for us in Christ.

- Why do Christians have so little when given so much?

(i) Despise the spiritual realities e.g. Esau Gen 25:34

(ii) Carnal, natural mind – tend to think as we did before we came to Christ

(iii) Walls and barriers of unbelief in heart – reactions to being hurt.

(iv) Demonic resistance and pressure to live out of old nature.

4. Obtaining Our Inheritance

· Everything in the Kingdom of God is obtained by faith.

· Rom.5:2 “Through whom we also have access by faith into this grace”.

(a) Receive Jesus Christ as Saviour

Jn.3:3 “…unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

(b) Receive the Promise of the Holy Spirit

Act.19:2-6 “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” When Paul laid hands on them the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke with tongues and prophesised.

Mk.11:22 Keys to receiving the Holy Spirit:

(1) Desire, (2) Ask, (3) Believe, (4) Receive, (5) Respond by praying in tongues.

(c) Constant filling of the Holy Spirit

· Place love and value upon the Holy Spirit person and presence in your life.

· Must by a deliberate act of will to choose to draw upon the life of God within you – 1Cor.6:17 “You are one spirit with the Lord”.

· Jn 7:38 “Out of your innermost being shall flow rivers …”

(1) See differently - Perspective! New creation, God within, Treasure, DNA.

(2) Think differently – Mind sets! Complete in Christ, have all things.

(3) Speak Differently – Words! Pray in tongues – speak the Word of God, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit.

(4) Act Differently – Actions! Intentionally stretch to serve people.

Blame Game

If we don't relentlessly deal with the Blame Game, then we think we're trying to move in faith, but we're actually continuing old patterns of unbelief and irresponsibility. The Blame Game started in Genesis, when God talked to Adam & Eve about eating the fruit of the tree. When they started blaming, God stopped talking - they experienced the consequences of their decision.

Passing the Blame (1 of 3)

"It's not my fault, you can't blame me for that". If we don't relentlessly deal with the Blame Game, then we think we're trying to move in faith, but we're actually continuing old patterns of unbelief and irresponsibility. The Blame Game started in Genesis, when God talked to Adam & Eve about eating the fruit of the tree. When they started blaming, God stopped talking - they experienced the consequences of their decision. Will you stop blaming and start to take responsibility? Find creative options. Take action. Jesus took responsibility for the sins of the world, offering hope and a different future.

You Always Have a Choice (2 of 3)

God empowered man with a free will, and the ability to overcome challenges in life. Man learned to be helpless, he developed limiting beliefs about himself. Israel learned to be slaves (helpless) in Egypt. The challenges they faced in the wilderness were designed to shift their slave mentality to explore what God had for them. We have the ability to handle every challenge in life if we choose to believe & trust God. We disqualify ourselves from our destiny, purpose & blessing if we blame & make excuses. Learn how you can break free from learned helplessness. Choose to change.

Dealing with Failure (3 of 3)

The origin of the Blame Game is failure. Blame places the responsibility for a failure/mistake on people or circumstances. We all fail, we need to admit that. Take responsibility and acknowledge failure so that God can lift you up, and you can change. Look at some of the glorious mistakes & failures recorded in the Bible, then discover powerful keys for handling our failures and moving on.

Paperback

- Paperback #1

- Paperback #2

Audio

- Passing the Blame (1 of 3).mp3

- You Always Have a Choice (2 of 3).mp3

- Dealing with Failure (3 of 3).mp3

Notes

- Passing the Blame (1 of 3)

- You Always Have a Choice (2 of 3)

- Dealing with Failure (3 of 3)

Passing the Blame (1 of 3)

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"It's not my fault, you can't blame me for that". If we don't relentlessly deal with the Blame Game, then we think we're trying to move in faith, but we're actually continuing old patterns of unbelief and irresponsibility. The Blame Game started in Genesis, when God talked to Adam & Eve about eating the fruit of the tree. When they started blaming, God stopped talking - they experienced the consequences of their decision. Will you stop blaming and start to take responsibility? Find creative options. Take action. Jesus took responsibility for the sins of the world, offering hope and a different future.

[13:35] I want to just start on another short series. This year we're looking at what it means to be apostolic, but what I want to do at this point is I want to just address an issue, which is a big one in New Zealand, called the Blame Game, the Blame Game. I'm sure you have played it. It goes like this: it's not my fault. You can't blame me for that, it's not my fault. We have a culture you know, we live in a culture, which is a culture of blame. When you live in a culture of blame, you start to think and act and behave and do what everyone else does, so when there's a culture which one of the aspects of culture is people blame one another, we then turn to get in, buy in and do the same kind of thing. So when people blame someone else, they kind of feel a bit better; oh not my fault, it's you, it's what you did. The problem is that, when you blame someone else, you remain powerless to change your situation; and God is wanting us to become empowered as people and believers.

If you're going to be empowered as a believer, and begin to move in dimensions of faith, you have to be relentless in addressing any habits you have of passing the buck, or blaming someone else. To walk in faith will require that we take responsibility, so I want to push in on this area of the blame game, so we begin to understand what it looks like, sounds like, so that we can deal with it. There was an interesting thing in the United States recently. Two very overweight women sued McDonalds. [Laughter] They sued McDonalds, for not warning them of the dangers of their food causing them to put on weight, and creating physically attractive and psychologically addictive food; so their condition of being overweight was McDonald's fault. Fortunately the judge saw through that, and threw the case out, but what on earth is going through people's minds, that they think you can blame someone else for their weight? It's about a way of thinking, a blaming way of thinking.

As we open this up over a couple of weeks, you're going to start to find it everywhere. It comes up in such subtle ways but the core of it is something like this; instead of taking ownership of the problem, and doing something about it; people blame someone else, or something else, see? The reason I'm not married, is there's not enough Christian men in the church. Oh, what did they just blame? Just blamed the church. Oh too bad, you'll stay single the rest of your life then, because you've assigned responsibility outside yourself. You've put the blame for your single condition outside yourself, somewhere else. Whoa, that was a bit close. I shouldn't have started that deep so quick should I aye? [Laughter] That's a bit nasty wasn't it aye? [Laughs] Oh well. Got really difficult times financially you know, the nation's going through a bad time. Blame! Is God my source or not? Where am I putting the blame? Where I put the blame, is where I put the responsibility; and when I put the responsibility out there, I'm left unable to do anything except be powerless, resentful and talk negatively about how bad it is.

So if we don't relentlessly deal with the blame game, we will find: on the one hand we think we're trying to move in faith; on the other hand we're actually continuing old patterns of unbelief and irresponsibility. It's everywhere. It is everywhere. So normally people blame - so we ask people: well what's your problem? They tell you where the problems are. Well how come they're problems? Oh well it was my father, it was my mother, she abandoned us. Yeah well heaps of mothers have done that, but it doesn't mean to say you end up with a mess. You've got to make a choice how you respond to that bad deal. You have to learn to play the cards you're dealt, not wish you got a different hand. God knows how we're going to come into this world, and knows what we're going to experience, and He's promised to help us, if we will stop blaming, and step up, and begin to think creatively what to do. If we're going to be faith people, we have to think creatively about the problems of life; and I want to get us out of blaming, and into some other kind of thing.

So people have got all kinds of reasons why they're like they are: well it was my teachers, you don't understand, that first year at school - oh well I was at high school ... terrible! Listen, I am hearing blame. You're putting the problem on someone else. Maybe they did contribute to it, maybe they did some very bad things; but at the end, if you don't stop blaming, you remain powerless and helpless, and you remain a victim of what happened. We have to make decisions, what we'll do about the hand we've been dealt by life. Here's another one: people blame the government, or they blame the church; you don't understand, that last church I was in - well the pastor or the leader or the... I'm hearing blame, because you're ascribing the reason you are like you are, to someone else or something else. You have to recognise the reason you are the way you are, is because of the choices you've made; and if you made bad ones, you can make better ones - and even better ones, see? So we blame everyone; we blame our background. Well you don't understand my background, I never had the education - woops! Blame.

There's heaps of people succeed in life without education. Come on, you've got to think this one through, and you'd be amazed. Well I had some bad experiences, I was abused. A lot of people in life are abused, it's a terrible thing, incredibly wounding and hurtful - but that does not determine your future, how you respond does. It's not what happened to you, its how you chose to respond, is the key. My lack of opportunity, I didn't have opportunity! Listen, everyone's got opportunities; what did you do with the ones you go? So you'll find in our culture, and I want you to listen for it this week. As people talk, I want you to listen for the sound of someone who is losing, blaming someone else. They will blame a person, or they will blame circumstances. How come you were late here? Oh well you understand, the traffic. Yeah, you're blaming something else, and so it goes on. You'll find everywhere in life, people want to blame, so I want to get into this whole thing of the Blame Game.

Let's have a look first of all, see how God designed us. Genesis 1:26-28, God said: let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion. Verse 28: God blessed them, and said to them: be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion - so we are designed for dominion. Here's one of the greatest gifts God gave you; He gave you a will, an ability to make choices. You choose what you do with your life. He gave you a free will to make choices, creative choices, so you have desires in your heart, and you will choose whether you are creative in fulfilling the desires, or not. With the capacity of free-will choice, we have consequences. God said: you can eat all of that fruit and that'll be fine, but eat that one you've got problems; so God gave us the ability to make decisions, the ability and right to be free in choosing what we do. But consequences, we have no control over them, they're what happen after you've made your decision.

So God has given us two things; one is, He's given us a free will to make choices; two, He's given us a creative ability, He expects us to use to solve problems. Notice what He said to Adam and Eve: subdue, have dominion. That meant there were some things out there that were not right, that had to be overcome; and they had to face the problems that were outside them, and creatively think how to deal with them. That's what God expects of us, all the time. We can pray to God, and we do. We can ask God's grace and help, and we do, but there's a part He expects us to play. For example, in Genesis 2:19 God had created all the animals. That was His part, and He brought all the animals to Adam, and He said to Adam: here you go Adam, I've created you for dominion, so go give them all a name. Oh, I'll call that one an elephant - and so he went and - now that's not an easy task to think up a creative name for all the animals. Imagine if you had to go here, and give everyone here a name - but all the animals, that's a big challenge.

Now Adam could have responded one or two ways. He could have thought through, and been creative in solving the problem; or he could have said: well that's not fair, you haven't given me a list of names to choose from! How do expect - this is unreasonable, to expect me to do all of this! He could have done that. He didn't do that though, but we do that. Well that's not fair, how can you expect me to do all this? Well God's given you a free will, and an ability to be creative, He expects you to kind of generate a few ideas on the way you know; to think through what you can do, instead of blaming the culture, blaming the people, blaming the government, blaming white people, blaming black people, blaming this person, that person, age. I mean people blame, and blaming leaves you powerless. So God expects us then, to be creative in finding solutions, and He will help us be creative in finding solutions. He expects us to take action, to do some things, so faith always has got action to it. Now where did the blame game start? Well over here unfortunately it tells us how it started.

Adam and Eve were given a great opportunity, and God said: eat all of this; don't eat that one. You eat all of this, you live; you eat that one there, you die - really quite simple. Here is a way that you train children: you show them what they can do, you show them what they can't do. If they do this, these are all the benefits; if they do that, that's the consequences. That's how you train them. Now here's the issue. When they break the laws, you've got to have consequences, because that's how people learn, it's God's way of doing it. In the pre-school, they have this thing: was that a good choice, or was that a bad choice? The little ones will say: I don't want you to ask me that, [laughter] because they're forced to decide whether their choices were good or bad, and if they were bad, then consequences will follow. Most people in the blame game want to make bad choices, but not have the consequences; so I'll make bad decisions about money, but you've got to help me out! No, no, no, you need the pain of the consequences, so you learn about managing money. When we bail everyone out all the time, what happens is, they never learn the lessons. Isn't that true?

How many of you have helped someone out, you help them, help them, help them; but they never change, because they're in a victim mode. The responsibility for their getting the release is put in someone else's hands, and you'll just keep helping them, and helping them, and helping them, until you get sick of helping them, because you saw no change. What you're better to do is actually initially give the help to lift the burden, but then begin to talk about being responsible. So if we have people in trouble financially, we're quite happy to help; however, it requires they submit to budget advice. Why? Because that's part of the consequences of goofing it up. You've got to then manage it better, and someone's got to help you manage it better. Does that make sense? Now this is really good stuff isn't it, because this really hits at the core of what's going on in our society.

Now notice what happened here. Adam and Eve both ate the fruit of the tree, and then this is what happened. The Lord God called to Adam and said: where are you? He said: I heard Your voice in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself - so they both ran away. He said: who told you you were naked? Did you eat the fruit of the tree I commanded you not to eat from? Now here it is, classic, here's where the blame game started, Verse 12: And the man said: well, speak to the hand! [Laughter] Listen, whose idea was it about women anyway? And who was the one talking to the snake? Hey, it's not my problem. The woman - notice he said: the woman You gave me; so basically he's now not wanting to be responsible for his failure, and of course men have an acute vulnerability to do this. Is that right women? [Laughter] Oh they're not saying that, because I'll get into trouble if I say that one, but it's true. So Adam blamed Eve, and then Eve said: well don't look at me, it's that blimmin' snake. If You hadn't made snakes, I mean whose idea was it to make - I don't like snakes. Why did You make snakes? You understand that here's what the problem is. They have actually made a bad choice, and now they're blaming someone else for their actions, transferring responsibility.

Imagine if they had assumed responsibility, and said: Lord, I really blew it. I got it wrong, I'm so sorry, will You forgive me? Now imagine if they'd said that? What a dilemma God would be in. He'd have to forgive them wouldn't He, give them a fresh start, because He's a forgiving God. But because they blamed, they were rendered powerless, and had to experience consequences. So notice what happens in here, they blame. So why do people blame? We want to divert the attention away from what we've done. So the heat was on Adam, he's feeling a bit embarrassed, and so what he does, he says let's get the attention away from me, onto her. So blame is about getting the attention away from me, onto someone else, because I don't want to take responsibility for my mistakes and failures, so I will blame someone else. That's what it's all about, it's diverting attention; and then what happens is, when you blame someone, it diverts attention, and you avoid your responsibility, and you become powerless, so you're going to end up with some consequences.

Now notice this, that both Adam and Eve, after God had spoken to them, when they started blaming, He stopped talking. When Adam blamed Eve and God for what he'd done, God stopped talking to him. Next time God spoke to him and said: here's the consequences, you broke the law, and this is what will happen. Didn't I tell you that? Did I tell you that, and you chose that, then when you chose that, you also unleashed a certain consequence into your life, and I'm not going to spare that for you. I will come to you in the consequence and help you, but I'm not going to spare you the consequence of the decision. That's how God operates. If you're going to help people, you have to think the same way, think the way God thinks, don't buy in to the blame game. So God held them accountable for their behaviour, so when people tend to blame someone else, so they can divert attention and not be responsible - have you ever done that? Have you ever done that? Wow, the silence says it all doesn't it? Of course we've all done it, we've all bought into it. We've found someone to blame, and this is an issue, it's a major one.

Let's have a look at another guy, and you've got to realise this: well, it's not my fault. That's kind of like in our mind, it's not my fault. Anyone said that, not my fault? Don't blame me, not my fault. Well it's not my fault. It's not my fault, it's my dad's you know, it's the pastors, it's the church, it's the government - not my fault! You just can't blame me, it's nothing to do with me! Except it's my problem, and if I don't do something, I'll never solve it. That's the dilemma with blaming. Okay, now let's have a look at another guy here, in 1 Samuel 15. This is a classic one of a guy who said: well it's not my fault, don't blame me; but like everyone else in the Bible, he received consequences of making bad choices. Now I'm wanting you as we just do this, is to just be thinking, and be reflecting, as to how often you would, in some way or another, say: well it's not my fault, or blame someone else, rather than actually face the problem, take responsibility and be creative to solve it. Remember this: every time you blame someone else, you render yourself unable to do anything. You become powerless, even if they were responsible.

So suppose for example a father was very abusive, alcoholic and there was a messy thing all through the family life. The child was beaten up, got all kinds of problems, so here he is later in life standing on all these issues now in his own marriage and all these problems in his own family. Now if he blames his father for it all, he now actually becomes the victim of what's happened. He becomes helpless and powerless, and then all he can say is: it's not my fault that I'm such a mess. Yeah, well that's why your wife left you, because you wouldn't take responsibility, and you blamed it somewhere else. Yes, there may have been an abusive background, and you may have deeply been hurt. However, this is your life, and God gave you this life. It's your responsibility to actually own your life, and be creative in making decisions how to make it succeed, not blame someone else. Oh well, we'll blame the economy - now notice what happens here. In this story in Verse 1, Samuel said to Saul: the Lord has sent me to anoint you king over His people, and over Israel. Now listen to the voice of the words of the Lord. I want to punish Amalek for what he did to Israel a long time ago, so God never forgets. He ambushed Israel on the way, he came up from Egypt.

Now this is hundreds and hundreds of years later, and God says: I'm going to settle the score now. I want you to go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, spare nothing. Okay, Verse 9: but Saul and the people spared Agag, the king, spared the best of the sheep, the best of the ox, fatlings, lambs, everything that was good, and were unwilling - notice this - unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything that was despised and worthless, that's what they destroyed. So you notice now, he's got a very clear mandate, and Samuel puts it to him in a certain way. He says: the Lord sent me, to anoint you. God has positioned you as a king to represent Him. Now just stop there for a moment. God had given Saul a role. God expected Saul to carry out His will. Now how many know and understand that God calls everyone of us priests and kings, and that He anoints us with His Holy Spirit. He has commissioned the church, every believer, to go into the community, to make disciples of nations. He's called every one of us to enter the community as a king, as someone authorised from heaven to represent Him, to move supernaturally in miracles, signs and wonders, and the power of God. He's called us to do that. It's not like an option.

Saul had a particular mission. He was sent, and given an assignment in the community, but God is giving assignments to every believer now. Now I want you to see what happens. Saul had a look at what he was called to do, and he made a decision: well look, I don't want to get rid of all of that stuff there. This looks good to me. I'll make some money here and there - so they just changed the plan, changed God's plan. But he's not allowed to change God's plan. He's going to have consequences for changing God's plan; and the church has been given a mandate, a plan from God, and it can't change God's plan. If the church changes the plan of God, we're in deep trouble, because we're not here for ourselves. We're here to love and worship and represent Him, and if God is saying to the church worldwide, certain things about global mission, and about reaching community, and about releasing the power of God - we can't change the plan. If we change the plan, we're like Saul: well I'll pick and choose the bits I agree with. I'll just pick the bit I like, and the bit I don't like, I'll leave that out. That's what's happening in the church in the west, picks out the bits it likes, and leaves all the other stuff out.

God's saying: I want the church to move in power, I want you to move, and pray for the sick, and cast out devils, and minister to people. I want you to witness, enter the community, and change the culture. You have to arise. There's a particular challenge is involved in this, and so Saul did this, so anyway he changed the plan, and then notice this. Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him: blessed are you of the Lord! I'm so glad to see you. I have done what God wanted me to do. He was so happy, like so many Christians, come to church on Sunday, well bless the Lord! I've done what the Lord wanted. Really? And Samuel asked a very pertinent question: How come I can hear sheep bleating? [Laughter] Wait a minute, let's go back to the original plan. Wasn't the original plan, that everything was killed? Oh, ah aah... How come I hear bleating? [Baa baa baa.] I hear all the animals. He drew his attention to the fact that there's some noise there, there's some bleating going on. I wonder if Samuel was here now, whether he'd talk to many of the Christians, and say: I hear a lot of bleating. [Laughter] All the things we didn't do, they're all bleating!

Notice the first thing he said, he was in total denial: I've done what God said. Verse 20: I've obeyed the Lord, I've done what - now notice this. He's in total denial about the fact actually he didn't do what God wanted him to do; but he come along, and he said: bless the Lord, I want to praise the Lord now, I've done what God wanted me to do. This is the condition of so many Christians, he's in denial, he's not facing he didn't do what he's supposed to do. God says to the husbands: love your wives, marriage is in a problem, did you love your wife? Probably not. I hear bleating, the bleating of your wife. Why didn't you do what God said to do? Oh, not my fault, you don't understand what kind of woman she is. [Laughter] Oh really? Bleating, I hear bleating, see? So notice what he said, Verse 15, now he passes the blame, and excuses himself. Hey listen, don't talk to me. The people, they bought them from the Amalekites, it's the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen. So now he's come into ways of excusing. So first he denies that there's a problem - when faced with the issue and reality, he carries on like there was no problem whatsoever, ignores it.

Then when he says: what about the bleating of the sheep, well he then excuses it: well listen, I realise there's a problem here, there's sheep here, but don't look at me. It was the people. Hello, aren't you the leader? Oh yeah, but it was the people, they did it. See him passing the blame, excusing himself, taking no responsibility. You know what he was really saying was: well yes, but you can't blame me, because it's them. It's amazing isn't it? It's a very powerful story this one, and then he minimises it: well you know, we did actually get rid of the bad stuff. We really got rid of the bad - now listen, Samuel, don't you hit on me now. We got rid of the bad stuff. That's trying to minimise the issue. He's trying to make it smaller than it is; but he had a clear command, he just didn't do it. He just chose what bits he'd do, and the rest he didn't do. First he denies it, second he tries to minimise it, third he blames someone else, and then finally he tries to reason - now get this, this is the best of all. He spiritualises it. [Laughter] Well, of course we bought these sheep and oxen so we could give them to the Lord. [Laughter] What a fob-off. He's trying to fob-off a prophet of God. He's trying to use every kind of defensive way possible, to do one thing: he blew it, and he wouldn't own up. That's what people do.

They blame someone else, minimise it, deny it, pretend it isn't there, try and spiritualise it, all kinds of things. They just didn't do the right thing, and they won't own it. Now here's the problem: if you don't own it, then you are in a problem. Defensiveness is a major way of avoiding responsibility, and blame shifting; and if you are a defensive kind of person, for whatever reason, when faced with failure, difficulty, challenge, set backs, if you become defensive, you are not taking responsibility. You are acting like a victim, and you're playing the blame game. We have to get out of that. We have to make decisions to get out of that, to be able to be what God called us to be. So notice this, that he experienced the consequences. The consequences were, he lost his right to rule. Now let's just stop there a moment. We're trying to get it out of the Old Testament and into today, so let's have a think about it. God calls you and me, children of the Father, we're children of God, we are kings. What does that mean? We're anointed kings. That means we have the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit, we are able to go into the community, and through prayer and faith, influence the outcomes of what's happening.

We're able to go into workplaces, and shift spiritual atmospheres. We're able to pray for the sick, we're able to see breakthroughs and miracles take place; and we have a mandate, a command, to go and to reach out to people, to win them to Jesus Christ. That is the plan. That is the mandate. It was not a suggestion, it is the plan, and so we have to be prepared for the plan. But part of being prepared is: I have embraced, this is the plan. Now what happens today is, if we personally will not take responsibility for our own lives, and for fulfilling the commission God gives us, we lose our ability to be able to do it. When you lose your ability to be able to do it, you become oppressed, and you become so like the culture, you can't change it, because there's no anointing, and no empowerment of God around your life anymore. Anointings are always to get the job done, so if we don't own the responsibility, and set out to do the job, we don't get the empowerment we need to do it. So we blame someone else: well you don't understand my workplace is so hard. Listen, every workplace is the same. You've just got to make a decision.

So here it is then, so let's get out of the: it's not my fault, it's someone else's fault; and let's get into the thinking: I've got choices. You always have a choice. Now you say: well it's really hard. Yeah. My background was really bad - yeah, but what are your choices? What could you do about it? What could you do to change? God has called you to have dominion. You were dealt a bad hand. You're in a difficult place. You've got difficulties going on. What are your options? One option: don't take it, the blame game, it's not my fault. If you play that game, you are rendered impotent and powerless. It may not be your fault, but if it's a problem in your way, as soon as you open your arms and say: I embrace this, I will find some creative ways through it, you are now rising up to be what God called you to be, [applause] and that's what we have to do. That's what God is calling us to do, to put our arms around situations, even if we didn't create them, and say: yep, it's a mess. Yep, it's bad, but I believe I'm here for such a time to change it. I can do something about that.

One of my daughters, Sarah who's here, she never found any boyfriend in the church. The man she's married, she found outside the church, because she never got into the blame game: I'm single, because there's no men in the church; she just went out and got some. Everyone she went out and built a friendship with, she brought to church and got saved, because that's what she's believing for: get them saved; otherwise you're playing the blame game. You've only got to work out in a church, if there's 20 single young women, and there's three young men, some single women are going to stay single, unless there's more men. Someone has to do something - well not my fault! But you can do something. Go talk to Sarah, how'd you do it? Every one, every guy she befriended, ended up in church, and made a decision for Christ, and then she made a decision whether she wanted to marry them - bring them home to dad, what do you reckon about this one? Na. Brought another one home, what do you reckon about this one? Na. Brought Andrew home, what do you think about this one? Oh yeah! [Laughter] That one's a good one, ah he's the one! And he is, he was, he's a great young man.

Now come on now, there's no blame game here. Andrew had to deal with the blame game didn't you? [Laughs] Go on, ask him. He'll share your testimony, had to deal with the blame game, and now he's dealt with it, his whole family's changed too. Come on now, you've got to get out of the blame game. Deuteronomy 30:19, it says: I set before you life and death, choose life. Choose life, that you and the next generation may live, so the choices you make are going to affect the next generation. Here it is in a nutshell: you always have a choice, it just may be not the one you wanted. Often the choice that's available to us that we wanted, our preferred choice, isn't going to work or isn't available - have to make another decision. You've got to learn to make different decisions, so what choices are available? We've always got a choice. Whatever I choose, there will be a consequence; so if you blame, that's a choice, you will then be a victim. We have to make choices, and expect that God will act as we will make the decisions, and be responsible.

So here it is: Life isn't fair. How many have said this: it's not fair? How many still think it's not fair? Well wake up, the whole world's not fair. It's not fair. Good people get bad stuff, bad people get good stuff, that's the world. It's not fair. It's not just. Heaven's a great place. It's fair in heaven, and it's just in heaven. Here on the earth, it's not fair, face it. At some time you're going to get a bad deal, and it's not fair. However you have to stop living in a fuzzy unreality. You have to face: this is life, bad stuff happens; but God empowered me to reach into the bad stuff, and make great choices, that influenced it and made things better. That's how Jesus came, He said: listen, I didn't come here to be served. I didn't come with any expectation I'm coming into a great place. I knew I'm coming into a messed-up world, and I came here with a heart to reach into it, make great decisions, bring the power of God into it, change it. That's what He did, and that's what we're called to be like Him, not complain how bad it is, but say: boy, aren't they all glad I'm here, God is with me, I can make a difference. God, show me some creative ways of making a difference.

One of the most amazing things is this. Listen, who sinned? Was it God or man sinned? Let's get this clear. It was the man that sinned, is that right? Who took the responsibility to fix it up? God did! Jesus came into the world, to take on Himself responsibility, for the sin of every person. What an amazing thing! He came into the world, took responsibility for everyone's failure, took it to Himself, took it in His heart, and He went to the cross, and in His heart he'd embraced the failures of - they weren't His failures by the way. He embraced their failures, and said: I can do something to change it. He didn't come in, and go back to the Father, and say: Father, this plan of Me going into the earth was a bad plan. It was tough going. Right from the beginning they were trying to kill Me, and then they were trying to kill Me all the way through My ministry. Finally they surrounded Me, took Me away, and put Me up on a cross. We need to burn this place up! [Laughter] But God doesn't think like a victim. He thinks: we, together, can make a change - and it still changes for every person who received Jesus Christ, they're able to have a changed life. Jesus took responsibility for your sins. He only requires that you acknowledge them, and come to Him, and He'll forgive them. What a wonderful thing!

Why don't we close our eyes and bow our heads. I wonder is there any person here today, and perhaps you have never experienced God's love and forgiveness. You are separated from God. You have no relationship with God. You think you're a good person, and you try to live a good life, but being a good person isn't enough. We need God to forgive our sins.

You may be here and you've come to church, or go to church regularly, but that's not enough either. We need to make a personal decision to receive Jesus Christ. He reached out to you, that you could become a Christian. He reached out to you, so you could have your sins forgiven. It just requires of you a decision. Don't blame your background, don't blame your past, don't blame someone else. Why don't you own up, and say: there's a lot of things have been wrong in my life, and I'm willing to own it, and acknowledge it. I'm willing to ask Jesus Christ to take the responsibility for that failure, and to make me clean.

I wonder how many people, just while we're sitting here, as I was speaking today, you just knew in your heart: man, I've been living this blame game. I've been blaming my husband, my wife, my kids, my dad, my mum, my background, my education or lack of it, the workplace, the boss, the country, the white people, the black people. I've been blaming. It doesn't matter what you've been blaming, just remember: when you do it, it's a choice, and you end up powerless. If you felt God speak to you today to repent of the blame game, why don't you just raise your hand and say: that's me, God's speaking to me today.

Father, I just pray that you'd give grace to every person who's responded today, to begin to make choices that are different, to break out of blame, and into taking positive action. Father, I pray that a creative anointing would be upon us all, to see ways through situations we haven't seen before, instead of waiting for someone else to do it. Father, I pray initiative would begin to come upon people in the church, in seeing problems, to begin to ask You what they could do, and how they could work, and begin to think with You: how they could work to change this. Father, I just pray that in these days ahead, the church is going to arise out of this victim mentality, out of blame shifting, and into a place of being very, very proactive in solving problems in the community. Father, I pray for release of your anointing upon us right now. I feel the presence of God here, favour of God here.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· “It is not my fault!”, “Can’t blame me for that!”

· People think, act and behave as the culture around them, does as everyone else does.

· When you blame someone else you stay powerless to change your situation.

· God wants us to be empowered as believers.

· To walk in faith enquire us to take responsibility.

· Culture = the behaviors and beliefs that are characteristic of as group of people e.g. Youth Culture; Drug Culture; also Blame Culture

· Culture of Blame = people rather blame anyone or anything for their misery than to take responsibility to own the problem and make it better.

· Blame = makes people ‘feel better’

= does nothing to solve the problem

= people think, feel and act as if there is nothing they can do.

· Core = instead of taking ownership of their problem in doing something about it, blame others or something, assigned responsibility of condition outside self.

· Example: USA – 2 overweight girls blamed McDonalds for their eating habits – sued McDonalds.

· Examples: People Blame : Father / Mother / Teachers / Church / Pastors / Government/

God

Background/Experiences/Lack of Education/Lack of Opportunities

· Key issues: Will you stop blaming and start taking responsibility?

· Is God my source or not? Do we blame or excuse ourselves for what is going on inside us?

· Learn to play the cards you were dealt, stop wishing for a new hand of cards.

· To be powerless, remain victim = blame.

· You are who you are because of the choices you make.

· It’s not what happened to you, it’s how you respond to them/it.

You are Designed for Dominion:

Genesis 1:26-28 - “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion …”

· God’s great gift to man – Free Will – ability to choose!

· You are able to desire and make choices, take responsibility for your desires and dreams.

· “Subdue’ = there are challenges, opposition, difficulties.

· Dominion = you are given freedom how you will respond, creativity

· You cannot always choose what happens to you.

· You can always choose how you will respond – choice to make!

· Man given:

1) Freedom to make creative choices

2) Responsibilities for the consequences experienced for each choice.

· Genesis 2:19 - “ …God brought the animals to Adam to see what he could name them”

· God expected Adam to take responsibility - make creative choices.

· Option 1 – Make a creative choice.

Option 2 – Blame God for not supplying a list of names, expecting too much.

· We can pray to God for grace but we have a part to play in it too. Think through what you can do before you blame. Be creative in finding solutions. He will help us.

· Faith = Action

· People make bad choices not to face the consequences and expect others to come through for them = blame game.

· God expects you to use the freedom you have.

i) Take responsibility for the situation

ii) Find creative options

iii) Take action

· God allows us to experience the consequences of our choices.

3) How the Blame Game Started:

Genesis 3:1-13 - ‘diverting attention by blaming’

· Adam blamed God and blamed Eve.

· Why blame others? Why blame circumstances? = divert attention

· They blame others instead of taking responsibility for their actions/decisions and didn’t ask for forgiveness so that God could give them another chance.

· It is easier to divert attention by blaming than assuming responsibility. Get the attention away from me onto someone else.

· Blame diverts attention: 1) owning responsibility 2) solving the problem

· People rather blame than take responsibility and solve the problem.

· When Adam blamed Eve, God stopped talking; the next time He talked He told them their consequences.

· Think how God thinks, don’t play the blame game. With choices come consequences.

· Proverbs 19:3 - ‘a mans folly ruins his life yet his heart rages against God’

· God always hold us responsible and accountable for our actions.

· If blame comes, take responsibility, don’t blame someone or something else, think of a creative way to fix it to succeed in life.

4) “Well, it’s not my fault!”

1 Samuel 15:1-3,9 - Saul fails to fulfill God given assignment.

· We are priests and kings as believers, we are all called to enter the community to move supernaturally – there is no other option = this is an assignment to us now. We cannot change God’s plan, if the church change it we are in deep trouble. If we change the plan and pick the bits we like and leave other things out. Go out and change the culture, ARISE = plan of God.

· Saul was positioned and anointed by God as a King.

· Saul was expected to fulfill God given assignments.

· Saul obeyed partially – did what he agreed with.

· Samuel confronts Saul: Defensive responses

i) Denial - when face with painful reality Saul denied it - verses 13,20

- Denial protects people from pain facing issues/ignores.

- Saul – ‘bless the Lord, I have done what God wanted”. Samuel heard lams bleating and asked Saul about them. Saul did have the plan God instructed to him. Does God hear bleating in the church?

ii) Minimizing – look for ways in doing damage control by making the issue smaller than it is, to avoid pain for us.

iii) Excuses/Blame - admit there is a problem but refuse any responsibility, “Yes, but …” = excuses, people wanted to take the best; it is them they didn’t want to get rid of the good stuff.

iv) Rationalise – admit there is a problem but explain it away – ‘Spin Doctor’ – Make it look good.

· He tried to fob off what God wanted him to do. He didn’t own his responsibility.

· Defensive people = not taking responsibility, act like victims and play the blame game.

· Even when made to face responsibility Saul wanted to keep us appearances to look good before people.

· Defensiveness is a major form of avoiding personal responsibility - verse 25,30.

· Saul’s consequence = he lost his right to rule.

· We are anointed as priests and kings. We are able to go and reach out to people and win them to Jesus Christ through prayer and faith action. Have you embraced this? This is God’s plan.

· If we personally don’t take responsibility of our own life, we loose our ability to do it, we become oppressed = no anointing or empowerment in our own life to fulfill Gods instructions. We make the choice and God will be with us.

5) You Always have a Choice:

Deuteronomy 30:19 - “I set before you life and death, blessing and cursing therefore choose life that both you and your seed may live”

· You always have a choice!

- It may not be the preferred one but there is always an option.

· All choices have consequences!

- Blaming is a choice! The consequence for this = helpless, resentful

- The choice you make affects the next generation. Put you arms around them even if God didn’t create them, use your creativeness to change.

· Life is Not Fair or Just – Accept that Reality!

- People wish for a world that is just and fair where people do, what people should do and good thing happen to good people.

- Stop sitting protesting, ‘Not fair” and blaming others.

- Deal with life as it is – not what it should be.

- ‘God enables me to change the bad in my life/this messed up world to make great decisions. God is with me, I can make a difference.’

- W sinned? = man. Who took the responsibility? = Jesus (for everyone’s failures). Jesus didn’t go to the Father telling Him of His bad plan. We together can make a change.

- Acknowledge sins and Jesus will forgive.

· Stop blaming – Take Responsibility – Look for Options:

- face reality as it is – own responsibility to initiate change.

E.g. Jesus: Took responsibility for the sins of the World.

Able to offer hope and a different future.

You Always Have a Choice (2 of 3)

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God empowered man with a free will, and the ability to overcome challenges in life. Man learned to be helpless, he developed limiting beliefs about himself. Israel learned to be slaves (helpless) in Egypt. The challenges they faced in the wilderness were designed to shift their slave mentality to explore what God had for them. We have the ability to handle every challenge in life if we choose to believe & trust God. We disqualify ourselves from our destiny, purpose & blessing if we blame & make excuses. Learn how you can break free from learned helplessness. Choose to change.

We looked at the Blame Game, and I want to carry on. I want to help you just to start to think about: how you think. I want to speak a message called: You Always Have a Choice. You Always Have a Choice. We'll just pick up where we were going a couple of weeks ago, Genesis 1:26-28. It says: God created Adam and Eve in His image and likeness. When He made man, He made us like Him, spirit beings. He designed us to have dominion in the earth, so it says: He blessed them; and said: be fruitful, multiply, increase, fill the earth; subdue and have dominion. So when God spoke, and it says: He blessed them, it means: He spoke words of empowerment and life into them.

In other words, He expected something to happen. He spoke words that enabled them to go out; that's why, in the heart of every man, is a need and a desire to conquer challenges. Men love challenges. Why do they love challenges? Because God called us to subdue and have dominion! And it's still inside men now. That's why men who don't rise to challenges always live a defeated life. It's something in us designed to rise and conquer, rise and face challenges. Subdue means you've got to overcome something that resists you. So from the very beginning, God's intention is that you and I would face challenges, that required us to step up, face them, overcome them, and bring them into the way God wants them. Isn't that an awesome thought, right from the very beginning. Sometimes Christians get a fuzzy-wuzzy idea that Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world, everything was just perfect, though actually it wasn't. If it was a perfect world, why did God say they had to subdue something? Why is it that He said: you have to bring dominion into the earth, if it was all perfect?

So from the beginning God designed us to live in a world, where we are required to step up and face challenges, and overcome them. You are wired by God that way. You're designed for this. Isn't that really good? Now of course as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, then immediately when God spoke to them, and held them to be responsible for what they had done, they started the blame game. The blame game goes something like this: it's not my fault. Wasn't me, it's the woman You gave me. Don't blame me! The woman - well don't blame me, it's that serpent. Why do You make serpents? They cause so much trouble. I don't - no one likes snakes! So the blame game means we shift responsibility for outcomes away from ourselves, to somewhere else, we won't take responsibility, and the blame game has been practiced every since. We live in a culture which seems to celebrate blame, it's not my fault. It's not my fault. Now you've got to realise this, that freedom and responsibility are connected. Everyone cries freedom, but you've got to realise, it's a twin with responsibility.

You think about this. A child, because it does not take up the responsibility of feeding itself, someone's got to feed it. Because it hasn't got responsibility at bedtime, someone puts it to bed. Because it hasn't got responsibility for cleaning up its nappies, someone cleans up its nappies, so children, relatively, have little freedom. But as they grow, and are able to take on responsibility, then they can actually have more freedom; and it's true as you're an adult, you are required to be responsible. If you are irresponsible, society or government will take away your freedom. In the end they lock you up, and you don't even have freedom to turn your light on and off, or to open the door or shut the door. You're in jail because you were irresponsible; so they're linked, responsibility and freedom. If you want freedom, you must become responsible, so when people get into the blame game, they then lose freedom. The moment you blame someone else, too bad, you're powerless, you can't do anything. We should feel sorry for you, but we're not, because God never called you to be like that, He called us to change.

So I want to just share a little thing that happens, it happened in my life. It happens in the lives of many people, and I want you to be able to tune in and pick it up, if it's happening in you. In Proverbs 23:7, it says: as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. So if you believe it, it's true. That's how it'll work out for you. If you believe it, then that's how it's going to work out for you - as a man thinks in his heart that's how he is, that's how his life goes. People learn to be helpless or powerless. People learn to be helpless or powerless. It's a phenomena they call 'learned helplessness'. Now let me just explain it, and then I'm going to just give you a few examples of it, and I want you to hear some of these ones which abound everywhere there are Christians. If you don't recognise it, you'll never change it; and I want to show you how God works to change our lives, so we move from being powerless, and being in bondage, and how we come to a place of being faced with Him, commissioning us to go into the world and change it. God wants to shift us from a life in bondage to sin and all kinds of things, into a life which is fully empowered and has victory - but there's a transition point between living in bondage, and beginning to explore all that God has got for you. I want to show you exactly how God takes us through a process to get us there.

If you don't understand the process, you're going to be blaming God, blaming the church, blaming pastors, blaming leaders, blaming your work. You're going to live in the blame game. You'll never be the person God wants you to be, and it won't be His fault; it'll be because you either didn't know what was going on, or you just made bad choices. You've always got a choice, doesn't matter what life dishes up. You've always got a choice. No matter how bad a hand you've got, you've got to choose how you'll play it, instead of looking back and blaming the past. So what they did is, they did an experiment with animals, and what they did was, they set the experiment up so no matter what the animal did, it could never have a good outcome. It didn't matter what it did, it could never have a good outcome, and the animals learned after a little while, you can never win. No matter what you do, you can never win, no matter what you do, it never turns out good. So once they got them so they were thinking that way, then they provided many opportunities for them to be able to escape, or get out, or get out of the situation, and even though it was obvious, they still never took it up, because they had learned: you can never win. No matter what you do, it'll never work. You know what I'm talking about?

Now people have similar things happen to them as well, and so past experiences shape how we believe; so before you come to Christ, you have many beliefs inside you, and they're not necessarily the truth, they're just what you believe. If you believe them, they're going to work out for you, just like you believe. If you believe: life is bad, man, it's really bad - did you notice? If you believe: life is good, man, did you notice how good it is? You get what you believe. Belief or faith, whatever you've got believing in your heart has a magnetic power, it pulls in around you exactly what you believe. If you're pessimistic, isn't it amazing how bad things are, how many negative things are going round. People who are positive, notice how many good things seem to come into their life - it's amazing. You seem to get what you believe for, so now what happens is, past experiences form belief systems, which can limit us. They can limit us, and those things don't necessarily change because you become a Christian. You have to make them change. They limit us.

They limit the way we look at life, and they limit what we can do; so for example, one of the things that I learnt when I was quite young was this. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I work, it's never good enough. There's a lot of pain behind that belief, and there's a lot of repeated experiences, that no matter how hard I work, hours and hours and hours worked hard, in fact every school I ever went to I got a diligence prize. I worked hard, yet no matter how hard I worked, there were never words of approval or commendation. There was always pointing out where I'd fallen short and could do better: you could do better. You could have done this, you could have done that. Now that shaped how I saw life. It doesn't matter what I do, how hard I work, how much I try, it's never good enough. Now you can imagine, even becoming a Christian, that doesn't necessarily change. Now it just transfers to God: no matter how much I do, how hard I try, I'm still never good enough - except now I've got all these other things you've got to learn to do, that you didn't have to do when you weren't a Christian. Know what I'm saying? You're getting quiet now, so I know this is probably echoing something in your own heart.

No matter what I did, I could never please dad, it was as simple as that. Didn't matter how hard I tried, didn't matter what I did, someone was still always angry, and with that there's all the pain that goes with it. No matter what I did, I could still never get approval. No matter what I did, it was always criticised, so what did I learn from those experiences? Apart from all the grief and loneliness that came with it, I learned lots of things. I learned no matter how hard I try, people are still going to get angry, they get mad at me, I never get approved of, and I'll never be good enough, and whatever. I learned all those things growing up. When I became a Christian, they didn't change. When I became a pastor, they didn't change - except now there's more people finding fault. [Laughter] Not only in my own church! [Laughs] There's more - so the world was full of what I believed it to be full of: disapproval. So of course if you're a good Christian, then you take on a persecution complex, being persecuted for walking with God. That's a load of rubbish. It's just you got what you're believing, and it happens over and over and over again. I know we're all quiet now, because it's getting a little close to you - so what you learn to do is, you learn one of two things. You learn either: to strive and compete and drive; or you learn: what's the use? When you learn what's the use, there's a lot of grief in the heart, there's pain, there's loneliness, and there's despair. I would find myself saying: oh it's hopeless; come into a situation: it's hopeless, can't change it.

I would be resigned to being powerless to change some things in life. Know what I'm talking about here? [Laughs] No one's admitting anything now, okay. So what happens is, you become a Christian, and then in the short term, there's an immediate joy of engaging God, you feel loved - I'm so blessed. Then I found I was crying a lot - started off really happy, and filled with the Holy Ghost, and praying; then there was a lot of crying. I realised I had a lot of grief, all those years of not being loved, to come in where God just loves me, oh! I had to make changes in how I believed. Now what I found of course is people carry - you have a whole lot of new experiences, and your old beliefs surface. Of course what happens is, is that we have developed this kind of way of thinking now, that actually kind of puts us still as a victim, and I want to shift you out of that. I'll show you how God shifts you out of it, and what your part in it is, so you can make the shift.

So you hear things: well I prayed and nothing happened. Heard that one? I prayed and nothing happened, limiting thinking, so you feel helpless. I prayed - well the pastor told me to pray, and I prayed, and nothing happened. The old feelings of helplessness come up again, so what happens is, you have a whole lot of new experiences, and the new experiences just surface your old junk, so God can help you deal with it. So you've got to have some new experiences, so you get people, and you hear statements like this. I wonder if you've heard any statements like this, and I want you to listen within the statement, what the person is saying, because you've probably heard someone say something like this: no one told me. Oh I tried to talk to my husband, but he wouldn't listen. I tried counselling, that didn't work. I'm just having a bad day. What's the person saying? They're saying: I refuse to be responsible for my negative attitudes, and my bad emotions. I'm blaming it on: the bad day, and you can't hold me responsible for a bad day. When I got up, I thought it'd be a good day, turned out it was a bad day, and so that's why I'm like I am. I'm having a bad day!

Have you heard that? It's called being irresponsible. That's what it really is. I hear Christians do that. It's just actually not owning responsibility for your emotions and your behaviours. How can you have a victory, how can you walk in dominion, if you won't take ownership? You always have a choice what you do, in a bad day. I mean we all talk about our bad days. How about this one: I talked to him, he wouldn't listen. So what's the thing: [groan], what can I do? I talked to my husband, he wouldn't listen, what can I do? You know - I tried counselling, it didn't work, what can I do? Can you feel the helplessness that comes up, and then: it's not my fault, someone else has got to fix it. Here's another good one: I tried to get a date, but there's no good ones out there. [Laughter] You've heard that one? I'd like to get married, but there's no good men in the church. [Laughter] Now can you hear what the person's saying? Where is the responsibility for their not being married? Where does it lie? Well it's the church, obviously hasn't got good men in it. [Laughter] I can't do anything about that, it's Pastor Mike's problem, he should solve that one. [Laughter] Or, we're in a country area, so there's no good men around here. So now where's the responsibility? Well it's out there, it's a country area. Well shift to the city - shift to the city. Wasn't it amazing, I didn't get anyone there either.

Because what happens is, people put responsibility for their problems, their dilemmas, their situations, outside themselves. They blame the circumstances - it was a bad day, or they blame people - oh it was my father, my mother, the Pakeha, it was my background, it was someone abused me, someone blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and it was someone else. Therefore it's not my fault, and I can be helpless. Please feel sorry for me, and I think I'll come up at the end, and you can pray for me. [Laughter] Come on. Sometimes the church plays into the game - oh well, we'll just pray for you. Now where's the responsibility lie there? I've got to pray prayers, to get your problem solved? [Laughs] I don't think so. [Laughter] You've got the problem. It'll always be your problem. You've got to take responsibility, and grow up, and face it. Isn't that what happens? You've all got so quiet today.

How about this one here, you've probably heard this one. I wrote it down because I thought this one: I prayed, and I'm waiting for God to provide. Well bully for you! [Laughter] But what are you going to do in the meantime? Aye? You going to go out and get a job? No, I've prayed, I'm waiting for God to provide. Or I'm trusting the script - the Lord says: He'll provide, so I'm waiting for the Lord to provide. So yeah, what are you doing? Well I'm sitting by the phone every day waiting for the phone to ring, someone will come, someone will ring me. No, no, no, you're just being stupid and irresponsible. Actually totally irresponsible, and what you're doing is: covering irresponsibility, with some super-spirituality. It's not actually getting ownership. Have a think about the person who says: I can't get any dates, can't get a man, because there's no good men in the church; what they're saying is: I've got no power over that. I have no choice, it's outside my power, I'm helpless. Got the idea? But what choices would such a person have? Well they could ask: do I have some glitches in my personality, that turn people off, I need some honest feedback? Am I meeting people? Am I putting myself into places where I'll meet people? Have I limited my selection of people, and I'm waiting for just Jesus to return? Well some people are, they're just waiting for Jesus. They've got no idea men actually aren't like Jesus, they're very like you, very full of sin and issues and problems, and they need to be journeyed into growth, just like everyone else. You don't find the perfect man - like they said in that TV ad: good on ya mate, she's a hard road to find the perfect woman. [Laughter]

Well there's no perfect men, and there's no perfect women, and if you sit around waiting, you'll be single all your life. [Laughter] You can make better choices than that, you understand? But it's like people cloak their helplessness with certain words that sound right, but their mindsets and limiting beliefs that stop them actually engaging God, and changing their life. It goes on all the time, I hear it all the time. If we're going to arise, and be all God intended, one of the things we have to do, is make the decision to become an empowered person, to take responsibility for my life, and work with who I am, and what I have, and believe God to do unusual things through my life. That sound okay? So if you blame people and circumstances, you feel helpless. Of course you're helpless, because you've put the blame out there, blame out there, they're responsible. Now it may well be that other people are responsible for stuff, but you're the one who's still got the problem. If you won't own: I've got an issue - I want to get married! What are you doing to prepare yourself and position yourself? Simple as that. Well I prayed about it, I'm waiting for God to provide. Well isn't that wonderful? We'll see you single for a long time. Come on, think about it. You've got to get out of this sort of thinking.

I've had a bad day - well get out of that bad thinking. What you have - let me just rephrase it. The day has turned up some troubles you didn't expect, and you haven't assumed responsibility to manage your emotions, and do the best with the way the day turned up for you. So what you've done, being irresponsible, is you just have: I've got a bad day, and you let your stuff hang out. You actually sow a bad future. You don't build good relationships by letting everything hang out, you have to actually take ownership, and I found for years, I lived with resentment and anger and self pity and depression, because I felt helpless. The only way to get out of it, was to break the limiting belief: I'm not helpless. I may have been back then, but I'm not now, I'm joined to Jesus. The Bible says in Philippians 4:13, it's very, very clear. It says: I can, I can, I can, yes I can do all things through Christ who indunamo, who empowers me to live a great life! Yes, I can! That's a great scripture. Through Christ, whatever God calls me to do, I'm up for it, because He will empower me to do it - but I've got to make a decision to give it a go, got to own the challenge. Is that right?

So how does God change us? How does God make the change take place? Well let's go and look in 1 Corinthians 10, and I want to show you the process, how God changes us. See God had two million people to change, and a lot of them didn't make it. Of course it's God's fault, He should never have taken them such a hard way. [Laughter] 1 Corinthians, Chapter 10:6, it's talking about Israel. Israel is a picture of the church. Israel was in bondage in Egypt; we were in bondage in the world, in sin. God miraculously delivered them. Jesus supernaturally saves us, so there's the parallel. Now Israel continued to limit God. God had this in mind: not just to get them saved, God had a great destiny for them. But how does He get them into the great destiny? He's got to grow them, and change them. How does He get you into a great destiny? Well you can sing 'I've Got a Destiny' as much as you like, but it doesn't mean you're going to get anywhere near it. I'm sure that they sang 'We've Got a Destiny' all the way from Egypt, all through the Promised Land - and they all died there. I want to know what God was trying to do, and why they failed to make it, and who got there and why. Good questions to ask aren't they?

Now in 1 Corinthians 10, here's the lessons that God wanted them to learnm because it says in Verse 6, everything that happened to Israel is an example. It's an example, so what happened to these people is a lesson to learn, so here's what I can guarantee. You're either going to figure out what happened to them, and learn the lesson; or you repeat the lesson. Over the years of being a Christian, I have seen many repeat the lesson, and fall in the wilderness, fail to walk on with God through the challenges of life, and produce fruit that brings glory to God over their life. You probably know many like that - started well, now where are they? Somehow they fell, and there must have been a reason they fell, so what is it God wanted them to learn? It's found in 1 Corinthians 10:13. Now no temptation has overtaken you, such which is common to man; but God is faithful - underline that one. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will, with the temptation, make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. Now that word 'temptation' is not necessarily just a temptation to sin. It's that and a lot more. It means literally: testings, trials, the challenges of life.

So you notice there are several things God wants you to learn, you just take a note of these. Number one, problems are common to everyone. It says: there's nothing that's happening to you, that someone else hasn't gone through - oh but pastor, you don't understand, it's such a special problem, because I'm a special person, and my problems are just so special, you wouldn't understand. Now listen, the Bible says clearly, they're common to everyone. There's nothing happening to you that didn't happen to someone else, and someone here's going through the same thing right now - different package, same problem see? So problems are common. Everyone has problems. Anyone that doesn't, well what dreamland are you in? [Laughter] Someone else is probably fixing up all your stuff.

Okay, second thing is: God is faithful. Here's the second thing: God is faithful, so problems are going to come, so just because you get saved doesn't mean you don't have problems. Problems come, but here's the thing that's different; God is faithful. You can depend on Him. He'll help you. God will help you. He's not only faithful, He's powerful. If He got them out of Egypt with great miracles, surely He can get you where He wants you to get! God who started this work in you, sure He can finish the work. Oh you don't understand how hard this problem is. What nonsense! God is a big God, and if He can get someone saved, He can also get them right through to where He wants them to go. So the first thing is: problems - everyone has them, but God - you can trust Him, rely on Him. He will get you through.

Here's the next thing. The next thing it says: He'll not allow you to be tempted above what you're able, so that means you have the ability to handle everything that comes your way. God will make sure it's never too much. You can handle it. You can cope - oh, I'm not coping. Listen, you're thinking wrong. You're believing wrong. You're not dealing with life. You can handle whatever God sends your way. Whatever comes your way, you're more than able, and here's another way. He says: here with the temptation, we'll make a way of escape, that you can bear it. So notice He'll always make a way through it. What a wonderful thing. I can rest today certain of these things; no matter what comes up today, well someone else has faced the same challenge, God's faithful, God's powerful, God's with me. There's always a way through this thing, there's an answer to it. I've just got to look for it. It may not be the answer I want, but I've got to look for it, see? He'll find a way - notice it says: He'll find a way, that you may be able to bear it; so God's way is never to take you into the next town. It's not to get you on a plane and fly you somewhere. God's way is you walk through the problem, face it honestly, walk your way, and it's a learning experience. You grow. So how does God shift you out of this whole place of being helpless and powerless and resentful and blah blah blah blah blah, all this stuff you've gone through? Very simple; He gives you some wonderfully new experiences, that put you under a bit of heat and pressure, and it's designed not to crush you, because God will never let it be more than you need.

Now notice this. The people of God started in Egypt. They were in a place of slavery. They were in bondage. Did they have any choices? No, they had to do what they were told, or they were whipped for it. So they were in a place of slavery, a place of no choices, a place of loneliness and isolation, grief, resentment, bitterness, all kinds of stuff. God saved them and got them out. Now what God had in mind, was a people that would become a great nation, that would impact the world; but to get them like that, He had to get them to change how they were thinking. They had lived all their lives knowing nothing except: I'm in bondage, I'm helpless, I can't get out of it. Now He got them out of it, but they still thought the same way; so what God did in the season called 'the wilderness' is, He allowed them to experience a few challenges. Every challenge was designed to surface in them, the pain of their bondage, the wrong believing they had; and to give them a chance to choose to believe and trust God.

Every time you face a challenge, a problem, a pressure and you feel powerless, helpless, resentful, angry, blah blah, all the old stuff, you have an opportunity to think, and respond, differently as a believer: God is faithful. God is powerful. God is with me. There is a way through it, I've just got to find what it is. You getting the idea? And so Canaan was a land of huge opportunity. Canaan was a land where God expected initiative. When they were in the wilderness, God wanted them to learn how to depend on Him, rely on His word, lean on His word, trust in Him, so whatever came, when the time came, they could go in and take initiative. The people God is building in this hour, an apostolic people going into the world, are a people of initiative, a new generation that trusts God, and actually take initiatives to make things happen. But to get like that, you have to change out of the old slavery, bondage, victim, blame, helpless mentality that you had when you were before Christ. So to get you there, He's got to send you a few challenges. How about that?

The challenges are to get you to stop blaming or excusing and living powerless, and to take responsibility, and to look in faith to God. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that wonderful. Learn God is powerful. Before I was powerless. Now I'm discovering: God is powerful! When I've discovered God is with me, and God is powerful, I can go and face a whole hostile world, and I am powerful, because God is with me, and nothing can stop me! Now you see the problem was, that every time Israel faced a new challenge, a new problem, a new difficulty, a new pressure, they always responded the same way. They felt powerless, got resentful and angry, and complained and blamed: oh blame Moses - you got us out here! Blame someone you can see. Blame the church, blame the government, blame your father, blame anyone except: face the challenge. See, now that's what God allowed them to go through. Now every time they faced a challenge, they complained bitterly; and so every experience God designed to prepare them to go in and occupy a land, and have all of these things, by the time they got there, they had no faith built in their life. So when they saw the problems, they said: we can't do it. He said: you're right, you won't.

I wonder what dreams and destinations God has prepared for us as a body of people, and has prepared for you individually, and on the journey of preparation, as God is giving experiences for you and I to grow in faith, we complain and blame and act like a victim, act in bondage. We are slowly and steadily disqualifying ourselves, because we won't grow forward in faith. That's a challenge isn't it aye? Think about that one. How much better if we be like Joshua and Caleb! Now you see Joshua and Caleb, when the time came for them to enter the Promised Land, to take initiative, to go and conquer, to advance, to see victories, to see breakthroughs, to see things happen, they said: we can do it, we're well able! But the others said: we can't do it. They're infected with unbelief and negativity and pessimism. That was the problem. They are still acting like a slave. If you think like a slave, and you speak like a slave, and act like a slave, you will be in slavery all your life, even if you're a free man; and what Jesus says is: He set us free, but now we have to change the way we think and respond, so we don't think and respond like a person in bondage. We begin to think and respond like a person who's free, and who's joined to almighty powerful God, who promised us: there's nothing you're going to face today that's too much for you.

Well what about the financial thing? Listen, people have been through that. Others are going through that. Whatever happens it's not the end of the world for you - may be the end of some parts of your world, it's not the end of the world altogether. Come on now aye? Now you can be free, see? In Romans 15:13 it says this: Now the God of all hope, fill you with joy and peace through believing, that you may abound in hope. In other words, God of hope, God of hope fills us with joy. Joy is one of the characteristics of freedom in the Lord - and how does it happen? Because I believe God is powerful! God is with me! Nothing's too much for me, I can do it! And I've got to change how I think. Now the problem is, people get stuck in a rut, and they think that only - well I spoke to my husband, he wouldn't listen. So what you're implying is: it's all his fault, and you're now a poor victim, we should feel sorry for you, poor you. You haven't got anything else you can do, except roll over. Well that's nonsense. You've got lots of other choices, except the choice you wanted, you didn't get. He didn't listen the first time round, but you're not limited to that. There's lots of things you can do. You can learn new ways of dealing with people. You can learn different strategies, you can try different things. There's a whole range of different things you could do. You just haven't seen them yet, that's all, just got to think about them, and ask the Lord to help you.

So how am I going to get out of this learned helplessness? Let me give you it in two steps. The first part is, you've got to deal with the roots. You've got to deal with the roots, and maybe there's some people today, and you're living with despair, hopelessness, there's a pressure lives around your life. The one thing we can do today is we can pray and break the power of the thing over your life, but that does not keep you free of it. To keep free of it, you've got to change how you live life, how you do life. So the first thing is, you've got to ask the Holy Spirit to uncover any roots in your life where you've become resentful or angry or grief stricken because you were powerless. You were held down, and you had no choice. All of us have had experiences like that, whether its sin that we're in bondage to, some kind of family situation, some circumstances in life and you were powerless, and you were hurt and wounded, and you were broken, became angry, and you learnt that you couldn't do anything.

Now you've got to admit that and bring that out to the Lord, because usually when people find they get like that, they become bitter, and they have a bitter expectation which defiles everything. They kind of expect: hey, this is how life's going to work for me. Oh well, you know, this is how it'll be. I just wonder what today will turn up. You can feel the bitterness, and the expectation, drawing all kinds of negatives in; and if that's in your life, you've got to repent of it. You've got to break your agreement with it, got to decide to leave the pain of Egypt behind, not carry the pain and grief of Egypt with you, so you can't enter into the things that God has for you, because to enter those we've got to change. So if God has been taking you through some painful experiences, and you've had all these old ways and thinking coming up - it's time to learn something and change. It's time to bring the grief and the pain out to the Lord, and to grieve over it, to repent of bitterness, to repent of making judgements against people, to repent even of just that whole thing of bitterly expecting: nothing's going to work for me.

I've had to repent of this stuff, and had to stay out of agreement with it, because it comes around you so easily. So number one, you've got to deal with the roots; number two, you've got to just embrace challenges differently. We have to embrace the challenges of life differently, because there's going to be someone - God's got someone just who knows how to get up your nose. [Laughter] He has got someone designed to just really push your buttons, and whatever's inside you that's unhealed, broken, wounded, in secrecy, hidden; God's got someone can come along who can just push that button and fire it up. You'll pray all your life for God to remove them, change them, deal to them, call fire from heaven upon them. Nothing of it ever works, have you noticed? You have to change, and you can choose to change, so this is what happens. Normally when we have a problem we feel pain and feel helpless: I don't know what to do. We go back into old ways of thinking: I'm powerless, I can't do anything. Well it's not my fault anyway. Then we begin to blame and excuse ourselves, won't take responsibility, and then we reap what we have sown.

So that's the old way. The old way, something comes up, a problem comes in front of me, I feel negative. I remember those feelings, I go back into the old ways of thinking, powerless, helpless, can't do anything. I agree with all of those thoughts again, now become resentful and whatever, start to blame and excuse myself: I'm powerless. I'm actually going to end up in a mess. There's no way to change your life when you act like that. I've got to handle it different, because the problem comes. Now no use praying God, don't bring any problems into my life. God told me off for praying that way one time. [Laughter] I just want a blessed life! He said: I'm committed to your character, not your comfort. I'll bring a few things into your life. [Laughter] NOT THAT! God knows how to put just enough pain to melt you, that's all, get you to fall apart. He's a refiner of gold, He can make the gold fall apart. When it falls apart, you see the junk that's inside. [Laughter] It does surface when you get melted.

Okay, so number one, when the problems come, try to just identify what you're feeling. Name it. Identify the feelings; feeling helpless, feeling down, feeling angry, feeling resentful, feeling bitter, feeling like withdrawing, feeling this, feeling that. Try to get names on the feelings; now what am I thinking? I'm thinking: I'm powerless. You challenge that assumption. You've got to change that thinking. You've got to change, you've got to break your agreement with that thinking, say: I believe 1 Corinthians 10:13, there's no temptation, no problem that's overtaken me, that's not common to man. God is faithful. God is faithful. God is faithful - He will, with it, make a way of escape. Now I wonder what God's way is through this? I need to enquire: what is the way of behaving I've never seen before? How could I deal with this, in a way I've never done before? God, show me what my options are. There's always options, but sometimes we just don't know. We sometimes need to ask some people to help us, then take action and persist, and you will reap a different future. You'll reap a different future. Seems too simple, doesn't it?

See the problem is, we've lived our life, most of the time, conscious we're alone and powerless, and we don't like it, and we're resentful about it. But if we spend time with God meditating in scriptures like this one here, that the God who created the whole world is with me, He's a powerful God, He's with me and He's helping me, and every time something comes, I can come near to him, and I can begin to face how to handle it - instead of: the first time your emotions come up, you just nut off and do what you've always done. You'll get what you always got. See, we must be responsible to change the way we do things. We are not victims! Whatever God calls us to do, we can do it through Jesus Christ, who empowers us to win in life! No more complaining. No more moaning. No more self pity. No more caves of depression. How many know those ones? People won't admit anything. I've been in those caves of depression for days on end, two little eyes at the back of the cave [laughter] looking out. No one will come in. Who would? Pair of fierce, angry eyes at the end of a cave - who's going to go in there? [Laughter]

The pastor didn't visit me! No, he doesn't like those eyes at the end of the cave either. [Laughter] No one does mate. It's time you came out of your - even when Elijah got like that, God said: what the heck are you doing here in the back of the cave Elijah? Come on out. Get out here. Get out here! He came out, you know what he did? He wrapped his mantel around him. God said: be quiet Elijah, I've got a mission for you. Break out of those old ways, and fulfil the mission I've got for you. See, that's what God's saying to you. Whenever these things come, don't roll over, don't just fall on the ground and roll over like a dead dog. Nothing is overtaking you! That's not common, there's someone else rolling over in the back there, but God is faithful. God is faithful.

Come on, let's just close our eyes right now. Father, we thank You right now in Jesus' name, we break our agreements with negativity, complaining, with despair and helplessness. We break our agreements with resentments and unbelief. Lord, we thank You, You are with us. You are with us, powerfully with us, to make us an overcoming people. Lord, give us grace to change, and Lord, keep those challenges rolling in. Keep them rolling in, so we can grow up and be bigger and stronger and more capable than we've ever been before, more persistent than we've ever been before, more fruitful than we've ever been before.

Listen, there may be someone here, and you're sitting here today, and you're not a Christian yet, you haven't given your life to Jesus Christ. Man, you're living in victim land really. It's a difficult life without God, all on your own, having to try and walk through life, not sure of what's in store, not sure of how you're going to get through, not sure of eternity and where you'll spend it. But friend, one decision, and one moment of time, to respond to Jesus Christ - He's your friend, came into this world to die on the cross for your sin - one decision starts you on a journey of walking with God, a totally different journey than the one you've ever experienced before.

People in this church have already made that decision. They're on the journey, they're a little ahead of you, but friend, you start out that journey. Don't sit on your hands, don't hold back. Make the decision: I'll come to Jesus Christ. I'll begin to walk with God, have a different life than the one I've had, much different life, free of sin, free of accusation, able to walk with God. That'd be a great thing to do.

I wonder how many others, today as I was speaking, you realised you are in an agreement with helplessness, in some area of your life. You're in agreement with that whole thing that causes you to think: you have no power; and today you say: I need to break my agreement with that. Why don't you just raise your hand right now and say that's me, that's me. I've been behaving that way so often. When I'm in pressure, I kind of go into myself, and go into that cave, and feel bad and don't come out. Is that you? Is that you? Raise your hand quickly right now. We want to pray with you today, want to stand and agree: if you will make a decision to rebel against that thing, and begin to process what's happened in your life, and begin to choose differently, we want to stand in agreement today, that God will break the power of it.

Summary Notes

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‘The Blame Game – Part 2’

15 March 2009

Introduction:

· Genesis 1:26-28 - “God blessed them … subdue and have dominion…”

· Man loves challenges it is part of who we are, inside us. Man without challenges lives in defeat. We have the will o face, step up and act on them, to subdue things and to bring dominion.

· From the beginning we were made to step up and subdue. Adam and Eve started the blame game = shifts the responsibility to someone else.

· Blessed = 1288 = to speak words dull of life and empowerment into people.

· God empowered man with free will and the ability to overcome challenges in life.

· Subdue = 3533 = to conquer, overcome = there are challenges, opposition, difficulties.

· Dominion = 7278 = to prevail, reign over = you have freedom and creativity in extending God’s rule.

· After the fall – A culture of blame = making excuses and shifting the responsibility – “It’s not my fault”.

· Freedom and Responsibility work together – if you want Freedom, you must be Responsible.

E.g. child: as a child takes responsibility, so it will get freedom.

· God gives us Freedom to make choices. Requires Responsibility for those choices.

· As an adult it is your responsibility to freedom, you cannot do what you want and not get snared in it.

How People Learn to be ‘Helpless’:

Proverbs 23:7 - “As he thinks in his heart so is he”. If you belief it, it is true.

· God wants to shift us from living in bandage and to explore what He has for you.

· Learned Helplessness/Powerless: Experiment by scientists with animals in situations of no choice = outcome was good.

- Animals leaned to think – not matter what it did – no good will come of it. They learn they can never win.

- Give up, quit trying, endured helpless/powerless condition even when opportunity provides it.

- They learn to be helpless – resigned “nothing I do will make any difference”.

· Past Experiences can form Limiting Beliefs (beliefs that can limit us, have looked at life, what can I do? You get what you belief for) – limiting ways of thinking.

· E.g. “No matter what I do” - ‘Can never please dad’

- ‘Someone still gets angry’

- ‘Never get approval’

- ‘Always criticized’

· Result: People stop trying- they bury their emotion of resentment, anger, bitterness, hate

· People develop beliefs about themselves – ‘I can’t’. ‘I am not good enough’.

· New Experiences surface Old Beliefs – limited thinking, feel helpless, no choice.

· E.g. ‘No one told me’

‘I talked to him – wouldn’t listen’

‘I tried talking to the husband, he wouldn’t listen’

‘I tried to talk to mum, she just got angry’

‘I tried counseling, it didn’t help me’

‘I tried to get a date, no good ones out there’

‘I am waiting for God to provide’ ‘I prayed and nothing happened’

· NB Note: in each situation: The person blames circumstances/people – they feel they have no choice! The feel helpless. They learn to strive, compete, drive or give up. They grieve and live in despair, loneliness and powerless.

· If you blame others it is not God’s fault, you still have a choice. Your problem is your problem; no one can pray it away for you. Some people cover it with super religious thinking. You always have a choice! It may not be the one you prefer! May be it is a choice you have not thought of yet.

· New experiences bring junk to the surface so that you can deal with it on the inside.

· You choose what you do on a bad day, your emotions and your beliefs.

· Do you except honest feedback from other people on how you act/behave, on who you are? Do you go out and meet others?

· Some people cloak themselves with helplessness and God can not move in their lives.

· A day has turned out troublesome from what you expect. Take responsibility and ownership, break limiting beliefs and break out of it.

· Philippians 4:13 – “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. You make a decision to give it a go.

· Strengthen = 1743 = endunamoo = to clothe with supernatural ability

3) God’s Process of Change:

· Israel learned to be helpless (slaves) in Egypt. Israel = Church now. God delivered them. Jesus saved us. God have a great destiny. We need to grow and be wiling to accept it.

· Israel continued to limit God because they would not change – Psalm 78:41

· 1 Corinthians 10:6 - Israel is a lesson to learn or to repeat from – an example for US to learn from.

· What lessons did God want them to learn? 1 Corinthians 10:13

· Problems are common to every person, every one has problems.

· God is faithful, He will help you – You can rely on His Word and change. God started the work; surely He will finish the work. You can trust and rely on Him.

· You have the ability to handle every challenge of life.

· God always makes a way trough for us; you have to look for it. Walk through the problem, God will help you through it. New experiences comes you way to change you.

· An Overview of Change:

Exodus 6:6-8 - Changed them, the way they were thinking. He allowed them to experience challenges to choose to belief and trust God.

The same with us – we have an opportunity to think/belief and act differently. God wanted them to learn how to trust Him. We have the initiative to make things happen, to change out of the old will get you there. The challenge is to stop excuses and blaming, stop to be powerless and trust and belief in God.

· Stop blame = except facing the challenges and change. We disqualify ourselves from out destiny, purpose and blessing if we blame and make excuses.

EGYPT -> WILDERNESS -> CANAAN

Place of slavery Place of training/preparation Place of opportunity/conquest

Loneliness/Isolation Connection to the Lord Intimacy – walk in spirit

Powerless God is Powerful/Faithfull God is in me – Powerful

No choice Learn to choose to belief Walk by faith, daily choice

Blame/excuses Learn responsibility Take initiative- –subdue

(Unsaved) (Growing Believer) (Apostolic Believer)

· How did God work to change Israel?

- He created new experiences of difficulty – opportunity to make new choices.

- Deuteronomy 8:2-3 - “… the He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”.

- Israel’s constant response: - think and act like slave

- Complain and blame – Exodus 16:2, 7-8

- We are not able – we can’t – Numbers 13:30-32

- If you think, act and behave like a slave, you will be a slave even if you are free.

- If you think, act and behave to be free, hopeful in God, joy and faith in God, He is powerful and with me – I can do it.

4) How you can break Free of Learned Helplessness:

Romans 5:13 - “Now! May the God of all hope fill you with joy and peace in believing that you might abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”.

- God will provide the new experiences and help you grow through them.

Your responsibility:

1) Resolve Bitter Roots – change how you live your live. Admit this – leave pain, grieve and resentment behind, cannot move into the things that God has for you – give it to the Lord. :

· Hebrews 12:15 - “... looking carefully lest any of you should fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by this many become defeated”.

· Ask the Holy Spirit to uncover any hidden roots from experiences of being powerless.

- anger - resentment - self pity - grief - unbelief - hopelessness

- Bitter expectations (belief) = “nothing I can do ….”, ‘Hopeless”

· Repent from it and release it to the Lord.

2) Embrace New Challenges in a Different Way (Process):

· You have to change, you choose to change.

· We reap what we have sown = agree with old thoughts, powerless and then end up in a mess.

· God is committed to character not your comfort. He will bring things to melt you to bring out the bad so that you can choose to change the thinking.

· How can I deal with this if I have never seen it before? You will reap different future. Spent time with God, meditate on scripture, get near Him and hear how you can change.

· We are not victim; whatever we have to do we can do it through God with Faith. He is Mighty and Powerful.

OLD WAY:

Problem -> Feeling (Helpless) -> Think Powerless = Blame/excuse => Recap Consequences

NEW WAY:

Problem -> Identify feelings -> Challenge thinking = Assume responsibility => Recap Benefits

Mark 9:23 - “If you can believe … all things are possible to him that believes”.

* Ask the Lord for Wisdom * Look for Opportunities * Take action and Persist

Dealing with Failure (3 of 3)

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The origin of the Blame Game is failure. Blame places the responsibility for a failure/mistake on people or circumstances. We all fail, we need to admit that. Take responsibility and acknowledge failure so that God can lift you up, and you can change. Look at some of the glorious mistakes & failures recorded in the Bible, then discover powerful keys for handling our failures and moving on.

I want to just conclude this series I've been doing on the Blame Game. How many are much more aware of people blaming? [Laughter] Man, isn't it everywhere! It's not my fault. It's not my fault, and someone else did it, it's someone else is responsible to fix it, it's always out there, someone else's fault. It's the people, it's the circumstances, it's where I've come from, it's my family, it's the government, it's New Zealand, it's the world. Whatever it is, it's always out there. If it's out there, you can't do anything, but if you actually own up, you can actually do something, if you take ownership. In this next season in the year, we're going to be looking at what it means to be apostolic people, and you'll find to be an apostolic person means you have taken a hold in your heart, that you have an assignment from God, and you will assume responsibility to fulfil your assignment in the community. So if you buy in to the blame game, you can never be what God called you to be. You have to recognise that buying into the blame game - by that I mean that we're blaming someone else for problems, and believing someone else is going to have to fix it up. When you buy into that, you remain a victim, you remain powerless, you cannot be part of the answer that God wants us to be. We have to absolutely reject the blame game, in every form, and say: I am going to be part of the answer, I'm going to be part of the solution.

So what I want to do today is, I want to share another aspect of the blame game. I'm going to go back to where it started, and isn't it amazing, it started when someone failed. The blame game, passing the buck. That's what it's called here, pass the buck you know? I liked it with Barack Obama. I liked it when he said: well the buck stops here! [Yeah.] I like that. That's good leadership, and that's the indications of a man who's going to do something about things. I like that.

He said: something went wrong. He said: it's my responsibility, I'll work on it to make it right. That's good stuff. That's a man who's not playing the victim. It's a man who stood up and said he's going to be part of the solution. You want to see these kinds of things. It's like a new thing happening, instead of blaming everyone else for the problems. So we're going to look at the blame game, and what I want to look at today is: dealing with failure. Is there anyone here who hasn't failed? I'd just like to meet them and shake their hand, it'd be quite nice actually. [Laughter] Sort of was hoping I might find someone here. Often in churches there's sort of this thing that you can't fail, because you're a Christian or something. Where did they get that idea? I just asked: who didn't fail; everyone here failed see, including me. See, everyone failed. Everyone makes mistakes. The Bible says: the steps of a good man - and we're good men and women, because God has made us good. Our goodness is because God has put goodness in us, He's in us. So the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, though he fall. Well he won't stay down, he'll get up, because the Lord lifts him up. I like that.

So it doesn't matter how much you fall, if you reach out to God, He'll get you back up again. So failure for a Christian, well that's just a temporary inconvenience, and a great opportunity to learn. There's one thing sure, you can rely on God to get you back up again see? Says the righteous man, though he falls seven times - in other words, he keeps falling over - God will lift him up again. God always loves to lift people up again, and it's interesting that when you get into a church environment, there's this whole fear of failing seems to come round people. Not only that, there's with it a religious Pharisaic spirit, that judges people for failing, as though we hadn't failed. I don't know, but when we just took communion there, my understanding of communion is ain't no way to get into heaven, until you bow the knee and admit you've failed. The rich man, the poor man, the wealthy man, it won't matter who they are, we all come into heaven the same way. You bow the knee to Jesus Christ, and you admit: I failed. [Laughs] Yes, you're going to have to admit something, got to own up, and that someone took responsibility for the failure. When you acknowledge your failure, and reach out and take responsibility to believe, then what will happen is, God can lift you up and make you change, so that's a great thing to know.

Always need to be reminded in church, everyone here makes mistakes, fails, does things wrong and imperfectly, every day. Well that's not something to be worried about is it? We do a lot of good things as well. Anyway let's go into this. I want to show something. What I love about the Bible is it's full of glorious mistakes and failures, absolute major mistakes. Look at this in Genesis 3:7-13. Let's see where the blame game started, and you notice in verses 7-13: the eyes of them both were opened. They knew they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves coverings. That's Adam and Eve. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, so they hid themselves. Isn't it interesting, when you know something's wrong, you want to avoid church, avoid fellowship, avoid meetings, anything to avoid feeling uncomfortable, and being reminded you've got something bad going on in your life?

People think: well the only way I can come to God, is if I get my life right. Well that's ridiculous. You come to God because your life isn't right. He accepts you like you are, and says: I'll help you change. You've got to get a handle on this kind of stuff. So notice here: they went and they hid; so hiding, when people are hiding, it means they've got something to be hiding about. They're guilty, and they've failed. It says: they heard the sound of the Lord God, and they hid themselves; and the Lord called to Adam and said: hey, where are you? I like this. God talks real simple. Notice what He says: Where are you? Who told you? Did you eat the fruit of the tree? He just nailed him with three questions. God asked questions, meaning He knows the answers, He's about to nail you, and so what did God say? He said hey, where are you? He said: well I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, I hid myself. Who told you you were naked? Did you eat the fruit of the tree? Now look at this, this is classic. You've got to get this line here. [Laughter] And this is what the man said - I love this line: The woman! [Laughter] See, passed the blame immediately. Now I love this line, the first is the woman. The woman, who You gave to be with me! None of my idea, it's all Your idea You know. You gave her to me to be with me, now what a nuisance that's turned out to be! [Laughter]

He's conveniently overlooked all the wonderful evenings they had together. [Laughter] Forgotten all about that - no, no, no. You, Your idea. I never thought a woman. I named animals, but I didn't think of women. You thought up women. [Laughter] It's all Your fault. Now the problem is, of course, in doing that, he missed his opportunity to have a massive learning experience and grow, and we've all suffered because he did that. You want to really take a note, that the moment you start blaming, you are disempowered, and you reap consequences, and you don't learn a thing. You're going to have to repeat the same thing again. The moment you start blaming, you then - notice when he blamed, God stopped talking. The moment you blame, you have absolved yourself from responsibilities, there's nothing left, than you bear the pain. You face the consequences, so blame game's not a good thing. But notice that the blame thing emerged whenever there was failure.

They say death and taxes are certain in life aren't they? Yeah, absolutely certain you'll die, and you're also certain there's taxes, but also certain there's failure. Failure is inevitable. Failure comes to us day by day. We have mistakes, things go wrong, things don't work out, things we try didn't work out, and we have some measures of success, and we also have failures. It's just part of being in this world, things don't always work out. Notice what it says in 1 John 1:10; If we say we haven't sinned, if we say we have no failures - then we're lying. So when we cannot admit to ourself, that actually we do make mistakes, we do things wrong, and we do it regularly; if we can't say that, then the one that's being deceived, is ourselves. No one else is being deceived by that, so you notice if we say that, then what we're doing is making God a liar, because He says: everyone has sinned. So we have to realise that everyone fails sometime, but what you do from it can be a learning experience, or you can just keep repeating the same failure.

If you keep repeating the same failure, inevitably you weren't learning, and you were blaming, and so we've got to not get into the blame game, so we can actually deal with our mistakes honestly, because they are going to come. The Bible abounds in them. I love this. I like to look in the Bible, and the Bible's glorious, and it doesn't just tell you all the good things God did, and the people He used. It tells you the terrible things that people did. It just gets all their mistakes out. Imagine being one of these great men in the Bible, and not only did the Bible record all your good stuff, it also records your absolutely magnificent failures - for thousands upon thousands of people, in every generation, to read about, so they could learn not to do what you did. Isn't that glorious? In 1 Corinthians 10, of the people of Israel it said: everything that was written - Verse 6 - was written for our warning. In other words, two million people made about 10 mistakes, and it was written down what happened to them, so we didn't do the same thing. So mistakes are great opportunities to learn, and they're inevitable.

So Abraham - Abraham's a wonderful man. Abraham lied about his wife, said: oh, it's my sister. He weaselled out, and in the end he got into a whole heap of trouble. Isaac lied about his wife too. We have Jacob, well he deceived his father. When his father was old and blind, you know what Jacob did? He put on an animal skin, and he came near him, and pretended to be his brother, so he could get the blessing. He deceived his father - poor blind old dad, about to pass out of this life, and he goes up and deceives him, gets him to put his hand on the skin that's on him, so he gets fooled into thinking that this must be Esau, the hairy one [laughter], instead of the lovely, sweet boy that was mummy's boy you know, soft hands and all that kind of stuff see? What a thing to do, deceive his dad. What about Moses? Moses was a great man with plenty of things going for him and a great call of God, and he murdered someone, then got chased out of town, and there was a reward poster put on him, capture him dead or alive. He's a murderer. That's not a really good way to start your ministry, is it?

And what about Rahab? Well Rahab, she was a prostitute. Just think about that for a little bit - not too long, but just [laughter] think about that a little bit. [Laughter] It's not a good way to start in the things of God, is it? Rahab had a call of God on her life, but she had a - not a very nice start. I wonder if we'd make her even welcome here? Well Jesus made her welcome, Bible makes her welcome. Think about this. Gideon, well Gideon was full of fear. When God starts talking to him, he argues and argues and argues, so full of fear and hiding, and he has to get over and over these kinds of signs and things. What about Barak? There's a guy there called Barak in the Bible, and he was so lacking in courage, he asked a woman to give him direction what to do. It's true, and she said: okay, I will. [Laughter] Okay, I will, and you won't get the glory and the honour, because you didn't have the courage to stand up and lead properly. That's what the Bible says. It's written down too, isn't that nice aye? We can talk about it today, about that wimpy man [laughs] who didn't get the honour. It went to someone else see. Think about that.

What about Samson? When you think about Samson, you always think about Delilah, isn't that right? [Yeah.] We think about what Samson did. Now what an amazing failure - goes there and stays a night with a prostitute, and then the enemy try to get him. He tears the gates of the city off, and then he doesn't learn his lesson. He goes out and gets involved with this woman there, and ends up getting a hair cut, an expensive hair cut, and his eyes put out - I mean what amazing failure. There you are, and you're just like a donkey, just driving the grain out you know? This is a major failure. This is really messing your life up. Interesting isn't it, all these people. Here's another one, Jephthah. Well Jephthah had a great start didn't he? His father went off and had sexual relationships with a prostitute, and that's how he started off, so his whole life was a mistake starting off. No one wanted him, everyone hated him, drove him out of town as a reject, and he didn't exactly do too well himself. He made some foolish rash vows.

It's all written in the Bible, all these people that made these glorious mistakes, magnificent failures. Most churches would write them off, say: well we couldn't do anything with that person. Interesting though, that the Bible lists each of those people I named as a man or woman of faith, and does not record their failure in the New Testament at all. It just says: by faith, these people did great things. Now did God overlook their failure? No, He didn't overlook their failure, but He looked above their failure, and beyond their failure, to what they were destined to be, and His focus was on their destiny, not their failures. There's no mention of Delilah in the New Testament, yet when you think Samson, you always think Delilah, but the Holy Spirit ignores here completely, doesn't even mention her in the chapter on faith. It doesn't mention any of these errors, these glaring errors. It doesn't mention them. Why? Because they're under the grace of God; each of these people have found forgiveness, each of these people have walked into the destiny, and God says: I really like these people, because in their day, yeah, they had mistakes, yeah, they made failures, and they were costly failures - but they're men and women of faith. That's a Biblical perspective you see, so failures are never fatal for us.

We've got to see that God doesn't overlook our failures. In fact actually your failures have huge consequences, for example Samson's failure, he lost his eyesight, and then he ended up in chains, lost his anointing, his eyesight and his ministry, ended up just grinding out like a donkey. But when he repented, God restored to him, not his eyesight, but restored to him his strength, and he was able to do one last great feat. So failure, if we handle it right, is never the end for us. It's just the beginning of a new season in our life, and if we don't get a grip on that, the problem is, that within a church environment, people feel they can't fail, and can't make mistakes. I hate being in an environment where I can't make mistakes, like I've got to be perfect or something. Perfectionism is an unrealistic expectation that everything will be perfect, or there'll be no mistakes, and everything will be done just right.

Perfectionism is rooted in the fear of failure, and in pride, and we don't need perfectionism. We want to do things well, but not perfectionism. Perfectionism is intolerant of people making mistakes, as though we didn't make them ourselves. That's very hurtful, because it judges, and makes it very difficult for anyone to rise up, and move on, and the church is called to be an environment where everyone is encouraged to take risks. With risks, there's going to be failures. God calls us, as a people of faith, to take some risks, and so when we take a risk, there's going to be some things go wrong, that's for sure. The best way to fall out of your destiny, is to just not take any risks at all, play it safe - and you have a boring life, a religious life, and you cannot fulfil your destiny, because your destiny requires faith. Without faith, you cannot please God, and faith is going to take some risks. Sometimes people really blew it on the way to taking risks, and you've got to learn how to deal with it. Isn't that true?

So we don't want to be perfectionists, nor do we want to have a spirit of perfectionism, a critical spirit, that the moment people have made a mistake, they seize on it, pounce on it, and implicit in it is a judgement against the person: YOU are unacceptable, because you failed. That implies: I don't fail. The reality is: all fail, it's just their one was visible, and we all saw it, yours wasn't - but God saw it, and it's still very real. So when we learn how to handle failure properly, we can come into a place of understanding the grace of God. The grace of God abounds where there's failure. Where sin abounds, failure abounds, grace even more abounds. So one thing's absolutely certain, if I find someone in a huge mess, and there's huge failures all round their life, the grace of God is far more abundant, and it's able to come in and shift them out of it, but they've got to handle the failure right. You and I can help people handle their failures, or we can actually keep them locked in their failure. We can take the side of Jesus Christ, who came to provide an answer for failures; or we can take the side of the devil, and be his advocate, and speak accusations against failures. There's no middle ground.

You are either joined to the Saviour, who came to save people out of their failures; or you're joined to the devil, who accuses people of their failures. There's no middle ground anywhere, and I want to always be connected to Jesus, giving hope that in the midst of failure, there's always grace, there's always a hope, there's always a future. You can always get up and get going again. Isn't that true? The church is to be a community of grace. The Bible says: the law came by Moses; in other words, there's laws: do this, or you didn't do it, ooh! See, judgement came by the law; but it says: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. So it doesn't mean that we're to overlook failures and mistakes; truth means we face them, but grace means there's an empowerment to get up out of it again. You've got to hold the two together. You and I can be a great ministry of blessing, to help people out of their failures; or we can actually hold them in them, and as a church community we have to, if we're going to grow in our influence in the community, we have to step up in being able to handle our own personal failures, and the failures of others around us, and the failures of people in the community.

Most times, the churches can do nothing else except criticise and complain what's going wrong. There is no solution in that. We need to actually understand that the answer is, not to overlook it, but to come with a hope, and with a message, and with faith, and will the possibility that something better could happen - people of vision and faith. So we have to learn to deal with failure. How are we going to deal with failure? So let's have a look at one classic one. I love this glorious one of David's. Now how many know King David was a man after the heart of God? You know David was a man after the heart of God, a great man; so Jesus was called the Son of David. So Jesus didn't mind being connected to David, the one who committed murder and adultery and blah blah blah, because David was a man who sought the heart of God, and got a vision for what he could become; but David made heaps of mistakes on the way, many mistakes, and the mistakes weren't little ones. When he made a mistake, thousands of people died. How do you live with that at night time? That's a big mistake.

When he counted all the numbers of Israel, and broke the law in doing so, then there was judgement came on Israel, and there were thousands died because he counted the soldiers. No wonder he had a heart that was very repentant, very soft, very open to the Lord. In 1 Chronicles 13, the Bible tells us, this a glorious, spectacular failure. This is where he really wanted to do something public, and something great, and something - you know, be really just a significant key note of his being made the king; because under Saul's reign, the ark of God, there was no presence of God, there was no ark of God. So what happened was, under Saul's reign, there was no move of God; so his desire was to bring back the ark of God. So he got the whole country together, he got the trumpeters, he got the musicians, he got everything all out, and they put the cart on an ox. They put the ark on a cart drawn by oxen, and they went down the road and everyone was out - talk about public. This failure was not a hidden failure, and they're going there down the road, the trumpets are playing and everything. David's dancing and shouting, and this is all a new thing.

In the middle of it, the oxen stumbled, someone touches it, and the guy is smitten dead, just like that. I don't know, I'd love to see what happened, whether a bolt of lightning came down and fried him on the spot! Whoa! Everyone, look at that thing. Now who's going to get the blame for messing this up? David! Now how do you overcome that? It says: David was very angry. He's looked forward to this. He's organised the whole nation to do this public thing, and bringing the ark back, and then God smites the man down right in the middle of it, and ruins the whole parade. Everyone goes skulking back to their home, and instead of it being a great thing, the ark didn't even quite make it to Jerusalem. It's now stuck in someone's house - a total, major, public spectacle failure. So what did David do? Well, you couldn't hide it, because it was all public, but he wasn't going to be deterred by it. What he did was he went and he sought the Lord, and it tells us in 1 Chronicles 15, that God showed him where he went wrong, and he re-went and reset the whole thing up again.

Now you can imagine the anticipation of that day. He's got the trumpeters there, he's got everyone out, got everything going again, and there it is - but he said this: We made a mistake, we didn't do it God's way last time. We were trying our best, and we meant well, but we just didn't do it right. He said: God showed me what to do. This time it was a success, so he learned from his failure, but what a glorious failure. What a glorious failure, total failure in front of the whole country. Don't you just love that? Not a little quiet one somewhere, that you can hide you know? If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence you tried, you know? He learnt from his experience. So how are we going to deal with failure? So failures are either a stepping stone to grow, or they're going to really wound you, and then it'll make you more and more reluctant to step out, so here's a few simple keys for doing. Number one, you need to own the failure. If you've made a mistake, had a failure in your life, something's gone wrong, you just have to take ownership of it. That's completely opposite of blame shifting; blaming, you're trying to find someone else to blame for our mistake.

The Bible says: if we cover our sin or mistakes or failures, we will not prosper. Now what's going on in many lives here, is that there's a covering of things that are wrong. When you cover things that are wrong, notice you can't progress. You can't advance, you can't go forward. If you confess them, and then turn away from them, you always experience mercy, and the grace of God to get you growing; but the first step is to stop covering, and stop concealing, and actually face it. So we've got to call it what it is. You've got to say: I failed. I messed up, really I messed up. That's a hard thing to say. You know what, it's hard for men to say. They have a choking fit when they try and say it: I was wrong. I was wrong. It's very hard for a man to say that. You just wait and see if you next hear a man say: I was wrong, very hard to say it. It's pride of course, but you have to admit it. I was wrong, I made a mistake, I got it wrong, I failed. I did it wrong. If you just own up - once you've said: I made a mistake, you've got ownership. Now you can do something to fix it up.

Notice that when Saul makes a mistake, twice he does the same thing: Ooh, aah, well, the circumstances, all these Philistines were gathered against me, and the people were all leaving, and you didn't come in the time. Notice, no responsibility for doing something wrong, and the prophet said: you've really done foolishly. You read it in 1 Samuel 13 and he says: you could have been the king, but now you're going to lose your kingdom, because you can't handle being responsible. Next time he did something silly he got another chance, he got a second chance. Next time he did the same thing, still did it wrong, but blamed everyone else, and then when it came to actually saying: I've sinned, and made a mistake, he wasn't very sincere. He just said: aah listen, by the way can you just stand with me when we're doing the offering, so everyone sees everything's okay between us? His whole manner about it is: I just want to look good. There was no ownership of the failure; whereas David always owned his failures, just came straight up and said: man, I really blew it. I'm sorry.

So the thing is, humility means you're just actually willing to own up: I made the mistake, it was wrong. I did wrong, I spoke wrong, and I'm going to own it. Now if I own it, I've got the power to change it, and the power to learn from it. If I blame, I can't do anything. The second thing, you need to evaluate your failure, need to have a look at it. What actually did I do wrong? Where did it go wrong? Usually one of the things I look at it is how I feel. Sometimes you feel really ashamed, sometimes you feel really guilty, sometimes you really feel like discouraged and disheartened. Sometimes you feel like you're very lacking in skill and ability. You have all kinds of feelings go on when you fail, but if you identify the feelings, you can often understand what you really believe about failure in your heart. So while we all will accept in a church meeting that God forgives sin, actually we wrestle with our personal struggles, because we believe something else; and so it helps just to identify what you feel when you fail: What's going on in my heart? And then how do I respond normally, when my failure is obvious? How do I respond? Now this is an interesting one when you ask.

So when you look at it, you see Adam just covered it up. Usiah, he made a mistake. He just got angry and bullied everyone. Elijah, well Elijah just withdrew, got depressed, withdrew and hid in a cave. Moses, he just ran away, all kinds of things that people did. Peter, Peter wept bitterly, just had a great howly-bag. He went out and cried, see? It's interesting in the Bible, it tells you what they did when they failed; and then of course there's Judas who went out and hanged himself. You're not encouraged to repeat his failure [laughter] by any means. [Laughs] Bit permanent wasn't it - but what do you do? What do you do when you've made a mistake, or done something wrong? Do you cover it and conceal it, try and hide it, minimise it, blame, shift, deny - what do you do when something's gone wrong? Well we're just honest and say: oh, I really messed that up. That's so hard for Christians to say: I really messed that up, but you know, if we could just say: I really messed that up, then you know the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, the Lord will uphold him.

So now I've owned up, at least now I've got God on my side to help me - but if I won't own up, then God's not on my side to help me. He's just going to let me experience some bad consequences now, and get very embarrassed. So what is it you do? What do you do when something goes wrong? When someone points it out, do you get really defensive and angry and react, and try and shut it down, or blame and minimise? What do you do? Well it tells you something about yourself, so just have a think what you do next time someone points out something wrong; evaluate what you felt and what you did. Then you'll see what's going on in your life, whether you are growing, and able to take on greater challenges of faith. If we won't take ownership of where we did go wrong, we fail to learn, and learning is God's goal for us. He has got the remarkable ability to take any situation we've been through, and use it to get us where He wants us to get.

That's the amazing thing about God. It doesn't matter how you blew it, doesn't matter what went wrong, God can take your mistake and failure. Yes, you may have pain, and some inconvenience, and some discomfort, and some reaping for many, many years, but He can still turn it around, and use it to get you where He always wanted you to go. That's the one wonderful thing about Him; but He can only do it if you'll come clean, admit it and bring it out in the open, and we have to do that. So what do you do? Then the thing is, you've got to learn from your failure; what can I learn about myself? What can I learn? Where did I go wrong? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? What can I learn from it? What can I do better? Where have I messed up? I wonder why I messed up? Why did I do that? Do I do that all the time? You just have to start to ask some things about what can I learn, and you'll be surprised what you can learn, if you think about where you went wrong - and surprised the things you can learn.

The Bible's very clear, Proverbs 24 it tells us, this man looked, and he saw this guy who'd made mistakes. He said: I looked, and I observed, and I learnt, so we can learn from other's failures, we can learn from our own. The Bible for example is full of people who failed; why don't you go find out how and why they failed, so you don't make the same mistakes, learn from them. Another thing we need to do if we fail is, we need to actually receive forgiveness. Proverbs 28 again it tells us in Verse 18: if we confess and forsake, then we shall find or receive mercy; so we need to learn to receive forgiveness. Now the problem to receive forgiveness, it starts off you've got to actually come up front, and talk about your problem to God. You've got to talk to Him. Most people, about the best they come up with is: I'm sorry God. Well that's a start, but you know, it's helpful if you actually talk about what you're sorry about. Most people when they say: I'm sorry, what they really mean is: blow, I got caught out. [Laughter] I'm sorry! That's all they mean. I'm sorry. That's why they weep. I'm sorry. Yeah, we're all sorry too, but it doesn't mean to say that there's going to be a change.

So really it is: I've really done wrong, this is what I did wrong, and this is how grieved You must be, and I so grieve that I have injured our relationship by what I did. Now that's more like it, because true sorrow not only takes responsibility for the event, or the thing that happened. It acknowledges the grief and damage to the relationship, and as soon as you acknowledge damage to the relationship, you're positioned then, for forgiveness to come. The Bible says: don't grieve the Holy Spirit. Oh, that means I can grieve Him. Did you ever think when you sinned, instead of just saying: sorry God; actually starting to also take time to think: Holy Spirit, I took You to things I never really wanted You to go to. I've taken You places which have grieved and wounded You. Forgive me for grieving You. Holy Spirit, arise within me and fill me again with all Your goodness and holiness. Become conscious of the spirit of God, and what we've done. He is grieved by some things. And of course we have to talk to other people. Now this is the hardest thing, is how to make a good apology.

Most people say: oh sorry; and implied in that is: you've got to forgive me now. I don't think I will, I don't feel you're sorry. You see, true sorrow has repentance, and it actually acknowledges the relationship was damaged. If you don't acknowledge the relationship was damaged, you can never get proper forgiveness and release to take place. Suppose you did something, you damaged someone's property, or suppose you stole something from someone, then you come and admit you stole it, and return it. Now you actually haven't got back to where you were before, because the person now doesn't trust you; because they haven't heard in that apology, what they were looking for. You hurt me. I trusted you, and you let down my trust. You understand that a real good apology will always acknowledge how the person has been affected, and be open for the person to be able to even share how it's affected them.

I've found often in Christians, we want to apologise and smooth everything over, without actually understanding how the person was hurt; so sometimes in working it out with someone, you've got to stop and listen, find out how do they feel, how did this affect them. We don't want to do that, but when you do it, the person feels like: now you've understood me. Then you now are apologising, not for just the action, but for taking the relationship for granted, and wounding the person, and you can learn from that. Boy, you can really learn from that. It's looking good, isn't it aye? Well you're getting all quiet now.

Well anyway the last one is very simple, we need to move on, please move on. [Laughter] Forget the failures, we're going to move on; and the moving on, you actually have to just progress with your life; and there's two ways you progress with your life of course, if you've learnt from it. One is sometimes, you've just got to keep trying, and persevere until we do get the breakthrough; and the second thing, sometimes we need to do is admit: well actually, that's the end of it. So if you've blown up a relationship, and the relationship is over, well it's over. Just grieve, and have a funeral, and grieve over it and goodbye, you know? We've got to get over it. See sometimes you actually have to acknowledge that it'll never be the same again, and you have to let go, and that's like having a funeral. There's something died, so I grieve over it, weep over it but I can't do anything about it, now I do move on with my life, after I've grieved. So failures in life, some are little, some are big, but they all have the same possibility of teaching us something. It's better if we learn from our little failures, than have massive ones, and our life's in turmoil for a long time.

How am I going to learn? First of all just acknowledge it's there, take ownership of the thing, how does it affect me, how I feel, how am I responding in this thing, what do I need to learn from God in this matter? What do I have to put right, and now: how can I move on? It's really quite simple, and you know, that's the heart of the gospel, that everyone is messed up, and someone did something to get it right. His name is Jesus Christ. He died on the cross. He suffered immensely, because the innocent always suffer, when someone else sins. And so He suffered, He took the pain on the cross, so you and I, if we would repent and have a heart towards God to trust Him, then He says: I've dismissed the matter, you've got a fresh start. What a great thing.

There may be some of you here need a fresh start in your life. Maybe you need a fresh start in your life. The first step to getting a fresh start in your life is to admit the failure, and the mistakes you've made, and to bring them to the Lord, and say: Lord, will You forgive me? I really have done so many things that have messed up my life and others. Lord, I thank You on the cross You died. I receive Your forgiveness today, and receive Your love and grace, and I think You're going to help me learn from this.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· What it means to be an Apostolic people is to recognize the assignment God has.

· Reject the blame game in full and change knowing that you can do something in life.

· In the church the idea was created that Christians cannot fail.

· The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Every time he fails God gets him back up again.

· God always lifts people up again.

· We all fail, we need to admit that. Take responsibility and acknowledge failure so that God can lift you up and you can change.

· The Bible is full of glorious mistakes and failures.

The Origin of the Blame Game = Failure:

· You need to come to God because your life isn’t right.

· God called Adam and asked 3 questions: ‘Where are you?’, “Who told you that you were naked?’, ‘Did you eat of the fruit of the tree?’

· Genesis 3:7-13 - “The woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate”.

· Blame = to place the responsibility for a failure, mistake on people or circumstances.

· Adam - refused to assume responsibility for his failure.

- He blamed Eve and he blamed God.

- He missed an experience/opportunity to grow.

- When he blamed, God stopped talking.

- He didn’t take responsibility and had to face the consequenses.

· When Adam refused to take responsibility for his failure he experienced full consequences of it.

· Blaming may make you feel better (not responsible) but it does not solve the problem.

· We live in a blame Culture – people fail to assume responsibility.

· The path to empowerment = take responsibility to make things better.

Failures and Mistakes are Certain:

· 1 John 1:10 - “If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His trust is not in us”.

· Two things are certain in life – death and failure/mistakes.

· What ever you are good at now you probably failed the 1st time you tried it.

· Every person fails at some time – you must learn to benefit from mistakes and failures.

· The Bible abounds in Failures of People, e.g.:

· Abraham lied about his wife

· Isaac lied about his wife

· Jacob deceived his father

· Moses murdered a man

· Rahab was a prostitute

· Gidean was full of fear

· Barak lacked courage

· Samson got involved with Delilah

· Jepthah – his mother was a prostitute and he made a foolish vow.

· Yet, in spite of the mistakes the Holy Spirit calls them “Men of Faith” – Hebrews 11

· God sees people not in the light of their mistakes but in the light of their destiny and their response.

· He does not overlook failures but He does not focus on them – He imparts Grace.

· What matters is how people respond! What do you do with your failures?

· We deceive ourselves if we think we cannot fail, we’ll say that God is a liar.

· Deal with mistakes honestly.

· There are magnificent failures and glorious mistake all through the Bible.

· God looked above their failures and each of these people was men and woman of faith and they owned their mistakes.

· Failure = if we handle it right it is a start of a new opportunity.

· With risks will be failure, something could go wrong. We cannot fulfill our destiny if we don’t take any risks.

· Destiny requires faith, and faith requires taking risks.

· Many people think – “you are unacceptable because you have failed”.

· Grace abounds with failure – Handle failure right. We can either help people with a failure mentality in this or we can keep them in their failure by accusations.

· We can either connect to them with Jesus Christ or we can accuse them like Satan.

· Grace = empowerment to get out. Step up and own failures. Come with a massage of hope, faith and that something positive can happen.

Key to Dealing with Failures:

a) Example – David: 1 Chronicles 13:1-14

· David’s failure was a public spectacle – seen by the whole nation.

· He made many mistakes, sometimes thousands died.

· God showed him where he went wrong, but David acknowledged his mistakes and learned from his failures.

· Note: David’s responses:

(1) Anger - 1 Chronicles 13:11

(2) Learned from his experiences – 1 Chronicles 15:11-13

· David did not allow his failures to hold him back from his dream.

· He learned from his failure and became successful.

· All failures/mistakes can be stepping stones to growth if we respond well!

b) Keys to Dealing with Failures:

(1) Own Your Failures – Proverbs 28:18

· Put your arms around it, take it home and become responsible for it.

· If we cover our failures/mistakes we cannot progress or move forward.

· Call it what it is: ‘I failed’, ‘I made a mistake’, ‘I was wrong’, ‘I messed up’ – own your mistakes.

· Pride = I just want to look good.

· Genesis 3:11 - “Adam blamed Eve and God.

· 1 Samuel 13:11-12 - Saul blamed people, circumstances and God. He just wanted to look good.

· 2 Samuel 12:13 - David: ‘I have sinned against the Lord’.

· Don’t hide from failure – embrace it and learn from it.

· Humility – seeing life from Gods point of view.

· Perfectionism – controlling alert for failures, weaknesses, imperfections – unacceptable.

Image conscious – wants to look good at all costs e.g. Saul – 1 Samuel 15:24-25

· Perfectionism = birthed out of failure and pride, and is intolerant of people making mistakes.

· People who own their mistakes are much easier people to relate to.

(2) Evaluate Your Failures – Proverbs 2:2

a) Your Feelings?

· Disappointment? Discouragement? Loss of Hope? Shame? Guilt? Inferior? Ashamed? Disheartened?

· What is going on in your heart?

b) Your Responses?

· How do you respond when you fail? What pattern?

· Bible examples:

- Adam = covered and blamed – Genesis 3:7-11

- Uzziah = got angry, bullied – 2 Chronicles 26:19

- Elijah = depressed, withdraw – 1 Kings 19:4-9

- Moses = ran away – Exodus 3:15

- Peter = wept – Luke 22:62

- Judas = hanged himself – Matthew 27:5

· What do you do? = angry? Blame self? Blame others? Give up? Distract? Deny? Make excuses? Avoid it? Try to compensate by pointing out an area of strength.

· It is hard for Christians to own up to their mistakes. What do you do? Are you growing and taking on new challenges in faith?

· God can take a mistake/failure to turn you around to get you to your destiny and purpose.

(3) Learn from Your Failures – Proverbs 24:30-34

· Use your failure to learn and gain wisdom.

· Questions that could be asked to improve or prevent failure!

What did I do wrong? What did I do right?

What have I missed? What choices did I have?

What weaknesses? What can I learn?

What new skills? What support have I got?

(4) Receive Forgiveness – Proverbs 28:18

· The devil is an accuser – constantly eroding confidence by accusing – Revelation 12:10

· Whatever is condemned/judged gets worse.

· Forgiveness and grace release you to start again.

· To Receive Forgiveness: You must talk to God – honesty – ask forgiveness

You must talk to people – open up – apologize

- no accusations

- seek forgiveness

· Talk to God about your problem, just to say ‘I’m sorry’ is not good enough.

· Just ‘I’m sorry” = ‘blow, I got caught out’.

· Tell Him about it and how grieved you are about injuring the relationship. The Holy Spirit was grieved too - damage to the relationship. ‘Forgive me for grieving the Holy Spirit’.

· People = ‘I am sorry’ is not always good enough. Acknowledge how the relationship was damaged.

· A good meaningful apology acknowledges and understands how a person was hurt.

(5) Move on – Hebrews 10:35-36

a) Go again:

· All great accomplishments require persistence e.g. Moses kept confronting Pharaoh until he got a breakthrough.

b) Have a Funeral – something died, grieve over it, let it go.

· Sometimes you have to admit that something has ended e.g. relationship.

· Genesis 19:26 - Lots wife kept looking back and turned to salt.

· Failure or loss must be grieved over like burying a body.

· God is able to bring good out of all things - Romans 8:28

· Trust Him; Take the first step to a fresh start.

· It is better to learn from little failures by dealing with them, by the time we need to deal with big failures we would know how to.

Let the Kings Arise

Kings Dream (1 of 4)

Kings dream. Kings declare. Kings prepare and then kings are generous. You're called to be a King! Will you live like a servant who's not enough and always complains and has no dream? Or will you live as a king, begin to dream, begin to declare, begin to prepare and begin to generously give? You have to choose.

Let the Kings Arise (2 of 4)

Peter says, you are a chosen generation. You are a royal priesthood. Many believers tend to think we're sinners, and see ourselves in terms of our past or our failures, but God says you are an offspring, that God has chosen you, put His DNA spiritually into you and now you are the offspring of God in the earth. He says you are a royal priesthood. In other words you have royalty in you. You are the offspring of a king. Notice how kings operate, how kings speak, they carry themselves in a noble way. They act in a way often different to what ordinary people do. Why is that? Because they know who they are and they know how they're to operate in the earth.

Servants or Kings (3 of 4)

God does not want you to live in the realm of a servant or slave. He wants you to live in the realm of friend - very important for your destiny and for your future that you migrate in your thinking from servant to friend. A servant is trained to: listen for instructions; follow the instructions. Their own desires or dreams are not involved.

Slave or Son (4 of 4)

You may still be in bondage, but God sees you as His son. He sees you according to destiny. He sees you according to His call on your life. You may be struggling and have all kinds of problems, pressures; you may not even be saved, but God sees you through the eyes of His destiny, says My Son and He calls you to move out of slavery and into sonship.

Audio

- Kings Dream (1 of 4) .mp3

- Let the Kings Arise (2 of 4).mp3

- Servants or Kings (3 of 4).mp3

- Slave or Son (4 of 4).mp3

Notes

- Kings Dream (1 of 4)

- Let the Kings Arise (2 of 4)

- Servants or Kings (3 of 4)

- Slave or Son (4 of 4)

Kings Dream (1 of 4)

Sun 31 Oct 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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Kings dream. Kings declare. Kings prepare and then kings are generous. You're called to be a King! Will you live like a servant who's not enough and always complains and has no dream? Or will you live as a king, begin to dream, begin to declare, begin to prepare and begin to generously give? You have to choose.

I want you to open your Bible with me in Genesis, Chapter 37. I just want to read a few verses and I want to share with you just some thoughts on this theme, Kings Dream. Kings Dream. We're just talking some of the aspects about kings in these coming weeks, but you're called to be a king. How many knew that, you're called to be a king? You're called to be a king.

You are one. It's just a matter of knowing that you are, knowing that you are who God says you are. He says you're a royal priesthood. You can't be royal unless you belong to a royal family, so when you and I were born again into the family of God we became royalty, kingly seed, the seed of our Father, king of kings is within us. When you're born again you're born by the word of God. His spirit comes in. There's a DNA implanted in you and I and we become kingly. Trouble is catching up with who are now we're in Christ.

We tend to live like we used to live, like slaves. I want to talk about that and help us in this series so I thought we'd start with the area of kings dream. What is the dream you have in your heart? So we read in Genesis 37 and there was a man by the name of Joseph. Joseph was 17 years old and was feeding the flock with his brothers. And it says - Verse 3 - now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons. He was the son of his old age, youngest boy and he made him a tunic of many colours. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and couldn't speak peaceably to him. So you can see it's not a very happy environment that Joseph's in. Everyone hates him and they can't speak nicely to him at all.

Now Joseph had a dream. Now Joseph had a dream and there's where it all changes. Joseph was the youngest in the family. He was the hated one, despised one by his brothers but favoured by his father - but Joseph had a dream, dreams and visions are the language of the spirit. God wants to give you dreams and visions. He wants you to be dreamers, visionary. Every one of the body of Christ can be visionary. Why? Because it says in Acts, Chapter 2, that this anointing of the Holy Ghost shall be poured out upon all flesh and it says and your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Then it talks they shall see visions, young men shall see visions, old men shall dream dreams.

So God's plan is His body, no matter how old we are, young we are, that we would engage the supernatural realm and have dreams and visions, that we would have experiences that open our insight and understanding beyond what we live with. Everyone needs a dream and a vision. Dreams have to do with possibilities. How many know that movie The Bucket List? It was a great movie wasn't it aye? I was just talking to Andy Lowe and he said I've just ticked something off my bucket list this weekend. I said what's that? He said well I'm going down to be a passenger or a pilot or whatever it is in the Targa Rally. I said have you done that before? He said no, I've never done it before. I said well what do you have to do? He said well someone told me to bring nappies ... [Laughter] ... and a sick bag because it's scary, but he said I've got it on my bucket list. I want to make sure I get it done before I die.

Now that's just a very simple thing. It's about having a dream of something you want to get done in your life so you don't let your life get frittered away and eaten up day by day, one day at a time. Every one of us needs dreams. Every one of us needs visions. Every one of us as believers need to have things in the future we're looking forward to and planning for and preparing for, not just existing, not just living as we are. There needs to be dreams, dreams and desires of the heart. I'll share about some of these things in the weeks to come, how you can access that and some of the mind sets you've got to break to break free into this area.

So God wants us to have that and interesting thing about the thing about kings is that God has called kings to be fruitful. God calls every person not only to be a king but to be a fruitful and productive king, so when you look at the beginning of Joseph in Genesis 30, Verses 22 to 24; When Rachael, his mother, conceived and bore him forth she said I'm going to give him a name. I'm going to call him Joseph. Why? Two reasons; one is God has removed by reproach and two, he will add to me. So the very same thing applies to us. Joseph had a destiny inscribed at his birth in his very name and it was that the reproach was taken away, the reproach of being unproductive and unfruitful was taken away and through this son there will be much added.

This is exactly the same when you got born again. When you were born again as a Christian God put His spirit in. Then the reproach of Adam failing, sinning and falling, of a king living in defeat is broken and now God has a king emerging into the earth in you who is called to be fruitful. Jesus said in John 15, He said you've not chosen me. I chose you to bring forth fruit and fruit that remains. It remains through remaining in Him, so we're called to be fruitful and overflow of a life that comes connected with God.

Most believers do not accomplish or fulfil their potential and one of the reasons is a lack of vision and dream to accomplish something with your life. The other is a lack of connecting to the source, the one who can empower you to fulfil that dream. You know that we focus and talk so often about spirit life, the life of the spirit. Why? Because there is a dimension of God life unless you are connected to Him and stay connected and the life is flowing, you can't produce the fruit of heaven in your life.

You'll hear us in the church talk about restoration retreats and freedom retreats and things like that. It's not just something we do. It's to unlock baggage and the bondage so kings can dream and connect and begin to fulfil their destiny! It's not just something you go to. It's a part of you owning I have a destiny as a king to accomplish something and I need to be free of the baggage! I don't understand why people stay in a Holy Ghost church like this and still don't open up their heart to let their lives be sorted out. It's a total paradox really. It's quite strange - don't understand it at all. However...

Around the world people hunger for it everywhere we go. Lyn goes out; people draw by the crowds to get what she has. Ian goes out; people draw by the crowds to get what he has. I go out; people draw by the crowds to get it. Celebrities come to get it, businessmen come to get it. They see something that can unlock the dream in their life, set them on a course to serve God and be free. So here's the thing - kings dream. Kings have dreams. Do you have dreams? What are your dreams? What have you written down about your future? What are the hopes? What are the aspirations? If you haven't done don't be condemned. There'll be some reasons for it and in these coming weeks we'll hope to unlock it so that you begin to start to reach out and dream.

If all your dreams have been dashed and you've lost any hope of dreaming, we want to see in these coming weeks if you would break out of that and begin to dare to dream again, then begin to start to talk about your dream. But kings dream. Kings dream! God is able to do more exceedingly abundantly than we ask or think or ask or dream. In other words God has got much more for us but we have to position ourself before Him, asking, pursuing and then allowing Him to change how we think. You keep thinking the same thoughts, you'll live the same life!

So it's about our thinking, where your mind goes, what's occupying your attention. If it's filled up with games, if it's filled up with internet, if it's filled up with television, filled up with all these things, it is stealing your life and your potential.

We have to understand you've only got one life to live. A bucket list - it caught on so much it kind of captured people, because what it did was - and I love the film. It's one of the best films I've ever seen. It was a great film and they had such a touching ending - I cried. I cried. I tell you now, it was touching. I thought I wonder why I cried. I realised because there's something, an eternal message in it. You've only got so much time and then it's over. Make good use of the time you've got. It's the one thing you can never replace. You can replace everything else around you except people and time, so we have to value those things - so we need to dream.

The movie caught on because this guy had a list of all of these things and they were not quite fulfilled the way they thought. The guy dreamed of kissing the most beautiful woman in the world. He had something in his mind what that might be and it turned out he was restored in his relationship with his estranged daughter and kissed her - the most beautiful woman in the world.

So sometimes dreams don't quite work out, especially God dreams. God dreams never work out quite like you think. Oh my! And that's what happened for Joseph. Now he had this dream and so kings dream, we need to dream. What did he dream of? You know what kings dream of? Increasing a kingdom. They dream of dominion. They dream of expanding their influence, so what did he dream of? Well he dreamed - this is what he dreamed and it says he told the brothers this dream. He said now listen to the dream, please listen to my dream. This is what I've dreamed. We were binding the sheaves in the field and my sheave rose and stood upright and your sheaves stood up also. But they bowed down to my sheave. ... [Laughter] ... That was a really nice dream. He was very happy about that dream, especially if you're the youngest in the family and they don't speak nicely to you. He comes out and you can almost catch the king inside him you know? Oh, we all had sheaves but yours bowed down to mine - and they hated him, so he had another one.

The brothers said shall you reign over us and have dominion over us and they hated him for the dreams and hated him for the words, but he dreamed another dream, told it to his brother - look, I dreamed another dream. The sun, the moon and the 11 stars all bowed down to me - and he told his father and his father told him off. So dreamers don't necessarily have a very good time when you start to share the dream. God told me I'd do this! Who do you think you are? That's what goes on.

So he had a dream. He dreamed of dominion. That's what kings dream of. They dream of a future different to what is here, a future shaped by the words of God. Now your future is shaped by your own desires perhaps or it's shaped by the opinions of people, or maybe it's shaped by your past. Well I've got no education, I can't get anywhere. Who told you that lie? So there are many things - oh, well we're poor. We've always been poor. My family's always been poor, or I've had this bad background. I've been abused and I have no education. This is all junk and rubbish, but what does God say that would frame your future?

You see God, everything, the world that came into being was framed or constructed by the word of God spoken forth, but before God spoke it forth He dreamed it. So we're creative, we're like God in that sense. We've got creativity, so we need to dream, need to position yourself for dreams and begin to start to thing what is it that God has put in my heart for my future? What is it that stirs my passion? What is it I wouldn't want to die without doing it? What is it that really stirs me? A lot of people just get too busy to stop and ask the question, but you need to because you only have one life and it's going - tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, just like that - and you don't know when it runs out.

So the dream is what begins to cause us to think about the future and gives us hope and inspiration and desire and longing and it keeps us with a forward focus, keeps us looking to God so it gets focus. So kings must speak their vision. Kings declare their vision. Notice he told his brothers - now you've got to be careful who you speak it to. You speak your dream to the wrong person, they'll leap on you and smash and crush the dream into the ground and powder it because your dream threatens them. Who do you think you are? Why should you dream like that? Why should you be like that? What they really mean is well I'm not going to be like that and neither will you be.

It's like crabs in a bucket. No crab will ever get out if you've got crabs in a bucket. They all will pull the one - as soon as one climbs up and gets on top the others all pull him down and unfortunately many people are like crabs in a bucket. I think New Zealand culture's a bit like crabs in a bucket - someone climbs up and starts to look like they're getting out, we've got to find a way to pull them down. It's a ridiculous thing isn't it?

But if that's the culture you've got to find a way then how to guard the dream of your heart, but you still need to speak it and there is a place to speak it. Every morning when you get up there's a need to speak your dream, to speak it over your life, to speak the future, to speak what God says is true about you! That's how men of faith rise. That's how men grow to be strong in the spirit. They don't just wait and say oh God, what's today going to hold? Today is the day the Lord has made! Today is a good day! I command my day to line up with God's plan for my life! I take dominion over everything that the devil has cooked up against me - it shall not succeed! I call God's dream into being in my life.

You've got to get assertive and get up there in the morning you know and shape your world before you go out to meet it. Demonic people have been up probably at midnight calling curses on you and you wake up heavy and grrrmph. Come on! You've got to learn to rise! Begin to speak the word of God! That's how we begin to create and construct something about our future, see?

Bible says in Romans 4:17, it says God causes things to be not as though they are, so everyone whoever said to Abraham said Abraham, father of nations - yeah, that's me, father of nations. Abraham looked up every night and he saw the stars; yes, children, children, many children. Then he looked down and he saw the sand - many children. Just like Brian,he looked at the past and there's seven kids - look, many children! He looked at the seat, there's an empty seat. Empty seat in the van - one more child, one more child, one more child, there it is now, he called it into being, just magically appeared I'm sure! ... [Laughter]

Now you know it didn't magically appear. He had a vital part in it, isn't that right? ... [Laughter] ... Dreams don't just happen you know. You've got to do your part, see, then the dream has got to be cooked up and prepared before it's delivered. This is true of all dreams, this is how it is. There we go.

Okay, here's the last one to finish on. Kings prepare. Kings prepare. Ecclesiastes 5:3 it says a dream comes about through much activity, not through lots of talk. [Laughs] So well there's some people like to talk and if you're prophetic you probably like to talk a lot. [Laughs] You've got to get past the talk and doing something you know - you know, all talk, just a talker. They say oh, he's just a dreamer. Great to have a dream but your dreams got to find action, it's got to find a reality in it and so we find - I'll just look at one part of - just look over into Genesis 39 because I've run out of time and I want to just give you three areas that actually Joseph was prepared in.

The Bible says in Psalm 105, it says until the time His word came the word of the Lord tried him, so although he had a dream there was a timing for the dream to be fulfilled and there was a preparation before that timing came about. You can delay the timing. You can miss your timing, but you have to be doing something before your dream is fulfilled. You want to dream to be a doctor? Well you've got probably five to seven years of study and hard work. Then the dream is fulfilled, so whatever you want to do in life, life teaches us have the dream, get a plan, stick with the plan and become big enough to fill that dream. Most people don't get big enough on the inside to fill the dream that God has.

God's dream is a big dream. God's dream for your life is bigger than you can imagine, greater than you can imagine, so the problem is we're stuck with thinking too small and we're stuck with being too small and God wants to expand us. So when you start to get a dream in your life and begin to start to pray that dream into being and plan towards it, believe me you are going to have to grow into it, become big enough to fill the dream. The problem is not the dream coming about; mostly the problem is you getting big enough to fill it.

So you get a businessman and they want a great big business and there's millions coming in - but are you big enough to run such a one? No. So you have to grow, you have to prepare. So people have the dream. You've got to grow - YOU have to grow into the dream and God always grows people into things. What you're facing right now is God trying to get you grow into your dream or into His dream for you. We don't always see it that way.

So we do know the story of Joseph. He had a great dream, we're excited about the great dream, we identify with him being told off and rebuked and put down for his dream. But often we don't realise is that he actually did something to fulfil the dream. He did something. He held a promise of God and grew through the difficult circumstances God took him through to prepare him. Let me give it to you quickly - in Genesis, Chapter 39, Verse 1. Joseph had gone down to Egypt. He was a slave in Egypt. He was stripped naked, put up on a box, sold in an auction to the highest bidder. That's not very nice. But he had a dream and he never let go his dream and so what happens, it says here the Lord was with Joseph. He was a successful man in the house of his master the Egyptian and the master saw the Lord was with him. The Lord made all he did to prosper in his hands and Joseph found favour in his sight and served him and made him an overseer of the house. In Verse 5, it came from that time that he made him overseer of the house and all that he had. The Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake and the blessing of the Lord was on all he had in the house and all he had in the field.

Now we could preach a message just on your role in the workplace off that one verse. The Egyptian representing an unsaved person and the Christian, being a source of blessing to the business, a source of blessing to the community. God blessed the Egyptian because Joseph was there. Think about that. Now that didn't just happen by chance either - oh, well that was Joseph. Notice Joseph did some things, so here's some of the things. See Joseph was there but Joseph was in the palace. A little bit later he's in the prison. Now here's the thing; he's in a palace and he prospers; he's in a prison and he prospers and he is learning how to manage people at kingly level, governmental level and he's learning how to deal with the lowest of society, the scum who were in prison. In both places he prospers. That's no accident, but he is learning. He's having to learn how to manage people at every strata of society, so God gives him a dose at the top and a dose at the bottom and now he's equipped to be able to manage and lead a country of people at every level, socially and financially in society. His prison experience, his Egyptian experience and prison experience was all part of preparing for the dream that God had for him.

Maybe you feel you're in prison right now. Okay, what is it God wants you to learn? Don't stay in prison too long aye? I'll just finish it now. He grew in these things; firstly he grew in capacity. He grew in ability to live at a regal level, at a high society level. Many Christians can't handle it at all. They can't even talk or communicate with people who've got money because of what's in their own heart. Think about that. It makes them uncomfortable when someone's got money, wealth. But God wants you to be able to live in there, serve in there. They would prosper because you're there. You would ask yourself what makes me uncomfortable? That's what God wants you to grow in your capacity in, so you can welcome people.

One of the things I love about by son Dave is Dave can relate to people at every level. I've seen him. He's met with Presidents, he's met with people top financially, he's met with people right down to people out of prison and there isn't one that I don't find he can't connect with and talk with. Very few people can do that. You've got to be free inside of any envy of what they have. You have to have no agenda whatsoever and people sense it. They sense it.

So Joseph's preparation; first he grew in capacity, see? He grew in capacity. Now how did he prosper? The Bible says how you prosper. You meditate in the word of God and you get to perform the word of God, get to do it. That's what God told Joshua in Joshua 1:8, he said you meditate in it, hold the word in your mouth, do the word of God, you'll prosper. So he prospered. How did he prosper? Well we look at it and we interpret it, oh he just had a lucky break. God blessed him because God wanted to do it, but He doesn't do that for me. No, this is a principle. You're a king. You're called in a kingly calling and God will prosper if you do what other people do that prosper.

Okay, the second thing he did is he grew in character. He had to grow in character. Character's what you are when no one's looking. Character's what you are when no one sees - had to grow in character. He had some huge issues to face; hatred of his brothers, injustice, betrayal by his brothers, sold as a slave, as an object of meat, just a piece of meat down on a slave market, bitter words spoken to him, betrayal, injustice, thrown into jail on a false rape charge when he'd stood up for what was right, temptation, ingratitude by those he helped, delays. He had to face all of those things. They sound familiar to you? It's called God's training process for kings.

What did he come out with? When he emerged at the end, when his time came, he showed great grace to his brothers. Don't worry, it wasn't you sent me. God sent me beforehand. He showed huge grace. He showed generosity - I'm here to provide for you, provide for the people who are bitter and hated him and put him down and then betrayed him? That's generosity and grace. That's a great, great character quality. I don't find many Christians have that. They find that hard, hard to be kind and gracious to people that have hurt them, to bless people, so too small to be great. Understand what I'm saying? We have to grow.

These things come to grow kings. You're a king in growth. What did he show? He showed strength. You've got to be strong to handle that kind of pressure of being betrayed, of being falsely accused, thrown to the bottom of the jail and you know you did right, treated and chained like a scum at the bottom part of the jail, then still serve and work your way up until you're in charge and everyone trusts you and loves you, believes in you. Tremendous internal strength, strength of character, determined! This prison that I'm in right now - I might be chained up. Everyone says I was guilty of rape. They want to take me and cut me up or cut parts off or take my head off or something - but listen. God said it's different. I've got a better future than this. It does not end here. I'm only in the middle of the story.

It doesn't end there. It ends when God has fulfilled His word in my life and when the time came the word of the Lord was fulfilled, but before that it was always something - this is how the word of God tries you. You see it, but then everything in front of you is different. Then what you've got in there starts to come up. He showed great faith. Finally he grew in faith, he held onto the word of God. Genesis 49 tells us Joseph - now this is the blessing of Joseph. This is what was on his life. Joseph is a fruitful bough, planted by a well. Ha ha! Now we begin to discover how he could do it. He had a well of life that came out of relationship with the spirit of God, whose branches go over the wall. In other words he was always reaching to be bigger, could never be contained. It says the archers shot at him and sorely wounded him but his strength remained. It says his arms remained strong and his bow was strong. In other words he could shoot words too but he didn't shoot bitter words, he shot words of faith, words of blessing. In the midst of adversity his strength remained because God strengthened him.

God helped him when everything around him was bad to hold the vision, to speak it until his words that he spoke, his bow was strong. No matter what anyone did to him his confession was strong, his testimony was strong. He fired words out knowing those words will not return empty. I shall arise! I shall come into dominion! I shall come to the truth! I shall come out in the calling of God! I will ARISE to fulfil the destiny! His bow was strong. That's your bow, your mouth; the words, the arrows. Got to find the strength to praise God and declare God's word instead of filling your mouth with negatives and complaints and difficulties and obstacles and whatever, like they did in the wilderness and fell there.

So the time came and Joseph came out and what a generous man he was. Well brothers, I know you betrayed me, I know you sold me out and I know you're feeling bad he said. Listen, don't feel bad. It wasn't you. I see now the hand of God shaping a king and I'm going to tell you something. God has positioned me to provide for you.

That's what kings do. Kings dream. Kings declare. Kings prepare and then kings are generous. Are you a king? Well you are, but will you live up to who you are or below who you are? Will you live like a servant who's not enough and always complains and has no dream? Or will you live as a king, begin to dream, begin to declare, begin to prepare and begin to generously give? You have to choose.

Father God, we thank you that in this house are many kings in the making. We thank you Lord that that anointing, that royal anointing of the Holy Ghost, that anointing that was on Jesus who is called King of Kings, Lord we thank you that anointing has come upon us calling us to arise and to learn how to walk as royalty in the earth today. God, we declare oh God, kings in the house are arising. Today we thank you that just as Ian and Kay are emerging globally kings hidden in the house over many years, we thank you today that there are hidden in the house other kings, other kings who will emerge and arise in these coming days to take the gospel in the mighty power of God to our community, to our nation, to nations of the earth. We thank you that there are kings in the business field, kings in education, kings in the marketplace, kings arising in the midst Lord. We hear the shout of our king in our midst. Arise and shine for light is calm and the glory of the Lord is rising upon you! Lord, we rise to that sound in Jesus' mighty name and we declare YOU reign, YOU reign oh God.

Come on, let's stand to our feet. Let's begin to sing that song, you reign over all the earth. Make it the declaration because you and I are united with Him and if He reigns we reign with Him.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· Gen 37:1-10 Joseph dreamed a dream!

· Dreams and visions are the language of the Holy Spirit

· God reveals His plans and purposes through dreams and visions – pictures of the future and possibilities

· Act 2:17 In the last days will be outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Visions and dreams – all flesh – divine bucket list

Destined to be fruitful:

Gen 30:2-24 God has taken away my reproach

· Joseph = OT3130 = He will add to me

· Prophetic destiny to add to be productive and fruitful

· All believers are called to be productive and fruitful

· John 15:16 Chose you to bear fruit. ‘I chose you to bring forth fruit’. He chose us

· Fruit = overflow of a life draws upon the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. The overflow of abiding in Christ and His life coming forth

3. Kings Dream:

· Eph 3:20 God is able to do abundantly more than we ask or think

· We must explore the realm of possibilities and not accept what is. We are born into a Royal family, Identity

· Kings dream of extending the kingdom

· Gen 37:5 Now Joseph had a dream

· Dream – supernatural influence, inspiration into his life

· God communicates in dreams and visions, trances, inspired thoughts

· Eg Abraham, Jabez, Joseph

· Must position self to dream and to see

· Alone/quiet/focus/meditate

· Dream of: Dominion, Influence, Significant and influential life

· The Word of God came to him and formed a dream of the future, a blueprint

4. Kings Declare their Dreams:

· Gen 37:5,9,10 Joseph told his brothers, father

· He didn’t understand it all but spoke and declared the Word of God

· Power of the tongue – must learn to speak forth dreams

· Your words shape the spiritual atmosphere create room for the invisible to become visible

· Declaring the word of God over your life shapes and frames your future

· It is a daily declaration

· Declaring his dream triggered the events that fulfilled the dream

5. Kings Prepare:

· Ecc 5:3 A dream comes trough much activity

· Dreams don’t come about by just dreaming – speak – order life

· Ps 105:19 Until the time his (dream) came the Word of the Lord

- there is a timing for dreams to manifest

- We must cooperate and play our part in fulfillment

- Faith without works is dead

Joseph Preparation:

i. He grew in capacity:

· Gen 37:2-5 Joseph served in the Palace – and

· Gen 37:20-22 Joseph served in Prison – and prospered

· God makes it clear that if we meditate in the word we will prosper Joshua 1:8

· He developed skill and capacity in different environments

ii. He grew in Character:

· Gen 45:4-8 Do not be grieved – God sent me!

· Gen 50:19-21 I will provide

Obstacles:

Hatred betrayal ingratitude rejection

Injustice delay bitter words temptation

Joseph developed:

Grace wisdom generosity

Strength faith

iii. He grew in Faith – held onto the Word of God:

Gen 49:22-24 Fruitful bough by a well

Archers – bitter words, hate, injustice

Bow = mouth Arrows = words spoken

Arms of hands made strong by God Almighty

Let the Kings Arise (2 of 4)

Sun 7 Nov 2010 AM  « Back to Top

Notes»  Audio»  Website»

Peter says, you are a chosen generation. You are a royal priesthood. Many believers tend to think we're sinners, and see ourselves in terms of our past or our failures, but God says you are an offspring, that God has chosen you, put His DNA spiritually into you and now you are the offspring of God in the earth. He says you are a royal priesthood. In other words you have royalty in you. You are the offspring of a king. Notice how kings operate, how kings speak, they carry themselves in a noble way. They act in a way often different to what ordinary people do. Why is that? Because they know who they are and they know how they're to operate in the earth.

Please now open your Bible with me and let's have a look in Mark, Chapter 4. I shared a message a week or so ago - can't remember when, it seems a long time - but about kings dream. You are a king. If inside you you understand who you are, then one of the things you realise is your need to have dreams about your future and about your direction. I love the idea of Bill having a bucket list. Isn't that fantastic, a bucket list and it'll be so many trips to China and so many people saved, now preaching and of course casting out demons next year. You realise that? ... [Laughter] ... Put that on your bucket list too, casting out demons and praying for the sick and healing them. You've only got one year to get ready for it. It'll be fantastic.

So I want to speak today, let kings arise. We sang a song earlier on, Rise Up and there was a theme flowing through our songs at the beginning about rising up. In the Book of Peter, Peter describes us like this. He says you are a chosen generation. You are a royal priesthood. Many believers don't know who they are. We tend to think we're sinners and we tend to see ourselves in terms of our past or our failures, but God says you are an offspring, that God has chosen you, put His DNA spiritually into you and now you are the offspring of God in the earth. He says you are a royal priesthood. In other words you have royalty in you. You are the offspring of a king and I don't know about you but when you notice how kings operate, how kings speak, they carry themselves in a noble way. They act in a way often different to what ordinary people do. Why is that? Because they know who they are and they know how they're to operate in the earth.

The Bible says that you and I are a priest. That means we have access by faith into the presence of God, to pray and to see, to hear from God, to access His wisdom. But we're also a king and I want to share today a message called let kings arise. I'm going to follow this theme for a little while, but we're going to have a look here in this passage about kings in training. In the Book of Revelation which is a revelation of Jesus Christ there's a number of things the Bible says, but one of the things, they see Him coming and He's clothed in white riding a horse and His name is King of Kings. He's a king and He has many kings under His kingship. You need to see yourself as a king under the kingship of Jesus Christ, called to advance the kingdom. If your Christian life is about just coming to church and hanging on and not doing too many bad things you've missed the point completely. That is not what Jesus came to do.

He came to speak a message about a kingdom that was advanced through miracles and signs and wonders, a kingdom that brings hope to people. He wanted us to be born into that kingdom and then extend that kingdom. I want to share with you something that's actually really incredibly practical. I'm going to take it out of one of the stories of Jesus of something He did. In Verse 35; On the same day about even when even had come Jesus said to them "Let us cross over to the other side." Now when they'd left the multitude they took Him along in their boat as He was. And other little boats were also with Him. And there was a great storm arose and the waves beat into the boat, and it was filling up and looked like it was going to capsize I guess. But He was in the stern and He was asleep on a pillow. Imagine sleeping through a storm, you've got to be really tired or really at peace. They woke Him up and said "Teacher, don't You care we're about to die?" He arose, He rose up. He rebuked the wind and He spoke to the sea, "Peace, be still!" And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. And He said to them, "Why are you so fearful? How is it you have no faith?" Notice that - no faith. No faith. Your lack of faith is revealed in how you respond to the storms of life. And so they feared exceedingly and said "Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!"

So I want to open some things on this. I want you to keep as you're thinking about this that Jesus is the King of Kings. He's about to demonstrate His authority in nature and He's got in training a bunch of junior kings. I want you to see some specific lessons that we can draw out of this. It says here even had come. Now in the Bible, in Bible times the day began at the evening, so when we get up in the morning, say it's a new day, but for the Hebrew culture the new day begins in the evenings. Six o'clock at night is the beginning of the next day, so it's evening and daylight make up the day, the evening first, then the daylight. So you notice this, you read that verse there it's very clear He's talking about a new day, a new opportunity, so when evening had come it's the end of one day, the beginning of another. It's the beginning of a new and a fresh day. God is always doing new things, completely new things and fresh things and kings don't live in yesterday's things. They live in the new things that God is doing, so we see that Jesus at this point, it's a new day. I don't know whether you're aware of it but there is a new season in the earth at this time. There is a new day dawning for the church of Jesus Christ, a day when miracles are in the marketplace, a day of the church invading society in a way it's never done before.

When I've been up to Taiwan earlier this year we had 80 pop stars and media people. I've never been in any church anywhere in the world where they have penetrated the culture, the pop culture and had one so many people in the media to Christ, it's a new day. It's a day for new things to happen and every day we arise it's an opportunity for something new, so new day here speaks of a new beginning.

Now God is about to move and do something different. You and I need to be aware that what God did 10 or 15 years ago is not what He's doing now. We're in a new phase, a new season of God's work, of God's work in nations, so the first thing is even had come as the beginning of a new day meaning that every new day you need something fresh from God. One of the dilemmas that many Christians have is living out of the experience of last year or the year before, or even a decade ago or even a childhood experience of God. We need fresh experiences of God for the new seasons that we're in, fresh revelation from Him. Notice what it says, Verse 35; Then He said to them. So the first thing we see is that kings receive prophetic revelation. It's a new day and Jesus' got new things to say. Jesus spoke to them. Notice there He spoke to them; don't live in last year's experience. What is God speaking now?

God is speaking a whole number of things to His church globally right now about kingdom, about world missions or global missions, about Israel, about the supernatural, many things God's saying. Notice Jesus spoke to them. There was something He had to say. You have to position yourself to hear it. If you go back up to Verse 34, when they were alone He said all things with His disciples. In other words the crowd didn't hear what He was up to. It was the disciples who spent time alone. Are you building time alone with God to hear what He is saying for this season you're in in your life?

We've been a ministry for many years, but right now for us I feel that God wants to speak new things and fresh things. We want to spend out next season seeking Him for fresh things that He wants to do - can't live off yesterday's experience. It isn't enough. We need new things for the new day. We're living in a generation which is open to the supernatural in a way unprecedented. We need to be experiencing as individual believers and as a church a new dimension of God. It comes through the prophetic word. It comes by hearing God speak. It comes by you positioning yourself to let God speak to you.

In the story of Mary and Martha, Mary positioned herself and she heard directly first hand from the Lord. How many of us are positioning ourself to hear first hand from the Lord? Kings receive prophetic revelation. If you're going to be a king serving under Jesus Christ, we need to be hearing from Him what does He want me to do? What does He want for this next season of my life? What adjustments do I need to make? What fresh vision does He want to put in my heart so I'm not living day to day; I'm living out of an anticipation, an expectation of new things God is about to do.

As a church we're about to launch into Pakistan. This is a completely new day. We're about to launch into the whole area of media and being able to impact multitudes, millions of people through media. This is a new day. God is saying new things. It's not just the latest thing we dreamed up. This is something God is speaking about, is a door opening up into the Muslim world in a way that has never happened before. Wherever I've gone in the Muslim world Jesus is appearing to people. People are supernaturally encountering Him, but nevertheless the church must arise and let the gospel go into these places. It's a new day! It's a new day! It's a new day!

It's a day of global harvest. It's a day of ordinary believers arising with the supernatural power of God operating in their life. Don't say it's not for me. It is for you, but you've got to position yourself so you're in the flow of revelation, hearing from God, capturing His heart. It's a day I believe when God is raising up fathers and mothers to nurture a generation that's fatherless. This is a great day. It's a great day for us! It's a great day if we can position ourself and be hearing how God wants us to respond.

There's men and women in here, God wants you to catch your heart for the next generation and invest time and energy and finance in working with them and raising them up. So it's a new day. Notice here that while they were alone Jesus spoke to them. You don't get to hear from God usually when you're out with a crowd. You get to hear from God when you're alone. Notice the second thing is - the first thing is kings receive prophetic direction, prophetic insight, prophetic revelation. If you're going to serve God and advance His kingdom you need to be hearing Him, because you need to hear Him for that workplace. You need to hear Him for your family. You need to hear Him for your business, need to hear Him for the school. You need to hear what God has to say because what is doesn't necessarily mean it's got to stay that way. God says it can be different.

Now second thing is kings dream of enlarging their territory. Most kings have got something in mind. They want to govern the territory well, they also want to enlarge it, want it to grow wealthy, want their subjects to grow wealthy. They want the territory to increase. They want to grow and expand it, so Jesus was continually thinking how to take new territory. Jesus was a visionary. His vision at the end of it was go take the gospel into every nation of the earth! I don't hear Him saying sit and look after yourself. I don't hear Him say sit in a cosy place just concerned about yourself and your children. I don't hear Him saying that. I hear Him saying go into all the nations of the earth!

When we first talked about Pakistan they wanted to raise their eyes and say isn't that risky? Yes, but starting the church in Jerusalem was very risky too. Come on, it's a day when God is causing people to arise with a sense of challenge. If you're in business how can you advance the gospel through your business? You're not there just to survive. You're there to prosper and do well and release resources and get a heart for mission, see God moving. So you notice here His words to them. Here's what they got. Let's cross over to the other side. I want to draw two things about that; the first thing is the other side. The other side meant the other side of the lake. There was a realm of territory of the Gadarenes that Jesus wanted to enter. It was governed by demonic powers. The people were shut down. In fact the very first person they met was the most demonised man in the region, real scary, maniac lunatic but the heart of God was we've got to go to new territories. I know we're having revival. I know we're having great meetings. I know people are getting blessed. I know people are getting touched - but there's territories have never heard the gospel and I want to go to those places. Let's cross over to the other side. Let's go to where we haven't been before. Let's not rest and be comfortable. That's the heart of Jesus.

See, so kings are forever thinking how they can enlarge their territory. Jesus is a visionary, wants you to get vision of how your life can have an impact. Get alone with God one day and write down how many years you think you might have left and say what could I accomplish with the kingdom of God in that time? Don't sit around saying I wonder what the church can do for me, or maybe isn't doing for me, end up in a small world and complaining negative world. Start to think like a king. I'm a king! I need to hear what God could do through me and the life I've got yet to live on the earth!

Come on, you've got to get that in your spirit. Go to the other side, new territory, new opportunities. It could be in your personal life the territory, could be a financial area, could be a business area, could be a family area. I mean every one of us has got some territory to advance the kingdom in. You may just be stuck in some form of bondage. Well that's an area, write it down, that's the other side for me. I've got to break out of that thing and get free of it. Maybe something that's got around you, a habit that's got your life; you say the other side, I'm crossing to the other side. I'm not staying here. I've got to break out and see the kingdom of God break through in my life. The other side, so let's cross over means you have to travel through. You've got to move forward. You actually have to move, have to progress.

There's a good word that you can use for it - it's called migrate. A person migrates, they go from one place to another. Our life with God is from faith to faith, it's a journey of migration. It's not of staying where we are. Anyone who stays where they are has stopped. Anyone who stays where they are has stopped. They're dead in the water. A yacht dead in the water don't go anywhere. It's just at the mercy of whatever. It's becalmed. It's a horrible state when you're like that. No, no, we need to be moving forward, making conscious decisions especially with the exit of this year as we come into next year, we are moving to take new territory personally, in our family, in our business, in our finances, in our ministry effect on other people. We're going to enlarge. We're going to break out, we're going to take new territory. See, so you must be willing to make the change.

Now of course as a church we've been through a lot of changes in this last year and they're quite challenging I suppose in many ways. You do feel the stress because we all tend to like to be comfortable, but actually I'm looking and thinking well now I've got people up there in America with the Dream Centre; I've got people up in Auckland now with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids. I have Dave and Kate working with millions up in Pakistan. We'll be having people - we've got people up there in Northern Territories there, working with Aborigines. We've got lots of things are happening. We've got Sue up in Uganda and all kinds of things are happening there.

So we see our territory is enlarging. Now you see unless you identify with that you miss what God is doing, can't see the big picture. Big picture's very, very big, but of course if we're in our little world we can't see a big picture at all. Now God wants us to expand our thinking, expand our believing in every kind of area, expand the thinking. Amen!

So here's the thing: kings dream of enlarging their territory. What assignment has God given you? What is your territory and how can you enlarge it? What has God called you to influence? How can you increase your influence? You may be in a rest home or you may be in some place, well who can you grab from the jaws of hell before they slip out and burn up forever? ... [Applause] ... There's always some territory to take, always in the kingdom of God. Amen! So kings know there is somewhere.

Here's the next think you notice: kings advance to new territory. I want you to see something here in these verses. When they left the multitudes, the multitude just are the multitude. They don't usually go very far. They follow everyone else. If you're going to be a king, if you're going to stand up and fulfil your destiny, you can't follow the crowd. Young people, you want to be great - don't follow the crowd. Crowd are lost, bewildered, bewitched, under all kinds of influences. They don't know where they're going and they don't know what controls them. So they left the multitude. If we live our live to please people and we live our life continually to meet the needs of people, live our life continually to keep people happy, we will never, never move from where we are into larger territory because you know what happens? The moment you try to step out and make a change people try to stop you. We don't want you to make the change. We don't feel comfortable with you being there because it'll show up we're not moving. That's what happens - happens everywhere.

So you're going to move from the crowd, so there's a couple of things that they had to - the first things they had to do was they had to leave the crowd, had to leave the crowd behind. The crowd - it takes vision and courage to go against what other people do. You'll probably realise over the years we've never really followed what all the other churches do and not everyone's very happy about that. Some people come and say well you should be like them down the road. No, because we were never raised up to be like that. We've tried to resist some of the current trends because they violate the DNA I have. Church should be full of God, full of the presence of God, full of what God is doing, full of people who love one another and love God and are happy to be themselves, keen to advance the kingdom of God. See?

So you have to resist the pressure. There's pressures everywhere, pressures in ministry, pressures in finance, pressures in business. No matter where you are there's pressure. The question is if you're a king do you have vision and will you expand your territory and resist the pressure of people? It takes courage to do that, say our marriage is going to be different, our family's going to be different, our business is going to be different, our lives are going to be different. It takes courage to do that, so you've got to leave the crowd because the crowd aren't doing that and the crowd are never right. Never. Think about that.

Why would you follow the crowd if they're never right? Come on, think about it. Just think about it. A couple of years ago the crowd were saying come on, buy up more land, buy up investment, buy up property, buy this, but God was saying to me something different. He was saying no, no, get rid of your mortgage, make sure everything's all paid off. I felt a bit goofy and stupid that I was the only one thinking that way. Turned out to be quite a good move really - so they left the crowd. See? Kings advance to new territory, so to advance to new territory you've got to stop worrying what people thing. You've got to advance in what God is showing YOU to do. Notice they did two things; they left the people and they left the shore. You never go out into the seas of opportunity if you don't leave the shore of security. Sometimes we've got to step out and take risks and take chances and step out and let go of security.

I think for Dave and Kate, early on for them that right now they're planning to let go everything that they've tried to build and to let go all security. Now at that age in life that's a big challenge, knowing that you're going to sow your finance in your life and you have an uncertainty about your future - if you're a responsible father and husband that's a huge challenge. Be the same for Doug and Kalinda. Same for Terry. These are big challenges, to leave security, to leave the shore to pursue that walk that God's called us to. Now your security doesn't mean leaving Hastings or anything. Your security could be just your house. It could be something you've got your life invested in and you could do great things but you're held to that thing. What is it that's holding you? What's stopping you? What's got a grip? What is the crowd saying to you? What is it got hold of you that as a king you can't enlarge because you fear the crowd or fear to leave the shore? Think about it, see?

So here's the thing. They were not alone - Jesus was with them. You may think when you take the journey of faith you're alone and it feels like you're alone. It feels incredibly lonely I can tell you now, but you're not alone. Jesus is with you. Now the other thing if you look in the verse you'll see something I hadn't noticed before. Other little boats were there. There's other people stepping out just like you and sometimes when you step out in faith and do something a bit different it feels like you're the only one and you feel like you're a little bit weird, but you know what? I can tell you now there's always other people doing it too. You just don't know about them yet.

So here's the next thing. Kings have spiritual perspective. In Verse 37 it says a great storm arose, tremendously great storm arose. Here's the thing you'll find. There's always demonic opposition to the dreams of kings. If you intend to advance the kingdom of God there will be demonic opposition. The demonic opposition came in two ways; one in the form of a storm and the second when they landed in the form of a person. In other words, putting it simply, that whenever you try to fulfil your destiny in Christ there's certainly you will find demonic opposition rise up in the form of circumstances and people.

All of it will be to intimidate you, make you lose your dream and look out for yourself and become full of fear and full of unbelief. It's always the same, every kind of situation where we try to step out and do the things of God, inevitably there will be some storms. You have to be ready for them. That word storm there, it means literally a whirlwind, like a column of air that's just swirling around and around like that. You get caught in a whirlwind, boy, you really now it. You get spun around and thrown up in the air and you're extremely unstable for a while. This was no ordinary storm. It was a demonic storm. I've been in one of them. When I was preaching in Fiji I was in a room preaching about religious spirits and this whirlwind started up inside the room. Wind just started to run round the room like that. It was loud enough to hear and strong enough to feel and there was no physical cause for it. As quickly as it started it stopped, went out and then it attacked the church evangelism, tore all the roof off it. It didn't touch any of the other huts. It was a demonic whirlwind, so this is a demonic whirlwind that actually caught up the seas and then raised the seas up so they were in danger of sinking.

There's a number of storms. There's usually three different types of storms come in life. There's storms that come because we goofed up so badly we've created a huge mess and now we've got a storm. Those are not good ones. You've got to repent, it takes you time to put them back together again and if you're honest with God He'll help you. There's another storm that God lets rise up to get your attention or to check your faith out, then there's a demonic storm. Demonic storm's just straight out resistance. You've got to discern what the storm is, so this was a demonic storm because straight after they met a demonic man.

So new assignments have new challenges. Keep your eyes on your assignment, not on the challenge. Jesus said we've got to go to the other side. If He said we've got to go to the other side, He didn't anticipate a boat sinking on the way. And if it did there'd still be driftwood to hold on to to get ashore. Paul had three boats sink under him but he carried on. This is Christianity that Jesus proclaimed was never sissy. The boat sank, he carried on. In this particular case Jesus had no - He knew the end from the beginning. If He has given you an assignment He'll get you there and I don't care what storms come and whether your boat sinks on you; nevertheless He can get you there because if He gave the assignment He didn't change because there was a storm!

If you live out of circumstances, feelings and experiences, when they turn bad you'll sink. You have to build your life on revelation and on the word of God so in the storm you keep your perspective. You keep sound in your mind. Storms come to fill you with fear so your faith goes. Notice what Jesus said; they were so filled with fear, He said you've got no faith. In other words the storm and circumstances when they focussed their attention off it caused them to forget the assignment that they had and what happened then? They got filled with fear, they began to doubt the word of God. Then they began to accuse Jesus; Jesus, you don't care about us. They began to blame Him; you need to help us. They're thinking not like a king, they're thinking like a victim, someone powerless in something they can't control. What it exposed was their thinking. What it exposed was their faith levels. Listen, you can be in the middle of meetings and God's doing stuff and still develop no faith.

Faith is built on hearing and responding to the word of God, of getting God's word into your own heart and life. Otherwise you can be in a great meeting, have a great experience and the next day your boat's sinking. The key thing is what did God say to you and are you pursuing it? And if there's a storm what is coming up in your life in the face of that storm? If you're a king you'll arise and assert your dominion. If you're a victim you'll say oh, help me Jesus, I'm sinking, wah wah. Who's stupid idea was it to put us in the boat?

Come on. Jesus was so unconcerned He was asleep. Why was He so unconcerned? Because He absolutely knew He was going to the other side. He'd heard from the Father. He had revelation. He's a king. That's why He's acting like a king - He's sleeping unconcerned about the circumstances. Not only that; He expected them to act like kings. He expected them to act like He would and He had and stand up and do something. He expected them to do what? He expected them to stand up and speak to the demonic storms and exercise kingly authority. I'll develop this another time, but kings make decrees and assert dominion aye? So what happened? It says Jesus rose up and He spoke directly into the storm and told it to be quiet. The word is He commanded or He legislated or He set a divine decree. What you understand is He used His power of words. He used words filled with faith to shut down the demonic storm and calm the circumstances down. There was a great storm, then there was a great peace. What changed it from a great storm to a great peace was a king standing and speaking into the storm, speaking the word of God into the storm, not doubting in His heart.

He said you have the faith of God or faith like God you'll speak to the mountain, be removed! I can't understand why so many Christians have such quiet voices when there's so many things you need to speak strongly and firmly - be removed! See? There's a reason for this. Kings decree, they don't beg. They don't plead, they don't entreat. Kings stand up and speak the word of God. You were here on this earth as a king. You have to learn how to speak God's word over your circumstances, speak God's word over your marriage, over your personal life, over your finances, over your family.

The Bible says the world we see were framed or constructed by God having a dream and speaking a word. We, when we operate in faith, must learn how to do the same thing. Father, in Jesus' name I declare today everything in my day shall work together for good for me. I declare in Jesus' name things come into divine order. I receive revelation today. You've got to learn how to speak the word of God over your life, calling the things to be not as though they are. That's how kings operate. That's how kings pray. Kings speak over their life, speak over their circumstances. They take dominion over spirits.

I take dominion. I declare no assignment against me shall prosper today. Every weapon that's formed, no weapon formed against me shall prosper; no relational weapon, no financial weapon, no spiritual weapon, no emotional weapon, none shall prosper today! I walk in the blessing of God today. You've got to learn to arise like a king and speak like a king because you ARE a king. See? We are kings waiting to rise up. That's why I share this message, when Jesus heard of the storm He arose. Let the kings arise and begin to exercise their kingship and start to speak in the spirit and shape their world according to the word of God!

There's so many believers undermine their world constantly, living and talking like a victim, speaking negatively, speaking and complaining. The people of Israel in the wilderness complained so much and the Lord said to them what you said, it'll come to pass. But Joshua said we're well able to go up and take these giants - God is with us. He said that's how a king speaks. You'll go in and possess the land and I'll make sure you get there.

You've got to learn to speak like a king, to think like a king, to frame your world like a king would frame his world, hearing the voice of God, desiring to expand your territory, letting go of what people think and letting go of circumstances to step out and to do new things and rising when the voice of God comes and speaking into it like a king. If storms come speak into them. Something happens, rise up and speak. Don't talk to people about your problem - talk to the problem. Don't complain to someone how tough it is. Get near God and get His perspective and decree it over your problem. Make the circumstances of your life yield to the invisible realm of eternity.

The Bible says all these things are a light affliction and they work for us a great weight of glory while we look not at the seen things which are temporal, but at the unseen things which are eternal. What does that look like? Very simple. You keep your eyes fixed on what God is saying. If God said to get there, well that storm's not going to stop me! If the boat sinks it doesn't mean I'm not going to get there. I will get there because God has sent me there! If you're thinking about you have a destiny, a core of things to accomplish in your life, you don't have to be afraid of death. Why? Because God will keep me 'til I fulfil my assignment. It's a perspective about life. It's a whole king's way of thinking about life. I've yet to accomplish many things. I can't die tomorrow or the day after; there's things for me to do. So I need to declare like a king and speak over my life and over the areas God's held me responsible for what God is saying.

Father, we just thank you today. There are many kings waiting to rise up today. There are men and women here today who have your seed in them, who've received your spirit and have a royal seed. There's royalty in waiting oh God. Father, I pray that in today and in the weeks ahead that the voice of Your spirit will stir that kingly seed to stand up and to begin to start to walk like a king and think like a king and speak like a king and act like a king and create a different realm around them, just like a king would.

Perhaps just while we're finishing here in the last few moments, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, don't know Jesus Christ, then a great day for you to come to Jesus today. Jesus said this; whoever received Him and believed on Him, He gave power to be a child of God. Notice that - a child of God, born into a royal family. You may be complaining about your background, where you've come from and what happened, all that kind of stuff. Listen, I've got news for you. When you get born again you come into a new family, get a new start, get a divine DNA put into your spirit and soul. You become different. But you have to make a decision. God says He's chosen you. Will you just say yes, I'm responding?

If you're here today and you want to become a Christian - a Christian's just a follower of Jesus Christ, a king in training, but you've got to make a decision and a choice to personally receive Him. If there's anyone here today right at that point I'd love to give you a chance to receive Jesus, become a Christian, have your sins forgiven, have a fresh start in life. If that's you today and you're right at that place of decision today and you sense man, God's talking to me, I need to respond. You may feel a bit nervous on the inside, but you know something's happened. Your heart's pumping - man, I just need to do something. Why don't you raise your hand and say Pastor, I want to become a Christian today. Anyone here today, right at that place of decision, just raise your hand, just let me know - I want to become a Christian. Anyone here today, anyone here right at that place, just let me know, raise your hand. Raise your hand. Just raise your hand, let me know.

There may be others here today and you've been just strengthened. In fact you felt God speak to you to start to rise up on the inside. If that was you, God spoke to you about that, about making changes in your personal life, beginning to re-think and set some clarity around your direction or where you're going. If you know God's speaking that way, say that's me, God's talking to me that way. God bless, God bless, God bless.

Father, we just pray that in these coming weeks kings will arise, in Jesus' mighty name. Everyone said ... [Amen!] ... Amen. Come on, let's give the Lord a clap. ... [Applause.]

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction:

1 Pet 2:9

“You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood:

· We must know and agree with what God says we are - our identity

· Chosen generation – selected by God to carry His DNA and be his family

· Royal Priesthood – access into the very throne of God

· Royal or kingly, regal

· Kings don’t beg, don’t think as a victim - powerless, blaming others

· Kings decree, legislate, make commands

· Kings discover and declare the will and purpose of God and advance the Kingdom

· Rev 19:16 “…He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords”

· Jesus is raising a generations of Kings and Lords to advance His Kingdom

Kings receive Prophetic Direction

a) “Even had come” v35

· Even = beginning of a new day. Days began in the evening

· New day = new opportunities, new challenges, new experiences

· God is always dong new things, fresh things

· Kings don’t live in yesterdays experience, they look forward to a new day

· New day = required new direction and revelation

b) “He said to them” v 35

· Don’t live in past experiences, yesterdays revelation experience

· Position yourself to hear God daily

· EG Mary, Jesus rose early and Moses

· V34 While they were alone He explained all things to His disciples

· Jesus raising Kings – took them aside to give revelation and direction

· ‘Alone’ – must build and prioritize time alone with God

3. Kings Dream of Enlarging their Territory

1 Pet 2:35

“Let us cross over to the other side”

a) Crossover” = to travel through, to journey through, go to new places

· Must be willing to move forward, enlarge, advance from current position

· Migrate = journey to a place of new opportunities

· There are challenges and obstacles to be faced

b) “Other side” = the territory beyond the place they were standing

· The country of the Gaderenes v51

· New territory, new areas to invade and advance the kingdom

· New experiences to have

· It could be personal life, finances, marriage, family, ministry

· God calls every generation out of their security to advance the kingdom

· New territories to enter: Media, education, government, finance, arts

· What dream do you have of the future enlargement, advance?

4. Kings advance New Territory

“They eft the multitude and took Him along on the boat’ v36

Left = 863 = to forgive, to send away= choose to let go can advance

i) Left the multitude (people)

· Kings don’t get led by the crowd and multitudes

· Kings have vision and direction and courage

· Crowd lacks vision, they pressure you to conform, to do what they want to do

· Kings hear God and have vision of new territory

· Faith life is in a journey of hearing God and moving forward

· It takes courage to be different

ii) Left the shore (place of security)

· No great adventures unless you cast off from shore

· Boat journeys are filled with uncertainty – cast off – let go

· What is holding you back? What are you clinging to?

· Jesus was in the boat

· Faith journey seems lonely but:

You are not alone; Jesus is with you

You are not alone; others are taking the same journey

Your faith stirs others

5. King have a Spiritual Perspective

A great storm arose and the waves beat in the boat

a) There is always demonic opposition to Kingdom advance

1. Storm 1 Pet 2:37 2. Demonised man 1 Pet 5:1

· Storm = whirlwind, rotating column of air with great turbulence

· The demonic storm whipped through the sea in to a turmoil

· Every assignment of God has demonic opposition

· Demonic opposition – circumstances or people

b) Focus on the Assignment not the circumstances, challenges, feelings – 2 Cor 4:16-18

· Disciples lost spiritual perspective

· Fear of death Accuse and blame Faith quenched and doubt

· Focus on saving self and not the assignment

· Think like a victim not a king

· Missed opportunity for growth

6. Kings make Decrees and Assert Dominion

· “He arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea …” v39

· Do you arise in your spirit like a King for battle or do you cringe like a victim?

· “Said” = 2036NT = to command, to legislate, to decree

· Kings make decrees – they assert their authority over the territory

· Whatever your assignment, territory – must learn to address the demonic!

· Mark 11:23 “Have the faith of God … peak to …not doubt with your heart”

· Jesus rebuked the wind and sea and disciples

· God requires us to walk by faith not by experiences alone

· Jesus expected them to interact with the circumstances as a King

Servants or Kings (3 of 4)

Sun 14 Nov 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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God does not want you to live in the realm of a servant or slave. He wants you to live in the realm of friend - very important for your destiny and for your future that you migrate in your thinking from servant to friend. A servant is trained to: listen for instructions; follow the instructions. Their own desires or dreams are not involved.

Wonderful. Well we've been looking at the theme of kings over this last couple of weeks and I know you're going to enjoy what I share with you this morning. So I want you to open your Bible with me in John, Chapter 15 and we'll read Verse 14 and 15. I want to call this message today servants or kings, which are you -a servant or slave, or are you a king? Which are you? Of course the way you think and the way you approach life will reveal it very clearly and I want to give you some biblical perspective. Notice here it says in Verse 14 and 15, this is Jesus' last session with His disciples and so the Bible recounts a lot of it. There's about four chapters; John, Chapter 13, 14, 15, 16 right through to 17 is all Jesus' words to His disciples. That's a lot of words written down and so the things that are shared there are really important.

You notice what He says here; You're my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant doesn't know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends for all the things that I heard from my Father I have made known to you. So Jesus at this point is raising the status of His followers. He says I'm no longer calling you servants. That meant prior to that time He had addressed them or treated them or called them servants. A servant is someone who listens to commands and does what they're commanded to do, but Jesus wants to elevate their status. He wants to shift them to a different realm of living. It's not a servant or slave, it's the realm of friend, a friend of God.

God does not want you to live in the realm of a servant or slave. He wants you to live in the realm of friend - very important for your destiny and for your future that you migrate in your thinking from servant to friend. Notice what He says here; servants know how to obey - so a servant listens. What a servant is trained to do are these things: number one, to listen for instructions; number two, follow the instructions. That's what a servant does. Their own desires or dreams are not involved. They wait for instructions and follow instructions, so a person who's a servant really has no dreams or desires of their own. They're not given expression to them. They just live to fulfil the will of another. That's the role of a servant.

Jesus is wanting to lift them up. A friend has a personal relationship. A friend connects and communicates heart to heart. When you go through the Bible and you begin to look at the friends of God, you find there's something quite interesting. Yes, they were God's representatives. You find that they fulfil what God wanted them to do, but they engage with God and often disagreed and debated or tried to persuade Him to change His mind. You have a look at Moses and God said to Moses, well I'm going to get out of the way. I'm going to kill all these people and Moses stands up and begins to negotiate with God and God changes the plan. Now that's a true friend.

They're able to come into relationship with God in such a way that God engages them and listens to them. It's not the role of a servant. A servant just does what they're told. Moses clearly had gone beyond the realm of a servant when he's negotiating with God about how He's going to treat Israel for their mistakes. Abraham was similar. He was called a friend of God but you notice when God said that He was going to destroy the city he begins a process of bargaining and he's a real Jew really because he beats Him down from you know, well if I find 50 in there, well what if you only found 10? Then he gets it right down to if I found one, so he does actually a bargaining with God. Can you believe that? ... [Laughter]

What kind of relationship did he have that he's able to walk and talk with God in that way? This is what Jesus is saying; He said I call you friends. Now what you have to see is that there was a progression of things happened in John 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. In John 13 Jesus models what a king behaves like. He said I'm your Lord or I'm the king. But then what He did was He took off His outer garments and He went down and He served the disciples, so He showed them a king actually can engage at the lowest level of class and serve. The kingdom of God, kings in God's kingdom, can serve and minister to the lowest levels of life, the lowest levels of human need. That's what God's kings can do. What a contrast that is to the kings of the world.

In John, Chapter 14, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit. Now you've got to understand what He's doing. He's promising - He said I'm about to leave you. I've modelled for you what a king is like. I've done this for you. Now you can do this for one another. Then the second thing is He promises a kingly seed. The Bible says that we receive the Holy Spirit, we are born again. There is an impregnation of our life with divine DNA, so when you get born again and the spirit of God comes into you, the divine nature of God becomes fused with your spirit. We are one spirit with the Lord, so therefore you are of divine origin. You have divine seed or life inside you, divine DNA. It is natural for you to connect with God. It is natural for you to walk with God. It's natural for you to speak and interact with God. It's natural for you to flow in the things of the spirit. Why? Because you're fused. You are now royal seed.

If you want to know where you come from well you have a look at your background, but when you got born again Jesus broke the connections to your old background and fused you and pulled you into a new family. It's a royal family. So one, He modelled what that kingly family would behave like. It's a family that knows how to serve needs. Two, it's also a family that's got royal DNA. You have royal DNA within you. The third thing is Jesus then raises them to a kingly stature. He raises them to friends. He'll always have pre-eminence. That's why He's called the king of kings. Kings talk with one another. You have a look at the leaders of nations. They meet and they build friendships with one another. They respect one another. They understand the domain over which each one rules and they relate in certain ways.

Jesus said I'm lifting you up out of the status of being a servant and into the status of being a king. I've shown you what a king acts like. I've demonstrated kingly power. Now I'm going to put kingly seed in you. I'm raising you up to become of a kingly family. I want you to live, act, think, talk and advance the kingdom of God. Trouble is we get stuck with a slave mentality.

In John 17 Jesus said He would share His kingly glory with us. So He's very clearly, the whole context of those few chapters is God is wanting to understand I am shifting you from where you were, servants of God, slaves to sin, I'm shifting you now to become kings and I'm going to anoint you and launch you into the world and you're going to have a global mission to advance the kingdom right through until every person, every part, every generation hears the gospel of the kingdom of God! Trouble is we get caught up in church. Actually, you're called to a kingdom. Church is here to help prepare you to do your kingly duties. Think about that.

Okay then, so let's have a look in John 13, we'll go back into there and you see Jesus is a servant king. He's not a servant. His identity never was servant. His identity always is He is a king. It says in Chapter 13 and Jesus, it said knowing that His hour had come - Verse 1 - that He would depart from this world to His Father, having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them to the end. The supper being ended and the devil put it into the heart of Judas, Simon's son, to betray Him - now notice this; Jesus, knowing what He had - knowing what the Father had given to Him, knowing where He'd come from, His origin. He came from God - knowing where He was going, He was going to God. Now where have you come from? See? Oh, I come from Dannevirke. I was born there. NO! Come on. You haven't renewed your mind yet. You have been born from above. Your citizenship, the place you belong, is in heaven with God. You are born from above. You are a citizen of Him. Where have you come from? You've come from heaven. Where are you going? Going to heaven. Where are you from? You're from a royal family and you're going back into that royal family and you are royal seed on the earth. Do you look like it? No, not at all, but then David didn't look like a king when he was running around and everyone was chasing him. Joseph didn't look like a king when he was going through some hard times.

Whether you look like a king or feel like a king is not the point. God says you are that by divine birth. You have royal blood inside you, God's blood, God's DNA. So Jesus was a king. He knew who He was. He knew His identity. He was a king and He knew it.

When you read the scriptures you'll find (and it almost was there today in what Amanda read) in Matthew 2:2, the wise men came and they said who's he who's born king? You follow through the scriptures and Pilot says to Him in John 18, are you king? He says too right I am. I am king. When He died on the cross they wrote something up on top of Him. It was called Jesus of Nazareth, king, king of the Jews. The Bible shows in the Book of Revelation He's there, He's the king of kings. He was always king. He never changed His kingly nature, never changed His kingly seed, never changed in His death. When He came into this earth He was born as a king in the earth. He knew who He was. He knew where He came from, knew where He was going and knew His realm of domain, His mission and assignment in this world, and He came to elevate and raise others to become kings like Him. He would be the first among kings, kings like Him that would advance the kingdom of God.

Now the problem is if you have a religious mindset you'll think like a servant. Jesus came to advance the kingdom of God. He demonstrated kingly behaviour and raised their status. Now the kings of this world act and think differently to the kings in the kingdom of heaven. In the kingdoms of this world you'll notice that position is important. Rank is important. Privileges are important, titles are important, power is important - so in the kingdoms of this world it's very concerned with position, titles, power, privileges that go with kingship, all of those kinds of things. The kingdom of heaven is not like that at all. It is not concerned with position. It's not concerned with title, it's not concerned with privileges, it's not concerned with people waiting on them. It's not concerned with any such things.

Jesus said in Matthew 20, the kings of this world exercise dominion and lordship and control people and exercise authority and turn them into servants, doing their will, fulfilling their vision. But He said it shall not be so among you. You shall not think or behave or operate in that paradigm or way, yet so often we find among Christians the biggest things are their positions, their titles - all those kinds of things are very important to some people. You know why they're important? They don't know who they are.

If you know who you are you don't worry about all those things. You don't need a title - I'm a leader! ... [Laughter] ... I just got six inches taller! You don't need that. You don't need it. Well I get to sit in the front! ... [Laughter] ... See, you don't need any of those things if you know who you are. It's all take it or leave it. You don't need them to establish your identity because you know who you are. I am born of kingly seed, I am a king. It's got nothing to do with any role, rank, position or where I might be right now. It's got to do with what Jesus did inside me. That's who I am!

Now once you know that, then you've got to think like a king. The problem is people don't think like a king, they think like a slave. You are a king. In 1 Peter 2:9 it says you are a royal, royal, royal - you are royal, you are royal - tell someone. Say "You're royalty." ... [You're royalty.] ... If you knew you were royalty you'd never carry on like a slave. That's why you've got to - tell them again. They forgot it already. "You are royalty." ... [You're royalty.] ... Look them in the eye, see. People have trouble. Your royal highness [laughs] That's good isn't it aye? That's a world title. Notice the word 'highness' in it. ... [Laughter]

We're just royalty. We're part of an eternal kingdom that's going to go on forever. We get to take it all over! But you've got to be doing something right now, not just waiting for all that to happen. So Jesus lived for a cause. He was a king who knew how to wash feet. Oh, now this is blowing our minds away because in this new kingdom we're a part of the kings wash people's dirty, dusty, grubby, pooey covered feet. I'm not sure whether I want to be a king any more. I kind of had something else in mind being a king. I sort of had in mind being on a throne and people bowing down to me and looking after me and I had privileges and perks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The world thinking!

He said it shall not be so among you. That's not His kingdom - that's the world's kingdoms which are ranked in order like that. He says God's kingdom's a different kingdom, where the king of kings can come down, wash feet and die on a cross. That is the nature of that kingdom. Jesus came and served people - but He was never their servant. Neither at any time was He a servant. He actually was in deep covenant relationship with His Father. He was a Son. He operated out of sonship, out of relationship.

We're going to show you just a few ways that kings and servants think which are quite different. I want you to change how you think. I want you to think like a king - you must think like a king! In Galatians 4, Verse 1, it says now the heir - that's the kingly seed who's entitled to the inheritance - if he remains a child he's nothing more than a servant. Oh? Think about that. You might be entitled to a big inheritance, but if you remain a child usually you can't get hold of it. Someone administers it for you. You're no different than a servant in the house having to learn. So notice what He said; while we're a child. While we're a child we're no better than a servant, so that means you've got to grow up see? Then He says but we're no longer children and He says what children look like. Now I'm going to read - we need to read this because I want to show you something in this, then we'll just give you some comparisons between a servant and kingly thinking and servant thinking.

So let's just go into Galatians for a moment, then I'll finish up. Galatians, Ephesians, there we go. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Chapter 4, Verse 1; Now I say the heir - that's the one who's entitled to the inheritance - as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, but he's under tutors and guardians until the appointed time. Now notice how He applies it. First of all He gives you a natural picture. If you remain a child, even though you are entitled to the inheritance you can't have it. You're just no better than a slave, you just do what you're told. Now notice what it says, I want you to watch this. He says now when we were - what tense is this? Past. We were children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world. Now what He's talking about there, we were in bondage living under rules.

How can you tell a person's a child? They live under rules. Do this. Don't do that. Their role: listen and obey. It's great for children to learn to listen and obey, in fact if you don't listen and obey you're going to grow up to be a monstrous teenager. So one of the first primary tasks is for children to learn to listen and obey.

Now notice what He says, that when you live under law, do's and don'ts, you have to do this, you can't do that, you're not allowed to do this, you must do that - when you live under laws. He's saying when you live under religion you remain a slave and you can't access what God has provided for your inheritance, the supernatural, miracles, dreams, visions, abundance, breakthroughs, enlargement, new territory. You can't get it if you live under religion. It's impossible. That's what He's saying. Now the dilemma is of course we just apply that to everyone else.

So when the fullness of time came God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law - notice redeem, to completely purchase us out from being bonded to law-keeping and bring us into instead placement as a son. A son is different to a slave. A slave has got rules and laws and they're told to do this, told to do that and they do it and they get punished if they don't. A son has relationship. A son enters into connection with the heart of his father. A son catches his father's businesses and shares his fathers concern. A son also has dreams of his own. A son also has desires of their own. A son talks with his father about how the dreams and desires can be fulfilled. Think about that.

Now we need to learn from Israel's history because Israel were called to be like that. Israel, my first born son. God wanted them to come into the liberty of an inheritance, so He got them out of Egypt where they were in bondage. They trusted in the blood, they came out of Egypt, they walked through the wilderness. Now there are two things they did which are very, very significant and we won't look them up. I'll give you the reference for them. The first one is in Exodus 19. In Exodus 19 God Himself came down and glory on a mount and He wanted the people to come and connect intimately face to face with Him. In Exodus 20 they said Moses, this is too scary. You go and represent us. So the first thing they did was they drew back from intimacy with God and replaced it with someone going to God and telling them what God had for them. They replaced it with a person.

God wanted them to be a nation of priests. He wanted them to be a royal kingdom where they all had access to Him and when they would not come near to Him He had to change the plan. Every person here is called to personal relationship with God. You are not designed to live off sermons week to week. They can be helpful. They can be constructive. They can build, they can motivate, they can reveal truth, but you're not made to live like that. Man shall not live by bread alone. Every word God is speaking to them, God has designed you to live from a flow of revelation, designed you to live out of a personal walk with Him. No personal walk with Him, you have become a slave immediately. Personal walk with God, intimacy, relationship, listening, hearing, communing with Him, sharing your heart, your dreams, your desires, beginning to draw instructional wisdom from Him - this is how He wanted Israel to be, but they didn't want that. They wanted someone to hear God and tell them what God was saying.

Many Christians are addicted to coming up and getting prophetic words. Why? They want someone else to hear God for them and tell them what to do with their life. It becomes another form of divination, instead of being responsible to listen to God. One of the foundational things in your life is to know who you are and then to connect with the one who has called you to Himself. All ministry, all leadership is to build people to Christ. He is the head. This is the first thing.

The second thing is you'll find if you look up in 1 Samuel, Chapter 8, and then again in 1 Samuel, Chapter 12, you'll find this is what happened. They looked around and they saw that the other nations around them had a king and they said give us too. We want to be like everyone else. Give us someone to rule over us - and God was very upset. He said but I rule over you. This is a kingdom where I'm in charge, you all hear me and I give you direction. I don't want you to have someone over you. They said give us a king anyway. He said well okay, I'll tell you what the king will be like. He will take from you. He'll take taxes. He'll extract from you and then he'll tell you what to do. Oh, we want that. We want that - and God was so displeased, now get this - number one, the first thing that happened was six times, it says he will take from you. It'll be a one way street when you put someone to be what God intended - a role God intended you to take. We're not to become dependent on people. We're to recognise the giftings of one another, but no one should ever be a substitute for the kingship of the Lord in our life, no one. ... [Applause] ... No one. No one, because He said it'll take something from you. Second thing that happened was they lost their harvest. They lost their harvest.

If you let someone take over charge of your life telling you what to do, you will lose your dreams and your destiny and your harvest. You see God's plan is not for us all just to be gathered in a church. We're to be gathered and mobilised into the community to fulfil dreams and desires and to activate the kingdom of God, to advance the kingdom of God. So if you do not value your relationship with God and let someone do your praying for you, someone else do it for you and you don't value the dreams and desires in your heart, then what'll happen is you'll never fulfil what God called you for. This is where so many people are. So many people are trapped in this place.

I'm finding God is bringing a revelation to the church. It's about His kingdom. It's about Him working through you, changing lives around you. Everyone is called to that. Everyone's called, so we've got to break it. Let me just share a few simple things that are just the difference between a servant and a king and we'll just finish up with that.

Servants must break out of slave mentalities. I want to share a couple of meetings with you or teachings with you to help you understand and recognise victim thinking or slave thinking. Slaves think a certain way and not only do they think a certain way, they talk a certain way. Here's a typical example; well, stuff happens. That's a slave mentality. It's not kingdom mentality - comes out of a heart that's resigned that stuff happens and we can't do anything about it. It's not a kingly statement. It tells something about a heart that's still in bondage. I want to share some of these things to help you recognise it. Once you get a few things about how people talk when they're in slave mentality you're going to pick this up everywhere. You're going to start to hear victim, victim, victim, victim, victim. Everywhere you go you'll hear victim talk and the thing is to make sure that you break out of victim talk and begin to start to speak and think and act like a king you are. Amen. Amen!

So let's have a look at the difference between a servant and a king and I'll just quickly go through these. I could develop them more but I'll leave it to you to think through. Now the first thing is for the servant, his identity is a servant. That's who I am. I am a servant. I serve, see? But for a king, well his identity - I'm a king. I am a king and I make decrees and declarations. I begin to build. I have designs and desires. I have a dream and vision. The slave, well the slave is not thinking like that. That's who he is. So you see here's the second thing about a servant; a servant is waiting for instructions. They don't do anything until they hear. They need to hear, so they practise listening and obeying and they're very good. They listen and obey and they're very good at that.

Jesus said if you don't learn to listen and obey you can never graduate to being His friend, because learning to listen and yield to God, revelation and obedience are qualifiers for friendship, see? But that's not where we stop, so a person who thinks like a king takes initiative. It's very difficult for many Christians to take initiative, because they're afraid of getting it wrong, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of missing the will of God. What if I miss the will of God? That's what they do and so they live like a slave. I'm so scared of missing the will of God, actually I won't take responsibility for decision making. I won't take responsibility for my life. I'll wait until God tells me.

Now there is a place and times when we need to listen clearly for directions from God, but if you want to - see I hear people say well God told me to go down and buy this, God told me to go down and buy that. God told me - you know, you hear people talk like that. Well God told me to buy - and they kind of go on and on about what God told them. It appears like it's really spiritual. It's incredibly childish. You could just if anyone talked to you like that say wait a minute. Hang on, back up here. Let me just run this by you. You're telling me that you are so childish and irresponsible that God's got even to remind you to buy toilet paper? What is with you. Grow up. Think it through. It sounds spiritual but it's incredibly religious and it's incredibly childish - but it can intimidate and come through as spiritual. That's what it's meant to do, but actually it's childish.

God gives you a free will and He gave you a mind. A mind. ... [Applause.] ... A mind to think, design, imagine, create and order your life with. He gave you that. He's not going to do it for you. You have to think. Tell someone you have to think. I know it's going to hurt, but think. It's true. Some people become Christians, they stop thinking. They become in slave mentality - I just got to do what I'm told, I got to wait for God to tell me what to do - but God, you're not talking to me. I'm not hearing anything. I'm stuck - passive and stuckness. There's another thing, so for a servant their relationship is authority based so they're big words. The big words that are big in their mind are submit, yield, wait, obey you see?

Well the king has already gone past all of that. They've grown out of the childhood stage and now it's covenant based, so they're concerned about engaging. What they have is God's, what God has is theirs, and they talk then about the sharing of resources, how they can walk together. It's a different deal. It's a whole different level of relationship. He said I'm not calling you servants any more, I call you friends. Friends talk and share dreams and desires with one another.

Here's another thing. The servant buries their own dreams and desires so they can serve, meet needs and please. A servant will bury all their dreams and desires. Now let me ask you this; Think if you were God for a moment and you designed a plan for every person before they came into this world. Think about that. The Bible says we're created for works that He prepared before we were born, in Ephesians 2:10. So now how are we going to get that person you have designed, how do you get them to connect to the plan you have for them? How are we going to do it? Just think about how God's going to do it.

Here's the first thing He does. He puts a desire and a passion in them. It's in their hearts. They have desires. They have dreams, they have passions. When they do what they're called to do, man they fire up and become energetic see? The second way is puts His Holy Spirit in to direct you, primarily if you're going off course. Now if you only wait and listen for the Holy Spirit you'll become a slave. You won't actually arise and take responsibility God has put in your heart dreams, desires, passions, destiny to fulfil. So many believers never connect to their dreams, desires and passions and never get a fulfilled life. They get a servant life doing what I'm told, waiting for God to tell me what to do next, so there's another difference you see. So a servant is relatively passive, waiting for instructions, whereas a king takes initiative and plans how he can advance his territory.

A servant is so worried about getting it wrong and getting punished he won't do anything until he gets an instruction, whereas a king says man, risk and failure are part of the deal. We're going to have a go anyway. Come on, think about it. Think about it. Religion keeps people as slaves. Jesus came to set us free - so here's another thing then. So we saw then that a servant would tend to be passive and powerless and waiting to be hold, whereas the king is proactive. He's thinking now what's some ways, you see? So the servant will be praying for God to tell him what to do. God would say you're creative, got ideas. Why don't you find out what ideas you've got and what resources you've got and try something? It might be a shock. It might work. If it doesn't work I'll help you out and mistakes aren't fatal in the kingdom because there's no condemnation of those in Christ Jesus. Ha ha ha! You can step out and have a go - if you're a king, because a king can step out and have a go! It's the servants can't. They're terrified they'll get it wrong. They live under the bondage of fear, whereas a king says well I'm going to have a go anyway and if it doesn't work out what did we learn? Okay, up and at it, we'll go ahead. Come on man!

A servant has a sense of entitlement - well I've done this for God, so therefore this should happen. I paid my tithe but nothing happened. ... [Laughter] ... I'm not going to tithe any more. I hate God. I'm resentful for Him not coming through like I expected Him to. Grrr! You know someone like that don't you? I know you know someone like that. They end up in resentment and anger because what they feel entitled to they don't get, whereas a king has a sense of responsibility. They have a sense of responsibility. I've got some things here I can do, so a king would look at the church and say man, I've got giftings here. What can I do to help build people? The servant says well what's the church going to do for me? How's it going to help me get out of my hole? Come on, give us a break. Get out of that thinking. It's a victim thinking. It's a victim thinking.

Become part of a royal family with something to contribute, something to give see, so a servant values personal security. So think about this; the servant that was given the one talent just buried it all and didn't do anything. The other ones all traded and got commended and got promoted. It's a mentality. It's a way of thinking see?

So a servant values security but a king values destiny, so a servant will try to do everything to make sure I don't get into trouble and they get to the very end of their life and say I'm still going to church. Aren't you pleased? ... [Laughter] ... But you see a king doesn't think that way. A king says I can never sit in a pew and that's it for my life. I have to be advancing the kingdom. What has God put in my way? What could I do? What could I give? How could I advance the kingdom of God? How can I touch someone's life? How can I grow my resources? So kings of course - see servants always have a poverty mentality, never got enough, but a king's not thinking that way. A king's thinking how can I multiply my resources? Don't want to live off a wage all my life. I really need to get busy here and find some ways, creative ways I can make money! I've got a kingdom to advance and it's going to take some money to do it - so I want to grow in wealth so I have abundance to give to others! That's how kings think. Jesus was never a poor man.

Okay and I'll give you the last one here. You're not going to like this one. I know you're not going to like this one. You're definitely not going to like this one. Here it is: A servant, a person who thinks like a servant, is waiting for revival - one day, soon. I heard that 30 years ago. One day, soon. So this is what you should do. You should pray and wait. ... [Laughter] ... That's the fruit of it. That is the fruit if you go down that route too far. I believe in revival. I believe God revives people, raises them up, puts His spirit in them, anoints them, puts vision and passions in their heart and wants them like a king to be busy with what they have! Be busy with what God has given them! Be busy with their entrustment, growing and expanding their giftings, training, taking initiative to do things instead of waiting - for one day it'll be better. No, one day you'll be old and die. ... [Laughter] ... That's what'll happen and your day will have gone. This IS your day! THIS IS YOUR DAY! No more thinking like a slave! No more thinking like a servant! Transform the thinking to think like a king, to walk like a king in nobility and dignity, to treat people with a heart to see them prosper and advance, to look after the interests of people that God brings into your world, to find ways to serve, create wealth, create resources, multiply, increase! This is how kings think. This is the thinking God is bringing into the nation of the earth right now.

This is one of the worst things that happened was about 150 years ago, come out of teaching the rapture, that you hang on until the end and then whisk! Up you go and the rest all burn! ... [Laughter] ... That is the most horrible, horrible thing I've ever heard. Survive and then escape and those wicked sinners will be all burnt up and that's what they deserve and they're gonna get theirs! So as a result of that you had a church and it's like a boxing ring with a little fella and a big fella and the big fella's beating the other one and pummelling him around the ring, beats him up and pushes him around the ring, beats him until he's black and blue but he hangs on and he won't give up. He hangs on and he won't give up and he hangs on round after round after round. Finally the tenth bell rings and a hook comes down from out of the sky, hooks the little fella and says he's the winner. ... [Laughter] ... Now this is just nonsense. He's not the winner. God's plan is something different. God's plan is an overcoming church. You read the Book of Daniel, read the Book of Daniel, read the Book of Revelation. It's not all about evil things. It's about a rock, not formed with human hands, becoming a mountain that fills the whole earth. It's about God's kingdom advancing right through the whole world. It says all nations shall come to the glory. Nations shall flow into the house of God. Why will they do that? Because it's the primary influence in the world!

Don't get some defeatist mentality. Don't get some victim mentality. Don't shut down and become passive. This is a great day and hour for kings to arise, an hour for you to discover who you are, to discover what God put into your heart to accomplish and begin to do what you need to do to get there. And it's not just about listening for instructions. It's about investing in yourself, about getting someone to help you and coach you. It's about gaining wisdom so you can make decisions. You don't run a business waiting for a miracle every week. What a tragic business that would be and what a pathetic runner you would be. What you do is you run your business on wisdom and under the blessing of God. It goes better that way.

So what a great day. How many know someone who thinks like a slave and a servant? How many of you know someone? I know it's not you but you're thinking of someone right now - but God has called us to rise up and become kingly seed.

Come on, let's just stand to our feet right now. Let's give the king of kings a great clap! Let's give Him a great shout! ... [Applause, verbal praise] ... There is a time coming when Jesus will come again, but He's coming for a glorious church. He's coming for a people full of glory. He's coming for a people who are changed. He's coming for a company of kings! He's coming for a company of people transformed into His image and likeness! He's not coming for something weak and defeated. He is moving by His spirit in this hour, reviving is taking place now! Tomorrow there'll be more. The day after, there'll be more! There is a river taking place now! It's time to lock into that river to grow in that river and see His glory manifest!

Father, we honour you today. We give you the glory! Come on, on the count of three let's give Him a shout - one, two, three ... [Shouting] ... Let's shout to the king of kings! Shout to the Lord of Lords. Shout to Him, the glorious one!

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· 1 Pet 2:9 “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood …”

· We must know and agree with what God says we are – that is our Identity

· Chosen generation – selected by God to carry His DNA, to be His family

· Royal Priesthood – access into the very throne of God, royal kingly, regal

· Kings don’t beg, don’t think as a victim – powerless, blaming others

· Kings decree, legislate, make commands

· Kings discover and declare the will and purpose of God and advance the Kingdom

· Rev 19:16

“He is king of Kings and Lord of Lords”

· Jesus is raising a generation of King’s and Lords to advance His Kingdom

· Mark 4:35-41 Kings in Training

Kings receive Prophetic Direction:

i) “Even had come” Mark 4:35

· Even = beginning of a new day, Days began in the evening

· New day = new opportunities, new challenges, new experiences

· God is always doing new things, fresh things

· Kings don’t live in yesterday’s experiences, they look forward to a new day

· New day = Require new direction, new revelation

ii) “He said to them” Mark 4:35

· Don’t live in past experiences, yesterday’s revelation

· Position yourself to hear from God daily

· Eg Mary, Jesus who rose early, Moses

· Mark 4:34 While they were alone He explained all things to His disciples

· Jesus was raising Kings – he took them aside to give them revelation and direction

· ‘Alone’ = you must build and prioritize time with God

3. Kings Dream of Enlarging their Territory:

· Mark 4:35 “Let us cross over to the other side”

a) ‘Cross over’ = to travel through, to journey through, to go to a new place

- You must be willing to move forward, enlarge, advance from current position

- Migrate = journey to a place of new opportunity

- There are challenges and obstacles to be faced

b) ‘Other side’ = the territory beyond the place they were standing

- The country of the Gaderenes

- New territory: new areas to invade and advance the kingdom

- New experiences to have

- Could be your personal life, finances, marriage, family, ministry

- God calls every generation out of security to advance the kingdom

- There are new territories to enter: Media, Education, Government, Arts

What dream do you have of future enlargement, advance?

Kings know their assignment

4. Kings Advance to New Territory:

· “They left the multitude and took him along in a boat” Mark 4:36

· “left” = 863 = to forgive, to send away, choose to let go so they can advance

a) Left the Multitude (People)

- Kings don’t get led by the crowd or multitude

- Kings have vision and direction and courage

- Crowd lacks vision, pressure you to conform, do what they ask

- Kings hear God and have vision of their new territory

- Faith life is a journey of hearing God and moving forward

- It takes courage to be different

b) Left the State (Place of Security

- No great adventures unless you cast off from shore

- Boat journeys are filled with uncertainty – cast off, let go

- What is holding you back? What are you changing to?

- Jesus was in the boat

- The faith journey seems lonely but – you are not alone as Jesus is with you, you are not alone as others are taking the same journey, your faith stirs others

5. Kings have a Spiritual perspective:

· Mark 4:37

· A great storm arose and the waves beat in the boat

a) There is always demonic opposition to advancing the Kingdom

- 1) Storm 2) Demonic man Mark 5:2

- Storm = whirlwind, rotating column of air with great turbulence

- The demonic the demonic storm whipped up the sea into a turmoil

- Every assignment of God has demonic opposition

- Demonic opposition = circumstances or people

- New assignments mean new challenges

b) Focus on the Assignment not Circumstances 2 Cor 4:16-18

- Mark 4:38 The disciples lost their spiritual perspective

- Fear of death, accuse and blame

- Faith quenched

- Focused on saving self and not the assignment

- Think like a victim not like a king

- They missed the opportunity for growth

6. Kings make Decrees and Assert Dominion:

Mark 4:39

“He arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea ….”

· Do you arise in your spirit like a King for battle? Or cringe like a victim?

· ‘Said’ – 2036NT = to command, to legislate, to decree

· Kings make decrees, they assert their authority over their territory

· Whatever your assignment, territory …you must learn to address the demonic

· Mark 11:23 Have the faith of God … speak to … not doubt in your heart

· Jesus rebuked the wind and sea and the disciples

· God requires us to walk by faith not by experiences alone

· Jesus expected them to interact with the circumstances as Kings

Slave or Son (4 of 4)

Sun 21 Nov 2010 AM  « Back to Top

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You may still be in bondage, but God sees you as His son. He sees you according to destiny. He sees you according to His call on your life. You may be struggling and have all kinds of problems, pressures; you may not even be saved, but God sees you through the eyes of His destiny, says My Son and He calls you to move out of slavery and into sonship.

I want you to open your Bible with me in John 15. I want to pick up where I was last week. How many felt challenged last week? That's good isn't it? Well I'm being challenged too, so mostly I'm preaching to myself. You just get to hear it, that's all. [Laughs] You can be like listening in, but God's speaking to me in a lot of areas at the moment and it's good to be part of it. So let's have a look in John 15 and we want to ask the question today whether you're a slave or a son, a slave or a son - and we're going to pick up from John, Chapter 15, Jesus' words. There they are in Verse 15; "No longer do I call you servants." That word is [doulos 00.00.45] or slave, someone who just does what someone else asks them to do or tells them to do without any understanding at all - He said for a servant doesn't know what his master is doing. There's no revelation. It's just do what you're told. It's an issue of obedience - but I call you friends, for all things I've heard from My Father I've made known to you.

So you didn't choose Me but I chose you. Amen, God chose you. That's a good thing to know, you got chosen. You didn't turn up by accident. You thought you got here by accident or you came because your parents made you or something like that, but actually God chose you - and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and your fruit should remain, whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. So Jesus is talking to His disciples in this and He is lifting their status. Now through the Bible people had not known God as a Father. People had known God in many ways, in fact continually through the Bible it's a revelation of what God is like and so various people in the Bible, God revealed Himself by His many different names and His names represented what He's like.

God is so big it's hard to put Him in words, so He reveals Himself in a whole number of different ways and when Jesus came into the earth, Jesus brought the ultimate revelation of who God is. God is Father and so Jesus came to represent the Fatherhood of God and He's now speaking to his disciples who'd only known what it is to live like a slave under the laws of the old commandment, under the laws of the old covenant, in a realm of obedience; do this, you're blessed. Don't do that, you're cursed, so they lived under laws. They lived under laws but the laws were to bring them to a time when they'd come to know God in an intimate relationship, so Jesus says I no longer call you servant slaves, people just called to be obedient, but I bring you into a new realm, friendship, relationship and friendship. That's God's heart for you and me is that we move from being a slave to keeping laws; do this, don't do that, must do this, mustn't do that, ought to do this, ought not to do that. God wants us to move from that mentality into the mentality, the freedom, the liberty of being a child of God. It's fantastic to be a child of God.

Every morning I have one of my grand daughters just comes, throws open the bedroom door, big grin and comes and leaps on the bed and wants just to have a hug. Now no one else can do that. She can do that because she's family. Family have privileges. Family have access - so God's desire is that we become a family of kings. In 1 Peter 2:9 we saw that you are a royal priesthood so when you and I give our life to Jesus Christ, Jesus paid the penalty for us on the cross. He took the penalty of every broken law and then when you and I receive Him His spirit enters our heart, DNA of God gets into us, kingly royal DNA gets in us. We become changed on the inside and God wants us to come out of a slave mentality and into a friendship relationship, being a family of kings representing Him on the earth. Jesus is called the King of Kings, so that's the things we saw last week.

Now I want to take it a bit further this week. Let's have a look in Exodus, Chapter 4. In Exodus, Chapter 4, we're looking at the Old Testament. We're looking at God's plan for Israel, so at the beginning God began to work through a man and a woman, then He worked through various people, then finally He begins to reveal He wants to work through a nation, a nation called Israel. Ultimately it'll be through the church, but this is what God spoke to Moses in Verse 22. He said I want you to go to Pharaoh. Pharaoh was the ruler of Egypt and held all the people of God in bondage. They'd been in bondage for 400 years of slavery, so notice He's talking about the end of slavery. This is what God's got in mind; Israel's had 400 years of hard slavery. They've been under a culture of taskmasters, under hard and bitter bondage for 400 years, not a single miracle. Four hundred years, not a single prophetic word; 400 years, not a glimmer of hope; 400 years, building pyramids, serving the Egyptians, their lives made very hard and very bitter. It tells us in Exodus 1, it tells us that they made their lives hard and bitter with the bondage that they put on them.

So for 400 years - now you can imagine, that's generation after generation after generation after generation, your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, so it went on 400 years. That's a lot of history and so Israel at that point felt abandoned by God. They were living in slavery, living as though God had abandoned them, as though they were orphaned and had no God to watch over them or care for them or provide for them. That's what it looked like. That was their experience for hundreds of years - terrible, terrible experience and notice what God says to them.

He says you'll go to Pharaoh and you'll say Thus says the Lord: "Israel is My son. Israel is My firstborn." So I'm telling you let My son go that he may serve Me. What an amazing revelation. There's a lot just in that one verse. This is what Moses was commanded to go to the Pharaoh and stand before him and he was called to declare something; this people that you treat like slaves, this people who have been in bondage for years, I'm telling you who they really are. They are the Son of God, a corporate son, a body of people that God says this is My Son. Jesus is revealed as the Son of God, the literal Son of God, but God wants to raise up a corporate Son. He said He's My Son, My firstborn.

When the Bible refers to the word firstborn, the firstborn was the one first born but the firstborn was entitled to a number of privileges. So the firstborn - and Israel would understand this - the moment they heard the word Son and firstborn they would understand that meant a double portion of inheritance. It meant priesthood in the family. It meant responsibility to be a blessing for the extended family, so he's bringing a revelation of who they are to the taskmasters. Israel is My Son, it's not your slaves. He's My Son. You may still be in bondage, but God sees you as His son. He sees you according to destiny. He sees you according to His call on your life. You may be struggling and have all kinds of problems, pressures; you may not even be saved, but God sees you through the eyes of His destiny, says My Son and He calls you to move out of slavery and into sonship.

Coming into sonship meant physically they were removed from Egypt and they physically were put into another land which became a land of inheritance, full of gold and silver, buildings, dwellings, prosperity, an inheritance. So God speaks to them but here's the problem. Let's have a look in Exodus, Chapter 1, read the verses there. It says - Verses 13 and 14 - the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve in hard bondage. They made their lives bitter with hard bondage and mortar and brick, all manner of service in the field and everything they made them serve was very hard. They had a hard life. It's a very good picture of what life is like when we're without Christ, it's very hard. It's very bitter. We serve many things, alcohol, work, all kinds of addictions and problems. Very, very hard.

So Israel truly were victims. They were powerless to remove themselves out of that situation. they were powerless to save themselves, just like you and I are powerless to save ourselves from sin. We need a saviour. They could not resist the taskmasters. They were subject to them. When people are without Christ they're subject to demonic powers, to sin, to bondages of all kinds and they'd like to live a better life but they just can't. They're victims. They're held in slavery, so a person who is a slave most times is a victim. They cannot escape out of what they're caught in.

But during that period of 400 years they developed a victim mentality or a slave mentality. Now victim mentality is not the same as being a victim. A victim mentality is when a person has a way of thinking. It's very prevalent in New Zealand and I'll tell you what's at the root of it and I'll tell you how it manifests itself. We're going to look at it particularly in the church how it manifests itself - so a victim mentality is when a person has an outlook or a way of looking at their life. You cannot live as a king and a Son of God and live with a victim mentality. You can't. You have to shift from victim thinking into sonship and kingly thinking. You have to change and we want to talk in another session how to make that change.

So a victim thinking is when the person refuses to take personal responsibility for their life and rather, they blame others for what's happening in their world. I'll say that again. A person has a victim mentality when they will not take responsibility for their life. That's their feelings, their thoughts, their choices, what's happening in their life; but rather they blame someone else. It was my father, my mother, it was the government, it was the preacher, is was the teacher, it was this, it was that, it's the white man, it's the black man, it's the whatever. There's always someone to blame, but prevalent in victim thinking is someone else is to blame or someone else is responsible.

Now if someone else is responsible you have no power to change. You are stuck as you are in victim land and I'll share with you just some ways that people would speak that reveals in their heart they're still a victim. You might be surprised and I'd ask that you'd have a think about some of these things I'll share with you a little later and begin to ask the Holy Spirit to show whether this is what is going on in your heart. If you hear yourself talking like this, you will know that deep in your heart your belief system is I'm a slave, I'm a victim and I have no power to get out.

Of course victims look for someone to help them out. They become very co-dependent and victims look for someone who'll take all the responsibility. Now underneath this victim mentality, it's not my fault, this victim mentality, someone else's fault, someone else is to blame is why my life is going so badly. Under that, this is the root of it. It actually is rooted in what we'd call an orphan spirit, the belief I am abandoned and I'm on my own. You will find - and I cannot think at this point of any exceptions to any person I have met that had a victim mentality, that without exception they believe they were on their own, that they were abandoned and of course we live in a culture where there are no fathers, where there is - sorry, not no fathers. Where there is an abandonment of families by fathers.

We live in a culture where so many young ones at school have no father living in their home, shaping their life and so that orphan spirit or spirit of abandonment rests on them and drives them into victim mentality; I have no one to look out for me. It's not my fault, it's your fault - and so underneath it will always be abandonment and deep bitterness and certain ways of thinking towards life. God is wanting us to become kings. We have to move out of victim mentality wherever we see it. We have to confront victim mentality whenever we engage it, so we don't get sucked into co-dependent relationships and bad relationships that just cannot work.

Many young people get themselves into relationships that will never work because someone inside that relationship is thinking like a victim and depending on the other to come through for them. I need you. I can't live without you. This is typical of the kind of thinking that destroys relationships, creates a burden and a pressure on people. Okay then, so an orphan spirit can't be cast out because it's a whole way of thinking. It's rooted in bitterness, abandonment and a whole way of thinking about life; I'm on my own and I'm bitter about being on my own. It's not my fault and so therefore to get out of that situation we have to deal with the whole belief system. I'll show you how to do as the Lord unveils it to me. [Laughs] I'm only one step ahead on this one. ... [Laughter] ... I've been convicted by my own studies. [Laughs]

I began to find as I started to look through it elements and areas where God wanted to heal me and to change my own thinking. That's good. It's healthy and so let's have a look then about what Jesus promised. I want you to see Jesus' promise in John, Chapter 14. Jesus made an incredible promise. This is the promise He made. Now Jesus has been with the disciples, He's been actually a spiritual Father to them. He said you haven't seen the Father. If you've seen Me you've seen the Father. Jesus fathered them - not physically fathered them, but He actually had a fathering spirit over Him. He revealed what a father is like and so He discipled His sons. They were spiritual sons. They didn't all turn out well, but He was a father to them.

So in John 14, Verses 16 to 18, He's about to go to heaven. He's about to finish His course on this earth, pay the price for sin and He makes a statement to them. He says He's about to go and then He says, Verse 16, I'll pray the Father, He'll give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever - the Spirit of truth, whom the world can't receive, because it doesn't see Him or know Him; you know Him, He dwells with you. He will be in you. Now here it is - "I will not leave you orphans." I will not abandon you. I will not leave you fatherless. I will not leave you without a father to comfort you, love you, embrace you, stand with you, discipline you, speak into your life, speak into your heart. I will not leave you an orphan. The Biblical word there for orphan is fatherless. Father shapes identity. He said I will not leave you fatherless.

He spoke to His disciples. He was fathering them. He was a spiritual father to them for three years. He's about to leave them. He said I won't leave you fatherless. He said I'm going to send you another that's exactly the same as the one you've had, no difference. I'm going to send you another comforter or father. He's called the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth. He has been the one in me. He's been the one that's been with you. It's the spirit of God in Me that has manifested what fatherhood looks like and He says that spirit, that same spirit that's in Me, once I've gone to heaven that Holy Spirit's going to be released into every one of you. He said the comforter, the fathering I've given you, the spirit of God will come into your life and there's some things He's going to do inside you. I will not abandon you and leave you as orphans.

So what does the spirit of God do? In Romans 8, Verses 14 to 17, He said now as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons or mature ones in God. So one of the goals in our Christian life is to learn and to cultivate a relationship with the Holy Spirit and learn how to be led by Him into experiences with God and to be led in life. If we're going to be a king, then we have the seed of a king, the spirit of a king in us. We need to learn to get to know Him, know the Holy Ghost, learn how to express His life through us, so we can be kingly.

What He's saying then is keeping rules and regulations, do's and don'ts, is not going to cut it. What is needed is a life filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the spirit of God, filled with the spirit of the Father, filled with the life of God. That is the life that will represent God. That's the mature life. He said you've not received a spirit of bondage again to fear. That word bondage is slavery. He said you've not got something from Me that's going to bring you back into slavery, do this, don't do that. I'm giving you something completely different. I'm giving you the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, the Father Himself will come in the person of the Holy Spirit. He's identical to Me. He will come inside you. He's going to lead you into liberty, because wherever the Holy Ghost is LIBERTY!

We mistake churchianity for Christianity. Most of churchianity is bound and miserable. It's under the law and in slavery, but the life that God intended is in incredibly free, so free it becomes offensive to churchianity. It's so free it offends the church people. It really is. It is so free. He will offend you by His freedom. The Holy Ghost is wild. The Holy Ghost is absolutely wild, believe me He's wild and He's so free. When we learn to yield to Him our lives become free. Most of us are far too uptight. Most of us are living in slavery rather than the freedom, kingly freedom that the Holy Ghost wants. ... [Yeah!] ... Kingly freedom! Joy! Life in the Holy Ghost! Joy, peace, patience, long-suffering - all the fruits in the spirit and the life of the Holy Ghost! Whoa! That's what He's calling us into.

So He said I haven't given you a spirit of slavery. When you got born again you didn't get born into keeping lots of laws; cut your hair, don't do this, don't do that, put on a suit, shape up - you didn't get born into that. You got born into another kingdom. It's on the inside. It's full of the Holy Ghost, full of joy unspeakable, full of glory! That's the kingdom! ... [Applause] ... That's what Jesus has for us! Notice He said you've received the spirit of adoption, the spirit that positions you into sonship that helps you grow to maturity, so the work of the Holy Spirit is to bear witness in our spirit, you are no longer an orphan. You belong to someone. You belong to God! You belong to Almighty God! You are one with Almighty God! The spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is inside you. You're in vital union with the Holy Ghost! Oh, we need to get that into our heart and spirit! ... [Applause] ... Full of it. Meditate on it 'til it gets free, free inside.

So the Holy Ghost imparts the life of God. The Holy Ghost puts some presence inside us and dwells inside us. He begins to reveal who we are. You're better than that. When you do something goofy He doesn't tell you off and scold you and chastise you, giving you a whipping. He doesn't do it that way. He says you're better than that. You're a king. You're not behaving like a king right now when you're carrying on with such a cranky attitude. That's not how kings behave, come on. You've got more in you than that! Let Me get control of your life a little bit and you'll see you can be a lot different. And of course the Holy Ghost reveals the Father. He reveals the Father.

I want you to have a look with me in Luke, Chapter 15. So we see what a wonderful thing Jesus called us to. How wonderful. See, the trouble is in getting in from our head to our heart. We'll have to talk about how to do that - when they get more insight. [Laughs] Okay, now we're going to have a look in Luke, Chapter 15. I want to show you what happens to many people in church. Church is wonderful. Church is the family of God, but church is God's design, needs to be run God's way. Needs to have freedom for the Spirit of God to move. Church is primarily His family, so therefore we need to walk and address one another as family. Of course if you're from a dysfunctional family well you'll have real problems as soon as you get into church, because you'll find that there's someone next to you from a dysfunctional family too. They don't love you very - they're not nice at all, they're horrible. But they're family so you've got to live with them.

So Jesus brings us into family. Now Jesus, in Luke, Chapter 15, the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Jesus to hear Him, but the Pharisees and the scribes complained, saying this Man receives sinners and eats with them. So here's the setting for what Jesus is about to tell you; He's in a setting where everyone who is a sinner and everyone who is a failure, everyone whose life was a shambles, a mess, who was from the other side of the tracks, they came to Him. They came to Him and they liked Him. He was nice to them. They didn't sense any judgement at all - no judgemental attitude, nothing. He didn't look at them and mentally look them up and down and decide whether you're in my world or not in my world. That's pride and judgmentalism you see. No, He didn't do that. He just made everyone welcome, so He was able to welcome them, hug them and eat with them and drink with them. So you know what the religious people, the church people's problem was? That Jesus ate with them. How can you be eating with that kind of person? How can you have them in your home? How can you be eating with such people! Don't you know what they're like?

You know they're so sinful some of it could get on to you and defile you. That's the thinking. That is the thinking, that some of the world's sin could stick on you and make you a mess. Well you can't have much in you if that happens. You've got the Spirit of God in you to make you clean. So then Jesus told some stories. You know the stories He told; first one about the lost sheep, second one about the lost talent and third one about the lost son, prodigal son. I don't want to talk about the prodigal son. I want to focus on the elder brother and we're going to look at the elder brother. We'll see if next to you is not an elder brother. If you've been around in church for more than a year probably you're an elder brother already, but you don't know. It's all very easy to tell, see your response to the unsaved. That just gives it up really easy.

Okay then, so you remember the story. Just to sum it up a man had two sons and the youngest son didn't want to live with the father. He wanted out, says dad I'd rather you were dead. Give me the dough. Get me out of here. Give me the money now, I want my inheritance in advance and he took off. Man, did he have a time. He blew all the dough, had a wild life with the women, the drugs, out there buying stuff. Man, life was great. Then he lost all the dough. There was an economic downturn, got into great despair, ended up feeding pigs and finally he came to his right mind and went back to his father with a humble heart.

The father was waiting for him. Wonderful, most wonderful passage in the Bible, the verse in the Bible where it says: and the father saw him while he was a long way off and ran to him and hugged him, welcomed him. That's God. That's God. That's God. He can hug the gay person. He can hug the drug addict, hug the homeless, He can love people, not ashamed of people. Doesn't matter how fallen they are - but there's an older brother. Now let's have a look at the older brother. It's as though they're having a big party. I love it when God - God loves parties. He said every time a sinner gets saved, then they have a party. Isn't that good? So the more we get saved the more partying - I like that. That's really good, parties in heaven. I don't know what you think you're going to do? Sit around there playing a harp or something. No, you're not going to be doing that at all, it's ridiculous. Having a party! Oh, joy unspeakable! Here it is: so anyway, here was the other brother and so - Verse 25 - the older son was in the field and as he came and drew near to the house he heard the music and the dancing, heard all the dancing, whoa. Wonder if it was salsa dancing ... [Laughter] ... Wonder what kind of dancing it was. There was dancing and music, so they're having a party and having great fun. So he called one of the servants and he asked what these things meant, what's going on? He said your brother's come - your brother, notice - and your father has received him safe and sound and you father's killed the fatted calf, you know the big fat one? He's killed it and your father's invited everyone. We are having a party, the wine is out, the food is out. It's all on. The son has come back.

But he was angry and he would not go in, so his father had to come out. The father had to go out and meet the other son and the father's gone out to meet this one. He pleaded with him, please come in. Please come in, please come in, don't stay out. Please come in - but he said this: 'Lo, these many years I've been serving you; I've never transgressed your commandment at any time. You never gave me a young goat. You never made me a young goat that I may make merry with my friends. You never touched me the way you've touched someone else. You never poured your glory on me like you poured it on someone else. You never did miracles in my life like you did it in others, no. No, you never did any of that. As soon as this son of yours comes back - he's devoured your livelihood with the prostitutes and now you've gone and killed the fatted calf!

He said to him, son, you're always with me, all I have is yours. It was right we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, he was lost and he's found. What an amazing thing - so the older brother was serving in the field. Now here's the thing, you have to understand this. He had no revelation of his sonship. He had no revelation of the father's heart. He just served in the house. He would be a representative in this particular case of the Pharisees and the scribes who had no understanding of the heart of God for the lost. Of course mentally when I say Pharisee and scribe you exclude yourself. Isn't that true? Oh, well who would say I'm a Pharisee? I'm just a Pharisee. No one would say that. I think they might be - anyway that's how it goes.

So here's the thing. He had an orphan spirit. He had no revelation of the father's love so he too was spiritually an orphan and he had a slave mentality. Now when you look at this passage you're going to see exactly what it looks like in a church context. Let's just have a look and you'll see. Now you notice what happens, there's some celebration and the first thing is when he heard about the brother's arrival and the father's celebration this is what he did. His heart, as soon as he heard it, closed up. His spirit closed up. What do you do when life doesn't go well for you, when you have troubles or difficulties or setbacks or things around you don't go right? Do you open up your heart to God to look at that situation, or do you close your spirit and withdraw?

Second thing that he did was he isolated and withdrew from relationship. He would not go in. When people have an orphan spirit and abandonment and bitterness in their heart, when something happens that knocks them emotionally, they withdraw from relationship and connect and isolate. If you withdraw from relationship and isolate, it's most likely that at the core of your heart you have an orphan spirit operating. You don't understand the Father's love and so you're taking it on personally. Then what he did was he struggled with deep feelings of rejection and loneliness and isolation and resentment. Now this is my experience with many people. I have struggled with that over many years of my life. Things would happen that would be a setback and instead of thinking about it right and handling it like a child of God, I'd go into an old pattern, a childhood pattern and become hurt inside, then isolate, withdraw, shut down.

It become such a habit of mine I could hardly stop it happening. What it means is there's something wrong in the heart. There's a lack or devoid of revelation of the love of the Father. That's what causes that. It's a void of revelation of love, so therefore you isolate and then you live in your pain and try and process it. Of course you become lonely and you'll say church is a lonely place. The church isn't here to meet your needs for loneliness. That has to be met by choice of your own, to deal with the inner belief system and find a relationship with God and learn to build friendships. When you build friendships the fruit of that is you're not lonely. If you want friendships you'll always be lonely. Just think about that.

Okay then, so his words revealed the mentality so you notice his behaviours revealed what was in his heart as soon as he heard that someone else had been blessed. Now how many times have you heard someone else get promoted and instead of celebrating immediately you thought why not me? It's not fair. That inability to celebrate with others, rejoice with their successes, is a sure sign of your lack of revelation of the Father's love and provision for you. I've found very often when someone gets blessed others in the house will say why him? They're an elder brother. They haven't got revelation of the Father's love for them, so the moment someone is acknowledged or comes forward, immediately there's negative feelings and a shutting down and withdrawing in pain and it's because of underneath there's a lack of revelation of Father's love for you.

When you're full of the love of the Father for you you're happy for everyone to be promoted, everyone to be celebrated. Someone just got a new car - that is fantastic! Take me out in it, you know, instead of you don't deserve that. ... [Laughter] ... That's an elder brother attitude. See, that's what the elder brother's - he doesn't deserve that! He doesn't deserve being blessed or being generous. Why? Because he needs to earn it and he hasn't earned it. Where did he get that thinking from? That was his own thinking. I've got to earn it. I've got to earn it. If I just am good enough and work hard enough I'll earn blessing from my father. That's what he's thinking. So now his words give him away completely.

Notice what he says; your brother has come - he was angry, wouldn't go in, so he answered. He said 'Lo, these many years I've served you. I've been serving you. I've been serving you. I'm the one entitled to the fatted calf. How come he got the diamond and I didn't? Look, it touches everyone. When there's revival and God pours His spirit out, the elder brothers appear in their numbers. It's true, so the first thing you notice - I'll give you some keys ways, a slave mentality, a victim mentality. Look, people think like victims, they'll think similar. This is what it is. First of all they justify themselves, I'm right. See, I've been a servant. I've been working, look, I'm doing alright. There's nothing wrong with me. Don't look at me. I've done something, I've been working hard you know - so a victim will always think they're right. I'm right. The word is viewed through 'I'm right' see? They justify themselves.

Second thing is you'll notice he blames. This son of yours wasted your money, so victim people blame everyone. You find someone blaming, they've got a victim thinking. The blame - oh well, you know, it's because of this, because of that. Oh well, you know it's not my fault. No, NOT MY FAULT! Very, very strong victim, okay. Here's the next thing. He said I've served you many years. What was he hoping? Why was he serving many years? He was hoping to be able to have a party too. He said I wanted to have that party too, I've served you many years. Notice he's passive? There's no record he ever requested anything. There's no record he ever came boldly to his father and said dad, can I have this? He just was passive, so when people have got the older brother mentality here's what they kind of think like; I'll just work and hope that God notices me and people notice me and they meet my needs. I'll tell you now, it's never going to work, never ever ever, yet people do it. I've done it.

So he's hoping. The next thing you notice is resentment. Resentment and bitterness are in the heart; you never gave me - I've worked so hard. I've been a good Christian. I come to church, I tithe, how come he suddenly got blessed and promoted? I've been tithing all these years. How come I never got - it just hasn't worked for me. There's a bitter resentment against God, bitter resentment against anyone going ahead. This is a sign of victim thinking. It's a sign of a person who has an orphan spirit, that they've got no revelation of love of the Father. So what else does he come up with? He says - here it is - this son of yours - judgemental and fault-finding. So you find when people have got this problem of victim mentality they find fault with everyone else.

You hang out with someone and they're always right and they blame everyone else and they don't tell you really what they're up to, they have no plans and they're just sort of passively waiting hoping that one day I'll get lucky? That kind of stuff isn't going to happen. It doesn't happen. It's typical victim mentality, judgemental, fault-finding thinking. Finally, he refused to take personal responsibility for his dreams.

What he had was a dream and a vision of something with his friends and he took no responsibility for that dream to be fulfilled, so when people have a victim mentality they do not own their dreams and plan how they might accomplish their dreams. They hope somehow it'll come about magically. That's victim mentality. In the church it works like this: there's dreams and desires and they're never vocalised. There's no plans made. They just pray and hope that one day God will do something and it'll all just come together somehow, lucky lucky, blah blah, Amen. It doesn't happen if you've noticed.

It just doesn't happen that way. Nothing happens that way. If you have dreams and desires you've got to bring them out into the open and talk to Father about them. Then get planning and taking responsibility and ownership for them. You make me feel so angry! No, I don't make you feel anything. Actually your feelings are all yours. That's victim thinking. Well you made me late. No, I didn't make you late. You were late all on your own. ... [Laughter] ... You understand? It's in the culture to think that way and under it is a generation without fathering that have an orphan spirit that's been abandoned and need to be shaped in their heart and their thinking to be a king.

This young man flushed the - he just flushed it out, so he failed to understand the grace and goodness of God, how to position himself to receive it. He failed to actually break out of his victim thinking. He was thinking if I just serve a long time it'll all work out good for me somehow. The result was he felt lonely and isolated, bitter, resentful. There was no joy in his serving whatsoever. Now you've probably heard people with victim speak. I want you to think about this because out of the mouth the heart speaks, so here it is.

If you've heard someone saying things like this - here's a few tick offs - if you heard someone thinking like this I can tell you now it's a victim thinking. If you hear them say this kind of thing: It's not fair - victim! You should have a little - you know those gas horns? It'd be quite good to carry one around. They've got that tank of gas that's got a little horn on it and you just push the button and when you push the button it goes WHAAAAAA! Like that you see - so when someone says it's not fair WHAAAAAA! I hear victim speak, you know, or it's not my fault WHAAAAAA! There it is again, victim speak's all coming out. You've probably heard it. It says I can't - WHAAAAAA! There's some victim speak - of course you can, you've never tried! What have you done to prepare yourself? Have you got any advice? There's all kinds of ways through. You don't have to have 'I can't' - you've never tried. How much have you tried? See?

I shouldn't have done that - WHAAAAAA! Victims always speak of what they should have done, could have done, might have done, ought to have done, but people who are kings don't think that way or talk that way. Servants always live under the law. No one listens to me - WHAAAAAA WHAAAAAA WHAAAAA! Heard that one a few times! ... [Laughter] ... Take responsibility for your communications. Learn to make yourself clear. Check out whether people understand you. Don't go saying no one listens to me. It's nonsense. You have an inner belief of a victim that no one will hear you and blow me down, life works out according to your beliefs. Well done! ... [Laughter]

You know, you want to change you've got to break out of that thinking, you've got to break down that internal thinking. I'll give a couple of more. Nothing I do is ever good enough. WHAAAAAA! I hear some victim speak here again. Dear Lord. Here's another one - you'll love this one: I don't have enough time. WHAAAAAA! WHAAAAAA! WHAAAAAA! Listen, that's victim speak. ... [Laughter] ... Do you have a 24 hour day? Then you've got time, it's just what you do with it's different, that's all. Don't have enough time, what nonsense. You ask a busy person they'll get it done because they can make time because they manage their time and they don't have excuses like I haven't got enough time. We've all got 24 hour days, seven day weeks, 365 day years. You just decide what you do with your time. You don't have enough time means you just spent it on the wrong things.

Here's another one, you'll love this one. Young ones, you'll love this one. My life sucks! ... [Laughter] ... WHAAAAAA! Big long blast, victim blast. Come on! That is just so bad, my life sucks. Your life's the sum result of all your choices. Break out of victim thinking. Take responsibility. Some of you are already angry ... [Laughter] ... I can feel it. I can see it in your eyes, the look. Sorry, I'm just saying what the Lord's been saying to me. ... [Laughter] ... If I have a bad day, oh it sucks! WHAAAAAA! Sorry. Better attitude needed here, break out of that stuff. I'll give you the last one. You'll find this one in a church. This is very much in a church: no one around here cares about me. ... [Laughter] ... WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Get outta here! ... [Applause/Laughter] ... That is victim speak.

Kings don't talk like that. Nobody cares about me?! Lot of nonsense - just projecting out onto the world your own belief system. If you believe no one cares about you, great, welcome to your world. You'll find no one cares about you is exactly what'll happen. [Laughs] They'll walk past you - ha! - and they don't care, don't seem to care. Actually they do care. It's just there's something that you're radiating out that's defiling everything around you and making your world become just like you believe in your heart. See?

So we could probably come up with some more. You could probably think of a few of your own. How many know someone who's said one or other of those things? ... [Yes!] ... You all know someone. Right, just carry around and horn and if you're a leader you should get one of those gas horns and carry it around. The next time you hear someone, especially if you're in your leadership team and they do that, just one loud long blast. ... [Laughter] ... Aaghh! Snap them! Now what was that about? I heard victim speaking and I don't like victim speak! You're trying to suck me into your negative world and I refuse. Kings don't go into negative victim worlds. Kings challenge them how to break out of their slavery, so it's a matter of thinking different things.

Notice what the father says? He doesn't answer any of the things at all. He doesn't get drawn into all of this. He doesn't get drawn into the moaning, groaning, judging, whining, complaining negatives, not one little bit. He doesn't try and justify what he's done. He doesn't try to explain what he's done. He doesn't do anything because he's not a victim. He doesn't need to justify and he doesn't need to blame, doesn't need to explain, doesn't need to do anything. He just said son, everything I had was yours. You just needed to ask. Son, everything I've got is yours, you just need to ask. Son, everything I have is yours! You just needed to ask! I love you.

The word son there is not older son, mature son. It's a little boy son, it's a child who's no different than a servant because he remains childish in his thinking. You say child, you're thinking like a child. You're part of my family. Everything I have is yours. Rise up and begin to declare your dreams and plan how to fulfil them and ask me for how to resource them and I'll do it. What a great thing. So the son got a revelation of the father's love. He couldn't receive it because he was so caught in his own victim thinking. Now Jesus was applying that to the religious people, the scribes and the Pharisees who couldn't understand the generosity of God, that God will pour His spirit and touch undeserving people, but that is what God is like.

Here's what God is like - He's good. Here's what He's like - He is good. He is good all the time and not only that, He's full of grace. That means He gives people what they don't deserve, but we've got a religious world that divides up if you deserve it you get it, if you don't deserve it you don't get it. That's not how God operates by the way. That's the law. He operates differently. He says I'm good! I'm good all the time! I'm generous all the time! I give all the time! Believe and receive and open your heart to experience my love and be transformed from being a slave into being a son of a great family, part of a royal line destined to rule over all creation.

We need revelation of the Father's love. We need to turn from our victim slavish thinking and come into the inheritance God has for us. One of the greatest lessons in the Bible is that the children of Israel, having received the goodness of God, refused to break out of their negative complaining, whinging, whining, blaming, excusing behaviour and in the end God said well what you've been saying is what's going to happen. You can't enter the land. We can't walk into the new things God has unless we let God reveal His love and open our hearts to think differently. Amen!

Father God, we just thank you today. What a great God you are. Oh, I hear the horns sounding in heaven today, pushing on all the negative thinking, all the negative talking and encouraging us to begin to think differently.

Summary Notes

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Introduction:

· John 15:14-15 “no longer do I call you servants … I have called you friends”

· Jesus raised the status, identity of his disciples to a new level

· Servant = 1401 = doulos = slave, one who gives himself wholly to the will of another

· God desires to raise s from slaves to sons – to be part of a royal family – Kings

· God’s plan is for a family of Kings 1 Peter 2:9 with Jesus the King of Kings

Israel was called from Slavery to Sonship:

· Exodus 4:22 “Israel is my Son, even my First born … let my Son go that he may serve me…”

· Israel was in bondage in Egypt – in slavery to taskmasters

· The taskmasters made their lives bitter with hard bondage Ex 1:11-14

· Israel were slaves, victims – hurt, rejected and abused

· Victim = person who is abused, hurt, oppressed by another ad is unable to resist

· Victim thinking = the person refuses to take personal responsibility for their life and blames others for what is happening in their world

= A way of thinking and interpreting life comes from unresolved offences, pain, and heart beliefs

· Underneath victim thinking is an ‘orphan spirit’ i.e. a person is abused in life and has no one to love, affirm, value, comfort, nurture, protect or discipline

· An ‘orphan spirit’ cannot be cast out – it consists of ungodly beliefs/bitterroots

It is developed over a lifetime – it becomes part of the way a person thinks.

It must be displaced, out to death by experiencing the Father’s Love and revelation of the Spirit of Sonship

3. Jesus’ Promise to His Disciples:

· John 14;16-18

“I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you”

· Jesus was about to die on the Cross – redeem humanity from slave to son

· “Another” = one exactly like the one you have had

· He promised He would not leave them orphans

· Orphan = 3737 = orphanos = to be fatherless, without a father to comfort, love and direct

· Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit

· Romans 8:14-17 “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit we are the children of God”

· We did not receive the spirit of bondage = 1397 = slavery, lacking, freedom of spirit

· Adoption = 5206 = to pace into full rights and privileges of Sonship

· Holy Spirit = Imparts the DNA of God, Reveals who we are, Dwells joined to us, Reveals God’s father love

4. Elder Brother Mentality:

· Luke 15:25-32 “The older son was in the field – serving”

· The elder brother was serving his father working in the fields

· He had no revelation of the fathers heart or love for him

· He had a slave or victim mentality – an orphan spirit

a) His behavior revealed his mentality – when he heard the news of his brothers arrival and the fathers celebration

Ø He closed up his spirit – ‘angry’

Ø He isolated and withdraw from the relationship – ‘would not go in’

Ø He struggled with feelings of rejection, anger and heaviness

b) His words revealed his slave mentality

Ø Justified himself - ‘I have served … never transgressed’

Ø Blames - ‘This son of yours … wasted your inheritance’

Ø Waits passively, hoping - ‘I served these many years’

Ø Resentment/bitterness - ‘You never gave me…’

Ø Judgmental, faultfinding - ‘This son of yours’

Ø Refused personal responsibility for own dreams and desires - ‘Make merry with my friends’

· He failed to understand grace, and the unconditional love of the Father

· His attitude was that what was wrong in his life was because of someone else – he felt lonely, isolated, unloved and bitter

c) How Victims Speak:

· Luke 6:45

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”

· Listen to yourself speak: do you speak like a King or a Slave?

‘It’s not fair’ ‘No one listens to me’ ‘Nobody cares’

‘It’s not my fault’ ‘Nothing I do is good enough’ ‘I can’t’

‘My life sucks’ ‘I don’t have enough time’

‘I shouldn’t have done that’

d) The Father’s Response:

· Luke 15:31

“Son, All I have is Yours”

· “Son” = 5043 = teknon = a child, one born to the father with rights and privileges but is still a child

· God wants us to experience His Love and Fatherhood and to receive all He has that is available to us

Standing in the Storms of Life

Standing in the Storms of Life (1 of 2)

You don't always see the connection between your actions and the current storm. Sometimes there's a bit of time takes place before finally you start to reap the consequences of your actions and your inner storm, whether it be in your marriage, in your family, in your finances, in your personal life, in your work life and actually it's the result of neglect or the result of poor choices. You're going to have to not just pray about it and blame the devil on it. You've actually got to own and take full responsibility, you only have power over the storm if you own responsibility. The second kind of storm then is a God-directed storm, that kind of storm is to bring you to surrender. There's just some natural storms that come in life. There can be some storms which are just straight out demonic.

Standing in the Storms of Life (2 of 2)

Jesus shows His dominion over nature, total authority over the law of gravity when He's walking on water. When He got into the boat immediately the wind just stopped. The third thing that happened was immediately the boat was on the other side, transported! Sometimes when we read the gospels we just read them almost with eyes blinded to the reality of the supernatural. Go preach the gospel, and signs will follow those who believe

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- Standing in the Storms of Life (2 of 2)

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Standing in the Storms of Life (1 of 2)

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You don't always see the connection between your actions and the current storm. Sometimes there's a bit of time takes place before finally you start to reap the consequences of your actions and your inner storm, whether it be in your marriage, in your family, in your finances, in your personal life, in your work life and actually it's the result of neglect or the result of poor choices. You're going to have to not just pray about it and blame the devil on it. You've actually got to own and take full responsibility, you only have power over the storm if you own responsibility. The second kind of storm then is a God-directed storm, that kind of storm is to bring you to surrender. There's just some natural storms that come in life. There can be some storms which are just straight out demonic.

I want to share with you on: standing in the storms of life. How many know that storms come on us once in a while, a bit unexpected aye? Every one of us faces storms of some kind. Storms, sometimes we see them coming on the horizon, sometimes you don't see them, they just blow up, and they just come. I want to just talk about some storms, a particular storm that Jesus' disciples faced, and the Holy Spirit, in the word of God, separated out from everything that Jesus did, just some things that we need to hear about. So there's so many things, if you wrote them all down it would fill the books of the world, so the ones we see here that are written have really got something for us, so let's have a look.

On the same day when evening had come, Jesus said - Mark 4:35 - let's cross over to the other side. And when they left the multitude, they took Him along in the boat as He was; no time to change, no time to get packed, hop in the boat and leave. And other little boats were also with Him, and a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat - it was already getting filled with water. But He was in the stern of the boat, asleep on a pillow. Isn't that wonderful aye? That's Jesus - and they awoke Him, and said to Him: teacher, don't You care we're about to die? We're perishing! And He arose, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: peace, be still! The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Then He said to them: why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith? And they were even more fearful. They feared exceedingly, and said: who can this be, even the wind and the sea obey Him!

So you notice this is a story of a storm, and how to handle a storm. Every one of us faces storms in life. This particular storm was a dramatic storm. Notice what Jesus says at the beginning. He says: let's cross over to the other side. In other words, He had an assignment for them. Jesus had in mind a territory to be reached. Jesus had a vision of a whole region of people He wanted to reach with the gospel; so when He said: let's cross over, what He's really saying is: I don't want to just stay preaching to those who've already heard the word of God. I want to go out to where people haven't heard the word of God. There's a whole territory out there, that I want to go to; and He said: let us cross over to the other side. So this is a tremendous picture for us, of God speaking about the need for us to break out of limitations, break out of comfort zones, to bring the gospel to people who never heard Him. People need to hear about Jesus Christ. The only way they're going to hear is if we bring the good news to them.

So notice the mandate they have, is to leave the comfort zone, and go out to where people haven't heard the gospel; and so they had to leave the crowd behind. It's great to be gathering and meeting like this. We have a great time, we enjoy the presence of God, but there are people around you every day that have never heard about the kingdom of God, they've never heard about a saviour who loves them. They're wrestling with storms in their life, unable to know what to do, and we've got something that can help them. It won't matter what stage you are at in your journey in your Christian life, you have something to help someone who doesn't know Christ - even if it's a simple act of kindness opens the door, but you have to cross over. You've got to cross over the great gap between: being with my friends; and being where people are who don't know Jesus. You've actually got to initiate it. Notice that Jesus said: you leave where you are, and go to where they are. It's always like that.

Often we think: well, we'd love to invite people to come; and it's great to have events to gather people too. They're great to do that, but really the bottom line is, God wants us to go where people are in need. I just so appreciated Thomas this morning, just his willingness to go to desperate people in need. I mean that's a - to have a young man stepping out like that to do something like that, he's never put any demand on anyone. He's worked sacrificially to do this. This is a thing that's inspiring, and it's a great example, but the bottom line is: he's going where people are; and we go out those doors to where people are, but you've got to intentionally leave the comfort zone.

Notice: they left the multitudes, left the crowd, left the place of comfort, to go to where people are in need. You actually have to engage them; and in the engaging with unsaved people, there will be a clash of kingdoms. We have to just understand the reality of that, and in this particular passage, and the next one that follows, there are two clashes that take place. In other words, Jesus has given the disciples an assignment, but always with the assignments of God, there will come a spiritual conflict. It is inevitable. If you are walking into what God has for you, you will face a clash between: the kingdom you represent; and the kingdom of darkness. It will not yield it's captives readily. It's something we have to bear. A lot of Christians aren't aware, that around the issue of reaching souls, there is a spiritual conflict; and it requires we overcome some of the things that arise against us. I want to help you understand some things that arise against us, some storms that arise against us, and what to do. But always it costs you something, always it costs you something.

Let's have a look at the story there, and it says: a great wind-storm arose. That word 'great' is 'mega'. It's a MEGA storm. Don't know if you've ever been out in a boat in a mega storm? It's horrendous! The word storm there, indicates there were great furious thunderclouds; there were driving blasts and gusts; and then there's this torrential rain. That's what it describes. When you read it: oh well there it is, yeah, a great windstorm. No, no, no. They were in a life-threatening thing. This thing rose up out of nowhere, and threatens to sink the boat before they've even got there; and so the storm came up. Now I want you to understand there's a whole number of storms that we can face in life. I want to identify for you four different kinds of storms. When you face a storm, usually what happens is: it affects your thought life; it affects your emotions; it affects your decisions. You feel like your life is a little bit out of control, because you're in the middle of a storm. How many understand what that's like?

There's all kinds of storms. You can have a financial storm, and suddenly there's this dramatic pressure; things look black and cloudy, the rain is on you. You look like the boat is sinking. That's a financial storm. You can have a storm in your marriage, it looks exactly like that in your marriage. It can be black and cloudy, and the winds are beating, and you're feeling very distressed, and thinking: I'm sinking very quickly. There can be storms in the family, especially if you have teenagers. You can have dramatic storms arise, suddenly overnight. Out of nowhere they just suddenly turn up, and there's a crisis call, and then you have to leave home and go down to the police station; or leave home and pick someone up from some place; or you leave home and you've got to sort out some crisis. Anyone who's had teenagers knows, there's a whole number of storms come during that period of life. How many understand what I'm talking about here? There we are, everyone! That's right. Be nice if you knew what to do in those storms wouldn't it? [Laughs]

Okay, so those are a couple of storms, different kinds of storms. When a storm comes, you're in turmoil. Now there's four different kinds of storms - there may be others, these are four that I'm aware of, four that I've had. I've gone through every one of these storms, so I know a little bit about storms. The first storm is the storm of your own making; the storm of your own making. In other words, you brought it on yourself. Now that is a storm, let me just give you a simple example. If you spend more than you have coming in, a financial storm is about to arise. It's only a matter of how long, then it arises, then you complain: ooh, the devil's attacking me, my finances are down, God's not coming through. Listen, you goofed up! It's just as simple as that. You just goofed up, and mismanaged; and now you're reaping what you sowed. It's just simple like that, so a storm of our own making means: there's stuff we did, and now we're getting the consequences of it; or there's stuff we didn't do, and now we're getting the consequences of it.

So husbands, if you neglect to love your wives... I was just talking to a guy recently, and I remember trying to help him out a little while ago, and now he's a very, very lonely person, and his marriage has broken up. His wife left him, and I said: did you learn anything from it? He said: yes, I did. He said: I realised I neglected her. I didn't want to say: we came and talked to you about that - it just wouldn't be appropriate in the middle of a storm. People are really needing help; not to sink. They don't need us to help point out they got there, but the thing was that he was reaping the consequences. Now the problem with this is, that you don't always see the connection between: your actions; and the current storm. Sometimes there's a bit of time takes place before finally you start to reap the consequences of your actions; and your inner storm, whether it be in your marriage, in your family, in your finances, in your personal life, in your work life; and actually it's the result of neglect, or the result of poor choices.

Now one of the hardest things is to connect that. You go to someone, like a Pastor or a leader, and they talk with you, and they'll ask you the questions, and help you link the storm you're facing now, to what you actually did or didn't do. That's one of the things of having someone external helping you in the middle of a storm. My observation over many years, is often in the middle of a storm, you can't see one thing from another. You're just fearful, and you want to survive; and you can't connect where you failed with what you're experiencing. Sometimes we just need someone to help us in that; so the key questions to think about here: what has been my contribution to this storm? Has there been any contribution by me to this storm? Now the financial one's an obvious one. If there's more going out than coming in, then you've absolutely been messing up. You've actually made some bad judgement calls, and you're going to have to not just pray about it, and blame the devil on it. You've actually got to own and take full responsibility; you only have power over the storm, if you own responsibility. So the first question then you ask is: what's my part in this? Then the key response is: will you acknowledge, and repent, and make the practical changes?

So some storms, they're not really spiritual. Demons will use them to torment, and trouble, and harass you; but they're basically not a demonic storm. They're just a storm of consequences. How many have had one of those? Probably that's the one that brought you to Christ. [Laughs] I think of the one that got me to Christ. Yeah, it was a storm, and it was horrendous, and in the end I came to the Lord. There was nowhere else to go. How many knew there was nowhere else to go, that's why you came to the Lord? Yeah, well that's good and honest. That's where most people are, so you'll find people who are in a storm, a lot of people you meet in life, their problems - yes, there's demons around it. Yes, there's kinds of issues around it, but the core of it is: they're messing up. There's sin, there's irresponsibility, and that's why they've got the problem. Many marriages break down because of neglect, not because of actually consciously doing bad things. They've just neglected the marriage over so many years, that in the end there's nothing left, it just ran out when the kids left home.

So the second kind of storm then, is a God-directed storm; a God-directed storm. This one here, you can't pray your way out of it; you can't work your way out of it; you can't repent your way out of it. You just can't get out of the storm, because God's the one who blew the thing in, in the first place, so that's a challenging storm, another storm. We like to feel we have the power to make things happen, but sometimes we can't; so a classic example of that is in Jonah 1:4, where Jonah had been told by the Lord: go and preach the gospel in Nineveh. He said: I don't like them. In fact, actually I despise them; and I'm not going, and he got on a boat and went the other way; and he went a long way the other way. That's kind of the condition of a lot of the church. God says: go and preach the gospel - I don't want to. I don't want to. It's inconvenient. People are not nice to me. It costs my time and my money, I don't think I want to. I think I'll get on a boat and go somewhere nice. It'd be lovely to go somewhere nice; so that kind of storm, it says: the Lord caused a great wind to blow; so it's definitely true in the Bible, that sometimes the winds that people have in their life, are the winds God causes.

The worst part of it is this: everyone around you gets caught up in your storm. I mean we're meant to advance the kingdom, and bring peace and blessing; that's righteousness, peace, joy and the Holy Ghost, isn't that right? That's what should be flowing out of our lives, so people at your work say: it's great to have you working for us, we see things are right. There's peace, there's joy, it's great we've got you here. Instead of that, they're all in turmoil, because you're in turmoil, because you're totally missing it in God. I think of the marriages where the wife and family are in turmoil because the man's not doing what God says, just deliberately on a boat somewhere else. Well, that storm comes into that boat! Think about that, so some storms God lets happen, and some happen for a purpose. It's actually to realign us with kingdom. It's just to realign us with kingdom. It's to get you realigned, so you don't go off track any further.

I mean, I wonder how many of us here, are going exactly 180 degrees away from where God wanted. You can be sitting in church, and still going 180 degrees away from where God wants you to go, you know. Praise the Lord - but I'm going this way! So we come into worship: oh oh oh praise the Lord! - but I'm going this way; and God says: but I want you going over here. Why aren't you doing this? And we say: oh the worship wasn't very good today. No, of course it wasn't good today, there's a storm blowing, and God's blowing the storm around you. The reason he's blowing around you, is because you're not in a right place in your heart; and God is helping you, because he loves you, to sort something out. So that kind of storm is to bring you to surrender. It's to bring you to surrender, to bring you to the cross; where you stop fighting God any more, and say: God, I'm yielding and letting go.

Usually people are in the belly of the whale before they actually cry out the prayer, when at last the big fish closes in over you, and you're swallowed, going down into darkness, oh how your praying changes. [Laughter] It does, doesn't it? YAAAHH! GOD, help us! I'm really sorry! You know, as that fish is opening up, and you're swimming as fast as you can. It's following you. You know, you do change. [Laughter] The prayers get quite different. They're not sort of long, complicated prayers. It's just a [Sobs loudly] I'm about to go into the belly of whale, of the fish, swallow me up; and there it is, slime; and the last thing he prayed. It was a great prayer he prayed, because it brought him into resurrection. When he let go, and he surrendered, and acknowledged the goodness of God, the bigness of God, and surrendered to God, it got him into resurrection. The fish got a belly ache and chundered him out! Can you just imagine?

Now this is not good, to fight against God, you realise that. You don't want to end up being vomited up by some fish up on a beach, covered in slime and seaweed. It's not really a nice place to be. It's where a lot of Christians get to somehow. At least if they come around and say yes to God, then things can only look better after that. So I wonder if God has been speaking in any area of your life, and the storm you're facing is just because God is wanting you to yield. Even Jesus faced His own storms. Think in Matthew 26, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He faced a storm. Now you see, the storm He faced was the cross; but it brought a storm in his emotions. You imagine if you know, if you knew that in twenty-four hours of walking out that door, you would face the most horrendous death. You've probably heard and seen of others, a terrible slow death, and then you know you're going to face that, what would you feel?

The Bible says: He was extremely sorrowful, but He didn't isolate. He gathered key friends around, and He asked them to pray with Him, and stand with Him through the difficulty He was facing. One of the things that people tend to do in a storm is isolate; and when you isolate, you're going to go down under a tree in depression, wanting to die like Elijah did. Isolation's not the answer, connection is, and then in the connection He asked His friends, even though they weren't able to solve His problem or change the circumstances, He just shared His heart with them, and gathered them in to stand with Him in prayer. He said: pray with Me an hour, and He shared His heart with them. It takes great courage and humility, when you're going through the face of a storm, and things are very, very difficult, to just share your heart with people; and say: could you stand with me in prayer? Not ask them to solve it, try and pray and fix it, prophesy some great thing. You just ask them: I just want you to stand with me in agreement. That's a Godly thing to do. No one should be alone. We should all be part of the body, and build connections; so when the pressure's on, you've got someone you can talk to, and say: can you pray with me? I really need prayer right now.

And then Jesus personally worked through, and wrestled through, to the place of surrender to the will of God; Father, not my will, your will be done. That's a huge challenge to go through those kinds of surrenders, but don't think He didn't have a storm with His emotions. It was a major storm, and the storm was about surrendering to what God wanted, when His flesh didn't want to do it. You may come across that in marriage, you can come across it in family. There's every area of our life we can face those kinds of pressures; and it's about: will you align with God, or not? When you're going through financial pressure, and someone talks to you about realigning your finances, that can be a terrible storm; and it takes huge courage to break through, and yield, and put your finances in God's hands; and then walk through the practical process of budgeting, and managing, and debt repayment, and getting yourself back on top again. Isn't that true?

Here's another one. There's just some natural storms that come in life. Now I hadn't thought about this, but I was thinking about it as I was praying, there are just some situations come. God didn't arrange it, the devil didn't arrange it, and you didn't do anything wrong. It's just because we live in a sinful world; like there's landslides happen, there's storms happen, there's earthquakes happen. There's things that happen. People do stuff. You drive down the road, and someone crosses the line, and there's an accident. It doesn't mean that the devil made it all happen, or that God was trying to get your attention and punish you. It was just we live in a fallen world, and in a fallen world - stuff happens. People are born with DNA issues, and it's a tragedy, and the parents grieve; where's God in this? And they go through all this whole thing. Sometimes it's just, we're living in a sinful and a fallen world; and God calls us - it says in Romans 8: the whole world groans, because of it's travail and it's problems.

The whole world is groaning because of sin in the world; so we're in that world. It's not heaven, but we are called to bring heaven into the earth, so some storms are just because there's stuff going on; and there are many people face storms in life. One of the key things, if it's a God directed storm is: what's God trying to say to me; and will I surrender? But if it's a natural storm of life, then the kind of question you have to ask is this: how should I respond to this? See sometimes it's no use blaming people, no use blaming yourself, no use blaming God, or blaming the devil. Just ask: what do I need to do, to walk through this storm? How do I walk through the storm; and then second: release grace into it; not judgement, because most people get offended, and want someone to blame when they're in a storm; rather than saying: God, how should I respond? How can I bring grace, the goodness of God, the life of God into this situation? I've got to come to the Lord and say: God, just give me the grace to stand in the middle of it.

The Bible says: by faith and endurance we inherit promises of God; you know, be followers of those, who by faith and patience, receive the promises of God. Sometimes it's just like that, you've just got to learn how to stand, and learn how to bring the grace of God into a difficult circumstance. Now that's part of being a kingdom person; so a lot of people just look around, and they complain; but we don't do that. We don't look around and complain. We're the sons of God, the sons of light; we find a way that we can bring goodness into it, overcoming evil with good, blessing where we're being cursed, starting to engage in reconciliation, or restoration of relationship. So think about that. The storm you're going through, no one may be to blame. It's just something to grow you;

Here's the last one. This is the one I want to pick up here, because this is the one this story's about; and there can be some storms which are just straight out demonic. In this situation, Jesus faced two demonic storms, one after the other. The first was in His natural circumstances, the wind and waves that were going to sink the boat. Second was, He met a totally demonised man, who become a life-threatening danger to them, because of his supernatural strength. One was circumstances, the other was a person; and in our life, we may face some circumstances which are demonically empowered, some people which are demonically empowered; but all have the same effect. They tend to intimidate, and cause you to feel like you're sinking, and can't handle it. I want you to just see what Jesus did. He did the same in both situations. Let's have a look what He did in this one here, because it's a great key to what to do in this situation.

If it's a demonic situation, here's the core question: what is the source of this storm? Is it God? Is it me? Is it reaping something? Is it just a natural storm of life; or is it a demonic storm? If it's a demonic storm, God will give you some indication of it. Now whenever I go overseas, I have demonic storms. I have them before I go, I have them when I'm there; even the people I go to have them. They constantly can't get over the problems they have: power failures, equipment failures, difficulties, setbacks of all kinds, miscommunication. They're just normal, just little stuff; and sometimes it's bigger, but not often. Notice now how they respond, and Jesus models for us how you respond when there's a spiritual pressure comes on you. Your emotions, and your mind, and your body or spirit are in turmoil. This is the first thing they did: they had a panic attack.

They had a panic attack; and then they went to Jesus, and literally they just complained: you don't seem to care about us! You seem to be totally not concerned about this terrible issue we're facing. Can't you see our boat's about to sink! See, they're getting quite angry, because Jesus is totally unconcerned. Now this is why Jesus is unconcerned: He's on a kingdom assignment, and He knows absolutely He will arrive there, and He will deal with the thing, and He'll finish His assignment. His life cannot be ended before His assignment is finished. Your life can't be ended before your assignment is finished, unless you do something goofy on the way. But in the midst of the storm ,the tendency they had was to: one, be filled with fear, and that magnifies the emotions, and all the situation, out of control, out of perspective; second, they got angry and upset; third, they wanted to blame Jesus, and accused Him of not caring about them.

This is ridiculous. His idea to get in the boat in the first place, His idea to lead them over there. He had a harvest in mind, but there were unexpected demonic resistance on the way to harvest. Every one of us who intentionally reaches people, will find demonic storms of difficulty and pressure will come. You've just got to toughen up, and learn what to do in it. It's very simple. They woke Him up; and this is what Jesus said. He arose! Don't lie down, don't go down in your prayer life. Don't go down into self pity and depression. Rise in your spirit! Start to begin to pray, and let your spirit rise up again. You have to stand up!

When I come into worship service, I'm interested not in what the musicians are doing, because they work hard, and they pray and they prepare well and everything. I'm interested in what the church is doing in it's spirit; whether we're standing up to worship God on the inside, or whether it's only on the outside. Whether our spirit is bound under sadness, and heaviness, and difficulty or oppression; or whether we've risen inside, by conscious choice.

You don't have to keep praying for God to pour His spirit out. He's already poured His spirit out. What you need to do is, remember that truth; and arise into it again. You see when storms come, they flood your soul. They affect the mind, the thoughts, the emotions; and if the enemy can get management of that, so you're not managing it properly, down you go; your spirit shuts down, then there's disengagement from the kingdom. The only answer to demonic storms is: engaging in the kingdom. It's the only way, because you actually have to demonstrate your determination and authority to beat the spirits behind it. To do that, you have to arise, number one; second, you have to speak into it. From arising into the presence of God, arising into His throne room, arising and standing before Him; then see it from His perspective: it's just a few demons hassling you. Speak and command them to shut down! Speak and direct them to be quiet! Speak and command them to depart! In other words, speak over the circumstances, and direct how they ought to be; rather than let the demons manipulate them. Get up every day, and rise in your spirit with gratitude to the Lord, because gratitude is vital for maintaining your relationship.

Start to thank Him for all the blessings, allow your spirit to rise and come into His presence; then begin to speak, and command your day to align with the kingdom of God, and align with God's will. You start to command your day to align, oh my, you'll start to engage a few things that are pushing against you through the day.

You'll be surprised when you start to command each and every part of your day to align with God's will. I speak to every spirit assigned against me today, to block and distract or to frustrate. I take dominion over you! Be quiet and silent today! You start to order your day, it's quite interesting. The first two or three days, you'll start to find yourself entering in to sight some awareness of the spirit world; then after that your life will start to become smoother, things will start to come into order. You see, storms come to every person who's determined to carry the gospel. Why would we think we're any different? Why would we lie down when some demon says: boo; when we have a command from heaven to go? Why would we allow ourselves to be overcome by rejection, and self pity, and defeat and fear; when we have a mandate from heaven to advance the kingdom?

I tell you what, it brings shame to the gospel. It brings shame to the kingdom we're called to represent; because I've been to enough nations now, and been to places where people die for their faith. There are more people dying for their faith today, than ever happened in the New Testament church, on a per capita basis. The numbers of people dying today in the world, this Century, exceeds what happened in the New Testament church persecution. Globally, there are challenges to the gospel; and I tell you what amazes me. There's people standing up, and refusing to be intimidated; and saying: God, we will carry the gospel. We will represent You. We will bring Your word to those who don't know. In New Zealand our opposition is not so direct. In Pakistan it's quite direct, you know, it could be just someone with a gun or a bomb, and you're done, just like that. But here it's more subtle. It's like it just saps away your strength, a little day by day, until you become weak inside; and just no energy, and full of apathy. That's what comes against us. We've got to fight that, speak against it. Today, every demon of apathy, indifference, passivity, you're defeated before me! I'll arise in the strength of God today!

Come on church, we need to determine we're going to do that, determine we're going to do that, arise [Applause] in the strength of the Lord! Be passionate about making Christ known! Halleluiah. Why don't we close our eyes right now. I wonder just in this last moment or two, is there any person here who doesn't know Jesus? What a great day to come to give your heart to Jesus. If you'd like to raise your hand, I'd love to pray with you. I'd love to pray with you, if you don't know Jesus Christ. Becoming a Christian is about putting your life in Jesus' hands, it's about trusting Him to break the power of sin. He's the one who'll make the change in your life. You don't have to try any more. You just walk with Him, so today Jesus offers you salvation. Is there anyone ready to receive - I'd love you to raise your hand. I'd love to pray with you and lead you to Christ.

Those who are facing storms, why don't you stand right now. We want to pray for the power of God to come around your life. You don't have to face the storm alone. Storms can be in marriage, family, finance, every part of our lives, spiritual storms, relational storms, whatever. Here's the thing: you're not alone. God says: I'm with you; two, there's other people in the body are with you, even if you don't realise it; three, if you'll pray, God will help you, and show you what to do.

Father, we just thank You today, for Your mighty power to help us through the storms of life. We thank You Jesus, your word says: though I walk through the waters, they'll not overwhelm me; if I go through the fire, it'll not consume me; for You are with me. You will hold me, You'll help me, You'll hold my hand. I thank You Lord today. Today we release strength and encouragement. We stand against every oppressing, depressing spirit. In Jesus' name, we command you to release your hold over the body of Christ. We command you to release your hold over members in this church. We command you to release your hold. Father, we pray great grace will come upon each one here today, in Jesus Mighty name.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

· 1 Cor.10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it”.

· Temptation = NT3986= to put to proof, to put to the test.

· Every person faces pressures and difficulties in life – storms can come unexpectedly.

· Storms = Financial, physical health, marriage, family, relationships, work, ministry.

· God Promises (i) You are not the only one facing this

(ii) God is faithful – never leave – always help

(iii) You are up to the challenge (even if you think you are not)

(iv) God has a way to walk through the storm and grow

2. Confronting Your Storms

(a) Mark 4:35-41 The Great Storm

(b) “Let us crossover to the other side” v35

· Jesus’ purpose and priority is clear – seek and save lost people.

· God always wants to reach people with the gospel.

· “Crossover” = leave your comfort zone to expand the Kingdom.

= Jesus’ mandate/direction to the harvest field.

· “Left the Multitude” = Left the place of success and achievement.

= Left the comfort of the crowd to pursue Father’s priority.

= Always costs something to focus on the harvest.

(c) A Great Wind Storm Arose (v37)

· “Storm” = NT2978= black thunder clouds, strong gusts of wind, torrents of rain.

· “Great” = NT3173= Mega – very big.

· Wind and rain beat upon the boat – all in imminent danger - sinking.

(d) 4 Different Kinds of Storms

(i) Storm of own Making

· You are reaping the consequences of actions or inactivity.

· Every person is responsible for choices and decisions.

· Every person experiences consequences of choices and decisions.

· Key Question – What has been my contribution to this storm?

· Key Response –

(ii) God Directed Storm

· There is a need for change and only a storm brings you to recognise this.

· E.g. Jonah 1:4 “The Lord sent a great wind into the sea”.

· The storm is intended to bring you to a place of surrender/alignment.

· E.g. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt.26:37-41)

· Key Question – What is God trying to say to me?

· Key Response – Surrender – yield to the Lord.

(iii) Natural Storms of Life

· Not personal failure, Not God, Not the Devil – consequence of being in a fallen world.

· Pressures come in our life – recession, job loss, conflicts, set-backs.

· E.g. Joseph – Heb. 6:12 Faith and patience – Heb. 10:36 Need of patience.

· Key Question - How should I respond?

· Key Response - Release grace not judgement – overcome evil with good.

(iv) Demonic Opposition

· This is a spiritual reality – active evil spirits set on destroying us.

· Evil spirits arise against us fulfilling God’s purpose and plan.

· E.g. Jesus faced the storm (circumstances) and discouraged men (people).

· Key Question – What is the source of this storm?

· Key Response – Exercise governing authority – speak the word of God.

(e) “Teacher do You not care?” v38

· The disciples were filled with fear – did not respond well.

· Jesus seemingly unconcerned about their storm.

· They accused Him of “not caring” – blinded to Kingdom realities.

- Looked for someone to blame!

(f) “He Arose – Rebuked the Wind and Spoke to the Sea” v34

· Jesus demonstrated how faith is exercised.

· He spoke directly to the storm – words of faith – words of command.

· Fear quenches faith and causes storms in the mind and emotions.

· What storm has arisen in your Life?

· What kind of storm is it?

· How should you position yourself to respond?

Standing in the Storms of Life (2 of 2)

Sun 14 Oct 2012 PM  « Back to Top

Notes»  Audio»  Website»

Jesus shows His dominion over nature, total authority over the law of gravity when He's walking on water. When He got into the boat immediately the wind just stopped. The third thing that happened was immediately the boat was on the other side, transported! Sometimes when we read the gospels we just read them almost with eyes blinded to the reality of the supernatural. Go preach the gospel, and signs will follow those who believe

We were in Mark 4 this morning, and we were talking about storms. We're going to look at storms again, but in a different place, a different storm. Have a look in Mark 6:45, and I want to just share on the gospel on the supernatural. I'll just keep it brief, because I think the testimonies are just very powerful themselves, in letting us know that God wants us to have his power, and to make His gospel known.

Let's have a look in this scripture here. Immediately He made His disciples - Jesus compelled His disciples - verse 45 - to get into the boat, and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida. Bethsaida means: house of fishing. And He sent the multitude away, and when He had sent them away, He departed to the mountain to pray. And when evening had come, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and He was alone on the land; and He saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, He came to them on the sea, and would have passed them by. When they saw Him, walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost, and they cried out. Now that word 'cried out' means: AAAGH! They shrieked out; so if you thought you someone saw someone walking on the sea, you would probably shout out too; and they all saw Him, and were all troubled. But immediately, He talked with them, and said to them: be of good cheer! I am; or: it is I. Do not be afraid. Then He went into the boat to them, and the wind ceased, and they were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure, and marvelled; for they had not understood about the loaves, because their heart was hardened.

Tonight we were hearing about the loaves and the fishes, and the disciples had just seen an amazing miracle. Sometimes when we read the gospels, we just read them almost with eyes blinded to the reality of the supernatural, so this is a problem particularly in the west, as we start to rationalise everything, and lose our understanding that the God we serve is a supernatural God. This is what Jesus said, when He commissioned the church: go preach the gospel, and signs will follow those who believe. See, Owen's not an ordained Pastor, but he's a believer. Sandra's a believer. People that are believers, signs can follow them; and so Jesus made it very clear that the supernatural would accompany the preaching of the gospel. Why? Because the gospel will go to cultures where there are idols, idols openly worshipped, sorcery, witchcraft. There's a need for demonstration and release of the power of God. Our idols are different. We cover them over. We call them a car, and we put them in a garage and then take them out and dust the dust off them, polish them all up, and spend half our life paying them off.

We've got our own set of idols that we worship in the west. It's usually material things, but nevertheless they do represent idols, when they've got a hold of your life, and take the place of God. I want you to see in this story here, Jesus wants every believer to engage in the work of harvest, every believer. Notice what it says: He compelled His disciples. He had to pressure them, and persuade them, because there was a reluctance in them to get into the boat. The place He wanted to send them to, was a place He intended there to be a harvest. It's called Bethsaida, the house of fishing. Jesus said: follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. The heart of God is to help people who are broken. There is a harvest everywhere. You don't have to walk very far to meet someone who tells you their story; a story of tragedy, of heartbreak, of marriage, of family, or abuse, or some kind of horrendous thing that has happened in their life.

I was praying and ministering to a girl recently, and she was adopted out at the age of five, and all her life she lived with this bitterness and grief and rejection in her heart. She encountered the Lord, and He took away all of the pain. We prayed with her, she went into an encounter that lasted an hour and a half. I've got a picture of her, and she's literally frozen like that, reaching and stretching out to Jesus, and Jesus is encountering her. She spent an hour and a half just - I can hardly do that for a minute, you know, hold your hand out like that's pretty hard going. It strains your back, strains your arm, and in the end you get tired; but she was frozen in an encounter with Jesus for an hour and a half, and in that time, He spoke with her, and ministered to her; and all that pain of her adoption and abandonment was just taken out of her soul. Just amazing. People need the power of God. Why are lives in such a mess? They're in a mess because there's wounds, there's griefs, there's abuse, there's traumas, there's issues that people cannot get free of without the power of God. People need the power of God.

Some of you here tonight, you'll be stuck in your life, stuck in your spiritual walk, because there's issues in your heart where you're not free, and you need God to touch you, need a breakthrough, need to get someone to speak into your life and help you. So Jesus compelled them to get into the boat to go before Him. Jesus always requires we go before Him. Now this is an interesting thing. It said: He sent them. In Luke 10:1 he says: He sent them into the cities He Himself would come. Now you've got to understand this. God has commissioned us to carry the gospel. He will come when we will go. He is already wanting to touch people. You've got to go out of your comfort zone, and engage where people are lost; and as you do that, you'll find God will come to them. You'll see your best miracles where there are people unsaved. You'll find continually, whenever you talk to people who are out reaching unsaved people, reaching lost people, that's where you see the biggest, and the best of the miracles; because the supernatural will always accompany people with faith in their heart, that carry the gospel out.

Let's have a look what happens in the story here. So the first thing we see is, God requires all of us: He compelled them and pressured them. They didn't want to go. He pressured them to engage the boat; got a picture of the local church, He literally persuaded them get involved with the local church, in the mission of reaching for souls. Get involved. How involved are you? How involved are you? Who is it, you're reaching out to? When did you last reach out intentionally to someone, to find out what's happening in their life, in their journey; listen to them, and let them see and feel the compassion of Jesus, and get touched by His love flowing through you?

Notice what happens there. He sent the multitude away. He sent them away, He went into the mountain to pray, and so He spent quite some significant time in prayer. You can't minister and see the power of God flow unless there's prayer in your life. When we look at it there, He came and met them at about the fourth watch of the night, that's 3am in the morning, so that means He was in prayer from about 6pm right through to 3am. Now if Jesus needed to pray - I'm not saying you've got to pray all that many hours. I don't think many can - however, what you've got to see is this: for the supernatural to manifest in your life, you must be a person of prayer. Without prayer, we don't see God move; and so Jesus spent time. Why did He need to spend that time? If you read in the gospel before that, you'll find several things happened. One of the things that happened was, He'd been ministering to thousands of people, and He and His disciples were incredibly tired. The second thing is, He got bad news, His cousin had been beheaded for his stand for the gospel, and so He was grieving over that. The third thing was, He tried to get His disciples to get away and have a break, and the crowd followed them; and instead of saying: hey guys, we've done our day, He continued to minister to them.

So He had poured His life out, even when He was in personal pain, and He was in discomfort. He fed the multitudes, and did one of the greatest miracles at that time, and so He needed to get alone. If we're going to see God move in our life in greater ways, we have to make a priority on time with God. I have been recently over in Asia. I did about 45 to 50 meetings in the space of about three weeks, just one after the other, meetings with people, meetings with groups, praying for hundreds and hundreds of people. I think how do you do it? You can't do it. You actually have to wait on God; so every day just wait on God, spend time in His presence, and God would speak and say: what to do, where to go, how to move. This is where the strength comes. The strength comes out of intimacy and prayer. If Jesus needed to pray, make prayer a priority in your life. Notice this: He made the disciples leave Him. He just needed time by Himself, with the Father.

Now if you have a look what happened straight after that, you start to see this overwhelming flow of the supernatural. The kingdom of heaven is a release of the supernatural to the earth. Notice what happens here: He saw them straining rowing, for the wind was against them; and the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed them by. When they saw - now, get this. This particular story is written out three times. Matthew speaks of it, Mark speaks of it, and John speaks of it; and all tell something a little bit different about it, because it's something that stunned them. Each of them brings out a different aspect, so you want to read the three different accounts, you'll see the three things that happened.

Here's the first thing we find, from the gospel of John. After rowing for nine hours, they were only three miles out, in the middle of the lake. Now can you imagine rowing hard for nine hours, how exhausted you'd be? It gives you an idea of the kind of opposition and difficulty they had, and it says that Jesus saw them. You may be going through pressures, difficulties, you may be going through adversity now. You may feel you're at the end of yourself, but Jesus sees where you are. I want you to see what Jesus said. Now you look at it, it's an amazing thing. Just it's hard to comprehend this, but this is what happened. There's a great storm, there's winds blowing, He sees them struggling; and then He begins to come to them, and He walks out into the sea, and He begins to walk on water. No one in history has ever walked on water, before that day. On that day, He demonstrated His total dominion over creation. He'd given them a miracle, and shown them the miracle of the loaves and fishes multiplying. Now He's about to demonstrate three other things to them, and you'll get the key point just in a moment.

The first thing He demonstrates to them is this. He demonstrates His total dominion over creation, over the law of gravity - you try stepping out on a pool and see what happens. You'll just go straight to the bottom. He stepped out and He began to walk across the water. Now probably the water would have been up to, you know, maybe between His feet and His knees. He was just walking through like it seemed shallow water. I've heard of revival in Indonesia ,and some people were being pursued by people who wanted to kill them, and they ran down. This guy Maltari and his team. They were running away from persecutors, who wanted to kill them. They ran down to a river, they put their foot in the river - it didn't seem very deep. They ran across the river, it was only up to about here, ran across away the other side. The others following them tried to do the same, went into the water, it was over their heads, and they were swept away. It's a modern day example of that very, very same miracle - amazing.

So you've got to understand, can you imagine someone walking out across Napier Harbour? Can you imagine someone walking across the Westshore area there? Can you just imagine how scary and freaky that is, to see something like that happening? It's just very scary. Now the disciples are absolutely exhausted, it's the middle of the night; so miracle number one, Jesus shows His dominion over nature, total authority over the law of gravity, and He's walking on water. Miracle number one.

Miracle number two, the second thing it tells us, is that when He got into the boat, immediately the wind just stopped. Now you know how gusty it was last night. Have you ever been in a storm where it's just going; and it suddenly just seems like it stops? It's not very often you have that happen, but it's like; there's this eerie - so you get it in a hurricane, when you get to the eye of the hurricane, and then it suddenly it's just still. Now you're in the eye of the hurricane, and it's about to start up again; but it wasn't like that. What happened was, the winds are blowing and blowing and blowing; and suddenly it just stops. All winds stop. They were amazed. What man is this, that has that kind of power? So there's miracle number two, He can control the weather. You would be amazed when we do missions, outreaches in Uganda and places like that, how often the moment you get into preaching the gospel, the weather suddenly changes; because occult people stir up spirits, stir up witchcraft.

I remember in Uganda there, man it was scary. You want to see the kind of wiring they had. They had this generator over here, and bare wires. They put sellotape around them, and they had the lights all going there, and then it just poured down like that; and I'm thinking: man, I don't want to step in the water, I'll get electrocuted somewhere; but it happened exactly at the altar call. The moment we come to the altar call, been no sign of rain, suddenly [pa-doompa!] down the rain came, and it just pummelled down, just drove everyone away. So we had to pray each night to restrain the heavens, so that there'd be no rain that would destroy our attempts to bring the gospel to people; and we saw that each night, God held it back for us.

So Jesus demonstrated His total authority over creation, over the wind. What man can stop wind? No one can. Now the third thing that happens, you read this in the gospel of John. Once Jesus got in the boat, and the winds stopped, here's the third thing that happened. Immediately, the boat was on the other side. Now if you don't read all three accounts of the gospel, you don't get it. There's one more thing that you'll need to read in a moment; so three amazing miracles! One, He walks on water; two, the wind ceases, the moment He's in the boat; and three, immediately the boat is transported. Remember the nine hours rowing, and they're only half way? Then when Jesus gets in the boat, it's there.

The nearest thing you find to that, is the example of Philip; where Philip is preaching, and suddenly he's gone, and he turns up somewhere else. It's called transportation - physically literally shifted from one location to another. That is the power Jesus has. All creation yields to His power. That's why He said: all authority of heaven and earth is given to Me, I have all authority, authority over the laws of nature; because when heaven invades earth, heaven's authority is greater than anything in the earth. It's most amazing, so God is able to do creative miracles. He's able to restrain nature. He's able to overcome natural laws. He's able to accelerate things. He's able to increase things. He's able to move you quickly from one place to another. He's able to do those things.

I was talking to a guy - now this happened in Hastings. I was talking to this man, and he's a great guy at sharing the gospel, just a great servant of the Lord; and he had a motor accident. It was a very severe motor accident, and he was in hospital, I think for probably up to a year recovering, and he doubted that he was ever going to recover. He thought he might even go; and the Lord said: no, I've got something for you to do. Once he'd recovered, he was out; and he began to work for a local Christian organisation here, and he would come into town and do the banking. Anyway, one particular Friday, or whatever day of the week it was he had to do the banking; and he had to go to seven banks I think, on the one day, and he only had about an hour to do it before closing time; it was a very short time, whatever it was. I'm not quite sure of the exact time but it wasn't very long. Now get this. He said: God, I do want to get this job done today. He went into the first bank, made the banking, came out and when he came out he saw, this is quite strange - he saw an angel standing outside the bank, and he saw like a crystal area around the ground.

He stepped on it, and the moment he stepped on it, he was at the next bank; so he went and did the banking. He stepped out, and there was the angel again, and the crystal all on the ground; and so he just stepped on it, and he was at the next bank. He did the whole of the banking - now that is supernatural transportation. That's the very thing that Jesus did - happened to a guy in Hastings here, not so long ago. So the God we serve has got enormous power, and the power is released through faith. I'll just finish with this, because I want to finish on half past seven. In the account of this story in Matthew - and you'll remember this - when Peter saw the supernatural happening, he said: I want to be part of that. Jesus, if that's you, bid me to come; and Jesus said: come; and he stepped out, and began to participate in the supernatural dimension of the kingdom. Now you've got to see this, that before that time, Jesus was the only one who walked on water. Then Peter was the second man; and here's the thing.

It was faith; when he saw what God was doing, and he linked his faith to it. Faith comes by hearing. He said: Jesus, if that's you, bid me to come; and Jesus said: come; and he stepped out of the boat, and he was walking on water. Of course a little bit later you know, that he got his eyes on the circumstances, and the big waves and the wind, and he lost his sight of what God was doing, and his faith diminished. He began to slowly sink, and then Jesus reached after him, and lifted him up again. Don't focus on the fact that he sank. The ones who were in trouble really were the guys in the boat, who saw it all, but never stepped into it. Tonight I want to challenge you to think about this. We've had Owen talking about things he's been doing in New Zealand, and things he's been doing overseas, and many of the miracles and things God's been doing. We've had Sandra talking about the great miracles that God has been doing, so we know that God is doing miracles, reaching and touching people, but will you see what God is doing in this hour of reaching unsaved people, and extend your faith to be part of it, and see God working through you? You see, Peter was the only one that extended his faith to get hold of what God was doing, and be part of it.

Now I look around. I've been around a few years in ministry, a few years. I've seen thousands upon thousands of Christians coming and going. You get a few people that stand out; and I see someone like Owen, who hasn't been a Christian very long - how long have you been a Christian? [3 years] Three years; but you see there's something unreserved about his giving to the Lord, and God has opened up avenues for him. I believe it's connected to the call of God on his life, but God has opened up for him the opportunities to speak, preach and minister; and God has provided supernaturally for him - but he's stepped into what God is doing in this hour, by saying an unreserved yes to Jesus.

Sandra's unnoticed. I don't think anyone notices Sandra; but over in Asia, they know her. She's becoming well known now, and she just said: yes, I'll go; and she went; and she's been in Indonesia, she's been in Malaysia, she's been in Singapore, been up in India, and probably going to be up in other places as well. But here's the thing: that she has seen the need; and stepped in, and joined her faith to walk in it. Now I encourage you to think about this. We are mandated to share the gospel, and always the gospel contains the supernatural. What are you doing to stir your prayer life, and to engage with others in reaching people for Christ? That is the challenge we all face today, to actually let our faith rise, and say: God, I'm believing.

I saw Girda tonight, and she had her testimony. She went and prayed for that lady, and then saw the lumps miraculously disappear. See, that's what I'm talking about. She's actually doing something, where hurting people are; and God loves people that are in need, and loves to reach out through someone. The question is: will He reach out through you? Who's life will be impacted by your testimony, by your efforts, by your commitment, your sacrifice? You know Jesus compelled them to get into the boat. They were a bit reluctant, and some of us may be a bit reluctant, but nevertheless Jesus still is putting the pressure on: get involved in harvest, it's harvest time. He's saying: even if you feel it's a bit out of your depth, and you don't know where you are; and there's some storms blow up, and you feel uncomfortable; nevertheless, go and reach the lost, reach unsaved people, build a relationship, build a connection, build friendship, find ways to minister to needs.

Get God to give you an idea, and show you what you could do. Who'd have thought of Owen being all over the world? Be the last thing you'd think. I don't even know how he does it. He's got a criminal record! He was deported from Australia. How does he get into places like Pakistan? Everywhere you go overseas, they ask you: what's your criminal record? You've got to fill it out on the form, and then if you've got a criminal record, you don't go there. Yeah, same with China, exactly - he got into China as well. China is very rigid on your criminal record, and they can look it up. You know we've got one guy in the church here, and his criminal record vanished; it just doesn't seem to be there on the computer anymore. Who knows how that happens?

See, God is committed to get people, who've got their heart towards Him, out into the harvest field. The challenge is: will it be you? Will it be you? Come on, let's just close our eyes tonight. Close our eyes right now, and I'd love Sandra to come on up, and I'd love Owen to come on up; you're going to lay your hands on some people, and let's fire up the evangelistic gift in people.

Church, tonight if it's in your heart, if you felt challenged and inspired to say: God, I want to make my life available. Lord, I want to commit myself to pray, and to start to reach out in a way I haven't done before. If that's you, would you make your way to the front. I want to get these evangelists to lay hands on you, and to believe for an impartation to increase your faith tonight.

Father, we pray for each person responding today. Father, let the power of the Holy Ghost come upon them. Let there be an impartation of faith and boldness in evangelism. We call for divine encounters; we call for divine opportunities; and we pray miracles to be released in Jesus' Mighty name.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

· 1 Cor.10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it”.

· Temptation = NT3986= to put to proof, to put to the test.

· Every person faces pressures and difficulties in life – storms can come unexpectedly.

· Storms = Financial, physical health, marriage, family, relationships, work, ministry.

· God Promises (i) You are not the only one facing this

(ii) God is faithful – never leave – always help

(iii) You are up to the challenge (even if you think you are not)

(iv) God has a way to walk through the storm and grow

2. Confronting Your Storms

(a) Mark 4:35-41 The Great Storm

(b) “Let us crossover to the other side” v35

· Jesus’ purpose and priority is clear – seek and save lost people.

· God always wants to reach people with the gospel.

· “Crossover” = leave your comfort zone to expand the Kingdom.

= Jesus’ mandate/direction to the harvest field.

· “Left the Multitude” = Left the place of success and achievement.

= Left the comfort of the crowd to pursue Father’s priority.

= Always costs something to focus on the harvest.

(c) A Great Wind Storm Arose (v37)

· “Storm” = NT2978= black thunder clouds, strong gusts of wind, torrents of rain.

· “Great” = NT3173= Mega – very big.

· Wind and rain beat upon the boat – all in imminent danger - sinking.

(d) 4 Different Kinds of Storms

(i) Storm of own Making

· You are reaping the consequences of actions or inactivity.

· Every person is responsible for choices and decisions.

· Every person experiences consequences of choices and decisions.

· Key Question – What has been my contribution to this storm?

· Key Response –

(ii) God Directed Storm

· There is a need for change and only a storm brings you to recognise this.

· E.g. Jonah 1:4 “The Lord sent a great wind into the sea”.

· The storm is intended to bring you to a place of surrender/alignment.

· E.g. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt.26:37-41)

· Key Question – What is God trying to say to me?

· Key Response – Surrender – yield to the Lord.

(iii) Natural Storms of Life

· Not personal failure, Not God, Not the Devil – consequence of being in a fallen world.

· Pressures come in our life – recession, job loss, conflicts, set-backs.

· E.g. Joseph – Heb. 6:12 Faith and patience – Heb. 10:36 Need of patience.

· Key Question - How should I respond?

· Key Response - Release grace not judgement – overcome evil with good.

(iv) Demonic Opposition

· This is a spiritual reality – active evil spirits set on destroying us.

· Evil spirits arise against us fulfilling God’s purpose and plan.

· E.g. Jesus faced the storm (circumstances) and discouraged men (people).

· Key Question – What is the source of this storm?

· Key Response – Exercise governing authority – speak the word of God.

(e) “Teacher do You not care?” v38

· The disciples were filled with fear – did not respond well.

· Jesus seemingly unconcerned about their storm.

· They accused Him of “not caring” – blinded to Kingdom realities.

- Looked for someone to blame!

(f) “He Arose – Rebuked the Wind and Spoke to the Sea” v34

· Jesus demonstrated how faith is exercised.

· He spoke directly to the storm – words of faith – words of command.

· Fear quenches faith and causes storms in the mind and emotions.

· What storm has arisen in your Life?

· What kind of storm is it?

· How should you position yourself to respond?

Imagination

Imagination (1 of 4)

Fantasy, an addictive drug (2 of 4)

Cleansing the Imagination (3 of 4)

Renewal of the Mind (4 of 4)

Audio

- Imagination (1 of 4).mp3

- Fantasy, an addictive drug (2 of 4).mp3

- Cleansing the Imagination (3 of 4).mp3

- Renewal of the Mind (4 of 4).mp3

Imagination (1 of 4)

Sun 10 Aug 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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Imagination (1 of 4) Mike Connell 10.08.2008 am

Thank You Lord. Okay, let's be seated. There's a tremendous amount of work going on there. Chinese businessmen go from Taiwan. People we've trained go up there and they're reaching just so many, many people. It's absolutely awesome. Well we're just going to get into the word. I want to share with you so I want to start a new series over the next four weeks. Before I go to Mongolia I want to share on an area that's going to be of help for you, going to lift you up and help you to get a breakthrough in your life. Just before we do that, just two things I want to draw to your attention. Number one is - where's Andy and Janine? They'll be sitting here somewhere, Andrew and Janine. There they are, just over there. Oh, Janine's not there is she? No, she's looking after baby somewhere.

Andy and Janine have got a tremendous opportunity to go up to Bethel, the School of Ministry in Redding, Bill Johnson's School of Supernatural Ministry. It's a huge step for them but they felt the Lord speak to them; they submitted it to us and to others for counsel and advice. We've all prayed over it and just feel that God is on this, so for nine months from the end of the month they're going to be going up to Redding in California where there's a School of Supernatural Ministry, a school of business, supernatural business as well and they're going to get some training up there and come back in about June next year isn't it? So I'd love you just to pray for them and to stand with them. It's a big venture, a very, very costly venture to take your whole family up and over to a strange land, but they've had very clear direction from the Lord in it and are very, very open to listen to God in the matter and not just race ahead.

So it's going to be a great experience for them, but they have got a challenge right now. The challenge is no house to go to and also there's no one to rent their house or buy their house, so there's a very practical thing that is needed right now is to pray for those two areas, the housing issue to be resolved. They need a good place for their family to go into with four children. It's quite a - not everyone's open to that so it's quite a challenge, and their finding is they ring and make connection that people, because they're overseas are not responding so we just need to believe that in this next three weeks they'll get a breakthrough, get a house over there and also get a breakthrough with their own house here. Just a very practical matter, a matter for prayer, so I'd love you to pray and let them know you're praying for them too. It'll be really, really good. So they'll be out at the end of the month and then back in June and we'll hear great things that God has done and taught them. It's going to be fantastic, so a great move and a great step of faith to let go a secure career, stepping out and not knowing quite what it all leads to, and that's what the journey of faith is like. You don't always know what your step will mean or where it'll take you.

Another couple of people taking a step of faith is Steve and Tara. They've taken a step of faith. They felt God call them to come and be planted here in Bay City and to help with the work here [applause] and so they've taken a step of leaving Australia. They also have a need for a building to sell. They've got a very expensive apartment over there needing to be released, so if you could just also pray for them that God will just give them a breakthrough and a release. They feel to come over here and stand with us in working and helping do whatever they can in the business arena to help people, so that's great news too isn't it aye? God moves in places people as it pleases Him. Want you to open up your Bible with me, going to do something that's over this next few weeks. It's going to just stretch you out just a little bit. I want to just talk about the area of imaginations, imaginations. I want to do a series on imaginations. How many people ever daydreamed? [Yeah!] My goodness me, daydreams. They take you some places don't they? [Laughs]

How many have made it a way of life? [Laughter] Well we're going to talk about fantasy and daydreams probably next week. I want to just start off today and begin to just talk about the whole realm of imagination and particularly just the whole area of it; the power of your imagination and what it can do with you and where it can take you. If we are going to walk with God the Bible tells us one of the things that God does is that He gives us dreams. A dream is an imagination. It's a picture of what could be in the future, and so if you and I are going to move prophetically and move into the things God has for us we must be able to receive the prophetic dreams or imaginations or images God gives us. We must also be able to deal with the other imaginations that come in, and my experience that most believers live out of imaginations which are vain and remove them from what God is doing, rather than managing and dealing with those imaginations and positioning themself to move with what God has.

So in these coming days ahead we're believing and wanting that you would begin to breakthrough into greater realms of seeing, of hearing God, of dreaming and looking at possibilities. The walk we have in God is always a walk of possibility, so I want to over about three or four weeks just lay out the whole area of imaginations and lay a foundation today just about how your imagination works and affects your life. We'll then look at the whole area of fantasy and daydreaming, which is a particular kind of bondage that people get into and yet you can be in it and controlled by it, and limited by and not even realise it. It's become so much a part of your life. Then I want to talk about some of the keys to deal with your imaginations, how to cleanse your imagination, how to confront imaginations which come in; then we want to open up to receiving things from the Lord. Amen. [Amen.] So it's going to be great, great stuff. I really felt this on my heart, so imaginations are just pictures in the mind aye, pictures in the mind; images of things that haven't yet happened.

So what happens in your imagination's going to affect the course of your life. Whatever's going to happen, it happens in your imagination, it's going to affect the course of your life so I want to just share three or four things today. Number one, the first thing I want you to understand is God designed us to be creative. God has designed us to be creative. You say well I'm not the creative type, thinking in terms of doing art and craft. But listen, that's a very, very limited sphere of being creative. God has made us and designed us; every one of us has got the potential to be quite creative and innovative. I'll show you why that's true biblically in a moment, but it may not be operating very well in your life because that power of imagination and innovation and creativity may be suppressed and held down by various kinds of bondage. That's why we want to be able to identify the things that hold you back, then I want you just to repent of it and get it out of your life so we can all move on, because we need what you have.

So imaginations can release creative things in our life so the first thing, I want you to have a look with me in Genesis 1. We're going to read in verse 26 through to 28; Then God said "Let Us make man in Our image. The first thing we see is in verse 1, in the beginning God did what? God created... He did what? [He created.] He created. How do you create something? You imagine it, then you put your hand to bringing it into being, so you've got to imagine it first of all. So God created, so we see here it says now in verse 26, God said let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, cattle, all the earth, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His Own image; in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. Then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiple; fill the earth and subdue it.

Okay, notice the first thing it says. It says let Us make man in Our Own image and likeness, or make man like Us. Now if we are made in the image of God and God is creative, we must be creative as well. You have a creative ability. The ability to - because you're made in the image of God, you have the ability to bring into this world things which haven't yet been seen, because you're made to represent God in the earth. When God made us He made us as His representatives in the earth. In Psalm 8 He says you have made him to have dominion over all the works of your hands, so you are made to have dominion. You're made to make your presence in this world be significant and be felt, significant and felt. In other words God has designed you first to represent Him, then secondly to advance His interests in the earth and because God is creative and we're called to represent Him, we have a creative ability. We have an ability to innovate.

Notice what the mandate was that God gave. He said there, He said in verse 28, God blessed them. Now that means God spoke creative words over them, or God gave a mandate. So when God blesses He not only says words; He says words and imparts life and power with those words. The words I speak are spirit and life Jesus said, so when God speaks over man God blessed them, that means He spoke prophetically and in a way that would impart destiny into man. This is what He said to Him: Let man be fruitful. In other words He's got the man and the woman in front of them and He's saying something like this, speaking be fruitful! Multiply! Fill the earth! Subdue! Have dominion! Now you see that's how He spoke. He's speaking words that are to empower man to do something, and you notice He said be fruitful and multiply. So we have two realms where creativity operates. We have two realms where our creativity operates; number one is sexually. Be fruitful and multiply, so man is created a sexual being. We can create an eternal being, eternal - we can work in partnership with God and an eternal being comes into existence. What an amazing thing.

Your sexuality gives you power to create a person who can be connected to God and live and represent God for eternity. Our ability to be sexual, to be intimate, to have sexual relationships and to enter into covenant relationship and bring forth children is a great gift of God, a creative gift of God. That's why it says the fruit of the womb is the Lord's reward. He gave us the gift of being able to create sexually through an intimate covenantal relationship, and then He gets the reward. He gets a family increasing in the earth, so God puts His - His part is to put His spirit, put the spirit into man, see? The spirit of man comes from God. You don't create a spirit, but you create the being within which God puts the spirit. So we work in partnership with God in creating a life. Number one, the way that we can create or be creative is sexually by having children. It's a wonderful thing, a wonderful thing to be able to do that - but we're not limited there.

Not everyone's call in life is to be married, so we're definitely not limited to that area of expression of creativity. The second area that God has given us the capacity to be creative is our imagination. Notice what God said: Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. That's clearly speaking there about man recreating, producing children in the world, filling the whole earth. But then the second thing He says, subdue it and have dominion over it. Now to subdue something means you have to apply force or you have to bring pressure around it to shape it or bring it to what God wants it to be. Implied in the word subdue is there's something out there that isn't right, the way God wants it, and we're called to work with Him to subdue it. Now you just think about life around you, there's heaps of things all around you that aren't right. You and I are called to partner with God to make it right, and to do that we have to be creative. You have to be creative because you're going to face challenges in your life, you don't know what to do. You need to come up with something new, come up with an idea, come up with a way.

Have you noticed how fulfilling it is when you're creative, when you actually put your hand to something and make something that was never there before, the wonderful fulfilment that comes in being creative? There's just nothing like it. So the seabed or the place where we create things is our imagination. There's nothing you see when you look around you that someone has built that first didn't start as a picture in the imagination. Think about that. Even the clothes you're wearing, probably you looked at them in a window and you looked and you thought oh man, I'd look alright in that. You went and tried it on; oh, that looks alright, I don't think I mind that. I think I'll have that. I notice Lyn's got a few things she's bought home from overseas [laughs] - and so have I. I looked in the window, thought that looks good, I like that. You begin to get a picture of yourself wearing it. Usually you try it on as well and you see the picture, then something begins to form and then before you know it there it is.

So imagination is the part of our life where creativity can work and it can either be creativity flowing out of partnership with God, where God gives ideas and dreams and visions and possibilities, or it can be a place where the devil floods our mind and keeps us limited and restricted. Now you think about the process of how God speaks to us. God is a spirit, so when God speaks to us He speaks spirit to spirit. His communications are from His spirit to your spirit. Now how do you actually get them then? Well they come up into your mind, into your imagination and what happens is - the most common way that people receive is they get a picture. A picture just comes up into the mind spontaneously and they see some kind of picture and that picture is something that God has shared with them that has possibilities if they will embrace it and give voice and do something about it. That's how God speaks. It come into our imagination.

How does the devil speak to you? Well the devil works from the other side. He works from the outside in, so he will put pictures into your mind. He will put pictures, feelings or sensations or words into your mind to try to capture your imagination, because whatever's got your imagination definitely has got a hold of you. The challenge we face is to be able to take dominion over our imagination and subdue thoughts which the devil brings and which are contrary to what God says, and to open our gate where revelation can flow and we can being to receive what God has for us. Every person is wired for this, so when you're daydreaming daydreaming can be harmless. Daydreaming can actually lead to immense bondage. Fantasies, well they can be harmless and be creative, but they can lead to immense bondage because the devil wants to capture the part of you which can create a different future.

You think about it. If someone says I've got a dream of being a doctor, well they've got a picture in their mind. In their imagination has come a picture which they've thought about and thought about and thought about. They've heard people say I've always dreamed of being this; I've always dreamed about being that, so they've had a dream. Where did they have it? It was the imagination and they saw themselves doing something in the future, and eventually as they applied themselves the dream imagination became the reality. If you have a think some of us have been around a while, the things we used to see in the movies as just imaginary, very many of them have become reality now. What you're seeing in movies and things now, many of those things will become a reality. Hollywood really should be a place where the creativity of God is expressed in a positive way, except something else has gone in there and polluted it and now it puts out images and imaginations which get into the hearts of people, defile relationships and defile lives and steal dreams.

So imaginations are really important, so number one, God has made us in His image with a creative ability; number two, creativity operates in two ways. Sexually, we can reproduce and create new life, and in the imagination we have got the capacity to come up with new ideas that have never been invented before. I'm sure that if enough pressure comes on the gas reserves and oil reserves, someone will come up with something that was never thought of before. They always do. God always - and it's funny, it seems to be released in the world in several places at once. Have you noticed that, many inventions of have been like that? Inventions, new things - how great, you're called to be an inventor of new things. Isn't that great? A person who's got possibilities. Jesus said you know if you've got faith all things are possible, so we're called to be possibility thinkers, dreamers about what could be; not just restricted by an overwhelming depression of what is. Rather we're called to carry dreams and visions and possibilities, and be men and women of faith. Isn't that good?

You're called to do it - but you've got to get a hold of your imagination, so man's imagination of course is a battlefield. That's the thing you'll have to understand and we'll get to that. I want to show you some strategies how to deal with it. Your imagination is the place where the war is fought, the war for your destiny. In 2 Corinthians 10, you'll know the verses very well. Let's just see them there and pick them up again, 2 Corinthians 10:3; Now though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

Now notice there it talks about a war, a warfare. That word warfare is a campaign, a military campaign or an apostolic advance. It has to do with the idea of a battlefield, so it says our warfare. Now notice 'our'. He's talking to Christians here. Every one of us sitting here today is involved in a warfare. There's no saying no to it; you're in it. You can't just say well I'll stop coming to church, I'll quit. No, that means you got shot and got defeated and the rest of your life is going to be falling short of what God intended for you. There is a battle for the control of our mind and what is going on. Therefore the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, so we're not just facing people. We've not just got problems with people and problems in life. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty through God, so we need to discover what the warfare is, how the enemy uses it, works to get us in bondage, and what do we do to get it out of the bondage. You need to be able to get out of the bondage yourself, and I would imagine there's many people here in bondage.

Tell the person next to you, it's you he's talking about, listen up. I'm sure it is, in bondage, weapons of our warfare. Okay then, notice there - so that word warfare is literally our apostolic commission or our apostolic calling. It's a campaign, so imaginations - notice it said imaginations exalt themselves against knowing God. Now how many people here really want to walk and know God? [Unclear 00.20.18] know God and walk [unclear 00.20.19]. Man, I'm hungry to do that. Okay, one of the things you have to face is a key thing that'll face your walking with God and knowing Him is what gets into your mind and imagination. It says imaginations, particularly vain or empty or idle imaginations get into your mind. They will hinder you knowing God and walking with God and fulfilling your destiny. That's real clear. If you can't recognise a vain imagination and its work in your life it will actually pull you away from God and stop you walking into your destiny because you just didn't know what it was and recognise it. You would just carry on being you, not realising that you being you is living the life of bondage, not in the freedom in this area that God wants us to be involved in.

And so dealing with imaginations, even recognising them is a crucial thing. You've got to know the enemy. So we want to now look at and understanding your imagination, understanding your imagination. So the first thing we saw is God created us; He has designed us to be creative. He's designed us to be creative. The second thing we're going to look at now is understanding our imagination, so first of all let's go and have a look at the imagination. I want you to have a look in Genesis 6:5. So imaginations clearly are just mental pictures. They're images. God says don't make an image that exalts itself against Me. Genesis 6:5, so I just begin to think - imagination - I'm trying to get - I find it's helpful if you get definitions for things. It's really helpful to get clear what something means, because we're going to look at imaginations today. We'll look at another time at fantasy, what fantasy is, and men's fantasies are different to women's fantasies. They're quite different fantasies, but at the end of the day they have the same effect.

They bring the person into a place they should not be, and they end up with the person being in bondage and not even realising that spirits have now accessed them and are now controlling their feelings and emotions and how they think and what they do. I have seen this over and over and over again. I've felt the Lord put on my heart we just need to get a handle on this how to deal with it. So an imagination is just a mental picture of something that has not yet come into being. It's a mental picture of something which is not yet come into being; it's an image. Imagination comes from the word image, so an imagination is an image, an image of something that is not yet come into reality. It could do or it may not, but it's a picture of something that's possible. So when you daydream for example, you go away and you begin to think of something and you get into something that just flows on and on and on and on. Before you know it hey, wait, come back! You know, where did I go? And you find you've gone somewhere and as far as I can see, and I'll show it to you another verse out of Ezekiel, it just seems as though there's a screen we have like a screen God's designed within us.

On that screen you get mental pictures form, so if you were to close your eyes and just remember or imagine your bedroom - whoa. Now what happens is you get a mental picture, so for example if I said tell me what your bedroom's like you'd say no, I want to go there. So I say no, don't go there, tell me what it's like. So you'd stop for a moment and you'd get a mental picture of what it looked like and then you'd try and put the picture into words for me, so what you carry is a picture inside you. And the whole spirit world works off pictures. Mostly God communicates with pictures and the devil puts pictures into our mind, because once you've got your imagination controlled every other part of you is going to come in line with what you're imagining. Getting the idea? It's really quite an important area, so your imagination - that's why TV and the internet can create huge inroads because it puts impressions or pictures directly into your imagination.

When we grew up you used to listen to radio programs and serials. Man, we used to love those things, but you had to use your imagination. You actually had to activate your imagination to picture what you were hearing, but with TV now it just invades your imagination and puts images in there. So clearly it's like a screen you have because when God speaks to you it's like you get a mental picture, and it comes to the same place that you imagine; hence the need to cleanse your imagination, because that's the place you receive the picture impressions from God. Getting the idea? So if your imagination gets filled with mental pictures that are corrupt and defiled it then chokes up and blocks up and affects your capacity to be intimate with the Lord. So it seems as though there's a part of us is like a screen on which mental pictures form.

Secondly, it seems as though our inner man is designed so there are - the Bible talks about the chambers of the imagination, like many rooms. Now if I for example, if I was to say I want you to go back and remember an event which happened last week and you would begin to close your eyes, think about it and then in your mind you begin to picture and re-live that particular event. While it's in your imagination it's like you're in a room and you just focus totally on that event, and then you can come out of that room again and some people block off those kinds of parts of their life. They've had bad memories, bad experiences and so they block them all off and yet their mind is filled with images which have really deeply wounded them, so I may get a chance in a couple of sessions to get into the whole area of your memories and how they impact your imagination, and how ungodly beliefs and unresolved hurts then feed things into your imagination that begin to control your life. Getting the idea?

Alright then, so we'll just go - so it seems that - we'll just look at the screen now. So you have a screen on which God speaks to you and which dreams come, ideas come, things come, and notice what it says here after the fall of man. Verse 5, it says God saw that the wickedness of man was very great, and every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was evil continually. Every imagination, now your Bible may have translated that word differently but it is the word imagination and it means this. It means to squeeze something into shape like a potter would mould clay, so your imagination if I could just use another picture to describe it is like this. Your imagination is like a potter with clay pressing, squeezing, moulding until you form something. So when you get away into your thoughts and you begin to dream and imagine, you begin to shape some things inside your mind. You frame up things inside and you have a whole realm that you can escape right into.

So your imagination is you form things in your imagination; you shape things in your imagination. If you were say for example, you were trying to design this building then you'd begin to think about the building and you'd begin to shape the thoughts until they crystallised and they came clear, then you'd put them on a piece of paper. Or you'd put them on paper and while you're putting them on paper you're working on the thing and you're thinking about it, and in the end you've got a picture of what it should look like. They say a picture's worth more than a thousand words. I'll give you a picture, you're oh! Exactly, I know exactly what that is. So language, our language works best through pictures; the spirit world operates off pictures. Pictures come into our imagination. Hence the imagination's so very, very important and notice what it says here. It says the imaginations of the heart were evil continually, so an unsaved person, they are completely opened up to all kinds of imaginations and those imaginations will be contrary to God and will pull them completely away from God.

You think about this: why is it a person has struggled to come to Christ? Very simple; the Bible says the God of this world has blinded their mind or their imagination. They can't see the truth. They're not open to it until prayer and intersession breaks the power of that. Getting the idea? Okay, we'll move on now. So imaginations have a voice. They talk to us. Your imagination, once you've got it now, it's a picture inside of some possibility, something could happen. Read in Jeremiah 7. Now your imaginations talk to you. They're not just sort of passive in there. They don't just stay quiet. Once things have got into your brain and into your head they start to talk, and they talk to you and if that imagination is a demonic imagination it'll be talking to you and taking you where you don't want to go. Think about that.

Okay then, let's have a look here and read in verse 23-24 and this is what God's saying: Now this is what I commanded them, saying obey My voice, I'll be your God, you'll be My people. And walk in all my ways I've commanded you, that it may be well with you. But they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsel and the imaginations of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. So notice here they followed the counsel of their imaginations. Counsel means a voice, so your imagination will speak to you. It will speak to you about possibilities, or it'll speak to you and arouse feelings of fear. Many imaginations stir up feelings of fear. You think what fear is; fear is a strong feeling. It's also a spirit, but it comes around your life as you begin to imagine a possibility of the future. So what happens is your imaginations talk to you, so just for example you've got embedded in your heart some beliefs of rejection or someone does something and you begin to imagine in your heart that they actually reject you.

The more you think about that the more it talks to you. How many of you have ever imagined a conversation before you had the conversation? Yeah, we do it all the time, so you're thinking about some situation you've got to go to and then you begin to think how it might go. Then imagination's talking to you, and before you know it you're wound up into a right royal state. I saw a video clip one time and this guy, he started out to go from his home to his neighbours to borrow a rake. As he walked out of his home to go to the neighbours he began thinking about how the neighbour would respond, and he began to have this picture imagination begin to form that the guy didn't like him and he was going to say no. He started to feel angry and stirred up, so by the time he got to the neighbour's he was so wound up that when he knocked at the door and the neighbour opens the door and says hello, he says you know what you can do with your rake! [Laughter] And the guy's whoa, what happened? Where did that come from?

But what's happened is between his own house and the neighbour's house imaginations have been running away and talking to him, and by the time he's got there he's absolutely convinced he's going to be rejected, convinced the guy hates him, is going to reject him and say no. He became very angry at it and by the time he gets there well that's it and there's an angry response. Now how many of us have done that? You've imagined something without finding what really is happening. You've assumed and then got this big imagination in your mind, and then over a few days of brooding on that imagination you're in a right state. When you go to meet the person, now you're wound up emotionally. All your emotions have been triggered off. Now you're walking after a vain imagination. Now notice what it says here. They didn't listen to God's perspective and point of view. They followed the counsel of their own imaginations, and they went backward, not forward.

So you can go backward, not forward, if you listen to the counsel of imaginations that are against what God has to say. You think about that. You say wow, I want to serve the Lord! I'm going to go out and have a real influence in my work, and then you go out there and some little thing happens and you've got this thing in your mind. You get wound up and really lose it. You've gone backwards. You didn't bring Christ to them; you brought your vain imagination and your wound up emotions and didn't do any good at all. This happens all the time. It's why people leave churches, why they break up marriages, they get this vain imagination about their partner, about their spouse, about someone, about all sorts of things. People get this imagination forms and it becomes so real in their mind it's like an idol talking to them and controlling where they go.

The Bible says the cause of it's really simple. Your imagination talks to you, make sure if you're listening to your imagination that it is in agreement with what God says. So the only reference for what you have for your imaginations is what does God say? Not what am I feeling, not what does it look like. What does God say about this? And you'll find that God tells you several things. He tells you not to judge matters before you've heard it [laughs] otherwise you'll look an idiot. It's what He says, so it's a real hard discipline not to judge things before you've heard both sides. So imagination's not real and when you let your imagination start going you begin to wonder what'll happen. How many have wondered what will happen to them? How many have got brooding over something, you began to wonder and wonder and wonder? You're walking after your imagination. That's what it says: you will walk after the voice of your imagination if you don't stop it and line it up with the word of God.

Unless we let the word of God get into our soul and spirit and heart, then ungodly imaginations will rule us and down we go, down that old path. How many have got old paths that you follow? Yeah, [well you 00.34.05] light your wick and there you go. Some people know how to light your wick too. [Laughter] Get's you going. The Bible says a man's got no rule over his own spirit like a city broken down without walls, so if we're going to move a church into dominion, into have influence and beginning to advance, we've got to deal with imaginations, foolish imaginations, vain imaginations contrary to the word of God. Okay, so a vain imagination will always lead you away from God, but God's imaginations, the word of God will lead you towards God. In Jeremiah 23:16 it talks about people speaking a vision from their own hearts, so here's the next thing about imaginations. [Laughs] We saw that imaginations talk to you; next thing is imaginations are prophetic.

They're prophetic in that they're a picture of your future. If you go down that imagination that's where you will go. You begin to start to think and meditate and picture someone and you're thinking the worst about them, boy you're in for a conflict. You cannot avoid the conflict because it's prescribing where your future's going. That's why we want our future to be determined by dreams in harmony with God's plan for our life. We want to be open to the prophetic because the prophetic is God's dream about my life and where my life is destined by God to go, and that's why it says where there is no prophetic revelation - Proverbs 28, where there's no prophetic revelation, where there's no unfolding imaginations, visions and dreams from God, it says that people perish or you miss the opportunities God designed for you. You can't see them when they come because you're following an imagination.

And this is a far more deep thing that we realise but God will help us get out of it, get us into the prophetic flow. Isn't that going to be good? Okay, so when you respond to the pictures by embracing them and speaking them, you're on the way to fulfilling them. Okay, let's go and have a look and finish one last scripture there in Genesis 3. We'll look at the very first place that imaginations really got going and [laughs] the consequences were horrendous. Genesis 3, now the serpent was very cunning, more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he came to the woman and he said oh really, oh really, okay, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said well we can eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden God said do not eat it. Don't touch it lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman you won't die, you won't die.

So you have to understand that vain imaginations will always oppose the word of God, so if you know what God says you can recognise a vain imagination. If you don't know what God says about you, you won't even recognise a vain imagination. [See for example 00.36.55] one of the problems that people have, most common problem is rejection. We feel unaccepted, but here's the truth. The truth you have been made accepted by God, you do not need the acceptance of people. That's the truth, but you see the problem is that truth is not very alive in people's mind but the pictures and images of pain and believes of rejection are, so when situations happen in life we operate out of the imagination of rejection instead of the prophetic impartation that we're accepted. We live out of the dream, the imagination, the thing that's got a hold of us on the inside. Isn't that true? Okay, now have a look how the devil got to Eve. The first thing he did was he said well God - that's not true, you won't die. He denied the consequence of walking a way different to God's way.

God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw the tree was good for food and was looking good to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took its fruit and ate. Now here it is. Notice this. The first thing is she got a word and a picture. Here's the picture: you'll be great. Great, that sounds good. Oh, you'll be like God. Whoa! Wow! Wow, so she starts - now notice he's put the picture in her mind. Now there's no problem with having an imagination come into your mind; it's whether you entertain it. You can reject it when it comes into your mind, or you can entertain it. To entertain it means you begin to ponder it; hm, wow, being like God, wow, that trip man, it's looking good. That fruit is looking good! I want - and she ate. That's the pattern, and that's how the devil still works. He still works the same way. He puts a picture in your mind contrary to what God says is true, contrary to what is true, and if you start to ponder on it you start to eat it.

Once you've eaten it you conceive whatever it's got, you'll conceive it in your heart and then it'll become your future. Now here's the worst thing. The worst thing is this, that when you've done that you'll then tell someone else your imagination. See Eve, she said she gave it to Adam and he ate. Well it's more than gave it; she talked to him: Wow, look at this! Wow, we've got this! Well if you eat this it's going to be really good! Can this make us get ahead! Oh really? Yeah, wow, okay. Now that's how relationships get defiled. One person gets an imagination or perception about someone else, they begin to feast on it, feed on it and meditate on it. They become convinced that person's this, this and this. They then enter into it. Now they've judged the person. They go to someone else and they talk to them and they begin to split up relationships. That's how your life goes off track.

You begin to perceive someone doesn't like me, someone's rejected me, someone's this, someone's that, pastor ignores me, hates me, all that kind of stuff. That's a vain imagination and the problem is when the vain imagination comes in, it comes in strong and it comes in with feelings and you can't feel the presence of God. You just feel the vain imagination. The only thing you've got left is not your feelings and not the presence of God because you don't even feel the presence of God. All you've got is the word of God, and if you've got that word you can beat the imaginations every time. Think about that. That's why it says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal; they are mighty through God. There's a dependence upon God where He will back up His word. They are mighty through God and I can tear down, cast down, pull down imaginations which will take me away from God down a path I don't want to go, a path of rejection, a path of bitterness, a path of anger, a path of loss, a path of independence.

All of these paths which look so attractive when you're going through the pressure, but they take you away from God. You go backward, not forward. I've seen heaps of people go backward, not forward, yet there they were sitting like all of us worshipping God, hearing the word of God, loving God. What went wrong? An imagination got in the heart, or was already in the heart and built upon because it had never been torn down. That's how the devil works. That's how it started in Genesis. The plan hasn't changed, it's such a good plan. You think about how a person goes off into sexual sin, a male goes off [unclear 00.41.45]. They begin to fantasise. They begin to get imaginations. Now the thought coming in, you can't do much about that except you can make a decision to reject it. But if you entertain soon sin has conceived and already the sin is alive in your heart. It's just waiting for the opportunity to express. If you take in an offence and begin to meditate on an offence what happens? Well then you begin to be angry on the inside and already you have now entered into, and will soon manifest that. It will control your future - certainly the future of that relationship.

How many relationships have been broken because a vain imagination got in the mind, a misunderstanding that was never checked out by asking questions, anything like that? The vain imagination got in, an assumption made, a pictured formed and the person then walked out of that imagination and the relationship was ruined? God says to walk differently, He says to handle things differently, not to walk after the counsel of our imaginations, but to walk in the counsel of God, in the word of God. You need to know what God says in His word. You can't rely on just feelings and sensations. When you're in a meeting the presence of God there is wonderful. When you're in a place of temptation you don't feel God at all. He feels like I don't know where He went, He's just gone. All you can feel is your mind filling up with pictures, desires forming, longings forming, and if you entertain it you'll eat it and very soon having listened to that imagination and followed its counsel, you'll walk it out and it'll change your future. That's how imaginations work.

So we have to actually get strategies to confront vain imaginations, tear them down, so we can walk in the word and the spirit of God and follow after God into His destiny and plan for our life. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal; they are spiritual and they're powerful and they can deal with all of this junk so we can walk with God and fulfil our destiny, and dream and see things. That's what God wants for every one of us. We've got to learn how to do it. We have to actually decide I'm in a warfare, I'm going to begin to watch what I'm imagining, what I'm thinking about, where my mind is going and begin to check it against what God says, is this true or is this a lie? And I'll follow the Lord. Can we give the Lord a clap? [Applause] Can we give the Lord a clap? Thank You Lord. We thank You Jesus that You overcame the devil's temptations and the imaginations he put into Your mind by the word of God. It is written, it is written, it is written of the word of God. Well we want to be word people, spirit people, follow in Your spirit, guided and held up by the word of God.

Father, we pray over these next weeks You will expose across the church in every one of us vain imaginations that control and run our life and talk to us and take us in a path we shouldn't be going. We're going backwards instead of going forwards. We want to go forwards so we choose to open ourselves to You, the living God. Everyone say amen. [Amen!] Amen. Let's just stand to our feet, going to finish with a great song. Perhaps there's someone here today and you've been walking in a vain imagination all your life. The Bible says the fool says in his heart there's no God. It's an imagination. There is a God and believe me, you're going to stand face to face with Him, but today you could actually connect with Him, your sins forgiven, a new life begun. Jesus said whoever will receive Me, believe and put their trust in Me, I give them power to become a child of God. That'll be a great thing to happen for you. If you're here today, you're not a Christian and you want to give your life to Jesus, as we sing this final song just make your way up to the front, stand here. We'll be glad to pray with you and lead you to Jesus Christ.

[File ends 00.45.43]

Fantasy, an addictive drug (2 of 4)

Sun 17 Aug 2008  « Back to Top

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Fantasy, an Addictive Drug (2 of 4) Mike Connell 17.08.2008 am

[Music to 00.00.24]

[Mike Connell] Father, we just open ourselves to all that you have for us today. There's a gratefulness in our heart. We say Lord, You're our strength. We say come today, minister to us, help us unlock in our lives things that need to be unlocked. Father, I pray clarity to speak, clarity of Your word into our hearts; not just the word but Lord, the spirit of it. I pray Lord that every person here today who's become locked up in some part of their life, unable to explore the prophetic dimensions and the realms of possibilities in God, that today would be a day of unlocking that and bringing release in Jesus' name. Amen. Lord, we open our heart to You. Great presence of God here isn't there? Great presence of God. Why don't you give someone a high five and just talk to someone, say hello to them and be seated. Thank you musicians.

Good, good, good. Okay, 2 Corinthians 10 and we're going to pick it up at verse 3. I want to share with you some things that the Lord spoke into my own heart some time ago that were extremely helpful for me and I don't think I've ever preached them. I just have got them in my diary. I got out my diary from a little time back and opened it up and there were these things, and it's very, very current for right now. Last week we were talking about the imagination and when we were sharing about the imagination we were sharing some things about God's design for us. We shared these things, that God has created us in His image, so therefore we are creative people. We have the ability to create. We saw secondly that we have the capacity to create as we can sexually create, we can have a child, we can produce a new life that's an eternal being. That's a very creative fact.

And secondly, with our imagination we can create ideas that then become realities in the world, so all the inventions you've ever seen were in someone's imagination before they were in the earth. So your imagination is part of the creative faculty; it's connected to your spirit and so the dreams, the things that God gives you will go into that imagination. So your imagination is a wonderful, wonderful gift that God has given you. Your imagination is a capacity, a mental capacity God has given you to form pictures of a future or of a reality that's not yet happened, so imagination's wonderful, a great gift that God has given us. We can make mental pictures of something that is not yet existing, so it's great you can dream about the addition you'll have to your house. You'll begin to think about it, dream about it, walk in and out through it - it hasn't even turned up yet and then there it is, and so from your imagination was birthed something into the world.

Now we saw also that your imaginations have a voice. They speak to you, so imaginations can be good and they can be vain. Vain ones are empty ones and they lead you somewhere. We saw how if you just let your mind go along a vain imagination that's not at all true, you will end up where you don't want to be and wonder how you got there. We saw also how imaginations are prophetic. As you yield to them they can begin to form a future and create a reality you haven't seen, so that's the powerful thing about our imagination. Of course the final thing we saw was that when God speaks to you He puts a word into your spirit or a picture in your spirit comes into the imagination. You begin to see it in the same place you imagine things. Now I want to look today specifically at the issue of fantasy, a misuse of the imagination, an addictive drug. Notice what it says here in 2 Corinthians 10. We'll just pick it up here: For the weapons of our warfare - though we walk in the flesh, we don't war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for the pulling down - notice this - we have weapons that with the power of the Holy Spirit are very, very powerful.

They're mighty in God. Notice this. Now these are all are referring to the same thing: the pulling down of strongholds, casting down of imaginations, every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. So notice these things, it's all really He's trying to use words to say the same thing. He's talking about thoughts, imaginations, high things that resist God working in our life and He calls them actually strongholds because demons can enter them and we become a - we have a mindset that stops us progressing. Many of us here today have mindsets that stop us moving in God. You love the Lord, but nevertheless in spite of loving the Lord you're committed to the Lord, mindsets, patterns of thinking which exalt themselves against knowing God will stop you progressing. It's really helpful then if we can identify them and work out what we need to do to bring them down, to stop them or to deal with them.

So imagination's a faculty of your inner man. It's a screen where pictures form and we can receive dreams from the Lord there. We can receive visions from the Lord there. It's a place where God has designed us, we receive input from Him into our imagination and we create from our own heart things in our imagination. And demons can put thoughts in that also lead to our imagination being filled, so there are three ways our imagination can be accessed: by the Holy Spirit putting things in there, by our own heart putting things in there, and by demons flooding and invading us. It's very important to understand that, and so the imagination can be cultivated. You can actually develop this whole faculty that God has given you and develop the prophetic realm because all can prophesy. So you can develop the ability to see, imagine, perceive, receive things from God. Everyone has been given that. Everyone has that faculty.

You understand that God has given it to you because He's made you a spirit being, like He gave you two eyes to see. They may not work so well, you may need glasses, and your imagination may be the same thing. The prophetic area may not be developed, but you can develop it through meditation in the word and renewing the mind, and identifying vain imaginations and confronting them and pulling them down. Next week we'll look at what's involved in the pulling down of them. Okay then, so imaginations can be cultivated and our imagination can also be defiled. Your imagination can become polluted and defiled, and it's a lasting defilement that requires a major cleansing action of the blood of Jesus and the word of God. How is it defiled? By for example, a person has a traumatic experience. The memory is imbedded into them and it keeps coming back in and the imagination will go over and over and over that event that happened.

We can set our mind and our heart on unclean things, sexual things and the imagination becomes defiled. People who've been sexually abused, they have images in their mind they cannot seem to get out of. It's just part of life. Things happen to us, so we need a strategy to deal with defilement of the imagination so that we can open our imagination progressively and begin to co-operate with the Holy Spirit in dreaming and beginning to see possibilities of the future. Getting the idea? So let me just look at this area today of fantasy. I'm going to talk about a fantasy, how imagination and fantasies are connected. So first of all I'll just give you a definition of it and we're going to look at fantasy and daydreaming. So first of all fantasy, and of course the thing is everyone has them. Tell someone next to you, he's talking to you. [He's talking to you.] Everyone has fantasies, not necessarily all bad. Everyone daydreams. Have you ever found yourself looking out the window and oh, wait, come back again? Everyone daydreams and everyone fantasises. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just where you go. Well what's taken it up, so we all have it so don't get all so serious on this matter.

Actually this part of our - it's normal for kids to dream and to - you know sometimes you find them staring into space? These things are all quite normal. There's a need to develop the imagination. Overexposure to television when children are young hinders the development of the imagination. That's why you don't want to have too much TV, put your kids in front of TV when they're very young, because what happens is their imagination then gets overloaded and it doesn't develop properly. You notice you can buy a fancy toy for a child and they throw it away and they're playing with some other little thing? Because their imagination is involved with that. They're not interested in the fancy - that fancy toy that cost so much is the parent's idea. The kid's happy with a bit of mud. Have you ever noticed children; they're not interested so much in the fancy toys, they're interested in other things and that's part of a normal developmental process, so some aspects are really quite normal.

So fantasy is an illusion formed in your mind. It's an illusion. It's not real. Fantasy - not real. I'll give you another definition. I've got to get clear on this. It's an imagined event or sequence of events that you create in your mind to fulfil some desire or longing. It's an event or a sequence of events which you create in your mind to fulfil some desire or longing, so inevitably if we examine our fantasies we'll also see what's going on in our heart. That's a realm of the imagination. A fantasy is where you use your imagination to create something happening that is absolutely unreal, but here's the thing that's common with all fantasies. You are the centre. It's all about me. There's more to it than that though. It's not only about you and you're the centre of it; you are God in that world, untouchable. You are in total control of that fantasy world. You create something where you cannot be defeated. You're in charge, you're in control, you're in power [laughs] so in the fantasy world you're able to be in control and have power.

You can shape those imaginations the way you want them to go, so if you have a look at what you fantasise about you'll begin to find out what's really going on inside you - not always that nice. However if it is there better to change it aye? So usually there's a desire that a person has that fuels the fantasy. We'll look at a couple of fantasies shortly, fantasies aah! Okay and then I'm going to show you how it accesses your life and can affect you. Many times people in their fantasy are looking for recognition, because you notice in your fantasy probably you're quite important. [Laughter] I won! [Laughs] And they're all clapping me! Oh come on, you all fantasise something where we're the hero and we won, or it's for control and power so you may revisit thoughts and now you are in total control of that situation. It may be that it's for revenge. Some people's fantasies are about revenge. They think and dream about how they're going to get back, how they'll suffer, oh. [Unclear 00.11.42] before you know it you're way down there - oh! Come back! Follow the daydream back, it was a daydream of revenge, some people plotting revenge.

For some it may be in the area of sexual intimacy, and so the daydreams go out there and they're about being intimate or about being sexual and they go way, way out there. Whoops! Come back! Gone too far. That's what happens. You're all getting quiet now because I know you have them. [Laughs] Well I've had them. I don't think there's any other man that hasn't them - and then some of the fantasies are about being safe, where a person's felt abused and then they go into a world so they can control that imaginary world and feel safe in there. So therefore it can be a place of refuge. If you're brought up in a home which is emotionally unsafe or physically unsafe, then fantasy was where you go because in that world you're safe, a wonderful world to be in, a lovely world to be in, so that's fantasy. Daydreaming is a bit like fantasy. Daydreaming is really a fantasy that - it's a dream-like fantasy you have while you're wide awake and away you go, and you just enter into this dream-like state. You become unaware what's going on around you.

Notice when someone's daydreaming they're aren't aware what's going on around them? You can even have a daydream while you're driving down the road. Da-da-da-da away you go - you've gone somewhere. Wives, you notice your husband while you're talking to him sometimes he's away? He's not there, he's gone away, he's in a dream, gone somewhere else. So fantasies do take you somewhere. Everyone has them. So everyone has them and they're not necessarily all bad but they can end up really destructive and really bringing your life into bondage, so [unclear 00.13.20] people and men and women's fantasies are a bit different. So you know, I used to love cowboy movies. I used to love them, used to think about them. I was away out there. I used to love books, used to read all the Enid Blyton books in those days and go way into a magical world. Go down the library - I was always in the library, I was away. In fact I don't even remember most of growing up. As a young person I was away. I wasn't there for most of it, I was away somewhere - fantasy. Daydreaming. Trying to escape from pain. That's what happens.

You know someone like that don't you? [Laughs] How many of you actually have dreamed you know, of being in some situation where you're the hero and you win, everyone notices you? See, that would be one some guys would have - or it's the sports team and I got the winning goal! See? Or you had a bad move and then you go back over it and over it in your mind and replay how you could have played it [laughter] and you notice when you replay how you could have played it you always win? Have you noticed that? And everyone cheers. [Laughs] You feel good! See, fantasies. See there's more to them than meets the eye and so those are some kinds of fantasies people have. There's another area people have. I was starting to think of where people have them. People have fantasies about money and wealth. They keep dreaming about that car, about that house, about that boat and away it all goes - or about being important, having some great position. Or if you're a woman you probably have romantic fantasies about some wonderful husband one day. [Laughter]

He's just like Jesus it turns out. [Laughter] And so you have this fantasy that the one you'll marry will be different to everyone else's person because they will be just so beautiful and wonderful, and it's a fantasy. There's no man can match that fantasy. The fantasy's totally under your control. Real men aren't like that. [Laughter] I'm sorry - and so they go through their life and lots of potential men come along, and then they just ignore the potential men because they've matched it with the fantasy. [Laughter] It doesn't match. You can see too many holes. Well listen, there's no man is perfect. You might as well find that out now. The period before you marry him is the great deception; after you marry him you'll find out what he's really like - and that works both ways too. So guys fantasise and their fantasies are usually about power and control, and about winning and victory and conquering, so they often have a sexual nature to them. That takes you into bad places. Women need to know that's what goes on in men's heads, away they go. They're gone in a bad, bad, bad, bad place, but it's actually coming out of rejection and hurt and trying to come into a place of power and control. It goes on.

People have religious fantasies and in the religious fantasy they're a great minister of the power of God. They've got all these kinds of things goes around them, but at the end of that when you watch what they're doing it doesn't match up. The fantasy world is a wonderful place that you can hide from living life, so fantasy can be a way where you can move to - your imagination can be used to creatively look at your future and begin to plan how you can shape it. Or your fantasy can be a place where you escape because you're hurt and have got struggles inside. Okay then, you've all gone quiet now. Its okay, come on. We all have them. There isn't anyone - man, I daydreamed my way all through school. I just remember daydreaming all the time away. I talked to dad about it. He said I didn't know where you were all that time. No one could ever connect with you - so fantasies are very, very powerful in the effect they have on our life. But when you're in it you don't realise what it's doing to you, and so that's why the Bible talks, you know, we need powerful weapons to pull these things down and to stop them.

So there's some fantasies okay, and usually fantasies can be attempt to heal the wounds that we feel, the pain we feel. They can be an attempt to gain power or to make up for some lack we have. They can be all kinds of things, but they can be very, very powerful, very, very powerful. So when men go into a fantasy world where there's sexual things as we'll see just shortly, it's because there's no fear of rejection. You're in an imaginary world where you have all you want and no one's saying no, and you're in control. There's no reality in it at all - imaginary, it's not real. It's fantasy. And the trouble is when you live there then you can't live in the real world. You've got to come out of that fantasy world and re-engage real life, and so whatever fantasies we have, whether they be religious, sexual, financial, all kinds of things, if we're living in a fantasy world with vain imaginations, that will be exalting themselves against you knowing and walking in your destiny. You have to deal with it.

It's not always easy to recognise that and so that's why I'm taking it slow and just talking about it today in a different kind of way than what I'd normally do. In 1 Timothy 4:1, it says now the Spirit expressly speaks. So He's saying that the Holy Ghost is drawing our attention to this reality, that in the last days - that's the days we live in - in the last days, ever since Jesus has been the last days but I guess we're nearer the last days than ever before - but in the last days men shall give heed - man means everyone - shall give heed to seducing spirits. They'll be drawn away from a personal faith that outworks itself with realities in life, into a dimension of seducing spirits. You say well that's not me, it couldn't be. That's because if you don't recognise how these things operate you would never actually know whether you'd been drawn away. The nature of seduction is you don't know what you're getting yourself into, and so a seducing spirit - that word seduce is the word [from which 00.19.43] you get the word planet, a wanderer. It's a spirit which tempts, leads, entices you and draws you.

Now when you're being seduced you don't even know what's going on until you wake up next morning: who the heck is that next to me? See, it's what goes on - and what did I do to get here? Something happened on the way. You ended up where you didn't want to be, because you didn't recognise what this influence was doing in your life. And so it says men will give heed to doctrines of demons, seducing spirits and particular doctrines, and that will draw them away from a living strong faith in Jesus Christ. In 2 Corinthians 11:1-3 Paul says I've espoused you to Christ. And then he says I feel lest somehow as the serpent deceived Eve. Now he's saying to Christians, he's saying I'm concerned that just the same way that the devil deceived Eve, you would be drawn away, your mind's corrupted from just simple devotion to Jesus Christ. That's what the Christian faith is about. We're in love with Jesus Christ. He's our strength, He's our life, we have a friendship Him. We're given a destiny to fulfil, got a great life, and he says I'm a bit concerned that just the same way the devil nailed Eve he'll nail you the same way.

How did he nail Eve? He put a vain imagination in her mind and she began to feed on the imagination, that if she ate the fruit of that tree she could be like God. She could have an independent life. She could be someone great. It appealed to vanity: I can actually move on without God. That's what it was. I can get what I want to get. I don't need God to do it, I just eat this - I'm going to get a hold of my life. I'm going to you know, look after number one. And she ate into it and when she'd eaten into it, taken it all onboard, then she shared it and corrupted - and then Adam came into that same influence. So if we were to say then what is it then would open the door to seducing spirits, so I'm going to give you a list of a few things which - these come out of experience in ministry. They're either out of my person life - I needed deliverance, or they're out of someone else that needed deliverance that I prayed for, so they're not sort of fanciful things. This is reality. This is what goes on.

So I want to share with you then just some things that are traps. One of them is books. Now for me I spent my whole life in books. Nothing wrong with books, had some wonderful books. I like reading books. I still read books, but when books become a source of fantasy where you escape from reality it's a problem. I used it to escape the pain of relationship, just went and read a book. Don't have to face anything that way, you just go away and you're in another world in your imagination, so books can be a source of that. Romance novels can be very much that way for women; action books and things for men. Another one is the area of TV. TV can be - TV's a wonderful, wonderful tool. You do all kinds of things with it, but TV can open the door; soap operas, Desperate Housewives [laughter] and some women are desperate to get back there to watch Desperate Housewives! I've got to watch it! I can't miss it! Make sure you record it. [Laughter] It's true, because - now you've got to ask yourself what has happened here?

Ask yourself what happened? It's the same with movies. Now what happens is - this is what the Lord showed me, very, very clever. He said when you watch a movie and of course TV's just a movie kind of deal. When you watch a movie you've got to realise someone has created a fantasy they want you to pay money to enter into, and they were mostly not Christians so therefore their fantasy was not a Godly fantasy. When they create the picture here's something that they can do. With the movies and with the media like that, what they can do is this; they can turn you into a voyeur. A voyeur is someone who peeps in on someone else doing something, so without realising when you sit at the screen and you begin to be drawn into that thing, they create the story so you begin to identify with the characters. Before you know it you are emotionally entangled and drawn in. You've identified with them. You're living in their world, and then when you're in that world if you get two people and they're making love you're actually able to stand in the bedroom and look in at people what they're doing. You don't get anywhere to do that in life. They arrest you, put you in jail.

But they create in the movies the opportunity for you to do that, and when you do that you get drawn in and you begin to fellowship with the spirit that's involved. If you don't watch you'll open your life and you can then become invaded by that same spirit, spirit of adultery, spirit of violent rape or whatever, those kinds of things. All kinds of stuff comes. Most of the movies, if anything bad happens, whether it's violent or anything else, I just close my eyes. I don't want the picture. I just don't want the picture, so I'll just go [unclear 00.24.37]. [Laughter] I know it's a bit limp but I just don't want the picture, it takes me too long to get it out. I can't be bothered. I'd rather not have the picture. In the old days they didn't put it all in. They actually edited it out and you never saw the violence and you never saw the sex. You just had implications of it. That's different to actually seeing it. When you see it you've seen it and you can't get the picture out. It's in the file. You've got to be cleansed. You getting the idea?

So they can create it. In Romans 1:32 - won't look it up but it talks about those who not only partake with sin, but actually rejoice with those who do these things [unclear 00.25.14] games, fantasy games. A fantasy game is a game where you take on a character. Now parents may not even be aware of this stuff but your kids probably know all about it, and what happens is they get into a game. Years ago it used to be Dungeons and Dragons was one of the first ones that came out, but now [unclear 00.25.28] so what happens is you find yourself identifying with the characters in the movie and you're drawn into the whole thing. You open your life to all kinds of unusual things. Another area is the area of - so they've got books, TV, movies, comics. Now the comics in my day used to be Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and the Phantom. I liked the Phantom, he was great. But nowadays I don't know where the Phantom is. He's gone I think. I went into a comic shop the other day down the road there, down in the main street.

Goodness me, I've never seen anything like it in my life - R18 comics! Unbelievable stuff. Just a cultic sorcery, sexual violence, all kinds of things, dreadful stuff and yet there it is. People are taking it onboard, and I know in some places people get addicted to comics. Another is the area of the internet, the chat rooms. I don't know how many marriages I've heard failed because someone got into a chat room and got into a fantasy relationship with someone somewhere away. Then in the end the spirit of adultery came round them because they shared their heart with that person, and they didn't realise a seducing spirit was coming on the internet. Now about 10 years ago the Lord told me the internet's going to be a channel for seducing spirits to come into homes without anyone realising it. That's why you've got to guard and set boundaries around the internet, watching for your family because they don't know what they'll get connected up to.

There's another one there and that's the area of fantasy [unclear 00.26.46] any sophisticated variations of it, but what happens in these games is you take on an identity and through accomplishing certain things you gain certain powers. Actually now it's developed to another level. It's developed to the level now where you can go live and you have a headset on and you're now speaking the things out into this imaginary arena where you're involved in conflict with people from around the world. It's become incredibly sophisticated, and when you get into those games you take on a name, an identity and you open yourself to the demon behind it. When I was in Singapore this last time I shared some stuff on that. I got a young man to come up and he said he'd been totally addicted to the game. When he came up I got him to renounce the game and renounce the identity that he had taken in the game, and he manifested as he renounced it and had a massive deliverance. Who says fantasy isn't powerful? This opened the door for him to come in and it clearly was a broken person, needed help and that kind of thing.

So of course there's all these sorts of areas and now you've got these fantasy worlds. See some of the parents are not even up with what's going on. You have a look at many of the stories that are coming, you've got all these fantasy worlds. There's Neverland, there's Narnia, there's Middle Earth, there's all these fantasy worlds that are being created in someone's imagination, and then when young people get on the internet they can get into this area, open the doorways for demons to come in and afflict them. Hey, isn't it a great day we live in aye? [Laughs] Glory to God. You wouldn't have heard of second life would you? [Laughter] Second life is where you enter the internet, take on another identity, go into another world and create and live in another world where there's buying and selling. And you have another marriage and there's pornography in there as well. It's unbelievable. This is the world we're in now; in the last days seducing spirits. Interesting isn't it?

We need to understand what's happening so we can - then I'll get right down to where it affects you in a moment. Another area is the area of pornography. Behind pornography is an - this is what the Lord told me. He said behind pornography is one of the ancient gods. You ever read through the Bible and wondered what it was that caused Israel to go after idols all the time? We read it in the 21st Century; what is up with these people? You know, God blesses them, God's kind to them and next thing you know they're whipping away there and off with idols. What is that all about? And interestingly enough in Numbers 25, when they wanted to get them off the course they just sent women in to sleep with them and get them onto idols. Once they're on the idols then away they go, they're lost again. And so the Lord spoke to me and He said the spirit behind the idols in the Old Testament is the same spirit that's behind pornography in the 21st Century, and it's a powerful thing.

It's a spirit of whoredom, a spirit of prostitution, so when a person is involved in pornography they pay money to watch someone do things and what happens is they are now entering into a financial agreement with a prostitute. The spirit of prostitution comes over their life and they're addicted, and it has a tremendous draw for two reasons; one, because it's a spirit behind it is pulling on people just like they did in the Old Testament, and like the Old Testament idols has to be torn down, and the second one is that emotional rejection or pain or woundedness will cause people to feel good and comforted in that fantasy world. They want to enter it to feel better instead of forming substantial relationships. In Ezekiel 8:12 it says see what they do in the dark in the chambers of their imagination; Ezekiel 8:12, see what they do in the dark in the chambers of their imagination. All the rooms of their imagination they've got these idols or pictures on the walls. What a classic picture in the Old Testament of modern day pornography. Hey, fantasies in the last days. This is the modern day fantasies; old days it was an idol. Oh, we wouldn't go for that. We've got our own different ones these days, just flick a switch and you're there.

So another one of course is imaginary companions. Now little kids have imaginary companions, but if they're deeply wounded it can turn into a familiar spirit which the child sees and no one else does. We had to pray for people in the Philippines, had a little - I don't want to call it a dwarf spirit but it's a little companion and it was a familiar spirit. In Ireland they call them leprechauns, a similar kind of thing. So there it is. Those are some of the doorways, some of the things and Job 31 says, he said I will make a covenant with my eyes, verse 1 and in verse 7, lest my heart follows my eyes, so whatever's captured your imagination will catch your heart. In Matthew 6 he says the eyes are the lamp of the soul, so whatever's got your sight, your imagination, will capture the focus of your life and direct you. This is what we need to be able to deal with it, and I'll show you how to do that. We're going to talk about how to tear it down, but I just want to go a couple more things and then I'll give you the key things to root it out.

So the next thing I want to look at, just I want to give you these quickly, but just the impact of fantasies, the impact of fantasies when they're unrestrained. There's several of them. Here they are: number one, it creates tracks in your mind that make it very, very easy to go there. Literally there are mental tracks in your mind. You just go back there all the time; same fantasy, same place, same thing, like a mental track is in there like a mental rut. The second thing, it causes you to avoid responsibilities that you should be facing. You go away to daydream land instead of facing responsibilities. Thirdly, it becomes a place of false comfort, where you find comfort with imaginations and demons instead of comfort from the Holy Ghost. It's a place of false comfort and connection to familiar spirits. The next thing, fourth, it becomes addictive. It becomes addictive like alcohol, just the same way alcohol, people go to the bottle, people can go to fantasy the same way and think they're much better than the alcoholic. It becomes a drug that opens your life.

The last couple of things, it opens the door to your soul to seducing spirits. It opens your life up. That's why we've got to deal with fantasies very, very clearly. It creates blocks to intimacy so you can never build good relationships within marriage and family. Many families are suffering because of this issue of fantasies as a way of escaping working things out. And lastly, it increases selfishness, self-centredness, because you actually become unaware of what anyone else is doing and you're locked up in your own world. Quite a pretty grim thing fantasy does. Now fantasy is a misuse of the creative gifting God gave us. We have to deal with this misuse and abuse. If you don't use something the way God intended, you've abused that and there's a consequence. How can I root out the fantasy? How can I root these things out? I'll look at it in more detail next week but I want to give you just the keys for rooting it out. Number one, you have to recognise it. You have to recognise it. Psalm 51:6, God desires truth of the inner parts.

So what is my fantasy? What is it my mind goes to? What do I begin to dream about? Am I dreaming about fulfilling the call of God, or am I going somewhere else? See, what shows up in the fantasy, what happens in the fantasy? You just ask yourself a few questions: when I daydream and go away in fantasy land what's happening? What goes on? Where does it end up? Just ask yourself the questions. How long has it been going? Am I addicted to this thing? Has this been a long-term pattern? Ask the questions and own it: I've got a problem. That'd be the first step. The second thing is it requires deep repentance. We have to abandon the false comfort. Matthew 4:17, if I want the kingdom to come in my life I must abandon the things which oppose it. This is something that opposes it. I have to make choices that this will no longer be part of my life. Even making the choice is a powerful step.

It's not the only step to dealing with it, because I need to let go not just the sin itself, the fantasy itself, the soul ties and attachments, the familiar spirits. I've got to abandon the whole thing, and you may not realise how addicted you are until you actually try to get rid of it. So thirdly I've got to remove the fantasy at its roots. I've got to remove it. Now that's the more difficult part. Here's what I suggest you do. I suggest you fast. If you want to root something out get into fasting. Fasting can expose and uncover things really, really easy. In Judges 6:26, Samson tore down the idol. He just literally went and he ripped the whole thing down and built a place of altar to the Lord, and God changed his name and he was anointed to begin to move into his destiny. So somewhere if our life has been sabotaged by fantasies, sabotaged by daydreaming, sabotaged by woundings in the soul, we've got to go there and tear that thing down. He got up in the night and he took people with him to help him because he was a bit afraid to deal with it.

If you can't deal with it yourself get some help for someone to deal with it and tear down that fantasy! Tear down that thing that you go to! Tear down the thing right at the roots of it! Confront the spirit that's hooked into you, trying to take you out of your destiny! See and we'll share with you some of the weapons we've got to do it next week. See, so fasting and prayer can expose the root and usually what people need is deliverance and healing, because many times you find that people are out in fantasy world - I was there because I was rejected. I was lonely, hurt and rejected and it was no use saying stop daydreaming. I couldn't help it. I just wanted to go there because everything else was painful. What I needed to do was address the real problem; hurt, rejected, you need to forgive. You need to face the feelings, grieve over them and get out of it. Unless you do it that way you don't really get out of it. You have a fix over the top and your fantasy is just a method of controlling your world.

The last thing then is we need to replace the fantasy with the truth. We've got to put the truth about what God says. We need truth. The truth will set you free. The Bible says renew your mind and you become a changed person, so as we see that how many people can say man, God is speaking to me today? Whoa! Come back. How many went away while I was talking? [Laughter] Some did. Good on you for being honest. One did. One admitted they'd gone away. That's alright, just tap her and say come back, come back. [Laughs] I've had to do that to some people; come back, come back, you're gone. [Laughs] It's okay. But listen, how many people felt God's convicting you inside, there's something in your life you need to tear down, something - a place of escape, a place that's really actually got you gripped? Maybe it's some program, addictive program. Man, I used to get into that sci-fi programs, have to run home and watch these things. Crazy stuff.

Just finding ways of escape into a fantasy world, but it's a spirit behind it. What if we were to be delivered of that thing and to break into new dimensions in our mind and our thinking, of seeing the dreams of God for our life, of seeing the possibilities of faith, what could be instead of going away and creating a fantasy world that'll never be true? I wonder how many people know God's speaking to you today. Just raise your hand right now, just acknowledge today God is speaking to me today. Father, I thank You right now, each and every person that's responded. Just close our eyes for a moment. Lord, we need Your help. You've said in the last days of seducing spirits, powerful forces that would enter the world to take us out of the calling of God. And Lord, today as we come before You we acknowledge together as a body of people that we have not fully pursued You. We've not loved You with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind. In parts of our mind we've had idols, things lifted up which have opposed us walking with You, knowing You and going forward with You.

And we thank You Lord for grace in our lives to flush the things out, and we're saying Holy Ghost, come into our midst, begin to flush these things out. Whatever has fed them, whatever hurt and grief and sorrow, flush it out Lord, and Lord, wherever we've built the fantasies and imaginations, Lord we stand and commit to tear them down in the power of the Holy Ghost. And we ask for Your grace to do it. Listen, just before we finish I wonder is there any person here today who's never received Jesus Christ? The most powerful way your life can change is to realise Jesus Christ came here to help you change. There's a power called sin at work that stops us, even though we try and make these good intentions. But the power of God can set you free. If you're here today you need to know Jesus Christ. If you've not already given your life to Him, this is the day to receive Him.

Every person who received Jesus He gave power to be a child of God by trusting in Him. I wonder is there any person here right now, you're not a Christian, you say I want to become a Christian, I want to give my life to Jesus? Why don't you quickly raise your hand right now, just let me see? I'd love to pray with you. I'd love to invite you to come to Christ, to experience Him [unclear 00.40.10], any person here today, quickly raise your hand. Is there anyone here today? Anyone here today, just let me know. Wow. Well Father, I just thank You for such a big response today concerning vain imaginations, fantasies, and I'm asking that over this coming week that You will begin to break open the ground of people's hearts as we fast and pray and push against these things. Father, as we come Lord in the coming week I pray there'd be a mighty deliverance and a breakthrough over the weekend at the Freedom Retreat, and on Sunday morning. I pray Lord that next weekend will be a breaking out and a breaking open the foundations that have held people locked up. Father, we believe for Your spirit to move as we do the groundwork and prepare.

Church, I encourage you, if you put your hand up and know there's some area, fast this week. Just do some fasting. Push into God and say Lord, how long has this thing been there? What is it? Show me what it exactly is. Write it down, what you dream about, where you go, what you think about, what that fantasy is, where it ends up. Write it down. How long has it been like that, and how strongly have I got this thing on my life? If I need to cut I'll cut TV off this week. I'll cut internet off. I'll cut off the things I've done that fed this thing and I'll see what rises up inside me. I've determined to make a stand like Gideon and pull down that family altar that for generations has held my family from the destiny of God. Is that you? Is that you? Do it this week. Do it. Do it. Father, I pray Your grace to do it in Jesus' mighty name. Everyone said [Amen!] Come on, let's give the Lord a clap and [applause] thank Him that at the cross of Calvary He broke the power of sin. He broke the power of the devil. He broke the power of seducing spirits, and He called you and me to live a life that's powerful and strong; a life that's faith-led, vision led, led by the spirit of God and not by some vain imagination and fantasy.

Come on, let's rise up. Come on, let's give Him a clap. Let's give Him a clap [applause] [unclear 00.42.30]. I exalt You, I exalt You. Let's lift Him up. Father, in Jesus' name we tear down every stronghold exalting itself against the knowledge of Jesus. We ask You to expose it in our lives and empower everyone in this church to break through it. Yes, I exalt You.

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Cleansing the Imagination (3 of 4)

Sat 23 Aug 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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Cleansing the Imagination (3 of 4) Mike Connell 23.08.2008 pm

We've been talking about imaginations. I want to just take it another step this time and talk about cleansing your imagination, cleaning up your act, cleansing your imagination. Let's go into 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. Here it says now for though we walk in the flesh - that's where we live in a human body - we don't war according to the flesh. In other words there's a spiritual battle we're engaged in - for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. So we have weapons and there is a warfare we're involved in, and they're not carnal but they are mighty through God. Ooh, that's good, mighty through God see, mighty through God - no use unless you use them of course, but mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds, casting down arguments, every high thing - sorry, imaginations, every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity into the obedience of Christ.

So very clearly you and I are in a warfare. There's no escape from the warfare. When you go out of here you'll be in it; when you come to up-rise tomorrow morning you'll be in it. We are engaged in a spiritual warfare and Jesus Christ came not just to set us free and connect us with God, but to empower us to have dominion, to actually win the war. That's a good thing to win the war. It's messy if you lose it. Yesterday we had people came and they won the battle against a whole number of things. It was great, so we were looking at one particular area it's very clear here that the battlefield is in your imagination, and we saw how God designed us to be creative. We're made in His image to be creative, so let's just summarise what we looked at. We saw God has made you creative. You can create a new life. God has given you a sexual ability to do that. Notice it takes two people to create the life. God has also given you an imagination, the capacity to picture something that is not yet in being and then to begin to work to bring that picture into being.

That's how God worked. He saw it in detail and then began to speak and act and it came into being, so whatever we see someone imagined it, someone dreamed it all up, and so we have that power to be creative. Your imagination's a major part of that. Your imagination is your capacity to picture things that aren't there, and your imagination talks to you. So whatever's going on in your mind, in your imagination is talking all the time. In the secular area they call it self-talk; you're always talking to yourself. You're always listening to something going on in your mind and if you have a vain imagination - a vain imagination is a picture which is completely opposed to what God has to say. It is completely opposed to God's perspective or viewpoint, and so it's a vain imagination. It's empty. It has no life and a vain imagination will take you out of what God has for you. It says vain imaginations exalt themself against you personally experiencing and knowing God.

So many believers live well below what God called us to live out and to be and to do. Why? Because there's areas of our mind, imagination, thinking that need to be renewed if we are to walk in power and in life and victory. So for example, someone stands in front of you and they're sick and you come to pray for them. Almost the first thing that comes up is how bad the sickness is, and unless that imagination is overcome no faith will rise in your heart to bring a miracle from heaven to earth. Your imaginations will lead you somewhere, so we need to understand and get in touch with what's going on in that brain, what we really think about, dwell upon where our mind goes. Last week we saw about fantasies which are a way - they can be positive, they can be dreaming about things that could be. But many times fantasies are an escape from reality into a world we can control and become incredibly addictive, and so today I want to deliver you.

How many people found there were some things - don't put your hand up - but you thought during the week as I've given you some homework to do of praying and fasting, you began to be aware I've got some things I'm a bit hooked into here. Okay, well we need to get unhooked. We've got to make a decision that I'm not going to let the imaginations hold my life and shape my life. Listen, you get into some of these TV programs like you know, Desperate Housewives, you'll get so immersed in those lives you'll take on the identities, the values, the whole thing. It'll shape how you view life, and then when you hear things about divorce and affairs your conscience won't be stirred too much. It'll be dull because your mind has embraced something that is anti-God, that's actually an anti-Christ, anti-anointing spirit. It came out of someone else's dream and imagination, and when you lock in on that and begin to feed off it - not everyone does, but many do.

When they get in and lock in and feed on it they can't do without that fix, that program. They've got to quickly get back and see that program. I used to be like that with science fiction. Man, I used to get to see that program - I got to watch! I got to watch! I got to watch! No, you don't have to watch at all. It's just someone else's dream and you've been caught in it. And so we realise then we need to deal with it, so I want to just look about some areas now. I want to look first of all at the sources of imagination, then I want to look briefly at two aspects of our battle. One of them we'll deal with today. I want to show you how you actually fight the imaginations. You've actually got to do something, but it helps if you understand where they come from first of all so I want to just look first of all at the sources of some of these imaginations, pictures you've got in your mind. We've all got them and we've got three possible sources: one of them is the Holy Spirit. That's the one that God wants us to have. The Holy Spirit is also the source of dreams and imaginations.

In Acts 2:17, in the last days I'll pour My Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old shall dream dreams. Now God wants to drop into your mind and imagination pictures and possibilities that He has dreamed up for you. See, He wants you to operate prophetically. That means that you are open to inspiration and Holy Ghost-inspired ideas. How is it that you move in the gifts of the Spirit? One of the ways you move in the gifts of the spirit is you open your heart in faith towards the Lord; He drops a picture into your mind. Notice He gives a picture, a picture of something and as you begin to act on that scene and begin to give voice to it, then miracles take place. Lives get changed, prophetic utterances take place, so moving in the spirit you've got to engage your imagination. Your mind and imagination has to be engaged and open to the Holy Spirit for input.

But the Bible's very clear that in the last days the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh, and the result of that is prophetic. You begin to see possibilities. You see things that God drops into your heart, divinely inspired dreams. Jeremiah 29:11 He says I know the thoughts I think of you, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a hope or something you look forward to. So in heaven before you were assigned into the earth, God wrote out and wrote a plan of the things that He designed you to accomplish. The only way that you can receive those is if you open yourself to prophetic flows from heaven to come into your life. We need to hear the voice of God, so our imagination is the area the Spirit of God drops things into. He drops them into our spirit; they rise up and you see them. An idea comes and as you begin to mull over that idea and agree with God's thoughts, then you position yourself for change to take place. So our walking in the spirit is about listening and being prompted by the Holy Spirit, and allowing the word of God to begin to shape the way we think and view life and view our future.

That's very, very powerful. Now I want to really develop that part another time. I'll do that and just to pick up that whole area of receiving prophetic input, of the area of the imagination and possibilities, because if we're going to grow we must break out of current thinking and expand our thinking. You've got to come to greater thoughts, bigger thoughts, expanded thoughts. One difficulty in living in a small rural area is that you tend to lock into little thinking, and you interact a lot of the time with people who are in a very self-centred little world. And when you're in that world that people - if you interact with that too much then you begin to become small and you're just concerned about yourself as well. But God wants us to have a vision of greatness, of great things, of what could take place in our community. What could we do? Oh, immediately the imagination come up: it's too hard. You can't do that. So there are imaginations that lock us up with unbelief that we could do things that are really significant, and we must decide that we're going to push past those and begin to develop different ways of thinking, be open to other possibilities from God.

Okay, so one source of imaginations is the Holy Ghost. He wants us to get locked in there. Here's another source of imaginations and that's wicked spirits, evil spirits. How do evil spirits trouble us? How do they afflict us? Why? What they do is this. They impose upon your thought life and they drop pictures into your mind, images of things that they want you to ponder on and think on. When they drop the image in, then you feel overwhelmed by that at the moment and you're not aware of the presence of God, so when temptation comes or these vain imaginations come out of the demonic realm, they invade you and they begin to fill your mind and emotions and you begin to picture things. So for example you may begin to start to think about a certain person. Fear strikes your heart, then you begin to fear this conflict you're going to have with them. You begin to [unclear 00.09.58] Before you know it you're working out in your mind this imaginary conversation you're going to have and how it's all going to work out. You end up being carried by an imagination that causes great fear to rise in your heart.

The doctor comes and says something and before you know it you've got imagination and you're dreaming there; you're at your grave and you're already watching them bury you. Your mind sort of went away somewhere instead of actually anchoring on what God says about our life. So that's how demons come and afflict us. They drop imaginations in. For example you take Eve, in Genesis 3:1-6. It said - this is what the devil did. This is how he always does it. He said did God say you shouldn't eat that? So the first thing he does is challenge the truth. See, he challenges the truth, and then he begins to put a picture in your mind. He said look at that tree. You know what? If you eat that you will become like God. Oh really? I like that - and then she began to look at it, whoa and began to think about it. Wow! Like God? Yeah, yeah, that's pretty good, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she took and she ate.

Then when she'd eaten she gave it to someone else, and this is what happens with vain imaginations. A thought comes into your mind, you begin to ponder on it, before you know it you've gone down there and you've eaten it. You've taken it in, you've taken it onboard, you start to talk and now you're talking with someone else and now you're starting to give it to them. So for example you hear a story about someone. You haven't stopped to hear whether it's the truth or not. You suddenly get these thoughts in your mind. Before you know it you've got all these imaginations about some person you've never even talked to to establish the truth. One of the greatest reasons we have conflicts in relationships is people get ideas in their mind what the other person thinks or wants or is really on about. We get an imagination. We fail to actually check out the truth, the facts and ask the questions. We just let the imagination build in our mind and we're wound up before we even talk to them. That happens all the time, all the time.

This is the strategy the devil uses, and just in case you think that was Old Testament, in 2 Corinthians 11:2 Paul says I'm afraid and concerned for you Corinthians, because I espoused you to Christ as a virgin to a groom. He says I'm concerned lest the same way the devil beguiled Eve, your minds will be corrupted from just a simple trust relationship with the Lord. So he's very clear it's possible for us to entertain thoughts that take us totally out of the way that God wants us to walk. How many know, how many can recognise and admit I've done it many times? See, we've all done it many times. Man, you get wound up, you think that person - they don't like me. They don't like me. Where did that thought come from? You don't even know, you've never even asked them. You ever went up and asked them do you like me? You never asked that. You just assumed they didn't like you, then before you know it [unclear 00.12.49] I don't like them either. Before you know it you've gone down some path, you shouldn't be there.

Or someone says something about someone else and you don't even stop to listen and check out whether it's true. Why are you telling me this? Have you checked the facts? Why aren't you praying for the person? You take it onboard: ooh, wow. Add a little bit to it. It grows in your mind. You tell someone else. Before you know it there's gossip and slander, all kinds of things going on. That's how it all works. Okay then, so one source of ideas and imaginations is the Holy Spirit. One source is the devil. Another source is your own heart, your own heart, ooh oh ooh, your own heart. Proverbs 4:23 says, very clearly it says keep your heart with all diligence, for out of your heart is where your life flows. Your life flows out of the things that are in your heart; not out of what your education is, not what your financial position is. It flows out of what you believe truly in your heart. If you believe, if you have embraced a belief in your heart that no one likes me, every place you go you'll find conflict in your relationships and people turning against you.

If you believe in your heart it's always my fault, I'm always to blame, everywhere you go you'll have problems in your relationships. You'll become the place that blame is laid every time. The Bible's very clear, what's in your heart determines how you will live out your life, so you've got to really watch what's in your heart and guard what's in your heart. Now there are several things, so there are some things in your heart. There are two lots of things can be in your heart and what you want to do is cultivate one and get rid of the other. So what can be in your heart can be very good. We can have dreams and desires and hopes and aspirations. Of course if you live under control, then you may come to believe well no one's ever interested in what I feel and what I want. I've just got to go along with the crowd. That is an imagination and it brings a bondage to your life, and you'll never explore the dreams and desires you have, but God wrote desires into your life.

He wrote gifts into your life. He wrote dreams into your heart, and you've got to actually discover what God's put in your heart. It's your heart, your life, your dreams, your desires. You've got to discover them and identify them. As you identify them and own them, the Bible says in Philippians 2:13, it's God works in you both to desire and will and to want and to purpose and to do of the things that please God. So we're waiting for the will of God. Sometimes the will of God is already written in desires you have in your heart, longings you have in your heart. But you've got to get them out of your heart and begin to dream them and then begin to get the dream into practical steps, so if we're going to move in the realm of prophetic flows from God and into the realm of the faith you've got to one, be able to hear from God and two, you've got to actually access the things God's putting in your heart, or you'll never be able to actually own your life. You're always living out someone else's dream.

Many children live out the dream their parents have for them instead of discovering their own dreams. You understand? So training children is about discovering what God's put in them and helping them move towards the thing God gave them. So one area of the dreams of our heart are really good, but there's another heart - the Bible says that also out of the heart of man comes defiling things. So the second thing that comes out of the heart of man, you think them up yourself because you've got issues in your heart and that is, it says - I'll give you the verse. Here it is in Mark 7:21, for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts. So some imaginations arise from stuff in your own life you need to get cleaned up. Some imaginations are dreams and visions given from God; some imaginations are dreams that come out of your heart that God has put in there, wired in you. Some imaginations come from the demonic realm to try and derail you, get you off track, and some dreams come out of actually issues in your own heart.

So what'll happen is because you're always under observation the demonic realm can see the issues of the heart and they can actually exploit you and manipulate your fears and your beliefs and set things up to get you going, get you stirred up. Some people, if you watch them for a little while you know what stirs them up, what presses their button. Isn't that right? You know, and you know what'll happen? While you've still got that button there it's going to be pressed all the time: press, press, press, [unclear 00.17.19]. You come out of your corner like that. You know, I don't know what your button is. It could be anger, it could be resentment, could be lust, could be rejection, could be self-pity, could be alcohol, could be any kind of thing, but all the devil's got to do is come along, see the button, push and away you go! Because you're controlled by that unresolved, un-dealt with issue of the heart. That's why it's important to deal with issues of the heart and the way we think and how we [work. 00.17.44]

So here we go, so some of the things that get in the heart, I'll just drop them out for you and I'll look at them another time, just straight out undisciplined thoughts; thoughts of fear - what's going to happen? What's going to happen? That house may not come true! The church prayed, it didn't come true, oh God You've let me down! I mean all of that kind of stuff. It goes on. Don't think it doesn't go on and don't think they didn't think that. They would have had to battle those kinds of thoughts, got the whole church praying and it got worse. Please don't pray for me again! [Laughter] You understand? Because of the wrong imaginations, see immediately it surfaces in the heart, oh God's going to let me down and these things come up. So sometimes they're just things, undisciplined thoughts, so here you are. You're going to go to have this appointment. All the time you're going you've got all these thoughts and you mentally run through how it'll all run. By the time you get there you're in a major state - and you haven't even spoken a word yet, because you've mentally done a run through the thing and got your imaginations [tied away. 00.18.42]

Fear, fear is an imagination of the future that's very, very bad for you. In spite of that God says God has not given us a spirit of fear, but fear when you let them run your life, they create imaginations, pictures of the future that are really bad and you just cringe inside and draw back. So that's one of the areas. Another area is the area of fantasy escapes, comforts, just finding a place. That's one area that things come. Another area is memories of past hurts, memories of past hurts. When you've been hurt in the past you have a memory of something that really hurt you and something comes nearby that looks like it and you suddenly get stirred up again. All the imaginations come back up again. You begin to see yourself having the same thing happen again; then you get wound up. A lot of people get wound up quite easily you know. They can't work out - lovely Christians, they get wound up, do these weird things, because they've got issues of the heart not dealt with.

Then the other one is ungodly beliefs or attitudes, ungodly things, beliefs we formed when we were growing up that we never realised were there, like a belief of abandonment: I'm all on my own. No one really looks out for me. Now you try to walk with God with that belief in your heart. You can't because at crunch points that imagination will come up and you'll always, it'll wrestle against you knowing that God never leaves you, never forsakes you. So we do have to deal with the issues of our own heart, so today I want to just address one thing and I want to look at it. There are two areas we're going to go to but one today, and the first is that we need to engage in warfare. 2 Corinthians 10 says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, to the pulling down. That's demolishing by exercising force. If you have a mind that runs away on you you have to get management of those thoughts by force. You will have to assert yourself. A passive mind is the devil's playground.

You've got to actually assert force when vain imaginations begin to rise up, because if you don't beat them they will talk to you and take you somewhere you'll have to say sorry to the Lord afterwards. Come on, you don't want to go there. You don't want to be saying sorry all the time, we want to get victory, get dominion. So the first thing is we must engage in warfare. We must engage in warfare to confront the thoughts, to confront the things that get in our mind and to bring the word of God on and make them submit to the word of God. Now that's actually a daily discipline for every believer. I tell you now, many of the problems you have are because you've never got to do this for yourself, and we rely on a Sunday meeting to do it for us. It's not going to happen. On a Sunday meeting you'll experience the presence of God. You'll be lifted up in your spirit. You may get inspiring word that begins to speak to you, but when you walk out you have to deal - it's your mind, your thoughts, your imaginations, your responsibility. Your life will reflect what you give yourself to thinking about. Getting the idea?

So number one, there's a warfare. You must engage in warfare. That means bring into captivity the thoughts. You've got to get a hold of them. To bring them into captivity means you shut them down and stop them running your life. Getting the idea? Okay, here's the second thing we need to do. We need to also renew the mind. Romans 12:2 says don't be conformed to the world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In other words don't let the way the world walks press you into it's shape. Don't copy what others are living their life like. You're called to live it differently. You're never going to be quite like everyone else. You are different and you're called to be different so be different. Dare to be different. Dare to be yourself! Dare to be who God made you to be. Just dare to live your life boldly, without living under the fear of what everyone's thinking. If I'm worried about what people are thinking all the time, something I cannot have control over, vain imaginations will drive me into fear, I can't please the Lord.

The Bible says very clearly, Galatians 1:10, if I seek to serve men or please men I can't be the servant of the Lord, so to serve the Lord I've got to get over pleasing people and begin to own what God says about me and my life, and you and your life. Getting the idea? Okay. I want to just tackle just the one thing then, and that is how to wage a war against vain imaginations. How do you wage the war? The only good war is the one you win. Next week we'll look at then how you actually deal with the renewing of the mind, so these two things, the waging a war against the thoughts which come against you and rise up in your mind, and then renewing your mind systematically; these are the ways you get to cleanse your imaginations. So one, you have to engage in an act of war; two, you've got to look at the way you think and what you're like, and begin to renew that consciously and systematically with the word of God. We'll look at that side next week.

I want to just give you some of the weapons that you use now. Now many times what happens is a thought comes into our mind and we begin to start to go along that thought. Now it can be a thought of a situation, it can be some kind of picture, mental picture you get. Maybe it's some unclean thing, maybe it's some memory that you've had in the past, some kind of thing, but pictures come in the mind. How many have had pictures come in the mind? How many have had them come when you're worshipping God? Most foul things come when you worship God sometimes, because you're engaging in warfare and they come - firstly the thought comes to fill your mind. Then secondly, straight after that comes an accusation: well what kind of grubby Christian are you thinking that? Here you are worshipping. You're a hypocrite! [Laughter] I'm a hypocrite. I think I should come up in the altar call. No, you shouldn't. You should need to get a hold of your mind and don't let your mind get dominated like that! Recognise it happens to everyone, no exceptions. No exceptions.

There are times when unpleasant, tormenting, invading thoughts come in at the least convenient time, and you have to wage a war against them. Now most people say something like this: I shouldn't think that. I shouldn't think that. I shouldn't think that. Ooh, I'm thinking that. Ooh, I shouldn't think that - no, no, no. I mustn't think that! Ooh, I'm thinking that. I mustn't think that. Ooh, ooh there's something attractive about the thing - and you find before you know it you're dreaming that you've gone down that route. How many have found that? Because you're tackling it the wrong way. You know if I put a sign up there, wet paint, do not touch, then walk out and leave you here, leave you here alone, do you know what's going to happen? You'll be able to see that thing. You'll see it, you'll touch it. [Laughter] If I had a box here, a big box, do not open, secret, and just left you here [laughter] it's absolutely certain the majority of people will become obsessed with the box. [Laughter] The whole room, all these things in here, but the box will be the thing they'll be obsessed about.

Do you know why? Because there's a law and laws do not bring freedom. They just point out you've got sin operates in your life. The more you at that thing don't do it, the more you want to do it. I shouldn't - but I want to! I shouldn't - I want to! Oh, I will! [Laughter] Sorry Lord, I won't do it again. [Laughter] What goes on? You're not going to win that way. How many know that you didn't win that way? You've never won that way, because the [law's 00.26.06] got no power to set you free. The Bible says our weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they are MIGHTY THROUGH GOD! So that means God has given us weapons. You have to use them, but you have to depend on the Holy Spirit for it to work, so there's got to be a faith element behind what you do. So here's one of the things you can do. When you've got unclean and unpleasant pictures come up in your mind, instead of actually saying I shouldn't think on that look at the thought and take the blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible says the blood of Jesus is one of our weapons of warfare.

The blood of Jesus speaks, so take the blood of Jesus Christ, mentally roller it over the whole thing until that picture has now been overcome by the blood of Jesus Christ. All you're seeing is the blood on that thing now, and every time it tries to get light back again instead of saying I'm not going to think that, you just begin to apply the blood over it until that picture vanishes. And what you do instead of trying to stop the picture appearing, you allow the picture to be there and you paint over it. You use your imagination. You use the blood of Jesus Christ, see it demolish that thing: By faith I demolish that picture now! Yes! You will be amazed how doing that will just cause the picture to vanish. It just causes it to vanish just like that. The Bible says we overcome the devil by the blood of the lamb, Revelations 12:11, and the word of our testimony. So applying the blood to unpleasant images really does shift them. It really shifts them and it shifts them real quick.

Here's another thing you need to do. You need to speak and declare the word of God, speak and declare the word of God. Ephesians 6:17 says that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. Now you actually have to speak it, speak God's word. Now a lot of people are quiet. SPEAK GOD'S WORD! You know, how do things get into the life? You dream about them and then you speak them and they start to have life when you speak them, so you've got to take the word of God, SPEAK IT! That's how Jesus overcame the devil. He spoke the word of God. You need to speak God's word over your life, declare over your life the truth: I'm the servant of the living God. I belong to Jesus Christ. You've got to declare what God says. You agree with what God says, start to speak it over your life, develop a pattern in prayer of speaking the word of God over your life. You'll be amazed how your inner man begins to stand up, YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! It's true! But you have to decide to do that.

No one can your mouth work for you. No one can make your mouth say the word of God. You've got to choose to speak the word of God, so speaking the word of God will make imaginations go. One of the ways you can do it is you can directly speak to the spirit behind it: You tormenting spirit, I take dominion over you. I bind you. I hold the blood of Jesus over you. Be gone! Just do that, just speak directly to the spirit. If demons are the source of some things confront them with the word of God. Use your authority. Take dominion. Don't just be pussy and roll over and [unclear 00.29.18]. [Laughter] [That's right.] Come on, stand up on the inside. Get the weapons of warfare. Come on, don't be meek and mild, stand up. There's a lion in there needs to overcome. It's no use thinking you're going to take the world if you can't take your own mind! [No!] Okay, here's the last couple and then we're finished.

Okay, speak and declare the word. Here's another one: praise the Lord. Begin to praise God when the thoughts come. I tell you what, but you've got to make it vocal. You've got to express it out. Psalm 8:2 says you have ordained or you have appointed praise. God is designated praise to do something, to still. That means to cancel an operation, to stop something that is progressing, to break down the power of something to influence you - to stop the work of the enemy and the avenger or accuser. That is why it's impossible if you are praising God strongly to have your mind invaded with junk. When you stand up and begin to consciously praise the Lord and speak out strong, sing out strong, express strongly through - it's impossible for demonic things to remain around you. The presence of God comes into that. The Bible says in James 4:7 humble yourself under the hand of God, resist the devil. He will flee from you. You've got to do something.

So be aggressive and assertive. Praise the Lord. If the devil comes and every time he comes you just end up praising the Lord he's going to give up on that strategy real quick. Okay, another way you can deal with it is praying in tongues, praying in the spirit. When you pray in tongues your spirit man is stirred so [Prays in tongues 00.30.54]. Then speak the word of God. Finally the other thing is quite a simple, very practical one. Just refocus your thoughts somewhere else - really practical, just focus your thoughts somewhere else. Get busy doing something different. Just redirect your thoughts somewhere else, because what you focus on your life opens up to. In Matthew 6, I think verse 22, it says whatever is the light of your eye it'll shine light into your whole body. See, the eye is the lamp of the body, so if you'll direct your focus somewhere else, so if you're here and your mind's starting to go into a mess DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING! It's going to drag you somewhere you don't want to go!

Instead of being dragged away by temptation and vain imaginations into rejection and self-pity and depression, all that kind of thing, do something! Just DO SOMETHING because the weapons of our warfare, they are not carnal. They are mighty through God, mighty through God, mighty through God [applause] and you pull down that thing that came against you! Tear it down! Tear it down! Tear it down! If you suffer from rejection tear it down! Tear it down! Tear it down! Wage war on it, tear the thing down. Tear it down! How are you going to tear it down? Hold the blood over it. Speak the word of God over it! Praise the Lord in the midst of it! Redirect your attention somewhere else. You can do it. You're called to do it. You need to do it. Your future depends on it and ours does too, because we need you to break through. We need you to break through so you will influence the people God called you to influence.

We need you to break through inferiority, passivity, poverty thinking, rejection thinking, self-pity thinking, victim thinking, fear thinking. We've got to break through those things. You have to assert yourself to break through them and use the weapons God gave you. Jesus didn't leave us defenceless you know. Hey, I love this. He said don't be afraid of what's in the world, I've overcome the world. I'm with you. I'll help you. I'm here to help you advance the kingdom. As the Father sent Me I am sending you. As the Father sent Me, you're a sent person. You need to understand that about yourself. Well you say I don't feel sent, nobody sent me to the mission field. Listen, the moment you walk through that door you're in your mission field. The Father has sent you. You are sent. You are on assignment from God, an answer to someone's problem. It's your job to discover the assignment and to position yourself so you can have influence. That's your job. My job is to help you to do it. Your job's to do it.

I wonder what it is that you have yielded to, what fantasy has attracted you away from boldly standing up and fulfilling the call of God? That thing you need to come today and repent of it, but we need to break the power of your agreement with that demonic thing. Whatever thought, what imagination has been around your life that's afflicted you, that's held you in bondage, you know what it is. Why don't you say today I'm not putting up with it any more. Today I'm going to begin to enter the warfare for my mind and my life.

[File ends 00.34.12]

Renewal of the Mind (4 of 4)

Sun 31 Aug 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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Renewal of the Mind (4 of 4) Mike Connell 31.08.2008 am

Okay, let's open your Bible at 2 Corinthians 10. I was just praying, God, you've got to [unclear 00.00.06]. I've got to finish this one today. I don't want to not finish it and I got really - funny thing when you're preparing messages, often I get touched very deeply myself. I want to just share this with you. It's going to help you. We've been sharing on the imagination. How many people's imagination has been stirred over the last few weeks? How many people have found you've got a lot of stuff going on there that shouldn't be going on there? [Laughs] How many have found that as you start to dream and think you go places and sometimes you think how do I get out of here? I need to come back, come back - and with daydreams and all kinds of things that go on or thoughts that go on. And so we talked about the imagination and how God has given you an imagination to be a creative faculty in your mind for the Spirit.

So imagination's a wonderful ability God has given to picture something that hasn't yet been, and then to be able to work towards bringing it about. So your imagination is very linked to your capacity to have vision for your life, and we saw also the imagination can be defiled. The imagination can end up where we're living out in fantasy world, a world of unreality where what's in our mind and what we're imagining is absolutely not true. It's not connected to the reality we're living in at all and if you get too far out there they lock you up. But it's the imagination gone out of control, and we do have times when imaginations go out of control and you've got to guard that. So we then looked at the area last week, we were looking at the whole area of our warfare, how to deal with the imagination, cleanse the imagination. A key verse was 2 Corinthians 10:3-5; for though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations - you have to tear them down - every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

So we saw then that there's warfare goes on for you mind. Whatever controls your mind has got control of your life. If fear controls your mind then your life is governed by fear and not by faith. If vain imaginations govern your mind they will lead you to places you shouldn't go, and so vain imaginations is a picture, an image or some kind of thought process in our mind which is devoid of truth. It's just not true. It feels like it when you're thinking about it, seems like it when you're thinking about it, but it actually is not true and it can lead you to all kinds of places. It can lead you into fear. The moment a doctor says something about your condition, immediately you know, you can imagine yourself at your own graveside. Suddenly you're there, and fear grips your soul and this can have a huge impact on your life just at that point a doctor made some assessment of you. Imaginations lead to confusion. We lead all kinds of thoughts all over the place and we get confused about what's the right thing to do about the path we should take.

Vain imaginations make you self-conscious; what are people thinking of me? They're all looking at me. They're thinking about, they're talking about me. You start to think that way too long, you're very self-conscious and inward looking at yourself. The other think that vain imaginations can do is they can cause us to project out self-importance. We think we're very, very important and we project out we're very important. You can usually tell if someone's projecting out vain imaginations because there's a fruit shows in their life, so if someone's projecting out self-importance when you're with them you don't feel built up. You feel put down, even if not much is said because you feel the content of what's emanating out of their life. Sometimes and a real danger and a danger for us as Bay City, a real danger is where because we have certain knowledge or experiences in God, that we begin to perceive that we are somehow better than other people, other Christians, other churches. It's always a danger.

The more the experiences you have, the more difficult it is to remain in a place of humility because there's a tendency to think because of my experiences I have a greater revelation, greater insight, greater [knowledge, 00.04.25] and actually it projects - self-importance comes out and this does not build people. It puts them down and it divides them. I can remember being associated with certain streams of churches and they had certain teachings. Those teachings promoted self-importance, certain doctrinal emphasis; we're the people of God. We're the end time people. We're the sons of God. We're this, we're that, we're whatever, and it produces a self-importance. It's a vain imagination and it actually hinders unity; it hinders us being effective for Christ, so there's all kinds of vain imaginations lead to all sorts of things, lust, witchcraft, all that kind of stuff.

And so we talked about last week how to deal with vain imaginations, and I said that there were two parts to it: one part of it is the warfare to discipline and sort through what you're thinking and manage your mind. We talked to you a little bit about that and one of the things that happens so commonly, I guess this would be the most common thing that happens everywhere, is people make assumptions. A thought comes into your mind, you assume something about the other person and fail to check out whether what you've assumed is true. Before you know it you're in a vain imagination: they don't like me. They're not treating me right. They're this, they're this, they're this. Most relationships break down because of vain imaginations and people just never ask questions, check the facts. So you have to discipline your thought life and last week we shared with you some of the keys how to cleanse your imagination from pictures, how to take hold of thoughts as they come and to deal with them.

Today I want to share something that goes a bit deeper than that. I want to talk about the renewal of your mind, the renewal of your thinking, the cleansing of your imagination by renewing what's going on inside you. I want to share with you a few things that will help you because when we think about the renewing of the mind many times we think well I know what all that is about, but it's up to the Holy Spirit to take away the things that are bad in my life. And so if I just open up to the Holy Spirit, He'll just remove the bad things. Of course that's not true. He doesn't work that way at all, so what I want to do is I want to do this in two or three steps. I want to first of all explain to you how your memory works. I want you just to understand how God designed you to work, because He's not going to violate how you're designed to work, so if we just understand how our memory works, how God has wired us to operate, then we're going to look at how the Holy Spirit initiates healing of things that have been painful in our lives.

Then I want to look at what your part is in renewing your mind, so three things. So we'll look at the first thing then, is first of all I want to look just about how your memory operates and it's quite helpful. It operates on the basis of three things: one is impressions, two is repetition and three is association. I'll explain each of these in a moment. First of all your mind operates or your memory operates off impressions. That's how a memory is stored. How does it work? What happens? Well when you have an experience it's stored in your mind as a memory, so every experience you've ever had there was some storage of it took place in your mind. The information is passed into your mind along electrical paths called neurons. They're just like an electrical circuit, that's all it is. The information comes in, passes on and goes into your mind and then it's stored inside there.

What causes a memory to be deeply impacting in your life is if there's a lot of emotion with it. Take note of that because you're going to find this is an important thing when it comes to dealing with our inner life. When something you experience has a lot of emotion with it it actually is more deeply embedded in your memory than almost any other. If there's no emotion with it it isn't embedded in your memory very much, so for example you think of your first kiss - a lot of emotion with that. You remember when and where and how, just only one kiss but you remember it. It was impacting because there was a strong emotion came with it, so any experience you have which strongly affects your emotions will make a stronger impression, a stronger marking in your life. If you have a traumatic experience then what happens then is there's a huge imprint left inside your mind by the traumatic experience. The way God has wired your mind is it doesn't just go to one place, its spread all over the mind in different parts. That's what makes it sometimes hard to recall it and bring it back. It's spread out.

So the first thing is impressions; whatever experience, the impression it makes on you, if it's a deep impression you tend to remember it. If it's got feelings associated with it you'll remember it even more, so often you'll find you'll remember something, you'll hear something and then you'll remember something and then there's emotions come back to mind. Okay, so the first thing is impressions, so the deeper the impression an experience has on you, the more it's embedded in your mind, the less likely you are to forget it. If it's a major one and traumatic, then it'll embed deeply in your mind like a crack and a fracture. It'll be spread across the various parts of your mind and it's recorded there and it's just there - and it doesn't go away. It doesn't go away. It doesn't go away. The second thing to realise is the power of repetition, so God has designed us that if we repeat things what happens is it goes something like this.

If you drive a car along the same spot all the time you'll start to find there are ruts in the road. When we went to Rome we went down some of the roads in Rome or one of the other places, Pompey. In Pompey there's actually ruts where the chariots went. You can actually see the rut, so if you try and drive a chariot there it'll fit into the rut and then it'll just go down the rut. Once it's in the rut it's not easy to get it out. So what happens is with a memory, you have an experience. There's a track of neuron paths created within your brain, and then if you keep having that or you repeat it the same track is formed, formed, formed, formed, formed. It goes deeper and deeper and deeper, until in the end you've got now something embedded into your mind and you don't have to think about it any more. You just drop into the rut and away you go, for example, how many of you have found like for example you're driving to work. You drive to work every day and then you get in the car and start to point it that way, then before you know it you're there and you haven't even thought through how you got there? It's just like it's now become such a habit that you get in the rut and when you point in that direction something subconscious takes over. It's the imprinted memory, the rut and away you go.

I've even had it where I've meant to go somewhere else and I started heading towards the church and ended up going to the church, thinking what did I do that for? Because I was no longer conscious. It was unconscious, subconscious. Getting the idea? And so for example if things have no emotion with them you've got to repeat them to memorise them. Say for example you want to learn the times tables, you have to keep repeating them and you repeat them and you repeat them and you repeat them. Eventually, after repeating them enough it's just locked into your mind. It's like there's a mental rut, a neuron path deep enough to contain that thing and you just immediately have got it. Now this is all stuff, its simple stuff isn't it? But you have to understand how this operates, so we've got that, how we memorise things when we first of all have an experience, it forms a path in the mind and if you repeat the experience then the path goes deeper and deeper and deeper.

Now of course the thing is if there is emotion with that experience then that path becomes quite deep and it becomes quite set into your mind. Then there's the next thing. The third thing is - so first of all we have the impression that's made by an experience we have. Then if we repeat the experience it begins to set into our mind, and then the third thing is association. Now that's the important one now, because what happens is we begin to - things aren't just in isolation. They are connected. One thing is connected with another, so associated means one thing connects with another. Now what happens is that one thing in your mind is connected to another, so one can trigger off the other and you'll see how this works. I'll explain it exactly in a moment. Now what is recorded in your mind in a memory is this: in the memory is recorded the experience you had, but the thing that's mainly recorded is not just the event itself but the emotions you felt as you experienced it.

They are recorded and remember, if it's a strong emotion it's a strong impact in your mind. Also recorded in there is your reaction, so if you had something happen to you and then you felt fear and you leapt and reacted in fear, that is recorded. Getting the idea? And then the fourth thing that's recorded in there is what you believed, or how you perceived this thing that happened to you. Okay, got it? The experience, the feeling that was there, how you reacted, and then what you believed about it, how you interpreted it. So for example, a young child is growing up and the family breaks up, and so for a long period of time he feels conflict between mum and dad. He may not understand what it is all about but in his emotions he's deeply affected, and so he remembers. What does he remember? He remembers conflict. He remembers pain, and he believes this is unsafe, I've got to do something. And maybe he chooses to hide.

Now all of that's built in; then the parents leave and now suddenly, traumatically, the father's gone and so he believes as a result of that trauma, then he believes in his heart a couple of things. One, conflict is really bad. It's unsafe; two, people will leave you and you're on your own, and maybe other kinds of things as well. Now you understand, so that's wired into the heart. Now what do we try and do? Well we try and control it all and bury it all, and we try and push it all under. And what we do is something called like this: move on with my life. The dilemma is when you try to move on with your life you have an imprint, a record in your memory of the event, of the emotion, of the reaction you made and of what you came to believe about that situation.

Now it's still all stuck in there. Now anything that reminds you or is associated in any way with that will trigger up the emotions, so for example you may just be in a situation and then there's a little bit of a conflict takes place and immediately an overwhelming fear is there. Why is the overwhelming fear there? It's only a little conflict - but you understand that you're not reading a little conflict. Your mind is remember and associating, this is dangerous, this is my world is going to fall apart. They're going to leave me, this is what's going to happen to me, and a huge reaction takes place. Many people for example react in anger and they don't even know - their anger just is a whoosh! It's just burst out. Now why did it suddenly burst out? Some of you who are married, you'll have situations that you're trying to cover up or trying to deal with, trying to work with and what'll happen is a little thing will be said and suddenly there's this huge emotional reaction; grief or tears or anger or fear, or a reaction of some kind.

But it's not what you're dealing with just there. It's actually deeper than that. It's some stuff you've never resolved and the moment you experience that feeling, immediately you lock in on the other feelings and the whole lie associated with it is up there, and now you're into a vain imagination. And you're no longer able to resolve your relationships, [not able 00.16.04] to work things out because now there's an illusion is operating. It's partly true, it's not the whole truth. You understand what we're talking about here? Oh, we're all getting very quiet now. Tell someone, I know he's talking to you, you just need to listen up on this one. We'll talk how you get out of it in a moment. So you may see a person and suddenly a wave of fear is triggered. You think what on earth is that? You may have a little experience and suddenly there's a wave of emotion is triggered, and you can't even work out what is this connected to because what's happened is it's tapped into something stored in your memory, stored in your subconscious.

Now so how are we going to get rid of all the junk see, because that junk will feed your life and affect the way you operate, because as a man believes in his heart so he is. So for example most of us at some point come to conclusions about what we're feeling and experiencing. Now let me just throw out to you some beliefs that people hold onto, because the Bible says as a man thinks in his heart, that's how he'll run his life. That's how he is, and what happens is that we form ungodly beliefs. An ungodly belief is a belief or an expectation, or some kind of assumption or judgement and it's not true. It's just not true at all, but it feels true and you really believe it's true. And because you really believe it's true it's going to operate in your life. Will you be aware of it? Probably not, because it was buried a long time ago, yet you'll still operate in it and so that's why we find even though we've become a Christian, we still operate very much along similar ways to what we operated before we were saved.

Unless we let the Lord renew our heart and we work on renewing our mind, we will continue to operate like we always operated. This is why the work of the Holy Spirit is so vital and so important. Let me give you some examples of beliefs that people, an ungodly belief someone may have in their life that will affect how they relate and how they respond when things happen. Now remember, these beliefs were formed when the person had an experience and felt pain and came to a conclusion, even if it was a wrong one. You understand? So children come to wrong conclusions, so for example if the parents are in argument or fighting the child may actually assume I'm to blame, and so they have a belief in their heart I'm to blame. Any time there's a conflict you know what they believe? I'm to blame, and let me give you a few kinds of these things. I remember sitting with someone recently and they were talking to me and I asked them about a conflict that they'd had.

They described it each from their own point of view and one person began to talk and as they described it I said just wait, stop right there. Your assumption is that you are to blame. You actually haven't even heard what the problem is, but immediately you felt the conflict. Immediately what's coming up as soon as you had the feeling, immediately the belief came up and you're down an imagination. You're down a vain imagination and you're no longer connected to the person. You're not even part of solving it any more. You can't solve it any more because you haven't stopped to listen and sort it out. You've just come to this conclusion immediately, I'm to blame. It's a prevailing mindset or it's an ungodly belief. Let me give you a few typical ones that people have. Now you may actually identify one that you have. I know when I looked this person in the face and said wait, wait, wait. I want you to tell me what you feel when I tell you what you believe, and I told them what the person believed. As soon as I told them what they believed, immediately they started - there was weeping. Emotions are connected to the ungodly belief.

See how it works now? You have an experience. If there's a lot of pain with it then the experience is deeply embedded. You come to assumptions or reactions, and the whole deal is locked up inside. If it's repeated it reinforces, reinforces and becomes the way you run your life. It doesn't matter whether you're in church, Christian, you'll still run your life according to how you've been programmed inside over those experiences, and if you don't recognise that and begin to adjust it you will run through this terrible process where you're trying to serve the Lord, but you've got these repeated patterns in your life that do not seem to go away. You feel so condemned because you can't seem to get any better. Now God wants to help us not to get better, He wants to heal us. Getting the idea?

Here's a few typical ungodly beliefs: I don't belong, I'm always on the outside. No one cares what I feel. The best way to avoid hurt is to isolate myself. I'm the problem. There's something wrong with me. I'm bad. If people knew me they'd never accept me. No matter what I do it's not good enough. That's [the one too here, 00.21.06] it must be my fault. If anyone gets close to me they'll hurt me. God loves others more than me. I'll never have any money, I'll always be poor. My value is in what I do. You talk about what I do, immediately I'll react because you're attacking me. That's a weird thing isn't it aye? Here someone tries to give you feedback on your performance or how you're doing, and immediately you get all emotional. You know then that you believe that what you do is who you are, and they're attacking you so now you're going to defend yourself - fight or flight, get sulky and withdraw, or stand up and really have an argument and get angry and react, and not receive the feedback that would shift and change your life.

This is why Christians get very defensive when someone tries to give them feedback that would help disciple them, shape them so they can be productive. Instead of being able to receive it they become angry and offended and take it as an attack on themself, when it isn't at all. But that's how they've always seen life and unless they change how they see life, then they can't actually move on or progress. Very, very important these areas. Okay, here's a couple more: I'm unattractive or I'm ugly. I'm fat. I read about one young woman and when she was going through her teenage years the boyfriend that she had said you're fat. It got into her and she could hear that thing. Now remember, there's emotions involved and there's a judgement she came into agreement with. You know what happened? She got then this whole thing of bulimia. No matter how she looked at herself, I'm fat, I'm fat, I'm fat, I'm fat, I'm fat, there's something wrong with me, and so that belief inside began to drive this whole thing of bulimia. It was actually a lie, rooted in a lie that was believed because there were strong emotions with it. Getting the idea?

I'll give you a few more examples on the way. Okay then: I must guard my feelings. I need to plan everything in case something goes wrong. I'm sorry, that's a vain imagination. Plan, yes, but you don't have to have everything planned and worked out. You end up controlling everything and everyone, imposing your plan on everyone else so you can feel safe. See, vain imaginations will lead to all kinds of behaviour that destroys relationships. Never trust anyone, see? I must never make any mistakes, I'll get in trouble. All of these are kinds of beliefs. There's many, many beliefs people have and one of the most common ones is it's my fault, it must be my fault. So how does the Holy Spirit bring about healing of this? Now let's have a look in John 16. The church over the years has not done too good. We've kept ourselves open to the healing ministry and really worked since we first pioneered here; Joy and I really saw the need in our own lives for healing, emotional and relational healing. And so when we came here the Lord said I want you not to teach what you've taught before; I want you to open your life to learn keys and to understand how the healing of the heart takes place, because people are in need of healing.

So we began to learn a few keys like that. Now what I noticed and observed in some church streams - it's less common now - they would say something like it's all under the blood. That was a convenient way of not actually identifying what the problem was, taking responsibility for it and dealing with it. True legally the blood of Jesus has made provision for healing, but I have to actually appropriate the healing. If I have sinned I have to bring the sin specifically to the cross, confess it and believe to receive forgiveness. If there's something wrong or there's damage or brokenness in my heart I need to bring it out specifically with its emotions, feelings and beliefs to the cross to be cleansed and its power to be broken and the thing to be healed. But you can't just bury it and get on with it. It just - it's a losing way of trying to handle conflicts in life, because nothing's solved. It's buried and anyone who observes your life will see it coming up every time the same emotions are present, you'll immediately be triggered off and you'll behave the same way you always behaved. It's a bit of an issue isn't it?

So how does the Holy Spirit deal with it? Well what we'd like the Holy Spirit to do is to push the button, zap our brain, fry the memory and that's it, we don't remember any more! Thank You Jesus! Well of course you can do that on a computer; you take the file, push the button, delete, the file's gone. Unfortunately though anyone who's an expert with a computer can go back and find where that thing was and restore it back again. Go down there into the junk bin, there it is, sitting there waiting, you push the restore button and it's back again. It never got deleted, never left the computer, it's still in there. So we would like it to be that way, but this is how the Holy Spirit does it, John 16:13. However, when He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth. Notice what He will do - He's called the Spirit of truth. That word truth is an unusual word. It's a word without anything covered or hidden or concealed, no hidden things, so He's the Spirit who doesn't tolerate hidden things.

It says when the Spirit of truth has come, He will do what? He will lead you into, or He will guide you into all truth; He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; He will tell you things to come. He can also tell you things of the past as well, so notice that word guide. That word guide means to accompany you on a journey and show you where and how to get there, so the Holy Spirit will accompany you on the journey into healing. It's His job to do the healing work in your life. Jesus said the Spirit of the Lord upon Me, He's anointed Me to heal the broken-hearted, see? So the Spirit of God is a healing spirit but the way He does His healing is He guides us or walks us into truth. Now here's where the problem comes. If you have lived your life burying your pain and controlling it, you have saved yourself. If you want to be healed instead of trying to control the brokenness and the damage; if you want to be healed you've got to abandon trying to save yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to lead you where you may not want to go so Jesus can save you, because His name is the Saviour.

That word save means to heal, restore, deliver, rescue, make whole again, so His work of saving is more than just sin. It's about deliverance, it's about healing and restoration in the soul, it's about every facet of our life He has come to save us. He is a wonderful saviour and His salvation is full and complete - but to obtain it you must let the Holy Spirit lead you there. So Jesus said I won't leave you an orphan. I will send you the Holy Spirit. He's the Spirit of truth, won't leave anything [uncovered. 00.28.15] He will lead you into all truth, or He'll guide you or He will walk and take you down a path that will bring you to healing. But of course you have to co-operate. You've got to be willing to take the path, and the dilemma is most people don't want to take the path. You know why they don't want to take the path? It feels painful, and if I go there what will I feel? My life will get out of control. I can't afford to go there. I've got to keep control. No, you don't. Control is your way of trying to cope with something Jesus wants to heal and restore so you don't have to control it any more.

So you have the choice whether you control the pain, control what's in your heart, or whether you make a decision to allow the Holy Spirit to lead you to the truth. Now what happens is this. You start to talk about it, immediately feel the pain. As soon as you feel the pain, immediately now an imagination is running your life and you're going to do everything you can - no more pain. But the Holy Spirit will take you into that situation and change what it is. It's amazing how He does it. He's very, very simple the way He does it. This is how He does it: He brings you back into the memory. He brings something to your mind. He'll help you remember things. That's one of His jobs, to bring back to memory. The second thing is He helps you access the emotions of it. When you remember you begin to feel the emotions, you begin to cry or feel angry, or feel hurt or feel alone or whatever. Then He uncovers what the ungodly belief is underneath and here's how He does His healing.

So remember in order to get you healed in this part of your life He takes you back so you remember it, you feel it, you begin to realise what you believed all that time, then He heals it. And how does He heal it? He shows you what you never saw when you were going through it. He enlarges your vision and shows you something you never saw before, and now your understanding spiritually is opened and you can see oh, healing comes, new insight comes. You're different. It's completely different. I better give you some examples just to show you. It'll tell you how it worked. In the family I grew up in there was conflict and my - I would feel conflict. I'm a very sensitive person. I feel it very, very deeply and so every day I would feel that conflict and I would conclude this is bad! I would feel afraid and withdraw, and so I practiced withdrawing and some time later, recently, the Holy Ghost spoke to me, wanted to bring healing. And I said okay, let's go, and immediately I was at home and I was standing there in my bedroom and I was looking down a long corridor. I could see the house; I could remember the place. I remembered it vividly. If you'd asked me to remember it I wouldn't remember. The Holy Spirit took me there, I could remember it vividly, every detail of it.

I saw the Lord standing there and He had His hand out to me and He's saying I want you to come to that place of conflict. I actually physically recoiled and felt this horrendous fear, so now I was in the emotion. I was remembering it, I was feeling it and I was reacting to it just like always. He said I want you to follow Me, and the moment I said yes, I was in the kitchen in the situation and there was all the conflict. I could still feel it, but I felt something different. I felt two hands resting on my shoulders and I realised Jesus was right behind me. His hands were on me and His peace was just flooding me, and I was sitting there watching it all and it wasn't affecting me, and He said I am with you. And with that truth that Jesus was with me, with the feeling and the experience of Him there, the fear all left! What He did was He overwrote the old thing with something - the truth. I can still remember it. I can remember it vividly. I can remember it in detail, but the old memory is overridden with the truth; the latest updated memory is this: there's two hands on my shoulders and its okay. [Laughs] I'm alright thank you. [Applause]

See, see how He does it? I can share with you all kinds of people that we've prayed for and many of you here have already got testimonies of how God has helped in this area to bring healing, something the Lord's been doing, haven't made a big deal of it in the last year though. But I've seen a lot of people healed and set free, just encountering the Holy Spirit, encountering the Lord. A little while ago my son-in-law spoke how his father had been killed in front of his eyes when he was nine and he went back there where he'd never wanted to even talk about it, let alone go there. And when he went there Jesus appeared to him in that scene and overwrote the scene. Did he remember it? Did he feel things? Yes, yes, yes - but it was overwritten by something else. He saw the Lord and the Lord said it's not your fault, and the Lord touched him and ministered to him, and his last memory is one of freedom from that thing. Not bad aye?

I was looking at that scripture that I've just read out to you, the Holy Spirit - it says He was the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all truth, and I began to look up the meaning of that word guide and it just means something like this. It means He will walk with you and accompany you, and take you where you need to go. He'll just be with you as well as showing you what to do, and immediately I started to weep. I thought oh, I've learnt now when you start weep God's trying to start you on something. So I just paused for a little while and then when I realised what God was trying to touch I was overwhelmed. Suddenly I had about six or seven different flashbacks from my life, just one after the other, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And every one of them was a similar kind of thing. I was having to do life alone, and the belief in my heart came up, I'm alone. I'm always on my own having to figure stuff out and do things, and the grief that came with it! Immense grief of trying to walk through life alone and face challenges, relationship struggles, difficulties alone, no one to connect to my heart.

And the Lord said I'm always with you. I'll never leave you. I'll never turn away - and I felt His presence in each one of those things. I just began to weep. You see the experience was overridden by a fresh experience. I was updated in truth, and so the belief system changed, the feelings changed and then the behaviour changes, so that's how God does it. But you've got to be willing to let Him go there, and the trouble is often we don't want to go there. But if you don't go there you remain broken and that's not God's plan for you. His plan is for you to be whole and restored, and not only that. His plan is - notice this, in Psalm 84:5 it says this: Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, who passes through the valley of weeping and turns it into a wow! I can minister and bless others! God - your breakthrough, your healing, your point of restoration, that is a wow for someone else! It'll give them hope and it'll give them help.

Sometimes in that place when God is doing that thing we need to be delivered and need to renounce things, repent of things, forgive things and so on; He'll tell us what to do. Anyway I just want to move on, we've got to finish this. In James 1:21 He says this - so there it is. You've got to let the Holy Spirit come in, but also we need to work on renewing the mind and I want to give you just the keys for how your mind is renewed. In James 1:21 it says receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your soul. The word of God - this Bible here has got power to heal and restore your soul. There's power in that word to heal you. How can I get the word from here into me? He says well receive with meekness the engrafted word. That word engrafted is the same as having an implant. I had an implant, titanium implant. What they did was drill a hole in, they stuck an implant, screwed an implant in and then they left it. And about six months later the bone had grown around the titanium, and now the titanium is now in the jaw. Then you can build something on it.

So the engrafted word, the Holy Ghost puts the word inside our soul so that it begins to be engrafted into the soul. Then it becomes - it brings stability to us, but how do you do it? This is the beautiful part of it. This is the part I really love. How is it I can get the word of God and get it into my soul, engrafted in so it stays there and changes me? It's very simple. Once you've identified what the Holy Ghost has said to you or done to you, or shifted in you or spoken to you about, get two or three scriptures that confirm that or speak of that situation. Get two or three scriptures and you're going to graft them into your mind. Now how do you graft them into your mind? You graft it in two ways; you graft it in using your imagination. Would you believe it? The very thing that was your downfall now is something you use constructively to imprint the word of God in you. The second thing you use is your tongue, confessing. How do we do it? Well here's the first thing. You take the scripture and this is what you do; you take time - now notice this. You're going to see it all connects together.

You take time to picture the truth of scripture. You visualise it, picture it in your imagination. You see the scripture, so for example the Lord is with me, I will never leave you nor forsake you. What does it look like if Jesus is never going to leave me? I need to let my imagination create that truth in a picture form. See I'm not making something up; I'm taking the word and using my imagination to see it. And I just need to see that and see that and see that and look at it, and embrace it and hold it. The second thing I need to do is not just imagine how it looks; imagine how it feels. What does it feel like? What would it feel like to know that God is with me all the time? Picture Him and imagine what it feels - because remember what we saw, an experience coupled with a feeling will be embedded more deeply into your mind. So if you begin to imagine the truth of the word of God and imagine how it feels, and dwell there and then embrace it, see? Imagine what it is to see God loving you. How does it feel to be loved absolutely unconditionally?

You begin to imagine that. Your heart begins to open up and embrace the truth, and then you repeat it. Picture it, imagine how it feels, repeat it, and you just repeat it every day, every day, every day you repeat that scripture truth and it begins to implant into your mind. The second thing you do is you confess it. You speak it out of your mouth. The Bible says the words we speak are spirit and life, so I need to confess what God says about me. Confess it and hold it around my life; agree with it, speak it out. Confess it over my life. The Bible says in Hebrews 10 and it tells us in I think verse [23, 00.39.46] it says hold fast the confession of my belief and expectation. How long do you have to do that for? Well I'll give you an idea, really, really simple. There's a scripture in the Bible where it says that Satan is the lord of the flies, Beelzebub, lord of the flies. How many know that one? Okay, a fly's lifecycle is 40 days so repeat the cycle, repeat the meditation, repeat the confession of the scripture for at least 40 days until you break the lie.

The second thing about flies is they tend to lay eggs every six hours, so you should be meditating and repeating scripture over your life at least once every six hours. You really want to shift something in your life, set aside 40 days and two or three times a day you just go into that place of memorising the scripture, meditating in the scripture, imagining what it looks like, imagining what it feels like, speaking and confessing it over your life. You will shift your mind and heart and reprogram your mind so you are changed on the inside. Now who's going to do that? Well you've got to do that. We can depend on experiences, experiences are wonderful, but we need the word to fortify them so they grip and hold and last. What an amazing God we serve. He's designed us so that we can have a fantastic imagination; we can receive revelation from Him, we can draw up ideas from inside, we can create things that have never been seen. But that same imagination God gave us can be twisted and perverted and taken another way, unless we're willing to go there and let the Holy Spirit cleanse the imagination and we'll rise up inside and say Lord, I'll do my part too.

Father, we just thank You for this time, when You are teaching us how we can be totally changed. We thank You Lord that we are totally transformed when we are willing to renew our mind. I pray for every person here and those who are listening to this CD and hear this message and what you're listening on the internet, Father I pray that Your spirit would begin to remind them of situations, reactions, behaviours, ways of doing things that You're willing to help them find healing and deliverance and release from. I pray Lord You begin to work to bring things to memory, things that people have buried down because they were too painful. Give them grace to actually face them, and the belief systems and the wounds and whatever's under there and resolve it, and begin to renew the mind so we can begin to enlarge as people, enlarge as a people, enlarge and break out of limitations.

[File ends 00.42.43]

Identity

Your Identity in Christ (1 of 4)

From Victim to Victor (2 of 4)

Performance (3 of 4)

Establishing your Identity in Christ (4 of 4)

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- Your Identity in Christ (1 of 4).mp3

- From Victim to Victor (2 of 4).mp3

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Your Identity in Christ (1 of 4)

Sun 4th May 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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Your Identity in Christ (1 of 4) Mike Connell 04.05.2008 am

Great, I wonder if you could open your Bible up in Judges 6. We've been doing a series for a little while on Unashamed and I want to talk now and begin to just pick up from there and just move forward. I want to do something else now and we looked and we saw how shame was an identity thief. When you're covered in shame you can't be who you're supposed to be. You can't actually be your true self. You put on a self that looks good and gets accepted, but you're not really true to yourself and so we found that when people have got a shame on their life they tend to put on a mask, try to be something they're not, and Jesus hates that kind of thing. He wants you to be yourself. There's only one of you; why should you be someone else? So we saw also shame was an intimacy thief. I want us to go and look in this scripture here and we want to look at our identity in Christ, who I am, because you get a bit confused after a while.

You think I wonder who I really am see? Why don't you just introduce yourself to the person next door to you? Go and introduce yourself to them and tell them who you are in case they didn't know. Tell them who you are. They may not know. [Background talk 00.01.14 to 00.01.25] Okay then, I wonder how many people introduced themself; you gave that person your name. How many gave them their name? Oh quite a few gave the name, right. How many actually said something about who you are? That's good, that's good. That's good, you're onto it. You're really onto it, who you really are. Who are you really? Well here's a man here and we're going to look at how God views us and God speaks to us. I want to show you something interesting about how God sees us, because most of us are shaped and we think of ourselves in all kinds of weird ways.

Notice this here, verse 11; the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour! [Unclear 00.02.22] The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour! And Gideon, like he hadn't even heard it, says O my lord, if the Lord is with us how come all this has happened to us? Where are all the miracles our fathers told us about? Didn't the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? Now the Lord's forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. Then the Lord didn't even listen to anything he said, didn't even bother to answer the question, ignored what he said completely. He says go in this might of yours. You will save Israel from the Midianites. Have not I sent you?

So he argues with Him again. Well Lord, how can I save Israel? How can I do this? My tribe is the weakest in Manasseh. I'm the youngest or the least in my father's family. And the Lord said to him surely I am with you and you will defeat the Midianites as one man. Now you notice that God listens to none of his objections? He doesn't even - it's like God carries on like He didn't hear anything he said - but we know that God did hear what he said. But I want to share with you some things on our identity in Christ. You see God comes to this man in the midst of a national crisis and declares to him his identity. The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour! Mighty man of valour! And you know what? Immediately he hears God speak his identity, immediately what he believes in his heart surfaces; oh, well I'm the least in my family, ah and our tribe, well we're the smallest tribe and ah, we're quite poor. You notice how he sees himself comes up immediately?

When the truth comes and God speaks to you directly and puts truth into you, what you really believe in your heart will surface - quite interesting. So we see the Bible says as a man thinks in his heart, Proverbs 23:7, as a man or a person thinks in their heart, that's how they'll be, so the way you see yourself will determine how you'll live your life. What you believe about yourself will affect how you conduct your life and the things that go on around you in your life. If you for example believe in your heart I am unwanted, I am rejected or I am unlovable, what will happen is you will put out a spiritual energy and force around you; people will pick it up and two things will happen. One is you'll misinterpret everything. People who believe they're rejected see it everywhere and pull it into their life. The second thing that'll happen is you'll attract into your life the very thing you believe in your heart.

You'll have many experiences of being rejected and you can't understand why it always seems to be the same no matter where you are. It's because of what you believe in your heart, so the way we see ourself will affect how we run our life. Think about that. The way you see yourself will affect how you run your life. Your heart beliefs and expectations will determine your life, so one of the things that God does to us, first He brings us into relationship, then He wants us to become established in the relationship with Him and in understanding who we are as He sees us. The dilemma is when you become a Christian is we carry a lot of mental and emotional baggage with us, and we don't catch up inside with what God has done inside us. We're still thinking the way we used to think. We're still expecting the way we used to expect, but God says no, a total change has taken place. Notice what God does. God speaks directly into him.

There's an interesting example that I came across. If you want to train an elephant what you do is you get the elephant when it's very young and you tie a chain around it's leg and you tie it to a tree. The young elephant will buck and pull and tug and eventually it learns that when that chain's around your leg you can't move. Later on they have the same chain and they just put it to a stake in the ground and the elephant will not move away, because he's been programmed I can't do that. I'm not strong enough to do that; yet actually he's got all the strength. He could pull the thing out and take off, but as soon as he feels the tug he remembers. He remembers what? I'm powerless to overcome that, and so he doesn't even try. People are very much the same. We have past experiences, they become part of our life and who we are, and then we become a Christian and we don't change in our understanding of who we now are in Christ.

If you don't know who you are you won't carry yourself the way God wants you to carry yourself. You'll still live like you used to live, so have a think about this. How do people define their identity? That's why I gave you the little thing, go out there and introduce yourself. So how many introduced yourself as a child of God? How many introduced yourself as a mighty warrior? As more than a conqueror? As a king? See, we don't think to. It's not in our thinking to introduce or to even see ourself that way, so how do we find ourself? Well let me just give you a definition. Identity are the personal characteristics that define you. It's the things, the characteristics by which people know you. It's how you're known. It's what makes you like who you are. That's your identity. Your identity are the characteristics by which you're know.

Now I'll give you a few ways that people know us. Number one, the most obvious way is your face, your face. As soon as you see your face, ah, there we are, Alex. I know that face - so we're known by our face see? Unfortunately you can't do too much about your face. You can make it a little bit prettier, but you can't do a lot about that part of you see? That's the way you've been made, the way God designed you, get used to it. Get to live with it. Enjoy the face you've got. Let it smile because it's the only face you've got. Show it off to the best you can - so our face. The second way we're identified is our name, our name, what we're called. So I look over there, well that's Alex, that's her name. So if I call out into the room Alex, there's one person in the room will identify with that and she'll stand up because she knows her name, so a name is another way we identify ourself.

Another way we identify ourself is who we're linked to, who we're connected to, so for example people are connected into a family so people are identified not only by what they look like and their first name, but also by their surname they're linked into some family. If you're from a tribal culture then you're linked into a tribe, or we may be linked into a nation. So you go overseas and people say who are you? You say I'm a kiwi, so your identity is attached to your nation, where you've come from, your source, your origin. So we use a whole number of ways to define our identity. Another way that we define our identity is by what kind of racial group we're part of; well I'm an Indian. I'm an African. I'm a this, I'm a that. Another way that people identify themselves is by what church they're part of, what denomination they're in; oh, that's Catholic - so put a label on them, now box them so I don't have to actually find out who they really are.

Many times people put labels on others so they don't actually have to connect personally with them and find out who they really are. Sometimes we get labelled and then can't live down our label. I'll give you some other examples. Another way that we get identified with is a common one among men; what do you do? Oh, he's a plumber, he's a this, he's a that, and so our identity is tied to our work. So men go through a traumatic experience when they lose their job because their identity is gone. If it's found in the job, when you lose the job then you lose your identity. For some people their identity is found in their social standing, their positioning in society; well what are you? I'm a leader. What are you? Well I'm a city councillor. What are you? I'm a this, I'm a that, and we identify who we are by position or status we have. The trouble with doing that is the moment you lose the position who are you?

So people like that come into the church and they want to have a position in the church; I want to be a leader. I want to be a this, I want to be a that, but then if you take them out of that role because it's time for change or they don't fit the role, they get upset because their identity was in the role. For some women their identity is in their children, ah, so you say anything about the child mum just has a hissy fit because she doesn't see you talking about the child. She sees you attacking her personally because her identity is in the child. She hasn't got a life of her own; she's living it through the children, so you know what happens? She lives her life through the children, the marriage diminishes, comes time the children leave home, marriage is nothing there. It's empty, been empty for years because the identity was tied up in the children. Children go, children do something the mum doesn't want, her life falls apart.

Our identity is not to be tied up with our children. We need to know who we are. We need to be secure in who we are. Sometimes our identity is tied to past experiences, especially if they're bad. So you'd hear someone say I'm a failure. How can you be a failure? People fail, but you can't be a failure. You're a human being - but you see people identify the painful experience and then they take that painful experience and they say I am a failure. No, you failed. Have you learnt from your failure so you succeed in the future? But you are not a failure. Your identity is not 'failure'. You understand? So these are the kinds of pressures we have around us and without us even really thinking about it, they shape the way we see ourself. For some their identity's totally tied up around their gender and they've been rejected as a woman, then they have this huge woman issue - or as a male or whatever.

Often these things are tied up around things that God does not want them to be tied to. The Bible says in Christ there's neither male nor female, so when God looks at you He doesn't look at man or woman; He sees a person, a human being. He sees them of equal value, totally equal value. The Bible says in Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, so God doesn't look and see well that's an Aussie, that's a kiwi; He just sees there's a person. He doesn't see things the way we see them and our problem is we see them a certain way and it affects how we live our life. So if you've lived your life with tremendous hurts or experiences, painful experiences, then it shapes who you see yourself as being. So for example how many people were called names, nicknamed when you were at school or when you were younger? How many of those nicknames were pretty derogatory? They weren't exactly honouring and wonderful?

I can remember them. There's pain in it, but I'm not that! But you see people put a label on you so they can define your identity. Now God does not want your identity to be defined by the world, your circumstances, your family, your tribe or nation, the culture you come from. He wants to define who you are, because He's made you for a unique purpose for example - and I'll touch this, then we'll get into this and have a look at this. I'll do something on this to touch out these characteristics a little more, but I want to just touch on this because some people, their identity is that of a victim. It's very common in New Zealand. A victim is a person who at some time was hurt or abused or badly treated, and they were powerless or unable to stop this thing happening to them. That's what makes them a victim. A victim is a person who had a painful or bad experience that they could not stop happening to them.

So they were the victim of someone's fault, someone's actions or whatever, but there's a huge difference between having been victimised, having an experience where you are treated that way, to being that. And so what happens is people adopt a victim mentality; the past experience, what happened to me now becomes who I am see? You are not a victim. You are a person. You have potential and you can make decisions. Now one of the terrible things about a victim mentality is it goes like this. The way of thinking is bad things happen to me, and so you know, this is my life. What happens is someone else is to blame for what happened to me; someone else has got to get me out of. So a person with a victim mentality never assumes responsibility for their life. They're always blaming someone else for why it's like it is and someone else has to come through to be the solution for them. That's a victim mentality; the identity is one of being a victim, a person unable to help themselves.

Now you understand, I just want to be sensitive here, but this thing of a victim mentality where a person's identity is taken up where I have been oppressed, therefore I am a victim. No, you may have been oppressed. You may have suffered injustice. You may have had pain - but you are not defined by that. Let God define you, who you really are. So I find in dealing sometimes with Maori people that there is a tendency to put the responsibility for why they are as they are somewhere else. We put it on a historic event. The Irish, where I come from, are very bitter about the English, see? Very bitter about the English; fought the English for years, considered themselves victims of the English, blamed the English. But you know Ireland began to change when the Irish decided to stand up and start to forge ahead and be who they're called to be.

Every culture can never - you can never define yourself by the culture or by the past painful experiences. If you do that you become a victim; well what can I do? I can't - well it's not my fault is it? Now a person who thinks that way, their identity is wrapped up in being a victim; well it's not my fault. I couldn't help it. It was someone else did it and someone else has got to get me out of this. You'll find that this mentality was the mentality that characterised Israel after hundreds of years in Egypt, so when they came out of the wilderness God saved them. They got filled with the Holy Ghost, water baptised, but they couldn't get into their destiny because they never came to accept who God called them to be. He said I have redeemed you. I got you out of that past. I have brought you to Myself into relationship and I have made you a kingdom of priests. I've made you people, and I have promises for you.

But they never ever embraced their new identity. They just remained victims and complained, so they could never enter what God had for them. Now you see here this man here, he's got a similar kind of problem. Now we've got to realise we should not let the past define who we are. If you failed in the past, had a miserable academic record at school, so what? Heaps of people did and some of the most successful people in the world did. You are not a failure because you failed at school. There could be a whole heap of reasons why you failed at school, some of them your own and some not your own. Don't worry about it. That does not define you as a failure for life, unless you accept that as your identity and many do. Many do and so they walk through the rest of their life defined by bad experiences. God wants you to stand up and become who He called you to be. There is no one quite like you.

Now listen, this is one of the things I found when looking at how God deals with us. God defines us - get this - God defines us, who we are, according to the purpose He designed us for. I'll say that one again. God defines your identity around what He called you to be, His purpose for your life. You really want to know who you are, find out what God says about you. So here's a nation that's in defeat and God comes to a man and this man's a businessman. He's trying desperately because the nation's overwhelmed by these people. They keep stealing the harvest and impoverished the whole nation, but he doesn't lie down like a victim. He's still working there, he's still producing something. He's doing it in a way that no one can see him and God comes to him and says you mighty man of valour! Now you imagine, understand he looks at the circumstances. What, man of valour? I'm here full of fear and I'm hiding behind this blimmin' barrel so no one will see me.

But God doesn't look at the circumstances. God saw what He had in mind for this man and God calls him the way He sees he will be. So when God looks at us He looks at us completely differently to the way we look at ourselves or others look at us. When others look at you they will look at you according to your past and your present. When God looks at you He sees your purpose and your potential, and in these dealings with people often He will either shut them up or ignore them when they try to protest. So listen what [He is in 00.21.10] Gideon. Gideon immediately comes up; oh, how come no miracles, you know? We heard all these great things in the Bible and you know, there's supposed to be miracles and stuff and I haven't seen any miracles. All I see is problems and a mess. You know what? God just ignores the question. There's some questions God's going to ignore. You're wasting your time asking, He's not going to answer it - just part of the mysteries.

Relationships have got a bit of mystery in them. He doesn't answer everything for us - wish He did but He doesn't. How come? We prayed and they didn't get healed, they died? Never hear a word. It's like He just says listen, I want you to operate by faith, so God ignores him, just keeps talking to him, says you know, you mighty man of valour, I'm going to send you and you'll save the nation. Now it begins - notice this - he's a man of valour. His name Gideon means mighty man of valour. His name meant mighty man of valour, notice so sometimes when God encounters a person He'll actually change their name because He wants them to think differently about who they are, give them a total name change. Did you know you got a name change when you got born again, see? You see, you're called one of Christ's ones, a Christian.

You see the way we use the word Christian now, we describe all kinds of people as being Christians when they're not at all. The Bible defines a Christian as being a whole-hearted follower of Jesus Christ, one who's given their life to serve Him, to walk with Him, see? So let me give you a few examples of people that God spoke to and the way He spoke to them is amazing. Now remember when God speaks to people He speaks according to what He sees in them, so you need God to speak to you how He sees you. What are you? Who are you now you've become a Christian? Who are you now? Well you'll probably define yourself according to what you used to be like, and God says there's a whole new set of things. I'll share with you some of the things God says about you. Here look, another example is found in Genesis 32:28, and Jacob is in a spot of bother.

His father-in-law's been after him, now his brother's after him and he thinks he's going to die. He looks like he's going to lose everything and so in a spot of desperation he presses in to the presence of God. Now I want you to have a look what God says to him. He has this encounter, an angelic encounter begins to wrestle with God and then God asks him a question - great when God asks questions. Here it is [laughs]. In Verse 26 it says Jacob wrestled and the angel said Let Me go for the day breaks, and he said I will not let You go until You bless me! And He said to him what's your name? And so he says my name is Jacob. Now what he's stating is this; I'm the crooked one. I'm the one who twists and lies and cheats and manipulates. I've got ambition and I'm determined to get somewhere, and I'll step over anyone to get there. You remember when Jacob was born his brother came out first and Jacob grabbed his heel. He was trying to pull him back in. He wanted to be the first one out and get the blessing of the first born.

He's an ambitious man and God says who are you? I'm Jacob, and He says you won't be called Jacob any more. You'll be called Israel, a prince. So from today wherever you go don't think of yourself when people ask who you are, don't say I'm the crooked one, the twisted one, the one who does this, the one who cheats, deceives, ambitious, walks over people to get where he wants to get; I'm a prince of God! A prince of God! Kings will come out of me. He had to change the way he talked about himself, the way he spoke about himself, the way he acknowledged himself. He required everyone around to acknowledge him differently, so he went and introduced himself, he's now a different person, a prince with God. Here's another one. In Jeremiah 1:5-10, God speaks to Jeremiah. God speaks to him, he says before you were born, before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and I ordained you a prophet to the nations.

Notice He's got an identity for him: you are a prophet. So God describes us in terms of His purpose for our life. You are a mighty man of God, you are a mighty woman of God. You are a child of the living God, you are a prophet, you are a giver, you are this, that. God's got things to define us by and of course immediately Jeremiah comes up with the argument. He says I'm too young, and God says zip the lip boy. Don't you tell Me you're too young. Don't tell Me who I'm going to choose. I had this figured out long before I saw you. You need to come up to the plan. You see when God is working with us He does not define us according to how other people talk about us. He sees gold in you. He sees something in you no one else sees, and you need to see what God is saying about you because it's how - what - when God talks to you about who you are He's defining your purpose in life.

He defines what you're called to do and to be - most amazing thing how God works with people, and God speaks in a certain kind of way a bit different to what we do. I'll give you another one. In Matthew 1:21-23, you shall call His name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. That's why naming your children is quite important. Some people give kids the weirdest of names, go and choose some character off the television, some dopey person instead of actually finding out well what does God want to name my child. God, You knew this child before they were born; what do You want to name them? I found a bit of a trouble as a teacher because you have all these naughty kids in your class and every time you think of a name you think of one of those naughty kids. I don't want to be like - I'm not going name my child that one! [Laughter]

But we prayed and asked the Lord to give us a name for each of our children. They've all got godly names because we're a godly line with a godly destiny. That make sense to you? Jesus, they'll call His name Immanuel, God is with us. Did you notice that the names God gives are identified with the purpose that God has for them? So when you get to come to Christ you have a new name which identifies you as a different person completely. Isn't it interesting aye how God works? Have a look in another in John 1:42. Jesus sees Simon. Simon means a reed, one who's blown this way and that way. He says Simon, you won't be called Simon any more, pushover. You'll be called Cephas, the rock, because I'm going to build something on you - so notice He called him Peter. If I use the word Peter you all know who it is. That's the name Jesus gave him because Jesus said you may look a pushover, you may look impulsive, you may make a lot of mess ups with your life, but I'm telling you you're the rock. I'm going to build something on you.

Do you understand, this is how God works? Have a look at it in Romans 4:17 or 21, somewhere around about then. Romans 4, you'll see another thing that God works. It's really important to get a hold of this because this is how faith operates. Romans 4, here we go, nearly there. How many have got it? How many found Romans 4? Here it is, verse 17 and God is talking about Abraham. Abraham's name was Abram before. Now it's changed to Abraham. I have made you a father of many nations, in the presence of Him who he believed - God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, then became the father of many nations according to what was spoken, so shall your descendants be. And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead. In other words sexually it was all over - and since he was about 100 years old - whoa! - and the deadness of Sarah's womb. She wasn't interested either.

But he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being convinced that what God said He could perform. Now Abram had no children, but Abram had a promise from God, so God renamed him and He said everywhere you go I want you to call yourself Abraham, Abraham, the father of nations. So when people ask who you are I am Abraham, the father of nations. [Unclear 00.30.07] no kids. I am Abraham, the father of nations! Day after day I am Abraham, the father of nations. God said at night time look up at the stars; father of nations. I'm going to give you kids, as many as those stars, and in the day time when you're walking through the desert look at the sand. I want you to reprogram your inner man that you are going to be the father of nations. Now here he is, 100 year old man. I haven't seen many 100 year old men, but you know when you do see them there ain't much life in them. They don't even think about sex any more. It's not in their mind any more.

And Sarah, she was pretty old too. Her womb was dead, long dead. Now you understand now naturally speaking what you saw was deadness, but God calls things that be not as though they are. God required him to get vision in his heart and confession in his mouth, and agreement with what God said about him and so every day, day after day for all this time, all this time, all this time, father of nations, father of nations, father of nations. Then he suddenly brings forth Isaac and he's fathered nations, multitudes of people. Now you've got to understand this. When God says something to you He says it because in the realm of the spirit it already exists. It just hasn't manifested yet. We look at our circumstances and we're locked in our circumstances, so we don't see the thing that God says is there; father of nations, father of nations, father of nations; prosperous in business, creative ministries, touching nations, apostle, an evangelist.

He doesn't - see, He calls the things that He sees because He's looking at what you're called to be. As far as God's concerned it's already there. The thing is for you by faith to catch up with what God says and make it become reality. The dilemma we have is we just don't see it so we don't believe it. God has things to say about your life. He has things to say about who you are. Will you look at what you have and what you seem to be, or will you look at what God says and agree with Him? Who are you going to agree with? [Oh yeah, 00.32.34] you're a failure. You're a reject. Oh okay. You going to agree with that? You'll live that out all your life, that identity, but it isn't who you are. You're someone else. You've let the world define you; you haven't let God define you. Let God define who you are, and if we let God define who we are we change. Now have a look in John 13.

I'll just finish here and give you a few things that God says about you, John 13. Now notice here, now before the Feast of the Passover Jesus knew His hour had come that he should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world. He loved them. Jesus loved them all. Supper was ended, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him. Now look at this; Jesus, knowing the Father had given all things into His hands, He had come from God and was going to God. Then He girded Himself and He served them all. Now get this. Jesus was totally secure in who He was. When you are secure He knew where He come from, He knew where He was going, He knows what He has. You know when you're secure you don't worry about other people and what they're up to. He could go then, here He is, the Lord of all. He can go and take off some of that outer garments and just wash people's feet, the lowest job.

I've found with many Christians they've got a real trouble doing the lowest job. You know what their trouble is? Insecurity, pride. You see when you're secure in who you are your identity is not defined by the task you're doing; oh, that's beneath me. There's nothing beneath you. You're a servant of the Lord. If you're the servant of the Lord there's nothing beneath you. Everything's above you - so Jesus was able to do the menial job of serving and washing and He set an example for us. You can't serve unless you're secure in who you are, otherwise you'll compare. One of the biggest problems teenagers have is they compare themselves with one another. Now the Bible says when you compare yourself with another person you're an idiot. You just make stupid decisions all the time because you're not like them. You're different. You're called to be something else. It's just the evidence of insecurity.

Don't look to the crowd to define you. Don't look to the crowd to set your course. Don't look to other people to define you. You must be defined by what God says about you, and when God speaks about you He speaks about your purpose, who you're called to be and how you're called to live and run your life. So the Bible's full of descriptions about who you are now you've become a child of God, but the trouble is we still live out of the old. We need to renew our thinking and catch up with what God says about me. I want to share with you a few things God says about you. Now if you really believe these in your heart then why don't you live like it's true? You see if you're a reject well you probably carry yourself and walk down the - you know? But if your the CHILD of a KING you carry yourself a bit differently! You walk differently! If you're an ambassador you walk differently. You're representing someone. You're significant in life!

You're not taking your reference point of value of what people say, because you know who you are, see? This is where so many people struggle. They don't even live like Christians. They live defeated. They live with heaviness and oppression and think that's normal and that's me. It's not so. You're an over comer. Not only that, you're more than an over comer. Let me give you a few things the Bible says about you. We'll just pop them up here. Number one, in 1 John 3:1, see what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would call His children. We are children of God! When you got born again you became a child of God. Yes, I'm someone else's child, but I'm also the child of God who made everything. I'm the child of God and I have access to my Father all the time. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, I'm a totally new creation. Everything old is passed away. I've got a new start.

I've got a clean start. Everything's begun and is new. I don't feel new. Listen, God said it; you now have to align your life to believe it and it begins to manifest in your life. Don't have to live the old way, power of sin is broken. I'm the dwelling place of God. Wherever I go the spirit of God is with me. Wherever I go I'm a walking revival! The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:16 I'm the temple of God. Do you believe you're the temple of God? The spirit of God inside you wherever you go; you can bring creativity. You can bring life. You can bring blessing. You can bring God's presence and goodness to people. Is that who you are? See, if you don't know who you are you'll just go back on Monday to being what the world says you are, instead of carrying yourself the way God wants us to carry ourselves. See, there's so many scriptures that describe greatly what we are. You can just take them and begin to use them to meditate on.

I'm an heir of God. Romans 8:17 - I like being an heir. I can remember going one day and there was a reading of the Will and I found out what I was entitled to. It was good. It was even better when I got it. [Laughter] It's true, remember that, it was great, got something. It's always good. [Laughter] Aye? It's good. Now when Jesus died on the cross He caused us to become heirs through faith in Him. We're heirs of God, so God has got things for us to have. If you're an heir of God you're entitled to get a hold of something. You're entitled to because that's who you are. If I'm a child of God I'm entitled to something. If I'm the temple of the Holy Ghost I'm entitled to certain things. If I'm an heir of God I can receive certain things. I've got to rise up and do it. I'm a saint. The Bible says you're a saint. You say well he's not a saint. I saw what he was doing last Monday, no saint there. Now listen, the Bible's very clear.

You see you've got the wrong concept of a saint. You think of some holy person with a halo around them and their picture up on the wall. That's a religious concept of a saint. You are a saint. You are sanctified, set apart by God for His purpose. He calls that thing a saint. A saint isn't a person who's perfect. A saint is a person set apart for the purpose of God, so He calls the church saints see, but the moment I say it you keep thinking of an old religious term rather than what God says about that person. That person next to you who believes in Jesus Christ is a saint of God. See them that way, it'll change how you relate to them. How many know that you're called to be a priest? You're a priest of God. Priest means I can come into the presence of God, worship Him and access Him and receive Him. I am a priest of God called to make offerings to God, called to praise, called to worship, called to intercede.

How many of you know that you're a king? You're a king. You're a king. A king goes out to conquer, so when you go through those doors God's got something for you to have dominion over. You're an ambassador. You are a representative of heaven. You are called to represent God. This is who you are! You say well I don't feel like I'm that. No, your feelings have to catch up with what God says, by changing the way you think about yourself, the way you see yourself, the way you look at yourself. If you keep looking at all your faults and problems all you'll see is a mess, but when you look at what God says you see someone of great beauty. You know you're God's workmanship. He's very proud of you. He's very proud of you. He loves you and He's very proud of you.

Ephesians 2:10, we're His workmanship, created in Christ for wonderful things. That's who you are. You're not what people said you were. You're better than that. You're much better than that, see? You're a wonderful saint of God. You're a representative of God. You're someone called to carry His love, life and presence and make a difference in the community. That's who you are. Did you realise you're an ambassador, someone sent to make a difference? But you've got to think that way. How do I get to think that way? It's a bit of a process. I think it helps if you realise that you had been thinking wrong, and you begin to do these things. I need to take a scripture and begin to memorise it - it helps just to memorise the scripture, but then make it personal. Make it very personal. Begin to meditate on it, scriptures that say who I am in Christ. This is who I am. I'm a child of God and I can come to my Father.

This is who I am. I am greatly loved of God. I'm a person who is loved, absolutely wonderfully loved. Of course your heart doesn't always believe that, so you have to change what's in your heart. You meditate on it, you begin to picture, imagine the truth of God, embrace it and believe it with all the capacity you have, and the truth conceives. Because what God says already exists in the Spirit, it's just got to conceive and give birth in my heart. God says I am blessed. I'm blessed with every blessing. [Unclear 00.42.18] David said the Lord is my shepherd, or putting it today we'd say the Lord is my Friend and I never lack anything. I've always got what I need, and you see to feel that, to live that out we have to change the way we see ourself. Sometimes we've got to resolve some issues and forgive people and break the power of words spoken over us, but you are better than you think. You're a wonderful person, a wonderful person, make no mistake about it.

You're a wonderful, unique person, loved by God, embraced and celebrated by your Heavenly Father. You're someone entitled to receive from God because of what Jesus did. You are called and privileged to represent Him. That's who you are. Now you decide whether you'll believe that and live that out, or whether you'll believe what you've always believed and you'll just live a life different to that. We choose what we believe. What kind of life are you going to live? Are you going to live out being the person God called you to be? You mighty man of valour, I have challenges for you to face and I will be with you. I'm going to send you to make a difference in the community where I've placed you. I'm going to send you to take on some demons, because didn't you know you are more than a conqueror through Christ who loves you and gave Himself for you?

You're not just an ordinary winner; you're greater than a winner. You're a super winner. You're definitely not a loser. The devil's the loser. That's who you are - what a privilege, who I am in Christ. This is why I love the prophetic gift. Many times the prophetic gift will speak out and bring revelation of who a person is and what God wants to say about them. That's who you are, a great man, a great woman of God. That's who you are. There's greatness in you, unimaginable greatness. He is able to do more than you ask or imagine. He's willing to do it. He can do it, but you've got to imagine more and ask for more. Why don't you make a decision, I'm not going to live out of the names people call me and the things I've taken on board. I'm going to begin to discover what God says I am and I'm going to live out of that.

I'm going to begin to renew my mind and my pictures every day. Every day I'll begin to meditate, begin to see this is who I am. I'm a winner today. I've got Almighty God with me. I can't help but win, and even if I have a setback or two, or three or four, at the end I win anyway because I learn from them, get up again and get going again. See? And maybe you get overthrown by sin. Maybe you fall down, something goes wrong. That's okay, I'm still a winner. I'm a forgiven child of God. I'm going to stand up and believe that. When the devil starts to get on your back and say you're a loser, you can't do anything, I'm going to just reject his lies. I'm going to stand up and say I am who God says I am; I'm a winner in life. I'm a wonderful, unique person, a gift to this community. You imagine if the church in our city rose up believing that and began to express it?

Now you understand this; believing for a Hebrew meant you embraced the truth in your heart and it was now being worked out in your life as a part of your life. For a Greek they've just - they've taken in and they know it, stored it away in their brain, hasn't changed their life. Why don't you begin to meditate in the word of God about what God says you are, and decide I will believe it? There's greatness in me. I'm a great person and I will demonstrate my greatness. I'm a servant of the Lord. You go into that workplace tomorrow, you're the servant of God. Servants of God can go anywhere. They act on Jesus' behalf anywhere they are. They can pray for people, minister to people, pray for the sick, cast out demons, bring encouragement to people, release gifts to people. They can do all kinds of things, because they're the servant of the Lord.

That boss doesn't notice you, recognise you, it doesn't matter because you're not really his servant. You're the servant of the Lord. You're serving Him as an ambassador. So you suffer injustice and difficulty and setbacks, don't worry about it. Lots of people in the Bible did. You're the servant of the Lord. You're more than a winner. You're going to win in the end. Just keep your attitude right.

[File ends 00.47.11]

From Victim to Victor (2 of 4)

Sun 25 May 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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From Victim to Victor (2 of 4) Mike Connell 25.05.2008 am

Well I want you to just look with me in Proverbs 23:7. I want to share with you something today that's an extension of where we're at. We've been talking about identity, who am I you know, and some people don't know; I don't know who I am and it's a problem if you don't know who you are - or it's an even worse problem if you've got a wrong idea of who you are. In Proverbs 23:7 it tells us, it says as a man thinks in his heart so he is. He is. He is means his identity, so the way you think will reflect in the way you live your life. Everything about your life is an overflow of how you see yourself, so the way you see yourself is very, very important. If you see yourself as a born again child of God, a representative of God in the earth, you are part of the answer. If you don't see that, if you see something else then what happens is you'll be inevitably part of the problems that are there instead of being a great representative of God.

So we need to see ourselves the way God sees us, so we're looking at a series on identity. What I want to just pick up, something I mentioned last time I was talking, about the whole issue of victim mentality, victim mentality. Now I've taught on this. I couldn't find my notes on it so I've redone it and I think its better, but when I first taught on this issue of victim mentality the tapes went out to different places. But one guy gave it to a friend of his who owned a business in North Auckland and they were having a lot of troubles with their employees and many, many conflicts in the business. When he got the tape and listened to it he realised that the majority of the workers employed there had a victim mentality with major, major negative effects on the way they did business, did their work, treated their fellow employees and related to management.

So he implemented a program, took the message, reformed it and then wrote a program and it totally transformed their whole business. So I want to pick that up today just in the light of this area of victim mentality, so I'm going to just talk a little bit about it and I want to give you enough that you can identify if you think this way. I want to just give us God's focus because God - I want to share with you three key principles that you need to get a hold of and begin to think about. If you embrace these things they will shift how you do life, and then I'm going to try and help you understand how this mentality operates. So a victim, let's describe first of all a victim. See, a victim is a person who's suffered at the hands of other people, or suffered negative circumstances and was unable to help themselves. They couldn't prevent it. They found themselves unable to do anything about it. That's a victim.

They were at the mercy of others, they suffered at the hands of people or circumstances, and for whatever reason - sometimes it's a reason of just age - they weren't able to do anything to prevent it and so they suffered. So that's a person who's a victim. They were powerless or felt powerless to do something about it, and of course people can be victimised by physical abuse, by violence against them. Someone's attacked for example; the trauma of it often sets up a cycle of failure and victim mentality in it. Fear and all kinds of issues come into their life. A person in a home can be treated in a way that makes them feel powerless. A controlling parent will cause a child to feel powerless and they become a victim in their thinking. Some families are so - their dynamic is victim oriented and so people pick it up and then they copy the patterns they've learnt in their family.

So a victim is someone who has suffered authentically through people or circumstances, and were unable to help themself for whatever reason; may have been a child, may have been sick, may have been an accident, something like that. But a person who suffered as a victim may then adopt an attitude of life that I'm powerless and I can't help myself. It usually comes like this: it's not my fault. Someone else is to blame. It's extremely common and I want us to just lock in today onto some of the ways this operates, and then look for it. Now what they did in this firm was every one of the staff having had this list of these things of the way a victim thinks and the way a victor or a person who's an over comer thinks, they locked in on those things and got to memorise them. Then each one of the staff identified a person who thought that way and worked with them to help them transition in their thinking, and that was what shifted everything in the business. It was amazing just how it all shifted.

See, so a person who takes on a victim mentality, their identity has now become I am a victim. I am a victim. Now you understand you can have pain and suffering in your life and experience being the victim of some situation, but that does not define your identity, who you are - unless you take on that mentality. Got the idea? So a victim mentality is a way of thinking about yourself and a way of thinking about life, where you view yourself fairly powerless in life and at the mercy of things which come against you - so it's a victim. Now one of the just - I won't go into but one of the big problems that God had with Israel, God delivered Israel, saved them out of Egypt and He had a great Promised Land to bring them in to. But what He was unable to do, unable because people wouldn't make the right choices, there are some things God can't do. He's given you free will; He can't make you change your mind. You have to choose to change your mind.

So He took them through a number of experiences called wilderness experiences, designed to break the power of victim thinking in their life and establish a faith level and confidence so they could enter the Promised Land and obtain things there. But they consistently complained and failed the opportunities that were given to them, perceived them negatively because they thought like a victim. They interpreted them negatively because they thought like a victim, and when the final time came and the opportunity to possess this inheritance that they had ahead of them, because they failed consistently to change their mentality they had never developed the faith for the big things God wanted them to have. Now that's the heart of that whole wilderness journey. God's intention and heart was to save them, get them into the Promised Land, but He had to shift their mentality through some challenging experiences of life.

But because they interpreted them negatively through a victim mindset they were unable to touch God and actually shift, so the majority of them failed to enter their inheritance. The Bible says in Hebrews 4, it warns us not to take on the same attitudes lest we end up the same way. So as a Christian you can experience being saved, water baptised, filled with the Holy Spirit, but never, never fulfil your purpose and destiny because you're unwilling to shift mentalities and outlooks. If you still think like you used to think you can't enter into the things God has for you. You've got to shift how you think; as a man thinks so he is, and that's the bit that we struggle with a bit because it requires we change. So I want to give you now three key biblical truths that are true about you. They are true about you. These things are true about you. Now you say well I don't know whether I really believe it. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, they're true. They're absolute truths about you.

You need to embrace these truths and think about these things. They shift your life. Genesis 1:26, and there's more I could share. I'll just keep to this area here because there are three important ones. God said let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, all the earth, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and said to them be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, every living thing that moves over the earth. Alright then, now today I want to just share from victim to victor, so I won't focus on all the truths here. I want to pick up a particular one.

Now you notice what God said to them. God said to them in Genesis 1:26, subdue and have dominion - so here's the first truth. You were created to win. You were created to win. In built in you, you're designed for winning in life, the ability to excel is already in you. You are created to win and the ability to excel is already within you. It's in your design. It's in how you're made up. God made you to subdue and have dominion. To subdue means something there is resisting you. Something there is a challenge to you. Something there you have to overcome. Something there you've got to assert a force and bring it under. In other words you've got to be a victor. You've got to rise up and overcome that thing, see? That's before sin came in, that was the mandate in man: have dominion. Now that's talking about man having dominion. We know that God rules; this is about you actually stirring yourself up to function like God intended you to function and bring influence over circumstances to change them so you win!

You're called not to be a victim. You're called to be a victor, a winner, a conqueror in life! It is hardwired into you. That's why when you're not winning, when you have a losing mentality, you are miserable. It is impossible to have a victim mentality, a losing mentality and be a happy person. You cannot because you're malfunctioning. You're operating against how you're designed. You are designed - the Bible says Jesus spoke to unsaved people, said the kingdom of heaven is within you. The principles and the values and lifestyle of the kingdom are hardwired in. When you violate them you get trouble - but when you walk in them things naturally just seem to flow much better, so you're made - it says the first one, you're created to win. Tell someone, you're born to win! [You're born to win!] You were born to win. You say well how come I'm losing so much and I'm such a failure? Well that's a little bit of a challenge isn't it aye? Well it's because of how you think.

Okay, here's the second thing and we'll read it in Genesis 2:15-16. Now the Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord commanded the man, of every tree of the garden you may eat freely; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat you shall surely die. Now here's the second thing. You were created with the capacity to choose. You were given a free will to choose. You've got to know that. You were created to choose. God wanted a relationship with man. He had to give him free will to choose. You were created with capacity to choose. You can always make choices. You can always make choices. You have power to make decisions; you can make good decisions, you can make bad decisions, but never say you had no power to choose. No choice, no decision is a choice. No decision is a choice to give up your right to do something and to allow things to cruise along.

Everyone, no matter what situation they're in, there are certain areas of choice available to you. So God's made you with the power of choice. Now we always have choices; sometimes they're difficult because they require us to change. Some choices are difficult, see? Now you can't choose about family relationships, but you can choose how you will participate in them. You can't choose your family of origin, you can't choose your father and mother, can't choose your children usually. You just can't - but you can choose how you function and relate to them. Don't blame your parents, don't blame your kids, make better choices! Victim blaming people as we'll see in a moment is all part of this whole culture of victim mentality. It's not my fault! Listen, you're carrying on like a victim. Don't you know you have the power of choice? Why have you given your choices up?

Why have you resigned from influencing what's there? You've got to think about this see? So you can choose to stop being a victim of your past. You can change your life by changing your choices. You can change your life by changing your choices. I love it in the pre-school what they do. They're just so great. When the kids are young, very, very young, they teach them was that a good choice or a bad choice? They're getting the child to think that they make good choices and bad choices. Now of course coming on from that is every choice has consequences. You can make the choice but you can't choose the consequences. Now it's a very, very simple thing that one isn't it aye? Every choice has a consequence. So you notice here then, here's the third thing then, Genesis 3. We'll pick this next one up, verse 9.

Now the Lord God called Adam and said where are you? And he said I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. And the Lord said who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you should not eat? The man said don't look at me, not my fault. It's that woman You gave me! There's a victim. That's where it first appears in the Bible, the first victim statement - not my fault! It's that woman You gave me - and notice who gave her. Do you hear me asking for one? It was Your idea. Don't - speak to the hand, I'm you know, nothing to do with me. So there it is then, so all choices have consequences. Notice God said to Adam here's all the trees in the garden. There's - look at them, there's heaps of them! Oh, trees as far as you can see. Now see that one there, now that one you don't eat of that one okay, because if you eat that one then you die.

Now you notice now he's given the power of choice. God's not saying that I'm going to force you not to do it; He's saying you've got the power of choice, but that choice brings with it a consequence. It brings a consequence, so everyone has got the power of choice, but no one has the power over the consequences. You are already reaping today the consequences of yesterday's choices, so don't whine and complain about it and play the victim. Errr, not my fault! See, to win in life you have to take responsibility for your actions and choices. You've got to take responsibility, so here's the key principle here. You were created to take responsibility for yourself. You're created to take responsibility for yourself. You're made to be responsible for yourself. God intends you be responsible for yourself. Now of course a person who's very, very sick can only do limited things and needs someone to actually help and care for them.

A young baby can't take much responsibility. They don't have many privileges either, they're just there. They just get someone waiting on them, but eventually they should grow up and the design for parenting is - God's design is you teach your child that they have power to make choices, good and bad; there are consequences of a good and a bad choice, and they must be personally responsible for their choices. That's good stuff, good parental training. When you violate that and allow the child not to face and feel his consequences of bad choices, you then ruin the child because they're not learning a vital lesson for success in life, that if I choose good I'll get good results; if I choose bad I'll get bad results. They have to learn that and so that's one of the major functions of the parent in nurturing, bringing up a child is to teach them that they have power of making choices, good and bad, and the bad ones will always have bad consequences even if not immediately.

They have to learn that and so if a child does something bad and you don't hold them to account for their behaviour and have bad consequences, what happens is they never learn. You've rescued them and in rescuing the person you've taken away from them the learning opportunity they had. This is really important stuff. Think about this, you see? So you know, often a teenager, they're wanting all the privileges and your mother says, father says or whatever, your parents say well you've got to get these things done before you're allowed to go out tonight to that function. So you mess around, don't get them done and then there's this battle goes on; I want to go out! No, you can't, you haven't done - did we not say that if you got these done you could go and if you didn't get these done you couldn't go? Oh you're not fair! You're just so mean!

Now listen, that person is behaving like a child and the more they do it, then the younger they're getting all the way until there's no way you're going out! Such a child could never be allowed out like that on their own. Come on, think about it. So a teenager mostly is looking for freedom and privileges without responsibility. The parent's role is to help them become responsible and attach privileges to growing responsibility. Getting the idea? Well it's not all about that. I want to get you out of a victim mode first of all so you stop blaming everyone okay? [Laughs] So you're responsible for some things. Your thoughts are your thoughts, don't blame me for how you think. Your feelings are your feelings, so don't shut them down, own them. Your choices are your choices, your words are your words; you made me so mad! No, I didn't make you mad. That's your stuff. Your feelings are your feelings!

Your actions are your actions. Your desires are your desires. Own them! Own them! Own them! They're part of who you are. You have to own them - so that's part of it. God's made you to become - He's called you to become responsible for the decisions and things that happen in your life, so you've got to do it. If you're going to win in life you've got to be responsible for your choices and your actions. It's the only way you can win in life. I read something the other day, look at this one. You'll love this. When rewards are handed out they belong to you, but when consequences arrive remember they weren't delivered to the wrong address. [Laughter] That's quite good isn't it aye? When consequences arrive remember they weren't delivered to the wrong address; it's not fair! Oh yeah, it's fair. They've just arrived. They had your name on it, had your name on it see?

Now here's another one that's really powerful. Blaming others is proof the person has yet to embrace personal responsibility. Blaming others is proof. You hear blaming going on, it's the proof that that person has not yet embraced responsibility for their life. Now this is the core. Now once you get a hang of those three truths - I'll just give them to you back again, then we're going to look at the victim thinking and you're going to see that victims think a certain way. Anyone that's got a victim mentality, they think a certain way and realise this, that life is - life really sucks for them. They come to church and try to make everything work and somehow it never works for them, it always works for someone else. So let's go back again: You're created to win, the ability to excel is already built into you. You are created with a capacity to choose, good choices or bad choices. You have capacity always to choose, and you're created to take responsibility for your life.

Okay, now what I want to do is to show you when a person has a victim mentality they will think in a certain way. You might like to tick the number of ones you come up with and see how strong it is inside you, and if it's strong inside you then you could make some different choices. You could choose to change and your life will change. Your life will change because you made better choices. Most people wait for someone else to change, so you get in a marriage situation. Every time in a marriage situation, it's without exception one's blaming the other and waiting for them to change. Come on, what a losing attitude that is. How can you possibly win in life like that? See all you do is get resentful and angry. You can't win when you adopt that strategy. It is a losing strategy by being irresponsible. So I've jotted a few things down and so I'm going to just give them to you, just going to read them out because [unclear 00.21.06] time to think about them.

Then I'll just show you some key choices you can make that'll shift you, key choices, of course we need the Lord to help us but we've got to have this mentality and think through what we've got to change. See, it's all very well to pray God will change you, but actually you've got to change what you think. They're your thoughts you know; God's not going to change your thoughts. You've got to change - you have to work on your thought life with the word of God and changing the way you think and do things. Sometimes we need help to do it. Okay, so let's just go through. Now every one of these is the characteristics of a person with a victim mentality and life for them just doesn't go too well at all, so here it goes. The first one is they shift or avoid responsibility so it lies somewhere else, and the consequence is they feel powerless.

They shift or avoid responsibility, so a victim just doesn't actually - they just won't take responsibility for their life. They shift it somewhere else, so any situation that's happening, well it's not my fault. You can't blame me, it's not my fault! They actually put the responsibility for the whole deal outside them, and as soon as you put responsibility outside yourself you feel powerless; I can't do anything about it, I'm just waiting for them to change. I'm praying Jesus will change them. I'm waiting for them to change. Listen victim, victim, victim! Don't think that way. YOU change. Just change how you do things, how you operate things - so they shift or avoid responsibility so it lies somewhere else. The consequence is they feel powerless, but a person who's got a conquering or a winning mentality, they take full responsibility for their own actions and attitudes and as a consequence they feel empowered.

So no matter what situation there is, no matter how difficult, they say well I've got some choices I can make here. I can be responsible for my life - and they don't mix it up. This is what I'm responsible for and that's what you're responsible for. That's your stuff. This is my stuff. So a person who's a victor will think about what they're responsibility is and where it lies. They don't go round carrying other people's baggage. They don't go round picking up and carrying other people and not allowing them to be responsible. The Bible reinforces this over and over and over again. In Galatians 6 for example in the [second 00.23.06] verse, it tells us every man should bear one another's burden, which means literally that every one of us should lift crushing loads that stop a person getting up. Then straight after that a few verses later it says and every man shall bear his own burden, which is a different word - the [light, list or light 00.23.21] pack like you just get through your day.

You know, you've got a suitcase or a briefcase or a light pack you go to school with, that's your stuff. No one's going to carry it for you, you've got to carry that stuff. But if you're down and crushed someone comes along and lifts that off you while you get back up, but once you're up you've got to carry your own stuff. Carry your own stuff! Carry your own stuff! Come on, carry your own stuff. Don't put it on someone else to carry it - and that's what parents are always looking for isn't it aye, so when you've chosen to carry your own stuff you feel empowered because you know what's yours. My thoughts, I can work on my thoughts, actions, attitudes. I can work on all those feelings, I can work on those. The other person, I can influence them but I'm not responsible for their choices. If they make a bad one, okay, let's make some consequences for doing this dumb thing you're doing, and you don't get into the power struggle that goes on where people contend with one another, each one trying to win and both losing.

Okay, the second thing is they blame others for life being the way it is and this empowers others at their expense. They blame others for the way life is, whereas a winner, a conqueror, a victor will refuse to blame others. They embrace the challenges and difficulties and they determine to win over them, so this issue of blame - so a victim will always blame other people. They just continually blame others. Now people blame all kinds of [things 00.24.38]. They blame their father, they blame their mother, they blame their brothers and sisters, they blame their teachers. They blame the church leaders, they blame bosses and employers, they blame everyone. Yet you keep the blame game up you aren't going to win. You actually have to break with the blame game. You've just got to stop playing that game. You've just got to change that and see, so a winner refuses to blame others.

They reckon if there's a challenge and a difficulty there, well man what a great opportunity this is. I can really learn from this - a different way of thinking about it. Come on, a different way of thinking. Here's a third thing then. A victim will refuse to assume responsibility for the consequences of their bad choice, so a victim - you notice another thing I've noticed about victims is this. When you try and hold them to account for what they've done they really get angry and resentful, because they don't believe they're responsible and when you try to hold them to responsibility by making them have consequences they get resentful and angry and blame you. But they refuse to take the consequences of their actions. I saw it in the paper just recently in the big upheaval there over tagging and the one thing I was looking for, will anyone state that people have to be responsible for their behaviours? And anyone who stands up and says they're not responsible, oh they're this and this, hello! You're perpetuating victim culture.

You're not going to help them. You're going to actually condemn them to a life of being victims, angry and resentful. So I've noticed that victims inevitably don't want the consequences, so they do something bad, they don't want to actually have pain following it. Do-gooders will try and rescue them from having the pain. Life tells us very clearly your choices have consequences. Don't spare people the consequences. They're to learn from them and as they learn from them they grow. It's the most wonderful way God set it all up, beautiful, works really well. Here's another thing about victims, so of course they refuse to assume responsibility. However a person who is a victor, well they'll take full responsibility for the consequences and they learn from it and they'll ask for feedback. They're actually quite open to feedback, you see whereas if you try to give feedback to a victim they get defensive.

They just actually get defensive and react angrily because their identity is in what they've done, just don't want to go there. You can't help them when people are like that, so you've just got to [help 00.27.01] them face the consequences. Here's the fourth thing. They focus on negatives and problems and lacks and injustices, and complain and feel powerless to do anything about it. They focus on negatives and problems, lacks, injustice and they complain you see, whereas a victor will focus on options and possibilities and opportunities to grow, and they're thankful for the opportunities. So one complains about the injustices and problems, continually complains so their attitude is one of complaining; ooh someone [unclear 00.27.27], negative and complaining. Whereas a person who's got a winning attitude says man, this is an opportunity here, so what are the options? They just think options all the time; what are my choices in here?

See, notice they're owning I've got choices in this; what choices can I make? How can I go? What options have I got? They think that way. It's just built in to think that way, and if you don't think that way, if you feel - the moment you feel powerless you've got to stop, step back and say I'm feeling powerless. What choices do I have here? What options are open to me? Then you start to choose better options. Now see every situation where you feel disempowered you've got to step back and then look why you got disempowered and what you can do, what choices you have now available to you. So it requires you being aware of how you feel and actually taking time to think about your life and what you're doing. Getting the idea? Really good isn't it aye? Okay then, so because victims feel powerless they want others to come through for them and they become demanding and focus on their rights.

Because victims feel powerless they then become demanding. They want others to come through for them; you've got to help me! I want you to learn to help yourself. What options have you got? Aah, [I've got no one 00.28.42] to help me, bail me out - so they've got a consistent problem with mismanaging their money and now they're in debt. The creditors are coming, they're beating on the door and wife's upset, the dog's upset, kids are upset and everything's a disaster; it's not my fault! You've got to help me! So we say well how can we help you? Well just give me all the money to pay the bill. [Laughter] Well that's not going to help you, because next week you'll be in the same fix. You haven't actually owned that this is a consequence of some choices you made a little while before. When you blew the card out here and you blew the card out there, and you blew the card out there you weren't thinking that one day that account would come in and you'd be oh no, I can't pay!

You just didn't take responsibility, so helping people out - notice with our work in missions, see the theme out there on the back is not a hand out. You give a hand out you don't help anyone; you've got to help them up. You've got to help them to learn and grow through that situation. Getting the idea? And see people all want a hand out. Hand outs don't help people. They can provide temporary relief but you actually want to help them up, which may involve a whole range of things but it always involves changing the way they think. So when we worked in Uganda for example, the biggest challenge we faced in all the Third World is shifting how they think, because they think like a victim; I'm this, you're that, you've got to come through for me. So we tell them we've got no money, we're only a small church, got no money you know? So what we can be is be friends to you and help you grow. Then on the way you'll find some money will turn up. That's why I've gone slow on some of the missions thing.

I'd love to just jump in and do a lot more, but you've got to grow them. Otherwise they just stay in this cycle of poverty and then they're looking for someone to help them out. Getting the idea? I hope you're not doing that. You wouldn't be doing that. No, you're very [laughs] - see, so of course a victor, because [they're powered, they're 00.30.33] proactive and institute change. They focus on responsibility rather than privileges. It's kind of interesting with people that are victims, they're always demanding something. They just think you've got to come through for me and you feel when you're with them a demand you've got to do something. You just feel it. In fact you feel drained. You're with them, you can't wait to get away because you feel this pull and you feel guilty, you feel drained, manipu- and it's just inherent in that way of thinking. And of course it doesn't bring life building relationships. It drains them out when people act like a victim.

Okay, so here's another one, number six. Because they feel powerless they're unwilling to seek help and they react defensively when they get feedback. But you see you know, the person who's a victor will always seek help out. Okay, here's another one. Because they feel powerless they speak bitterly against others, especially those in authority who they blame for hurting them. So they speak bitterly against others because they feel powerless. If you're powerless you can't do anything. What are you going to do? Just get angry and yell at people; [unclear 00.31.29] the boss - and that's what people do and they get more and more bitter, whereas a person who's got a winning mentality, well they don't think that way and they don't act that way. They actually act and they speak - because they're secure they can encourage this one, encourage that one and they always treat bosses with respect.

They just think differently. So just work out how you're doing today. Work out how you're doing. Now of course you'll actually think you're doing better than you are. You just ask someone to give me some feedback. Oh, [I won't 00.31.56] do that! Why would you ask me to do that! Oh! [Laughs] Tick, another one there. Okay, so let's give you another couple. Okay then, so here's another one, number eight. Their hope for change lies outside them and so they get frustrated, so for the person who's a victim their hope for any change in their situation is outside them. Something has got to change in the circumstances, so they get into a Lotto mentality. You'd be amazed how many people - I bet there'll be some here, but you don't have to put your hand up. [Laughter] This is what they're thinking: I'll get that Lotto ticket. I just might get that big breakthrough, just might. And actually everything in their life has that same mentality. It's the big breakthrough, the big breakthrough.

You hear them talking and when I hear people talking about the big breakthrough I think listen, the only breakthrough's you're ever going to have are a result of what you choose to do today - so what are you doing today? I'm taking a ticket. Oh, get over it. If you got the money you wouldn't have the ability to manage it. You'll blow it and it'll ruin everything around you. Just read the papers about people who've won a lot of money and what it did to them. A Lotto mentality was I'll just pray and then I'll get a breakthrough with God and then everything will change. That's Lotto thinking. It's Christian Lotto thinking. Well I just pray, just pray! Just pray! Oh wow, whoa, oh, you're praying, oh good. What are you doing? Oh, well I'm praying for a breakthrough in my marriage. Well what are you doing today to help build your marriage? What are you doing that you could do? Oh, what are you talking about - I'm praying! [Laughter]

Your breakthrough's a long time coming I can tell you [laughter] and what'll happen is you'll get bitter and frustrated and angry at God, because He didn't come through for you and every time you hear a message about breakthroughs or hear a testimony of breakthroughs you'll get angry and bitter because how come them and not me? I prayed so hard you know, even fasted a little bit. [Laughter] Never got the breakthrough! People who are waiting for a breakthrough it isn't coming, because they're not doing today what they need to do to initiate the changes. Just prayer doesn't do it. Prayer - He said you know you show Me your faith by your works. The works, what you're doing demonstrates whether you're a believer, so I look and people tell me they believe; oh I believe God, blah blah. Oh look, I've heard it for years. I say what are they doing? That's what tells it. Your faith is demonstrated by the way you live your life. It's as clear as that see?

So again, this victim mentality gets into the church and the Christians. Okay, so the hope is outside us. Now because they feel powerless they're passive, waiting for something to happen. They're passive and they're waiting, so a lot of people are passive because they're waiting for something to happen. But you see a person who's a victor, they think differently; man, I'm here to make something happen. I take initiative - you know, so a person who's a victim will say oh won't someone do something about that? How come someone doesn't [unclear 00.34.50]? Listen, you saw it. Why don't YOU do something? You know, so a person's who's [initiative, 00.34.55] man look, there's an opportunity there and I could do something about that. I'd be good at that. They think differently. You have to get people out of victim thinking. You will never help them by allowing them to stay in victim thinking, see?

And of course here's the last one I thought of was so a victim will see God as uncaring and indifferent. In their heart they'll see God doesn't care about me and He's indifferent to what's happening, and so their life is characterised, their spiritual life is characterised by unbelief. They can't trust God, see? So a person who's a victim will take the view that God is uncaring and indifferent and so they can't trust Him, and their spiritual life is characterised by unbelief. One of the challenges I've continually had is to ask this question: what actions are you taking that depend on God coming through for you as a result of taking those steps? And it just keeps you a check as to whether you're in faith, or whether you're just in cruise mode. So a person who's a victim will be religious. You can't help but be religious because you haven't assumed responsibility.

You might even come and sing songs, worship, wave your hands, jump up and down and wave the flag, have a banner, do all kinds of stuff, but listen. If you don't actually take responsibility to initiate things you will actually become religious. You'll have all the expression but no life and no power, and we don't want that. We want people to come into [light, 00.36.20] okay? Whereas you see a person who's a victor, well they see God as caring, involved, wanting to empower me. Man, and they're growing in their faith. They're continually growing in their faith because they're connecting to God, because they believe that God is going to walk with them. Man, God has given me a mandate to go out there and make a difference. Boy, if He told me to do it He's with me! Something should be happening! Got to think that way.

See, but the other would say oh, that's - so of course a victim would come back, oh it's so hard. People are so unkind. I shared about Jesus and they really weren't very kind to me. Stop whining! That's victim speak. Victim speak. You ought to get sussed out at how to pick up victim speak. Victim speak has got a sound of its own. It's got a whining sound, like a diff that's gone. [Laughter] A continued whine. [Laughs] We don't want to have that do we? Okay, I'll give you one more verse and then we'll show you just a couple of keys out of it. Okay, here we go. Here it is in 2 Corinthians 2:14, we quoted it before. Now thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph in Christ. Well that doesn't read like this: well thanks be to God who once in a while may give us a breakthrough. [Laughter]

Notice this. It says thanks be to God who always, always, always, always, everywhere, every place, every time always CAUSES us. So we're involved in this thing and what do we do? We triumph because we're doing things that God has got His hand on, in Christ and because of that to make manifest His presence through our lives we're working with God and we're cooperating with God and eventually we win! You say well look, you know, sometimes it doesn't look like you're winning. No, it doesn't look like winning at all, but you know when it's over I may not have won completely in that, but what I'll have done is I'll have grown up another step in character. I'll be all ready for the next challenge. I win no matter what. I win no matter what! I win no matter what, because either I'm going to grow in character which is a win, or I change that situation which is a win. Either way I can't help but win! I am wired to win! What a life! Wired to win! WHOA, WHAT A LIFE!

I can't stand it, it's so good. What a life! Wired to win everywhere, no matter what we face, wired to win! That's got to be good - but you've got to make better choices. Oh, well don't tell me that, I'm just going to pray. I'm going to pray! You've got to DO something too. You've got to get [that power. 00.38.49] What can you choose to do? See the little boy brought out the five loaves and fishes. Next thing there's a whole miracle. The breakthrough came when someone did something. Okay, I'll just give you a couple of steps out of it. I won't develop them, but just give you some steps out. When you choose to think like a victim you're going to have no power. You're going to lose power in your life. You've got to change the way you think so here's a few things you can do. Number one, stop blaming and complaining. Tell someone next to you they need to hear that one: stop blaming, stop complaining, straight off like that. [Stop blaming, stop complaining.]

You hear someone blaming, oh-oh, zip! Just give them a sign any time you hear one of the believers in the church and they're blaming someone, psst! I hear victim speak! You poor you! [Laughter] Come on, really bring it out: victim speak, hello! They're singing the victim song. Blaming someone else - oh poor you, you're so powerless you can't do anything. It's all their fault. Why don't you change and do something different? Okay, so stop blaming, stop complaining, start rejoicing and taking responsibility. The second thing is you need to assume responsibility for your life. Start to rejoice, take responsibility. Man, it's a winning life. I'm wired to win! What a life! I'm going to rejoice in the Lord! Is there something really heavy in front of me, difficult in front of me? Oh yes. Is it overwhelming? Well it seems that way, feels that way, but boy I'm wired to win! Somehow I'm going to come through this one okay.

So we've got to do that. You've got to choose that. Those are the key things you've got to change. Now the next thing you need to do is initiate actions that bring change in your own life. You've got to do something to change your life. Don't go coming up in an altar call all the time and just - I see people come up in altar calls all the time. That's why we don't have them so often. We have them once in a while but not all the time because people used to come up all the time. They never change and what people do is they get to think well you know, making decisions to come to the Lord is not going to do anything. You actually become a stumbling block for others, so we've tried to change our processes in the church. What can you do to change? Here's something you can do to change.

If you have been treated like a victim and you're hurt and someone's really done the dirty by you, then why don't you just face the feelings, let go the anger and forgive them? Start to bless them. Break out of this thing. The second thing you do if you think like a victim, why don't you just a hold of some things you think, get the Bible promises and change how you think. So see, it's not hard. You could do that. You can do that because the Lord will come in on that. He's all into that. The moment you start agreeing with how God sees life you start to wire into Him and He starts to move. If you think like a victim you're disagreeing with God. God will say well didn't I say in Genesis 1 they're wired to win? What's going on here? They're not agreeing with Me - I can't help.

But the moment you break out and start to say God, you've wired me to win in life. You've called me to subdue and have dominion. Whatever it is, I'm going to win on this thing. I'm trusting You to help me, show me what I can do. Show me my choices; what do I need to change on the inside? That's the first thing, and then how can I influence - here's the last one - how can I influence what's around me by better choices? How can I influence people and circumstances by making different choices to the ones I'm making? Man, this is good isn't it aye? We need to get someone the CD for this one. You know someone who needs to hear this. I know that. I know that. You know someone. You're thinking of them right now - boy, I wish they were here. They need that. No, YOU need it actually. Come on, get that list and tick it off in private - not here, you'd be embarrassed. Check off in private.

I can think of circumstances in marriages and finances and lives that changed the day people stopped being a victim, made a decision to take personal responsibility, to recognise consequences, change their decisions, let go forgiveness, change how they think and change how they do stuff. Then they get amazing breakthroughs. You want to talk to Steve and Delwyn, you have to see the miracle they got - unbelievable miracle they got in their finances. But there was something before that great breakthrough. It wasn't the Lotto. They didn't just come and oh Jesus, help! It was far more than that. They made good choices and God gave them a miracle. Amen. You could have a miracle too couldn't you? Come on, let's close our eyes. Father, right now we just thank You You've wired us to win. You've called us to be champions in life. You've called us to be MORE than conquerors through Christ Jesus, that's greater than a winner. We're an outstanding winner, so that people understand we serve the living God.

Lord, we ask today You'd forgive us for where we've thought and acted like victims and Lord, have whinged, whined, complained and blamed and put the responsibility somewhere else and they've tried to cover it with religious activities and haven't just got straight down to business and started to do what we need to do. Father, I pray that a great revelation of this would come into people. I pray that mindset of being a victim will break in people's lives. I'm asking Lord that during these coming weeks, that You will cause people to remember the things that were said today and recognise whenever they're acting like a victim and thinking and speaking like a victim, or when the people around them are thinking and acting that way. Help them to begin to recognise how deep-rooted it's in our culture and to begin to stand up and become the answer to it, in Jesus' mighty name. We say amen to that.

[File ends 00.43.49]

Performance (3 of 4)

Sun 8 Jun 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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Performance (3 of 4) Mike Connell 08.06.2008 am

Thank You Lord! Thank You Lord! We love You Jesus! Hallelujah Lord. Amen. Please be seated. Have a look in your Bible, Proverbs 23:7. We've been talking about identity, identity. I want to pick that up. We're doing a series on it. I looked identity in Christ in the first session, what it would look like if you were free to be who you are. Then we looked at some ways people define identity, who I am. Identity's all about who am I, and if you don't know who you are well you're in trouble because everyone else will define it for you. So we saw different ways people identify themselves and we looked particularly at one area of victim mentality; I'm a victim. I can't do anything. So the question is then how do you see yourself, because how you see yourself and Proverbs 23:7 says as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. Or what you believe in your heart yourself to be is how you'll live your life.

What you believe about yourself will dramatically determine your life and your relationships, so the question is how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself the way God sees you, or do you define yourself somewhat differently? So we were looking at some aspects of that; what do you believe about yourself? See, how do you see yourself? How do you define yourself? You're going to live out of that. See, who are you really, and next time I'm up I want to just talk to you then about our identity in Christ, how we establish what that identity in Christ is and how we establish it strongly and firmly in our life. I need to know who I am in Christ, see? So your identity is who you are and it's made up of a lot of things. We define it different ways, so one way you look at your face; oh, there's Cecelia. She didn't say a word and I knew her face, so your face defines who you are. Your face speaks or identifies who you are. Your name identifies you. I'm Mike. That's my first name, so my face and name identify - and voice identify me.

My name is Connell so I'm from a family line. I'm connected to a family line and in that family line a lot of things look similar. Anyone seeing my brothers would realise a lot of things are similar. [Laughter] You look, you see oh, it's a family you know? You can actually see - so my identity is also partly defined - in the natural area we're looking at now - by where I come from, the family line I'm a part of. And God sees you connected into generational lines, so God sees you in terms of family and when God looks say for example at Levi, He said well he's part of the Abraham line. So whatever Abraham did, Levi was a part of that because he's part of the family line - but Levi was a great-grandchild. So when God looks at families He looks at the whole line of the family. Now that's a problem. It's good and it's bad because if you've got great parents then you are part of a family line that's great, got great qualities going through.

But if they were really bad you've got some issues, and so there's a problem there. So God designed us so that family identity would flow down from where we came from, so Adam and Eve came from God. Who are they? They're the children of God, but when they sinned something changed. God's plan was that from Adam and Eve would flow down the line of God into the earth; that Adam and Eve were made in the image of God with His character, His nature, some of His capacities. They were designed to reflect Him in the earth and so what God's design was that they would have children, and the children would also reflect what God is like. But when sin came in, see now the next line was now made in the image of Adam, not in the image of God because something had changed. Sin had come in and now there's destructive things come in family lines as well as constructive things and we have to understand that and work out what to do about that.

So we identify ourself by our gender; I'm a male, I'm a man. I'm a man, I'm a woman, you know so that's a part of identifying who you are. You identify yourself by your [racial background; 00.04.14] I'm a Kiwi - so we use a whole number of ways of identifying ourselves. We could identify ourselves by our social status; well I'm a leader, I'm a pastor, I'm a businessman. That's who I am. What if your business goes bust, who are you then? [Laughs] We can identify ourself by experiences, by the hurts and pains and difficulties or failures we've had; I'm a failure. No, you're not a failure. You've defined yourself in your identity by your experiences, but that's not who you are. Alright, we may define ourself by painful experiences; I'm a victim. I'm powerless. I can't do anything. Now you never say that but actually it's in the heart it'll flow out the life.

You'll believe that about yourself, so many people in this church here today would define themselves not as God defines you, not as God sees you but according to how you see you and it's defined by what's happened in your past; I'm a failure, I'm a reject, I'm a nothing see? Well that's going to affect how you run your life, and so clearly the motivational people are right. You need to get a good view of yourself, your self-esteem, but the problem with all of the teaching stuff on self-esteem is it never has the cross in it. It always exalts self rather than exalting Christ, so it tries to build a person without actually becoming rooted in who I am as God intended me to be. That's the problem with it, so it's got good concepts. They're all drawn from the Bible actually [although they may 00.05.44] not admit that. That's where they come from.

So some people identify themself by the words of others; I'm a failure. How do you know you're a failure? I'm useless, I'm this, I'm that because someone told me and I believed them. Then so we looked at - particularly last week we looked at the area of victim, defining ourselves I'm a victim. In other words I'm powerless, I can't do anything, bad things always happen to me, what's the use. Now all that kind of mentality leaves you disempowered. That's not who God called you to be. God called you to have dominion, you're a person with dominion, so we're going to share with you in another time how you actually arise in your personal life and begin to assert dominion into the realm that's around you. But to do that you've got to know who you are. Okay, now I want to before I get into the final one on identity, I want to look at another way that people define themselves and this is a really important one.

If it rings your bells then put your hand up and get to change okay? [Laughs] So another way is that people define themselves is by their performance, what they do; I am what I do. So what I do tells you what I am. Now it's only a partial truth in that, so Jesus [identity 00.06.50] and the key to your identity is revelation. The key to your identity, your true identity, is revelation. It's what God says about you. If you don't know what God says you are how do you know who you really are? You're just defining yourself according to your background, or experiences, or what people say about you or even the group you're in. They put a label on you so they can say who you are; oh, you're just that. Oh, you're just a Pentecostal. Oh, you're just a Catholic. You know, people put labels to box us, but I need to know who I am according to what God says. Every one of us needs to know clearly who we are according to what God says about me, and then I live out of what God says.

Now I may not be living up to it completely, but I'm not trying to prove that's who I am. I'm actually living up to who I am. Got the idea? So it's a real different thing, whereas most people try to establish who they are by doing something. God reveals who you are and then you begin to live up to it. Getting the idea? Okay then, so just have a look - I want to have a look first of all in John 1:29. Now Jesus' identity was defined very clearly. He knew exactly who He was. Because He knew who He was He didn't worry about position or rank, title. He didn't worry about what people thought about Him. He was actually free to be Himself, because He knew who He was so He didn't need someone else to say who He was. But we find His identity's defined in two places; one, it's defined by the prophet of God revealing something to Him in John 1:29.

And He says the next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and he said behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! Now you notice what's happening here. You have to understand this. John was God's representative in the earth and John was preaching the gospel, a repent of sin and repentance towards God and then water baptism. Now you've got to understand what the significance of this water baptism thing is. Water baptism was this, it was I have repented from my old life, my old way without God, and now I want to demonstrate openly that the old identity of life as I used to live it is gone. And I'm beginning a new life as a new person with a new framework - God is the centre. So baptism then was they go down into the water; the old life identity as you used to know is buried. Now there's a new person risen up, a walking with God person.

Now Jesus had to be baptised, not because He'd sinned but because He wanted to identify with what God was saying in that day. God was saying in that day repent, change your lifestyle, change your heart towards God, and begin to live a lifestyle of relationship in pleasing God. And to indicate that change get water baptised, so Jesus said - came down to John. John said You don't need to be water baptised, You should be doing that to me. He said no, to fulfil what's right before God I will be water baptised and notice now associated with His old life - what was His old life? His old life was His natural life as a carpenter in Nazareth, so when people looked at Him that's the carpenter of Nazareth, and He was saying My life as carpenter of Nazareth is over. I'm beginning who I really am which is the Son of God, Jesus, the Saviour of the world. Therefore I need to be baptised as a public demonstration of who I now am.

And associated with that there are two witnesses; one in the earth, one in heaven. John stood up and said behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! Who is this man in your midst? He's the Lamb of God. This is the Saviour. This is who He is. How did John know it? Revelation. How did he know who Jesus really - oh, that's my cuzzie bro. [Laughter] See, naturally that was true. John was His cousin; oh it's just my cousin. Who does He think He is? But he had revelation and the revelation was this is the Lamb of God. Now Jesus gets baptised. Do you know what immediately happens after He gets baptised? The heavens open and Father from heaven says this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased - so He has a voice on earth, speaking God's heart, God's revelation; a voice in heaven, this is who this person is.

He's not the carpenter you once knew. He's not the boy that grew up in that community. He's not that little child that was part of a big family that their dad died and He took over the business. This is the Saviour of the world, the promise of God, the gift of God. So how did he know who He was? It was revealed. He had there was a word from God through a prophet and a word from Father in heaven directly to him, so if he didn't know it before he knew it then! How did Jesus know who He was? God told Him, this is who You are, it's where You come from. This is who You are, this is where You're going, this is what You've got to do. So His identity was totally secure. Now I want you to have a look with me in Luke 3 - or look in Matthew 3. It's all the same sort of thing, Matthew 3. We'll just read in Matthew 3 - here it is there, verse 17. Suddenly a voice came from heaven saying this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased, so God's just burst out and said ah ha ha ha! Hey, I know who You are! You're My Son and I love You. Well I can't help shouting out from heaven! You understand?

So who is He? Well God - the prophet said who He is and the Father said who He is. There's no doubt who He is - and notice what the devil says, [Matthew 4:3. 00.12.47] When the tempter came and said to Him if You are - if You are. That's an identity question: who are You? If You are prove it, do something. Now you notice what he is, he's trying to move Jesus' identity from what God says He is, to proving it by what He does. And this was consistently a pattern in Jesus' life, is a tempter would come and say if You are this You ought to do that. If You're the Son of God - Luke 4 - he said if You're the Son of God prove it, do something. See? If You're the Son of God prove it, do something, see? Now there's a couple of other places too. I'll give you them but we won't look them up.

In Luke 23:8-9 Pilate hoped to see a miracle. If You are the Son of God do a miracle. Pilate asked Him a question; are You the king? Jesus said nothing. Now you'll notice when Jesus was challenged who He is - who are You? - He either quoted the word of God or He said nothing. He quoted the word of God or said nothing, but He never felt the need to prove who He was. You either received it and recognised it, or He didn't worry about it. If you didn't recognise who He was that's okay, it's your problem. When He came to His own town they said this is the carpenter. We grew up with this boy here. We know Him, we know His mother and brothers and sisters and the business they ran. They were offended and wouldn't believe and no miracles, so you understand they saw Him in natural terms. They did not realise who He really was, so because they didn't recognise His true identity they couldn't receive.

Do you realise that the way you get saved is to recognise the true identity of Jesus, what He did, who He is and what He's done? The moment you acknowledge that in your heart and speak it with your mouth, you're saved. Isn't that amazing? So each time Jesus come under a spiritual attack, this is one of the things. In Matthew 12:38-39 the scribes and Pharisees come up and said well if You're who You say You are, prove it. Do a miracle. Now what they're sort of saying is if you do a miracle I'll believe You're true. I'll believe You're the Son of God. Actually if he did a miracle - He did miracles. He raised Lazarus from the dead. You know what they wanted to do? Kill Lazarus, because this is a problem Lazarus living. He was dead before and he's alive now - we don't want to know how this happened. Let's just get rid of the fellow, because if we acknowledge it we'll have to acknowledge who Jesus is.

So miracles will not necessarily establish the identity of God, who He is and what He does. People just won't believe. If unbelief is in their heart they won't believe, so it's revelation. That's why Jesus said no one can come to the Father but by Me, and no one comes unless the Spirit reveals. Now you need to know who you are. You need God to reveal to you who you are as well. You need to know who you are, and I'll share that in the next message. I'll go clearly to what the Bible says about it, see? So look at this in the end of Jesus' ministry, Mark 15:29 and 32. They said hey, if You're the Son of God! Come down from the cross, prove it! So You're the Son of God, so You're the king. Prove it! Do something spectacular. So you notice even when unbelievers look - well you're a Christian, why don't you do this? Well I am a Christian and I do lots of things; I'm not choosing to do that for the moment.

You understand, people want to attach your identity to what you do, or they want you to prove who you are by what you do. Many believers, many Christians unfortunately are locked into what I call performance orientation and they define themselves according to what they're doing or have done. Now we all are subject to that. We all have that dilemma in our life until we become established clearly, this is who I am and I am happy with who I am, and I am growing in who I am and I'm actually able to be free to be that person. It brings tremendous liberty, so many people for example, they'd have something like this going on in their life; I'm a success. How do you know you're a success? Well look at all the things I've done, I must be. Well did God ask you to do all those things? Were you designed to do those things? Is that what the call of God was for you to do all those things? Is that how you're successful?

A person gets to the end of their life and they're about to die and go to heaven, they really have a reality check immediately on what was of value and what isn't. They never define their life [according to 00.17.13] what they did. It's always the relationships that they have and who they've expressed themselves to be, see? So you know, even God says - He says well I see you've done all these things, but did you love people? Is love in your heart? Are you a loving person? Who are you? Are you a loving person? Are you a generous person? What kind of person are you anyway? Well I look at my past and I see what I've done, I think I'm pretty miserable really - so we cannot define ourselves according to what we do, otherwise we'll come up with things I'm a success because I did this, this and this. I went to university, [sniffs] you didn't. But you see understand that when you define your identity around your performance, then you divide your world up into those who've performed less than you and you're better than them.

Then unfortunately you'll meet up with people who perform better than you and now you'll feel less than them, so you don't hang around them. They make you insecure because they challenge your identity. They show you up. You actually didn't do so much after all, and if your identity is attached to what you do the moment you meet someone who's accomplished a lot more you become insecure, because the comparison you were using before was someone who hadn't done so much; well look what I've done. I've got all this money together - look at you! And then you meet a billionaire; oh whoa! You understand, if our identity is attached to what we've accomplished, then we're insecure the moment those accomplishments fail or we meet someone else who's accomplished more, because our identity is attached to the wrong thing. So the moment you fail you've got issues about not the failure but who you are.

So for example if a woman attaches her identity to her children's performance that's an issue. Now the kids have got to perform or mum feels bad about herself, and when the kids are failing in front of people mum is now in a major insecure identity issue. It's not about the kids, it's not about training them, it's not about godliness. It's actually about I'm not looking good. I'm feeling bad, and you kids are causing it and I've got to really get control over you to stop this happening. So you cannot have your identity within your children. Children leave home, now you're rejected because got no kids around. Your identity's been in the wrong place. Our identity's not in our children. If your identity's in your children you can hardly say no to them and you will try to control them. Our identity must be in Christ. We're secure [in our Christ 00.19.46] and we steward our children for God. That means training them, saying no to them, shaping them and then eventually releasing them.

If your identity's in them you can't release them, because it's part of who you are. You're letting go. You can't die because your identity's tied [up. 00.20.04] You getting the idea? So people live with a thing like I'm inferior. Well where do you get this thing I am inferior? Inferior means you're comparing with something; well I'm comparing with you and I compare what's best in you with what's worst in me, and I am inferior. So my mindset is I'm inferior - but I'm not inferior. I am me, and you are not the basis for how I evaluate my life. The Bible says 2 Corinthians 12:10, it says if you compare yourselves, one with another, you're stupid and foolish and you've got no sense in the conclusions you come to. You can't use someone else as the basis for who you are. There's only one person we can use and that's Jesus Christ. Now you'll get to in a minute about what it means to be born again you see.

So if a person has got this whole performance base inside, essentially in their heart they believe if I do well I'm loveable and acceptable. If I don't do well I'm not acceptable, I'll be rejected. That's the core belief system inside and that has to shift, see? Now if a person believes that, if you believe that in your heart - I believed it for a long time. I believed it for years and you know what the fruit of it was? The fruit of it was every school I went to, every place I ever went I had the diligence prize, but do you know what drove it? A funny belief system inside, and a drivenness and a fear and a struggling and a striving that produced this thing which was not the fruit of the Spirit. It was the fruit of fear and inferiority in my life. See, so you can't use that. See I put approval which I was seeking on performance, so therefore performance was always the evaluation mark of who I was and how I was doing. [That right? 00.21.50]

Now when you think like that you have a whole heap of stuff goes on in your life, and you might know someone like this so I want you to listen to this list of fruit because I think you'll know someone just like that. You might even like to point it out to them. [Laughter] But don't expect them to receive it. You could expect an angry response - so the first thing is a person who's got their identity in their performance always needs affirmation about their performance. They constantly need to be affirmed. Why? If they're not affirmed they don't feel they are okay. Okay, second thing is they can't handle feedback because they feel rejected. Give them feedback; well this was good because of this, this and this. That was bad - oh! What do you think [unclear 00.22.31] - now you see because in their world when you say something about the behaviour you're attacking them, because their identity is attached to the performance.

Speak about the performance, now you're attacking them personally and they're going to get angry, resentful and react. Many Christians are like that. When you try to disciple them and talk about their behaviours and their attitudes they react and get offended and withdraw. This is the reason why; because their identity is not established in Christ. It's around their performance, and when you say something about the performance you say something about them. So you try to point out to a mother something about her child you know, four times out of five she'll react angrily. Talk to the dad, he'll probably say yeah, they've been doing that at home too - but the mums identity, because of the nurture is often - not always but often - more deeply attached to the child and their behaviour. A criticism of the child is perceived through this filter in the mind, that's an attack on me. [Laughs]

We had a standard policy: never talk to the mum, always talk to the dad first of all. He'll come up more honest and up front you know? [Laughs] If you want to know how it really is ask the mum. Okay, a person who's got performance orientation's afraid to try new things because they might fail. So you understand if your identity is tied to your performance, what's going to happen if you try something new? Yeah God, what if I fail? This is too much to think of. I can't possibly stand that - so there's a fear of failure. Another thing is constant fear of failure and what people think, so a person who's got performance orientation is always worried about what someone else is thinking. Well you know what, let me just tell you a little truth. People are going to think what they think no matter what happens. Who cares what they think? You see, the reason you're afraid of what people think is because you really want their approval because your identity's not secure in what God says about you, His thoughts about you. Are you getting the idea?

Okay then, so here's another thing about people who are performance oriented like this. They need to know the rules beforehand because they have to be in control, so whenever they come into something they've got to know exactly what's expected, [exactly what to think. 00.24.31] But actually the real thing underneath it is I'm terrified I'll make a mistake. I can't make a mistake. I CAN'T MAKE A MISTAKE! Tell me what the rules are! So they live their life by rules instead of spontaneous flow. Horrible way to live your life, by rules. Oh, you live in fear all the time you're going to break the rules, and of course - okay, so they need to know the rules; can't be spontaneous because they have to be correct. If you're living all your life and you have to be correct, you can't be spontaneous because you're always trying to do the right thing. What's the right thing? I don't know. Well look around, find out what seems to be the right thing around here. [Laughter]

You understand? And you get everyone doing that, you have a whole church culture where everyone's looking to do the right thing - whatever the right thing is. God doesn't call us that way, He calls us to do things that bring life and it doesn't matter whether you think it's right or not. Its irrelevant see, so you can't be spontaneous if you're controlled and correct. Of course you know, a person who's like that, they'll give out their affection and praise in a very measured amount: I'll give it if you deserve it. You don't deserve it, so I'll withhold it. You understand that, because that's been their experience; I'm loved if I perform. If I don't perform I'm not loved, so that's how I dish things out to the world. But you know that's not the biblical perspective. God is a God of love, I'm made in His image, I'm a loving person. I love because I love, not because you deserve it.

You get this in the church [unclear 00.25.52] huge issues. A lot of people have this kind of thing going on in their life, and of course if you don't perform right they give you the cold shoulder; you don't meet what I want. So you get the silent treatment, the cold shoulder. In a marriage they withhold sex until you do what I want you to do. That makes a person a prostitute because I'll give you sex if you do what I want you to do. That's humiliating and demeaning to the person who operates that way, and they feel defiled by it. This is a strong culture, it's a strong thing in the culture and of course when it gets into church you have a huge issue when it gets into church. Of course you've got to understand this when you're working with children. You know when you work with children, I've been into schools and it was so - religious schools - so tight I thought I could never send my kids there.

I'd rather they went to a secular school than be exposed to this thing, because it'll destroy them. It'll destroy their soul, but you see because a religious spirit is the worst kind. So a religious spirit is something which is trying to please God, but see true Christianity, God has already done the thing that pleased and we've just got to trust it so now we're free to be ourselves. So we're FREE! Ha ha! Ooh, [unclear 00.27.09]. Thank God I don't have to perform, you know? Like I've been living out of something someone else did for me, not my own performance, and so when you've got that kind of environment - of course you've got to understand in a home, in a home one of the things that builds a great home is when you have a lot of laughter together because it's hard to be controlled and laugh at the same time. [Laughter, applause]

Let it out, a great hearty laugh [laughs] and you know there's something free about that that people like. See, not much laughter around the home? Boy, she's tight - and then if it's not much laughter and it's all controlled do you know what happens? A kids spirit gets shut down inside and they get - you know what? They don't believe - this is what they believe in their heart: I can't be myself in this environment. I can't share my feelings and my feelings are part of me; I can't share my thoughts, my thoughts are part of me, because the moment I do they'll say you're not to think like that. You shouldn't feel that way. In our family we don't do those kinds of things. Now you understand that kind of environment crushes kids and raises them to be performers and they're really insecure. When there's laughter and affection and people are accepted and mistakes are not you know, dwelt on [unclear 00.28.16]. Listen, get over it. Come on, it's a light thing. Little kids make mistakes you know?

But you see if your identity's tied up in the kid performing perfectly, you're going to require something of them that crushes their spirit. Love and laughter and affirmation, that creates a healthy environment for everyone - including me. [Laughs] I love it - so of course when people get into church, of course now OH NO! I've got all these new things I've got to do! [Laughter] It was hard before and it's terrible now! [Laughter] Now God, I must do this and I mustn't do that, and I have to do this and I can't do that, oh! And that's people's concept of Christianity. You talk to unsaved people, their concept is you can't do this, you can't do that, you have to do this, you have to do that. Listen, I don't have to do anything. Because I love the Lord I do the things that please Him. They're part of who I am. You getting the idea?

So the Pharisees were like that and of course when there's people like that they're striving to be perfect all the time. They're full of guilt and full of striving - and they're full of envy. They look around, you know they're watching what everyone else is doing; who did the pastor talk to? He didn't talk to me. [Laughter] What does that mean? It means he favours this one, doesn't favour me. They get all screwed up inside on it. [Laughter] He looked at me, he didn't say anything. What does that mean? [Laughter] It didn't mean anything; he was thinking about something else, that's all it means. Came in and I said hello and he didn't say hello, just walked straight past me. What does that mean? [Laughter] He hates me, I know it. I knew it. I've always known he hates me. [Laughter] No, no, he was thinking about something else. He just walked on by and never heard a word.

Come on, you've got to understand, this is stuff that goes on with people when they're insecure inside and it's because they're watching everyone, they're comparing, envy, someone gets something - I didn't get that. How come I didn't get that? Why do they get it? They don't deserve it. Well maybe they just got it not because they deserved, but because someone was generous. God is generous. He doesn't give things because you deserve it, He gives it because He's generous. Yee aah! Well I paid my tithe, God's got to give me - God doesn't operate like that! I'm glad God's saved me, my finance [was His hands so 00.30.23] so I'm glad to give, and God is glad to bless me. But the moment you get into this performance thing you come under the law and it becomes miserable and legalistic and people can't trust God, they can't be spontaneous. They're shut down.

I've been into some churches and I look and I think oh my God, this is disastrous. There's one place I would never be if I was in this city was that church there. [Laughter] I would die. The first thing I want to do is get them to laugh. [Unclear 00.30.49] we came here in the beginning, 40 - when I turned 40 we started this church here and the first thing we had to do was start to have a party because everyone was serious and miserable. [Laughter] Had to learn how to laugh and have fun. Laughter and fun are part of the kingdom of God. We're called to have joy in the Holy Ghost. [Unclear 00.31.04] It's not helpful for you - so the Pharisees were like that. The Pharisees lived that way, and Jesus said here's your problem. You're concerned about every little performance of the law, this done right, that done right, this done right. But you miss everything that's really important to God, which is on the heart and on the inside. You miss the whole deal.

The Pharisees were full of performance orientation because their identity, I am a godly man because I do all these good things. Actually the truth is I'm a godly man because I trusted in Jesus Christ. If any man is in Christ he's a new creation! So I'm a new creation! Well I still do some goofy things. Well that doesn't mean I'm a goofy person. It just means I haven't yet grown up into the fullness of the identity I have in Christ. I'm a generous person because God is a generous God! Generosity's in me. I'm a bit mean and miserable sometimes. That means I just haven't grown up into the fullness of what God has of abundance of generosity, because I've got some fears and brokenness and damage I need to sort out. Well I am holy! You don't look holy to me. [Laughter] I know you're not holy, I saw what you did. [Laughter] That wasn't a holy thing at all. You're right, but I am holy because God is holy and I'm in His image. I'm just learning to live up to it.

Thank you for pointing out [laughter] but I'm still holy - not because of that thing but because God says it. He says be holy, He doesn't say do holy things. Do lots of holy things and you'll be a holy person. He says you are holy, now live up to it! Spirit of holiness is in your life, let the spirit of God begin to identify with the new man you are! In 2 Corinthians 5:17, any man who's in Christ, he is a new creation. That's what it means to be born again! You're sinning, you're living a life without God, you're struggling, victim mentality - oh, poor me! Poor me! Oh there's so many bad things, always bad things. And then you - performance, I've got to do things to be accepted. Then you come to Christ; what have I got to do to be saved? Repent and believe! There must be more to it than that? No, religion's more to it than that. This is what Christianity is. Repent and believe! Now be baptised! Why do I need to get baptised? Because you need to acknowledge the realities of what's happened in you.

Your old identity, your sin in living without God finish. Now you rise up and you get immersed in the Holy Ghost. You've got a new life you're living and you know what? We called a new name on you. We called on you the name of Christ. You are a Christian, a Christ follower. Live up to it! Live up to it! So now I have to discover who I am and begin to live that life - so what's happening while I'm discovering? I have all kinds of things go wrong on the way, all kinds of immaturity, all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of failures. It doesn't matter, because God said it's okay and made provision for all of those. You're a believer and a Christian not because of those things happening or not happening. It's because I've already given you the gift of love. Now I want you to discover who you are. Who are you? Who are you now? I don't know who I am, I think I'm a failure still.

Why do you think you're a failure? Well I look at all this stuff. Listen, learn how to walk with the Spirit, walk in the principles of God and your life will be surrounded. You're already a success. God designed you for success. Start saying it; I'm a success in life. I'm a success because of one thing. I've discovered the God who made me and I'm linked to Him for eternity. I don't worry about what you think about my life. I'm only concerned about what God is saying about my life and if you're speaking on His behalf then I'm really concerned. Getting the idea? So what does God say? He says I'm generous. I'm holy. I'm a child of God. What does that mean? I need to understand what that means and live it. Then when you go out I'm an ambassador, [well that sounds 00.35.20] important. Now you see before I was thinking I'm a victim. Now God says no, you're an over comer. But I don't feel like an over comer.

It's not about what you feel. But look, I've got things going wrong. It's not about what's happening around you. I HAVE MADE YOU THAT! BELIEVE IT! STAND UP and learn how to live in it and get rid of the junky thinking inside. Start to live out what I've called you to become! As you walk in the Spirit and as you begin to express what I'm like, then it establishes your identity who you are. Otherwise you just live out of the old and you're trying hard to be new, and that's where so many believers live in defeat. They're trying to be a better person. You're trying to do God's work for Him. He didn't tell you to be a better person, He said I made you a better person, believe it. Live it. I made you generous. Well I don't - I'm not - well that's because you've got some bondages in your life, but that's not who you are. In fact have you noticed that when you're like that and your money's tight and you can't [unclear 00.36.27], have you noticed how miserable you are and how closed up you are and your life is not so good?

You notice, because you're not living who you are. Who you are is generous! I love what Anna said: I love to give! It's fun to give! See, she's living out of being a giver. Oh, well what did God do for me this week? Maybe I'll give Him something. Listen, no, I'm a giver, that's who I am. That's why I give, because I am. My identity is that, therefore I do. My identity is this, therefore I do. My identity is I'm a child of God, therefore I talk to Him daily. My identity is an ambassador, so therefore I'm concerned about how I represent Him. It's because of who I am, not because of what you think, because there'll be times when you represent Christ and everyone hates you and turns on you - but you're still a wonderful person identified with Christ, His ambassador. Huh! See, so if you've got an issue with performance orientation here's a couple of things.

Number one, you need to acknowledge it's a disease that infects your whole life and relationships, because not only do you evaluate your identity on what you do; you evaluate everyone else the same way and it infects your relationships. You need to recognise it's a cancer of the soul. It is a cancer of the soul that eats out true faith and true identity. The first thing, I've got to acknowledge it and start to look how I'm behaving. The second thing I need to do is I need to actually repent of it. I need to come to face the unbelief in my heart. I haven't believed I'm accepted, I reckon I've got to do something to get there see? And I listen to people's language: how are you getting on? Oh, I'm getting there. I've arrived, I'm just enjoying the journey. [Laughs] Where are you getting? Well implicit in that statement 'I'm getting there' is I've got all these things I've got to try and get over and overcome and change and shift. Why can't you just enjoy being who you are and enjoy the journey?

So we've got to believe, and so that means I've got to change the beliefs in my heart, I've got abandon, repent and abandon the belief systems that keep me performing to get approval, performing to get accepted. We've got to abandon that stuff, so it may take a little time to figure out what you believe, and then you start to repent of it. The third thing is you actually need to acknowledge that because you've lived that way you are very resentful and angry inside. Oh, no I'm not. [Laughter] I tell you what'll flush it up: someone else getting really, I mean really, really blessed and they don't deserve it. It'll flush it up in you. That's why - the Prodigal Son. The son come home, he's wasted all his money, wasted his life; Oh dad, I'm sorry. Dad just loves him and blesses him, gives him a party - and the other son is furious! Hssss [laughter] resentful and angry. And notice when his dad comes out to talk to him what he says.

Well, I've served you all this time. I've never gone out and done this wild party living. You've never done this for me! You've never acknowledged me. You've never thanked me and appreciated me. I've been the good son instead of the bad son! Then this rotten son of yours, I'm - he's nothing to do with me! He's your son. He's come back and now you put a party on. What is up with you?! You understand, this man is totally oriented to performance and it always brings resentment and anger and religiosity. He was there, he could had everything. He never had it because of his attitude. He never understood the father's heart. The father said everything I've got is yours, why didn't you ask for something? I thought I had to work for it. There's your trouble.

Father in heaven, we just thank You right now, You're a God who's a gracious God, a loving God, oh a God who loves people. Oh Halleluiah, I just thank You love people. Jesus was declared by His enemies to be the friend of sinners. I want to be that kind of person Lord, I am that kind of person in You, in Christ. I'm a friend of God and I'm a friend of sinners. Father, I just thank You what You're showing us at this time about becoming really understanding and believing in our hearts who we are. Father, I pray for every person here that's struggling with this issue. I wonder if there's anyone here today and you're not yet a Christian, have never given your life to Christ. You're struggling as a broken person in the world without God, no sense of destiny, where your eternal purpose is; no sense of understanding of God's love for you and a relationship you could have with Him, so you're trying hard to look good.

It's hard work looking good. It's real hard work having an image. Why don't you just come to the Lord and He'll just receive you. The Bible says everyone who comes to Jesus Christ, who puts their trust in Him, believes in Him, receives Him as their Saviour, He welcomes them. He's your friend, but you can make Him your friend by acknowledging what He's done and committing your life to Him. Is there any person here today, you say I want to give my life to Jesus, want to become a Christian? Why don't you raise your hand right now, just let me know, I want to become a Christian, I want to give my life to Jesus. Anyone here, put your hand up, say man this is my day, I want to give my life to Jesus. Is there anyone here who'll give their life to Jesus, ready, right at that point? I wonder if there are other people here today and you're wrestling with this performance orientation. If you were to be honest you'd say man, this is me. This is me! I've got a problem in my life.

I wonder if you'd just acknowledge it before God today, say Lord, You're speaking to me. Too much of my identity is attached to what I do. I get insecure when people give me feedback. I get upset when they talk about things I've done. I just am watching all the time what others are going through and what's happened to them and comparing myself. I've got all these things going on inside me Lord, and I need to repent of that whole framework and belief system and begin to renew my mind. If that's you why don't you just raise your hand, say God's speaking to me today. God bless, many hands going up, many hands. Many hands, many hands. Remember what the keys are. The first step is recognising it; second is repenting, just repenting of the belief system. Third is letting go the resentment and anger and forgiving people. The final one is that you've got to learn to embrace the word of God.

I'm going to share that in another session, how to get God's word around your heart and begin to establish your identity soundly, strongly, in who I am in Christ. I am a child of God. I am the servant of the Lord. I am an ambassador of Christ. I am a new creation. I am holy - and then we need to learn to live [up. 00.43.07] Father, I thank You for each one that's responded. Father, let there be right now in Jesus' name, I speak and I break that spirit of fear and control that dominates their life. I break the power of that orientation around their life to try and perform to get approval. Father, I ask for the power of Your Spirit to come around each one and to begin to shift them so they can be free to be who they are, able to be spontaneous, able to love and to receive love, able to give and receive gifts, able to enjoy the journey because they're secure in who they are.

And Jesus we give You all the honour and all the glory. We thank You, You've welcomed us. We thank You, we don't have to listen to that Pharisee spirit. We don't have to listen to that accusing, blaming, self-righteous spirit. We don't have to tolerate it in any way! We can be ourselves, oh ho ho ho! Thank You Lord. Thank You for Your goodness. You say amen to that. [Amen] Come on, let's give the Lord a great clap! Whoa! [Applause] Come on, let's stand up, let's celebrate. This God we serve is a great God! [Music to end] Halleluiah!

[File ends 00.44.23]

Establishing your Identity in Christ (4 of 4)

Sun 22 Jun 2008 AM  « Back to Top

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Establishing Your Identity in Christ (4 of 4) Mike Connell 22.06.2008 am

Okay, I wonder if you can open your Bible, Proverbs 23:7. I want to finish the series I began a little while ago and I've got to finish it by giving you some practical keys, so I want to get there and we're just going to quickly pick up what we've been doing. We've been looking at our identity in Christ, your identity, your identity and it's part of what the Lord was talking to us about through the year. Proverbs 23:7, as a man thinks in his heart so he is. Today I want to just talk about establishing your identity in Christ, who am I? We saw in this verse here, let's just summarise some things we've done over the last couple of weeks so we get to the new things - and first thing we looked at, Proverbs 23:7 tells us as a man thinks in his heart. What you believe in your heart about yourself will determine how you live your life. Make no mistake about it; the way you see yourself affects the way you live.

Even in the secular world they talk about self-image, the way you see yourself, the way you view yourself. That actually affects the way you relate, the way you connect. It affects your expectations, it affects the way you connect with people, so how you see yourself. If you see yourself as a person with nothing to give you won't front up to give. You'll always stand back in the crowd and always be a little unhappy someone else stood up and did something. If you see yourself as being uneducated, therefore you can't contribute, this is actually a lie and many people who are not educated are great achievers in life. You understand? But if you get the message while you're at school I'm a dummy, I can't do anything, and you begin to believe that it's going to affect your performance all through your life.

I prayed for a young man who had been rejected totally by his father, totally abused by his father, got involved in homosexual activities and he got a massive deliverance. Actually it was on the floor of a restaurant. I was up there in this restaurant and he gave his testimony and I was really deeply touched by his testimony and I thought I'd like to pray for him. So I got my hands on him and prayed for him and actually gave him a big hug. I held onto him and gave him a big hug, such a non-homosexual hug [laughter] and a big hug, a big father hug and held him. I held him and he just began to break and weep. He wept and wept and wept and then we just cast these demons out of him. Well the staff were just astonished. This guy's rolling around the floor and these demons coming out of him, and afterwards just totally clean. But you see his mind had been shaped, the way he saw himself and he just needed to get free.

I had another young guy in a church just recently and he also had had a similar background. He just said in his heart, he said I just want the pastor to hug me and I hugged [unclear 00.02.46] going on praying for people. I saw this one guy, just gave him a big hug and held him, he began to weep. I didn't know what it was. Later on he said God had touched and set him free, just like that. See, but these people saw themselves in a certain way, so how you see yourself is going to affect how you live your life. How you see yourself will affect how you live your life and we saw that people defined themselves in a whole number of ways; by our name: who are you? Oh well I'm Mike. We define ourselves by our name, we define ourselves by where we've come from, I come from this family line. We define ourselves by our race, I'm a Kiwi or I'm an Irishman or I'm a Maori or I'm a Cook Islander.

We define ourselves by gender; I'm a woman, I'm a man - and if we're not sure, well I don't know you know? I'm in between. [Laughs] But if you're uncertain, boy it's certain you're going to put some vibes out there that people will pick up. So we define ourselves in a whole number of ways and we saw also people define themselves by the experiences they've had. So if they've had a lot of failure experiences and they believe I am a failure, then what happens is they begin to live their life out according to that and they fail repeatedly. We saw also that if people had experienced abuse, injustice or whatever and they began to believe I'm a victim, I'm powerless, I can't help myself; then what happens is they begin to then be victimised all through life. That's why young women who have been abused tend to attract into their life men who abuse them - until the issue is resolved. When the young girl gets a different view of herself, then she'll attract a different kind of guy in.

That's why you've got to be made whole. You don't want to hang around - in fact if you've been abused don't think of entering into romantic relationships until you've resolved your baggage. You're bringing your baggage in, you've got a bad future ahead of you. At some point it'll come up and you'll have to resolve it. What I have noticed is people who see themselves as being a victim of abuse tend to attract into their life people who will abuse them. It's just like until it's resolved you're like a magnet for this stuff. That's why you have to change, we have to renew how we think about ourself and even you notice in Uganda when the woman saw themselves in a certain way. Just getting the truth that actually a woman is a minister of God sets them free. Now they start to think, I can do that kind of stuff. So many of the ways we see ourself are shaped by our family background, our culture, the community we're in. All kinds of things affect it.

So we're wanting to move from that and to look at how we get established in Christ. So the first thing we talked about was how God defines us according to His purpose, so when we looked at Jesus we found in Matthew He shall be called Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. So when God brings a person into the earth He has a purpose for our life, so He wants you to see yourself in terms of your relationship with Him and what you're called to do with your life and destiny. You're an important person. You're an important person. Jesus, when He was baptised, the father spoke to Him: this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. So He received His identity by revelation. He was who the Father said He was. Now people from His hometown said that's just Jesus, the carpenter. He said no, I'm Jesus, the Saviour, and so He lived His life out of revelation of who God said He was.

Those who related to Him according to Him being Jesus, the carpenter, He couldn't touch their life at all. He couldn't receive any miracles, and hence you see the problem. If we view ourselves according to the way the world's described us we can't live out what God called us to be. If you view other people according to a natural way you've seen them, according to where they've come from, what family they're in, you will confine them and they won't be released to be who they are. Sitting next to you is someone waiting for their potential to be released. Are you going to confine them by your expectations, or are you going to help them become who they were called to be? Church community is to be a community where we call people forth into who God has called them to be. You don't have to make people anything; we have to find out what God has called them to be and help them become it.

You can see it's quite different, as we get to the end of this you'll see this. So you notice then Jesus was incredibly secure in His identity. In John 13 it says in verses 1, 2 and 3, somewhere around about there, he said Jesus knew where He came from. He knew where He was going, He knew what the Father had given Him, and do you know what He could do? He could serve. He wasn't worried about position, wasn't worried about title, wasn't worried about privilege. This is important to lots of people - wasn't important to Jesus at all. He took up the lowliest job and washed their feet. He said I'm your master and I can do this. You guys can do it too. In other words because His identity was secure He could have any position, status anywhere; His life was not found in those things. Life was not found in His money, not found in property, it's not found in His position, not found in His title. It's found this is who I am, for the Father told Me so and so He could lay His life down.

If you're not sure who you are you'll look for people around you to affirm it. You'll try and find your identity outside yourself, when actually you need to find it inside yourself by hearing what God has to say about you. I don't care what the authorities say about you. What does God say about you? I don't care what your past friends have said about you, what does God say about you? That's your potential. That's who you can be. Most people will only know where you've been, but God knows where you could go and so we see in the Bible as we - remember, we looked at this. We looked at various people, how God spoke to them. God speaks into us and sometimes He changed the names of people, because He wanted them to get a different picture so they can fully embrace the call of God. For example Abraham; we saw his name was originally Abram and God changed his name to Abraham so everywhere he went they'd say who are you? Oh, I'm the father of nations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're an old fella, where's the nations you know? Where's the father thing you know?

But he had to actually present himself as I am this. I am this. Well we don't agree with that, we don't see any kids. I don't care whether you see any kids, I am this because God said so. The Bible says in Romans 4:17, God calls things that be not as though they are, so before He was physically a father God called him a father and he agreed with God and he called himself a father. This is part of the way faith operates; you don't try and work hard to become something. You find out what God says you are and begin to embrace that until you actually grow into it. There's a huge difference; one, people are striving to become something, and the other, you're beginning to understand who you are and then embrace how you live that out. You'll see this is incredibly important when it comes to your Christian walk, because you're either trying to become someone - I ask the question how are you doing? I'm getting there. I think you've got a problem, because you've got some imaginary place you're wanting to get when actually what you need to know is be rested, I am already acceptable in Christ. I'm growing up and working it out.

I'm discovering more and more about who God called me to be and what He called me to do, see? So Gideon, Gideon, you mighty man of valour! He said what? What? Where? Listen, I'm only the youngest in the family. So you understand that over and over again in the Bible God spoke to people according to what He had called them to be and to do. Simon - Simon, you're going to be called Peter, the rock. James and John, it says Jesus called them another name, sons of thunder because you're going to up heave the place everywhere! So sometimes in the Bible God renamed people in order for them to get fixed in their mind this is who I am as I walk with God. Otherwise you're living out of who everyone else said you were as you grew up and that's where most people live. They live out of their background, their past, their concepts, their beliefs, instead of actually making it a life pursuit to discover what does God say about me. Who am I?

Only the One who made you knows who you are and what lies inside you, what dreams are in there, what hopes are in there, what possibilities are in there. There's no one around you can tell you that. The One who created you can tell you that, but you've got to stop trying to be someone else and actually discover what does God say about me. That's what is going to be the foundation of my life. This is who I am. I am who God says I am. I am forgiven. I am loved. I am redeemed. I am blessed. It's got nothing to do with anything outside me; this is what God says. I'll live out of what God says - and that's how Jesus said you've got to live your life. The devil came to Him; if you are this then prove it, do something. He said man shall live not by bread alone, every word I live by what God says. I don't have to prove anything to anyone. You understand, because I live out of what the Father says about me. That's a really important thing to get a hold of, a major, major thing.

Now when you embrace your identity in Christ you become free then to actually connect with people, because you don't have to build a mask around you. You can be who you are. When you become secure in your identity who you are, you can actually then become quite creative because you don't have to copy anyone. You can be an original. When you become free in your identity and who you are you can connect with people without a mask; you can be creative and you can be quite confident because you're not being someone else, you're being you. What a liberating thing that is! Not trying to be someone else. One of the big pressures young people face is trying to be someone else, so the Bible says a lot of things about us. Let me read you a couple of scriptures, then I want to show you who we are in Christ and how we establish it in our life. Here's a couple of scriptures.

In 1 John 3:1-2, Beloved, now we are the children of God! See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God! Now beloved we are. Who are we? We are the children of God. It does not appear what we shall be. In other words no one can see what you're really like - but when He appears we shall be like Him, but we shall see Him as He is. So clearly it tells me I'm a child of God, I'm growing and I will come to a place of maturity just being like Christ. That's what God has in mind, wants you to actually have the character in life of His Son, being a true Christian [laughs] instead of a copy. Okay, so there's a simple scripture. Look at 1 John 4:17. The Bible says as He is - what is Jesus like right now? As He is, so are we in the world now. I pray that one over me regularly; Lord, as You are, so I am in the world now, so I begin to declare what He's like. His nature, His characteristics are in me and flow through me, because the Bible says it. As He is, so am I now.

Well I don't feel like that. Hey, it's got nothing to do with feelings. Your feelings and everything around you will change if your heart belief will change. Got to work on the heart belief system see? Okay, I want you to have a look with me in 2 Corinthians 5. So the Bible tells us many things about who are. You've got a job to discover it, otherwise you're only who people say you are and who you think you are, but God says there's much more to you than that, much, much more to you than that. You are His workmanship, God's working on you, fine piece and master of art. You're His workmanship. You're His servant. Do you see yourself as a servant of God? You're a minister of God. Do you see yourself as a minister of God? Wherever you go you can bring God to people; do you see that? Do you believe that? If you believe that then of course you'll want to be equipped on how you can move in the spirit of God to bring God to people, because that's who you are. You do that kind of thing.

Let's have a look in 2 Corinthians 5. I want to read a few verses here and we'll pick it up in verse 14. For the love of Christ motivates us, because we judge that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. I reckon if someone gave you $1 million you'd feel very indebted to them for helping you. What if someone laid His life down for you? You'd feel quite indebted to respond. Okay, it says from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we've known Christ according to the flesh, we know Him this way no longer. Notice that - from now on we no man after the flesh. I'll tell you what that means in a moment - therefore if anyone is in Christ he's a new creation; old things have passed away and behold, everything has become new. I've got a problem straight away because it doesn't feel like everything's become new.

Now let's just go through it, and then it says then we are ambassadors for Christ. I want to go through a few things in here and show you. Notice what the Bible tells us, it says we have new motivation when you become born again. The new motivation, it says now the love of Christ compels me forward. I'm not doing things because I have to any more, not doing things because it's the right thing to do any more; I'm doing things because I'm loved by God and the love makes me want to do stuff. See, the love of Christ constrains or motivates or harnesses my life. I want to do things I never wanted to do before. Before you came to the Lord you're selfish. That was the old you. The new you is generous. Have you caught up with who the new you is yet, or are you still living the old one? So you notice the first thing is we've got a new motivation in the love of Christ. Notice the second thing here, it says we no longer live for ourselves, so we've got a new centre of living.

So we're no longer self-centred now. We're thinking man, I want to live my life for the Lord. I want to please the Lord. I've got someone who loves me, committed to me! I want to serve Him! I want to so connect with Him that my life makes a difference, otherwise I don't think that way, I'm thinking like I used to live. It's just what's in this for me, see? So [we no longer 00.17.14] live for ourselves. Notice a couple of other things here; got a new perspective and it says before, from now on we know no one after the flesh, got a new perspective on people. Now what does it mean to know someone after the flesh? It means when you look at people you start to look at them differently, so when you're born again you start to look at people differently. You don't look at them and say how much money this man's got, or what job he's got or whether he's white or black or brown or yellow. We're not looking at whether it's a male or a female. We now see people differently.

The problem is of course if you don't realise that you see people differently you're just going to relate to them the way you used to, out of prejudice and attitudes. But you see if I'm motivated by the love of God now, and if I actually start to look at people differently I see this is a lovely person that God created to represent Him. This is my brother, this is someone in the family of God. I'm not worried whether he's the mayor of town or whether he's got some great position or some great influence or income. That's got nothing to do with anything. We're not to know people after the flesh. To know them after the flesh means you judge people and you put them into ranks of social status; this is high up, this is low down; moneyed status, this is rich, this is poor, or positional status or racial status or gender status. Said in Christ all of those things have gone, because God doesn't see us that way. It's time I caught up in my thinking and look at people differently.

The new me sees people like Jesus sees them, as immensely valuable people, eternal beings. So if you just start to look at people as whether they can get you ahead you'll just be the same old person you used to be. You'll say you're a Christian, come to church, but you're living out of someone you used to be, not out of who you are now. This is the [dilemma. 00.19.04] I want to show you how you can shift on the inside in that area, so the Bible says henceforth we know no man after the flesh, but you know people after the spirit. In other words you can feel something about them the moment you meet them. You can weigh them up, you can sense where they're at, you begin to feel the person's flow of spirit. You can sense when they've got walls up, you can sense things about them. Why? Because I'm knowing people after the spirit now. That's a whole new way of living, of learning to relate to people after the spirit.

There are no old people, young people, rich people, poor people, Jew people, Gentile people. There's all just one kind of people. These are valuable representatives of God and I need to learn how to love them; old and young, black and - whatever colour, see? And you understand that old mentalities will stop you doing that. We've got to upgrade our thinking how we see people, otherwise you'll see well that's women, women don't do that. Well who said? Where did you get that idea from? Well that's a man, men do that. Where did you get that idea from? Why don't you see people in the spirit? Why don't you see them according to the way God sees them, which is according to their new identity in Him, a child of God with enormous potential? If you saw people that way you wouldn't talk against them, judge them, find fault with them, look at the outside and judge them according to appearances.

How can you judge people according to appearance? You've got no idea what's going on and you've got no idea what motivates them. The only way you'll ever find out is if you don't judge them on the outside; you let God show you things and you listen to what God says about them. It's one of the hardest things of all to do is to withhold judging people, just not to judge them, just hold it until God has given you some insight. Okay, so we're getting on - now notice what it says here about our new identity. We're getting to it now. If anyone is in Christ he is totally new. I like that. Old things, all of them are gone away. They're passed away, meaning they're dead. He passed away means he died. The old things passed away. Notice it says behold, all things have become new. Now of course when you look - I used to look at that scripture and think oh man, that's a tricky one because I don't feel like it and I definitely don't live like it, so what's the deal here?

God saying I'm a new creation means when I'm born again I got a total renovation on the inside of the house, a fresh start. Therefore the Spirit of God coming into me gives you and me a fresh start, and now the Bible says behold or take a look at this! But all the old stuff's passing away and there's new things are coming into your life. Get the picture? You see if you don't get the picture that having come to Christ, that everything old passes away and now new things are coming into your life, you're going to live out of the old instead of embracing the new. And He says behold, get a grip on it, get a vision of it, get a picture of it that old things - old things means the selfish way of running your life, self-centred, self-sufficient, just the way of relating to God and to people and to life. It's all gone away. He said behold, new things have started.

Now the problem is even though God has practically and legally made all things new, it's not my experience until I start to make it mine. So for example when Jesus died on the cross all men potentially could be saved and go to heaven, but only those who actually make a response to Him by faith. Then they're born again, they receive Jesus as Saviour, sins are forgiven. Now we're positioned for a life of becoming a new person. In God's eyes He said everything is changed. This is a new person. It's a child of God that was a sinner. This is a child of God, this is one of My family now, totally changed. Now have they changed in the way they think? Not so much. Have they changed the way they live their life? Yeah, a little bit. But there's a lot of stuff has not changed yet, so why is it not changed? Because something's required of me. God says everything is passed away, and now you can be that new person I've called you to be. You need to discover it.

How am I going to do that? I've got to actually begin to discover from the word of God what He says about me, so let's have a look in Ephesians 4:22. This is what He says. Notice it says a very simple thing here. He says put off concerning the way you used to live your life, the old man which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness. Now notice God requires me to cooperate with Him in making some effort here, so He doesn't - even though you're born again and the Spirit of God's come into you on the inside, you've still got old beliefs, old emotions, old struggles, old ways, old habits, but potentially everything is new. You've got to know I am new and begin to throw off - it says put off, like take the garments off that you used to live like and put on new ones.

The key to doing it is you've got to change how you think, be renovated in your mind. So that raises a good question; how do I renovate my mind? How do you renovate your mind? Put off, put on, renovate the mind, renovate your thinking. So if you just understand how your mind works; your mind or your subconscious mind stores up every experience you've ever had, it stores it up, it's all stored in there; the feelings you've had, the painful things, the difficult things, the memories of things you've [had 00.24.33] all stored in there like in a big super filing system. The beliefs you formed, they're all in there too. The judgements you formed, well they're all in there too. The opinions, yes, they're all in there. They're ALL in there, so you've got this huge box inside your subconscious mind, all the things that you've learned over the years and experienced over the years.

Now what are you going to do? Well the way you live your life is no matter what you say or do, as soon as you have an experience it'll trigger off something inside you and you'll act out of the old - unless you decide to change it. This is why so many Christians live defeated, because they don't understand the cooperation required of us in working with God to renew the inside of our heart and mind. If I don't do the work of renewing I just will live out of the way I used to before, same old reactions, same old anger, same old hurt, same old rejection, same old, same old, same old. And yet now I'm trying hard to be a Christian. What a bore! It's too hard. [Laughter] It's too hard. God wants me to relax; this is who I am, now I begin to work with the Holy Spirit as He shows me to process and deal with issues in my life. That's not so hard, not a hard thing to do.

You don't have to try and rack up all the junk and get it all. As you walk through life if you live a reflective life with the Holy Spirit He will show you stuff, and if He doesn't someone around you will point it out to you. Isn't that nice? [Laughter] You've got a bad attitude! Then you've got a chance; oh, I've got a bad attitude. I wonder what is that attitude and what can I do to shift that attitude? Or you can say who do you think you are anyway!? Oh yes, you really have got a bad attitude. You're just responding out of the old ways you used to respond. You haven't actually understood the new man in Christ operates differently. You've got to learn who I am and how to operate my life see? So how am I going to do it? Let me give you four things which are part of the process. I'll just lay them out for you very simply. Number one - and you sort of work on all of these at one time or you could work on any one bit at one time, but it is a part of the process, okay?

So I'll give it to you in four bites, what kinds of things you can do. Remember, it's our responsibility to shift. In Romans 12:2 it says don't be pressured or conform to the way the world does things, or be pushed into a mould so you're like everyone else. Be transformed or go from a [butterfly to a caterpillar 00.26.59] kind of life by being renewed in your mind. So if I'm going to be transformed or change my lifestyle it starts with renovating the mind. Renovation is like this: you go in and you gut the building and you put in the new stuff, so you've got to see what needs to be ripped out first of all you know. Don't just lose your brain. You've got to actually be quite constructive with your mind, so you notice that the first thing I need to do then is I need to resolve past issues which impact my identity. I need to resolve past issues that impact who I am or who I think I am, so for example if you've got victim issues you've got to process the stuff.

If you've got performance issues you've got to process that stuff - so what do you mean by process it? Well you need to actually allow the Holy Spirit to help you remember those painful experiences where you were humiliated or hurt and you began to form beliefs inside. As you remember them you just grieve over them, forgive the people concerned and begin to identify what you believe that needs to change. And it can happen so easily. I was just driving down the road, I was driving - where was I driving? Driving somewhere. I was driving around to a birthday part and I just felt tears come to my eyes. I said what is that [unclear 00.28.17] I'm going to a birthday party, [I might be 00.28.19] happy, not crying! And I felt the Holy Ghost just talk to me, just dropped a thought into my heart. I said can we put it on hold until after the party's over? [Laughter] I'm not going there to have a howlybag at a birthday part, so I went back afterwards, went into my room, began to just pray and then I began to engage and encounter the Lord showed me what He wanted to shift in my life.

The emotions were the first key to get that there was something there needed to be resolved. I was able to just bring it up, allow myself to feel the emotions, find what was going on and then Jesus touched me and the whole belief system shifted in my life. It wasn't so hard at all. It's not hard. It's not hard. I had another situation, I'd just turned the television on and I just caught the end of a movie and there was a bit of music on it. As I listened to the music I started to feel tears. I thought why am I emotional, it's only music, it's a movie? It's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, [laughter] why have I got emotional? But then I turned it off and I stopped and I thought what does that music remind me of? Suddenly the Holy Ghost showed me exactly what it reminded me of and I began to weep and weep and let go the pain of that situation. Then the Holy Ghost, Lord just appeared to me and just brought comfort to me and shifted the belief system just like that.

It's not hard to renovate on the inside. You've just got to be open to stop controlling it all and engage, this is your stuff. If you're going to renovate the inside you've got to face what's there, even if you don't like it. If there's rot in the woodwork well that's okay, cut it out but don't paint over it for sure. [Laughs] Okay, so number one, you need to resolve past issues see and remember it, grieve over it and identify what you believe and just let it go. The second thing is we need to actually change what we see and what we believe. In 2 Corinthians 3:18 it says this, now beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image. I'll just give you this in a simple language. If you pick a mirror up and put it in front of you and look into it, who do you see? Aye? You see yourself. Is that right? And often when you look up there's spots and wrinkles and I missed a shaving spot there.

You see all the things that are wrong, did you notice? And you try to put them all right. Okay, now notice what the Bible says. Now beholding as in a mirror, what? The glory of the Lord. I need to be looking at what Jesus is like and seeing when I look at it that that's what I'm like. This is the new me! This is who I am! I am like Him! I am like that. I'm a loving person. Focus on your faults, they get out of control. Begin to focus on what you are in Christ, you begin to start to grow. You're a loving person. You're a forgiving person, you're a generous person. Start to see what Jesus is like, begin to meditate. How do you do that? Well very simple: find out what the Bible says about you. That's the first thing. What does God say that Jesus is like? Now I begin to meditate and as I behold Him, begin to fix on Him, I'm thinking that's what I'm like. I'm a generous person, [whoa! Yay! 00.31.25]

You begin to start to personalise the scripture. You make it personal. I am loved and I am a loving person, that's who I am. God is generous to me, I'm a generous person. You begin to look and make Him the focus of your heart. That takes time, you visualise it, imagine what that's like. You begin to repeat that, that's who I am. That's who I am. Oh, that's new to me. I thought I was pretty mean and selfish; turns out no, I'm a new person now. This is who I am! If you keep focussing on all your faults they just get bigger and bigger and bigger. You actually just put them off and focus on what God says you're like now. Let that be the emotional focus of your heart. You begin to picture it, make it personal. You begin to imagine how it feels, you begin to declare it, this is who I am. I am this kind of person. I am a forgiving person. I'm a loving person. I'm a person who walks in the Spirit. I am this. Why am I like that? I saw it in the mirror. I saw God's conforming me to Jesus Christ and that's what He's like, so that's who I am.

God calls the things that be not just like they are right now. Our problem is we remember what we used to be and then we reject what we are now, rather than actually embracing what we are now and then letting your life cooperate and come into alignment with what God says about you now. We try to become something, rather than Jesus says you ARE something, now grow up into it and live it out. Discover what that's like. Discover what it looks like. Begin to think if I'm a loving person what does that look like? How does that work out? If I'm a generous person what does that look like? How - and begin to see yourself living out what Jesus says you're like. It just takes time. Most people won't put in the time, that's what the difficulty is, so their mind remains unrenovated.

Here's another thing you can do, I'll give you two last things. Here's the third thing you can do is to practice positive disclosure. I'll explain what that means. We're not talking about cleaning out your junk and talking your junk to people, but if you're going to become who you are you actually need to own up to some things and make them known, like for example you need to be able to say I like this. I don't like that. I feel this. This is part of who you are. It's time you stopped hiding all that stuff and be a little more honest in talking about things; this is my dream instead of hiding it. This is my goal, this is what I believe I could be and do - but most people keep it all secret. They're ashamed of even bringing the things out. A lot of people are ashamed to talk about what they feel; I feel discouraged today. Well at least you can actually state it, then you can do something about it instead of covering it all over. So positive disclosure's pretty good; this is what I want, this is the help I need. That's positive, that's saying what you need. That's part of being a person.

A lot of people just cover up everything, won't even say I need some help on this. See a part of actually growing in your identity is to be able to disclose those things, and then the last thing is you need to begin to practice doing some different things. You need to practice doing some different things. Two things you can practice being, one is joyful and the other is generous. See, God that we serve is a generous God, a generous God. I can be a generous person, generous with compliments, generous with praise, generous in giving to people. I am that person, and so I give not because I have to, not because someone stood up there and gave an inspiring message. I give because I'm generous. That's who I am you know? You understand? Now that's a whole different deal to being pushed and persuaded and made to become, to do something out of guilt or duty or you're a Christian now, you should be like this. That's a guilt load. Jesus didn't come to give any of that stuff to us.

He says you are a Christian. Don't be condemned if you've got a few funny things and quirks, I know all about them. Just don't be condemned. Just set your mind on the spirit thing, set your mind on things which are godly and you'll walk in the spirit. Will you blow it? Sure you'll blow it, just own up to it and move on. I've already got it all sorted out - but do not live condemned. Do not live forever thinking I'm nobody or I'm nothing, or I'm a failure or I've got a weak or a hopeless Christian life. Listen, how can you have a hopeless Christian life? Listen, you're a believer. You're a [saint 00.35.51] of God, you're a child of the living God. You are loved by your Father. Stand up and begin to live that out. If you fall over just get up again quick, get grace to live your life out. Live out of who you are. You're a forgiven child of God.

Who am I? I'm forgiven. When you fall over you're still a forgiven child of God, so stand up into that and begin to walk back in that again. You'll be amazed how quickly condemnation, accusation just drops off you like water off a duck's back. You don't have to live that way any more, because that's not who you are. You're not a condemned person; you're a vindicated, redeemed person. The Bible says that the redeemed of the Lord say so, say so. I'm redeemed. I'm loved - and not only that, I'm lovable as well. Well you may not think so but it doesn't really matter because my Father told me so. Can you understand? Make God's words your reference point, and other people can signal if you've gone off track a bit but they're not the reference point for where your life is. Make God's words the reference point for your life. He's got only positive things to say about you and if He's got to tell you off He does it so lovingly, just straight, He goes straight into your heart saying I didn't like that. Oh, forgive me [unclear 00.37.06], get back up again and get going again.

Don't stay down, stay up, stay alive! Be joyful in the Holy Ghost! Why? Because the kingdom of heaven is [unclear 00.37.15] God's sons are always joyful. They've got joy in them! God's sons are always generous, they've got generosity in them. Well I don't have much to give. It doesn't matter, just give something. Only got $10 and you give five of them, well that's really generous. [Unclear 00.37.30] you're an abundant giver. You understand? It's like a heart spirit thing. We are the children of God. We're ambassadors in another kingdom. We are something the world hasn't seen yet who we are but oh, we're breaking out and [applause] becoming that! Come on, why don't we stand up and give the Lord a clap! Halleluiah! Oh Lord, we love You! We thank You we're becoming more like You. That's who we are! We're Christ followers! Oh halleluiah! Bold, courageous, full of the Holy Ghost, full of the joy of the Lord! Thank You Lord for all You've made us to be. We honour You Lord!

[File ends 00.38.08]

The Making of a King

The Making of a King (1 of 5)

Davids Early Life (2 of 5)

The Making of a King (3 of 5)

The Making of a King (4 of 5)

The Making of a King (5 of 5)

Audio

- The Making of a King (1 of 5).mp3

- Davids Early Life (2 of 5).mp3

- The Making of a King (3 of 5).mp3

- The Making of a King (4 of 5).mp3

- The Making of a King (5 of 5).mp3

The Making of a King (1 of 5)

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The Making of a King (1 of 5) Mike Connell 03.02.2008 pm

Great stuff. I want you to open your Bible with me in Revelations 5, just halfway through verse 9 and verse 10. Thank you musicians, what a great job. Well we're beginning the year. Who's in for a great year this year? Okay, let me give you a secret. It'll be what you make of it. See, it'll be what you make of it. If you're going to change it's because you decided to change and I love it when people have decided they're going to grow and change. I want to speak - I'm going to share with you some things, a series of messages called The Making of a King, and we're going to look into the life of David. But I want to start it off and just share just a couple of verses first of all. This one here in Revelations 5, it says You have redeemed us to God. You have redeemed us to God by Your blood. Out of every tribe, every tongue, every people and every nation, and You have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on earth. Where shall we reign? Where shall we have our dominion? Where shall we have impact? On earth.

So the Bible tells us of an event in heaven and it says of a multitude of people and they're declaring and thanking God. The Bible tells us that these people have come out of every tribe, every nation, every people, every [kindred, 00.01.24] every kind of group, people group you could imagine; God has drawn them out and made them His own family and destined once we've become family He calls us kings and priests. You are a king, you are a priest. Now you don't have to try and make yourself that. When you gave your life to Jesus Christ the Spirit of God entered into you. You were automatically placed into the family of God with true important privileges; number one, the capacity to come into the presence of God on behalf of yourself, on behalf of others, to begin to intercede, pray and receive blessing from heaven.

That's everyone's privilege. While you can use that privilege you can begin to grow and learn how to function in that area, or you can neglect it. If you neglect it the blessings God has intended will never be yours, because blessings have to be taken hold of. So what will you take hold of from God this year? The second thing He's privileged us to be is to be kings. A king is a person who has dominion. A king is a person who has a realm over which he rules. Now we are called to represent God to advance His kingdom, so every one of you has a region of influence starting with your own life. Start with your own life. If you can't rule your own life, you won't be able to rule much else - but every one of us, God calls us to advance His kingdom like a king. Putting it simply, that means to reach the people around you, to shift the cultures, shift the hearts of men and women, shift young people, shift them into the kingdom of God.

Everyone is called to that. EVERYONE is called to that. Everyone is called to that. You are called to have an influence in your generation. Now if God called you to do it He will provide all we need to do it. It's our responsibility to discover the heart of God and begin to learn how to take hold of it. I want to show you a verse, we're going to look now at a king everyone knows, King David. But I want you to look firstly in Acts 13, so we see when we get born again we're positioned to be kings and priests. It's a language we don't readily take hold of, but we're called to be winners, we're called to win in life. How about that? And we're called to touch and impact an influence to people around us, change them by the power of God. We're called to bring God from heaven into the earth, His life and power. Everyone is called to do that.

Okay, I want you to have a look with me in Acts 13, just two verses, very familiar ones but they give an insight. What we're going to do is we're going to look at the life of a man God chose to be king. Here's a man who actually shifted the whole generation he lived in. How could this - what was in this man that enabled him to arise and have such an impact, see? I'm called to be a king. He was called to be a king. He's got something in his life I can learn from. So I want to share with you two things just here at this point, then we're going to look into his story and pick up one area of his life. In verse 22 he says, look at this; he said when He had removed Saul He raised up David as a king, to whom He also gave testimony and said I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all of My will.

So you notice here's the first thing that God said: I found someone. [Laughs] That other one I had was no good! He said the one that was raised up didn't do what I needed him to do. He failed to realise that when I anointed him and raised him up and positioned him to be king, it was so I could get something done. What was in the heart of God was way beyond Saul's comprehension and so in the end, because Saul just wouldn't cooperate and do what God wanted to do, God had to remove him. Bit of a tragedy isn't it? If I won't fulfil what God called me to do God certainly will find someone to take my place, and the difference will be that person will say yes when I said no. I don't want to be like that. I have a fear of the Lord; oh God, I want to keep on that edge, keep growing. I never want for You to look and say he wasn't doing what I needed him to do, I'll find someone else. That's what happened with Saul.

And so the Bible says I have found a man after My own heart who will do all My will. Notice what He says: He's found him. He's been looking. God is looking for people. Why? Because His kingdom will never advance. People never get saved unless God has someone to represent Him. Are you such a man? Are you such a woman? Are you a person that will represent the Lord this year? Are you a person that will make a difference this year? That's what God wants to know. He's looking for them. He's looking for people like that. The Bible says the eyes of the Lord go to and fro through the earth that He might find someone whose heart is loyal to Him, that He might work powerfully on their behalf. It's not a position. It's not a title. Do you have a heart after God? Notice what God said: I've found a man that is after My heart, or in other words put it like this. He said I have found someone who is desperate to find what I'm like and what I love and what I want to do in the earth.

He's not a guy that's sort of sitting back and just saying a little prayer and get on with his life. Here's a man who actually wants to know what's on My heart to do in the day he lives. It's all very well to look back in the Bible at all these great men, but they lived in a generation and God touched their lives. God touched David. Notice what He says, the first thing about him, he pursued the heart of God. So he wasn't just a guy who had a good idea of being a king. He was a guy with a pursuit and passion for a relationship with God, a pursuit to know what God is like. I shared with you a verse tonight you know, these things I delight in. God delights in some things. Now you see there's things God delights in, there's things He actually loves and when you do the things He loves boy, He really starts to come and take notice of you. See? You know what He loves? He loves people who will pursue Him and be in love with Him; not just sing songs or clap, far more than that.

But actually their longing is to get to know Him and understand how He thinks and what He likes, what He dislikes and to find ways to please Him. He said I've found someone who's got a heart after Me and he will do what I want. Why? Because that's the pursuit of his life, discovering My heart. You know that it's on the heart of God to see people saved? It's on the heart of God to see people reached for Christ. Jesus come into the world to save him, so here's the first thing we see, the pursuit of God's heart. Here's the second thing and have a look here a little bit further down, one of the other verses just a bit further down, same chapter in verse - I've got these marked in my Bible, coloured in. Verse 36: For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep. So here's the second thing. Number one, he pursued the heart of God; number two, he was a history maker. He wasn't [unclear 00.08.34], he was not content to just live an ordinary life.

The overflow of his pursuit of God was that he changed a generation. He became a history maker in that he so impacted the day he lived that everything in the nation changed. The government changed, the finances changed, the social structure changed, the way people related to God changed. Everything changed. He was a man who literally wrote history. Now that's the kind of guy you want to take a look at and say he's got something God liked, because when Jesus came Jesus was called the Son of David. In other words Jesus was identified with King David and they kept calling Him the Son of David because David was the greatest king that Israel had ever known, and he had a heart after God and he was a history maker, determined to change the generation he lived in.

Well you may not change a whole generation but there's some people you can change. There's some difference you can make, so the question is will you be a person who pursues the heart of God? Will you be a person who desires to do what God wants done through you, where you are? It's not about whether you've got great opportunities or great positions or great things like that. Will you do what God wants you to do? And what we're going to do is we're going to have a look at David, this man who became such a great king and there are different seasons in David's life. Every one of the seasons that was in David's life was a season where God had things to teach him, because it's all very well for you to be positioned as a king, but you actually have to grow and learn how to be a king.

You actually have to learn to grow into the role. You have to learn what it is to stand up and how do I serve God and position myself that I can make a difference. David did not start out by making a difference. He started out with some other things and we're going to look and there are five different cities in the Bible which David was connected with. Each one of these cities represents a season in his life, a season, a distinct period in his life when he actually was learning and growing and he learnt certain things. What I want to do tonight is just take the first of those cities and I want to show you what it is that was happening in his life that nobody saw. We're going to have a look at it, go back into 1 Samuel 16. So each of the cities that David was associated with or each of the places - there's five places he was connected with and each one of them was a season in his life.

There were bad seasons, there were good seasons and there were different seasons, but there were some things were constant and I want to look at those tonight. So the first thing we're going to look in 1 Samuel 16 and we'll start it off just in verse one. Now the Lord said to Samuel how long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I've rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, go; I'm sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite. For I have provided Myself a king among his sons. So the first season in David's life - and this event takes place when he's about 17, so we're talking now the period in his life from when he's a young person up to 17. Now what was it David did that made him so distinctive? Then there'll be another season in his life. We'll share that season in another time, but this is the season in the place called Bethlehem. We know of someone else who also was born in Bethlehem and had a season there. His name is Jesus Christ.

But David was living in Bethlehem and when we read the story we find out as we read through the verses in here that David was the youngest in his family. It was a family of seven or eight and he was the youngest in the family. He had the lowest social stature in the family, so Bethlehem was the place of obscurity, the place where no one sees you except God. Bethlehem is a place of obscurity, a place where no one sees you except God. It's a place where there are some things to learn, and if you learn the things in that place you position yourself for the next place or season in your life. Some people never learn the lessons that are found in this place called Bethlehem. So we're going to look not at many verses, just going to pick up a few aspects of his life and I want to talk to you about what he was like up to that age of 17. How many people are about 17 or 17 and under now? Great, you all qualify then aye? How many are over 17? Oh my goodness, whoa. Okay, it's still not too late. [Laughter] You may have to go back to being 17. [Laughter] You may have to go back to being young.

Okay, there are three things that he learned in that season. There are three things he learned in that season, now let's just pick up a couple of things or a couple of verses about it. Verse 11, now what happened was that Samuel now went to the little town of Bethlehem and he searched out the man called Jesse. He said Jesse, we're going to have a feast at your house. I want you to bring all your sons here, and he didn't tell him why. So he brought all his sons together, had a great big feast and he brought all the sons together and then he asked them all to pass by him. So he got each of the sons; he got Eliab, the first one. Boy, he was a good looking guy. He got him to go past him; the Lord said no, not that one. He said man, this has got to be the one. He's so good looking, looks good. This has got to be the one who's going to be the new king. The oldest in the family, good looking guy, that's the one - and God said this. In verse 7 he said this is not the one, He said because man looks on the outside but God looks on the heart.

He said I see not as man sees, I see the heart. The problem Eliab had was an issue of pride. He felt himself better than everyone else, and so they brought each of the sons in front of the prophet and the prophet's thinking man, this is the one. This is the one. No! This is the one. No! This is the one. No! Finally all seven had gone by and there's nothing. He says what a mystery. I wonder if I missed it? Then he said there wouldn't be another son in the family would there? They said oh yeah, don't worry about him, he's out there in the field looking after the sheep, no good in him. Don't worry about him. He said no, I want you to bring this young man to me, let's have a look. It says in verse 11, Samuel said to Jesse are all the young men here? And he said no, there remains the youngest and he's keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to him send and bring him, we will not sit down until he comes here. And they sent and brought him in. He was red head with bright eyes and good looking. That's alright isn't it aye? And the Lord said arise, anoint him; that's the one!

Now get this. His family considered him to be the least, the lowest and the youngest and everyone knows the youngest is either the pet of the family or the one they all pick on. Now in this case with David, David got the worst job in the whole family. The family was quite poor. The family only had a few sheep and we know that because in 1 Samuel 17 it says there are only a handful of sheep, there are only a few sheep. So because they weren't a wealthy family and they couldn't employ someone to look after the sheep, then they gave the job, the lowest job, the dirtiest job to young David. So this is some things we find about David. We found he was the youngest in the family, lowest in position, no one thought anything of him, no one thought he was important. They all walked over him, in fact when there was an important feast he wasn't even invited.

He wasn't even included in the spiritual things. There he was and what was he doing then? Well he had just a few sheep and looking after sheep was the lowest of jobs. It was a menial job. It was a very lonely job. You were just out there and you had a group of sheep you had to look after. So he would have to make sure the sheep didn't wander off; he'd have to lead them and look after them. That was his full time job, looking after a handful of sheep, full time employment. What do you do all day looking after a handful of sheep? What do you do when you've got a boring, menial job? What do you do in that kind of time, see? And see the thing is he had a tremendous - he developed some qualities. He developed three qualities in that time and you've got to realise that in that season when no one notices you and you're just doing the menial tasks that no one even cares about; in fact it's so dirty it's the cleaning the toilets, it's the washing up outside.

Think what he had to do. He had to get the sheep, he had to dag the sheep and they didn't have these fancy buzzers they have to shear them electronically. He had little clippers, so he'd have to get the sheep and had to clip off all the dags, had to clean them all up. He had to get all the bugs out of them. He actually had to lay his life down in looking after them. He actually proved himself faithful in small manners. While everyone else was doing the important jobs, he's got the least jobs and he is qualifying himself to be a king. He qualified himself in three ways. Here's the first way. Number one, he developed a devotion and a passion for the Lord. We know that - he says in Psalm 27:4, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.

In the same psalm he says in Your presence is joy, fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures evermore. How can you write that stuff? You've got to have experienced it, see? So he begins to - so the first thing he did was he developed a heart to seek after God. So what did he do? Well he played a guitar or some kind of musical instrument, so day after day as he did this work, menial tasks, looking after the sheep, where no one is watching David is developing a heart to worship God, a heart to pursue God. People would say well we feel sorry for you in that job; he's saying no, I'm not sorry I've got that job because this is a great chance for me to pursue what's the delight of my heart, a relationship with God. So even though he had the menial task, he's developing a heart to worship God. He's learning how to worship, he's learning how to express his heart to God, he's learning how to express feelings to God. He's learning how to express his concerns.

Imagine being there, out there just night after night, day after day, you're all alone. There's no one to talk to except sheep. You understand? It's a place where no one sees what's going on in your life and in that place where no one sees what's going on in your life, there are some things happen. Number one, you can develop a heart to love God because no one really recognises you anyway. One of the things that'll be a secret for you becoming great is you learn to have a love of God and find your life in Him, not in the job you're doing. Some people, they look at the little jobs and say oh no man, I want something bigger and better than that. Listen, just celebrate the little jobs. Celebrate the little things. Give yourself to the little things and while you're doing it develop a heart to worship God and be grateful to Him. So David developed a heart that just loved the Lord, that worshipped Him, that enjoyed His presence and I can imagine over a period of time him gradually discovering the anointing of God coming on him as he learnt to worship.

He learnt what it was to experience God's presence. He learned how to play chords that would open his heart and open heaven and the presence of God would come upon him. He learned how to passionately express himself. The whole psalms are written out of what, the overflow of David's relationship with the Lord. They express feelings. They express what he was facing. They express his life. He didn't just write them when he was older; he actually developed a worshipping heart when he was a young person, and you can't have anyone do that for you. That's the one thing you can yourself is develop a heart that is passionate towards God and learns how to be alone and worship Him and encounter Him. When I started out in ministry I was just literally thrust into it. I had no training. I had less than any of you here have really in terms of teaching in the word of God.

The one thing I did have, I had a piano accordion [laughs] and I learned how to worship God. I learned how to just come and spend hours until I learned how to unlock my heart and spirit and just begin to worship the Lord, and begin to feel His presence. Sometimes Joy and I, we'd just have a fire going in Dannevirke, had no TV and I'd begin to play the music and the presence of God would come. You can learn in the place where no one sees what's going on, you can learn to bring the presence of God - and the Lord spoke to me and lead me out of teaching in a public school. We had hundreds of people and they had 25 kids to look after, a little flock [and I sang 00.21.15] well Lord, I want to do this, I want to do this. He said no, this is the place of training. This is the place where you learn. This is the place where I teach you. It's just with these young children; equivalent to working in the kid's church all the time.

What I learnt to do was learnt how to get before God and to bring His presence down from heaven around my life, until I could feel His presence and bring His presence wherever I went. Now you have to learn how to do that. You have to learn how to do this. People can teach you, but you've got to learn how to do that and value that if I've got God coming on my life it doesn't really matter if no one knows what I think or I'm doing or whatever's happening. And actually at that point I came to a place where Lord, if You want me to be here for the rest of my life with just this I'm really happy. Now that is a great place to be, where you're happy to be in love with the Lord and positioned where He wants you. You are preparing yourself for enlargement. So the first thing was a devotion to the Lord. You can learn that now.

You're in a church that teaches how to encounter and experience God; why don't you make it the passion of your heart to learn how to pray in such a way you begin to feel God's presence coming around your life? You become a carrier of the presence of God. We know that David was able to do that because shortly after he went from this place to the next place and he was with the king, he could play his instrument and the presence of God would come and demons would flee. So we know in that secret place where no one saw him he was developing his personal life with God. Now many of you, no one knows about you yet. You're not known. You're a king in hiding. You're one that God has said this is one of My kings, but you've got the responsibility in that place of obscurity to be developing a heart that worships God and loves God, and begins to discover what He likes you know? He says I'm the Lord who delights in loving kindness and justice and mercy, so God loves mercy.

He's not harsh on us, He loves mercy. So David if you look at his life was a man who knew the mercy of God, so even though he did outrageous things at times - you realise he not only committed adultery and murdered a man, he made a foolish mistake that cost 70,000 men their lives. And still he was a man who could sing of the mercy of God. See, you've got to learn how to connect with God yourself, personally. So number one, the first key in the place of obscurity is to develop a heart and a passion for God and to be happy with Him, content in Him, secure in Him. This is the first lesson. The second lesson we see that he learnt was the area of faithfulness you see. Notice here in 1 Samuel 17:28, and David goes down to the battle and Eliab, his oldest brother, heard when he spoke to the men.

Eliab's anger was aroused against David, and he said why have you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart. You've come to see the battle. But actually David was faithful, and so the second thing he learnt was he learnt faithfulness in small things, in the menial task where he was unrecognised and despised. He just learned to be faithful. That's something that we can choose to learn. You know there's one thing you can be unlimited in and that is faithfulness, faithfulness in small tasks. Faithfulness in small tasks means when you give your word you keep it. When you do a job you do it well. When you have a commitment you fulfil your commitment. Now you see you can't just learn that from the Bible. You learn that by taking on a responsibility and this is one of the reasons that we call people unashamedly and challenge them to become connected and committed and involved in some area of the church life and ministry, because somewhere you have to learn what it means to be faithful.

You have to learn what it means, if there's a little task you do the little task. If you're given a little job you turn up on time, you turn up and do it; there's no excuses, you make sure it happens. This is what David learnt, he learnt to be faithful with the few that he had and God was preparing him. In Psalm 78 it says that God took him from the flocks and made him shepherd over a nation, and he led them with integrity of heart and with skilfulness of hands. In other words he developed while he was a young man, he developed integrity, giving his word and keeping his word. He developed skill; that means understanding, knowing what to do, so while no one was looking he was learning some things. The Lord spoke to me when I was working in a Christian school with only 25-plus kids; the Lord said to me this is where you're going to learn the things that will be a part of the ministry for all the rest of your life.

So how did David qualify himself to be a king? Well one of the ways he qualified was he passionately pursued the heart of God and God was so impressed, He said I like that boy. I'm going to do something great with his life. He knows Me, he knows what I like, he knows what I want and he's willing to do it. The second thing is he was faithful. There was a faithfulness in his life given a small task, so I wonder what you're like in your faithfulness? In Luke 16:10 it says this. It says a man who is faithful in small things will be faithful in great things. If you can't be faithful in the small things, you certainly can't be relied on in the big things. How many would love God to entrust to you something significant? Well we'd all like that. How many would like to be promoted? Oh, we'd all like that.

But listen, promotion comes when there's faithfulness at the current level. If you can't be faithful in one task then you're not faithful at all, so it's unlimited your possibility to be faithful. Now think about the small things you can do at home. Think about your responsibilities at home. God's watching all of that stuff. Think about the responsibilities you have in your life; there are bills to pay, pay the bills on time. You give a commitment, keep the commitment. If you can't keep it you still keep it, unless you negotiate your way out by arrangement. It's integrity. These are things that you can do. You've got a little job, you do it really well as though it's the most important job in the whole world. You've got to make a plate of scones for some outing, make the best ones you've ever made. Make them big, make them great, put plenty of butter, plenty of jam on them so people go whoa! Look at that! You see?

Now you think well making scones isn't important; oh yes it is. Every job - yeah, whipped cream and [unclear 00.27.44], yeah, that's right, we need more of that. [Laughter] Can you see what's coming on here? [Laughs] Listen, but it's faithfulness. It's understanding faithfulness. You know the Bible tells us everyone will [reclaim 00.27.54] how great they are, but a faithful person is really hard to find. It's really hard to find people who will give their word and keep it; who will actually take a small task and do it diligently. You know what happens? When you find a person who is functioning faithfully in a little task, you can't leave them there. You can't. They're too good for that little task and you've got to bring them up. And when they function faithfully in that task you can't leave them there, you've got to bring them up further. That's how real promotion takes place, and so we see that God said these words.

He said I have seen among the children of Jesse a son, a king. He saw a king. Now look at that. What did God see? Well we look around and we see there's just a young little red-faced boy, red-head boy with bright eyes and smiling, plays a guitar, sits out there in the country just wasting his time - and what kind of use is he? So when we have the party and call the prophet in they don't even consider to bring him in - but God said I have seen a king. What did He see? He saw a heart devoted to worship Him. He saw a man who was faithful see? So the place of obscurity, the place where no one sees you, no one knows you, you're not important, no one knows about you, just another face in the crowd; that's the place where you learn to develop a heart that seeks God and faithfulness in little matters. So you put your hand up, say count me in. I'll do this job and I will be there and I'll do it well. You are preparing yourself for big things.

The third thing that you develop in that place of obscurity is you develop courage in the face of conflict. You develop courage in the face of conflict. I want you to have a look and go with me and we'll just finish here, in 1 Samuel 17, here it is in verse 34. In verse 33 Saul said to David you're not able to go and fight the Philistine. You're a young boy and he's a man of war. And David said to Saul your servant - notice his language - your servant. See, he's been serving in secret; he calls himself a servant. Your servant used to keep his father's sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock I went after it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it rose against me I caught it by its beard and struck and killed it. And your servant killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God. And the Lord, the Lord, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.

You've got to realise now that David faced conflict in the little job. Here he's got just a handful of sheep and one of the things that was common there was there were wild animals would come. One of the roles of the shepherd was not just to care for the sheep, look after the sheep, clean them up, keep them looking good, de-bug them, do all the dirty jobs. It wasn't just that. This is what he also had to do; if something come against it to kill it he had to do something. The Bible says of Jesus, He said I'm the good shepherd who lays His life down for the sheep, but a hireling runs away when he sees the wolf coming. Because he's just a hireling he's in it for what he can get out of it. He said but the good shepherd lays his life down. Now notice what David did. In the place where he was serving there was conflict, a lion and a bear. Now I'd only ever thought about it, ever been by the zoo and stood outside a lion's cage? See we read this and we think oh a lion and a bear, yeah, David licked them.

Listen, go one day and stand outside a zoo and go outside the lion's cage. Get as near as they'll allow you to get there and then we're going to look into that lion. I remember doing that and I began to walk up and down and I realised he was running up and down with me, so I kept doing it [laughter] and he would come back. Then I'd do this - then I looked and I thought there's only bars separating me from death. [Laughter] I could see the lion was looking at food. [Laughter] He was looking at a meal and I was looking at a lion. Now it says the lion came against the lamb and David rose up - now to hit the lion you've either got to throw a stone from a long way off, which is possibly what he did. But we know he got into personal hand to hand combat because he said when it rose against me I took him by the beard and I killed him. That's personal combat with a lion. Now that's no mean feat. How on earth did he get the courage to do that? I think it came out of his relationship with God and the anointing he tapped into.

Now listen, the call upon David's life was to wage war. Where did he learn to wage war? It wasn't all these years later. He was learning when he was 17. By the time he was 17 he'd physically got stuck into a lion and killed it. He'd physically laid into a bear and killed it. Now I don't think we've ever thought what a bear does and how close you've got to get to a bear. A bear's got mighty paws that can just sweep you away like that. It's not an easy task to kill a bear hand to hand. Think about it. Just think about it. So what would you and I feel? This is what we'd feel: I think I'll just explain to dad that we lost a couple of the sheep. [Laughter] Wouldn't you feel that way? Fear would grip you. I think dad - look dad, you've got to understand. It was a lion you know! I had to look after myself! But you see there was something developing in David that was greater. It was an opportunity for him to prove and develop courage in the face of fearsome conflict.

Now you may not have to face a lion or a bear. The Bible likens the devil to a lion, coming to roar against you and intimidate you, and I'm sure even at your young age you have lions and bears in your life. Lions try and intimidate you; bears try and crush you. Have you thought of circumstances, situations where you face intimidation, something frightens you, where you face being crushed by words that people spoke, by things people have done, the way people have treated you? Do you have courage growing in your heart to arise and defeat those things? He said the Lord delivered these things. The Lord delivered me out of the hand of the lion and the bear. In other words he had a deep trust in the Lord and he grew in ability to be able to face things and conquer them.

Now that's what God's wanting to teach us to do. Now for you perhaps the thing you've got to face is just a conflict with a person. Maybe you've got to put something right that was wrong. Maybe you've got to face something that was really difficult. This year you'll face some lions, you'll face some bears, you'll face things that will challenge you, frighten you; but will you have a testimony the Lord delivered me out of them? You'll never be significant in a public arena until first you've developed in private and see, in the place that was private David did these things. One, he developed a devotion to the Lord and an ability to draw the presence of God around his life; two, he developed faithfulness in small things. He became faithful in the little matters; and three, he developed courage in the face of conflict. These are things that kings do. You are already born a king. You were born again into a royal family; you're born to make a difference with your life - but are you developing a relationship with the Lord?

Are you developing faithfulness? Are you developing courage in the face of conflicts? Or do you quit when there's conflict, you give up the little jobs and your prayer life is just temporary? Listen, this is the time and the season - David served his generation. What does that mean? He was a man who rose up and he impacted the generation he lived by the life he lived. You're called to do the same. It'll be different for every one of us. For some they'll be kings in a business area, some it'll be in a school, some it'll be in the area of government, some it'll be in the area - different areas, educators, all kinds of different places we can learn to be a king. But every one of us is a king, a king in training. God already saw you and said there's a person I like. God already reached out and brought you into His family. You now have to do what David did and develop the qualities of a king within, so the Lord can move you to the next place.

For the majority here you're in the place of obscurity. That's the place to learn those lessons. Why don't you make a decision now, this year this is what I'm going to develop. I'm going to develop a relationship with the Lord. I'm going to develop faithfulness. Now you can't just do that on your own. You've got to have someone give you a job that you see through, and thirdly I'm going to develop courage. When issues come up I'll face them. I won't run away like I've run away before. I'm going to trust God to bring me through it. Come on, just let's close our eyes right now.

[File ends 00.36.58]

Davids Early Life (2 of 5)

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David's Early Life (2 of 5) Mike Connell 10.02.2008 pm

Amen, praise the Lord. Okay, come on, let's open up and I want you to have a look with me first of all in Acts 13:22. We're looking at the Making of a King because every - people know. How many love the story of David? See, well what I'm going to do is I want to just go through it. We're going through the life of David, but we're not looking at all the great things he did. That's how people normally look at David; they look at all the great things he did. I want to look at the kind of man he was, because when you look at the great things people do you mentally position well they're the great person over there, and you don't always think really what you could do as a person yourself. So what I want to do is to look at the heart of David, so let's just pick it up first of all in Acts 13 and this is what God said of him. He said two things about him - well He actually said a bit more than that but I want to pick two things to mention to you.

In verse 22; I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all of My will. So you see the first thing that God says about him, this is what God says, it's what the Holy Ghost said about him, he was a man passionately concerned to discover what God is like. That's something you and I could make our pursuit as well, to discover what God is like, to discover His heart, not just what He does. Not just the miracles, the outward manifestations, but what is in the heart of God; what is it He loves? What is it He hates? What is it He desires? What does He delight in? You can discover those things and David made that his pursuit. Notice what it says here, it says he will do My will, so a man after the heart of God is a person who will overflow and begin to actually do in the earth what he sees God wants done. So He says in a later verse there, the second thing about him, He said for David - verse 36 - after he'd served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep.

So we see two things about David here; number one, a passionate desire to know God and to walk intimately in His presence. He was a heart man, and the second thing is he had a passion to make a difference in the generation in which he lived. Obviously he encountered God in a major way because he totally revolutionised worship, the nation, the army. Every aspect of the national life he changed it. What a man, what a tremendous man. The dilemma of course is that we look at people like that and we say oh, well I'd never be like that. But actually you can draw from the life, the man, what he's like and actually discover things you and I can apply into our own life, so we're going to look at that. Before you do I'm just going to throw out one more thing there in verse 34. God spoke to him and [said, concerning He said 00.02.41] I'll give you the sure mercies of David.

I'm not going to teach you about it tonight but let me just throw this out, that one of the things that God gave to David was a flow of mercy, so much so that David could quite confidently say that even my failures, God can turn them around and make them a great stepping stone to my success. When you look in David's life you find great failures in his life. He wasn't just a perfect boy; there were significant failures in his life, but he's endorsed as a man who walked in the mercies of God. He said in Psalm 23 the goodness and mercy of God's going to follow me everywhere I go. You understand, he tapped into something. He tapped into a life flow. Now what happens is we get a mental attitude, well if I just do what's right God's got to bless me. That's legalism. See God blesses people because He's good. Doing things that are right is your expression of knowing His goodness.

And so David so knew His goodness he could be confident, no matter where I go, what happens, no matter how much I goof up, I can be sure of this: I will continue and have goodness around my life, unexpected blessing and favour, and also if I blow it God's with me. He's going to get me up again. What a way to walk. What a way to walk, see? He made a mistake that cost 70,000 men their lives, but he still said the goodness and mercy of God's around my life. You need a lot of mercy when you've killed 70,000 people by mistake. Come on, imagine that weighing on your conscience. Bad leadership decision, 70,000 men die; how do you handle the pressure of guilt? Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. He knew how to tap into the heart flow of God, God is good, God is merciful. He tapped into it. Now let's go into the Old Testament and we're going to pick up now just where we were.

We saw that there are five cities mentioned in the life of David and those five cities all represent a season in his life. Last week we were looking at the first season, so we'll go over there and get back into the Bible. I want you to, on the way back to 1 Samuel, I want you to look with me in Psalm 75. The first city we saw him at was the city of Bethlehem or the town of Bethlehem, and we found that represents the season of obscurity, or literally the season where no one knows who you are. You're just another face in the crowd, so we saw last week we were looking in that. There was a season when David was a young boy growing up to the age of 17, no one knew him. He was so despised and so thought to be nothing that when a prophet came into their home dad wouldn't even invite him to the feast; nah, get out and do the sheep stuff.

Sheep herding was the lowest job you could have, and there's David day after day and in that place where no one saw him we found he developed some things. You're going to see it come up again today. We saw last week he developed faithfulness. He was faithful in the little matters. That's something you could develop when no one knows who you are. How many believe God's got a significant plan for your life? Well right now [no 00.06.00] the world doesn't know you. Now one day it may well do, but today when you're not known is the day to do what David did and develop faithfulness in the little matters of life. The second thing we saw was he developed a deep personal relationship with the Lord when no one saw him, and the third thing we saw was he developed his character, courage and integrity when no one was looking.

There was no one to see him and so looking at that in your own life, right now when the world doesn't yet know you, when no one may really know you or even see there's much good in you; when you may be young and there's nothing yet really come great of your life and you're struggling with all kinds of issues, nevertheless you can do what David did and develop an intimate relationship with the Lord while no one's looking. You can develop faithfulness; whatever little tasks you're given, you see that you do it. You give your word, you keep your word. You're given a little job, you do your little job well. This is where you're learning for the great things. And then finally you can learn to develop courage, because all of us as young people or whatever stage of our life have conflicts or issues to face, and that's where you learn courage.

You don't learn it when everyone's watching it. You learn when the crowd is watching you and you make a courageous stand and it costs you something, see? You can learn these things now. This is the time to learn them - no use seeking for greatness. Seek to know God and develop great character, and then God will make the other things begin to happen. So here it is in Psalm 75. Let me just show you something here in Psalm 75:6. So we saw the first season was Bethlehem, the place where no one sees you, where you learn devotion to God, develop faithfulness and grow in your character and courage and integrity. Here now we look at Gibeah. We're going to look at the second place which is the place of promotion. We'll get to it in a moment. Notice what it says here: Promotion doesn't come from the east or the west or the south. God is the Judge: He puts one down and He lifts another up.

So you notice here the Bible's telling us about promotion. Promotion means people get to know who you are. Promotion means you get to be popular. Promotion means you get to be out where people see you. How many would like to be promoted, get up there a bit? Your promotion means you get up ahead so in your work, you know you're working at one level, you start off at McDonalds, you start at the lowest job. Then promotion comes. People like promotion. Promotion means more pay usually; get in a job and you get promoted, that's a wonderful thing to get promoted, but the Bible's telling us here very clearly that God brings about promotion in your life. Now I have observed this in watching people that in the hearts of many people there's a struggle for recognition. They want to be noticed, want to get somewhere. What they do is in their own efforts they struggle and manipulate and try and manoeuvre so that they can get themselves into position where they've got influence or significance.

Listen, the Bible's very clear on that. God will promote you if you'll do the things you need to do, and you see if you're struggling for promotion then you'll be afraid of everyone else who looks better than you. But if you can actually put your life in the hands of the Lord and say Lord, when I'm ready then you'll change this season. I can move from this thing to something else but right now I'll stay where I am, being faithful, being devoted, developing integrity, developing character. And when it's right and the right time You'll lift me up. Now listen, this works everywhere in the world. You get into a job situation and you do your job well. You are faithful, you are diligent, you see to the details; that boss can't keep you in that role too long. You have to come up, so faithfulness. The Bible says every man talks about his own goodness, but a faithful man who can find? A person who'll just do the job and get it done, and make sure it's done and there's no hidden agendas in it.

If you do things with a hidden agenda, eventually your agenda will be exposed so you don't have to do - just I serve because I love the Lord. I just serve in the big things, serve in the little things. You're going to see this in David in just a moment. I just saw something this week that just amazed me and thrilled me about him. Okay, let's go into 2 Samuel 16. We're going to have a look at David's promotion. He's in a different place now. Remember each one of these cities represents a different [pay, 00.10.18] a different season in his life. So he's nought to 17, so now we're down here 2 Samuel - or 1 Samuel sorry, 1 Samuel 16:14. Let's read a few verses, then I want to pull out some principles out of here or some really good life lessons. Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him - so he's demonised. And that word distressing is literally to terrify, to suddenly come on and fill you with terror.

So what Saul had now, he was once a man who walked with God and was doing what God wanted partially. Eventually he lost his position altogether and an evil spirit come around him, then he would be terrified. Every now and then he'd be filled with panic - what we'd call it today, he had panic attacks. He had panic attacks, so he's got panic attacks and he's very distressed. And Saul's servants said surely a distressing spirit from God is troubling you. Now let our master command your servants who are to seek out a man - now look at this. There's a need arises. Now this is an amazing thing see, God wanted to train David to become a king so he trained him in character, he trained him in relationship, he trained him in courage. Now he needed to train him in how you be a leader, how you actually rule. So what does He have to do? He's got to get him where he can actually be trained.

So what does He do? He allows there to be a need develop and there's this tremendous need. The king is having panic attacks. They said can we find anyone who can help fix this job up? Is there anyone else here knows what to do? So suppose you've got a kid in your class and they're demonised; is there anyone around knows what to do? I was talking with a young guy from City Harvest Church in Singapore and he's in the army. They all do military training for two years, and what happened was they were in their hut with - he's got his platoon or squad or whatever it was, about a dozen guys under him or 20 guys under him. Then one of them began to massively manifest a demon. Now all these soldiers in training just panicked, didn't have a clue what to do, and this guy knew exactly what to do. He knew exactly how to confront and deal with the spirit, and that day they saw him - the guys actually saw him confront the spirit. It left the man and he came right. Immediately his standing in the sight of everyone lifted to a whole new level.

You see the meeting the need, the capacity to meet a need positions you to be promoted. If you have developed no skills to meet needs how can anyone promote you? You have to develop something. You have to have some things in your life that will help people where they're in need and that will create opportunities for you to go forward in life, because all of life promotion involves people and how you relate to them and what you can do for them. If you want to really get ahead somewhere don't just develop your life with God; develop a deep capacity and passion to help people. You will find yourself - opportunities emerge. In a couple of weeks there's a lady going to be speaking at the Miracle Centre. Her name is Patricia Green. I remember when Patricia Green was here years ago and she was looking after a home for wayward girls. I think you were one of them were you? [Yes.] There you go. She was looking after Janice, and after she looked after Janice we looked after Janice see. [Laughter]

So then she felt that season was over of looking after girls in difficulty, not realising of course that God was preparing her for the next thing. She went to and got a heart for Cambodia, went in there and began to work with the kids who were sold into prostitution on the streets. So what they would do, they'd be offered and promised things in the villages that they could come into the city. They get a job alright, but they're working as a prostitute and this is going on in a massive scale over there. She set up a ministry called Rahab Ministries to reach out to people who are trapped in prostitution and to provide a skilled training, because remember without the skill there's a limitation what they can do. So they had to develop, so she set up Rahab Ministries which was to outreach to these girls and then provide skill training so they could earn an income. Otherwise they couldn't get out of the cycle that they were in. See, they were limited because of no abilities or no skills.

Now she did that for some years and what has happened since then is she's been able to raise up someone and hand over the ministry. Now she's working next to, as an advisor to the United Nations. So how does a little Kiwi girl get to be an advisor to the United Nations? Well it just started off helping girls who were in need, and following that through step by step and gradually it grew and grew, and step by step the Lord raised her up until now she's an advisor to the United Nations in the issue of child prostitution and trafficking of people. Now how about that? Do you understand that God can make ways for people to go forward? You don't have to worry about that. You've got to worry about what's going on in your life with what you have now see, isn't that true? So notice here than an opportunity comes, so it says let's go find someone who knows how to play a harp, so they thought the music might help. Saul said to his servants provide me now a man who can play well, and bring him to me.

One of the servants answered and said look, I've seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skilful in playing, a might man of valour, a man of war, prudent in speech and a handsome person; and the Lord is with him. Now notice here that needs are opportunities to advance. Notice this, let other people promote you. Don't promote yourself. Let other people promote you, so one of the interesting things that talks about leadership is that what kind of report do people have? What are people saying about you? Well what are people saying about you? They'll be saying the kinds of things you'll like and what you do and the dealings you have with them, and eventually it comes to a point where you have a whole flow of people know you and they know what you're like. And you never know when someone - there's a need somewhere and they'll speak up on your behalf and say oh, I know so-and-so, they'd be just right for that. This is what happened. David never had to advance himself.

One day a messenger came and he said listen, we want to you to come to the king's palace, come to the place of Gibeah, there's a new season in your life. There's a season now of promotion and preparation for the next thing God has. Now I want you to see what they saw in his life because this is the thing, because most of the time when we look at the story of David we think about slings and Goliaths and lions and bears and battles. What we don't think about is what really was going on in his life, and that is what got him into those places. We've got our own battles and Goliaths and things to fight; we need the similar heart and spirit of this man. Okay then, so notice here what they said. These are the things they identify. What did they notice that lead to him being promoted? Here's the first thing, they said he's skilful in music. In other words he had a musical skill. He had an ability. He had a skill he'd developed. Have you got any skills you've developed that someone could want to pay for those skills? Well think about it.

See, if you have no skill you're an unskilled labourer. If you have a skill now you can do something others can't do. Develop skills. We'll be sharing about that this morning. So they noticed he had a skill. He had an unusual ability developed from a lot of time just alone playing an instrument. I was listening tonight at our instruments and boy, the skill that some of them have - but there was a time when no one saw them and they were doing the practice and going to a tutor, getting lessons and paying for that and learning the [chords - aah! 00.17.57] And someone else had to endure all the bad music and no longer music, but now it is good music aye? The second thing you notice here is it said he's skilful in playing, a mighty man of valour. They saw he had a reputation for courage. A person with courage or a mighty man of valour is a person who when challenges come up can face them head on and not be afraid and back off. Have you developed skill in your life that people know about?

Have you developed courage in your life that people have heard about? Wow, they just stood up, people running down their friends and they just stood up and stood up for their friends, whoa, that's something! When the whole class was laughing about Christian things they stood up unashamed - whoa! Crowd all went to the party and were drinking and they left because they won't get involved in that - whoa, courage! People going out sleeping with one another, they said no, I'm keeping myself. Everyone laughed - courage. You get known - and not everyone likes it of course, not initially, but they do respect it. Have you developed courage in your life? Courage means there's issues and you face them front on and don't run away from them. That's what he was known for. Someone else knew about it and someone in the right place knew about him.

Here's another one. It says he's a mighty man of war. Well he never held a spear or sword yet, but what they knew about him was he had a reputation because he had a fighting spirit in him. Now how did it be that a boy that the family thought so low of that they didn't even invite him to the feast, that other people know about what's going on? You see, he'd established a reputation. People got to know about him. When you've got something going on and God in your life people get to know about it, and so he developed musical skill, he developed in his life courage, he developed a fighting spirit. Notice it said he was a handsome person - sorry, prudent in speech, so they noticed how he spoke. He spoke wisely, didn't mouth off, didn't run people down, didn't criticise people, didn't bad-mouth people. He didn't complain. He wasn't a negative person. When he spoke there's something different about this person, he's got really good living words. Death and life are in the power of the tongue; when David spoke there was life in the words.

See notice all of these things, you could do all of these things. See we tend to look and we say oh that's David. I'm here and I'm just this. Now listen, you can develop these qualities. Then it says the next quality it said about him was he was a handsome man. Well you may not be able to do much about that [laughter]. Some of you are praying for one. Don't pray for a handsome man, that speaks of his appearance. He presented himself well. Now I've noticed an interesting thing. Some people are born with good looks, some people aren't born with such good looks, but what I notice about people is the ones who carry a life within them of God and they're pure inside always look stunning. There is something about a girl who loves the Lord and has kept herself that makes her beautiful and extremely attractive, especially if she's got the other qualities as well, developed some skill, developed some courage, can stand up for herself and be assertive and actually has kept herself well. She is really some woman. Isn't that right?

Come on now, inner beauty shows on the outside of people, so you know people think oh well the Lord looks on the heart. Yes, He does, but people look at the outside and they judge you up by how you present yourself so you need to present yourself well. David presented himself well. When he was with people he not only spoke well, there was a good impression created by the way he presented himself. That's why what you dress in, how you dress says a statement about you. If you wear low-cut stuff it says a statement, come on. Well it does. Is that the message - I'm mean I've seen some girls with some t-shirts and I've actually stopped in an altar call many times and said look what the t-shirt says. Is that the message you want people to know about you? I said you're better than that. Who got you to put that t-shirt on? That's not you, you're better than that. You understand?

So when you've got statements on you that are an encouragement for immorality, that's not a good thing - but it indicates how the person sees themself and so they present themself the way they see themselves. David was loved of God and he presented himself well because he was secure inside. What about the way you present yourself? Sharp - don't have to have the latest things, but you can present yourself really sharply. If you're going to go to the palace of a king you need to be able to present yourself well. Often what happens is people look at Christians and they look so drab and dull in how they present themself, oh my goodness, whoa, keep away from me! See, whereas really in fact actually we need to enhance everything God has given to us. It's a part of who we are and your face gives your identity to the world, so make it look good. Smile, smile a lot more. Okay, we've all gone quiet on this one, goodness me.

And notice here the last one of course. It says the Lord is with him. The Lord is with him, so they were - now isn't that amazing? It was known that God was with him, God [blessed - 00.23.21] how did they know God was with him? Well the reputation must have got out that the spirit of God was on his life. God is with this guy. How do they know God was [there? 00.23.28] Because somehow things seemed to go well for this guy. Did you hear the story about there was this lion and he nailed the lion? Man oh man, how do you nail a lion face to face and grab a hold of his beard and it's dribbling and drooling; it's mouth's open, it's ready to devour you and you just kill it! Boy, I don't know. I've been in front of a lion's cage and I was glad there were bars there. I didn't fancy getting the other side of that, but you see he had an anointing on his life for that particular work and he proved it. He actually learned how to work with the Holy Ghost as a young man.

Now get this. He's still 17 and he's got that reputation - how about that! So you see what's happened in the life of David is out of this relationship with God and his response to God, he developed a heart that [hungered one thing 00.24.17] [unclear 00.24.18] His heart was for God and he developed serving, he developed skill in music, he developed his character, he developed his courage. He developed his ability to fight, he developed his ability to make a stand, he presented himself well, he spoke well and people heard about him. Someone said what you need is David. Bring David in. Notice he didn't have to [promote 00.24.39] himself, someone else said that's the guy you need. Today you're preparing for tomorrow's promotion - or you're not preparing for it see, so I love what Amy was saying. She's off to train to be a teacher; well I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this and I'll be a teacher, see?

In other words she's doing the preparation and one day she'll be a teacher see. Well because she's got a clear goal, clear steps to get there and she's working on some things - what about you? What are you working on? What are you working on see? So now what happens is it says - verse 19 - therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said send me your son David who is with the sheep - see, even knew he was a shepherd. And Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat, and sent them by his son David to Saul. And David came to Saul and stood before him, and he loved him greatly and became his armorbearer. Then Saul sent to Jesse saying let David stand before me, he's found favour in my sight. And so it was, whenever the spirit of God was upon Saul - in other words when he had a panic attack - David would take the harp and he'd play with his hand. And Saul would become refreshed, or he'd be released from that demon. Why? Because David had learned how to play in such a way that the anointing of God was released. Oh don't you love that?

If you could speak in such a way that God's presence comes with you. You could play an instrument so God's presence comes with you, or whatever you do God's presence comes with you into it. You see what he had around his life? See, that's what you desire. That comes out of a life devoted to the Lord. You could build these things around your own life, it wouldn't be too hard. Okay then, so now what happens is he's now promoted. Now I want you to get the picture, here's a guy who's in the back side of the desert virtually, alone with sheep. Now he's in the palace of a king. Now he's standing alongside the king, he's in the place where decisions are made, where governmental decisions affecting a nation are being made and he's right there alongside watching every bit, and he's in training for his day. He's in the wings waiting for his moment to emerge. Do you think he's worried about that? Not at all, he's just worried about being faithful.

I want to show you just a couple of things about him because when you get promoted, when you get lifted up, when recognition comes in your life finally, that becomes a bigger test of your character than when you were alone and no one knew you, because when people are successful they tend not to look at the Lord; they tend instead to now enjoy their newfound status, their new privileges. You imagine, he ate at the king's table, he was in the king's palace, he was there when everything was happening. He had a nice room, nice surroundings, had everything going for him, and now he's in a new place - but you know something? He still maintained the same heart he had when he was a shepherd. And see so when you get promoted that will test your attitude. Have you ever noticed some people, you ever had an experience where someone came into a bit of money then they never talked to you? Or they got promoted and now they don't want to know you? See, because their newfound position has caused them to become elevated with pride.

So sometimes success and particularly success in ministry or success in any area of life can cause you to become confident in your own ability and lose what got you there in the first place. Never lose the source - so you notice, now I want to show you just something very simple in here. I'll pick out a couple of things then we'll finish. In verse 15, now notice this. David occasionally went and returned from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem. Now here, get this. He never got an attitude, cocky attitude to his brothers; ha ha ha, look at me, okay guys! You didn't think much of me before but now I'm in the king's palace. Now you listen to me, I've got some things to say. If you don't listen I'm going to tell the king, you're in trouble. He didn't get lifted up. The Bible says this: occasionally whenever he had the opportunity he would leave the palace and he'd go back to the sheepfold and serve his father. Now that tells you his heart.

You see most people will never go back to what they did before. They're beyond it, see. You've got to learn to [stay - 00.28.53] see the thing to see in this is when he was in the king's palace he was a servant to the king. When he was in his father's home he was a servant to his father. The real issue was no matter where he was he was always a servant. He never drew his identity from where his position, where he was. He never thought while he was in this lowly role I'm in a lowly role, I'm not much, there's not much for me. I'm just a [unclear 00.29.17]. He wasn't like that and when he was over here he wasn't like that; whoa, look at me now, I'm next to the king! He wasn't like that there. He just said I'm actually the servant of the Lord. Now Jesus was the same. He could be with the crowds and have thousands of people and do miracles, and then He could go alone and wash the disciple's feet, the lowest job.

He could flick between being in a position of prominence, popularity and favour, and then straight away go into insignificance and doing the lowest job. Why is that? Because His identity was never attached to the job and the status. It was always attached I'm the servant of the Lord. Wherever I go I'm a servant. Now I love it. That is a quality that will get you far with God. That was the heart - that's something that's in the heart of David. Wherever he went he's the servant of the Lord. Wherever you go you're the servant of the Lord, see? That's why it's no problem for me. I've learnt some of the things over years. I can remember when we set up a Christian school down in Dannevirke and because I was pastoring the church there, principal of the school, everything's all going pumping, it's all going well, and God wanted to teach me this lesson out of 1 Samuel here.

So one day all the kids are in school and someone reports to me. He said the toilet's broken. Now we only had one small facility there for the toilet, only had one sit on toilet and it's not working. Now that means you're going to have to close the school, unless you can get a plumber. So I rang every plumber in town, no one could get there. So I stood there looking at this toilet [laughter] and the Lord said to me you know what you have to do. [Oh! Laughter] And what had happened was someone had dropped a toilet roll down it which blocked it, then the next person filled it. [Laughter] Yeah, it wasn't too nice - and He just said to me well are you the servant of the Lord or not? If you are then forget you're a principal and forget you're a pastor, just do what needs to be done - so I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. [Laughter]

I don't think I could touch that arm for a month afterwards. [Laughter] We didn't have those fancy gloves that you have now, had nothing like that. I just had to [shove my whole - thank 00.31.45] You Jesus, it's a privilege to serve You Lord, and I did it. Now you see the thing is you'll always face challenges like that, little tests to see whether you really are a servant or whether you're a bit big for your boots. Never get too big for your boots or one day you'll lose them see? [Laughs] Okay, we'll kind of just draw it into a close now. So think about that. I'll just show you what happens in the season of promotion. We won't touch it much, just let me just give you a couple of verses. He got promoted, he got opportunity of course to slay a giant and then in 1 Samuel 18:1 he had a huge favour with the king's son. He got favour with the whole nation. Look in verse 14, David behaved wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was with him; and verse 16, all Israel and Judah loved him; verse 20, now Michael, Saul's daughter, loved David.

Now notice this. David is in a place of huge promotion. He's become a national hero; the king's son loves him, the king's daughter loves him and is about to become his wife. The whole nation loves him. They sing songs about him. He is number one on the popularity chart, and popularity and fame test a person's character. When the crowds came around Jesus the Bible records He just got up early and went alone into prayer with the Father and was able to stand up and say we're not staying here where the crowds are, we're going to another city. You understand there's something in the heart has to be developed to be the servant of God and not worried about the popularity. If you're popular today, the same crowd you're popular today tomorrow they'll hate you. You have a look at Britney Spears and what's happening with her. Her wheels are totally coming off. A little while ago she was fame plus; now you just feel sad for her see, because when the crowd starts to turn the emotions if people have built their life around what others are saying about them, they just go to pieces.

You watch and have a look - just reading Lindsay Lohan, great star and here she is, she's in alcohol rehabilitation. One after the other; Kirsten Dunst, alcohol rehabilitation, one after the other, all of these stars and you find the same kind of stuff going on. They're in a place of fame and they draw their identity out of what people are saying, and when people start to turn against them then they go down. You've got to have your roots firmly in God, and so in this season let's just summarise the lessons you've learned, because David's about to get another lesson. He's about to go from being public hero number one to public villain number one and there's an APB out, kill him on sight. Shoot on sight. That's how people can be with you. Today they celebrated Jesus coming to the city; the next day they yelled crucify Him!

You've got to actually have something inside yourself that the popularity, what people are saying, what people are doing - now young people, this is a huge area for you to grow because as a teenager transitioning out of being dependent on parents to actually becoming a young adult, what the crowd says about you is important to you. But don't make it too important. Make a crowd around you that will actually reinforce your walk with God. Get the right kind of group around you. Connect in with friends that are moving forward with God, because if you hang out with the other ones they'll pressure you to go somewhere else. So we just need to not say there's no such thing as peer pressure. What you do is you create peers around you who actually will pull you in the right direction, so when you're down you've got friends who are going to lift you up and get you going forward.

Okay, we'll just summarise the lessons here that you can learn. Promotion comes from the Lord in His right timing. Develop faithfulness, integrity and courage when no one's looking. Deepen your friendship with the Lord, He's the one who'll promote you. He can get you an opportunity see? If the job is your source then when the job goes you're in trouble. If God is your source when the job goes, I wonder what's next Lord? Hold fast to your integrity and faithfulness when people do stuff to recognise you. Don't get too filled with self-importance, and then you have to realise that when your identity is secure in the Lord you'll be stable no matter what people are saying about you. The time that you start to rise up and start to gather fame and start to become recognised is also the time when against you will start to arise people who are jealous of you.

If you'll have a look here I'll just finish with this last thing. That season of promotion lasted in David's life 17 to 23. It's about - how many years is that? How many years? Six years. He had six years where he was in unusual favour in the nation, then it all turned against him. You notice here, we'll just pick it up and you'll see it here. It says in verse 5, David went out wherever Saul sent him, and he behaved wisely. And Saul set him over all the men of war, and he was accepted in the sight of all people. Now look at this, verse 12; Saul was afraid of David because the Lord is with him and had departed from [Saul, 00.36.42] and Saul demoted him from his presence, made him captain over 1000, but he still behaved wisely. He got a terrible public humiliation right at the end of the season when he was doing his best. Promotion and popularity doesn't last for very long. You know it's called 15 minutes of fame, so don't live for 15 minutes of fame. Live to please God.

Live to walk with Him and discover His heart, and to find a way that you can please Him. Develop the skills in your life and if people promote you, thank God for the privilege but stay a servant in the middle of it. If people rise in envy don't be worried about it. Your promotion is always from the Lord. He was there at the top of the army, and he's demoted down to 1000. We next see him at the next place, we'll find he's in the period of total rejection and abandonment, where now there are new lessons he's got to learn in his life. You're in a season if you're under 17 or 17 and under, you're in the same season as David, learning the lessons of devotion to the Lord, how to build intimacy with the Lord, how to be faithful, how to develop skills, how to speak right and present yourself right. If you've come out into the place of recognition, now there's new kinds of tests.

Will you still remain a servant, or will you position I'm too important to do the little jobs now? I don't do that, someone else does that. Listen, you're never too big to do the little jobs. Keep that heart of a servant, and if you're promoted to great places you're still a servant. If you lose it all then it doesn't matter because you're still a servant. Your life isn't in what the circumstances say; your life is found in you. Lord, my life is in You. My strength is in You. My hope is in You.

[File ends 00.38.32]

The Making of a King (3 of 5)

Sun 24 Feb 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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The Making of a King (3 of 5) Mike Connell 24.02.2008 pm

Okay, let's open our Bibles in Acts 13. This morning I began a series called Unashamed. Going to be following that through on Sunday mornings for a little bit, but I'd love you just to believe that God will help you and open your eyes to see where shame has locked around you and actually restricted or limited your capacity to express who you are, and to give forth the life of Christ. I'm going to show you some keys on it over a few days, but at night time now we're doing a series on The Making of a King. I've just been enjoying that so much because right here the Bible calls us when we come to Christ priests and kings. In other words when you come to Jesus Christ your identity radically changes, and what happens is most of us don't actually come up with the new person we are. We're still living out of the old that we used to be, and we need to come up - God calls us a number of things. He calls us a priest.

That means a person who is called, it's your purpose to come near to God to minister to Him, to access Him, to listen to Him, receive from Him and have something to give. You're also called to be a king. A king is a person who extends dominion, who rules over something. So every one of us has a realm or an area where God calls us to bring His influence to extend His kingdom, so there are places you go and you walk and you meet people and interact I will never go. You are called to advance the work of God in that place. The trouble is so many Christians have been happy and content to come to meetings and consider that that's fulfilling their call of God. No, that isn't fulfilling your call of God. That's positioning yourself to be inspired, be encouraged, but then you fulfil your call when you go out those doors there, and we need to be connected to that call of God.

So what we're doing is we're looking at the life of King David and we saw in King David's life several things. But let's go and pick these verses up because they're very, very good ones, in Acts 13:22. I have found David, the son of Jess, a man after My own heart, who will do all of My will, verse 22. Now pick it up in verse 36; for David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep - or he died in other words. So we discover in this two things about David that God says about him. See, now it's alright to have people say stuff about you. It's another thing when God's saying things about you. You need to value what God is saying about you, see? And what heaven is saying about you. So the first thing tonight is you know, if you've never received Jesus Christ, never given your life to Jesus Christ, what God is saying is you don't belong in His family.

But when you respond to Jesus Christ, when you receive Jesus Christ, begin to trust Him and commit your life to Him, when you recognise I've lived a life apart from God and you begin to connect with Him, God writes your name in His book and He says some different things about you. He says this is My son, this is My daughter, I love them. So we can divide the world up into two groups of people: those who are in God's family and those who potentially are in God's family, and the way that changes is that the people who are in God's family make Him known. So we saw two things here. Now let me just touch on these. Each week we've just reinforced them. The first thing is David was a man after the heart of God. Now we often read this statement and don't have an idea what it means. What it means is this. It means David passionately desired to know what God is like. Now you can have your own ideas of God and they will limit how you can walk with God.

But David made it a personal pursuit to actually discover what God was like. Now what happened was in the season, in his first season in his life when no one saw him, he learned how to worship God and access the presence of God and listen to the voice of God, and he discovered things that God liked. In fact - and often we don't realise this, but in the day - because we've got all the Bible there you see, but when he was living only a part of it had been written. We can look back and we know so much now; he didn't know that much. But what he did was he's so connected with the heart of God, he looked at all of the religious order, the way things were done, the way God had set it up and he was able to - and how Moses had set it up. Moses, the mighty man of God who delivered Israel; Moses, the great giant in Israel's history. He had set up all these ways of worshipping God according to how God had directed him, and you know what David found? He found actually that's not really what God is after.

Now you've got to be pretty bold if you can look at what's existing and be able to say actually that's not really what God is after, there's something else He's after. It's temporary, but there's actually something different that He's got in mind. Now that, how did he find that out? Well he found the heart of God. He found what God desires. He found what God delights in, and he was able to write it down in the psalms. If you search the word of God you'll find out things God really delights in and desires. Now when you begin to discover what He desires and delights, you begin to live a life radically different to everyone around you see? Most people thought God was happy if they turned up three times a year to the celebrations and went to church every week. He said that's not the picture. God is actually after something. He's after passionate worshippers who will love Him and advance His kingdom.

He discovered what God likes and dislikes. Have you discovered that? Have you actually taken time to find out what God really switches on about? See when you do you begin to be a person after the heart of God, and you can't get it all off a platform. You've got to actually discover it through time in the word of God and time in prayer and worshipping Him and waiting on Him, and then He begins to share things with you. The Lord shared some things with me and it's like it just oh! Wow, stunning! See, this is what David was like. He was a man who spent a lot of time pursuing God when no one was looking, and he did that up to the time he was 17. So when David was 17 he was encountering God and discovering things about God that no one else knew in his day. How about that? And that wasn't just where his life started. He actually continued all his life pursuing what God is like, and then he totally reformed everything religious in the nation.

I believe we're in a season and an hour when there's a massive reformation taking place in the way people who are connected to God think about God, think about church, think about what they're called to do. Or you're a part of a group of people that just carries on, I'm happy to just do my little bit and go on. I want to be at the cutting edge of what God is doing in the hour today, because David lived back there. The Bible says David was a man after the heart of God; not only after His heart but would be willing to do what God wanted him to do in his day, and so it says the first thing was he had after God. The second thing is he served his generation by the will of God. Now he didn't serve his generation by continuing what they did in Moses' day; he served his generation by discovering what God wanted him to do in the day he lived, and then he passionately pursued doing that.

And that has not changed. We're in the 21st Century, God is still looking for people who will have a heart to know Him. You say I don't know, it all seems so hard. No, it isn't hard. You're in a church where there are many, many gifted people can help you connect with God and begin to grow in your relationship with God, but ultimately it's got to be your desire. You have to want to. He's wanting you to. He's got things to share with you see, and then out of that flows the fulfilment of destiny. He served his generation by the will of God. Destiny means I discover what God has called me personally to do; what is my assignment in life? What should I be doing with my life? What has God called me to do? Now if you can't answer that you're in trouble, you're drifting, and David discovered what God wanted him to do in his day. God had many things for him to do. He totally reformed the whole way worship was done. Even to this day there are a lot of people get upset about shouting, laughing, jumping, leaping, crying, weeping, expressiveness in the church.

But David saw that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before anyone else did. How did he get it? He touched the heart of God and found what God really likes. God likes extravagant worship. He likes expressive, passionate people. He loves that. If He loves that I want to be that kind of person, and so he discovered in his day what he should do. In his day he was called to be a reformer. Now you may not reform the world but there's certainly some part of this community God wants you to make a difference with your life. So we're then looking now into what David was like and we saw there were some seasons in his life that each of the cities that he dwelt in was a season in his life, so the first one we looked at was - anyone remember it? Bethlehem. Bethlehem was a season where he was unknown. Bethlehem - he lived in Bethlehem from nought to about 17.

He was born there, grew up there to about the age of 17 and the place of Bethlehem, it's always the season in our life where no one is looking what's going on. And in that season you are developing your relationship with God and learning to serve and be faithful in small things with no one looking. Now a lot of people need someone to you know, get your room done, aah aah, you've got to stand over them, try to get them to do that. Listen, that's not the deal. David learnt what to do. He learnt how to fulfil small tasks faithfully, and so we saw some things and then the second place we saw was the season of promotion. Let's go back into the Old Testament again, 1 Samuel 16, and it was his time of promotion. So they were looking - God was - it was his point where God was wanting [to promote him. 00.10.37] We learnt that promotion comes from the Lord, and how did he get promoted? He didn't say listen what I can do; someone else said look God, this is what I notice about this young guy.

Do you remember what we saw that he could do? And these were the giftings, these were the things we found in 1 Samuel 16:18. He was skilful in playing, he developed musical skill. What are you doing to develop your skills? Have you got anything to offer? If you have potentially an ability in an area and don't develop it and remain unskilled, what you can contribute there diminishes. You are called by God to become excellent in whatever skill or ability or thing He's put in your heart as a gifting. Develop it. It's your responsibility to develop. They called him out and they said man, he's really excellent in playing an instrument. He's a mighty man of valour. He's got courage. He's developed his character. He's not afraid to stand up and speak out. Notice it said there he was a man of war. He had a fighting spirit. If something rises up you can guarantee he'll stand up and challenge it.

How did they know that? They'd heard of what he'd done; a bear came, he took on the bear. A lion came, he took on the lion in hand to hand combat. We see these characteristics developed where no one saw but God, so what giants are you facing in your life where no one is looking but God? Perhaps it's a giant of lust. Perhaps it's a giant of fear. Perhaps it's a giant of shame. It may be a giant of rejection. Whatever it is, then challenge that giant and do what David said; when the bear tried to get me I took a hold of him and I slew him, and the Lord helped me. You'll never solve issues or problems in life if you aren't willing to face them and stand up to them. And then it says he was prudent in speaking. He was very careful in how he spoke. He'd developed wisdom, words that actually created impressions and touched people's lives. He spoke wisely, he acted wisely, and it said there he looked good. He presented himself well, and then it said the Lord is with him.

They were aware that he carried the presence of God in his life. Now isn't that amazing if others could say that about you? See, if your face comes up an impression of what you're like will come up, and he established credibility by the time he was 17. How about that? So what have you established about your name and your reputation by this stage in your life? If people were to use your name what would they say? Oh, he's a joker. Whoa, that'll take you a long way. Oh wow man, he's the life and soul of the party, can drink everyone under the table. That'll take you a long way too - but not on the right path. So what are you establishing in your life that you want to be known for so when your name is mentioned people say oh, I know that one? Yeah, boy he's courageous. You want to hear how he speaks. See, the Bible says a good name is more to be desired than silver or gold; more desirable to have a reputation that's good and honourable than anything else.

So then came the season of promotion and he was promoted. He came into a place of immense favour and of course that place of immense favour was also a place where everyone's eyes were on him, and we saw that he got promoted. He slew Goliath. Suddenly he's got national prominence. He suddenly emerges to fame. He has overnight success - 17 years and he becomes an overnight success. Now the thing is this, that whether - if you are impacted by the praises of people you will also be impacted by their criticisms. When people are speaking well of you it's a real test on your character as to whether you'll give honour to the Lord for how you got where you got. We need to be able to actually acknowledge what we've done, but give the Lord the credit. He enabled me - notice what David said. The Lord who helped me slay the lion and the bear will also help me slay this giant.

See that he's constantly aware that God is helping him. He's able to give honour to the Lord. Now I wonder how much you're able to honour the Lord for the things you've accomplished in your life? See having a heart that's grateful will help you in that area. Now I want to move on to the next season because seasons in life shift. People are fickle and they change, but even in spite of the fact people change, God always is so consistent. Now look in 1 Samuel 19. Let's have a look - verse 8. There was a war again; David went out and fought the Philistines, and struck them a mighty blow, and they fled from him. So notice he's still on a winning streak. He's just gone out and won a battle. Now he comes into what we call the cave of Adullam. We'll see that in a moment. The cave of Adullam is the season where you are misunderstood and rejected and treated unfairly. Misunderstandings, rejection, injustice; everyone who's going to become a king, a man or woman of God, will have times when you are in the cave of Adullam.

Notice what straight away happened. He'd just gone out and done something good and now the distressing spirit from the Lord came upon Saul as he sat in his house. David was ministering with his music and then Saul tried to kill him. Verse 11, Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him and said kill him. Kill him, and Michal, David's wife told him saying if you don't save your life tonight tomorrow you'll be killed, so he had to get out and to flee. So you notice now he's gone from being the hero of the nation to experiencing some demotion, and now they just plum outright want to kill him. He's rejected, he's misunderstood and he faces tremendous injustices, not once but many times. Now I want you to see how he handles it because the message of misunderstanding is you don't understand me! I've heard lots of people say that. Young people say it; you just don't understand. No, you're not making yourself clear. [Laughter] Misunderstanding is a part of life and you have to be able to handle it and not need to have people understand you.

We all want someone to understand us - but you don't understand! You need to understand! What I'm saying is you need to understand me! No, no, no, no. Actually you're going to have times in life where people don't understand you and totally get it wrong. Now what goes in your heart, what happens in your life when you're having that season? You know what happens to us? We want to be understood, so we want to rise up and now begin to contend so people can understand us, rather than saying its okay, that God understands and I can rest in Him. If I need to I can communicate - I've been in times where it's like it didn't matter what I said it just got worse and worse. I realised zip your lip - but you don't understand my intentions are pure! I'm just trying - listen, zip! You're just making it worse. Just don't try and explain yourself and justify yourself. It will get worse.

The Lord's the justifier. He can come on your case and sort it out, and the same people who misunderstand you and hate you today can turn around tomorrow and think you're wonderful, and they really now think they understand you - but they don't. You don't have to be understood by everyone. Just let it go. Let go needing to be understood. Just bring your issues to God, see? [Don't understand. 00.18.11] The second one's rejection, so rejection has a message nobody cares about me! I've heard lots of people say that. I used to say it myself, inside my head all the time. You don't understand, nobody cares! That's actually not true, but it's an attack on your inner man where you experience the pain, the feeling and the grief that goes with being rejected. You don't fit in. It appears like people don't want you. That's painful. No one wants that experience. How many have had it already in their life a few times? See, it's a life experience.

How many have been misunderstood a few times? It's life. Come on, get used to it. And there's some times when God actually cranks it up and you've got all of it happening all at once! It's like nobody understands you; you're now all alone, nobody even wants to talk to you. The phone that rang, the texts came have all stopped. Now you are a reject! [Laughter] Of course that's almost like a teenager's terror of being a reject. No matter what happens I've got to not be a reject. I have to fit in! I have to be accepted! No, you don't. You just need to actually go deeper into God. You need to actually obtain your identity and your acceptance through your connection with God, and then it makes you secure so if people don't understand you it's not a problem. If they reject you it's not a problem. You're secure within from the praise of people or the criticism of people, and so how on earth is God going to put that into your life?

Come on, just think about it. Well we'll have an altar call and come up and you can pray for understanding or pray for this thing that, you know? No, no, no, it doesn't work like that. God sets up for you opportunities to be rejected and misunderstood to give you a chance to learn how to handle those things you need to be the man God wants you to be, or the woman God wants you to be. So you should be saying BRING IT ON GOD! [Laughter] Rather than [unclear 00.20.20] don't like me, they just - nobody spoke to me. Well did you speak to anyone? See when you've got this issue of needing to be understood or this issue of rejection, what you're doing is you're placing a demand people have got to come through for me. You, it's your job to understand me! It's your job to care for me! Now listen, that's actually disempowering yourself. It isn't their job to do anything like that. It's your job to learn how to face rejection and misunderstanding, and of course the one really gets people is injustice.

The message of injustice: it's not fair! I've heard my kids say that many times. You understand, it's not fair. How many have said that a few times? If I say it will I be rejected? [Laughter] See, but it's not fair, so that's actually the message of injustice, when we're treated unfairly. Now notice what David had done. David had just gone out and he'd defeated the major enemy that Israel had, and now they're rejecting him. That's not fair! He's just gone out to war, fought a battle and he comes back and now the king - he's come back to the king: oh, you should really understand me now and understand I've got a king inside me, and you should really, really love me and embrace me. And instead of that Saul picks up a spear, says I'm going to stick that little boy. Now maybe people don't throw spears but they do hurl words, and words can be like spears. They're like arrows the Bible says that come into you and hurt you. So how many can identify with being misunderstood, rejected and felt unwanted, and injustice, it's not been fair how I've been treated? Is there anyone here who's exempt from that? You're just obviously not old enough to have experienced much of life yet.

Okay, we all can see it's part of life, but actually it's part of life you must experience to grow as a man or woman of God, and God is watching in that season what you do. He watches what you do, so there are things to learn and things to [unclear 00.22.28]. I want you to see the first thing that David did, the moment this thing came and he realised he's going to lose his life if he stayed where he did. Now I believe he's in a highly - what you'd call a dysfunctional, abusive environment and he did the thing that all people should do in that, leave it. He fled from it. God does not expect you to stay in an environment destructive to your potential in your life. You have to position yourself in the place where you are actually able to grow and go forward, so sometimes we have to flee out of things. Sometimes you've actually got to say no. If you're in a group or in a crowd and that crowd - and sometimes they can be like dogs. They'll just turn on one and bite and devour and put them down.

If you're in that you've got to get out of that crowd. That's not good for your health. So there are some times you have to actually move away from situations, but this is what you do need to do. It says verse 18, David fled and escaped, and went to Samuel at Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done. And he and Samuel went and stayed in Naioth. Now what you've got to understand is the significance of this is Samuel was the voice of God to the nation at that time. Samuel carried an anointing and a presence that impacted the whole nation at his day, so what it tells us then is he ran into the presence of God when he suffered injustice, rejection and misunderstanding. Where do you go? Do you go angry and nut off? Do you isolate and get full of self-pity, have a pity party and there you are, all on your own? You've invited no one - and no one wants to come. [Laughter]

I've been there many times. Depression comes with it, angry at yourself, angry at what's happened, feeling powerless, self-destructive thoughts come. It's a terrible thing really. But you see he didn't do that. He ran in to the presence of God. He ran in to the presence of God to hear fresh from God for his life. The one thing you have to learn to do when you face misunderstandings, rejection and injustice is reach into the presence of God. You've got to go alone with God and begin to start to worship Him, let your griefs, your sorrows, your injustice go before Him until you come to the place of rest in Him, and then ask Him what should I do? Most people angrily react. They rebel. They angrily react, they get sulky, the get self-pity. They go out and have a drink, start to drink, start to smoke, start to do things. Now you'll find - you have a look at a lot of the issues that young people struggle with now. They're rooted in rejection, injustice and misunderstanding and instead of turning into God they begin to turn in and hate themselves, then try and find a way of comforting through drugs or alcohol or sexual relationships, all kinds of stuff like that.

You have to learn consciously to choose to come with your pain to the Lord, and that was the thing that he did. In psalm - I may have it written down here somewhere - in Psalm 142:4, it says this. It says that I look to the left and the right and look at this, this is David. No man cared for my soul. Then he came into the presence of God and discovered intimacy and God's love and acceptance for him. See, how are you going to reach into the love of God when you desperately need to be loved; don't reach for people, reach into God and begin to start to open your heart to Him. I can remember hours over a period of a long time in facing emotional pain and grief, learning how to worship God and to express the pain and grief of the heart and come in and lay before Him, sometimes on my face weeping, but it just took time. And then I'd begin to start to encounter His presence, hear His words. He'd tell me what to do.

Now you understand that the situations were painful. I wouldn't want to go through most of those again, but they drove me to find and discover God in a deeper way. You have to do that, otherwise whenever there's misunderstanding you'll have to prove you're right. Whenever you're rejected you'll react and reject others. Whenever you have injustice you'll angrily try to beat the others down or prove you're right, instead of being able to come into the Lord and get wisdom what to do. God will give you the wisdom but you've got to learn how to connect to Him when you're in pain, because most of us when we're in pain we're just overwhelmed by the pain. Well get some music, go alone with God, begin to play music and select songs that will work for you. Now that's what I was talking before about songs being a way - music is a way, it's a language of the soul, so certain songs will express emotions and feelings and even the cry of the heart.

Sometimes when we're hurt it's hard to put it in words; what's wrong? Err eww I don't know. Well you've got to do better than that. It's your job to communicate what's in your heart. You've got to take time to get what's in your heart out, and so I found like for example that song Lord, You're My Healer. Now God can heal you in any part of your life, it's not just physical healing. Now the guy who wrote that song wrote it in the midst of being riddled with cancer, with death reports around his life and he wrote Lord, You're My Healer. So that song was birthed out of deep conflict where a person made a decision to come to God and arise with faith. You think he cried? I'm sure he cried. Do you think he wept? Do you think he felt injustice? I'm so young. Do you think he felt rejected? I'm sure he felt all of those things, but he decided to turn it in towards God, creatively expressed his heart in a song.

So a song like that is not like ordinary music. It carries with that something from the spirit of a man that when you begin to play it and allow it to come around, suddenly you begin to find you're weeping because it's saying what's in your heart that you can't quite get the right words for. I find I can't always get the words, but music can help. Praying in tongues can help, and spending time in the presence of God, loving on Him and communicating with Him. It helps to unload the heart and the emotions and begin to develop a much deeper trust in the Lord. If you've ever had a broken relationship and it breaks your heart, where will you go? I remember my heart being broken over a broken relationship and night after night weeping with grief, and struggling to find God in the middle of it. But this is part of the making of a person of God. You have to learn how to handle the issues of life. Instead of whimpering and rolling over and becoming a victim and poor me, you begin to pursue God in the middle of it and then you start to build in your life the qualities that are needed to prepare you for your next season.

God is not going to allow these things - you go through the water, it'll not overwhelm you; go through the fire, it'll not consume, because the Lord will help you. See, I know that verse, it comes out of Isaiah, because I needed that one time when the waters were overwhelming and the fire looked like it was going to burn me to the ground. Then I heard God saying I'm with you, I will hold your hand, I'll help you. That's not a verse for me; that's a reality. Understand that? Now that's how you become made as a man of God. You have experiences and what God is watching, all heaven is watching, what will you do with the lemon gave you? Become bitter and sour, turn away, get disappointed, rejected, overwhelmed, offended, or will you just turn into God and become something sweet for others? No shortcuts. There are no shortcuts. No shortcuts to the making of a man or woman of God, this is how it takes place. That's why we have really so few people who actually can make influence or make great changes, because there's a price to pay in your personal life.

God's looking for you. You're the one. You're the one He's got His eye on. All heaven's got their eye on you right now, in the challenge you're facing, the lion that's seeking to intimidate you, the bear that's crushing you. All of heaven is watching whether you'll reach to the Lord and overcome that through His ability in you. We can preach messages, Anna can ring you up and text you, you can be encouraged, everything. But the bottom line that comes down, what will you choose when these things come to you? David chose to go straight into the presence of God. Look in 1 Samuel 22. David then departed from there and escaped into the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down. Everyone who was in distress, in debt, everyone who was discontented gathered to him. And he became captain over them, about 400 of them. Let me just give you a couple of the lessons you need to learn because I'm starting to run out of time now.

There are some lessons to be learnt see. He went into the cave, so the cave of Adullam is the season of your life which is like a cave. In the Bible natural things often pictures spiritual realities. To be in a cave means you've withdrawn from everyone, you're in a place you're really lonely and it's dark and it's cold and you're miserable. Cave time - and everyone in their life has some cave time, everyone. Cave time is not a nice season. It doesn't need to last. It'll only last as long as is needed for your life to turn and change and develop, and then you're out of your cave. Even Elijah went into a cave. God said what are you doing here? [Unclear 00.32.31] and he starts to come up with all these things, and then God spoke to him in a quiet voice; Elijah, Elijah, and gave him fresh mandate and direction. See, so the cave is an important time in our life. What we do means either we stay in there and rot in there, or we actually grow and come out of it, the cave of Adullam.

So the cave of Adullam is a time to deepen your dependency on the Lord. Notice that David did something else. The tendency is in rejection and misunderstanding and injustice, to become totally involved in yourself: it's all about me! And then you let it all hang out. [Laughter] Everyone knows you're in a bad place. Listen, that's not how you handle it. There's a part you must bring before the Lord, but the thing that'll get you out of it is if you do things David did. He went into the presence of the Lord; second thing was he maintained concern for others. Notice he went and he got his parents and family and brought them too, because he was concerned that they would be killed. Even in his own pain he stopped to think about what could happen to his family, and was concerned about his family's welfare. We find if you read on a little bit further there was another city called [Kealla 00.33.45] and the people were being maraudered by the Philistines.

He said Lord, I want to help them. See, there's something in his heart, kingship's in his heart. It's in his heart. It's in his heart. He saw these people and he's [unclear 00.33.58] I've got to do something about it God, just give me a yes and I'll go help them! See, he didn't act impulsively. He asked God, enquired of God and got direction, and God said go up. His men said don't do that, listen, listen! We've got enough problems of our own. Why go making more problems, stirring up the Philistines and trying to help some people? What are they to us anyway? Listen, David had a different heart. He carried in him the heart of a king and a king, no matter what pain they're going through, is still thinking how they can do what God called them to do. I've discovered this over the years. Most people I've watched quit quit when the pain came instead of actually bringing it to God and then staying where they ought to stay and doing what God said for them to do. They quit.

Seen youth leaders quit, pastors quit, people quit marriages, people quit all kinds of things. They quit when they're in pain rather than use the pain as an opportunity to fire them into the presence of God, learn some new things and still keep looking out. You've got to keep looking out, or you'll be consumed with your problems. So he helped his family, he helped these people and did he get thanked for his help? Now listen to this. The Bible says Saul heard where he was. Now you see he delivered the city and after he's delivered the city everyone says oh, you're great. Come on in Dave, we love you. Dave, you're a great guy, come on in. Bring your soldiers, we've got a feast for you. Saul heard about it and brought his armies towards them and David did this; Lord, Lord, you know what people are like. What are they going to do? Are they going to look after me or are they going to betray me? Are they going to stand with me against Saul now I've helped them out, or are they going to turn on me like dogs?

God said they're going to turn on you like dogs. He said you'd better get out. You understand, he never needed the favour of people to make his decisions. People are fickle. People are fickle. Today they love you, tomorrow they've got an issue. Today you're wonderful, tomorrow they've said something behind your back. That's people. Get over it, it's life. But what you need to do is say God, what should I do? Now listen, in this situation he asked God whether these people would be his friends or not - quite good for you to talk to God about your friends. Some people look like they're friends, they all say nice things to you today, but tomorrow they could deliver you up just as easily. So you've got to listen to what God is saying about people. He says some things and He can tell you what's in people's hearts because He knows what's in their hearts.

I've known people go into business with someone and I think did you ask God to go into that or not? They had their mind made up, they went in, their wife was trying to warn them. Later on it was a disaster. They never stopped to listen. David listened. He listened and that got him out of a potential trap that could have taken his life. You see this comes out of in the midst of his pain and his sorrow, he came into the presence of God to learn how to express to the Lord, and then secondly he actually asked God what to do. He got involved with people, helping them, but he never let his life be delivered into their hands. And Jesus was the same. It says He didn't commit Himself to these people who thought He was wonderful because of the miracles, because He knew what was in their heart. He knew they'd deliver Him up. The people that are saying you're wonderful today could tomorrow deliver you up and betray you.

You've got to listen to God and let your roots go into God, and accept sometimes people do things that hurt us. It's part of life, but when you're set in the Lord you can get over injustice, over rejection, over these things that have happened. So we see there what he did. He didn't react. He didn't get angry with them. He didn't stand there: listen, well you lot, you know what you can do! I've just helped you out and saved you and this is how you're going to treat me? They didn't even know what was in their own hearts, but God did and He positioned David so he never had to have that issue. There's an awful lot of pain you could free yourself from and not have to face if you ask God about relationships before entering in too deeply to them. God knows how people will react under pressure, so why don't you ask Him if He wants you involved in partnerships or relationships, or ask His direction because He knows what they will be like. He knows how they'll respond. You've got to listen to Him when it comes to these things.

I've had over the years all people say, lots of people say lovely, sweet things but the Lord said don't trust that person because there's this, this and this in their heart, and when the pressure comes this is what will come out. You say oh, that's not very loving. No, that's very wise, see? We're to love the world. That means you do what's best for them; you act in a way that's godly towards them, but trust everyone? No way. You're not called to trust everyone; you're called to give trust to people who prove trustworthy, and God has got a few things to say about that. Now I tell young people you would save an awful lot of pain in your coming life if you could handle your issues the way David did. He went into the presence of God, discovered a place of comfort and friendship with God that enabled him to get over injustice, misunderstanding and rejection.

In the middle of his own pain he still had the heart to fulfil his course and care for people and help them, and he listened to God before entering into any relationships and it saved him. The last thing that happens and I won't go into these stories, but there were two opportunities. Someone really treated him badly and he was about to go kill them and he listened to good advice, and then thanked them for advising him well. He ended up marrying the lady because she gave such good godly advice. There's a second situation where he's in a cave with Saul and his friends around him said listen, this is the day that God has delivered your enemy into your hands. Why don't you get up and kill him now, get this over with? You'll become the king, Saul's out of the way, our problems have stopped. He said God forbid that I should take his life. He refused to touch someone who had treated him [justly. 00.40.10] He said God set him in that place; let God sort him out.

God saw that [attitude. 00.40.16] You know twice David faced that same test and the crowd was saying - this is what the crowd said. The crowd said oh ooh, now's your chance, get him! This will be over. Knock him out of your way and then it'll be over! And David said no, the Lord forbid I should do such a thing. I'm trusting God to get me where He wants me to get. That brings us to the final thing and it's this. No man can steal your destiny, but you can mess it up by not responding to God. Saul was never able to kill him, in spite of trying and using all these soldiers, everything at his disposal could never kill David. There's no one can stop you getting where God wants you to get, but you can stop yourself by getting wrong attitudes and not responding right to God. The season of misunderstanding, rejection does not last forever, but it's preparing a king for his next place in the work of God.

If you're going through that why don't you make a decision, I'm going to change how I respond to it and behave differently. I'm going to do these two things; one, I'm going to bring what I have to the Lord and press in to His presence to listen to Him, to hear His words, to be encouraged in my faith. I'm going to release and bless the people that have done this, and I'm going to keep focussing on my commitment to the destiny and call of God. I will continue to help people. I won't become bitter. There have been times when I have come through that gateway there, overwhelmed with personal grief at what was happening in my life, and I made a statement to the Lord in the 100 metres from that roundabout there through to that gate. When I cross that gate I'm going to fulfil my call and I expect you to take all the grief from me and anoint me to do what I need to be doing.

See, God notices that kind of thing. You didn't notice that, but God did. You understand? You couldn't have done anything about the pain or couldn't have done anything to help about it. I could have quit and given up, been overwhelmed. But Joy and I stood together, pushed into God and said we'll still continue to serve the way we're called to serve. That's the heart of a king. That's the heart of David. Jesus was called the Son of David. That's the kind of man that David was; Jesus was even identified with him, same kind of person, same spirit.

[File ends 00.42.52]

The Making of a King (4 of 5)

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The Making of a King (4 of 5) Mike Connell 02.03.2008 pm

Amen. It's great when God enlarges us isn't it aye? It's always good to be enlarged and we're in a season now where God is enlarging us. Enlargement has two forms; it's external, you grow, things change, things increase, things get bigger. Business grows, your influence grows, you get promoted. Now those are the external things, but always external enlargement is preceded by internal change. So right now whether you're young or whether you're old, God is calling you to be willing to change on the inside. I want to just pick up that story of David and we've been looking at the seasons in David's life. We've been following through the theme the Making of a King, and I want to just share tonight related to that. I want to just stop and look at an incident in David's life and I want to just tonight talk about courage to continue, courage to continue.

So we're going to go back where we started. We're going to start the same place each time because if I keep repeating the scripture you'll find you remember it. In Acts 13, so let's go back into Acts 13 and this is what the Bible says concerning David. Now this is God's commending him. It's not like someone wrote this about him. It says in verse 22 I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all of My will. So we see the first characteristic that made David the man he was was he had a heart that longed to know God intimately; God, what do You like? What do You delight in? What is in Your heart? What are the things that You think about? And so he pursued God. He was a man of intimacy with God, a man who pursued God and if David could do it we can do it too.

David, when he had time alone when he was just a young person up to the age of 17, established in those 17 years a track record of reaching out and connecting with God. He made the pursuit of God his personal priority. Now I know many of you young ones, you're doing courses at school, all of those kinds of things and they're all really helpful for you, but listen. The pursuit of God will carry you through to your destiny. There is nothing you can learn at school that will actually take you to the God-given destiny. The only way that you can reach your God-given destiny is if you connect with the one who created you, develop intimacy with Him. Intimacy takes time. It's time spent praying, time spent pouring your heart out, it's time spent reading the word. It's not found in a meeting; it's found at home alone, and then when you come into a meeting you find already before anyone else has even started your heart is arising to connect with God.

You've practiced it, and one of the things you find when you begin to practice engaging the presence of God at home, it becomes like a track built into your inner man and it becomes easier and easier and easier to just suddenly lock in and engage the presence of God. But if you've never made it a habit, if you've never made it a habit to pour out your heart and begin to learn how to reach into the heart of God; if you never do that when you're young you find it gets more and more difficult as you get older. You have much more stuff has got into your life, so David, when he was a young man pursued God. The second thing we saw in this scripture here is He said I know David, he's a man after My heart who will do all My will. So David was a man who not only sought what God wanted, he actually was happy to do what God wants. So in verse 36 David, after he'd served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep. So the second thing we see about David, not only was he a man passionate to know God intimately, he didn't just spend a lot of time praying.

He actually was a man who influenced and changed a nation. It says he served his generation, so every generation including this one is looking for a man or a woman who will get to know God, and then fulfil what God says to do. Now that could be that you reach your friends for Christ, it could be you start up some kind of thing that helps gather them up. You may start some kind of program that touches people's lives. Who knows what it will involve for you? Every one of us has got a unique way of expressing the will of God in this generation, but the key thing is that we do it. Now I want you just to look with me at a couple of verses, then we're going to go back into the Old Testament to David again. I want you to pick up in Hebrews 6:12. The TV man hasn't got that one because I just threw it in. In Hebrews 6:12 he says this. He says don't become sluggish or lazy, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Don't become a slacker in other words. I like that kind of [word 00.04.39], don't become a slacker. So obviously he's writing to Christians. It's possible to become a slacker. Tell the person next to you, don't become a slacker. [Don't become a slacker.] That's good, good counsel. That's good advice, don't become a slacker. A slacker is a person who's lazy, they're waiting for someone else to do it all. Notice this, it says be followers or an imitator of certain kinds of people. Now young people, there's a great tendency to follow the crowd. Have a look really what you're following and where it goes. Just think through what you're following and where that leads to, because the people you follow, the people you connect with, the people you share your life with, they begin to shape what you are. So begin to be careful what you follow.

The Bible tells us what to follow. It says follow those men and women who through faith - listen to this - faith and endurance, or courage to continue in the face of pressure. Follow people who are believers in God and when it's tough in their life, they've got the courage in them to stick with it and go on. They may not be up on a platform, they may not be people that you see visibly, but they've got faith in their life and when you watch them in adversity, you watch them in trouble, you watch them in pressure, the thing you notice is there's a courage inside. They stand up and they stay the course and they're not quitters. I've had years and years of people and when the pressure comes on them they quit right at the crucial time. I grieve over people that do that. Right at the point when they should be breaking through to the things God has they quit because they didn't have the courage to stay the course.

One of the things that helps us stay the course is you have people you look to and model your life on who've got faith. They believe God and they have courage to stand. You watch them when times are tough, and you hear them still praising God. They still continue and a year later they're still there serving God. Over the years I've seen some bright and shining stars. Well the bright stars shine and then they go. What I look for are men and women who stay the course, and you may not see them up here. They may not be on the platform, may not be out in the open, but when you watch over the course of time you see there they were. They just hung into God. You never saw what went on behind the scenes, but they hung into God. They had courage to stand. I could share story after story of people here who had the courage to stand when everything in them wanted to quit see? That's what the Bible says; be like that.

He said be followers of those who through faith and patience - notice this - inherit the promises of God. So if God has spoken to you about something He wants to do in your life, you've got to realise it'll take you faith and it'll take you some courage to stick with it, because everything is going to take off course if it possibly can. I can think of times when people have come up and have stood in altar call, they've dedicated their life to the Lord, Spirit of God spoke prophetically and I look at them now. They just didn't have the faith and the courage to stay the course. They were sabotaged before they finished their course. I say Lord Jesus, help me, I want to stay the course and finish strong. See? You want to do that? It's not where you are now, it's how you finish. I was talking to someone today, I said it's not where you're at now. It's what you're like at the end of the course, what you're like at the end of your life.

Are you still strong and there's fire and there's passion for God, you're pursuing and still believing promises of God? Or did you quit because it got tough; you gave up because your friends around you gave up? There was someone who was your friend and they gave up on God, and you followed them? Don't be followers of quitters; followers of people who stick the course, stay the course. Listen, even in the natural things of this world people who quit too easily never achieve, never succeed. There's something about staying the course, not being distracted, keeping your focus on your dream, your vision and particularly in this case focussing on the Lord who's got the ability to fulfil your promises. Notice the second thing, found in Hebrews 10:38. So what have we got to do? Don't be a slacker, but rather be followers or imitators of people who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Here's another one, similar kind of thing in Hebrews 10:35; Don't cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of - what have you got need of? You've got need of courage to stay the course, so that after you've done the will of God you may receive the promise. So notice again that in order to receive what God has promised you there are a couple of things it tells you here. It says number one, don't lose your confidence, confidence in God. Man, you can have a mess all around you but stay confident that God's great at fixing messes. If God could reach out of heaven and raise a dead man out of a grave, and raise him up and bring him to heaven, he's got the ability to raise me up. It doesn't matter what I look, doesn't matter what you say, doesn't matter what my finances are saying, doesn't matter what circumstances say. God can lift me up and help me finish the course! He can do it for you too!

Look at Joseph. There he is in the lowest prison of Egypt. He's been accused falsely of rape, attempted rape, and there he is rotting away in a prison and God is able to reach into the prison, lift him up and stick him on a throne. That's the God we serve. He can do it! If He can do it for Joseph and Daniel and men like that, He can do it for you. He's not a different God - but I'll tell you something. The Bible's very clear, don't let go of being confident in God. Don't be confident in yourself, don't be so confident in your friends. Be confident in God! God is faithful. God is faithful. He will get you there. Don't lose your confidence, and hang in and stay true because after you've done what God says to do, that's when you get the promises. There's something about that that people today struggle with. You've got to remain bold and confident in God and stay on course, doing what God said to do. Then God brings you through.

I've seen this over and over and over, people just stuck the course and I've seen it with people and they - I couldn't believe it. Right when they're about to break through they just gave up and went off track. I thought oh, my heart broke for them. I was just talking with someone this week and right at the point they're about to have everything enlarge for them they just went off course, actually gave up. I think oh, don't be a quitter. Don't give up. Never, never give up. Tell someone don't give up! [Don't give up!] Don't be a quitter, don't give up. Come on, stay the course! [Repeated by congregation.] Okay, let's go into the Old Testament. We're going to have a look at David. Let's go into the Old Testament, courage to continue. Let's pick it up in 1 Samuel 30.

I love this about David. Sometimes we look at all kinds of things. We're not looking at all the things he did. We're looking at the kind of man he was. We want to find out not just what people did but what kind of person they are. I was just thinking today of Ian coming back from overseas and conference opened up for him over there. But I remember when he first arrived here, it didn't look like he was going to be taking conferences all over the world. He had to stay the course, stay the course, stay the course, just keep doing what God said to do. Then it comes about. That's how it works, and that's why the Bible says be followers of those who've got faith and they stick the course. Don't follow people who waver all over the place and quit and give up; follow people who've got the courage to follow their convictions in God.

Now look at this. It tells us here that David was in Ziklag. Ziklag had been a city that was given to him. Remember we found that there are certain lessons in David's life associated with cities. We saw a number of cities and what happened in those places. Now here's a major challenge that David faces. It's the challenge where has he got courage to continue when his whole world is falling apart. Now this is not for just young people tonight, this is also for any one of us who right now may be facing your life being overwhelmed. Here it is. Now it came pass or happened when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the South and Ziklag, and attacked Ziklag and burned it with fire, and had taken captive the women and those who were there, from small to great. They did not kill anyone, but carried them away and went their way.

David and his men came to the city, and there it was, burned with fire; and their wives and their sons and their daughters had been taken captive. David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept, until they had no more power to weep. And David's two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the widow of Nabal the Carmelite, had been taken captive. And David was great distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and daughters. Now you see here David is in a crisis. He had no warning a crisis was about to overtake him, absolutely no warning.

What he'd done is he'd gone out on a raiding party as he'd always done. The soldiers, about 600 of them went out. They were all armed and they were ready to go and conquer some areas of land, and when they went away they left the city behind them. They left the city of Ziklag, and in that city they had their wives, their children, their finances, their TV sets, their computers. They had everything that people have, they were all there. David I guess in his heart trusted because he was serving the Lord, that the Lord would look after him in that situation, and so they went out on a raiding party. About three days later they returned to the city. Now I want you to try and imagine what he must have felt. Remember, we're looking at what was in his heart and how he conducted himself.

We're looking at what kind of type of guy he is. Then we want you to think about something that you have faced or may have faced in the past. When he came and he looked as they drew near they would have seen a column of smoke rising up. Have you ever seen a city on fire? I've seen a city on fire. When a city's on fire there are columns of smoke rising up into the sky from every burning building. When I stood in India in 1984 and there was a riot in the streets, I stood on the roof of a house and as I looked from the roof of the house as far as you could see, every direction there were columns of smoke rising up from burning buildings. It's a most incredible experience to have, to be there and see the city is on fire.

The Amalekites were a very, very violent people. They were known to wait and just hang on in Moses day and pick off the people of God. They were horrendous people. Saul was challenged to go and kill them and he never did, so now these Amalekite hordes had come up. Now they were a violent people. It's hard for us to kind of imagine that. You imagine now say a motorcycle gang has gone into town and has absolutely destroyed everything that's there. Not only do they just smash the windows, smash the doors, smashed everything that was precious, they just looted the place. Now when a place has been looted everything's just pulled out. There's no respect for any property. They just tear stuff around, they're looking for money, looking for gold, looking for silver, looking for valuables and looking for people.

These cruel people gathered up and they saw that there was just women and children in the town; they gathered up and took every woman, every child, every son, every daughter. They herded them all up. Can you imagine the panic in the families surrounded by an army like that? And then as they were taken out of the city they went through the city burning it to the ground, razing it to the ground. Now can you imagine what it's like to have been there, to have been captured like that? There's no one to protect you. You're being carried away by an enemy army. You know what's going to happen. They will be raping and molesting the women and the children; they'll be forcing the young men to just serve them as slaves. They're dividing the people up so this one belongs to this one, no, this one's mine and they're beginning to argue and fight.

They've got the wine and the alcohol. You can imagine what would have happened within a day or two of them taking everyone out of the city. You get the picture what this is like - so David now as he approaches the city, looks and the city he expected God to look after now has been devastated. Everything has gone. Now don't think that David didn't feel deeply about it. The Bible says they cried and cried and cried until they had no more tears to grieve, so we see here he faced a major setback, a major disappointment in his life. How do you handle setbacks and disappointments? It's valid to grieve - part of what we do because we're human, we just grieve. Have you ever had a setback? Have you ever had a disappointment, something you were looking forward to and it just never worked out? Something that you had hoped would be there and it just fell apart, something that you valued and someone just destroyed it and treated it like it was nothing? There is a grief comes with that.

David and his friends wept. Now this is a hardened soldier and what is he feeling? Imagine what he's thinking as he's coming to that city now; my wife, my beautiful wife, my beautiful children, and they've been taken away by an Amalekite man and who knows what they're doing to them right now. Can you imagine the grief and the anguish of soul that he felt? All the money's gone, all the goods are gone, everything he has built in his life has now just gone. That's the kind of level that he's facing. Here's a man who never lost a battle and now in front of him is a total disaster, and to top it off not only did he have a major setback and disappointment. The second thing that happened was he was rejected by his own men.

Now you've got to understand this is not the first time David's been rejected. David was rejected by his family. David was rejected by King Saul. David was rejected by the nation. David was rejected by the men he had reached out and helped them and saved them, risking his life. David understood the pain of rejection, and now the men that had stood with him for the last 13 years, they too are saying we better get rid of David, he's a poor leader. They are about to snuff out the only hope they have for their future. This is what people do. When they get hurt they want someone to blame, they want someone to get angry against. When people get upset, they lose someone, they just get real angry and they'll lash out at the person right near them.

You understand he's facing two major things; deep disappointment and deep rejection. He was overwhelmed with grief and extremely alone. Have you ever felt in a time like that, extremely alone, disappointed and there's no human person to support you? And that's David's condition at that time. But what you don't see, see we can see it now when we read the Bible, because when you read the Bible it's like you just look into the book of his life. So we know what comes, we've got the benefit. We can just flip the page; oh, he becomes a king. We can look at it and see what God did, but you can't imagine what it's like for the man standing there. He doesn't know what the future's going to be like. He's just lost everything he's invested his life into. It's like a financial collapse and he's lost everything, including his wife and children. That's the level of disaster.

There are many people facing that kind of thing at the moment. What would you do? Would you have the courage to continue? Would you have the courage in spite of it all to believe God and continue? That's the thing that David had to face, have you got it in you to continue? What do you do when there's no one to turn to and all your world has fallen apart? Well I'll tell you what'll happen. Whatever's been built into your life in the days preceding that will be the thing that'll come to the surface. If you have never built a relationship with God, when that time comes you'll be angry and shaking your fist at God. If you've never built a consistent relationship with God and learned how to lean on Him, when a crisis like that happens you'll fall apart.

I have seen over the years when people find their world falling apart they fall apart themselves. They begin to be angry. They blame the church. They begin to blame God, they blame this one and that one, and then marriages fail, all kinds of stupid things happen because they never learned to just have the courage to continue the course. I want you to have a look what David did, a very, very interesting thing the Bible says about him. This is something that's just unique about this man see. Think about it. It says here in verse 6, David was greatly distressed, greatly distressed, greatly distressed, greatly distressed. He was pressed and besieged, he was overwhelmed. He was immensely overwhelmed. He was absolutely devastated, numbed, too much weeping. What do you do now when the pressure's on you?

And so the Bible tells us very clearly what he did. It says he strengthened himself in the Lord his God. Now let me ask you this question: what controls your life? When you face some pressure what controls your life? Do your feelings control your life, so when your feelings are up oh, it's great. We come to church and we serve the Lord. When you're feelings are down no, I don't think I'll go, I don't think I'll follow through, I've just - I've got other things. See, do your circumstances control your life? Well if circumstances are going good I'll be happy to come to church, praise the Lord; circumstances not so good, oh well I don't know, I don't know about this God thing. See, what controls your life? Your friends, do your friends control your life? Does money, your things control your - what controls your life?

You see what was at the centre of David's life was a relationship with God. He said my life and my destiny are wrapped up in the Lord. Whatever the Lord started He can finish, and so David, he turned - see it's interesting. We see what people turn to when the pressure's on. Some people when the pressure's on, they turn to the television, more videos, more videos. See, some people when the pressure's on go on the internet, click-click-click-click-click-click. Some people when the pressure's on start to smoke, some people when the pressure's on start to drink. Where do you go when the pressure's on? Where do you go when you find that you're in adversity? It says where David went, and that's what made him unique. That's the thing about him; in the midst of pressure when it looked like even God had let him down, there's no person to support him, it says he strengthened himself in the Lord his God.

He came into the presence of God and he did some things. Now there's certain things that he must have done in order to become stronger. The Bible says he strengthened himself, so he did things that enabled his whole inner life to become filled with strength, to the point where he was able to then seek God for what to do next. Now normal tendency is to be overwhelmed with emotions, and I'll show you just a couple of things that he must have done. We'll just hold your finger there and we'll just look at these couple of verses, then we're just pretty well finished. I want you to have a look Psalm 142 and then Psalm 138. Psalm 142, there it is, verse 1. I cry out to the Lord with my voice; with my voice to the Lord I make my supplication. I pour my complaint and declare before Him my trouble. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then You knew my path. In the way in which I walk they secretly set a snare for me. Look at this - I look at the right hand and see, there is no one who cares for me; refuge has failed me; no one cares for my soul. And I cried out to You, O Lord and said You are my refuge. Notice what he does; he reaches out and he pours his soul out the Lord.

Look in Psalm 138:3. In the day when I cried out, You answered me, and made me bold with strength in my soul. Now I want you to see the first thing he did. The first thing he did after he'd cried all his tears out, he went and he poured out his heart to the Lord. It takes something to do that. Sometimes we just shrink our emotions down on the inside and bottle everything up and become like a raging thing. He went before the Lord and he just began to weep and weep and weep, and poured out his concern, his fear, his loss and then he said Lord, You are my refuge. In this you get a key how to deal with stuff that's tough. You have to learn to acknowledge your feelings and let your feelings of your soul go out and express to the Lord.

David never tried to tough it out. He actually opened his heart and he poured out his complaints, his sorrows, his difficulties. He was overwhelmed and the first thing he did was acknowledge how overwhelmed he was and let his heart just weep before the Lord. I could see him on his knees, weeping and weeping and weeping, and sharing with God how he felt about it. And then once he had shared how he felt he began to arise and declare Lord, You are my refuge. You are the place I go. You are the strength of my life. My life is in You. My strength is in You. My hope is in You - and he began to declare his relationship with God and the promises of God. Lord, You said you would bring me to the stage where I would be the king. I believe Your promise to me. I believe Your word - and he would take the words of God and bring the words of God back before him.

Number one, he poured out his emotions and heart; number two, he began to declare the promises of God. He began to declare God's faithfulness. He reminded God of what He'd said, and strength began to come back into his spirit. You see it's not what the people around you are doing; it's what God says and God is doing. God is faithful no matter what is happening. Now of course if you've never proven that God is faithful you don't really know that yet, and so long before David came to this crisis, when David was just a teenager, David had learned to lean on the Lord, express his feelings, express his needs, begin to reach out and lean upon the Lord. When David got to this point he had a whole track record of times he'd lent on the Lord and God had delivered him out of a mess, and so he could go back and remind himself God, I remember when You delivered me out of that. Oh yeah, that was great. Man, I was overwhelmed then. Boy, You got me out of that.

Another time, oh God, You got me out of that too. Wow, You got me out of that situation - man Lord, You really got me out of a whole heap of things. I'm confident You will get me out of this one here - and he was able to strengthen himself. You can strengthen yourself in praying in tongues. You can strengthen yourself confessing the word of God. You can strengthen yourself as you begin to praise the Lord for the things He's done. You can strengthen yourself thanking the Lord for the way He's helped you in the past. You can strengthen yourself remembering what God has done but friend, if you don't strengthen yourself what are you going to do? Now it's wonderful to have people around us who can stand with us. It's important to have supportive relationships, but there's a part of your life which is the secret part when it's just you and God. Will you lean upon Him?

When you've lent upon Him do you know what He'll tell you? He'll then tell you what you need to do. It says then David enquired of the Lord. After he had got back into a place of confidence and encouragement, then he was able to say Lord, give me some wisdom here, what should I do? Do you want me to follow them all? Do you want me to leave it? Shall I pursue? It's an amazing question. What would you want to do? Want to get in your car, go down there and find these people and get your family and your goods back? He said Lord, You show me what I should do. That's tremendous trust to stop the natural impulse of wanting to go out and smash these people up, and to ask God what do You want me to do? And the Lord said very clearly, pursue, overtake and you'll recover all.

He had a word, a mandate that gave him faith to be able to shift all these leaders, stand up and begin to change that circumstance around. What changed it was in the midst of a crisis a man knew how to lean on God and get a word from God to shift that situation around.

Now what I've observed over many years is when Christians face pressure they cry, they stop praying, they stop reading, they watch television, they drink. They go to the wrong places, but often they don't do the very one thing that would get them through, which is go into the secret place, pour their heart out to God, lean on the Lord and remind Him of His promises. And then listen; Lord, what should I do? I can remember being in many different situations and I didn't know what to do. We came to the place of grieving and I waited on the Lord, and then He gave me exactly a word exactly what to do, and I followed it to the letter. The whole situation turned around. I can remember there was a season in the church when the Spirit of God had moved and everything was in turmoil and upheaval because issues in people's lives had come up.

Foundations of the church were being shaken and what we'd built was having a good shake. I remember being through that time and I remember going there and weeping before the Lord, and He told me very clearly, He said don't try and fight this battle. He said lean upon Me and learn to rest in Me, and I will direct you exactly what to do. And now you see today where we are, we've come way out of that whole situation. We're in a whole different place now. You see, God can do it. This is what made David a great man; in the time of rejection, in the time of disappointment, he didn't do what everyone else did. They just wept and then wanted to find someone to blame. He went into the presence of God and found an answer.

Now God is looking for people just like that, Davids in the heart; young men, young women, that when the pressure's on they've already established a track of coming into the presence of God. They know how to pour their heart out and how to stand on God's word. They've got a history of growing behind them of past victories and now, right now they're poised ready for their greatest challenge. Within seven years of this particular battle, David became king over the whole of Israel and all of the promises of God began to be fulfilled in his life. You never know that the crisis you're facing now is not the decision point of whether you take hold of God's promise, or whether you let it go. Be followers, don't be lazy. Don't be a slacker. Don't quit, don't give up, but be followers of those who through trust in the living God and steady endurance, doing what God says to do, obtain the promises.

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The Making of a King (5 of 5)

Sun 16 Mar 2008 PM  « Back to Top

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The Making of a King (5 of 5) Mike Connell 16.03.2008 pm

Great, I want you to open your Bible at Acts 13. I want to finish tonight what I've started. Sorry I wasn't here last week. I was with a group of Indians. We had a great time, some good miracles and people getting filled with the Holy Ghost. It was great - so we've been sharing a series on the Making of a King, the Making of a King. And the Bible tells us that we are kings; that we have an area God wants us to have dominion over and you saw coming up for some of you that area of dominion will be your money. If you can't get dominion over your money forget about the world. [Laughs] It ain't going to happen. So we're called to be kings, to have dominion. You're designed for that. You're designed for dominion. You're designed to actually express the love of God and to bring the values, the life and the victory of heaven into the earth, to take dominion.

There's no place in the kingdom of God for people who are passive, who are victims in their thinking or waiting for something to happen. God calls you to connect with him, arise and begin to advance his interests in the earth. We've been looking at the life of David and let's just pick up a couple of verses about him in the New Testament; then we'll go back and finish our story with him in the Old. Acts 13:22, it says when He had removed Saul, He raised up David as a king, He raised up for them David as a king, to whom He gave this testimony, saying I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will. So we see the first thing about David was he was raised up by God. He said he's a man after My own heart. He was a man with a passion to know God, a passionate desire to know what God is like. A lot of people know about God - different knowing about God to actually knowing Him personally. He can be known as you search the word of God.

If you were to read the Bible and begin to start to find and look up the word 'delight' and 'desire', and start to have a look around and find what the Lord delights in and what He desires, you'll be quite amazed what you can find out about Him. You know there's things He loves, things He hates. If you want to walk with the Lord begin to discover what He loves and love that; begin to hate what He hates, and you'll begin to start to find your fellowship with the Lord increases. You are starting to become more like Him in your thinking and the way you run your life. There are some things God really loves. He delights in mercy, He delights in justice, delights in things being done right, see? There are things He hates; a proud look, a lying tongue, someone who sows discord. Things that God loves, things He hates, and David had a heart to discover what God desired.

He had a passionate heart for God. Notice what it says that God said of him: I've raised him up for them, so David was raised up not just so he could be a great man, but he was raised up for a purpose. We see that a little bit down the line in one of the verses in Acts 13 where it says after David had served his generation - verse 36 - after David served his generation by the will of God. So we see then two things about David; number one, he had a passionate desire to know and to walk with God. That was the driving force behind his greatness. The second thing was he was committed to serve his generation. He was committed to do something with what he had. If you're going to walk with God it will always be He will raise you up for someone else. The call of God on your life is not for you. You are called to represent God, to touch the lives of people. So when God raises you up and gives you a role, a gifting or whatever, it's not for you.

You are to bring that to touch the lives of people. So everything that God gives us somehow overflows to be a blessing and a benefit to people. We must not only build the vertical dimension of our love for God; we actually have to have a heart to be able to serve the people that are around us to bring God to them. The key problem in Saul's failure as a king - think about this: God did not hate him. God loved him. God gave him opportunities. The problem with Saul was he never actually found out what God delighted in. He in many ways just listened to what people want and he feared how people thought about him, so he lived his life subject to the pressures of people around him, and he disqualified himself from a great role. We see him now and we think of Saul, we think of him as a man who failed - but actually he was a person anointed by the Spirit of God, raised up. He could have been a great king. He just chose a wrong path.

David was a man after the heart of God and so David's journey was a little different. Saul got promoted quickly; David actually just allowed God to bring him forward. One of the challenges in your life is to build an intimate relationship with the Lord, begin to set goals based on what you know in your heart God is showing you, and then let God get you there. You don't have to walk over people to get there. You don't have to tramp people down to get where you need to get. If God has called you to something He is able to get you there, and that's the thing you see in the heart of David. Now we've looked at several instances in David's life. We looked at some different seasons in his life; we looked where he was in - first of all he was in Bethlehem where he was unseen. That was up to the age of 17.

While he was in the place where he was unseen he was learning how to be responsible for little things. He was learning how to build a relationship with the Lord, and he faced some challenges there where no one saw him. That's the season many of you young people are in right now; the season when you're young, this is the time to be building a relationship with God. This is the time to be worshipping Him, getting to know Him, getting to hear His voice. This is the time to just be faithful in the small things you have. Keep your eye on just doing small things well. If you have a little task do it well. If you have a little job to be given do it well, and God will be watching the little things that you do. You are preparing yourself for your next season and it's very, very important. So think about it. Don't worry about all that's ahead. One of the things that young people tend to want to do is when they're at school they're thinking of how quick I can get out of here and into the workplace.

Listen, you've got all the rest of your life to work. The season you're in now, do the very best you can. One of the things that happened to David when he was in that season unseen, he developed his skill. You have some skills; develop your skills. Pay money, invest in your skills being developed. You see, when the time came for him to come forward he was called forward not because he promoted himself, but because someone said I know a man and he's really skilful in music. He developed ability there. He's also very anointed with the Holy Spirit. He's also very wise. He's also got a fighting spirit. I've heard how he's fought these battles; I hear how he tackled a lion, tackled a bear. See, he had a reputation established at 17. I wonder how many people are 17 or under? Okay, that's quite a few of you there. How many are over 17 then? That's all the rest, alrighty then. Okay, well at 17 people already know what you're like. You've established a reputation for something.

If I was to go around your friends and ask what are you known for, what would you be known for? What would you be known for? If I mentioned your name, oh yes, what would they say about you? See, they will be saying about you - what they'll say about you on the most part will reflect what you've been doing with your life. Right now you're preparing for your future. Don't waste this time - so that was a place of preparation, a place of small things. Don't think about challenging Goliaths in the land and doing great things for God, unless you're willing to tackle the small things in your personal life. For some of you it might be just the managing of your money. It's a giant to beat. It's a lion that will try and intimidate you. Beat that thing. Begin to establish mastery over your money; learn how to save, learn how to give, learn how to invest. Do it when you're young. I guarantee when you get old you'll have a heap of money.

Start when you're young, don't wait until you're older. Oh well I haven't got much. Listen, it's not the much that counts, it's what you're doing with the little. You've got to start with the little and work with the little. So we saw Bethlehem was that [place where - of unseen place then 00.08.09], he was noticed. He went to a place called Gibeah where he was recognised and promoted, and we found he had some lessons to learn in that season as well. We noticed when we saw David we found he was able to be in the court of a king and go back to the place there by the shepherding the sheep out of sight. He could move from the highest place to the lowest place and no problem to him. Some people can't do that, because they want everyone to notice they're in the highest place. Their identity is about having a position. David could be here, could be there; he didn't worry what anyone thought of him or how it looked. His heart was I just want to please God, because He's going to look after me and take me where He wants me to go. So he could move in and out of serving and promotion just like that.

You could imagine the attitude he could have had as a young man. Listen, he could have talked to his brothers and said oh hey, I'm in the court of the king now. Ha ha - who's the big fella now! See, but he never did. There was no sign of that attitude. He was able to shift from being in the court of a king and going down and serving the lowest job in his home and family. Are you too big to do the lowest job? [Laughs] You're too small to be a king. Think about it; greatness is seen in the small things, ability to do the small things. Then we saw he went from there to the cave of Adullam. He had a season of promotion, then he was rejected. Adullam was the place of rejection and injustice, where he was treated terribly unjustly, pushed around. He was chased down, he was treated like a criminal, but it was a place where he had to deal with injustice and rejection. Are you still hurting inside because of how you've been treated? Are you still angry about how people have treated you? You're still in your cave of Adullam trying to get to grips with what's happened.

In the place of Adullam he was able to touch God and let go the hurt and the anger and the bitterness, and begin to develop a life with God that prepared him to take on and be responsible for a whole nation. The cave of Adullam, that place where you're chased and things aren't going well; it looks like you've been treated badly, is also the place of preparation for your next season in life. Then we saw he went to the next place which was Ziklag. He'd had a season of tremendous success. He was starting to grow. People were starting to come to him, and then he had a devastating problem. He had a devastating failure. What do you do when you have a failure? What do you do when everything around your world goes wrong? Well you'll do what you do most of the time - and David did what he did most of the time. He went to the Lord. He went straight into the Lord, he got divine direction, and as a result of that he got a strategy. He not only got back everything, but he actually got back more than that and he was in a position to bless multitudes of people.

Your disasters, your places of disappointment are stepping stones to your next enlargement. Your places of disappointment are stepping stones to your enlargement, or they're places that cause you to become bitter. You choose. So we see these things and each one of these areas of course we could explain quite a bit out. I want to just pick up the last one now, in 2 Samuel 2. So we're not trying to look too much at all the things that happened. We're trying to look at what was going on in David's life, the kind of heart he had and there's a lot more could be shared, but I'm just going to draw it in this last session here with this. Let's go in 2 Samuel 2. Now what's happened, David has been anointed king. Saul, the current king, has fallen in battle. He's been totally defeated, and now David - notice what it says. We're just going to read a few verses here in chapter 2. It happened after this. After what? After Saul's death. David inquired of the Lord, saying shall I go up to any of the cities of Judah? And the Lord said to him go up. David said where shall I go up? And He said to Hebron.

David went up there with his two wives. Verse 3: David brought up the men who were with him, every man with his household, and the dwelt in the cities of Hebron. Verse 4: Then the men of Judah came, and they anointed David king over the house of Judah. And they told David, saying the men of Jabesh Gilead were the ones who buried Saul. So David sent messengers to the men of Jabesh Gilead, you are blessed of the Lord, you've shown this kindness to your lord, to Saul, and have buried him. And now may the Lord show kindness and truth to you. I will repay you for this kindness, because you have done this thing. Now let your hands be strengthened, and be valiant; for your master Saul is dead, and also the house of Judah has anointed me to be king over them.

One of the first things you see here is that David is in a position where he could just - there's a leadership vacuum. He could immediately just rise up and take this role. Here's the first thing David did. It's the same thing he did all the time. He enquired of the Lord what to do next. When opportunities come to you do you take time to go and talk to the Lord about the opportunity? Do you ask Him what you should do? David enquired of the Lord; he didn't just pray a prayer. He expected God to actually speak to him and direct him. He expected that God would show him what He wanted to do and give him the plan for it. If you follow David's life you'll find one thing is consistent in his life; he enquired of the Lord. He didn't just go and pray. He didn't just go and tell God what his problems were. He actually asked questions with the expectation God would speak back to him. Many times in our prayer life what we do is we tend to pray to God or commit things to Him, and we never stop and take time to wait quietly and in a still place, until you can hear His voice.

He is interested in the affairs of your life. He's interested in the struggles you have. He's interested in the decisions you have to make - but He wants to actually give you confidence in making the decisions by speaking to you. But you've got to take time to listen. Many times I've found we tend to just talk at God, and not take the time to just stop: Lord, what do You want me to do? What should I do? I can remember being at a crossroads in my life and asking the Lord what should I do, and He replied. How did He reply? I just spent time reading the scripture and a scripture lit up to me, and it was like a direct answer to the question - so God can speak to you just by raising a scripture up and you just know that that is a clear word and answer from the Lord. Or He may just speak into your heart, and as you just wait on Him He begins to talk to you and begins to tell what He wants.

I've found many Christians tend to approach their walk with God; here's my plan Lord, bless my plan. It's true we should plan, but it's also true we need to come with our plans before the Lord and ask Him. God had a plan for David to make him a king. David's question is this: should I arise and seize this now, or what would You have me do? What do You want me to do? The Lord said to him I don't want you to be the king over the nation right now. I want you just to take one little bit and grow one little bit. Isn't that interesting, we tend to want to take on the whole world, but God will just take us bit by bit. He said take one tribe, the tribe of Judah, the tribe of praise, the place of origin where you come from. Begin to work in that area first, so the first thing we see there is he was able to resist pressures because he listened to the Lord. When you look at David in battle, before he went to a battle, Lord, what do I do? How do You want me to approach this?

You know, if you lack wisdom for decisions ask the Lord to show you. Then take enough time that you can actually wait on Him to give you an answer. What happens is we pray and go and do what we're going to do anyway, rather than pray and just give God room to give you an answer. It may take a couple of days, it may take a little longer. Give God room to give you an answer. Many times people have come to me and they've asked about this and that, and I see they've already made up their minds. So I just say it's okay, go do it then. They've already made their mind up. They actually haven't come for any counsel, any advice. They haven't come to really ask what God wants. They just have made up their mind and they just want me to agree with them. How much different if a person comes and they lay their plans down, say I'm feeling this, what do you feel about this? What do you think about this?

One of the ways God talks to us is directly. Another way He talks is through the counsel of people who have wisdom. If you have something you're wanting to do why don't you talk to someone who's a Christian or got some kind of experience behind them, who's successful in that area, and ask them to give you advice and counsel? Why don't you ask someone to show you what to do, to help you with your decision? You may have the broad plan, this is where I want to go, but I need someone to help me with those decisions. God can speak through the Bible. He can speak directly. He can also speak through a person with wisdom, but if you're wanting an answer or direction in your life do not go to the crowd. Go to someone who has a track record of success in their life, talk to them, ask them. See, think about this.

A lot of people run around and do all kinds of stuff. I had a member, one young person came to me and they asked what do you think I should do this coming year; should I go to university, or should I stay here? I said give me a chance to think about it. I said no, I think you should stay here for one more year. The person went off to university anyway because they felt they wanted to get - and then what happened was they had not been prepared properly for it, just like I'd told them. You're not ready for that yet. Just stay and become consolidated, get some money behind you, begin to get a track record of working and serving. Then you'll be ready - but they didn't. They went ahead and what happened was their whole life was turned over and they came back with failure around them. It took about two, three years to get over that. Isn't that amazing aye? If they'd just listened to God's advice at the right time they would have saved two, three, four years cycle with all the problems that went with it.

How better it is if we listen. David enquired of the Lord. He had a heart to ask and seek God for what to do. See, think about that. Jesus constantly looked for direction Himself. There's a situation in Mark 1 where Jesus had tremendous crowds around Him, all kinds of miracles were there. He rose early in the morning and the Father said I don't want You to stay here with us. I want You to move on. He said this is what I have as Your purpose. And the crowds came and they said Jesus, won't You just stay here, it's so good and things that are happening? He said no, I must fulfil My purpose, I've got to go to other cities. So one of the things that will keep you on track is having a clear purpose where my life is going, some kind of plan to get there, and continually consulting the Lord just where do I go, what do I do? Lord, show me now at this point what I should do. Think about that. Do you have clear plans?

Young people, if I was to ask you have you got any kind of ideas where you're going, what you're going to do; think about it if you haven't. A person who's got no clear plan will be drifting and be unaware of what's coming and taking away their time and life. So the first thing is he enquired of the Lord, he had a heart to ask after God. Now I want to show you some other things here which show David's heart. Remember, now he's in a place of being promoted. The next thing you see about him is he showed personal care, not only to his family but to those who helped him. Look there in verses 2 and 3, and you see not only did he look after his wife and family, but he also looked after the men who were with him. He made provision for them. So one of the things that was in David's heart, he had not only a heart to seek God but he also had a heart to care for the people who were around him, to ensure that they were provided for, to ensure that they got blessed.

Today often you find with ambitious people, what they want to do is walk on everyone to get where they want to get and they have no sense of caring for the ones around them who are a part of it. There's no one really makes it on their own. Always there's people help you, so what is your attitude to the people around you that are helping you move forward in your life? Have you identified the people who are supporting you, helping you? Maybe it's a parent. Maybe it's both parents. Maybe you have some friends, maybe there's a youth leader, maybe there's someone around you that's being a support and a help. What is your attitude to them? Do you appreciate them? Do you speak to them and express your appreciation? David was a person who not only loved God, but he also valued the people around him and appreciated them. How regularly do you stop to think who is helping you or who has helped you to get where you've got?

Have you ever thought back in your life, who actually helped me get where I am? Did someone make an investment in my life that's helped me move to where I am? Did you stop and thank them? Did you stop and bless them? Did you stop and give them something that acknowledged you help me get where I've got? Young people, think about youth leaders that help you and sow their life, their energy and their time. It's a very difficult, challenging thing being a youth leader. The reason it's challenging is because young people are so up and down, and today they're this and tomorrow they're something else. They're unstable in the course. You can't always rely on them, and often they'll just use everything you've got and then take you for granted and walk away. And that's what makes it really hard for someone working with youth. That's why it's quite challenging for people to take on ministering and working with young people.

So how many times have you stopped to look at the people who've helped you, counselled you, gave advice to you, and actually stopped to thank them, appreciate them and make room for them in your life? Write a note and say thank you, it meant so much when you did this. Maybe you've had kid's church leaders and they've invested in you, and you know you are where you are because of what they did. Perhaps you're an adult and you realise as you look back, there were two or three people in your life that helped you. They were with you, they supported you, they enabled you to get where you are. Did you ever stop to write to them and thank them, and appreciate them? Have you made any provision to bless them for what they've done for your life? This is the heart of David. The Bible says in Hebrews 6:12 I think, it says God is not unrighteous to forget your labour of love, in that you minister to the saints and continue to minister.

So get this. God says it's actually unrighteous to forget when people do good. If people do good and you just don't acknowledge it and you forget it, that's actually unrighteous. It's wrong. It's just minimising them, devaluing them and taking them for granted. How often do we just take for granted what people do for us, instead of actually blessing them and thanking them and appreciating them, and expressing that in some kind of way? What David did was he actually provided financially for the people who had blessed him and helped him. He gave a financial gift. He actually helped them. He was always like that. He continued to do that; even at Ziklag when he received and got tremendous wealth as a result of standing up, hearing God and coming into a place of victory, what happened was after that he gave gifts to everyone who'd been his supporters. That's the heart of David.

Are you that kind of person, or do you just look to get something out of people - and I've seen this over the years in the church among Christians. So many of them have still got the mentality of the world, that they'll come and what they really want is they want to draw what they can get so they can get ahead. Then the moment they've got it, then they forget you and walk away. They're looking for someone else to get them ahead again further. This is unrighteous. This is exploitation of people, it's lacking honour and value for the people that position and help us in our life. Ooh, everyone's all quiet about that. Well think about that, how many people. What about what your parents have done; have you stopped for a while to honour your parents and honour them for what they've done, what they've contributed, to actually think about the sacrifice, what it cost them to do what they've done, and begin to just find ways to express the appreciation.

It may be a gift, maybe a written note. Think of what would really make the difference. Think about this. This is the heart of David. This is the kind of person he was. He never forgot the good that people did to him, never forgot it. There was something about him that just actually always appreciated and valued the people that he had around him. Notice here in verses 5 and 6; David sent messengers to the men of Jabesh Gilead, and said to them you are blessed of the Lord, for you have shown this kindness to your lord, to Saul, and have buried him. And now may the Lord show kindness and truth to you. I will also repay you this kindness - now get this. What had happened was now Saul, now remember King Saul was his enemy. King Saul's son Jonathan was his friend, and Saul and his sons died in the battlefield and they chopped off their heads and hung them up on a wall. The men of Jabesh Gilead went in the middle of the night, took the bodies down, took them back and gave them a proper burial.

This is what David had to say: Because you did this thing, he said may the Lord show His blessing upon you. He said I will repay you for it too. So you see his heart; his heart is to actually bless people and show kindness to people who act honourably. Do you actually acknowledge people who do what's right? Do you acknowledge people who act honourably, who do the right thing? Quite a challenge to do that. When you see a young person make a stand, maybe an unpopular stand, do you actually go up and encourage them and speak into them: man, I really was inspired by what you did. That really was wonderful. Here, here's just something to encourage you. See, this is the kind of person that David was. We tend to see his battles and his victories, and how he became a king and changed a nation. We see him as a history maker when we look at his events, but we're trying to look into his heart what kind of person he was.

Looking into his heart we find there's this passionate love for God, and then as he had this passionate love for God not only did God guide him and direct him in his life, but what he also did was he took on the characteristics of what God is like. So he didn't forget his friends, he honoured those who honour the Lord. Come on, think about that. He honoured those who honoured the Lord. What kinds of things have you done in the last year to express appreciation to those who you've seen act really well, do something really good, or have actually helped you get where you are? Think about that. Here's another thing that he did. He showed bigness of heart in welcoming people who had formerly served his enemy. See King Saul was hounding him down and these people served King Saul, and then what he did was this. He actually showed kindness to them and honoured them and valued them.

Now it shows a bigness of heart if the people who once were against you, you can actually then still not react and reject and be bitter towards them, but actually include them in your future. That takes bigness of heart to do that doesn't it? Most people, if someone's really affected you or hurt you that's it, you write them off, judge them. They're never going to come near you again - but do you have a heart big enough that if someone has hurt you, offended you or done something that's upset you, that you can still be big enough to welcome them into your future when they look like they've made a change? In a small town what often happens, a small place like this, it's very hard to live past your mistakes. But people change, and these people who were against him initially, they've turned now and they're open to him, and he's enlarged his heart to make room to include them. How inclusive are you? Do you have your little cliques and ones you're really close to, or do you have a heart to reach out and gather up potentially other great people?

The think you'll find with David that many people came to him. In fact they came to him in their droves and he welcomed them, received them and raised them up to be loyal men, to be men of war, to be men who would shape the future. If you're going to have a great destiny, you're going to need great people around you. Are you big enough to welcome into your life people who may have been difficult before? You think about that. I've found that one of the dilemmas that all leaders face is this, is the difficulty of being big enough in heart to include into their world those who have leadership abilities or are challenging to them. If you only accept into your world the people who are nice to you, the people who you like, the people who personally you feel comfortable with, you have a small world. God has got a lot of other people he wants to bring into your world, but you've got to have a heart to embrace them and welcome them.

Have you got a heart to do that, or can you only bring in the ones you feel comfortable with? You'll stay very small and in your comfort zone, instead of facing the challenges of bringing challenging people around you. See, we all need people around us who are big and who have got greatness in their life to help us. They stir us to get to where God wants us to get. And finally, we find that David waited patiently for the Lord to promote him. He didn't push himself to get where he wanted to get. He spent seven years in this place called Hebron. He spent seven years; he spent from the age of about 30 to 37 in that period in Hebron, so he was able to wait for God to fulfil His promises. Most people today I find are impatient. They want it all and they want it now, and that song represents the spirit of the age. I want it all, I want everything and I want it all now. Now you think, if you take on that mentality think how that's going to affect every part of your life.

I want it all, I want it now. How do you ever build good relationships? How do you ever build a relationship with God? How do you ever build financial strength and independence? I want it all and I want it now. You can't with that mentality. David, he was able to wait patiently for the Lord and many times in the psalms he was saying learn to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. He will bring about everything He's said. You don't have to strive and struggle and make it happen. He never had to fight to make himself king; what he did was he walked with the Lord and listened to Him, and God got him there. See, it's a tremendous thing to be able to be patient. The Bible tells us don't be lazy, but be a follower of those who through faith, trusting God and through patience receive the promises of God. Nothing comes quick in life, and so the world will offer you everything quick and it tries to tempt you with things that are quick. What happens is if you buy into it you actually lose sight of how God builds.

He builds slowly, step by step, and He builds with your whole life in mind and with the next generation in mind. So when you're young of course all you want everything and you want it all now, but listen. If you can actually stand against that and wait patiently, and persevere slowly and steadily towards your goals, you will outrun everyone. You will outrun everyone. The race does not go to the most gifted. You look around you; maybe you feel insecure, this one's so gifted, that one's so gifted, this one's so gifted. Listen, at the end of the day it won't be the gifted ones necessarily that actually shine and rise up to the top of the pile. It'll be the ones who had a plan, who trusted the Lord, and patiently and persistently worked towards where they wanted to get. Well think about that. Don't buy in to the current generation and how it thinks. Start to be a leader by just thinking and acting differently.

Begin to get the heart of David around you; passionate love for God, a caring heart for the people around him, a willingness to honour and value people who were helping him and part of his team, a willingness to impart what he knew to others, a willingness to receive others who had strengths to add to him, a willingness to wait patiently for God to break through and bring him to where he was supposed to get. And the final thing that I see in the Bible about David was this. There's many other things, but when he did succeed the first thing he wanted to do was to restore the presence of God to be the centre of the nation. The first thing he wanted to do when he got to the place where God had got him king over - not only over Judah but eventually put him king over all of Israel, listen, this is what he did. The first thing he wanted to do was this, he wanted to restore the presence of God to the centre of the nation. In other words he gave God the full honour and glory for getting him there. What an amazing man this man David is.

Jesus was called the Son of David because He had the same kind of characteristics and qualities. What kind of heart do you have? Do you have a heart that delights in the Lord? Do you have a heart that's faithful in the small things? Do you have a heart that can trust God to get you where He wants to get you? Do you have a heart that blesses and thanks the people around you, that actually help you get where you get? Do you honour those who do well? Do you have room in your heart to include those who actually have gifts that could help you? And when you do get to the place of victory, when you've got that promotion, got that job, got that business, won that [court 00.32.44], whatever it is; you get to that place, God is still first in your life. He didn't even act like a king when he got there. He just acted like someone still passionately in love with the Lord, because being king was never his goal. To honour God and serve his generation was.

Now for you to serve your generation learn to just study these aspects of David and take on the same traits. Take on the same traits, because you know what's going to happen? God wants to get you somewhere. There's a place He wants to get you, and God wants to raise you up into leadership because He has people for you to touch. So how can it happen? You've got to make the choice.

[File ends 00.33.21]

Priority of the Kingdom

Priority of the Kingdom (1 of 4)

Democracy or Kingdom (2 of 4)

Kingdom Mandate (3 of 4)

Kingdom Authority (4 of 4)

Audio

- Priority of the Kingdom (1 of 4).mp3

- Democracy or Kingdom (2 of 4).mp3

- Kingdom Mandate (3 of 4).mp3

- Kingdom Authority (4 of 4).mp3

Notes

- Priority of the Kingdom (1 of 4)

- Democracy or Kingdom (2 of 4)

- Kingdom Mandate (3 of 4)

- Kingdom Authority (4 of 4)

Priority of the Kingdom (1 of 4)

Sun 24 Jun 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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Priority of the Kingdom (1 of 4) Mike Connell 24.06.2007 am

In two or three week's time we're going to be starting the course Undercover, so I want to begin to start to just sow some seeds out towards that before we go there. I want to talk about the Kingdom of God and I want to just show you some things from the word of God. I'm going to do it over a couple of Sundays. Next Sunday I want to look at the difference between democracy and the kingdom. What you're going to find is as we start to teach on the kingdom of God, I want you to really be open for God to work something in your heart. You know you can know lots of things, but not actually have a changed life and what really counts is a changed life. I remember when I first heard someone speak about the kingdom of God - I've looked back at the message and I thought I don't know how that made any difference to me; but God switched the lights on in me. My prayer for us as a church is that right across the church God will switch the lights on for you, to see something you've never seen before.

So I want to over the first couple of weeks before we get into the course Undercover, I want to just share some things that give you a perspective or why it is we need to position ourselves undercover. The course itself will be evidence, what we need to do and how to face and deal with certain issues. But I want to give something like the bigger picture, so today I want to do the first in a series of two or three, just before we lead in to the whole Undercover series. I do encourage you to get the book and make it your devotional study, and ask the Holy Ghost to speak to you. Ask God to talk to you. Okay, I want you to have a look with me in Matthew 6:33. This is one of my favourite verses in the Bible, one that I have just loved and valued for years, and here it is. I don't have to turn to it, I know it of course, Matthew 6:33. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you.

So I want to talk to you today about the priority of the kingdom of God. We're going to look further into these verses, going to share a few verses with you, but I want to look around these verses in Matthew 6. So it says seek first the kingdom of God, so when you think about kingdom what do you think of? Now of course if you're a church person, you've been around church for a long time, well it's just another word. You use it in church, don't use it anywhere else. You don't go in your business and use the word kingdom. You don't go anywhere in society and use the word kingdom. In fact you don't use it anywhere, and because we don't use it anywhere we've got no kind of framework within which to understand when the Bible is talking about the kingdom what it's really talking about. And so what tends to happen is we approach the things of God from the viewpoint shaped by our culture, and our culture in the west is not kingdom-oriented. Our kingdom in the west is very much democratic in its government, democratic.

Next week I'll talk a little bit about the difference between the democratic form of government and some of its inherent weaknesses, and the kingdom of God government, the divine government that God has intended. It'll really help you to understand why so many believers struggle is because we come and we get born again into the kingdom of God, but we don't change in our thinking and approach to how we run our life. So what happens is we are part of the kingdom of God with a whole new access to new privilege, but we don't access it because we're still thinking and living out of a democratic mindset. It's very hard for us in the west to understand this, and I'll show you why shortly. If you go to Thailand for example and you talk about kingdom, oh, kingdom! Immediately everyone knows what you're talking - they know the king. The king there is the longest serving king in any nation in the earth. They love their king in Thailand.

You make any comments about the king, you'll be in jail. They love their king. Their king is benevolent, their king cares about the people, the king intervenes in the nation at times to ensure that the welfare of the people is looked after. He personally has initiated projects for the welfare of the people. The people in Thailand love their king. They had a celebration of his anniversary a while ago and the whole nation celebrated. Then you look around some other parts of the world, say a bit nearer to us. Those who are from the Islands would understand this. Tonga is a kingdom. They have a king, and he operates in a certain kind of way. So if you'd been born in Tonga you would understand about kingdom and you'd have a certain idea about what the king was like and various things related to that. But you see we're in the west now and we don't understand that.

Now I see there are a few older ones around here, apart from the young ones. There's an old one or two. Well for the young ones who wouldn't know anything about this, you don't know anything about this but I'll tell you something that we used to do. This is what we used to do - of course if you're older you'll know what we used to do. Every time there was a movie at the beginning of the movie they would show a picture of the Queen, our Queen, and everyone would stand. Everyone in the theatre would stand. It was unthinkable not to stand in the presence of royalty. If you sat down everyone - they would stare at you. We would sing a song, God Save the Queen and send her victorious, happy and glorious, born to rule over us. It's unthinkable for us to sing such a song now. Why? Because we've changed how we think.

So for us the thought that someone was born to rule over us is just inconceivable, because our culture has totally shifted and you see the whole of the western culture's shifted. Of course Britain, they used to sing Britannia, Britannia rule the waves, you know, because it says we shall never be slaves. So it's a song, the songs and words were all about kingdom and it came out of revival and it came out of reformation in the whole of Britain. So years later, now I can remember when the change came and disrespect came, and gradually the Queen's role when from being a sovereign to actually being a figurehead government, until finally now the royal family, there's a mixture of either people either like them and respect them, or they just think they're a joke. See, so that's happened in our lifetime that that shift has taken place.

So for the culture coming up today it's unthinkable to stand at the beginning of a movie singing God save our Queen, God save our gracious Queen, you know - send her victorious, happy and glorious, born to rule over us! A ruling class - it's unthinkable, see? And yet it has in it actually a reflection of the very kingdom we're born into, except we're born to be the ruling class - so we'll talk to you a little bit about the kingdom of God. Next week I'll share about the difference there between democracy and kingdom, so you can understand the way of thinking and the way of operating is totally different. So when we talk about kingdom we're talking about the realm over which a king is absolutely sovereign. It's a place or a territory over which his word, his will is done, his desire is done, his values are imparted. The kingdom of heaven, when we talk about the kingdom of heaven or any kind of kingdom, we're thinking about principles, laws and protocols, ways of doing things.

See a lot of Christians don't understand protocol. Protocol, if you're a Maori person you'd understand when you go on a marae there are certain protocols, and heaven forbid if you break protocol. You will know about it, because there are consequences for breaking protocol. It's just the way you go about doing things. Now the kingdom of heaven has protocols, so for example one of the protocols when you want to approach the King, you approach Him with an offering. You approach Him with praise, so for all those people who don't clap, don't sing, don't bring anything to the King, you are breakers of protocol. Think about that. Think about that, because the Bible's very clear. The Bible lays out the protocols of the kingdom, and it tells us very clearly in the Bible how to approach Him. It tells us to approach Him boldly and confidently. It tells us come before His presence with singing, enter His gates with thanksgiving, into His courts with praise. It tells what to do.

It tells us how to enter the courts of the King see, so when we come singing is not sort of something you just do at the beginning of a service, and if you like it you do it; if you don't like it you just wait to get the message. It's actually the protocols of how to approach a king. It's the ways of going about doing stuff. Now there are a whole lot of things which are protocols of heaven, and if you want to see the benefits of heaven in the earth you've got to understand the ways of doing things. So Undercover will touch into one aspect only of kingdom life and the dimensions of the kingdom, but what I want to do is to lay out some things prior to that so you can sort of get the perspective within which it happens. Okay, we got the idea? Alright, I want us to have a look in Genesis 1. The focus of the Bible - the Bible is not about religion. Most people think it's all about religion you see; are you religious? No, I'm not religious. I hate religion. Religion's the blight of the world! It's true, it's the blight of the world.

Religion's been the cause of wars, conflict, oppression, persecution. All kinds of things have been done in the name of religion, and we'll clarify the difference between religion and kingdom. Jesus never came to bring us religion. Religion is what men think up to do, and so if you're religious it's because you don't understand what God really intended us to have. He intended us to be totally free of all religiosity, totally free of all religion and to have a wonderful relationship and understand how to bring heaven to earth - most [amazing. 00.09.56] Let's have a look at God's original plan in design again, Genesis 1:26; then God said let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. So God made man a spirit being with a unique capacity to be able to not only - he's a physical being, he lives in a physical body, but is a spirit being.

We're a spirit being just like God is a spirit being, and so we have spirit capacities and as a spirit being we are able to access into the world of the spirit, the realm where God lives. As a physical being we live in the earth; let Us make man after Our image and likeness, and now He tells us - here's the mandate. Let man have dominion over all the earth. So man is created a spirit being in the image of God, put into a physical body, and given part of God's creation in which to extend God's dominion. Now if you think religion all you'll be thinking religion's about is trying to get you to heaven, but if you think kingdom you understand that God wants your life to have purpose and impact and make a difference now, see? And so God's purpose for man is that we would have dominion. That means sovereign authority. That means that the life, the power, the privileges, the benefits of heaven would come into the earth through man. That's how you're designed.

You're designed that way. You function only when you recognise and embrace that, and so that's God's original design for man. We're created for a kingdom, so when God made man He gave him a relationship, He gave him a realm of dominion and an opportunity to be a good steward and be promoted, see? So he was created for that, and the key to being fulfilled is to understand I can never have a fulfilled life unless I have a relationship with God, and fulfil His purpose in whatever area of life He has called me to fulfil. And so the cry, see so when Adam fell this is in essence what he did; in essence because you say well he ate the fruit of the tree. No, no, this is in essence what he did. He said basically in his heart I don't want God to rule over me, I want to make it on my own and do it my way. When we think of sin we tend to think of all the big ugly and bad things, which is true, it is. But the core of sin is saying God, I'm not having You to tell me what to do. I'm not having You to give me directions. I want to break out and do my own thing. That is the core of sin.

Now when he did this he lost his relationship and he lost his capacity to bring divine power into the earth. He lost his kingdom, so as a consequence of that a universal quest in every person, wherever you find people there are two things people are looking for; number one, they're looking for purpose, what is the meaning of my life here? People get to the end of their life, they say is this all it was, you know? Is this all there was to it? Because they never found their purpose, so we've already shared quite a lot this year on purpose. But the second thing people are looking for is power. People want power. We want the power to be able to control our life, control our circumstances, control what's happening around us. We have a sense where we want to be in charge of life, see? That is actually born into us because it's part of the dominion mandate. God designed us for this, except the problem is when we let go of God we do it all the wrong way. We rule over people instead of working to build people and serve people, and using God's blessings to touch the lives of others.

We tend to want to subdue and control the people around us. You notice it says there let them have dominion. It didn't say have dominion over people; have dominion over the works of God's hands, not people. So we see there, now I want to just have a quick look through some scriptures. I'm not going to look all these up. What I want to do is I want to show you very clearly that throughout the Bible the emphasis is on the kingdom of God. Now if I just tell you that it's hard for you to kind of grasp - yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I want to do is quickly just give a few scriptures, and I want to show you that without exception the Bible is always about the kingdom. It's always about the kingdom of God. Now you see most times people think of - they just think 'church'. But church and kingdom are quite different, and the message Jesus came was primarily about kingdom. The church is the people who are part of the royal family, have given their lives to Christ, been born again, and positioned to now fulfil the original mandate; subdue the earth and have dominion.

So the purpose you have and we have corporately and individually is that we would advance God's purpose, whether it be in art or finance, or business or education, or the media, whatever it is. Of course what's happened is when people got religious they then withdrew from the world, so the church now on the whole has withdrawn from the world and that's the influence of religion, see? God came to - His idea is a kingdom where we go out and we actually influence the world and change the world around us, whether it be the environment, whether it be in the health area, whether education, whatever it is. That's why young people, I'm all behind you pursuing being trained and developing your skills to the best you possibly can. Serving God is done in the marketplace best by developing our skills what God has entrusted with us. It's an entrustment.

Now let me just give you a few scriptures, just so you can see - I want to put them under three headings; number one, just under Jesus' ministry and I'm just going to quote the scriptures. We'll put them up on the screen if you've got them there, just start to pop them up and I want to just show you just how everywhere - and once you've seen this everywhere you'll look you'll see nothing but this. If you were to read through the gospels again what you'll see over and over and over is Jesus' emphasis on the kingdom. So the beginning of Jesus' ministry, Matthew 4:17 and Jesus began to preach saying repent for the kingdom is at hand. See, in Matthew 4:23 and Jesus, this is His preaching and He preached the kingdom of God and healed all who were sick. He preached. What did He preach about? He preached the kingdom of God, and what did He do? He healed the sick. Why did He heal the sick and cast out demons? Because that's all part of the kingdom of God coming into the earth.

You see sickness was never God's plan, so the kingdom is about God's protocol, God's life, God's values. God values healing and wholeness, so when the kingdom is preached it's so the power of God might come into the earth, might have healings, see? Then you see His teaching in Matthew 5:3, the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus gathered them all together and guess what He began to teach about? He began to teach about - oh ho ho, goodness me - about the kingdom of God. You know what the Sermon on the Mount is about? It's about all the protocols, values and the way the kingdom operates, and so He says well you've heard people say this, but this is actually how the kingdom operates, so He goes through and His main teaching there is all about the kingdom of God. It's all about the kingdom of God. He's teaching about the kingdom, His priority.

In Matthew 6:33 He said seek first the kingdom of God - so what did Jesus say is a priority? The kingdom of God. When the disciples said teach us to pray guess what Jesus taught them to pray? Matthew 6:10, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come. In case you didn't understand what that meant, They will or value in life and protocols and ways be in the earth like they are in heaven - in case we didn't understand it, see? And Jesus' prayer, so then His parables, how many all know the parables Jesus spoke? Jesus told lots of stories at parables. You will find almost without exception He said the kingdom of heaven is like; Matthew 13:24, it says the kingdom of heaven is like a sower went out to sow, and He has all these parables. Matthew 13:31, more parables. He had about a half a dozen parables there of the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven's like a household. The kingdom of heaven's like a man cast out a net. The kingdom of heaven's like a man who found a pearl in the field, or treasure in a field, the pearl of great price.

It's all actually how the kingdom is, what the kingdom of God is like. He taught about the kingdom all the time. In Matthew 24 and 25 they said when there's a sign of you coming, and you know what He began to teach? He began to teach parables about the kingdom again; the kingdom of heaven's like five wise virgins, five foolish virgins. Then He talked about the kingdom of heaven is like the king who went to a far country and he called to himself his servants, and he gave to everyone talents and said occupy until I come, or be busy and trade and be productive until I come. That's the kingdom. So He talked - all His teaching was about the kingdom, the kingdom. And guess what, after He rose from the dead in Acts 1:3, would you believe what He spoke about for 40 days? Yeah God, do you know what He spoke about for 40 days? He spoke to them things concerning the kingdom, and you know what the disciples asked? When's the kingdom going to come?

He said don't worry about when the kingdom's coming. He said you'll get power you see, because kingdom and power are associated with one another. The Holy Ghost will come on you and you'll be witnesses unto Me. Now the problem the disciples had was they kept thinking of the kingdom as being an earthly kingdom with an earthly king, and they expected Jesus to arise and overthrow the Roman government. They expected a natural thing; that's why they missed the cross altogether. They were so convinced - because when He talked kingdom they're thinking David and a king and the glorious days of Israel. They're thinking all of this; He's thinking of a spiritual kingdom. He said My kingdom is not of this world, it's from another world. It's from heaven, see? Now this is Jesus, so Jesus all His [unclear 00.20.00] now I've only given you a little of all the verses there are on the kingdom. Everywhere Jesus taught about the kingdom. Have another look at those parables and start to re-read them, and you'll see they're all about what the kingdom is about.

Then the apostle's ministry, in Matthew 9:35, guess what the apostles did when they went out? Matthew 9:35, you got it up there? And Jesus went about teaching, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing every sickness and disease among the people. [I'm guessing 00.20.28] the disciples did the same thing. In Acts 8:12, Philip went out preaching and doing miracles. Guess what he was preaching about? The kingdom of God, and Paul when he was preaching, Acts 19:8, guess what he preached about? The kingdom of God. Now we don't seem to realise just how much the total emphasis of the Bible from one end to another is about kingdom. Now when you're talking about kingdom you're talking about a realm of government. See, every society needs governing some way and next week I'll look at some of the different styles of government that they have.

Of course the one we're in right now is democracy, and we kind of think democracy's the only way. Of course the Americans think democracy is the only way. Actually the only way ultimately is the kingdom of God. However democracy's got tremendous advantages in it, except when you try and impose it on a tribal culture. Then you find you run into a - a tribal culture is essentially another kingdom, so if you look into tribes they've always got a king at the top of the tribe. The king rules over everyone in the tribe, so when you come and have a look at a country like Iraq you've got different tribal groups, or different ethnic groups and religious groups. Of course they are led in a tribal type fashion, and then when you try to bring them together the only way it's ever worked is if there was a strong man ruled over them and he actually ruled by force. See, so you have a look at Yugoslavia for example; immediately the strong man was taken away, the tribal rivalries arose again and they all fought one another. The ethnic killing was horrendous. It's all an issue of government, how will we be governed.

So all the fighting that goes on in the world is all about either religion or government, or a mix of the two. It's all about that and it's because at the core of man's problem is what we lost was the good government of God in the earth. That's why there's all the wrestling, so the conflict of the universe is who will be in charge? Who will be in control? Who will rule? It's always that. In every conflict between a husband and wife do you know what it'll always be about? In the end who will rule - unless they learn how to work as a partnership, how they work as a team, how to learn to work under God's rule to achieve an agreeable solution. All the conflicts that kids have with their parents are all about who will rule - especially if you're a teenager. Teenagers want to rule, parents want to rule, so the conflict's about who will rule. It's always that, and so when we get to the whole series on Undercover it's actually about recognising and positioning yourself so that you're in a position where you can bring the influence of God into the earth.

If you don't position yourself right you can't do it. That's why so many Christians are so ineffective, because they come to church but they don't understand that God wants us to understand how the kingdom operates and operate on those principles. Getting the idea? Okay, now I'll just give you a couple more scriptures, then we've got to look at the key one that we've started. Now in case you were concerned about all the end times [let's look 00.23.40] at a couple of good end time ones. In Daniel 2:44, Daniel got a prophetic vision. Now his prophetic vision - I won't go into all the details of it. You can read it for your own - but basically he was in Babylon. What had happened was that Babylon had arisen as a kingdom and it was a world kingdom. It was a world government. All the known world in Asia was ruled by Babylon see, and so what happened then was the king of Babylon got a dream and in the dream he saw certain things. So he asked - and Daniel was the only one who could interpret it.

What he saw was a big image and he saw this huge image; it had a head of gold and then it had a chest of silver and a belly of bronze, and the legs and so on, went right down to the feet. And he saw a stone come and smash this thing and the whole thing crumpled. Daniel said this is what it all means. The head of gold is the kingdom of Babylon. After that will be another one, and of course anyone who's studied history understands that Babylon fell and the Medes and the Persians took over. That was the next one, and then after that they fell and then the Greeks took over. After that they fell and the Romans took over, which are the legs of bronze. Then finally you get the last kingdom which is the current day we live in, and it says in that day, in the days of those kings it said God will raise up a kingdom and it shall smash in pieces the religious kingdom, the educational kingdom. He said every kingdom that's been devised by man, whether it be financial, religious, education, political or military, all will be subdued by the power of God - all.

Notice He said in the days of those kings - read what it says. Let's have a look what it says [unclear 00.25.27] can put it back up again, leave it up there. In the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Now if you were a betting man, if a guy has got already Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, you've got four predictions right, I'd be backing on that last one happening. I've been there and I've seen the ruins of all of those places, and they're all there, great kingdoms, unbelievable kingdoms. When you see what must have been the glory and splendour of Greece, the buildings that they've built there, the - we can't even do that today. And yet they had these huge marble structures - when you stand - I mean I can't even put my arms around some of the pillars, they were that big. And huge pillars that went up sometimes three, four storeys, huge massive constructions that have lasted 2,000 years.

You can hardly believe the glory of it, and yet it was overthrown exactly as was prophesied. Jeremiah as a young man was called by God and raised up to prophesy the overthrow of those kingdoms, and then it took place. So the Medes and the Persians took over, then the Greeks took over. When we went to Greece you can see in Greece the remnants there of all of these massive buildings and amphitheatres, huge amphitheatres and places where people gathered. We went there to the place where, in Ephesus in Turkey where Paul preached. You can actually see the road that they would have come up from on the ships. They'd have come up the end of the road and berthed, then they'd come down this path, marble path with columns all the way, to an amphitheatre which would seat thousands, 60,000 people.

You can hear [without a microphone, 00.27.19] you can hear someone talking quietly like this right up the back - so can you imagine we stood there in that place there, which was constructed by [unclear 00.27.29]. We'd have trouble building a thing like that today, and buildings everywhere like that. They were kings that were once mighty in the earth and they'd been overthrown. The west is a civilisation, the same thing eventually will happen. It's just inevitable, inevitable - so it's just exciting to see these things isn't it. Read this, here's a better one here. Here we are, Revelations 11:15. John saw it too see, so this is only a selection. Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven saying now look, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever.

Now who is - do we know who the Lord is first of all? Who's the Lord there? The Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ, right. The kingdoms of this world have now become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, so who's His Christ? His anointed body, the body of Christ, so from beginning of the Bible to the end the Bible makes it very clear the destiny of the people of God is to advance His kingdom right through the world, every part of society; not by force and might and using a sword, but by the power of the Spirit of God. You're all thinking about that. This is only just the introduction - you say we have to see that. So now there's heaps of scriptures like this and we could talk a lot about this area, so I just want to just get it touched on today. We need a revelation of the kingdom because that's what Jesus came to talk about and came to restore. I want you to go and have a look with me in Matthew 6:33. Let's go back there again.

I want to just look at a few things in Matthew 6. We'll pick it up there. Now you notice Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God, seek first the kingdom of God. Now let's have a look at the context He's talking about. He's talking - chapter 5 and verse 1 - He's talking to His disciples, in verse 3 He says blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He's talking about the kingdom and this is all the way through Matthew 5, 6 and now we get here and we'll pick it up at verse 24-33. Now no one can serve two masters; he will either hate one and love the other, he will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot, you cannot serve God and money. It doesn't say there you can't have money and you can't have heaps of it; it says you just can't serve it, so it's impossible to serve it.

So you notice here He points out that money demands us serve it, in contrast to serving God. I'll explain what I mean in just a moment. Now therefore I tell you - so He's saying now listen, don't worry about your life. Don't be in a place of anxiety about what you'll eat, what you'll drink, nor your body, what you'll put on. Life is more than food and drink and clothing. The purpose of life is much more than just that. Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you more value than birds? So He says which of you by worrying can even get one inch taller? Why do you worry about clothing? Look at the lilies of the field. They grow, they don't toil and they don't have to work to do it, and even Solomon in all his glory wasn't arrayed like these. If God clothes the grass of the field which is today and tomorrow is gone in the oven, how much more shall He clothe you, o you of little faith? Therefore - He repeats it again - don't worry.

Three times He says don't worry - or like they say don't worry, be happy. Don't worry - here it is, verse 25, don't worry. Verse 31, don't worry. Verse 34, don't worry. If He says it once it's important; if He says it twice He must really want us to get it. If He's saying it three times in the space of a few verses - don't worry! Stop worrying! Listen - DON'T WORRY! Everyone worries. I looked at these people on the ship, I looked at them - so many sad people. We're just having a ball you know? All around us they hear the noise and the laughter you know, and other people just look serious and they're worried about this and worried about that, anxious about all kinds of stuff. You know we just used to go ashore and all these Americans would have their own kind of - they'd arrange these tours. It would cost them heaps of money, and we'd just go ashore and wander ashore and see if we could find a train or a bus or something. They said aren't you worried you'll get lost? I said we'll get lost, we'll find our way around it again, don't worry if we get lost. We're not going to worry about that.

Well aren't you worried about this - and in the end it boiled down, they were bound by fear and couldn't do things that would have really enlarged their life - because of fear. They were just worried - what if? My mother used to worry something terrible, aye, aye, aye, worry, worry, worry. It says verse 32, for all these things the Gentiles seek after and your Father knows you need those things, so seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and these things will be added to you. Therefore don't worry about tomorrow, [tomorrow the evil is sufficient for tomorrow but today - it says 00.32.38] tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Okay, let me just give you a few scriptures here. Clearly Jesus is talking about priorities. Now priorities are really important. Anyone who's done any motivational stuff understands priority is setting first things first. Prioritising is when you look at all the things you need to do, you've got to decide what really counts - so a priority means most important thing.

Now you would all realise that the world is full of trivia all pulling on you to waste your time and your energy, so if you have a look at your life, then you look at how you spend your life, so how you spend your energy, how you spend your time and how you spend your money; if we were just to have a look at what you did with that we would know what you value with your life, because your choices will always reflect what is important to you. It's inevitable. The decisions you've been making over the last few years come out of what was important to you, and of course as you get older or you've been around a while or come to the Lord, you realise man, I made some bad choices back there. We were talking to one young guy on the ship there and he'd just been blowing all his dough. He had this huge chance to earn a lot of money, just blew all the dough, until he got married - now he's careful with his money.

See now why is he careful with his money now and he wasn't before? Now there's a higher priority. Before it was having a good time; now I've got to provide for a wife and family, my priorities have changed, therefore choices have changed. So your choices currently and in the past have been determined by what is important to you. Now you may think God's important to you, but have a look at whether any of the choices or decisions you've made have had any reference to God at all. Often we find that there are many other things in our heart determine what our choices are. The Bible says and Rob was sharing this morning, Proverbs 23:7, as you think in your heart, that's how you are. So your thinking in your heart and what you believe in your heart at the end will determine what's important for you, and so all of us, the Bible tells us very clearly in these verses Jesus says look, there's a lot of things will call for your attention, but there's something you need to make a priority.

You have to choose this every day. He said make it a priority, make the kingdom of heaven your priority - and I'll explain just a little bit about this in a moment. Okay then, now let's go have a look through it here, so it says seek first - that word 'first' means literally the first importance, the first in rank - of all the things you need to do, seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness, whatever all that means, Jesus said it's the most important. So underline the verse and He says seek it first, circle first. First means do this before everything else, first, so in case you have trouble working out what's important in your life Jesus laid it out in this verse. This is what's important: first thing, this is the first thing, the first thing, do this before everything else, this is number one. First! First! Not last, not if you can fit it in - first. I'll probably explain a bit more about it tonight, but let me just - I want to get this home first of all.

Now let's just go quickly through what He said in terms of this priority. He said - notice this - he said that you can't serve two masters. You can't serve God and money. That doesn't mean to say you can't have a heap of money; it just says you can't serve money. So basically at the end your time and your money actually reveal what your priorities are, so He says don't serve. You can't serve God and mammon, so God is a spirit; mammon must have a spiritual power behind that yells serve me! Serve me! Serve me! Now if you're a person who's got a lot of debt you are serving money. You're just serving. You're in slavery and bondage. The Bible says the one who owes the money, he's in bondage to the one who'll lend it to him. Now of course there are certain situations where you do need to get loans for appreciating assets like a house and so on, but if you're just running up credit card debt and you're living your life in debt, you are serving money. You are its servant.

And some people in church just keep borrowing and because they can get credit free or debt free - they get debt, free, but actually it costs you because in the end you pay all this interest on it. What happens is you mortgage your future so you've got no choices see, so one of the greatest things is to be able to get debt free, so then you increase your choices about your future. So He says are you going to serve money or serve God? So how do you know whether you're serving money or God? It's very, very simple. If money is ruling over your fears and concerns and dominates your thinking and there's never enough, then money is ruling your life. How can you tell if you've got a victory through in it? Well it will start to come into order and you'll begin to manage the money; but here's one of the key determinants. If you can give money, then you rule money. If you can give it you rule it. If you can't give it, then you know you haven't got rule over it, it's got rule over you.

So one of the things is your money will always have a message. It'll be generous or stingy. If you've got stingy money it means money rules you, and you're a stingy person inside and money is fleeing from you and you've never got enough. But if you're generous in your heart your money will be generous. I'm not saying be extravagant or anything like that, but there'll be a generosity to people that'll come in every part of your life and that reflects that you're serving God, or that you've got free of serving money. There's a lot of stuff on that. I don't want to go too far into that. Anyway let's go back a bit further. So Jesus said don't be anxious or don't be wound up. Don't worry or be anxious about daily needs. Now everyone worries about the same things. They worry about food, they worry about their clothes, they worry about where they're going to live, the worry about next week. They worry about basically daily living, and Jesus said the world does that. Don't do that as a believer.

You say well I need all those things. Yeah, but He says don't worry about them. Don't make that the focus of your life and attention. The word worry means to be divided to distracted, so you're anxious and you can't focus and enjoy your life, so He says don't be uptight and worried. What is the key to not being uptight and worried? The key is set your priority on something else; then when you set your priority on something else not only are you not worried but actually the other things start to come into your life. See what He's saying? So He says seek first the kingdom of God. So that word seek, pursue after or make a diligent effort [to get to - for 00.39.03] the kingdom of God. So what is that kingdom and what is this righteousness? I'll explain it more at another time, but let me just give you this. The kingdom of God is all about a king and what He rules over, so to seek the kingdom of God is to seek to know God's values, God's ways, God's protocols, and to connect with Him in such a way that you purpose in your heart you're going to make this the way you'll run your life.

So God's got something in His word about how marriages work, how families work, how your finances work, how relationships work. The Bible is full of instructions of how the kingdom operates, see? And so to seek first the kingdom of God means you make it a priority to deepen your walk with God, and apply His will to your life so you can be an influence on others. See the problem with religion is people talk but they don't actually live it, but with the kingdom you make it a priority to allow God's rule, allow the ways of God to become your ways of living. And then you've got power in your life to help others. See, quite simple isn't it? So like the principles of God are really simple, like for example in the kingdom it says love. It says forgive, it says walk humbly, it says - there's a whole heap of things it tells us to do. So it says first of all place your first priority on pursuing knowing God and applying His ways to every area of your life.

Now the dilemma comes if we have a division between our Sunday life and then all the rest of our week. Then you become religious. Any person who divides up their life Sunday is God day, God/church stuff, and the rest of the week I just do other stuff; they are actually religious. Why are they religious? Because they haven't really understood it's never about coming into a meeting. It's all about the kingdom coming into the earth, and that's a daily pursuit; daily prayer, daily in the word of God, daily looking to apply God's word to my life. Okay, here's the second one. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, so what does it mean to seek His righteousness? I'll just put a very simple definition, because when you look at it you think oh, I've got to be a do-gooder and got to be so good, and it's so hard to be good. No, it's not really - it's more than that. It says His righteousness. Now religion will always be working hard to try and get God to accept me. That's why the majority of religious people never feel they're good enough for God, see?

It says seek His righteousness, so let me just give a definition of righteousness. Righteousness is having a right standing or positioning with God, a right standing or positioning with God. In other words righteousness is knowing where you stand with God and being in good relationship and fellowship with Him. See everything is about positioning. The reason God wants me to seek this positioning and right relationship with Him is because He wants to pour blessings into my life. If I want the benefits of His kingdom I've got to place it first and position myself so I can receive. Now in Uganda last year we had to put a hold on some of the giving; it's not we didn't have the money, couldn't give it. It's just we had to put a hold on it because they did not position themselves to be able to receive what we wanted to give them, and so we wouldn't give it to them because I didn't want it wasted.

If you do the right things and position yourself and then funds and money will start to come to you. It's the same for you; you want God to bless you, you have to position yourself for that blessing to be there. If you want God to bless your relationship, well conduct your relationship and position yourself with God so it can be blessed. Just because you pray God bless it doesn't mean to say that'll happen. The Bible says seek first to discover God's ways, values, protocols, His principles for succeeding in life, and apply them to your life; two, seek to maintain being positioned intimately with Him so He can bless you. This is not so hard. I'll share a bit more about that tonight perhaps. Seek first the kingdom of God - now here's the promise: and all the things that everyone else worries about will just be added to you, just be added to you. They'll just fall on a plate to you. They'll just literally fall on a plate to you, and I just can't get over - we look over the years and how we've - because I've made that a principle to put this first in my life.

Put God's interests first, and no matter what happens believe He will add to me. So when God adds to you you don't have to work like everyone else does. Do you know what people say? Oh you're lucky. Yeah, yeah, yeah - so much luck! All this time lucky. No, it's not luck. It's actually positioning yourself so God can bless you, and it comes about because of a lifestyle of right priorities. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things that everyone else is running after, you'll have what you need. He said your Father already knows. You know a lot of the time I don't even talk to God about - you know how I prayed about this cruise thing? I just thought one day I wouldn't mind doing a cruise up the Greek Isles. That's all I did, I thought it. I just thought it. I said to Joy it'd be nice if we did that one day wouldn't it? Costs a bit of money though, we'll just leave it be for the moment. That's all, thought it and then a guy walks up and says we'd like to give you a cruise up the Greek Isles.

I remembered I'd thought that and you know I thought all the other times I'd prayed so hard, and this one was just a little thought prayer; it'd be nice Lord. [I've actually got 00.44.57] a whole lot of other examples, little nice things like that - and some of the best blessings I've had I just thought it, that might be nice Lord, and it happened. Dear God, out of all the other times you've prayed so hard and not much happened, then just these odd little things you just throw it out to God, He just delights to add it to you. So anyway, positioning yourself first.

Father, we just thank You right now that You're teaching us, instructing us to seek first Your kingdom, to make it our number one priority, that of all things we will pursue knowing You, knowing Your principles, Your ways, Your protocols, Your ways of running life, and to position ourselves continually so we can be blessed and receive them. Father, I just pray that in these coming weeks the church will continue to grow in positioning itself for blessing after blessing after blessing. I pray for marriages to become blessed. I pray for families to become blessed. I pray for businesses to become blessed. I pray for young people to become blessed. I pray Your blessing on every area of Bay City. Father, I ask that You would help us open our eyes to understand this. It's not hard Lord is it? We ask You to open our eyes and understand it; we'd see it everywhere we look in the Bible and Lord, we begin to position ourselves for this growth. You say amen to that.

[File ends 00.46.15]

Summary Notes

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Priority of the Kingdom

24 June 2007

1. Introduction:

• Matthew 6:33 - “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you”

• “Kingdom” – what comes to mind, what picture? What concept?

• We tend to interpret Bible terms through our culture/experience.

• The Western world has lost the concept of a “Kingdom” – think Democracy.

• E.g.: Thailand = Kingdom E.g.: Tonga = kingdom E.g.: Britain = Kingdom

• E.g.: When we were young we used to sing “God save our Queen….born to rule over us”.

• We need to understand the Kingdom of God or think from culture – Democracy, Tribal.

2. The Focus of the Bible is on the Kingdom of God:

• God’s original purpose for man – a kingdom – dominion.

• Genesis 1:26 - “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, let them have dominion”.

• Man was created by God for a Kingdom – for dominion, sovereign rule.

• God’s design for man, key to his fulfillment, to extend the Kingdom of God in the earth.

• When man sinned – he rejected God’s government and lost direction and purpose.

• There’s a search in the heart of man for

1) Purpose – meaning for his existence.

2) Power – the ability to control life and circumstances.

• Man is seeking for the Kingdom that he lost.

• The Bible is about God’s Kingdom and governing earth.

e.g.: Jesus’ Ministry - The Beginning - Matthew 4:17

- His Preaching - Matthew 4:23

- His Teaching - Matthew 5:3

- His Priority - Matthew 6:33

- His Prayer - Matthew 6:10

- His parables - Matthew 13:24

- Matthew 13:31

- Matthew 25:14

- After Resurrection - Acts 1:3

e.g.: Apostles - Preaching - Matthew 9:35

- Philip - Acts 8:12

- Paul - Acts 19:8

e.g.: End Time - Daniel - Daniel 2:44

- John - Revelations 11:15

• We need a revelation of the Kingdom of God and how to operate in its life, power and privileges.

3. Priorities – Key to Success in Life:

• Priority = Putting 1st things 1st – majoring on the major.

• Life is a result of choices, we have decisions daily.

• How you spend your life is reflected in how you spend your time and money.

• Decisions are determined by your priorities – what you believe is important.

• Proverbs 23:7 - “As he thinks in his heart so is he”.

• Priority = The principal thing, the 1st in a rank of importance.

= The primary focus, placing in order of importance.

• When your priorities are right you preserve time, energy, life.

• Matthew 6:35 - “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness…”

• First = Proton = 1st rank, time, order of importance.

• God makes it clear what should be the 1st priority of life and the benefits that come from this.

4. God’s Priority – The Kingdom First:

Matthew 6:24-34 - Jesus’ Teaching about Priorities.

1) You cannot serve two masters – verse 24

• Money – is it you master or your servant?

• People are in conflict over issue of money.

• Money = power – ability to accomplish.

• Pursuit of money competes with the relationship of God.

• God or Money – which one will be first in your life.

2) Don’t worry – be anxious over daily needs – verse 25

• Worry = to be anxious, distracted, divided.

• Everyone worries about the same things – basic needs met.

• Your life is more – much more than this to maintain a relationship with God.

• Your self worth is much more than those basic needs.

3) Number One Priority – Seek First – verse 33

• ‘Seek’ = Pursue after, to seek by thinking, meditating, prioritizing.

a) Kingdom = Highest value must be placed on the kingdom of God.

• Kingdom = NT 963 = Basileia = Dominion, sovereign rule, reign.

• Kingdom = God’s Government, wherever the Will of God is done and heavens influence and value advance.

• Kingdom = Governing influence of a King aver a territory that brings forth his will, purpose, values and desires.

b) Righteousness = Right positioning, standing in relationship with the King.

• Rights = to maintain right relationship and standing with authority so as to qualify for its privileges.

• Promise = All these things = financial, physical, emotional, relationship – added.

Democracy or Kingdom (2 of 4)

Sun 1st Jul 2007  « Back to Top

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Democracy Mind and the Kingdom of God (2 of 4) Mike Connell 01.07.2007 am

Okay, I want you to open your Bible, Matthew 6:33. I want to carry on about the kingdom today and I'm just enjoying so much being able to just share some things about this, so I want to just pick up where we were last week. I want to share some fresh things just to get you thinking a bit. I know it'll get you thinking a bit. I just took quite a bit of time to think about it myself and really, really good. But of all the messages I've ever heard that changed my life significantly, apart from coming to know Jesus, understanding about the kingdom of God was like the lights went on and my life changed. It changed in so many areas at once I was absolutely staggered, so I look back at the message and I can't figure out what was in the message that made the difference. All I can think it was the day when God turned my lights on and I just trust that over these next few weeks God will turn your lights on, because it will change how you live.

So we need to see the way we view something or see something affects how we relate to it. The way you look at something, or your attitude to it, then determines how you will connect with it. So when we hear about the kingdom of God and when we hear about Jesus and His authority, how we see kingdom and how we - our attitude inside will affect how we relate. And of course the dilemma for us is we're raised and we live in a western part of the world which is a wonderful thing, and of course the governing principle through the western world is democracy. So when we come to approach the things of God we approach it and the way we approach it is we think out of democratic mindsets. In other words what we're used to experiencing is our norm; we don't often stop to check whether is our norm is actually what God has in mind. So over today I want to show you some things just about the difference between democracy and kingdom, and I want you to think not just in terms of getting a bit of useful information. I want you think in terms of is this how I think? Is this how I run my life? Is this the way I operate? Do I operate with a democratic mindset, trying to advance the kingdom of God?

So when we for example are teaching on the authority of Jesus and the whole series on authority, every kind of issue we've ever had with authority will come up in our mind. All kinds of issues will come up and questions, but they will be solved most of them through the course. The issue of course is that if I want to fulfil my mandate, what God called me to do, I must have His authority and power to do it. So what we're doing is teaching on the kingdom and this whole series of undercover. It's not to put a burden or try and make life hard for people. It's to give us understanding so internally we can be positioned to see God's blessing in a greater way; for example, if you have a child and there is a demonic spirit troubling the child, a doctor can't fix it. A teacher can't fix it, a psychiatrist can't fix it. What is needed is a superior kingdom to come and displace it - and you are authorised to do it. In fact a little later I'll do a session at some stage just on what we are authorised by the Lord to do on His behalf, and you'll be quite surprised what you're authorised to do.

Of course whether you do it's another thing. Whether you do it is another thing, so like you know, if the prevailing atmosphere in your home is mainly demonic, then whether you do something about that is up to you. You just decide whether you're going to live in the kingdom blessings, or whether you decide where you're going to live under what you're used to. But we don't have to accept what we see; we can bring God's heaven, we can bring the kingdom of heaven into earth and change it see, so we need to see that. We are agents of change. Now a little later at some other time I'll just talk to you a little bit about the difference between religion and the kingdom. They're massively different again in the thinking, and what you'll find when we look at that, you'll find that for some the prevailing mindset is a religious mindset. In other words it doesn't originate in God, it doesn't originate even in the Bible. It just sounds good, looks good, we've got used to it and we think that's normal.

We've not stopped to check it, whether it actually is biblical or not. So what I want to do is just talk about the kingdom. So we saw last week what we got into and looked at was we saw Jesus preaching, Matthew 4:17, the beginning of His message and the whole of His message was about the kingdom of God. So right from the beginning He spoke repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And all His ministry, if you've started to read through the Book of the Gospels, you'll see it's all about the kingdom. How many have started to read it and look for that? Okay, there's a couple. That's probably why I've got to do a series of about four, see? Because I actually asked you to read it again and look for what the Bible plainly says, because if you don't look for it you won't find it. Okay then, and the second thing we saw, Luke 9:2, we saw there that the disciples were sent out and Jesus gave them the message they should preach. They should preach the kingdom of God.

So from the beginning of the Bible to the end, all through Jesus' teaching, He was preoccupied about teaching about the kingdom of God, so we should have an understanding of it. We saw in the Book of Acts 28:31, Paul preached the kingdom of God and the things concerning Jesus Christ. So when you look at the whole thrust of the New Testament it all is about the kingdom of God; Jesus announced it. He demonstrated it. He taught about it. He taught the principles of it, taught how to live it, empowered people to preach it, and the whole of the New Testament is about the kingdom of God advancing - and so that's why it's so important. Now Matthew 6:33, He says now seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. So Jesus made it very clear that the priority, the first two priorities we should have in our life once we're a believer; number one is to seek first the kingdom of God. Number two is to seek His righteousness. We'll just explain them.

The kingdom of God literally refers to a realm or an area where a king rules. It's the governmental rule of a king, so it says first above everything else, seek that God's way of doing things becomes established in your life. That's probably the simplest way to describe it. The second thing is seek His righteousness. In other words that means seek to learn from the word of God how to position yourself so the blessings of God can come into your life. Just because you're a Christian doesn't mean God's blessings become realised in your life. You have to position yourself for them - so it says seek number one, to understand the ways God operates and how He has directed for life to be run. In other words seek first His rule, His ways being established on the earth. And then secondly, seek to position yourself in your personal life so that you can connect with Him and can draw upon what He's made available for you - so for example, all can prophesy but many don't. But all can. All can pray for the sick, but lots don't. All can cast out demons, but most don't.

All can see God's blessing released, but most don't. All can have prosperity in their life in various levels, but a lot of people don't position themself for that to happen. So positioning has to do with our understanding how to come near to God, how to approach Him, how to live in relationship with Him and how to overcome the constant barrage of accusations the devil puts to put us down. If I'm put down and I don't know where I stand, I can't release heaven into the earth. So next week I'll share with you about the kingdom mandate, in other words what God has given to us. Now we want to look today, I want to just look at this issue of government. We'll go and pick up and I have to lay just a couple of things out first before I can talk the difference between democracy and the kingdom. Let's just go into Genesis 1:26, so if you could just give me just a few minutes to just lay out just some simple things, and they are evident but if you don't have the background you don't get the big picture.

Once you get the big picture it'll help you understand a lot of stuff perhaps you've wondered about - so first of all we'll read Genesis 1:26. God said let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, all the earth, every creeping thing. Let's make man in Our image and likeness. Let Us make man a spirit being with God-type qualities and let Us put him and give him dominion over the earth - now not dominion over one another. That's why we don't want anyone to tell us what to do. We're not sort of made and wired that way. We're made to have dominion over the earth and we're made to be in relationship with God, so we find it hard to have anyone tell us what to do. But man was made for dominion, made for authority, to rule over creation. So God's intention was very simple. He had created all of heaven and in heaven His presence fills it; His character fills it. His nature fills it. His authority fills it. It's a wonderful place to be.

Then He made earth, and earth - He made earth that kingdom of heaven might be extended into the earth, and so He created man to be His agent to represent Him and to bring heaven to earth. You can tell that He's done that because number one, He gave us the mandate you've got to bring heaven into earth, bring dominion there; and secondly, He created us in His own image and likeness, a spirit being, so we're quite unique. We can access heaven, the realm of the spirit because we've got a spirit part of us, and we can live in the earth and do things in the earth because we've got a human part of us, so that makes us a wonderful creation. Psalm 8 says what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You created him to have dominion over all the works of your hands? So you are made for dominion. You are made to win in life. You are made to advance the kingdom of God. You are made to have an influence in the earth. You are made for your life to count for something eternal. That's why if you live for the moment you'll always feel empty and needing your next fix.

We are made for eternity. We are made to bring heaven into the earth, so if you work in a business you're designed to bring the resources of heaven into the earth and to touch the lives of every person you do business with and interact with - including your employees. If you're in a school you're designed to bring something of God's presence into the school. If you're in the school that is God's purpose for you. If you don't fulfil His purpose you'll follow the crowd. So wherever we are we're called to bring something of heaven into earth. The big thing is how to do it. Now let's have a look at a few things. First I want to get this real clear about [this 00.10.50], so we see here that the first one who came up with the idea of dominion was God, so God realised that the earth would need bringing into order and that in order for things to work there would have to be some form of government. We hear the word 'government' - some of you will have very negative thoughts, see?

You'll have negative thoughts because of your experience and your opinions, see? But government isn't bad; government's necessary. Just consider for a moment if there was no government, if there is no one setting rules on the road and everyone drives the way they like. The place will be very unsafe. If there is no one setting rules about what behaviour's acceptable, not acceptable and there's no authority and power to enforce that, your life will be extremely unsafe because people can break into your home and take what they want, when they want. If there is no government to provide some kind of organisation then society breaks down and becomes chaotic. So no matter where you are in the world people need government. We must have government. We understand government is God's idea. There must be government. It came from God who's a king over a kingdom, so when God created the earth He said for man, man will have dominion. They'll be My representatives, have dominion.

Now the problem is of course is what happened when Adam fell. Now the core of Adam falling, the core of His sin was this, because when I use the word 'sin' you think of drunkenness and all kinds of wickedness. But you see actually the core of sin is just saying this: I won't have God to rule over me. That's the bottom line. You can come to church and still live a sin-filled life because you're saying in your heart I don't mind coming to church, but I just don't want God to rule over me. I want to be in charge of my own life, see? That's the core and the heart of sin. Everything springs out of saying no God, we're saying no to You and no to Your government. We've got a better idea and it's we'll govern ourselves. Or the world puts it like this: I'll do my own thing. I'll do my own thing, see? And it says in the last part of the Book of Judges, it says because there was no king everyone did what was right in his own eye. So the core of sin is I'll do what I think is right for me. Getting the idea?

See when I start to bring these things out in the open like this you'll realise that these paradigms and thoughts dominate our way of thinking. If we're going to live and walk in the fullness of what God has for us we need to change how we think. So it's no longer I do it my way and you'll see why in a moment. You'll see that comes fully out of not only of the sin but also comes out in other areas of the democratic way of thinking. Let's have a look in Luke 4. I want you to see something that happened in Luke 4. I want you read in verses 5 and 6. So let's just look at the fall of man and we're going to look at Jesus being tempted. Now remember that Jesus came into the earth, He announced the kingdom of heaven is here. Then immediately after He was filled with the Holy Spirit and anointed for this mission of advancing the kingdom; immediately He had a season of prayer and fasting, and then He was tempted by the devil.

Now notice what the devil said to Him. Notice these words that the devil said to Him. He said to Him - verse 5 - the devil took Him up onto a high mountain and showed Him what? Showed Him all the kingdoms of the world at one moment. So He was actually transported in the spirit or physically up to a mountain and the devil, using the power he had, was able to show Him all the kingdoms and their glory. In other words He was able to look into the realm of the spirit and see the kingdoms of the earth and their glory. Whether he showed he showed Him the kingdoms that have been and are coming I don't know, but certainly he showed Him kingdoms. We've been there and seen some of the kingdoms, and the Roman kingdom at the time of Jesus was unbelievably magnificent - unbelievable buildings and organisation; it was a massive kingdom that influenced the whole of the earth.

It had conquered, subdued and colonised the known world. It was an amazing kingdom, and Jesus was shown all the kingdoms of the earth, and this is what the devil said: All of this power glory will I give to You for it's been given to me, and I can give it to who I like. Notice what he said, it's been given to me. Where did he get it, see? He didn't get it from God. He got it by overthrowing the man God put in and gave that authority, so when the devil said all this authority, all this dominion, all this glory, all this power to be able to build such kingdoms has been handed over to me by God's representative who declared independence. So where did the devil get that power? It was given to him by Adam when he seduced him and overcame him, and Adam yielded up and said I won't do what God wants. We have hardly any concept of the level of power and glory and dominion that Adam walked in, see? We tend to think of him just like us, but he hadn't sinned, no way. He was covered with the glory of God.

He had unusual and unbelievable power to be able to change things and make things happen, and to move about the earth and it came because he had access into the realm of the Spirit, the second heaven. He could govern the earth with the power God had given him. When he fell he lost his glory, he lost his power and the devil picked it up and so now in the realm of the Spirit there are wicked spirits temporarily occupying that place. So when you ask why have we got all the problems in the world, it's simple. The man God gave the entrustment to let Him down, declared independence; now the devil's got a hold of it - for the time being. God's intention is it does come back to His people. His intention is it comes back to His people. His intention from the beginning was we have it, so at the moment the devil is a usurper and he occupies the realm of the Spirit. The devil doesn't occupy hell; he occupies the realm of the Spirit, interfering and controlling and manipulating the affairs of nations on the earth. And God calls us to rise into that place and to do what Adam failed to do. Come on, just think about it, see?

And Jesus said no, he said it is written that you worship the Lord and serve Him alone. So Jesus was tempted. He was tempted. This is what the temptation was. Listen, forget the cross, forget all the [hard route, 00.17.27] just bow down to me and I'll give You the lot. I know that's why you've come here. He tried to short-circuit Jesus' ministry and say take the easy road. Take the easy road; look, if You just bow down to me I'll hand it all over to You - which of course He would never have done. He would have actually then sabotaged God's plan to bring the kingdom back and wrestle it out of the hands of the devil. Okay, we getting the idea? Starting to get some concepts here now see, so what happened when Adam and Eve refused the government of God. They refused and they wanted to establish their own, so the result of that was three things - I mean lots of things, but [let me three 00.18.00] things. Number one, demonic powers began to rule over and create chaos in the earth, that's the first thing.

And the Bible says, Ephesians 2:2, the devil now works - the world follows the same course under the power of the prince of the power the air, that spirit that works in children of disobedience; or it's essentially saying this: The chaos in the world is caused by a spiritual power and people responding to it. Okay, second thing that Adam [lost 00.18.27], so the first thing that consequence was chaos. The second thing is he lost his government. He lost his government. The second thing was actually he lost his relationship, and so what he did was then he substituted religion for relationship. I'll look at that a little later - so religion is men trying to find a way back to God, and that's all the places in the world you go you find religion. The third thing that he lost was government so he had to invent his own. See, so [what did he lose? 00.18.52]

So first of all he lost his authority, and the devil got it and created chaos; he lost his relationship, so therefore now he has to substitute something for it which is religion; and he lost his governance, so he's also got to substitute something for it, got to create some form of government. And so all the governments that you ever see in the world are a substitute for the true government of God, the kingdom of heaven, and the ultimate thing, all governments will fail and the kingdom of heaven will be established in the earth. It's the full message of the Bible. Okay then, so what kinds of governments do we see? You could probably think of a few governments, and we can think of some. In the Middle Ages of course, you go right through the - and you find generally they form under these kinds of things. They form under a dictatorship. Dictatorship is where one person considers himself superior to everyone else, and they rule - they literally rule over everyone. Everyone bows down to them and usually whatever they want happens.

So you can think of all the dictators that rose up under different regimes, but all of them had one thing in common. All they wanted to do was just increase their power, their rule and use people to get where they wanted to get. So you find that. So then of course you have a thing like monarchies. You find - we've got a monarchy but it's actually a powerless monarchy. It's only a figurehead monarchy, and so long ago in the Middle Ages the power of the monarchy was removed because the monarchy failed, and instead of blessing the people it oppressed the people, so they stripped the monarchy of its power. See, Cromwell and all of those people, see? And then you have a look in this Century, there's been the rise of communism. Communism also seeks to take the power away from a ruling elite, so it took the power away from the Tsars and put it in the hands of the people so that the people could govern themselves.

Of course what happened was in the end if you look at communism, you just change one tyrant for another. You just get a whole ruling class of other people who say we're equal but they're not. Then you find there are things like socialism. Socialism also attempts to put power back into the hands of the people, and so you have various forms of elected government, but the government then takes care of the people. Now to take care of the people you've got to give up your rights, and our government is moving from being democratic to being socialist, and so there you get that term 'nanny state' where the government is taking over the running of everyone and so we've got to keep you safe. We've got to make sure you don't hurt yourselves. We've got to do this for you, got to do the thinking for you, we'll look after your children for you. And actually the philosophy is a socialist philosophy and the government is [unclear 00.21.26].

Now of course for a government to be a socialist government they've got to persuade people to give up their responsibilities and authority, and progressively they've done that. Okay, getting the idea? So then we get down to democracy. Now we can have a look at democracy and what it is, then see how it differs. Because we're used to democracy we can't see the emergence of socialism. Let's have a look in Philippians 3:20. So when you get born again, look at this, look what it tells us. Philippians 3:20, when you are born again. When you are born again, okay. It says our citizenship is in - where? Our citizenship is where? [In heaven.] Our citizenship is in heaven. Now that word citizenship means a native or naturalised member of a state who gives allegiance to its government and is entitled to its privileges and protection. I'll read that again. A citizen is a person who is native or has been naturalised as a part of a state or country; he gives allegiance to its government and he's entitled to its protection. See, that's a citizen.

So what are we citizens of? Citizens of? [Heaven.] Heaven, heaven. Where does your citizenship - and you know that's why Jesus wrote your name there. He wrote your name on the - not the electoral role, the kingdom role. See, put it on the electoral role, you get to vote; put it in the kingdom role, you're part of a family. Get the idea, the difference? So when you got born again Jesus wrote your name and your name is recorded that you are now a citizen of heaven. If you're a citizen of heaven your first loyalty is to the king, because it's a kingdom, not a democracy. It doesn't have a president over us, it has a king over us, see? There's a king over us. Okay, so we are part of - so the kingdom that we're part of has a king. It has protocol, it has laws, it has a culture, it has principles. It has values, it has authority, has power, has all kinds of things, and you and I are part of that.

You were born to be part of that. Now we're all New Zealanders, so as New Zealanders we belong to New Zealand; we're either born in New Zealand or naturalised in New Zealand, and now we're also part of a democracy. So here's the interesting thing: our primary allegiance is to a kingdom which is not from this world, it's from heaven, but we live in a democracy which we're called to represent the kingdom interests in. Getting the idea? It's sort of straight forward isn't it really? Of course the problem is you get confused and think democratically about the kingdom of heaven, then you've got a real problem. So we live in a democracy, but we are truly representative of a kingdom. Now of course what happens is over the course of history, if you have a look at the history of the church, the church was called - and we'll look at this in its [unclear 00.24.17] - the church is called to advance the kingdom of God. This brought it into conflict with the state regularly through history.

So why did the first Christians get martyred? Because they said there's another king, His name is Jesus. The government said there is only one king, his name is Caesar; bow and worship Caesar or you die. They said we will serve only one king, His name is Jesus Christ. We will not bow - so they died. Now the same thing happens around the world, exactly the same thing, whether it's communist or socialist it happens all around the world, same thing. It ultimately boils down that the conflict everywhere is about who will rule. Okay, now having got that let's have a look at democracy and the kingdom and what I want you to do is I want you just to begin to think, we're going to just describe under a number of areas - I've picked about six or seven - how the thinking and mentality is different. Now currently you're either thinking democratically, or you're thinking and you've modified your thinking to your new nation which is heaven, see?

And so what I want you to do as we go through these things, I want you to think how your thinking operates currently and what really prevails, whether you are still immersed so much in the culture of New Zealand and the democratic style and our ways, or whether you have actually immersed yourself in the new place you're a part of where you'll spend forever in. Because one day you'll leave New Zealand forever, but you'll enter your citizenship in heaven forever see? So you really want to know about where it is you're going to spend forever in and learn how to operate there, because the one we're in now is only temporary. Getting the idea? Alright then, what I did was to make it easy to follow, I put it under just some simple headings which address different areas of life, and then we can just have a think about them, think about each one. There'll be heaps of scriptures, I've just chosen one to give a representation of it.

Now number one is ownership, ownership, ownership. So the key issue is ownership. Now we're going to look - we've got to contrast democracy with the kingdom, and then again I want you to think mentally just very quickly which way you think, alright? Ownership. Now in a democracy one thing that is really important in democracy is the protection of the rights of the individual to own property. See the communists take it away because power rests in the land, so ownership is important in a democracy, individual rights. In other words what I own I rule over, so in a democracy I own my land, I own my house, I own my car, I own lots of things. Got the idea? I own it, and because I own it I rule over it. If you're the owner you can rule over it. That's the prevailing mentality. Now of course in a kingdom, a kingdom's a lot different than that. See in a kingdom the king owns everything. That's what makes him the king. See in the old days a king owned all the land and so he let you live on the land and you just gave allegiance to him. If he wanted you to fight a battle you fought his battles, but you didn't own anything. The king owned it.

Now think about this. If you've made something you're the owner. If you have purchased something you're the owner. If you've created something you're the owner. Now the Bible says in Psalm 24:1, now the earth is the Lord's and everything inside it. So what does the Bible declare about who owns everything? See, you go through it all over. In Haggai 2 He says the silver's Mine, the gold is Mine. God made it all. He owns it. You're breathing His air. You're walking on His ground. You're using His resources. You're using up His stuff. Come on, who owns it? God does. You don't own it at all. You temporarily get to use it, then you die and they divide it up and someone else has got it. Then they die and someone else has got it; it's definitely not permanent. But what is permanent is it belongs to the Lord. He made it, He owns it. Now we don't see it under His - we don't see His [management 00.28.18] but He's definitely the owner. Now if I'm the owner then I can do what I like with it, but if I'm not the owner I'm a steward of it.

Okay then, so are you the owner of your life? Yes, you are - but you're part of a kingdom, so you've got to decide whether you're an owner or a steward of your life. Do you own your car, own your house, own this, own that? Well do you own it or are you part of a kingdom? If you're part of a kingdom He owns it, and you're a steward. So you've got to think how do I run my life; do I run it like an owner and I own it and do what I like? Or do I run it as a steward and I look after it because it's there for someone else's use, and I've just got temporary ownership of it? Your bank account, is it yours or is it Gods? Your house, is it yours or Gods? Your finances, every part of your life, is it yours or Gods? Your children, are they yours or Gods? You see you've got to decide the issue of ownership. Your business, is it yours or is it Gods? If it's yours good on you, worry all you can about it. [Laughter] If it's Gods let Him worry about it, you just follow what He says to do, see?

If it's yours worry about it. If its Gods don't worry, trust Him. He's responsible. You've just got to be a good steward. Required of stewards, a man be found faithful; in other words that we be productive with what we have. So are you the owner or the steward? Oh, oh - think about it. Okay, now the second thing is, another area we're going to look at is the area of - now I could develop each one but I'm just going to give you a few thoughts to get you thinking. Already what you'll find is that most of us are so ingrained with democratic values and thinking, that we actually continually are sabotaging our life with God because we don't think right, see? So if I don't own [anything - see people, see I 00.30.07] lost my wallet and all the [credit cards, 00.30.09] everything like that, and I didn't worry at all. Some people it would ruin their whole holiday - not worried at all, just carried on, carried on enjoying my holiday. I didn't worry about one little thing. I rang up and cancelled them, carried on with my holiday.

For some people they lose it, their whole life is in a mess and a turmoil because why? Because they're the owner, and therefore they have to worry. Jesus said don't be anxious, seek first the kingdom! Seek first the right mentality about everything you've got. God owns it! If He owns it let Him worry about it! I'll enjoy working with it, using it, being a blessing with it. I'll be a good steward of it. See, good isn't it aye? Okay, here's the second one, authority. This is a word we all hate. It's a very difficult one, but actually authority is the legal right to rule and make decisions. It's a lawful right to make decisions, so authority is really important. So what you're responsible for you have authority over and so we need to see - now here's the difference between a democratic way of viewing and then a kingdom way of thinking. Now in a democracy the source of authority is the people. In a democracy the source of the authority is the people - power to the people. People get to vote in who they want, and so authority that the government has comes from the people and the authority is given by the people to someone who'll represent them.

So you vote someone in and they can't just do their own thing - or they're not supposed to. They're supposed to actually represent you, and if they don't do what the people want then they are breaking down democracy, because democracy is the power is in the hands of the people and the democratic government is a government whereby the people who rule over are the representatives of the ones ruled. That's the whole thing about democracy. In a kingdom of course a king rules over the whole lot. That's what makes it so different to a democracy. In a democracy the authority rests with the people; in a kingdom it rests with the king. The king has got total charge, can't argue with him. He's in charge - disagree, throw you in jail. God never works like that unless you disagree with Him over the area of unforgiveness, and you'll find interestingly enough He says He'll deliver you over to the tormenters. How about that? Think about it. Just think about it. You'll start to see scripture in a totally different light when you start to understand the kingdom. He's a king. He is a king.

Okay then, so [source of authority is the 00.32.34] people and the authority's limited by the law. In other words there are certain laws that the government can't do anything outside the law. Hence we've had in the last few years all these scandals where government representatives who are elected broke the law; therefore they had to be called to account you see, because they just can't do what they want. If they did what they want [it would 00.32.52] become a dictatorship, see? And so they're delegated authority to represent the law. Now here's the thing. In a democracy the source of authority's the people, but in a kingdom the source of authority's the king. The king's in charge. He does what he wants. In a democracy the authority's limited by the law, but in a kingdom it's unlimited. He does what he wants. He's got the power to do it. He owns it all and he can enforce it - so Gods power is unlimited.

That's why Jesus all authority in heaven and earth is given to Me. I've got it all! I've got all authority! Who's got all the authority? Jesus has got all the authority. Does it look like it? No, it doesn't look like it. Don't be deceived, He's still got all the authority. He's still got all the authority. You see in a democracy a delegated authority represents the law, so when you see a policeman he's there to represent the law. So if they come and break into your house they break in in the name of the law. See, but in a kingdom the delegated representative represents the king, see? So are you a delegated - see you've got to realise now that you are delegated on the earth to represent the king. How do you represent the king? Well in the name of Jesus! It's not a little prayer you add on you know. It's actually about a position; you're representing someone coming on His behalf to enforce the kingdom lifestyle in the earth. So when you come and cast out a demon only one way to get him out. [Unclear 00.34.12] the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Ghost!

So Jesus said in Matthew 12, He said if I cast out demons by the finger or the spirit of God, know the kingdom has come among you. So deliverance is a man representing the kingdom, carrying not only the authority and right to represent Him and act on His behalf, but also the anointing of the Holy Ghost, the favour of God behind him. Now you've got to see yourself, you're called to be like that in the earth. We're called to carry the nature of Christ, to carry His anointing and authority, and to bring change in the community. Religion teaches all about going to heaven; kingdom's all about staying on earth and making it change. Come on, think it through. Think about it. Think about it, see? So authority, so authority in a democracy, it rests with the people so you vote in who you like. If you don't like them vote them out - but you can't vote God out. Churches can and do. They vote God out. They do.

They just vote out the Holy Spirit. How do they do that? They just resist the Holy Spirit, vote God out. I'd just be scared to be in that church that says we're a church, we represent Jesus Christ and we voted Him out. God was overruled by 12 to two. [Laughter] The Board met. Okay then, so here's [laughs] so let's have a look at government and ruling, how ruling is done, how government is done. Notice in a democracy you're governed by consensus, so if you want to govern in a democracy do you know what you've got to do? You've got to have committees meet and find out what everyone wants, and so consensus is how you govern. Consensus means we get people to agree, so we find out the opinions of the majority. So in a democracy it's the rule of the majority, see? See, so you govern by consensus. In the kingdom He governs by decree, see, not by consensus. See for example if Jesus operated by consensus the Greenies would have caned Him for cursing the tree! [Laughter] The animal rights people would have caned Him for putting demons in the pigs and they all died. [Laughter]

But He didn't ask their opinion, He just did it - because He had authority, because He was the one who created it all. So He didn't wait around for consensus; He governed without consensus. He was here to announce something different; not the consensus of God or the democracy of God, actually the kingdom. So He says to the tree ha die! And it dies. He says to the bread increase! And it increases. That's what happens in the kingdom. It operates differently, see, whereas in a democracy you've got to have a meeting and find out what everyone thinks. We don't agree, majority don't agree, we can't do it so we vote God out see? So in a democracy personal opinions abound, so anything happens everyone's got an opinion. But in the kingdom you don't have opinions. See in the kingdom whatever the king's opinion is is what's you're opinion. Oh that's getting to you. I can see that see, because we're so full of opinions. We are riddled with opinions. Decision's made, we've got our opinion.

Here's a simple thing. If you're not responsible for it don't have an opinion. It's real simple. So someone asks what do you think of that? I don't think anything. Why not? It's not my responsibility. See, having opinions leads to gossip, criticism, every kind of negative thing, because it doesn't come out of the kingdom. See what my opinion is and what does God say about it, well that's my opinion. Oops, see - I can see it radically pushing on the way you think, because our thinking is dominated by [the world, 00.38.06] it's dominated by the democratic mindset so we have opinions. We've got opinions about how to raise kids, got opinions about - everyone's got opinions. What does the word of God say? What does Gods word say? Well that's my opinion. Wherever we can get agreement on that - and one of the guidelines I've found is if I'm not responsible for it don't have an opinion. [If someone says 00.38.24] what do you think about such and such a ministry? I don't think anything. I just found it real easy to say I don't have an opinion on it, because they're not my servant. They're a servant of God. He's the one to have the opinions, ask Him. In due course He'll show what it is.

See, so what happens is of course church gets full of opinion and so what happens is well I don't agree, I don't agree! So then [unclear 00.38.45] and then what happens is we bring that, the democratic mindset into what an operation of the church or operation of the kingdom of God. There's room for discussion. I believe we should have unity and I believe there should be teamwork, but you've got to understand the prevailing thing is at some time someone just says this is how it will be. That's how it is with Jesus. [Now that 00.39.04] I've found that I don't have opinions about a lot of things, just ask Him what He says and He gives direction, you know? You know if you ask God for guidance He doesn't sort of come back and say what's your opinion? [Laughter] Did you get on the phone and check out half the church; what do they think? Well they think its okay. Well it must be okay then. [Laughter]

See, He doesn't think that way at all. He says this is what I'm telling you to do. But, but, but, but, but! Do I hear that democracy coming up again? This is not a democracy, didn't I tell you? You know? See, understand with God He gives direction, gives decree, said that's how it's going to be. That's how it is - so when for example - of course if He's got ownership then of course you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to make lots of decisions because many of them He's actually able to direct you in. He's responsible to direct you in. When it comes to direction - see I didn't want to leave teaching and go out and run a Christian school. Lord said I want you to do this, so when it all boils down is it my opinion or His? Well I just say Lord, [what you want? 00.40.03] That's why Jesus said Your will be done. Of course we can have opinions about all kinds of things, but I encourage you to not be so opinionated. Be sure you've got Gods mind on things.

Okay then, and of course when there's the issue of government that way of course what happens is the majority opinion rules and of course the majority can be influenced by minority, so the minority groups with self-interest, so what you find in a democracy is self-interest becomes prevalent. Gradually over a course of a period of time self-interest for small groups starts to have a vocal and a vocal and a vocal and a vocal. Then before you know it the majority are forced to come under what has been decided by the consensus, and so it breeds self-interest; whereas the kingdom, it's all about the king is a benevolent king who has a heart for His people and their welfare. Interestingly enough there are a lot of people have criticism about Singapore and its government. I suppose there is plenty of reason, but I notice that their mindset is not fully democratic like ours is. Their mindset is we're the trustees of the nation, so your rights actually have to come into alignment with what will be best for the nation.

It's interesting. People who are full of democracy always object to that. They say oh, you take away my rights. No, no, no, we're just making you more responsible. Okay, so here's another thing then is the issue of - oh, that brings us to the next one - personal rights. Personal rights, and of course in democracy the rights of the individual are important. And in the west the rights of the individual become so important it's been at the expense of the community. In the kingdom of God the rights of the king and His family are important, so it's all about the king and what he wants. So self-interest prevails in our situation of course, where we just have personal rights whereas in the kingdom of God there's a king who cares about His family. See, God cares about people. [He 00.41.54] says in the kingdom of heaven it's not about selfishness; it's about serving, so Matthew 20:25-28 Jesus said in the world they all just lord it over one another and its one-upmanship. He said in the kingdom of heaven it's not like that. In the kingdom of heaven it's about serving. Jesus in John 13 said look, you call Me Lord. Notice what I did, I served you. You do the same.

The kingdom of heaven is not like a [kingdom. 00.42.19] See, we tend to think kingdom and you're starting to get - I know you'll get wound up over this and start to think ooh, it's all about authority and control. No, it isn't see because the kingdom of heaven, the king serves. Ever found a king that would wash people's feet? I don't think so - but we have one. He's our king. Ever had a king who'd lay his life down so you could be freed? I don't think so, but we have one. See? That's our king. That's why it's not hard to serve Him. That's why these things aren't hard to follow - He's not hard to follow because He loves us, and He's shown it by demonstrating Himself sacrificially. Getting the idea? Okay, well here's another thing; government, the values and the culture. The values and the culture, of course in a democracy they constantly change and what the majority want is what happens.

I can remember years ago - we've talked about it before - that people used to stand up for God Save the Queen. Now they don't do it at all. They don't want any shorts, they just want to go straight to the movie. We got too busy, get me out of here you know? And think about the situation of divorce. When I grew up if a person committed adultery it was actually in the paper. It was such a scandalous thing that would erode the nation and family values - and so it was in the paper. I'm not saying whether that was good or bad, but now of course it happens all the time and no one even thinks about it. So you understand values are changing, so in a democracy the values change the majority determine what the values will be. Hence we have a lot of laws that maybe the majority don't necessarily agree with, but it's been pushed through anyway.

But in a kingdom well of course the king determines the values and the values are absolute, so here, well I think this is okay to live together, well I don't think it's okay. See but in the kingdom of God He just says straight something like this. Adultery is a sin. Fornication is a sin. Homosexuality is a sin. Pride is a sin. It's just quite black and white and it's never changed in 4000, 6000 years, never changed. It's unchanging, so the kingdom of heaven is unchanging in its culture, its values, its laws. It just doesn't change. What changes is our laws change, our values change, our culture changes. Before if you were on a bus, a woman got on a bus, all the men would stand up and let her have a seat. An elderly person got on a bus, all the men would stand up and let her have a seat. Kids would stand up and let them have a seat. Not now, culture's changed - and not for the better. Not for the better see, so in a democracy one of the dilemmas with a democracy is as the people forsake accountability to God and the character declines to do what people want, then the whole culture declines and of course the majority rule.

So in New Zealand only 10 per cent age Christian, so you have the majority who are not; they actually begin to determine what the culture is. Interesting isn't it? So in the kingdom of heaven it's not a vote on the culture. It's not a vote on the laws. There's no vote whatsoever. There's just how it is, this is how it operates. So when Jesus was speaking in Matthew 6, or 5, 6 and 7 and gave His Sermon on the Mount, He said this is how the kingdom operates. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they'll receive the kingdom of heaven. You've heard people say you shan't commit [adultery. I tell you look 00.45.30] with lust in your heart, you've already committed it. He began to outline how the kingdom operates. I encourage you to read Matthew 5, have a look at it all.

Okay, here's the last couple then and we'll just finish up. The last couple here are these. Representation, representation. Now representation - so representation, the government is voted in and the government is voted out. Don't we like that? That's one good thing about democracy; if we don't like them vote them out. You like them, vote them back in again, see? But in the kingdom you can't vote the king out. You can't vote God out. He's the king because He's the king, so He's king by birth or by appointment - but He's a king. He's king because that's who He is, so you can't vote Him in, can't vote Him out. You never vote the king out. He's always there and He's always going to be there, see? The other thing is that of course when there's representation the leaders are supposed to represent the people, [yes, 00.46.18] the leaders. So our elected leaders are supposed to represent us, but in the kingdom of God - get this - people are supposed to represent the king. Think about that.

So our leaders are supposed to represent us, but in the kingdom of God we're called to represent the king, so your mandate is to go into the earth and represent the king, not represent yourself and your own thing. Represent the king; to stand and promote His values, His culture, His lifestyle and His ways, His principles of success in life, firstly by living them and modelling them, and secondly by interacting powerfully with people and starting to engage them in a way that their lives are changed and you're truly salt and light. But religion will seek you to isolate and withdraw in case they infect us - but the Bible's quite different. [It says 00.47.10] greater is He in you than he that's in the world. Go out and infect them with it, it's good! See the thinking is so different - and finally accountability. Accountability goes like this: in democracy they have systems of checks and balances, so you've kind of got laws and check ups and whatever. Leaders give account to the people and you have elections.

So a leader's got to give an account to the people - but you know what? In the kingdom of heaven it's not like that at all. It's absolutely completely different. See the king's rule is absolute and the people give account to the king. [Aye aye? 00.47.43] Now listen. Every three years the government gives account to the people and you vote them in or vote them out, but in the kingdom it's exactly the opposite. We give account to the king. It works exactly the opposite, so the Bible says in Romans 14 all of us should give account of our stewardship how we've been as citizens of His kingdom to the king, that we might qualify for eternal reward. [A challenge, 00.48.08] what a difference. What a difference see, now if you don't like the government vote them out - but you can't vote God out and one day you have to stand before Him and give account what of? Of your stewardship, see? And so in the earth we have elections, ballot box, but in heaven there's a throne room and a place to go where God says it all about how things really are.

You know something? It's not hard to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, because we have a king that loved us and served us, and demonstrated He's such a good king who wouldn't want to serve Him? Who wouldn't want to put Him first? Remember, all other governments will fail, but the kingdom of God lasts for eternity.

[File ends 00.48.50]

Summary Notes

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Democracy or Kingdom

1 July 2007

1. Introduction:

· The way we view or see something determines how we relate to it.

· We are raised in a democracy but born again into the Kingdom.

· Kingdom - The Massage of the Bible

· Matthew 4:17 - Jesus began to preach saying: “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”.

· Luke 9:2 - Jesus sent them to preach the Kingdom of God ant to heal the sick.

· Acts 28:31 - “Paul… preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord”.

· Kingdom - Jesus priority for us.

· Matthew 6:33 - “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things….”

· Kingdom = Government or Rule of a King.

· Righteousness = Right positioning and relationship with the King to qualify for privileges

· The Core of the kingdom is the King who fills it with His presence, character and authority.

2. Government is God’s Idea:

· Definition: - To govern is to steer, pilot, act as a rudder (Greek)

- Authority and power to rule over and give direction to a territory and its people.

· Kingdom = 1st form of Government.

- Genesis 1:26 - “let us make man in our own image according to our likeness, let them have dominion”.

- Psalm 8:5-6 - “You have made him to have dominion over all the works of your hands”.

- Man was created to extent the Government of God from the realm of heaven into the earth.

- Heaven is filled with presence, character and authority of the God.

- Man was called to extend the Kingdom of Heaven to earth by representing His character, nature of God.

· The result of Independence = Chaos

- Luke 4:5-6 - “All this authority …. For this has delivered to me”.

- When Adam and Eve declared independence from God:

i) They Refused the Government of God. ii) Established Self-Government

- The result was that control of earth passed temporarily to demonic usurper.

- Ephesians 2:1-2 - The course of this world – the spirit that works.

· Consequences of the Fall:

i) Demonic chaos

ii) Loss of relationship entrance of religion

iii) Loss of the Kingdom – entrance of other forms of government

Example: Human is by vote or by violence.

· Feudalism – landlords – one who owns the land owns and governs all.

· Dictatorship – one person –n superior by birth or force rules all.

· Communism – Government controls land and people and governs for the people.

· Socialism – King is replaced by State governing for the people.

· Democracy – Government of the people by the peoples elected representative.

3. Differences between a Democracy and The Kingdom of God:

· We live in a Democracy that represents a Kingdom.

· Philippians 3:20 - “For our citizenship is in heaven”

· Citizenship = “Native or Naturalized member of a State who owns his allegiance to its Government and is entitled to its protection and privileges”.

· Contrast:

Kingdom Mandate (3 of 4)

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Kingdom Mandate (3 of 4) Mike Connell 08.07.2007 am

Ephesians 1, we're on a series on the Kingdom of God. Last week we talked about the difference between a democracy, what a democracy's like and what a kingdom's like and what it is of course, we are part of and our citizenship is in the kingdom of God but we have to live in a democracy. An interesting thing is that there's nowhere in the Bible where anyone's instructed to overthrow the government, so throughout the Bible no matter what the government was, never did the people of God arise to overthrow it. What they did was showed the superiority of the kingdom of God within it, and eventually of course kingdoms came and kingdoms fell, and we're in a democracy here. There are other countries in communism and various kinds of things, but one thing is universal; the kingdom of God is superior to every other form of government. Eventually, as we saw in the Bible, all forms of government will yield to the kingdom of God.

It's a wonderful thing to be part of it isn't it aye? But we've got to learn about it. Now I'll just pick up this verse and just start here today. We're going to just start to look towards and get some thoughts on the Kingdom Mandate, the Kingdom Mandate. A mandate is a command, something we're instructed to do. It has to do with our purpose and just let's read a couple of verses here. Paul is saying - he's talking in verse 16; I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you - now he's praying for Christians, that God would give them something - the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened or opened up; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power. Isn't that fantastic?

Paul is praying that we would receive from God wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how to do life, knowing what to do with your life, how to live your life, see? He's also praying that we would get revelation; that's to be able to understand how life works, how to see life. So you need revelation to see life as God sees it. If we don't have revelation we have an opinion. We're going to get onto that just shortly. If you don't have revelation you have an opinion, and your opinion is just your opinion. We're going to touch on this a little bit later - but when Gods word becomes clear to us and the Holy Spirit shows it to us, then we actually have revelation. We understand something we didn't understand before, so we need revelation how to see life, see? You will in building your marriage, you will build your marriage pretty well according to the pattern you were raised with with only minor variations, unless you get revelation of something better. You'll just reproduce it. See, you'll raise children the way you were raised unless you get revelation of a better way.

You'll run your finance the way you saw finances were run, unless you have revelation of a better way. So when we become born again and come into the kingdom of God we have to have revelation continually about every area of life. If we don't get revelation about every area of life, how to see life, and then wisdom, how to do life or live life, we just continue - we're now a Christian. We're in the kingdom of God, but we're operating our life the way we did before we got saved. We have the same problems everyone else has, and so Paul is praying; we need revelation, we need wisdom and we need understanding. That's insight to how it works, how life really works see. Why we need these things, you notice he tells us three reasons we need them: the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened. Now he's praying for this. In other words it's not something that comes naturally just by study. It's something the Holy Spirit has got to actually open our eyes to see. I need revelation, see?

When I was a Catholic I thought I was right, had strong opinions. Then there came a point where I got revelation of my need to be saved. Before that I thought I was. I had an opinion and I was completely wrong - sincere but wrong. Then when I got revelation I realised actually I'm in a desperate condition and I really need Christ. I need to give my life to Christ. See, so revelation, when our eyes are open, positions us then to act wisely and make decisions that change our life and how it works. God's got a purpose for it here. He says that you may know what is the hope of His calling, so there's a lot on that but let me just say this. I'll put it - God wants you to have your eyes opened to His purpose for your life. Why are you here in this world? What are you called to do?

The second thing it tells us, that your eyes might be open to see the riches of His glory in the saints, His inheritance in the saints. So in other words God wants you to understand what He gets out of this relationship with you, wants you to understand that actually - you know the Bible says that children are a heritage of the Lord. God is wanting you to see that what He gets out of this deal, He actually is looking for a family. He's looking to express His fatherhood because He's a Father. So what He's looking for is a family. He's looking for people in His image and likeness who will represent Him see, so He wants you to understand that and to see what it means, what He's going to get out of this. God actually wants to enjoy you. He's created you for His pleasure, so He can enjoy you. So when you have a creative gift and begin to discover the creative gift, He delights in it because you're expressing His creativity. You know, there's nothing I - when [Brighton 00.05.31] came back the other day and he was telling me about what he was doing I just felt so proud. He brought great pleasure, because I saw what we'd put into him now being reproduced. That's what God - God wants you to see He gets something out of this deal, see?

He's not a power freak or anything like that. What He gets out of it is a family. He's about family and see, He wants a family who are like Him. Then it says and finally the exceeding greatness of His power towards us who believe; so He wants you to have a revelation that there are no limits on your life. There are no limits on the life of a believer. Nothing is impossible to Him who believes. In other words He wants you to live out of a revelation that whatever He's called you to do, He's going to delight in you doing it and He'll help you do it. Isn't that fantastic? That would be a message all in itself aye - isn't that fantastic? See, that God wants you to understand what He's called you to do with your life that'll give it eternal value, He wants you to understand how He gains great pleasure out of you succeeding in that, and He wants you to understand how He is alongside you to empower you to be a winner in all of that. Isn't that fantastic?

You see religion will conform people, but this isn't what this is about. This is actually about us discovering our uniqueness; not copying the crowd but being absolutely unique. Ha ha! Don't you love it! It's fantastic. Okay, so we're going to look - I want to just look again at design because everything springs off this issue of design. What something is designed to do is key to how it will operate, so we've got to look at that. Then we'll look at the mandate, so let's go back into Genesis 1 again. I want you to have a look, first of all God's design in creation. Now you've got to remember whenever you make something or create something, something of you is in it. It represents what you're like and so it tells us in Genesis 1, now in the beginning God created the heavens. Notice that's plural, heavens - more than one heaven. He created the heavens and the earth. So if you've created something you're the owner of it, you're [a soul 00.07.36] in charge of it, you do what you like with it.

So we have to understand God is the owner; you're breathing His air, walking His ground, using His resources. He's the owner, He owns the whole lot. Now whether in your opinion that is true or not is irrelevant, because it's actually true. One day you'll have to let everything go. One day you'll return to Him and He'll ask you what you did with what He lent you, so that's a core issue the issue of ownership. And in Daniel 4:25 this king of Babylon which was the greatest king in the whole world had to get a lesson that God's in charge and He can give it to whoever He wants. So the guy got so proud God took it all off him, and then later on He gave it back to him, so he can understand that the heaven rules over the earth and God gives it to whoever He wants, see? So that's quite helpful for you to understand that, that God can give more to you than you have now - but you have to position yourself in your lifestyle for that to receive it. Okay? Alright then, so God can give, God can take it away, God can do whatever He wants. No one can restrain His hand was the lesson that the king learnt.

You read in Daniel 4:34-35 and God can do what He wants and who can tell Him you can't do that? When He flooded the earth who could say you can't flood the earth? But He did say He wouldn't flood it again, so we don't have to worry overly about global warming sinking the earth. God's actually promised He won't let the earth be flooded again. He set the boundaries on it all - so we get a biblical perspective on it. Okay, so if God has designed the earth certainly the Bible tells us His imprint will be everywhere, and so in Romans 1 it tells us in verse 20 that the unseen things of God are clearly understood by looking and observing creation. In other words everywhere in creation is the hand and mark of God's design. So you find you know the number seven appears consistently in nature; seven days for this, or multiples of seven in terms of animal reproductive cycles and so on.

So various numbers of God appear right through, so God's hand is all through creation. Principles of sowing and reaping are in creation, so everywhere you go you see God's principles in creation. But God's design is also in you, so now let's have a look at man, the design in man. Genesis 1:26; so God's now got something He's made, a physical world, and now what He needs is someone who'll be an ambassador for Him. So He looks around, got all the animals but none of the animals are suitable. Why are none of the animals suitable? Because they're not a spirit being. He needs someone if he's going to represent Him, it's got to be someone like Him - so in Genesis 1:26 let us make man in Our image and likeness. So God created man in His image and likeness. He made him a spirit being living in a body, capable of interacting with heaven in the spirit world, capable of actually functioning on the earth so you're absolutely and completely unique in that design. You're creative but you're a spiritual person. You can't become more spiritual, you're already a spirit person - just got to learn how to work with your spirit.

Once you get born again the spirit of God within you, then you start to function the way God intended you to. Creativity flows from our spirit, ideas flow from our spirit, giftings flow from within. God's thoughts come to us from within our spirit, so we're designed to operate in the spirit. So don't say living the supernatural life is hard; actually it's normal. What is abnormal is not living that way. See, what's abnormal is when you don't connect with God and you don't function like you're intended to function - that's what's abnormal. So God has created man like Him and He's put a DNA in us. He's put His own print in us. That's why no matter where you go there'll always be people trying to reach out to find God. There's something about God and how He's designed nature that's printed in every one of us. In Luke 17:21 it says the kingdom of God is within you. Now he was saying that to unsaved people. He was telling them that the way the kingdom operates is so inbuilt into you that actually you can't violate it without consequences, so we look at that say for example a simple thing, just if you look at relationships.

If you are loving, God is love, love is a principle of the kingdom. If you are loving and giving and generous you know what? Relationships really go well. But if you take the opposite of that which is selfish and got hate in your life and you try to run your relationship it just does not work. The kingdom of heaven is a serving kingdom, so if you learn how to serve and learn how to meet the needs of people and how to help people, you find your influence increases and you become quite great. Your business becomes great because of service. Why? Because it works. If you have no customer service or you're not a servant, you just don't help people, then you become isolated and you find that your business declines. In the kingdom of heaven honour is a principle; what you honour you attract. So when you honour people you find things start to draw towards you; you dishonour them, they move away from you.

So life actually is designed to operate according to the kingdom of God. However, when man fell his mind got so shifted that we think different to the ways of the kingdom of God. See, so what we think works actually doesn't work, see? What we think is how life works actually is totally against what the kingdom is. So in the kingdom God says if you want to be great, fantastic, we want you to be great. Greatness is in you. This is how it happens: you develop the lifestyle of being a servant and you learn to serve through your giftings, and greatness is in you. You'll emerge, you can't help it. But we just think no, that's crazy. What we need to do is tread on people and work our way to the top and put ourself forward, that'll get us ahead. So intuitively the way we operate as an unsaved person or even as a Christian initially, is we think that just to copy the way of the world. Now you have to understand that because I'll share with you a little bit later that one of the things that affects us deeply is the culture we're in.

If we're going to actually be successful and fulfil our calling we've got to recognise cultural pressure and take a different stand towards it - not a religious stand but a different stand, a kingdom stand. Got the idea? So we're designed to work right, now we're designed to be an ambassador. Let me define an ambassador. I looked up in the dictionary, here's an ambassador. An ambassador is a diplomatic official. How about that? They're a diplomatic official of the highest rank - so you are a diplomatic official of the highest rank. The world doesn't know that yet, but one day they may discover that. You've got to discover it, and you're sent by one sovereign state to another to act as its resident representative. In other words an ambassador is a person who is sent from one country to another by the government of that country, to live there, be a resident there and to represent its lifestyle and values and its cultural, and to advance it's interests.

So the ambassador from the United States lives in a special house down in Wellington and he is there. He acts and he's empowered by his government to make decisions and to speak and to act on behalf of the United States. His sole mission is to represent his country and to advance his country's interests. Now he lives in our nation, therefore he's to a measure subject to the laws of our nation - but he actually comes from another nation. Now that's exactly how we are. We are an ambassador. We are born again from above. Our citizenship, where we belong, our whole life is found in the realm of heaven. Therefore we're called to speak and act on behalf of heaven in the earth. How can you do that if you don't even know how heaven works? How can you do that if you don't understand the value system and the lifestyle and how things work in there, see?

See when the young man came to Jesus for example, the rich young man, and we look at it and it seems incredibly hard but the rich young man come to Jesus and he said what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said have you kept the commandments? He said I've done this, this and this. He said you've got one thing you lack. He said what's that? He said we need to sell up what you have and give it all away. And he went away very sad. Now what you've got to understand, most people look at it and say oh God, to be a Christian you've got to give up your money, oh, that's bad. But it's not that at all. Jesus saw that his life was gripped by the power of money, and what He wanted him to do was to learn that in the kingdom of the world you have to collect and gather and you're under the power of money. But in the kingdom of God you learn to sow and release money and actually learn to receive returns.

He didn't want him to be a poor person, and He doesn't necessarily say to give away everything anyway. What He said to this man is you've got an issue in your life and you think you're right, and you haven't recognised the power this thing has to affect all your life, all your relationships. If you'll just let the money go which is managing everyday you think about your [unclear 00.16.36], you're worried about all these things that control so much of your life and relationships, if you just let it go completely what you would receive would actually fulfil what you need in your life. And we understand that when you sow you reap, so He's not wanting him to become a poor person so he can serve God. He's wanting him to be a free person to serve God. Can you get the idea on that, a free person? If you're in bondage to money and debt and caught up with the whole thing, you're not a free person. All you do is think about it all the time.

We had people on the ship that couldn't even - when we were doing our cruise they couldn't even rest and have a holiday. The reason they couldn't rest and have a holiday, they've got to look up the internet and find how their shares are doing all the time. They actually just worried all the time. I spoke to a multi-millionaire; he's worried all the time, doesn't sleep at night. I think have you got the money or has the money got you? [Laughter] Can you understand what Jesus is saying, get the heart of it? He's saying in the kingdom of heaven you become a generous person and a giver and you have a free life. You're not in bondage to things. It doesn't say give away everything. He wanted this man to face the issue in his life and position himself to be free and to prosper, see? So the kingdom of heaven, it's a great thing - so you're an ambassador. Of course man is God's ambassador. Now here's the thing. God only chooses family members to represent Him.

See, God only chooses family members to represent Him, so you can't be an ambassador for God - you can call yourself that. You can call yourself anything you like, but you can't be unless you're born again and you've actually become a member of the family of God. So when every one of us makes the decision to receive Christ, get born again, the Spirit of God enters us and we're positioned as part of the family of God, name written in heaven, now to grow to the point we can represent Him well in the earth and advance His interests. Hence you need to be trained and discipled to grow, so you understand the word of God, the ways of God, how to move with God. Why? So you can fulfil your calling. He wants you as a son to represent Him. He wants you as a son to take over the earthly business. You'll find as we look in the scripture the mandate at the beginning was global, and at the end it's global, and at the very end it actually succeeds.

But God's intent always is that we be global people and everyone is an ambassador. Now I've used the word ambassador because if I said evangelist you'd all shrink and point to Danny or someone else see. If I used the word missionary you'd all point to [Graham and Jess 00.19.00] or someone else or [Bryden 00.19.02] and say that's not my thing. But actually it's everyone's thing because that's why you're here. We're an ambassador, part of God's royal family, here to advance His interests in the earth - so we've got to learn how to do it. It's the learning how to do it is the important thing; how can I live the life and be victorious over my issues, and actually influence and affect and impact the people around me? I won't touch it today but I'll do it perhaps the week after next, how religion always has exactly the opposite impact. It causes people to withdraw, isolate and just shut down, rather than actually having a kingdom mindset of advancement. See, it's totally different.

So Jesus never came to give us religion; He came to restore to us a kingdom we'd lost and to get things back on track again, so let's have a look at the original mandate found in verse 27. So God created man in His image and likeness. He created them and then He blessed them and said to them be fruitful, multiply; fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves on the earth - not to dominate people, not to rule over people, but to actually rule over creation, make it productive. Now notice what it says here, it says He blessed them. He blessed them. That word bless means literally to speak or proclaim success over someone, so when Adam was launched the first thing God did was create him, then He actually gave him a mandate, a purpose. The first part of that was to bless him, to speak over his life something he was called to be successful at, and that was being fruitful, multiplying, filling the whole earth, subduing - that means there's something to bring under, there's something going to resist - and to have dominion. That means there's an order to be established.

Now get the picture, this is a global thing: fill the earth. Fill the earth. Fill the earth. Fill the earth. God is not into little things. If you've got little things in your mind and have little mentality, you're not connected to God's perspective on things. God is big! He thinks in terms of the world. He thinks in terms of nations, that's why as we'll look in a moment the mandate to the church nations, disciple whole nations, whole nations, whole thousands upon thousands of people. He wants them impacted, because this is the original mandate. It's the earth. Why is it the earth? Because He owns it. Psalm 24, the earth is the Lords and everything inside it. So He owns it all. He wants it filled. What does He want it filled with? He wants it filled with His kingdom. He wants it filled with the nature of His kingdom; the values, the culture of His kingdom. Love and serving, humility, faith, a whole range of things - He's wanting the world filled with those things. When you complain about what's going on in our community you're complaining really about the absence of the kingdom of God.

Now that's a strange thing that we should be complaining about the absence of the kingdom of God when we're the ones called to advance it. So we shouldn't be complainers; we should be motivated by the lacks and needs around us to actually do something, because we're the ones called to do it. And I'll share with you later, I'll share with you a session on the authority that's given to us. You'll find there are about 10 areas God has actually given us authority to speak and act, to actually make things happen and when we know what to do and how to do it, then actually power comes and things happen. That's right, you don't have to be old to cast out demons; you've just got to know what to do and position yourself so you can do it. And then heaven comes into the earth. Oh, that's not my thing. Okay, good for you. [Laughs] It's God's thing though, see? It's God's thing. Healing the sick, that's God's thing see and prospering, that's God's thing. Getting people out of trouble, that's God's thing see? So if you're [in about 00.22.49] God's business then whatever He's on about we're into it. See, the good news! The good news of the kingdom, I love it.

See, so notice here the mandate is global: fill the whole earth. So we're called to occupy the land and I love the word [unclear 00.23.01] used the word colonise. I love that word. Actually I hadn't thought of it that way but I got inspired when I read about that, the word colonise - now colony, I looked in the dictionary, is a group of people who leave their native country to live in a new land and form a settlement there, and they come out and not only form a settlement but they build their culture and their kingdom and their values. So when we think of colonisation we always have these bad ideas. We think of the British coming to make New Zealand a colony, and we think of various [unclear 00.23.30] but actually when you have a look at it colonisation was God's plan. He wanted us to come into the earth and then form a - see a colony is a group of people who came from one country, go to another country and then they begin to develop it and subdue it and bring it under their government. That's a colony.

That's colonisation. So if you were launched or a group of you were launched see, to go into a nation and to form a settlement and to gather up people and bring it under the laws and values of New Zealand, you would be colonising that place. See, you're called to do that here. You're called to do that in the school, colonise the school. What with? People who are born again, spirit-filled lovers of God who live a Godly life and they've got faith in them, and they're [encouraged and live 00.24.13] a clean life. They don't drink, they don't get into this other stuff. You're called to do it. If it's not happening, ha! Don't blame the school. You're the one. You're the colonists. Think about it - you're the ones with the mandate. You're the ones called to do it, so see the problem is as a church, the church tends to complain about how bad things are and forget its mandate; we're the ones called to change it, and if we don't don't complain. It's there because of neglect. You know, if you've got a piece of land and the land's all covered in weeds don't complain. You let it get like that.

See, so I'm trying to get the thinking right. See once we get the thinking right - so a [colony, group of people - 00.24.53] so we're charged with colonising the earth. Colonise the earth. Go and actually one by one colonise the earth, so the problem was Adams disobedience. Now [interesting this. 00.25.03] To colonise the earth one of the things is everything has to come under the principles and ways of God's kingdom. That means we've got to actually learn how to live subjected to Him. That's not a hard thing to do that. See people look at it, it's hard. No, it isn't hard. It's actually an easy thing with wonderful benefits to honour God and to live a life that pleases Him. What's hard is when you don't. It feels good, then it's hard in the long-term. You think about this. You build a marriage, a covenantal marriage.

You both live clean lives, form your marriage, begin to build the marriage on the principles of God's kingdom. You begin to operate as a man, take leadership, responsibility, begin to love your wife, begin to serve in the family, provide an example and leadership and protection as God says this is how you do it. Then the wife, she begins to take her positioning alongside you as a partner in life and you begin to flow together, just like God's word says to do it. What happens is over a period of time - you've got struggles initially but over a period of time you start to see the fruit of it. Then years later people look at your life and they say look at the fruit of this marriage, isn't it wonderful? They still love one another at this age. Then the others who live a different kind of life, they're promiscuous and they did whatever they wanted. They didn't run their life God's way. What happens is they find they've got a lot of troubles and they can't see how they got there, because it all seemed right what they were doing. They had opinions. We didn't have opinions; we said God, how do You want it to happen?

So the same with children. You begin to work with your children. You get a family and they work with their children according to the principles of God. It doesn't mean they won't have troubles, because we live in a culture opposite to that. There will be troubles, but on the other hand they should have a family that actually loves and respects them. And over the course of their life, in spite of the troubles, things work out see, because God's principles work - but you've got to actually see the long haul to see it work. It's not in the short thing. See we tend to want a miracle now, rather than a lifestyle that produces fruit, and it's the lifestyle over years that produces the fruit, see? So we can see then very clearly God's intent in this area. Okay, now I want to just look at the - see the problem with Adam's sin. Have a look in Romans 5, problems with Adam's sin. So the mandate is to go into the earth, become productive with our life in every area, so if you're an artist become a productive artist. If you're good in business become productive in business, make a lot of money. Be fruitful. Extend the kingdom of God and extend His influence.

Let's have a look in Romans. Now the Bible tells us here Romans 5:12, it says by one man sin entered the world. So when Adam disobeyed something was actually - a spiritual power came into the earth. Now that spiritual power that comes into the earth comes in every time we disobey or we break the law of God, we actually empower the demonic. We empower destructive things to happen - and it says, I want you to see in verse 17, if by the one man's offence death reigned - so death actually reigns in the world - much more those who receive the abundance and grace, the gift of righteousness shall reign in life. Now notice here again it's saying that when man sinned another spirit entered the world, and that's why there's this chaos and destruction. But when we come to Christ and become right with Him, righteousness and we have His grace, that's His empowerment; what happens then, we should be able to win in life. Reign in life means having dominion, means actually success in life. It doesn't mean you succeed short-term; long-term you actually see benefits and results.

Your life is a joyful life. You start to see finances, health, a whole range of things start to begin to flow the way God intended them to, see? So it said - so God still wants you to reign in life. He wants every believer to get on top of things. Does that mean you're not going to have many problems? No way. Anyone who's been around a while you've got heaps of problems come, sometimes just because you're a Christian. But what He's calling us to say is that we can have actually the ability to reign in life and the key is righteousness, standing with God and secondly, being able to draw on His ability and power to run our life. You need that as a husband. You need it as a father, you need it as a mother, need it as a wife. You need it in business, you need it at school. We need the grace, the empowerment of God supernaturally to live the life that He wants us to live. We can't live it without Him. That's why you pray. It's not you pray because you have to; you pray because you can't live the life without it.

Why do we read the word of God? Not because we have to, not because someone made you do it. I read the word of God because I need to know how to run my life. I need to actually draw from God inspiration and direction for life from Him, because that's how I've chosen to live my life. So a person who sets that every day of their life they will rise, spend time with God, spend time reading God's perspective for the day, in the course of their life if they will apply that they'll start to see fruit, good fruit. Okay then, so let's just continue on now about Jesus' ministry. Let's have a look in Matthew 4:17, Jesus' ministry was repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. So He came to restore the relationship with God. He came to restore us to God and restore the mandate, and so God wants us to have some changes. Notice what Jesus said: repent. That means you need to change how you look at life and you need to change how you live your life, because all that God has intended for you to have is available now through that doorway. Getting the idea? Okay then.

Now the problem we have is so many believers want to be blessed. I want to be blessed, I want that prophet to pray for me! I want him to do this for me, I want to have God touch me! We want - oh that's great to want to that. I want all that - but we want to do is we want to have the blessing without the change. Now you see so we get this idea well, you know Jesus loves me like I am! You know what that is? That's a statement I'm unwilling to change. I've never heard a person say that that actually wasn't resisting changing. See the truth is yes, Jesus loves you, but He actually requires you to change. If you want the benefits of the kingdom repentance is actually the change in attitude and values and thinking to have it. If you don't make the changes you can't have the benefits, and it doesn't seem always that logical because when you follow things that are logical it seems if I give money away then I'm going to not have enough.

It seems if I get it all for myself and hoard it I'll really do well. It seems that way - but in the kingdom you have to take a step of faith. You have a change in the way you see and you learn to become a giver as a way of life, trusting God to supply and goodness me, what happens? All these things begin to happen in your life! But it didn't seem right. The reason it doesn't seem right is because our minds have been so affected and we have these opinions. We have a lot of things that we don't think are right. Now when Jesus came, interesting He announced - first of all He said repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Is that correct? Alright then. Now the next thing He said in Luke 4:18, He said now the spirit of God is on Me. He's anointed Me for a certain thing.

Here's what He's anointed Me to do: preach the gospel to the poor. That's get people in relationship with God, but some other things as well. Get their broken hearts healed; that's why you need healing. Why? So you can form relationships instead of [reducing 00.32.26] dysfunction. He sent Me to set the captives free. You need deliverance to get free from generational curses and bondages, so you can be free in the spirit. He sent me to open the eyes of the blind. We need vision for our life. He sent Me to let the oppressed or to lift the oppressions off everyone. Why? Because you need burdens lifted off you so you can fulfil your course - and get this last one: to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Now what's all that about? The acceptable year of the Lord was the year of jubilee. In Leviticus 25 the year of jubilee went like this. God said this: the land belongs to Me, and you can steward the land, but every 50 years if you've lost your bit of land or had to sell it up and got into hardship, got into debt, in the year of jubilee all debts are cancelled and everyone goes back to what I originally intended them to have.

So Jesus said My mission here is to get you out of the bondages of life and get you back to what God had for you. That's what He said the Spirit of God's on Me. It's not just to get you physically healed. You can still live a miserable life. It's not just to get the demons off you, you can still live a miserable life. I want to position you so you can live the kind of life I called you to live and designed you to live, a supernatural life. You need to come back to your position. See, what God intended for us. You know the year of jubilee was fantastic because every 50 years they'd blow a trumpet; you had your debts all cancelled. Imagine what we'd do if I blew a trumpet and then all your credit card debt and all the other debts have all gone. Man, you'd be happy! They had a happy time, see. It's good news! The gospel is good news! See, the gospel is GOOD NEWS! It's good news because debt is cancelled. Sin is cancelled. It's cancelled. It's not a problem anymore. Lots of things change in the year of jubilee, and that's why Jesus said it's good news I've come to tell you.

They all understood what He was taking about; I've come to restore - they kept thinking it was a physical kingdom you see, but they actually had something else in mind, He had a spiritual kingdom. They wanted Him to overthrow the Roman government but He said no, no, I'm not going to do that. Okay, now have a look at the commission that He gave the church, in Matthew 28:19-20. All authority in heaven and earth is given to Me. All authority. All authority. Who's got all authority? All authority; that's the legal right to speak and act - is given to Me in heaven and earth. Go there and what? Make disciples of all nations, teaching them what? Teaching them? Teaching them? Oh just come to church and receive Jesus, your Saviour, you'll be just fine. Aye? Is that what He said? No. Make disciples, teaching them to obey. To obey! Why? Because it's only as I yield and flow with the one who loves me that I'm going to actually enjoy the benefits of what He's called me to have. I can't advance His kingdom if I'm not under it.

If I'm a rebel I can't actually advance His kingdom. I'm just like everyone else. The problem is people look at Christians; they come to church and they got a bit of religion around them. They look all uptight and wound up and their lives are a mess. They look at them and say man, whatever you've got I don't like it, I don't want any of that. I say the same thing, I don't like it at all. Jesus never came to give us that. He came to bring our lives back into alignment to how to succeed in life. It's just we got opinions, see? Now notice it said it's global, all nations, the whole world. The whole world, the whole world, that's why every believer's got a mission to the whole world - so at least you've got a mission to your little bit of the world. Everyone can get up and go somewhere, to someone with something God has given you. That's His intent, that you and I would actually teach people to obey. But you can't teach someone to obey something you haven't done yourself.

Now let's just talk a little bit about culture, culture. What culture is, culture is actually - and the world has a culture of its own. The kingdom of heaven has a culture of its own, then you have cultures - there's the Maori culture, there's a youth culture, there's the drug culture. Culture is the set of attitudes and beliefs and values that actually influence and shape a group so they're like they are see? So they believe and value certain things, and they do certain things. That's culture. So one of the things is the world has a culture of its own, and the culture shapes how you live your life, so if you come around you'll see Kiwis have got a Kiwi culture. So if you come from South Africa - got any South Africans here? We have some. How did you find it when you came into New Zealand; was it just like South Africa? No. Did you get a culture shock? You got a bit of a culture shock. How many have been to India? Man oh man, did you get a culture shock when you went there? Whoa! I was stunned for about three days. [Laughter]

Then when I came back I was stunned when I come back here. [Laughter] I realised that there's a culture, and the culture is the way people live their life, and it's the values and the beliefs and the things people consider a norm. Well the kingdom of heaven has a culture see, so the culture - we kind of think the culture is normal, so we as Kiwis act in a way which is very Kiwi-like. Some of the things are good, some of the things are not so good. And so the Bible tells us though about the culture of the world. In Ephesians 2:2 it says now, He says you were once dead in your trespasses and sins, who walked - now get this - according to the culture of the world, operated on by a spirit which works in the children who disobey God. Let's just summarise it.

There is a culture in the world and there's a spirit empowers it, and it's a spirit of darkness and it empowers it because people disobey God. So we were called out of that to have a culture where we obey God and there's another spirit operating. If you want the Holy Ghost operating in your life and through you you've got to embrace the culture of heaven, the culture of the Bible, the culture of God. Some things we can live in and accept, they're just fine the way they are, but other things you've got to build a culture. There's a family culture, see? Family culture can be incredibly dysfunctional and everyone is impacted by it, and they tend to become dysfunctional when they produce their children. You can have a culture in a church. It can be really healthy; it can be very unhealthy. You have a culture in a school. It can be really vibrant and a great place to learn; it can be actually a dangerous place and it's unsafe to be there. You have a culture in a community. Even Havelock's got its own culture.

Then Flaxmere's got its culture, and Hastings is still a little bit different. Have you noticed that? There's kind of like the group of people and their lifestyle and their values and everything, and if you live there you'll become like them. I'm certain if you went out in Havelock you'll join the jogging crowd and you'll have your little bottle and [laughter] your little Walkman and you'll be out there doing your little run. [Laughter] I've seen them all out there, heaps of them, lattes down there in the village - wouldn't even think of buying anything in Hastings. It's just - like there's a culture and it's not all bad, but there's sorts of things that characterise it. So the world we're in has got a culture of its own. The Maoris have a culture and of course so people view it in different ways. If they're ignorant of it they view it with suspicion, or if they're PC they embrace it all, see? But actually the culture is neither good nor bad. The culture's just a culture but it's got within it things which may be demonically empowered, just like our culture has.

And so God calls us then to take on the culture of heaven. Now the way culture expresses itself is many ways, but this is what empowers it: people's opinions. You change the opinions, you change the culture, see? You change the opinions, the way people think; you change the culture. Now our culture - how many know our culture's in change? Anyone who's been around a while knows it's in change. Why is it in change? Because people in certain places have altered the opinions that people have. Once the opinions are altered, parents today - here, now get this - parents today feel disempowered in working with their kids because of the opinions of certain people in education who impose them on the rest of the culture. See? Now kingdom people, we've got to discover God's opinions and begin to learn how to live them. Now does that mean you go and impose them on everyone? Not at all, it makes you a religious nutter.

People need to see that what you have works, so they watch you and if you're a believer somewhere in the community you know what? There's going to be a heap of people watching you. You know what they're watching? They're watching everything. They're primarily watching to see if you're authentic. Are you an ambassador of another kingdom with a better life that I need to come alongside and find how you made it work and how you make it succeed? Or are you just spouting verses at me and putting me down, and showing a holier than thou attitude? Unfortunately that's what religion does. Religion isolates. The kingdom goes out and what the computer language they call interfaces; it connects with a culture and actually shows that the way of the kingdom of God is superior in every way. People need to get near enough to you to see that your life is authentic, and what you've got works and it works better than it works for them, and to feel totally challenged by your lifestyle. That's what's called being salt and light. Salt, having an impact to restrain evil, and light, showing it up.

See, now I know people in this church and they have tremendous impact in the community where they are because their life is just so positively different, and that's what we're called to do. We're not called to go around and conquer people, bring them under dominion, bring them and force them into your way of thinking, confront them in an ungodly way. We're called to show to them that what we have from the kingdom of God actually works and it works better. Now let me give you an example of it, then I'll finish up. About three or four years ago we had a dentist here who was a Muslim and initially when my dentist changed, he was a Muslim, I had to confront my personal attitude. I actually wanted to change dentists. [Laughter] I'll be honest about it, I did. I thought about it seriously. Then I decided no, I won't. This is an ideal opportunity; I will go and actually stay in this place and I'll stay with the new man, and I'm going to reach out to him and his wife.

So Joy and I determined we're going to reach out to him and his wife. They're from South Africa. He was dark. He was from Iranian descent and a Muslim; she was from a Christian family and she had actually given up the faith to marry him. So we had a chance to influence him. Now I won't get into how we did it all but let me just say this. At the end of the year, after all the interactions, after all the talk, after everything else, after we'd done what we could do, we were able to get both of them to the church and they came to a Christmas service here on a Christmas eve. Then they came to our home. We took them into our home and at the end of that evening we asked how are you doing? He said I am stunned. I have never had anything in my life that I could reference this to. I'm overwhelmed. I said what has overwhelmed you? He said well first of all he was just totally impressed with what he saw in the church. It was not at all what he ever thought a church would be like.

But he said the thing that really has left me stunned, I don't know what to say, and he said I'm so stunned I don't even know how to respond - is your family. He said I have never been in an environment where people love one another, had fun with one another and everyone was accepted and welcomed; there was no alcohol and there was no fighting. I have never ever experienced this in my whole life. He said I just don't know what to say. Now you see that's exactly what the Queen of Sheba did when she came to Solomon. She was stunned. The kingdom of heaven - stunning! [He's right.] It's stunning! [Applause] It's just we don't have enough of it - but the more you get, the more stunning it is. When the Queen of Sheba went in she was oh! She said I thought I was going to see something, she was oh! They said all breath was taken out. She's oh! The wow factor, oh! I love the wow factor, oh! Church should have the wow factor back. I love it when people come in to [unclear 00.44.55] and they come in here and they oh! A church, wow! A radio announcer, I couldn't understand why they're having a church, I've been worried about that all week. [Come on here, oh! 00.45.04] Wow! The kingdom of heaven is stunning.

Our king is stunning! His ways are stunning! They're different, but they're stunning! [Applause] If we could just get enough of them in our life and be bold about who we are and live it out, I tell you what, you will impact people! You may not use a verse; your whole life is a message. Your life confronts the lifestyle of the ungodly. Let me finish with one other example. I love this. I just love it when ungodly people or unsaved people are stunned and can't speak. You know I talk to young people especially about this. We really believe and value kingdom values that you keep yourself for marriage. Don't have sex with people before you're married, you mess yourself up. You keep yourself, so we've had three weddings where children have come up and other weddings where people in this church have kept themselves for marriage, and their friends have berated them and laughed at them and said how come you're going to live together, blah blah blah, all this sort of stuff, and made fun of them and mocked at them, and secretly then grudgingly began to respect them.

Then they came here into one of the meetings here - stunned! I can remember a certain TV personality who was well known in New Zealand. She's now in England, and she was very, very anti things of Christ. She came here to do a national TV thing on Robert and Debbie when they got married. She came in and she was aggro to me right from the very start - until she went through the service and she was stunned! [Applause] Afterwards she came up and she was touching me and hugging me. [Laughter] There were tears in her eyes - the rock had melted! Stunned! I have seen with some of our kids when they've got married the presence of God come and I've seen kids who have come in and you see - I can see it in the eyes of the girls who've slept around. They are dismayed and stunned; stunned because they never thought it could be ever like that. It seems like it's a fairy book, how could it be like that?

I had one person, it was the third one they came to and they said I thought the first one was just lucky. The second one I was starting to worry. The third one he said I've given up. There's something in this! When young people keep themselves and they come down that altar Jesus is honoured and their lifestyle is honoured. They love their parents and they honour their parents - it is stunning. It is what the world needs! It lost God and it lost the kingdom. It needs that back again! It needs someone [applause] to stand up and live it out! And live it in front of them! And show them it's possible to have a stunning life! That's you! Come on, that's the person next to you, called to have a stunning life! A stunning marriage, stunning family!

[File ends 00.47.57]

Summary Notes

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The Kingdom Mandate

8 July 2007

1. Introduction:

· Each believer needs revelation:

Ephesians 1:17-19 - Paul’s prayer for wisdom, revelation and understanding.

- How to see life – How to live life – How life really works.

- God’s purpose for us – God’s inheritance in us – God’s power through us.

· God’s design in creation:

Genesis 1:1 - “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.

- God is the owner of all that can be seen by right of creation.

- Because God is the owner – His authority is absolute over all creation.

- God has a divine right to do as He will – to give it to who He will.

- Daniel 4:25, 34-35 - “No one can restrain His hand”.

- Romans 1:20 - “The hand of God is evident in all he has created”.

· God’s design for man:

Genesis 1:26 - “Let us make man in our image and likeness”.

- Man is created a spirit being who lives in a human body.

- The DNA of God is imparted into how man is designed to operate.

- Luke 17:21 - “The Kingdom of God is within you i.e. DNA.

- We are designed to operate according to the life, principles and values of Kingdom.

- Ambassador = a diplomatic official of the highest rank sent by one sovereign state to another as its resident representative.

= Person sent to represent his country and fulfill a mission.

= A governmental minister appointed to live in another country, to speak and act on behalf of its government.

- Man = God’s ambassador – Family member sent to advance Family Business.

2. The Original Mandate/Mission:

· Genesis 1:26-28 - “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, let them have dominion”.

· Blessed = To speak or proclaim, to confer success or prosperity upon.

· The mandate is global – fill the earth.

· Man is called to occupy the Land God owns and colonize it.

· God’s design is to bring the life, values, ways, and presence of heaven to earth.

· Jesus’ Prayer – Matthew 6:10 – “Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth...”

· Colony = A group of people who leave their native country to form in a new land, a settlement subject to the Governments of their own nation.

= a group of people having similar interests and values coming from their country to establish the values, culture and government of their government in another territory.

· Man is changed with colonizing earth with heaven and extending the government and culture of heaven throughout the earth.

· Man is called to extent the culture and government of God into every area of life – finance, culture, sports, government, education, health.

· Adam’s disobedience – violating the law of God cost him his authority to rule and his connection with heaven.

· Romans 5:12,17-19 - One mans sin – Death reigned = to rule, have dominion.

3. Jesus Ministry - Restore the Man and Renew the Mandate:

· Matthew 4:7 - “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at Hand”.

· Jesus came to restore the relationship with God.

· Repent = have a change of mind, attitude, values, lifestyle – obedience.

· God wants us to change how we see life and how we live life.

· People want to be blessed by God – God’s desire is change.

· Luke 4:18 - “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… acceptable year of the Lord”.

· Acceptable year of the Lord is same as OT year of Jubilee.

· OT – The land belonged to God men were stewards of God’s land.

· Year of Jubilee – All debts released – people restored to their land – Leviticus 25:23-24.

· Jesus came to restore relationship, inheritance, and mandate.

· Matthew 28:18-20 - “All authority – Go – disciple all nations – teach and obey”.

· The Great Commission is the restoration of our mandate – Global.

· All believers are called to advance the Kingdom of God.

· Culture = attitude, beliefs, values, customs that distinguish people.

· Agriculture = soil that has been tilled => set of traits ploughed into people.

· Culture – shapes, who we are, how we think, relate and live – it imposes.

· Ephesians 2:2 - The culture of the world – varies from group to group.

- Character by disobedience.

· The spirit of the world operates through culture and imposes it on everyone.

· Our mandate: “Teaching then to obey”.

· Jesus loved his disciples – but required them to change.

· Spirit of the world is Anti-Christ – against the rule of Christ: “If I like, agree, then will do”

· The Spirit of the World works through “Opinions”

4. The Kingdom of God and the Church:

· Matthew 16:13-19 - “Who do men say I am? Who do you say I am?”

· Opinion = personal idea, belief, attitude, prevailing way of seeing things.

· Opinions reflect belief and how I want to live.

· Many opinions about Jesus – He is the Christ – The Son of the Living God.

· Peter got revelation but still opinionated how to live life.

· Matthew 16:22-23 - “Pity yourself – offensive to the Kingdom of God”.

· Jesus is the Anointed – He is King, He rules, He leads – I will follow.

· Jesus not receptive to Peter’s opinion – wanted him to yield to Kingdom.

· Peter wanted position and power – Jesus required obedience to the will of God.

· Peter had “opinions” about what it meant to be King – ideas from his culture.

· Our King is a Servant King – Matthew 20:25-28

· The Church = ecclesia = called out ones – Greeks = Senate.

- The Church is the governing people of God – chosen by Him to advance His Kingdom throughout the world.

· Matthew 5:13-16

Kingdom Authority (4 of 4)

Sun 22 Jul 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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Kingdom Authority (4 of 4) Mike Connell 22.07.2007 am

Okay, I want you to open your Bible with me. We're going to carry on in the word. I want to build a bridge today just between where we were looking at the mandate, the kingdom mandate we have, so we'll pick that up now in Matthew 28. I want to just bridge over to where the church is moving on the John Bevere series Under Cover. So let's just have a look here. We want to carry on, we look at Kingdom Authority, Kingdom Authority - so Matthew 28. I love this, the great suggestion Jesus gave the church. Here we go, it says in verse 18 through to 20: And when they saw Him they worshipped Him, but some even then doubted. Imagine that, a man's risen from the dead and you're looking and talking to him and you're still full of doubt. And it says here Jesus came and He spoke to them, saying all authority - how much authority? [All.] All authority. That's the power to govern and rule - all authority and power to govern and rule. All authority is given to Me. How did He get it? He got it by obedience to the will of the Father. He now is positioned where all authority - so everything is subject to Him.

We don't see that yet. We see and live in a world where not everything is subject to Jesus, but one day will be and so in the meantime He has all authority. He's the absolute Lord over all of the creation. He's the one who holds absolute rule; no one can restrain Him. No one can challenge Him and say why do You think You're doing this? No one can even hold back the day of the death, no one. He has absolute and total authority. He is a king and He has a kingdom and we are part of that kingdom. We're born into His kingdom, we are sons of the living God. Fantastic! So He's the absolute Lord and He came of course to reveal what the Father is like and then to restore to us our relationship and our understanding that as a son and a child of God, He calls us to make a difference in the world. You're called to make a difference. You're called to bring something of heaven into the earth. The character, what God is like, and also the life and power see?

And so it's a fantastic thing. Now notice here what He says. He gives a great mandate. Now He spoke to them and He said all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth; now go. Go therefore and make disciples of a handful of people in each region in New Zealand. He didn't say that did He? He didn't say go and have a small thing. He said go and have a real big thing, real big. God is really big. Go and disciple all nations. That's a big vision - all nations, all peoples, all countries. Next year I go up to Mongolia, so we'll be going out to another nation. Mongolia's situated between China and Russia, and at one time Mongolia ruled all of Asia. Now it doesn't rule, it's a kingdom that is diminished and now will be receiving something of the kingdom of God. It's going to be wonderful. This is the vision God has, all nations. All nations. All nations. See the problem is we get a mindset and we think in terms of church, of a handful of people; God is thinking of nations, multitudes, big, big, BIG!

You've got to keep thinking big! If you think this is big you're not thinking big enough, definitely not. There's 120,000-odd people in Hawkes Bay and if there are 500 or 600 here, it's not definitely not big. See, big is when you've got most of the people in the region saved. That's big. It says in Paul's day all of Asia heard the gospel. That's big, see? We've got a real challenge - so all nations, so baptised - He said go and speak and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe or obey all things I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always. Now notice this, that Jesus is given a mandate. The mandate is to go. The church is called to go, go, go! You've got to watch out that we don't have a message come, come, come. The church's message is go, go, go! Go into the schools, go into the government, go into the areas of art and culture, go into the media, go into every area.

The funny thing about the church is when people start to go there the church gets in an uproar and says you shouldn't be there. This is nonsense. Creativity came from God, the church should be there. Government came from God, the church should be there. Education came from God, the church should be there. See, this is where the church needs to realise we've got a mandate to go into the world, a mandate. A mandate isn't a suggestion. A mandate is a directive from a king to his ambassadors. A mandate is a directive given by a king to his ambassadors. Every believer has a mandate to go, to go into the earth. Now for some that may mean we go out to nations and I love to get people from our church into nations, but for all of us we're called to go as an ambassador, as a representative of God and advance His business.

And whatever trade you're in, that's His business. Become great at it and become excellent at what you do, and influence people through it. Whatever your trade is, whatever gifts you've got, develop them and then become great. Become outstanding. Become excellent at it, and then people look and they don't see poverty, they don't see meanness. They see generosity, excellence and a serving spirit. They're really near to the kingdom of God, see? Those are the things that really count, and then when they see you pray for people and things happen, then they understand there is a God who is really different. See, so we're called to go, go to all the nations, teaching them not only to make - it says to make disciples of them, or to not just get people to come to the front and make a decision, but to radically alter their lifestyle so they also become ambassadors.

So our mandate is not just to have people come to meetings, or just have people make decisions. Our mandate is that people's lifestyle changes, they become a follower of Christ and begin to represent Him and establish His way. His way's better than any other way. In every area His ways are better than anything you'll find on the earth. It's just we need persuading of it sometimes. You have a look at when marriages are operated God's way, it's excellent. When families are raised God's way, it's excellent. When young people keep themselves for God, holiness is excellent. It's not a goofy thing, it's a good thing. See, when people do business well and God's hand is upon their life and upon what they do, this is excellent. It speaks - no corruption, something different about the way you operate. See, we're called to go out into all nations - I love it. Our mandate's global. It's not a suggestion; it's given by a king to His ambassadors, or a mandate is a command given by a superior Court to a lower Court. How about that?

So whatever way you look at it we have a mandate, not a suggestion. It's not a suggestion. See, it's a mandate. It's something for us to do. I love it - and so to believe the gospel means you actually align your life to do it and that's what Jesus is interested in. Now let's go and have a look at Matthew 16 where Jesus talked about the kingdom and the church. So the mandate of going forth, it's a purpose, not a preference. It's a command, not a suggestion. Let's have a look in Matthew 16. We'll go back to where we were last Sunday when the visiting speakers came, the Sunday before when I was speaking. Let's just go back again because there's a lot in there and we'll just pick up some aspects of it. I want to just talk a little bit about the kingdom and the church. Sometimes people get them confused and let's have a look what Jesus said. Jesus said in verse 13, He came to His disciples.

He asked His disciples, saying who do men say I am? Or what's people's opinion about Me? And they said some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. So He said who do you say I am? What's your belief or your opinion? Simon Peter answered and said You're the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered and said to him blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church and the gates of Hades or hell shall not prevail against it. In other words the devil won't be able to hold out against the believing church. And He said and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then He commanded His disciples they should tell no on He was Jesus the Christ - because it wasn't the right timing. There's a timing [He'd have 00.08.55] everything.

So the first thing you find, there's a revelation of several things. First of all there is revelation in here of the king. Notice He asks for what do men say? What is the opinion of people? Now lots of people have got opinions about who Jesus is. He's another good man, He's another prophet. He's just someone who does great things, or He was the founder of Christianity - but Jesus is not interested in opinions see. Our opinion doesn't change what is fact and reality, and so we need to understand there are a lot of opinions but Peter got a revelation of who He is. Now a revelation means it was put into his heart by the Spirit of God. When you don't know Jesus Christ He's just another person, but what he had was God spoke into his heart and made known who Jesus is. The knowledge - now listen to this - the knowledge of Jesus Christ, who He is and what He's like, requires revelation by the Spirit of God. That's not just for your initial salvation, but if you really want to know what He's like.

The Holy Spirit is sent into the world to make Him known and you need - every one of us, we're called not just to come into a first encounter with Him, but to get to know what He's like. If you don't know Him as a healer you can never present Him as a healer. If you don't know Him as a deliverer you can never present Him as a deliverer. If you don't know Him as a saviour you can never present Him as a saviour. If you don't know Him as a provider you can never represent Him as a provider - and so in every area of life we need revelation of what Jesus is like. We need to see Him, what the Bible tells us He's like, but it's got to become reality. If you're a rejected person and you've lived all your life with rejection and you believe I'm not acceptable, you need revelation to your heart to change that belief see? Otherwise you'll come to Jesus and yet you'll still struggle as to whether you're accepted, and then you'll live in defeat as a believer because you actually haven't had it revealed to your heart yet that He is the one who makes us totally acceptable.

See, it came out in the communion just concerning the prodigal son and how, when he came back to the father and how the father totally embraced him, sins, faults, failures and all, made him welcome and gave him positioning. Now that's a revelation. You may have heard the story this morning, but it needs to be a revelation to our heart. Only the Holy Spirit can do it. I've got to ask God to show me these things, see? Now if you want to know Jesus as the one who works miracles, not one in the Bible historically who worked miracles, but if you want to know Him as the miracle worker today you need the Holy Spirit to reveal it, it's got to become faith in our heart. You see I believe most believers here would believe God does miracles. That's not the issue. Here's the issue: the issue is will He do miracles through me? Now that's revelation is needed for that. You need to know who He is. He's the same yesterday, today and forever - so Peter got a revelation of who Jesus was.

He got a revelation of Jesus, a revelation what He's like and of course we need to continually have that. He got a revelation that He's a king. He's the king and the Lord. He said You're the anointed one, the Son of the living God. He was revealed in this is who Jesus is. He's not just someone, take it or leave it Jesus. This is a Jesus, the Lord. This is a Jesus who is God's anointed representative in the earth. This is Jesus that all nations will bow their knee before. This is who He is and we need to have that revealed to us and become a live, living truth. The second thing Jesus revealed to him was about the church, and you notice what He said - He said upon this rock or upon the rock of revelation who I am, I will build My church. I'm glad Jesus said He'll build it, so when He says He's building His church what exactly is He building? Well of course you see there that word church. Well if you come from a certain kind of background you'll think oh, Jesus is going to build His church. We think a nice building with a steeple and stained glass windows. For you that's church.

Or maybe you've come from a different kind of background and you think He'll build His church, you think dear God, give me nothing to do with it. You see a handful of old ladies in the back of some old building and there's nothing happening. There's no life and there's no next generation. You think right, I don't want anything to do with that. See, so all of us when we hear the word church have a mentality about what God is building, and it's based primarily on what the culture has represented the church to be like and what our own experience - see, if you were raised like I was in a situation with religious orders and so on, then you had certain mindsets about what the church was like, mainly about don't do this, don't do that, don't do something else. You understand, so we come with concepts or opinions and we need to see what Jesus said the church really is.

See when we ran these meetings the other night we had a whole heap of people come in and some of them, oh! [They just went like that, 00.13.58] oh! this is a church! Oh, what kind of church? Tell me about this? I'd like to come - you see, because it just blew away their concepts of church. See, they looked at the building. Now the building is not the church; the people are the church. But the building reflects what's in the heart of the people, so when I go and I see a church building that's run down and everything's run down and there's no excellence, no serving, this represents a people who are defeated. They don't represent the church of the living God; they represent everything people hate which is religious defeat. You see Jesus said - the word He uses is the word ecclesia. He said I will build My ecclesia.

Now of course we look at that and think what the heck is that? Oh, okay, translate it for me, alright. Let's have a go. We'll say church. Oh, okay, a handful of old people running a little wee bizarre out there raising a few bucks. Come on, you get ideas but Jesus said I'll build My - now, to the people who were listening, when they used the word ecclesia they knew exactly what He was talking about, because they were in Roman culture which followed the Greek culture, and the Greek culture which was a democratic culture, the ecclesia were a group of people who were called out. The word ecclesia means called out ones. They were called out like we would elect a government; they were called into a place where they actually governed and represented whoever was in charge. So for the Romans the ecclesia then represented the governing body under the emperor. Think about that. There's a governing body; it was to actually act in close consultation with the emperor in order to outwork in the nation the designs and desires of the emperor. The nearest we'd call it would be caucus.

Now don't start to suddenly oppose certain mentalities and attitudes. Just think of its role. Just think there you have a Prime Minister and you have a caucus, a governing group who consults together and has insights no one else has, and outwork it in governing a nation. That is what Jesus had in mind. He had in mind a people who would have intimate access to Him because they are family, and out of that intimate access to Him they would be able to bring forth His life into the world; healings, deliverance, provisions, creativity, community advancement, health advances, educational advances. He had that in mind. Why did He have that in mind? Because that's what God always had in mind, right from the beginning! Always a people to represent Him as His ambassadors in the earth. So when He's thinking of the church these are people who are called and invited to come into that. Now of course whether you come into that is another thing, but when you gave your life to Jesus Christ, called Him your saviour, you were then positioned to be raised up to intimacy of counsel with Him, and to be able to represent Him in your field of life. Think about that.

That's your call. That's what the church is about, and you notice the church is just the vehicle which has a purpose. I will build My church, I will give to you the keys of the kingdom. In other words He said it's all about My kingdom advancing into the nations, and so you need to have a kingdom mentality. Now Jesus said He'll build His church, so we don't have to worry about building the church. What we need to do is about advancing the kingdom, which means mentalities and attitudes and values. This is why having a value of excellence, having a value of serving, having a spirit of worship, having the anointing and presence, this is all the kingdom. People come in and it speaks for itself. Poverty always has a - it shouts out keep away, but excellence always, generosity always attracts and so we're called to advance the kingdom.

So you notice every believer is called a son of God or a child of God and an ambassador. You are an ambassador. You didn't choose to be, you were called to be. You are one anyway. You're either a good one or a poor one, just think about that one for a moment see. So every believer's called to intimacy with the Lord and then to discover purpose, and then corporately we begin to express the purpose in the community. So we need to belong to a local church so corporate our voice can come together to make a bigger difference corporately than we ever could individually, see? So God has something to do through you every day of the week, 24/7, and then corporately through us, see? And so through us you know this year, probably 40,000, 50,000 people will hear the gospel, be ministered to, be touched by who? By us. You say well I didn't do that. Oh yes you did, you were a part of it. It was what we did.

It's not what I do, it's not what someone else has done; it's what we have done. WE have done these things. WE touched hundreds of families this week. WE touched hundreds of lives last week, and next WE will touch thousands of lives. Miracles will flow and bring deliverance and heal all kinds of things - and WE will have done it. This is our business. Sons of the king, sons and daughters, called to represent God. Man, that's why prophets are always on about getting near to God, because God wants you to understand what He's like like we can represent Him better. Holiness is about cleaning up our lives so we become more like God wants us to be, so we can represent Him better. That's why we have things to clean up our lives. Okay, notice another thing He gave is revelation of kingdom authority. He says I will give you keys of the kingdom. A key is authority to access and to operate. A key gives you authority to access something and operate, so I don't have many keys and I don't really feel like I need them. I actually have no keys to anything except the front door. I like that.

Someone else can have the keys. They have the authority to go there, I don't need to go there, it's not my business to have keys to everything. I don't need that, but there are some things I need keys for - my car. It's a horrible thing if you've got a car and no key, or you've lost the key. Healing needs keys to make it operate. Deliverance needs keys to make it operate. Prosperity needs keys to make it operate. Good marriages take keys to get it to operate. Good families take keys to get it to come right. See, wherever you are in life there are keys you need to make it work, to bring what God does into the earth because it's good. It's always good. You don't find any unhappy families in heaven, you find them on the earth. We're to bring the keys of why they're all happy in heaven into the earth. Come on, think about this. So He said I will give you the keys of the kingdom, so He said I'll give you keys and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven.

So keys are the knowledge and the legal right to actually make things happen. I want to touch with you some keys. Now we need to understand our authority as a believer and you'll see how I'm going to connect this in a moment. You need to realise that as a believer God has already entrusted you some authority. Now what I like are credit cards. How many like credit cards? Credit cards can be terrible or they can be really good, see? I've got a couple. If you lose one - you know what I was fearful of when I lost one, when my wallet was stolen? I was concerned someone would use it illegally because there was an authority with the credit card to make certain things financial happen. So I had to immediately ensure no one could operate with my credit card unlawfully. Of course Jesus wants to entrust you a credit card too; it's called His name. In My name you shall do mighty works. He wants us to learn how to access heaven and do things in His name, see?

Now the devil does them unlawfully. The devil stole Adam's authority and does a lot of things unlawfully. You and I are the lawful ones to operate in the kingdom. We're the ones called to do things and to do them right, and so using keys of faith, faith gives us access to God, the name of Jesus; gives us ability to draw heaven's resources into the earth, but we have to be positioned for that to happen. Let me give you some things God gives you authority to do. Now the funny thing is you've all got authority to do this stuff, but whether you do it or not depends on whether you have the key of knowing how. See, so you have authority to bring the Holy Spirit into any place you go. You have authority to invite God's presence any place you are. You say well it's really oppressive there - well you've got the authority to invite the presence of God to come, change all of that.

Don't complain the place you work and live has got a bad atmosphere. Change it. You're called to change it. See, we are given authority to bless. Well of course we're used to that religious blessing. No, no, to bless means to speak creative, faith-filled, empowered words that bring changes in people's lives; release creative words over people, speak into their lives destiny to release peace that's tangible and changes. Let me give you an example. I had to do a funeral for a family member in the church and the mother was unsaved and committed suicide. That's about as bad you get and she'd cut her wrists in the bath. That's really bad - and so the funeral was held down at the crematorium. I went down there and I had two people from the church here, it might have been Bruce and Eileen. Anyway they came down to put a bit of music to try and - we needed to create some atmosphere, because I've got to do this funeral service for a suicide of an unsaved person in a crematorium. That's not a very nice place to be.

Of course you go in there and it's just oppressive with spirits of grief and all kinds of things. So anyway we go in there and we begin to walk and they're setting up their instruments, a guitar and a keyboard and whatever. I just began to walk, began to pray and then suddenly the Holy Ghost came on me and I felt the presence of these demons in there, of grief and despair and death. Immediately I just suddenly react and went in Jesus' name I command those spirits to go and boof! The atmosphere shifted just like that. You could feel the change. People that came with me were quite surprised - oh, what happened? Now at the funeral the presence of God came so strong you could hardly believe that this was like it - like normally for a situation like that everyone would be in really bad shape. But the presence of God and the love of God came so wonderfully you almost forgot what we were really on there about. Just God came, you see - but if I didn't know how to shift that, those demons would have stayed there and dominated the atmosphere and made it a miserable time.

Now, so we have authority to speak words that change atmospheres, affect people's lives, release giftings in them. Fathers can bless their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers can bless their family, you can bless the people around you instead of cursing them and speaking negatively of them, criticising them and running them down and swearing at them. What's this going to do? You're releasing demons. We're not called to release demons, we're called to release the Holy Ghost and angels! Got to learn how to do it. You have authority to do it! You were called to do it, and if you're the only believer there you must do it - or you're giving up and letting it all go to the devil; probably justifying it by saying oh well, they're all sinners, they deserve what they get. This is not the heart of God. See, you're authorised to pray for the sick and see them healed. We're authorised to break bondages where people have been cursed, and to set them free. We're authorised to do that. You were authorised to do that. Who authorised you? Jesus did when He gave you the mandate to go out and make disciples. You can't do that unless you can deal with the demonic and break the curses, and set people free and pray for their healing and bless them.

You're authorised to pray for people to be filled with the Holy Ghost. You're authorised to do all kinds of things in Jesus' name, but if you don't know what you're authorised to do it's almost absolutely certain you'll never do it. And if you don't have the key of knowledge you'll never do it either, and that's the tragedy in the 21st Century of the church in the west is it doesn't know what it's called to do. So for goodness sake don't complain about how bad it is if you're the ones called to change it. You just add more cursing and increase the problems. We're the salt and the light, therefore it's our responsibility to actually make a difference. It's interesting when I was in City Harvest some years ago. Pastor Kong shared with me how they were crossing over, they were making a decided effort to turn the church out into the community and his wife who was Pastor Sun at that time - she resigned from the pastoral role and they began to, because she's an outstanding worship leader and beautiful person, lovely singing voice. They began to invest into her to prepare her to go out into the media.

The goal was to get up and get good enough to get on MTV, to hit it in America and then through that reach into Asia. Now guess where the biggest problems came? See, the church in the nation. Oh what? This is all wrong. You understand, the church has got a problem; when a believer rises up, hits the charts and is making it in Hollywood because it can't conceive that that's our destiny. Hollywood, don't complain about Hollywood. Hollywood's a creative gift to the world. It just needs to be redeemed, so don't complain it's gone off. It needs salt and light to change it. See the problem with the church, it just stands back and complains and grizzles and moans and groans, and forgets our identity. We're the ambassadors of the kingdom and our message is repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. There are changes and we can help you make them. You're an ambassador to advance God's kingdom. Every believer here can pray for the sick and pray and set people free, lead people to the Lord, set people free of bondages; if there's a house full of demons go in and clean up. If you don't know what to do for goodness sake line up when we train you and do it!

The real issue is not the lack of knowledge. I think the real issue is the lack of will and that brings us to positioning ourself under the authority of the Lord. Come on, this is what this is about. I think it's exciting. I think it's absolutely exciting. It's the great thing I've ever heard. You know, fantastic, we've got a great thing that we can do, see? Have a look at this, Matthew 8. I better move or I'll run out of time. Matthew 8:5, look at this. Here's a centurion and when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came and pleaded with Him; Lord, my servant is at home paralysed, dreadfully tormented. Jesus said I will come and heal him. He said no Lord, I'm not worthy You should come under my roof. Only speak a word and my servant will be healed. He said now, so he says because I'm a man under authority and I say to this one go and he goes, and this one come and he comes, he said say only the word and my servant shall be healed. Isn't that amazing?

Here's a man who recognised authority. Why did he recognise authority? Because he himself was a man under authority. He had a commander over him and he had soldiers under him. He understood chain of command. He said do this, it'll happen. He looked at Jesus and because he was a man who understood the principles of authority, he saw Jesus as under authority. He's got power. If He just gives a word it'll happen. And Jesus said whoa, what great faith. It takes great faith to trust that the invisible God works through people who represent Him. We all know that God does stuff, but actually God works through people and see, so it takes great faith. It takes something in our heart to understand that authority is always - God's authority is always reflected through people, and that how we respond to people actually recognising Jesus released the miracle power to go, recognising His authority enabled Him to operate.

When Jesus was not recognised His authority didn't operate, so He was a man under authority. So we see here that - notice this - that religious people will acknowledge God can do something, but they've always got authority issues and they can never see anything happen, because if I'm to see something come from heaven I have to position myself under the authority of God so I can operate in authority. Now you're going to learn a lot of things in this course, but let me just tell you one thing you need to see. There is a purpose for learning about being under authority. Here's the purpose: It's not just about you being protected. It's much, much more than that. It's about you being able to function like God called you to function. It's about being able to represent God and see God's blessing flow in your life like He intended. How can you do it? You can't operate - see I've had people say lay hands on me so I can have double the anointing you have. I said that's a lot of nonsense, forget it. I'm not going to do it.

They say why? I say well if I wanted double anointing why would I give you double anointing? I want it myself. Double - I've never heard of such a thing. I said here's why I won't, I said because you've got no heart to serve people and the anointing is always to serve people and advance the kingdom of God. It's not about you having an ego trip. Okay, here's the last thing I'll just share here, just carry on in Matthew 16 now. I want to just show you something else. Now remember Peter's got this revelation on the king, he's got the revelation on the kingdom and the church. Now look at this. He really missed out big time here, because he misses on the nature of the kingdom. Now notice this. Jesus said to His disciples - verse 21 - He's going to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things. So Jesus began to talk about the future. He said listen boys, I'm off to Jerusalem and I'm going to suffer. They're going to badly treat Me. They'll kill Me but I'll be alright, I'll rise up on the third day.

He made it pretty clear this is what is about to happen. Now Jesus is responding to His Father's will. This is what the will of God is: I go to Jerusalem, I be put to death and rise on the third day. Now immediately Peter began to take Him aside and tell Him off. Now here's Peter, he just said - now this is the Lord. Oh! Ooh! You're the Christ, the Son of the living God! Then next minute he says excuse me. Now I don't want to disturb all the other apostles but I don't like what You're preaching. Forget this cross stuff. Forget this having to lay Your life down stuff. We're having a revival here. And it says this is what he said to Him. Now I'll get this and we'll finish. He said to Him pity yourself. Let this be a long way from You. Don't do this in other words. What You should be doing is looking out for Yourself. Now Jesus immediately reacted with an immense confrontation. Get behind Me Satan! You're an offense and a stumbling block to Me.

What - now anyone looked at that and thought boy, that's pretty tough? He's one of the apostles and now He's giving him a slap like - that's a big slap isn't it? That's a big slap. In anyone's terms that's got to be a big slap. You know, blessed are you Simon Bah-Jonah. You've had Holy Ghost revelation. Next thing, slap, slap, slap! You devil! That's a pretty big shift. What brought the change? Why did nice gentle Jesus turn into slapping Jesus? [Laughter] Come on, ask yourself what it was. There was something in what Peter said that fundamentally opposed the kingdom of God and it was this. Peter was wanting to use Jesus and His position to advance himself. Simply he's saying if you go this cross route - he didn't even hear about the resurrection. If You go down there to Jerusalem and they kill You and You get put to death, what will happen to the dreams of a kingdom? What will happen to my position? What will happen to my ministry? What will happen to me? It's all about me.

See people don't mind acknowledging Jesus is Lord, but you see what they want is a nice, a watered down Jesus, you know, a Jesus that's easy to take. But actually Jesus is the Lord, and He calls us to align with His purpose for our lives; not to just take what we like and use Him to get what we want. See that is offensive to any person. You imagine having a relationship with someone and all they want is to use you to get themselves ahead. You can't believe how offensive that is. It's incredibly offensive. It's offensive because you are devalued by their selfish motivation. Everyone picks it quite quickly. Now somehow as Christians we think I can use Jesus; Jesus, bless this. Jesus, bless that. Jesus, bless this. Jesus, bless - well listen. What are you doing to align yourself with God's plan in that area?

He doesn't just bless your plans because you planned them. He blesses what He initiated through you that's right with His purpose. So He gave him a huge slapping, notice here. Now Jesus Himself, so his mentality is preserve yourself, look after yourself, get yourself ahead. Jesus said listen, if you're going to serve in My kingdom you've got to understand you have to be a person under authority. You actually don't do what you want, you actually act as an ambassador for another person. And sometimes when you act as an ambassador for God you will lay your life down to the things you like and love and want, in order that He can be honoured and He in turn will bless and ensure that what you need is met - an amazing thing, see? Jesus wanted to confront him over this issue. You can't serve God and just do your own thing. He said I'm a man under authority, I don't even do what I want to do. I do what I see the Father showing Me to do. I'm a man under authority.

Now if we just finish with this, Jesus Himself several times demonstrated He's under authority. I'll just give them out to you just quickly like this. Number one, He was under the authority of His parents. His parents said Son, what are You doing? He said don't You understand, I've got to be here? They said no, we don't understand. You come with us - and it said He submitted Himself and He grew in wisdom and stature and favour with God [and man. 00.36.32] He put Himself under His parents authority when they misunderstood Him. The second place He put Himself under authority was with John the Baptist. Now John the Baptist message is there's a messiah coming. You know what Jesus did? He came and He got baptised by John, and John said listen, You should be doing this to me. He said no, I'm going to submit to you because this is the way I walk in righteousness. I'm coming under the anointed ministry of the time and submitting to the authority God gave you.

Almost everywhere you find it in the Bible; when Jesus was asked a question. Listen, do the sons have to pay taxes? No, they own everything, they don't have to pay taxes. He said that's right, we don't have to pay the tax - but so we don't create unnecessary offense we'll pay the tax. And He used His power then to bring miraculous provision to come under the authority of the government of His day, the Roman government. You'll find without exception Jesus had a huge understanding of authority and the need to be under authority in order to be able to function in the supernatural and bring God's kingdom into the earth. The devil's attempts were always go on, do your own thing. Just turn this into food, do this, do this, do this. Take a short cut. He said no, I know why I'm here. It's to bring honour to the Father - and He placed Himself continually under Father's authority.

Now we find it easy to do that with God perhaps, but when it comes to people we find it more difficult. The whole course on Under Cover is about understanding not only does God have authority, but He works that authority through people and every time you meet someone who carries authority, whether it be position or in their person life, you're starting to encounter the authority of God. It's not the man that's the issue; it's that you see beyond it to what God is doing. Listen, do you know someone in the New Testament who had a direct encounter with God? Paul. He had a direct encounter with God's authority. God just [unclear 00.38.24], off the horse. You know what God said to him straight after? He said I want you to go to this city and I want you to put yourself under the authority of Ananias, because when he prays for you you'll get healed. God immediately put him under delegated authority.

Now you can't go anywhere where you don't meet authority and every time you meet it your heart attitude towards God and His authority flushes immediately. Over this course I believe and I'm praying that in every part of the church where our attitudes and things aren't right, that it will surface for productive change. See? And you'll - sure, I know you'll be just like Peter. You'll be right in your own mind and own thinking, absolutely persuaded you're right. But I encourage everyone here to be open to let the Holy Ghost change our thinking, so we can position ourself to operate in power. You see if I teach you and we run seminars how to move in healing, how to move in deliverance, how to break curses, how to bring blessing, how to release this, how to release that; if we do all of that thing for you, if you do not position yourself right under God two things happen. One, the power flow doesn't operate right and two, you set yourself up for demonic attack and I don't want that. We want to grow to new levels.

[File ends 00.39.39]

Summary Notes

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Kingdom Authority

22 July 2007

1. Introduction:

· Matthew 28:18-20 - “All authority has been given to me…..go therefore…”

· Authority = the power of government, of rule, of judicial decision.

· Jesus Christ is absolute Lord and King over all creation.

· Jesus came to reveal the Father and restore out mandate.

· Mandate = a command or authorization to act in a particular way given

by a King to His ambassadors.

= to authorize, decree.

= a command for a superior court to a lower one.

· Our mandate is:

i) Global – Nations ii) Life transforming – teaching Kingdom life.

· To Believe = To obey, align with the King’s will.

· Mandate = Purpose not Preference; a Command not a Suggestion.

2. The Kingdom and the Church:

· Matthew 16:13-20 - “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom”

a) Revelation of the King - verse 13:

· Opinions = personal idea, attitude, prevailing way of seeing things.

· Opinions reflect beliefs – how I would live my life.

· Many opinions about Jesus – personal ideas.

· Peter’s revelation = Jesus = the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

= Jesus is the Messiah - The Coming King.

· Jesus was born King – came to reveal God and restore His Kingdom.

b) Revelation of the Church – verse 18:

· Church = Ecclesia = to call out, called out ones.

· Ecclesia:

– Used by Greek/Romans to refer to the governing group in the nation.

– People hand picked to govern the nation on behalf of Emperor.

– NZ – Caucus.

· Meaning of the word ‘Church’ has been distorted.

· God’s intention has always been family, sons and daughters to enter His secret council and extend His Kingdom.

· Every Believer is to be a Son and Ambassador of the King.

· Revelation 12:24 - Nations shall walk in the light of the City of God.

· Every believer called to intimacy and to fulfill purpose.

· Every believer must understand authority; Be under and to exercise.

c) Revelation of the Kingdom Authority – verse 19:

· Keys of the Kingdom = authority to access and operate.

· Key = Knowledge and authority to enter and to speak.

· God gives us keys to open heaven and bring blessings to earth.

· We need to understand our authority as a believer.

· We are authorized to:

- Invite the Holy Spirit - Heal the sick

- Bless and release creative words - Bind and loose

- Inner healing - Raise the dead

- Break bondages/curses - Deliverance

- Release prosperity

· We are called to act as ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven.

· We must learn the principles of authority – how to govern.

· Mathew 8:8-10 - The Creation

i) He recognized authority and submitted to it.

ii) He was a man under authority.

iii) He exercised authority.

· Note: Jesus commendation – “Great Faith”

Recognizing and responding to earth positions us to exercise authority.

· Note: The religious people had knowledge but did not enter or experience Kingdom life and power – form without power.

d) Revelation of the Nature of the Kingdom:

Matthew 16:21-23 - “The Kingdom reflects the nature of the King”.

Peter’s opinion - Response when forced with submission to the Will of God.

· “Pity yourself” - “Be it far from you!” - rebuked Jesus.

· Peter’s mentality = preserve yourself, personal rights are important.

· He wanted to preserve his position and privileges.

· He wanted a Jesus that could give him what he wanted.

· People desire a Jesus to bless, benefit – but He is a King.

Jesus response

· Kingdom = call to submit to the will/authority of God.

· Submission = a paradox = gives freedom!

· Whatever / whoever submit to come under the authority.

· Become like the character of the one you submit to.

John 5:9 - Jesus was a submitted person.

E.g. Submitted to parents - Luke 2:51-52

Submitted to John the Baptist - Matthew 3:15

Submitted to Government authority - Matthew 22:21

· Jesus confronted the spirit the was behind Peters statement.

· Conflict between Kingdom God (submission/humility) and King Satan (pride/lawlessness)

· Romans 13:1-2 - “All must be under authority”.

· Source of Authority = GOD

· God delegated authority;

= positional – church, home, government, world.

= personal – men anointed thus relationships.

· Our choice to position ourselves under authority.

E.G. Acts 9:44-15 - Paul encountered direct authority – placed under delegates.

Destiny Decisions

Destiny Decisions (1 of 2)

Destiny decisions (2 of 2)

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- Destiny decisions (2 of 2).mp3

Destiny Decisions (1 of 2)

Sun 20 May 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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Destiny Decisions (1 of 2) Mike Connell 20.05.2007

...in Ephesians 2:10. Remember this verse, we've used this quite a lot. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them. So we see in this and other verses that long before you came into this world God designed a purpose for your life. It's your responsibility to discover that purpose. You were brought in here just to fill in your life with just busyness and activities. We're called to partner with God and be productive for Him. That doesn't mean we're all called to be preachers. It means God has a unique purpose for every person and we talked a little bit about destiny, have the idea of a destination, somewhere we're going. Destiny in this sense means literally the path that God is taking us towards, it's destination it's going to reach and the actual journey we take.

And so when we're talking about destiny we're talking about the journey as well as where it ends. Now we know for a believer that we're going to end up in heaven. God's plan is to bring heaven to earth see, so how we will live in heaven, how we will enjoy eternity really is dependent on what we do about bringing heaven to earth in this life. And so every one of us is called to make our life productive in some kind of way and achieving the destiny means you've got to discover what God's called you to do and to do it. The greatest tragedy in life is having no sense of purpose, or to live your life pleasing someone else. That's where many people live their lives. We have to be prepared to break free of an inner desire to please the people around us. You know, God has a plan and it isn't always what others agree with see? So it's a process and a journey, a great journey. I'm loving the journey, it's fantastic.

In 2 Timothy 4:7 Paul finishes the end of his course. He makes an incredible statement at the end of his life. Imagine getting to the end of his life, but when you see him come to the end of his life he makes a statement - but on the way he had all these things happen to him. He had dramatic things happen to him, but in the midst of them he had this thing inside him, I'm a man of destiny. I have a call and a purpose for my life. So the Bible tells us that there was a time when he got stoned - I'm not talking smoking the wacky backy. He was literally stoned and left for dead and much to everyone's surprise he stands up: I haven't finished my course yet. He ends up getting shipwrecked and he hangs on to a piece of wood for three days in the deep: I haven't finished my course yet. There's another time where they beat him. He gets up and he says I haven't finished my course yet.

When you have a look at Paul's life and all the adversities and obstacles and things he faced, inside him was this tremendous sense I have a course to fill and I haven't finished it yet, and nothing is going to stop me finishing the call God put on my life. When he gets to the end of his life he says now, I said I fought my fight and I have finished the course. What a great thing to get to the end of your life and be able to say, I discovered what God put me in the earth for and I never quit! I finished it! You want to be a finisher, not just a starter. I've seen heaps of starters, start so enthusiastic. We want to finish the race, want to finish and finish strong. So whatever's happened it's still your choice whether you finish strong. It's still your choice. How many know people that start things and never finish them? Don't let that be you.

Okay, let me just give you some decisions now. So what I'm speaking on today, I may have to finish it next week: Destiny Decisions. Now these are personal choices, personal decisions that you make and they have eternal consequences for your life. And I thought about what some of these may be and I've come up with a number of things, which as I've thought about my own life these are absolutely crucial parts of actually forging your life forwards so it has a sense of purpose and it also accomplishes something on the journey. So let me give them you, here it is, number one. Let go the past. You must choose to say no to bitterness and resentment over how you've been treated. Let me just talk a little about that. In Hebrews 12:15 it talks about the grace of God; Let no man fall from the grace of God, and a root of bitterness springing up in you defile many.

Every person coming into this world has some hardships and pains, difficulties and setbacks. It is a part of life. For some of you I know the family situations you've come from; you've come from situations where there was hurt or pain; for some of you great families, others there was abuse in the families. Some families were really wonderful to be there; others were dysfunctional. Some of you have had conflicts in relationships, people let you down, people maybe you gave your heart to and they betrayed you in various kinds of ways. Listen, this is life. Life is like that. But when this happens to you there are two things that happen within you and it's what happens inside you that determines what's going to happen ahead of you. The first thing is you get hurt and wounded by some of the things that happen.

I can think of many events that have happened in my life that have deeply wounded and hurt me, took me quite some time to get over it. The second thing is when you get hurt you believe certain things. You begin to form beliefs; you can never trust any more or you can never trust a leader, or don't trust this or - you begin to start to inside formulate beliefs because you've been wounded and hurt. Now let me tell you this. If you don't resolve those things from your past they will defile your present and steal your destiny, absolutely. I have seen people and because of bitterness they could never make a marriage or a family work; because of hurts and wounds they could never make their life really work. Why? They could never rise to full potential because they never made the choice, the destiny decision I'm going to face what hurt me and who hurt me and how badly I'm hurt. I'm going to forgive. I'm going to release. I'm going to bless and I will move on because I was made for greater things.

You can choose to live in regret and resentment. You can choose to live remembering the injustices you've suffered and all the defeats you've had, or you can choose to forgive, to bless and to grow and to come forward and find in the future that it was all part of God's plan for your life. What you thought could have sunk you now becomes a springboard to help others. Recently I went away for a week, 10 days, I was up in Asia. One place that I went to was in Singapore and there was a family there which I'd met many years ago and their eldest daughter committed suicide. Now I've never had a child commit suicide but I've had a trauma in our family that caused tremendous grief, and I knew exactly what they would be feeling. I was able to go alongside them and to talk with them, and over two days help every member of the family walk forward.

So what I'm doing now or what happened last week came about because I chose to deal with stuff a long time ago. There are courses we have, there's the Freedom Retreat and Restoration Retreat and there are other courses we run. If you've got issues don't look back in regret and resentment and then keep multiplying those problems. Young people, if you've got issues with parents I can tell you now resolve them now! Or you'll repeat them in your future and you'll have to resolve them then - or if you don't ever resolve them they will steal much of the potential God had planned for your life, cause unnecessary pain and hardship. So it's always a decision. There's two people come to mind as I think about this. In 2 Samuel 6 there's a story of David's restoration of the ark into Jerusalem. Now at this very point in time what was happening is years ago when David was a very young man a prophet came and lay hands on him and said I have a plan for you. God has anointed you to be king. You have a destiny to shape a generation!

And so this young man of course was very excited about the dream, excited about the destiny and then he went out and he slew Goliath and he became immediately famous. Then he married the king's daughter and the king became jealous of him. So the king decided to kill him, so King Saul attempted to kill him. His wife helped him escape because she loved him and so David went this way and his wife went that way; both of them treated unjustly by Saul. Years later David has gone through every kind of hardship. He's been a notorious criminal, he's had to survive by share wits and leaning on the presence of God. He's suffered all manner of things - but finally his hour comes when the promise of God is about to be fulfilled, and his heart is free of bitterness, free of resentment, free of negativity. And the Bible says he [joyed 00.08.54] and rejoiced.

Michal, his wife who loved him, never got over what happened to her. She became bitter. She became angry. She came to believe you could never trust any men. She became bitter against God and in the hour when she should have been fulfilling her purpose and coming to the highlight of her life, she was bitter and never entered into it. The Bible said she remained barren, unproductive, unfruitful. She missed her destiny, because she never dealt with the issues of the past. She never dealt with hurt. She never dealt with wrong beliefs. It's one of the things if we're going to go forward, you have to make the decision that you're going to choose to let go of past hurts, going to choose to let go of bitterness and negative thinking, begin to start to be the kind of person that thinks possibilities. Will you be such a person? You have to choose that. No one's going to choose that for you.

You can look back; oh, you don't understand how badly I was treated. You don't know what happened to me and all this stuff. Listen, no, I don't know what happened, but I do know if you don't get over it it will shape the rest of your life. Some of you I really admire because I've sat with some of you - and I won't expose or reveal who you are. That's your testimony, that's your right to do that. But I've sat with many here and heard horrendous stories of what's happened in your lives and I've watched so many of you stand up and courageously face it and move past it. And I just really honour people that have done that. I had one last week I met and it was in my room and there was a counselling situation. There was a confrontational situation and a resolution of something going back years, and I just really admire that young person for the courage to do it.

It takes courage to face where you've been hurt and courage to face what you believe that's wrong and to start to determine I'm going to make changes. So that's a quality destiny decision; make it and you move forward. Don't make it and you'll always be limited and never rise to God's plan for your life. Let me ask you this: don't you think God knew about all of that stuff? And if He knew about all of that stuff He's got a way for you through it. Not only has He got a way for you through it, He's got a way for you to actually come out of it sweet. David said in Psalm 84, blessed is the man who strength or power to overcome was found in the Lord, who passing through the Valley of Sorrows makes it into a well. See, so whatever negative experiences, painful experiences, setbacks you've had, God's plan for your life is you turn that into a sweet well. Others will drink from it and you go from one level of strength to another. What a fantastic thing that is.

Isn't this fantastic? God's the only one that can bring life out of death. Everyone looks and says oh, that was bad. You say God says I see a possibility here! People look and they see Lazarus in the tomb, he's dead! God says you watch Me, he's coming alive! God wants you to come alive. You don't have to stay in that place of death where you're negative and you're resentful and got bad attitudes. You don't have to stay there! It's your choice to stay there. God pours His grace to enable you to get out of it. Choose! Choose! Choose! Make a choice I'll fulfil my destiny. Don't sink. You know Paul was bitten by a snake having got out of a shipwreck. He gets bitten by a snake and shakes it off. I haven't finished my course - see? And I don't know what's bitten you but SHAKE IT OFF! Shake it off! It's not killing me. I haven't finished my course yet. There's more for me to accomplish with my life. [Applause] I'm not going to be defeated at that place.

Some of you have gone through failures, well shake it off. Come to the cross. Come to the blood. Get up and move forward, but don't live in the bitterness of regrets. Live in the vision of a life doing something for God! [Applause] Why not? It's a choice. We've got to choose that way. One of the things I find a challenge in New Zealand is the persistent negativity, dwelling on what's negative and selling what's negative. We've got to change that and be people of dreams and visions and destiny. Amen. Destiny decision number one, let go of past hurts and say NO! This is a no bitterness zone. This is a no negativity zone. This is a no bad belief zone. This is a faith zone! You choose that. No one can choose that for you. Here's the second thing then. The second thing, we found in Romans 14, second destiny decision.

The key scripture here in Romans 14, here it is here. Let's read the scripture first, Romans 14:10. Now why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt or despise your brother? For - look at this - each one of us, we shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ. As its written says the Lord, as I live every knee shall bow to Me, every tongue shall confess to God - and here it is - so each of us shall give account of himself to God. Each one of us shall give account of himself to God, so here's destiny decision number two. Take personal responsibility for your life and say no to the blame game, and no to victim mentality. I'll say it again. Take personal responsibility for your life and say no to the blame game, and no to victim mentality. You notice what it says; God isn't going to ask about all how badly you were treated. He's going to ask what did you do? What did you think? What was your attitude? What was your motive? What did you say?

He will call us to be responsible for our lives. Now listen, when you get into the issue of blame blame means you're putting the responsibility on someone else. And if you put the responsibility on someone else, guess who doesn't have the ability to change things? If you are victim, you are constantly living in a mentality that someone has hurt me. Someone needs to put it right. You're putting the blame out there, you put the responsibility out there; you have no empowerment to change it. And there are so many people living in our nation who live with this constant reminder of injustices. When you get reminded continually of how badly you're treated you begin to see I'm a victim, and when you're a victim you have no power to change. Unfortunately there are some aspects of governance in our nation that keep people in this mentality.

But you and I have got to see through it; appreciate the good, honour those in authority, but recognise philosophies and thinking that keep you a victim. You are not a victim. You're not a victim unless you choose to be - because you're an adult now. You've got power to make choices. Now maybe years ago someone badly treated you. Maybe years ago you were young and vulnerable. Maybe someone misused their authority and treated you in some kind of way, or maybe it was a generation or two ago someone did something bad. But listen, if you are blaming that for why you're here you have now given up responsibility for your life. You remain a victim. You can't move forward. I hate victim mentality. It's characterised by poor me, won't you feel sorry for me? Jesus confronted it as being a demonic way of thinking.

When Jesus in Matthew 16 was announcing his determination to go to the cross and fulfil the will of God for His life, to fulfil His purpose and destiny, Peter when he heard about the cross, when he heard about the suffering bit, when he heard about the pain bit, when he heard about maybe the crowds will go bit, maybe I'll be alone and having a little bit of pain here somewhere; when he heard that he drew Jesus aside and said pity Yourself. Jesus immediately confronted it. What did He confront? He confronted the self pity, victim mentality. He confronted the thoughts that would make you feel sorry for yourself and become disempowered and draw back from hardship and difficulty and the things that are needed to fulfil your purpose. And He said get behind Me Satan! That's a pretty tough thing to say to an apostle, but He was addressing the thought and the spirit behind that thought, the spirit behind the thought oh, feel sorry for yourself. Look after yourself, is demonic.

And He said not only that, you are a stumbling stone for Me in fulfilling My destiny. When people try and make you feel sorry for yourself, or you start to feel sorry for yourself is coming over you, you've got to stand up and you've got to confront that thought. That's a destiny thief, you've got to stand against that and make a choice I will not go down that path of self pity. I'll not go down the path of being a victim. I will not go down that path, I'm better than that. I've got a call, I've got a destiny. God's able to turn whatever happened to me to good - only if I'll take responsibility for my attitudes and thoughts and words and actions, and do what He calls me to do. I was talking to the wife of this man whose daughter committed suicide and we picked up a number of things.

I said well there are some things you're going to need - there'll be thoughts that will come to your mind and you'll actually need to just grieve over them; acknowledge them and feel them and grieve over them. But I said there are two thoughts you're going to have to make a stand against, and I asked the husband to hold her accountable to stand against it. One is the self pity stream of thought; poor me, I feel sorry for myself. It does not lead you to your destiny; it leads you to becoming disempowered and becoming a victim. Now listen, it doesn't matter what bad deal you've been dealt. I love it - I just was listening to [Chunky Gee. 00.18.37] He said it doesn't matter what hand of cards you were dealt in life, there's someone could pick them up and win the game with them. I like that. Did you hear him say that? I like that one [unclear 00.18.49]. I'm going to remember that one - see, because it's actually true.

You can say well you don't understand how bad it was and my family and my background and our culture and this and this and this and this; the poverty and the struggles or whatever. You can say a whole lot of those kinds of things. At the end of the day someone could pick that up and make something happen out of that. I was just talking last night to the guys about a man born in Putaruru who had a harelip and cleft palate and a speech impediment. He was so unable to communicate properly that the headmaster called him retarded. He recently received $47 million for selling his share in Trade Me. [Applause] And this is what happened. This is what happened. His mother said you may have these physical issues, but no son of mine is going to be a dummy. Find what you're good at and make it great - and he did. It shows what can be done doesn't it aye? Of course you'd say but it's not [poor person. 00.19.44] He's not feeling poor. It fact he's actually very, very wealthy. [Laughter]

Come on, you've got to make a decision. How many saw the 20/20 with Tess, our niece, you know Paul's daughter? How many saw that. Oh man you'd love to see it, you really have to see it. She was born with no arms, just from the elbows down, no hands and this part of the arm. But to see her attitude and spirit and she said oh I don't need arms, I don't need hands. He said would you want to have hands? She said no, I don't want hands. She said I've got a great life like I have, and there she is scaling a wall, a climbing wall with no hands. Some of you would look at it with hands and not even try; I can't! Aaah, I can't! I watched her climb up there with these little stumps, up she goes, unbelievable. And it's a real credit that Paul put into her not to consider that as being an obstruction and a limitation for her life. She doesn't consider herself disabled at all. Everyone else does and feels sorry. Feeling sorry doesn't get you anywhere. You've got to make decisions, got to be responsible for your life, personally responsible for your life.

Isn't it fantastic when you think about these kinds of things? And so don't go down this blame game. Don't go blaming someone else. Just own your stuff. If there's a conflict find your part, own your part and become empowered to make a difference. Don't go blaming someone else. There's two examples in the Bible that I can think of of this. One of them is King Saul found in 1 Samuel 15. Read the verses there, 1 Samuel 15:20-21. And you see Saul and he begins to blame the people; ooh, it wasn't my fault. I did what God wanted me to do. [Where's the 00.21.18] people? What kind of leader is that, he's blaming the people for what happened? He's the leader, he's in charge. You don't blame the people for what you allowed to have happen, see? And so what happened was he never took responsibility for his bad decisions. What he did was he tried to blame someone else for them and what happened was he lost his destiny. He totally missed his destiny.

Why did he miss his destiny? Very, very simply for this one reason; that he would not take responsibility for his failures. What a contrast to David and we see that in the verses there in 2 Samuel 24:10, where David said I have sinned against the Lord. He took full responsibility for his decisions and for his failures. What an amazing thing for a young man to take that kind of responsibility. He never blamed anyone else; he took full ownership, full responsibility. We need to see how clearly it is, you make these quality decisions: I will not be a victim. I will not play the blame game. I will take responsibility for my life. I am what I am because of my choices, not because of someone else. I'm where I am because of my choices, not because of someone else's. I will be in the future where God wants me to be because I chose to be.

Young people, you make choices today that are going to determine the direction of your life. If you look at older people here they look back and they know the decisions they made and why they're where they are now. Is that true or not? Once you got past 40 you're looking back at some of those decisions thinking boy, that wasn't a smart thing at all. There were a lot of bad ones down there [laughs] but don't live in regret! Don't blame someone else. Make a decision I've still got time, I'm going to make the best of the time I have and my life will count. Can you say yes to that? [Yes!] I'll share with you next week five other destiny decisions, crucial choices you make with your life; the first two today, just repeat them so we have them very clear in our minds. The first destiny decision, I will let go of past hurts. I'll release bitterness. I'll release the pain. I'll release wrong beliefs and negativity. I won't hold on to them.

The second one is I'll take personal responsibility. I will say no to self pity and the blame game. I will own my life and begin now to choose to do something with it. Are you lacking in your walk with God? Make a choice to do something. Don't blame someone else. Are you suffering financially? You're probably reaping the choices of bad decisions. Make better decisions; don't blame someone else. If you've got some troubles in your relationships take responsibility to initiate change, don't wait for someone else. If there's a problem and a conflict in the marriage you be the answer, don't wait for someone else to change. Wives, you're worried about your husband and you're resentful of him. You make the change, because you've got power to change. We've all got power to make choices.

[File ends 00.24.00]

Destiny decisions (2 of 2)

Sun 27 May 2007 AM  « Back to Top

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Destiny Decisions (2 of 2) Mike Connell 27.05.2007 am

Ephesians 2:10 - well I know that, I don't need to look to it. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus under good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And we saw last week how God had planned before we were born a course for our life to take, an eternal destination - heaven - and the eternal destiny, things that we will be occupied with throughout eternity. And so before we came into this world God prepared that, but it's our choice to respond to that, and so it says He has prepared works for us to accomplish - so there's no person here that God has not called you firstly into relationship and intimacy, and out of that to accomplish things that advance His kingdom in the earth. And so we're all called to do that and that's the course that we run. We want to get to the end of our course like Paul, who said I have finished my course, I've fought the good fight, I've finished my course, henceforth is laid up for me a crown.

So right now you and I are on a course and I want to run my course as passionately and as strongly as I can and I want to finish it as strongly as I can, and so there is no place for half-heartedness in that. And we saw some decisions we make that actually as a consequence of these decisions our whole future is affected. Everyone makes them and we're not all called to be preachers of the gospel, but we're all called to be ambassadors for Christ. And so we have the power to make any choice we like, but we have no power over the consequences of the choice. Once you've chosen, then there's certain things follow and so when we choose to make decisions that are good and godly and flow with His will, there are tremendous blessings and benefits begin to outwork in our life. Often they're not seen until you've walked with the Lord some years.

Sometimes we make lots of little decisions and they're costly little decisions, and it doesn't seem like its any benefit. But over the course of your life, gradually you see God working and gradually you see tremendous things begin to unfold behind you and you see the fruit of those decisions. Okay then, so we talked about two of those decisions and the first one was I needed to make the decision to let go the past, to say no to bitterness and resentment and unforgiveness. I've got to choose; we make a choice whether we'll harbour things from the past, broken relationships, hurts and woundings, or whether we will position ourself to deal with it. We have courses in the church to deal with these things. By far the most common issue that holds people back is they remain hurt, unforgiving, resentful and locked back to their past and believing negative things that then begin to affect the future. If you want to fulfil your potential you've got to unlock from things that hurt you and set you back.

We do that by the process of acknowledging them, grieving over them, and then forgiving them. Sometimes we've got to repent and release people from things. The second destiny decision we saw was we need to take personal responsibility. We must say no to the blame game, blaming someone else. We must say no to victim thinking. See, all of these things are very, very important, that we make those decisions and if we remain a victim saying well look how badly I was treated and this happened to me and that happened to me, then we're waiting for someone to come through for us and at the same time blaming someone else for why we are where we are. The moment you get into the blame game and don't take responsibility, you have no power. You have power and authority over everything you assume responsibility for, so if God has given you certain things and you don't take responsibility for them, then you will find they will come out of control and be embarrassment for you.

We've got a financial course coming up shortly. Now if you're in debt I encourage you to go the course, because you're in bondage. The Bible says a person in debt is in bondage. The borrower is the servant of the lender, so if you've borrowed off ungodly people you're in bondage to them and it affects your future. I've talked with people in the church and they run everything up on tick and they - see what you do is you're selling your future. You're putting yourself in such bondage you can't fulfil what God calls you to do. If God says I want you to do this, you're just not positioned to do it. So when you get into debt you don't realise your mortgaging your future and there are certain places we can get into debt, but go to the course. Get dominion over your finances. An interesting thing when I talked with Andrew about the whole issue of Uganda we realised an interesting thing. For many people in the church if we gave them $100, they wouldn't get out of their debt. In other words they're below zero.

With Ugandans if we give them $100 they come up above zero and they start to be productive. I thought well man, I looked on them as being poor and I realised actually debt and this whole thing of credit has really crippled the church far more than we realise. So we want to do things that will help you and this course is one way to help you in that - so take personal responsibility. Say no to being a victim. Now let's give you the other ones and I want to get through these today. Each one of them you could develop and think about, but if I just give you them you'll realise and they just - like most things with God, anything that God's in is actually commonsense. You thought oh, I knew that. It doesn't mean to say you're doing it, but you knew it. Okay, so let me give you some of the other destiny decisions. These are important decisions.

Here's one of them which is very important: pursue excellence. Pursue excellence. In other words say no to mediocrity and half-heartedness; no to mediocrity and half-heartedness. Let me give you a verse in Colossians 3:23. Let's have a look at that. Excellence doesn't mean that I'm the best around. Excellence means I'm committed to do the best I can and to continually work to improve, so I never settle down for half-heartedness, see? Sometimes we use the word excellence; you say well that's beyond me. That's for other people. No, no, no, excellence is when you do your very best. When you use whatever resources and ability you've got and you do the very best you can, that's excellence and then when you continue to work to improve then that's excellence. That's the commitment to excellence, otherwise we look and we say I could never be like that, see?

So in Colossians 3:23 notice what it tells us here. Whatever you do, whatever you do do it from the heart or with excellence. Do it wholeheartedly as if you were doing it for the Lord and not unto men. And here's the reason why we do that, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of inheritance. So this has got destiny implications in it. I need to approach my life that I will never devalue myself by ever doing something half-heartedly. I'll never be involved in something mediocre. If it's mediocre change it and make it excellent, but don't give your life to something that's half-hearted. It will diminish your value. We must make a decision inside, if we're going to do something do it really well. One of the things I was delighted to see that in Uganda the property that John has got where they've got a house rented and they've got their offices in, is the sharpest looking one in the whole city.

They just keep it clean and they look after it. Everyone else just lets things run down - and so excellence. Mediocre means literally barely adequate, barely adequate, moderate to inferior in quality. So think about the jobs you do young people; your room. [Laughter] Moderate, mediocre, half-hearted, poor quality. That's not excellence. The funny thing about excellence is when you've committed to excellence in your life and you just do whatever you do well, what happens is it creates a draw of good things into your life. When you do things half-heartedly people are repelled you. No one likes half-heartedness. No one likes a tradesman who's half-hearted. No one likes a job that was done and it was a mediocre job. Just no one likes it, they don't come back, so excellence has a way of attracting and drawing results. Excellence honours God and it seems to attract people. It seems to do something. Excellence means or to excel means go beyond a limit or standard, to rise high and distinguish yourself.

So you could do the floors, you could clean the floors with excellence. See, it shows up there. You could clean the toilets with excellence. See, it's not like you've got to have some big quality. It's just what you do you do it well. I heard someone say one time how come you haven't got the time to do it well, but you have got the time to do it again? [Laughter] Think about that. Think about that. Just whatever you put your hand to, say I'm going to do it well. I'll do it so it stands up and salutes and says yes sir, and people know that was a good job. See, whatever we do. Now one of the things that's been a blight in the church and has greatly caused the community to be turned off is mediocrity, half-heartedness, lukewarmness. You have a look around a lot of church facilities you go to and you find they don't represent an excellent King. They don't represent an excellent God. They look run down, shoddy and everything inside looks like it's tired and about to give up.

That doesn't inspire me at all. I'm not attracted to anything like that, and if you say that God's in that then I'm not attracted to the God that's in that. See, but when there's excellence, there's something about excellence that inspires us. The Queen of Sheba came to Solomon and the Bible tells us her breath was taken away because everything was excellent. It says there was no more spirit in her, so excellence honours God. He's an excellent God, so when we do things well what we're doing is we're making a decision to position ourself for God's very best as well. There are many examples. We shared a couple of them before. Let me give you another one. In Proverbs 10:4 it says he who deals with a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. So it's a personal choice not to take on the she'll be right attitude; oh she'll be right, it's near enough.

Now listen, you've got to say no. If I'm going to do it I'll do it well. Now that comes to your job, it comes to your school work, it comes to your housework. It comes to everything we do, we do it well. That's why one of the things I love about this church, people who come here, they just love the way they're greeted and the hospitality and the way they're met and the way they're looked after. They just go away inspired. They go away inspired because most places they go it isn't like that, but we've been working to build excellence into the church in every area. That's why we put money into facilities, keep everything sharp. It doesn't need to be extravagant, but it just needs to be sharp, a cut above the ordinary. And to do that takes effort. You've got to maintain things, you've got to keep them looking sharp. You've got to keep them painted, you've got to keep them maintained.

Think about your home. Does your home when you look around the grounds and look around, when someone stands outside your home do they see excellence? Not seeing rich, we're talking excellence, that things are kept tidy and sharp. Actually what you do, you present yourself well. It's almost certain that in those little things you will reveal certain aspects of your character, so are you known as someone that's chosen I'll never do anything half-hearted. Whatever I do I always do it well. That's a pathway to promotion and if people know that it's a pathway to promotion, how much more does God know it's the way for you to go forward in your destiny? I want to share with you a couple of examples from the Bible. We won't look them up but you do know them quite well.

In Revelations 3:14-16, there was a church in Laodicea and it was rejected or it lost its destiny. And Jesus Himself spoke why it lost its destiny; He said because of half-heartedness and lukewarmness. Lukewarmness costs you your destiny. That's why if you're a lukewarm Christian you're probably the most miserable of all people, because you haven't enough world to help you keep happy. You're sort of saying no to that most of the time, and you haven't got enough of God to actually inspire you and motivate and energise you, so you're in this energy-less place - whereas I know if I give my very best to God in worship, best to God in prayer; I give Him the best I find He gives also His best to me. See, that's why - for me to get up early and to come to be here today, whether I was preaching or not I still want to be in the presence of God. I can't stand the thought of three Sundays and missing what we have here. It's just a mentality you begin to develop.

My father-in-law told me, he said never be involved in anything that's mediocre, and I'm involved in something that's not mediocre. It's called the kingdom of God. It's an excellent kingdom - so you notice here the church in Laodicea, He says because you're half-hearted I'll spit you out, so even God doesn't like mediocrity. In Malachi He says half-hearted offerings, I'm not interested in those either. See, there's nothing about half-heartedness that draws God to honour our work, but when we do it well see, when we do it well; when it's done with a full heart and passion - maybe no one sees it but God who watches sees we're making good destiny decisions. Think about it. How could God trust you to be excellent with His work if you can't be excellent with what you already have, see? So let's say no to mediocrity, no to half-heartedness.

See and same in the worship. Half-hearted worship - you know one of the things I've noticed about half-hearted worship? God's presence never comes. So if we're cold and down and miserable and we can't be bothered, you know what happens? God can't be bothered either. His presence doesn't come into the church, and so I have to continually work with the musicians, also with the church, that when you come and the moment we get here we get here right on time. We're ready to start right on time. Why? You wouldn't miss a dentist appointment. You wouldn't miss a doctor's appointment. You wouldn't miss an appointment with your banker. You wouldn't miss these appointments, you'd be there on time - but with God, oh she'll be right. And then we wonder why if we're she'll be right with God, that we don't actually see and enjoy God's favour in our life. You can't treat Him that way, He's a person. And you know yourself if someone always treats you in a half-hearted way, you're not going to respond.

How much more will the living God be the same? And so you see there that half-heartedness, whereas we can see in Daniel 6:1-4, remember what it tells about Daniel. I love this about Daniel. Boy I love this verse here. It says this about Daniel: It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be over the whole kingdom; and over these were three governors of whom Daniel was one, that the satraps might give account to them so that the king would suffer no loss. Then this Daniel distinguished himself above all the governors and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to setting him over the whole realm. So the governors and satraps sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom; they could find no charge or fault because he was faithful; there was no error or fault. He was excellent. He wasn't mediocre. He didn't say oh that's near enough. He was actually attentive to details.

He was attentive to details. He made sure things were done and they were done well, and so you notice here he became promoted. Why did this happen? Because he had an excellent spirit in him. What spirit did he have in him? The Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God's an excellent spirit. He inspires us to do things well. This is why when we're dealing with Uganda we've actually just refused to go forward until they start to do things right and do it well. Then we add more to them - and it's the same for you. If you want to go forward, if you want God's favour in your life, we need to make a decision what I'm going to do is choose excellence. Here's another one: choose character. Develop character. Here's another destiny decision, develop strong character and say no to compromise. Develop strong character, strong character. In Romans 8:29 the Bible tells us that He has predestined us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, His Son, the First Born of many brothers.

So God's plan and God's destiny is we become Christ-like in character, so when you make a commitment to grow your character and develop your character, you're making a commitment to your destiny - because I've noticed this. I was sharing this with someone else the other day. I haven't got a whiteboard or anything; if you could imagine just for a moment three circles like this, one here and there's one nice big circle there, another one intersecting it and then a third one intersecting it okay? Now pretty well all you see in a person's life is the top circle, the gift that they have. The top circle is their gift. The Bible says a gift will make room for you, so if you've got giftings in your life, you're musical or creative or quite gifted [an accountant 00.16.50] then it'll open a door for you. But what keeps you in that place is your character and your spirit or attitude that you carry.

So you'll find a person that you receive and give them a job because he's got great gifting, if he hasn't got a good character to go with it eventually you'll want to fire him. If he defiles and messes up the relationships because he hasn't got a good spirit and ability to connect and relate to people, then also he'll probably get fired as well. So what I've noticed over years now with people, that people make the most of all their gifts and highlight what they're gifted at, but actually it's your character and your spirit that determines whether you can build anything big. And so if we're going to really advance in our life the things we can give attention to are our character and the spirit that we carry, so we carry an excellent spirit and also we develop our character. So what do we mean develop your character? Well what about the area of being faithful, that when you give your word you can be relied on. That's character.

What about being honest? There's absolutely no dishonesty in any area of your life; that's your character. What about generosity, where you're abundantly generous and bless the people around you, sow into them and give to them and assist them and encourage them. These are character areas. What about the area of courage, the ability to be able to stand in the place of compromise and say no, I'm not going to go with the crowd. So I've seen heaps of gifted people over the while, but the only ones I've seen produce lasting fruit and go forward in God are those who actually address the issue of having an excellent spirit, a right spirit, and also develop their character so they've got a strong, reliable character. Give me character anytime, because at least I know can rely on him - but if I can get character and gifting and good spirit, you've got someone who can really produce, someone who'll go forward in God.

Now you see character is something you can work on. How often do you give a little word, say you're going to do something and don't do it? These are the kinds of things that are part of our character, so all of those issues we can work on. Now let me give you a couple of people, one who missed their destiny because of their character; the other one who got his destiny because of his character. Here's one of them, 2 Kings 5:20-27. There was a man by the name Gehazi. Now Gehazi had a unique opportunity. Elijah was a man anointed by God and he chose a disciple Elisha. Elisha received a double portion of what Elijah had. He did twice as many miracles. His servant was Gehazi. His disciple was Gehazi, so Gehazi was positioned to be able to flow in the anointing of the supernatural and to replace Elisha when Elisha died. What an amazing opportunity! And so he was positioned in his life by serving Elisha to eventually have the mantel of Elisha on him, and be able to have a unique influence in the nation.

But Elisha had a different heart and character to him, so what happened was when the Syrian came along Elisha spoke to him directions and the man received a miracle, and Naaman the Syrian wanted to give to Elisha some money. Elisha said no money, I'm not taking any money - because if he took money there'd be a sense where the obligation had gone. By taking no money he showed a pure heart and attitude, and he left the possibility of a strategic relationship open. But you see what happened Gehazi looks and says man, this Syrian, well we should have taken something off him. He got this miracle. He's going to die you know, he's a leper. Man, this is wrong, I need to do something about this - so he sneaked out and he said listen, my master's had a change of mind and what he wants is a little bit of gold and a bit of silver and some clothes. Can you help him out? And he said yeah, fine.

He gave him all the clothes. He took them all away, took the silver and the gold, and of course Elisha saw in the spirit what had happened. Elisha confronted him and the result of his sin was he got leprosy, his family got leprosy, his descendants had a curse of leprosy over them and they missed their destiny completely. Now this is not written there for nothing. This is written to help us to see that character has a huge impact on the destiny that we have. I look at the years of ministries I've seen that have fallen; they never fell because they weren't gifted, never fell because they weren't - a love for God. They fell because in the area of character there was compromise somewhere, so think about your own life and ministry. Think about what you do. Build and develop character, faithfulness in small things. Here's someone, Daniel 3:17-18: Daniel's three friends and they're faced with this compromise. The king had put a huge gold idol up and he said everyone has got to bow down and follow the culture.

Now young people, it's a great message for you if you look into that. They were forced to conform to the peer group and the three guys said well listen, you know, we're not going to do that. And so they were brought to the king and the king said do it! Bow down or you burn! They said well king, we understand what you're saying, but he said our God who we serve is able to deliver us. But if He doesn't there's no way we're bowing down. We're going to suffer for our faith, even to the point of death. I have just been reading recently articles concerning Christians in Turkey who have been tortured to the point of death, rather than compromise their faith in Christ. See and these guys here, it says they were promoted as a result of that, so God gave them grace. They were spared. There was a miracles intervention by the Lord and they came up and they are examples for us of people who never compromised and fulfilled their destiny.

Joseph's another one, refused to compromise over sexual sin and he came into his destiny. The Bible's full of this. Think of other examples of people who fell because of this. Here's another one then. Here's number five. Here's another decision that will impact your destiny or your future. Now remember each of these decisions actually have lifelong application and consequences. A person who's excellent at the beginning will be excellent right through his life. A person who builds character will be a charactered person right through their life. Here's another one: build or pursue vital relationships. If we want to succeed in fulfilling our destiny we'll never do it alone. Say no to going it alone. Say no to going it alone. We are made for relationships. In Proverbs 18:1 it says the one who isolates himself is seeking his own agenda. A person who isolates themself or separates from relationships with other people has got their own plan, their own agenda, and it does not include others.

So I've found inevitably when a person isolates themself they've got something going on inside them that isn't right. Even in a flock a sheep that isolates itself is usually sick. Now this is what the Bible tells us in Proverbs 13:20. The person who walks with wise men will become wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed. So the people closest to you have a huge impact on where your life goes. The people closest to you have a huge impact on where your life goes, so who are you letting into your heart? Who are you letting into your life? Do you have relationships you're consciously building which are vital; they give you life and they inspire to come up another level? Now the ones we feel comfortable with are the ones who are a little lower than us. We feel comfortable with them, there's no challenge there. They think we're wonderful.

The ones who are above us or they've got greater character, greater success, greater capacity, greater vision, greater faith, greater prayer life; we feel a little uncomfortable when we're with them because we become aware where we are. But those are the ones that help you come up another level, so every one of us needs to make a decision if we're going to fulfil our destiny, I need others to help me get there. I can't get there alone. This is one of the reasons for small groups in the church, to have relationships where people know you, they can encourage you, they can stand with you, but particularly so you can be supported to go forward. So vital relationships are absolutely crucial - and that means you've got to pursue them. Now sometimes that can be difficult. If you had a mentor, if you had someone who could coach you to success, give you direction in your life and help you, you would quickly accelerate your growth.

So when people coach us or we have a personal coach or someone speaks into your life, what it does is it accelerates the process of change, rather than trying to just do it all on your own. Don't be distracted, just keep focus. Here we are, let me give you two examples of people. I want to show you two who missed their destiny because they missed vital relationships. The first one is Jonathan. Jonathan, through covenant with David, was destined to be on the throne beside him, but he died in a battlefield next to his father. He missed his destiny because of loyalty to something that was about to pass away, loyalty to the old. It was what you'd call a misplaced loyalty. Some people are holding to relationships and connections that long ago should have been let go of, because they're no longer part of where you are and where you're going. False loyalty can lock us - I've seen people cover up in their family horrendous abuse because of false loyalty.

See, false loyalty means when we violate the word of God in conscience in order to maintain a connection with someone. We need to actually understand the importance of dealing with this issue in our lives, of actually ensuring we're connected where God is moving and with what God is doing. Another example is Demas. Demas was another guy who missed his calling. Demas was a friend of Paul. He was next to the apostle Paul. Paul writes Paul and Demas and Timothy and the other ones who [were here, 00.26.26] then later on he says this. He said Demas has departed from me having loved this world. So Demas had a apostolic call. He was moving in the supernatural, but when it got hard he began to think of how easy it would be in the world and so he left the call of ministry and went back away from that. The Bible says he actually left his destiny. He left what he was called to be. What a unique opportunity working next to the apostle Paul - a bit challenging but [laughs]. But he left it. He quit. He just quit when it got tough.

I've seen heaps of people - how many people have seen a Christian quit when it got tough, and if you think about their life they just never have gone right since then? I can think of heaps of them, because they disconnected from vital relationships, often because they got offended or needed to change and they didn't change. An example of person who fulfilled his destiny was Elisha. Elisha remained connected to Elijah and would not let go, and he got something that took him into the future. Here are the last couple of destiny decisions. The next one is you need to develop a plan. Without a vision - Proverbs 29 tells us without a vision we perish. We miss the opportunities in life unless we have some kind of plan in our life, so I encourage you to think about planning. It's a decision to plan. Everything that's going to get you somewhere is going to take a plan. The Bible says the plans of the diligent make a person rich. It says the simple person passes on and he misses opportunities.

Every one of us needs to set some kind of goals. Goals are just the plan you have with some steps to get there. No planning financially, your finances will be in a mess. No planning concerning a marriage, your marriage will be in a mess. No planning concerning family, you'll have heaps of kids. [Laughter] I can tell you now. [Laughter] See, so but in order for us to go forward we need to actually plan how we're going to go forward. Let me ask you this: if your finances are going to go forward what plan do you have in place? If your marriage is going to deepen in intimacy what plan do you have in place? If your spiritual life is going to improve what plan do you have in place? If your relationships are going to develop what plan do you have in place? Young women, if you're looking for a man what plan do you have in place to grow yourself as a person? Men, if you're looking for some woman, don't look for the woman; what plan have you got in place to grow yourself so you'll be a great catch?

Come on, you think everything in life has got a plan. Even this building was built with a plan. There's nothing constructed eternally that doesn't have a plan it in. God has a plan and He works it out step by step, so start to plan. If you want your destiny to be fulfilled you've got to start to make plans that your life will follow a course by vision and not by just circumstance. And finally the last one is cultivate intimacy with God. Probably the most important of all is to cultivate intimacy with God. Proverbs [3:3-5 00.29.14] it says Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways be intimate with God and He will direct your paths, see? So if we want God to direct our path into our destiny there has to come a point where you stop trying to lean on your own ability and just trust yourself to walk with God and begin to be intimate with Him, opening your heart to Him about your plans, the affairs of your life.

These are decisions that affect destiny. I have watched people, observed people and I've noticed that people who have moved forward and made an impact with their life, all of these things are operating in their life. What about your life? What's happening there? Let's just close our eyes for a moment right now. When we cultivate intimacy with God we're saying no to becoming religious. The Pharisees were religious and never had a destiny, failed altogether. See, David was not religious. David had intimacy with God and fulfilled the will of God - so here's some decisions for us to make. As we think about those decisions, seven decisions, each one of them you work it out in your life, and as I look at people around me I see people who have already done that and you can see their lives going forward; decision to let go of past offences, what a great thing.

A decision to take responsibility, what a great thing to choose to be responsible for my life and future; a decision to develop character, a decision to pursue excellence, a decision to pursue strong and supportive vital relationships and not be a loner. All of these are vital decisions, decision that I will build intimacy in my life with God, a vital decision.

[File ends 00.31.00]

Sunday Sermons

1. Gods Mandate to Parents

Sun 18 Mar 2007 AM  « Back to Top

Notes»  Audio»  Website»

Controversial "anti-smacking" legislation has recently been passed here in NZ. I just want to give some help and some biblical perspective to it, so I want to talk about this whole issue of the smacking issue, of whether to smack or not to smack but it's a lot deeper than that. What does God have to say about this matter?

So how many have been aware that there's a big issue going on at the moment, about changes to the law? About half the church. I wonder where the other half live? [Laughs] What I felt to do was, because this is an area which has got a lot of emotion in it, I just want to give some help, and some perspective to it. So I want to talk about this whole issue of the smacking issue, of whether to smack or not to smack; but it's a lot deeper than that. What I know will happen is, a lot of people get a lot of emotions, and they'll jump up and down, and they'll say all kinds of things, and then key issues will be lost in the middle of it.

So what I want to do is, I want to just look at what's about to happen, how it affects us, and then I want to just talk with you and get some Biblical perspective, because if we don't come from a Bible framework, basically the framework you come from in your thinking is: well, a couple of whacks didn't do me any harm, so won't do my kids any harm, see? Now most people, that's how they think, but this is not what the issue is really about: what did you harm; or didn't do you harm. From a Christian perspective, we need to understand what God says. If you don't know what God says, then you'll have your opinions; and the question is, whether you want to run your life out of opinions, or whether we want to run our life out of revelation, what God says.

What I tend to find is, Christians have a heap of opinions; so if their parents didn't smack, they say: you don't need that, you can be a great person without that. Our parents did smack - it never hurt me; and so there's all these kinds of opinions, but what is seldom brought to light is: what does God have to say about this matter. The Bible has a lot of things to say about it, and I found generally Christians tend to get very emotional, so some will jump up and down about the law change, and miss the point completely. So what I want to do is, to just get some perspective on it, and we'll look at some things. So let's first of all look at Romans Chapter 13, just get a little bit of overall perspective.

In Verse 1 through the first three or four verses, and it says: let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except of God, and the authorities that exist have been appointed, or are appointed by God. So whoever resists the authority, resists what God has ordered, and those who resist then will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers or authorities are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of authority? Do what's good, and you will have praise from the same. Now look at this statement: For he is God's minister to you for good. That's a hard one to swallow, but it is true. He is God's minister to you, for good; but if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.

For he is God's minister to you for good. If you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is God's minister. Notice how this 'minister', authorities are God's minister. Now that's mentioned about three times. So you think of a minister, you think immediately of someone up on a stage, a preacher or something. What's hard for us to understand, is that God has got many ministers. When you meet a policeman, he's God's minister. See that's a hard one to swallow, unless you understand how God has ordered things and set things up, and what he requires of us, see? So that's what we want - the bigger picture.

So one of the things is that God has a role for government. The government's role is basically stewardship and protection of the people in the nation. One of the major mandates of government, is that they should protect the nation, and one of the things that happens in a nation, is when the character of a nation decreases - character's connected to our ability to be responsible people. When our ability to be responsible decreases, we become irresponsible, our character declines, inevitably the government will bring in more rules and regulations. It's just a matter of how it works. For example, the ability to have freedom depends on you being responsible, so if you're irresponsible enough, eventually you lose your freedoms, and if you're really irresponsible then they put you in jail. Then you don't even have the freedom to turn your light on and off, eat when you want, come in and go out. Someone does it all for you. Irresponsibility leads to loss of freedom. Responsibility leads to increasing freedom. This is just a principle, and so when a nation goes into spiritual decline, and their personal character declines, and they just want to do what they want to do, inevitably the nation becomes more irresponsible, and then government brings in laws. So we should not be up in arms and jumping up and down about government invading the home. You have to see there's a bigger picture here, and I want to show you how to fit within the bigger picture, and to have a good perspective on it all, otherwise you'll be jumping up and down, and at times may even look a bit silly about it.

New Zealand has an appalling record in the area of abuse of children. In terms of the United Nations hit list, we're near the bottom for the area of welfare and safety of children. In other words, there's more risk to people or children in New Zealand, of abuse and violence, than there is in many nations of the world. That is appalling - yet we say we're a free nation, great nation, beautiful nation to come, and yet you read the stories of children being beaten, being abused and being violently put to death, the most horrendous stories. This does not happen all over the world, and so from the United Nations list, of western countries particularly, we are well down in terms of care of children. It's an embarrassment to the nation, and an indication of the decline of the nation. It's inevitable, in that environment, people want to bring laws to try and regulate it.

Of course as we're well aware, you can't change what people are doing by passing another law, and as we'll see the proposal that's there at the moment is to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act, and it says something like this: Every person in the place of a parent of a child, is justified in using force by way of correction towards that child, if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances. That's the provision at the moment. What they're planning to do is remove that, and one of the reasons for removing it is of course the bigger picture of the abuse right through the nation, and of course many parents have actually abused their children and then hidden behind that law, and have got off actually being held to account for their abusive behaviour.

So the government's response, or kneejerk response, or philosophical response, basically they want to change the law. They want to remove now that provision for a parent. Let's read it again. Every person in place of a parent of a child - the parents - are justified in using force, by way of correction, towards the child. In other words it's saying: you can use physical force to correct a child, provided the force is reasonable. Now what they're doing is taking all that away, and of course there's going to be a lot of dilemmas. The proposals won't change this, but what they will do will mean that good parents will then be turned into criminals by the use of force against their children in any kind of way. This has huge implications, and I have looked up some of the articles that have been written about it.

The proposed change won't save the problem. What it'll mean is that, if you as a parent want to spank your child, any neighbour who notices, any teacher who notices or hears about it, your child reports it to anyone, the police will be required to investigate, and the result of that is, they will be required by law to act if a complaint is made. Now you can understand the tremendous distrust this will produce in our society. It's very, very bad, and the law won't stop those who are doing this from doing this. All the law will do is make criminals out of the ones who are acting responsibly, and this is where a huge issue is. Now of course it will place the child in the same position as an adult, and this is the bit I want you to understand. I don't want us to be jumping up and down about government passing laws. This is relatively ineffective.

I want you to understand how God wants us to respond in the midst of a situation like this. Otherwise you'll be the smacking group, the non-smacking group, everyone will argue, come up with their experts and whatever, and they do all this kind of arguing. We do a survey. No one wants the law changed. The government changes the law. We know how it goes, and we've seen it already a number of times, that the government actually has it's own philosophy. They have their philosophical base, their own philosophy. They have a belief system upon which they make laws. Now this is the bit that I want to get you to, is I want you to understand why it is a Christian believes certain things, and what the issues are for a Christian, because you'll jump up and down about someone taking away your rights, when God is more interested in you accepting your responsibilities. So what people will tend to do is jump up and down about invasion of their home and their rights by the government, and the rights to do this; they get all angry about my rights being taken away, but what they won't do - and this is the thing we need to do - is look at what our responsibilities are, and be sure that we fulfil our responsibilities, rather than just jump up and down about the rights.

Should we say something? Yes, we should. Should we stand up? Yes, we should. But don't stand up over the wrong issues, and when you do talk with people about this, because it's going to be a big talking issue, you need to know what to say. You need to know where you stand. Unfortunately many people in the church who actually do not - they're not good parents. They have no understanding of God's purpose for them as parents, no understanding of God's design for the raising of children, and how that should be done. They operate primarily out of, well this is how I was raised, didn't me too much harm, it should be okay for my kids. Listen, when you become a Christian, your reference point is God and His word and eternity; not the old way you used to do stuff. In other words, when we come to Christ, we're introduced to a kingdom, a king and His purposes and plans and principles, and ways of going about things.

Now of course we bring cultural baggage, so if you're a white person, Pakeha or whatever, you'll bring in a certain kind of approach to this. If you're from a Maori or a tribal culture of any kind, you'll bring in another kind of approach; but these are not what is relevant. What is really relevant is we find what God says, His principles, then we learn how to apply them, and in doing so you will always stand against the culture, and you'll always do things that culture will disapprove of. You have to decide in your heart, whether you're called to represent Christ, and be an ambassador for the kingdom, or you're just going to copy the crowd, and go with the crowd. In the Maori people, the level of abuse of children is horrific, and I am appalled at the lack of Maori voices speaking up about it. It's a huge issue, but it's a covered issue, because prevailing thought is: well, we have our way of dealing with it. This is not acceptable. We need to see what God says about it, and understand that children become demonised when they're abused either by physical or sexual abuse, or emotional abuse or anger. They're hurt. We leave a bad legacy for the next generation, and we've got to be nation-builders, legacy-imparters.

So we've got to think a little differently about the children we're raising up, what we're doing with them, and what God calls us to do, so if you don't understand what God called you to do, you will just follow your own opinions, or the prevailing voice of the 'experts', and what you'll find is, the experts aren't experts. The only one I know who's an expert is the Holy Spirit, and He's written words down here, which tell us how to do life, and if we don't follow Him and follow the word of God, we'll listen to a whole of so called 'experts'. Now I believe we need to learn, but what you've got to understand is many of them actually do not come from a Biblical way of thinking. They come from a different base of thinking; philosophy's a base of thinking, and they produce different results to what God wants. So what you'll find is there's a lot of things you can read about that are actually really helpful, but often they miss the key point, and so what I want to do is I'll just show you a few things from scripture. I want to help you see what is a key base difference, between the way a believer would approach the issue of child raising, and a person who's a non-believer. This is foundational. It's actually at the core of how you see the whole deal, and parents today have been totally disempowered. See one of the problems with this law, it will lift up children, and put them almost on a par with adults, and that will make it very difficult for parents to actually do the job God called them to do. So this law will in effect, although it comes supposedly with good intentions, have some terrible consequences - but I don't want to worry about that so much, because laws come and laws go, governments rise and governments fall. It's more that we, in the middle of it, actually think according to God's way. That make sense?

Okay then, so what I want to do then we'll just have a look here in this verse here. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except of God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. So firstly I want to look at God's mandate to parents, God's purpose and mandate for parents. You need to understand why you're parents. Well just parents have kids, and we raise the kids, and they get off. Then we retire and we die, and then they carry on. Listen, is that all there is to it? Man, I've spent a whole two months trying to get us to realise that whatever God does is for eternity, see? So we need to understand that when you have children, you're bringing an eternal being into this world, and need to understand how to go about fulfilling your responsibility.

When you come home from the hospital with a wonderful little child, you now have a responsibility and a mandate from God, and we need to know what God says about it. So God has a purpose for parents. He has a responsibility He entrusts to you, and with that responsibility He gives you certain authority to act. So God called every person, adults and children, to come under His authority. The core of sin is, I want to run my life my way. That's sin. We tend to think of sin as breaking, you know, killing, murdering - that's all sin, but then sin is deeper than that. Sin is actually, I don't want anyone, especially God, or any of His representatives, to tell me what to do with my life. I want to be the sole source of what I will do. I want to run my life my way, with no accountability to any person. I want to be able to do what I want to do. That is freedom, for this generation.

Now you see that's what the Bible calls sin and lawlessness. God wont' tolerate it! So God has devised and formed several structures in society; number one, family; number two, the church; number three, government; number four, business - business all through the Bible, God's all into business; but there are certain principles and responsibilities in the governing of the business. The Bible's full of that as well, what a worker should do, their responsibilities; what an employer's responsibilities are, and their authority. Parents, parents have responsibilities; so we're going to look at your responsibilities in a moment, and children also have responsibilities. If you're a child, God speaks to you directly, and He gives you certain responsibilities, and what's wonderful, He says if you will fulfil these responsibilities, there's certain things I can guarantee you will happen in your life.

Okay then, so God calls parents. He has invested us with authority, notice what it says; let every soul. How many are left out of that one? No one, no one left out. Let every soul be subject to higher powers. That word subject means this; it means to position yourself under an authority, following their direction, so together you can accomplish a common task. It's to place yourself under someone God's put over you, with a view to co-operating and getting a task done, so when the Bible tells children to be subject to their parents, it's saying put yourself voluntarily under their leadership; because they have a task, they have something God's given them to do, and it can only take place if you will respond to their leadership in your life. So everywhere in life it's got to operate that way, so parents have authority. You know why a parent has authority? You have an authority because God gives it to you, and the government can't take it away. God has given you a responsibility to fulfil, and with that, authority, the legal right to speak and act. That's what authority is. It's delegated to you from God.

You have the responsibility to do certain things with your children, and then God gives you the right to speak and act on His behalf, to make that happen. You have to understand, that it is God gave you the authority as a parent, God gives you the responsibility as a parent, so when the government, or any kind of civic authority, tries to alter the standing of a child, put a child on the same standing as a parent, they violate God's basic order, because God has said something like this: parents, you're in charge. You pay the way, you're in charge. Parents are in charge, so if you're a parent, you are to be in charge. Now that one thing alone, we'd have a whole heap of problems with many people - often, so many of them from Havelock [expensive suburb] - I've noticed have real trouble understanding: parents, you're in charge. You're in charge of your children.

We've had many debates and arguments with parents, who don't realise they're in charge of their children. God has given you that responsibility, and if He gave you the responsibility, He expects you to perform it. He gives you the ability and grace to perform it, and He expects of you, that you give account for what you've done. You cannot yield up something God entrusted to you, and put it in the hands of another. You need to be involved with your children, involved in what God calls you to do, and I'm going to show you two major things that God tells parents very clearly, some things He tells us very clearly what to do.

Let's have a look in Genesis 18:19. I have chosen Abraham. I know him. He will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord. Notice what it says. Abraham I know, and I've chosen Abraham. I know him, I know what he's like. He will command his children and his household after him, and they will keep the way of the Lord. Isn't that a wonderful verse? To do what's right, and to do what's just. Isn't that wonderful, God's mandate to a parent. So you notice here with Abraham, God said: he will command his children. Now what are you going to command them? Not to just do what he wants them to do. See parents, you've got to understand this, when God gives you the authority to lead your family, it's not to just do what you want them to do. It's not just that you'll do as you'll please. If you'll do as you please, you're modelling what it is to be a lawless person. We're not to do as we please as parents. We're actually to teach kids to walk right, because they're an inheritance of the Lord. They're something we're raising up for the Lord. They'll go on either - listen, your child that's born, is an eternal being, who will go on into heaven for eternity, or go on into hell for eternity, and you're the one who has the greatest influence in forming them. So He says: I know Abraham. He will command, he will give clear direction, clear leadership, and he will require his household to walk in a certain way. What way? To do what's right, and to act justly, and to keep the ways of God; so Abraham, the father of our faith, was a man who gave direction to his household, and directed them in godly ways.

Parents, you are charged with directing your household. You're charged with giving direction, and that will require setting boundaries. It will require establishing relationship. It will require setting requirements out. You've got a duty. This is part of what it is, to fulfil God's mandate to you. See God has given you that responsibility. Deuteronomy 6, Verses 4 to 6; If I was to ask you what is the great command, you say: that's you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. Well of course that's only a little part of it. You read the rest of it; You shall love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul, Verse 5, and with all your soul and all your strength, and the words I command you will be in your heart, and you will teach them diligently to your children, and talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You'll bind them as a sign on your hands, writing on your hands, and on the doorposts.

In other words He's saying, parents, He said you're called to passionately love God, and then you're called actually to raise up, train, direct and cultivate an environment where your kids will be followers of God as well. So there's a responsibility in the first commandment, not just to love God passionately, but to express it in what we do within our family. The first place we see your love for God, is in your family, in your marriage, and with your children. Make no mistake about it, you may be very good in business, or very good in ministry, very good at this or that, but if you're failing at home, you're failing your primary mandate - the primary mandate, the first one. In the marriage, and in the family, you have a mandate from God. You have a responsibility from God, something you're expected to fulfil; and you need to know what it is, and understand how to do it, so no government regulation rule changes or swerves you from what you ought to do. I know how these things work. I've been in education.

I went down to a school thing just recently, and they were telling us - they wanted parents to come and meet and hear about the latest thing. Okay, I'll see the latest thing that they're doing - and the latest thing apparently was phonics. I said: well isn't this a lovely thing. Thirty years ago I battled with the Department over phonics. They said phonics is out. I argued with them and said it works, so we're not putting it out, we're keeping it, and we had all kinds of contentions over it. I said: well who's going to help the children that you'll mess up on the way with your new fancy programming? And you know 20 to 30 years later, we've got a whole generation don't read too well, and part of it is the programmes they brought in, that were at the wisdom of the experts. I almost put my hand up and said: this new programme was a proven programme 20 to 30 years ago, was taken out by experts, and you're bringing it back in. Here's my question; who will put their hand up and say: we were wrong?

I have no confidence in the experts - confidence in the word of God. You've got to think that way. You're a Christian. Your orientation's how God says it's to be. Okay then, so keep going, then we read - so notice here the responsibility. Now look at this in Ephesians 6, Verse 4; Fathers - now does this mean mothers are not included, no. Fathers, God speaks to fathers, because He puts the responsibility right at the top. Father's called to be the head of the home, head of the wife, and as a partner they work together, and part of the responsibility of husband and wife of course, is to raise their children. You can't raise your children right unless you're in agreement, and cultivate your marriage relationship where it overflows to raise the children right. If you don't cultivate your marriage, then you don't bear a witness that God's ways work. You're actually a living excuse for sin. Don't be surprised if your kids rebel.

Okay, notice what it says here, Verse 4; You fathers, okay then, you fathers - now mothers, you can listen in with this, but realise the mandate's given to dad. You share the mandate together, because God brought the woman to work with the man, as a partner in life for him. So fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, don't get them angry - well I won't go down all the reasons you get them angry, but one way you get them angry, is you lash out them. You try to discipline them with anger and frustration, or you're not there, you're too busy in your work, or you're inconsistent in what you do, or you don't explain and talk and enter their heart. These are all the ways that get kids really, really angry. Smacking can get kids really angry, if there's no heart connection, and consistent principles of why you're doing this, and what it's designed to do; so you have to actually have an explanation. You have to actually have relationship, so it says: fathers, do not get your kids mad at you, or angry or upset and frustrated.

Now one of the problems I had in teaching, is the numbers of young people that are angry, and they're angry because of the way parents are wrongly parenting them, and so we've got to learn what to do. Notice, now it tells us what to do, tells us don't do that, don't get them mad. Don't get them all angry. Well they will get angry sometimes, when you cross their way. He's not talking about that here. Bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord, or bring them up. Bring them up. In other words it says, you must give direction, dads. You are responsible in the home, to give leadership to your family, to train them. That's to prepare them for something in life, and to bring them up in the admonition of the Lord. That means you are warning them, encouraging them, confronting them, about God's ways of life; how to succeed in life. Now that's a whole - I could share a lot on it. We'll just keep it at that point. You are called to actually shape and form the young life, that they might be useful to God, and to do that, there's certain things are right and certain things are wrong, and you've sometimes got to direct them which is the right way.

To do that you cannot rely on church to do it. How can one hour on Sunday hope in any kind of - how could you think one hour could possibly in any way override all you did, or didn't do, through the week? The primary responsibility is the parents. Who was responsible for the parent's education? I challenge you to find anywhere in the Bible where it says the government is. Try to find it - but parents, you are responsible for your child's training, and that's every aspect, character, spiritual life, their relational life, their connections, their education, every part of it, you are responsible. You may not do it all, but you are held responsible to bring them up, and not just any education, but you're called to train them and bring them up in how to walk in God's ways. Don't think the kids can do it for you. Don't think the youth group can do it for you. They can only provide an environment where there's a corporate thing happening, where kids get shown some things, but you've got to do it. That's why it said: love the Lord passionately, and then talk to your kids daily on the way, when you get up, every situation in life.

Some good evangelical families have a little family devotion. All very wonderful, but if you don't talk about life with the kids, and show how to connect what they're doing to life, you're missing it. Okay then, so we see there, very good, very, very clear. Now notice this: parents have authority. You're acting on behalf of God. God told you to do it. The government didn't tell you to do it. God said do this. You're acting as God's representative. You have to remember that God has given you instructions what to do; He expects you to represent Him, so if you mess up and the kids get wrong attitudes to you, they get wrong attitudes to God, and you affect the whole eternal destiny. You are the first authority people children see in their life, and if they rebel against you, they're rebelling against God, they have no place in heaven. You have to understand that, and if you do not deal with this issue as they're growing, you are preparing them in ungodliness, because you're training them one way or another. We are training our children either towards godliness, or towards doing their own thing, and they learn, you know, if they fuss enough they get their way. If they throw up a tantrum, you'll fuss over them and hug them and reward them for their tantrum. Listen, what we're doing is preparing them for an eternity without God. All of us, ALL of us, will come before God, and give account of our life. If a child is raised, and they learn to rebel against authority, they will already be in a place of rebellion against God, and walking under influence of demons.

One of the things I've got a couple of messages on, how kids get demonised, and the fact that there are examples in the Bible of children who were demonised, but here's the problem. If I teach about that, the dilemma is people think all their problems are demon. The problem is not the demon. The problem is the demon got in, because parents didn't provide the nurture, admonition, warning and encouragement children needed. So God's mandate is so very, very clear. You're a person under authority, as well as your child. You want them to be under your authority, you must be under authority. We're all under the same one. His name is Jesus Christ, but we have different roles. Oooh, you're getting quiet in there. God has given you responsibility. You don't have to ask the child's permission to exercise it.

But you see the modern movement of kiddie's rights, parents end up negotiating with them. Negotiating - but God gave me a mandate what to do. Have you reduced a mandate to negotiation? See? What you've done is, you've taken and bought into the lie of the world. Parents are parents, children are children. They're all to be under - we're all to be under - the authority of God, but we have different roles, so parent has one role, the children have a different role. The parent's role is to bring them up in the nurture, admonition of the Lord. In Proverbs 22:6, train up a child in the way he should go. Train them up. Now that word 'train' means to narrow the way. Well dear God, what does that do with 'the child should try everything'? See the common philosophy is we'll let them try things, you know? This is not God's philosophy. God speaks clearly, narrow the way. Don't give them lots of options. Narrow the way. You've been around, you know some things that work and some things that don't work. They don't have to find it all out the hard way. If you want to grow some way, you want to learn from someone who already found out, so the Bible tells us: narrow their way. See, narrow their way, confine their way a little bit. It means also to rub the pallow - give them a taste for what's really good and they'll love what's good. Get them a taste for the good thing, so parents, it's an area - it takes faith and responsibility and courage to be a great parent. You don't have to have the kids agreement about it all. See?

So you are an agent of God, to shape the child's heart, not just to try and control their behaviour. Many parents are only connected to the behaviours of the child. If the child's out of order, or they do something, they're naughty, then the parent reacts after a little while, but we're to do more than just stop them behaving badly. We want to actually shape their heart, so they have a heart for God. To shape the heart you've got to communicate. You've got to talk into them. You've got to connect with them. You've got to know what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what they're struggling with.

Okay, what does God say to the kids then? [Laughs] This is really good, see. Can we get this - discipline is an issue of honouring God. Discipline, training children, is an issue of whether you'll honour God, or dishonour Him. When you train and discipline, and correct and guide and nurture your children, you're honouring God, who gave you the role. When you won't do it, or you give it to someone else to do, you dishonour God, and disqualify yourself from greater blessing, because you haven't functioned well in the one place God put you. Hey, glory to God. Ephesians 6, 1 to 3; Children - here we are, if you're a young person - obey - oh quick! Underline it! Colour it! Obey, obey, obey! Oh, so this is right! So you remember what Abraham has commanded to teach his children, to bring them up in a way which is right? Children obeying their parents is right. Disobeying their parents is wrong. See, then notice what it says: children, honour your mother and your father, that it may go well with you, and you may live long on the earth. Now notice here, that there are two things that God wants children to do and to learn. One is obedience; and the other is honour or respect. So at least two things a parent must do, is teach children how to be obedient; how to be respectful. They need to respect. They need to respect authority. One of the major issues we have is disrespect for authority. We have to have something different operating in our families. They need to respect you.

So notice here, that there's a blessing God puts, when a child will position themself, by obeying and honouring their parents. What'll happen is, God's blessing comes on them. Things go well. Things go well. They don't just go well today and tomorrow; they go well over the course of your life. You look at the life of a child who is obedient, and respected authorities, and responded, developed his giftings, loved God. Their life is a blessed life. You'll see it over the course of their life. The child that does their own thing will be an embarrassment to everyone, so children must learn honour and obedience. Honour means you treat them with respect and esteem, because they represent God in your life. You say well, you don't know my dad! Well maybe he has got personal lacks and personal flaws - so do you. That doesn't change the fact God made him your dad, and put him in that place. What you're doing, is looking at his faults, and then excusing your rebellion. I don't have to, because look at him. That's not the deal. God says to respect him, because of the place he has in your life. Respect him, you'll find self-respect in God.

Obedience means, you submit yourself to the authority of another, and do what you're told to do. Get this; you do it without delay. Now when you get the children, tell them something to do, they take a long time to do it, you notice. That's disobedience, and most parents will do this: they'll tell them once, tell them twice, tell them three times. Then they've trained them on a certain note. When the mother's voice reaches a scream, and her eyes are bulging, and there's veins throbbing, then the child responds, [Laughter] because they're trained that way. Isn't that wonderful? They were trained that way. You're always going to train your children - you train them either God's way, or you train them another way, see?

So obedience, they do it when they're told, they do it without excuse, they do it without challenge - why should I? Careful, you're on dangerous ground. Dangerous ground, entering the ground of disobedience, because God doesn't always tell us why. He tells us to do. When we do, we grow in wisdom and knowledge, and He shares more with us. That's how life works. That's how God works, and of course today, you've got to reason out, got to give all the reasons, got to even give them a bribe. Listen, that's not character changing. What that is training them to do, it's training them to be selfish, that I will go along with things if I want to, that I'll do what I want, when I want, if I can manipulate my way there. They learn to be selfish, and manipulate the whole system. That's why parents have got to stand in agreement on this issue here.

So the implications are very clear. Submission to authority means the child will have to do things they won't want to do. Now you see it's all very well to say the child's submitted, or you're submitted or obedient or whatever, if you're doing things you want to do, but the day you step across and you say you're not to do that, and they want to do that, that's when it shows. That's when you have the rebellion against authority. That's when you actually find you're dealing with a challenge, and you have to weigh up the challenges. This is not the place today to talk about how to do that. We've got courses that'll help you do that. Kay's got a course - there's courses around that'll help you in various ways of handling it. You've got to get the principle right, the core thing: respect and obedience.

Now listen. Some of you, when you get out in public, your kids are an embarrassment to you. You bring them here, they're an embarrassment as well, and there's one simple reason for it. You're irresponsible; or you just don't know what to do. If you don't know what to do, get into a course and learn what to do. Get someone to help you, but some mums, their kids are disobedient, kids are messy, your kids are all over the place. They don't even see it, and when you try to point it out, they get very hurt and angry. Well they're just as rebellious as the kids, just as rebellious, and so they've just got the fruit of their own way, and they'll be very embarrassed over the course of life, so we need to understand. Now here's the heart issue. In Luke 6, Verse 43 - and here's where we come completely different. This is where we part ways with the world. First we've already started to part ways with how they think anyway, because they think that kids are equal to the parents, and God says no. Parents have got one responsibility; children have got something else. It's quite different.

Luke 6 and Verse 43, notice what it says here. A good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree is known by it's fruit. There we go. Every tree is known by it's fruit. Now here's the belief system that secular people believe. They believe children are morally neutral. Neutral means they're going to take on whatever you teach them. The Bible says something quite different. The Bible says something completely different. Now you understand in secular education, their thinking, their belief system is, because they don't believe in a God, that kids are neutral. But the Bible says: there's foolishness in their hearts. See, this is where the Bible says, a completely different thing, and the overflow of the heart is in the life see? So the Bible says this, in Jeremiah 17:9, the heart is wicked, so children's heart has got wickedness in it. I know, but they look so sweet and so lovely just lying there. Oh, believe me, selfishness is wrapped up in there! Give the passage of 13 or 14 years and you will see it, in it's full bloom.

Proverbs 22:15; Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. So what does God's word say is in that sweet little darling you brought into the world? What is in the heart? Foolishness. Yeah, foolishness. Now what does it mean by foolishness? Well the Bible says: the fool says no to God. The fool won't receive correction. The fool reacts, and goes his own way. So what it's saying is this, it's saying in every child, there is a nature there of sin, that'll cause them to want to do their own thing through life, and to challenge anyone who tries to stop them. Now of course some of them are little more compliant than others, and some are really out there, strong willed. You get the whole range of this with kids, and if you've got lovely, nice compliant kids, you can't understand these strong willed kids, and the nightmares that parents have trying to train them. But believe me, it's still the same. That little quiet child can be quietly, stubbornly, rebellious, and you'll never know until you cross their will, and then you'll just see it, the evils, you know. So the Bible says this: foolishness in the heart of every person born into this world.

Now this is where we're different. See the world says they're neutral, it's just all environment. We say no, there's an issue called sin, and they need a saviour. We represent the saviour, and we're to help them bring on the right track. God has given us the authority to do it, the responsibility to do it, and that means we will make them do things they don't always want to do, and of course this brings you into huge troubles with the Education Department, because they believe different. But the Bible's very clear; foolishness is in the heart of a child. The rod of correction will drive it far from them. Notice they've used the word 'rod'. They use the word 'correction'. Correction is correcting them, saying: that's not right, this is right. That is wrong, this is right. You'll find in the education system, you can't tell the children that - crazy stuff. It's absolute nonsense. Listen, that's right, that's wrong. This is right. Stop doing wrong. You do wrong, there'll be wrong, bad choice has got bad consequence, so God always works off choices and consequences, and we have to too.

So foolishness means they reject God; don't want to be corrected. A fool will reject God, and so the purpose of the rod or the purpose of any kind of restraint and correction, whatever it be, whether it's withdrawal of privileges, whether it's time out, whether it's eventually spanking or the rod, the purpose is always the same. It's to humble the heart of the child by experiencing pain, make them aware they've messed up, and bring them back into relationship with you, so they can actually be positioned for blessing. So if you just allow it to go on, or you don't deal with it - of course if you just go slapping kids, that's not Biblical training. You have to understand, it's not Biblical training. It's just you being irritated by the child, and wanting to control their behaviour by hitting them. That is not Biblical training. Biblical training always has a correcting element. You touch the heart.

You talk to - say you've got a child yelling - you stop yelling, you know. [whack] Now listen, that is not Biblical training. That's just an angry parent, assaulting their child. That's why, you know, and lots of Christians do it - the government really gets upset about this whole issue right through the nation. Listen, if you're going to smack them at any time, the key thing is, you've got to talk into the heart, and they must understand what they did, and where they went wrong. You're yelling because you want your own way. You're yelling because you're angry. They need to understand what's in the heart, and Jesus way was to deal with the things in the heart.

Then they feel some pain, then they apologise, and then you reconcile, then they can walk in blessing. Works really wonderfully, and of course so what happens is the government, or the people proposing the law change, are trying to equate abuse with smacking. Now listen, corporal punishment or the rod is totally different from abuse of children. You do it because you love them, because you're concerned about training them, and so you have to do it consistently for the same kinds of things: defiance of authority; and outright rebellion; and you restrain it for almost all other areas. It should be almost your last resort, or used only in the situation where there was outright rebellion against your right to rule.

If they rebel against your right to rule, either you subdue the rebellion, or your household is now under the control of a witchcraft spirit operating through the child, because rebellion is as witchcraft. Some homes are full of witchcraft, because the kids are out of control, and you go in there, there's no peace. You can't enjoy fellowship with the parents. You can't enjoy anything in the home, because that child is out of control, and there's another spirit - it's not called the spirit of God. It's called a spirit of witchcraft operating there, manipulating the whole household with some little child throwing tantrums and stuff. That's what you've got to train out of them. That's what we're required by God, so when I see the kid out of control, and it's like that all the time, I realise they've also got an adult out of control. Oh, but I love them. Listen, if you love them, you'll discipline them. God does love us, and He disciplines us. Very clear see, so in order to be able - for the rod to work, you cannot hit anyone in anger.

You can't hit your children when you want, and how you want. You can't just strike them willy-nilly, give a bang over the ear. Listen, that's not Biblical discipline at all. You don't do it for punishment. It's actually all done totally, that you might correct a behaviour, and a heart attitude that are wrong, and God commends us for that, but you've got to do it right. He never endorses us just hitting and slapping kids. Getting the idea?

Okay, so the core difference - now here's the key issues now. One, God called you to be a parent, and gave you responsibility and authority. Don't let anyone take it away. Two, you need to discover what the responsibilities are, and how to fulfil them. Go to a parent course, or you'll just carry on the mistakes of your parents. Three, kids need to realise, young people and our young adults, need to realise the requirement God has of us that we have a submitted heart towards those over us, and we respond with obedience and respect. Need to understand that. We need to understand that if we hit children, hit young people, that is not smacking. That is not Biblical correction. That's just frustration, acting it's way out, and the kids will get angry and upset by that.

So what shall we do now? Here's the simple thing to finish it. Now when the government invades the home and takes away a parental right, the first thing you should do is be concerned whether you're fulfilling your parental responsibility. So I think the first thing, that would help a lot of Christians right now, instead of jumping up and down about smacking, jump up and down about parents being responsible, and understanding their call by God and what they're supposed to do, and beginning to accept it and do it. That's the first thing. Second things is, I think you should raise a voice over the changes, because the changes are not good, and they'll actually penalise and create many problems for parents which are Godly, and do use some measure of corporal punishment with their kids. Three, I think you need to pursue your parenting skills. You need to learn how to communicate. A lot of parents don't know how to communicate with the heart of a child.See one of the best things you can teach them how to do, is how to express their feelings, what they feel. See some kids go [wah-wah] like that. You're just trying to shut - actually they're going through something, you want to find what's in the heart, teach them there's another way of doing it. You understand? Change the heart, not just get the behaviour, so it's nice and you've got a happy home. It's not about you. It's about raising up godly children.

Finally, it's your own personal decision what you do about smacking, about corporal punishment, but if you're going to do it do it the right way, do it in the right attitude. Understand this: if the government passes a law, still, it's your right as a parent to do it, because God said you can. Now that's a bit of a one isn't it aye? You see in China for example, they forbid parents to tell their kids about Christ, so what would you do if you were in that situation? I'd be a lovely good citizen - let your kids go to hell. I don't think so. You'd tell them about Jesus. Now when you tell your kids about Jesus, you know what will happen In China? If the kids let on that the parents have been talking about Jesus, you'll be arrested, put in jail and your kids taken off you. Will you still talk to them about Jesus? Well if you understand that actually, it's not all about the kids, it's actually about me fulfilling my responsibility to God, you'll make the stand. That's where the challenges come see? If you don't - to have a heart commitment, to actually raise our kids so they're great kids for the Lord, they love God, love the house of God, love to serve God, and they've got great character, see? Really good isn't it aye?

So if you're going to disobey remember, don't have a truculent attitude against authorities. Have a good attitude. We just disagree. Now the Bible's full of examples of it; Daniel, they said: listen, I know you want us to eat this food. We're not going to eat the food, but can we make some options? Then Peter, they said listen, you can't preach the gospel. He said listen, we know you said we can't preach the gospel, but God said we're to preach the gospel, we're going to preach the gospel. But if you preach the gospel, you've got to face the consequences, so when they got thrown in jail, beaten up, they just said: praise the Lord. We're counting it honour to suffer for Jesus' sake - so what you do in this area's a personal thing, but I don't think you should make smacking the issue. I think you should make: am I fulfilling my responsibilities as a husband, wife and parent; make major on the majors, and prepare yourself to be a great parent. Say Amen! Amen, praise the Lord! [Applause] Come on, let's give the Lord a clap shall we. [Applause]

Thank you Lord. Father, we just pray for our nation Father as it goes through these kinds of turmoil, and families are all thinking about all these issues. We pray it'll be a great opportunity for your people to come to another level of responsibility and parenting, another level of skills and ability, and connecting with young people and working with them. We pray Lord it'll be a great opportunity. Opportunities open for every person here to speak about these issues, and to help parents who are struggling, and don't even understand that they've got a responsibility, and they've got rights, and they've got an authority God gave them, and that they need to do the right things. Father, I'm asking that a spirit of boldness will come upon your people, Lord to be able to talk to others about these matters, in Jesus' name. Everyone said ... [Amen!]

I was at a function recently. They had an opening of their new house. They had all the tradesmen in, we got a chance to talk to the tradesmen and the lawyers and everyone. I had a great opportunity to talk to one of the lawyers, and here's the thing. He was a good man. He's a family man, but you know what? He really couldn't get over when we started to share some of the things that God has shown us about family, and about connecting with your kids, and about holding them to account, things it took us years to learn. He just went away, he said: I never heard so many creative ways of handling some things. So we should be creative, not just slappers and bashers of kids. We should have great ways of doing it. We should take on oh man, this is a great thing, great opportunity to let our light shine.

If you're part of a culture where abuse is happening, and it's covered over, stand up! Make your own stand against it. Don't cover it. Never cover it. Start to stand up. We've got a great hour ahead of us aye? Young people, want you to be the greatest young people ever, but you've got a challenge too, to obey and honour your parents. Isn't that a great thing? Why don't you go home, and put it right with them if you haven't been, and tell them: I want to be a great young person, I want you to be proud of me.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

Introduction:

· Role of Government and Stewardship/Protection.

· When character/responsibility decreases then government by law increases.

· NZ – appalling record in relation to ‘Child Abuse’ => family decline.

· Cannot change this by changing the laws.

· Proposal change – Repeal section 59 of the Cries Act.

“Every person in the place of a parent of a child is justified in using force by way of correction towards the child, if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances”.

· Proposed change – won’t solve the problem; will turn good parents into law breakers, and neighbours and teachers into government agents reporting.

· “Police will be required by law to act if a complaint is made”.

· “Effect of act will be to place child in the same position as an adult” - QC.

God’s Mandate to Parents – Purpose; Responsibility; Authority; Accountability.

· God calls every person to live under authority – preference to correction.

· He has invested authority in people – family, church, government, business.

· Romans 13:1-2 - “Let every soul be subject to authorities”.

Subject = lupotasso = to position yourself in place of yielding and cooperation with one in authority to work together for common purpose.

· Parents have authority because God calls you to be an authority in a child’s life.

e.g. Genesis 18:19 - “I have chosen Abraham, I will know him that he will command his children and household after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord”.

e.g. Deuteronomy 6:4-6 - “The great commandment – love Lord God teach children”.

e.g. Ephesians 6:4 - “Do not provoke children – bring them up in the nature of the Lord”.

· Parents have the authority to act on behalf of God – fulfill his directions.

· Parents have the responsibility to fulfill as God’s representatives.

· God defines the task – you act on his behalf.

· You are a person under authority – as well as the child – same Lord but different roles.

· Because God has given responsibility – you don’t need the child’s permission to act.

· You are in charge – you have the responsibility – Shepherd child.

· Proverbs 22:6 - “ Train up the child in the way he should go”.

· Train = to narrow, rub the palate, discipline => direction

· You are God’s agent to shape the child’s heart attitudes and behaviour.

· Discipline is an issue of honoring God and character formation

- communicate and Rod of the Lord.

- no place for anger

3. God’s Mandate to Children:

· Ephesians 6:1-3 - Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.

· God’s directive to children: Obey and Honor (Respect)

· God’s blessing: Things go well – life is blessed.

· Key issues; Children must learn to honor and obedient.

· Honor => Treat parents with respect and esteem them because of position/authority.

· Obedience => Willing submission of one person to the authority of another. Do what told – without delay; without excuse; without challenge.

· Submission to authority => child will have to do things don’t want to.

· Implications:

1) Parents must train their children in honor, respect and obedience.

2) Parents themselves must be an example in attitude and action.

· Inevitably there will be a clash of wills.

4. The Root is a Heart Issue:

· Luke 6:43 - Out of the heart!

· Children are not born morally neutral.

· Their actions and words flow out of what is in the heart.

· Their behaviors are the overflow of the heart.

· Jeremiah 17:9 - Heart is wicked – desperately wicked.

· Proverbs 22:15 - “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child but the rod of correction will drive it far from him”.

· God’s Word = something wrong in the heart of a child/reflects in action.

· Folly/Foolishness = reject God; do not want to hear correction.

· Fool rejects God’s authority and ways, follows own desires.

· Purpose of rod = humble heart of child so can be subject to parental instruction and direction.

· For the rod to work => no anger; no frustration; no ‘punishment’.

Requires: communication, faith, correction, love – Proverbs 13:24

· Rod of correction restores child to a place of relationship/blessing.

Requires: clear explanation, clear conscience, identify behaviour – heart issue, correction, reconciliation.

· God never endorses hitting children whenever we wish.

5. What should we do?

· When the law invades the home and conflicts with God’s word e.g. China – parents forbidden to communicate the Gospel to their children.

· Actions:

1) develop a submissive attitude to authority (respect)

2) Reuse voice over proposed changes.

3) Develop parenting skills – understanding.

4) Personal decision over issue speaking;

* right attitude

* disobedience or rebellion

* accept consequences e.g Daniel’s fiends

e.g. Apostles, Hebrews 12:5-11

2. Twilight

Sun 5 Dec 2010  « Back to Top

Audio»  Website»

A Christian perspective is offered on the hugely popular fictional Twilight series, discussing its roots in both the Occult and also the Mormon religion, and the potential effects that this type of "chick-porn" can have on real world relationships.

I want to speak tonight on Twilight, and I want to just open our eyes a little bit to gain understanding on it. I want to first of all just set a bit of a context like I did - how many enjoyed the message I did on tattoos, opened their eyes on tattoos? So I want to pick up with the same kind of slant on it. I don't want to be into: forbid people to do this, forbid people to do that, and bring people under the law. That's not really what we want to do. I want you to have understanding so you can make choices, and choices we make determine our destiny. You don't just suddenly arrive anywhere. You make a lot of little choices on the way, and as a result you arrive where you've directed your life to go.

I want you to look with me in Acts, Chapter 2. In there is an outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and we're still in that outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Notice what Peter says, as he describes the outpouring the spirit of God. He speaks prophetically some things. This is that which is spoken of by the prophet Joel. It shall come to pass in the last days - that's when this happened, until now and beyond. The last days, we're in the last days - I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Now notice what he says: your sons and daughters shall prophesy, young men shall see visions, old men shall dream dreams. On my man servants and maid servants I'll pour out my spirit. In those days they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath.

So we see here God prophetically declares, that in the times of the New Testament Church until the time we're living in, and in an increase - I believe an increasing, accelerating pace, we're going to see more and more of the supernatural. There is a hunger for the supernatural. You are in a generation called to flow in the spirit and power of God. When we were in early days as a Pastor, it was the only gifts of the spirit we saw in any consistency, was the gift of prophecy, but now gifts of the spirits flow readily. Miracles happen readily. I'm hearing of miracles in the church, miracles people prayed. Some were sitting in the church just last week, they came in with pain in their feet. They'd damaged their heel for some long time, just suddenly woke up the next day, totally healed. Miracles are happening. We are in a river of God's spirit.

Now that river of God's spirit is to go to people, and draw them to encounters with God, so you and I are called to carry the spirit of God, and bring people to encounter, so you are called to flow in the things of the supernatural. Now there are principles upon which it bases, and which it operates, so corresponding to the church being called to arise, and to flow in the supernatural, there is an immense awakening of hunger everywhere in the world for the supernatural. Hollywood is pumping it out and making mega bucks on it. Anything that's got supernatural in it, is a seller. About a year ago or two years ago I picked that after the vampire thing had run a bit of its course the next thing that would be out would be werewolves. Sure enough they're out there, and they're starting to make movies about werewolves. There is a fascination with this realm of the spirit, and we need to understand that the realm of the spirit operates on spiritual laws.

So if we violate the laws of God, we can find ourselves connected to the occult realm, and not even know it. What that does is it sabotages the life of a person who's passionate to serve God. You are called, not to an ordinary life, you are called to a life passionate for Jesus Christ, passionate for advancing the kingdom of God, and so what you don't want is baggage around your life, that stops you running your course, finishing your race. You don't want to be a half-baked, half-hearted Christian. You want to be passionate, on fire, God's speaking to you, God's working through you. You experience the joy, the life, of fulfilling your destiny, so at the same time that God is raising up such a generation, at the same time there are many, many subtle entanglements coming, and their goal is to compromise your life, to cause you to get involved in things that take away your passion for God, and your love for His presence. So some of the things like we talked about the tattoos, we opened up and showed you the occult realm, and the occult dimension, and how you actually open up your life into the occult realm through the taking of tattoos.

But I want to look at this whole area of this series of Twilight. We're going to talk a little bit about it, and for those who don't know I'll have to explain a bit about it. Before I do that, let me just explain the power of a story. In Matthew 13, Verse 34, the Bible says that Jesus spoke, and He spoke to them in parables or stories. Stories carry emotional impact. When you hear a story, you have an image in your mind. The better the story is told, and the more emotional the story, the more it impacts you, so when you hear the testimony of someone, and how God has worked in their life and they were broken and damaged, you feel empathy for that person. You enter into the story with them, you're listening, and then you kind of have feelings and emotions that stir up as you hear the story.

When you listen to your friend, and they tell you about the break up of a relationship, and they're weeping on your shoulder, you get caught into the feeling and the stories. Stories are powerful ways of conveying images into our mind, impressing us, and shaping how we think, for example, how many saw the movie Titanic? I loved it. I saw it the first day it opened up. As soon as I saw it, this is going to be a winner, and there was almost no one came for about the first week, and then it just took off. Then it became a best seller and the rest is all history, so what are the things in there? There's certain things in the story that had an appeal to people. I won't go into that story. I want to get into the Twilight, and look at what's in the Twilight. Interesting the name Twilight, it's the period between when the sun's gone down and it's not yet dark, it's neither light nor dark, it's in between - the Twilight Zone.

So stories have power to affect our lives. Don't think that what you read, doesn't affect you. TV puts out millions and millions and millions of dollars into advertising, to create pictures and images to get an impact in your life, to make you feel like you're unhappy with what you have, but what they're offering on the advert is just what will make you happy. So you see the images, and many young people will buy stuff straight off the images they see on the TV, so that brings us to the stories. The Twilight series is a series of four books. There's four of them, and it's a publishing and a movie phenomena. What that means is, unbelievable, unbelievable response - over 17 million of the books sold, huge response, millions of dollars taken in the sales of the movies. It is not just now a movie, it's become a phenomenon, that's affected primarily young girls, girls pre-teen, tweens, and teens and - would you believe it - older women as well!

One of the things when something is a phenomenon, there must be some reason for it being such a phenomenon. There must be a reason, there must be some kind of reason for it, so Twilight has got people all over the world reading it, waiting for the next story, wanting to watch the next movie.

Essentially it's a love story between a girl, a fairly plain girl, ordinary girl, and really a classy guy who's actually a vampire - so it's a love story. Stories create an image about how you see relationships. They create an image about how you see relationships, so when people read the book, images are created about what relationships look like, and what I want to do is, I want to go through - I won't go into all the story, I don't want to tell all the story. You can find that out yourself. I'll just give you enough of the first one to know what it's about - but what I want to do is, I want to unlock what is behind it. If you think it's just a story, why is it so popular? If it's just another story, why has it sold so many millions? Why are so many people buying it? Why are so many millions of young girls in love with Edward in the story? You've got to ask the question; they're really in love with it, they're obsessed with it, and that's one of the fruits you'll see with this thing, is it's obsessive.

So if you're an addict and you love these stories, you may not be happy with everything I have to say today. You may not be happy at all [laughs] so there's four books; the first one's called Twilight, the second one New Moon, the third one's Eclipse, the fourth one is Breaking Dawn. There's a reason it's so popular. They follow a sequence of ideas right through from this young girl meeting this vampire. He actually looks like he's 17 years old or 18 years old, or something like that. Actually the reality is he's over 100 years old, and I'm going to show you what that's all about just shortly. There are things in this story you have no idea, of course it's, you know, girls love it. They read the story - how many guys have read the book by the way? Yeah, right - guys, how many guys have read it? Yeah, like I thought, no one. [Laughter] How many guys have seen the movie? Yeah, well that's - okay, two of us. [Laughter] Good on you, there's three guys saw the movie. Good on you. I wanted to see it, to know what it was on. I watched it on a plane, otherwise I can't talk about something I haven't seen. You've got to know what it's about.

So what is it about? Well it's actually a Gothic or dark romance. The whole thing's really about the story of a love relationship between - and it involves vampires and werewolves. You think how could anyone get involved in that? You know what? When I first saw the picture of it, you know what I thought? I don't like you! When I saw the next one come out, and it had the other guy on it, Jacob, I thought I don't like you either! They had these advertising brochures up everywhere, and every time I'd see one: I don't like you. I'm thinking I wonder why I've got such a reaction inside, I actually don't like you. I'd see this, and the stuff was up in the bookshops, its up in the movies, anywhere. You can't go anywhere without this blimmin' picture of this eclipse, and Edward and Bella looking out of her tree [laughter] and this other guy, Jacob with his shirt off and all the abs and so on - and there it is. I looked, I thought: I don't like you!

Every time I go past one, I thought I don't like you! Then I thought man, this is a phenomena and I don't like it, I wonder why? It's because I'm older, must be because I'm older, and I don't have abs like that. [Laughter] Maybe it's something like that you know, kind of think that sort of thing, and I thought about it for a while and I realised actually, there's something in me is reacting, and reacting strongly. Every time I go past a poster, I'd look at it - I don't like you. I had no intentions seeing the movie. I saw it on a plane. I thought it was a chance to see the thing quietly, I might as well find out what this is up to, so at least I've got some information. But I realise now that there was a spirit reaction in me to the whole story, and I think anyone who has any spiritual discernment of any kind, on looking at it at first glance, would automatically have the alarm bells go off at the thought of vampires and werewolves, and that's it, they switch off.

Now if you have spiritual discernment like that well great, because you know exactly what to be involved with, and what not to be involved with. But we live in a generation where this has become a culture phenomenon, and if you're going to be relevant to a generation you've got to know what's going on, and then how to address it. What is it that's causing the pull? We shared with you about the Harry Potter stories. I shared with you when they came out, what is the pull that's involved in there? The pull is a pull to the occult. It's a fascinating draw into the occult, so this thing is really very, very popular. So the heroine Bella Swan lives with her father, marriage has broken up, so she lives with her father in a small place in Forks, Washington. She meets and falls in love with this guy Edward Cullen and he's a sort of a sombre, moody, broody - oh I don't like him, I so don't like him. He's moody, broody and he has a cold dark secret, he's a vampire, over 100 years old. You think God, how could anyone, any of these girls fall in love with this? They do, believe me. They fall in love - and there's a reason.

So they're part of a family of vampires, who's origin goes right back to the 1600s. Now I'll connect all this information just shortly, and I'll show you what lies behind it - so the origin of the family with the senior father Cullen and it's like a family, and the family are all loyal to one another. Anyone who comes against family comes against them all. They all stand together, they're all one family, they come from one father, and this father decided that they would not eat human blood, they would drink the blood of animals. So the whole family has tried to stay true to the father's teaching. Now you're going to see this when you discover the roots of it, that there's far more in the story than is apparent. So this family has lived over these hundreds of years, and they're quite a close community until this girl falls in love with the guy Edward. So the drama goes on, and there's a romance going between the two, but there's some extremely disturbing things in it.

He is presented very powerfully as strong, fast, got supernatural power, supernatural abilities. He's caring. He's tender, he honours her, he doesn't have sex with her. There's a whole range of things about him, which make him sort of a kind of a guy that you think well, where would you find anyone like him - apart from the fact he's a vampire. She sort of has very little going for her in many ways, in that she's quite ordinary, she's a very insecure girl, and she gets totally wrapped up in this relationship with this guy. That's the basic core of the story. So this particular family are the goodies, and there's another group of vampires which are baddies, and they want to kill Bella, so it's a fight between the goodies and the baddies, and the goodies win - that's the story, something like that.

Of course each story that goes on adds a bit more in. The next story, you get a young guy Jacob turns up, and he's a werewolf, and she's caught in the eternal triangle - which is the better person, the vampire or the werewolf? That's kind of the story of it. Now what I want to do is to go into what's really behind it. Is it just a harmless story? Is it just a love story? Is it just sort of some kind of thing that happens to be a buck maker, or is there more to it? Many people encourage people to read it, because they say it's essentially a teen romance, whos theme is having no sex before marriage. So some people say really good book because young people get the message about not having sex before marriage, but actually there's far more to it than that.

When you read a book, like when you watch a television program, this is what happens; you go into a realm of imagination. When I was growing up I was extremely dysfunctional and disconnected, and the way I coped with the emotional need in my life was to read fantasy books, and to go and live in a fantasy world, and disconnect from real relationships. So books that have fantasy stories stimulate your imagination, and take you into an imaginary world. When you go and read a book or watch a TV program, you actually enter into the whole story, you go into the imagination of the author. So for example you watch a TV program, you are watching some author's imagination, and you're seeing it in a visual form. You can actually go into the story, and live in the story, in a way you could never do in real life, like you're peeping on everything they do. It's just kind of unnatural to be that close.

When you read a love story or a romance like this, your imagination then goes with you, and depending on how clever the writer is, right into the story, into the characters to begin to connect with them. Now here's the reason why - we'll get into it in a moment - there's some problems in it. There are two primary areas of problems. When you read the book, it begins to shape - now remember it's not just one, there's four - it begins to form pictures and images about how relationships ought to work. In other words, you come out of it with views about relationships, and so the two places that this has got major problems is this; the first one, it is rooted in the occult and steeped with the demonic, filled with the demonic. Right from one end to the other you are into an occult world, and it's filled with demonic and supernatural power. That's the first problem, and we'll show you, I'm going to explain to you some things about that in a moment.

The second thing about it is, the story itself is a highly emotionally - it's written to appeal to emotions, and it's written with young women in mind, to appeal to their emotional side of their being, and to portray some images about relationships. The problem is, the relationships that are represented there, between Bella and Edward, is totally, totally, totally dysfunctional. Any girl who I heard was getting into a relationship with any guy like him - even if he's not a werewolf or a vampire [laughter] - I would come with alarm to them, and tell them you are about to wreck your life. You have no idea what you're about to get into. I'll explain that in just a moment. Now of course those of you who loved it, and are wrapped into it are getting angry at the moment. Don't worry about it, just stay open will you?

First of all I want to look at the influence of the occult in the books. Now the word occult means covered, or secret, or hidden. It's because anything that's involving the occult involves the spirit world, but the nature of it is hidden, so the occult has to do with the hidden spirit world's supernatural power, supernatural information and so on. So the Bible warns us, in so many different places - Deuteronomy 18:9, when God's people are coming out of Egypt and going into the Promised Land, one of the major warnings they were given was: don't get involved in the occult. If you get involved in the occult, you'll be defiled, you'll become demonised. You will fail to enter into the Promised Land. When they said also about going into the Promised Land, when you go in the Promised Land, they're involved in the occult, clean it up, get rid of everything, leave nothing there, get rid of everything involved with the occult. Why? Because when you get involved with the occult, you are drawn into relationships with demonic spirits.

Now most of the time, demonic spirits don't come to you and say: can we have a relationship? They come to you in a subtle way, that you are not aware of. That's the nature of deception. Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light, so I would describe Edward in this story as an angel of light, classic, straight out of Corinthians, demonic spirit masquerading as an angel of light. You'll see he presents himself as being extremely attractive and seductive, powerful and strong and mysterious. He relates in a way that stirs the emotions in Bella, until she just wants to give herself over to him - but actually, the core of his nature, is demonic. Think about it. A love relationship between a girl and a demon? That's what this is about. That's what this is about. It's a love relationship between a young girl and a demon.

So in Acts, Chapter 19, when the church had revival, one of the things they did was they totally got rid of everything associated with the occult. They got rid of their books, they got rid of - in Verse 18 through to 20 - they got rid of $50,000 worth of stuff they had involved with the occult. Why did they do that? Because the move of God's spirit would be hindered by attachments to the occult, so they had a clean out, and everyone who'd been involved in the occult, everyone who'd been involved with any kind of spiritism, they came forward, they confessed what they'd done, burnt their books, burnt their tarot cards, burnt their Ouija boards, burnt the whole deal - burnt it, and there was about $50,000 pieces of silver, which is millions of dollars worth of occult materials. That's what revival looks like. You clean up your act and you get rid of the stuff you've got hidden in the cupboard. You get rid of the secret stuff, and you come clean with God, and you walk in the light.

I can guarantee if you're addicted to Twilight, you are not walking in the light, and you've got some troubles - guarantee it. I'm just waiting to get my hands on someone to pray for someone and see what manifests. So throughout the Bible, there are continual conflicts between the power of God and the people of God and sorcerers, so for example Moses, Elijah, Paul, all of them had these kinds of issues and involvements. Now let's have a look at Twilight. Where does the demonic come in? Well actually far more than you realise. You just can't imagine. I read on the internet, I've been searching around getting as much as I could find, got heaps of stuff. Here's the first thing. The first thing is, its demonic origin. The first thing is that the novels were inspired by a dream that Stephenie Meyer got in 2003. She had this dream - note this; she got two dreams. The first dream, she saw two people, and they were standing in a meadow. I'll explain - you'll see the significance of all these things shortly as I pull it all together.

They were standing in a meadow, and there was this young ordinary, average girl, and there was this fantastic sparkly vampire, and they were discussing a difficulty they had; one, they were in love with one another, and two, he's attracted to the scent of her blood and wants to kill her. That's the dream she had, and from that dream, she began to formulate the books, so the books were inspired by a dream. Now she wrote about this guy Edward. Later on she had a second dream. In the second dream, Edward came and spoke to her, and terrified her, and this is what he said. He spoke to her in a dream and he said, she'd got it all wrong. He really did exist, and he couldn't live off the blood of animals, had to live off the blood of people. How about that? She was terrified, because the Edward that appeared in the dream was not the one she'd been writing around, but the source was demonic.

So the source of it is demonic. It's not surprising the book is full of it. You're going to see a few more things in just moment. I'll quickly go through these things. If the roots are demonic then you can absolutely be certain the fruit will be something similar. You can't dabble with the occult, and with the demonic, and not become defiled and affected, you just can't do it. So here it is. The first thing is, the books are filled with the occult, so I'm going to go through and I'll list you just some of the occult things that are in the book. First thing, the vampires. Notice they've got supernatural powers; they've got supernatural speed; supernatural strength. They can read people's minds; they can control people's feelings; they can see at great distances - so those are all in the books, all in the stories. It's actually all in the movie. You can see them knowing all these things, seeing all these things and whatever. That is all occult. It's strictly from the occult. It has to do with divination and sorcery, and the occult is a realm of darkness.

Second thing that's in there are werewolves. Werewolves are people that can change shape. They change shape from a person into an animal, and that animal destroys people and kills people, whereas vampires suck their blood out. We'll get to that in just a moment - but the werewolves are different. The werewolves tear people apart. Are they real? Oh yes. There are people who can change shape. They are involved in the occult, and they're well known, not so much in the west, but in countries which are very open to the occult, it's not infrequent that people have to deal with sorcerers who can change their form, and turn into an animal at will, turn into a serpent or a python, turn into a wolf, or in one case in a revival recently in Fiji, there were a whole group of sorcerers turned themselves into bats, and came and sat up and made a noise and interrupted one of the meetings this guy was preaching at. But he preached the gospel anyway. Later on all these guys came and repented of their sins. They said we heard your message, and he said where did you hear it? He said we came and visited you.

Now I won't go into too much detail around that. I don't want you to be fascinated with it. It's no surprise that these things can happen, but it's people highly into the occult. Now it's dramatised, so the guy looks really handsome and very attractive. Make no mistake the root is evil, absolutely and completely, but it's presented in a beautiful form that a young teenage girl could fall in love with very easily. So you've got a whole following for this guy Jacob, who's a muscly, handsome, good looking guy. I don't like him! Actually happened - turns out he's a werewolf, and so he can bite you too. Notice that also associated with it is the drinking of blood. Drinking of blood is closely connected all over the world with the occult, so when people are involved in the occult, blood sacrifices, blood letting, blood drinking are part of that.

It's so much a problem that in Leviticus 19:26 God forbade the drinking of blood, and believe it, in the New Testament Church, Acts 15, they also forbade the taking of blood, so what was in the Old, was also forbidden in the New. Not many laws we got to keep in the New, but one of them is don't drink blood, don't drink blood - and yet the picture portrayed there in the movie, now I'll get to another thing in a moment - the picture in the movie is that, if he is to drink her blood he'll put a venom in her, and she will turn, and she will die to her humanity, and become like him, living forever. Don't tell me there aren't spiritual pictures in that, that are very, very powerful - so drinking of blood.

Another thing that's in there is, there's a total reconstruction of what is evil becomes good, and what is good becomes evil. Now one of the - I haven't got time to go into any of that, but normally if we think of vampires, you think of real evil things. Suddenly you've got a story in which the vampire's a good guy. What to make of that? Now the Bible has something to make of it. It says: woe to them, in Isaiah 5, who call evil good and good evil, so woe to - in other words, there is a curse comes on people, who call things which are evil good, and call that which is good evil. Now you notice in this book they're portraying evil, someone who's a vampire, as being a good guy. It's a total distortion, that speaks of that in the books. Here's another thing you may not know that's interesting, that salvation, how you get saved is distorted.

So daddy Cullen, in the year 1640 or thereabouts, turns his son Edward, who's 17, into a vampire who lives for hundreds of years or whatever. Now here's the thing. He did this to save him, so he turned him from being human into being this cold-blooded supernatural being, and he saved him. This is what they called the experience; they called the experience New Birth. How about that? And born into the family, so he's had a New Birth, he's come into a family, and now he's part of a very special family, and they've got this thing that they all follow their father. Now you're going to get the reason for this in a moment. Another thing, if you read the book, you'll see on the first page or the cover of the book, you'll see an interesting thing, a scripture verse. It talks about eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil - though shall not eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden, Genesis 2:17, and it's got a picture of a woman or two hands holding out the fruit of the tree to eat. I mean you can't get a more blatant - it actually points - anyone who's got eyes to see, can see this thing ain't going to a good place.

Now when you actually look at how the whole series, you'll find that Bella longs to live forever, and what she needs to do to live forever, is let Edward put the bite on her, and then she'll die to being human, and she'll be as wise, and be as Gods, and live forever. I tell you, talk about Genesis 2:17 just being fulfilled, just in the whole theme of the story - but there's more to it than that, and I'll just finish the last bit of it, then we'll finish the emotional bit. How many are finding this a bit disturbing, this part of it? Okay, well here's the next thing is, is that the lady who wrote the book is a Mormon. [Laughter] Now you say well what's the deal about that? If anyone has read all four books you'll find, interestingly enough, that all four books, the primary action takes place in a meadow. Not only that it's a meadow up in a mountain, or Mountain Meadows.

Now you would think that doesn't mean anything. Oh, yes it all does. You find out you see, if you follow through and understand anything about the Mormon Church, and look at their history, the first thing is Mountain Meadows. Mountain Meadows was the scene in America in the 1800s, of the worst massacre of white settlers by Mormon people. There was a group of white settlers travelling through Utah to go to California, and the Mormons had been under some persecution at that time. What they did was they dressed up as Indians, and they incited the local Indians, they attacked this particular wagon train, and the wagon train circled. They had it under attack for four days, and after the four days the Mormons dressed themselves up and came and said listen, we've got a way out of here. If you just lay down all your guns, and you walk away and leave all your stuff, we'll protect you, we've got a deal with the Indians, and you'll be safe. So they all agreed to do it. They laid down their guns, they left all their things, they walked out each one accompanied by a Mormon, who was supposedly guarding them against the Indians.

At a predetermined signal they turned on them and shot the lot of them, 120 people died. There was an outrage. It was sanctioned by the leader of the Mormon Church at that time. There was an outrage against it, and so this Mountain Meadows became a scene in history of tremendous reproach against the Mormons. Now have a look at the whole story. Now you begin to see that right through this story, there is a thread of Mormon belief right through the whole story, their way of viewing salvation. It starts off - now get this - the family started with the father started off, who started this family, Cullen Senior, started off in the 1600s and exactly the time when Joseph Smith came and founded the Mormon Church, and got his so-called revelation. Not only that, the wife of this guy in the book is even named a similar name as Joseph Smith's first wife, who rebelled against the whole thing of multiple marriages. Notice this - the family is a special family, who stays true to the father's vision, which is what the Mormons believe. Think about it.

See, not only that, they proclaim chastity, but they also have this thing that the woman is saved through marriage and childbearing, which is the theme of the story. It's extraordinary how this stuff comes through. Notice this: they also promoted child brides, a very controversial practice, young girls being married to old men. Now have a think about this - how old is Edward really? See, the subtleties of the story are there right through it. He's over 100 years old guy, with a 17 year old girl? Give me a break. Come on, think about it. It's a story of her conversion into his family, and ultimate salvation. This is what goes right through the whole thing. It's full of the occult, it's full of it. So that's just that aspect of it. What about the relationship aspect? This is the bit that's really got a - this nails it to the tree.

I was stunned when I did the research, and found out just how much of the occult is steeped through the whole deal. I mean it was obvious vampires and werewolves, but it was far more subtle, far deeper than that, and so people form concepts about relationships. Now the thing is Twilight's a love story on steroids. It's a love story amped plus, and this is why girls love it, and guys think oh yeah. Guys who read it think oh man, there's too much, you know, it describes in detail her first kiss, and all the feelings and emotions. So although the book on the one hand says it's got a stance of pro-chastity, actually it's full of lust and a spirit of seduction. When you read the thing girls, you just go into fantasy world plus! It is fantasy plus! There ain't no Edward. [Laughter] He's a demonic delusion. What happens is, you get an idea of a relationship, and there's no such thing, and even if there was, you wouldn't want the kind of relationship he's got with her. It's horrendous.

Now of course there's some nice qualities he's got. He's really strong, and really fast, he's sensitive, and he's caring, and he listens to her - that's good. But what about this? He sneaks into her bedroom and stands there watching her while she sleeps. That is creepy. [Laughter] Hey, if you did that you'd be arrested, you know that. [Laughter] He eavesdrops on conversations - what is that about aye? He encourages her to deceive her father. Well that's really honouring your father well, isn't it? He takes her out of the truck and kidnaps her, separates her from her friends - notice this. This is all the signs of a totally dysfunctional relationship. Girls, if you ever have a guy, who's listening in on your conversations, tells you and teaches you to deceive your parents about what's going on, and takes you away on his own, separates you from your friends, you have got a big, big problem here.

Here's some other things. Of course, so she's got no self-confidence, she puts herself down, and she treats the boy as a superior being, and she really looks down on her humanity, wants to be like him. Now here's the thing that's the biggest problem in it, is emotional dependency. They are linked in a co-dependent emotional relationship that's incredibly unhealthy. They can't live without one another - [in a whiny voice] I can't live without you. The second story, when she departs from him, or he breaks the relationship up, she's just like a zombie. You want to see the pictures of her, she really looks really, really bad, and so see, emotional dependency means this. It means you're not emotionally stable. You aren't secure in yourself. You need someone else to make you feel good. Any relationship where you need someone else to make you feel good about yourself is doomed, totally doomed. It's totally doomed. Relationships do not work like that in real life. This is FANTASY!

You know for boys, now boys have got a different problem. Boy's problem is pornography, and now you turn on pornography; what have you got in pornography? What you've got is women that are unreal, they don't really exist. They're hired and paid to do something to create a fantasy, so some guy will get all aroused and excited. That's what pornography is. It's an illusion. Ain't no one that's like that. It just isn't true. It's a fantasy with a hook, to get you caught into and become addicted into the images and pictures, until you live in an unreal fantasy world, and can't for real relationships. Pornography's incredibly destructive to young men, and pornography is to men, what this is to women. This is emotional pornography. That's exactly what it is, because you get caught into a fantasy. It appeals to women's emotional needs, so you get caught into fantasy.

Oh they think about it, dream about it, have pictures up. It's an absolute disaster really see, so emotional dependency is another way of saying: you are the one who'll meet my needs in life. This is called relational idolatry. There is no person. Girls, there's no man can meet your needs. You need to know it now. You need to let Christ meet your needs, become a whole person, and come into relationship with something to give. You can't run any relationship, hoping some guy will make you feel good about yourself, and feel loved. He's not responsible for your feelings, and there's no guy like Edward. He's not a real guy. He's a fantasy. Real guys aren't like that. Real guys aren't like that at all, I'm sorry! [Laughter] They're just not - so what you're doing is, as you get into that, you get caught up into an image, and it begins to be addictive. That's why you notice you can't stop reading the book. Mum tells you to go to bed, light's on, I'm going to read, read, read, I've got to read. What's happening? Something's going on inside you. You're hooked and addicted.

So people get addicted to it, so emotional dependency is a form of idolatry, you give yourself to another person, hoping they'll meet your need. So here's another aspect of it. So first of all, it's just weird the way he carries on. Secondly, there's relational co-dependency and idolatry. Here's the third thing. He could kill her at any moment, and so the tension in this thing is, he's a vampire after her blood, and he's trying to restrain himself, so she never knows whether he's going to love her, or bite her to death. Huh? Now let me tell you this. I've counselled and Lyn counselled heaps of people, where the man - you never know, one minute to the next, whether he's in a good mood, or angry and aggressive and violent move. You never want to be in a relationship with anyone like that, who is moody and unpredictable, and you never know when this thing is going to go off. This is totally dysfunctional. You need to see it. People who enter a relationship - and Jacob, well he's no better. He's the werewolf, he's just as likely to bite her and devour her too, and turn her into a werewolf.

So she's on tenterhooks all the time around both guys, making sure she doesn't upset them. Girls, that is no way to have a relationship. You've got to be secure in yourself, you've got to have a secure guy, and you've got to work out the fact that in that relationship there's going to be stuff to work out. This is total fantasy. It's just unreal. [Laughs] It's just unreal. Now the thing is it's supposed to be pro-abstinence, but get this. Edward, now he's the main character, this is what he said. He said the book is based on the virtue of chastity, but it seems to have the opposite effect on the readers. I have eight year old girls come up to me and say bite me, I want you to bite me. Girls, there's a feeding frenzy on this guy. The Bible says - 2 Timothy 2:22 - flee youthful lusts. Run away from things that stir up passions you can't control.

Fantasy creates unrealistic expectations. Real life, it just don't work like that, so here's the problem with the bottom line. The bottom line, it portrays evil as good, and good as evil, and it leads to you being engaged in the occult, and having images of relationships which are totally dysfunctional, and yet you think they're ideal; I wish I had someone just like him. No way do you want anyone just like him! You'll be in for counselling before you know it, and be crying on the altar there; oh, it's terrible, I don't know what to do, he's at me all the time. It's just not going to work. Real relationships don't work like that. Real relationships, you are whole and strengthened, and founded in Christ. You're secure in who you are. You have something to put into relationships, you have strong boundaries, and you also have friends beyond the relationship. You also know how to honour your parents. A strong relationship, the guy needs to be strong in himself, have his own connection with God, his own self, be able to stand up for himself. He's not going to meet all your needs, you're not going to meet all his needs. Together, you add something in that builds a strong relationship. You have problems, you work them out on the way. That's real life. This is real life.

The other is a seductive fantasy, and the Bible says: in the last days there will be seducing spirits, doctrines of devils, all kinds of things like that. When good is called evil, and evil is called good, something's really wrong. When millions of girls are obsessed - here's the fruit of it. People become obsessed. I'm not even going to ask who's got the pictures up. We won't go there, but you need to ask, if you're obsessed, if you've got a problem with obsession, you need to deal with it. If you've got a problem with romantic idolatry, you need to face this thing and put it right.

Why don't we just close our eyes right now shall we? If you've got children, and children want to read the books, you've got to decide what you do in your own home. I wouldn't want those books in my home if my kids were young, but if you've got a child in their teens, early teens, then you need to sit and talk with them about it, and then if they still are going to read it you've got to decide what standard you have in your home, and what you allow them to read and not read, and what areas you'll go. But if you're going to say don't read it, talk to them about the whys. Talk to them about keeping themselves for God, about being a special generation, about learning godly values, about how to build success in relationships, and how these things are seductive and they lead you away from truth, they lead you away from wholeness. They lead you away from Jesus Christ, who knows how to help you succeed in life.

If they're going to read the book I suggest you say well, I'm going to read the chapter with you, we're going to have a bit of a talk afterwards and going to interact over the ideas, we're going to look at what this says, and what the Bible's like. They say oh, you're being so boring! No, no, no, I'm trying to engage with you to protect you from something that will open the door to the demonic for you. Let's close our eyes right now. Father, we just thank You. Lord, we thank You we live in a great hour and a great day, when Lord we're able to access heaven in an unprecedented way, see Your miracles, see Your presence, see Your power, see things happen. Father, tonight we thank You, that we're alive in such a day. I thank You for this generation that's alive in such a day, what a day to be serving Jesus Christ. Oh, we've dreamed of it all our lives and here it is, the dawning of a new day. Lord, we see the up rise of so many other things as well, that are seeking to capture the hearts of a generation, and Lord, we want this generation of our young people, and our Lord our older people, we want everyone to arise and fulfil their call. So today Lord, I ask that You'll help people, help individuals in here who are struggling.

I want you just with your eyes closed right now, I want to ask you just a few questions. Firstly, for those who read that book - there'll be some who read it, some who don't. When I shared about this, has it opened your eyes to the reality of the occult in it? Have you found a fascination with this thing, and you find you're drawn in and obsessed with it, and can't get it out of your mind? Listen, I've just done this study for this meeting, and I've had all I can stand of it. I just want to go home and just read the word of God and wash my mind, get the thing out of my mind and just have it on tape. It's a defiling thing. It is defiling. If you find that thing you've got it in your mind, you've got it in your emotions, why don't you say tonight, I just want to get it out. I feel God speaking to me about letting go of something that just sabotages my relationship with God. I really want to be close to God, I don't want to be close to demons. I want to be close to God. I really don't want to continue with this thing. I'm glad that I've got the truth tonight. Even though I don't like the truth, I'm going to respond to what God is saying. Don't compromise your relationship. You know you can't feast off the table of the spirit of God, and the table of idols and demons, you just can't do it, so when you get involved in this stuff, it affects you and you don't even know it.

Listen, tonight if you find that there's a fascination, obsession with these books, perhaps you are fantasising about relationships as a result of it, why don't you tonight come up and say: I need some help, I really want to get free. If you find that you're fantasising, and having dreams, and thinking about this thing, and it's got a hold of you, then you need prayer to help you break out of that. You've got to make a decision - I'm not going to be attached, I'd had no idea this thing was hooking into me like that. You've got a need, and it's a valid need, but it won't be met that way. That becomes addictive, it becomes fantasy, it becomes idolatry, and it brings you into bondage. Why don't you come up tonight and say: I want to be free of this thing, I don't want that stuff in my mind and emotions. If you know you're spending time daydreaming and fantasising about romances and stuff, it's taken you where you don't want to go. Listen, don't fantasise about some romance, and some kind of thing from a book. Begin to read the Bible, find out what God says about relationships, and grow up as a believer. This is just sapping your energy at a time you really need to be focussed.

Perhaps there's others, and you're troubled, you've been reading this stuff, and you've got trouble in your mind with spirits. You may have been into blood covenants, blood cutting, or any things like that. If you've been into that, or made agreements, or spoken words of making agreements, or you know, even saying words of being in love with this guy, people do all kinds of crazy stuff when they've got their emotions stirred, but the devils listen to it, and they lock you in on it, and these things begin to come through an open door in your life. Why don't you say tonight: Jesus, I want to be cleaned up, I want to be free, I don't want this stuff around my life? Perhaps there's others of you, and you've been involved in other kinds of areas; there may be guys here and you're struggling with images in your mind, and you're glad tonight I've been talking to the girls, but really you've got your own struggle in your own life, and you say man, I've got images that just burn in my brain, I can't seem to get them out. Listen, you can just have those things broken off your life very simply, break the soul ties attaching you to them. You've got to just repent of that thing.

See, these things are all fantasy, escape, they bring you into the world of imagination, and then into the world of the spirit. God wants your imagination, men and women free, so His spirit can bring prophetic dreams and creative ideas. You've got to have your mind and imagination clean and clear. It's the gateway, the doorway into the spirit world. If anyone wants to access the spirit world, they focus their mind and imagination, and it opens a gateway. Listen, this is a gateway for the spirit, but you want the right spirit to come. You want to set your mind and imagination aside for the Lord. Perhaps there's some of you tonight, and you're struggling in relationships of different kinds. Perhaps you're struggling with grief or depression, or feeling a bit suicidal, or down inside. It'd be a great night to come forward and say God, I want to become whole, I want to be restored. Just while the musicians are playing people, I know God's been speaking to you, why don't you just come tonight, just come and stand in front of me and lift your hands and say: Jesus, I want my life to be clean for You. I want to be in love with You and passionate for You. Man, You're my Edward, You're my man. Man, You're supernatural, You're strong, You're wise, You're smart, You're beautiful. You're eternal, and if I will drink from You I will live forever, and that's the real thing. He's the real deal this Jesus Christ. Man, this Edward's a counterfeit, he's a substitute. He'll bite you and console you, confine you to cold death. Tonight Jesus Christ offers you life.

3. The Orphan Spirit

Sun 16 Jan 2011  « Back to Top

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The plight of humanity is: we are spiritually orphaned. We have not God as our Father. John 14:18, Jesus said: shortly I'm going to leave. I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever - the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, nor that sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He dwells in you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. Notice this statement: I will not leave you orphans.

Will you open your Bible at John, Chapter 14. One of the things that God wants us to have, is an understanding of is the immense love He has for us. You only give away what you've got, you can't give what belongs to someone else. You have to have something that's real, and the thing that the world needs more than anything, is the love of God. You can't give it if you haven't got it, and this year I would encourage you to open yourself up to encounter and personally experience God's love.

So I want to just pick up where we were last week, speaking about the story of Hosea. Hosea, whose name means salvation, is a type of God himself, and Hosea had an instruction. His instruction was to marry Gomer. Gomer means to come to the end of yourself, to be completely at the end of yourself, to have no more resources left. Gomer was a prostitute. She'd sold herself out, and so Hosea went and married her. Now I didn't go into trying to think through just the implications of the story, but I want to raise this bit. Even though he was married to her, she struggled in her heart to believe she could be loved. Her struggle was the difficulty in believing: I could be loved. This is a struggle many people have. It's a struggle I had for years, and at times still have it. It comes and goes.

It's a struggle to know that we're lovable, to know that we're loved completely and perfectly; and what happened was, Gomer had in her heart a wrong belief system. She had a belief system that somehow she was ugly, defiled, unlovable, and no one could love her, so when you have those kinds of belief systems, even though she had a marriage, and a marriage to a man who loved her, she couldn't receive the blessings of that marriage, because her heart belief system refused to accept that she could be loved. She continued to live as though she was unloved and rejected. When people believe in their heart that they're unlovable, they sabotage their lives and relationships, either by going for addictions to try and fill up that need for love, or by doing crazy things that prove that we're unlovable. So she ran away, and went back and sold herself into prostitution, was living with a man, and proving thereby I'm unlovable.

And yet God shows that no matter where we are, no matter what state we're in, we are lovable, because He's got great love for us. So He sent this man, this prophet to represent Him, and go and pay the full price, to bring her out of the slavery of prostitution, bring her back to himself, and to reveal to her, that in spite of what she thought and believed, she was lovable. This story can be found all over the Bible. It's this tremendous story, it's the story of Jesus Christ. This man Hosea is Jesus Christ, coming because the Father sent Him, into a world that doesn't believe it's lovable, that self-destructs in so many ways, and no matter what we've sold ourselves to, Jesus Christ loved us, paid the full price on the cross, to receive us into intimacy again. The story's seen in the parable of the Prodigal Son, it's seen in so many ways in the Bible, and we're going to explore some of those things this year.

So her difficulty was, her core belief: I'm unlovable - in fact she was an orphan in her heart, no one could love me and care for me. Now I want you to just have a look with me in John 14:18, I want to share on the Orphan Spirit. It's not a demonic spirit. It's just a whole stronghold, a mentality, a way of thinking, a way of living. It is called the world system, it's the way of living your life, when you live your life without God, and I want to just show you how it began. I want to show you how it shows up in our life, and then how Jesus came to remedy that situation for us. This year it's my prayer that God will bring the church, through great increase in personal revelation and corporate revelation, of the love our Father has for us. As we experience that love, it will change us, and change our relationships.

I believe God's wanting to bring the spirit of fatherhood into the house and into the church. I believe He's wanting to raise up men and women in the church, who will be fathers to the next generation. He wants to put fathering in your heart and spirit, the heart to reach out and embrace, and be a father to someone who needs you. So in John 14:18, this is what Jesus spoke. He talked about leaving; He said: shortly I'm going to leave, and then He talked about the Holy Spirit. He said: I will send to you - Verse 16 - I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever - the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, nor that sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He dwells in you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. Notice this statement: I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. He's promising the Holy Spirit would come.

So I want to just open this scripture up, and begin to just have a look at it. Some of the seed thoughts I got came from a guy, James Jordan, a New Zealander who's got a tremendous revelation of the love of the Father, and I want to just share some things related to this. The first thing is to understand the purpose that Jesus came, so many people think He just came to die on the cross for our sins. It's much more than that. The purpose of dying on the cross for our sins was to remove the block to relationship. He wanted to soundly deal with the issue, that we live in this life separated from God. Sin separates us from God, spiritually orphans us, leaves us without a loving Father; and so Jesus came, and through the Bible God sent prophets, sent various men, and they all revealed some aspect of God. But when Jesus came, Jesus came to reveal this: He came to reveal that God is a Father. Now this was the major revelation that He brought to His day - that God is a Father. Now religions don't know God as a Father. They know Him as a God, they know Him as severe, they know Him in all kinds of ways. The do not know Him as a Father.

When Jesus taught the disciples to pray, He said this is how you pray: Father. If we have issues in our heart with a father, if there are issues of unresolved conflict, we will find this extremely difficult to connect with God as a Father. Yet Jesus said that's how He wants us to relate to Him, as a Father. For many, the experiences of a father have caused images in the mind to be formed, that are not what Father in heaven is like at all. They are idols, they are wrong images. Jesus came to show us exactly what God is, as a Father; so when you study the life Jesus, He said: the words I speak are the Father's words, I say the things He gives Me to say, I do the things He tells Me to do. So when you look at Jesus' life, He reveals exactly what Father God is like, in the way He handles people and deals with people. So have another go through the gospels, reading about Jesus, and begin to think: this is what God is like as a Father. Is this what I would have expected Him to do?

And so God is a Father - so Jesus made it very clear: the words I speak are the words the Father gives Me. So when He says: I will not leave you orphans; He's saying something like this: currently when I leave you, you are orphans, spiritual orphans. The plight of humanity is, we are spiritually orphaned. We have not God as our Father, we have someone else. It's called the devil, and he runs a world system, with a belief structure and ways of doing life, values and attitudes, and we live in that, we're conditioned by that, we think like that, and God wants to remove us out of that, to give us a revelation of His Fatherhood, His love for us, and to bring us into our identity as sons. So remember we shared the story of the Prodigal Son, and the older brother, although he was a son, lived as a slave. Here's a picture for people who are Christians, who have come into the house of God, who are a son of God; but still in the mentality, live like an orphan, like a slave. Jesus came to remove that. He came to take away all the need to perform, and came to bring us into a revelation of grace, and the sheer goodness of God.

You can't give to others what you don't have, and God was wanting to flood the church with a revelation of His love, His goodness, His grace, and His glory, to remove bitter judgement out of the house, out of our lives. So Jesus made it very clear that people are orphans, and He says: I promise - here's My promise: I will not leave you orphaned. Here's what I'll do - I will send the Holy Spirit. He will come into you, and you will no longer be alone. You'll actually be in intimate union with the spirit of My Father. He said: you have seen Me with you, but soon the spirit of My Father is going to be in you, joined to your spirit. You can't get any more closely connected than that. He said: this is better than having Me here with you, because now My spirit, the spirit of My Father - see Jesus represented the Father. The Holy Spirit represented the Father. The three are one, there's no breaking or dividing them up. When you have the Holy Spirit, you have the spirit of the Father in you.

So He said: I'm going to make it so that the spirit of the Father comes and lives in you, and within you, you will be joined, and this spirit is a spirit of sonship, it's a spirit that reveals to you that God is Father. That's why when you pray within you it'll bear witness, Abba, daddy, father, I can come to you, you're my loving father. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. He said: I'm promising you that; and so Jesus called us to two things. He called us into intimacy and relationship with God as a Father; He called us also into mission. Intimacy precedes mission. Jesus' mission flowed out of intimacy. They're interconnected. You don't have one without the other, you have both. If you just have intimacy, without mission, I question what kind of intimacy you really have, and whether you've caught the heart of the Father, who is ascending God. Now God sent you to Hastings/Napier, Hawkes Bay, because He has a work for you to do. Out of your intimacy, out of your love, out of your revelation of Him, will flow a mission to reach people, because people need love. They need a revelation that God is a loving God. Why? Because they don't believe they're lovable.

You get with non-Christians, and after a while they know you're a Christian. Suddenly all their feelings about themselves surface. That's how they really feel, and we need to be able to minister to them in love. So where are the origins of the orphan spirit? How did this thing all come about? There are two places; the first thing is you have to understand, that the origin of this orphan spirit is demonic. It's demonic. It began with Lucifer. We read in Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-16, there are descriptions of life before the fall. The Bible describes an angel by the name of Lucifer. It says he was in Eden, the Garden of God; so the Garden of God, Eden, is not just a physical place. It's more than that. It's a garden, it's a place in the spirit of fellowship, intimacy and relationship with God.

It's also called the Mountain of God, and in that place there, he was the anointed cherub that covered it. He had a realm in worship, he had a realm of influence around the throne of God. He was a major angel, and then the Bible says that there rose in him, inequity in his heart. It says that he said: well I will arise, and I'll go beyond my positioning, I'll go higher. I will go to this, and he said: I will be as God. So in his heart, pride formed, and this is what he did. He rejected God as a Father. The angels are called sons of God too, and so he rejected the Fatherhood of God. When he rejected the Fatherhood of God, this is what happened. He was cast out of heaven. He was cast out of his Father's family. He was cast out of his Father's home. He was cast out from his Father's presence. He was literally orphaned - no Father. No Father, no home, no inheritance, no place. He was literally orphaned.

So he is the source, he is the one behind the whole attempt to bring people into a state of not knowing and understanding the love God has. His whole design and intention, is to distort your relationship with God, so you don't understand His loving Father heart, His loving nature. His whole structure of his world system is set up to keep you in a state of perpetual being an orphan. Now I'll refer to it in some different way, so that's where it happened, he was cast out. So he was rejected. He was abandoned. He was orphaned, and so he then desired that when he saw the creation of God, Adam, he desired to orphan Adam as well. He desired to separate Adam from God. Why did he want to do that? Two reasons; one, he was envious of what Adam had, and the positioning that God gave Adam; and two, this was the only way he could break God's heart, is to destroy His children. You think about it. People put up with a lot of things, but you touch their children, now something stirs up! People may put up with all kinds of things, and stand up for a lot of stuff and not say a word, but the moment their children are at stake, then they come out fighting.

Now you understand that your children, particularly, are a part of who you are, and so because your children are part of who you are, there's a deep fondness for them. There's an affection for them, and there's a love, there's a bond that's there. So because the devil couldn't do anything about God, his only way of lashing back at God, to wound and to hurt God, is to strike at the heart, to strike at the people that God loved, to take His children, steal His children. Once you begin to understand that, you realise what this whole thing in the Garden was about. I want you just to turn with me into the Garden of Eden, and to Genesis, Chapter 2. I want to just talk about the creation of Adam and I want to show you some things about this you'll have not noticed. I hadn't noticed it myself and just when I saw it I began weep and weep and weep. So we read in Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 7.

Now we know that God created the heavens and earth. We realise in Genesis 1, God said: let there be light, and then there was light. He spoke. You notice that in everything that God did, He created it by the spoken word. God said: let there be light, let there be fish, let there be trees, let there be this, let there be that. He spoke, and the words created, the words brought forth out of the realm of the spirit, into the earth, the things He wanted to design; but when it came to man God did it differently. Here it is here, I want you to have a look with me in Verse 7. The Lord formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Now I want you to have a look at how God made Adam. I want you just to think on this for a moment, because sometimes I've found with scripture we read it, and we're familiar with the story, but we don't stop to think what happened.

Just when you stop, and you begin to see what really happened, the first thing is, it says that God formed Adam. In other words - now that word 'formed' is the word used when you have a potter, and he takes some clay in his hands with water, and he begins to spin the pot, and begins to squeeze and mould and shape it. So this word 'formed' has to do with touch, the hands. So notice that God didn't create man by speaking. He created man with His own hands. He actually took the dust of the earth, and then He began to shape. Can you imagine God standing there in the earth He'd created, and taking handfuls of dust, and as He takes those handfuls of dust, He begins to let His glory flow into the dust. He begins to move, and His hands move over it, and He begins to shape. All the angels are standing around, and they're wondering what on earth God is up to. They've seen Him create the heavens, and they've seen Him create the earth, they've seen Him create the sun, moon and stars. They've seen Him create the seas, the animals, the plant life. They've seen Him create everything, and now suddenly God is standing on the earth, and God reaches down into the earth and picks up some dust.

He's holding it in His hands. There it is, Almighty God, holding dust in His hands, and He begins to move His hands like a potter. As He moves those hands, He begins to shape, and the angels and everyone are watching, just what is God up to now? He begins to shape, and as He begins to shape, the dust that He's shaping takes on the shape of a human body, the image of God, eyes and ears and nose and mouth, hands and feet, a body. But if you've ever been in a wax museum, it was probably a bit like one of those. You see a dead body, it's just like a wax, it's there, but there's no one in it, and so the angels are standing, and it's almost like God, out of the dust of the earth, has made this body, and it's an adult body, a fully grown body - so Adam wasn't just a little baby that came into being. He's actually formed as a body, fully, fully formed. And everyone's watching, what is God up to? Then it said: God breathed into him the breath of life, breathed - now notice this - breathed into his nostrils.

Now God didn't do this from a long way off. God is here like this. He's holding Adam, and He's just formed him, but all there is, is a human body, a perfect human body, and then God needs to do one other thing. He needs to give Adam the kiss of life, and so [kisses his wife] like that. See, it's not something a long way off. This is something intimate and close. Why? Because He's about to make someone He loves. He's about to form man in His own image and likeness, and so the Bible says: He breathed into Adam, into His nostrils. So that meant He had to be close. [Laughter and applause] Now think about this. Now when He did that, Adam became something, so God put in His life, the life of His spirit, and suddenly Adam became conscious. Now when Adam became conscious, you've got to realise now, his mind was not corrupted by sin. Scientists tell us we use only about 10 per cent of our brain. The smartest person has perhaps got an IQ of 150 to 200. Only 10 per cent - imagine what the IQ is, if you've got the full brain use.

Now you've got to remember, he's had no experiences of life at all. He's had no memories. There are no memories. He's about to open his eyes, and have his first experience, and what is his first experience? [Laughter] As he opened his eyes, his first experience was God, His heavenly Father, fully of glory, full of love. He looked straight into the face of God, into the face of His Father. What he saw on that face was love, approval, acceptance, and the biggest smile you've ever seen in the world. God is making a Son. God is making man, in His image and likeness. God is making someone to govern His creation. God is making His family, and the first experience that Adam had - so as He breathed into him, the skin suddenly became pink, as the blood began to flow, the heart began to pump. Suddenly Adam becomes conscious, and as he becomes conscious, he realises he's alive. It's like waking up, and suddenly he wakes up, his eyes open, and what he sees, is the face of God. He sees the face of his Father. He feels the love of his Father, the approval of his Father, the acceptance of his Father. That is his first and lasting impression; and your first experience of anything - it's lasting. So imprinted upon him, is a loving Father. What an amazing thing aye? Isn't that amazing? Think about how amazing that is.

So he doesn't know any pain, he doesn't know any suffering, he doesn't know what sorrow is, doesn't know what rejection is, doesn't know a thing about any of those things. He opens his eyes, and he sees his Father's love, and every day he's living in his Father's love. Every day he's talking with his Father. Every day he's receiving love. Actually heaven is on earth. The kingdom of heaven is now on earth. He has access to his Father in the realm of the spirit. He has access to heaven, yet he's on earth. He's God's original intention. Now you notice that not only did he have this experience of God's touch. He would have smelt the fragrance of God. He saw the face of God. He experienced the feeling of God's love. He walked in that love, and yet it was incomplete. God needed that he have someone human to express that love to. Love never can be alone. It always has to overflow to people, and so he caused Adam to go into a deep sleep.

In Genesis 5:1 it says: He called their name Adam. In other words, when God formed Eve, Adam and Eve were one. There was no division, there was disunity, there was no hiding, there was no deception, there was no dishonesty, there was nothing like that. Actually they just walked in love and openness, and they had a relationship that was intimate, and close with one another, and with God. Every day God would come into the Garden, and they would walk and talk with Him, and enjoy it. They actually had heaven on earth. What an amazing experience, tremendously amazing experience - and so he lived in intimacy, lived in closeness, lived in a most amazing environment; and then the devil came. The devil is the one who wants to orphan us, and this is what he had in mind: I've been orphaned, I'm going to take away these kids of God, I'm going to take away His children, I'm going to destroy His family. So he was subtle. God had given Adam some warnings, given him some boundaries. He gave that, He gave him opportunity to be a steward, and to grow in authority and wisdom and stature.

So He gave him an assignment, a place to work out that assignment, some boundaries around that assignment, and within that, he was to grow up - but of course you remember the story in Genesis 3. We read it there; the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Well really? Did God say don't eat every tree of the garden? The woman said: well we can eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, God said you shall not eat it, nor touch it, you'll die. The serpent said: oh, you won't die. God knows. He knows something that He's not telling you. The day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, you'll be like God. Now that was the very thing that was in Satan's heart: I will be as God; and so he says: oh, you'll be as God. What he's saying, simply is this: you really can't trust God, He's a hold out, and He's not telling that you'll eat that fruit, you know what's going to happen? You'll be like Him. Oh? Oh I don't need God, I could eat the fruit, and I'll actually just be able to be like Him? Whoa, this is awesome!

Now remember, the plan of God is we become like Him, that we grow into His nature. But it's growing through relationship, and walking with Him - but he's saying: here's another way. You don't have to trust God. In fact, I wouldn't trust Him at all. He knows you're not going to die. There are going to be no consequences of sin! Come on, He's holding out on you. What you need is to take this, you need to do this. You need to let go Him being your Father. You need to step out and do something for yourself, just like the Prodigal Son. So they took it and they ate of it, and the moment they ate of it, their eyes were opened; and now suddenly some things have happened. The glory that was on them vanished. That's why they looked and saw they were naked. There was a glory of God's presence upon them; they were not conscious of themselves, they were not conscious of one another, they were conscious of God's love. And what happened, in a moment of time, guilt came in, shame came in, fear came in. They began to cover, they began to hide. When God came, they ran away and hid, and God came and visited them, to find them.

Notice the question that God asked them. He didn't ask them: have you guys broken my laws? He didn't ask them: have you done something wrong? What have you done? He asked them a relational question: where are you? He did not come with judgement in His heart. He did not come with condemnation in His heart. He came as a loving Father, to find His children: where are you? Adam and Eve were hiding, so then He asked a second question: well who told you you were naked? Who have you been talking to? Have you eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? And immediately, Adam, now Adam was faced with this opportunity: He could be responsible, and own his actions, and ask his Father to forgive him; or he could deny responsibility, blame someone else, and refuse to repent, and come back into relationship with his Father. In that moment, he did what men do. Men find it really difficult to say: I was wrong, I am sorry, will you forgive me? It comes right back to Adam.

If he had just done that, God would have room then, to forgive him; but he didn't do that, he denied and blamed. Now you imagine two people walking in love and unity, and Eve's shock for the first time. Now what you've got to understand, is the shock they experienced. They are in a state where they're stunned, because the glory has gone, the presence of God is gone, fear is in them - they're feeling emotions they've never felt before, and they're in a panicked state and hiding. When God speaks with them, instead of seeing Him as a loving Father, they see Him through the corruption of their own minds: I'm scared of Him. He's going to punish me. I've got to blame someone else, so I don't get punished. With that, then God stepped in, and began to do some things. The consequences of the fall were this: notice these words here. Read down here, and I'll finish with this in a moment.

It says in Verse 24: He drove out the man, and placed cherubim at the gate of the Garden of Eden, a flaming sword which turned each way, to guard the tree of life. Why did God do that? Verse 22, the Lord said: man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. Now lest he put his hand and take the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, we've got to get him out of here. Now how many of you saw that movie Lord of the Rings? How many saw Lord of the Rings? Okay, now there was a guy in there called Gollum. You notice Gollum was a really ugly creature, an incredibly ugly creature. But if you watched the movies, in one of them, it showed what he used to be. What he used to be, was just one of the elves. He was quite a nice looking fellow, but when he reached out for the power of the ring, he became corrupted, and as he kept the ring in his possession, eventually he became totally corrupted. He changed physically, he changed his appearance, he became an ugly, vile, loathsome, divided internally kind of creature - horrendous.

This is exactly what God saw would happen to Adam and Eve, now that sin had entered their lives. They'd refused to take responsibility for sin, so this is what happened. Then He saw corruption would come, and He said: I love them too much to leave them like this, so this is what's going to happen. Firstly, you have to carry the consequences of your sin; secondly, I'm going to send a redeemer; thirdly, I'm going to cover you; but fourthly, you can't stay here in the Garden. You can't eat the tree of life, you can't live forever, because that corruption would go on and distort and disfigure you, if I didn't stop it. You've got to come to an end. I can't let you have the tree of life. Then what it says is this: God drove them out of the Garden. Now think about that word 'drove'. It meant: He divorced them. It meant literally, He pushed them out of their possession and inheritance. Now when you push someone, it's because they are reluctant to leave.

Now have you ever seen someone, who's just had a major accident, maybe a car crash? You see them straight after a car crash, they are in shock. Their emotions are in shock, their mind's in shock, their body's in shock, and they sort of stand there, and they're kind of bewildered. Often what medical people have to do, is they have to gather them and guide them, and literally make them go to where they need to go, or to sit down and do what they've got to do, because they're in shock. So we see that God drove them out - they were in shock. They were traumatised by what they experienced. They were now orphaned, out of the Garden, out of the presence of God, out of the love of God, and so that's where the orphan spirit developed.

So how does it manifest in people's lives? A whole number of ways. Let me just give them quickly and see what Jesus came really to do, I'll just give a couple of scriptures for it. Here's the first thing. An orphan has no sense of home or belonging. When people are born into this world, the thing we are lacking, is a spiritual home and spiritual belonging. There's no sense of name or identity. An orphan has no one to speak words of affirmation in them, to say who they are. They have no father. Spiritually people are orphaned. The third thing is, that there's no inheritance. When you're an orphan, you have no one to leave an inheritance to you, you have no one to leave property, money, finances, resources to you. If you're an orphan, you have no one to provide for you, discipline you, guide you, correct you through life. If you're an orphan, this is what you are: you are alone in life; and this is what you learn: there's no one to look out for me except me. I need to look out for number one. So the whole world system operates on this principle: I must look out for number one. I must look out for me. Why? Because there's no one to provide for me. Actually it's the sign a person's orphaned. With it there are a whole number of issues of course, rejection and abandonment and loneliness and stuff like that, but basically people become subject then to the world system. Now you think how people live their lives. They live as spiritual orphans. When we come into the church, we can easily come in, come to Christ, and yet still live like spiritual orphans. That's what the elder brother did, in the story of the Prodigal Son.

What did Jesus come to do? This is what He came to do: I love this, John 1:12. This is what He said: To as many as received Him, to as many as welcomed Jesus Christ, to as many as believed on Him, and put their trust in Him; He gave them the right, the privilege, to become a child of the living God. To as many as made Jesus welcome, when Jesus came and walked on the earth: one, He showed what the Father was like; He taught what the Father was like; He acted and lived out what the Father is like; He died on the cross to deal with the issue of sin. Why? So we could get out of that place of being an orphan, into a place of intimate connection with the Father. To everyone who received Him, He gave the right and privilege to become a child of God, to become not just a child, but an heir of God, heir to all that God has, access to God, access to love, access to being unconditionally loved.

Jesus came to deliver us of the bondage of performance. Under the law, people perform to get accepted by God. Jesus came to give a different way, it's called grace. It's called: God did it for me! Jesus did the work for me, I need to believe and receive, and become positioned to enter and access my Father's love and blessing. In Romans, Chapter 8 it says: the spirit that He's put in us, is a spirit of adoption; the spirit that you receive when you receive Christ comes into your heart, to place you into your sonship - no longer an orphan, no longer living alone, no longer abandoned, no longer without identity, no longer without someone to speak into your life, no longer without someone to correct you, no longer without an inheritance, no longer having to look out for number one, no longer having to live that kind of life; now access to the treasures of heaven, access to the blessings of God, access to a loving Father. That spirit witnesses with our spirit. I am a child of God, I am loved by my Father.

Jesus came to bring us into spiritual sonship, not to be a slave, not to serve and to work, not to just do what we're told, but to come into relationship with God, to be able to experience His love, experience His face again, experience His glory again, experience His blessing in our lives. God came to give you that. How much of it are you receiving? The Prodigal Son couldn't believe it could be trusted, and went out and went into the world; but came back and experienced that love and provision. The elder brother was like many Christians, in the house, but no concept of the love and resources of his father available to him. We'll talk with you another time why those blocks are there, and what to do about the blocks that stop me realising my sonship in Him. God wants you in this year, to have a great revelation of His Fatherhood, His love for you, your identity in Him, so you're free from performing, free from pretending, free from trying to be someone. You can just be yourself. He freed us from the law, so we can be ourselves. He said: I accept you like you are, so you can rest, and be yourself, and then grow into the person God has made you to be.

Let's just close our eyes. Father, we just thank You right now for the wonderful love, the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful grace poured out. Oh God, deliver us from the mentality of an orphan, living as though it's all up to us, struggling, striving, competing, envying, eyeing what others have, and wanting what they have. Bring us into revelation of Your Fatherhood, of Your love, of Your acceptance, of Your provision. Bring us into revelation of Your destiny for us. Oh Father, we thank You. Jesus prayed that the love that the Father has shown Me, might be in those who follow Me. Imagine that - love, affirmation, destiny, legacy, the many blessings that God has. He wants them to be realised in your life. This is not a year to live like a slave and a pauper. It's a year to step into God's love and blessing and provision, and the changes He wants you to make.

Is there any person here today who hasn't received Jesus Christ yet, you're not yet a Christian? You know Jesus died on the cross to break that orphan spirit, so you'd never be alone, that in your heart would be home, in your heart would be heaven, in your heart would be the spirit of God; the power of sin broken, joined to heaven itself. What a wonderful, wonderful gift God offers you, but it requires a decision to receive Jesus Christ. If you don't receive Him, then you carry on walking like a spiritual orphan, and you're not just orphaned in life, you're orphaned for eternity - a tragedy, when God makes it possible to be part of His family. Today I invite you to respond to receive Jesus Christ. I want you to pray this prayer with me.

[Repeated by congregation] Father in heaven, I come to You in Jesus' name. I have lived as a spiritual orphan, separated by sin from You. Today I receive Jesus Christ, I receive His forgiveness, I receive His life. I receive the spirit of sonship into my heart. Lord, I turn away from all sin and choose to walk with You. Today I thank You that You are revealing Your love for me day by day. I thank You as I walk with You, I will grow as a son of God into my destiny, and the inheritance You have for me. I thank You today I am free from performing, free from trying and struggling, free to enjoy You. Amen. Praise the Lord!

If you're listening on the internet, and you prayed that prayer for the first time, you've opened the way for Jesus Christ to become your saviour. I encourage you to reach into the website and get access to some of the teachings, some of the resources. Otherwise you need to get connected quite quickly into a local church somewhere that preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ. Get connected to the family of God that can help you.

Father in heaven, we thank You for this day. Is this a great day or what! [Applause] Are you a blessed person? You're removed from cursing into blessing, curse of failure into curse of success, curse of poverty into blessing prosperity. We are moved from curse to blessing today! Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Story of Hosea and Gomer – Hosea 1 – 2

Gomer (to fail, come to an end) runs away in spite of the love Hosea has for her.

She believes she is unlovable, undeserving of love.

She sabotages her relationship with Hosea – proving what she believes.

Core belief: I am unlovable – root of negative behaviour, addictions, ‘performance’.

God reveals His Amazing Grace through Hosea – His unquenchable love for Gomer.

Jn 14:18 “I will not leave you orphans”.

- Jesus came to reveal the Father and His Love and heart for people.

- Jesus spoke the words His Father gave Him.

- God calls people orphans – ones without a Father.

- Jesus promises - not to leave you orphans = send Spirit of Father

to live in you.

- To resolve the issue of being orphans by being

united with the Father.

2. Origins of Orphan Spirit

(a) Lucifer

Is 14:12-15 Lucifers 5x “I Will” – I will be like the Most High.

Ezekiel 28:12-16 Lucifer – cast as a profane thing from the mountain of God

He lived in the garden of God – the presence and glory of God, the Father.

He rejected the Father hood of God and His positioning.

He was cast out of the Father’s presence, love, glory.

He was rejected, abandoned, judged, with no hope of restoration.

He became the original orphan, the source of the orphan spirit.

(b) Adam

Gen. 2:7-8, 21

(i) God formed Adam (v7)

- All other areas of creation God spoke into existence – “let there be”.

- God did no ‘speak’ Adam into existence. God formed man.

- Form = to squeeze into shape like a potter models the clay.

- He used His own hands to shape and form a human being in His likeness.

- Formed a perfect adult human – perfectly functioning body – without life.

(ii) God breathed into Adam’s nostrils (v7)

- God kissed Adam – came near to him and imparted His breath – His life.

- Adam suddenly came alive – a living soul in a body – able to experience.

- He became conscious, alive – personality awoke, memory and experiences start.

- Brain had immense capacity to think, image, reason (we only use 10%).

(iii) Adam’s first experience – Father’s Love

- Adam opened his eyes for the first time – first experience – first feelings and sensations.

- What experience? Father’s face – smiling with approval and love.

- Small fragrance of His presence – looked into the face of God – face of love.

- First experience was the face, and love, and touch, of God the Father.

- Jn 17:3 “This is eternal life that they know the Father …”

- Adam looked into the love of God.

(iv) Relational Unity

- God called their name Adam – Gen 5:1

- Adam and Eve walked in love, oneness, unity – experiencing glory and love of God.

- No experiences of pain, rejection, sorrow – lived in Kingdom – love, peace, joy.

- Daily intimacy and oneness with Father and with each other.

(c) The Temptation and Fall

Gen. 3:6 – 10

Satan the original orphan – hates God and hates the family of God – destroyer.

He set a trap for Adam and Eve – “be as God knowing …”

He formed the lie = there is life to be found outside of God.

Immediately Adam followed his wife into sin.

- Loss of Glory

- Experience guilt, shame, fear of punishment

- Disfigured by sin

Example of Lord of Rings – Gollum.

Lust for power – corrupted and changed him – grossly disfigured.

(d) Consequences of Fall – ‘Orphaned’

Gen. 3:20-24 God drove them out of the Garden

- Confronted them

- Called to account

- Made a promise to them

- Clothed them

God still loving and compassionate

Could not allow them to continue to live forever progressively disfigured.

Drove = to force out from a possession, divorce.

Adam and Eve were stunned emotionally, spiritually – in shock!

Never experienced this before – lost their relationship with Father – orphaned.

Orphan

- No sense of home or belonging

- No name, identity, words of affirmation

- No inheritance gifted

- No source of provision, discipline

- Alone – having to perform, fight, compete for everything

- Subject to world system governed by the devil – look after No.1, compete

- Roots – rejection, abandonment, shame, fear, bitterness, loneliness

When people grow up in this system they think it is normal – Way of Life.

Jesus Promise – John 1:12, John 14:18, Romans 8:15.

4. Relationship or Rights

Sun 6 Feb 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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Would you rather be Right, or would you rather have Relationship? Hurt people hurt others, without even realising. We have no power really to stop painful things happening in our life. We do have the choice how we respond. Relationship conflicts reveal our heart attitude.

I want you to open your Bible with me in Matthew, Chapter 18. I want to speak a message called Relationship or Rights. Relationship or Rights - would you rather be right, or would you rather have relationship? While you're finding Matthew 18 - there's a scripture in Ephesians 5 that goes something like this. It says: be imitators of God, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us. In other words, the Bible says: don't copy the guy next door to you. Don't copy someone down the road. Don't model your lifestyle on people who are broken and sinful. Rather model your lifestyle on what God is like.

We're called to become like Him, so God has designed us for relationship and to become like Him. To become like Him means, we need to model our life on Jesus, what He taught, and how He lived His life out; and walk in love, as He walked in love. So this is the challenge, is walking in love, a lifestyle of love, and it's not ishy-gishy or all that kind of [woohy] sort of thing. It's much, much more than that. It's something substantial that involves our character, what goes on in your heart. Now in life, there wouldn't be anyone here in this room who didn't have someone upset you or hurt you, probably on the way to church this morning - upset you or hurt you, just by living in life; and living in life, one thing is absolutely certain is taxes. The other thing that's fairly certain, is that you're going to get hurt, you're going to suffer injustice, you're going to suffer pain, you're going to get wounded in your interactions with people.

When this happens, which is part of life, it's natural to feel a bit hurt and a bit upset. Sometimes we might even get angry - tell someone next to you: that's you he's talking about now. I know you [Laughter] so it's quite natural to be like that. But the thing is, we have no power really to stop painful things happening in our life. We do have the choice how we respond, and it's the choice how you respond that positions you to walk in blessing and increase of the grace of God, or to literally open your life to demonic oppression. My observation is the majority of Christians suffer needlessly, suffer in their life and relationships, in ways that we should never have to suffer, because they don't understand how to walk in the love of God, how to walk and reflect the character of God. We would rather be right than do that, so when someone upsets you, you have a choice.

Your choice - remember, you have no choice over what they did. Here's what your choice is. Your choice is in how you respond; and you're either going to decide to move in blessing, or in cursing. Choose life, choose blessing rather than cursing. We always have the choice, so the moment someone upsets you, gets on your wick or anything, you can choose to walk in blessing, and release blessing - if you release grace and forgiveness; or if you want to demand your rights, and hold that the person has to put it right, and demand they apologise to you, you will walk in cursing.

I'll show you why you'll walk in cursing. God opened to me something from scripture; I've read it enough times, and you have too, but I saw something I had not seen before, because I've puzzled about this parable. So I want to go through the parable of the unforgiving servant, in Matthew Chapter 18 Verse 21. So in Verse 21, Peter came to Jesus and said: Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? How about seven times? That's pretty big of me, if I forgive him seven times. That's not to bad is it aye? I'm a pretty good guy don't you think? And Jesus said: no, seventy times seven. He said: what? Then Jesus began to speak a parable, and so He said: the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he begun to settle the accounts, there was one brought to him who owned him ten thousand talents. That's millions of dollars - and he was not able to pay.

His master commanded he be sold with his wife and children, all he had, and that payment be made. The servant fell down before him, said: master, have patience. I will pay you all, then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave the debt. Man, isn't that something else. So you have to understand that there's a whole area where Jesus has been teaching, on offences and issues in relationships. In the context of that, Peter sort of says: well you know, if someone upsets me, hurts me or gets me annoyed, and gets on wick; how many times should I forgive him? Once, twice, maybe seven times, how about that? And Jesus said: no, no, no and then He teaches a parable.

Parable is to open up an insight and understanding related to the issue of being hurt in relationship. This is a kingdom parable, and so you notice here that it's about a kingdom and about a king; so the first thing is, who is the parable addressed to? Well you know, maybe it's just to unsaved people. No it isn't, it's addressed to Peter, and if you read at the end of it, the application Jesus gives: so will My heavenly Father do to you, if each of you from your heart does not forgive everyone, his brother their trespasses. So twice in the parable, it's clear this is something for Christians. I'd encourage you to open your heart to listen, because what I share with you will shift your thinking about how important it is to walk in forgiveness and grace.

I guarantee that people are going to hurt. I guarantee that you will not always respond well, but if you can get an insight from this parable, it will help motivate you to make choices which ensure no matter what anyone does, two things happen: one, you respond in a way that gets you into a new flow of grace and blessing; and two, that you actually ensure you grow from the experience, become a greater person.

So the first thing is, who's it addressed to? It's addressed to Christians, addressed to you. Second thing is, what is the key issue in this parable? The key issue is this: how will you treat people? How will you respond to people who annoy you, tick you off, offend you, do an injustice to you, do something that really hurts and upsets you? How will you respond? That is the key issue. This is about the response, and you can choose to respond with the law. You can choose to respond with grace. That is the choice - law or grace. If you respond with law, you will demand your rights. You will demand justice. This is not fair, you must do something, you owe me. You have to do something to fix this up. That is the law.

Or you can respond with grace. Grace releases something to people they don't deserve. It releases forgiveness. It releases blessing. If you respond with the law, then you and the other person end up into cursing. If you respond with grace, you and the other person end up in blessing. It's always your choice. We're going to just flow through, and I want to show you this, how it works. So first of all what's the nature of the kingdom? You notice it talks about the kingdom of God, and here's the nature of this kingdom that we serve. It says the king, when faced with the man who had debts of millions - there's no way he could repay it. That king is Jesus Christ. That kingdom is the kingdom of God, and the nature of that kingdom is like this: he was moved when compassion, when the man said: I just can't do it. I can't fix this problem up. It's too big.

When you and I come to Jesus Christ, He opens His heart with compassion, and extends grace to you. None of us are saved by doing works. None of us are saved, or come right in relationship with God, by doing anything to help ourselves. We come right by receiving grace, through believing in the goodness of God. That's how you start your walk with God. You believe He is good, you believe He's done the work for you, and by that you open your heart, and you are forgiven. You enter a flow of grace. The Bible says: we're to come to the throne of grace.

Now grace is not some funny word you hear in church. Grace is a flow of power that enables you to change, enables you to live the life God wants you to live. It empowers you to do what God called you to do, so grace is a flow of the power of God. It's nothing deserved or earned, it's something that comes to those who are in a place of faith and closeness with God.

It's not human ability or strength. It's actually a substance from heaven that enables you to do what you could never do. How can I do 10 days in Taiwan, praying for people morning and night, hundreds and hundreds of people; get on a plane, fly down to Auckland; up to San Diego and then pray for hundreds and hundreds of people, and still be able to do it? I'll tell you very simply, it's called grace. It is very real. It's a power that flows in your life, that energises your body, energises your soul, energises you to do things you couldn't normally do. It also helps you in your relationships.

So grace, we need the grace of God, and the Bible says: grace is given to the humble. Now notice this man. He humbled himself, and said: I can't do it, please help me. The nature of this kingdom we're in, it's a kingdom of grace; so those who humble themselves, God is kind and loving and he pours out what we don't deserve. We don't try and earn it. We don't do anything. We don't go to services to get this. It's about a relationship from the heart, so that's what the key is. Grace is intended to be - it's the dynamic of heaven, it's the power of heaven. It's to enable us to walk with God. It comes out of walking with God, but here's the thing. It's intended to flow to people that you are in relationship with.

So now let's move on, have a look what happened to the guy. Now relationship conflicts reveal our heart attitude. Here's the thing you have to understand: it's impossible for you to love God if you can't walk in love with the people around you. It's a deception to think because you have experiences with God, you are walking with God. An experience with God is just that, it's an experience - came in, had a buzz and went out. Came in, had a good time and went out. I got in my prayer time, experienced the touch of God, and then walked out. Listen, having an experience with God is not a walk with God. Having an experience with God is just that. It's a momentary thing. It happens in a brief time, and it's wonderful, and it imparts to us, but it imparts grace to change how we live.

Now the real test of whether you're walking with God shows up in how you treat the family of God. You can say to me how spiritual you are. You may have seen miracles, and done all kinds of things, or experienced many kinds of experiences, but the evidence of your walk with God is seen in your walk with people. How do we treat people? Now God is lovely. You get alone with Him, He's loving and merciful and kind, and talks the truth. We all love to be in the presence of God, it's wonderful. I love it. Cry, and enjoy God, and feel loved, hear words of encouragement; but you know the thing is then, what happens when we go out to people?

See, the family of God is actually Christ in body form; so when you meet another believer, you are meeting a part of the expression of Christ in the earth. How you treat other believers really does reveal what's in your heart, and whether you're walking with God; so our conflicts with people, our difficulties with people, cause or they reveal what's really in our heart. Now notice, this man was a servant of God. That means he's a Christian, a servant of God. You notice he has received forgiveness, he's received mercy, and he needed it. He had a really bad lifestyle. He's the kind of person that really blew it. They really have messed up their life, done so many wrong things, bad things. They've come, and God has just poured out His love and forgiveness. Now the key issue for them is: will you walk, and continue to abide in that favour of God, or will you just cancel it out? So you can come into an experience with God, and the same day when you meet someone, cancel out much of the blessing and life flow you've come in, by how you respond to a person. This is exactly what this guy did, and I'll show you in a moment how he did it.

Another servant come up, and the servant went out, and he found one of the fellow servants; so this is a Christian dealing with another Christian, and he owed him a hundred denarios, which is less than a day's pay, maybe $100 compared with the millions. Notice what he did - he laid hands on him, took him by the throat - ha! Pay what you owe! So the fellow servant fell at his feet and begged him. Notice he said the same thing that the other servant said to the king: have patience, I'll pay it all. But he would not, and he threw him into prison, until he should pay all the debt. So notice the things that come up in here. Now he had an opportunity, having come into grace, when he met another Christian, he had an opportunity to extend grace; so his choice was: do I pass on and extend what I'm in; or do I give the law? The law means I demand justice, I demand and insist on my rights - now notice this. He was right. He was totally right. That guy had failed, that guy had hurt him, that guy did owe him. That guy truly was in debt. He was right, and legally it was with in his rights to demand the repayment. Legally it was right - however, what needed to flow out of him was something different. He'd experienced the goodness, the grace, the mercy, the kindness of God. What was needed now, was for him to extend it to another person; so instead of that, something else came up in his heart.

He had a choice to demand what is right, and demand and stand on that, and he was quite right, legally right. He could put the guy in prison - notice, put him and his family in prison; or he could extend grace, which means yield your right, and allow the person what they didn't deserve. That was the choice. Now you notice here, it's not what you give to the person who hurts you. When someone hurts you, you want to give them a poke in the eye, you want to retaliate. Oh, you did this, and you got this thing you want to do. Don't tell me you haven't felt that way. We've all felt that. We're all made of the same stuff - and you get flustering and puffing up, and get all flamed, and your nostrils flare, and your eyes glare. You're starting to huff and puff, and your veins are bulging. Next thing you know, you're yelling, or banging a door, or doing something. You're standing on your rights that have been violated! Something's got to pay!

So I mean we've all been there and done those kinds of things - more often than we'd like to admit isn't it really? [Laughs] There you were, driving to church and someone cut you off! Grrrr! We were just going to worship God, you know? [Laughter] We somehow got it all separate. Someone cuts you off in the car park going out. and the lovely sweet face that was saying: I love you Jesus, I am blessed - Grrrr - and you're cursing just like that. Move from grace and blessing to cursing just in a moment. That's the problem.

James wrote, and he said: it shouldn't be like this. One minute we're blessing, then we're cursing them. Shaking our fist, and roaring in anger and bellowing or some kind of thing; or a more subtle form of it, with snappy little words that are like a little sword that go straight into the heart and down inside, leaves the person wounded deeply as they walk away. Or we just get [sniffs as if offended] cold, [Laughter] and we freeze them out! It's all the same stuff - demanding your rights and not being gracious. So it's not what you want to give to the person who hurt you. We all know what you want to give them, poke in the eye or a slap on the face. It's what you want to receive in your future relationships that counts, so when someone upsets you, make a decision whether you give them what you want to give them, or whether you decide about what you want it to be like for you in the future.

You can move in blessing, and prepare blessing for your future; you can flow in cursing, you'll reap it as well. Many people can't understand why they have so much repeated difficulties in their relationships, because they respond to injustice with wanting to be right. I'm right, you're wrong, you've got to pay. See, wanting to be right is a problem - yeah, but I want to be right! Of course you do, that's pride, just want to be right. The heart of the kingdom is about relationships. You notice, the king was entitled to throw the guy in prison; but rather than hold onto that right, he yielded to the right, and gave him grace.

Now let's see what happens now. So what happened, this was what was exposed. Firstly, hardness of heart. In spite of his experience with God, he was hard in his heart. His experience of grace, and the blessing or the encounter with God, did not change his heart. That's the first thing you see - he was hard in his heart. The second thing you notice was, he was angry, grabbed the guy by the throat, so he had anger uncontrolled operating in his life. He'd had an experience with God, that still didn't change his anger. His anger was still his anger to be dealt with.

Notice, the next thing that you see about him is, he had absolutely no value on this other person whatsoever; totally dishonoured another believer in the house of God by the way he treated him. Then the final thing you see is, actually what was in his heart was pride. There was a deep root of pride in his heart. Now whatever experience - I've been around for years, you know. We've walked through all kinds of moves of God, and seen many kinds of things, and the thing that I have seen that's very, very common in it all, whether it's a revelation of doctrine or it's a revelation of an experience of God, or some kinds of encounters, this is what I have noticed over years without exception: that you can have all of that, but pride can lie deep in the heart, and it's reflected in how you treat people.

Jesus came to show us that loving God, also means loving the people that He created; not in a mushy way, but in a way that releases blessing to their lives. So pride in our heart is always revealed in how nice we're able to be. So if I ask if you've got pride in your heart, you say: no, of course not. You've got humility in your heart - oh well, nice of you to notice. [Laughter] The one sin people can hardly bear to admit to is pride; and yet the one thing that really is insidious, and is at the heart of the kingdom of Satan, is pride; so pride reveals itself in a number of ways. See, pride always notices the wrongs others have done - but can't see what it's done. It always notices what others have done. Did you notice? Pride will always notice what everyone else did wrong. Pride never identifies, or empathises, with the person who's had a failure; thinking they also may be a broken, hurt person, and haven't got a clue what they're doing.

I've gone through my life, and there's been areas of wounding and pain and brokenness that I had no idea were there; and in not being aware of it, I've actually hurt people over the course of my life; hurt my wife, hurt my children, hurt people around me that I love, people that have stood with me; and not even known, not even known. See, so we've got to realise that sometimes when a person hurts us, there's actually issues in the heart that they're not even aware of. Notice what Jesus said, He said: Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Hurt people hurt others. That's the nature of it. If someone's hurt, they'll hurt you; and often when you try and talk to them, they can't see it, because they've got pain and brokenness in their life. They need the restoration, and one of the things they need to do, is to get what you got, which is receive grace. Grace, the goodness of God, leads a person to become changed in their life.

Okay, so what we see here is pride, can never empathise with people. Pride cannot admit wrong. The hardest thing to say is: I was wrong, I'm sorry. Now a lot of men can't say that, and I'm sorry, but it's a deep root of pride in your heart that stops it. It just chokes, rather than say: I'm sorry. It's the hardest thing, but it's the thing that brings life. We humble ourself when we can say: I am so sorry, I was wrong.

We were at a good marriage course with Bob and Audrey Meisner, and one of the things they got us to do, which was very powerful: hold your wife's hands, and look in her eyes, and say: I'm so sorry, I was wrong; will you forgive me? That was really good for us to do that. We both did it, but I felt something happen as we did, and so God has started a work then, and is just continuing that work. I think that there's a lot that I need to do to put right, but you see pride can never admit that it's wrong, you see. Pride would rather be right, and stand on the rights, than have a heart relationship; so the thing that'll be preventing you from entering into better relationships - there's a number of things. One of them is the wounding in the heart, and the pride that won't actually deal with the darkness; and then the skills needed to actually be able to put the relationships differently.

We hope this year, and pray this year, that God will really shift our church in this area of relationships, really grow in relationship, that the heart of God as a Father will begin to flow in the church. People will begin to be recovered and healed and restored, and begin to learn how to walk in kingdom life, value relationships... So of course pride will always justify, you know: well I'm right, you're wrong, and there it is, that's the end of it. So pride always excuses the fact that it's harsh and condemning and judgemental; so we're not going to be held accountable for what anyone else did, but God will call us to account for what we do, and how we handle the injustices.

So I want you to see, here's the thing. It says, the Bible's making it clear: if you sow judgement, you reap judgement. Now notice what happened to the guy. Look what it says. First of all, it says: his fellow servants saw what he'd done. They were grieved, and told the master; and the master came and said to him: you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you asked me, begged me. Shouldn't you have compassion on your fellow servant, as I had compassion upon you? Now notice the things there, what the master calls him. Now this is a kingdom parable. He calls him a wicked servant. Can you imagine being part of the family of God, and God calls you wicked? It's almost unthinkable, isn't it? The word wicked doesn't mean intrinsically evil. It means this - having a negative influence in the family; putting a burden and grief and sorrows over the lives of others, that makes their life harder. So when he says: you're a wicked servant, he says: you are making life harder for everyone around you, instead of having received abundance of grace, and releasing grace.

You notice the second thing is, the servants around were grieved. That meant they were saddened, they were burdened. It is true that when someone in the church, someone in our family, walks with unforgiveness in their heart, it is hurtful to everyone around. You know it stops the flow of life. There's invisible walls. No matter how nice you are you can feel the wall, you feel the lack of flow, you feel the lack of the grace flowing. You meet, and it's polite and nice, but there's no flow from the heart, because the heart is walled up. That's not how God intended us to be, living separated and isolated and our hearts walled up. God created us for dynamic and living and heart-felt relationships, but we have to deal with the pride and the offences and stuff that gets in our heart, and grace is meant to do that.

The more grace you receive, the more you're able to give to others; the more God forgives you through humbling yourself, coming to Him, the more you can give to others. Now notice what happens here. Notice carefully what happens; this man had received an abundance of grace. Here's the thing that just is stunning. He was at one place, in a position where he was going to be thrown into jail, and his family, for all that he had done; then he was moved and came into a position of grace and blessing. He and his family were in a flow of blessing and life.

Then he came and faced a fellow servant. When he faced the fellow servant, this is what he chose: he did not choose to continue in grace. He chose to despise the spirit of grace; so when he despised the spirit of grace, there's only one place you can be now, you're back under the law. He put himself under the law when he judged, found fault, and stood on his rights, and made demands. He put himself under the law. That meant, if he's put himself under the law, he's no longer under grace; and notice what happens, notice carefully in the passage what happens. All the debt that he had been forgiven, now legally stands again, and becomes operative. He's no longer walking in the grace of forgiveness. Not only that, now it says: the Father, he was put in prison, delivered over to tormentors. So now demonic spirits have free access into his life. Is he still saved? I think he is, but here's the problem. He's not living in blessing, he's living in cursing; and why is he living in cursing? Because he refused to live and walk in the grace of God, and extend grace to others. What he chose to do instead was, to hold to his rights, place a demand, hold anger in his heart, stand on his rights, and put someone - which he was legally entitled to do - put them into jail to pay the price. That's a person who holds unforgiveness in their heart, judges the other person, and has a demand on them to do something to put it right.

He took himself out of grace and put himself under law; and listen, Jesus works with grace. Grace and truth came by Jesus. The one who works with the law is the devil. The devil is the fault-finder. The devil is the accuser. The devil is the judge. When you don't extend grace to others, you remove yourself from grace, and you come directly under demonic judgement over your life. They are then able to find every fault that you have, every failure you have. They're able to come in the courts of heaven and say: we have a right to get into this guy's life and mess him up - and heaven says: you have, because he's no longer under grace. He's under the law, and he removed himself from grace of God when he mistreated the fellow Christian. Now in case you think it doesn't apply to you, Jesus applies it: so also shall my Heavenly Father do to each one of you, if from your heart, you don't forgive each one his brother their trespasses.

So God has forgiven each of us so much. He has put us in a place where we have access to a throne of grace. Did someone upset you? You can come to God, find the grace to overcome your attitudes and to impart grace to the person, instead of jumping up and down on your rights and being angry, which is holding onto your rights; yield your rights and say: God, he didn't understand what he was doing. I just forgive. I release blessing. I'm going to flow into blessing. I choose to stay in blessing, not to stay in judgement and cursing. Or you can choose to stand on your rights - I'm right, that person needs to put it right. We can put ourselves in a place we're demanding the person puts it right, we're finding fault, we're holding judgement over them, and then we ourselves are open and exposed to demonic powers. What does that mean?

I'll tell you. I'll just give it to you briefly, and I'll show you quickly how to get out. This is what it means; what it means is you don't enjoy the flow of grace from God. Your life is burdensome. What does it mean? It means demonic spirits have direct access to your mind. What will they do? They'll keep you angry. They'll keep you stirred up in anger, they'll keep you stirred up for every little injustice that takes place. They'll stir it up, and you'll hear someone, and someone will be talking, and they'll share an injustice; and something will rise up, and you'll be angry, and it was nothing even to do with you! You're tormented. You're actually in a spiritual prison house with tormentors. You can't walk in liberty, joy, love and grace and freedom. Why? You put yourself there! When you chose, when someone failed you - who knows why they did? Who knows what's in their heart? You just know that they did something that hurt you. Instead of judging, finding fault, demanding they pay, shutting them out, paying them back, retaliating in some way, avoiding them, all that kind of thing - extend grace. Why? So you can reap grace in your future. This is a classic example of "if you judge, you yourself are judged". What you sow, is what you reap. That man had a choice, having come out of his experience with God, his encounter with God, and the goodness of God. He had an experience when he came out, and he had to choose whether he was going to keep his experience; or lose it. How did that happen? When he faced a hurtful situation with another believer. At that point, you choose whether you stay in the life flow of God; or whether you take yourself out from it and open yourself to demonic harassment, which often includes arthritis, pains in the body, various spirits of infirmity, all kinds of things.

Listen, I've seen it too many times, and prayed for too many people; life-changing sicknesses, and it was all due to roots of bitterness in their heart. They'd come into grace, but would not extend it, and they were open to a spirit of infirmity. God wants us to walk in blessing, wants us to walk in grace; so if you're in the prison, you once started out so good, but here you are, you walked as a Christian for a few years, and now you find: I don't know why, it's just not fair, but somehow I'm in torment! Somehow - I mean, it's not right what's going on to me! Now you've got to find someone to blame. There'll be a pastor, there'll be a leader, there'll be a this, there'll be that. It was the last church, it was the - you'll find someone to blame; instead of saying: God, what is going on in my heart? What do I need to face?

The way out is: one, is you want more of God in your life, and you say: God, whatever it takes, show me what's in my heart. Show me what I need to face - then you come with a heart that's truly repentant. A repentant heart forgets the faults and failures. It starts to see people as broken and damaged, and no longer says: well I'm going to hold a thing against them. It says: God, I don't want to pay them back. I don't want to do anything like that. Father, I repent of that attitude, repent of my pride, the judgements, the bitterness, the things I've held in my heart. I repent of it and let it all go. Then it begins to sow kind - then you receive forgiveness. We've got to receive forgiveness from God - God, forgive me. Now I forgive and release them, and I start to bless them. Simply desire to be in the presence of God, and live and walk in the presence of God, that nothing breaks the flow with Him.

Some people think: if I just have another experience, I'll have more of God. I'm sorry, I've seen too many people have experiences, and they don't have more of God. It doesn't show in their life. The way you have more of God is when you walk in love. Jesus said: if you keep my commandments, which is to love one another, then My Father will love you, we will come and abide with you. Walking in love is the key to reflect the kingdom of God. It means we're compassionate on people, and we show mercy to people when they don't deserve it. We release them.

There's other aspects of it, but this story primarily today is just about one aspect: the issue of unforgiveness. How do I get out of the prison? I need to want to be near God, and walk with God more. Then I've got to realise that walking with God is connected to my relationships with others, so I need to humble myself. When God shows me wrong attitudes of heart, I may be completely right, but wrong in my heart attitude. God doesn't care if you're right. He's interested in your heart, and whether your heart desires relationship. You may be completely right, you may be completely justified, but if you'll stand on it, you'll stay in misery. If you just say: God, I just want a connection. I want this thing to come right, then you can repent of judging and all those things, receive forgiveness; and then start to show kindness into the person that created the hurt and offence. Very simple, very practical.

The key is this: these things are going to happen. You choose whether you'll find yourself in prison; or whether you'll find yourself growing into grace. Jesus - interesting about Jesus. Jesus was able to wash the feet of Judas, knowing he'd already sold Him out. That's called grace. Did he deserve it? No. What did he deserve? Someone to take out a sword and stick him - but he never got that. He didn't get what he deserved. He got grace. What about Joseph, betrayed. He said: it wasn't you guys. God sent me, because He had a plan for my life, and I've had to grow through these difficulties. Now I'm in the grace of God so strongly, I'm the mentor to the leader of Egypt. I'm actually running the country now. People want to be great, and they think an experience will do it. No, it's walking with God, and it's reflected in our relationships.

Let's close our eyes right now. Father, we thank You. We know You want us to walk in love. We know You want us to walk in grace. Father, I just ask right now, for each person in here, that Lord, where we've grieved Your Holy Spirit by judgemental attitudes, by attitudes of criticism - and we were right probably - but they were more concerned with being right than with having a relationship and a heart for that person. Father, forgive us for the pride and the rigidity that would cause that. Help us to walk in humility and strength, humility that can actually just own our stuff and put our stuff right, that we can actually have no problem in saying: I was wrong, I'm so sorry. Lord, rid our hearts of this need to be right, such a need to be right, that we'd rather give up a relationship so we could say that we were right; than to pursue the relationship. Father, help us as a church, and as individuals, to grow in the grace of God.

Just I wonder while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, perhaps there's someone here today and you don't know Jesus Christ personally. To know Him means to receive Him as your saviour, to trust what He did. It's not about going to church, or what you've done in church, or anything good. It's actually about trusting that when Jesus died on the cross, what He did was totally sufficient for you to be forgiven and saved. Jesus said: to everyone who received Him and believed in Him, He gave power to become a child of God. I wonder today, if that's you? Do you want to just realise I'm right at that point, I need to give my life to Christ.

Jesus said: to everyone who received Him, He gave power; the right to become a child of God. Is there anyone here today, and God's been speaking to you about your heart attitudes, and you realise there's a part of your life is in prison; because when you faced injustice, when you faced pain, and hurt and difficulty, you chose to judge and find fault. You wanted to prove: I'm right; and so you shut your heart down against other members in the body of Christ. If you could have the courage to say: God is speaking to me, that's my heart, I need to repent today - would you raise your hand if that's you? God bless, God bless, hands up all over. God bless. I've got my hand up too.

I know God's speaking very deeply in my heart about many of these issues. Your next step would be to just come before the Lord, and let Him show you exactly where and how it's taken place, and repent of that thing, ask His forgiveness, forgive the person; and then start to sow kindness to that person, just sow. Don't expect anything to come back. The sowing means you've passed from death to life, because you're now communicating love. That's your part.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Eph 5:1-2

“Be imitators of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ has loved us …”

Jesus is our model and pattern – we are called to imitate Him in our lifestyle and relationships.

Everyone experiences hurts, pain, disappointments, injustice, and unfair treatment.

It is natural to feel hurt, angry, wounded.

We all have a choice how we respond :

Blessing if we respond with grace and forgiveness

Cursing if we respond with blame, judgement, Unforgiveness

Luke 9:54 – 56 “You know not what manner of spirit you are of”

The disciples reacted out of pain and hurt of rejection, dishonour and injustice.

2. Parable of Unforgiving Servant Mt 18: 21-35

(1) Who is this parable addressed to?

V21 Peter’s question = disciples/followers of Christ

V35 “So each of you” = followers of Christ – Christians

(2) What is the Key Issue in this Parable?

V28 How will you treat people who fail, offend, treat you badly?

Will you operate in law or grace?

Grace gives what people do not deserve, love, kindness, forgiveness.

Law demands rights, justice – values being right over relationship.

(3) What is the Nature of the Kingdom of God?

V23-27 “Moved with compassion” – released him forgave all his debt – millions of $$.

· The King reveals His nature and the nature of Kingdom – what He is like.

· Compassion – deep love and concern for people.

· Grace – extend forgiveness, release demand of debt cf Heb. 4:15.

· Grace is intended to bring us into fellowship with God and change our heart – how we relate with people (1Jn 4:20).

(4) Relationship conflicts reveal our Heart Attitudes

vs 28 – 31 “took by the throat .. throw into prison …”

· The issue that exposed his heart was the failure of a fellow servant.

· The failures of others reveal our heart and give opportunity to choose.

(a) Demand our rights – what is fair – give person what they deserve

(b) Yield to grace – give person what they do not deserve

N.B.

· It is not what you want to give the person who hurt you – it’s what you want to receive in your future relationships.

· What was exposed:

(a) Hardness of heart – no compassion

(b) Anger and bitterness

(c) No value or honour on person or relationship

(d) Pride

(5) Pride in our Heart is Revealed in How we Relate to People

· Sees the wrongs others have done.

· Never identifies, empathises with the hurts, wounds of others, weakness.

· Admits no wrong – hates to take responsibility for personal mistakes.

· Rather be right than have relationship.

· Justifies wrong attitude by “being right”.

· Excuses and justifies its bitterness resentment, unloving attitude to others – cold love.

N.B.

· We are not held accountable or responsible for the pain/wounding others bought into our life.

· We are held responsible for how we react to that wounding.

· The servant who had received grace – responded with judgement – demanding his rights.

N.B.

· He removed himself from grace – and came under judgement himself.

(6) If you sow Judgement – you reap Judgement

· Mt 7:1 – 3 “… for with what judgement you judge, you will be judged …”

· Ps 109: 12 – 19 “…as he loved cursing, let it come unto him ….”

· “Wicked servant” = 4190 = to cause pain, sorrow, hardship, to have a negative and hurtful influence.

· “Grieved” = 3076 = to throw the fellow servants into grief and sorrow and pain.

· Unforgiveness, bitterness, cold love cause defilement and grief in relationships.

· Reminded: He had received grace – needed to extend grace to stay in flow of grace.

· When hurts come we have a choice:

Grace – value and restore relationships

Law – exposure, demand rights, judgement

· Eg: Joseph – Gen 45: 14-18 - Attitude to brothers – grace

Jesus Jn. 13: 14-14 - Attitude to Judas – grace

· Satan is an accuser and a legalist – he trades in the law.

· Jesus is a Saviour and advocate – He trades in grace

· Consequences i) forgiveness was revoked – no longer legal, cancelled

ii) Handed over to the tormentors – demonic spirits

iii) Wife and children were also exposed to tormentors

(7) Mercy and Forgiveness are Kingdom Principles

· V35 How Jesus applied consequences to each of us for how we respond to people who have hurt, wounded, offended us, failed us.

· “Each of You” = no person is exempt.

i) Demand rights, justice = torments/prison

ii) Yield/Grace = receive grace and flow in grace

· Lk 6: 35 – 36 Reward = experience the Father’s embrace and flow of His favour.

(8) The Path Out of Prison

(i) Desire for intimacy and fellowship with God (Rom. 2:4)

(ii) Repentance and Confession of our sin (pride) (2 Cor. 7:9-11)

· Causes us to see how we have hurt others.

· Know we have grieved the Holy Spirit – repent of unforgiveness and judgments.

· Willing to let go the need to be right.

· Willing to guard how we speak – respond to others.

(iii) Give and Receive Forgiveness

· Forgiveness is an issue between you and God (Lk. 23:24; Mk. 11:25)

· Forgive others for the hurt they have brought – hurt people hurt others.

· Receive God’s forgiveness for judging, demanding rights, bitterness.

(iv) Sow Kindness into Others

· Sowing kindness is the fruit of a changed heart.

5. Witchcraft in Relationships

Sun 15 May 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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Witchcraft is imposing your will upon another, against their will. You've been given a free will to make decisions with your life, but someone can bring pressure or push you to change and accommodate them and what they want. Its within that context that witchcraft operates. They try to pressure you from within. Dont isolate yourself or withdraw; instead Identify, Pray, Confront, set Boundaries

I want you to open your Bible with me in Acts, Chapter 13. I want to just speak on Witchcraft in Relationships, the operation of witchcraft in relationships, and there's so much could be shared it's impossible to cover it in just one service, but I'm going to bring this out in a way that will help you recognise witchcraft operating in relationships. We'll help you understand what is behind it, and also help you understand how to deal with it. Unfortunately I can't just give you a method. I'll give you some keys, but sensitivity to the Holy Spirit is crucial. I think you'll enjoy this, so let's just open it up, and we'll have a read in Acts Chapter 13.

Paul is on a journey - Verses 6 to 8; Now when they've gone through the island of Paphos they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, which means son of Jesus. Hold that - notice he's a sorcerer, a prophet and he comes under the name the 'son of Jesus' or as though he's a descendant or something from Jesus. Then what happened was, he was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. This man called for Barnabas and Saul, and sought to hear the word of God; but Elymas the sorcerer withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. Saul, who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, fixed his eyes intently on him and said: "you full of deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease perverting the straight ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord shall be upon you, shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a time." Immediately a dark mist fell on him, and he went around looking for someone to lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul believed.

There are so many insights into this scripture, but I want to look just at two realms of witchcraft offering. I want to focus on the second one. In this particular situation we have a man, a proconsul, who's a major political leader of a region. Wherever you have political leaders, wherever you have leadership who has authority, you will always find the operations of witchcraft coming around them, to try and sabotage them away from God's way of doing things.

Those who carry authority, responsibility, are like a magnet for this kind of thing to come around. The reason is, if a person has a major influence, carries great authority, and their decisions have a great effect; then occultic powers seek to come around, get influence on the person's life, control the way they think, and then work and influence through them, all that is under them. Putting it simply, if you can get a hold of the one in charge, you can influence everything that's underneath them. Now that applies in every arena of life. If a demonic power can come and access, and manipulate, and control a person's life, everything under them lacks the life, vitality, flow, freedom and fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit. It all begins to shut down, in spite of how hard they work, because a spiritual influence is at work.

So I have been around in different places, and seen how frequently that people who practice the occult get in near someone who is operating in a leadership function, in any kind of level of the community. If you operate in business, you'll find people who have the occult will seek to get in near you; they'll seek to influence you; they'll seek to come around you. Notice the occult realm operates through people. It was a connection with the sorcerer Elemis, who means literally the sorcerer. He presented himself as the son of Jesus. He presented himself as having some kind of wisdom and whatever, but behind him there was a demonic spirit, which influenced the proconsul away from God.

One of the things you'll find about witchcraft, it will always move you away from God. It will seek to bring you under the power of, and influence of, and authority of, an evil spirit; then subsequently shut down everything under you, and cause all kinds of problems in it. So we see in a number of places in the Bible, whenever the gospel went out, apostles ended up confronting sorcerers; operators in witchcraft who were attached to leading political figures. Even in the Old Testament, it was the same. If you look back in the days of Moses, when Moses was delivering Israel, and Moses confronted Egypt, his confrontation was with the demonic powers that govern the nation, and specifically through the sorcerers who were gathered around the Pharaoh. So there's many, many things in the Bible on that, but let us just realise that that spiritual power or influences work through people - for good or for bad.

You and I are designed to be a gateway, and a channel, for the life, liberty, freedom, joy, fruit, nature of the spirit of God; and the kingdom of God to come, but people can equally as well open their lives to demonic influences, and then something else comes; there's death, destruction, strife, discord, disharmony, whatever. I was talking to a member of this church recently, and a new person had been appointed in the area they were working, and there was strife and discord; disharmony, problems. People were demoralised, productivity took a steep dive with this person being there. I asked: is there any chance that he's been involved in the occult? He said: actually he is. I said: well what are you doing about it? He looked a bit puzzled about it. I said to him: God put you there, to be a kingdom representative. It is your role to shut it down - not shut the person down, but shut down the operation of spirits, which are working through the person making everyone's life unhappy.

Many times Christians think that the kingdom, or the power or the presence of God, only comes in a church meeting. God wants us to bring and advance His kingdom into our workplace, into the arenas we are; and so I just showed him how to pray, got up and started praying. He came back the next day and said: man, it's got pretty tough at work. It's got really hard. I said: great, the fight has begun. The wimp has stood up [laughs] and starting to take his authority. Within 10 days the person had been replaced; the atmosphere changed, the whole productivity went up, and there was a totally different change in that environment. Subsequently this person was promoted.

Now this is our people in the community, shifting things at a spirit level, and having an influence inside an environment in the work. We can do it. You need to understand, this is our job. We're called to do this kind of stuff. So that's an occultic realm of spiritism operating, and the Bible describes in the Old Testament, a number of places it talks about the realm of the occult; and it talks about the whole area of occult practices and occult powers. In Deuteronomy Chapter 18 Verses 9 to 14, the Bible tells us not to be involved in any kind of occultic practice, that those who practice those things - fortune telling, divination, consulting spirits, calling up the dead - that these are an abomination to God. They bring a defiling around people. We're not to be involved in such things. In fact we are to confront them, because of the harm and the damage that they cause.

Let's have a look at a man who came under a demonic power of witchcraft. It's found in 1 Kings 19, and this is a great man of God. There's no way you can understand this passage unless you consider the reality of spiritual powers; and so we know the story of Elijah. Elijah was a prophet of God, so Elijah was called to come into the nation, stand up in the nation, and to bring a drought on the nation, and to confront the witchcraft and occultism that had come into the nation of Israel, that had defiled it. So he was confrontational prophet. He was to call the nation to repentance, and to bring a spirit of reviving, a softening of the hearts of the fathers; and turn them to their sons, and the sons to their fathers; so he was to bring a national revival.

The Bible says that in the last days, in Malachi 4, that God will again bring the spirit of Elijah into the church, and it will be for the same thing. It'll be to confront controlling powers, to dismantle them, to bring people out of idolatry, to restore fathers into their right places and to restore marriages and families; because in the last days there'll be a major decline in family values, family life. We see that already happening. Now here's this man Elijah. Elijah stood up, had a great victory, wow! Fire from heaven! That's fantastic. That's no little miracle is it aye? Fire from heaven! Awesome - then having called fire from heaven, he then proved that the prophets of Baal had no power whatsoever, having confronted them and bringing the fire of God from heaven, he then put them to death. But that wasn't all. There were some other prophets there, prophets of Jezebel, and they all got together and began to curse Elijah, and send witchcraft curses against him. How do they do that? Well they invoke their spirits, spoke words against him, stood in agreement.

When people, men stand in agreement, they can invoke powers into the earth; because God has designated men to carry authority, men and women to carry authority. So Verse 1: Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, how he'd executed all the prophets with the sword. Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying: let the Gods do to me and more also, if I don't make your life like one of them tomorrow. In other words He said: I'm going to kill you; and when he saw that, he ran for his life to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, left his servant there. He himself went a day's journey in the wilderness, came and sat down under a broom tree, and he prayed that he wanted to die. It's enough! Take my life, I'm no better than my fathers! He lay down and slept; and then an angel appeared to him.

Now you notice here that he had received a messenger of Jezebel, probably someone came to him, and told him exactly what was going to happen. But what had happened was, through the words of that man, the demonic power was released against him. Notice this - it was when he heard the message. When someone spoke to him, that's when this demonic power started to come against him; and you notice a number of things, and these things, each one of them, they reveal an aspect of what you feel and experience when under a witchcraft attack. Notice the first one was his perspective was distorted. He couldn't see clearly when he saw that, so he lost sight of God, and he got focussed on the problems. He lost his sight of God, how great God is, and the call of God, faithfulness of God, the power of God. He lost sight of yesterday's victory. He got totally focussed on the size of the problem facing him.

Second, so it distorted perspective. Second thing he did was, fear filled his heart. He became very afraid. There was a dread, a panicky feeling, a sick feeling filled him and overwhelmed him. Why was that? Because a spirit was against him, to confuse his mind and stop him seeing clearly. Then the next thing you notice is - he isolated. He began to shut down and withdraw. He isolated himself from his companion, and then he withdrew from his responsibility, and began to run away. All he could think of was, how he could get out of the pressure, the struggle, the problem and the difficulty.

Finally he comes to the point where he's depressed, heavy and he sits down under a tree. The last thing you find is, his last prayer is: I want to die, Lord kill me now. So you see a progression of experiences. When a person is attacked by witchcraft experiences, a witchcraft spirit, no matter what the source, the impact on your thinking and emotions will be the same. That's why you can always pick it up so easy. God put it in the Bible so we'd learn.

The first is you lose perspective, what God has called you to do, what God is able to do, what God wants you to do; and you become filled with the problem. Second thing is, fear begins to grip your heart. Fear's the opposite of faith. Fear, you can have a sick feeling in your stomach, a dread in your stomach, whatever. Now you can feel fear, you don't have to yield to it; but if the third thing happens, you're going to go down under that spirit.

The next thing he did was - he isolated, or disconnected. Disconnection is one of the major fruits of witchcraft operating. When people disconnect in relationships, you know something is wrong. Something is affecting the person and causing them to shut down, so witchcraft will cause you to disconnect, to want to withdraw from relationship, because of the turmoil you're facing on the inside. Instead the one thing that would help you in that time, is to lean into relationship; but what the pressure is, is to withdraw from relationship. You find when people come under spiritual attack, one of the most common things that they do is withdraw from fellowship and connection; when that is the one thing that would really help you, coming into fellowship, bringing it into the light, would get you out of the mess.

So the next thing you see is having withdrawn and disconnected, then he comes into depression. Depression is a sense of heaviness, despair, it brings a confusion, darkness, a blackness. You can't think properly. You are now under the influence of that spirit. The spirit is producing heaviness and torment around your life. Then finally you sit down, and feel like you lose the will to fight. All you want to do is find a way out. Now this is written in the Bible for us, to be warned by, and to learn from. These are clear symptoms. Anytime you start to experience a sequence of those things happening, then you know that a witchcraft spirit is coming against you; to draw you back from the assignment God gave you; disconnect you from the people God connected you to, to fulfil that assignment; and to cause you to end up wanting to abandon what God called you to do, and find an escape from life's realities.

So I would encourage you to get your Bible, mark them all down. Anytime you see, sense, feel those things happening, or they're happening around someone else, get it out in the light. Get it out in the open. The moment you bring it to the open, you break its power. One of the keys to breaking this thing is the point here, where he isolated himself. It's okay to get caught up in the problems. That happens to all of us. It's okay to feel a bit afraid, and not quite know what to do; but if you isolate at that point, that is when the thing starts to have it's impact on you. Why? That witchcraft spirit, sometimes called a Jezebel spirit, I don't always use that name because people tend to associate it with a woman rather than actually deal with it as a spirit power - gender neutral - so we'll just call it witchcraft at this point. So it's gender neutral, it's just got everyone it's after.

He wants to separate you from the assignment of God, and the connections of God, so you disconnect and shut down; and then find yourself lost in life. It's a very, very interesting spirit. There is three things work with it. One is an Antichrist spirit. Antichrist spirit works with it, and it's function is to break the flow of liberty, of life, of freedom; and to cause you to start to shut down on the inside, so that spirit resists the flow of the Holy Spirit. When we live and flow in the Holy Spirit, the anointing of the spirit flows, and so the flesh drives us, but the spirit flows. So when you're walking in God, and walking in the spirit, you can be relaxed about life and there's a flow to your life, there's a flow to your decision making, there's a flow in your relationship. There's a flow that comes out of your innermost being. God says in John 7 verses 38-39: out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water; and He was speaking about the spirit.

So any time the flow from inside you is being choked up, you've got to address what's going on. Something is going on, so witchcraft, one of the things it will do is, to seek to shut down the flow of the Holy Ghost. Now you see why the Spirit Life Course can be helpful for you, because it helps you to strengthen your inner man, your spirit man, so you've got some strength inside when spiritual pressure comes on you. If you're weak, you can't stand up to much, so it doesn't take much to knock you back.

A second spirit that works with it is what's called the Power of Death, or a Spirit of Death. Spirit of Death will cause you to isolate and disconnect, and start to become alone. Loneliness comes around you when that is operating, and the other one is the power of hell, which fills you with fear and dreads and uncertainty. So these things all just work together. You can't separate them. All you have is a bad experience - something big has come up, you feel shut down on the inside, you start to feel a dread about what's going to happen; and then you have to make a decision. You can either stand up and fight, and bring it to the light; or you start to isolate and disconnect, and then you're on a downhill spiral. This is what happened to him.

It's wonderful to see how God got him out of it. God got him out of it very simply. He just connected with him, touched him, broke the disconnection. Once the disconnection was broken, and he was strengthened, he was able to go up and he was reassigned - go back where God called you to be, and do what he called you to do. Now I just want to leave it on that realm just at that point.

I want to move on somewhere else. I want you to go and have a look in Galatians, Chapter 2. Maybe some other time I'll come back and teach a series on that whole area, but I just want to stick to this one area, witchcraft in relationships. I want to show you something in Galatians, Chapter 2. Here it is, Verse 11: Now when Peter - this is Paul is engaged here - when Peter had come to Antioch, I - that's Paul - withstood him or confronted him to his face, because he was to be blamed. There was a fault. There was something that was wrong, because before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; when they came he withdrew or shrunk back, isolated or separated himself, because he was afraid. There it is. It's an operation of witchcraft - so notice Peter is mixing with the Gentiles. He's mixing with the Gentile people here, and in Galatia, and in Galatians church - he eats with them, fellowships with them, there's no problem; and then these guys from Jerusalem come, James and some of the other guys, and as soon as they came, he came under pressure. Under pressure - notice this - he became afraid. This is Apostle Peter - he become afraid, and notice what - he withdrew and isolated, he changed his behaviour to accommodate his fear of rejection, and the feeling of the pressure of these Jerusalem Jews, who were a little bit legalistic.

They were trying to impose the Jewish law on these Gentile believers. They were trying to bring them under the law; do this, don't do this, have circumcision, have this, have this, have this, don't have that. They were trying to bring them all under the law. They actually were limited in their thinking. They were holding what God had said hundreds of years ago, and they hadn't got a hold of what God was saying now, so they were sticking to their former revelation, and they were trying to bring Peter under it. When Peter felt the pressure of it he caved in, and not just Peter caved in; also - notice here it says: Barnabas did as well. It said he withdrew, separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision, and the rest of the Jews played hypocrite with him. Look at that, hypocrite, acting out a part. They were not authentic or genuine, and even Barnabas was carried around with their hypocrisy.

When I saw they were not straight forward, straight up and down about the truth of the gospel, I confronted Peter in front of them all. Now this is an operation of witchcraft coming against Peter. Peter has become afraid. He's wanted to please them, he's wanted to be accepted by them. He's become afraid of them; and instead of holding to revelation what God had shown him, he caved in, or traded, to have peace with these people, security with these people, acceptance by these people. He caved in what he really believed, and when he caved in to what he really believed, he then was acting and living out something he didn't really believe. That's why he's called a hypocrite, and the others are called hypocrites. It's just someone acting a part, not authentic, not genuine. If you ask: what do you really believe Peter, he'd say: well I believe the Jews don't have to do this. Well Peter, how come you're now carrying on like the Gentiles do have to do this?

So Paul just confronts him, and he confronts him very seriously. Chapter 3 verse 1: You foolish Galatians! Who bewitched you? What spirit has come over you, that has caused you to move away from the revelation you received? Now you've got to understand this. The spirit of witchcraft will seek to move you away from the things God has revealed and showed you. It will come through people, and will push on you through people. It can come through culture, and the culture pressures you to conform, to agree; to be like what they want; to please people, so you'll be accepted.

The pressure can come through family, to agree with what they want, and how they want it. Why? So that you can be accepted, and they'll be happy with you. It can come through Christians, or believers who don't believe the same as you. You may be in another area of truth or whatever, and they can pressure you to make you, or cause you, to feel like you have to conform. It can come financially through situations. It can come in your business and workplace. This can come anywhere, but it always is a spirit operating, and it operates through people. Once you understand it's a spirit, and it operates through people, you'll realise you have to: one, engage it at a heart and spirit level; and two, at a relationship level.

You've got to learn to recognise this. Once we learn to recognise it, oh my how things change then! See? So notice - I want to share with you another scripture now. You notice here in Galatians 5 - since we're in Galatians lets go down into here in Galatians 5, Verse 19. Now the works of the flesh are evident. This is not demons. Demons can help it happen, and push on you to make it happen, but actually this is not demons. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions - and so there's a whole list of things there. Right in the middle of it is witchcraft. Witchcraft is connected - they've got the word sorcery there, but it's the word witchcraft in the original language; idolatry, sorcery, hatred, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred - Verse 20. So witchcraft, notice they've got it in between idolatry - having an image of God, worshipping something that's not really God - and hatred, having bad attitudes in your heart, wrong attitudes of hate, not love, in your heart. There it is right in the middle is witchcraft.

Notice it says: it's a work of the flesh; so how does it operate? This is the bit when you understand how it operates, so we've seen the occultic dimension, and what it does to people. Now I want to look just at when a person is not in the occult; they may be a good Christian person, may be a nice person, someone that you know, someone you're connecting with; and yet they can operate - when they're not flowing with the Holy Spirit, they can operate out of witchcraft. So witchcraft literally means to use a spiritual power to pressure or manipulate someone, so your will is done, no matter what they're wanting to do. I'll say it again: witchcraft is imposing your will upon another, against their will. Now I'm not talking about this in relationship to parents and children, where parents have to insist on their will over the will of the child. That's a different deal. I just wanted to stick with - although it applies in there, but I want to just stick with the more sinister side, where God has given you a free will to make decisions with your life, and someone brings pressure to make you, or push you, to change and accommodate them, and what they want. It's within that context that witchcraft operates.

When witchcraft is in relationships, it's either: very direct; or it's very subtle. If it's very direct, it comes like this - SHOUTING! Yelling! Anger! Banging doors! That's pretty obvious when it's like that. That is nothing more than the flesh manifesting anger, and it's designed to intimidate you, and to manipulate you, to co-operate and do what you may not necessarily want to do; or it can be more subtle. It can be emotional, but what happens is - you feel it. You feel the pressure. It can be a demand, the manipulation of emotions: oh, well you don't love me. If you loved me, you'd do this - and as you're listening to the person talk, even if they never say what they want, you know exactly what they want. Maybe they never said it - are you meaning this? No, no, no, I never said that - and they never did. But what they did is try to pressure you from within.

Now how does that work? Well the Bible tells us that we're designed spirit, soul and body. I won't go into all of it, but in a number of things it says - in Proverbs 4:23 it says: out of your heart flows the issues of life. So when it's talking about your heart, it's talking about your spirit, your inner man. So here is what you need to understand - there's a lot to be discovered in this. Whatever is in your heart, creates a river, a flow from your spirit, that goes outside your body, and influences people and environment. Your spirit flows, out of your heart flows. If you have bitterness in your heart, then bitterness will defile everyone around you. If you have love in your heart, people feel loved. If there's anger in your heart, people feel what's there.

Jesus said: out of your innermost being - John 7:38-39 - shall flow rivers of living water; but he was speaking of the spirit. So what he does identify, is that you are designed to flow from your spirit; so your soul carries the same shape as your body, but your spirit is like an energy source. It's dynamic, there's a life flow; and what it does is, it flows out of you. People in the world call it 'sixth sense', or they might say you've got an 'aura' around you; or they say you give out certain 'vibes'. They're talking about the same thing. It is about the flow from your spirit.

Okay then, so we flow from inside. Now the first place the flow of your spirit is seen, is on your countenance; so for example in Genesis chapter 4, when Cain got angry, his countenance fell. So when you've got a turmoil inside your soul, when you've got anger or bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, the first place the flow from within you is seen, is on your countenance.

In one of the Psalms, Psalm 43, it says: they looked to him, and were radiant; so when we spend time with God, and we're in the presence of God, and our heart is free and flowing, something comes up on our face, on our countenance. Ever seen pictures of Africa or India of unsaved people? There's a darkness there. Then you see the same people and they're saved, and they're now radiant, or bright or alive. So your spirit, whatever's in your heart will flow out of you; seen on your countenance; flows through and expressed through your words, and your body language, and your actions. Of course what happens is, you exert a spiritual influence on others; so for example if I'm preaching like this, and preaching to a group like this, and I'm flowing from my spirit, my spirit flows out and touches everyone right to the very end of the room.

If you, inside yourself, begin to react; or several begin to react, and start to arise and resist, I will feel it in my spirit. I'll literally feel the impact of your thoughts arising to push against me. I was in a church in Fiji, and I went to preach there. Everything that I put out, there was a resistance, because a religious spirit sat on everyone. A religious spirit is concerned about the form, looking good on the outside, but it's not authentic; so religious spirits, and religious people, are full of hypocrisy. They're one thing on the outside, but underneath it is completely different - hatred and bitterness, all kinds of things.

Now the thing is, what they think is, you can't tell; but actually if you're a spirit person, you can always tell. Why? Because when you open your heart to talk, connect and flow, there is a resistance or a wall. In this case, it pushes back on you; and the feeling you have after you've spoken, after you've engaged, is one of being deeply rejected. You've got no idea, because nothing bad was said. In fact in this particular case, in this particular meeting, no one said anything, but I felt this huge wall. It was actually like I was just talking into a brick wall, and there's all these people - notice they're in church. They come to hear God, come to listen to what God has to say, but the reality is such a religious spirit over them, it pushed back on me. I went home and had one of the worst nights I had ever, just total rejection come over me; and a desire to withdraw, isolate and just vanish, catch on a plane and go home.

I couldn't do that of course. I made a decision to step up and stand up. The Lord showed me how to address it; but the thing I want to draw to your attention is, whatever's in people flows out, and affects those around them. You can't hide it. It's just called spiritual realities, and so relationships, where there's love flowing out of the heart, through the words, through the body language and so on, will actually create an atmosphere of love around; and people feel your spirit, and feel what you carry.

So all of us flow out of our heart. How's it seen? It's seen in a number of ways. If someone is manifesting, or someone's got some kind of issue going around their life, usually you'll see it in a whole number of ways. You'll see it in the body language. The body will close up when the person inside has got a bad attitude, and you will literally feel the atmosphere around them change. If a person's sitting on anger, they may never say a word. You can feel anger fill the atmosphere. If a person is really excited, when you get with them, there's an energy begins to fill the atmosphere. You come away and you're really excited. If a person's got bitterness inside them, and you go near them, what will happen is, you'll begin to feel yourself becoming negative towards the church; leadership; people; this one and that one. Whatever they're bitter about, you will begin to feel a reaction. You'll start to find your thoughts becoming negative towards that person. This is a witchcraft spirit operating.

Another kind - there's a whole range of different ways. If a person's feeling sorry for themselves, they come in and they walk up, they talk to you. Soon the energy, the flow of their spirit, soon what you'll feel is, as though you feel very sorry for this person, and you'll feel almost like you need to step in and help them. God hasn't told you to do it, but you're just being affected by the spiritual dimension around their life. So whatever's in our spirit flows. You get in a football match, everyone gets excited. The excitement fills the air, the atmosphere, so that's people's spirit, saved or unsaved there's a part of us actually affects the atmosphere round us. A person that carries peace in their heart, they're at peace inside, got the peace of God in them, you get around near them, you feel quite at peace with them. You feel the peace.

A person's anxious and uptight, some people can be so anxious and uptight; they walk into the room. The atmosphere begins to change in the room, and as they get there, you think: oh my God, what's about to happen! Hello - you are now resonating, and reflecting back the very thing that they're letting out. Once you begin to understand that, you realise how important it is to deal with your own stuff; then learn how to sense and recognise what others are carrying, and what others are bringing.

If a you go to a funeral, you find everyone's sad. They're all grieving, and even if you don't even know the person, suddenly you can feel tears, you start to feel sad. Why? Because you've been affected by the atmosphere there; so it helps us to understand, because we're designed as spirit beings, whatever's in our heart will flow out of our life. Whatever's in our spirit, will flow out of our life - fear, timidity, self-pity, uncleanness. You can't hide it. It flows. People feel it, and get affected by it.

You've got religious, got control, it'll all flow out some way. You're trying to manipulate someone, hey, they'll feel it. Now the problem is, on the other side is, we don't always recognise what we feel; and don't always know what we're going to do, what to do about it. When a person's got issues in their heart, say anger issues, what will happen is this. This is what they do. They begin to shift their focus off God, and begin to focus on the injustice. Once they focus on the injustice and the anger, this is what happens. The Bible says: now the light of the body is the eye, so whatever you focus on, you open your life to. So you start to focus on injustice, offence and anger, you know what will happen? Very soon you'll open your whole inner being to spirits; and so what will flow out of you is the injustice, the anger, the offense flows out; and people feel it.

So what do they feel? Well they feel a whole number of things. Here's what they feel: they feel a pressure on them - don't know what it is - until you pray. You can feel a pressure on you, and you feel agitated, don't know what it is; or you can feel shut down, like you're closing up inside, and you've got no idea why you're closing up. You can feel suddenly anxious and full of dread, and you've got no idea why you're full of dread. There's sort of like, something is about to happen, I don't know what it is, or it feels like you're on eggshells. Now what the person who's got the anger issue, has got the other issue; what they don't realise is they are releasing into the atmosphere.

You could sit there on your anger, you could sit there on your bitterness, you could sit there on your hate, and you will still fill the atmosphere with it! People will still feel oh! Don't go near! Something's on there! Then they will have changed their behaviour to accommodate you, and they've come under the spirit that's controlling you.

God spoke to - through the prophet - spoke to Saul, and said: Saul, rebellion is as witchcraft. Now the real word for rebellion is this. It's bitterness, bitterness. Bitterness is like witchcraft. Why is that? Because when a person's bitter in their heart, they have their own agenda they want to impose on people, and it's like witchcraft. It opens the door to the same spirit to come and pressure people. That's why it says: bitterness defiles people; because a person who's bitter will do this. They will seek to influence everyone around, to come into agreement with their bitterness, and it defiles us; so when in human relationships, we start to feel the pressure, that's not said, unspoken, it's in the atmosphere, you will then be under pressure what to do with it.

You are responsible to choose what you do. You can either submit and yield to it. Now a lot of women that live with an abusive man, the whole atmosphere is so full of uncertainty, that forever they live in anxiety and terror and fear and dread, and trying to accommodate the spirit of witchcraft. Let me tell you this. You're wasting your time, and you're damaging yourself. The only way through it is to confront it. You can do nothing else except confront it, because if it's not confronted, you end up in agreement with it. If you end up in agreement with it, you come under it; then you'll go through the cycle that Elijah did, exactly the same things. You'll start to feel pressure, your spontaneity goes, you'll start to shut down, no creativity. You start to feel yourself feeling anxious and on edge, then you start to withdraw and isolate, start to feel shut down.

In other words, witchcraft operating through the flesh, through a person with bad attitudes, has the same sensations as if a demonic occultic attack was coming on you. It may be a little less intense, but it's the same deal, because it's the same spirit. So how can you deal with it? Very, very simple; let me share with you simple keys. I wish I could just say it's a one, two, three thing but it isn't.

But we did see in Galatians that Peter confronted it, so let me give you some things you could do to deal with it. Number one, identify it. Number one, you've got to identify what it is that's affecting me; and some of it will be your own reactions, but try and identify what it is you're feeling. So these are the kind of things I look for: number one, a reserve or hesitancy, or starting to feel like I'm uncertain, and I'm holding back rather than abundant. I like abundance. We're made for abundance, so if no abundance, and abundance is shutting down, you're becoming reserved and withholding and mean, you know something is shutting you down. Ask the question, what is it?

A loss of spontaneity is another one, where you start to feel you can't be yourself, you can't be relaxed, you're having to somehow please everyone. That is a sign something is pushing on you. What is I'm feeling? How's it affecting me? You start to feel another thing, pressure around you to yield and please someone, then you know there's a witchcraft operating. You start to feel fear, anxiety or dread, you want to flee away from it, or you want to die, all of those are symptoms you've got a witchcraft spirit operating. So how is it operating? Where is it operating from? Who is the person that I need to face up to? What is it I need to face up to? Number one, identify it.

Number two, pray. You need to pray. Never try to deal with stuff without prayer. Why? Because you'll react. You've got to deal with your own reactions, your internal reactions of anger, and all kinds of stuff. In Ephesians 6 it tells us: we're not wrestling against flesh and blood, we're wrestling against spiritual powers; so separate the person from the spirit. So pray strong, build up your spirit man, and begin to just take authority. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what the issue is. God, what is the thing? What is it I'm dealing with? What is it, that I'm feeling is coming against me? Ask Him to show you the thing, show you or help you identify it, the thing you can't see; and don't take action until you can see clearly.

So if you get offended, you won't see anything. You've got to get into God, pray strong in tongues until you start to free up, ask the Holy Ghost to help you see what it is, and just wait until you can see clearly - oh, that's what it is! You actually then have to confront the darkness, so to do that you need to prepare yourself. To prepare yourself in this relational issue - what am I responsible for? What are they responsible for? Then what they're responsible for is what they've got to face. You don't have to face that. What you're responsible for is your stuff. You're not responsible for their feelings, their choices, their decisions, their actions - that's their stuff. You're responsible for your feelings, your decisions, your choices, your actions; so you've got to be clear you're not going to make them change. You're not going to try and make them do anything. What you're going to do is, you're going to speak out, and let the light come into the darkness.

The Bible says to do that, it says: don't have fellowship with the evil works of darkness. In other words, don't yield, surrender and get drawn into that whole drama. Rather, expose it. Bring it out to the light. Say: hey, we need to talk. We need to talk - then that's the challenging part, is to bring things to the light. So the thing is, we just need to talk, let's have a talk; then say what you're sensing, what you're feeling; this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm sensing. Listen, we've got a problem in this relationship. This is what I see is happening - we need to talk about it.

You've got to realise that the other person's responsible for their stuff. Hey, did you realise - come in a spirit of grace, come in a spirit of life. You've got to come in the opposite spirit. You've got to always operate in the opposite spirit. Someone's angry, you come in calmness. Someone's bitter, you come with a sweet grace in your heart. If someone's dishonouring, come with honour. That's part of how you win. You win by playing the game God's way. You win by finding God's way, and so one of the ways He says to win is, you know: bless those who curse you. I don't want to bless them. I want to punch them, and then curse them - or maybe the other way round. But you've actually got to manage your own internals before you address the thing, and you desire to have a godly outcome. So you come to the person with love in your heart, and concern for the relationship, but you've got to talk the truth. You've got to speak the truth; say: this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm sensing, what's going - and when they say no, no, no, there's nothing going - yeah, there's something's going on. I can feel it. Then they say no, no, no. Actually what you're doing is affecting all of us, it's affecting me. This is how it's affecting me. You've got to lay it all right out there, straight on the table. This is what I'm unhappy about. This is what I'd like to talk about.

Then explore the possible solutions, and if it all comes to an end, and it doesn't end so good, at least you set a boundary; then actually I don't have to put up with that. I'm not going to put up with that, and you establish a clear boundary: that this is how you'll behave in the future, if they behave that way.

So what you've got to realise is, behind these what we call human problems, is a spirit power that operates; so don't try and deal with these problems just on one level. Deal with them: one, in prayer; two, with love and grace and truth; and boundaries at a practical level. So if there's an issue comes up, identify it: what are you feeling? Try to get a handle on it, try to get a name on it, pray, ask the Lord, just strengthen yourself in the spirit. Ask the Lord to give you inside, what it is you're dealing with, bring it out so you can see it, what you've got to face, what they've got to face. Then go to the person when you're ready - prepare yourself. Go to the person when you're ready, and just go in grace, go in peace, go to reconcile, go to sort the thing out - but go to get a change.

Go to get the darkness - you know all it takes to get rid of darkness, just turn on the light. That's all it does, so demons actually, once you're in the right frame and space with God, once you're actually fired up in God, and got the right heart attitude, all you've got to do is just come with the truth and the light and bang! You're suddenly there, and the person may just go crazy - whoa! So that's what we've been up against all this time. This is real bad stuff. Let them shout and whatever, just say: listen, I won't carry on with that, and you just put a wall and a boundary, and say: I won't be treated that way, and we won't continue while you're carrying on that way.

This is a real challenge for us in relationships, to be able to do this, be able to go and sort things out like that. I encourage you to have a think about this, and think about the relationships where you have, or are experiencing, witchcraft pressure on you; and instead of just saying: it's just me, there must be something wrong with me, maybe there's a spirit coming in to separate and fragment that relationship, undermine that marriage, undermine that family, undermine that partnership. Something's coming in - why don't you be the one that steps up by saying: this is what I'm feeling God. Now I'm going to pray until I get the insight. Then I'll prepare my heart, and go talk about it, put it on the table, and we've got it out, and we've cleaned it up. Amen!

Father, we just honour you right now. We thank you for your grace, your presence, your truth, your life with us. Just while our eyes are closed right now, I wonder is there any person here and today, as I've shared that message, you know you're facing that very thing - just raise your hand quite quickly right now. Eyes closed, heads bowed. Very many, lots of people, lots of people right now, you're facing that very kind of pressure round you right now. Could be with a child, could be with a partner, could be in ministry, could be any kind of area. Okay, whole heaps of people.

Thank you for being so honest. Let me just give you one real important thing. Do not isolate in it. That step of isolating and disconnecting, is a step of yielding to this thing, and you will end up in a very bad place. You have to come into the open with it, and connect with it. If you don't know what to do, find someone you can share with; who will pray with you, and help you see it clearly. But here's what you can do. Firstly, try and identify what you feel, and how this thing is pressuring against you. Go to God in prayer, and ask Him to help you. Stand up strong in the spirit, and ask Him to help you to see it clearly; and just wait, take a little while to see it clearly, a few days, maybe a little longer. Then you start to see it very clearly, and say: now God, I want to prepare myself. What's my part? What do I need to do? Give me wisdom, what I need to handle it, and how I can handle this person. Then you arrange to meet, and get it straight out on the table, in the light. Now remember, it's not necessarily going to be very pleasant. If there's a spirit behind it, and you're coming against that thing, you may have quite a mess. But you know it's better to face that; than it is to live and just want to die. You're better than that. You've got more in you than that.

Father, right now in Jesus' name, we take dominion and authority over every spirit of witchcraft that is attacking members of this church. Those that put their hands up, I break the power of that spirit right now! I break the power of death! I break the power of hell! I break that anti-christ spirit off you! I release you from the heaviness and pressure, in the Mighty name of the Lord, Jesus Christ! I call you to stand in Jesus' name and come into the liberty, stand fast in the liberty that Christ has set you free! Do not be entangled again in that yoke of bondage. Father, we honour you today, for the grace you give us to win in life, and everyone said ... Amen! Let's finish with a victorious sound. Those of you put your hand up, if you'd like us to lay hands on you, just pray for you, come quickly to the end, we'll pray with you. Come on church, let's stand up together!

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Acts 13:4-12 Paul’s encounter with a sorcerer in Cyprus.

The Sorcerer operated with the assistance of demonic powers.

He sought to turn away the governor from faith in Christ (v8)

People operating with witchcraft spirits seek to influence those with authority.

The impact of this occultic power is to turn people from faith in Christ and control them.

2. Witchcraft and The Occult

Occult = hidden, covered, secret = the spiritual power behind it is concealed.

Dt. 18:9-14 God expressly forbids His people to be involved in the occult.

Witchcraft = to manipulate, intimidate or control someone or something with the assistance of spiritual powers.

The power behind witchcraft is demonic and always steals, kills and destroys.

1 Kings 19:1-5 After successful ministry Elijah came under witchcraft attack “Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying …” (vs2).

(i) Distorted perspective – he focussed on problem and not on God (v3)

(ii) He became afraid – He felt fear, dread, sick- He drew back from his responsibility (v3)

(iii) Isolation - He separated himself from relationship – a mistake! (v3)

- Disconnection from relationship is a fruit of witchcraft operating.

(iv) Discouragement and Depression – “He sat down” (v4).

(v) Death Wish – “He desired to die” (v4). A sense of hopelessness

overwhelmed him.

God’s response was to touch him, refresh him, challenge him and reassign him.

When witchcraft operates in relationships – people can experience similar issues.

3. Witchcraft in Relationships

· When people are in relationship with one another they have influence on each other.

· Witchcraft = to manipulate another person to impose your will upon theirs. So they do what you want, rather than what they really want to.

· This manipulation of others to asset your will may be –

(i) Direct: shouts, threats, violence.

(ii) Indirect: subtle manipulation of emotions – guilt, blame, self pity, demand.

· The agenda may never be spoken but a “pressure” to agree and to please the person is “flet”.

· You might experience – guilt, dread, anxiety, grief.

· You can never be at rest to be yourself when witchcraft operates.

· Example of Peter and Jerusalem leaders

Gal. 3:11-14 “Now when Peter had come to Antioch I withstood him to his face”

Peter had personal revelation from God (Acts 10:9-16) to connect relationship with Gentiles.

When the Jewish leaders from Jerusalem came he changed his behaviour.

He was afraid of judgement and rejection by them – he felt pressure to conform.

Paul confronted the behaviour which he called hypocrisy – not authentic.

The spiritual pressure was so strong Barnabus was influenced also.

4. Witchcraft and The Flesh

(i) Witchcraft is also a Work of the Flesh

· Gal. 5:17-21 Witchcraft is connected to idolatry and hatred.

· Selfish agendas war against the low of the Holy Spirit and are contrary to Him.

(ii) Rebellion is as Witchcraft

· 1 Sam. 15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.

· Rebellion = 4805 = to be bitter, to resist, to rebel.

· Underneath witchcraft are bitter roots and rebellion against God’s order.

(iii) Religion can be a form of Witchcraft

· Gal. 3:1 “Oh foolish Galatians – who has bewitched you?”

· Bewitched = 940 = to charm, put under a spiritual influence, bring evil on a person.

· The Galatians had come under the influence of religions legalism.

· Religion – activities to please God that have form but no power (1 Tim. 3:5).

(iv) How God has designed us

· Man is designed to be spirit, soul and body (1 Thess. 5:23)

· The spirit of a man energises his body and soul (Prov. 4:23)

· Spirit life flowing from within a person is first seen on the face. E.g. Ps 34:5. Gen. 4:5-7 – Cain.

· What is in a person’s heart overflows as a “spiritual presence” or atmosphere.

· Demons can manipulate people and fill that atmosphere (Eph. 4:26-27).

· Whatever a person focuses on he will open his heart to release. (Mt. 6:21).

· Examples of Spiritual presence ‘felt’? – body posture, voice tone, atmosphere.

*Anger *Peace *Uncleanness *Anxiety *Arrogance *Blame *Self Pity

· Unrestrained negative attitudes within a person overflow and influence people around them placing a “pressure” upon them.

· When witchcraft operates people “feel” – sick, dread, fear, anxiety, pressure, tense.

5 How to Deal with Witchcraft in Relationships

· It is a doorway to the demonic – you must confront it (Gal. 5:1).

(i) Identify the influence

· Reserve – something is ‘not right’.

· Loss personality, spontaneity, freedom.

· ‘Pressure’ to please, appease, yield.

· Fear, anxiety, dread.

· Desire to flee – avoid.

· Disconnecting relationally.

(ii) Pray strongly (Eph. 6:10-12)

· Energise spirit man – tongues

· Ask Holy Spirit to reveal what can’t see

· Hold back until see clearly (Acts 16:18)

(iii) Prepare self to respond

* What am I responsible for?

* What am I not responsible for?

* Do I need support?

(iv) Confront the Darkness (Eph. 5:11-13)

* Find suitable time/place

* Speak directly

* Say what feeling/sensing

* Bring issue out to open

* Explore possible solutions

* Establish clear boundaries what you will/will not accept.

* Stay Calm.

6. Lessons to Learn in a Prison

Sun 31 Jul 2011  « Back to Top

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At the age of 17 Joseph had a prophetic dream. That prophetic dream was a glimpse or an insight to what his future could be and there are ways you can position yourself to get prophetic dreams. Joseph learned how to operate in the gifts of the spirit in prison. Learn to hold onto God, remain faithful to Him in spite of what it feels like and what circumstance. Learn to love the people around you.

We're living in a great day; great opportunity, great to be alive. Man, I'd love to be a young person in today's hour - what a great day we live in aye? Got iPads and iPods and everything, every kind of gadget and gidget and whatever you need to make life a little bit easier, fantastic. I love them all. Trouble is, in the midst of it we can actually lose our way, and there's a whole generation thats lost it's way, and I believe we're in a time when God is raising up a generation. We were reading this morning about Joseph, and I want to talk a little bit about Joseph tonight. I want to share with you a simple message called: Lessons to Learn in a Prison.

You've got to make decisions, whether you learn anything through what's happening; or whether you just go, and have stuff happen. A lot of people drift along, and just have stuff happen; but God has got His hand on our life, and if we align with Him, He is able to use every situation to advance us, to grow us, prepare us, develop us, in all kinds of ways. So Joseph is a young man. At the age of 17 started to get prophetic dreams, 17. So if it could happen to Joseph, it could happen to you at a young age; prophetic dreams.

One of our daughters was called up to heaven at the age of nine. God has not changed. It's possible for you to experience prophetic dreams, where God opens heaven, begins to give you a glimpse of what He has in store, or ahead for you. What an amazing thing for God to do that, but it doesn't just happen. Usually there's a hunger in a person's heart. That's what seems to open up heaven for us. Sometimes God just seems to pick someone out, and for no reason at all, bless them. I find that hard to handle.

I don't know about you, I really find it a bit hard to handle. Just seems so unfair, but God is not fair, He's just; and He just does things like it pleases Him, but He's operating according to principle. So at the age of 17, Joseph had a prophetic dream. That prophetic dream was a glimpse, or an insight, to what his future could be; and there are ways you can position yourself to get prophetic dreams. I wonder how many of you here have had prophetic dreams. I've had some. I don't have enough of them, I'd like more. Some people have a lot. I feel a bit envious of that, I'd like a lot more, and I don't seem to have enough of them.

However, I've been praying to God for increase that whole area. So there are times when I've had a prophetic dream, it's given me a deep insight to a situation around my life, or something was coming up; so God is into prophetic dreams. In fact it says: with the baptism in the Holy Spirit, I'll pour My spirit out in you, and you'll dream dreams and have visions; so it's your legacy and right to access the realm where God speaks to you, and gives you insights about the future. Whether you do or not is your choice.

I'd just love to have a body of people, a generation of people, who would rise up and say: God, I believe You can speak, You do speak, You will speak, and You will speak to me. You will give me glimpses of why I'm here on earth, and what I'm called to be and to do. See without that, you drift; and today we're living with a generation that is drifting. They've lost values, lost standards, lost their way, and drift from experience to experience, and not knowing how to succeed with their life. What a great hour to actually live, because I know in times like that, God pours out His grace, and pours out His spirit.

So I want to talk about what it is to be in prison - so young Joseph got a prophetic dream. Wasn't it wonderful to have a prophetic dream? The problem is, God doesn't always tell you what's going to come between the dream, and getting it fulfilled. I like the dream bit. I like the fulfilment bit. I don't like the bit in between. The bit in between is not very comfortable, and so we're going to talk about it. See, what Joseph did was, Joseph was like this: man, I got a dream! I've got a dream! I've got a dream; and he went to the older brothers, and said: I've got a dream! I'm going to be great, and you'll bow down to me! [Laughter] They didn't like his dream. Then he came back, and he said to his mum and his dad: I'VE GOT A DREAM! Not only did my brothers bow down to me, you did too! That was the dream - and they didn't like it either.

But his father was a spiritual man, and he kept it in his heart. In other words, just because he'd had this dream, didn't mean it wasn't from God; and sometimes the dreams that God gives us, we don't always understand all they mean, and how they'll work out, but they're about our destiny. They're about our destiny. I'd love to hear young people saying: God's given me a dream. I have a dream in my heart. I've a dream of what my life could be. Listen, without that dream, you're all over the place. Without that dream, you're drifting. You're like a boat in a storm with no rudder. It's a horrible thing, you just can't go anywhere. You just go with the crowd, go with the flow.

So this dream he had was a dream of impacting a nation in his generation. The way the dream worked out was this - we'll see how it worked out. How it worked was this - He rose to become probably the greatest financial manager of a nation that the world has ever seen. He rose up, and in the midst of a crisis, a financial collapse - the Bible tells us in the time of Joseph, money totally collapsed. There was a financial collapse in the world, beyond what we've ever seen. Everything collapsed; and in the middle of it, God gave him the keys how to transfer wealth, and make his boss the wealthiest man in the world in that time. Now how about that - and he was 17 when he got the dream. How many 17 year olds have we got here? At least 17 hands are up. Okay, the rest are all younger than that. That's okay, [laughs] so it was time we had some dreams then isn't it?

But what God didn't tell him - and this is the tricky bit of the things of God, because He doesn't always tell you what's going to come up on the way to get to the dream being fulfilled, and you've just got to learn how to trust Him. I want to share with you a few lessons that Joseph had to learn in prison; and prison is a place of containment, confinement, so when God gave him a dream of being a ruler, and his family all coming and bowing down, what God didn't tell him was how he was going to get there. He didn't tell him about the injustice. He didn't tell him about the bad treatment, He didn't tell him how he'd be sold as a slave, He didn't tell him how he'd be betrayed. He didn't tell him how he'd end up in prison - didn't tell him any of that. God leaves all that stuff out, have you noticed?

If you've been walking with the guy, you'll find He leaves out all that stuff. He leaves out the details of how He's going to get you, where He's going to get you. You've got to actually trust Him on the way, that whatever's going on in your life, it's an opportunity for you to learn and grow. So we're going to look at his time in prison. Here it is, we'll pick it up in Genesis 39: and the master, when He heard these words - Verse 19 - when the master heard these words which his wife spoke, saying: this is what Joseph did, his anger was aroused. So the boss, the master took him, put him in a prison, a place where the king's prisoners were confined, so it wasn't just an ordinary prison. It's a place where the worst criminals are put, and confined him in the prison.

The Bible says: he was bound with chains on his feet, and it says but! - ha, ha - so he's in a prison BUT, God was with him. That's the thing that makes the difference. God was with Joseph. God showed him mercy, because God's a merciful God. God gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison, and the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners who were in the prison; whatever they did there, it was his doing. In other words, even when he was in the prison, he ends up in charge of the prison, and that's pretty good isn't it aye? Especially knowing what he was challenged with.

The keeper of the prison didn't even look at anything that was under Joseph's authority, because the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it to prosper. Now here's an amazing story. I won't go through all of that, because I want to pick up the lessons that Joseph learnt, and here's the deal: he's in a prison. He's got his feet in chains. He's on a false trumped up charge of attempted rape. Here he is at the bottom of the prison. Everyone hates him, despises him for what he's done, and yet he comes to the top. Now it's pretty good if you can come to the top wherever you are. That's pretty good if you can come to the top wherever you are, but you know something? When you read it, it looks like God did it all. Actually there was a vital part that Joseph played in it, and I wanted to share with you several things that you can learn, if you're in a prison.

So a prison is a place where you're contained, confined; where it doesn't feel like the dream you've got is ever going to be fulfilled; where in fact actually what you experience is opposite to what you were hoping would happen. There's some limitations, there's pressures around you, there's constraints around you, misunderstandings around you; and you're in a season in your life where it's difficult, and it's hard, and it doesn't look like ever you'll get out. That's what the prison is. See, you've got to think of it - we've read the story. We know what happens, but imagine from Joseph's point of view, he's gone through all these experiences, and now he's in the bottom, bottom prison, the worst prison of them all. His feet are in chains. There's a trumped up charge of rape. He has got no idea how this is all going to work out.

You could read the book. You read the answer - but he's in jail. What do you think he felt? What do you think he went through? What do you think he had to learn, while he was in that prison? This will be good for us to learn too, so let me just give you a few things that you've got to learn if you're in a tight place. How many know what it's like to be in a tight place? Could be tight financially, tight relationally, pressure, constraint, can be really difficult.

Okay, so here's the thing. The generation we're in today needs to learn about commitments, and holding on and persevering in trouble. See today if it doesn't work, people tell them where to put it, and move on you see? If there's pressure and trouble, people give up, because we're living in an 'I want it now' generation. Let me tell you this. The spirit of that will never work in making you a man and woman of God, so let me give you several things that you learn. Here's the first one. Number one, you have to learn to remain faithful to the Lord, when it looks like He's left you. You have to learn to remain faithful to God, when it looks like He left you.

How many know there's seasons and times in your life you don't feel God at all, don't even hear God at all? Believe it or not, I have those times too. I think: you've left me with this church Lord, and what am I going to do? Where are you, you know, and He's not talking. He's not saying anything, and it's difficult. Here's the thing, when it looks like God has left you; when you've got a trouble in your family, and it seems like there's this conflict won't go away, and you're praying and God's not answering anything; it's a choice you have to learn, to remain faithful to God, and hold onto God in the midst of your trouble.

To hold on to God means you keep coming to Him in prayer, keep opening your life to His words and His promises. It means you remain faithful to Him. I've found people get a bit of pressure on them, they stop fellow-shipping, they stop coming to church, they're already on the way down, because they've let go of holding onto God, holding onto the family of God. So number one, you need to learn to hold onto God, in spite of the circumstances; so will you remain faithful in distress?

In Isaiah 41, He says this. He said: don't be afraid. Don't be dismayed, for I am with you. It doesn't matter what you're going through, no matter what distress, what contrary circumstances. God says: I AM with you, whether you feel it or not. You notice this, that when you're going through temptation, you can't feel the presence of God at all? Not at all, when you're facing a temptation, temptation to sin, you don't feel God at all. Does that mean He's gone? No. It feels like He's gone. That's why it requires faith, to hold onto the promise of God. God - You said You would never leave me, You'll never forsake me, You'll never abandon me. I will hold onto You, and I won't let go. Number one lesson, learn to hold onto God, remain faithful to Him in spite of what it feels like, and what circumstance.

Here's the second thing that Joseph did. Joseph learned how to operate in the gifts of the spirit in prison. That's an amazing thing. Even though he's in prison, he's able to interpret dreams. He's able to flow in a gift of God. He's able to sense when people have a need, to reach out to them; and in spite of the fact of him being in need, him being in prison, him being treated unjustly, he's able to reach out to others in the middle of it, and flow in the gifts of the spirit. You say it's hard to flow in the gifts of the spirit? No it isn't, it's easy. Why on earth did you think it was hard? What caused you to think that? Who told you it was hard? Where did you learn that?

We've run seminar after seminar on flowing in the gifts of the spirit, and how to move in the spirit. It's very, very easy to do it. It's not hard at all. If it was hard, then only a few could do it.

No, it's not hard. The issue is, whether you can stir yourself up, and trust God, and begin to hear from Him and flow with Him. That's the issue, and you have to learn to do that. Well, I just love to do it, when we've got a lovely feeling, lovely atmosphere. No, no, you need to learn to listen to God, and stir your gifts, even when it's difficult.

In 2 Timothy 1:6, Timothy's going through a hard time. You know what the hard time was? He was young guy, everyone's putting him down, everyone's speaking against him, older people saying he's too young to be a bishop, how come - how come you're doing this? In the midst of it, he became intimidated. When you're intimidated, and when you're affected by the attitudes of people, and shut down inside, your gift stops flowing. You CAN flow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You've just got to make a decision to STIR UP YOUR SPIRIT! See? You wait for God to do it? Ha ha! What are you dreaming? You're dreaming. You're thinking something crazy. God is not going to stir your spirit.

Paul wrote to Timothy: stir up the gift of God that's inside you, by the laying on of hands. Fire it up, man of God - don't forget who you are. I don't care who's putting you down, who's speaking against you. Fire up the gift of God! How do you do it? Get praying strongly in tongues. You start to pray in tongues, your spirit is praying. You become energised in your spirit man, your head clears, and you start to hear the voice of God. See, you can't wait for someone to do that for you. You've got to do that for yourself. I don't feel like it. Enjoy your prison then. See?

We need to learn how to stir the gifts of God, so wherever we are, we can start to feel the presence of God activate. You've got the Holy Ghost inside you, you can stir up the gift of God any time you wish. You see the problem is that we tend to live under the feelings, impressions, the sensations, the imprisonment; and we don't actually live from our spirit, where the life of God is. The life of God is in your spirit.

Now of course what happens is, the stuff that gets in your thoughts, in your soul, and your emotions, can shut down your spirit; so you have a spirit. You have the Holy Ghost inside you. You can speak in tongues. You can activate the gift of God. You can active your spirit man, and stir up your gift, so God begins to flow through you; and when you do that, the gifts start to flow. Gifts are not for you, they're for someone else, so in order for the gifts to flow, you have to stir yourself up and be committed to helping other people. In the midst of the prison, he learned to stir up the gift of God. It was his prophetic gift that got him into trouble in the first place, and now his prophetic gift is the very thing that will get him out of prison.

It was his prophetic gift that got him in there, it was his prophetic gift got him out of it. So if you let the gift of God shut down in you in the midst of difficult experiences, how will you get out of those difficult experiences? Because you need the flow of God's presence, and the flow of His power, to get out; so the thing is, when he rose up and he began to help people, he began to help people with his gift, he began to serve them with his gift, and the gift of God flowed; he began to interpret the dreams of this guy, interpret the dreams of that guy, both the guys got out of prison, and eventually one of them remembered; a situation came, and he was called on to exercise his gift. Imagine missing your moment because the time - suppose the king just suddenly said: okay boy, I hear you can interpret dreams, come and tell me what my dream is. Ooh, oh well I've been in prison, you can't expect me to do much. That was the place to be learning to stir your gift. Hey, what are you doing in your difficult time? Are you stirring the gifts? When was the last time you prophesied? When was the last time you heard a word of God? When was the last time you felt God flow through you? When was the last time you heard God speak clearly, something to encourage someone?

See. Stir up the gifts of God. Don't wait until you feel something. You've just got to stir them up anyway, it's stirring your faith, declaring the word of God. Here's another thing; you need to hold on and believe for a better future. You need to hold on in faith, and believe God your future's going to be good. The Bible says in Psalm 105: until the time His word came, the word of the Lord tried him. In other words, he held on to God's word in the face of difficult circumstances; and what the trial was was this - my circumstances disagree with what I believe. I believe I'm going to rise and be a leader, but what I'm seeing is different; and how do I handle what I feel, when what I see is so different to what God told me? At that point, many people quit, they give up. They say, what I'm experiencing is so different to what God told me, I can't ever believe that God's going to come through. I must have been dreaming, I must have been crazy - and you lose the word of God. You have to believe that tomorrow will be better than today, that for you: I know the plans that the Lord has for you. He says: I know the plans I have for you - Jeremiah 29 - plans for good, not evil, to give you a great future. Your future is great from God's point of view. It may not be from your point of view. Well, there's a recession. Well God's not worried about recessions. He uses them too. There was a great recession in Joseph's day, and God used Joseph to deal with the whole thing.

So here's the thing. Here's another thing you can learn - learn that God will bless you, in spite of what you're walking through. God still wants to bless you. Notice here, it says in Verse 21: the Lord was with Joseph, showed him mercy, gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison, so God blessed him. Notice this, he said: whatever he did, the Lord made it to prosper; so here's the thing a lot of people don't realise, that even if you're in your prison, you can still do well. You can actually improve the prison you're in. See, most people want to get out of prison, rather than actually change the prison; and then they get out... So He blessed - whatever situation you're in, I hear this over and over. People come complain about their job, complain about school, complain about their family, but you'll never get anywhere doing that. You've got to say: if this is the place I feel contained and restricted and limited, then how can I change it, and make it a better place? When you've done that, that's when you're ready to be promoted.

The thing that God wants you to change now is the thing that's really irritating you. That's the thing people don't understand. The thing that's bugging you the most, is the thing that God calls you to influence change and bless. He's got to make a decision, that's what I'm going to do; and it's challenging, because some problems don't go away - they last a long time.

I know some prisons, or some problems that people have, last a long time, feels like God's never going to answer; but you know, if you hold on, and believe for a better future, it'll come. It will come. It does break through. It's just a matter of whether you can last the distance or not. You've got to hold on to God. God will bless you. He's blessing you where you are now. Sometimes we get so miserable in our feelings, we just can't see we're being blessed, but God has blessed us with good things. That's why the Bible tells you to be grateful and thankful. Have a look around, start to see what can I be thankful for? Well I'm alive, got two eyes, even though I'm wearing glasses. I can stand, I can speak, I've got energy, got life, got friends, I've got - and you begin to thank God. Thanking God shifts your spiritual atmosphere. Bless God. Bless God.

I'm amazed when I come into meetings, how little people have got to give to God; because we haven't practised giving something to God. Practise, practise, practise! Oh God, thank you! Today I am blessed. I am blessed today! I'm blessed in everything I do! I'm blessed when I come in! I'm blessed when I - I hope you would pray that prayer of you. That's a great prayer to pray. That's a prayer of a person of faith. That's a person who believes that God is with me, and His purpose is to bless me; so even dumb stuff, bad stuff and failures, nevertheless God uses them all for good.

I am blessed! I don't feel blessed, no. Do I look like I'm blessed? Sometimes no - BUT I AM BLESSED! Why? Because God is with me, He's in me, my life is in His hands. Oh, how can it get better than that! Come on, it's about an attitude, an attitude, so one of the great prayers you can pray when you get up in the morning everyday: I AM BLESSED TODAY! I thank you God, I am blessed. My life is a blessed life today. Whatever I put my hand to is blessed. I thank you Lord, you bless the works of my hand, you bless my health, you bless my relationship, bless my - I am blessed.

You say well, I don't even feel like that. Nevertheless, if you will start to declare it, those things will change around you. You start to see it differently, say: I'm blessed. I can't believe how - it's a thing in New Zealand. I've been to Pakistan. Now if you want to see people in trouble then you go to Pakistan. Man, we were sick there, and there's a lot of things to be very miserable about - people carry guns because it's frightening, and bombs go off, and there's terrorists; and yet in the midst of it, I just see very many happy people. I come here, and it's safe, and there's all these things going on that are so wonderful for us; and people are so miserable. Come on now, we need to say: I'm blessed. I am blessed by God!

Start to make it your confession; I'm blessed, blessed in the morning, blessed in the evening, blessed every day in my relationship, everything. God blesses me, see? So when you are in the prison, you have to learn to declare and to agree, that God is blessing you; even the bad times will turn around, and turn out for you good. Isn't that an interesting thing to realise? If you want to understand the pain of other people, go through a little yourself; and suddenly it changes your judgements, and your harshness, and you start to feel twinges of compassion. See before that, you just feel: oh yeah, go on, get a life, get a life, get on your feet, stop mucking around. You get a harshness and a judgement, but see, when you go through a few things, then you have a tenderness to say: come on, we know you can do it. Go on, I'll come alongside you and help you. There's a softness comes, so the things that are causing you pain right now, are to soften you up a little, so you'll feel a bit more about other people who are going through hard times. Isn't that right?

Come on, that's a lesson you can learn in prison. God blesses you, see? Here's another thing. Prison is a place where you learn to love the people who are rejecting you. Prison's a place to learn to love the people who reject you. Now how many people have experienced rejection? That'd be everyone here - you've had someone who just spoke against you, rejected you, turned you down, shut you off, cut you off, did some kind of - it just is part of life. Tell someone next to you: it's part of life. Get used to it - it's going to happen, and it'll happen more. See? It's just part of life, just happens. Here's the thing: can you love the person; or do you react against them? My observation is, most people, they don't love the people who reject them. They just get angry inside, and twisted inside, and: you'll get yours, you know? I know what I'll do, I won't talk to you any more. Well that's - big deal, you know? Good on you, if you're going to do that. We've got to learn to love people, and love has to flow out of a heart that's free, that's resolved pain. You've got to learn how to love people.

Well, you know, I love the people I like. That's not love. The Bible says in Luke 6, it says around about 34 or something like that, it says something like this. It said: if you're good to the people who are good to you, where is the evidence of God's grace in your life? Even an unsaved person does that. If you're kind to people who are kind to you, where's God's grace in all of that? No grace for that! Anyone can do that! Unsaved people do that! If you lend to people, hoping to get something back, what's the big deal? There's no grace in any of that. Hey, even unsaved people can do that. But if you can love those who hate you, if you can pray for those who use you, if you can bless those who curse you - oh, now that requires grace, because it goes against what you feel inside.

So prison's the place where you grow in loving people. When you're in prison, and you're in a bit of pain, that's when you choose to forgive, to bless, and to love; and you know what? God is watching that. He's preparing you for your enlargement. So you have to learn to love people, because at the end of the day, Jesus said: all of the whole Bible is summed up in loving God passionately, and loving people. So if you can't love people, you're missing the lesson of the prison, because that's the big lesson God's wanting you to learn - to love people.

You know what? Imagine how he actually loved the prison keeper, who put him in the chains, and hurt his legs with chains. He was able to serve him, and help him, and bless him, and make him look so good and such a success, he just let go the whole control of everything, and trusted Joseph with everything - never even checked a thing. How about that? Doesn't that require a great spirit, that people who've hurt you, and rejected you, and you can love them and bless them, until the point where they're totally changed, and they have changed in their attitude to you? Isn't that amazing grace? Isn't that amazing to do that, to love people.

I find it hard to love people sometimes. Do you find it hard to love people? It's something to learn, to learn how to love in the midst of difficulty. How do you go about learning how to love people when you're going through a difficult time? First you admit your pain. You have to admit your pain. If you don't you'll actually try to put on a behaviour that your heart doesn't agree with, so in a place of prison when you're in pain and you've been hurt by people, the best thing you can do is weep. Weep before God, pour your heart out before God and begin to feel His comfort and His love coming into you. Then choose to bless and release and forgive and pray God's hand for good upon their life. When it starts to flow from your heart naturally you know you've moved from death to life.

I found a lot of people don't learn that, so they stay pretty small, and often stay in the prison of bitterness. We don't want to be in prisons. We want to be free people. Free people can love. Free people can love. Aye? Okay, last couple of things, then we get a chance for you to respond and see what God has been speaking to you about.

Here's the thing: so Joseph, we know that Joseph just refused to get bitter. Here's the last couple of things. You have to learn to serve. You have to learn, when you're in a prison, to serve. Whatever situation you're in, if you want to become great, learn to serve, and make the people or the situation better. Learn to serve. Learn to serve. You want to be great? Jesus said: do you want to be great? DO YOU WANT TO BE GREAT? Well, I don't know - do you want to be great? Do you want to be great, or do you want to be insignificant? [GREAT!] See, there's one person wants to be great. Good on you Danny, there you go, you're on your way already, because you've got the right attitude, see?

Do you want to be a great person in the kingdom, or do you just want to be insignificant? If you want to be insignificant, well you'll have a whole world around you, helping you be insignificant. If you want to be a great person, you've got God on your side. He wants you to become great. He said: any man desires to be great, here's the way you make it happen. You make it happen by serving. You learn to develop the heart of a servant, so wherever you, are you step up and make it better for everyone around you, and developing that heart of serving is what develops greatness in you. And Joseph did that. You notice he's serving Potiphar, and what happens? Potiphar gets so blessed, he lets go everything into his hands. Then what happens? He gets put in the prison. You know what he does? He serves so well there, they let go everything, put it all in his hands, and trusted him. You know what happens next? Then they put the whole nation's future financially in his hands. Well, I'd like to have that happen. However, you've got to see what you can do with what you've got right now.

So if you're serving right now, and passionately making what's around you better, you've got the heart of a king, you've got the heart of Jesus. Here's the last thing you need to do. You need to learn that promotion comes from the Lord. There came a time it says when he got suddenly promoted. You look at Genesis, Chapter 41, and it tells - look at this - it said: so his advice was good in the eyes of Pharaoh - Verse 37 - in the eyes of his servants. The Pharaoh said to his servants: where can we find a guy like this, in whom is the spirit of God? And the Pharaoh said to Joseph: inasmuch as God showed you all this, there's no one as discerning and wise as you. You'll be over my house, all my people shall be ruled according to your word; only in regard to the throne, will I be greater than you. See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.

Now you've got really get the picture of this. Egypt was the major military, economic power of the day. It was the leading nation in the world, and this guy goes overnight from the prison, to next to the king on the throne. Now you see God can promote you. God can step you up, and give favour upon your life, and bring you before important people. God can open the door to promote you. See, if God doesn't do it, you've got to do it yourself, and it's real hard if you do it yourself. It's easy if you let God promote you, and to let God promote you, learn the things you need to learn in the prison. That's how God promotes you.

So what happened was this: he became known because of the prophetic edge, and the favour of God. How did he have the favour of God on his life? He did the things I told you he did; and you know what? He put his whole heart into it. He just was quite an excellent person, and so people heard: here's a guy who's got a prophetic gift. Here's a guy who serves, here's a guy God's on his side. Everything he touches turns to gold. This kind of guy can help us - and he suddenly gets a door opened to him. So God can open doors of opportunity for you. Paul says: he prayed for doors of opportunity to be opened.

You want to become something with your life, why don't you do the things you need to do to succeed? Be great wouldn't it? Imagine looking back, and you remember tonight, and you remember all of the people sitting around you. Out of all of them, you were the one that somehow rose up and the other all say: oh, well God seems to have favoured that person. The answer is not so, that He favoured them. You just put into practice the things you needed to do, to position yourself, for God to promote you.

Throughout the Bible, God promoted people, promoted them, lifted them up, gave them all kinds of opportunities. God can do it. He can do it for you.

Why don't we just close our eyes right now. Father, we just thank you right now for your presence here, just get ready to pray - why don't we just thank you. Just close our eyes. Let's just open our hearts to the Lord right now. Maybe you're going through a difficult situation, difficult circumstance, difficult experience, a season of limitation. So your prison can just be a season where your activities are limited, what you can do is limited, maybe financial limitation, maybe a limitation just at school. That's a limitation to you, to some extent, because you're just contained, and confined within a learning environment for a few years of your life; and most people when they're at school, want to get out of school. Once they're out of school, they wish they'd been back there and learnt something while they were there; so while you're in school, it's the season of containment to learn something.

So you may not be in school. You may have come out, but you're in different, older latter years of your life, and you realise perhaps you're in a prison contained by mistakes you've made; contained by perhaps the limits and restrictions around you in some areas of your health or whatever. It doesn't really matter what the prison is. God wants you to learn things in that prison. One of the people in the church who I love is Janice. Janice is not here tonight. Janice suffered greatly when she was a young woman, terrible abuse, passed from one family to another, and no home, institutionalised and poor diet, all kinds of things. So she suffered in her body, suffered with sickness, and to this day she's suffered with great weakness in her body, but inside is a heart of gold for God. There's an intercessor inside her. She prays, and she hears God. She opens her home to have people in. She gives to other people who are in need. I admire someone like that.

So maybe there's a limitation around her, in terms of physical health, but inside she's learnt great lessons, and become a person in my life of influence. I really love and respect her. Probably some of you don't even know her, but I respect her, because I know the day she walked down the drive of the church, she'd been everywhere, and there was no hope. Everyone said: you can't do anything with her, and she came, I can remember to this day her coming down our drive, God saying: reach out to her and love her. See, God sees what you can become; so I wonder today, how many of you, as you listen to some of those things I shared, lessons to learn in the prison. I wonder how many of you, God spoke to you about some issue tonight. Would you raise your hand, and just acknowledge: God is speaking to me tonight? God bless, God bless, God bless, many hands going up. God bless.

These are keys to grow, keys to learn. What I'd love you to do is, just going to get into a flow of worship music. What I'd love to do is people tonight that felt God speak to them, I'd love you just to come forward, lift your hands to the Lord, and begin to just speak to him: Lord, you were speaking to me tonight in my heart about this. Lord, I just repent of bad attitudes or a bad response, an unwilling response. I let go of things that have limited me, and tonight Lord, I open my heart to learn the new lesson you want me to learn. Lord, I'm asking for your grace, and I'd love to just come and lay hands on you, and pray that God's grace and favour would come on you.

I have been in many prisons, many very painful, difficult, limiting experiences; so the person you see on the stage is a public person, but privately I have faced many painful prison experiences, and all I could do was just weep before the Lord, and reach out for Him to teach me and help me. You could do that too. It's called the path to greatness. You are a great person inside, just waiting to come out. Why not just listen to the musicians play, and just as we have an atmosphere of worship, those that had God speak to them tonight, why don't you come forward tonight, just lift your hands, and build an altar in your heart to the Lord. I'd like to come and just pray and bless you. Some of the other pastors will come and pray also. Let's just do that, just stand right now. Come on, let's just stand as we just start worshipping God.

Just make your way to the front. Make your way to the front. Just build an altar in your place of prison. God, I feel like I want to fly. I feel so contained, and God's saying: don't be impatient, I want to teach you some things. Come on, won't you come forward, come now. Just come, come on, it's why you came here tonight. It's not just to sing songs, it's to let God touch your life. Just get in touch with your heart - so close your eyes. Closing your eyes enables you to look inwards, enables you to look upwards, so just begin to worship the Lord. As you worship Him, begin to talk to Him about what the issue is He was speaking to you about. We'll just come and lay hands on you. The rest of the church, if you could just pray and flow into the song, or just sit down wherever.

Thank you Lord. Father, I just thank you for each one who's responded tonight. Father, pour out your spirit. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Father, tonight as we lay hands on people we ask for your presence and power to come on them, an impartation of grace to grow in the very area you spoke to them tonight, in Jesus' name.

7. Training your heart to see

Sun 9 Oct 2011 AM  « Back to Top

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Training your heart to see_Mike Connell_09-10-2011_am

[Pastor Mike Connell] Well let's take our seats. I want to just introduce a couple who are going to come and share with us now and we're just going to just get an interview with them. But I want to just welcome Graham and Jess Hodder. Graham and Jess have been with us many years. What you wouldn't realise is they've had almost three careers; first career was working in the business area here locally. While he was doing that they were serving first of all Assembly of God church, then they served here in running our kids church for a season. Then they had another season of their lives where they went to China and they ran an orphanage, gathered up Chinese children who were in trouble and cared for them and become spiritual parents for them in a family home. It's amazing. And then they came back and now they're doing something else and I think it's a great inspiration that no matter what you have happening in your life, no matter what stage of your life you're at, there's always something you can put your hand to.

We're going to find out a little bit of what they're doing now, so let's give them a great welcome as they come up now. [Applause] God bless, there we are. We need another microphone. There we go, fantastic. Wonderful. Come on, let's give them a great clap. [Applause] [Laughs] There, we got one, you've got a microphone now.

[Graham Hodder] Thank you.

[Pastor Mike Connell] I've got this one on. That's right, praise the Lord. Just keep it there. Okay, please be seated and this is very difficult for Graham and Jess. They're private people and they don't like to be up the front, so what happened just then probably is the worst nightmare they could have had happen [laughter] but it's very right that we honour people, particularly when there are things to honour in someone's life. Today is not so much about honouring them though, but I think it was appropriate to do that because I don't know any couple that have actually consistently over a such a long course of time, have just committed to the work of the Lord; firstly in a children's church, then the orphanage. Now we're going to hear about what they're doing - would you believe it - on the street evangelism in our city. We're going to find out a little bit about what they've been doing.

They've not been doing it out in front. You don't see this happening and there's a lot of things you don't see happening, but they're going to tell us a little bit today. So Graham and Jess, thank you for coming up. I know you didn't want to do this, but I want to just thank you for coming and just [sit on it, 00.02.12] we'll just chat like we're just here at home. Just shut them all out [laughter] and close the eyes. [Laughter] So the first thing is I'd like you to tell us a little bit about what you've been doing out on the streets of our city.

[Graham Hodder] Well I guess I had to ask myself why are we on the city streets; what are we doing on the city streets? And why have we got a passion now to do this that we didn't have before, because up until a couple of years ago this wasn't our scene at all. But I think what had caused us to do this was our time China where we could see that Christian people were so subdued, it was illegal to become Christians, it was illegal to convert people. There was no such thing as being able to get out into the streets and share with people on the streets. When we came home - we were in China for 12 years, just under 12 years and when we came back we could see that instead of being a closed door as there was in China, there was a door in New Zealand wide open. As we read the word of God which we love the Bible, we love reading the word of God; the great commission that Jesus gave stood out very, very strongly, that for everyone who believes in Him should go out and preach the gospel to every creature.

This doesn't mean to say that we've all got to be full time evangelists, but we could at least give one or two hours a week to reach out to people. So we thought about this and one Saturday night I said to Jess we've got to get out. We've got to get out onto the street, and we had in the [unclear 00.04.05] International School, Bible School of - ISO - School of Missions, that's right. There was one of the sessions there by the way of the master group and they were talking about getting out onto the street, and this inspired us. So this particular night we went out, shivering, it was cold and we started speaking to someone. On that night we spoke about four or five young kids in the parking lot, so what goes on in the street, what happens, what we want to do and what we do do is to share the love of God and the love of Christ. It's the love of God that constrains us, that forces us to go and to share that love with other people.

[Jess Hodder] Well we actually go out like onto the streets to take the gospel and the love of God to as many people as we can. We've got an unlimited opportunity out there.

[Pastor Mike Connell] What parts of the city have you been going out and how often?

[Graham Hodder] Oh right. Initially we started to just go out on a Saturday night. We felt that that was plenty enough for us and we went continuously - [sorry Midi. 00.05.23] Oh thanks Lyn, yeah. Oh yes, we went continuously every Saturday night and then we thought this is not enough, so we went also on Sunday night. Then we felt after about a year and a half that this was not enough, so we'll be going to town anyway on a Thursday night because that's our date night. We always go out and have a meal together and we thought well we're in town, we'll go out and we'll just keep on going out into the street and share. So we go out three nights a week now onto the street to share with people.

[Jess Hodder] Most times there's more people than what we could actually speak to on one night each and we just felt really - thought the ones that we couldn't actually speak to because there just wasn't enough of us...

[Graham Hodder] Yeah.

[Jess Hodder] ...so that's been a real challenge, yeah.

[Pastor Mike Connell] How have you gone about preparing to go out and do this? What have you done?

[Graham Hodder] Well I think it's a matter of if you sense that God has given you a call to do something you'll pour your heart and soul into it, whatever it might be. And with this the strength has come on greater and greater. There is an anointing our lives, we know that, because we are never so happy as when we're down on the street talking to people. We've got one joy. We've got one love and we've got one passion and that is to live our lives for the Lord Jesus Christ, daily to walk with Him and to share with as many as we can about His love. And this is fulfilled as we go out onto the streets.

[Pastor Mike Connell] How do you go about approaching people? What do you do when you're out there, once you're out on the streets and part of the city?

[Graham Hodder] I think this is one of the things that puts most people off from wanting to even to think to go out to evangelise or to share the gospel, the reason being that to approach somebody is very scary. Like someone walking along the street, their mind is probably not even thinking of anything like God and yet somehow you've got to within the space of a few seconds initiate a conversation. How do you do it? Well on this program in the [ISOM 00.07.54] course that we had, they had a little million dollar note. Many have probably seen it. It's a million dollar New Zealand note which of course is a genuine fake and [laughter] so on the back there is some information which I'll read out. But basically how we do it, it is very, very simple and within the space of five to 10 seconds you can establish a conversation on spiritual things inoffensively. I mean that is very important.

We don't like to get into people's face and just sort of get right in front of them. That's not the way we operate. Basically what we do is as we're walking along someone will come walking towards us and Jess might say if it's a lady, Jess might say oh good evening, did you get one of these? And of course most of the time they haven't and they take it off us and they say well what is it? We say well that's a million dollar note but it's a little Christian pamphlet, because on the back there's a million dollar question: hence it's called a million dollar note. The question is when you die where do you think you're going to go, to heaven or to hell? And there's about a two second silence when they're trying to digest that [laughter] and then suddenly you see their faces and you can tell which way the conversation is going to go by the way they reply.

Some people say well I don't believe that a loving God is going to send people to hell. And we say well of course He wouldn't, but it's people who send themselves to hell. But other people will say well how can we know? Other people say well I'm not even interested and they just give it back to us and walk off, they're gone. Okay, fair enough, we just say God bless you, have a nice evening. But then it enters straight away if people say well I'd like to know. One of our questions is well what do you think of Jesus? And on one occasion we said this to a gentleman who was with his children. He'd been playing with them and his wife and so on and he came over and sat at the same table as us. Straight away he said I think Jesus is the most wonderful person that ever lived, and I said do you believe in Him? Are you a Christian? He said no, I'm not, so we were able to share what it was to be a Christian by having our faith in Jesus.

You tell about that young Catholic lady, girl I should say, on the corner there.

[Jess Hodder] Down by the canteen noodle restaurant was a young Catholic lady and we engaged with her and were talking to her. Then we realised she was a Catholic, so we just said to her well have you got a personal relationship, a personal faith in Christ? She said she didn't know, so we explained to her how to have a relationship with Jesus and she said I've never heard it put like this before. That young lady wanted to open her life to Christ, mm.

[Pastor Mike Connell] Wonderful, wonderful.

[Graham Hodder] There were a couple of young men, contractors by the railway line. This was about eight o'clock or half past eight this particular night and they were both - one was on crutches and the other had a broken arm. We went and spoke to them. They said we both had separate accidents. They are contractors out on the farms and they were from Chile. So straight away we had a fair idea they were probably of the Catholic faith, however we didn't say anything. But anyway they said look, we both had separate accidents and then so I said well look, did you get one of these? They both took one and we went through the million dollar question and they turned it over. They said well yeah, that's very interesting. One of them said well I must admit, when my car rolled I started thinking about God. I said are you both Catholics? They said yes, we are.

Then I said have you got a personal faith in Jesus? They sort of looked at each other not quite sure what I was meaning, and they said well - I can't remember the precise words but what do you mean? And so we explained what it is to have a personal faith in Jesus Christ. One of the men said I want that. He said I want that, and we went on a little bit further, to go further, deeper and just slightly more into it so that they fully understood what it was to repent of their sins and to receive God's forgiveness and receive Christ by faith into their hearts. I said do you want to do that? They both said yes, we do, and when do you want to do it? We'd like to do it now, and so those two young men - we don't actually lead people in the Sinner's Prayer. Over the two and a half years we've been doing this over 40 people have opened their lives to Christ. We don't count anymore now, but we said to them I want you to pray your own prayer.

As I say, we don't lead the Sinner's Prayer. So these two young men just simply said Lord Jesus, we want You to come into our lives and be our Saviour. That night those two young men were born again. Unfortunately they lived out on the farm about 20 kilometres out of town, but the following morning we posted them a Gospel of John each. We got their postal address and gave them a Gospel of John. We feel the importance of sharing Christ to these people, Christ Jesus is the one they need to know. That's how we feel about this, and so on the streets we uplift Him to the greatest of our ability.

[Jess Hodder] Mm.

[Pastor Mike Connell] Very good. What encouragement would you give people who perhaps like you were many years ago, would never have considered doing anything like that? What encouragement would you give people?

[Graham Hodder] I would say I know that in a church of our size, 300 to 400 people, I know that there are a number of you, probably quite a large number who really want to do this. You've got it on your heart that you want to go out and you want to share your faith with people. I know how you feel because this is how we felt. We didn't quite know what to do, but we've got a group started now and we've got a team of eight people who come down on the street with us and we've all learnt. We all start just at the beginning and learn how to do this. I would say this, that if you're interested we'll be down the back later after the service. Come and see us because we have on a Saturday night, which is our group night as a Dare to Share as we call it; Dare to Share group, we meet on the Saturday night at six o'clock. We have a DVD on one aspect of sharing on the streets by the Way of the Master people, excellent, excellent stuff and it helps you to overcome things that you may not have thought of.

Then we have a time to pray and then we go down on the street by seven. We get back by about quarter past to half past eight and then we gather together and we talk together about the different ones that we've spoken to, if anyone has come and opened their lives to the Lord and then we pray for them, and then we pray for one another. So you'll be in a very protective situation if you would like to come and join with us. Come down and see us and we can tell you a wee bit more about it, but I know that there are many people who have been thinking they want to do this. So my advice is don't put it off. There are thousands perishing even in Hastings. Hastings has got a population of 71,000. Statistics say that three per cent go to church - that's 2000, leaves 69,000; allowing about 15,000 for little children and people unaccountable, about 15,000. That leaves about 55,000 people who don't go to church and they're on their way to hell unless we tell them.

And God has placed us here. We are here and the job that He has for us is to go out and share the gospel with people. I sometimes think that we are too easy. I think that we are running with the world too much. We've got our own amusements. Sometimes we'd rather stay at home and watch television than get out and be a bit uncomfortable for a while, to go out onto the streets. Some people say to us what about when it's cold and in the winter, you know, if it's wet? I say yes, of course we go out in the winter. I say do you stop going to work just because there's a few drops of rain? [Laughter] No. Or if you're going to go out to the movies or meet someone to have a meal at Breakers do you call it off just because it's a bit of a cold wind? Of course you don't, so why shouldn't we keep going for Jesus, even if it's cold.

[Unclear 00.17.19] Oh yes [laughter] yes. Okay, so if we don't go who will? If you and I don't get out to share, because here we are, we're so happy, we sing, shout it out, tell let the whole world know, you know, be that city of light. But we go out the door unchanged - but we can change and we're all the same. I was the same too, but yes, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Now if we don't go, who will? I'll tell you who will, the Jehovah's Witnesses will go, the Mormons will go and the Muslims will go. I was talking to a Jehovah's Witness gentleman the other night and I knew that he was Jehovah's Witness the way he chatted. We talked about some of our differences and then I said to him the same thing; I said can I ask you a question? He said yeah, of course. I said what does Jesus mean to you? He stopped and then he said well I go out every week and I do - I said no, I didn't ask you that. I said what does Jesus mean to you? And he didn't really have an answer.

I said well what are you relying on when you stand before God? He said well I've done quite a lot for Jesus like that, and I said oh, I was actually hoping you'd say that you were trusting in the blood of Jesus for your redemption. But anyway then I said to him how many of your people go out onto the street every week? He said well if a person becomes a Jehovah's Witness they understand that they've got to go out onto the streets. He said we have two churches in Hastings, one in Hastings East, one in Hastings West, and both churches send out one team every day. He said we have 14 teams going out every week. Each team has about four to five people; that's about 60 to 70 people they send out every week. I felt quite ashamed. I met a Mormon lady last night with whom I spoke and I asked the same question to her.

She said well in Hastings or in Flaxmere we've got about 20 of these young missionaries who do their two year training as missionaries with their little badges on, Elder So-and-So and Sister So-and-So. She said we've got 20 of them. I said do they have to go out every day? She said yes, they do, they go out every day. They are required to do that. Also Islam is growing in its presence on the streets, Muslims. We've met a...

[Jess Hodder] Lots of young people, lots of Maori young people are turning to Islam.

[Graham Hodder] Yeah and so if we don't go folks there are other people who will, so my word is don't put it off any longer. Come and see us. Come out and give it a try. If you can't come out on a Saturday night I'll come out on a Monday night with you. I'll take you down and we can have a go and I'll show you how to do it. But our heart is that our church should rise up. We can do a lot better than we are doing.

[Pastor Mike Connell] Yes, [very good. 00.20.16]

[Graham Hodder] We've got to get serious on this matter of the great commission. Jesus said in Acts 1:8, He said you'll be filled with power after you're filled with the Holy Ghost and you'll be My witnesses. A witness is someone who provides evidence. That word witness also comes from the same word martyr, so to be a witness for Jesus it means that we're willing to put our life on the line to go out and provide evidence for Jesus in our own town. So folks, we just hope and pray that as time goes on more and more people will come out onto the streets to get right onto the coalface. You'll get your hands dirty. People will hug you who you sort of don't want to hug, but they will listen and often times it's always sowing the seed. It's always sowing the seed and the rest is God's responsibility. For the ones who come and open their life to the Lord, some of them have come to the church but they haven't stayed.

A young couple we met under the clock one Saturday night, it was time to go home and we saw this young couple cuddling up on the seat. I think it was about quarter past eight, I can't remember the time, but it was a bit cold and they were shivering. I said come on, let's go and have a chat to this young couple, young Indian couple - and [Buvnesh, 00.21.49] the husband, he's right here at the moment now. And so we shared the good news about Christ and Buvnesh is Hindu and his wife Jess is Sikh. Over the months we got to know them and we wanted to extend our friendship to this young couple, and now they live with us in our little sleep out and we have a Bible study every week. We've gone right through the Gospel of John chapter by chapter; we've gone through the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6 and 7, and right now we're going through 1 John, the Letter to 1 John.

Our aim is to tell them about Jesus and about what Jesus expects of us, His commands, because He said go into all the world and preach the gospel, baptising them and teaching them those things that I have commanded you. And so this is what we have done and it's wonderful just to see how they've learned to appreciate the Lord, and how that by taking it a step at a time there's no pressure, they're just taking it a step at a time. But we know that the Lord is showing them and dealing with them.

[Pastor Mike Connell] Very good. Is there anything else you'd like to say?

[Graham Hodder] [Okay. 00.23.02]

[Pastor Mike Connell] Why don't we just close our eyes for a moment. I'd just like to ask you this question: what is God saying to you right now that you've listened to this? Has God spoken to you in your heart? Why don't you just meet Graham and Jess afterwards and just say I'd love to become a part of it all, at least give it a try or come along. I felt stirred in my heart today. Father, we just pray for a fire of evangelism to ignite in the hearts of every believer in this church, to reach the lost for You in Jesus' name. Amen. Well thank you Graham and Jess, it's been fantastic. [Applause] Absolutely wonderful [unclear 00.23.50]. Did you enjoy that? Let's give them a great clap shall we? [Applause] Wonderful, wonderful. Why don't we just hold hands, let's begin to pray for our city. As you pray for our city let's stand together and let's begin to think of people that you know that don't know Jesus Christ.

If you're here today and you're from another church, another place, that's fine. Why don't you begin to think of people that don't know Jesus; let's begin to hold them in our heart, name them before God. Let's begin to pray for them together right now. Thank You Lord. Let your voice rise up to heaven. Father in heaven, we come before You right now. Father, we ask for Your grace to come upon people that we know and love. Father, we pray for opportunities to share with them. Father, we pray the things that hold them back, the things that blind their eyes, the things that cover them, Lord that they would break from their eyes where they would see and respond to the gospel. Father, we pray for a change, a shift in our hearts, our lives, towards sharing You, sharing Your life with others. Lord, we look for the power of Your spirit to flow mightily.

We lift our city before You, asking God that You would touch people; asking for Your presence and power to flow and bring people into living relationship with Christ, great salvations, lives changed, people touched. Lord, we need Your help. We cry out for Your grace, in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. [Amen.] Praise the Lord. Give someone a hug or a high five before you sit down. [Applause] Praise the Lord, well man I enjoyed that. That was really stirring wasn't it? How many felt stirred by that? Is that good? Yeah, it's great and I'm just going to adapt what I was going to speak on and just abbreviate it noticeably. So I want you just to open up your Bible, if you have a look with me in Luke 7. Last week I was speaking on the gift of tongues and speaking in tongues and how speaking in tongues energises your spirit, and the purpose as Graham pointed out is to empower you to become a witness, so your life is to be a witness; the way we live our life, the kinds of attitudes we have.

We heard about gratitude this morning and I see a lot of people complain. This is not being filled with the spirit. Complaining quenches your spirit. In fact David said when I complained my spirit was overwhelmed, so to stay full of the Holy Spirit we do need to learn to be grateful, have a grateful heart, have a thankful heart and rejoice in the blessings God's given us. We need to learn to do those kinds of things, so that's part of being filled with the spirit. And we saw that when you pray in tongues, when you speak in this language that God gives you, it energises your spirit but it also connects you to the Holy Spirit. It opens a line of communication and you begin to start to get insight from the spirit of God. All of us God wants to speak with us. He wants to speak with you. This is not for just someone special; this is for every believer. Every believer can hear the voice of God. Every person can hear from God.

The trouble is often we're too busy and there are too many other voices we're listening to. We listen to all kinds of voices around us, but we can train ourselves to tune in to God speaking to us. It's not hard to train in to God speaking to you, so one of the first aspects of it is to learn to stir your spirit up so you remain energised and alive on the inside. It's great when we pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is giving us the language. Our spirit is rising up, there's an energy and a life flow that's coming and we begin to come alive on the inside. But this flow that comes from within is the same flow when God wants to speak to you, and I find that continually people kind of put it off as in the too hard basket, rather than actually saying I want to give myself to actually learning how to engage with God, how to be able to see and hear Him and flow with Him.

We can actually train our senses. You have spiritual senses. Paul talks about in Ephesians 1:18, he says that the eyes of your understanding would be opened; in other words that the eyes of your heart, so he's saying that you just don't have physical eyes. You have literally a capacity to see spiritually, but what are you going to see and how are you going to see? We need to train ourselves in that area and there are a whole number of things we can do. One of the most important parts to developing your capacity to see and to connect with God is to harness your imagination. Every one of us has an imagination; whether you use it not, use it well or not, everyone's using it somehow. You're using it well or you're using it badly, but you all have an imagination. Imagination is your capacity to form pictures or images inside you. You just do it and don't think about it, but think about this.

In your imagination you can close your eyes and in just a moment you can begin to start to see pictures - don't know where they are, but they're in your imagination. There's a part of you clearly that enables you to see pictures, and that part of you is connected to your spirit because the Bible talks about the imaginations of the heart. So your imagination, your capacity to create pictures inside you, images inside you, that's a gift God has given you. It's connected to your spirit, so therefore it's a part of your spiritual capacity. Your imagination can be used in all kinds of ways, like you can close your eyes and begin to think of a happy experience you had in the past and before long it's like all your attention is focussed; you've forgotten what you're doing and in your imagination you're back there and you're very happy out in that boat catching snapper. [Laughter] There's great feelings start to flow inside you and you can start to remember that tugging and there it is, and it was all in your imagination.

You just went there and for a moment you forget about everything around you and you're there as though you were back there really. You see, you can feel that kind of experience happening inside you and it brings great pleasure. There are other things you don't want to remember because to go back and to picture them may be very painful. They may be traumatic images, but if you haven't restored or healed your soul, haven't let Jesus do that, those images are still in there and a lot of people don't want to stop and have a think too long, because some of those images come back up. So we have to be able to deal with that if we're going to cleanse this part of us for opening our mind to God. We can imagine the present. Most of us when we imagine the present, you begin to think about something and then before long you're thinking about what could happen in that and you start to get very anxious.

So maybe you stop for a moment and the moment you start to pray, immediately your mind goes and you're thinking about your work situation, how difficult it is, or a relationship problem and you begin to think about it. Before you know it you're away there in your imagination, holding a conversation with someone. You've gone. You've gone from where we are and you're in your imagination. You're actually out in a place and thinking about things you're facing or are around you. It can lead to a tremendous anxiety, and a lot of people who struggle with anxiety and have panic attacks, they're allowing their imagination to run away and to picture a very negative future. So your imagination has a huge impact on you. It affects your brain, it affects your body. You begin to imagine for example, begin to just think of a food that you really like and just as you close your eyes begin to think of that food and see yourself sitting down to begin to - there it is, it's right - oh my! Oh look at that, the hokey pokey ice cream and strawberries. I'm getting hungry already. [Laughter]

And you can just for a moment just go away and it's almost like your connection to what's around you and the people around you diminishes, and your awareness of what's in your imagination can increase. So your imagination is very, very important. God [over in the area of the Bible 00.31.50] speaks consistently, for example with Abraham when He wanted to birth faith in Abraham's heart. He said Abraham, every day when you go out look up at the stars. That's how many children you're going to have. I know your circumstances are very bad right now, and I know your wife's getting really old and I know you are too and there's not much happening between you. But however look up at those stars because I want you to get something in your imagination: lots of kids. Then in the day time He'd say I want you to look at the sand, a lot of sand around.

So he stirred his imagination to picture his future, so we can imagine our future. You can make a plan and imagine your future, so you may plan a holiday. You get the brochure and you sit there, you're oh, sitting on the beach in Fiji [unclear 00.32.36], oh my! And it's always for a little bit you just away you go into that - or you may have a project and so you're trying to do something. You stop and you begin to think about that project and you're working it all out and it's being designed in your head. So you notice that the things that you imagine are actually the things that for the most part turn up in your life, so you think about it. You build a house, you imagine the house first. You're going to repair a room in the house or renovate a room in the house, you always imagine it before you do it. Before the world came in to being God imagined it, saw it in a picture form and then called it and made it happen, so what we see, whether it's been made by someone or whether it's actually created by God, all of it started in imagination.

So your imagination connects the physical world with the realm of the spirit; what is unseen can come into the physical world through the doorway of your imagination. That's why your imagination is very important and I want to show you just a couple of simple things you can do to harness your imagination and then a discipline you can develop in your life that will help you in your engaging with God at a personal level. [I'll show you, 00.33.46] it's quite simple and I'll just use the scripture to help you do it and very, very simply. So our imagination is incredibly important. Think about this. Jesus said in Matthew 5, He said if a man looks on a woman to lust after here, then he has already committed adultery in his heart. So during the period where he's lusting he's in his imagination, so maybe it's in pornography or maybe it's in some fantasy and the way the mind goes.

There's this fantasy and in the fantasy he's now his heart is flowing towards this evil picture or picture of evil, and the Bible says the sin has already happened. So in the heart, the heart is now stained. So when the fantasy is over and the person comes out of the fantasy, their life is now stained with adultery, so they now bring into their physical relationships what has been in the fantasy realm of the heart. Think about that. Women, you would know, if you've ever seen a man looking at you and he's mentally undressing you or he's got bad things in his mind going on. You can feel it. You can feel it it's that bad. Where did it start? It started in the imagination, so clearly what was in his imagination has now brought something into the world, into the relationship, which causes you to feel uncomfortable and aware something bad is in that person. Do you understand?

So your imagination is incredibly important because we design our future through our imagination. We create in our imagination, we are able to plan a different life with our imagination, or we can repeat the failures of the past. A lot of it has to do with what's going on in the imagination. So we need to harness our imagination and in the Bible it uses the word to describe this; it describes it, it's called meditation. In Joshua 1:8 it says if you will meditate in the law of the Lord day and night and it'll not depart out of your mouth and you observe to do it, notice what it says. You will make your way prosperous and successful, so saying to Joshua who's facing a huge challenge, He said I know the challenge is big. I know there are giants and big walled cities, but what I want you to do is to meditate in the word of God because as you do that and begin to speak your agreement about it, and go over and over and over what it's going to do, it will motivate you and form in you the faith to overcome.

So right through the Bible it talks about meditation as being an important key to prospering. In 1 Timothy 4, I think verse 15 or somewhere near that, Paul talks to Timothy. He says Timothy, I know we laid hands on you and prayed for you and imparted a gift to you, but Timothy what you need to do is to actually do something. Don't just leave it be, like wasn't it a great meeting? I got a prophecy and they laid hands on me, [blah blah blah. 00.36.37] He said don't do that. He said now I want you to meditate. I want you to use your imagination to picture yourself flowing as I have prophetically described over your life, and constantly day after day see it and acknowledge it and expect it. It will start to change and you'll start to prosper. So he always talks about meditating and giving yourself to the thing you're meditating on. If you meditate on sin you'll give yourself to sin; meditate on a plan for some project, you'll give yourself to that project. Meditate on a relationship developing, you'll give yourself to that relationship.

So what you're meditating on, we all meditate. It's just a matter of deciding what we're going to meditate on. So one of the things is this, is if meditation or if your imagination is a faculty that connects the spiritual world and the natural world, then that's where the Holy Ghost is going to talk to you. So when you're praying in tongues the Holy Spirit is imparting into you, He's imparting into your language and that comes up. You pray in tongues and then you stop praying, you'll suddenly hear the language in your head, so there's a flow starts. Now where God wants to communicate with you, He wants to actually put pictures into your mind or speak into your mind and it comes up through your spirit. So praying in tongues is a great way to stir your spirit, but you need to learn also to harness your mind. My experience with my own life and with the life of many Christians is they don't know how to focus their thought life.

So I want to just give you some simple keys that will help you, then we'll just look at a passage and let's just see what God will do. It shouldn't take us long, but let's just open our mind to just take a scripture. So here are a few practical keys on what you can do to train your imagination and it tells us to do this. In 2 Corinthians 4:18 it says now the things that are going on around us that are difficult and upsetting and challenging, it says all of these things are temporary and they will work for us. They will work on our behalf something that changes that changes us provided we do this; we look at things which are unseen, not at things which are seen, because the things seen are temporary, the things unseen are eternal. Now notice what He's saying. It's up to you to choose whether you focus your mind and your thoughts and your attention on the realities of that which are spiritual, or whether you focus them on the realities which are in the physical world.

It doesn't mean you ignore everything in the physical world. You have to cope with life and face life like it is. But what He's saying is there's something bigger than that that can change our physical reality. He's saying this, He's saying if you can see it it's temporary. If you can see it and touch it it's definitely temporary. Think about that - but He said if it comes from the realm of eternity, the realm of heaven, the realm of God, then it's eternal. It's tangible. It lasts forever - so you notice that whatever you purchase or own, no matter how good it is, how expensive it is, how valuable it is, I can assure you you will leave it all behind. It is definitely temporary. No matter how established you look right now it's not going to be how you'll be at the end of your life. It's like we have to face that if you can see it and touch it it's temporary, and it's subject to change. It will change, but one of the things that's important is to get our eyes on the realm of the supernatural, the realm of the spiritual.

So how are we going to do that? There are a few things you can do. Number one thing that can help you is fasting. Physical fasting on food can sharpen your sensitivity in your spirit, just sharpens you up. One of the things that if you're going to develop your capacity to see clearly and begin to experience flows of God speaking, I encourage you to fast of visual media: fast off television, fast off internet - except what's needed for work, fast off looking at stuff which could damage you or put images into your mind you can't get out. So for example we're in a culture now where all of these TVs, video games and internet, all that kind of stuff literally floods the imagination. It bypasses all your thinking, just goes straight in there and saturates you. There's a reason for that, because we're living in an hour when there's going to be the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit and there is a need for you to keep your imagination clean and clear. Otherwise you can't flow with God and the things He has for you.

You can't see His future for you. You're just flooded. It's like it's dulled out, so I have found it's quite important to at times just go right off all media to stop the dulling out of the imagination and to allow the imagination to come back alive again. So fasting is kind of like cutting off some stuff, so you've got to do a bit of cutting off. That's one thing you can do. The second thing you can do with your imagination is to cleanse your imagination. Cleansing your imagination is very important to actually stopping the invasion of unwelcome thoughts. Now all of us have unwelcome thoughts. We've got to deal with it. Some of them are images or pictures of the past. You've got to face them and consciously address them. I've found that at times when I pray, at times when I'm thinking, stuff will come that's unwelcome. So what I've learnt to do is to speak into it, to actually be quite proactive.

Don't say to it I shouldn't think that. You'll put yourself under the law and have no power to change it, because the law has no power. Just recognise if there's an unwelcome image coming into your imagination, it's a spiritual pressure coming on you to defile you and it needs a spiritual response. Quite simple? So a spiritual response is if it's an old picture and it's a haunting; suppose you're a male and you've been involved in sexual relationships and so a picture of something comes back and it's in a previous experience, it just keeps coming back to you. You actually have to cut your attachment to it, so just instead of trying to say I shouldn't think that, just look at that picture: In Jesus' name I repent totally of that. I reject that picture. I cut off all attachments in my soul to it.

Father, I just paint it over with the blood of Jesus Christ and I curse the thought tree that allows it to stay established within my life - because physically and chemically, if you keep repeating your thoughts you form in your brain chemical thought trees. It's as simple as that and that's why I think it's quite interesting that Jesus when He was teaching about faith, that the illustration He used was He cursed the fig tree and said don't bring forth fruit anymore. And the tree died or withered. Now I was thinking the other day and wondering whether Jesus knew well ahead about the fact that scientifically in the 21st Century we'd discover that the way your brain works is that there's neuron thought trees and they just grow, and if they're bad thoughts then they're toxic trees and if they're good thoughts they're quite healthy trees. [I think time just can 00.43.29] show that.

So I learnt that one of the things it was helpful to do was instead of trying to fight the thought, address the thought and confront it. Just confront it and speak it's unwelcome. Hold the blood of Jesus Christ over it. It's a persistent one cut off any attachment that I may have had to it and then just curse the thought tree that gives it a place to sit. I've found it quite effective to just [psst, 00.43.53] it's gone, just gone like that, and then redirect your attention somewhere else. So one aspect of developing our capacity to see is cutting off the stuff we don't want to see and fasting helps, and cleansing your mind with the word of God helps as well. The the second thing then is to actually learn to focus your attention as you - and these are two things you can do to help you develop. One of them is as you pray in tongues and your spirit is flowing, begin to focus your attention on some things you're praying about and consciously look at them.

Now so for example I'm praying for my wife. Well then I'd begin to picture my wife, lift her before the Lord, speaking things: Lord, I just lift Joy before You right now. I thank You for her, and I just begin to pray for her. Now as I pray in tongues for her I begin to hold the picture of her in my imagination, looking to see if God wants to open up and show anything around her or around our marriage that I need to know about, and it'll come by way of a picture or impression, just starts to come and you suddenly become aware of something. So as you pray, focussing your attention when you pray is quite important. Many people can't focus their attention very long, so there's something that you can do to do that. So one is praying during prayer time; another is pray as you go to sleep. You just pray Lord, I just begin to set my mind on You, meditate on a scripture, meditate on Him and as you're going and dropping off to sleep say thank You Lord, I open my inner man for You to speak to me through dreams tonight. That's one way of doing it.

Here's another thing that you can put into practice and that is meditating. I think of all the things that meditation, consciously meditating in the word of God is one of the most powerful ways to shift your inner man and to shift your inner life. It's spoken all over the Bible and meditation; meditation means to consciously use your imagination to roll over and repetition is the key. Repetition and impact, those are the keys in how strongly this thing impresses you, so let me just show you how it'll work or how I've done it. I've taken either a scripture passage with Jesus in it, or Psalm 23 or some other passage that talks about God, talks about His works, talks about who He is and what He's like. Many scriptures talk about what He's like, and then just pray in tongues for a little while and get the flow going. Then I may pray quietly in tongues, very quietly in tongues.

While I'm doing that I allow my imagination to begin to try to picture the details, and so what you could do then is just take a story from the Bible like I did it this morning. Just take this story here and I'll show you what you could do. Now in Luke 7:11-15 it happened that He went to a city called Nain. The word Nain, I looked it up and it just means pleasant, beautiful, a lovely happy place - and He went there and there was a whole of disciples there. So what I would do is this. I read the story through several times. I can tell you what's in the story, I know what's in the story. Jesus got a huge crowd, He's going from one place to another and He happens to go through a town called Nain, and it means beautiful and fruitful. And as He comes there He begins to see a huge crowd coming out of the city. He's going into the city; a crowd is coming out of the city and it's not a happy crowd.

It's a crowd of mourners. He knows they're mourners because they're all wailing and sobbing and crying. This is a large crowd, so He's got a crowd coming His way. There's another crowd coming the other way. Jesus is about to connect with them just like that, and as they come there He sees that they're carrying something. They're carrying an open kind of coffin. They've got like a stretcher and there's a young man all wrapped up. He's dead, and his mother ought - obvious who the mother is, she's dressed in black. She's right behind him and she's weeping, and around her is everyone else is all weeping. There is a lot of weeping, a lot of wailing and this woman, it's her only son and she's a widow. So that means - you need to get the facts of the story - only son and widow. So there it is, and this is what it says. Jesus is moved with compassion. Now I want you just to [say it 00.47.56] and what did He do? Well He did unthinkable. He touched a dead body. No one ever touched a dead body.

He went over and He put His hand on the body, stopped the whole show and His crowd and the other crowd stopped all with a standoff kind of thing. What is He going to do? He spoke to the boy, He raised him from the dead and then He brought him and presented him to his mother - so that's the story. You can read the story. You need to read the story two or three times until you've got the story inside you, and then when you've got the story inside you put your Bible down so you don't have to look at it. Now in your imagination enter into the story. Now you see you have to understand the word of God, the Bible says the word of God is living, so most people who read a Bible it's just words. They can't even remember what the words are. We're not approaching it right. You've got to approach it Holy Ghost, You wrote these words. You wrote the story. I want to get in the story and find out what's there. I want You to speak to me and help me engage with Jesus, because this story is a revelation of Jesus.

So how do you do it? Well you have to allow your imagination, so read the story, you're not a reader. Listen to it on a tape - Janice is not a good reader but she listens to things over and over and over on tape until she knows the story better than anyone. It's just repetition, gets the story. When you've got the story and as you begin pray, now you can begin to start to put yourself in it. So what would you do? Well you can position yourself anywhere in the story you like and every time you do it you can position yourself differently. You can position yourself alongside Jesus. You walk with Him as an observer, one of His disciples, to see what He's going to do and how He's going to respond - or you can position yourself over here and you're alongside the woman and you're feeling the grief and the pain and seeing what's happening there. You can position yourself anywhere in the story you like, and wherever you position yourself you get a different view of it.

You become aware of different things, but you have to allow your imagination to take you into the story. You've got to start off by priming the pump, by getting the story in and then starting to begin to think about it and stay there and not get distracted by lunch. [Laughter] And it's as you stay there you start off using your imagination to picture it, and what are you looking for? You're looking into the story to draw out every detail that you may not have seen before. So you're entering in with an enquiring mind like you're looking around the story, and as you look around the story try to engage what you feel; what do I feel as I am watching this? And so if you know a few of the key things in the story, then they'll come to mind. So you begin to - there it is, you're with a huge crowd. Supposing you just close your eyes for a moment so you're not looking at me.

Just allow yourself to just for a few minutes - we'll do this. It'll take about four to five minutes. It'll help you. So Holy Ghost, lead us into the story to engage with Jesus. This is what I do is just begin to quietly pray in tongues and begin to see the story and we're in the story now, and it's a great crowd of people, a huge crowd of Jesus' followers. Some of them are committed people, some of them are His apostles that are with Him, and some of them are just a rabbly crowd. They've just come along to see what will happen. They're all there. There's a huge noise of this crowd and we're following Jesus and I don't know what will come up, because when we're following Him the unexpected comes. So I wonder what's about to happen as we walk with Him and start to come to the city, a place that's supposed to be very fruitful, very abundant, a place that's a very happy place. That's what it means.

And as we look we see there's someone coming to us and they're not at all happy. There is a whole crowd of people, lots and lots of people. What's going on? There at the front of it, four men carrying a young man who's obviously dead, and there's his mother. I think a lot of people knew that woman and a lot of people knew that young man. They were well known in that village; that's why the whole village turned out, because the whole village was impacted by this. As they come closer you see there's a tremendous spirit of grief over them. They're weeping. I wonder why they're weeping? What does it mean? She's a widow. How sad. Lost her husband. This isn't the first funeral we've been to. I wonder what it meant to her to lose her only source of income, to lean on this young man growing up, expecting that one day he would provide for her. And now he's been stuck down by some disease, some sickness.

She's prayed and prayed and prayed and God doesn't seem to have heard. Then her son, her hope of a future dies. It's a shock to her. All of her hope, her dreams taken away in a moment of time; no one to support her, sustain her, so she's following her son. Her heart is broken. As you look you can sense and feel the grief, tremendous grief. A woman with no inheritance, no future, no hope, walking her second journey to the burial ground to put her son beside her husband, knowing when she comes home there's no one to come home to. Feel the grief. Let your imagination, heart open up to let the Holy Spirit show you this person who's lost all hope of the future, the hope of a next generation rising to support, all gone; hope of her son to care for her in her old age, all gone. As you look you can't help but think of when your dream was taken away, when your hope was dashed. Perhaps right now as you're looking at that picture and see her just think oh, so it's not just about her. In some ways that's you too.

Did something valuable in your life seem to be taken away? Allow yourself to feel her grief, the grief of having the hope of your future taken away. What does Jesus do? He's moved with compassion. Place yourself just where the woman is, seeing the crowd coming towards them. She doesn't even know who He is and what He can do - but He sees her, just like He sees you and His heart is moved with compassion. What does that look like? What would His eyes look like? Let your heart reach out and feel the compassion of Jesus. He stops everything, steps into this hopeless situation, puts His hand on the child and restores hope again, restores life again. What kind of God is this that can come into a place of absolute death and bring life; come into a place where there's despair and no hope and recreate a new future? And Jesus took the young man's hand and presented him to his mother. Try to look at the look in her eyes of disbelief, that this God we serve could do such things, the tears of gratitude. This is the God we serve, God of resurrection life, no situation too difficult, no situation beyond Him and He cares. So we begin to engage, find your heart begin to be moved. You start to feel His presence.

Of course I've tried to do it out loud, but normally be doing this alone and as you just allow your heart to flow into the scripture, into the story, the Holy Spirit starts to take over and it gets a life of it's own. God begins to show you other things and how this works in your life, takes you and begins to show you other things. Pictures begin - it starts to take on a life of its own as you focus your attention and refuse to be distracted. Once you learn to do this in scripture, to hold your attention fixed in scripture for long periods of time, your mind becomes trained to tune into the flows of the spirit. Your mind starts to become trained to resist distracting thoughts and stay locked into listening to God. Then our heart starts to feel the flow of life.

This morning I just meditated on that scripture. I just began to weep as I felt God apply it personally to me. I encountered the Jesus who's compassionate and you see experiences like that, we carry them inside us and it enables us to easily connect with Him and to hear from Him and to receive from Him, because we're tuning our inner man to the realities of the spirit of God and the word of God. Very, very simple isn't it? Let's open our eyes. How many people got touched? How many people felt God touch you? Mm, quite a number of you. Father, we just thank You that You're teaching us, training us to be Holy Ghost people, opening our hearts and lives to You, learning how to train and develop our inner man to reject the negative, to focus on the good things that You have for us, and to become people of faith and influence. Lord, let the compassion of Christ deepen in our heart, that as we see lost people we will want to step out of the constraints and do something to help them and touch them with Your love. Everyone said [Amen.] Amen.

Don't forget to meet with Jess and Graham at the end if you want to ask any questions. They're just down there. Don't forget to give Owen a welcome. He come back from Pakistan. We've seen over 200,000 people come to Christ and this is a great, great thing. Fantastic. God bless you, have a fantastic day. We'll see you back here tonight.

[File ends 00.59.17]

8. Breaking Free (1 of 2)

Sun 5 Feb 2012 PM  « Back to Top

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I want you to get in your heart: it's time for ME to break out this year, break out of the limitations, the restraints, to break free of the things held me back, and begin to start to have a greater impact with my life. Mica 2:13: The one who breaks open will come up before them; They will break out, pass through the gate, and go out by it; Their king will pass before them, the Lord at their head.

I'd like you just to have a quick look in a verse in Mica, Chapter 2 and Verse 13. Sometimes I get messages God will give me a couple of weeks out, sometimes I get them the beginning of the week, sometimes during the week, sometimes on Friday, sometimes on Saturday, occasionally on Sunday. [Laughs] I hate the ones I get on Sunday. I find that quite stressful, but on the other hand I've found that listening to God and flowing with Him gets you the best results.

When I woke up this morning, it's like I woke up, and suddenly it's almost like I heard a voice shouting in my head. It was the Holy Ghost, and what He spoke to me was this: It's time to break out. If there's anything that you get out of this message today, I want you to get in your heart: it's time for ME to break out this year, time for me to break out of the limitations, time for me to break out of the restraints, time for me to break free of the things held me back, and begin to start to have a greater impact with my life. We'll just read in Mica, Chapter 2 and it's not the scripture we're going to stay in. There's one in the Old Testament that the Lord spoke to me about, but look at this verse here, and it says in Verse 13: the one who breaks open will come up before them; They will break out, pass through the gate, and go out by it; Their king will pass before them, the Lord at their head.

So what it's talking about, the people of God, and it refers to Jesus Christ, and it calls Him the Breaker, the one who breaks out, the one who demolishes limitations, the one who breaks, bursts out into new territory, the one who breaks out of current ways of thinking, and in every way that you look at Jesus, He was definitely a breaker. He broke the culture, He broke the customs, He broke the traditions, He broke almost every kind of formal thing that would have restrained God's people. The word there to break, is exactly the word that has followed it, when it says: they will break out, so when we determine in our hearts to follow Jesus and begin to live our life to honour and please Him, then He wants us as a result of that to break out, to break out and have influence with our life.

Christianity is about an army advancing a kingdom, and so often what we do, we get to like our experience with God and don't realise, actually it's all about breaking into new territory, breaking into new areas, breaking open new things, and just staying comfortable is found nowhere in the Bible, not at all, not at all. The Great Commission, the last word Jesus gave to the church, I'll just say it, you know it: Go! That means break out. What could be simpler? Break out of your limitations, break out of your mentalities, break out of the confinement, break through your fears, break out, go and make disciples, make people into followers of Christ. So that is what Jesus commanded the church. He commanded the church to break out and invade new territory, and like all churches, it didn't respond so quickly.

Let's have a look quickly in Acts, Chapter 1. I want you to have a look about the baptism in the Holy Ghost. Baptism in the Holy Ghost's wonderful - if you're not baptised in the spirit speaking tongues, it's a great experience, it's an essential experience to live in the spirit. But notice what it's for; so Jesus told him: I want you to wait until the Holy Ghost be poured out, so what He says here in Verse 8: You shall receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you; then you shall have meetings where you'll laugh and fall over, and great things will happen. You'll see visions, have dreams, see angels. You'll be so impressed with the angels, have all these things happen - that's what'll happen. Well He didn't mention that, but that's just the side bit that happens, actually as a result of understanding what baptism in the spirit's about. Baptism in the spirit is a gateway experience into the realm of the spirit and the supernatural, that is accompanied by the mission or the purpose of God being performed. In other words you shall be witnesses unto Me.

So the outcome of being filled with the spirit, having great meetings, being touched by God, is that your life becomes a clear witness of the reality of Jesus Christ. To become a clear witness of that reality, we've got to live in freedom, and we need express that life. I think that guy that came up to Brydon, and just offered to pay when they were short of money, that to me is a very practical expression of it, something that just - generosity to a complete and utter stranger. So the New Testament Church broke out eventually, on the Day of Pentecost, of course there was a break out, 3,000 people saved. What you've got to realise is, this is the very city in which the founder of Christianity was murdered, was hung on a cross. What an amazing thing to start a church where your founder was murdered. Of all the places you wouldn't want to start, that's the one you wouldn't want to start, and no doubt you'd have a better plan. But Jesus said no, in the place where the problem was the worst, the solution will be the greatest, and so He poured out His spirit, and He sent them out. If you follow through the New Testament, I'll just look at one more verse, then I want to go to where I'm going, in Acts Chapter 8, and you'll see them breaking out.

Now they didn't break out easily. Jerusalem was a very religious city, and the people who lived in it, took on the culture of their day, and they were also reasonably religious, so although there was an outburst of the Holy Spirit, religious confinement or tradition mean they didn't actually do what Jesus said. Notice what He said: You'll receive power from on high, and you'll be witnesses to Me, in Jerusalem. He added more you know - and in Judea and Samaria and the utmost parts of the earth, so Jerusalem, our home city; Judea our region, and Samaria into our nation, and then the nations of the earth. We've got to be reaching into all aspects and so they were a bit reluctant to do that. It's quite interesting to see how God solved the problem of reluctant Christians. Here it is here - and so there was at that time - Chapter 8 - there rose a great persecution against the church. Isn't that nice? And therefore - Verse 4 - those who were scattered went out preaching the word, so God got them all out there eventually didn't He, how about that?

Great difficulty, a great opposition came, and so sometimes the difficulties we have, sometimes the challenges we have, are not challenges because we're advancing the kingdom, but they're challenges to get us out of the comfort zone and get on course, that our life counts in taking territory for Jesus Christ, winning souls, reaching people. So notice there, that those who were scattered - it doesn't say they were anyone important. It just says those that left Jerusalem and went to other parts, everywhere they went, they shared about Jesus Christ, everywhere they went people were won, and even Philip who was a Deacon, a helper in the church, he went out and preached the Gospel, preached about Jesus Christ. He is the one - the message is not about Bay City. The message is not about some great experience. The message is about a person, it's about Jesus Christ.

I want you to have a look with me, I'm going go to where I want to go, which is a scripture the Lord put in my heart. It's found in 2 Samuel, Chapter 5. So the end days, you've got to ask yourself, how is this going to affect me? What's this going to do for me? Where do I get on this? Everyone has got some place we need to break out; so if I asked you the question: when did you last lead someone to the Lord, and it's a long time ago, you need to break out, see? You need to break out. If I ask the question is than an issue or a fear or a thing in your life that's stopping you fulfilling what you know in your heart you're called to do or want to do, then that's nearer to break out. If there's limitations around your life, and you think man, I can't do all I'm supposed to do, that God wants me to do, all I've got in my heart, there's a limitation, it's to break out of it.

So everyone today will have something that God wants you to break out in, and as a body He wants us to break out in the engaging intention and connecting with people who don't know Jesus. So I want you to read with me in 2 Samuel, Chapter 5, Verse 17. Now the Philistines heard they'd anointed David king over Israel, and all the Philistines went up to search for David. And David heard of it, and went down to the stronghold. The Philistines also went and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim. So David inquired of the Lord, saying: shall I go up against the Philistines? Will You deliver them into my hand? And the Lord said to David: go up, for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into your hand. Isn't that good? Go up, you'll win! So David went to Baal Perazim, and David defeated them there; and then he said: the Lord has broken through my enemies before me, like a breakthrough of water. So that's why he named the place Baal Perazim, meaning 'the Lord breaks through', or the 'Lord of breakthrough' - and he said: because the Lord has broken through my enemies before me like a breakthrough of water.

So they left their images there, and David and his men carried them away. Then the Philistines went up once again and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim. And David inquired of the Lord, and He said you shall not go up; circle around behind them, get them from behind, come upon them in the front of the mulberry trees. And when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, you'll advance quickly. For then the Lord will go out before you, and strike the camp of the Philistines. And David did so, as the Lord commanded him. That's a good statement - and he drove the Philistines from Geba, as far back as Gezer. Isn't that fantastic? What a great thing.

I want to pick it up and just open it and show you some things the Lord just dropped into my heart this morning, reading in Verse 17. Now the Philistines heard they'd anointed David king, so the Philistines were a very war-like people. They lived and dwelt in what's modern day Palestine now, lived on the coast. The name means literally 'to roll in the dust', and they were very violent, they worshipped idols, and they were a constant threat and a constant irritation to Israel. While Samuel was a prophet in the nation, while he was alive, they were held back by the anointing that he had on him. Once Samuel had died the Philistines began to invade the nation taking city after city, until the nation became deeply oppressed and impoverished because of the Philistines. Notice then, then the Philistines heard of David being anointed. Now they haven't heard that before. They didn't know about that before. Now they heard he's anointed king. Anointing is to empower you to do something. Every believer is anointed by the Holy Ghost. Every believer is given an anointing, a baptism in the Holy Spirit, an initial experience, but it's an empowerment experience,

David was anointed. When God anoints you, His anointing is for a purpose. A big mistake is to look for experiences, and separate your experiences from the purpose. I love experiences, I can't get enough of them, but if I separate experiences from the purpose of God, then the experiences become a deception, they become a trap, and we become irrelevant to the purpose of God. It doesn't matter how great the experience is, it is to lead you nearer to the Lord, so you'll bring people nearer to Him. So your anointing, God anoints us for a purpose. When the Holy Ghost was poured out - we read in Acts 1:8 - it was for a purpose, that we would make Jesus known. The second thing you notice there, in that verse is it says: they heard that David had been anointed king. Kings - notice it didn't say he was anointed a prophet, or a priest, or anything like that; he was anointed a king. This is what upset them, that he was anointed to be a king.

Here's the next thing: kings have dominion. Kings have a territory they rule over. God anointed David king because He had a purpose for Israel, to advance it, and to establish His kingdom in the earth. When you get anointed by the Holy Ghost, it's because God has in mind that you would, as a representative of heaven, advance His kingdom. How much did the kingdom advance last year, because of your effort? What advances were made, either at a personal level, or in the realm of influencing others? Ask the question - so David was anointed king, and kings have a territory, and kings dream of how they can enlarge their territory. Saul failed in his kingship, because he did not understand that he was a king in order to advance the purpose of God. The moment he stopped advancing the purpose of God, and just enjoyed the status he had, that's when he lost the plot, and lost his kingship.

Now you and I are called - the Bible tells us very clearly in Revelations 1 Verse 5, He has made us kings and priests unto God. In Revelations 5 it says: He has made us kings and priests to God, and we shall reign on earth. So you have been given a kingly anointing, and you are expected to reign, or to have a kingly influence in the earth, in the earth. It's not about waiting for some great thing one day. We are expected to advance the kingdom today, and all the teachings of Jesus talk about the kingdom, and the advance of the kingdom, and the stewardship of individual believers, of the gifts that God has given them - and God expects an increase from us, all of us. He expects us to be productive, expects us to be fruitful. So David was anointed king; you were born for dominion, and you should dream of it, so if there's anything in your life, if you've got a bondage in your flesh, a bondage in your life, you are called to have dominion over it. Set your face, you'll find the way to break free. Set your face, that this is not acceptable any longer.

If you have an addiction to smoking, then this is a bondage. Set your face, that you will expand the kingdom in your life, and have dominion over it, and begin to figure out or find out or get counsel how to break through that limitation. If you have a sin area in your life, a habit in your life, a fear in your life, determine this year, I will break through that. Then there are other parts of the kingdom and that's where we represent Christ in the community, so every one of us has a positioning in the community assignment. You have people you meet I'll never meet, and probably most of the people in this church won't meet either. They're in your territory, so wherever you go, your territory includes your personal life, your finances, your relationships, and wherever you are. So wherever we are, that's our territory, and we're not to rule over people. We're called to rule over spiritual influences, and to advance the kingdom of God, by being His representative to people, serving people as you heard of earlier on today.

So you are a king, and we have a commission, and it's a very clear commission: Go, make disciples. Go, make followers of Christ. Don't make church sitters and pew warmers. Don't make people who just come along, and Sunday's their church thing, and the rest of the week they'll just do what they like. That is not a Christian, that's not a disciple. That is not a disciple. A disciple is a follower of Jesus. We're following Jesus, then we align our life to begin to walk with Him, to discover His purpose, and to fulfil that purpose in our life - that's a disciple. Disciple, He said, follow Me, I'll make you a fisher of men. A disciple is a fisher of people. That means you put the right bait out, and you catch the fish - aha! How many did you catch last year? How many did we catch? How many did we catch for Christ? I love fishing.

I absolutely love fishing. I like going fishing with Brent Douglas. Brent's a great fisherman, he knows how to catch fish. A lot of people go out, you go out in the boat, catch nothing much - I hate that, just boring, get sea sick, and come back tired and cranky - but it's good tiredness. But when you go out with Brent, Brent is very focussed on fishing. I went out in the boat with him one time, and he said well here's the rule in the boat: don't talk. I said well that suits me fine, I don't want to talk anyway so that's great. We talked all day then. [Laughs] But we were focussed on fishing, and he showed me how to put the bait - how to hook it on properly. He showed me how you set your line up so you can catch these snapper, and he had this big chest there, and we come home full of snapper. I've been out several times with him. He knew how to set the bait, and he knew how to catch them, and he showed me some things that you do - I can't remember them all but he showed me so I caught fish. I didn't catch the big ones he caught - there's a way of catching the big ones too, a real way of catching the big ones.

Here's the thing though. You have to go where the fish are, and you have to lay out something that will draw and attract them, and then at the right time you hook them. If you don't have the right bait, you don't get any fish. If you don't go to where the fish are - and he would move this boat around all over the place, until he got it exactly where the fish were. He said it's no use fishing anywhere else, the only place you'll catch them, is where they are - make sense? See, so the fish you'll catch this year, aren't here, they're there. Think about that one.

So that means you need to turn up there, with an intention of fishing, and you don't always catch fish. Sometimes you get a bit disappointed, but if the fish are biting, you catch them, and so you've got to have the right bait, got to have the right way of hooking them. There's a bit of skill in it, and through the year I'd love if we can begin to start to set our heart, that we can begin to life our game plan and vision, that we'd see people saved for Christ, individually, right across the church. One person - sure, one person could come to Christ because of you. Some people come very easily, some of them come - you worked hard on this one, they didn't respond at all, and you've got someone over here, and suddenly they come to Christ, and you didn't do hardly anything. That's how it is, you do that. So there it is.

Now here's the other thing then is, there's no advance of the kingdom without resistance. The third thing, no advance of the kingdom without resistance, so when David was anointed king, and planned to advance the kingdom, the first thing the Philistines did when they heard about it was get up and jump up and go kill him. They wanted to kill him. When you set out - if you just want to just sort of be a casual Christian, you'll have to live your life below what God wanted. We're called to be productive and fruitful, that's fantastic, so here's the thing: the moment you step up and decide: I'm going to break out of this limitation, break out of this bondage, break into enlargement; you will encounter resistance and difficulties. If your prayer life is slack, and you say I'm going to really work on my prayer life in the next two, three weeks, get myself back into shape, you'll find resistance. If you decide you're going to break out of some bondage, there will be resistance.

The demonic realm notices people who are intent on a mission. Every time I ever go overseas, I always have something happen, before I go, while I'm there, and when I come back. It's always the same, and I've just learnt to shrug it off, as being part of the resistance that comes, so before and after this trip, I had things happen, and I've learnt to just shrug them off, just like that, just nothing, keep on course. When we were away we had lots of things happen, but funny things happened. We had a guy manifest in the room next door - haven't had that for a while. He was groaning and moaning and yelling for about half an hour I suppose, and then we had the power just go out on us, we had a whole lot of little things like that. It's just nothing, it's just little stuff, little stuff! You've got to learn to just hang in there - so the Philistines go up and their one thing in mind is to kill him. Kill him means take away the life, so the devil wants to take away liberty, freedom, and life from you, so you're bored and passive and dull, without fire for God! How we need to keep the fire every day alive - get inspired on Sunday, but what's happening Monday through Saturday? When you get up and begin to pray, begin to push through your limitations, and establish your positioning in heaven next to the Lord, and begin to decree today I speak and command my day, everything shall align up according to the will of God. I call blessing over my day today. I stand and take dominion over all assignments of the enemy, and cancel them in Jesus' name. Today everything will work together for good for me.

You've got to learn to get assertive, and get up, and start the day in prayer, and make decrees and declarations of the word of God, your life will be in alignment with the Lord! Demons, before they even come to you, you're on them, all over them! That's the spirit of David, see? So David, all these things happened to him, so there may be, we'll find there'll be resistance. An interesting thing here is I read that the giant, the Philistines came and they got themselves into this place called the Valley of Rephaim. I looked up about that and what I found was that Rephaim, they were descendants of the Nephilim, but they were formerly a race of giants. It's in this plain where the giants used to live, that's where the Philistines decided to set the battle, and I began to realise there are sometimes patterns of thinking, and fears, and strongholds, and issues in our life, and behind every one of them is some giant stands there intimidating you. Now the giants actually had all been killed by Joshua. All that's left is the memory of them. All that's left is the name. There's no giants there - but in that place where the giants were named, and where they once fell, there was a battle currently with the Philistines.

It's like Christ at the cross has legally defeated every enemy, defeated every bondage, defeated every demon that would come against you, but you have to deal with the memories of those things, and the thoughts of those things, and the attitudes of those things, and rise above it! I have felt God speaking to me about this, and I have been purposing in my heart to this year push out in a whole number of personal areas. It's good, you never quit, never give up, never retire see? [Applause] So I know there's a few people out in a retirement village, but don't you get a retirement spirit around you - it's all over, it's all over spiritually for you, you're not earning any more fruit in heaven, if you have that around you. You don't retire, just keep getting fired up - oh, we're in a retirement village. Well great! Let's start a prayer meeting! Let's start to pray and believe. Before all these people die and go to hell, let's get a few of them saved, and some of the staff while we're doing that!

So we've got all these activities they've arranged, well let's get to and start to pray, agree, and talk to them. And they can't escape - they all live in the village! [Laughter] All it needs is just one or two, hot-fired gospel Holy Ghost-filled tongue speaking believers - let's get the village saved aye! It's your territory if you live there. No one got saved? What happened? Why did you go there? Hey, glory to God! So we want to catch some people. If you're at school, young people at school, you need to believe God to break through the giants of fear and intimidation, rejection, see some people saved, see some people touched. It's a bit of work, you've got to sow and work at it, and of course there's always a resistance comes from the giants, so they call them to the place of battle, in the place that had memories of giants. I have no doubt that all of us this year will have some challenges, and it'll probably be over issues like fear or rejection or shyness, all that kind of stuff. But you've got to see what David did.

Now here's what I like about David - let's read what he did. It says: the Philistines heard that they'd anointed David king over Israel, and then went up to look for him. Now this is what I love about David: David immediately, because he heard about it, went straight down into the stronghold. The stronghold was his fortress, so when he heard it's on, there's a fight brewing, immediately calls all his soldiers together, gets them all armed up, and he's on, I'm going for it! Now you notice, he's already gone out to battle before he's even asked the Lord about whether he's going to have a fight or not. Now what that tells you then - see, its amazing insight to David - what it tells you is, he had a warrior spirit, and no one's going to knock him back, or put him down from what God called him to - warrior spirit. Got a breakthrough spirit. Interesting, all these guys around him got the same spirit on them, so notice, he's immediately someone stands up and challenges him to a fight, it's on. Now that's a fighting spirit. That's a fighting spirit. I've seen a few nasty people around town at times, and you look them in the eye, and suddenly [grr] they want to take you on, you know? That's not a fighting spirit, that's just they're plum angry and made at something and they're looking for a fight.

Well the Philistines were looking for a fight, and David said it's on! That's what I'm called to. I'm called to be a warrior. The only time he failed, was when he stopped going out to the fights, so he had an anointing to go out to the fight. He had a spirit of might on him, never lost a battle - except an internal one.

Now you and I, would you believe it, have an anointing for a fight! Well if you've got fears in your life, fight them! If you've got some depression around your life, fight it! You've got some demonic influence, fight it - and then there's some resistance in the community to people coming to Christ. It's in the spirit - fight it! [Applause] Fight it! Let's get something around us, that gets gritty and determined, and not namby-pamby and wussy. I can't stand it, and - I just can't stand it. I don't mind if we lie and stand and weep and worship and do stuff, so long as we're not wussy on the inside, so when the fight's on, you stare and you're counted, get up and get standing in the battle. We need to have that around us. David was both very tender, very soft, a worshipping man, spent a lot of time in the presence of God, but oh, he was a fighter! He fought - the public battle with the giant, was fought after the private battle with the lion and the bear. The lion, the demonic spirits, the bear, the crusher - that usually speaks of the flesh, speaks of iniquities in our family life or personal life. They try and crush us and stop us doing anything, and he took them on as a young boy with a sling, then he went out, and when time came to take on a giant, a biggie for the whole nation, he was ready. See, he was all ready.

What are you ready to pick on this year? I think you should decide what you're going to pick a fight on [laughter] really. You don't break out if you just wait for something to happen. You've got to decide, this is what God's speaking to me about, the challenge and the change, and I'm going to pick a fight with the devil on this one, until - and then I'll have a plan and I'll stick with it until I break out. I want you to see quickly David's plan, and then we'll just finish up. I want to show you a clip for three minutes that just touched my heart when I was looking at it, so the first thing is, he immediately goes up, so first thing is, you've got to take responsibility. Until you make a decision in your heart that you will make a change and be quite specific, nothing will happen. Notice what he did: he took responsibility. He didn't have to wait to be told to go out and get ready, he just immediately donned the weapons out and was gone, we've got this army showing up here, we're going to go down and give them what's what. They're not walking in here having it easy.

So the first thing is, you've got to take responsibility, you face the issues and take responsibility. Let me ask this. This is the thing I'm feeling a deep challenge in. Have we taken responsibility for people around us that don't know Christ? Have we taken responsibility in the workplace for its spiritual atmosphere, and for speaking and praying to change it? Have we taken responsibility to be the shepherd to the people that are there, so they find someone that's different in the workplace that reaches them? Have we taken responsibility? If we haven't, that's your first place to start. Have you taken responsibility to pray for anyone? They'll never change until someone begins to pray, and then has a plan, so number one, we need to take responsibility.

The second thing is revelation; he asked the Lord what to do, and basically what He's answering is this - now notice this: he's already gone down clothed with all the battle gear, he's got all the soldiers all called out and all ready to go, then he says: well what do you reckon Lord, should we go out to that fight? If we go out will I win it? They're good questions to ask the Lord aren't they? Should I pick this fight, and will I win it if I do? That's good prayer, asking God shall we go to that one, or not go to that one? Should I take that on, or not take it on?

So you notice although he's got a warrior spirit, he's also sensitive to the Holy Ghost leading. He listens to God. He enquires of God, he gets revelation, and God says: go up, take it head on. I'm with you, you'll clean them out! He said that's what I wanted to hear - so off he goes, has a battle, beats them thoroughly.

So number one, we need to take responsibility; number two, we need to get revelation, need to get insights on what to do and where to go so you don't go big headed and take on everything. You've got to take on what God gave you. The third thing is, you notice response; he took action, and he engaged the Philistines. Now this is the thing, you'll never change anything unless you engage it. To engage it, means you commit to getting involved. We have to engage with people if we're going to help them change. We have to engage the issues in our life, if they're going to shift. If you're happy to live with them, great. That's fine for you, good on you, well for you - but me, I want to move on in my life. I've decided I'm going to push against some things. See, so we need to make a response, and the response is that we've got to take some kind of action. You've got to do something, so it's all very well to get wound up, and get prepared, well to do to pray, but you've actually then got to put a plan down, and do something specific. God showed him even how to do it - got to take them on head on.

The fourth thing you notice here, it says after he broke through it says - Verse 21 - they left their images there, and David and his men carried them around. Notice that David addressed the root issue. The root problem they had was, what the power was behind these people, were these idols and he's making sure we're not having any idols around here. He dealt with the root issues. If you're going to deal with problems in your life, deal with the roots, not just the behaviour. If you don't change the root system, what you believe in your heart, and what's motivating your heart, then the behaviour performance thing doesn't get you very far.

A lot of people try with their willpower to make things happen in God, it doesn't happen that way, doesn't work that way. You've got to lean on the Holy Spirit to help you identify and deal with the roots. They discovered the idols, they discovered the root cause of this problem, they were having and they burnt them all. They just got rid of them all. Now here's the next thing is that you have to resist, because whatever you face, and whatever you determine to do this year to break out, there's going to be - it won't be just one battle. You'll have to have more than one, but you have to keep working at it. Some of these things you've got to keep persevering. I reckon that if you can just keep persevering and not quit, you'll probably break through and win, because you just outlast every one and everything else. You just kept going and wouldn't be stopped, so you need to resist.

The next time the enemy comes up - notice the next thing he does, is he gets fresh revelation. Now what this means is this: he never assumed that what he did last year would take him through this year. He never assumed that his gift would get him through. He never assumed that his past experiences would give him what he needed to get the victory. To get the victory, he needed God with him. For you to get victory this year and see breakthroughs, you need God with you. You need God with you, so you've got to continually ask him for direction, and the Lord said - notice what the Lord said. He says don't go up and take them head on. I've got a changed plan. Oh here's the plan: the plan now is you go sneak up around behind them, go right around the long way, come up behind them where they're not expecting it, and then he says wait until you hear the movement in the trees. In other words He said: there will be a supernatural movement, and on that movement then you initiate your action.

So you notice how on the one hand, he's got this warrior spirit and determination; on the other hand he's incredibly sensitive to the directions of the Holy Spirit, and if we're going to see things change in our life, have influence and whatever - maybe it's in your marriage, maybe it's in your family - you need to listen to the Holy Spirit, and get some insight on what to do. We need to listen a lot more, and then get busy doing what God said to do. Whatever God said to you to do last, do it - see? So he goes out there, and he routs them thoroughly, and this time they don't return. This time he decisively drives them right back to the far end of the land, and reclaims the territory that had been lost in the reign of Saul. What a great thing, so he truly broke out, and his fame was established.

So here's a couple of question to think about then, just as we finish up, and I want to show you a little clip. What are you going to do this year? What will you do this year to break out? What can you do? First of all start off by dreaming, and thinking about what do you want to change in your personal life, your finances, in your family, marriage, whatever it is. Just begin to dream about it. You've got to have a dream, ask the Lord, talk to the Lord, begin to get the dream, and not just in your personal life, but what about reaching or winning or influencing someone? One of the simplest things to do is, find what you love doing, and then do it with unsaved people and get them involved, draw them in. It's quite amazing what people [laughs] - I just said to the guys when I was away there hey, I love guns. Can we go shooting on Monday? Immediately, it was amazing how many people came out wanting to go out and do some stuff together, quite amazing. You've got to do some things together.

Secondly then, what's your limitation? What is the limitation that stops - what's stopping you? Is it your past experience, you've had a bad experience or two? Is it some thought pattern? Is it some habit pattern? Is it a bondage you need to break? Identify what the limitation is, because that is your hindrance personally, that you've got to get through. Then you may need to up-skill to get through that. You may need to learn something new, you may need to go into Equiping Track to get some training. If you're not in a small group - you need to be in a small group where others can encourage you in fulfilling your dream, and ask you how you're getting on, pray with you and stand with you. Finally it'll be what will you do? In the end what are you going to do? So have a think about what is it I want to break in? Where do I want to break out this year - in my personal life, marriage, family, and specifically in reaching the community? I need to do something. I need to break out. I need to break out. Tell someone next to you, you need to break out. Someone is waiting for you to break out.

I've got a little clip I want you to watch - if you could just play the clip now. I got it off YouTube and its called Evangelism, it's called Girl on a Park Bench. Just have a look at this.

[Excerpt] Here I am desperate for love, for truth. What are you going to do when you leave this building? Are you going to share with me what you've been learning here today, or are you just going to bottle it up and pull it out next week for your friends? Now when I say share I'm not talking about every tactic you've used on me in the past like judging my every move, telling me I'm a bad person, pointing fingers, giving me disgusting looks [laughs] and my favourite is when you tell me that I'm lost. I don't even know what that means to be lost. Do you really think judging me is going to make me change? Would it make you change? Now I know I'm a bad person. I've done bad things, but I don't need you to tell me that. What I need is for you to pick me up when I fall down, to be there when I'm broken. Yes, there's something missing in me. There's a void in my heart I don't know how to fill. You have it. You have that thing that makes you whole. You know that person that I need to know, so I'm watching your every move. I'm watching where you go, what you say and do because I'm desperate for something real. I need something genuine, to know that there's something more here than this. This can't be it, really and I think you know that. Listen to me, I need you. I need you to be here for me. I need you to walk out right now ready and willing to do whatever it takes - hey, it may not be comfortable. It may not be easy but I need you to show me love. No matter the cost show me what unconditional love really looks like. Stop telling me about this God of yours and show me who He really is. Honestly, I'll probably resist you. I'll probably argue with you and laugh at you. You know even when you fall I'll probably call you a hypocrite - but don't give up on me. Please don't give up on me because I'm going to ask you when's it going to happen?

[Pastor Mike] Let's close our eyes. A very powerful clip. Don't give up on me. What will you do? Let's listen to the Lord for just a moment, what He's saying that you need to do, that we need to do. It starts with just that one thing. [Pauses] What do you need to do this year to impact some unsaved person for Jesus Christ? What do you need to do? Do you need to learn how? Do you need to break out of the limitation of current relationships, do you need new skills, do you need - what do you need? What do you need to do?

Father, we just pray that You'll put in our hearts today people that need to know Jesus Christ, that Lord, we not walk out and just forget what we've learned. Lord, this year would be a true year of breaking out to see unsaved people connected to and engaged with, intentionally connected to with a view to winning them to you by demonstrating the love of Jesus Christ, the wonderful compassion. We may not see a leper but we can see someone who's really full of shame, defiled by what they've been involved in. They need Your help. We may not see a cripple, but we'll see people whose minds and emotions are crippled by the experiences they've been through. Why don't you just now just as we finish up, I don't want to finish up just with a big song or anything. I'd like us to pray with someone next to you, that they will fulfil what God spoke into their heart, they will truly break out and impact someone's life for Christ. Would you do that, just find someone near to you and pray, if you can move in the prophetic word move in the prophetic word. Let's pray and let's believe for God to touch someone's heart. Just pray for that person next to you. The problem is never what to do; the problem is having a heart to do it. God gave us a heart to do this.

9. Break Through (2 of 2)

Sun 12 Feb 2012  « Back to Top

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All the Philistines went up to search for David to kill him. David enquired of the Lord, saying shall I go up against the Philistines? Will You deliver them into my hand? The Lord said to David go up, doubtless I will deliver them into your hands. What would you take on this year if you heard God saying to you go for it, you can't lose?

I'm going to pick up the passage I was in (2 Samuel, Chapter 5), but I want to take it from a different perspective. [Continued from Breaking Free (1 & 2), 5th/12th Feb 2012] I want to pick up two aspects of it which is really what the message is on tonight, strength and sensitivity. Strength and sensitivity; strong and sensitive. Let's just look here and we're going to see it in the life of David and here it is, Verse 17; Now the Philistines heard that they'd anointed David king over Israel and all the Philistines went up to search for David to kill him. That's nice of them isn't it aye, real friendly like? And David heard of it and went down to the stronghold and the Philistines also went and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim. So David enquired of the Lord, saying shall I go up against the Philistines? Will You deliver them into my hand? Shall I pick a fight or shall I take on the fight and will I win? The Lord said to David go up doubtless I will deliver them into your hands. That's not bad is it? Imagine having a relationship with God where He says go for it, I'm with you, you can't lose.

What would you take on this year if you heard God saying to you go for it, you can't lose? That's what He does say to us of course, go for it, you can't lose. He encourages us to stretch out - and so David went. He went to Baal Perazim and he defeated them there. There was a great battle, a great victory and then he said the Lord has broken through my enemies before me like a breakthrough of water, so he called the name Baal Perazim. In other words he said this place is the lord of breakthrough, so he changed the place.

Now I want you to see, just have a look for a moment where it was that they fought this battle. They fought it in the Valley of Rephaim. Rephaim means the giants and the Rephaim were all killed by Joshua, but these Rephaim they were giants and they were the things that frightened everyone, intimidated everyone. They were the giants who ruled the land. They were all gone. There was just the memory of them left and David turned that place of memory of giants that terrified and he turned it into a place called the Lord has broken through. Think about that, because you'll have memories, experiences, issues, thought patterns, habits, things that you need to break through this year and instead of seeing it as a giant in your life, look at it as this is where God is going to give me breakthrough this year.

Then he went on and therefore the Philistines came up again, so he didn't kill them all. They came up and had a go and they also came back to the same place. You'd think they'd have a different strategy wouldn't you aye? You'd think they'd try a different plan when the first plan failed so terribly but no, they came up to the same thing. But David had a different plan and so he inquired of the Lord and the Lord said don't go up, don't confront them. Don't go down against them like you were before, so probably they were thinking like this; they were thinking well we lined up all the army and it looked like we were going to win. Then David came out with a small group of people and gave us a licking, so this is what we'll strengthen the army and we'll get it set up even better and this time he'll never be able to do what he did. Of course what they didn't realise is David's very sensitive to the Holy Ghost. He didn't go back that way and didn't fall into the trap they set for him. He just went around behind and God said to him wait 'til you hear the sound in the mulberry trees of a wind blowing. In other words I'm going to give a supernatural sign to you that will give you a signal to have a go.

Soon they just poured out of the trees wherever they were hiding, came up behind them and wiped them out again and this time just made mincemeat of them and what a great victory. And here's the interesting thing is if you have a look at the end of - we'll start at the end then want to bring out two things in this story. Notice here it says David did as the Lord commanded, in Verse 25, and he drove the Philistines from Geba as far back as Gezer. Now I want you to see this; firstly David was anointed to be king. He was anointed to actually gain back the territories that belonged to the people of God, just like you and I have an anointing of the Holy Ghost and it's a kingly anointing just like his anointing is a kingly anointing. You have got things to conquer this year. You have got some challenges to take on. You've got some things to break through. All of us are called to advance the kingdom of God, see souls saved, people's lives changed, a community touched because if our witness, but for most people you've got to get over yourself first of all. You've got to break through the things that stop you being effective, so for some of you you're just so wrapped up in yourself you'll be thinking I've really got to break out, got to become a friendly person. I've got to become a person who's grateful, a person who's honouring, a person who connects with unsaved people and begins to start to share the gospel with them.

Now I want to show you two things about David in this story and two things that you and I need to put on because it's great to hear he got the breakthrough; I want to hear how I can get a breakthrough [laughs] and you want to hear how you can get your breakthrough this year. The first thing I want you to notice is when the Philistines came up against him, the Philistines came up against him the moment he was anointed king. In other words the spirit world knows when you are carrying anointing and you have faith in your heart and you're determined to do something for God. If you're not determined to do anything for God you're not going to be a bother for the devils. You're already out of the action, but when you make a decision I'm breaking through this year in my life, I'm breaking through this bondage, I'm breaking through this fear, I'm breaking through financially and you begin to pray, prepare your heart, get faith in your heart and a plan together and start to work the plan - you will cause the enemy to worry.

We'll teach on deliverance and on healing principles and how to flow in the power of God through this year and as we teach that if you determine not just to come to a seminar or some teaching but I'm going to flow in these things, I'm going to begin to look for a way that I can minister the life of God to others, I tell you what, you're picking a fight. So this is the thing that we often overlook. There is a very real spirit world. You can come to a meeting, get stirred up but you've got to turn your being stirred up into some actions the next day so that you begin to start to put your faith so it can be practically seen. Think about it. How could your life be different? What is limiting you right now? Is it shyness? Is it fear? Is it inferiority? Is it bitterness? Is it disappointment? Is it inadequacy? What is it? What has got your name on it, it's your giant, it's just a memory because Jesus defeated at the cross but it is holding you back in your life? Wouldn't it be great if you could take it on?

I remember when I went into a meeting, one of the first meetings with Clark Taylor and he preached a message; he just asked this question. He said if you knew that this thing that has been holding you down, holding you back, that if you just persevered and broke through in it your life would change, wouldn't it be worth the battle no matter what it was? I said yes, it would be and I went home and I changed my whole prayer pattern and I worked on myself until I got a breakthrough in that area. That breakthrough has carried me all the rest of my life. The area you break through will bring benefit for others, so David was appointed to win a war. Now here's the interesting thing, when we saw at the start of the story you notice they heard he's king and now they're coming to kill him. At the end of the story he takes over everything that they occupied, so when the devil sets out to try and knock you back, pressure you, defeat you, intimidate you or whatever, here's the thing - God has set him up for a failure so you can enlarge.

I don't see any enlargement in the Bible or even in life without having a bit of a fight, having a struggle, having to contend. You want to break through in some area this year? Want to break out of where you currently are? Want to enlarge yourself? You have to decide I'm going to put up a fight - so here's the two things I want to show you about David and I want to show just quickly how you can start to put these on in your life. You realise that if you're going to be different at the end of this year it's because you decided to make a change. Don't go praying and waiting for God to change you. He's already made the changes possible through what He did at the cross. Your role is to identify what you need to change in and do all you need to do to fulfil your part. In other words you can't just pray and wait for God to do it. That leads you under religious spirit.

So here's the two things: The moment the Philistines rose up against David and he heard it - see, notice what it says about Verse 17 - as soon as David heard it, immediately he got into a battle position. Here's the first thing about David. David had an incredible warrior spirit. He had a strength of spirit. Now here's what Jesus taught in the New Testament. He taught in Matthew, Chapter 11, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent press in and take it forcefully. That's an amazing statement to make, so what he's saying is essentially this, that in order to bring heaven to earth, in order to advance the kingdom of God, the will of God in your life, you have to be determined. You have to have strength and determination. You must decide and determine and develop the strength to continually persevere until you break through. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence. The violent press in and take it by force. Every advance I have made in my life I have had to make a determined effort that I would push in to the presence of God, that I would push in in prayer, I would begin to develop the inner strength needed to break through in that area.

Now just take one area, say for example take an area just where I was struggling some years ago just with rejection and a thing around my life that caused me to feel I was just not acceptable. I'd wrestled with that since I was very young and I realised it was affecting my life, so I realised I had to deal with it. I had to have a strategy. Now one of the first parts of the strategy is very, very simple. I learned the power of praying in tongues. See the Bible tells you when you pray in tongues your spirit is praying and when your spirit is praying it says also - 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 2 - it says that you strengthen yourself. You build up yourself, so for many of us the battles we have in our life are in the soul and in the flesh area of our life and what resists us is the flesh and demonic spirits push on us through that.

What we need is strength in our spirit to prevail and God has given us a tool, praying in tongues. So I learned to pray strongly and forcefully in tongues until I could feel my whole body energise with the life of the Holy Ghost. Now you can't just put it on. You can't just develop it overnight. You have to give yourself to prayer and so I gave myself aggressively to prayer. In fact actually what I did was I got into as well as praying in tongues, I got into singing in the spirit as well and so the early days of the church being pioneered here I spent hours every day, day after day in prayer, pushing in the spirit to grow strong in my own life. What I did was I could play a piano accordion - not very well but I played enough to be able to just flow in the spirit and worship with the music just like David did, because I saw that's what he did.

So I began to pray and I'd play aggressively and begin to flow in the spirit until the whole atmosphere would begin to shift around me. Over a course of time I developed inner strength. Now if you want to get physically strong got to go to a gym and work out, so if you're going to develop spirit strength you have to get into prayer and you learn to pray strongly. I'd just begin to build the time in prayer longer and longer and longer and as I'd begin to pray in tongues I'd could feel strength and my whole spirit would energise and come alive. A lot of what my ministry has developed over the years has been because of building this capacity inside, so I can in a moment of time arise in my spirit. Doesn't take long now - see, so there's strength in there. There's capacity developed, but it just doesn't happen. You've actually got to give yourself to praying and so praying in the spirit strengthens your spirit and what it begins to do, it provokes something because then the issues that are lying there start to surface and start to rise. So what I did was I'd pray in tongues and strengthen my spirit.

The second thing I did was I got a strategy where this thing had come from and what I needed to do, first of all what I needed to confront and so day after day I'd strengthen myself in prayer and then just speak into the spirit world and confront and decree God's word. To this day I still do it. I still daily arise, pray in tongues strongly for a season and decree God's word over my circumstances and over the world around me. You've got to learn to do that see, so strength - the Bible talks about in Ephesians 3 how he prays - in Verse 16 - that you would be strengthened with might by His spirit in your inner man, so God obviously wills that you become strong, not namby pamby. You have a spirit and your spirit is the gateway into the spirit world and the thing that shuts that or opens it is your soul, what's going on in your mind and emotions. So one of the first things you do is develop tremendous strength in prayer. That's why we from the very beginning unto this day I like to have very strong expressive praise, because it keeps at bay that religious thing that sits over people and gets them to be passive and shut down and half-hearted and lukewarm and not really engaging in their spirit with the person of God. There's a reason for it, see?

So it's no coincidence that wherever I go demons get thrust out and they get to manifest, stuff seems to happen. It's because strength has been developed. You can develop it. When I first went to Singapore, Pastor Kong Hee's one of the most greatest church builders in this day and he came along on an altar call with me, prayed for two people and he was done. He was very embarrassed and ashamed that he was tired out and exhausted, but he hadn't developed strength in his spirit and he just determined - the next year I came in there and he just carried - he prayed for hundreds with me and he was no problem. I said I see you're different this year, I see you're really hanging in there. What happened? He said I was ashamed of my lack of spiritual strength and capacity when you came last year, I made a decision that when you came next year I would have shifted and changed - otherwise you just make an excuse for why you're like you are. Think about it.

See so David, the moment the devil rose up against him, the moment the enemy rose up against - immediately he's locked into fight mode, see? There's a difference to being in fight mode or having a warrior spirit. It's something that develops inside you, you rise up in the spirit straight away so I can be very gentle and if I have any demonic encounters straight away I'm into aggressive mode just like that. See? Why not? Jesus was. You have a look at how he handled stuff. You know His first recorded church meeting ended with everyone wanting to murder Him. Think about that. That's not very nice is it, all these lovely church people want to kill Him? He was engaging the religious spirit with the things He was saying.

Second meeting that's recorded in Luke, Chapter 4, just a few verses later He had a demon start yelling out in the middle of the meeting, so He was strong. He grew strong in spirit the Bible says, so I encourage you make a determination that you will develop this capacity of David. See his immediate default response when the enemy arose was to rise up in his spirit straight away. You want to fight? He didn't pick the fight. God set the fight up for him. He didn't pick the fight - it was the Philistines started the fight and so you don't know what situation you've got coming up this year where God is getting the devil stirred up to pick a fight with you, so you can arise and break through. It's a perspective area. It's an issue of faith. It's an issue of seeing that what comes into my life God knows all about it and I've got what it takes - so before the thing comes I should be doing some preparation, building my strength so when something comes immediately default mode is to stand up.

You can't sort of develop a strong prayer thing in the middle of a crisis, you know? In the middle of a crisis you've got what you've got. It just gets revealed, that's all. So why don't we just make a decision that you're going to develop some strength in your spirit, so you begin to pray every day, begin to build your strength, build your capacity and build the flow. It's not loudly shouting, it's from within your spirit speaking strongly see? As you do it - Cheyenne, just come over here. Let me show you what I mean - just come over here. Sorry, just stand just where you are - that's right. Now you see if I just begin to arise in my spirit [Speaks in tongues 00.18.34] and I begin to say that within me is the mighty power of God, then I'm sure if I will just stretch my hand out the power of God will just touch him and he'll be touched by what's inside me. See? I didn't have my eyes open when I did that. He's got touched by something that flowed out of me because I practiced arising and believing that the power of God was in me. Same spirit in you by the way, I've just done a bit of homework, that's all. You can do homework too, then you'll be different by the end of the year. Do the homework, build strength inside you.

So you build strength - one of the ways, by speaking the word of God; one of the ways is by praying in tongues, but get praying in tongues. I love praying in tongues. I've just determined since I've been away on holiday, I came back, I'm praying in tongues. Joy's isn't at home so I pray in tongues all the time around the house now. [Prays in tongues 00.19.27] I find myself talking to myself. It's shocking really but however I'm growing in strength, ready for the new challenges this year aye - and you can do it too, strong. So the first thing you notice about it, he's strong. Now having got into a position to begin with a fight, then the next thing you notice he's incredibly sensitive and here's an interesting thing about the kingdom. Often things in the kingdom seem to be like a paradox. They seem to be opposite to one another and so you find it says Jesus taught in two places, Matthew 11 - the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, violent men take it by force - and that's that strong, assertive taking dominion. Then in Matthew 18 he makes a completely opposite statement, and you look at it and you think is this the same guy talking? But there's two truths held in balance. He said in Matthew 18, Verse 3, except you be converted and become as a child you can't enter the kingdom. So on the one hand it's being assertive, there's a place for that; on the other hand there's a place to be soft and tender and to be sensitive like a child is. Now you just think, he said unless you be converted and become like a child. You think what a little child is like. They're often quite sensitive. I can remember Sarah sneezed and her baby started crying - kids can be quite sensitive, but the thing is that a child is also quite vulnerable. See if I'm with a child they'll pour their feelings out and pour their thoughts out. They'll just come and they'll cry if they're unhappy. They'll express what's going on in their life and often we learn as Christians, we learn not to express and pour out in a tender way and a soft way and a sensitive way to the Lord, the disappointments, the struggles, the pains. There's a place to speak it out and to become vulnerable to God and intimate with Him, so the praise is very strong but the worship, we need to be very tender and so I practiced for a long time having times of being incredibly strong and then just finding the flow of the spirit where I could feel God and then I'd just weep. If you have a look at my accordion to this day it's covered with tear marks. There's the two sides that go with working with the spirit of God, very strong, very sensitive and the Bible tells us don't grieve the Holy Spirit, or in other words be sensitive to how your conduct can grieve the Holy Spirit. He particularly talks about bitterness and anger and speaking badly about other people. He said all of those things grieve the Holy Spirit and stop Him operating powerfully in your life, so notice there the two things of David; very strong and very sensitive. Strong, sensitive - strong, sensitive and you've got to learn to be able to be like that. Tough, tender, strong, sensitive.

That's real manly stuff isn't it aye? Trouble is men get the tough stuff and don't get the tender bit to go with it. They might get the very strong but don't get the sensitive side, but both of them are part of the nature of God and both of them are aspects of what made David a great man of God. You have a think, remember that verse I shared with you, except you become as a child? You have a look at it a chapter away when David starts to enter the city and what he did, he began to dance like a kid. He's leaping, whirling, dancing. That is sensitive, vulnerable. People looking at him - his wife looked at him, despised him, she was barren. He just said I do this for the Lord. He said I'm not worried about what you think - I've just got to be passionate before Him. I did itto Him - and so he was extremely expressive and sensitive to the Holy Spirit, yet at the same time he was incredibly strong and could rise up as a warrior and was never defeated in a battle.

So for this year for you to break through, don't just look at David having a story of breaking through. He broke through as a result of little breakthroughs a long way earlier in his life. You see when everyone else was doing what they were doing, he was there and he was praying strongly and he was worshipping strongly and he was being sensitive to the Holy Ghost. He had first of all a lion. Now I don't think I've ever been by a lion's cage at any time. I'm very glad that there are bars. When I went beside one of the cages one of the things started to roar at me so I walked along and it followed me along, you know - I'll go back this way here. It followed me along again; went this way and it followed me along again. I thought you want to eat me don't you? So grrrr - you know, but I thought I'm glad that it's got bars there - but can you imagine being attacked by a real lion? Now that's quite something to be able to kill a lion when you don't have much weaponry. You've got a sling - a sling can really do it but that's still a bit of a thing. I don't think I'd be wanting to throw a stone at a lion. Think about that now. So what was in David? There was just this something developed in him caring for the sheep, something developed in looking after something for someone else, this whole strength in God. He said God helped him deal with the lion and then God helped him deal with a bear. Now have you ever thought of trying to kill a bear? That's not an easy thing to kill either, but he did it. So when he faced these Philistines he had a track record of years of battle sport, so last year - have a think back about last year. What battles did you face? How did you do? Did you develop strength? Did you break through? Did you develop sensitivity - or did you wimp out a bit on the way and turn away from it and just live and accommodate it? It'll cost you something to accommodate the Philistines.

When the Gibionites were accommodating to the Philistines they said yeah, yeah, we'll make a covenant with you. We'll give you peace but we'll poke your right eye out - meaning they could never be a man of war and hold the shield and fight. Imagine you've lost your right eye, got the shield over covering your left eye - not going to see too much for battle would you? So think about that. This is the year to break out in different ways, to increase your personal influence so that requires internal changes, shifts in the heart. It requires external changes in connecting with people and determining that I will engage people so I can extend the kingdom of God. It doesn't mean you go and talk about Jesus to every person you meet. It means you go and represent Jesus to every person you meet. It means you intentionally start to look at reaching towards people with a heart to see them come into the kingdom. Wow, what a great thing that would be. What a great thing that would be that if this year every one of us broke through some limitation. Perhaps it's financial, perhaps it's attitude, perhaps it's in your skills. Whatever it is, make a decision that I will become strong. I'll become sensitive and I'm going to put a plan in place to develop both of those.

I'm going to break through some area of my life and in my influence in the community. What a great thing to do that - then at the end of the year say God gave me breakthroughs. Let me tell you about my breakthrough and what I've got the place that was once a memory of giants and defeat and I have broken through. That's the law to break through, so an area where I minister very regularly when I go overseas, I can absolutely trust God to come completely because the memory of the giant in that area, I overcame him and now I've got something fresh. I've got a breakthrough in that area of my life. So people see things happen but they don't realise there's a breakthrough that you have to make to get into that zone and you don't break through by staying in a safe zone. You break through by deciding I've got to move out of where I'm comfortable to where I'm uncomfortable and I'll do the preparation and prayer with God, then start to do that. Let's decide this year is your year of breakthrough, isn't that right? Year of breakthrough, year of breaking out, breaking through.

10. War a Good Warfare

Sun 11 Mar 2012  « Back to Top

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How many know that you're involved in struggle and conflict in life? Life isn't that easy. Everyone is fighting in the same battle. For you to get forward and to progress in your life, for you to get somewhere, you've got to learn how to stand up & fight. You've got to learn what you're fighting against and how to fight. The only fight that is any good is the one you win! So to fight a good fight.

How many know that you're involved in struggle and conflict in life? How many know their life isn't that easy? Life isn't that easy. Now get this: everyone is fighting in the same battle. There isn't any one of us exempt; and so for you to get forward, and to progress in your life, for you to get somewhere, you've got to learn how to stand up and fight.

You've got to learn how to, and what you're fighting against, and how to fight; and so in 1 Timothy, Chapter 1 verse 18, Paul is writing to a young man. He said: this charge I commit to you, according to the prophesies made concerning you, that by them you may wage a good warfare. Timothy's a young man, and Timothy faces a great responsibility. There's a great challenge that lies ahead of him, looking out for people, shepherding people; and because he's young, people despise him, and look down on him; and in the midst of it, God says: there's a battle you're facing; and He said: fight a good fight.

Now I reckon the only fight that is any good, is the one you win. Would that be right? The one you win, and so to fight a good fight. I can tell you right now, that every one of us is going to face challenges. There's no one exempt; and so He says: wage a good warfare, by the prophetic word that came over you. In other words, he's saying this; God spoke destiny over your life. God spoke, and gave direction, prophetically, to your life. You need to hold what God has said, and cling onto it, because by what God said, you can get a victory in your life.

Now some of you may not even have a word from God about your life. I don't know how you could walk through your life, trying to find your way in the darkness, when God is the only one that can help us in dealing with issues of life. We need a vital connection with Him, so I wonder what warfare you're facing right now. I wonder what challenge you're facing. Is it fear? Is it insecurity? Is it rejection? Is it a struggle with your thought life? Is it a struggle with sin of some kind? What struggle are you facing? What issue are you facing in life that is a challenge to you getting to your destiny?

There'll be some of you here tonight, and you're already defeated, you're lying down. You lie down, you can never get up. You've got to make a decision, that I'll never lie down and stay defeated. Even if I fall over and make a mistake, I'll not stay down. And I want to show you just two little scriptures, one's found in 1 Peter; and the other one's found in Isaiah 7. I want to show you just a simple thing that God says to do, and if we do what God says, we're going to have some results in our life.

So have a look at them in 1 Peter chapter 5, and it says: be sober or wide awake. Be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. So resist him, step up in faith, knowing that the same afflictions are experienced by others in the world; and may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ, after you've suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. So notice what He's saying. He's saying: you have an adversary. Want you to tell the person next to you: you do have an adversary. You do have an adversary. You may not think so, but you do have an adversary; and it's not something sort of vague out there. You do have an assignment from God to fulfil, and you also have an assignment against you to hinder you. Think about that.

Have you ever taken the time to work out how you could win that battle, and what actually comes against you? Have you ever stopped to think, what it is you're really struggling with, and how you could get a victory over it? If you don't stop to think and get a strategy, you will always go down the same route; and so you notice what He says here. He says: resist. To resist, means to make a stand on the inside, against someone opposed to you; against the demonic or spiritual realm opposed to you. Why would you need to make a stand? Because if you don't make a stand, you'll get pushed around.

He says this. He says: notice that your adversary the devil prowls like a roaring lion. The word adversary is someone who has a go at you legally. It means literally, the prosecutor in the court; so any of you who've ever been to court, and there may be one or two here, and you've been to court - not very nice going to court. I remember going to court many years ago, and it wasn't a very nice experience at all, and there you are, and you stand in the dock. You feel terrible, absolutely shocking. There's some policeman over there reading a speeding charge out. Speeding charge -used to go to court in those days, so fortunately you don't have to do that now, just pay the fine. But in those days you had to go to court; so went to court, and there it is, you've got a judge sitting up there, and there he sits up on the box; and here you are, standing looking absolutely embarrassed and humiliated; and then there's some person stands up and reads: Your Honour, on the such and such a day of such such the accused - and you're the accused now - and so they read out what you were doing, the wheelies you were doing on the, you know, the whatever you were doing, going too fast or however it was.

In this case, I was travelling too fast in an old V8, down in Waikanae actually; and so going a bit too fast. So what happened was, I had to stand there, and they read out the charges; and of course the issue was, I had no defence, because I was actually guilty; so all I could do was plead guilty, and I had to pay the fine. But for you and I as a Christian, someone else has made the stand to pay the fine. Someone else has made it possible to get a victory. Someone else has made it possible for you, on every occasion, to win out against the failures, the accusations; and so the Bible says: stand, resist the devil.

Why do you need to resist him? Because the Bible says how he operates. He says: he's like a roaring lion. He isn't a lion. He hasn't got teeth. He's like a lion; and lions seek to intimidate the people around them, seek to intimidate their prey; so often when a lion begins to roar, the animals just get absolutely petrified and scared. They don't know what to do, and that's part of his strategy against them. I wonder how many today are facing something that terrifies you, and frightens you, something that comes up against you, and it seems to intimidate you, so you feel and you have these thoughts: I'm so little in the face of this. I've got so little strength, so little ability. I've got so little to do, that I could get through this thing.

See that is the strategy the devil works against you, and it doesn't stop when you get older. It's all your life, the same thing keeps coming. The devil roars from time to time, trying to shut you down. Now why does he try and intimidate you? He tries to intimidate you, and fill you with fear, so that you will turn from God's assignment for your life; so you'll turn, and shut down. If you've become passive, shut down in your prayer life, you've already had something come against you. Who knows what it was, but isn't it time to stand up, and fight again? Isn't it time that you got back into the battle? Isn't it time you did what Jesus said, and that He says very clearly. He says: resist! Don't roll over and be a pansy. Resist! Make a decision where you're going in life, what you're wanting to accomplish, and step up and believe that God will get you there. He will get you there.

You've got an issue in your marriage, God will help you solve it. God an issue with your personal relationships? God will help you solve it. You're facing some difficulties in life, God will help you solve it. Why? He wants to be on your side. He is on your side. Bible says: thanks be to God who always gives us victory in Christ. Want to think about this, how victorious are you today over your emotions? I notice some people coming in today, and they're in heaviness. That's a resistance of the enemy. You've got to stand up to that kind of stuff.

Maybe you've had discouragement come around you. Well that's a weapon that the devil will hurl against you too. The Bible says: you've got to stand up, got to stand in faith, or stand holding to what God says about you; and when you do that, there's two things will happen; one, you will face a bit of pressure, and suffer a little bit for a while, but then you'll break through. Two, God will have used this to grow you. Now this is one of the dilemmas many Christians find, many people who've come to Christ find, is instead of actually staying in a place of passion and intimacy and love and fire and vibrancy, they end up passive and shut down. Something has happened.

Do you know anyone like that? Is there anyone who's lost their fire, their passion? Actually they look no different to any other person in the world. See, something has happened and it requires of us that we take an act, and have some remedy. I want to show you just a simple scripture in Isaiah 7, then we'll come back here and finish; and this is the story of a man who tried to serve God, Isaiah 7. He came against - there was a problem came. Here it is here, Isaiah 7, first few verses - and it came to pass in the days of Ahaz. It says that: the King of Syria and the King of Israel went up to Jerusalem to make war, but they couldn't prevail against it. The King of Syria - even today there are Syrians, and there's a battle going on in Syria right now. Nothing much changes over the course of history, and so the Syrians gathered an army together, and they got Israel. Israel speaks of Christians who backslid, and so you have the enemy came, and it came up, and tried to assault Jerusalem. It tried to assault the King, but it couldn't get the victory. Here's one thing you need to know; that the devil can never get a victory over you, you can never fail permanently unless you let the devil do it, unless you lie down. You don't need to be defeated continually, not at all.

God's there for you to help you, so I want to you see what happens. It'll show you the strategy - and so it was told the house of David, saying: Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim, and his heart, and the heart of the people, move like the trees move in the wind. In other words, what happened is there were rumours came around that said: boy, there's a lot of problems coming up. You and I, you've got to make decisions whose voice you're listening to. If we listen to the voice of God, the voice of the Spirit of God, He will always put faith and courage into our heart. If we listen to the voice of people who have faith in their hearts, they will always encourage you - you can win in life.

But if you listen to the voice of negative people, discouragement and fear will start to come around your heart. You'll start to feel dismayed. If you listen to the voice of spirits whispering in your ear, words of rejection, and words of failure, and words of defeat; if you listen to those voices you'll become overwhelmed, and see this is what happened. They were like the trees blowing in the wind, unstable. Now I want to show you clearly what the devil's plot was, because it hasn't changed; and the Lord said to Isaiah: go out and meet Ahaz, at the end of the aqueduct at the upper pool, and say to him - and He gives him two things: number one, He tells what the enemy strategy is; and two, He tells him what to do about it. Let's get what the enemy strategy is.

He says: Syria, Ephraim - Verse 5 - have plotted evil against you, saying: let us go up against you to trouble it, make a gap in the wall for ourselves, and set a King over there. So number one, the enemy said: let's go up and intimidate them. Let's go up against them to intimidate; so one of the first strategies the devil will use to keep you out of your destiny, is just to try and intimidate you. To intimidate means, you feel little, and the problem's very big; and when the problem has become very big in your mind, and in your thoughts, and in your emotions, and you are very little and very small, you are intimidated. That's what intimidation is, and the Bible tells us the devil prowls like a lion, and he's got many ways to bring it against you; so any time you feel overwhelmed, you feel in your mind the problem has got very big, and you are very small, you are starting to go down the route of intimidation.

The second thing he says is, let's make a breach in there. To make a breach means: to break a way through into their life, so the second strategy the enemy will use against you is this. He will try and tempt you to do something, to get rid of the pain and the stress you feel. Go have a drink, you need a drink. You deserve a drink. Now have another one. No, you can still feel the pain. Have another one - go on, keep drinking. So you'll find, that the devil will always find a way to bring pressure on you, to do one thing: to go contrary to God's way of getting through problems.

God has got an answer for your life. He's got a way through for you. You've got to look to Him, and seize it. So number one, if you're feeling intimidated in your life, realise you're facing a growth challenge in your life. No one gets through life without challenges of intimidation. Number one, it's a growth opportunity; two, behind it, there's a spiritual pressure on you; three, the temptation will be, to try and find a way of escape to just comfort. In other words to run away from the problem, instead of turning to God in the middle of it. So let me ask you this: are you experiencing feelings of being intimidated, overwhelmed at this time? You have got an opportunity in front of you to grow. Are you feeling that you're constantly going away to find some comfort, watching too much television, burying yourself in some distraction, getting involved in games, starting to drink, and do all kinds of stuff to try and feel better? Then you're going down the path, where a breach is being made in your life, so you can be brought into a place of defeat.

And notice the last thing that He said that they tried to do. He said: we'll set a King over them; so the goal the devil has is to bring you into bondage. To have a King over you, other than Christ, means you are now held in some area of your life in some grip of a problem. So when a person's addicted to nicotine, they've got another King in their life. It's nicotine. Why? Because as soon as you got stress, where do you go? Go to nicotine, or if alcohol's a problem in your life, where are you going? You've got another King over you. It's called alcohol. Maybe it's called drugs, or maybe its called sex, or maybe it's called some other kind of thing. The devil wants to intimidate you, so you don't see you're a winner, and see what God wants to do through you; two, he wants to create a breach in your life, so you begin to find a way from God, and a way out of the problem and try and get the pain off you; but thirdly, he wants to just establish a bondage in your life. Now let me ask you this: how many of you got intimidated, and went to some false comfort, and are now in bondage? That's the strategy. That's the thing God wants to help you out of.

I want to show you what the solution is, and what He tells in here. See a prophet comes. He gets a word from God. When you're in trouble, you need to be listening to God. And this is what the word of God was, in Verse 4: take heed, or take care. Be still, and don't be afraid or faint-hearted. Take care, be still, don't be afraid, don't be faint-hearted. Verse 7, with us says the Lord God, it'll not stand, it'll not come to pass. How about that? So what He's saying is this. He's saying when you're facing problems, don't allow intimidation to get you disturbed, but become still in your heart, knowing it has no power to defeat you, except what you give it. The devil has no power to defeat you, unless you agree with him. In 1 Peter 5, He said: this is what you need to do, you need to make a stand; and the stand we make is: I know I'm feeling this, I know there's pressures around my life, but what does God have to say about me, and about the situation? We need to look to what God says.

Isaiah later on says: trust the Lord, believe the prophetic word of God, and you will prosper. So prophetic word, is just very simply, the Holy Spirit speaking in an inspired way to us, how to handle a situation. So when you're facing difficulties and challenges, here's some things to know. Number one, still in 1 Peter: everyone in the world faces pressures. We're not exempt because we're Christians. Sometimes people think because you're Christian you're going to have some easy path. Not so. You actually have fresh problems, and different kinds of problems, but you're going to face the same pressures and stresses everyone else does. He says: because this is happening in the world as well, everyone around us. He says nevertheless this is what you need to do. You need to turn to God, and make a stand, to resist this pressure. You need to get hold of what God says, and start to believe it in your heart, and speak it over your life. I found one of the reasons that people fail, is because they fail to get a hold of God's word, what God says about you and about your life, hold it in their heart and faith, begin to speak it over their life, and just resist, until the pressure breaks.

This is what the Bible says in 1 Peter, and we'll just finish up with this right now. It says that God will give you grace, because He wants to see you grow; and He says after you've suffered a while - in other words, there is often a season where it's difficult, after you've suffered a while - so God does not answer always straight away, but He does answer. So He says: after you've suffered a while, He will do something in your life. He will establish you. He will strengthen you. He will mature you because - get this - God has something so big ahead for you, He has to take you through a growth process to get there. You're never going to - for example, if someone here had a problem, a brain aneurism, they're not going to ask anyone in here to try and fix it. They'll want someone who's done the training, someone who's done the preparation. If someone had some major sickness, they're not going to ask anyone here to operate, because there's no one here's had the training or preparation. So the things that God has planned for your destiny, which are so good, He can't bring them to you, until you yield and walk through the process of His training; and so from time to time He will let pressures come, and issues come, and struggles come.

But here's the deal - He said: they're not to hurt you. They're not to harm you, they're not to crush you. They are to grow you, so you become complete. They are to establish you, so you get firmly rooted in God. They are to strengthen you, so you become tough. I've had to fight devils in this city ever since I've been here, but it's helped me get tough in my spirit, so now I go anywhere in the world and cast out devils everywhere. I've often wondered, I wonder why it isn't easier. God says: don't worry about why it's not easier, just grow, grow, become stronger.

So there it is. Every one of us face challenge, every one of us face pressures, the devil's strategies never change. Between you, and your God given destiny, there are a series of challenges. Here's the thing: God wants to use them to grow you. What are you going through right now, that God intended to use to grow you, and the devils trying to stumble you? He's stumbling you by the same old ways he's stumbled everyone. Number one, he intimidates you, so you feel small, you feel insignificant, you feel like the problem's big and you can't get through, got no friends, they've got everything against me, there's trouble. That's why people go down to suicide. They believe - they come into agreement with a demon, and they listen to the demon's lies, that there's no hope, no way through; but there is a way through. See, they've just allowed life to intimidate them, they've allowed a spirit to intimidate them; because I've talked to one person who attempted suicide. They took the pills. The moment they took the pills their head cleared, immediately cleared once the pills were in their body; and the moment their head cleared, they realised this is not what I want to do. I believe I can come through this, but it was too late. The pills were in there so they had the presence of mind to ring the hospital, get someone to come immediately - rang 111, someone came immediately, and they were able to recover before the pills - the stomach pumped out.

Here's what I realised in talking to them, that while they were in that place of pressure, their mind and emotions were so overwhelmed, they didn't realise they were listening to the wrong voice. They were intimidated. Satan prowls like a lion to intimidate you. Are you being intimidated? Are you trying to find a false comfort? This girl tried to take this false comfort, took pills thinking - get this - thinking that my torment will stop if I die. It doesn't. It goes on forever. It's a horrendous thing. It doesn't stop. The pills don't stop it. They just permanently set in place where you already are, for eternity. Think about that, see, and so we realise then, intimidation; the devil tries to find a way of escape for you, offers you a way out, offers you something that'll breach you, and give him grounds to bring you into bondage.

Jesus says do this; He says: take a stand and resist. This is your life, your destiny. Don't roll over and give up. You can win. You can do it. I'm with you. I've overcome, I'm in you, I'm going to help you. Number one, make a stand to resist. Stand up and fight. Don't be a sissy on the inside. You've got the roar of the lion, the true lion, the lion of Judah inside you; so learn to stand up, and you learn to stand up by getting in praying every day strongly, and starting to build your spirit man. Secondly, get a hold of what God says about you. Get the word of God, and begin to hold that word over your life, over your circumstance, over your situation. I guarantee whatever's pressing you will yield. It will yield - maybe not straight away, but it will yield; and once it's yielded, you'll be stronger, you'll be more mature, you'll have grown up. You'll be established, and you'll know for sure, actually God is with me, God helps me, God gets me through the issues of life.

So what is it that's challenging you? It's time you warred a good warfare. If you've had a word of prophecy over your life, that word of prophecy is a part of divine destiny, to get you where you've got to go; and you need it as a weapon of war, so when doubts come, when fears come, when life seems to be all over you, and you can't seem to find a way through, I know God said this about me! And you hold on to what God says. Jesus used the word of God as a weapon. Paul wrote that it was a sword of the spirit. We need to take seriously, God's word is the way we can walk through these issues and problems of life.

When we close our eyes right now, Father, I just thank you for your presence here tonight, and I thank you Lord you want to help people. You want to help people who are struggling. I wonder is there any person here, and you've come tonight, and you're not even connected to Jesus Christ. You haven't made the first step of becoming a Christian yet, but you really want to. A Christian is a person who's given their life to Christ, they become a follower of Jesus Christ. This is the problem that we face. The Bible says: all have sinned, and all of us are struggling with life, because we're disconnected from God. Jesus came to announce that there's a kingdom, there's a different life we can live in the kingdom of God, and that takes place freely as we just turn away from sin, and receive Him. Whoever receives Him, becomes a child of God. We immediately come into a whole new realm of life and experience. We change on the inside - but it requires a step of commitment. Everything in life, it takes a step of commitment; and perhaps there's someone here tonight, and you've never made that first step of commitment. I'd love to pray for you to receive Jesus Christ, to become a Christian.

I wonder if there's others here tonight, and perhaps you're facing an experience in your life which is intimidating to you. It's not the problem that's the issue, it's how you view it, and what you believe about it. So perhaps for some, you may have some situation that feels completely overwhelming. You're at a bit of a loss for what to do, you're feeling quite overwhelmed and lost in it, or intimidated. Seems beyond your ability to solve, and perhaps it is too, you need the Lord. If that's you tonight, I want you to raise your hand and say: God, I just want to be honest with you tonight. I'm really feeling overwhelmed by something. Anyone else feeling overwhelmed, struggling? Okay then.

I wonder if there's any others, and in the midst of pressure and turmoil, you've tried to find an easy way out. The devils tried to breach your life, and you know there's things are not right in your life, you know there's things in there that aren't right. You're starting to go into bondage. You're starting to go down a path, where now you've got problems, that keep repeating. If that's you, why don't you say: Lord, tonight I want to get it right. I want to really get it right. I want to repent, put my life right, and turn back to you. Want you to just raise your hand, let me know, anyone here? God bless. God bless. God bless. God bless. God bless.

I wonder if there's others tonight, and you just need to make a stand. God's just speaking to you tonight to make a stand again, hold onto the promises of God, because you've started to lose your vision for your life. You need to go back, and start to build your life of prayer, start to look at - bring out any prophecies God's given you; or start to get into the word of God. Say God, I need you to speak to me, and I need to identify the things you call me to do. I need fresh vision and fresh purpose in my life. If that's you tonight, and you know that's God speaking, I want you to raise your hand, and say: I know I need to get back on track again, need to start to resist more, I need to step up more and get more focussed in my life. If that's you, why don't you just say right now. God bless. God bless. God bless - some hands going up.

If you realise this: broken focus is one of the reasons people fail in life. It's not because they lack talent or gift or ability. It's just their focus breaks. If the devil can get you off on the wrong track, focussed on the wrong thing, you lose. So tonight, if that's you, broken focus, you need to respond to the Lord. So what we're going to do now, we're going just flow back into worship, and I'd love those of you who put your hand up, those of you that want to be prayed for tonight, someone to stand with you in agreement. Love you just to come make your way to the front, make a row across the front, so we can pray with you - want to stand with you in agreement. You're just making a decision tonight, you're going to break out of that intimidation. You're going to start to break out of those false comforts, out of those things which breach you, and cause your life to be in bondage. You're going to reach out to the Lord once again, renew that relationship with Him. He is the one who strengthens us. It's His plan. Well let's just stand together, just flow in that song together, and those of you that want to be prayed for, please just make your way to the front. Just stand in front of me tonight. Just come. Come, come tonight. Just come, come. God bless. God bless.

11. Wise and Faithful Servant

Sun 25 Mar 2012 PM  « Back to Top

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Jesus has been asked some very important questions. The disciples asked Him tell us about the future of Jerusalem, what's going to happen, when are these things going to happen. They said tell us when you will come. We want to know about the end of the age. For a believer our hope is not the things that happen in our life now. Our hope is set in eternity, and life is an apprenticeship.

I want you to open your Bible with me, in Matthew, Chapter 24, Verse 45 through to Verse 51. What I want to do is ask the question: who then is a wise - or a faithful and a wise servant? So let's read in Verse 45, and Jesus is speaking: Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food or meat in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say he will make him ruler over all his goods. But if that evil servant says in his heart, My master delays his coming, and begins to beat his fellow servants, eat and drink with the drunkards, the master of the servant will come on a day when he's not looking for him, at an hour he's not aware of, will cut him two, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites, and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So before we try to look in and see what that might mean, and how it might apply, we need to see what the whole context of it is. Jesus has been asked some questions. They're very important questions. The disciples asked Him tell us about the future of Jerusalem, what's going to happen, when are these things going to happen; and they said: tell us when you will come. We want to know about your coming, and we want to know about the end of the age. For a believer, our hope is not the things that happen in our life now. Our hope is set in eternity. Your life is very small compared to eternity. Your life is an apprenticeship for eternity, so whatever assignment you have in life now is small compared to the assignment you have in eternity.

So God always wants us to live with eternity in mind; and so Jesus begins to answer, and He talks about some of the signs of the end times. I don't want to go into that today - and He talks a little bit about the nation of Israel. Then He begins to talk and share three parables, and all the parables are connected to one another; and He shares also one other story, or event, that happens. So the first He talks about, is the parable of the wise servant. Then the second one He talks about, is the parable of the wise virgins; then the third parable He goes to is on the faithful servant; and finally He talks about the nations being judged.

Now all of them have this in common, very simple: they all span history from Jesus' first coming to a second coming, so they're prophetic. Not one of them has been fulfilled in its entirety yet. We are living in the middle part of the parables. That's the first thing to see. They have application for today, and I want to show you what that is.

Second thing to see, is that each of the parables brings out something different. This parable we're going to talk about, is about how you relate to the house of God. It's a very important one - your attitude to God's people. It's about whether we will love God's people or not. The second parable is about whether we'll love the Lord or not. It's about intimacy with the Lord. The oil with the virgins was about intimacy, the oil speaks of the anointing, or flow of the Holy Spirit, gained by intimacy with the Lord. The third parable is about the servants in the talents, and it's about productive serving, that you make your life count; and then finally the fourth one involves the separation of the nations, and it's essentially about practical love. Did you love people? Did you express it in a practical way? Did you get involved in social justice issues? Did you engage with the needs in the community, and in the world?

Now here's an interesting thing about it, is that all of them are evaluated. In other words, in all four, Jesus comes and evaluates people. You have to understand how we live our life is really important to Jesus. The kind of life you live is important to Him, and we have to understand that every one of us, He will evaluate our life. Now if you're not a Christian, then you're on a different playing field altogether, in that God's desire for you is to come to know Him as your saviour, to receive His grace and love into your life, to acknowledge what He's done for you, and to begin a new life with Him.

But if you're a believer, then it's a different deal: now that we have a life with God, we are responsible to be productive. This is what will honour and glorify the Father, that we're fruitful, so this is why fruitful is a very important thing. So here's the interesting thing is that: one, everyone is evaluated; two, everyone experiences consequences. It's an enviable law of the kingdom you can choose to do whatever you wish; however you will have consequences. So everyone experiences consequences - and the third thing is that the consequences involve either reward and great gain in the future, or they result in loss of some kind.

Now Jesus speaks right through - His message from the beginning of the book to the end of the book is consistently about the kingdom of God. Now most people, most Christians and people particularly in the western world, when they think about this whole area of the kingdom, and think about Christianity, they think primarily in terms of getting into heaven. We're into heaven - we're not into heaven. The Jews would think of it completely different. They're not thinking about heaven at all, so when Jesus' talking about the kingdom, they're thinking about the kingdom on earth. They're thinking about the nation being changed. They're thinking about Jerusalem and Israel being the centre of the world, and a new global government in which Jesus is the king.

So who's right? Actually both are. Each was revealed a portion that's a bit different. If you look at Jesus' ministry and His teaching, He consistently emphasised one thing, and that is, the message of the kingdom; how to live in the kingdom, the values of the kingdom, how to relate to the king; and then He talks about through parables and various teaching about the life of the king; and much of it, He teaches about when that kingdom comes, and what it will look like. And that's something that's well worthwhile doing some looking into - so let's pick it up; and first of all, just summarise what we learnt in the last time.

The last time around we looked at the parable of the talents, and the parable of the pounds, and we found several things: number one, God invites us all to be great, so greatness is the call - oh, He calls us to be great, and we become great through serving. The second thing we saw was - in the message the last couple of weeks - is that everyone is given an assignment. You're given gifts, you're given grace, you're given opportunity, you're given a life, you're given freedom to choose. We have an assignment of God. Everyone has an assignment, something God wired just you to do, something He prepared beforehand just for you to do. So don't look at the person next to you and compare yourself. It's irrelevant, because what God has is for you and it suits you perfectly.

You're not required to copy someone else, or be someone else. You can't. You're required to be an original, and discover what God wired you to do, and then get busy doing it, and find a great and fulfilling life, fulfilling the course of God. The third thing we saw was this: that all of the servants of God will be evaluated for their service. That's not about whether you get into heaven or hell, or anything like that - got nothing to do with that. It's got to do with about do you qualify for promotion? It's as simple as that - or will you stay at a low level, and will you just be content with far less than what Jesus had for you? I remember it was an interesting thing, that when we were working with Uganda, we had about $60,000 in the bank at one point; and I was just longing to put it in John's hands, but he wasn't ready for it; and it was the first time I felt this thing in my heart, what it's like for God, who's got so much to give to us, but you can't put it in the person's hands, unless they're actually able to handle it. They just will fail. It will ruin them, so your generosity can ruin someone, if they haven't grown in the capacity to manage what they have, and as Brian was saying: faithful in small, and faithful in great.

So let's have a look at this story here, and we'll read this story: Who's the faithful and wise servant, whom the master made ruler over his household, to give food in due season? Blessed is the servant whom his master, when he comes, shall find so doing. Let's just look at that part there, so the first thing is, it's a picture of an Oriental household; and so we don't tend to think of servants and slaves, but when you go to the Middle East and into Asia, they have house servants; wherever you go there's servants - it's great! Even my son and daughter in Indonesia have got servants. They'd come home, we got to say: hey, wake up guys - we aren't your servants [Laughter] and there are no servants in New Zealand, okay? Not in terms of having someone run around the house doing something for you. You've got to pull your weight, pick up stuff after you, clean up your mess, and take part in the responsibilities of the house - but over in Indonesia they quite like it, because they got two people as servants, and one does all the cooking and one does all the housework, and what a life! So anyway, there it is. So they got servants, but they pay them something for it; and so this is a picture of an Oriental household, and every one of the servants has got a responsibility in the household. Everyone's got responsibility in the household, and so you notice here it says: the master has made the person ruler over his household, to give them their food in due season. So the words 'make a ruler' means to appoint a person to a role or a function, to give them something to do in other words.

It's a household full of servants, and each one of the servants is given an assignment, something to do with their life, something - a duty, a responsibility to discharge, got the idea? And the servant there, is one who gives himself to the world. Interesting the word servant here is the word [doulos]. Remember when I shared the scripture on what Jesus said it took to be great? He said: if you want to be great, become a servant - [diarcena] meaning literally a servant - but if you want to be the greatest, become [doulos], the servant of all. So now what He's saying is, this person is a person who's in the household of the master, he's got a personal assignment, and he's got a life of loyalty to his master's wishes and intentions. That's the picture that's created, so anyone who understood what he was saying would know - they'd think of a household, a big household, many servants, people who are totally dedicated to fulfilling the master's wishes, and every one of them's got a job and an assignment to fulfil, and then the master goes away and comes back, and checks them out.

Now what is the job the servant has got to do? Let's have a look at the servant first of all, because - good servant there - and here's a couple of things for us to see. The first thing is this: his responsibility was to give them their meat in due season. Well I read that a little bit, and I think goodness me, what on earth does that all mean? And then I started to realise, I just looked at what the intention behind it is this, very simply it's this: he's calling on every servant to provide nourishment to the household, and it's to be in due season, or with the right timing; so you've got two things that they're called to do. Each servant has got a responsibility to provide something that'll build up the household; and it's to be in due season, so that means timeliness. In other words, it's not just a grinding-on service. It's actually spirit-led, spirit-empowered serving; so putting it all together, the Bible tells us: we are members of the household of God; and every one of us are servants of the living God; and everyone of us has a responsibility to the household of God, to give meat in due season; in other words to be led by the Holy Spirit, to nourish and build up other believers.

What happens is, the church has moved over generations, from being a community or a family or a household, into something like an organisation and meetings. This is not what God has in mind. Neither is it what He's speaking of here. He's speaking of a household of the master, so He's talking about the church He's building. He's talking about the people of God, and how every one of us is responsible to nourish, build up, and provide for others out of what God has given us, being led by the spirit. Really quite simple isn't it?

Now you say: well, I don't have much. Well no, no, no, you've got a testimony, you've got giftings in your life, you can flow in prophetic, you have got heaps to build someone up; and so if you think about it, the householder is Jesus Christ, and we're the servants of the household. He's made it very clear what our job is to do. It is to go make disciples. It's to build up people, and it's to increase His household; and then there's about 31 different statements where it says love one another, forgive one another, be kind to one another, be tender hearted to one another, have grace with one another, minister the gift to one another - all the one-another's are giving meat in due season. You can't do it alone. It requires being connected in relationships, so when we have what we call a small group, it's just a group of people gathered together with a particular purpose in mind, and one of that is that they build up one another. Everyone is called to build the church.

The moment in your heart you draw back from that, you miss then what one of the significant things Jesus taught about the end times; so He talked about the wise and the faithful servant, and this is what the servant does: he gives meat in due season. In Romans 12 verses 3 to 8 it says: we, being many, are one body in Christ, members of one another. We belong to one another. You can't get away from it. God puts us in a church together to help one another, strengthen one another. We all need one another. I need others. I've got a group that I connect with, and they help me too. Everyone needs others to help them grow and help them build. In 1 Corinthians 12:18, God has set the members, each one in the body, just as according to His pleasure, and He's given you gifts to build up the church. That's what He said, so you notice there, you know, as we take what God has given us, and intentionally under the leading of the Holy Spirit, work to build, bless, encourage, strengthen, develop, help others - for some it may be just in a practical way, but all of us can do something to encourage another person, and build up another person.

And He said: blessed is that servant who is doing that when the Lord comes - and that's a bit of a trick, because we don't know when He's coming. Because we don't know when He's coming, you've got to have a bit of a think about how you're going to run your life, because most people think: He's not coming soon. Oh, might be 10 years, 20 years, who knows? Five years? But what He's saying is, you'll never know. You'll only know the signs in the world, but you won't know, so the key thing is: what are you doing today?

What you're doing today is actually what you're doing. Should He come right now, would He find you being the wise servant, the faithful servant who is giving meat to His household in due season - in other words, led by the Holy Spirit, and working to invest in the lives of people? Now you notice interestingly the next two - He calls this one the wise and faithful servant; the next parable is about what it means to be wise, and it talks about intimacy with the Lord, and gaining the anointing and sensitivity of the Holy Spirit, but in the third parable He talks about what it is to be faithful, and that's taking what you've got, and using it to advance the kingdom of God in various ways.

So it says: when He comes; now you'll notice here, he's got his assignment. Now the thing is, there's a reward associated with the assignment. When he comes, if he finds him doing that - so here's the thing; whether you're alive or you're dead at the coming of the Lord, everyone gets evaluated. Everyone has an opportunity to receive something. This is the most amazing thing, and the Bible is over and over and over and over again, it keeps restating it, in various pictures, various forms, various ways. It's absolutely wonderful. It's actually a great hope for you, and why, as a believer, you need to stay on fire, and passionate for God for eternity, there's a lot at stake. Now here's the thing: if you don't know what's at stake, it won't mean much to you, and that's the problem is, we don't tend to know what's at stake. So let's have a look. Notice what it says - it gives a clue to it here. It says: he will make him ruler over all his goods.

Now who is the ruler here? It's Jesus Christ. All his goods. That's got to be a lot. All authority in heaven and earth he said, is given to me. All his goods is everything. If you can see it, it's his, the whole universe is his; so we think: oh well, so what? What's the deal? Let's just go through, and have a look what the deal will be, and I want to help you just shift and see a few things. Now you notice then that each of the servants, in the three different parables, are rewarded; so in here he's made ruler over all His goods. With the parable of the virgins, they enter into the marriage feast, of which communion is a picture of one day - you see every time you have communion, have something to eat and drink, it's a picture that one day, there is a great banqueting feast with the Lord - but you've got to qualify for it.

Well come on. Nothing's automatic. The invitation's there. The call is there. How we deal with our life is our responsibility. We've got to choose how we'll respond; so in the third one, what's at stake is, he said: I will make you ruler over little - now ruler over much, in the parable in Luke 19, ruler over little, ruler over 10 cities; so let's get a picture now of what is at stake for you. I can't give it all in one session because it's far too vast. There's too much in the Bible about it, but we'll open up a little bit today, and see if we can just get a bit worked out with you.

So in Revelations, Chapter 20, so go to Revelations, Chapter 20, alright? This is an event yet to come. This is the future. I hope I'd see it in my lifetime, it's fantastic if it does - however, the more I've looked at it, the more shaky I've got. I thought: dear Lord Jesus, I need to repent. I have. I was repenting this morning, as I was preparing the message. Oh Lord Jesus, oh whoa whoa whoa [Laughter] why? Because you suddenly gain eternal perspective. Every time you gain eternal perspective, it shifts how you think about what you're doing, and how you live, so we need to get eternal perspective.

So Revelations 20 verse 1: I saw an angel - now this is John, in the spirit, on the Lord's da,y getting vision of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, so don't get thinking the book of Revelation is full of beasts and antichrists and stuff. That's not the main focus of it. The book is the book of Revelation of Jesus Christ, and a coming kingdom. That's what the book is really about. The others are part of it of course, an important part. Now - I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hands. An angel with a key and a chain - and then what does he do? He laid hold on the dragon, the serpent of old, who's the devil and Satan, bound him a thousand years, cast him in the bottomless pit, shut him up, set a seal on him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were finished. And then after that, he's released a little while.

So notice, it's not even God that does this. He just sends an angel to deal with the devil. So that changes your thinking about who's got the power. Sometimes we think: man, the devil's really strong, and he's fired. God's fighting against him. No! The devil's just limited, and Jesus already has provided everything we need for our salvation, and so at the right timing God sends an angel, said: here's your mission, go down there, chain him all up, and all his mates, and pop them down there, and put a cap on them for a thousand years. That's how quickly it's over.

And it says what the devil is doing at the moment: the devil is deceiving the nations. That means, behind all of the activities you see in the earth in every city, every town and every village; there is a spiritual world, which is influencing what goes on in that city and town and village; that there is a structure of governance in the spirit world, demonic structure, that is influencing the decisions that are made. Then it tells us that - Ephesians 2: the whole world walks according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is working in the children of disobedience. So one of the reasons we have such problems in the world, is the influence of demonic structures in the spirit world. So what He's saying effectively is this: at the beginning of a thousand years, I'll send an angel down, and he's going to do these things, going to do four things to him - going to grab the devil. First of all he grabs him - grabs him like that - lay hold on him. Isn't that good? - lay hold on him. You change your thinking about the devil, just an angel comes down, lays hold on him, and then wrapped him up in chains, downed him for a thousand years, cast him in the bottomless pit - down you go! Just like that, he's got no - and then shut him in, closed the door, put a seal on it, he can't get out. He's just stuck, can't do a thing, thousand years. Isn't that good?

And he's sealed up, so he can't do a thing. He cannot do a thing. He's sealed, seal of God's on him, he can't do a thing. He's absolutely locked up for the one thousand years; and then at the end of a thousand years, he's released for a while. So that gives us a little bit of a picture about some things that are coming up. We say coming up - I suppose coming up soon; so soon there comes a point, and God's plan is for heaven to come down, and to come near to earth. That's why everywhere you're getting messages on heaven and earth; heaven, thy kingdom come - because God is wanting to bring heaven nearer to earth, and reconnect it like it was originally connected.

And so let's have a look at some of the things that are in there. Let's read on what happens - and I saw - so he saw the devil put out of the way for a while; I saw thrones, and they sat on them. It's a place of governance, it's a positioning, a realm in the spirit where someone governs from - and they sat on them, and judgement was committed to them. Who are they? Let's have a look - then I saw the souls of those who'd been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and the word of God; had not worshipped the beast or his image, had not received his mark on their foreheads or hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. So if you live for a thousand years, you have to have been resurrected, and so you're resurrected, your body changes.

Now that raises a whole lot of things if your body is resurrected, especially if lots of other people haven't been resurrected. Now can you imagine living in a world where you live in a resurrected body like Jesus did? I mean Jesus came in and out of rooms, He ate food, they touched Him, they could feel His body. He went in - he said where does Jesus live? I don't know, but He just turns up, [sound effect] just like that, whoa! How do you that? Quite simply, because He now freely accesses heaven and earth. He lives in heaven; but can walk into the earth realm like that, and then just walk out of the earth realm like that; doesn't need a bed to sleep, doesn't need a house to live in, doesn't need a motor car, doesn't need anything, because He goes [sound effect] and there He is! It's not bad is it?

So what happens if the police turn up to try and arrest him? Well they can shoot all they like. It won't make any difference a bit. He's got a resurrected body. It's not going to affect Him one little bit - so what if they try and blast Him? It's not going to affect Him. Nothing anyone does could affect Him, and likewise those with the resurrected bodies. Bullets just go straight through them. [sound effect] Ha ha ha - try again! Go on - something bigger, you know, that kind of stuff. So this is amazing.

Now imagine that - no sickness. Other people get sick, other people are living and dying, getting old and dying through the thousand years - but you're not. You've been restored to full health, and you won't be that old either. You'll be younger. You'll be restored, probably to something around about the age of 30, where your body was at its peak, and there you are, all that hair and teeth back [Laughter] and no creaky joints or, you know, no kind of hip replacement stuff. I'll get the teeth back. You can get rid of all those old... You'll have a restored body. Now isn't that amazing? And that's for a thousand years, and then forever - but can you imagine what it'd be like living in this world, entering in and out of this world in a body like that, and no one else is? Gives you a bit of a heads up on everyone doesn't it really, but there's a purpose for it - so let's have a look and we'll just summarise what some of the things are, because there's a task to be done. [Laughs] I was just thinking about it - it's just awesome.

So first of all he says: there a thousand years, so what's commonly called the millennium, is a one thousand year period of time; and it'll begin at some time, and then it ends at another time, then after that there's eternity. Now there's something happens in that one thousand years, so the millennium is a one thousand year period of time when Jesus will physically appear in the earth, and manifest His kingdom on the earth. That's the thing you have to understand; the prayer is constantly your kingdom come into the earth. We tend to think of 'get out of it'! No, you're abandoning the kingdom assignment. So when we withdraw from the community, we abandon our assignment: the eternal assignment and the current one. That's why Jesus' assignment was to go, go into the earth, make disciples, win people, build the house, advance the kingdom of God by adding people to the house, discipling them, raising them up, then releasing them to go out and advance the kingdom of God. That was the mandate, so here's the first thing; it's the millennium's a thousand year period of righteousness and peace. See, no devil, so that makes a huge difference to wars and battles and things, doesn't it?

Second thing is, the kingdom of God will manifest openly, globally, in every sphere of life. Now we see hints of it, you know, the presence of God will come; and when there's a very intense meeting, there'll be a great atmosphere of God; but the Bible says: the whole earth will be filled with the glory, so that means glory will come in and out of the earth, heaven will be really close to the earth, and every sphere of life will be affected.

In South America when they had a revival, and they broke down the power of the ruling spirit, the ground produced - and still to this day produces huge produce, out of proportion to anything else, huge fruits, huge vegetables. The land changes, because at the moment the whole of the world is bound by this thing of Satan influencing it, producing poverty; so ground will produce in a way it's never produced before - but it's every sphere of life will be affected. It affects everywhere - the physical realm, where people live, it affects everything. The political realm will be affected, anything you see right now, no matter how unjust it is, no matter how it is in the political arena, will all change. The educational area will all change. The economic system will all change, because it's unjust, and it oppresses the poor. All of these things must be changed. He is going to bring His kingdom into this earth, His kingdom. Daniel saw it as a stone made without hands, that rose up and became a mountain that filled the whole earth!

See, we're not talking about something little here. We're talking about something you can't hide, because it's going to be everywhere, right through the earth; and no one can stop it, no one can stop it, and it's bad if they ever try, because if they try it'll be a problem. Technology will change, families will change. Think about this: society at every level will change, education change, the legal system, law enforcement - every area of society is to be changed. We mentally think, when you have a 'going to heaven' mentality, we just think: you just leave all those things behind, you go there, and that's it. But he's saying no, no, no, no, no, that's only the temporary holding place. See what I really want to do is, bring you here and change the earth.

Now you understand why God wants Christians to be involved in every part of society, because that was always the intention. It was always the intention. Why? Because He wants to redeem it. He's paid the price - now we can redeem it partly now, but at the coming of His kingdom it'll be properly redeemed, because there'll be nothing to stop us. No one could stop us. Oh, don't you love that, isn't it aye? So God's purpose is that heaven start to become and invade earth, heaven beginning to invade earth, so that the realm of the supernatural becomes accessible, and then miracles are happening in the great dimension, economic things change, lots of things begin to change. Why? Because the supernatural dimension is coming around the earth as God always intended it.

John saw it as the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, but its heaven invading earth - something happening. Now the crucial thing of course is, what we're going to be doing there. So one of the things that we tend to think is, we tend to think that somehow Jesus will just crack a wand or something, I don't know - bang a Bible or something, who knows? But we don't think about this. We kind of think that all life processes will just suddenly change. They didn't change when He came the first time. He actually came, and He engaged in His culture, and set about advancing the kingdom. When He comes the next time, He'll not come as the lamb, He'll come as the lion, and no one can resist Him.

The Bible says in a couple of places - so the natural resources or natural process is going to continue on, so guess what? The education system will continue on. Someone's going to have to get in there and change it. Law system's going to continue on, someone's going to have to get in there and change it. Political systems, they'll still continue. You can't just suddenly - ever been in a government where they lost all the government? The whole place falls to pieces. You can't change a nation by just dismantling all the authority structures. You've actually got to change the structures, and that means change the people, change the thinking, change the processes.

So step one, remove the demonic influence in it, so that that's not there. Now release people, who are in resurrection bodies and accessing heaven, in and out of heaven, to go and begin to work to change these things, to begin to educate them how they need to set them up, so justice is available for all. So there's huge things - so what will happen is, every sphere of life there'll be a change, and so that means that existing leaders in areas of society will be replaced. Think about it. I'll just show you a scripture here, this scripture here in Psalm 110, notice what it says: The Lord is at your right hand - Verse 5 - He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath. It says it in there. It's spiritual. He will judge among the nations - sounds like the second coming doesn't it? It says: and the places will be filled with dead bodies. And then it says: He shall execute the heads of many countries. There'll be no one resist Him. No one can resist His coming, and no one can resist His purpose. The devils are out of the way, so now it's just human beings, arrayed against the Lord and His anointed.

His anointed is the body of Christ, people who are serving with Him, so think about that. So what will happen then is people - someone's got to take over managing the food, water, the education, the finances, the political system, government - someone's got to actually be appointed in there to run it right, and someone's got to help them make it go right, and the people who'll be helping make it go right are those who have now got resurrection bodies, able to enter in and out of the earth's realm, and instruct and teach and minister and empower and impart and bring heaven to earth. Isn't this extraordinary? Yeah and just think, you know, Jesus could eat food while He was here, enjoy food. He sat down and had a feed with them. That raises a whole lot of things doesn't it aye?

So during the millennium period, all the kings of the earth will bow down to Jesus Christ, all the kings of the earth. See, have a look in Psalm 72. You can search - there's so many scriptures, I just brought out a couple to just get you thinking down this line. Great to think about this though isn't it? Because then you've got to say: well, what am I doing now? And if I'm waiting for it to burn up, I haven't got the kind of attitude that would make me of any use in that day. Seventy-two, Verse 11: all kings - all kings will fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him, and He will deliver the needy when He cries, and the poor also that has no helper. He will spare the poor and needy, and save the souls of the needy, and redeem their life from oppression and violence, and precious shall be their blood in His sight. So He's talking again about the millennial kingdom, He's talking then about the attitude God has towards oppression and poverty. He will engage people. If they will not change they will be destroyed. It's very clear.

You can see it in Revelations, where it talks in Chapter 20, about Him coming on a white horse to make war. Now that's not nice, but He's determined that this earth, the kingdom will advance on this earth; and so what you've got is, you've got the period now, where we're in now, and that period covers two thousand years of history, and it's where the servants of God prove out and run their assignment, so they prove whether they're faithful for the thousand years; during the thousand years, they work with Christ to redeem the earth, and bring every part back into government order, into the order of the kingdom; and so there'll be a time of unprecedented productivity, creativity, blessing, peace, absence of wars, absence of conflict, everything coming to order; and then when it's all in order, then the end comes. They let the devil go one more time, and that's when there's an almighty battle; and then there's a new heaven and a new earth, and everything is delivered over to the hands of the Father.

What do the people of God do? Well, they've already had the best thousand years they've ever had. Now they've got all eternity, and God has got much more, probably the rest of His universe to govern. So this is not bad is it? This is pretty good. [Laughter] This is pretty good, don't you think? The resurrected saints then will rule with Jesus - in Revelations 5 verse 10 - let's have a look at that, and so He said: you have made us priests unto our God. Get it? You have made us kings and priests to our God, we shall reign on earth. Where will we reign? ... On earth. ... On earth. We'll reign on earth. We'll reign on earth. So you can look around you and realise then that the earth we're in now, no matter how difficult it is, and how upset and how much injustice and poverty or whatever; the mandate of the church is to be salt and light, because one day we take it over. In 1 Corinthians it actually tells - I think 6 - He says: don't you know, the saints will judge the world? Judge the world? Judge the world? That means you put it into order. That means that those who do wrong, are dealt with. This is a huge thing ahead of us.

This is amazing, and scripture abounds in it. It's so great and so magnificent that Paul says: Oh! Thou would anything, that I might obtain unto that day, and that resurrection! He said: oh, run the race, that you might win a prize! It's nothing to assume that we get this thing. Him that overcomes, will I grant to sit with me in my throne. You've got to overcome. There's some part we play in all of this now. Ooh ho ho, isn't that glorious aye? So resurrected saints will be doing all of this. So now that brings us back - we'll close up with this parable. What a great thing, so that's what's at stake. I've only given you a little bit. It's a bit inadequate, but I've given you a little glimpse of what that could look like.

Now go back into Matthew 24. We'll just finish there, because we heard the wise servant was very simply the one that caught the heart of the master, and actually did what the master wanted, built the household, built the household of God, took his gifts and loved on the people of God. That's what he did, because he loved the master. He just applied what he had to build people. It was an intentional part of his life to do that, and he was led by the Holy Spirit in it.

Now it says - there's another one there - and it says: and the evil servant - now that evil servant, so it's not talking about a different person. It's talking about one servant, who could be good, or could be evil. In that case it's talking about all servants, and we all have the potential to do this. Now notice what the servant did. The evil servant said in his heart: my master delays his coming. The first thing is, the heart attitude you notice. Now get this, the heart attitude is very simply this: Jesus isn't coming soon; I got all my life ahead of me. Mate, I'm going to have a great life, and do what I want. I don't need God to help me get my things done. That's virtually what he's saying - not living his life carefully, as though every day counted to eternity; not living his life intentionally, so that he's doing something to advance the kingdom of God, to have his life count. He's just saying: oh, my master delays his coming. Oh well, you know, been hearing the end-time teaching for ages, you know, one day he'll come. I guess he'll come, but I don't know what will happen after that - don't really want to know. No, no, no. There's something very important at stake, and so we saw what the faithful servant got. This one then, because of his attitude the Lord delays his coming. I'll put it to you another way - there's a scripture, I can't remember. It's probably in Ecclesiastes, and it says something like this: when punishment is not executed speedily against an action, the person's heart rises up to do more. So because we don't experience consequences for our actions - we don't always connect the consequences of our choices, to the things that happen in our life, we actually become hardened and deceived.

Now notice he says, the servant said: oh, my master delays in coming. Oh don't worry about it, one day, you know, it's the big pie in the sky stuff, don't worry about it. I got to get on and pay my bills, do my stuff - and you see, so that's the kind of attitude. So then it says: he began to beat the fellow servants. Now the fellow servants, are people of the same household; so he's talking to the relationship with Christians, the relationship with other Christians. I think it can be extended to include those that God intends to add into His household too, because I think when God looks, He sees the householders, not wondering what is, but what He's already written out in our city to be; so it's actually your attitude to people.

And so it says he begins to beat them. Now that word beat is the word literally to give a slap in the face, slap 'em; or another way to put it is this; he begins to insult them, or treat them in a way which is insulting. When you don't keep commitments that is insulting. When you speak behind someone's back, that's insulting to them. When you're one thing to a person's face, and another thing behind, that is insulting. When you have a hidden agenda to manipulate people, to get what you want, that's insulting. It doesn't treat them as a person of dignity. It actually insults their personality, their humanity.

Now there's probably lots of things we could think of, which you would consider insulting. They just actually offend you, and hurt you, and distress you, when you're treated that way. Do you realise, when someone does an act of love and service, and we don't express gratitude, that is insulting; that when people do good, and we forget it and don't remember it, and honour them and value them, that is insulting. When we look at people, and we see: oh, how much money's that one got, and what position do they work in, that is insulting. There's many things that are extremely insulting to people, that dishonour, devalue and treat them badly. Anything that is insulting to someone else in the body of Christ, anything that insults them and offends them, comes into this category here; and it's because, in your heart, you're saying: the Lord's not coming soon, He's going to wait for a while. It didn't matter - no one saw, I'll do what I like. And people do this all the time. They never stop to think that actually heaven is watching all the time, and you're positioning yourself either as that good servant, who actually encourages and builds up the body of Christ; or that evil servant, that actually their behaviour is destructive.

When you say you're a Christian, and then go into the community, and you treat people in the community and your workplace and so on in a bad way, you are insulting them, offending them and turning away from Christ. You become that servant. That's quite sobering isn't it? I couldn't get this parable out of my mind for about the last four or five days. I kept reading it, reading it, couldn't get anything out of it. It was only really last night, and this morning I just started to see, that God's wanting us to get a handle on what it means to mistreat.

So he began to beat them; and then to eat and drink with the drunkards. So there two things; the first was concerning the household - bad attitude and bad treatment of believers. The second was lifestyle - eat and drink with the drunkard, was literally to just have a lifestyle exactly like the world around you. You're living the same way they do. There's no one can tell the difference between you and someone - it's not that we're not to mix with people. It's just the lifestyle is the issue ,and it says - the only other reference in Matthew 24 to eating and drinking is: in the days of Noah, they were eating and drinking, and didn't know when the flood came. They had no idea - so what he's saying in here, simply is this: is that we are called to an incredibly great inheritance; the eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered in the heart of man, what things God's got prepared for those who love Him. It's absolutely extraordinary what God has ahead for us; and all that we have to do, is just be faithful in our part now; and in this case, this particular servant here, who was faithful and wise, he was wise because he looked ahead, and he was faithful because he did what he needed to do: build up the body, build up the believers, build up the church, being led by the spirit to help one another.

The evil one just put it all off, said: it doesn't really matter, I don't have to be accountable to anyone. I'll just do what I want to do, and then what he did was: one, he began to have a bad attitude, and treat the body of Christ badly; and secondly, his lifestyle began to be similar to those in the community. He become no longer salt and light. He says: now when the master comes, guess what he does to this one? You don't want to even go there, and I've tried to figure it out, but I think I need more insight on it - but notice what it says here; it says: the master come to him, and this is what the master did. He said - here's the first thing - the master comes when he's not looking, so here's the deal. If you live carelessly, here's one thing that's absolutely certain to happen; when the Lord comes, you will not know it. It'll catch you by surprise. See - what he says - come when the day's not ended; and second thing you notice here is, he cuts him in two. That's pretty severe isn't it? Now I don't think it's literally cutting them in half. What the cut in two referred to, how they treated severe criminals. What it means is that the treatment is quite severe, because the crime is quite severe. He said: he appointed him his portion with the hypocrites, because he's just play acting, he's not genuine. There's no genuine love for people, no genuine love and expressions of love, for the household of God; actually he's acting out a lie. He's just a Sunday person, but the reality is, in his heart, his actions and the way he runs his life, he's actually hurting what God is trying to build. That's what essentially it's saying.

And so it says: he appoint him his portion with the unbelievers - what that means, is that he will then be disqualified from his inheritance. Paul wrote, and he said, oh, he said: I run the race that I might win. I keep my body down through prayer and fasting, and I don't let my body rule me. I don't let anything rule me, that I might obtain the prize. So I encourage you to read the word of God, and look for the prize, look at the prize! Look at the prize! Look at the prize! Look at the thing that has to be won ahead of us; and has to be won by passionate, zealous, fiery lifestyle, that loves passionately the Lord, loves people passionately, and practically gets out and gets involved in ways to minister to people and build them up! What a great, exciting challenge we have ahead of us! Oh, don't look around you, what anyone else is doing! Get in the word of God, and see what is at stake; because whether you're alive on the earth when it happens, or whether you've already gone, what you do now counts for eternity! So make your life count! Make your life count! Say God: which servant am I most like? Am I taking what I have, and consciously, intentionally, led by the spirit to build people; or do I have negative attitudes, bad attitudes, and down the line one day, there's the shock of my life, He's going to come.

Oh, Father we thank you, that you are leading us and helping us to see the great destiny we have. Lord we dream of the day, when heaven will come to earth, when our bodies will be changed, when Lord we can engage in changing the affairs of the world. We thank you Lord, even at this little extent now, we've been privileged to be able sow into nations, and take our part with the orphans, with social justice, with micro finance, with bringing the Gospel, with raising leaders, with teaching and educating. We thank you Lord, we've been able to do a sample of it. Lord, we expect that in the days that come, Lord our influence will increase and grow, that Lord we will be involved in many different ways, in changing this world to advance the kingdom of God.

God, we long for your word to be fulfilled; and the day came when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, when the day came according to Daniel, when the saints possessed the kingdom, and began to advance the purpose of God. Oh we long for a day when the economies are thriving, when technology is created, when justice rules. We long to be part of it. Teach us now, to vigorously do the part we can right now, because of the greatness of what lies ahead of us.

I wonder if there's any person here doesn't know Jesus yet? You're not in the kingdom of God yet; but it's very near to you, very near. It's actually one decision, one choice you are, away from the kingdom of heaven. From everyone who received Jesus, to everyone who believed on Him, trusted him; sin is the issue. Sin keeps us out of the kingdom, but the moment we come to Christ, and acknowledge what He's done for us on the cross, and turn from our sin, a life without God, and turn to begin to walk with Him; oh my, everything begins to change. The spirit of God comes into your heart, you come alive. I wonder is there any person here today, and you say I'm right at that point, I want to give my life to Jesus, I want to become a Christian, would you raise your hand, let me know? I'd love to just pray with you.

I wonder how many people felt God speak to you about your heart attitude, and the need to have a change, the need to change; to re-look at how you relate to God's people, how you serve God's people, because in serving them you're serving Him; re-looking at how you relate to the community, because in serving them, you're serving Him.

I wonder how many people got spoke to, the need to discover what you're called to do, prepare yourself for it, and give yourself to it. I wonder how many people are right at the point, where you're discouraged in whatever area you're serving, but God has just challenged you to stand up and persevere, and be faithful to the end. If you felt God speaking in one of these ways, or another way, why don't you just raise your hand, just let's acknowledge God, you're talking to me, I'm hearing you today. God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless. Many, many people.

Father I thank you for those that have responded; and I pray for every other person, who didn't respond today, but you love them, and they're part of your family. I pray for increasing revelation of your purpose for their life, that they would grow in your love, and know how much you love them; and Lord, be inspired to make their life count, to break out of the limitations, and become great in the earth, in Jesus' name.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

Mt.24:45-51: The Faithful Servant and the Evil Servant

Context: Disciples question Jesus on the second coming and End of the Age (Mt.24:3).

(i) Parable of the Servants - attitude to the House of God

(ii) Parable of Virgins - Intimacy with the Holy Spirit

(iii) Parable of Servants - Productive service

(iv)The Nations judged - practical love

(All are evaluated)

(All experience consequences for actions)

(Consequence involves reward and loss)

Review of Teaching of Talents and Pounds (Lk:19)

(i) God invites all of us to be great in His Kingdom.

(ii) Each of us has an assignment to fulfil, a race to win.

(iii) All servants of God are evaluated and receive reward or loss.

(iv) Partnership can greatly increase how productive we are.

2. Parable of the Servants (Mt. 24: 45-51)

(a) Picture of an Oriental Householder

The Lord and Master has servants under his rule.

The Servants have responsibilities and assignments in his household.

Their duties revolve around the Master’s wishes and directions related to the affairs of his household. (Mt. 28:19; Heb. 3:13).

V45 “Made ruler over his household”

“Household” =Oiketeia NT3609= body of servants NB Eph 2:19.

“Made ruler” =NT2525= to appoint to administer office, set a person into a role.

Servant =NT1401= one who gives themselves totally to the will of another.

= This is the key to greatness in the Kingdom (Mt.20:27)

(b) The Assignment

V45 “To give them meat in due season”

“Meat” =NT5160= Food, nourishment, instruction.

“Due Season” =NT2540=Kaines= at the right time i.e. sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

Every believer has something to contribute to build the house of God.

Rom.12:3-8 “We being many are on body in Christ – members of one another”.

1 Cor. 12:18 “God has set the members each on of them in the Body just as He please”.

Eph.4:15-16 “The whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies”.

Each of us is responsible to build the household of God – the church.

God requires of each of us faithfulness in His assignment (1 Cor. 4:2).

Note Whom the Master, when He comes, find him so doing - v46.

(c) The Reward that is at Stake

V46 – 47 “He will make him ruler over all His goods”

Faithful service is rewarded in each of the 3x parable e.g. Wise Virgins – Wedding Banquet.

Rewards are not automatic; they are the consequence of how we conducted our life.

Note Mt. 25:21 Faithful over many things. Luke 19:17 Have authority over 10 cities.

Rev. 20:1-6 “And they lived and reigned with Christ 1000 years”.

(i) The Millennium is a literal 1000 year period in which Jesus will rule the earth in righteousness and peace.

(ii) The Kingdom of God will openly manifest globally affecting every sphere of life – political, social, agriculture, economic, spiritual, law, education, medical, arts, family technology and society at every level.

(iii) God’s purpose has always been that heaven and earth be joined together.

Heaven – the realm where God’s presence and power is openly manifest.

Earth – the physical realm where human life, emotions, creativity is experienced.

(iv) The natural processes of life will continue and Jesus will establish infrastructure for every sphere of life in every city and village. This will include replacing –

· Governmental leaders with new people in every area of society. God will remove evil leaders Ps110:5-6 and establish Kingdom governmental order.

· In a worldwide government He will bring Kingdom life, power, order and government. Food, water, power, building, economy, spiritual life, law, agriculture etc.

(v) During this millennial period all the Kings of the earth will worship Jesus and base their governments upon His Word (Ps. 72:11)

(vi) The Resurrected Saints will rule with Jesus as Kings and Priests

Rev.5:10 “And have made us Kings and Priests to our God and we shall reign on earth”.

· Priests = Worship, intercede, communicate knowledge of God, enter in and out of Throne.

· Kings = appoint people, train, oversee, direct and manage the global affairs.

· Rev. 2:26 “He who overcomes and keeps my works to the end I will give power over the nations”.

(vii) The resurrected Saints will govern the affairs of God and advance His Kingdom

· Teaching, training, restoring cities, restoring and administrating justice, dealing with sin.

· 1. Cor. 6:2-3 “Do you not know the saints will judge the world?”

· Dan. 7:26-27 “The greatness of the Kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people, the saints of the most high”.

· This is not automatic – it is given to those who overcome!

(d) The Evil Servant

Mt.24:48-51

Note Heart Attitude: “My Lord delays his coming”

= Don’t worry, I have plenty of time ahead of me.

Note His Behaviour

(i) “Begins to beat fellow servants” = mistreat, insult, ignore welfare = “slap in face”.

(ii) Eat and drink with the drunkard = lifestyle patterned after the world and its values.

Consequences = severe suffering and loss of inheritance, exclusion from the blessings prepared for him.

12. Filling Your Lamp

Sun 1st Apr 2012  « Back to Top

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Jesus will come again, and there's things that He wants us to be busy doing. It's not come to Jesus, fill in my life, and then go to heaven. This is so far from the plan of God as to be quite a deception. God wants your life to be powerfully engaged in advancing His kingdom. He wants you to be filled with the Holy Ghost & moving! So we share with you 3 parables, each one has something to tell us.

If you open your Bible just for a moment, I'm going to share something just briefly, and then I want to pray for people tonight, going to get people filled with the Holy Ghost aye? Get people filled with the Holy Ghost! I just want to pick up where I was speaking on this morning, [Having a Full Lamp] and I was sharing on a parable, one of the great parables in Matthew 25; and Jesus spoke, and the disciples had asked to hear Him, and they said: when are you going to come again, because they were already were aware that He was about to depart - and said: when will you return? What's the sign at the end of the age? What's the sign of you coming; and He began to describe it all.

One of the things is absolutely clear, Jesus will come again, and there's things that He wants to be busy doing. It's not, I come to Jesus, fill in my life, and then go to heaven. This is so far from the plan of God as to be quite a deception. That's not God's plan for you. God wants your life to be powerfully engaged in advancing His kingdom. He wants you to be filled with the Holy Ghost, and moving; and so we share with you three parables. One of the parables is the parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins. One is the parable of the talents; one is a parable of a story concerning how God will judge the nations. Each one's got something to tell us, now here's the thing.

This one here - I'm not going to go through the whole story, I'd encourage you to read it yourself, but this is what happened. He said: at midnight (verse 6), there was a cry heard; Behold, the bridegroom is coming. Go out and meet him; and the virgins, all of them, five wise, five foolish, rose and trimmed their lamps; and the foolish said to the wise: give us your oil, some of your oil, our lamp is going out. And the wise said: no, buy for yourself; and then those that were ready - some went out to buy, and those who were ready went into the wedding when the Lord came, and then the door was shut.

So I'm not going through all of it. If you want to know about that parable, read [Having a Full Lamp ~ Sun 1st Apr 2012 AM]. What I want to do is highlight one thing. It says that these foolish virgins, they suddenly become aware that they lacked substance of God in their life. They lacked vision, they lacked the flow of the Holy Spirit. They lacked anointing and activity of the Holy Ghost in their life. They lacked oil for their lamps; so the Bible describes them as virgins. In other words, they are people that have been set aside for the Lord, set aside to serve God; and each one of them had a lamp, pictures or is typical of your works, your life, your ministry - let your light shine before men; and in order to get the lamp burning, in order to have influence in the community, in order to influence lives with the life of God, they needed to have oil.

They needed a supply of oil, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and the thing that they suddenly realised was, they had not given time and attention to building a supply of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Now let me just talk a little bit about that, and I want to give you some simple, practical things that can change your life if you'll do them. I want you to get filled with the Holy Ghost, and a staple. I don't want any one of us to say that our lamp is going out, our influence is dimming, we're not showing up like we could show up. We don't have much life and anointing of the Holy Ghost, and I want your life to change.

My life was radically changed by the Holy Ghost. When I got the Holy Ghost, came into my life and I got filled with the spirit, my life began a radical change. I started to change on the inside. I started to change on the outside, and I changed for the better; and I have come to love the Holy Spirit. I've come to really, really love Him. The Bible says in Romans 14: the kingdom of heaven is not about eating and drinking, and keeping rules and how you dress, how you look; but it's about right standing with God, peace with God and in your heart, absence of conflict, and joy that the Holy Ghost gives.

One of the most strong characteristics, if you've got a lamp that's full of oil, is your light will shine brightly; and how will it shine? One of the ways it shines brightly is on your face. I look at a lot of people, and it would seem to me that they're incredibly depressed. I look at a lot of believers, and it would seem to me they don't look much like what they're supposed to look like. The Bible says of Jesus, in Hebrews Chapter 1: He was anointed with the oil of gladness, above everyone else. What does that mean? I'll put it very simply. He smiled the biggest smile you could ever see. There was joy in his life. He lived a joyful life in the midst of adversity, and it showed on His face. It showed on His face! There was a joy, vibrancy and a light; and He got it from a source, the Holy Ghost.

Now this is not a different Holy Ghost, to the Holy Ghost who God wants to give you, and has given you. The spirit of God, that you got in you when you received Christ, is the same one Jesus had. The anointing that came upon Him, is the same anointing that comes on you. What the difference is, what you do day by day; and so the five foolish virgins said: we want you to give us some of what you have.

Oh my, I've been in lots of places and people say: I want what you have; and usually what I end up having to say to them is: pay the price, and you can have it. Pay the price, and you can have it. There is a price to pay, to carry the life of God. There's a price. It's an internal price. It's something to do with the kind of life you live secretly before God. Jesus said: you pray in secret, God will to reward you openly. Fast in secret, god will reward you openly. Give in secret, God will reward you openly; and so there's a lifestyle to live in the sight of God, that enables you to carry joy and vitality before men.

My conclusion, after years of ministry, is that we don't really need great new things for God to do in our life. All we need to do is use what we've been given. For most people, the reality of the spirit world is not very strong for them, and part of the reason is because very simply, they don't just do the basics to get full of the Holy Ghost, to get full of the Holy Ghost. Don't you think God wants you to be full of the Holy Ghost? If you're not full of the Holy Ghost, you'll be full of depression, full of religion. [Laughs] Holy Ghost came! That's what Jesus came to fight against was religion; people that have got a form of godliness, but there's no life inside them! No joy! No vibrancy! Just depressed and living under oppressions of spirits.

Listen: the spirit world is a reality. Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant. There is a real spirit world. There is a real activity of demonic spirit; and let me just make it really personal - there's at least a half a dozen that have you in their sights. Now that's a stirring thought isn't it? Why would you think, that out of all the people in the world, the demons wouldn't pick on you, and try and steal your destiny, and steal what God has for you?

This is just part of the world we live in. We live in a fallen world. Jesus came to expose the works of the devil, and to get us filled with the Holy Ghost, and then He said: listen to me. He said: I will give you authority, and you will tread on serpents and scorpions, over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will harm you. You'll have a different kind of life. It's a life full of the Holy Ghost. He wants you to have that, so what stops you? Does God stop you? Not at all. Only two things that stop us; one is the activity of demons, who fill your mind with rubbish; and the other is the activity of yourself, choosing to believe the wrong things, and not doing the right things. They're really quite simple.

You know a lot of people would love to be able to play an instrument, but the majority of people, even if they have a gift, don't give themselves to the discipline needed in their life to excel, and so they never become great. It's just really as simple as that. So I've looked around - have you ever thought, I wonder why it is that God seems to favour that person? Why is it they seem to be so blessed? It would seem like God actually is partial, and has favourites. The answer is no, He doesn't have favourites, but He does pour His grace out on people and who He chooses. But there's what is a secret life, that you and I must have, if we want to walk in the freedom and life of the Holy Ghost. You've got to choose it. I'll tell you what - I've made a choice. Sometimes it's not easy, but I've made the choice, that the life filled with the Holy Ghost is a better life than a life of depression. I used to live depressed all the time, go to parties and drink, but none of it ever helped. You wake up the next day still depressed, and you're sick as well - not very good at all. Tell, you what, we need the Holy Ghost, but oh, that wonderful Holy Ghost, that God gives. Would you love to know - and keys to being filled with the Holy Spirit are so very, very simple.

Here's the thing I can guarantee: I can guarantee tonight, if you were to take on-board these keys, your life will change, absolutely your life will change and would it change for the better? It will change for the better, but you would need to be applying these things into your life, day by day by day, until you start to see the change. I'll just give them to you very, very simply. They're not hard and it's not rocket science. In Ephesians, Chapter 5 verse 18 it says this: Don't be drunk with wine. It doesn't say, don't have any wine at all; just says: don't be drunk with wine; and for some people that means don't have any [Laughs], because once they start, they can't stop - bit like chocolate you see. But you have a look at the problems. We've got like so many young people today, they're struggling. They have one drink - Lyn won't have one drink. If you ask Lyn, she will have no drink, no drink shall pass her lips, because she understands what happens when you go down that route, and she's made a decision: I'll be filled with the Holy Ghost, but I won't be full of wine.

So don't be drunk. That word drunk is the word methowo, like a metho, under the influence. He says: don't be drunk with wine, but rather here's the contrast to being drunk, and being under the influence of spirits; it is to get full of the Holy Ghost. Get your life full of the Holy Ghost. So speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual song - let me give you four or five simple things that will help you get full of the Holy Ghost; and I can guarantee, if you just persevere through these, and continually work on them, then your life is going to change.

Here's number one, and I gave that to Jo. I went up to Jo and I said: Jo, you're quite gifted, but you know something? I said you're drawn back inside yourself, and the real you isn't coming out, and if the real you doesn't come out, then we never get to meet the real you. We get to meet the pretending-you, and so what I did was, got her to do this thing: pray in tongues. There's one of the keys to getting full of the Holy Ghost, learn to pray strongly in tongues every day, regularly every day, and during the day. Learn to pray in tongues. Why? One Corinthians 14, once you pray in tongues, the spirit of God is praying through you, your spirit is praying, you begin to arise on the inside. I guarantee it. Just that one activity of itself, praying in tongues. If you don't know how to pray in tongues, haven't got the gift of tongues, you wouldn't want to go home without it, because the gift given to you to build your spirit man, so I pray in tongues [Prays in tongues], and I allow myself - I give myself to it. I get my body working, and I allow myself to come alive on the inside with the Holy Ghost, see.

What happens is, you stir your spirit man. Most people live out of their body and their soul, and their mind and emotions, instead of letting their spirit arise. I looked and I saw in these last few weeks with Jo, and I saw there she is, the life of God is flowing out. I can feel her spirit touching us. She's full of the Holy Ghost, absolutely wonderful, the joy and the countenance, the light on the countenance. It's where it first shows, whatever's in you shows on your face. So number one, get praying in tongues, and get praying in tongues regularly. Get up every day, and begin to build that flow of praying in the spirit. If you're praying in the spirit you can't help get filled up. Something has got to go - and I don't mean mumbling in the spirit. [Mumbles] No, this is not going to cut it. Kingdom of heaven suffers violence. Strong people push in, and get a hold of us aye, so start to pray and pray strongly. Get up and begin to pray. Shake your body, shake yourself, that you hear your voice. Hear your voice! Let your voice out! [Prays in tongues]

Now I didn't use to be like that. I used to mumble away myself. I broke out of all of that; so number one - that's number one. Here's number two: meditate in the word of God. Meditate in the word of God, and there's several ways of meditating, or using the word of God, but here's one thing you could do. Get the word of God, and start to read and pray it over your life. Pray it over your life. Thank you Lord, you are filling me with might in the inner man, by the Holy Ghost. I am filled with might today. Thank you Lord. Today you're filling me with might. You're filling my spirit with life.

Begin to speak God's word over your life. Speak it and speak it strongly, speak it clearly, and believe what you are saying. See, you say: well I didn't feel that. I didn't feel very much at all. Therein is the problem of course, you're living from your feelings rather than living out of your spirit. Now there is a place for your feelings, but your feelings will follow what you believe; and so if your believing changes, your feelings will change. I guarantee it. You start to do the things you need to do, your life will change. You can do it. You can do it. You've just got to make the choice. You see the outcome, the other side, is full of the Holy Ghost, full of the Holy Ghost, full of the Holy Ghost, hearing from God, enjoying God, starting to live a different life, a better life, starting to have an influence you haven't had before. So there's two things straight away, two things straight away: praying the word of God, so get your Bible out and start to pray things. Pray out of Ephesians, pray out of Revelations, pray the word God. Start to speak God's word over your life. Take the word of God and begin to picture: thank you Lord, you are filling me with might in my inner man. I thank you the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in me, filling me. I thank you today, my whole body is full of life and energy. Pray that kind of way - you'll find it's a different way, if you're not used to it, but what happens is, as you give yourself to this, what happens is, everything in you begins to change. You can do this. This is nothing like it's very hard, or anything like that. So there's a couple of things you could do.

Let me give you two or three other things then we'll finish up. We'll start to pray together and pray and lay hands on a few people. Here's another thing you can do, and its this: learn how practice talking to, and appreciating, the Holy Spirit. So what I've shared of course has been quite sort of strong, but you need to be strong to push stuff away from you; but in practice actually being thankful and appreciative ,and starting to talk with the Holy Spirit as a person, this will really help you. You see most of us, we become conscious or aware of all kinds of things. You become conscious of your body, you're hungry, you're tired, you're whatever; but we can focus our attention, and begin to be appreciative.

Now I've learnt something very simple. The Bible tells us that honour and gratitude give you access to God. Dishonour and ingratitude cause his presence to move away, and you go into darkness, Romans 1:21. So that makes it very simple, and it works in every area of life. If I will honour people and appreciate them, I will gain access to them. If I dishonour or disrespect them, and show ingratitude and take them for granted, then they will move away from me. This is a powerful principle in life, and so I guarantee if people are moving away in some place, there's disrespect and lack of appreciation. Restore that back into the relationship and it'll begin to shift again.

So applying that to our relationship with God, if I will begin to just talk with Him: thank you Holy Spirit. I thank you you're living in me. Thank you, today you are joined in me. You are empowering me. I yield and surrender to you Holy Spirit. I so appreciate you. Come and speak to me today. Come and talk with me, come and fellowship with me. Come and show me the ways of Jesus, show me things from the word of God - and you begin to talk, and not talk loud and strong, but talk gently. Talk consciously, like you're addressing a person, like you're just someone that close to you, and you're talking with them as a real person. See most believers, most Christians forget the spirit of God is living inside them. We think and live out of our experiences of being alone and lonely, instead of actually living out of the new reality: I am never alone, ever again.

God is in me and with me, so you begin to meditate on that. You begin to think. You can do that even in a car, begin to pray in tongues; one minute praying in tongues, and then beginning to talk and say: thank you Holy Spirit. I feel your presence here. Here's the next thing, the fourth thing you can do, is very, very simply, just practice yielding to Him, and that's quite simple to do. Holy Spirit, I just yield every part of me today. I yield my spirit, each and every part of my spirit. I yield and surrender to you today - and then go through each part of your body, and begin to yield it to Him. Learn to let go control.

So here's the last one; practice dealing with issues in your life very quickly. In Ephesians 4:30, it tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit; so you can actually grieve the Holy Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 5:18, don't quench the Holy Spirit. So the activity of the Holy Spirit in your life, you can hurt Him or grieve Him, and make Him terribly heartbroken about you by certain things. The kinds of things that make Him heartbroken are usually attitudes to people; so in Ephesians 4 it tells us: don't let there be bitterness. Don't let there be anger. Don't let there be resentment. Don't let there be these things in your heart, because they will grieve the kindness and goodness of the Holy Spirit. So when you start to deal with issues of your heart, very quickly, anything comes into your heart, repent of it very quickly. You help cultivate the atmosphere of being filled with the spirit.

Don't quench the spirit. To quench the spirit means to act in ways that resist His work in your life, so let me tell you one thing that was just - trying to be cool is quenching the Holy Ghost. You want to be cool? You want to be cool with the Holy Ghost? Very simple, because when the Holy Ghost fills you, He deals with the issue of pride; and we want to look good in the face of people. So by osmosis, if you want to be cool and want to look good in the face of people, the chances are you won't be looking too good before God. So instead of looking cool, learn to let go and say: God, I just want all that you have for me. So we can quench the Holy Spirit by looking cool. We can quench the Holy Spirit by control, consciously trying to control our life and run our life, and just have God as an add on God. He's not an add-on God, so don't treat Him with disrespect.

Thank you Lord, today you're helping me in every part of my life, so that means I need to address properly any little things that go on in my heart that aren't right. You know they're not right. The moment you're aware of them, just put them right quickly; and if you practice doing these things consistently every day, your life will begin to change. Praying in the Holy Ghost, meditating on and speaking the word of God over your life, appreciating and expressing your gratitude and honour to the Holy Spirit; and becoming sensitive to Him, and then yielding, and so you let go the things that are going on in your life. If there's any issues that are wrong, you put them right very quickly. What you'll find happening - I guarantee it - is you'll start to increase in the flow of the spirit in your life.

How many feel that God's challenging you tonight about some things related to walking with him? You may be here and don't know Jesus Christ at all. If you don't know Him, you don't have his spirit, his loving spirit living in your heart; if you're living a life without God, that could all change in just a moment of time, in one decision.

What keeps us separate from God is sin, when we consciously live apart from God doing our own thing our own way, that's what sin is. What happens is, we live a life separated from God and from His spirit, and from His presence and from purpose in our life; but all of that could change in a moment. Jesus said: to everyone who received Him, He gave power to become a child of God, who believed on Him. So this is a necessity in our life, to acknowledge we have lived a sinful life, done our own thing; and to acknowledge what Christ has done, and receive Him.

I wonder if there's any person tonight, that you're at that place in your heart, and you'll say: actually I need to receive Jesus. I need to become a Christian. I need to have a change. I've tried all my own things, and it's getting nowhere fast, but tonight I believe God would change me. I believe He's able to change me. I believe He's willing to change me. I believe it'll happen if I respond. If that's you tonight, you're willing to become a Christian and receive Christ into your life, that's a great decision to make.

Perhaps you're living far from God. It's been a long time since you felt close to God. Tonight you feel God drawing on your heart, to turn from just living a backslid and lukewarm oil-less life. Lamp's nearly gone out, no sign that people could easily see that you're a believer, a follower of Christ. If God is speaking to you about that tonight, would you raise your hand and say: God's talking to me about that, I want to respond. God bless. Anyone else? God bless. God was speaking to you tonight about making steps to change, to begin to move forward, and to shift the things that are in your life, by applying some of the principles I gave you tonight.

We're going to live a powerful life to the Lord, going to start to rise up and get hold of God; and as you get a hold of Him, start to begin to focus on what your destiny is. Don't hold back. Don't be proud in your heart. Don't be worried about what people think of you. Be real with God and with yourself tonight. Praise the Lord. God, I just thank you for each one that's responded. I pray for your spirit to come upon them. Why don't we have the Pastor's leaders just to come, just lay hands on and pray and minister different ones that come forward. Let's just finish in a final song and let's thank the Lord. Jesus, lift His name up.

13. Having a Full Lamp

Sun 1st Apr 2012  « Back to Top

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How will we know the end of the age? How will we know your second coming? One of the great things for us as believers is to know that not only Jesus came once, He will come again. There are massive issues related to His second coming that affect how you live your life. So Jesus spoke some parables and He had three parables and each parable brings out a different aspect of His coming.

I want you to open up your Bible with me in Matthew, Chapter 25. It's the Parable of the Virgins, five wise, five foolish. When you read it you automatically think I wouldn't be a foolish one. I must be a wise one and it may not be so though.

Then the kingdom of heaven should be likened to 10 virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five were wise and five were foolish, and those who were foolish took with them their lamps, but took no oil with them. That's a bit strange isn't it? And the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept, and at midnight a cry was heard: behold the bridegroom is coming. Go out and meet Him. Then all the virgins rose up, trimmed the lamps, and suddenly the foolish realised their lack of oil. They said to the wise: give us some of your oil, our lamps are going out; and the wise said: no, no, less there be not enough for us and for you. Go rather to those who sell, buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and those who were ready went in with them to the wedding, and the door was shut. And afterward the other virgins came also saying: Lord, Lord, open to us, and He answered and said: surely I say to you, I do not know you; and then Jesus applies it: watch therefore, you know not the day, nor the hour, at which the Son of Man is coming.

Now it's helpful if we see the context that Jesus is speaking, context is the background, otherwise you've just got one story on its own. The context for this is found in Matthew 24. The disciples asked this: how will we know the end of the age? How will we know your second coming? One of the great things for us as believers is to know not only Jesus came once, He will come again; and there are massive issues related to His second coming that affect how you live your life. If you don't understand anything about the second coming, chances are you won't worry, just go on with your life, and not understand the tremendous issues that are at stake for us.

So Jesus spoke some parables, and He had three parables, and each parable brings out a different aspect of His coming; so one of the parables brings out that Jesus is represented as a bridegroom. In other words, the Bible uses a picture to describe what He's like, and what He's like is a bridegroom; you think of people who love weddings. I mean everyone loves a wedding, come to the wedding, everyone's dressed up. You see the groom standing there, waiting for the bride to come down the aisle, and it's an exciting event a wedding; and then afterwards there's a great feast and celebration, and dancing and partying. Weddings are great - but when it's talking about the bridegroom ,it's presenting Jesus like this: that He is passionate with desire for you! He intensely loves you, and is willing to do everything He can to win your heart. He's the bridegroom.

Then it represents Him, in one of the parables, as a King. When Jesus is represented as a King, He's represented as something with great power, extraordinary supernatural power, able to transform individual lives, groups of people, families, cities and nations. And so the Bible presents that Jesus is a King, He has a kingdom, and He calls us to obey. He calls us to bring our lives into alignment with Him, for blessing and for destiny. Then the third way He's presented, He's presented as a judge. Now people don't like that aspect of Jesus. We just want to hear He's a bridegroom, He loves me and I love Him and I have a wonderful time.

Actually, you have to have several aspects of Jesus to get the proper picture. One of the things to see is, Jesus is also a judge. As a judge, He will come to remove all oppression, and all injustice. He will remove everything from the earth that opposes love. Why? Because He's a passionate lover, and He won't let anything stay that would hinder love. So in order to understand what Jesus is like, you've got to see Him not just in one of those pictures, but in all three. You've got to see Him as the bridegroom, who loves us passionately; as the King, who has power to change our lives, and desires to rule over all the earth; and as the judge, who will come and address all issues of injustice, and all issues of wrong.

Now if you only have a picture of Him as the bridegroom, you get all sentimental; Oh, Jesus, you love me, and I love you; and oh, having a wonderful time, and I just want more. If that is all you have, you actually become weak and ineffective, and we don't live out what we're called to do. We need to see Him not only as the one who loves us, and enjoy that; but also to see Him as a King, and He has a kingdom, and there are ways of living that bring blessing, and there's an order He wants to establish. We see Him as judge, we understand we need to deal with issues in our life first, because God calls us to judge with Him.

All of these aspects of Jesus that are important, and they turn up all through the Bible. Let me just show you a few places they turn up. Want you to have a look with me; just hold Matthew 25, we'll come back in a moment. Look into Revelation 19. Now you'll look, and when you start to look at the Bible, just look for how Jesus is presented, and you'll find He's presented in different places; Song of Solomon, He's the groom. The Book of Kings, He's a King. The Book of Revelation, He's the groom, and He's the King, and He's the judge. Now look at some of these things here, in Revelations, Chapter 19. Look at this, and it says in verse 7: let us be glad and rejoice, and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the lamb has come; and His wife has made herself ready, and to her was granted that she would be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; so it talks about the groom, and the wedding. The marriage supper - Verse 10 - of the lamb has come, so there He is, the groom.

Now look at Him in Verse 11. Now I saw heaven open, and behold a white horse, and He that sat on him was called "faithful and true and righteous", He judges and makes war. So now He's not just a bridegroom, and it's not about a wedding; it's about a war, a global war. Do not think there'll be peace forever. God speaks of an end time, and a global war when He will come, and it'll be messy. It'll be very messy. A large number of peoples will die during that season, when the Lord comes again, to establish His kingdom. Everything that opposes love will be confronted and dealt with.

Notice it says: He comes to judge and make war. His eyes like a flame of fire, on His head were many crowns. Look at this, verse 14: the armies of heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him; so He's going to be doing this with His people. Out of His mouth goes a sharp sword to strike the nations, and He will rule with a rod of iron; and on His robe is, in fire, a name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lord. So again you see, the coming of the Lord, John saw something yet to come, and He saw at the end time a wonderful wedding feast and a marriage; and then he saw Jesus coming as a mighty King; and he saw a great war and the earth being judged. All are aspects of Christ, not just one; and when you look at Jesus ministry, you find it starts with a wedding, and ends with a wedding. Book of Revelation; have a look at Jesus' ministry, it begins at a wedding feast, it ends with a marriage supper.

Now let's have a look, and go into Matthew 25. Now in order to understand Matthew 25, you do need to understand a little bit about what this would have meant to those who heard it. Now for us, we look and it's a strange story; lamps and oil, and shout of a bridegroom coming, and people going out in the middle of the night; and doors shut and all that kind of thing. It means very little to any of us, because we have a different concept of a wedding. We think: you come to the church, the groom's here, and the bride comes down. There's music, and we all go to the party afterwards. We think that - but the Jewish wedding was completely different.

What would happen is, the son would - either his father would arrange the marriage for him; or they would send a servant to arrange a marriage for him, so they had arranged marriages in the Bible. They worked quite well apparently - or the son himself would go, and he would seek out a bride that he would marry; so the son would come, and when he came he would carry with him an immense amount of money, which was the dowry. He had a purchase price. The second thing he would carry with him, was the wedding contract; and the third thing he'd have with him was wine; and what he would do is, he would go and he would meet with the bride and with her family, and present out the proposal of a wedding.

And there was a price to pay; and then the bride, then they would sit down and they would have a meal together; and the cup of wine would be passed around, and if the bride accepted the cup of wine, and drank the cup of wine, then that means she was accepting engagement. She was now considered, from a Jewish point of view, she is now married to him; even though the wedding's not consummated, the marriage is not consummated, she is now legally married to this man - and yet the wedding doesn't take place fully until a season later.

So at that point they're betrothed. Mary was betrothed to Joseph. That's how it happened. So a woman who was betrothed had to remain faithful in the period of time of preparation; so the man would then go back to his father's house and prepare the bridal chamber, and that may take a while; prepare a dwelling place. Now that you begin to understand what Jesus meant when He said: I go to my Father's house to prepare a place for you, this is all wedding language. They understood what that meant.

When Jesus said: I've longed to drink this cup with you, and they drank the cup at communion, now you understand what He was talking about. He was proposing in marriage. He was setting forth a new covenant. This is what He said: this is the new covenant. He's talking about marriage, and what He's saying is: I've come, and I'm presenting a new covenant. Drink this with me, and this will bind together God and man in a marriage covenant. Then He says: now I'll be leaving. I'll be going to my Father, and I'll be preparing a place for you, and then I will come again.

Then what would happen was, the bride had no idea when the groom would come. The groom came when the father said it was time to come, and he would determine whether everything was ready. Then he'd say: it's time to come, and the groom and his friends would come, and they would come at night, and they would come with lamps burning; and then the shout, the bridegrooms best man would shout: the bridegroom is coming! Now the bride had to be awake, so she'd have a lamp, and she needed to have oil in the lamp to keep the lamp alight. She would wake when she heard - because you never know what night he's coming - you can imagine the anticipation; and then suddenly the shout goes up, and quickly she'd rise up, and she's been spending her time preparing how to be a great wife, how to be a great mother. She's all ready, and she goes out to meet; and there it is. It's a wonderful thing. There it is - there's lights and torches, the groom, his friends, his party is with him. The bride comes out. She has her lamp, and then she goes with the groom, and they go back to the father's house where there's a wedding chamber; and they go in, and the door is shut, and no one can go in there.

And then there's a tremendous feast and celebration. Now that is what the Jews understood. Now when you read this, and see what Jesus did, you get a much better idea. So let's have a look. He says: then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened to 10 virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Then is referring to at the end of the age, it's talking about the coming of the kingdom. There is a time yet to happen, when this will take place, and this is what will happen. There were 10 virgins, he said, so the kingdom, the day when the kingdom comes in full manifestation of power on the earth will be like this. It'll be like 10 virgins. Now the word virgin refers to someone who's kept themselves pure. In 2 Corinthians Paul writes, and he says: I have espoused you to Christ as a virgin. What he's saying is: when you receive Jesus Christ, your sins were washed away. You were made clean. You now spiritually become a virgin, a person undefiled, and you have entered into a marriage covenant with Jesus Christ. You've entered into a relationship with Christ, we are called to be faithful to Him. We are called to keep our lives pure for Him. We are called to be His bride, to represent Him in the earth, and to prepare ourselves for this coming day.

Notice this - 10 virgins, the number 10 speaks of the full number of whatever's in view, so it's speaking not of unsaved but saved. It's speaking of believers. Let me ask you this: are you wise, or are you foolish? And the only way you know you're wise or foolish, is if you see what's at stake here, and see what they did. So you notice that all of the virgins had a lamp. The lamp was a small container with a wick, and it gave out oil. It used up oil, gave out light; so the lamp, now the lamp speaks of having capacity to shine light somewhere. Every believer has a lamp. Your lamp is your life, and in John 5, Jesus said of John the Baptist: he is a bright shining lamp. In other words, you are a bright shining lamp. Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 5, He said: let your light so shine before men, that they will see your good works. So what does it mean to have your light shining? It means you are doing something that is constructive, advances the kingdom of God, acts of kindness. You are doing something, not just in a prayer room, but you are actually doing something that causes people to know you are the real deal. You have got something in your life that I want. You carry the life of God. So let your light so shine, that men may see what you do, your good works and glorify your Father who's in heaven.

In other words he's saying the church must become a light to the community in every aspect; so every one of the virgins had a lamp. The difference was between those who had oil, and those who had no oil, or didn't have an adequate supply. Let's just follow the story through, and see how that works out for us, so the oil or no oil. So notice the first one is, the five virgins, or the wise virgins, that had oil. Oil always in the Bible is a picture for us of the Holy Spirit. It's a picture, you know, we're anointed with oil; so they put oil on, and the Holy Spirit would come on people, so the five wise had oil. What does it mean, that they had oil?

It means they had taken time to build intimacy with the Holy Spirit. They'd taken time in prayer, and the word of God, to come to know Him, to hear His voice, to yield to his leadership and direction in their lives; just as Esther yielded to Hagar, and Hagar prepared her, we are called to let the Holy Spirit prepare our lives. Listen - you cannot run your life just with a Bible. You need the Holy Spirit, the fire of God, the oil of His presence, alive in great quantities in your life.

A little while ago we were talking about praying in tongues, energising your spirit man, and letting God fill you with life, fill you with vibrancy. So this having oil has to do with our spirit life. It has to do with the kind of life you're living with God, where no one sees. It's the kind of life - what kind of prayer life you have; what kind of time in the word of God? Are you letting God's word change your life? Are you letting God's word shift your mind? That's how you become filled. The word of God is power to change us, and fill us afresh with the Holy Spirit; so the wise virgins had oil, and the oil of the Holy Spirit touches your heart. He softens our heart. He shows us where we've gone wrong. He helps us to repent. He gives us grace to stay on course. He brings things, and reveals things, to us. We need the Holy Ghost in our life. That's why - church without the Holy Ghost, what is it? It's dead. Something is missing in there.

You and I need that light with the Holy Ghost; and listen, you come into Bay City, it is a Holy Ghost church. There's a great dimension here, but you've got to make sure you've got the oil yourself. You've got to get the oil yourself, so we're teaching some of our leaders here how to become conscious of God, conscious of the Holy Spirit, so they learn how to yield and flow and work with the Holy Spirit. We all need to be able to do that. All of us can do that. It's why I've got a seminar on activating the gifts, but it's more than activating the gifts. It's getting oil inside you, so you're full of the life of God.

So what about the five foolish virgins? The five foolish virgins took no oil. They had no oil. In other words - get this, I want you to see what this means; it means they were so busy with life, doing things, they failed to build an adequate personal devotional life; just like Mary and Martha. Mary was commended for placing priority on relationship over works. It's not either/or. Works, what we do, needs to come out of what we are in His presence; and the only way you can do that is if you build a prayer life, build a life in the word of God. Build one - you say: well, I can't do it, I'm not good at it. Everyone can! Everyone can, and if you don't know what to do, put your hand up and ask. Don't say in that day: I'm sorry, I didn't have enough.

Notice there was no room for the virgins to give an explanation of why they had no oil. There were just consequences for no oil; and so in this last day before the coming of the Lord, there'll be increasing emphasis on a number of things: one, there'll be increasing emphasis on the marriage relationship with Jesus, that He loves us, that He desires us, on intimacy with Him. There's going to be an increasing emphasis on that. Second, there'll be an increasing emphasis on the kingdom advancing through the earth; and thirdly, there'll be an increasing emphasis on social justice; and Christians need to be full of the Holy Ghost. So they didn't, now look what happened; there came a cry at midnight. Midnight's the darkest hour - so they all slept and slumbered because He delayed; and there's a tendency when the Lord's not come, and we don't know that He's coming, and we think it's a long way off, or it's not going to happen soon; we tend to just sleep and slumber, and not really notice what's going on.

Finally there is a cry comes, and there is definitely going to be a prophetic voice. It's already started speaking to the church: Jesus is the lover of your soul! Jesus is a coming bridegroom. Notice what the voice was - behold, He comes. Go out and meet Him. So three things: number one, Jesus is coming! He is coming! He will return! Two, He will return as a bridegroom, passionately in love with you. Three, go out and meet Him. Rise up and begin to engage personally in your personal life with God. Engage personally in intimacy with Him. Don't neglect that side of your life and think oh, somehow it all works out. It doesn't. It doesn't. There's just consequences and choices.

So let's have a look, and it says - notice here that the five foolish virgins, they rose up and they said: oh, give us some oil. Our lamp is going out. So what they're saying simply is this: we are not having impact with our life anymore. Our lamp is going out. One of the biggest concerns I have in my personal life is, my lamp never go out. When your lamp is going out, it means there's an absence of Holy Spirit presence around your life and activities. When the lamp is going, there's a lack of fresh revelation from heaven, there's a lack of hearing the voice of God. When your lamp goes out, you're having little or no effect in the community.

It is a great concern in my life that my light burn bright. It is a great concern to Jesus that His church, individually and corporately, shine brightly, that there's passion, fire, life, a reality of something with God that overflows; and we want to do things that represent Him, and advance His kingdom. So the five foolish virgins came to realise - and notice this - they were busy, and they were doing lots of things, but they didn't realise until the cry came: He's coming; we're out of oil. I think it's very easy. Now just think about this: how many of you remember when once you were passionately on fire for Jesus? And now the fire is really dim. You've run out of oil. We need to do something about that. We need to re-engage in our life with Him, and our love with Him. We need to see what's coming in, and repent, and do the first works again, begin to be back excited.

I felt the Holy Ghost just so challenge me. I want you to be back, so excited about the things you first were excited about, stirring me to coming alive into a new dimension again. So they said: we want to have what you have. Here's the thing that they said: no, you can't have it. Seems very selfish doesn't it, but here's what the deal is. You cannot transfer the intimacy, and preparation of the heart, one person has to another. I can share my light with you. I can light up your life. I can release anointing to you, but the one thing I cannot do, is substitute; or give to you what only you can do, in your time with God. No one can do it for you, no one.

It's not a matter of how gifted you are. It's not a matter of what talents, education you have. It's not even a matter of how much money you have, it's not about whether you're a minister, everything - every believer is called to shine. Every believer is given the Holy Spirit. It's our decision, what we do in building intimacy with Him. What a challenge!

They said: no, you have to go and buy it for yourself! You have to pay the personal price! Young people, it's great to come to a camp - let me tell it and put it real simple: you came into someone else's oil in life. Make it your own. Be determined. I want what I saw on those leaders. I want that fire of God! I want that life of the Holy Ghost! I want to burn passionately, and make my life count for something! I want what they have - and you can't just get it from them, but you can learn from people, how to build your devotional life. You can learn how to pray. You can learn how to pray, read the word of God, how to meditate in the word of God, how to gain insight to heaven from what God's word says. Everyone can do it! Even if you can't read - Janice, two hours a day in the night, she will play an audio CD, and the word comes into her; because her reading's not so good, but that's not stopping her get the word of God. I understand she's already gone through the Bible a whole number of times, which would be more than many others. No education, very little reading skill, and yet passion for God. That counts. It really counts.

So go and buy it for yourself! So then finally it says: while they went to buy it the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with them to the wedding, and then the door was shut; and so you see, the bridegroom came. Those that were ready - there is a time coming Jesus will come. It's absolutely certain. Who knows when - but those who are ready, those who were prepared immediately arose, and were able to enter in. What did they enter into? They entered into intimacy. They entered into an experience with God. They entered into the third heaven. They entered into a new realm with God. They entered into a totally different dimension, that you have to qualify yourself for, by intimacy with the Holy Ghost.

What about the five who were foolish? The five who were foolish went away. By the time they'd done what they needed to do to prepare and came back, He said: the door is shut. That means that opportunity has ceased. Now I can't even begin to imagine what that must mean, but for 2000 years there's been a door of opportunity open for people. I would hate to come and find the door shut, because at the coming of the Lord I was not passionate, zealous and on fire for Him! Of all the things that would grieve and break my heart, it would be that. I could suffer the loss of everything, but not that. That is your destiny. See, we talk about destiny, and people think of it in terms of: well I'll do a business, or I'll do this, or I'll do that. Listen, our destiny is far bigger than that. You are called to an eternal destiny, of which your time on this earth is just your preparation and apprenticeship. The only reason people don't prepare, is they don't know what's at stake. I urge you to read, and find out what's at stake.

Can you imagine, since they came and they knocked, and He said: I didn't know you - now notice this; it doesn't say they weren't Christians. It doesn't say they were evil. It doesn't say they were bad people. It just said: I don't know you; or in other words: I have no intimacy with you. You're a Sunday Christian. I have no intimacy with you. Day by day, there's no connection and fellowship, and sharing your heart and your pain and your struggles in your life. There's no opening your life to the anointing of the Holy Spirit; when I speak, you don't hear. You actually just run your life just like everyone else in the world, but with this think that somehow you'll go to heaven. He said: actually I don't really know that. That's not what I came to do. I came to talk about a coming kingdom, and your part in it. I came to offer you a kingdom, and a place in it, but you took it so lightly.

I'll share with you another parable shortly, and you'll see all three aspects in the one parable: of Jesus being the groom; the King; and the judge; and you'll see what is required for us. So one thing that's required in this parable here, Jesus applies it very simply, He says: watch. Watch - and watching's always connected with prayer - watching has to do with staying spiritually vibrant and alive, and connected with what the Holy Spirit is saying. Watch and pray. How do I watch and pray? I've got to build a devotional life, and be connected, not just with the Holy Spirit, but with His body and with His people, and let the life of God grow in me. Prayer, meditating in the word, praying the word of God, repenting when little things come up, keeping a clear conscience before the Lord - it's not rocket science. It's what's called basics, keeping your relationship alive.

I'll just finish with this. Can you imagine - many of you have seen this. You've seen a wedding take place, and you've been in here and seen the couple come up, and oh, the beauty of it all, and the emotion of it all. The intentions are all so good; and how tragic some years later, when you see that they're totally separated, and living apart. Everyone in our heart knows this is not right, and there are lots of reasons, and all the kinds of things that come up, but in your heart you know love was meant to be forever. This is the same with our relationship with God. Our love is meant to be forever, to stay passionately in love with Him. What has got in the way? What is causing your light to flicker? What is draining out the oil of the Holy Spirit? What sorts of things? You know the Bible tells us: don't grieve the Holy Spirit, and let your light begin to flicker. If you're angry with people, and bitter with people, hold anger, unresolved issues in your heart - don't do that! Why? It'll stop the flow of oil, the flow of the Holy Spirit! Be passionate for the flow of the Holy Spirit in your life and do whatever you need to ensure it's there.

Let's just close our eyes. Father, we thank you for great promises of a great day. Oh, what a great day when our groom, when Jesus Christ Himself comes, when He gathers us up, and takes us into a new dimension of intimacy, and then influence, power and authority to change this world. What an immense privilege we have. Lord, today I pray that every one of us would become fired in the Holy Ghost, to have a fresh love for the spirit of God, a fresh yieldedness to the Holy Ghost, fresh devotional life, and to carry with our life a bright and shining light, that flows from inside.

Just while our eyes are closed, has God spoken to you today? How is your relationship with the Holy Ghost? How is your prayer life? Are you praying? Is there passion? Are you in the word and reading, and God's speaking new things to you; or are you living out of yesterday's experience? Are you receiving fresh insight from God, because you stay hungry to learn? I realised it's not what's external that counts. It's that: am I still hungry in my pursuit for Jesus? Am I hungry in my pursuit for the Holy Spirit? Am I doing the things in my life, to position myself for Him to flow through me, and in me; and my light shine brightly?

Has God spoken to you today about your devotional life, about attitudes of heart that are quenching your life? Would you raise your hand, so God's speaking to me today? I need to make some change - God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless - many hands going up. Father, we thank you. Father, I pray for great grace to come upon each person that responded to you today to change and to build a great and powerful life with you, that overflows with light into our community and everyone says ... Amen!

14. Easter Service (2012)

Sun 8 Apr 2012  « Back to Top

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Great Power was released at Jesus Death & Resurrection. The veil in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, the rocks (hard places) were split in two. The graves were opened. There was another greater (megas) earthquake. The stone was rolled back. Jesus arose from the dead, and many saints arose from the dead also.

I love Easter. Easter was the time of the year when I got filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the power of God for the first time, baptised in the spirit down in Waikanae at a camp. I had an encounter with God that changed my life, and I want just to speak on the power of resurrection this morning briefly. You got a Bible - be great if you could open it.

I want to draw your attention to a couple of things that people don't notice, or don't realise, about Easter - what happened at the original time when Jesus died and rose from the dead. One of the things that we understand in the Christian faith, the great hope we have, is the resurrection. I don't know how people can live their life, not being sure where they're going, what's going to happen the other side of death, what's going to happen after you die. I don't know how people can live like that, without having the assurance that we have, as believers and followers in Christ, that there definitely is a resurrection. Death does not end it all.

Let's have a look, and I want to look at two scriptures, Matthew 27 and 28, and they describe what happened when Jesus died. We're not going to go to all of it. I just want to draw your attention to a couple of parts of it, firstly about Jesus' death, and so in Verse 50, Matthew 27 verse 50, and it said: Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit. Then behold the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; the earth quaked, the rocks were split, the graves were opened; and many of the bodies of the Saints who'd fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, went into the Holy City and appeared to many. And the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and what happened, they were terribly frightened, they were greatly afraid, said: truly this is the Son of God.

The first thing I want to describe, just to talk to you a little bit about Jesus' death. Many have seen the film "The Passion of the Christ", so you understand the horrors of how Jesus was put to death, and I want you to notice something about His actual death on the cross. The Bible says that: He cried with a loud voice. In other words, He shouted out! Now I've been with many people who died. You know what one thing is common with all of them, apart from the fact they died was this: they died very quietly, very quietly. I've seen, and been with many people when they've died, and usually what happens is, their voice gets very, very quiet, because they have very little breath left; and then as they die, often the voice fades away completely. Then there's often a rattle, and they breathe their last breath. That's how many people that I've watched die, and that has been how they died. It's very, very quiet. Sometimes it was so quiet, you never heard a thing, just suddenly you were aware that they had gone.

But this is not so with Jesus. The Bible says, now you've got to understand he'd been whipped severely, scourged, the Crown of Thorns put on, nailed on the cross. He'd hung on the cross for three hours, from midday to 3.00pm, and right there - notice this - right there at the very time that the religious people who crucified Him were offering up the lamb, the Passover lamb, to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the nation, which was done once a year in memory of the original Passover; right there at that very point when they were doing that, the Bible says: Jesus shouted with a loud shout!

In other words, He gave a mighty victorious shout that He had won a great battle! He had won a great battle. It was a shout - when Jesus died, two things the Bible tells us: one, He shouted a shout of victory; and two, He let go His spirit. He let go. He gave up His life. It was never taken from Him. He had power to do that, something you and I don't have. So it was a shout of victory. Why was it a shout of victory? Because Jesus knew something, that no one else around there knew, and all the demonic powers did not know. If they'd known, they would never have crucified Him. He knew something they did not know. He knew that He was acting as a representative of all humanity; for centuries upon centuries upon centuries, thousands of years, people had been born, had lived and died; born, lived, died; generation after generation, suffering the impact of the first man's sin, and no one could do anything to stop it. When Jesus came, He came to represent what God is like, the love of God, and the heart of God. Then when He died on the cross, He took with Him to the cross our sins and failures. He also took to the cross the list of every fault and failure and sin that was listed against us.

The Bible says in Colossians 2:14, it says: He took the handwriting, the list of every law of God that we ever broke. He took the list of everyone, everything you've done in your past, have done today, will do later today, will do in the future - everything wrong in the whole span of your life, and the life of every other person; He took it all, and nailed it to the cross. And the Bible says in Colossians 2:14: when Jesus took that list and put it on the cross, He disarmed every principality and power. He took from the devil his power to hold you in bondage. If you're in bondage, it's your choice that's causing it. If you're in bondage, it's your beliefs that's causing it. If you're in bondage, it's your habits that's causing it. It's not because God hasn't made a way for you.

When Jesus died on the cross, the Bible says: He disarmed; He took away from every demon the right, the power, the authority, the privilege, the ability to oppress you with sickness, disease and torments. He disarmed them, literally took away their power, and you and I have to understand that's why He shouted out: great victory; because He knew in a moment of time, as He let go His life, He had represented humanity before God, and now He offered the sacrifice of His life; the devil's power to hold everyone in bondage was now broken. So His shout was a shout of victory.

Now we know not only that. We know that when God has his hand on something, He demonstrates it usually with some form of power manifestation. I want you to notice the things that happen, distinct things that happen, because most of us understand the cross. We don't understand the things that happened around it. Notice the first thing that happened was that the earth shook. There was a massive earthquake the moment Jesus died. That was not a coincidence. That was God - heaven was opening up, and God was saying: this sacrifice that Jesus has offered, on behalf of all men, is acceptable to me, and so He shook earth.

Now I don't know if you've been down in Christchurch, you know what earthquakes are like, but usually when you get a fairly massive earthquake, when you get a massive earthquake - people freak out. They freak out. They start screaming, running, yelling. Now this earthquake was strong enough to shatter rocks. It was big enough to shatter rocks. Now that's got to be a sizeable earthquake, to cause rocks to shatter. So I want you to picture yourself there, that Jesus - the Bible tells us there was a darkness over the land, an unusual darkness. There was no explanation for it. There was darkness over the land from 12 midday, the brightest time of the day normally; darkness, total darkness right over the land from 12 until 3.00pm; and then the moment Jesus died, immediately as He gave this great shout of victory over the devil, and all his works on behalf of man, God responded with a power demonstration from heaven, and four things happened; number one, there was a massive earthquake. Number two, it was so strong, that rocks just shattered and broke. I understand that the remains of some of those rocks are there to this day. The third thing that happened was, God took the temple veil, and He literally tore it - notice it says: from top to bottom, it was ripped open. Now the veil was a very, very thick curtain, that kept ordinary people out from the presence of God; and so in the temple, only a priest could go into the holy place once a year, and so at this time of the year, this very time, the priest would have gone in there to that holy place, to offer a sacrifice on behalf of the nation. Normally he would not be seen. No one would see. No one was allowed there. It was death to go there, and suddenly it's ripped completely open; and what had never been seen before, was seen. God was announcing to the world: by the death of my Son, I made it possible for every person to access me. Every person can have a relationship with God, through faith in Jesus Christ, and what He did. Every person can access the presence of God. Every person can come personally to God. There's no need for someone to come on our behalf.

The next thing you notice, and this is the unusual one, it tells us that the graves were opened. Now so when the earthquake came, not only did it shake the ground, and broke the rocks, but it also opened up graves. I don't know whether you've ever seen any open graves at all. They're not very nice! Now these are people who would have been entombed, and so there was a boulder over the tomb, and the boulder was rolled away or split or whatever, and the tomb was opened up. Or they were people who were in the ground, the ground just cracked open. Now have you ever seen when there's been a major damage in an earthquake? They had a bit of it in Christchurch, where some of the graves had broken open, and the bones of people were actually visible. It's usually a shock and a horror when people see that kind of stuff, but this was widespread. Graves everywhere around that area opened up - and can you imagine what that's like, the fear that would have come upon people at that moment? Can you imagine the fear? Firstly the earthquake; secondly rocks around which are normally hard, shattering; and third, graves opening up, and you can see bodies! Now they're not in good shape. Most of them would just be bones. They'd be decayed away, and there's just fragments of bones, and its left open, just like that, all over the place - open graves.

So often these are the things that we don't see, so we don't read these aspects around the crucifixion. Now why is it that God did a thing like that? Firstly, the display of power is to demonstrate that His favour was on the offering that Jesus did. Second thing was, when He opened the grave, the Bible says: when we sin, the wages of sin is death. The consequence of sin is separation from God, ultimately physical death. Now what's happened is, at the death of Jesus Christ, suddenly all the graves are open, and God is putting on display: this is the consequence of sin. Horrible. No one wants to look at a grave, no one looks at the dead body, there, open in front of everyone, so everyone could see this is the consequence of sin. So Jesus declared: He'd won a victory over the devil. Very soon, He's going to demonstrate His power again, and He's going to get a victory over death, so I want you to read with me just another passage now.

So the first thing we see is, Jesus died on the cross, He won a victory, totally, over the devil; and made it possible for us to come near, personally access God. Here's the second thing we see then, the graves open, and the consequence of sin exposed. Now I want you to have a look at this - go into Matthew 28. Now after the Sabbath, this is the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. Now look at Verse 2. Many of you perhaps read it, and never noticed this: behold, there was a great earthquake, another earthquake, a second earthquake - so there were two earthquakes. There was an earthquake the moment Jesus died, God shook the ground like that, shook everyone up, and it was so scary that even toughened, hardened Roman soldiers were terrified, and knew it was the Son of God. It's definitely the Son of God! Now these guys had been campaign-hardened military men, and they were shaken to the core of their being with fear at what they saw, and acknowledged: this was truly the Son of God. They got saved right at that point.

Now I want you to see something else happens. Now, here it is, and we're back there, it's the third day of Jesus being dead, in the grave for three days, and it says: there was a great earthquake. Now that's not just an earthquake. This time it's a great earthquake, and the word that's used in the original language is 'mega'. There was a mega-quake! That's got to be pretty big, doesn't it? A mega-quake! There was a massive, massive earthquake, and then it says: an Angel Lord descended from heaven, came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it, and its countenance was shining. And the guards again were terrified, and they shook like dead men and fell down; and the Angel Lord said to the women: don't be afraid, I know who you seek. You seek Jesus, who was crucified. He's not here, He's risen.

I want to show you some things that happened. Number one, there was an earthquake. Number two, the stone rolled back - so this is a supernatural thing, it's a huge boulder that was put in front, and sealed with the Roman Army seal. It was rolled back, just immediately like that. Here's the third thing that happened; Jesus rose. He rose. His body was completely changed. Now I want you to see something else. Go back to where we were in Verse 52 of the previous chapter; the graves were opened, and many bodies of the Saints who had fallen asleep were raised from the dead, and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, went into this holy city and appeared to many.

Now I want you to see what has happened now. Now there's another massive great earthquake, and something God is demonstrating, that death no longer has victory. He showed first of all that the devil no longer has the power, sin no longer has the power; but now He's demonstrating death no longer has victory and power. How do we know that? Because not only did Jesus rise from the dead. His body transformed completely, but also - notice this - many who were in the graves. That's bones of people who died through history. He probably - since it says many, and not everyone - it means God selected out of those who were dead, those people who had honoured Him in their lifetime; and at that point when Jesus rose from the dead, they also arose.

Now if all that's left of you is dead bones, you have to have His resurrection body; so not only did Jesus rise from the dead, but a whole company of people also arose from the dead. Now get this - they went into the city of Jerusalem, and began to appear to people, and talk with people. Now that is really freaky. That is really something else. Jesus is demonstrating for us that resurrection is not just about Jesus' resurrection from the dead. It's God's plan to raise all mankind out of this place of death, to free us from living afraid of the future, afraid of death, and to impart to us life.

Here's the amazing thing. The Bible says in Romans 8:11, it says: now the same spirit, that raised Jesus from the dead, has come to live inside you. When you become a believer, and a follower of Christ, He puts His spirit inside you. The Holy Spirit of God is the spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, that changed His body, and made it a glorious body. It's the same spirit that worked on those bones in the grave, reassembled them, put flesh on them, and they came to life; resurrected people, and went back into the city of Jerusalem to appear. After, when Jesus ascended to heaven, no doubt they all ascended with Him into heaven - so by this God gives a powerful witness of these things; number one, the devil is defeated. His power has been taken away. You don't need to live in fear, or in bondage to any demonic spirit. Number two, sin has been answered for at the cross. We don't need to live in sin. We don't need to live in bondage. We don't need to live bound to any habit, any addiction, any kind of thing; and three, death has lost its power, because if you are a believer in Christ, there's an absolute certainty of a resurrection, just like those men had.

For all of us, there is a life beyond the grave. The Bible's very, very clear. Life goes on after the point we call death. It goes on into another realm called the realm of the spirit. There is no need for any person to be afraid of death, to live in bondage to sin or demonic powers, because Christ has won the victory. How do we make it ours? It's through your believing. It's through your believing.

Now in the Bible, to believe is not just to head-acknowledge something. In the Bible when you believe, you believe with your heart. You speak it with your mouth, and you live it out with your life. So God invites every person who's lived in bondage to sin, bondage to demons, and in fear of death and what might lie beyond it. He invites every person to receive Christ as their saviour, to receive Him into their life, and to those persons Jesus said: who received Him, He gave power to become a child of God.

What happens, the spirit of God comes in you, and the same mighty spirit that raised Christ from the dead, lives in you; and it's that spirit that will quicken your body. I believe if you walk with God, you have every reason to expect you'll be very healthy, and very blessed. You'll live in the life of the Holy Ghost. I believe you'll live a great life. You'll live an overcoming life. You'll live a victorious life. When others are down, you don't go down. You bounce back very quick, because the spirit of God's in you. The truth of resurrection is not just applying to physical death. It applies to death of every kind, so we have something happens in the family, we lose someone. We can bounce back from it, because we have a hope in resurrection, and the power of God to help us. We have the death of a dream, something we'd invested our life in, and it falls over and goes down. We don't need to go down with it, because we have this resurrection power, that can cause us to rise in our spirit again, with confidence in God's ability to get us going again.

Listen - what a great hope we have in Jesus Christ. What a great hope. So I want you to read those verses again, and start to think about what happened on those tremendous days, when Jesus died on the cross, and the earth shook, and the graves opened, and access was made to God. And then when Jesus rose from the dead, so also rose many people from the dead, and Jesus Christ showed His total victory, and total authority, over everything. He says: all authority of heaven and earth is given to me. Now go and change the world.

I want you just to close your eyes for a moment. I wonder is there any person here today, and as you've come here to this Easter Service, and you perhaps wondered about life, wondered about just your future, perhaps there's areas you're struggling within, in bondage to, fears or maybe there's areas of addictions or habits or things that are gripping your soul. It doesn't have to be that way. Jesus has made a way for you. Jesus has a made a way for you. It's called faith, believing and trusting in Him. You'll never know until you commit your life to Him, how much He will change you and turn your life around. How much He will change you. God loves you deeply, passionately. He is willing to help you.

But He requires a step from you, a step to walking with Him. And so today, I wonder is there any person here who's not a Christian yet - a Christian is a person who's become a follower of Jesus Christ, starting to walk with Him, and live life according to the life that Jesus gives him, according to the ways of Jesus, a wonderful life, a blessed life - so a Christian's not someone who just comes to church. That doesn't change you. It can help you, but it's only a decision, consciously day by day, to walk with God. That's what changes you, and it starts with inviting Jesus Christ to become your personal saviour.

I wonder is there anyone here today, right at that point; you'd like to become a Christian; you want to give your life to Jesus Christ? Today would be a great Easter to do that. When we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead, how wonderful if you too could spiritually arise and be changed. I wonder if there's anyone today and you're living with difficulties in your life, challenges in your life, perhaps failures in your life, but today you know that God was speaking to you, that you don't have to live there, that you can arise above it, through just simple repentance and reaching out, and beginning to walk with Him again? If you know God was speaking to you that way, would you raise your hand, say God's wanting me to have a fresh start this Easter. God bless - many people wanting a fresh start this Easter. It's wonderful to do that, because Easter we celebrate new beginnings, be great to do that, start again, start afresh, let God give you a fresh start.

I'm going to ask, for everyone to just stand up, and each of the people that put their hands up, would you like to make your way down to the front and make a row just facing me. I'd love to pray with you and bless you, and lead you in a simple prayer to receive Jesus. It'll only take a couple of moments, but it's a step of faith, so you've made the decision in your heart, now you just put action to it.

It's quite a difficult thing to do that, but I know when you do that, God also responds to you; so let's just rise together shall we, and those people who put their hands up, I'd like you to make your way to the front, just stand here in front of me. Just close your eyes now. This is a great decision you're making. It's a decision just to acknowledge that your life is going bad. It's a decision to acknowledge Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins and He wants to change me, He wants to help me, He loves me. You know there's greater love than no one can show than they lay their life down and Jesus loves you, so no matter what you've done, no matter what you're ashamed of, no matter where you've come from, no matter what your past, I can assure you He loves you unconditionally and He accepts you. You don't have to do anything really except just to believe in His love and what He's done for you, so what we'll do is we're going to lead you in a prayer. Prayer is just talking to God and as you talk to God listen to the words I pray and make them your words. Speak them to God and He will hear you.

Church, I'd like you also to just follow me in the sinner's prayer, so let's pray together now. Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins, and to rise again from the dead. Lord, I have sinned. I've gone my own way, but today I turn to you. Jesus, I receive you as my saviour. Please forgive all of my sins and failures, and give me a fresh start. I receive your spirit into my heart. I receive you as my saviour and I give you my life today. Before heaven and earth I declare Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord and my friend forever. Amen.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is foundation of the Christian faith.

The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of hope – confident expectation of the future.

Rom.15:13 “Now,the God of all hope fill you with joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”.

2. Great Power was released at Jesus Death

Mt. 27:50-54 “Then Jesus cried with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit”.

Great power was released from heaven into the earth at Jesus death.

a) Jesus Death – “a loud voice”

· The voice of a dying person is weak and soft.

· Jesus spoke out with full strength Loud =NT3173= Megas

· Shout of triumph, of victory over all his enemies.

· Col.2:14 “He wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, and has taken it out of the way having nailed it to the Cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them and triumphing over them in it”

· He dealt with the issue of sin and its power to hold men in bondage.

b) Power Released

· The veil in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

· The earth quaked

· The rocks (hard places) were split in two.

· The graves were opened - consequences of sin exposed.

3. Great Power was Released at Jesus Resurrection

· Mt.28:1-4 “Behold there was a great earthquake …”

· There was a great (megas) earthquake (v2)

· The stone was rolled back (v2)

· Jesus arose from the dead (v6)

· Many saints arose from the dead also (Mt 27:53)

· The consequences of sin (death) was overcome by power of God.

· Death is no longer to be feared.

(i) Death is not the end. (There is hope!)

(ii) There is life after death (physical death, death of hope, dream etc)

(iii) There is resurrection of the dead – all shall rise!

(iv) The power of the Holy Spirit is available for us to live in victory.

· Rom.8:11

· Eph.3:20 “He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think according to the power that works in us!”

·

15. Pursuing Greatness and Eternal Rewards

Sun 22 Apr 2012  « Back to Top

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Most people live just in the pressures and problems of their immediate day to day life and can't rise up above it. You need to be gripped by a vision of where your life is going and what you're called to be and to do. If we have no concepts about what God has prepared for us we just fritter away our days and meaningless activities consume our life. Your life is precious.You've only got one to live

Well I want you to just open your Bible in Ephesians, Chapter 2, we're going to start there. Over the last few weeks I've been sharing a series to help shift your perspective about life. Most people can't get past today. Most people don't live past today. Most people live just in the pressures and problems of their immediate day to day life, and can't rise up above it. One of the things that we need, to be able to help us to rise above things, is not just some simple things on how to cope with life; but you need to be gripped by a vision of where your life is going, and what you're called to be, and to do.

If we have no sense of eternity, and no sense that this life is so short, that it's just like an apprenticeship for something that goes on forever; if we have no concepts about what God has prepared for us, we will just fritter away our days, and actually end up with meaningless activities, and it consumes our life. If this is your preparation for eternity, you would not want to be consuming it with trivia. I'm astonished at our people having no sense of eternal purpose and perspective, fritter their life away on trivia. Your life is precious. You've only got one to live. Money you can get back again, possessions you can get back again. Your life - you've only got one to live.

We need to live it passionately in a focussed, intentional way, and have something that we're working, and walking, towards. It goes beyond just getting a house, or getting this or getting that, and actually has God's eternal viewpoint in mind. So when we come to think about eternity, people have all sorts of fuzzy ideas, and I want to today remove some of the fuzzy ideas, and help you understand something that Jesus had much to say about.

So I want to start first of all, just where we were last week in Ephesians Chapter 2. I need this to be very clear, before we go to where we're going to go. In Ephesians Chapter 2, it says: by grace have you been saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not works, lest anyone should boast. Let's stop there. You and I become a Christian, become a follower of Christ. We become born again, or changed, by a transaction of faith. No one can make you a Christian. No one can do anything to make you a Christian. It is an act of faith in your heart.

When I put my trust in what Jesus Christ did, Christ and His work alone on the cross, by faith the benefits come to me, my sins are forgiven, the spirit of God comes into my life and heart, and I am born again. I'm a new person, connected to God forever. This is a wonderful, wonderful truth. We can't emphasise it enough.

But the Bible has other truths as well, so the foundational truth to build your life on, is this: that you do not have to work, to gain acceptance with God. You are already approved when you trust in the work of Jesus Christ; so the Bible tells us very clearly, if I will put my trust in Christ, God will respond, and I will be born again, and become part of the family of God. So we need as a foundation, for day to day relating with God: we're in covenant, accepted unconditionally. If I have a good day or a bad day, that does not change God's opinion of me. He still loves me. He loves me passionately. He loves you passionately, and He will lift us up, and keep us going forward. He's a great father.

Now I want to move us beyond that. In Verse 10 it says: now you are created for something, you're created for a purpose. Now that purpose is not just drudging your way through life. Young people, you need to get this very thing inside you: that God has planned a destiny for you, and you've only got a limited time span to work it out in. If you're 80 in the church today, then you reckon you possibly got 10, maybe 20 years; but if you're a young person and you're about 15, you think you've got forever. Actually you don't have forever, and it soon goes, and what you realise is, you can't get it back. We can't get it back! Its running out - so if we live our life thinking: I've only got a short time in my life to prepare myself, and to lay up for eternity for myself, I should be busy.

So the Bible says we're created in Christ for good works, and that God intends we walk and live in them. God prepared them for us, so God has prepared something for you to accomplish with your life, that's unique to you. You don't have to copy me, or do the things I do. You need to do the things God called you to do; so passivity and apathy, and fear and unbelief, are all your eternal enemies. If you let them get the better of you, you will find yourself slipping back from the best that God has for you. God is looking for your best.

Now having said that, I want us to go into Revelations, Chapter 19. We just have to pick up, and make sure that each time that we talk about this area, we have it very clear: we're saved by faith; not works. Got that? No works to get saved. No works to get into heaven, except believing, okay?

However, in heaven we'll find not everything is equal. In eternity, not all are equal; and I want to really get this truth. I've been trying to come at it from different ways. I want to show you something from the word of God. We're going to go through a few scriptures, and I felt the Lord's given me just ability to just put them together in a way that they're really evident when you look at them, just what the truth is. In Revelations Chapter 19, the event to come, it says: let us be glad and rejoice - verse 7 - and give glory to Him, for the marriage of the lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready, and to her was granted she would be arrayed or dressed or clothed in fine linen, clean and white, with a fine linen of the righteous acts of the saints. Then He said: write it down - blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the lamb. These are the true sayings of our God.

So we see here that there's an event to come, which the church needs to know about. It is a great event. It is a great event at the return of Jesus, of a great celebration for those who are His followers. It's an event which is described in many ways, and one way is that of a wedding feast, a feast where there's a great celebration, great rejoicing, and it's a great and wonderful experience. It says: let us be glad and rejoice, for the marriage of the lamb is come. His wife has made herself ready. Now you notice here that we're all called to this - doesn't guarantee we'll all get there - but we're all called to it. We're all invited. You've got an invitation to a wedding.

And it says: now His wife has made herself ready. In other words, she has prepared herself for what she knows is about to come. Coming to church does not prepare you. It can help, but preparation is something you do day by day. Preparation has to do with what you are personally doing with your life. I can't do your preparation for you. I can inspire you, and give you direction and encouragement and instruction and so on, but you prepare yourself for this. This is about your life, and how you're living your life.

And it says: to her was granted, or to her was given a gift, so she prepared herself; and now a gift is given, and the gift is given because she prepared herself. If she didn't prepare herself, no gift given; prepared herself, gift given. You get the connection very clearly. The gift is given because the preparation took place. She prepared herself, and to her was given or granted that she should be clothed in fine linen, clean and white - fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints; so when you read it, and we've probably heard it - I've even sung it, had songs about it a while back, but I didn't have a clue what it all meant; and I want to help you understand some things about what this meant.

The bride is given garments, or there's a clothing given, so just hold on to this thought, that when you come to some very important thing, usually you dress up for it, and so the Bible says that God gives the clothing. The clothing comes from Him, but the preparation is our part. Now I want to understand a little bit about the clothing, and I want to just shift some of the thoughts we have, because most of us, you think about heaven, you think about people in white robes wandering around. I wonder what on earth do they do with all their time? Actually nothing could be further from the truth. This is just a common concept that people have, which on looking into the word of God, you find it's not like that at all. It's just a concept people have, and so I want to help you shift in that concept.

The first thing to get is this: to receive garments is evidence of bestowing great honour and reward on you; so wherever in the Bible we see garments are given, it's associated with honour, and reward for something the person did. So if you want to understand things in the Bible, you've got to look and go through the Bible, and see where and how these things happen, so if we were to go through the Bible and I'll just highlight a few for you so you can understand and see them very easily, some examples of it. So let's get the first one, here, a very simple one in Genesis 37, Verse 3. Joseph, when he was a young man, received a garment or robe from his father, as an evidence of particular favour and grace. He actually was dad's favourite, so one of the first evidences of getting a garment, receiving a garment, was Joseph, who got it because he had special love and favour with his father.

The second one that I notice in the Bible, is found in Genesis 41 verse 42. You'll find that the theme is completely consistent, so each time you look, it's the same kind of deal. Now you can't understand Revelation unless you look consistently what happened through the Bible, so in Genesis 41, Verses 41 and 42, Pharaoh has said - Verse 40 - you shall be over my house. All my people shall be ruled according to your word, only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you; and Pharaoh has said to Joseph: see, I have set you over all the land of Egypt. So you notice he's been bestowed a huge honour of authority to rule. Now the Pharaoh took his signet ring off his hand, a sign of that authority, an authority to act on the Pharaoh's behalf, put it on Joseph's hand - notice this - and clothed him in garments of fine linen. Here's the first example you see of someone being clothed in garments of fine linen, and it was a reward or an honour associated with him entering a whole new realm of honour. He went from the prison, the place of extreme difficulty and testing and trying; and he went to the throne, where he ruled with the Pharaoh over a nation; and notice this, apart from other things, garments, white linen, was given to him associated with that.

Now let's have a look, another example of it, and you'll find this in Esther, Chapter 6. We read in Esther Chapter 6, and you find there's someone else gets honoured, and I want you to see what kind of honour this person gets. In Esther Chapter 6: and Haman came in, and the King asked him: what shall I do to the man, the King delights to honour? And Haman thought in his heart, now who would the King delight to honour, more than me? And so Haman answered the King: well for the man who the King delights to honour, let a royal robe which the King has worn, and a horse the King has ridden, and the royal crest placed on it, said the robe and the horse be delivered by the hand of the King's most noble prince, that he may array the man whom the King delights to honour, and parade him on horseback through the city, and proclaim before him. And Verse 10, the King said to Haman: hurry, take the robe and the horse, and give it to Mordecai, and parade him through. Let nothing be left undone. So you notice now again, the garment is associated with honour, great honour, great honour, the bestowal of great honour.

Okay, let's have a look at another one now and let's go through into Revelations Chapter 3, and in Revelations Chapter 3, John is having a revelation of the end times, and so this is a message for today. The Bible says: blessed is the man who reads this book, and keeps the words of the book. There's a blessing for reading the Book of Revelation. I try to read it regularly.

Okay, notice what it says now in Revelations Chapter 3, verse 4 through to 6: Now you have a few names, even in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments. They shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes, shall be clothed in white garments. Now notice - who was he writing to here? He was writing to the church. What kind of church is he writing to? He's writing to a church that's got a lack of strength. He's writing to a church that needs encouragement and correction, but basically he's writing to believers. Now notice what he says: there's a promise to those who overcome. Now overcoming is not something everyone does. We're all called to, and God will help us to; but that doesn't mean we do, unless we choose to. So the Sardis Church, the church in Sardis had a number of things to overcome, and this is what Jesus said: If you overcome, then I will give you, to be arrayed in white linen. Now he's not talking about getting saved. They're already saved. He's talking about clothing them in some form of garments.

Okay, we'll do one more example now; and obviously in that one, there's a possibility that they may not overcome, and they may not get the white garments. We're just going to go back in the Old Testament again, and I want you to look with me in Exodus 28. Now this again is God's idea. All of this is God's idea. It's not something anyone made up. Now I want you to look in Exodus 28, verse 2 through to verse 4. Now this is what God instructed Moses; He said: you shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother - notice what the garments are for - here we get the first insight what this thing about these garments are, because otherwise you're going to think you're just going to have some kind of long flowing white robe, and you walk around in that. I want you to understand there's much more than that, there's far more than that, that's an inadequate description of something.

So here it is here; He says: notice that the garments are for glory, and for beauty. God's idea was that Aaron the High Priest, and his sons, have special garments that they would wear. That was God's idea; and not only that, God gave explicit instructions what the garments would be like, and the purpose of the garments, because God had in mind that this natural thing would be superseded by something that was far more glorious. So when we go to the Old Testament, which was the natural, He said: I want to have beautiful garments, garments for glory and honour, and magnificent garments, so when people see it they will be stunned at what they see. Why? Because down the line, it's not just going to be one person; it'll be in that priesthood. I've got a whole group of people I'm planning to make priests, and I have garments for them.

So right back there in the Old Testament, God required exact detail. There were jewels, there were precious stones on the breast, precious stones on the shoulders, special garments, every detail was spelt out. Why? Because God understood that in the future, He has something great planned for his people, that involves clothing them with great glory, and great majesty, and great honour; and so he prefigures it, or shows it up in the Old Testament, and then in the Book of Revelation. He says: you have to overcome to get there. You have to overcome to get there. Getting the idea?

Okay, so what we learn here, that in each of these cases that we've said, God associates - in the word of God in the Bible - it associates the receiving of garments with great position of honour and value, and esteem and majesty. In other words, it represents a reward for something the person's been positioned into. It's an acknowledgement of something about their life, and we see in every case, it did not go to every person. Actually, it came to some people. Getting the idea?

Alright then, so that raises for us then, when we come to Christ, we receive righteousness, and the ability to enter heaven, to stand before the living God. But while we're here on earth, our life's journey and ministry prepares, and lays up for us, the right to glory and honour and majesty in eternity. It's closely connected. The bride prepared herself, that's why she got this. In every one of these situations, they had to do something, in order to receive.

So okay, now let's have a look now. So eternal garments are expressions actually of God's glory and God's beauty, so the garments He's talking about, it's not like a shirt like this, or trousers like this, or anything like this. These garments that the Bible talks about, are a manifestation of God's own glory and beauty on a person's life. You've probably been to places, or seen significant events; so look at the Coronation, or something like that. You notice the way they all dress up - it's just majestic. Everything is just amazing, how they all dress. We saw when Prince William got married, and just the way everyone - the fuss that's on the bride's dress. You know, it's this great secret, and then it's out, and everyone wants to copy it, but they've only got a copy. There's only one original, only one original, okay?

So the first thing is, I want you to do now in relation to this, I want you to just forget just thinking that: in eternity, you're going to walk around in white robes, and do nothing much. Play a harp, sing [Laughter] wander around, smell the flowers, that kind of stuff. It's just ridiculous, and yet that is the concept people have, because we don't have revelation or insight. The first thing you've got to understand is, why did God design you? He didn't design you just to be able to wander around in a white robe and smell the roses. Why did He design man? He designed man for an intimate relationship, and to advance His kingdom, and His interest. He raised up man. What is man, that you are mindful of Him; or the son of man, you visit Him; you have crowned Him with glory and honour, made him a little lower than the angels; crowned him with glory and honour and raised him to have dominion over the all the works of your hands. God has a work for you to do. It starts now. You're on your apprenticeship now. God is watching every day, every item, everything you do, how you do it, why you do it. Why? Because He's preparing something much greater, and if you're wallying around, passive, slack, not praying, why would you think you're going to inherit anything much?

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever; and not only that, it's highly de-motivating to think I can have a slack spiritual life, live in compromise the way I like, and yet I don't miss out on something. That just does not make reasonable sense to anyone, and it defies that God is a just God. The reality is, him that overcomes shall be arrayed in white linen; so we need to just explore this a little more. So the first thing is, don't just kind of get that idea of you're just wandering around in white robes. God is going to empower us with His nature, and his glory; and He wants to bestow great honour, great glory, great value on you; and He's designed clothing for you, for eternity. You will wear it for eternity. It'll be diverse; and one of the difficulties we have, when you try and explain spiritual things, it's hard to get natural language for it; so what they did was, they used the word linen.

Now the word linen, linen was the nicest, most expensive material you could get in the days these things were written, so when He writes the word linen, it doesn't mean in heaven you've got some nice linen garments on, or everyone's wandering around in a white t-shirt, and some white shorts, longs or whatever. Just think about that - doesn't make any sense at all, because God is incredibly creative. Heaven is a beautiful place. Earth just reflects the glory of what heaven is like; so earth is a diverse, beautiful place; and so heaven is a glorious place. It makes no sense that when it comes to creativity, God is left outside, when it comes to designing garments for you.

How could He be creative in everything, and then end up with you in a white t-shirt in heaven? Doesn't make any sense, does it? No, no, no, no. Everything God does is beautiful, and so He's designed for us garments of glory and beauty, so you're not going to wander around in a white t-shirt and a white robe. The linen was the only way, the only word available, to describe something that was extremely precious, and of fine quality; and we'll see some other things about it just in a moment.

Okay, now the thing to understand is, what does God clothe Himself in? That's a good thought to ask. Well fortunately the Bible tells us - I'm glad you asked - so here it is in Psalm 104, what does God wear, you know? what clothes does He wear? Interesting thought, isn't it? Come on, have a look in Psalm 104. You'll see it, and the Bible tells us very clearly: He clothes Himself in light. Very good, very good, so Psalm 104, let's have a look in Psalm 104 verse 1 and 2: The Lord, my God, you are great. You are clothed with honour and majesty. In other words, you're clothed with exceedingly great glory, and magnificence and majesty. We can't find the words, so we use the word glory and majesty; and it says: you clothe yourself, or cover yourself, with light; as if you were covering yourself with a garment. So in other words, God's clothing, or what He clothes Himself with, or wears around - it's His glory, it's His nature, and it shines and shimmers, and casts out tremendous light. Paul wrote to Timothy. He said: God dwells in light, which is unapproachable; so if God were to reveal Himself, your flesh could not take it. That's what the Bible's very clear about - you couldn't take it, if God showed all of Himself; so He covers Himself with light, so to come into the presence of God ,is to come into the presence of His glory; and it registers to you as great shining light. He can conceal it, make it look just like garments, and we'll see that in just a moment, but its glorious light, see?

In Revelations 4 verse 2 and 3, it tells us that when He, He who sits on the throne - it talks about it Him being like a jasper, and the sardius stone; so John is looking, in the Book of Revelation, he's looking into heaven. He says: oh, how can I describe it? Well like a jasper, meaning a diamond. God is just like a diamond, glistening and glittering and flashing just like a diamond would; so if you've ever seen a diamond in a jewellers shop, a big diamond, got those little lights on it, and it goes flash, flash, flash, flash, flash and you - ooh, it's lovely! I want it! [Laughter] So what he's saying is, he's trying to get language you can understand, to describe something which is spiritual; so he says: you know what a diamond is like? Beautiful, big, multi rock, multi carat diamond, all glittering and shining? That's what God is like. He's more beautiful than that - he says like a sardius stone. Sardius is red. It shines off a red glow. He's full of life and energy, so he's trying to find language to describe what God looks like in heaven. The Bible's full of it, but it uses picture words to describe it; so - now here's the thing - that even when Jesus was on earth, He gave a glimpse of this.

Let's have a look and I want you to look with me in Matthew 17. Jesus gave a glimpse of what this would be, and what it would look like. Here it is in Matthew 17. You've read it, but you probably haven't seen what this was. Now he says in Verse 1: after six days, He took Peter, James and John, and went up to a mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. Something happened as Jesus prayed on the mountain. Now He's just in a human body like ours, but His human body, His clothing, the glory of God, the nature of God, the true man, the spirit man, the man of the heart is hidden away with this garment that's clothed Him. It's called his body; and Moses, as he prayed, his face literally began to emanate rays, light came out, his garments even began to shine, because the glory, the nature, the presence of God that was in Him was beginning to reveal and show forth. It was no longer concealed, and as it showed forth, the effect on His body was, it began to radiate light. His clothes radiated light. It was like the sun, it was so bright. That was Jesus in his physical body. When His glory manifested, He looked like a shining light. It was the nature of God manifesting. His clothes looked light, looked bright. In Mark 9 he says - he's trying to describe it. He says it's whiter - it's like snow. It's like it's so white, it looks like - I don't know. It's whiter than anyone can make a garment. He's lost the language. What he's trying to do is, describe an experience where Jesus, manifesting the hidden glory within Him, is beginning to shine forth like a light, and they're starting to see the true reality, who is in this person is God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ; and when God revealed Himself, His whole countenance and clothing ignited with bright light.

Isn't that amazing? And the Bible tells us in 2 Peter, that was what He's going to be like, when He comes again. This was what they saw. They got a prefigure of the second coming, and a prefigure of what will happen. Now the Bible tells us that Christ is in you, and this light is hidden in you. It's the hidden man inside the heart, so God is wanting us to grow our inner life, our life with God, and it expresses itself through our life; so that when that day comes, we will be seen, we'll be like Him.

Let's go back here in Revelations 19 again, and then I want to just get on to - there are two possibilities: that one, you'll be clothed; and two, you won't be clothed. It's true, and I've found them in the Bible. I'll show you the scriptures that bear witness to it, so let's have a look at first of all the clothing. In Revelations 19 verse 8, and here's the clothing that we have, and it says: here to her was granted - Verse 8 - she would be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright or white - and that word there is the word lampas, from which we get the word lamp. So what he's saying is - he's not saying that the clothing is, like it's just a natural linen, and its white colour. The word he uses is the word lampas, which means to radiate or shine, or glitter or glisten, with life and glory. He can't find language to - he can't find anything - says: it's white, or it is lamp-like, would be a better way to say it; so he's saying that the clothing, that was given to the overcoming church, is lamp-like in its appearance. It literally glistens, and glitters, and shines - it's so glorious.

In Revelations 3 it's a similar thing, when he talks about the garments being given to the overcomer; he called them: white raiment. Actually the word white is still a problem, because white is the best colour he could use. If he said: you know if something is really hot and blazing, it becomes white hot, see? And so what he's trying to say, it's like it so shines. I bet the best thing we could say: it's white; but actually the word we're using is lamp-like, shining, glistening, glittering. In other words, what he's saying is: the garments are beautiful, magnificent garments, formed specifically by God for you, and they reveal aspects of His glory, and they also reveal aspects of how you have grown and developed in this journey of your apprenticeship. And those garments that you will receive, will exactly reflect what you accomplish with your life while you're on the earth, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

In other words, it is God who ascribes to you, reward and honour and majesty, according to how you've lived your life on the earth; and it's given to you, so you can't buy it, or earn it. It is given, but you can position yourself, so that this actually is the path that your life takes, a path with eternity in mind, and I'm living every day to count. Getting the idea?

Now, so we've got the idea then about the garments, what they may look like. They are actually a manifestation of God's nature and glory. Now the thing that's helpful to understand is, that in eternity, it will vary. If we were to go in our community, we would find rich people and poor people. In heaven it's the same. I'll give you a scripture - I'll give you two scriptures. I want to just show you these scriptures quickly, and then we'll just finish and show you just exactly how Jesus talks about the possibility of loss, and the need for us to be proactive in our Christian life and faith, because eternal reward is at stake.

I want to share you two scriptures just on reward. Here it is. The first one's found in Matthew, Chapter 16. There are heaps of them, I'm just going to give you two. In Matthew 16 verse 27: For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father, with His angels. So he's talking about the second coming of Christ you see, the second coming; He will come in glory - so when they saw Him on the mountain, they saw what He would look like - absolutely amazing and brilliant, so magnificent they fell down. They couldn't handle it. It was too much. It was overwhelming for them - and he says: when He comes, He will come in the glory of His Father with His angels; now notice what it says He will do. He will reward each man, according to his work. Now this statement about rewarding according to his work is repeated in Revelation. Low I come quickly; my reward is with me, to get every man according to his work.

Now what you have to understand is: your work, is your work. The work He's talking about, is the work you have done in this life, representing God and His interests. I'm not talking about preaching. I'm talking about the unique work God called you to do with your life. This is personal. I can't do that work for you, and you can't copy me and do your work. Every man has their own work, and only God can tell you what that is. Everyone, and the work God has for you, is unique to you, your personality, your background, whatever; and God has got various ways of looking how to evaluate it, but notice this: the reward is according to your work. No work, no reward. Lots of accomplishing the will of God, a bigger reward. It's very, very clear. We've shared enough scriptures on that for you to see that, so the reward that Jesus has - in other words He's saying this: I really appreciate people who responded to my gift of my life. I gave the only thing I could give really, was I gave the thing most precious. I let my life be laid down, for you to be saved; so you could then live a different life, and honour me; and those who've honoured me, them also will I honour. It makes sense. So He laid his life down, so freely we could be saved; and after that we need to let His life live in us, and express in us, so we live a life that brings honour to Him. Those that honour me, I will honour. Makes sense doesn't it?

And He said: and I will reward them. Now just in case you thought that this may not be true, I want you to see that Paul repeats the same thing. It's so repeated, I've just got to use a couple of scriptures just so you see it. One Corinthians, Chapter 3, here it is here. Verse 13: If any man's work, each one's work will become clear - so right now I wouldn't have a clue whether your work was good or bad, or anything else. I wouldn't have a clue; and not only that, I'm not going to be able to find out, because it'll never be clear until the day of Christ. It'll never be clear, because only God knows exactly what you're doing. Here we are sitting here, I don't know who's sitting here, and secretly you have no position, no public profile, nothing. But behind the scene you're living out an intimate life with Jesus. You're touching the lives of people with kindness, you're ministering to people, you're serving and maybe at your home and family, and the people that are around you, there's a flow of the life of Jesus. I couldn't see that. Only God can see that.

So it says the day - that's the day when He comes, and He sorts this thing out - so that's when it'll be clear. Right now we don't know, and in that day it'll be really clear, because He will honour ones that have honoured Him. Isn't that good? It's exciting isn't it aye, because it puts us all on the same kind of level then aye? And it says: it will be revealed by fire. The fire will test each one's work, what sort of work - so if anyone's work which He's built endures, He rewards; so God will just check out what you did, so He's got a great movie player there. He's got a record of everything you did and said, and why you did it, and He'll play it all back, and have a little look at it, and you will see why you did what you did, how you did what you did - if you were a slacker, it'll be seen. If you were diligent, it will be seen. If there was love in it, it'll be seen; if there was an agenda in it, it'll all be seen. It'll all be seen, and then He said: and if the work stands up to Jesus' investigation of it, then you'll be rewarded.

So works that are done out of a motive of love, works that flow out of intimacy with the Lord, those are the things that will abide; not doing what someone else told you to do. Not trying to please someone, or trying to gain some position, gain some influence, gain some - nothing like that's going to do it. It's what came out of your relationship with Christ, and your love for Him; and you've decided to serve Him, and you just did it under Him; so this is repeated. Whatsoever you do, do heartily as the Lord, not to men. Don't be a man pleaser - men pleaser, always waiting to do something that someone notices, so they can get ahead. Tell you what; you've had your reward. You got ahead - but it just gets burnt up.

Now notice what else it says here. It says: if your work remains - in other words, when God gives it a look over; and it's interesting when John saw Jesus, he saw Him with eyes like fire, looking right in. Oh oh, you look right in. See, we can hide from one another; we can't hide from Him - he said: but anyone's work is burned up, he suffers loss - ooh - but he will be saved. Oh, thank goodness! I thought for a moment I wasn't going to be saved. It's got nothing to do with salvation, and being saved. It's got everything to do with what God is going to reward His people with.

He said: you'll be saved, but so as by fire; or literally, it's like this: it's like a man who built a house, and it caught fire, and it burnt down, and he just got out in the nick of time; and he was saved, but he's smelling of smoke, and there's nothing left, and there was no insurance. Get the idea? So he got out; but there he is, smelling of smoke, and you see the burn marks, and the tatty garments and stuff, and that's it? I don't want to just get into heaven, and that's it - smoke of everything around me, and I've just made it in.

I don't want to just make it inside the gate, not when there's greater things ahead for us! Want to live a life that's passionate, and on fire, and serving God, and having impact and influence! I don't want to be held down by passivity, and apathy, and other kinds of negative things! I want to live passionately. There's a lot at stake for me. That's a good incentive. See, free enterprise really does work. People do work harder if they're motivated with a reward. It actually works.

Now we'll just try and draw this to a close now. Okay then, so some are saved, but they don't have any reward. Okay, now having said that, now I want you to see just a couple of simple scriptures about the possibility you could make it into heaven, and yet not be clothed; and Jesus' remedy for it. It's a very simple remedy. It's actually so simple I love it. You'll love it too, so just give a couple more verses, just have a little bit of patience. Revelation 16 verse 15. This is Jesus talking, and He says this, look at this: Behold, I am coming like a thief. Do thieves let you know when they're coming? No, so they just come when you don't expect; so He said: I'm coming as a thief. He isn't a thief. He's coming unexpectedly, is what He's saying; and notice what He says: Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, otherwise he will be naked and they'll see his shame. So what He's saying - now He's writing to church people - and He's saying: blessed is he who watches. To watch is always being connected with praying, and being spiritually alive and vibrant; so be alive and vibrant in prayer, and living an active life for Christ. Then you won't lose your garments, and you won't be found naked. To be found naked, it's to be unclothed. Something is missing from your life, your clothes; and so He said: it's possible some Christians would be found naked. They get to heaven, but they don't have the reward they're entitled to - because they aren't entitled to it of course.

Revelations 3, here it is again. Now this is to the church. Look at this. I hope this doesn't apply to you, but this is to the church of Laodicea. It says: I know your works. You're neither cold nor hot; you're just lukewarm, passive, indifferent, and don't care anything about anything; and He says: you say you're rich and you're wealthy, and have need of nothing, but actually - notice what He says - now He's talking about believers: You're actually wretched and miserable, and poor and blind and naked. Naked. Naked. He's talking to believers, and saying that they are naked. What does that mean? If a believer is naked, it's got nothing to do with his physical clothing. He has not clothed his life with something. There's something missing in his life; and the keys that are in there are quite clear. It has to do with lukewarmness, passivity, indifference and compromise; and He says: that leaves you in a state where you think you're okay. I'm alright mate - but actually, from God's perspective, you're wretched and poor, and blind and naked. So we look at one another and think: well I'm doing alright. At least I turn up on Sunday and pray, you know; but that's got nothing to do with anything. It's got to do with God's evaluation of the kind of life you're living, and His counsel is to buy of me. In other words, you're going to have to do something to get what you need. You're going to have to actually exchange something, to get what you need; and we'll just get to that in a moment.

So notice there, He talks about to be naked, or to be ashamed in eternity, means that you lack a reward in eternity. He's concerned about the church. All these churches, He's talking about what's missing, so they'll adjust and repent and make a change, so they can inherit and receive what He had for them; and so He's saying there: I want you to repent. I want you to have a change of mind, change your life, change your course; because I want to clothe you with great glory and honour, but it's connected to something you should be doing right now. So then the question is, what must I do? What do I need to do? Now here it is here: I counsel you, you are wretched, poor, miserable, blind and naked spiritually. Buy from me gold, refined in the fire, that you may be rich; white garments, that you may be clothed.

Now I won't go into it all but I want to just pick out just a key thought on it here. First of all, this is a counsel of God to the church, living in an era of lukewarmness and passivity. That's God's counsel. This is Jesus' counsel. It's good to follow the counsel of God, not the other opinions of people. I found in the church, there's a lot of people have opinions. Actually they don't count for a toot. It's the opinion of God that really counts. It's the opinion of God that really counts. He says: I counsel you, if you're in that condition of lukewarmness, you need to buy from me. So what He's saying to buy, you can only get from Him; so notice He says: buy from me. Buy means - it's a word meaning - to go to the marketplace, and do trading. He said: there's a trade that will take place, for you get what I want you to have, and the only person you can get this, and do the trade with, is with Jesus Himself; so you can't come and try to do something for a person, thinking that that's what will give you good points in heaven. This is between you and Jesus, so buy from me. You can't go to a person. There's no minister can help you do this. This is something you personally do. You buy from Him. There's a trade takes place with Him.

Now there are two things, and the Bible's very clear about them. So if you're going to do a trade with God, something that's of value to you is surrendered, in order to receive something of greater value. We can't buy things from God. We can't, but what we can do is, we can invest our life; and the consequence of it, is a return that comes to us, by the principle of sowing and reaping. You can't go to God and buy, and just trade: I give you this, you give me that. That's worldly thinking. No. What we need to do is, go to the Lord, and discover from Him what He wants us to do; and it will cost something. It costs you, often, your time. It costs you your energy. It sometimes costs you with disappointments, and difficulties with people. It costs you to serve and walk with God, and so there are two aspects of it. I'll just finish up with these right now.

In 1 John 2 He says: abide in Him, that you may have confidence when He comes and appears, and not be ashamed or naked before Him. Isn't that interesting? 1 John 2, He's saying: abide in Him; so the first thing we need to do in trading with God is, we need to value our relationship with Him, and invest in our relationship with God. Coming to church helps, that but it is not that. Your relationship with God is your personal connection. You can sit in a church, and not connect with God. You can sit, and come to a meeting, and be no different to a person who's in a religious situation anywhere. This is about connecting with God, so Jesus said: abide in me. That's a relationship, staying connected, keeping your heart free of wrong attitudes. Abide in me, let my words abide in you. You will bring forth fruit. So this is firstly intimacy with Him; secondly, Revelations 19 verse 8 says: to her was granted, that she would be arrayed in white arrayment, and the white garments are the righteous acts of the saints.

So there are two things I need to do. Number one, I need to invest in my relationship with God, learning how to remain connected with Him, abiding in Him, keeping my heart free from bitterness and inequity. I need to learn how to keep a passionate love for God alive. Number two, I need to passionately love people, because it says: for the fine linen, or the garments, are the righteous acts of the saints; and we saw last week that the righteous acts of the saints, are: acts of justice and generosity and mercy; on behalf of the poor, oppressed and needy. So the two things are summed up very clearly: love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength; and passionately love your neighbour, as yourself. If you do that, you'll not lack anything.

So a passionate love, ignited day by day, for the Lord; and a fervent love for people, that overcomes setbacks and disappointments, and expresses practically, practically, practically! How can you say you have love inside you, and you know God, if you see your brother with a practical need, and you don't reach out to help him? How can you say the love of God is living in you? It's incredibly practical, so the two things: developing a passionate, intimate relationship with God keeps me on track, and alive, and on fire; and I'm not wretched, and I'm not poor. Actually I'm very rich, and if I fill my life with flowing out from that relationship with God, with acts of kindness and mercy for the poor and the oppressed and the needy, then I'll be sure then that I have the garments that He wants from me.

And so the Bible says: there will be a day when you will enter into that kingdom, and may your entrance be glorious! May the entrance you have be glorious, because you worked on your life, and made yourself ready, and had a great life with God, and a great overflow of generosity! That is what this is all about, and the results will affect you for eternity. We all for a season of our lives are journeying together, but there is a day when we all give account and from that point on, we're in the realms God has appointed, wearing the garments He's appointed, associated with the honour of different realms.

You look in an army, you see the different ranks. You look into heaven, you'll see different ranks. You'll see different positionings and placings, you'll see different realms of expression, different realms of authority and rulership, different realms of glory. We are not all equal in heaven. It helps to get hold of this concept deeply in your heart, and realise I have one life to live. Let me run it passionately. I want to say like Paul did: I have run my race. I've fought my fight. Now is laid up for me a crown; which the Lord won't just give to me, but to all who love Him passionately, and live for Him. Hallelujah! What a great day! Oh, I get inspired thinking of the greatness of what is ahead for us, and the relevance of it to what we do in our life today. I hear an Amen?

Come on, why don't we stand. Let's give the Lord a clap. Let's let our hearts engage with Him. [Clapping] Thank you Lord, thank you Jesus. Here's just a couple of questions, just as we finish with a final song. How are you doing, in your walk with God? What is happening, in your relationship with God? Is there passion, and fire, and love? Is there a hunger, and a pursuit for Him and his words? Are you spending time investing in that relationship; or have other things come in to fritter it away? Well just make a change. Repent, have a change of heart, and begin to return to Him again.

What's happening in your life in the area of kindness and generosity for people? The overflow - are you making time available, or your resources available? Is your home available; or is it just so precious, no one would ever been seen in there? Is what you have, open? If you have a heart that's open, just share it; make it available for God to work through. If you have a heart for those poor and oppressed, do you see people in need and feel moved by God to respond to that need? Only you can answer that. I believe God wants us to have a shift of heart, and spirit and passion; to get an eternal perspective; for if you fail to have that, you'll live unsatisfied with the short term, and miss on the big things.

Father, we thank you today that you are here with us today. We honour you that Lord, you have given your life for us, that you sent Jesus to die on the cross, such an incredible sacrifice. May we live a life that brings honour to Jesus. May we live it passionately, full of faith, full of love, full of desire and hunger for you and may our lives abound in generosity and goodness to the people around us. Lord, we call upon you to shift us individually, and corporately, into a greater passion in every area of our life, and living in Jesus' name - and everyone said: [Amen].

How many felt quite challenged here today? Really challenge you and some aspect of your life? Praise the Lord! We're not going to pray for you. You've just got to do something about it. Go back to Revelations 3. Do something about it, Amen?

16. Zealous for Good Works

Sun 29 Apr 2012  « Back to Top

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Your life is short when you compare it to the times, seasons and ages that are ahead. The Bible tells us clearly there's a millennial age when Christ will come, our life here is our stewardship for that age. The work to get saved has been done by Jesus, but after that He calls us to do something with our life. All the hardship now is nothing compared to what God has prepared for those who love him

We've been having a great series recently looking at eternity. What I want to do is, I want us to open your Bible with me in Titus, Chapter 2. I want to continue from where I was, but I'm starting another a series. It's mainly because what I was sharing is: I've tried to lift your perspective about eternity. I want to just use one more illustration that may help to do that, I just need one man to help me, just one guy. Quickly, one guy. Len, you'll do. Oh here's one, Ian. Ian will be great. Now I want you to watch this and all you're going to have to do Ian, I want you just to stand here and I want you just to take one step - not even a big step - about one foot. Just take one foot forward, okay. Just stop there.

Your life in relationship to the millennial reign represents that one step that Ian just took now and compared to the millennial reign, just go out about two and a half to three kilometres and you get how much your life is in relationship to what God has just in the millennium for us. So if you think your life is long, it's short when you compare it to the times and seasons and ages that are ahead. The Bible tells us very clearly there's a millennial age when Christ will come and our life here is our stewardship for that age. Your life is so short, one step, compared to nearly three kilometres. Think about that.

So this life we've got is incredibly short. It's over very quick and it is your apprenticeship. Where you benefit from it is where you actually fulfil your apprenticeship which will be in eternity. We need to get an eternal perspective. Don't think short term and about what God can do for me today and tomorrow. Begin to think what I can be and prepare in my life for eternity, because that's only the millennial reign. That's only 1000 years. It goes on for ages and ages and ages and forever and forever, but at least that bit you can get a perspective. One step, two and a half to three kilometres. You see the comparison. Let's make our lives count now.

All the hardship now is nothing compared to what God has prepared for those who love him. Amen! Gives you a bit of perspective. Thank you Ian. Okay, open your Bibles to Titus, Chapter 2 and I want to just speak and start to share with us over the next two or three Sundays as I can; I want to speak to us about this theme, Zealous for Good Works. How many felt the women today as they shared about what they were doing? Could you feel the passion in there and the fire and the love? That's what I'm talking about - zealous to do something for God. And the question is, well of course we shared in Ephesians, Chapter 2 and Verse 8 and 9 how the work to get saved has been done by Jesus, but after that He calls us to do something with our life.

And we saw how Jesus has prepared for us good works, that He prepared before we were born, and one of the staff said well: how do I discover what those good works are and then walk in them? That's a good question isn't it? So we want to answer that question as best we can. It's given me a lot of food for thought and so I want to just spread it out over a couple of Sundays because I have the feeling and sense in my spirit that God is trying to shift this as a church. So for about six weeks we've been trying to gain eternal perspective, so you begin to make your life count. Now we need to get some applications around it, so I want to just start to look over the next two or three weeks or whatever, at a series and we're looking at being passionate or zealous to do good stuff, to do good works.

So what I want to do today is I want to just lay some foundation around that. If I don't do that everyone ends up running around doing this and that and striving and they miss the whole point, so I want us to get first of all a good foundation for this. So I'm going to outline - what I outline today is going to help you get perspective and understanding and we're going to anchor it around two key things you'll need to know. So I know this will be of great help for you, but we want to lay it out systematically, so in Titus, Chapter 2, let's read it. Verse 16, it says they profess to know God but in works deny him, so He's saying that there are some people who say they know the Lord, but actually the lifestyle or what they do actually denies that that's a reality.

Now we go down here, we go into Chapter 2, Verse 14. Now He gave himself for us that He might redeem us from every inequity and purify for himself His own peculiar people or special people, zealous for good works. He gave Himself for us. He loved us. He gave Himself for us for a purpose, so in these verses here we see that Jesus gave Himself or He gave His whole life for something. Now you've got to ask yourself, what did He give His life for? Was it to just do something in the Heavens? No, I think more than that.

He gave Himself for us that He might redeem for Himself, so God, Jesus got something in this that He gets or He's looking for and it says that He might redeem us; in other words He gave Himself to totally pay a ransom price that something could be established and happen as a result of that, so this is what Jesus is looking for. He's looking for a special, unusual people. The word special (or particular) literally means to be distinct, unique or beyond usual, so what the Bible is saying here is Jesus redeemed you so you would be special, unique, quite different and unusual compared to everyone else in the community.

What makes you unusual and different is this; that you are - look at this - purified for Himself, His own special people, zealous for good works, passionate to do something and we're going to identify exactly what it is, the things that God wants us to do. Today I want to remove some of the difficulty from it by showing you it's not all spiritual stuff, and I want you to get very clearly two frameworks of what God is looking for you to do. Then we'll begin to unravel it and show you. Ultimately then it's up to each one of us. Notice what it says here in Chapter 3, Verse 8. This is a faithful saying and I want to affirm constantly, in other words I want you to constantly be reminded that those who have believed in God - that's us - be careful to maintain good works. Be careful to do it.

So He said this is God's purpose, is that people who'll be filled with good works - whatever that means - and He says, twice now He says in Verse 8, He says I want you who have believed in God be careful that you maintain good works. In other words be careful that there's fruit in your life for your Christian life and it shows up in what you're doing. Notice again in Verse 14 He says the same thing; let our people also learn to maintain good works, not only to meet needs or problems or issues that people have, but so you may not be unfruitful. We'll come back to that right at the very end.

So what God is saying here is that it's His purpose that we be productive, unique, unusual, that we stand out because of all people in the world, we are interested in the cause of the poor and the needy. We're interested in the cause of justice. We're interested in the cause of the community. We are not about having meetings to get blessed. We are about making a difference in the community and so He said let your light shine before men so that they see your good works. If you have a look through history the people who started the schools, the people who started the hospitals, the people who did good works; it came out of revivals. It came out of the life of God overflowing to meet the needs of the poor, the oppressed and those who had been treated unjustly.

This is the foundation of our faith, and over the next few sessions we're going to explore that a little more clearly, what that means to you as an individual. Now, there are three reasons why it's important to maintain good works, three reasons. I want to give them to you, so helpful to have these and then we're going to look into two foundations. Number one, here's the first reason. The first reason it's important for you to be productive or have good works operating in your life or to be doing something that's of benefit to others. We just put it like that; doing something that benefits others. Number one, divine design. You're designed for it. You'll never be happy in your life unless you do.

There's no such thing as a self-centred selfish life, that's a happy life. It's an illusion. We are designed - have you noticed when you did something really kind to bless someone, how good you felt? The joy that comes out of it - where did it come from? It come out of being aligned with Heaven and doing what God called you to do. Ephesians 2:10, He has created us for good works. You're created not to just sit in meetings and pray and do stuff like that. You're created to be busy with your life and be very productive with your life. Everyone is designed for that, to be productive in some kind of way, designed for good works.

So number one, one reason we need to be doing things that bring benefit and blessing to others, number one is the way God's designed us, part of His purpose. Number two is because something is at stake, and that's always a good stick isn't it, aye? That's always a good thing. There's something is at stake. Eternal rewards are at stake. I want you to look at two verses. The first one's found in Revelations 22, Verse 12. This is what it says. It says behold, I come quickly and my reward is with me to give everyone according to His work. How much clearer could you get? It's talking about the second coming of the Lord and it says when He comes He has in mind rewarding or acknowledging what His people have done to make the world a better place.

So teachings that cause you to trust your future, that somehow God's going to whisk you out of it, actually bring you into a place of deception and passivity and stop you becoming engaged in what God wants us to be engaged in. There's many verses. I'll give you one more, Matthew 16:27. For the Son of man will come and the glory of His Father and with His angels and He will reward each one according to their works. Nothing could be clearer. Your life now counts, day by day, minute by minute, what you do does make a difference. What you do counts. The word reward, most times Jesus uses it, the word is the word misthos, meaning pay. That's not a bad word is it? Meaning a pay or an acknowledgement of the services someone has given, so at the end of the week you turn up at the office and you've worked for a whole week. You know that you will receive a reward, you'll receive pay.

So the word that's translated reward really means something that you are entitled or out of God's benefit He wants to give to you because of what you have done. It's totally connected to what you've done, not your good intentions. What did you do? Okay, we getting the idea? So number two reason is because eternal rewards are at stake. God wants - remember, you are on your apprenticeship now and so God is wanting to reward or acknowledge your success in your apprenticeship by appropriate reward in the millennium and for eternity. So if you're pretty poor in your apprenticeship you can't be expecting you'll be promoted too much. Makes sense doesn't it?

So the third reason is that there's accountability, that the kingdom of Heaven is not a democracy. It's a kingdom with a king and we're accountable to a king, so we're accountable. Accountability's a part of life and notice this in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 3 and it says Verse 11; no other foundation can anyone lay which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. If anyone builds on the foundation - so to build on a foundation means you're starting to do something, so you have become saved by faith. It's been given to you, salvation's given to you. Now the question is what are you doing with your life? What are you doing to build your life?

Now coming to meetings is a help but it won't complete the task of building your life. To build your life requires your own personal engagement with God, time in the word of God and intentionally giving yourself to learn and to grow. All of us are needing to learn and grow. I'm still having to learn and grow. It's called a life journey. It's called being a disciple or a follower of Christ. It's a life of learning and being taught by Him and growing, but you can intentionally apply yourself to it, and to intentionally apply yourself means we've now become a disciple of Jesus. We're letting Jesus help us in our journey grow and become more mature and that will involve prayer; it'll involve the word of God, it will involve service of some kind because you can't grow in isolation, and you can't grow without putting your hand to something.

So when we do something, when we start to apply ourselves, whether it's some part of building the church, some part of doing something for extending the kingdom, in that environment God can grow us. We all need to be committed to personal growth. No one is beyond a group because when in groups the best growth takes place, but it doesn't take place just in a group. Somehow it works out in your day to day life. You've got to be doing something, so tomorrow if you do the same things you did today, probably you won't grow.

Think about it. Think about it. It's really quite important so He said each one's work will become clear, so right now you've got no idea how good a job I'm doing, and I have no idea how effective you are for what God has given you to do. But it says that day will make it clear, so I'm not called to judge you for what you're doing. I'm called to inspire you to go further. See, so it says the day will declare everyone's work but it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test each one's work, what kind of work it is. So now we begin to get an insight - it's not just that you're busy doing something. There's certain sorts of work actually God will acknowledge and we're going to see in a moment some sorts of work He doesn't acknowledge at all.

But everyone's work will pass through testing, so you can fool me and fool someone else part of the time but you can't fool Heaven who sees every - God sees everything. So He's looking at all that you do and why you do it and how you do it. See, we can't always see why you do things and we can't always see how you've done it. We can't even tell whether you did your best or did a half job. No one really knows. We can't even tell whether you're doing all the things that God called you to do, because this is part of your personal walk with God. But what we can say definitively is this; that God will test everyone's work and then - it doesn't matter what you think - He will have a good look over what you've done and He will be able to test out your work.

And the Bible says if your work be wood, hay, stubble, it'll all go up in smoke. There it is - and it says but, if the work endures you'll receive a reward. Anyone's work is burnt, then you'll suffer loss. But He'll be saved it even by fire, and so it says you can build gold, silver, precious stone; wood, hay, straw. So what He's saying is that in our life we build our life personally and also we're involved, engaged in the serving of God. Doesn't matter where you are, there's no such thing as part time service for God. Everyone has a full time call. Everyone has a full time call. You are a full time minister of God, see, and so what you do with your life to build your life with God and then to work to advance His cause, to reach people, influence people, touch people, that is your work.

Your work involves what you do with your life. So for some it'll partly involve a marriage, it'll partly involve a family, it'll partly involve their workplace. For some it'll partly involve the community. Every one of us has got a work that God has got us to put our hand to and it varies from person to person as we'll see a little in another session. Now God will evaluate how you did the work and what work you did and why you did the work, so He says you can build it with wood, hay, stubble. It'll all go up in smoke - or gold, silver, precious stones. Gold, silver, precious stones tend to be the things which God has formed in the earth under heat and pressure, and the other - wood, hay, stubble - is the stuff that grows in the earth that doesn't abide anything. It just goes up in smoke.

It always speaks of humanity, human motivations and whatever and so it says - notice what it tells us then; if you work abide. In other words, when God scans your life to have a look at you, He is able to penetrate everything you've done and why you did it and how you did it. He saw everything no one saw and He says I see what you've done in secret. Welcome, well done. Enter the joy of the Lord, enter into reward. Isn't that fantastic?

But He says there's also the possibility that you'll go up in smoke, or your work will go up in smoke and He said, notice what it says here, Verse 15; if anyone's work is burned He will suffer loss, so it is possible and the Bible speaks very clearly, that you can suffer the loss of the things God intended you to have in eternity. If any man's work be burnt He will suffer loss. Will he be saved? Yes, he will. He will be saved. The Bible's very clear. He will be saved. Probably the best way I could describe it is like this; you spent your life building a house and having done all and worked and spent this and that, then one day there's an electrical problem and the house just burns to the ground. Fortunately you get out of it and you're smelling of smoke and your garments are burnt with smoke, but you're saved! But what is there? There's no house left! Your whole life went up in smoke! Whoa! Life is too precious to let it go up in smoke! Life is far too precious. If you're over 60 it's even more precious!

Isn't that true? That's the truth isn't it, so there's three reasons why it's important to maintain good works. See? Okay, now here we're onto the foundations for the works. I want you to come with me to Matthew 7:21. This is a bit of a shock but I woke up this morning, the Lord just was pounding this verse into me and I thought oh my, so I had to change what I was going to do. That's alright. I don't mind - so He gave me some better ideas than I had. That was very helpful. I like that, very helpful. Okay, here it is, Matthew 7. Now you know these verses, now verse 21; Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in Heaven. Many will say to me in that day Lord, Lord, haven't we prophesised in your name, cast out demons in your name, done many wonders in your name and I'll declare to them I never knew you depart from me who practise lawlessness.

Now here's the first thing is to see the context. This is part of Jesus' teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, so He's teaching His disciples and followers and he's talking about the culture, attitudes and values of the kingdom of Heaven and what it requires to live as a citizen of that kingdom and bring Heaven to earth. That's what this is all about, so now He's come to the very end of His message and He's about to draw some conclusions. Here's first of all a warning He gives and secondly a conclusion. The first thing He tells us, He said not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, so to enter the kingdom of Heaven is the key issue at stake.

Now, notice this. He's not talking about getting saved. You have to understand that. If you try to approach it from the point of view about salvation you're going to miss it altogether, because He's saying - notice what He's saying - He said not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of Heaven. But He says many shall say to me in that day, so what day is He talking about? He's not talking about the day He's talking. He's talking about that day. He's talking about the day of His return. The day of the Lord, and so many will say on that day. In other words, when He comes there's a lot of people going to say Lord, Lord, we prophesied. We cast out demons. We did miracles - and He will say I didn't know you. You worked inequity.

Now that's a real hard thing to handle. So He's talking about to Pentecostal people particularly, because they tend to focus on prophesying and praying in tongues and doing things like that, and He's talking about spirit people really. Now I want you to have a look at what He says there, He says on that day so it's the day of His coming. Now what He's saying, many will say Lord, Lord. Now these are obviously believers. How do we know they're believers? Because He said they prophesied, they work miracles and they cast out demons. You cannot cast out demons by methodology. Acts 19, they tried to copy the method. It didn't work. They were not saved. They couldn't do it. You can't do these things of prophesying and casting out demons and miracles in the name of Jesus unless you are a believer. So let's re-read it.

Many believers who've had a spiritual ministry and saw the supernatural operating will say in that day Lord, Lord, and He will say to them I'm sorry, I didn't know you. You worked inequity. Now that's a hard one to understand isn't it, because we think if someone is moving in the power of the Spirit, that means everything's right with God. No. What it does mean is they have faith for the miracle. It does not mean everything about their character and motivation is right with God, and you'll see in a moment what God is looking for is the character and the motivation and the relationship with him. So undergirding everything that we do for the Lord is firstly intimacy in relationship with Him and response to Him and the second is the motivation, what is causing us to do what we're doing. They're foundational, so if I just talk to you about works and don't address this issue, you just get into a frenzy of busyness and striving and you'll miss what's foundational for a fruitful life, which is our relationship with Him.

If you look in this you'll see very, very clearly, He said the one's that enter the kingdom of Heaven are those who do the will of the Father, so it's possible for you to run off on your own, doing all kinds of great and good things and God honours it because He's a God who honours His name, but it doesn't mean you're aligned with what He had for your life. Just because you're enjoying blessing in your life does not mean you're in the favour of God. You're blessed because He blesses everyone who comes to Him. We are blessed because of what Jesus did. Now our responsibility is to align with Heaven to what God wants for each of our lives and for you it's different to me. No one can tell you what that work is. That requires personal relationship with God and connecting to God's destiny for you personally, otherwise you end up with things like we'll just follow the dream in your heart. But that's only a partial truth. If I followed the dream in my heart I'd be fishing up in Warkworth.

Congregation: [Laughter]

Isn't that true? Or I'd be away overseas somewhere. If I'd followed the dream in my heart I'd be up in the Gold Coast doing something. In other words there are lots of dreams in the heart, but it doesn't mean to say they come from God. In fact actually He's talking here - notice what Jesus said - it's those who do the will of the Father. This requires an engagement with God to know what He wants you to do and that will mean the end of some things you did want to do. It means the cross, it means you will follow Him no matter what it is. You're laying down the rights to your life and you're walking in what He's called you to do, not what everyone thinks is a good idea or necessarily what you would like to do. Getting the idea?

You're going to see this over and over and over again, so teachings on dreams and visions, we'll come to that a little bit later, on the whole thing of desires of the heart. We'll get to that in another session, but you've got to get this foundation right first otherwise you'll run off to all kinds of things and you'll actually waste the years of your life when you should be productive.

Okay, we all ready? Okay, so let's go on a little bit further, getting in deep on this one here. Alright then, so what are the two key issues? Here they are; I will declare to them - now He says it so - I love Jesus. He actually makes it real clear. He said two things; I didn't know you, and two, you worked inequity. So we just need to understand what they are and one of the things in the Bible, if you're not sure what something means go look somewhere else and see if it turned up somewhere else, because if it turns up somewhere else the chances are He cast the light on it that you didn't see in this particular passage. So when you look at, I never knew you, well how on earth did they do the miracles? What is He talking about? And workers of inequity, they're doing miracles working inequity. How does that all work out?

I'll just open up really quickly for you and you'll see it just in a glance, which is what the Lord just dropped into my heart today and notice what He said; I never knew you. That word know is to know intimately, to know as a friend and Jesus brought people into friendship who first learned obedience. He said I no longer call you servants - servant doesn't know what His master does. He follows instructions. I now call you friends, so after a period of serving as servants they grew into friendship with Jesus. So this is about friendship with Jesus, okay. Now let's just take it a little bit further. The only other place that I noticed where this turns up, I never knew you, interestingly enough it turns up in Matthew 25:12 with the 10 virgins, the five wise and five foolish and remember the issue there with the five wise and foolish virgins is the whole issue and we taught on this in depth was intimacy with God.

They were all virgins, meaning they were all believers, but five were wise, five were foolish. The five wise prepared their lives and ensured they had oil in a vessel. The five who were foolish made no preparation in their life. Were they all virgins? Yes. Were they all in covenant relationship? Yes, they were. However, five prepared, and the preparation involved the getting of oil which is always symbolic of the Holy Spirit. Or putting it another way, they took the time and effort to spend time gaining intimacy, gaining revelation, gaining insight from God. They gained the flow of the Spirit by a personal life dedicated and connected to the Lord. Remember the five foolish ones said, they said hey listen, will give us some of yours? They said no, no, we can't give it to you. No, no, no. You've got to go and buy it yourself.

So intimacy with God got to buy for yourself. There's no one praying for you can do it for you. We can bring to you the fruit of our intimacy, but you've got to develop your own and so number one, see intimacy with God and you remember that He said to the five foolish virgins, He said very, very clearly - it says to them - and this is what He said to them. He said, actually I didn't know you. Knock, knock, knock, knock, let us in. No, no, no, no, it's too late. The season of opportunity is over, there's a consequence of not doing this, so the very clear one there is personal intimacy, a loving relationship with Jesus, where you're connected to Him and yielded to Him in a relationship like husband and wife. It's like a lover of my soul. It's becoming intimate with Him and sharing my life with Him and learning to surrender and talk over the struggles of life with Him.

We could do some things on that sometime, but - remember Mary and Martha? Now Mary got very, very busy doing stuff, Martha got busy doing stuff in Luke 10:38 - and Mary got very busy listening to Jesus and then Martha got all wound up with all her serving and she's so wound up, stressed out, burned out, everything. She complains and gets bad attitudes and Jesus said to her, Mary chose the good thing. Now it's not either/or. It's an issue of priority, so it's not saying that you shouldn't do something. It's saying your first priority is the relationship out of which the works flow. Jesus said I don't do anything except what I see the Father doing. Now we need to explain that - not today, but I'll do it in another session.

What He did was He said I am moved in my life by Heaven's agenda. I do not have a thing of my own. I haven't come here to do my will. I've come here to do the will of the Father. I haven't come to just sort of - in fact He wrestled even with it in the garden. Remember Him saying Father, if it's possible I'd rather not do this but not my will, your will be done. So the first thing you see is, remember what Jesus said at the beginning of this passage? He said to enter the kingdom requires you do the will of the Father. Now, you notice that may involve church meetings and church roles and may involve doing this and that, but actually no one can really know. The only one who can really know is you if you're listening to God, because how it outworks will be different for each person. So number one is intimacy. I need to be in relationship where I'm hearing with it from the Lord.

Now if you notice straight after this He follows it on and applies it. He said now I'm going to tell you a story so you can get it. Anyone who hears these words of mine and does them, be like the man who built on a rock. He doesn't fall over at the end of the day. The man who listens to them, doesn't do anything, He said well that man, he's going to find His whole life everything he's built will fall over at the end of it when it's evaluated and the storm comes along. It's very, very clear. It's about hearing God and flowing with what He has for your life, therefore the responsibility of every believer is a personal intimacy with the Lord, listening, hearing and saying yes Lord, what you want, that's what I'll do. Lord, what you've got for me, that's better than my plan for me. I'm happy to go along with your plan. Get the idea?

The second thing is, He says those who work inequity. You who worked inequity - so hard to think believers would be working inequity but apparently it's so. The word inequity means to be without law or to be lawless or independent, or literally, to have no one speaking into your life. In other words, you do your own thing. Hello? Church is full of that? Kingdom of God's full of people doing their own thing and they think God's going to bless them for it. Well He will bless the work they do to a point because He's a God who blesses, but will they give account? Oh my yes. I want to be found that day, so the word there means literally to be without law.

Now I want to show you one other place I found someone who was caught out and actually confronted over this very issue, then we'll finish with this. Are you ready? Just come with me to Acts, Chapter 8. When you see this story this'll help you understand what it means and then you'll get a better idea of what we're talking about. You'll see it very, very clearly. Okay, in Acts, Chapter 8. So the first is personal intimacy, second is purity of motivation, pure love for people, pure love for the Lord, pure love for people, loving God passionately, listening to him, responding to him, loving people out of a pure heart - not trying to use them to get them to do something you want them to do. It'll come down to something simple like love the Lord with all your heart, love your neighbour as yourself.

Here it is in Acts, Chapter 8. Now just bearing in mind the working of inequity, in Acts, Chapter 8, Verse 9; There was a certain man called Simon who previously practised sorcery in the city, astounding the people of Samaria, giving out that He was some important one to whom everyone gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying this man is the great power of God. They gave heed to him because he'd astonished them with His sorceries, but then they believed in Jesus when He preached things about the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus and men and women were baptised and Simon himself also believed and was baptised and continued with Phillip and was amazed seeing the miracles and signs. Notice the statement, He also believed and was baptised.

Okay, now we'll go on. The apostles heard that and so on and so forth. Now Verse 17, they laid hands on them and they received the Holy spirit, but when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles hands the Holy spirit was given, He offered them money, saying give me this power that I might - anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy spirit. He said your money perished with you because you thought the gift of God could be purchased with money. You have neither part or portion in this matter for your heart is not right with God. Repent of this wickedness and perhaps God will forgive the thought of your heart, for I see you are poisoned with bitterness and in the bond of inequity.

Now I want you to just get this because when we look at that, we just read Simon the sorcerer and we switch off and it's nothing to do with us. I want you to just re-engage and have a look at it. The first thing is he was a person with huge influence and leadership in the community. Actually everyone was listening to him. Now how did He get it? Guess how he got it? He got influence with people by using supernatural power. He tapped into the occult and he could get people astonished with what he did and so, what they did then was - notice it says he gave out that he was important. So what's going on here? Very simply this; he's a man who's rejected, a man with injustice and disappointments in his life and in order to try and find a sense of purpose and significance and identity and value, he begins to access the occult realm to try and put out to people he's important. So his whole motivation is to use the power that's available to build his own influence, reputation and standing with people.

Now he gets saved and he gets saved. He believed on Lord Jesus Christ and he was baptised. If you believe in your heart, you're baptised, you'll be saved. There's no doubt about it. He was a saved man. Now he looks and he's a follower. Not only that, he's following the disciples. He's joined in the crowd and he's following, so you'd say he's a person who once was out there in the world, he got saved, got water baptised, he's now in the church and now he's following on, watching what God is doing and he's learning as he goes. Now notice what he does. He sees that when the apostles lay hands power comes. He thinks I want power!

Let's just put it a different way. Oh, I want the anointing! I want the power that's on you! You can't believe how many people come up and say I want you to lay hands on me! Give me a double portion of your anointing! I say no, I won't...

Congregation: [Laughter]

And I won't. I won't, and the reason I had a guy do that one meeting, he come up - actually did it at three meetings in a row, one after the other; come up and said I want the double portion. I want the double portion, pastor pray for me, pray for the double portion! I said no. He went away disappointed. He come up again the next night, same thing. No! And the third time He come up, I said no! No, no, no! I won't. He said why? I said very simply, I said first of all if I had double I'd have it for myself.

Congregation: [Laughter]

Okay. Now what I really - what I said to him was this; I said I've been watching you for three nights in a row and I've noticed we've had hundreds of people in need, hundreds of people weeping, being delivered, ministered to and I saw you with your suit and a big Bible wandering around. Not once did you ever put your arm around anyone, hug them, come alongside them, help them, minister them, comfort them, do anything to indicate you were interested in people. I said why would God anoint you with power, when all you're interested in is just promoting yourself?

Now this is what the issue with this guy was. He wanted power to promote himself and Peter put his finger straight on it and he said you cannot use the power or the gifts of the Spirit. You can't use the prophetic dimension. You can't use the flow of the Holy Spirit to establish your identity and make yourself very important. He said I see what the real problem is; in your heart is a deep rooted bitterness and you've never resolved it, and he said also you're in the bondage of inequity. You're operating without respect for God's way, God's principles, God's timing. You're just trying to promote yourself - and that word bond means this. When a Roman soldier had a prisoner, what they would do is they would put a chain on the Roman soldier's left hand and they'd link it to the prisoner's right hand, so the prisoner always was linked to a soldier.

The soldier had the sword. He could just hit him anytime, bring him back into line, so the word bond is describing something like this. He said I see that your right hand or right arm, the works in your life are thoroughly chained and in slavery to an independent, rebellious root in your life that comes out of bitterness and hurt, and you were just wanting to use the gifts and good things of God to promote yourself and to give out to people you're important. You're trying to establish your identity, and he said there's no way you can have a part of this. So that's the only other place I found where that inequity is, apart from the issue with Saul.

So get back to it again; two things that are foundational for me to produce good works - one, I need a personal relationship where I'm listening to the Lord and listening to what He has to say, and two, the second thing is, I need to let God work in my heart concerning my motives for what I do. Otherwise what I'll do is I'll just be like everyone in the world and I'll use people to get me ahead. This is a chronic sickness within the body of Christ, where people use gifts and roles in order to promote or advance themselves and fail to see that this is inequity that will cost you everything. All gains will be temporary, but in eternity they will be seen for what they are and your reward which only God can give will certainly be lost.

We need to let God work in our heart so that we have an authentic and genuine love and what we do is a genuine desire to serve. We give because we love God and we're so grateful to Him, we want to overflow with a serving spirit and there's no agenda - and that is what makes the works we do different, because inside them is no agenda. How many of you have had someone do something for you and after they did it you thought that was wonderful, thank you. That was really kind, that was really loving - and then before you know it there's a hook in it and there was always an agenda in it. Now the agenda comes out and they're pulling on you to do something? That just sucks. All the joy is taken out of the thing. You feel poisoned by the thing inside, manipulated by it and you hate it.

See now what he's saying is that the works we do, God will be honoured because there's something about them is really fresh. They come out of relationship with Jesus and there's a purity of love and serving involved in it. Now isn't that fantastic? Isn't that a great thing? So before we do anything on looking at what the works are that God calls you to do, this is the foundation to lay in your life. Number one, intimacy with God. Number two, let God work on the motivation, why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I doing it to be seen by men? It doesn't cut. That's what this guy Simon did. He did it to be seen by people, so if I'm doing it to be seen by men I'll only do it when the Pastor's around or a leader's around. I'll be sucking up and making sweet sounds and kind of things like that and trying to impress - but we're not to impress men. We're to impress God with a right heart and right attitude. We say Amen...

Congregation: Amen.

...and just close our eyes right now, just close... just for a moment I want to ask this question; is there anyone here who's never begun this fantastic journey of walking with Jesus Christ? You know the Bible tells, we're born into this life separated from God. Without the life of God, without a sense of destiny, struggling to try and find things to meet what can only be met by relationship with God. Jesus came into this world and paid the price for the power of sin to be broken, and for our lives to be free to come into relationship, but it does require something. It requires one, we recognise our condition that I'm walking apart from God. That's the condition of sin, that Jesus has made provision by dying on the cross and rising from the dead, and I'm willing to receive him into my life to give me a fresh start, and so I can become connected to Heaven and begin the journey walking with God and into my destiny.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Tit.2:14 “who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for Himself, His own special people, zealous for good works”

· Jesus gave up His life on the Cross for a purpose – not just to get us to heaven.

· He redeemed us – pay the full ransom price to free a captive – for a purpose.

· Jesus wants us to be a people that are unique, special (lit. beyond usual, belonging to God)

· “Zealous” = NT2207 Burning with passion, strongly contending for something.\We are called to be busy, proactive, passionately advancing the Kingdom of God.

· Tit.3:8 “… those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works”

· Tit.3:14 “Let our people learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs that they be not unfruitful”.

2. Three Reasons why it is Important to Maintain Good Works

(i) Divine Design and Purpose – Gold has prepared good works unique to each of us.

· Eph.2:10 “..created in Christ Jesus unto good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”.

(ii) Eternal Rewards are at stake – God desires to reward us, acknowledge our work.

· Mt.16:27 “Fer the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels and then He will reward each according to his works.

· Rev. 22:12 “Behold I am coming quickly, and my Reward is with me, to give to everyone according to his work”. (Reward = NT3408 = wages, pay for services).

(iii) Accountability is required – God will evaluate what we have done with our life.

· 1 Cor.3:11-15 “If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. Reward =NT3408= wages, pay for services).

· Jesus Himself will evaluate what we have done – our works – what sort of work.

· Our works may fail to qualify for a reward, but we are still saved.

· Jesus evaluated the works of the 7 churches of Revelation and made promises of reward. (Rev. 2:2 “I know your works”).

3. Two Foundations for Good Works

· Mt.7:21-29 “Not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven but he who does the Will of my Father in heaven”.

(a) Context: The Sermon on the Mount – this is the conclusion.

· Jesus has been teaching the culture, heart attitudes and values of the Kingdom.

· He is now addressing the issue of how we respond to his teaching – what we do.

(b) Vs21 “Entrance to the Kingdom” is the key issue at stake.

· He is not talking about “getting saved” = we are saved by grace through faith without any works (Eoh.2:8-9).

· He is talking about entering (experiencing) the Kingdom of Heaven now in our personal life but more importantly the millennium and eternal Kingdom.

(c) Vs22 “That day” refers to the day of His coming to establish His Kingdom on earth.

· In “that day” He will evaluate what we have done – “what sort of work”.

(d) Supernatural Ministry does not necessarily qualify us for Kingdom Entrance.

· V22 “Many will say” Lord, Lord – these are saved believers who call Jesus Lord.

· Note their works: Prophesy, Deliverance, Miracles = Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

· These are done in Jesus name by faith (you cannot do deliverance by methods – Acts 19:13).

(e) Two key issues at stake.

· Vs23 I will declare to them I never knew you; depart from me you that work iniquity. Personal Intimacy Loving relationship with Jesus

· Vs23 “I never knew you” = I did not know you as a friend.

· The other place Jesus makes this statement is in Math.25:12 ‘I do not know you’.

· 5x foolish virgins failed to prepare themselves, to purchase oil of intimacy.

· Our first call and work is to love the Lord with all our heart.

· This means relating to Him, hearing His voice, sharing our heart and life with Him.

· E.g. Lk10:39 Mary and Martha – Mary placed intimacy – hearing Jesus before works. Purity of Motivation Authentic love for people

· Vs23 “You that work iniquity”.

· Iniquity =NT458= without law, lawless, independent, illegal, contempt for law or authority.

· The key issue is fulfilling the will of God (Mt.7:21) not doing good works and expecting God to be impressed.

· E.g. Acts 8:9-23 “I see you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity”

· Simon was a person with great influence and importance. He used occult power to help him gain the influence and recognition.

· Vs9 “He gave out that he was great” = self-promotion.

· Vs13 He became a believer, was baptised and followed Philip.

· He wanted the power of God not to honour God and serve people but to promote himself.

· He failed to understand the need to serve out of love so God is honoured.

· Roots Bitterness – rejection and injustice was poisoning his perspective.

Iniquity – not yielded to the will or authority of God.

- Desired to use God to advance position, reputation, finances.

· “Bond” = Roman Soldier would chain prisoner’s right hand to his left hand.

· His works were “dead works” moved by selfish agenda.

· Cf Jn.5:38 “I have come down from Heaven not to do my will but the will of Him who sent me.

· Mt.7:24 “He that hears these sayings of mine and does them – stable

4. Focus on Knowing Jesus and Developing Character

2 Peter 1:2-11

· Build intimacy daily with the Lord

· Commit to personal growth in Godliness

· Results i) Not barren or unfruitful (v8)

ii) Not stumble (v10)

iii) Abundant entrance to Kingdom (v11)

17. Foundations for Fruit Bearing

Sun 6 May 2012  « Back to Top

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This is about people who are walking with God, moving in the supernatural, but there's something really missing in what they do and how they do it. It's not that they aren't seeing results - they're seeing people healed, delivered, touched by the presence or power of God, but there's something missing at the core of their being. Notice what He says: 1) I didn't know you; 2) you did your own thing

Okay, just let's open our Bible in Titus, Chapter 2 again; and we're doing a series we started last week, and it was Zealous for Good Works [Sun 29 Apr 2012 AM]. I want to go back to the key verse on this. We'll just keep repeating the key verse, and God wants you to be productive with your life. One of the greatest concerns to me as a Pastor is, over the years, to watch people fritter away their life. You've only got one life to live and there's so much at stake; so for the first term we were sharing, giving an eternal perspective, and what's at stake for you; to live your life powerfully now, and to live it for God.

But then it raises the practical thing; well we're called to do something, not just come to meetings. And meetings are great, but that's not what Christian life is about. Meetings are to build you, so you can live out the Christian life; and the Christian life is about doing the works of Christ. Today I want to share with you just what I call Foundations for Fruitbearing. Foundations for fruitbearing - and then in another session I'll begin to show you how you can identify what Jesus has called you specifically to do, but as you'll see in this, all of us are called to do this, and this is a key to be actually effective. So let's just look at a couple of scriptures where we were, then we'll give you something new today.

So have a look in Titus 2 verse 14, and it says: Looking for the blessed hope, and glorious appearing, of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every inequity, or all inequity; and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. Jesus gave His life for a purpose. It was not just to get you to Heaven. If you think in those terms, you miss that His message was about the kingdom. The purpose of God originally, for man, was to be His representative on earth, and advance His kingdom in the earth - to bring Heaven to earth. It has not changed.

In Revelation we see people, and they are reigning on earth. You have to get a perspective, you're called to change this world we live in, not run away from it. We're called to influence it. We're called to bring the kingdom of Heaven to it, and that's not something about praying for revival. This is about you engaging with God personally, and expressing His life through the things you do, the works you do. And so the question then comes up: well what does God want me to do? We'll address that in another session. This is a foundation to it.

Let's have a look in Matthew Chapter 7. Go back to there where we were; Matthew, Chapter 7 - because we saw that the difficulty was, when you just end up running around being busy, doing all of this and all of that; God is - His purpose is, that we be passionate and active advancing His kingdom; but one of the key things that we saw last time, was that intimacy with the Lord is crucial to knowing what He wants you to do. No one can tell you what He wants you to do. You've got to discover it for yourself.

The second thing we saw, was that the way you go about doing what you do, is also very important. In other words, not just go out and do your own thing. There's an alignment with Heaven that's important, so let's have a look in Matthew 7 verse 21. Not everyone who says: 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of Heaven. He that does the will of my Father in Heaven; for many will say in that day, speaking of the coming day of judgement, day of the Lord, that: we prophesied, and we cast out demons. Wow, we worked some great miracles. Yay, He said. I declare to you: I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice inequity.

This is an incredibly serious passage, so if you interpret that this is about people being saved or not saved - you've missed it. This is about people who are walking with God, moving in the supernatural, but there's something really missing in what they do, and how they do it. It's not that they aren't seeing results. They are seeing people healed, they are seeing people delivered, they are seeing people touched by the presence or power of God, but there's something missing at the core of their being. Notice what He says: two things; one, I didn't know you; and two, you did your own thing. To work inequity is to just do your own thing; whatever's in your life, do what you feel to do, what you think to do. There's a core of lawlessness around that.

So if we just go back and look at the big picture, Jesus is talking - this is the end of a message. Now notice this. In Matthew, Chapter 5, 6 and 7, it's all one block of teaching. This is the end of it; and so things usually progress from an introduction to a finale, so the introduction is: Blessed are the poor in Spirit; so the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount are the core attitudes and values of the kingdom, that we need to welcome and cultivate in our life. Secondly, He begins to talk about doing works. He says: let your light so shine before men, that they see your good works, and that they glorify your Father in Heaven. So He moves from: having the values of the kingdom; to doing the works of the kingdom. Then He comes to the very final conclusion and He says that: not all of those works will be of great value. Actually, I'm going to look over all you do, and I'll be looking: did this come out of intimacy, and relationship, and alignment with my will?

So in the very final part of this, first He starts: you need to build kingdom perspectives and thinking in your life. Secondly: get engaged doing something productive for the kingdom; and thirdly: align your life with the will of the Father. Don't just do your own thing. Not everyone that says 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of Heaven; its speaking of coming into the realms of glory in this coming kingdom. He said: no. He said: those who do the will of my Father; and then He tells a story, and it's all about hearing and doing. So we see then God wants you to have kingdom values and thinking in your life. In other words, the core value system shifted; secondly, to be productive, and active in doing things; but thirdly, to ensure your life is aligned with what God has for you, and we need to learn how to align it.

So what I want to do is, to look at what I consider essential foundations; and they're found in one passage of scripture. It's very, very interesting that when Jesus was in the Last Supper, remember at the Last Supper it says this; it says: Jesus, knowing where He came from - in other words knowing He was from above, knowing His origins were Heaven, and knowing that He went back to Heaven - it says: and knowing the Father had given everything into His hands. In other words, He knew His identity. He knew His destiny, He knew what He was called to do, and it says: He girded Himself, and He served; and He served in the lowest role, as a servant.

He was not worried about what anyone thought about Him. He has eternity in mind. I know where I've come from, I know where I'm going, and because of that, I'm committed totally to serve the Father's purpose. There's nothing too low or too small for me to do, and the Bible says to have that same kind of thinking. What you do, flows out of who you are. If you're mean, you'll do mean things. If you're angry, you'll do angry things. If you're selfish, you'll do selfish things; so in other words, what he's saying is: out of what you are, flows the flavour of what you do.

Remember Jesus spoke of the Pharisees in Matthew 6, and He warned His disciples. He said: listen, when you pray, do your praying in secret. Why? Because the Pharisees pray out openly. Their whole agenda is to be seen by men. No reward for them in Heaven. When you give, don't let people see what you're giving. Do it in secret. He's saying this is about the whole motivation. The Pharisees were full of pride, and so pride flowed in what they did. You can't stop what you are coming through in what you do, and that's got a plus side and a minus side. The plus side is, be yourself and enjoy what God has gifted you with, and express it fully in light. The other side is, if there are character issues, they will come out as well; and so we want to look at that now, and I want to show you something that's actually full of promises. This is amazing scripture.

Look with me in 2 Timothy, Chapter 1. So we're called to be ambassadors. We're not just called to fulfil a destiny and have self-fulfilment. See, people who coach you, or life coaches, will talk all about your desires, your dreams and your destiny; but if you contact the Holy Spirit who's the best life coach of all, He'll talk about the will of the Father, and they don't always line up unfortunately.

There's a thing called the cross; about learning to walk in what God wants for you; so we have a real danger, if we look to the world to direct how we run our life, we'll end up missing what God has purposed for us. Now let's come to 2 Peter, Chapter 1. Here it is: Now Simon - Verse 1 - Simon Peter, a bond servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, said: those who've obtained, like precious faith with us, by the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ - that's us. See, Peter the apostle, speaking to us, who have got like faith. We believe in Jesus, okay? Verse 2: Grace and peace be multiplied to you, through the knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ; and then He says: as this divine power given to us, everything that pertains to life and Godliness, through the knowledge of Him, who called us by glory and virtue, by whom we've been given exceeding great and precious promise, that through these you may become partakers of His divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the world through lust.

So he's saying: this is a message for believers. This is for people who've been born again. This is a message for people who are coming to grow in their knowledge of God. He says: I want you to notice very carefully what I have to say to you. He says this in Verse 5 through to 11: Also for this very reason, because of what you're called to be and do, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, perseverance to Godliness, Godliness to brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness, love.

Now, He tells us to add something into your life. These are all qualities of character. This is about the kind of person you are. Then He says: for - and He gives reasons for it - if these things are yours, and abound in you - now notice this - they will ensure you are not barren or unfruitful. Now if I could say to you: listen, I can guarantee to you, that you will be not barren and unfruitful; neither will you fail and fall, if you put certain things into your life; you would want to do those things. Well He's listed them here, so they're not so hard to understand. So here it is - and you notice there's some things that He tells us about it: to make sure that you'll neither be barren or unfruitful, in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who lacks these things is short-sighted, and even to blindness; has forgotten he's cleansed from his old sins; so be diligent - there's the word diligent again. Verse 5 - diligent. Verse 10 - diligent.

Why should you be diligent to put them in? Because it's all about the call of God, and His selection for the kingdom, so He says: really be diligent. Twice He tells you: be diligent; and then He says: be diligent to make your calling election sure; if you do these things, you'll never stumble, and an abundant entrance will be supplied to you, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. He goes on to describe what that will be like a little later. Let's pick the passage up now.

So notice what he's saying here: add - or the word literally, add; be diligent to add to yourself. Now that word means to thoroughly furnish your house, so can you imagine having an empty house. Empty house is not a very great place to live in. You know, you've got a hard floor, you've got nothing to eat with; and he's saying: furnish your house thoroughly. Now you are the house, and he's saying: furnish it with certain kinds of things. Then He lists the things to furnish it with, and let's have a look what you are called to furnish your life with - and every one of us is called to do this. He says: add to your faith.

You can't put these things into your life by attending a prayer meeting. You can't put these things into your life by attending a Bible Study. You can only put these things in your life, as you do what God called you to do. They are things you develop in your life, that ensure what you're doing is productive and fruitful, and qualifies for reward; so all that God calls us to do, and whatever we're going to be doing, here's a grid to look at and see: how am I operating? What is showing up in my life, as I do these things? And you'll see they're quite easy to look at, quite easy to deal with. Nothing in God is complicated, so let's see what we're called to add, or develop, as we serve people.

It always comes down to serving people. It always comes down to a person, that you will help them in life. It's always going to come to that; and if we avoid connecting and engaging with people in life, we are never going to fulfil all of these things, it just isn't possible. It requires an engagement with people; so here it goes. Let's have a look at it. Add to your - giving all diligence, or being really passionate and zealous about this, add to your faith. So you've come to believe in Jesus Christ. Now he's saying: add to your faith virtue, so I looked up the meaning of the word virtue. The word virtue means these two things: it means excellence; or purity. So we'll just stick with the word purity.

Purity has to do with the motivations of your heart, and has to do with also sexual cleanness, because sexual uncleanness defiles our capacity to love God, and to love people. It builds walls in our heart, and hardens our heart from being loving people; so what he's saying is then: as you work, as you serve, check out the motivations of your heart; and check out the purity of your life, what kinds of things you're looking at, what kinds of things you're touching, what kinds of things you're involved with. What is operating in your life as you serve?

He's saying: add to your faith purity, because God is separating for Himself, or calling on people to be clean. It's not going to mean, we're not going to have wrong motives at times, or we're not going to have sexual temptations. What it means, He's saying: be diligent to work on your life, so these areas clean up as you journey with God; and you may have, or have come into your Christian life with, areas where there's been major sexual sin, major bondage of sin. Then make it a point of focus for your life, that you will address these hidden bondages that keep defiling your life, and you begin to work to develop cleanness and purity. Courses are run in the church. These things can help you to address those areas of your life.

So He says: add to you; so it's obvious, it must be possible to add to us, and the Holy Ghost will continually work on you to challenge your motives, and also to point out where what you're doing is actually defiling your relationship with God. So be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and be aware of His promptings: hey, your motivation in that wasn't so good, or there was uncleanness in your thinking. There was uncleanness in your heart, or you're entertaining things in your heart. So He said: make it your pursuit, you will separate yourself from the defiling influence of sexual sin in the world.

Now listen young people, it just comes at you left, right and centre; like a bombardment comes. It comes through the media, it comes through the school, it comes through the culture; and what He's saying is: if you're going to be fruitful you've got to add purity to your life. You've got to actually be committed to sexual purity, to purity on the inside, and in your relationships. Why? Because you can never represent Christ well, if sexual sin is operating in your life. It brings a condemnation, and it steals your testimony with those who know what you've been doing.

So what he's saying is: clean up your act, begin to commit to sexual purity. Why? Because He said: God will deal with all of this thing, this defiles people, and stops them engaging in intimacy in all levels of life. So there's Verse 1: add into your life; so that's a bit of a journey. How many say that's a bit of journey? All of those over 60 would say: yes, it doesn't go away. Doesn't go away until after you die. You've still got to push against this thing, and maintain purity in your life; otherwise it just will keep coming in, and when it comes in, it will steal intimacy with God, and it will steal out your testimony.

You ever noticed, no matter how great people have come into governmental office, if they fail sexually, somehow it disqualifies them out of the office? Doesn't matter how big it is. You know, the President of the United States failed sexually; he's out of office. Great giftings, great charisma, great potential, did a lot of great work; but fell out of office through just this whole area, didn't deal with this thing in His life. Number one, sexual purity. Okay, number two: I said add to purity, add to purity knowledge. That's word is experiential knowledge you've got, in other words, commit to growing in knowledge, spiritual knowledge, and spiritual understanding; so we need to apply ourself to learning from God.

You need to apply yourself to that. If you cry for understanding, you lift up your voice for knowledge, the Holy Spirit will teach you; but to do that, you've got to want to, and put yourself reading the word of God. You see, there are many different kinds of knowledge, and let me just give you a scripture in Colossians 1, Verse 9 and 10. It says: be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. So God wants you to know what His will is. How am I going to find out? I'll give you it in more detail, because you can't find the will of God and be filled with knowledge and understanding, except you pursue Him, and get to know Him better; study the life of Jesus, study what He taught, begin to start to apply what He taught to your life. Hunger for the Holy Spirit to show you things, and He will begin to increase your knowledge of God, and your spiritual understanding.

A lot of people seek for - now there's wisdom in the world. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in secular society, but you will not find the wisdom of God there. You'll find the wisdom of God in the word of God, and with the Holy Ghost; so ensure that in all you're seeking, that you place wisdom of God in relationship to life at the highest level. You can be helped or coached in this and that, but if you lose spiritual wisdom and understanding of where God is wanting you to direct your life, all of that will actually count for nothing in the long term of eternity.

Here's the next thing He says: so add to your pursuit of purity, add knowledge. Then the third one says: add to knowledge. Oh, I've got to add some more things! Self-control. Oh my! That means control yourself, manage yourself. So what is that? Let's just give it really clearly, really simple: He's saying: do not let anything get a hold of your life; so that there's a part of your life in bondage. So in other words, control your tongue. Stop gossiping, stop cutting people down, stop backbiting, stop bickering, control your tongue. Control your body. Don't eat until your body is so big, you're going to have a heart attack. Don't leave your body so neglected, that it now can no longer carry you through the course God wants you to toe. Deal with your soul. Manage your soul. Deal with anger issues in your heart. Anger's a big issue for people today, a lot of angry people around. Doesn't take much to fire up - someone cuts across in front of them. Next minute they're yelling [speaks loudly - blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!] And that's just on the way to church you know...

Congregation: [Laughter]

...and then they're going to come and hold their hands, and you know [laughs] Jesus, I love you, you know? Jesus says: I saw what you did down the road. I was watching, see. So self-control, managing your emotional life, managing the areas of your inner life. That's not controlling everything, suppressing. It's actually developing healthy emotions, and learning how to address issues of anger, and various other things that come up in our emotional life and physical life. Okay, self-control. There we go, managing your money, managing addictions or dealing with addictions in your life; addictions to food, addictions to internet, addictions to anything. Anything that's got control over your life, deal with it. It's about bringing balance to your life. Get the idea? Bringing balance round your life: managing your money.

Okay, next one, so add to self-control, got to add something else. Add to self-control perseverance. Now that word perseverance, literally it means to maintain a positive attitude during setbacks and disappointments. Now how do you develop that? You actually develop it in life. You know one of the areas you most have to develop perseverance? That's being involved as a leader, in a small group. Anyone committed to discipling people, anyone's who's serious about the great commission, that gets involved with people - perseverance is a must. People do stuff. That's why self-control is needed, because you get angry, take it personally and think you're rejected by them. No, they're just doing stuff.

But in order to fulfil the great commission, be fruitful and work with people, we have to manage our emotions; we have to also develop the ability to stay on task, don't quit, don't complain, don't feel sorry for yourself, don't whine, and don't run things down. In other words, it's saying: keep a joyful attitude in tough times, because they won't last; but if you've got a great attitude, God will come into that, and it'll work out somehow for you good at the end of it. Well, how many people just quit before they produce fruit? Ah, just kind of quit, gave up on that, gave up on this, gave up on that, gave up on that, and actually where they were bearing fruit, they actually stop bearing fruit any more.

I think God always leads you from one fruit bearing thing to another; and sometimes people quit, because they're just weary and tired. The Bible says in Galatians 6: don't be weary in well doing. So it tells us that, because you get tired doing good. You get tired working with people, you get tired discipling people. You get tired trying to help them sort out their problems. You get tired with the silly stuff they get caught up in, you get tired with the smallness. All of these things are very tiring, so you've got to develop a good attitude inside, that you persevere; because this is about the kingdom, it's about the business of Almighty God, and this is important business, the business of working with people.

It's very easy to withdraw from that, and engage in something that you feel good with; but the work of the Gospel is a work discipling people, and all are called to do it in some way or another, and you want to try and find ways that you can get engaged and get involved in that, but everyone is called. That is the mandate given to the church. Everything serves that mandate. Everything we do is to serve this purpose of discipling people to be followers of Christ; and if you've ever worked with a new Christian, you'll realise how much energy and effort is needed, how much persistence is needed. I think of the teams that are out on the street, the teams that go to the prisons, the teams who work with - people who work in the small groups. This is a work that requires perseverance; and here's the great thing: if you commit to the work, you develop the perseverance. [Laughs] There's no way you'll develop perseverance without giving yourself to something; and this is God, be positive!

Okay, then the next thing is this: add to your perseverance godliness. Oh! After all this, you've got to add something else! That word godliness means literally respect, or reverence to God, so what it's saying then is, develop constantly respect for God. I could spend a lot of time talking about respect for God, but here's the thing; familiarity breeds disrespect in every area of life, and disrespect separates you from what you're disrespecting. Disrespect money, and you'll be in debt. It'll flee from you. Disrespect a relationship, and it will break down. Disrespect God, and you'll find yourself religious, and not full of the Holy Ghost. He will not be disrespected. You've got to understand that. It's not that we can't disrespect God. It's just He won't be defiled by that. He'll just draw back from you, and this is the dilemma.

I want to be quite practical about this. I want you to think about the Sunday meeting we're in now. Is this a Sunday Church Meeting, or is this a meeting with God? You've got to decide that. If it's a meeting with God, respect Him, and turn up on time. Respect the people who are here to start on time, and be there on time. Respect by participating, and being involved and engaging; rather than chattering and making everyone's job really hard. This is respect. That's what it looks like, and it's not only respect for God. It's impossible to respect Him, without giving respect to His people. Jesus, when Paul was persecuting the church, Jesus said: why do you persecute me? Jesus says: you did this to the least of my brethren, you did it to me. Now that - you can't get clearer than that, so one thing is to respect God, and to show reverence to Him, and to show honour to Him in our heart attitude, and the way we treat Him.

We show respect for His person. We show respect for His presence, and we show respect for His words; when you listen to His words, take in His words, you're showing respect for His words. I'll challenge on something else now. I want you to have a think about this. On the internet you can go and you can search for messages all over the world, and there's many preachers, and there's great preachers, and they're all over the world. But there's not many are here in this house that are telling you what God's saying to us at this time, so the words are important. If you go out - and I'm not saying not look around and feed off some things, but what you've got to realise is, God talks to us as a community. He talks to us about what He's wanting US to come into. Often it's parallel with what He's saying around the world, or in certain areas, or to prophetic people; but many times it's actually quite specific and relevant to us; and so when God is speaking to us, the messages He's bringing prophetically comes to actually instruct us on what He's wanting us to grow into. It's important you get the messages, and see what God is saying, and how He wants to apply it to your life, otherwise you just have a disrespect for it; and then what happens is, you're disrespecting the one who's sent the message.

I wait every week for what God wants to say to the church. See, if I wanted to get an easier way of doing that, I'd just copy someone's message. I need to know what God is saying to us; and He's right through this year, speaking on a whole number of areas: eternal perspective; and now he's talking for us on becoming productive with the Gospel in the community. He's trying to shift the whole church, but we need to understand that if I respect Jesus, I respect what He's saying, and He can speak to you through many different ways. I'm only one of that ways. He'll speak to you through other areas of life, other ways in life but I need to be open to what God is saying; and respect his words by taking them in, thinking about them, and looking how they would apply to my life. Add to your life godliness, respect for God, and His word, and for His people.

I have found that anyone who disrespects the people of God, and the house of God, generally they're not in a good shape with God himself. They're usually in a state of deception; so just look around. Around you is Christ, in a human form. We say: I can love you Jesus, but oh, that person next to me, I don't - they give me the creeps.

Congregation: [Laughter]

Well they may well do, and there may be some junk and baggage they're carrying, but that doesn't mean you should disrespect them, or speak negatively about them, or treat them badly, or cut them out of your life by cold love, and being cold to them. That totally misrepresents Christ, who shows cold love to no one; shows rather warm, loving, acceptance to people of all kinds. That's partly why we get you up, and get you around - to get connecting; and I'm always watching where this is an overflow of the heart, that just wants to love people - people are interesting. There are all these interesting people, interesting stories and testimonies, but this is it. This is what the word's - it's all about. Notice what this leads on to.

The next one, add to godliness, brotherly kindness. Oh my! He's spelt it out. That's a shame. Now I've just put it down here as kindness to Christians. Kindness to Christians. Kindness to Christians. You want to count how many times the Bible says: love one another, forgive one another, be kind to one another, considerate, patient with one another, long-suffering with one another; oh my goodness, there's lots of one-another's, over 30 of them. Here's the good thing about that. It does require you engage with another Christian, for you to do it. You see there's no such thing in the Bible as 'solo' Christianity. It's always about community. It's always about a body of people; and within the body or family of people, that's where you work out. You see, if Jesus tells me: I want you to love one another, as I've loved you; forgive one another, as I've forgiven you; and I see someone I don't like, just turn up my nose, and go I'll go over here.

Now listen: you aren't growing in brotherly kindness that way. It's when you see the person you've got the issue with and whatever, and you can go and demonstrate kindness to them anyway, you are growing in brotherly kindness. See, that's why I say: you can't work this out without people; and it's interesting. The first place He wants us to do it in is in the church, God's own family. Jesus said: by this they'll know you're my followers, you love one another. So start to re-think your attitude to the local family of God. Has it got shortcomings? Of course! Are there things not right and not perfect? Oh, there's heaps of them - more than you could count. But are there people there who are part of the family of God, that I'm called to love? Yes, there's at least 30 commandments I have, towards each one of you.

We've all got to think about this. If we're serious about walking with God, serious about eternal things, you've got to start to apply what God says: love one another, be kind to one another, caring for one another, building up one another, encouraging one another, ministering the gifts to one another. There's a whole number of things that are called to be part of our journey with God, so one of the first things to learn to do is, you might not be able to see God, but that brother next to you, you can see and He will flush up in you, where you really live with God. That brings you back nearer to the Lord, to help Him deal with the lack of love, lack of passion or negative things in the heart.

It's a great thing working with people. That's why one of the things I found early in life, if you want to really grow as a Christian, get engaged working with people. Here's the last one that it says: add to this - after adding all of those, add - and I've called it practical love. Practical love. Add to your life practical love. In case the others were too spiritual for you, add practical love. Practical love means: meeting needs, helping people out, showing kindness, doing things that'll help people, seeing people who have a need, and stepping up and being engaged and involved with them. Showing kindness of God in very simple ways. Never minimise the simple kind act. It is the way that you represent Christ to people.

Okay then. So now it tells us, why do all these things? Here it is, three negative reasons: Because if you don't have these in your life, you're blind. Hello! Can't see. Or like me, short-sighted; so the word blind means - and I love this - the original words are great. They're more graphic than the word blind. I think blind, you think of someone who can't see at all. Actually the word in the Bible means - it's the word tooposs, meaning smoky; or putting it this way, you're surrounded in a cloud of smoke. So it says: if you haven't got these things growing in your life, it's like you're living surrounded by a cloud of smoke; and you're coughing, and can't see where you're going.

The second thing He says: and you're short-sighted. You've got no vision for eternity. You're living just out of what's in front of you. God help me meet this need today. These are pretty serious things aren't they? And notice this. The third one that comes up in here: and you've got a memory loss. You've forgotten that you've been forgiven. So you've got memory loss, blind, and short-sighted. It's not too good is it aye? Covered in smoke, can't see very far; and actually you've forgotten. What have you forgotten? You've forgotten why you were saved. You've forgotten what it cost to save you?

You've forgotten Jesus gave His life! He didn't give his life for nothing! He gave it for a people who'd be passionate for Him. He gave it for His people that would represent him, that would be His hands and eyes and ears and mouth and voice, and bring Him to the world. That's what He did it for. That's what He did it for. Have you forgotten? It's why we have communion, to remember, remember! Remember - I was lost. I'm saved just by the grace of God; and I've got a purpose. First I'll be grateful to Him. Then it says: now if you do these things - so it's interesting, He's trying to get the message through. He says: there's three negatives - that should motivate you; but here's three that'll motivate you. He said: they ensure you won't be barren or unfruitful. Secondly, they'll make sure that you never stumble or fail, or fall or backslide; and third, an abundant entrance will be given into the kingdom of Heaven. Not everyone is promised an abundant entrance. That means if the Bible tells us, that I could do things that will bring me an abundant entrance into the coming kingdom; that means there must be an average and ordinary entrance as well; and there must be entrances which are full of glory and shouts of triumph; and entrances which are ooh, you're still smelling of smoke. You've just made it!

And we saw that in the other scripture, in 1 Corinthians 3, where the works are tested; and if they're burnt up, the person is saved yet by fire. They come into Heaven, they come into eternity with the Lord; but all that God had prepared them for, they haven't qualified for. This is so distressing. What an amazing thing, to have an abundant entrance; and I don't think it's just in eternity, and in the millennial. It actually starts to happen now. You start to access God. You start to see His presence in your life. You start to begin to feel Him around your life. You have divine connections take place. You start to see blessings happening in your business, in your personal life. Around your life, God begins to start to make His presence manifest. The kingdom is coming near to you, and you know that one day, an abundant entrance will be given for you, into that place.

So your life is set. I will give myself passionately for works of serving God. I'm zealous that Jesus name be honoured, so I will let my light shine before all men, that they see what I do, and know there's no way it could be anything except: God is working in that person. Now does that mean it's all about supernatural things? No. I tell you something: when you see an unselfish act of kindness, even an unsaved person's got to say: I never seen anything like that. God is in that. Think of Mother Theresa, whatever you think of her, unsaved people said: God - we saw God in those acts of kindness.

I'll just finish with this quick story. We were in a very difficult season in our life, and we faced many pressures at work, and many pressures at home, many pressures in the ministry as well. Just there were lots of pressures, and we were really quite tired, and it was early days of serving a ministry, and financially we had no money. I'd taken a pay cut from about - that day it was about $24,000; and I went down to $6,000 to serve the Lord. It was quite stressful for us, with a family of four; and so we had to lean and depend on the Lord constantly for our provision. We were at a place we were quite emotionally and spiritually drained, and tired, and we needed a break. Someone offered us a place up in another city, up in the north, where we could be looked after as a family for three weeks, and have a break, which was wonderful. It wouldn't cost us anything. All we had to do was get there, and I checked out the money we had. I had enough money to get there, and not enough money to get back, so I said: well this is very good - so Lord, I'm leaving in this car to go there. If you want me back you'll have to provide [Laughter], and I'm not going to tell anyone. I'm not going to tell anyone. No one will know my need, except you.

And so we went on that, and we were there, and had quite a nice time of break; and one evening, one of our friends said: we'd like to invite you out for a meal. I said that'd be wonderful. We'd love to go out for a meal; and so they invited us for a meal. When we got there they said: no, actually it's not with us. It's a special surprise, and they said we've got a map for you. We want you go to this address, and the surprise is there, which was quite unusual. So we drove around the streets, and there's a house there with the lights on, and the door is open. There's a big sign up: Welcome Mike and Joy, and so we went inside and there's no one in the house. The house has got beautiful candles. It's lit up. The lounge is lit up with candlelight and they've got candles around the room and candles on the table and the table is set for a course, about a five course meal and all the meal was laid out there before us. There's beautiful Christian music playing; and anyway, there was a note to us, that said: our ministry is to express the love of Christ to people, and we will come and serve you coffee at the end of this meal. So we sat down, and they had a scripture for us.

I can remember the love of God to this day, that I felt when two people I didn't even know showed the love of God. I can still feel what I felt then, the gratitude to God, for the kindness shown in such a practical way, to people who really needed it. They later came round and gave us coffee, and they said: this was our ministry. We ask only one thing: that you never tell anyone who we are. To this day, I've never told anyone who the people are, and they've continued. They said: we've had all these people come through our house, and we've had marriages restored. We've had lives restored, just through the simple act of making a home available, to show kindness to people.

You see, the love they had showed through the act. You couldn't hide it. We couldn't do anything but feel it. There was absolutely no selfish gain in it. There was no way that they wanted to draw attention to themselves. It was just a genuine, authentic act of love; of making a meal, and it changed our lives. See, it's not in the big ministry things that the most powerful impact is made. It's in the simple acts of love, coming out of a character that's aligned with 2 Peter 1: acts of kindness; out of a motive just to honour Jesus Christ.

That day I can tell you this; I'm thankful to the people, but God will reward them. I'm mostly thankful to the Lord, who showed such kindness through these people. I was left impressed with what God had done for us, not with what they had done, and that shows that flowing through it was the spirit of love. That's why we need to grow in love, so that whatever we do, and however we express the life of God, through whatever gifts and whatever acts of kindness; and they're limited only to your creativity what you could do; that in them, the love of God touches lives.

Father, we just honour you and thank you. We thank you for your presence here today. We are feeling so challenged in our hearts that our lives would count; they would count for eternity, and they would count now. I'm asking Lord, that there be a stirring within the whole spirit of Bay City, to begin to start to consider how our lives can be adjusted, and grow to enjoy your love in a greater level, and to express it; love is around us. I'm asking for release of creativity of ideas, and how to bring the love of God to people. I'm asking Lord for an increase of your anointing, that through simple acts of kindness and love, that people's hearts will be transformed. I'm asking Lord that you change Bay City, that you shift us into all the new things you have for us, and that the community be blessed because we are here. Father, we give you all the honour and all the glory.

There may be someone here who doesn't know Jesus. It'd be a great day to receive Him as your saviour. If you would just like to make your way to the front, I'd love to pray with you to receive Jesus, become a Christian who'd respond to Jesus. Believe He died on the cross for you, and to actually actually open your life to partnership with Him, to walk with Him by faith, a great journey, a wonderful journey.

If anyone here is at that place right now, just raise your hand. I'd love to pray with you, love to bless you and help you in your journey spiritually. The others here perhaps today, and God is really speaking to your heart about actually giving yourself to the work of the Lord. God is not unrighteous, to forget your work of love; and that you minister to his people, and continually minister to the people you meet. God wants you to do these things. If God spoke with you today in some way, would you like to just raise your hand so help God speak? God bless, God bless, God bless.

What is in your hand, take it and use it to make Jesus known to people, even if it's just a simple of kindness in some way. Use it to make manifest the reality of God's love. Lets just finish up, we just won't have a big song or anything. Just there's a great atmosphere here. Why not just pray with the person next to you, that God will give great opportunities in this week, to express the love of God in a very practical way.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Titus 2:14 “He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for Himself, His own special people zealous for good works”.

· Jesus gave His life for a purpose – raise up an unusual people passionate about advancing the Kingdom of God in this world.

· Mt.7:21-23 “Not everyone that says Lord, Lord shall enter the Kingdom of heaven…”

· Context: Sermon on Mount to his disciples

Overview: (i) The attitudes and values of the Kingdom (Mt.5) “blessed”

(ii) Doing the works of the Kingdom (Mt.5-6) “Salt, Light – Rewards”

· Key Issues raised by Jesus – Intimacy with God and Purity of Motivation.

· He will evaluate all our works what sort they are (1 Cor.3:13) with reward in mind.

· How can I be productive as a Christian? What should I do?

2. Foundations for Fruit-bearing

(a) What you do flows out of who you are!

e.g. Jn.13:1-3 Jesus – knew where he came from, where going, purpose = He served.

· What you do (works) flows out of the person you are – overflow of inward life.\What you do (works) shapes and confirms who you are.

· It is important to commit to personal growth to become Christ-like.

· We are called to be ambassadors – to represent Christ to people.

(b) Key Foundations to Build

2 Pet.1:1-11 “Add to your faith …”

· Develop divine DNA in your life! – become more and more like Him.

· Add =2023= to thoroughly furnish a house, fully supply.

· NB You develop these qualities as you serve people.

(i) Purity

V5 add to your faith “virtue”

· Virtue =703= excellence, moral purity

· It is our responsibility to cultivate purity

· Sexual sin and personal agendas defile the heart and create selfishness.

· Holy Spirit works constantly with us on purity in thought, word, action.

(ii) Knowledge

V5 add to your virtue “knowledge”

· Knowledge =1108= experiential knowledge of God and His purposes.

· We need to apply ourselves to spiritual knowledge and understanding.

· We need to know what God wants us to do

· Col.1:9-10 “filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding”.

· Col.2:8 “Don’t be cheated by drawing from the philosophies and ways of world”.

(iii) Self-Control

V6 add to knowledge “self-control”

· Must learn to manage yourself

· E.g. Books – physical diet, health, rest; soul – addictions, anger, lust

· What areas of your life are in bondage? – Out of your control?

(iv) Patient Endurance

V6 add to self-control “perseverance”

· Perseverance =NT5281= to maintain a positive attitude during setbacks and pressures.

· How do you respond in difficulties? – Complain? Self-pity? Quit?

· Gal.6:9 “Let us not grow weary in well doing – we shall reap if we faint not”.

(v) Godliness

V6 add to perseverance “godliness”

· Godliness =NT2150= respect and reverence towards God

· Respect attracts in relationships. Disrespect leads to distance in relationship

· Cultivate respect – high value towards Jesus, His Words, His house

· Respect a person = respect what they have to say and who they are.

(vi) Kindness in Christians

V7 add to godliness “brotherly kindness”

· Brotherly kindness =NT5360= love for Christians as part of a family

· Jesus identifies with His Church – we are one with Him

· How we treat the Christians we see and interact with is how we treat Him

· Local church = practical expression of Christ – place to put our faith to action

· NT abounds with “one another’s” – how we are to treat one another

(vii) Practical Love

V8 add to brotherly kindness “Love”

· Love =NT26= Agape = practical kindness with no selfish agenda

· We are called “to walk in love” (Eph.5:1-2)

· Love gives a flavour to all that you do (1 Cor.13:1-3)

· Love is very practical – it serves people with words and acts of kindness

(c) Why are these Qualities important to Develop

(i) V9 – 3 Negative Reasons

· Blind =NT5786= smoke, in a haze, dull intellect

· Short-sighted =NT3467= can only see what is near, no concept of eternity

· Memory loss =NT3024= forgotten he was forgiven, lost gratitude for the Cross

(ii) V8 and v10 - 3 Positive Reasons

· Neither barren nor unfruitful Barren =NT692 lazy, idle, spiritually unemployed

Become productive in good works

· Not stumble – never backslide

· Abundant entrance to Kingdom – abundant reward in eternity!

APPLICATION

· What am I doing to develop my inner life in Christ?

· Which of these qualities do I need to work on?

· What heart issues, bondages block the flow of the Holy Spirit in this area?

· In what relationships in my life do I need to apply these?

· How am I incorporating Jesus Words into my life?

18. Vision to See

Sun 6 May 2012  « Back to Top

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Proverbs 29 tells us that without a Vision, people are naked, or dwell naked, or dwell carelessly. One of the most important senses you've got in your life is vision, the ability to see. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world with darkness. This is the world that Jesus came into, a world with spiritual darkness, to help people. God wants you to have vision for your life, wants you to see

I want you to open your Bible with me. We're going to look at Mark, Chapter 10, down to Gospel of Mark, Mark, Chapter 10. The Bible tells us in Proverbs, Chapter 29, it tells us that without a vision people are naked, or dwell naked, or dwell carelessly. One of the most important senses you've got in your life is vision, the ability to see. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world with darkness. This is the world that Jesus came into, a world with spiritual darkness, to help people. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were blind? The way your life would be affected, the way your life would be impacted? You'd live in a world of darkness. Think about that, constant darkness.

You would trip over things, constantly not knowing what you're tripping over but always you would walk with uncertainty because you never know whether you'll strike an obstacle or something, so instead of walking confidently you walk hesitantly, tapping with a stick, trying to see what's out there in your imagination. If you were blind and lived in blindness you'd live not only a world of darkness but you'd have no idea quite where you're going. You'd need someone to point you in the right direction. If you were in a world of blindness people could deceive you very easily. It would be very hard to be able to work out what's going on around you.

Imagine what it'd be like to live in a world of blindness. Horrendous. You could be easily led astray by someone. You would be easily deceived by people. Living a world of darkness is a horrendous thing and so we need to understand that there are different kinds of blindness and different kinds of darkness, so just picturing it now what it would be like physically, the kind of things that would happen in your life if you were blind - living in darkness, stumbling, unable to see your way, lost, dependent on others, easily deceived and easily losing your direction. This is what the majority of people in this world live like all the time.

God wants you to have vision for your life, wants you to see, so I want you to have a look at the story of this man who was lost in blindness and he came to see. Let's go and have a look at it in Mark, Chapter 10 and at Verse 46; he came to Jericho, went down to Jericho with his disciples. There was a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus sat by the roadside and he was begging, so there are different kinds of blindness; first blindness that people can have is a natural blindness. That's what he had, but there's other kinds of blindness too.

Here's the second blindness you can have and that is spiritual blindness. You can't see your way to God, can't see at all. Imagine what it's like to live your whole life knowing somehow there's something out there, but you actually can't see or can't tell. You don't know about God. You don't know him personally at all. You're living in spiritual darkness. Sin brings darkness in our life. Then there's another form of blindness and that is destiny blindness, where maybe you have got your eyes and you can actually see and maybe you've come to Christ, but you can't see at all what you're supposed to be doing with your life. Those are three forms of blindness. There's probably other ones as well, but each one of them presents problems. Each one of them leads you to difficulties in your life, so I want you to see this man who broke his way out of it and want us to learn a couple of things from it.

So here's the guy - in Mark 10, Verse 46. There it is. They came to Jericho and he went out of Jericho with the disciples. There's a great multitude and blind Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging and when he heard that it was Jesus he began to cry out, saying Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Then many warned him, be quiet and he cried out even more; Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped. This is the story of the man who stopped Jesus. Jesus stood still, commanded him to be called and they called the blind man and saying to him, oh, look, hasn't this turned out good for you? Rise up, he's calling for you - and he threw away his garment and he rose and he came to Jesus and Jesus answered and said what do you want me to do for you?

He said Rabbi, that I might receive my sight. He said go your way, your faith has made you whole. And immediately he received his sight. He followed Jesus and the road. So you notice several things about this man and just typical of a blind person. The man is blind, can't see. It says that he's the son of - Bartimaeus is his name, which means the son of Timaeus, the son of the unclean man, so obviously his reputation was not very good. He sat by the highway - that means he's quite a passive person - a person who's sitting by the roadside's passive. Many people are passive. You don't go far in life being very passive. God wants you to have a spirit that's energised, eyes that have vision and a heart that can see what you're called to do and to stir your life up to count, not to just be passive.

I find all over New Zealand so many people are passive, spiritually passive, emotionally passive. He was sitting by the roadside and he was begging. He was dependent on other people to help him, dependent on others to come through for him, dependent on others to feed him, dependent on others for directions, dependent on others for guidance, dependence on others for correction and help. Listen, this man was not in good shape. He literally was not fulfilling the potential he's created for. He was not fulfilling his destiny. In fact he's falling far short of it. Instead of being up and having been productive with his life, he's leaning on others.

I wonder in your spiritual life if you are leaning and depending on other people, if you find that you have never built a life with God, a sense of God's presence and purpose around your life, and so you just lean on other's Christian life. You lean on the life of others to make your life sort of come alive a little bit. Sometimes people do that. They come to a meeting. They're relying on someone else to break through for them, someone else to engage God for them, someone else to hear God for them. This is not the life we're called to. We're called to be incredibly active and pro-active and drawing from God for ourselves.

This man was begging, dependent on others. Perhaps some of you are emotionally dependent, dependent on others to support you, come through for you. There's no reason why we can't get the help of others, but you don't want a lifestyle - this was a lifestyle like that. You imagine a lifestyle like that. You get up every day and someone has to help you find your place where you can sit and you can beg and ask people to come through for you. Think about that. It's a horrendous way to live your life. It's definitely not what God purposed. Then he heard about Jesus. This man heard about Jesus, this man who was blind and in darkness.

There are many ways blindness comes on people. There's a physical blindness of course. It's quite disturbing to look at when people have lost their eyes or their eyes have been damaged and they have no sight, it's quite disturbing to see. But there's other forms of blindness. If you have a look through the Bible there are many people who are blind. Think about them. Think about the people in the Bible described as being blind. I'll describe some blindness for you.

There was a man called Samson, a man of great destiny. He got distracted by compromise and ended up blind, lost his sight, lost his sense of purpose, lost his direction totally. That's what compromise will do for you. You need to know where you're going in life and what God's called you to do. If you stick on that and stay focussed on that and then you maintain your direction, your vision in life. This is what I'm called to do. This is what God wants me to do. He dilly dallied with women, got involved in relationships and he ended up losing his sight.

There's another group of people that Jesus said were blind as well. They were religious leaders. They were people who outwardly, they did everything outwardly to impress people and there was no heart engagement with God. They were more concerned with what people think. When you're more concerned with what people think, you're blind. You can't see real life. If you're looking for the applause of people, then you'll miss the applause of one who really counts. That's where we should be focussed on what God has to say for us - and so the religious leaders were blind. He said they were quite blind.

There are other people in the Bible that the Bible tells were blind too. There was a church in the Book of Revelation that Jesus wrote, I've been there, into that place Laodicea and everyone was lukewarm. They were half hearted, spiritually passive and shot down and saying well we've got it, we're okay, we don't need anything. And Jesus said you're blind. You can't see your need. You can't actually see that that state of apathy and passivity and lukewarmness leaves you without any vision for what you're called to do. You'd never be in that state if you could see what you're called to be.

And so He describes a whole number of things. In the Book of Peter, Peter describes people who are blind and he says these people have never cultivated their life with God, never built a life that would be productive and fruitful in advancing the kingdom. A person who does not give their life to some purpose in God is blind. You can't see what you're here for. You've missed your way and lost your purpose and God wants to do something about that. He wants to help you. So as we're looking at the story you may be one of those people. There may be physical eye sight problems - we can pray for those later. There may be also that you're in darkness, that actually sin has blinded your eyes. Could be that you're living to impress people and you've got issues of the heart that would leave you blind.

Here's another area that Jesus said makes you blind too - may not have thought of this one. Matthew, Chapter 7, He says - in Matthew, Chapter 7, the first few versus He said don't judge people, because if you judge people, He said then it'll return to you and He said first remove the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly. So judgements in the heart stop you seeing clearly. They make you blind. You can't see what real life is about, what issues are about and you can't be of help to people. When we judge people we can't really help them at all, so there's some of the ways that people can be blind. I wonder if one of those is you tonight? God can help you in this.

So blind Bartimaeus, here he is living a miserable life, a miserable existence, boring thing. People probably kick him and spit on him. He can't do anything about it - doesn't know who they are and there they are, just sitting day by day, just in the dust on the side of the road. One day he heard of Jesus. Someone spoke to him, that you don't have to live this way any longer. Someone spoke to him and said Jesus Christ can change your life. He can physically heal you. He can break the power of sin. He can set you free from the bondages in your life.

He heard what Jesus could do. People in darkness who are blind, spiritually or any other way, he could hear what Jesus Christ can do for an ordinary person's life. You and I are called to let our community who is blind know about this Jesus Christ. Every one of us is called, because when he heard about it - I was amazed, interesting the story that Danny told; here in a school and they're all laughing and then he began to share the Gospel. Suddenly hearts began to open up and the atmosphere changed and people started to see something they hadn't seen before and then began to respond. Tremendous thing to see it. It's like the darkness began to lift and then they see their need. Quite an extraordinary thing to watch and when the Gospel is preached, to see people who laugh and jeer and then they start to go quiet, and then they began to draw in and began to listen as they begin to see that they have a need in their life and that only Christ can meet it.

He's the only one that can meet it. He's the only one who can open your eyes; said if you follow me you'll walk in light and not in darkness. Person walks in darkness can't see - so, what did this man do? He began to cry out and here's the thing; Jesus has come to do all He's going to do, there needs to be something happen in us. We need to cry out to Him. We need to cry out to Him, to reach out. See this man received something no one else got. This man got a miracle that changed his life, that there was something happened in him that got him the miracle. You know there were hundreds of people no doubt around. They were thronging Jesus, but only one got a miracle. Why is it only one got a miracle? Because one person chose to believe I don't have to stay like this. I believe that Jesus Christ can change my life.

You know, I've been in many meetings where there's heaps of unsaved people and then two people get saved. Faith rose in their heart to believe that God could change them. I've been in meetings where God was moving and just some got healed. You know that there was faith for that miracle took place in their life. Faith comes when we respond to the word of God. Faith comes when you focus on attentive - and you choose to believe that what God says is true. And so the man began to cry out. Now of course when you start to cry out and extend your faith and reach out for God to help you, don't expect everyone to be happy about that. Don't expect everyone to be happy that you are starting to stretch out and starting to believe your life could be different, that you're going to break away from all the old patterns.

I'll tell you what; everyone around wants to keep you where you were. I can remember when God began to speak to me about the issue of alcohol in my life and I wanted to make a change. I could see for the first time how alcohol in my life had affected me and so I made the decision that I would give it up. The moment I did I found there were reactions from all people around who formerly I thought were my friends. I was quite surprised. I thought they were good friends. I thought they were friends over a long period of time and once I stopped drinking they were friends no more. I thought I wonder what kind of friendship I had? I must have been blind to the true nature of it. You'll be surprised when you start to make decisions and commitments to follow Christ, how certain people who you thought were friends are no longer friends anymore because your decision that you will break out of where you are challenges them.

They're challenged by your decision. I wonder if you've been making decisions that are challenging anyone; decisions in your finance, decisions around the way you run your life and so on. We could do that. You could make decisions and start to take actions and the actions themselves challenge people. The began to cry out and they began to shout it, tried to quiet him down, but he refused to be quiet. He refused to be ignored. He refused to be silenced. He refused to give up. He refused to let go, a strong cry, and a belief that God could come through for him.

I have found many people are very passive. There was something in him when he got faith in his heart. He changed from being passive with his hand out, waiting, to rising up and saying I've got to have this thing that God has for me. See, God has purpose for your life but you'll have to press into him to get it. God has vision for your life, but you'll have to pursue him to get it. You can't just sit there begging and hoping that some Sunday message will give you the vision you need. You've got to fight for this yourself. You've got to arise inside and say God, open my eyes to what I'm called to be and to do. Show me the possibilities around my life. Show me how you've wired me to be successful in this life.

You need God to help you in that. He's the only one that can open your eyes. He designed you for something. He's the only one that can speak to you and reveal to you, this is what you're called to do. See I was called into teaching and I had a gift around me in the natural arena of teaching. It would never have occurred to me to go into ministry, never, but God had a bigger plan and he spoke to me and when I said yes to him, when I chose to believe and respond, then my eyes were opened. There was more in me than I'd ever thought. I just didn't know. He called me out into teaching in a primary school and in this primary school, Christian school, I had to do lots of things I'd never done before. But as I begun to do these other things I realised there was a whole dimension to me I was blind to, that I'd never seen before. God began to open up a whole area of my life and I began to see what I could do in a way I'd never seen before, because he spoke to me and I said yes. I chose to believe.

You've got to choose to believe what God says. So the man, he was crying out and the crowd get more furious at him. Listen, if you're going to stand out, if you're going to have God working in your life, you'll have to be doing something other people aren't doing and you'll have to be doing something you weren't doing before. And this man did something he hadn't done any other day because he'd sensed that his moment had come! He heard the noise, began to enquire what's going on? Jesus of Nazareth is near. He sensed the movement of the Holy Ghost and in that moment rose up and began to cry out. They tried to silence him. I'll tell you what, it's the only record in the Bible where Jesus was stopped by a man.

Jesus stopped because of a cry. Jesus stopped on odd occasions as well. This one here, this man's cry stopped him. Why? Because it was a cry - I dare to believe my life could be different. I dare to believe I could see and I could have a destiny and fulfil it. And so he cried and this is the interesting thing, He said bring this man to me. The crowd changed. Notice how the crowd changes. There's many examples in the Bible of the crowd changing. You know, there's a time when Paul, he landed on an island, he got bitten by a snake and they said he's a murderer. The crowd said well he must have murdered someone. He deserves to die. He's being punished - and then a little bit later he shakes the snake off and he carries on. They think he must be a God. That's the crowd.

Jesus comes in to town. Today they say how wonderful, He's our hero, hallelujah and three days later they crucify him. That's the crowd for you. The crowd is very fickle so you can't run your life from the crowd. You have to run it by focus on eternal matters, on the Lord himself. So what's your life focussed on? This man rose up. I want you to see something else he did. He wore a garment. His whole identity was wrapped up in being this beggar and so he had an official garment on of the beggar that enabled him to go out to beg. It was a license to beg. Probably had to pay some money for it - and so this is what he did. Here's the thing that's interesting; now he could have kept the beggar's garment on and gone there.

Now remember that's his license to beg. He could have kept the beggar's garment on but let's go up and see what Jesus does. Maybe something will happen. You know what he did? Threw it off! I'll never beg again! Point me in the right direction! I'm going to have a miracle! When he threw that garment off he was throwing off what he'd been attached to in his former way of living. If you're going to get vision for your life, if you're going to have things happen supernaturally, you've got to decide if there's things you're attached to that hold you back. Are there attitudes that hold you back? Are there habits that hold you back? Throw them off. Throw them off.

Are there patterns of compromise that are holding you back? Throw them off! Throw them off! They're not going to be part of your future anymore. Are there things that have kept you in bondage for years? Throw them off! You're going forward. You're not - this is a day to change. It's a day to get vision in your life. Throw it off. Throw it off. Pull off those old things that hold you back.

Is there unforgiveness and bitterness because of what happened to you? Throw it off! Disappointments? Throw them off! Don't let old things keep you locked up and defying who you are... so he came to Jesus and Jesus said what do you want? Ah, well I'll tell you what I want. I want my eyes back - and Jesus said I see you have faith and according to your faith it's done to you. And immediately his eyes were opened and he could see. I want you to notice the distinctive thing that happened after that. He didn't just jump up and down and shout. The Bible says he followed Jesus in The Way. He become a follower of the Lord. See, his whole destiny was altered by that one encounter when he reached out and extended his faith to believe God could give him a miracle. One encounter changed his life.

I remember many years ago and I was just young and give my life to the Lord but wasn't going anywhere really. We went occasionally to a church, about six times that year I think. In Auckland we went to Assembly of God and they had a revival meeting to go to. I don't know what 'revival' was. They had miracles. I didn't really know what they were either and it was this eerie service. It was a Pentecostal service, but just being in that atmosphere, a spiritual hunger began to awaken in my life and I began to realise I needed the Holy Ghost. I needed God to encounter me. I become more and more aware of it.

Someone had spoken to me about this before and wanted me to come to a meeting where they spoke in tongues and so on, Catholic charismatic meeting. I said keep away from me, this is - no way! You know, I wouldn't have a piece to do with it. I just didn't want anything to do with it and so I was quite resistant. But as time went on I started to have a hunger come and a desire for God, desire for the Holy Ghost and so we decided we'd go down to this conference and I believed that God would touch me that Easter. Now we got in the car and here's the interesting thing; we got in this car, the Mini Cooper. It was a hotted up little Mini Cooper, went like the clappers and it had a remote gearstick in the thing so they'd taken out the original gearstick, put in a remote shift in this thing and boy could you wipe that thing down the road! It was fast, very, very fast. So anyway, we got in the thing, I think Joy was pregnant at that time and we whipped off down to Waikanae and we got on the Desert Road and suddenly there's a shower of sparks and a bang and this thing comes loose in my hand.

So now I've got what used to be a remote shift. It's no longer remotely moving anything anymore. It's just flopping and that's not a very good thing because that means you can't change gears, so I'm stuck in one gear. We can't go anywhere and so anyway I stopped; oh, this is such a pain and so I got out and had a look at it and there's no way we could fix it. We just slept in the car overnight and hitchhiked back to Taupo. There was no one available, it was Good Friday and no one around to help us fix it so we hitchhiked back to the car again and here we are by the car, stuck, no way we we're going to make that conference.

I remember thinking God, I know this is my weekend. I know somehow you will get me to that conference. I know there's something good going to happen to me this weekend, and so I just was thinking about then and I looked down on the ground and I saw that someone had dropped a little crucifix. I thought, where did that come from? I never saw that before and as I looked at it I felt this witness in my heart that God will come through. Now we'd had no traffic come by and then suddenly there's a car comes down the road and it's a Mini and the guy stops. He said what's your trouble? I said look, I got this remote shifter and as you can see it's had it and I'm stuck.

He said well I've got one in my car too and I just live down the road and I've got the original gearstick sitting in my garage. I'll go down and get it for you - so he drove - it was 15 minutes later; I had the remote shift out, the new one in and we were back - it wasn't so quick of course but nevertheless I had gearstick and we were go, go, go! That weekend I got filled with the Holy Ghost and my life changed. See, one experience with God can start the biggest shift in your life and in that experience I had my eyes were open to the realm of the supernatural and I began to walk in a way that was completely different.

Listen; this man blind Bartimaeus was stuck in life, no vision, no destiny. He was passive, he was shut down, he was dependent. He needed a touch of God in his life and when he heard that Jesus was moving he cried out for Him. I believe there'll be some here tonight that need that touch too and there was a great presence of God, thank you worship leaders and musicians - great presence of God - if you get back up on the stage again and let's just open up again with an alter call for people who would like to come and just cry out to God for vision for their life. There's several levels of it.

If you don't know Jesus Christ, the first level is to just come into relationship with Him. You know when you give your life to Jesus Christ He opens your eyes to spiritual things and you begin a journey walking with him, into your eternal destiny. The second area tonight that some of you may need an eye opening in, it may be there's an issue in your life you need to break free of and it's blinding you to what - here's the thing I found about sin. Sin blinds us to how our life is being stolen. We think we're doing okay and we're not, so maybe there's something that's holding you back you've got to get rid of. I want you to come tonight and say God, I'm putting that thing off. It's a hindrance to my destiny - and there's another level too that God wants to help people and that is in the area of flowing in the prophetic, of being able to see.

One of the great things about Jesus, He could see in the Spirit. He could see things that the Father had prepared for Him. I believe tonight God wants to impart and release prophetically for people as well. So number one, is there anyone here tonight wanting to give their life to Christ? That's number one. Number two, is anyone wanting to break free of bondage in your life and begin to get fresh direction for your life? And number three, is there anyone here tonight who's saying I feel I'm wanting God to open my eyes in the prophetic realm to start to see and to move prophetically about my destiny and future?

Why don't you just come to the front right now? Would you do that? Let's just stand together in this atmosphere, where we're singing about the fire of God coming down. I believe God is here to help you tonight. Why don't you just come, just come, just come. If you don't know Jesus Christ come and stand in front of me. Want to become a Christian tonight, just come and stand in front of me and I'll lead you to Christ. If you know there's things that God is saying to you to throw off and rise up and break free of, why don't you come to the front on the left or right? It's an area of enlargement in seeing in the Spirit, the prophetic realm.

Won't you come and just open your heart and say God tonight I believe for increase tonight. Why don't you come? Come on. Let's come tonight. Let's come and be business with God. Don't wait for someone to come to you. You come and you lift your hands. You don't have to yell out, but there should be a yell on the inside anyway - Oh I want to see! I want to see direction for my life! I want to break free of the things that have blinded me. I want the prophetic anointing to increase in my life! I want to see the possibilities around me! Come on, let's reach out tonight.

19. Five Loaves and Two Fish: Keys for Miracles

Sun 10 Jun 2012  « Back to Top

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God wants you to experience the supernatural. Look beyond yourself at the needs of others. Miracles require you to take initiative in faith. Miracles require you to do what you can. Miracles require you to speak and act. Application: Do you see the needs around you? Are you moved? Not my problem? What's your response? compassion? What do you have that God could use? What will you do?

I want you to open your Bible with me in Mark, Chapter 6. Want to speak on five loaves and two fish. Want to show you some amazing insights, to how God does miracles. It's always the same, the outworking is a little different, but we all hunger for miracles. Miracles come, and you're going find there's certain things that are a part of it, and this passage is really, really a great insight to this.

So in Mark, Chapter 6 and Verse 30: The apostles gathered to Jesus, told Him everything that they had done, and what they'd taught, and He said: come on, let's go aside to a deserted place, have a rest; so there were lots of coming and going, and they didn't even have time to eat - typical ministry aye? And so they departed to a deserted place in a boat by themselves, but the multitudes saw them departing. Many recognised or knew Him. They ran there on foot from all the cities, and they arrived before them, and came together to Him. So there it is.

The first thing you need to understand is, God wants you to experience and to flow in the supernatural. You have to - your thinking about this is very important. If you think that this is unusual, that certain people, only certain people or certain places in the world, or certain times or seasons, if you think that that's the only way that things happen, then you won't position yourself for God to move. We need to believe that right here, and right now, God has made me both to experience the supernatural, and to flow in the supernatural.

Look what it says of the disciples. It says in Verse 13: they cast out many demons - Verse 12 - they went out and preached that people should repent. They cast out many demons, anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them. So Jesus' plan has always been that His ministry in the supernatural would flow through those who follow Him; in fact in the great commission, which is a commission to go into the world and change the community; the commission is never to sit around. The commission Jesus gave is dynamic, it is active, it requires commitment and perseverance to go and make your life count.

I think, you know, one of the greatest tragedies that I see is young people with no vision, no direction, no purpose in their life, wasting their life, wasting it on all kinds of trivia; when God has so much more for you. The Bible's very clear: Jesus moved in the supernatural. He trained his disciples how to do the same. He showed them that they are spirit people, made to move in the supernatural; and He commissioned them to go out. That commissioning has never changed; commissioning is here for you as well; to go out, to make Jesus known, to move in the supernatural; and it doesn't really matter what background you've come from. It doesn't matter what your past has been like. The possibility of God working through you is immense. It is immense.

God has not chosen just to do things through what Jesus did on the earth. He's chosen to work through you, if you can believe, if you can believe. Now we believe that Jesus does miracles. What we don't believe is: He'd do them through me, or He'll do them now, or He'll do them here. So what you're really struggling with is, a spirit of unbelief, that stops you accessing what God has intended for you. There's nowhere in the Bible it suggests it's not normal for the supernatural to follow, and be part of, a believer's life. These signs shall follow them that believe - 1 Corinthians 12:7 - the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man; so where does that put you? Are you receiving from God revelation, insight? Are you positioning yourself in prayer and hunger and desire for God to touch you?

I know of many that have come into this church, and they have set their heart and their face to draw from the supernatural realm, and that God has used them extremely powerfully to touch lives. I can think over the years of many people who've come, and got a hold of something that God put here for you, to draw from; but you see you have to draw, you have to reach it, you've got to make these things your own. If you've been baptised in the Holy Spirit, you can speak in tongues; every day you can arise, and you can be building an altar in your life where you begin to pray; you begin to put yourself in the presence of God, with expectation for God to move through you; begin to listen to His voice, begin to recognise His promptings. See, everyone can do that. Everyone can do that. There's no limit to what you can do in that area - it's just what you choose to do.

But God's plan, very clearly, is to entrust to you and me, a flow of the supernatural, because of the needs that are in our city. How many of you know someone who's from a broken home? They need the touch of God. How many of you know someone who's been abused, or in an abusive situation? They need a touch of God. How many of you know someone who's without life, or purpose? They need a touch of God. In fact there's no place you can look, that there aren't people that need a touch of God; and God has placed you in this city, and area, to bring such a touch to them. In fact let me tell you something else: He's not going to do it, unless you do it. He's not going to do it, unless you arise, and let Him work through you. There are people around you, in your sphere of influence, and the only breakthrough they'll get, is if you will break through in prayer, and start to reach out to them; otherwise when the season and the opportunity goes, God has to move them somewhere else, to someone else, to bring them that breakthrough. What a great chance you have, what a great opportunity you have.

Ever since I became a Christian, I've been hungry for the supernatural. There's never been a place I've been, where I didn't experience and see it happening, not one, not one. But I hungered for it. When I found that there was a real spirit world, that you could get full of the Holy Ghost, and you could begin to start to do things, and prophesy - I decided that was for me. I wasn't a preacher then, and I wasn't a pastor - I wasn't anything - just a teacher in school. I saw God move - right through all of my life I've seen that happening, and this is the legacy that you have. You're in this church, and this is your home church, you've got a legacy of this. You've got to take hold of it. You need the power of God, and there's a desperate need around us for it.

Look at this, it says in Verse 33: the multitudes saw them departing, and many knew Him, and ran there on foot from all the cities - gathered, they all arrived, hungry people wanting God. They were sick of religion, sick of oppression, but when they saw and felt God moving, they wanted God.

Jesus is still popular you know, it's just Christians aren't always! And Jesus when He came, saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion for them, because they were like sheep, not having a shepherd; so He began to teach them many things, and the day was now far spent, and the disciples came to Him and said: this is a deserted place, already the hour is late. Send them away, so they may go to surrounding country and villages, buy themselves bread, for they have nothing to eat. And He answered, and said: you give them something.

Okay, so number one, God wants you both to experience the supernatural, and to be able to bring the life of God to others. That's the first thing to see. Second thing is, if you're going to move in this way, you have to look beyond your own needs to the needs of others. You notice that Jesus saw the disciples were incredibly tired. He Himself was very tired. In fact they were so tired, that they were on vacation; except the crowd followed them. Now the normal thing would be to say: listen, I'm tired, I've had a hard time, send them all away. Listen, I can't do this - but the Bible says that Jesus was moved with compassion. The disciples just wanted to get rid of the crowd, they were so tired; well we've done our bit for God. We've done our bit for God, that's enough. Some people, they come to church on Sunday - I've done my bit for God, that's enough.

How far that falls short! You've got to get your eyes past yourself, and begin to see people in need. You've got to lift your eyes beyond yourself. There are some people here have never been on the platform, and yet they touch people in need. They touch people in need. The supernatural's not always spectacular. It's often in the acts of kindness, and the small things, reaching out, extending out, but always you've got to look past yourself; and one of the ways of doing that, quite a simple way you can do that - I did this when I first came into the city, and I'm about to do it again, because I felt this thing burning in my heart again; one of the first things I did when I come in the city was say: oh dear God, what do I do, you know? This is a strange place and I didn't really like even being here, pretty miserable, it was sort of cold and wet about then. I wasn't very happy about being here at all, but I felt the Lord tell me to do this. He said: I want you to rise, and I want you to walk around the centre of the city, and I want you to pray in tongues, and I want you to look into the faces of people, and I want you to see the need of the city.

And I've done that on more than one occasion. I remember doing it with Ian - remember we did that one time? We went around, and we walked around the city centre, I don't know, maybe a week or something? Every night we walked around, Ian walked with me in those early days, so when I first arrived here I did it; and when I did it, then God was birthing compassion; and I remember walking around the streets, and looking at the faces of people; the far end of Hastings was very, very dark in those days. Gangs gathered down there. It was a shocking place. You wouldn't walk there at night, so I walked right around, and you would look at people, and I'd drive around some nights and I'd just pray, but most of the time I'd walk around and look in the faces of people, and just look to see what God showed me. I found that if you will ask God to open your eyes, and you start to pray, and just: look and listen, look, listen, ask questions; you will begin to see how desperate the needs our people have. They're everywhere - abused people, hurt people, people who are angry, people who are broken, people who are furious with how life has treated them so unjustly. But if you don't see them, you'll never reach them. You have to see them, and let it move your heart.

I found one of the reasons that we don't move is, we're so caught up with ourself; and when you're caught up with yourself, you've got nothing left over for anyone else, so get your eyes off yourself. Set yourself for - maybe for three weeks, that every day for three weeks, wherever you live or work, or wherever you're in a school or something, you begin to pray and ask God to open your eyes, to see the condition of people. Ask Him to show you what is really there, what He sees, and you'll be quite surprised what you see. Start to ask people questions. Just be determined to listen to people, and find out what is going on in their world. You'll be amazed how people will open up their heart and tell you. They will just tell you what's going on. You'll be quite surprised at the pain, and the distress stories, that are everywhere. It's almost overwhelming, it gets so big; but the first step is, you've got to get out of your own zone. You've got to look past your own need, so one of the things that Jesus modelled, and this is always so when miracles take place, is you look beyond yourself, to the needs of others.

So if we would just start to build that heart of compassion, looking beyond ourself - it always costs something to get a miracle. Now it's interesting, I was watching that programme Once Upon A Time. I see it's on TV just at the moment. There was an interesting statement that was made in there, and I thought - I heard it said a couple of times and I thought, it's very, very true, just talking about magic, it's the whole realm of fantasy. The guy said an interesting thing. He said: magic always has a price, because he was talking that if you get in the occult, then there's a cost to pay that you'll never ever imagine. Anyone who gets involved in the occult, there's a price you pay, that you would never know up front; and it was very true in this particular episode. The person made this agreement to get this magic to operate, and the cost was immense, and then of course when the price come, he didn't want to pay it, it was so high.

There's a lot of people are discovering the cost of being in the realm of the supernatural, in the occult area; but there's also a cost to moving with God. It costs you - it's inconvenient. You've just got to make decisions. I want my life to count for something. Young people, imagine your life counting for something. Imagine if you could step up above everyone else, and flow with God, and make an impact. Imagine if God worked through your life to touch people. What would happen in the people around you? You've got to get a dream in your heart, of God doing something great through you, and hold and pursue that dream, so you don't just live a normal, down-below average life. So it costs something, so look beyond yourself.

Here's the next thing. Now miracles always require you take faith initiative. Now this is the terrible part that people don't want. In order for miracles to happen, someone has to take initiative in faith. Someone's got to stretch out and believe. There'll never be a miracle happen, unless someone stretches out. Notice what happened here, that the disciples said: send them away. Get rid of them. What they're saying is simply this: they looked around, and they saw a hungry group of people. Basically they saw people with need, and this is what they were saying: it's not my problem. It's not my problem. You show me how you can justify living in a community, that the problems of the community are not my problem. They are indeed. See, they are indeed. This is where God has planted us. The problems in your school, actually they are your problem. They affect the whole atmosphere of the school, and your capacity and ability to learn and go forward, and until we actually own it - we keep thinking like the disciples - they looked and they said: this is beyond us, this is too big. We can't handle that, this is far too big - that school, that workplace, that unsaved person, it's all too big, it's all too big. So you know what their answer was, when it was too big, and the problems seemed too great? Get rid of them, it's not our problem.

Listen, we can't withdraw from our community, and engagement with people, by saying: it's not my problem. It's your problem, get over it, I'm moving on. Listen, that's not the heart of the gospel, that's not the heart of Jesus. You can't just say: it's not my problem. You say: it's not my problem, you're the problem; because you're God's solution. We are God's solution to people in need. We are God's solution to people who are broken. We bring Christ to them. It's not that we ourselves are the answer, but the answer flows through us, to people in need; and if we won't stand up, then we are the problem, as far as God is concerned. God's problem is not the working of miracles. God's problem is having people step out, and risk, and engage; and it's only in engaging with people, you start to see things happening. You say: well, that sounds scary to get out and engage. Yes, it is a bit. It's a bit scary, but do it anyway. Make that decision.

So when I've got a heart of compassion, compassion moved Jesus to engage. The disciples said: boy, this is too big a problem for us, get rid of them - so miracles will always require that you take an initiative, and take the risk of something happening. You notice what Jesus said: you give them something to eat. You do something. Now have a think about that. Just look into that parable there, and you have a think about what that means, in terms of our community. We can complain about all the problems, and all the issues, and we can say it's not my problem, and Jesus responds: are you a follower of His, by the way? Are you a follower of His? You give them something to eat - and they said: ooh, ooh, ooh, what do you mean you give them something to eat? We can't do that. That's all too big. You know, this is beyond us - but Jesus is still saying: you give them something. You give them something. You give them something. Give them something.

This is one of the great tragedies, when the church withdraws, and becomes caught up with just itself, and caught up with its own needs; then it stops engaging in the mission of the church, which is to reach people in need. Jesus placed us here to change and transform our community, so when I say: it's not my problem, I've just become the problem. They said well, it's all too big, and He said: you give them to eat; and you see Jesus answer is not some great thing that will just happen, and suddenly change everything. Jesus' answer is His people, His followers, giving something to people, to meet their need. Think about that - and so they said immediately: well, it's beyond us, we can't do that, you know? He said: no, no, you must take initiative. You're going to have to take initiative, so all miracles require that we extend our faith, and believe God could do something through us. You've got to extend your faith, and believe God can do something through me. I wonder what God could do through you.

I heard a story from a visiting minister I listened to in Auckland; great, it was amazing. He'd taken his daughter to India, and his daughter was just a teenager, and she was deeply touched by the plight of the Indian community she was in, deeply touched. She saw how poor they were - that's why it's great to go to India, Pakistan, go to any of these third world nations, and see how desperate the need is. If you can't see it around you, go where you can see it. Once you do see it there, come back and have another look. Then you'll see what the need is very easily. [Laughs] Ian would verify that, you've been out there and seen the need, you come back, you say: oh my! It really is needy here.

And so she looked, and she said to her father, she said: dad, I want to build a school, and I think the school would cost $30,000 US dollars. She said: I want to build a school that can hold this many students. It was going to cost about $30,000. She's only a teenager - and so anyway he nearly spoke up and said: oh that's ridiculous; but no, she was moved with compassion. Compassion moves you to step out, and start to engage. Now he could easily have said: it's not your problem. He could easily have said: oh well, you know, that's too big. I mean we could never do that, I mean that's a big amount, $30,000! Are you crazy? She said: no, I've got it in my heart to do it, so she went back, she took out all the savings in her account, which was $200, and she made her $200 available; and someone heard about it, and so they got her to testify, and she testified and someone else; the story started to get around about this girl who had taken all her savings, $200 and made them available for the school, to build a school in India.

And so there's another very big church locally, and they got to hear about it, and they had a TV programme, so they interviewed her on the TV programme, and next thing you know, money starts to flow in. Within a short time, she had got the whole $30,000, and put the school up - even had the trip paid to go back there to open the school. Here she is, just a teenager.

Now all of those things we've seen in that story apply in that story - the need was immense; but you notice this: she got beyond herself, and was moved with compassion, and said: well I'll do something. I'll step out and engage, and you know, there are family after family after family of Indian people, Indian children that will benefit from her step of faith. With putting up a school, she's ensured now that multitudes of young people actually get an education, and get help. Isn't that amazing? Just one person - you notice she had to look beyond herself to the needs of others, let God touch her heart, and she had to take a step of faith; and you notice what Jesus said: you give them to eat.

So here's the next thing about a miracle; miracles require you do what you can do. See, there's a part that you can do. Now what she could do was, take her $200. I wonder what you could do, if you really meant to make something happen, and make a change. In other words, instead of looking how big all the problems are, say: what do I have, that I could make available to God, to meet the needs of people? Go and see. Go check out what you've got. Now you'll be surprised. For every one of us, we've got a testimony. Your testimony was never just for you - it's to help someone; and when you share your testimony, it starts to help people. Think about it. Think about it. What else do you have? If you have a home, you can open your home. If you have - there's so many ways that we can make what we have available. You've got to decide to use what you've got.

Now here's the interesting thing about God; He will take what you have, not what you don't have. Most of us we look at what we don't have. Jesus said: what have you got? Show me what's in your hand. Moses said: I've just got a shepherds rod. He said: that's okay, I'll deliver a nation with that; and He said to the poor widow lady: what have you got? Oh, I've got nothing - got a little a bit of bread, that's all, we've just got a little bit here, and I'm making the last meal for - He said: that'll do. We'll start with that. He went to another widow woman, He said: what have you got? Just got one little vase of a bit of oil. He said okay, start with that, get the empty vessels and pour it out. God always starts with what you have. He doesn't start with what you don't have.

Most people think I don't have anything I could give. You have got plenty! - compared to the rest of the world, you're a millionaire! You have got so much. The problem is not what you've got, the problem is in the heart. When I say, it's not my problem, and I don't engage, I'm a block to the miracle. God just says: take what you've got. Find what you're good at, and use what you're good at, or love to love people with - so what is it you love? Begin to develop what you love, and use it as a way of loving people. You'll enjoy it, and they will too, and God will get the glory - and you won't know what you can do, by just taking what you've got, and making it available for people. It's just what you love to do. Take what you love to do - that's what you've got. Well then start to use it to be a blessing to people. You'll be amazed what God can do.

So Jesus made them go and check what they've got. What do you have? Don't sit there moaning about what you don't have. When you moan about what you don't have, you'll never see a miracle. Say: what have I got? Let's start with that, and make that available. I remember we just started, and we had a little school home. We made it available for young people to come and gather in. You'd be amazed the number of people that got saved, and got delivered, got ministered to, in that place. I didn't know anything. I can remember when I got first started, and I didn't have a clue. I wasn't water baptised, didn't know the Bible. I said: I'll help. I'll make what I've got available, and I made what I had available - God started to use it. See, take what you've got, and make it available. Believe God could use what you have. That's how He says: make yourself available! Here I am!

I've watched various people over the years rise here, and almost all of them had this in common: they made themselves available to God. They made their home, their gift, their talent, whatever they had. It isn't much, just a little thing, but I'll make it available to God, and God says: that's the story. I just need you to take what you've got - not what you haven't got.

Here's the next thing: the miracles always require you speak, and act. Now always with a miracle, you've got to say something; and do something. I've never seen a miracle happen easily yet, that didn't require someone saying something, and doing something. Now what Jesus did here - and we'll just finish with this. He said: they found out we've got five loaves and two fish, so He told them - now notice this - He commanded them, to sit down in groups on the green grass, or in table big parties, in other words in groups, just to eat and have a meal. So the whole - can you imagine, 5,000 men, plus all the women, plus all the children? He said to them: tell them now, everyone's to sit down, and get ready for a feed. Now you've got to understand, what He's doing is, He's building anticipation, and expectation.

I've found miracles always require an expectation. Now you see the crowd didn't know He didn't have any food. They just know, He told them all to sit down, and get ready to eat; So naturally speaking, there weren't the resources for anything to happen, but what He did was build expectation; and He got the disciples above, He said: get them all organised, and get them sitting down in table parties, and tell them to say Grace. Now you can understand what's going in the disciples minds - they said: well, how on earth is this going to work? And then notice what else He did, He said: looking up to heaven, looking up to heaven - so number one, you've got to actually build expectation for a miracle. Usually you talk, and get things set, that's how it happens. You have to have expectation. Miracles always seem to come when there's expectation for them.

I've found in New Zealand, often there's very low expectation for God to do things, and that's part of the reason you don't see quite the same moves of God that you do in other places; but I've noticed that when we have seminars, and people come with great expectation, that lots happens. It's always connected to expectation - so He built expectation.

Second thing He did was, very simply this: He looked up to heaven. You've got to look to the source. The word look, means to gain your sight again; or in other words for example - I'll just pick someone out just to pray for - here we go, you'll do. Would you come and just let me pray for you? Now if I look at the need - well there's a need for me to come through, there's a need for me to have word for her. Immediately I just don't know what to do, because I haven't got anything, not one little bit. So if I look at the need, my heart will shut down with fear, and my thinking won't be right. Now what Jesus did with this, the Bible says: He looked up to heaven. Now it doesn't mean He went like this [Laughter] no, he didn't do that. Now what it means is this; it means, in His heart, He looked to the source. He looked into the kingdom. He looked into where God can meet every need; and when He looked in, and became aware of the source, then immediately the miracle [exhales] starts to happen - the power of God starts to come and flow. Miracles start to come when you look to the source, and I have learned in flowing with the things of the spirit, keep your eyes on the source, so let me just look and see what God is wanting to say to you.

Well, what I see is generosity is in your life, generosity and compassion. You're an extremely generous person, and you have got a passion growing in your heart. It's been growing now for some time to help people, just to help people who are in desperate need. This whole area of compassion has been growing. Tonight something's been resonating in your spirit, when I talked about compassion to see people, because you see people differently to where a lot of other people do. You've had something you've been praying, God has touched your heart, and there's been a rising compassion for people, and a desire to help people, and you just - you just did something recently didn't you? You just went and cut your hair off? [Yeah] Well isn't that amazing. Who would have thought of doing that? How much did you raise cutting your hair off? [$1,090] A thousand-and-ninety dollars for - what did you raise it for? ... [For Leprosy Mission.] ... For Leprosy Mission, how 'bout that! ... [Applause.] ... Leprosy Mission, $1,090 and what did you have? Your hair. Now how about that? That was worth $1,090 - that actually meant an awful lot to some lepers. See $1,000 may not be a lot in New Zealand; but to people who are in a Leprosy Mission, and they're desperate, $1,000 is a lot of money. It supports you, 50,000 rupees, 30,000 rupees - oh, my accountant has quickly calculated 30,000 rupees. [Laughs] Does that take into account the commission? [Laughter] and the tax? Oh, praise - well you see isn't that amazing? But anyway, I better get back to the prophetic word - so God's saying that there's been a compassion that's been growing in your life, and this first project was like your first major step out, but God says there's other projects. He said: what you raised this time, you will multiply at other times. God is going to then cause significant favour - you just said: I want to do something, you took what you had, and did it; and God has done a miracle. I tell you what, God's going to do much, much more.

As you close your eyes, the presence of God is going to come on you - there it is right now. Thank you Lord right now, Holy Ghost come on in. Now. Isn't that wonderful? [Applause] So all miracles, you have to look to the source, the supernatural, where God can supply. Then it said of Jesus: He took the bread; and it said: He blessed it; or He spoke over it. Normally when miracles happen, you have to speak something. You have to speak over your circumstances, speak over the hair, speak over whatever it is you're doing, speak over - you've got to speak blessing over it. This will increase. This will grow. I decree growth. I decree enlargement. I decree my class shall open their hearts to the Lord. I speak, my workmates shall come to Christ. You've got to actually speak something. Jesus said: have the faith of God, if you'll speak to the mountain: be removed.

Look at the miracles that happen. They spoke something. He said with a loud voice: raise up! There's always someone who's got to give voice to God's plan to do something, and then they have to act, so isn't it interesting. First He built expectation; got them all in crowds ready to have a meal. Secondly, He took what they had; thirdly, He looked up to the source that could make this have impact; and the next thing He did was, He spoke over it; He blessed it, or spoke positive creative words over it. Then He said: now go do something with it, and you notice this; the bread never multiplied until they took it, and started to give it out. It was in the actual giving out, that the miracle happened.

So when I just asked her to come up, I had no idea what God was going to do; but I expected that if I would just look to the source, something would start to happen, and it started to happen. That's how the realm of the spirit operates. Now here's the last thing. The last thing is this: Jesus made him pick up all the pieces. Now was that because He's a Greenie, or what? He made him pick up all the pieces, and put them all in baskets, and when he finished he had 12 baskets. Twelve is symbolic of God's government, or God's kingdom; so what it's saying is, this is how the kingdom operates.

Now, in case you thought it was not important, each time Jesus did that miracle, He made them pick up the remains. Is it because He's green? Not at all. There was a purpose in it. What He wanted them to do, was to see the 12 baskets, and remember what they started with, and have a visual picture in front of them of what a miracle can do. This is just the scraps. This is the stuff they didn't eat.

Later on, when their faith failed them at a certain point, He said: haven't you learnt anything? Remember. Remember the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the 12 baskets. In other words, what He's saying is: go back and remember the miracle, and what you saw; because that's crucial to teach you about flowing to the next level that I want you to grow in.

Now how many people have had God move in your life, at one point or another? God's come and broke through? I think most of us here have something you remember, something. Remember it, because what God did then, that's your learning step to actually believe Him for more to happen. You've got to remember things God has done. I'll just finish with this simple thing.

I was in a meeting one time. I walked in this meeting, there's a guy a wheelchair there, and I was a bit upset - thought oh, they'll bring Him up at the end of the meeting, and I'll pray, and nothing will happen. I'll be a bit disappointed. I just hate wheelchairs, and I'm thinking like this you see, and sort of by the time I got to my seat, I was sort of in a state about wheelchairs - just don't like them. And anyway, so the Lord said: you need to change your attitude; meditate on the miraculous, meditate on the healing - and I stood there meditating for quite some time, and suddenly in a moment I knew in my heart, he would be healed. And at the end of the meeting we prayed for him, the guy got up, walked, and then he was saved.

It was the first time, I ever in my own ministry, saw someone come out of a wheelchair, and I learnt from it. I learnt the power of setting your mind on the source, and seeing in the spirit God at work doing things through your life. It's incredibly powerful. In fact, until you train yourself to see like that, you probably won't see much actually out-work.

So there it is, how miracles happen. Notice, you've got to take what you have, you've got to take risks, you've got to be willing to step out and engage, and allow God to help you, as you take what you have, make it available to God, and you know, build expectation; today when I pray for someone, something will happen for them. You've got to build that expectation around your life, and then look to God, look to the source, and start to speak and act on what you believe God is showing you - and you might be surprised.

So let me just finish with a couple of questions. I want you to close your eyes, and just have a think about this for a moment, just a few questions; and then we're going to just open our hearts, just respond to the Lord tonight, because I believe He wants you to see things happening in your life. Here's the first thing - do you see needs around you? Number one, do you - can you, see the real needs around you; or do you need to start prayer walking, or praying and looking for people, starting to ask God to open your heart to the need. See, what is your response to the needs around you? Do you say: it's not my problem; or are you feeling that compassion is growing? You see, notice in that example that we had tonight, just the wonderful way when someone was moved with compassion, God came through, and a tremendous amount was raised to help people in need.

So what is your response normally; it's not my problem what's going on. It's not my problem what's happening in my neighbourhood, not my problem which is happening in the school, not my problem, not my problem. You are the problem - it's time to make a change, say: God, I want to engage and bring hope to people. What do you have that God could use? What is it that's in your life that God could use? What is it that you have that God could use, that you could put into practice? Do you have some kind of gift or something like that?

I was talking to one man - this is amazing - and God said to him: I want you to learn the guitar. He said: really? He said: yeah, I want you to learn and become a great - able to run a concert. He said: but that would take me years. He said: yeah, start to learn; and so he committed to learning, and then he was in Israel visiting, because he was living in Israel for part of the time. He said: God, how could I reach Israelis? The Lord said: why don't you go to a music shop? He went to a music shop, and he was in the music shop; and the Lord said: pick up the guitar and play it, so he picked it up and began to play it, and all these Hebrew boys started to gather round him. Do you know what they all said? Can you teach us how to play the guitar? He said: I would love to teach you how to play the guitar, and so now he's got a whole group of Hebrew kids in his home, teaching them how to play the guitar, while he talks to them about Yeshua Messiah. See, the guitar was the key.

What is it you've got? You've got something. You've got something. What do you have? If you don't know, go home and have a look, and think about it; and then make it available to God.

Father, we just thank you right now, for a growth and increase of miracles of the supernatural, of your hand working through our lives. Father, we pray for people here tonight, that hearts would be stirred to look again at the harvest, to look with compassion and begin to start to engage meaningfully, taking what we have and making it available to others. Listen, while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, is there any person here right at the place where you want to receive Jesus, this would be a good place to do that? Your miracle could begin just very simply, by opening your heart to Jesus Christ. I'll just give one more opportunity tonight; if you're not a Christian, and want to receive Jesus, would you raise your hand right now?

I wonder how many people here tonight, and you know that God is speaking to you very strongly, to start to look around, look again at the community, you look again around you at the people there, and begin to look at what you have, and make it available. If you felt God speak to you that way, I want you to just raise your hand right now, just raise your - God bless, many hands going up right now. Won't you come up to the front, love to lay hands on you, just believe that God's power and presence to touch you, that God will make a way. God will make a way. Come quickly those who put their hands up, just come up, come up now. I want to believe with you, that God will create opportunities for you, that harvest will be ahead for you, harvest will be ahead for you, harvest of miracles, harvest of souls saved.

I've found it's not the cleverest people, it's just the one that says: God, well here, I don't have much, but I'm available, use me. Those are the ones that God seems to use, over and over and over again. Praise the Lord. Let's believe together for the supernatural to flow through your life, that there would be people touched by what you have to offer.

Summary Notes

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Mark 6:30-44 Miracle of multiplication

1. God wants you to experience the supernatural

· V.30 “You are designed for the supernatural”.

· V.13 Jesus plan – multiply ministry.

· Jesus gave authority to followers.

· Spiritual problems require spiritual solutions.

· Generation is hungry for the supernatural.

· Desperate need for the power of God.

2. Look beyond yourself at the needs of others

· V.34 great multitude of people in need.

· Moved – stirred to take action.

· Compassion – church? to heart of God.

· Jesus overlooked personal needs for rest, food.

· Most caught in the small world of own need.

· Western countries wealthy – self-absorbed.

· Miracles come at a cost.

· Pray – Look – eyes opened to what is around you.

3. Miracles require you to take initiative in faith

· V.36 “Send them away – buy for themselves”

· Disciples saying “not my problem”.

· V.37 “You give them to eat”.

· Jesus offers opportunity to extend faith, move into miracles.

· Until willing to engage3 in meeting needs of others – don’t see miracles.

4. Miracles require you to do what you can

· V.33 What do you have? Go and see!

· God uses what you have.

· Don’t limit what God can do.

· God expects you to do what you can.

· Make yourself available – make what you have count.

· How available are you?

5. Miracles require you to speak and act

· Notice how the miracle took place:

(i) Jesus built expectancy

V39 – make them sit down in ‘table groups’.

(ii) Jesus focussed on the source

He looked up to heaven (v41)

“Looked” = to recover sight that was lost.

(iii) Jesus spoke faith words

He blessed and broke the loaves (v41)

Bless = praise, acknowledge God’s goodness

= to speak well of, speak life into

= He spoke to the loaves

(iv) Jesus required disciples to take action

He gave them to disciple – to set before them.

Miracles always require action.

The multiplication miracle took place when the disciples acted.

(v) Jesus required them to remember the miracle

12 baskets full of fragments.

Each creative miracle they gathered fragments.

Gathered fragments – tangible record of the miracle.

Mark 9:20:21 – how many baskets? Do you remember?

Remember what God has done.

It is seed for the next miracle.

Don’t focus on lack but on possibilities.

Remembering past miracles can stir faith for the new miracles.

Application

· Do you see the needs around you?

· Are you moved? Not my problem?

What is your response? Compassion?

· What do you have that God could use?

· What will you do?

21. Samson - Man of Faith

Sun 24 Jun 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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Keys from the story of Sampson, about the grace of god, how he loves us even in the midst of defeat and disgrace. This story is about the goodness of God to someone who's fallen over, fallen down. You are not beyond the reach of God no matter where you are today. The best days of our life are ahead of us if we're in the hands of God.

I want you to look with me in Judges 16. If I was to mention to you the name Samson, what would come to mind? What words would come to the mind straight away? [Delilah] Isn't that interesting? Delilah is the first thing that would come to mind.

I'm glad you said that word, because it indicates that our tendency is to look at life from a very negative perspective. That story is not about Delilah by the way. It’s about a man of faith, a man who believed God, in spite of massive failure; and the thing is, he's named a hero of faith, not because of all he did before he met Delilah, but what he did after he was restored.

So our first response, when we think of the name Samson, is immediately you think Delilah; and immediately you think of the sexual sin, the bondage, the troubles he got into; and so our mind tends to look at him, and in a way we kind of feel sorry for him, and we feel like: well, we wouldn't do that. We've just seen what happened to him; we wouldn't do the same, and tend to look at it out of a negative and prideful perspective, but the Bible has a different perspective on him.

If we were to check up in Hebrews 11 verse 32, we would find that the Holy Ghost specifically encouraged someone to write down, and He recorded out of four thousand years of history, men who God liked, men who impressed God, men who pleased God; and out of all of the people that did something for God in history, the Bible records or pulls out about a dozen of them, and right there stuck in the middle is Samson!

Not a mention of Delilah in the New Testament, not one mention of her. Why is that? Because when the Holy Ghost looks on Samson, the Holy Ghost records he was the man who rose out of failure and setback, and trusted in the grace of God. He dared to believe that grace could come to him. He dared to believe that in the most impossible and difficult setback, where everything in his life had been stripped away from him, where his life now was in ruins, and he's no longer fulfilling his purpose, he dared to believe that God was still good, and would help him at that moment.

It's great when life is going well, to think good of God; but you know when you're right down there, and things are in trouble, and there's pressure on you; that is when you need to know that this God we serve, is a God who loves us. He's a God of grace, and He's a God who can reach right down to you, wherever you are; and everyone's said: it's over, you're history, you've failed; and God says: I see the fire of faith in that man's heart; I can pick him up out of there, and I can cause his end to be stronger than his beginning. Now that is a great message, and Delilah's got not much to do with that. It's all about God. You've got to focus on the right things.

It says in Judges 16:4 - it says: afterwards he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, the Valley of Vines, whose name was Delilah.

Delilah means literally - it means to bring you low, to dry you up, to make you feeble - how about that? To bring you low, dry you up, make you feeble; so every person has got a Delilah, something that brings you down, makes you weak, makes you feeble. Your faith starts to falter.

It could be some little wee habit you've got in your life, it could be some area in your heart, whatever it is, the devil knows about it. I can tell you now, and he will have assignments, that will go descend a Delilah into your life.

Your Delilah is whatever you trade with, to feel better. Your Delilah could be the television, it could be the Internet, could be romance novels, it could be all kinds of things. Your Delilah is whatever you trade away your purpose and destiny, to feel a little better about yourself.

Your Delilah comes in when you feel the need of comfort, when you're feeling lonely, it comes in to offer you comfort, and it'll take away your purpose, your destiny; it'll steal your vision, it'll steal your strength, take everything away - and everyone has got one.

The question is whether you can name your one. If you can't name it, it'll be working on you all the time; and so it says here: the Philistines, Lords of the Philistines, a picture of demonic spirits or familiar spirits, came and said to her: entice him, or let's see if you can open him up, get his soul opened up, find out where his strength lies; that we might prevail against him, or overpower him, or overcome him; and then afflict him, or put a yoke on him, and then attack him, or afflict him, or depress him; and put him down and humiliate him.

So notice the strategy of the enemy, it's very simple: send a Delilah; something into your life that looks good, feels good, makes you feel a little better about yourself; but it strips away some things from your life.

It says very simply: your Delilah is anything that you open your life up to, anything that draws you, takes you away from God said about your life. And it says: it'll overpower you, or overcome you. It says: it will bind you, or yoke and harness you; and then it'll depress you, and bring you down.

So I'm sure that you could probably already think of what it is, that whenever it happens, it gets on top of you, and it seems to somehow get around your mind and emotions, and knock you back.

Now that's your Delilah - and see, he didn't even see it coming, because she seduced him. He fell asleep on her knees; in other words, he was spiritually unaware of what was going on around him.

Many Christians live spiritually unaware of what is going on in their personal life, what is really happening around them in their atmosphere. It's very easy for us to become passive, shut down; prayer's gone, our praise has gone. We don't really have much energy and vibrancy in life, we're into a routine in our prayer time or devotional time; or it's not there are all, instead of having some vibrancy of the Holy Ghost!

And so Delilah got him to sleep, so he didn't see her, wasn't aware what was going on. You need people around you, to help you become aware what's happening in your life. We need fellowship, we need people, we need to be connected to people that can talk into our life, and say: hey, you don't seem to be yourself today. Hey, you seem to have lost your spark. Hey, how are things going?

That's what groups are for, is to get you into relationships - not so you can sit around, have a cup of tea and talk about the Bible. It's more than that. It's to stimulate you, to get on top in your personal life, and to grow. He never had anyone like that, so he was a sitting duck, then he become a lame duck, then he become a very powerful eagle. I love it how it ends! I love how it ends! God can take a lame duck, and make him a mighty eagle.

So she caused him to fall asleep. Once he fell asleep, she nipped off the hair - the most expensive hair cut he ever had in life; and so he comes out of the hair cut, and the enemy come in around him, and the Bible says: he shook himself; saying: I'll move in the Holy Ghost like I did before - and he didn't realise the Holy Ghost wasn't on him anymore. That's the most tragic thing, isn't it?

I remember being in a men's conference one time, and I was talking to these guys the first night there, and I was picking up some of the comments people were making, and I said to the guys: I don't know which is the worst. I don't know which I feel most sad about: one, that the spiritual atmosphere is totally empty, and devoid of any move with God; or that this is something people have got so used to - that they think this okay. I said: I think I'm really stirred about that, that people have got so used to living under a spiritual atmosphere of passivity and heaviness and oppression and blah, blah, blah, that actually they think that's normal.

Blind - and so what happened to him, they took him, they got hold of him, and the first thing they took from his life was his vision, his sense of purpose - because if you have no purpose you're lost.

One of the things Jesus came for, was to connect us to purpose. So they took out his eyes. He couldn't see where he was going. He had no direction for his life. They took out his eyes.

Second thing they did is, they bound him; they put him bondage, so he was in chains, he had no strength. His strength was never in hair. His strength was in the mighty spirit of God on him; and that same Holy Ghost that's on him, is inside you and me! We can stir our spirit man any time we want - pray, move with the Holy Ghost! It's a matter of exercising your will, and your voice, and making decisions to build a strong life. We can do that any time, because the Holy Ghost that came upon him, now lives inside all of us.

Then they put him down, and they got him going round in circles, just his life became a daily grind; and this is where so many people live; they live and they have no vision, no sense of purpose, no captivating dream. Even if they can see, they can't see that God has got something for their life; and they're in a place where they're bound and restricted by old habits, old sins; and they're going round in circles, grinding out on a day to day routine - and something inside the person feels not right.

I want you to see what Samson did, because this prayer - and this prayer is really the key to what happens; you notice his hair began to grow again. They took him out, and wanted to put him on display and humiliate him. So there was a great public gathering, and it says: there were thousands. Verse 27; the temple was full of men and women, the Lords of the Philistines there, about three thousand men and women, watching while Samson performed in front of them.

The Bible tells us that you and I are on display. It says there is a crowd of heavenly witnesses watching our life.

There are people who went before us, who ran their race, Paul and Peter, and men of every generation, watching how you're running.

There's also some other people in the arena. There are also demonic powers. There's the Lords of the Philistines, there's all those demons, and they're looking, and they're watching how you're doing too.

What they want to see is, they want to see God's man, God's woman, blind - no Holy Ghost strength - locked up and going round in circles, humiliated.

Why does the devil love to do that? Because he can't do anything to God, but if he can get the people God loves into a place of bondage and defeat, then he can say: look at your champions.

I wonder if the spirit world knows what's going on around you, whether the demons are saying: go on! Look at your champion defeated! Going round in circles, no purpose, no vision, no dream, no Holy Ghost fire. Is that the best you can do? That's what goes on in the spirit world. It's what goes on. There's other men and women saying: God, move on our behalf, move on our behalf.

So Samson's out there, and they're all humiliating him, and he's got thousands of his enemies around him; and deep inside him there's something has risen - faith in God. Not faith in faith, but faith that God is a good God.

The Bible says, after it describes our simple condition, it says that God who is rich in mercy and His great love. His great love, that He loves, is rich in mercy. Wherever you're at, you're not past the reach of God.

So this man said, and you'll read it in those verses, he said: remember me Lord, and give me my strength one more time, and I will lay my life down for your purpose.

God heard that prayer. That's a great prayer. God, remember me, remember me - and so God remembered him.

The power of God came on him again. This is not about Samson and his defeat, and about Delilah. This is about the God that we serve, is waiting to step in on your behalf. The God we serve is the God of grace and power. He's waiting to step in on your behalf.

What activates Him is not your need. What activates Him is your faith.

Samson was listed as a man who believed God; so I'm sure that in the time that he was going round and round in circles, getting nowhere, he didn't just sit down feeling sorry for himself.

He would have taken time to meditate in the words God had spoken to him, to meditate in what God had done in the lives of others. Every day, even though it was a bad day, and he was in a bad place, he believed it's possible for God to lift him back up out of that bad place.

You see, before he was just toying around with the call of God. Before he liked the anointing, he liked the feel of power, he liked to get the victory; but you see there was an issue in his soul that had never been resolved.

It was the issue of: will I surrender to the purposes of God? So he wanted God and the other, and he got a Delilah. Then when he came to himself, he came to a place where he said: God, it's all about you, and your purpose for my life; and so he reached out: Lord, remember me, remember me. Lord, in all your goodness, remember me; remember me and strengthen me again, and I will lay my life down for your purposes.

And when God heard that cry, God responded. It's not the cry of someone who just wants: well God, I'm feeling down today. Can you come and send someone to pray for me, and bring me a prophetic word, and bless me? It's not that kind of cry. It was a cry that said: God, I have come like the prodigal son to the end of myself; and I've come to my senses and I'm coming back.

You can marry what happened there with the story of the prodigal son. When the prodigal son returned, the Father held him in his arms. The Father put on him a shimmering garment of righteousness, restored him into the throes of sonship, put a ring of authority, so he could stand again as the son. He didn't have to do anything. It's because the Father is good, the Father is loving, the Father is gracious. All it takes is for someone who'll dare to come to Him and believe.

The thing I observe about Samson is this, that in the midst of his pain, he did not become bitter. The midst of his sorrow and his mistakes, he did not become depressed and suicidal.

Instead, in the midst of it, he thought about God, and faith rose in his heart; and there came a day when he said: God, I lay my life down to serve you. Now Lord, strengthen me, remember me. I know I've blown it, I know that I'm really short of what you had, but Lord, I'm not short of your grace, your goodness.

It was never about his prayer, and never about Delilah. This story is about the goodness of God, to someone who's fallen over, fallen down. You are not beyond the reach of God, no matter where you are today.

You may be thinking: I can't see how my calling could work out. I can't see how I can get from where I am; but I tell you - you're not past the reach of God.

He's able to reach into your life, if you will let Him - but God who is rich in mercy and His great love, that's the God we serve. That's the God we've been singing about.

God is rich in mercy. All He's looking for is a heart that will be surrendered to Him, and will dare to believe that no matter where they're at, God can help.

Lord, remember me and strengthen me one more time. With that the Holy Ghost came on him. He tore down the pillars of the temple, and in his last act of warfare against his enemies, killed more in that last act, than all his lifetime put together. His last moment was a glorious moment, a moment of great, great victory; and your next season in your life can be like that.

Is there anyone here today, first of all, who's not received Jesus Christ as their saviour? I'd love to give you an opportunity to receive Him. That would be the most important thing, would be to become a Christian, to give your life to Jesus. He loves you. He's concerned for your life. He's given His life for you. Are you here today, and want to give your life to Christ? I'd love you just to raise your hand, let me know. I'd love to pray with you, and lead you to come to know Jesus.

I wonder is there anyone here and God has been speaking to you, you feel this like Samson, that I'm in a low place; eyes been put out, lost my strength and vigour and determination, feels like I'm going round in circles. You don't have to stay there. God is a good God.

You say: but how can He do it? How can He do it? Don't try to figure out how. Put yourselves in His hands. Put your life in His hands. Let Him work with you one more time. Let Him work with you again. Let Him work to change you. Let Him work to help you grow through this difficult season, and there is a great day ahead for you. It'll be the greatest day of your life.

All of us, the best days of our life are ahead of us if we're in the hands of God. Don't assume you always are. Put yourself there today like Samson did. Don't be passive. Nothing happens to any passive person. You have to actively extend your faith.

I want you to pray this prayer with me: Father, I come boldly to you in Jesus' name. I ask that you restore my strength to me. I put my life in your hands to serve you, to become available for you. All I am and have, I put in your hands; and I ask you Lord today, as I reach out to you, to put your anointing afresh upon me, and to begin to pick up my life and walk with me afresh. Strengthen me Lord, to fulfil my course. Amen.

22. Withered Hand

Sun 24 Jun 2012 PM  « Back to Top

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God wants you to have a vibrant purpose. He wants you connected to Him, to understand your purpose, and fully engage with Him. If for some reason that you have been injured in life, hurt in life or disconnected from God, it's inevitable your life will not demonstrate all it could. Your life will be like this man with the withered hand, not just a physical thing but emotional, with tremendous shame

If you've got a Bible with you, what about opening your Bible at Luke, Chapter 6 and Verse 6. I want to read a story to you out of the life of Jesus. I want you to just open your heart to consider the possibility that God is wanting to speak to you tonight, about an area of your life; and let's have a look and just read the passage out, Luke 6 verse 6: it came on another Sabbath, that He entered into the synagogue, and he taught; and there was a man there, and his right hand was withered - so our message tonight is about the Withered Hand, the right one.

He had a right hand, and it was withered; and the scribes and the Pharisees watched Him closely, not to see how He'd do the miracle, so they could copy; but rather watched Him so that whether He would heal on the Sabbath Day, that they might find an accusation against Him. But He knew their thoughts, and He said to the man with the withered hand: arise, stand here. And he rose and stood.

And Jesus said to them - that's the Pharisees - I want to ask you one thing: is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or do evil; to save life, or to destroy it, or to kill? And when He looked around at them, He said to the man: stretch out your hand. And he did so, his hand was restored whole as the other; and rather than rejoice and celebrate, they were filled with rage, and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. And we know history tells us that they conspired to put Him on the cross.

I want to just draw a few thoughts out here. The first thing you need to do, is understand the nature of Jesus' ministry. Many times we confuse church meetings and the ministry of Jesus, and we need to be really clear. When Jesus came, He had a message, a very simple message. His message was that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He came to proclaim that the power, the benefits, the blessings that God has in his kingdom in heaven, are available on the earth, in life, here and now.

So His message was: the kingdom of heaven is at hand. His heart was to reconnect people with God, and get them to be engaged in heaven, engaged with God's purpose, so they could bring heaven to earth; at school, in their workplace if they're at work, in their business, in their marriage, in their family life; that whatever the blessings are that God has in heaven, whatever God has reserved in that place for us, that they could be born into the earth and manifest here. We live in a world that's full of chaos, that's ruled by sin and evil spirits, and Jesus came to bring a tremendous message of hope.

And so the place He came to was the nation of Israel, people called by God, and of course many times He went into the synagogue. A synagogue's like a little local church, it wasn't the big temple where the centre of worship was. It was like a local gathering. It was like a small church gathering, and people came to worship; and so many times Jesus went into this synagogue, and when He went in the synagogue, it was His habit - He made a habit of going and attending; but what He did was, inevitably He caused trouble. Inevitably He caused trouble, so He goes into the synagogue this time, and the Bible says that there's man in the synagogue, and he has a withered hand.

It doesn't tell us exactly how it happened he got the withered hand, but quite often what happens, person gets a brain aneurysm, have a problem in their brain, they get like a stroke, and their hand becomes quite withered up, or they lose use of a leg or use of a hand, use of one side. But this man's hand was withered up, and probably like most of these ones, if you've ever seen a person with a withered hand, it turns inward; and so here he is, and when a person's got a hand which is like that; the word withered means it's dried up, shrivelled up, it's absolutely no use. So he's got a part of his body which is absolutely no use, and it was his right hand; and the Bible, whenever it refers to right hand, the right hand always was the ministry. The right hand always was the blessing, the right hand always was someone's strength.

When the Bible's referring to your hand, it's talking about your capacity to work, your capacity to labour, so when it says that his right hand was withered, and it had all turned inward, what it's telling us is: his life had been deeply impacted by something that had happened to him. He was not like he ought to be. His potential was diminished, and there was a whole part of his life that would not operate. So today it's a picture for us of people unable to function in the gift and calling that God has given you to function in. God has given every person, every believer, a ministry calling. He's given you a calling to do something, accomplish something with your life. He doesn't want our life to be without purpose. A life without purpose is a withered life. It's a life that's not functioning properly.

God wants you to have a vibrant purpose. He wants you connected to Him, understand your purpose, and fully engage with Him; and if for some reason that you have been injured in life, hurt in life or disconnected from God, it's inevitable your life will not demonstrate all it could. Your life will be like this man with the withered hand, and so this man's hand was withered up. Undoubtedly it was not just a physical thing in his life. It was also an emotional thing. There was tremendous shame. He'd have had tremendous shame about it, because imagine going in some place, you know, and there you are and your hand - you've got to hide the thing.

I've seen people with withered hands, and they inevitably try and hide the disfigurement in their body; and so shame will cause us to draw back from people, draw back from engaging, draw back and not function like we ought to function. He's in church, he's in the house of God. This is a place to be lifting your hands and worshipping God. This is a place to be empowered to serve God. Instead he's in shame, and he's hiding, and his hand is withdrawn; and he cannot function like he should.

I wonder what is withering you. I wonder what has happened in your life, that has stopped you fulfilling God's purpose for your life; what's stopped you from doing all that you could be doing for God, what's caused you to become passive, shrunken, withdrawn; and no longer doing - or not doing what God has called you to do? It could be fear. Perhaps fear has come into your life, fear of failure because of difficulties that you've had? It could be shame, because of things that have happened in your life. It could be patterns of sin that have got around your life, and so your life is not what all of it could be. It's actually shut down.

It could be that you have some kinds of issues in your background that you have given into, or had happen to you, and so your life has been affected. Trauma can affect people. I read in the paper, on more than one occasion, where a person's been held up or armed robbery in a shop, and then when you follow up the person later on, you find they can't hold the job any longer. The trauma has literally shocked their soul, and withered their soul, and they're not functioning properly.

Sometimes when people are growing up, they live under critical judgemental words, and that withers the soul, causes you to end up with these lies in your mind: I'm not good enough. You can't do what you could do. You can't fulfil your potential, because there's a withering of your hand. There's a withering inside your mind, a withering inside your soul, that affects what you do with your life. Listen, the Bible says: as you think in your heart or believe in your heart, that's how you'll be. So if you have conflicts that are unresolved, grief, you have disappointments, you have bitterness, you have offences, you have unresolved sin, you have abuse or trauma in your life; these things can wither your mind, and your thinking, and your attitude, to the point where you don't function like you could - and that's this man.

And Jesus came to this man. I want you to see what happened. It's quite possible that they did not let people who were crippled in a synagogue, so it's quite possible that the Jewish ruler set this one up, to see what Jesus would do. So Jesus walks in the synagogue, and He saw the man with the withered hand. It was pretty hard to hide the thing, no matter how hard you try. He saw it, and here's the thing; the synagogue, the local church, is a place for people to discover the heart of God, and to connect with God, and to be released into their ministry, into the call of God in their life. It's not to be filled with laws, and do's and don'ts, and criticism and judgement, and pettiness and position-seeking, backbiting and all of that kind of stuff. It's not to do with that at all. It's a place of worship - He said: my house will be a house of prayer; and so the local church is a gathering of people, to inspire people to serve, and Jesus came in.

When He came into the church, this is what He saw. He saw a man with a withered hand, but He saw something else. He saw a coldness, and a hardness in the hearts of people, and so He provoked a fight. Now sometimes people think that Jesus is a sissy person - not so. He's a man of intense courage, immense courage, and so many times He would confront things quite strongly, quite boldly. Often it was in the synagogue. Even in the temple, He took to them all with a whip, and drove out all the money changers.

See, this Jesus we serve is not just a nice, gentle person. He's courageous to face injustice. When you look at the same story in Mark, it's interesting because it adds in some details that Luke doesn't write, and it says in Mark 3: He looked around, and He was angry. He was furious. Often you don't think of Jesus being angry. You think of Jesus being nice and smiley. You think of Jesus, you want to think of smiley Jesus, not think of an angry Jesus. It's not a nice thought at all - but He was angry. Now He was angry about something. The Bible says: He was angry, He was angry, being grieved or in great sorrow over this man's condition, and the hardness of heart, or the lack of compassion and care there was in the church of that day, to that man's needs. That's what He was grieved about.

If Jesus was to stand here physically in the church today, and to look around, the same thing that made Him angry then, would make Him angry today. He said: He looked around; that's why He picked a fight. He said: He knew what they were thinking. He knew that these people, all these religious people had in mind, they were law keepers. The Bible tells us that they were hypocrites. They lived one thing on the outside, and another thing on the inside. They put on a show for people, so they looked good. They're like church-wise people; been around church a long time, and they look okay on the outside, and know how to behave and perform, but inside no heart and passion for God, and no care for the people God's concerned about. That's what this was about - and so He stood up, and He saw the man; and He gave three commandments to the man: two of them, and then He put a challenge in the middle of it, and then He gave the third commandment.

The first two were very simple commands. He said to the man: rise up, or wake up; and then I want you to stand up, come over here and stand by me. Two commands; rise up in your spirit; stand up where you are, and come and stand next to me. Now that's not nice to get a handicapped person, and make a feature of him, and bring him out the front, you know? It's not politically correct to do that kind of stuff is it? He brought the handicapped man up, but He knows what He's going to do. See, the heart of God is always to restore and to heal. Jesus represents what the heart of God does, and He's both angry when there's religious indifference to the needs of people; and He's also stirred by the needs of people.

And so He drew the man up, and then He spoke to the religious people, and He said: well tell me this - is it right to good, or do evil, on the Sabbath Day? Is it right to bring life, give life; or to kill? You see, these people were religious people. If you have no relationship with God, you tend to live your life by rules and laws and regulations, and do this and don't do that, you can't do this and can't do that, and that's how they lived their lives - doesn't bring life to anyone. No laws can bring you life, only a relationship with God can bring you life. And so He said: well which is it? Because they were watching to see if He'd heal. They wanted to accuse Him of working on the Sabbath Day. He points out the hypocrisy, and said: even the priests will kill a sacrifice, and do some work on the Sabbath Day; so He's asking the question: well is it better to kill; or is it better to bring life? Is it better to offer your offerings and kill your sheep, or is it better to bring life to someone who's in need? He said: you don't have a clue about what God is like. He said: God is not interested in sacrifices and offerings. He said: they're more for your sake, than God's sake. He's not interested in those. What He's interested in, is a compassion for people in need.

In the Old Testament, He put it like this: He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you - to do justly, or to act right towards the poor, the widows and the orphans and oppressed; to love mercy, to love and delight in showing mercy, kindness and compassion to people; and to just walk humbly, or dependent on the Lord. Pharisees did none of these things. He said to them in another place, He said: you go and read your Bible again. He said: can't you find in the Old Testament, it says I delight in mercy, not in sacrifice; and so He challenged them, and He knew He was challenging them. Then He said to the man - now He told the man to do something He couldn't do. The first two commands he could do - he could stand up; and he could rise up, and he could come to Jesus, stand next to Jesus. The last one took the power of God, and when he responded to the first two, Jesus said: now stretch your hand out.

To everyone's astonishment a creative miracle took place. Now a creative miracle's not just an ordinary miracle. This man's hand was withered and shrunk, and literally life came into it, and it was restored and made whole; and if he had a brain aneurysm, whatever was in his brain that had gone wrong, that was healed as well. Can you imagine what that - the impact something like that must have had? And of course crowds of people were absolutely thrilled, because the heart of God was on display. God loves to help people. But the religious people, the Pharisees, the hypocrites, the Bible says - you look at it in the book of Mark - it says: they went, and they connected with their arch enemies, the Herodians. The Herodians were a politically motivated people. The place had been taken over by Romans, and they put Herodians in charge of the nation, and so the Herodians were the followers of Herod, and they were actually political, they were always in political compromise. Anyone knows anything about politics you know it's a world of compromise - so they were into political compromise. They compromised the word of God in order to get position, and get authority in the nation politically; the Pharisees compromised the heart of God, and the ways of God to get position and influence among men in the church arena. The two had one thing in common; none of them knew the heart of God.

They came together, and the Bible says: they planned how they could kill Jesus. Isn't that extraordinary, that people who would say that they loved God, and come to worship Him; actually would be antagonistic, and to the point of wanting to kill the one who demonstrated what God was like. That's the nature of this thing that Jesus came to flush out.

If Jesus was to stand here today, He would have the same feelings of anger, when we overlook the needs of those who desperately need the touch of God, and the reality of the spirit of God,, and we're rather in favour of - we criticise and judge; and want position and influence among men. See Jesus was totally against that. He has a heart for people in need.

I tell you, Jesus is here tonight, and He is the same Jesus, as is spoken in that passage there. I'll tell you what, Jesus wants to touch you tonight and help you; so perhaps as you see that story, you can imagine the dramatic change in the man's life. He can go out and he can earn an income, he's not dependent on anyone, he's not longer got any shame. Finally he's out there. This whole thing, everyone can see. He is healed and had a miracle.

Tonight I wonder if there are people here, and your life, a part of it is withered up. Perhaps you're not connected to God at all, and something is definitely not right. You are not fulfilling your purpose from God. You could make a decision tonight to receive Jesus Christ; and enter the kingdom of God; and start on a journey, walking with Jesus, learning how to bring heaven to earth. What a great journey that would be. Perhaps there's something has withered your life; disappointment, a setback, a failure, words that have been spoken, judgements made against you. Perhaps there's been some traumatic situation; perhaps it's just some pattern of sin, and you know you are not functioning right. Tonight would be a good night to come, to stand up and come and stand where Jesus is moving and then stretch and believe that God's with you.

23. Discover your Assignment

Sun 1st Jul 2012  « Back to Top

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Jesus didn't just save you to get into heaven. He saved you to fulfil the original purpose which is to restore the earth, to restore people, to restore our community one soul at a time. God wants all of us to be at work, one person at a time, changing our community. Don't quit your job to do something great for God, your job is where your place of calling is. Get energised by the Holy Ghost!

If life isn't focussed, we dissipate our energy and resources. You get focussed in your finances with a goal and a target, you start to move your finances; but what about your life? It disturbs me that so many Christians, their Christianity is primarily church on Sunday. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not God's intention, and church has a great plan, and meetings have a great part to play in what we're called to do, but God has got something bigger than that.

So let me just read in the scriptures here, Ephesians 2, it says: but God - Verse 4 - God is rich in His mercy, and His great love, so wherever we fail, whatever we've done, God is rich, abundantly extravagantly rich in mercy. A lot of people think God's waiting to get them; but no, God is rich in mercy and immense love, remember He loved us even when we were dead and trespassers in sin, cut off from God, doing our own thing. Then He quickened us, and made us alive in Christ Jesus; and has raised us up to sit, or to live and to engage life, in the spiritual world. What an amazing thing - yet the majority of Christians don't understand how to engage in the spiritual world, and bring heaven into earth. That's what God intends we do.

He's connected us. He put His spirit inside you, so a part of you is 24/7 connected to heaven. How about that! Now of course we live mostly conscious of everything around us, and we're conscious of pressures and problems. This week we're conscious how cold it is, so you get conscious of all kinds of things. But what if you became conscious that you are connected to the resources of heaven, and that God is willing and able to work through you? I tell you something, that won't come easily. There'll be a contending for it, and so not only do we have an assignment from God, but the devil has an assignment against you.

It's helpful to realise - and we're going to look at this in scripture in just a moment - I want to make it really simple, how you can discover what God called you to do. It's not very hard at all. It has a general aspect that is very specific for you, and I'd love you to set your heart, that I will focus my life, and begin to discover and work towards fulfilling what God called me to do. So He said: made us alive, grace sits in heavenly places, the ages to come. He'd see the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. I won't develop much of that here, but the thing is: we're just in one age. There are ages to come, and the best things that God has, are not just now. The best things are reserved for the next ages, that are to come.

We've talked a little bit about that in one of the series before, for by grace - here we go - for by grace are you saved through faith, and not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, no works, no works - say that, no works [No works] No works to get saved, yet it's so easy for us to move away from that basic positioning. No works to get saved - His work got me saved. His work dealt with every sin, past, present, future. His work dealt with every failure, past, present, future. His work dealt with every curse. All I have to do is position myself to believe, and open my heart to receive what He has done. I don't have to work to get to heaven. I don't have to work to get God to love me. You don't have to do any work to do that, and yet there is a work we do.

So I love these Verses 8 through to 10, firstly it tells us His work. We are accepted and access God totally because of His work, not because of any of our works. However, notice what it says immediately after. It tells us this: so His work, Jesus' work, is the work of salvation. Our work is the work of advancing His kingdom. See? Jesus didn't just save you to get you to go to heaven. He saved you to fulfil the original purpose, which is to restore the earth, to restore people, to restore our community, one soul at a time. That's how you do it.

We can sing great songs about the kingdom coming, and the glory coming, all that kind of thing, but you know what? It's really quite simple. He's connected you to his glory, so that you can change the community, one person at a time. Doesn't seem such a big task then does it? So God wants all of us to be at work, one person at a time, changing our community. Every life that gets saved, built in Christ, discipled to follow Christ and added to the church, the community begins to change. Get enough of that happening, whole cities change; so it's not waiting for some great big thing. If you wait for that, you'll actually miss that actually it's one soul at a time we change the community - quite simple. So who is the soul that you're reaching out to change?

Okay, so let's have a look what it says here; for we are His workmanship, created in Christ under good works which God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them. So salvation is His work, our work is advancing the kingdom; and it has a general aspect, every believer is called to reach out and to befriend the lost, and to advance the kingdom, in whatever sphere of society God's placed us. That's why the Bible tells us, wherever you're called; don't quit your job to do something great for God. Your job is where your place of calling is. Your community where in is where our place of calling is, so notice this, it says here that: the works God's prepared for you, were prepared before you began. In other words, God made the assignment, then He made you.

I want to talk about your assignment, and I want to show you very clearly from the word of God, that before we were born God, had an assignment for us. So my challenge is, and your challenge is this: how do I discover it? How do I prepare for it, and how do I fulfil my assignment, so that when I get to the end of my life, I can look back and say: I have finished my course, I fought my fight, and henceforth is laid up a crown, a reward? So the reward is not going to heaven. The rewards are rewards in the next ages to come, so notice this. He says: we are created for works; so you're created to do something that has spiritual significance and impact. Every one of us is created for works, and God prepared them before we even arrived in the earth. In other words, God knew when He designed you, why He designed you, and why He brought you in where He brought you in, and what He would accomplish through your life. He knew all about that.

If I was to take the Bible like this, now I'm looking at Jeroboam being sick. See, I've just opened up the Bible, so from eternity you can just open up history at any point, and step straight into it. It's just from here, we're on a timeline you know. So God has designed something for us to do. The challenge always is finding out what our assignment is. Firstly I want to just show you just quickly from scripture, how God has designed us for assignments.

In 1 Kings 13 verse 1 and 2: the man of God went from Judah to Bethel, by the word of the Lord, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Then he cried out by the word of the Lord, and said: O altar, altar! It's interesting, they spoke to things, solid things. Thus says the Lord God: a child, Josiah by name, shall be born in the house of David; and on you he'll sacrifice the priests of the high places, who burn incense on you, and men's bones shall be burned on you.

Now he's talking to an altar, and he's decreeing something. Now notice what he's saying. He's talking 300 years ahead of his time. He's saying by the word of God, that in 300 years time, there'll be a man born. His name will be Josiah. He will arise, and he'll become a great king, and he will take this altar here, where people have been sacrificing to false gods, and he's going to burn the bones of the prophets on it. You notice now 300 years before Josiah turns up, there's an assignment prepared for him to do. Then when you read the story of Josiah, he comes on the scene, it's exactly what he does. In other words, from God's point of view, He had the assignment before He had the man. He made the garden, then put the man in the garden, with a job to do.

Now this goes on right through the Bible. Just look at one more in Jeremiah 1, and you'll see it there - because the tendency is for us to kind of think that it's all sort of a bit hit and miss, but actually we want to focus our life, so we become clear of our assignment, and then pursue it passionately. In Verse 5: before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I sanctified you, and ordained you a prophet to the nations. So here's Jeremiah, and God's saying: before you were even shaped, in other words, before you even come an embryo inside the womb, I already had set you apart, to be a prophet to nations.

So before we saw Josiah, and 300 years before his birth, already he's already got a prescription from God what he's called to do. Now, you can go through many, many men of the Bible, and it's exactly the same; for example, John the Baptist. They prophesied over John the Baptist, that the spirit of Elijah would be on him, he would go and prepare a way for the Lord - before he's born, while he's still in the womb. What about Samson? Samson, his parents got a word that this man would rise up, and become a great deliverer. He would begin to deliver the nation of Israel; so person after person through the Bible, the same thread runs through, that before the person entered the world, there was an assignment from God prepared.

Now, of course when you start to think about that, you think: well, that's different, you know? That's John the Baptist, you know; and all these famous people in the Bible, but that wouldn't be me. But we've just read that He has created you for good works, which He prepared beforehand, that you would walk in them. To walk means, you would arrange your life, to fulfil what God called you to do.

Now this is not then about just dying and going to heaven. This is about aligning our life with God's kingdom purposes. Okay, now there's many things and many ways, so the question then is: how on earth do I find out what God called me to do? How many are puzzled by that one? Well, if you're honest, you wouldn't be puzzled by it. How many can say straight away: I know exactly what God's called me to do, and I've actually got some goals set out, and I'm working on it now? See what I mean? You see, we have this fuzzy sort of thing, I'll just sort of mosey along, and have a bit of a prayer time and - but we're not thinking clear. We need to actually be focussed in our life.

Let's have a look in Psalm 139. Now David is writing, and this is what he says. He said: your eyes - Verse 16 - saw my substance, being yet unformed. So he's saying again, this is David writing - he's saying: before I was even formed in the womb, You saw exactly what my DNA, my make up, how I would come forth. You see how scriptures like this really speak of the sanctity of life in the womb very strongly; so notice what he says here: And in your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.

Now let me just give you a couple of other versions. Here's what the NIV says: All the days ordained for me were written in your book, before even one of them came into being. How about the Living Bible: You saw me before I was born. You scheduled each day of my life before I began to breath, and every day was recorded in your book. Now when you start to look at it like that, we can just sort of say it something like this: that before you were even formed in your mother's womb, before any of us ever came into this world, God had a book and He listed every day of our life. He knows exactly when it'll finish, and He has a plan for every day of our life. Now that's quite extraordinary isn't it?

The problem is, how can I find His plan? It seems so elusive at times. So let's just give some simple things of how you could discover your assignment. Now the first thing to realise, is that it must be possible for me to discover what God wants me to do. It must be possible; and not only that, it must be simple; so I just need to know how that would take place. For example, if you have a look at the life of Jesus, at the age of 12 He turned up in the temple and He said: I must be about my father's business; so at 12 years old, it's possible for you to know your assignment for life. How about that?

Later on, He was able to articulate, and He said: this is my assignment, the spirit of the Lord's upon me. He's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, heal the broken hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, restoring vision to the blind, setting at liberty those oppressed, proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. In other words He's saying: I know exactly what I'm called to do, and I know how long I've got to do it. It's quite specific, and at the end of His ministry, He was totally committed to it. He said: my meat, or what I live on, is actually discovering what my father wants me to do, and finishing His work. Finally, when He got to the end of His life, in John 17:4, He says: I've finished all the work You assigned me to do. So in Jesus' model for us, that it's possible from when you're young, to be aware of the call and the work of God on your life; that it's possible for you to identify, and articulate this is what I am called to do with my life; that we need to make commitments for that to happen, or it doesn't just happen; and at the end of your life, you can get to the end of your life and say: actually, all that God wanted me to do, I've done it. Now that's a great thing isn't it? He's the model. He's the example - not someone else down the road. Jesus is the example.

So it raises then, how can we discover what God assigned us to do? I've given a lot of thought about that in the last few months. How can you discover what God has assigned you to do, and I've kind of really got it down under three headings. If you were God, and you have the problem where you've made someone.... We've got a big plan, so we'll work out exactly how he will be, and where he'll be born. Now we've got a job for him to do, or an assignment for his life. How am I going to get the assignment to him? I have discovered that there's probably three ways that happens. Number one, you've got to connect with God, and let Him talk to you, because you'll never discover all the things God has planned for your life unless you're in a place of listening to Him. We'll come back to that in a moment.

Second thing is, God wires it into the DNA of the person, so you have to actually get personal insight to who you are, before you can actually discover your assignment. The third thing is, you must actually purpose to discover it, because I've found that nothing of a spiritual nature just comes easily. You actually have to pursue them, and the Bible says: to seek the kingdom of God first, place it as priority to discover what God has for your life, and then accomplish it.

Now we'll try and get it down to some very simple things, so number one is revelation. So simply, we need the Holy Ghost to talk to us. Let's have a look at a Verse on that, in John 16, Verse 13. This is why the Holy Ghost is so important. I love the Holy Ghost. Somebody's going to break out, and we'll prophesy for some people shortly, but John 16, Verse 13: Now when He comes in the spirit of truth, He will guide you into all truth. So this is the job description of the Holy Ghost. It is to guide you into all truth, and notice what it says: He's not going to say things out His own mind. He says: He will say the things that He has heard. Who's He hearing them from? He's hearing them from the Father. The things the Father's prepared for your life, He shares with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is placed inside you, so He can lead you into the truth about what you're called to do; and notice this - and show you things to come. Well I don't know, maybe you're thinking global events there, and what's the finance market going to do? Maybe we'll just reduce it to something simple like: He can show you what things lie ahead for you in your life, in a way that you could actually start to walk into them. That has to be at least one of the things that He's called to do, so I need to cultivate a lifestyle of listening to the Holy Spirit, who speaks through the word of God, speaks personally in your heart.

What is your relationship with the Holy Spirit like? I'm finding recently He's saying more and more, to just relax and lean on Him and to make a fresh commitment to trust Him more, to lean on Him more, just to flow with Him more, not try and worry about getting everything worked out. Holy Ghost is wonderful. I was going to pray for some people soon, but I'll get stuck in, get away on the Holy Ghost in a moment. Notice this: see, this is a major work of the Holy Ghost. He's put inside you to help you find your assignment! How good does that get! People are worried about seeing angels and things. I'm not worried about seeing angels, because Almighty God is inside my spirit! Same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is inside me! It's not a different Holy Ghost you've got, you know.

You've got to learn how to arise with the power of the spirit in your life. It's not so hard. We teach it over and over and over. We're going to go through it again, because I find people forget. They just forget, plum forget. But I tell you what, you can be energised by the Holy Ghost! In Philippians, Chapter 2, it says: it is God, or the Holy Ghost, who energises you, who works in you; to will, and to do of the things that please the Father. So there it is. Your assignment is: the Holy Ghost knows what your assignment is. He knows what He's wanting to do today. He knows what He wants to do in you tomorrow. Get connected to the Holy Ghost!

You get fired up and energised! Get that gift of tongues praying, until you break all that heaviness off you! Start to renew your soul, so you're getting revelation from the spirit! The spirit of man, the Bible says, is the lamp of the Lord; so if you want revelation, your spirit has to be able to flow through a soul that's clear of depression and heaviness and condemnation and guilt! That's why we need to be free in our soul! Free and just love the Holy Ghost! I love Him! Amazing! Then you get praying in tongues every day. I guarantee your life will change. First three days, stretch you a bit. After that all kinds of problems will come. [Laughter] They will, I can assure you, absolutely assure. You commit every day I'll get up, and I'll start to pray in tongues, then I'll start to tenderly worship God, and I will begin to stir my spirit man, let the word of God begin to meditate in my soul. You'll have some problems, I can tell you now.

What are the problems? Oh, I understand. They're the opposition to my assignment. So how many rolled over and gave up? Come up in an altar call and get prayer. [Laughs] Okay, so the Holy Ghost, first one. Revelation, revelation. Holy Ghost energised. Second thing is, I believe it's personal insight. I believe if you're going to fulfil the assignment God's given to you, you need personal insight. You need insight as to who you are, how God's wired you, and I'll give you some practical things how to discover that. They're quite simple but sometimes we overlook - you know, the Bible tells us that we have gifts that differ, so you are different. Tell someone: actually, you're different. You're really different. You're really different! Whoa! Because the problem is, we want to make them all the same. God says NO! You know what He says? When I made you, I said: I'll never do that again! There's only going to be one of you. You are unique. Broke the mould, the next one comes out as different. Every one is different. Difference is good. Get in a church culture, everyone wants to make you the same. Difference is good. Difference is God, so He's creative. Look around at the number of plants, trees, animals. The variety everywhere, difference is grea,t and you can be totally different. Why not? If you've got hair, colour it!

I saw someone the other day, had some lovely purple hair. I thought it was magnificent. It was great. I saw a Pastor over in Taiwan who's got purple hair too. I thought well that looks great too, but I couldn't get away with that, not at my age. [Laughter] It looked good on him.

So let me just give you some simple things. This is so easy to find this. Number one, what is it you really love doing? What do you really love doing? Everyone knows this. Don't be religious. What do you love doing? That is a clue, and a key to finding out what God's put inside, because when you do what you love, you just love doing it, and you're very happy, and you just keep doing it because you're so happy doing it, because you like doing it. This is one of the things about doing what you love to do. You love to do it, so it's fun; so get some other people and gather them in, and do the things you love to do with them, and then share with them about the Lord when the chance opens up.

Second thing is, what do you hate? What is it really gets you wound up, you hate it? You know, because some people can't say what they love, but they do know what they hate. I hate that! Well maybe you're called to fix it? [Laughter] Come on, maybe you're called to fix it. People complain - somebody ought to do something about it! You saw it - you do something! God's obviously put the concern in your heart. Now it's as simple as that. Sometimes we overlook the most obvious. What is it grieves you? What is it causes your heart to feel touched and sad? That's a clue too.

I was with someone, and they shared this story of where they were from, and I actually felt deep compassion, and I knew that I should try to help that person, because that's what I'm called to do. I knew it because of what I felt inside. Sometimes things get us angry. Now there's lots of reasons to get angry; you get angry because someone cut you off coming in. We're not talking about that; but sometimes you hear of things, and it really triggers off inside you, you know, Jesus looked around in Mark 3, He looked around at the hardness of these religious people in the church, and He was extremely angry being grieved. So you notice He was angry, and He was grieved, and He did something about it. Anger can cause energy to arise, to face and challenge things; and not all anger's good, but some anger - God gets angry. Jesus gets angry - but we forget He gets angry. He walked in that temple, and they were all cheating everyone, and making money off everybody. He got angry! I mean this is no Gentle Jesus! He just stood there, and thought about it while the anger was rising up inside Him, and He's plaiting these lovely whips, and then He ran through the place and turned over the tables, whipped everyone and drove them all out. Now that is something really big. That's a big thing.

This is the same Jesus we were worshipping, oh. [Laughter] Come on. You've got to realise, God does not want the church feminised. He wants the church to be both male and female, in other words, to have a strength about it, that comes about by engaging a cause, and a purpose; and Jesus knew. He said: I'm about my Father's business. What angered Him was, it was His assignment to clean up the house of God. That's why He got angry, and He was grieved because of the religious hardness, and lack of love for people, lack of compassion for people, see? So that's another clue.

Here's another way: find out what you're good at. Just have a look and try a few things. Just try some things, and see what you're really good at, because if you get good fruit in something, probably that's something to do with the assignment God has for your life. Then the last one is, you could ask someone else - not everyone; because a lot of people have agendas, but you could ask a trusted person what they see in you. What do others recognise in you? If you've been in a community, or connected in relationships, after a little while people see what you're quite good at, and they say: well, you'd be great at that. I never thought of being a Pastor, but a Pastor spoke to me and said: hey, you'd be great as a Pastor. I couldn't see it. I still struggle sometimes, but however that's neither here nor there. I've come to recognise it's what God called me to do, just embrace it, and get over yourself, you know, so [Laughter] there it is.

So what do you have? That's not so hard. If you were to think - see we try to make it so spiritual, but if you were to think: what is it I really love doing? Can I just begin to give myself to that, include others, and bring others into the world of what I love, and start to impact them for Christ? That could be your assignment.

I was just quite thrilled recently - you know Beryl? Beryl loves to be kind and hospitable and recently she did an amazing thing. She gave up a half a days pay and wages and whatever, so she could set up a programme to teach people how to cook. She loves to cook, and so she's just got two places, first it was just one here. She does a class here, and she just loves to cook and help people to cook; and now she's found another place she can do it and be evangelistic. Now that's just actually taking what you love, and then bringing others into your world where you love doing this, then letting God touch them.

We've got others in the church, and they're never up on the platform, or ever being vocal in any kind of way, but they are phenomenal in what they do, phenomenal. They just do what they love doing - say I love doing it. Just I love it. And it's usually the thing that God's called you to do, and it's a matter of then being able to focus it. Here's another couple of things. The last one I believe is this: you actually have to actively pursue what God wants you to do. I don't think it just falls on our plate. I think it requires an active pursuit, and by active pursuit, I believe that the devil is assigned to try and stop you going into what God has for you to accomplish with your life.

I was just talking with Richard this morning, and God's put in his heart a whole number of giftings around the area of marriage and counselling, and had a huge amount of experience, and he wants to write a book. So he's got a book, but he was talking to me today about all the difficulties he's had just facing the publishing of the book; but he has an assignment, and so there are battles with your assignment, so don't think that's strange. Don't think it's strange that the thing that God called you to do, that you'd face conflict in it. It's absolutely normal, because you are called uniquely to advance the kingdom, and there will always be opposition to that from the spirit world, and in people; and God can use it to grow you, and build the man and the woman of God He wants to build.

So here's some other simple practical things I think we have to do in the pursuit of our assignment. Here's a few things: number one, look for opportunities to help people. Look for opportunities to serve and help people. I think we should be proactive in helping people, because your assignment is always to someone. It's always to help someone. Jesus came, and His assignment was to help the whole world, and His assignment He left to the church, carry on the mission! See? So every assignment that God has, no matter what form it takes, will be in service to people. So whether you're behind in an office, or whether you're out, seen or whatever, there'll always be people you're serving. That's a part of it, so look for the opportunities. Galatians 6:10 tells us: as we have opportunity do good to all men, and especially those who are believers, so look for opportunities. Make it a lifestyle of looking for opportunities to help people, and be a blessing to people, and that's one way of discovering your assignment, because you start to find your way into it quite quickly.

The second thing is, I believe we need to invest in personal growth and development. I think if you're gong to fulfil your assignment, you have to make a decision to invest in yourself. Now no one is going to do that for you. So for example, if you've got a musical gifting, you can have all the gifting you like, but if you don't invest in the training, you'll never fulfil your assignment. You'll never become great unless you get some training. So I look around - a lot of young people, when they start to walk with God, they get this kind of thing of God will take them here and take them there. Listen - discover what is inside you that could be a gift to the world, and then develop the gift. Invest in your development. Get some training, get some education, get some skills. Whatever you do, develop yourself, and so that spiritual development, growing in your personal life and also it's practical and natural development, in just your skills and abilities and various other things, even managing finance. It's not so hard is it? These are quite important - so invest in yourself.

So here's a question then. Who is it, that you've been doing good to? What opportunities have come up recently? Second question you could think of would be: what am I doing to invest in myself, and to grow my gifts, and grow my ability? What am I doing? Am I doing anything? Well then if you're not growing, you're just stagnating.

Third thing is, develop excellence in serving. Develop excellence in serving. Why do I say that? Because excellence in serving, that means very simply, do the little things well, and on time. Do the little things well, and on time. Do it with a great heart. Why? Colossians 3:23 says: whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord, not unto men, knowing - here's why you do it that way - knowing that from the Lord we shall receive the reward of inheritance. So serving with excellence is a key part of gaining favour with men, that gives God room to promote you. Think about that.

So if I don't find people serving, or their serving is trivial or poor, they're not committed to grow, I know they can't become great. Greatness in the kingdom is about serving. It's about meeting needs of people, and doing it really well, and doing it with a great heart, doing it with a great attitude, and continually improving your serve. It's quite simple, and you know, in a church like this, there's heaps of ways that you can serve. Just serve the family of God. Every time we have a Sunday Service, there's people up there who do lights, there's people outside in the car park and - did a great job, they're out in the car park there, and they're the first people that people meet. There's people count money, there's people do all kinds of things. There's about 70 people involved on a Sunday morning, let alone acts of service anywhere else. I know there are so many people who are doing things behind the scenes all the week, so these are great ways of going isn't it?

Here's the fourth thing - set some practical goals. Make a plan. If you're going to grow and achieve something with your life, make a plan. Maybe it's just a plan about your work. Maybe it's a plan about your spiritual growth, a plan about your marriage, a plan about your family, but just make a plan. Put some things down that you commit yourself to do. That's quite simple, because the moment you do that, you're now articulating what I'm doing, and now this is where I'm going. Most people who succeed in life have a plan. They have something that maintains their focus in life. You say: how's that going to get my assignment? Because these are the things everyone has to do, to accomplish something great with their life, and it's on the journey that God guides you. He doesn't give it to you all - it's a scroll. It unravels as you go. I wish it was a book - you could just sort of go and have a peek in it - where am I up to? Sixty-six. Don't know what's up now? No, it doesn't work like that, it's a scroll, so it just unravels as you walk into it.

Here's another thing. Build relationships with people that can mentor you, or speak into your life. This is one of the things that stops many people becoming great, is they actually don't let anyone speak into their life, or don't build connections intentionally with people that can help them grow. If you have an assignment, it requires you grow, and you need people to help you, so who have you got speaking into your life? Welcome people speaking into your life to help you grow, find a place where you can serve.

Here's another couple, and I'll finish with these. Take risks. I've come to the conclusion, you're just going to have to take more risks. You just have to step out and try stuff. Now here's the problem. I look around, I see many grey hairs, and of course as you get older, you don't want to take risks. You want a smooth life, but actually that's the worst thing you could possibly do, is to in the last season of your life, slow down and stop taking risks, petering out rather than going out with a bang of glory! See Bill there, and he's still going off to China, and smuggling Bibles across the border - he's amazing! Bill the smuggler [Laughter] You used to be Conservative Bill, but it turns out there's a bit of Wild Bill inside there, see? [Wild Bill.] Yeah, exactly, Wild Bill. He's got that name now, Wild Bill, because he does things other people wouldn't do, and there's risk. But in doing so, he's discovered his assignment, so you have to take risks; and a good example of that is Peter, who stepped out of the boat on a word from the Lord, and began to do something no man apart from Jesus had ever done before: walk on water.

Now you can focus on him sinking, but don't focus on him sinking. He walked on water twice, once when he started out, then after he got the dunking, up again and he walked again. So he walked by faith, and it took him risk. Everyone else played it safe in the boat. Now have a good think about this: intentionally plan things that stretch you out, so you're not comfortable, and you have to lean on God. It's in those things that you'll find your boundaries increase, and you begin to start to find God moving and making clear what He wants you to do.

We'll never know all that God has for us, if we don't try some things out, and try some different things out. Now think about it. That's not so hard all of that was it? It was one, God wants to speak to you, so get full of the Holy Ghost! Two, gain personal insight. In other words, reflect on what you love, what you hate, what grieves you, what makes you angry, what stirs you up, what you're good at, and begin to start to put yourself out. Now there are many roles in the church people can function in. You never know what you can do until you give it a go. I never knew. I've done things I'd never thought I'd ever do. How did I end up here? I said to myself when I was a teenager: I'll never do that, and yet there I am, ended up doing that, because at some point I stepped out and did things I'd never done before. That's part of it.

Then finally, make it a pursuit that you'll discover what God wants you to do. It unravels through your life, and try to articulate: this is what I feel in my heart I'm called to do. You know, stand and look in the mirror, and say: I believe God's calling me to do this. I will arise and fulfil this, and trust God to lead me as I do it.

Now some of you already are well on the way. You're well journeying down your assignment, but others, I believe it's a time to activate those things, and come alive in them. I just see assignments inside people, just waiting to burst out, and here's the thing: if you wait for someone else to bring it out, it'll never happen! You've got to own this thing yourself, because it's YOUR assignment. It's what God designed YOU to do, and no one else. Why is there no one else? Simply this, because of the unique DNA you have, the giftings and mix you have, the experiences you have, where you've come from, what your experiences with God are, and where you are uniquely placed. You meet people that I'll never meet, and God put you there for a reason. It's our role to change the community, one person at a time. So why don't we all begin to decide we're going to take up our assignment?

Let's just close our eyes for a moment. Father in heaven, we just thank you for the work you're doing in our midst by your spirit. I want to just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, is there any person here never made the first step, and that is to receive Jesus as your saviour, to become a Christian? If you haven't received Jesus yet, I'd love to pray a simple prayer with you. A Christian is a follower of Christ, someone who's given their life to Him, trusted Him to save them, and started to intentionally walk with Him.

I wonder how many people today, that has God has really challenged you about your assignment, about actually beginning to embrace or understand that God does want you to advance His kingdom, in a way that's quite unique to you, that you have an assignment from God which unravels over the course of time, and you are actively pursuing that right now. You've identified where your strengths are, and what you love to do. You're starting to look for the ways you could grow into that role somewhere, or somehow. Perhaps some of you God's given ideas and dreams. Well you know, until you put it down, and start to do something about it, it'll never become reality. We've got to step up and take hold of our assignment.

I wonder how many people God spoke to this morning about that. Just raise your hand right now. God bless, God bless. There's many people - why don't we just do this as we finish, why don't you just come and just come to the front, just lift your hands and just begin to build an altar to the Lord, say: God, I do not want to drift any longer. I want to become focussed with my life. I've got keys today to help me with that assignment; the first one, I'm going to start to build strong praying in tongues. Secondly, I'm going to start to identify what's in my life. I'm going to begin to seek the help of others if I need to; and three, I'm going to actively pursue - I've actually got the keys now of what to do.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

Eph. 8-10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”.

· Each of us is a masterpiece, a unique creation of God that He is working on.

(a) V8 Salvation = His Work: He has done it all. I must believe and rest on the work Jesus did. There is nothing more I can do to become accepted by God.

(b) V10 Advancing the Kingdom = My Work: He has designed me for a unique purpose –

= called to bring heaven to earth.

= called to restore our community one life at a time.

· V10 “Prepare beforehand” = God designed an assignment and created you to fulfil it.

· “Works” = activities we do energised by the Holy Spirit.

· “Walk” = NT4043 = to tread all around, to regulate your life so you fulfil your assignment.

2. God Designed Your Assignment before you were born

(a) Examples of Men with Assignments

· 1 King 13:2 Josiah – His name and assignment were prophesied.

· Jer. 1:5 Jeremiah – called to be a prophet before he was born.

· Jud. 13:5 Samson – called to be a deliverer from womb.

· Lk. 1:13-16 John – called to be a revivalist from the womb.

(b) God has prepared every day of your life

· Ps.139:16-17

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them come to be”. NIV

“You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breath. Every day was recorded in your book”. TLB

(c) Your assignment is Specific to You

· Jesus Was aware of His assignment at age of 12 years (Lk2:49)

Was totally committed to His assignment (Jn4:34)

Could clearly articulate His assignment (Lk4:18)

Fully completed His assignment (Jn17:4)

3. How Can you Discover What your Assignment is?

(a) Revelation by the Holy Spirit

· We can only discover our assignment fully if we listen to the Holy Spirit.

· Jn.16:13 “When He the Spirit of Truth has come He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority but whatever He hears He will speak and He will tell you things to come”.

· One major work of the Holy Spirit is to reveal God’s will and empower us to do it.

· Phil.2:13 “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure”.

· “Works” = HNT1754 = Energeo = to energise, powerfully work in.

· How does the Holy Spirit do this?

· Build your devotional life and practise listening and responding to the Holy Spirit as a lifestyle.

(b) Active Pursuit

· Acts 16:6-9 as Paul acted on what he knew, his assignment unfolded

(i) Look for opportunities to help people (Gal.6:10)

(ii) Invest in personal growth and development (1 Tim. 4:15)

(Natural and spiritual)

(iii) Develop excellence in serving people (Col 3:23)

(iv) Set some practical goals – make a plan (prov.29:18)

(v) Build relationships with mentors that can speak into your life and help you (Prov.15:22)

(vi) Take risks – welcome opportunities to extend (Mt.14:28-32)

(vii) Commit to Spiritual and Emotional health (Prov.4:23)

24. Handling Life's Difficult Experiences

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Life is a mixture of experiences - some sweet and some bitter. The Bible abounds in examples and stories of people, and it tells us that without faith we can never please God. We must learn how to trust Him, and trust is developed in private, but it's always shown up in difficult experiences we have in life. So difficulties are an opportunity for us to grow because they reveal our heart condition.

How many thought, as a Christian, you thought that things would all work out easy, and go well for you aye? [Laughs] How many found it didn't work out like that at all? Quite disappointing at times, so let's have a read, and I want us to read in Exodus, Chapter 15 in Verse 22: so Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out to the Wilderness of Shur, and they had three days in the desert without any water. That's pretty tough isn't it aye?

The Bible abounds in examples and stories of people, and it tells us that without faith we can never please God. We must learn how to trust Him; and trust is developed in private, but it's always shown up in difficult experiences we have in life. He says: they came to the waters of Marah, in other words they found some water, but they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. That's why they called the name of it Marah, which means bitter. And the people complained against Moses, saying: what do we drink? And he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When He cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet; and there He made a statute and an ordinance, and there He tested them. So this was a test. This was something God was using to grow and develop them.

He said: if you diligently head to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give air to His commandments and keep His statutes, I'll put none of the diseases on you, which I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord which heals you.

So the first thing to see, life is a mixture of experiences - some sweet and some bitter. These people had just seen one of the most amazing miracles of God. They were being pursued by an army, and they saw as Moses lifted his rod up, they saw a wind come up that parted the waters; and then as they crossed over those waters, the waters collapsed; and all the soldiers, who had held their life in slavery for hundreds of years, were destroyed. So they saw this tremendous - isn't that a great experience of God - and they tasted freedom, and it was sweet. Then three days later they're burned out, and drying out in the desert; there's no water, no supply, tongues sticking to the roof of their mouths.

So it's like on one hand they had this tremendous experience, and you would think hey, God has done this for me. I expect Him to treat me real well, and next thing you know they're in this very, very difficult situation. It's true in our life, we can have great experiences with God in a meeting, or great breakthrough with God in our life, but then it's followed by an unexpected disappointment, setback or difficulty, and this is pretty challenging. You ever been without anything to drink for a day? Imagine being in the sun, the blazing sun for three days, and you've got no water, and then finally the water you get, it tastes bitter. You can see that water. They probably broke into a run. They all ran to the water. They get in the water, start slopping it up and aarrgh! spitting it out like that.

So what they had was a bitter experience, a disappointing experience. I wonder how many of you tonight have faced an experience which was quite disappointing, that was quite a bitter experience, something that happened that actually was like a setback in your life. You never expected something like that would happen. Often we find that we have these experiences, they just come into our life unexpectedly; but here's the second thing. Difficulties are always an opportunity for you to grow, so currently some of you may be facing a difficult experience, a difficult season or experience. You may be in a relationship, maybe a financial issue, it may be a personal issue, or it may be just a season you're going through, a lot of difficulty in your life. You pray, and it doesn't seem like God comes through for you. It's what's called a bitter experience.

But these kinds of experiences are an opportunity to grow. God is committed to your growth or your character, not your comfort. Now it's a help to realise that, that we may think that God is going to come through, on every need that I have, and He'll supply on time. I've observed that He doesn't always come through on time, and He definitely doesn't come through like you expect. He often comes through in a way that you don't expect at all; so when you are going through a difficult time, or difficult season in your life, it is an opportunity for you to grow. The Bible says: He tested them; or gave them an opportunity to grow and to shift. If you're going to come into the things God has for you, you have to grow. You have to grow. You have to grow. God has planned many things for you, but it's like a father having a motorbike he wants to give to the child, but the child's only about six. He's not going to get the motorbike; not until they're grown up.

You've actually got to cooperate with God in His preparation process, or you can't experience the things He's planned for you; so the best things that God has for you are yet ahead for you. I don't know how many, but I guess when we get to heaven we'll have a look, and God will show us these are all the things that I intended for you, but when the going got tough, oh my, why did you respond that way? Why did you sulk? Why did you quit? Why did you give up? Why did you draw back? I had so much I was planning for you, and you quit on me, right at the key point when I was trying to prepare you; so you'd know what to do, and have the courage to handle it.

So difficulties are an opportunity for us to grow, because they reveal our heart condition. So you notice here, that when they came to Marah, it says they couldn't drink; and it says: they complained. They complained. Now one of the things to understand, is that people that have been in bondage, and people that have been in a life of slavery, often they have what's called a victim mentality. A victim mentality is: I'm powerless; life's not fair, and someone's to blame. So whenever you face a difficult situation in life, whatever's in your heart will come out through your mouth; and what they did was, they began to complain. They began to speak, and always when people complain, they're trying to find someone to blame, someone to put responsibility for the situation on.

So they complained against Moses. They complained against God's visible representative. They complained against God Himself. Basically they were blaming them for the situation, saying: it's your fault. You brought us here, you got us here. How come you put us in such a situation?

I wonder when you face difficult situations, how much you complain, how much you become negative and sour, because what's in your heart is sour. This week I encourage you, just to have a listen around the community, wherever you are; whether it's at school or work, wherever it is. Listen to how often, and how frequently, you find people complaining. You will be amazed, and when people are complaining, it tells us they have bitterness in their heart; the bitterness of being defeated, of being hurt, of injustice, of some kind of problem in their life they've never resolved. So when they face a challenge which is difficult, up comes the bitterness, out comes the flow, and out comes this complaining and negativity and all kinds of things.

Now listen. God wants you to be free of that, wants to get it out of your heart, so He allows you to go into some difficult situations; and you notice they had just had amazing deliverance, they're out of Egypt, but they forgot yesterday's blessings. They're caught up in the problems of today. I wonder how many of us have forgotten what God did in the past, forgotten the way He's helped you, forgotten the things He's done for you. You're just caught up in the injustice and unfairness of what's there right now - very easy to do that.

So the next thing that we see here, is that God is aware of your needs. God actually knows exactly what your needs are. You don't actually have to tell Him what your needs are. He already knows. He's completely aware of your needs, and He's planned the journey. Interesting thing was, God knew exactly after three days, they're going to be dried out. He knew after three days, when they're right at their driest, and they got to the water, the water would be bitter. God knew all about that. He could foresee. It's like He looked at the book of your life, and He can see what you're going to face tomorrow. He can see what you're going to face next week. He can see what you're going to face in six months time. He knows exactly what you're going to face - He's planned your journey. He's planned your journey.

Now if there's faith in your heart, you can actually have confidence God has planned my journey. I can rest on the promise in Romans 8, which talks about the love of God; I can rest on this promise. All things work together for my good, because I'm called by God, and I'm walking with Him. Everything works together for my good. Even the bad things will develop some good thing in your life. No matter what you're going through, no matter what situation you find, faith tells me that whatever it is, God can turn it for good. It can turn around, and actually I'm going to benefit from this thing. So let's have a look at this story here.

So we see there that God knew exactly what they were going to face. He knew exactly the problem they'd have, and here's the thing: there was already a solution. God had already prepared a solution for it see, because they didn't know what to do. Now right now, I can tell you now, whatever problem you're facing, God is aware of the problem, aware of what you're walking through, and He's already got a solution for you. It's not like, here you are one day, and you find your life in a bit of a mess, and you cry out: God, and God looks down and thinks: what on earth have you done? Whoa! I don't know what am I - I'll have to think up a plan to get you out of that mess. It's like God doesn't have to stop and figure out a plan to get you out of the mess. He already knows your path. He knows what will happen when you find yourself in certain situations, you'll begin to respond in a certain way. He already has the solution. The challenge is, whether you'll do what the people did, complain and let your bitterness come out; or whether you'll do what Moses did. Moses had the solution, and he found the solution, he didn't really know what to do. I mean some problems are like that. The Bible says: if you don't know what to do, ask God, and ask in faith, believing He'll show you what to do. Ask God.

So what happens here, it says: they cried out to the Lord, and they complained. The reason they complained was, they were angry. They were bitter, and there was a lot of grief in their heart, and it all came out. I don't know whether you imagine what it would be like for Moses trying to deal with people like that. Imagine what some of your parents, what it's like to deal, when you get negative and complaining. It's a miserable thing when you've got a lot of people complaining. This is what Moses did. Moses cried out to the Lord; so number one, how do you respond when things are difficult, or there's a bitter experience you face. Number one, cry out to God. Cry out to God. God has an answer for you. The Bible says: He's able to do more exceedingly abundant things. He said: He'll supply your every need, according to His riches in Christ. God has promised, over and over in His word: He won't leave you, He's with you, He will help you; but the first thing is to come to Him, and cry out, and start to begin to spend time in prayer: God, I don't know what to do. God help me with this situation. It's beyond my ability to deal with it.

See naturally, they would die if they got no water, but here's the thing. Why would God bring them out into the desert, go all to that effort to do all the miracles and get them saved, just so they could die here, because they had no water? Clearly He had a plan. Now the dilemma is, God doesn't tell you the plan, not until you cry to Him; and you'll find in the Bible many situations - there's another one where the disciples, Jesus told them to get in the boat. Now they resist to get in the boat. The Bible says: He constrained them, or forced them, or pressured them, to get in the boat. Why would they not want to get in the boat? They're fishermen! They can tell there's a storm coming. No one wants to be in a little boat on the sea when there's a storm coming.

They get in the little boat. Next thing, it's in the middle of the storm, and now they're in a place of stress. Now Jesus knew all about it, and this was an opportunity for them to grow in faith, which they flunked.

I don't know how many ones I've flunked. I've flunked a few over my life, a few little things have got me. But here's the first thing: Number one, you need to cry out to God. Number two, you need to listen for God's direction. It says: God showed him something. Do you realise that God can speak to you, and show you things, in the middle of your trouble? I remember being in the midst of one of the greatest challenges I had in my life in ministry, and right in the middle of it, God showed me something about myself that needed healing; something about myself that needed changing, something about my heart attitude, that He'd exposed in the middle of the situation, and He wanted me to change.

So the first thing then is: cry out to God, and then give a bit of space for Him to speak to you. How would He reveal things to you? He could easily reveal it as you're just spending time in the word, could reveal it to you as you're talking to someone. You could be sitting in a meeting, and then suddenly God speaks to you. Just this last week we had Pastor Anwar Fazel here, and one of the meetings I felt like God just spoke to me so clearly, just like it was a directive from heaven, just like that. So we've got to tune in our heart to the spontaneous flow of God; so God showed him a tree. In the Bible, when the Bible's talking about the word tree, it's a picture of the cross, the cross of Jesus Christ. It's a picture of Jesus Christ. God showed Him a bush. Now here's the thing; the bush was always there. He just didn't see its significance in solving the problem. He came there, and he's got two million people plus, and they're all complaining and groaning, and they're all going to die in a couple of days, they're going to start dying off, and the water they've got is a mess, and he's got nowhere to go. He cries out to God, and God's opened his eyes, and points out to him something that was always there, which he didn't see.

Now here's the thing. At the cross of Christ, at the cross, Jesus has broken the power of sin, broken curses, made it possible for every person to be blessed. It's just sometimes, in the middle of your problem, you just don't see it. At the cross, Jesus demonstrated He loves you, He's so committed to you, no matter what you've done, and what you've been in, and no matter how bad your life has been. He's willing to give of Himself to help you, but when you're in a fix, you just don't seem to see it; and so what happened in the midst of his time of praying, God showed him something he hadn't seen before. He gave him revelation, gave him insight to the work of the cross, the power of God to heal and transform any situation.

Now here's the most amazing thing about this thing. If they had not come to bitter waters, they would never have discovered God's power to heal. It was only in a crisis, that they actually had an insight and a revelation of what God is like. It's only when you're in a fix, and you're in a tight place, and you start to cry to God, that you get revelation about what God is really like; and that revelation will change you - said: he cried unto the Lord. Number one, he cried out. Number two, he heard God speak to him. God showed him something. Here's the thing he had to do; he had to take this bush, and he had to throw this bush into the water; and the tree, when it got in the water, then changed the water.

Now here's the application: think about this. You can cry out to God, and God can speak to you, but you have to act on what God shows you. Now notice what he had to do. He had to take the tree, he had to go to the solution, and he had to bring the tree to the water. What that pictures, or means, for you is this: when you're facing a tough spot, when there are setbacks in your life, come to the Lord, and begin to cry out to Him. Ask Him for insight what to do, wisdom what to do. As He begins to show you, you then have to apply that to the situation. You have to act on what God shows you. If you fail to act, you can know all about the tree that heals, but if you don't actually take the tree, and put it into the situation - what does that mean for you?

Well if you've faced a very painful difficult situation, been betrayed in a relationship, you can choose to be angry and bitter and complain; or you can come to the cross and say: God, you have forgiven me. Now I bring this whole situation. and I bring your forgiveness into this difficult situation. and I'll turn it from being sour to being sweet. Here's the amazing thing, God has got a lot of ways to change our situations. He's not limited. Sometimes He does something totally different to what you expect, and the situation changes. Sometimes He just does something out of the ordinary.

When Paul and Silas had been beaten up for preaching the gospel, they'd done something good, they were thrown in prison - interesting, they're right down, and their feet are in the stocks. They're in the lowest part of the prison. It's late at night, and instead of complaining and whinging they begin to praise God, and honour God; and suddenly there's an earthquake, the doors open, the chains break off. They can run away if they want to - now that is just unusual. That is incredibly unusual. God can do something unusual to change your circumstance, and the result of it was that a whole jailer and his family got saved.

So here's the thing, they had this problem of being whipped and put in jail; but the consequence was they met a jailer, and his whole family got saved. So it wasn't the inconvenience and the pain. That was just a little thing compared to a whole family getting reached for Christ, and this is how God works. He can sometimes use your situation, and change it dramatically as in the doors open, the chains fell off; or He can use it to bring about something you never expected, for example the family got saved.

Another one - Lazarus was sick and was dying. They called for Jesus to come, and Jesus deliberately delayed coming. Now don't you hate that, when God deliberately delays, and you need Him now! And He deliberately delays, and then what is a sick situation becomes a deadly situation, becomes very, very bad. He said: if you can believe you'll see the glory of God; so what He said is: don't be overwhelmed with grief and disappointment. Keep trusting me. I haven't finished yet - and they saw, instead of a sick man getting healing, they saw a dead man raised! So would you be happy with a little miracle, or the bigger one? Well any miracle would do [Laughter] but you see, the Bible abounds... So in some ways God solves the situation because He changes it in a way you don't expect. Sometimes He introduces something into it that you never thought of, and the whole thing changes; and sometimes He just teaches you, you have to live through that situation and trust Him. So God's got a lot of ways.

I wonder what you're facing right now, and I wonder what response you're making in the middle of it. If you're complaining, if you're pouring out negativity, if you're overwhelmed with that, then there is definitely bitterness in your heart. This would be a great time tonight to say: God, I don't want to be bitter. I want my spirit to be sweet.

I just love the story of Nelson Mandela, who had all those years in prison, all those years in prison. When he came out, and he had the power put in his hands, he could now pay back all his enemies; and instead he brought a message of reconciliation. He brought sweetness, where he had every reason to be bitter. God had done something in his heart. Joseph was the same. I wonder what happens out of you, or what flows out of your life, whenever you're in difficulty. Is it sweetness and confidence in God; or is there negativity and complaining, overflowing of bitterness and a sense of being a victim and blaming someone? What flows out of your heart?

You know what's flowing out of your heart. This would be a great chance to bring it to the Lord. Can we close our eyes right now? This is the way you handle those difficulties that you're in, you bring them to God. You come to Him and cry out to Him. You begin to listen to Him for His insight into how to solve it, and you may take a little while to do that, then you have to apply what God has shown you, whether it be forgiveness, whether it be patience, whether it be perseverance, whether it be just trusting Him to see this thing worked out.

Whatever it happens to be, you have to actually apply what God shows you. So while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, I wonder tonight if there's anyone here - I believe there's several of you that are in a very difficult experience right now, in a very painful experience or a bitter experience or a time of disappointment, a time where things are going very hard for you. I wonder if you could say: that's me tonight, I'm in that place. Would you just raise your hand right now? I wonder just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, I wonder if those people that are going through difficulty, if you recognise that complaining becomes very much a part of your life, that actually you do things with complaining and groaning and murmuring, and your response has not been good. If you know that's true, it means probably there's bitterness somewhere in your heart, you need to ask the Lord to heal it.

I want to do this tonight. I want to give you an opportunity for prayer, for God to come and touch you, for the prophetic word to encourage you. God is not finished with you. You are in a season where He's trying to change you, and build you to be a better person, because He has better things ahead for you. Father, I just thank you for each person here tonight that's responded. We ask Lord as we pray for them, and minister to them, that the grace of God will come upon them. There may be someone here tonight who doesn't know Jesus. If you're a person here tonight that doesn't know or haven't experienced Jesus Christ, haven't given your heart to Jesus, this would be a great night to respond to Him.

The Bible says that everyone who put their trust in Him, received Him, and gave their life to Him, became a follower of Jesus - to him He gives power to become a child of God. Tonight you could walk out with your sins forgiven, joined to heaven, joined in your heart to God, a child of God - or you could walk out empty. It's your choice. If you want to receive Jesus Christ tonight, I encourage you to come up. Someone will stand with you and pray with you.

Let's just all stand together, and just as the musicians just allow this gentle worship process to be just a flow of worship, let's just stand right now. If you put your hand up and responded tonight, you're in a difficult place, a hard place, a place of bitter waters, it's really quite sour, and you're quite distressed over it, why don't you make your way to the front right now. Father, I just thank you for each one that's come. I believe Lord you have something for them. We just ask for your spirit to come. There may be others here tonight, and you need prayer for some other area of healing, or whatever it is - feel free to come up. We'd just love to pray with you.

25. Fathers Day 2012 - Valiant Men

Sun 2nd Sep 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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To be valiant is to be bold, to be courageous, to hold fast to the commitments in the face of adversity, to face your fear and wrestle with it and still deal with it anyway. God always sees what you could be. He sees what he's designed you to be. Paul said that at the end of his life. I've finished my course. I've run my race and a crown is laid up for me.

John Stephen Akhwari represented Tanzania at the Mexico Olympics and what he didn't realise was of course that the altitude would affect him so greatly. In fact because of the altitude of Mexico City so many of the athletes were affected that out of I think - how many started? I think there were 75 started, only 57 finished. The others dropped out of the race because of the high altitude and they did not have the stamina to see their way through about the 19 kilometres out of the 42 kilometres. About the 19 kilometre mark there was a lot of jostling for position and he got jostled and fell.

When he fell over he badly damaged his knee, he dislocated his knee and also damaged his shoulder and yet he got up and he ran. Many times on the remainder of the journey people tried to get him to stop and he just refused to quit. This is a man who finished the race. You could see there it was dark when he finished. All the others had finished. The earliest one was there over an hour, the awards had already been given out. The majority of people in the grandstand had gone and about an hour after the first had come in and been acknowledged and got their award there was a sound of sirens and there was the flashing lights of police bikes and cars and everyone stood up to see what was happening and this man, John Steven Aquari came in and he was the last to finish that day, in spite of all the pain, in spite of all the difficulty, in spite of the damage to his knee, the damage to his leg, the damage to his arm he finished the race.

I think the words that he said are absolutely the words of a valiant man; My country did not send me five thousand miles to start a race. They sent me five thousand miles to finish a race. It's just extraordinary courage and inner strength. That's a valiant man. He's valiant not because he went to the Olympics and he did great in the race. He went to the Olympics and he held on when there was every reason to give up. I think this is a sign of a valiant man. You know at any point he could have been persuaded to give up. There was every reason to give up. He had an injured leg, dislocated leg, he was hurt. He had every reason to give up. If he'd given up no one would have said anything against him, but he persevered, he refused to give up because he had a sense of purpose. His life had been leading up to this challenge and he had a great sense of purpose in his life. He refused to quit.

He remained loyal to the trust his country had put in him. He was the representative of the country - wasn't just coming as an individual. He was coming on behalf of the country so he's representing a country and he held in his heart a deep sense that I need to remain loyal and finish what I've started. I think that's a sign of a valiant man, a great and a valiant man. He persevered and fulfilled his commitment and I think just in seeing that you can see what a valiant man would look like. It's someone who has a purpose in their life. It's someone who understands that they're called by God to represent heaven in the earth, a person who understands that my life is here to make a mark, a person who doesn't swerve aside and give up when there's reason to do so, a person who doesn't quit when it's difficult or it's hard or they've been injured and hurt or set back in some kind of way, a person who determines I'm going to remain loyal to what God has called me to do and I will finish my race.

Paul said that at the end of his life. I've finished my course. I've run my race and a crown is laid up for me. There's another example of a valiant man and I believe that this man is a tremendous example of a valiant man. I looked up what happened to him after this. When he went back to his own nation he was awarded Hero of the Nation medal not because of his achievement on the track but because of his courage and stamina, his inner spirit, the character that caused him to refuse to quit when he had every reason to do so. The second thing I found out about him was a foundation was named after him to honour him and that foundation funds and helps the training of all athletes who are preparing for the Olympic Games in his nation. I also found out about him that when they ran the Olympics the following year he became the torch bearer that ran through the nation carrying the light. He symbolised what it's like to be a valiant man and a few years ago someone wrote a song and it was when the Olympics were held in China.

You'll remember they were not so long ago, but they wrote a song called The Hero and the song The Hero was based on this man's journey. What they did was they went and found him again and he's a father of six children, he's a farmer working somewhere in the backblocks of Tanzania and he became an honorary ambassador to China because he represented courage. He represented what it's like to be a valiant man and so they made a video of him as part of that song and they played it at the Olympic Games. What an amazing person, came from nowhere, no chance of winning but he refused to quit. What an amazing thing when it looks like you can't win and you can't succeed and you can't do what you thought you'd do, but you just don't quit. That's courage. That's a valiant man and I believe God is looking for valiant men.

I believe our nation's looking for valiant men. God is looking for valiant men. Throughout the Bible God looked for valiant men and the interesting thing is valiant men aren't always obvious. We have to actually pull out of a man or pull out of any person what God has put inside them and it's quite interesting to see how God treats men. Often in our culture men get criticised, run down, the faults are pointed out, so men live in a culture which is quite hostile to being valiant. Men struggle with all kinds of inadequacies and all kinds of different things, but when God deals with a man God treats men with a great deal of respect and I want to show you just a few people in the Bible and how God treated them. To be valiant is to be bold, to be courageous, to hold fast to the commitments in the face of adversity, to face your fear and wrestle with it and still deal with it anyway.

A valiant man is a person who's got moral courage, knows what's the right thing to do and does it, knows what needs to be said and says it. That's a valiant man. God is looking for valiant men, but what God calls a valiant man we wouldn't call a valiant man. We would look at criticise and find fault, but God always speaks to what's in our heart, what's in our potential. He always sees what you could be. Let me just give you a few examples. Here's a man in the Bible and this man was illegitimate. He was the son of a prostitute, born out of wedlock, born in an adulterous affair, but God raised him up and called him a mighty man of faith, a mighty man of valour. His name was Jephtha and he changed a nation. There's another man and this man was extremely fearful. In fact he was so fearful he was hiding. It was very difficult times and he was hiding himself and God spoke to him. God's words were to him, to this fearful man in hiding, you mighty man of valour.

God always sees what you could be. He sees what he's designed you to be. He's designed every one of us to be mighty men of valour and so that man's name was Gideon and he changed his nation. There's a man that you would know of by the name of Samson and Samson's generally associated with sexual sin and sexual failure, but in the New Testament God talks about him as a mighty hero of faith, a valiant man. God dismisses the failure, not that it wasn't important, but God's grace overcomes failures and turns ordinary people who've failed into great people. So Samson is acknowledged by the Holy Ghost in the Book of Hebrews as being a valiant and a mighty man.

There's another man in the Bible who had a real anger problem, followed him through all his life, actually never got the victory over it. He'd just have outbursts of anger and in fact one of his outbursts he actually intentionally killed and man and yet God calls that man a mighty man of valour and his name was Moses. He's known in the Bible in Hebrews 11 as a great man of valour, so why is it that God can see, God can speak and call a person a great man of valour when when we look at them we see someone who's fearful, someone who's failed, someone who's got all kinds of issues? Because God sees what we can be and when we respond to God, then we become the very thing He wants us to be.

There's another man in the Bible, quite a famous man really and this man was actually a coward, quite fearful. In fact when someone else thought his wife was very attractive and thought they might like his wife, he lied and said it was his sister and the man took his wife to be with him. That man's a coward and yet God calls him the father of faith. So we look at people and we see fearful cowards who have failed. We look around and we see all kinds of problems in people, but when God looks He sees a room full of mighty men of valour, valiant men. He sees you potentially as a valiant man. If God was to speak to you, God knows all our faults, he knows all our weaknesses, all our shortcomings, but when God speaks to you He speaks to what you could be, you mighty man of valour.

What about Peter? Peter was a vacillator, he was proud and he was boisterous and then when a woman came and challenged him he fell over and he ran away from Jesus and betrayed - just ran away altogether, but Jesus in His first speaking to him He says your name is Simon but I'm calling you Rock. See, God saw a mighty man of valour. He saw a man who would lay his life down one day for the faith. God doesn't see you like people see you. God sees what you could be and He sees a room full of mighty men and women of valour. The key is we must connect with God. In one of the Psalms it said through our God we shall do valiantly, God in your life is what makes the difference. It's the place you give God in your life and the one thing that was common with all of those men is they found a place of faith and rest and trust in God and they outworked what God had for them and God says that's a valiant man and wrote it down for us to hear, that valiant men are not without faults. Valiant men have learnt to trust God and live out their life according to the purpose that God has for them.

We've got lots of valiant people here and of course the greatest and the most valiant person of all that you read about in the Bible is Jesus Christ Himself. Let me just read you one verse, then we'll just close up. In John, Chapter 17, read about a valiant man. You may not have thought of Jesus this way, but when Jesus left heaven and came to the earth, left aside all His authority, all His power, left aside all His ability naturally, He lived by faith, depending on the Holy Spirit. In John 17, Verses 3 and 4, He said this is eternal life, that they may know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You've sent. So eternal life is a relationship. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work You gave Me to do.

So Jesus, at the end of His life, said I have finished the work that You gave Me to do, then He laid His life down. I was thinking about some of the things that He did that made Him a valiant man. The first thing is He had a call in His life that He chose to fulfil. He remained true to the call right through to even giving His life up to die. The second thing I noticed is that He lived His life out of kingdom values. He remained true to the values of the kingdom of God. He never compromised to please people. A third thing I noticed about Jesus was He refused to conform to what other people expected of Him. He followed and was very true to Himself and to what the Holy Ghost spoke into His heart. He was a valiant man.

People have got lots of ideas about Jesus, but He was a valiant man. He refused to quit or to retaliate when people opposed Him, abused Him and spoke evil of Him. He managed to keep His nature under control, under management. A valiant man can manage their emotions. In the face of pain and death He went to prayer and in His place of prayer He poured out His emotions, not ashamed to show what He really felt but then he yielded to the will of God in spite of fear and concern about what was about to happen to Him. That's a valiant man. Then when He was on the cross suffering and dying He found grace in His heart to forgive people who had abused Him and were still abusing Him. That's a valiant man. And when He was on the cross and someone next to Him was in need, even though He was suffering and even though His own needs were overwhelming He helped that man and ushered that man into eternity. He showed compassion on someone. That's a valiant man.

When He was on the cross and He was dying He had concern for His mother and made sure she was provided for. That's a valiant man. When Jesus died He didn't have His life taken away, He gave up His life that you and I could be free. That is a valiant man. When you look at the life of Jesus Christ you'll never find anyone like Him who's such a valiant man and this is what Jesus said. This is a very great thing. This is amazing scripture. The Bible says to every person who received Him, made Him welcome, embraced Him into their life, receiving someone releases what they have to give to you. When you reject someone or find fault with them, you can't receive what they have to give to you. There were some places Jesus went where people couldn't receive what He had. There were some places He went He could do no mighty miracles because of disrespect and familiarity and they would not receive Him, but those who received Him He gives power, those who believed or put their trust in Him He gave power to become a valiant man.

The Bible's very clear. When you receive Christ, when you put your trust in Him and commit your life to Him, you have the ability to be like Him, to be a valiant man. It's interesting, I was talking to Bryden about the trees and the grafting of the trees and I said you have a lot of different tree roots but once you graft it in it just takes on the nature of that thing you've grafted in. We get grafted to Jesus. We come connected to Him to take on His life, so let me challenge you to think about your life. Do you see yourself as a valiant man? We're talking to men and women today. God sees you as a valiant man, a valiant woman. God sees you as a person who is called and has a mission, something you're called to accomplish with your life in the community, something you're called to do that no one else can do and if you will do that and see it through, you will be a valiant person. You're not called to copy me, you're not called to copy the person next to you. You're called to discover what God called you to do and if you'll do that and won't quit, you're a valiant person.

So you could be a valiant husband, a valiant wife. You could be a valiant person but you've got to link with God first and connect with His purpose for you, then determine no matter what happens you'll never quit. When I saw that video I was so inspired. I thought that is what a valiant man looks like. He came last in the race, so it's not what his performance was like. But he came last in a great way. He refused to quit. He had a valiant spirit and I think that could be true and it could be said of you, but the problem is your race isn't over yet. You're still in the middle of it, so where are you at in your race in life right now? Are you connected to Jesus Christ? How are you walking with Him? Do you know what you're called to do? Are you still going strong or has something caused you to quit and give up?

Are you still engaged in serving Him, building His house, advancing His kingdom, or has something gone out and you've found a reason why you could stop the race? One of the greatest tragedies I've seen over many years is many Christians for whatever reason just stop running their race and there's hundreds of reasons people can find but they won't count when you get to heaven, because just as that crowd was watching you know the thing I found was interesting? They stood and they cheered when the valiant man came in, long after the winner had taken his gold the greatest shout came to the valiant man who finished in spite of adversity.

There's a crowd of witnesses in heaven waiting for you to finish your race. Will they see you come in like he did, no matter what's happened I finished my course, or will you quit on the way? Why don't we just close our eyes right now. I just want to ask a couple of questions and you let the Holy Spirit just speak to your heart.

The first thing I want to ask is are you a Christian? Have you given your life to Jesus Christ yet? This is the most important decision because receiving Him into your life imparts to you a nature that makes you a valiant man. The first thing you could do would be to receive Christ today. There may be someone here today and you're separated from God, your life is lived without God, you're lost and have no purpose in life but God would give that to you today through relationship with Jesus Christ. To everyone who received Him, believed on Him, He gave power to become a child of God. If that's you today and you don't know Jesus Christ, would you like to receive Him today? To as many as have received Him, that's every person, I'd love you just to raise your hand and say I want to become a Christian, I want to give my life to Jesus today. I want to become a Christian. You know going to church doesn't make you a Christian, it's a relationship with Him. Would you raise your hand if you're ready to give your life to Christ today? Let me just see your hands.

Is there anyone here today, just let me see you want to give your life to Christ, you want to become a Christian, anyone here today? God bless dear. Anyone else, anyone here today? I wonder today just thinking about this, in your race have you stumbled and injured yourself? Are you using that as an excuse? It may be someone else's fault and that's stumbled you. Maybe someone let you down and that stumbled you. It may be someone you trusted and betrayed you and that stumbled you. It may be that something that you really were looking forward to never happened and that stumbled you, so you fell heavily and injured yourself. I want to know this; have you quit or are you still on your feet, determined to finish your race? If you've quit today you could get up again. You could just make that decision to get up again.

This is what I'd like to do, with all our eyes closed, all our heads are bowed. I'm not even asking you what the issue is, but if you felt the Lord speak to you clearly today you are a valiant man. You need to get back into the race. It's not over yet for you. If you felt God speak that way and perhaps somewhere, somehow you've stumbled and you're not running like you once did, would you like to stand right now, just stand where you are. I'm not going to ask you to come forward. You're standing - it's just an acknowledgement God, I'm standing up, I'm getting back in the race. I can see what's happened, I see what affected me, I'm getting back in the race. God bless, God bless, God bless. Anyone else today? Anyone - God bless, God bless.

Father, I just thank You for people today that have made that commitment afresh to follow You. Father, I pray You'll bless them, heal them, restore them, strengthen them and Lord, they will passionately pursue You. We pray for the power of Your spirit to come on them in Jesus' Mighty name. Everyone said Amen. Turn to someone and say you're a valiant man. You're a valiant man. Have a happy Father's Day today, have a great day today.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction: John Stephen Ackwon

· John Stephen Ackwon – a Valiant man

· Represented Tanzania in the Olympics in Mexico City in 1963

· Cramped up due to high altitude of Mexico City.

· Not trained in such a high altitude in Tanzania.

· At 19/42km position in the race there was jostling for position and he fell badly wounding his knee, dislocating the joint, and injuring his shoulder.

· He was repeatedly asked to quit the race but he refused.

· He finished last 57/75 that started. (18 did not complete the race).

· At 7 p.m. over one hour after the race was completed lone runner hobbled in – police sirens.

· “My country did not send me 5000 miles to start the race; my country sent me 5000 miles to finish the race”.

· He is a Valiant Man

· He refused to give in or be limited by personal injury.

· He refused to quit when others did and he could easily have done so.

· He remained loyal to the trust that others had put in him to represent the country.

· He persevered and fulfilled his commitment.

· He was a valiant man – not because of performance but moral courage.

· He is honoured and respected by his nation for his courage in adversity

· Awarded Nation Hero medal of honour.

· Foundation named after him to support Olympic athletes.

· Torchbearer for Olympian relay through his country.

· Goodwill ambassador for Beijing for 2008 Olympics – a video and song “The Hero” written for him.

2. God is looking for Valiant Men

· Our city and nation is desperately in need of Valiant Men

· Valiant = to be bold, courageous, strong in the face of adversity

= to carry out responsibilities with courage and determination

· Courage = begins within – battle against fear – never retreat from disheartening or difficult tasks – inspires others.

· God is aware of the flaws and faults in every man but sees potential.

· God treats men with respect! – calls forth their potential.

Examples

· Jud.11:1 Jepthah – Megitmantle, rejected – mighty man of valour.

· Jud.6:2 Gideon – fearful – valiant man

· Heb.11:32 Samson – secual sin – valiant man

· Heb.11:24 Moses – murder, anger – valiant man

· Heb.11:17 Abram – lied, fearful – valiant man – Abraham (Father of Nations)

· Mt.16:8 Simon – fearful flip flop – Valiant Man – Peter (Rock)

· God sees beyond the flaws to the real man within – the Valiant Man.

3. Jesus: Our Example of a Valiant Man

· Valiant = showing courage in the face of opposition, difficulty, pain

· Physical courage – facing fears, facing the unknown

· Moral Courage – saying and doing what is right.

· Jn.17:3-4 “I have finished the work you gave me to do!”

· Remained loyal and faithful to God given purpose.

· Placed the message and values of the Kingdom of God before all else.

· Refused to conform to the expectations of others.

· Refused to quit or retaliate in the face of opposition, rejection.

· Demonstrated courage in the face of pain and death.

· Forgave when abused on the Cross.

· Showed compassion to others in face of imminent death.

· Honoured his mother as he was dying on the Cross.

· Invested His life into others.

· Gave His life so we could become

26. Two Principles that Release the Best in People

Sun 2nd Sep 2012 PM  « Back to Top

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People are a gift from God, so right now in this room there could be someone who's a gift from God for you and you wouldn't even know it, but there is a way you can unlock it. Whatever you disrespect will move away from you, whatever you respect will attract towards you. We can become offended when people don't meet our expectations, and start to dishonour and disrespect them. Prejudice can stop you receiving people, pride is a terrible thing, causes us to judge, find fault, see the worst, and build a wall that stops you receiving. Discerning? No, you just didn't have enough love to celebrate them and receive them.

I want to share with you something that will just be a blessing for you. I want to share with you a couple of principles that can unlock the gift that is in the lives of other people. How many of you know you need other people in your life? You may not think so but you do need other people. In fact, actually God's designed it so we can't succeed in life without other people. I know you'd like to go it alone and it's just me and God, but people who become lone rangers like that become very weird strangers indeed, so life is not made for just living alone with God, just me and God. We actually need people.

In fact God sends people into your life. How many know that God brings people into your life that are the answer to what you need, or they have the answer to what you need? So once we get to accept that, and face that, here's the thing - if I believe that God brings people into my life to help me get where He wants me to get, well who are they, and how can I unlock it? The problem is, they don't sort of come along and say: well God has sent me to you to change your life, and help you succeed. How many have had anyone come up to you and say that? It just doesn't happen does it? So what happens instead is, we have a whole lot of weird and wonderful people coming in and out of our life, and the question is: which one came from God, and which one can help us?

So since you don't really know, the temptation is for us to miss the opportunities to unlock for our lives what God has for us. I learnt, I was in a church in Dannevirke, and God showed me the key a long, long time ago. Very, very simple, and I want to share with you two things tonight. They're things you can do, and if you would just see them as principles of the kingdom that work, and that they're right through the Bible. They're things you can immediately start to practice in your life, and it will start to impact your own life. It'll start to unlock what people have to give. It's interesting, it said: counsel lies deep in the heart of a man, but a man of understanding will draw it out. So you can have someone next to you, who may have exactly the wisdom you need to solve the problem you're facing, but unless you know how to draw it out, you'll miss it.

I have seen over the years, many people miss things. One of the things, when I went into the church that I ended up pastoring, I remember going in there, and God teaching me this principle very quickly. I was in a group that the Pastor worked with, but out of all the people in the group, I was the one that received the most from him. I got more than anyone else, and it's not that he had more time with me. It's not that he put a lot of time into me at all, but it was because of how I positioned myself in relationship to him, and I want to share with you those two keys. They're very simple, and they're found in scripture, and they're principles that Jesus taught, and then I want you to begin to think about how you could apply it into your own life.

It works in marriages. It works in families, it works in a business, it works in school, it works everywhere in life. These are principles of the kingdom. It's how life works, so here's the thing. People are a gift from God, so right now in this room, there could be someone who's a gift from God for you, and you wouldn't even know it, but there is a way you can unlock it. I love what Brian was sharing; he made a lifestyle choice of generosity, and so the things I will share with you, they need to become lifestyle choices, that you'll actually operate your life according to these principles; and as you do, you'll find things will shift around your life. If you violate these principles, you will find many things that God intended for you will not actually happen, because you've literally frustrated it. I know that's hard to understand, but let me just show you.

We'll go to Mark, Chapter 6, and I want to give you the first principle. It's the principle of honour or respect. Whatever you disrespect, will move away from you. Whatever you respect, will attract towards you. To respect something means: to look at it, with a view of placing value on something. The word honour means to place value, so whatever you place value on will come near to you, whatever you devalue will move away from you. If you devalue a relationship, it will diminish; value a relationship and it will grow. So whatever you value or respect will come near to you, whatever you disrespect will draw away from you. Now you've got to get that. See the thing is, it's such a simple principle, but it actually works everywhere in life, and many marriages fail because of just that simple thing of dishonour and disrespect.

I know many Christians who have missed out on what God could have given them. Very simply, they just didn't respect and honour the people God brought into their life to help them. They actually rejected or despised the counsel that was given. Let's see the principle in operation, just so you can see it absolutely vividly in Mark, Chapter 6. Jesus went from there, and came to His own country, and His disciples followed Him. And when the Sabbath had come He began to teach in the synagogue, and many hearing Him were astonished, saying: where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands! So notice what people are saying? They are amazed at the tremendous wisdom He has, as He teaches in the synagogue, and they have heard of the miracles He's done, and they are stunned by all the miracles Jesus has done; blind eyes opened, deaf ears open, the lame walked, people raised from the dead. They have heard of the miracles, and now they see Him teaching in their synagogue, and they are astonished.

Now, so they go from being astonished to this. It says: now isn't this just the carpenter? Isn't this just a carpenter, an ordinary carpenter? Aren't His family here, you know, the son of Mary, brother of James and Joses, and Judas and Simon? And aren't His sisters here as well? And they were offended at Him. It says - notice this - it says, Jesus said to them: a prophet is not without honour except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house. Then He said: He could do no mighty work there. Now He could no mighty work there. He laid His hands on a few sick people who did receive Him, and respond, and honoured Him; He healed them, and He marvelled at their unbelief. Now here's the thing, the statement, an amazement statement: Jesus Himself could do no mighty work there.

Now I want you to see that in that town there were many sick people. There were many people with financial problems, there were many people in distress, there were many people who were demonised and tormented, many people. Now God's answer has just walked into the city. See, Jesus was the answer that God had for the needs they had, the need for healing, the need for deliverance, every need that they had, He had the answer for them, and the heart of God was to help the people, and the heart of Jesus was to help the people. This was His home town. He knew the people there, He knew the people that suffered from blindness, and deafness, and torments, and were demonised. He wanted to help them, so get this; He's anointed with all the power to help them. In His heart, He wants to help them. It's the will of God to help them, God has sent Him into that town - yet He could do no mighty work.

What that tells us, that even if Jesus Himself stood here in the room, physically in front of you, unless you meet the conditions required, you'll receive nothing. Now this is astonishing. What you've got to realise, it goes past that. Any person that God sends into your life, to help you in your journey to get where you need to get to, unless you respond to them properly, they cannot do any mighty work for you. Think about that. Think about over your life, all the people that God may have tried to send into your life to assist you, help you, grow you, shape you, influence you, challenge you, confront you, whatever; and because you didn't respond properly, God's work, or that mighty work through that person, was stopped. So that means that how you respond to a person can make the difference between whether what God has given them for you is released, or whether it is retained, or hindered, or locked up. Now that's extraordinary.

See, God brings people into our life, and connects us with people, to help us to get where He wants us to get. He has got a destiny for you. He's got a journey for you to take. There are issues for you to face. There is a personal growth journey you have to take, and for you to do that, God brings into your life the people that can help you get there. Now you may think: well I don't see that. I don't see it at all. Well get this, that if you don't respond rightly to people, then you shut down the ability of God to work in your life. Isn't that extraordinary! Now we would love to come into a meeting, and lift our hands and pray, and sing some songs, and ask God to do all kinds of wonderful things; but God sometimes sends people into your life to help you, and how you respond to the people He sends determines whether there is a release of God's gift. Remember, God's gift is always a person. We tend to think of the gifts of the spirit, but what we forget is, actually we tend to think of gifts. Actually what you get is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit reveals Himself in various ways. We call those giftings, but actually the gift is the person.

You think about the answers, well people need healing. No, actually God gives the gift of Jesus the healer. People need peace, God gives Jesus the prince of peace. When you have Him, peace comes. When you have Him, healing comes. When you have Him, deliverance comes; but the whole thing is receiving Him, and so He could do no mighty work. Now why was that? Very simply, they dishonoured and disrespected Him. It's as simple as that - dishonour and disrespect shuts down the flow of the gift of God into your life from another person. In fact, this is so important a principle, that God says there are two people - the first one is your father and your mother, your father and your mother - God says: if you will honour them and respect them, then you will live long, and life will go well for you. In other words, what it's saying, if you learn to treat the first representatives of God in your life with honour and respect, then it guarantees you will release into your life wisdom from God, to help you grow in your character, and prepare you for life.

You think of why so many young people go off the rails. It's simply this; they actually disrespect a father, or disrespect a mother. They rebel, because they disrespect them. See, once you've disrespected and dishonoured someone, then it will create the excuse for you then to reject what they have to give into your life. So an example, I've seen in families young people, I've seen in a family with an unsaved father, he had wisdom that would have protected the child, but because they despised him because he wasn't a Christian, his wisdom was rejected, and the child got into trouble. I've seen it over and over and over again. Respect and honour will release for you what that person has gifted by God for you, and when it comes to authority in our life, or people God puts over us, this is one of the vital principles. So you think about this; you go everywhere, you hear people running down their boss, they're criticising their boss. What that means effectively is, that everything God intended to bring into their life through that boss is blocked, because of the attitude of disrespect.

Where did you learn that? Well you learnt that disrespect for authorities in the realm of home and family with parents, so God says specifically: there's a promise with respecting and honouring, and placing value on your parents, and their opinions, and their counsel, and their advice. When you do that, there is a blessing will follow through your life, and it'll affect your choice of marriage, it will affect your relationship with God, it will affect your relationship with your teachers, it will affect your relationship with your boss, in fact it is going to affect every major authority relationship right through your life. It will either release protection and wisdom for you, or it will shut it down.

I was at a point in my life as a young Christian, and I just was inexperienced, and felt that something was a leading from God. I made a decision I was going to quit my job and go up to Whangarei, and going to go up to a ministry up there, and we were going to be involved with him, and blah blah blah. So I got the whole process even rolling, and then my Pastor came to talk to me. We had a talk, and I realised that I had disrespected his counsel in my life, and disrespected him by not at least sharing with him such a major decision - not that he would tell me what to do, but that actually, he would have a part in me making such a big decision. When I realised God spoke to me that I had done that, I became dismayed in my heart, and he challenged me whether I'd done the right thing, and pointed out one or two things. After he'd left I was just left in shock, and I was faced with a choice: will I respect what he has in his life, and receive it; or will I actually follow what I'd determined to do?

I went into some shock for a few days over that one, and I made a decision I would honour and respect the gift on his life. Now there were many reasons why I could have not respected him. You notice in the story with Jesus, there are two reasons that people disrespected Him. The first one was familiarity. Isn't this the carpenter's son? What would the carpenter know about God? I mean, what would a carpenter have to do? In other words, familiarity - they were so familiar with Him, He'd grown up in their area, in their town. They knew Him, and they become familiar with Him, and when you become familiar with a person, it's easy to lose sight of what God has in them to give to you, and through disrespect, familiarity breeds disrespect, and disrespect shuts down the gifts that God has in people for you. Ask yourself this: is there any person in my life that God has made as a gift to me, and I have disrespected them, because I've become familiar? I've taken them for granted? I've taken the person for granted, what they have to give me for granted, and I've treated it lightly. That's what it means is to place little value on it.

This certainly shuts down what they could give to you, so I made the decision at that time - you notice with Jesus it said: they were offended at Him, so the first thing is familiarity; the second thing is offences. We become offended when people don't meet our expectations. We become offended when things don't work out like we expect them to work out, and we can become offended with God very easily, when He doesn't answer things the way we want. We can become offended with God, we can start to dishonour God and disrespect God. Now here's the other thing the Bible tells us clearly" not only has He put a promise that honouring your parents things will go well for you, here's a second thing. He explains specifically, in two places in the Bible, that to access His presence you must come with honour and appreciation and gratitude, you know, enter His gates with thanksgiving, enter His courts with praise. Honour is the doorway into His presence; and dishonour, Romans 1:21, takes you out of His presence, and causes you to not see what He's trying to do in your life. This is a very, very important principle.

So I made the decision I would respect the Pastor's wisdom and counsel, and then I was left in a very, very terrible tight spot. I decided I would trust God, that if I listened to counsel and submitted to that counsel, then He would work it out. I won't give you all the details of it, that's for another time, but what happened was, I ended up with a promotion, and life started to go extremely well, in a new level of blessing in my work. It was because I just respected godly counsel, and respected the person, and their insight into my life, and to what was right for me. That's happened on more than one occasion, and I tell you, it took quite a humbling to do that. It was just a matter of saying: I respect what this person has to say, I place value and weight on it, and I place value and weight on him. Therefore I will receive it, and I will respond to it - and it saved me. Now just the end of it, without going too far, two years later that ministry that we would have gone and followed went totally off the rails, went into major deception. His marriage broke up, and the whole ministry, it was a disaster - whereas two years later I was set in position to start and pioneer a Christian school, and eventually within a year of that, become Pastor of the church.

Now it's a key principle. I can tell you this over and over and over again, so there it is. Very simply, Jesus was disrespected and dishonoured, because of familiarity and offence, so they recognised what He did other places, but they didn't realise He was God's answer to them. Now without me going into lots of examples of this, let me just give you just a couple of things to think about here. It is very easy to just dishonour and disrespect people that God brings around your life that could help you, because we just don't see them as God's answer, and it takes faith to see that every person God brings around you has something to give to your life. If you just think well, actually I don't really need people, and they're a bit of a nuisance, you miss that people are actually part of God's way of enriching our lives. I've found there's always something I can learn off any person. Here I have, been a Pastor for all these years, but I can learn something off the youngest Christian. I can learn something about God that I didn't know, just if I will respect that person, and honour them, and treat them as someone of value, and maybe God has got something in their life that I could draw from and learn. It's all in the attitude, so think about that - they didn't see He was God's answer.

Now here's a thing, men particularly need respect. Of all the needs, God's wired a man so men need respect; women need love. Women need to be pursued and loved, men need respect; so when men are disrespected, the gifts in their life shut down. So in marriage and family where there's disrespect, then what happens is, the gifting shuts down and men withdraw, shut down. Many marriages are in trouble, really simply for one reason, because of criticism and disrespect; whereas respect would have opened up and allowed the gift to be unlocked like a passage, honour unlocks the giftings that are in people's lives - a very simple principle this, not very hard. Let me give you a few examples in the Bible.

Here's one. One example is Miriam. Miriam was Moses' oldest sister. One day Miriam looked at Moses and thought well, he might be a mighty man of God, and think he's something else; but he's marrying that black woman, and I don't like the idea about that. That's not a very good idea at all - so she rose up, and she became critical of him. When she became critical of him, and dishonoured him and disrespected him, immediately God intervened, and she got hit with leprosy. Disrespect shut her down from receiving what God had, through her brother's ministry. He was the brother, and he was the younger brother at that. Think about David. David was God's answer to Israel. David was the youngest boy in the family, but when the prophet came to see who in the family was worthy of being anointed, and who was God's one to choose, the father and the brothers did not even think to include David. It never entered their minds that David could be great. Why? Because they looked down on him, and despised him, and disrespected him; but not one of them was the one that God chose. God's choice was the one they all despised. Think about it.

You see, if Samuel hadn't actually said: there's got to be another one, have you got another boy around here? And they finally dragged him out, then David would not have been anointed king; and he became God's answer to the nation. God's answer to the nation was in their home, and they didn't see it. Think about Joseph. His brothers were envious, and were jealous of him, and despised him, and dishonoured and disrespected him; but he was the answer to the famine that would come up, and would affect all of their lives later on. Respect and honour unlocks the gifts in people's lives, disrespect shuts it down, and they cannot bring to you what God has intended for you. When you think about how God deals with people, do you realise that God treats people with respect? Now that's a bit of a hard one to swallow, because we would tend to think that God knows everything.

God knows everything about us, so God knows all about you Ray, knows everything, so we see you nicely dressed and all the good things, but God sees everything. He sees everything. Now when we see everything about people that we don't like, do you know what we do? We then disrespect them. We see only the shortcomings and faults, and what happens is we start to despise and disrespect them, and we think there's no good thing can come from that person. Now see, I was quite stunned a couple of weeks ago - stunned is the right word - when Ray got up on the stage, and what he had in him all these years just flowed out with such life. It was extraordinary. I didn't know that was in there, but then someone found it. They received him and listened, gave him room to move, and valued what he had, and suddenly it all comes out. Now that's true of other people as well, and if you don't receive the person, if you don't actually honour and respect, you can't draw it out.

Now think about how God deals with people. I'll give you a couple of people as an example, then we'll just finish with the last key. It'll be easy, the last key's quite a simple one as well. Think about this, when God dealt with Abram. Abram lied about his wife, lied that she was his sister, allowed this other king to take the wife, because he was afraid. He was so looking out for himself, and yet God treated him with respect, and He said: they call you Abram. I'm going to call you Abraham. Gideon was a man who was full of fear, and he's hiding from the enemy, he's so fearful; and yet God says: mighty man of valour. We tend to look and see the weaknesses in people, and use it as a grounds to disrespect and dishonour them. It never is. When God looks at you, He sees all the faults, but He looks past it, and never disrespects you. He'll always treat you with a respect and honour. In fact He'll treat you with so much respect and honour, He'll let you choose your eternal destiny. He'll give you the right of choice. He'll never override your will, and therefore disrespect you. Because He treats us with honour and respect, we can respond, and what's in us gets unlocked. Amazing isn't it?

There's all kinds of examples. Think about Simon. Simon was an unstable kind of character. Jesus said: you're the rock, I'm going to build on you, and that man was obviously unstable. He was reckless, he did all kinds of weird stuff, and yet Jesus called him a rock. How about that - so you may have heard a lot of people say much about you, and none of it much good, but when God looks He says: oh, I see someone great in there! And God can bring it out of you, because He sees something great in you, and He honours you and respects you; and He's just waiting for you to respond.

Okay, here's the second key, very, very simple one, and we'll find it here in Matthew, Chapter 10, very simple key. Here it is, Verse 40; He who receives you, receives Me. He who receives Me, receives Him who sent Me. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward. He who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward. Okay, let's just pick it up there. Notice there He talks about the word receiving. Now to receive someone means to reach out and welcome them, and unconditionally accept them, embrace them in your life, to recognise in them there's something unique, and something possible that can bless you. You receive them. It tells of Jesus, He came to His own, and His own would not receive Him. They were offended by Him, so guess what? The Son of God would not be the Son of God to them. Until they receive Him, He cannot save them. Isn't that extraordinary? Until they receive Him - and there will come a time when Israel will receive Him, but they didn't receive Him. Think about this - if you receive the Holy Ghost, then you receive God's power to change your life, but you have to receive Him.

There's this whole thing of receiving. Jesus makes it very clear in that principle, He says: if you receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, if you recognise what God has put on the person's life, and receive the person as that to you, then God will ensure that what He has for you, will flow into your life through that person. If you look at a person and see the shortcomings, the character faults, the humanity; if you see only that, then you won't receive them. You will judge them, and when you judge them, you'll start to dishonour and reject them. You'll stop the gift flowing into your life. It's a most extraordinary thing, if we can receive and make people welcome, and not be judgemental of them, we will unlock what God has for us in their life. I wonder how many people God brought into your life to help you, and you shut down what they could do, because you judged them?

There's a situation - I won't go into it, I'll just give it to you right now - Jesus was going through the town of Samaria. There were sick people, there were demonised people, there were troubled people, tormented people, and Jesus was there to help them; and it says: they did not receive Him, because He looked like He was going to go to Jerusalem. So the disciples felt greatly rejected, and they said: let's call down fire on these people. Jesus said: no, leave them alone, you don't know what spirit you are. Now get this, here's the thing; because they didn't receive Him, it stopped the gifts flowing to touch them, and that day that He walked through that area, there were people could have been healed, but weren't; there were people who could have been blind eyes opened, deaf ears opened, but they weren't, because of one thing. They just did not receive Jesus. Now why did they not receive Him? Very simply, they had a prejudice, a racial and religious prejudice.

Prejudice can stop you receiving people. Racial prejudice can stop you receiving people. Religious prejudice can stop you receiving people. Intellectual or social prejudice can stop you receiving people. One of the things, the great things that God had to teach us, when we went to Dannevirke - we did come from an educated background. I did a masters degree, and met Joy in university, we did university degrees, but when we went to this church in Dannevirke, there wasn't a single person with any qualification above School Certificate, not one. Socially, it wasn't great either. They were all workers and labourers and whatever, so it was a totally different social group, but we knew God wanted us there, and I learnt things because I received them. Some of the greatest people I've met in my life, that helped me change and be who I am, I met there, and because they loved me, and I received them, I was able to receive an impartation of what they had. You see pride is a terrible thing, causes us to judge, find fault, see the worst, and build a wall that stops you receiving.

I challenge you to do these things, because the Bible's very clear. Whoever received Jesus, then receives power to become something different. But what if Jesus sent someone to you? You see, if you can receive them, then it'll unlock what God has in their life for you. Now some people that Jesus sends to us are quite difficult. It's hard to see that they actually got sent by God to us. Think about that - but Joseph, at the end when the brothers came to him, he said: don't be upset about yourselves for sending me off to Egypt. He said: it wasn't you who sent me, it was God sent me. So he could look, and he could see actually, the very things that were in his brothers was actually a gift of God, to shape and prepare his character for his destiny. So God will send some people into your life who are incredibly difficult. Those difficult people are actually a gift of God, for you to grow your character, and to develop grace in your life.

How many have got some difficult people right now, can think of them right now? How many of you are reacting right now to that difficult person? Why don't you actually change your attitude, and actually say: I'm going to find every way I can to honour, and place value on them. I'm going to just welcome them, and receive them just for who they are. I may not like them, may not get on well with them, but I'm going to receive them and welcome them, and I'm going to thank God for them in my life, and ask God to use them to develop in me what He wants to do. You know what will happen? You'll grow real quick, and they'll change, or you'll change, or the circumstance will change. It always happens. It always happens. So this is a very simple principle; so let me ask you this: how much have you chosen to adopt honour as a lifestyle? To honour and value people, people over you, but also people around you, and also people who may work to serve you? How many of you honour them, and treat them with respect and dignity? I've seen some people treat those who serve in shops with incredible disrespect, just because they're serving in the shop. I've seen people treat waitresses at a restaurant with incredible disrespect, and you feel quite grieved for them, that they're treated so dishonourably.

So it doesn't matter where people are, practice this one thing, treating people with honour and respect. Treat them as a person of immense value, and place value on them, appreciate them, thank them. That's one of the greatest ways you can honour people, just to thank them, and not take them for granted. So are there people that you need to honour, respect, and start to show gratitude? Could you start to practice gratitude daily, to the people that God brings into your life? They don't come announced: God sent me. They just come. It's whether you can see them, and receive them, and honour them, and value them.

I tell you this, if you'll start to honour the people God brings into your life - they're not hundreds, they're actually quite limited - and start to intentionally, every day, honour and value them and treat them with respect, treat their opinions with respect, and start to value them, you'll start to gather and attract people into your life, and probably win a lot more people to Christ. Think then about people that you receive. How many times have you had a reserve, a judgement, something about a person, and instead of receiving them and celebrating them, you walled them out? That's called an offence. You say: oh well, I was discerning. No, no, no, no, you just didn't have enough love to celebrate them and receive them. Think about that. Jesus knew all of the disciples, including Judas. He knew exactly what he was like, but he could still eat a meal with him, sleep with him, walk with him, and trust ministry to him, even give the finances to him. That's the Jesus we follow. He practices honour and respect.

The Bible says in Romans 15:7, receive one another, as Jesus has received you. Did He know all about your stuff? Did He make you really welcome in your life? He has, and that's how you treat people. Do you see stuff? Of course you see it. Do you have to make sure that you're cautious about it? Sure you do. You've got to be wise, and not just take everything, but you know you can still reach out, and love and welcome people, and make them feel glad to be with you, because of the honour, respect and appreciation you give to them, when they're with you.

Let's just close our eyes right now. Those principles will help you. They'll change you. Start at home, start with your family, start with your mum and dad, start with brothers and sisters, start with those around you. Let me just ask you this question: do you intentionally practice honour and respect? Secondly, are there people that you have shown disrespect to, because you're familiar with them? It's a terrible thing, familiarity. People get to know you. I've found that very difficult. I'm a Pastor, I'm a person too, and I've got shortcomings. The closer people get to me, the easier it is for them to see the shortcomings. You only see me at a meeting, very much, but it's not so much you get near enough to see the shortcomings. My wife sees those, staff see those, and that's where grace is needed, not to end up despising and dishonouring, because you see the weaknesses in people.

There's a decision I made with my Pastor, never to despise him because of the humanity that I saw, but to recognise the gift that he was to me from God, and I thank God for him to this day. I can think of other ministers God brought in my life. Every one of them fell over in adultery, yet I honour them and thank God for them, because they were great men, who put great things into my life. I choose not to be offended by their failure, and God has helped me because of that. So are there people that you judge because of race? You look at them, and something rises up, and instead of receiving them, you feel this wall of reserve. Is it because of social status? Is it because of finance, so if people are wealthy, will you treat them better than someone else - people obviously poor, oh well, you just don't have so much to do with them? That's not receiving people as Christ received us.

In the community when you go, do you notice people, start to pay attention to the people, the people who serve you in the bank, and the tellers, and the various people that you meet? I tell you, if you were to ask God: teach me how to honour and respect the people around me, show me every time I dishonour and disrespect someone and don't receive them, welcoming them like you've welcomed me, show it to me. Would you put that challenge out to God today? I'm sure He'll start to show you all kinds of things, and your life will start to change.

So what has God spoken to you today? What is it you need to make an adjustment? What will you do when you leave this place? I think your whole life could change. I think that you'll start to see around you, wonderful gifts of God, saved and unsaved gifts of God, people that can help you, if you can honour and respect them, and accept them unconditionally in your life, and start to build the connection with them, with those underlying values. Your life will begin to change. Your influence will begin to change. You will begin to change. Wouldn't that be worth it? Wouldn't that be worth it? You say Amen.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

“Two Principles that Release the Best in People”

(1) Introduction

· How you respond to people determines what you receive from them.

· People are a gift of God to us.

· Two keys to releasing what is in others.

(2) Respect

· Mk.6:1-5 Jesus in His home town.

· “Could do no mighty work there”

· Jesus anointed to meet needs of people.

· All the power of God was available.

· Jesus was God’s answer – provision.

· Dishonour/Disrespect – stopped the flow.

(i) Familiarity – family his own house

· Familiarity breeds disrespect – e.g. Miriam and Moses

· They saw and were familiar with natural

· Familiarity hindered seeing God’s provision.

· When disrespect you block what God has to help you through that person.

· Men need to be respected to function.

(ii) Offense – they were offended at Him

· Disrespect and familiarity lead to offense.

· Offense builds walls in heart.

· Offended that God would help them through this person.

· They recognised what he did elsewhere but did not see he was God’s answer.

(iii)Greatest need men have is for respect

· Men need to be treated with respect. Respect, honour releases what they have.

· God treated men with respect.

e.g. Jud.6:2 Gideon – fearful – Mighty Man

Heb.11:32 Samson – sex- Man of Faith

Heb.11:24 Moses – murder – Man of Faith

Heb.11:17 Abram – liar – Father of Nations

· God sees every flaw in men but treats them with respect and honour.

· Honour is your gift to people.

· When you honour people you unlock the gift that is within them.

Spouse – boss – child – leader

People in community

· “Honour all Men” 1 Peter 2:17

· Rom.12:10 “In honour preferring one another”

· Honour/respect gives access to relationship

· Dishonour/disrespect shuts down relationship

(3) Receive

Mt.10:40 “He who receives you receives Me”

Receive person = receive reward of God

Receive = to embrace unconditionally

= unlocks what God has to give you.

· Receive people as a gift of God to you and you release what God has put in them for you.

· Receive = to welcome – be grateful for.

e.g. Receive Holy Spirit = receive person power God

Receive Jesus = receive access family God

= receive access to the Father

Jn. 1:12 “To as many as received Him gave

Lk.9:53 “Not receive Him = no power released.

· Offended and judgemental – Not Receive

· When judge others cannot receive from them.

· Rom.15:7 “Receive one another as Christ received”.

· Can live with a person and not honour or receive them.

Who do I need to honour/receive?

Who have I dishonoured and not received?

27. Arise and Stretch

Sun 7 Oct 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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The Bible describes a withered condition where joy has withered away. Man, we need plenty of joy in our life, need to laugh more, have more fun and connect with people. Enjoy the life of God. It's not a hard life, it's a great life walking with God - but what has withered it up? Has fear withered it up? Fear will shrink the gifts of God in our life. Jesus said My joy I give to you, let no man take it from you. You never see the power of God in your comfort zone. You never see the power of God in the life you've been used to living, you only see it when you go out and start to take some risks and start to move beyond your comfort area. That's when you start to see it.

I want us to look at Mark, Chapter 3. I just felt God quicken something today. You know Jesus said these words. He said: he that believes on me, out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water; and He was speaking about the Holy Ghost. That's not a different Holy Spirit, that Jesus had, to the one we have. It's the same Holy Ghost, and He still wants to flow out of our lives. He still wants to flow beyond us, in a great river that touches people. You are called to release and activate the life of God to the community, to the people around you, and this is a great thing that we're called to do. What a great thing that God calls us to do. Ezekiel saw it, and this is what he saw. He saw the temple of God - we're the temple of God - and he saw a great river going. Here's the interesting thing: the river was shallowest, the closer you got to the house. It said: he went into the river; and he says: up to his ankles. Then he went a thousand cubits and got deeper, but he was going with the river (downstream). He went another thousand, and it got up here, then it got up here, then it become a great river that he couldn't pass over. That river, wherever it went, touched the dry places and brought life, and people were saved and healed. The rivers of God flow strongest where there are unsaved. The rivers of God flow deepest where there are unsaved.

Now you see this breaks the pattern a lot of people have, we think that the river of God flows greatest when we meet together. Certainly there's wonderful experiences we can have in worship, in the presence of God, and God touching us; but the greatest rivers are the rivers that see men saved, that see people drawn out of sin, and drawn into the kingdom. I want to share with you a story in Mark 3, which I felt is very prophetic of the church, and it's something God's just put on my heart. Jesus entered the synagogue, Verse 1, and there was a man there who had a withered hand. It said: they watched Him closely, will He heal him on the Sabbath, that they might accuse Him. So the environment Jesus is stepping into is an environment of law. It's not an environment of the spirit, it's an environment of people who are living under laws and regulations, and their main thing is to find fault, judge and accuse.

Jesus is carrying the river of God. It says: He entered the synagogue, and there was a man with a withered hand. They watched closely whether He'd heal him on the Sabbath, that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man who had the withered hand: arise, step forward. Then He said to them: is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or do evil, save life or kill? To help someone; or offer a ritual sacrifice. They wouldn't say a word, and He looked around at them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts. He said to the man: stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and it was restored and made whole; and of course immediately the Pharisees plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might kill Him.

Notice Jesus is in a synagogue. He's come into what we would call the modern equivalent of a local church. He's come into a local church setting. The church is called by God to represent Him. We're called to represent Jesus. We're called to re-present what He is like. In other words: how much of Jesus do people see, when they see you? It's not about your preaching to people. It's about the life we live before people. We're called to be a community that love one another, stand together, but represent Christ. We're called to advance the kingdom of God. There's no believer exempt from this. Every one of us has got a purpose, a mission, called to advance the kingdom of God. Now the reason I raise this, I want you to see what is happening in this particular synagogue.

Anyway, this man, he's got a withered hand, and he's in the church. Now when the Bible is talking about a hand, it's talking about what we do. It's talking about work. Now Jesus deliberately provokes a confrontation with legalists and religious people in this meeting. You have to see that it's not about the man being healed, it's actually Jesus picking a fight with religion; because you notice they're all watching around to see: is He going to heal on the Sabbath Day. They're worried about their rules. They're worried about their regulations, do this right, do that right, everything else right; and they've lost sight of what they're called to do. They've lost sight they're called to be a river of God to the nations of the earth, the ministry. So the hand in the Bible always speaks of what we do. It's our work, it's how you earn your living with your hands. It's what we do. It also speaks of ministry. It's the extension of your life, to do something that can impact others.

So the hand was withered, and that withered hand was actually quite prophetic of the condition of the church that he found in that day. It was withered by legalism, withered by rules and regulations. It was withered by religion. It was withered; it was not like God intended. It was no longer reaching out to touch nations, and bless nations; rather it was twisted, withered and turned inward. So when Jesus looked around the church, and He saw this man there; the man's hand was withered, means it was all dried up, there was no life in the hand; and the Bible tells us it was his right hand. You look in Luke 6, it says: it was the right hand of the man was withered all up; and the right hand in the Bible is quite significant, because the right hand always speaks of two things. It speaks of blessing - come, sit on my right hand, you blessed of My Father.

So whenever the Bible is talking about the right hand of God, it refers of blessing, releasing blessing. Isaac laid hands - he laid his right hand, the hand of blessings; so always the right hand was the hand of blessing. If you go to India, you'll know the right hand is definitely the hand of blessing; and the other hand is definitely not, not even allowed to touch anyone with it. Horrible, and we won't go there. [Laughter] You go on a missions trip to India sometime there, and you can find out why you don't touch anyone with the left hand. The right hand is the right hand of blessing; and it's also, the Bible refers to power and strength. God delivered them by His right hand, so when the Bible's talking about the right hand, it's a picture for us, prophetic picture, literally of blessing and power and life, flowing out of the church to touch people who's lives are in need; and it was withered, and it was turned inward.

When people usually have had a withered hand, or something's gone wrong like that, the whole hand turns, often it turns in; and so there's embarrassment, there's shame, and usually there's a hiding. The person becomes quite self-centred, and self-conscious; and not only that, he's quite restricted what he can do. So when Jesus saw the man in there, I'm sure he was trying to hide himself, because if you've got that kind of condition, you don't show it off. You usually conceal it; and this is what I saw. I saw that so much of the church of today in New Zealand, is like it's withered, it's drawn back and drawn inward; and looking inward, looking at itself, and not actually functioning as it ought to, to bring life into the community, life into the nation, life to those that are lost. As Jesus looked, He spotted the man. I think the Holy Ghost spoke to Him, because the Bible tells us He said: I only do the things I see the Father doing; so right in the middle of the meeting He provokes a fight. He says to the man: rise up and stand up!

So Jesus is about to challenge where the church of His day is at. I wonder in your life, where you are with God? What overflow from your life is touching people? I wonder how intentional the overflow of your life is, to reach people who don't know Christ? It's not easy in New Zealand. It's quite difficult. I love going to these other nations, but I'm very aware that many of these other nations I go to, that there is a move of God in them, and so there's a spiritual environment, and you do see a tremendous amount of things happen in a very short space of time.

So anywhere you go up in Asia, in Africa, South America, you'll find great movings of the spirit of God. When you come to our own nation yes, God moves, but actually you've got to contend and fight for every step of the way. I was talking to an American Pastor who's been working in New Zealand for some time, and he said: oh, I have had to fight every step of the way. He said: any other place in the world, it would be easy compared to how I find it here. He said: I've had to fight to get the breakthroughs, and fight to stand up, and fight to keep my spirit right, and fight to keep a place of faith in my heart; because he said: it's the passivity, and unbelief, and negativity, that seems to blanket the nation. He said: I've had to fight to stand up, but I can go anywhere in the world and the life of God will flow, because I've had to fight and break through all that stuff. I was talking to Bill Subritzky just on Friday, and he said he'd had time with Anwar, and Anwar said he was shocked when he came to New Zealand, how different it is to overseas, to Pakistan. He said in Pakistan, he'd lift his hand, and the power of God would come, people would fall down, and all kinds of miracles happened. He said here he felt like it was suffocating, trying to breathe spiritually, and see breakthrough.

But that's okay, because that means that you've just got to stand up inside, and get big on the inside; every one of us lives in the same environment, so you make a choice. You can choose whether your life gets withered, or you can choose when you rise up. You know Jesus said about the sower and the seed, He said: the sower plants the seed; and it's the heart, the condition of the heart is what determines whether the seed produces any fruit; and so He said: there's some by the roadside; and He said: when the sun comes up, and it beats down on it, it withers away. He said: those that hear the word of God, so they're believers sitting in a church, that are receiving the word of God week by week, but when the pressure comes on, they don't stand; because they haven't let God get deep into their heart. How do you let God get deep into your heart? Have you let your roots go down in prayer, so you're standing and believing God for breakthroughs in your life, holding His word over your life to see change? Or has the pressure caused you to wither, and lose your hope, and your fire, and your faith, in your life?

You have to make choices on these things, and I wonder in your spiritual condition today, where you are at, and if something has withered you. There's many things can wither us, and I'm preaching to myself in all of this. Many things can wither us. Disappointment can wither you, where you prayed and reached out to God, and it seemed like it didn't happen. In fact it seemed like something else happened, and you're left with disappointment, and can't understand why. Setbacks, where you'd had something planned, or had some hopes and expectations, and it didn't work out; and grief starts to set around your heart - that can wither you up. Perhaps you're here today, and grief got into your life, and so instead of being bubbly with the joy of the Lord, Jesus said: My joy I give to you, let no man take it from you. There is a joy that God gives to us. It actually is a gift to us. It comes with the person of the Holy Ghost, as we abide in Him in prayer and the word, and listening and flowing with Him, there is a joy God puts in your heart. Don't let anyone take it from you.

The Bible describes a withered condition, where joy has withered away. Man, we need plenty of joy in our life, need to laugh more, laugh more and have more fun and connect with people. Enjoy the life of God. It's not a hard life, it's a great life walking with God - but what has withered it up? Has fear withered it up? Fear will shrink the gifts of God in our life. Fear always shrinks the gifts of God. Paul wrote to Timothy, he said Timothy, you're withered up man! I've put a gift into your life - stir the gift up! God hasn't given you a spirit of fear. Fear can wither your life and your gift. Bitterness, when you get hurt by someone, you don't resolve it and you let it sit there and it sits there chugging away in your heart. It withers away the life. You know, financial pressures can wither away the life, you end up being burdened.

I was with a guy the other day in Promise Keepers, he come up to me after the meeting. He was in bad shape really and he just kept telling me everything, I mean everything you can imagine seemed to be a problem with the guy, and now he was quite sick. His health had gone, his job had gone, his finances had gone, everything had pretty well gone; but as he talked a little bit more, I kept hearing him saying that everything good has been taken away from him. I thought that's interesting, talk to me more about that. Then I began to realise, you've got big walls in your heart, and the more I listened to him and asked the questions, the more I realised - in the end I said: I recognise what your problem is. I said: you've never got over your dad abandoning you at ten years old, walked out of the home, left you there; and He said you were close to him, and your life withered at that point when you had that trauma in your life, and you have never been the same.

I said: I've listened to what you've been saying to me, and it seems to me like everything good in your life has been taken away. I said: actually there was one good thing taken away, and that was your father, and you've never gotten over it. You actually are believing that's going to be your future. You need to deal with this thing in your heart. As I began to talk to him he just stood there, tears started to come down, first time he'd cried in years. As he began to feel God start to touch him, we gave him some help; and of course he was stuck with the whole thing of money, had little money coming in. I said listen, even if you haven't got much money coming in, don't think like a poor man. Don't stay withered like in poverty. I said: listen, just take one dollar. Don't worry about people telling you what you've got to give and don't give. Take one dollar, and hold it in your hand and pray over it, and say: God, it's all I've got, it's my life; and put it in the offering. I said: when you do it, don't be ashamed. God's looking for your heart, not looking for how much money you're giving. He's looking for what's in your heart. I said: when you do it, break out of all this guilt and condemnation that everyone's put on you. Just hold it before the Lord, and say: God, I give it with joy. I said: then take an hour of your life, and give it to someone. You'll be blessed; and stop saying that you have nothing in life. You're withered by your heart attitude and thinking, not by life itself. He just walked away, and he was just kind of like a different person.

So what got a hold of you and withered you? What's stolen the good life of God away from you? That's the thing you've got to answer, because no one can answer it for you. The Holy Ghost can show you, if you're withered; if you've lost something of the life, vibrancy, your enthusiasm and passion for God, if something has dried up inside, then say: God, I want to get my life back again.

And so Jesus saw that. He saw that man withered up. He saw that church in a state where it should be reaching, extending beyond itself; and He spoke and He pulled the guy out, got him right out there in front of everyone, so no one can ignore what He's about to do. He tells him two commands. The first command is this, first command's really simple: stand up, rise up. Stand up in front of everyone, and come out. Now that's not easy to do when you're handicapped. When you've got something there that you're embarrassed and ashamed of, you've got to make a decision that you'll move out of your comfort zone, and you're not going to stay with the crowd, and you're not going to stay hidden in the crowd. You're going to stand up, you're going to stand up, you're going to stand up and have your life count. You've got to make that kind of decision of standing up on the inside, and to stand up on the inside means prayer. Put it really clear, prayer. If we're not praying, we're not standing on the inside!

Prayer, faith, felt passionate prayer can only come out of someone standing up on the inside; and you've got to make decisions to do that, otherwise you'll wake up tomorrow, and the pressure and the heaviness and whatever of life, it'll just squish you down; and you say a little nod to God, and your spiritual life begins to wither. You haven't got enough inside you to stand up. God wants us to stand up, be full of life and full of joy - but we've got to do something, so Jesus is calling us, stand up, we've got a prayer meeting this week - RISE UP! You're not praying? Don't stay away from the prayer meeting, come, get stirred up, and then make a decision: I'll decide to build my prayer life, little by little, until I've got something inside me, and I'm standing up.

I remember talking to Jo there some time ago, and Jo was going through a spot of bother in her life, and it withered her up a little bit, and she kind of vanished inside the box. It happens you know. When you get withered in your spirit, you sort of disappear inside, and no one knows where you are; but she made a decision and a commitment to get up and start to pray; and boy, what a great worship leader she's becoming now. This is the thing. This is the life God's given - we've got this great opportunity in a spiritual environment like this to pray, build our life with God. Deal with whatever's withered you. Get to a course that helps you deal with whatever's withered you, face it, name it. This is what Jesus said to do. I love this, and I'll finish with this right now.

Jesus said to the man: stand up; and so it first takes a decision to stand, to arise inside, to begin to start to connect with God, pray, let your life begin to flow again in obedience to Him. The second thing you do, you ask Him to do something you can't do, unless you get a miracle. Now I want you to see this really clearly. He could not physically stretch his hand. It took the power of God to do it, but you know the power of God is always released when you stretch. You never see the power of God in your comfort zone. You never see the power of God in the life you've been used to living, you only see it when you go out and start to take some risks, and start to move beyond your comfort area. That's when you start to see it. You know it's interesting: it's as he stretched, the miracle happened. Most believers don't want to stretch; and often what happens, you put them in a stretch situation - oh man, that's a bit uncomfortable, I'll go back to where I feel safe again.

You take up a role as a cell group leader, you have to stretch. But here's the thing, the very thing you want to do, which is grow, happens in the stretching, and taking up responsibility. Start to get involved in reaching out to people, the very act of reaching out to someone else, stretches you. See, if the church doesn't stretch out to the unsaved, it's actually failing in the mission that Jesus gave us. It's not my mission, it's His mission to each of us. So let me share with you three things you could do to stretch.

Here's the first one, and they're not necessarily in order of importance, but there's three things I felt God just put on my heart really simply. Number one is: start to care; you need to be intentional about these, intentional about caring for people, just showing kindness to people, generosity to people. You'd be amazed how you can influence lives through caring for people, just taking a little stretch to show kindness, do something. We've seen some amazing things happening in the church, of people reaching out to one another, helping one another, blessing one another financially. I've heard some great testimonies of people's lives just being impacted by the extension of generosity. There's people you don't even know of. They're never on a platform, and they're reaching out behind the scenes, showing kindness, doing things you don't even know about. Showing care, caring for people.

Number two: we need to hear people, need to listen to people. You never know what's going on in someone's life until you've listened to them, and found out their journey. One of the things, if you really want to stretch, is set your mind: I'm going to start to enquire, and listen to the people that come across my life, to find out what is going on in their world. I want to find out about their journey, where they are, what they're concerned about, what they're struggling with. Don't be in a hurry to try and fix them up. Just have a great passion to come near to them, because one of the big issues of today, worldwide, is people feel alone and disconnected. If you would make the effort to reach out to people who are disconnected, and start to listen to their story, and ask and enquire, and find out where they are, you'd be amazed what is going on in people's lives. That opens the door for caring, then you can share what God has given to you.

It's quite simple isn't it aye? Hear, care and share. Take an intentional effort to listen to people, find where they are; show kindness and care for them; then share, when you have the opportunity, what God did for your life, that made your life change, and your life different. People are waiting to hear what you have, but they won't hear what you have until they see if you care. This is the time to stretch out. This is the time for all of us to stretch out; all of it is under-girded by praying.

I encourage us to begin to think now. Perhaps in your life you're like that man who's a bit turned inward, and a bit self-referenced, and you've drawn back in some kind of way, and there's not the same life there. Why don't you make a decision, God, that's me! I know when you heard it, you thought of someone else; but no, that's me! I'm turned inward, and I'm a bit withered up, and I don't have much life, and I'm certainly not nice to be around. I'm not smiling much anymore, not much joy. You're withered! Come on, what withered you? Make a decision: God, I'm going to bring this thing to the light, I'm going to face where the joy was taken away, reconnect with you, and start to stretch; because it's in the stretching through caring, and hearing, and sharing with people, I'm going to actually start to see God move in a greater way in my life. Why don't we just close our eyes right now.

Father, I just thank You, that You encourage and strengthen us. Lord, I thank You for that tremendous story, and the miracle that was done. I thank You Lord you're provoking us to reach people who don't have anyone who cares for them, no one who hears them, and no one who'll share life with them, and an answer for them. Father, I just pray that there would be a spirit of evangelism, begin to flow like a river through this church, spirit of evangelism to reach our city, community, neighbours; Lord, to begin to touch.

Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, is there anyone here that doesn't know Jesus? This would be a great day if you get to know Him. Perhaps when I shared about being withered, you thought: boy, that's me. Sin will wither you up too you know, sin; just being disconnected from God and living a life without Him. That leaves you pretty bad on the inside. It leaves you withered, spiritually withered; but you know that could all change in a moment if you reconnected with God. Jesus said: whoever received Him, and believed on Him, he'd give power to become a child of God.

Maybe there's someone sitting here today hasn't become a Christian. If you are, I want you to raise your hand and say: I want to give my life to Jesus today. I'd love to pray for you, love to see you get saved, love to see Jesus touch your life. I wonder how many people here, and God was speaking to you today, you realise: oh man, I'm a bit withered up, I've lost my life and vitality, and freshness with God. I feel God's speaking to me about dealing with something in my life. If you hear God speak to you, why don't you raise your hand right now, say God's talking to me that way. I wonder how many people felt God challenge you today to stretch, to stretch out beyond yourself to people who don't know Him, either with kindness or friendship, through listening to them, through caring for them, sharing what you have and sharing your life. If you felt God speak that why don't you just raise your hand today and say it.

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

· Jn.7:37-38 “He that believes on me out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”

· Jesus Message – “Kingdom of God is near – within reach”.

· Jesus Purpose – come that you might have Life and may have it more abundantly.

· Indwelling presence of the Spirit of God is designed to flow out to others.

· Ezekiel’s vision – river from the house of God – flow to the lost, dry, people in need.

· Unless there is an outward flow – spiritual life becomes withered.

- purpose of God is frustrated.

2. The Man with The Withered Hand

(a) Key Passages Mark 3: 1 – 6

(b) He entered the Synagogue (v1)

· Synagogue = local church, gathering to worship – called to extend the Kingdom of God.

· Called to represent Christ – extend His hand to the World.

· Prophetic picture of the nation – failing to reach beyond self.

(c) He had a Withered Hand (v1)

· Hand = Works, doing something, activity, productive work.

= Ministry (serving) people.

· Right Hand (Lk 6:6) = main hand you work with.

= Hand of blessing (Mt.25L33)

= Power of God (Exod. 15:6)

· Withered = Dried up, shrivelled, scorched, no life

= Like a piece of fruit left under the bed – withered.

= Not functioning as God intended.

= No extension of the love of God to reach the World.

= Turned inward – turned in on self.

= Shame – concealed – withdrawn.

· What has withered you?

- What caused you to lose vitality, draw back from serving God?

- What caused you to become withered and turn inward?

- Trials and difficulties? e.g. Mt.13:6

- Offenses – bitterness?

- Disappointment – Grief?

- Negative words spoken?

- Spiritual pressure – resistance?

- Fear?

- Unfulfilled expectations?

· You choose your response – becoming withered is a consequence of disconnection.

· Brain Aneurism – can cause hand to become withered

– what are you thinking? What are you believing in your heart?

(d) Jesus Spoke to the Man (v3)

(i) “Arise and Stand Forth”

Arise = to awaken from sleep, inactivity, death, disease.

Heart of the Father is to restore – Jesus came to give life – abundant.

Arise! – must shake off passivity and defeat and inward focus.

Make a decision to stand up on the inside.

Stand Forth! – Don’t hide in the crowd.

Don’t conceal yourself – hide your gift.

(ii) “Stretch Forth”

The miracle is in the stretch – reaching beyond comfort.

“Stretch” = to extend out the hand beyond normal position.

As he stretched the power of God was released.

Don’t wait until you see change – believe and stretch.

(iii) Application – How you can stretch – Be Intentional!

(a) Care for people

· Look for opportunity to do acts of Kindness.

· Smile, appreciation, practical help.

· Generosity to people – let people see reality of your life.

(b) Hear people

· People are isolated and struggle with issues – connect.

· Enter their world – ask questions take an interest.

· What is happening?

· What is their journey?

· What are they concerned about?

(c) Share your Life

· What can you do/give to make their world a better place?

· Your testimony – your journey with Christ – share it!

· What has Christ done for you – let people see it!

(d) Prayer

· Commit daily to pray for people for opportunities.

· Extend your faith to believe for doors to people to open.

· Arise – stretch forth your hand.

Let the life and power of God begin to flow!

28. Resolving Offences

Sun 21 Oct 2012 AM  « Back to Top

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Offences will come. They are part of life. There's no way of escaping it. It's impossible that you're going to miss out on your opportunity to face some very offensive behavior; or some things happening that upset you. The first thing is to focus on yourself, and your personal response. Jesus said: take heed to yourself. Carefully guard your condition of heart. It's a choice.

I want us to open our Bible in Luke 17. I felt the Lord put something on my heart that is a very, very important message, because everyone thinks someone else ought to hear this one; so for all of those who think someone else should hear this one - this is for you. I've called it "Resolving Offences", but you could also call it: What, Me? Offended? Never! [Laughter]

So let's have a look in Luke 17, and we see something that Jesus spoke. He said to His disciples - that's His followers, so Jesus is speaking to His followers, and He said: it's impossible that no offences should come. How about that, so there is something that is definitely impossible; and here's what's impossible: that you should get through your happy life without someone doing something that upsets you. Isn't that true? It's impossible that you don't have experiences where people upset you, disappoint you, let you down, do something you never expected. Offences will come. They are part of life. They're a part of the life we live. There's no way of escaping it. It's impossible that you're going to miss out on your opportunity to face some very offensive behaviour, or some offending things, or some things happening that upset you.

It could have been someone just got in, and got your car park; and now you're upset, couldn't even enjoy worship. That seat you were thinking you were going to sit in, someone sat in your seat; and so there you are, upset, can't even enjoy worship. It's like God isn't there. Of course God's there. The only thing is, your heart's not right, that's why you can't enjoy Him. You know the big thing is, we don't have to struggle to go somewhere. We just have to become conscious of where God is. He's in us, and with us; so offences must come. Jesus made it very, very clear, so wherever there are people, you're going to find offences, wherever. Now we seem to somehow think if we come into the church, there won't be offences; and yet obviously that's not going to be true. Who comes to church? People who need Jesus. What kinds of people need Jesus? People who've got things going on in their life they can't solve; so they come into church, begin to belong to a body, and just because you come to Christ, doesn't mean your life's just fixed up. We still come, and He accepts us, loves us, and says: now let's take a great journey. Unfortunately, on the journey, you'll probably upset a lot of people; and a lot of people will upset you. Get used to it, and learn how to deal with it.

If we learn how to deal with it, then everything that comes to us, is our chance to grow; so we want to look at how to deal with it. But notice what He says here: take heed to yourselves. So Jesus' first priority is that you should, when something happens that offends you, the first thing is: to focus on yourself, and your personal response. Now we would tend to think: if someone's upset me; my focus is on them, and what they did. You did this, you've done that. So we go through this tremendous turmoil, about what someone else has done; and Jesus said: take heed to yourself. In other words, carefully guard your condition of heart, when you face something that upsets you. How many have had something upset them this week? There's one or two, the rest are sitting on it [Laughter]. It's just life. It's called life. You mean to tell me, you got through a whole week, 24/7, and no one did anything that upset you? You must have been away on your own. [Laughter]

The problem is, it's not that the things don't happen; the thing is, we don't admit, and face the things properly. We don't face the impact of difficulties, and setbacks, and people on our lives. People are wonderful. They're a great source of blessing; yet they can be a great source of frustration, and every married couple said: [Amen!] Amen. [Laughter] And would it be true, it doesn't matter how spiritual you are, that it still happens? I can tell you, after all these years of marriage, we're still working on stuff. I wonder whether you've got off square one sometimes. No, this is life. Life is about people, and people do weird and wonderful things; sometimes intentionally, but often unintentionally. The result is, we often get hurt and have misunderstandings, but we can use these as a great chance to grow; or we can be terribly stumbled. So first of all, let's have a look at this word 'offence'.

Jesus said: offences must come. Now when we think about offence, this is what most people think... Now actually this is not a Biblical offence, so when Jesus is talking about offences, He's not talking about this next thing I'm going to say. Here's what most people think of, when they think of an offence. We tend to think an offence is when: someone hurt me; you hurt me; or I feel bad after my interaction with you. I came happy, and then I went away miserable; so we tend to think: well, you've got the problem, you've offended me. This is ridiculous. I'm the one who's got the problem. I came there happy, and walked away sad; I'm the one who's got the feelings changed, I'm the one who's got the issue. I'm potentially about to become an offender. See, we tend to get so focussed on other people, and what they do; we don't look at our own heart. Jesus said its impossible that offences not come. He doesn't tell you immediately in that verse what you ought to do. He says: guard yourself first; so we've got to have a look at this issue of offences.

So we tend to think an offence is: something someone else does, that hurts me, and makes me feel bad. Actually your feelings are your feelings. No one is responsible for your feelings but you. Oh well, you make me feel angry. No, no, no, no. No, your anger is your anger, I didn't make you feel angry, you just got angry. It's your response. So while we blame someone else, we don't look at what's going on in our own life, and we miss the chance to grow. In James 3 verse 2 it says: we all offend in many things. How about that? We all offend in many things, James 3:2. How many are included in that? All, all of us! We all offend in many things, and not just little things; and so I may have been a Pastor for many years, but the truth of the word says that I offend in many things - still. And it says: if any man doesn't offend with his words, then he's perfect. Have we got any perfect people here? Please, please can we find the perfect person, and get them to put their hand up? Right away, put your hand up, we need to see you. We can all give you a clap. [Laughter] [Shian?] You're asking the wrong person; you've got to ask Kathy [laughs] - she's shaking her head see.

See, so if any offend not on the word, then he's a perfect person, he can bridle the whole tongue. So the reality is, we all offend in many ways; and not only that, most particularly, we offend with the words we speak, and how we speak, and the attitude we speak in. All of us do it, so if all of us do it, stop thinking you're better than anyone else. It's time to stop blaming anyone else, because actually you and I are all offenders. We all do things that are distressing to other people at various times. It doesn't mean it's always that what we do is bad; it just means it creates difficulties. So what is the Bible meaning for an offence? The word offence in the Bible is the word scandalon; in which you get a scandal, a juicy scandal. Have you noticed how juicy scandals are? Scandal is when someone seems to have done something wrong, and the newspapers get a hold of it, and they start to spread it out. Have you noticed everyone wants to talk about it, and spread the scandal? Everyone loves a juicy scandal - did you hear about so and so? Did you read the newspaper? Did you hear what happened to the couple, the prince and princess when they were out there and they were on their honeymoon? Pictures no doubt, topless no doubt; and so scandal is just there everywhere, just goes everywhere.

Whole magazines are devoted to scandals. Get a Woman's Weekly, it's got scandals all over the front page. If they haven't found one, they make one up! There's something juicy about scandals. We would think being the church we might be a bit different, but James does say: we all offend in many things; so we all have scandals going on, and we scandalise and upset others; so the word scandalon means literally this, now you need to get this really clear. When the Bible is talking about an offence, it's talking about setting a trap deliberately, that would cause someone to stumble in their walk. I'll say it again. When the Bible is talking about a Biblical offence, it means: setting a trap or a snare, so that someone coming along trips up and falls, and their journey is hindered. Now just have a think about that. Do we make mistakes? Yes, we make mistakes. Do we sin and fail? Yes, we sin and fail. These are not offences necessarily. How I respond is the offence.

You see you've got to think about this; so do we miscommunicate? Yes, we do. I've got atrocious problems at times with that - ask Joy, ask my family, ask the staff. See, sometimes we miscommunicate, we fail to communicate. These are all part of living life, and they're areas where we need to grow and mature and develop skills; but they aren't necessarily offences. An offence, a Biblical offence, is where I actually set out to do something, that will trip up someone else; and I'll show you how this happens. You'll be quite surprised when you look at it; so a Biblical offence is when something is set up that deliberately stumbles; or I can choose to be stumbled. Now I want to show you how this works out. We're going to just highlight a few examples in the Bible of great offences; so there's some things that offend people. One thing that offends people, Christians particularly and also unbelievers, is the truth, the truth. Truth can deeply offend people, especially if the truth comes in the form of feedback or correction. Now let me ask you this question: How is it possible for you, to be a disciple or follower of Jesus, without correction? It's impossible; and don't think it all comes from Jesus. We actually need others to talk into our life, to help us see what we can't see. Don't just be so spiritual you think the Holy Ghost is going to tell you everything. We live in community, we live in relationships, and when you're in relationships, people get affected by our behaviour; and they talk with us, hopefully, about what we're doing that actually is creating blocks in the relationship.

So we see then that truth can affect us. We can be affected by the truth. You can't believe the numbers of people; and Ian could testify, Lyn will testify, George - any leader here will testify, of the numbers of people; when we try to speak truth into their heart, got highly offended, and felt rejected. They interpreted it as a rejection. Here's the thing. When someone speaks truth in your life, because they love you, and want you to grow; they're helping you get out of sin, not setting a trap to get you into sin. I'll say it again. When someone, or particularly a leader, a friend, or someone who loves you, and cares about you, speaks the truth to you; it's to help you get out of sin, not to stumble you into sin. Holding on to an offence will cause you then to stumble others. This is a major difficulty. This is a major challenge. A lot of people don't realise how difficult it is. People are often offended by unmet expectations. We have this expectation; I'm going to show you a few people in the Bible in a moment, and every one of these people were offended; and instead of choosing to deal with it well, they chose to actually become a stumbling stone, and caused huge problems to everyone, and themselves as well. It's an amazing thing.

So here's the thing: Unmet expectations; the truth, correction; or just disappointments in life, people letting us down, or failing in some way; all have the potential to stumble us, whether the person did it deliberately or not. Our response we choose; so if something has happened in your life that hurts you, at that very moment, you have the power to choose life or death; prison or promotion. You can be imprisoned by the things others do, because you harbour an offence against them; or you can grow in grace, and love, and the character of Christ; by reaching into God, and releasing into that situation the grace of God. Every time someone does not meet expectations, hurts, offends, betrays, lets you down, at that point you have a decision: prison or promotion; imprisoned with the offence, by judging or holding it in my heart; or I can be promoted by God, if I will release grace into it. I can operate in faith, and do it God's way; I can operate in unbelief, and do what I feel to do. We choose.

So every situation that happened to you last week, and the ones this coming week, where you got hurt, knocked, disappointed; it is a choice at that moment: to bring God and His grace into it; or to bring judgement, and leave God out of it. If we will bring God into the circumstances of life, you can only do that through relationship with the Holy Spirit. If we will relate to the Holy Spirit in such a way we seek His insight around situations in life, then we can start to change and we grow. Think about this. How many know that Jesus wants you to become like Him? How many understand that? Okay. Would you say He's a fairly forgiving person? So how do you become a forgiving person? Do a lot of worship in church? No. How do you become a forgiving person? You make choices in the face of offences. How do you become a gracious person? Is Jesus full of grace? How do you become gracious? By ministering grace, when you have every reason to react, and get angry and upset. It's a choice. It's always a choice; so what flows out of your life this week, when you go out and face all these little disappointments that come - it's a choice.

Our choices can create a huge offence and stumbling blocks; or our choices can bring grace, and we grow and become a great person; and you become a great person by making lots of little choices regularly, over and over and over and over and over. I thank God for the wonderful people around me that show a lot of grace to me. I need every bit I can get [laughs] - so here's the thing. When something happens, you can either reach out in love and show grace; or you can react and become offended. Once you become offended - now here's where the scandal comes - it's actually sitting in your heart; and once you're offended, a lot of things are going to happen.

Let me just give you examples of how some people responded to offence. Let me just give you a few people in the Bible that actually become stumbled by something; and at that moment of stumbling, they had an offer of a choice to go a different way, and they failed to make it. The consequences are unbelievable.

You don't realise that your relationships, your life, and what's going on in your family and in your future, depends on you not stumbling. It depends on you not stumbling. It depends on you handling things in a Biblical way; so let me give you a few examples. The first one you can find is found in Genesis 4. It's the guy Cain. Now Cain got offended. Why did he get offended? Because God seemed to accept his brother's offering, but didn't seem to accept his offering. Now without going on to the reason about it, God spoke to him, and said: don't be cast down, don't get all upset about this, just learn from it and grow. But instead he became angry, he became depressed, he hated his brother, and then killed him. Now that's in Genesis 4, how a person became offended, and an offence ends up with hatred, and can end up in murder.

Now you'll find this consistent right through the Bible. Genesis 37:4-8, remember another guy Joseph? Now what was great about Joseph? The first thing was, he was the youngest son; and his father seemed to like him, and gave him a special coat; and so the brothers hated him. They were offended by the father, and they took out their offence on Joseph. Then Joseph was given some prophetic dreams by God, he had a great dream for his life; but he began to, out of immaturity, share his dreams. I saw this dream, and you all bowed down to me; and they hated him more. They were offended by what he seemed to have in God. Don't tell me that doesn't happen in the church; and instead of blessing him, they decided to kill him. Don't tell me that doesn't happen in the church. It's true, it's what happens. If we don't deal with offence properly, hatred and a spirit of murder will arise in our heart; and we will seek to find a way to deal to that person. It always will happen, and in very subtle ways. We don't go killing. We find other, subtler ways.

Here's another one, 1 Samuel 18:7-13; Saul was very offended that David was so popular, so Saul went out one day; and he's the king. The next thing you hear is, the ladies are singing and they're singing songs to Saul - oh, how lovely. Saul's killed a thousand, wonderful, isn't that great; but then they start singing: but David has killed ten thousand; and immediately he's offended. What does he try and do? He immediately tries to kill David. He had hatred in his heart. This is what happens. You find this pattern runs right through the Bible. I'll give you a few more examples of simple ones. Here's one, 2 Kings 5:9-17, and in this one here it's Naaman. Now Naaman was a leper, and Naaman was looking for a healing; but when he came there, he thought the prophet was going to wave his hand over him, and say: ooh, POWER! He thought he'd see that. That's what he came expecting. Instead, the prophet didn't even come out to see him. The prophet said: just go down in the water, and dip in the water seven times in that muddy old stream, you'll be healed; but he didn't even come out to see him. He was offended and furious. He was offended, and he was furious, and he nearly lost his healing and died prematurely, because of offence. Now what was he offended about? He was offended because God did not work in his life the way he expected.

How many know that God doesn't always work in our life the way we expect? You know John the Baptist had the greatest revelation. He was the greatest prophet in the Bible before Jesus, and yet sent to Jesus saying: are you the one? Jesus said: blessed is the man who's not offended in Me. Now why did he do this? Because John, his whole faith had ebbed out. Why? He was offended in his heart, at how Jesus didn't come to get him out of the prison. He thought it should be one way; and God had another plan. God's plan was: he'd lose his head. That's not a very good plan is it? [Laughter] To have your head cut off? So he was offended Jesus didn't come and recognise him; he was offended, because his way of thinking: what God ought to do, was not the same as what God had in mind. God had in mind he would give his life down for the faith. Why is it, that he lost his head anyway? Someone else had an offence - Herod's wife; and he told Herod's wife the truth: it's not legal for you to marry Herod. It's not legal for you to marry this man; so she got offended, and she got full of hate, and she waited her moment. One day - now notice this - one day, when her daughter has the opportunity of a lifetime, she's danced before the father, the father said: wow, I'll give you anything - up to half the kingdom! Now think about that: anything! Money, riches, up to half the kingdom - I will give it all to you. Now get this; the person with the offence stole away her future, by polluting her with the offence, and saying: I want the head of John the Baptist.

Offences don't just affect us. They overflow, and they steal other people's futures. That's why the Bible warns about them. The Bible warns about those, by whom offences come. You see this girl - if you were the mother, and your heart was full of love for your daughter; would you not choose something different, than a head of a prophet, to give her for a present? It just shows what spirit sat upon her life; and the reason it was there was an offence, because she was confronted with the truth. So a spirit of murder came over her, a Jezebellic spirit actually, that sought to kill; and eventually, when she had her moment, she lashed out; and she not only killed John the Baptist. She stole her daughter's inheritance, by polluting her. That's a true offence. It wasn't offensive what John said. John spoke the words of truth, that would have been able to free her from her bondage. She just reacted with offence, and ended up trying to kill him, and get back at him. Have you ever noticed that happen? Oh, we're getting close to the bone here. I know you'd never do this. Tell someone: I know you'd never do anything like this. [Laughs]

One of the things you find keeps coming up; what about the older brother? The older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Son, the Prodigal Son goes out, and totally blows it; blows all the money, has a wild life; comes back in, and the father says: I want to show you how grace is. It's this big! And he forgives him, and clothes him and welcomes him, has a party; and the older brother was offended. Why was he offended? You don't deserve this. The grace of God can be offensive because - this is what the older brother is thinking - I have worked so hard. Why should you get it easy? He was offended. He was offended by grace, offended by goodness. Whoa! And so he got very, very angry. Now one of the things you'll find with every case, the bible is full of them - if you look through every case of this - here's the thing you'll find in common. Wherever there's an offence, you find walls go up; and you'll find inevitably anger and hatred, and bitterness and murder come in the heart, every time, every time. I'll show you how it works out.

See, because Jesus said: take heed to yourself; what you do is, take heed to yourself when offences come, that they don't get into you, grow in you, so then it's got a major hold around your life. Now here's what people normally do. When people have suffered an offence, someone did something to hurt them, someone disappointed them, someone let them down, and now it's got in their heart. Now they've got a choice: I minister grace to it, I believe God to help me use it as a stepping stone to go forward; or I harbour offence. Now if a person harbours offence, now they're definitely doing the wrong thing. This is what they usually do, they usually have to find someone else to talk to about this thing that's going on in their life. Have you noticed that? That's where the word gossip comes from; so usually what happens is, they find someone that they can talk with, that will give them a listening ear. They sound people out; and usually what they do is, repeat their story in a way - and you may have experienced this, you may have even done it, you never know - they repeat the story in such a way, that they are painted good, and injustice has been done to them; and the other person's painted the villain, who should be punished. They'll paint themselves the hero. They'll paint themselves the good guy. They'll paint themselves as the one who's the victim of injustice; and in doing so, are seeking to get something from you. Now the Biblical way, if you're upset, is not to brood and stew; and if you've lost your peace, which is the first sign, just go back to the author of peace, and say: God, where did I lose my peace? What happened in my heart? I need to address it.

But you see instead of that, we find someone to talk to, and download. Now once you start downloading, that's when you are now spreading offence. You are laying a trap that will stumble someone. They don't even know it. They don't even see it coming. How many of you have talked with someone, and they downloaded some of their stuff, and then afterwards you felt quite stirred and agitated, and no peace afterwards? It's very common isn't it, and if they were talking about someone else, the next time you saw them, you can't even look at them. Something has happened; so this is what is the hidden agenda, and I want you have a look at this verse here: Proverbs 26:24. We'll read it out in Verse 22: The words of a talebearer are like tasty trifles. Ooh yes, tell me more! I need to know! And they go right down into the rooms of the belly, right down and affect your spirit. So then it says, verse 24: he who hates, disguises it with his lips, and lays up deceit within himself; when he speaks kindly, do not believe him, for there are seven abominations in his heart. Though his hatred is covered by deceit, his wickedness will be revealed before the assembly. Now what he's really saying, is something like this. He's saying that when people have got offences in their heart, and hatred in their heart, and around it, they will cover it with nice talk, but it will flow out anyway.

You can't stop what's in your heart flowing out. It just naturally flows out, out of the heart we speak. So what happens is, we're speaking blessing, or we're speaking cursing; we're speaking words that build and edify, or we're speaking words that tear down. We have to make choices around these kinds of things. Now here's the thing. When a person does this to you, and you sit down and give them a good old listening ear, then this is what happens. They have got a hidden agenda around it. This is the agenda: I want to draw you in to what's happening in my life, because I want you to come into agreement with me. I want you to agree that I'm okay feeling this way, so angry about what was done to me. I want you to agree with my feelings, and feel my feelings. I want you to feel angry too. I want you to feel upset too. I want you to feel stirred up. I want you to agree with me, that I am right, that I am fully vindicated in having this thing sitting in my heart. I want you to agree with me - yeah, oh, it's terrible. I want you to agree.

Why do I want you to agree? Because I've got no peace in my heart, and I need you to tell me that's okay to hold this thing there, because the Holy Ghost is telling me: it's not right to hold it there. I want you to tell me: it's okay; so I want you to just agree with me. I want to draw you onto my side; and if I draw you onto my side, then I've now divided you from that person you once knew, and were relating quite perfectly well with. I've now created division. Offences created divisions in relationships. Offences in marriage divide the marriage; offences in families divide the family; offences in churches divide the church. This is a spiritual principle. You have to deal with it, because there's a fruit of it. Now what I want you to do is, I want you to tell me I'm okay to think that way. I want you to agree with me.

Now you don't have to say anything, you just have to listen and say nothing; and there's the problem. Now there's a way to deal with this thing. Here's the dilemma. We all want to help people, and so people have got pain in their life. Now if you're going to help a person who's got pain in their life, you've got to make sure you are aware of the possibility of being defiled by an offence; so you've got to be aware that they will present their side of the case. I'll give you two verses on it, there's good Biblical wisdom about this situation. When you sit down to help someone, you listen to them, and all of their pain. Now I have been caught by this one, over and over and over; listened to them because I cared, listen to them to find out and help them have understanding; and then forgot that actually by not saying something, I was ending up agreeing with it - and I didn't agree with it at all. I had to learn that one, and keep learning it. It's easy to be trapped into. I found it easy, if you listen to people intently to find what's in their heart, it's very easy to end up being in agreement with what the problem is, or not speaking, and then they feel you're in agreement with them. Silence means agreement; so yes, it's great to listen, but there are two scriptures you need to keep in mind, whenever that person is talking to you. They're found in Proverbs again. the first one is Proverbs 18:17. The first one to plead his cause seems right - the first one. So in other words, the first one comes and gives you all their story. Oh, that was a dreadful thing that happened, so before you know it, you're all wound up and stirred up; but it says: it's when the other person comes, you hear the other side of the story.

So the first thing to realise, is that there is two sides to the story; so when you hear one person, you've heard one person, you don't know the truth, and you don't know why they've told you. You just know you've heard one side. Here's the second scripture, it's found in Proverbs 18:13. He who answers a matter before he hears it, it's a folly and a shame to him. So don't come to conclusions without hearing both sides. Now parents would do well to do that. How many parents have had this experience: mummy, he hit me, he hit me. Oh yes, he picked up one of the blocks and bashed me on the head, he hit me. Mum: oh ooh oh. Now, if you could just calm down, you've actually been offended. You've picked up someone's offence and manipulation. They've tried to bring you into agreement, and now you turn to the other child, you haven't heard their story. When you hear their story: oh, well he was continually doing this and this and this, and I asked him to stop it but he wouldn't stop, so then I hit him. [Laughter]

Now the innocent person is complicit in the problem of strife in the home. Isn't that true? You know that. Why would you think it stops when we get older? Are we all that smart? Do we all grow up that much? I don't think so. [Laughter] We just do the same thing when we get older: find someone who'll listen to us, and tell the story; tell our story and they get all upset. Usually they carry an offence. Here's the problem, here's the thing you need to ask is, after you've listened to the person, you've got to ask yourself: have I heard both sides of the story? Have I actually given this thing a fair hearing? The second thing you need to be able to ask is: have you gone to the person and sorted it out yourself? It's the strangest thing, that the one thing people don't want to do, is go to the only person that can sort it out, and sort it out. There's no person can help you sort it out. You've actually got to, eventually, end up either: resolving it before God; or going and talking to the person that needs to be talked to. Have you spoken to someone?

Now this is a real problem in the area of leadership in the church. I'll tell you why. Leaders are no more important than any other person. They just have a different function to other people, but here's the deal. If someone starts to speak, and they have an offence - suppose someone has come to Pastor Lyn and got counsel, and the counsel they got, they didn't like because she saw the problem, nailed it, put the truth out, and they got offended. So usually the next thing they do is, they turn up on someone else's door, another leader, and they don't say that they went to Pastor Lyn. They say: I've got this problem you see, and they get the same response there. Now they're offended, so now what they do is, they go and tell someone else: there's no love here, and they tell them why. That person listens. Now the seeds of division are sown in their heart.

Now here's the problem. If someone divides you against a leader, who God placed in your life for your welfare; what happens is, distrust is sown against all leaders; and you have enough of it in your life, and enough people in church today have come in out of broken homes, where there's been failures with authorities, failures with fathers, failures with mothers, failures in families; they come in already offended. So they become easily drawn into this kind of thing. Leaders make mistakes like everyone, but once you get an attitude of offence, then you're actually affected in receiving from God, through someone He put in your life to help you. Then you go to the next place, it'll be the same thing there. We can't let these things get in our heart, and if there's a resting place for them, we should just come to the Holy Spirit, say: I need help to resolve this thing. One of the first things learned as a leader is, someone comes for counselling, you say: have you been to anyone else? [Laughs] What did they say? Oh, I'm going to say the same thing - you're not going to like me at all either, you know? That's the whole deal. You're all getting real quiet.

Come on, let's have a look in Matthew 18 and see - it's the other person next to you needed to hear that. I told you that someone needed to hear this. [Laughter] It's good you knew it all. I know that. Isn't that right? I know that. There's lots of things I've known, I've had to learn them over and over again - just keep forgetting. [Laughs] Let's have a look in Matthew 18. Very, very clearly, he's in the context of talking about heaven and the earth; and in verse 15 he said: if your brother sins against you, he actually has done something wrong; not just something you thought was wrong - go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. Now that's Jesus teaching, so Jesus teaches: if someone creates a problem for you, does actually do something wrong; not perceived wrong, or they didn't do what you wanted or that kind of thing, actually did something wrong; you should go to them, and sort it out quickly. Go to him, and go alone; just go and talk to them alone, find a way to talk to them. Now if you're going to do that, here's the thing you have to realise: The goal is to have a reconciliation. The goal is to stop breaches in relationship. The goal is to draw people together. The goal is to unite; because when there's agreement on the earth, then there's a blessing flows from heaven. Now God has set it up,, that if we're in agreement on the earth, then blessing flows from heaven. If we're believing in Jesus' name, blessing flows. Have you ever thought of this, that if we agree on earth concerning offence, we bind the offence, and demons can operate? Have you ever thought that when you shared that thing with someone else, and came into agreement and spoke against someone, that now you've allowed in the realm of the spirit, demonic powers access to that person you were talking about? You agreed to it. We agreed to release judgement rather than grace. You see, when anyone shares something to you about someone else, their failures or perceived miscomings or whatever, at the end of the day whether it's true or not, grace needs to come into that situation.

One, you need to make sure you've heard the other side of the case, the other side of the story; two, you listen properly before jumping to conclusions. That's the hardest thing of all, is to listen properly, and try to find out what the real issue is; that's a whole skill of it's own, that requires a heart willingness to listen to people, and find where they are. So you've got to make a decision, so Jesus said: go to the person; so how do we do it? Let me give you two or three things, how you can solve this issue straight away, very, very quickly. Number one, if you have a difficulty, there's something that's gone on, now if it's with God, and He didn't do things the way you thought, well then you've got to take that up with God. You've got to go talk to Him about it, always it's go talk with Him about it. Here's number one: bring it to the Lord first, ask the Holy Spirit to help you, and this is what you're looking for. This is what you're looking for - expose your feelings. This is what I'm feeling. You have to talk about your feelings with God, got to talk about your feelings with Him. You've got to get your heart clean before the Lord, first of all.

Then if there's any judgements or any issues you're holding in your heart, because often we get upset because, we think they meant something, and they didn't. We actually assume that they did it for some reason; so sometimes a person can overlook you, do something, and they had no intention of doing it; but when you think they intended to do it, because they don't like you, you've judged them. You've got something in your heart to deal with. Well, we can deal with it easy. We come before the Lord; Holy Ghost, what's my part in this? Holy Ghost, help me to see what I haven't seen. Lord, help me to see, and I'll just share my feelings: I'm really hurt, I'm in pain over this thing. I don't know what to do. Now Lord, is there any part that I've played? Is there any beliefs or judgements in my heart I need to deal with? Lord, I just bring them out and deal with them before you. Now Lord, help me to go to this person, so I can restore and rebuild the relationship.

How do you do it? Well very simply, approach the person, and ask them for a convenient time and a place to meet. Let them choose the time and the place, don't pressure people. You're going there to talk something out, go and ask them for a suitable time. Tell them there's something you'd like to talk about. Then when you get there, talk quickly and straight. Get to the point and identify: hey, this is the specific thing that happened, and this is how it's affected me, so use 'I' statements, not 'you,' you did ra-ra-ra, you, you, you, you know? Well now listen, that's just going to get a fist fight, going in like that. You think about where the issues in marriages come from: you, you and you, you, you. The voices rise higher, because no one's listening to anyone. It's just getting higher and higher, then there's a shouting match. Then now it's really bad and people say things and they regret later. Now they've got more to overcome.

Just go with a heart to hear, a heart to talk and share, and let's see what the Holy Spirit will do. Ask for a suitable time, ask for a suitable place, go there and say: this is what the issue is that I'm struggling with. This is what the thing is, that's a problem. Put it out, just in its facts, and how its affecting intimacy, how it's affecting you. Let them see how it's affected you; and then listen, understand their position, try and find out what's going on; what happened, and what's going on. Then come to a place of agreement: forgive, release forgiveness, bless people, bless people. Let's walk in blessing.

You know something? When something breaks down in a relationship, there's always a cost to fixing it. It cost Jesus His life to fix it; and here's what it takes. It takes on the part of the person who's been sinned against, grace to forgive; and it requires a cost on the part of the person who transgressed, to repent and say: I'm sorry. That's how things get fixed up. I'm really sorry, and I mean it from my heart, I had no idea, please forgive me; and it requires: yes, I will forgive. Let's pray together, and walk together in a flow of unity. That's what it takes. That's what it takes. It always costs. Jesus modelled what it cost. He came from heaven - boy, that's costly, coming to polluted world. That's costly, and then He ministered to people, and they hurt Him and wounded Him, put Him on the cross; and then on the cross, He forgave them. That is really costly, but it also costs something to get the relationship right. We've got to repent, so there's a mutual thing goes on in there. If he repents, forgive him, so release forgiveness.

Here's the other thing then. If someone comes to you with an offence, the first thing to remember is: guard your heart. Just guard your heart. You're only hearing one side of the story. Ask the appropriate questions, and then particularly challenge the person: what stops you going directly to this person to sort it out? What is stopping you? Can I pray with you, and help you in this journey of coming and doing it Jesus' way; instead of creating a scandal and division in a relationship? There isn't any other way. This is Jesus' way. Jesus' way is: grace, truth, forgiveness; that's His way. We've just got to decide whether we'll do it His way; or whether we'll let offence sit in us, and we become a scandal to those around us, stumbling them. How many times in your journey has someone told you something about someone else, that turned out not to be true, but it stumbled you in your relationship with them? Think how often that is, and frequent that is. We can do something better than that, we can follow God's way.

I've had many reasons to be offended in all kinds of ways, still do; and I've had to learn you just have to rise with grace in your heart, and say: Jesus, help me to act as You would, and be an agent for reconciliation in this situation. Face the pain. Face what's in the heart, and the beliefs of the heart. Get your heart free with God, and forgive and bless the person. When your heart's free, then talk. If it isn't free, you'll argue, and you'll get angry, so it won't get any better, it'll get worse. What's in your heart will come out when you meet the person, so better to get your heart free; so when you come you have no agenda, but that you be reconciled and restored. This is what God blesses. This is bringing unity. This is bringing healing. This brings wholeness. If we would just practice what Jesus said, imagine how different it would be.

Why don't we close our eyes right now. Father, we just honour You and thank you. We thank You for the price You were willing to pay for us to be reconciled. Lord, we open our hearts to You right now, for the spirit of God to speak to us. Just while our eyes are closed and heads are bowed, if there's any person here and you are not connected to God, you're not a follower of Jesus, you're disconnected from God, if that's you today, what's stopping you making the next step? Jesus died on the cross for your sins. It's a matter of just saying: Jesus I need you, I've got sin in my life. I run my life without You, and I need Your help. Jesus, I come to You today, and believe You died on the cross for my sins, and I receive You into my life. What stops you doing that? There's no reason to stop. Just right now, why don't you decide today: I want to receive Jesus, I want my sins forgiven, and want life walking with God. Would you raise your hand please if that's you today - ready to give yourself to Christ, ready to become a Christian, a follower of Jesus. If you're ready to do that would you raise your hand?

I wonder how many of you heard God speak to you today; heard within the preaching, within the message, you heard God speak to you, the Holy Spirit start to speak to you: There's a lack of peace, there's turmoil in your heart. Turmoil in your heart is not just what other people did, or didn't do; it's how you're responding. Whatever anyone else does, you can still have it in your heart, but that peace comes at a price. You have to let go trying to bring people into agreement that you're right and they're wrong. You have to make a decision: do I value relationship; or would I prefer to be right? That's really where the choice will always come.

I wonder today how many people God was speaking to you? You realise how quickly you take offence, you can think of instances you've taken offence. You can think of times you've shared them with others too. If you're going to share with someone else, it should be someone who can help us to do what Jesus said: forgive and bless, go talk to the person; someone who's got the courage to tell us: that's wrong doing this. I'm glad you've shared, but here's the right thing to do now, to get this thing resolved: go talk to the person.

I've had some people come to me, and share with me things, ways in which they had felt I had offended them, they'd harboured deep hurt and grief in their lives, and I listened. I just felt my heart break. We don't know how we come across sometimes, until someone tells us. It takes great courage to do that. It's always costly to build bridges of relationship. I remember weeping in my heart, telling them how sorry I was, asking their forgiveness - done it many times. Does that mean I don't make mistakes? Not at all. What about you? What is the Holy Spirit saying to you? What will you do, after you leave this meeting? Is there some relationship you need to put right? Is there something you need to get right in your heart? What's stopping you doing it? If God spoke to you today in any kind of way through this message I want you just to raise your hand right now, just raise your hand right now. God bless, many, many hands, many hands up.

You know sometimes the greatest offences take place in families and marriages, the ones who are close to us. We can be offended at God, offended at the church, offended for all kinds of things - or we can grow. What a great day that we make decisions every day: I refuse to harbour offence. I will choose to respond in a Godly way; releasing blessing, not cursing; releasing grace, not judgement; believing God to work good, instead of harbouring unbelief. I will operate that way, and I thank You Lord, You'll give me the grace to do it. Amen.

Summary Notes

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1. Introduction

· Lk.17:1-3 “It is impossible that no offence should come”

· Wherever there are people there will be offences.

· Offences can produce dramatic and lasting damage to people and relationships.

· Offences will come to every person – key issue is how you deal with them.

· Vs3 “Take heed to yourselves” – Jesus warning to guard ourselves in issue of offences.

· Mt. 24:10 “Many will be offended, will betray one another and will hate one another”.

2. What is an Offence?

(a) What it is not!

· We tend to think that an offence is anything a person does that “hurts me” or results in me “feeling bad”.

· James 3:2 We all stumble (offend) in many things, if anyone does not stumble (offend) in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.

· All people sin, make mistakes, struggle to communicate properly, tend to self.

· Many of the things that “hurt us” are the result of immaturity and self-centredness.

(b) What an Offence is

· Offence =NT4625= ‘Skandalon’

= a trap, a snare, a stumbling block

= an impediment placed in the way that causes a person to stumble.

· It is inevitable that the actions of others or their failure to act can be a cause of stumbling to others.

· Many things can cause people to stumble, to be offended.

· People are offended by:

(a) The Truth (b) Jesus (c) Correction (d) Counsel (e) Unmet expectations

· Correction that people consider an offense is not a snare to draw them into sin but an act of love to help them out of sin.

· People often react, become offended and then stumble others, infect with offense.

· The key issue is how you respond! – this is a choice.

3. Your Response to Offense is a Matter of Life or Death / Prison or Promotion!

(a) Bible Examples of People who become Offended

i) Gen.4:5-8 Cain – offended by God’s correction – Anger and Murder

ii) Gen.37:4-8, 18 Joseph’s brothers – offended at immaturity – Hate, Murder

iii) 1 Sam. 18:7-13 Saul – offended at Daniel’s popularity – Hate, Murder

iv) 2 Ks 5:9-17 Naaman – offended at God’s Ways – Anger and Rage

v) 2 Sam 15:1-11 Absalom – offended at Daniel’s failure – Betrayal, Murder

vi) Num. 14:1-4 Israel – offended by spies report – Anger, betrayal

vii) Mk.6:17-19,24 Herod’s wife – offended at the truth – Hatred and Murder

viii) Mk 3:6 Pharisees – offended at Jesus work – Hatred and Murder

(b) How People Usually Respond (Mt 12:34)

· Draw others in by repeating their story to them.

· Repeat their story in a way that highlights their hurt and injustice.

· Never talk about the real reason they are in pain or assume responsibility.

· Nurse their hurt rather than resolve it Jesus Way.

(c) The Hidden Agenda (Prov. 26:26-27)

· Draw others into their offense to justify self.

· Seek to bring others into agreement with them.

· Make them feel like they feel.

· Draw them to agree with their judgement of the ‘offender’.

· Draw them onto “my side” i.e. create division.

· Seek for you to tell them they are right to hold these attitudes.

· Willing to sacrifice your future, damage your heart and relationship with that person in order to justify themselves and prove they are right.

Prov.26:24-27

· Hatred is at the root of the behaviour – love always seeks to restore.

· Words that carry a spirit of offense – taste sweet – they resonate within us – they wound our spirit and ability to love.

· Prov.26:17 Meddling with strife = taking dog by ears.

(d) Passive Listening = Agreement

· We tend to listen to people because we care about them and want to help them.

· Don’t just listen and agree – give Biblical direction or become angry and offended.

Prov. 18:17 There are two sides to a story.

Prov. 18:13 Don’t come to conclusion without hearing the other side.

· Give Bilheal direction! Mt18: Have you spoken to this person about it?

4. How to Deal with Offences

(a) You feel Offended

Mt.18:15 “Go and talk face to face with a heart for restoration”

(i) Bring it to the Lord first – Ask the Holy Spirit to help!

Expose feelings – how did you lose your peace?

Expose judgements – what do I need to face?

Forgive and bless the person! – Choice! e.g. Joseph; Gen 45:4-5

(ii) Resolve it with the person

Ask for a suitable time and private place to meet.

Get to the point – identify the specific action and how it affected you.

Listen to understand the other person.

Own your part – repent and forgive.

(b) Someone Comes to You with an Offense

(i) Guard your heart from premature judgement and offenses.

(ii) Challenge the person to obey Jesus directive – Mt. 18.

(iii) Pray and bless the person you spoke about.

29. Pentecost - Fresh Filling of the Holy Ghost

Sun 19 May 2013  « Back to Top

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Pentecost is about meeting with God. Mount Sinai was completely covered in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Then the blast of the trumpet sounded long, and came louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. Now that's the first Pentecost. It's about engaging in intimacy with God. It was no work, no labour, no striving, no struggling, and they gave to the poor.

How many knew it was Pentecost Sunday this Sunday? Well that's fantastic, so Pentecost Sunday. I thought well if it's Pentecost Sunday, we should focus on that this Sunday, so we're going to go back quickly to the Old Testament, then I want to pick up three things in the New Testament. It helps if we get a context for it, and so let's go in the Old Testament, the first Pentecost, oh how glorious! Look at this, Exodus 19.

It came to pass on the third day, in the morning, there were thunderings and lightnings, a thick cloud on the mountain; the sound of trumpet was very loud, and all the people in the camp trembled! Oh glory! And Moses brought the people out of the camp - and here's what it's about - to meet with God. Pentecost is about meeting with God - and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was completely covered in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, the whole mountain shook. Now that is something! Then the blast of the trumpet sounded long, and came louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. Now that's the first Pentecost. Isn't that fantastic?

The first Pentecost was a meeting of God with His people. It was a demonstration of the nature, the power, the goodness of God. Notice that. Smoke and thunder and lightnings, mountains shaking - that's not something hidden away is it? That's something that's so visible, that everyone got a bit scared of it; then they heard the voice talking from the mountain. This is the first experience of Pentecost. I won't go into the Hebrew background of this, but very simply when you look at the whole context of it, God was meeting with them, to invite them into a marriage relationship with Him. There are many pictures and symbols in there that indicate that the Hebrews would have understood this, including what happened after, the giving of the law as being God entering into a marriage relationship with a people, for the very first time in history.

So Pentecost is not just about the smoke and thunder and lightnings and fires. It's about engaging in intimacy with God. That's what it's primarily about. We're going to look at two or three things related to it shortly. Let's have a look in Leviticus, Chapter 23. This was such an important feast, one of three major feasts, that God required they remember the feast, and interestingly enough He talks about it in Leviticus 23. You know I'm going to go to Acts, but I'll get there in just a moment. He says now - in Verse 16 - count 50 days - Pentecost is 50 - 50 days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you'll offer a new grain offering to the Lord. So notice that they count 50 days, 50 days after Passover was the Feast of Pentecost. Then on that day, it was a new offering to the Lord. In other words, it was a meeting with God again. Now when you came to Christ, Christ became your Passover. You experienced the power of salvation. You experienced change in your life, but now He's saying there's another meeting with God.

This one is to enter into intimacy with Him, and so notice He makes several things about it - I'll come back to this, and refer to these a little later, because they're quite important.

Notice it says that He says: you'll bring an offering. You'll come to God, presenting something. The second thing I want you to notice is this. In Verse 21 it says: this is a holy gathering or convocation to you. Do not ordinary work on it. So notice this: come with an offering, and no work. We'll show you what this means just shortly, and how vital this is. This is giving us an idea of what is about to come up, in terms of living and walking in the spirit. It's about an offering to God; and no work; no struggling, striving or trying. You actually rested on that day, so Pentecost then was a day when they rested, and it was a day of engaging God, and they rested.

Now the next thing it says - and this is also important - when you reap the harvest of your land, you won't wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor gather any gleanings from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the Lord your God. Now I want you just to notice these. We'll come and I'll refer to them when we get into the New Testament fulfilment. Here's what He's saying. Pentecost - now He required they celebrate this every year. Every year they were required to gather and celebrate this feast for a day. Notice this - they came before the Lord to experience and encounter Him. They came to give Him something. It was no work, no labour, no striving, no struggling. It was rest, and they also gave to the poor.

Now we're going to go into the New Testament and look at Pentecost, and you'll see all of these facets are there in what Pentecost really means for us today. I know the moment I talk about Pentecost you'll think of speaking in tongues, and that's a part of it, but there's somewhat more to it than that. So let's go into Acts, Chapter 2, where there's the fulfilment of this. Remember the Old Testament was just the picture; here is the reality. Here is the substance. This is what it was always pointing towards. So the disciples, Jesus has offered Himself. He's become the Passover lamb. He's risen from the dead. He's become the first fruits to the Lord. Now, 50 days later, they've been in prayer, they've been in hungering, and it is the Feast of Pentecost. Everyone has gathered in the city. It's a day when they're going to celebrate the feast, and they're going to make an offering to God. There'll be no work, and it's a time of giving to the poor. Now notice what happens.

It says they were gathered - Verse 1 - when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven, like a rushing mighty wind - that word rushing is a roar, a mighty roar, like the roar of a thunder. It says a mighty wind - that means it's forceful and powerful, and notice then it filled the whole house where they were sitting. There appeared to them tongues, or flames like fire on them. They were filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak in other tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance. Of course it was so noisy, 120 people filled with the Holy Ghost, the noise was so dramatic, everyone came to have a look at it. When they came to have a look, they were amazed because of what they heard, and experienced. The power of God, the presence of God had come upon a room. It was filled now, with the presence of God, and the people were speaking in tongues. They were full of joy and laughter, and were carrying on like drunk people. That's why some mocked and said: they've been drinking.

Now you would never say to a person: you've been drinking, unless you had evidence, or it looked like they were, so if you said to someone: you've been drinking, it's because you've observed something about their behaviour that indicates they've been drinking. In other words they're laughing a lot, they're staggering a lot, they're carrying on like drunk people. They are absolutely immersed in the Holy Spirit - so that's got to be a good thing, for all those who love to be in control. That's how God desires to do it. I didn't write that, He did. [Laughter] So I want to share with you three things, primarily focus on three things. Number one, Pentecost is about a personal experience, of being filled with the spirit of God. It's an engagement to Him, to enter intimacy, so you notice the first thing that happened is, they got baptised in the spirit, began to speak in other tongues. Now essentially it means this. The baptism in the spirit is an entrance into a new realm of relationship with God. It's the entrance into the supernatural. It's like a gateway experience you walk through, but here's the thing.

The role of a gate is to provide a separation between one realm and another realm. If you're going to go through the gate, the idea is you live in the realm beyond the gate, so the baptism of the spirit literally means to be immersed into the realm of the spirit, or to be able to engage with God, in a level of intimacy and spirit connection you never had before that experience. So the first one that comes is this dramatic manifestation of God, but it's just like it was, and similar to the Old Testament. God is setting up, hey, this is my engagement to you. You are coming into intimacy, and in order to be intimate, you need to talk, so a language is given, a language to be intimate with God. That's a great thing isn't it aye? So God wants us to be filled with the spirit.

Now the idea is not just that one time alone you enter that gate and you get in; well that's it, I've done that. Been there, done that, now what's next? You know, well there's a lot next, but it actually means learning how to live and enjoy and experience that realm, so God wants us to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Acts, Chapter 4, they prayed, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost. The Bible says: be filled with the Holy Ghost. God wants you to be constantly filled with the Holy Ghost. If you're not filled with the Holy Ghost, you'll be filled with something else. It's really as simple as that isn't it? So like for example in Ephesians 5:18 it says: don't be drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; halleluiah, filled with the Holy Ghost.

Now let me just go into that verse just for a moment. Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess. What is it gets you drunk? Is it trying, or is it the wine? Think about that. Do you have to try and make yourself drunk? You don't try to make yourself drunk. Drunkenness, or the loss of balance, laughter, all that goes with that, is the consequence of receiving something into yourself. In other words, there's no effort to get yourself drunk, you just drink, and you'll get drunk, isn't that right? Have you noticed that Richard? [Laughter] I see you nodding. I never found it very difficult to get drunk at all. I still wouldn't - just keep drinking, you get drunk. You just keep drinking, and you get drunk. What do you do when you're full of wine? You get drunk, and you get out of your mind, and you say things, and you babble, all sorts of stuff - not good. Not good.

Now the Bible says: don't be drunk with wine. It says rather be filled with the spirit, so now a lot of people try to put on the life of the spirit. Christianity is all a big trying hard. The Bible tells us, it's not about that at all, it's about being filled with someone - filled with the Holy Spirit. If you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the natural - there's certain things are going to flow out of your life. You can't pin the oranges on a tree. You know, I couldn't go over the road to that oak tree over there, and pin some oranges on it, and try and fool anyone that it was anything but an oak tree. [Laughter] It's true isn't it? You cannot pin it on. You actually grow it. Joy is a fruit of someone expressing their life in you. Peace is the fruit of someone expressing their life in you. I believe many Christians really struggle, because they don't know how to get filled up with the Holy Ghost.

Their experience is not one of being filled. Their experience is one of struggling, and trying hard to be good enough, to be a good Christian. Would that be right? How many enjoy that experience? Its blimmin' miserable! It is miserable trying to be good, and here's why it's so miserable trying to be good; because you're forever blowing it. It's such an effort all the time to be trying so hard to look good, and be good, and here's why: because all your efforts are energised by the flesh and they can never produce the things of God. What is needed is the understanding of how we can be filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the Holy Spirit, day after day after day. So normally the problem is this, it's that we don't really believe what God's word says. We believe what we feel and experience, and we in other words, believe in the things around us, rather than believing in what God says.

The big problem we have is believing life is found somewhere apart from God, so how can I be filled with the spirit? Let me give you two or three things that will help get you filled with the spirit - three things. There's probably heaps of things. Here's three things that occurred to me: number one, speaking in tongues is one great way to allow your life to become filled up with God. Why is that? Speaking in tongues - speaking in tongues is a great gift. I pray in tongues every day. I pray for a long time every day. I enjoy praying in tongues. I get energised - see, when you pray in tongues, your spirit is praying, as the Holy Ghost is giving you utterance, so now when you choose to pray in tongues, there's a flow from the spirit of God into your spirit. Your spirit begins to arise, starts to fill up with life, so praying in tongues is one of God's gifts to you, to help, because you can pray in tongues anytime you like. Build up your inner man, and start to come alive in God anytime! Anytime! Anytime! Ooh, [prays in tongues]

I pray in the morning, and if I get up too late and then there's people out I run into when I'm walking. They look... I say it's okay, I'm alright, I'm happy. [Laughter] I'm filled up with the spirit of God. I'm enjoying God. I'm using my language to love on Him. He that speaks in an unknown tongue is speaking to God. This is intimacy - you don't listen in. You know, you're talking with your wife, intimately, you don't want people listening in. You've got a good language, to be able to talk intimately with God, and not have people listen in, see? They just hear the murmur, but that's all, they don't know what's going on. It's between you and God.

Here's a second part of being filled with the spirit. This is perhaps one of the most powerful ways that you can do it, because it addresses where one of the biggest problems is. The biggest problem is what you believe in your heart, so here's the second way you can be filled with the Holy Spirit, is through meditation in the word of God. I cannot overstate how much meditation helps you to shift your believe system, and start to engage with heaven's reality - meditation.

You notice it says: they'll be filled with the spirit, and it says they'll have dreams and visions and so on. It talks about having dreams and visions. Now when God gives dreams and visions, there's nothing to indicate in those passages that those were open visions, or they saw them with their open eye. In fact when you dream, you actually close your eyes; you're asleep, and you have something come to you. Where does it come to you? In your mind and imagination, so clearly when God gives you dreams, then they come into your imagination, and likewise when God gives you visions, for the most part, unless it's a distinctly open vision, which is not quite so common, it comes into your mind and imagination as a mental picture. So we can see from that, that the imagination is a connecting point, between the realm of the spirit, and your soul or your spirit man.

So you can use your imagination creatively, for example, we can take the word of God, and create a picture in our mind, and begin to imagine what that would feel like, and look like, and how we would experience that. You see for many Christians, say for example the truth, that you are the temple of God; for many Christians, it doesn't mean much. It's just head knowledge, because they don't feel it. Many Christians, when we say that God loves you, it doesn't mean much, because they don't experience being loved by God, and experience is important to our being filled with God. One of the things that can help you immensely, is to train your imagination - you can pray in the spirit and get your spirit arising up, but to train your imagination, to meditate on truth, to picture it, as a reality for you.

So for example if I were to take the truth that I am the temple of the Holy Spirit, my body's a temple of the Holy Spirit, well you know that verse. See we know it in our head, but what if you were to become conscious everywhere you go, the spirit of God is living within me? What would it be like with God's spirit living in me? What would it feel like, if God was to just fill every part of me, just like He filled the Old Testament temple? What would it be like if God filled every part of me? I begin to imagine that, and I can begin to feel the spirit of God filling me. See, your imagination is the way for the reality of the truth to be experienced. A lot of people get worried about this. They think New Age and all that kind of stuff. Listen, New Age came around a long time after this. It's a latecomer on the scene. They just found what worked, and used it to their own methods without God. We're talking about taking the word of God, what God says, so for example, just Jesus - now Jesus reveals Himself in the Bible in many ways. There's many pictures formed of Him, so you could just imagine yourself encountering Jesus.

Now you're not going to worry about the colour of His hair, or how tall He is. You're not going to be worried about the colour of His eyes. There's no need to be looking at that. We need to be looking at the character of the person Jesus, so what I'm looking at, is what the Bible describes of Him: His eyes are ablaze with fire and passion and zeal, of immense love for me. Now as you behold this, it begins to affect you. You become changed as you behold - that's how you get changed, not by trying. You get changed by stopping trying, and beholding. You get changed by believing, not by working. How did you get saved? Did you work real hard to get saved? No, you chose to believe, but then from then on, we work hard. Meditation allows us to see and experience the truth that is, and it changes our experience. Our dilemma is one of unbelief.

A dilemma is one of not really believing what God says, so if I was to meditate, which I do every day, that Jesus is before me, I'm standing before Him, and I begin to look, and I'm looking at His character. I'm not looking at the colour of His eyes. I'm looking at the fact that His eyes are ablaze with passion and zeal, and He looks right through me, so I'm just going to be transparent before Him. I can't hide. No one can hide, but religion is all about hiding who you really are, and trying hard to be something you're not, or taking the methods you hear preached on a Sunday. You hear something, and then you turn it into a method, but it's never about methods. It's about believing what God says, and our challenge is we don't really believe. If I knew and believed in my heart I'm filled with God, so everywhere I'm going, God's presence is flowing, how would I behave? What would I feel like? When I face difficulties what would I do? The Bible says: you are the temple of God, so as you meditate and believe what God says, you start to be changed to be like that, not by trying harder. That's the dilemma everyone has, they try harder, and we try so hard; if I do this, I'll be blessed. Well see there is the problem straight away. Why don't you just handle this completely different, and say: I am already blessed with every blessing. I'm a blessed person. Now Lord, what would a blessed person behave like, talk like, and look like?

See, in other words, we are so bombarded and pressured to conform to the world and the image of what we used to be, it takes time and effort to renew our mind and heart, so we understand who we've become now in Christ. Most people just don't do it, so therefore they struggle immensely, but if you were to just take these disciplines, very simple disciplines, of the praying in tongues, and allowing your spirit man to flow; and taking the word, and begin to meditate in who you are, and who Jesus is. I have stood and just meditated on Him loving me, what it would look like in His eyes. You know when you don't feel loved, you don't really want to look in anyone's eyes, or look too hard at their countenance. You'll just want to say things and do things to prove you're okay, compress them, but if I just come before Him, and stop trying to do anything, and just hold the truth in my heart and meditate on it, the lies will come up quite quickly of course. You need to deal with those. Sometimes we need deliverance and healing to deal with those lies, but it always helps to meditate in the truth, the truth of being the temple of God, the truth that wherever you are, you're not waiting for revival to come, it's inside you.

You're not waiting for God to do a big thing. He's inside you waiting for you to believe and flow, and so meditating in that, changes your experiences with God and changes you. It's been practiced as long as time goes, and it works. If you talk to anyone who experienced God on a regular basis, and you'll find that engaging their imagination with the word of God is a vital part of that. It's important to do that. The third aspect of being filled, is choosing to yield and stop working to make something happen, and start believing and yielding. One of the challenges people have is just to let go control. We're so uptight, and so afraid, and so in control, you come and say: would you pray for me for God to do something? You can almost feel the tension inside of all the control and the fear, rather than actually being renewed. God is not angry with you, He loves you. Before you came to Christ, He died on the cross. Now won't He give you everything you have need for today? Can you imagine God being so mean, that He would die on the cross, but then make life miserable for you the rest of the time, hold back from you? It's just not true. God is good all the time.

All the time He's good, so meditating in His goodness and His nature, taking the truth and allowing your heart to rest in it, you start to get filled with God. All I can say is: I'm not trying; I'm choosing to yield and believe, and that's where the life flows. It's in the yielding and believing, so when you come to pray for someone, come to minister to someone, just - Gill, you're nearby, just come here - and that brings us to the next thing. We're not just to be filled with the spirit, we're also to be ministers of the spirit. You can hardly minister something you don't have much of, but God's intention is all minister. 1 Corinthians 12:7, now the gift, and the manifestation of the spirit of God, is given to every person - given, therefore it's just received. So the deal is just about receiving, so I don't need to try hard to do anything. Just come around here. I don't have to try hard to do anything.

If I just take your hand, and what I'll do is I'll say - why don't you close your eyes, and I want you to look towards the Lord and expect Him to do something for you. Look to Him, see. Already as she does that, something's starting to happen, see, already, without me doing anything. I'm not even trying to minister, just the presence of God. Now she began to direct her inner man towards God, and He began to move. Ministry is not something you have to work hard to do. It is the overflow of a person within you, and connecting with the Holy Spirit, connecting and being filled and yielding to Him. Now there's many ways we resist Him. When we get angry with people, and won't deal with our heart attitudes, when we hold unforgiveness and bitterness, we grieve Him, and therefore you can't be filled with the spirit, so you can't stay angry and be filled with the spirit. Face your anger, come honestly before God about what has caused you to feel such feelings, and what you really believe underneath about that, and ask God to show you the truth, and then be filled with the spirit again.

We don't have to stay living in these fleshy things. In fact the life of defeat as a believer, is inevitably trying hard to put on a good show, trying hard to look good. Now everyone's all dressed up, you all look good. You actually look beautiful, wonderful. [Laughs] However, we know that's not like that all the week. [Laughter] Isn't that right? Now you see if I was just to consciously think: well God, I'll just think about being the temple. Thank You Lord, I'm the temple of the spirit, and I would think these kinds of things; that Your presence just fills me, and fills everything around me, so wherever I am, Your presence is overflowing - now she can begin to feel that presence just like that. [Laughter] Full of joy. See, you notice it's not struggling, it's not hard. It's not something you have to struggle to do. Jesus said: this is the work. He said: strive to enter your rest. Isn't that a crazy statement? What He's really saying is this. He's saying: the challenge is not to work hard to be a better person; the challenge is always to break through unbelief and negative thinking, and believe.

So number one, get filled with the spirit, get filled with the spirit every day, and hunger for more of God. As you worship Him and yield to Him, stand by the bed and just lift your hands, oh! just let the Holy Ghost come on you and fill you. I have noticed, that if you will yield, He will come on you, as well as rise up within you, and the more He comes on you, and the more drunk you get in the Holy Spirit, it's got to be good for you. It's got to stop you being so uptight, to be filled with the spirit, huh? It'll be a lot better. Some people I look, and so many people are tense and anxious and wound up and uptight and stressed. Why don't you stop, STOP, STOP! STOP! God, I'm blessed with every blessing. Help me to remember. I've just forgotten it under the pressure of the world, who I am, and what I carry. I need to come back home again.

Through the Bible it says: through returning and rest, you enter and experience the things of God. Repenting, and just resting, and you come back into that place in God again. You know a lot of us would do a lot better in the life if we could just stop through the day for a minute every now and then, just stop: oh God, I just come back to You. Thank You, You're filling me - and we start to feel the joy again, feel the life come back again, start to feel happy again - might even look drunk. People say why are you laughing? [Laughter] Excuse me, why are You laughing? Why are you so happy? [Laughter] You're just drunk in the Holy - but I don't understand. How come you have a - this is not even midday, and you've been drinking. [Laughter] [I'm an early starter.] You're an early starter, confirmed. [Laughter] She's an early starter, I love that.

But you see, just even doing what we're doing, people start to get touched. There's a flow of the spirit. It's not a hard thing, and so we'll just finish now, and let me just finish with one last thing. Here it is here. You notice that number one, your personal experience, get filled with the Holy Ghost; number two is, learn to flow with the spirit. The more you flow with the Holy Ghost, the more you get filled again, get filled again. I'll just finish with the last one. Here it is, go down the end and here it is, blah blah blah blah, Verse 44: All those who believed were together, had all things common and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all, so anyone had need they just gave to them.

Now here's the thing, practice generosity. You want to be filled with the spirit, please practice generosity. If you want to be filled with the spirit, practice generosity. There's no person can be filled with the spirit, and remain mean. It's just impossible. Generosity is the expression of love, so if you get filled up with the love of God, the first thing you want to do is to give to someone. You ever noticed drunken people give: here, here, here, have some. [Laughter] They kind of... you know? But generosity is the characteristic of God, and so if you're filled with the spirit you become generous, and God wants us to intentionally be generous with people who are poor, who are in difficulty, the unsaved, the widows or single parents, those who are without a father, those who are in need.

Part of Pentecost, and the Feast of Pentecost, now we'll just close it with this. In the Old Testament, when God prescribed the Feast of Pentecost He said this: gather, make an offering, here I am. No work [laughter] NO WORKS! No works. No works! Stop struggling - see? And then He said: and don't forget to be kind to the poor. So there it is. So in the New Testament they got filled with the spirit, they came and presented themselves to God, and received. Ah! No works! Got drunk and filled with the Holy Ghost. Then they began to minister the spirit, because that's the flow; what you've received you can give to others, and then finally they were generous. They were generous to the poor, and so Pentecost starts with experiencing God, and it finishes with a river of life, that expresses itself in ministry to needs and people, and giving and generosity to the poor.

So we want a new Pentecost? Well then it's time to stop working so hard, and start to make a decision to experience God again. Come on, quick, I'm going to start to just - you've got to do this, come on. Just do this. Now close your eyes just for a moment, lift your hands up now and start to begin to meditate, that you are the temple of God, and that God's spirit is just filling you, filling you, filling you. Just let it start, He'll start to fill you and oh! Spirit of God, here it comes. You'll be glad to have a wife full of the Holy Ghost - you'll have to let go control through. [Laughter] There it goes, praise the Lord. [Laughs] Quickly Rod, come on up here. Come on up and Bill, why don't you come up too Bill? You've always wanted to get filled with the Holy Spirit. Come, come, that's right, just stand in that place of presenting and surrendering. You'll start to feel the joy start to come on you. Ready Bill? Give me your hand and there it is, the presence of God - someone get behind him quickly.

See, now remember I was meditating - what was I meditating on? I'm the temple of God - ooh, got holy hands now mate. Listen to this, you take a handshake of this, the power, ready? Take a handshake, ready? [Boom! Power!] There's something happens see, filled with the Holy Ghost, here we go. Put that down and get drunk with the Holy Ghost. Put it down, just get drunk with the Holy - ready, lift your hands up, that's right, whoa! Okay, now just begin to meditate [laughter] there it is, Holy Ghost, look at that. You're living with a drunk. Here we are, come and have one too. Have a drink too, come on, have a drink of the Holy Ghost. This is what we need, to be filled with the Holy Ghost, ready? Just - okay, now just lift your hands up like you're drinking. Oh, I'm just drinking now, whoa! There it is, Holy Ghost. Come on her Lord right now. Look at that, that's happening so easy isn't it?

Now Brian, why don't you just stand there. Now I want to minister to you, I want you just to stand and close your eyes, and Jesus is right in front of you. He's just reaching out to you, saying have a drink Brian, have a drink. Let's have a drink together, come on, have a drink. [Laughter] Now you're - there it is, just a river of God flowing like that. Isn't this exciting? Isn't this fun? Why don't we all just stand up now and reach out, we need to finish now, but we need this river flowing constantly in our lives. Come on Brian, up on your feet. He's drunk - another drunk man over here, look at this. Holy Ghost. Come on, let's just stand on our feet, just lift your hands up to the Lord. Lift your hands up to the Lord, just close your eyes. [Laughs] Now for some of course, it'll be easier than others, because you've practiced this, for some it may not be, and if you're listening on the tape you could do this. Just stand. If you're standing at home alone you want to be standing by a bed in case you fall over, you can fall on the bed.

Okay, just lift your hands to the Lord. I want you just to use your imagination to just lock on, there is Jesus in front of you, about to fill you with the spirit. His eyes are ablaze, His countenance full of joy, and He's just opening His hands [exhales once gently] to release His presence into you. Just receive now. Holy Ghost, thank You for coming on me. [Laughter] That's right, relax and just yield to Him. [Laughter] Or you may want to take the picture of being the temple; there right inside you is the temple of the Holy Ghost, you're there. and the Holy Ghost is inside you rising up, filling, filling, filling. Holy Ghost come - look at this, people getting drunk already. Its okay, if you feel like laughing then laugh. [Laughter] Don't try to pretend. [Laughter] Holy Ghost, spirit of God, we need a fresh Pentecost. We need Your power coming upon our lives again in a fresh way. We need You to touch us powerfully.

Holy Ghost come, come. You ready Brian? Just step forward. If you step forward you get drunk - drunk, drunk, drunk! Holy Ghost, come on him right now. Its funny isn't it aye? That's right, step forward - there it is see, presence of God. That's right, now step into it. Use your imagination, and step into the presence of God, it's amazing what happens - whoa! Holy Ghost come, come, come. Spirit of God, come, the Holy Ghost, that's right, Holy Ghost come. [Laughs] Well I was feeling the touch of God. Why don't you come up the front, already feeling God's presence touching you well just come and stand around the front here, we're going to lay hands on you, just release more. Come on, we want a river of God flowing. If you want the touch of God on you why don't you come on up? There's a river flowing here!

Summary Notes

Formatted »  Back to Top »

1. Introduction

· Exodus 19:16-19 The first Pentecost – a visitation of God to His people.

· Thunder, lightening cloud, trumpet, fire, earthquake.

· God met with His people to become engaged to marry them.

· He required that they remember and celebrate this day each year!

· Leviticus 23: 16, 20-22 Pentecost instituted as an annual celebration.

(v16) Come before the host to make an offering and celebrate.

(v21 No work!

(v22) Remember to be generous to the poor.

*Pentecost begins with an encounter with God and ends with generosity to the poor.

*Church needs constant fresh encounters with God and filling with the Holy Spirit.

2. Personal Experience: Be Filled with the Holy Ghost

Acts 2: 1-4 “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”

(a) Baptism In Holy Spirit is a gateway experience to Supernatural Life.

· God’s intention is for us to experience spiritual reality.

· Baptism in the Holy Spirit opens up realm of Supernatural.

· Further evidence – overflow with new languages of spirit – speaking in tongues.

· This is the language of intimacy with God (1 Corinthians 14:2)

· They received from God an impartation – speaking, joy, drunkenness.

(b) Keys to Ongoing Filling with the Holy Spirit

· Believers need to keep being daily filled with the Holy Spirit. The power to live the Christian life. (Eph. 5:18)

· Trying harder doesn’t change us or make us better, must learn to receive.

· Everything we receive from God comes by believing not trying.

(i) Speaking in Tongues

· When you speak in tongues you activate and energize your spirit man.

· You open up a direct flow with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:4)

· You edify or build up your inner man. (1 Corinthians 14:4)

· Speaking in tongues is a powerful way to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

(ii) Yield to the Holy Spirit Within

· We receive from God by believing not trying – striving.

· To receive must first stop trying, striving, struggling

· Yielding is an act of surrender – letting go self effort: letting God.

· Our challenge is to believe what God says is true about us.

· John 6:29 “This is the work of God that you believe….”

(iii) Meditation – Imagining Gods’ Word

· V17 “Dreams and Visions” – both are pictures or imaginings.

· Nothing indicates they are seen with the natural eyes.

· Both are images in the mind, in the imagination.

· They are God inspired pictures in your imagination.

· Take Gods’ truth – practice imagining what it would be like to experience being in this truth. What would it look like? Feel like? Sound like?

Eg: Being in the Temple of God

Entering the Throne of God

Being filled with the love of God

· Stop working, striving to obtain – set imagination to see, embrace, believe.

3. Personal Experience: Flow with the Spirit

Acts 2: 17-18 “I will pour out My Spirit in those says and they will prophesy”

· You are filled with the Spirit for the purpose of mission.

· The overflow of the Spirit of God is seen in life and ministry to needs.

· 1 Corinthians 12:7 “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each man to profit all”

· ‘Given’ – you receive by believing not by striving or struggling.

· ‘Each man’ – Gods design is every believer ministers to others.

4. Practice Generosity (Fruit of the Spirit)

Vs 44-45 “Generosity to those in need were the consequence of being spirit filled.”

· Generosity is evidence of the love of God: can’t love without being generous.

· Pentecost starts with being filled with Holy Spirit and ends with generosity.

· Dt 24:18-22 “Pentecost was a harvest time – here is what God required.”

· World pressure – consumerism, pressure to spend all on yourself.

· God requires intentional generosity to be part of our life.

· Leave margins in your life – compassion for those in need, time, finance, talent, relationships.

· No quantity specified – the issue is gratitude to God and generosity.

· Command – this is a way of life of person filled with the Holy Spirit.

· Generosity to strangers, fatherless, widows.

Questions:

(i) Are you filled with the Holy Spirit?

(ii) Are you flowing with the Holy Spirit?

(iii) Are you practicing generosity?

Basic Deliverance Training

基本驱邪术训练

基本驅邪術訓練

Following Jesus includes progressively walking into freedom; and the empowerment to advance the Kingdom of God.

Understand what demons are, and how they enter people and work to destroy lives; and then what Jesus has done to purchase freedom from oppression for us.

Learn about the important part we have to play in positioning ourselves to experience freedom.

Understand the anointing upon Jesus, and the impact of that anointing in our lives.

Learn about the basic doorways that demons use to enter people, and the issues of the heart that give them access.

This powerful series of teachings will give you insight to Spiritual Freedom.

跟随耶稣包括逐步走入自由和权力来推进神的国度。

了解什么是妖，以及他们如何进入人们的工作和摧毁生命;然后耶稣已经完成，从压迫自由购买我们。

了解我们有自己的定位，体验自由发挥的重要组成部分。

认识耶稣后的恩膏，那恩膏在我们生活的影响。

了解了恶魔可以用它来进入人们的门道，和心脏这给他们访问的问题。

这种强大的系列教诲会给你的洞察力与精神自由。

跟隨耶穌包括逐步走入自由和權力來推進神的國度。

了解什么是妖，以及他们如何进入人们的工作和摧毁生命;然后耶稣已经完成，从压迫自由购买我们。

了解我們有自己的定位，體驗自由發揮的重要組成部分。

認識耶穌後的恩膏，那恩膏在我們生活的影響。

了解了惡魔可以用它來進入人們的門道，和心臟這給他們訪問的問題。

這種強大的系列教誨會給你的洞察力與精神自由。

Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8)

To advance the Kingdom, we must overcome an inferior one, that currently has dominion over people’s lives. This doesn't happen by our will power or hope, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we depend on Him and grow in God. To be free we need to remove the armour, or belief system, from our lives that have bound us up, so the demon or strongman can be easily cast out. Demonic strongholds creates an energy, but the Holy Spirit can energise us, to get great victory and freedom over any area of our life.

如何到部长驱邪（领导人） (1 of 8)

如何到部長驅邪（領導人） (1 of 8)

Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8)

Explore the different doors of entry into a person’s life, from generational curses to inner vows. We get freedom through the Power of the Holy Spirit, by what Jesus has won on the Cross for us. He won the total victory, which was utterly complete, covering all intentional and un-intentional sin. As you open your heart, and take ownership for your sin, rather than blame others, and then repent and release forgiveness, healing and freedom will flow into our lives.

自由的基础 (2 of 8)

自由的基礎 (2 of 8)

Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8)

Explore the issues in the heart that can hold us in bondage. Discover that ungodly soul ties, inner vows and word curses are three entry points into our lives, where we can open ourselves to bitterness, jealousy, anger, complaining, addictions, etc, which then become strongholds in our lives, that the enemy can come in and take hold of. This includes other peoples words and actions towards us. As we recognise these traits in our lives, we can take ownership of them, renouncing and releasing them from our lives in Jesus Name.

心的牢笼 (3 of 8)

心的牢籠 (3 of 8)

Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8)

Explains three main legal grounds, upon which demons can gain access to your life: generational curses; the occult; and sexual sin. The issues and bondages that come into our lives through these door ways can be broken and cast out by the power of the Holy Spirit, because we are redeemed and set free by the Cross of Jesus Christ. We need to acknowledge and identify these areas of sin; then renounce and release forgiveness as necessary; then call upon the name of Jesus, who will set your free!

法律有权进入 (4 of 8)

法律有權進入 (4 of 8)

The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8)

Humans are very unique - not only living in the natural world, but can also connect to the spiritual world. Jesus came to tell us about the Kingdom of God, which is full of light, peace and joy; but there is another Kingdom which we are all born into - the Kingdom of Darkness - which rules by tormenting people, and using sin to control them. Jesus came to set us free, by shedding his blood on the Cross. When we accept what Christ has done for us, we need to continue and allow the Holy Spirit to change our thinking, by the renewing of our mind - that we would be kind, tender hearted and loving to one another, and set free in our hearts.

两个王国 (5 of 8)

兩個王國 (5 of 8)

Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8)

Many problems we have in life come from traumatic experiences, which have often happened in early childhood: in the womb; early childhood; or during school years. These experiences tend to shut us down, and control the memory of the trauma. We do not realise that these experiences are actually controlling you: relationships; reactions; and approach to life. The effect of these traumatic experiences can only be overcome and healed through prayer; by exchanging old memory pictures with scripture memorisation; and by inviting the Holy Spirit and the truth into the situation - for total restoration in Jesus name!

创伤性经历 (6 of 8)

創傷性經歷 (6 of 8)

Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8)

We are called to pray for people, and to be a minister of the Spirit of God. Come spiritually prepared, and believe that God is with you - guide people’s attention to the Lord, not the prayer! There will be conflict before, during, and after ministry, and the battles will be within you. Believe God is with you, take risks, and reach out in prayer. Keeping your eyes on Jesus, and listening to the Holy Spirit, you will be able to minister healing and freedom, in Jesus name, to people.

我们被邀请成为圣灵部长 (7 of 8)

我們被邀請成為聖靈部長 (7 of 8)

Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8)

We learn that Jesus came to touch people's hearts, by bringing revelation of the Power of God, for: salvation; healing; deliverance. Jesus made it clear we would have difficulties and problems, but He has overcome all evil with good - on the Cross, and through His ministry to us. As we face the reality that we are hurting and suffering, and allow the Lord to help us repent and forgive, He will always respond. God is committed to our character and growth, not our comfort.

耶稣的部 (8 of 8)

耶穌的部 (8 of 8)

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp3

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp3

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp3

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp3

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp3

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp3

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp3

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp4

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp4

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp4

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp4

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp4

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp4

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp4

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp4

Vimeo

- Vimeo Channel »

- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp4

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp4

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp4

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp4

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp4

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp4

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp4

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp4

如何到部长驱邪（领导人） (1 of 8)

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我的一个女儿Joanna今天跟我在一起。我的妻子向大家问安，她留在家中照看Joanna的三个男孩，她是一位好奶奶。对于那些还不认识我的人来说，我们有七个孩子，二十个孙子，是一个大家庭，蒙福的家庭。

很高兴和你们在一起，可以和你们一起分享，一起祷告是非常美好的。 我们很喜欢来到灵粮堂，对我们来讲透过灵粮堂我们才能够来到台湾，透过Jonathan牧师与你们有连结。过去这十年我们每年至少来台湾两到三次，看到成千上万的生命被改变。我们真心感谢Jonathan牧师让我们有机会来到这里认识大家，建立美好的友谊。

神给我们非常大的恩宠，让我们可以有机会服事这个国家的一些牧师和职场上的领袖，服事一些非常有影响力的人。见到一些一般人没有办法见到的人，看到神在他们家中触摸他们，影响他们。我们很爱台湾，很喜欢来台湾，我也觉得跟华人有一种很深的连结。

在我们刚来台湾时，经历了属灵中最激烈的征战。我们第一次来时，每一天翻译都生病，每一天都换一个新的翻译。而我自己在一个星期的服事之后也生重病，如果你是要将神的大能带给人们时，生病是一件很尴尬的事情。我必须要在当下突破邪灵的拦阻。前面三四次来到台湾的时候，我周围的人和我自己都会生病。之后我们就完全突破，没有这样的困扰了。

有时在我们的事工当中，面对的拦阻是非常真实的。我们必须要鼓起勇气来面对，抵挡，突破。我当时就决定不退缩。我第一次来台湾时，第四天或第五天时，我病得不能说出话来，早上起来没有了声音。我跟神说，“神啊，我来这里不是来生病的，我是来帮忙的。”于是我整天都没有说话，到了晚上聚会时，我立刻有了声音。当我讲完道之后，又没有了声音。之后要服事几百人，为他们祷告。我说，“主啊，我不退缩，帮助我。”他就帮助我找到一个不用讲话就可以释放神的大能的方法。所以我们总是在不断地学习操练当中，我希望在这段时间里跟大家分享，能够帮到你们。

我们的主题是释放的事工。因为大家都有一些基础的教导，我要讲的重点是挪开污鬼的坚固营垒。不止要看如何赶鬼，还要更进一步了解是什么样的坚固营垒可以让鬼居住呢？

我们首先来看耶稣的教导，马太福音十二章28节，耶稣说，“我若靠着神的灵赶鬼、这就是　神的国临到你们了。”耶稣在这里教导我们如何释放，主要内容有几点，

一． 释放是神的国的彰显。是神的国临到地上产生的结果，是耶稣的权柄建构在一个人的生命中的结果，是神的国进入，推翻邪灵的权势的结果。耶稣教导我们祷告他的国降临。所以你在做释放事工时，是国与国的相争。是更有权柄的国和王赶走那个没有权柄的王。

二． 赶鬼释放的能力是来自于神的灵。只有借着神的灵才能进入释放的事工里面。我们需要圣灵的膏抹和能力。这人必须操练他的信心，才能有这样的能力。接下来我想跟大家一起分享，如何与圣灵同工。因为释放不是单靠方法，虽然适当的方法会有帮助，但是我们依靠的不是方法和步骤，我们依靠的是圣灵的帮助。没有圣灵，就没有办法进行释放。所以我们跟圣灵的关系是非常关键的。靠着圣灵赶鬼，在你身上运行的能力就是圣灵的大能，是借着我们的信心而领受的能力。我们需要学会聆听，回应，并与圣灵一起同工。在我们的事工中，常常需要聆听圣灵对我们说什么。

三． 耶稣教导我们说，“我若靠着神的灵赶鬼”。所以释放的事工是需要有一个人来面对邪灵。你不能祷告求神来做，你要自己去面对邪灵。这个人要与圣灵一起同工，使用他的信心，对邪灵说话。当神的灵与他一起运行时，神的国就会建立了。所以当我们做释放时，必须要敏锐，与圣灵一起同工。我们会在其它时间着重讲这个。

接下来看43至45节，“污鬼离了人身，就在无水之地，过来过去，寻求安歇之处，却寻不着。于是说、我要回到我所出来的屋里去。到了，就看见里面空闲，打扫干净，修饰好了。便去另带了七个比自己更恶的鬼来，都进去住在那里。那人末后的景况，比先前更不好了。这邪恶的世代，也要如此。”

耶稣在这里分享的东西非常关键，他帮助我们明白我们肉眼看不见的灵界的东西，他也帮助我们明白在释放的事工中可能会遇见的问题。这也是我们今天的重点，“污鬼离了人身、就在无水之地，过来过去，寻求安歇之处”，耶稣描述的是一个人在得着释放之后所发生的事情。作为教会中的领袖或者小组长，当一个人得到释放之后应该怎么办？我们必须要知道释放之后灵界的状况是什么。很多人的问题是只专注于释放的过程，反而失去了整个的异象。要知道释放事工中赶鬼只是一部分，最主要的目的是引领人归向耶稣，做他的门徒。

释放事工是将拦阻他的灵界的黑暗力量挪开，我们所要做的不只是把污鬼赶出去，耶稣告诉我们为什么。他说，“污鬼离了人身”，就是说在释放之后，这个污鬼被赶出去了。那么鬼去了哪里呢？首先，他走来走去。邪灵在灵界里属于低阶的灵，他们能够做的东西是很有限的，所以当我们进行释放事工时，邪灵就被赶出去，“在无水之地走来走去”，他们去到的地方是没有圣灵的恩膏和运行的地方。他们立刻就离开，但是他们想找安歇之处，所以邪灵是在不断地寻找可以居住的地方。他们不是躺在那里，他们想进入一个可以成为家的地方，他是在寻找属灵的家。所以邪灵一直在寻找一个可以进入影响的人，并透过这个人把他的属性彰显出来。他们的目标就是进入一个人里面，毁坏这个人的生命。当他找不到任何人时，他就回家。

所以邪灵是有个性有位格的，他可以思想，可以做决定，可以说话，可以沟通。他是肉眼看不见的灵，这个灵是有位格，有心思，有想法，可以做决定的。我们所面对的是一个仇敌。他说他要回到他的家，就是说邪灵会记得他是从谁的身上被赶出去的。邪灵是非常遵守律法的，他说“我的房子”，就是说他有合法的权利进入那个人里面。所以邪灵会寻找一个合法的权利进入一个人生命里，去影响他。我们以后会详细解释这点。

邪灵说这个人是我的家。圣经告诉我们，我们的身体是圣灵的殿，是耶稣的宝血赎买回来的，我们是单单属耶稣的。所以你的身体是你的家，我们邀请圣灵进入我们的身体，我们的身体成为圣灵的殿。邪灵看着这个人说这是他的房子，他们是在宣称他们有合法的权利拥有这个屋子。他“就看见里面空闲、打扫干净、修饰好了。”就是说邪灵可以找到之前被赶出的那个人。可以想象在灵界里，他们可以认出不同的人。如果我从他身上赶鬼出去，鬼去到很远的地方，他会记得他是从谁的身上赶出去的，也可以再找回来。

你说“为什么不把他赶到地狱里去？”圣经里没有任何的经文告诉我们可以把他赶到地狱里。圣经里有讲现在很多捆绑在地狱里的邪灵，在末世的时候会被释放出来，圣经也告诉我们耶稣在审批日的时候，会把所有的魔鬼捆绑在地狱里。在这之前，他们就是在地上游走的邪灵，寻找可以吞吃，可以毁坏的人。另一方面，邪灵可以知道你的属灵光景，他看见你“里面空闲、打扫干净、修饰好了”。空闲，就是你在度假，没有生产力，不做任何事情。打扫干净，就是指外面看起来是干净的。这里有一个非常困扰的事情，当我们看人时，我们只看到他们所住的房子，就像用帷幕遮盖一样。圣经告诉我们，我们有灵，有魂，住在这个屋子里。

邪灵看我们不一样。当我们看人时，我们只看表面。而当邪灵看人时，他会看见你灵里面的人。当我们看人时，我们看的是人的身体。邪灵看人时，看的是我们真正灵里面的人，你属灵的光景是可见的。从灵界的角度，你真实的人是邪灵可以看得见的。邪灵可以知道你属灵的光景。

有一次我在做释放事工时，一位弟兄跟着一起来，当时赶鬼释放是很艰难的，邪灵开始彰显威吓我。我就站起来抵挡他，他就做了一个很奇特的事情，那个人就转离我，面对与我一起来服事的弟兄放声大笑，并开始讲发生在这位弟兄身上的事情，讲出他看见的灵里的状况。这位弟兄非常尴尬，脸色通红。我说你现在还不适合做这样的服事，因为你还没有建立你的权柄。我非常讶异邪灵可以看见他灵里面的状况。

所以我们要保持这样的释放，带给人真正的自由，必须找到问题的根源，让邪灵没有重新进入的权利。

圣经这里第45节讲到，“另带了七个比自己更恶的鬼来、都进去住在那里．那人末后的景况、比先前更不好了。”换句话说，邪灵可以彼此沟通，他们一起分工合作，扩张在那人生命中的领地。我们读完这段经文之后的结论是，光赶鬼是不够的，我们必须要处理这人生命中的根本问题，建立他们与神同行的生活。他们属灵的生活不能只是空闲在那里，而是要很积极地追求。

有一段非常有趣的经文，以弗所书第四章28节说，“从前偷窃的，不要再偷；总要劳力，亲手作正经事，就可有余，分给那缺少的人。”讲的是停止偷窃还不够，必须要改变，亲手作正经事，就可有余。所以对一个偷窃的人来说，他的自由不是来自于他停止偷窃，而是当他经历改变，给予出去的时候，他才经历自由。弃绝谎言，说诚实话，彼此相爱。

所以不只是要停止负面的行为，更需要拥抱正面的东西，改变他们的生活。没有中间地带。当我们经历到爱时，我们是从死亡进入到生命里。所以我们必须要教导当鬼从这人身上赶出去时，这人首先需要与圣灵同行，在他们的生命中有真实的改变。

请看路加福音第十一章20至22节，耶稣讲到释放时说，“我若靠着神的能力赶鬼，这就是　神的国临到你们了。壮士披挂整齐，看守自己的住宅，他所有的都平安无事。但有一个比他更壮的来，胜过他，就夺去他所倚靠的盔甲兵器，又分了他的赃。”

耶稣讲这里是在讲释放。他提到两点，一，壮士。二，盔甲兵器。他讲到你要使一个人得自由，就要把他的盔甲兵器挪开。壮士是指邪灵在一个人生命中的某个领域胜过了这个人。举例来讲可能是一个被拒绝的坚固营垒。这个人灵里面充满了被拒绝的意念和感受，在这个人的生命里的某一点建立了坚固营垒。坚固营垒是一个心思意念，是我们思想的模式，是抵挡真理的思想模式。如果有人有一个根本的被拒绝的问题，就是一个心思意念的坚固营垒。他与人的互动，都是透过这个坚固营垒来看世界。

给大家一个例子。假如两个人在交谈，牧师走进教会，牧师非常忙碌，一直在想他接下来要做的事情。当两人转向牧师说，“牧师好。”牧师则继续往前走，没有听到。其中一人这样想：“牧师很忙，我等一下再去找他。”另一位这样想：“他不喜欢我，我就知道牧师不喜欢我，他就是讨厌我。”于是整个崇拜中，他就是这种心情，越想越气，整个主日崇拜都被毁了。他没有办法不去想今天牧师拒绝了我。

两个人有同样的经历，但是他们的解读却是不一样的。其中一个没有被拒绝的坚固营垒，他的态度是“没关系，他很忙，我迟点再找他。”另外一个，有被拒绝的坚固营垒的，同样的经历，却认为他不想理我，他不喜欢我。所以他里面的坚固营垒的情绪就被挑旺，邪灵就不断的用这种方式搅扰他。

耶稣说，被搅扰的灵就是这个壮士，在影响这个人的生命。那个盔甲就是要保护这个邪灵不被赶出去。盔甲就是这个人生命中问题的根源。邪灵可以进入到我们生命中的一个方式就是欺哄。当人相信谎言时，邪灵就隐藏在谎言的背后。

如果一个人的问题根源是被拒绝，可能会有被拒绝的灵，还有可能有谎言，或者是伤痛的经历，或者有一些经历让这个灵进入他里面。耶稣告诉我们，你要拆毁邪灵居住的架构，你就会很容易把他赶出去。你把他的盔甲拆毁挪开之后，就很容易把他赶出去了。

所以我们的事工不 仅仅是赶鬼，我们要与那个人一起同工，了解邪灵居住的架构是什么。我们一起把邪灵居住的房子拆毁，邪灵没有地方可以继续抓住，他就没有办法再回来。

当你赶走了这个被拒绝的灵之后，这个人仍然相信谎言，相信他不是被爱的，不是被接纳的。在经历过几个他认为是负面的经历后，邪灵就会回来了。所以释放的事工不只是赶鬼，我们也要服事这个人，处理他生命中让邪灵进入的坚固营垒。我们要知道坚固营垒是什么，是怎样运行的。所以在服事，做释放事工的时候，要知道邪灵所居住的架构是什么，是什么让他可以抓住人的生命。

这就带出了一个问题，邪灵是怎样开始进入人，影响人生命的？不同的事工会从不同的角度来看这个问题。有些人甚至不看那些最根本的问题，我觉得这是个问题，因为邪灵赶出去后，还是会回来的。不同的事工会从不同的角度来看邪灵是怎样进来的，但最终会达到一个共同的结论。

第一种进入人的方式就是透过合法的权利。合法的权利代表邪灵有着合法的权柄，因着属灵的法则进入这个人的生命。这个权柄是因着这个人的犯罪而给予邪灵的。

以弗所书四章27节告诉我们，“不可给魔鬼留地步。”地步在希腊文里面的意思是合法的空间。不要给仇敌魔鬼一个合法的空间进入。

魔鬼进入我们生命最主要的方式就是透过这种合法的权利。当我们行走在神所设的法则原则当中时，我们是活在祝福里。当我们违背了神的律法，后果是相当严重的。我们收获的是我们所种下的，邪灵就有了合法的权利进入我们里面。之后我们会讲到耶稣在十字架上已经解决了这个合法权利的问题。当我们服事人时，我们要处理这个合法权利，让仇敌魔鬼在这人身上没有留任何的地步。要做的方式也非常简单。

第二种进入人的方式就是透过一些悲惨的不好的经历进入。这样一个伤痛的经历，就是在他情感上非常受伤的经历，可能是一次意外，或者让他惊吓的经历，或者长期处于压力当中。所以这样创伤的经历会在情绪上，身体上，影响这个人生命。很多时邪灵就会利用这种经历进入到人的生命当中。

当我们要帮助一个人时，你会发现在他伤痛的经历里面是有图案的，有记忆的，仇敌魔鬼就会把自己绑在这些记忆当中。

第三种进入人的方式是我们面对着这些惨痛经历时的回应。当一个人受伤时，他通常会想要回应，要控制这种疼痛，尝试要控制他们的人生。当他想要控制掌握他的人生时，在这个过程中，常常会给邪灵有合法的机会进来。

我自己的服事经历告诉我，这三种方式都是连在一起的。合法的权利，惨痛的经历，以及我们对这些惨痛经历的回应都是绑在一起的。所以当我们在服事一个人时，我们需要主要他们生命中的问题，我们要思考合法的权利，伤痛的经历，和对伤痛经历的回应。我们会详细谈这个，我会给大家一个步骤，一步一步的分析找到他生命中问题的根源。

当邪灵进入当一个人的生命中时，会带来一些他里面的问题。会影响这个人生命中不同的领域。这些领域包括：

1）他们会经历灵界的彰显。例如做噩梦，在梦里有可怕的东西显现，灵界的彰显显然来自于错误的根源。

2）邪灵也会影响我们的心思意念，有一些负面的想法不断的在我们里面得胜。

3）邪灵也会影响我们的情感，有一些情绪会突然出现，我们无法掌控。

4）邪灵也会影响我们的身体，带来一些疾病是我们无法回应的。

5）邪灵也会影响人的生活，透过一个不断循环挫败的模式。

这样的方式是如何在一个人的身上运行的呢？我想透过这样的方式向大家解释，我们看几处经文以帮助大家理解。先来看以弗所书三章20节说，邪灵和坚固营垒的运行会给人里面带来一个能量，但是圣灵也是在我们里面，带来一个能量，能力的。

给大家一个例子，当一个人生气的时候，会感觉到生气，里面有非常大的力量要冲出来，这是负面的力量。当一个人沮丧的时候，他们感受到他们周围有一个压制的负面的力量。当人们受到性犯罪的诱惑时，会感受到情欲的力量在他们的周围。我要告诉大家这两种运行其实是一样的。

第一个在以弗所书二章1至2节告诉我们，“你们死在过犯罪恶之中，他叫你们活过来；那时，你们在其中行事为人随从今世的风俗，顺服空中掌权者的首领，就是现今在悖逆之子心中运行的邪灵。”这里说的，是在我们心中运行的邪灵。这个运行在希腊文中的意思是“给予力量”，“兴奋起来”。所以当邪灵在一个人的生命中时，他释放一个强而有力的负面的能力，一个强而有力的属灵的压力在他身上。邪灵会释放一个强大的能量在人的生命里面，压制他们，捆绑他们，压制他们的心思，压制他们的意念，压制他们的生命。所以当邪灵在运行时，你会感受到能量的运行。

我们再看罗马书第七章5节，“因为我们属肉体的时候，那因律法而生的恶欲，就在我们肢体中发动，以致结成死亡的果子。”这里说在我们里面发动了，罪会在人里面发动，那个发动的意思就是给予能力，邪灵会在我们里面发动，给我们能量，在我们生命里面带来负面的压力。罪也做同样的事情，在人的生命中带来负面的能量。当我们在描述罪跟邪灵带来的影响的时候，圣经用“给予力量”来形容。当罪和邪灵运行在人的生命里时，那个人会感受到里面有一个很大的负面的能量要释放出来，我们不能透过人的意志力来胜过这个能量，因为这是一个属灵的能量。罪会释放属灵的能量在我们生命里面，这个能量是 运行在人的里面的力量，这个力量不断的要求释放的更多。邪灵会释放负面的能力，运行在人的里面。所以当人在罪和邪灵的影响下时，他里面会有一个很大的负面的能量正在压制他的生命。当我们面对邪灵的时候，我们需要先处理他生命里的罪，把罪对他生命产生的负面的能量挪开。

我们再看以弗所书第三章20节，“神能照着运行在我们心里的大力，充充足足的成就一切超过我们所求所想的。”对一个基督徒来说，在我们里面有一个正面了力量在运行当中。这个“运行”与我们前面提到的“运行”是一样的，在我们里面运行的力量是圣灵的大能。换句话说，圣灵其中之一的工作就是让我们的生命得着这样的能力，让我们有力量胜过这一切。

我们来看第16节保罗所做的祷告，“求他按着他丰盛的荣耀，借着他的灵，叫你们心里的力量刚强起来”。所以一定是可以的，我们可以借着神的灵，让我们内心的能力刚强起来。这个“刚强”就是“大大的加增，强壮”，就是“带着极大的能力”。所以虽然罪带出一个负面的能量，让我们远离神，虽然邪灵带来负面的能量，但是我们有另外一个正面的能量，是圣灵的大能，神的灵可以让我们刚强起来得胜。

帖撒罗尼迦前书第二章13节，“为此，我们也不住的感谢神，因你们听见我们所传　神的道、就领受了不以为是人的道、乃以为是　神的道．这道实在是　神的、并且运行在你们信主的人心中。”这里再次提到“运行”，神的道可以给予你极大刚强的生命，神的道可以大大的加增你生命的能力。我们知道负面能量的来源是罪和邪灵，但是正面的得胜的能量来自于圣灵和神的话语。

所以要帮助一个人得着真正的自由，我需要除去这个负面能量的来源，处理他生命中的罪和伤痛的经历，把邪灵赶出去，但是以人的意志力是不能够得胜的。很多时，我们只是告诉人该做什么，但是那个人的生命需要有能力去做这些事情，他需要知道他灵里面的人如何刚强起来，他需要知道如何透过神的灵，神的话刚强起来。过去他的生命是在挫败里面，而现在他们的生命充满了神的灵的大能和神的道的能力。我常常问这样的问题，“你怎样让神的道使你的灵刚强起来呢？”圣经告诉我们，神的道就有这样的功能。但是我的生命要怎样借着神的道刚强起来呢？

我们要做的不只是挪开负面的东西，我们要带人进入真正的生命里。所以当我们讲释放，不单是赶鬼而已。我们是把他们从过去负面的能量中转向，连结在生命的能量的源头。所以赶鬼只是其中一个部分而已，当我们更深的带人进入自由里时，我的目的是找出给予负面能量的源头并处理这个源头，带他们进入一个生命中神的大能在运行的模式，他们的生命因着充满神的能量刚强起来。

我们要知道怎样去做，怎样发现他的根本问题，怎样带他到生命的源头里。当人们经历了神的大能，他的生命刚强起来时。圣经这样告诉我们，“生命的律释放我，从罪和死亡的律”。换句话说，我需要活在神的生命的大能里才可以。不只是要赶鬼而已，我要从过去黑暗辖制捆绑当中来到自由的里面。这就是我们所谓的门徒训练，就是带人进入一个在神里面是活跃的地方。

很多时候当我们服事人时，他们只要我们帮他们解决问题，或者把他们的伤痛挪开，当然我们的目的是要带他们进入耶稣基督生命的源头里，当他们生命中与基督连结时，就有神的大能在他们生命中运行。

（一位学员被邀请上前做祷告示范）

神渴望我们把他的生命带到别人的生命中，这不应该是很困难的事情。主，我们感谢你来到她的身上，与她同在。我们不单单只是解决问题，我们要带领人认识生命的源头，不单是赶鬼，而是带人进入到基督的生命里。

（请上前来，闭上眼，将你的心敞开，让神触摸你）

我们相信神的同在，神呼召我们带来神的同在，想象神的百姓带着神的同在，而不是活在邪灵的辖制里面。很多时候我们的想法很负面，有邪灵，我需要解决他邪灵的问题。但是人受造是要让圣灵居住的，所以我们不只是要解决邪灵的问题，而是要带着神的同在，让他们的生命被神完全充满。过去我们是在邪恶的辖制里面，现在他们在圣灵的影响和充满当中。

（来，来，圣灵充满她，赶快来到她的右边，我们向神敞开。）

我总是想知道这是如何发生的，你要怎样建构你的生命，让神可以居住在里面。不应该困难，应该很容易的。我也要在这方面帮助大家。我们需要学习的是如何面对问题，如何解决邪灵的问题，怎样帮助人在神里面建构生命，使他们从被邪灵辖制到被圣灵充满，带着神的同在。

如果你只是透过赶鬼来释放的话，你会很兴奋，每次看到鬼就赶。可是如果我们从神的角度看，让人被圣灵充满，那就不单只是赶鬼了，而是要带他们进入生命的源头。阿门！

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我们现在来看邪灵进入人生命的门，邪灵是如何进入人生命中的，如何处理，把这些门关上。如果我们只是要赶鬼，而没有处理他们生命中根本的问题，释放他们得自由是很困难的，让他们持守在自由里面也是困难的。我们要来看圣灵进入人生命里的方式，当中有些是你已经知道的，有些也可能是你今天才知道的。我们会一一来看，然后解释如何处理这种方式。

有三个主要的部分: 一）合法的权利。什么是合法的权利，在合法的权利中仇敌怎样进入到人的生命中。我们要怎样拆毁这个合法的权利。在我们开始这些之前，我们要看耶稣在十字架上为我们所成就的，我们要看三处经文，耶稣已经处理好所有我们需要面对的问题。当我们看这需要服事的部分时，我们要知道如何面对这些问题。

我们首先来了解我们自由的根基是什么。歌罗西书第二章13至15节，“你们从前在过犯，和未受割礼的肉体中死了，神赦免了你们一切过犯，便叫你们与基督一同活过来。你们从前在过犯，和未受割礼的肉体中死了，神赦免了你们一切过犯，便叫你们与基督一同活过来。又涂抹了在律例上所写，攻击我们有碍于我们的字据，把他撤去，钉在十字架上。既将一切执政的掌权的掳来，明显给众人看，就仗着十字架夸胜。既将一切执政的掌权的掳来，明显给众人看，就仗着十字架夸胜。”

我们在这一段中看到耶稣为我们所成就的，这里说他“涂抹了我们所有的过犯，赦免我们的罪”，这里的过犯就是指我们刻意要犯的错，耶稣已经赦免了我们一切的过犯，又涂抹了在律例上所写，攻击我们，有碍于我们的字据，把他撤去，钉在十字架上。你会发现耶稣完全涂抹了攻击我们的字据。换句话说，我们违背神律法的所有证据，不管是我们知道还是不知道的犯罪，这些证据都有写下来，有时我们很难理解所有我们的过犯都有记录下来。

在旧约中我们知道如果你刻意犯罪，需要献祭，如果你无知犯罪，你也需要来到神的面前献祭。你可以想象就像一个人透过影片在看你的人生。天使有一个很大的工作就是记载你每一次的犯罪，他有一个很大的书卷。圣经讲耶稣将整个书卷钉在十字架上。

所有仇敌魔鬼可以看到你的东西，你曾经犯过的罪，仇敌魔鬼的控告就是指向那个书卷。所有你所犯的一切的错，耶稣都把它钉在十字架上。当耶稣把它钉在十字架上时，他赦免了我们一切的过犯。赦免代表我们不需要再还债。魔鬼说，“你犯了罪，你要偿还债务。”耶稣把它钉在十字架上，释放，每一个人都得到豁免。“既将一切执政的掌权的掳来、明显给众人看、就仗着十字架夸胜。”

所以当耶稣把我们的罪带到十字架上时，他已经挪开仇敌魔鬼可以攻击我们的兵器。所以在歌罗西书第二章我们看见，所有我们犯的罪，所有仇敌魔鬼有的合法权利，耶稣都已经把它带到十字架上了，他流出他的宝血，使这个合法的权利可以破除。就像我们刚才在路加福音第十一章看到的，“除去盔甲”，把罪除去。

我们必须要面对他们生命中罪的问题。神对罪是有补救方法的。有人会说，“这是我的软弱。”但是如果这不是罪，就没法带到十字架，没法胜过了。可是我们承认这是罪，把它带到十字架前。约翰一书第一章9节，“我们若认自己的罪，神是信实的，是公义的，必要赦免我们的罪，洗净我们一切的不义。”洗净我们从罪带来的一切的不洁。所以要了解耶稣为我们所做的，他在十字架上为我们担当了一切的过犯。如果一个人受邪灵影响的原因是因为罪，那么把他的罪带到十字架前。很多时人们只是要我们为他们祷告，我们必须告诉他们真理是什么，把他们引导到神的面前。

第二处经文是加拉太书第三章13至14节，“基督既为我们受了咒诅，就赎出我们脱离律法的咒诅。因为经上记着，『凡挂在木头上都是被咒诅的。』这便叫亚伯拉罕的福，因基督耶稣可以临到外邦人，使我们因信得着所应许的圣灵。”这里提到的是咒诅的问题解决了，这两节经文讲的是咒诅和祝福。

祝福就是透过言语释放出来的一个能力，也代表领受圣灵，领受祝福代表我们领受圣灵的能力，充满在我们生命里面，让我们继续在生活当中前行。所以蒙福的人生就是被圣灵能力充满的人生，蒙福的人生是活在圣灵运行里面的人生，所以第13节说“基督既为我们受了咒诅，就赎出我们脱离律法的咒诅”。咒诅就是带有负面的属灵能力的言语，那个能力是毁灭性的能力，咒诅背后的能力就是邪灵的能力。这里说耶稣为我们成为咒诅。

在旧约里有一节我们很熟悉的经文，“凡挂在木头上都是被咒诅的。”这是在罗马人发明钉十字架这一酷刑之前几百年就已经记载了。所以当罗马兵选择将耶稣钉十字架时，他们选择让耶稣受的刑法，让他经历了人类所有的咒诅，所有历代家族的咒诅，违背神律法所带下来的咒诅，所有在申命记二十七章所记载的咒诅，所有这些咒诅在十字架上都被破除了。基督救赎了我们，换句话说，他偿还了所有的赎价，这是合法的代价，他付上赎金将我们从辖制当中买赎回来。

当我们面对弟兄姐妹时，如果在他们生命中有咒诅临到，不管是历代家族的咒诅或者其它任何的咒诅，主耶稣在十字架上流出的宝血是解决咒诅的答案。我们要把咒诅带到十字架前，让咒诅的能力被破除。所以每一次我们在处理生命中有咒诅的人的 时候，我们要把他们的咒诅带到十字架前，让咒诅的能力被破除。然后让圣灵运行在他们生命当中，让祝福临到。

所以当我们在处理咒诅问题的时候，我们期待他会从邪灵的影响当中得释放，然后让圣灵充满，运行在他生命中。我们迟一点再来讲如何让圣灵运行。

现在我们来看以赛亚书五十三章，这是非常好的经文，如果我们能够背下来就更好了。这里讲的是我们可以收回曾经给予仇敌魔鬼的合法权柄，从而得到自由。如果仇敌魔鬼是透过合法权柄进入我们生命里面，神把这个合法权柄夺回，释放我们。所以当你服事人的时候，把这个合法权利从仇敌魔鬼那里夺回来，邪灵就没有合法的权柄停留在那人生命中。

以赛亚书五十三章3节，我要你了解耶稣在十字架上所成就的有多么伟大。“他被藐视，被人厌弃，多受痛苦，常经忧患。他被藐视，好像被人掩面不看的一样；我们也不尊重他。”他全然担当我们的忧患，背负我们的痛苦。忧患代表在忧伤，困难，疾病，软弱中；痛苦代表我们情感上的忧伤和精神上的折磨。

所以耶稣担当了我们的忧患，背负了我们的痛苦，第5节，“哪知他为我们的过犯受害，为我们的罪孽压伤。因他受的刑罚，我们得平安；因他受的鞭伤，我们得医治。”我们讲到过犯是指我们刻意的要去违背神的律法。罪孽使我们内心扭曲倾向犯罪，是我们人性的扭曲和对犯罪的喜好。第6节，“我们都如羊走迷，各人偏行己路。耶和华使我们众人的罪孽都归在他身上。”

从我们所看的这三处经文中可知，在十字架上耶稣处理了我们的过犯和罪孽，他处理了我们生命当中所有的咒诅，处理了我们所有的忧患和痛苦，所有我们伤痛的经历，他处理了我们生命中扭曲转离神的罪孽，耶稣在十字架上为我们完成了整个和好的工作，我们需要思考的是我们应该怎样把这个应用在我们的服事当中。

在旧约中，人们必须把羊羔的血涂在门楣上，羊的血不只是要流出来，还要涂上去。所以我们要把耶稣为我们流的宝血，他为我们所做的应用在我们的服事当中。换句话说，我们必须要借着信心来使用神为我们所成就的。所以在整个服事当中，我们有我们要做的，被服事者也有他们需要做的，在他们得到自由的过程中，他们也有需要做的事情。

举例来说，当我们讲重生得救的时候，耶稣为我们死在十字架上，使我们可以重生得救，让每一个人都可以得救。从合法的角度讲，每一个人都可以重生得救，但是要让救恩彰显在他的生命当中，他自己必须要有所回应，他们必须要认罪悔改，然后相信。所以让神运行工作之前，人必须预备好自己，做一些事情来回应神。

所以我们的责任是要带他们来认识，应用神已经为他们成就的。第一个是让他们得自由，第二是让他们持守在自由里面。他们要应用主耶稣为他们所成就的。要应用需要信心，所以在他们得自由之前，一定要把这些讲清楚，让这些成为他们得自由的根基。我觉得人们没有得自由或持守在自由里面的原因是，他们生命里面根本的东西并没有拔除。或者在过程中，那个人并没有一起参与同工。

我们刚才谈到了自由的根基，我们看到耶稣在十字架上为我们所成就的，当时每个人都必须做好他需要做的事。我给大家一个人必须要做回应的清单。第一，人们必须要看清楚而且要为他生命中的挫败承担责任。很多时候人们都喜欢怪罪其它的事情，他们有很多的借口，很多的理由去怪罪别人，但是迈向自由中很重要的一部分就是要为你犯的罪和挫败承担责任。

箴言第二十八章13节，“遮掩自己罪过的，必不亨通；承认离弃罪过的，必蒙怜恤。”如果我们把我们该负的责任隐藏起来，通常我们透过怪罪别人来不负起我们的责任，或者减低我们应负的，或者否定我们的问题，这些其实是在拦阻神让我们得自由的工作。所以当我们在服事人的时候，他们如果不愿意为自己所做的承担责任，你很难继续下去。如果他们没有承认他们活在一个模式里面，他们很难得到自由。

我们最大的挑战就是让人看见真理，很多时候他们会把问题隐藏起来，或者假装问题没有那么糟糕。最近我在服事一位姐妹的时候，她在挣扎，因为她无法怀孕，她渴望有一个家庭。我跟她分享，听她的故事。我说，你已经有一个家庭了，你有四个孩子，你之前夺走了四个孩子的生命，他们现在在天国，他们是真实的，有各自的名字的。所以你之前所做的事情，造成了你现在无法怀孕。

对她来讲，这是一个很痛苦的经历，让她面对她现在无法怀孕这个事实是跟她之前四次堕胎有关系的。我跟她说让我们祷告，让她可以得着医治，可以怀孕之前，要承认是什么样的原因使你陷入现在的痛苦光景中。在天国你有四个孩子，他们的生命是因为你这样的选择而结束的。耶稣认识他们每一个，你需要来到耶稣面前，他已经饶恕了你，你需要来领受他的饶恕。我们可以为你祷告，让这个罪带来的结果可以得着医治。她想要得医治，却不想要去面对因她之前的选择所造成的后果。我说你要先经历饶恕，承认你对在天国的孩子们所做的事。神深深的触摸了她，她当天也给四个孩子都取了名字。

所以我们最大的挑战就是在服事弟兄姐妹的时候让他们认清他们真正的原因是什么，也愿意为这个问题承担责任。在提摩太后书第二章24至26节 中写道，“然而主的仆人不可争竞；只要温温和和地待众人，善于教导，存心忍耐， 用温柔劝戒那抵挡的人，或者神给他们悔改的心，可以明白真道， 叫他们这已经被魔鬼任意掳去的，可以醒悟，脱离他的网罗。”这里讲的是一个被魔鬼掳去的人，换句话说，就是在无法摆脱的影响之下，魔鬼控制了他的心思意念，甚至决定，他需要脱离这个网罗。

在他脱离网罗得自由之前，有一个很重要的步骤，就是需要明白真道，愿意悔改，他们就可以脱离魔鬼的网罗。如同26节讲，“可以醒悟。”就是清醒明白过来。所以在他们承认这个真理之前，通常会有很多的冲突，可是一旦他们承认了真理，他们就进入了自由的过程中。所以当你在服事人，跟他们分享真理的时候，你会发现他们的心思意念就像一个战场，可是当他们明白，承认之后，会有一个突破。

承认真理和悔改是在脱离网罗之前。在我们服事人的过程中，我们会问他们一些问题，以帮助我们明白他们的问题所在，然后告诉他们真理是什么，告诉他们如何在这个过程中一步步地得释放，然后用神的大能让他们经历到释放。这样讲明白吗？我们会问一些问题，诊断出问题的根源，帮助他们认识真理。如果他们愿意承认这个真理，愿意进入悔改里面，你就可以带他们进入到自由。如果他们不承认真理，或者不愿意悔改，他们就没办法得自由，或者如果你帮他们得自由，他们也没法持守在自由里面。所以在我们的服事当中，先认识真理，之后才能进入神的大能里面。

所以当我跟这位姐妹分享时，她是在教会里面做领袖的，非常有影响力。可是因为无法生育，她的心常常被搅扰。所以当我说她有四个孩子的时候，可以感觉到她周围困惑的气氛。接下来我要慢慢的一步步的帮她分析，让她看清，因为她过去相信一个谎言，以为这不是一个生命，只是我生命中需要解决的问题。我需要帮助她了解，她有四个孩子，他们现在住在天上。你现在有这样的问题，是因为你过去夺走了他们的生命。她就解释她当时堕胎的原因，很多压抑和伤痛。

我说，“我们没有办法进入到自由里面，除非你能够诚实的承认，面对生命中的问题。这是圣经中明确讲明的。“你会感到她里面有很多的挣扎和困惑，突然就清晰起来，她就明白了她所做的。然后，她就因着她所做的开始忧伤了，这个时刻就是我们开始服事，为她祷告的时候。因为她承认真理，也愿意悔改。

所以我们的服事过程其实很简单，就是首先发现问题的根源，然后帮助他承认，悔改。一开始他很苦毒的怪罪周围的人，我说当你怪罪别人的时候，你自己就是一个受害者，一个受害者的心是无法得着自由的。当你怪罪别人的时候，你把你得自由的能力给了别人。可是当你愿意为你的状况承担责任的时候，你就再次有能力得到释放。

所以我们第一个带他们进入的就是让他们认识到自己的罪，并为他们所做的承担责任。当他们愿意看清问题所在，也愿意承担责任，就可以继续下一个步骤了。有一位姐妹，我本来是要为她祷告的，她问我说，“有个人想跟我结婚，我应该怎么办？”这种问题通常很微妙。于是我说，“可以告诉我你的状况吗？”她说，“我曾经跟这个人交往了三四年，分手后，我又跟另外一个人交往并有了一个孩子，然后又分手了。现在这个人又回来说要娶我。”我问她，“你们为什么分手呢？”她说，“他之前曾经三次对我不忠实。”我说，”这是一个很合理的理由。通常不忠实一次就已经分手了，你还等了三次。”我说，“他是基督徒吗？”她说，“他不是。”

于是我说，“答案非常简单，过去他对你不忠实三次，他的心也没有经历过改变，他会继续做他之前所做的。”可是我可以感觉到她没有听我的话，因为她想要跟这个人结婚。我问她，“你可不可以跟我分享一些你自己的家庭，分享一下你的父亲。”她说，“我不跟我的父亲碰面。”“为什么？”“当我十三岁的时候，我的父母就离异了。他现在跟别人住在一起。”我说，“我很好奇你的父母是怎样离婚的。”“我父亲不忠实。”“多少次？”“三次。”整个过程其实很奇特。我说，“你对你的父亲有苦毒，你论断他，这个根源一直没有解决。这就是为什么你被同样的男人吸引，而且你也受蒙蔽了，看不出他的真实面目。这段关系是一个灾难，你需要处理的是心中对你父亲的苦毒。我很讶异她说她看不出这个情况，其实是她不想看见，因为她只想着跟这个男人结婚。我说，“很抱歉，我没法帮到你。因为你不愿意面对你生命中的苦毒，也不愿意相信其实你里面有邪灵在影响你。”

所以当我们在服事弟兄姐妹的时候，第一个阶段就是要了解问题的根本是什么，帮助对方看到他们所应承担的责任，然后帮助他们得自由。

1） 帮助他认清问题，承担责任。

2） 认罪，悔改。一个人要得到自由，他身上罪的问题一定要先处理，如果有因罪带来的合法权利，罪必须要从他身上先挪开。透过认罪，悔改，我们可以把罪从他身上挪开。约翰一书第一章9节，“我们若认自己的罪，　神是信实的，是公义的，必要赦免我们的罪，洗净我们一切的不义。”所以我们要先处理罪的问题。人们必须要认罪，悔改，处理罪的问题。悔改代表我们转离罪。罪引导我们走向死亡，转离罪，就会引导我们走向生命。很多时候释放很困难，是因为他没有真正的认罪。

3） 服事的对象必须要释放，饶恕。马可福音第十一章25节告诉我们，“你们站着祷告的时候，若想起有人得罪你们，就当饶恕他，好叫你们在天上的父也饶恕你们的过犯。”人们无法得自由的另一个主要的原因就是因为不饶恕。

不饶恕使人的魂和伤害他的事情与背后的邪灵绑在一起。当一个人里面有不饶恕的时候，通常他的心中会有憎恨，因为不公义的事情临到他的身上，他生命中一些宝贵的东西被夺走了。可能是真实的伤害，也可能只是想象中的伤害。不饶恕就是债务一定要偿还，你欠了我的，你一定要还。就如怀恨父亲，因为他对家庭不忠，破坏了整个家，我受苦了这么多年，你一定要偿还。我们心里面对那个伤害的要求，就是要偿还的要求。

饶恕就是你欠了我的，你不用偿还了，我释放你，你不需要跟我道歉，你不需要补偿我，你不需要做任何事情，我已经把要求你偿还的权利放下。如果我们要释放人得自由，就需要明白饶恕的大能和重要性。马太福音第十八章34至35节中说，你们若不 从 心 里 饶 恕 你 的 弟 兄，就会被交给掌刑的。换句话说，不饶恕会带给邪灵合法的权利，可以进入你的生命里面。

我发现这越来越成为一个问题。如果只是简单的对人说，“嘿，你需要饶恕。”是不够的。他需要从心里面饶恕，必须是一个心里面的决定，从死亡转向生命。“我放下不饶恕，我释放饶恕，我愿意祝福这个人。”耶稣说你要祝福那些抵挡你伤害你的人，为他们祷告。所以饶恕他们是放开他们，祝福他们。所以我发现，不是机械的对他们说，“你需要饶恕。”然后为他们祷告。可是他的心没有在里面，这样他们是不会得自由的。饶恕是一个决定，是一个选择，是从心里出发，愿意放手。

有些时候他们做的祷告只是言语，心里却没有真正放下来，因为他们把那个伤痛和愤怒埋藏在他们心底的深处。当你在服事弟兄姐妹的时候，一定要了解，一个人可能受伤很深。让我举个例子帮你理解。如果Jonathan过来跟我说，“麦克牧师，请你原谅我。我带给你一些伤害，你会饶恕我吗？”我说，“是的，是的，没问题。”关键是，他没有告诉我他做了什么，我也没有问。是一块钱的问题还是一百万的问题？你做的事情对我有多深的影响？如果你拿了一块钱，没问题；如果是一百万，你毁了我的生活，我存了那么久的钱被你偷走了，你要我饶恕你，我气死了。你发现一块钱和一百万是不一样的。我的损失与我是相连的。如果你要我饶恕，我就要了解我释放的是什么。所以很多人在释放的时候，只是在头脑里做了祷告，可是心却没有参与到这个过程中。所以在你服事人的时候，这样做是有帮助的，你帮助他承认心中真正的伤痛。这个人做了什么？怎样影响了你？你的感觉是什么？很多人否认他真正的感受，在华人里面更是。他们就是忍者，如刀在心，可是里面很苦毒。如果一个人苦毒，他会显现出来，说话很尖锐，苦毒像河流一样玷污周围的人。

所以在我为一个人释放祷告之前，我会让他们写下来分享这件事对他的影响到底是什么。“你觉得怎么样？”“你生气吗？”“你有多生气？”很多时候这些情绪都被压抑起来。我发现这样做很有帮助，用问题与他互动。因为当他承认他内心的感受的时候，他才会跟他的心连结。“当你想到这个人的时候，你的感觉是什么？”“我才不想他呢。”是的，因为你想要逃避。可是当你真正去想你的感觉，你会害怕，你会生气，你会痛，让他把情绪带出来。

有时我会让人写一封“生气的信”，其实不是给任何人看，只是让他自己和神看，把他心里的感受写出来摆在面前。有的时候是对父亲，或者是对母亲，有时是其他人。当你写的时候，先把好的东西写下来，因为他们不把好的东西写下来，他们要经历这个过程。当他写坏的部分时，“哦，对我很坏。”“哦，其实也没有那么坏。”“我好生气。”“哦，他其实还挺好的。”这样他就没有办法真正的跟心连结。所以如果跟你的父亲有关系的，先写下来他的优点，感谢你给我这么多好的东西，然后再写下来真正带给你忧伤的事情。写下来你心里真实的感受，让感受真实的流露出来，为你的感受忧伤流泪。这时才释放饶恕。你就知道你要放下，要饶恕什么了，“我释放他，饶恕他，祝福他。”要得到自由，饶恕是一个非常重要的部分。神要我们活在这个地方，不是要我们不断的要求别人，而是要成为别人的祝福。

有时候，我会暂停服事，先帮助他们一起面对他们的感受，将感受表达出来，饶恕别人，特别是那些有被虐待和有非常惨痛经历的。然后释放饶恕，我饶恕他们，我祝福他们。特别是对于那些长期的来自于家人的伤痛。我鼓励他在接下来三个星期，每次敬拜神的时候，都想到那个人，去拥抱他们，祝福他们，为他们祷告。因为当你的心里还有伤痛和怒气的时候，你是不可能这样做的。这些都是带我们得自由的根基。如果我们没有承认我们的罪，就会拦阻整个过程，如果我们没有悔改，也无法进入到自由里面，如果我们没有饶恕，也无法得自由。

下一个步骤就是，人们必须要弃绝他们生命中的捆绑。我会解释到底有什么样的捆绑，然后怎样做。捆绑可以是历代家族的咒诅，或者内在誓言。举例来说，我之前为一位女士祷告，她想要怀孕，我问她之前你有没有怀孕过，她说我们有一个孩子，可是之后又流产过三四次。“你可以讲一下第一次怀孕的情况吗？”“非常艰难，非常痛苦。”“你有没有曾经在心里面说再也不要生孩子了？”“有的。”这就是内在誓言带来的结果，你的身体是在回应你的内在誓言。你的身体在拒绝每一个闯进去的孩子，因为你说过不要再有孩子了。你必须要破除弃绝这个咒诅对你生命的影响。然后我们会讲这个弃绝是什么。这里我们讲到承认我们的问题，负起责任，悔改，认罪，饶恕，弃绝，破除捆绑，最后就是寻找神的大能来释放自由。我们看到整个得自由的过程，得自由的根基，寻求耶稣来得自由；否则在事奉过程 中人们会把你当成偶像，他们希望你来解决问题，他们把所有的责任加在你的身上，你要给我得自由。你要让他们承担责任，去寻找耶稣，得到自由。

我为大家做一个示范，有没有一个志愿者？感谢神，你，就是你了。请把手交给我。当我们服事人的时候，如果人定睛在你的身上，去为他成就这件事，就会有一种压力从他身上出来，你就会有表现的压力，从人身上而来的压力其实是由巫术去掌控的，耶稣从不让从人而来的压力影响他的服事，他做父神让他做的事，或者因着怜悯做事。

很简单的建议，我会说，“我希望你闭上眼睛，定睛耶稣，从里面仰望耶稣，期待他触摸你。”现在，他的焦点已经从我转向耶稣了，他的压力已经不在我身上了，我要他的焦点定睛在主耶稣身上，期待领受从他那里来的能力。当他这样做的时候，神的同在运行就临到了。同样，我也不要专注在他身上，我把焦点定睛在耶稣身上，他的同在就会来临，你会感觉到他恩膏的来临。所有我们的服事必须是定睛在圣灵身上，我们跟他一起同工，让他的心向圣灵敞开。聆听圣灵的声音，就很容易可以运行在他的大能里面。你要让他的眼目定睛在耶稣身上，寻求帮助。人们总是习惯定睛在你的身上，寻求你的帮助，他们是一个受害者，你是他们的拯救者，而事实不是这样的。结果可能会是这样：我是受害者，你是拯救者，你必须要拯救我，如果我没有得自由，那就是你的错。我就要去找一个更有恩膏的。同样的，你要让我得释放，让我得自由，我还是用一个受害者的身份去思想，而不是在神的能力中来思考。如何决定是我的责任，我要在信心里面得自由，是我的信心要释放神的大能。

“请上前来，让我牵着你的手，闭上眼睛，把你的心向神敞开，神的大能就会临到你。”我们的事工应该是从安息中开始，其实我没有做很多，我只是把他引到真正的答案面前，他可以感受到神的大能在他身上。我发现在我们服事的时候，那个恩膏是从我们里面涌出来的，是圣灵的大能，当人们向神敞开的时候，会有恩膏临到他们。我可以强烈的释放神的大能，因为我们已经创造了这样的一个可以服事的氛围。

所有你不要想着有一个好的表现，要帮助人们处理他们的问题。如果你想着去解决问题，你就变成了拯救者，他是受害者，你就在扮演耶稣的角色。如果没有任何事情发生，你就会觉得很糟糕，你也变成了受害者，认为为什么没有透过我带给他自由。这就是一个问题，所以我们必须要有一个正确的焦点。我总是叫人们定睛在主身上，而不是我的身上。圣灵一起同工释放自由，你就会发现圣灵的流动是很自然地释放出来的。

在服事人的时候，我们需要认识到“我无法拯救他，我解决不了他的问题，这也不是我的责任。认识到这一点是很有帮助的，我是基督的代表，我把基督带到他生命中，帮助他与基督连结。所以我的事工就是将他带到能真正拯救他的那一位主面前。如果我总是认为“我要解决他的问题”， 我就会在一个压力下，每一次都要找到正确的答案。可是如果我只是帮助他与神连结的，我就可以放松，当你里面是放松，安息的，你就会发现服事是最有效的。圣灵就像鸽子一样，你一紧张，鸽子就飞走了。所以你里面安歇，圣灵的恩膏就更容易流出。

现在让我牵着她的手，这样触摸她。“闭上你的眼睛，仰望主耶稣，渴望他触摸你，期待他与你同在。”现在我期待她定睛在主身上，我也定睛在主身上。主，我感谢你与我们同在。当你定睛在主耶稣身上的时候，你要怎么做呢？我就想象主就站在我面前，非常靠近，我注视着他。耶稣说，“我看见父神所做的，我也去做。”透过这样的方式，你的事工会很容易。让人与神连结，你也与主相连，就会很自然的运行。圣灵就会降临。很简单。

我们还没有进入到释放里，我只是教导大家怎样预备人的心进入到服事里。当我们预备一个人的时候，就是预备他的心仰望主，准备领受神迹。不是要定睛在我要解决的问题上。这是你的问题，我与你一起同工带来神的答案。这样你就不会承受一个很大的服事的压力，让我们的思想都对焦在耶稣身上。当人的心预备好，转向神的时候，你真的可以感受到神的同在临到他们身上。当人的心没有预备好，还缺少什么的时候，圣灵就不见了。

我能牵着你的手吗？你什么都不需要做，只是闭上眼睛，向主敞开你的心，就像打开门让他进来一样。“我现在所寻求的，是神的大能触摸她。”每次我这样做的时候，都能够感觉到这人对神有多敞开。你可以感觉到神的灵临到他们身上，或者你可以感到有些阻挡，水流不畅。现在神的灵来了，她很放松，这样就非常容易服事。

有时你会感觉到一个无形的墙，你可以感受到那个抵挡，你必须要学会察觉这些不同点。约翰福音第七章38节告诉我们，“信 我 的 人 ， 就 如 经 上 所 说 ， 从 他 腹 中 要 流 出 活 水 的 江 河 来 。”圣灵是像河流一样运行的，我所做的就是如何预备一个人的最根本的东西，什么是他们必须要做的，我们要做的就是跟圣灵一起同工，让圣灵可以自由的运行。

我要牵着他的手，我不是尝试让什么事情发生，而是把焦点定睛在主耶稣身上，我能真实的感受到从天而来的能力在他身上，我唯一做的就是把他的焦点转向那个源头，我能看见那个水流，我也向那个水流敞开，所以这样的服事事工不是很轻松吗？我们不是要尝试让事情发生，我们要对圣灵所做的工作更敏感，对圣灵的流动更敏感，对圣灵的运行更敏感，一直不断聆听他所说的话。这样，就不是你要去解决一个人的问题，而是与圣灵同工。我们还可以借着圣灵的能力赶鬼，我们还没有进入赶鬼的阶段，我只是让大家想到如何跟圣灵一起同工。阿门!

我不再继续教，我要你尝试一些练习，这是一个很好的操练，把你的笔记本放下，还是可以坐下来。我来演示一下。我们都是在灵里服事，换句话说，有神的恩膏在我们身上，我们可以挑旺恩膏，我们可以挑旺圣灵的流动，所以接下来我们做这样的操练。等一下我们会用强有力的方言祷告，挑旺我们灵里面的人。我要你三个人一组，你可以去到会场所有的地方，每三个人一组。

我这里有三个人，你是接福的人，你要睁开眼；你是领受的人，可以把眼睛闭起来；你是服事的人，你要释放神的大能。接下来我们这样做，我们一步步教导大家，第一步，“我能在你身上操练吗？”“好，你尽力而为。”你闭上眼睛，牵着她的手，我要你方言祷告，方言祷告就会挑旺你的灵，还不需要做任何事情。他还没有尝试做，就已经发生了，圣灵已经在她身上了。你能感受到恩膏在她身上吗？是的，是的，很强对不对？你正释放神的大能到她身上，我们数1，2，3，你就吹气。圣灵来了。

你刚刚有什么样的感觉？当你方言祷告的时候，你有没有感觉内心有一个能力升起来？当你方言祷告的时候，你发现什么样的事情发生在她身上？她感觉有一个水流临到她身上，她开始站立不稳。当你祷告的时候，她开始仰望神，你注意到圣灵开始临到她。我们能够敏锐的感觉到圣灵的运行是很重要的，然后你很容易释放神的大能。从你里面的能力，不是外在的力量，是借着我们的信心，从里面释放出来的力量。

你注意到你坐的位置是你没有办法推她的，有些人是想把她推倒。当你把她推倒的时候，你是在血气里面，你没有依靠圣灵。你推人的话，圣灵会担忧就离开了。你不需要推，人们不喜欢被推，你推他，他会推回来，没有人喜欢被推倒。那不是服事，那是推人。好，我们三个人一组，我能在你身上练习呀？可以。牵着她的手，用方言祷告，放轻松，挑旺圣灵的水流，释放神的大能。1，2，3，神的大能。看，这并不难，对不对？给她一点掌声。

我可以牵着你的手吗？如果我这样为她祷告，我根本不可能推她，你也可以按在这里。你要练习服事，不推人，学会释放神的大能。我们没有期待这样的事发生，但是它就发生了，因为我们在圣灵的流动当中。触摸她，触摸她，当恩膏在释放当中，邪灵就开始彰显，感谢主，触摸她。

我们还没有时间看到问题的根本，事情就发生了，但我们跟圣灵一起同工，我们祷告，恐惧的灵离开她，奉主耶稣的灵，释放她。感谢主。

心的牢笼 (3 of 8)

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（开场祷告）

主啊，我们向你敞开我们的心，渴望你的触摸，服事我们，教导我们，我们欢迎你，愿神的国可以来到我们中间，今天早上我们仰望你，我们为你昨天所做的感谢你，也为你今天将要做的感谢你。在今天白天和晚上的聚会中，我们感谢你，珍惜你的同在，我们爱你在我们当中所做的，最重要的是我们把我们的心定睛在你的身上，今天早晨，我们把一切的尊荣都归给你，感谢你。阿门！

（上节简介）

今早我们要看的是心中的捆绑。我们很快的复习一些我们昨天所提到的，我们看到耶稣授膏，来释放人自由，耶稣教导释放，释放其实是神国的彰显，我们看到耶稣教导我们当邪灵被赶出后，会尝试重新回到原来那个人的身上。这就是为什么释放的事工常常被人误解，因为我们常常专注在赶鬼，而不是在处理这个人问题的本质。耶稣说，当鬼被从人的生命中赶出去的时候，那个鬼会尝试回来再次占有这个人的生命。这就是为什么我们要处理的其实是他生命中根本的问题。

我们的角色不只是要把鬼赶出去，而是要把这个人的生命从黑暗中带到光明里面，帮助他们在生命的旅程中与神同行。我们看到在以弗所书第四章中的经文讲到，偷窃的不要再偷了。什么时候小偷不再偷窃，是当他开始劳力工作，并开始给予出去。

昨天他们也提到邪灵可以通过什么样的方式进入到我们生命里面。第一，透过合法的权利，当人违背神的律法，仇敌魔鬼就拥有了合法的权利进入到人的生命中去。记得耶稣的教导，那个魔鬼说“我要回到我的屋子里去。”我昨天为那位姐妹祷告的时候，邪灵对我说，“她是属于我的。”换句话说，邪灵在说这是我的屋子，我是有权住在这里的。重要的是，当我们释放人得自由的时候，我们要把邪灵合法居住在这里的权利夺走，我等一下告诉大家如何做，很简单。

对于每一个基督徒来说，主耶稣是我们生命中的主人，邪灵魔鬼无法拥有一个信徒。圣经告诉我们，我们是耶稣的宝血重价赎买回来的。代价已付，我们得自由。当我们心里相信，口里承认，主耶稣基督是我们的主人，我们是单单属他的时候，我们就得救了。借着圣灵，我们从过去黑暗的国度进入到神的国度里面，我们拥有我们的权利，有我们可以享受的福分。

记得我昨天呼召的时候，我引用了约翰福音第一章12节，“凡接待他的，就是信他名的人，他就赐他们权柄，作神的儿女。”当我们把我们的信放在基督身上，从法律的角度看，我们就可以真正成为他的后裔，他的儿子。所以邪灵无法拥有一个基督徒，他可能会侵占基督徒生命中的某一个部分。

记得在我们做开始祷告中，我带大家做一个信心的宣告，主耶稣是我生命的救主，是我的主，我是因着主耶稣的宝血赎买回来的，从咒诅，从邪灵和罪的辖制之下赎买回来的，我是单单属于主耶稣的。这个信心的宣告就是预备人进入到释放里，当邪灵说“他属于我”时，他就是在乱讲，因为这人已经宣告他是属于主耶稣的。有时在服事时，我也会提醒他他是属于主耶稣的。所以邪灵进入人生命中最主要的方式就是透过这样的合法的权利。

第二个邪灵进入人生命中的方式就是创伤的经历。这个伤痛的经历很深的影响了他们的情感。相似的经历对不同的人有着不一样的影响，之后我会再谈这个创伤式的经历。当一个人经历了创伤性的经历时，他里面的惊吓可能会给邪灵留下进入的机会。举例来说，青少年在学校期间会有感受到极大压力的经历，这些经历所造成的内在誓言或者错误的信念，常常会给仇敌魔鬼机会进入到他们生命中去。

第三个邪灵进入人生命中的方式，就是人对这些创伤性经历的回应和反映。我们以后再讲这一点。

昨天我们谈到使人得自由的根基是什么。首先，我们必须知道耶稣为我们所成就的是什么。我们看到主耶稣在十字架上所成就的大功。所以从法律的角度讲，耶稣在十字架上为我们赎买了什么，这是我们必须要知道的，要讲出来，还要对邪灵讲出神的话。

其次，我们谈到这个人必须要承担的责任是什么。我们讲到他必须要认清问题，并要为这个问题承担责任。必须要认罪，必须要悔改，必须要饶恕，弃绝从邪灵而来的任何捆绑以及与邪灵签订的任何协议。他们必须要做出来，在灵里面兴起抵挡魔鬼。雅各书第四章7节告诉我们，“故此你们要顺服神，务要抵挡魔鬼，魔鬼就必离开你们逃跑了。”这个经文很清楚的说，我们必须要让我们的生命跟神一致。“顺服”在希腊文中的意思是“转移我们的姿势，对准”，这个意思就是我们要预备我们自己，然后降伏在主耶稣之下，我们就可以得胜。这个词也是一个军事的用词，就是指我们降伏在主里面就可以经历得胜。当军队排列的时候，也代表他们排列整齐，准备打仗。

这是一个功能用词，当圣经中讲到“妻子顺服丈夫,”这个顺服不是讲丈夫比妻子更优更好，或者妻子是更次等的，而是讲他们要预备好，排列整齐，进入到争战里面。所以顺服，降伏神，代表我们的生活与神的关系有一个正确的次序。如果有要认罪的，认罪；如果有要饶恕的，饶恕；如果有捆绑辖制的，弃绝。降伏，就可以得胜。

第二个讲的词是抵挡魔鬼。刚才我们讲到我们预备在神之下，跟他一起得胜。但是我们也预备好一个姿势，来抵挡魔鬼，魔鬼必定要逃跑。你会发现经文中很多时候把这个责任放在我们的身上，我们必须站在预备好的地方，准备打仗。你要记住这个经文，你要预备人进入服事里时会非常有用。我们的角色就是帮助他们与神站在一起，抵挡邪灵。

你可以看出，当一个人爱他的罪，没有准备好弃绝他的罪，你就知道他没有降伏神，也没有准备要抵挡魔鬼。当一个人不愿意饶恕的时候，他就没有在神的秩序里面，他不愿意降伏，也没有抵挡魔鬼，其实他就是站在魔鬼那一边。

所以雅各书第四章7节是非常有趣的经文，当我们降伏神的时候，让你的生命在神的秩序架构下，抵挡魔鬼。接下来他说要“亲近神，他就会亲近你”。所以这个人可以从过去在仇敌的辖制当中进入亲近神的亲密关系里面，重点是这个转变。

当我们在服事人的时候，我们要帮助他们认清在得自由的过程中他们自己所要做的部分，否则我们总是在营造一个受害者的心态，在里面纠结，他觉得他是受害者，让你成为拯救者。所以我们必须要建构他的信心，让他相信他可以突破。我们也会来看怎么做。

（主要信息）

今天我们要来看的是我们心中的捆绑可能会有哪些，我们应该怎样破除这些捆绑，然后我们会回过来再谈邪灵进入我们生命中的各种方式，我们会详细探讨每一个方式，帮助不同方式的人得医治。我们现在来看的是心中的捆绑。

我们昨天读到路加福音第十一章，拆毁壮士的盔甲，那个人才能得自由。箴言第四章23节，“你要保守你心，胜过保守一切。因为一生的果效，是由心发出。”你要成为你心的守望者，圣经告诉我们为什么要谨慎的保守我们的心，因为你一生的果效，或者说你一生的界限，是由你的心来决定的。发生在你心里的状况，一定会在你今后的生活中显现。耶稣说，当人说话，是说他心里所想的。

箴言第四章这里说一生的果效是由心发出的，所以我们不是以我们想的或是认为的方式来生活，而是在我们心里的东西会发出来影响我们的生活。如果在你心里有一个苦毒的根，这个根会像水流一样玷污你生活中的每一个关系，那个水流是邪灵的能量充满的水流，在你生命中的每一个部分这个苦毒的根都会出现，玷污你所有的人际关系。所以我们必须要认清问题，处理这个根。

很多时候在我们心里的东西会借着我们的口说出来，或者通过我们的面容表情，或者是我们结出的果子表现出来。例如一个人是苦毒的，你若问他，“你苦毒吗？”他一定说，“我不苦毒。”“你心中是不是有很深的愤怒和不饶恕？”“没有，你怎么会觉得我有。”可是如果你了解那些征兆，去寻找的话，你会发现很多人都非常苦毒。跟大家分享你要寻找的东西，这是苦毒的征兆。

苦毒的征兆有这些：

1） 这人的面容没有喜乐。一个苦毒的人很难喜乐，喜乐也很难持久，因为他的心是苦的。

2） 有苦毒的人从面容就可以看出，他的脸看起来是酸酸的，而且越老，那种尖酸越明显。有些人越老，越甜，充满爱；而有些人越老，越吓人。

3） 尖锐的言辞。苦毒的原文意思就是尖锐。尖锐的用词会伤害人心，后面很有可能是苦毒。

4） 压抑下的怒气。当一个人苦毒的时候，他心里实际上隐藏了很多的怒气。你可以感觉到他们的不认同，可是他们不开口讲任何东西。

5） 抱怨。抱怨这个，抱怨那个，总没有办法感恩喜乐。

6） 不感恩。苦毒的来源是因为我们的不饶恕和怒气，不饶恕是要求对方偿还，因此一个不饶恕的人没有办法为他所有的感谢，他总是说你要还我这个，还我那个。

7） 怪罪他人。一个充满苦毒怒气的人，常常会怪罪他人，把所有的不是都怪罪在别人身上。

8） 无法庆祝别人的成功。如果身边的人得到升职，“为什么是他，他不配。”没有能力去庆祝别人的成功。

我用这个例子的目的就是告诉你，所有在我们心里的东西，都会在我们的生活中显露出来。不管你如何假装压抑或假装这些东西不存在，它一定会从你心中发出来。如果你灵里面是敏锐的，你甚至可以感受到它的运行。在那个人身上就是有这种压力。

所以我们讲到你一生的果效是由心发出来的。我要跟大家分享一些基本的，心里面的捆绑是什么，我们应该如何处理这些不同的捆绑。邪灵会附在这些心里的捆绑上，加增这个人心里的压力。当我们服事人的时候，我们需要知道要处理心里面的问题。我会给大家一个清单，是我常看到的一些心里的困扰，就是影响人心和生命的捆绑。之后我们会讲一些创伤性的经历。

第一，不属神的魂结。魂结是指一个人跟另外一个人的连结，这个魂结可以帮助他们很深的联系彼此。神渴望我们跟人是有连结的，所以在我们生活当中这样的连结是很重要的。就像孩子出生的时候跟母亲有一个很深的连结，这样他之后的生活会有一个安全感。所以孩子最初学会的技能就是连结，与母亲连结，当然他以后也要学习跟母亲分离。

当他们十五个月左右大的时候，总是紧紧的抓住妈妈，妈妈都会给他们喂奶，照顾他们，当他们两岁大的时候，开始想要独立，“不，不，我要自己。”这些都是正常发育。如果一个孩子与母亲没有连结，如果当初母亲考虑过堕胎或不想要这个孩子，这个孩子在成长的过程中一直会有这样的困扰。他会用不属神的魂结的方式，跟人连结来满足他里面需要的安全感。

所以魂结是两个人之间的连结，这个连结开始是很正面，很有帮助的；或者也可能这个连结是不属神，不合神心意的。一个健康的，好的魂结，就是母亲和孩子，丈夫和妻子，教会弟兄姐妹的连结都是好的，亲密的友谊也是好的。这样的连结是好的，因为让你有亲密的关系，我们受造就是要在一个连结的关系当中的。

仇敌魔鬼没有创造新的东西，他都是扭曲神的创造。所以魂结也可以是不合神心意的。不合神心意的魂结就是指那个魂结是带着毁灭性，负面的能量进入到人的生命中去的，那个连结是不健康的连结，是不合神心意的连结，这个连结可以使仇敌有机会玷污他们的生命。这样不属神的连结更常见，一个不合神心意的连结，导致仇敌魔鬼可以有地步进入到我们生命中玷污我们。

第一个不属神的魂结的例子，就是在婚姻之外的任何性关系都会使人进入到这个连结里。婚前的性行为会让我们跟不同的性伴侣造成这种魂结，就像有一个无形的绳索将我们与过去的性伴侣绑在一起，我们的心也一直想要回去那个人身上，无法真正进入到婚姻当中。可能常常回忆过去一起做的事，或者一些性画面，邪灵就用这种方式搅扰他的魂。当我们处理性方面的罪的时候，光是赶鬼是不够的，我们必须要处理魂结，要破除这些不属神的魂结。

箴言告诉我们，人所犯的罪就像一根线绑着他，我过去认为罪会像一根线把你缠绕住，现在我知道它好像一个无形的线，把你和当时的罪绑在一起，把你拉回到当时的情景。我们也可以与一位掌控的人有一个不属神的连结，在一个掌控性的环境或掌控性的人之下，我们会不知不觉拥有这样一个不属神的魂结，而没有办法摆脱跟他之间的关系。就像一个依附的感觉，依附在那个人身上。这样的不属神的魂结需要被破除。

一个人也可以和一位虐待者有不属神的魂结，虽然他经历了很多从这人而来的伤害，可是他都没有办法摆脱离开这个人。或者人也会对他们迷恋的对象有不属神的魂结。这也是我们在辅导时经常碰到的状况。当一位弟兄去辅导姐妹的时候，过程可能会造成一种不健康，不合神心意的魂结产生。可能是弟兄对姐妹，也可能是姐妹对弟兄，都有可能。有时人会对已经死去的人有不属神的魂结，比如对过去很亲的奶奶，虽然奶奶已经去世了，他还没有放下，还是与她连结在一起。

人们也可以与色情网络和色情图片有一个这样不合神心意的魂结。当人看那些色情网络或者色情影像的时候，透过这些影像会建立一个不合神心意的魂结，邪灵就透过这些进来了。这些色情画面最可怕的就是它真的会改变你大脑的状况，当你不断去看这些东西的时候，你的大脑会产生一些新的连结路径，当一个东西激发了他的情欲欲望的时候，他的思想就会跟着以前所看到的东西进入到邪恶败坏的东西里面。所以有这样不合神心意的魂结也要砍断。

对于连结这些影像的，连结这些网站的，因为他们可能会看这个网站上瘾，他们可能会付钱进入这个网站，甚至会跟这个败坏的灵开始协议，跟淫乱的灵开始交易。所以他们看的影像和上的网站可能会产生不合神心意的魂结。

对姐妹来说，可能是罗曼蒂克的性幻想。她们可能会迷恋一些偶像剧的男主角，或者她们会对一些教会的领袖有一些错误的想法，一些性幻想。那些拜偶像的，也会跟偶像有魂结。透过这些例子，我们看到人可以建立一些不健康，不好的魂结，也可以看到透过某种性幻想进入到一个辖制受捆绑的状况里。

当我们看到有不合神心意的魂结产生的时候，邪灵会透过这个不合神心意的魂结进入到这个人的心里面，搅扰他，加增负面的能量。

我们应该怎样解决不合神心意的魂结这个问题呢？非常简单，有两个步骤。第一，当事人必须要弃绝这个魂结。他要说出破除这个魂结的话语。他必须承认有不合神心意的魂结，然后弃绝它。他们要渴望转离这个魂结，不是继续持守在这个思想里面。“奉主耶稣的名，我弃绝这个魂结，我弃绝我的魂跟这个东西的连结。不管是性伴侣或是图像，或者是偶像，或者性幻想，或者是网站，我破除弃绝这个魂结。”

第二，当你服事人的时候，你的祷告就像在砍一个东西一样。“奉耶稣的名，我破除这个魂结，我把这个连结剪断。奉主耶稣的名，砍断。”你可以想象你拿着圣灵的宝剑，把那个魂结砍断。有时你会发现当你砍的那一霎那，邪灵会彰显。过去跟不同的性伴侣产生的魂结，就想像有不同的线连结这些不同的性伴侣，就一一把他们砍断。当你可以在脑子里可以想象这些东西的时候，你的信心可以有一个对焦的方向。

另外一个跟魂结有关系的，很关键，我要补充一下，人们也会跟一个创伤性的经历有魂结。当我们服事一位有创伤性经历的人时，重要的是我们要让他把这个魂结砍断，就像这个人的记忆停留在当时的情景当中，因为那个事件产生了魂结，他们没有办法走出来。

第二个心里的捆绑是我们里面的苦毒和论断。苦毒和论断就是因着我们里面的苦毒和憎恨所带出来的论断。这个苦毒论断会在生命中形成一个种与收的不断重复的循环。举例来说，“你不能相信男人，男人总是让你失望。”“你不能相信女人，女人掌控性很强。”“不能相信领袖，因为领袖总是不公义的对待你。”“不要相信任何人，人们总是让你失望。”这些都是论断，苦毒的论断经常的用词就是“总是”，“从不”。经常有这样论断的话语，“我永远不会成功的，我总是失败，我做的没有一件事是好的。”

我所说的例子总有一些负面的东西在里面。当我们心里有苦毒，因着这个苦毒所做的论断，就像一个负面的信心，我们就开始吸引我们所论断的结果进入我们生命里面来。希伯来书第十二章14，15节，“你们要追求与众人和睦，并要追求圣洁。非圣洁没有人能见主。又要谨慎，恐怕有人失了神的恩。恐怕有毒根生出来扰乱你们，因此叫众人沾染污秽。”从毒根来的论断是因着我们里面受伤而作出的错误回应。可能你被一两个男人伤害后，你就论断所有的男人都是这个样子。耶稣在马太福音第七章1，2节告诉我们，“你们不要论断人，免得你们被论断。因为你们怎样论断人，也必怎样被论断。你们用什么量器量给人，也必用什么量器量给你们。”

当我们面对我们生命中惨痛和悲伤的经历时，我们可以有两种回应，我们可以释放审判，也可以释放恩典。如果你选择释放审判，你就开启了这个你论断也被论断的这种种与收的循环论断的法则。例如一位妇人苦毒论断她的父亲，通常会吸引一位就像她父亲一样的男人，就像她里面有一个信念“男人都是这样的”，这就是她会吸引一位类似她苦毒论断的人。你会发现这样的事情会常常见到，他生命中所面对的问题就是他原生家庭所要逃避的东西。

我曾为一位妇人祷告，她心里非常苦毒，因为她是母亲领养的。她整个的人生都因为这个被负面影响了，我发现她自己也做同样的事情，她人生当中所收到的其实是她在原生家庭所种的。当你论断一个人或一件事的时候，你开启了你生命中这个种与收的法则。所以一位妇人论断自己的父亲，很容易吸引一个跟她父亲一样的人。一个人论断自己的母亲，长大后就会像她妈妈一样，总是愤恨的样子。

所以苦毒的根是我们需要处理的。苦毒的论断是一种回应，是因着过去惨痛的经历而得出的论断。问题是，人们经常忘记他们在经历惨痛经历时他们所做的论断，一旦他们做了这样的论断之后，这个论断就给仇敌魔鬼空间可以运行在他的生命当中，并开启了这个种与收的循环法则。

怎样从这种论断中得自由呢？首先，他们要知道他们在论断，承认自己的伤痛，饶恕他们生气的对象，破除论断，弃绝论断。“奉主耶稣的名，我破除所有我在苦毒当中对我父亲所做的论断，我弃绝对所有男人所做的苦毒论断，我释放，饶恕，祝福。”当这样的事情做完之后，你们可以说，“我奉主耶稣的名，我破除你生命中的这种论断，我破除这个种与收的循环，苦毒的灵离开。”因为在这背后一定有邪灵绑在一起。

另外一个心里的捆绑就是“内在誓言”。誓言是我们做的承诺，内在誓言就是我们对自己所做的承诺，也常常是我们在受伤中对自己做的宣告。通常是“我以后永远不怎样怎样。”或者“我以后一定要如何。”就像我们对自己发誓。当我们做了内在誓言，这个誓言会辖制你的生命，因为邪灵附在这个誓言上面。人们经常会忘记自己的誓言，所以内在誓言背后经常会有苦毒的根，在人的生命里越来越深。

给大家一个例子。一位妇女来到我教课的一个圣经学校，带着她的丈夫和婴儿。她说，“我要感谢你对内在誓言的教导。”我问她什么事情。她说，“我有两个孩子，第一个孩子怀孕时，非常辛苦，我有内在誓言永远不再生孩子了。可是孩子出生后，我忘记了我曾经的想法，当我想要第二个孩子的时候，我们尝试过，可是流产了三次。后来我来圣经学校学习，当我听到内在誓言的时候，我弃绝了那个内在誓言，我破除之前我所做的誓言。那年年底，我怀孕了，生了第二个孩子。如果不是处理了我的内在誓言，我是不会有这个孩子的。”

她对自己发誓永远不生了，所以她的身体回应她的誓言，拒绝了三次她的孩子。如果一位妇女重复流产数次，可以考虑是否跟内在誓言有关系。流产也可能跟拜偶像有关系。

怎样处理内在誓言呢？当事人必须要了解这个伤痛，必要时，释放饶恕，弃绝，破除内在誓言。你可以说，“奉主耶稣的名，我破除这个内在誓言，我释放你，从内在誓言中得自由。”很简单。

背后可能还有邪灵，可能是恐惧的灵或者苦毒的灵，但是内在誓言本身是很容易破除的。当这人愿意弃绝内在誓言的时候，你就说，“奉主耶稣的名，我砍断破除这个内在誓言所带来的影响。”有时释放立刻就会发生。

我记得曾为一位弟兄祷告，他非常富有，但是他内心非常有竞争性，他里面静不下来，无法安息。当我们跟他交谈分享的时候，发现他来自非常贫穷的家庭，他上学所穿的衣服让他觉得很羞愧，他就有了一个内在誓言，“我永远不要再穷。”我要努力工作，赚很多的钱。现在他已经很有钱了，他无法停止工作，也无法享受他所拥有的。因为在他心里，他认为他是穷的，因着这个内在誓言催逼着他不断的工作，不管他赚多少钱，总是不够，继续工作赚更多。所以他的这个生活模式使家庭受到很大伤害，他必须要弃绝这个内在誓言，释放他童年经历的忧伤和悲痛。

另一个心里的捆绑是咒诅的言语。咒诅的言语就是对一个人负面的宣告。箴言第十八章21节告诉我们，“生死在舌头的权下。”有两种咒诅的言语，第一，咒诅自己。人会讲一些咒诅自己的话，他对自己的心说负面的，毁灭性的话。例如死亡的意念。“我希望我死掉算了。”当人们在极大的伤痛里面，他会有这样死亡的念头。这样他就跟死亡的灵有了一个协议，会影响他们的生命，麻痹他们的心。这是个非常重要的领域要处理。

通常被性虐待，性侵犯的，或在关系中被遗弃的，被虐待的，他们希望死掉算了。在长期的压力和伤痛经历中，他可能会有一个自杀的念头。他们可能忘记自己曾经说过，可是很多年后，他们发现他们的心是麻痹的，没有办法经历神，经历关系的喜乐。

人可能对自己的生命宣告挫败的话语，“我没有用， 我很笨，我总是不够好。”这些言语会成为他们心中不属神的核心信念。就像苦毒的论断，“没人会爱我，没人会接纳我，我是没人要的。”这些很短的一句话，可是它会成为我们心中的核心信念，它会成为邪灵居住的屋子。当你相信谎言的时候，阴间的灵和死亡的灵就可以进来搅扰。

这种咒诅的言语也可以是来自别人的。例如你父母对你说的话，或者有权柄的人所说的话，像老师，属灵领袖。我们有属灵权柄的要非常谨慎，因为我们很容易咒诅别人，讲一些负面的令人挫败的言语。挫败的言语或者给人贴标签，就像以弗所书讲的从魔鬼而来的火箭，进入人心里面。

有些人在成长过程中，可能有经历过学校霸凌或羞辱，老师可能跟他说，“你好笨，以后不会有出息的，你不会及格的，你是失败者。”如果这个人相信老师对他说的话，这个言语就会进入到他心里，因为他同意了这样的言语。这个谎言就会成为他的信念，并开始掌控他的生命。当你跟人在一起，处理人的各种状况时，也要处理这些人相信的咒诅，或者失败的言语。

我最近为一位教会的领袖祷告，她的父亲来自于一个很大的家族，当时家里很穷，只能让一个男孩读书，她的父亲很聪明，当家里没有钱让他读大学，她的父亲因着无法读书感到非常的苦毒。他觉得是父母夺走了他求学的机会。现在他唯一的女儿，他给她很大的压力，要她完成他曾经的梦想，不管她有多么好的成绩，总是不够好。总是给这个女儿压力，不管她做什么，他总是挑她的毛病，说她可以做得更好。这个女孩成长过程中是缺乏爱，呵护和肯定的，她有一个信念就是我永远不够好。对她的父亲有一个苦毒论断的根。

可是我看她的领导能力的时候，我问她在教会承担的事工；猜猜她做了什么， 她给会友们很大的压力，尝试他们有好的表现，好的生命，就像她父亲对她一样。每一次都挑会友的毛病，他们做什么都不够好。她生命里的苦毒已经发出来了，因为不管她怎么做，都不够好。邪灵借着她心中的这些错误的信念，开始搅扰她的生命。

这是一些心里的捆绑，人们需要从中释放得自由。另外可能临到人身上的咒诅，就是在隐秘处对人发的咒诅。比如一个人过去经历过性侵犯，那个人跟她讲，“你不许跟任何人讲。你跟任何人讲，你必须要承担家庭破灭的责任，你就害死了自己的父亲或者母亲。”这个在隐秘处做的誓言，会带给人非常大的问题。当你祷告服事一些有性侵犯经历的人时，他们身上常常会有这个隐藏的誓言，结果是她们活在死亡和搅扰的灵的辖制里面。他们很愤怒，因为她们想跟别人讲，但是她又害怕讲了之后家庭会崩溃。所以她的里面有很大的拉扯和绝望。

要处理这些东西非常容易，不管是言语的咒诅，自己对自己的咒诅，或别人对他的咒诅，或者在隐秘处的内在誓言。我们要承认这是咒诅，当事人必须要释放饶恕，饶恕伤害他们的人，然后弃绝这个咒诅，弃绝我在隐秘处所做的誓言，我弃绝这样的誓言，我弃绝我对自己咒诅的言语，我拒绝对我所说的负面话语。当事人弃绝完之后，你就可以奉主耶稣的名，破除这个咒诅，命令所有和这个咒诅有关的邪灵离开。

这可能是在人身上的重担，你会发现在我们心里的捆绑其实会影响我们的生命。下一堂我们会谈创伤性的经历，创伤性的经历怎样影响人的身心。这些心里的捆绑，如果你可以认出它们，魂结，苦毒的根，内在誓言，咒诅和自我咒诅，或者是别人对我们所说的咒诅的话语。如果我们清楚知道有这些东西在我们里面，我们可以破除它们，砍断它们，使这个人得到自由。阿门！

非常容易，认出问题，让当事人拒绝，然后破除它的能力，命令所有跟这些东西有连结的邪灵离开。可是如果你不知道这些东西在他心里面存在，你尝试做释放，邪灵会用各种的捆绑来抵挡你。如果我们把它的盔甲和它所居住的架构拆毁，邪灵一定要走了。所以释放事工不是只赶鬼，是看这人的生活和内心的情形，拆毁仇敌所居住的屋子，然后再赶鬼。

在我们其中一堂的时候，我会给大家一个清单，服事人时需要了解什么。当一个人带着他的问题来到你面前时，如果你脑子里有这个清单，你会知道需要寻找什么。很多时因为我们不知道要找什么，所以我们尝试去处理外在的问题而不是心里的问题；可是一生的果效是从心里发出来的，如果有魂结，砍断魂结；如果有苦毒论断的根，砍断；如果有内在誓言，砍断； 如果有咒诅的言语，砍断！如果与创伤性的记忆有连结，砍断！这样，我们就能让这人轻松地得自由。阿门！

法律有权进入 (4 of 8)

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上一课我们讲的是心中问题的根源。我们解释了心里的捆绑有哪些，当人们经历困难时，通常会有什么样的心理反应，会形成什么样的心里捆绑。如果我们不处理心里的问题，就无法释放人们得自由。

我们分享了心会被什么东西捆绑，不属神的魂结，苦毒论断的根，对未来负面的期待，内在誓言，创伤性的经历，咒诅的言语，所有这些都会带来心里的捆绑。当我们带领人们得自由的时候，我们需要知道他们心里的捆绑，然后处理这些捆绑，这并不困难，最重要的是在他心里建造正确的架构。

我们继续看合法的权利，邪灵进入我们生命中的最主要的三个方式，因为犯罪给仇敌魔鬼合法进入的权利，要处理这些也是很容易的，当你明白其中的关键和秘诀时，你就会了解如何与人同工，你的释放果效也会有很大的提高。

合法的权利是人的生命里给予魔鬼合法的地步，仇敌魔鬼认为这是他给我的地方。通常是因为罪的缘故，不管是刻意还是不小心违背了神的律法。邪灵是没有能力胜过人的，他们用欺哄带人进入到犯罪里面，然后违背神的律法。我们看一些主要的合法权利，并教大家如何处理。

1）家族历代的咒诅和罪孽。咒诅是一个灵里的力量，它会不断的运行直到被制止。罪孽是一种向问题或失败的方向弯曲，扭曲的倾向。家族历代的咒诅和罪孽是从家族中遗传下来的。从自然的角度看，当你看医生时，医生会问你家族的病史﹔你去办保险的时候，他们也会问你家族的病史﹔因为他们知道我们有一些疾病和软弱是家族遗传下来的。神也是这样看我们的，一代代传下来的。灵界的影响也可以从一代延续到另一代。

所以当你违背了神的律法，为邪灵打开了大门，你的后代也会因着这个受影响。出埃及记第二十章告诉我们拜偶像的后果，3至6节，“除了我以外，你不可有别的神。不可为自己雕刻偶像，也不可作什么形像仿佛上天，下地，和地底下，水中的百物。不可跪拜那些像，也不可事奉它，因为我耶和华你的神是忌邪的神。恨我的，我必追讨他的罪，自父及子，直到三四代，爱我，守我诫命的，我必向他们发慈爱，直到千代。”

这里神讲明拜偶像的影响是历代的影响。所以罪孽的倾向代表的是家族中罪孽的扭曲从一代传到下一代。这里讲三四代，就包括了你，你的父亲，你的祖父和曾祖父，这四代里包括了很多人。申命记第二十三章，私生子带来的咒诅会影响十代。申命记第二十三章也讲到乱伦的关系会带来十代之久的咒诅。简单的说就是这一代的罪会对后代有影响。

所以邪灵进入家族里面，因为从血缘的角度，从法律的角度，你都是跟这个家族有连结的，邪灵就有权利进入你的生命影响你。很多时我们为人祷告，发现他们问题的根源其实不是他们，而是之前的上一代或上上一代。所以家族中有人过去是拜偶像的，行邪术或通灵的等等，都会向邪灵敞开，让邪灵进入到家族里面来。

我们当然不是要为我们父母所做的负责，我们只需要为我们自己做的负责。但是他们所做的事情的结果，我们可能会经历。这样问题的模式是怎样一代代相传的呢？有些是通过DNA遗传下来的，科学家还没有了解罪是如何影响我们的DNA的，有些是与遗传有关的，有些是因为邪灵在我们的家族里面，有些行为是跟父母学的。我们必须要了解耶稣已经为我们破除了咒诅和罪孽。

给大家一个历代家族咒诅的例子。在纽西兰有一位女士请我为她祷告。我问她，“你的问题是什么？”她就告诉我她的问题。我常常会问，“这个问题是什么时候开始的？”因为这会告诉我们是不是一个家族历代的问题。她的问题是，在她的心思意念中经常会有性的搅扰，邪恶的性幻想。她是一位单身的基督徒。我说，“你有没有过性犯罪？”“没有。”“你有没有经历过性侵犯？”“没有。”“这个问题有多久了？”“我一生都有这个问题。”

当她说“我一生都有这个问题，或很小就有的时候，就很有可能是家族历代的问题。”我就问她，“你家族的状况如何？”她跟我讲到，她的祖父母是到中国去的宣教士，他们有一儿一女，他们送儿女去到另一个省上学，当30年代日本侵略中国的时候，这个省份被日本人管辖，这个女孩被日本兵性侵犯，当时她12，13岁左右。最后这个孩子被救出来了，她的父母也都离开了那个宣教会场。后来这个女孩长大结婚，有了一个女儿，就是要我祷告的这一位姐妹。后来这位姐妹的父母离婚了，其实这并不意外，因为她带着被性侵的创伤。那个时代，人们不讲这些，都是压抑在心里。

所以当她被性侵的时候，邪灵进入了家族里，这个年轻的女孩在成长的过程中，受到搅扰的原因就在这里了。这个妇女所面临的问题，并不是因为她做了什么，而是因为发生在她母亲身上的事情。让邪灵可以进入到家族里面，借着家族的遗传临到她的身上。我带她一起祷告，饶恕这些日本士兵，做认同祷告，破除家族中的咒诅。她就得释放，心思意念就清晰了。

我有为很多人祷告，他们问题的根源都是历代家族性的。年轻的男女，他们的灵魂被仇敌魔鬼深深的搅扰，并不是因为他们做了什么，而是因为他们家族历代的问题﹔特别是跟拜偶像，通灵等跟灵界有关的，或跟性侵犯有关的问题。门就打开了，咒诅就进入了家族里面。

当你服事人的时候，试图解决他们生命中的问题，要了解他们的问题什么时候发生的。他们需要为他们自己的生命负责，就像这位妇女一样，她的问题是她自己的问题，她需要与邪灵争战。这个问题的根源其实是家族历代流传下来的。当你服事人的时候，要尝试厘清这个问题是不是有家族历代的根源。

我记得有一次在一个教会的学校里，我们发现一个有趣的事情，所有的孩子必须要背诵圣经。学校中有三个学生，什么书都可以背诵，就是圣经背不下来。其中有两个来自同一个家庭，另一个来自另一个家庭，他们都背不了经文。他们学了，忘了，没办法可以留在脑子里。他们学习其它的东西都没有问题。我就祷告求问神，为什么这些孩子学不会经文。

有一天我来到学校，发现这两家的父亲过去是在同济会，他们都是同济的人，他们效忠于同济会。邪灵因此就进入了他们的家庭，孩子什么都没有做，但是邪灵就拦阻他们领受，理解，记住这些属灵的东西。他们破除了同济的咒诅就可以背诵经文了。就像里面的困惑和混乱离开了，没有什么激烈的表现，他们就是可以开始背诵经文了。这是我第一次经历咒诅透过家族临到孩子身上。

我曾为很多人祷告，他们的问题都是来自于家族性的。如果你看他们的族谱，有些问题很容易看出来。如果你祷告让问题显明，有时问题突然就会显明出来。有邪灵或咒诅运行的家族通常会有些征兆，我给大家一个咒诅运行的例子，你应该寻找哪些征兆。如果你看他的族谱，你寻找这些模式，这些都记载在申命记第二十八章。

我们很快的看一下，如果有咒诅在家族里面，他们家族中经常会有精神的疾病，或有慢性病的遗传，或家族中有流产，无法生育或者婚姻家庭的破裂﹔或者财务上的亏损，常常有意外发生﹔或者有暴力性是死亡和自杀﹔很多被虐待和不公平对待的现象﹔无法安静下来，总是到处走动﹔很多家族成员有邪灵搅扰的问题。

所以当你在服事一个人的时候，要厘清问题的根源是什么，因为很多是家族历代遗留的问题。如何处理家族历代的咒诅呢？其实很简单，几个步骤：

首先要认出这是家族历代的咒诅。我们会跟他说，这是你家族历代的问题，现在临到你的身上，你作为当事人必须要做的是，认同祷告，代表家族弃绝这个咒诅。如果他们自己也有参与在这里面，就要求神赦免饶恕他们的罪。他们也要饶恕为邪灵打开门的家人。要释放饶恕，要把主耶稣的十架放在他和他的家族的遗传中间，求主耶稣释放他们。

如果你为一个有家族历代咒诅的人祷告，可以这样祷告：

1）宣告信仰

“天父，我奉主耶稣的名来到你面前，我宣告主耶稣是我的主，是我生命的主，我是他的宝血重价赎买回来的，从所有的咒诅赎买回来，从所有的邪灵赎买回来，从所有的罪孽赎买回来，我单单属于主耶稣。”

2）认同祷告

“我代表我的家族，弃绝这个咒诅，破除它的能力，破除我的家族与邪灵达成的任何协议，我破除任何将我们的孩子献给庙宇神灵的协议。如果我有参与这个行为，求你赦免我。我将主耶稣十架放在我和我的家族中间。我饶恕为邪灵打开门的家人，求主释放我，撒旦从我生命中离开。奉主耶稣的名祷告。 ”

通过我们信仰的宣告，破除我们过去所做的协议，预备好我们自己，然后宣告破除这个咒诅，最后，释放饶恕。这人就要仰望神，仰望耶稣，得到自由。

你看到我所做的祷告，其实都包含了我们刚才所说的得自由的根基。信仰的宣告，就是认出我们的问题并为此承担责任，认罪悔改，释放饶恕，弃绝抵挡魔鬼。祷告的顺序和用词并不重要，但要了解这个过程并处理它。

通常在你带领他们做这个祷告的时候，邪灵就开始彰显。所以你要做的就是，奉主耶稣的名，破除这个家族的咒诅。这个咒诅就像一条无形的线，带着权柄的能力宣告破除，不需要很大声，但要坚定。这并不困难。

你要明白这个事工的流程，人犯罪的时候就与邪灵签订了合法的协议，透过我们的祷告，砍断这个协议﹔宣告我们在基督里的信心，把我们的罪带到光中，破除罪所带来的一切后果，仰望耶稣，使我们得自由。

记住要依靠圣灵来引导你，不用担心讲对每一个字，否则你就是方法导向而不是圣灵引导了。

第二个常见的问题就是参与通灵和邪术的行为。申命记第十八章9至13节，“你到了耶和华你神所赐之地，那些国民所行可憎恶的事，你不可学着行。你们中间不可有人使儿女经火，也不可有占卜的，观兆的，用法术的，行邪术的，用迷术的，交鬼的，行巫术的，过阴的。凡行这些事的都为耶和华所憎恶。因那些国民行这可憎恶的事，所以耶和华你的神将他们从你面前赶出。你要在耶和华你的神面前作完全人。”

人们对灵界有一种好奇和恐惧，现在的主流媒体正在试图透过很多的奇幻，超自然的现象影响年轻人。这个时代渴望经历超自然的事情，之前的时代也有害怕超自然的事情。各个不同的文化中都有人对灵界的好奇感，他们想要接触灵界有几个目的。第一，希望得到灵界的保护。他们害怕这些邪灵，所以向他们献祭。可是他却不知道当他向邪灵献祭的时候，是把自己献给邪灵，或者是跟他们交易。

任何人向偶像献祭，或者向任何邪灵献贡品的时候，就陷入了跟邪灵交换的关系里。在这样的协议中，邪灵就有了合法的权利进入他的生命中。交易就是协议，当他拜的那一刻，献贡品的那一刻，就是进入与邪灵交换的协议中。

交换的东西就是保护，祝福。财务上的，生命中的，健康上的祝福﹔或者从灵界得来的能力可以胜过他的敌人。不管你去到哪一个文化中，都会发现有人渴望跟灵界接触。

跟灵界接触有两个部分，第一，占卜，就是算命。华人最爱算命。当他们成为基督徒的时候，他们也希望有一个基督徒的算命。算命就是透过灵界寻找引导。这个引导有多准确呢？灵界中的连结是很紧密的，就像一个邪灵的网络，他们有连结可以彼此沟通。当你与灵界沟通的时候，你其实不是在跟你的亲戚的灵连结。圣经告诉我们，人必有一死，死亡之后就是审判。

所以人连结的是一个熟悉的灵，它对你的家庭状况非常熟悉，它得到资讯都是正确的。邪灵会观察人，知道他们所做的事。当你去找一位通灵的人，想知道你已死的家人的状况，他给你的资讯可能是很准确的。在这个过程中，你已经邀请了邪灵进入你的生命中，对你的生命说话。

邪灵不知道你的未来，你生命中的某些领域是向他们敞开的，他会看到神要带给你生命的东西，他们想要拦阻神对你的祝福。所以一个人找算命的人并听他们的话，这个人就是听从了邪灵的话，让邪灵有能力影响他的环境。这种模式会上瘾，这人做任何重要的决定的之前，都要去找算命师，算命师的掌控非常强。国外这种人称为“通灵师”，人们打电话给通灵师，其实就是熟悉的灵透过人在运行。

另一种行邪术的就是巫术或称灵界的能力。那些行邪术的经常是因为他们被拒绝，非常难过，他们渴望拥有能力。行邪术的行为是很上瘾的，当人跟邪灵连结起来的时候，他们渴望更多更多的能力。每一个文化中，都有行邪术的人，越是原始的文化，行邪术的能力越大，甚至可以控制整个村落。

在马可波罗的时代，马可波罗遇见一位名叫Kublai Khan的蒙古人，他是成吉思汗的爸爸，他告诉马可波罗，“我觉得基督教对我的国家有帮助，我愿意接纳基督教。”这是历史上重要的一刻。但是他接着说，“你看看我的周围，有非常多的术士，他们有非常大的能力。他们可以让杯子飞起来到你面前，他们可以改变天气，我担心他们会杀了我。所以你回去带一百个人来，他们知道如何运行在神的大能里面，可以胜过这些术士的巫术。我跟我的国家会转向基督。”

这是历史上非常关键的一刻，当马可波罗回去之后，派了两个人回来，不是一百个，其中一人在途中死亡，这个国家没有转向基督。后来我们看到成吉思汗攻略了整个亚洲。福音有可能在一百年前影响这个国家，可是因着这些术士的辖制无法进入。

我们这个时代也碰到这样的问题。我在圣经学院教书的时候，有一位年轻人非常喜欢玩一种网络游戏，魔兽世界，这是在年轻人中经常在玩的游戏。这个游戏是一个角色扮演的游戏，这位年轻人扮演的就是巫师，他打败敌人就会增加他的能力。他对这个游戏非常上瘾，同时也在邪灵的辖制下。

我告诉他耶稣的话，你如果看到一个妇人，在心里面动了淫念其实你就是犯了奸淫。换句话说，耶稣教导我们，在你心里生出来的东西，其实在灵界里已经释放出来了。一个人可以在心里面犯奸淫的罪了，却没有奸淫的行为。他将他的生命向奸淫的灵敞开，你的想象力其实是进入到灵界的门。

将自己放在这个游戏中，就是把自己献给邪灵，巫术的灵进入到你生命里面。我带着他弃绝这个游戏，弃绝他在这个游戏中所扮演的角色。当他这样做的时候，邪灵就彰显在他脸上，他倒在地上，开始尖叫，后来我们就让他得到释放。虽然他没有真的投身在邪术巫术里面，但是透过这个游戏所扮演的角色，他也进入到了这里面。

后来我们做呼召的时候，有两百个学生从网络游戏的捆绑中释放得自由。这些人来到教会学院学习，将来是要做教会领袖的，可是在他们个人生活中参与这些游戏，就是参与在了巫术当中。我们要了解邪术可能是下一代所面临的非常大的问题。媒体和电影中充斥了这些东西，非常吸引年轻人。

我所讲的对巫术网络游戏上瘾的情况同样也适用于暴力游戏。在发现频道播出的一个节目中，他们采访了一位杀死自己父母的年轻人，他心里面对父母有很深的苦毒，因为他是被领养的。虽然他的父母尝试要照顾他，他的苦毒没有消失。在他青少年期间，在自己房间里看了很多电视电影，他想象自己就是“骇客任务”里面的角色。有一天他就用枪把父母杀了。

凶杀案让人震惊，但其实这个计划在他心中早就形成了。我看他在电视中的访谈，他里面有家族私生的问题，对父母领养他的苦毒，遭遗弃的灵，长期的憎恨在心里面。透过想象力和幻想，开启了他生命中凶杀的灵。如果有人知道如何帮助他的话，帮助他解决历代家族遗留的问题和他幻想的问题，他不至于走到这个地步。

我们如何处理行邪术的罪呢？非常简单，他必须要承认他参与这种事情，然后认罪悔改，弃绝他们跟邪灵所做的任何协议，破除跟邪灵的协议。不管是自残或邀请邪灵进来或任何程度的参与，都需要弃绝，仰望耶稣，使他们释放得自由。

如果我带人祷告，我会从信仰的宣告开始，

“父神，我奉主耶稣的名来到你面前，我宣告耶稣基督是我生命的救主，是我生命的神，我是耶稣宝血重价赎买回来的，从咒诅赎买回来，从邪灵赎买回来，从罪的能力中赎买回来。主，我向你承认，我过去参与过邪术，通灵的行为，求你赦免我，我弃绝，破除所有与邪灵所做的协议，我拒绝这些灵。主，我饶恕那些伤害我的人，我求你使我得自由，撒旦离开我的生命。奉主耶稣的名。”

跟得自由的根基所经过的过程非常相似。当你了解了其中的过程时，应用在不同的地方就很容易了。可能句子的用词或顺序会有一些不同，圣灵会带领你如何做。你应如何服事呢？首先，破除与邪灵的协议。第二，命令邪灵离开。奉主耶稣的名，我破除所有与邪灵的协议，我破除他跟这个游戏的魂结，我破除他跟邪灵的连结。有时当我们破除这个连结的时候，邪灵立刻就开始彰显。你就马上命令邪灵离开。

使用我们今天所讲的自由的根基架构，首先是承认罪，然后认罪悔改，弃绝协议，释放对人的饶恕，并求主释放他们，抵挡魔鬼。你破除咒诅，破除跟仇敌所有的协议，命令邪灵出来。很直接。

第三，性方面的犯罪。

性方面的罪可以使我们的生命向邪灵敞开。原因是：神有一个设定好的法则，透过性亲密，二人成为一体。当一人跟另一人发生性关系的时候，他们的灵魂产生连结。哥林多前书第六章16，17节告诉我们，“岂不知与娼妓联合的，便是与她成为一体吗？因为主说，二人要成为一体。但与主联合的，便是与主成为一灵。”18节，“你们要逃避淫行。人所犯的，无论什么罪，都在身子以外。惟有行淫的，是得罪自己的身子。”换句话说，有东西会进入到身体里面。路加福音第四章33至36节讲到在会堂里有污鬼，不洁的灵在人里面。

性犯罪可以在不同的方面影响人。 1）与性关系的对象有一个不合神心意的魂结产生。 2）他们所做之事的记忆和影像会出现在脑海里。 3）当他们的关系破裂时，在心里的反映。所以当有性关系的两人分手后，心里会有很深的忧伤。因着这个伤痛，人们就会对男人或女人产生苦毒的论断，内在誓言，甚至死亡之愿来试图减低伤痛。 4）邪灵进入生命影响他。

性犯罪对人影响很深，神希望我们能够洁净，单单敬拜他。有很多陷入性犯罪的人发现，当他们敬拜神的时候，很难投入，总有不洁净的画面进入他们的脑海里。性犯罪带来的最不好的结果就是会有这样的图像烙印在脑海里。从这里得自由的旅程需要一些时间。

我们在处理性犯罪的时候，我们要从灵里面处理，第一就是要认罪悔改，将邪灵赶出去。第二处理魂结的部分，他跟那个对象产生的魂结。第三需要处理的是魂里面的被玷污。对他的受伤所做的反应，或者对伤痛的记忆。透过认罪悔改，他的罪立刻得到赦免，立刻得释放。但心意的更新需要时间，要让他慢慢的胜过情欲的诱惑，开始追求神圣和洁净。

圣经很清楚的告诉我们性犯罪的危险，为什么圣经这样强烈的警告我们，不是因为这个罪比其它罪更严重。性犯罪是罪，它影响的是我们跟神之间的亲密关系，以及跟人之间的亲密关系。神创造我们要有一个连结的关系，他给我们能力可以用亲密的行为表达爱，当我们犯了性方面的罪时，它影响了我们亲密的能力和感受被爱的能力，影响我们建立好的关系，不断的玷污影响我们的心思意念。

我们需要认清这几个罪的部分。教会应该针对这几个领域有清晰的态度，这个问题比我们想象的更严重。性犯罪通常伴随着隐藏和羞耻，很多问题都是隐藏起来的，人们在不洁净的光景中受到很深的搅扰，他们把自己封闭起来，却又感到孤立。

性犯罪的一些例子包括婚姻之外的性关系，同性恋，色情，习惯性的手淫，肛交或者是虐待的性行为，淫乱，乱伦，奸淫，人兽交，扭曲的性幻想。其实圣经讲到很多这些东西，我们要学会如何服事人，让他们得自由。他们可能已经成瘾，需要上一些课程以帮助他们重新建立生命，逐渐得自由。

最基本的服事步骤包括，

第一，承认他们的罪，向主悔改认罪。带他们做认罪悔改的祷告，“父神，我奉主耶稣的名来到你面前，我向你承认我犯了奸淫的罪，看来不该看的东西，我把这些罪带到十字架前求你饶恕我。”你鼓励他，圣经告诉我们，我们认自己的罪，神是信实公义的，必会赦免我们的罪。

第二，他们必须弃绝不属神的魂结。 “奉主耶稣的名，我破除所有跟我发生性关系的对象之间不合神心意的魂结，破除跟我连结的每一个影像以及性幻想，我奉主耶稣的名，弃绝这个魂结。”一样样的拆毁。

第三，我们处理产生的反应。 “主，我弃绝对异性发出的苦毒的论断，我弃绝为了保护自己所做的内在誓言，我弃绝我发出的死亡的意念。主，我释放饶恕，饶恕曾经利用我伤害我的人，我饶恕他们，释放他们，祝福他们。”

我们逐渐拆毁邪灵居住的堡垒。罪，魂结，我们里面苦毒的回应，然后释放饶恕。接着我们就可以开始服事了。从破除开始。 “奉主耶稣的名，我砍断，破除不属神的魂结，我破除，破除。”你就一边宣告一边破除，“我破除与这些影像的魂结，我破除其它的捆绑，我破除内在誓言，破除死亡的念头。”当你明白他们的问题时，你就逐个破除它。

现在你就命令那些邪灵，污鬼的灵，苦毒的灵，死亡的灵，被拒绝的灵，忧伤的灵。让圣灵引导你为什么祷告，你可以想象那个人的经历，你就可以清晰的讲出他们所经历的拒绝的灵，苦毒的灵，对男人的憎恨，对自己的憎恨，羞耻。你就可以锁在圣灵的水流中了。

很多生活在这种状况下的人会感到很羞耻，“父神，我奉主耶稣的名破除羞耻的灵。”因为有羞耻，就会产生憎恨，有自杀的念头。这个过程需要圣灵的引导。

我也会为另外两个领域祷告，像这样，“父神，求你挪开他生命中任何的玷污和沾染，从他的身体和灵魂中挪开。”有时他会感觉就像有人从他身体里离开一样，“主我们祷告医治他的灵和魂，让你的洁净临到这人里面。”

我们做呼召的时候，我们就呼召曾经犯过这样罪的人，破除魂结，命令羞耻淫乱的灵，内在誓言，苦毒的灵，不洁净的灵，死亡的灵统统离开。你会看到这人对曾经伤害过他的人的反应，包括：苦毒，憎恨﹔对他们自己的反应则是：羞愧，自我憎恨，自我否定，苦毒，忧伤。当人经历了这些混乱，他与神的关系，与另一人的关系，与自己的关系，我们需要处理这三个领域。

这就是我们需要学习服事的主要领域，明天我们会谈创伤性的经历。这里我再简要的提一下，就是习惯性的，重复式的罪，你需要认清它们：不饶恕，苦毒，憎恨，悖逆，这些都是在人生命中主要的罪﹔对别人做的事的回应，嫉妒。常见的心里的罪：悖逆，苦毒，不饶恕，憎恨。圣经告诉我们这些都会为邪灵打开门。我们需要处理这些问题，悔改，释放饶恕。命令邪灵离开。

我们现在学习了如何服事人的很多的秘诀，我们看到邪灵透过这些方法进入到人生命里面，把门封起来，把门拆毁，拆毁邪灵的居所，命令邪灵离开，这样就可以释放人得自由。

明天我们要讲创伤性的经历如何影响人，我们如何服事人，让人持守在自由里面。光赶鬼是不够的，要行走在新的生命中，包括灵命的成长，更新的思想，面对试探诱惑的力量。很简单，降伏神，顺服神，抵挡魔鬼，魔鬼就必逃跑了。

有些实际的步骤可以帮助人建造生命，通常人只想你帮他解决问题，我们必须鼓励他与神同行，建构敬虔的生命。赶鬼比建立敬虔的生命容易多了，因为建立敬虔的生活需要有训练，生命中要形成好的习惯。

祝福大家！

两个王国 (5 of 8)

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今晚我们要为人祷告从搅扰人的灵中得释放，我相信很多人来是有期望的，渴望看见生命有突破。突破可以是非常戏剧性的，突然的；或者也可以是一步步慢慢发生的。

今天聚会结束后，我们有机会为人祷告；任何需要祷告的人都可以上前来，我们为你祷告；我们渴望祝福你，帮助你，这是神的心意，他爱你，他渴望帮助你。今晚我们也会邀请还 不是基督徒的朋友接受主耶稣，成为跟随主耶稣的人。今晚我跟大家分享神的良善，我们会祷告，服事弟兄姐妹，并让你有机会做回应，接受主耶稣。

当我们出生的时候，因着罪的缘故，我们与神隔绝。问题不在神那里，是我们的问题；神爱人，神的心意总是要帮助我们每一个人。神的本性就是爱，他的心总是转向他的儿女，转向你。但是罪蒙蔽了我们去看见真理，我们以自我为中心，想要过一个没有神的生活，违背了神的律法，这样在我们的生活中产生了很多问题。神渴望进入我们的生命，帮助我们。

今晚我们会分享圣经中的一个故事，还会分享一个实际的例子，怎样得自由。神总是要渴望帮助我们，我们需要打开我们的心让他来帮助我们。我们转向神的第一步就是明白我们的需要。当我们出生来到世上，我们不知道我们人生的意义和目的，不知道我们为什么来到这个世上，我们渴望发现我们人生的意义。我们发现我们人生有很多问题是我们无法解决的，这就是罪，就是与神隔绝；耶稣基督来到这个世上，就是要解决这个问题，让我们可以接受新的生命。

当聚会结束，我们为弟兄姐妹祷告的时候，我们还会祷告神的能力触摸大家。我们会做一个释放祷告，释放祷告就是从邪灵的辖制中释放得自由的祷告，就是破除你生命中的捆绑的祷告。耶稣说，“我来是要人得生命，并且得的更丰盛。”他说，“仇敌魔鬼来，是要偷窃，杀害和毁坏。”所以邪灵是非常真实的，它们寻找机会进入到我们生命里，带来毁灭。

今晚我们要挑战这些邪灵，面对它们，让它们知道耶稣基督比所有的邪灵都要强壮。邪灵想要进入人生命影响他，都是通过欺骗来进入的，很多人不知道有邪灵在他们里面，邪灵不断的在他们里面搅扰，给他们产生问题。耶稣来就是要赶鬼，解决因罪让邪灵进入生命中的问题，使我们可以再次跟神连结，神的灵可以临到我们身上。没有人受造是跟邪灵共存的，我们受造是要与神同在，把天国带到地上。

我们当中有被邪灵搅扰的，可以得到自由。虽然我会就某一个领域来谈，但我鼓励你敞开心扉，来到台前接受祷告服事。当神的恩膏开始在我们中间运行的时候，属灵的气氛会非常不一样，我们无法看见神，因为他是灵，但这并不代表他不存在，我们可以通过他触摸生命感受到他的同在。

当神临到一个会场的时候，有时邪灵就开始彰显。当耶稣在会堂讲道的时候，邪灵就开始做乱。所以在我们聚会结束之前，很有可能邪灵开始彰显，人们可能会战抖，流泪，尖叫，倒在地上。不要让这些分心，我们的焦点是主耶稣所做的事。

今晚如果你坐立不安的话，可能也是一个邪灵的彰显，如果你心里有些恐惧，不是你，而是邪灵在里面害怕，因为它知道将要发生的事。如果你非常生气，也不是你，而是邪灵在你里面生气，因为他看到了即将发生的事情。如果你突然不喜欢这个讲员，想要杀死他，这一定是邪灵。我们相信耶稣会使我们得自由。聚会时，你感到生气，搅扰，请来到台前，我们为你祷告，服事你。

主啊，我们欢迎你今晚带着你的大能来到我们中间；圣灵，我们邀请你来到我们当中。奉主耶稣的名，我对我们中间所有的邪灵说，你降伏在我的权柄之下。我命令你的时候，你要彰显，从人的身上离开。主我们感谢你，因为你的同在，触摸你的百姓。阿门！

我们一开始先为一些人祷告，享受神的同在，不要举起手来让我为你祷告，我会寻找人，为你祷告，我要聆听圣灵，他会让我知道为谁祷告，为什么祷告。

（为前面的一位姐妹祷告）

神知道我们的生命，他就在我们中间，主你今天触摸她。主离我们非常近，当我们把我们的心向他敞开的时候，虽然我们不能看到他，可是他的同在就在这里，就在我们中间。

神的同在是一个非常好的感受，有时人会笑，有时人会哭，神以不同的方式触摸人。我们看不到神，但是他的同在就在我们中间。这是个非常好的教会，敬拜的教会，祷告的教会，神就在我们中间。圣经告诉我们耶稣做王的天国里有喜乐平安和自由。

你知道我们活在一个敞开的天空下，神随时帮助我们。今晚我们当中有些人有很深的问题，令你非常困扰，神愿意帮助你，我们唯一需要做的就是用信心仰望他，耶稣就会照着你的信心，为你成就。当你来祷告的时候，期待神触摸你，期待会有事情发生，期待神服事你。阿门！

当我们为人祷告，你会感受到神的大能临到你身上。如果你里面有邪灵的话，它可能会彰显，你可能会尖叫。所以聚会最后，我们会做一个集体的祷告，焦点对准神，用信心仰望神触摸我们。不是我，焦点是主耶稣，当你的信心对准他的时候，他会来触摸你的生命。

（为一位做噩梦，怕黑的姐妹祷告,释放）

我为大家解释以下刚刚发生的事情，主刚才让我领受了一个“知识的言语”，就是为一个人预备的一句话。主让我看见她一生中都有这个问题，她有勇气承认来到台前。当我开始祷告，命令邪灵的时候，圣灵开始彰显。首先有尖叫，然后流泪，咳嗽，邪灵就开始离开她。神很深的触摸她，如果你一生都被邪灵搅扰，这是个非常创伤性的经历，从她年幼的时候就有这些搅扰她的噩梦。我们知道这个邪灵是从家族历代进来的，每一晚，她都被邪灵搅扰。跟人解释这些很不容易，通常人们会感到很羞耻，不愿意告诉别人。

这是搅扰的灵，到这里来是要偷窃，杀害，毁坏。但是耶稣要给我们生命，所以今晚他开启了释放得自由的事工。经过了这些忧伤，她开始经历自由，会从噩梦中得自由。她不需要害怕睡觉，不需要开灯睡觉，因为耶稣已经胜过一切黑暗的权势，带给她自由，还有其它的领域神要触摸她，我们就让神继续在她生命里做工。

今晚在我们中间的其他人，可能也有同样的状况，神也希望你得自由。有些人可能有噩梦，可能你半夜惊醒感觉有人掐你的脖子，这些是邪灵。或者半夜你感到有人在摸你或骚扰你，却没看见人，这也是邪灵。神要你从这一切中得自由，这就是为什么耶稣来，他要解决我们罪的问题，让我们从搅扰人的灵中得自由。他要我们被圣灵充满，圣灵在哪里，那里就有喜乐平安。

刚才我为其他人祷告的时候，就有喜乐平安临到他们身上，神的灵带给我们生命中非常美好的东西。我们知道圣灵结出的果子是仁爱，喜乐，和平；而邪灵带来的果子就是我们被搅扰，焦虑。神要我们得自由，今晚结束时，我们会邀请大家，神要让你得自由。阿门！

现在我们看旧约出埃及记第一章13，14节，然后再看出埃及记第十五章。圣经启示我们肉眼看不见的灵界，还有我们可以看见的物质世界。人是很特别的，我们活在物质世界里，可以同时跟灵界连结。耶稣教导我们神的国，他来把天国带到地上，天国中是没有邪灵的，天国拥有国王的属性，耶稣是天国的王，他的国度充满了光，充满了生命，充满了创意，充满了平安，喜乐，是一个非常美好的国度，他要将这个国度带到你生命里面。

但是还有另一个国度存在，叫做黑暗的国度。当亚当夏娃犯罪，得罪神的时候，邪灵就开始管辖掌控人的生命，用重担，压力，问题压在人身上；给生命中带来疾病和问题。耶稣来是要使人得自由，他说：主的灵膏他，他周游四方，行善，医治所有被魔鬼压制的人。所以耶稣服事人，使他们从邪灵的搅扰中得自由，让人可以认识进入到神的国度里面。在神的国里面，没有疾病，没有搅扰，耶稣掌管的地方，耶稣的生命在掌权。

旧约里面有一个故事讲的的就是肉眼看不见的灵界所发生的事。我们可以从这个故事中学习主耶稣，也可以学习到灵界的事情。我们来看以色列的历史，以色列人还在埃及为奴，受辖制的时候，他们渴望自由，可是因着埃及法老王的军事辖制，他们无法自由。他们的身份是奴隶，必须要服事主人。他们渴望自由，却没有办法得到自由。他们需要有人释放他们。

我们也一样。在我们认识主耶稣之前，我们可能认为我们是自由的，可是我们活在罪的辖制下，邪灵在掌控着我们，我们的人生在很多的捆绑之下，非常艰难。这里第13，14节说，“埃及人严严地使以色列人作工，使他们因作苦工觉得命苦，无论是和泥，是做砖，是作田间各样的工，在一切的工上都严严地待他们。”

我们看到这一群人渴望得自由，可是他们有一个严酷的主人钳制管辖着他们，使他们生活中的每一个部分都非常艰难。他们命苦，就是说他们很深的受伤，被虐待，在苦难中，可是却没有可逃离的地方，他们是在外地为奴。他们的心中充满了苦毒，当人们在苦难中，被别人伤害的时候，他们通常会有憎恨，厌恶，他们的心就会越来越苦毒。当他们的心苦毒的时候，就会打开门让邪灵进来，带来疾病。

我曾为一位年轻人祷告，他对他的父亲有很深的苦毒，他憎恨他的父亲并让这个恨进入他里面；所以他的生命充满了苦毒，没有办法享受人生中美好的事物，因为他的心是苦毒的。结果疾病临到他的身上，偷走了他的健康，他所有的关节都很疼痛，脊椎开始僵直，他面临可能瘫痪的威胁。

心里的苦毒，打开门向邪灵敞开。当人心里有苦毒的时候，邪灵就会借机进来。我也发现当人们拜偶像，服事这些偶像，魔鬼的时候，他的人生也开始越来越苦毒。偶像不会为我们人生提供任何答案，反而使我们的生命更艰难。所以这些以色列百姓是非常苦的，神听到了他们的呼求，就差遣摩西来到他们中间。摩西就预表主耶稣，是先知性的预表，是一位拯救者的来到。摩西要带领以色列的百姓离开埃及。

神降十灾在埃及，每一个灾害就是刑法他们所拜的这些神灵。最后一灾，神的百姓将羔羊的血涂在门楣上，毁灭者经过这个地方，那些有血涂抹的地方的人，性命就可以存留。

这是一个先知性的预表，预示将来有一天主耶稣基督为我们钉死在十字架上，流出宝血，为我们舍掉他的生命。任何相信他的人，耶稣的宝血已经足够破除邪灵的能力。当我们凭信心相信接受主耶稣，他的宝血可以破除一切邪灵和罪的权柄，使我们得自由。

当那一天来到，以色列的百姓得拯救离开埃及。埃及人被毁灭，神的百姓在喜乐中离开，充满了盼望。神不只要救他们，神要带他们进入一个充满祝福的地方。要进入这个充满祝福的地方，神要改变他们。

我们翻到出埃及记第十五章22至25节，“摩西领以色列人从红海往前行，到了书珥的旷野，在旷野走了三天，找不着水。到了玛拉，不能喝那里的水，因为水苦，所以那地名叫玛拉。百姓就向摩西发怨言，说，我们喝什么呢？摩西呼求耶和华，耶和华指示他一棵树。他把树丢在水里，水就变甜了。”27节中说，“他们到了以琳，在那里有十二股水泉，七十棵棕树，他们就在那里的水边安营。”

当我们将生命献给主耶稣的时候，我们跟随主耶稣，不是所有事情都会很美满，在这个旅程中会有很多挑战，神带领我们在旅途中通往祝福，在这个过程中他渴望改变你的生命，让你从心里的苦毒中得到自由。神看到这些百姓离开埃及，他们开始欢庆离开，神知道他们还带着一个奴仆的心，有着奴仆的想法，受害者的心态。神渴望改变他们，从奴隶的思想中得释放，神渴望他们成为神的儿女，可以继承产业，可是要继承产业，他们必须改变思想。

神为你预备了丰盛的祝福，但你必须长大成熟，让神在你生命里面工作。有时我们心里会有拦阻；生命里有拦阻，生命中有捆绑，是在我们重生得救前就存在的。我们得救后，神说，我渴望改变你，给你自由，让你在生命里经历神的国。

我们要怎样做？经文中这里说，这些百姓经历了非常大的得胜。三天没有水，在沙漠中行走没有水是很困难的，他们很渴，这是一个暂时性的缺乏状态。神可以看见他们看不见的东西，神看见他们得自由，神为他们预备好这个旅程，神知道前面有棕树和甜美的水源，神已经为他们预备好了，只是他们还看不见而已。他们经历了三天没有水，心里的抱怨就开始出来了，所以他们喝的水是苦水。

百姓们怎么做呢？要知道你所遇见的每一个困难都是你成长的机会。而这里百姓开始抱怨，他们在多年的奴役之下，心是苦的。当他们遇见困难的时候，他们心里的真实光景就出来了，神渴望改变他们的心。可是在改变之前，你必须要了解你需要改变。有时我们在生命中经历的困难，让我们看见我们心中真实的状况，让我们有一个正确的回应来长大成熟。

这些人的心里是苦毒的，他们认为自己是受害者，神渴望他们得到医治，从他们的苦毒中释放得到自由。当人们开始认识主耶稣的时候，他们都有多年的伤痛经历，他们的心很苦毒。可能是所出生家庭的问题，破碎的婚姻，糟糕的人际关系，失望等等。如果你问一个人，“你苦毒吗？”他通常会回答，“我不苦毒，我怎么会苦毒，我上教会，读圣经，怎么会苦毒呢？”

很多人心中苦毒却不察觉，压力和困难会使我们心里的真实状况浮现出来。心中的苦毒有几种征兆，

第一，抱怨。你常常听到人抱怨，因为他们心中有苦毒。

第二，怪罪别人。苦毒的人总是寻找别人来怪罪，“是你让我生气的”，“都是你的错，要不然我也不会如此”，“不是我的错，我生气是因为你生气”。没有人使你生气，你生气是因着你自己。

第三，没有喜乐。苦毒的人很难笑出来，他们里面很苦很酸，这都显示在他们脸上。他们常常皱着眉头，象在吃柠檬，越老越严重，他没有能力可以享受，可以喜乐。

第四，不感恩。苦毒的人没有一颗感恩的心，他们专注在他们没有的东西，而不是他们拥有什么。一个脱离苦毒的人是充满了感恩的心，“我是何等的蒙福，我有好多的祝福”。

这些人无法喜乐，无法感恩。他们不是说，“感谢你带我们离开埃及，感谢神。”反而在那里抱怨，“为什么没有水？都是你，为什么带我们来到这里？我想你会杀了我们，我们还是回去埃及好了。”这就是不感恩。

第五，苦毒的人很容易论断。他们非常刻薄，常常挑别人的错。

这些就是苦毒的一些征兆，苦毒的人无法进入和经历神的祝福，他们必须先处理生命中的苦毒。以色列的百姓是苦毒的，导致他们生活在一个循环的挫败里面。当你苦毒的时候，你自己不知道，但是苦毒的果子可以显出来，抱怨，怪罪他人，没有喜乐，无法欢庆成功，没有感恩的心，论断他人，总是渴望更多，从不满足。

他们常用尖锐的话语。苦毒的人说话总是带着刺，你可以感受到那个话刺进你心中。

圣经中有一个例子，就是一个男人和一个女人，大卫和他的妻子米甲，米甲是扫罗的女儿，大卫就是扫罗的女婿。他们两个人其实都很受扫罗王的伤害。扫罗王很嫉妒大卫，他把大卫赶走，并下了追杀令，如果大卫有任何朋友帮助他，就把他的朋友杀了，把他从以色列境内赶出去。同时扫罗将大卫的妻子米甲给了另一个男人，米甲的心破碎了，她必须跟一个她不爱的人住在一起，进入一个她根本不想要的婚姻中。

大卫和米甲各自过不同的人生，但神为他们有一个命定，他们一起要管理以色列。后来神使他们又在一起，恢复大卫成为以色列的王。过去大卫被不公平的对待，他受伤很深，被拒绝，被人诬告，他的朋友因为他死去，他被追杀，但他的心没有苦毒。为什么呢？因为他饶恕。他寻找神的良善。他说，“神对我是美好的，我也要照着神的美善显出恩典和饶恕。”

当大卫有机会杀扫罗王的时候，他没有杀。他说，让神来处理扫罗，我把我的生命放在主的手中。通常人在受伤的时候，会想到要报复，有人告诉我，华人有句话是，君子报仇，十年不晚。大卫也经历了十年，可是他的心中没有报复。当他成为王的时候，他把神的约柜带进来，他心中充满了喜乐。他欢庆，喜乐，跳舞，他的心是自由的，他想要祝福扫罗的家族，他对神的恩典充满了感谢，他的心没有任何的苦毒，他的灵是自由的。

但是大卫的妻子米甲非常苦毒，她没有来到神的面前领受从神而来的恩典。撒母耳记下第六章中，神说，她从窗中望出去。这是什么意思？她没有办法经历神的祝福。在以色列历史中最伟大的复兴时，她只是从窗中看见，却无法成为其中的一部分。苦毒使你没法经历神的同在。苦毒使你受到很深的搅扰。

第二个是她往窗外看，看到她的丈夫，心里就轻视他，因为心里有苦毒的人就是这样。当大卫回家的时候，他心里充满喜乐，充满感恩，对神的感恩。他回来对家人祝福的时候，他的妻子这样说，“你是王啊，你怎么能有这样的表现。你这样何等的羞耻啊。”一定是苦毒，这种尖锐的话，尖酸刻薄的话。就像一把剑，刺向人。

生死就在我们舌头的之下。所以一个人是甜美的，一个人是苦毒的；一个人享受神的祝福，一个人却在神的祝福之外。这是每个人的选择；当人面对困难的时候，每个人的回应就决定了这个选择。大卫选择饶恕就进入祝福里；另一个，米甲，因为她的苦毒，她终生都无法生育，她生命中无法结出任何果子。苦毒会让你一生结不出果子，而且会玷污你所有的关系。她的婚姻变成空洞的，人生变得空虚，她在她的苦毒中死去，所有的梦想都破灭，因为她从来没有处理心中的苦毒。

很不幸许多基督徒也是如此。我们让过去的伤痛继续存留在我们心里面；我们对曾经伤害我们的人有苦毒的心，没有选择饶恕释放他们。圣经在以弗所书第四章告诉我们，不要使圣灵担忧，不要让任何的苦毒，愤怒，憎恨，邪恶进入到你心里，你要有一颗柔软的心，仁慈相待，存怜悯的心彼此饶恕。

在基督徒中我看到的最大问题之一就是苦毒，苦毒的心。它表现出来的是经常抱怨，怪罪他人，无法庆祝别人的成功，没有喜乐。当一个人得到升迁，如果你的心是自由的，你会说，“嘿，太好了，恭喜你。”“哦，你买了新奔驰车，太好了。”但当你心里有苦毒的时候，你会说，“怎么会是他升职。”“为什么他买新车，我没有。”苦毒让你无法欢庆别人的成功，苦毒让你定睛在不公平，不公义的事情上，而没有定睛在神的良善上。

神不断的要求他们处理生命中的苦毒，还有里面的憎恨，那个很深的憎恨来自于过去奴仆生活的捆绑。你不能承受继续苦毒，让过去的怒气留在心里面，无法让憎恨继续停留在你心里面，允许不饶恕停留在心里面。耶稣这样教导我们，马太福音第十八章35节，当我们不饶恕的时候，邪灵有合法的权利进入到我们生命中来搅扰我们。

神在这里做了什么呢？看这里，神已经为他们预备好了泉源，神并没有偏待他们。前面已经有一个水泉在等着他们，在他们走到水泉之前，他们经历了一段干旱的时间，苦毒就出来了。这里说，摩西呼求耶和华，耶和华指示他一棵树，他把树放在水里，水就变甜了。

神知道他们会碰到这个困难，他已经为他们预备好了这个供应，只是他们还看不见，神要打开他们的眼睛。那里有一颗树，这棵树预表的就是十字架，当耶稣死在十字架的时候，他把所有的不公义，所有的罪都承担了。然后耶稣说，“父啊，赦免他们。”当我们经历不公平的对待，经历到失望和受伤，我们需要来到十字架前，说，“主耶稣，你怎样赦免饶恕我，我也怎样赦免饶恕他们。我把十字架带进这个环境里，让我的苦毒变成甜美。”

在旧约中，约瑟有许多理由变得苦毒，可是他找到了基督。约瑟被兄弟出卖，被诬告，被关进监狱，被忽略。但当他见到他的哥哥们的时候，他说，你们不要自责，不是你们要把我卖来埃及，是神对我生命有一个计划，是神差我来埃及，我需要有这个经历，预备我进到我的命定里。”他的心没有任何的苦毒和不饶恕，他看见神在这个苦难中的目的，是要预备好他进入到伟大中。

神要改变你，但是在改变之前，你必须要知道神要处理的问题是什么。我们讲到有人有不饶恕和苦毒的心，可能是对你的丈夫，你的妻子，你的父亲，你的母亲，你的哥哥姐姐，你的亲戚，或者你的师长，或者是属灵的领袖。当你祷告的时候，你常常被这些人搅扰，被邪灵搅扰。你发现当你面临压力的时候，你没有转向神而是开始抱怨，怪罪他人，你无法享受人生的喜乐，你无法欢庆别人的成功，因为你心中有苦毒。

当我们讲到神的同在，你好像没有办法经历到神的同在，你属灵的人生不是很有果效，没有结出很多果子，人际关系中有很多的冲突，可能问题不在别人，而是在你的心里面。要让我们得到自由其实很简单，来到耶稣面前，苦毒的心需要悔改，饶恕曾经伤害过我的人。当我释放饶恕的时候，神的大能就释放在我生命中。

我发现很多人在疾病里，忧郁中无法得到释放的主要原因之一就是苦毒。神渴望你得释放，你今天就要做一个决定，是不是愿意来到主耶稣的十字架前，释放饶恕。你会说，“这很不公平，是他伤害我。”是不公平，饶恕是指你欠了我的不需要再还了，因为神已经赦免了我，我也愿意赦免伤害我的人，祝福他。耶稣说，“你要祝福那些咒诅你的人，那些利用你的人，你要为他们祷告。”

有人对你发咒诅的话，饶恕他们，祝福他们。“我不想饶恕他们。”这就是苦毒说出来的话。如果有人利用你，操控你，掌控你，伤害你，为他们祷告。“我不想这样做。”这就是苦毒，受搅扰的人还是你。

今晚你可以从这里释放得自由，神渴望我们许多人释放得自由，从苦毒，憎恨，不饶恕中释放。但是你必须做这个决定，你需要改变。“今晚我要来到十字架前，我要把我心里的憎恨，心痛和忧伤放下。我要释放饶恕，不要再咒诅，我要祝福。”这会不会改变另外一个人呢？根本不会改变他，但是会改变你，你会得到自由。

我们为人祷告的时候，会有很多人从搅扰的灵中得自由。我发现很多时候当人拜偶像的时候，他里面会有苦毒；当我们通灵行邪术的时候，里面有苦毒；有性方面罪的时候，也会有苦毒；当受到其他人伤害时，会有苦毒。但是耶稣可以使苦水变甜，他可以翻转你的生命，使你成为别人的祝福。

圣经中有一段非常有趣的经文：我们赐安慰的神，在你的苦难中安慰你，以至于你可以带着安慰去安慰别人。

我们来闭上眼睛；我邀请我们当中任何还不是基督徒的人，从来没有接受主耶稣的人，今晚我邀请你来到主耶稣基督面前；主耶稣说，所有接待他的，就是信他名的人，他就赐他们权柄做神的儿女。

所以，今晚如果你还不是基督徒，在你灵里面有一个非常大的空洞，那个空洞只有透过跟耶稣的关系才能填满。耶稣邀请你跟他建立这样的关系，跟他一起同工，改变周围人的生命。他说，“来，跟随我，我要使你得人如得鱼。”“来，跟随我，我会改变你的生命。你的生命将会变的甜美。”“来，跟随我，你不会行走在黑暗中，我会有神的光在你生命里。”

“来，跟随我。”这是今晚耶稣对你的邀请，圣经说，神爱世人，他差遣主耶稣为你的罪死在十字架上，凡是相信他的，不至灭亡，反得永生。今晚你来到这个聚会，你感受到神的同在，你看见神的灵触摸人，看见喜乐进入到人的生命里面，好像从天而来的看不见的水流一样。你看到年轻的女孩从邪灵的辖制中得自由。神是真实的，不是我的能力，是圣灵的大能，那个使人充满喜乐的灵，那个使那姐妹得自由的灵，今晚他要触摸你。

今晚我要你这样做，任何愿意接受主耶稣的人请举起手来，让我知道你在哪里，神祝福你。这是一个重要的决定，接受主耶稣，成为基督徒。

我们会这样做，一起站起来，拍掌欢庆，一起举起手的朋友们，或者你刚才没有举手的朋友，今晚你渴望接受主耶稣，打开你的生命让神赦免你一切的罪。我请刚才举手的朋友们来到台前，我要带你做一个简单的祷告，我们站起来欢迎他们，请上前来，来，神祝福你。如果你今晚陪朋友一起来，你可以邀请他们跟你一起上来。

感谢主，我很高兴你今天来到神的面前，耶稣认识你们每一个人；他知道你的名字，你们每一个人都是他认识的；他知道你的挣扎，他知道你所面对的难处，他也知道你生命中所面对的挑战；他知道你哪里失败了，但是他爱你。他为了你在十字架上舍掉了他自己的生命。圣经说，当一位罪人愿意回应耶稣的时候，天上有非常大的欢庆。所以现在天上有极大的欢庆。

我要带领你做一个祷告。祷告就是跟神说话，神就会有回应。请把眼睛闭起来，你会知道主耶稣非常的靠近，你祷告的时候，他会听见你，他会饶恕你，他的平安会进到你的心里面，他会抹去你一切的羞耻；你过去挫败的羞耻，或者你曾经的过错，或者别人对你所做的事。

“父神，我奉主耶稣的名来到你面前；谢谢你爱我，谢谢你接纳我，谢谢你差遣耶稣，为我的罪死在十字架上，为我从死里复活。我转离罪，我转离假神。耶稣我接受你成为我的救主，求你赦免我一切的罪，我现在领受你的饶恕，我领受你的灵进到我心里。我今天把我的生命献给你，在天地中间我宣告，耶稣基督是我的救主，是我的主，也是我永远的朋友。阿门！”

创伤性经历 (6 of 8)

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首先我们快速的回顾一下我们之前的学习；我们看到耶稣教导释放事工，释放事工是神国度的彰显。当我们做释放事工的时候，必须要与圣灵同工，这需要信心。我们必须相信我们为人祷告的时候，一定会有事情发生。我们看到耶稣的教导，一个人得到释放之后，邪灵还是要尝试回来掌管这个人。

我们的结论是，一个人必须改变他的生命的架构，这样仇敌魔鬼才不会再回来。我们不单只是把鬼赶出去，而是要把它居住的坚固营垒完全拆毁。我们讲到三个邪灵进入人生命的方式，一）合法权利。二）透过创伤性的经历。三）对创伤性的经历的回应。

我们也看到为什么人会得释放，释放的根基是什么。第一个根基是主耶稣为我们所成就的，耶稣在十字架上买赎我们回来。有时你会发现魔鬼在争执说那人是属于魔鬼的，所以你必须要训导神的话语，他是属耶稣的。另一个根基是个人的，我们必须要预备好这人的心，让他进入到释放里。通常他没有得到释放的原因，是我们没有好好预备他的心，让他进入到释放中。

我们谈到人首先要看清自己的问题，并为此承担责任，否则释放很难继续下去。所有的改变来自于承认我们需要改变，并为这个需要负起责任。我们看到很多人来接受服事的时候，他们只是希望我们解决他们的问题，而不愿担起最初他们如何进入这个光景的责任。作为一个服事者，我们需要帮助我们的服事对象了解，他们在释放过程中需要扮演的角色是什么，要承担什么责任。

他们必须要认罪悔改，把他们的罪带到十字架前。他们必须要饶恕和释放饶恕。有时人会很难饶恕自己，领受从主而来的饶恕同时也释放饶恕在那些伤害他们的人的身上。一个不愿意饶恕的人很容易在停留在辖制里面，不能得自由。

人们也必须弃绝在他身上的捆绑，弃绝就是破除建构在我们生命中的坚固营垒。例如，一个人过去拜偶像，与偶像有一个协议，他们必须要说出破除协议的话。如果这个人是献给庙宇和偶像的，他必须要说出话语破除这个献祭的行动。耶稣说我所说出的话是灵是生命，所以我们所说的话是很重要的。

人也必须要负起责任来抵挡魔鬼。他们不能很被动很负面的说“你来帮我做就好了。”在释放事工中有一个属灵的争战正在发生。人们必须要愿意站立抵挡魔鬼，仰望神得自由。

昨天我们谈到心里的坚固营垒和捆绑。让我们可以认清心里的问题是什么并去处理问题。我们谈到魂结，就是人与魂与一些影像连结。我们讲到苦毒论断的根和内在誓言；咒诅的言语，包括自己咒诅自己或者是来自别人的咒诅；我们也谈到创伤性的经历。有时人也会把过度的重担和期待放在人的身上。

我们也谈到是如何向邪灵开的门。包括家族历代的咒诅，家族的人做过的事让历代的咒诅临到家族中，当有人愿意处理时，这个咒诅就会停止。当一个家族的人愿意代表家人为这个行为承担责任，在神的面前做认同悔改，把十架放在家族和罪的中间。我们有教导要认清历代家族的咒诅，通常需要了解这个问题是从什么时候开始的，这样就可以知道这是不是一个家族历代遗传下来的问题。

行邪术，通灵及跟灵界有关的事情也会打开门让邪灵进来。性方面的罪也会让生命向邪灵敞开。有些习惯性的罪也会向邪灵打开门。苦毒，憎恨，愤怒，不饶恕，悖逆，苦毒的论断，所有这些都会让邪灵有渠道进入人的生命。

接下来我们要看的是关于创伤性的经历。我会跟大家分享寻找它的根源的几个步骤，然后如何帮助人经历自由。

创伤性的经历，我也正在学习这个领域。我发现很多人的问题都是发生在年幼的时候，通常是一个创伤性的伤痛的经历。创伤是我们在情绪上无法面对的，无法愈合的经历，是一个无法磨灭的记忆。这些经历可以是一般性的，也可以是非常严重的。

每一个人面对创伤性的经历的回应都不一样。我们必须要了解的是，人们是不会忘记他们经历的创伤。经历越伤痛，记忆就会越深。经历如果是非常伤痛的，或者是很持久的经历，就会烙印在他的记忆里。

例如，一个人经历了摩托车车祸，车祸的冲击可能会停止他大脑的运作，忘记当时发生的事情。你跟摩托车手谈起车祸，他对车祸之前和之后的记忆都有，但是车祸当时的记忆就没有了。其实他们记得当时的车祸，只是他们失去了意识。创伤性的经历的记忆分散在他身体里。

当人有创伤性的经历的时候，在他们的记忆中产生一个烙印，是大脑中的化学元素烙印在身体里面，邪灵就通过这个印记进入到他的生命中。当人经历创伤性的经历的时候，一定会有一个影像在他的记忆中，创伤性的记忆是这样的：

1. 有一个图像，影像很深的记得。如果你回忆你的人生，有没有一些在学校里非常尴尬的事情或者人生中非常惨痛的记忆。会有一个图像，影像出现。大部分人都会有这个情况，你的经历是用图像记忆起来的。还有就是你对这个经历的解读，这个经历对我有什么意义。

对于一个从小被性侵犯的孩子，她有被性侵犯的图像记忆，她也记得当时的味道，灯光，场景等等；她对整个事件的解读就是“我是不配的，没有价值的，男人是会伤害我的。”她对这个事情产生的回应就是内在誓言，“我不再信任任何人。”所以在这个创伤性的记忆中包括：整个事件的图像，因着这个事件他们产生的信念，以及对这个事件的回应。所有这些都包含在这个创伤性的经历里面。

举例来说，被性侵犯的人会记得性侵者的形象和当时事情发生时的场景，她会记得当时的感觉，声音，味道和影像。她对整个事件的解读就是，“我是无助的，没有价值的，都是我的错。”她对这件事的回应就是，“我不能告诉任何人，我永远不能相信男人。”这就是我们之前讲到的，心里的捆绑和回应。当一个人有一个创伤性的经历的时候，就会包括所有这些；最有能力影响我们的就是那个图像，以及她们对这个图像的解读。

人可以尝试将问题压抑下来，埋在心底里，可是之后她们可能会看见，听见或者闻到一些东西，勾起她们的记忆，所有的感受又再次浮现出来了。去年，我在印尼的一个女儿在怀孕五个月的时候发生流产，我赶紧飞过去帮助他们经历这个阶段。经过长途的飞行和一些服事，我经历了非常忙碌的几天。我必须要管理好自己的情绪，因为我要服事别人，然后我回到新西兰，正是圣诞节，我有很多事情要做。

四个星期之后，我坐在电视机前看电视，有一首歌开始唱起来，就是『奇异恩典』，我就开始一直哭，一直哭，因为我上一次听到这首歌时，是在我女儿的家举行的礼拜。我把对那个流产的忧伤一直压抑下来。可是这首歌让我想起当天发生的事情，所有的忧伤都开始浮现出来。我仿佛看到在房子里，听见女儿在唱歌，我的孙子就躺在盒子里。我需要好好的忧伤，然后把她交托给主。

我这个女儿经过一个很长的忧伤的时期，特别是他们那边做火化的方式，对她来讲是一个很难承受的经历，她里面有很大的冲击。我跟她说最重要的是，你要从神的角度来看这件事，你必须要有一个不一样的图像在你的脑海里，因为你看到的最后一个图像带给你很深的困扰，你需要神给你一个不同的图像，你无法挪去人的记忆，但是你可以做到的是让神给你一个不一样的图像。

当我们经历一个伤痛的经历的时候，我们能看见的是非常有限的，都是围绕在我们的伤痛中。所以我们面对这个伤痛的方式就是邀请圣灵将这个人带回到这个经历中；让他们在这个经历中看到主耶稣，当然这人也必须愿意让圣灵带他回到原来的经历中。大部分人会将伤痛压抑下来，好像把他们关在房间里，不让任何人进入。他尝试压抑他的疼痛。

我常常鼓励他们让基督进入那个记忆的房间，再次面对伤痛；主耶稣一定会向你说话，安慰你，为你改变那个环境。对于我的女儿来说，我请她闭上眼睛，想象她之前看到的图像，邀请主耶稣进来。她立刻看见主耶稣站在那里，她看到他的忧伤，主耶稣紧紧抱着孩子，对她微笑，对她说话，她的忧伤当时就消失了。所以她对孩子的最后回忆不是棺材推进火里去烧，而是主耶稣抱着孩子，这带给她一个很大的释放。

当人们有一个伤痛的经历时，他们需要圣灵将耶稣启示在那个经历中。你可以想象旧约中列王记下第六章，以利沙的仆人看到军兵围困他们非常害怕；他在恐惧中对他的主人说他不知道怎样去面对这个状况。以利沙这样祷告，“主啊，你打开他的眼，让他看见他的眼睛没有看见的，打开他的眼，看见帮助我们的比抵挡我们的要多得多。”圣灵就打开了他的眼睛，他就从灵界里面，从神的角度看见所有天使天军的同在。他能够看到敌军，但他还能看到其它的，他看到神的大能是站在他那边的，他就有平安了。

这是神医治创伤性的经历的主要方式之一。我经常跟当事人解释，他们把创伤性的记忆放在一个房间锁起来，想这样来拯救自己。我让他们愿意想起他们过去不希望想起的东西，邀请耶稣进入那个房间。很多当事人想起过去的经历的时候就开始流泪，我就问他们，“看耶稣在哪里？耶稣在做什么？他的表情是什么？他说了什么？”然后那个人就开始和我互动，跟我说他看到了什么，就会有另一个图像进来，这个图像就会改变他的回忆，取代之前惨痛的图像。

有一个姐妹，当她五岁的时候被领养，她跟她的教会分享她是被领养的，以及她是怎样听到我们的见证而信主的。当我听到她的见证的时候，我说，“主感动我要为你祷告，主要医治你。你还记得当初你的妈妈把你送去领养吗？”她说，“我记得非常清楚。”那就是在她脑里的一个图像，有很多的忧伤，在那个图像中，她的妈妈将她交给陌生人。有很多的疑问，妈妈为什么要这样做？我怎么了？有很多这些东西在她的脑海里出现。

我对她说，请你闭上眼睛，让自己回忆起当时的经历。她就开始哭泣，回忆起那个经历，当着我们所有人的面流泪。我问她，“你能看到耶稣吗？”她说，“我看到耶稣。”我说，“耶稣看起来怎么样？”她说，“他也在流泪，为这件事情悲伤。”我说，“你可以为这件事情仰望他。”我没有想到她真的伸出手，站在那里僵硬住了，聚会的一个半小时，她就一直保持这个姿势。一般人是没有办法做到的。她就像是被抓住了。我继续讲道，然后做呼召。她突然就出来了，我问她，“发生了什么事？”她 有一个遇见耶稣的经历。“耶稣跟你说了什么？”“他说这不是我的错。”这么多年，她一直相信一个谎言，“这都是我的错。”她一直被邪灵搅扰，当耶稣把真理告诉她的时候，“不是你的错，你不是一个坏人，我爱你，我永远不会离弃你。”我第二天看到她，其实我没有认出她来，她完全不一样了，有喜乐和生命在她里面。

我记得为一位曾经遭受过性侵犯的女孩祷告，我问她愿不愿意回到过去的回忆里，她就开始流泪，开始描述当时发生的事情，描述她的父亲进到房间。我让她寻找耶稣，她看到他并开始流泪，她说耶稣充满了怜悯，他在流泪，他看到发生的事情很难过。我说，“你定睛在耶稣身上，看他做什么，说什么。”她就跟耶稣互动，她说，“耶稣走向我，站在我跟我父亲中间，我现在看不见我爸爸了。耶稣说他会保护我。”她完全改变了，三个礼拜之后，她跟她父亲和好了。她从这个创伤性的经历中得到医治，那个创伤性的图像被另一个图像取代。

有时，创伤背后有邪灵，或者跟这个创伤有魂结。如果你觉得圣灵有带领你，把创伤性的经历和魂结砍断，命令邪灵离开，同时也让圣灵启示耶稣在当中的作为。有时，过程中人们会有很多怒气，很多苦毒，他们需要经历饶恕的祷告。创伤的本质是一个图像；跟图像连接在一起的感受，因着他对这个事情的解读而产生了信念；他对这个事件作出的回应，他对这个事情的回应也需要悔改，谎言被真理取代，他们需要被释放，砍断魂结。

我鼓励你尝试这样做；我鼓励你如果有人有这样创伤性的经历，邀请耶稣进入这个经历中并医治他们；你会惊讶这个过程有多么容易，人很容易就得到自由，得到释放。

我为一位姐妹祷告，她因为堕胎有很深的忧伤。她看见耶稣抱着她的孩子，她就开始流泪；耶稣对她说，“你需要饶恕你自己。”耶稣已经饶恕她了，可是她不愿意饶恕她自己。在这个领域，很多人都有不一样的经历，那些经历总是伴随着图像；跟着图像就会有当下的感受，还有由图像而来的信念，以及对事件的回应。信念的改变是因为我们听见，看见真理；回应的改变是通过我们认罪悔改，邪灵就会很容易的赶出去。

给大家一些关于创伤性经历的例子，让我们知道我们需要寻找的是什么。创伤是一个负面的图像，因着一个伤痛的经历而烙印在人的记忆里面。同样的经历对一个人来说是创伤，而对另外一个人可能不算什么。

我们在服事中经常遇到的一些创伤性的经历有，

1.在母腹中的经验。一个孩子在母腹中被拒绝，对孩子是一个很大的创伤，影响是一生的。过去一百年来的科学认知是，孩子所有记忆都在大脑里面，如果大脑还没有形成的话，他们是不会记得的。而过去四五年中，通过利用超音波的研究发现，这不是真的。当一个孩子在母腹中时，他对母亲和周围的环境有清楚的了解。

母腹中的孩子可以很深的感受到被拒绝。一个女孩在母腹中，当她发现父母想要的是男孩的时候，她会感受到被拒绝，而这个拒绝感会让邪灵进入到里面。母腹中的孩子可以感受到母亲的情绪状况，如果母亲有很深的焦虑，忧郁，愤怒或者家里面有冲突，对孩子都会有很大的影响。母腹中的孩子能够明白妈妈对他讲的话，妈妈对爸爸讲的话，爸爸对他讲的话，爸爸对妈妈讲的话。如果怀孕过程中出现一些状况，例如如果母亲得了血毒症，腹中的孩子会有对死亡的恐惧。如果有尝试要堕胎，这个孩子也会记得的。或者之前有过堕胎的经历，孩子是会知道的，也会受到影响。只有圣灵能启示我们他的问题是不是从母腹中得到的。

有时出生时的创伤也会带给孩子很深的伤害。早产，脐带绕颈，或者难产的压力会对孩子造成伤害。跟母亲没有很好的连结，也会造成创伤。很多人认为婴儿不会说话，没有感觉，他不会知道；事实是孩子在没有保护的状况下，很容易让邪灵进入引起创伤。孩童期创伤，被拒绝遗弃的孩子，被领养的孩子，或者家庭中有很大冲突和危机的孩子，言语上或肢体上的虐待，或者是害怕恐惧的经验；父母离异也会深深的让孩子受创伤，或者是严重长久的疾病，开刀，意外，亲朋好友的去世，求学的经历。我们服事过很多人，在校园中都有很惨痛的经历。破裂的关系，意外，流产，堕胎都是创伤。

有很多方式给我们的情绪带来冲击，邪灵利用这个机会进入我们里面搅扰我们。当你在服事人的时候，就要寻找有没有这样的创伤性的经历，一个带着负面能力的图像。当我们跟人交谈的时候，求圣灵将这些都显现出来。我跟大家分享一些应做的步骤。

创伤性的经历带来的问题包括：1）图像，由图像带来的感受，感受所结出来的信念，以及对这件事情的回应。2）有时创伤会有一个魂结，我们必须要砍断魂结。3）有时邪灵会附在创伤的背后，我们在处理释放的过程中，可以将邪灵赶出去。

我们看过很多邪灵进入我们生命中的方式；当你坐下来服事这个人，应尝试了解他的问题是什么，以下是一些诊断的步骤。通常人们寻求服事的时候，都有一些问题请你帮助他。你必须要聆听问题寻求答案。当他带着问题来时，你就提出问题，寻找这个问题真正的根源是什么。不管他的问题是什么，我们可以开始提出这样的问题，帮助我们寻找问题的根源，邪灵是如何进入的。

我们服事的出发点就是要拆毁邪灵居住的屋子，再赶鬼。邪灵居住的屋子是怎样造成的？可能是家族历代的咒诅；可能是犯罪的模式；可能是一些心里的回应，如魂结或苦毒的论断；也可能是创伤性的经历。

我们可以这样处理：“可以跟我讲你的问题是什么吗？它怎样影响你？这个问题有多久了？”当你问“这个问题有多久了？”的时候，你就可以知道这是不是一个家族历代的问题。在诊断问题的时候我们会寻求这些：

1）这是不是家族历代的问题？换句话说，有没有家族历代的咒语在运行中。他的家族中有没有同样的问题。当你跟一个人谈论他的问题的时候，可以问他，“你的家族中有没有其他人有同样的问题？”“这个问题有多久了？”很多时候可以根据问题发生的时间找到问题的根源。我们在诊断的时候就是在搜集这些资讯，聆听圣灵告诉我们的。圣灵有时会感到我们问一些奇怪的问题。

2）你是否跟某个人或某件事有魂结。甚至问题是这个人引起的，你仍跟他有连结。可能是在性方面的犯罪，让你跟这个人有魂结；或者是跟虐待你的人有魂结；跟一个遗弃你的人有魂结。有没有任何苦毒的根和不饶恕存在，或者在苦毒中对某人的论断存在。“我永远不要相信男人，男人只会让你失望。”有没有任何苦毒的期待；有没有任何内在的誓言。“我永远不这样做，我永远不那样。”找出这些问题的答案。

也许什么问题都没有找到，但至少你知道你需要寻找什么。这人的生命中有没有任何咒诅的言语，自己对自己的咒诅，或者是死亡的意念；或者自己对自己不断重复的话，或者别人对他生命所说的话；寻找这些，会告诉我们问题的根源是什么。有没有重复性的犯罪？有没有任何的创伤？创伤的图像对他生命引起负面的影响，负面的伤痛。是什么样的邪灵在背后？透过这个方式回想他的生命，你就会系统的拆毁邪灵的房子。使用我们今天教导的自由的根基，就是宣告我们的信仰，宣告他是属于主耶稣的，然后认罪，悔改，饶恕，弃绝罪，弃绝邪灵。

如果我们不寻找心里面的真正根源，只是改变了他们的行为，这样的改变不会持久。心里面真正的问题必须处理。当人带着他的问题来找你的时候，不要立刻为他祷告；花点时间寻求，问问题，聆听；当与人交谈时，要留意他浮现出来的一些情绪。我跟人交谈，他们开始流泪，我就会停下来问，“你怎么了？”“你的感觉是什么？”“为什么这个感觉会出来呢？”这就告诉我他心里面正在发生的事情。

所以你看到这不是简单的一二三几个步骤就解决问题了，我们需要敏锐的圣灵工作；圣灵会启示我们应往哪个方向走。所以开始时，我会让人放松，然后问问题，在问题中找到根源。然后看问题的根源所影响的范围是什么；是家族历代遗传的问题？是魂结？内在誓言？苦毒的论断？死亡之愿？咒诅的言语？还是罪？每一个东西被拆毁之后，释放就很容易了。总是从这个角度释放，拆毁盔甲，拆毁屋子，把邪灵信赖的盔甲拆毁之后，释放就容易了。总是这么容易吗？如果你遵循这样一个过程，就会容易很多。

（译员分享了前一晚他们为一位曾经有过堕胎经历的姐妹所做的释放祷告。）

在状况中，我们必须清楚的告诉他们责任是谁的；这人清楚他所做的，他在忧伤当中也有很大的伤痛，我必须要很温柔的告诉他；当你在选择自己还是孩子的时候，你选择了自己，夺去了孩子的生命。我跟他分享了我看到的异象，在天堂神看顾很多这样的孩子。当你选择堕胎的时候，表面看是选择了最简单的方式，可是不知道有更多新的问题产生。

我们一步一步的带领她，帮助她离开她的状况。第一，来到主的面前，认罪悔改。如果你认罪悔改，神会赦免你。第二，处理对孩子的忧伤问题；求神给她一个异象；当她向主敞开心的时候，神开始向她显现，跟她说话；她看到耶稣抱着她的孩子，耶稣对她说，“你必须要饶恕你自己。”我就让她聆听这个孩子是男生还是女生，我们立刻有一个感动知道他是什么，然后我让她给孩子起个名字，把孩子交托给主。她看到主耶稣抱着她的孩子，对她微笑，对她讲安慰的言语。

每一个步骤非常清楚。处理罪，命令邪灵离开，带她经历主，遇见主；让她承担责任，为孩子命名，带出整个事件非常好的结果。她的表情，面容，在之后完全不一样了。我们拆毁了仇敌魔鬼在她生命中所建造的。从一个谎言开始，“这没有什么，只是一块肉，把它切掉就好了。”最后她承认这个真理，“这是她的儿子，这是他的名字，她夺去了他的生命。”但是耶稣饶恕她了，耶稣现在在照顾这个孩子。

神的作为是非常奇妙的，你只需要拆毁这些坚固营垒，负起责任，认罪悔改，弃绝捆绑，释放饶恕，然后领受主的医治。使用这些工具来拆毁邪灵居住的屋子，当你在头脑里面知道你要寻找什么，你就会发现重复的东西会不断的发生。家族历代的问题，魂结，苦毒的论断，内在誓言，死亡之愿，咒诅的言语，不断重复的罪，创伤性的图像，邪灵。每一个部分都有解决的方法。

我们如何在服事中越来越老练呢？你必须要不断的操练，愿意服事弟兄姐妹；不要想是“我要解决你的问题”，而要想，“这是你的问题，但耶稣有答案。”我是帮助你找到耶稣，找到问题的答案，面对真理，即使这个真理不容易接受。

当我们服事人的时候，总应是由他们自己承担他们问题的责任，耶稣有他们问题的答案；我们也需要圣灵帮助我们看到问题的真正根源是什么。我们带着谦卑和爱来面对这个人，帮助他们看到真理，当他们知道真理的时候，我们就可以带他们得释放。

如果你发现服事的人有很多的挣扎，无法释放，那可能是缺少了某一个步骤，我们需要神的帮助。可能是罪，可能是不饶恕，可能是有些捆绑需要解决；如果我们把整个屋子拆毁，邪灵就会很容易的离开了。

当我们服事完这个人之后，接下来需要怎么做？我们分享几处经文，以便我们能够知道原则是什么，如何实际的帮助人。

首先我们看雅各书第四章7节，这个经文跟自由有关系，“你们要顺服神，务要抵挡魔鬼，魔鬼就必离开你们逃跑了。”这里很清楚，神要我们抵挡魔鬼。抵挡就是很积极的面对，去抵抗。同时神也要我们与主站在一边，顺服神，抵挡魔鬼。

另一处很类似的经文是以弗所书第四章22至24节，“就要脱去你们从前行为上的旧人。这旧人是因私欲的迷惑，渐渐变坏的。又要将你们的心志改换一新。并且穿上新人。这新人是照着神的形像造的，有真理的仁义，和圣洁。”这里讲到两个东西，一个是脱去旧人，就像抵挡一样；另一个讲到穿上新人。所以我们的改变需要我们刻意的去做，才会发生。

很多人渴望你来为他们祷告，服事他们；他们却没有预备好接下来他们需要进入的，改变的生活中。在神的国度里没有中间地带；耶稣告诉我们邪灵会尝试重新回到我们的生命中影响我们；一个人需要非常积极的寻求他的自由。自由是有代价的，可是当你享受了自由的以后，你永远不会想要回去捆绑里。但是你必须要持守你得到的自由。

你发现有些国家的百姓可以摆脱独裁者，可是持守在自由中，管理这个国家是与过去完全不一样的。那你怎样持守在自由里呢？你需要特别刻意的去做。例如有人有色情的捆绑，“牧师，你为我祷告，解决我这个问题。”这是没有用的，因为他这样讲的时候，就已经把解决问题的责任放在了别人手中。

我跟他们讲，首先，你有这个罪，你在犯罪，而且习惯犯罪，习惯是需要时间去改变的。你有两个问题，第一，你生命中有很深的被拒绝。第二，在伤痛中，你透过不好的色情的东西来带给你安慰。这里有很深的属灵的问题，还有情感的问题；另外这已经是习惯性的罪，在你的大脑里面已经成为一个生理上的捆绑；你看到的东西会刺激你去按照你习惯的方式去做，你不能期待一个祷告就解决几个月甚至几年的问题。

要得到自由是有一些步骤的，从罪里面释放有一些过程。最开始就是将罪带到光中；处理罪的问题，但要持守在自由里面，有些事情你必须要做。我讲的是一般性的案例，特殊情况下也适用。我给大家以下几个步骤，帮助我们持守在自由里。这不是唯一的方式，但是我认为很实用。

1）不断建立和加强你的属灵生命，让你灵里面的人刚强；我们胜过罪是因为我们里面圣灵的大能，而不是因为我们更加的努力。让你属灵的生命刚强，圣经在犹大书第一章20节中说，“亲爱的弟兄阿，你们却要在至圣的真道上造就自己，在圣灵里祷告。”我鼓励被服事的弟兄姐妹每天操练自己，用方言祷告。因为当你用方言祷告的时候，你就是在造就你灵里面的人。 所以当一个人的属灵生命是活跃的，有能力的，就会很有帮助。

2）需要更新思想。这是最重要的；很多时候人们不会这样做，更新就像是重新装潢一样，要借着默想来更新思想。在以弗所书第四章的经文中说，“我们要更新我们的思想。”罗马书第十二章2节，“心意更新而变化”。

我们应该怎样做呢？透过默想我们可以更新我们的思想。默想就是在脑海里想象神的真理，你需要看见神的真理；你的想象力是一个非常强而有力的，可以连结神的东西。提摩太前书第四章15节，保罗对提摩太说，“这些事你要殷勤去作，并要在此专心，使众人看出你的长进来。”

你的大脑无法想象抽象的东西；如果对你说，“神爱你”，这是一个很抽象的想法，我头脑中知道这个，但心里面没有任何的感受。如果你问基督徒们“你觉得神爱你吗？”他们都会说，“当然爱我，神是爱，神爱世人。所有爱的经文我都知道。”如果我换一种问法，“你有感受到神爱你吗？”“你有经历到他正在爱你吗？”人们就突然安静下来，因为他们没有经历到神的爱，除非他们来到聚会中。

但那并不是他们生活中每天所经历的；在生活中，他们祷告，可是却感觉不到神；来到聚会中，有感受到神的触摸，会流泪。可是从礼拜天到礼拜天中间有六天。所以通过默想，想象神的真理，每天不断的重复，就会让你的心经历到他的真理。

假如这个人在被拒绝中挣扎，他相信的是，“没有人爱我，我是不被接纳的。”这个谎言会允许邪灵进入来搅扰他们。如果这个谎言居住在他的心里面，就会影响他看每一件事情。如何让这个谎言离开呢？当我们弃绝谎言，拥抱真理的时候。如果你一生中都相信这个谎言，就是“你不被爱，你是被拒绝的。”那么我跟你说，“耶稣爱你。”你完全无法接受。

默想是一个符合圣经的方式，把真理带进我们的生命里。我不是背诵神爱我的经文，我需要想象，这个经文看起来会像什么，这个经文感觉会是什么。如果我可以不断的重复想象真理，拥抱真理，它就会开始在我心里面成为一个信念。因为这需要时间，需要守纪律才可以完成，大部分的人做不到，于是他们就不断的跌倒。

如果你要真理进入到心里面，你需要背诵神的话语，想象这个话语落实在你的身上。每天用你的想象力去看，去仰望这个真理，紧紧的抓住它。一次又一次的，直到真理停留在你心里。在你里面活跃起来。

我们灵里面的人是需要这些图像的，如果我问你，“你家里哪个地方最舒服，你最经常去休息的是哪里？”你会闭起眼睛，“啊，我知道哪里了。”你会发现它是一个图像，那个图像总是让你想到安息，休息。所以如果我要改变我内心的核心信念，我需要改变我里面的图像。

默想是一个改变人生命的关键，可是很少人这样做。因为它需要练习，需要时间，重新调整心思意念。你想象你愿意在这方面下功夫，你就很容易经历神，这不是很好吗，其实是很值得的。我不断的操练，有一天我突然就感觉到了神。连续三个礼拜我每天操练都没有感觉到神，可是当有一天真理进到我心里时，我突然就感觉到了神，我开始一直流泪。

所以默想就是我们开始想象真理，想象那个东西看起来像什么，感觉起来像什么。当我们讲到圣洁的时候，很多人不明白，所以我们要更努力，要圣洁，但是不容易做到，因为我们还是在犯错。但是当我们默想圣洁，看着耶稣，看到他的纯洁，站在他面前想象。如果在我生命中没有任何的罪，与他同在的洁净是怎样的一个感觉。当我在默想他的圣洁的时候，我就变的跟他一样。你就开始喜欢这样，不喜欢其它的，因为你已经改变了。这就要我们每一天花时间跟神建立关系。

我们做一个总结，如果一个人要在生命中继续往前走，他需要建构他灵里的生命，以至于神可以运行在他的生命里面。

1）方言祷告。

2）借着默想来更新思想，宣告神的话语。

3）我们容易回到旧人的心思意念。如果你发现有负面的想法，赶快停止，拒绝这些想法。我们需要改变我们的回应。在罗马书第十二章告诉我们说，我们要透过善来胜过恶。如果有人伤害你，你开始生气，“主我将怒气交给你，我饶恕他，祝福他，我对它们有恩慈。”

4）很刻意的改变你的生活方式。其中一个很有帮助的方式就是向人敞开。我们在这个旅程中需要人的帮助，约翰一书第一章7节，“我们若在光明中行，如同神在光明中，就彼此相交，他儿子耶稣的血也洗净我们一切的罪。”

所以当我们在分享这些的时候，就像门徒训练的过程，与耶稣同行。不要将释放赶鬼看成一个独立的事工，释放其实是门徒训练的一个步骤。拆毁邪灵的坚固营垒，把邪灵赶出去，帮助这个人成为神要他们成为的人。没有任何中间的位置，没有消极被动的状况。我们就是要不断的往前追求神。阿门！

我们被邀请成为圣灵部长 (7 of 8)

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我今天讲服事人。我注意到现在我晚上要给其它人做许多祷告。部分是因为人们有很大的期待，希望有神的人为他们祷告。我理解这些，但如果我们继续投入更多，这就会减少你能做的其它事。因此，我要讲一下服事中的一些事，让你们能从中受益。

在服事的周围总是有属灵的争战。认出这些属灵争战，然后学习在它们出现时怎样应对。第一个冲突发生在为人祷告之前；第二个冲突发生在为人们祷告的时候；第三个发生在为他们祷告之后。看到这幅画面了吗？你正在服事圣灵，在这附近就会有争战和冲突；战场就在你心里。我要很快地展示给你们怎样应对。

如果你想更好地服事圣灵，你就要练习。不练习，就学不好。你非要练习不可。你想弹钢琴吗？要练习！如果你只是看着钢琴，“噢，我会弹错的”，你就永远不会弹。你必须练习。因此，有人与你一同练习常常是一个令人谦虚的事，我们要主动，愿意冒险。我会演示给你们，让你们知道这是什么意思，我只是需要一个志愿者帮忙。这是第一部分。如果什么也没发生怎么办？“就站在那里，面对着我”。

因此，第一个冲突是乐于把自己摆在服事别人的位置；因此，我现在把自己摆在了一个容易受伤害的位置；我在冒风险；因此，对许多人来说，把自己摆在这个位置本身就是争战；所以，你必须做一个决定；我受呼召做圣灵的使节，神与我同在，我会站出来，承担风险。承担风险的意思是：我会站出来，寻找神的帮助；因此，每一次我站出来的时候，我都感到有一点紧张；这不会改变，因为每一次你这么做时，都变得容易受伤害。

因此，你能做什么呢？你只要做一个决定，我受呼召做圣灵的使节，神教我的方法就是：参与实践，去与真实的人互动，去面对真正的问题。“我愿意，是的，我会去做”。你就是要做这个决定。如果你不做这个决定，把自己放在需要服事的地方，你可以读许多有关的书籍，但你永远学不会。

如果你想骑单车，你首先要骑上去。“噢，我读了许多怎样骑单车的书，我有很多资料，我对单车知道得很清楚”；“嗨，你有没有骑上去？”，“没有”，“那你就不会骑单车”。看见了吗？知识与经验是不同的；有些东西你只能通过经历才能学会。

因此，第一个争战是要说：“是的，我会来祷告”。这是你们有些人会漏掉的。当我聚会的时候，会有膏油的释放，而每一个祷告的人会得到膏油。学习的最好地方就是大型的聚会，那里有能力在流动。这也是最容易得到的学习机会；因为有膏油的释放，我能按手在你身上，把它传授给你。

通常，有百分之九十五的机会，学到的会在三个星期失去；你必须把他融入你的生命；你要把它变成你自己的东西；你通过练习把它变成你自己的东西；你通过冥想把它变成你自己的东西；你必须把自己投入到服事中。这就是第一个争战。

第二个争战是，当我来祷告的时候，我会想：“噢，压力很大，要尽力解决她的问题”；因此，我会做的是，更加直截了当； “我要你闭上眼睛，向耶稣敞开心灵，我要你依靠他”；我所做的就是把她的注意力转向了耶稣，而不是我；而这也大大地减少了我的压力。

现在，如果我把注意力集中在“噢，要做什么？” 我就会变得害怕，而这会关闭我的灵性；因此，你要把你的注意力转向耶稣身上。当我闭上眼睛，我就开始想耶稣就在我身旁；我每天都这么做；今天早晨也是这么做的。所以，当我闭上眼睛，我会清楚地知道耶稣就在我身边，与我同在；我立刻就能感受到他的同在。

因此，你必须做功课，让神在你的生命中；服事是把神的生命带给人。在我开始祷告前，会有担心；如果什么事都没发生怎么办？如果我感到信心不足怎么办？

你要做一个决定：我要站出来，信靠神；当你开始祷告的时候，你可能感到一点担心:“或者没有事会发生”。把这个想法抛到一边，聚焦在耶稣身上；“谢谢主你与我们同在；我看到你正在触摸她”。我做的就是想象耶稣站在那里，生命通过我触摸她；所发生的正是这样。

当然，开始服事后，有时会有疑虑；你怀疑“够不够好”；停下，到此为止；不要分析下去；你已经尽力了；你只要问那人：“对你有帮助吗”？我们能学习，下次再学；这是一个不断学习的过程。

“来，就这样；现在闭上你的眼睛”；你要把人们的注意力引到耶稣身上；否则，他们会对你有要求，你会觉得受到操控，试图要让什么事发生，而不是依靠圣灵；现在，在做完辅导后，你开始为人们祷告；祷告的时候，要依靠圣灵，总要依靠它。因此，我集中精神，只听圣灵，看看它要怎么做；然后，我会觉察到膏油是否淋在她的身上；如果我感到有墙或阻挡，就会感到没有流动，一定有我不知道的什么事正在发生；这时， 我只需要问主：“那是什么？”

有时，在服事人的时候有许多阻挡；如果只是一个，有时我可以通过加大力量来突破它；但大部分情况下，你需要停下来，问主问题出在哪里；可能那人受到邪灵的控制；也可能是由于不信。“奉耶稣的名，我捆绑那控制她的邪灵，我捆绑那不信，释放她”。然后，能力通常就会开始流动。或者， 可能心里有一个尚未提及的问题；你只要说“嗨，我没有感到圣灵的流动，让我们来谈一谈吧；我们有没有漏掉什么？让我们问问主漏掉了什么”；你闭上眼睛，也让他们闭上眼睛。让我们问主：“主，把我们需要处理的问题显明给我们”；与那人互动。

练习：

现在，我们需要有机会与人一起祷告，我把时间快用完了，总是有那么多事情想要做。我要你们互相为对方祷告。然后在结束的时候会有一个呼召，我们必须相信神会触摸你，不管你哪里需要触摸。这些就是我们将要做的，我要你们每三个人一组，我要你们感受服事能力进入彼此的身上。我们只要三个人一组，来吧，就站在那里。

非常简单，只要一步一步来做。目的就是要你们熟练地释放能力。现在，我们通常在发出一句命令的同时释放能力；它是从我们里面发出的。我们要遵循的步骤非常简单。“你是扶人的，眼睛要睁开，要准备好扶人”；有时人会摔倒，会很突然，所以要警觉；你可以把眼闭起来；现在你要问：“我能在你身上练习吗”？你说“可以”。要鼓励他；好，先停在这里。

耶稣培育了一个服事的环境；当人没有回应时，能力是不流动的。如果这曾让耶稣的遇到，它也会发生在你的身上。耶稣曾经把人带到城外为他们祷告，因为那不信的氛围非常强烈。有时他把人带到屋外，因为那里没有信心；为服事而营造合适的气氛是很重要的，营造期待神做些什么的气氛。

好，现在，我们再一次来服事圣灵的能力流到这位女士身上；我再一次问她：“我能在你身上练习吗”？“是的”；我喜欢笑容；好，接下来，这位女士接受能力；“闭上眼睛，把心思意念集中在耶稣身上；很快，神的能力将触摸你的生命”；“我要你闭上眼睛，我要你开始想象耶稣站着的画面，他就站在我站的这个地方，他正与你在一起；神与你在一起；开始用方言祷告”；激活圣灵的流动；开始感受到神与你同在，神与你同在；然后数三下；我们现在要释放神的能力，因此当我们数到三时，你里面就兴起，然后就释放出神的能力；就说这几个字：“能力！1，2，3，能力”。

好，我要改变一下，角色互换；你来扶着，你站在这里，对了。我要你们做的就是，问她，同样的问题：“我能在你身上练习吗”？“可以”；闭上眼睛，开始祷告；用方言祷告；当你用方言祷告是，神的灵就在你身上流动；现在，当你感到神的同在，对了，不要把注意力集中在祷告，要集中意念，就是这样。

现在，同一个人祷告，两个不一样的经历。不要担心，没关系。被祷告的人的领受能力是有差别的，所以就会不一样。总是要有信心；服事不是被动的，你要积极地相信神会让事情发生的。阿门。

再来一次，来吧，我需要一个人扶着；“我能握着你的手吗？我能练习吗？”“好，就这样”；记住，营造一个正面的氛围是很重要的；你是领导人，你要期待神做些什么；因此，当你服事的时候，营造一个期待的气氛；接下来，神将触摸你的生命，神的能力会临到你；我已经可以看到恩膏正降在她身上；圣灵来，现在触摸她；我灵里面升起，释放神的能力。

“来，你也来；把你的手给我，站在她后面”；感谢主；来吧；闭上你的眼睛；仰望神；神想要触摸你；神想要用他的灵浇灌你；现在，你注意，我说了一些东西，我宣告了一些东西。

“来吧，就这样”；这样不是很好吗？感谢神；把你的手给我；闭上你的眼睛，仰望神；神想要触摸你，想要像触摸别人那样触摸你，要用他的大能触摸你；接下来，我要你看到你的心就像两扇大门打开；“就是现在，触摸她”；

我刚才预备她领受；我是怎么预备的呢？我不知道你们是否注意到我是怎么做的；我会示范给你看。首先，我刚才已经有了两次经历，她也看到神的能力在运行；见证也有同样的功效，比如分享神能力运行的例子；第二，我让她打开她的心灵；我用了一幅画面帮助她打开心灵；然后，我就更强烈地祷告；然后，事情就发生了；所以，我们必须学习怎样建立信心，让事情发生。

“到这里来”；一，二 ，三；你服事；你来领受；你来扶着；准备好了吗？“我能在你身上练习吗”？很好；你知道这一定会成功；我要你想象神就在你身边，就像我在你身边；神的灵正充满你；现在释放神的能力；就这样；一，二，三；非常好；“你感到能力的流动了吗”？别害羞，来吧，放开胆量；“感谢主；闭上你的眼睛，仰望主耶稣；感谢主的同在；奉耶稣全能的名现在触摸她”。

好，现在轮到你们；我要你们三个人一组；让每个人都有机会为别人祷告；好吗？找一块地方来练习，三个人一组；如果你还没有三个人，请把手举起来；准备好；一个是扶人的，眼睛要睁开；一个人领受祷告；一个人服事；我们一步一步做。

步骤如下：

第一步，“我能和你练习吗”？“可以，可以，可以”。

第二步，领受的人：闭上眼睛，开启心灵；神要触摸你。服事的人：静静地用方言祷告，想象神的能力运行。数到第三下时，释放神的能力，同时向领受的人吹气，或说“能力”。

耶稣说，从你里面能流出活水的江河；问题是：从那里流出来？从你里面；你必须让它从你心里发出，去到那人；你必须发出神所给你的。你不能远远地站着说，你不能站这么远服事；你要释放神给你的能力。

扶着她；在你的灵里面升起；释放神的能力；这就像你把神给你的，给了他们；灵这个字有呼吸的意思；这就是为什么我让你们吹气，或者说话。“能力，主现在触摸她”；神正在触摸她，有时候看得更明显；如果我站得再近一些，“感谢主，主的能力触摸她，就是现在”；这里的问题出在接受，而不是释放；因为如果我这么做，“能力，现在触摸她”；你看，这一组人都倒下了。因此，这是领受的问题，我要帮助她领受。

“我要你闭上眼睛，放松；神爱你，他确实非常爱你；我要你看到你的心有两扇大门，我要你把它们打开，从而让你能领受；你习惯了向其他人释放，不习惯领受；耶稣要你也能领受；接下来，我要你开启你的心灵，就像打开门；“喔，触摸她”。

刚才的区别在那里？区别就是要把心定位在领受；在我开始祷告的时候，我问“主啊，问题在哪里”？我感到主对我说“她释放给其他人，但她觉得领受不容易”。然后，我鼓励她把她的心想象成有两扇大门，把门打开。当她这么做时，神的灵就进到她里面；准备工作很重要；有的人怎么也倒不了；别担心，我不是教你们怎么倒下；我是要教你们圣灵流动的力学。

“你这次感到有什么不同”？你是不是觉得神开始触摸你？是的，你有很多侍奉，为其它人付出了很多；通常，当你为他人付出时，过了一段时间后，你不认为有什么是你自己的；神确实爱你。再闭上你的眼睛；“神爱你；看他就站在你前面；他爱你；天父，奉耶稣的名，我打碎拒绝的灵；我打碎所有不敬虔的信念，就是觉得我每有价值，我的生命没有用；我奉耶稣的名打碎它；主啊，与我们同在；触摸她”。

所以，根本的原因是拒绝。即使什么事情都没发生，我仍然问主：“发生了什么“？你们明白了吗？学习！好，让我们再来一次。让我们再次祷告；准备好了吗？找人一起练习；“能力，能力”；准备好； 问 “我能和你练习吗”？“当然，尽力做”。开始前先仔细听我说：

领受的人，如果你心里相信这里没有什么是给你的，那么什么都不会发生；如果你看着为你祷告的人，认为他们的恩膏不够，那么什么都不会发生；你必须认识到，即使那人没有大大地被膏油涂抹，也没有关系，你的信心能释放他们身上的恩赐。耶稣说：如果他们接受你，就是接受我；所以，如果你正站着，有人已经拉着你的手，你只要在闭上眼睛时想象耶稣在那里，并敞开你的心灵领受；就是这样；看着耶稣，他在微笑，他爱你。

如果你在服事，现在就释放神的能力；1，2，3，“ 能力”。最重要是心里明白。再试一次；她失去知觉了，找其它人练吧。领受的人，闭上眼睛。那里发生什么事了？ 那是一个邪灵；一个人用方言祷告，另一人命令它出来，直接对着邪灵说。好我们准备好；领受的人闭上眼睛；耶稣正准备服事你；服事的人，开始看到耶稣正向这人伸出双手；数到第三下时，在灵里提升并释放喜乐。

现在，注意这个，我鼓励你们祷告的时候不要把手放在他们身上，从而能抵挡去推他们的诱惑，或不自觉地推了他们。如果你把手这么放，你会想：我要帮神一把，我推。

我试图教你们从灵里提升，从灵里流动；如果你是从灵里流动，你不需要推；你只要触摸，神的同在就会临到；因此，它不是方法，而是流动。

当你对鬼说话的时候，你不是像打苍蝇那样把它赶走，那不是赶鬼的方法；你要说话，我们说出的话是灵；你要对鬼说话。

鬼在什么地方？在这里？在那里？问主，求他显明给你；他可能让你把手放在他们头上；你必须从里面说出有能力的话；你必须相信你说的，就会发生；耶稣说：要对神有信心，对这座山说挪开；你必须相信你所说的会成就。因此，我们要说会发生的。那就是，“松开”；你就能看到能力在流动；如果我们是在做赶鬼的事，鬼就会感受到那个“松开”。

说了这些命令，鬼就被迫来到表明；他们知道你是不是相信你自己所说的；我们并不只是说空空的字句；说出的字句要带着信心。我相信当我说了以后，事情就会发生；如果我注意，我相信当我说“能力”，能力就会流动；因此，你说的时候，你要信事情会发生。

现在，我们要有时间为人祷告。我们讲的涵盖了许多领域，我们必须相信神会做些什么。

因此，如果你有世代咒诅，拜偶像，通灵术，性犯罪，或经历创伤等问题，说“神，我需要你触摸我；我知道我需要得自由”。请自己走到前面来，站成一排。第一排领受，第二排扶人。

让我们敬拜神；看到这么多人，我可以想到人们的两种反应：“噢，这么多人，唉”；或者：“我每多祷告一次，我就更强壮一点，因为我练习了我的权柄”；因此，如果你们一些人帮助了祷告，你也能更强壮；所以，如果你们没有在领受，或许你愿意出来，参与做祷告。

现在，记住我们说过的，要预备氛围。你们没有注意到，我让你们互相祷告也是在预备气氛；让你们敞开心灵，让你们放松，让你们对圣灵敞开。

我们没有办法仔细地为每个人祷告，我必须相信当我按手在你身上时，神的能力会临到你；而你也需要相信。尽管我不知道你生命中发生的所有事情，但神的能力将临到你。因此，预备你的心灵。现在，告诉耶稣你想要解决的问题；说得越具体越好；不要只是说：“好，无论神要做什么，他都可以做”，这没有用；就像耶稣问那瞎眼的人：“你想要什么”？

你需要告诉耶稣你想要什么？你在那里需要突破？是世代咒诅的事吗？是通灵术方面的事吗？是心中的一些烦恼吗？是创伤经历吗？是性犯罪方面的吗？是心态上的吗？那个问题是什么？只管现在把它带到主的面前。是恐惧吗？是什么东西阻碍你吗？是羞愧吗？是拒绝吗？是不是你在别人的操控下太久了，因此感到内心深处的愤怒和拒绝？有没有什么画面出现在你的脑海？现在就告诉耶稣。

如果是罪，求主赦免你；如果你需要原谅什么人，说出原谅的话语。来吧，让我们现在就做；对耶稣说吧，对他说：“主耶稣，对不起，在我的生命里有做些罪；我来到你的面前，求你的赦免”。告诉耶稣具体是什么；是什么东西上瘾？还是什么捆绑？都告诉他；他爱你；他会赦免你。所以，你也释放原谅，原谅那些伤害过你的人，出卖过你的人；释放原谅。

现在，我准备做的是，带领你们祷告。它是一个相当常规的祷告，但你会明白这对你有用。在你完成祷告后，张开双臂敬拜耶稣。有人按手在你身上的时候，停止祷告。如果里面有邪灵，把他咳出来；放手让里面的东西出来；让埋藏在心里的东西出来；准备好了吗？

“天父，我奉耶稣的名来到你的面前；我承认耶稣基督是我的救主；耶稣的血把我从一切的咒诅里，所有的邪灵中，一切的罪中，救赎出来；我属于耶稣。我弃绝所有的世代咒诅；我弃绝与邪灵立下的所有盟约；我弃绝一切不属神的魂结；主我求你让我得自由；我原谅那些伤害过我的人；我把手伸给你，现在让我得自由。撒旦，离开我的生命；奉耶稣的名，让我们敬拜主，谢谢主。”

“奉主耶稣基督的名，我现在拿起权柄。我打碎历代的咒诅；我命令拜偶像的灵，行巫术和占卜的灵，苦毒，怨恨和性方面的灵，污鬼，我命令你们离开；我来对付惊吓和创伤的灵，走，走，走”。

耶稣的部 (8 of 8)

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神的同在今晚触摸我们。我真是感受到神要把圣灵倾倒给我们大家。我们刚才花了更多的时间敬拜神。爱神是非常美好的。当我们爱神时，他就与我们同在。今晚我们就能感受到神的同在。刚才在台上发生的事都很有意思，他们一会就没事了。

今晚我真是极大地被神的同在所感动，我要在这里想一想我以后要做些什么。我们每人都有自己的计划，但神有他给我们的计划，我们要有弹性。在过去的两三天，我们教导了怎样让人释放，得自由。我相信神想要触摸更多的人，他想要帮助人，他想要满足你们大家的需要。我这里要给大家分享一个简短的信息，我们要看两段经文。

我鼓励你们敞开你们的心灵，让神今晚触摸你。他认识你，他知道在你生命中发生的事。如果你还不是基督徒，你刚才已经看到神在我们中间与我们同在，触摸人。我们看不见神，但当他来到我们中间，他会触摸人的生命，有人会大笑，有人会哭泣，人被从邪灵的捆绑中释放出来，人身体上的疾病能得医治。

所以，无论你今晚有什么需要，我鼓励你向耶稣基督伸出你的双手。在我们今晚讲道结束的时候，我们会给大家机会，接受耶稣进入你的生命中。如果你还不是基督徒，你的生命中没有神，你的生命是没有意义的，而由此带来的空虚，只有神能让你满足。今晚我想给你们机会接受耶稣。

神是那么的爱你，他派他的独生子耶稣来到地上，把神的国展现给世人，把神的大能展现给世人。他为我们的罪死在十字架上。如果我们与神隔绝，通过耶稣，我们的罪就能得到赦免，就能与神和好。耶稣邀请今晚在座的每一个还不认识他的人，邀请你回应他。因此，敞开你的生命，请耶稣进来，与神重新连接。并与神一道，为其它人生命的改变施加正面的影响。耶稣说，跟从我，我会让你们得人如鱼。

圣经告诉我们，耶稣的事工就是触摸人。耶稣被圣灵充满，他身上有神的大能，他让被邪灵压迫的人的自由。当耶稣描述他的事工时，他说圣灵在他身上，让他传扬神的道，解释给人们怎样才能与神和好。耶稣说，认罪悔改，改变你的意念，因为神的国就在你的身边。耶稣来到世上，也是来医治破碎的心灵，让受邪灵捆绑的人得自由。

我们现在看诗篇84章，第五，六，七节，“靠你有力量心中想往锡安大道的，这人便为有福。他们经过流泪谷，叫这谷变为泉源之地。并有秋雨之福，盖满了全谷。他们行走，力上加力，各人到锡安朝见神。”

耶稣也说的很清楚，我们生活在世上会遭受苦难，但你们要勇敢，因为我已战胜了一切。耶稣知道家庭的压力，他知道什么是背叛，他知道被拒绝的感受，他知道被人批判是什么滋味。他知道面对不公正时会怎样。但他总是彰显神的生命，他总是用善良战胜邪恶。

这几段经文告诉我们罪人怎样的自由；他讲了流泪谷，流泪的意思是悲伤或哭泣。圣经用这个画面来描述我们生命中痛苦的经历。谷是一个低地，山是一个高地。当一个人在低谷时，他们就是在挑战和艰难当中。圣经讲述了许多低谷，有幽暗死亡之谷，有烦恼之谷，有悲伤哭泣之谷。

今晚你们这里的一些人心中有悲伤，有非常痛苦的经历。我曾经帮助过的一个人，我拥抱他，他不停的哭泣，他的心里有伤痛。在这里讲的流泪谷，是生命中的低谷。我们每个人都有低谷，有痛苦的经历，这些经历带来悲伤。它有可能是婚姻，或是家庭，或是财务状况，或是服侍，或是工作，或是朋友。生命中有悲伤，当一个人在悲伤的低谷时，他的心里有伤痛。

圣经的这段经文告诉我们，靠神的力量，走过流泪谷的，是有福的。低谷是每个人都无法避免的，低谷是充满痛苦的，但低谷也可以让我们受益，让我们成长。不管你正经历什么，神想让你因此成长，他想进入你的生命，来到你的低谷，他想让你知道他是多么爱你，他想帮助你走出低谷。神不想让我们待在低谷里，他想让我们从低谷走出来。

靠神的力量走过流泪谷的人是有福的，他走过流泪谷的这段经历变成帮助他人的源泉。无论你生命中痛苦的经历是什么，你可以陷在那痛苦中，生气，怨恨，悲痛一生，或者你可以选择与神牵手，改变这些。让你的流泪谷变成源泉，一个帮助他人得生命的源泉。

圣经用画面描述了这属灵的经历，流泪谷，哭泣和艰难的日子，变成了得祝福的源泉。神的灵在那时运行，流泪谷就成为得祝福的源泉。你无法阻止困难的事发生在你身上，但当痛苦的经历发生时，你可以选择怎样面对。你可以变得苦毒，或你可以变得更好；你可以刻薄，受伤，怨恨，或你可以在神的恩典中成长；你可以生气，埋怨他人，或者求神帮助你；你可以被这个经历扭曲变形，或变得更加甜美，亲切。这是你的选择。我们无法选择别人怎样对待我们，但我们能选择怎样回应。

所以，圣经上说，靠神力量的是有福的，他走过低谷，让它变成源泉，神就倾倒下祝福给他，这人就力上加力，越来越有力，上到更高的层级。你想要强壮吗？好好应对遇到的不幸。你想要成为大人物吗？好好应对逆境。因此，我们看到，神的计划绝不是把我们扔在流泪谷。实际上，以赛亚书53章告诉我们耶稣担当我们的忧患，背负我们的痛苦，让我们不用承担。

我要问两个问题，第一， 为什么人会陷在那低谷？第二，你怎样走出来？你怎样把你的低谷变成源泉？从而使你出来时变得更强壮，而不是更软弱和苦毒。先讲第一点，为什么人会陷在那低谷？这些年来，我遇到许多的基督徒和非基督徒，他们的生命中充满了忧伤，他们在活痛苦中。他们的心中有一个部分是流泪谷。

因此，我试图找出原因。尽管他们并不想这样，但偶尔当有人说了什么或做了什么时，激发了他们的怒气，引起了他们的反应。为什么他们心中承受伤痛？为什么他们总无法释怀？以下是我找到的一些原因。第一个是因为人否认或贬低他们受到的伤害；如果你被什么人或什么事伤害，而你否认所受到的伤害，或者你把它放在一边，告诉自己“这真的没什么”；从而接受了一个谎言；伤痛被埋葬，被谎言掩盖。

我发现许多女人深受其苦，例如那些曾经堕胎的女人。在他们的心灵深处，他们知道发生了什么，但他们掩盖了真相，贬低和否认了真正发生的事，因此他们的心灵深处有伤痛；除非我们面对真相，我们总无法释怀。我后面会给你们讲解走出伤痛的步骤。

我发现在亚洲，人们不愿谈论他们受到的伤害。因此，当人们否认或贬低问题时，他们的内心受到伤害，这伤害埋藏在心灵深处；他们试图让它伴随自己的生命，而不愿意面对它，解决它。人们陷在那低谷的另一个原因是不宽恕；不宽恕的意思是：你伤害了我，你亏欠了我，我拒绝免除你的债。

当我们存着不宽恕的心时，圣经上说：我们就为使人痛苦的邪灵开了一扇门，让你受苦。它不停地提醒你：这不公平。它不停地唤起你的伤痛，激起你的不公平感，挑动你心中的怒火，这些经历不断叠加。

我发现有些人火气很大，他们对每一件事都生气。但真正发生的是：他们受了伤害，非常生气，他们从来没有宽恕。愤怒就像债，就像不宽恕。人愤怒，是因为他们相信自己的东西被拿走了，属于他们的东西被偷走了。“你亏欠了我，你要道歉，你要改正。”因此，愤怒和不宽恕就像一个要求：你要还给我。但你可能永远不还给我，或者你错的太严重，无法还给我。

因此，如果我把愤怒和不宽恕隐藏在心里，我就被陷在了那低谷，我陷在了流泪谷，被我自己的不宽恕陷在了那里。现在，神对你说，“嗨，我想帮你，我想让这低谷变成源泉，但你正抓住你的愤怒和不宽恕不放手你不让它走，因此你一直处于这困境当中，我要让你出来。”

人陷在那低谷的另一个原因是：他们心底的誓言。他们让自己心硬；他们对自己说：“我再也不让任何男人靠近我”；“我再也不相信女人”；“我再也不干这个职位”；因此，如果我们心底的誓言扎根在愤怒和苦毒之上，我们就会陷在那低谷。“我绝不要像我父亲”；“我绝不要像我母亲“；这一类的声明是建立在愤怒和苦毒之上的，它会让你陷在那低谷。因此，有许多的原因会让我们陷在低谷：否认，贬低，不宽恕，愤怒，心底的誓言，评价。人让自己的生活一团糟。现在，我们可以选择怎样应对这一困境。

看一看圣经是怎么说的：“靠神有力量,…这人便为有福。”有福！就是说，神的恩惠临到他们。注意：为什么人会陷在那低谷，是因为他们试图自己掌控所有的伤痛，掌控自己的生命，试图掌控他们周围的世界。当我们想掌控自己的生命时，我们的生命中就没有神的位子。因此，“这人便为有福”的步骤是，换句话说，神的祝福临到这人的程序是：第一，“靠神有力量“，力量这个字的意思是：在神那里有得胜的能力。

因此，整句话的意思是：靠神战胜困境，这人便为有福。他们来到神那里，拿到光的下面，而不是试图自己掌控，试图掩盖。经上说，这人，就把流泪谷变成了源泉。他们怎样把它变成源泉，因为他们做出了选择，他们选择让神来掌控，选择让圣灵进入他们的生命，选择让神改变他们的心灵，选择敞开他们的伤痛让神来医治。

神不想让你独自承受生命中的苦难；这就是哥林多后书第－章所说，今天，那赐安慰的神，那安慰人的神，安慰你所遭受的所有苦难。因此，神是安慰人的神。你遇到的每一个困难，都是宝贵的时机，神想要来到你身边，想要安慰你。现在，那赐各样安慰的神，要安慰你所有的苦难。下面看这一段“…叫我们能用神所赐的安慰，去安慰那遭各样患难的人。” 《哥林多后书》 1:4。

因此，如果你陷在痛苦的境地，神想来到你身边，安慰你，医治你。而如果你是神改变生命能力活生生的见证，你就能帮助其他人，因为你曾经历同样的痛苦，你了解他们。因此，走出伤痛的步骤是什么呢？

这常常比你想的容易很多。难的是做，但步骤很容易。1.我要面对现实，我要诚实，承认受到伤害；发生在我身上的事真的伤害了我，我在受苦。通向自由的第一个步骤是诚实。讲出事实，承认受伤害；而不是假装，掩盖，对自己说：这不算什么。2.我要诚实地面对问题；发生了什么，对我有什么影响，我是怎样回应的。当你问这些问题时，你就是在开始真正面对问题。现在，我需要寻求神的帮助：主阿，我需要你的恩典和帮助因此，第一步是诚实地面对现实；第二步要问：发生了什么？对我有什么影响？我是怎么回应并解决问题的？ 3.现在，我需要求神的帮助，做出决定：我要宽恕；我哀叹所发生的，我将宽恕。有时候，我们需要先哀叹，然后才能完全地宽恕。眼泪是心灵的语言，内心的问题，需要从心底发出。

耶稣说，宽恕要发自内心。常常是这样：眼泪的流出表示或说出我们内心的伤痛。当我与人互动，交谈，劝解他们时，我总是会看着他们的脸。我发现，当你触动他们的心灵一刻，那里就是他们内心伤痛之所在，心灵的窗户，眼睛就开始有泪水涌出。你就能知道那人真正的伤痛；我常常会把重点放在这里，因为这就是神想要你医治他们的地方。

因此，面对问题，提出问题：发生了什么？它怎样影响了我？我是怎样试图保护自己的？然后带着这些来到主的面前，哀叹这些问题，释放宽恕，然后开始祝福伤害了你的人。如果有心底的誓言或评价，声明放弃；并期待神帮助你，给你恩典使你走出这低谷；期待神对你说话，因为他的话带来安慰。

我记得我曾面对难以置信的困境：我的一个女儿被性侵犯，这让我心碎；我去到了流泪谷。没有人能解决我的问题。人们甚至无法理解我是多么的伤心。在我的心底深处，我在挣扎，在想我能不能再信靠神。因此，我把这些都抑制隐藏在我心底。

我试图继续照常生活，试图做一个好的基督徒，试图翻过这一页。有人对我说，他们会想办法帮助我；他们问我：如果你可以对神说任何话，你会说什么？因此，当有一天我独自与神交通时，我开始哭泣，我开始面对这伤痛；然后我说出了心里话，我说“神啊，我觉得你让我失望，我曾期待你关心我，照顾我，现在我不信任你。我已经祷告了，为我的家庭祷告了。而我的家庭正受到伤害，是你容许这事发生的；因此，我在挣扎，要不要继续祷告”。

我诚实地面对神，当我说出我的心声时，说出心里真正的挣扎时，我开始哭泣。安静片刻后，我感到神的同在，感到神在帮助我。只要你诚实，神总会回应。只是我们有时试图假装没事。

我感到主开始向我说话，告诉我他是多么爱我。他说：“我不关注你是否舒适，我关注你的品德”；他说：“我要你成长；我知道这对你是一个悲伤的经历，但在这个过程中，你将成长，你的家庭将成长，我会来帮助你们，然后你就能帮助更多其它人”。

我开始哭泣，他说：“你祷告的时候，就祷告让你生活中的一切恢复正常；我不关注你是否舒适，我关注你的品德”。然后他对我说：“你知道吗，你对你女儿的感受，也是我对我的民的感受，罪玷污了他们的生命”。我感受到神的心声，我开始不停的哭泣，然后我放手。

我说：“神啊，我感谢你来帮助我。”在三个月的时间里，我女儿奇妙地遇见天使，她的生命被改变。神以超自然的方式来帮助我们，情况完全改变了。靠神有力量的人有福了；他在悲伤困苦中转向了神，而不是试图自己掌控一切，或把悲伤埋葬在心底。转向神，并做出选择，把流泪谷变成源泉的人有福了。

你可以选择信神；你可以选择跟随神的道路。让我们再看一次那段经文：“靠你有力量心中想往锡安大道的，这人便为有福。”（诗篇 84章 5 节）换句话说，就是：心中愿意经历一个过程。我们只是想要有人为我们祷告，把事情解决；但神想让我们与他同行，信靠他。

因此，我变得越来越有力量。当我思想现在的情况，我的心中没有任何伤痛；发生那事让我伤心，但神给予了极大的胜利；我们已经为成百上千有类似经历的人祷告，让他们得释放，得自由；诗篇这段经文的意思就是：心里拥抱神设定的过程，靠神有力量的人有福了；他们经过流泪谷并让它变成源泉，祝福如雨充满他们，他们变得越来越有力量，他们正经历神。

靠神有力量的人有福了，他在困境当中转向神，说：“神啊，我愿意与你同行，经历这个过程”；他们经过流泪谷；他们并不停在那里，变得苦毒愤怒伤心怨恨；他们把这变成甘甜。他们宽恕，而不是愤怒；他们祝福，而不是咒诅；他们展现慈爱，而不是苦毒；他们变得越来越有力量，得神祝福，享受与神同在。你心中如果有苦毒，你就无法享受与神同在。

保罗写道：不要让圣灵难过；不要让你的心中有苦毒和愤怒；不要有怨恨和报复；而要有慈爱，温柔的心，及宽恕。享受神的同在；我爱圣灵；我爱神的同在；我要我的生命得自由；因此，只要悲痛来临，你就必须做出选择，是陷在低谷，还是把它变成源泉。

现在请你们闭上你的眼睛。今晚，这里有人还不认识耶稣；你来到这个世界，与神隔离；但神爱你，他给了你一个生命的归宿。耶稣来到世上，为你的罪被钉死在十字架上，并在第三天从死里复活；他说：所有接受他的，所有相信他的，他就让他们成为神的儿子。如果你还不认识耶稣，我要你今晚做出决定：“我接受耶稣；我转向他，爱我的神。我一生信靠他，并从心里接受他。

罪人的祷告:

“天上的父，我们奉耶稣的名来到你面前。谢谢你爱我；谢谢你派耶稣来，为我的罪死在十字架上，并从死里复活。今晚，我要离开罪，转向你。耶稣啊，我接受你为我的救主；我求你赦免我的罪。现在，因着信，我收到赦免，我收到你的灵进入我心中，我今晚把我的生命交给你。我在天地面前宣布，耶稣基督永远是我的救主，我的朋友。阿门！”

Healing from Abortion, Miscarriage & Adoption

从流产/流产/收养愈合

從流產/流產/收養癒合

1. Personal Testimony: Adopted Daughters Wedding

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

2. Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding

Mike and Joy Connell, together with their daughter Josephine, share their story of reconciliation—testifying of how God can turn situations around when we obey Him.

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

个人见证：收养女儿的婚礼

这是一个曲折的爱情故事，有欢笑也有悲伤。就像罗密欧与朱丽叶一样，他们这一对年轻的情侣因各自的家庭背景被迫分开。更糟糕的是，他们将一个婴儿带到了世上，并决定放弃她。但是这个故事，不像其他的故事那样，它因为有神的介入，让悲剧变为欢笑，有了一个开心的结局。

個人見證：收養女兒的婚禮

這是一個曲折的愛情故事，有歡笑也有悲傷。就像羅密歐與朱麗葉一樣，他們這一對年輕的情侶因各自的家庭背景被迫分開。更糟糕的是，他們將一個嬰兒帶到了世上，並決定放棄她。但是這個故事，不像其他的故事那樣，它因為有神的介入，讓悲劇變為歡笑，有了一個開心的結局。

Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

从流产/流产愈合

神的心脏是充满怜悯医治和恢复受损的生命。堕胎是门口的悲伤和恶魔般的束缚，这在很大程度上是在保密和否认隐藏。当真相面对一个孩子的生命已采取的痛苦是巨大的。现实即将来临，有一个儿子或女儿在天堂谁，我们会遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意义的愈合谁失去了一个孩子在子宫内的家庭，使他们免受奴役和折磨。耶稣来不是要谴责 - 他要拯救，医治，拯救，恢复。

從流產/流產癒合

神的心臟是充滿憐憫醫治和恢復受損的生命。墮胎是門口的悲傷和惡魔般的束縛，這在很大程度上是在保密和否認隱藏。當真相面對一個孩子的生命已採取的痛苦是巨大的。現實即將來臨，有一個兒子或女兒在天堂誰，我們會遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意義的癒合誰失去了一個孩子在子宮內的家庭，使他們免受奴役和折磨。耶穌來不是要譴責 - 他要拯救，醫治，拯救，恢復。

Healing From Abortion (1 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (2 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (3 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (4 of 4)

The Silent Scream (Bernard Nathanson)

Dr. Bernard Nathanson's classic video that shocked the world. He explains the procedure of a suction abortion, followed by an actual first trimester abortion as seen through ultrasound. The viewer can see the child's pathetic attempts to escape the suction curette as her heart rate doubles, and a "silent scream" as her body is torn apart.

A great tool to help people see why abortion is murder. The most important video on abortion ever made. This video changed opinion on abortion to many people.

Introduction by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, host. Describes the technology of ultrasound and how, for the first time ever, we can actually see inside the womb. Dr. Nathanson further describes the ultrasound technique and shows examples of babies in the womb. Three-dimensional depiction of the developing fetus, from 4 weeks through 28 weeks. Display and usage of the abortionists' tools, plus video of an abortionist performing a suction abortion.

Dr. Nathanson discusses the abortionist who agreed to allow this abortion to be filmed with ultrasound. The abortionist was quite skilled, having performed more than 10,000 abortions. We discover that the resulting ultrasound of his abortion so appalled him that he never again performed another abortion.

The clip begins with an ultrasound of the fetus (girl) who is about to be aborted. The girl is moving in the womb; displays a heartbeat of 140 per minute; and is at times sucking her thumb. As the abortionist's suction tip begins to invade the womb, the child rears and moves violently in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a "silent scream." The child's heart rate speeds up dramatically (to 200 beats per minute) as she senses aggression. She moves violently away in a pathetic attempt to escape the instrument. The abortionist's suction tip begins to rip the baby's limbs from its body, ultimately leaving only her head in the uterus (too large to be pulled from the uterus in one piece). The abortionist attempts to crush her head with his forceps, allowing it to be removed.

In an effort to "dehumanize" the procedure, the abortionist and anesthesiologist refer to the baby's head as "number 1." The abortionist crushes "number 1" with the forceps and removes it from the uterus. Abortion statistics are revealed, as well as who benefits from the enormously lucrative industry that has developed. Clinics are now franchised, and there is ample evidence that many are controlled by organized crime.

Women are victims, too. They haven't been told about the true nature of the unborn child or the facts about abortion procedures. Their wombs have been perforated, infected, destroyed, and sterilized. All as a result of an operation about which they they have had no true knowledge.

Films like this must be made part of "informed consent." NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood are accused of a conspiracy of silence, of keeping women in the dark about the reality of abortion.

Finally, Dr. Nathanson discusses his credentials. He is a former abortionist, having been the director of the largest clinic in the Western world.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding.mp3

- Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage.mp3

- Healing From Abortion (1 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (2 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (3 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (4 of 4).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding.mp4

- Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage.mp4

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个人见证：收养女儿的婚礼

Sun 26 Oct 2008 AM  « 返回页首

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这是一个曲折的爱情故事，有欢笑也有悲伤。就像罗密欧与朱丽叶一样，他们这一对年轻的情侣因各自的家庭背景被迫分开。更糟糕的是，他们将一个婴儿带到了世上，并决定放弃她。但是这个故事，不像其他的故事那样，它因为有神的介入，让悲剧变为欢笑，有了一个开心的结局。

个人见证――养女的婚礼

迈克Mike和乔伊康奈尔Joy Connell与他们的女儿约瑟芬分享他们重归于好的故事；见证当我们顺服神时，神是怎样把境况完全转变过来的。

我要与你们分享两个原则，然后我们将分享见证神的良善；见证非常良善的神，见证他带给我们生命中的祝福，只有祝福；简直就像是个童话，让人难以置信。

我们要与你们分享见证，并将重点放在我们是怎样做的，从而引出要讲的那些原则。神是永远不变的，神总是好的；但只有在我们自己预备好时，他的良善才会释放；实际上，你必须做出决定，定位好自己，接受从神来的祝福。

定位的意思是：你呈现的状态，或你说的话，或你做的事， 给神留出空间，让神来触摸你的生命。

圣经说得很清楚：我们必须相信神是一个好的神；我们必须相信他会来触摸我们的生命。

我要先分享一下我们的背景，我们的日常生活；我们从哪里来，是什么让我们来到这里。我们还要重点讲一下神怎样奇妙地来到之前一个周末的婚礼上。

我们参加的是我们结婚以前送给别人收养的女儿的婚礼；对我来说，能主持婚礼，规划婚礼的程序，安排接待的程序，这一切都让人难以置信；甚至能去到那里本身就是一个奇迹；但能够很荣幸地计划和安排这些程序，给神留出空间，更加重要。

我会先重点讲述两个原则，然后讲解我们怎样把这些原则应用在生活的各个方面；以及神是怎样地信实，让我们有如此令人难以置信的见证。

把孩子送给别人收养的故事，通常并没有这么好的结局，这只是其中的一个；但它展示了神总是好的，因此，不管故事的结局是 什么，神的良善永不改变。

对一些人来说，找到养父母是非常痛苦的，甚至会增加他们已经经历的痛苦。而对我们来说，正好相反；我们要与大家分享一些背景资料。

两个原则：

1. 雅各书 4：6 “神赐恩给谦卑的人。” 当圣经讲到谦卑，它是指你“心里的状态”，你的态度；谦卑并不是奴颜婢膝。谦卑的意思是：你坦率地面对神，承认生命中的错误和失败，不试图掩盖或辩解；这非常重要。谦卑让 我们既看到我们生命中负面的东西，也看到潜能，就像神看到的。圣经告诉我们：神将授权给谦卑的人，就是你要定位自己，在以下方面与神达成一致： A.你的错误和失败；对此持开放的态度。 B. 神是怎样说你和你的生命；（如果他说：“你被赦免了”；那你就被赦免了）。谦卑指的是：我相信；我坚持。C.这是你的定位，是神呼召你去做的。谦卑能通过大胆而坚强地经受考验显明自己。对一些人来说，它看起来像是骄傲，但它不是；它实际上是：我与神就我是谁，我受呼召去做什么， 与神达成一致；这就是谦卑。

2. 第二个原则是：尊敬的原则；圣经上对它的描述是负面的，罗马书1：21 说：“因为他们虽然知道神，却不当作神荣耀他，也不感谢他。他们的思念变为虚妄，无知的心就昏暗了”。原则是：你尊敬和感激的将走向你；你不敬的将远离你。尊敬，荣誉和价值将吸引人进入你的生命；而不敬将让人离开。如果你不重视金钱，它很快就远离你；当你尊重它，处理得当，它就会走向你；生命就是这样。“尊敬某人”的意思是：给予他们恰当的承认，位置和价值；它可以表现在对待他们的态度，或言语，或行为。当我们尊敬人，我们重视他们，我们把自己放在低微的位置，从而使他们被举起。如果我们要圆满地与神同行，享受神的祝福，我们要学习：谦卑的原则和尊敬的原则。

在三种情况下我们会尊敬人：

1. 我们尊敬他们，因为：他们所做的事；如果有人 做了什么著名的事，你应该尊敬他，重视他，感激他。

2. 你应该尊敬一个人的品德，就是他是什么样的人。如果某人勇敢，他们可能从没有站出来，但只要有一刻他们在压力下表现出勇敢，你尊敬他。

3. 我们要认同我们生命中其他人的地位和等级；重视他们，尊敬他们，只因为他们的地位。这就是为什么圣经上说：尊敬你的父母；你可能做的很好；但你也可能说：我不知道我父母是怎样的人；其实没有关系，你尊敬他们，因为：这是在你的生命中，神给他们的地位；如果你尊敬他们，你就会得到祝福。

两个原则：谦卑的原则；就是在生命上，在神怎样说我们上，与神达成一致，坚信神说的 是真实的。尊敬的原则；就是愿意给人价值和适当的尊敬。你会发现这总能释放出神的恩典。

说了这些后，我们要分享这些原则是怎样应用在我们的生命中的；有关在我们结婚前发生的事，然后神怎样解决我们生命中出现的这些问题。

[Joy Connell说] 我要和大家分享一段经文，这是主这一周让我注意到的。“在旷野预备耶和华的路，在沙漠地修平我们神的道”。它许多年都是一个沙漠，也是神的道，因为神要来到沙漠。经上还说“一切山洼都要填满”；那对我来说确实是一段非常低谷的时期：小孩被秘密的送给人收养；那真是一个非常低的低谷。

但经上说：“一切山洼都要填满”。而参加她的婚礼是一个非常高的位置，真奇妙。经上说：“大小山冈都要削平”；对我来说，在怀孕的时候面对父母， 那曾经是一座大山，是我无法翻越的大山。上周六，我所有的家庭成员都在那里，与我们站在一起，人很多。经上还说：“弯弯曲曲的地方要改为正直；高高低低的道路要改为平坦”！“耶和华的荣耀必然显现”；我们看到神荣耀的显现。“凡有血气的必一同看见”；是的，婚礼上所有的人都看到了神的荣耀；他们不知道那是神的荣耀，但那确实是。“因为这是耶和华亲口说的”；因为神给了我们应许，他所判定和宣称的，就会实现。

我相信，现在是时候对你们的高山发出预言；我知道你们许多人正面对高山，但神能削平他们，而当他这么做的时候，那绝对奇妙。

如果你看圣经一开始所说的，当亚当犯罪的时候，因为害怕，他躲了起来。在我们约会了七年后，有一次发生了很大的冲突。因为害怕，我采取了亚当和夏娃同样的方法；他们把自己隐秘地躲藏起来，我想，这是一个可以仿效的办法。

我也有内在誓言，就是过去你自己告诉自己的，让自己捆绑在其中。当遇到危机的时候，你就按照这已经在心底编制好的程式运作。尽管它们不是最好的办法，但这是你的办法，因为你已经告诉自己要怎么做。

我从来也没有准备诱骗什么人与我结婚，或经历在我的教会看到的：先怀孕后结婚的羞愧。

我的内在誓言告诉我：“没可能我会去到那里”；但实际发生的是：内在誓言的控制力极强，它在你的心灵周围筑起高墙；这就是我当时情况。此外，我自己的办法就是仿效；Mike刚才说谦卑是“承认神的办法”；但如果你不转向神，你有各种自己认为可以仿效的“好办法”。

仇敌也会出几个“好主意”，当你听从了它，按照你自己的办法去仿效，基本上可以带来即时但短暂的安慰。你保护了自己，但所有这些办法带来隔离和更大的痛苦，进一步的伤害，以及更多的捆绑；但这就是当时1969年时的情况。

[Mike Connell说] 在我们结婚前，我还不是基督徒，并不认识神。当Joy怀孕后，我们决定把这女孩送给别人收养；这是个非常坏的选择，非常错误的决定；它是在压力下做出的决定，因为没有能力去勇敢地承受。因此，在犯了一个错误后，我们紧接着又犯了第二个错误。圣经上说，如果你想掩盖事情，你绝不会成功；所以，此后的许多年我们忍受了极大的伤心和痛苦。

我们从来没有忘记这个女儿，没有忘记为她祷告，总想知道她怎么样了。你无法放下这些事，这简直成了你生活的一部分。后来，我来到主的面前，完全认罪悔改，就我所做的，与神达成一致：要为过错负责；为了Joy，要勇敢承受拒绝这个孩子所带来的后果。

我那天在主面前誓言（有些誓言是非常好的），公开地认罪悔改；我说“不管我们现在处在生命的那个阶段，我知道有一天你会把这个孩子带回来，因为你是神；不是我们有权这样，因为我们已经放弃我们的权力；而是因为神是良善的，你会带她回来”。

我心里知道，我坚信，她会回来；所以，当我认罪悔改后，我向神说：“你带她回来的那一天，不管我会是什么身份和地位，我将接受她以任何身份回到我们的生命中；我们将给予过去应该给她而没给她的，认可她，爱她，欢迎她。

谦卑看起来就是这样；你实际上完全掉转过来，在需要发生什么事上与神达成一致。

几年后我们来到这里；神向我们讲了生命中的问题，我们有一个婚礼更新或婚姻更新的服务。

[Joy Connell说] 教堂仍然很小；当我们结婚时，只能在护士的小礼拜堂；我们有：一个天主教的神父，圣公会的牧师（与一个兄弟会的结了婚，对我这方面的事情很理解）。很奇妙，神的同在就临到了。

让双方家庭都接受的婚姻看起来似乎是完全不可能的；但Mike同宿舍的人离开神学院当了天主教的神父，其中一个摔断了腿住进惠灵顿医院，在那里与一个长老会的护士相爱，从而给我们创造了一个先例；他从主教（或其它什么人）那里获得特许，可以结婚。

所以，我们只是遵循他的先例；在看起来毫无可能的情况下，神为我们开了一条路。结婚后，我们意识到，许多事已经改变；我们已经支离破碎，仅仅存活下来，找到返回神那里的路。我们还认识到，那时教会里有其它人也像我们一样；他们来到神那里，他们的情况完全改变，准备开始全新的婚姻；所以，我们与12对夫妇一起，交谈了三个星期；我们谈论婚姻的基础，准备再次经历婚礼；而在那里，我第一次揭开了心中的秘密。

我从来没有告诉我父母我有一个女儿，但在这个小组里，我们讲述了自己的背景；我们决定：这是我们放下包袱的时候了；或许我们应该写信给福利部门，看看能不能与失去的女儿恢复联系。

你知道吗？神真是太好了。我们女儿的养母Carol觉得她的女儿有权知道她的来历，因此她也写了信给福利部门；我们双方的信同一天到达了福利部门。因为符合双方的意愿，福利部门给了我们有关的资讯，我们就开始了联系。

对我来说，这真是很难；当你已经掩盖了什么事，已经否认了她，而突然要面对现实；我真是无法适应，甚至不能看到她的照片。我打算把这些事封闭起来，把它严严实实地用大石头压住；神说：推开这个石头，不要走到这一步；我意识到它是死亡，它是丑陋，它是痛苦；但当你真正把石头推开，看着照片，你想：这实际上是一个人。

她的名字叫Josephine；我想：这有点像一个教名；神提醒我约瑟的故事：与他所有的兄弟分离，后来一起团圆。

面对现实是一件大事，尤其当你已经在否认中生活了18年时；但我们必须真正推开石头，揭开盖子；然后你就感到自己极其脆弱，完全要依靠神。

而这正是他要我们做的，不再掩饰曾经掩饰的东西；在创世纪的时候，他们身上曾经有无花果的树叶遮盖，但他们实际上要脱下它，来接受皮制的遮盖，如同耶稣基督在十字架上给我们的预备。对我来说，这也是非常脆弱的一个环节。

[Mike Connell说] 所以，谦卑的问题再一次出现；我们必须面对我们个人生活中的问题，把各样事情理顺，并认识到我们的生命受到深深的伤害；然后来到主的面前，承认这些； 主清楚的告诉我：你要理顺这些。

我不得不与Joy一道理顺这些；我去找到她的父亲，在他面前理顺这些事；我们要清理我们做错的；当你这样做的时候，当你按照神说的去做时，他就给你祝福，他就给你恩典。

[Joy Connell说] 是的，我记得我把父母请来，我说：“我要和你们说一些事，…”；我把他们带到我知道的最好的餐馆 Old Flame，让他们坐下。我告诉他们我向他们隐藏的事情，并为此向他们深深的道歉，请求他们原谅。

[Mike Connell说] 我们改正错误，这实际上是尊敬他们；哪里有不尊敬的地方，就要在那里恢复尊敬；这有很大的不同。

[Joy Connell说] 然后我们写信给Josephine，向她道歉；我们两个都为对她的拒绝，以及因此给她的生活造成的影响，表示了谦意，并请求她原谅。然后，我们决定要欢迎她。我们邀请她来家里住；这也是一个奇迹。她当时正在学牙医，现在已经是Whakatane的一个牙医了。她当时在奥塔哥学牙医正学了一半，她正在学一个假期课程，我们邀请她在假期课程结束后到家里来。

当然，当你正牧养着一个教会，当你已经有了六个孩子，你不可能对教会什么也不说就在下星期天又带一个孩子来。但这个教会非常了不起；在她来之前的周日，我们在教会站起来，分享了我们的见证。当时的一些人今天还在这里，我记得你们的样子。在当天的崇拜结束时，神真是太好了，所有人的密室都打开了，所有人的丑事都揭开了；神感动了大家，带给大家极大的医治；作为一个教会大家庭，你们很好地回应了我们。我们邀请她来到家里，来的那天刚好是Mike 44 岁的生日。

[Mike Connell说] 怎么这么巧？

[Joy Connell说] 那是她说好要来的日子。

[Mike Connell说] 她不知道我的生日，但来的那天刚好是我的生日。

那星期我们渡过了一个美好的时光；这以后，她联系上了我们，渐渐认识了我们，也爱我们。每次回来都哭，与我们的家庭紧紧地联系在了一起。

直到有一天，一个男孩想与她结婚；他尊敬我，来征得我的许可，那真是让我惊讶。我没有任何权力；你知道，当你把孩子送给人收养，你就没有了权力；而且在过去一段日子，甚至都失去了联系，没有办法联系；现在，这一切都过去了。

当我们把孩子送给人收养时，神对我说话；我心里知道她会回来，但看不出有任何可能的办法，因为我们之间没有任何联系，你不能获得联系方法；后来，法律改变了，让这成为可能；她回来了，我们能重新建立联系；然后，这男孩向我请求让他们结婚，这是我极大的荣幸。

她也尊敬我，让我帮助安排结婚事宜。她曾经来过我们家的婚礼，非常喜欢；她说：我不知道那是什么，但我就想要这样的婚礼。

这样，非常奇妙，我就有了一个新角色，参与策划婚礼接待；因此，就做出一些安排，让神进来。我教她怎样去尊敬她的养父母；在她离开他们的照顾，建立新的家庭时，怎样向他们说话，说些什么。

[Joy Connell说] 那时，尽管Mike有机会帮她准备婚礼，教她怎样尊敬她的养父母，当然那会立刻带来眼泪；Mike与他们并没有感情上的联系，但他列出了他们为她做出的许多事，以及怎样尊崇感谢他们。

同一时刻，我在去台湾的飞机上，正看着一个收养故事的电影；看完后，我深受感动，我决定给Josephine写一封信。

写到她的婚礼时，我在信中赞扬了她的勇气，赞扬了她走出的每一步；我也为自己当时的决定后悔；但在那以后做出的决定都是非常正确的：与Mike结了婚，把我们的心交给了主，把我们的生命建立在他的上面，用这些来鼓励她。

但我忘记把寄出去；所有，我到了台湾在酒店安顿下来以后，我拿酒店的信纸写了信，交给前台帮我寄出。

信在我们妇女大会开会的那天送到了，刚好是她婚礼前一天的疼惜日，她邀请我与她一同过疼惜日，但我要参加妇女大会，去不了；但就在她准备离开去过疼惜日的时候，她收到了我的信，这让她感觉我与她在一起。

[Mike Connell说] 我们去到婚礼；婚礼的排练非常的困难，你必须面对问题。

我们与主同行时， 如果我们做出了不好的决定和选择，他不会让我们免于承担后果；而你如果要成长，你就必须知道，做了坏的决定和选择，就会有坏的后果；尽管神会赦免我们，但我们仍需承担由此产生的后果。

当然，对我来说，最大的挑战就是在婚礼上，另一个男人会牵着我的女儿走过长廊；那对我真是非常难，你会看到，我过一阵会给你们看几张照片。（附视频）

前一夜，我非常痛苦；我们排练了婚礼，并与他们待了一段时间，但没有神的同在；感觉非常别扭，非常不舒服；排练结束后，我去了海边的沙滩，在神面前哭泣。

我说：神啊，这真是太难了，你要帮助我们。

看起来将没有真正的价值和尊敬；你知道新西兰人是怎样的，他们那奇怪的幽默，那种奚落人似的幽默。

我非常想要神的认可，神的同在不，来到那地方；但似乎就是不行；那晚见了她的家人，排练了婚礼；回到家，我感到非常的苦恼；我对神说：神啊，你必须帮助我；你要告诉我怎样才能让明天的婚礼与今天的排练不同。

我可能花了大概两个小时，等待神的回复，知道在那个特殊的场合要怎样说怎样做；

那真是一个非常奇妙，不同寻常的感受；我们一边说，一边会给大家看一些照片，让你们多多少少也能感受一些。它是最不同寻常的感受，“另一个”男人带着我的女儿走下长廊；处理好因此产生的情绪，是很大的挑战；但这是我多年前的决定产生的后果，我必须承受。

我知道神会给恩典；他做的就是：他让我讲尊敬，真正展现出尊敬，用尊敬来启动整个婚礼。

因此，我们让Kate 和 Andrew （我们的女婿和媳妇）一起唱了一首歌；在他们开始唱的时候，气氛开始改变；不是因为他们选的歌，而是因为他们内在的生命，气氛开始改变，神的同在临到那里；你能感到气氛的改变，当然，每个人都看着我：他会说什么呢？ “你会说什么呢？你会说多少呢？”

我们同情她的养父母；因为最开始，我们觉得或许我们家只来两个人参加婚礼，但Jo要所有人都来；所以，我们对说什么“很敏感”；但神准确地告诉我该说什么。

[Joy Connell说] 小男孩Alex是Josephine的小儿子。

[Mike Connell说] 那是她的养父母；这是他们在婚礼上把我女儿交给新郎Steve。

我感到神告诉我要真正尊敬她的养父母，因为他们会感到不舒服；谦卑就是知道自己的位置，适应恰当的位置；有时你可以是管事的，但有时你必须当仆人。你要看到神给你的位置，并自己选择这个位置；我花了相当时间去尊崇他们；直接了当地向他们说，尊崇他们。

对他们来说，收养了这样一个孩子，是一个非常艰难的选择。

[Joy Connell说] 她是先天性髋关节脱位。真是令人惊讶；这个妈妈声称是无神论者，但她看到我们这个孩子说：我知道她会没事的；10个月的时候，她站起来走路了。

[Mike Connell说] 在医院的时候，没有人要她，我们不知道为什么。

她的养母本不想要这个孩子，因为她以为这孩子是个瘸子；但她的心里觉得她应该要这个孩子；因此，我尊崇她选择欢迎Josephine进入她的生命。

我们尊崇了孩子受到的教育和他们家庭生活的环境；我们尊崇了他们鼓励孩子找到我们，知道这对他们来说是非常困难的；

[Joy Connell说] 我们还尊崇了他们为我们开放了他们家。

[Mike Connell说] 并欢迎我们去他们家相聚，与他们共度时光。

[Joy Connell说] 我们与Josephine见面后没多久，就与他们第一次见面，当时感觉很奇怪；我们去到新西兰南岛的最顶端，两对父母，加上Josephine，一起吃饭。邀请我们来到他们家是一件大事；但让我觉得有趣的是：吃饭吃到一半，她的养母向我倾诉了她的心声，讲了她的感受，心情；然后突然她说：嗨，你完全是个陌生人，我不知道为什么跟你讲这些。

[Mike Connell说] 我做的就是尊崇他们；尊崇她的兄弟们，我们全部家庭成员都与我们同来，支持我们，没有一个漏掉。我尊崇了Steve，为他来找我征求允许的恰当举动；然后是Josephine，为她寻找我们的勇气和意愿，并欢迎我们进入她的生命中和心底里。

我非常清楚地指出：我们来这里不是因为我们“有权”来，而是特别的恩典，由于她善意的决定。

我与他们分享了“智慧建立房屋”；用智慧建立婚姻；用智慧建立各样东西，关系，生意，及事工。

但智慧是要从神的眼光来看问题，做选择；我承认我曾做了不好的选择；我们曾生活在痛悔之中；但现在，我们很高兴，神为我们开路让这一天临到；我们那天能去到那里就是一个奇迹。

[Joy Connell说] 当神要恢复事情时，是轻而易举的；他有着宽广的胸怀。

在婚礼之前，Mike和我去了尼日利亚庆祝我们25年结婚纪念；一个尼日利亚先知把他瘦骨伶仃的手指放在我的脸上，并让我知道了以下的信息：在神的眼里，Josephine就像一个孤儿。

我的意思是，那个家庭真是太好了；我们两个都是老师，他们两个也都是老师；她在乡村长大，有自己的小羊小牛当宠物，受到非常好的教养。

唯一所缺的是神。她完全不知道神的事，因此在神的眼里，她是一个孤儿。我想：喔，神啊，你心里装着那些不认识你的孤儿；宁愿在世上一无所有，也要认识耶稣，他是一切。

所以，这让我感触很多，与神在孤儿上达成一致，明白了神的心里装着孤儿，而我们关心孤儿的心也是由此而来的。我很高兴你们今天在坐的许多人赞助孤儿，神是站在他们一边的。

神很伤心，因为Josephine对神的事一无所知。

[Mike Connell说] 到了接待的时候，我们不知道会怎样。当我们进去的时候，我们注意到Jo做了一件有趣的事。

她坐在主桌，安排两对父母坐在她的对面，他们得到同等的待遇；真是奇妙！人是办不到的。然后，她站起来，尊重收养她的养父母家庭，感谢他们；这之后，她尊重了我们。

心里非常感动；当你尊重别人时，能打开人的心灵。我们再多看几张照片，非常幸福的一对。

原本她妈妈说她没有什么要说的。开始时她突然又说：“我要说几句。”

尊重人就会拉近人们彼此间的距离，也会与神靠近。当你尊重别人的时候，上帝的同在就会悄悄降临。所以她站起来开始讲话，我们非常吃惊。

[Joy Connell说] 是的，前一晚真的很尴尬，她根本都没有正面看我，她一直在忙啊，忙的。

[Mike Connell说] 显然很痛苦。

[Joy Connell说] 在婚礼上被敬重，使她消除了疑虑。在Josephine敬重她之后，她站起来说话，她本来没打算要说的，她看起来那么漂亮。

她说出了她心底的话，我想Josephine从来都没有听到她的心底话；她尊重她每一个孩子，其中三个是领养的，一个是亲生的。他们每一个人都是非常宝贵的。

她尊重Josephine，讲述她为他们的生活带来了无比的欢乐，他们拥有的所有快乐的时光。最让我震惊的是…（哭泣）

[Mike Connell说] 她说每年的圣诞节或者是Josephine的生日的时候，他们总想到失去她的那个家庭，他们非常感恩，我们的损失是他们的收获。

当然你可以体会我们当时的感受，因为每一年我们都会想起我们失去的女儿。她那样说非常触动我们两人的心。我们两人都站起来了，我说：没有一年我们不思念我们的女儿，我们每年为她祷告，这是我们的重大损失。

我们很感激Josephine愿意让我们重新回到她的生命中，真的非常感动。你可以听到周围哭泣的声音，我甚至都不敢向四周看，因为到处都有人在抹眼泪。我们意识到整个人群当中，有婚姻破碎的，有被收养的，有失去孩子的，有混合家庭的，有各式各样的问题，当人们感到被尊重的时候，他们的心打开了。

[Joy Connell说] 这样神就可以进来了。

[Mike Connell说] 神进来做工。

[Joy Connell说] 尊重人就可以让神降临，这是一个大能的经历。

Josephine不希望我们在招待会上讲太多，如果她的父母不讲话，我们也会相应的去做。但是她的父母双方都讲的很好，很长；她也让我们有机会再讲两句，我们不会讲太多，我们只是尊重她，她看起来多么的漂亮，感谢她欢迎我们一家人。

关于她的未婚夫Steve，有两件奇妙的事情。首先，Josephine第一次来我们教会拜访我们之后，回到她的住处。当她不在的时候，她的一位室友受洗了。她说，我知道你们说什么，我去我亲生父亲的教会，我知道你们说了什么。

第二件事是，Josephine在Steve出现之前还有过几段关系，她的感觉是：我就知道你们喜欢这个人。因为有一天，Steve让一位像Mike这样的人为他受伤的背部祷告，他躺倒在地上足足有二十分钟，起来后完全得医治了。所以他真实的感受到了神的大能。Josephine说：我知道你们会喜欢他！

婚礼前一个星期的礼拜六，Steve在水深28米的海里潜水，氧气用完了，他快速的上浮，然后就得了潜函病(深海潜水员因浮出水面太快而感到关节剧痛﹑ 呼吸困难的症状)，被送进减压室直到结婚前两天才出来。

我真高兴Steve能跟我们在一起，感谢神保守了他。我不知道这是不是邪灵在做工，这种事情非常困难。神为每一个人都有计划和命定，我相信它正在展开。

我尊重他所做的，我们没有权利要求成为神伟大计划的一部分，是的，我们没有权利。但是神是这样的美好，他赐恩典给我们，让我们有机会认识他，敬重他，成为他计划的一部分。

[Mike Connell说] 我们分享了一些故事，它对人们的影响是惊人的。还有很多事情我不便公开，它们是非常宝贵的经验。

但是有一件事令人非常感动，Jo的儿子Alex，七岁了，他在婚礼前跟Steven谈话，Steven问他，“你想让我成为你的继父吗？”他说，“不想，我已经有一个爸爸了，我不需要一个继父，我就叫你Steve吧。”

但是婚礼过后，神的同在触摸了人的心。Alex问:“为什么有人哭啊？”Jo说，“当人们讲出他们心里的话，他们就会感动。”Alex说，“我也想说几句。”

于是这个七岁的孩子拿起了麦克风，他敬重他的妈妈，说她非常漂亮，对他多么的好。然后他又敬重Steve，他说：Steve，我愿意你成为我的继父，我愿意你在我生命中有这个位置。

[Joy Connell说] 他坐下来后就开始流眼泪。

[Mike Connell说] 是的，他坐下来哭起来了。还有很多这样的事情发生。

还有一件对我非常重要的事情。虽然在婚礼前感觉有些尴尬，但是婚礼后，Josephine的妈妈走过来跟我说：谢谢你教导她将婚礼办的这么好。我感谢她的认同，其实我们所做的就是教导她尊重人的原则。

当Josephine一路这样做的时候，神的同在降临，使整个事件变得不寻常。感谢神，有些事情我们从来都是做不到的。

我们相信神会把她带回来，我们相信我们会成为她生命的一部分，但是我们从来没有想到神给我们的更多，多过我们所期待的。

我鼓励大家思考这个问题：谦卑和敬重，能够开启我们的生命。

结束祷告：

我知道有些人被深深的触动。也许你的心被感动了，你还不是一个基督徒，你还不认识耶稣基督，你还没有经历神对你的爱。耶稣说：任何接受他的人，任何邀请基督进入他们生命的人，他就赐他们权柄成为神的儿女；赦免他们的罪，他们与神就有了一个新的关系，神是他们的天父，他们也成为神家庭中的一员。

今天做这个决定非常重要，我们这样决定了，在我接受耶稣基督之前，我的生命一团糟。

主的美好就在眼前，你自己何不就做决定。

如果今天你还不认识耶稣基督，为何不现在就接受神的爱，让他进到你的生命，成为一个基督徒？与神连结是一个个人的选择。

也许你曾经与神相连，但是因为失望，有些事情没有像你想象的那样，你退缩了；今天，你需要重新建立与神的关系。只要诚实，谦卑。

谦卑就是承认我的状况。你要承认：神，我今天需要回到你身边。

______________________________________________________

由Dawn Seow撰写的相关文章 （www.citynews.sg – 2012年6月16日）

这是一个曲折的爱情故事，有欢笑也有悲伤。就像罗密欧与朱丽叶一样，他们这一对年轻的情侣因各自的家庭背景被迫分开。更糟糕的是，他们将一个婴儿带到了世上，并决定放弃她。但是这个故事，不像其他的故事那样，它因为有神的介入，让悲剧变为欢笑，有了一个开心的结局。

1962年，Mike和Joy Connell刚刚进入大学，他们在学校相识并相爱。但是因为Connell来自天主教家庭，而Joy的家庭则是严格的兄弟会成员。两个家庭非常反对他们两人的关系。

“我们两个都是家中的老大，我们面对来自家庭很大的压力，”Joy回忆道。“当时，新教和天主教之间的关系非常敌对，我们双方的家庭也因为宗教信仰的不同强烈反对我们在一起。我们不断的分手和复合。”

六年后，他们犯了一个大错，Joy怀孕了。

“我非常的震惊，害怕和羞愧，心想：我该怎么办？我们做了一个愚蠢的决定，藏在了一个秘密的地方，不让家里人知道。我们离开家，生下孩子，任何人都不知道。”她说。

当Joy决定生下孩子的时候，她也决定不要她。“我们把她送给别人领养。那时在新西兰，法律规定如果我们放弃孩子，把她交给人领养，我们将永远见不到她。法律禁止两个家庭相互接触。”

感谢主，神最终让这一对年轻人结婚了，因为他们的父母觉得他们在一起的时间确实很长了。即使Joy感到她有些远离耶稣基督，认识他们的人还在不断的为他们祷告。“有一天我听到神对我说他（Connell）有一颗爱主的心，可以嫁给他。”Joy说。“我感到了很大的释放。”

为了安慰双方家庭，他们决定举行一个由天主教神父和圣公会牧师联合主持的仪式。Connell说，“结婚当天我将生命献给主耶稣；我知道如果我们生命中没有耶稣，将永远不会有幸福。于是在结婚仪式前，我决志信靠主耶稣基督。”

这就是Mike和Joy Connell的爱情故事，他们现在是新西兰哈斯丁市海湾教会的主任牧师。他们的名字对于城市丰收教会并不陌生，Connell是国际知名的讲员，他在发预言，释放，以及内心医治方面有特别的恩赐和能力，他的服事大大的医治了那些受伤和破碎的心灵。

六月二日和三日的周末，当他在城市丰收教会服事的时候，他的家人与城市新闻分享了他和Joy如何跟他们第一个被送给别人收养的孩子重归于好的故事。

和好始于医治

“来到主的面前，我意识到将孩子送给人收养是多么错误的决定。我相信即使法律不允许，但主一定会为她的回来开路。于是我彻底的悔改，承诺如果她能够回来，不管怎样，我一定将整件事情公开，因为罪是隐藏的，悔改就是完全公开。

结婚八年后，Connell夫妇接受神的呼召开设了一个基督教学校，同年他们也开始牧养教会。生活还在继续，他们从未谈起过去的伤痛对他们的影响。

“有一段时间，我们跟几位已婚夫妇一起共事，我们决定开设一个重建婚姻的服务，帮助夫妻稳定双方婚姻的基础，重新回顾彼此的承诺。”Joy继续分享说，“那也是我们第一次看到我们生命的基础因为过去的伤痛而受到了很大的损害。处理了这些伤痛之后不久，禁止原生父母与已被收养孩子见面的法律修改了。神知道法律要修改，他让我们预备好。”

Connell夫妇写了一封信给社会福利部门，非常有意思的是，几乎就在同一时间，那位领养了他们孩子的母亲也写了一封信给他们，想要了解一些事情。

Josephine Brown，Connell家的女儿，当时已经十八岁了，正在大学一年级学习。通常情况下，社会福利机构是不会让他们在孩子年满二十一岁前与她接触的，但是因为是双方的意愿，他们被允许开始联系。

Josephine说，“我刚出生的时候，带着夹板在床上呆了十个星期。我父母收养我的时候，医生也不知道我会不会残疾。我的爸爸妈妈跟他们的父母说要收养我的时候，他们强烈反对。”

不像其他被领养的孩子，Josephine从小就知道她是被领养的。“没什么好坏，我知道这是个事实。小时候我总是想知道我是谁。在纽西兰，很多人有不同的背景，像来自英国，爱尔兰或者威尔士的人总在说他们是半个爱尔兰人或者半个英国人，我从来不知道我是什么人。”

当Josephine发现她的妈妈收到了一封来自社会福利部的信，知道她的亲生父母还有六个孩子的时候，她的脑海里充满了各种问题：他们是谁？他们长什么样？他们像不像我？“真的好蠢，当你没有任何信息的时候，脑子里就装满了各种各样的想象。”

终于，那一年，Josephine完成考试后飞来与Connell全家见面；她到的那一天正是Connell的生日。

“在她到来的前一个星期，我们在教会公开讲述了我们的全部故事。这之后，很多有问题的人开始分享他们的过去，将他们以前的秘密公开。”Joy说道。

当Connell将他们家的过去洁净之后，神让一个念头进入他的脑海中。“我们在教会坦承之后，神问我，你知道如果你不跟整个教会分享后果会是怎样吗？我说，不，我根本没有那样想过。神说，如果你将这件事隐藏，是对所有接受你领导的人信任的背叛；他们总有一天会知道真相的。”

谦卑和敬重

多年来，Connell家一直与Josephine保持着联系。她不是在一个基督教的家庭中长大的，但是每次来探望他们的时候，她都会和他们一起去教会。

当Josephine在教会被神的同在感动的时候，是否要成为一名基督徒以及对家庭忠诚的问题一直困扰着她。“我成长的过程中，总是想要取悦我的父母亲，我不希望这个决定是为了使别人开心，我想完全为了我自己。所以我用了很长时间不再顾虑我的父母以及Mike和Joy的想法。”

当Josephine遇见她未来的先生Steve Brown后，改变开始了。Steve与Josephine分享了他在一次教会崇拜中得医治的见证。“我想，这人可以帮助我灵命成长，这是很重要的。如果我跟错了一个人，可能就更难成为基督徒了。”

他们的婚礼在2008年10月举行，这是Josephine的亲生父母和养父母两个家庭的首次见面。“我希望我爸爸可以领我走上台，Mike来主持婚礼。”

但是事情并不像大家希望的那么顺利，Connell还记得在婚礼预演时的紧张气氛。“我跟神说，‘神啊，求你帮助我解决这个问题。’我没有得到回答，但是到了婚礼当天的早上，神启示我要从敬重的原则出发”。

Josephine的父母和兄弟姐妹也很不安，每个人都在想：他会说些什么。我也在想：我要怎么说？

神启示我由敬重Josephine和她的父母开始，因为当你自己谦卑下来，敬重别人的时候，他们的心就会变得柔和。我讲到尊重她的父母，尊重她的兄弟，尊重Josephine和Steve。神的同在临到了，紧张的气氛消失了，人们的心融化了；你能感到爱的流动。这就是我向神所求的：破除所有的壁垒。人们开始流泪哭泣，真是太好了。

在婚礼仪式后的招待会上，她妈妈站起来讲话，大家又开始流泪；她曾经面对因为她自己的母亲反对她收养Josephine所引起的冲突，但是在她内心深处，她知道这个孩子是没问题的。”

去年复活节，Josephine和Steve在家中接受Connell的施洗。“我们现在扎下根，学习如何祷告，与神同行。”Josephine笑着说。

人难免犯错，但是就像这个故事一样，神总是愿意帮助我们将痛苦变成欢笑。

从流产/流产愈合

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神的心脏是充满怜悯医治和恢复受损的生命。堕胎是门口的悲伤和恶魔般的束缚，这在很大程度上是在保密和否认隐藏。当真相面对一个孩子的生命已采取的痛苦是巨大的。现实即将来临，有一个儿子或女儿在天堂谁，我们会遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意义的愈合谁失去了一个孩子在子宫内的家庭，使他们免受奴役和折磨。耶稣来不是要谴责 - 他要拯救，医治，拯救，恢复。

教会应传播盼望的信息。福音就是人们盼望的信息，是神对我们的爱，他愿意帮助我们。作为基督徒，无论周围发生什么，我们要明白我们需要帮助别人，耶稣基督来就是要帮助人的。

我想到一个很重要的经文，耶稣来不是来定人的罪，而是来使人因他得救，拯救人脱离罪恶。耶稣爱你，他从不定我们的罪，不管你身边发生什么，上帝的心一直伸向你，爱你，恢复你。

身为一个基督徒，不要为国家许多的问题害怕，要学习了解他们，服事他们。没有不能谈论的议题。事实上，我们应该谈论任何议题，带着爱的灵，盼望的灵，安慰人们。

今天我要做的是跟大家分享一些感人的事情，我以前没有分享过，但最近上帝对我的心说话。昨晚和今早我还在挣扎，我想讲别的东西，可是你当聆听上帝，他对我们已经有安排。今天的信息可能直接影响你，也可能间接影响你。希望大家有一颗敞开的心，爱的灵。因为我们为人祷告，看见上帝带来极大的突破。

我们来看诗篇127篇3节。我们来过这里很多次，经常跟大家分享我们的故事。大部分人知道我们有一个大家庭，七个儿女，21个孙子女。在这个过程中，学习到很多，其实我们还有两个孩子，在天上。我今天要谈的是堕胎和流产。

我希望给大家带来盼望，我希望还不认识耶稣的人，明白到上帝爱你，想要帮助你，想要打破你生命中罪的权势。然后，我要为三组人祷告，我们一起祷告，免得任何人觉得尴尬。我们希望爱的灵，上帝的大能能帮助你。我要为所有曾经堕胎的人，或跟曾经堕胎的人接触过的人，或流产的人，无法生育的人，一起祷告。我们绝不会开口问你是什么样的问题，希望大家自由的到前面来，相信上帝会帮助你。

诗篇127篇3节说“儿女是耶和华所赐的产业。所怀的胎，是他所给的赏赐。” 。所以孩子是产业，是上帝赐给我们的，每个人里面都有这个灵，是从神而来。圣经说神是灵。人与人结合会创造生命。人与神同工，上帝把灵放在孩子身上，孩子成为有灵的活人。上帝渴望孩子分享他给的命定，上帝的渴望是有许多的子女，这是神的心。上帝的计划就是接触这地，帮助人，就是上帝的人。

当我们生在这世上，因为罪与神隔绝。上帝渴望来到我们中间，饶恕我们的罪，将他的灵放在我们生命中，赐给我们永恒的命定。这一切由回应基督开始。

三天前，我读到一篇有关中国的新闻。故事发生在潍坊市，一对年青夫妇，他们已经有了一个孩子，正怀着第二个孩子。一天早晨，公安冲进家门，拦住这位丈夫，抓走了妻子，直接把她带到了医院。当时妻子怀孕六个月了，他们威胁她说要把她的丈夫关进监狱。而丈夫也四处找寻妻子，六个小时后才找到，但她已经被打了流产针。

深深感动我的是，他们两个人因为失去孩子而忧伤，这没有人可以安慰他们，我的心都碎了。我将分享一些我个人的见证。我们再看看神的话语，希望为人们带来盼望。

很多年前，我的妻子经历过两次流产。身为一个男人，当时我不明白这对女人意味着什么。我们四处服事，感到很大的压力。我们已经有五个孩子，我的妻子从没有抱怨过这两次流产。她从医院回来，我们继续我们的生命。没有多想什么。我们又有了两个孩子，Peter和Sarah。

多年后，我在另一个教会服事，为一位女士祷告。我问她发生了什么事情，她说她流产了，当我祷告时，她开始哭泣，我也感到非常忧伤，与她一起哭泣。我想太不可思议了，我一定是感受到了神的爱。

同一天，我去到另一个教会，同样的事情又发生了。我为一位流产的女士祷告，我又感受到了很深的忧伤。当你感觉到什么时，就要问自己，我的感受是什么？我为什么会有这样的感受？回到家后，我开始祷告，上帝跟我说，你忧伤不是因为她，而是因为你自己失去的两个孩子。一个男孩，一个女孩。你从未停止过悲伤，即使你并未意识到你的损失。

我开始很忧伤，上帝就告诉我该怎么做。我回到家跟妻子说“上帝跟我说到我们流产的两个孩子”。Joy说“上帝也跟我说话。他们是一个男孩，一个女孩。我给他们起名为Timothy和Catherine。”我说，神告诉我在家里应该怎么做，于是，像往常一样，我们全家一起进餐。Joy把两朵漂亮的花放在餐桌上。我跟孩子们分享说“我们家有七个孩子，实际上，应该是九个，还有两个在天上。”

有趣的事情发生了，流产后出生的两个孩子开始深深的哭泣。我感到他们灵里的悲伤。在他们的头脑里都不知道我们失去了两个孩子，悲伤一直由我妻子承担了。现在他们知道他们失去了一个哥哥和一个姐姐。他们的心中充满了忧伤。忧伤的灵在他们周围。

所以，我妻子的流产的忧伤，传到了后面的两个孩子身上。我们就按手在他们身上，为他们祷告。而其它的孩子们则没有这个问题。这就告诉我们，在母腹中的胎儿能感觉到母亲的忧伤。当忧伤没有解决时，就传递给后面出生的孩子。

我们做了一件事：为流产的孩子取名字。这很重要，不要只把他们当成一个东西。对于我，就好像我的妻子掉了一颗牙，很痛一样。在心中没有感到作为一个父亲，失去了一个孩子。

所以我认识到，当流产和堕胎发生时，会有很深的忧伤，处理忧伤的过程之一就是认出他们，为他们取名字，将他们释放在神的手中。不只是“一件事情”发生了，失去了“某样东西”，他真实的是一个活着的灵，她的身体没有成型，他的家没有长久，他们不得不离开。我妻子讲的很美“他就像一朵玫瑰花苞，没有绽放。”很多年来，我们为很多人祷告，在这方面帮助他们。

第二个见证。今年初我在新加坡讲道，教导关于与神相遇。当时我正在服事我们的敬拜小组，帮助他们与神相遇。在这以前的一天，教会结束后，我们的两个很忧伤的孩子分别跟我们说，他们今天聚会时看到了他们失去的哥哥和姐姐在天堂，还能清楚的描述他们。我必须承认我有些嫉妒。而当今年我讲与神相遇时，教导人们如何专注耶稣，用你的想象力想像圣经中是如何描述他的，让你的心伸向他 ，默想耶稣。这些年青人也都与神相遇。我感到不应只带领聚会，我也要进去。

于是我开始默想耶稣，不想其它任何事情。突然我进入灵里。没有看到耶稣，圣灵向我显出了两个人。一位年青男士和一位年青女士。我很惊讶，这不是我预期的。他们同时叫我爸爸。我更吃惊了，他们说“我们有很多关于天上的事情要告诉你。”然后我意识到耶稣站在我身旁，怀里抱了个婴儿，他就是我们十二月流产失去的孙子。突然，我又看到一个小孩，叫我爷爷，我能看出他的容貌，是我们另外的孩子失去的孩子。

我的注意力集中在我的儿女身上，耶稣在我身边，他们开始和我交谈，他们说“我们要给你看一些东西。”突然，我的眼开了，我看到在很大的一片地方，到处是孩子。不同的年龄，从婴儿到小小孩，数不清的孩子。他们说“这些都是流产和堕胎的孩子，在天上他们每人都有专属的地方，天使在照看他们，他们在那里受教育，长大。

我注意到，我失去的孙子的大小正是他相应的年纪。我也留意到我失去的两个孩子也是他们相应的年龄。我看到周围流产和堕胎的孩子们，神向我显示的全部都是中国孩子，我非常震惊。

耶稣对我说，他来不是要定任何人的罪，我能感受到他的爱。他说“每个人都有他的母亲，她因为失去孩子而忧伤，我要医治她们。”他没有说他们做了什么，他只是说“我爱她们，想医治她们，因为她们忧伤。”他说“我要你开始在这方面学习和预备，准备一些DVD，在中国讲道。”我的心深深的触动了。不光是因为看到了这些孩子，而是感受到了他们母亲的忧伤。我感受到耶稣的心深深的忧伤。

最近我们到中国，有人私下找到我。我不敢相信，他们说他们曾经堕胎，需要帮助。上帝大大地服事医治他们，赐这对夫妇安慰。这以后，我们每到一个地方，总有人要求我们为他们祷告。

我想与大家分享一些经文。问题最根本的关键是，在神的眼里，每个孩子即使还在母腹中都是一个活人，有他的命定。有时人们认为，在母腹中的孩子，他不懂任何事情，他不是一个人，只是一件东西，还很不方便。

我想告诉大家，在圣经中，神的看法是怎样的。孩子在怀孕前，神就知道他们，他们的品格，他们的生命的定命，不管他在母腹中长到什么阶段，在神的眼里，他都是一个活人，有他的命定，是神认识的人。

士师记十三章2至5节说“那时有一个琐拉人，是属但族的，名叫玛挪亚。他的妻不怀孕，不生育。耶和华的使者向那妇人显现，对他说，向来你不怀孕，不生育，如今你必怀孕生一个儿子。所以你当谨慎，清酒浓酒都不可喝，一切不洁之物也不可吃。 你必怀孕生一个儿子，不可用剃头刀剃他的头，因为这孩子一出胎就归　神作拿细耳人。他必起首拯救以色列人脱离非利士人的手。”

请留意，孩子在怀孕前，神就知道他是个男孩，神的计划是这个男孩会拯救以色列人，最重要的一点就是这位母亲在怀孕时应该怎样照顾自己，换句话说，神关心对未出生的孩子的任何负面影响。所以说，怀孕前，神就知道这个孩子和他的命定。

再看列王记上十三章1至2节“那时有一个神人奉耶和华的命从犹大来到伯特利。耶罗波安正站在坛旁，要烧香。神人奉耶和华的命向坛呼叫，说，坛哪、坛哪，耶和华如此说，大卫家里必生一个儿子，名叫约西亚。他必将丘坛的祭司，就是在你上面烧香的，杀在你上面，人的骨头也必烧在你上面。”

国家败坏，到处充斥着拜偶像，神派遣先知来警告他们。他说“我要为这世界带来一个孩子，他的名字叫约西亚。他要恢复整个国家。”你知道这个预言之后多久约西亚才出生的呢？360年！即360年前，在未怀孕，未出生前，神已经为他命名，为他安排了命定。

360年后，当他的父母有了这个孩子后，根本不记得当时的预言，他们只有一个念头，“为这个孩子取名为约西亚。”他们甚至不了解他们叫他约西亚，成就了神一早的计划。神为这个孩子360年前定命时，他的父母都还没有出生。上帝看见了未来。他说“360年后，有一对夫妇，尽管父亲非常败坏，拜撒旦，但我还是要将一个孩子带到这个家庭，他会拯救整个国家。他的名字叫约西亚。所以，神为孩子命名，安排他们的命定，在他们怀孕前就认识他们了。

另外一段经文，耶利米书一章4节5节“耶利米说，耶和华的话临到我，说，我未将你造在腹中，我已晓得你，你未出母胎，我已分别你为圣。我已派你作列国的先知。”多么神奇，神说在胚胎还未成型前，我就知道这将是谁。即你是个灵，在你住的人的家还没成型，我就认识你，知道你的全部，我已经将你分别出来，为你安排了命定。甚至你的母亲还不知道你，什么胚胎都没有，我已经将我的灵放入你中，你将成为列国的先知。

你注意到还在孩子成型前，神已认识他，为他安排命定，多么神奇！以赛亚书四十九章1节中也说：以赛亚也是在母腹中形成前，神就已经认识他了。

诗篇139篇16节，大卫说“我未成形的体质，你的眼早已看见了。你所定的日子，我尚未度一日，你都写在你的册上了。 ”大卫的意思是：当我还是小小的胚胎时，我还未成型前，你就看到我了。不仅如此，在你的书上，已经写下了我的一生，我甚至还没有过一天。 他的意思是，神已视他为一个人，一个灵，一个有命定的人。在他出生前，为他安排了一切。

这些经文强调在我们怀孕前，神已经知道我们，在我们怀孕时，神的灵进入到这个孩子，即使未成型，神爱他，为他安排了命定，即使他出生在一个困难的家庭环境中。

约西亚的父亲是个拜撒旦的，但上帝仍然安排他的命定，神看这个未出生的孩子是在母腹中的人，是活生生的人，有名字，有命定，有计划的生命，真实奇妙！

圣经中有很多次，神讲到未出生的孩子，讲到撒迦利亚和伊丽莎白。伊丽莎白是不能生育的，神对撒迦利亚说“你知道你的妻子不能生育，不能有孩子吗？”他说“我知道。”神说“你将会有一个孩子。”他说“她太老了，怎么生孩子？”他与神争执，但神说“不要争论。你们会有一个孩子，他将是名先知，为主预备道路。”圣经非常清楚的写明，神在他们怀孕和出生前很久就认识他们，为他们安排好一生的计划。

马太福音一章21节“他将要生一个儿子。你要给他起名叫耶稣。因他要将自己的百姓从罪恶里救出来。”再次说明，在孩子怀孕前身就认识他，知道他的名字，为他安排了命定。

你又如何呢？以弗所书二章10节中“我们原是他的工作，在基督耶稣里造成的，为要叫我们行善，就是神所预备叫我们行的。”请留意这里告诉我们每一个人都是神的独特的创造，没有任何人与你一样，你的指纹是独有的，你的DNA是独有的，每一样东西都是独有的。在你出生前，神已为你安排好了要走的路，你有一个目的，就是为了行善，在你开始前，神为你的一生就计划好了。阿门！

另一处经文路加福音一章39至44节中，神告诉我们在我们出生前就认识我们，知道我们的名字，知道我们长什么样子。我们还在母腹中，他就关心我们，为我们的一生安排了命定。

我最近读到一本书，他们对母腹中的胎儿用超声波进行了大量的研究。100年前，人们认为人的特征形成于大脑，个性，知识，意识等。如果一个人的个性，特征和感情是在大脑形成的，就得出结论是，如果大脑未发育完成前，他就不是个真正的人，你就可以随意处理掉他。

但是圣经告诉我们的完全不同。最新的研究也显示，人的心在大脑之前发育。圣经说“你的一生由心发出。”最新的研究发现，孩子在母腹中就能了解周围发生的事情，虽然他的大脑还未形成。经过大量的研究，这本书中得出结论：未出生的母腹中的孩子，完全了解周围的事情，即使他的大脑还未发育。他就是个人了。

最后，作者得出结论，孩子有第六感官。他讲的就是灵。他们的大脑，听觉还未发育好，他的灵知道周围发生的事情，他发现孩子能够辨认出父母的声音，能够分辨出争执，了解周围发生的事情。这也是希伯来文化中的一部分，当妇女怀孕后，要躲在一个安静的地方几个月，以使母腹中的孩子能够在平安和祥和的环境中生长。这些都是现代的研究发现。

圣经路加福音一章39至41节说“那时候马利亚起身急忙往山地里去，来到犹大的一座城。进了撒迦利亚的家、问以利沙伯安。” 以利沙伯怀孕六个月，婴儿还没有完全成型，“ 以利沙伯一听马利亚问安，所怀的胎就在腹里跳动，以利沙伯且被圣灵充满。”谁说腹中的婴儿不了解周遭发生的事情？你看，以利沙伯正怀孕，马利亚来探望她，圣灵通过她预言。以利沙伯听到了，婴儿也听到了，他大力的踢动，满有喜乐。因为这是他的命定，要成为弥赛亚的先知，还在母腹中，他就有了命定。他知道了这些安排，感受到了圣灵，他跳跃，大力地踢。

这就是他们最新研究发现的。婴孩在母腹中会感受到灵的影响。而早在2000年前，圣经就写明了。还在在母腹中就了解周围的环境，了解上帝的同在，了解母亲和她的感受，了解父亲。

我花时间分享这些事情的原因，是因为我要谈到堕胎的影响。圣经讲明，魔鬼对孩子非常有敌意。从创世纪三章15节开始，魔鬼对儿女就充满敌意。因为神的应许是：从妇女生出的孩子中，有一位将摧毁撒旦，成为世界的拯救。

当我们查考圣经历史，就会发现邪灵攻击孩子的例子。不管是在母腹，还是刚出生。出埃及记中，在上帝拯救之前，所有两岁以下的男婴被杀。大卫王之后，亚她利雅杀死了所有的王室小孩，只留下一个。耶稣时期，谋杀的灵临到希律王，又杀掉了所有不到两岁的孩子。

魔鬼常常攻击孩子，母腹是冲突之地。当流产发生时，神美好的计划突然终止了。堕胎发生时，孩子的生命被夺走了，不好的事情发生了，有巨大的影响。当我们为人祷告时，留意到很多人非常痛苦，但却不明白为什么。

圣经中讲述了流产发生的几个来由。 重点是，神的计划不是流产，而是生养众多。我们查考经文，分现流产的发生是因为拜偶像，有时咒诅临到家中，发生流产。有时是因为家中有乱伦的事发生，有时是因为人们交鬼产生的。

我不详细讲解所有经文，但圣经中非常清楚的告诉我们，上帝的心意是要我们生养众多，所以流产发生时，有属灵的原因，也有自然身体上的情况。我们对家里上次的流产求问神时，我的一个女儿从神那里得到话语，“是因为大脑没有正常发育成型”，我女儿和她丈夫经历了多年的忧伤。忧伤也会有生理上的原因。我们生活在一个堕落的世界。有时是属灵的问题。有时因为母亲做了内在誓言，不要生孩子。

不管原因如何，结果总是忧伤的，当母亲怀胎又失去了孩子，就会产生强烈的忧伤。男人不容易了解。女人的生命以孩子为中心，孩子是从她的生命中得着生命，当失去了一个孩子，就会有巨大的忧伤。

我想强调堕胎 的影响，有时当我们辅导人时，如果没有挖到问题的根源，问题就永远不会解决。当我研究这个领域时，发现不管在任何地方，人们得出同样的结论。当女人堕胎时，她必须让自己相信这不是真实的人。可能是医生告诉她，这没什么，只是一次医疗手术；也可能是因为害怕，或者身体条件不好，她就是不肯承认发生的事情。

最重要的一点就是否认他是个人。母亲否认他是个人，不过只是一次身体上的手术，就像拔一颗牙一样。但是，这不是真相。

堕胎的人有很多常见的问题。现在最普遍认同的症状是堕胎后创伤症。我在这里列出来这些问题，然后再探讨如何释放人们。

• 羞愧。他们会感到羞愧和隐秘，没有自信。

• 罪咎。不能脱离的罪咎感。

• 忧郁。时常忧郁，悲伤和痛哭，却没有明显的原因。请记住，如果你以谎言遮盖真相，拒绝接受一个生命被夺走，你不会明白为何会悲伤，如果他不是什么东西，我有什么好悲伤的呢？

• 自杀倾向。

• 自恨。

• 睡眠失调

• 各样回想的画面。女人会突然记起过去痛苦的经历，又回到震惊和悲伤中去。

• 强烈渴望拥有一个替代的孩子。下意识中希望有一个孩子可以弥补失去的孩子。这个被称为“周年现象”，在堕胎日或孩子的出生日，母亲时常开始忧伤哭泣，却不明白为什么。

• 宠爱，溺爱另一个孩子。

• 酒精和毒品的问题。

• 自我惩罚的行为。我应该被惩罚，可能自我伤害如割伤自己，虐待的关系，混乱的关系。

• 可能有身体的疾病。经常流血，或习惯性流产。

• 常常有很深的罪恶感。我活下来了，可孩子付上了代价。很可怕的感觉。

最近一位女士请我为她祷告。我问她“你的问题是什么？”她说“我时常流血，有十二年之久了。我们非常想要一个孩子却没有。”我问，“你有堕胎吗？”她说“有过四次。”我带着爱对这位女士说“你的家庭有四个孩子，但他们都在天上。这是因为你的行为造成的。当别人告诉你这只是一个简单的手术时，他们在撒谎，这就是你问题的根源，你和你的丈夫现在没有一个孩子，原来你们可以拥有的孩子却失去了。”

她开始不停地哭泣，我们与她分享上帝爱她，饶恕她。于是她在神里面得恢复，她的心得医治。我祷告下次再见到她时，她会有一个孩子。今年我到城市丰收教会，一位女士和她的丈夫抱着一个婴儿来到，她说“你要看看我们的宝宝，神迹的宝宝。你走后12个月，我们有了第一个孩子。怀孕非常困难。我自己以前内在誓言说再也不要生孩子了。每次怀孕都会流产。我听了你的教导，才知道自己做了内在誓言。我弃绝这样的誓言，请求上帝祝福我的肚腹，三个月后，我就怀孕了，就是这个宝宝。”实际上不到三个月，大约是一个月。

你可以看到，生命中有属灵的关联。女性经历的很多问题，她们不追溯到堕胎，她们假装这不是什么严重的问题。

耶利米书31章15节说“耶和华如此说，在拉玛听见号咷痛哭的声音，是拉结哭他儿女不肯受安慰，因为他们都不在了。”所以，我们如何得自由？处于这种情况的人，第一步就是转向耶稣基督。约翰福音三章16节说“神爱世人，甚至将他的独生子赐给他们，叫一切信他的，不至灭亡，反得永生。”神不是来定人的罪，而要世人因他得救。你的任何痛苦，耶稣都能够拯救医治。

可以看出，堕胎的后果远比我们认识到的严重。它影响到母亲，肚腹中灵里的部分，影响到下一个出生的孩子，影响到家庭，原本可以做父亲的男人失去了孩子，祖父母失去了孙子，以后出生的兄弟姊妹也受到创伤的影响。

我记得一位妇女带着孩子来，我问“什么问题？”她说“我的孩子不肯让我喂他母奶，我每次抱他到怀里要喂他，他就开始尖叫，我们该怎么办？”我说“你有没有试图想过要打掉这个孩子？”她说“有。”我说“是不是孩子怕你，他感受到了谋杀的灵，他不敢亲近曾想害他的人。”她非常震惊，请求耶稣饶恕她，我为母亲和孩子祷告，孩子就开始亲近她了。当孩子得释放，离开恐惧和谋杀的灵，立刻他们就可以亲近了，非常明显。

怎样得自由呢？有三个方面：属灵的问题，情绪的问题，关系的问题。离开死亡进入生命，答案非常简单：

1. 我们需要面对属灵的问题。要面对真相，是我夺走了孩子的生命。大部分的母亲这样做是因为感到极大的压力。来自男朋友或丈夫的压力，家庭的压力，环境的压力，不管怎样，他们必须负责任。得释放的关键就是打破谎言。以赛亚书二十八章告诉我们，当我们以谎言遮盖自己，我们就与死亡和地狱立约。

2. 在神面前悔改，认罪。真实的来到神的话语前。约翰一书一章9节“我们若认自己的罪，神是信实的，是公义的，必要赦免我们的罪，洗净我们一切的不义。”神已经饶恕赦免了我们，我们要做的，就是领受他，

3. 饶恕。首先人们必须接受饶恕，接受神饶恕了我们。其次，饶恕自己。最后，饶恕别人。经常，女人会对孩子的父亲生气，对自己的父母生气，或对帮她做手术的人生气，对鼓励她这么做的朋友生气。有各样的怨恨和悲伤需要面对。放开饶恕他们是解决这一问题的方法。释放他离开邪灵。

认罪，饶恕，从邪灵里得释放，我们等一下会为人们释放祷告。另一方面，对人们非常有帮助的是，求问神，这是怎样的孩子？耶稣知道，上帝认识你的孩子，男孩还是女孩？聆听你的心，神会告诉你。我看到人们在进行这一步时，总是痛哭。

接下来就是给他们取名字。给他一个身份，打破谎言。你知道给孩子起名多么困难，我们花几天的时间想好一个名字。但我在整个过程中发现，上帝已经为他们命名了，我们只需要聆听。求问神，我失去的孩子的名字是什么？或是自己给孩子一个名字。

我对那位经历过四次堕胎的女士说“求神告诉你孩子是怎样的。”她很快的回答说“女孩，男孩，男孩，女孩。”我说“给他们取个名字吧。”几分钟就起好了。接下来她就开始悲伤了，意识到了她的孩子们。我说“下一步就是释放你的孩子们在神的手中。耶稣站在这里，把你的孩子交给他。你要知道，有一天，你会再见到他们。”有时，我们简短的祷告“耶稣，我将我的孩子交托给你，把他交托在你的怀中，请告诉他我对我所做的非常抱歉，我盼望再见到他。”

请留意，这一切都是打破谎言，回归真相。经常会有很多悲伤，痛苦和伤感。有时，还有破碎的关系需要修复，通往自由的路是简单的。

当然，除非是有历代遗传的因素，流产的人不用认罪，忏悔。通常我发现这样做非常有帮助。就是每次闭上眼睛，心向神敞开，求他向你显示孩子是怎样的，告诉你他的名字。现在，他不再是一个东西了，他是一个人。你会再见到你的孩子。这就是福音的盼望，孩子在天上。

当你与耶稣交通时，他就会告诉你的孩子。把你的孩子交托在耶稣手中，有一天你会再见到他们。我看到很多人得自由释放，破碎的心得医治。凭着对耶稣基督的信心，把所有的秘密，羞辱，谎言都打破，破碎心得医治。

我相信上帝会触摸很多人。让我们闭上眼晴，你要明白神爱你，耶稣来到世上，道成肉身，让我们看见天堂如何，邀请我们与他连结。我们都活在罪中，与神隔绝，我们找不到神的路。但耶稣为我们的罪死在十字架上，他从死里复活，打破了罪的权势。耶稣说，凡接待他的人，欢迎他的，相信他的，他就赐他们权柄做神的儿女。

愈合流产 (1 of 4)

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愈合流产 (2 of 4)

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愈合流产 (3 of 4)

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愈合流产 (4 of 4)

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(Bernard Nathanson)

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Freedom Evangelistic Messages

自由福音讯息

自由福音訊息

Stand-alone messages on Deliverance & Healing, ending with an opportunity for people to respond to Jesus Christ, and be saved and delivered from tormenting spirits and sicknesses.

The power of God touched many people during these sessions - hundreds gave their lives to Christ and experienced Deliverance/Healing.

Expect the presence and power of God to touch you as you listen to these powerful messages.

一系列的消息：拯救（驱魔）和治疗，有机会为人们应对耶稣基督，并予以保存，并交付从折磨精神和病痛的结局。

神的力量在这些会议上感动了很多人 - 数百人选择了他们的生命服从基督，体验解脱/治疗。

期待神的存在和力量，你听这些强大的邮件碰你。

一系列的消息：拯救（驅魔）和治療，有機會為人們應對耶穌基督，並予以保存，並交付從折磨精神和病痛的結局。

神的力量在這些會議上感動了很多人 - 數百人選擇了他們的生命服從基督，體驗解脫/治療。

期待神的存在和力量，你聽這些強大的郵件碰你。

Spirit of Divination (1 of 12)

Acts 16:16 tells a story about a woman who was tormented by an evil spirit - a python spirit, or spirit of divination. Many people came to her city, a centre of Arts, wanting to know their future, and she made a lot of money for her owners by fortune-telling. What is the source of this power? How does it gain access to our lives? What does the Bible say about our destiny? How can we be set free?

由占卜的灵中得自由

由占卜的靈中得自由

The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12)

In Numbers 21, the children of Israel became bitter in their heart and started complaining against Moses. Their sin released fiery serpents which bit the people and released poison into their system. Their was only one remedy for the bite of the serpent - fixing their eyes, with faith in their heart, on God's provision.The same power is available to you today -the power of the cross for curses.

由蛇咬中得自由

由蛇咬中得自由

Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12)

In Exodus 15, we follow the journey of God's people who came out of the slavery of Egypt to the promised land. When they met difficult circumstances we see what was in their heart - all the "fruit" of bitterness. If the fruit is there, the root is there. Test yourself. Do you think like a slave or a son? We can focus on injustice and choose to be bitter, or respond to God's provision and embrace grace.

由苦毒中得自由

由苦毒中得自由

Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12)

In Malachi 4 God prophetically declared the condition on the earth in our time - breakdown in family relationships, destruction and broken-hearts. The problem lies in our heart. We don't have to live out of disappointment and pain. God wants to heal the broken-hearted and TURN our hearts. We can resolve issues of the heart. King David and his wife Michal both suffered injustice from King Saul, but their heart response determined their destiny. Discover powerful keys for accessing God's promises and blessing. It's not automatic, it requires a response.

尊榮你的父親母親

尊榮你的父親母親

Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12)

Jn 1:29 "Behold - the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world" has little meaning for people today, but for the Israelites who applied the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts (Ex.12) it was tremendously significant. When the destroyer saw the blood, they were protected, and 430 years of slavery finished. Jesus is God's provision for our sinfulness, and His blood still speaks. Get a fresh revelation of the power of the blood of Jesus for your freedom.

門柱旁的血

門柱旁的血

Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12)

In 1 Kings 19 we find Elijah had yielded to fear and intimidation, and drawn back from his God-given assignment. We then get one of those "God Questions". He knows the answer, but wanted Elijah to think about where he was at, to recognize his distorted thinking, and to get back to his assignment, which included raising up others to fulfill the ministry. What are you doing here? Elijah had chosen to yield to fear, withdraw from his assignment, sit down, become passive and isolate at the crucial point when he needed to press forward. Sound familiar? Learn to recognize the signs of pressure.

由洞穴中得自由

由洞穴中得自由

Hope After Loss (7 of 12)

The widow of Nain ( Luke 7 ) was in a place of great grief and without hope for her future, no-one could comfort her. Maybe you too are locked into grief feeling numb and disconnected. Our God is a God of comfort, and a God of all hope. Set-backs are not the end. Let Christ in - He is able to breathe into a place of death, and bring life and fresh vision. Jesus still works miracles, and restores a broken heart.

損失之後的盼望

損失之後的盼望

Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12)

In John 5 , Jesus likens us to sheep - this message gives several ways this is true! One similarity is that sometimes sheep are "cast", lying down, unable to move, unable to function. If we are lying down we may have many excuses, feel a victim, and be waiting for something to happen. However, like the man in this story, who had been waiting 38 years for help, we need to answer this same question Jesus asked: Do you want to be made whole? We have the power of choice - to receive Jesus and have the power of sin broken.

再造全新的我

再造全新的我

Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12)

Sometimes an area of our life has become "withered", or without life, just like the man in Mark 3, who had a withered hand. We tend to conceal, or hide in shame, when we feel like this. To restore the man in the story, Jesus required 2 "action steps": 1) Bring the problem right out into the open 2) A stretch of faith - doing what Jesus asks us to do. The healing is "in the stretch"!

伸出手得醫治

伸出手得醫治

Spiritual Blindness (10 of 12)

The Bible describes 2 kingdoms - the kingdom of "light" (Jesus), and the kingdom of darkness (devil). The Bible also describes several spiritual problems in the heart which cause spiritual blindness - hatred, pride, bitter offences. Blindness speaks of limitations and captivity. In Mark 10, a blind man called Bartimaeus obtained his healing. What did he do that caused Jesus to stop and respond to him? What did he believe about Jesus? How did he demonstrate faith? His encounter can be a doorway to your encounter!

屬靈的眼盲

属灵的眼盲

Freedom from Divination (11 of 12)

God promises to direct our steps, as we trust Him and listen to His voice. Many people, fearful about the future, pay money to a fortune-teller to receive information (divination). They prostitute themselves with evil spirits - they pay money for information and receive a spirit into their body. Lev 20:6 warns of the dangers of this. We are not made for evil spirits. If you have opened your life up, you can be set free - like the girl in Acts 16:16

由占卜中得自由

由占卜中得自由

Healing from Abortion and Miscarriage (12 of 12)

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and demonic bondage which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day! Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

由堕胎流产中得医治

由墮胎流產中得醫治

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Spirit of Divination (1 of 12).mp3

- The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12).mp3

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- Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12).mp4

- Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12).mp4

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- Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12).mp4

- Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12).mp4

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由占卜的灵中得自由

Fri 4th Oct 2013  « 返回页首

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请大家翻开圣经使徒行传第十六章16至18节，“后来，我们往那祷告的地方去。有一个使女迎着面来，她被巫鬼所附，用法术，叫她主人们大得财利。她跟随保罗和我们，喊着说，这些人是至高神的仆人，对你们传说救人的道。她一连多日这样喊叫，保罗就心中厌烦，转身对那鬼说，我奉耶稣基督的名，吩咐你从她身上出来。那鬼当时就出来了。”

圣经讲的很清楚，耶稣来是要释放人得自由；这个故事发生在希腊的一个地方，这个女子被邪灵折磨。他们那里拜的是叫阿波罗的神，当时那个地方是整个创意艺术的中心，那里的人喜欢占卜，算命，就是在灵里面跟邪灵打交道以找到自己的未来。那里有一个特别的庙，称为Delfai的神域。

这个女子就是依靠邪灵的力量来说预言；人们来找她，付钱给她，让她告诉他们将来的命运如何。这是一个著名的城，各地的人都涌来想知道他们的未来。当他们碰到生意上或者艺术娱乐上的要作出重大决定的时候，都来找她。付钱想知道他们的未来。

今天这也很常见，我们都想知道未来会怎样，想知道生命是否蒙福，想知道明天怎样，想知道未来的事物。对未来的渴望，想知道未来会发生什么，在各个文化中都有。

圣经告诉我们，我们的生命在上帝的手中，以弗所书第二章10节告诉我们，神在我们生命中有一个计划要我们去成就。你不是一个意外，你生在这世上是上帝特别设计的。你的家庭可能有各样的困难，可能没有计划生你，可能父母没有想到会有你。可是圣经告诉我们，上帝为你安排了计划和命定，要你去成就，可能你自己都没有想过，上帝一早就想着你了。

圣经中有很多例子，显明上帝认识这些人早在他们认识主之前。举例来说，耶利米书第一章5节，上帝对耶利米讲，“我未将你造在腹中，我已晓得你。你未出母胎，我已分别你为圣。我已派你作列国的先知。”当他还在母腹当中，根本还刚成型，上帝就看见先知了，上帝已经为他命定了，并召他进入这命定。

旧约中有一位王名叫约西亚，在他出生约六百多年前，就有先知预言说将来有一位王叫约西亚，他要胜过所有邪灵，恢复我们在神面前属灵的信结。在他出生六百多年前，上帝就知道他什么时候要来，叫什么名字，在什么地方出生。

再看创世纪中，上帝对亚当和夏娃发预言说，将来有一位救主，他的名字叫耶稣基督。这是耶稣之前四千年的事；圣经中，有很多很多的预言都在耶稣基督身上应验了。换句话说，上帝早就看见你的生命了，他在你的生命中有计划；不管你生命中发生了什么，只要你对上帝有信心，他甚至能将你生命中负面的东西变成你的益处。

如果我们跟上帝之间没有关系，对未来就没有这个确据，就会转向占卜。上帝恨恶占卜的事，他说这是属灵的召妓。我们受造不是要跟邪灵接触，我们受造是要跟上帝建立关系。当你参与占卜时，不是在跟上帝接触，而是在跟邪灵接触。

这个女孩身上就是这样，她有占卜的灵在身上，今天我们称她是灵媒。你可能付钱让她帮你算命，她力量的源头是邪灵，她身上的灵就像蟒蛇一样缠绕着她。很有意思，使用她发预言的那个女神的名字叫做Hasia, 跟蟒蛇是同样的字根。很多人是在这个灵底下运行的。他们付钱给这个女孩，她的身上有这个邪灵缠着她。邪灵不了解你的未来，魔鬼预见不了未来，只有上帝能看见。

信靠神，与神同行更好，而不要去找那些邪灵。在娱乐界，商业界，金融界，政府界的人们，在做重大决定的时候先过去找灵媒，付钱给他们，就是跟邪灵做交易，打开生命，让他的生命由邪灵来操纵。魔鬼知道他们的未来吗？完全不知道。可是这就像邪灵的网络一样，邪灵观察这些人，邪灵可以讲出他们在你生命中观察到的东西，他们一直在观察人。

如果你去找算命的，去找灵媒。你接触的不是眼前的这个人，而是他后面的灵。他讲到的一些你生命中的东西可能是真的，因为他们一直在观察你。可是一旦你相信他们跟你讲的话，你就把生命的权利交给他了。

这个女人看见保罗，就跟着保罗，大喊“这是至高神的仆人”，“让你看见救人的道”。她讲的是真话，她讲的是真相，因为邪灵看得见。可是她在那里，她身上的灵就让人非常厌烦。蟒蛇就是缠绕着将人挤碎，它慢慢的缠着人，不断的将他们的生命挤压出来。

当人参与在占卜当中，他们就上瘾了，什么事情都要问过之后才做决定，慢慢的就把生命的权利交给了邪灵。慢慢的邪灵也就缠绕着这个人，挤碎他的生命，摧毁他的盼望。这个女孩就有这个灵，有一天保罗转过身，圣经说，他直接面对这个邪灵，直接跟邪灵对峙，奉耶稣基督的名，吩咐他出来。邪灵马上放开这女人，立刻离开，使女就自由了。你注意她的生命改变了，已经没有邪灵缠绕她，挤压她了。也没有声音在她耳边讲话了，她也没有能力知道人的生命将会如何了。当邪灵离开她，帮人算命的能力也一起走了。

邪灵不了解你的未来，但如果你找他们，听他们的，你就打开你的生命，他们就会影响你的未来。神召我们是要我们跟上帝建立关系，召我们与其建立信任的关系，在生命中与上帝同行，信靠他，相信他是慈爱的上帝，他深深的爱我们，为我们安排了最美的计划。上帝不把所有的计划都告诉你，可是他将渴望和梦想放在你心中，他跟你说话肯定印证他要的事。当你选择凭信心而行，他就一步步为你展开生命的计划。

一定从第一步开始，就是接受耶稣基督。要远离罪，这第一步是离开没有上帝的生活，他是走向永生的真神。今晚就希望有人走出这一步，来回应上帝恩慈的一步，来接受上帝慈爱的一步。

这个使女一开始是怎么得到这个灵的，这邪灵是怎么进到她生命的？很可能是从她的家里，可能她的家是拜偶像的，也可能他们家参与占卜，邪灵就从家族下来，可能她很小的时候就听到这些声音，做很搅扰人的梦，晚上看到一些邪灵。

有一次我去到斐济，在路上开车，看到公园里面有一群人。很有意思的是，我觉得我好像看到一群蛇一样，我停下车走过去仔细看，发现有一些围篱，一群人坐在垫子上，中间有些蛇，他们就在那里玩蛇。在纽西兰没有蛇，所以这些对我来讲很新鲜，我很感兴趣。其中有一个人就来找我说，不要为我们祷告，我们是从珀流来的，只想赚点钱，我们没有伤害谁。

我发现他们不单只玩弄蛇，他们其实是一群巫师，他们使用这些蛇，这些蛇在他们生命中就有势力了。他们在邪灵底下运作，他们拿一些水，有三个自愿的人，把水洒在这些人身上，他们就倒在地上了。之后就将一个罩子放在他们头上，然后就做一些巫术的事情；当他们把脸上的面罩拿开后，那人像是受到很大惊吓；他看见那个巫师的头是一条蛇，他吓坏了。他们对他下了咒，就在邪灵底下影响这个人。

这些能力是非常真实的，圣经说，当我们参与在这样事上，上帝的心就会忧伤。有些人家中可能有参与邪灵，可能有做过占卜算命的事情，就打开了门让邪灵进来折磨你的生命。有些人自己也参与在占卜当中，可能有什么巫术碗或者碟仙等等；你已经参与邪灵了，上帝要释放你得自由。你可能有去找过灵媒，观鬼的，这些所谓的灵媒都是跟邪灵接触，邪灵借他们来说话。

可能在你生命中有去找过那些算命的，这让上帝难过，上帝爱你，计划好了你的生命。当我们去找邪灵跟他们纠缠在一起，就让上帝非常忧伤难过。邪灵可能是由家中传下来的；也可能你小时候献过给偶像；或者你向邪灵敞开你的生命，邀请他进来；可能你自己有过交鬼；不管是什么，这个使女把生命向邪灵敞开，而耶稣释放她得自由。

由蛇咬中得自由

Sat 5 Oct 2013  « 返回页首

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请翻开约翰福音，圣经向我们显明，上帝的计划就是要帮助人；圣经由两部分组成，一部是旧约，一部是新约。旧约所针对的国家就是以色列，上帝向以色列人应许说有一天救主会来，而且会释放所有人得自由。

约翰福音第三章14节，这是非常奇妙的经节，它是从一个图画开始的，我们等一下会带大家看一下这个图画。“摩西在旷野怎样举蛇，人子也必照样被举起来。”耶稣讲到在几百年前他们的祖先摩西在旷野的行为，就像预言他将来在十字架上的受死。15至17节，“叫一切信他的都得永生。神爱世人，甚至将他的独生子赐给他们，叫一切信他的，不至灭亡，反得永生。因为神差他的儿子降世，不是要定世人的罪，乃是要叫世人因他得救。”

所以你要认识耶稣的心，上帝不要你灭亡，他是要你得救。圣经非常清楚的告诉我们，神的属性就是爱。许多人对上帝有不同的想象；你对他的想象，或者你相信他是哪一位，会影响你跟他的连结。所以如果你对神的想象有扭曲，有错误的话，你就无法跟他正确的连结。

圣经告诉我们神爱世人，而且是如此的爱世人，他从天上降下来，来到这个世界，他向我们显现天上的国度是如何的，邀请我们成为这个国度的一部分。邀请我们跟天父建立美好的关系。耶稣是怎样示范神对我们的爱呢？

1）通过他的教导。

2）在如何跟人接触方面。

3）通过行神迹，帮助人得释放。

4）最重要的一点，就是透过他死在十字架上，并从死里复活。

但是人最根本的问题是，我们的心是跟神隔绝的。圣经告诉我们，这个隔绝就是死亡。所以耶稣来到世上，打破罪的权势，并把他的灵，他的生命再次放在我们的心里，好让我们能够活出当初被造的样式，就是跟神有美好的关系，而不是跟神隔绝。

在我们信主之前，我们靠着我们自然人的样式过活，但是上帝要改变你的生命，改变你的心，把他的灵放在你里面，好让你活出与以前不一样的生命。上帝没有要定你的罪，他乃是要释放你得自由，因此不管你生命中有任何问题，不管你生命中有多少捆绑，上帝没有怪你，没有定你罪，他的愿望就是要帮助你。

耶稣告诉我们他来不是要定世人的罪，他是要指出什么是错误的，他来就是要拯救人。我要跟大家分享一个旧约中的故事。旧约中有很多人遇见上帝的故事，很多时候我们不了解一件事的属灵意义，所以上帝用很多例子告诉我们。旧约中有很多的图画，让我们能够了解属灵的含义。

我们来看一个真实发生的故事，透过这件事显示上帝何等的爱世人。上帝做了什么帮助人，人需要什么条件才能得到这样的爱。请翻开民数记第二十一章4至9节，“他们从何珥山起行，往红海那条路走，要绕过以东地。百姓因这路难行，心中甚是烦躁，就怨讟神和摩西说，你们为什么把我们从埃及领出来，使我们死在旷野呢，这里没有粮，没有水，我们的心厌恶这淡薄的食物。于是耶和华使火蛇进入百姓中间，蛇就咬他们。以色列人中死了许多。百姓到摩西那里，说，我们怨讟耶和华和你，有罪了。求你祷告耶和华，叫这些蛇离开我们。于是摩西为百姓祷告。耶和华对摩西说，你制造一条火蛇，挂在杆子上。凡被咬的，一望这蛇，就必得活。摩西便制造一条铜蛇，挂在杆子上。凡被蛇咬的，一望这铜蛇就活了。”

上帝的意愿总是要赐福我们；这里的百姓已经被捆绑为奴四百年了，管理他们的监工非常的严厉，他们非常艰苦的生活，使得他们变的非常的苦毒，非常的衰弱。上帝差遣摩西去释放以色列的百姓，因为他听见他们哭求的声音，上帝透过摩西彰显了许多的神迹奇事，人们离开了埃及，开始了前往他们的应许之地迦南的旅程。

以色列人在旷野经历了许多的挑战，这很像我们。在我们认识主之前，我们被罪所捆绑，我们是罪的奴隶，没有办法不犯罪；我们也活在邪灵的影响下，他们用恐惧，挫折来伤害我们；他们让人上瘾，他们伤人的心，他们产生了许多的问题。但是当我们接受了耶稣基督之后，上帝把他的灵放在我们里面，摧毁了邪灵的能力，除去了这一切捆绑的权势。

我们必须要选择如何过我们的生活；我们刚刚看到的这个故事，当时以色列的百姓取得了极大的胜利，上帝帮助他们打败敌人，每天供应他们，保护他们，他们每一天都活在上帝的祝福之中，但是人们还是抱怨。他们为什么会抱怨呢？因为他们有苦毒。凡是在我们心里的，总是会显现出来的。当人们受压时，就会发出苦毒的埋怨。当苦毒进入到我们心里，一有压力就会流露出来，抱怨，批评，说消极的话。

当时他们就埋怨摩西，摩西只是想要帮助他们。他们也埋怨上帝，人们 说还不如回到埃及那个被捆绑的地方更好，他们完全忘记了上帝所供应他们的。所以人们的心腐败了，他们看不见上帝是何等的爱他们，他们看不见上帝与他们同在，他们的眼睛看不见上帝的美好，在他们里面就有苦毒，埋怨，不愿意原谅。

他们在埃及曾被大大的伤害过，上帝也曾指示他们如何依靠神。上帝的意愿是拯救以色列的百姓，由奴隶成为神的儿子，从受害者的身份变成得胜者的身份。当人们苦毒抱怨的时候，就会释放仇敌的权势在身上。他们埋怨的时候，蛇就进来咬他们；要知道，蛇总是在旷野里，以色列的百姓是被上帝保护的，蛇是不能伤他们的。

圣经告诉我们，蛇就是邪灵的写照；耶稣说赐给我们权柄胜过一切的蛇蝎毒虫，因此耶稣要我们胜过一切邪灵的权势。当人们埋怨，悖逆，当他们的心转离神的时候，他们就开始做错事，蛇就不再被限制，蛇就进入营地中，开始咬人，开始咬的人躺下来，立刻感到被蛇咬的疼痛，他们用仗击蛇，但是没有用，还是有很多人被咬后死亡。

当他们被蛇咬的时候，会有两种元素注进身体里，通过两种不同的方式发生作用。第一种是，瘫痪你的系统，所有的神经系统全部瘫痪，人们因此死亡，这是非常痛苦的死亡方式。第二种是，蛇吃你的肉，你的身体会被感染中毒，然后死亡。所以被蛇咬总是非常致命的。

新约中耶稣遇见许多人，他们的生命被邪灵控制；因为他们违反了上帝的律法，他们可能有拜偶像，交鬼，性犯罪，酗酒，上瘾的问题等等，这些问题让邪灵有空间进入他们的生命攻击他们。但是耶稣来是释放人得自由。所以当人们被蛇咬，他们就想原来都没有蛇，但是当我们埋怨神，埋怨摩西的时候，蛇就来咬我们了。非常明显就是罪的问题。

所以在这个故事的图画里，可以看见三件事情的连结关系，就是蛇，罪，死亡。我们犯罪了，就给撒旦空间进入到生命中，而且罪的后果就是死亡。长期来讲是身体的死亡，短期则是与神隔绝。当人们愤怒的时候，就像心中的毒药，当有人陷在情欲里面时，就像心里有毒药。当人们被仇恨抓住，也是心里的毒药。而且没有任何的解救之道。

可以想象当时蛇可以随时进来咬人，这是非常恐惧的，而且没有解药。圣经非常明确，对罪的解救只有一个方法，对付邪灵只有一个方法，但大部分人都不知道是什么。当人们跟罪有关的时候，问题就出来了，他们就开始呼求神，呼求摩西帮助他们。求摩西祷告将蛇挪走。上帝听到摩西的祷告，摩西太有恩典了，他们每一天都不断的批评摩西，可是蛇咬了他们之后，他们又对摩西说抱歉。摩西大可以说“这是你们应得的。”但是他没有，他为人祷告，他对人有神的心。

上帝给摩西一个很有趣的指示，他说制一个铜蛇，而且高高挂在一个杆子上面，每次有人被蛇咬，不管在哪里，你要知道你必须要做一件事，否则你一定死，因为毒素已经开始起作用。这个唯一的解救之道就是找到铜蛇。

你可以想象有人被蛇咬后一定很惊慌，无法走动，只有一件事能救他们，就是寻找铜蛇，而且要看着它。当人被咬后，只有很短的时间，他们会非常努力的寻找铜蛇，圣经说你要仰望铜蛇，眼睛要注视着它，心也要跟着它，铜蛇的权能就会临到你身上，上帝的权能就释放你。

我们的确需要花一点时间定睛注视着铜蛇，但是上帝的大能就会临到你。可以想象如果你被蛇咬，感到痛，你会做什么？你会寻找那个铜蛇，定睛在铜蛇上，不让人挡住你的视线。然后所有毒素都走了，疼痛也消失了。感谢神，你的权势释放了。

你要知道，铜蛇本身是没有权能的，它是你信心的焦点所在，这是上帝要他们了解的。罪进入世界因为这个蛇，有一天耶稣会来，而且他会被挂在十字架上。民数记里记载的是要在几百年后在耶稣身上应验的预言。上帝早就预知会发生的事情，因此主耶稣来到世上，并为我们死在十字架上的时候，这是没有发生过的事情。

当他死在十字架上，罪的权势就被打破了，蛇的权势被打破了，死亡的权势也被打破了。歌罗西书第二章14，15节，当耶稣死在十字架上，他取消了我们一切的罪状，解除了仇敌魔鬼的武装。上帝让他们知道，就像摩西举起铜蛇一样，有一天耶稣会在十字架上，每一个明白罪会导致死亡的人，当你注视耶稣的时候，心中对他有信心，你的罪就会被赦免，你就会得救。

神如此爱世人，他将他的独生子赐给人，为我们死在十字架上，只要相信他是为我的罪而死的，而且他三天后复活，胜过了罪的权势，死亡的权势，我们因此得释放。哈利路亚！

由苦毒中得自由

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我们看出埃及记第十五章，上一堂我们也讲的是这一部书，不同的故事讲的都是同一位主角，就是耶稣基督。我们看出埃及记第十五章22至26节，“摩西领以色列人从红海往前行，到了书珥的旷野，在旷野走了三天，找不着水。到了玛拉，不能喝那里的水，因为水苦，所以那地名叫玛拉。百姓就向摩西发怨言，说，我们喝什么呢？摩西呼求耶和华，耶和华指示他一棵树。他把树丢在水里，水就变甜了。耶和华在那里为他们定了律例，典章，在那里试验他们；又说，你若留意听耶和华你神的话，又行我眼中看为正的事，留心听我的诫命，守我一切的律例，我就不将所加于埃及人的疾病加在你身上，因为我耶和华是医治你的。”

这个故事讲到苦水变甜，我要讲到苦的根源。有一次我在新加坡，有一个青年呼召的时候出来；他有一个肩膀非常的疼痛，因为有知识的言语，上帝让我看到他的疼痛，他就出来了。可是我感觉到他心中对他父亲有苦毒，他真正的问题不是身体的疼痛，而是心里有这个疼痛的灵。我就问他，“你跟你爸爸相处的如何？”他回答说，“我爱我的爸爸。”我再次听主的声音，就再问他，“你爸爸是不是常常不在家？你生命中重要的日子他都不在。你后来就开始对他生气苦毒了。”他低下头说，“真的是这样。”

你的苦毒在你生命中打开门，让疾病的灵可以进来。你身体生病是因为你心里先病了，而你是有能力决定不让心里生病的。你可以选择饶恕，可以让环境带下来的是恩典而不是论断。他做了很简单的祷告，饶恕他的父亲，命令那个软弱疾病的灵出去，他立刻得释放。之后他跟我讲，其实不光是肩膀疼，全身都在疼，现在所有的疼痛都不见了。前一个星期医生还跟他讲脊椎很僵直，他才四十岁就不能弯腰了。现在他自由了。

这个年轻人有威胁到他生命的疾病，可是源头是这个疾病的灵，真正的根源是他心中带着的苦毒。当他处理了苦毒，来到耶稣基督十架前饶恕，他自己就得到释放和自由。

我们再看出埃及记第十五章的故事，这是旧约的故事，这里的话让我们看到属灵的真理。有时属灵的真理不是那么容易看懂的，你很难用话去表述。在整个旧约中，就有上帝介入人事物当中的故事，上帝跟人互动，通过这些互动我们就学到一些东西。

这个故事讲到以色列的百姓在埃及做奴隶四百年，他们的生活很艰苦，被人虐待，被人鞭打，曾经有一段时间刚出生的小男孩都被杀死，被逼做奴役，活在非常艰难困苦的生活里。这样为奴四百年，每一个人的记忆所及，都是在捆绑底下服侍埃及人。埃及有非常严厉的监工，常常鞭打虐待他们，他们的生活非常艰苦，直到上帝拯救他们。

上帝应许他们，他会拯救他们脱离埃及。他用极大的能力拯救他们，拯救他们脱离埃及的捆绑，带他们进入上帝的应许里。带他们离开埃及奴役之地，带他们进入产业应许之地，那里有很大的祝福和供应。其实旷野的这段路程很短，上帝的百姓出埃及的这一段故事，也是我们的故事，也是我们的生命。

我们认识上帝之前，我们身在这个世界都做罪的奴隶，不能摆脱罪，没有能力拦阻它。就像疾病在我们身上一样，埋怨，苦毒，愤怒，有情欲，有渴望，不断想伤害我们。每一个生在这世界的人，都是跟上帝隔绝的，成为罪的奴隶。

圣经说埃及人就像在邪灵底下，每一次犯罪都有邪灵的作用。今天很多在座的人，你的生命一直在罪的捆绑底下被邪灵折磨，这邪灵折磨你的思想，情绪，身体，这就是我们接受基督之前的生命。如果你仍在这样的境况里，上帝要释放你得自由。他要赦免你的罪，打破邪灵的权势，释放你离开邪灵。你只要做简单的决定，就是相信。

我请大家仔细看这个故事，问题在哪里。那些在奴役当中活了这么久的人，他们的思想跟奴隶一样；他们离开了埃及，上帝想要他们知道你们现在的身份是儿子了，不再是奴隶了，有慈爱的父，这是供应他们的父。当他们在埃及时，他们过的像奴隶，想的也像奴隶，现在得自由了，是自由人了，可是他们需要选择像自由人一样想，他们需要选择相信自由到底是谁。他们这么多年在奴役当中，虽然自由了，但觉得自己还是奴役，他们思想像奴役，反应像奴役。

任何基督徒都是这样，我们活在罪的奴役当中，耶稣来释放我们得自由；所以生命的灵进到我们的生命，我们成为上帝的儿女。可是我们的思想生活还像奴隶一样，这全在乎你心中是如何想的。问题就在这里，这些人的心中是苦毒的，上帝要向他们显明自己他不单是拯救的主，也是要医治他们的主。

如果你观察人时间够久的话，他们会显明他们的想法。我们来看这些人，他们是怎么做的。他们在旷野走了三天，找不到水。没有水，渴了，就想哪里有下一个供应站呢？我们看27节这里，当这一切结束后，“他们到了以琳，在那里有十二股水泉，七十棵棕树，他们就在那里的水边安营。”

我们先看整个的情况后，再看苦毒。上帝拯救他们脱离了埃及，他供应他们，这里有泉源，有棕树，从上帝来看，他是慈爱的父。可是从以色列的百姓来看，他们看不见供应，看不见上帝对他们的应许，看不见那里有水，有休息的地方，他们只看到现在的环境。与上帝同行的路，就是信心的路，这条路相信上帝是美善的，上帝一直是美好的；可能会有不好的经历，但上帝是美好的。他爱我，他供应我。

当他们在走的时候，没有水，他们是怎么想的？“我们还是奴隶，我们还在受苦，上帝不关心我们。”然后找到水的时候，喝了一口，苦的，他们很失望。他们不了解上帝的供应就在前面，很快就要到了。可是在到达之前，这里看起来很苦。光看环境，好像上帝遗忘他们了，好像还在埃及受苦，要死了。

他们心里的苦毒出来了，不要从眼睛看生命，而要从心里来看生命。心里的东西，会影响你看世界的眼光。他们经历四百年的奴役，心中仍对这样的奴役带着苦毒。当他们活在奴役中的时候，他们活在缺乏里，活在受苦里，活在折磨中，活在没有盼望里。现在得释放了，有慈爱的父满足他们一切的需要。但他也有计划，不单只满足他们的需要，也要医治他们。如果要得地为业，你需要改变想法，不可以再像奴隶的想法了。

奴隶是无能为力的；当人经历困难，觉得无能为力的时候，他们开始愤怒，开始怀怨，开始苦毒，因为他们做了论断，觉得自己没有用，没有能力。当一个人觉得自己无能为力时，就会变得苦毒，对一切发生的事开始愤怒苦毒。当我们得释放跟随耶稣，我们有选择的权利，我们可以选择如何回应生命。你在困难时怎么回应就显明你心里的境况。你口中说出的话就显明你心里的境况。

我们看以色列人如何做，他们向摩西发怨言。他们生气，埋怨，苦毒，就开始发怨言了。当人心中有苦毒的时候，之所以苦毒是因为觉得无力；坏事发生，伤害，愤怒，埋怨，苦毒，心中酸涩，感觉无力。他们在埃及的时候是做奴隶的，现在跟随主，他们能够选择，选择相信上帝的美善和供应的能力，或者选择相信自己无力，上帝是敌对他们的。

他们选择相信上帝是好的，慷慨的，还是选择相信上帝是邪恶，让他们受苦的。当我们面对困难的时候，就把你心中所想的带出来了。苦毒会是怎样的？我让大家看一些苦毒的征兆，每一棵树都会结果子，苦毒是在心中的根，都是用愤怒，怀恨，论断来喂养的，都是用不信来喂养的。有些记号是这样的：

1）抱怨。当一个人在抱怨的时候，他们就是缺乏的，不相信上帝是伟大的，会供应他的。他们抱怨是因为有些东西得不到。

2）怪罪别人。苦毒会从脸上看出来的，特别越老的人越容易显出来。心中喜乐的，脸上都喜乐。心中苦毒的，脸上就很酸苦，整个人会缩起来。上帝没有造我们苦毒，苦毒会在生命中显出来。借着我们的面容，我们说出的话显出来。

3）不会感恩。不是说，“感谢上帝供应我们，我们脱离那里了。”而是说，“为什么会发生这个。”只要是苦毒的人就不会感谢，他们想要更多，越来越多。

4）不能庆祝别人的成功。别人可能高兴的说，“我刚刚升职了，加薪了。”如果心是自由的人会说，“太棒了，恭喜你。”如果心里有苦毒的人会说，“为什么是他，我不喜欢这个人。为什么不是我。”注意在浪子的故事里，哥哥不肯进来跟他们一起庆祝，因为他苦毒，对自己所有的不会感恩，不能庆祝他失去的弟弟回来了。苦毒在他脸上表示出来，他愤怒。苦毒的人是很容易生气的。

我曾经跟一个人谈话，我说你呼召的时候出来，他说“我生气。”我说“你对谁生气？”“每一个人。”我记得圣经上讲，别跟生气的人在一起，不然你也会生气。因为愤怒的人开始要求别人。你开头对谁生气，你从一个人开始生气，就一直生气下去。因为第一个生气没有处理，它就成为苦毒的根源，他就对每一个人都生气了。

我就问他几个问题，圣灵引导我所问的问题。因为我跟他讲了很久，我问他，“你对谁生气?”他说“不知道，对每一个人都生气。”我说，“总有个起头，你是否对你的父母生气。”“对。”“你是家中的老大吗？”“是的，我是。”“你是非婚生子吗？”“是的，我是。”“啊，我们知道发生什么了。”因为你出生的情况，让你有很深的被拒绝感。你的愤怒是因为你里面的苦毒流露出来了，你不断的要求，不能感恩，不能感激，这些在你生命中发生的事情，你都忘记对谁生气了，所以就对每一个人都生气。你会生病的，你的生活会一塌糊涂。我说你要悔改，处理苦毒的根。因此苦毒的根会在人的生命中结出果子来。

另外一点关于苦毒就是人会论断。那个浪子的哥哥对他爸爸说，你从来没有给我开过派对。苦毒的人会论断，这是从他们心里生出来的，苦毒的人努力要争权，苦毒的人不断经历失败的循环。这些人都是苦毒的，在他们的生命中就显出来了；这样的苦毒已经是很多年了，他们已经从埃及出来了，但愤怒，苦毒，怀怨还在心里，只要有一次的挫折，就全部出来了。当他们稍微有点缺乏，稍微经历困难的时候，不是相信上帝是美善的，会帮助我；不是选择相信神，他们选择苦毒，开始抱怨。

我们也是这样，上帝希望我们的心没有苦毒；苦毒让圣灵担忧，圣灵是非常施恩的，他是饶恕的主，圣经说不要使他担忧，不要让上帝的灵担忧；因着你心里留着埋怨，不饶恕，苦毒，圣灵就会担忧。你要温柔，恩慈，饶恕，这是上帝造你的样式。你注意，当一个人抱怨，就显明里面的苦毒。

当你面对困难该如何回应？摩西没有试着恳求他们，也没有试着解决问题，他问上帝，“神，这样苦毒的解答是什么？”上帝向他显明一些事情，上帝也想向你显明一些事情，是否向他请求就是你的事情了。上帝已经供应好医治这样的苦毒了，不光是将来提供他们水泉的地方，也要医治他们苦毒的根源，已经提供他们医治的解答了。

当摩西呼求，上帝让他看到一棵树，这棵树一直在那里长了很久了，可是他不知道的是，那棵树可以医治苦水。当他将树丢进水里，这苦水变甜了。上帝显明自己是医治的主，这让我们看见一幅图画，我们看见耶稣的十字架。几百年后，耶稣死在十字架上；他不是在埋怨，苦毒，愤怒中死亡，他显示被圣灵充满的样式。他饶恕，饶恕，饶恕。

上帝希望你明白这一点；当我们在生命中遇到困难，发现自己有苦毒，愤怒，来到耶稣基督的十字架，十字架打破罪的权势；耶稣在十字架上 打破了罪的权势，在十字架上他打破咒诅，打破所有邪灵的权势，他死里复活，他彰显得胜的生活。

当你来到耶稣面前，你来到同样的十字架，你要做基督徒，就是相信耶稣在十字架上所做的，在我们生命中有效，为我而死，代表我；当他死，我跟他同死，他埋葬，我跟他同埋，他复活，我跟他一起复活。我需要将我的怀恨，埋怨，苦毒全部带到十字架上，钉死它。

要承认心里的罪，转离罪，相信上帝可以释放我得自由。当我转离苦毒，我需要放开我里面敌对的人，我需要施恩饶恕人。当人苦毒，他们就论断，他们无力，他们是受害者，就不断要求“你欠我的。”上帝希望我们学习不一样的方法，带到十字架来，承认它，饶恕人。

耶稣为我们的罪死在十字架上，他为我们做榜样怎样处理罪，饶恕，饶恕，饶恕。坏事情发生，你感觉情绪要冒出来了，饶恕他。你可以带出恩典，也可以是论断；你要成为甜美的人还是苦毒的人？你的生命是酸的还是甜的？甜美的 是饶恕的，施恩的，慈爱的，恩慈的，有温柔的心，这就是你在基督里新造的人。你不要再活在过去的方式里，照过去的心态去活。如果有人让我生气，我就怀怨，愤怒；不，我是新造的人，我把十字架带进这里面，代表我放开，我饶恕，我祝福，我释放。

上帝让他们看见一棵树，当他把树，也就是十架，带进苦水里，苦水变甜了。每一个人都要做决定，你要怎么回应生命中的困境？有些人一直活在过去发生的埋怨，愤怒，苦毒里。它在你一生好像苦水一样，一直让圣灵担忧，限制它在你跟人的关系中长出苦的果子来。

你可以作出选择，相信我是新造的人；我已经不再是苦毒的奴隶了，我不要让苦毒来掌管我的生命，我不要愤怒掌管我的生命，不要让仇恨掌管我的生命。我是新造的人，我是饶恕人的人，我在环境中释放恩典，我选择爱人而不是恨人，饶恕人不是论断人，施恩典而不是苦毒，这是我要过的生活。每一次你这样决定，你就把十字架放进苦水里了。

每一个人都会在生命中碰到困难，都会碰到痛苦的情况；人会让你失望，坏事发生，生命是会碰到困难，每一个人都不能避免。想想耶稣，他就是榜样，他被人背叛，遭拒绝，被人轻视，所有朋友都抛弃他了，他没有反应出来， 他完全施恩典，不苦毒。我们可以想象耶稣可以这样说，“我受够了地上这些人了，我是放弃了天堂的宝座来到这里的，我生在马槽里，身边都是动物；我爸爸妈妈穷到连一个像样的房子都没有，只有羊在我身边；之后那些人又想杀我，后来我们又逃命，搬到别的国家去，后来又回来。我这一生别人都恨我，根本不喜欢我。我医治病人，赶鬼，他们竟然钉死我。我的朋友，我跟他们分享，可是他们偷光了我的钱，还把我卖给敌人。我的朋友全都离开了，他们鞭打我。我真的受够这一切了，让你们死在这里算了。”

耶稣没有这样，他教我们怎样处理不公义，怎么面对背叛，不恩慈，严酷，诬告。你选择论断，还是选择饶恕，就是变得苦毒还是变得甜美。我们作出的选择都是有后果的，在结束前我要让你知道，那些没有放开苦毒拥抱恩典的人，他们没有领受上帝为他们所预备的。苦毒会偷走你的未来，苦毒会偷走上帝在你生命中的祝福，你不需要苦毒，是你选择苦毒的。再说一次，你不需要苦毒，之所以苦毒是你自己选择苦毒的。

这个苦毒是有代价的，它会影响你的人际关系；婚姻，儿女，会从一代传到下一代，偷走上帝的祝福。圣经说，不要亏缺上帝的恩典，让苦毒进到你的生命。今天在这里的人，有人曾经经历过很痛苦的情况，家中的问题，虐待的问题，你不用一直苦毒下去，愤怒下去，被不饶恕折磨。你可以做决定饶恕放开它，开始施恩。

你可以选择活的像天父的儿女一样，或者活的像一个无力的奴隶。无力的奴隶才会苦毒，上帝的儿女是甜美的，你选择怎么活。上帝已经确定你是他的儿女了，他已经为你供应一切了，但你还不相信，仍然活在奴役的苦毒里。这是我们心里如何相信的问题，我相信上帝今天要释放很多人自由，你在埋怨，愤怒，苦毒里挣扎，你一直放在心里。上帝说放开它，放开它。

拿那棵树放进苦水里，能够得到医治变为甜美；把问题带到十字架前，上帝有能力改变你，之后你就会像约瑟一样。约瑟是那将苦水变甜的人，他的兄弟背叛他，将他卖了当奴隶，他被人诬告，在牢里受苦。当他从另一边出来，上帝兴起他。

就像南非的曼德拉一样，他在牢里住了二十五年，当他出来，他选择饶恕。这么多年，他选择饶恕。当他出来，他被提升做全国的领袖，是因为他的成就吗？不，是因为他的品格。当他有能力愤怒苦毒，可以报复当初伤害他的人的时候，他说“不，我愿意饶恕。”他在整个国家开启了和好的运动。大家公认他是南非最伟大的领袖，因为他跟约瑟一样。

约瑟从牢里出来，当他到了权位之地，看见他的哥哥们，他说，“不要生气，不用怪自己，也不是你们要把我送到这里来的，我看见上帝的手，让我成为一个伟大的人，我看见上帝使用这一切，让我成为一个更好的人。不用生自己的气，我也不生你们的气，上帝已经赐福我了。”

圣经中一个一个的故事，这些人做了选择，有些人变得苦毒，失掉自己的命定；有人选择拥抱十字架，饶恕，经历上帝的恩惠。我只有一个问题，你会怎样做？在你心里有什么？苦毒还是甜美？论断还是饶恕？不论你做什么，都会在生命中显露出来。就在今天作出决定，你要挪去毒根的论断，饶恕，让上帝释放你。你不再是奴隶了，你要活的像上帝的儿子。

对那些不配的人施恩，爱人，饶恕他们，因为我们的父是这样的。这是你的选择。有些人给予是想要得回什么，连不信主的人都会这样做。我现在选择给予，是因为我慷慨，就像我的父亲一样；他不要回报，他说我就是这样的人，我喜欢饶恕，因为我就是这样。活出新的人，经历神的祝福。阿门！

尊榮你的父親母親

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请大家翻开圣经玛拉基书，这是旧约中最后一本书。等到上帝运行，耶稣来到这世界，这中间有约四百年沉静的时间，上帝给他们这样的应许。第5，6节说，“看哪，耶和华大而可畏之日未到以前，我必差遣先知以利亚到你们那里去。他必使父亲的心转向儿女，儿女的心转向父亲，免得我来咒诅遍地。”上帝在表达他的关切，他先知性的显明在末世的日子会是如何。他显明在耶稣回来之前，在地上存在的最关切的问题就是家庭关系的破裂。

家庭是我们社会的根基，社会要建立在刚强的家庭之上，刚强的婚姻，刚强的关系。上帝的心意是希望家庭都是健康的，上帝的心意是让父母亲显明天父对这世界的心。这里描述到家庭的破裂，不管在世界哪个角落，到处都是这样的，最大的问题就在家庭里；夫妻关系的破裂，亲子关系的破裂；家原来是充满喜乐，爱，最美好的地方，但很多时侯你看到的是问题，痛苦和毁灭。这影响到孩子长大的情况，这个问题一代代倍增。

上帝显明问题的原因在哪里，问题的根源在心里。心就决定你这一生的境况，我们以为一生都是有大脑意念来决定，很多人试着用意念来做。圣经告诉我们，我们一生的果效是从心里面流露出来的。箴言第四章23节讲，“你要保守你心，胜过保守一切。因为一生的果效，是由心发出。”当我们讲到心，讲的是你灵和魂的交接点，讲的不是头脑，讲的是那人的内在信念系统。圣经说你需要转化你的心，换句话说，那个心已经朝着错误的方向，现在它需要转过来了。如果不使心转向，就没有爱和医治的流露，可能就会变得很尴尬困难，即使你想表现爱，都会是一种非常奇怪的方式。

上帝最关切的不是你外在的表现，外在的情况，而是在你心。你外面可能看起来很好，但是心却不对了。他在这里说，“他必使父亲的心转向儿女，儿女的心转向父亲”，这是双方的转向。要让父母转向儿女，也要让儿女转向父母。如果不发生的话，结果就会是咒诅遍满地面。当家庭破碎，父母离婚，儿女背叛，生命因为愤怒苦毒而扭曲，这不叫祝福，这叫咒诅，只要有咒诅就有邪灵在运行。上帝要带我们进入祝福，都要从心开始，上帝能够改变你的心；改变你所相信的，你的生命就改变，你一生的果效是从心发出的。

当我们在婚姻问题辅导人时，发现很多人都有同样的情况，就是跟父母之间有一些没有处理的冲突，这些问题就带进了他们婚姻里。一开始都有很大的期待，非常浪漫，充满爱意，而一段时间之后发现原来期待的没有发生，因为他们原生家庭没有解决的冲突带进了婚姻里。任何人结婚之前，他们需要解决心中对自己父母的问题。

我们来看以弗所书第六章，它讲到作为一个信徒生命应该怎么过。2，3节说，“要孝敬父母，使你得福，在世长寿。这是第一条带应许的诫命。你们作父亲的，不要惹儿女的气，只要照着主的教训和警戒，养育他们。”注意这里有原则，也有应许。上帝说孝敬，你要看重孝敬你的父母，因为这个后面带着应许。这是第一条带应许的诫命，代表在上帝的眼中这太重要了。他特别把应许加在上面。

应许就是：如果我孝敬父母，我能够长寿而且在世得福。换句话说，孝敬父母会影响我的健康，也影响我的生命和感情。反过来也同样，如果你不孝敬父母，这样带出的你的生命的结果就是健康出问题，在你的生命中会有各样的问题发生。如果你看不清问题的根源，不知道为什么会有问题。

有一次我为一位年轻人祷告，他身体上有很大的疼痛，所有的关节都痛，他的脊椎都僵直了；医生说再有几年他可能都不能弯腰了。他有很严重的健康问题。我寻求主，主就告诉我，他身上有疾病软弱的灵，邪灵在他身上造成的疾病，而问题的根源是他对他父亲的苦毒。当这个年轻人悔改饶恕自己的父亲，我们祷告他从邪灵中释放，他立刻得到医治，完全没有痛，可以很自在的行动了。邪灵偷走他的健康，因为他心里一直对父亲有着苦毒。他爱不爱他的爸爸？爱，他真的爱。问题是他里面有没有解决的冲突，他心里面的反应流露出来，就是论断他爸爸没有做好的事情。

我还记得另外一对年轻人，他们有流产的问题。每一次流产就祷告求上帝来医治，已经是第五次流产了，他们请我去为他们祷告。当我祷告的时候，我感觉到主告诉我，每一个流掉的都是男孩，她跟她的爸爸之间有问题。我私下跟这个姐妹谈，她真的每一个流掉的都是男孩。我问她，“你跟你爸爸怎么样呢？”她马上说，“我爱他。”在她的意识中她是爱他的，可是我们再问几个问题，发现她对自己的爸爸有很深的苦毒，她里面有内在誓言，“我绝对不要生男孩。”这是一个咒诅在她身上运行，让她没法顺利生下男婴。你心里的境况就决定了你生命的限制在哪里。如果你心里许下了这样的誓言，我绝不要生男孩，你身体的限制就是由你的心来决定的。

上帝在他的话语里很清楚的说“孝敬父母是有应许的。”孝敬是什么意思？会有什么样的情况？如果不孝敬会有什么样的后果呢？旧约中孝敬的意思是重量，把重量放在上面。跟荣耀是同样的一个词，当我们说上帝是荣耀的，代表他的分量很大，非常扎实。所以旧约里孝敬就是看重有极大分量的东西，加添他的价值。

新约中是另外一个词，代表为一个人立价格，你选择为他定一个价值。我们将这两个放在一起，就了解了圣经中孝敬的含义，代表你认定父母是有极高价值的，并看重你跟他们之间的关系和沟通，你看重这一切。

怎样看重孝敬一个人呢？我们会有不同的理由，每一个文化中都有受尊敬的方式。首先，有些人受尊重是因为他们的成就，有些人做了伟大的功绩，人们就尊重他们，我们看重他们的价值是因为他们伟大的成就，代表他们做了一些事情我们认为很重要。

第二个让我们尊敬一个人的理由是因为他们的品格，这个人显出的正直和勇气。我们敬重是因为他是一个伟大的人。因为他们勇敢，正直，忍耐，赢得了我们的尊敬。他们配得敬重。

第三种我们敬重人的原因是因为他们的角色，像总统，因为他的职位我们敬重他，因为他的位置是全国最高的政治地位，我们因此敬重他。圣经说，你要敬重在位的人。

三种主要敬重一个人的理由就是因为他的成就，品格，还有就是地位。可是上帝尊重一个人是有不同的理由，跟前面的理由很不一样，是很重要的理由。上帝尊重一个人是因为人是按照他的样式所造的，你碰到的每一个人对上帝都是很有价值的，每一个人上帝都在他们身上放了极高的价值，他也显明出来。

我的这个手表，到底它有没有价值呢？就看有人愿意付多少钱，可能有人说，值一千块；也有人说，夜市买的，十块钱。他们放了价格在上面，就看它有什么意义了。我们衡量一个人的价值就是因为他们如何看待他。上帝看我们是有极高价值的，他付的代价是差他的独生爱子来到世上，为我们舍了生命；即使我们还在罪里面，我们的生命一塌糊涂，很多不好的事情发生，神说你是我极其珍贵的，我可以不看那些错的东西，我看见的核心是这是按我的形象造的，我看重你们。

尊敬是上帝赐给我们的，是他放在我们身上的价值。耶稣来到世上，行在人的当中，为我们舍掉生命，为我们显明什么是爱。上帝是看重人的，只是因为是人，是按他的形象所造的。我们常用不同的角度看重人，如果他做的好就好，如果他让我们失望，我们就论断他，不喜欢他；如果品格上有瑕疵，我们就论断他，不喜欢他；如果他的角色没有扮演好，我们也不喜欢。我们对人有自己的意见，我们按照人的行为来论断人。

我们再来看看什么是不尊敬。有些人之所以不敬重孝敬父母，是因为太过没大没小，我们太亲近他们，不单只看到好的一面，也看到不好的一面；不光看到他们好的品质，也看到他们的破碎，看到愤怒，没爱心，所有的一切。因为我们所看到的，我们就论断敌对我们的父母。他们没有按照我所期待的去做，他们做的是我没有想到的，我们心里受伤了。当人受伤，就会有愤怒，愤怒是一种要求，“你欠了我的。”

很多家庭真的是有问题；有些朋友的爸爸背叛妈妈，背叛他的婚约，背叛所有的家人，离开自己的妻子。因为这样的家庭破裂，让你陷入极大的情绪折磨中。或者父母其中一方很生气，就会打孩子，虐待你，抛弃你，拒绝你。很多人都有痛苦的经验，这是要学的功课，别人做的事情你不用负责，但你有权利选择如何回应，你也能决定怎样做。你可以选择轻视，论断，不孝敬；你也可以选择饶恕和孝敬；这是你的选择，你有能力做这样的选择。每一个人做了这样的选择就继续这样做；看你心里的情况，如果有失望，怀怨，愤怒，你就可能轻视你的父母，论断他们，用各样不孝敬的方式对待他们。

孝敬是出于心的问题，这就让我们了解了，上帝要求我们孝敬父母不是因为他们了不起，他要求我们孝敬他们就如同给他们礼物一样。他们给了你生命这个礼物，而你的反应就是要给他们孝敬。上帝给了一个特别的应许，如果你孝敬父母，不管他们是怎样的人，不管他们是不是好父母，只要你做决定心中有这样一颗孝敬的心，你就会长寿得福。如果你受到过伤害，可能他们曾经做过很伤害你的事情，你里面有愤怒怀怨，有论断敌对他们，这样的生命是不能得福的。

我听过很多年轻人这样说，“我绝不要象我的父亲。”你听见他里面对他父亲的论断和苦毒，就可以想见他做的很多事情跟他父亲一模一样。就像再一次复制出来一样，他真的就跟他的父亲一样了。我听人这样讲过，“我永远不要像我妈妈。”我说，只要有时间，你就会变得跟她一样。有一天你会听到自己吼跟她一样，像她骂人一样骂人，所有你最讨厌的事情，你说你最不要的事情，你有一天会做的一模一样。怎么会这样，我怎么会到这个地步的？我记得那个很大的伤害，还说绝对不要这样。

怎么发生的？因为你没有解决心里的问题，因为你心里对父母的论断，因为你轻视他们，这就会在你生命中产生一个恶性循环。我记得有一个人来找我，他跟他的老板有冲突。我问他“你上一个工作如何呢？”他说，“我跟那个老板也处不好，也离开了。”“那你跟你的小组长相处如何？”“我就是因为这个来见你，我跟他也处不来。”我说，“有没有一个工作是你做的很开心的？”“我当兵的时候很开心。”“那你跟你的长官相处如何？”“他不喜欢我，一天到晚找我麻烦，我也不喜欢他们。”你就可以看到这个模式。“你在学校如何？”“不是很好，老师老是挑我毛病。我不喜欢他们。”“你跟父母关系如何？”“我爸爸把我赶出家了。他们不是我的亲生父母，是我的养父母。”

让我告诉你问题在哪里，我也告诉你未来会如何，因为这个模式很清楚。你的问题就在当你被收养，你感觉被拒绝了，你对自己的亲生父母带着愤怒，埋怨和苦毒；而真正愿意付出代价来养育你的父母亲，你却拒绝他们，把你的愤怒发泄在他们身上；你同时不孝敬自己的亲生父母和养父母，就显明在你生命中各处的冲突，这些冲突会一直追着你，直到你解决心里的问题。你需要认清心里的问题并且悔改。

我们很快看一下圣经里的一个故事，撒母耳记下第六章，生命的问题都是跟着你不孝敬父母而来的。这个故事的背景是，它是一个很大复兴的故事，国家有了一个新的国王，大卫王登基了，而他的妻子米甲也回到他身边，他把神的同在，约柜，带进城，全国欢庆，每一个人都在那里。到处是音乐，舞蹈，欢呼，非常美好的一天，有上帝的同在。大卫非常的喜悦，在那里欢喜跳跃，舞蹈，因为有神的同在。14节，“大卫穿着细麻布的以弗得，在耶和华面前极力跳舞。”

大卫在跳舞，我们来看他的太太米甲，16节说，“耶和华的约柜进了大卫城的时候，扫罗的女儿米甲从窗户里观看，见大卫王在耶和华面前踊跃跳舞，心里就轻视他。”两个人，一个世界，两种完全不一样的回应。

为什么？米甲在大卫年轻的时候非常受他吸引，她是扫罗王的女儿，扫罗讨厌大卫，他嫉妒大卫，想要杀了他。他们结婚之后，大卫成为了扫罗王的女婿，扫罗的嫉妒越来越强，他计划如何杀掉大卫，他派出一群杀手要在床上杀了他。你可以想象派杀手去暗杀自己的女婿，可是他的女儿听到这个消息后，让大卫赶紧逃了出去。大卫成为了通缉犯，扫罗派人追杀他，只要任何人跟大卫做朋友，就把他杀了。大卫像难民一样逃亡，很多年躲在旷野里面，受到极大的苦难，一直很害怕。如果你害怕一个人，他们可能背叛你，可能就杀了你。所以大卫非常的困苦。

而米甲的父亲扫罗又将她嫁给了另一个人。她爱的是大卫，大卫是她的英雄，是她的梦中情人，而她的父亲将她嫁给了另一个男人。她被逼跟另一个人生活，但她的心不爱这个人。大卫和米甲都是被同样一个人恶劣的对待。当有人恶劣的对待你，你可以用上帝的方式处理，使用敬虔的方式处理这件事，带进恩典，释放饶恕，让自己的心仍然保持在自由的境况。你也可以变得愤怒苦毒，轻看，不尊敬，扫罗的女儿米甲轻看自己的父亲，同样也轻视自己的丈夫。

大卫是一个真正爱上帝的人，他能够原谅扫罗，他从来没有举起手敌对他，他一直很敬重扫罗。而在他生命中最伟大的一天，他们聚集在一起，约柜进城了，大卫在经历神，而他的妻子盯着他，心里充满了轻视。当大卫回来，20节说，“大卫回家要给眷属祝福。扫罗的女儿米甲出来迎接他，说，以色列王今日在臣仆的婢女眼前露体，如同一个轻贱人无耻露体一样，有好大的荣耀阿。”米甲真的好好的骂了大卫一场。

大卫说我为主跳舞，我还要跳更多。他不要因为妻子的苦毒和不敬重而受到胁迫，他不要任何人把他拉下来，他不要任何人拿走他的自由。接下来看23节，“扫罗的女儿米甲，直到死日，没有生养儿女。”大卫选择敬重的路，敬重神，敬重扫罗，看重人；扫罗不配人敬重的，但大卫敬重他。可是米甲变得很苦毒，轻看自己的父亲，轻视自己的丈夫，后果就是：第一，她没有办法经历上帝的作为，没有办法进入上帝的祝福，因为她心里的情况。第二，婚姻无法生养。婚姻中没有生命，没有喜乐，没有爱。所有的爱都被她的苦毒，论断和不尊敬给掩盖了。第三，她没有儿女。在希伯来文化当中，这是很羞辱的事，就像她女人的身份失败了一样。后来也看到她收养了别人的孩子，这孩子也被处死了。两种后果，一个是尊重人的，一个是不尊重人的。

我们再看几处经文，申命记第二十七章16节，“轻慢父母的，必受咒诅。”另外一处在箴言说“轻视父亲嘲笑母亲的眼目，要被乌鸦啄去。”当你不孝敬父母，邪灵就有权利进入我们的生命折磨我们。第二处经文说的乌鸦讲的就是邪灵，它能啄去你的眼睛。这就是在生命战场上失败跌倒的人最后的结局。这里讲到我们如果不孝敬父母，就没有能力看清，邪灵会让我们盲目。另外一处在箴言第二十章20节，“咒骂父母的，他的灯必灭，变为漆黑的黑暗。”这里讲到的灯就是你内在的生命，当你咒诅或者对父母讲一些不好的话，黑暗会充满你的生命让你无法看清。

这些都是很严重的经文，我们应该怎么办呢？

第一，上帝希望你有不一样的生活，他给你的是生命；上帝明白破碎家庭的问题，他明白人经历的忧伤和痛苦；耶稣来，他的心意就是要医治伤心的人。上帝第一样要给我们的就是，你只要转向他，承认问题不在你的父母，家人或者发生的这些事，问题在你的心里面，他应许赐给你一颗全新的心，将我的灵放在你里面，你现在进入一个新的家庭，上帝是你的父亲，你没有任何缺乏。

上帝希望我们明白，自然的家庭是有限制的，人是有罪的，所以痛苦伤害一定会有。忧伤失望是生命的一部分。但是我们不用这样过活，不用活在痛苦忧伤里面，耶稣有更美的东西要给我们；他说眼目不要看自然的家庭，也不要看自然的环境，你要仰望，这位神是爱你的，天上的父是这样完全的爱你，天上的神他欢迎你，爱你，拥抱你，为你供应，永不离开你，不断来接触你，他在你这一生都在接触你。

耶稣说，凡接待他的人，相信他的人，因他为我们的罪死在十字架上，得胜复活。凡相信耶稣基督的，他赐他们权柄让他们做上帝的儿女。不管我们的家庭如何，上帝要把你放在他的家里，他要给你新的开始，新的身份，成为永生神的儿女。

我们都有自己的原生家庭，但现在是更大家庭的一份子；神是我们的父，他供应我们一切的需要；他一直爱我们，一直这样的恩慈，一直是这样的温柔，他知道怎样医治你的心。我们第一步是要进到上帝的家，相信耶稣基督。

第二，上帝要你改变生活的方式。不光是到前面来接受耶稣而已，是要超过这些，要改变你的心，改变生命，改变你跟人相处的方式。上帝说，“现在你改变了，我把我的信心放在你里面，你不用像以前那样愤怒，苦毒，扭曲的生活。你要恩慈，因为我是恩慈的，我对每一个人恩慈。不是光对好人，做对的事情的人才恩慈，这不是在你原生的家庭，这是新的家庭，我一直都恩慈。”“那么即使我做了很坏的事情也是吗？”“是的，我不改变，不是因为你日子不顺我就改变，我一直都是恩慈的。你要温柔，不用严厉，因为我就是这样。”

神是非常温柔的神，“如果我们把事情搞砸了，你不会吼我，不会骂我，不会惩罚我吗？”“不会，我不会惩罚，我会非常温柔的待你，我希望找到方式把你带回来。恩慈，温柔，彼此饶恕，我要你学习饶恕人，不是不尊重或者论断他们，就像我饶恕你一样。”上帝说，“我要你重新看你的家人，重新看你的爸爸妈妈；如果你心里有愤怒苦毒，你觉得他们让你失望，你觉得他们辜负你，他们可能真的很失败，辜负了你，确实会发生的，可是你不知道他们也是破碎，所以才这样做。现在你在新的家庭了，新的家庭里是尊敬人的。”

你说，“他们真的很伤我啊。”神说，“我知道，你做的也伤我，但我饶恕你了。就如同我饶恕你一般，你需要饶恕他们。现在我要你改变你的心，我要你看见他们，没有他们你不可能进到这个世界，也没有可能有永生的生命；即使他们所有的事情都没有做对，我要你仍然看重尊敬他们，是他们把你带进这个世界。我要你看重他们，因为我看重他们；他们对我一样也是特别的，我要你孝敬他们，给他们这个孝敬的礼物。”

你说，“可是他们不配呀，我爸爸做了这么可怕的事情，抛弃我们。”上帝说，“我知道，可是你很愤怒，你需要饶恕，就如同我饶恕你一样。因为我看重你，我要你做的，是当你得饶恕，你就会开始为他们祷告；当你为他们祷告，你的心就开始跟他们连结在一起。你看见上帝为他们安排最好的，他们开始改变。不然不可能为他们祷告，你如果愤怒的话是不可能为他们祷告的。首先你需要原谅，放掉所有的论断，开始为他们祷告。”

如果你也造成他们的痛苦，我觉得你需要跟他们道歉。你说，“你不了解我爸爸做过什么，我妈妈是怎么做的。”神说，“我知道，可是我仍然看见你里面的愤怒，你做的事真的伤害他，当你论断拒绝他们，他们可能没有说什么，但是他们感受到痛。因为他们是你的父母。这仍然在他们里面，他们仍然爱你，关心你。”

你说，“可是我的父母把我送给人，我的家庭破碎了。”“仍然一样，这是新的生活方式，这是用我爱的方式来爱人，我饶恕的方式来饶恕人。你记得你对你妈妈是怎样的又骂又吼，咒诅她悖逆她，她可能感觉不好，你们两个可能吼在一起，她也受伤了，你伤害了她 。”

你可以这样跟她说，“妈，上帝对我说话，他让我看见我心中很多年都有愤怒和伤害，我真的很抱歉，你愿意原谅我吗？我爱你。”当你这样做，你要先来到主的面前才能做得到，当你把事情调整对了，找一些方法表达你的恩慈，给他们礼物。我告诉你，爱一定赢，爱一定会赢。

我跟大家讲一个小故事，我很惊讶；我成为基督徒之前面对了很多的困难，我们有一个女儿送去给人收养，因为她带来冲突，羞辱，我们就把她送给人藏起来了。我接受基督之后，我真的悔改，相信上帝会恢复我们的女儿，有一天他真的做到了。几年之后，我们开始跟我们的女儿建立关系，她说，“我希望你来主持我们的婚礼，我去过我自己姐妹的婚礼，好美呀，我希望我也有跟她们一样美的婚礼。”之所以这么美是因为有神的同在，因为我的孩子都是基督徒，有神的同在降临。可是我的女儿不了解，她只是希望她的婚礼也有这么好。

我们开始有一个预演，开始确实很难，里面很紧张，她的养父母在那里，养父母的家庭也都在，他们都是收养的，一共有三个家庭在那里，她爸爸和妈妈大概也很难接受；我记得预演完之后，我跟主耶稣说，“这真是很难啊。”我走到海滩去，一直流泪，跟耶稣基督说，“主啊，请你帮助我，我能做什么呢？我能说什么呢？”第二天早上醒来，主就把一些话放在我心里。有些时候上帝会立刻回应，我早上醒来上帝就把答案给我。

我们来到婚礼，她从红毯走过来，她的养父陪着她，她的家人坐在这里，另一个家庭坐在那里，而我们的家庭就坐在他们当中；气氛非常紧张，有时候我会听到灵里面的一些话，我听见的是，“他会说什么？我要听听他会讲什么。”她的养父母不希望我主持婚礼，因为他们不是基督徒，也不希望我主持婚礼，可是我的女儿一直坚持。我怎么做呢？当他们站在我面前，非常紧张，这是她 一生最特别的日子，大家都在等我开口，上帝这样对我说，“敬重她的父母。”聚会开始之前，我特别跟她父母说，“我要特别感谢你们做的这一切，为了Josephine，谢谢你关心她，给她教育，给她家庭，谢谢你们照顾她接纳她，因为你们在她的生命中这么重要的角色，我要敬重你们。我们没有权利做任何要求，我们何等感激你容许我们今天能够来参加。”

整个的气氛马上就变了，神的同在降临，有人开始流泪，上帝开始运行，这可能是我们见过的最美的婚礼。当恩典流露，你最容易感觉到上帝。后面有用餐的时间，我在想不知道会有怎样的气氛，不知道我们会坐在哪里，座位的安排是会告诉你一些信息的。我们去到那儿看看我们会坐在哪里。我告诉我的女儿这一天你要好好孝敬你的父母，你需要讲话感激他们，就像其他婚礼一样。

当我们到了那里，发现前面有两张特别的桌子，没有谁比谁高，两边是平等地位的，一个是她的家人，一个是我们。我立刻看见我女儿站起来说话，她敬重她的养父母教养她长大，她也敬重我们，上帝降临，在敬重中上帝一定降临。我的妻子Joy站起来讲话，她也对Josephine的妈妈表达她的感激。Josephine的养母站起来说话，她讲了一个我们都不知道的事情，她自己的母亲给她压力要她不要收养这个孩子，她必须要反对自己的妈妈来收养这个孩子。她说，每一次她生日的时候，我都感谢生她的母亲把她带进这个世界。上帝的同在降临，每一个人都开始流泪。我从来没有参加过婚宴大家哭成这样的。很神奇，有些人哭出声音，有人哭成一团。上帝的爱真的充满那个地方。

我希望你明白一点，除非我们决定孝敬，这一切不可能发生。能够给人敬重，就带下祝福。她选择敬重自己的养父母，也敬重我们，我们也选择敬重他们，上帝就能自由的运行。这是你要给人的礼物，因为我们是这样的人，我们是愿意敬重人的人，现在我们在更大的家庭－上帝的家庭里面，敬重是我们愿意给人的。

門柱旁的血

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我们看两三处的圣经，圣经是上帝的话，告诉我们上帝的计划，它分成两个部分，旧约和新约。我们先看约翰福音第一章29节，“次日，约翰看见耶稣来到他那里，就说，看哪，神的羔羊，除去世人罪孽的。”约翰是上帝特别差派准备的一个人，让国人预备好迎接耶稣的降临，他的信息就是悔改，离开罪。全国各地都有人来，他在预备这些人领受上帝为他们准备的祝福。有一天当他为人施洗的时候，看见耶稣朝他们这边走来，上帝对他的心说话，向他显明耶稣基督是谁，“耶稣基督是神的儿子。”

约翰这位先知这样说，“看哪，神的羔羊，除去世人罪孽的。”对我们大部分人来说，这根本没有什么意思，可是对在场的听众，这有极大的重要性。人类一直在挣扎的问题，就是罪的问题。罪违反上帝的律法，就是让我们的生命没有上帝，自己做主。罪就是不理上帝，我们自己往前跑；罪就是转离上帝，走我们自己的路；罪带来的是毁灭和死亡。圣经说，罪的工价，它的后果，就是要隔绝，摧毁，死亡。

上帝不希望我们的世界是这样的，战争，暴力，贫穷，犯罪；他创造的世界原是美好的地方，他的创造是好的。当罪进入到世界，他创造的人远离他，整个受造物的动力就改变了，邪灵开始有能力进到世界来，邪灵开始辖制人。亚当犯罪的时候，疾病，死亡，忧伤进入世界，上帝应许他们有一天他会差下一人救赎他们，这人能处理罪的问题。

世界所有的宗教，它们的挑战都是怎样面对罪，所有的宗教都了解罪的问题，它们的处理方式都差不多，你需要做点事情。基督信仰是完全不一样的，你要在神的面前悔罪是最主要的，不是我做什么，也不是你做什么，而是耶稣基督为我们所做的。

我们看旧约出埃及记第一章，让你知道整个的故事。这里讲到上帝的百姓在埃及。11至14节，“于是埃及人派督工的辖制他们，加重担苦害他们。他们为法老建造两座积货城，就是比东和兰塞。只是越发苦害他们，他们越发多起来，越发蔓延，埃及人就因以色列人愁烦。埃及人严严地使以色列人作工，使他们因作苦工觉得命苦，无论是和泥，是做砖，是作田间各样的工，在一切的工上都严严地待他们。”

上帝的百姓被困在外地，活在奴役底下。没有人一生下来就是奴隶的，我们生下来就是自由的，我们渴望自由。但这些人在捆绑底下，在埃及人的重担底下，埃及人派最严厉的督工来，打他们，虐待他们，让他们觉得非常命苦。他们受苦，被打，被虐待，很努力的工作，没有后果；不能自由经营自己的生命，都在辖制底下，都在悲惨当中，他们受到非常残酷的对待。

这就是我们看见的图画，受罪的辖制也是这样。当人生在世上，我们都成为罪的奴隶，什么东西征服了你，你就伏在他底下。罪，苦毒，仇恨，愤怒，这罪影响到每一个人，而在罪的后面就是邪灵。当人生在这世界，都生在罪的辖制下，生命很辛苦，很让人失望。背叛，困难，挫折，在痛苦中人们想要找到舒缓，他们对不同的东西上瘾，成瘾也是一个捆绑。他们毒品上瘾，毒品就吸走他们的健康和金钱。或者色情上瘾，酒精尼古丁上瘾，这就是奴役，让人变得很苦毒。

圣经告诉我们，在埃及后面有不可见的属灵的世界，埃及人拜很多不同的偶像，各样事情都有神。真相是，这些人在奴役中，奴役背后的权势就是邪灵，借着埃及人开始施压，让这些人哭泣，求上帝帮助他们。

上帝就派摩西帮助他们，当摩西来了，他跟法老说，“主说，让我的百姓离开。”法老说，“你的主是谁呀？又不是我的神，我不让他们离开。”上帝就在埃及地降下灾祸，我们来看最后一灾。在出埃及记第十二章，3节，“你们吩咐以色列全会众说，本月初十日，各人要按着父家取羊羔，一家一只。”5至7节，“要无残疾，一岁的公羊羔，你们或从绵羊里取，或从山羊里取，都可以。要留到本月十四日，在黄昏的时候，以色列全会众把羊羔宰了。各家要取点血，涂在吃羊羔的房屋左右的门框上和门楣上。”12节，“因为那夜我要巡行埃及地，把埃及地一切头生的，无论是人是牲畜，都击杀了，又要败坏埃及一切的神。我是耶和华。”14节，“你们要记念这日，守为耶和华的节，作为你们世世代代永远的定例。”22，23节，“拿一把牛膝草，蘸盆里的血，打在门楣上和左右的门框上。你们谁也不可出自己的房门，直到早晨。因为耶和华要巡行击杀埃及人，他看见血在门楣上和左右的门框上，就必越过那门，不容灭命的进你们的房屋，击杀你们。”29至31节，“到了半夜，耶和华把埃及地所有的长子，就是从坐宝座的法老，直到被掳囚在监里之人的长子，以及一切头生的牲畜，尽都杀了。法老和一切臣仆，并埃及众人，夜间都起来了。在埃及有大哀号，无一家不死一个人的。夜间，法老召了摩西，亚伦来，说，起来，连你们带以色列人，从我民中出去，依你们所说的，去事奉耶和华吧。”

我们第一个看见的是，上帝说他要来审判埃及地所有的神。埃及人拜很多的神，他们拜尼罗河，所以在尼罗河上有瘟疫；他们所拜的一切，他们所说的一切神，上帝就一个个审判他们。上帝显明他的能力大过这些神的能力，这些都是假神，他是唯一的真神。每一次带下瘟疫，他就让他们看到这些神无力可为，他显明你们拜的都是没有能力的，以色列的神，耶和华，才是真正的神。

每一次摩西来到法老面前，法老刚硬着心，绝不放开他们，埃及人再一次遭殃。每一次的遭殃，法老的心变得非常刚硬苦毒，终于来到最后的一次灾殃。你需要明白一点，法老被众民崇拜如同神一样，大家也拜他的儿子如同是神，在埃及人的眼中，法老是他们国家很伟大的神，他的儿子也是。上帝说，他给以色列的百姓很清楚的指示，摩西把以色列所有的领袖都聚集了，仔细听好，再一次的灾，上帝要打破埃及的权势，要打破邪灵的权势，上帝要照他的话释放我们。

这是非常重要的事情，会发生在第十四天，你要在羊群中找一只羊羔。因为埃及人轻看牧羊人，轻看羊群。上帝说我要你拿一只羊羔，仔细挑选，没有残疾，没有疾病，不可以是瞎眼的，瘸腿的，完美的羊。十四号的黄昏，大概下午三点钟，将全家带进家中，杀了这只羊，把羊的血留在盆里，拿牛膝草蘸血打在门楣门框上，你们进去，一起吃这只羊。因为半夜我要杀掉家中所有的长子，所有牲畜的长子，除非他看见这个血，看见羔羊的血，你就得赦免。上帝看见这血，就知道这是我的百姓，血遮盖他们，他们不会遭害，不会进到家里。

那一天来了，14号，如果你是长子，你一定会确定这一切都按部就班的做好了，不可以冒险，只有一次机会。埃及人看到他们，有些人相信，他们也这样做，他们感到神在以色列人一边。半夜十二点开始，哭号开始，一家一家，几百户家，天使进去把每一家的长子杀了，即使你坐牢了，是长子你都不能幸免。遍地每一个角落，上帝来审判法老这个神，他打破他们属灵的能力，他打破这个国家后面的权势，埃及后来再也没有恢复过来，再也不是以前一样的兴盛大国 ，在这之后，失掉了一切。

死亡使者走过全地，所有涂了血的家庭，都被饶恕了。上帝对他们说，你们要吃这羊羔，预备你们的旅程了，你们要离开捆绑，四百三十年的奴役，今晚结束，准备出门了，今晚奴役结束了。圣经 说，没有一个离开埃及的人是软弱的。那个晚上，当他们流出了血，他们凭信心等候，不光是灭命使者来杀人，上帝的灵也运行在当中，所有生命得医治，没有一个是软弱的，他们活在奴役中，活在贫穷里，没有一个是软弱的，神的能力使他们坚强。

上帝说，神的军队那晚要离开埃及，埃及人把他们的金银全给他们了，他们掠夺了埃及，走上了旅程，要进入应许之地。上帝说，我要你每一年的第一个月的十四号这一天，要纪念这个，要献上逾越节的羔羊，流出它的血来纪念我为你们所做的。他们每一年每一年这样做。

等到施洗约翰来到的时候，他说，“看哪，神的羔羊。”他们所有人都知道他在讲什么，那是逾越节的羔羊，那个羊的血，拯救我们，医治我们。这是上帝的羔羊，上帝拣选的，上帝拣选耶稣基督，除去世人的罪孽。他预言你在一千五百年所看见的所有事情，都要象征着这个，这才是真相。

我们来看耶稣基督被钉十字架的事，注意马太福音第二十七章，我们看到血很重要，因为生命就在血里面，世界各地的文化都会稍微了解一点这个。那时在全地都有极大的黑暗，46节，“约在申初，耶稣大声喊着说。”50至53节，“耶稣又大声喊叫，气就断了。忽然殿里的幔子，从上到下裂为两半。地也震动。磐石也崩裂。坟墓也开了。已睡圣徒的身体，多有起来的。到耶稣复活以后，他们从坟墓里出来，进了圣城，向许多人显现。”

从正午到申初，耶稣来到事工的末了，他的生命不是从他身上拿走，是他自己献上生命。正午到申初，大概是中午十二点到下午三点的时间，上帝让全地变得黑暗，就如埃及地全地黑暗一样。到了申初，耶稣大声喊着，为什么圣经要指出这申初的时间？申初是下午三点的时间，在以色列这个时候就是逾越节吃饭的时候，全国各地来参加这个节庆的人，大祭司在这时会带着羊羔，宰杀它，流出血来。大家没有留意，上帝逾越节的羔羊，在十字架上献上自己的生命，在申初，耶稣大声喊着，将他的灵献上。

如果你有见过临死的人，你知道在死前他们不会大声喊，他们渐渐断气。可是耶稣死时，圣经说他大声的呼喊，极大的呼喊，得胜的呼喊，成了，世界罪得救赎的工成了！他流出了宝血，当上帝乐纳这个祭，能力就释放了。

注意发生的事情，第一，圣殿里的幔子，从上到下裂为两半。圣殿的幔子是很厚的，是进入到上帝所在的至圣所的地方，突然圣灵的手把幔子撕开，人们惊讶。第一次他们能够看见进入到上帝的同在里。上帝警告他们，我已经开了一条路，让每一个人进入上帝的同在。

第二个发生的事情是，很大的地震。这里说连磐石都崩裂了，甚至震开了坟墓。能把坟墓震开是很大的地震了，为什么会发生？罪的后果就是死，上帝打开坟墓，这些尸体都在不同的腐烂阶段；骷髅起来了，人不能就这样离开去清理坟墓，要等到逾越节结束才能开始工作。耶稣自己进到地下最深之处，跟所有掌权的邪灵宣告，我已经胜过你了。第三天，有一次很大的地震，耶稣从死里复活。

马太福音第二十七章说很多圣徒的身体也都起来，进入圣城，向许多人显现。有些人以为死亡就是结束，这不是结束。你要了解，当耶稣死里复活，很多在坟墓里的这些人，上帝超自然的重新组合他们的身体，让他们死里复活，走出来见他们的神；可能是摩西，亚伯拉罕，或者是圣徒，伟大的王等；向很多人显现，真是超现实。上帝向每一个人显明，他的能力借耶稣的宝血显现，来赦免你的罪，打破邪灵的权势，让你不再受邪灵的辖制。

神把你举起来，把复活的生命放在你里面，上帝在显明复活的生命，不管魔鬼给了我们什么。因为我相信耶稣所流的血，神的能力的释放，能改变你的生命。这真是神奇的事情。圣经在歌罗西书第二章14，15节说，当耶稣死在十字架上，流出宝血，他将所有敌对人的罪都挪走了，也卸下那些执政掌权人的权势，把魔鬼所有的权势拿走让你不再受他的辖制。不是我做了什么，而是基督为我所做的，只要我相信。

圣经说，上帝让耶稣基督成为我们的施恩座，因相信他的血。罗马书第三章25节，上帝让耶稣成为了我们的挽回祭，因我们相信他的血。如果你犯了罪，耶稣的宝血付了代价；如果你失败了，耶稣的宝血付了代价；如果你在现世挣扎，耶稣的宝血救赎你。我们说羔羊的血救赎了我，救赎的意思代表所有的赎金都付清了，当耶稣流出宝血，他付了完全的代价，释放你自由，救你，饶恕你的罪；只需要一点，就是你转离罪来相信他。如果你犯罪跌倒，转向他，相信他，宝血已经付上代价了。

你的生命可能在罪里挣扎，转向来相信耶稣为这罪而死，转离罪，罪一直带给你忧伤；定罪，难过，相信耶稣所做的。有一个很神奇的真理，世上每一个宗教，都要你做一些事情，但基督信仰是耶稣做完了一切，只要我回应耶稣，只要我认同他，因我心中的信，他为我所做的一切都是我的了。

你知道洗礼的意思是什么？我不知道你们这里是怎么做，在新约中是把人带到河边，把他们放到水里面再起来。当一个人接受洗礼，这不是一个仪式，这是一个宣告，你心中信心的声明；当我进到耶稣里，我旧的生命就结束了，他死在十字架上，我跟他一同死亡；我认同他，我旧的生活形式已经死了；耶稣埋在坟墓里，当我们进到水里面施洗，我相信我的生命埋葬了，旧有自私犯罪的生命结束了。从洗礼上来的时候，代表新的生命开始了。

这不是水把你弄湿而已，而是心里明白相信，我旧的生命结束，跟基督同死，他已经埋葬了。从上帝的眼光来看，我现在相信他，我是新的人了。我现在活在新的生命中，是幸福的生命，跟随耶稣基督的生命。我还会不会失败？会，还是会。因为我常常忘记我自己是谁，我们常想到过去的那个人，做过去的事。但我不需要再做了，因为它的权势被打破了。我认罪悔改，耶稣宝血洗净我，我可以重新来跟上帝同行。

我们如认我们的罪，他是信实公义的神，必赦免我们的罪，洗净我们一切的不义。我们行在光中，代表跟上帝敞开，彼此团契，基督的宝血就洗净我们。这宝血随时都可以洗净我们的失败和罪，我们只需要相信，在心中相信耶稣所做的就足够了。

当你进入与上帝同在，你如果相信耶稣所做的足够了，你就可以坦然的进来。你不相信这就足够了，你就会感到胆怯。上帝要你相信，耶稣的血就够了，能洗净你的罪；能够让你起来，行在新生命的能力里。

由洞穴中得自由

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我们翻开圣经列王记上第十九章，我先很简短的跟大家分享一下，然后跟大家祷告，领袖需要复苏，生命中有上帝全新的触摸，我们学习怎样跨出去。我们用一些经文为大家解释一下，列王记上第十九章9节，“他在那里进了一个洞，就住在洞中。耶和华的话临到他说，以利亚阿，你在这里作什么。”12，13节，“地震后有火，耶和华也不在火中。火后有微小的声音。以利亚听见，就用外衣蒙上脸，出来站在洞口。有声音向他说，以利亚阿，你在这里作什么。”

对以利亚来说，这是很严重的问题，他的生命有神的呼召，要在一个败坏的国家中站立起来，代表神向他们说话，直接面对当时属灵的权势，他蒙召要为国家带来复兴，他受到恩膏为国家带来复兴，原来他从一个隐藏的，人看不到的地方出来。你记得他怎样让全地开始饥荒，从天上降下火，火降到祭坛上，杀了巴力的先知，以利亚在上帝的运行当中。

整个国家预备让上帝来工作了，可是所有上帝的运行都需要领袖，没有领袖就没有结果。当上帝要成就一件事，他需要有一个人愿意站起来，有人承受圣灵的恩膏，站起来代表他。这一直是上帝给我们的挑战，找到一个代表他的人。代表他是如何的，带着他的能力，来拆毁一切威吓生命的事。

整个国家活在巫术的辖制下，在拜偶像的权势下，庙里有妓女，各样的巫术在畅行，整个国家都在非常压抑的气氛中。大部分人一直受到惊吓活在恐惧当中，上帝要找一个在那种环境中愿意站起来的人，不害怕这样的属灵气氛，不害怕偶像，不害怕庙宇，不害怕巫术，能够站起来活出不一样的生命。

以利亚一开始很棒，后来他面对属灵的攻击，一个属灵的反击。他本来有很好的进展，拆毁他们的祭坛，把所有献给主，摧毁巴力的先知，上帝很大的运行，他只要继续的运行下去，就能够触摸整个国家；可是有一个很严重的属灵的反击，有很大的属灵压力敌对他。圣经说耶洗别出来了，他说，“我要杀了你，夺走你的生命，你怎么夺走先知的生命的，我就怎么夺走你的生命。”他开始威吓以利亚。

这都是在服事当中大家会面对的问题，你很容易有一个好的开头；但要在战争中站立的稳，压力来到你也能站立的稳；当整个属灵的压力压在你身上，你还能站立的稳。这可能是借着人压在你身上，有人控告你，威胁你，惊吓你，你要选择如何回应。你看到保罗跟提摩太说，“你要挑旺神在你里面的恩赐，上帝赐给你的不是胆怯的心，乃是刚强仁爱谨守的心。”提摩太也有问题，他的生命有大能的恩膏恩赐，可是那些年长的人吓到他了，宗教的文化惊吓到他，因为受到惊吓，他生命的恩赐就封闭了。

如果你受到惊吓，让恐惧抓住你，你生命的恩赐就开始封闭，恩膏就不能流露，你只想着如何保护，救自己而已，而不是如何扩展神的国了。保罗写了两封信给提摩太，两次提到这样的恩赐。提摩太前书讲不要忽略这样的恩赐，上帝给我们每一个人都有大能的恩赐；他赐给你圣灵的恩赐，叫耶稣从死里复活的灵，同样的灵住在你里面，要给你能力，坚固你。我们都得着同样的圣灵，都有同样的恩膏临到我们，但我们要选择的是要挑旺神的灵，不断让恩膏流露，还是要受到惊吓，退缩，躲在山洞里。

很多基督徒躲在洞穴里，在洞穴的后面不出来。我们很快看以利亚怎么了，也看他怎样犯错，生命中是怎样做的。我们当中有些人可能发现自己也在这种属灵的压力底下，在这战争的热火中，与以利亚犯同样的错误，当最后你就跟他躲在同样的地方。

有一次有一个牧师打电话给我，他说，“你可以帮助我吗？我非常忧郁，几乎想要自杀了，不知该怎么办了？自从我来到这个城市，就一直有这些事情发生。”我说，“我真的知道问题出在哪里，我也知道你该怎么办，你现在在属灵的攻击底下，你的意念，魂，受到了压力。让你失掉自己的眼界，受到了惊吓，就在里面退缩了。跟以利亚一样。”

大家注意以利亚做了什么，耶洗别威胁他；属灵的攻击发动，敌对他，威胁要夺走他的生命。在我们每一个人里面，都想要活下去，遇到任何让我们痛苦的，我们就退缩；你因痛苦而退缩下来，你想要救自己；当你想救自己的时候，我们的生命就会很困难。在服事当中没有中立地带，你要留在战火之地。有的时候很难，真的受不了了；你看见我在台上服事，神的能力流露，可是我自己也有非常大属灵压力时候，有时好像头脑中一片黑暗，什么都看不到。我要学习怎样在这种状况中站起来，每一次你站起来，你在主里就更强壮。

3，4节说，“以利亚见这光景就起来逃命，到了犹大的别是巴，将仆人留在那里，自己在旷野走了一日的路程，来到一棵罗腾树下，就坐在那里求死，说，耶和华阿，罢了。求你取我的性命，因为我不胜于我的列祖。”上帝的仆人前一天把火从天上降下来，杀了他们的先知；第二天却坐在树下忧郁说，死了算了。上帝大能的仆人怎么从这里到了那里的呢？最后躲到洞穴里去了。

圣经说他受到威胁，当他见到这光景，他就逃命了。经文中说这是耶洗别说的话，有一个信差对他说话，他见到了。你所见到的会影响你所做的。你见到的会决定你怎么做。不是看见神的同在，不是看见将来的复兴，他看见的是可怕的死亡，看见自己受到攻击。不管什么充满你的心思意念，什么东西让你定睛在上面，你生命专注在哪里，就影响你的情绪，影响你的灵，就决定你会怎么样。

你绝对不要将焦点放在负面的东西上；要一直专注在耶稣身上，定睛在上帝所说的话上，定睛在神的能力上，他对你的爱上。从天上降下火，先带来干旱，又带来降雨的神，怎么会抛弃我呢?差派我去的上帝怎么会抛弃我孤单一人呢？他完全失掉异象，失掉对未来的看见，压力临到他，他的眼睛看不到异象，看不见他蒙召要做的事，眼睛只看见环境了，只看见自己。

当他的眼睛离开上帝和上帝的目的，专注在威胁上，他的心融化了，他的信心消失了，恐惧就来了。圣经说他开始逃，他逃离自己的任务，逃离自己的使命，从原来蒙召该做的事上退缩了。压力来临的时候很容易让你的眼睛看不见异象，看不见蒙召该做的事，只看见问题了，受到惊吓，失掉了眼界。不是从上帝的眼光看，而是看到了困难，退缩离开了上帝要你去的地方。离开信心的地方，退缩离开勇气，里面萎缩下去，不是成为刚强的祷告勇士，几乎爬不起来祷告了，从他的使命中退缩了。

当一个人退缩，他的生命中就失去了权柄，恩膏就不能流露了。上帝说那退后的人我不喜悦。你要留在战场上，连在信心之地，留在相信上帝的地方，这才让上帝喜悦。以利亚做的几件事就是，第一，他专注在负面的事上就失掉了眼界。第二，他从自己的使命上退缩下来。第三，让自己孤立。这种隔绝孤立让自己不再跟人连结了，不再跟上帝连结。孤立隔绝就是死亡之处。

就像羊，当它们生病，它们就孤立了，从羊群中离开了。你很容易辨别哪只羊生病了，它们从羊群中退缩出去，从团契中退缩了，从小组退缩，从领袖聚会退缩，从连结上退缩，不想连结了，不想你再问我问题了。有一种恐惧，就像亚当夏娃犯罪之后，第一个就是害怕藏起来。每一次以色列被打败，他们就躲在山洞里面。

洞穴是很黑很深，没有出口的，接着他坐下来。不是站起来争战，不是在灵里面兴起，不是开始祷告，让恩赐方言流露。他坐下来了，你可以看到一个人，外面可能是站着的，可是里面却坐下来。已经放弃不打仗了，开始消极了，战士不见了，被打倒了，他需要帮助。一旦他坐下，一旦他消极什么都不做了，他就开始忧郁了。

很可怕的忧郁临到他，他想到的只有死。他不是突然掉到这个情况中的，他是一步步来到这里的。首先，他的眼睛只看到问题不看到解答，他的焦点从异象离开了。第二，让恐惧夺去他的思想。他想要保存自己而不是为使命放下自己。他从使命中退缩，让自己孤立起来。最后，他坐下，非常的忧郁，很想自杀，想睡觉了。他最后的一个祷告就是主啊，带我走，我不想再醒来了。

上帝怜悯他，上帝派了一个天使拍拍他给他食物。当你打仗，你需要休息，需要食物，可是他继续逃，又跑了四十天，终于找到了一个山洞，他躲在山洞里不出去。上帝问他问题；在圣经中，上帝问问题时，他早就知道答案。圣经中第一个问题就是，“亚当，你在哪里？”这是一个关系上的问题，上帝早就知道他在那里，上帝知道他，上帝要他自己面对问题，自己说出来。圣经只有记载说他跟上帝说“杀了我吧。”，没有记载他跟上帝说话。

上帝看着以利亚，“你在这里干什么？你是大复兴的主要角色，为什么躲在山洞里？”有一次我跟一群人到餐厅去，餐厅另一边是一个酒吧，坐满了人在那里喝酒玩乐，音乐很响，我就要进去看看，陪我去的教会领袖就奇怪为什么牧师要去那里。我说我保证会在这里找到远离神的基督徒在这里。因为如果你没有被圣灵充满，你就会被其他东西充满。如果你不用上帝安慰你，你就会用酒来安慰。你总归是要得安慰的，不是来到上帝面前，就是去酒吧买醉。

我就站在那里看他们，甚至有员工站在吧台上跳舞，还一边点酒。我走过去站在他们后面等着。他转身看到我吓了一跳，问我干嘛，我反问他在干什么。“你不属于这里，这不是你蒙召该去的地方。”他靠在吧台上，满手都是饮料。我说，“你怎么了，失掉了对上帝的肯定，要到酒中去寻找自信。”他手里拿着酒，周围响起音乐，他开始哭泣，跟我讲他的心碎了，因为有人跟他分手了。我说，“这帮不了你，你需要回到主的面前，回到你蒙召该去的地方。”

所以当上帝说，“以利亚，你在做什么？”他要讲的是，你怎么将自己沦落到这个地步，我们的大复兴需要你，你到那里去了？我刚跟天使在说话，你怎么就跑到洞穴里来了？我的仆人以利亚需要做事情。“天上降下火来，杀了所有的先知，吓到了那个可怕的皇后，你看看我的仆人以利亚，躲在洞穴里干什么呢？”

以利亚开始讲他自己的故事，“只有我一个人忠实，他们都想来杀我，我只是想服事你，他们就要杀我，太不公平了。我不知道有这么难，我不想再做组长了，太难了，我对他们好，可是他们都走光了，还讲我的坏话。只有我一个人忠心。”你躲在山洞里怎么会忠心？他真的很困惑，因为他压抑的灵让他困惑。上帝对他讲，“事实上，还有七千个先知没有向巴力屈膝。”“我不知道啊。”

上帝两次跟他说，“以利亚你在这里干什么？以利亚你在这里干什么？”换句话说，你不属于这里，你需要回到你的任务上。上帝对他说，“回到你的任务上。”上帝让他做什么？“我要你兴起门徒，我要你膏抹别人，我要你倍增你的服事，你一个人这样做太久了，要有策略性的办法，要兴起别人，继续这样的服事。我会告诉你是谁，你都不用想会是谁，以利沙和耶户。你投资在这些人身上，将你有的释放在他们身上，你就会看到你做不完的工作，他们帮你做完。”

上帝显明他的意图，他要兴起门徒，倍增服事，可是首先要回到自己的岗位。今晚的信息里面，看到属灵压力的结果。那个打电话给我的牧师，极度的沮丧，我跟他说，“这是属灵的压力，属灵的攻击，你就像以利亚一样坐在树下，我会同你在一起，为你祷告。你需要站立起来，离开那个洞穴，回到你的任务里，回到祷告里，回到服事里，回到做你该做事情的地方。”

我告诉他怎样站起来祷告，怎样认清这些属灵的攻击，直到你的灵完全的兴起。要在灵里面说话，宣告敌人被打败了，然后再一次回去，开始服事。如果你这样做，方言祷告，灵里兴起，对你的生命宣告上帝的话，面对魔鬼，面对搅扰你的灵，你就会突破。现在这个人有非常兴旺的教会，因为他站起来了。他不是只打给我一次电话，而是好几次，每一次我都跟他讲同样的事。“从洞穴出来，回到你的任务中去，站起来祷告，对你的环境说出上帝的话，眼目再一次定睛在主身上。”他就改变了。

今晚我跟大家分享这个，是因为我感觉到好些人躲在洞穴里。从外面来看，有些人什么都好，可是心里受伤了，心被打倒了，你的心退缩，失掉了异象。上帝在说，“你在这里做什么，你不属于这个山洞，你是上帝大能的勇士。”

同样的灵，胜过魔鬼，让基督复活，就在你里面要帮助你；不要孤立，不要退缩，不要专注在问题上；站起来，再一次调整视线，再一次连结，开始追求，上帝说你会突破。你看完整个故事，看见皇后的位置被拆毁，整个国被倾覆，上帝的国被建立。关键就在改变，就是要培训新的门徒。

損失之後的盼望

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各位请翻开圣经路加福音第七章11至16节，“过了不多时，耶稣往一座城去，这城名叫拿因，他的门徒和极多的人与他同行。将近城门，有一个死人被抬出来。这人是他母亲独生的儿子，他母亲又是寡妇。有城里的许多人同着寡妇送殡。主看见那寡妇就怜悯她，对她说，不要哭。于是进前按着杠，抬的人就站住了。耶稣说，少年人，我吩咐你起来。那死人就坐起，并且说话。耶稣便把他交给他母亲。众人都惊奇，归荣耀与神说，有大先知在我们中间兴起来了。”

耶稣到哪里都有人跟着他，看他到底在做什么。圣经中另外一个地方，耶稣说，“生命在我，复活也在我。”上帝以能力膏拿撒勒人耶稣基督，不管到哪儿跟人互动的时候，都显明上帝的心和恩赐。

这个故事中的城名叫拿因，拿因原文的意思就是美丽美好，充满青草的地方。这个地方从外貌看是很美好的，可是后面隐藏的是极大的忧伤，极大的压力。人也是一样，外面看很好很吸引人，可是心里带着极大的忧伤，难过，极大的失望。

今晚你在这里，外表看可能很好，圣经说，神看的是内心。他看见你心里的忧伤，看见你经历了什么。这个故事中特别的情况是死的是个年轻人。年轻人指的是下一代，代表的是未来，代表的是盼望，代表的是这个女子美好的未来。圣经说他的母亲是个寡妇，已经失去丈夫了，受到了极大的伤痛。失掉能保护她的人，供应她的人，她只剩一个盼望，就是她的儿子。她以他为荣，期待看着她的孩子长大。

她前面的盼望就是将来儿子会养她，供应她。她心中的梦想就是这个孩子的将来，梦想着他结婚生子，非常期待将来。

这个年轻人代表她的盼望，她的未来，她的产业，她的供应，她的保护，她的生命完全的寄托在这个年轻人身上。有一天不可思议的事情发生了，失掉丈夫之后再失掉了孩子。故事中看他已经长大成人了，可是却生病死了。那一天所有未来的盼望都被夺走了，她非常震惊，以后会怎么办？好像没有了未来，没有了盼望，老了没人照顾，不单只是失掉了儿子，也失掉了对未来的梦想。

这个女人非常忧伤，没人能够安慰她，她为她自己的损失难过。忧伤是经历损失的过程，除非有原因，不然不会忧伤。我们不会为不认识的陌生人忧伤，也不会为没有连结的人忧伤。当我们失掉所珍爱的，才会忧伤。忧伤会有不同的阶段，第一个阶段就是震惊；不相信这件事会发生，看到这个孩子，不敢相信会发生这种事。第二个阶段就是极大的愤怒；人们的东西被夺走了，常常会非常愤怒，但又不知道对谁愤怒。所以第三个阶段就是怪罪；想要在当中找到出路。

忧伤中的人，可以是震惊，无法承认发生的事情；或者非常愤怒，怪罪别人，想为自己找一个出路。接下来就是忧郁和难过，流泪，最后只好接纳，调整自己的生命接受改变。这就是忧伤的整个过程，可能是在几个小时内就经历到所有的情绪，有些人从来没有放下过忧伤，没有正确处理这个忧伤，就锁在忧伤里了。

今晚有些人就锁在忧伤里，心里有很深的忧伤。不同的人会经历不同的事情。有些人忧伤是因为亲近的人过世了，可能是母亲或者是父亲，对你很重要的人，你很忧伤因为他不在你生命里了。离婚也会导致忧伤；儿女经历父母离婚，会带来极大的忧伤，因为他们真的失去了父母，他们在父母双方的拉扯当中，他们对每一个人都很愤怒，不了解自己在忧伤里面。

当人失掉盼望和梦想，他原来计划的东西突然被夺走了。他原来期待升官的，突然别人抢走了位置，忧伤就进来了；你期待梦想可以实现，完全被夺走后，忧伤是很大的。如果不处理忧伤，人可能一生都在忧伤里，一生都在愤怒里，一生都在怪罪人。问题的根源就是没有解决的忧伤。

我最近为一位女士祷告，她非常愤怒；我问她，“你在气什么？”她也不知道，她对每一样事情都生气。我说总有一个开始让你生气的地方吧，最后追溯发现她的爸爸在她很小的时候抛弃了她们，她深深的跟她妈妈连结在一起，后来妈妈突然去世了。我说你仍然在为失去妈妈而忧伤，你跟她太亲了，她变成了你生命中的偶像，取代了上帝的位置。一旦你生命中的偶像被拿走，你就会变得很生气。我们依靠的事物，成为我们偶像的事物，一旦被拿走或失败的话，人们就会变得很忧伤，很愤怒。

忧伤是因为他们的依附被突然拿走。这个依附可能是人，也可能是一个梦想，可能是你亲近的人发生车祸意外，死亡或者离婚。当人受到虐待，他就会忧伤，不管是受到身体或者性虐待的人，甚至是情绪，言语上的受虐待的人，他们有很大的忧伤。如果没有处理忧伤，这人会在震惊中一直忧伤下去。对过去发生的事产生魂结，即死亡进来了。

像这样的情况，很容易让邪灵进入到你的生命。忧伤是整个过程和情绪，可是你不处理，忧伤的灵就进来了。你会一直忧伤，即使在快乐的场合中，都快乐不起来，好像忧伤一会儿又回来了，这就是有忧伤的灵。有的时候是死亡的灵，如果死亡的灵在心里，这人就会麻木，觉得完全与人隔绝，也与自己隔绝，里面完全的麻木，就是很深的忧伤，对未来绝望。

圣经告诉我们上帝是怎样的；哥林多后书第一章上帝说他是赐一切安慰的神。当我们感到压力，上帝渴望安慰我们，在一切患难中安慰我们，让我们也能去安慰人。上帝显明自己是一位安慰人的神；在你的忧郁中，亲近你，帮助你；在你忧伤中陪着你，告诉你你不孤单。

当人在忧伤中，孤单是一个很大的问题。这个故事中的女士行在棺材的后面，全身穿的黑色的衣服，忧伤的灵在她身上，即使有很多人在旁边，她是那里最孤单的一个人。这群朋友安慰不了她，没有人能够安慰她，只有耶稣才能进入到她的环境中安慰她。

圣经说上帝是赐一切安慰的主，他医治伤心的人。罗马书第十五章13节告诉我们，“但愿使人有盼望的神，因信将诸般的喜乐平安，充满你们的心，使你们借着圣灵的能力，大有盼望。”上帝安慰我们，他也将盼望赐给我们。上帝在我们痛苦时安慰我们，也给我们未来更好的盼望。当我们痛苦，上帝陪在我们身旁，他让我们看见异象，未来是更好的。

上帝是行神迹的上帝。今晚的见证，我第一次遇见玉萍，她心中有很大的痛；我记得坐在那里听她做见证的时候，上帝跟我说话，“我要医治她，我要安慰她。”我到了台上，牵着她的手为她祷告，上帝的灵就带下极大的医治。有很大的盼望，她开始去寻找她的母亲，上帝是不是很神奇，原来全部死去的境况，再次有丰盛的生命。这就是我们上帝的伟大之处，他是恢复之主，他可以进入环境，让死的活过来，再一次有盼望。

你可能丧失了，可能有挫败，但生命中这一切不会长久；只要让基督进来，在忧伤中与你同行，再一次赐你异象，让你有盼望有美好的未来。当你在上帝里，未来是美好的，即使现在痛苦；可能你在忧伤的低谷里，当有神迹在前面等着你，改变在等待着你，美好的未来在等着你，你不用活在绝望里。

圣经说耶稣看着这个妇人，感到深深的怜悯。上帝看见这女人的孤单，她的 破碎，她的绝望，她的忧伤，他深深的感动了，要做点事情。这个女人什么都没有做，年轻人什么都没有做，是耶稣自己主动，他来到这妇人面前说，“不要哭。”请注意，她没有任何理由停止哭泣，儿子死了，耶稣说“不要哭。”因为耶稣要做事了。换句话说，哭泣结束了，我要改变你周遭的环境了。忧伤结束了，我要行神迹了。你不需要留在这个境况里。

耶稣处理她的心，处理她的痛，不要哭了，之后他手按着棺材。没有人会去按死人的棺材的，这让你受污秽。耶稣说，“少年人，起来。”死人就坐起来了，再一次回到他母亲身边。对人不可能的事，在神凡事都能。只要你肯信，上帝能将你的低谷转为生命的泉源。

耶稣愿意来到这种绝望的境况，还有什么比人死了更绝望的，耶稣进来恢复他的生命。我一定要跟大家分享一个故事，我的儿子大卫去到巴基斯坦，本来是邀请我去的，可是我太忙了，就差我儿子去了。他两次带着团队过去，第二次去的时候，他站在台上，大概有一万五千人，有人给他翻译，他开始咳嗽就倒了下去，等他再站起来说话的时候，这个翻译开始咳嗽然后就倒下去死掉了。翻译死掉了很麻烦，没办法讲下去了，我儿子站在他旁边，命令死亡的灵离开，那个人就醒过来了，半个小时之后又继续翻译。

我儿子想可能没有死吧，只是倒下去而已，跟他们这一起的一个人是警察，看过很多死人；他检查过这个人，他真的没有生命迹象了，现在活过来了，是上帝让他复活的。绝望的境况，哈利路亚。

上帝能够进入你的环境里，把安慰和盼望带来；耶稣进到你的环境里，你就不再孤单；上帝与你同在，他还工作，赐你有盼望的未来；他不希望你流泪，他希望你往前看，明天是更好的一天。

那一天从忧伤，难过开始，哀愁遍满全城，最后以欢庆结束，每一个人都在庆祝。如果我在那里，我会说，“你死的时候看到了什么？你有没有看见天堂？”那个年轻人会有很多的见证，讲述上帝在他生命中所做的一切。

今晚我听到那个见证的时候，我心里好感动；上帝在死亡之处吹气，带出生命和盼望。母亲盼望有另一个孩子，很多年活在痛苦和哀愁中；现在跟女儿团园了，害怕女儿不原谅她；但上帝早就遇见了她的女儿，她不再是死掉了，她活过来了。我们知道将女儿送出去收养的情况，我们也做过同样的事，这一生都在为这个决定忧伤，痛苦让你不知该怎么办。忧伤和死亡，在损失中难过。

当我们经历这个的时候，我向耶稣打开我的心，我相信有一天他会将女儿带回来。我很感动，这个妈妈送走的孩子遇见了耶稣，耶稣拿走了她身上的苦毒，拿走了她的愤怒，拿走了她的死亡，让她活过来。在这之前我就见过她了，耶稣医治她之后我几乎都认不出她来了，她活过来了，因为耶稣处理了她的忧伤。上个主日见到她的妈妈是何等的喜乐，那个女子，被丈夫抛弃，只好放弃自己的孩子。多年之后，上帝眷顾她，让孩子回到她的身边。

这就像我们刚刚讲的故事一样，圣经中的故事是两千年前的事，是一个真实的母亲，真实的儿子，真实的悲惨情况。你今晚听到的见证也是真实的母亲，失掉的女儿好像死了一样，再一次活过来，回到母亲身边。耶稣仍然在行神迹，恢复人，医治伤心的。

再造全新的我

Thu 10 Oct 2013  « 返回页首

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我们来看这个故事，约翰福音第五章1至9节，“这事以后，到了犹太人的一个节期。耶稣就上耶路撒冷去。在耶路撒冷，靠近羊门，有一个池子，希伯来话叫作毕士大，旁边有五个廊子。里面躺着瞎眼的，瘸腿的，血气枯干的，许多病人。因为有天使按时下池子搅动那水，水动之后，谁先下去，无论害什么病，就痊愈了。在那里有一个人，病了三十八年。耶稣看见他躺着，知道他病了许久，就问他说，你要痊愈吗？病人回答说，先生，水动的时候，没有人把我放在池子里。我正去的时候，就有别人比我先下去。耶稣对他说，起来，拿你的褥子走吧。那人立刻痊愈，就拿起褥子来走了。那天是安息日。”

我们先看当时的情况，圣经描述在城边上的羊门，就是羊进城的地方，那里有好些个廊子，有个池子叫毕士大，好多需要医治的人坐在那里。圣经告诉我们耶稣是好牧人，耶稣说“我是好牧人。”另外一处说，“我们都如同羊走迷了路。上帝使用很多自然的情况帮助我们了解属灵的事情，上帝用很多不同的方式来描述人是怎么样的，也有很多图画是描述他是如何的。

圣经描述人就如同羊，如果你不了解羊，这样的描述对你来讲没有任何意义。如果我讲骑摩托车的人，你就知道我在讲什么了，因为你见的很多这样的人。讲到摩托车，没有地方可以比得上台湾，从没有看过这么多的。前几次刚来的时候，摩托车吓到我了。

我跟大家解释一下羊。很多年前，我们到一个小地方，那里有很多的牧场，很多的羊。我想要一只小羊当宠物，好可爱，可是它们可爱的阶段不久，很快就变大羊了。我从中学到了很多羊的事情。

羊有这样一些特征，首先，羊完全没有方向感。一旦看不见别的羊，它们就迷路了。如果你带一只猫到另外一个城市，它自己会跑回来找你。羊呢，你才转个转角，它就找不到路了。所以圣经以赛亚书第五十三章6节“我们都如羊走迷，各人偏行己路。”羊一旦迷路，就根本找不到家，它们需要牧人。人一样，活在罪中就像走迷了的羊，我们找不到应走的路，我们需要牧人让我们看见方向。

第二，羊很容易受到惊吓。所以一只羊，只要很小的声音，它就会赶快跑开了。就像人一样，很容易被吓到，新闻中各样的事情都会让他们害怕。圣经一直告诉我们，“不要怕，不要怕。”因为人很容易受到惊吓。害怕让我们不能跟随神，与有信心相反。一开始寻找羊，如果它们被吓到后就逃跑了，它们就迷路了。

第三，羊彼此跟随。它们喜欢团体行动，青少年喜欢聚在一起，羊也是一样。一旦一只羊走，不管它知不知道要去哪儿，其他的羊都跟着它走。好像人一样，跟随时尚，跟着大众。羊也是盲从的，如果你吓到一只羊开始跑，其他的羊也跟着它跑。

另外一点，当羊生病的时候，它们就孤立出来；如果你发现单独一只羊，它大概就是生病了。人也是这样，当他们生病，有事情不对了，他们就不说话了，不打电话，不传简讯，不去教会，不来小组了。所以你要不断的接触，因为他们是羊，他们会走迷的，当他们生病了，就自己一个人躲开了。

还有一点，羊身上是有寄生虫的。它们吃的草上会有一些虫子跳上来，这些寄生虫是排除不了的，需要牧人帮助它们，因为它们吃的东西使它们里面有寄生虫。人也是这样，我们把生命向很多东西打开，邪灵就进来了，我们没法将他们赶出去，需要牧人帮我们赶出去。

在新西兰会有牧人来为羊灌肠，他们将一种化学的东西放进羊嘴里，整个晚上羊一直咳一直咳，把里面的虫子咳出来，因为药杀死了虫子。有一次我来聚会，为人祷告，对邪灵讲话的时候，那人一直咳。前几天我们也为一个人祷告，他咳了几个星期。看来这个药很有效。

另外我们有一种苍蝇，每年的特定时间就飞出来了，在羊背上，头上或耳朵边下蛋。这些蛋孵出后就变成小小的红红的蛆，很恶心，它们吃羊，吃到肉里，或者从耳朵钻进羊脑袋把羊弄疯了。就像魔鬼一样，把谎言撒在我们身上，如果你相信这个谎言，它就进入你脑中了，你被它弄疯了，做很多荒唐的事情。

羊还有一点就是没有防卫性。如果有人来侵犯它，它完全无法防卫，它们没有尖的角，锋利的牙齿，没有能力保护自己。很像人，圣经将人比作羊，而魔鬼是来侵略的狼，它是来偷窃杀害的。当攻击来临的时候，羊受到很大的压力，它们因为受到追杀而惊慌。新西兰有时会有狗追羊群，咬它们，把它们扯烂，很大的压力。一旦狗尝到了血的味道，它们不吃羊，只是把它杀了。有些狗尝到了羊血的味道就开始这样做，非常危险的狗，它追羊让它流血致死。

魔鬼就像野狗，嗜血追赶人，摧毁他们的生命，让他们流血受伤，罪咎羞愧，忧伤哀愁，受伤。如果你看见野狗走了，羊躺在草地上流血，这只羊就没救了，只能杀了。同样，如果你用属灵的眼睛看，看见那些伤心的人，破碎的心，心里充满忧伤，迫切需要帮助，因为他们保护不了自己。

羊的形象是非常精准的形象，看见人在灵里的境况，我们需要牧人。耶稣描述自己就是一个好牧人，愿意为羊舍命。诗篇二十三篇就可以看出好牧人是如何做的。

另外有一点，羊吃的很好的时候，它们躺下来，如果躺得太久，它们就会站不起来，当它们站起来时就会头晕又倒下去。所以当羊发生这种情况，躺太久自己起不来，需要牧人拉起它，扶着它站稳直到再次可以行走，躺太久会影响它的平衡。我们受造不是要躺在地上的，站不起来，不能动，不能服事神。不管什么将你弄倒，不管什么导致你躺下放弃，你躺的越久就会越难站起来。

很多事情会让我们躺下，让我们想放弃。我们被冒犯，我们失望，被人背叛，受伤害，我们期待的事情没有发生；我们从上帝那里退缩，不是在灵里面保持活力站立，不是站在信心里信靠，不是在上帝的计划里继续往前，而是放弃抛弃了。很多人都是这样，他们不是躺在地上，他们里面躺下了，战斗的精神没有了，信心没有了，他们里面退缩了。

我们昨天讲到一个人躲在洞穴里，今天看到羊瘫在地上起不来了。牧人来到羊群，不是定羊的罪，那样是没有用的，牧人帮羊站起来。

我们再来看这个故事，耶稣来到毕士大的池子，这个地方叫怜悯之处，好多人在那里，有瞎眼的，瘸腿的，血气枯干的，那些软弱没有力气的人，没有异象的人，不能行走的人，他们在等候，希望事情会改变。有一个人病了三十八年了，他躺在那儿，每天有人把他搬到那里去，他就躺在那儿。三十八年真的是很久了，超过了人的半生了。耶稣看见这个人，就像看见你一样，他就像羊站不起来一样，没有力气，他需要神迹，需要神的能力来改变他。他身体上有东西不对劲了，圣经说他是疾病软弱。

圣经说上帝有很多方法帮助我们，让我们站起来。耶稣看见他，问他一个很有意思的问题，“你想要痊愈吗？”这是一个很奇怪的问题，上帝问问题的时候，不是他不知道答案，他要你思想，他让你看见自己的生命。这个人太习惯这种状况了，他整个的生活形态都是这样，无力的，无助的。耶稣问他你要完全吗？你知道答案是什么？只有一个答案，就是“要啊！”他没有这样说，他说出来的是上帝想要怎样帮助他，上帝要从他里面带出来他预备好的东西。耶稣问他想不想要痊愈？要！

当耶稣问他的时候，他的想法都是受害者的想法，很多借口，“太多人，没有人帮我，天使来的时候，我太迟了。”等等。他要怪罪每一个人，不断的找借口。他整个的想法都是受害者，除了借口和怪罪，什么都没有。耶稣问“你要你的生命不一样吗？”你要不要这个选择。

上帝给我们自由意志，给我们能力作选择，你现在活着的生命都是你过去所做决定的结果。不都是因为那些坏事，而是因为你选择如何回应。上帝给你能力选择如何生活。耶稣死在十字架上的时候，他打破了罪的权势，他从死里复活，打败了魔鬼，他让每一个人有可能不再受罪的辖制，不再受邪灵的控制，你想不想要痊愈？你想要自由吗？

现在问题就在我们自己了；所有需要该做的，耶稣都在十字架上完成了，你想要痊愈吗？你要做这个决定吗？这选择是回应神，相信他的话；你想要痊愈吗？你想要改变吗？如果你想要不一样的未来，你需要开始做不一样的选择。“哎呀，我受的教育不多。”那你开始多学习。“我对这个很生气。”你可以选择饶恕。“发生的事情我真的放不掉。”你可以选择放下。你可以找一些辅导，寻求一些帮助。

“你想不想痊愈？你想不想改变？”“哦，你不了解我丈夫这个人，他很爱喝酒，他对我很不好，所有我这样忧郁。”

“你想不想要痊愈？”是你选择要不要发生，我们有选择的能力。

耶稣死在十字架上，打破了罪的权势，让你可以作选择来接受他，得着打破罪的能力，选择跟从他，过不一样的生命。每一天你醒来，都有作选择的能力；每一天你醒来，都可以选择跟上帝同行，选择今天的态度；选择正面的态度或者负面的态度，选择相信神或者选择继续留在挫败里。

“你想不想痊愈？”这是耶稣说的。他的生命带出他心中的境况。耶稣对他说，“起来，得医治。”他站起来了。后来耶稣对他说，“不要继续犯罪，不然更糟的事情会发生。”换句话说，耶稣把他生命的境况跟罪放在一起了，耶稣不光是处理疾病，不光是处理邪灵，还要处理生命中问题的根源：罪，罪的权势让我们跟上帝隔绝。

“你想要痊愈吗？”完全从你做决定开始，也是一条路程；痊愈的路程，从你灵里选择接受耶稣基督开始。上帝把灵放在你里面，让你选择跟上帝连结；进入这一条路程，需要做很多的决定，每一天选择让上帝进入到你生命，选择同意他的说法，放掉你过去的想法，过去的方式。与耶稣同行，是痊愈的路程，每一天跟他连结，让他的话语进入到我们心中，我们开始改变。

你可以在任何一点停下来，躺下；我发现很多人，有些人不认识基督，他们里面躺下了，被生命打败了，依靠别人，活的像一个受害者。难过的是看见这样的基督徒，他们来到耶稣面前开始接受与耶稣同行的路。事情发生了，有人冒犯了你，有人让你失望，负面的事情发生了，你不是站立稳，信靠神，求神帮助你处理，而是在里面躺下了，起不来了。耶稣今天要帮助你，要对你的生命说话，让你再一次站起来，再一次成全你想要服事的愿望，再一次在生命中与神同行。

伸出手得醫治

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我们翻开圣经马可福音，有很多神奇的生命改变的故事。马可福音第三章1至6节，“耶稣又进了会堂。在那里有一个人枯干了一只手。众人窥探耶稣，在安息日医治不医治，意思是要控告耶稣。耶稣对那枯干了一只手的人说，起来，站在当中。又问众人说，在安息日行善行恶，救命害命，那样是可以的呢？他们都不作声。耶稣怒目周围看他们，忧愁他们的心刚硬，就对那人说，伸出手来。他把手一伸，手就复了原。法利赛人出去，同希律一党的人商议，怎样可以除灭耶稣。”

这里讲的这个人见证了耶稣基督的大能，也是圣经中很少提到的耶稣生气了，我们来看看从中能学到什么？是什么让上帝生气了？

圣经说，“耶稣来是要我们得着生命，而且是更丰盛的生命。”上帝要在我们里面恢复属灵的生命和活力，上帝创造我们是要与他有关系的，跟他连结的，他的生命借我们流露。神是灵，他设计我们的灵跟他的灵结合，他的生命借我们流露，他的性情借我们流露。爱，喜乐，平安，他的生命创意在我们生命中流露。

所以，耶稣说，“我来，是要让你们得生命，而且是更丰盛的。”人犯罪，上帝的生命就不住在他们里面，跟上帝的关系就被破坏了，在灵里面分开了，没法在灵里面有生命的流露，只能靠魂和体来活了。罪和疾病进入世界。

耶稣说，“从你的腹中流出活水的江河来。”他还讲将圣灵赐给人。上帝渴望将他的灵放在你里面，用他的生命充满你，让生命从你流露出去，有创造性的，带着爱，带着上帝的性情，在社会的每一个领域里扩展上帝的国。

教会是上帝兴起的一群人，是上帝加添能力的信徒，是被圣灵充满的，动员起来服事上帝。耶稣来到会堂，很多人在那里敬拜，耶稣注意到一个人，他的手是枯干的，很可能是脑部受损，让身体的一部分枯干瘫痪，问题可能是从大脑发生的。结果是他的手枯干了，没有生命了，整个缩起来了。就像一个水果不小心掉到床底下或者角落里，很久之后才发现它，里面所有的水分，生命都没有了，整个萎缩枯干了。生命没有了，就完全不一样了。

这个人的手枯干了，常常一个人的手枯干后就会缩起来了。当你碰到这种人，他们手常常是缩在里头，想要藏起来。他们通常的问题是：第一，他们有很大的羞愧，想要隐藏他们的问题。凡是羞愧的东西，我们就没有能力处理它；没有能力呢，就觉得羞愧。亚当夏娃犯罪，他们感觉到羞愧，就遮掩藏起来了。我们生命里任何领域变得萎缩了，不对了，我们就退缩藏起来。

到处都是这样的人，当生命中有地方不对了，当东西没有正常运作，我们常常想要去遮掩隐藏，最不想让别人将这个指出来。这个人手枯干了，首先是身体上的问题，圣经如果讲到的是右手，这是有含义的，圣经中的右手是要祝福的手，右手是能力之手，右手是你工作之手。他的右手枯干了，代表祝福临不到他身上，能力不能进入到生命。

右手枯干就象征这个人的生命枯干了，没有生命，没有祝福，只剩咒诅了，邪灵在运行。这人不能工作，在生命中不能生产，不能做事，他所有的潜能受到限制。当这人的手枯干，就没有祝福，没有生命，无法发挥潜能，他生命的成就就受到限制。他的手没了，只有一只手怎么工作呢？生命就受到极大的拘谨和限制。

圣经中的右手也象征服事，服事人。所以枯干的手代表他的服事开始萎缩了。我们看见了三个层面，第一，他有身体上的问题。他的情况需要医治和恢复。这个故事中上帝的心是要医治他。第二，看见一个没有蒙福的生命，生命枯干了，是受咒诅的。象征这个生命在羞愧中遮盖，所有潜能受到限制。第三，象征一个信徒的服事萎缩了，可能他曾经做的很好，很热情的服事上帝，曾经看到果子，曾经为上帝成就很大的事。但有事情发生了，他的手枯干了，没有像以前一样的服事了，只能退缩了，不再有生命活力，好像进入了一个羞愧的境况。

耶稣看见这个人，他的心感动了。有很多事情会造成我们的生命萎缩，很多事情让我们枯干往回退缩。失望可能让你变得干枯，圣经告诉我们“忧伤的灵使骨枯干。”我们的心碎，生命就萎缩了，没有喜乐，没有活力，一直想退缩。

很多人来自破碎的家庭，他们的魂萎缩了，他们没有喜乐的生命，生命一直有问题。忧伤会让我们的灵萎缩，不饶恕，苦毒会让你的魂萎缩，你里面枯干了，因为你为别人做的事情愤怒，对不好的待遇愤怒；你的父亲错待你，母亲错待你，其他人错待你。当人愤怒受伤，一直带着不饶恕和苦毒，他的心就枯干了。当人去恨人的时候，心中充满了仇恨和怀怨，他的魂就会枯干。上帝造我们不要心里带着这些负面的东西；有这些负面的东西，心就会萎缩；一开始看不到，因为它藏在里面，一段时间之后，苦毒的影响，不饶恕，仇恨，会影响这个人，造成他们退缩。

另一个让魂萎缩的东西是恐惧，也让人退缩。当我们害怕，恐惧抓住我们生命，我们就退缩不敢面对事情，我们里面封闭起来，好像枯干手的那个人一样，我们退缩到自己里面了。记得我们讲以利亚的故事，当他面对恐惧，害怕的时候，整个人退缩逃到山洞里去了。很多人会这样，当在害怕的境况中，我们不用信心胆量去面对，受到惊吓就退缩了，我们的服事就枯干了。

提摩太后书第一章6节，保罗写信给提摩太，提摩太的服事萎缩了，他生命中有很大能的恩赐，他有很大能的圣灵的恩赐，可以改变生命的，可以把神的生命带出来的，可是却隐藏萎缩，没有运行；因为恐惧，那些年长的人惊吓他，恐惧抓住了他的心，他不能放胆的起来，他退缩了；他看起来一样，但里面的服事却退缩了，因为害怕和惊吓，不敢有放胆的行为，不敢放胆跟随神，不敢勇敢服事主。

失望也会让你枯干，失望也会让你退缩。这是我知道的一件事，一旦退缩，觉得这个情况丢脸，你知道你没有尽力，你知道你被打败了。可能是性犯罪，在你生命中经历的一些事情好像无法摆脱；那种犯罪感让你失掉了权柄，你在服事中就开始退缩了。有很多不同的方式让我们的服事萎缩，或者生命开始枯干，很多枯干的人迫切需要上帝的触摸。来自破碎的家庭，被虐待的人；在感情中受苦的人，他们的魂都失散了；他们真的从生命中退缩下来了，忧伤，受伤，孤单，有时想自杀，有时忧郁。

在这个聚会里，耶稣看见这个人，他做的事情很有意思。他马上叫出这个人，这个人可能最不想的事情就是被人指出来。耶稣说，“站起来。”那人就站起来了，每一个人都看着他，他试着把手藏起来。圣经说，耶稣周围看，他非常生气，他里面受到搅扰。很有意思，耶稣生气了，是什么让他生气的？他里面忧愁。当我们忧愁，是因为有些东西被夺走了，失丧了。因为你失掉一个人或者失掉一个宠物而忧伤，因为失掉工作而忧伤。

耶稣为其他事情而忧愁；他因为永生上帝的教会失掉对人的爱，失掉要看见人得完全的渴望；那里都是有需要的人，他们是律法的，论断的，承受律法的重担；没有上帝的生命像活水在他们身体流动。人们受到压制，要承受律法，一直被人定罪。耶稣忧愁当时的宗教系统注重论断和指控，而不是爱和医治，这个宗教系统根本没有代表上帝。它宣称代表上帝，他说“我们会看见”，但他们是瞎眼的，只看见自己的想法，对人一点帮助没有。

上帝禁止我们让生命变得无用，无法帮忙，我们就开始论断，到处找人的错，而没有看见人都是按上帝的形象造的。领袖更愿意找人的错误，而不愿意医治伤心的人，医治生病的人，他们失掉了方向，可是却说“我们知道方向”。

当耶稣四周观看，看见教会的捆绑，他很忧愁，对这些宗教领袖很生气。耶稣挑战他们，安息日可不可以医治？他们不回答。安息日是为人设立的，是要医治得安息的。耶稣就对枯干手的人说，他让他做两件事，第一，站起来，离开你躲藏之处，离开羞愧之处，把问题带到亮处来，让每一个人都看到。他当然羞愧了，当然他想藏起来，当然他很丢脸，可是上帝觉得丢脸的是这些宗教领袖们。

“站起来，站起来，不要藏在群众中。”我想他不会坐在第一排，大概躲在后面的角落中。耶稣说，“我看见你枯干的手了，站起来。”那人站起来了。这是第一步，你要与神调对频道，承认自己的境况，别再隐藏，别再遮掩，站起来；做出这个决定来回应耶稣，下定决心对耶稣说“我愿意”。把这个可怕的情况带到众人眼前，照他的能力去做，站起来，战胜对人的恐惧。

之后耶稣又让他做一件事，命令他伸出手来；他在生理上是做不到的，需要信心回应耶稣讲的话，当你照着耶稣所说的去做，就显出你的信心来，真正的信心是可以看得见的。他开始伸出手，最不可思议的事情发生了，原来枯干的手，已经萎缩的手，当他伸出来的时候，他感觉到生命流到里面，手开始活起来了，肌肉开始恢复了。他把手伸出来，手活过来了，原来死的，现在活过来了，他不再隐藏了，他告诉每一个人，是上帝的能力释放他得自由。

如果你生命枯干了，上帝要医治你，将他的生命放进你里面；如果你的服事枯干了，上帝要恢复你，但是你要做一些事情。在这个故事中有两件事，第一，站起来，不要再隐藏这个情况了，把它带到大家面前，带到耶稣面前。第二，要做做不到的事情，伸出来，当你相信而伸出来，上帝就开始运行；在伸出来的过程中上帝就运行。

圣经中经常看见耶稣命令人做一些事，告诉瞎子去池子里去洗，他就看见了。叫那个大麻风的回去让祭祀看，当他走的时候就得医治了。跟那个瞎子说往上看，你看见什么？他就看见了。上帝每次都要我们做一些事情。

屬靈的眼盲

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请翻开圣经马可福音第十章46至52节，“到了耶利哥。耶稣同门徒并许多人出耶利哥的时候，有一个讨饭的瞎子，是底买的儿子巴底买，坐在路旁。他听见是拿撒勒的耶稣，就喊着说，大卫的子孙耶稣阿，可怜我吧。有许多人责备他，不许他作声，他却越发大声喊着说，大卫的子孙哪，可怜我吧。耶稣就站住，说，叫过他来。他们就叫那瞎子，对他说，放心，起来，他叫你啦。瞎子就丢下衣服，跳起来，走到耶稣那里。耶稣说，要我为你作什么。瞎子说，拉波尼，我要能看见。耶稣说，你去吧。你的信救了你了。瞎子立刻看见了，就在路上跟随耶稣。”

故事的开始就是耶稣来到耶利哥城，耶利哥城是一个多年被咒诅的城。在那个城里有一个人叫巴底买，就是底买的儿子，意思就是秘密的，隐藏的，在那个家族中有一些秘密的事情。巴底买是一个瞎子，看不见东西，活在黑暗的世界里。他坐在路旁乞讨，希望有人帮助他。

瞎眼改变了他的生命，改变了他人生的做法，他无法追寻他心里想做的事，追寻他的梦想。他只能坐在路边依靠别人帮助他活下来，他是一个乞丐，他必须要穿着乞丐的制服，披着乞丐袍，表示他是一个乞丐。但是今天他做了一件事情让耶稣停步，我们刚才读的故事中写道是什么让耶稣停步呢？

这是耶稣最后一次到耶利哥，他正往耶路撒冷去，往十字架的路上走。就在这一天有一个人的生命被改变了，因为他遇见了耶稣。我们先来看看这人的状况，这人是瞎眼的，没有视力，可能是因为身体上的原因而造成的天生的瞎眼，但是还有其他形式的瞎眼，例如属灵的瞎眼。圣经说耶稣将圣灵降临到他身上，恢复了他视力。换句话说，就是让看不见的人可以看见了。

这个故事不单只是让瞎眼的得医治了，而是耶稣打开人的心，带领他从黑暗的世界来到光明的世界。“请每一个人都闭上眼睛”；当我们闭上眼睛，大部分的世界都是黑暗的，如果将你的手放在眼睛上，就会更暗了。想象一下你这样离开会堂回家，你有一些记忆，但是你不知道你会遇见什么障碍，会有什么危险，因为你看不见。你可以想象在这个黑暗的世界中怎样找到回家的路，如果黑暗是永久的，你该怎样过活。没有色彩，没有太阳，看不见任何东西，只有黑暗，而且无法脱离黑暗。

现在打开眼，看看你的周围是何等的美丽，你的视力是何等的重要。圣经告诉我们上帝的国是明亮的国度，是我们可以清楚看见的国度，这个国度的本质就是爱。圣经也有描述撒旦的国度，撒旦是黑暗国度的国王，当你进到黑暗的国里，你的属灵的眼睛是瞎的，属灵的黑暗中看不见，看不见要去哪儿，看不见路上会遇见什么，看不见危险。

圣经告诉我们，耶稣来是让我们脱离黑暗的国度，脱离属灵的黑暗，进到光明的国度，我们可以看见，看见生命改变了，看见人改变了，能够明白永生，所有的事情都改变了。只要你从黑暗的国度出来，进到光明的国度。

有很多事情会造成属灵的黑暗，我们这里会讲几个，请翻开约翰一书第二章9至11节，“人若说自己在光明中。却恨他的弟兄，他到如今还是在黑暗里。爱弟兄的就是住在光明中，在他并没有绊跌的缘由。惟独恨弟兄的是在黑暗里，且在黑暗里行，也不知道往哪里去，因为黑暗叫他眼睛瞎了。”

你看到圣经中讲到仇恨。仇恨是一种心里的问题，当人们受伤，他们的心就不愿意饶恕，因为不饶恕就会产生苦毒和仇恨。我们经常看不见仇恨，但是它会彰显在我们的生命里。一个人心里有仇恨，就很难去爱人，他们可能装成很好的样子，但那个爱是不真实的。如果心中有恨，爱就不可能流露出来触摸别人。

更不好的是，恨会使你瞎眼，你无法看见如何跟人建立关系，仇恨会在你周围产生黑暗。不难想象仇恨是来自撒旦的，他的国度就是黑暗的国度。如果一个人有仇恨，他们就会被仇恨弄瞎眼睛，无法清楚的看见，也无法作出正确的决定。他们没有好的人际关系，因为他们看不清楚。

如果你长在一个混乱的家庭中，会产生忧伤和仇恨，你不用为你父母的行为负责，但你要负责的是如何在心里面对问题，愿意放手；如果心里有恐惧愤怒抓住你，这就是你的责任。我们需要了解的是，如果你将对家庭的仇恨留在心里，对父亲的仇恨，对母亲的仇恨，甚至有时是仇恨自己，就会使你瞎眼，影响你跟人建立美好的关系，你总是透过你仇恨的眼光来看别人的行为。

圣经告诉我们有仇恨在心里的，行在黑暗中，无法看见，因为仇恨弄瞎了他的心眼。如果一个人恨他的双亲，有可能仇恨也会转向他的儿女。有些人有仇恨愤怒的经历，可能会是从历代祖先传下来的。一个人从小长大时仇恨父母，成年后也会恨他的儿女，仇恨像一个河流从家族的血脉流下去，世世代代在黑暗中。这是因为缺乏爱，爱触摸人的心，爱使我们彼此相连。

缺乏爱，使我们受伤。仇恨不只有一种方式表达，它有多种的表达方式。圣经告诉我们，仇恨会引起谋杀，可以确认的是谋杀的诱因就是仇恨。有人被激怒，愤怒上升就会引起谋杀。约翰一书第三章14，15节讲，“我们因为爱弟兄，就晓得是已经出死入生了。没有爱心的，仍住在死中。凡恨他弟兄的，就是杀人的。你们晓得凡杀人的，没有永生存在他里面。”仇恨弟兄的人就是谋杀者。仇恨弟兄的人就行在黑暗中。

谋杀者就是取走别人生命的人，导致谋杀的原因就是仇恨。仇恨的表现就是对人的暴力行为，可能是身体上的暴力行动，也可能是愤怒的言语。当一个人非常愤怒的时候，你会感到害怕，因为背后有谋杀的灵，你能真实的感受到他控制不了的愤怒。

我们被设计不是要仇恨人，不是活在仇恨中；我们被设计的是活在爱中。当心中有恨，我们无法清楚的看见，会对人有不好的反应，想要伤害人，人们可以用话语伤害人，当你走开，觉得生命被吸干了，感到痛苦，需要时间复原。

另一种仇恨的形式被称为冷漠的爱，不是从神而来的爱。从神来的爱充满了温暖，亮光，温情，而冷漠的爱则是从封闭的心里出来；他们非常有礼貌，不会做不好的事，但是感觉不到爱，心是冷的。行为是无可挑剔的，但感受不到爱。冷漠的爱是因为心里有仇恨，表面假装没事，他没有体会神的爱。

圣经非常清楚的告诉我们，有仇恨在心里，就会使我们瞎眼，看不清关系，会引导你进入黑暗，影响你的人际关系。圣经告诉我们邪灵会导致属灵的黑暗。在哥林多前书第四章4节，这世界的王弄瞎了我们的心眼，以至于神的光进不来。

另外一个导致属灵黑暗的原因是，就是邪灵的工作。圣经告诉我们这世界的王就是邪灵，他弄瞎了我们的心眼，使我们看不见，不了解。当你跟他们分享耶稣基督的时候，他们不明白，他们会说“我看不见”，这就是属灵的盲眼。这就是为什么我们要为不信主的人祷告，打破黑暗的权势。我们祷告除去属灵的黑暗，祷告挪走邪灵的影响力，祷告有清晰的心思意念，看见真理，拥抱真理。

另一个导致属灵盲眼的原因就是骄傲。圣经启示录第三章17节，“你说，我是富足，已经发了财，一样都不缺。却不知道你是那困苦，可怜，贫穷，瞎眼，赤身的。”这里讲的是教会中的人。骄傲就是自我为中心，骄傲有两方面，第一，觉得自己自高自傲，无人可比；如此自爱，以至于看不见其他人。骄傲的人看到的全部都是自己，当你跟一个骄傲的人在一起的时候，你会觉得自己一点价值都没有，因为他们全部的关注都是自己。你跟他们谈话的时候，你没有什么机会讲话，他们全讲完了，都是有关他们自己的。

骄傲的另一种面貌就是刚刚相反，“我一点价值都没有。”这人非常的自我为中心，总是想别人会怎样看我，我要人们都喜欢我。所有这些人的骄傲都会在我们周围产生属灵的黑暗，使我们眼瞎看不见。

还有一个导致瞎眼的就是苦毒的冒犯，当有人冒犯我的时候，我心里不原谅他，这也使我们看不清问题，因为我们总是定睛在被冒犯这件事上。一个女孩被父亲侵犯就很容易被其他的男人冒犯。一位男孩被母亲冒犯也会很容易被其他女人冒犯。

这些事情都会使我们眼瞎，没法看清楚。巴底买瞎眼，他在乞讨。乞讨就是向别人伸手，希望他给予，满足你的需要，很多人这样做。如果你看不清上帝在你身上的作为，你就需要其他人的肯定来认同你；如果你看不清上帝对你说的话，你的价值，你的天赋，你的目标，你就希望其他人能告诉你，肯定你。你希望利用这样的关系使你感觉更好，需要这种关系能够告诉你是受欢迎的，你很好。这种依赖的关系是非常不健康的。

如果我们心中有论断，也会使我们瞎眼。马太福音第七章5节中，耶稣谈到论断。当你论断一个人的时候，你就无法看清楚。我们用许多不同的方式论断人，如按照性别来论断人，女人经常这样做，“所有女人都像这样。”或者“所有男人都那样。”还有以种族论断人。所以如果心中有论断，就不能清楚的看见，也影响我们的生命。

我们来看巴底买会如何；他想要不一样，他听说耶稣经过，这对他来讲意义重大；他听说过耶稣所做的事情，他听说耶稣是救主，他听到耶稣行的神迹，他听说耶稣帮助人，他听说耶稣从不拒绝人，他听到耶稣从邪灵中释放人得自由，从疾病中释放，巴底买的信心起来了，他希望他的人生不一样，他希望上帝的大能临到，上帝的权能影响他的人生，改变他的人生。“我不要再瞎眼了，我不要再坐在黑暗里了”。

以赛亚书第四十二章7节说，坐在黑暗中的人就像坐在监牢里一样。属灵的黑暗就像监牢一样影响你的生命，掳掠你，让你无法成功。如果你骄傲，就限制了你，捕捉了你，你仇恨的 心占领了你。如果你在灵里面是被虏的，你就在黑暗的监牢里，你需要寻找人来帮助你。巴底买说“我受够了，我要耶稣改变我，我不想再在这里待下去了。

大部分的人会维持现状，不想改变，不管有多痛苦，也不要承受改变的痛苦。但巴底买不同，他想信耶稣能够改变他 ，所以当他听到耶稣经过，他开始大喊。如果你厌倦了活在属灵的黑暗中，厌倦了呆在属灵的监牢里，厌倦了祈求别人来帮助你，向耶稣伸出你的手。巴底买是这样做的，他大呼，“耶稣，大卫的儿子，怜悯我。”他用大卫的儿子这个称呼，就是即将到来的弥赛亚。“耶稣，我知道你救人，我知道你能够打破罪的权势，打破魔鬼的权势，我知道你能够改变我，耶稣!”

众人是怎样讲的呢？很多人对他讲，小声点，不要出声，安静的呆在那儿吧。大众一点都不感兴趣你的人生争战，他们只是想避免受到拦阻，避免属灵的噪音，也就是他们在反对巴底买的信心。没有记录有任何人是邪恶的，巴底买有信心，他的信心不是沉默的。当你有了信心，你总是要显露出来的，这人的信心在两个方面显露出来：

第一，他大声的呼叫耶稣。

第二，当人们阻止他，他持续不停的叫。当人们想要拦阻他时，他就更有信心，大声的叫喊。当有一大群人的时候，会有很多噪音，耶稣听见了他的声音，停下来，他听到的是信心的呼声，他听出了不同。耶稣不是只听见众人的声音，他能分辨出那独一的声音。因为那人的信心和持续不停的呼叫。

有时我们祷告没有立刻从神那里得到答案，圣经有很多这样的故事；当你向神呼求的时候，可能你也不是立刻得到解答；可能有许多人想要让你沮丧，但是信心永远不被打倒；我们要一直大声呼求，更大声呼求，越多的拦阻就会呼叫的越大声。

耶稣要求带他来到面前，群众立刻改变了，耶稣不是呼叫埋怨的人，耶稣呼叫的是有信心的人。巴底买做了什么呢？他把乞丐衣服全部脱掉了，起来到耶稣面前。那件乞丐服是有象征意义的，它是正式的乞讨的制服，就像一个批准乞讨的证书。当他丢掉这件乞丐服，代表他的生命将会完全不同了，他就是上帝行神迹的那个人，因为耶稣叫他到前面去。

这个乞丐服代表了什么呢？

第一，代表他旧有的生活方式。当他丢掉这件衣服，他就改变了，圣经告诉我们这就是悔改。我整个的人生要完全改变了，因为我来到耶稣面前，他呼叫我上前来。我不再活在黑暗中，不再贫穷，不再完全依靠别人的怜悯了，他的生活要完全改变了。

第二，乞丐服代表了限制。就是他原来的生命是受限的，因为黑暗所以受限，因为不信而受限；很多人都是受限的，因为他们不想像他们自己；很多人受限不是因为神，而是因为你心中对你自己没有信心。

箴言第二十三章7节，“因为他心怎样思量，他为人就是怎样。”所以你相信你在撒旦的权势下，你就生活在受限和黑暗中；你不相信你能的时候，你就会受限了；你不相信你可以做好任何事情，你就活在受限中。

不管是什么让你受限的，将它丢掉吧，悔改就是丢掉的意思，我把我对人生的看法完全改变了。乞丐服代表的第三个意义是，他人生的忧伤和痛苦。每一次当他穿上乞丐服，都会提醒他的受伤，许多人仇视他，责骂他，取笑他，捉弄他，偷他的钱。

许多人带着伤害，悲伤，痛苦，就像穿上乞丐服一样；很多人伤害他，他希望人人都同情他，他抱着他的伤痛的乞丐服向人乞讨。

当他来到耶稣面前，他决定他要改变；不仅如此，这件乞丐服给他安全感，他可以不用完全丢掉它，万一耶稣弄不好怎么办？需要一个退路吗？很多人来到耶稣面前是抱有这个心态的。但是巴底买完全没有想过，他完全脱掉袍子，来到耶稣面前。耶稣问他，“你要什么？”“我要能看见。”正是正确的答案。

我们看到另外一个跛腿的人，当耶稣问他“你要什么？”他有一大堆的埋怨，他没有给出正确的答案。

巴底买立刻回答“我要看见。”所以当我们来到耶稣面前，不要埋怨，不要找借口，像巴底买一样干脆的回答“我要看见。”耶稣说，“因为你的信心，你就得医治。”立刻眼睛开了，黑暗不见了，他成为了耶稣的门徒，跟随耶稣。从前这人是在黑暗的监狱中，现在看见了，他把乞丐服丢掉了，他的整个人生改变了，他不用再乞讨了，他不用再受限了。他第一个看见的是什么？耶稣！他就跟随耶稣了。

耶稣来将我们从属灵的黑暗中拯救出来，他来改变我们的人生，去除一切的限制，医治伤心的人，给我们真正的安全感，带领我们过一个美好的人生。在这个故事里，耶稣最后一次经过耶利哥，有一个人挡住了耶稣，神迹改变了他的生命。

数百人中，只有一个人挡住了耶稣，数百人只是观看，他们没有信心，只有一个人，丢掉他的袍子，相信耶稣会改变他。就像他期望的，耶稣改变了他。

由占卜中得自由

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请翻开圣经约翰福音第十章27，28节，“我的羊听我的声音，我也认识他们，他们也跟着我。我又赐给他们永生。他们永不灭亡，谁也不能从我手里把他们夺去。”在这段信息中，耶稣把自己比作牧羊人，人就像羊一样。

这里耶稣说了三件事情，一，我的羊认得我的声音。我们曾经养过一只羊，他很快就认得了我的声音。如果你懂羊，你就知道它是认声音的。耶稣说，“我的羊听我的声音，我也认识他们”，这里讲的是一种关系，我认识他们，他们跟从我。每一个人在生命中都跟从一些东西，你可能跟着群众，跟着流行，跟着电视，跟着媒体。人们都是在跟着一些东西，只是常常自己不了解。

我们生命中可能会有压力，让我们跟从，我们喜欢在人群中，跟羊一样，羊也是喜欢群聚的。耶稣说我的羊听我的声音，代表我们跟从基督，跟随主的关键就是有能力听从他的声音。这世上有很多的声音，很多声音一直压迫你，要抓你的注意力，要你的钱，要你的心。上帝创造我们是要我们活在跟他的关系里，我们都是属灵的，在灵里有一个部分需要上帝来充满。没有神的时候就去找别的东西了，可能听人的声音，也可能听邪灵的声音。上帝要我们今天开始听他的声音，回应他的声音。

神做了应许，我们如果跟着他，我们不会活在黑暗里，我们会得着光，他的生命在我们里面。耶稣邀请每一个人来跟着他，在生命中的某一个阶段要做这个决定，不再让罪带领我们，不再让群众带领我们，不再让邪灵带领我们，做决定跟从耶稣。

耶稣说，“跟从我，跟从我。凡跟从我的，不再在黑暗里行，他们得着永生的光。”今天有很多人，他们的生命中有黑暗，苦毒，仇恨的黑暗；愤怒，不饶恕的黑暗；或者各样罪恶的黑暗。圣经说，神的国是光明的国，魔鬼的国是黑暗的国。耶稣应许我们，如果跟从他，我们的生命就满是活力，开始发光，看起来不一样，讲话不一样，活的不一样。他说，“你不会行在黑暗里。”

神说当你跟他同行，跟从他的带领，上帝的灵会帮助你处理生命中的黑暗，各样受伤愤怒的黑暗，忧伤，苦毒和失望。我们需要决定到底谁来带领我们。人们都在寻找方向，不幸的是我们常常在错误的地方寻找。

我们来看圣经中的一个故事，一位女子听到不同的声音，被领导，被带领，她听到的不是上帝的声音，她听到的是邪灵的声音。这个故事里，很多人付她钱，让她告诉他们的未来。在使徒行传第十六章16至18节，“后来，我们往那祷告的地方去。有一个使女迎着面来，她被巫鬼所附，用法术，叫她主人们大得财利。她跟随保罗和我们，喊着说，这些人是至高神的仆人，对你们传说救人的道。她一连多日这样喊叫，保罗就心中厌烦，转身对那鬼说，我奉耶稣基督的名，吩咐你从她身上出来。那鬼当时就出来了。”

保罗当时在腓立比这个城市，这个城市非常出名，它有一个区域叫Pufo，那里有所谓的神域，是算命的中心；他们拜的是阿波罗，是艺术，音乐，戏剧的神。传说他征服了当地的一条蟒蛇，他们之前拜这条蟒蛇。这个占卜算命的中心，人们从世界各地来到，想要做新生意的人，开始新事业的人，在政府的人，当人要做决定的时候，都来找算命的人，付他钱来算算，我们称这种人叫灵媒。

整个城市有很多灵媒，整个区域都在这种占卜算命的灵的笼罩下，压抑的灵。那里有很多算命的工作在做，很多这种属灵的活动，整个区域有沉重的压力。人们付钱，灵媒就讲他们未来的生活。圣经中讲到的这个女子，她身上有灵环绕，就像蟒蛇的形状；看不见这个灵，但这条蟒蛇缠在她身上，它的头就在她的耳边，那是个邪灵，对她的生命说话。她会听见它说话，听见灵界的声音对她说，告诉她资讯。当她有这个灵的时候，她给出的资讯不可能从其他地方得到。

占卜就是你参与到灵界，从邪灵处而不是从上帝那里得到一些资讯。上帝创造我们是要我们跟他建立关系，神是灵，他让我们也是灵；上帝要跟我们说话，圣经说上帝在我们身上是有计划的，他在我们生命中是有目的的，他要指引你的生命。耶稣说，我是好牧人，我的羊听我的声音。代表上帝会跟我们说话，他说跟从我，跟从我的指示带领，我带他们去好的地方。

可是还有一个声音，是邪灵的声音。圣经中的这个女人赚了很多钱，那些人都想知道自己的未来；魔鬼知道你的未来吗？他不知道。只有创造了你的那一位，才能看见前面，知道你的生命是为什么；只有创造你的那一位，才知道你的目的，只有创造你的那一位，才能完全明白你。

上帝渴望我们跟他连结，从他领受启示指引。圣经在箴言第三章5，6节告诉我们，“你要专心仰赖耶和华，不可倚靠自己的聪明。在你一切所行的事上，都要认定他，他必指引你的路。”很多时候，神应许会指引带领我们。人们都对未来充满恐惧，不知道会怎样，我会不会成功，我会不会很富有，能不能有美满的婚姻感情，每一个人都有这样的问题。

上帝要我们跟他连结，活在信靠的生命中，信心的生命是学习每一天与他同行。他不会把我们生命的一切告诉我们，但他鼓励我们跟他同行，走信靠的路，听他的声音，也听我们的心。上帝显明在我们心里的是什么，当你开始跟上帝同行，你的心就会指引你，借上帝的话语，也借上帝的灵，你会富足。

我们看刚才的经文中讲要全心依靠神，他会指引你的路。我们跟上帝的关系就是要有信任，这关乎你的心，以你的心来信任他，以你的生命信任他。不是全凭脑袋搞清楚事情，上帝搞清楚你的生命就够了，他要我们学会信任他，学会倾听我们心的声音，为未来做计划，相信他会与我们同行，祝福我们的计划。上帝的应许会指引我们，你可以做最棒的事情，就是跟上帝连结，学习听他的声音。

如果没有这位爱我们，带领我们的神，我们对未来就会很恐惧，很害怕。我知道上帝是好牧人，他爱我，他相信我，他创造了我，在我生命中有美好的计划，我会将生命交在他手上跟从他。当我知到耶稣为我死在十字架上，我可以将生命交给他，跟从他。因为有人爱我到可以愿意为我而死，这是我可以信任的。

如果我不相信神，我就活在孤单的生活中，对未来充满恐惧，有些人对未来充满恐惧。如果你焦虑，没有安全感，对将来的事情感到很害怕。当然你看新闻，会增加更多的害怕；海啸，地震，冰山融化，恐怖份子，媒体上都是坏消息，人们感到害怕，在这种情况下，人们就开始找算命的了。

这个女孩是个灵媒，赚很多钱，人们付他很多钱；邪灵知道人们的未来吗？不知道！邪灵的知识是有限的，他们不知道你的未来，但他们知道你在做什么，他们观察你，知道你过去经历过什么。就好像有一个邪灵的网络一样，把你的名字打上去，搜索一下，所有的东西都出来了，所有邪灵都上来了，“我知道他的爸爸妈妈，祖父祖母，他们全家我都认得，我观察他们很久了。很高兴将他们的生活搞得一塌糊涂。”

耶稣说魔鬼来就是要偷窃，伤害，毁坏，你要知道什么，邪灵就跟她讲；这个女士其实不那么聪明，她只是听而已，听魔鬼的声音，然后讲出来。邪灵不知道你的未来，他不过是给你开这条路，你同意他，邪灵就开始在你身上工作，开始控制你。

旧约圣经利未记第二十章6节告诉我们，“人偏向交鬼的和行巫术的，随他们行邪淫，我要向那人变脸，把他从民中剪除。”上帝警告人接触邪灵的危险，灵媒是邪灵运用的一个人来对人说话；交鬼的是让邪灵进入他里面，让他可以说出你生命的事情；占卜就是要进到灵界，连结上邪灵，请他给你方向。这可以用各式各样的方式来做，青少年常玩的，好像碟仙，放很多字在旁边，把碟子放在中间；谁在那里？他们不明白的是，这是跟邪灵在接触，真的有人在那里，还有好多人呢。

圣经说我们到神的面前，耶稣说我是道路，我是真理，若不借着我，没有人能到父那里去。当你进入到灵界，不管用什么样的方式接触，你接触的都是邪灵。交鬼和接触家族熟悉的邪灵的，是随他们行邪淫。我们想想妓女，她是付出身体以交换金钱，这是交易的产生，当她拿到钱就将身体出卖了，付钱的人利用她的身体。

圣经说，当你参与占卜的事，你就好像妓女一样。你得到资讯，可是你让邪灵有权利利用你的身体。你得到资讯就好像妓女拿到钱一样，你就让那个灵进入到你的身体了，就像妓女把身体为男人敞开一样；圣经用的一些类似语言，不要跟魔鬼行邪淫，不要让邪灵来污秽你，这让你跟上帝的关系被砍除。这是让上帝最忧伤的事，他设计了你，他在你生命中有计划，他爱你，想要帮助你，要跟你同行，要进入到你生命里，要你转离这一切，你反而转向邪灵仇敌去了。

你打开生命让邪灵进来，要交换什么？就这么一点点资讯吗？你知道找灵媒会怎样吗？他们会上瘾的。自己做不了决定，一定要回去先问过灵媒，付更多的钱，获得更多的资讯，再付更多的钱，得到更多的资讯。他们的生命就被邪灵掌控了。凡是参与占卜的，你跟邪灵达成了协议，你让他有权利进到你的生命，这样就会有很多问题了。

要参与到这当中，人们会有各样的方式；今天的媒体上都是这些东西，好像哈利波特电影，很多神奇鬼怪的电影，他们美化了占卜，把巫术，魔术讲的很美，看起来很有意思。可是他们没有告诉你的是，他能力的源头在哪里？真是属灵的力量就一定有属灵的源头。神的国里，能力的源头就是圣灵，耶稣基督得荣耀。但在魔鬼的国，能力的源头就是邪灵，你不知道它是从哪里来的。

有些人在占卜上做过实验，感觉好像没有伤害；大家都在玩，有的在学校玩，有的在家里玩，有些在周末玩；会有一些幻想出来，你有没有想过当那些蟒蛇立起来盯着一个动物的时候，那些动物常常就瘫痪了，感觉被蟒蛇催眠了，无法离开它的视线。当你参与在邪灵里，就开始有这样的幻想出现了，因为那个能力是很真实的，有吸引力，有邪灵的吸力。但这样做，你是打开生命让邪灵对你产生更多捆绑。

有些人是家族中有人做算命的事，这也有机会让邪灵进入到你生命。有些人家里有法术，巫术的事情；各式各样的找寻灵里的能力，拜偶像是其中一种形式；拜偶像的人需要献祭，要交换，给一些东西给偶像，要交换一些东西回来。交换回来的是什么呢？是邪灵。同样的，就像妓女一样，我们被造不是为了邪灵，我们的生命不是要被鬼附的，我们受造是要让神爱的灵住在我们里面，上帝的渴望是要他的灵从我们心中流出，如同活水的江河。

可是你拜偶像，占卜，算命等等，做巫术，魔术的事，当我们向这些东西打开生命，就向邪灵打开我们的生命了，麻烦就开始了；麻烦是渐渐增加的，参与这这些事里面，常常会做噩梦，在灵里面挣扎，很沉重，很忧郁，很难过；好像房中的东西都会动，或者听到声音跟他讲话又没法让他闭嘴，有时晚上被折磨，有各式很可怕的噩梦；或者醒过来感觉有人要杀了他，或者感觉被性侵犯，却没有人在房中。一旦邪灵有了入口，他就不断要增加捆绑，不断增加他的掌控，要完全打败你的生命。

耶稣说盗贼来就是盗窃，杀害，毁坏，耶稣来赐给我们生命。我们回过头来看这个故事，在使徒行传第十六章，这个女孩有占卜的灵在身上，她跟着保罗大喊着说，“这些人是至高神的仆人，对你们传说救人的道。”她讲的都是真的，很多人不知道，他们只是一群人在那里。这些人是有知识的，当耶稣面对邪灵，邪灵会大叫，他们知道耶稣是谁。邪灵认识耶稣，也认识跟从耶稣的人，他们知道你是谁。

记得有一次我在巴厘，开车经过一个公园，发现有些人和一些蛇在那里，我特别下车去跟他们聊一聊，看他们在干什么。因为在新西兰没有蛇，我就很好奇。那些人聚在一起，中间垫子上有一些蛇，非常吓人。我不敢太靠近，离得远一点，他们应该是从珀流来的巫师，其中之一就来到我面前。邪灵会认出神的仆人，他是怎样认出来的？当你跟从耶稣基督，圣灵活在你里面，上帝的灵住在你里面，你身上有神的灵的印记，你真的是散发光出来的，别的人可能看不到，但你生命中的证据果子，灵界都看得见。

于是这个人就出来跟我说，他从没见过我，跟我讲过话；他说，“请不要祷告敌对我们，让我们停下来，我们来只是要赚点钱，我们没有要伤人。”他怎么会讲这种话，在他们身上的邪灵认得出上帝的仆人，他们的回应就是拜托我不要拦阻他们，这也代表我们有能力拦阻他们；耶稣说我赐你们权柄胜过蛇和蝎子和一切仇敌的能力，没有什么能害你的。在灵里他们能认出你是谁，我们看人就是人，看不见他身上是否有邪灵缠着，除非上帝向我们显明。我们也看不出谁是基督徒，除非你看他生命的果子。可是在灵里，我可以看出你是谁，是怎么样的，他们认得出你。

去年九月在台湾的一次聚会，很多人，圣灵很大的运行；上帝跟我说话，开始释放，我们呼召，上帝就开始运行，有很多人得释放，跟我们这里一样。我最小的女儿跟我在一起，她跟我说，因为那是一个很大的聚会，我真的遇见主了，她发现她可以释放；她说：“我问主想要我发现什么事，我以为头脑里会想到一句话”；主就跟她讲“转身，面对这些人。”她回答说，“不要了，我的睫毛膏都流下来了。”主说你转身看这些人，打开眼睛。她跟我说，她站在那里打开眼睛看，眼睁睁看着这些人站在前面，可是在他们的上面还有一个属灵的世界存在，她同时看见两个世界。只有上帝打开你的眼睛你才有可能看见这些事情。我问她“你看到什么？”她说“我看到邪灵。”“他们长什么样？”“他们吓坏了，我看见他们在聚会中，每一个都吓坏了。充满了恐惧。”“他们在干什么？”“他们抓着这些人，试着一直要抓着他们。”“他们为什么要抓住他们。”“邪灵有些是 把手放在这些人的眼睛上，让他们不要看，有些邪灵把手放在他们耳朵上，让他们听不见。有些把手放在他们嘴上，让他们说不出话来。每一个都是死命的抓住这些人。”我说，“你还看到什么？”她说，“我看不见你，我听见你说话。”她看到一位好像耶稣的人，很大的光一直照出来。所有邪灵看着这个人，吓坏了。“每一次你说话，就像上帝的大水把邪灵冲出去。”我说，“你还看到什么。”她说，“太多了，我眼睛受不了，同时看到两个世界。我再一次闭上了眼睛。”

重点就是，灵界会看到我们真正的景况，邪灵认得耶稣，知道他是上帝的儿子，他们非常怕耶稣。耶稣在各各他打败他们，圣经说当耶稣舍命，他打破了邪灵在所有人身上的权势。耶稣邀请我们转离罪，转离邪教，转向永生真神。他爱我们，我们受造不是要与邪灵连结，有些人把生命向邪灵打开；可能从你家族里来，可能有人在庙宇中把你献给了邪灵，或者你家人在拜偶像，算命，甚至你自己也做过，就向邪灵打开生命了；或者你打开眼，进入到邪教的世界，邀请邪灵。

上帝要释放你自由，我注意到有些人进入捆绑的方法，就是借着电脑游戏，那些扮演角色的电脑游戏，扮演巫师什么的。我为很多人祷告，大概有四百人，都是玩线上游戏的，上瘾了，被鬼附了，他们通过这种想象力，角色扮演的游戏开始进到灵的世界里了；还有通过武术，打坐等的各式各样的方式接触灵界。

耶稣来是要释放我们得自由。我们来讲完这个故事，看看会怎样。这里讲她这样做了多日，保罗就心中厌烦，他很难过。字面的意思就是他在挣扎，想突破；有一些邪灵的活动，在灵里会感到压力，他明白是有污鬼在她身上。保罗就对她说话，他是奉耶稣基督的权柄而来的，耶稣能胜过魔鬼。我们现在跟耶稣同行，我们也能征服魔鬼了。“奉主耶稣基督的名，出来！”对那个灵说话，那个灵发作，就从那个女孩身上出来了。这是一条蟒蛇，就从她身上出来了，她就得自由了。

我记得很多年前在一个地方，我们第一次有上帝的运行和释放，我很清楚的记得，场面非常壮观。有一天晚上聚会，大家出来接受服事，我为一位男士按手，他是从太平洋岛来的，他的家族有做算命的事，他倒在地上，这个也很常见的，但是后来他做的事，我从没见过。他就像一条蛇一样，在椅子底下一路的滑，滑到房间的最后面。我从没见过这种把戏，椅子都飞开了。

我们开始对他说话，命令占卜的灵离开，那个灵就离开了，灵的形状就像蟒蛇。我碰到过好多次这样发作的情况，各式各样的事情都有；重点是他们都是坏的，他们是来伤害你的。保罗直接面对灵，这个女孩就得自由了。她是其他人的使女，也是邪灵的使女，那一天她接受耶稣基督，成为自由人，远离罪的自由，远离邪灵的自由。上帝让你经历同样的事。

今天我们要做两项邀请，第一，邀请人来跟从耶稣。耶稣说，凡接待他，欢迎他，相信他名的人。耶稣是救主，他拯救我们脱离罪，凡接待他的相信他的人，他赐他们权柄做上帝的儿女，进入上帝的家中。上帝今天要为你这样做，他要改变你的生命；只要你愿意，他要进入你的心中。不管你生命经历过什么，不管你生命有多糟糕，神爱你，他爱你，他明白你；不管你参与过什么，都不能改变上帝爱你的事实，你的行为不管有多可怕，都不能改变上帝爱你。当你还在罪中，上帝差他的儿子为你死在十字架上，今天我要告诉你，上帝爱你。

耶稣说跟从他的人会听他的声音，他要赐他们永生，今天邀请你做这第一步，来跟从耶稣，邀请他进入到你生命，求他赦免你的罪，接受他进入你生命。

后面还有第二次呼召，特别为那些在邪灵里挣扎的人祷告。如果你有做过算命，占卜的事，或在各样的邪教里面，拜偶像，交鬼的，或被邪灵折磨的，可能你家族中有人参与到邪灵里；我们会有第二次呼召，为你祷告释放，上帝的能力会临到你，释放你离开这些邪灵。

今天你可以做决定，跟上帝连结；你今天可以做决定，不再带邪灵回家，你只要求耶稣基督释放你得自由。

由堕胎流产中得医治

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教会应传播盼望的信息。福音就是人们盼望的信息，是神对我们的爱，他愿意帮助我们。作为基督徒，无论周围发生什么，我们要明白我们需要帮助别人，耶稣基督来就是要帮助人的。

我想到一个很重要的经文，耶稣来不是来定人的罪，而是来使人因他得救，拯救人脱离罪恶。耶稣爱你，他从不定我们的罪，不管你身边发生什么，上帝的心一直伸向你，爱你，恢复你。

身为一个基督徒，不要为国家许多的问题害怕，要学习了解他们，服事他们。没有不能谈论的议题。事实上，我们应该谈论任何议题，带着爱的灵，盼望的灵，安慰人们。

今天我要做的是跟大家分享一些感人的事情，我以前没有分享过，但最近上帝对我的心说话。昨晚和今早我还在挣扎，我想讲别的东西，可是你当聆听上帝，他对我们已经有安排。今天的信息可能直接影响你，也可能间接影响你。希望大家有一颗敞开的心，爱的灵。因为我们为人祷告，看见上帝带来极大的突破。

我们来看诗篇127篇3节。我们来过这里很多次，经常跟大家分享我们的故事。大部分人知道我们有一个大家庭，七个儿女，21个孙子女。在这个过程中，学习到很多，其实我们还有两个孩子，在天上。我今天要谈的是堕胎和流产。

我希望给大家带来盼望，我希望还不认识耶稣的人，明白到上帝爱你，想要帮助你，想要打破你生命中罪的权势。然后，我要为三组人祷告，我们一起祷告，免得任何人觉得尴尬。我们希望爱的灵，上帝的大能能帮助你。我要为所有曾经堕胎的人，或跟曾经堕胎的人接触过的人，或流产的人，无法生育的人，一起祷告。我们绝不会开口问你是什么样的问题，希望大家自由的到前面来，相信上帝会帮助你。

诗篇127篇3节说“儿女是耶和华所赐的产业。所怀的胎，是他所给的赏赐。” 。所以孩子是产业，是上帝赐给我们的，每个人里面都有这个灵，是从神而来。圣经说神是灵。人与人结合会创造生命。人与神同工，上帝把灵放在孩子身上，孩子成为有灵的活人。上帝渴望孩子分享他给的命定，上帝的渴望是有许多的子女，这是神的心。上帝的计划就是接触这地，帮助人，就是上帝的人。

当我们生在这世上，因为罪与神隔绝。上帝渴望来到我们中间，饶恕我们的罪，将他的灵放在我们生命中，赐给我们永恒的命定。这一切由回应基督开始。

三天前，我读到一篇有关中国的新闻。故事发生在潍坊市，一对年青夫妇，他们已经有了一个孩子，正怀着第二个孩子。一天早晨，公安冲进家门，拦住这位丈夫，抓走了妻子，直接把她带到了医院。当时妻子怀孕六个月了，他们威胁她说要把她的丈夫关进监狱。而丈夫也四处找寻妻子，六个小时后才找到，但她已经被打了流产针。

深深感动我的是，他们两个人因为失去孩子而忧伤，这没有人可以安慰他们，我的心都碎了。我将分享一些我个人的见证。我们再看看神的话语，希望为人们带来盼望。

很多年前，我的妻子经历过两次流产。身为一个男人，当时我不明白这对女人意味着什么。我们四处服事，感到很大的压力。我们已经有五个孩子，我的妻子从没有抱怨过这两次流产。她从医院回来，我们继续我们的生命。没有多想什么。我们又有了两个孩子，Peter和Sarah。

多年后，我在另一个教会服事，为一位女士祷告。我问她发生了什么事情，她说她流产了，当我祷告时，她开始哭泣，我也感到非常忧伤，与她一起哭泣。我想太不可思议了，我一定是感受到了神的爱。

同一天，我去到另一个教会，同样的事情又发生了。我为一位流产的女士祷告，我又感受到了很深的忧伤。当你感觉到什么时，就要问自己，我的感受是什么？我为什么会有这样的感受？回到家后，我开始祷告，上帝跟我说，你忧伤不是因为她，而是因为你自己失去的两个孩子。一个男孩，一个女孩。你从未停止过悲伤，即使你并未意识到你的损失。

我开始很忧伤，上帝就告诉我该怎么做。我回到家跟妻子说“上帝跟我说到我们流产的两个孩子”。Joy说“上帝也跟我说话。他们是一个男孩，一个女孩。我给他们起名为Timothy和Catherine。”我说，神告诉我在家里应该怎么做，于是，像往常一样，我们全家一起进餐。Joy把两朵漂亮的花放在餐桌上。我跟孩子们分享说“我们家有七个孩子，实际上，应该是九个，还有两个在天上。”

有趣的事情发生了，流产后出生的两个孩子开始深深的哭泣。我感到他们灵里的悲伤。在他们的头脑里都不知道我们失去了两个孩子，悲伤一直由我妻子承担了。现在他们知道他们失去了一个哥哥和一个姐姐。他们的心中充满了忧伤。忧伤的灵在他们周围。

所以，我妻子的流产的忧伤，传到了后面的两个孩子身上。我们就按手在他们身上，为他们祷告。而其它的孩子们则没有这个问题。这就告诉我们，在母腹中的胎儿能感觉到母亲的忧伤。当忧伤没有解决时，就传递给后面出生的孩子。

我们做了一件事：为流产的孩子取名字。这很重要，不要只把他们当成一个东西。对于我，就好像我的妻子掉了一颗牙，很痛一样。在心中没有感到作为一个父亲，失去了一个孩子。

所以我认识到，当流产和堕胎发生时，会有很深的忧伤，处理忧伤的过程之一就是认出他们，为他们取名字，将他们释放在神的手中。不只是“一件事情”发生了，失去了“某样东西”，他真实的是一个活着的灵，她的身体没有成型，他的家没有长久，他们不得不离开。我妻子讲的很美“他就像一朵玫瑰花苞，没有绽放。”很多年来，我们为很多人祷告，在这方面帮助他们。

第二个见证。今年初我在新加坡讲道，教导关于与神相遇。当时我正在服事我们的敬拜小组，帮助他们与神相遇。在这以前的一天，教会结束后，我们的两个很忧伤的孩子分别跟我们说，他们今天聚会时看到了他们失去的哥哥和姐姐在天堂，还能清楚的描述他们。我必须承认我有些嫉妒。而当今年我讲与神相遇时，教导人们如何专注耶稣，用你的想象力想像圣经中是如何描述他的，让你的心伸向他 ，默想耶稣。这些年青人也都与神相遇。我感到不应只带领聚会，我也要进去。

于是我开始默想耶稣，不想其它任何事情。突然我进入灵里。没有看到耶稣，圣灵向我显出了两个人。一位年青男士和一位年青女士。我很惊讶，这不是我预期的。他们同时叫我爸爸。我更吃惊了，他们说“我们有很多关于天上的事情要告诉你。”然后我意识到耶稣站在我身旁，怀里抱了个婴儿，他就是我们十二月流产失去的孙子。突然，我又看到一个小孩，叫我爷爷，我能看出他的容貌，是我们另外的孩子失去的孩子。

我的注意力集中在我的儿女身上，耶稣在我身边，他们开始和我交谈，他们说“我们要给你看一些东西。”突然，我的眼开了，我看到在很大的一片地方，到处是孩子。不同的年龄，从婴儿到小小孩，数不清的孩子。他们说“这些都是流产和堕胎的孩子，在天上他们每人都有专属的地方，天使在照看他们，他们在那里受教育，长大。

我注意到，我失去的孙子的大小正是他相应的年纪。我也留意到我失去的两个孩子也是他们相应的年龄。我看到周围流产和堕胎的孩子们，神向我显示的全部都是中国孩子，我非常震惊。

耶稣对我说，他来不是要定任何人的罪，我能感受到他的爱。他说“每个人都有他的母亲，她因为失去孩子而忧伤，我要医治她们。”他没有说他们做了什么，他只是说“我爱她们，想医治她们，因为她们忧伤。”他说“我要你开始在这方面学习和预备，准备一些DVD，在中国讲道。”我的心深深的触动了。不光是因为看到了这些孩子，而是感受到了他们母亲的忧伤。我感受到耶稣的心深深的忧伤。

最近我们到中国，有人私下找到我。我不敢相信，他们说他们曾经堕胎，需要帮助。上帝大大地服事医治他们，赐这对夫妇安慰。这以后，我们每到一个地方，总有人要求我们为他们祷告。

我想与大家分享一些经文。问题最根本的关键是，在神的眼里，每个孩子即使还在母腹中都是一个活人，有他的命定。有时人们认为，在母腹中的孩子，他不懂任何事情，他不是一个人，只是一件东西，还很不方便。

我想告诉大家，在圣经中，神的看法是怎样的。孩子在怀孕前，神就知道他们，他们的品格，他们的生命的定命，不管他在母腹中长到什么阶段，在神的眼里，他都是一个活人，有他的命定，是神认识的人。

士师记十三章2至5节说“那时有一个琐拉人，是属但族的，名叫玛挪亚。他的妻不怀孕，不生育。耶和华的使者向那妇人显现，对他说，向来你不怀孕，不生育，如今你必怀孕生一个儿子。所以你当谨慎，清酒浓酒都不可喝，一切不洁之物也不可吃。 你必怀孕生一个儿子，不可用剃头刀剃他的头，因为这孩子一出胎就归　神作拿细耳人。他必起首拯救以色列人脱离非利士人的手。”

请留意，孩子在怀孕前，神就知道他是个男孩，神的计划是这个男孩会拯救以色列人，最重要的一点就是这位母亲在怀孕时应该怎样照顾自己，换句话说，神关心对未出生的孩子的任何负面影响。所以说，怀孕前，神就知道这个孩子和他的命定。

再看列王记上十三章1至2节“那时有一个神人奉耶和华的命从犹大来到伯特利。耶罗波安正站在坛旁，要烧香。神人奉耶和华的命向坛呼叫，说，坛哪、坛哪，耶和华如此说，大卫家里必生一个儿子，名叫约西亚。他必将丘坛的祭司，就是在你上面烧香的，杀在你上面，人的骨头也必烧在你上面。”

国家败坏，到处充斥着拜偶像，神派遣先知来警告他们。他说“我要为这世界带来一个孩子，他的名字叫约西亚。他要恢复整个国家。”你知道这个预言之后多久约西亚才出生的呢？360年！即360年前，在未怀孕，未出生前，神已经为他命名，为他安排了命定。

360年后，当他的父母有了这个孩子后，根本不记得当时的预言，他们只有一个念头，“为这个孩子取名为约西亚。”他们甚至不了解他们叫他约西亚，成就了神一早的计划。神为这个孩子360年前定命时，他的父母都还没有出生。上帝看见了未来。他说“360年后，有一对夫妇，尽管父亲非常败坏，拜撒旦，但我还是要将一个孩子带到这个家庭，他会拯救整个国家。他的名字叫约西亚。所以，神为孩子命名，安排他们的命定，在他们怀孕前就认识他们了。

另外一段经文，耶利米书一章4节5节“耶利米说，耶和华的话临到我，说，我未将你造在腹中，我已晓得你，你未出母胎，我已分别你为圣。我已派你作列国的先知。”多么神奇，神说在胚胎还未成型前，我就知道这将是谁。即你是个灵，在你住的人的家还没成型，我就认识你，知道你的全部，我已经将你分别出来，为你安排了命定。甚至你的母亲还不知道你，什么胚胎都没有，我已经将我的灵放入你中，你将成为列国的先知。

你注意到还在孩子成型前，神已认识他，为他安排命定，多么神奇！以赛亚书四十九章1节中也说：以赛亚也是在母腹中形成前，神就已经认识他了。

诗篇139篇16节，大卫说“我未成形的体质，你的眼早已看见了。你所定的日子，我尚未度一日，你都写在你的册上了。 ”大卫的意思是：当我还是小小的胚胎时，我还未成型前，你就看到我了。不仅如此，在你的书上，已经写下了我的一生，我甚至还没有过一天。 他的意思是，神已视他为一个人，一个灵，一个有命定的人。在他出生前，为他安排了一切。

这些经文强调在我们怀孕前，神已经知道我们，在我们怀孕时，神的灵进入到这个孩子，即使未成型，神爱他，为他安排了命定，即使他出生在一个困难的家庭环境中。

约西亚的父亲是个拜撒旦的，但上帝仍然安排他的命定，神看这个未出生的孩子是在母腹中的人，是活生生的人，有名字，有命定，有计划的生命，真实奇妙！

圣经中有很多次，神讲到未出生的孩子，讲到撒迦利亚和伊丽莎白。伊丽莎白是不能生育的，神对撒迦利亚说“你知道你的妻子不能生育，不能有孩子吗？”他说“我知道。”神说“你将会有一个孩子。”他说“她太老了，怎么生孩子？”他与神争执，但神说“不要争论。你们会有一个孩子，他将是名先知，为主预备道路。”圣经非常清楚的写明，神在他们怀孕和出生前很久就认识他们，为他们安排好一生的计划。

马太福音一章21节“他将要生一个儿子。你要给他起名叫耶稣。因他要将自己的百姓从罪恶里救出来。”再次说明，在孩子怀孕前身就认识他，知道他的名字，为他安排了命定。

你又如何呢？以弗所书二章10节中“我们原是他的工作，在基督耶稣里造成的，为要叫我们行善，就是神所预备叫我们行的。”请留意这里告诉我们每一个人都是神的独特的创造，没有任何人与你一样，你的指纹是独有的，你的DNA是独有的，每一样东西都是独有的。在你出生前，神已为你安排好了要走的路，你有一个目的，就是为了行善，在你开始前，神为你的一生就计划好了。阿门！

另一处经文路加福音一章39至44节中，神告诉我们在我们出生前就认识我们，知道我们的名字，知道我们长什么样子。我们还在母腹中，他就关心我们，为我们的一生安排了命定。

我最近读到一本书，他们对母腹中的胎儿用超声波进行了大量的研究。100年前，人们认为人的特征形成于大脑，个性，知识，意识等。如果一个人的个性，特征和感情是在大脑形成的，就得出结论是，如果大脑未发育完成前，他就不是个真正的人，你就可以随意处理掉他。

但是圣经告诉我们的完全不同。最新的研究也显示，人的心在大脑之前发育。圣经说“你的一生由心发出。”最新的研究发现，孩子在母腹中就能了解周围发生的事情，虽然他的大脑还未形成。经过大量的研究，这本书中得出结论：未出生的母腹中的孩子，完全了解周围的事情，即使他的大脑还未发育。他就是个人了。

最后，作者得出结论，孩子有第六感官。他讲的就是灵。他们的大脑，听觉还未发育好，他的灵知道周围发生的事情，他发现孩子能够辨认出父母的声音，能够分辨出争执，了解周围发生的事情。这也是希伯来文化中的一部分，当妇女怀孕后，要躲在一个安静的地方几个月，以使母腹中的孩子能够在平安和祥和的环境中生长。这些都是现代的研究发现。

圣经路加福音一章39至41节说“那时候马利亚起身急忙往山地里去，来到犹大的一座城。进了撒迦利亚的家、问以利沙伯安。” 以利沙伯怀孕六个月，婴儿还没有完全成型，“ 以利沙伯一听马利亚问安，所怀的胎就在腹里跳动，以利沙伯且被圣灵充满。”谁说腹中的婴儿不了解周遭发生的事情？你看，以利沙伯正怀孕，马利亚来探望她，圣灵通过她预言。以利沙伯听到了，婴儿也听到了，他大力的踢动，满有喜乐。因为这是他的命定，要成为弥赛亚的先知，还在母腹中，他就有了命定。他知道了这些安排，感受到了圣灵，他跳跃，大力地踢。

这就是他们最新研究发现的。婴孩在母腹中会感受到灵的影响。而早在2000年前，圣经就写明了。还在在母腹中就了解周围的环境，了解上帝的同在，了解母亲和她的感受，了解父亲。

我花时间分享这些事情的原因，是因为我要谈到堕胎的影响。圣经讲明，魔鬼对孩子非常有敌意。从创世纪三章15节开始，魔鬼对儿女就充满敌意。因为神的应许是：从妇女生出的孩子中，有一位将摧毁撒旦，成为世界的拯救。

当我们查考圣经历史，就会发现邪灵攻击孩子的例子。不管是在母腹，还是刚出生。出埃及记中，在上帝拯救之前，所有两岁以下的男婴被杀。大卫王之后，亚她利雅杀死了所有的王室小孩，只留下一个。耶稣时期，谋杀的灵临到希律王，又杀掉了所有不到两岁的孩子。

魔鬼常常攻击孩子，母腹是冲突之地。当流产发生时，神美好的计划突然终止了。堕胎发生时，孩子的生命被夺走了，不好的事情发生了，有巨大的影响。当我们为人祷告时，留意到很多人非常痛苦，但却不明白为什么。

圣经中讲述了流产发生的几个来由。 重点是，神的计划不是流产，而是生养众多。我们查考经文，分现流产的发生是因为拜偶像，有时咒诅临到家中，发生流产。有时是因为家中有乱伦的事发生，有时是因为人们交鬼产生的。

我不详细讲解所有经文，但圣经中非常清楚的告诉我们，上帝的心意是要我们生养众多，所以流产发生时，有属灵的原因，也有自然身体上的情况。我们对家里上次的流产求问神时，我的一个女儿从神那里得到话语，“是因为大脑没有正常发育成型”，我女儿和她丈夫经历了多年的忧伤。忧伤也会有生理上的原因。我们生活在一个堕落的世界。有时是属灵的问题。有时因为母亲做了内在誓言，不要生孩子。

不管原因如何，结果总是忧伤的，当母亲怀胎又失去了孩子，就会产生强烈的忧伤。男人不容易了解。女人的生命以孩子为中心，孩子是从她的生命中得着生命，当失去了一个孩子，就会有巨大的忧伤。

我想强调堕胎 的影响，有时当我们辅导人时，如果没有挖到问题的根源，问题就永远不会解决。当我研究这个领域时，发现不管在任何地方，人们得出同样的结论。当女人堕胎时，她必须让自己相信这不是真实的人。可能是医生告诉她，这没什么，只是一次医疗手术；也可能是因为害怕，或者身体条件不好，她就是不肯承认发生的事情。

最重要的一点就是否认他是个人。母亲否认他是个人，不过只是一次身体上的手术，就像拔一颗牙一样。但是，这不是真相。

堕胎的人有很多常见的问题。现在最普遍认同的症状是堕胎后创伤症。我在这里列出来这些问题，然后再探讨如何释放人们。

• 羞愧。他们会感到羞愧和隐秘，没有自信。

• 罪咎。不能脱离的罪咎感。

• 忧郁。时常忧郁，悲伤和痛哭，却没有明显的原因。请记住，如果你以谎言遮盖真相，拒绝接受一个生命被夺走，你不会明白为何会悲伤，如果他不是什么东西，我有什么好悲伤的呢？

• 自杀倾向。

• 自恨。

• 睡眠失调

• 各样回想的画面。女人会突然记起过去痛苦的经历，又回到震惊和悲伤中去。

• 强烈渴望拥有一个替代的孩子。下意识中希望有一个孩子可以弥补失去的孩子。这个被称为“周年现象”，在堕胎日或孩子的出生日，母亲时常开始忧伤哭泣，却不明白为什么。

• 宠爱，溺爱另一个孩子。

• 酒精和毒品的问题。

• 自我惩罚的行为。我应该被惩罚，可能自我伤害如割伤自己，虐待的关系，混乱的关系。

• 可能有身体的疾病。经常流血，或习惯性流产。

• 常常有很深的罪恶感。我活下来了，可孩子付上了代价。很可怕的感觉。

最近一位女士请我为她祷告。我问她“你的问题是什么？”她说“我时常流血，有十二年之久了。我们非常想要一个孩子却没有。”我问，“你有堕胎吗？”她说“有过四次。”我带着爱对这位女士说“你的家庭有四个孩子，但他们都在天上。这是因为你的行为造成的。当别人告诉你这只是一个简单的手术时，他们在撒谎，这就是你问题的根源，你和你的丈夫现在没有一个孩子，原来你们可以拥有的孩子却失去了。”

她开始不停地哭泣，我们与她分享上帝爱她，饶恕她。于是她在神里面得恢复，她的心得医治。我祷告下次再见到她时，她会有一个孩子。今年我到城市丰收教会，一位女士和她的丈夫抱着一个婴儿来到，她说“你要看看我们的宝宝，神迹的宝宝。你走后12个月，我们有了第一个孩子。怀孕非常困难。我自己以前内在誓言说再也不要生孩子了。每次怀孕都会流产。我听了你的教导，才知道自己做了内在誓言。我弃绝这样的誓言，请求上帝祝福我的肚腹，三个月后，我就怀孕了，就是这个宝宝。”实际上不到三个月，大约是一个月。

你可以看到，生命中有属灵的关联。女性经历的很多问题，她们不追溯到堕胎，她们假装这不是什么严重的问题。

耶利米书31章15节说“耶和华如此说，在拉玛听见号咷痛哭的声音，是拉结哭他儿女不肯受安慰，因为他们都不在了。”所以，我们如何得自由？处于这种情况的人，第一步就是转向耶稣基督。约翰福音三章16节说“神爱世人，甚至将他的独生子赐给他们，叫一切信他的，不至灭亡，反得永生。”神不是来定人的罪，而要世人因他得救。你的任何痛苦，耶稣都能够拯救医治。

可以看出，堕胎的后果远比我们认识到的严重。它影响到母亲，肚腹中灵里的部分，影响到下一个出生的孩子，影响到家庭，原本可以做父亲的男人失去了孩子，祖父母失去了孙子，以后出生的兄弟姊妹也受到创伤的影响。

我记得一位妇女带着孩子来，我问“什么问题？”她说“我的孩子不肯让我喂他母奶，我每次抱他到怀里要喂他，他就开始尖叫，我们该怎么办？”我说“你有没有试图想过要打掉这个孩子？”她说“有。”我说“是不是孩子怕你，他感受到了谋杀的灵，他不敢亲近曾想害他的人。”她非常震惊，请求耶稣饶恕她，我为母亲和孩子祷告，孩子就开始亲近她了。当孩子得释放，离开恐惧和谋杀的灵，立刻他们就可以亲近了，非常明显。

怎样得自由呢？有三个方面：属灵的问题，情绪的问题，关系的问题。离开死亡进入生命，答案非常简单：

1. 我们需要面对属灵的问题。要面对真相，是我夺走了孩子的生命。大部分的母亲这样做是因为感到极大的压力。来自男朋友或丈夫的压力，家庭的压力，环境的压力，不管怎样，他们必须负责任。得释放的关键就是打破谎言。以赛亚书二十八章告诉我们，当我们以谎言遮盖自己，我们就与死亡和地狱立约。

2. 在神面前悔改，认罪。真实的来到神的话语前。约翰一书一章9节“我们若认自己的罪，神是信实的，是公义的，必要赦免我们的罪，洗净我们一切的不义。”神已经饶恕赦免了我们，我们要做的，就是领受他，

3. 饶恕。首先人们必须接受饶恕，接受神饶恕了我们。其次，饶恕自己。最后，饶恕别人。经常，女人会对孩子的父亲生气，对自己的父母生气，或对帮她做手术的人生气，对鼓励她这么做的朋友生气。有各样的怨恨和悲伤需要面对。放开饶恕他们是解决这一问题的方法。释放他离开邪灵。

认罪，饶恕，从邪灵里得释放，我们等一下会为人们释放祷告。另一方面，对人们非常有帮助的是，求问神，这是怎样的孩子？耶稣知道，上帝认识你的孩子，男孩还是女孩？聆听你的心，神会告诉你。我看到人们在进行这一步时，总是痛哭。

接下来就是给他们取名字。给他一个身份，打破谎言。你知道给孩子起名多么困难，我们花几天的时间想好一个名字。但我在整个过程中发现，上帝已经为他们命名了，我们只需要聆听。求问神，我失去的孩子的名字是什么？或是自己给孩子一个名字。

我对那位经历过四次堕胎的女士说“求神告诉你孩子是怎样的。”她很快的回答说“女孩，男孩，男孩，女孩。”我说“给他们取个名字吧。”几分钟就起好了。接下来她就开始悲伤了，意识到了她的孩子们。我说“下一步就是释放你的孩子们在神的手中。耶稣站在这里，把你的孩子交给他。你要知道，有一天，你会再见到他们。”有时，我们简短的祷告“耶稣，我将我的孩子交托给你，把他交托在你的怀中，请告诉他我对我所做的非常抱歉，我盼望再见到他。”

请留意，这一切都是打破谎言，回归真相。经常会有很多悲伤，痛苦和伤感。有时，还有破碎的关系需要修复，通往自由的路是简单的。

当然，除非是有历代遗传的因素，流产的人不用认罪，忏悔。通常我发现这样做非常有帮助。就是每次闭上眼睛，心向神敞开，求他向你显示孩子是怎样的，告诉你他的名字。现在，他不再是一个东西了，他是一个人。你会再见到你的孩子。这就是福音的盼望，孩子在天上。

当你与耶稣交通时，他就会告诉你的孩子。把你的孩子交托在耶稣手中，有一天你会再见到他们。我看到很多人得自由释放，破碎的心得医治。凭着对耶稣基督的信心，把所有的秘密，羞辱，谎言都打破，破碎心得医治。

我相信上帝会触摸很多人。让我们闭上眼晴，你要明白神爱你，耶稣来到世上，道成肉身，让我们看见天堂如何，邀请我们与他连结。我们都活在罪中，与神隔绝，我们找不到神的路。但耶稣为我们的罪死在十字架上，他从死里复活，打破了罪的权势。耶稣说，凡接待他的人，欢迎他的，相信他的，他就赐他们权柄做神的儿女。

Deliverance Training (Special Topics)

驱邪术培训（具体事宜）

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Detailed teaching to train leaders in how to minister Deliverance (exorcism), bringing freedom from Generational Curses, Occult powers, and Sexual sin.

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詳細的教學，培養領導者如何拯救部長（驅魔），從世代詛咒，神秘的力量，和性罪帶來的自由。

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Freedom from Generational Iniquity & Curses (1 of 3)

Understand Generational Iniquity and Curses, recognize when it is operating in a person's life, and learn how to minister to help a person be set free.

从世代遗传的罪恶和咒诅中得自由

從世代遺傳的罪惡和咒詛中得自由

Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3)

People trade with evil spirits for knowledge, power or protection and end up in bondage.Learn how to recognize occult bondage and how to set people free,

从邪术/秘术中得自由

從邪術/秘術中得自由

Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3)

Understand God's design for a blessed life, and about the deep impact on our spirit and soul of sexual sin. Learn how to break bondages, minister deliverance, and rebuild damaged lives.

从性犯罪中得自由

從性犯罪中得自由

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从世代遗传的罪恶和咒诅中得自由

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什么是历代的罪孽和咒诅？怎样辨别它们？有哪些现象是我们可以看到的？如何服侍他人，释放他们得自由。

我相信在服侍人的时候，我们需要留意历代咒诅的根源在哪里？马可福音第九章20节说：“他们就带了他来。他一见耶稣，鬼便叫他重重地抽疯。倒地上翻来覆去，口中流沫。”这里这个少年人被邪灵所附，邪灵开始发作出来。你会发现，经常耶稣一到某个地方，那里邪灵就发作了。这是因为耶稣身上带着上帝极重的恩膏和同在，这些邪灵一定会有所反映。我们生命中的恩膏越强，就越容易经历到这些事情。特别是当你到第三世界的文化中时，一去就会发现邪灵很容易发作出来。耶稣的门徒想要把鬼赶出去，却赶不出去。在21节，“ 耶稣问他父亲说，他得这病，有多少日子呢。回答说，从小的时后。鬼屡次把他扔在火里，水里，要灭他。你若能作什么，求你怜悯我们，帮助我们。耶稣对他说，你若能信，在信的人，凡事都能。孩子的父亲立时喊着说，我信。但我信不足，求主帮助。耶稣看见众人都跑上来，就斥责那污鬼，说，你们聋哑的鬼，我吩咐你从他里头出来，再不要进去。那鬼喊叫，使孩子大大的抽了一阵疯，就出来了。孩子好像死了一班，以致众人多半说，他是死了。但耶稣拉他的手，扶他起来，他就站起来了。耶稣进了屋子，门徒就暗暗的问他说，我们为什么不能赶出他去呢。耶稣说，非用祷告，这一类的鬼，总不能出来。”

我们来仔细看这个故事，理解其中更深的含义。首先，你看到一个孩子受邪灵的折磨，邪灵可能在一个人的童年就进入到他的身上。在圣经里，邪灵在孩子身上的例子不止一个。当然，我们要把顽皮捣蛋，缺乏管教的孩子与受邪灵折磨的孩子区分开。邪灵把这个孩子丢到水里，火里，是要毁灭他的生命。在这个故事里，耶稣问了一个很重要的问题，这个病有多少日子了。如果你要帮助人，服侍人，你要追溯这个人身上是否有历代的咒诅，你需要问这个问题。如果这个人回忆说这个问题很小就有了，就有两种情况。第一，可能是在很小的时候就面对的创伤；第二就是历代家族的咒诅。从这两个问题可以找到一些线索，以确定是否是历代的咒诅，遗传了下来。第一个问题，这个事情多久了，就是什么时候开始的；第二个问题，你家中别的人有没有类似的情况。从前面的经文中我们看到，耶稣一开始也是问孩子的爸爸这个问题，他回答说，小的时候就开始了，按照这个父亲描述的经历，几乎可以确定这个孩子身上就是这种历代咒诅的邪灵。这种历代的咒诅，就是很多人问题的根源。重要的一点是，耶稣说，要释放就一定要有信心。

你若能信，凡事都能，信是最关键的。我要是相信上帝会运行，我就有能力把这个鬼赶出去。门徒问耶稣，为什么这个鬼我们赶不出去呢？他们做过很多释放，为什么这一次却失败了呢？“耶稣说，非用祷告，这一类的鬼，总不能出来。”耶稣的话有几层含义；首先，邪灵有不同的位阶和能力；第二，我们需要有信心；没有信心，什么都不会发生，虽然有时候可能会有抵挡，相信上帝会赐下这样的突破；第三，需要禁食祷告帮我们建立信心。我们注意到，耶稣常常禁食祷告。在上面的经文中我们看到，当这个邪灵出来的时候，耶稣马上认出它是什么鬼，原来它是聋哑鬼。如果你能够认出邪灵，讲出它的名字，它在这个人身上的势力马上就减弱了。耶稣直接命令邪灵出来，并且命令邪灵不可以再进去。在我查考圣经中，这是耶稣唯一一次命令邪灵不可以再进去。我觉得耶稣之所以这样说，是因为这是个孩子，而其它的例子，特别是在马太福音十二章，耶稣说邪灵是有机会再回来的。因此，我们需要与上帝建立良好的关系。

我跟大家分享一些曾经服侍过的一些人，可以很清楚的看到他们身上历代遗传下来的邪灵。第一个是一个很小的孩子。两个人找到我说，“我们的孩子有一个很严重的问题，只要他一醒过来，就开始砸毁房间里的东西。我们都不知道为什么这样，他才大概两三岁。”我就开始了解他们的背景，以确定这一特别行为背后的根源。原来这个爸爸有很严重的毒品问题，易怒问题；而这个妈妈的家族在邪教巫术上有研究。这两个家族向邪灵敞开，影响到了这个孩子。孩子醒着时很难祷告，邪灵常常发作，孩子开始大喊，又踢又打，很难释放。我就在孩子睡着时请父母跟我一起跪下来，我的手没有碰到他，离开他的头一点点，开始祷告，吩咐从父亲家族，母亲家族来的邪灵的咒诅全部离开，命令邪灵离开。那个孩子就像打了个哈欠，哈出一口气，我祷告好几次，他都会大哈一口气，很明显看到不一样，我祷告让邪灵不再进入这个孩子，也释放平安进入孩子身上。整个过程孩子都没有醒来。第二天孩子的父母打电话给我说，孩子醒过来后，完全没有了以前那种摧毁性的行为了，完全消失了。这件事对于我来说，也是一个学习的机会。看到这些历代邪灵的真实性，认清它是怎样发生的，最重要的是怎样处理它。

我再举一个大人的例子，一个五十多岁的妇人找到我，说她在教会为主工作很多年了，有一个问题一直困扰她，希望得到帮助。首先我需要问的三个问题：问题是什么？对你的影响是什么？这个问题什么时候开始的？她说长期以来，性不洁，污秽的画面一直在她脑中出现，特别是在敬拜的时候搅扰她。我问这种状况多久了，她说从很小的时候就开始了。我再问“你过去有没有遭受过性虐待或接触过类似的画面？”她说没有。现在剩下唯一的可能就是历代的邪灵了。我又问了一些关于她家庭背景的问题。她的祖父是到中国去的宣教士，有两个孩子，其中一个女儿就是这位妇人的妈妈，还有一个儿子。他们在中国的一个省服事，把孩子送到另一个省的寄宿学校学习，而该省当时被日本人统管。学校被日本人接管后，该女孩长期受到日本人的性虐待。后来，这孩子终于回到父母身边，再后来他们离开了中国，女孩结婚生子，夫妻之间的关系又破裂了。我问这个女孩，你愿不愿意代表你的家人，饶恕日本士兵？她说愿意。 我跟她一起做了一个简单的祷告，承认她的基督的信心，弃绝她家族中传下来的性虐待的过去，饶恕那些士兵，当我命令的时候，那个污鬼就大发作跑出去了。从那一刻开始，她的头脑就开始清晰了，再也没有以前的折磨了。

现在我们以加拉太书三章13节做总结，看看耶稣的作为。“ 基督既为我们受了咒诅、就赎出我们脱离律法的咒诅．因为经上记着、『凡挂在木头上都是被咒诅的。』”经文讲得很清楚，耶稣在十字架上的成就，就是救赎我们脱离咒诅，带我们进入祝福。这里特别强调挪走以前因为违背神的律法而受到的咒诅。上帝的目的是让福分临到我们，圣灵在我们生命中的运行，就是我们福分的源头。祝福代表恩惠，代表有果效，代表神的生命流入。

“叫亚伯拉罕的福临到外邦人”。上帝赐福亚伯拉罕，在耶稣身上成就了。当我们认同耶稣，与他同活，就有福分释放下来，临到我们。认同耶稣，并调整我们的生命与他配合，我们就是在耶稣里面新造的人。上帝的福分临到他的儿子耶稣基督，当我认同他，我就蒙福。当你做了基督徒，认同基督的死亡，埋葬与复活，你就已经享受蒙福的地位了。

蒙福是因为你跟基督的关系，不是因为你做的事情。有一个危险是，我们进入基督后，又重新回到律法中去。我蒙福是因为认同基督，而不是我做了什么，不然你就又回到律法了。耶稣救赎我们脱离律法的咒诅，所有代价他都付清了，他在各各他山上的工作已经打破了所有的咒诅，耶稣死在十字架上，圣经说“凡挂在十字架上的，都是受诅咒的”。他救我们脱离咒诅，自己被咒诅，他完全满足了上帝的要求。

咒诅背后的权势救赎邪灵。咒诅是属灵敌对我们的力量，是邪灵赐下的能力，它会一直运行直到被打破为止。很多人因为受到咒诅不断的挣扎，我们要将耶稣所成就的，直接逼迫这个邪灵。我们必须了解：第一，祝福背后的势力是圣灵，当你认同耶稣，你的生命就蒙福。以弗所书第一章告诉我们，在基督里，受到将天上所有的福分都赐给了我们，我不需要努力得着福分，我只需要领受福分。第二，咒诅的背后是邪灵的势力。咒诅是因为违背了上帝的律法。耶稣救赎我们脱离一切因为过去违背上帝律法而受到的咒诅，救赎代表完全付清赎金，释放一个人自由。耶稣付了全部的代价，我还要付多少呢？不用付了。耶稣已经供应我，让我得福，我还要做什么才能赢得福分呢？什么都不用，我只要相信。

一个人怎样保持自由，得胜的关键就是信心。不是更努力。我越努力，就越陷入律法的诅咒之下。神召我活出蒙福的生命，我已经是得福的人了，不管发生什么，因为信耶稣，我已经蒙福。在各样事上蒙福，在每个领域蒙福。不用赚取这福分，而是因信心释放的。

我们看一看关于历代的罪孽和咒诅的几处经文。出埃及记二十章2至6节，十诫，“我是耶和华你的　神、曾将你从埃及地为奴之家领出来。除了我以外、你不可有别的神。不可为自己雕刻偶像、也不可作甚么形像、彷彿上天、下地、和地底下、水中的百物． 不可跪拜那些像、也不可事奉他、因为我耶和华你的　神是忌邪的　神、恨我的、我必追讨他的罪、自父及子、直到三四代．爱我守我诫命的、我必向他们发慈爱、直到千代。”这里上帝很清楚的警告我们不准拜偶像。上帝看人是把你当作家人看待。而我们看人，只是看到每个个体。上帝可以看到几代人，他的计划是让福分几代的传下去。福分是上帝的恩惠，是圣灵在我们周遭的流露。当我们与上帝同行，过敬虔的生活，我们的子女就蒙福。他们什么都不用做，就可以领受上帝极大的恩惠。因为他们是爱神的子民的儿女。上帝的设想是每一代能够建立在前一代跟上帝的关系之上，继续的进行。我们每天做的小小的选择，会将我们引向特定的方向。我的岳父母现都已过世，我清楚记得岳父八十岁的生日，全家和朋友们一起庆祝。他们有五个儿女，全部长大结婚，有很多不同年龄的孙子。晚上，当大家一起为他祝寿时，二十个孙子都站起来表达他们对爷爷的爱。这些年来，他一直刻意与上帝同行，为主工作。他也决定在每个孙子身上投资，在他们五至十一岁的年纪时，带他们去度假，有时两三个，有时四五个孩子，一起跟爷爷去度假。他们一起灵修，祷告，一起玩，每个人都可以选择这一天怎样过。这么多年来，他做了各式各样的活动，他相信这种家族历代的产业可以一直传承。在庆祝时，我岳父的兄弟也在场，可他完全走的是另一条路。他拒绝耶稣，现在是第二次婚姻，因为各样的外遇和不忠实，现在又跟别人在一起了。两个女儿都没有结婚，很特别的一家人，也没有孙子女。当他们两兄弟一起长大时，他嘲笑哥哥相信耶稣，可是等到他八十岁时，就可以看出来他当时的决定带出的一生的果效如何。一个与上帝同行，投资在家庭中，有敬虔的产业留下来，有美好的婚姻，稳定的家庭，有爱祖父的孙子女们。而另一个，没有稳定的婚姻，没有稳定的家庭，也没有产业留给孙子女。

我们了解上帝的计划是让敬虔的产业代代相传，如果我们选择活在悖逆的生活中，留下的就是毁灭。只要与上帝同行，福分就会不知不觉中进入我们的家庭。我记得多年前到印尼去带一场约两千人的聚会。我的儿子David跟我一起。他跟我去过很多次的宣教。通常我的计划是先训练领袖，然后再进行大型聚会。但那天是假日，一开始就进行大型聚会，没有人受过训练，不知该怎么做，每一个人都需要释放，只有David和我两个人。呼召时，上千人走出来，成排成排的人站在那里，我跟David说，一半都是你的，另外一半给我。我在释放时，看到各式各样的事情，有人叫喊，邪灵出来。突然，我想看看David在干什么，他身边都是人，有些人倒在地上，有些人大声叫喊。圣灵在他身上大大的运行。后来他告诉我说，大概三个月前，我决定上帝做在你身上的都是要留给我的产业，我就开始祷告，希望得着属于我的，真了不起，今天发生的，就是祷告的结果。这就是继承敬虔的产业。他能够站起来说，在你身上所有的，都是属于我的。代表我不用像你那样付代价才能得着，我得着是因为我是你的家人。同样我们得着基督的一切，是因为他是我们的长兄，我们是与他连结的，我们只需要起来去得着这一切，突破了，就得福分。

同时，罪也是有历代延续的后果的。“不可为自己雕刻偶像、也不可作甚么形像、彷彿上天、下地、和地底下、水中的百物.”（出埃及记二十章4节）。第一个最大的例子就是亚当。他犯罪，我们每一个人生下来都有罪。上帝讲明，有些罪有历代延续的后果。在耶利米哀歌五章2至6节，“我们的产业、归与外邦人．我们的房屋、归与外路人。 我们是无父的孤儿．我们的母亲、好像寡妇。 我们出钱才得水喝．我们的柴是人卖给我们的。 追赶我们的、到了我们的颈项上．我们疲乏不得歇息。 我们投降埃及人、和亚述人、为要得粮吃饱。”。请留意，我们是受人逼迫的，我们的景象是尴尬和羞辱的，上帝给我们的产业已经被别人拿走了，所有的福分都没了，我们像孤儿一样，没有父亲。原来免费喝的水，现在要给钱了，柴也要买了，我们这样劳苦努力，完全不得歇息。还被埃及亚述人捆绑奴役。接着第7节就讲出了问题的源头。“我们列祖犯罪、而今不在了．我们担当他们的罪孽。”。就是说，父母做得不对，子女承担后果。

我们再回到出埃及记二十章，上帝很特定的讲到拜偶像的罪孽。“我耶和华你的神，是嫉妒的神。”（出埃及记二十章5节）。神说他对我们有热烈的爱，当他看到你有别的情人的时候，他非常不高兴。我们讲的不是邪恶的上帝，他说“我对你的爱是这样的深，如果看到你跟别人走，对我造成很深的伤害。”这里用的是婚姻上的用语。我想多解释一下前后文的背景，让大家有更多的了解，上帝在什么情况下把十诫颁给他们的。希伯来文化中，大部分人认为，上帝把律法写下来，行的好就好，行的不好就受惩罚。记得当时上帝带这些人到旷野里来，上帝跟百姓说想见他们。上帝的话对希伯来人是有意义的。“你们是我特别的宝贝”。希伯来文化中，两个人要结婚会有几个步骤。第一步就是要说“你是我特别的宝贝”。然后才下聘礼，订婚，结婚。他们会在帐幕中预备婚礼。新郎拿出他们的婚约。婚约列出婚姻中所提出的条件《出埃及记》二十章中的Katuba指的就是婚约。他们交换誓言，彼此同意一起维系婚姻。他们做奴役许多年了，这个婚约对他们来说是很美的。好像夫妻之间许配给了上帝。大家可以在网络上搜索一下希伯来人的婚姻，他们整个订婚的过程，就会在《出埃及记》看到，整个过程就是与上帝立约的过程。上帝说，在婚姻中不忠诚就会有后果。我们常常觉得与上帝的关系很随便。不是的，这是盟约，是彼此联合的同意书。上帝说，如果你拜偶像，会影响好几代。《出埃及记》二十章说：我耶和华是忌邪的神。换句话说，我最不能忍受的就是你心里有别的男人。《雅各书》说，如果你跟随世上的价值，你就是一个淫妇。你对上帝就是不忠心的。上帝爱我们，他要我们进入这个关系里。上帝特别讲到拜偶像，虽然有不同的源头，但拜偶像是最严重的。上帝说，除我以外，不可有别的神，不可为自己雕刻偶像，不可向他们跪拜。跪下代表你拜这个偶像，代表这个偶像在你生命中受尊重，有重要地位。一个人向偶像屈膝，实际上是承认偶像里的邪灵。偶像背后的权势就是邪灵，偶像本身不过是块木头。其实它什么都不是，是没有意义的，不过是手刻出来的，但是在它里面，在它后面的是邪灵。

你必须明白上帝不喜欢这样的事，但一个人向偶像献祭时，就是与邪灵做交易。刻意与邪灵达成协议，才是问题的所在，邪灵有了合法进入的权利。你把这个献给偶像，期待它来保护你，或是供应你，或给你能力。这些都是上帝想要给我们的，当你向偶像屈膝，你就拒绝了上帝，不承认他是你保护，供应和能力的来源。《诗篇》115篇第3至第8节说：“然而，我们的神在天上。都随自己的意旨行事。他们的偶像，是金的，银的，是人手所造的。有口却不能言，有眼却不能看。有耳却不能听。有鼻却不能闻。有手却不能摸。有脚却不能走。有喉咙也不能出声。造他的要和他一样。凡靠他的也要如此。”请注意，“造他的要和他一样”。你拜什么就会像什么。如果你拜偶像，你就会变得跟它们一样，又冷又硬。我观察那些拜偶像的，通常生命中有苦毒的根；情绪上也是冷漠刚硬，死亡的灵完全掌控他们。

再回到《出埃及记》二十章，上帝说，由父及子，三四代。上帝追讨他们的罪孽。罪的后果就是死亡。上帝很清楚的设定规则，犯罪就是死亡。圣经中有些罪是死刑。问题是当你犯了这样的罪，上帝杀了你，就砍断了后面的世代。而若没杀你，罪的审判会传下去好几代。虽然没有死亡，但会影响好几代。罪孽的原文是“弯曲”的意思，希伯来文的意思是看到一个东西就把你勾上了。罪孽就是弯曲的，扭曲的，就好像会朝向一个特定的问题过去，罪孽是一种驱动的能力，把一个人逼往罪上，是造成犯罪的根源。请大家看《出埃及记》三十四章6，7节“耶和华在他面前宣告说，耶和华，耶和华，是有怜悯有恩典的神，不轻易发怒，并有丰盛的慈爱和诚实。为千万人存留慈爱，赦免罪孽，过犯，和罪恶，万不以有罪的为无罪，必追讨他的罪，自父及子，直到三，四代”。在这里，上帝亲自宣告他的名，上帝说我是有怜悯有恩典的神。我赐怜悯，恩典，我不轻易发怒，长久忍耐，也有公义，但更多怜悯。上帝的怜悯代表他的饶恕，恩典；上帝的公义则要求我们为罪付出代价。

上帝饶恕三件事，罪孽，过犯，罪恶。这三件是不同的。我们认为都是罪，做错事。但圣经把这三件事区分开来。这些词在新约中再次出现，把他们全部归为罪。我们需要明白，罪孽，过犯，罪恶这三者虽然每一个都是不同的，但耶稣的宝血都已经完全赎清。

罪孽，代表弯曲，转折，你的生命转折向罪了。当我们讲到历代的咒诅，罪孽就是我们要处理的。

过犯，代表刻意违背神的律法，心里清楚的知道不对，但还要去做，这就是违背神的律了。

罪恶，代表没有达中目标，造成得罪的事。重要的是，我们做了一些我们都没有察觉的事，是无意中做错了。如你开车没有留意限速50公里，你开了80公里，被警察拦了下来。你说你不知道限速是50公里，警察不会对你说，没事，对不起，你走吧。他会说，不管你知不知道，你违法了，就要付罚金。

无知的犯罪和过犯不同。旧约中，当摩西要求百姓涂血在门框和门楣上，有罪孽，过犯和罪恶，都要涂血。耶稣基督的血包含了我们所有的罪孽，过犯和罪恶。所以涂血就如同划了一个十字架。出埃及记二十章中，上帝指明十字架和耶稣的宝血就是解决罪孽，过犯和罪恶的问题。每个人要为自己的行为负责，父母犯的罪不会怪你，你不用为他们的过犯负责。可是他们身上带的罪孽，因为血气的原因，就会影响到你。上帝追讨罪孽直到三四代。（ 申命记二十三章第2，3节）

另外一种会代代相传的诅咒是私生子。即婚姻以外私生的孩子。在这人身上有拒绝的诅咒，有拒绝的邪灵进入他们。曾经有一个人上前接受呼召，因为当时有太多人接受呼召，没办法进行辅导。我只问简单的问题，通过询问才能找到问题的根源。“你的问题是什么？”我问。他说“我很生气。很多愤怒。”“那你对谁愤怒呢？”“每个人。”这代表他对某人愤怒而没有处理。为找到问题的根源，我又问:“你跟父母的关系如何？”他回答说“我对父母双方都很生气。”“那他们做了什么得罪了你呢？”他说“不知道，我就是对他们生气。”我说“你是家中的长子吗？”“是的，我是。”“你是婚姻之外出生的吗？”“是的。”他承认。愤怒的根源就在这里了。他的生命中包含了很深的拒绝和羞辱，总想怪罪那些想要帮助他的人，把愤怒投向每个人。他需要饶恕父母，不可拒绝他们，要向他们道歉。因为他拒绝他们的帮助，是对他们的不尊敬。私生子的生命中一直承带着愤怒和拒绝。愤怒是一种要求，是对不公义事情的反应。欠了别人的就是愤怒，放弃权力去饶恕对方才是解决的方法。如果在家族中历数四代，每人生两个孩子，最后家族中至少会有三十人。如果历数十代，人数就更多了。上帝这样爱我们，但有些罪打开门，让历代咒语进来，也让罪孽进来。诅咒是负面的摧毁的势力，是邪灵的能力造成的。罪孽是家族扭曲造成人不断犯罪，罪孽诅咒并行，一代代传下去。

历代的罪孽是家族中持续犯某一种罪， 如，奸淫，醉酒，同样的罪不断发生。历代的诅咒是一种负面的势力一代代传下来，是邪灵造成的。我们先探讨罪孽如何从一个人传递到另一人，然后，学习如何认清诅咒。

首先， 罪孽的传递方式是历代遗传。就如你身上带有父母遗传的体征，有些罪孽你也会继承下来。

罪孽的源头有几点。

第一，可能是邪灵的能力。家族中有熟悉的邪灵在运行。

第二，毒根的论断。如果你因为特定的罪或失败论断父母，你的生命中就会产生杀种和收割的循环。你论断的东西就会在自己的生命中出现。有些人讲我绝不要像我爸爸，代表他们受过伤，对父亲有论断，现在又誓言，结果他就会跟爸爸一模一样。所以当我们论断父母，反而让家庭中有了罪孽的循环，我们论断的，我们自己收割。 这是家族罪孽的一个源头。

第三，行为的模式，基因的原因。有可能这些罪孽破坏了基因的密码，造成问题借着基因传递下去。

第四，学习的行为。人们会模仿他们父母的行为，使同样的罪孽在家族中一直延续，他们要学习新的生活方式。

那么如何认清家族历代的诅咒？什么是诅咒？

诅咒是人说的话让属灵的势力运行。这些话释放了属灵的势力，可以一代代传下去，直到被打破为止。诅咒背后的势力就是邪灵污鬼，诅咒一个人就是把邪恶，摧毁，灾难带到他身上。当诅咒临到一个人，就像有属灵的势力压制他不断重复毁灭性的行为。压制他的环境和情绪，不断重复失败。

诅咒从哪里来？箴言二十六章2节说“无故的诅咒必不临到”，即诅咒必是有原因的。第一个可能的原因是上帝。因为上帝设定了律法，违背律法就会让邪灵在生命中运行，就会受到诅咒。第二个原因来自人。人说出的话诅咒家族，诅咒人。人所行的巫术，当他施咒时就会敌对人。例如，有人将孩子在庙中献给偶像，就会造成诅咒的发生。当人对邪灵敞开，把自己的生命献给邪灵，就会开启邪灵运行的机会。另外有时权威的角色会说诅咒的话，如“你不会做成什么大事”“你这么笨”等等。有权柄的人讲出毁灭性的话，就造成诅咒的发生。人也可以诅咒自己，“我是个失败者，什么都做不好”。第三个造成诅咒的原因，就是邪教的误见。申命记七章25，26节，上帝说“他们雕刻的神像，你们要用火焚烧；其上的金银，你不可贪图，也不可收取，免得你因此陷入网罗；这原是耶和华－你 神所憎恶的。可憎的物，你不可带进家去；不然，你就成了当毁灭的，与那物一样。你要十分厌恶，十分憎嫌，因为这是当毁灭的物。”有些物件，如偶像或邪像，如果带进家中，就会把邪灵的势力带进来，造成后果。如果有诅咒在运行，一定会有后果。有没有诅咒在运行，就看有没有发生不断重复失败的模式，特别是一代代传下来的情况。

失败的模式有哪些呢？申命记二十八章15节中列出了很多，“你若不听从耶和华－你的 神的话，不谨守遵行他的一切诫命律例，就是我今日吩咐你的，这以下的诅咒都必追随你，临到你身上。”总结起来有以下的情况，

• 重复发生的心理或精神问题

• 重复发生的慢性病或过敏的情况

• 难怀孕或流产。这特别跟拜偶像有关。何西阿书九章讲到，拜偶像会造成所有的果子被剪除

• 家族破裂，离婚，常常发生，家族中冲突不断

• 重复发生财务缺乏的问题

• 常常发生意外。家族中很多人都经历过意外

• 自杀，英年早逝在家族中不断发生

• 家族中常有虐待发生

• 无法安顿。不稳定，无法安静下来。该隐就受到这样的诅咒，四处漂流。

所有这些问题都有不同的原因，如果不断重复发生，就很可能是历代诅咒造成的。有人曾对我说，他常有恶梦搅扰。我会问三个问题，“什么问题？”“怎样影响他？”“什么时候开始的？”他说这一生都有。显示出可能是历代家族中传下来的。另外过敏，“有多久了？”“一生如此。”“还有别人有此情况吗？”“我妈妈也有，她妈妈也是。”这些重复发生的模式，就会说明家族中有东西运行。有些东西被扭曲了，后面有势力在运行。

圣经中有几个例子，很明显可以看出是有罪孽和诅咒在运行。撒母耳记下十二章10节，撒母耳对大卫王说，“因为你娶了别人的妻为妻，因此刀剑必永不离开你的家。”这就是诅咒。大卫做了什么造成他们家这样的问题呢？他犯了奸淫和谋杀的罪。上帝饶恕他了，可罪孽的后果还在家族中运行。大卫的家族中奸淫，强暴，苦毒，背叛，兄弟间互相残杀等等问题，都有历代的根源。

另一个例子，列王记下五章26，27节，基哈西和以利沙的故事。基哈西贪恋亚兰人乃缦的金银， “ 以利沙对他说、那人下车转回迎你的时候、我的心岂没有去呢。这岂是受银子、衣裳、买橄榄园、葡萄园、牛羊、仆婢的时候呢。 因此乃缦的大麻风必沾染你、和你的后裔、直到永远。基哈西从以利沙面前退出去、就长了大麻风、像雪那样白。”

他的罪是心中的贪婪，说谎，欺骗，这就破坏了以利沙和乃缦的关系。以利沙不要乃缦的任何东西，即使他是非常富有的人。他希望乃缦欠他一个人情。这样以利沙就有权力对乃缦的生命说话。如果拿了钱，就毁了以利沙的身份和他们之间的特殊关系。

有几次，我在台湾服事过几位非常高位的人，我去到他们那里，从不向他们索要任何东西，我给的全是免费的。这保持了我的心是正直清洁的，这样才能影响这个人的生命，如果我有任何贪婪的表现，马上就让人反胃离开了。所以，生命中是否有权柄，就看私下是否有贪婪的意图。基哈西的贪婪是很严重的事情，会毁掉以利沙的名声，结果他长大麻风，身体的疾病，他和他的后裔，因为罪，让麻风病在他家族历代传下去。

创世纪十二章10至13节，亚伯拉罕说谎，不让别人知道撒拉的身份；创世纪二十六章，以撒也对自己妻子的身份说谎；创世纪二十七章，雅各也说谎，骗了他爸爸以扫，因为以扫看不见了；而到了创世纪三十七章，全家人都说谎，掩盖约瑟的死。这就是罪孽的例子，在家族中都有不诚实，说谎的现象，罪越来越严重。

另外一个例子是以利。撒母耳记上三章13至14节，以利做祭司不衷心，诅咒临到他家。“我曾告诉他必永远降罚与他的家、因他知道儿子作孽、自招咒诅、却不禁止他们。 所以我向以利家起誓说、以利家的罪孽、虽献祭奉礼物、永不能得赎去。” 第二章31节“ 日子必到，我要折断你的膀臂和你父家的膀臂，使你家中没有一个老年人。”33节“我必不从我坛前灭尽你家中的人。那未灭的必使你眼目干瘪，心中忧伤。你家中所生的人都必死在中年。”这里说到以利家历代家族在上帝的坛前做祭司的职位，会被拿走，家中的人会英年早逝，时常忧伤。这个历代的诅咒是拿不掉的。 创世纪中诺亚的儿子迦南受到诅咒，创世纪四章11节该隐和他的后裔也受到了诅咒。

那么如何帮助这些受历代罪孽和诅咒的人得自由呢？

首先，要了解耶稣成就了什么，如何应用在我们身上。加拉太书三章13，14节讲到，耶稣打破咒诅，使我们可以领受祝福。耶稣救赎我们脱离律法的咒诅，付清了所有的代价，拯救我们离开咒诅，我们不用负任何代价了。 因为他的作为，我们因信耶稣基督，得着亚伯拉罕的福，也得着圣灵。

耶稣打破咒诅的权势，让我们有资格领受福分，他也承担了我们的罪孽。以赛亚书五十三章5，6节“那知他为我们的过犯受害、为我们的罪孽压伤．因他受的刑罚我们得平安．因他受的鞭伤我们得医治。我们都如羊走迷、各人偏行己路．耶和华使我们众人的罪孽都归在他身上。”

耶稣承担了我们违背上帝律法的过犯，为我们的罪孽压伤，我们里面扭曲的，敌对神的本性，由他承担了。耶稣死在十字架上，承担了我们一切的罪孽，让罪孽的权势完全被打破。“他完全挪去这一切，打破咒诅的权势，让我们能够领受福分。”（歌罗西书四章13，14节）

我们怎样帮助人脱离咒诅呢？

我们需要求圣灵告诉我们真正的问题和根源在哪里，求圣灵帮助我们挪去根源，释放自由。留意倾听人的问题。圣灵可能会给你一个意念让你如何询问。记得我讲过的很生气的年青人，主把这个念头放进我心中。我的问题一开始就是，“什么时候开始的？他是不是长子？是否是非婚生子？”他对我的问题很吃惊，这些都是圣灵告诉我的。保持对圣灵的敏锐，听到圣灵对你说话。不要立即下结论。我工作时一定会准备一张纸，写下他的问题，他父母双方的问题，是否有历代的问题，等等。

如何处理历代罪孽和咒诅呢？

圣经有几处经文提到，利末记二十六章39，40节给我们一个如何帮助人得自由的线索。 上帝说“你们剩下的人、必因自己的罪孽、和祖宗的罪孽、在仇敌之地消灭。他们要承认自己的罪、和他们祖宗的罪、就是干犯我的那罪、并且承认自己行事与我反对 。” 所以，承认自己的罪孽很重要。承认自己的罪，也承认列祖的罪。（尼希米记一章6节及九章37节）（但以理书九章3节）

历代罪孽是什么？你自己也要省察有没有这样做。如拜偶像，父母拜偶像，你有没有做？你的罪要承认，父母的罪也要承认。首先诊断问题，然后跟他们谈，让他们看到如何得自由。

第一步，诊断问题。问圣灵，也问这个人。

第二步，解释基督为他们所成就的。他们已经得赎，脱离了咒诅，上帝希望他们蒙福。信耶稣，救赎就会临到。（加拉太书三章13，14节）

第三步，我们如何帮他们。一同祷告，承认耶稣基督。只有认同基督，才能得自由。其次，承认个人和家族中的罪孽，弃绝诅咒的权势，说出打破罪孽和诅咒能力的话来，求耶稣赦免，洗净你的罪孽，饶恕打开罪孽之门的家人。凭信心呼求主释放你，紧紧抓住他的话语。

最后，我觉得非常有帮助的是，教导他们将基督和十字架放在自己和家族中，在基督中你是新造的人。

如何为历代拜偶像的人做祷告呢？我会这样祷告，

第一个祷告，信心的宣告

“天父，我奉耶稣的名到你面前，我承认耶稣基督是我的救主，他的宝血赎回了我，远离一切咒诅，一切邪灵，所有的罪孽，罪恶得赎回，我属于耶稣。”

这个信心的宣告是非常有能力的。宣告我和耶稣的关系，是自由的根基。是对耶稣的信心，不是对祷告者的信心，使人得自由。

第二个祷告，认罪祷告

“主啊，我再次成为家族的代表，承认我们的罪孽，将我们家拜偶像的罪孽带到十字架前，我承认自己也参与过拜偶像。主啊，求你赦免我，洗净我的罪孽。”

第三，弃绝祷告

“奉耶稣的名，我弃绝，撤销所有历代的咒诅，所有跟邪灵的协议，我弃绝家族中所有的罪孽。

第四，饶恕祷告

“主啊，我饶恕我的家人，饶恕我的父母和所有为罪孽打开门的家人，我饶恕并祝福他们。”

这也是放弃对父母和家人的论断。

祷告之后，你就有开始服事他们。必须要对三种势力说话，

第一，对罪孽，咒诅说话，打破他们的权势

第二，对在这人身上的邪灵说话，命令吩咐邪灵出来，求圣灵指引带领。请记住，跟灵说话与刚才的祷告完全不一样。

“奉耶稣基督的名，我打破历代的咒诅，打破跟邪灵达成的协议，从生命中砍断这一切。”

“奉耶稣基督的名，我吩咐拜偶像的灵离开。”

圣灵会带领你知道有哪些灵在里面存在。

这个人需要做些什么呢？

他需要默想上帝的话，更新自己的想法，改变他的行为和反应。思想和行为必须同时改变。默想上帝的话是真实的，不是我赚得的福分，我只要相信耶稣基督，就能活出蒙福的生命。“ 基督既为我们受了咒诅、就赎出我们脱离律法的咒诅．因为经上记着、『凡挂在木头上都是被咒诅的。』 ”（加拉太书三章13节），所以，罪已经被打破了，我已经不是活在律法之下，我有蒙福的人生。“上帝叫亚伯拉罕的福、因基督耶稣可以临到外邦人、使我们因信得着所应许的圣灵。 ”（加拉太书三章14节）

有些人经历了服事，可是思想上还像受咒诅的人一样，而不是一个蒙福的人的想法。例如，一个人持续经历财务失败的咒诅，他心里就会相信，我是个失败者，不会管理金钱，开始思想失败，期待失败。他既然已经释放解脱了，他应该改变想法，默想我是个蒙福的人，上帝的恩惠已经临到我所做的一切事情上，感谢上帝我的金钱是蒙福的，我一切所需的，上帝都供给了。我要改变我的行为，活出蒙福的生命。外在不见得有很大的改变，重要的是内在的改变。开始将自己跟上帝说的相合，心里相信上帝所说的，外面就开始改变，相信上帝是丰盛的神，我要同意我所相信的，上帝的话是真实的。

如果按照以前的想法，十一奉献就蒙福，不十一奉献就受咒诅，就是仍然活在律法之下。很多基督徒活在律法下。他们需要思想，蒙福的人就是慷慨的人，给予是因为蒙福，而不是害怕受咒诅。有些人想用祷告改变问题，却不想继续在蒙福的路上更认识主，因为这需要付出更多努力和责任，跟从主的道，成为主的门徒，没有中间地带可行，要么就是回到过去的生活方式，要么就是转向新的生活方式，我们常常需要坚持。

当我们感到有把我们往回拉的压力时，该怎么办呢？我们需要强烈宣告，耶稣的宝血已经使我们脱离罪孽，我拒绝再回去，我是蒙福的人，新造的人。把想像真实的建立起来。

活出蒙福的生命是怎样的生命呢？不是被动的，不是有问题请人祷告，而是在基督里新造的人，蒙福的人，有神的灵，开始体贴圣灵而不像过去体贴肉体。蒙福的生命是白白赐给我的，我只需要相信并在生命中活出来。必须摈除旧有想法，上帝是真实的，我们要学会相信我真的改变了。

过去一个人活在罪孽，咒诅和捆绑里，现在在基督里成为了蒙福的人，把所有的咒诅砍断了。我要改变我的思维方式，我需要宣告：罪孽已经被打破，我是蒙福的。说出来并默想上帝与我同在，我的需要得满足，我有丰盛的生命，主是我的牧者，我必不致缺乏。心里对上帝的肯定，靠基督成为蒙福的人，所思所行就要像一个蒙福的人。即使有时在财务上有些压力，过去的想法又要回头，这时就要很刻意地把它们压下去，重新注目基督。不用怀疑上帝是否祝福我，而是要相信蒙福，得到安息。这是所有信徒内心的争战，每一次心灵得安息，就是胜利，这是一生需要经历的。人们都喜欢接受服事，得自由，可是如何改变，活得像自由的人，不是单单凭头脑，而是要凭心灵和信心。

听众提问一：请分享你如何长期保持对圣灵的敏锐？

回答：秘诀就是祷告。也需要在小事情上回应圣灵。圣灵给你的一点点感动，就要行出来。对任何小小的指引，就会变得越来越敏锐，越多领受。马可福音四章24节，耶稣说“你若有耳可听，回应的话，就越多的给你。”聆听圣灵，回应圣灵，使你更敏锐。

我每天的祷告中，会有一段完全敬拜，爱神的时间。我不断使其延长，默想上帝的同在，用方言祷告，单单爱神。我学会说方言，用意念唱歌，想见耶稣，在敬拜中将自己全人献上。我的祷告大约持续二十分钟。我刻意将生命中的不同领域降伏于他，对我生命说话，我相信上帝所做的。

我的祷告是这样的：

“主啊，今天我将我的听力，我的耳朵降伏于你，感谢主我今天能清楚听到你的声音。我的心对你的声音敏锐，主啊，我听到你对我说话，我立刻回应，感谢主给我倾听的心，听人的声音，能问问题，找出问题的根源。感谢主给我看见问题的能力，有眼可见，有耳可听，能分辨真情。”

我在宣告我将来想过的生活，根基就是圣经约翰一书“他如何，我们在世上也如何。”他现在如何，我们在世上也如何。耶稣听父的声音，他看见人的心，懂得人心。主如何，我们也如何。我清楚听见父的声音，我立刻回应，我听见人心中的声音，看见他们 的生命。即使你现在可能没有这样活，但这是你想要的生活。当我开始宣告我生命的运行，默想在基督里我是谁，相信我能做什么，就会在我生命里显现出来。

这是蒙福的生命，那些很努力要上帝帮助他们的人，如果完全在基督里，他一切所需的都有了。我们已经有恩膏，凡事都能明白，如果你认为你不知道所有的事，你需要更敏锐的察觉。

反省式的祷告，常常省察自己，认清真理。不是到了要服事时才开始做，而是要每天培养，在生命中慢慢建立彰显。我花了很多年的时间，看到上帝的真实运行，才了解到如何服事人。以前做的人都没有告诉我如何做，他们只是在做，我们觉得很震惊。我想做一位就像电视上表演的解密魔术师，把所有的秘诀都告诉你。你明白后，就觉得简单了。当你明白灵界的活力，明白你是新造的人，在基督里完全，他如何我也如何。圣经说效法耶稣的样式，不是在镜子中看到自己，而是在属灵上每天越来越像他。这不是努力得到的，而是要教导我们的心，相信真理，凭着默想和宣告，上帝与我同在。最后一点，“要习练的通达。” (希伯来书五章14节) 。要借着练习，才能通达你的敏锐。

听众提问二：公司的经理经常对她发怒，她能感觉到背后的势力。这个经理对别人都很好，只是针对她，除了祷告，还能如何应对这种情况。

回答：这可能是 灵里的反应。可能是对你，也可能是对你做事的方式。我们需要敞开，上帝可能希望我们更成熟。请求上帝帮助我们以善胜恶。罗马书告诉我们以善胜恶，不要为恶所胜。每次祷告，把这个人带到主前，看见这个人的脸，夺去他背后邪灵的势力。对邪灵说话，命令他放开这个人。操练你属灵的权柄，能够胜过他背后的邪灵。宣告奉耶稣的名你已有的权柄，以权柄的地位来说话。可以踩在蝎子，蛇的头上，没有什么可以伤害到我，攻击我，捆绑被愤怒控制的灵，巫术的灵。在祷告中保持灵里的能力。最后，求神的恩典，有能力爱这个人，可以与他好好相处。圣经说温柔的回答使怒气消散。用轻柔的声音向他澄清一些事情，他会平静下来回答你。

另一个策略就是直接敞开的跟对方讲明。

“我注意到你对我特别的生气，能告诉我原因吗？是我做错了什么吗？我希望能帮助你，不希望让你生气。”

找到最好的方式与难相处的人沟通，需要我们与上帝同工，处理好自己的灵命，学习与人沟通的技巧，讲轻柔的言语，用恩慈的心。

最后，经历过这种情况，你可能受到打击，如果想离开，你要说，主啊，我饶恕这个人，释放他，求你让爱回到我心中。阿门！

听众提问三：父母双方有非常强的拜偶像的灵，家人中有在庙宇中工作的，地位非常高。即使通过祷告，洁净房屋，仍深受困扰。要如何处理家中的这些邪灵的势力？

答：第一，首先要明白，耶稣打败了邪灵。在台湾，我发现大家觉得魔鬼，偶像，邪灵都很厉害。但耶稣已经胜过了他们！我并没有轻视邪灵压制的现状。耶稣基督献上的祭，比任何邪灵的势力更强大。

台中有一个很大的妈祖庙，我去之前，大家都很担心。我想“耶稣战胜了魔鬼！”在我们的信念中，总在描述邪灵的能力，实际上他们没有。我说赶快带我去台中，到庙里去看看怎么回事。我不受他们的恐吓。我与教会的同工开会，觉得他们是世界上最压抑的一群人。很多人得抑郁症，甚至死了。所以，在那里的第一个晚上，我的题目就是拜偶像。我直接对峙。当时，妈祖在街上游行，几千人跟在后面，我就特别讲到妈祖。整个气氛很紧张，我一直讲下去，不是对人说，而是对人背后的灵，宣告耶稣的权柄，宝血的能力。当晚有很多人得释放。第二天看新闻得知，前晚的庙中委员们投票打了起来，警察来到，赶走了所有人。所以，千万不要被他们威胁，要在基督里兴起，邪灵怕你。

有一个女孩从小就献给了一个印度的神，赛巴巴。她们家有一个很大的赛巴巴的坛。她经历了很大的释放后，我对她说，不用担心赛巴巴，你的卧室是你的地方，在你的房间抹油，宣告邪灵不准进入，这里是圣灵的地方，是我的圣所。播放敬拜音乐。其它房间属于你爸爸，你不要批评，不要反对他们。要孝敬父母。每天经过赛巴巴时，就方言祷告，宣告赛巴巴衰微，耶稣兴旺。一年后，她告诉我做了小组长，而赛巴巴就不太好。他们家因为财务的危机，从原来的公寓搬到了一个较小的公寓，没有坛了，只有一张照片。赛巴巴真的衰微了。 再后来，她带了三个小组，而赛巴巴呢？照片从墙上掉下来，摔坏了，现在换成了一个小小的照片。

重点是，你不要被邪灵吓倒。在灵里，你与基督一同坐在宝座上，他胜过一切执政掌权的，魔鬼在下面。这就是信念。

我鼓励你默想经文，建立信心。你跟基督联合，胜过魔鬼，你有权柄胜过这一切。当你对邪灵说话，他们就降伏离开。你要祷告，你的灵要兴起敬拜神，穿上上帝的军装，奉耶稣的名宣告，成为全家的代表，弃绝一切邪恶的偶像，捆绑所有邪灵的势力，不准他敌对你和你的家人。拿撒勒的耶稣已经胜过了魔鬼。不要敌对邪灵，要宣告耶稣的得胜。这两者是不一样的。真实的情况是：邪灵看起来很有势力，但耶稣拥有所有的权力，你也有这样的权力，你对自己的信心还不够，所有邪灵才会影响到你。

争战不在你以外，是在你里面。你要完全肯定自信，这是你强壮的时候。在罗马凯撒君王的殿中有很多的偶像，家中有拜偶像的聚会。千万不要被他吓倒，恐吓是他最大的武器。要抵挡，凭信心站立。这时可能有各式各样的事发生，这是与耶稣同行的路。

在新加坡城市丰收教会，年青人信主时，他们拜偶像的父母会打他们。陈义平牧师当时18岁，他们都是读中学的年青人，都受过父母的打。但是，最后他们的父母都得救了。康牧师也是，他父母是由我带领信主得救的。

把你们的痛苦和忧伤，恐惧和愤怒带给主，饶恕你的父母，求主给你更大的爱，成为最好的家族代表。虽然不容易，这就是我们在基督里要走的路，我们的挑战。阿门！

从邪术/秘术中得自由

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今天的主题是邪教的问题。什么是邪教？邪教对今天的年青人有什么影响？还有什么是巫术？如何帮助人, 释放他们得自由。我们曾经处理过很多这方面的问题，有一些经验，今天与大家一起分享，使大家能够更明白。

首先，上帝创造我们是要我们互相关联，这是神的设计。 让我们互相联接，互相依附。我们是灵，有魂住在我们身体里面。上帝创造我们让我们有能力与别人依附在一起，我们心里的渴慕，只有上帝才能满足。上帝设计我们跟他依附在一起，因为跟他的依附，他的性情，他的生命就在我们身上流露。哥林多前书六章17节说“但与主联合的，便是与主成为一灵。”

上帝设计我们跟他连结，是灵跟灵的结合，这样他的生命通过我们进入这个世界。上帝的设计包含了，第一，关系，跟他有亲密的连结。第二，扩展他的国。他造我们成为他的代表，使用他的权柄。

对亚当夏娃最开始的指令，神交给他们的任务的一部分就是管理看守花园。给他们一个治理的领域，在这个领域中他们有权柄。亚当得着属灵的权柄来代表神，上帝给他关于伊甸园的两条命令，第一，培育，发展，结果子。上帝栽培我们，就是要我们在我们的领域结果子。第二，看守这个领域，保护它不让人入侵或摧毁。

上帝一开始就设计我们跟他有关系连结，也赐给人权柄在地上代表他并扩展他的国。亚当接受的指令是栽培园子，保护它不受入侵，后来他打破了与神的这个关系，失去了他的权柄。当他打破了跟神的关系后，他就完全不设防，不在神的保护下了。在人类历史的第一个世纪时，邪灵就开始入侵人的世界，败坏人的文化。耶稣来，就是要恢复我们跟上帝的亲密，将权柄再次赐给我们。再就是给我们指令要生养众多，遍满这地。

做基督徒，就是要跟基督连结，跟随他。把他国度的影响带进世界，做他的大使，有权柄胜过任何的邪灵和受造物。我们看到耶稣的服事，他训练门徒，给他们权柄胜过邪灵。相关的经文有，马可福音三章14，15节，“他就设立十二个人，要他们常和自己同在，也要差他们去传道，并给他们权柄赶鬼。”大使命包括传福音，医治病人和有权柄胜过邪灵。路加福音十章17节中又讲“那七十个人欢欢喜喜的回来说，主阿，因你的名，就是鬼也服了我们。”19节又说，“我已经给你们权柄，可以践踏蛇和蝎子，又胜过仇敌一切的能力，断没有甚么能害你们。”

权柄这个词的意思是有合法授予的权力代表神说话，作为。耶稣说，“我给你权柄”，权柄在他手上，我们只是做他的代表。权柄不是我们的，是他授予我们的。我们有权柄代表基督，这权柄来自于我们跟基督的连结。这个权柄是有践踏蛇和蝎子，就是一切的仇敌的能力。

他用两个图画来描述邪灵，蛇和蝎子。蛇在旷野中咬人，把毒放入人的身体里面。蝎子有针。这两个都是折磨人的东西。虽然不是很清楚，但可以揣测，他指出这是两个不同的邪灵实体。蛇代表邪灵，蝎子代表恶魔般的灵，灵体等。神说给你权柄，有胜过一切的能力。这个能力也是使徒前传里面讲的能力，是一种超自然的能力。你有合法的权力，胜过所有邪灵的超自然能力，没有什么能伤害你。这是一句很好的需要记住的经文。当你帮人释放，如有一点胆怯，记住，没有什么能伤害你的。

我们现在来看邪教。申命记十八章中有提到邪教。圣经中没有很清楚的提到这些邪灵从哪里来，有很多不同的看法。有些人认为他们是堕落的天使，我对此也不是很确定。他们被称为邪灵，一定是灵体，他们的意图也一定是邪恶的。在创世纪第六章中，有一些天使放弃上帝给他们的地位，开始以人的形态与女子发生关系，他们生下的后裔就称为伟人，他们都是非常狂野，凶残的一群，他们来败坏这地。他们的败坏如此严重，最后上帝就用洪水来毁灭全地。他们一半是天使，一半是人，可能成为邪灵后，继续留在地上骚扰人类。

各个文化背景的人都知道灵的世界。圣经以外其它的一些书中对此也有涉及，如以诺书，描述一群天使叫做守望天使，他们被指定专门指令人，可是有一群放弃自己的地位，败坏了上帝给他们的角色，与女人发生关系，并教导人邪教的东西。上帝抓住他们直到最后审批的日子。从那时起，邪教的内容就进入了人类的文化中。迦南就有一个充满了邪教的文化。迦南地的国家参与邪教很深，有各式各样变态的作为。申命记十八章9节，“你到了耶和华你神所赐之地，那些国民所行可憎恶的事，你不可学着行。”上帝警告这些人，他们要进入的迦南地，那里的人行各样上帝憎恶的行为，指的都是邪教的作为。

邪教的意思是隐密的，遮盖的，隐藏的。因此邪教的活动是在灵界寻求知识和资讯，或从灵界寻求能力，寻求保护。邪教的两个主流，一个是占卜，就是从灵界寻求资讯的。另一个是巫术，从灵界寻求能力。他们一定与拜偶像相连。

上帝的百姓所要面对的是，要进入的国家里的人都被这些邪恶的行为败坏了，那里没有释放，因此他们要摧毁这些国家，因为那里的人都被邪灵充满了。邪教的能力是隐秘的，能力的源头是隐藏的。参与邪教的人可能感到自己跟邪灵有连接，他们被欺骗了，他们以为自己得着灵的能力，实际上是邪灵在他们身上才有能力。当人参与邪教，他以为灵在帮他，实际上邪灵是靠他们得着能力的。最终，邪灵会向你讨价钱，所有的魔法都是要付代价的。在神的国里，所有的代价先跟你讲明了，在黑暗的世界则是反过来的，先享受再付代价，而代价远远超过你想像的。

上帝列出很多他们的做法，都跟拜偶像和邪教有关。邪教的问题是它会渐进式的让你上瘾。一旦进去，就很难脱身了。当上帝的百姓进入迦南地，发现当地的人拜偶像，还有各样交鬼的行为。申命记十八章10至14节说“你们中间不可有人使儿女经火，也不可有占卜的，观兆的，用法术的，行邪术的； 用迷术的，交鬼的，行巫术的，过阴的。凡行这些事的，都为耶和华所憎恶。因那些国民行这可憎恶的事，所以耶和华你的神将他们从你面前赶出。你要在耶和华你的神面前作完全人。因你所要赶出的那些国民，都听信观兆的，和占卜的；至于你，耶和华你的神从来不许你这样行。”

这里列出的行为不容易理解。各个文化有不同的变化方式。每一个行为都有属灵的能力在后面。第一个讲到的就是把儿女献给偶像，有一个特定的偶像叫摩洛，他是一个很大的铜偶像，手臂伸出来可以在上面点火，烧到很烫后，人在旁边打鼓叫喊，然后把孩子扔到偶像身上烧掉。对上帝来讲这太可怕了。可以看出那后面邪灵的性情，就是偷你的孩子。而今天最像这种行为的就是堕胎，有同样的灵在后面运行。

还有占星，观看天上的星宿。我简短的为大家解释一下。圣经告诉我们“诸天诉说他的荣耀”（诗篇十九篇）。讲到天，讲到神的话。在神的道写下来之前，上帝可能是对以诺说话，借着看天上的星宿，看到记载的上帝的荣耀。他就把星星分成十二个星座，用不同的图画连起来便于记忆。每一个星座都有一个名字，他们代表上帝救赎计划的一部分，有女人，蛇，人的堕落，然后一直到基督的降临，胜过蛇，建立了他的国度。每一个星座的名字都是鼓励的信息，帮助人们理解更大的图画，从创世到基督再来。问题是你从哪里开始，如人面狮身，从处女座的女人开始，到狮子座。

在描述这些星星时，上帝记载了人类的历史，人子来，救赎计划等等，全部记录在这个故事中。星星是没有能力的，只是上帝给人一个代代相传的信息，让他们有对将来得救赎的盼望。可是经过时间，被扭曲了，人们开始相信星星对我们的命运有影响，完全扭曲了真相。有关星座的这本书的作者叫做Bullinger。大家可以查看一下。

整个占星术打开了门，让人进入邪教里面，使人上瘾。人寻找属灵的源头，来指引他们生命的方向。他们依附在错误的事情上，是上帝指引我们的生命，是上帝对我们的生命有计划，不是星星。我鼓励大家读这本书，会非常惊讶上帝借由天上的星空传递救恩的信息。诗篇十九章说诸天传讲神的道，然后借着神的道给我们救恩的信息。

整个系列有占卜的，魔术的，行秘术的等。邪教可以分成两组，第一组，占卜。使徒行传第十六章16至18节中讲到的一个占卜的女子。“后来、我们往那祷告的地方去．有一个使女迎着面来、他被巫鬼所附、用法术、叫他主人们大得财利。他跟随保罗和我们、喊着说、这些人是至高　神的仆人、对你们传说救人的道。他一连多日这样喊叫、保罗就心中厌烦、转身对那鬼说、我奉耶稣基督的名、吩咐你从他身上出来．那鬼当时就出来了。”这个女子身上就有占卜的灵，今天就称她为灵媒。灵媒现今很受欢迎，他们可以讲到你生命中的一些事情，还有未来，他们就是在模仿我们的知识和言行。这里的这个女子算命后可以得到财力，即别人付钱给她算命，这样他们就是与邪灵交易，等于行淫。

利未记二十章2至6节中上帝警告百姓不要跟邪灵打交道，行淫。5，6节中写道“我就要向这人和他的家变脸、把他和一切随他与摩洛行邪淫的人、都从民中剪除。人偏向交鬼的、和行巫术的、随他们行邪淫、我要向那人变脸、把他从民中剪除。”上帝说任何交鬼或与家族熟悉的灵打交道的人，就是跟他们行邪淫。意思就是有付钱，有与邪灵连结依附，就像妓女的行为。保罗在哥林多前书讲“你出卖了自己。”你以为在买资讯，而实际上是出卖了自己，把自己卖给邪灵，与他连结在一起了。所有参与邪教的东西都跟邪灵有关，人与邪灵结合在一起，邪灵就有权力进入你的生命。

灵媒就是邪灵的管道，他们失了魂，邪灵附在他们身上，给他们一些资讯。在圣经中很明确的说参与邪灵是要判死刑的。我们回到使徒行传十六章，这个女子是有占卜的灵，那里整个地区都因占卜出名，有人从各地专门来这里算命，这里现在是希腊的一个地方。人们专门在那里等候传达神谕的人。传达神谕的人是灵媒。大家付钱给他得到一些资讯。这个使女被污鬼所附，英文中说“拥有”不是说“所附”，原文讲好像穿上了一件衣服，邪灵像衣服一样穿在了身上，她披上的不是圣灵，而是邪灵。占卜，巫术的原文意思是蟒蛇，就是当时他们工作的那个地区。这个蟒蛇的灵绕着她，对她说话，这种灵叫做家族熟悉的灵，就是说那些占卜算命的灵媒都是借着熟悉的灵运作，这个灵跟她沟通，对她的耳朵说话。

这个灵知道什么呢？他们知道你的未来吗？圣经没有明说，我的结论是他们不知道你的未来，你的未来隐藏在上帝的手中。可是他们能看见上帝能带给你什么。例如但以理书十章中，但以理祷告时，上帝派天使把信息带给他，但邪灵抵挡他。邪灵知道你是谁，一直在观察你，好像有邪恶的网络到处可以连结。这种熟悉的灵，可以跟你沟通与你有关的讯息，因为他一直在观察你和你的家庭，这个很难理解，我们一直是受到监视的。那些灵一直监视着你的行为，注意到你是多么可预测的。邪灵就把这些资讯传给灵媒，很可能很真实，模仿上帝知识的言语，很多灵媒有很强很真确的知识的言语，可是资讯的源头却是邪灵。因为邪灵给你这些资料，让你开始相信他，而当他跟你讲到你的未来时，你就完全同意他的话，他就有能力操纵你的未来了。有灵界的参与，一定会打开门，让邪灵进来。是自己给邪灵合法的权力让他进入你的生命中。

这个女孩有占卜的灵，使徒行传十六章17节这里讲，“他跟随保罗和我们、喊着说、这些人是至高神的仆人、对你们传说救人的道。” 他说的是正确的。但是带来的影响是，保罗心里面感觉厌恶，厌烦，搅扰，甚至拦阻他服事，这个灵制造了保罗服事的困难。一连多日，直到保罗直接面对她。一旦与邪灵对峙，就造成很大的骚动，最后被丢到牢里了。

占卜是寻求邪灵以得着隐藏的知识，有各式各样的做法；华人特别对占卜上瘾，都想知道未来。不是跟上帝同行，信靠上帝，而是去找邪灵了解这些资料。这些活动包括：找灵媒算命；找巫术板，上面有些字母的板子，大家就问它问题；找熟悉的灵；找交鬼的，那人被鬼附，灵通过他说话；或者占星的；或者塔罗牌；算数字的；看星象的等等。每一个文化有他们自己的模式，最关键的是能力的源泉来自哪里？既有属灵的力量就有属灵的源头。如果源头是邪恶的，他的影响也是邪恶的，上帝禁止我们参与其中。有些人只是好奇进入了占卜的领域，却打开了整个区域。很不幸，最近很多电影都是各式各样占卜的东西，就像哈利波特，都是占卜的。他们很多的灵感来自真实在做的行为，是很引诱人的。“得到一些秘密”，“知道未来”，“我会发财”，“我会幸福”，大家都想知道这些事，如果找邪灵，他就有合法的权力进入我们的生命。圣经说参与占卜，就是跟邪灵行淫，玷污了自己。任何参与算命的人都被污秽了，他们需要弃绝灵媒跟他讲的话以及后面的邪灵。

不可以既与上帝同行，又带着魔鬼跟你讲的话。从占卜中得释放的根基是悔改离开，承认你的罪，神憎恶的就是罪，也需要弃绝与邪灵的依附，也要弃绝所有邪灵给的话。不能服事两个主，不能一脚踏两船。我们的生命是放在主的手上，回应他的带领，让他的应许指引我们。如果我们去邪灵的领域寻找，就会慢慢的被吸进黑暗中。有些人非常上瘾，如果没有看一下占星或算一下命，一整天都不用做事了。

最后，你看到这个鬼从女孩身上出来后，她就没有这个能力了，资讯的源头是邪灵。有一次教会结束后，有一个人来找我，请我为他的朋友祷告，他的朋友现在的生活非常糟糕，想去找一个算命的人，我就让他来找我。我对他说，“听说你想找一个算命的？”他说，“是的。”我对他说，“上帝知道你的未来，你应该学习仰望他，让我为你祷告吧。”我求主给我一个清楚，明确，正确的话语，跟他讲。他谢过我之后就走了。我知道他还会去找算命的，就做了一个简短的祷告，“主啊，我知道他要去算命，求你让算命的话困惑。”一个星期之后，他又来找我，决志信主了。他说，“我去找了算命的，根本就是浪费钱，我付了五十块。她跟我讲的乱七八糟，根本听不懂。”他就这样信了耶稣。

我们需要学会依靠上帝的启示，不能把这些属灵的领域抛弃给灵媒，我们要努力在生命中得着上帝的启示。这些先知性的话语，都是上帝给教会的恩赐，灵媒只是替代品，真正的宝贝是圣灵的恩赐。这对教会是一种羞辱。让人觉得这些灵媒这么行，很有影响力，而教会很难接受这些灵里简单的东西。

现在我们来看巫术。在整个邪教中，巫术是非常重要的部分。巫术是从邪灵得着能力，这个能力胜过人，或者胜过环境。巫术就是追求能力，是参与到邪灵中，从灵界将超自然的能力带进世界来。旧约出埃及记第七章10节说，“摩西亚伦进去见法老，就照耶和华所吩咐的行，亚伦把杖丢在法老和臣仆面前，杖就变作蛇。” ，这很壮观的。想像我拿一个木杖一丢，变成了蛇，大家一定尖叫逃出去了。这是很吓人的。可是术士做了什么呢？11节说“ 于是法老召了博士和术士来，他们是埃及行法术的，也用邪术照样而行。 ”英文经文的意思是他们按他们念的咒或秘密的邪术而行，注意这是秘密的法术。现在有两条蛇了，可是摩西的蛇把另一条蛇吞了，他拿起来又变成了杖，这就展现超自然的能力了。

上帝的能力被行巫术的术士模仿抄袭。之所以能做到是因为他们参与连结了邪教的领域。当我们讲到巫术，讲到的是真实的能力，邪灵的能力，那些跟邪灵接触的人真的是有能力。任何文化都有经历，看到这些事，特别是在土著的地方，那些巫师有能力控制人和整个地区。埃及的这个巫师有三次模仿上帝的能力，22节“埃及行法术的、也用邪术照样而行．”就是把水变成了血。八章7节中“行法术的也用他们的邪术照样而行，叫青蛙上了埃及地。”上帝打的仗是针对埃及的这些神，真正的冲突是谁是真神，谁是假神。所有十灾都是要面对埃及人拜的神，前面三个神迹，这些巫师都可以模仿，把木杖变为蛇，很吓人；把水变成血，也很吓人；把青蛙叫到地上来；他们在物件和动物上有能力，改变这些东西。

你观察世界各地的邪教，会发现有些文化中非常害怕巫师，因为他们身上带着能力，不是他们自己的能力，而是邪灵的能力。有些文化，会让自己隐形，他们可以改变形状样貌，可以变成动物。我们最近的一些电影，好莱坞拍的电影很多就是巫术做的事，很多电影来源于巫术。人可以从一个地方变到另一个地方；突然消失又从另一个地方冒出来；或变成一种动物；这些人能做的事情非常了不起。这些电影其实是有真实来源的，通过好莱坞的包装来吸引人，这些能力都是很真实的。人们受到他们的引诱，被他们控制，最后被他们毁灭。

行巫术的喜欢跟有能力的人在一起，使徒行传十三章6节中讲，“经过全岛，直到帕弗，在那里遇见一个有法术假充先知的犹太人，名叫巴耶稣，或耶稣的儿子。”他就是进入地狱之门。7节8节中说“这人常和方伯士求保罗同在，士求保罗是个通达人。他请了巴拿巴和扫罗来，要听神的道。 只是那行法术的以吕马，（这名翻出来就是行法术的意思)敌挡使徒，要叫方伯不信真道。”这个法师就像一个地狱之门，他运用邪灵的能力，想要影响罗马的这个官，他使用魔术和巫术，抵挡真道的传播。保罗处理的方式是，让上帝的能力降临在他们当中，让这人马上瞎了眼。11节“现在主的手加在你身上．你要瞎眼、暂且不见日光。他的眼睛立刻昏蒙黑暗、”这就显明了上帝的能力，摆脱巫师的控制，让这些人都相信上帝的能力。保罗就跟当时摩西一样，他显明神的能力胜过一切行法术的。

使徒行传第八章9至11节，“有一个人名叫西门，向来在那城里行邪术，妄自尊大，使撒玛利亚的百姓惊奇．。无论大小都听从他，说这人就是那称为神的大能者。 他们听从他，因他久用邪术，使他们惊奇。”这个人在行邪术，对人有很大的影响力，人们都在他的咒底下，在他的影响之下，他的影响是邪恶的。 圣经里形容他自己妄自尊大。巫术中的人，非常自我为中心，不断展现自己的重要性。当腓利来了之后，他受洗信主了。他看到了使徒身上的能力，他就给他钱想得到这样的能力。19节“把这权柄也给我，叫我手按着谁，谁就可以受圣灵。”他渴望有能力，可能是他里面的苦毒在驱动他。“彼得说，你的银子和你一同灭亡吧。因你想神的恩赐是可以用钱买的。 你在这道上无分无关，因为在神面前，你的心不正。 你当懊悔你这罪恶，祈求主，或者你心里的意念可得赦免。 我看出你正在苦胆之中，被罪恶捆绑。”（使徒行传第八章20至23节）西门还是用旧有的方式思想，他明白灵里的交易，付代价得能力。他想我付了代价就应该有能力了。彼得不肯被钱收买，直接找到了问题的根源，“苦毒”。他是被人拒绝和苦毒的一个人，所以他才要能力；他还被罪恶捆绑，里面有自我为中心的自私，生命被扭曲了。

巫术是非常真实的，它后面的能力是邪恶的，人参与其中就是与邪灵行邪淫了。这是渐进的，上瘾的。当今人们参与的巫术法术有哪些呢？其中一种是魔术师咒语。任何人为得到能力跟邪灵达成的任何协议，就是将生命向邪灵打开了。不可避免的是，在邪教里一定有灵里的交易，即一定要牺牲一些东西。当人参与其中时，一定先跟邪灵达成协议，邀请邪灵进入他的生命，他们要进行交换，有时会流血。当我们帮助人时要留意，他们既然流了血，跟邪灵的连结就到了另一个层面了。

另一个常见的就是幻想的电脑线上游戏。很多线上游戏都有巫师作为娱乐消遣；有些游戏是角色扮演，你选一个角色扮演，你在线上就有了另一个完全不一样的身份。有些人就扮演巫师的角色在里面玩，对人施咒，跟不同的人打仗，让自己能力越来越强。这很容易让人上瘾。

马太福音第五章28节，“凡看见妇女就动淫念的、这人心里已经与他犯奸淫了。” 耶稣说你若带着淫念的眼光看一个女人，你就是跟她行淫了。行淫这个罪是从心里开始的，一个人可以犯了淫乱罪却没有身体上的接触。主在这里让我看见一个人长期沉浸在电脑游戏中，想像在其中得着能力，就打开门让邪术进来。刚开始可能只是为了娱乐消遣，一打开门，就让巫术进来了，这就造成问题了。可不可能打开电脑被鬼附呢？随便看一看就不可能，但花很长时间的话，就有可能了。最容易分辨的就是看上不上瘾。

在城市丰收教会，我有一次讲到一个年青人，他对游戏上瘾，无法抛开，不断被吸引回到游戏中。这个人出来了，后来我们发现他玩的是叫魔兽的游戏，他讲出他玩的角色，我叫他弃绝这个游戏和他在里面的身份时，当他祷告时，巫术的灵在他脸上发作，他整个人就倒在了地上。他在玩这种游戏的时候，打开生命接触到这些巫术。我们呼召时，有两百人走出来接受辅导，有很大的释放。这个很神奇。这些人白天在神学院读神学，晚上回家在电脑前玩巫术。让我们警觉的是，他们用伪装的方式，让人们以为它是无害的。它是旧问题有了新包装。

另外一个巫术的入口就是吸毒。新约中讲到“邪术”跟“药师”是同一个词。有些药会让人失去自我，有人因为生命中的一些痛苦，就对药物上了瘾。不是解决问题的根源，而是用药物压抑它。对药物上瘾就拦阻了你跟上帝建立关系，同时也没有很好的解决问题。人因药物上瘾而产生的幻觉都很类似。我曾为一个人祷告，他因医生开的处方药上瘾，他过去一直有醉酒和吸毒的历史，放弃这些后，医生给他开的止痛药又让他产生了幻觉，看到很多蜘蛛从墙上往他身上跳。当我们针对这个巫术把它赶出去后，他的幻觉和身上的疼痛都不见了。因此这种让人上瘾的药也会打开门让邪术的灵进来。

与这个相关的另一种模式是使用迷奸药，让女孩昏迷后与其发生性行为。任何人受到这种药物的影响，都没法反应，也没法挣扎逃脱，这种药物的背后是有巫术的能力的。有一个人来找我说，“我好像碰到这种情况。”我为这个女孩祷告，命令巫术的灵离开她。换句话说，另一个人用药物把这个能力加在她身上。她有很大的释放。

另一个我在马来西亚碰到的例子。这个女子子宫一直出血，整个腹部都肿了起来，后来我才知道，她被下了咒。什么是下咒？她说，有一个人养了小鬼，与小鬼交换能力，他拿了一种药粉去敲这位女生的门，当她一打开门，就将药粉吹在她的脸上，她立刻就进入灵的影响，他性侵这位女子后就离开了。当这位女孩清醒后，就开始了内部出血，腹部肿胀的情况出现了，无法停止。我们就为这个人祷告，砍断她跟那个人的所有连结，赶走邪灵，她就得医治了。

有各式各样的巫术，如武术有时也会打开门让邪灵进来。马可福音五章4节，那人有超级的能力，能把铁链弄断，这背后是有邪灵的力量。我有个儿子那时想去学武术，我跟他讲了这些进入邪灵的入口，一开始只是为了锻炼身体，慢慢的进行打坐，让生命进入灵界获取更大的能力，这样就被鬼附上了，你得着的能力是邪灵的能力。你的教练到时就会要求你这样做了。他接受武术课程一段时间后，这个就真的发生了，那时他就不学了。所以武术慢慢引你进入打坐的境界，然后进入灵里了。

对于这些能让邪灵进来的入口我们一定要很小心。有些音乐也可能打开门让邪灵进来。从美国的一个校园枪击案中，发现有两个关键因素。第一，枪手在服用抗忧郁的药。第二，他很喜欢重金属的音乐。里面很强烈的节奏和很恶心的歌词让人进入一种疯狂的境界。这不是唯一的理由。有一些音乐背后是有邪灵在，可能打开门，当然拜偶像一定会让邪灵进来。哥林多前书十章12至21节，那些人向偶像献祭而不是献给神，拜偶像为邪灵开门，在庙里向偶像献上自己做干儿子，干女儿的也一样。

我们有时看到参与邪教的人，在过程中一定会有血的因素，我们一定要非常警觉。利未记十七章14节中，圣经说生命在血中。邪灵要让人跟他达成协议，要跟你做交易，其中的一种方式叫歃血为盟。歃血为盟本是由上帝开始的，后来魔鬼了解了它的能力，就是祭坛献祭的能力，他就鼓励人筑坛献祭。列王记下三章27节，以色列正取得极大的胜利，乘胜追赶他们的仇敌，突然战争急转直下，他们敌对的王把自己的儿子献上为祭了，那个国家就极力地抵抗以色列。换句话说，那个王用自己儿子的血，祈求邪灵的能力。当你面对参与邪教的人，一定要问他有没有歃血为盟的行为，邀请邪灵或砍伤自己。这一定要打破才行。

歌罗西书一章14节说是耶稣的宝血赎回我们，耶稣的血比任何献祭更有能力。彼得前书一章18节，我们是耶稣的宝血赎回的。我们要用耶稣的宝血和宝血所成就的。简单的说，生命在血中，流了血，就形成了盟约。上帝的计划是借着耶稣的宝血让我们跟他立约，而邪灵让我们用我们的血跟邪灵立约。我们最近为一个人祷告，他的父母取了他的血带到庙里献给偶像，他自己没去但他的血被拿去了，我们需要留意到这样的事情。借着血可以释放很大的能力，耶稣的宝血释放很大的能力。世界各地行巫术时，会有流血献祭，动物的血或人的血，他们身上才得着超自然的能力。

面对邪教时一定要留意，先询问他们怎么结合在一起的，有没有流血的事情，或者献祭的事。我很惊讶，有很多年青人跟邪灵歃血为盟。他们需要弃绝这样的协议和跟他流血的事。

一个人在邪教的压抑下，会有哪些症状？我们应看什么？有哪些迹象可以帮助我们认清问题？例如，晚上会有不寻常的声音，通常会是邪教的行动；幻听，这个人听到不同的声音，有声音对他说话，通常是邪灵在活动的证据；或是物件自己在移动，门会自动开关，灯会一暗一明，很吓人；或是有灵显现出来，这是很严重的问题；或是身体上感觉受到性侵害，却没有人在现场，这个比你想象的更常发生，有一种灵，特别喜欢性侵男人或女人，性侵男人和女人的灵分别有不同的名字，叫succubus 和incubus，他们都是性方面的邪灵，他们会在半夜骚扰人，甚至把人钉在床上，这个人的感觉就是被人强暴或性骚扰一样，但是却看不到任何人，这都是邪灵的作为。很多人不敢讲，觉得很丢脸，而且别人也不相信他。所以你听到有人这样说或自己感觉到这样，要先问清楚情况。如果他说出来，要愿意相信。

如果一个人常有性念头的折磨，也可能是邪灵的侵扰，很沉重压抑的感觉。当有恩膏的聚会时，非常焦躁不安，没有办法专注在属灵的事上，非常困惑。这些的症状可能都显示有巫术参与其中。我们要看清楚还要问他你生命中经历了什么，人可能有各式各样的入口。

我们接下来来看如何服事人，哪些步骤可以释放人自由。

第一，求圣灵帮助我们。我们需要他揭露根源，我们需要来自于圣灵的能力。

第二，诊断，找到问题到底在哪里。你需要问问题，“你有什么样的情况”，“它如何影响你？”“什么时候开始的？”这告诉你是否是历代的问题。“开始时有发生什么事情吗？”“是你做了什么还是你家中发生了什么事情？”“还是有人对你做了什么？”这个人必须要敞开，诚实。我们一定要找到问题的源头，“你有没有向邪灵打开门？还是你们家其他人打开这个门的？”

给大家讲一个例子。有一个女生家里闹鬼，她打电话来给我，让我帮她清理鬼屋。我去到那里，这个女人和她的男朋友，她的女儿和女儿的男朋友都在那里，非常害怕，他们听到奇怪的声响，根本不敢睡觉，吓死了。我跟他们讲话也都听到那种声音，我知道有这种声音了，可是我要知道它们是怎么来的，我就开始问问题。要找到问题的根源，需要发问也需要聆听，然后再发问。要有聆听的态度，听这个人，也要听圣灵，他会告诉你要问 什么。我就问他们，“这样有多久了？”他们说“两个星期。”“两个星期前发生什么事？”“不知道，啊，我女儿和她的男朋友搬进来了。”我弄清楚了，他们来之前没有问题，他们搬进来后问题就出现了，所以是这男女两人把问题带进这个房子。我就问这两个男女“你们搬进来这个房子以前，在你们原来的房子有没有这样的问题？”他们回答“有。”“所以是你们把他带进来的。”“应该是吧。”所以就是跟着你们其中之一来的了，要知道是男的还是女的把他带进来的。“你原来住的房子就有这个问题吗？”“没有。”我又问“你们两个人有没有参与过邪教的事？”“没有。”“你们两个人之前，有没有哪一个跟参与过邪教的人上过床的？”那个女孩说“我前一个男朋友。”“你们的关系是不欢而散吗？”“是的。”“他有没有诅咒你？”“有的。”“因为你跟那个男的发生性关系，你们成为一体，邪灵就有权力进入你的生命。因为性关系和他的诅咒，邪灵就临到你和你家里，你又把它带进这个房子，你离开它就会走了，它是跟在你身上的。”她说“我很震惊，我想着只是房子闹鬼，从来没有问过这鬼是怎么来的。”我说“你的罪让邪灵有门进来。我带领这些人信主，弃绝他们跟邪灵的关系和协议，吩咐邪灵离开，这房子就安静下来了，他们也安静了，一对男女又搬回去了。

你比较容易怪罪这个闹鬼的房子，而不肯为问题负责。房子会不会闹鬼？会的。但通常是有人邀请邪灵进来，可能是交鬼或邪术的事情，或家中发生灾难，不然邪灵不会进来的。所以要注意诊断问题的根源。如果你发现这个人在邪教邪术上有参与，会有很多问题，你需要发问找到问题的根在哪里。你问“问题什么时候开始的？”“当时发生什么事情？”就可以帮助你找到这些线索。认清这是历代的问题还是个人的问题。他们自己做的吗？一定要诊断，到底是什么原因让邪灵进来。

第三，需要跟他们解释基督的作为，简短的解释。他们需要明白耶稣宝血的大能，神的能力，他的权柄胜过所有邪灵。不用很长，但一定要跟他们介绍耶稣。耶稣才释放我们，耶稣才胜过邪灵。就像我跟你讲的一样，简单分享圣经，之后跟他们解释，得释放他们该做些什么，该怎么做。解释他们的部分，他们应该做的包括：认罪悔改。这是根基的部分，你邀请邪灵进来了，就要承认，请耶稣饶恕你；其次，领受饶恕并饶恕别人。参与邪教的人，常常是心里有很深的苦毒的，家庭关系的破碎，痛苦的感情，心里的苦毒，愤怒和怀恨。这些根源造成他们参与邪教，全都要挖出来。第三，他们需要弃绝所有跟邪灵的协议。弃绝就是撤销，说出话来撤销跟邪灵的协议。因为你邀请了他进来，现在你就要命令他离开。你跟他达成的协议，现在就要打破它了。话语很重要，不是嘴巴随便说说，而是要真心说出来。

我们告诉他们这就是你要做的部分，你抓住这个罪是无法得自由的，你仍然不饶恕就在捆绑里了，如果你不抵挡魔鬼，他就紧紧抓住你。你可以跟他们一起看雅各书四章7节，“故此你们要顺服神，务要抵挡魔鬼，魔鬼就必离开你们逃跑了。”顺服神就是悔改饶恕，选择上帝做你能力的源头，不要找魔鬼。当我们为他们祷告，他们要主动抵挡邪灵。这就是预备好这个人。

然后，跟他解释你要做什么，让他明白服事是怎么样的。我会带你做一个祷告，你跟着我说，祷告最后的时候，我会打破捆绑，吩咐邪灵出来，我不是对你说话，而是对邪灵说话。我不要你再祷告了，单单抵挡，命令这个邪灵出来的时候，你可能会咳嗽或吐气出来。

现在所有的步骤都讲完了，很简单很有逻辑。现在就带他们做这个祷告。祷告很简单，通常是有这样的部分：

第一，承认对基督的信。宣告对基督的信心。

第二，弃绝一切跟邪灵的协议。

第三，求上帝饶恕他。认罪，求上帝饶恕，领受上帝的饶恕。或者他们需要饶恕别人。他们进入邪教，常常是因为他们自己的苦毒。他们要触摸耶稣，主动的抵挡魔鬼。

当你做这个弃绝和祷告时，要记得是否有盟约需要打破，这时候他们会告诉你了。另外一个要注意他的身上有没有佩戴一些与邪教有关的东西，手腕上或脖子上，这可能成为一个释放的拦阻，有时那些物件一解除，马上就得释放了。每一个字句和顺序并不重要，祷告时要一直聆听圣灵的声音。我带大家一起做这个祷告，让你们看到祷告是怎样做的，就是我们刚刚讲到的部分组合的，当我祷告，我会在灵里面跟着圣灵的水流来做，因此这个字眼和顺序你可以改变。

我会这样带他们，

第一宣告信心，这个很重要，就是宣告我站在主这边。我坚持相信他所做的一切。这些话很重要。

“亲爱的天父，我奉耶稣的名到你面前，承认耶稣是我的救主，耶稣宝血赎回了我，离开一切咒诅，一切邪灵，所有邪教的势力。我得赎回，我属于耶稣。”

这就是认同耶稣。

第二，我们可能会说

“主啊，我承认有参与这样的活动，我承认我的家人有参与这样的活动，求你饶恕我，我领受你的饶恕。从我心中饶恕那些伤害我的人，特别饶恕我的父母，现在我弃绝所有与邪灵达成的协议，我弃绝所有的邀请，完全弃绝撤销它们；我弃绝所有用血达成的协议，我弃绝撤销它们；我弃绝所有灵媒对我说的话，弃绝它们；我弃绝所有历代的咒诅，所有我的家人跟邪灵的协议。”

整个祷告中，任何可能的协议，全部撤销。当你诊断时，就知道该怎么祷告了。

“主啊，我现在触摸你，求你释放我自由，撒旦离开我的生命，奉耶稣的名。”

这个祷告做完了，你才带他祷告，他可能就发作了，你仍然要掌控，不要受到惊吓，命令这个灵安静下来。

接下来，第三，你就要操练你的权柄了，开始释放了。记得上帝赐我们权柄可以践踏蛇和蝎子。你需要这样做，首先，打破这些协议。好像他们之前讲过的话，现在你要撤销这些话。或者想像邪灵的绳索，现在你要把它砍断。

“奉耶稣的名，我打破与历代邪灵达成的协议，我打破它们，我打破捆绑家庭的协议，我打破你跟邪灵达成的血约，打破跟你所说的话语和虚假的命定，打破所有跟邪灵的依附。”

不是每次讲的字都一样，可是你可以看到这个水流是按照发生的情况，你祷告时，圣灵就会给你该打破的部分，你只要试试看就可以了。不要依靠方法，你要了解怎样做，了解原则和过程，依靠圣灵告诉你该讲的话。如果有帮助，就把祷告列出来。

首先，奉基督的名，打破这个捆绑。之后，命令邪灵，直接对这个人里面说话，命令邪灵出来，不断的 施压，从你灵里面开始说话，开始兴起，吩咐他离开。所以，你要培养灵里的人，让你的话语带着灵里的力量。不是看说话有多大声，而是要带着信心祷告。想像你好像站在洞穴的门口，对着里面的动物说，“我命令你出来。”你的焦点就是要命令邪灵出来。注意改变的发生，有时一点反应都没有，你就要继续施压，慢慢的就要孵出来了。我发现讲出邪灵的名字会有帮助。当我祷告没有反应发生时，我就讲出邪灵的名字，他就反应出来了。

你要为什么祷告呢？可能有占卜的灵，污鬼的灵，魔法的灵，苦毒的灵，死亡的灵，仇恨的灵，这些都可能包含在里面。你要对这些东西说话，命令它们离开，从灵里不断的对它们施压，要一直依靠圣灵的帮助。

有时它们会发作，有各式各样的发作方法，很多人会尖叫。如果一直尖叫，说明他没有得释放。就像在表演一样，所以不要让他一直这样做。让这人停下来不要尖叫，开始抵挡。还是要对圣灵敏锐，如果这人一直尖叫，我会跟他说停下来，停下来，你要跟我合作，抵挡这个灵。他们可能会尖叫，会抖动，也可能会很暴力，不要害怕，他们的眼睛好像冒着火光一样看着你，你就从里面看回他们去，把他们瞪回去，让他看到你的眼光更锐利。你要知道你代表耶稣，他会怎样瞪着仇敌，他会怎么看这些邪灵的，发光的眼，里面要兴起，带着电光看着这个人。很有意思，他们有些很害怕就开始躲避，我注意他的眼神开始漂移或往下看时，就很强的逼迫他，他很快就出去了。一旦他开始不抗拒，很快他就消失了。

有时有些人会想吐，所以准备一些纸巾和袋子等，这些都是协助你的，不是拿袋子往上一套就得释放。对发生的事情敏锐，继续命令。如果他们持续的争斗，踢斗，就要约束他们，以免伤到他们或伤到别人。有时我会退后一步，继续命令。你需要一直听圣灵教你怎么做，聆听他的指引。要分辨到底是邪灵还是他的情绪，有时会从邪灵很快的转变为情绪，有时面对邪灵，他里面的忧伤痛苦全都冒出来了。如果是邪灵，他里面的感觉是很丑陋，很恶心的；如果是情绪，看起来很像，但是里面是没有反应的，只是在叫，实际上是这人的情绪；有时会有很多眼泪。灵是要赶的，情绪就需要停下来，他可能需要饶恕，放开什么。问他到底发生了什么，跟他互动，教他跟你一起配合服事。不是那么容易分辨什么是邪灵什么是情绪的，经验会帮助你，如果根本没有释放，你就停下来算了。跟这人互动，得到他的协助，圣灵会告诉你，要先处理什么，才能更进一步的释放。

如果邪灵跟你争吵，威胁你，你怎么办？邪灵说“这人属于我，我不要离开，你是谁，你什么都不是，你没有能力。”没错，我们没有能力，但耶稣有，我们是奉他的名来的。你要对他说话，“奉拿撒勒人基督耶稣的名来敌对你，他在各各他打败你，撤销了你所有的能力，他在各各他羞辱了你，有一天会把你丢到火湖里。”用经文把它压下去。有时他会说，“谎言”“不要跟我这样讲”，你就继续压迫他。魔鬼不喜欢听上帝的话，有时我会说这样话，“耶稣的宝血打破了你的势力”。

如果这个魔鬼抵挡我，我会看着他说，“魔鬼，你看到十字架，你看见宝血，你的能力被打破了，你的掌控被打破了。”我感觉是从灵界，不是从自然界。自然界是按照时间来看的，我们今天的人，是看不见十字架的，因为是两千多年前的事，我只能在想像里看见。可是在灵界里，好像就在现场，真实发生的，是现在灵里的真实。每次我叫他们看十字架，看耶稣宝血，马上就出现整个释放。

如果他持续抵挡，你可能需要回应一步，看看有什么需要先解决的。你需要先拆下邪灵所住的房子，很快就可以把邪灵赶出去了。服事时，一直依靠圣灵的帮助；服事完了以后，安慰这个人，祷告神的爱和平安进入他的心中。不要在这人得释放前就开始安慰。昨天晚上我就看到了，我常常看到。有人抱着他，安慰他，我手一放在他头上，他就开始尖叫，因为邪灵没有出来。你要留在那里警觉，免得魔鬼骗你。你怎么知道他出来了？你会感觉那个魔鬼出去了，或者那个人会告诉你，或者圣灵会告诉你。你要用不同的方式观察。

如果这人参与邪教的话，还有额外的东西，所有跟邪教有关的物件都要从他们家清除。使徒行传十九章19节，“平素行邪术的，也有许多人把书拿来，堆积在众人面前焚烧。他们算计书价，便知道共合五万块钱。”这里人们对他们的罪知罪了，公开承认自己的罪，确定再也不回到这里面去了。五万块，很多钱了，他们的意思是这些钱不再吸引我了，我完全摆脱这些东西了。

同样，旧约申命记七章25，26节中也说，这个人需要清除家中所有与邪教有关的物件，你要要求这人把这个东西拿来给你烧掉，在这方面绝不能妥协，参与邪教的人，需要完全得释放。

你要为什么样的灵祷告？我们已经讲了很多的灵，让圣灵引导你，当有任何的名字冒出来，你就命令他。阿门？阿门！

听众提问之一：这一位女士去看中医，在中华文化中，我们相信体内有一种气，而她体内的气很弱，于是她的中医就建议她打坐以增强她的气，但她担心走火入魔，拒绝这么做，改用锻炼身体的方式。她想知道练太极，瑜伽等，是否会落入邪灵的圈套？

答： 气就是你生命的力量，对基督徒来讲，这就是你灵里面的生命。我们讲忧伤的灵使骨枯干，你灵里的状况会直接影响你身体的状态。灵，魂，体，都是彼此攸关的，我们灵和心里的情况都会影响身体的能量。

你怕打坐让自己打开接触到邪灵的问题，圣经中讲的默想是非常积极的，是去想神的话语，是理解神的话语，看见神话语的真实，他的焦点专注在一个事情上。而东方的这种静坐冥想，是要倒空自己，这就打开门让别的东西进来了。我不觉得这是好事。其实瑜伽的每一种动作都是他们对某一种神的膜拜方式，它的根源就显明了它是从哪里来的了。有些人做运动，好像打太极，做瑜伽等，好像是有获得利益，可是他们的根源却来自于对假神的崇拜。

问题是，你要离那个悬崖多近才不会掉进去呢？这就是你要问圣灵的了。我的建议是，锻炼的最好方式是走路，游泳，鼓励你方言祷告，培养你灵里的活力和能量。圣经说叫耶稣死里复活的灵住在我们里面，需要释放他出来，释放的方式就是让我们灵里面的能力接触神，让神进来。

我每天做的事情非常有帮助，就是每天走路，方言祷告，很刻意的祷告，让我的灵兴起。我方言祷告时，默想上帝亲近我，我跟他结合，花时间祷告敬拜他，容许他的生命在我的生命中流露出来。我住在台北时，就在酒店的那一层走路，很早就开始走路，这样就不会碰到人，不然大家想这个外国人疯了。如果我唱歌，可能会想这个外国疯子还很开心的。我发现自己的体力和能量借着运动，方言祷告敬拜，还有默想上帝的话语，真的得到提升。

让这成为习惯，我在这方面就得到很大的帮助。有一些借着你流出来的能量，感觉是魂的部分，或者是心的部分，如果我们刻意把这些降伏在主的面前，让他在我们生命中流露，你就会期待你的能量有很大的增加。我就很有活力，想到我的年纪，这是很让人惊讶的，我可以花几个小时为很多人祷告，可是我需要有跟上帝独处的时间。

我需要默想他的同在，在我里面充满我。我要常常回到根源，建立属神生命的最基本的生活。以赛亚书四十章说，等候耶和华的，必重新得力。我觉得我们活的生命是交换来的生命。不是我要让事情发生，而是要放掉这一切，我开始明白察觉，基督在我里面。能力已经在我里面了，默想训练你的心相信这个，这才让你越来越有活力。

刚强的方言祷告，运动和默想，对我的活力非常有帮助。同时也需要好的饮食和休息。有时活力低，可能是身体不平衡，或者魂有问题。例如，焦虑会滤光你的能量，恐惧会吸走你的能量。我们身体系统的运作就是要我们的心跟上帝和谐为一，我们的心跟上帝和谐为一了，其它的东西就自然的调对了。希望这能帮助到你。

听众提问之二：这个人遇到一位马来西亚来的女留学生，这个女孩半夜跟他们在一起时，突然邪灵发作，整个行为完全改变了，甚至声音，眼神都变成了男孩。后来，她说她有很严重的抑郁症，没有咨询过医生就擅自停止服药了。这个人想知道，如何分辨药物的情况还是灵里的情况，该如何处理。

答：这是一个非常好的问题。你必须要敞开，有些人的问题是生理不是属灵的，或者两者都有的，因为它们是有连结的。我们提供的建议都是属灵的，我们不是医生，也没有受过医药的训练，这些事情就不要擅自做主，这不是我们的专长。

如果在这种情况下需要用药的话，或者你应该鼓励这人去做一个检查，做了检查就可以发现这是否是生理的问题，就可以调整饮食或用药帮助他身体恢复平衡。有些人用药，不告诉医生就自己停下来了，很让人担心。没过多久，问题就变得更严重了。因为当他没有用药，身体就有反应，整个发作出来了。如果跟健康医药有关，需要有医生的帮助和建议，我们不是专家，不能知道全部东西。

我们曾经碰过一个女生，我们越为她祷告，她疯狂的越严重。我说不祷告了，有几件事你需要做的。首先，我们不再为你祷告了，你要先找一个人谈话，他会跟你祷告。第二，马上去找医生，做检查，一定有东西不对了。第三，做些实际的东西。不要太属灵，要实际一点。有时候，运用恩慈这个恩赐。一开始，她反应很强烈，我们真的限制她只能跟这个人联络；很难叫她去看医生，一旦去看了，叫她的家人也一起去帮忙，让她自己对自己的行为负责。我上次看到她时，她是很稳定，很安静的一个人。这不再是释放的问题，而是她身体内的荷尔蒙或生理上的不平衡。这一切都是相关的，所以她的情绪，生理都会造成这些反应。

人们常喜欢把所有的错都怪罪在魔鬼身上，自己就不用负责了。所以做一些正常的事情，找医生检查一下，验一下血等等。如果你认为可能是心理上的问题，不要超过自己的能力，把他转介给医生就好了。这不会有什么损失，会有很大的帮助。

听众提问之三：这位女士经常听到房屋的结构或钢筋在嘎嘎作响，非常吵，无法入睡，应该怎么办？第二个问题是，你刚才提到的邪灵性骚扰的问题，如果在床上被压制，被侵犯，当时应该怎么做？

答：这两者可能是相关的。如果一个人晚上有邪灵性侵犯她，通常有很强的邪教的连结，就打开门让邪灵进来，它宣称在这人生命中有权力了，而实际上它没有。通常这种灵都是从邪界来的。可能是家族中有变态的事情发生过。第二，如果有这样的灵，家中发生各样的声响或搅扰人的事情也是常见的。

第一步就是要把它带到光中。你需要圣灵帮助你看到根源是什么，什么时候开始的，造成的原因是什么，是否有历代的原因还是这人做了什么。之后就是释放了。大部分事情你可以自己照着这几个步骤释放了，灵里面方言祷告，命令他出去。有的时候，你需要别人来服事你。这可以帮助你做的更深，或碰触到你自己碰不到的东西。

我猜测这两者是有关联的。你听见房子里面的声音，一般来讲就是邪灵在里面

压制造成的情况。祷告让圣灵让你看见有哪些入口。要弃绝，完全关上门，抵挡魔鬼，或找人帮你，服事你。

听众提问之四：一位女士提出关于小朋友的问题。一个七，八岁的孩子，晚上半夜经常狂哭尖叫，白天为他祷告时，又反应的很激烈。对于灵里有问题的小孩，应如何医治释放，如何帮助他。

答：儿童有服事他们的方法。通常有两种接触的方式。

第一，孩子睡觉的时候帮他们祷告。让父母也在场，所以服事当中如果孩子醒过来的时候，不至于被吓倒。我有为比这更小的孩子祷告的情况。做之前，要先了解孩子的家庭背景，找到这个灵是由哪个源头来的，是历代开的门吗？可能借由家族的邪灵进来的。所以跟父母谈话，会帮你找到源头。先服事他们，要挪去邪灵进入他们家中合法的权力。

不要碰这个孩子，轻柔的祷告，安静的在灵里祷告，邀请圣灵来，聆听圣灵说什么。基于你之前知道的资料，打破家族中邪灵的咒诅，和跟邪灵的协议，吩咐邪灵出去。这不需要孩子参与。

另一种方式是，坐下来跟孩子聊，问他晚上做什么梦，让孩子自己说他感受到什么。用他们懂的语言来表达。要用孩子的方式跟他们讲真理。当孩子跟你讲完之后，你可以这样跟他说，“你知道是什么让你有这种梦吗？”“我觉得是一个不好的灵。”“你知道有不好的灵，它会来烦我们的。”“不是你的错，你没有做错事情，是那些坏灵做的。”“耶稣可以搞定他们的，耶稣身上有好灵的。”我用他们的语言，让孩子能够明白。

“有时候这些坏灵会进到人里面，让他们很难过，让他们很害怕。但耶稣来把这些坏灵赶走。圣经中，耶稣就把那些坏灵赶走了。坏灵很怕耶稣的，他们怕到等不及逃走。我们邀请耶稣来，他比坏灵更厉害，他可以帮助你不要这个坏灵.”

“等一下我会帮你祷告，我会对坏灵说话，我不是对你说话，当我一换，你就知道我在跟坏灵说话。我们就命令他离开，你里面可能会有些感觉，因为坏灵会害怕。不是你害怕，是坏灵在害怕。你只需要呼气，吐气让他离开，把他推出去。”

这些孩子都懂的，呼气或咳嗽，“我们一起咳嗽，一起工作，把坏灵赶出去。耶稣就会很开心。”

我们用的语言是孩子都能听懂的。你可以坐在孩子身边，或让孩子坐在你膝上。如果7，8岁，发作起来会有些困难，他力气已经很大了。现在你已经有他合作，我们期待这个邪灵可以很容易离开。做的时候最好父母都在场，可以是很透明的做法。不要说什么做什么吓到孩子。

你会让孩子很有信心，感觉很棒，很好。“如果你里面有什么感觉，你就把它咳出来，我们要抛开这个东西。”你就帮他走过这个过程。

如果孩子发作，你就紧紧抱住他，限制他，可是有时候很难。最好让孩子跟你合作，这样他跟你一起同工抵挡邪灵。

听众提问之五：这位女士帮助的一个人，他有家族病史，家族中有很多人因这个病自杀。这个病就是身体虚弱，睡不着觉，吃不下，身体机能丧失。这个人会有幻听，让他有自杀和自残的想法。曾经积极参与医治和释放的聚会，可都没有很大的释放和改变。好像历代的问题和幻听都有。我们应该如何开始服事，如果没有太大的经历，要怎样帮助他。以前从不知道他有否参与过邪教的行为，但家族中一直有拜偶像的现象。

答：像这种失眠，无法睡觉，有很多理由。有些是生理上的，有些是焦虑症，有些是灵里的问题。有时同时给他医疗和属灵方面的治疗。我的处理方式就是系统性的问问题，试着找出根源。不处理根，不能得自由的。

这个人要为这件事负起责任来。有些人总希望别人帮他修好，自己不想负起责任来。他自己要面对耶稣，跟耶稣建立起关系。在家族中有很多人自杀，家族中就有问题了。有自杀的灵，压抑的灵，拜偶像的灵，还有邪术的灵，你要找到有哪些源头。这个人要站稳自己的立场，抵挡邪灵，来到十字架前。

有些人没有信心他们可以得自由。释放不是消极的东西，我们要主动进去得着耶稣给我们的。有时服事之前你要先教导他。举例来说，呼召时，你会发现出来的人有不同的反应。都出来了，代表他们都希望看到一些结果，可是后面却完全不一样了。有的很戏剧化，有的什么反应都没有，我们之前都看不出来的。这个人心里的预备和态度，会影响到他从上帝那里能领受多少。有些人来是觉得，我真的有这个问题，我需要上帝释放，我预备好，禁食，到领受的时候，就有很大的释放。有些人只是抱着试试看的态度，人家叫他去了，什么反应都没有。他里面的消极被动心，根本没有预备跟神相遇。

预备好跟神相遇很重要。我会说，第一，看他的根源，先问他，找到问题的根源在哪里。之后，按照这些步骤一步步，看有没有反应。鼓励这个人可以禁食，让他先默想一些经文，上帝的应许。不要让他被动的等你做就好了。他就把所有责任放在你身上，要你帮他修好。而不是我自己要追求全人的健全。

责任在谁身上很关键。常常我们看到人没有迫切想要得到自由。 “这个想法不错，可是要跟耶稣调整对，我又不太想了。”我们讲到失眠这个问题，自杀的问题，你必须要给他一些指示。

给你一段相关的经文，提摩太后书二章24至26节，“主的仆人不可争竞、只要温温和和的待众人、善于教导、存心忍耐、用温柔劝戒那抵挡的人．或者　神给他们悔改的心、可以明白真道．叫他们这已经被魔鬼任意掳去的、可以醒悟、脱离他的网罗。”

前面要有教导，让这个人明白，他才能抓的到真道。我没有失眠的所有答案，有些是邪灵造成的，有些是身体的化学反应问题。我有一个牧师朋友，他自己根本没办法睡，他就用那些时间看书，读经，让自己有生产力。可是圣经应许，“让他亲爱的安然入睡。”有些解答可能是属灵的，有些可能是生理上的。可能吃一些东西，帮助他身体睡觉。千万不要喝咖啡，让自己清醒。学习入睡前放松。

这个解答不是那么明显，可能要从不同的层面看。起码，你知道了方向了。

亲爱的天父，我们感谢你有这样相聚的时间。主啊，教我们怎么应用我们所学到的，能够释放恩膏，在人的生命中结果子。奉基督的名，阿门！

从性犯罪中得自由

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性犯罪是一个当前我们所面对的一个越来越严重的问题。当服事人时，应从什么角度开始帮助人从性犯罪中得自由？我们应保持愿意学习的心，了解别人的情况。

我们从圣经中一个人被污鬼搅扰的故事开始。了解上帝是如何创造人的，再看性犯罪的影响，最后是服事人的方法。

路加福音第四章33节讲，“在会堂里有一个人，被污鬼的精气附着，大声喊叫说， 唉，拿撒勒的耶稣，我们与你有甚么相干，你来灭我们么，我知道你是谁，乃是　神的圣者。 耶稣责备他说，不要作声，从这人身上出来吧。鬼把那人摔倒在众人中间，就出来了，却也没有害他。”这个人被不洁的污鬼所捆绑，所有的污鬼都是不洁的，很可能这个人就是在性方面犯罪而被捆绑。这里是信徒聚集的会堂，所以应该是一个信徒在性方面犯罪的问题，不知他是如何打开自己的生命，让邪灵进来折磨他的。他被情欲，变态的灵折磨。那么，这是怎样的一种折磨呢？

第一，他的头脑中常常出现过去性行为的画面，邪灵确保这些图画一直出现在他眼前。

第二，幻想将来性行为的情形，意念中常常幻想将来可能的情况，他里面就会有被催逼，情欲的欲望。

第三，生命中会有不断失败的循环。求神赦免，好一点后，不久又回到了从前。

这种不断催逼的势力是从邪灵来的。邪灵会在人里面产生能量。以弗所书二章2节讲到，“那时、你们在其中行事为人随从今世的风俗、顺服空中掌权者的首领、就是现今在悖逆之子心中运行的邪灵．”邪灵在心中运行，运行就是得活力的意思。邪灵在人里面产生能量和压力，罪也会在人里面产生能量。罪会让人得着能量。罗马书五章27节说，是罪在你们心中发动。当人有这样的问题时，他里面会有强烈的能力和压力在逼促他，里面的邪灵和罪会不断增加压力。

性冲动是我们要学会管理的胃口，它是上帝赐给我们的。就像每天都要吃东西，也是一种自然的胃口。性欲望也是上帝放在人里面的一种自然渴望的胃口。是人需要好好管理的。可是邪灵的存在和罪，会在里面产生极大的能量，不断的压迫你，造成更大的胃口。我们要学习管理好自己。

帖撒罗尼迦前书第四章3至8节，“神的旨意就是要你们成为圣洁，远避淫行。要你们各人晓得怎样圣洁尊贵，守着自己的身体。 不放纵私欲的邪情，像那不认识神的外邦人。不要一个人在这事上越分，欺负他的弟兄。因为这一类的事，主必报应，正如我预先对你们说过，又切切嘱咐你们的。 神召我们，本不是要我们沾染污秽，乃是要我们成为圣洁。 所以那弃绝的，不是弃绝人，乃是弃绝那赐圣灵给你们的神。”

关于处理性犯罪的问题不是用祷告，上帝的要求就是要我们保持清洁，远避淫行，就是远避性犯罪。

第一，神的旨意是要我们远避，要有节制，要懂得保护自己。

第二，学习如何管理自己生命中的这种胃口。我们看到没有得救的人，总是找机会满足自己在这方面的欲望，这种行为正与我们相反。

第三，不要在性方面操纵弟兄姐妹，如果你这样做，就是欺负他了。这是一个很重大的教导。如何建立美好的关系，又不在性方面操纵人。

最后，圣洁是神所召，不是人所确定的。如果我们抵挡圣洁，清洁的教导，就是抵挡上帝。

人为什么要走这条路？我们刚刚在路加福音第四章看到的这个人，他在淫行，性犯罪的捆绑中，需要得释放。释放是他得自由的关键。释放之后，他仍需行在圣洁里。还要管理自己的胃口，也要用全新的方式建立他的关系感情。

要了解上帝的计划安排，先要了解上帝是如何创造我们的。创世纪第二章18节，“耶和华神说，那人独居不好，我要为他造一个配偶帮助他。”24节中“因此，人要离开父母，与妻子连合，二人成为一体。”所以在上帝的创造中，他说不好的只有人的孤单。上帝造人，是要有关系的。我们受造就是有能力跟人亲密，也需要这样的亲密。跟上帝亲密，也跟其他人亲密。上帝赐给我们这样的能力，用很实际的方式来表达这样的亲密，有连结的能力。两个人在性方面发生关系，就结合在一起。性的亲密会使头脑中产生化学反应，让两个人产生连结，他们同时会有依附的感觉产生。

孤单需要亲密来解决，跟上帝的亲密，跟另一个人的亲密，上帝造我们是有能力跟别人结合的，性交是产生这种结合的关键。二人要合为一起，两人发生性亲密，就使两人结合在一起，就连结了。上帝赐我们很多不同的能力，有能力跟别人亲密，表达这样的亲密，跟别人结合，有能力创造，可以用意念，也可以用身体创造东西。

在我们性能力方面有两个很重要的东西。第一，有能力跟别人亲密结合。第二，有能力创造新生命。这当然是要负责任的，可世界却一直在扭曲这些。马太福音十九章4至6节中“耶稣回答，那起初造人的，是造男造女。”上帝的设计是一男一女，不是男跟男，也不是女跟女。“并且说、『因此，人要离开父母，与妻子连合，二人成为一体。』这经你们没有念过么。 既然如此，夫妻不再是两个人，乃是一体的了。所以神配合的，人不可分开。”所以，神最初的设计是两人彼此亲密。亲密代表不设防，向对方打开平常不给人看到的地方，人不可能跟每个人都亲密，这是不恰当，会造成伤害的。

亲密需要慢慢培养建立关系和信任，亲密对上帝很重要。他造我们，就是希望我们能够亲密， 他设计我们有紧密的关系。有亲密的能力也让我们不设防。如果你向一个人打开心，把自己的一部分让他知道，这样不设防你就很容易受到伤害。他可以拒绝你，背叛你，这是两难的情况。你伤害我，就会影响我的生命，让我很难跟别人亲密了。所有亲密都让你不设防，所以上帝的设计是，在亲密中一定要有保护。两人在性方面的亲密，是他们的灵，魂，体都参与的。上帝的设计是我们从灵里开始活，我们灵的生命借着魂和体表达出来，触摸别人。

世界把性经历贬低为纯粹只有肉体。在上帝的眼中，认为这是从里面出来的，心跟心的连结，分享生命，之后才是身体。但世界反过来了。世界只强调是肉体的，完全不在乎可能对灵和魂造成的伤害。当两人有身体上性的关系，而没有亲密关系，没有打开心爱另一个人，就把这行为贬低为只有肉体的反应了。亲密而没有委身信任，就打开门让伤害进来。上帝设计我们，是让两人因性亲密。发生性行为，身体上会有变化发生，在性交过程中，头脑会发生化学反应，因人的喜乐造成结合。

当两人亲密结合时，他们听见，看见，经历都像魂结合在一起，人彼此结合时，两人的灵彼此触摸接触。上帝的设计就是从一个人的灵的流露， 与另一个人的灵，魂，体接触。如果你忽略这些，就是把亲密贬低为仅有肉体的反应，就完全扭曲了上帝的原意了。

圣经中讲到亚当和夏娃的亲密时说，亚当“认识”夏娃，之后才跟她同房。夫妻之间由认识，再到亲密。如果不是夫妻，就只称为同房。例如他玛被强暴时，她的兄弟与她同房。圣经中用完全不同的词汇来表达。

性交除了身体的接触，还有彼此心跟灵的结合，所以要保护这样的亲密。上帝用立约跟我们接触。约是结合的协议，在协议中，不会有伤害。上帝建立的关系，是盟约的关系。上帝设计的婚姻，也是立约的关系。两人彼此委身，不要伤害对方，而要忠心到底。上帝设计的婚姻是男与女结为夫妻。在盟约的关系里，也反应了耶稣与教会的关系。盟约是一生的承诺和委身，彼此衷心和保护。

圣经中有盟约时，先是说话，然后流血，这样就是彼此承诺了。上帝设计女子第一次性行为时，会有流血的情况，上帝就是向我们显明这是立约，盟约的关系。在婚礼上，夫妻双方先交换言辞，就是立约；然后交换戒指，成为立约的保证。大家一起见证这个约，一起庆祝这个约。可是婚姻只有在圆房之后才算完成，因为当中会有流血。父母会把沾了血渍的床单留着，代表女子贞洁的证明。这是希伯来文化中非常重要的一件事。女子要为男子保存自己，与男人建立盟约。而当男人与女人亲密，却没有跟她立约，就是占她的便宜了，利用她满足自己的需要，没有给她盟约的保证和安全感，对她造成伤害。

上帝设计建造男人去追求和征服，女人是寻求保障和委身。耶稣追求我们，给我们这个约，我们跟他的关系就有了保障。婚姻中，男子追求女子，给她一个约，对她衷心到底。性行为是整个婚姻中的一部分，所有婚礼的程序，以及两人的性亲密都是上帝设计的盟约的关系。这就是帖撒罗尼迦书中讲的“你不要欺负对方”的原因。操纵人使自己得好处，男人欺负女人，操纵她，引诱她，有了性行为之后又抛弃她。女人需要的是安全感和亲密，被抛弃后，就觉得被欺负了。

可以看出来，我们离上帝的设计有多么的远，我们需要回到上帝的心意里。你创造了一个东西，就了解他如何运用。造出微波炉的人，就会写出应用手册。如果你不理会应用手册，随意将金属放进去，肯定会有问题。同样，我们要回到上帝的设计里，按照上帝希望的性亲密的行为守则行事。但是人就是敌对神，总想按照自己的想法做。罪就是亏缺上帝原来给我们安排的美意。性犯罪就是亏缺了上帝的原意。他们享受吗？当然享受，这原本就是上帝的设计，但是里面隐藏了毁灭，因为罪的代价就是死。

圣经中也警告我们避免性犯罪，避免性犯罪造成的损害。神的目的是要我们有亲密，在亲密中不设防，婚姻之外发生的性亲密很明显就会造成伤害。在这方面神有些什么警告？

首先，神不反对性。人是他创造的，他给我们能力创造新生命，他也教我们如何做，我们就是被这样设计的，神觉得这样很好，他把这个欲望放在我们里面，我们也很喜欢。所以，不要祷告让神把它拿走，神是有目的的。

哥林多前书第六章13 节，“身子不是为淫乱，乃是为主。主也是为身子。”表明神不希望有性犯罪，保持自己的贞洁就是尊荣神。神设计我们来显明他，他不希望我们没有委身就与人发生性行为，他与人是立约的关系，是永恒的。夫妻之间是流血立约的。上帝借耶稣的血跟我们立约，我们领圣餐的主要目的之一，就是庆祝这样的关系，是约的保证。我们吃饼，喝杯，就是提醒我们耶稣的血赎净了我们。我对上帝是很尊贵的，他爱我，我属于他，不属于其它任何人。我得赦免，被爱。我们与神的关系就像婚约，神是守约的，我们如果违约，不忠实，就是很严重的罪。在上帝的眼中，关系代表生命，违背关系就是死亡。盟约代表上帝与我们相交，违背盟约就是很可怕的罪，违背了上帝最核心的精神。

接着看哥林多前书第六章15 ，16节，“岂不知你们的身子是基督的肢体么。我可以将基督的肢体作为娼妓的肢体么。断乎不可。 岂不知与娼妓联合的，便是与他成为一体么。因为主说，『二人要成为一体。』 ”身为信徒，上帝的灵住在我里面，我们是耶稣在世上的代表之一，是基督身体的一部分。参与性犯罪，身上带着的圣灵不想参与。与娼妓结合，就让上帝的灵担忧。

18 节，“你们要逃避淫行。人所犯的，无论甚么罪，都在身子以外。惟有行淫的，是得罪自己的身子。”说谎，偷窃，违背律法等等的犯罪都是在你外面。只有性犯罪不同，上帝警告我们，行淫是得罪自己的身体。当两人结合，一人的部分生命会进入另一人里面，改变发生在里面。大脑的化学反应，开始回应，还有记忆留在里面。这种淫行会建立神经的管道让人上瘾，头脑好像被卡住。当服事人时，这不是外面的罪，表示道歉就行了，而是里面要开始改变，因为罪一直带在身上，没法走开。

性犯罪的影响非常独特，有东西会进入身体里面。罗马书第一章27节，“男人也是如此，弃了女人顺性的用处，欲火攻心，彼此贪恋，男和男行可羞耻的事，就在自己身上受这妄为当得的报应。”这里讲到性犯罪对人的影响远大于其它的罪。人里面发生改变，越走入性犯罪这条路，这影响和改变就越深。

性犯罪造成的伤害有很多，虽然很多人不肯承认。一个人越对自己的灵敏锐，就会越察觉性犯罪造成的影响有多大。

首先，是灵里的损伤。影响你跟上帝的关系，让圣灵担忧。以弗所书四章30节就讲到让圣灵担忧，造成他的痛苦和难过。因为上帝是守约的，你如果行淫，就让圣灵担忧，破坏了这个关系。以弗所书四章，五章是有联系的，列出了让圣灵担忧的事。淫行就让上帝担忧，对上帝造成伤害。继续犯罪，就会使我们的良知越来越麻木。参与淫行，会产生罪咎，羞愧的心理。

这世界一直强调性犯罪不是大问题。可是任何高官在犯了淫行后，都会感到羞愧和罪咎。上帝希望我们坦然面对他，可是在性犯罪中挣扎的人，就会觉得自己被定罪了，不配来到上帝面前。性犯罪中，魔鬼会不断的逼促你，做了之后，就马上定你的罪，让你羞愧。上帝供应我们，洗净我们，只要我们按照他的方法做。

同时，邪灵的污秽可能跟着发生了。邪灵会经由性行为由一个人身上传到另一个人身上。两人发生性交，就是二人成为一体。邪灵就有机会进入了。就像性病互相传递一样，邪灵也有了合法的权力从一人身上进入另一人身上。旧约中，能够让上帝的子民犯罪的方法之一就是性犯罪，人让邪灵进入就会被掳走。

民数记二十五章巴兰想要咒诅以色列，上帝说不行，他们是蒙福的。于是他就差那些拜偶像的女人到他们中间，引诱他们，与他们同房，他们就因此跌倒了。士师记十六章的参孙，那些人就是在等他掉进淫行里，夺走他的力量，把他掳走了。是淫行让他先在灵里被捆绑了。大卫王也是因为性犯罪，引起了后面的欺骗和谋杀。旧约中发生的性犯罪，是会被律法治死的，死亡的灵就合法进入了。性犯罪让邪灵的污秽很容易发生。我以前分享过的一个女孩，有过被污鬼压制的情况，因她曾跟一位参与邪教的人发生性行为。

另一个灵里的损伤是，不敬虔的魂结产生了，让邪灵有权力进来。魂结是一种结合，二人成为一体时，他们结合在一起了。如果他们结婚了，是合法的结合；如果没有结婚，就是不敬虔的魂结。这样的结合，就让邪灵进入生命。如果性伴侣之间的魂结被打破，邪灵通常会马上发作。

灵里的影响是我们跟上帝的关系受损。邪灵进来，良心受损，人被定罪，邪灵的魂结就产生了。

上帝让我们留意性犯罪，因为我们里面会有改变，要转回来是很不容易的。保持自己的清洁，就会有改变，修复损伤需要很大的努力。

我们再看魂的部分。箴言五，六，七章都有讲到性犯罪。第五章3至6节，“因为淫妇的嘴滴下蜂蜜，他的口比油更滑。 至终却苦似茵蔯，快如两刃的刀。他的脚，下入死地。他脚步，踏住阴间。以致他找不着生命平坦的道。他的路变迁不定，自己还不知道。”这里讲的就是淫行。当人开始行淫，就变得苦毒。苦毒的男女，感觉在性关系中被人利用。原来期待亲密和爱，却被拒绝，被抛弃，最终变得苦毒。当你服事人时，要留意这里面的苦毒。另外，死地和阴间都是属灵的势力，死亡让人孤立麻木，阴间折磨人。这两种灵在性犯罪中很常见。

箴言五章22节，“恶人必被自己的罪孽捉住。他必被自己的罪恶如绳索缠绕。” 第六章32，33节，“与妇人行淫的，便是无知，行这事的，必丧掉生命。他必受伤损，必被凌辱。他的羞耻不得涂抹。” 我们看到媒体上曝光的任何淫行的事件，都会给当事人带来极大的羞耻和痛苦。第七章24至27节，“众子阿，现在要听从我，留心听我口中的话。你的心，不可偏向淫妇的道。不要入他的迷途。因为被他伤害仆倒的不少。被他杀戮的而且甚多。他的家是在阴间之路，下到死亡之宫。”这里再次提到伤害，死亡，阴间。如要了解整个引诱和试探，可以参考箴言第六章。

魂里会受到伤害。魂到底发生了什么？魂包括了意念，情绪，想像，意志力等方面。

在魂的方面，首先就是污秽的画面和记忆。记忆是这样运作的，把你所经历， 看见的图像，保留在头脑中。如果连结欢乐的感觉，或激烈的痛苦，铭记就深。如果重复发生，铭记就会更深。性犯罪的本性，每一次参与性行为，会有化学成分产生，头脑中的图像无法抹掉。祷告时会出现，与配偶亲密时也会出现。因为它在你里面，在你的头脑中。邪灵就是用它来操纵你，定你的罪。

头脑中敬拜，亲密上帝的领域，与性亲密是同一地方。当敬拜神时，头脑使用的部分，与性亲密时使用的部分相同，所以那些图画都出现了。如果在健康的婚姻关系中，就不会有这种情况，但如果是不健康，不敬虔的性关系，画面就出来了。要拦阻你跟上帝亲密。

第二层是情绪的痛苦。是什么样的情绪呢？当你想起这段感情，这段关系破裂了，通常会有忧伤，因为你对这段关系期待很高。感觉被拒绝；常常苦毒；常常会恨，恨男人，恨女人，恨自己；常常愤怒，羞愧。

为了寻找爱而被伤害，魂受到了伤害，产生了忧伤和愤怒；感觉被拒绝，这人就开始变得苦毒。如果女人被男人引诱，又被抛弃，就会恨自己，怎么让这种事发生，这都是秘密，不让家人知道，就造成了很大的羞耻感。

当你跟人讲话，他很少会跟你说他做了什么，他的生命有多糟，你只需了解有这样的折磨就够了。人的里面还有困惑，因为他不单只有一段关系，多个部分的魂都有受伤，魂都四散了；等到结婚时，已经很难把自己给人了，太多破碎，太多痛苦。人已经被分散了，很难把自己完整的献给对方。有时会觉得还依附在别的人身上。有时，配偶会在灵里感觉到，你没有跟我在一起。

性交是亲密，是从里面连结。当我教导你在灵里流露时，我要你专注，如果你心不在焉，就没有办法接触，灵里就不能接触。跟配偶性亲密，两人的魂不可能不连结，不要去幻想别的关系，这样头脑就没法专注，伤害和羞愧因此就进来了。

如果男人从事色情的东西，他整个大脑中的化学反应都改变了，每经历一次色情的东西，包括幻想，欲望，或手淫的行为，他的头脑就被捆绑了。当人观看色情的东西时，他们面对的不是真正的人，而只是一个形象。在这形象中，把女人物件化，把女人当成一件物品供他享乐。当男人看色情时，他的大脑被训练成为，看见女人时，无法看见上帝的 形象，因为他看不见人，只看见身体。这种污秽的想像，无法让他进入婚姻的亲密，变得自我为中心，不能去爱，因此变态的娼妓的灵就进入他里面。他的配偶也感觉不到他的爱了，因为他没法跟她在灵里流露，他的意念被不同的思想污秽了，整个意念都需要洁净。

创世纪五章6节讲到有一群天使从天上堕落下来，就是因为他们想跟女人行淫。他们看到上帝给人的能力，他们也想要做男人，就离开了上帝给他们的岗位，与女人行淫。可以看出，问题比你想像的更多。

最后要讲的是，人的魂中有摧毁的反应。当人受伤时，通常会防卫保护自己，因此人发生淫行时，很常见的反应，就是在心里筑起墙以免继续受伤。需要留意的典型问题是：

第一，内在誓言。内心里面自己立誓，这是出于愤怒和伤害。如“我再也不要相信男人”或“再也不要相信女人”。如果你内心做了这样的誓言，你的内心就会相信它，你自己可能已经忘记了这个誓言。多年后你结婚了，遇见了一位很棒的男人，可是你的心会说“不要相信他”，不管他有多好，你还是不相信他。关系开始失败， 是因为你内在不信任的引领，你内在的誓言。我有碰见过有人内在誓言不要怀男孩，她每次怀男孩都会流产。当人为保护自己做了内在誓言，就在心里筑起了坚固营垒， 没有了生育能力。

第二，毒根的论断。由于过往的经历，觉得男人一定让人失望，或女人就想掌控你，他们是不可信的。这类的苦毒论断会污秽你将来所有的关系。很常见的是死亡之怨。“我死了算了。”因为做过的事情产生极大的羞愧和怨恨，这样的想法就出现了。服事人时，我们需要看到他魂里的反应。所有的罪都在人身体之外，只有性犯罪是在人里面，这里有罪的问题，邪灵的问题，不敬虔的魂结，图像就印记在头脑里，造成内心的伤害和反应，所以上帝警告我们，不是性不好，而是我们需要按照上帝的指示做，他才成为美好。

性犯罪另一个问题是制造了很多的黑暗和秘密。因为被它带来的羞愧遮盖，埋在里面让黑暗蔓延。当今，这个问题越来越严重，特别在网络上，让人有很多机会接触到性变态，即使简单的接触，都会对生命造成很大伤害。我们曾为一位年青牧师的儿子祷告，他接触网络色情约有两年的时间。牧师很难过，家里已经做了所有的保护措施，但他的儿子又去到他的朋友家，那家的父亲不管孩子，所以两个男孩一起在电脑上看色情的东西。青少年只要看过一次，马上就上瘾了。

色情的英文来自两个词，“妓女”和“书写”。对于娼妓的描述就是色情的源头。色情的背后就是召妓的行为，变态的灵，拜偶像的灵。娼妓是为了赚钱才做这样的事。 变态的灵，就扭曲了上帝的形象。女人也是按上帝的形象造的，色情就毁掉了这样的形象，把人当成了物件。男人对色情是最没有抵抗力的，因为他们容易受到视觉的影响，他们也害怕在感情上受拒绝。他们里面想得安慰，控制这样的欲望驱动。色情会改变我们大脑的化学成分，在脑内释放胺多酚和脑内酚等。色情是上瘾的，就像滥用药物一样，越看就想越多，最后就会产生魂结，将人锁在了色情的图像和网络上，依附在上面了。

耶稣在马太福音五章28节说，“看见妇女动了淫念就是犯了奸淫了。”色情打开门让情欲的灵，变态的灵，娼妓的灵，拜偶像的灵进来。旧约中，当以色列人进入拜偶像的文化中时，常有庙妓出现。他们拜偶像的过程中，跟男妓和女妓发生性行为很常见。上帝原来想祝福我们的心意，变成了邪灵的入口。最近，我读到一份有关色情的调查报告，他们研究的项目是，当人接触色情时，脑部会发生什么反应。他们的发现是：完全没有接触过色情的人，脑部的反应不会很大。而看过很多色情东西的人，大脑中很大的区域都被启动了，与吸毒的人的大脑被驱动的区域一样。结论是，脑部对色情的化学反应，与其它让人上瘾的东西发生的反应是一样的。这样的研究有很多人抗拒，色情与毒品一样让人上瘾，会改变大脑的结构，形成虚幻，而且有耐受性，要越用越重。

圣经中提到很多淫行，大家可以自己查考。例如：苟合，奸淫，同性恋，强奸，与邪灵的性亲密，虐童，兽交，娼妓，乱伦，强暴，虐待等等，任何扭曲上帝造人的模式都会造成问题。

我们需要有策略释放人自由，得自由的道路包括，箴言二十八章13节“遮掩自己罪过的，必不亨通。承认离弃罪过的，必蒙怜恤。”

如何服事人得自由？第一，求圣灵的帮助，显明问题的根源。处理任何问题都需要依靠圣灵的帮助，学习用心聆听，他给你的感动，可能是一个小小的需要问的问题，观察对方的反应。第二，诊断问题。一直发问，直到找到问题的根源。有可能是历代遗传下来的；也可能是这人经历过的创伤，如小时候的性虐待，接触过性虐待的画面或直接被性虐待；是否有犯罪的情形。性犯罪有很大的欺骗性，人们想隐藏所发生的一切，但只有面对真相，不留黑暗，才能完全洗清。

例如一位年青人经历了家庭的破裂，在痛苦中寻找安慰，性犯罪是他的安慰，但根源是他家庭的破碎。要找到根源，不要只看到表面的罪。跟他分享你看到的问题，与他互动。如果不明白问题的广度，只能治标不治本。这人要对你诚实，他跟你说的事情，如果有犯罪的因素，你不可以掩盖，不可以掩盖虐待的事情。严重的事情，我保留寻求协助的自由，否则可能被吸到可怕的境地。如有人说我性侵犯我的妹妹，或与教会的领袖发生性关系等。

在服事中，不能先签订保密条款。当然，隐私需要被尊重，不向任何人揭露隐私，可是不能担保保守秘密，要向上面的人报告，需要专家的建议。如果有人告诉你一个重大的秘密，你不与人谈，反而会对你造成很大的定罪感，他就把你拉进了他自己多年的黑暗和秘密中，千万不要被拐进这样的委身中。

有一个人来找我，他与一位女子结婚，生了两个男孩，他性虐待这两个男孩。他来认罪，因为他陷入极大的折磨中。我对他说，你的诚实是好的， 让事情曝光。这件事情是错的，有很多后果。第一，你跟上帝的关系。你背叛了妻子的信任，违背了你的婚约，因为你虐待孩子。第二，你这是犯罪违法的行为。这种行为是不能隐藏的，我不能隐藏，我也不想隐藏。你的选择是：告诉这位女子你做了什么，不可避免她应该向警察报案；或者，你可以自首。我不会帮你遮掩，我会给你一点时间让你决定如何回应，这是犯罪，你需要面对后果。圣经讲得很清楚，如果认罪悔改，你会得怜恤。直接面对，代表以后会有比较正面的结果。我给他一个星期，之后整个事情被揭露了。注意这里，我没有陷入帮他保守秘密的陷阱里，我不希望成为掩盖他犯罪的帮凶。如果你帮他保密，你整个的事工都会被瓦解，别人看你是协助侵犯孩童的一份子。教会的人也会被迷惑，他们怜悯罪犯，所以我们必须按正常的管道处理，不然就成为了共犯。

求主赦免，神保证会赦免，他们要转离罪行，悔改不是只道歉，而是要转离这一切。你需要跟他解释需要饶恕的部分，这些人要饶恕伤害过他们的人。这部分会有愤怒和忧伤，可能需要花一点时间，帮助这个人承认自己的愤怒和忧伤，然后从心里饶恕。我们可以练习写一封信给你生气的人，但不要寄出去。将你心中的愤怒写下来，让自己看见，然后在主的面前解决他。饶恕是两重的，首先饶恕伤害你的人，然后领受饶恕，原谅自己。有些人，特别是女士，很难饶恕自己，觉得很羞愧。你需要跟她谈，不要再要求自己，上帝已经饶恕你了。

另外一个需要做的是，帮助他弃绝，砍断这些捆绑。需要撤销的捆绑包括：不敬虔的性的魂结，如砍断色情的魂结，砍断网路的魂结；或者防卫式的反应，如内在誓言，论断，死亡之愿等等，都要弃绝。最后，到主面前，求主释放他们自由。先悔改认罪，转离罪恶，说出认罪的话。“主啊，赦免我，因我犯了色情的罪，求你洗净释放我自由，远离生命里的污秽。”宣告饶恕他人，也要领受饶恕，原谅自己。

那么如何服事人呢？首先，还是要跟从圣灵的引导。奉基督的名，打破所有的捆绑。打破历代的罪孽和咒诅，魂结，内在誓言等；然后命令邪灵离开。会有各种各样的邪灵，如情欲的灵，变态的灵，拜偶像的灵，历代家族中的灵，色情的灵，奸淫的灵，仇恨的灵，苦毒的灵，忧伤的灵，羞愧的灵，自我仇恨的灵，死亡的灵，折磨的灵，阴间的灵等等。

大家要从三方面来看，因行为本身而进来的灵；也有因这个人对加害他的人的反应而进来的灵；还有因他对自己的反应而进来的灵。对自己的反应有：自我仇恨，羞愧，苦毒。对加害人的反应有：恨男人或女人，苦毒，愤怒，暴怒。 这些都是有逻辑联系的。有时，只要一讲到这个灵的名字，他就会发作跑出来了，要一一把他们打破。

例如，呼召的时候，有时为人按手，就能释放神的能力；但有些人没有反应，就要叫出这些灵的名字，上帝会把灵的名字给你，让你往哪里找。是罪？还是对加害人的？还是对自己的？

我求圣灵帮助我从这个人的灵，魂，体中挪走一切因过去关系带来的伤害。他进入你里面了，就求圣灵把他赶出去。也求圣灵恢复他以前四散的部分。为人这样祷告时，他们会流泪，他们里面的羞愧无法摆脱，特别是女士。

我的祷告是这样的，“主啊，求你将他因过去的关系对他的身，心，灵造成的伤害挪走，他所有在感情上的付出，求你为他恢复，让他能振作起来。求主释放洁净，圣洁的灵进入他的生命。主啊，求你的爱和洁净的能力进入他的身体。” 他的身体已经没法再清洁，但上帝会给他灵里的清洁，就如同这件事没有发生一样。呼召时，没办法做完全部这些事，可以在单独祷告时这样做。服事中所做的就是要弥补过去性犯罪所造成的伤害。

如何做服事之后的跟进？性犯罪在人生命中造成的影响是非常严重的，第一次的性行为对人有极大的影响。跟进的方面有：

1. 家中的洁净，有没有任何的物件需要清除？可能有杂志，电脑档案，以前的书，照片，礼物等等。记得与罪隔绝，与上帝同行。过去任何有可能控制你，让你犯罪的东西，统统扔掉，这是他们要负的责任。求圣灵告诉他们需要清理的东西。你也可以给他们一些建议。

2. 有没有任何关系需要保持距离的？保持距离就留下了空间，能够回转过来。如果跟人有性关系，现在还保持这样的关系吗？如果有，他就很容易又回到这个关系中。一旦这个关系变成性的，就成为了单纯的身体关系，他们需要分开一段时间，正确的与上帝同行。

3. 有没有需要道歉的地方？不要严厉命令他如何做，要求圣灵让他看见。有时道歉会让事情变得更糟，有时不理他更好。有时上帝不要求道歉和恢复，有时要求做一个象征性的例子。你必须要听圣灵的。

如果需要道歉，首先，必须正确的道歉，绝对不能怪罪别人。道歉自己的部分，即使别人有合作。其次，必须清楚讲明为什么道歉。第三，先处理自己的忧伤和愤怒。如果跟人道歉，心里却很埋怨，怨恨就没用了。自己要没有怒气，没有怪罪，清楚知道需要道歉的地方。当面道歉比写信更好，写信像犯行的罪证，当然有时简单便条也可以接受。在对方方便的时候，当面道歉，道歉必须要简短，“谢谢你让我有机会与你谈话，上帝跟我说话，我明白我的行为对你造成很深的伤害，请你原谅我。”这样做是需要勇气的，可是它在你的心里，良知上会有很大的改变。别人可能不原谅你，但这不重要，那是他们的问题。别人可能不想见你，你也许可以通过电话简短的说，或写一封短信，一定要简短。

最后，也是最难的一点，就是重建生命。要保持清洁，就要做不一样的事情。想洁净，知道洁净是好的，知道你的生命要服事上帝。我需要的意象是服事上帝的生命，生命借我流露，建立自己的生命，每天方言祷告，让属灵的生命得到能量，默想上帝的话，默想上帝的爱，让上帝的爱进入我的生命，在生命中宣告神的话语，每一天将你的生命带到他的话语中。每天对我的心说，吩咐我的心转离一切幻想和性犯罪。我在灵里兴起，协助我的心转向神，因为一生的果效是由心发出的。同时，对意念说话，你的身体会回应你的话语。

记得耶稣曾对一棵树说，不再结果子。对意念说，我咒诅跟性犯罪相关的记忆，完全不结果子，枯干。Caroline Leaf写过一部书，她的研究表明，你的思想意念会占大脑的部分空间，这些神经像树一样。你想到一个念头，这棵树就会亮起来，如果是正面的想法，这棵树就会很健康。一旦你有性犯罪的念头，它们就被激活开始改变了，你就要想这棵树，奉耶稣的名，咒诅它不再结果子，拒绝它。重建自己在神里面的生命，设定生命的方向，在没有受到引诱之前，每天设定自己的方向。

接下来，就是有意念进来时就把它掳住。当试探来，就掳掠它，掳掠你的思想。例如，一位男士在路上看到一位穿着非常暴露的女士走过来，立刻这种形象开始出现，他思想的路径开始看她是一个物件，这时就需要立刻夺走这样的想法。开始拦阻，拒绝把女人当物件的想法。“要夺去你的想法。”（哥林多后书十章5节。）就好像有活的东西冲向你的脑部，马上抓住他，把他扔出去。转移焦点，注意别的东西，你的头脑就开始了新的念头。只是认为这样想不对，不可以这样想，一点用都没有，因为那是律法。

如果我在前面放一个盒子，上面有一个红色的大大的按钮，旁边写上“不准按”，只有你和盒子在房间中，你最想要做的事就是按按钮。好像着迷了一样。换句话说，律法让你不要按，反而自己越想犯罪。律法没有能力救我们。你告诉一个人不可以这样做，他反而更想做。就像有牌子写着“油漆未干”，很多人最想做的就是摸一摸。因为心里面有东西被挑起来，所以律法没法帮到你。最好的做法是，不要去想这样想是不对的，我不是好的基督徒，这样的策略只会让你感觉失败。而是要想“主啊，这是毁灭的想法，我不想这样想，我要转向其它的方向，耶稣，感谢你的圣洁在我里面起来。”你要用属灵但实际的方式来处理。定自己的罪是没有帮助的。

还有一个帮助就是负责任，对别人坦诚。坦白承认是自己负责任的改变。如果请别人监督我的生命，不代表问题变成他的了，还是自己的问题。平常我们可以这样跟人讲，“我在这方面有挣扎，不断想释放自己，我想要得自由，我不知在小组中怎样做，我跟你见面时，希望你能帮助我，问我做的怎么样，问我是不是说真话，希望你帮助我继续保持承诺。”坦白负责，承认这是我要走的路，请别人帮助。敞开是走向自由的道路，当然要确保帮助你的人不会定你的罪。

要有简单的策略面对失败。在这条路上一定会有失败，圣经说，“义人的脚步为上帝所立定，即使跌倒，上帝都会搀扶他，不致他全身扑倒。”如果你跌倒，不管是色情，手淫自慰，立刻承认，很快的悔改，里面重新站起来，让耶稣的宝血在你身上。你越留在定罪里面，罪就越掌控你的生命。一个人如果失败，赶快转向主，“主啊，对不起，我向你认罪，我真的很抱歉。主啊，我接受你的饶恕，接受你的洗净，我再次站在你面前。”因为你跟上帝断绝了关系，就让问题延续，要相信上帝会饶恕，要说出话，悔改认罪，信实的上帝一定会赦免你，洗净你。

最后，要留意罪的循环。画一个大圈，最上面是引发事件，我们犯的罪有很多是预期可以循环的，好像照剧本演出一样。如果你了解罪的循环，通常有引发的事件；跟着有负面的感觉出现，如受伤；接下来就是忧伤沉重，沉重是性犯罪的一个征兆，有特别的压力和沉重。这时就马上要转移焦点，不然，罪的循环的第二步，罪的图像记忆就会回来了，这人就开始犯罪了。他们感到难过，罪咎，跟着就要道歉了，借着祷告读经，回到上面来了。一直循环。

很多男人性犯罪，就像一出排演好的剧本。他们感觉受伤，有负面的感觉；想要感觉好一点，就掉进罪里；觉得抱歉，罪咎，又走出来了。这就是一个罪的循环。解决的方法是，认清罪是如何影响你的，改变你的行为，当你感觉失落时，不要又回到原来的路上，要打破头脑中的既定模式。这些都是如何服事人的方法。

观众提问之一，怎样打破罪的循环？

答：第一，留意并认出这个循环。每个人犯罪的模式是可预期的，他们开始幻想预期这个东西，跟着上电脑寻找，我们要帮助他们认出这个模式，和行出来的过程。

第二，求圣灵帮助他们了解自己的感受。在吸引他性犯罪之前，当他们失落，沉重时就感觉到了，就可以很快的解决问题。要认清如果我不转移焦点，就会重新掉进循环里。不要等到犯罪了，再爬起来。有时只要十五分钟，转移焦点，做不一样的事，你的感觉就改变了，就可以出来不用掉进旧的循环里了。你要形成新的路径，简单的起来，到其他地方，做别的事情，将焦点转移，引诱试探就消退了。

不要刻意抵挡，因为这样你就专注在这上面了，他就越来越大，你向他敞开生命。例如，在我们祷告服事中，如果太专注别人的需要，会让我受不了，专注于自己，我也会关闭。当我专注于主，就打开门让上帝运行。简单的祷告，改变自己的方向，发展新的模式，最后就变成常态了。

如果在性犯罪方面有很长的时间，就需要有人陪他，帮助他做到。所有的罪的代价，上帝都付清了。最糟的是活在定罪里，相信自己不对，很糟糕。上帝说“我爱你，你是我的儿女。”

宗教的定罪是性犯罪的温床，你的头脑被设计好要走上这条路，重新设计路程需要花时间。性犯罪在你里面发生改变，但上帝胜过这一切。

观众问题之二：如何帮助释放同性恋者？

答： 首先就是要爱他，接受他，他们是有价值的人。最难的是克服对这种行为的罪恶感和论断。同性恋也是人，他们有自己的痛苦和过程。上帝爱他们，为他们而死。同性恋周围有很多问题造成他们更大的困难，你要让他感到你接纳他，看重他这个人。

可是对很多同性恋者，他们的认同太依附在他们的行为上。当你指出他的行为，他就会觉得你在人身攻击。耶稣接触的人中也有同性恋，可是耶稣与他们一同吃饭，从来没有认同他们的行为。别人首先接触到的就是你的态度，你最先要调整的也是你的态度，上帝帮助我们爱每一个人。

有些人我知道是同性恋者，我会拥抱他，跟拥抱其他人一样。他就是一个人，常常他们还很有创造力，他们通常在感情和家庭中受到很大的伤害。因为他们的创意，就很难让他们融入男性或女性的文化中。他们生命中有很深的拒绝的根。他们很多人可能是被人占过便宜或虐待，这就打开了门；有些只是孤单，需要感情。他们寻找的跟其他人一样，就是爱。当你了解他们，就知道他们在错误的地方找爱，错误的人身上找爱。他们的生命产生这样的问题，性犯罪在里面造成问题，同性恋的身上产生更大的问题。

吸引他们来到基督面前，而不是要先解决他们的问题。有时身为基督徒，我们希望他们先把生命调整对了，才接近神；可是上帝说我爱你的原样，接纳你，一旦我进入你的生命，陪你走这条路，让上帝的能力进入他生命。

基督徒面对这些人时，常常喜欢当面对峙，认为罪就是罪，而没有想到这人对上帝是很珍贵的，只有圣灵才有能力改变他们。我的工作不是改变他们，而是爱他们，将他们带向耶稣。你不逼他们改变，而是让上帝改变他们；你只需要照耶稣说的去做，爱他们，为他们祷告，把基督带给他们，帮助他们走与基督同行的路，主会处理好这些事情。

有些来到教会的人是同居的关系，我们不会当面与他们对峙，指责他们，而是带他们跟上帝同行，相信当他接触到上帝的爱，神国度的原则，开始与上帝同行，圣灵和他们的良知会让他们知道这是错误的，不应该做的。他有了这个很大的恩典，不用担心将来的事情，相信我带他们继续与上帝同行，上帝会对他们的心说话，让他们知道这样做不对。

可是，我们对教会会友，会直接问这个问题。大部分的人在我们还没有开始问他们时，就已经谈过了。不过我们还是需要澄清他们是否住在一起。让我们谈谈好吗？你现在进入上帝的家中，需要面对这样的情况。有时情况会很复杂，帮助每一个个人走上这条路程。有些人的情况确实很糟糕，出来才是重点；有些人需要结婚；没有统一的答案。就像基督爱他们一样，我们也爱他们，告诉他们真理，让他们自己决定如何往前走。

医治同性恋，帮助他们得释放，我没有所有的答案，但我知道耶稣爱他们。焦点是做上帝召我们该做的事，而不做不该做的，就是爱他们，把基督带给他们，鼓励他们与耶稣同行。他们一定会走到需要谈论这个的时候。就像今天这样教导，帮助大家明白上帝如何造人，预备好答案，交谈时应如何讲。

现在它变成了一个很政治化，情绪化的问题了，教会也是一路挣扎过来。现在纽西兰的法律已经改了，同性的人可以结婚了，接下来他们就要开始改我们的教育系统了。这是我们的一个挑战，扩展神的国，让他们看见上帝设计生命的方式如何，而神国的益处只有悔改才能得着，不按照神的方式，罪的后果一定会临到你的。

观众提问之三：合法结婚的夫妻，如果一方带有邪灵，是否代表另一方在性亲密过程中只能长期接受邪灵的进入？

答：这是个很好的问题。不敬虔的关系，就让邪灵有能力进到这人里面。因为你们是用不敬虔的方式结合为一，让他有机会进来折磨你。我觉得善的能力胜过恶，当两人结了婚，是不会想到对方是被鬼附的，婚姻因他们的信仰成圣。我不认为一方会被邪灵附着，他们现在的关系是在上帝的秩序下。我从来没有碰到过因为婚姻从配偶身上得到邪灵的经验。这个关系是按神的方式，邪灵是没有地方进来的。我会多思考一下。

哥林多前书第七章讲到如果信徒跟非信徒结婚，不信之人会因信的人的信心成圣得益，不然他的儿女就不敬虔了。一个有信仰的人的影响力远远大于我们能想像的。

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬

天父，感谢你我们有这样相聚的时间，感谢你与我们同在，帮助我们，面对困难的情况，找到人生命的解答。主啊，求你的恩典降临到每个人身上，在圣灵里，温柔待人，爱他们，在真理上坚定。祷告在今天的问题上有挣扎的人，能经历极大的得胜。也祷告接下来的聚会，求你的大能释放人得自由，奉耶稣基督的名，阿门！

Basic Deliverance Training

基本驱邪术训练

基本驅邪術訓練

Following Jesus includes progressively walking into freedom; and the empowerment to advance the Kingdom of God.

Understand what demons are, and how they enter people and work to destroy lives; and then what Jesus has done to purchase freedom from oppression for us.

Learn about the important part we have to play in positioning ourselves to experience freedom.

Understand the anointing upon Jesus, and the impact of that anointing in our lives.

Learn about the basic doorways that demons use to enter people, and the issues of the heart that give them access.

This powerful series of teachings will give you insight to Spiritual Freedom.

跟随耶稣包括逐步走入自由和权力来推进神的国度。

了解什么是妖，以及他们如何进入人们的工作和摧毁生命;然后耶稣已经完成，从压迫自由购买我们。

了解我们有自己的定位，体验自由发挥的重要组成部分。

认识耶稣后的恩膏，那恩膏在我们生活的影响。

了解了恶魔可以用它来进入人们的门道，和心脏这给他们访问的问题。

这种强大的系列教诲会给你的洞察力与精神自由。

跟隨耶穌包括逐步走入自由和權力來推進神的國度。

了解什么是妖，以及他们如何进入人们的工作和摧毁生命;然后耶稣已经完成，从压迫自由购买我们。

了解我們有自己的定位，體驗自由發揮的重要組成部分。

認識耶穌後的恩膏，那恩膏在我們生活的影響。

了解了惡魔可以用它來進入人們的門道，和心臟這給他們訪問的問題。

這種強大的系列教誨會給你的洞察力與精神自由。

Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8)

To advance the Kingdom, we must overcome an inferior one, that currently has dominion over people’s lives. This doesn't happen by our will power or hope, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we depend on Him and grow in God. To be free we need to remove the armour, or belief system, from our lives that have bound us up, so the demon or strongman can be easily cast out. Demonic strongholds creates an energy, but the Holy Spirit can energise us, to get great victory and freedom over any area of our life.

如何到部长驱邪（领导人） (1 of 8)

如何到部長驅邪（領導人） (1 of 8)

Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8)

Explore the different doors of entry into a person’s life, from generational curses to inner vows. We get freedom through the Power of the Holy Spirit, by what Jesus has won on the Cross for us. He won the total victory, which was utterly complete, covering all intentional and un-intentional sin. As you open your heart, and take ownership for your sin, rather than blame others, and then repent and release forgiveness, healing and freedom will flow into our lives.

自由的基础 (2 of 8)

自由的基礎 (2 of 8)

Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8)

Explore the issues in the heart that can hold us in bondage. Discover that ungodly soul ties, inner vows and word curses are three entry points into our lives, where we can open ourselves to bitterness, jealousy, anger, complaining, addictions, etc, which then become strongholds in our lives, that the enemy can come in and take hold of. This includes other peoples words and actions towards us. As we recognise these traits in our lives, we can take ownership of them, renouncing and releasing them from our lives in Jesus Name.

心的牢笼 (3 of 8)

心的牢籠 (3 of 8)

Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8)

Explains three main legal grounds, upon which demons can gain access to your life: generational curses; the occult; and sexual sin. The issues and bondages that come into our lives through these door ways can be broken and cast out by the power of the Holy Spirit, because we are redeemed and set free by the Cross of Jesus Christ. We need to acknowledge and identify these areas of sin; then renounce and release forgiveness as necessary; then call upon the name of Jesus, who will set your free!

法律有权进入 (4 of 8)

法律有權進入 (4 of 8)

The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8)

Humans are very unique - not only living in the natural world, but can also connect to the spiritual world. Jesus came to tell us about the Kingdom of God, which is full of light, peace and joy; but there is another Kingdom which we are all born into - the Kingdom of Darkness - which rules by tormenting people, and using sin to control them. Jesus came to set us free, by shedding his blood on the Cross. When we accept what Christ has done for us, we need to continue and allow the Holy Spirit to change our thinking, by the renewing of our mind - that we would be kind, tender hearted and loving to one another, and set free in our hearts.

两个王国 (5 of 8)

兩個王國 (5 of 8)

Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8)

Many problems we have in life come from traumatic experiences, which have often happened in early childhood: in the womb; early childhood; or during school years. These experiences tend to shut us down, and control the memory of the trauma. We do not realise that these experiences are actually controlling you: relationships; reactions; and approach to life. The effect of these traumatic experiences can only be overcome and healed through prayer; by exchanging old memory pictures with scripture memorisation; and by inviting the Holy Spirit and the truth into the situation - for total restoration in Jesus name!

创伤性经历 (6 of 8)

創傷性經歷 (6 of 8)

Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8)

We are called to pray for people, and to be a minister of the Spirit of God. Come spiritually prepared, and believe that God is with you - guide people’s attention to the Lord, not the prayer! There will be conflict before, during, and after ministry, and the battles will be within you. Believe God is with you, take risks, and reach out in prayer. Keeping your eyes on Jesus, and listening to the Holy Spirit, you will be able to minister healing and freedom, in Jesus name, to people.

我们被邀请成为圣灵部长 (7 of 8)

我們被邀請成為聖靈部長 (7 of 8)

Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8)

We learn that Jesus came to touch people's hearts, by bringing revelation of the Power of God, for: salvation; healing; deliverance. Jesus made it clear we would have difficulties and problems, but He has overcome all evil with good - on the Cross, and through His ministry to us. As we face the reality that we are hurting and suffering, and allow the Lord to help us repent and forgive, He will always respond. God is committed to our character and growth, not our comfort.

耶稣的部 (8 of 8)

耶穌的部 (8 of 8)

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp3

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp3

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp3

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp3

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp3

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp3

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp3

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp4

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp4

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp4

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp4

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp4

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp4

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp4

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp4

Vimeo

- Vimeo Channel »

- Ministering Deliverance for Leaders (1 of 8).mp4

- Foundations for Freedom (2 of 8).mp4

- Bondages of the Heart (3 of 8).mp4

- Legal Right of Entry (4 of 8).mp4

- The Two Kingdoms (5 of 8).mp4

- Traumatic Experiences (6 of 8).mp4

- Called to be a Minister of the Holy Spirit (7 of 8).mp4

- Ministry of Jesus (8 of 8).mp4

如何到部長驅邪（領導人） (1 of 8)

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我的一個女兒Joanna今天跟我在一起。我的妻子向大家問安，她留在家中照看Joanna的三個男孩，她是一位好奶奶。對於那些還不認識我的人來說，我們有七個孩子，二十個孫子，是一個大家庭，蒙福的家庭。

很高興和你們在一起，可以和你們一起分享，一起禱告是非常美好的。 我們很喜歡來到靈糧堂，對我們來講透過靈糧堂我們才能夠來到台灣，透過Jonathan牧師與你們有連結。過去這十年我們每年至少來台灣兩到三次，看到成千上萬的生命被改變。我們真心感謝Jonathan牧師讓我們有機會來到這裡認識大家，建立美好的友誼。

神給我們非常大的恩寵，讓我們可以有機會服事這個國家的一些牧師和職場上的領袖，服事一些非常有影響力的人。見到一些一般人沒有辦法見到的人，看到神在他們家中觸摸他們，影響他們。我們很愛台灣，很喜歡來台灣，我也覺得跟華人有一種很深的連結。

在我們剛來台灣時，經歷了屬靈中最激烈的征戰。我們第一次來時，每一天翻譯都生病，每一天都換一個新的翻譯。而我自己在一個星期的服事之后也生重病，如果你是要將神的大能帶給人們時，生病是一件很尷尬的事情。我必須要在當下突破邪靈的攔阻。前面三四次來到台灣的時候，我周圍的人和我自己都會生病。之后我們就完全突破，沒有這樣的困擾了。

有時在我們的事工當中，面對的攔阻是非常真實的。我們必須要鼓起勇氣來面對，抵擋，突破。我當時就決定不退縮。我第一次來台灣時，第四天或第五天時，我病得不能說出話來，早上起來沒有了聲音。我跟神說，“神啊，我來這裡不是來生病的，我是來幫忙的。”於是我整天都沒有說話，到了晚上聚會時，我立刻有了聲音。當我講完道之后，又沒有了聲音。之后要服事幾百人，為他們禱告。我說，“主啊，我不退縮，幫助我。”他就幫助我找到一個不用講話就可以釋放神的大能的方法。所以我們總是在不斷地學習操練當中，我希望在這段時間裡跟大家分享，能夠幫到你們。

我們的主題是釋放的事工。因為大家都有一些基礎的教導，我要講的重點是挪開污鬼的堅固營壘。不止要看如何趕鬼，還要更進一步了解是什麼樣的堅固營壘可以讓鬼居住呢？

我們首先來看耶穌的教導，馬太福音十二章28節，耶穌說，“我若靠著神的靈趕鬼、這就是　神的國臨到你們了。”耶穌在這裡教導我們如何釋放，主要內容有幾點，

一． 釋放是神的國的彰顯。是神的國臨到地上產生的結果，是耶穌的權柄建構在一個人的生命中的結果，是神的國進入，推翻邪靈的權勢的結果。耶穌教導我們禱告他的國降臨。所以你在做釋放事工時，是國與國的相爭。是更有權柄的國和王趕走那個沒有權柄的王。

二． 趕鬼釋放的能力是來自於神的靈。隻有借著神的靈才能進入釋放的事工裡面。我們需要聖靈的膏抹和能力。這人必須操練他的信心，才能有這樣的能力。接下來我想跟大家一起分享，如何與聖靈同工。因為釋放不是單靠方法，雖然適當的方法會有幫助，但是我們依靠的不是方法和步驟，我們依靠的是聖靈的幫助。沒有聖靈，就沒有辦法進行釋放。所以我們跟聖靈的關系是非常關鍵的。靠著聖靈趕鬼，在你身上運行的能力就是聖靈的大能，是借著我們的信心而領受的能力。我們需要學會聆聽，回應，並與聖靈一起同工。在我們的事工中，常常需要聆聽聖靈對我們說什麼。

三． 耶穌教導我們說，“我若靠著神的靈趕鬼”。所以釋放的事工是需要有一個人來面對邪靈。你不能禱告求神來做，你要自己去面對邪靈。這個人要與聖靈一起同工，使用他的信心，對邪靈說話。當神的靈與他一起運行時，神的國就會建立了。所以當我們做釋放時，必須要敏銳，與聖靈一起同工。我們會在其它時間著重講這個。

接下來看43至45節，“污鬼離了人身，就在無水之地，過來過去，尋求安歇之處，卻尋不著。於是說、我要回到我所出來的屋裡去。到了，就看見裡面空閑，打掃干淨，修飾好了。便去另帶了七個比自己更惡的鬼來，都進去住在那裡。那人末后的景況，比先前更不好了。這邪惡的世代，也要如此。”

耶穌在這裡分享的東西非常關鍵，他幫助我們明白我們肉眼看不見的靈界的東西，他也幫助我們明白在釋放的事工中可能會遇見的問題。這也是我們今天的重點，“污鬼離了人身、就在無水之地，過來過去，尋求安歇之處”，耶穌描述的是一個人在得著釋放之后所發生的事情。作為教會中的領袖或者小組長，當一個人得到釋放之后應該怎麼辦？我們必須要知道釋放之后靈界的狀況是什麼。很多人的問題是隻專注於釋放的過程，反而失去了整個的異象。要知道釋放事工中趕鬼隻是一部分，最主要的目的是引領人歸向耶穌，做他的門徒。

釋放事工是將攔阻他的靈界的黑暗力量挪開，我們所要做的不隻是把污鬼趕出去，耶穌告訴我們為什麼。他說，“污鬼離了人身”，就是說在釋放之后，這個污鬼被趕出去了。那麼鬼去了哪裡呢？首先，他走來走去。邪靈在靈界裡屬於低階的靈，他們能夠做的東西是很有限的，所以當我們進行釋放事工時，邪靈就被趕出去，“在無水之地走來走去”，他們去到的地方是沒有聖靈的恩膏和運行的地方。他們立刻就離開，但是他們想找安歇之處，所以邪靈是在不斷地尋找可以居住的地方。他們不是躺在那裡，他們想進入一個可以成為家的地方，他是在尋找屬靈的家。所以邪靈一直在尋找一個可以進入影響的人，並透過這個人把他的屬性彰顯出來。他們的目標就是進入一個人裡面，毀壞這個人的生命。當他找不到任何人時，他就回家。

所以邪靈是有個性有位格的，他可以思想，可以做決定，可以說話，可以溝通。他是肉眼看不見的靈，這個靈是有位格，有心思，有想法，可以做決定的。我們所面對的是一個仇敵。他說他要回到他的家，就是說邪靈會記得他是從誰的身上被趕出去的。邪靈是非常遵守律法的，他說“我的房子”，就是說他有合法的權利進入那個人裡面。所以邪靈會尋找一個合法的權利進入一個人生命裡，去影響他。我們以后會詳細解釋這點。

邪靈說這個人是我的家。聖經告訴我們，我們的身體是聖靈的殿，是耶穌的寶血贖買回來的，我們是單單屬耶穌的。所以你的身體是你的家，我們邀請聖靈進入我們的身體，我們的身體成為聖靈的殿。邪靈看著這個人說這是他的房子，他們是在宣稱他們有合法的權利擁有這個屋子。他“就看見裡面空閑、打掃干淨、修飾好了。”就是說邪靈可以找到之前被趕出的那個人。可以想象在靈界裡，他們可以認出不同的人。如果我從他身上趕鬼出去，鬼去到很遠的地方，他會記得他是從誰的身上趕出去的，也可以再找回來。

你說“為什麼不把他趕到地獄裡去？”聖經裡沒有任何的經文告訴我們可以把他趕到地獄裡。聖經裡有講現在很多捆綁在地獄裡的邪靈，在末世的時候會被釋放出來，聖經也告訴我們耶穌在審批日的時候，會把所有的魔鬼捆綁在地獄裡。在這之前，他們就是在地上游走的邪靈，尋找可以吞吃，可以毀壞的人。另一方面，邪靈可以知道你的屬靈光景，他看見你“裡面空閑、打掃干淨、修飾好了”。空閑，就是你在度假，沒有生產力，不做任何事情。打掃干淨，就是指外面看起來是干淨的。這裡有一個非常困擾的事情，當我們看人時，我們隻看到他們所住的房子，就像用帷幕遮蓋一樣。聖經告訴我們，我們有靈，有魂，住在這個屋子裡。

邪靈看我們不一樣。當我們看人時，我們隻看表面。而當邪靈看人時，他會看見你靈裡面的人。當我們看人時，我們看的是人的身體。邪靈看人時，看的是我們真正靈裡面的人，你屬靈的光景是可見的。從靈界的角度，你真實的人是邪靈可以看得見的。邪靈可以知道你屬靈的光景。

有一次我在做釋放事工時，一位弟兄跟著一起來，當時趕鬼釋放是很艱難的，邪靈開始彰顯威嚇我。我就站起來抵擋他，他就做了一個很奇特的事情，那個人就轉離我，面對與我一起來服事的弟兄放聲大笑，並開始講發生在這位弟兄身上的事情，講出他看見的靈裡的狀況。這位弟兄非常尷尬，臉色通紅。我說你現在還不適合做這樣的服事，因為你還沒有建立你的權柄。我非常訝異邪靈可以看見他靈裡面的狀況。

所以我們要保持這樣的釋放，帶給人真正的自由，必須找到問題的根源，讓邪靈沒有重新進入的權利。

聖經這裡第45節講到，“另帶了七個比自己更惡的鬼來、都進去住在那裡．那人末后的景況、比先前更不好了。”換句話說，邪靈可以彼此溝通，他們一起分工合作，擴張在那人生命中的領地。我們讀完這段經文之后的結論是，光趕鬼是不夠的，我們必須要處理這人生命中的根本問題，建立他們與神同行的生活。他們屬靈的生活不能隻是空閑在那裡，而是要很積極地追求。

有一段非常有趣的經文，以弗所書第四章28節說，“從前偷竊的，不要再偷﹔總要勞力，親手作正經事，就可有余，分給那缺少的人。”講的是停止偷竊還不夠，必須要改變，親手作正經事，就可有余。所以對一個偷竊的人來說，他的自由不是來自於他停止偷竊，而是當他經歷改變，給予出去的時候，他才經歷自由。棄絕謊言，說誠實話，彼此相愛。

所以不隻是要停止負面的行為，更需要擁抱正面的東西，改變他們的生活。沒有中間地帶。當我們經歷到愛時，我們是從死亡進入到生命裡。所以我們必須要教導當鬼從這人身上趕出去時，這人首先需要與聖靈同行，在他們的生命中有真實的改變。

請看路加福音第十一章20至22節，耶穌講到釋放時說，“我若靠著神的能力趕鬼，這就是　神的國臨到你們了。壯士披挂整齊，看守自己的住宅，他所有的都平安無事。但有一個比他更壯的來，勝過他，就奪去他所倚靠的盔甲兵器，又分了他的贓。”

耶穌講這裡是在講釋放。他提到兩點，一，壯士。二，盔甲兵器。他講到你要使一個人得自由，就要把他的盔甲兵器挪開。壯士是指邪靈在一個人生命中的某個領域勝過了這個人。舉例來講可能是一個被拒絕的堅固營壘。這個人靈裡面充滿了被拒絕的意念和感受，在這個人的生命裡的某一點建立了堅固營壘。堅固營壘是一個心思意念，是我們思想的模式，是抵擋真理的思想模式。如果有人有一個根本的被拒絕的問題，就是一個心思意念的堅固營壘。他與人的互動，都是透過這個堅固營壘來看世界。

給大家一個例子。假如兩個人在交談，牧師走進教會，牧師非常忙碌，一直在想他接下來要做的事情。當兩人轉向牧師說，“牧師好。”牧師則繼續往前走，沒有聽到。其中一人這樣想：“牧師很忙，我等一下再去找他。”另一位這樣想：“他不喜歡我，我就知道牧師不喜歡我，他就是討厭我。”於是整個崇拜中，他就是這種心情，越想越氣，整個主日崇拜都被毀了。他沒有辦法不去想今天牧師拒絕了我。

兩個人有同樣的經歷，但是他們的解讀卻是不一樣的。其中一個沒有被拒絕的堅固營壘，他的態度是“沒關系，他很忙，我遲點再找他。”另外一個，有被拒絕的堅固營壘的，同樣的經歷，卻認為他不想理我，他不喜歡我。所以他裡面的堅固營壘的情緒就被挑旺，邪靈就不斷的用這種方式攪擾他。

耶穌說，被攪擾的靈就是這個壯士，在影響這個人的生命。那個盔甲就是要保護這個邪靈不被趕出去。盔甲就是這個人生命中問題的根源。邪靈可以進入到我們生命中的一個方式就是欺哄。當人相信謊言時，邪靈就隱藏在謊言的背后。

如果一個人的問題根源是被拒絕，可能會有被拒絕的靈，還有可能有謊言，或者是傷痛的經歷，或者有一些經歷讓這個靈進入他裡面。耶穌告訴我們，你要拆毀邪靈居住的架構，你就會很容易把他趕出去。你把他的盔甲拆毀挪開之后，就很容易把他趕出去了。

所以我們的事工不 僅僅是趕鬼，我們要與那個人一起同工，了解邪靈居住的架構是什麼。我們一起把邪靈居住的房子拆毀，邪靈沒有地方可以繼續抓住，他就沒有辦法再回來。

當你趕走了這個被拒絕的靈之后，這個人仍然相信謊言，相信他不是被愛的，不是被接納的。在經歷過幾個他認為是負面的經歷后，邪靈就會回來了。所以釋放的事工不隻是趕鬼，我們也要服事這個人，處理他生命中讓邪靈進入的堅固營壘。我們要知道堅固營壘是什麼，是怎樣運行的。所以在服事，做釋放事工的時候，要知道邪靈所居住的架構是什麼，是什麼讓他可以抓住人的生命。

這就帶出了一個問題，邪靈是怎樣開始進入人，影響人生命的？不同的事工會從不同的角度來看這個問題。有些人甚至不看那些最根本的問題，我覺得這是個問題，因為邪靈趕出去后，還是會回來的。不同的事工會從不同的角度來看邪靈是怎樣進來的，但最終會達到一個共同的結論。

第一種進入人的方式就是透過合法的權利。合法的權利代表邪靈有著合法的權柄，因著屬靈的法則進入這個人的生命。這個權柄是因著這個人的犯罪而給予邪靈的。

以弗所書四章27節告訴我們，“不可給魔鬼留地步。”地步在希臘文裡面的意思是合法的空間。不要給仇敵魔鬼一個合法的空間進入。

魔鬼進入我們生命最主要的方式就是透過這種合法的權利。當我們行走在神所設的法則原則當中時，我們是活在祝福裡。當我們違背了神的律法，后果是相當嚴重的。我們收獲的是我們所種下的，邪靈就有了合法的權利進入我們裡面。之后我們會講到耶穌在十字架上已經解決了這個合法權利的問題。當我們服事人時，我們要處理這個合法權利，讓仇敵魔鬼在這人身上沒有留任何的地步。要做的方式也非常簡單。

第二種進入人的方式就是透過一些悲慘的不好的經歷進入。這樣一個傷痛的經歷，就是在他情感上非常受傷的經歷，可能是一次意外，或者讓他驚嚇的經歷，或者長期處於壓力當中。所以這樣創傷的經歷會在情緒上，身體上，影響這個人生命。很多時邪靈就會利用這種經歷進入到人的生命當中。

當我們要幫助一個人時，你會發現在他傷痛的經歷裡面是有圖案的，有記憶的，仇敵魔鬼就會把自己綁在這些記憶當中。

第三種進入人的方式是我們面對著這些慘痛經歷時的回應。當一個人受傷時，他通常會想要回應，要控制這種疼痛，嘗試要控制他們的人生。當他想要控制掌握他的人生時，在這個過程中，常常會給邪靈有合法的機會進來。

我自己的服事經歷告訴我，這三種方式都是連在一起的。合法的權利，慘痛的經歷，以及我們對這些慘痛經歷的回應都是綁在一起的。所以當我們在服事一個人時，我們需要主要他們生命中的問題，我們要思考合法的權利，傷痛的經歷，和對傷痛經歷的回應。我們會詳細談這個，我會給大家一個步驟，一步一步的分析找到他生命中問題的根源。

當邪靈進入當一個人的生命中時，會帶來一些他裡面的問題。會影響這個人生命中不同的領域。這些領域包括：

1）他們會經歷靈界的彰顯。例如做噩夢，在夢裡有可怕的東西顯現，靈界的彰顯顯然來自於錯誤的根源。

2）邪靈也會影響我們的心思意念，有一些負面的想法不斷的在我們裡面得勝。

3）邪靈也會影響我們的情感，有一些情緒會突然出現，我們無法掌控。

4）邪靈也會影響我們的身體，帶來一些疾病是我們無法回應的。

5）邪靈也會影響人的生活，透過一個不斷循環挫敗的模式。

這樣的方式是如何在一個人的身上運行的呢？我想透過這樣的方式向大家解釋，我們看幾處經文以幫助大家理解。先來看以弗所書三章20節說，邪靈和堅固營壘的運行會給人裡面帶來一個能量，但是聖靈也是在我們裡面，帶來一個能量，能力的。

給大家一個例子，當一個人生氣的時候，會感覺到生氣，裡面有非常大的力量要沖出來，這是負面的力量。當一個人沮喪的時候，他們感受到他們周圍有一個壓制的負面的力量。當人們受到性犯罪的誘惑時，會感受到情欲的力量在他們的周圍。我要告訴大家這兩種運行其實是一樣的。

第一個在以弗所書二章1至2節告訴我們，“你們死在過犯罪惡之中，他叫你們活過來﹔那時，你們在其中行事為人隨從今世的風俗，順服空中掌權者的首領，就是現今在悖逆之子心中運行的邪靈。”這裡說的，是在我們心中運行的邪靈。這個運行在希臘文中的意思是“給予力量”，“興奮起來”。所以當邪靈在一個人的生命中時，他釋放一個強而有力的負面的能力，一個強而有力的屬靈的壓力在他身上。邪靈會釋放一個強大的能量在人的生命裡面，壓制他們，捆綁他們，壓制他們的心思，壓制他們的意念，壓制他們的生命。所以當邪靈在運行時，你會感受到能量的運行。

我們再看羅馬書第七章5節，“因為我們屬肉體的時候，那因律法而生的惡欲，就在我們肢體中發動，以致結成死亡的果子。”這裡說在我們裡面發動了，罪會在人裡面發動，那個發動的意思就是給予能力，邪靈會在我們裡面發動，給我們能量，在我們生命裡面帶來負面的壓力。罪也做同樣的事情，在人的生命中帶來負面的能量。當我們在描述罪跟邪靈帶來的影響的時候，聖經用“給予力量”來形容。當罪和邪靈運行在人的生命裡時，那個人會感受到裡面有一個很大的負面的能量要釋放出來，我們不能透過人的意志力來勝過這個能量，因為這是一個屬靈的能量。罪會釋放屬靈的能量在我們生命裡面，這個能量是 運行在人的裡面的力量，這個力量不斷的要求釋放的更多。邪靈會釋放負面的能力，運行在人的裡面。所以當人在罪和邪靈的影響下時，他裡面會有一個很大的負面的能量正在壓制他的生命。當我們面對邪靈的時候，我們需要先處理他生命裡的罪，把罪對他生命產生的負面的能量挪開。

我們再看以弗所書第三章20節，“神能照著運行在我們心裡的大力，充充足足的成就一切超過我們所求所想的。”對一個基督徒來說，在我們裡面有一個正面了力量在運行當中。這個“運行”與我們前面提到的“運行”是一樣的，在我們裡面運行的力量是聖靈的大能。換句話說，聖靈其中之一的工作就是讓我們的生命得著這樣的能力，讓我們有力量勝過這一切。

我們來看第16節保羅所做的禱告，“求他按著他豐盛的榮耀，借著他的靈，叫你們心裡的力量剛強起來”。所以一定是可以的，我們可以借著神的靈，讓我們內心的能力剛強起來。這個“剛強”就是“大大的加增，強壯”，就是“帶著極大的能力”。所以雖然罪帶出一個負面的能量，讓我們遠離神，雖然邪靈帶來負面的能量，但是我們有另外一個正面的能量，是聖靈的大能，神的靈可以讓我們剛強起來得勝。

帖撒羅尼迦前書第二章13節，“為此，我們也不住的感謝神，因你們聽見我們所傳　神的道、就領受了不以為是人的道、乃以為是　神的道．這道實在是　神的、並且運行在你們信主的人心中。”這裡再次提到“運行”，神的道可以給予你極大剛強的生命，神的道可以大大的加增你生命的能力。我們知道負面能量的來源是罪和邪靈，但是正面的得勝的能量來自於聖靈和神的話語。

所以要幫助一個人得著真正的自由，我需要除去這個負面能量的來源，處理他生命中的罪和傷痛的經歷，把邪靈趕出去，但是以人的意志力是不能夠得勝的。很多時，我們隻是告訴人該做什麼，但是那個人的生命需要有能力去做這些事情，他需要知道他靈裡面的人如何剛強起來，他需要知道如何透過神的靈，神的話剛強起來。過去他的生命是在挫敗裡面，而現在他們的生命充滿了神的靈的大能和神的道的能力。我常常問這樣的問題，“你怎樣讓神的道使你的靈剛強起來呢？”聖經告訴我們，神的道就有這樣的功能。但是我的生命要怎樣借著神的道剛強起來呢？

我們要做的不隻是挪開負面的東西，我們要帶人進入真正的生命裡。所以當我們講釋放，不單是趕鬼而已。我們是把他們從過去負面的能量中轉向，連結在生命的能量的源頭。所以趕鬼隻是其中一個部分而已，當我們更深的帶人進入自由裡時，我的目的是找出給予負面能量的源頭並處理這個源頭，帶他們進入一個生命中神的大能在運行的模式，他們的生命因著充滿神的能量剛強起來。

我們要知道怎樣去做，怎樣發現他的根本問題，怎樣帶他到生命的源頭裡。當人們經歷了神的大能，他的生命剛強起來時。聖經這樣告訴我們，“生命的律釋放我，從罪和死亡的律”。換句話說，我需要活在神的生命的大能裡才可以。不隻是要趕鬼而已，我要從過去黑暗轄制捆綁當中來到自由的裡面。這就是我們所謂的門徒訓練，就是帶人進入一個在神裡面是活躍的地方。

很多時候當我們服事人時，他們隻要我們幫他們解決問題，或者把他們的傷痛挪開，當然我們的目的是要帶他們進入耶穌基督生命的源頭裡，當他們生命中與基督連結時，就有神的大能在他們生命中運行。

（一位學員被邀請上前做禱告示范）

神渴望我們把他的生命帶到別人的生命中，這不應該是很困難的事情。主，我們感謝你來到她的身上，與她同在。我們不單單隻是解決問題，我們要帶領人認識生命的源頭，不單是趕鬼，而是帶人進入到基督的生命裡。

（請上前來，閉上眼，將你的心敞開，讓神觸摸你）

我們相信神的同在，神呼召我們帶來神的同在，想象神的百姓帶著神的同在，而不是活在邪靈的轄制裡面。很多時候我們的想法很負面，有邪靈，我需要解決他邪靈的問題。但是人受造是要讓聖靈居住的，所以我們不隻是要解決邪靈的問題，而是要帶著神的同在，讓他們的生命被神完全充滿。過去我們是在邪惡的轄制裡面，現在他們在聖靈的影響和充滿當中。

（來，來，聖靈充滿她，趕快來到她的右邊，我們向神敞開。）

我總是想知道這是如何發生的，你要怎樣建構你的生命，讓神可以居住在裡面。不應該困難，應該很容易的。我也要在這方面幫助大家。我們需要學習的是如何面對問題，如何解決邪靈的問題，怎樣幫助人在神裡面建構生命，使他們從被邪靈轄制到被聖靈充滿，帶著神的同在。

如果你隻是透過趕鬼來釋放的話，你會很興奮，每次看到鬼就趕。可是如果我們從神的角度看，讓人被聖靈充滿，那就不單隻是趕鬼了，而是要帶他們進入生命的源頭。阿門！

自由的基礎 (2 of 8)

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我們現在來看邪靈進入人生命的門，邪靈是如何進入人生命中的，如何處理，把這些門關上。如果我們隻是要趕鬼，而沒有處理他們生命中根本的問題，釋放他們得自由是很困難的，讓他們持守在自由裡面也是困難的。我們要來看聖靈進入人生命裡的方式，當中有些是你已經知道的，有些也可能是你今天才知道的。我們會一一來看，然后解釋如何處理這種方式。

有三個主要的部分: 一）合法的權利。什麼是合法的權利，在合法的權利中仇敵怎樣進入到人的生命中。我們要怎樣拆毀這個合法的權利。在我們開始這些之前，我們要看耶穌在十字架上為我們所成就的，我們要看三處經文，耶穌已經處理好所有我們需要面對的問題。當我們看這需要服事的部分時，我們要知道如何面對這些問題。

我們首先來了解我們自由的根基是什麼。歌羅西書第二章13至15節，“你們從前在過犯，和未受割禮的肉體中死了，神赦免了你們一切過犯，便叫你們與基督一同活過來。你們從前在過犯，和未受割禮的肉體中死了，神赦免了你們一切過犯，便叫你們與基督一同活過來。又涂抹了在律例上所寫，攻擊我們有礙於我們的字據，把他撤去，釘在十字架上。既將一切執政的掌權的擄來，明顯給眾人看，就仗著十字架夸勝。既將一切執政的掌權的擄來，明顯給眾人看，就仗著十字架夸勝。”

我們在這一段中看到耶穌為我們所成就的，這裡說他“涂抹了我們所有的過犯，赦免我們的罪”，這裡的過犯就是指我們刻意要犯的錯，耶穌已經赦免了我們一切的過犯，又涂抹了在律例上所寫，攻擊我們，有礙於我們的字據，把他撤去，釘在十字架上。你會發現耶穌完全涂抹了攻擊我們的字據。換句話說，我們違背神律法的所有証據，不管是我們知道還是不知道的犯罪，這些証據都有寫下來，有時我們很難理解所有我們的過犯都有記錄下來。

在舊約中我們知道如果你刻意犯罪，需要獻祭，如果你無知犯罪，你也需要來到神的面前獻祭。你可以想象就像一個人透過影片在看你的人生。天使有一個很大的工作就是記載你每一次的犯罪，他有一個很大的書卷。聖經講耶穌將整個書卷釘在十字架上。

所有仇敵魔鬼可以看到你的東西，你曾經犯過的罪，仇敵魔鬼的控告就是指向那個書卷。所有你所犯的一切的錯，耶穌都把它釘在十字架上。當耶穌把它釘在十字架上時，他赦免了我們一切的過犯。赦免代表我們不需要再還債。魔鬼說，“你犯了罪，你要償還債務。”耶穌把它釘在十字架上，釋放，每一個人都得到豁免。“既將一切執政的掌權的擄來、明顯給眾人看、就仗著十字架夸勝。”

所以當耶穌把我們的罪帶到十字架上時，他已經挪開仇敵魔鬼可以攻擊我們的兵器。所以在歌羅西書第二章我們看見，所有我們犯的罪，所有仇敵魔鬼有的合法權利，耶穌都已經把它帶到十字架上了，他流出他的寶血，使這個合法的權利可以破除。就像我們剛才在路加福音第十一章看到的，“除去盔甲”，把罪除去。

我們必須要面對他們生命中罪的問題。神對罪是有補救方法的。有人會說，“這是我的軟弱。”但是如果這不是罪，就沒法帶到十字架，沒法勝過了。可是我們承認這是罪，把它帶到十字架前。約翰一書第一章9節，“我們若認自己的罪，神是信實的，是公義的，必要赦免我們的罪，洗淨我們一切的不義。”洗淨我們從罪帶來的一切的不潔。所以要了解耶穌為我們所做的，他在十字架上為我們擔當了一切的過犯。如果一個人受邪靈影響的原因是因為罪，那麼把他的罪帶到十字架前。很多時人們隻是要我們為他們禱告，我們必須告訴他們真理是什麼，把他們引導到神的面前。

第二處經文是加拉太書第三章13至14節，“基督既為我們受了咒詛，就贖出我們脫離律法的咒詛。因為經上記著，『凡挂在木頭上都是被咒詛的。』這便叫亞伯拉罕的福，因基督耶穌可以臨到外邦人，使我們因信得著所應許的聖靈。”這裡提到的是咒詛的問題解決了，這兩節經文講的是咒詛和祝福。

祝福就是透過言語釋放出來的一個能力，也代表領受聖靈，領受祝福代表我們領受聖靈的能力，充滿在我們生命裡面，讓我們繼續在生活當中前行。所以蒙福的人生就是被聖靈能力充滿的人生，蒙福的人生是活在聖靈運行裡面的人生，所以第13節說“基督既為我們受了咒詛，就贖出我們脫離律法的咒詛”。咒詛就是帶有負面的屬靈能力的言語，那個能力是毀滅性的能力，咒詛背后的能力就是邪靈的能力。這裡說耶穌為我們成為咒詛。

在舊約裡有一節我們很熟悉的經文，“凡挂在木頭上都是被咒詛的。”這是在羅馬人發明釘十字架這一酷刑之前幾百年就已經記載了。所以當羅馬兵選擇將耶穌釘十字架時，他們選擇讓耶穌受的刑法，讓他經歷了人類所有的咒詛，所有歷代家族的咒詛，違背神律法所帶下來的咒詛，所有在申命記二十七章所記載的咒詛，所有這些咒詛在十字架上都被破除了。基督救贖了我們，換句話說，他償還了所有的贖價，這是合法的代價，他付上贖金將我們從轄制當中買贖回來。

當我們面對弟兄姐妹時，如果在他們生命中有咒詛臨到，不管是歷代家族的咒詛或者其它任何的咒詛，主耶穌在十字架上流出的寶血是解決咒詛的答案。我們要把咒詛帶到十字架前，讓咒詛的能力被破除。所以每一次我們在處理生命中有咒詛的人的 時候，我們要把他們的咒詛帶到十字架前，讓咒詛的能力被破除。然后讓聖靈運行在他們生命當中，讓祝福臨到。

所以當我們在處理咒詛問題的時候，我們期待他會從邪靈的影響當中得釋放，然后讓聖靈充滿，運行在他生命中。我們遲一點再來講如何讓聖靈運行。

現在我們來看以賽亞書五十三章，這是非常好的經文，如果我們能夠背下來就更好了。這裡講的是我們可以收回曾經給予仇敵魔鬼的合法權柄，從而得到自由。如果仇敵魔鬼是透過合法權柄進入我們生命裡面，神把這個合法權柄奪回，釋放我們。所以當你服事人的時候，把這個合法權利從仇敵魔鬼那裡奪回來，邪靈就沒有合法的權柄停留在那人生命中。

以賽亞書五十三章3節，我要你了解耶穌在十字架上所成就的有多麼偉大。“他被藐視，被人厭棄，多受痛苦，常經憂患。他被藐視，好像被人掩面不看的一樣﹔我們也不尊重他。”他全然擔當我們的憂患，背負我們的痛苦。憂患代表在憂傷，困難，疾病，軟弱中﹔痛苦代表我們情感上的憂傷和精神上的折磨。

所以耶穌擔當了我們的憂患，背負了我們的痛苦，第5節，“哪知他為我們的過犯受害，為我們的罪孽壓傷。因他受的刑罰，我們得平安﹔因他受的鞭傷，我們得醫治。”我們講到過犯是指我們刻意的要去違背神的律法。罪孽使我們內心扭曲傾向犯罪，是我們人性的扭曲和對犯罪的喜好。第6節，“我們都如羊走迷，各人偏行己路。耶和華使我們眾人的罪孽都歸在他身上。”

從我們所看的這三處經文中可知，在十字架上耶穌處理了我們的過犯和罪孽，他處理了我們生命當中所有的咒詛，處理了我們所有的憂患和痛苦，所有我們傷痛的經歷，他處理了我們生命中扭曲轉離神的罪孽，耶穌在十字架上為我們完成了整個和好的工作，我們需要思考的是我們應該怎樣把這個應用在我們的服事當中。

在舊約中，人們必須把羊羔的血涂在門楣上，羊的血不隻是要流出來，還要涂上去。所以我們要把耶穌為我們流的寶血，他為我們所做的應用在我們的服事當中。換句話說，我們必須要借著信心來使用神為我們所成就的。所以在整個服事當中，我們有我們要做的，被服事者也有他們需要做的，在他們得到自由的過程中，他們也有需要做的事情。

舉例來說，當我們講重生得救的時候，耶穌為我們死在十字架上，使我們可以重生得救，讓每一個人都可以得救。從合法的角度講，每一個人都可以重生得救，但是要讓救恩彰顯在他的生命當中，他自己必須要有所回應，他們必須要認罪悔改，然后相信。所以讓神運行工作之前，人必須預備好自己，做一些事情來回應神。

所以我們的責任是要帶他們來認識，應用神已經為他們成就的。第一個是讓他們得自由，第二是讓他們持守在自由裡面。他們要應用主耶穌為他們所成就的。要應用需要信心，所以在他們得自由之前，一定要把這些講清楚，讓這些成為他們得自由的根基。我覺得人們沒有得自由或持守在自由裡面的原因是，他們生命裡面根本的東西並沒有拔除。或者在過程中，那個人並沒有一起參與同工。

我們剛才談到了自由的根基，我們看到耶穌在十字架上為我們所成就的，當時每個人都必須做好他需要做的事。我給大家一個人必須要做回應的清單。第一，人們必須要看清楚而且要為他生命中的挫敗承擔責任。很多時候人們都喜歡怪罪其它的事情，他們有很多的借口，很多的理由去怪罪別人，但是邁向自由中很重要的一部分就是要為你犯的罪和挫敗承擔責任。

箴言第二十八章13節，“遮掩自己罪過的，必不亨通﹔承認離棄罪過的，必蒙憐恤。”如果我們把我們該負的責任隱藏起來，通常我們透過怪罪別人來不負起我們的責任，或者減低我們應負的，或者否定我們的問題，這些其實是在攔阻神讓我們得自由的工作。所以當我們在服事人的時候，他們如果不願意為自己所做的承擔責任，你很難繼續下去。如果他們沒有承認他們活在一個模式裡面，他們很難得到自由。

我們最大的挑戰就是讓人看見真理，很多時候他們會把問題隱藏起來，或者假裝問題沒有那麼糟糕。最近我在服事一位姐妹的時候，她在掙扎，因為她無法懷孕，她渴望有一個家庭。我跟她分享，聽她的故事。我說，你已經有一個家庭了，你有四個孩子，你之前奪走了四個孩子的生命，他們現在在天國，他們是真實的，有各自的名字的。所以你之前所做的事情，造成了你現在無法懷孕。

對她來講，這是一個很痛苦的經歷，讓她面對她現在無法懷孕這個事實是跟她之前四次墮胎有關系的。我跟她說讓我們禱告，讓她可以得著醫治，可以懷孕之前，要承認是什麼樣的原因使你陷入現在的痛苦光景中。在天國你有四個孩子，他們的生命是因為你這樣的選擇而結束的。耶穌認識他們每一個，你需要來到耶穌面前，他已經饒恕了你，你需要來領受他的饒恕。我們可以為你禱告，讓這個罪帶來的結果可以得著醫治。她想要得醫治，卻不想要去面對因她之前的選擇所造成的后果。我說你要先經歷饒恕，承認你對在天國的孩子們所做的事。神深深的觸摸了她，她當天也給四個孩子都取了名字。

所以我們最大的挑戰就是在服事弟兄姐妹的時候讓他們認清他們真正的原因是什麼，也願意為這個問題承擔責任。在提摩太后書第二章24至26節 中寫道，“然而主的仆人不可爭競﹔隻要溫溫和和地待眾人，善於教導，存心忍耐， 用溫柔勸戒那抵擋的人，或者神給他們悔改的心，可以明白真道， 叫他們這已經被魔鬼任意擄去的，可以醒悟，脫離他的網羅。”這裡講的是一個被魔鬼擄去的人，換句話說，就是在無法擺脫的影響之下，魔鬼控制了他的心思意念，甚至決定，他需要脫離這個網羅。

在他脫離網羅得自由之前，有一個很重要的步驟，就是需要明白真道，願意悔改，他們就可以脫離魔鬼的網羅。如同26節講，“可以醒悟。”就是清醒明白過來。所以在他們承認這個真理之前，通常會有很多的沖突，可是一旦他們承認了真理，他們就進入了自由的過程中。所以當你在服事人，跟他們分享真理的時候，你會發現他們的心思意念就像一個戰場，可是當他們明白，承認之后，會有一個突破。

承認真理和悔改是在脫離網羅之前。在我們服事人的過程中，我們會問他們一些問題，以幫助我們明白他們的問題所在，然后告訴他們真理是什麼，告訴他們如何在這個過程中一步步地得釋放，然后用神的大能讓他們經歷到釋放。這樣講明白嗎？我們會問一些問題，診斷出問題的根源，幫助他們認識真理。如果他們願意承認這個真理，願意進入悔改裡面，你就可以帶他們進入到自由。如果他們不承認真理，或者不願意悔改，他們就沒辦法得自由，或者如果你幫他們得自由，他們也沒法持守在自由裡面。所以在我們的服事當中，先認識真理，之后才能進入神的大能裡面。

所以當我跟這位姐妹分享時，她是在教會裡面做領袖的，非常有影響力。可是因為無法生育，她的心常常被攪擾。所以當我說她有四個孩子的時候，可以感覺到她周圍困惑的氣氛。接下來我要慢慢的一步步的幫她分析，讓她看清，因為她過去相信一個謊言，以為這不是一個生命，隻是我生命中需要解決的問題。我需要幫助她了解，她有四個孩子，他們現在住在天上。你現在有這樣的問題，是因為你過去奪走了他們的生命。她就解釋她當時墮胎的原因，很多壓抑和傷痛。

我說，“我們沒有辦法進入到自由裡面，除非你能夠誠實的承認，面對生命中的問題。這是聖經中明確講明的。“你會感到她裡面有很多的掙扎和困惑，突然就清晰起來，她就明白了她所做的。然后，她就因著她所做的開始憂傷了，這個時刻就是我們開始服事，為她禱告的時候。因為她承認真理，也願意悔改。

所以我們的服事過程其實很簡單，就是首先發現問題的根源，然后幫助他承認，悔改。一開始他很苦毒的怪罪周圍的人，我說當你怪罪別人的時候，你自己就是一個受害者，一個受害者的心是無法得著自由的。當你怪罪別人的時候，你把你得自由的能力給了別人。可是當你願意為你的狀況承擔責任的時候，你就再次有能力得到釋放。

所以我們第一個帶他們進入的就是讓他們認識到自己的罪，並為他們所做的承擔責任。當他們願意看清問題所在，也願意承擔責任，就可以繼續下一個步驟了。有一位姐妹，我本來是要為她禱告的，她問我說，“有個人想跟我結婚，我應該怎麼辦？”這種問題通常很微妙。於是我說，“可以告訴我你的狀況嗎？”她說，“我曾經跟這個人交往了三四年，分手后，我又跟另外一個人交往並有了一個孩子，然后又分手了。現在這個人又回來說要娶我。”我問她，“你們為什麼分手呢？”她說，“他之前曾經三次對我不忠實。”我說，”這是一個很合理的理由。通常不忠實一次就已經分手了，你還等了三次。”我說，“他是基督徒嗎？”她說，“他不是。”

於是我說，“答案非常簡單，過去他對你不忠實三次，他的心也沒有經歷過改變，他會繼續做他之前所做的。”可是我可以感覺到她沒有聽我的話，因為她想要跟這個人結婚。我問她，“你可不可以跟我分享一些你自己的家庭，分享一下你的父親。”她說，“我不跟我的父親碰面。”“為什麼？”“當我十三歲的時候，我的父母就離異了。他現在跟別人住在一起。”我說，“我很好奇你的父母是怎樣離婚的。”“我父親不忠實。”“多少次？”“三次。”整個過程其實很奇特。我說，“你對你的父親有苦毒，你論斷他，這個根源一直沒有解決。這就是為什麼你被同樣的男人吸引，而且你也受蒙蔽了，看不出他的真實面目。這段關系是一個災難，你需要處理的是心中對你父親的苦毒。我很訝異她說她看不出這個情況，其實是她不想看見，因為她隻想著跟這個男人結婚。我說，“很抱歉，我沒法幫到你。因為你不願意面對你生命中的苦毒，也不願意相信其實你裡面有邪靈在影響你。”

所以當我們在服事弟兄姐妹的時候，第一個階段就是要了解問題的根本是什麼，幫助對方看到他們所應承擔的責任，然后幫助他們得自由。

1） 幫助他認清問題，承擔責任。

2） 認罪，悔改。一個人要得到自由，他身上罪的問題一定要先處理，如果有因罪帶來的合法權利，罪必須要從他身上先挪開。透過認罪，悔改，我們可以把罪從他身上挪開。約翰一書第一章9節，“我們若認自己的罪，　神是信實的，是公義的，必要赦免我們的罪，洗淨我們一切的不義。”所以我們要先處理罪的問題。人們必須要認罪，悔改，處理罪的問題。悔改代表我們轉離罪。罪引導我們走向死亡，轉離罪，就會引導我們走向生命。很多時候釋放很困難，是因為他沒有真正的認罪。

3） 服事的對象必須要釋放，饒恕。馬可福音第十一章25節告訴我們，“你們站著禱告的時候，若想起有人得罪你們，就當饒恕他，好叫你們在天上的父也饒恕你們的過犯。”人們無法得自由的另一個主要的原因就是因為不饒恕。

不饒恕使人的魂和傷害他的事情與背后的邪靈綁在一起。當一個人裡面有不饒恕的時候，通常他的心中會有憎恨，因為不公義的事情臨到他的身上，他生命中一些寶貴的東西被奪走了。可能是真實的傷害，也可能隻是想象中的傷害。不饒恕就是債務一定要償還，你欠了我的，你一定要還。就如懷恨父親，因為他對家庭不忠，破壞了整個家，我受苦了這麼多年，你一定要償還。我們心裡面對那個傷害的要求，就是要償還的要求。

饒恕就是你欠了我的，你不用償還了，我釋放你，你不需要跟我道歉，你不需要補償我，你不需要做任何事情，我已經把要求你償還的權利放下。如果我們要釋放人得自由，就需要明白饒恕的大能和重要性。馬太福音第十八章34至35節中說，你們若不 從 心 裡 饒 恕 你 的 弟 兄，就會被交給掌刑的。換句話說，不饒恕會帶給邪靈合法的權利，可以進入你的生命裡面。

我發現這越來越成為一個問題。如果隻是簡單的對人說，“嘿，你需要饒恕。”是不夠的。他需要從心裡面饒恕，必須是一個心裡面的決定，從死亡轉向生命。“我放下不饒恕，我釋放饒恕，我願意祝福這個人。”耶穌說你要祝福那些抵擋你傷害你的人，為他們禱告。所以饒恕他們是放開他們，祝福他們。所以我發現，不是機械的對他們說，“你需要饒恕。”然后為他們禱告。可是他的心沒有在裡面，這樣他們是不會得自由的。饒恕是一個決定，是一個選擇，是從心裡出發，願意放手。

有些時候他們做的禱告隻是言語，心裡卻沒有真正放下來，因為他們把那個傷痛和憤怒埋藏在他們心底的深處。當你在服事弟兄姐妹的時候，一定要了解，一個人可能受傷很深。讓我舉個例子幫你理解。如果Jonathan過來跟我說，“麥克牧師，請你原諒我。我帶給你一些傷害，你會饒恕我嗎？”我說，“是的，是的，沒問題。”關鍵是，他沒有告訴我他做了什麼，我也沒有問。是一塊錢的問題還是一百萬的問題？你做的事情對我有多深的影響？如果你拿了一塊錢，沒問題﹔如果是一百萬，你毀了我的生活，我存了那麼久的錢被你偷走了，你要我饒恕你，我氣死了。你發現一塊錢和一百萬是不一樣的。我的損失與我是相連的。如果你要我饒恕，我就要了解我釋放的是什麼。所以很多人在釋放的時候，隻是在頭腦裡做了禱告，可是心卻沒有參與到這個過程中。所以在你服事人的時候，這樣做是有幫助的，你幫助他承認心中真正的傷痛。這個人做了什麼？怎樣影響了你？你的感覺是什麼？很多人否認他真正的感受，在華人裡面更是。他們就是忍者，如刀在心，可是裡面很苦毒。如果一個人苦毒，他會顯現出來，說話很尖銳，苦毒像河流一樣玷污周圍的人。

所以在我為一個人釋放禱告之前，我會讓他們寫下來分享這件事對他的影響到底是什麼。“你覺得怎麼樣？”“你生氣嗎？”“你有多生氣？”很多時候這些情緒都被壓抑起來。我發現這樣做很有幫助，用問題與他互動。因為當他承認他內心的感受的時候，他才會跟他的心連結。“當你想到這個人的時候，你的感覺是什麼？”“我才不想他呢。”是的，因為你想要逃避。可是當你真正去想你的感覺，你會害怕，你會生氣，你會痛，讓他把情緒帶出來。

有時我會讓人寫一封“生氣的信”，其實不是給任何人看，隻是讓他自己和神看，把他心裡的感受寫出來擺在面前。有的時候是對父親，或者是對母親，有時是其他人。當你寫的時候，先把好的東西寫下來，因為他們不把好的東西寫下來，他們要經歷這個過程。當他寫壞的部分時，“哦，對我很壞。”“哦，其實也沒有那麼壞。”“我好生氣。”“哦，他其實還挺好的。”這樣他就沒有辦法真正的跟心連結。所以如果跟你的父親有關系的，先寫下來他的優點，感謝你給我這麼多好的東西，然后再寫下來真正帶給你憂傷的事情。寫下來你心裡真實的感受，讓感受真實的流露出來，為你的感受憂傷流淚。這時才釋放饒恕。你就知道你要放下，要饒恕什麼了，“我釋放他，饒恕他，祝福他。”要得到自由，饒恕是一個非常重要的部分。神要我們活在這個地方，不是要我們不斷的要求別人，而是要成為別人的祝福。

有時候，我會暫停服事，先幫助他們一起面對他們的感受，將感受表達出來，饒恕別人，特別是那些有被虐待和有非常慘痛經歷的。然后釋放饒恕，我饒恕他們，我祝福他們。特別是對於那些長期的來自於家人的傷痛。我鼓勵他在接下來三個星期，每次敬拜神的時候，都想到那個人，去擁抱他們，祝福他們，為他們禱告。因為當你的心裡還有傷痛和怒氣的時候，你是不可能這樣做的。這些都是帶我們得自由的根基。如果我們沒有承認我們的罪，就會攔阻整個過程，如果我們沒有悔改，也無法進入到自由裡面，如果我們沒有饒恕，也無法得自由。

下一個步驟就是，人們必須要棄絕他們生命中的捆綁。我會解釋到底有什麼樣的捆綁，然后怎樣做。捆綁可以是歷代家族的咒詛，或者內在誓言。舉例來說，我之前為一位女士禱告，她想要懷孕，我問她之前你有沒有懷孕過，她說我們有一個孩子，可是之后又流產過三四次。“你可以講一下第一次懷孕的情況嗎？”“非常艱難，非常痛苦。”“你有沒有曾經在心裡面說再也不要生孩子了？”“有的。”這就是內在誓言帶來的結果，你的身體是在回應你的內在誓言。你的身體在拒絕每一個闖進去的孩子，因為你說過不要再有孩子了。你必須要破除棄絕這個咒詛對你生命的影響。然后我們會講這個棄絕是什麼。這裡我們講到承認我們的問題，負起責任，悔改，認罪，饒恕，棄絕，破除捆綁，最后就是尋找神的大能來釋放自由。我們看到整個得自由的過程，得自由的根基，尋求耶穌來得自由﹔否則在事奉過程 中人們會把你當成偶像，他們希望你來解決問題，他們把所有的責任加在你的身上，你要給我得自由。你要讓他們承擔責任，去尋找耶穌，得到自由。

我為大家做一個示范，有沒有一個志願者？感謝神，你，就是你了。請把手交給我。當我們服事人的時候，如果人定睛在你的身上，去為他成就這件事，就會有一種壓力從他身上出來，你就會有表現的壓力，從人身上而來的壓力其實是由巫術去掌控的，耶穌從不讓從人而來的壓力影響他的服事，他做父神讓他做的事，或者因著憐憫做事。

很簡單的建議，我會說，“我希望你閉上眼睛，定睛耶穌，從裡面仰望耶穌，期待他觸摸你。”現在，他的焦點已經從我轉向耶穌了，他的壓力已經不在我身上了，我要他的焦點定睛在主耶穌身上，期待領受從他那裡來的能力。當他這樣做的時候，神的同在運行就臨到了。同樣，我也不要專注在他身上，我把焦點定睛在耶穌身上，他的同在就會來臨，你會感覺到他恩膏的來臨。所有我們的服事必須是定睛在聖靈身上，我們跟他一起同工，讓他的心向聖靈敞開。聆聽聖靈的聲音，就很容易可以運行在他的大能裡面。你要讓他的眼目定睛在耶穌身上，尋求幫助。人們總是習慣定睛在你的身上，尋求你的幫助，他們是一個受害者，你是他們的拯救者，而事實不是這樣的。結果可能會是這樣：我是受害者，你是拯救者，你必須要拯救我，如果我沒有得自由，那就是你的錯。我就要去找一個更有恩膏的。同樣的，你要讓我得釋放，讓我得自由，我還是用一個受害者的身份去思想，而不是在神的能力中來思考。如何決定是我的責任，我要在信心裡面得自由，是我的信心要釋放神的大能。

“請上前來，讓我牽著你的手，閉上眼睛，把你的心向神敞開，神的大能就會臨到你。”我們的事工應該是從安息中開始，其實我沒有做很多，我隻是把他引到真正的答案面前，他可以感受到神的大能在他身上。我發現在我們服事的時候，那個恩膏是從我們裡面涌出來的，是聖靈的大能，當人們向神敞開的時候，會有恩膏臨到他們。我可以強烈的釋放神的大能，因為我們已經創造了這樣的一個可以服事的氛圍。

所有你不要想著有一個好的表現，要幫助人們處理他們的問題。如果你想著去解決問題，你就變成了拯救者，他是受害者，你就在扮演耶穌的角色。如果沒有任何事情發生，你就會覺得很糟糕，你也變成了受害者，認為為什麼沒有透過我帶給他自由。這就是一個問題，所以我們必須要有一個正確的焦點。我總是叫人們定睛在主身上，而不是我的身上。聖靈一起同工釋放自由，你就會發現聖靈的流動是很自然地釋放出來的。

在服事人的時候，我們需要認識到“我無法拯救他，我解決不了他的問題，這也不是我的責任。認識到這一點是很有幫助的，我是基督的代表，我把基督帶到他生命中，幫助他與基督連結。所以我的事工就是將他帶到能真正拯救他的那一位主面前。如果我總是認為“我要解決他的問題”， 我就會在一個壓力下，每一次都要找到正確的答案。可是如果我隻是幫助他與神連結的，我就可以放鬆，當你裡面是放鬆，安息的，你就會發現服事是最有效的。聖靈就像鴿子一樣，你一緊張，鴿子就飛走了。所以你裡面安歇，聖靈的恩膏就更容易流出。

現在讓我牽著她的手，這樣觸摸她。“閉上你的眼睛，仰望主耶穌，渴望他觸摸你，期待他與你同在。”現在我期待她定睛在主身上，我也定睛在主身上。主，我感謝你與我們同在。當你定睛在主耶穌身上的時候，你要怎麼做呢？我就想象主就站在我面前，非常靠近，我注視著他。耶穌說，“我看見父神所做的，我也去做。”透過這樣的方式，你的事工會很容易。讓人與神連結，你也與主相連，就會很自然的運行。聖靈就會降臨。很簡單。

我們還沒有進入到釋放裡，我隻是教導大家怎樣預備人的心進入到服事裡。當我們預備一個人的時候，就是預備他的心仰望主，准備領受神跡。不是要定睛在我要解決的問題上。這是你的問題，我與你一起同工帶來神的答案。這樣你就不會承受一個很大的服事的壓力，讓我們的思想都對焦在耶穌身上。當人的心預備好，轉向神的時候，你真的可以感受到神的同在臨到他們身上。當人的心沒有預備好，還缺少什麼的時候，聖靈就不見了。

我能牽著你的手嗎？你什麼都不需要做，隻是閉上眼睛，向主敞開你的心，就像打開門讓他進來一樣。“我現在所尋求的，是神的大能觸摸她。”每次我這樣做的時候，都能夠感覺到這人對神有多敞開。你可以感覺到神的靈臨到他們身上，或者你可以感到有些阻擋，水流不暢。現在神的靈來了，她很放鬆，這樣就非常容易服事。

有時你會感覺到一個無形的牆，你可以感受到那個抵擋，你必須要學會察覺這些不同點。約翰福音第七章38節告訴我們，“信 我 的 人 ， 就 如 經 上 所 說 ， 從 他 腹 中 要 流 出 活 水 的 江 河 來 。”聖靈是像河流一樣運行的，我所做的就是如何預備一個人的最根本的東西，什麼是他們必須要做的，我們要做的就是跟聖靈一起同工，讓聖靈可以自由的運行。

我要牽著他的手，我不是嘗試讓什麼事情發生，而是把焦點定睛在主耶穌身上，我能真實的感受到從天而來的能力在他身上，我唯一做的就是把他的焦點轉向那個源頭，我能看見那個水流，我也向那個水流敞開，所以這樣的服事事工不是很輕鬆嗎？我們不是要嘗試讓事情發生，我們要對聖靈所做的工作更敏感，對聖靈的流動更敏感，對聖靈的運行更敏感，一直不斷聆聽他所說的話。這樣，就不是你要去解決一個人的問題，而是與聖靈同工。我們還可以借著聖靈的能力趕鬼，我們還沒有進入趕鬼的階段，我隻是讓大家想到如何跟聖靈一起同工。阿門!

我不再繼續教，我要你嘗試一些練習，這是一個很好的操練，把你的筆記本放下，還是可以坐下來。我來演示一下。我們都是在靈裡服事，換句話說，有神的恩膏在我們身上，我們可以挑旺恩膏，我們可以挑旺聖靈的流動，所以接下來我們做這樣的操練。等一下我們會用強有力的方言禱告，挑旺我們靈裡面的人。我要你三個人一組，你可以去到會場所有的地方，每三個人一組。

我這裡有三個人，你是接福的人，你要睜開眼﹔你是領受的人，可以把眼睛閉起來﹔你是服事的人，你要釋放神的大能。接下來我們這樣做，我們一步步教導大家，第一步，“我能在你身上操練嗎？”“好，你盡力而為。”你閉上眼睛，牽著她的手，我要你方言禱告，方言禱告就會挑旺你的靈，還不需要做任何事情。他還沒有嘗試做，就已經發生了，聖靈已經在她身上了。你能感受到恩膏在她身上嗎？是的，是的，很強對不對？你正釋放神的大能到她身上，我們數1，2，3，你就吹氣。聖靈來了。

你剛剛有什麼樣的感覺？當你方言禱告的時候，你有沒有感覺內心有一個能力升起來？當你方言禱告的時候，你發現什麼樣的事情發生在她身上？她感覺有一個水流臨到她身上，她開始站立不穩。當你禱告的時候，她開始仰望神，你注意到聖靈開始臨到她。我們能夠敏銳的感覺到聖靈的運行是很重要的，然后你很容易釋放神的大能。從你裡面的能力，不是外在的力量，是借著我們的信心，從裡面釋放出來的力量。

你注意到你坐的位置是你沒有辦法推她的，有些人是想把她推倒。當你把她推倒的時候，你是在血氣裡面，你沒有依靠聖靈。你推人的話，聖靈會擔憂就離開了。你不需要推，人們不喜歡被推，你推他，他會推回來，沒有人喜歡被推倒。那不是服事，那是推人。好，我們三個人一組，我能在你身上練習呀？可以。牽著她的手，用方言禱告，放輕鬆，挑旺聖靈的水流，釋放神的大能。1，2，3，神的大能。看，這並不難，對不對？給她一點掌聲。

我可以牽著你的手嗎？如果我這樣為她禱告，我根本不可能推她，你也可以按在這裡。你要練習服事，不推人，學會釋放神的大能。我們沒有期待這樣的事發生，但是它就發生了，因為我們在聖靈的流動當中。觸摸她，觸摸她，當恩膏在釋放當中，邪靈就開始彰顯，感謝主，觸摸她。

我們還沒有時間看到問題的根本，事情就發生了，但我們跟聖靈一起同工，我們禱告，恐懼的靈離開她，奉主耶穌的靈，釋放她。感謝主。

心的牢籠 (3 of 8)

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（開場禱告）

主啊，我們向你敞開我們的心，渴望你的觸摸，服事我們，教導我們，我們歡迎你，願神的國可以來到我們中間，今天早上我們仰望你，我們為你昨天所做的感謝你，也為你今天將要做的感謝你。在今天白天和晚上的聚會中，我們感謝你，珍惜你的同在，我們愛你在我們當中所做的，最重要的是我們把我們的心定睛在你的身上，今天早晨，我們把一切的尊榮都歸給你，感謝你。阿門！

（上節簡介）

今早我們要看的是心中的捆綁。我們很快的復習一些我們昨天所提到的，我們看到耶穌授膏，來釋放人自由，耶穌教導釋放，釋放其實是神國的彰顯，我們看到耶穌教導我們當邪靈被趕出后，會嘗試重新回到原來那個人的身上。這就是為什麼釋放的事工常常被人誤解，因為我們常常專注在趕鬼，而不是在處理這個人問題的本質。耶穌說，當鬼被從人的生命中趕出去的時候，那個鬼會嘗試回來再次佔有這個人的生命。這就是為什麼我們要處理的其實是他生命中根本的問題。

我們的角色不隻是要把鬼趕出去，而是要把這個人的生命從黑暗中帶到光明裡面，幫助他們在生命的旅程中與神同行。我們看到在以弗所書第四章中的經文講到，偷竊的不要再偷了。什麼時候小偷不再偷竊，是當他開始勞力工作，並開始給予出去。

昨天他們也提到邪靈可以通過什麼樣的方式進入到我們生命裡面。第一，透過合法的權利，當人違背神的律法，仇敵魔鬼就擁有了合法的權利進入到人的生命中去。記得耶穌的教導，那個魔鬼說“我要回到我的屋子裡去。”我昨天為那位姐妹禱告的時候，邪靈對我說，“她是屬於我的。”換句話說，邪靈在說這是我的屋子，我是有權住在這裡的。重要的是，當我們釋放人得自由的時候，我們要把邪靈合法居住在這裡的權利奪走，我等一下告訴大家如何做，很簡單。

對於每一個基督徒來說，主耶穌是我們生命中的主人，邪靈魔鬼無法擁有一個信徒。聖經告訴我們，我們是耶穌的寶血重價贖買回來的。代價已付，我們得自由。當我們心裡相信，口裡承認，主耶穌基督是我們的主人，我們是單單屬他的時候，我們就得救了。借著聖靈，我們從過去黑暗的國度進入到神的國度裡面，我們擁有我們的權利，有我們可以享受的福分。

記得我昨天呼召的時候，我引用了約翰福音第一章12節，“凡接待他的，就是信他名的人，他就賜他們權柄，作神的兒女。”當我們把我們的信放在基督身上，從法律的角度看，我們就可以真正成為他的后裔，他的兒子。所以邪靈無法擁有一個基督徒，他可能會侵佔基督徒生命中的某一個部分。

記得在我們做開始禱告中，我帶大家做一個信心的宣告，主耶穌是我生命的救主，是我的主，我是因著主耶穌的寶血贖買回來的，從咒詛，從邪靈和罪的轄制之下贖買回來的，我是單單屬於主耶穌的。這個信心的宣告就是預備人進入到釋放裡，當邪靈說“他屬於我”時，他就是在亂講，因為這人已經宣告他是屬於主耶穌的。有時在服事時，我也會提醒他他是屬於主耶穌的。所以邪靈進入人生命中最主要的方式就是透過這樣的合法的權利。

第二個邪靈進入人生命中的方式就是創傷的經歷。這個傷痛的經歷很深的影響了他們的情感。相似的經歷對不同的人有著不一樣的影響，之后我會再談這個創傷式的經歷。當一個人經歷了創傷性的經歷時，他裡面的驚嚇可能會給邪靈留下進入的機會。舉例來說，青少年在學校期間會有感受到極大壓力的經歷，這些經歷所造成的內在誓言或者錯誤的信念，常常會給仇敵魔鬼機會進入到他們生命中去。

第三個邪靈進入人生命中的方式，就是人對這些創傷性經歷的回應和反映。我們以后再講這一點。

昨天我們談到使人得自由的根基是什麼。首先，我們必須知道耶穌為我們所成就的是什麼。我們看到主耶穌在十字架上所成就的大功。所以從法律的角度講，耶穌在十字架上為我們贖買了什麼，這是我們必須要知道的，要講出來，還要對邪靈講出神的話。

其次，我們談到這個人必須要承擔的責任是什麼。我們講到他必須要認清問題，並要為這個問題承擔責任。必須要認罪，必須要悔改，必須要饒恕，棄絕從邪靈而來的任何捆綁以及與邪靈簽訂的任何協議。他們必須要做出來，在靈裡面興起抵擋魔鬼。雅各書第四章7節告訴我們，“故此你們要順服神，務要抵擋魔鬼，魔鬼就必離開你們逃跑了。”這個經文很清楚的說，我們必須要讓我們的生命跟神一致。“順服”在希臘文中的意思是“轉移我們的姿勢，對准”，這個意思就是我們要預備我們自己，然后降伏在主耶穌之下，我們就可以得勝。這個詞也是一個軍事的用詞，就是指我們降伏在主裡面就可以經歷得勝。當軍隊排列的時候，也代表他們排列整齊，准備打仗。

這是一個功能用詞，當聖經中講到“妻子順服丈夫,”這個順服不是講丈夫比妻子更優更好，或者妻子是更次等的，而是講他們要預備好，排列整齊，進入到爭戰裡面。所以順服，降伏神，代表我們的生活與神的關系有一個正確的次序。如果有要認罪的，認罪﹔如果有要饒恕的，饒恕﹔如果有捆綁轄制的，棄絕。降伏，就可以得勝。

第二個講的詞是抵擋魔鬼。剛才我們講到我們預備在神之下，跟他一起得勝。但是我們也預備好一個姿勢，來抵擋魔鬼，魔鬼必定要逃跑。你會發現經文中很多時候把這個責任放在我們的身上，我們必須站在預備好的地方，准備打仗。你要記住這個經文，你要預備人進入服事裡時會非常有用。我們的角色就是幫助他們與神站在一起，抵擋邪靈。

你可以看出，當一個人愛他的罪，沒有准備好棄絕他的罪，你就知道他沒有降伏神，也沒有准備要抵擋魔鬼。當一個人不願意饒恕的時候，他就沒有在神的秩序裡面，他不願意降伏，也沒有抵擋魔鬼，其實他就是站在魔鬼那一邊。

所以雅各書第四章7節是非常有趣的經文，當我們降伏神的時候，讓你的生命在神的秩序架構下，抵擋魔鬼。接下來他說要“親近神，他就會親近你”。所以這個人可以從過去在仇敵的轄制當中進入親近神的親密關系裡面，重點是這個轉變。

當我們在服事人的時候，我們要幫助他們認清在得自由的過程中他們自己所要做的部分，否則我們總是在營造一個受害者的心態，在裡面糾結，他覺得他是受害者，讓你成為拯救者。所以我們必須要建構他的信心，讓他相信他可以突破。我們也會來看怎麼做。

（主要信息）

今天我們要來看的是我們心中的捆綁可能會有哪些，我們應該怎樣破除這些捆綁，然后我們會回過來再談邪靈進入我們生命中的各種方式，我們會詳細探討每一個方式，幫助不同方式的人得醫治。我們現在來看的是心中的捆綁。

我們昨天讀到路加福音第十一章，拆毀壯士的盔甲，那個人才能得自由。箴言第四章23節，“你要保守你心，勝過保守一切。因為一生的果效，是由心發出。”你要成為你心的守望者，聖經告訴我們為什麼要謹慎的保守我們的心，因為你一生的果效，或者說你一生的界限，是由你的心來決定的。發生在你心裡的狀況，一定會在你今后的生活中顯現。耶穌說，當人說話，是說他心裡所想的。

箴言第四章這裡說一生的果效是由心發出的，所以我們不是以我們想的或是認為的方式來生活，而是在我們心裡的東西會發出來影響我們的生活。如果在你心裡有一個苦毒的根，這個根會像水流一樣玷污你生活中的每一個關系，那個水流是邪靈的能量充滿的水流，在你生命中的每一個部分這個苦毒的根都會出現，玷污你所有的人際關系。所以我們必須要認清問題，處理這個根。

很多時候在我們心裡的東西會借著我們的口說出來，或者通過我們的面容表情，或者是我們結出的果子表現出來。例如一個人是苦毒的，你若問他，“你苦毒嗎？”他一定說，“我不苦毒。”“你心中是不是有很深的憤怒和不饒恕？”“沒有，你怎麼會覺得我有。”可是如果你了解那些征兆，去尋找的話，你會發現很多人都非常苦毒。跟大家分享你要尋找的東西，這是苦毒的征兆。

苦毒的征兆有這些：

1） 這人的面容沒有喜樂。一個苦毒的人很難喜樂，喜樂也很難持久，因為他的心是苦的。

2） 有苦毒的人從面容就可以看出，他的臉看起來是酸酸的，而且越老，那種尖酸越明顯。有些人越老，越甜，充滿愛﹔而有些人越老，越嚇人。

3） 尖銳的言辭。苦毒的原文意思就是尖銳。尖銳的用詞會傷害人心，后面很有可能是苦毒。

4） 壓抑下的怒氣。當一個人苦毒的時候，他心裡實際上隱藏了很多的怒氣。你可以感覺到他們的不認同，可是他們不開口講任何東西。

5） 抱怨。抱怨這個，抱怨那個，總沒有辦法感恩喜樂。

6） 不感恩。苦毒的來源是因為我們的不饒恕和怒氣，不饒恕是要求對方償還，因此一個不饒恕的人沒有辦法為他所有的感謝，他總是說你要還我這個，還我那個。

7） 怪罪他人。一個充滿苦毒怒氣的人，常常會怪罪他人，把所有的不是都怪罪在別人身上。

8） 無法慶祝別人的成功。如果身邊的人得到升職，“為什麼是他，他不配。”沒有能力去慶祝別人的成功。

我用這個例子的目的就是告訴你，所有在我們心裡的東西，都會在我們的生活中顯露出來。不管你如何假裝壓抑或假裝這些東西不存在，它一定會從你心中發出來。如果你靈裡面是敏銳的，你甚至可以感受到它的運行。在那個人身上就是有這種壓力。

所以我們講到你一生的果效是由心發出來的。我要跟大家分享一些基本的，心裡面的捆綁是什麼，我們應該如何處理這些不同的捆綁。邪靈會附在這些心裡的捆綁上，加增這個人心裡的壓力。當我們服事人的時候，我們需要知道要處理心裡面的問題。我會給大家一個清單，是我常看到的一些心裡的困擾，就是影響人心和生命的捆綁。之后我們會講一些創傷性的經歷。

第一，不屬神的魂結。魂結是指一個人跟另外一個人的連結，這個魂結可以幫助他們很深的聯系彼此。神渴望我們跟人是有連結的，所以在我們生活當中這樣的連結是很重要的。就像孩子出生的時候跟母親有一個很深的連結，這樣他之后的生活會有一個安全感。所以孩子最初學會的技能就是連結，與母親連結，當然他以后也要學習跟母親分離。

當他們十五個月左右大的時候，總是緊緊的抓住媽媽，媽媽都會給他們喂奶，照顧他們，當他們兩歲大的時候，開始想要獨立，“不，不，我要自己。”這些都是正常發育。如果一個孩子與母親沒有連結，如果當初母親考慮過墮胎或不想要這個孩子，這個孩子在成長的過程中一直會有這樣的困擾。他會用不屬神的魂結的方式，跟人連結來滿足他裡面需要的安全感。

所以魂結是兩個人之間的連結，這個連結開始是很正面，很有幫助的﹔或者也可能這個連結是不屬神，不合神心意的。一個健康的，好的魂結，就是母親和孩子，丈夫和妻子，教會弟兄姐妹的連結都是好的，親密的友誼也是好的。這樣的連結是好的，因為讓你有親密的關系，我們受造就是要在一個連結的關系當中的。

仇敵魔鬼沒有創造新的東西，他都是扭曲神的創造。所以魂結也可以是不合神心意的。不合神心意的魂結就是指那個魂結是帶著毀滅性，負面的能量進入到人的生命中去的，那個連結是不健康的連結，是不合神心意的連結，這個連結可以使仇敵有機會玷污他們的生命。這樣不屬神的連結更常見，一個不合神心意的連結，導致仇敵魔鬼可以有地步進入到我們生命中玷污我們。

第一個不屬神的魂結的例子，就是在婚姻之外的任何性關系都會使人進入到這個連結裡。婚前的性行為會讓我們跟不同的性伴侶造成這種魂結，就像有一個無形的繩索將我們與過去的性伴侶綁在一起，我們的心也一直想要回去那個人身上，無法真正進入到婚姻當中。可能常常回憶過去一起做的事，或者一些性畫面，邪靈就用這種方式攪擾他的魂。當我們處理性方面的罪的時候，光是趕鬼是不夠的，我們必須要處理魂結，要破除這些不屬神的魂結。

箴言告訴我們，人所犯的罪就像一根線綁著他，我過去認為罪會像一根線把你纏繞住，現在我知道它好像一個無形的線，把你和當時的罪綁在一起，把你拉回到當時的情景。我們也可以與一位掌控的人有一個不屬神的連結，在一個掌控性的環境或掌控性的人之下，我們會不知不覺擁有這樣一個不屬神的魂結，而沒有辦法擺脫跟他之間的關系。就像一個依附的感覺，依附在那個人身上。這樣的不屬神的魂結需要被破除。

一個人也可以和一位虐待者有不屬神的魂結，雖然他經歷了很多從這人而來的傷害，可是他都沒有辦法擺脫離開這個人。或者人也會對他們迷戀的對象有不屬神的魂結。這也是我們在輔導時經常碰到的狀況。當一位弟兄去輔導姐妹的時候，過程可能會造成一種不健康，不合神心意的魂結產生。可能是弟兄對姐妹，也可能是姐妹對弟兄，都有可能。有時人會對已經死去的人有不屬神的魂結，比如對過去很親的奶奶，雖然奶奶已經去世了，他還沒有放下，還是與她連結在一起。

人們也可以與色情網絡和色情圖片有一個這樣不合神心意的魂結。當人看那些色情網絡或者色情影像的時候，透過這些影像會建立一個不合神心意的魂結，邪靈就透過這些進來了。這些色情畫面最可怕的就是它真的會改變你大腦的狀況，當你不斷去看這些東西的時候，你的大腦會產生一些新的連結路徑，當一個東西激發了他的情欲欲望的時候，他的思想就會跟著以前所看到的東西進入到邪惡敗壞的東西裡面。所以有這樣不合神心意的魂結也要砍斷。

對於連結這些影像的，連結這些網站的，因為他們可能會看這個網站上癮，他們可能會付錢進入這個網站，甚至會跟這個敗壞的靈開始協議，跟淫亂的靈開始交易。所以他們看的影像和上的網站可能會產生不合神心意的魂結。

對姐妹來說，可能是羅曼蒂克的性幻想。她們可能會迷戀一些偶像劇的男主角，或者她們會對一些教會的領袖有一些錯誤的想法，一些性幻想。那些拜偶像的，也會跟偶像有魂結。透過這些例子，我們看到人可以建立一些不健康，不好的魂結，也可以看到透過某種性幻想進入到一個轄制受捆綁的狀況裡。

當我們看到有不合神心意的魂結產生的時候，邪靈會透過這個不合神心意的魂結進入到這個人的心裡面，攪擾他，加增負面的能量。

我們應該怎樣解決不合神心意的魂結這個問題呢？非常簡單，有兩個步驟。第一，當事人必須要棄絕這個魂結。他要說出破除這個魂結的話語。他必須承認有不合神心意的魂結，然后棄絕它。他們要渴望轉離這個魂結，不是繼續持守在這個思想裡面。“奉主耶穌的名，我棄絕這個魂結，我棄絕我的魂跟這個東西的連結。不管是性伴侶或是圖像，或者是偶像，或者性幻想，或者是網站，我破除棄絕這個魂結。”

第二，當你服事人的時候，你的禱告就像在砍一個東西一樣。“奉耶穌的名，我破除這個魂結，我把這個連結剪斷。奉主耶穌的名，砍斷。”你可以想象你拿著聖靈的寶劍，把那個魂結砍斷。有時你會發現當你砍的那一霎那，邪靈會彰顯。過去跟不同的性伴侶產生的魂結，就想像有不同的線連結這些不同的性伴侶，就一一把他們砍斷。當你可以在腦子裡可以想象這些東西的時候，你的信心可以有一個對焦的方向。

另外一個跟魂結有關系的，很關鍵，我要補充一下，人們也會跟一個創傷性的經歷有魂結。當我們服事一位有創傷性經歷的人時，重要的是我們要讓他把這個魂結砍斷，就像這個人的記憶停留在當時的情景當中，因為那個事件產生了魂結，他們沒有辦法走出來。

第二個心裡的捆綁是我們裡面的苦毒和論斷。苦毒和論斷就是因著我們裡面的苦毒和憎恨所帶出來的論斷。這個苦毒論斷會在生命中形成一個種與收的不斷重復的循環。舉例來說，“你不能相信男人，男人總是讓你失望。”“你不能相信女人，女人掌控性很強。”“不能相信領袖，因為領袖總是不公義的對待你。”“不要相信任何人，人們總是讓你失望。”這些都是論斷，苦毒的論斷經常的用詞就是“總是”，“從不”。經常有這樣論斷的話語，“我永遠不會成功的，我總是失敗，我做的沒有一件事是好的。”

我所說的例子總有一些負面的東西在裡面。當我們心裡有苦毒，因著這個苦毒所做的論斷，就像一個負面的信心，我們就開始吸引我們所論斷的結果進入我們生命裡面來。希伯來書第十二章14，15節，“你們要追求與眾人和睦，並要追求聖潔。非聖潔沒有人能見主。又要謹慎，恐怕有人失了神的恩。恐怕有毒根生出來擾亂你們，因此叫眾人沾染污穢。”從毒根來的論斷是因著我們裡面受傷而作出的錯誤回應。可能你被一兩個男人傷害后，你就論斷所有的男人都是這個樣子。耶穌在馬太福音第七章1，2節告訴我們，“你們不要論斷人，免得你們被論斷。因為你們怎樣論斷人，也必怎樣被論斷。你們用什麼量器量給人，也必用什麼量器量給你們。”

當我們面對我們生命中慘痛和悲傷的經歷時，我們可以有兩種回應，我們可以釋放審判，也可以釋放恩典。如果你選擇釋放審判，你就開啟了這個你論斷也被論斷的這種種與收的循環論斷的法則。例如一位婦人苦毒論斷她的父親，通常會吸引一位就像她父親一樣的男人，就像她裡面有一個信念“男人都是這樣的”，這就是她會吸引一位類似她苦毒論斷的人。你會發現這樣的事情會常常見到，他生命中所面對的問題就是他原生家庭所要逃避的東西。

我曾為一位婦人禱告，她心裡非常苦毒，因為她是母親領養的。她整個的人生都因為這個被負面影響了，我發現她自己也做同樣的事情，她人生當中所收到的其實是她在原生家庭所種的。當你論斷一個人或一件事的時候，你開啟了你生命中這個種與收的法則。所以一位婦人論斷自己的父親，很容易吸引一個跟她父親一樣的人。一個人論斷自己的母親，長大后就會像她媽媽一樣，總是憤恨的樣子。

所以苦毒的根是我們需要處理的。苦毒的論斷是一種回應，是因著過去慘痛的經歷而得出的論斷。問題是，人們經常忘記他們在經歷慘痛經歷時他們所做的論斷，一旦他們做了這樣的論斷之后，這個論斷就給仇敵魔鬼空間可以運行在他的生命當中，並開啟了這個種與收的循環法則。

怎樣從這種論斷中得自由呢？首先，他們要知道他們在論斷，承認自己的傷痛，饒恕他們生氣的對象，破除論斷，棄絕論斷。“奉主耶穌的名，我破除所有我在苦毒當中對我父親所做的論斷，我棄絕對所有男人所做的苦毒論斷，我釋放，饒恕，祝福。”當這樣的事情做完之后，你們可以說，“我奉主耶穌的名，我破除你生命中的這種論斷，我破除這個種與收的循環，苦毒的靈離開。”因為在這背后一定有邪靈綁在一起。

另外一個心裡的捆綁就是“內在誓言”。誓言是我們做的承諾，內在誓言就是我們對自己所做的承諾，也常常是我們在受傷中對自己做的宣告。通常是“我以后永遠不怎樣怎樣。”或者“我以后一定要如何。”就像我們對自己發誓。當我們做了內在誓言，這個誓言會轄制你的生命，因為邪靈附在這個誓言上面。人們經常會忘記自己的誓言，所以內在誓言背后經常會有苦毒的根，在人的生命裡越來越深。

給大家一個例子。一位婦女來到我教課的一個聖經學校，帶著她的丈夫和嬰兒。她說，“我要感謝你對內在誓言的教導。”我問她什麼事情。她說，“我有兩個孩子，第一個孩子懷孕時，非常辛苦，我有內在誓言永遠不再生孩子了。可是孩子出生后，我忘記了我曾經的想法，當我想要第二個孩子的時候，我們嘗試過，可是流產了三次。后來我來聖經學校學習，當我聽到內在誓言的時候，我棄絕了那個內在誓言，我破除之前我所做的誓言。那年年底，我懷孕了，生了第二個孩子。如果不是處理了我的內在誓言，我是不會有這個孩子的。”

她對自己發誓永遠不生了，所以她的身體回應她的誓言，拒絕了三次她的孩子。如果一位婦女重復流產數次，可以考慮是否跟內在誓言有關系。流產也可能跟拜偶像有關系。

怎樣處理內在誓言呢？當事人必須要了解這個傷痛，必要時，釋放饒恕，棄絕，破除內在誓言。你可以說，“奉主耶穌的名，我破除這個內在誓言，我釋放你，從內在誓言中得自由。”很簡單。

背后可能還有邪靈，可能是恐懼的靈或者苦毒的靈，但是內在誓言本身是很容易破除的。當這人願意棄絕內在誓言的時候，你就說，“奉主耶穌的名，我砍斷破除這個內在誓言所帶來的影響。”有時釋放立刻就會發生。

我記得曾為一位弟兄禱告，他非常富有，但是他內心非常有競爭性，他裡面靜不下來，無法安息。當我們跟他交談分享的時候，發現他來自非常貧窮的家庭，他上學所穿的衣服讓他覺得很羞愧，他就有了一個內在誓言，“我永遠不要再窮。”我要努力工作，賺很多的錢。現在他已經很有錢了，他無法停止工作，也無法享受他所擁有的。因為在他心裡，他認為他是窮的，因著這個內在誓言催逼著他不斷的工作，不管他賺多少錢，總是不夠，繼續工作賺更多。所以他的這個生活模式使家庭受到很大傷害，他必須要棄絕這個內在誓言，釋放他童年經歷的憂傷和悲痛。

另一個心裡的捆綁是咒詛的言語。咒詛的言語就是對一個人負面的宣告。箴言第十八章21節告訴我們，“生死在舌頭的權下。”有兩種咒詛的言語，第一，咒詛自己。人會講一些咒詛自己的話，他對自己的心說負面的，毀滅性的話。例如死亡的意念。“我希望我死掉算了。”當人們在極大的傷痛裡面，他會有這樣死亡的念頭。這樣他就跟死亡的靈有了一個協議，會影響他們的生命，麻痺他們的心。這是個非常重要的領域要處理。

通常被性虐待，性侵犯的，或在關系中被遺棄的，被虐待的，他們希望死掉算了。在長期的壓力和傷痛經歷中，他可能會有一個自殺的念頭。他們可能忘記自己曾經說過，可是很多年后，他們發現他們的心是麻痺的，沒有辦法經歷神，經歷關系的喜樂。

人可能對自己的生命宣告挫敗的話語，“我沒有用， 我很笨，我總是不夠好。”這些言語會成為他們心中不屬神的核心信念。就像苦毒的論斷，“沒人會愛我，沒人會接納我，我是沒人要的。”這些很短的一句話，可是它會成為我們心中的核心信念，它會成為邪靈居住的屋子。當你相信謊言的時候，陰間的靈和死亡的靈就可以進來攪擾。

這種咒詛的言語也可以是來自別人的。例如你父母對你說的話，或者有權柄的人所說的話，像老師，屬靈領袖。我們有屬靈權柄的要非常謹慎，因為我們很容易咒詛別人，講一些負面的令人挫敗的言語。挫敗的言語或者給人貼標簽，就像以弗所書講的從魔鬼而來的火箭，進入人心裡面。

有些人在成長過程中，可能有經歷過學校霸凌或羞辱，老師可能跟他說，“你好笨，以后不會有出息的，你不會及格的，你是失敗者。”如果這個人相信老師對他說的話，這個言語就會進入到他心裡，因為他同意了這樣的言語。這個謊言就會成為他的信念，並開始掌控他的生命。當你跟人在一起，處理人的各種狀況時，也要處理這些人相信的咒詛，或者失敗的言語。

我最近為一位教會的領袖禱告，她的父親來自於一個很大的家族，當時家裡很窮，隻能讓一個男孩讀書，她的父親很聰明，當家裡沒有錢讓他讀大學，她的父親因著無法讀書感到非常的苦毒。他覺得是父母奪走了他求學的機會。現在他唯一的女兒，他給她很大的壓力，要她完成他曾經的夢想，不管她有多麼好的成績，總是不夠好。總是給這個女兒壓力，不管她做什麼，他總是挑她的毛病，說她可以做得更好。這個女孩成長過程中是缺乏愛，呵護和肯定的，她有一個信念就是我永遠不夠好。對她的父親有一個苦毒論斷的根。

可是我看她的領導能力的時候，我問她在教會承擔的事工﹔猜猜她做了什麼， 她給會友們很大的壓力，嘗試他們有好的表現，好的生命，就像她父親對她一樣。每一次都挑會友的毛病，他們做什麼都不夠好。她生命裡的苦毒已經發出來了，因為不管她怎麼做，都不夠好。邪靈借著她心中的這些錯誤的信念，開始攪擾她的生命。

這是一些心裡的捆綁，人們需要從中釋放得自由。另外可能臨到人身上的咒詛，就是在隱秘處對人發的咒詛。比如一個人過去經歷過性侵犯，那個人跟她講，“你不許跟任何人講。你跟任何人講，你必須要承擔家庭破滅的責任，你就害死了自己的父親或者母親。”這個在隱秘處做的誓言，會帶給人非常大的問題。當你禱告服事一些有性侵犯經歷的人時，他們身上常常會有這個隱藏的誓言，結果是她們活在死亡和攪擾的靈的轄制裡面。他們很憤怒，因為她們想跟別人講，但是她又害怕講了之后家庭會崩潰。所以她的裡面有很大的拉扯和絕望。

要處理這些東西非常容易，不管是言語的咒詛，自己對自己的咒詛，或別人對他的咒詛，或者在隱秘處的內在誓言。我們要承認這是咒詛，當事人必須要釋放饒恕，饒恕傷害他們的人，然后棄絕這個咒詛，棄絕我在隱秘處所做的誓言，我棄絕這樣的誓言，我棄絕我對自己咒詛的言語，我拒絕對我所說的負面話語。當事人棄絕完之后，你就可以奉主耶穌的名，破除這個咒詛，命令所有和這個咒詛有關的邪靈離開。

這可能是在人身上的重擔，你會發現在我們心裡的捆綁其實會影響我們的生命。下一堂我們會談創傷性的經歷，創傷性的經歷怎樣影響人的身心。這些心裡的捆綁，如果你可以認出它們，魂結，苦毒的根，內在誓言，咒詛和自我咒詛，或者是別人對我們所說的咒詛的話語。如果我們清楚知道有這些東西在我們裡面，我們可以破除它們，砍斷它們，使這個人得到自由。阿門！

非常容易，認出問題，讓當事人拒絕，然后破除它的能力，命令所有跟這些東西有連結的邪靈離開。可是如果你不知道這些東西在他心裡面存在，你嘗試做釋放，邪靈會用各種的捆綁來抵擋你。如果我們把它的盔甲和它所居住的架構拆毀，邪靈一定要走了。所以釋放事工不是隻趕鬼，是看這人的生活和內心的情形，拆毀仇敵所居住的屋子，然后再趕鬼。

在我們其中一堂的時候，我會給大家一個清單，服事人時需要了解什麼。當一個人帶著他的問題來到你面前時，如果你腦子裡有這個清單，你會知道需要尋找什麼。很多時因為我們不知道要找什麼，所以我們嘗試去處理外在的問題而不是心裡的問題﹔可是一生的果效是從心裡發出來的，如果有魂結，砍斷魂結﹔如果有苦毒論斷的根，砍斷﹔如果有內在誓言，砍斷﹔ 如果有咒詛的言語，砍斷！如果與創傷性的記憶有連結，砍斷！這樣，我們就能讓這人輕鬆地得自由。阿門！

法律有權進入 (4 of 8)

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上一課我們講的是心中問題的根源。我們解釋了心裡的捆綁有哪些，當人們經歷困難時，通常會有什麼樣的心理反應，會形成什麼樣的心裡捆綁。如果我們不處理心裡的問題，就無法釋放人們得自由。

我們分享了心會被什麼東西捆綁，不屬神的魂結，苦毒論斷的根，對未來負面的期待，內在誓言，創傷性的經歷，咒詛的言語，所有這些都會帶來心裡的捆綁。當我們帶領人們得自由的時候，我們需要知道他們心裡的捆綁，然后處理這些捆綁，這並不困難，最重要的是在他心裡建造正確的架構。

我們繼續看合法的權利，邪靈進入我們生命中的最主要的三個方式，因為犯罪給仇敵魔鬼合法進入的權利，要處理這些也是很容易的，當你明白其中的關鍵和秘訣時，你就會了解如何與人同工，你的釋放果效也會有很大的提高。

合法的權利是人的生命裡給予魔鬼合法的地步，仇敵魔鬼認為這是他給我的地方。通常是因為罪的緣故，不管是刻意還是不小心違背了神的律法。邪靈是沒有能力勝過人的，他們用欺哄帶人進入到犯罪裡面，然后違背神的律法。我們看一些主要的合法權利，並教大家如何處理。

1）家族歷代的咒詛和罪孽。咒詛是一個靈裡的力量，它會不斷的運行直到被制止。罪孽是一種向問題或失敗的方向彎曲，扭曲的傾向。家族歷代的咒詛和罪孽是從家族中遺傳下來的。從自然的角度看，當你看醫生時，醫生會問你家族的病史﹔你去辦保險的時候，他們也會問你家族的病史﹔因為他們知道我們有一些疾病和軟弱是家族遺傳下來的。神也是這樣看我們的，一代代傳下來的。靈界的影響也可以從一代延續到另一代。

所以當你違背了神的律法，為邪靈打開了大門，你的后代也會因著這個受影響。出埃及記第二十章告訴我們拜偶像的后果，3至6節，“除了我以外，你不可有別的神。不可為自己雕刻偶像，也不可作什麼形像仿佛上天，下地，和地底下，水中的百物。不可跪拜那些像，也不可事奉它，因為我耶和華你的神是忌邪的神。恨我的，我必追討他的罪，自父及子，直到三四代，愛我，守我誡命的，我必向他們發慈愛，直到千代。”

這裡神講明拜偶像的影響是歷代的影響。所以罪孽的傾向代表的是家族中罪孽的扭曲從一代傳到下一代。這裡講三四代，就包括了你，你的父親，你的祖父和曾祖父，這四代裡包括了很多人。申命記第二十三章，私生子帶來的咒詛會影響十代。申命記第二十三章也講到亂倫的關系會帶來十代之久的咒詛。簡單的說就是這一代的罪會對后代有影響。

所以邪靈進入家族裡面，因為從血緣的角度，從法律的角度，你都是跟這個家族有連結的，邪靈就有權利進入你的生命影響你。很多時我們為人禱告，發現他們問題的根源其實不是他們，而是之前的上一代或上上一代。所以家族中有人過去是拜偶像的，行邪術或通靈的等等，都會向邪靈敞開，讓邪靈進入到家族裡面來。

我們當然不是要為我們父母所做的負責，我們隻需要為我們自己做的負責。但是他們所做的事情的結果，我們可能會經歷。這樣問題的模式是怎樣一代代相傳的呢？有些是通過DNA遺傳下來的，科學家還沒有了解罪是如何影響我們的DNA的，有些是與遺傳有關的，有些是因為邪靈在我們的家族裡面，有些行為是跟父母學的。我們必須要了解耶穌已經為我們破除了咒詛和罪孽。

給大家一個歷代家族咒詛的例子。在紐西蘭有一位女士請我為她禱告。我問她，“你的問題是什麼？”她就告訴我她的問題。我常常會問，“這個問題是什麼時候開始的？”因為這會告訴我們是不是一個家族歷代的問題。她的問題是，在她的心思意念中經常會有性的攪擾，邪惡的性幻想。她是一位單身的基督徒。我說，“你有沒有過性犯罪？”“沒有。”“你有沒有經歷過性侵犯？”“沒有。”“這個問題有多久了？”“我一生都有這個問題。”

當她說“我一生都有這個問題，或很小就有的時候，就很有可能是家族歷代的問題。”我就問她，“你家族的狀況如何？”她跟我講到，她的祖父母是到中國去的宣教士，他們有一兒一女，他們送兒女去到另一個省上學，當30年代日本侵略中國的時候，這個省份被日本人管轄，這個女孩被日本兵性侵犯，當時她12，13歲左右。最后這個孩子被救出來了，她的父母也都離開了那個宣教會場。后來這個女孩長大結婚，有了一個女兒，就是要我禱告的這一位姐妹。后來這位姐妹的父母離婚了，其實這並不意外，因為她帶著被性侵的創傷。那個時代，人們不講這些，都是壓抑在心裡。

所以當她被性侵的時候，邪靈進入了家族裡，這個年輕的女孩在成長的過程中，受到攪擾的原因就在這裡了。這個婦女所面臨的問題，並不是因為她做了什麼，而是因為發生在她母親身上的事情。讓邪靈可以進入到家族裡面，借著家族的遺傳臨到她的身上。我帶她一起禱告，饒恕這些日本士兵，做認同禱告，破除家族中的咒詛。她就得釋放，心思意念就清晰了。

我有為很多人禱告，他們問題的根源都是歷代家族性的。年輕的男女，他們的靈魂被仇敵魔鬼深深的攪擾，並不是因為他們做了什麼，而是因為他們家族歷代的問題﹔特別是跟拜偶像，通靈等跟靈界有關的，或跟性侵犯有關的問題。門就打開了，咒詛就進入了家族裡面。

當你服事人的時候，試圖解決他們生命中的問題，要了解他們的問題什麼時候發生的。他們需要為他們自己的生命負責，就像這位婦女一樣，她的問題是她自己的問題，她需要與邪靈爭戰。這個問題的根源其實是家族歷代流傳下來的。當你服事人的時候，要嘗試厘清這個問題是不是有家族歷代的根源。

我記得有一次在一個教會的學校裡，我們發現一個有趣的事情，所有的孩子必須要背誦聖經。學校中有三個學生，什麼書都可以背誦，就是聖經背不下來。其中有兩個來自同一個家庭，另一個來自另一個家庭，他們都背不了經文。他們學了，忘了，沒辦法可以留在腦子裡。他們學習其它的東西都沒有問題。我就禱告求問神，為什麼這些孩子學不會經文。

有一天我來到學校，發現這兩家的父親過去是在同濟會，他們都是同濟的人，他們效忠於同濟會。邪靈因此就進入了他們的家庭，孩子什麼都沒有做，但是邪靈就攔阻他們領受，理解，記住這些屬靈的東西。他們破除了同濟的咒詛就可以背誦經文了。就像裡面的困惑和混亂離開了，沒有什麼激烈的表現，他們就是可以開始背誦經文了。這是我第一次經歷咒詛透過家族臨到孩子身上。

我曾為很多人禱告，他們的問題都是來自於家族性的。如果你看他們的族譜，有些問題很容易看出來。如果你禱告讓問題顯明，有時問題突然就會顯明出來。有邪靈或咒詛運行的家族通常會有些征兆，我給大家一個咒詛運行的例子，你應該尋找哪些征兆。如果你看他的族譜，你尋找這些模式，這些都記載在申命記第二十八章。

我們很快的看一下，如果有咒詛在家族裡面，他們家族中經常會有精神的疾病，或有慢性病的遺傳，或家族中有流產，無法生育或者婚姻家庭的破裂﹔或者財務上的虧損，常常有意外發生﹔或者有暴力性是死亡和自殺﹔很多被虐待和不公平對待的現象﹔無法安靜下來，總是到處走動﹔很多家族成員有邪靈攪擾的問題。

所以當你在服事一個人的時候，要厘清問題的根源是什麼，因為很多是家族歷代遺留的問題。如何處理家族歷代的咒詛呢？其實很簡單，幾個步驟：

首先要認出這是家族歷代的咒詛。我們會跟他說，這是你家族歷代的問題，現在臨到你的身上，你作為當事人必須要做的是，認同禱告，代表家族棄絕這個咒詛。如果他們自己也有參與在這裡面，就要求神赦免饒恕他們的罪。他們也要饒恕為邪靈打開門的家人。要釋放饒恕，要把主耶穌的十架放在他和他的家族的遺傳中間，求主耶穌釋放他們。

如果你為一個有家族歷代咒詛的人禱告，可以這樣禱告：

1）宣告信仰

“天父，我奉主耶穌的名來到你面前，我宣告主耶穌是我的主，是我生命的主，我是他的寶血重價贖買回來的，從所有的咒詛贖買回來，從所有的邪靈贖買回來，從所有的罪孽贖買回來，我單單屬於主耶穌。”

2）認同禱告

“我代表我的家族，棄絕這個咒詛，破除它的能力，破除我的家族與邪靈達成的任何協議，我破除任何將我們的孩子獻給廟宇神靈的協議。如果我有參與這個行為，求你赦免我。我將主耶穌十架放在我和我的家族中間。我饒恕為邪靈打開門的家人，求主釋放我，撒旦從我生命中離開。奉主耶穌的名禱告。”

通過我們信仰的宣告，破除我們過去所做的協議，預備好我們自己，然后宣告破除這個咒詛，最后，釋放饒恕。這人就要仰望神，仰望耶穌，得到自由。

你看到我所做的禱告，其實都包含了我們剛才所說的得自由的根基。信仰的宣告，就是認出我們的問題並為此承擔責任，認罪悔改，釋放饒恕，棄絕抵擋魔鬼。禱告的順序和用詞並不重要，但要了解這個過程並處理它。

通常在你帶領他們做這個禱告的時候，邪靈就開始彰顯。所以你要做的就是，奉主耶穌的名，破除這個家族的咒詛。這個咒詛就像一條無形的線，帶著權柄的能力宣告破除，不需要很大聲，但要堅定。這並不困難。

你要明白這個事工的流程，人犯罪的時候就與邪靈簽訂了合法的協議，透過我們的禱告，砍斷這個協議﹔宣告我們在基督裡的信心，把我們的罪帶到光中，破除罪所帶來的一切后果，仰望耶穌，使我們得自由。

記住要依靠聖靈來引導你，不用擔心講對每一個字，否則你就是方法導向而不是聖靈引導了。

第二個常見的問題就是參與通靈和邪術的行為。申命記第十八章9至13節，“你到了耶和華你神所賜之地，那些國民所行可憎惡的事，你不可學著行。你們中間不可有人使兒女經火，也不可有佔卜的，觀兆的，用法術的，行邪術的，用迷術的，交鬼的，行巫術的，過陰的。凡行這些事的都為耶和華所憎惡。因那些國民行這可憎惡的事，所以耶和華你的神將他們從你面前趕出。你要在耶和華你的神面前作完全人。”

人們對靈界有一種好奇和恐懼，現在的主流媒體正在試圖透過很多的奇幻，超自然的現象影響年輕人。這個時代渴望經歷超自然的事情，之前的時代也有害怕超自然的事情。各個不同的文化中都有人對靈界的好奇感，他們想要接觸靈界有幾個目的。第一，希望得到靈界的保護。他們害怕這些邪靈，所以向他們獻祭。可是他卻不知道當他向邪靈獻祭的時候，是把自己獻給邪靈，或者是跟他們交易。

任何人向偶像獻祭，或者向任何邪靈獻貢品的時候，就陷入了跟邪靈交換的關系裡。在這樣的協議中，邪靈就有了合法的權利進入他的生命中。交易就是協議，當他拜的那一刻，獻貢品的那一刻，就是進入與邪靈交換的協議中。

交換的東西就是保護，祝福。財務上的，生命中的，健康上的祝福﹔或者從靈界得來的能力可以勝過他的敵人。不管你去到哪一個文化中，都會發現有人渴望跟靈界接觸。

跟靈界接觸有兩個部分，第一，佔卜，就是算命。華人最愛算命。當他們成為基督徒的時候，他們也希望有一個基督徒的算命。算命就是透過靈界尋找引導。這個引導有多准確呢？靈界中的連結是很緊密的，就像一個邪靈的網絡，他們有連結可以彼此溝通。當你與靈界溝通的時候，你其實不是在跟你的親戚的靈連結。聖經告訴我們，人必有一死，死亡之后就是審判。

所以人連結的是一個熟悉的靈，它對你的家庭狀況非常熟悉，它得到資訊都是正確的。邪靈會觀察人，知道他們所做的事。當你去找一位通靈的人，想知道你已死的家人的狀況，他給你的資訊可能是很准確的。在這個過程中，你已經邀請了邪靈進入你的生命中，對你的生命說話。

邪靈不知道你的未來，你生命中的某些領域是向他們敞開的，他會看到神要帶給你生命的東西，他們想要攔阻神對你的祝福。所以一個人找算命的人並聽他們的話，這個人就是聽從了邪靈的話，讓邪靈有能力影響他的環境。這種模式會上癮，這人做任何重要的決定的之前，都要去找算命師，算命師的掌控非常強。國外這種人稱為“通靈師”，人們打電話給通靈師，其實就是熟悉的靈透過人在運行。

另一種行邪術的就是巫術或稱靈界的能力。那些行邪術的經常是因為他們被拒絕，非常難過，他們渴望擁有能力。行邪術的行為是很上癮的，當人跟邪靈連結起來的時候，他們渴望更多更多的能力。每一個文化中，都有行邪術的人，越是原始的文化，行邪術的能力越大，甚至可以控制整個村落。

在馬可波羅的時代，馬可波羅遇見一位名叫Kublai Khan的蒙古人，他是成吉思汗的爸爸，他告訴馬可波羅，“我覺得基督教對我的國家有幫助，我願意接納基督教。”這是歷史上重要的一刻。但是他接著說，“你看看我的周圍，有非常多的術士，他們有非常大的能力。他們可以讓杯子飛起來到你面前，他們可以改變天氣，我擔心他們會殺了我。所以你回去帶一百個人來，他們知道如何運行在神的大能裡面，可以勝過這些術士的巫術。我跟我的國家會轉向基督。”

這是歷史上非常關鍵的一刻，當馬可波羅回去之后，派了兩個人回來，不是一百個，其中一人在途中死亡，這個國家沒有轉向基督。后來我們看到成吉思汗攻略了整個亞洲。福音有可能在一百年前影響這個國家，可是因著這些術士的轄制無法進入。

我們這個時代也碰到這樣的問題。我在聖經學院教書的時候，有一位年輕人非常喜歡玩一種網絡游戲，魔獸世界，這是在年輕人中經常在玩的游戲。這個游戲是一個角色扮演的游戲，這位年輕人扮演的就是巫師，他打敗敵人就會增加他的能力。他對這個游戲非常上癮，同時也在邪靈的轄制下。

我告訴他耶穌的話，你如果看到一個婦人，在心裡面動了淫念其實你就是犯了奸淫。換句話說，耶穌教導我們，在你心裡生出來的東西，其實在靈界裡已經釋放出來了。一個人可以在心裡面犯奸淫的罪了，卻沒有奸淫的行為。他將他的生命向奸淫的靈敞開，你的想象力其實是進入到靈界的門。

將自己放在這個游戲中，就是把自己獻給邪靈，巫術的靈進入到你生命裡面。我帶著他棄絕這個游戲，棄絕他在這個游戲中所扮演的角色。當他這樣做的時候，邪靈就彰顯在他臉上，他倒在地上，開始尖叫，后來我們就讓他得到釋放。雖然他沒有真的投身在邪術巫術裡面，但是透過這個游戲所扮演的角色，他也進入到了這裡面。

后來我們做呼召的時候，有兩百個學生從網絡游戲的捆綁中釋放得自由。這些人來到教會學院學習，將來是要做教會領袖的，可是在他們個人生活中參與這些游戲，就是參與在了巫術當中。我們要了解邪術可能是下一代所面臨的非常大的問題。媒體和電影中充斥了這些東西，非常吸引年輕人。

我所講的對巫術網絡游戲上癮的情況同樣也適用於暴力游戲。在發現頻道播出的一個節目中，他們採訪了一位殺死自己父母的年輕人，他心裡面對父母有很深的苦毒，因為他是被領養的。雖然他的父母嘗試要照顧他，他的苦毒沒有消失。在他青少年期間，在自己房間裡看了很多電視電影，他想象自己就是“駭客任務”裡面的角色。有一天他就用槍把父母殺了。

凶殺案讓人震驚，但其實這個計劃在他心中早就形成了。我看他在電視中的訪談，他裡面有家族私生的問題，對父母領養他的苦毒，遭遺棄的靈，長期的憎恨在心裡面。透過想象力和幻想，開啟了他生命中凶殺的靈。如果有人知道如何幫助他的話，幫助他解決歷代家族遺留的問題和他幻想的問題，他不至於走到這個地步。

我們如何處理行邪術的罪呢？非常簡單，他必須要承認他參與這種事情，然后認罪悔改，棄絕他們跟邪靈所做的任何協議，破除跟邪靈的協議。不管是自殘或邀請邪靈進來或任何程度的參與，都需要棄絕，仰望耶穌，使他們釋放得自由。

如果我帶人禱告，我會從信仰的宣告開始，

“父神，我奉主耶穌的名來到你面前，我宣告耶穌基督是我生命的救主，是我生命的神，我是耶穌寶血重價贖買回來的，從咒詛贖買回來，從邪靈贖買回來，從罪的能力中贖買回來。主，我向你承認，我過去參與過邪術，通靈的行為，求你赦免我，我棄絕，破除所有與邪靈所做的協議，我拒絕這些靈。主，我饒恕那些傷害我的人，我求你使我得自由，撒旦離開我的生命。奉主耶穌的名。”

跟得自由的根基所經過的過程非常相似。當你了解了其中的過程時，應用在不同的地方就很容易了。可能句子的用詞或順序會有一些不同，聖靈會帶領你如何做。你應如何服事呢？首先，破除與邪靈的協議。第二，命令邪靈離開。奉主耶穌的名，我破除所有與邪靈的協議，我破除他跟這個游戲的魂結，我破除他跟邪靈的連結。有時當我們破除這個連結的時候，邪靈立刻就開始彰顯。你就馬上命令邪靈離開。

使用我們今天所講的自由的根基架構，首先是承認罪，然后認罪悔改，棄絕協議，釋放對人的饒恕，並求主釋放他們，抵擋魔鬼。你破除咒詛，破除跟仇敵所有的協議，命令邪靈出來。很直接。

第三，性方面的犯罪。

性方面的罪可以使我們的生命向邪靈敞開。原因是：神有一個設定好的法則，透過性親密，二人成為一體。當一人跟另一人發生性關系的時候，他們的靈魂產生連結。哥林多前書第六章16，17節告訴我們，“豈不知與娼妓聯合的，便是與她成為一體嗎？因為主說，二人要成為一體。但與主聯合的，便是與主成為一靈。”18節，“你們要逃避淫行。人所犯的，無論什麼罪，都在身子以外。惟有行淫的，是得罪自己的身子。”換句話說，有東西會進入到身體裡面。路加福音第四章33至36節講到在會堂裡有污鬼，不潔的靈在人裡面。

性犯罪可以在不同的方面影響人。1）與性關系的對象有一個不合神心意的魂結產生。2）他們所做之事的記憶和影像會出現在腦海裡。3）當他們的關系破裂時，在心裡的反映。所以當有性關系的兩人分手后，心裡會有很深的憂傷。因著這個傷痛，人們就會對男人或女人產生苦毒的論斷，內在誓言，甚至死亡之願來試圖減低傷痛。4）邪靈進入生命影響他。

性犯罪對人影響很深，神希望我們能夠潔淨，單單敬拜他。有很多陷入性犯罪的人發現，當他們敬拜神的時候，很難投入，總有不潔淨的畫面進入他們的腦海裡。性犯罪帶來的最不好的結果就是會有這樣的圖像烙印在腦海裡。從這裡得自由的旅程需要一些時間。

我們在處理性犯罪的時候，我們要從靈裡面處理，第一就是要認罪悔改，將邪靈趕出去。第二處理魂結的部分，他跟那個對象產生的魂結。第三需要處理的是魂裡面的被玷污。對他的受傷所做的反應，或者對傷痛的記憶。透過認罪悔改，他的罪立刻得到赦免，立刻得釋放。但心意的更新需要時間，要讓他慢慢的勝過情欲的誘惑，開始追求神聖和潔淨。

聖經很清楚的告訴我們性犯罪的危險，為什麼聖經這樣強烈的警告我們，不是因為這個罪比其它罪更嚴重。性犯罪是罪，它影響的是我們跟神之間的親密關系，以及跟人之間的親密關系。神創造我們要有一個連結的關系，他給我們能力可以用親密的行為表達愛，當我們犯了性方面的罪時，它影響了我們親密的能力和感受被愛的能力，影響我們建立好的關系，不斷的玷污影響我們的心思意念。

我們需要認清這幾個罪的部分。教會應該針對這幾個領域有清晰的態度，這個問題比我們想象的更嚴重。性犯罪通常伴隨著隱藏和羞恥，很多問題都是隱藏起來的，人們在不潔淨的光景中受到很深的攪擾，他們把自己封閉起來，卻又感到孤立。

性犯罪的一些例子包括婚姻之外的性關系，同性戀，色情，習慣性的手淫，肛交或者是虐待的性行為，淫亂，亂倫，奸淫，人獸交，扭曲的性幻想。其實聖經講到很多這些東西，我們要學會如何服事人，讓他們得自由。他們可能已經成癮，需要上一些課程以幫助他們重新建立生命，逐漸得自由。

最基本的服事步驟包括，

第一，承認他們的罪，向主悔改認罪。帶他們做認罪悔改的禱告，“父神，我奉主耶穌的名來到你面前，我向你承認我犯了奸淫的罪，看來不該看的東西，我把這些罪帶到十字架前求你饒恕我。”你鼓勵他，聖經告訴我們，我們認自己的罪，神是信實公義的，必會赦免我們的罪。

第二，他們必須棄絕不屬神的魂結。“奉主耶穌的名，我破除所有跟我發生性關系的對象之間不合神心意的魂結，破除跟我連結的每一個影像以及性幻想，我奉主耶穌的名，棄絕這個魂結。”一樣樣的拆毀。

第三，我們處理產生的反應。“主，我棄絕對異性發出的苦毒的論斷，我棄絕為了保護自己所做的內在誓言，我棄絕我發出的死亡的意念。主，我釋放饒恕，饒恕曾經利用我傷害我的人，我饒恕他們，釋放他們，祝福他們。”

我們逐漸拆毀邪靈居住的堡壘。罪，魂結，我們裡面苦毒的回應，然后釋放饒恕。接著我們就可以開始服事了。從破除開始。“奉主耶穌的名，我砍斷，破除不屬神的魂結，我破除，破除。”你就一邊宣告一邊破除，“我破除與這些影像的魂結，我破除其它的捆綁，我破除內在誓言，破除死亡的念頭。”當你明白他們的問題時，你就逐個破除它。

現在你就命令那些邪靈，污鬼的靈，苦毒的靈，死亡的靈，被拒絕的靈，憂傷的靈。讓聖靈引導你為什麼禱告，你可以想象那個人的經歷，你就可以清晰的講出他們所經歷的拒絕的靈，苦毒的靈，對男人的憎恨，對自己的憎恨，羞恥。你就可以鎖在聖靈的水流中了。

很多生活在這種狀況下的人會感到很羞恥，“父神，我奉主耶穌的名破除羞恥的靈。”因為有羞恥，就會產生憎恨，有自殺的念頭。這個過程需要聖靈的引導。

我也會為另外兩個領域禱告，像這樣，“父神，求你挪開他生命中任何的玷污和沾染，從他的身體和靈魂中挪開。”有時他會感覺就像有人從他身體裡離開一樣，“主我們禱告醫治他的靈和魂，讓你的潔淨臨到這人裡面。”

我們做呼召的時候，我們就呼召曾經犯過這樣罪的人，破除魂結，命令羞恥淫亂的靈，內在誓言，苦毒的靈，不潔淨的靈，死亡的靈統統離開。你會看到這人對曾經傷害過他的人的反應，包括：苦毒，憎恨﹔對他們自己的反應則是：羞愧，自我憎恨，自我否定，苦毒，憂傷。當人經歷了這些混亂，他與神的關系，與另一人的關系，與自己的關系，我們需要處理這三個領域。

這就是我們需要學習服事的主要領域，明天我們會談創傷性的經歷。這裡我再簡要的提一下，就是習慣性的，重復式的罪，你需要認清它們：不饒恕，苦毒，憎恨，悖逆，這些都是在人生命中主要的罪﹔對別人做的事的回應，嫉妒。常見的心裡的罪：悖逆，苦毒，不饒恕，憎恨。聖經告訴我們這些都會為邪靈打開門。我們需要處理這些問題，悔改，釋放饒恕。命令邪靈離開。

我們現在學習了如何服事人的很多的秘訣，我們看到邪靈透過這些方法進入到人生命裡面，把門封起來，把門拆毀，拆毀邪靈的居所，命令邪靈離開，這樣就可以釋放人得自由。

明天我們要講創傷性的經歷如何影響人，我們如何服事人，讓人持守在自由裡面。光趕鬼是不夠的，要行走在新的生命中，包括靈命的成長，更新的思想，面對試探誘惑的力量。很簡單，降伏神，順服神，抵擋魔鬼，魔鬼就必逃跑了。

有些實際的步驟可以幫助人建造生命，通常人隻想你幫他解決問題，我們必須鼓勵他與神同行，建構敬虔的生命。趕鬼比建立敬虔的生命容易多了，因為建立敬虔的生活需要有訓練，生命中要形成好的習慣。

祝福大家！

兩個王國 (5 of 8)

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今晚我們要爲人禱告從攪擾人的靈中得釋放，我相信很多人來是有期望的，渴望看見生命有突破。突破可以是非常戲劇性的，突然的；或者也可以是一步步慢慢發生的。

今天聚會結束後，我們有機會爲人禱告；任何需要禱告的人都可以上前來，我們爲你禱告；我們渴望祝福你，幫助你，這是神的心意，他愛你，他渴望幫助你。今晚我們也會邀請還 不是基督徒的朋友接受主耶稣，成爲跟隨主耶稣的人。今晚我跟大家分享神的良善，我們會禱告，服事弟兄姐妹，並讓你有機會做回應，接受主耶稣。

當我們出生的時候，因著罪的緣故，我們與神隔絕。問題不在神那裏，是我們的問題；神愛人，神的心意總是要幫助我們每一個人。神的本性就是愛，他的心總是轉向他的兒女，轉向你。但是罪蒙蔽了我們去看見真理，我們以自我爲中心，想要過一個沒有神的生活，違背了神的律法，這樣在我們的生活中産生了很多問題。神渴望進入我們的生命，幫助我們。

今晚我們會分享聖經中的一個故事，還會分享一個實際的例子，怎樣得自由。神總是要渴望幫助我們，我們需要打開我們的心讓他來幫助我們。我們轉向神的第一步就是明白我們的需要。當我們出生來到世上，我們不知道我們人生的意義和目的，不知道我們爲什麽來到這個世上，我們渴望發現我們人生的意義。我們發現我們人生有很多問題是我們無法解決的，這就是罪，就是與神隔絕；耶稣基督來到這個世上，就是要解決這個問題，讓我們可以接受新的生命。

當聚會結束，我們爲弟兄姐妹禱告的時候，我們還會禱告神的能力觸摸大家。我們會做一個釋放禱告，釋放禱告就是從邪靈的轄制中釋放得自由的禱告，就是破除你生命中的捆綁的禱告。耶稣說，“我來是要人得生命，並且得的更豐盛。”他說，“仇敵魔鬼來，是要偷竊，殺害和毀壞。”所以邪靈是非常真實的，它們尋找機會進入到我們生命裏，帶來毀滅。

今晚我們要挑戰這些邪靈，面對它們，讓它們知道耶稣基督比所有的邪靈都要強壯。邪靈想要進入人生命影響他，都是通過欺騙來進入的，很多人不知道有邪靈在他們裏面，邪靈不斷的在他們裏面攪擾，給他們産生問題。耶稣來就是要趕鬼，解決因罪讓邪靈進入生命中的問題，使我們可以再次跟神連結，神的靈可以臨到我們身上。沒有人受造是跟邪靈共存的，我們受造是要與神同在，把天國帶到地上。

我們當中有被邪靈攪擾的，可以得到自由。雖然我會就某一個領域來談，但我鼓勵你敞開心扉，來到台前接受禱告服事。當神的恩膏開始在我們中間運行的時候，屬靈的氣氛會非常不一樣，我們無法看見神，因爲他是靈，但這並不代表他不存在，我們可以通過他觸摸生命感受到他的同在。

當神臨到一個會場的時候，有時邪靈就開始彰顯。當耶稣在會堂講道的時候，邪靈就開始做亂。所以在我們聚會結束之前，很有可能邪靈開始彰顯，人們可能會戰抖，流淚，尖叫，倒在地上。不要讓這些分心，我們的焦點是主耶稣所做的事。

今晚如果你坐立不安的話，可能也是一個邪靈的彰顯，如果你心裏有些恐懼，不是你，而是邪靈在裏面害怕，因爲它知道將要發生的事。如果你非常生氣，也不是你，而是邪靈在你裏面生氣，因爲他看到了即將發生的事情。如果你突然不喜歡這個講員，想要殺死他，這一定是邪靈。我們相信耶稣會使我們得自由。聚會時，你感到生氣，攪擾，請來到台前，我們爲你禱告，服事你。

主啊，我們歡迎你今晚帶著你的大能來到我們中間；聖靈，我們邀請你來到我們當中。奉主耶稣的名，我對我們中間所有的邪靈說，你降伏在我的權柄之下。我命令你的時候，你要彰顯，從人的身上離開。主我們感謝你，因爲你的同在，觸摸你的百姓。阿門！

我們一開始先爲一些人禱告，享受神的同在，不要舉起手來讓我爲你禱告，我會尋找人，爲你禱告，我要聆聽聖靈，他會讓我知道爲誰禱告，爲什麽禱告。

（爲前面的一位姐妹禱告）

神知道我們的生命，他就在我們中間，主你今天觸摸她。主離我們非常近，當我們把我們的心向他敞開的時候，雖然我們不能看到他，可是他的同在就在這裏，就在我們中間。

神的同在是一個非常好的感受，有時人會笑，有時人會哭，神以不同的方式觸摸人。我們看不到神，但是他的同在就在我們中間。這是個非常好的教會，敬拜的教會，禱告的教會，神就在我們中間。聖經告訴我們耶稣做王的天國裏有喜樂平安和自由。

你知道我們活在一個敞開的天空下，神隨時幫助我們。今晚我們當中有些人有很深的問題，令你非常困擾，神願意幫助你，我們唯一需要做的就是用信心仰望他，耶稣就會照著你的信心，爲你成就。當你來禱告的時候，期待神觸摸你，期待會有事情發生，期待神服事你。阿門！

當我們爲人禱告，你會感受到神的大能臨到你身上。如果你裏面有邪靈的話，它可能會彰顯，你可能會尖叫。所以聚會最後，我們會做一個集體的禱告，焦點對准神，用信心仰望神觸摸我們。不是我，焦點是主耶稣，當你的信心對准他的時候，他會來觸摸你的生命。

（爲一位做噩夢，怕黑的姐妹禱告,釋放）

我爲大家解釋以下剛剛發生的事情，主剛才讓我領受了一個“知識的言語”，就是爲一個人預備的一句話。主讓我看見她一生中都有這個問題，她有勇氣承認來到台前。當我開始禱告，命令邪靈的時候，聖靈開始彰顯。首先有尖叫，然後流淚，咳嗽，邪靈就開始離開她。神很深的觸摸她，如果你一生都被邪靈攪擾，這是個非常創傷性的經曆，從她年幼的時候就有這些攪擾她的噩夢。我們知道這個邪靈是從家族曆代進來的，每一晚，她都被邪靈攪擾。跟人解釋這些很不容易，通常人們會感到很羞恥，不願意告訴別人。

這是攪擾的靈，到這裏來是要偷竊，殺害，毀壞。但是耶稣要給我們生命，所以今晚他開啓了釋放得自由的事工。經過了這些憂傷，她開始經曆自由，會從噩夢中得自由。她不需要害怕睡覺，不需要開燈睡覺，因爲耶稣已經勝過一切黑暗的權勢，帶給她自由，還有其它的領域神要觸摸她，我們就讓神繼續在她生命裏做工。

今晚在我們中間的其他人，可能也有同樣的狀況，神也希望你得自由。有些人可能有噩夢，可能你半夜驚醒感覺有人掐你的脖子，這些是邪靈。或者半夜你感到有人在摸你或騷擾你，卻沒看見人，這也是邪靈。神要你從這一切中得自由，這就是爲什麽耶稣來，他要解決我們罪的問題，讓我們從攪擾人的靈中得自由。他要我們被聖靈充滿，聖靈在哪裏，那裏就有喜樂平安。

剛才我爲其他人禱告的時候，就有喜樂平安臨到他們身上，神的靈帶給我們生命中非常美好的東西。我們知道聖靈結出的果子是仁愛，喜樂，和平；而邪靈帶來的果子就是我們被攪擾，焦慮。神要我們得自由，今晚結束時，我們會邀請大家，神要讓你得自由。阿門！

現在我們看舊約出埃及記第一章13，14節，然後再看出埃及記第十五章。聖經啓示我們肉眼看不見的靈界，還有我們可以看見的物質世界。人是很特別的，我們活在物質世界裏，可以同時跟靈界連結。耶稣教導我們神的國，他來把天國帶到地上，天國中是沒有邪靈的，天國擁有國王的屬性，耶稣是天國的王，他的國度充滿了光，充滿了生命，充滿了創意，充滿了平安，喜樂，是一個非常美好的國度，他要將這個國度帶到你生命裏面。

但是還有另一個國度存在，叫做黑暗的國度。當亞當夏娃犯罪，得罪神的時候，邪靈就開始管轄掌控人的生命，用重擔，壓力，問題壓在人身上；給生命中帶來疾病和問題。耶稣來是要使人得自由，他說：主的靈膏他，他周遊四方，行善，醫治所有被魔鬼壓制的人。所以耶稣服事人，使他們從邪靈的攪擾中得自由，讓人可以認識進入到神的國度裏面。在神的國裏面，沒有疾病，沒有攪擾，耶稣掌管的地方，耶稣的生命在掌權。

舊約裏面有一個故事講的的就是肉眼看不見的靈界所發生的事。我們可以從這個故事中學習主耶稣，也可以學習到靈界的事情。我們來看以色列的曆史，以色列人還在埃及爲奴，受轄制的時候，他們渴望自由，可是因著埃及法老王的軍事轄制，他們無法自由。他們的身份是奴隸，必須要服事主人。他們渴望自由，卻沒有辦法得到自由。他們需要有人釋放他們。

我們也一樣。在我們認識主耶稣之前，我們可能認爲我們是自由的，可是我們活在罪的轄制下，邪靈在掌控著我們，我們的人生在很多的捆綁之下，非常艱難。這裏第13，14節說，“埃及人嚴嚴地使以色列人作工，使他們因作苦工覺得命苦，無論是和泥，是做磚，是作田間各樣的工，在一切的工上都嚴嚴地待他們。”

我們看到這一群人渴望得自由，可是他們有一個嚴酷的主人鉗制管轄著他們，使他們生活中的每一個部分都非常艱難。他們命苦，就是說他們很深的受傷，被虐待，在苦難中，可是卻沒有可逃離的地方，他們是在外地爲奴。他們的心中充滿了苦毒，當人們在苦難中，被別人傷害的時候，他們通常會有憎恨，厭惡，他們的心就會越來越苦毒。當他們的心苦毒的時候，就會打開門讓邪靈進來，帶來疾病。

我曾爲一位年輕人禱告，他對他的父親有很深的苦毒，他憎恨他的父親並讓這個恨進入他裏面；所以他的生命充滿了苦毒，沒有辦法享受人生中美好的事物，因爲他的心是苦毒的。結果疾病臨到他的身上，偷走了他的健康，他所有的關節都很疼痛，脊椎開始僵直，他面臨可能癱瘓的威脅。

心裏的苦毒，打開門向邪靈敞開。當人心裏有苦毒的時候，邪靈就會借機進來。我也發現當人們拜偶像，服事這些偶像，魔鬼的時候，他的人生也開始越來越苦毒。偶像不會爲我們人生提供任何答案，反而使我們的生命更艱難。所以這些以色列百姓是非常苦的，神聽到了他們的呼求，就差遣摩西來到他們中間。摩西就預表主耶稣，是先知性的預表，是一位拯救者的來到。摩西要帶領以色列的百姓離開埃及。

神降十災在埃及，每一個災害就是刑法他們所拜的這些神靈。最後一災，神的百姓將羔羊的血塗在門楣上，毀滅者經過這個地方，那些有血塗抹的地方的人，性命就可以存留。

這是一個先知性的預表，預示將來有一天主耶稣基督爲我們釘死在十字架上，流出寶血，爲我們舍掉他的生命。任何相信他的人，耶稣的寶血已經足夠破除邪靈的能力。當我們憑信心相信接受主耶稣，他的寶血可以破除一切邪靈和罪的權柄，使我們得自由。

當那一天來到，以色列的百姓得拯救離開埃及。埃及人被毀滅，神的百姓在喜樂中離開，充滿了盼望。神不只要救他們，神要帶他們進入一個充滿祝福的地方。要進入這個充滿祝福的地方，神要改變他們。

我們翻到出埃及記第十五章22至25節，“摩西領以色列人從紅海往前行，到了書珥的曠野，在曠野走了三天，找不著水。到了瑪拉，不能喝那裏的水，因爲水苦，所以那地名叫瑪拉。百姓就向摩西發怨言，說，我們喝什麽呢？摩西呼求耶和華，耶和華指示他一棵樹。他把樹丟在水裏，水就變甜了。”27節中說，“他們到了以琳，在那裏有十二股水泉，七十棵棕樹，他們就在那裏的水邊安營。”

當我們將生命獻給主耶稣的時候，我們跟隨主耶稣，不是所有事情都會很美滿，在這個旅程中會有很多挑戰，神帶領我們在旅途中通往祝福，在這個過程中他渴望改變你的生命，讓你從心裏的苦毒中得到自由。神看到這些百姓離開埃及，他們開始歡慶離開，神知道他們還帶著一個奴仆的心，有著奴仆的想法，受害者的心態。神渴望改變他們，從奴隸的思想中得釋放，神渴望他們成爲神的兒女，可以繼承産業，可是要繼承産業，他們必須改變思想。

神爲你預備了豐盛的祝福，但你必須長大成熟，讓神在你生命裏面工作。有時我們心裏會有攔阻；生命裏有攔阻，生命中有捆綁，是在我們重生得救前就存在的。我們得救後，神說，我渴望改變你，給你自由，讓你在生命裏經曆神的國。

我們要怎樣做？經文中這裏說，這些百姓經曆了非常大的得勝。三天沒有水，在沙漠中行走沒有水是很困難的，他們很渴，這是一個暫時性的缺乏狀態。神可以看見他們看不見的東西，神看見他們得自由，神爲他們預備好這個旅程，神知道前面有棕樹和甜美的水源，神已經爲他們預備好了，只是他們還看不見而已。他們經曆了三天沒有水，心裏的抱怨就開始出來了，所以他們喝的水是苦水。

百姓們怎麽做呢？要知道你所遇見的每一個困難都是你成長的機會。而這裏百姓開始抱怨，他們在多年的奴役之下，心是苦的。當他們遇見困難的時候，他們心裏的真實光景就出來了，神渴望改變他們的心。可是在改變之前，你必須要了解你需要改變。有時我們在生命中經曆的困難，讓我們看見我們心中真實的狀況，讓我們有一個正確的回應來長大成熟。

這些人的心裏是苦毒的，他們認爲自己是受害者，神渴望他們得到醫治，從他們的苦毒中釋放得到自由。當人們開始認識主耶稣的時候，他們都有多年的傷痛經曆，他們的心很苦毒。可能是所出生家庭的問題，破碎的婚姻，糟糕的人際關系，失望等等。如果你問一個人，“你苦毒嗎？”他通常會回答，“我不苦毒，我怎麽會苦毒，我上教會，讀聖經，怎麽會苦毒呢？”

很多人心中苦毒卻不察覺，壓力和困難會使我們心裏的真實狀況浮現出來。心中的苦毒有幾種征兆，

第一，抱怨。你常常聽到人抱怨，因爲他們心中有苦毒。

第二，怪罪別人。苦毒的人總是尋找別人來怪罪，“是你讓我生氣的”，“都是你的錯，要不然我也不會如此”，“不是我的錯，我生氣是因爲你生氣”。沒有人使你生氣，你生氣是因著你自己。

第三，沒有喜樂。苦毒的人很難笑出來，他們裏面很苦很酸，這都顯示在他們臉上。他們常常皺著眉頭，象在吃檸檬，越老越嚴重，他沒有能力可以享受，可以喜樂。

第四，不感恩。苦毒的人沒有一顆感恩的心，他們專注在他們沒有的東西，而不是他們擁有什麽。一個脫離苦毒的人是充滿了感恩的心，“我是何等的蒙福，我有好多的祝福”。

這些人無法喜樂，無法感恩。他們不是說，“感謝你帶我們離開埃及，感謝神。”反而在那裏抱怨，“爲什麽沒有水？都是你，爲什麽帶我們來到這裏？我想你會殺了我們，我們還是回去埃及好了。”這就是不感恩。

第五，苦毒的人很容易論斷。他們非常刻薄，常常挑別人的錯。

這些就是苦毒的一些征兆，苦毒的人無法進入和經曆神的祝福，他們必須先處理生命中的苦毒。以色列的百姓是苦毒的，導致他們生活在一個循環的挫敗裏面。當你苦毒的時候，你自己不知道，但是苦毒的果子可以顯出來，抱怨，怪罪他人，沒有喜樂，無法歡慶成功，沒有感恩的心，論斷他人，總是渴望更多，從不滿足。

他們常用尖銳的話語。苦毒的人說話總是帶著刺，你可以感受到那個話刺進你心中。

聖經中有一個例子，就是一個男人和一個女人，大衛和他的妻子米甲，米甲是掃羅的女兒，大衛就是掃羅的女婿。他們兩個人其實都很受掃羅王的傷害。掃羅王很嫉妒大衛，他把大衛趕走，並下了追殺令，如果大衛有任何朋友幫助他，就把他的朋友殺了，把他從以色列境內趕出去。同時掃羅將大衛的妻子米甲給了另一個男人，米甲的心破碎了，她必須跟一個她不愛的人住在一起，進入一個她根本不想要的婚姻中。

大衛和米甲各自過不同的人生，但神爲他們有一個命定，他們一起要管理以色列。後來神使他們又在一起，恢複大衛成爲以色列的王。過去大衛被不公平的對待，他受傷很深，被拒絕，被人誣告，他的朋友因爲他死去，他被追殺，但他的心沒有苦毒。爲什麽呢？因爲他饒恕。他尋找神的良善。他說，“神對我是美好的，我也要照著神的美善顯出恩典和饒恕。”

當大衛有機會殺掃羅王的時候，他沒有殺。他說，讓神來處理掃羅，我把我的生命放在主的手中。通常人在受傷的時候，會想到要報複，有人告訴我，華人有句話是，君子報仇，十年不晚。大衛也經曆了十年，可是他的心中沒有報複。當他成爲王的時候，他把神的約櫃帶進來，他心中充滿了喜樂。他歡慶，喜樂，跳舞，他的心是自由的，他想要祝福掃羅的家族，他對神的恩典充滿了感謝，他的心沒有任何的苦毒，他的靈是自由的。

但是大衛的妻子米甲非常苦毒，她沒有來到神的面前領受從神而來的恩典。撒母耳記下第六章中，神說，她從窗中望出去。這是什麽意思？她沒有辦法經曆神的祝福。在以色列曆史中最偉大的複興時，她只是從窗中看見，卻無法成爲其中的一部分。苦毒使你沒法經曆神的同在。苦毒使你受到很深的攪擾。

第二個是她往窗外看，看到她的丈夫，心裏就輕視他，因爲心裏有苦毒的人就是這樣。當大衛回家的時候，他心裏充滿喜樂，充滿感恩，對神的感恩。他回來對家人祝福的時候，他的妻子這樣說，“你是王啊，你怎麽能有這樣的表現。你這樣何等的羞恥啊。”一定是苦毒，這種尖銳的話，尖酸刻薄的話。就像一把劍，刺向人。

生死就在我們舌頭的之下。所以一個人是甜美的，一個人是苦毒的；一個人享受神的祝福，一個人卻在神的祝福之外。這是每個人的選擇；當人面對困難的時候，每個人的回應就決定了這個選擇。大衛選擇饒恕就進入祝福裏；另一個，米甲，因爲她的苦毒，她終生都無法生育，她生命中無法結出任何果子。苦毒會讓你一生結不出果子，而且會玷汙你所有的關系。她的婚姻變成空洞的，人生變得空虛，她在她的苦毒中死去，所有的夢想都破滅，因爲她從來沒有處理心中的苦毒。

很不幸許多基督徒也是如此。我們讓過去的傷痛繼續存留在我們心裏面；我們對曾經傷害我們的人有苦毒的心，沒有選擇饒恕釋放他們。聖經在以弗所書第四章告訴我們，不要使聖靈擔憂，不要讓任何的苦毒，憤怒，憎恨，邪惡進入到你心裏，你要有一顆柔軟的心，仁慈相待，存憐憫的心彼此饒恕。

在基督徒中我看到的最大問題之一就是苦毒，苦毒的心。它表現出來的是經常抱怨，怪罪他人，無法慶祝別人的成功，沒有喜樂。當一個人得到升遷，如果你的心是自由的，你會說，“嘿，太好了，恭喜你。”“哦，你買了新奔馳車，太好了。”但當你心裏有苦毒的時候，你會說，“怎麽會是他升職。”“爲什麽他買新車，我沒有。”苦毒讓你無法歡慶別人的成功，苦毒讓你定睛在不公平，不公義的事情上，而沒有定睛在神的良善上。

神不斷的要求他們處理生命中的苦毒，還有裏面的憎恨，那個很深的憎恨來自于過去奴仆生活的捆綁。你不能承受繼續苦毒，讓過去的怒氣留在心裏面，無法讓憎恨繼續停留在你心裏面，允許不饒恕停留在心裏面。耶稣這樣教導我們，馬太福音第十八章35節，當我們不饒恕的時候，邪靈有合法的權利進入到我們生命中來攪擾我們。

神在這裏做了什麽呢？看這裏，神已經爲他們預備好了泉源，神並沒有偏待他們。前面已經有一個水泉在等著他們，在他們走到水泉之前，他們經曆了一段幹旱的時間，苦毒就出來了。這裏說，摩西呼求耶和華，耶和華指示他一棵樹，他把樹放在水裏，水就變甜了。

神知道他們會碰到這個困難，他已經爲他們預備好了這個供應，只是他們還看不見，神要打開他們的眼睛。那裏有一顆樹，這棵樹預表的就是十字架，當耶稣死在十字架的時候，他把所有的不公義，所有的罪都承擔了。然後耶稣說，“父啊，赦免他們。”當我們經曆不公平的對待，經曆到失望和受傷，我們需要來到十字架前，說，“主耶稣，你怎樣赦免饒恕我，我也怎樣赦免饒恕他們。我把十字架帶進這個環境裏，讓我的苦毒變成甜美。”

在舊約中，約瑟有許多理由變得苦毒，可是他找到了基督。約瑟被兄弟出賣，被誣告，被關進監獄，被忽略。但當他見到他的哥哥們的時候，他說，你們不要自責，不是你們要把我賣來埃及，是神對我生命有一個計劃，是神差我來埃及，我需要有這個經曆，預備我進到我的命定裏。”他的心沒有任何的苦毒和不饒恕，他看見神在這個苦難中的目的，是要預備好他進入到偉大中。

神要改變你，但是在改變之前，你必須要知道神要處理的問題是什麽。我們講到有人有不饒恕和苦毒的心，可能是對你的丈夫，你的妻子，你的父親，你的母親，你的哥哥姐姐，你的親戚，或者你的師長，或者是屬靈的領袖。當你禱告的時候，你常常被這些人攪擾，被邪靈攪擾。你發現當你面臨壓力的時候，你沒有轉向神而是開始抱怨，怪罪他人，你無法享受人生的喜樂，你無法歡慶別人的成功，因爲你心中有苦毒。

當我們講到神的同在，你好像沒有辦法經曆到神的同在，你屬靈的人生不是很有果效，沒有結出很多果子，人際關系中有很多的沖突，可能問題不在別人，而是在你的心裏面。要讓我們得到自由其實很簡單，來到耶稣面前，苦毒的心需要悔改，饒恕曾經傷害過我的人。當我釋放饒恕的時候，神的大能就釋放在我生命中。

我發現很多人在疾病裏，憂郁中無法得到釋放的主要原因之一就是苦毒。神渴望你得釋放，你今天就要做一個決定，是不是願意來到主耶稣的十字架前，釋放饒恕。你會說，“這很不公平，是他傷害我。”是不公平，饒恕是指你欠了我的不需要再還了，因爲神已經赦免了我，我也願意赦免傷害我的人，祝福他。耶稣說，“你要祝福那些咒詛你的人，那些利用你的人，你要爲他們禱告。”

有人對你發咒詛的話，饒恕他們，祝福他們。“我不想饒恕他們。”這就是苦毒說出來的話。如果有人利用你，操控你，掌控你，傷害你，爲他們禱告。“我不想這樣做。”這就是苦毒，受攪擾的人還是你。

今晚你可以從這裏釋放得自由，神渴望我們許多人釋放得自由，從苦毒，憎恨，不饒恕中釋放。但是你必須做這個決定，你需要改變。“今晚我要來到十字架前，我要把我心裏的憎恨，心痛和憂傷放下。我要釋放饒恕，不要再咒詛，我要祝福。”這會不會改變另外一個人呢？根本不會改變他，但是會改變你，你會得到自由。

我們爲人禱告的時候，會有很多人從攪擾的靈中得自由。我發現很多時候當人拜偶像的時候，他裏面會有苦毒；當我們通靈行邪術的時候，裏面有苦毒；有性方面罪的時候，也會有苦毒；當受到其他人傷害時，會有苦毒。但是耶稣可以使苦水變甜，他可以翻轉你的生命，使你成爲別人的祝福。

聖經中有一段非常有趣的經文：我們賜安慰的神，在你的苦難中安慰你，以至于你可以帶著安慰去安慰別人。

我們來閉上眼睛；我邀請我們當中任何還不是基督徒的人，從來沒有接受主耶稣的人，今晚我邀請你來到主耶稣基督面前；主耶稣說，所有接待他的，就是信他名的人，他就賜他們權柄做神的兒女。

所以，今晚如果你還不是基督徒，在你靈裏面有一個非常大的空洞，那個空洞只有透過跟耶稣的關系才能填滿。耶稣邀請你跟他建立這樣的關系，跟他一起同工，改變周圍人的生命。他說，“來，跟隨我，我要使你得人如得魚。”“來，跟隨我，我會改變你的生命。你的生命將會變的甜美。”“來，跟隨我，你不會行走在黑暗中，我會有神的光在你生命裏。”

“來，跟隨我。”這是今晚耶稣對你的邀請，聖經說，神愛世人，他差遣主耶稣爲你的罪死在十字架上，凡是相信他的，不至滅亡，反得永生。今晚你來到這個聚會，你感受到神的同在，你看見神的靈觸摸人，看見喜樂進入到人的生命裏面，好像從天而來的看不見的水流一樣。你看到年輕的女孩從邪靈的轄制中得自由。神是真實的，不是我的能力，是聖靈的大能，那個使人充滿喜樂的靈，那個使那姐妹得自由的靈，今晚他要觸摸你。

今晚我要你這樣做，任何願意接受主耶稣的人請舉起手來，讓我知道你在哪裏，神祝福你。這是一個重要的決定，接受主耶稣，成爲基督徒。

我們會這樣做，一起站起來，拍掌歡慶，一起舉起手的朋友們，或者你剛才沒有舉手的朋友，今晚你渴望接受主耶稣，打開你的生命讓神赦免你一切的罪。我請剛才舉手的朋友們來到台前，我要帶你做一個簡單的禱告，我們站起來歡迎他們，請上前來，來，神祝福你。如果你今晚陪朋友一起來，你可以邀請他們跟你一起上來。

感謝主，我很高興你今天來到神的面前，耶稣認識你們每一個人；他知道你的名字，你們每一個人都是他認識的；他知道你的掙紮，他知道你所面對的難處，他也知道你生命中所面對的挑戰；他知道你哪裏失敗了，但是他愛你。他爲了你在十字架上舍掉了他自己的生命。聖經說，當一位罪人願意回應耶稣的時候，天上有非常大的歡慶。所以現在天上有極大的歡慶。

我要帶領你做一個禱告。禱告就是跟神說話，神就會有回應。請把眼睛閉起來，你會知道主耶稣非常的靠近，你禱告的時候，他會聽見你，他會饒恕你，他的平安會進到你的心裏面，他會抹去你一切的羞恥；你過去挫敗的羞恥，或者你曾經的過錯，或者別人對你所做的事。

“父神，我奉主耶稣的名來到你面前；謝謝你愛我，謝謝你接納我，謝謝你差遣耶稣，爲我的罪死在十字架上，爲我從死裏複活。我轉離罪，我轉離假神。耶稣我接受你成爲我的救主，求你赦免我一切的罪，我現在領受你的饒恕，我領受你的靈進到我心裏。我今天把我的生命獻給你，在天地中間我宣告，耶稣基督是我的救主，是我的主，也是我永遠的朋友。阿門！”

創傷性經歷 (6 of 8)

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首先我們快速的回顧一下我們之前的學習﹔我們看到耶穌教導釋放事工，釋放事工是神國度的彰顯。當我們做釋放事工的時候，必須要與聖靈同工，這需要信心。我們必須相信我們為人禱告的時候，一定會有事情發生。我們看到耶穌的教導，一個人得到釋放之后，邪靈還是要嘗試回來掌管這個人。

我們的結論是，一個人必須改變他的生命的架構，這樣仇敵魔鬼才不會再回來。我們不單隻是把鬼趕出去，而是要把它居住的堅固營壘完全拆毀。我們講到三個邪靈進入人生命的方式，一）合法權利。二）透過創傷性的經歷。三）對創傷性的經歷的回應。

我們也看到為什麼人會得釋放，釋放的根基是什麼。第一個根基是主耶穌為我們所成就的，耶穌在十字架上買贖我們回來。有時你會發現魔鬼在爭執說那人是屬於魔鬼的，所以你必須要訓導神的話語，他是屬耶穌的。另一個根基是個人的，我們必須要預備好這人的心，讓他進入到釋放裡。通常他沒有得到釋放的原因，是我們沒有好好預備他的心，讓他進入到釋放中。

我們談到人首先要看清自己的問題，並為此承擔責任，否則釋放很難繼續下去。所有的改變來自於承認我們需要改變，並為這個需要負起責任。我們看到很多人來接受服事的時候，他們隻是希望我們解決他們的問題，而不願擔起最初他們如何進入這個光景的責任。作為一個服事者，我們需要幫助我們的服事對象了解，他們在釋放過程中需要扮演的角色是什麼，要承擔什麼責任。

他們必須要認罪悔改，把他們的罪帶到十字架前。他們必須要饒恕和釋放饒恕。有時人會很難饒恕自己，領受從主而來的饒恕同時也釋放饒恕在那些傷害他們的人的身上。一個不願意饒恕的人很容易在停留在轄制裡面，不能得自由。

人們也必須棄絕在他身上的捆綁，棄絕就是破除建構在我們生命中的堅固營壘。例如，一個人過去拜偶像，與偶像有一個協議，他們必須要說出破除協議的話。如果這個人是獻給廟宇和偶像的，他必須要說出話語破除這個獻祭的行動。耶穌說我所說出的話是靈是生命，所以我們所說的話是很重要的。

人也必須要負起責任來抵擋魔鬼。他們不能很被動很負面的說“你來幫我做就好了。”在釋放事工中有一個屬靈的爭戰正在發生。人們必須要願意站立抵擋魔鬼，仰望神得自由。

昨天我們談到心裡的堅固營壘和捆綁。讓我們可以認清心裡的問題是什麼並去處理問題。我們談到魂結，就是人與魂與一些影像連結。我們講到苦毒論斷的根和內在誓言﹔咒詛的言語，包括自己咒詛自己或者是來自別人的咒詛﹔我們也談到創傷性的經歷。有時人也會把過度的重擔和期待放在人的身上。

我們也談到是如何向邪靈開的門。包括家族歷代的咒詛，家族的人做過的事讓歷代的咒詛臨到家族中，當有人願意處理時，這個咒詛就會停止。當一個家族的人願意代表家人為這個行為承擔責任，在神的面前做認同悔改，把十架放在家族和罪的中間。我們有教導要認清歷代家族的咒詛，通常需要了解這個問題是從什麼時候開始的，這樣就可以知道這是不是一個家族歷代遺傳下來的問題。

行邪術，通靈及跟靈界有關的事情也會打開門讓邪靈進來。性方面的罪也會讓生命向邪靈敞開。有些習慣性的罪也會向邪靈打開門。苦毒，憎恨，憤怒，不饒恕，悖逆，苦毒的論斷，所有這些都會讓邪靈有渠道進入人的生命。

接下來我們要看的是關於創傷性的經歷。我會跟大家分享尋找它的根源的幾個步驟，然后如何幫助人經歷自由。

創傷性的經歷，我也正在學習這個領域。我發現很多人的問題都是發生在年幼的時候，通常是一個創傷性的傷痛的經歷。創傷是我們在情緒上無法面對的，無法愈合的經歷，是一個無法磨滅的記憶。這些經歷可以是一般性的，也可以是非常嚴重的。

每一個人面對創傷性的經歷的回應都不一樣。我們必須要了解的是，人們是不會忘記他們經歷的創傷。經歷越傷痛，記憶就會越深。經歷如果是非常傷痛的，或者是很持久的經歷，就會烙印在他的記憶裡。

例如，一個人經歷了摩托車車禍，車禍的沖擊可能會停止他大腦的運作，忘記當時發生的事情。你跟摩托車手談起車禍，他對車禍之前和之后的記憶都有，但是車禍當時的記憶就沒有了。其實他們記得當時的車禍，隻是他們失去了意識。創傷性的經歷的記憶分散在他身體裡。

當人有創傷性的經歷的時候，在他們的記憶中產生一個烙印，是大腦中的化學元素烙印在身體裡面，邪靈就通過這個印記進入到他的生命中。當人經歷創傷性的經歷的時候，一定會有一個影像在他的記憶中，創傷性的記憶是這樣的：

1. 有一個圖像，影像很深的記得。如果你回憶你的人生，有沒有一些在學校裡非常尷尬的事情或者人生中非常慘痛的記憶。會有一個圖像，影像出現。大部分人都會有這個情況，你的經歷是用圖像記憶起來的。還有就是你對這個經歷的解讀，這個經歷對我有什麼意義。

對於一個從小被性侵犯的孩子，她有被性侵犯的圖像記憶，她也記得當時的味道，燈光，場景等等﹔她對整個事件的解讀就是“我是不配的，沒有價值的，男人是會傷害我的。”她對這個事情產生的回應就是內在誓言，“我不再信任任何人。”所以在這個創傷性的記憶中包括：整個事件的圖像，因著這個事件他們產生的信念，以及對這個事件的回應。所有這些都包含在這個創傷性的經歷裡面。

舉例來說，被性侵犯的人會記得性侵者的形象和當時事情發生時的場景，她會記得當時的感覺，聲音，味道和影像。她對整個事件的解讀就是，“我是無助的，沒有價值的，都是我的錯。”她對這件事的回應就是，“我不能告訴任何人，我永遠不能相信男人。”這就是我們之前講到的，心裡的捆綁和回應。當一個人有一個創傷性的經歷的時候，就會包括所有這些﹔最有能力影響我們的就是那個圖像，以及她們對這個圖像的解讀。

人可以嘗試將問題壓抑下來，埋在心底裡，可是之后她們可能會看見，聽見或者聞到一些東西，勾起她們的記憶，所有的感受又再次浮現出來了。去年，我在印尼的一個女兒在懷孕五個月的時候發生流產，我趕緊飛過去幫助他們經歷這個階段。經過長途的飛行和一些服事，我經歷了非常忙碌的幾天。我必須要管理好自己的情緒，因為我要服事別人，然后我回到新西蘭，正是聖誕節，我有很多事情要做。

四個星期之后，我坐在電視機前看電視，有一首歌開始唱起來，就是『奇異恩典』，我就開始一直哭，一直哭，因為我上一次聽到這首歌時，是在我女兒的家舉行的禮拜。我把對那個流產的憂傷一直壓抑下來。可是這首歌讓我想起當天發生的事情，所有的憂傷都開始浮現出來。我仿佛看到在房子裡，聽見女兒在唱歌，我的孫子就躺在盒子裡。我需要好好的憂傷，然后把她交托給主。

我這個女兒經過一個很長的憂傷的時期，特別是他們那邊做火化的方式，對她來講是一個很難承受的經歷，她裡面有很大的沖擊。我跟她說最重要的是，你要從神的角度來看這件事，你必須要有一個不一樣的圖像在你的腦海裡，因為你看到的最后一個圖像帶給你很深的困擾，你需要神給你一個不同的圖像，你無法挪去人的記憶，但是你可以做到的是讓神給你一個不一樣的圖像。

當我們經歷一個傷痛的經歷的時候，我們能看見的是非常有限的，都是圍繞在我們的傷痛中。所以我們面對這個傷痛的方式就是邀請聖靈將這個人帶回到這個經歷中﹔讓他們在這個經歷中看到主耶穌，當然這人也必須願意讓聖靈帶他回到原來的經歷中。大部分人會將傷痛壓抑下來，好像把他們關在房間裡，不讓任何人進入。他嘗試壓抑他的疼痛。

我常常鼓勵他們讓基督進入那個記憶的房間，再次面對傷痛﹔主耶穌一定會向你說話，安慰你，為你改變那個環境。對於我的女兒來說，我請她閉上眼睛，想象她之前看到的圖像，邀請主耶穌進來。她立刻看見主耶穌站在那裡，她看到他的憂傷，主耶穌緊緊抱著孩子，對她微笑，對她說話，她的憂傷當時就消失了。所以她對孩子的最后回憶不是棺材推進火裡去燒，而是主耶穌抱著孩子，這帶給她一個很大的釋放。

當人們有一個傷痛的經歷時，他們需要聖靈將耶穌啟示在那個經歷中。你可以想象舊約中列王記下第六章，以利沙的仆人看到軍兵圍困他們非常害怕﹔他在恐懼中對他的主人說他不知道怎樣去面對這個狀況。以利沙這樣禱告，“主啊，你打開他的眼，讓他看見他的眼睛沒有看見的，打開他的眼，看見幫助我們的比抵擋我們的要多得多。”聖靈就打開了他的眼睛，他就從靈界裡面，從神的角度看見所有天使天軍的同在。他能夠看到敵軍，但他還能看到其它的，他看到神的大能是站在他那邊的，他就有平安了。

這是神醫治創傷性的經歷的主要方式之一。我經常跟當事人解釋，他們把創傷性的記憶放在一個房間鎖起來，想這樣來拯救自己。我讓他們願意想起他們過去不希望想起的東西，邀請耶穌進入那個房間。很多當事人想起過去的經歷的時候就開始流淚，我就問他們，“看耶穌在哪裡？耶穌在做什麼？他的表情是什麼？他說了什麼？”然后那個人就開始和我互動，跟我說他看到了什麼，就會有另一個圖像進來，這個圖像就會改變他的回憶，取代之前慘痛的圖像。

有一個姐妹，當她五歲的時候被領養，她跟她的教會分享她是被領養的，以及她是怎樣聽到我們的見証而信主的。當我聽到她的見証的時候，我說，“主感動我要為你禱告，主要醫治你。你還記得當初你的媽媽把你送去領養嗎？”她說，“我記得非常清楚。”那就是在她腦裡的一個圖像，有很多的憂傷，在那個圖像中，她的媽媽將她交給陌生人。有很多的疑問，媽媽為什麼要這樣做？我怎麼了？有很多這些東西在她的腦海裡出現。

我對她說，請你閉上眼睛，讓自己回憶起當時的經歷。她就開始哭泣，回憶起那個經歷，當著我們所有人的面流淚。我問她，“你能看到耶穌嗎？”她說，“我看到耶穌。”我說，“耶穌看起來怎麼樣？”她說，“他也在流淚，為這件事情悲傷。”我說，“你可以為這件事情仰望他。”我沒有想到她真的伸出手，站在那裡僵硬住了，聚會的一個半小時，她就一直保持這個姿勢。一般人是沒有辦法做到的。她就像是被抓住了。我繼續講道，然后做呼召。她突然就出來了，我問她，“發生了什麼事？”她 有一個遇見耶穌的經歷。“耶穌跟你說了什麼？”“他說這不是我的錯。”這麼多年，她一直相信一個謊言，“這都是我的錯。”她一直被邪靈攪擾，當耶穌把真理告訴她的時候，“不是你的錯，你不是一個壞人，我愛你，我永遠不會離棄你。”我第二天看到她，其實我沒有認出她來，她完全不一樣了，有喜樂和生命在她裡面。

我記得為一位曾經遭受過性侵犯的女孩禱告，我問她願不願意回到過去的回憶裡，她就開始流淚，開始描述當時發生的事情，描述她的父親進到房間。我讓她尋找耶穌，她看到他並開始流淚，她說耶穌充滿了憐憫，他在流淚，他看到發生的事情很難過。我說，“你定睛在耶穌身上，看他做什麼，說什麼。”她就跟耶穌互動，她說，“耶穌走向我，站在我跟我父親中間，我現在看不見我爸爸了。耶穌說他會保護我。”她完全改變了，三個禮拜之后，她跟她父親和好了。她從這個創傷性的經歷中得到醫治，那個創傷性的圖像被另一個圖像取代。

有時，創傷背后有邪靈，或者跟這個創傷有魂結。如果你覺得聖靈有帶領你，把創傷性的經歷和魂結砍斷，命令邪靈離開，同時也讓聖靈啟示耶穌在當中的作為。有時，過程中人們會有很多怒氣，很多苦毒，他們需要經歷饒恕的禱告。創傷的本質是一個圖像﹔跟圖像連接在一起的感受，因著他對這個事情的解讀而產生了信念﹔他對這個事件作出的回應，他對這個事情的回應也需要悔改，謊言被真理取代，他們需要被釋放，砍斷魂結。

我鼓勵你嘗試這樣做﹔我鼓勵你如果有人有這樣創傷性的經歷，邀請耶穌進入這個經歷中並醫治他們﹔你會驚訝這個過程有多麼容易，人很容易就得到自由，得到釋放。

我為一位姐妹禱告，她因為墮胎有很深的憂傷。她看見耶穌抱著她的孩子，她就開始流淚﹔耶穌對她說，“你需要饒恕你自己。”耶穌已經饒恕她了，可是她不願意饒恕她自己。在這個領域，很多人都有不一樣的經歷，那些經歷總是伴隨著圖像﹔跟著圖像就會有當下的感受，還有由圖像而來的信念，以及對事件的回應。信念的改變是因為我們聽見，看見真理﹔回應的改變是通過我們認罪悔改，邪靈就會很容易的趕出去。

給大家一些關於創傷性經歷的例子，讓我們知道我們需要尋找的是什麼。創傷是一個負面的圖像，因著一個傷痛的經歷而烙印在人的記憶裡面。同樣的經歷對一個人來說是創傷，而對另外一個人可能不算什麼。

我們在服事中經常遇到的一些創傷性的經歷有，

1.在母腹中的經驗。一個孩子在母腹中被拒絕，對孩子是一個很大的創傷，影響是一生的。過去一百年來的科學認知是，孩子所有記憶都在大腦裡面，如果大腦還沒有形成的話，他們是不會記得的。而過去四五年中，通過利用超音波的研究發現，這不是真的。當一個孩子在母腹中時，他對母親和周圍的環境有清楚的了解。

母腹中的孩子可以很深的感受到被拒絕。一個女孩在母腹中，當她發現父母想要的是男孩的時候，她會感受到被拒絕，而這個拒絕感會讓邪靈進入到裡面。母腹中的孩子可以感受到母親的情緒狀況，如果母親有很深的焦慮，憂郁，憤怒或者家裡面有沖突，對孩子都會有很大的影響。母腹中的孩子能夠明白媽媽對他講的話，媽媽對爸爸講的話，爸爸對他講的話，爸爸對媽媽講的話。如果懷孕過程中出現一些狀況，例如如果母親得了血毒症，腹中的孩子會有對死亡的恐懼。如果有嘗試要墮胎，這個孩子也會記得的。或者之前有過墮胎的經歷，孩子是會知道的，也會受到影響。隻有聖靈能啟示我們他的問題是不是從母腹中得到的。

有時出生時的創傷也會帶給孩子很深的傷害。早產，臍帶繞頸，或者難產的壓力會對孩子造成傷害。跟母親沒有很好的連結，也會造成創傷。很多人認為嬰兒不會說話，沒有感覺，他不會知道﹔事實是孩子在沒有保護的狀況下，很容易讓邪靈進入引起創傷。孩童期創傷，被拒絕遺棄的孩子，被領養的孩子，或者家庭中有很大沖突和危機的孩子，言語上或肢體上的虐待，或者是害怕恐懼的經驗﹔父母離異也會深深的讓孩子受創傷，或者是嚴重長久的疾病，開刀，意外，親朋好友的去世，求學的經歷。我們服事過很多人，在校園中都有很慘痛的經歷。破裂的關系，意外，流產，墮胎都是創傷。

有很多方式給我們的情緒帶來沖擊，邪靈利用這個機會進入我們裡面攪擾我們。當你在服事人的時候，就要尋找有沒有這樣的創傷性的經歷，一個帶著負面能力的圖像。當我們跟人交談的時候，求聖靈將這些都顯現出來。我跟大家分享一些應做的步驟。

創傷性的經歷帶來的問題包括：1）圖像，由圖像帶來的感受，感受所結出來的信念，以及對這件事情的回應。2）有時創傷會有一個魂結，我們必須要砍斷魂結。3）有時邪靈會附在創傷的背后，我們在處理釋放的過程中，可以將邪靈趕出去。

我們看過很多邪靈進入我們生命中的方式﹔當你坐下來服事這個人，應嘗試了解他的問題是什麼，以下是一些診斷的步驟。通常人們尋求服事的時候，都有一些問題請你幫助他。你必須要聆聽問題尋求答案。當他帶著問題來時，你就提出問題，尋找這個問題真正的根源是什麼。不管他的問題是什麼，我們可以開始提出這樣的問題，幫助我們尋找問題的根源，邪靈是如何進入的。

我們服事的出發點就是要拆毀邪靈居住的屋子，再趕鬼。邪靈居住的屋子是怎樣造成的？可能是家族歷代的咒詛﹔可能是犯罪的模式﹔可能是一些心裡的回應，如魂結或苦毒的論斷﹔也可能是創傷性的經歷。

我們可以這樣處理：“可以跟我講你的問題是什麼嗎？它怎樣影響你？這個問題有多久了？”當你問“這個問題有多久了？”的時候，你就可以知道這是不是一個家族歷代的問題。在診斷問題的時候我們會尋求這些：

1）這是不是家族歷代的問題？換句話說，有沒有家族歷代的咒語在運行中。他的家族中有沒有同樣的問題。當你跟一個人談論他的問題的時候，可以問他，“你的家族中有沒有其他人有同樣的問題？”“這個問題有多久了？”很多時候可以根據問題發生的時間找到問題的根源。我們在診斷的時候就是在搜集這些資訊，聆聽聖靈告訴我們的。聖靈有時會感到我們問一些奇怪的問題。

2）你是否跟某個人或某件事有魂結。甚至問題是這個人引起的，你仍跟他有連結。可能是在性方面的犯罪，讓你跟這個人有魂結﹔或者是跟虐待你的人有魂結﹔跟一個遺棄你的人有魂結。有沒有任何苦毒的根和不饒恕存在，或者在苦毒中對某人的論斷存在。“我永遠不要相信男人，男人隻會讓你失望。”有沒有任何苦毒的期待﹔有沒有任何內在的誓言。“我永遠不這樣做，我永遠不那樣。”找出這些問題的答案。

也許什麼問題都沒有找到，但至少你知道你需要尋找什麼。這人的生命中有沒有任何咒詛的言語，自己對自己的咒詛，或者是死亡的意念﹔或者自己對自己不斷重復的話，或者別人對他生命所說的話﹔尋找這些，會告訴我們問題的根源是什麼。有沒有重復性的犯罪？有沒有任何的創傷？創傷的圖像對他生命引起負面的影響，負面的傷痛。是什麼樣的邪靈在背后？透過這個方式回想他的生命，你就會系統的拆毀邪靈的房子。使用我們今天教導的自由的根基，就是宣告我們的信仰，宣告他是屬於主耶穌的，然后認罪，悔改，饒恕，棄絕罪，棄絕邪靈。

如果我們不尋找心裡面的真正根源，隻是改變了他們的行為，這樣的改變不會持久。心裡面真正的問題必須處理。當人帶著他的問題來找你的時候，不要立刻為他禱告﹔花點時間尋求，問問題，聆聽﹔當與人交談時，要留意他浮現出來的一些情緒。我跟人交談，他們開始流淚，我就會停下來問，“你怎麼了？”“你的感覺是什麼？”“為什麼這個感覺會出來呢？”這就告訴我他心裡面正在發生的事情。

所以你看到這不是簡單的一二三幾個步驟就解決問題了，我們需要敏銳的聖靈工作﹔聖靈會啟示我們應往哪個方向走。所以開始時，我會讓人放鬆，然后問問題，在問題中找到根源。然后看問題的根源所影響的范圍是什麼﹔是家族歷代遺傳的問題？是魂結？內在誓言？苦毒的論斷？死亡之願？咒詛的言語？還是罪？每一個東西被拆毀之后，釋放就很容易了。總是從這個角度釋放，拆毀盔甲，拆毀屋子，把邪靈信賴的盔甲拆毀之后，釋放就容易了。總是這麼容易嗎？如果你遵循這樣一個過程，就會容易很多。

（譯員分享了前一晚他們為一位曾經有過墮胎經歷的姐妹所做的釋放禱告。）

在狀況中，我們必須清楚的告訴他們責任是誰的﹔這人清楚他所做的，他在憂傷當中也有很大的傷痛，我必須要很溫柔的告訴他﹔當你在選擇自己還是孩子的時候，你選擇了自己，奪去了孩子的生命。我跟他分享了我看到的異象，在天堂神看顧很多這樣的孩子。當你選擇墮胎的時候，表面看是選擇了最簡單的方式，可是不知道有更多新的問題產生。

我們一步一步的帶領她，幫助她離開她的狀況。第一，來到主的面前，認罪悔改。如果你認罪悔改，神會赦免你。第二，處理對孩子的憂傷問題﹔求神給她一個異象﹔當她向主敞開心的時候，神開始向她顯現，跟她說話﹔她看到耶穌抱著她的孩子，耶穌對她說，“你必須要饒恕你自己。”我就讓她聆聽這個孩子是男生還是女生，我們立刻有一個感動知道他是什麼，然后我讓她給孩子起個名字，把孩子交托給主。她看到主耶穌抱著她的孩子，對她微笑，對她講安慰的言語。

每一個步驟非常清楚。處理罪，命令邪靈離開，帶她經歷主，遇見主﹔讓她承擔責任，為孩子命名，帶出整個事件非常好的結果。她的表情，面容，在之后完全不一樣了。我們拆毀了仇敵魔鬼在她生命中所建造的。從一個謊言開始，“這沒有什麼，隻是一塊肉，把它切掉就好了。”最后她承認這個真理，“這是她的兒子，這是他的名字，她奪去了他的生命。”但是耶穌饒恕她了，耶穌現在在照顧這個孩子。

神的作為是非常奇妙的，你隻需要拆毀這些堅固營壘，負起責任，認罪悔改，棄絕捆綁，釋放饒恕，然后領受主的醫治。使用這些工具來拆毀邪靈居住的屋子，當你在頭腦裡面知道你要尋找什麼，你就會發現重復的東西會不斷的發生。家族歷代的問題，魂結，苦毒的論斷，內在誓言，死亡之願，咒詛的言語，不斷重復的罪，創傷性的圖像，邪靈。每一個部分都有解決的方法。

我們如何在服事中越來越老練呢？你必須要不斷的操練，願意服事弟兄姐妹﹔不要想是“我要解決你的問題”，而要想，“這是你的問題，但耶穌有答案。”我是幫助你找到耶穌，找到問題的答案，面對真理，即使這個真理不容易接受。

當我們服事人的時候，總應是由他們自己承擔他們問題的責任，耶穌有他們問題的答案﹔我們也需要聖靈幫助我們看到問題的真正根源是什麼。我們帶著謙卑和愛來面對這個人，幫助他們看到真理，當他們知道真理的時候，我們就可以帶他們得釋放。

如果你發現服事的人有很多的掙扎，無法釋放，那可能是缺少了某一個步驟，我們需要神的幫助。可能是罪，可能是不饒恕，可能是有些捆綁需要解決﹔如果我們把整個屋子拆毀，邪靈就會很容易的離開了。

當我們服事完這個人之后，接下來需要怎麼做？我們分享幾處經文，以便我們能夠知道原則是什麼，如何實際的幫助人。

首先我們看雅各書第四章7節，這個經文跟自由有關系，“你們要順服神，務要抵擋魔鬼，魔鬼就必離開你們逃跑了。”這裡很清楚，神要我們抵擋魔鬼。抵擋就是很積極的面對，去抵抗。同時神也要我們與主站在一邊，順服神，抵擋魔鬼。

另一處很類似的經文是以弗所書第四章22至24節，“就要脫去你們從前行為上的舊人。這舊人是因私欲的迷惑，漸漸變壞的。又要將你們的心志改換一新。並且穿上新人。這新人是照著神的形像造的，有真理的仁義，和聖潔。”這裡講到兩個東西，一個是脫去舊人，就像抵擋一樣﹔另一個講到穿上新人。所以我們的改變需要我們刻意的去做，才會發生。

很多人渴望你來為他們禱告，服事他們﹔他們卻沒有預備好接下來他們需要進入的，改變的生活中。在神的國度裡沒有中間地帶﹔耶穌告訴我們邪靈會嘗試重新回到我們的生命中影響我們﹔一個人需要非常積極的尋求他的自由。自由是有代價的，可是當你享受了自由的以后，你永遠不會想要回去捆綁裡。但是你必須要持守你得到的自由。

你發現有些國家的百姓可以擺脫獨裁者，可是持守在自由中，管理這個國家是與過去完全不一樣的。那你怎樣持守在自由裡呢？你需要特別刻意的去做。例如有人有色情的捆綁，“牧師，你為我禱告，解決我這個問題。”這是沒有用的，因為他這樣講的時候，就已經把解決問題的責任放在了別人手中。

我跟他們講，首先，你有這個罪，你在犯罪，而且習慣犯罪，習慣是需要時間去改變的。你有兩個問題，第一，你生命中有很深的被拒絕。第二，在傷痛中，你透過不好的色情的東西來帶給你安慰。這裡有很深的屬靈的問題，還有情感的問題﹔另外這已經是習慣性的罪，在你的大腦裡面已經成為一個生理上的捆綁﹔你看到的東西會刺激你去按照你習慣的方式去做，你不能期待一個禱告就解決幾個月甚至幾年的問題。

要得到自由是有一些步驟的，從罪裡面釋放有一些過程。最開始就是將罪帶到光中﹔處理罪的問題，但要持守在自由裡面，有些事情你必須要做。我講的是一般性的案例，特殊情況下也適用。我給大家以下幾個步驟，幫助我們持守在自由裡。這不是唯一的方式，但是我認為很實用。

1）不斷建立和加強你的屬靈生命，讓你靈裡面的人剛強﹔我們勝過罪是因為我們裡面聖靈的大能，而不是因為我們更加的努力。讓你屬靈的生命剛強，聖經在猶大書第一章20節中說，“親愛的弟兄阿，你們卻要在至聖的真道上造就自己，在聖靈裡禱告。”我鼓勵被服事的弟兄姐妹每天操練自己，用方言禱告。因為當你用方言禱告的時候，你就是在造就你靈裡面的人。 所以當一個人的屬靈生命是活躍的，有能力的，就會很有幫助。

2）需要更新思想。這是最重要的﹔很多時候人們不會這樣做，更新就像是重新裝潢一樣，要借著默想來更新思想。在以弗所書第四章的經文中說，“我們要更新我們的思想。”羅馬書第十二章2節，“心意更新而變化”。

我們應該怎樣做呢？透過默想我們可以更新我們的思想。默想就是在腦海裡想象神的真理，你需要看見神的真理﹔你的想象力是一個非常強而有力的，可以連結神的東西。提摩太前書第四章15節，保羅對提摩太說，“這些事你要殷勤去作，並要在此專心，使眾人看出你的長進來。”

你的大腦無法想象抽象的東西﹔如果對你說，“神愛你”，這是一個很抽象的想法，我頭腦中知道這個，但心裡面沒有任何的感受。如果你問基督徒們“你覺得神愛你嗎？”他們都會說，“當然愛我，神是愛，神愛世人。所有愛的經文我都知道。”如果我換一種問法，“你有感受到神愛你嗎？”“你有經歷到他正在愛你嗎？”人們就突然安靜下來，因為他們沒有經歷到神的愛，除非他們來到聚會中。

但那並不是他們生活中每天所經歷的﹔在生活中，他們禱告，可是卻感覺不到神﹔來到聚會中，有感受到神的觸摸，會流淚。可是從禮拜天到禮拜天中間有六天。所以通過默想，想象神的真理，每天不斷的重復，就會讓你的心經歷到他的真理。

假如這個人在被拒絕中掙扎，他相信的是，“沒有人愛我，我是不被接納的。”這個謊言會允許邪靈進入來攪擾他們。如果這個謊言居住在他的心裡面，就會影響他看每一件事情。如何讓這個謊言離開呢？當我們棄絕謊言，擁抱真理的時候。如果你一生中都相信這個謊言，就是“你不被愛，你是被拒絕的。”那麼我跟你說，“耶穌愛你。”你完全無法接受。

默想是一個符合聖經的方式，把真理帶進我們的生命裡。我不是背誦神愛我的經文，我需要想象，這個經文看起來會像什麼，這個經文感覺會是什麼。如果我可以不斷的重復想象真理，擁抱真理，它就會開始在我心裡面成為一個信念。因為這需要時間，需要守紀律才可以完成，大部分的人做不到，於是他們就不斷的跌倒。

如果你要真理進入到心裡面，你需要背誦神的話語，想象這個話語落實在你的身上。每天用你的想象力去看，去仰望這個真理，緊緊的抓住它。一次又一次的，直到真理停留在你心裡。在你裡面活躍起來。

我們靈裡面的人是需要這些圖像的，如果我問你，“你家裡哪個地方最舒服，你最經常去休息的是哪裡？”你會閉起眼睛，“啊，我知道哪裡了。”你會發現它是一個圖像，那個圖像總是讓你想到安息，休息。所以如果我要改變我內心的核心信念，我需要改變我裡面的圖像。

默想是一個改變人生命的關鍵，可是很少人這樣做。因為它需要練習，需要時間，重新調整心思意念。你想象你願意在這方面下功夫，你就很容易經歷神，這不是很好嗎，其實是很值得的。我不斷的操練，有一天我突然就感覺到了神。連續三個禮拜我每天操練都沒有感覺到神，可是當有一天真理進到我心裡時，我突然就感覺到了神，我開始一直流淚。

所以默想就是我們開始想象真理，想象那個東西看起來像什麼，感覺起來像什麼。當我們講到聖潔的時候，很多人不明白，所以我們要更努力，要聖潔，但是不容易做到，因為我們還是在犯錯。但是當我們默想聖潔，看著耶穌，看到他的純潔，站在他面前想象。如果在我生命中沒有任何的罪，與他同在的潔淨是怎樣的一個感覺。當我在默想他的聖潔的時候，我就變的跟他一樣。你就開始喜歡這樣，不喜歡其它的，因為你已經改變了。這就要我們每一天花時間跟神建立關系。

我們做一個總結，如果一個人要在生命中繼續往前走，他需要建構他靈裡的生命，以至於神可以運行在他的生命裡面。

1）方言禱告。

2）借著默想來更新思想，宣告神的話語。

3）我們容易回到舊人的心思意念。如果你發現有負面的想法，趕快停止，拒絕這些想法。我們需要改變我們的回應。在羅馬書第十二章告訴我們說，我們要透過善來勝過惡。如果有人傷害你，你開始生氣，“主我將怒氣交給你，我饒恕他，祝福他，我對它們有恩慈。”

4）很刻意的改變你的生活方式。其中一個很有幫助的方式就是向人敞開。我們在這個旅程中需要人的幫助，約翰一書第一章7節，“我們若在光明中行，如同神在光明中，就彼此相交，他兒子耶穌的血也洗淨我們一切的罪。”

所以當我們在分享這些的時候，就像門徒訓練的過程，與耶穌同行。不要將釋放趕鬼看成一個獨立的事工，釋放其實是門徒訓練的一個步驟。拆毀邪靈的堅固營壘，把邪靈趕出去，幫助這個人成為神要他們成為的人。沒有任何中間的位置，沒有消極被動的狀況。我們就是要不斷的往前追求神。阿門！

我們被邀請成為聖靈部長 (7 of 8)

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我今天講服事人。我注意到現在我晚上要給其它人做許多禱告。部分是因為人們有很大的期待，希望有神的人為他們禱告。我理解這些，但如果我們繼續投入更多，這就會減少你能做的其它事。因此，我要講一下服事中的一些事，讓你們能從中受益。

在服事的周圍總是有屬靈的爭戰。認出這些屬靈爭戰，然后學習在它們出現時怎樣應對。第一個沖突發生在為人禱告之前﹔第二個沖突發生在為人們禱告的時候﹔第三個發生在為他們禱告之后。看到這幅畫面了嗎？你正在服事聖靈，在這附近就會有爭戰和沖突﹔戰場就在你心裡。我要很快地展示給你們怎樣應對。

如果你想更好地服事聖靈，你就要練習。不練習，就學不好。你非要練習不可。你想彈鋼琴嗎？要練習！如果你隻是看著鋼琴，“噢，我會彈錯的”，你就永遠不會彈。你必須練習。因此，有人與你一同練習常常是一個令人謙虛的事，我們要主動，願意冒險。我會演示給你們，讓你們知道這是什麼意思，我隻是需要一個志願者幫忙。這是第一部分。如果什麼也沒發生怎麼辦？“就站在那裡，面對著我”。

因此，第一個沖突是樂於把自己擺在服事別人的位置﹔因此，我現在把自己擺在了一個容易受傷害的位置﹔我在冒風險﹔因此，對許多人來說，把自己擺在這個位置本身就是爭戰﹔所以，你必須做一個決定﹔我受呼召做聖靈的使節，神與我同在，我會站出來，承擔風險。承擔風險的意思是：我會站出來，尋找神的幫助﹔因此，每一次我站出來的時候，我都感到有一點緊張﹔這不會改變，因為每一次你這麼做時，都變得容易受傷害。

因此，你能做什麼呢？你隻要做一個決定，我受呼召做聖靈的使節，神教我的方法就是：參與實踐，去與真實的人互動，去面對真正的問題。“我願意，是的，我會去做”。你就是要做這個決定。如果你不做這個決定，把自己放在需要服事的地方，你可以讀許多有關的書籍，但你永遠學不會。

如果你想騎單車，你首先要騎上去。“噢，我讀了許多怎樣騎單車的書，我有很多資料，我對單車知道得很清楚”﹔“嗨，你有沒有騎上去？”，“沒有”，“那你就不會騎單車”。看見了嗎？知識與經驗是不同的﹔有些東西你隻能通過經歷才能學會。

因此，第一個爭戰是要說：“是的，我會來禱告”。這是你們有些人會漏掉的。當我聚會的時候，會有膏油的釋放，而每一個禱告的人會得到膏油。學習的最好地方就是大型的聚會，那裡有能力在流動。這也是最容易得到的學習機會﹔因為有膏油的釋放，我能按手在你身上，把它傳授給你。

通常，有百分之九十五的機會，學到的會在三個星期失去﹔你必須把他融入你的生命﹔你要把它變成你自己的東西﹔你通過練習把它變成你自己的東西﹔你通過冥想把它變成你自己的東西﹔你必須把自己投入到服事中。這就是第一個爭戰。

第二個爭戰是，當我來禱告的時候，我會想：“噢，壓力很大，要盡力解決她的問題”﹔因此，我會做的是，更加直截了當﹔ “我要你閉上眼睛，向耶穌敞開心靈，我要你依靠他”﹔我所做的就是把她的注意力轉向了耶穌，而不是我﹔而這也大大地減少了我的壓力。

現在，如果我把注意力集中在“噢，要做什麼？” 我就會變得害怕，而這會關閉我的靈性﹔因此，你要把你的注意力轉向耶穌身上。當我閉上眼睛，我就開始想耶穌就在我身旁﹔我每天都這麼做﹔今天早晨也是這麼做的。所以，當我閉上眼睛，我會清楚地知道耶穌就在我身邊，與我同在﹔我立刻就能感受到他的同在。

因此，你必須做功課，讓神在你的生命中﹔服事是把神的生命帶給人。在我開始禱告前，會有擔心﹔如果什麼事都沒發生怎麼辦？如果我感到信心不足怎麼辦？

你要做一個決定：我要站出來，信靠神﹔當你開始禱告的時候，你可能感到一點擔心:“或者沒有事會發生”。把這個想法拋到一邊，聚焦在耶穌身上﹔“謝謝主你與我們同在﹔我看到你正在觸摸她”。我做的就是想象耶穌站在那裡，生命通過我觸摸她﹔所發生的正是這樣。

當然，開始服事后，有時會有疑慮﹔你懷疑“夠不夠好”﹔停下，到此為止﹔不要分析下去﹔你已經盡力了﹔你隻要問那人：“對你有幫助嗎”？我們能學習，下次再學﹔這是一個不斷學習的過程。

“來，就這樣﹔現在閉上你的眼睛”﹔你要把人們的注意力引到耶穌身上﹔否則，他們會對你有要求，你會覺得受到操控，試圖要讓什麼事發生，而不是依靠聖靈﹔現在，在做完輔導后，你開始為人們禱告﹔禱告的時候，要依靠聖靈，總要依靠它。因此，我集中精神，隻聽聖靈，看看它要怎麼做﹔然后，我會覺察到膏油是否淋在她的身上﹔如果我感到有牆或阻擋，就會感到沒有流動，一定有我不知道的什麼事正在發生﹔這時， 我隻需要問主：“那是什麼？”

有時，在服事人的時候有許多阻擋﹔如果隻是一個，有時我可以通過加大力量來突破它﹔但大部分情況下，你需要停下來，問主問題出在哪裡﹔可能那人受到邪靈的控制﹔也可能是由於不信。“奉耶穌的名，我捆綁那控制她的邪靈，我捆綁那不信，釋放她”。然后，能力通常就會開始流動。或者， 可能心裡有一個尚未提及的問題﹔你隻要說“嗨，我沒有感到聖靈的流動，讓我們來談一談吧﹔我們有沒有漏掉什麼？讓我們問問主漏掉了什麼”﹔你閉上眼睛，也讓他們閉上眼睛。讓我們問主：“主，把我們需要處理的問題顯明給我們”﹔與那人互動。

練習：

現在，我們需要有機會與人一起禱告，我把時間快用完了，總是有那麼多事情想要做。我要你們互相為對方禱告。然后在結束的時候會有一個呼召，我們必須相信神會觸摸你，不管你哪裡需要觸摸。這些就是我們將要做的，我要你們每三個人一組，我要你們感受服事能力進入彼此的身上。我們隻要三個人一組，來吧，就站在那裡。

非常簡單，隻要一步一步來做。目的就是要你們熟練地釋放能力。現在，我們通常在發出一句命令的同時釋放能力﹔它是從我們裡面發出的。我們要遵循的步驟非常簡單。“你是扶人的，眼睛要睜開，要准備好扶人”﹔有時人會摔倒，會很突然，所以要警覺﹔你可以把眼閉起來﹔現在你要問：“我能在你身上練習嗎”？你說“可以”。要鼓勵他﹔好，先停在這裡。

耶穌培育了一個服事的環境﹔當人沒有回應時，能力是不流動的。如果這曾讓耶穌的遇到，它也會發生在你的身上。耶穌曾經把人帶到城外為他們禱告，因為那不信的氛圍非常強烈。有時他把人帶到屋外，因為那裡沒有信心﹔為服事而營造合適的氣氛是很重要的，營造期待神做些什麼的氣氛。

好，現在，我們再一次來服事聖靈的能力流到這位女士身上﹔我再一次問她：“我能在你身上練習嗎”？“是的”﹔我喜歡笑容﹔好，接下來，這位女士接受能力﹔“閉上眼睛，把心思意念集中在耶穌身上﹔很快，神的能力將觸摸你的生命”﹔“我要你閉上眼睛，我要你開始想象耶穌站著的畫面，他就站在我站的這個地方，他正與你在一起﹔神與你在一起﹔開始用方言禱告”﹔激活聖靈的流動﹔開始感受到神與你同在，神與你同在﹔然后數三下﹔我們現在要釋放神的能力，因此當我們數到三時，你裡面就興起，然后就釋放出神的能力﹔就說這幾個字：“能力！1，2，3，能力”。

好，我要改變一下，角色互換﹔你來扶著，你站在這裡，對了。我要你們做的就是，問她，同樣的問題：“我能在你身上練習嗎”？“可以”﹔閉上眼睛，開始禱告﹔用方言禱告﹔當你用方言禱告是，神的靈就在你身上流動﹔現在，當你感到神的同在，對了，不要把注意力集中在禱告，要集中意念，就是這樣。

現在，同一個人禱告，兩個不一樣的經歷。不要擔心，沒關系。被禱告的人的領受能力是有差別的，所以就會不一樣。總是要有信心﹔服事不是被動的，你要積極地相信神會讓事情發生的。阿門。

再來一次，來吧，我需要一個人扶著﹔“我能握著你的手嗎？我能練習嗎？”“好，就這樣”﹔記住，營造一個正面的氛圍是很重要的﹔你是領導人，你要期待神做些什麼﹔因此，當你服事的時候，營造一個期待的氣氛﹔接下來，神將觸摸你的生命，神的能力會臨到你﹔我已經可以看到恩膏正降在她身上﹔聖靈來，現在觸摸她﹔我靈裡面升起，釋放神的能力。

“來，你也來﹔把你的手給我，站在她后面”﹔感謝主﹔來吧﹔閉上你的眼睛﹔仰望神﹔神想要觸摸你﹔神想要用他的靈澆灌你﹔現在，你注意，我說了一些東西，我宣告了一些東西。

“來吧，就這樣”﹔這樣不是很好嗎？感謝神﹔把你的手給我﹔閉上你的眼睛，仰望神﹔神想要觸摸你，想要像觸摸別人那樣觸摸你，要用他的大能觸摸你﹔接下來，我要你看到你的心就像兩扇大門打開﹔“就是現在，觸摸她”﹔

我剛才預備她領受﹔我是怎麼預備的呢？我不知道你們是否注意到我是怎麼做的﹔我會示范給你看。首先，我剛才已經有了兩次經歷，她也看到神的能力在運行﹔見証也有同樣的功效，比如分享神能力運行的例子﹔第二，我讓她打開她的心靈﹔我用了一幅畫面幫助她打開心靈﹔然后，我就更強烈地禱告﹔然后，事情就發生了﹔所以，我們必須學習怎樣建立信心，讓事情發生。

“到這裡來”﹔一，二 ，三﹔你服事﹔你來領受﹔你來扶著﹔准備好了嗎？“我能在你身上練習嗎”？很好﹔你知道這一定會成功﹔我要你想象神就在你身邊，就像我在你身邊﹔神的靈正充滿你﹔現在釋放神的能力﹔就這樣﹔一，二，三﹔非常好﹔“你感到能力的流動了嗎”？別害羞，來吧，放開膽量﹔“感謝主﹔閉上你的眼睛，仰望主耶穌﹔感謝主的同在﹔奉耶穌全能的名現在觸摸她”。

好，現在輪到你們﹔我要你們三個人一組﹔讓每個人都有機會為別人禱告﹔好嗎？找一塊地方來練習，三個人一組﹔如果你還沒有三個人，請把手舉起來﹔准備好﹔一個是扶人的，眼睛要睜開﹔一個人領受禱告﹔一個人服事﹔我們一步一步做。

步驟如下：

第一步，“我能和你練習嗎”？“可以，可以，可以”。

第二步，領受的人：閉上眼睛，開啟心靈﹔神要觸摸你。服事的人：靜靜地用方言禱告，想象神的能力運行。數到第三下時，釋放神的能力，同時向領受的人吹氣，或說“能力”。

耶穌說，從你裡面能流出活水的江河﹔問題是：從那裡流出來？從你裡面﹔你必須讓它從你心裡發出，去到那人﹔你必須發出神所給你的。你不能遠遠地站著說，你不能站這麼遠服事﹔你要釋放神給你的能力。

扶著她﹔在你的靈裡面升起﹔釋放神的能力﹔這就像你把神給你的，給了他們﹔靈這個字有呼吸的意思﹔這就是為什麼我讓你們吹氣，或者說話。“能力，主現在觸摸她”﹔神正在觸摸她，有時候看得更明顯﹔如果我站得再近一些，“感謝主，主的能力觸摸她，就是現在”﹔這裡的問題出在接受，而不是釋放﹔因為如果我這麼做，“能力，現在觸摸她”﹔你看，這一組人都倒下了。因此，這是領受的問題，我要幫助她領受。

“我要你閉上眼睛，放鬆﹔神愛你，他確實非常愛你﹔我要你看到你的心有兩扇大門，我要你把它們打開，從而讓你能領受﹔你習慣了向其他人釋放，不習慣領受﹔耶穌要你也能領受﹔接下來，我要你開啟你的心靈，就像打開門﹔“喔，觸摸她”。

剛才的區別在那裡？區別就是要把心定位在領受﹔在我開始禱告的時候，我問“主啊，問題在哪裡”？我感到主對我說“她釋放給其他人，但她覺得領受不容易”。然后，我鼓勵她把她的心想象成有兩扇大門，把門打開。當她這麼做時，神的靈就進到她裡面﹔准備工作很重要﹔有的人怎麼也倒不了﹔別擔心，我不是教你們怎麼倒下﹔我是要教你們聖靈流動的力學。

“你這次感到有什麼不同”？你是不是覺得神開始觸摸你？是的，你有很多侍奉，為其它人付出了很多﹔通常，當你為他人付出時，過了一段時間后，你不認為有什麼是你自己的﹔神確實愛你。再閉上你的眼睛﹔“神愛你﹔看他就站在你前面﹔他愛你﹔天父，奉耶穌的名，我打碎拒絕的靈﹔我打碎所有不敬虔的信念，就是覺得我每有價值，我的生命沒有用﹔我奉耶穌的名打碎它﹔主啊，與我們同在﹔觸摸她”。

所以，根本的原因是拒絕。即使什麼事情都沒發生，我仍然問主：“發生了什麼“？你們明白了嗎？學習！好，讓我們再來一次。讓我們再次禱告﹔准備好了嗎？找人一起練習﹔“能力，能力”﹔准備好﹔ 問 “我能和你練習嗎”？“當然，盡力做”。開始前先仔細聽我說：

領受的人，如果你心裡相信這裡沒有什麼是給你的，那麼什麼都不會發生﹔如果你看著為你禱告的人，認為他們的恩膏不夠，那麼什麼都不會發生﹔你必須認識到，即使那人沒有大大地被膏油涂抹，也沒有關系，你的信心能釋放他們身上的恩賜。耶穌說：如果他們接受你，就是接受我﹔所以，如果你正站著，有人已經拉著你的手，你隻要在閉上眼睛時想象耶穌在那裡，並敞開你的心靈領受﹔就是這樣﹔看著耶穌，他在微笑，他愛你。

如果你在服事，現在就釋放神的能力﹔1，2，3，“ 能力”。最重要是心裡明白。再試一次﹔她失去知覺了，找其它人練吧。領受的人，閉上眼睛。那裡發生什麼事了？ 那是一個邪靈﹔一個人用方言禱告，另一人命令它出來，直接對著邪靈說。好我們准備好﹔領受的人閉上眼睛﹔耶穌正准備服事你﹔服事的人，開始看到耶穌正向這人伸出雙手﹔數到第三下時，在靈裡提升並釋放喜樂。

現在，注意這個，我鼓勵你們禱告的時候不要把手放在他們身上，從而能抵擋去推他們的誘惑，或不自覺地推了他們。如果你把手這麼放，你會想：我要幫神一把，我推。

我試圖教你們從靈裡提升，從靈裡流動﹔如果你是從靈裡流動，你不需要推﹔你隻要觸摸，神的同在就會臨到﹔因此，它不是方法，而是流動。

當你對鬼說話的時候，你不是像打蒼蠅那樣把它趕走，那不是趕鬼的方法﹔你要說話，我們說出的話是靈﹔你要對鬼說話。

鬼在什麼地方？在這裡？在那裡？問主，求他顯明給你﹔他可能讓你把手放在他們頭上﹔你必須從裡面說出有能力的話﹔你必須相信你說的，就會發生﹔耶穌說：要對神有信心，對這座山說挪開﹔你必須相信你所說的會成就。因此，我們要說會發生的。那就是，“鬆開”﹔你就能看到能力在流動﹔如果我們是在做趕鬼的事，鬼就會感受到那個“鬆開”。

說了這些命令，鬼就被迫來到表明﹔他們知道你是不是相信你自己所說的﹔我們並不隻是說空空的字句﹔說出的字句要帶著信心。我相信當我說了以后，事情就會發生﹔如果我注意，我相信當我說“能力”，能力就會流動﹔因此，你說的時候，你要信事情會發生。

現在，我們要有時間為人禱告。我們講的涵蓋了許多領域，我們必須相信神會做些什麼。

因此，如果你有世代咒詛，拜偶像，通靈術，性犯罪，或經歷創傷等問題，說“神，我需要你觸摸我﹔我知道我需要得自由”。請自己走到前面來，站成一排。第一排領受，第二排扶人。

讓我們敬拜神﹔看到這麼多人，我可以想到人們的兩種反應：“噢，這麼多人，唉”﹔或者：“我每多禱告一次，我就更強壯一點，因為我練習了我的權柄”﹔因此，如果你們一些人幫助了禱告，你也能更強壯﹔所以，如果你們沒有在領受，或許你願意出來，參與做禱告。

現在，記住我們說過的，要預備氛圍。你們沒有注意到，我讓你們互相禱告也是在預備氣氛﹔讓你們敞開心靈，讓你們放鬆，讓你們對聖靈敞開。

我們沒有辦法仔細地為每個人禱告，我必須相信當我按手在你身上時，神的能力會臨到你﹔而你也需要相信。盡管我不知道你生命中發生的所有事情，但神的能力將臨到你。因此，預備你的心靈。現在，告訴耶穌你想要解決的問題﹔說得越具體越好﹔不要隻是說：“好，無論神要做什麼，他都可以做”，這沒有用﹔就像耶穌問那瞎眼的人：“你想要什麼”？

你需要告訴耶穌你想要什麼？你在那裡需要突破？是世代咒詛的事嗎？是通靈術方面的事嗎？是心中的一些煩惱嗎？是創傷經歷嗎？是性犯罪方面的嗎？是心態上的嗎？那個問題是什麼？隻管現在把它帶到主的面前。是恐懼嗎？是什麼東西阻礙你嗎？是羞愧嗎？是拒絕嗎？是不是你在別人的操控下太久了，因此感到內心深處的憤怒和拒絕？有沒有什麼畫面出現在你的腦海？現在就告訴耶穌。

如果是罪，求主赦免你﹔如果你需要原諒什麼人，說出原諒的話語。來吧，讓我們現在就做﹔對耶穌說吧，對他說：“主耶穌，對不起，在我的生命裡有做些罪﹔我來到你的面前，求你的赦免”。告訴耶穌具體是什麼﹔是什麼東西上癮？還是什麼捆綁？都告訴他﹔他愛你﹔他會赦免你。所以，你也釋放原諒，原諒那些傷害過你的人，出賣過你的人﹔釋放原諒。

現在，我准備做的是，帶領你們禱告。它是一個相當常規的禱告，但你會明白這對你有用。在你完成禱告后，張開雙臂敬拜耶穌。有人按手在你身上的時候，停止禱告。如果裡面有邪靈，把他咳出來﹔放手讓裡面的東西出來﹔讓埋藏在心裡的東西出來﹔准備好了嗎？

“天父，我奉耶穌的名來到你的面前﹔我承認耶穌基督是我的救主﹔耶穌的血把我從一切的咒詛裡，所有的邪靈中，一切的罪中，救贖出來﹔我屬於耶穌。我棄絕所有的世代咒詛﹔我棄絕與邪靈立下的所有盟約﹔我棄絕一切不屬神的魂結﹔主我求你讓我得自由﹔我原諒那些傷害過我的人﹔我把手伸給你，現在讓我得自由。撒旦，離開我的生命﹔奉耶穌的名，讓我們敬拜主，謝謝主。”

“奉主耶穌基督的名，我現在拿起權柄。我打碎歷代的咒詛﹔我命令拜偶像的靈，行巫術和佔卜的靈，苦毒，怨恨和性方面的靈，污鬼，我命令你們離開﹔我來對付驚嚇和創傷的靈，走，走，走”。

耶穌的部 (8 of 8)

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神的同在今晚觸摸我們。我真是感受到神要把聖靈傾倒給我們大家。我們剛才花了更多的時間敬拜神。愛神是非常美好的。當我們愛神時，他就與我們同在。今晚我們就能感受到神的同在。剛才在台上發生的事都很有意思，他們一會就沒事了。

今晚我真是極大地被神的同在所感動，我要在這裡想一想我以后要做些什麼。我們每人都有自己的計劃，但神有他給我們的計劃，我們要有彈性。在過去的兩三天，我們教導了怎樣讓人釋放，得自由。我相信神想要觸摸更多的人，他想要幫助人，他想要滿足你們大家的需要。我這裡要給大家分享一個簡短的信息，我們要看兩段經文。

我鼓勵你們敞開你們的心靈，讓神今晚觸摸你。他認識你，他知道在你生命中發生的事。如果你還不是基督徒，你剛才已經看到神在我們中間與我們同在，觸摸人。我們看不見神，但當他來到我們中間，他會觸摸人的生命，有人會大笑，有人會哭泣，人被從邪靈的捆綁中釋放出來，人身體上的疾病能得醫治。

所以，無論你今晚有什麼需要，我鼓勵你向耶穌基督伸出你的雙手。在我們今晚講道結束的時候，我們會給大家機會，接受耶穌進入你的生命中。如果你還不是基督徒，你的生命中沒有神，你的生命是沒有意義的，而由此帶來的空虛，隻有神能讓你滿足。今晚我想給你們機會接受耶穌。

神是那麼的愛你，他派他的獨生子耶穌來到地上，把神的國展現給世人，把神的大能展現給世人。他為我們的罪死在十字架上。如果我們與神隔絕，通過耶穌，我們的罪就能得到赦免，就能與神和好。耶穌邀請今晚在座的每一個還不認識他的人，邀請你回應他。因此，敞開你的生命，請耶穌進來，與神重新連接。並與神一道，為其它人生命的改變施加正面的影響。耶穌說，跟從我，我會讓你們得人如魚。

聖經告訴我們，耶穌的事工就是觸摸人。耶穌被聖靈充滿，他身上有神的大能，他讓被邪靈壓迫的人的自由。當耶穌描述他的事工時，他說聖靈在他身上，讓他傳揚神的道，解釋給人們怎樣才能與神和好。耶穌說，認罪悔改，改變你的意念，因為神的國就在你的身邊。耶穌來到世上，也是來醫治破碎的心靈，讓受邪靈捆綁的人得自由。

我們現在看詩篇84章，第五，六，七節，“靠你有力量心中想往錫安大道的，這人便為有福。他們經過流淚谷，叫這谷變為泉源之地。並有秋雨之福，蓋滿了全谷。他們行走，力上加力，各人到錫安朝見神。”

耶穌也說的很清楚，我們生活在世上會遭受苦難，但你們要勇敢，因為我已戰勝了一切。耶穌知道家庭的壓力，他知道什麼是背叛，他知道被拒絕的感受，他知道被人批判是什麼滋味。他知道面對不公正時會怎樣。但他總是彰顯神的生命，他總是用善良戰勝邪惡。

這幾段經文告訴我們罪人怎樣的自由﹔他講了流淚谷，流淚的意思是悲傷或哭泣。聖經用這個畫面來描述我們生命中痛苦的經歷。谷是一個低地，山是一個高地。當一個人在低谷時，他們就是在挑戰和艱難當中。聖經講述了許多低谷，有幽暗死亡之谷，有煩惱之谷，有悲傷哭泣之谷。

今晚你們這裡的一些人心中有悲傷，有非常痛苦的經歷。我曾經幫助過的一個人，我擁抱他，他不停的哭泣，他的心裡有傷痛。在這裡講的流淚谷，是生命中的低谷。我們每個人都有低谷，有痛苦的經歷，這些經歷帶來悲傷。它有可能是婚姻，或是家庭，或是財務狀況，或是服侍，或是工作，或是朋友。生命中有悲傷，當一個人在悲傷的低谷時，他的心裡有傷痛。

聖經的這段經文告訴我們，靠神的力量，走過流淚谷的，是有福的。低谷是每個人都無法避免的，低谷是充滿痛苦的，但低谷也可以讓我們受益，讓我們成長。不管你正經歷什麼，神想讓你因此成長，他想進入你的生命，來到你的低谷，他想讓你知道他是多麼愛你，他想幫助你走出低谷。神不想讓我們待在低谷裡，他想讓我們從低谷走出來。

靠神的力量走過流淚谷的人是有福的，他走過流淚谷的這段經歷變成幫助他人的源泉。無論你生命中痛苦的經歷是什麼，你可以陷在那痛苦中，生氣，怨恨，悲痛一生，或者你可以選擇與神牽手，改變這些。讓你的流淚谷變成源泉，一個幫助他人得生命的源泉。

聖經用畫面描述了這屬靈的經歷，流淚谷，哭泣和艱難的日子，變成了得祝福的源泉。神的靈在那時運行，流淚谷就成為得祝福的源泉。你無法阻止困難的事發生在你身上，但當痛苦的經歷發生時，你可以選擇怎樣面對。你可以變得苦毒，或你可以變得更好﹔你可以刻薄，受傷，怨恨，或你可以在神的恩典中成長﹔你可以生氣，埋怨他人，或者求神幫助你﹔你可以被這個經歷扭曲變形，或變得更加甜美，親切。這是你的選擇。我們無法選擇別人怎樣對待我們，但我們能選擇怎樣回應。

所以，聖經上說，靠神力量的是有福的，他走過低谷，讓它變成源泉，神就傾倒下祝福給他，這人就力上加力，越來越有力，上到更高的層級。你想要強壯嗎？好好應對遇到的不幸。你想要成為大人物嗎？好好應對逆境。因此，我們看到，神的計劃絕不是把我們扔在流淚谷。實際上，以賽亞書53章告訴我們耶穌擔當我們的憂患，背負我們的痛苦，讓我們不用承擔。

我要問兩個問題，第一， 為什麼人會陷在那低谷？第二，你怎樣走出來？你怎樣把你的低谷變成源泉？從而使你出來時變得更強壯，而不是更軟弱和苦毒。先講第一點，為什麼人會陷在那低谷？這些年來，我遇到許多的基督徒和非基督徒，他們的生命中充滿了憂傷，他們在活痛苦中。他們的心中有一個部分是流淚谷。

因此，我試圖找出原因。盡管他們並不想這樣，但偶爾當有人說了什麼或做了什麼時，激發了他們的怒氣，引起了他們的反應。為什麼他們心中承受傷痛？為什麼他們總無法釋懷？以下是我找到的一些原因。第一個是因為人否認或貶低他們受到的傷害﹔如果你被什麼人或什麼事傷害，而你否認所受到的傷害，或者你把它放在一邊，告訴自己“這真的沒什麼”﹔從而接受了一個謊言﹔傷痛被埋葬，被謊言掩蓋。

我發現許多女人深受其苦，例如那些曾經墮胎的女人。在他們的心靈深處，他們知道發生了什麼，但他們掩蓋了真相，貶低和否認了真正發生的事，因此他們的心靈深處有傷痛﹔除非我們面對真相，我們總無法釋懷。我后面會給你們講解走出傷痛的步驟。

我發現在亞洲，人們不願談論他們受到的傷害。因此，當人們否認或貶低問題時，他們的內心受到傷害，這傷害埋藏在心靈深處﹔他們試圖讓它伴隨自己的生命，而不願意面對它，解決它。人們陷在那低谷的另一個原因是不寬恕﹔不寬恕的意思是：你傷害了我，你虧欠了我，我拒絕免除你的債。當我們存著不寬恕的心時，聖經上說：我們就為使人痛苦的邪靈開了一扇門，讓你受苦。它不停地提醒你：這不公平。它不停地喚起你的傷痛，激起你的不公平感，挑動你心中的怒火，這些經歷不斷疊加。

我發現有些人火氣很大，他們對每一件事都生氣。但真正發生的是：他們受了傷害，非常生氣，他們從來沒有寬恕。憤怒就像債，就像不寬恕。人憤怒，是因為他們相信自己的東西被拿走了，屬於他們的東西被偷走了。“你虧欠了我，你要道歉，你要改正。”因此，憤怒和不寬恕就像一個要求：你要還給我。但你可能永遠不還給我，或者你錯的太嚴重，無法還給我。

因此，如果我把憤怒和不寬恕隱藏在心裡，我就被陷在了那低谷，我陷在了流淚谷，被我自己的不寬恕陷在了那裡。現在，神對你說，“嗨，我想幫你，我想讓這低谷變成源泉，但你正抓住你的憤怒和不寬恕不放手你不讓它走，因此你一直處於這困境當中，我要讓你出來。”

人陷在那低谷的另一個原因是：他們心底的誓言。他們讓自己心硬﹔他們對自己說：“我再也不讓任何男人靠近我”﹔“我再也不相信女人”﹔“我再也不干這個職位”﹔因此，如果我們心底的誓言扎根在憤怒和苦毒之上，我們就會陷在那低谷。“我絕不要像我父親”﹔“我絕不要像我母親“﹔這一類的聲明是建立在憤怒和苦毒之上的，它會讓你陷在那低谷。因此，有許多的原因會讓我們陷在低谷：否認，貶低，不寬恕，憤怒，心底的誓言，評價。人讓自己的生活一團糟。現在，我們可以選擇怎樣應對這一困境。

看一看聖經是怎麼說的：“靠神有力量,…這人便為有福。”有福！就是說，神的恩惠臨到他們。注意：為什麼人會陷在那低谷，是因為他們試圖自己掌控所有的傷痛，掌控自己的生命，試圖掌控他們周圍的世界。當我們想掌控自己的生命時，我們的生命中就沒有神的位子。因此，“這人便為有福”的步驟是，換句話說，神的祝福臨到這人的程序是：第一，“靠神有力量“，力量這個字的意思是：在神那裡有得勝的能力。

因此，整句話的意思是：靠神戰勝困境，這人便為有福。他們來到神那裡，拿到光的下面，而不是試圖自己掌控，試圖掩蓋。經上說，這人，就把流淚谷變成了源泉。他們怎樣把它變成源泉，因為他們做出了選擇，他們選擇讓神來掌控，選擇讓聖靈進入他們的生命，選擇讓神改變他們的心靈，選擇敞開他們的傷痛讓神來醫治。

神不想讓你獨自承受生命中的苦難﹔這就是哥林多后書第－章所說，今天，那賜安慰的神，那安慰人的神，安慰你所遭受的所有苦難。因此，神是安慰人的神。你遇到的每一個困難，都是寶貴的時機，神想要來到你身邊，想要安慰你。現在，那賜各樣安慰的神，要安慰你所有的苦難。下面看這一段“…叫我們能用神所賜的安慰，去安慰那遭各樣患難的人。” 《哥林多后書》 1:4。

因此，如果你陷在痛苦的境地，神想來到你身邊，安慰你，醫治你。而如果你是神改變生命能力活生生的見証，你就能幫助其他人，因為你曾經歷同樣的痛苦，你了解他們。因此，走出傷痛的步驟是什麼呢？

這常常比你想的容易很多。難的是做，但步驟很容易。 1. 我要面對現實，我要誠實，承認受到傷害﹔發生在我身上的事真的傷害了我，我在受苦。通向自由的第一個步驟是誠實。講出事實，承認受傷害﹔而不是假裝，掩蓋，對自己說：這不算什麼。2.我要誠實地面對問題﹔發生了什麼，對我有什麼影響，我是怎樣回應的。當你問這些問題時，你就是在開始真正面對問題。現在，我需要尋求神的幫助：主阿，我需要你的恩典和幫助。因此，第一步是誠實地面對現實﹔第二步要問：發生了什麼？對我有什麼影響？我是怎麼回應並解決問題的？ 3.現在，我需要求神的幫助，做出決定：我要寬恕﹔我哀嘆所發生的，我將寬恕。有時候，我們需要先哀嘆，然后才能完全地寬恕。眼淚是心靈的語言，內心的問題，需要從心底發出。

耶穌說，寬恕要發自內心。常常是這樣：眼淚的流出表示或說出我們內心的傷痛。當我與人互動，交談，勸解他們時，我總是會看著他們的臉。我發現，當你觸動他們的心靈一刻，那裡就是他們內心傷痛之所在，心靈的窗戶，眼睛就開始有淚水涌出。你就能知道那人真正的傷痛﹔我常常會把重點放在這裡，因為這就是神想要你醫治他們的地方。

因此，面對問題，提出問題：發生了什麼？它怎樣影響了我？我是怎樣試圖保護自己的？然后帶著這些來到主的面前，哀嘆這些問題，釋放寬恕，然后開始祝福傷害了你的人。如果有心底的誓言或評價，聲明放棄﹔並期待神幫助你，給你恩典使你走出這低谷﹔期待神對你說話，因為他的話帶來安慰。

我記得我曾面對難以置信的困境：我的一個女兒被性侵犯，這讓我心碎﹔我去到了流淚谷。沒有人能解決我的問題。人們甚至無法理解我是多麼的傷心。在我的心底深處，我在掙扎，在想我能不能再信靠神。因此，我把這些都抑制隱藏在我心底。

我試圖繼續照常生活，試圖做一個好的基督徒，試圖翻過這一頁。有人對我說，他們會想辦法幫助我﹔他們問我：如果你可以對神說任何話，你會說什麼？因此，當有一天我獨自與神交通時，我開始哭泣，我開始面對這傷痛﹔然后我說出了心裡話，我說“神啊，我覺得你讓我失望，我曾期待你關心我，照顧我，現在我不信任你。我已經禱告了，為我的家庭禱告了。而我的家庭正受到傷害，是你容許這事發生的﹔因此，我在掙扎，要不要繼續禱告”。

我誠實地面對神，當我說出我的心聲時，說出心裡真正的掙扎時，我開始哭泣。安靜片刻后，我感到神的同在，感到神在幫助我。隻要你誠實，神總會回應。隻是我們有時試圖假裝沒事。

我感到主開始向我說話，告訴我他是多麼愛我。他說：“我不關注你是否舒適，我關注你的品德”﹔他說：“我要你成長﹔我知道這對你是一個悲傷的經歷，但在這個過程中，你將成長，你的家庭將成長，我會來幫助你們，然后你就能幫助更多其它人”。

我開始哭泣，他說：“你禱告的時候，就禱告讓你生活中的一切恢復正常﹔我不關注你是否舒適，我關注你的品德”。然后他對我說：“你知道嗎，你對你女兒的感受，也是我對我的民的感受，罪玷污了他們的生命”。我感受到神的心聲，我開始不停的哭泣，然后我放手。

我說：“神啊，我感謝你來幫助我。”在三個月的時間裡，我女兒奇妙地遇見天使，她的生命被改變。神以超自然的方式來幫助我們，情況完全改變了。靠神有力量的人有福了﹔他在悲傷困苦中轉向了神，而不是試圖自己掌控一切，或把悲傷埋葬在心底。轉向神，並做出選擇，把流淚谷變成源泉的人有福了。

你可以選擇信神﹔你可以選擇跟隨神的道路。讓我們再看一次那段經文：“靠你有力量心中想往錫安大道的，這人便為有福。”（詩篇 84章 5 節）換句話說，就是：心中願意經歷一個過程。我們隻是想要有人為我們禱告，把事情解決﹔但神想讓我們與他同行，信靠他。

因此，我變得越來越有力量。當我思想現在的情況，我的心中沒有任何傷痛﹔發生那事讓我傷心，但神給予了極大的勝利﹔我們已經為成百上千有類似經歷的人禱告，讓他們得釋放，得自由﹔詩篇這段經文的意思就是：心裡擁抱神設定的過程，靠神有力量的人有福了﹔他們經過流淚谷並讓它變成源泉，祝福如雨充滿他們，他們變得越來越有力量，他們正經歷神。

靠神有力量的人有福了，他在困境當中轉向神，說：“神啊，我願意與你同行，經歷這個過”；他們經過流淚谷﹔他們並不停在那裡，變得苦毒憤怒傷心怨恨﹔他們把這變成甘甜。他們寬恕，而不是憤怒﹔他們祝福，而不是咒詛﹔他們展現慈愛，而不是苦毒﹔他們變得越來越有力量，得神祝福，享受與神同在。你心中如果有苦毒，你就無法享受與神同在。

保羅寫道：不要讓聖靈難過﹔不要讓你的心中有苦毒和憤怒﹔不要有怨恨和報復﹔而要有慈愛，溫柔的心，及寬恕。享受神的同在﹔我愛聖靈﹔我愛神的同在﹔我要我的生命得自由﹔因此，隻要悲痛來臨，你就必須做出選擇，是陷在低谷，還是把它變成源泉。

現在請你們閉上你的眼睛。今晚，這裡有人還不認識耶穌﹔你來到這個世界，與神隔離﹔但神愛你，他給了你一個生命的歸宿。耶穌來到世上，為你的罪被釘死在十字架上，並在第三天從死裡復活﹔他說：所有接受他的，所有相信他的，他就讓他們成為神的兒子。如果你還不認識耶穌，我要你今晚做出決定：“我接受耶穌﹔我轉向他，愛我的神。我一生信靠他，並從心裡接受他。

罪人的禱告:

“天上的父，我們奉耶穌的名來到你面前。謝謝你愛我﹔謝謝你派耶穌來，為我的罪死在十字架上，並從死裡復活。今晚，我要離開罪，轉向你。耶穌啊，我接受你為我的救主﹔我求你赦免我的罪。現在，因著信，我收到赦免，我收到你的靈進入我心中，我今晚把我的生命交給你。我在天地面前宣布，耶穌基督永遠是我的救主，我的朋友。阿門！”

Healing from Abortion, Miscarriage & Adoption

从流产/流产/收养愈合

從流產/流產/收養癒合

1. Personal Testimony: Adopted Daughters Wedding

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

2. Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding

Mike and Joy Connell, together with their daughter Josephine, share their story of reconciliation—testifying of how God can turn situations around when we obey Him.

It was a love story that seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. Like Romeo and Juliet, they were two young lovers forced apart by their family backgrounds. To make matters worse, they brought a baby into this world; a baby they decided not to keep. But unlike other stories, this one has a happy ending, because God intervened and turned tragedy into triumph.

个人见证：收养女儿的婚礼

这是一个曲折的爱情故事，有欢笑也有悲伤。就像罗密欧与朱丽叶一样，他们这一对年轻的情侣因各自的家庭背景被迫分开。更糟糕的是，他们将一个婴儿带到了世上，并决定放弃她。但是这个故事，不像其他的故事那样，它因为有神的介入，让悲剧变为欢笑，有了一个开心的结局。

個人見證：收養女兒的婚禮

這是一個曲折的愛情故事，有歡笑也有悲傷。就像羅密歐與朱麗葉一樣，他們這一對年輕的情侶因各自的家庭背景被迫分開。更糟糕的是，他們將一個嬰兒帶到了世上，並決定放棄她。但是這個故事，不像其他的故事那樣，它因為有神的介入，讓悲劇變為歡笑，有了一個開心的結局。

Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and bondage, which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day!

Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

从流产/流产愈合

神的心脏是充满怜悯医治和恢复受损的生命。堕胎是门口的悲伤和恶魔般的束缚，这在很大程度上是在保密和否认隐藏。当真相面对一个孩子的生命已采取的痛苦是巨大的。现实即将来临，有一个儿子或女儿在天堂谁，我们会遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意义的愈合谁失去了一个孩子在子宫内的家庭，使他们免受奴役和折磨。耶稣来不是要谴责 - 他要拯救，医治，拯救，恢复。

從流產/流產癒合

神的心臟是充滿憐憫醫治和恢復受損的生命。墮胎是門口的悲傷和惡魔般的束縛，這在很大程度上是在保密和否認隱藏。當真相面對一個孩子的生命已採取的痛苦是巨大的。現實即將來臨，有一個兒子或女兒在天堂誰，我們會遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意義的癒合誰失去了一個孩子在子宮內的家庭，使他們免受奴役和折磨。耶穌來不是要譴責 - 他要拯救，醫治，拯救，恢復。

Healing From Abortion (1 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (2 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (3 of 4)

Healing From Abortion (4 of 4)

The Silent Scream (Bernard Nathanson)

Dr. Bernard Nathanson's classic video that shocked the world. He explains the procedure of a suction abortion, followed by an actual first trimester abortion as seen through ultrasound. The viewer can see the child's pathetic attempts to escape the suction curette as her heart rate doubles, and a "silent scream" as her body is torn apart.

A great tool to help people see why abortion is murder. The most important video on abortion ever made. This video changed opinion on abortion to many people.

Introduction by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, host. Describes the technology of ultrasound and how, for the first time ever, we can actually see inside the womb. Dr. Nathanson further describes the ultrasound technique and shows examples of babies in the womb. Three-dimensional depiction of the developing fetus, from 4 weeks through 28 weeks. Display and usage of the abortionists' tools, plus video of an abortionist performing a suction abortion.

Dr. Nathanson discusses the abortionist who agreed to allow this abortion to be filmed with ultrasound. The abortionist was quite skilled, having performed more than 10,000 abortions. We discover that the resulting ultrasound of his abortion so appalled him that he never again performed another abortion.

The clip begins with an ultrasound of the fetus (girl) who is about to be aborted. The girl is moving in the womb; displays a heartbeat of 140 per minute; and is at times sucking her thumb. As the abortionist's suction tip begins to invade the womb, the child rears and moves violently in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a "silent scream." The child's heart rate speeds up dramatically (to 200 beats per minute) as she senses aggression. She moves violently away in a pathetic attempt to escape the instrument. The abortionist's suction tip begins to rip the baby's limbs from its body, ultimately leaving only her head in the uterus (too large to be pulled from the uterus in one piece). The abortionist attempts to crush her head with his forceps, allowing it to be removed.

In an effort to "dehumanize" the procedure, the abortionist and anesthesiologist refer to the baby's head as "number 1." The abortionist crushes "number 1" with the forceps and removes it from the uterus. Abortion statistics are revealed, as well as who benefits from the enormously lucrative industry that has developed. Clinics are now franchised, and there is ample evidence that many are controlled by organized crime.

Women are victims, too. They haven't been told about the true nature of the unborn child or the facts about abortion procedures. Their wombs have been perforated, infected, destroyed, and sterilized. All as a result of an operation about which they they have had no true knowledge.

Films like this must be made part of "informed consent." NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood are accused of a conspiracy of silence, of keeping women in the dark about the reality of abortion.

Finally, Dr. Nathanson discusses his credentials. He is a former abortionist, having been the director of the largest clinic in the Western world.

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding.mp3

- Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage.mp3

- Healing From Abortion (1 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (2 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (3 of 4).mp3

- Healing From Abortion (4 of 4).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding.mp4

- Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage.mp4

- Healing From Abortion (1 of 4).mp4

- Healing From Abortion (2 of 4).mp4

- Healing From Abortion (3 of 4).mp4

- Healing From Abortion (4 of 4).mp4

- The Silent Scream.mp4

Vimeo

- Vimeo Channel »

- Personal Testimony - Adopted Daughters Wedding.mp4

- Healing from Abortion/Miscarriage.mp4

- Healing From Abortion (1 of 4).mp4

- Healing From Abortion (2 of 4).mp4

- Healing From Abortion (3 of 4).mp4

- Healing From Abortion (4 of 4).mp4

個人見證：收養女兒的婚禮

Sun 26 Oct 2008 AM  « 返回頁首

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這是一個曲折的愛情故事，有歡笑也有悲傷。就像羅密歐與朱麗葉一樣，他們這一對年輕的情侶因各自的家庭背景被迫分開。更糟糕的是，他們將一個嬰兒帶到了世上，並決定放棄她。但是這個故事，不像其他的故事那樣，它因為有神的介入，讓悲劇變為歡笑，有了一個開心的結局。

個人見証──養女的婚禮

邁克Mike和喬伊康奈爾Joy Connell與他們的女兒約瑟芬分享他們重歸於好的故事﹔見証當我們順服神時，神是怎樣把境況完全轉變過來的。

我要與你們分享兩個原則，然后我們將分享見証神的良善﹔見証非常良善的神，見証他帶給我們生命中的祝福，隻有祝福﹔簡直就像是個童話，讓人難以置信。

我們要與你們分享見証，並將重點放在我們是怎樣做的，從而引出要講的那些原則。神是永遠不變的，神總是好的﹔但隻有在我們自己預備好時，他的良善才會釋放﹔實際上，你必須做出決定，定位好自己，接受從神來的祝福。

定位的意思是：你呈現的狀態，或你說的話，或你做的事， 給神留出空間，讓神來觸摸你的生命。

聖經說得很清楚：我們必須相信神是一個好的神﹔我們必須相信他會來觸摸我們的生命。

我要先分享一下我們的背景，我們的日常生活﹔我們從哪裡來，是什麼讓我們來到這裡。我們還要重點講一下神怎樣奇妙地來到之前一個周末的婚禮上。

我們參加的是我們結婚以前送給別人收養的女兒的婚禮﹔對我來說，能主持婚禮，規劃婚禮的程序，安排接待的程序，這一切都讓人難以置信﹔甚至能去到那裡本身就是一個奇跡﹔但能夠很榮幸地計劃和安排這些程序，給神留出空間，更加重要。

我會先重點講述兩個原則，然后講解我們怎樣把這些原則應用在生活的各個方面﹔以及神是怎樣地信實，讓我們有如此令人難以置信的見証。

把孩子送給別人收養的故事，通常並沒有這麼好的結局，這隻是其中的一個﹔但它展示了神總是好的，因此，不管故事的結局是 什麼，神的良善永不改變。

對一些人來說，找到養父母是非常痛苦的，甚至會增加他們已經經歷的痛苦。而對我們來說，正好相反﹔我們要與大家分享一些背景資料。

兩個原則：

1. 雅各書 4：6 “神賜恩給謙卑的人。” 當聖經講到謙卑，它是指你“心裡的狀態”，你的態度﹔謙卑並不是奴顏婢膝。謙卑的意思是：你坦率地面對神，承認生命中的錯誤和失敗，不試圖掩蓋或辯解﹔這非常重要。謙卑讓 我們既看到我們生命中負面的東西，也看到潛能，就像神看到的。聖經告訴我們：神將授權給謙卑的人，就是你要定位自己，在以下方面與神達成一致： A.你的錯誤和失敗﹔對此持開放的態度。 B. 神是怎樣說你和你的生命﹔（如果他說：“你被赦免了”﹔那你就被赦免了）。謙卑指的是：我相信﹔我堅持。C.這是你的定位，是神呼召你去做的。謙卑能通過大膽而堅強地經受考驗顯明自己。對一些人來說，它看起來像是驕傲，但它不是﹔它實際上是：我與神就我是誰，我受呼召去做什麼， 與神達成一致﹔這就是謙卑。

2. 第二個原則是：尊敬的原則﹔聖經上對它的描述是負面的，羅馬書1：21 說：“因為他們雖然知道神，卻不當作神榮耀他，也不感謝他。他們的思念變為虛妄，無知的心就昏暗了”。原則是：你尊敬和感激的將走向你﹔你不敬的將遠離你。尊敬，榮譽和價值將吸引人進入你的生命﹔而不敬將讓人離開。如果你不重視金錢，它很快就遠離你﹔當你尊重它，處理得當，它就會走向你﹔生命就是這樣。“尊敬某人”的意思是：給予他們恰當的承認，位置和價值﹔它可以表現在對待他們的態度，或言語，或行為。當我們尊敬人，我們重視他們，我們把自己放在低微的位置，從而使他們被舉起。如果我們要圓滿地與神同行，享受神的祝福，我們要學習：謙卑的原則和尊敬的原則。

在三種情況下我們會尊敬人：

1. 我們尊敬他們，因為：他們所做的事﹔如果有人 做了什麼著名的事，你應該尊敬他，重視他，感激他。

2. 你應該尊敬一個人的品德，就是他是什麼樣的人。如果某人勇敢，他們可能從沒有站出來，但隻要有一刻他們在壓力下表現出勇敢，你尊敬他。

3. 我們要認同我們生命中其他人的地位和等級﹔重視他們，尊敬他們，隻因為他們的地位。這就是為什麼聖經上說：尊敬你的父母﹔你可能做的很好﹔但你也可能說：我不知道我父母是怎樣的人﹔其實沒有關系，你尊敬他們，因為：這是在你的生命中，神給他們的地位﹔如果你尊敬他們，你就會得到祝福。

兩個原則：謙卑的原則﹔就是在生命上，在神怎樣說我們上，與神達成一致，堅信神說的 是真實的。尊敬的原則﹔就是願意給人價值和適當的尊敬。你會發現這總能釋放出神的恩典。

說了這些后，我們要分享這些原則是怎樣應用在我們的生命中的﹔有關在我們結婚前發生的事，然后神怎樣解決我們生命中出現的這些問題。

[Joy Connell說] 我要和大家分享一段經文，這是主這一周讓我注意到的。“在曠野預備耶和華的路，在沙漠地修平我們神的道”。它許多年都是一個沙漠，也是神的道，因為神要來到沙漠。經上還說“一切山窪都要填滿”﹔那對我來說確實是一段非常低谷的時期：小孩被秘密的送給人收養﹔那真是一個非常低的低谷。

但經上說：“一切山窪都要填滿”。而參加她的婚禮是一個非常高的位置，真奇妙。經上說：“大小山岡都要削平”﹔對我來說，在懷孕的時候面對父母， 那曾經是一座大山，是我無法翻越的大山。上周六，我所有的家庭成員都在那裡，與我們站在一起，人很多。經上還說：“彎彎曲曲的地方要改為正直﹔高高低低的道路要改為平坦”！“耶和華的榮耀必然顯現”﹔我們看到神榮耀的顯現。“凡有血氣的必一同看見”﹔是的，婚禮上所有的人都看到了神的榮耀﹔他們不知道那是神的榮耀，但那確實是。“因為這是耶和華親口說的”﹔因為神給了我們應許，他所判定和宣稱的，就會實現。

我相信，現在是時候對你們的高山發出預言﹔我知道你們許多人正面對高山，但神能削平他們，而當他這麼做的時候，那絕對奇妙。

如果你看聖經一開始所說的，當亞當犯罪的時候，因為害怕，他躲了起來。在我們約會了七年后，有一次發生了很大的沖突。因為害怕，我採取了亞當和夏娃同樣的方法﹔他們把自己隱秘地躲藏起來，我想，這是一個可以仿效的辦法。

我也有內在誓言，就是過去你自己告訴自己的，讓自己捆綁在其中。當遇到危機的時候，你就按照這已經在心底編制好的程式運作。盡管它們不是最好的辦法，但這是你的辦法，因為你已經告訴自己要怎麼做。

我從來也沒有准備誘騙什麼人與我結婚，或經歷在我的教會看到的：先懷孕后結婚的羞愧。

我的內在誓言告訴我：“沒可能我會去到那裡”﹔但實際發生的是：內在誓言的控制力極強，它在你的心靈周圍筑起高牆﹔這就是我當時情況。此外，我自己的辦法就是仿效﹔Mike剛才說謙卑是“承認神的辦法”﹔但如果你不轉向神，你有各種自己認為可以仿效的“好辦法”。

仇敵也會出幾個“好主意”，當你聽從了它，按照你自己的辦法去仿效，基本上可以帶來即時但短暫的安慰。你保護了自己，但所有這些辦法帶來隔離和更大的痛苦，進一步的傷害，以及更多的捆綁﹔但這就是當時1969年時的情況。

[Mike Connell說] 在我們結婚前，我還不是基督徒，並不認識神。當Joy懷孕后，我們決定把這女孩送給別人收養﹔這是個非常壞的選擇，非常錯誤的決定﹔它是在壓力下做出的決定，因為沒有能力去勇敢地承受。因此，在犯了一個錯誤后，我們緊接著又犯了第二個錯誤。聖經上說，如果你想掩蓋事情，你絕不會成功﹔所以，此后的許多年我們忍受了極大的傷心和痛苦。

我們從來沒有忘記這個女兒，沒有忘記為她禱告，總想知道她怎麼樣了。你無法放下這些事，這簡直成了你生活的一部分。后來，我來到主的面前，完全認罪悔改，就我所做的，與神達成一致：要為過錯負責﹔為了Joy，要勇敢承受拒絕這個孩子所帶來的后果。

我那天在主面前誓言（有些誓言是非常好的），公開地認罪悔改﹔我說“不管我們現在處在生命的那個階段，我知道有一天你會把這個孩子帶回來，因為你是神﹔不是我們有權這樣，因為我們已經放棄我們的權力﹔而是因為神是良善的，你會帶她回來”。

我心裡知道，我堅信，她會回來﹔所以，當我認罪悔改后，我向神說：“你帶她回來的那一天，不管我會是什麼身份和地位，我將接受她以任何身份回到我們的生命中﹔我們將給予過去應該給她而沒給她的，認可她，愛她，歡迎她。

謙卑看起來就是這樣﹔你實際上完全掉轉過來，在需要發生什麼事上與神達成一致。

幾年后我們來到這裡﹔神向我們講了生命中的問題，我們有一個婚禮更新或婚姻更新的服務。

[Joy Connell說] 教堂仍然很小﹔當我們結婚時，隻能在護士的小禮拜堂﹔我們有：一個天主教的神父，聖公會的牧師（與一個兄弟會的結了婚，對我這方面的事情很理解）。很奇妙，神的同在就臨到了。

讓雙方家庭都接受的婚姻看起來似乎是完全不可能的﹔但Mike同宿舍的人離開神學院當了天主教的神父，其中一個摔斷了腿住進惠靈頓醫院，在那裡與一個長老會的護士相愛，從而給我們創造了一個先例﹔他從主教（或其它什麼人）那裡獲得特許，可以結婚。

所以，我們隻是遵循他的先例﹔在看起來毫無可能的情況下，神為我們開了一條路。結婚后，我們意識到，許多事已經改變﹔我們已經支離破碎，僅僅存活下來，找到返回神那裡的路。我們還認識到，那時教會裡有其它人也像我們一樣﹔他們來到神那裡，他們的情況完全改變，准備開始全新的婚姻﹔所以，我們與12對夫婦一起，交談了三個星期﹔我們談論婚姻的基礎，准備再次經歷婚禮﹔而在那裡，我第一次揭開了心中的秘密。

我從來沒有告訴我父母我有一個女兒，但在這個小組裡，我們講述了自己的背景﹔我們決定：這是我們放下包袱的時候了﹔或許我們應該寫信給福利部門，看看能不能與失去的女兒恢復聯系。

你知道嗎？神真是太好了。我們女兒的養母Carol覺得她的女兒有權知道她的來歷，因此她也寫了信給福利部門﹔我們雙方的信同一天到達了福利部門。因為符合雙方的意願，福利部門給了我們有關的資訊，我們就開始了聯系。

對我來說，這真是很難﹔當你已經掩蓋了什麼事，已經否認了她，而突然要面對現實﹔我真是無法適應，甚至不能看到她的照片。我打算把這些事封閉起來，把它嚴嚴實實地用大石頭壓住﹔神說：推開這個石頭，不要走到這一步﹔我意識到它是死亡，它是丑陋，它是痛苦﹔但當你真正把石頭推開，看著照片，你想：這實際上是一個人。

她的名字叫Josephine﹔我想：這有點像一個教名﹔神提醒我約瑟的故事：與他所有的兄弟分離，后來一起團圓。

面對現實是一件大事，尤其當你已經在否認中生活了18年時﹔但我們必須真正推開石頭，揭開蓋子﹔然后你就感到自己極其脆弱，完全要依靠神。

而這正是他要我們做的，不再掩飾曾經掩飾的東西﹔在創世紀的時候，他們身上曾經有無花果的樹葉遮蓋，但他們實際上要脫下它，來接受皮制的遮蓋，如同耶穌基督在十字架上給我們的預備。對我來說，這也是非常脆弱的一個環節。

[Mike Connell說] 所以，謙卑的問題再一次出現﹔我們必須面對我們個人生活中的問題，把各樣事情理順，並認識到我們的生命受到深深的傷害﹔然后來到主的面前，承認這些﹔ 主清楚的告訴我：你要理順這些。

我不得不與Joy一道理順這些﹔我去找到她的父親，在他面前理順這些事﹔我們要清理我們做錯的﹔當你這樣做的時候，當你按照神說的去做時，他就給你祝福，他就給你恩典。

[Joy Connell說] 是的，我記得我把父母請來，我說：“我要和你們說一些事，…”﹔我把他們帶到我知道的最好的餐館 Old Flame，讓他們坐下。我告訴他們我向他們隱藏的事情，並為此向他們深深的道歉，請求他們原諒。

[Mike Connell說] 我們改正錯誤，這實際上是尊敬他們﹔哪裡有不尊敬的地方，就要在那裡恢復尊敬﹔這有很大的不同。

[Joy Connell說] 然后我們寫信給Josephine，向她道歉﹔我們兩個都為對她的拒絕，以及因此給她的生活造成的影響，表示了謙意，並請求她原諒。然后，我們決定要歡迎她。我們邀請她來家裡住﹔這也是一個奇跡。她當時正在學牙醫，現在已經是Whakatane的一個牙醫了。她當時在奧塔哥學牙醫正學了一半，她正在學一個假期課程，我們邀請她在假期課程結束后到家裡來。

當然，當你正牧養著一個教會，當你已經有了六個孩子，你不可能對教會什麼也不說就在下星期天又帶一個孩子來。但這個教會非常了不起﹔在她來之前的周日，我們在教會站起來，分享了我們的見証。當時的一些人今天還在這裡，我記得你們的樣子。在當天的崇拜結束時，神真是太好了，所有人的密室都打開了，所有人的丑事都揭開了﹔神感動了大家，帶給大家極大的醫治﹔作為一個教會大家庭，你們很好地回應了我們。我們邀請她來到家裡，來的那天剛好是Mike 44 歲的生日。

[Mike Connell說] 怎麼這麼巧？

[Joy Connell說] 那是她說好要來的日子。

[Mike Connell說] 她不知道我的生日，但來的那天剛好是我的生日。

那星期我們渡過了一個美好的時光﹔這以后，她聯系上了我們，漸漸認識了我們，也愛我們。每次回來都哭，與我們的家庭緊緊地聯系在了一起。

直到有一天，一個男孩想與她結婚﹔他尊敬我，來征得我的許可，那真是讓我驚訝。我沒有任何權力﹔你知道，當你把孩子送給人收養，你就沒有了權力﹔而且在過去一段日子，甚至都失去了聯系，沒有辦法聯系﹔現在，這一切都過去了。

當我們把孩子送給人收養時，神對我說話﹔我心裡知道她會回來，但看不出有任何可能的辦法，因為我們之間沒有任何聯系，你不能獲得聯系方法﹔后來，法律改變了，讓這成為可能﹔她回來了，我們能重新建立聯系﹔然后，這男孩向我請求讓他們結婚，這是我極大的榮幸。

她也尊敬我，讓我幫助安排結婚事宜。她曾經來過我們家的婚禮，非常喜歡﹔她說：我不知道那是什麼，但我就想要這樣的婚禮。

這樣，非常奇妙，我就有了一個新角色，參與策劃婚禮接待﹔因此，就做出一些安排，讓神進來。我教她怎樣去尊敬她的養父母﹔在她離開他們的照顧，建立新的家庭時，怎樣向他們說話，說些什麼。

[Joy Connell說] 那時，盡管Mike有機會幫她准備婚禮，教她怎樣尊敬她的養父母，當然那會立刻帶來眼淚﹔Mike與他們並沒有感情上的聯系，但他列出了他們為她做出的許多事，以及怎樣尊崇感謝他們。

同一時刻，我在去台灣的飛機上，正看著一個收養故事的電影﹔看完后，我深受感動，我決定給Josephine寫一封信。

寫到她的婚禮時，我在信中贊揚了她的勇氣，贊揚了她走出的每一步﹔我也為自己當時的決定后悔﹔但在那以后做出的決定都是非常正確的：與Mike結了婚，把我們的心交給了主，把我們的生命建立在他的上面，用這些來鼓勵她。

但我忘記把寄出去﹔所有，我到了台灣在酒店安頓下來以后，我拿酒店的信紙寫了信，交給前台幫我寄出。

信在我們婦女大會開會的那天送到了，剛好是她婚禮前一天的疼惜日，她邀請我與她一同過疼惜日，但我要參加婦女大會，去不了﹔但就在她准備離開去過疼惜日的時候，她收到了我的信，這讓她感覺我與她在一起。

[Mike Connell說] 我們去到婚禮﹔婚禮的排練非常的困難，你必須面對問題。

我們與主同行時， 如果我們做出了不好的決定和選擇，他不會讓我們免於承擔后果﹔而你如果要成長，你就必須知道，做了壞的決定和選擇，就會有壞的后果﹔盡管神會赦免我們，但我們仍需承擔由此產生的后果。

當然，對我來說，最大的挑戰就是在婚禮上，另一個男人會牽著我的女兒走過長廊﹔那對我真是非常難，你會看到，我過一陣會給你們看幾張照片。（附視頻）

前一夜，我非常痛苦﹔我們排練了婚禮，並與他們待了一段時間，但沒有神的同在﹔感覺非常別扭，非常不舒服﹔排練結束后，我去了海邊的沙灘，在神面前哭泣。

我說：神啊，這真是太難了，你要幫助我們。

看起來將沒有真正的價值和尊敬﹔你知道新西蘭人是怎樣的，他們那奇怪的幽默，那種奚落人似的幽默。

我非常想要神的認可，神的同在不，來到那地方﹔但似乎就是不行﹔那晚見了她的家人，排練了婚禮﹔回到家，我感到非常的苦惱﹔我對神說：神啊，你必須幫助我﹔你要告訴我怎樣才能讓明天的婚禮與今天的排練不同。

我可能花了大概兩個小時，等待神的回復，知道在那個特殊的場合要怎樣說怎樣做﹔

那真是一個非常奇妙，不同尋常的感受﹔我們一邊說，一邊會給大家看一些照片，讓你們多多少少也能感受一些。它是最不同尋常的感受，“另一個”男人帶著我的女兒走下長廊﹔處理好因此產生的情緒，是很大的挑戰﹔但這是我多年前的決定產生的后果，我必須承受。

我知道神會給恩典﹔他做的就是：他讓我講尊敬，真正展現出尊敬，用尊敬來啟動整個婚禮。

因此，我們讓Kate 和 Andrew （我們的女婿和媳婦）一起唱了一首歌﹔在他們開始唱的時候，氣氛開始改變﹔不是因為他們選的歌，而是因為他們內在的生命，氣氛開始改變，神的同在臨到那裡﹔你能感到氣氛的改變，當然，每個人都看著我：他會說什麼呢？ “你會說什麼呢？你會說多少呢？”

我們同情她的養父母﹔因為最開始，我們覺得或許我們家隻來兩個人參加婚禮，但Jo要所有人都來﹔所以，我們對說什麼“很敏感”﹔但神准確地告訴我該說什麼。

[Joy Connell說] 小男孩Alex是Josephine的小兒子。

[Mike Connell說] 那是她的養父母﹔這是他們在婚禮上把我女兒交給新郎Steve。

我感到神告訴我要真正尊敬她的養父母，因為他們會感到不舒服﹔謙卑就是知道自己的位置，適應恰當的位置﹔有時你可以是管事的，但有時你必須當仆人。你要看到神給你的位置，並自己選擇這個位置﹔我花了相當時間去尊崇他們﹔直接了當地向他們說，尊崇他們。

對他們來說，收養了這樣一個孩子，是一個非常艱難的選擇。

[Joy Connell說] 她是先天性髖關節脫位。真是令人驚訝﹔這個媽媽聲稱是無神論者，但她看到我們這個孩子說：我知道她會沒事的﹔10個月的時候，她站起來走路了。

[Mike Connell說] 在醫院的時候，沒有人要她，我們不知道為什麼。

她的養母本不想要這個孩子，因為她以為這孩子是個瘸子﹔但她的心裡覺得她應該要這個孩子﹔因此，我尊崇她選擇歡迎Josephine進入她的生命。

我們尊崇了孩子受到的教育和他們家庭生活的環境﹔我們尊崇了他們鼓勵孩子找到我們，知道這對他們來說是非常困難的﹔

[Joy Connell說] 我們還尊崇了他們為我們開放了他們家。

[Mike Connell說] 並歡迎我們去他們家相聚，與他們共度時光。

[Joy Connell說] 我們與Josephine見面后沒多久，就與他們第一次見面，當時感覺很奇怪﹔我們去到新西蘭南島的最頂端，兩對父母，加上Josephine，一起吃飯。邀請我們來到他們家是一件大事﹔但讓我覺得有趣的是：吃飯吃到一半，她的養母向我傾訴了她的心聲，講了她的感受，心情﹔然后突然她說：嗨，你完全是個陌生人，我不知道為什麼跟你講這些。

[Mike Connell說] 我做的就是尊崇他們﹔尊崇她的兄弟們，我們全部家庭成員都與我們同來，支持我們，沒有一個漏掉。我尊崇了Steve，為他來找我征求允許的恰當舉動﹔然后是Josephine，為她尋找我們的勇氣和意願，並歡迎我們進入她的生命中和心底裡。

我非常清楚地指出：我們來這裡不是因為我們“有權”來，而是特別的恩典，由於她善意的決定。

我與他們分享了“智慧建立房屋”﹔用智慧建立婚姻﹔用智慧建立各樣東西，關系，生意，及事工。

但智慧是要從神的眼光來看問題，做選擇﹔我承認我曾做了不好的選擇﹔我們曾生活在痛悔之中﹔但現在，我們很高興，神為我們開路讓這一天臨到﹔我們那天能去到那裡就是一個奇跡。

[Joy Connell說] 當神要恢復事情時，是輕而易舉的﹔他有著寬廣的胸懷。

在婚禮之前，Mike和我去了尼日利亞慶祝我們25年結婚紀念﹔一個尼日利亞先知把他瘦骨伶仃的手指放在我的臉上，並讓我知道了以下的信息：在神的眼裡，Josephine就像一個孤兒。

我的意思是，那個家庭真是太好了﹔我們兩個都是老師，他們兩個也都是老師﹔她在鄉村長大，有自己的小羊小牛當寵物，受到非常好的教養。

唯一所缺的是神。她完全不知道神的事，因此在神的眼裡，她是一個孤兒。我想：喔，神啊，你心裡裝著那些不認識你的孤兒﹔寧願在世上一無所有，也要認識耶穌，他是一切。

所以，這讓我感觸很多，與神在孤兒上達成一致，明白了神的心裡裝著孤兒，而我們關心孤兒的心也是由此而來的。我很高興你們今天在坐的許多人贊助孤兒，神是站在他們一邊的。

神很傷心，因為Josephine對神的事一無所知。

[Mike Connell說] 到了接待的時候，我們不知道會怎樣。當我們進去的時候，我們注意到Jo做了一件有趣的事。

她坐在主桌，安排兩對父母坐在她的對面，他們得到同等的待遇﹔真是奇妙！人是辦不到的。然后，她站起來，尊重收養她的養父母家庭，感謝他們﹔這之后，她尊重了我們。

心裡非常感動﹔當你尊重別人時，能打開人的心靈。我們再多看幾張照片，非常幸福的一對。

原本她媽媽說她沒有什麼要說的。開始時她突然又說：“我要說幾句。”

尊重人就會拉近人們彼此間的距離，也會與神靠近。當你尊重別人的時候，上帝的同在就會悄悄降臨。所以她站起來開始講話，我們非常吃驚。

[Joy Connell說] 是的，前一晚真的很尷尬，她根本都沒有正面看我，她一直在忙啊，忙的。

[Mike Connell說] 顯然很痛苦。

[Joy Connell說] 在婚禮上被敬重，使她消除了疑慮。在Josephine敬重她之后，她站起來說話，她本來沒打算要說的，她看起來那麼漂亮。

她說出了她心底的話，我想Josephine從來都沒有聽到她的心底話﹔她尊重她每一個孩子，其中三個是領養的，一個是親生的。他們每一個人都是非常寶貴的。

她尊重Josephine，講述她為他們的生活帶來了無比的歡樂，他們擁有的所有快樂的時光。最讓我震驚的是…（哭泣）

[Mike Connell說] 她說每年的聖誕節或者是Josephine的生日的時候，他們總想到失去她的那個家庭，他們非常感恩，我們的損失是他們的收獲。

當然你可以體會我們當時的感受，因為每一年我們都會想起我們失去的女兒。她那樣說非常觸動我們兩人的心。我們兩人都站起來了，我說：沒有一年我們不思念我們的女兒，我們每年為她禱告，這是我們的重大損失。

我們很感激Josephine願意讓我們重新回到她的生命中，真的非常感動。你可以聽到周圍哭泣的聲音，我甚至都不敢向四周看，因為到處都有人在抹眼淚。我們意識到整個人群當中，有婚姻破碎的，有被收養的，有失去孩子的，有混合家庭的，有各式各樣的問題，當人們感到被尊重的時候，他們的心打開了。

[Joy Connell說] 這樣神就可以進來了。

[Mike Connell說] 神進來做工。

[Joy Connell說] 尊重人就可以讓神降臨，這是一個大能的經歷。

Josephine不希望我們在招待會上講太多，如果她的父母不講話，我們也會相應的去做。但是她的父母雙方都講的很好，很長﹔她也讓我們有機會再講兩句，我們不會講太多，我們隻是尊重她，她看起來多麼的漂亮，感謝她歡迎我們一家人。

關於她的未婚夫Steve，有兩件奇妙的事情。首先，Josephine第一次來我們教會拜訪我們之后，回到她的住處。當她不在的時候，她的一位室友受洗了。她說，我知道你們說什麼，我去我親生父親的教會，我知道你們說了什麼。

第二件事是，Josephine在Steve出現之前還有過幾段關系，她的感覺是：我就知道你們喜歡這個人。因為有一天，Steve讓一位像Mike這樣的人為他受傷的背部禱告，他躺倒在地上足足有二十分鐘，起來后完全得醫治了。所以他真實的感受到了神的大能。Josephine說：我知道你們會喜歡他！

婚禮前一個星期的禮拜六，Steve在水深28米的海裡潛水，氧氣用完了，他快速的上浮，然后就得了潛函病(深海潛水員因浮出水面太快而感到關節劇痛﹑ 呼吸困難的症狀)，被送進減壓室直到結婚前兩天才出來。

我真高興Steve能跟我們在一起，感謝神保守了他。我不知道這是不是邪靈在做工，這種事情非常困難。神為每一個人都有計劃和命定，我相信它正在展開。

我尊重他所做的，我們沒有權利要求成為神偉大計劃的一部分，是的，我們沒有權利。但是神是這樣的美好，他賜恩典給我們，讓我們有機會認識他，敬重他，成為他計劃的一部分。

[Mike Connell說] 我們分享了一些故事，它對人們的影響是驚人的。還有很多事情我不便公開，它們是非常寶貴的經驗。

但是有一件事令人非常感動，Jo的兒子Alex，七歲了，他在婚禮前跟Steven談話，Steven問他，“你想讓我成為你的繼父嗎？”他說，“不想，我已經有一個爸爸了，我不需要一個繼父，我就叫你Steve吧。”

但是婚禮過后，神的同在觸摸了人的心。Alex問:“為什麼有人哭啊？”Jo說，“當人們講出他們心裡的話，他們就會感動。”Alex說，“我也想說幾句。”

於是這個七歲的孩子拿起了麥克風，他敬重他的媽媽，說她非常漂亮，對他多麼的好。然后他又敬重Steve，他說：Steve，我願意你成為我的繼父，我願意你在我生命中有這個位置。

[Joy Connell說] 他坐下來后就開始流眼淚。

[Mike Connell說] 是的，他坐下來哭起來了。還有很多這樣的事情發生。

還有一件對我非常重要的事情。雖然在婚禮前感覺有些尷尬，但是婚禮后，Josephine的媽媽走過來跟我說：謝謝你教導她將婚禮辦的這麼好。我感謝她的認同，其實我們所做的就是教導她尊重人的原則。

當Josephine一路這樣做的時候，神的同在降臨，使整個事件變得不尋常。感謝神，有些事情我們從來都是做不到的。

我們相信神會把她帶回來，我們相信我們會成為她生命的一部分，但是我們從來沒有想到神給我們的更多，多過我們所期待的。

我鼓勵大家思考這個問題：謙卑和敬重，能夠開啟我們的生命。

結束禱告：

我知道有些人被深深的觸動。也許你的心被感動了，你還不是一個基督徒，你還不認識耶穌基督，你還沒有經歷神對你的愛。耶穌說：任何接受他的人，任何邀請基督進入他們生命的人，他就賜他們權柄成為神的兒女﹔赦免他們的罪，他們與神就有了一個新的關系，神是他們的天父，他們也成為神家庭中的一員。

今天做這個決定非常重要，我們這樣決定了，在我接受耶穌基督之前，我的生命一團糟。

主的美好就在眼前，你自己何不就做決定。

如果今天你還不認識耶穌基督，為何不現在就接受神的愛，讓他進到你的生命，成為一個基督徒？與神連結是一個個人的選擇。

也許你曾經與神相連，但是因為失望，有些事情沒有像你想象的那樣，你退縮了﹔今天，你需要重新建立與神的關系。隻要誠實，謙卑。

謙卑就是承認我的狀況。你要承認：神，我今天需要回到你身邊。

______________________________________________________

由Dawn Seow撰寫的相關文章 （www.citynews.sg – 2012年6月16日）

這是一個曲折的愛情故事，有歡笑也有悲傷。就像羅密歐與朱麗葉一樣，他們這一對年輕的情侶因各自的家庭背景被迫分開。更糟糕的是，他們將一個嬰兒帶到了世上，並決定放棄她。但是這個故事，不像其他的故事那樣，它因為有神的介入，讓悲劇變為歡笑，有了一個開心的結局。

1962年，Mike和Joy Connell剛剛進入大學，他們在學校相識並相愛。但是因為Connell來自天主教家庭，而Joy的家庭則是嚴格的兄弟會成員。兩個家庭非常反對他們兩人的關系。

“我們兩個都是家中的老大，我們面對來自家庭很大的壓力，”Joy回憶道。“當時，新教和天主教之間的關系非常敵對，我們雙方的家庭也因為宗教信仰的不同強烈反對我們在一起。我們不斷的分手和復合。”

六年后，他們犯了一個大錯，Joy懷孕了。

“我非常的震驚，害怕和羞愧，心想：我該怎麼辦？我們做了一個愚蠢的決定，藏在了一個秘密的地方，不讓家裡人知道。我們離開家，生下孩子，任何人都不知道。”她說。

當Joy決定生下孩子的時候，她也決定不要她。“我們把她送給別人領養。那時在新西蘭，法律規定如果我們放棄孩子，把她交給人領養，我們將永遠見不到她。法律禁止兩個家庭相互接觸。”

感謝主，神最終讓這一對年輕人結婚了，因為他們的父母覺得他們在一起的時間確實很長了。即使Joy感到她有些遠離耶穌基督，認識他們的人還在不斷的為他們禱告。“有一天我聽到神對我說他（Connell）有一顆愛主的心，可以嫁給他。”Joy說。“我感到了很大的釋放。”

為了安慰雙方家庭，他們決定舉行一個由天主教神父和聖公會牧師聯合主持的儀式。Connell說，“結婚當天我將生命獻給主耶穌﹔我知道如果我們生命中沒有耶穌，將永遠不會有幸福。於是在結婚儀式前，我決志信靠主耶穌基督。”

這就是Mike和Joy Connell的愛情故事，他們現在是新西蘭哈斯丁市海灣教會的主任牧師。他們的名字對於城市豐收教會並不陌生，Connell是國際知名的講員，他在發預言，釋放，以及內心醫治方面有特別的恩賜和能力，他的服事大大的醫治了那些受傷和破碎的心靈。

六月二日和三日的周末，當他在城市豐收教會服事的時候，他的家人與城市新聞分享了他和Joy如何跟他們第一個被送給別人收養的孩子重歸於好的故事。

和好始於醫治

“來到主的面前，我意識到將孩子送給人收養是多麼錯誤的決定。我相信即使法律不允許，但主一定會為她的回來開路。於是我徹底的悔改，承諾如果她能夠回來，不管怎樣，我一定將整件事情公開，因為罪是隱藏的，悔改就是完全公開。

結婚八年后，Connell夫婦接受神的呼召開設了一個基督教學校，同年他們也開始牧養教會。生活還在繼續，他們從未談起過去的傷痛對他們的影響。

“有一段時間，我們跟幾位已婚夫婦一起共事，我們決定開設一個重建婚姻的服務，幫助夫妻穩定雙方婚姻的基礎，重新回顧彼此的承諾。”Joy繼續分享說，“那也是我們第一次看到我們生命的基礎因為過去的傷痛而受到了很大的損害。處理了這些傷痛之后不久，禁止原生父母與已被收養孩子見面的法律修改了。神知道法律要修改，他讓我們預備好。”

Connell夫婦寫了一封信給社會福利部門，非常有意思的是，幾乎就在同一時間，那位領養了他們孩子的母親也寫了一封信給他們，想要了解一些事情。

Josephine Brown，Connell家的女兒，當時已經十八歲了，正在大學一年級學習。通常情況下，社會福利機構是不會讓他們在孩子年滿二十一歲前與她接觸的，但是因為是雙方的意願，他們被允許開始聯系。

Josephine說，“我剛出生的時候，帶著夾板在床上呆了十個星期。我父母收養我的時候，醫生也不知道我會不會殘疾。我的爸爸媽媽跟他們的父母說要收養我的時候，他們強烈反對。”

不像其他被領養的孩子，Josephine從小就知道她是被領養的。“沒什麼好壞，我知道這是個事實。小時候我總是想知道我是誰。在紐西蘭，很多人有不同的背景，像來自英國，愛爾蘭或者威爾士的人總在說他們是半個愛爾蘭人或者半個英國人，我從來不知道我是什麼人。”

當Josephine發現她的媽媽收到了一封來自社會福利部的信，知道她的親生父母還有六個孩子的時候，她的腦海裡充滿了各種問題：他們是誰？他們長什麼樣？他們像不像我？“真的好蠢，當你沒有任何信息的時候，腦子裡就裝滿了各種各樣的想象。”

終於，那一年，Josephine完成考試后飛來與Connell全家見面﹔她到的那一天正是Connell的生日。

“在她到來的前一個星期，我們在教會公開講述了我們的全部故事。這之后，很多有問題的人開始分享他們的過去，將他們以前的秘密公開。”Joy說道。

當Connell將他們家的過去潔淨之后，神讓一個念頭進入他的腦海中。“我們在教會坦承之后，神問我，你知道如果你不跟整個教會分享后果會是怎樣嗎？我說，不，我根本沒有那樣想過。神說，如果你將這件事隱藏，是對所有接受你領導的人信任的背叛﹔他們總有一天會知道真相的。”

謙卑和敬重

多年來，Connell家一直與Josephine保持著聯系。她不是在一個基督教的家庭中長大的，但是每次來探望他們的時候，她都會和他們一起去教會。

當Josephine在教會被神的同在感動的時候，是否要成為一名基督徒以及對家庭忠誠的問題一直困擾著她。“我成長的過程中，總是想要取悅我的父母親，我不希望這個決定是為了使別人開心，我想完全為了我自己。所以我用了很長時間不再顧慮我的父母以及Mike和Joy的想法。”

當Josephine遇見她未來的先生Steve Brown后，改變開始了。Steve與Josephine分享了他在一次教會崇拜中得醫治的見証。“我想，這人可以幫助我靈命成長，這是很重要的。如果我跟錯了一個人，可能就更難成為基督徒了。”

他們的婚禮在2008年10月舉行，這是Josephine的親生父母和養父母兩個家庭的首次見面。“我希望我爸爸可以領我走上台，Mike來主持婚禮。”

但是事情並不像大家希望的那麼順利，Connell還記得在婚禮預演時的緊張氣氛。“我跟神說，‘神啊，求你幫助我解決這個問題。’我沒有得到回答，但是到了婚禮當天的早上，神啟示我要從敬重的原則出發”。

Josephine的父母和兄弟姐妹也很不安，每個人都在想：他會說些什麼。我也在想：我要怎麼說？

神啟示我由敬重Josephine和她的父母開始，因為當你自己謙卑下來，敬重別人的時候，他們的心就會變得柔和。我講到尊重她的父母，尊重她的兄弟，尊重Josephine和Steve。神的同在臨到了，緊張的氣氛消失了，人們的心融化了﹔你能感到愛的流動。這就是我向神所求的：破除所有的壁壘。人們開始流淚哭泣，真是太好了。

在婚禮儀式后的招待會上，她媽媽站起來講話，大家又開始流淚﹔她曾經面對因為她自己的母親反對她收養Josephine所引起的沖突，但是在她內心深處，她知道這個孩子是沒問題的。”

去年復活節，Josephine和Steve在家中接受Connell的施洗。“我們現在扎下根，學習如何禱告，與神同行。”Josephine笑著說。

人難免犯錯，但是就像這個故事一樣，神總是願意幫助我們將痛苦變成歡笑。

從流產/流產癒合

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神的心臟是充滿憐憫醫治和恢復受損的生命。墮胎是門口的悲傷和惡魔般的束縛，這在很大程度上是在保密和否認隱藏。當真相面對一個孩子的生命已採取的痛苦是巨大的。現實即將來臨，有一個兒子或女兒在天堂誰，我們會遇到一片天！

探索如何把有意義的癒合誰失去了一個孩子在子宮內的家庭，使他們免受奴役和折磨。耶穌來不是要譴責 - 他要拯救，醫治，拯救，恢復。

教會應傳播盼望的信息。福音就是人們盼望的信息，是神對我們的愛，他願意幫助我們。作為基督徒，無論周圍發生什麼，我們要明白我們需要幫助別人，耶穌基督來就是要幫助人的。

我想到一個很重要的經文，耶穌來不是來定人的罪，而是來使人因他得救，拯救人脫離罪惡。耶穌愛你，他從不定我們的罪，不管你身邊發生什麼，上帝的心一直伸向你，愛你，恢復你。

身為一個基督徒，不要為國家許多的問題害怕，要學習了解他們，服事他們。沒有不能談論的議題。事實上，我們應該談論任何議題，帶著愛的靈，盼望的靈，安慰人們。

今天我要做的是跟大家分享一些感人的事情，我以前沒有分享過，但最近上帝對我的心說話。昨晚和今早我還在掙扎，我想講別的東西，可是你當聆聽上帝，他對我們已經有安排。今天的信息可能直接影響你，也可能間接影響你。希望大家有一顆敞開的心，愛的靈。因為我們為人禱告，看見上帝帶來極大的突破。

我們來看詩篇127篇3節。我們來過這裡很多次，經常跟大家分享我們的故事。大部分人知道我們有一個大家庭，七個兒女，21個孫子女。在這個過程中，學習到很多，其實我們還有兩個孩子，在天上。我今天要談的是墮胎和流產。

我希望給大家帶來盼望，我希望還不認識耶穌的人，明白到上帝愛你，想要幫助你，想要打破你生命中罪的權勢。然后，我要為三組人禱告，我們一起禱告，免得任何人覺得尷尬。我們希望愛的靈，上帝的大能能幫助你。我要為所有曾經墮胎的人，或跟曾經墮胎的人接觸過的人，或流產的人，無法生育的人，一起禱告。我們絕不會開口問你是什麼樣的問題，希望大家自由的到前面來，相信上帝會幫助你。

詩篇127篇3節說“兒女是耶和華所賜的產業。所懷的胎，是他所給的賞賜。” 。所以孩子是產業，是上帝賜給我們的，每個人裡面都有這個靈，是從神而來。聖經說神是靈。人與人結合會創造生命。人與神同工，上帝把靈放在孩子身上，孩子成為有靈的活人。上帝渴望孩子分享他給的命定，上帝的渴望是有許多的子女，這是神的心。上帝的計劃就是接觸這地，幫助人，就是上帝的人。

當我們生在這世上，因為罪與神隔絕。上帝渴望來到我們中間，饒恕我們的罪，將他的靈放在我們生命中，賜給我們永恆的命定。這一切由回應基督開始。

三天前，我讀到一篇有關中國的新聞。故事發生在濰坊市，一對年青夫婦，他們已經有了一個孩子，正懷著第二個孩子。一天早晨，公安沖進家門，攔住這位丈夫，抓走了妻子，直接把她帶到了醫院。當時妻子懷孕六個月了，他們威脅她說要把她的丈夫關進監獄。而丈夫也四處找尋妻子，六個小時后才找到，但她已經被打了流產針。

深深感動我的是，他們兩個人因為失去孩子而憂傷，這沒有人可以安慰他們，我的心都碎了。我將分享一些我個人的見証。我們再看看神的話語，希望為人們帶來盼望。

很多年前，我的妻子經歷過兩次流產。身為一個男人，當時我不明白這對女人意味著什麼。我們四處服事，感到很大的壓力。我們已經有五個孩子，我的妻子從沒有抱怨過這兩次流產。她從醫院回來，我們繼續我們的生命。沒有多想什麼。我們又有了兩個孩子，Peter和Sarah。

多年后，我在另一個教會服事，為一位女士禱告。我問她發生了什麼事情，她說她流產了，當我禱告時，她開始哭泣，我也感到非常憂傷，與她一起哭泣。我想太不可思議了，我一定是感受到了神的愛。

同一天，我去到另一個教會，同樣的事情又發生了。我為一位流產的女士禱告，我又感受到了很深的憂傷。當你感覺到什麼時，就要問自己，我的感受是什麼？我為什麼會有這樣的感受？回到家后，我開始禱告，上帝跟我說，你憂傷不是因為她，而是因為你自己失去的兩個孩子。一個男孩，一個女孩。你從未停止過悲傷，即使你並未意識到你的損失。

我開始很憂傷，上帝就告訴我該怎麼做。我回到家跟妻子說“上帝跟我說到我們流產的兩個孩子”。Joy說“上帝也跟我說話。他們是一個男孩，一個女孩。我給他們起名為Timothy和Catherine。”我說，神告訴我在家裡應該怎麼做，於是，像往常一樣，我們全家一起進餐。Joy把兩朵漂亮的花放在餐桌上。我跟孩子們分享說“我們家有七個孩子，實際上，應該是九個，還有兩個在天上。”

有趣的事情發生了，流產后出生的兩個孩子開始深深的哭泣。我感到他們靈裡的悲傷。在他們的頭腦裡都不知道我們失去了兩個孩子，悲傷一直由我妻子承擔了。現在他們知道他們失去了一個哥哥和一個姐姐。他們的心中充滿了憂傷。憂傷的靈在他們周圍。

所以，我妻子的流產的憂傷，傳到了后面的兩個孩子身上。我們就按手在他們身上，為他們禱告。而其它的孩子們則沒有這個問題。這就告訴我們，在母腹中的胎兒能感覺到母親的憂傷。當憂傷沒有解決時，就傳遞給后面出生的孩子。

我們做了一件事：為流產的孩子取名字。這很重要，不要隻把他們當成一個東西。對於我，就好像我的妻子掉了一顆牙，很痛一樣。在心中沒有感到作為一個父親，失去了一個孩子。

所以我認識到，當流產和墮胎發生時，會有很深的憂傷，處理憂傷的過程之一就是認出他們，為他們取名字，將他們釋放在神的手中。不隻是“一件事情”發生了，失去了“某樣東西”，他真實的是一個活著的靈，她的身體沒有成型，他的家沒有長久，他們不得不離開。我妻子講的很美“他就像一朵玫瑰花苞，沒有綻放。”很多年來，我們為很多人禱告，在這方面幫助他們。

第二個見証。今年初我在新加坡講道，教導關於與神相遇。當時我正在服事我們的敬拜小組，幫助他們與神相遇。在這以前的一天，教會結束后，我們的兩個很憂傷的孩子分別跟我們說，他們今天聚會時看到了他們失去的哥哥和姐姐在天堂，還能清楚的描述他們。我必須承認我有些嫉妒。而當今年我講與神相遇時，教導人們如何專注耶穌，用你的想象力想像聖經中是如何描述他的，讓你的心伸向他 ，默想耶穌。這些年青人也都與神相遇。我感到不應隻帶領聚會，我也要進去。

於是我開始默想耶穌，不想其它任何事情。突然我進入靈裡。沒有看到耶穌，聖靈向我顯出了兩個人。一位年青男士和一位年青女士。我很驚訝，這不是我預期的。他們同時叫我爸爸。我更吃驚了，他們說“我們有很多關於天上的事情要告訴你。”然后我意識到耶穌站在我身旁，懷裡抱了個嬰兒，他就是我們十二月流產失去的孫子。突然，我又看到一個小孩，叫我爺爺，我能看出他的容貌，是我們另外的孩子失去的孩子。

我的注意力集中在我的兒女身上，耶穌在我身邊，他們開始和我交談，他們說“我們要給你看一些東西。”突然，我的眼開了，我看到在很大的一片地方，到處是孩子。不同的年齡，從嬰兒到小小孩，數不清的孩子。他們說“這些都是流產和墮胎的孩子，在天上他們每人都有專屬的地方，天使在照看他們，他們在那裡受教育，長大。

我注意到，我失去的孫子的大小正是他相應的年紀。我也留意到我失去的兩個孩子也是他們相應的年齡。我看到周圍流產和墮胎的孩子們，神向我顯示的全部都是中國孩子，我非常震驚。

耶穌對我說，他來不是要定任何人的罪，我能感受到他的愛。他說“每個人都有他的母親，她因為失去孩子而憂傷，我要醫治她們。”他沒有說他們做了什麼，他隻是說“我愛她們，想醫治她們，因為她們憂傷。”他說“我要你開始在這方面學習和預備，准備一些DVD，在中國講道。”我的心深深的觸動了。不光是因為看到了這些孩子，而是感受到了他們母親的憂傷。我感受到耶穌的心深深的憂傷。

最近我們到中國，有人私下找到我。我不敢相信，他們說他們曾經墮胎，需要幫助。上帝大大地服事醫治他們，賜這對夫婦安慰。這以后，我們每到一個地方，總有人要求我們為他們禱告。

我想與大家分享一些經文。問題最根本的關鍵是，在神的眼裡，每個孩子即使還在母腹中都是一個活人，有他的命定。有時人們認為，在母腹中的孩子，他不懂任何事情，他不是一個人，隻是一件東西，還很不方便。

我想告訴大家，在聖經中，神的看法是怎樣的。孩子在懷孕前，神就知道他們，他們的品格，他們的生命的定命，不管他在母腹中長到什麼階段，在神的眼裡，他都是一個活人，有他的命定，是神認識的人。

士師記十三章2至5節說“那時有一個瑣拉人，是屬但族的，名叫瑪挪亞。他的妻不懷孕，不生育。耶和華的使者向那婦人顯現，對他說，向來你不懷孕，不生育，如今你必懷孕生一個兒子。所以你當謹慎，清酒濃酒都不可喝，一切不潔之物也不可吃。 你必懷孕生一個兒子，不可用剃頭刀剃他的頭，因為這孩子一出胎就歸　神作拿細耳人。他必起首拯救以色列人脫離非利士人的手。”

請留意，孩子在懷孕前，神就知道他是個男孩，神的計劃是這個男孩會拯救以色列人，最重要的一點就是這位母親在懷孕時應該怎樣照顧自己，換句話說，神關心對未出生的孩子的任何負面影響。所以說，懷孕前，神就知道這個孩子和他的命定。

再看列王記上十三章1至2節“那時有一個神人奉耶和華的命從猶大來到伯特利。耶羅波安正站在壇旁，要燒香。神人奉耶和華的命向壇呼叫，說，壇哪、壇哪，耶和華如此說，大衛家裡必生一個兒子，名叫約西亞。他必將丘壇的祭司，就是在你上面燒香的，殺在你上面，人的骨頭也必燒在你上面。”

國家敗壞，到處充斥著拜偶像，神派遣先知來警告他們。他說“我要為這世界帶來一個孩子，他的名字叫約西亞。他要恢復整個國家。”你知道這個預言之后多久約西亞才出生的呢？360年！即360年前，在未懷孕，未出生前，神已經為他命名，為他安排了命定。

360年后，當他的父母有了這個孩子后，根本不記得當時的預言，他們隻有一個念頭，“為這個孩子取名為約西亞。”他們甚至不了解他們叫他約西亞，成就了神一早的計劃。神為這個孩子360年前定命時，他的父母都還沒有出生。上帝看見了未來。他說“360年后，有一對夫婦，盡管父親非常敗壞，拜撒旦，但我還是要將一個孩子帶到這個家庭，他會拯救整個國家。他的名字叫約西亞。所以，神為孩子命名，安排他們的命定，在他們懷孕前就認識他們了。

另外一段經文，耶利米書一章4節5節“耶利米說，耶和華的話臨到我，說，我未將你造在腹中，我已曉得你，你未出母胎，我已分別你為聖。我已派你作列國的先知。”多麼神奇，神說在胚胎還未成型前，我就知道這將是誰。即你是個靈，在你住的人的家還沒成型，我就認識你，知道你的全部，我已經將你分別出來，為你安排了命定。甚至你的母親還不知道你，什麼胚胎都沒有，我已經將我的靈放入你中，你將成為列國的先知。

你注意到還在孩子成型前，神已認識他，為他安排命定，多麼神奇！以賽亞書四十九章1節中也說：以賽亞也是在母腹中形成前，神就已經認識他了。

詩篇139篇16節，大衛說“我未成形的體質，你的眼早已看見了。你所定的日子，我尚未度一日，你都寫在你的冊上了。 ”大衛的意思是：當我還是小小的胚胎時，我還未成型前，你就看到我了。不僅如此，在你的書上，已經寫下了我的一生，我甚至還沒有過一天。 他的意思是，神已視他為一個人，一個靈，一個有命定的人。在他出生前，為他安排了一切。

這些經文強調在我們懷孕前，神已經知道我們，在我們懷孕時，神的靈進入到這個孩子，即使未成型，神愛他，為他安排了命定，即使他出生在一個困難的家庭環境中。

約西亞的父親是個拜撒旦的，但上帝仍然安排他的命定，神看這個未出生的孩子是在母腹中的人，是活生生的人，有名字，有命定，有計劃的生命，真實奇妙！

聖經中有很多次，神講到未出生的孩子，講到撒迦利亞和伊麗莎白。伊麗莎白是不能生育的，神對撒迦利亞說“你知道你的妻子不能生育，不能有孩子嗎？”他說“我知道。”神說“你將會有一個孩子。”他說“她太老了，怎麼生孩子？”他與神爭執，但神說“不要爭論。你們會有一個孩子，他將是名先知，為主預備道路。”聖經非常清楚的寫明，神在他們懷孕和出生前很久就認識他們，為他們安排好一生的計劃。

馬太福音一章21節“他將要生一個兒子。你要給他起名叫耶穌。因他要將自己的百姓從罪惡裡救出來。”再次說明，在孩子懷孕前身就認識他，知道他的名字，為他安排了命定。

你又如何呢？以弗所書二章10節中“我們原是他的工作，在基督耶穌裡造成的，為要叫我們行善，就是神所預備叫我們行的。”請留意這裡告訴我們每一個人都是神的獨特的創造，沒有任何人與你一樣，你的指紋是獨有的，你的DNA是獨有的，每一樣東西都是獨有的。在你出生前，神已為你安排好了要走的路，你有一個目的，就是為了行善，在你開始前，神為你的一生就計劃好了。阿門！

另一處經文路加福音一章39至44節中，神告訴我們在我們出生前就認識我們，知道我們的名字，知道我們長什麼樣子。我們還在母腹中，他就關心我們，為我們的一生安排了命定。

我最近讀到一本書，他們對母腹中的胎兒用超聲波進行了大量的研究。100年前，人們認為人的特征形成於大腦，個性，知識，意識等。如果一個人的個性，特征和感情是在大腦形成的，就得出結論是，如果大腦未發育完成前，他就不是個真正的人，你就可以隨意處理掉他。

但是聖經告訴我們的完全不同。最新的研究也顯示，人的心在大腦之前發育。聖經說“你的一生由心發出。”最新的研究發現，孩子在母腹中就能了解周圍發生的事情，雖然他的大腦還未形成。經過大量的研究，這本書中得出結論：未出生的母腹中的孩子，完全了解周圍的事情，即使他的大腦還未發育。他就是個人了。

最后，作者得出結論，孩子有第六感官。他講的就是靈。他們的大腦，聽覺還未發育好，他的靈知道周圍發生的事情，他發現孩子能夠辨認出父母的聲音，能夠分辨出爭執，了解周圍發生的事情。這也是希伯來文化中的一部分，當婦女懷孕后，要躲在一個安靜的地方幾個月，以使母腹中的孩子能夠在平安和祥和的環境中生長。這些都是現代的研究發現。

聖經路加福音一章39至41節說“那時候馬利亞起身急忙往山地裡去，來到猶大的一座城。進了撒迦利亞的家、問以利沙伯安。” 以利沙伯懷孕六個月，嬰兒還沒有完全成型，“ 以利沙伯一聽馬利亞問安，所懷的胎就在腹裡跳動，以利沙伯且被聖靈充滿。”誰說腹中的嬰兒不了解周遭發生的事情？你看，以利沙伯正懷孕，馬利亞來探望她，聖靈通過她預言。以利沙伯聽到了，嬰兒也聽到了，他大力的踢動，滿有喜樂。因為這是他的命定，要成為彌賽亞的先知，還在母腹中，他就有了命定。他知道了這些安排，感受到了聖靈，他跳躍，大力地踢。

這就是他們最新研究發現的。嬰孩在母腹中會感受到靈的影響。而早在2000年前，聖經就寫明了。還在在母腹中就了解周圍的環境，了解上帝的同在，了解母親和她的感受，了解父親。

我花時間分享這些事情的原因，是因為我要談到墮胎的影響。聖經講明，魔鬼對孩子非常有敵意。從創世紀三章15節開始，魔鬼對兒女就充滿敵意。因為神的應許是：從婦女生出的孩子中，有一位將摧毀撒旦，成為世界的拯救。

當我們查考聖經歷史，就會發現邪靈攻擊孩子的例子。不管是在母腹，還是剛出生。出埃及記中，在上帝拯救之前，所有兩歲以下的男嬰被殺。大衛王之后，亞她利雅殺死了所有的王室小孩，隻留下一個。耶穌時期，謀殺的靈臨到希律王，又殺掉了所有不到兩歲的孩子。

魔鬼常常攻擊孩子，母腹是沖突之地。當流產發生時，神美好的計劃突然終止了。墮胎發生時，孩子的生命被奪走了，不好的事情發生了，有巨大的影響。當我們為人禱告時，留意到很多人非常痛苦，但卻不明白為什麼。

聖經中講述了流產發生的幾個來由。 重點是，神的計劃不是流產，而是生養眾多。我們查考經文，分現流產的發生是因為拜偶像，有時咒詛臨到家中，發生流產。有時是因為家中有亂倫的事發生，有時是因為人們交鬼產生的。

我不詳細講解所有經文，但聖經中非常清楚的告訴我們，上帝的心意是要我們生養眾多，所以流產發生時，有屬靈的原因，也有自然身體上的情況。我們對家裡上次的流產求問神時，我的一個女兒從神那裡得到話語，“是因為大腦沒有正常發育成型”，我女兒和她丈夫經歷了多年的憂傷。憂傷也會有生理上的原因。我們生活在一個墮落的世界。有時是屬靈的問題。有時因為母親做了內在誓言，不要生孩子。

不管原因如何，結果總是憂傷的，當母親懷胎又失去了孩子，就會產生強烈的憂傷。男人不容易了解。女人的生命以孩子為中心，孩子是從她的生命中得著生命，當失去了一個孩子，就會有巨大的憂傷。

我想強調墮胎 的影響，有時當我們輔導人時，如果沒有挖到問題的根源，問題就永遠不會解決。當我研究這個領域時，發現不管在任何地方，人們得出同樣的結論。當女人墮胎時，她必須讓自己相信這不是真實的人。可能是醫生告訴她，這沒什麼，隻是一次醫療手術﹔也可能是因為害怕，或者身體條件不好，她就是不肯承認發生的事情。

最重要的一點就是否認他是個人。母親否認他是個人，不過隻是一次身體上的手術，就像拔一顆牙一樣。但是，這不是真相。

墮胎的人有很多常見的問題。現在最普遍認同的症狀是墮胎后創傷症。我在這裡列出來這些問題，然后再探討如何釋放人們。

• 羞愧。他們會感到羞愧和隱秘，沒有自信。

• 罪咎。不能脫離的罪咎感。

• 憂郁。時常憂郁，悲傷和痛哭，卻沒有明顯的原因。請記住，如果你以謊言遮蓋真相，拒絕接受一個生命被奪走，你不會明白為何會悲傷，如果他不是什麼東西，我有什麼好悲傷的呢？

• 自殺傾向。

• 自恨。

• 睡眠失調

• 各樣回想的畫面。女人會突然記起過去痛苦的經歷，又回到震驚和悲傷中去。

• 強烈渴望擁有一個替代的孩子。下意識中希望有一個孩子可以彌補失去的孩子。這個被稱為“周年現象”，在墮胎日或孩子的出生日，母親時常開始憂傷哭泣，卻不明白為什麼。

• 寵愛，溺愛另一個孩子。

• 酒精和毒品的問題。

• 自我懲罰的行為。我應該被懲罰，可能自我傷害如割傷自己，虐待的關系，混亂的關系。

• 可能有身體的疾病。經常流血，或習慣性流產。

• 常常有很深的罪惡感。我活下來了，可孩子付上了代價。很可怕的感覺。

最近一位女士請我為她禱告。我問她“你的問題是什麼？”她說“我時常流血，有十二年之久了。我們非常想要一個孩子卻沒有。”我問，“你有墮胎嗎？”她說“有過四次。”我帶著愛對這位女士說“你的家庭有四個孩子，但他們都在天上。這是因為你的行為造成的。當別人告訴你這隻是一個簡單的手術時，他們在撒謊，這就是你問題的根源，你和你的丈夫現在沒有一個孩子，原來你們可以擁有的孩子卻失去了。”

她開始不停地哭泣，我們與她分享上帝愛她，饒恕她。於是她在神裡面得恢復，她的心得醫治。我禱告下次再見到她時，她會有一個孩子。今年我到城市豐收教會，一位女士和她的丈夫抱著一個嬰兒來到，她說“你要看看我們的寶寶，神跡的寶寶。你走后12個月，我們有了第一個孩子。懷孕非常困難。我自己以前內在誓言說再也不要生孩子了。每次懷孕都會流產。我聽了你的教導，才知道自己做了內在誓言。我棄絕這樣的誓言，請求上帝祝福我的肚腹，三個月后，我就懷孕了，就是這個寶寶。”實際上不到三個月，大約是一個月。

你可以看到，生命中有屬靈的關聯。女性經歷的很多問題，她們不追溯到墮胎，她們假裝這不是什麼嚴重的問題。

耶利米書31章15節說“耶和華如此說，在拉瑪聽見號咷痛哭的聲音，是拉結哭他兒女不肯受安慰，因為他們都不在了。”所以，我們如何得自由？處於這種情況的人，第一步就是轉向耶穌基督。約翰福音三章16節說“神愛世人，甚至將他的獨生子賜給他們，叫一切信他的，不至滅亡，反得永生。”神不是來定人的罪，而要世人因他得救。你的任何痛苦，耶穌都能夠拯救醫治。

可以看出，墮胎的后果遠比我們認識到的嚴重。它影響到母親，肚腹中靈裡的部分，影響到下一個出生的孩子，影響到家庭，原本可以做父親的男人失去了孩子，祖父母失去了孫子，以后出生的兄弟姊妹也受到創傷的影響。

我記得一位婦女帶著孩子來，我問“什麼問題？”她說“我的孩子不肯讓我喂他母奶，我每次抱他到懷裡要喂他，他就開始尖叫，我們該怎麼辦？”我說“你有沒有試圖想過要打掉這個孩子？”她說“有。”我說“是不是孩子怕你，他感受到了謀殺的靈，他不敢親近曾想害他的人。”她非常震驚，請求耶穌饒恕她，我為母親和孩子禱告，孩子就開始親近她了。當孩子得釋放，離開恐懼和謀殺的靈，立刻他們就可以親近了，非常明顯。

怎樣得自由呢？有三個方面：屬靈的問題，情緒的問題，關系的問題。離開死亡進入生命，答案非常簡單：

1. 我們需要面對屬靈的問題。要面對真相，是我奪走了孩子的生命。大部分的母親這樣做是因為感到極大的壓力。來自男朋友或丈夫的壓力，家庭的壓力，環境的壓力，不管怎樣，他們必須負責任。得釋放的關鍵就是打破謊言。以賽亞書二十八章告訴我們，當我們以謊言遮蓋自己，我們就與死亡和地獄立約。

2. 在神面前悔改，認罪。真實的來到神的話語前。約翰一書一章9節“我們若認自己的罪，神是信實的，是公義的，必要赦免我們的罪，洗淨我們一切的不義。”神已經饒恕赦免了我們，我們要做的，就是領受他，

3. 饒恕。首先人們必須接受饒恕，接受神饒恕了我們。其次，饒恕自己。最后，饒恕別人。經常，女人會對孩子的父親生氣，對自己的父母生氣，或對幫她做手術的人生氣，對鼓勵她這麼做的朋友生氣。有各樣的怨恨和悲傷需要面對。放開饒恕他們是解決這一問題的方法。釋放他離開邪靈。

認罪，饒恕，從邪靈裡得釋放，我們等一下會為人們釋放禱告。另一方面，對人們非常有幫助的是，求問神，這是怎樣的孩子？耶穌知道，上帝認識你的孩子，男孩還是女孩？聆聽你的心，神會告訴你。我看到人們在進行這一步時，總是痛哭。

接下來就是給他們取名字。給他一個身份，打破謊言。你知道給孩子起名多麼困難，我們花幾天的時間想好一個名字。但我在整個過程中發現，上帝已經為他們命名了，我們隻需要聆聽。求問神，我失去的孩子的名字是什麼？或是自己給孩子一個名字。

我對那位經歷過四次墮胎的女士說“求神告訴你孩子是怎樣的。”她很快的回答說“女孩，男孩，男孩，女孩。”我說“給他們取個名字吧。”幾分鐘就起好了。接下來她就開始悲傷了，意識到了她的孩子們。我說“下一步就是釋放你的孩子們在神的手中。耶穌站在這裡，把你的孩子交給他。你要知道，有一天，你會再見到他們。”有時，我們簡短的禱告“耶穌，我將我的孩子交托給你，把他交托在你的懷中，請告訴他我對我所做的非常抱歉，我盼望再見到他。”

請留意，這一切都是打破謊言，回歸真相。經常會有很多悲傷，痛苦和傷感。有時，還有破碎的關系需要修復，通往自由的路是簡單的。

當然，除非是有歷代遺傳的因素，流產的人不用認罪，懺悔。通常我發現這樣做非常有幫助。就是每次閉上眼睛，心向神敞開，求他向你顯示孩子是怎樣的，告訴你他的名字。現在，他不再是一個東西了，他是一個人。你會再見到你的孩子。這就是福音的盼望，孩子在天上。

當你與耶穌交通時，他就會告訴你的孩子。把你的孩子交托在耶穌手中，有一天你會再見到他們。我看到很多人得自由釋放，破碎的心得醫治。憑著對耶穌基督的信心，把所有的秘密，羞辱，謊言都打破，破碎心得醫治。

我相信上帝會觸摸很多人。讓我們閉上眼晴，你要明白神愛你，耶穌來到世上，道成肉身，讓我們看見天堂如何，邀請我們與他連結。我們都活在罪中，與神隔絕，我們找不到神的路。但耶穌為我們的罪死在十字架上，他從死裡復活，打破了罪的權勢。耶穌說，凡接待他的人，歡迎他的，相信他的，他就賜他們權柄做神的兒女。

癒合流產 (1 of 4)

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(Bernard Nathanson)

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Freedom Evangelistic Messages

自由福音讯息

自由福音訊息

Stand-alone messages on Deliverance & Healing, ending with an opportunity for people to respond to Jesus Christ, and be saved and delivered from tormenting spirits and sicknesses.

The power of God touched many people during these sessions - hundreds gave their lives to Christ and experienced Deliverance/Healing.

Expect the presence and power of God to touch you as you listen to these powerful messages.

一系列的消息：拯救（驱魔）和治疗，有机会为人们应对耶稣基督，并予以保存，并交付从折磨精神和病痛的结局。

神的力量在这些会议上感动了很多人 - 数百人选择了他们的生命服从基督，体验解脱/治疗。

期待神的存在和力量，你听这些强大的邮件碰你。

一系列的消息：拯救（驅魔）和治療，有機會為人們應對耶穌基督，並予以保存，並交付從折磨精神和病痛的結局。

神的力量在這些會議上感動了很多人 - 數百人選擇了他們的生命服從基督，體驗解脫/治療。

期待神的存在和力量，你聽這些強大的郵件碰你。

Spirit of Divination (1 of 12)

Acts 16:16 tells a story about a woman who was tormented by an evil spirit - a python spirit, or spirit of divination. Many people came to her city, a centre of Arts, wanting to know their future, and she made a lot of money for her owners by fortune-telling. What is the source of this power? How does it gain access to our lives? What does the Bible say about our destiny? How can we be set free?

由占卜的灵中得自由

由占卜的靈中得自由

The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12)

In Numbers 21, the children of Israel became bitter in their heart and started complaining against Moses. Their sin released fiery serpents which bit the people and released poison into their system. Their was only one remedy for the bite of the serpent - fixing their eyes, with faith in their heart, on God's provision.The same power is available to you today -the power of the cross for curses.

由蛇咬中得自由

由蛇咬中得自由

Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12)

In Exodus 15, we follow the journey of God's people who came out of the slavery of Egypt to the promised land. When they met difficult circumstances we see what was in their heart - all the "fruit" of bitterness. If the fruit is there, the root is there. Test yourself. Do you think like a slave or a son? We can focus on injustice and choose to be bitter, or respond to God's provision and embrace grace.

由苦毒中得自由

由苦毒中得自由

Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12)

In Malachi 4 God prophetically declared the condition on the earth in our time - breakdown in family relationships, destruction and broken-hearts. The problem lies in our heart. We don't have to live out of disappointment and pain. God wants to heal the broken-hearted and TURN our hearts. We can resolve issues of the heart. King David and his wife Michal both suffered injustice from King Saul, but their heart response determined their destiny. Discover powerful keys for accessing God's promises and blessing. It's not automatic, it requires a response.

尊榮你的父親母親

尊榮你的父親母親

Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12)

Jn 1:29 "Behold - the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world" has little meaning for people today, but for the Israelites who applied the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts (Ex.12) it was tremendously significant. When the destroyer saw the blood, they were protected, and 430 years of slavery finished. Jesus is God's provision for our sinfulness, and His blood still speaks. Get a fresh revelation of the power of the blood of Jesus for your freedom.

門柱旁的血

門柱旁的血

Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12)

In 1 Kings 19 we find Elijah had yielded to fear and intimidation, and drawn back from his God-given assignment. We then get one of those "God Questions". He knows the answer, but wanted Elijah to think about where he was at, to recognize his distorted thinking, and to get back to his assignment, which included raising up others to fulfill the ministry. What are you doing here? Elijah had chosen to yield to fear, withdraw from his assignment, sit down, become passive and isolate at the crucial point when he needed to press forward. Sound familiar? Learn to recognize the signs of pressure.

由洞穴中得自由

由洞穴中得自由

Hope After Loss (7 of 12)

The widow of Nain ( Luke 7 ) was in a place of great grief and without hope for her future, no-one could comfort her. Maybe you too are locked into grief feeling numb and disconnected. Our God is a God of comfort, and a God of all hope. Set-backs are not the end. Let Christ in - He is able to breathe into a place of death, and bring life and fresh vision. Jesus still works miracles, and restores a broken heart.

損失之後的盼望

損失之後的盼望

Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12)

In John 5 , Jesus likens us to sheep - this message gives several ways this is true! One similarity is that sometimes sheep are "cast", lying down, unable to move, unable to function. If we are lying down we may have many excuses, feel a victim, and be waiting for something to happen. However, like the man in this story, who had been waiting 38 years for help, we need to answer this same question Jesus asked: Do you want to be made whole? We have the power of choice - to receive Jesus and have the power of sin broken.

再造全新的我

再造全新的我

Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12)

Sometimes an area of our life has become "withered", or without life, just like the man in Mark 3, who had a withered hand. We tend to conceal, or hide in shame, when we feel like this. To restore the man in the story, Jesus required 2 "action steps": 1) Bring the problem right out into the open 2) A stretch of faith - doing what Jesus asks us to do. The healing is "in the stretch"!

伸出手得醫治

伸出手得醫治

Spiritual Blindness (10 of 12)

The Bible describes 2 kingdoms - the kingdom of "light" (Jesus), and the kingdom of darkness (devil). The Bible also describes several spiritual problems in the heart which cause spiritual blindness - hatred, pride, bitter offences. Blindness speaks of limitations and captivity. In Mark 10, a blind man called Bartimaeus obtained his healing. What did he do that caused Jesus to stop and respond to him? What did he believe about Jesus? How did he demonstrate faith? His encounter can be a doorway to your encounter!

屬靈的眼盲

属灵的眼盲

Freedom from Divination (11 of 12)

God promises to direct our steps, as we trust Him and listen to His voice. Many people, fearful about the future, pay money to a fortune-teller to receive information (divination). They prostitute themselves with evil spirits - they pay money for information and receive a spirit into their body. Lev 20:6 warns of the dangers of this. We are not made for evil spirits. If you have opened your life up, you can be set free - like the girl in Acts 16:16

由占卜中得自由

由占卜中得自由

Healing from Abortion and Miscarriage (12 of 12)

The heart of God is full of compassion to heal and restore damaged lives. Abortion is a doorway for grief and demonic bondage which is largely hidden under secrecy and denial. When the truth is faced that the life of a child has been taken the pain is immense. The reality dawns, there is a son or daughter in heaven who we will meet one day! Discover how to bring meaningful healing to families who have lost a child in the womb, and set them free from bondage and torment. Jesus did not come to condemn - He came to save, heal, deliver, restore.

由堕胎流产中得医治

由墮胎流產中得醫治

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- Spirit of Divination (1 of 12).mp3

- The Bite of the Serpent (2 of 12).mp3

- Freedom from Bitterness (3 of 12).mp3

- Honour your Father and Mother (4 of 12).mp3

- Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12).mp3

- Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12).mp3

- Hope After Loss (7 of 12).mp3

- Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12).mp3

- Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12).mp3

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- Freedom from Divination (11 of 12).mp3

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- Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12).mp4

- Come Out of Your Cave (6 of 12).mp4

- Hope After Loss (7 of 12).mp4

- Do You Want To Be Made Whole? (8 of 12).mp4

- Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12).mp4

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- Blood on The Doorposts (5 of 12).mp4

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- Stretch Out and Be Healed (9 of 12).mp4

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由占卜的靈中得自由

Fri 4th Oct 2013  « 返回頁首

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請大家翻開聖經使徒行傳第十六章16至18節，“后來，我們往那禱告的地方去。有一個使女迎著面來，她被巫鬼所附，用法術，叫她主人們大得財利。她跟隨保羅和我們，喊著說，這些人是至高神的仆人，對你們傳說救人的道。她一連多日這樣喊叫，保羅就心中厭煩，轉身對那鬼說，我奉耶穌基督的名，吩咐你從她身上出來。那鬼當時就出來了。”

聖經講的很清楚，耶穌來是要釋放人得自由﹔這個故事發生在希臘的一個地方，這個女子被邪靈折磨。他們那裡拜的是叫阿波羅的神，當時那個地方是整個創意藝術的中心，那裡的人喜歡佔卜，算命，就是在靈裡面跟邪靈打交道以找到自己的未來。那裡有一個特別的廟，稱為Delfai的神域。

這個女子就是依靠邪靈的力量來說預言﹔人們來找她，付錢給她，讓她告訴他們將來的命運如何。這是一個著名的城，各地的人都涌來想知道他們的未來。當他們碰到生意上或者藝術娛樂上的要作出重大決定的時候，都來找她。付錢想知道他們的未來。

今天這也很常見，我們都想知道未來會怎樣，想知道生命是否蒙福，想知道明天怎樣，想知道未來的事物。對未來的渴望，想知道未來會發生什麼，在各個文化中都有。

聖經告訴我們，我們的生命在上帝的手中，以弗所書第二章10節告訴我們，神在我們生命中有一個計劃要我們去成就。你不是一個意外，你生在這世上是上帝特別設計的。你的家庭可能有各樣的困難，可能沒有計劃生你，可能父母沒有想到會有你。可是聖經告訴我們，上帝為你安排了計劃和命定，要你去成就，可能你自己都沒有想過，上帝一早就想著你了。

聖經中有很多例子，顯明上帝認識這些人早在他們認識主之前。舉例來說，耶利米書第一章5節，上帝對耶利米講，“我未將你造在腹中，我已曉得你。你未出母胎，我已分別你為聖。我已派你作列國的先知。”當他還在母腹當中，根本還剛成型，上帝就看見先知了，上帝已經為他命定了，並召他進入這命定。

舊約中有一位王名叫約西亞，在他出生約六百多年前，就有先知預言說將來有一位王叫約西亞，他要勝過所有邪靈，恢復我們在神面前屬靈的信結。在他出生六百多年前，上帝就知道他什麼時候要來，叫什麼名字，在什麼地方出生。

再看創世紀中，上帝對亞當和夏娃發預言說，將來有一位救主，他的名字叫耶穌基督。這是耶穌之前四千年的事﹔聖經中，有很多很多的預言都在耶穌基督身上應驗了。換句話說，上帝早就看見你的生命了，他在你的生命中有計劃﹔不管你生命中發生了什麼，隻要你對上帝有信心，他甚至能將你生命中負面的東西變成你的益處。

如果我們跟上帝之間沒有關系，對未來就沒有這個確據，就會轉向佔卜。上帝恨惡佔卜的事，他說這是屬靈的召妓。我們受造不是要跟邪靈接觸，我們受造是要跟上帝建立關系。當你參與佔卜時，不是在跟上帝接觸，而是在跟邪靈接觸。

這個女孩身上就是這樣，她有佔卜的靈在身上，今天我們稱她是靈媒。你可能付錢讓她幫你算命，她力量的源頭是邪靈，她身上的靈就像蟒蛇一樣纏繞著她。很有意思，使用她發預言的那個女神的名字叫做Hasia, 跟蟒蛇是同樣的字根。很多人是在這個靈底下運行的。他們付錢給這個女孩，她的身上有這個邪靈纏著她。邪靈不了解你的未來，魔鬼預見不了未來，隻有上帝能看見。

信靠神，與神同行更好，而不要去找那些邪靈。在娛樂界，商業界，金融界，政府界的人們，在做重大決定的時候先過去找靈媒，付錢給他們，就是跟邪靈做交易，打開生命，讓他的生命由邪靈來操縱。魔鬼知道他們的未來嗎？完全不知道。可是這就像邪靈的網絡一樣，邪靈觀察這些人，邪靈可以講出他們在你生命中觀察到的東西，他們一直在觀察人。

如果你去找算命的，去找靈媒。你接觸的不是眼前的這個人，而是他后面的靈。他講到的一些你生命中的東西可能是真的，因為他們一直在觀察你。可是一旦你相信他們跟你講的話，你就把生命的權利交給他了。

這個女人看見保羅，就跟著保羅，大喊“這是至高神的仆人”，“讓你看見救人的道”。她講的是真話，她講的是真相，因為邪靈看得見。可是她在那裡，她身上的靈就讓人非常厭煩。蟒蛇就是纏繞著將人擠碎，它慢慢的纏著人，不斷的將他們的生命擠壓出來。

當人參與在佔卜當中，他們就上癮了，什麼事情都要問過之后才做決定，慢慢的就把生命的權利交給了邪靈。慢慢的邪靈也就纏繞著這個人，擠碎他的生命，摧毀他的盼望。這個女孩就有這個靈，有一天保羅轉過身，聖經說，他直接面對這個邪靈，直接跟邪靈對峙，奉耶穌基督的名，吩咐他出來。邪靈馬上放開這女人，立刻離開，使女就自由了。你注意她的生命改變了，已經沒有邪靈纏繞她，擠壓她了。也沒有聲音在她耳邊講話了，她也沒有能力知道人的生命將會如何了。當邪靈離開她，幫人算命的能力也一起走了。

邪靈不了解你的未來，但如果你找他們，聽他們的，你就打開你的生命，他們就會影響你的未來。神召我們是要我們跟上帝建立關系，召我們與其建立信任的關系，在生命中與上帝同行，信靠他，相信他是慈愛的上帝，他深深的愛我們，為我們安排了最美的計劃。上帝不把所有的計劃都告訴你，可是他將渴望和夢想放在你心中，他跟你說話肯定印証他要的事。當你選擇憑信心而行，他就一步步為你展開生命的計劃。

一定從第一步開始，就是接受耶穌基督。要遠離罪，這第一步是離開沒有上帝的生活，他是走向永生的真神。今晚就希望有人走出這一步，來回應上帝恩慈的一步，來接受上帝慈愛的一步。

這個使女一開始是怎麼得到這個靈的，這邪靈是怎麼進到她生命的？很可能是從她的家裡，可能她的家是拜偶像的，也可能他們家參與佔卜，邪靈就從家族下來，可能她很小的時候就聽到這些聲音，做很攪擾人的夢，晚上看到一些邪靈。

有一次我去到斐濟，在路上開車，看到公園裡面有一群人。很有意思的是，我覺得我好像看到一群蛇一樣，我停下車走過去仔細看，發現有一些圍籬，一群人坐在墊子上，中間有些蛇，他們就在那裡玩蛇。在紐西蘭沒有蛇，所以這些對我來講很新鮮，我很感興趣。其中有一個人就來找我說，不要為我們禱告，我們是從珀流來的，隻想賺點錢，我們沒有傷害誰。

我發現他們不單隻玩弄蛇，他們其實是一群巫師，他們使用這些蛇，這些蛇在他們生命中就有勢力了。他們在邪靈底下運作，他們拿一些水，有三個自願的人，把水洒在這些人身上，他們就倒在地上了。之后就將一個罩子放在他們頭上，然后就做一些巫術的事情﹔當他們把臉上的面罩拿開后，那人像是受到很大驚嚇﹔他看見那個巫師的頭是一條蛇，他嚇壞了。他們對他下了咒，就在邪靈底下影響這個人。

這些能力是非常真實的，聖經說，當我們參與在這樣事上，上帝的心就會憂傷。有些人家中可能有參與邪靈，可能有做過佔卜算命的事情，就打開了門讓邪靈進來折磨你的生命。有些人自己也參與在佔卜當中，可能有什麼巫術碗或者碟仙等等﹔你已經參與邪靈了，上帝要釋放你得自由。你可能有去找過靈媒，觀鬼的，這些所謂的靈媒都是跟邪靈接觸，邪靈借他們來說話。

可能在你生命中有去找過那些算命的，這讓上帝難過，上帝愛你，計劃好了你的生命。當我們去找邪靈跟他們糾纏在一起，就讓上帝非常憂傷難過。邪靈可能是由家中傳下來的﹔也可能你小時候獻過給偶像﹔或者你向邪靈敞開你的生命，邀請他進來﹔可能你自己有過交鬼﹔不管是什麼，這個使女把生命向邪靈敞開，而耶穌釋放她得自由。

由蛇咬中得自由

Sat 5 Oct 2013  « 返回頁首

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請翻開約翰福音，聖經向我們顯明，上帝的計劃就是要幫助人﹔聖經由兩部分組成，一部是舊約，一部是新約。舊約所針對的國家就是以色列，上帝向以色列人應許說有一天救主會來，而且會釋放所有人得自由。

約翰福音第三章14節，這是非常奇妙的經節，它是從一個圖畫開始的，我們等一下會帶大家看一下這個圖畫。“摩西在曠野怎樣舉蛇，人子也必照樣被舉起來。”耶穌講到在幾百年前他們的祖先摩西在曠野的行為，就像預言他將來在十字架上的受死。15至17節，“叫一切信他的都得永生。神愛世人，甚至將他的獨生子賜給他們，叫一切信他的，不至滅亡，反得永生。因為神差他的兒子降世，不是要定世人的罪，乃是要叫世人因他得救。”

所以你要認識耶穌的心，上帝不要你滅亡，他是要你得救。聖經非常清楚的告訴我們，神的屬性就是愛。許多人對上帝有不同的想象﹔你對他的想象，或者你相信他是哪一位，會影響你跟他的連結。所以如果你對神的想象有扭曲，有錯誤的話，你就無法跟他正確的連結。

聖經告訴我們神愛世人，而且是如此的愛世人，他從天上降下來，來到這個世界，他向我們顯現天上的國度是如何的，邀請我們成為這個國度的一部分。邀請我們跟天父建立美好的關系。耶穌是怎樣示范神對我們的愛呢？

1）通過他的教導。

2）在如何跟人接觸方面。

3）通過行神跡，幫助人得釋放。

4）最重要的一點，就是透過他死在十字架上，並從死裡復活。

但是人最根本的問題是，我們的心是跟神隔絕的。聖經告訴我們，這個隔絕就是死亡。所以耶穌來到世上，打破罪的權勢，並把他的靈，他的生命再次放在我們的心裡，好讓我們能夠活出當初被造的樣式，就是跟神有美好的關系，而不是跟神隔絕。

在我們信主之前，我們靠著我們自然人的樣式過活，但是上帝要改變你的生命，改變你的心，把他的靈放在你裡面，好讓你活出與以前不一樣的生命。上帝沒有要定你的罪，他乃是要釋放你得自由，因此不管你生命中有任何問題，不管你生命中有多少捆綁，上帝沒有怪你，沒有定你罪，他的願望就是要幫助你。

耶穌告訴我們他來不是要定世人的罪，他是要指出什麼是錯誤的，他來就是要拯救人。我要跟大家分享一個舊約中的故事。舊約中有很多人遇見上帝的故事，很多時候我們不了解一件事的屬靈意義，所以上帝用很多例子告訴我們。舊約中有很多的圖畫，讓我們能夠了解屬靈的含義。

我們來看一個真實發生的故事，透過這件事顯示上帝何等的愛世人。上帝做了什麼幫助人，人需要什麼條件才能得到這樣的愛。請翻開民數記第二十一章4至9節，“他們從何珥山起行，往紅海那條路走，要繞過以東地。百姓因這路難行，心中甚是煩躁，就怨讟神和摩西說，你們為什麼把我們從埃及領出來，使我們死在曠野呢，這裡沒有糧，沒有水，我們的心厭惡這淡薄的食物。於是耶和華使火蛇進入百姓中間，蛇就咬他們。以色列人中死了許多。百姓到摩西那裡，說，我們怨讟耶和華和你，有罪了。求你禱告耶和華，叫這些蛇離開我們。於是摩西為百姓禱告。耶和華對摩西說，你制造一條火蛇，挂在杆子上。凡被咬的，一望這蛇，就必得活。摩西便制造一條銅蛇，挂在杆子上。凡被蛇咬的，一望這銅蛇就活了。”

上帝的意願總是要賜福我們﹔這裡的百姓已經被捆綁為奴四百年了，管理他們的監工非常的嚴厲，他們非常艱苦的生活，使得他們變的非常的苦毒，非常的衰弱。上帝差遣摩西去釋放以色列的百姓，因為他聽見他們哭求的聲音，上帝透過摩西彰顯了許多的神跡奇事，人們離開了埃及，開始了前往他們的應許之地迦南的旅程。

以色列人在曠野經歷了許多的挑戰，這很像我們。在我們認識主之前，我們被罪所捆綁，我們是罪的奴隸，沒有辦法不犯罪﹔我們也活在邪靈的影響下，他們用恐懼，挫折來傷害我們﹔他們讓人上癮，他們傷人的心，他們產生了許多的問題。但是當我們接受了耶穌基督之后，上帝把他的靈放在我們裡面，摧毀了邪靈的能力，除去了這一切捆綁的權勢。

我們必須要選擇如何過我們的生活﹔我們剛剛看到的這個故事，當時以色列的百姓取得了極大的勝利，上帝幫助他們打敗敵人，每天供應他們，保護他們，他們每一天都活在上帝的祝福之中，但是人們還是抱怨。他們為什麼會抱怨呢？因為他們有苦毒。凡是在我們心裡的，總是會顯現出來的。當人們受壓時，就會發出苦毒的埋怨。當苦毒進入到我們心裡，一有壓力就會流露出來，抱怨，批評，說消極的話。

當時他們就埋怨摩西，摩西隻是想要幫助他們。他們也埋怨上帝，人們 說還不如回到埃及那個被捆綁的地方更好，他們完全忘記了上帝所供應他們的。所以人們的心腐敗了，他們看不見上帝是何等的愛他們，他們看不見上帝與他們同在，他們的眼睛看不見上帝的美好，在他們裡面就有苦毒，埋怨，不願意原諒。

他們在埃及曾被大大的傷害過，上帝也曾指示他們如何依靠神。上帝的意願是拯救以色列的百姓，由奴隸成為神的兒子，從受害者的身份變成得勝者的身份。當人們苦毒抱怨的時候，就會釋放仇敵的權勢在身上。他們埋怨的時候，蛇就進來咬他們﹔要知道，蛇總是在曠野裡，以色列的百姓是被上帝保護的，蛇是不能傷他們的。

聖經告訴我們，蛇就是邪靈的寫照﹔耶穌說賜給我們權柄勝過一切的蛇蠍毒虫，因此耶穌要我們勝過一切邪靈的權勢。當人們埋怨，悖逆，當他們的心轉離神的時候，他們就開始做錯事，蛇就不再被限制，蛇就進入營地中，開始咬人，開始咬的人躺下來，立刻感到被蛇咬的疼痛，他們用仗擊蛇，但是沒有用，還是有很多人被咬后死亡。

當他們被蛇咬的時候，會有兩種元素注進身體裡，通過兩種不同的方式發生作用。第一種是，癱瘓你的系統，所有的神經系統全部癱瘓，人們因此死亡，這是非常痛苦的死亡方式。第二種是，蛇吃你的肉，你的身體會被感染中毒，然后死亡。所以被蛇咬總是非常致命的。

新約中耶穌遇見許多人，他們的生命被邪靈控制﹔因為他們違反了上帝的律法，他們可能有拜偶像，交鬼，性犯罪，酗酒，上癮的問題等等，這些問題讓邪靈有空間進入他們的生命攻擊他們。但是耶穌來是釋放人得自由。所以當人們被蛇咬，他們就想原來都沒有蛇，但是當我們埋怨神，埋怨摩西的時候，蛇就來咬我們了。非常明顯就是罪的問題。

所以在這個故事的圖畫裡，可以看見三件事情的連結關系，就是蛇，罪，死亡。我們犯罪了，就給撒旦空間進入到生命中，而且罪的后果就是死亡。長期來講是身體的死亡，短期則是與神隔絕。當人們憤怒的時候，就像心中的毒藥，當有人陷在情欲裡面時，就像心裡有毒藥。當人們被仇恨抓住，也是心裡的毒藥。而且沒有任何的解救之道。

可以想象當時蛇可以隨時進來咬人，這是非常恐懼的，而且沒有解藥。聖經非常明確，對罪的解救隻有一個方法，對付邪靈隻有一個方法，但大部分人都不知道是什麼。當人們跟罪有關的時候，問題就出來了，他們就開始呼求神，呼求摩西幫助他們。求摩西禱告將蛇挪走。上帝聽到摩西的禱告，摩西太有恩典了，他們每一天都不斷的批評摩西，可是蛇咬了他們之后，他們又對摩西說抱歉。摩西大可以說“這是你們應得的。”但是他沒有，他為人禱告，他對人有神的心。

上帝給摩西一個很有趣的指示，他說制一個銅蛇，而且高高挂在一個杆子上面，每次有人被蛇咬，不管在哪裡，你要知道你必須要做一件事，否則你一定死，因為毒素已經開始起作用。這個唯一的解救之道就是找到銅蛇。

你可以想象有人被蛇咬后一定很驚慌，無法走動，隻有一件事能救他們，就是尋找銅蛇，而且要看著它。當人被咬后，隻有很短的時間，他們會非常努力的尋找銅蛇，聖經說你要仰望銅蛇，眼睛要注視著它，心也要跟著它，銅蛇的權能就會臨到你身上，上帝的權能就釋放你。

我們的確需要花一點時間定睛注視著銅蛇，但是上帝的大能就會臨到你。可以想象如果你被蛇咬，感到痛，你會做什麼？你會尋找那個銅蛇，定睛在銅蛇上，不讓人擋住你的視線。然后所有毒素都走了，疼痛也消失了。感謝神，你的權勢釋放了。

你要知道，銅蛇本身是沒有權能的，它是你信心的焦點所在，這是上帝要他們了解的。罪進入世界因為這個蛇，有一天耶穌會來，而且他會被挂在十字架上。民數記裡記載的是要在幾百年后在耶穌身上應驗的預言。上帝早就預知會發生的事情，因此主耶穌來到世上，並為我們死在十字架上的時候，這是沒有發生過的事情。

當他死在十字架上，罪的權勢就被打破了，蛇的權勢被打破了，死亡的權勢也被打破了。歌羅西書第二章14，15節，當耶穌死在十字架上，他取消了我們一切的罪狀，解除了仇敵魔鬼的武裝。上帝讓他們知道，就像摩西舉起銅蛇一樣，有一天耶穌會在十字架上，每一個明白罪會導致死亡的人，當你注視耶穌的時候，心中對他有信心，你的罪就會被赦免，你就會得救。

神如此愛世人，他將他的獨生子賜給人，為我們死在十字架上，隻要相信他是為我的罪而死的，而且他三天后復活，勝過了罪的權勢，死亡的權勢，我們因此得釋放。哈利路亞！

由苦毒中得自由

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我們看出埃及記第十五章，上一堂我們也講的是這一部書，不同的故事講的都是同一位主角，就是耶穌基督。我們看出埃及記第十五章22至26節，“摩西領以色列人從紅海往前行，到了書珥的曠野，在曠野走了三天，找不著水。到了瑪拉，不能喝那裡的水，因為水苦，所以那地名叫瑪拉。百姓就向摩西發怨言，說，我們喝什麼呢？摩西呼求耶和華，耶和華指示他一棵樹。他把樹丟在水裡，水就變甜了。耶和華在那裡為他們定了律例，典章，在那裡試驗他們﹔又說，你若留意聽耶和華你神的話，又行我眼中看為正的事，留心聽我的誡命，守我一切的律例，我就不將所加於埃及人的疾病加在你身上，因為我耶和華是醫治你的。”

這個故事講到苦水變甜，我要講到苦的根源。有一次我在新加坡，有一個青年呼召的時候出來﹔他有一個肩膀非常的疼痛，因為有知識的言語，上帝讓我看到他的疼痛，他就出來了。可是我感覺到他心中對他父親有苦毒，他真正的問題不是身體的疼痛，而是心裡有這個疼痛的靈。我就問他，“你跟你爸爸相處的如何？”他回答說，“我愛我的爸爸。”我再次聽主的聲音，就再問他，“你爸爸是不是常常不在家？你生命中重要的日子他都不在。你后來就開始對他生氣苦毒了。”他低下頭說，“真的是這樣。”

你的苦毒在你生命中打開門，讓疾病的靈可以進來。你身體生病是因為你心裡先病了，而你是有能力決定不讓心裡生病的。你可以選擇饒恕，可以讓環境帶下來的是恩典而不是論斷。他做了很簡單的禱告，饒恕他的父親，命令那個軟弱疾病的靈出去，他立刻得釋放。之后他跟我講，其實不光是肩膀疼，全身都在疼，現在所有的疼痛都不見了。前一個星期醫生還跟他講脊椎很僵直，他才四十歲就不能彎腰了。現在他自由了。

這個年輕人有威脅到他生命的疾病，可是源頭是這個疾病的靈，真正的根源是他心中帶著的苦毒。當他處理了苦毒，來到耶穌基督十架前饒恕，他自己就得到釋放和自由。

我們再看出埃及記第十五章的故事，這是舊約的故事，這裡的話讓我們看到屬靈的真理。有時屬靈的真理不是那麼容易看懂的，你很難用話去表述。在整個舊約中，就有上帝介入人事物當中的故事，上帝跟人互動，通過這些互動我們就學到一些東西。

這個故事講到以色列的百姓在埃及做奴隸四百年，他們的生活很艱苦，被人虐待，被人鞭打，曾經有一段時間剛出生的小男孩都被殺死，被逼做奴役，活在非常艱難困苦的生活裡。這樣為奴四百年，每一個人的記憶所及，都是在捆綁底下服侍埃及人。埃及有非常嚴厲的監工，常常鞭打虐待他們，他們的生活非常艱苦，直到上帝拯救他們。

上帝應許他們，他會拯救他們脫離埃及。他用極大的能力拯救他們，拯救他們脫離埃及的捆綁，帶他們進入上帝的應許裡。帶他們離開埃及奴役之地，帶他們進入產業應許之地，那裡有很大的祝福和供應。其實曠野的這段路程很短，上帝的百姓出埃及的這一段故事，也是我們的故事，也是我們的生命。

我們認識上帝之前，我們身在這個世界都做罪的奴隸，不能擺脫罪，沒有能力攔阻它。就像疾病在我們身上一樣，埋怨，苦毒，憤怒，有情欲，有渴望，不斷想傷害我們。每一個生在這世界的人，都是跟上帝隔絕的，成為罪的奴隸。

聖經說埃及人就像在邪靈底下，每一次犯罪都有邪靈的作用。今天很多在座的人，你的生命一直在罪的捆綁底下被邪靈折磨，這邪靈折磨你的思想，情緒，身體，這就是我們接受基督之前的生命。如果你仍在這樣的境況裡，上帝要釋放你得自由。他要赦免你的罪，打破邪靈的權勢，釋放你離開邪靈。你隻要做簡單的決定，就是相信。

我請大家仔細看這個故事，問題在哪裡。那些在奴役當中活了這麼久的人，他們的思想跟奴隸一樣﹔他們離開了埃及，上帝想要他們知道你們現在的身份是兒子了，不再是奴隸了，有慈愛的父，這是供應他們的父。當他們在埃及時，他們過的像奴隸，想的也像奴隸，現在得自由了，是自由人了，可是他們需要選擇像自由人一樣想，他們需要選擇相信自由到底是誰。他們這麼多年在奴役當中，雖然自由了，但覺得自己還是奴役，他們思想像奴役，反應像奴役。

任何基督徒都是這樣，我們活在罪的奴役當中，耶穌來釋放我們得自由﹔所以生命的靈進到我們的生命，我們成為上帝的兒女。可是我們的思想生活還像奴隸一樣，這全在乎你心中是如何想的。問題就在這裡，這些人的心中是苦毒的，上帝要向他們顯明自己他不單是拯救的主，也是要醫治他們的主。

如果你觀察人時間夠久的話，他們會顯明他們的想法。我們來看這些人，他們是怎麼做的。他們在曠野走了三天，找不到水。沒有水，渴了，就想哪裡有下一個供應站呢？我們看27節這裡，當這一切結束后，“他們到了以琳，在那裡有十二股水泉，七十棵棕樹，他們就在那裡的水邊安營。”

我們先看整個的情況后，再看苦毒。上帝拯救他們脫離了埃及，他供應他們，這裡有泉源，有棕樹，從上帝來看，他是慈愛的父。可是從以色列的百姓來看，他們看不見供應，看不見上帝對他們的應許，看不見那裡有水，有休息的地方，他們隻看到現在的環境。與上帝同行的路，就是信心的路，這條路相信上帝是美善的，上帝一直是美好的﹔可能會有不好的經歷，但上帝是美好的。他愛我，他供應我。

當他們在走的時候，沒有水，他們是怎麼想的？“我們還是奴隸，我們還在受苦，上帝不關心我們。”然后找到水的時候，喝了一口，苦的，他們很失望。他們不了解上帝的供應就在前面，很快就要到了。可是在到達之前，這裡看起來很苦。光看環境，好像上帝遺忘他們了，好像還在埃及受苦，要死了。

他們心裡的苦毒出來了，不要從眼睛看生命，而要從心裡來看生命。心裡的東西，會影響你看世界的眼光。他們經歷四百年的奴役，心中仍對這樣的奴役帶著苦毒。當他們活在奴役中的時候，他們活在缺乏裡，活在受苦裡，活在折磨中，活在沒有盼望裡。現在得釋放了，有慈愛的父滿足他們一切的需要。但他也有計劃，不單隻滿足他們的需要，也要醫治他們。如果要得地為業，你需要改變想法，不可以再像奴隸的想法了。

奴隸是無能為力的﹔當人經歷困難，覺得無能為力的時候，他們開始憤怒，開始懷怨，開始苦毒，因為他們做了論斷，覺得自己沒有用，沒有能力。當一個人覺得自己無能為力時，就會變得苦毒，對一切發生的事開始憤怒苦毒。當我們得釋放跟隨耶穌，我們有選擇的權利，我們可以選擇如何回應生命。你在困難時怎麼回應就顯明你心裡的境況。你口中說出的話就顯明你心裡的境況。

我們看以色列人如何做，他們向摩西發怨言。他們生氣，埋怨，苦毒，就開始發怨言了。當人心中有苦毒的時候，之所以苦毒是因為覺得無力﹔壞事發生，傷害，憤怒，埋怨，苦毒，心中酸澀，感覺無力。他們在埃及的時候是做奴隸的，現在跟隨主，他們能夠選擇，選擇相信上帝的美善和供應的能力，或者選擇相信自己無力，上帝是敵對他們的。

他們選擇相信上帝是好的，慷慨的，還是選擇相信上帝是邪惡，讓他們受苦的。當我們面對困難的時候，就把你心中所想的帶出來了。苦毒會是怎樣的？我讓大家看一些苦毒的征兆，每一棵樹都會結果子，苦毒是在心中的根，都是用憤怒，懷恨，論斷來喂養的，都是用不信來喂養的。有些記號是這樣的：

1）抱怨。當一個人在抱怨的時候，他們就是缺乏的，不相信上帝是偉大的，會供應他的。他們抱怨是因為有些東西得不到。

2）怪罪別人。苦毒會從臉上看出來的，特別越老的人越容易顯出來。心中喜樂的，臉上都喜樂。心中苦毒的，臉上就很酸苦，整個人會縮起來。上帝沒有造我們苦毒，苦毒會在生命中顯出來。借著我們的面容，我們說出的話顯出來。

3）不會感恩。不是說，“感謝上帝供應我們，我們脫離那裡了。”而是說，“為什麼會發生這個。”隻要是苦毒的人就不會感謝，他們想要更多，越來越多。

4）不能慶祝別人的成功。別人可能高興的說，“我剛剛升職了，加薪了。”如果心是自由的人會說，“太棒了，恭喜你。”如果心裡有苦毒的人會說，“為什麼是他，我不喜歡這個人。為什麼不是我。”注意在浪子的故事裡，哥哥不肯進來跟他們一起慶祝，因為他苦毒，對自己所有的不會感恩，不能慶祝他失去的弟弟回來了。苦毒在他臉上表示出來，他憤怒。苦毒的人是很容易生氣的。

我曾經跟一個人談話，我說你呼召的時候出來，他說“我生氣。”我說“你對誰生氣？”“每一個人。”我記得聖經上講，別跟生氣的人在一起，不然你也會生氣。因為憤怒的人開始要求別人。你開頭對誰生氣，你從一個人開始生氣，就一直生氣下去。因為第一個生氣沒有處理，它就成為苦毒的根源，他就對每一個人都生氣了。

我就問他幾個問題，聖靈引導我所問的問題。因為我跟他講了很久，我問他，“你對誰生氣?”他說“不知道，對每一個人都生氣。”我說，“總有個起頭，你是否對你的父母生氣。”“對。”“你是家中的老大嗎？”“是的，我是。”“你是非婚生子嗎？”“是的，我是。”“啊，我們知道發生什麼了。”因為你出生的情況，讓你有很深的被拒絕感。你的憤怒是因為你裡面的苦毒流露出來了，你不斷的要求，不能感恩，不能感激，這些在你生命中發生的事情，你都忘記對誰生氣了，所以就對每一個人都生氣。你會生病的，你的生活會一塌糊涂。我說你要悔改，處理苦毒的根。因此苦毒的根會在人的生命中結出果子來。

另外一點關於苦毒就是人會論斷。那個浪子的哥哥對他爸爸說，你從來沒有給我開過派對。苦毒的人會論斷，這是從他們心裡生出來的，苦毒的人努力要爭權，苦毒的人不斷經歷失敗的循環。這些人都是苦毒的，在他們的生命中就顯出來了﹔這樣的苦毒已經是很多年了，他們已經從埃及出來了，但憤怒，苦毒，懷怨還在心裡，隻要有一次的挫折，就全部出來了。當他們稍微有點缺乏，稍微經歷困難的時候，不是相信上帝是美善的，會幫助我﹔不是選擇相信神，他們選擇苦毒，開始抱怨。

我們也是這樣，上帝希望我們的心沒有苦毒﹔苦毒讓聖靈擔憂，聖靈是非常施恩的，他是饒恕的主，聖經說不要使他擔憂，不要讓上帝的靈擔憂﹔因著你心裡留著埋怨，不饒恕，苦毒，聖靈就會擔憂。你要溫柔，恩慈，饒恕，這是上帝造你的樣式。你注意，當一個人抱怨，就顯明裡面的苦毒。

當你面對困難該如何回應？摩西沒有試著懇求他們，也沒有試著解決問題，他問上帝，“神，這樣苦毒的解答是什麼？”上帝向他顯明一些事情，上帝也想向你顯明一些事情，是否向他請求就是你的事情了。上帝已經供應好醫治這樣的苦毒了，不光是將來提供他們水泉的地方，也要醫治他們苦毒的根源，已經提供他們醫治的解答了。

當摩西呼求，上帝讓他看到一棵樹，這棵樹一直在那裡長了很久了，可是他不知道的是，那棵樹可以醫治苦水。當他將樹丟進水裡，這苦水變甜了。上帝顯明自己是醫治的主，這讓我們看見一幅圖畫，我們看見耶穌的十字架。幾百年后，耶穌死在十字架上﹔他不是在埋怨，苦毒，憤怒中死亡，他顯示被聖靈充滿的樣式。他饒恕，饒恕，饒恕。

上帝希望你明白這一點﹔當我們在生命中遇到困難，發現自己有苦毒，憤怒，來到耶穌基督的十字架，十字架打破罪的權勢﹔耶穌在十字架上 打破了罪的權勢，在十字架上他打破咒詛，打破所有邪靈的權勢，他死裡復活，他彰顯得勝的生活。

當你來到耶穌面前，你來到同樣的十字架，你要做基督徒，就是相信耶穌在十字架上所做的，在我們生命中有效，為我而死，代表我﹔當他死，我跟他同死，他埋葬，我跟他同埋，他復活，我跟他一起復活。我需要將我的懷恨，埋怨，苦毒全部帶到十字架上，釘死它。

要承認心裡的罪，轉離罪，相信上帝可以釋放我得自由。當我轉離苦毒，我需要放開我裡面敵對的人，我需要施恩饒恕人。當人苦毒，他們就論斷，他們無力，他們是受害者，就不斷要求“你欠我的。”上帝希望我們學習不一樣的方法，帶到十字架來，承認它，饒恕人。

耶穌為我們的罪死在十字架上，他為我們做榜樣怎樣處理罪，饒恕，饒恕，饒恕。壞事情發生，你感覺情緒要冒出來了，饒恕他。你可以帶出恩典，也可以是論斷﹔你要成為甜美的人還是苦毒的人？你的生命是酸的還是甜的？甜美的 是饒恕的，施恩的，慈愛的，恩慈的，有溫柔的心，這就是你在基督裡新造的人。你不要再活在過去的方式裡，照過去的心態去活。如果有人讓我生氣，我就懷怨，憤怒﹔不，我是新造的人，我把十字架帶進這裡面，代表我放開，我饒恕，我祝福，我釋放。

上帝讓他們看見一棵樹，當他把樹，也就是十架，帶進苦水裡，苦水變甜了。每一個人都要做決定，你要怎麼回應生命中的困境？有些人一直活在過去發生的埋怨，憤怒，苦毒裡。它在你一生好像苦水一樣，一直讓聖靈擔憂，限制它在你跟人的關系中長出苦的果子來。

你可以作出選擇，相信我是新造的人﹔我已經不再是苦毒的奴隸了，我不要讓苦毒來掌管我的生命，我不要憤怒掌管我的生命，不要讓仇恨掌管我的生命。我是新造的人，我是饒恕人的人，我在環境中釋放恩典，我選擇愛人而不是恨人，饒恕人不是論斷人，施恩典而不是苦毒，這是我要過的生活。每一次你這樣決定，你就把十字架放進苦水裡了。

每一個人都會在生命中碰到困難，都會碰到痛苦的情況﹔人會讓你失望，壞事發生，生命是會碰到困難，每一個人都不能避免。想想耶穌，他就是榜樣，他被人背叛，遭拒絕，被人輕視，所有朋友都拋棄他了，他沒有反應出來， 他完全施恩典，不苦毒。我們可以想象耶穌可以這樣說，“我受夠了地上這些人了，我是放棄了天堂的寶座來到這裡的，我生在馬槽裡，身邊都是動物﹔我爸爸媽媽窮到連一個像樣的房子都沒有，隻有羊在我身邊﹔之后那些人又想殺我，后來我們又逃命，搬到別的國家去，后來又回來。我這一生別人都恨我，根本不喜歡我。我醫治病人，趕鬼，他們竟然釘死我。我的朋友，我跟他們分享，可是他們偷光了我的錢，還把我賣給敵人。我的朋友全都離開了，他們鞭打我。我真的受夠這一切了，讓你們死在這裡算了。”

耶穌沒有這樣，他教我們怎樣處理不公義，怎麼面對背叛，不恩慈，嚴酷，誣告。你選擇論斷，還是選擇饒恕，就是變得苦毒還是變得甜美。我們作出的選擇都是有后果的，在結束前我要讓你知道，那些沒有放開苦毒擁抱恩典的人，他們沒有領受上帝為他們所預備的。苦毒會偷走你的未來，苦毒會偷走上帝在你生命中的祝福，你不需要苦毒，是你選擇苦毒的。再說一次，你不需要苦毒，之所以苦毒是你自己選擇苦毒的。

這個苦毒是有代價的，它會影響你的人際關系﹔婚姻，兒女，會從一代傳到下一代，偷走上帝的祝福。聖經說，不要虧缺上帝的恩典，讓苦毒進到你的生命。今天在這裡的人，有人曾經經歷過很痛苦的情況，家中的問題，虐待的問題，你不用一直苦毒下去，憤怒下去，被不饒恕折磨。你可以做決定饒恕放開它，開始施恩。

你可以選擇活的像天父的兒女一樣，或者活的像一個無力的奴隸。無力的奴隸才會苦毒，上帝的兒女是甜美的，你選擇怎麼活。上帝已經確定你是他的兒女了，他已經為你供應一切了，但你還不相信，仍然活在奴役的苦毒裡。這是我們心裡如何相信的問題，我相信上帝今天要釋放很多人自由，你在埋怨，憤怒，苦毒裡掙扎，你一直放在心裡。上帝說放開它，放開它。

拿那棵樹放進苦水裡，能夠得到醫治變為甜美﹔把問題帶到十字架前，上帝有能力改變你，之后你就會像約瑟一樣。約瑟是那將苦水變甜的人，他的兄弟背叛他，將他賣了當奴隸，他被人誣告，在牢裡受苦。當他從另一邊出來，上帝興起他。

就像南非的曼德拉一樣，他在牢裡住了二十五年，當他出來，他選擇饒恕。這麼多年，他選擇饒恕。當他出來，他被提升做全國的領袖，是因為他的成就嗎？不，是因為他的品格。當他有能力憤怒苦毒，可以報復當初傷害他的人的時候，他說“不，我願意饒恕。”他在整個國家開啟了和好的運動。大家公認他是南非最偉大的領袖，因為他跟約瑟一樣。

約瑟從牢裡出來，當他到了權位之地，看見他的哥哥們，他說，“不要生氣，不用怪自己，也不是你們要把我送到這裡來的，我看見上帝的手，讓我成為一個偉大的人，我看見上帝使用這一切，讓我成為一個更好的人。不用生自己的氣，我也不生你們的氣，上帝已經賜福我了。”

聖經中一個一個的故事，這些人做了選擇，有些人變得苦毒，失掉自己的命定﹔有人選擇擁抱十字架，饒恕，經歷上帝的恩惠。我隻有一個問題，你會怎樣做？在你心裡有什麼？苦毒還是甜美？論斷還是饒恕？不論你做什麼，都會在生命中顯露出來。就在今天作出決定，你要挪去毒根的論斷，饒恕，讓上帝釋放你。你不再是奴隸了，你要活的像上帝的兒子。

對那些不配的人施恩，愛人，饒恕他們，因為我們的父是這樣的。這是你的選擇。有些人給予是想要得回什麼，連不信主的人都會這樣做。我現在選擇給予，是因為我慷慨，就像我的父親一樣﹔他不要回報，他說我就是這樣的人，我喜歡饒恕，因為我就是這樣。活出新的人，經歷神的祝福。阿門！

尊榮你的父親母親

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請大家翻開聖經瑪拉基書，這是舊約中最后一本書。等到上帝運行，耶穌來到這世界，這中間有約四百年沉靜的時間，上帝給他們這樣的應許。第5，6節說，“看哪，耶和華大而可畏之日未到以前，我必差遣先知以利亞到你們那裡去。他必使父親的心轉向兒女，兒女的心轉向父親，免得我來咒詛遍地。”上帝在表達他的關切，他先知性的顯明在末世的日子會是如何。他顯明在耶穌回來之前，在地上存在的最關切的問題就是家庭關系的破裂。

家庭是我們社會的根基，社會要建立在剛強的家庭之上，剛強的婚姻，剛強的關系。上帝的心意是希望家庭都是健康的，上帝的心意是讓父母親顯明天父對這世界的心。這裡描述到家庭的破裂，不管在世界哪個角落，到處都是這樣的，最大的問題就在家庭裡﹔夫妻關系的破裂，親子關系的破裂﹔家原來是充滿喜樂，愛，最美好的地方，但很多時侯你看到的是問題，痛苦和毀滅。這影響到孩子長大的情況，這個問題一代代倍增。

上帝顯明問題的原因在哪裡，問題的根源在心裡。心就決定你這一生的境況，我們以為一生都是有大腦意念來決定，很多人試著用意念來做。聖經告訴我們，我們一生的果效是從心裡面流露出來的。箴言第四章23節講，“你要保守你心，勝過保守一切。因為一生的果效，是由心發出。”當我們講到心，講的是你靈和魂的交接點，講的不是頭腦，講的是那人的內在信念系統。聖經說你需要轉化你的心，換句話說，那個心已經朝著錯誤的方向，現在它需要轉過來了。如果不使心轉向，就沒有愛和醫治的流露，可能就會變得很尷尬困難，即使你想表現愛，都會是一種非常奇怪的方式。

上帝最關切的不是你外在的表現，外在的情況，而是在你心。你外面可能看起來很好，但是心卻不對了。他在這裡說，“他必使父親的心轉向兒女，兒女的心轉向父親”，這是雙方的轉向。要讓父母轉向兒女，也要讓兒女轉向父母。如果不發生的話，結果就會是咒詛遍滿地面。當家庭破碎，父母離婚，兒女背叛，生命因為憤怒苦毒而扭曲，這不叫祝福，這叫咒詛，隻要有咒詛就有邪靈在運行。上帝要帶我們進入祝福，都要從心開始，上帝能夠改變你的心﹔改變你所相信的，你的生命就改變，你一生的果效是從心發出的。

當我們在婚姻問題輔導人時，發現很多人都有同樣的情況，就是跟父母之間有一些沒有處理的沖突，這些問題就帶進了他們婚姻裡。一開始都有很大的期待，非常浪漫，充滿愛意，而一段時間之后發現原來期待的沒有發生，因為他們原生家庭沒有解決的沖突帶進了婚姻裡。任何人結婚之前，他們需要解決心中對自己父母的問題。

我們來看以弗所書第六章，它講到作為一個信徒生命應該怎麼過。2，3節說，“要孝敬父母，使你得福，在世長壽。這是第一條帶應許的誡命。你們作父親的，不要惹兒女的氣，隻要照著主的教訓和警戒，養育他們。”注意這裡有原則，也有應許。上帝說孝敬，你要看重孝敬你的父母，因為這個后面帶著應許。這是第一條帶應許的誡命，代表在上帝的眼中這太重要了。他特別把應許加在上面。

應許就是：如果我孝敬父母，我能夠長壽而且在世得福。換句話說，孝敬父母會影響我的健康，也影響我的生命和感情。反過來也同樣，如果你不孝敬父母，這樣帶出的你的生命的結果就是健康出問題，在你的生命中會有各樣的問題發生。如果你看不清問題的根源，不知道為什麼會有問題。

有一次我為一位年輕人禱告，他身體上有很大的疼痛，所有的關節都痛，他的脊椎都僵直了﹔醫生說再有幾年他可能都不能彎腰了。他有很嚴重的健康問題。我尋求主，主就告訴我，他身上有疾病軟弱的靈，邪靈在他身上造成的疾病，而問題的根源是他對他父親的苦毒。當這個年輕人悔改饒恕自己的父親，我們禱告他從邪靈中釋放，他立刻得到醫治，完全沒有痛，可以很自在的行動了。邪靈偷走他的健康，因為他心裡一直對父親有著苦毒。他愛不愛他的爸爸？愛，他真的愛。問題是他裡面有沒有解決的沖突，他心裡面的反應流露出來，就是論斷他爸爸沒有做好的事情。

我還記得另外一對年輕人，他們有流產的問題。每一次流產就禱告求上帝來醫治，已經是第五次流產了，他們請我去為他們禱告。當我禱告的時候，我感覺到主告訴我，每一個流掉的都是男孩，她跟她的爸爸之間有問題。我私下跟這個姐妹談，她真的每一個流掉的都是男孩。我問她，“你跟你爸爸怎麼樣呢？”她馬上說，“我愛他。”在她的意識中她是愛他的，可是我們再問幾個問題，發現她對自己的爸爸有很深的苦毒，她裡面有內在誓言，“我絕對不要生男孩。”這是一個咒詛在她身上運行，讓她沒法順利生下男嬰。你心裡的境況就決定了你生命的限制在哪裡。如果你心裡許下了這樣的誓言，我絕不要生男孩，你身體的限制就是由你的心來決定的。

上帝在他的話語裡很清楚的說“孝敬父母是有應許的。”孝敬是什麼意思？會有什麼樣的情況？如果不孝敬會有什麼樣的后果呢？舊約中孝敬的意思是重量，把重量放在上面。跟榮耀是同樣的一個詞，當我們說上帝是榮耀的，代表他的分量很大，非常扎實。所以舊約裡孝敬就是看重有極大分量的東西，加添他的價值。

新約中是另外一個詞，代表為一個人立價格，你選擇為他定一個價值。我們將這兩個放在一起，就了解了聖經中孝敬的含義，代表你認定父母是有極高價值的，並看重你跟他們之間的關系和溝通，你看重這一切。

怎樣看重孝敬一個人呢？我們會有不同的理由，每一個文化中都有受尊敬的方式。首先，有些人受尊重是因為他們的成就，有些人做了偉大的功績，人們就尊重他們，我們看重他們的價值是因為他們偉大的成就，代表他們做了一些事情我們認為很重要。

第二個讓我們尊敬一個人的理由是因為他們的品格，這個人顯出的正直和勇氣。我們敬重是因為他是一個偉大的人。因為他們勇敢，正直，忍耐，贏得了我們的尊敬。他們配得敬重。

第三種我們敬重人的原因是因為他們的角色，像總統，因為他的職位我們敬重他，因為他的位置是全國最高的政治地位，我們因此敬重他。聖經說，你要敬重在位的人。

三種主要敬重一個人的理由就是因為他的成就，品格，還有就是地位。可是上帝尊重一個人是有不同的理由，跟前面的理由很不一樣，是很重要的理由。上帝尊重一個人是因為人是按照他的樣式所造的，你碰到的每一個人對上帝都是很有價值的，每一個人上帝都在他們身上放了極高的價值，他也顯明出來。

我的這個手表，到底它有沒有價值呢？就看有人願意付多少錢，可能有人說，值一千塊﹔也有人說，夜市買的，十塊錢。他們放了價格在上面，就看它有什麼意義了。我們衡量一個人的價值就是因為他們如何看待他。上帝看我們是有極高價值的，他付的代價是差他的獨生愛子來到世上，為我們舍了生命﹔即使我們還在罪裡面，我們的生命一塌糊涂，很多不好的事情發生，神說你是我極其珍貴的，我可以不看那些錯的東西，我看見的核心是這是按我的形象造的，我看重你們。

尊敬是上帝賜給我們的，是他放在我們身上的價值。耶穌來到世上，行在人的當中，為我們舍掉生命，為我們顯明什麼是愛。上帝是看重人的，隻是因為是人，是按他的形象所造的。我們常用不同的角度看重人，如果他做的好就好，如果他讓我們失望，我們就論斷他，不喜歡他﹔如果品格上有瑕疵，我們就論斷他，不喜歡他﹔如果他的角色沒有扮演好，我們也不喜歡。我們對人有自己的意見，我們按照人的行為來論斷人。

我們再來看看什麼是不尊敬。有些人之所以不敬重孝敬父母，是因為太過沒大沒小，我們太親近他們，不單隻看到好的一面，也看到不好的一面﹔不光看到他們好的品質，也看到他們的破碎，看到憤怒，沒愛心，所有的一切。因為我們所看到的，我們就論斷敵對我們的父母。他們沒有按照我所期待的去做，他們做的是我沒有想到的，我們心裡受傷了。當人受傷，就會有憤怒，憤怒是一種要求，“你欠了我的。”

很多家庭真的是有問題﹔有些朋友的爸爸背叛媽媽，背叛他的婚約，背叛所有的家人，離開自己的妻子。因為這樣的家庭破裂，讓你陷入極大的情緒折磨中。或者父母其中一方很生氣，就會打孩子，虐待你，拋棄你，拒絕你。很多人都有痛苦的經驗，這是要學的功課，別人做的事情你不用負責，但你有權利選擇如何回應，你也能決定怎樣做。你可以選擇輕視，論斷，不孝敬﹔你也可以選擇饒恕和孝敬﹔這是你的選擇，你有能力做這樣的選擇。每一個人做了這樣的選擇就繼續這樣做﹔看你心裡的情況，如果有失望，懷怨，憤怒，你就可能輕視你的父母，論斷他們，用各樣不孝敬的方式對待他們。

孝敬是出於心的問題，這就讓我們了解了，上帝要求我們孝敬父母不是因為他們了不起，他要求我們孝敬他們就如同給他們禮物一樣。他們給了你生命這個禮物，而你的反應就是要給他們孝敬。上帝給了一個特別的應許，如果你孝敬父母，不管他們是怎樣的人，不管他們是不是好父母，隻要你做決定心中有這樣一顆孝敬的心，你就會長壽得福。如果你受到過傷害，可能他們曾經做過很傷害你的事情，你裡面有憤怒懷怨，有論斷敵對他們，這樣的生命是不能得福的。

我聽過很多年輕人這樣說，“我絕不要象我的父親。”你聽見他裡面對他父親的論斷和苦毒，就可以想見他做的很多事情跟他父親一模一樣。就像再一次復制出來一樣，他真的就跟他的父親一樣了。我聽人這樣講過，“我永遠不要像我媽媽。”我說，隻要有時間，你就會變得跟她一樣。有一天你會聽到自己吼跟她一樣，像她罵人一樣罵人，所有你最討厭的事情，你說你最不要的事情，你有一天會做的一模一樣。怎麼會這樣，我怎麼會到這個地步的？我記得那個很大的傷害，還說絕對不要這樣。

怎麼發生的？因為你沒有解決心裡的問題，因為你心裡對父母的論斷，因為你輕視他們，這就會在你生命中產生一個惡性循環。我記得有一個人來找我，他跟他的老板有沖突。我問他“你上一個工作如何呢？”他說，“我跟那個老板也處不好，也離開了。”“那你跟你的小組長相處如何？”“我就是因為這個來見你，我跟他也處不來。”我說，“有沒有一個工作是你做的很開心的？”“我當兵的時候很開心。”“那你跟你的長官相處如何？”“他不喜歡我，一天到晚找我麻煩，我也不喜歡他們。”你就可以看到這個模式。“你在學校如何？”“不是很好，老師老是挑我毛病。我不喜歡他們。”“你跟父母關系如何？”“我爸爸把我趕出家了。他們不是我的親生父母，是我的養父母。”

讓我告訴你問題在哪裡，我也告訴你未來會如何，因為這個模式很清楚。你的問題就在當你被收養，你感覺被拒絕了，你對自己的親生父母帶著憤怒，埋怨和苦毒﹔而真正願意付出代價來養育你的父母親，你卻拒絕他們，把你的憤怒發泄在他們身上﹔你同時不孝敬自己的親生父母和養父母，就顯明在你生命中各處的沖突，這些沖突會一直追著你，直到你解決心裡的問題。你需要認清心裡的問題並且悔改。

我們很快看一下聖經裡的一個故事，撒母耳記下第六章，生命的問題都是跟著你不孝敬父母而來的。這個故事的背景是，它是一個很大復興的故事，國家有了一個新的國王，大衛王登基了，而他的妻子米甲也回到他身邊，他把神的同在，約櫃，帶進城，全國歡慶，每一個人都在那裡。到處是音樂，舞蹈，歡呼，非常美好的一天，有上帝的同在。大衛非常的喜悅，在那裡歡喜跳躍，舞蹈，因為有神的同在。14節，“大衛穿著細麻布的以弗得，在耶和華面前極力跳舞。”

大衛在跳舞，我們來看他的太太米甲，16節說，“耶和華的約櫃進了大衛城的時候，掃羅的女兒米甲從窗戶裡觀看，見大衛王在耶和華面前踴躍跳舞，心裡就輕視他。”兩個人，一個世界，兩種完全不一樣的回應。

為什麼？米甲在大衛年輕的時候非常受他吸引，她是掃羅王的女兒，掃羅討厭大衛，他嫉妒大衛，想要殺了他。他們結婚之后，大衛成為了掃羅王的女婿，掃羅的嫉妒越來越強，他計劃如何殺掉大衛，他派出一群殺手要在床上殺了他。你可以想象派殺手去暗殺自己的女婿，可是他的女兒聽到這個消息后，讓大衛趕緊逃了出去。大衛成為了通緝犯，掃羅派人追殺他，隻要任何人跟大衛做朋友，就把他殺了。大衛像難民一樣逃亡，很多年躲在曠野裡面，受到極大的苦難，一直很害怕。如果你害怕一個人，他們可能背叛你，可能就殺了你。所以大衛非常的困苦。

而米甲的父親掃羅又將她嫁給了另一個人。她愛的是大衛，大衛是她的英雄，是她的夢中情人，而她的父親將她嫁給了另一個男人。她被逼跟另一個人生活，但她的心不愛這個人。大衛和米甲都是被同樣一個人惡劣的對待。當有人惡劣的對待你，你可以用上帝的方式處理，使用敬虔的方式處理這件事，帶進恩典，釋放饒恕，讓自己的心仍然保持在自由的境況。你也可以變得憤怒苦毒，輕看，不尊敬，掃羅的女兒米甲輕看自己的父親，同樣也輕視自己的丈夫。

大衛是一個真正愛上帝的人，他能夠原諒掃羅，他從來沒有舉起手敵對他，他一直很敬重掃羅。而在他生命中最偉大的一天，他們聚集在一起，約櫃進城了，大衛在經歷神，而他的妻子盯著他，心裡充滿了輕視。當大衛回來，20節說，“大衛回家要給眷屬祝福。掃羅的女兒米甲出來迎接他，說，以色列王今日在臣仆的婢女眼前露體，如同一個輕賤人無恥露體一樣，有好大的榮耀阿。”米甲真的好好的罵了大衛一場。

大衛說我為主跳舞，我還要跳更多。他不要因為妻子的苦毒和不敬重而受到脅迫，他不要任何人把他拉下來，他不要任何人拿走他的自由。接下來看23節，“掃羅的女兒米甲，直到死日，沒有生養兒女。”大衛選擇敬重的路，敬重神，敬重掃羅，看重人﹔掃羅不配人敬重的，但大衛敬重他。可是米甲變得很苦毒，輕看自己的父親，輕視自己的丈夫，后果就是：第一，她沒有辦法經歷上帝的作為，沒有辦法進入上帝的祝福，因為她心裡的情況。第二，婚姻無法生養。婚姻中沒有生命，沒有喜樂，沒有愛。所有的愛都被她的苦毒，論斷和不尊敬給掩蓋了。第三，她沒有兒女。在希伯來文化當中，這是很羞辱的事，就像她女人的身份失敗了一樣。后來也看到她收養了別人的孩子，這孩子也被處死了。兩種后果，一個是尊重人的，一個是不尊重人的。

我們再看幾處經文，申命記第二十七章16節，“輕慢父母的，必受咒詛。”另外一處在箴言說“輕視父親嘲笑母親的眼目，要被烏鴉啄去。”當你不孝敬父母，邪靈就有權利進入我們的生命折磨我們。第二處經文說的烏鴉講的就是邪靈，它能啄去你的眼睛。這就是在生命戰場上失敗跌倒的人最后的結局。這裡講到我們如果不孝敬父母，就沒有能力看清，邪靈會讓我們盲目。另外一處在箴言第二十章20節，“咒罵父母的，他的燈必滅，變為漆黑的黑暗。”這裡講到的燈就是你內在的生命，當你咒詛或者對父母講一些不好的話，黑暗會充滿你的生命讓你無法看清。

這些都是很嚴重的經文，我們應該怎麼辦呢？

第一，上帝希望你有不一樣的生活，他給你的是生命﹔上帝明白破碎家庭的問題，他明白人經歷的憂傷和痛苦﹔耶穌來，他的心意就是要醫治傷心的人。上帝第一樣要給我們的就是，你隻要轉向他，承認問題不在你的父母，家人或者發生的這些事，問題在你的心裡面，他應許賜給你一顆全新的心，將我的靈放在你裡面，你現在進入一個新的家庭，上帝是你的父親，你沒有任何缺乏。

上帝希望我們明白，自然的家庭是有限制的，人是有罪的，所以痛苦傷害一定會有。憂傷失望是生命的一部分。但是我們不用這樣過活，不用活在痛苦憂傷裡面，耶穌有更美的東西要給我們﹔他說眼目不要看自然的家庭，也不要看自然的環境，你要仰望，這位神是愛你的，天上的父是這樣完全的愛你，天上的神他歡迎你，愛你，擁抱你，為你供應，永不離開你，不斷來接觸你，他在你這一生都在接觸你。

耶穌說，凡接待他的人，相信他的人，因他為我們的罪死在十字架上，得勝復活。凡相信耶穌基督的，他賜他們權柄讓他們做上帝的兒女。不管我們的家庭如何，上帝要把你放在他的家裡，他要給你新的開始，新的身份，成為永生神的兒女。

我們都有自己的原生家庭，但現在是更大家庭的一份子﹔神是我們的父，他供應我們一切的需要﹔他一直愛我們，一直這樣的恩慈，一直是這樣的溫柔，他知道怎樣醫治你的心。我們第一步是要進到上帝的家，相信耶穌基督。

第二，上帝要你改變生活的方式。不光是到前面來接受耶穌而已，是要超過這些，要改變你的心，改變生命，改變你跟人相處的方式。上帝說，“現在你改變了，我把我的信心放在你裡面，你不用像以前那樣憤怒，苦毒，扭曲的生活。你要恩慈，因為我是恩慈的，我對每一個人恩慈。不是光對好人，做對的事情的人才恩慈，這不是在你原生的家庭，這是新的家庭，我一直都恩慈。”“那麼即使我做了很壞的事情也是嗎？”“是的，我不改變，不是因為你日子不順我就改變，我一直都是恩慈的。你要溫柔，不用嚴厲，因為我就是這樣。”

神是非常溫柔的神，“如果我們把事情搞砸了，你不會吼我，不會罵我，不會懲罰我嗎？”“不會，我不會懲罰，我會非常溫柔的待你，我希望找到方式把你帶回來。恩慈，溫柔，彼此饒恕，我要你學習饒恕人，不是不尊重或者論斷他們，就像我饒恕你一樣。”上帝說，“我要你重新看你的家人，重新看你的爸爸媽媽﹔如果你心裡有憤怒苦毒，你覺得他們讓你失望，你覺得他們辜負你，他們可能真的很失敗，辜負了你，確實會發生的，可是你不知道他們也是破碎，所以才這樣做。現在你在新的家庭了，新的家庭裡是尊敬人的。”

你說，“他們真的很傷我啊。”神說，“我知道，你做的也傷我，但我饒恕你了。就如同我饒恕你一般，你需要饒恕他們。現在我要你改變你的心，我要你看見他們，沒有他們你不可能進到這個世界，也沒有可能有永生的生命﹔即使他們所有的事情都沒有做對，我要你仍然看重尊敬他們，是他們把你帶進這個世界。我要你看重他們，因為我看重他們﹔他們對我一樣也是特別的，我要你孝敬他們，給他們這個孝敬的禮物。”

你說，“可是他們不配呀，我爸爸做了這麼可怕的事情，拋棄我們。”上帝說，“我知道，可是你很憤怒，你需要饒恕，就如同我饒恕你一樣。因為我看重你，我要你做的，是當你得饒恕，你就會開始為他們禱告﹔當你為他們禱告，你的心就開始跟他們連結在一起。你看見上帝為他們安排最好的，他們開始改變。不然不可能為他們禱告，你如果憤怒的話是不可能為他們禱告的。首先你需要原諒，放掉所有的論斷，開始為他們禱告。”

如果你也造成他們的痛苦，我覺得你需要跟他們道歉。你說，“你不了解我爸爸做過什麼，我媽媽是怎麼做的。”神說，“我知道，可是我仍然看見你裡面的憤怒，你做的事真的傷害他，當你論斷拒絕他們，他們可能沒有說什麼，但是他們感受到痛。因為他們是你的父母。這仍然在他們裡面，他們仍然愛你，關心你。”

你說，“可是我的父母把我送給人，我的家庭破碎了。”“仍然一樣，這是新的生活方式，這是用我愛的方式來愛人，我饒恕的方式來饒恕人。你記得你對你媽媽是怎樣的又罵又吼，咒詛她悖逆她，她可能感覺不好，你們兩個可能吼在一起，她也受傷了，你傷害了她 。”

你可以這樣跟她說，“媽，上帝對我說話，他讓我看見我心中很多年都有憤怒和傷害，我真的很抱歉，你願意原諒我嗎？我愛你。”當你這樣做，你要先來到主的面前才能做得到，當你把事情調整對了，找一些方法表達你的恩慈，給他們禮物。我告訴你，愛一定贏，愛一定會贏。

我跟大家講一個小故事，我很驚訝﹔我成為基督徒之前面對了很多的困難，我們有一個女兒送去給人收養，因為她帶來沖突，羞辱，我們就把她送給人藏起來了。我接受基督之后，我真的悔改，相信上帝會恢復我們的女兒，有一天他真的做到了。幾年之后，我們開始跟我們的女兒建立關系，她說，“我希望你來主持我們的婚禮，我去過我自己姐妹的婚禮，好美呀，我希望我也有跟她們一樣美的婚禮。”之所以這麼美是因為有神的同在，因為我的孩子都是基督徒，有神的同在降臨。可是我的女兒不了解，她隻是希望她的婚禮也有這麼好。

我們開始有一個預演，開始確實很難，裡面很緊張，她的養父母在那裡，養父母的家庭也都在，他們都是收養的，一共有三個家庭在那裡，她爸爸和媽媽大概也很難接受﹔我記得預演完之后，我跟主耶穌說，“這真是很難啊。”我走到海灘去，一直流淚，跟耶穌基督說，“主啊，請你幫助我，我能做什麼呢？我能說什麼呢？”第二天早上醒來，主就把一些話放在我心裡。有些時候上帝會立刻回應，我早上醒來上帝就把答案給我。

我們來到婚禮，她從紅毯走過來，她的養父陪著她，她的家人坐在這裡，另一個家庭坐在那裡，而我們的家庭就坐在他們當中﹔氣氛非常緊張，有時候我會聽到靈裡面的一些話，我聽見的是，“他會說什麼？我要聽聽他會講什麼。”她的養父母不希望我主持婚禮，因為他們不是基督徒，也不希望我主持婚禮，可是我的女兒一直堅持。我怎麼做呢？當他們站在我面前，非常緊張，這是她 一生最特別的日子，大家都在等我開口，上帝這樣對我說，“敬重她的父母。”聚會開始之前，我特別跟她父母說，“我要特別感謝你們做的這一切，為了Josephine，謝謝你關心她，給她教育，給她家庭，謝謝你們照顧她接納她，因為你們在她的生命中這麼重要的角色，我要敬重你們。我們沒有權利做任何要求，我們何等感激你容許我們今天能夠來參加。”

整個的氣氛馬上就變了，神的同在降臨，有人開始流淚，上帝開始運行，這可能是我們見過的最美的婚禮。當恩典流露，你最容易感覺到上帝。后面有用餐的時間，我在想不知道會有怎樣的氣氛，不知道我們會坐在哪裡，座位的安排是會告訴你一些信息的。我們去到那兒看看我們會坐在哪裡。我告訴我的女兒這一天你要好好孝敬你的父母，你需要講話感激他們，就像其他婚禮一樣。

當我們到了那裡，發現前面有兩張特別的桌子，沒有誰比誰高，兩邊是平等地位的，一個是她的家人，一個是我們。我立刻看見我女兒站起來說話，她敬重她的養父母教養她長大，她也敬重我們，上帝降臨，在敬重中上帝一定降臨。我的妻子Joy站起來講話，她也對Josephine的媽媽表達她的感激。Josephine的養母站起來說話，她講了一個我們都不知道的事情，她自己的母親給她壓力要她不要收養這個孩子，她必須要反對自己的媽媽來收養這個孩子。她說，每一次她生日的時候，我都感謝生她的母親把她帶進這個世界。上帝的同在降臨，每一個人都開始流淚。我從來沒有參加過婚宴大家哭成這樣的。很神奇，有些人哭出聲音，有人哭成一團。上帝的愛真的充滿那個地方。

我希望你明白一點，除非我們決定孝敬，這一切不可能發生。能夠給人敬重，就帶下祝福。她選擇敬重自己的養父母，也敬重我們，我們也選擇敬重他們，上帝就能自由的運行。這是你要給人的禮物，因為我們是這樣的人，我們是願意敬重人的人，現在我們在更大的家庭－上帝的家庭裡面，敬重是我們願意給人的。

門柱旁的血

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我們看兩三處的聖經，聖經是上帝的話，告訴我們上帝的計劃，它分成兩個部分，舊約和新約。我們先看約翰福音第一章29節，“次日，約翰看見耶穌來到他那裡，就說，看哪，神的羔羊，除去世人罪孽的。”約翰是上帝特別差派准備的一個人，讓國人預備好迎接耶穌的降臨，他的信息就是悔改，離開罪。全國各地都有人來，他在預備這些人領受上帝為他們准備的祝福。有一天當他為人施洗的時候，看見耶穌朝他們這邊走來，上帝對他的心說話，向他顯明耶穌基督是誰，“耶穌基督是神的兒子。”

約翰這位先知這樣說，“看哪，神的羔羊，除去世人罪孽的。”對我們大部分人來說，這根本沒有什麼意思，可是對在場的聽眾，這有極大的重要性。人類一直在掙扎的問題，就是罪的問題。罪違反上帝的律法，就是讓我們的生命沒有上帝，自己做主。罪就是不理上帝，我們自己往前跑﹔罪就是轉離上帝，走我們自己的路﹔罪帶來的是毀滅和死亡。聖經說，罪的工價，它的后果，就是要隔絕，摧毀，死亡。

上帝不希望我們的世界是這樣的，戰爭，暴力，貧窮，犯罪﹔他創造的世界原是美好的地方，他的創造是好的。當罪進入到世界，他創造的人遠離他，整個受造物的動力就改變了，邪靈開始有能力進到世界來，邪靈開始轄制人。亞當犯罪的時候，疾病，死亡，憂傷進入世界，上帝應許他們有一天他會差下一人救贖他們，這人能處理罪的問題。

世界所有的宗教，它們的挑戰都是怎樣面對罪，所有的宗教都了解罪的問題，它們的處理方式都差不多，你需要做點事情。基督信仰是完全不一樣的，你要在神的面前悔罪是最主要的，不是我做什麼，也不是你做什麼，而是耶穌基督為我們所做的。

我們看舊約出埃及記第一章，讓你知道整個的故事。這裡講到上帝的百姓在埃及。11至14節，“於是埃及人派督工的轄制他們，加重擔苦害他們。他們為法老建造兩座積貨城，就是比東和蘭塞。隻是越發苦害他們，他們越發多起來，越發蔓延，埃及人就因以色列人愁煩。埃及人嚴嚴地使以色列人作工，使他們因作苦工覺得命苦，無論是和泥，是做磚，是作田間各樣的工，在一切的工上都嚴嚴地待他們。”

上帝的百姓被困在外地，活在奴役底下。沒有人一生下來就是奴隸的，我們生下來就是自由的，我們渴望自由。但這些人在捆綁底下，在埃及人的重擔底下，埃及人派最嚴厲的督工來，打他們，虐待他們，讓他們覺得非常命苦。他們受苦，被打，被虐待，很努力的工作，沒有后果﹔不能自由經營自己的生命，都在轄制底下，都在悲慘當中，他們受到非常殘酷的對待。

這就是我們看見的圖畫，受罪的轄制也是這樣。當人生在世上，我們都成為罪的奴隸，什麼東西征服了你，你就伏在他底下。罪，苦毒，仇恨，憤怒，這罪影響到每一個人，而在罪的后面就是邪靈。當人生在這世界，都生在罪的轄制下，生命很辛苦，很讓人失望。背叛，困難，挫折，在痛苦中人們想要找到舒緩，他們對不同的東西上癮，成癮也是一個捆綁。他們毒品上癮，毒品就吸走他們的健康和金錢。或者色情上癮，酒精尼古丁上癮，這就是奴役，讓人變得很苦毒。

聖經告訴我們，在埃及后面有不可見的屬靈的世界，埃及人拜很多不同的偶像，各樣事情都有神。真相是，這些人在奴役中，奴役背后的權勢就是邪靈，借著埃及人開始施壓，讓這些人哭泣，求上帝幫助他們。

上帝就派摩西幫助他們，當摩西來了，他跟法老說，“主說，讓我的百姓離開。”法老說，“你的主是誰呀？又不是我的神，我不讓他們離開。”上帝就在埃及地降下災禍，我們來看最后一災。在出埃及記第十二章，3節，“你們吩咐以色列全會眾說，本月初十日，各人要按著父家取羊羔，一家一隻。”5至7節，“要無殘疾，一歲的公羊羔，你們或從綿羊裡取，或從山羊裡取，都可以。要留到本月十四日，在黃昏的時候，以色列全會眾把羊羔宰了。各家要取點血，涂在吃羊羔的房屋左右的門框上和門楣上。”12節，“因為那夜我要巡行埃及地，把埃及地一切頭生的，無論是人是牲畜，都擊殺了，又要敗壞埃及一切的神。我是耶和華。”14節，“你們要記念這日，守為耶和華的節，作為你們世世代代永遠的定例。”22，23節，“拿一把牛膝草，蘸盆裡的血，打在門楣上和左右的門框上。你們誰也不可出自己的房門，直到早晨。因為耶和華要巡行擊殺埃及人，他看見血在門楣上和左右的門框上，就必越過那門，不容滅命的進你們的房屋，擊殺你們。”29至31節，“到了半夜，耶和華把埃及地所有的長子，就是從坐寶座的法老，直到被擄囚在監裡之人的長子，以及一切頭生的牲畜，盡都殺了。法老和一切臣仆，並埃及眾人，夜間都起來了。在埃及有大哀號，無一家不死一個人的。夜間，法老召了摩西，亞倫來，說，起來，連你們帶以色列人，從我民中出去，依你們所說的，去事奉耶和華吧。”

我們第一個看見的是，上帝說他要來審判埃及地所有的神。埃及人拜很多的神，他們拜尼羅河，所以在尼羅河上有瘟疫﹔他們所拜的一切，他們所說的一切神，上帝就一個個審判他們。上帝顯明他的能力大過這些神的能力，這些都是假神，他是唯一的真神。每一次帶下瘟疫，他就讓他們看到這些神無力可為，他顯明你們拜的都是沒有能力的，以色列的神，耶和華，才是真正的神。

每一次摩西來到法老面前，法老剛硬著心，絕不放開他們，埃及人再一次遭殃。每一次的遭殃，法老的心變得非常剛硬苦毒，終於來到最后的一次災殃。你需要明白一點，法老被眾民崇拜如同神一樣，大家也拜他的兒子如同是神，在埃及人的眼中，法老是他們國家很偉大的神，他的兒子也是。上帝說，他給以色列的百姓很清楚的指示，摩西把以色列所有的領袖都聚集了，仔細聽好，再一次的災，上帝要打破埃及的權勢，要打破邪靈的權勢，上帝要照他的話釋放我們。

這是非常重要的事情，會發生在第十四天，你要在羊群中找一隻羊羔。因為埃及人輕看牧羊人，輕看羊群。上帝說我要你拿一隻羊羔，仔細挑選，沒有殘疾，沒有疾病，不可以是瞎眼的，瘸腿的，完美的羊。十四號的黃昏，大概下午三點鐘，將全家帶進家中，殺了這隻羊，把羊的血留在盆裡，拿牛膝草蘸血打在門楣門框上，你們進去，一起吃這隻羊。因為半夜我要殺掉家中所有的長子，所有牲畜的長子，除非他看見這個血，看見羔羊的血，你就得赦免。上帝看見這血，就知道這是我的百姓，血遮蓋他們，他們不會遭害，不會進到家裡。

那一天來了，14號，如果你是長子，你一定會確定這一切都按部就班的做好了，不可以冒險，隻有一次機會。埃及人看到他們，有些人相信，他們也這樣做，他們感到神在以色列人一邊。半夜十二點開始，哭號開始，一家一家，幾百戶家，天使進去把每一家的長子殺了，即使你坐牢了，是長子你都不能幸免。遍地每一個角落，上帝來審判法老這個神，他打破他們屬靈的能力，他打破這個國家后面的權勢，埃及后來再也沒有恢復過來，再也不是以前一樣的興盛大國 ，在這之后，失掉了一切。

死亡使者走過全地，所有涂了血的家庭，都被饒恕了。上帝對他們說，你們要吃這羊羔，預備你們的旅程了，你們要離開捆綁，四百三十年的奴役，今晚結束，准備出門了，今晚奴役結束了。聖經 說，沒有一個離開埃及的人是軟弱的。那個晚上，當他們流出了血，他們憑信心等候，不光是滅命使者來殺人，上帝的靈也運行在當中，所有生命得醫治，沒有一個是軟弱的，他們活在奴役中，活在貧窮裡，沒有一個是軟弱的，神的能力使他們堅強。

上帝說，神的軍隊那晚要離開埃及，埃及人把他們的金銀全給他們了，他們掠奪了埃及，走上了旅程，要進入應許之地。上帝說，我要你每一年的第一個月的十四號這一天，要紀念這個，要獻上逾越節的羔羊，流出它的血來紀念我為你們所做的。他們每一年每一年這樣做。

等到施洗約翰來到的時候，他說，“看哪，神的羔羊。”他們所有人都知道他在講什麼，那是逾越節的羔羊，那個羊的血，拯救我們，醫治我們。這是上帝的羔羊，上帝揀選的，上帝揀選耶穌基督，除去世人的罪孽。他預言你在一千五百年所看見的所有事情，都要象征著這個，這才是真相。

我們來看耶穌基督被釘十字架的事，注意馬太福音第二十七章，我們看到血很重要，因為生命就在血裡面，世界各地的文化都會稍微了解一點這個。那時在全地都有極大的黑暗，46節，“約在申初，耶穌大聲喊著說。”50至53節，“耶穌又大聲喊叫，氣就斷了。忽然殿裡的幔子，從上到下裂為兩半。地也震動。磐石也崩裂。墳墓也開了。已睡聖徒的身體，多有起來的。到耶穌復活以后，他們從墳墓裡出來，進了聖城，向許多人顯現。”

從正午到申初，耶穌來到事工的末了，他的生命不是從他身上拿走，是他自己獻上生命。正午到申初，大概是中午十二點到下午三點的時間，上帝讓全地變得黑暗，就如埃及地全地黑暗一樣。到了申初，耶穌大聲喊著，為什麼聖經要指出這申初的時間？申初是下午三點的時間，在以色列這個時候就是逾越節吃飯的時候，全國各地來參加這個節慶的人，大祭司在這時會帶著羊羔，宰殺它，流出血來。大家沒有留意，上帝逾越節的羔羊，在十字架上獻上自己的生命，在申初，耶穌大聲喊著，將他的靈獻上。

如果你有見過臨死的人，你知道在死前他們不會大聲喊，他們漸漸斷氣。可是耶穌死時，聖經說他大聲的呼喊，極大的呼喊，得勝的呼喊，成了，世界罪得救贖的工成了！他流出了寶血，當上帝樂納這個祭，能力就釋放了。

注意發生的事情，第一，聖殿裡的幔子，從上到下裂為兩半。聖殿的幔子是很厚的，是進入到上帝所在的至聖所的地方，突然聖靈的手把幔子撕開，人們驚訝。第一次他們能夠看見進入到上帝的同在裡。上帝警告他們，我已經開了一條路，讓每一個人進入上帝的同在。

第二個發生的事情是，很大的地震。這裡說連磐石都崩裂了，甚至震開了墳墓。能把墳墓震開是很大的地震了，為什麼會發生？罪的后果就是死，上帝打開墳墓，這些尸體都在不同的腐爛階段﹔骷髏起來了，人不能就這樣離開去清理墳墓，要等到逾越節結束才能開始工作。耶穌自己進到地下最深之處，跟所有掌權的邪靈宣告，我已經勝過你了。第三天，有一次很大的地震，耶穌從死裡復活。

馬太福音第二十七章說很多聖徒的身體也都起來，進入聖城，向許多人顯現。有些人以為死亡就是結束，這不是結束。你要了解，當耶穌死裡復活，很多在墳墓裡的這些人，上帝超自然的重新組合他們的身體，讓他們死裡復活，走出來見他們的神﹔可能是摩西，亞伯拉罕，或者是聖徒，偉大的王等﹔向很多人顯現，真是超現實。上帝向每一個人顯明，他的能力借耶穌的寶血顯現，來赦免你的罪，打破邪靈的權勢，讓你不再受邪靈的轄制。

神把你舉起來，把復活的生命放在你裡面，上帝在顯明復活的生命，不管魔鬼給了我們什麼。因為我相信耶穌所流的血，神的能力的釋放，能改變你的生命。這真是神奇的事情。聖經在歌羅西書第二章14，15節說，當耶穌死在十字架上，流出寶血，他將所有敵對人的罪都挪走了，也卸下那些執政掌權人的權勢，把魔鬼所有的權勢拿走讓你不再受他的轄制。不是我做了什麼，而是基督為我所做的，隻要我相信。

聖經說，上帝讓耶穌基督成為我們的施恩座，因相信他的血。羅馬書第三章25節，上帝讓耶穌成為了我們的挽回祭，因我們相信他的血。如果你犯了罪，耶穌的寶血付了代價﹔如果你失敗了，耶穌的寶血付了代價﹔如果你在現世掙扎，耶穌的寶血救贖你。我們說羔羊的血救贖了我，救贖的意思代表所有的贖金都付清了，當耶穌流出寶血，他付了完全的代價，釋放你自由，救你，饒恕你的罪﹔隻需要一點，就是你轉離罪來相信他。如果你犯罪跌倒，轉向他，相信他，寶血已經付上代價了。

你的生命可能在罪裡掙扎，轉向來相信耶穌為這罪而死，轉離罪，罪一直帶給你憂傷﹔定罪，難過，相信耶穌所做的。有一個很神奇的真理，世上每一個宗教，都要你做一些事情，但基督信仰是耶穌做完了一切，隻要我回應耶穌，隻要我認同他，因我心中的信，他為我所做的一切都是我的了。

你知道洗禮的意思是什麼？我不知道你們這裡是怎麼做，在新約中是把人帶到河邊，把他們放到水裡面再起來。當一個人接受洗禮，這不是一個儀式，這是一個宣告，你心中信心的聲明﹔當我進到耶穌裡，我舊的生命就結束了，他死在十字架上，我跟他一同死亡﹔我認同他，我舊的生活形式已經死了﹔耶穌埋在墳墓裡，當我們進到水裡面施洗，我相信我的生命埋葬了，舊有自私犯罪的生命結束了。從洗禮上來的時候，代表新的生命開始了。

這不是水把你弄濕而已，而是心裡明白相信，我舊的生命結束，跟基督同死，他已經埋葬了。從上帝的眼光來看，我現在相信他，我是新的人了。我現在活在新的生命中，是幸福的生命，跟隨耶穌基督的生命。我還會不會失敗？會，還是會。因為我常常忘記我自己是誰，我們常想到過去的那個人，做過去的事。但我不需要再做了，因為它的權勢被打破了。我認罪悔改，耶穌寶血洗淨我，我可以重新來跟上帝同行。

我們如認我們的罪，他是信實公義的神，必赦免我們的罪，洗淨我們一切的不義。我們行在光中，代表跟上帝敞開，彼此團契，基督的寶血就洗淨我們。這寶血隨時都可以洗淨我們的失敗和罪，我們隻需要相信，在心中相信耶穌所做的就足夠了。

當你進入與上帝同在，你如果相信耶穌所做的足夠了，你就可以坦然的進來。你不相信這就足夠了，你就會感到膽怯。上帝要你相信，耶穌的血就夠了，能洗淨你的罪﹔能夠讓你起來，行在新生命的能力裡。

由洞穴中得自由

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我們翻開聖經列王記上第十九章，我先很簡短的跟大家分享一下，然后跟大家禱告，領袖需要復蘇，生命中有上帝全新的觸摸，我們學習怎樣跨出去。我們用一些經文為大家解釋一下，列王記上第十九章9節，“他在那裡進了一個洞，就住在洞中。耶和華的話臨到他說，以利亞阿，你在這裡作什麼。”12，13節，“地震后有火，耶和華也不在火中。火后有微小的聲音。以利亞聽見，就用外衣蒙上臉，出來站在洞口。有聲音向他說，以利亞阿，你在這裡作什麼。”

對以利亞來說，這是很嚴重的問題，他的生命有神的呼召，要在一個敗壞的國家中站立起來，代表神向他們說話，直接面對當時屬靈的權勢，他蒙召要為國家帶來復興，他受到恩膏為國家帶來復興，原來他從一個隱藏的，人看不到的地方出來。你記得他怎樣讓全地開始飢荒，從天上降下火，火降到祭壇上，殺了巴力的先知，以利亞在上帝的運行當中。

整個國家預備讓上帝來工作了，可是所有上帝的運行都需要領袖，沒有領袖就沒有結果。當上帝要成就一件事，他需要有一個人願意站起來，有人承受聖靈的恩膏，站起來代表他。這一直是上帝給我們的挑戰，找到一個代表他的人。代表他是如何的，帶著他的能力，來拆毀一切威嚇生命的事。

整個國家活在巫術的轄制下，在拜偶像的權勢下，廟裡有妓女，各樣的巫術在暢行，整個國家都在非常壓抑的氣氛中。大部分人一直受到驚嚇活在恐懼當中，上帝要找一個在那種環境中願意站起來的人，不害怕這樣的屬靈氣氛，不害怕偶像，不害怕廟宇，不害怕巫術，能夠站起來活出不一樣的生命。

以利亞一開始很棒，后來他面對屬靈的攻擊，一個屬靈的反擊。他本來有很好的進展，拆毀他們的祭壇，把所有獻給主，摧毀巴力的先知，上帝很大的運行，他隻要繼續的運行下去，就能夠觸摸整個國家﹔可是有一個很嚴重的屬靈的反擊，有很大的屬靈壓力敵對他。聖經說耶洗別出來了，他說，“我要殺了你，奪走你的生命，你怎麼奪走先知的生命的，我就怎麼奪走你的生命。”他開始威嚇以利亞。

這都是在服事當中大家會面對的問題，你很容易有一個好的開頭﹔但要在戰爭中站立的穩，壓力來到你也能站立的穩﹔當整個屬靈的壓力壓在你身上，你還能站立的穩。這可能是借著人壓在你身上，有人控告你，威脅你，驚嚇你，你要選擇如何回應。你看到保羅跟提摩太說，“你要挑旺神在你裡面的恩賜，上帝賜給你的不是膽怯的心，乃是剛強仁愛謹守的心。”提摩太也有問題，他的生命有大能的恩膏恩賜，可是那些年長的人嚇到他了，宗教的文化驚嚇到他，因為受到驚嚇，他生命的恩賜就封閉了。

如果你受到驚嚇，讓恐懼抓住你，你生命的恩賜就開始封閉，恩膏就不能流露，你隻想著如何保護，救自己而已，而不是如何擴展神的國了。保羅寫了兩封信給提摩太，兩次提到這樣的恩賜。提摩太前書講不要忽略這樣的恩賜，上帝給我們每一個人都有大能的恩賜﹔他賜給你聖靈的恩賜，叫耶穌從死裡復活的靈，同樣的靈住在你裡面，要給你能力，堅固你。我們都得著同樣的聖靈，都有同樣的恩膏臨到我們，但我們要選擇的是要挑旺神的靈，不斷讓恩膏流露，還是要受到驚嚇，退縮，躲在山洞裡。

很多基督徒躲在洞穴裡，在洞穴的后面不出來。我們很快看以利亞怎麼了，也看他怎樣犯錯，生命中是怎樣做的。我們當中有些人可能發現自己也在這種屬靈的壓力底下，在這戰爭的熱火中，與以利亞犯同樣的錯誤，當最后你就跟他躲在同樣的地方。

有一次有一個牧師打電話給我，他說，“你可以幫助我嗎？我非常憂郁，幾乎想要自殺了，不知該怎麼辦了？自從我來到這個城市，就一直有這些事情發生。”我說，“我真的知道問題出在哪裡，我也知道你該怎麼辦，你現在在屬靈的攻擊底下，你的意念，魂，受到了壓力。讓你失掉自己的眼界，受到了驚嚇，就在裡面退縮了。跟以利亞一樣。”

大家注意以利亞做了什麼，耶洗別威脅他﹔屬靈的攻擊發動，敵對他，威脅要奪走他的生命。在我們每一個人裡面，都想要活下去，遇到任何讓我們痛苦的，我們就退縮﹔你因痛苦而退縮下來，你想要救自己﹔當你想救自己的時候，我們的生命就會很困難。在服事當中沒有中立地帶，你要留在戰火之地。有的時候很難，真的受不了了﹔你看見我在台上服事，神的能力流露，可是我自己也有非常大屬靈壓力時候，有時好像頭腦中一片黑暗，什麼都看不到。我要學習怎樣在這種狀況中站起來，每一次你站起來，你在主裡就更強壯。

3，4節說，“以利亞見這光景就起來逃命，到了猶大的別是巴，將仆人留在那裡，自己在曠野走了一日的路程，來到一棵羅騰樹下，就坐在那裡求死，說，耶和華阿，罷了。求你取我的性命，因為我不勝於我的列祖。”上帝的仆人前一天把火從天上降下來，殺了他們的先知﹔第二天卻坐在樹下憂郁說，死了算了。上帝大能的仆人怎麼從這裡到了那裡的呢？最后躲到洞穴裡去了。

聖經說他受到威脅，當他見到這光景，他就逃命了。經文中說這是耶洗別說的話，有一個信差對他說話，他見到了。你所見到的會影響你所做的。你見到的會決定你怎麼做。不是看見神的同在，不是看見將來的復興，他看見的是可怕的死亡，看見自己受到攻擊。不管什麼充滿你的心思意念，什麼東西讓你定睛在上面，你生命專注在哪裡，就影響你的情緒，影響你的靈，就決定你會怎麼樣。

你絕對不要將焦點放在負面的東西上﹔要一直專注在耶穌身上，定睛在上帝所說的話上，定睛在神的能力上，他對你的愛上。從天上降下火，先帶來干旱，又帶來降雨的神，怎麼會拋棄我呢?差派我去的上帝怎麼會拋棄我孤單一人呢？他完全失掉異象，失掉對未來的看見，壓力臨到他，他的眼睛看不到異象，看不見他蒙召要做的事，眼睛隻看見環境了，隻看見自己。

當他的眼睛離開上帝和上帝的目的，專注在威脅上，他的心融化了，他的信心消失了，恐懼就來了。聖經說他開始逃，他逃離自己的任務，逃離自己的使命，從原來蒙召該做的事上退縮了。壓力來臨的時候很容易讓你的眼睛看不見異象，看不見蒙召該做的事，隻看見問題了，受到驚嚇，失掉了眼界。不是從上帝的眼光看，而是看到了困難，退縮離開了上帝要你去的地方。離開信心的地方，退縮離開勇氣，裡面萎縮下去，不是成為剛強的禱告勇士，幾乎爬不起來禱告了，從他的使命中退縮了。

當一個人退縮，他的生命中就失去了權柄，恩膏就不能流露了。上帝說那退后的人我不喜悅。你要留在戰場上，連在信心之地，留在相信上帝的地方，這才讓上帝喜悅。以利亞做的幾件事就是，第一，他專注在負面的事上就失掉了眼界。第二，他從自己的使命上退縮下來。第三，讓自己孤立。這種隔絕孤立讓自己不再跟人連結了，不再跟上帝連結。孤立隔絕就是死亡之處。

就像羊，當它們生病，它們就孤立了，從羊群中離開了。你很容易辨別哪隻羊生病了，它們從羊群中退縮出去，從團契中退縮了，從小組退縮，從領袖聚會退縮，從連結上退縮，不想連結了，不想你再問我問題了。有一種恐懼，就像亞當夏娃犯罪之后，第一個就是害怕藏起來。每一次以色列被打敗，他們就躲在山洞裡面。

洞穴是很黑很深，沒有出口的，接著他坐下來。不是站起來爭戰，不是在靈裡面興起，不是開始禱告，讓恩賜方言流露。他坐下來了，你可以看到一個人，外面可能是站著的，可是裡面卻坐下來。已經放棄不打仗了，開始消極了，戰士不見了，被打倒了，他需要幫助。一旦他坐下，一旦他消極什麼都不做了，他就開始憂郁了。

很可怕的憂郁臨到他，他想到的隻有死。他不是突然掉到這個情況中的，他是一步步來到這裡的。首先，他的眼睛隻看到問題不看到解答，他的焦點從異象離開了。第二，讓恐懼奪去他的思想。他想要保存自己而不是為使命放下自己。他從使命中退縮，讓自己孤立起來。最后，他坐下，非常的憂郁，很想自殺，想睡覺了。他最后的一個禱告就是主啊，帶我走，我不想再醒來了。

上帝憐憫他，上帝派了一個天使拍拍他給他食物。當你打仗，你需要休息，需要食物，可是他繼續逃，又跑了四十天，終於找到了一個山洞，他躲在山洞裡不出去。上帝問他問題﹔在聖經中，上帝問問題時，他早就知道答案。聖經中第一個問題就是，“亞當，你在哪裡？”這是一個關系上的問題，上帝早就知道他在那裡，上帝知道他，上帝要他自己面對問題，自己說出來。聖經隻有記載說他跟上帝說“殺了我吧。”，沒有記載他跟上帝說話。

上帝看著以利亞，“你在這裡干什麼？你是大復興的主要角色，為什麼躲在山洞裡？”有一次我跟一群人到餐廳去，餐廳另一邊是一個酒吧，坐滿了人在那裡喝酒玩樂，音樂很響，我就要進去看看，陪我去的教會領袖就奇怪為什麼牧師要去那裡。我說我保証會在這裡找到遠離神的基督徒在這裡。因為如果你沒有被聖靈充滿，你就會被其他東西充滿。如果你不用上帝安慰你，你就會用酒來安慰。你總歸是要得安慰的，不是來到上帝面前，就是去酒吧買醉。

我就站在那裡看他們，甚至有員工站在吧台上跳舞，還一邊點酒。我走過去站在他們后面等著。他轉身看到我嚇了一跳，問我干嘛，我反問他在干什麼。“你不屬於這裡，這不是你蒙召該去的地方。”他靠在吧台上，滿手都是飲料。我說，“你怎麼了，失掉了對上帝的肯定，要到酒中去尋找自信。”他手裡拿著酒，周圍響起音樂，他開始哭泣，跟我講他的心碎了，因為有人跟他分手了。我說，“這幫不了你，你需要回到主的面前，回到你蒙召該去的地方。”

所以當上帝說，“以利亞，你在做什麼？”他要講的是，你怎麼將自己淪落到這個地步，我們的大復興需要你，你到那裡去了？我剛跟天使在說話，你怎麼就跑到洞穴裡來了？我的仆人以利亞需要做事情。“天上降下火來，殺了所有的先知，嚇到了那個可怕的皇后，你看看我的仆人以利亞，躲在洞穴裡干什麼呢？”

以利亞開始講他自己的故事，“隻有我一個人忠實，他們都想來殺我，我隻是想服事你，他們就要殺我，太不公平了。我不知道有這麼難，我不想再做組長了，太難了，我對他們好，可是他們都走光了，還講我的壞話。隻有我一個人忠心。”你躲在山洞裡怎麼會忠心？他真的很困惑，因為他壓抑的靈讓他困惑。上帝對他講，“事實上，還有七千個先知沒有向巴力屈膝。”“我不知道啊。”

上帝兩次跟他說，“以利亞你在這裡干什麼？以利亞你在這裡干什麼？”換句話說，你不屬於這裡，你需要回到你的任務上。上帝對他說，“回到你的任務上。”上帝讓他做什麼？“我要你興起門徒，我要你膏抹別人，我要你倍增你的服事，你一個人這樣做太久了，要有策略性的辦法，要興起別人，繼續這樣的服事。我會告訴你是誰，你都不用想會是誰，以利沙和耶戶。你投資在這些人身上，將你有的釋放在他們身上，你就會看到你做不完的工作，他們幫你做完。”

上帝顯明他的意圖，他要興起門徒，倍增服事，可是首先要回到自己的崗位。今晚的信息裡面，看到屬靈壓力的結果。那個打電話給我的牧師，極度的沮喪，我跟他說，“這是屬靈的壓力，屬靈的攻擊，你就像以利亞一樣坐在樹下，我會同你在一起，為你禱告。你需要站立起來，離開那個洞穴，回到你的任務裡，回到禱告裡，回到服事裡，回到做你該做事情的地方。”

我告訴他怎樣站起來禱告，怎樣認清這些屬靈的攻擊，直到你的靈完全的興起。要在靈裡面說話，宣告敵人被打敗了，然后再一次回去，開始服事。如果你這樣做，方言禱告，靈裡興起，對你的生命宣告上帝的話，面對魔鬼，面對攪擾你的靈，你就會突破。現在這個人有非常興旺的教會，因為他站起來了。他不是隻打給我一次電話，而是好幾次，每一次我都跟他講同樣的事。“從洞穴出來，回到你的任務中去，站起來禱告，對你的環境說出上帝的話，眼目再一次定睛在主身上。”他就改變了。

今晚我跟大家分享這個，是因為我感覺到好些人躲在洞穴裡。從外面來看，有些人什麼都好，可是心裡受傷了，心被打倒了，你的心退縮，失掉了異象。上帝在說，“你在這裡做什麼，你不屬於這個山洞，你是上帝大能的勇士。”

同樣的靈，勝過魔鬼，讓基督復活，就在你裡面要幫助你﹔不要孤立，不要退縮，不要專注在問題上﹔站起來，再一次調整視線，再一次連結，開始追求，上帝說你會突破。你看完整個故事，看見皇后的位置被拆毀，整個國被傾覆，上帝的國被建立。關鍵就在改變，就是要培訓新的門徒。

損失之後的盼望

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各位請翻開聖經路加福音第七章11至16節，“過了不多時，耶穌往一座城去，這城名叫拿因，他的門徒和極多的人與他同行。將近城門，有一個死人被抬出來。這人是他母親獨生的兒子，他母親又是寡婦。有城裡的許多人同著寡婦送殯。主看見那寡婦就憐憫她，對她說，不要哭。於是進前按著杠，抬的人就站住了。耶穌說，少年人，我吩咐你起來。那死人就坐起，並且說話。耶穌便把他交給他母親。眾人都驚奇，歸榮耀與神說，有大先知在我們中間興起來了。”

耶穌到哪裡都有人跟著他，看他到底在做什麼。聖經中另外一個地方，耶穌說，“生命在我，復活也在我。”上帝以能力膏拿撒勒人耶穌基督，不管到哪兒跟人互動的時候，都顯明上帝的心和恩賜。

這個故事中的城名叫拿因，拿因原文的意思就是美麗美好，充滿青草的地方。這個地方從外貌看是很美好的，可是后面隱藏的是極大的憂傷，極大的壓力。人也是一樣，外面看很好很吸引人，可是心裡帶著極大的憂傷，難過，極大的失望。

今晚你在這裡，外表看可能很好，聖經說，神看的是內心。他看見你心裡的憂傷，看見你經歷了什麼。這個故事中特別的情況是死的是個年輕人。年輕人指的是下一代，代表的是未來，代表的是盼望，代表的是這個女子美好的未來。聖經說他的母親是個寡婦，已經失去丈夫了，受到了極大的傷痛。失掉能保護她的人，供應她的人，她隻剩一個盼望，就是她的兒子。她以他為榮，期待看著她的孩子長大。

她前面的盼望就是將來兒子會養她，供應她。她心中的夢想就是這個孩子的將來，夢想著他結婚生子，非常期待將來。

這個年輕人代表她的盼望，她的未來，她的產業，她的供應，她的保護，她的生命完全的寄托在這個年輕人身上。有一天不可思議的事情發生了，失掉丈夫之后再失掉了孩子。故事中看他已經長大成人了，可是卻生病死了。那一天所有未來的盼望都被奪走了，她非常震驚，以后會怎麼辦？好像沒有了未來，沒有了盼望，老了沒人照顧，不單隻是失掉了兒子，也失掉了對未來的夢想。

這個女人非常憂傷，沒人能夠安慰她，她為她自己的損失難過。憂傷是經歷損失的過程，除非有原因，不然不會憂傷。我們不會為不認識的陌生人憂傷，也不會為沒有連結的人憂傷。當我們失掉所珍愛的，才會憂傷。憂傷會有不同的階段，第一個階段就是震驚﹔不相信這件事會發生，看到這個孩子，不敢相信會發生這種事。第二個階段就是極大的憤怒﹔人們的東西被奪走了，常常會非常憤怒，但又不知道對誰憤怒。所以第三個階段就是怪罪﹔想要在當中找到出路。

憂傷中的人，可以是震驚，無法承認發生的事情﹔或者非常憤怒，怪罪別人，想為自己找一個出路。接下來就是憂郁和難過，流淚，最后隻好接納，調整自己的生命接受改變。這就是憂傷的整個過程，可能是在幾個小時內就經歷到所有的情緒，有些人從來沒有放下過憂傷，沒有正確處理這個憂傷，就鎖在憂傷裡了。

今晚有些人就鎖在憂傷裡，心裡有很深的憂傷。不同的人會經歷不同的事情。有些人憂傷是因為親近的人過世了，可能是母親或者是父親，對你很重要的人，你很憂傷因為他不在你生命裡了。離婚也會導致憂傷﹔兒女經歷父母離婚，會帶來極大的憂傷，因為他們真的失去了父母，他們在父母雙方的拉扯當中，他們對每一個人都很憤怒，不了解自己在憂傷裡面。

當人失掉盼望和夢想，他原來計劃的東西突然被奪走了。他原來期待升官的，突然別人搶走了位置，憂傷就進來了﹔你期待夢想可以實現，完全被奪走后，憂傷是很大的。如果不處理憂傷，人可能一生都在憂傷裡，一生都在憤怒裡，一生都在怪罪人。問題的根源就是沒有解決的憂傷。

我最近為一位女士禱告，她非常憤怒﹔我問她，“你在氣什麼？”她也不知道，她對每一樣事情都生氣。我說總有一個開始讓你生氣的地方吧，最后追溯發現她的爸爸在她很小的時候拋棄了她們，她深深的跟她媽媽連結在一起，后來媽媽突然去世了。我說你仍然在為失去媽媽而憂傷，你跟她太親了，她變成了你生命中的偶像，取代了上帝的位置。一旦你生命中的偶像被拿走，你就會變得很生氣。我們依靠的事物，成為我們偶像的事物，一旦被拿走或失敗的話，人們就會變得很憂傷，很憤怒。

憂傷是因為他們的依附被突然拿走。這個依附可能是人，也可能是一個夢想，可能是你親近的人發生車禍意外，死亡或者離婚。當人受到虐待，他就會憂傷，不管是受到身體或者性虐待的人，甚至是情緒，言語上的受虐待的人，他們有很大的憂傷。如果沒有處理憂傷，這人會在震驚中一直憂傷下去。對過去發生的事產生魂結，即死亡進來了。

像這樣的情況，很容易讓邪靈進入到你的生命。憂傷是整個過程和情緒，可是你不處理，憂傷的靈就進來了。你會一直憂傷，即使在快樂的場合中，都快樂不起來，好像憂傷一會兒又回來了，這就是有憂傷的靈。有的時候是死亡的靈，如果死亡的靈在心裡，這人就會麻木，覺得完全與人隔絕，也與自己隔絕，裡面完全的麻木，就是很深的憂傷，對未來絕望。

聖經告訴我們上帝是怎樣的﹔哥林多后書第一章上帝說他是賜一切安慰的神。當我們感到壓力，上帝渴望安慰我們，在一切患難中安慰我們，讓我們也能去安慰人。上帝顯明自己是一位安慰人的神﹔在你的憂郁中，親近你，幫助你﹔在你憂傷中陪著你，告訴你你不孤單。

當人在憂傷中，孤單是一個很大的問題。這個故事中的女士行在棺材的后面，全身穿的黑色的衣服，憂傷的靈在她身上，即使有很多人在旁邊，她是那裡最孤單的一個人。這群朋友安慰不了她，沒有人能夠安慰她，隻有耶穌才能進入到她的環境中安慰她。

聖經說上帝是賜一切安慰的主，他醫治傷心的人。羅馬書第十五章13節告訴我們，“但願使人有盼望的神，因信將諸般的喜樂平安，充滿你們的心，使你們借著聖靈的能力，大有盼望。”上帝安慰我們，他也將盼望賜給我們。上帝在我們痛苦時安慰我們，也給我們未來更好的盼望。當我們痛苦，上帝陪在我們身旁，他讓我們看見異象，未來是更好的。

上帝是行神跡的上帝。今晚的見証，我第一次遇見玉萍，她心中有很大的痛﹔我記得坐在那裡聽她做見証的時候，上帝跟我說話，“我要醫治她，我要安慰她。”我到了台上，牽著她的手為她禱告，上帝的靈就帶下極大的醫治。有很大的盼望，她開始去尋找她的母親，上帝是不是很神奇，原來全部死去的境況，再次有豐盛的生命。這就是我們上帝的偉大之處，他是恢復之主，他可以進入環境，讓死的活過來，再一次有盼望。

你可能喪失了，可能有挫敗，但生命中這一切不會長久﹔隻要讓基督進來，在憂傷中與你同行，再一次賜你異象，讓你有盼望有美好的未來。當你在上帝裡，未來是美好的，即使現在痛苦﹔可能你在憂傷的低谷裡，當有神跡在前面等著你，改變在等待著你，美好的未來在等著你，你不用活在絕望裡。

聖經說耶穌看著這個婦人，感到深深的憐憫。上帝看見這女人的孤單，她的 破碎，她的絕望，她的憂傷，他深深的感動了，要做點事情。這個女人什麼都沒有做，年輕人什麼都沒有做，是耶穌自己主動，他來到這婦人面前說，“不要哭。”請注意，她沒有任何理由停止哭泣，兒子死了，耶穌說“不要哭。”因為耶穌要做事了。換句話說，哭泣結束了，我要改變你周遭的環境了。憂傷結束了，我要行神跡了。你不需要留在這個境況裡。

耶穌處理她的心，處理她的痛，不要哭了，之后他手按著棺材。沒有人會去按死人的棺材的，這讓你受污穢。耶穌說，“少年人，起來。”死人就坐起來了，再一次回到他母親身邊。對人不可能的事，在神凡事都能。隻要你肯信，上帝能將你的低谷轉為生命的泉源。

耶穌願意來到這種絕望的境況，還有什麼比人死了更絕望的，耶穌進來恢復他的生命。我一定要跟大家分享一個故事，我的兒子大衛去到巴基斯坦，本來是邀請我去的，可是我太忙了，就差我兒子去了。他兩次帶著團隊過去，第二次去的時候，他站在台上，大概有一萬五千人，有人給他翻譯，他開始咳嗽就倒了下去，等他再站起來說話的時候，這個翻譯開始咳嗽然后就倒下去死掉了。翻譯死掉了很麻煩，沒辦法講下去了，我兒子站在他旁邊，命令死亡的靈離開，那個人就醒過來了，半個小時之后又繼續翻譯。

我兒子想可能沒有死吧，隻是倒下去而已，跟他們這一起的一個人是警察，看過很多死人﹔他檢查過這個人，他真的沒有生命跡象了，現在活過來了，是上帝讓他復活的。絕望的境況，哈利路亞。

上帝能夠進入你的環境裡，把安慰和盼望帶來﹔耶穌進到你的環境裡，你就不再孤單﹔上帝與你同在，他還工作，賜你有盼望的未來﹔他不希望你流淚，他希望你往前看，明天是更好的一天。

那一天從憂傷，難過開始，哀愁遍滿全城，最后以歡慶結束，每一個人都在慶祝。如果我在那裡，我會說，“你死的時候看到了什麼？你有沒有看見天堂？”那個年輕人會有很多的見証，講述上帝在他生命中所做的一切。

今晚我聽到那個見証的時候，我心裡好感動﹔上帝在死亡之處吹氣，帶出生命和盼望。母親盼望有另一個孩子，很多年活在痛苦和哀愁中﹔現在跟女兒團園了，害怕女兒不原諒她﹔但上帝早就遇見了她的女兒，她不再是死掉了，她活過來了。我們知道將女兒送出去收養的情況，我們也做過同樣的事，這一生都在為這個決定憂傷，痛苦讓你不知該怎麼辦。憂傷和死亡，在損失中難過。

當我們經歷這個的時候，我向耶穌打開我的心，我相信有一天他會將女兒帶回來。我很感動，這個媽媽送走的孩子遇見了耶穌，耶穌拿走了她身上的苦毒，拿走了她的憤怒，拿走了她的死亡，讓她活過來。在這之前我就見過她了，耶穌醫治她之后我幾乎都認不出她來了，她活過來了，因為耶穌處理了她的憂傷。上個主日見到她的媽媽是何等的喜樂，那個女子，被丈夫拋棄，隻好放棄自己的孩子。多年之后，上帝眷顧她，讓孩子回到她的身邊。

這就像我們剛剛講的故事一樣，聖經中的故事是兩千年前的事，是一個真實的母親，真實的兒子，真實的悲慘情況。你今晚聽到的見証也是真實的母親，失掉的女兒好像死了一樣，再一次活過來，回到母親身邊。耶穌仍然在行神跡，恢復人，醫治傷心的。

再造全新的我

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我們來看這個故事，約翰福音第五章1至9節，“這事以后，到了猶太人的一個節期。耶穌就上耶路撒冷去。在耶路撒冷，靠近羊門，有一個池子，希伯來話叫作畢士大，旁邊有五個廊子。裡面躺著瞎眼的，瘸腿的，血氣枯干的，許多病人。因為有天使按時下池子攪動那水，水動之后，誰先下去，無論害什麼病，就痊愈了。在那裡有一個人，病了三十八年。耶穌看見他躺著，知道他病了許久，就問他說，你要痊愈嗎？病人回答說，先生，水動的時候，沒有人把我放在池子裡。我正去的時候，就有別人比我先下去。耶穌對他說，起來，拿你的褥子走吧。那人立刻痊愈，就拿起褥子來走了。那天是安息日。”

我們先看當時的情況，聖經描述在城邊上的羊門，就是羊進城的地方，那裡有好些個廊子，有個池子叫畢士大，好多需要醫治的人坐在那裡。聖經告訴我們耶穌是好牧人，耶穌說“我是好牧人。”另外一處說，“我們都如同羊走迷了路。上帝使用很多自然的情況幫助我們了解屬靈的事情，上帝用很多不同的方式來描述人是怎麼樣的，也有很多圖畫是描述他是如何的。

聖經描述人就如同羊，如果你不了解羊，這樣的描述對你來講沒有任何意義。如果我講騎摩托車的人，你就知道我在講什麼了，因為你見的很多這樣的人。講到摩托車，沒有地方可以比得上台灣，從沒有看過這麼多的。前幾次剛來的時候，摩托車嚇到我了。

我跟大家解釋一下羊。很多年前，我們到一個小地方，那裡有很多的牧場，很多的羊。我想要一隻小羊當寵物，好可愛，可是它們可愛的階段不久，很快就變大羊了。我從中學到了很多羊的事情。

羊有這樣一些特征，首先，羊完全沒有方向感。一旦看不見別的羊，它們就迷路了。如果你帶一隻貓到另外一個城市，它自己會跑回來找你。羊呢，你才轉個轉角，它就找不到路了。所以聖經以賽亞書第五十三章6節“我們都如羊走迷，各人偏行己路。”羊一旦迷路，就根本找不到家，它們需要牧人。人一樣，活在罪中就像走迷了的羊，我們找不到應走的路，我們需要牧人讓我們看見方向。

第二，羊很容易受到驚嚇。所以一隻羊，隻要很小的聲音，它就會趕快跑開了。就像人一樣，很容易被嚇到，新聞中各樣的事情都會讓他們害怕。聖經一直告訴我們，“不要怕，不要怕。”因為人很容易受到驚嚇。害怕讓我們不能跟隨神，與有信心相反。一開始尋找羊，如果它們被嚇到后就逃跑了，它們就迷路了。

第三，羊彼此跟隨。它們喜歡團體行動，青少年喜歡聚在一起，羊也是一樣。一旦一隻羊走，不管它知不知道要去哪兒，其他的羊都跟著它走。好像人一樣，跟隨時尚，跟著大眾。羊也是盲從的，如果你嚇到一隻羊開始跑，其他的羊也跟著它跑。

另外一點，當羊生病的時候，它們就孤立出來﹔如果你發現單獨一隻羊，它大概就是生病了。人也是這樣，當他們生病，有事情不對了，他們就不說話了，不打電話，不傳簡訊，不去教會，不來小組了。所以你要不斷的接觸，因為他們是羊，他們會走迷的，當他們生病了，就自己一個人躲開了。

還有一點，羊身上是有寄生虫的。它們吃的草上會有一些虫子跳上來，這些寄生虫是排除不了的，需要牧人幫助它們，因為它們吃的東西使它們裡面有寄生虫。人也是這樣，我們把生命向很多東西打開，邪靈就進來了，我們沒法將他們趕出去，需要牧人幫我們趕出去。

在新西蘭會有牧人來為羊灌腸，他們將一種化學的東西放進羊嘴裡，整個晚上羊一直咳一直咳，把裡面的虫子咳出來，因為藥殺死了虫子。有一次我來聚會，為人禱告，對邪靈講話的時候，那人一直咳。前幾天我們也為一個人禱告，他咳了幾個星期。看來這個藥很有效。

另外我們有一種蒼蠅，每年的特定時間就飛出來了，在羊背上，頭上或耳朵邊下蛋。這些蛋孵出后就變成小小的紅紅的蛆，很惡心，它們吃羊，吃到肉裡，或者從耳朵鑽進羊腦袋把羊弄瘋了。就像魔鬼一樣，把謊言撒在我們身上，如果你相信這個謊言，它就進入你腦中了，你被它弄瘋了，做很多荒唐的事情。

羊還有一點就是沒有防衛性。如果有人來侵犯它，它完全無法防衛，它們沒有尖的角，鋒利的牙齒，沒有能力保護自己。很像人，聖經將人比作羊，而魔鬼是來侵略的狼，它是來偷竊殺害的。當攻擊來臨的時候，羊受到很大的壓力，它們因為受到追殺而驚慌。新西蘭有時會有狗追羊群，咬它們，把它們扯爛，很大的壓力。一旦狗嘗到了血的味道，它們不吃羊，隻是把它殺了。有些狗嘗到了羊血的味道就開始這樣做，非常危險的狗，它追羊讓它流血致死。

魔鬼就像野狗，嗜血追趕人，摧毀他們的生命，讓他們流血受傷，罪咎羞愧，憂傷哀愁，受傷。如果你看見野狗走了，羊躺在草地上流血，這隻羊就沒救了，隻能殺了。同樣，如果你用屬靈的眼睛看，看見那些傷心的人，破碎的心，心裡充滿憂傷，迫切需要幫助，因為他們保護不了自己。

羊的形象是非常精准的形象，看見人在靈裡的境況，我們需要牧人。耶穌描述自己就是一個好牧人，願意為羊舍命。詩篇二十三篇就可以看出好牧人是如何做的。

另外有一點，羊吃的很好的時候，它們躺下來，如果躺得太久，它們就會站不起來，當它們站起來時就會頭暈又倒下去。所以當羊發生這種情況，躺太久自己起不來，需要牧人拉起它，扶著它站穩直到再次可以行走，躺太久會影響它的平衡。我們受造不是要躺在地上的，站不起來，不能動，不能服事神。不管什麼將你弄倒，不管什麼導致你躺下放棄，你躺的越久就會越難站起來。

很多事情會讓我們躺下，讓我們想放棄。我們被冒犯，我們失望，被人背叛，受傷害，我們期待的事情沒有發生﹔我們從上帝那裡退縮，不是在靈裡面保持活力站立，不是站在信心裡信靠，不是在上帝的計劃裡繼續往前，而是放棄拋棄了。很多人都是這樣，他們不是躺在地上，他們裡面躺下了，戰斗的精神沒有了，信心沒有了，他們裡面退縮了。

我們昨天講到一個人躲在洞穴裡，今天看到羊癱在地上起不來了。牧人來到羊群，不是定羊的罪，那樣是沒有用的，牧人幫羊站起來。

我們再來看這個故事，耶穌來到畢士大的池子，這個地方叫憐憫之處，好多人在那裡，有瞎眼的，瘸腿的，血氣枯干的，那些軟弱沒有力氣的人，沒有異象的人，不能行走的人，他們在等候，希望事情會改變。有一個人病了三十八年了，他躺在那兒，每天有人把他搬到那裡去，他就躺在那兒。三十八年真的是很久了，超過了人的半生了。耶穌看見這個人，就像看見你一樣，他就像羊站不起來一樣，沒有力氣，他需要神跡，需要神的能力來改變他。他身體上有東西不對勁了，聖經說他是疾病軟弱。

聖經說上帝有很多方法幫助我們，讓我們站起來。耶穌看見他，問他一個很有意思的問題，“你想要痊愈嗎？”這是一個很奇怪的問題，上帝問問題的時候，不是他不知道答案，他要你思想，他讓你看見自己的生命。這個人太習慣這種狀況了，他整個的生活形態都是這樣，無力的，無助的。耶穌問他你要完全嗎？你知道答案是什麼？隻有一個答案，就是“要啊！”他沒有這樣說，他說出來的是上帝想要怎樣幫助他，上帝要從他裡面帶出來他預備好的東西。耶穌問他想不想要痊愈？要！

當耶穌問他的時候，他的想法都是受害者的想法，很多借口，“太多人，沒有人幫我，天使來的時候，我太遲了。”等等。他要怪罪每一個人，不斷的找借口。他整個的想法都是受害者，除了借口和怪罪，什麼都沒有。耶穌問“你要你的生命不一樣嗎？”你要不要這個選擇。

上帝給我們自由意志，給我們能力作選擇，你現在活著的生命都是你過去所做決定的結果。不都是因為那些壞事，而是因為你選擇如何回應。上帝給你能力選擇如何生活。耶穌死在十字架上的時候，他打破了罪的權勢，他從死裡復活，打敗了魔鬼，他讓每一個人有可能不再受罪的轄制，不再受邪靈的控制，你想不想要痊愈？你想要自由嗎？

現在問題就在我們自己了﹔所有需要該做的，耶穌都在十字架上完成了，你想要痊愈嗎？你要做這個決定嗎？這選擇是回應神，相信他的話﹔你想要痊愈嗎？你想要改變嗎？如果你想要不一樣的未來，你需要開始做不一樣的選擇。“哎呀，我受的教育不多。”那你開始多學習。“我對這個很生氣。”你可以選擇饒恕。“發生的事情我真的放不掉。”你可以選擇放下。你可以找一些輔導，尋求一些幫助。

“你想不想痊愈？你想不想改變？”“哦，你不了解我丈夫這個人，他很愛喝酒，他對我很不好，所有我這樣憂郁。”

“你想不想要痊愈？”是你選擇要不要發生，我們有選擇的能力。

耶穌死在十字架上，打破了罪的權勢，讓你可以作選擇來接受他，得著打破罪的能力，選擇跟從他，過不一樣的生命。每一天你醒來，都有作選擇的能力﹔每一天你醒來，都可以選擇跟上帝同行，選擇今天的態度﹔選擇正面的態度或者負面的態度，選擇相信神或者選擇繼續留在挫敗裡。

“你想不想痊愈？”這是耶穌說的。他的生命帶出他心中的境況。耶穌對他說，“起來，得醫治。”他站起來了。后來耶穌對他說，“不要繼續犯罪，不然更糟的事情會發生。”換句話說，耶穌把他生命的境況跟罪放在一起了，耶穌不光是處理疾病，不光是處理邪靈，還要處理生命中問題的根源：罪，罪的權勢讓我們跟上帝隔絕。

“你想要痊愈嗎？”完全從你做決定開始，也是一條路程﹔痊愈的路程，從你靈裡選擇接受耶穌基督開始。上帝把靈放在你裡面，讓你選擇跟上帝連結﹔進入這一條路程，需要做很多的決定，每一天選擇讓上帝進入到你生命，選擇同意他的說法，放掉你過去的想法，過去的方式。與耶穌同行，是痊愈的路程，每一天跟他連結，讓他的話語進入到我們心中，我們開始改變。

你可以在任何一點停下來，躺下﹔我發現很多人，有些人不認識基督，他們裡面躺下了，被生命打敗了，依靠別人，活的像一個受害者。難過的是看見這樣的基督徒，他們來到耶穌面前開始接受與耶穌同行的路。事情發生了，有人冒犯了你，有人讓你失望，負面的事情發生了，你不是站立穩，信靠神，求神幫助你處理，而是在裡面躺下了，起不來了。耶穌今天要幫助你，要對你的生命說話，讓你再一次站起來，再一次成全你想要服事的願望，再一次在生命中與神同行。

伸出手得醫治

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我們翻開聖經馬可福音，有很多神奇的生命改變的故事。馬可福音第三章1至6節，“耶穌又進了會堂。在那裡有一個人枯干了一隻手。眾人窺探耶穌，在安息日醫治不醫治，意思是要控告耶穌。耶穌對那枯干了一隻手的人說，起來，站在當中。又問眾人說，在安息日行善行惡，救命害命，那樣是可以的呢？他們都不作聲。耶穌怒目周圍看他們，憂愁他們的心剛硬，就對那人說，伸出手來。他把手一伸，手就復了原。法利賽人出去，同希律一黨的人商議，怎樣可以除滅耶穌。”

這裡講的這個人見証了耶穌基督的大能，也是聖經中很少提到的耶穌生氣了，我們來看看從中能學到什麼？是什麼讓上帝生氣了？

聖經說，“耶穌來是要我們得著生命，而且是更豐盛的生命。”上帝要在我們裡面恢復屬靈的生命和活力，上帝創造我們是要與他有關系的，跟他連結的，他的生命借我們流露。神是靈，他設計我們的靈跟他的靈結合，他的生命借我們流露，他的性情借我們流露。愛，喜樂，平安，他的生命創意在我們生命中流露。

所以，耶穌說，“我來，是要讓你們得生命，而且是更豐盛的。”人犯罪，上帝的生命就不住在他們裡面，跟上帝的關系就被破壞了，在靈裡面分開了，沒法在靈裡面有生命的流露，隻能靠魂和體來活了。罪和疾病進入世界。

耶穌說，“從你的腹中流出活水的江河來。”他還講將聖靈賜給人。上帝渴望將他的靈放在你裡面，用他的生命充滿你，讓生命從你流露出去，有創造性的，帶著愛，帶著上帝的性情，在社會的每一個領域裡擴展上帝的國。

教會是上帝興起的一群人，是上帝加添能力的信徒，是被聖靈充滿的，動員起來服事上帝。耶穌來到會堂，很多人在那裡敬拜，耶穌注意到一個人，他的手是枯干的，很可能是腦部受損，讓身體的一部分枯干癱瘓，問題可能是從大腦發生的。結果是他的手枯干了，沒有生命了，整個縮起來了。就像一個水果不小心掉到床底下或者角落裡，很久之后才發現它，裡面所有的水分，生命都沒有了，整個萎縮枯干了。生命沒有了，就完全不一樣了。

這個人的手枯干了，常常一個人的手枯干后就會縮起來了。當你碰到這種人，他們手常常是縮在裡頭，想要藏起來。他們通常的問題是：第一，他們有很大的羞愧，想要隱藏他們的問題。凡是羞愧的東西，我們就沒有能力處理它﹔沒有能力呢，就覺得羞愧。亞當夏娃犯罪，他們感覺到羞愧，就遮掩藏起來了。我們生命裡任何領域變得萎縮了，不對了，我們就退縮藏起來。

到處都是這樣的人，當生命中有地方不對了，當東西沒有正常運作，我們常常想要去遮掩隱藏，最不想讓別人將這個指出來。這個人手枯干了，首先是身體上的問題，聖經如果講到的是右手，這是有含義的，聖經中的右手是要祝福的手，右手是能力之手，右手是你工作之手。他的右手枯干了，代表祝福臨不到他身上，能力不能進入到生命。

右手枯干就象征這個人的生命枯干了，沒有生命，沒有祝福，隻剩咒詛了，邪靈在運行。這人不能工作，在生命中不能生產，不能做事，他所有的潛能受到限制。當這人的手枯干，就沒有祝福，沒有生命，無法發揮潛能，他生命的成就就受到限制。他的手沒了，隻有一隻手怎麼工作呢？生命就受到極大的拘謹和限制。

聖經中的右手也象征服事，服事人。所以枯干的手代表他的服事開始萎縮了。我們看見了三個層面，第一，他有身體上的問題。他的情況需要醫治和恢復。這個故事中上帝的心是要醫治他。第二，看見一個沒有蒙福的生命，生命枯干了，是受咒詛的。象征這個生命在羞愧中遮蓋，所有潛能受到限制。第三，象征一個信徒的服事萎縮了，可能他曾經做的很好，很熱情的服事上帝，曾經看到果子，曾經為上帝成就很大的事。但有事情發生了，他的手枯干了，沒有像以前一樣的服事了，隻能退縮了，不再有生命活力，好像進入了一個羞愧的境況。

耶穌看見這個人，他的心感動了。有很多事情會造成我們的生命萎縮，很多事情讓我們枯干往回退縮。失望可能讓你變得干枯，聖經告訴我們“憂傷的靈使骨枯干。”我們的心碎，生命就萎縮了，沒有喜樂，沒有活力，一直想退縮。

很多人來自破碎的家庭，他們的魂萎縮了，他們沒有喜樂的生命，生命一直有問題。憂傷會讓我們的靈萎縮，不饒恕，苦毒會讓你的魂萎縮，你裡面枯干了，因為你為別人做的事情憤怒，對不好的待遇憤怒﹔你的父親錯待你，母親錯待你，其他人錯待你。當人憤怒受傷，一直帶著不饒恕和苦毒，他的心就枯干了。當人去恨人的時候，心中充滿了仇恨和懷怨，他的魂就會枯干。上帝造我們不要心裡帶著這些負面的東西﹔有這些負面的東西，心就會萎縮﹔一開始看不到，因為它藏在裡面，一段時間之后，苦毒的影響，不饒恕，仇恨，會影響這個人，造成他們退縮。

另一個讓魂萎縮的東西是恐懼，也讓人退縮。當我們害怕，恐懼抓住我們生命，我們就退縮不敢面對事情，我們裡面封閉起來，好像枯干手的那個人一樣，我們退縮到自己裡面了。記得我們講以利亞的故事，當他面對恐懼，害怕的時候，整個人退縮逃到山洞裡去了。很多人會這樣，當在害怕的境況中，我們不用信心膽量去面對，受到驚嚇就退縮了，我們的服事就枯干了。

提摩太后書第一章6節，保羅寫信給提摩太，提摩太的服事萎縮了，他生命中有很大能的恩賜，他有很大能的聖靈的恩賜，可以改變生命的，可以把神的生命帶出來的，可是卻隱藏萎縮，沒有運行﹔因為恐懼，那些年長的人驚嚇他，恐懼抓住了他的心，他不能放膽的起來，他退縮了﹔他看起來一樣，但裡面的服事卻退縮了，因為害怕和驚嚇，不敢有放膽的行為，不敢放膽跟隨神，不敢勇敢服事主。

失望也會讓你枯干，失望也會讓你退縮。這是我知道的一件事，一旦退縮，覺得這個情況丟臉，你知道你沒有盡力，你知道你被打敗了。可能是性犯罪，在你生命中經歷的一些事情好像無法擺脫﹔那種犯罪感讓你失掉了權柄，你在服事中就開始退縮了。有很多不同的方式讓我們的服事萎縮，或者生命開始枯干，很多枯干的人迫切需要上帝的觸摸。來自破碎的家庭，被虐待的人﹔在感情中受苦的人，他們的魂都失散了﹔他們真的從生命中退縮下來了，憂傷，受傷，孤單，有時想自殺，有時憂郁。

在這個聚會裡，耶穌看見這個人，他做的事情很有意思。他馬上叫出這個人，這個人可能最不想的事情就是被人指出來。耶穌說，“站起來。”那人就站起來了，每一個人都看著他，他試著把手藏起來。聖經說，耶穌周圍看，他非常生氣，他裡面受到攪擾。很有意思，耶穌生氣了，是什麼讓他生氣的？他裡面憂愁。當我們憂愁，是因為有些東西被奪走了，失喪了。因為你失掉一個人或者失掉一個寵物而憂傷，因為失掉工作而憂傷。

耶穌為其他事情而憂愁﹔他因為永生上帝的教會失掉對人的愛，失掉要看見人得完全的渴望﹔那裡都是有需要的人，他們是律法的，論斷的，承受律法的重擔﹔沒有上帝的生命像活水在他們身體流動。人們受到壓制，要承受律法，一直被人定罪。耶穌憂愁當時的宗教系統注重論斷和指控，而不是愛和醫治，這個宗教系統根本沒有代表上帝。它宣稱代表上帝，他說“我們會看見”，但他們是瞎眼的，隻看見自己的想法，對人一點幫助沒有。

上帝禁止我們讓生命變得無用，無法幫忙，我們就開始論斷，到處找人的錯，而沒有看見人都是按上帝的形象造的。領袖更願意找人的錯誤，而不願意醫治傷心的人，醫治生病的人，他們失掉了方向，可是卻說“我們知道方向”。

當耶穌四周觀看，看見教會的捆綁，他很憂愁，對這些宗教領袖很生氣。耶穌挑戰他們，安息日可不可以醫治？他們不回答。安息日是為人設立的，是要醫治得安息的。耶穌就對枯干手的人說，他讓他做兩件事，第一，站起來，離開你躲藏之處，離開羞愧之處，把問題帶到亮處來，讓每一個人都看到。他當然羞愧了，當然他想藏起來，當然他很丟臉，可是上帝覺得丟臉的是這些宗教領袖們。

“站起來，站起來，不要藏在群眾中。”我想他不會坐在第一排，大概躲在后面的角落中。耶穌說，“我看見你枯干的手了，站起來。”那人站起來了。這是第一步，你要與神調對頻道，承認自己的境況，別再隱藏，別再遮掩，站起來﹔做出這個決定來回應耶穌，下定決心對耶穌說“我願意”。把這個可怕的情況帶到眾人眼前，照他的能力去做，站起來，戰勝對人的恐懼。

之后耶穌又讓他做一件事，命令他伸出手來﹔他在生理上是做不到的，需要信心回應耶穌講的話，當你照著耶穌所說的去做，就顯出你的信心來，真正的信心是可以看得見的。他開始伸出手，最不可思議的事情發生了，原來枯干的手，已經萎縮的手，當他伸出來的時候，他感覺到生命流到裡面，手開始活起來了，肌肉開始恢復了。他把手伸出來，手活過來了，原來死的，現在活過來了，他不再隱藏了，他告訴每一個人，是上帝的能力釋放他得自由。

如果你生命枯干了，上帝要醫治你，將他的生命放進你裡面﹔如果你的服事枯干了，上帝要恢復你，但是你要做一些事情。在這個故事中有兩件事，第一，站起來，不要再隱藏這個情況了，把它帶到大家面前，帶到耶穌面前。第二，要做做不到的事情，伸出來，當你相信而伸出來，上帝就開始運行﹔在伸出來的過程中上帝就運行。

聖經中經常看見耶穌命令人做一些事，告訴瞎子去池子裡去洗，他就看見了。叫那個大麻風的回去讓祭祀看，當他走的時候就得醫治了。跟那個瞎子說往上看，你看見什麼？他就看見了。上帝每次都要我們做一些事情。

属灵的眼盲

Sat 12 Oct 2013 PM  « 返回頁首

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請翻開聖經馬可福音第十章46至52節，“到了耶利哥。耶穌同門徒並許多人出耶利哥的時候，有一個討飯的瞎子，是底買的兒子巴底買，坐在路旁。他聽見是拿撒勒的耶穌，就喊著說，大衛的子孫耶穌阿，可憐我吧。有許多人責備他，不許他作聲，他卻越發大聲喊著說，大衛的子孫哪，可憐我吧。耶穌就站住，說，叫過他來。他們就叫那瞎子，對他說，放心，起來，他叫你啦。瞎子就丟下衣服，跳起來，走到耶穌那裡。耶穌說，要我為你作什麼。瞎子說，拉波尼，我要能看見。耶穌說，你去吧。你的信救了你了。瞎子立刻看見了，就在路上跟隨耶穌。”

故事的開始就是耶穌來到耶利哥城，耶利哥城是一個多年被咒詛的城。在那個城裡有一個人叫巴底買，就是底買的兒子，意思就是秘密的，隱藏的，在那個家族中有一些秘密的事情。巴底買是一個瞎子，看不見東西，活在黑暗的世界裡。他坐在路旁乞討，希望有人幫助他。

瞎眼改變了他的生命，改變了他人生的做法，他無法追尋他心裡想做的事，追尋他的夢想。他隻能坐在路邊依靠別人幫助他活下來，他是一個乞丐，他必須要穿著乞丐的制服，披著乞丐袍，表示他是一個乞丐。但是今天他做了一件事情讓耶穌停步，我們剛才讀的故事中寫道是什麼讓耶穌停步呢？

這是耶穌最后一次到耶利哥，他正往耶路撒冷去，往十字架的路上走。就在這一天有一個人的生命被改變了，因為他遇見了耶穌。我們先來看看這人的狀況，這人是瞎眼的，沒有視力，可能是因為身體上的原因而造成的天生的瞎眼，但是還有其他形式的瞎眼，例如屬靈的瞎眼。聖經說耶穌將聖靈降臨到他身上，恢復了他視力。換句話說，就是讓看不見的人可以看見了。

這個故事不單隻是讓瞎眼的得醫治了，而是耶穌打開人的心，帶領他從黑暗的世界來到光明的世界。“請每一個人都閉上眼睛”﹔當我們閉上眼睛，大部分的世界都是黑暗的，如果將你的手放在眼睛上，就會更暗了。想象一下你這樣離開會堂回家，你有一些記憶，但是你不知道你會遇見什麼障礙，會有什麼危險，因為你看不見。你可以想象在這個黑暗的世界中怎樣找到回家的路，如果黑暗是永久的，你該怎樣過活。沒有色彩，沒有太陽，看不見任何東西，隻有黑暗，而且無法脫離黑暗。

現在打開眼，看看你的周圍是何等的美麗，你的視力是何等的重要。聖經告訴我們上帝的國是明亮的國度，是我們可以清楚看見的國度，這個國度的本質就是愛。聖經也有描述撒旦的國度，撒旦是黑暗國度的國王，當你進到黑暗的國裡，你的屬靈的眼睛是瞎的，屬靈的黑暗中看不見，看不見要去哪兒，看不見路上會遇見什麼，看不見危險。

聖經告訴我們，耶穌來是讓我們脫離黑暗的國度，脫離屬靈的黑暗，進到光明的國度，我們可以看見，看見生命改變了，看見人改變了，能夠明白永生，所有的事情都改變了。隻要你從黑暗的國度出來，進到光明的國度。

有很多事情會造成屬靈的黑暗，我們這裡會講幾個，請翻開約翰一書第二章9至11節，“人若說自己在光明中。卻恨他的弟兄，他到如今還是在黑暗裡。愛弟兄的就是住在光明中，在他並沒有絆跌的緣由。惟獨恨弟兄的是在黑暗裡，且在黑暗裡行，也不知道往哪裡去，因為黑暗叫他眼睛瞎了。”

你看到聖經中講到仇恨。仇恨是一種心裡的問題，當人們受傷，他們的心就不願意饒恕，因為不饒恕就會產生苦毒和仇恨。我們經常看不見仇恨，但是它會彰顯在我們的生命裡。一個人心裡有仇恨，就很難去愛人，他們可能裝成很好的樣子，但那個愛是不真實的。如果心中有恨，愛就不可能流露出來觸摸別人。

更不好的是，恨會使你瞎眼，你無法看見如何跟人建立關系，仇恨會在你周圍產生黑暗。不難想象仇恨是來自撒旦的，他的國度就是黑暗的國度。如果一個人有仇恨，他們就會被仇恨弄瞎眼睛，無法清楚的看見，也無法作出正確的決定。他們沒有好的人際關系，因為他們看不清楚。

如果你長在一個混亂的家庭中，會產生憂傷和仇恨，你不用為你父母的行為負責，但你要負責的是如何在心裡面對問題，願意放手﹔如果心裡有恐懼憤怒抓住你，這就是你的責任。我們需要了解的是，如果你將對家庭的仇恨留在心裡，對父親的仇恨，對母親的仇恨，甚至有時是仇恨自己，就會使你瞎眼，影響你跟人建立美好的關系，你總是透過你仇恨的眼光來看別人的行為。

聖經告訴我們有仇恨在心裡的，行在黑暗中，無法看見，因為仇恨弄瞎了他的心眼。如果一個人恨他的雙親，有可能仇恨也會轉向他的兒女。有些人有仇恨憤怒的經歷，可能會是從歷代祖先傳下來的。一個人從小長大時仇恨父母，成年后也會恨他的兒女，仇恨像一個河流從家族的血脈流下去，世世代代在黑暗中。這是因為缺乏愛，愛觸摸人的心，愛使我們彼此相連。

缺乏愛，使我們受傷。仇恨不隻有一種方式表達，它有多種的表達方式。聖經告訴我們，仇恨會引起謀殺，可以確認的是謀殺的誘因就是仇恨。有人被激怒，憤怒上升就會引起謀殺。約翰一書第三章14，15節講，“我們因為愛弟兄，就曉得是已經出死入生了。沒有愛心的，仍住在死中。凡恨他弟兄的，就是殺人的。你們曉得凡殺人的，沒有永生存在他裡面。”仇恨弟兄的人就是謀殺者。仇恨弟兄的人就行在黑暗中。

謀殺者就是取走別人生命的人，導致謀殺的原因就是仇恨。仇恨的表現就是對人的暴力行為，可能是身體上的暴力行動，也可能是憤怒的言語。當一個人非常憤怒的時候，你會感到害怕，因為背后有謀殺的靈，你能真實的感受到他控制不了的憤怒。

我們被設計不是要仇恨人，不是活在仇恨中﹔我們被設計的是活在愛中。當心中有恨，我們無法清楚的看見，會對人有不好的反應，想要傷害人，人們可以用話語傷害人，當你走開，覺得生命被吸干了，感到痛苦，需要時間復原。

另一種仇恨的形式被稱為冷漠的愛，不是從神而來的愛。從神來的愛充滿了溫暖，亮光，溫情，而冷漠的愛則是從封閉的心裡出來﹔他們非常有禮貌，不會做不好的事，但是感覺不到愛，心是冷的。行為是無可挑剔的，但感受不到愛。冷漠的愛是因為心裡有仇恨，表面假裝沒事，他沒有體會神的愛。

聖經非常清楚的告訴我們，有仇恨在心裡，就會使我們瞎眼，看不清關系，會引導你進入黑暗，影響你的人際關系。聖經告訴我們邪靈會導致屬靈的黑暗。在哥林多前書第四章4節，這世界的王弄瞎了我們的心眼，以至於神的光進不來。

另外一個導致屬靈黑暗的原因是，就是邪靈的工作。聖經告訴我們這世界的王就是邪靈，他弄瞎了我們的心眼，使我們看不見，不了解。當你跟他們分享耶穌基督的時候，他們不明白，他們會說“我看不見”，這就是屬靈的盲眼。這就是為什麼我們要為不信主的人禱告，打破黑暗的權勢。我們禱告除去屬靈的黑暗，禱告挪走邪靈的影響力，禱告有清晰的心思意念，看見真理，擁抱真理。

另一個導致屬靈盲眼的原因就是驕傲。聖經啟示錄第三章17節，“你說，我是富足，已經發了財，一樣都不缺。卻不知道你是那困苦，可憐，貧窮，瞎眼，赤身的。”這裡講的是教會中的人。驕傲就是自我為中心，驕傲有兩方面，第一，覺得自己自高自傲，無人可比﹔如此自愛，以至於看不見其他人。驕傲的人看到的全部都是自己，當你跟一個驕傲的人在一起的時候，你會覺得自己一點價值都沒有，因為他們全部的關注都是自己。你跟他們談話的時候，你沒有什麼機會講話，他們全講完了，都是有關他們自己的。

驕傲的另一種面貌就是剛剛相反，“我一點價值都沒有。”這人非常的自我為中心，總是想別人會怎樣看我，我要人們都喜歡我。所有這些人的驕傲都會在我們周圍產生屬靈的黑暗，使我們眼瞎看不見。

還有一個導致瞎眼的就是苦毒的冒犯，當有人冒犯我的時候，我心裡不原諒他，這也使我們看不清問題，因為我們總是定睛在被冒犯這件事上。一個女孩被父親侵犯就很容易被其他的男人冒犯。一位男孩被母親冒犯也會很容易被其他女人冒犯。

這些事情都會使我們眼瞎，沒法看清楚。巴底買瞎眼，他在乞討。乞討就是向別人伸手，希望他給予，滿足你的需要，很多人這樣做。如果你看不清上帝在你身上的作為，你就需要其他人的肯定來認同你﹔如果你看不清上帝對你說的話，你的價值，你的天賦，你的目標，你就希望其他人能告訴你，肯定你。你希望利用這樣的關系使你感覺更好，需要這種關系能夠告訴你是受歡迎的，你很好。這種依賴的關系是非常不健康的。

如果我們心中有論斷，也會使我們瞎眼。馬太福音第七章5節中，耶穌談到論斷。當你論斷一個人的時候，你就無法看清楚。我們用許多不同的方式論斷人，如按照性別來論斷人，女人經常這樣做，“所有女人都像這樣。”或者“所有男人都那樣。”還有以種族論斷人。所以如果心中有論斷，就不能清楚的看見，也影響我們的生命。

我們來看巴底買會如何﹔他想要不一樣，他聽說耶穌經過，這對他來講意義重大﹔他聽說過耶穌所做的事情，他聽說耶穌是救主，他聽到耶穌行的神跡，他聽說耶穌幫助人，他聽說耶穌從不拒絕人，他聽到耶穌從邪靈中釋放人得自由，從疾病中釋放，巴底買的信心起來了，他希望他的人生不一樣，他希望上帝的大能臨到，上帝的權能影響他的人生，改變他的人生。“我不要再瞎眼了，我不要再坐在黑暗裡了”。

以賽亞書第四十二章7節說，坐在黑暗中的人就像坐在監牢裡一樣。屬靈的黑暗就像監牢一樣影響你的生命，擄掠你，讓你無法成功。如果你驕傲，就限制了你，捕捉了你，你仇恨的 心佔領了你。如果你在靈裡面是被虜的，你就在黑暗的監牢裡，你需要尋找人來幫助你。巴底買說“我受夠了，我要耶穌改變我，我不想再在這裡待下去了。

大部分的人會維持現狀，不想改變，不管有多痛苦，也不要承受改變的痛苦。但巴底買不同，他想信耶穌能夠改變他 ，所以當他聽到耶穌經過，他開始大喊。如果你厭倦了活在屬靈的黑暗中，厭倦了呆在屬靈的監牢裡，厭倦了祈求別人來幫助你，向耶穌伸出你的手。巴底買是這樣做的，他大呼，“耶穌，大衛的兒子，憐憫我。”他用大衛的兒子這個稱呼，就是即將到來的彌賽亞。“耶穌，我知道你救人，我知道你能夠打破罪的權勢，打破魔鬼的權勢，我知道你能夠改變我，耶穌!”

眾人是怎樣講的呢？很多人對他講，小聲點，不要出聲，安靜的呆在那兒吧。大眾一點都不感興趣你的人生爭戰，他們隻是想避免受到攔阻，避免屬靈的噪音，也就是他們在反對巴底買的信心。沒有記錄有任何人是邪惡的，巴底買有信心，他的信心不是沉默的。當你有了信心，你總是要顯露出來的，這人的信心在兩個方面顯露出來：

第一，他大聲的呼叫耶穌。

第二，當人們阻止他，他持續不停的叫。當人們想要攔阻他時，他就更有信心，大聲的叫喊。當有一大群人的時候，會有很多噪音，耶穌聽見了他的聲音，停下來，他聽到的是信心的呼聲，他聽出了不同。耶穌不是隻聽見眾人的聲音，他能分辨出那獨一的聲音。因為那人的信心和持續不停的呼叫。

有時我們禱告沒有立刻從神那裡得到答案，聖經有很多這樣的故事﹔當你向神呼求的時候，可能你也不是立刻得到解答﹔可能有許多人想要讓你沮喪，但是信心永遠不被打倒﹔我們要一直大聲呼求，更大聲呼求，越多的攔阻就會呼叫的越大聲。

耶穌要求帶他來到面前，群眾立刻改變了，耶穌不是呼叫埋怨的人，耶穌呼叫的是有信心的人。巴底買做了什麼呢？他把乞丐衣服全部脫掉了，起來到耶穌面前。那件乞丐服是有象征意義的，它是正式的乞討的制服，就像一個批准乞討的証書。當他丟掉這件乞丐服，代表他的生命將會完全不同了，他就是上帝行神跡的那個人，因為耶穌叫他到前面去。

這個乞丐服代表了什麼呢？

第一，代表他舊有的生活方式。當他丟掉這件衣服，他就改變了，聖經告訴我們這就是悔改。我整個的人生要完全改變了，因為我來到耶穌面前，他呼叫我上前來。我不再活在黑暗中，不再貧窮，不再完全依靠別人的憐憫了，他的生活要完全改變了。

第二，乞丐服代表了限制。就是他原來的生命是受限的，因為黑暗所以受限，因為不信而受限﹔很多人都是受限的，因為他們不想像他們自己﹔很多人受限不是因為神，而是因為你心中對你自己沒有信心。

箴言第二十三章7節，“因為他心怎樣思量，他為人就是怎樣。”所以你相信你在撒旦的權勢下，你就生活在受限和黑暗中﹔你不相信你能的時候，你就會受限了﹔你不相信你可以做好任何事情，你就活在受限中。

不管是什麼讓你受限的，將它丟掉吧，悔改就是丟掉的意思，我把我對人生的看法完全改變了。乞丐服代表的第三個意義是，他人生的憂傷和痛苦。每一次當他穿上乞丐服，都會提醒他的受傷，許多人仇視他，責罵他，取笑他，捉弄他，偷他的錢。

許多人帶著傷害，悲傷，痛苦，就像穿上乞丐服一樣﹔很多人傷害他，他希望人人都同情他，他抱著他的傷痛的乞丐服向人乞討。

當他來到耶穌面前，他決定他要改變﹔不僅如此，這件乞丐服給他安全感，他可以不用完全丟掉它，萬一耶穌弄不好怎麼辦？需要一個退路嗎？很多人來到耶穌面前是抱有這個心態的。但是巴底買完全沒有想過，他完全脫掉袍子，來到耶穌面前。耶穌問他，“你要什麼？”“我要能看見。”正是正確的答案。

我們看到另外一個跛腿的人，當耶穌問他“你要什麼？”他有一大堆的埋怨，他沒有給出正確的答案。

巴底買立刻回答“我要看見。”所以當我們來到耶穌面前，不要埋怨，不要找借口，像巴底買一樣干脆的回答“我要看見。”耶穌說，“因為你的信心，你就得醫治。”立刻眼睛開了，黑暗不見了，他成為了耶穌的門徒，跟隨耶穌。從前這人是在黑暗的監獄中，現在看見了，他把乞丐服丟掉了，他的整個人生改變了，他不用再乞討了，他不用再受限了。他第一個看見的是什麼？耶穌！他就跟隨耶穌了。

耶穌來將我們從屬靈的黑暗中拯救出來，他來改變我們的人生，去除一切的限制，醫治傷心的人，給我們真正的安全感，帶領我們過一個美好的人生。在這個故事裡，耶穌最后一次經過耶利哥，有一個人擋住了耶穌，神跡改變了他的生命。

數百人中，隻有一個人擋住了耶穌，數百人隻是觀看，他們沒有信心，隻有一個人，丟掉他的袍子，相信耶穌會改變他。就像他期望的，耶穌改變了他。

由占卜中得自由

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請翻開聖經約翰福音第十章27，28節，“我的羊聽我的聲音，我也認識他們，他們也跟著我。我又賜給他們永生。他們永不滅亡，誰也不能從我手裏把他們奪去。”在這段信息中，耶稣把自己比作牧羊人，人就像羊一樣。

這裏耶稣說了三件事情，一，我的羊認得我的聲音。我們曾經養過一只羊，他很快就認得了我的聲音。如果你懂羊，你就知道它是認聲音的。耶稣說，“我的羊聽我的聲音，我也認識他們”，這裏講的是一種關系，我認識他們，他們跟從我。每一個人在生命中都跟從一些東西，你可能跟著群衆，跟著流行，跟著電視，跟著媒體。人們都是在跟著一些東西，只是常常自己不了解。

我們生命中可能會有壓力，讓我們跟從，我們喜歡在人群中，跟羊一樣，羊也是喜歡群聚的。耶稣說我的羊聽我的聲音，代表我們跟從基督，跟隨主的關鍵就是有能力聽從他的聲音。這世上有很多的聲音，很多聲音一直壓迫你，要抓你的注意力，要你的錢，要你的心。上帝創造我們是要我們活在跟他的關系裏，我們都是屬靈的，在靈裏有一個部分需要上帝來充滿。沒有神的時候就去找別的東西了，可能聽人的聲音，也可能聽邪靈的聲音。上帝要我們今天開始聽他的聲音，回應他的聲音。

神做了應許，我們如果跟著他，我們不會活在黑暗裏，我們會得著光，他的生命在我們裏面。耶稣邀請每一個人來跟著他，在生命中的某一個階段要做這個決定，不再讓罪帶領我們，不再讓群衆帶領我們，不再讓邪靈帶領我們，做決定跟從耶稣。

耶稣說，“跟從我，跟從我。凡跟從我的，不再在黑暗裏行，他們得著永生的光。”今天有很多人，他們的生命中有黑暗，苦毒，仇恨的黑暗；憤怒，不饒恕的黑暗；或者各樣罪惡的黑暗。聖經說，神的國是光明的國，魔鬼的國是黑暗的國。耶稣應許我們，如果跟從他，我們的生命就滿是活力，開始發光，看起來不一樣，講話不一樣，活的不一樣。他說，“你不會行在黑暗裏。”

神說當你跟他同行，跟從他的帶領，上帝的靈會幫助你處理生命中的黑暗，各樣受傷憤怒的黑暗，憂傷，苦毒和失望。我們需要決定到底誰來帶領我們。人們都在尋找方向，不幸的是我們常常在錯誤的地方尋找。

我們來看聖經中的一個故事，一位女子聽到不同的聲音，被領導，被帶領，她聽到的不是上帝的聲音，她聽到的是邪靈的聲音。這個故事裏，很多人付她錢，讓她告訴他們的未來。在使徒行傳第十六章16至18節，“後來，我們往那禱告的地方去。有一個使女迎著面來，她被巫鬼所附，用法術，叫她主人們大得財利。她跟隨保羅和我們，喊著說，這些人是至高神的仆人，對你們傳說救人的道。她一連多日這樣喊叫，保羅就心中厭煩，轉身對那鬼說，我奉耶稣基督的名，吩咐你從她身上出來。那鬼當時就出來了。”

保羅當時在腓立比這個城市，這個城市非常出名，它有一個區域叫Pufo，那裏有所謂的神域，是算命的中心；他們拜的是阿波羅，是藝術，音樂，戲劇的神。傳說他征服了當地的一條蟒蛇，他們之前拜這條蟒蛇。這個占蔔算命的中心，人們從世界各地來到，想要做新生意的人，開始新事業的人，在政府的人，當人要做決定的時候，都來找算命的人，付他錢來算算，我們稱這種人叫靈媒。

整個城市有很多靈媒，整個區域都在這種占蔔算命的靈的籠罩下，壓抑的靈。那裏有很多算命的工作在做，很多這種屬靈的活動，整個區域有沈重的壓力。人們付錢，靈媒就講他們未來的生活。聖經中講到的這個女子，她身上有靈環繞，就像蟒蛇的形狀；看不見這個靈，但這條蟒蛇纏在她身上，它的頭就在她的耳邊，那是個邪靈，對她的生命說話。她會聽見它說話，聽見靈界的聲音對她說，告訴她資訊。當她有這個靈的時候，她給出的資訊不可能從其他地方得到。

占蔔就是你參與到靈界，從邪靈處而不是從上帝那裏得到一些資訊。上帝創造我們是要我們跟他建立關系，神是靈，他讓我們也是靈；上帝要跟我們說話，聖經說上帝在我們身上是有計劃的，他在我們生命中是有目的的，他要指引你的生命。耶稣說，我是好牧人，我的羊聽我的聲音。代表上帝會跟我們說話，他說跟從我，跟從我的指示帶領，我帶他們去好的地方。

可是還有一個聲音，是邪靈的聲音。聖經中的這個女人賺了很多錢，那些人都想知道自己的未來；魔鬼知道你的未來嗎？他不知道。只有創造了你的那一位，才能看見前面，知道你的生命是爲什麽；只有創造你的那一位，才知道你的目的，只有創造你的那一位，才能完全明白你。

上帝渴望我們跟他連結，從他領受啓示指引。聖經在箴言第三章5，6節告訴我們，“你要專心仰賴耶和華，不可倚靠自己的聰明。在你一切所行的事上，都要認定他，他必指引你的路。”很多時候，神應許會指引帶領我們。人們都對未來充滿恐懼，不知道會怎樣，我會不會成功，我會不會很富有，能不能有美滿的婚姻感情，每一個人都有這樣的問題。

上帝要我們跟他連結，活在信靠的生命中，信心的生命是學習每一天與他同行。他不會把我們生命的一切告訴我們，但他鼓勵我們跟他同行，走信靠的路，聽他的聲音，也聽我們的心。上帝顯明在我們心裏的是什麽，當你開始跟上帝同行，你的心就會指引你，借上帝的話語，也借上帝的靈，你會富足。

我們看剛才的經文中講要全心依靠神，他會指引你的路。我們跟上帝的關系就是要有信任，這關乎你的心，以你的心來信任他，以你的生命信任他。不是全憑腦袋搞清楚事情，上帝搞清楚你的生命就夠了，他要我們學會信任他，學會傾聽我們心的聲音，爲未來做計劃，相信他會與我們同行，祝福我們的計劃。上帝的應許會指引我們，你可以做最棒的事情，就是跟上帝連結，學習聽他的聲音。

如果沒有這位愛我們，帶領我們的神，我們對未來就會很恐懼，很害怕。我知道上帝是好牧人，他愛我，他相信我，他創造了我，在我生命中有美好的計劃，我會將生命交在他手上跟從他。當我知到耶稣爲我死在十字架上，我可以將生命交給他，跟從他。因爲有人愛我到可以願意爲我而死，這是我可以信任的。

如果我不相信神，我就活在孤單的生活中，對未來充滿恐懼，有些人對未來充滿恐懼。如果你焦慮，沒有安全感，對將來的事情感到很害怕。當然你看新聞，會增加更多的害怕；海嘯，地震，冰山融化，恐怖份子，媒體上都是壞消息，人們感到害怕，在這種情況下，人們就開始找算命的了。

這個女孩是個靈媒，賺很多錢，人們付他很多錢；邪靈知道人們的未來嗎？不知道！邪靈的知識是有限的，他們不知道你的未來，但他們知道你在做什麽，他們觀察你，知道你過去經曆過什麽。就好像有一個邪靈的網絡一樣，把你的名字打上去，搜索一下，所有的東西都出來了，所有邪靈都上來了，“我知道他的爸爸媽媽，祖父祖母，他們全家我都認得，我觀察他們很久了。很高興將他們的生活搞得一塌糊塗。”

耶稣說魔鬼來就是要偷竊，傷害，毀壞，你要知道什麽，邪靈就跟她講；這個女士其實不那麽聰明，她只是聽而已，聽魔鬼的聲音，然後講出來。邪靈不知道你的未來，他不過是給你開這條路，你同意他，邪靈就開始在你身上工作，開始控制你。

舊約聖經利未記第二十章6節告訴我們，“人偏向交鬼的和行巫術的，隨他們行邪淫，我要向那人變臉，把他從民中剪除。”上帝警告人接觸邪靈的危險，靈媒是邪靈運用的一個人來對人說話；交鬼的是讓邪靈進入他裏面，讓他可以說出你生命的事情；占蔔就是要進到靈界，連結上邪靈，請他給你方向。這可以用各式各樣的方式來做，青少年常玩的，好像碟仙，放很多字在旁邊，把碟子放在中間；誰在那裏？他們不明白的是，這是跟邪靈在接觸，真的有人在那裏，還有好多人呢。

聖經說我們到神的面前，耶稣說我是道路，我是真理，若不借著我，沒有人能到父那裏去。當你進入到靈界，不管用什麽樣的方式接觸，你接觸的都是邪靈。交鬼和接觸家族熟悉的邪靈的，是隨他們行邪淫。我們想想妓女，她是付出身體以交換金錢，這是交易的産生，當她拿到錢就將身體出賣了，付錢的人利用她的身體。

聖經說，當你參與占蔔的事，你就好像妓女一樣。你得到資訊，可是你讓邪靈有權利利用你的身體。你得到資訊就好像妓女拿到錢一樣，你就讓那個靈進入到你的身體了，就像妓女把身體爲男人敞開一樣；聖經用的一些類似語言，不要跟魔鬼行邪淫，不要讓邪靈來汙穢你，這讓你跟上帝的關系被砍除。這是讓上帝最憂傷的事，他設計了你，他在你生命中有計劃，他愛你，想要幫助你，要跟你同行，要進入到你生命裏，要你轉離這一切，你反而轉向邪靈仇敵去了。

你打開生命讓邪靈進來，要交換什麽？就這麽一點點資訊嗎？你知道找靈媒會怎樣嗎？他們會上瘾的。自己做不了決定，一定要回去先問過靈媒，付更多的錢，獲得更多的資訊，再付更多的錢，得到更多的資訊。他們的生命就被邪靈掌控了。凡是參與占蔔的，你跟邪靈達成了協議，你讓他有權利進到你的生命，這樣就會有很多問題了。

要參與到這當中，人們會有各樣的方式；今天的媒體上都是這些東西，好像哈利波特電影，很多神奇鬼怪的電影，他們美化了占蔔，把巫術，魔術講的很美，看起來很有意思。可是他們沒有告訴你的是，他能力的源頭在哪裏？真是屬靈的力量就一定有屬靈的源頭。神的國裏，能力的源頭就是聖靈，耶稣基督得榮耀。但在魔鬼的國，能力的源頭就是邪靈，你不知道它是從哪裏來的。

有些人在占蔔上做過實驗，感覺好像沒有傷害；大家都在玩，有的在學校玩，有的在家裏玩，有些在周末玩；會有一些幻想出來，你有沒有想過當那些蟒蛇立起來盯著一個動物的時候，那些動物常常就癱瘓了，感覺被蟒蛇催眠了，無法離開它的視線。當你參與在邪靈裏，就開始有這樣的幻想出現了，因爲那個能力是很真實的，有吸引力，有邪靈的吸力。但這樣做，你是打開生命讓邪靈對你産生更多捆綁。

有些人是家族中有人做算命的事，這也有機會讓邪靈進入到你生命。有些人家裏有法術，巫術的事情；各式各樣的找尋靈裏的能力，拜偶像是其中一種形式；拜偶像的人需要獻祭，要交換，給一些東西給偶像，要交換一些東西回來。交換回來的是什麽呢？是邪靈。同樣的，就像妓女一樣，我們被造不是爲了邪靈，我們的生命不是要被鬼附的，我們受造是要讓神愛的靈住在我們裏面，上帝的渴望是要他的靈從我們心中流出，如同活水的江河。

可是你拜偶像，占蔔，算命等等，做巫術，魔術的事，當我們向這些東西打開生命，就向邪靈打開我們的生命了，麻煩就開始了；麻煩是漸漸增加的，參與這這些事裏面，常常會做噩夢，在靈裏面掙紮，很沈重，很憂郁，很難過；好像房中的東西都會動，或者聽到聲音跟他講話又沒法讓他閉嘴，有時晚上被折磨，有各式很可怕的噩夢；或者醒過來感覺有人要殺了他，或者感覺被性侵犯，卻沒有人在房中。一旦邪靈有了入口，他就不斷要增加捆綁，不斷增加他的掌控，要完全打敗你的生命。

耶稣說盜賊來就是盜竊，殺害，毀壞，耶稣來賜給我們生命。我們回過頭來看這個故事，在使徒行傳第十六章，這個女孩有占蔔的靈在身上，她跟著保羅大喊著說，“這些人是至高神的仆人，對你們傳說救人的道。”她講的都是真的，很多人不知道，他們只是一群人在那裏。這些人是有知識的，當耶稣面對邪靈，邪靈會大叫，他們知道耶稣是誰。邪靈認識耶稣，也認識跟從耶稣的人，他們知道你是誰。

記得有一次我在巴厘，開車經過一個公園，發現有些人和一些蛇在那裏，我特別下車去跟他們聊一聊，看他們在幹什麽。因爲在新西蘭沒有蛇，我就很好奇。那些人聚在一起，中間墊子上有一些蛇，非常嚇人。我不敢太靠近，離得遠一點，他們應該是從珀流來的巫師，其中之一就來到我面前。邪靈會認出神的仆人，他是怎樣認出來的？當你跟從耶稣基督，聖靈活在你裏面，上帝的靈住在你裏面，你身上有神的靈的印記，你真的是散發光出來的，別的人可能看不到，但你生命中的證據果子，靈界都看得見。

于是這個人就出來跟我說，他從沒見過我，跟我講過話；他說，“請不要禱告敵對我們，讓我們停下來，我們來只是要賺點錢，我們沒有要傷人。”他怎麽會講這種話，在他們身上的邪靈認得出上帝的仆人，他們的回應就是拜托我不要攔阻他們，這也代表我們有能力攔阻他們；耶稣說我賜你們權柄勝過蛇和蠍子和一切仇敵的能力，沒有什麽能害你的。在靈裏他們能認出你是誰，我們看人就是人，看不見他身上是否有邪靈纏著，除非上帝向我們顯明。我們也看不出誰是基督徒，除非你看他生命的果子。可是在靈裏，我可以看出你是誰，是怎麽樣的，他們認得出你。

去年九月在台灣的一次聚會，很多人，聖靈很大的運行；上帝跟我說話，開始釋放，我們呼召，上帝就開始運行，有很多人得釋放，跟我們這裏一樣。我最小的女兒跟我在一起，她跟我說，因爲那是一個很大的聚會，我真的遇見主了，她發現她可以釋放；她說：“我問主想要我發現什麽事，我以爲頭腦裏會想到一句話”；主就跟她講“轉身，面對這些人。”她回答說，“不要了，我的睫毛膏都流下來了。”主說你轉身看這些人，打開眼睛。她跟我說，她站在那裏打開眼睛看，眼睜睜看著這些人站在前面，可是在他們的上面還有一個屬靈的世界存在，她同時看見兩個世界。只有上帝打開你的眼睛你才有可能看見這些事情。我問她“你看到什麽？”她說“我看到邪靈。”“他們長什麽樣？”“他們嚇壞了，我看見他們在聚會中，每一個都嚇壞了。充滿了恐懼。”“他們在幹什麽？”“他們抓著這些人，試著一直要抓著他們。”“他們爲什麽要抓住他們。”“邪靈有些是 把手放在這些人的眼睛上，讓他們不要看，有些邪靈把手放在他們耳朵上，讓他們聽不見。有些把手放在他們嘴上，讓他們說不出話來。每一個都是死命的抓住這些人。”我說，“你還看到什麽？”她說，“我看不見你，我聽見你說話。”她看到一位好像耶稣的人，很大的光一直照出來。所有邪靈看著這個人，嚇壞了。“每一次你說話，就像上帝的大水把邪靈沖出去。”我說，“你還看到什麽。”她說，“太多了，我眼睛受不了，同時看到兩個世界。我再一次閉上了眼睛。”

重點就是，靈界會看到我們真正的景況，邪靈認得耶稣，知道他是上帝的兒子，他們非常怕耶稣。耶稣在各各他打敗他們，聖經說當耶稣舍命，他打破了邪靈在所有人身上的權勢。耶稣邀請我們轉離罪，轉離邪教，轉向永生真神。他愛我們，我們受造不是要與邪靈連結，有些人把生命向邪靈打開；可能從你家族裏來，可能有人在廟宇中把你獻給了邪靈，或者你家人在拜偶像，算命，甚至你自己也做過，就向邪靈打開生命了；或者你打開眼，進入到邪教的世界，邀請邪靈。

上帝要釋放你自由，我注意到有些人進入捆綁的方法，就是借著電腦遊戲，那些扮演角色的電腦遊戲，扮演巫師什麽的。我爲很多人禱告，大概有四百人，都是玩線上遊戲的，上瘾了，被鬼附了，他們通過這種想象力，角色扮演的遊戲開始進到靈的世界裏了；還有通過武術，打坐等的各式各樣的方式接觸靈界。

耶稣來是要釋放我們得自由。我們來講完這個故事，看看會怎樣。這裏講她這樣做了多日，保羅就心中厭煩，他很難過。字面的意思就是他在掙紮，想突破；有一些邪靈的活動，在靈裏會感到壓力，他明白是有汙鬼在她身上。保羅就對她說話，他是奉耶稣基督的權柄而來的，耶稣能勝過魔鬼。我們現在跟耶稣同行，我們也能征服魔鬼了。“奉主耶稣基督的名，出來！”對那個靈說話，那個靈發作，就從那個女孩身上出來了。這是一條蟒蛇，就從她身上出來了，她就得自由了。

我記得很多年前在一個地方，我們第一次有上帝的運行和釋放，我很清楚的記得，場面非常壯觀。有一天晚上聚會，大家出來接受服事，我爲一位男士按手，他是從太平洋島來的，他的家族有做算命的事，他倒在地上，這個也很常見的，但是後來他做的事，我從沒見過。他就像一條蛇一樣，在椅子底下一路的滑，滑到房間的最後面。我從沒見過這種把戲，椅子都飛開了。

我們開始對他說話，命令占蔔的靈離開，那個靈就離開了，靈的形狀就像蟒蛇。我碰到過好多次這樣發作的情況，各式各樣的事情都有；重點是他們都是壞的，他們是來傷害你的。保羅直接面對靈，這個女孩就得自由了。她是其他人的使女，也是邪靈的使女，那一天她接受耶稣基督，成爲自由人，遠離罪的自由，遠離邪靈的自由。上帝讓你經曆同樣的事。

今天我們要做兩項邀請，第一，邀請人來跟從耶稣。耶稣說，凡接待他，歡迎他，相信他名的人。耶稣是救主，他拯救我們脫離罪，凡接待他的相信他的人，他賜他們權柄做上帝的兒女，進入上帝的家中。上帝今天要爲你這樣做，他要改變你的生命；只要你願意，他要進入你的心中。不管你生命經曆過什麽，不管你生命有多糟糕，神愛你，他愛你，他明白你；不管你參與過什麽，都不能改變上帝愛你的事實，你的行爲不管有多可怕，都不能改變上帝愛你。當你還在罪中，上帝差他的兒子爲你死在十字架上，今天我要告訴你，上帝愛你。

耶稣說跟從他的人會聽他的聲音，他要賜他們永生，今天邀請你做這第一步，來跟從耶稣，邀請他進入到你生命，求他赦免你的罪，接受他進入你生命。

後面還有第二次呼召，特別爲那些在邪靈裏掙紮的人禱告。如果你有做過算命，占蔔的事，或在各樣的邪教裏面，拜偶像，交鬼的，或被邪靈折磨的，可能你家族中有人參與到邪靈裏；我們會有第二次呼召，爲你禱告釋放，上帝的能力會臨到你，釋放你離開這些邪靈。

今天你可以做決定，跟上帝連結；你今天可以做決定，不再帶邪靈回家，你只要求耶稣基督釋放你得自由。

由墮胎流產中得醫治

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教會應傳播盼望的信息。福音就是人們盼望的信息，是神對我們的愛，他願意幫助我們。作為基督徒，無論周圍發生什麼，我們要明白我們需要幫助別人，耶穌基督來就是要幫助人的。

我想到一個很重要的經文，耶穌來不是來定人的罪，而是來使人因他得救，拯救人脫離罪惡。耶穌愛你，他從不定我們的罪，不管你身邊發生什麼，上帝的心一直伸向你，愛你，恢復你。

身為一個基督徒，不要為國家許多的問題害怕，要學習了解他們，服事他們。沒有不能談論的議題。事實上，我們應該談論任何議題，帶著愛的靈，盼望的靈，安慰人們。

今天我要做的是跟大家分享一些感人的事情，我以前沒有分享過，但最近上帝對我的心說話。昨晚和今早我還在掙扎，我想講別的東西，可是你當聆聽上帝，他對我們已經有安排。今天的信息可能直接影響你，也可能間接影響你。希望大家有一顆敞開的心，愛的靈。因為我們為人禱告，看見上帝帶來極大的突破。

我們來看詩篇127篇3節。我們來過這裡很多次，經常跟大家分享我們的故事。大部分人知道我們有一個大家庭，七個兒女，21個孫子女。在這個過程中，學習到很多，其實我們還有兩個孩子，在天上。我今天要談的是墮胎和流產。

我希望給大家帶來盼望，我希望還不認識耶穌的人，明白到上帝愛你，想要幫助你，想要打破你生命中罪的權勢。然后，我要為三組人禱告，我們一起禱告，免得任何人覺得尷尬。我們希望愛的靈，上帝的大能能幫助你。我要為所有曾經墮胎的人，或跟曾經墮胎的人接觸過的人，或流產的人，無法生育的人，一起禱告。我們絕不會開口問你是什麼樣的問題，希望大家自由的到前面來，相信上帝會幫助你。

詩篇127篇3節說“兒女是耶和華所賜的產業。所懷的胎，是他所給的賞賜。” 。所以孩子是產業，是上帝賜給我們的，每個人裡面都有這個靈，是從神而來。聖經說神是靈。人與人結合會創造生命。人與神同工，上帝把靈放在孩子身上，孩子成為有靈的活人。上帝渴望孩子分享他給的命定，上帝的渴望是有許多的子女，這是神的心。上帝的計劃就是接觸這地，幫助人，就是上帝的人。

當我們生在這世上，因為罪與神隔絕。上帝渴望來到我們中間，饒恕我們的罪，將他的靈放在我們生命中，賜給我們永恆的命定。這一切由回應基督開始。

三天前，我讀到一篇有關中國的新聞。故事發生在濰坊市，一對年青夫婦，他們已經有了一個孩子，正懷著第二個孩子。一天早晨，公安沖進家門，攔住這位丈夫，抓走了妻子，直接把她帶到了醫院。當時妻子懷孕六個月了，他們威脅她說要把她的丈夫關進監獄。而丈夫也四處找尋妻子，六個小時后才找到，但她已經被打了流產針。

深深感動我的是，他們兩個人因為失去孩子而憂傷，這沒有人可以安慰他們，我的心都碎了。我將分享一些我個人的見証。我們再看看神的話語，希望為人們帶來盼望。

很多年前，我的妻子經歷過兩次流產。身為一個男人，當時我不明白這對女人意味著什麼。我們四處服事，感到很大的壓力。我們已經有五個孩子，我的妻子從沒有抱怨過這兩次流產。她從醫院回來，我們繼續我們的生命。沒有多想什麼。我們又有了兩個孩子，Peter和Sarah。

多年后，我在另一個教會服事，為一位女士禱告。我問她發生了什麼事情，她說她流產了，當我禱告時，她開始哭泣，我也感到非常憂傷，與她一起哭泣。我想太不可思議了，我一定是感受到了神的愛。

同一天，我去到另一個教會，同樣的事情又發生了。我為一位流產的女士禱告，我又感受到了很深的憂傷。當你感覺到什麼時，就要問自己，我的感受是什麼？我為什麼會有這樣的感受？回到家后，我開始禱告，上帝跟我說，你憂傷不是因為她，而是因為你自己失去的兩個孩子。一個男孩，一個女孩。你從未停止過悲傷，即使你並未意識到你的損失。

我開始很憂傷，上帝就告訴我該怎麼做。我回到家跟妻子說“上帝跟我說到我們流產的兩個孩子”。Joy說“上帝也跟我說話。他們是一個男孩，一個女孩。我給他們起名為Timothy和Catherine。”我說，神告訴我在家裡應該怎麼做，於是，像往常一樣，我們全家一起進餐。Joy把兩朵漂亮的花放在餐桌上。我跟孩子們分享說“我們家有七個孩子，實際上，應該是九個，還有兩個在天上。”

有趣的事情發生了，流產后出生的兩個孩子開始深深的哭泣。我感到他們靈裡的悲傷。在他們的頭腦裡都不知道我們失去了兩個孩子，悲傷一直由我妻子承擔了。現在他們知道他們失去了一個哥哥和一個姐姐。他們的心中充滿了憂傷。憂傷的靈在他們周圍。

所以，我妻子的流產的憂傷，傳到了后面的兩個孩子身上。我們就按手在他們身上，為他們禱告。而其它的孩子們則沒有這個問題。這就告訴我們，在母腹中的胎兒能感覺到母親的憂傷。當憂傷沒有解決時，就傳遞給后面出生的孩子。

我們做了一件事：為流產的孩子取名字。這很重要，不要隻把他們當成一個東西。對於我，就好像我的妻子掉了一顆牙，很痛一樣。在心中沒有感到作為一個父親，失去了一個孩子。

所以我認識到，當流產和墮胎發生時，會有很深的憂傷，處理憂傷的過程之一就是認出他們，為他們取名字，將他們釋放在神的手中。不隻是“一件事情”發生了，失去了“某樣東西”，他真實的是一個活著的靈，她的身體沒有成型，他的家沒有長久，他們不得不離開。我妻子講的很美“他就像一朵玫瑰花苞，沒有綻放。”很多年來，我們為很多人禱告，在這方面幫助他們。

第二個見証。今年初我在新加坡講道，教導關於與神相遇。當時我正在服事我們的敬拜小組，幫助他們與神相遇。在這以前的一天，教會結束后，我們的兩個很憂傷的孩子分別跟我們說，他們今天聚會時看到了他們失去的哥哥和姐姐在天堂，還能清楚的描述他們。我必須承認我有些嫉妒。而當今年我講與神相遇時，教導人們如何專注耶穌，用你的想象力想像聖經中是如何描述他的，讓你的心伸向他 ，默想耶穌。這些年青人也都與神相遇。我感到不應隻帶領聚會，我也要進去。

於是我開始默想耶穌，不想其它任何事情。突然我進入靈裡。沒有看到耶穌，聖靈向我顯出了兩個人。一位年青男士和一位年青女士。我很驚訝，這不是我預期的。他們同時叫我爸爸。我更吃驚了，他們說“我們有很多關於天上的事情要告訴你。”然后我意識到耶穌站在我身旁，懷裡抱了個嬰兒，他就是我們十二月流產失去的孫子。突然，我又看到一個小孩，叫我爺爺，我能看出他的容貌，是我們另外的孩子失去的孩子。

我的注意力集中在我的兒女身上，耶穌在我身邊，他們開始和我交談，他們說“我們要給你看一些東西。”突然，我的眼開了，我看到在很大的一片地方，到處是孩子。不同的年齡，從嬰兒到小小孩，數不清的孩子。他們說“這些都是流產和墮胎的孩子，在天上他們每人都有專屬的地方，天使在照看他們，他們在那裡受教育，長大。

我注意到，我失去的孫子的大小正是他相應的年紀。我也留意到我失去的兩個孩子也是他們相應的年齡。我看到周圍流產和墮胎的孩子們，神向我顯示的全部都是中國孩子，我非常震驚。

耶穌對我說，他來不是要定任何人的罪，我能感受到他的愛。他說“每個人都有他的母親，她因為失去孩子而憂傷，我要醫治她們。”他沒有說他們做了什麼，他隻是說“我愛她們，想醫治她們，因為她們憂傷。”他說“我要你開始在這方面學習和預備，准備一些DVD，在中國講道。”我的心深深的觸動了。不光是因為看到了這些孩子，而是感受到了他們母親的憂傷。我感受到耶穌的心深深的憂傷。

最近我們到中國，有人私下找到我。我不敢相信，他們說他們曾經墮胎，需要幫助。上帝大大地服事醫治他們，賜這對夫婦安慰。這以后，我們每到一個地方，總有人要求我們為他們禱告。

我想與大家分享一些經文。問題最根本的關鍵是，在神的眼裡，每個孩子即使還在母腹中都是一個活人，有他的命定。有時人們認為，在母腹中的孩子，他不懂任何事情，他不是一個人，隻是一件東西，還很不方便。

我想告訴大家，在聖經中，神的看法是怎樣的。孩子在懷孕前，神就知道他們，他們的品格，他們的生命的定命，不管他在母腹中長到什麼階段，在神的眼裡，他都是一個活人，有他的命定，是神認識的人。

士師記十三章2至5節說“那時有一個瑣拉人，是屬但族的，名叫瑪挪亞。他的妻不懷孕，不生育。耶和華的使者向那婦人顯現，對他說，向來你不懷孕，不生育，如今你必懷孕生一個兒子。所以你當謹慎，清酒濃酒都不可喝，一切不潔之物也不可吃。 你必懷孕生一個兒子，不可用剃頭刀剃他的頭，因為這孩子一出胎就歸　神作拿細耳人。他必起首拯救以色列人脫離非利士人的手。”

請留意，孩子在懷孕前，神就知道他是個男孩，神的計劃是這個男孩會拯救以色列人，最重要的一點就是這位母親在懷孕時應該怎樣照顧自己，換句話說，神關心對未出生的孩子的任何負面影響。所以說，懷孕前，神就知道這個孩子和他的命定。

再看列王記上十三章1至2節“那時有一個神人奉耶和華的命從猶大來到伯特利。耶羅波安正站在壇旁，要燒香。神人奉耶和華的命向壇呼叫，說，壇哪、壇哪，耶和華如此說，大衛家裡必生一個兒子，名叫約西亞。他必將丘壇的祭司，就是在你上面燒香的，殺在你上面，人的骨頭也必燒在你上面。”

國家敗壞，到處充斥著拜偶像，神派遣先知來警告他們。他說“我要為這世界帶來一個孩子，他的名字叫約西亞。他要恢復整個國家。”你知道這個預言之后多久約西亞才出生的呢？360年！即360年前，在未懷孕，未出生前，神已經為他命名，為他安排了命定。

360年后，當他的父母有了這個孩子后，根本不記得當時的預言，他們隻有一個念頭，“為這個孩子取名為約西亞。”他們甚至不了解他們叫他約西亞，成就了神一早的計劃。神為這個孩子360年前定命時，他的父母都還沒有出生。上帝看見了未來。他說“360年后，有一對夫婦，盡管父親非常敗壞，拜撒旦，但我還是要將一個孩子帶到這個家庭，他會拯救整個國家。他的名字叫約西亞。所以，神為孩子命名，安排他們的命定，在他們懷孕前就認識他們了。

另外一段經文，耶利米書一章4節5節“耶利米說，耶和華的話臨到我，說，我未將你造在腹中，我已曉得你，你未出母胎，我已分別你為聖。我已派你作列國的先知。”多麼神奇，神說在胚胎還未成型前，我就知道這將是誰。即你是個靈，在你住的人的家還沒成型，我就認識你，知道你的全部，我已經將你分別出來，為你安排了命定。甚至你的母親還不知道你，什麼胚胎都沒有，我已經將我的靈放入你中，你將成為列國的先知。

你注意到還在孩子成型前，神已認識他，為他安排命定，多麼神奇！以賽亞書四十九章1節中也說：以賽亞也是在母腹中形成前，神就已經認識他了。

詩篇139篇16節，大衛說“我未成形的體質，你的眼早已看見了。你所定的日子，我尚未度一日，你都寫在你的冊上了。 ”大衛的意思是：當我還是小小的胚胎時，我還未成型前，你就看到我了。不僅如此，在你的書上，已經寫下了我的一生，我甚至還沒有過一天。 他的意思是，神已視他為一個人，一個靈，一個有命定的人。在他出生前，為他安排了一切。

這些經文強調在我們懷孕前，神已經知道我們，在我們懷孕時，神的靈進入到這個孩子，即使未成型，神愛他，為他安排了命定，即使他出生在一個困難的家庭環境中。

約西亞的父親是個拜撒旦的，但上帝仍然安排他的命定，神看這個未出生的孩子是在母腹中的人，是活生生的人，有名字，有命定，有計劃的生命，真實奇妙！

聖經中有很多次，神講到未出生的孩子，講到撒迦利亞和伊麗莎白。伊麗莎白是不能生育的，神對撒迦利亞說“你知道你的妻子不能生育，不能有孩子嗎？”他說“我知道。”神說“你將會有一個孩子。”他說“她太老了，怎麼生孩子？”他與神爭執，但神說“不要爭論。你們會有一個孩子，他將是名先知，為主預備道路。”聖經非常清楚的寫明，神在他們懷孕和出生前很久就認識他們，為他們安排好一生的計劃。

馬太福音一章21節“他將要生一個兒子。你要給他起名叫耶穌。因他要將自己的百姓從罪惡裡救出來。”再次說明，在孩子懷孕前身就認識他，知道他的名字，為他安排了命定。

你又如何呢？以弗所書二章10節中“我們原是他的工作，在基督耶穌裡造成的，為要叫我們行善，就是神所預備叫我們行的。”請留意這裡告訴我們每一個人都是神的獨特的創造，沒有任何人與你一樣，你的指紋是獨有的，你的DNA是獨有的，每一樣東西都是獨有的。在你出生前，神已為你安排好了要走的路，你有一個目的，就是為了行善，在你開始前，神為你的一生就計劃好了。阿門！

另一處經文路加福音一章39至44節中，神告訴我們在我們出生前就認識我們，知道我們的名字，知道我們長什麼樣子。我們還在母腹中，他就關心我們，為我們的一生安排了命定。

我最近讀到一本書，他們對母腹中的胎兒用超聲波進行了大量的研究。100年前，人們認為人的特征形成於大腦，個性，知識，意識等。如果一個人的個性，特征和感情是在大腦形成的，就得出結論是，如果大腦未發育完成前，他就不是個真正的人，你就可以隨意處理掉他。

但是聖經告訴我們的完全不同。最新的研究也顯示，人的心在大腦之前發育。聖經說“你的一生由心發出。”最新的研究發現，孩子在母腹中就能了解周圍發生的事情，雖然他的大腦還未形成。經過大量的研究，這本書中得出結論：未出生的母腹中的孩子，完全了解周圍的事情，即使他的大腦還未發育。他就是個人了。

最后，作者得出結論，孩子有第六感官。他講的就是靈。他們的大腦，聽覺還未發育好，他的靈知道周圍發生的事情，他發現孩子能夠辨認出父母的聲音，能夠分辨出爭執，了解周圍發生的事情。這也是希伯來文化中的一部分，當婦女懷孕后，要躲在一個安靜的地方幾個月，以使母腹中的孩子能夠在平安和祥和的環境中生長。這些都是現代的研究發現。

聖經路加福音一章39至41節說“那時候馬利亞起身急忙往山地裡去，來到猶大的一座城。進了撒迦利亞的家、問以利沙伯安。” 以利沙伯懷孕六個月，嬰兒還沒有完全成型，“ 以利沙伯一聽馬利亞問安，所懷的胎就在腹裡跳動，以利沙伯且被聖靈充滿。”誰說腹中的嬰兒不了解周遭發生的事情？你看，以利沙伯正懷孕，馬利亞來探望她，聖靈通過她預言。以利沙伯聽到了，嬰兒也聽到了，他大力的踢動，滿有喜樂。因為這是他的命定，要成為彌賽亞的先知，還在母腹中，他就有了命定。他知道了這些安排，感受到了聖靈，他跳躍，大力地踢。

這就是他們最新研究發現的。嬰孩在母腹中會感受到靈的影響。而早在2000年前，聖經就寫明了。還在在母腹中就了解周圍的環境，了解上帝的同在，了解母親和她的感受，了解父親。

我花時間分享這些事情的原因，是因為我要談到墮胎的影響。聖經講明，魔鬼對孩子非常有敵意。從創世紀三章15節開始，魔鬼對兒女就充滿敵意。因為神的應許是：從婦女生出的孩子中，有一位將摧毀撒旦，成為世界的拯救。

當我們查考聖經歷史，就會發現邪靈攻擊孩子的例子。不管是在母腹，還是剛出生。出埃及記中，在上帝拯救之前，所有兩歲以下的男嬰被殺。大衛王之后，亞她利雅殺死了所有的王室小孩，隻留下一個。耶穌時期，謀殺的靈臨到希律王，又殺掉了所有不到兩歲的孩子。

魔鬼常常攻擊孩子，母腹是沖突之地。當流產發生時，神美好的計劃突然終止了。墮胎發生時，孩子的生命被奪走了，不好的事情發生了，有巨大的影響。當我們為人禱告時，留意到很多人非常痛苦，但卻不明白為什麼。

聖經中講述了流產發生的幾個來由。 重點是，神的計劃不是流產，而是生養眾多。我們查考經文，分現流產的發生是因為拜偶像，有時咒詛臨到家中，發生流產。有時是因為家中有亂倫的事發生，有時是因為人們交鬼產生的。

我不詳細講解所有經文，但聖經中非常清楚的告訴我們，上帝的心意是要我們生養眾多，所以流產發生時，有屬靈的原因，也有自然身體上的情況。我們對家裡上次的流產求問神時，我的一個女兒從神那裡得到話語，“是因為大腦沒有正常發育成型”，我女兒和她丈夫經歷了多年的憂傷。憂傷也會有生理上的原因。我們生活在一個墮落的世界。有時是屬靈的問題。有時因為母親做了內在誓言，不要生孩子。

不管原因如何，結果總是憂傷的，當母親懷胎又失去了孩子，就會產生強烈的憂傷。男人不容易了解。女人的生命以孩子為中心，孩子是從她的生命中得著生命，當失去了一個孩子，就會有巨大的憂傷。

我想強調墮胎 的影響，有時當我們輔導人時，如果沒有挖到問題的根源，問題就永遠不會解決。當我研究這個領域時，發現不管在任何地方，人們得出同樣的結論。當女人墮胎時，她必須讓自己相信這不是真實的人。可能是醫生告訴她，這沒什麼，隻是一次醫療手術﹔也可能是因為害怕，或者身體條件不好，她就是不肯承認發生的事情。

最重要的一點就是否認他是個人。母親否認他是個人，不過隻是一次身體上的手術，就像拔一顆牙一樣。但是，這不是真相。

墮胎的人有很多常見的問題。現在最普遍認同的症狀是墮胎后創傷症。我在這裡列出來這些問題，然后再探討如何釋放人們。

• 羞愧。他們會感到羞愧和隱秘，沒有自信。

• 罪咎。不能脫離的罪咎感。

• 憂郁。時常憂郁，悲傷和痛哭，卻沒有明顯的原因。請記住，如果你以謊言遮蓋真相，拒絕接受一個生命被奪走，你不會明白為何會悲傷，如果他不是什麼東西，我有什麼好悲傷的呢？

• 自殺傾向。

• 自恨。

• 睡眠失調

• 各樣回想的畫面。女人會突然記起過去痛苦的經歷，又回到震驚和悲傷中去。

• 強烈渴望擁有一個替代的孩子。下意識中希望有一個孩子可以彌補失去的孩子。這個被稱為“周年現象”，在墮胎日或孩子的出生日，母親時常開始憂傷哭泣，卻不明白為什麼。

• 寵愛，溺愛另一個孩子。

• 酒精和毒品的問題。

• 自我懲罰的行為。我應該被懲罰，可能自我傷害如割傷自己，虐待的關系，混亂的關系。

• 可能有身體的疾病。經常流血，或習慣性流產。

• 常常有很深的罪惡感。我活下來了，可孩子付上了代價。很可怕的感覺。

最近一位女士請我為她禱告。我問她“你的問題是什麼？”她說“我時常流血，有十二年之久了。我們非常想要一個孩子卻沒有。”我問，“你有墮胎嗎？”她說“有過四次。”我帶著愛對這位女士說“你的家庭有四個孩子，但他們都在天上。這是因為你的行為造成的。當別人告訴你這隻是一個簡單的手術時，他們在撒謊，這就是你問題的根源，你和你的丈夫現在沒有一個孩子，原來你們可以擁有的孩子卻失去了。”

她開始不停地哭泣，我們與她分享上帝愛她，饒恕她。於是她在神裡面得恢復，她的心得醫治。我禱告下次再見到她時，她會有一個孩子。今年我到城市豐收教會，一位女士和她的丈夫抱著一個嬰兒來到，她說“你要看看我們的寶寶，神跡的寶寶。你走后12個月，我們有了第一個孩子。懷孕非常困難。我自己以前內在誓言說再也不要生孩子了。每次懷孕都會流產。我聽了你的教導，才知道自己做了內在誓言。我棄絕這樣的誓言，請求上帝祝福我的肚腹，三個月后，我就懷孕了，就是這個寶寶。”實際上不到三個月，大約是一個月。

你可以看到，生命中有屬靈的關聯。女性經歷的很多問題，她們不追溯到墮胎，她們假裝這不是什麼嚴重的問題。

耶利米書31章15節說“耶和華如此說，在拉瑪聽見號咷痛哭的聲音，是拉結哭他兒女不肯受安慰，因為他們都不在了。”所以，我們如何得自由？處於這種情況的人，第一步就是轉向耶穌基督。約翰福音三章16節說“神愛世人，甚至將他的獨生子賜給他們，叫一切信他的，不至滅亡，反得永生。”神不是來定人的罪，而要世人因他得救。你的任何痛苦，耶穌都能夠拯救醫治。

可以看出，墮胎的后果遠比我們認識到的嚴重。它影響到母親，肚腹中靈裡的部分，影響到下一個出生的孩子，影響到家庭，原本可以做父親的男人失去了孩子，祖父母失去了孫子，以后出生的兄弟姊妹也受到創傷的影響。

我記得一位婦女帶著孩子來，我問“什麼問題？”她說“我的孩子不肯讓我喂他母奶，我每次抱他到懷裡要喂他，他就開始尖叫，我們該怎麼辦？”我說“你有沒有試圖想過要打掉這個孩子？”她說“有。”我說“是不是孩子怕你，他感受到了謀殺的靈，他不敢親近曾想害他的人。”她非常震驚，請求耶穌饒恕她，我為母親和孩子禱告，孩子就開始親近她了。當孩子得釋放，離開恐懼和謀殺的靈，立刻他們就可以親近了，非常明顯。

怎樣得自由呢？有三個方面：屬靈的問題，情緒的問題，關系的問題。離開死亡進入生命，答案非常簡單：

1. 我們需要面對屬靈的問題。要面對真相，是我奪走了孩子的生命。大部分的母親這樣做是因為感到極大的壓力。來自男朋友或丈夫的壓力，家庭的壓力，環境的壓力，不管怎樣，他們必須負責任。得釋放的關鍵就是打破謊言。以賽亞書二十八章告訴我們，當我們以謊言遮蓋自己，我們就與死亡和地獄立約。

2. 在神面前悔改，認罪。真實的來到神的話語前。約翰一書一章9節“我們若認自己的罪，神是信實的，是公義的，必要赦免我們的罪，洗淨我們一切的不義。”神已經饒恕赦免了我們，我們要做的，就是領受他，

3. 饒恕。首先人們必須接受饒恕，接受神饒恕了我們。其次，饒恕自己。最后，饒恕別人。經常，女人會對孩子的父親生氣，對自己的父母生氣，或對幫她做手術的人生氣，對鼓勵她這麼做的朋友生氣。有各樣的怨恨和悲傷需要面對。放開饒恕他們是解決這一問題的方法。釋放他離開邪靈。

認罪，饒恕，從邪靈裡得釋放，我們等一下會為人們釋放禱告。另一方面，對人們非常有幫助的是，求問神，這是怎樣的孩子？耶穌知道，上帝認識你的孩子，男孩還是女孩？聆聽你的心，神會告訴你。我看到人們在進行這一步時，總是痛哭。

接下來就是給他們取名字。給他一個身份，打破謊言。你知道給孩子起名多麼困難，我們花幾天的時間想好一個名字。但我在整個過程中發現，上帝已經為他們命名了，我們隻需要聆聽。求問神，我失去的孩子的名字是什麼？或是自己給孩子一個名字。

我對那位經歷過四次墮胎的女士說“求神告訴你孩子是怎樣的。”她很快的回答說“女孩，男孩，男孩，女孩。”我說“給他們取個名字吧。”幾分鐘就起好了。接下來她就開始悲傷了，意識到了她的孩子們。我說“下一步就是釋放你的孩子們在神的手中。耶穌站在這裡，把你的孩子交給他。你要知道，有一天，你會再見到他們。”有時，我們簡短的禱告“耶穌，我將我的孩子交托給你，把他交托在你的懷中，請告訴他我對我所做的非常抱歉，我盼望再見到他。”

請留意，這一切都是打破謊言，回歸真相。經常會有很多悲傷，痛苦和傷感。有時，還有破碎的關系需要修復，通往自由的路是簡單的。

當然，除非是有歷代遺傳的因素，流產的人不用認罪，懺悔。通常我發現這樣做非常有幫助。就是每次閉上眼睛，心向神敞開，求他向你顯示孩子是怎樣的，告訴你他的名字。現在，他不再是一個東西了，他是一個人。你會再見到你的孩子。這就是福音的盼望，孩子在天上。

當你與耶穌交通時，他就會告訴你的孩子。把你的孩子交托在耶穌手中，有一天你會再見到他們。我看到很多人得自由釋放，破碎的心得醫治。憑著對耶穌基督的信心，把所有的秘密，羞辱，謊言都打破，破碎心得醫治。

我相信上帝會觸摸很多人。讓我們閉上眼晴，你要明白神愛你，耶穌來到世上，道成肉身，讓我們看見天堂如何，邀請我們與他連結。我們都活在罪中，與神隔絕，我們找不到神的路。但耶穌為我們的罪死在十字架上，他從死裡復活，打破了罪的權勢。耶穌說，凡接待他的人，歡迎他的，相信他的，他就賜他們權柄做神的兒女。

Deliverance Training (Special Topics)

驱邪术培训（具体事宜）

驅邪術培訓（具體事宜）

Detailed teaching to train leaders in how to minister Deliverance (exorcism), bringing freedom from Generational Curses, Occult powers, and Sexual sin.

As you listen, you will gain insight into how demons can enter the lives of people; and what to do (step by step) to set a person free.

详细的教学，培养领导者如何拯救部长（驱魔），从世代诅咒，神秘的力量，和性罪带来的自由。

当你听，你会深入了解如何恶魔能够进入人们的生活，以及做什么（一步一步地）设置一个自由的人。

詳細的教學，培養領導者如何拯救部長（驅魔），從世代詛咒，神秘的力量，和性罪帶來的自由。

當你聽，你會深入了解如何惡魔能夠進入人們的生活，以及做什麼（一步一步地）設置一個自由的人。

Freedom from Generational Iniquity & Curses (1 of 3)

Understand Generational Iniquity and Curses, recognize when it is operating in a person's life, and learn how to minister to help a person be set free.

从世代遗传的罪恶和咒诅中得自由

從世代遺傳的罪惡和咒詛中得自由

Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3)

People trade with evil spirits for knowledge, power or protection and end up in bondage.Learn how to recognize occult bondage and how to set people free,

从邪术/秘术中得自由

從邪術/秘術中得自由

Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3)

Understand God's design for a blessed life, and about the deep impact on our spirit and soul of sexual sin. Learn how to break bondages, minister deliverance, and rebuild damaged lives.

从性犯罪中得自由

從性犯罪中得自由

Paperback

- Paperback

Audio

- Freedom from Generational Iniquity & Curses (1 of 3).mp3

- Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3).mp3

- Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3).mp3

YouTube

- YouTube Playlist »

- Freedom from Generational Iniquity & Curses (1 of 3).mp4

- Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3).mp4

- Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3).mp4

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- Vimeo Channel »

- Freedom from Generational Iniquity & Curses (1 of 3).mp4

- Freedom from the Occult (2 of 3).mp4

- Freedom from Sexual Sin (3 of 3).mp4

從世代遺傳的罪惡和咒詛中得自由

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什麽是曆代的罪孽和咒詛？怎樣辨別它們？有哪些現象是我們可以看到的？如何服侍他人，釋放他們得自由。

我相信在服侍人的時候，我們需要留意曆代咒詛的根源在哪裡？馬可福音第九章20節説：“他們就帶了他來。他一見耶穌，鬼便叫他重重地抽瘋。倒地上翻來覆去，口中流沫。”這裡這個少年人被邪靈所附，邪靈開始發作出來。你會發現，經常耶穌一到某個地方，那裡邪靈就發作了。這是因爲耶穌身上帶著上帝極重的恩膏和衕在，這些邪靈一定會有所反映。我們生命中的恩膏越強，就越容易經曆到這些事情。特別是當你到第三世界的文化中時，一去就會發現邪靈很容易發作出來。耶穌的門徒想要把鬼趕出去，卻趕不出去。在21節,“ 耶穌問他父親説，他得這病，有多少日子呢。回答説，從小的時後。鬼屢次把他扔在火裏，水裏，要滅他。你若能作什麽，求你憐憫我們，幫助我們。耶穌對他説，你若能信，在信的人，凡事都能。孩子的父親立時喊著説，我信。但我信不足，求主幫助。耶穌看見衆人都跑上來，就斥責那污鬼，説，你們聾啞的鬼，我吩咐你從他裏頭出來，再不要進去。那鬼喊叫，使孩子大大的抽了一陣瘋，就出來了。孩子好像死了一班，以緻衆人多半説，他是死了。但耶穌拉他的手，扶他起來，他就站起來了。耶穌進了屋子，門徒就暗暗的問他[說説]，我們爲什麽不能趕出他去呢。耶穌説，非用禱告，這一類的鬼，總不能出來。”

我們來仔細看這個故事，理解其中更深的含義。首先，你看到一個孩子受邪靈的折磨，邪靈可能在一個人的童年就進入到他的身上。在聖經裏，邪靈在孩子身上的例子不止一個。當然，我們要把頑皮搗蛋，缺乏管教的孩子與受邪靈折磨的孩子區分開。邪靈把這個孩子丟到水裏，火裏，是要毀滅他的生命。在這個故事裡，耶穌問了一個很重要的問題，這個病有多少日子了。如果你要幫助人，服侍人，你要追溯這個人身上是否有曆代的咒詛，你需要問這個問題。如果這個人回憶説這個問題很小就有了，就有兩種情況。第一，可能是在很小的時候就麵對的創傷；第二就是曆代家族的咒詛。從這兩個問題可以找到一些線索，以確定是否是曆代的咒詛，遺傳了下來。第一個問題，這個事情多久了，就是什麽時候開始的；第二個問題，你家中別的人有沒有類似的情況。從前麵的經文中我們看到，耶穌一開始也是問孩子的爸爸這個問題，他回答説，小的時候就開始了，按照這個父親描述的經歷，幾乎可以確定這個孩子身上就是這種曆代咒詛的邪靈。這種曆代的咒詛，就是很多人問題的根源。重要的一點是，耶穌説，要釋放就一定要有信心。

你若能信，凡事都能，信是最關鍵的。我要是相信上帝會運行，我就有能力把這個鬼趕出去。門徒問耶穌，爲什麽這個鬼我們趕不出去呢？他們做過很多釋放，為什麽這一次卻失敗了呢？“耶穌説，非用禱告，這一類的鬼，總不能出來。”耶穌的話有幾層含義；首先，邪靈有不衕的位階和能力；第二，我們需要有信心；沒有信心，什麽都不會發生，雖然有時候可能會有抵擋，相信上帝會賜下這樣的突破；第三，需要禁食禱告幫我們建立信心。我們註意到，耶穌常常禁食禱告。在上麵的經文中我們看到，當這個邪靈出來的時候，耶穌馬上認出它是什麽鬼，原來它是聾啞鬼。如果你能夠認出邪靈，講出它的名字，它在這個人身上的勢力馬上就減弱了。耶穌直接命令邪靈出來，並且命令邪靈不可以再進去。在我查考聖經中，這是耶穌唯一一次命令邪靈不可以再進去。我覺得耶穌之所以這樣説，是因爲這是個孩子，而其它的例子，特別是在馬太福音十二章，耶穌[說説]邪靈是有機會再回來的。因此，我們需要與上帝建立良好的關係。

我跟大家分享一些曾經服侍過的一些人，可以很清楚的看到他們身上曆代遺傳下來的邪靈。第一個是一個很小的孩子。兩個人找到我説，“我們的孩子有一個很嚴重的問題，衹要他一醒過來，就開始砸毀房間裡的東西。我們都不知道爲什麽這樣，他才大概兩三歲。”我就開始了解他們的背景，以確定這一特別行為背後的根源。原來這個爸爸有很嚴重的毒品問題，易怒問題；而這個媽媽的家族在邪教巫術上有研究。這兩個家族曏邪靈敞開，影響到了這個孩子。孩子醒著時很難禱告，邪靈常常發作，孩子開始大喊，又踢又打，很難釋放。我就在孩子睡著時請父母跟我一起跪下來，我的手沒有碰到他，離開他的頭一點點，開始禱告，吩咐從父親家族，母親家族來的邪靈的咒詛全部離開，命令邪靈離開。那個孩子就像打了個哈欠，哈出一口氣，我禱告好幾次，他都會大哈一口氣，很明顯看到不一樣，我禱告讓邪靈不再進入這個孩子，也釋放平安進入孩子身上。整個過程孩子都沒有醒來。第二天孩子的父母打電話給我[說説]，孩子醒過來後，完全沒有了以前那種摧毀性的行為了，完全消失了。這件事對於我來説，也是一個學習的機會。看到這些曆代邪靈的真實性，認清它是怎樣發生的，最重要的是怎樣處理它。

我再舉一個大人的例子，一個五十多歲的婦人找到我，説她在教會爲主工作很多年了，有一個問題一直睏擾她，希望得到幫助。首先我需要問的三個問題：問題是什麽？對你的影響是什麽？這個問題什麽時候開始的？她説長期以來，性不潔，污穢的畫麵一直在她腦中出現，特別是在敬拜的時候攪擾她。我問這種狀況多久了，她説從很小的時候就開始了。我再問“你過去有沒有遭受過性虐待或接觸過類似的畫麵？”她説沒有。現在剩下唯一的可能就是曆代的邪靈了。我又問了一些關於她家庭背景的問題。她的祖父是到中國去的宣教士，有兩個孩子，其中一個女兒就是這位婦人的媽媽，還有一個兒子。他們在中國的一個省服事，把孩子送到另一個省的寄宿學校學習，而該省當時被日本人統管。學校被日本人接管後，該女孩長期受到日本人的性虐待。後來，這孩子終於回到父母身邊，再後來他們離開了中國，女孩結婚生子，夫妻之間的關係又破裂了。我問這個女孩，你願不願意代錶你的家人，饒恕日本士兵？她説願意。 我跟她一起做了一個簡單的禱告，承認她的基督的信心，棄絶她家族中傳下來的性虐待的過去，饒恕那些士兵，當我命令的時候，那個污鬼就大發作跑出去了。從那一刻開始，她的頭腦就開始清晰了，再也沒有以前的折磨了。

現在我們以加拉太書三章13節做總結，看看耶穌的作為。“ 基督既爲我們受了咒詛、就贖出我們脫離律法的咒詛．因[為爲]經上記著、『凡掛在木頭上都是被咒詛的。』”經文講得很清楚，耶穌在十字架上的成就，就是救贖我們脫離咒詛，帶我們進入祝福。這裡特別強調挪走以前因爲違背神的律法而受到的咒詛。上帝的目的是讓福分臨到我們，聖靈在我們生命中的運行，就是我們福分的源頭。祝福代錶恩惠，代錶有果效，代錶神的生命流入。

“叫亞伯拉罕的福臨到外邦人”。上帝賜福亞伯拉罕，在耶穌身上成就了。當我們認衕耶穌，與他衕活，就有福分釋放下來，臨到我們。認衕耶穌，[並併]調整我們的生命與他配合，我們就是在耶穌裏麵新造的人。上帝的福分臨到他的兒子耶穌基督，當我認衕他，我就蒙福。當你做了基督徒，認衕基督的死亡，埋葬與復活，你就已經享受蒙福的地位了。

蒙福是因為你跟基督的關係，不是因為你做的事情。有一個危險是，我們進入基督後，又重新回到律法中去。我蒙福是因為認衕基督，而不是我做了什麽，不然你就又回到律法了。耶穌救贖我們脫離律法的咒詛，所有代價他都付清了，他在各各他山上的工作已經打破了所有的咒詛，耶穌死在十字架上，聖經説“凡掛在十字架上的，都是受詛咒的”。他救我們脫離咒詛，自己被咒詛，他完全滿足了上帝的要求。

咒詛背後的權勢救贖邪靈。咒詛是屬靈敵對我們的力量，是邪靈賜下的能力，它會一直運行直到被打破爲止。很多人因為受到咒詛不斷的掙扎，我們要將耶穌所成就的，直接逼迫這個邪靈。我們必須了解：第一，祝福背後的勢力是聖靈，當你認衕耶穌，你的生命就蒙福。以弗所書第一章告訴我們，在基督裏，受到將天上所有的福分都賜給了我們，我不需要努力得著福分，我衹需要領受福分。第二，咒詛的背後是邪靈的勢力。咒詛是因為違背了上帝的律法。耶穌救贖我們脫離一切因[為爲]過去違背上帝律法而受到的咒詛，救贖代錶完全付清贖金，釋放一個人自由。耶穌付了全部的代價，我還要付多少呢？不用付了。耶穌已經供應我，讓我得福，我還要做什麽才能贏得福分呢？什麽都不用，我衹要相信。

一個人怎樣保持自由，得勝的關鍵就是信心。不是更努力。我越努力，就越陷入律法的詛咒之下。神召我活出蒙福的生命，我已經是得福的人了，不管發生什[幺麼麽]，因為信耶穌，我已經蒙福。在各樣事上蒙福，在每個領域蒙福。不用賺取這福分，而是因信心釋放的。

我們看一看關於曆代的罪孽和咒詛的幾處經文。出埃及記二十章2至6節，十誡，“我是耶和華你的　神、曾將你從埃及地[為爲]奴之家領出來。除了我以外、你不可有別的神。不可爲自己雕刻偶像、也不可作甚麽形像、彷彿上天、下地、和地底下、水中的百物． 不可跪拜那些像、也不可事奉他、因為我耶和華你的　神是忌邪的　神、恨我的、我必追討他的罪、自父及子、直到三四代．愛我守我誡命的、我必曏他們發慈愛、直到千代。”這裡上帝很清楚的警告我們不準拜偶像。上帝看人是把你當作家人看待。而我們看人，衹是看到每個個體。上帝可以看到幾代人，他的計劃是讓福分幾代的傳下去。福分是上帝的恩惠，是聖靈在我們周遭的流露。當我們與上帝衕行，過敬虔的生活，我們的子女就蒙福。他們什麽都不用做，就可以領受上帝極大的恩惠。因為他們是愛神的子民的兒女。上帝的設想是每一代能夠建立在前一代跟上帝的關係之上，繼續的進行。我們每天做的小小的選擇，會將我們引曏特定的方曏。我的岳父母現都已過世，我清楚記得岳父八十歲的生日，全家和朋友們一起慶祝。他們有五個兒女，全部長大結婚，有很多不衕年齡的孫子。晚上，當大家一起爲他祝壽時，二十個孫子都站起來錶達他們對爺爺的愛。這些年來，他一直刻意與上帝衕行，爲主工作。他也決定在每個孫子身上投資，在他們五至十一歲的年紀時，帶他們去度假，有時兩三個，有時四五個孩子，一起跟爺爺去度假。他們一起靈修，禱告，一起玩，每個人都可以選擇這一天怎樣過。這麽多年來，他做了各式各樣的活動，他相信這種家族曆代的産業可以一直傳承。在慶祝時，我岳父的兄弟也在場，可他完全走的是另一條路。他拒絶耶穌，現在是第二次婚姻，因為各樣的外遇和不忠實，現在又跟別人在一起了。兩個女兒都沒有結婚，很特別的一家人，也沒有孫子女。當他們兩兄弟一起長大時，他嘲笑哥哥相信耶穌，可是等到他八十歲時，就可以看出來他當時的決定帶出的一生的果效如何。一個與上帝衕行，投資在家庭中，有敬虔的産業留下來，有美好的婚姻，穩定的家庭，有愛祖父的孫子女們。而另一個，沒有穩定的婚姻，沒有穩定的家庭，也沒有産業留給孫子女。

我們了解上帝的計劃是讓敬虔的産業代代相傳，如果我們選擇活在悖逆的生活中，留下的就是毀滅。衹要與上帝衕行，福分就會不知不覺中進入我們的家庭。我記得多年前到印尼去帶一場約兩千人的聚會。我的兒子David跟我一起。他跟我去過很多次的宣教。通常我的計劃是先訓練領袖，然後再進行大型聚會。但那天是假日，一開始就進行大型聚會，沒有人受過訓練，不知該怎麽做，每一個人都需要釋放，衹有David和我兩個人。呼召時，上千人走出來，成排成排的人站在那裡，我跟David説，一半都是你的，另外一半給我。我在釋放時，看到各式各樣的事情，有人叫喊，邪靈出來。突然，我想看看David在幹什麽，他身邊都是人，有些人倒在地上，有些人大聲叫喊。聖靈在他身上大大的運行。後來他告訴我説，大概三個月前，我決定上帝做在你身上的都是要留給我的産業，我就開始禱告，希望得著屬於我的，真了不起，今天發生的，就是禱告的結果。這就是繼承敬虔的産業。他能夠站起來説，在你身上所有的，都是屬於我的。代錶我不用像你那樣付代價才能得著，我得著是因為我是你的家人。衕樣我們得著基督的一切，是因為他是我們的長兄，我們是與他連結的，我們衹需要起來去得著這一切，突破了，就得福分。

衕時，罪也是有曆代延續的後果的。“不可爲自己雕刻偶像、也不可作甚麽形像、彷彿上天、下地、和地底下、水中的百物.”（出埃及記二十章4節）。第一個最大的例子就是亞當。他犯罪，我們每一個人生下來都有罪。上帝講明，有些罪有曆代延續的後果。在耶利米哀歌五章2至6節，“我們的産業、歸與外邦人．我們的房屋、歸與外路人。 我們是無父的孤兒．我們的母親、好像寡婦。 我們出錢才得水喝．我們的柴是人賣給我們的。 追趕我們的、到了我們的頸項上．我們疲乏不得歇息。 我們投降埃及人、和亞述人、[為爲]要得糧吃飽。”。請留意，我們是受人逼迫的，我們的景象是尷尬和羞辱的，上帝給我們的産業已經被別人拿走了，所有的福分都沒了，我們像孤兒一樣，沒有父親。原來免費喝的水，現在要給錢了，柴也要買了，我們這樣勞苦努力，完全不得歇息。還被埃及亞述人捆綁奴役。接著第7節就講出了問題的源頭。“我們列祖犯罪、而今不在了．我們擔[噹當]他們的罪孽。”。就是説，父母做得不對，子女承擔[后後]果。

我們再回到出埃及記二十章，上帝很特定的講到拜偶像的罪孽。“我耶和華你的神，是嫉妒的神。”（出埃及記二十章5節）。神説他對我們有熱烈的愛，當他看到你有別的情人的時候，他非常不高興。我們講的不是邪惡的上帝，他説“我對你的愛是這樣的深，如果看到你跟別人走，對我造成很深的傷害。”這[裏裡]用的是婚姻上的用語。我想多解釋一下前後文的背景，讓大家有更多的了解，上帝在什麽情況下把十誡頒給他們的。希伯來文化中，大部分人認為，上帝把律法寫下來，行的好就好，行的不好就受懲罰。記得當時上帝帶這些人到曠野裡來，上帝跟百姓説想見他們。上帝的話對希伯來人是有意義的。“你們是我特別的寶貝”。希伯來文化中，兩個人要結婚會有幾個步驟。第一步就是要説“你是我特別的寶貝”。然後才下聘禮，訂婚，結婚。他們會在帳幕中預備婚禮。新郎拿出他們的婚約。婚約列出婚姻中所提出的條件《出埃及記》二十章中的Katuba指的就是婚約。他們交換誓言，彼此衕意一起維繫婚姻。他們做奴役許多年了，這個婚約對他們來[說説]是很美的。好像夫妻之間許配給了上帝。大家可以在網絡上搜索一下希伯來人的婚姻，他們整個訂婚的過程，就會在《出埃及記》看到，整個過程就是與上帝立約的過程。上帝説，在婚姻中不忠誠就會有[后後]果。我們常常覺得與上帝的關繫很隨便。不是的，這是盟約，是彼此聯合的衕意書。上帝説，如果你拜偶像，會影響好幾代。《出埃及記》二十章[說説]：我耶和華是忌邪的神。換句話説，我最不能忍受的就是你心裏有別的男人。《雅各書》説，如果你跟隨世上的價值，你就是一個淫婦。你對上帝就是不忠心的。上帝愛我們，他要我們進入這個關繫裏。上帝特別講到拜偶像，雖然有不衕的源頭，但拜偶像是最嚴重的。上帝説，除我以外，不可有別的神，不可爲自己雕刻偶像，不可曏他們跪拜。跪下代錶你拜這個偶像，代錶這個偶像在你生命中受尊重，有重要地位。一個人曏偶像屈膝，實際上是承認偶像裡的邪靈。偶像背後的權勢就是邪靈，偶像本身不過是塊木頭。其實它什麽都不是，是沒有意義的，不過是手刻出來的，但是在它裏麵，在它後麵的是邪靈。

你必須明白上帝不喜歡這樣的事，但一個人曏偶像獻祭時，就是與邪靈做交易。刻意與邪靈達成協議，才是問題的所在，邪靈有了合法進入的權利。你把這個獻給偶像，期待它來保護你，或是供應你，或給你能力。這些都是上帝想要給我們的，當你曏偶像屈膝，你就拒絕了上帝，不承認他是你保護，供應和能力的來源。《詩篇》115篇第3至第8節[說説]：“然而，我們的神在天上。都隨自己的意旨行事。他們的偶像，是金的，銀的，是人手所造的。有口卻不能言，有眼卻不能看。有耳卻不能聽。有鼻卻不能聞。有手卻不能摸。有腳卻不能走。有喉嚨也不能出聲。造他的要和他一樣。凡靠他的也要如此。”請註意，“造他的要和他一樣”。你拜什麽就會像什麽。如果你拜偶像，你就會變得跟它們一樣，又冷又硬。我觀察那些拜偶像的，通常生命中有苦毒的根；情緒上也是冷漠剛硬，死亡的靈完全掌控他們。

再回到《出埃及記》二十章，上帝[說説]，由父及子，三四代。上帝追討他們的罪孽。罪的後果就是死亡。上帝很清楚的設定規則，犯罪就是死亡。聖經中有些罪是死刑。問題是當你犯了這樣的罪，上帝殺了你，就砍斷了後麵的世代。而若沒殺你，罪的審判會傳下去好幾代。雖然沒有死亡，但會影響好幾代。罪孽的原文是“彎曲”的意思，希伯來文的意思是看到一個東西就把你勾上了。罪孽就是彎曲的，扭曲的，就好像會朝曏一個特定的問題過去，罪孽是一種驅動的能力，把一個人逼往罪上，是造成犯罪的根源。請大家看《出埃及記》三十四章6，7節“耶和華在他麵前宣告説，耶和華，耶和華，是有憐憫有恩典的神，不輕易發怒，並有豐盛的慈愛和誠實。爲千萬人存留慈愛，赦免罪孽，過犯，和罪惡，萬不以有罪的為無罪，必追討他的罪，自父及子，直到三，四代”。在這裡，上帝親自宣告他的名，上帝説我是有憐憫有恩典的神。我賜憐憫，恩典，我不輕易[發髮]怒，長久忍耐，也有公義，但更多憐憫。上帝的憐憫代錶他的饒恕，恩典；上帝的公義則要求我們爲罪付出代價。

上帝饒恕三件事，罪孽，過犯，罪惡。這三件是不衕的。我們認為都是罪，做錯事。但聖經把這三件事區分開來。這些詞在新約中再次出現，把他們全部歸為罪。我們需要明白，罪孽，過犯，罪惡這三者雖然每一個都是不衕的，但耶穌的寶血都已經完全贖清。

罪孽，代錶彎曲，轉折，你的生命轉折曏罪了。當我們講到曆代的咒詛，罪孽就是我們要處理的。

過犯，代錶刻意違背神的律法，心裏清楚的知道不對，但還要去做，這就是違背神的律了。

罪惡，代錶沒有達中目標，造成得罪的事。重要的是，我們做了一些我們都沒有察覺的事，是無意中做錯了。如你開車沒有留意限速50公裡，你開了80公裡，被警察攔了下來。你[說説]你不知道限速是50公裡，警察不會對你説，沒事，對不起，你走吧。他會説，不管你知不知道，你違法了，就要付罰金。

無知的犯罪和過犯不衕。舊約中，當摩西要求百姓塗血在門框和門楣上，有罪孽，過犯和罪惡，都要塗血。耶穌基督的血包含了我們所有的罪孽，過犯和罪惡。所以塗血就如衕劃了一個十字架。出埃及記二十章中，上帝指明十字架和耶穌的寶血就是解決罪孽，過犯和罪惡的問題。每個人要爲自己的行為負責，父母犯的罪不會怪你，你不用爲他們的過犯負責。可是他們身上帶的罪孽，因為血氣的原因，就會影響到你。上帝追討罪孽直到三四代。（ 申命記二十三章第2，3節）

另外一種會代代相傳的詛咒是私生子。即婚姻以外私生的孩子。在這人身上有拒[絕絶]的詛咒，有拒絕的邪靈進入他們。曾經有一個人上前接受呼召，因為當時有太多人接受呼召，沒辦法進行輔導。我衹問簡單的問題，通過詢問才能找到問題的根源。“你的問題是什麽？”我問。他説“我很生氣。很多憤怒。”“那你對誰憤怒呢？”“每個人。”這代錶他對某人憤怒而沒有處理。爲找到問題的根源，我又問:“你跟父母的關係如何？”他回答説“我對父母雙方都很生氣。”“那他們做了什麽得罪了你呢？”他[說説]“不知道，我就是對他們生氣。”我説“你是家中的長子嗎？”“是的，我是。”“你是婚姻之外出生的嗎？”“是的。”他承認。憤怒的根源就在這裡了。他的生命中包含了很深的拒絕和羞辱，總想怪罪那些想要幫助他的人，把憤怒投曏每個人。他需要饒恕父母，不可拒絕他們，要曏他們道歉。因為他拒絕他們的幫助，是對他們的不尊敬。私生子的生命中一直承帶著憤怒和拒絕。憤怒是一種要求，是對不公義事情的反應。欠了別人的就是憤怒，放棄權力去饒恕對方才是解決的方法。如果在家族中歷數四代，每人生兩個孩子，最後家族中至少會有三十人。如果歷數十代，人數就更多了。上帝這樣愛我們，但有些罪打開門，讓曆代咒語進來，也讓罪孽進來。詛咒是負麵的摧毀的勢力，是邪靈的能力造成的。罪孽是家族扭曲造成人不斷犯罪，罪孽詛咒[並併]行，一代代傳下去。

曆代的罪孽是家族中持續犯某一種罪， 如，姦淫，醉酒，衕樣的罪不斷發生。曆代的詛咒是一種負麵的勢力一代代傳下來，是邪靈造成的。我們先探討罪孽如何從一個人傳遞到另一人，然後，學習如何認清詛咒。

首先， 罪孽的傳遞方式是曆代遺傳。就如你身上帶有父母遺傳的體徵，有些罪孽你也會繼承下來。

罪孽的源頭有幾點。

第一，可能是邪靈的能力。家族中有熟悉的邪靈在運行。

第二，毒根的論斷。如果你因為特定的罪或失敗論斷父母，你的生命中就會産生殺種和收割的循環。你論斷的東西就會在自己的生命中出現。有些人講我絕不要像我爸爸，代錶他們受過傷，對父親有論斷，現在又誓言，結果他就會跟爸爸一模一樣。所以當我們論斷父母，反而讓家庭中有了罪孽的循環，我們論斷的，我們自己收割。 這是家族罪孽的一個源頭。

第三，行為的模式，基因的原因。有可能這些罪孽破壞了基因的密碼，造成問題借著基因傳遞下去。

第四，學習的行為。人們會模仿他們父母的行為，使衕樣的罪孽在家族中一直延續，他們要學習新的生活方式。

那[麽如何認清家族曆代的詛咒？什麽是詛咒？

詛咒是人説的話讓屬靈的勢力運行。這些話釋放了屬靈的勢力，可以一代代傳下去，直到被打破爲止。詛咒背後的勢力就是邪靈污鬼，詛咒一個人就是把邪惡，摧毀，災難帶到他身上。當詛咒臨到一個人，就像有屬靈的勢力壓製他不斷重復毀滅性的行爲。壓製他的環境和情緒，不斷重復失敗。

詛咒從哪裡來？箴言二十六章2節説“無故的詛咒必不臨到”，即詛咒必是有原因的。第一個可能的原因是上帝。因為上帝設定了律法，違背律法就會讓邪靈在生命中運行，就會受到詛咒。第二個原因來自人。人説出的話詛咒家族，詛咒人。人所行的巫術，當他施咒時就會敵對人。例如，有人將孩子在廟中獻給偶像，就會造成詛咒的發生。當人對邪靈敞開，把自己的生命獻給邪靈，就會開啓邪靈運行的機會。另外有時權威的角色會説詛咒的話，如“你不會做成什麽大事”“你這麽笨”等等。有權柄的人講出毀滅性的話，就造成詛咒的發生。人也可以詛咒自己，“我是個失敗者，什麽都做不好”。第三個造成詛咒的原因，就是邪教的誤見。申命記七章25，26節，上帝説“他們雕刻的神像，你們要用火焚燒；其上的金銀，你不可貪圖，也不可收取，免得你因此陷入網羅；這原是耶和華－你 神所憎惡的。可憎的物，你不可帶進家去；不然，你就成了當毀滅的，與那物一樣。你要十分厭惡，十分憎嫌，因為這是當毀滅的物。”有些物件，如偶像或邪像，如果帶進家中，就會把邪靈的勢力帶進來，造成後果。如果有詛咒在運行，一定會有後果。有沒有詛咒在運行，就看有沒有發生不斷重復失敗的模式，特別是一代代傳下來的情況。

失敗的模式有哪些呢？申命記二十八章15節中列出了很多，“你若不聽從耶和華－你的 神的話，不謹守遵行他的一切誡命律例，就是我今日吩咐你的，這以下的詛咒都必追隨你，臨到你身上。”總結起來有以下的情況，

• 重復發生的心理或精神問題

• 重復發生的慢性病或過敏的情況

• 難懷孕或流產。這特別跟拜偶像有關。何西阿書九章講到，拜偶像會造成所有的果子被剪除

• 家族破裂，離婚，常常[發髮]生，家族中沖突不斷

• 重復發生財務缺乏的問題

• 常常發生意外。家族中很多人都經歷過意外

• 自殺，英年早逝在家族中不斷發生

• 家族中常有虐待[發髮]生

• 無法安頓。不穩定，無法安靜下來。該隱就受到這樣的詛咒，四處漂流。

所有這些問題都有不衕的原因，如果不斷重復發生，就很可能是曆代詛咒造成的。有人曾對我説，他常有惡夢攪擾。我會問三個問題，“什麽問題？”“怎樣影響他？”“什麽時候開始的？”他説這一生都有。顯示出可能是歷代家族中傳下來的。另外過敏，“有多久了？”“一生如此。”“還有別人有此情況嗎？”“我媽媽也有，她媽媽也是。”這些重復發生的模式，就會説明家族中有東西運行。有些東西被扭曲了，後麵有勢力在運行。

聖經中有幾個例子，很明顯可以看出是有罪孽和詛咒在運行。撒母耳記下十二章10節，撒母耳對大衛王説，“因為你娶了別人的妻為妻，因此刀劍必永不離開你的家。”這就是詛咒。大衛做了什麽造成他們家這樣的問題呢？他犯了姦淫和謀殺的罪。上帝饒恕他了，可罪孽的後果還在家族中運行。大衛的家族中姦淫，強暴，苦毒，背叛，兄弟間互相殘殺等等問題，都有歷代的根源。

另一個例子，列王記下五章26，27節，基哈西和以利沙的故事。基哈西貪戀亞蘭人乃縵的金銀， “ 以利沙對他説、那人下車轉回迎你的時候、我的心豈沒有去呢。這豈是受銀子、衣裳、買橄欖園、葡萄園、牛羊、僕婢的時候呢。 因此乃縵的大麻風必沾染你、和你的[后後]裔、直到永遠。基哈西從以利沙麵前退出去、就長了大麻風、像雪那樣白。”

他的罪是心中的貪婪，説謊，欺騙，這就破壞了以利沙和乃縵的關係。以利沙不要乃縵的任何東西，即使他是非常富有的人。他希望乃縵欠他一個人情。這樣以利沙就有權力對乃縵的生命説話。如果拿了錢，就毀了以利沙的身份和他們之間的特殊關係。

有幾次，我在[臺灣服事過幾位非常高位的人，我去到他們那裡，從不曏他們索要任何東西，我給的全是免費的。這保持了我的心是正直清潔的，這樣才能影響這個人的生命，如果我有任何貪婪的錶現，馬上就讓人反胃離開了。所以，生命中是否有權柄，就看私下是否有貪婪的意圖。基哈西的貪婪是很嚴重的事情，會毀掉以利沙的名聲，結果他長大麻風，身體的疾病，他和他的[后後]裔，因為罪，讓麻風病在他家族歷代傳下去。

創世紀十二章10至13節，亞伯拉罕説謊，不讓別人知道撒拉的身份；創世紀二十六章，以撒也對自己妻子的身份[說説]謊；創世紀二十七章，雅各也説謊，騙了他爸爸以掃，因為以掃看不見了；而到了創世紀三十七章，全家人都説謊，掩蓋約瑟的死。這就是罪孽的例子，在家族中都有不誠實，説謊的現象，罪越來越嚴重。

另外一個例子是以利。撒母耳記上三章13至14節，以利做祭司不衷心，詛咒臨到他家。“我曾告訴他必永遠降罰與他的家、因他知道兒子作孽、自招咒詛、卻不禁止他們。 所以我曏以利家起誓説、以利家的罪孽、雖獻祭奉禮物、永不能得贖去。” 第二章31節“ 日子必到，我要折斷你的膀臂和你父家的膀臂，使你家中沒有一個老年人。”33節“我必不從我[壇罈]前滅盡你家中的人。那未滅的必使你眼目幹癟，心中憂傷。你家中所生的人都必死在中年。”這裡説到以利家歷代家族在上帝的壇前做祭司的職位，會被拿走，家中的人會英年早逝，時常憂傷。這個歷代的詛咒是拿不掉的。 創世紀中諾亞的兒子迦南受到詛咒，創世紀四章11節該隱和他的後裔也受到了詛咒。

那麽如何幫助這些受歷代罪孽和詛咒的人得自由呢？

首先，要了解耶穌成就了什麽，如何應用在我們身上。加拉太書三章13，14節講到，耶穌打破咒詛，使我們可以領受祝福。耶穌救贖我們脫離律法的咒詛，付清了所有的代價，拯救我們離開咒詛，我們不用負任何代價了。 因為他的作為，我們因信耶穌基督，得著亞伯拉罕的福，也得著聖靈。

耶穌打破咒詛的權勢，讓我們有資格領受福分，他也承擔了我們的罪孽。以賽亞書五十三章5，6節“那知他爲我們的過犯受害、爲我們的罪孽壓傷．因他受的刑罰我們得平安．因他受的鞭傷我們得醫治。我們都如羊走迷、各人偏行己路．耶和華使我們衆人的罪孽都歸在他身上。”

耶穌承擔了我們違背上帝律法的過犯，爲我們的罪孽壓傷，我們裏麵扭曲的，敵對神的本性，由他承擔了。耶穌死在十字架上，承擔了我們一切的罪孽，讓罪孽的權勢完全被打破。“他完全挪去這一切，打破咒詛的權勢，讓我們能夠領受福分。”（歌羅西書四章13，14節）

我們怎樣幫助人脫離咒詛呢？

我們需要求聖靈告訴我們真正的問題和根源在哪裡，求聖靈幫助我們挪去根源，釋放自由。留意傾聽人的問題。聖靈可能會給你一個意念讓你如何詢問。記得我講過的很生氣的年青人，主把這個念頭放進我心中。我的問題一開始就是，“什麽時候開始的？他是不是長子？是否是非婚生子？”他對我的問題很吃驚，這些都是聖靈告訴我的。保持對聖靈的敏鋭，聽到聖靈對你説話。不要立即下結論。我工作時一定會準備一張紙，寫下他的問題，他父母雙方的問題，是否有歷代的問題，等等。

如何處理歷代罪孽和咒詛呢？

聖經有幾處經文提到，利末記二十六章39，40節給我們一個如何幫助人得自由的[綫線]索。 上帝説“你們剩下的人、必因自己的罪孽、和祖宗的罪孽、在仇敵之地消滅。他們要承認自己的罪、和他們祖宗的罪、就是幹犯我的那罪、並且承認自己行事與我反對 。” 所以，承認自己的罪孽很重要。承認自己的罪，也承認列祖的罪。（尼希米記一章6節及九章37節）（但以理書九章3節）

歷代罪孽是什麽？你自己也要省察有沒有這樣做。如拜偶像，父母拜偶像，你有沒有做？你的罪要承認，父母的罪也要承認。首先診斷問題，然後跟他們談，讓他們看到如何得自由。

第一步，診斷問題。問聖靈，也問這個人。

第二步，解釋基督爲他們所成就的。他們已經得贖，脫離了咒詛，上帝希望他們蒙福。信耶穌，救贖就會臨到。（加拉太書三章13，14節）

第三步，我們如何幫他們。一衕禱告，承認耶穌基督。衹有認衕基督，才能得自由。其次，承認個人和家族中的罪孽，棄[絕絶]詛咒的權勢，説出打破罪孽和詛咒能力的話來，求耶穌赦免，洗凈你的罪孽，饒恕打開罪孽之門的家人。憑信心呼求主釋放你，緊緊抓住他的話語。

最後，我覺得非常有幫助的是，教導他們將基督和十字架放在自己和家族中，在基督中你是新造的人。

如何爲歷代拜偶像的人做禱告呢？我會這樣禱告，

第一個禱告，信心的宣告

“天父，我奉耶穌的名到你麵前，我承認耶穌基督是我的救主，他的寶血贖回了我，遠離一切咒詛，一切邪靈，所有的罪孽，罪惡得贖回，我屬於耶穌。”

這個信心的宣告是非常有能力的。宣告我和耶穌的關繫，是自由的根基。是對耶穌的信心，不是對禱告者的信心，使人得自由。

第二個禱告，認罪禱告

“主啊，我再次成[為爲]家族的代錶，承認我們的罪孽，將我們家拜偶像的罪孽帶到十字架前，我承認自己也參與過拜偶像。主啊，求你赦免我，洗凈我的罪孽。”

第三，棄[絕絶]禱告

“奉耶穌的名，我棄絕，撤銷所有歷代的咒詛，所有跟邪靈的協議，我棄絕家族中所有的罪孽。

第四，饒恕禱告

“主啊，我饒恕我的家人，饒恕我的父母和所有[為爲]罪孽打開門的家人，我饒恕並祝福他們。”

這也是放棄對父母和家人的論斷。

禱告之後，你就有開始服事他們。必須要對三種勢力説話，

第一，對罪孽，咒詛[說説]話，打破他們的權勢

第二，對在這人身上的邪靈説話，命令吩咐邪靈出來，求聖靈指引帶領。請記住，跟靈説話與剛才的禱告完全不一樣。

“奉耶穌基督的名，我打破歷代的咒詛，打破跟邪靈達成的協議，從生命中砍斷這一切。”

“奉耶穌基督的名，我吩咐拜偶像的靈離開。”

聖靈會帶領你知道有哪些靈在裏麵存在。

這個人需要做些什麽呢？

他需要默想上帝的話，更新自己的想法，改變他的行為和反應。思想和行為必須衕時改變。默想上帝的話是真實的，不是我賺得的福分，我衹要相信耶穌基督，就能活出蒙福的生命。“ 基督既爲我們受了咒詛、就贖出我們脫離律法的咒詛．因為經上記著、『凡掛在木頭上都是被咒詛的。』 ”（加拉太書三章13節），所以，罪已經被打破了，我已經不是活在律法之下，我有蒙福的人生。“上帝叫亞伯拉罕的福、因基督耶穌可以臨到外邦人、使我們因信得著所應許的聖靈。 ”（加拉太書三章14節）

有些人經歷了服事，可是思想上還像受咒詛的人一樣，而不是一個蒙福的人的想法。例如，一個人持續經歷財務失敗的咒詛，他心裏就會相信，我是個失敗者，不會管理金錢，開始思想失敗，期待失敗。他既然已經釋放解脫了，他應該改變想法，默想我是個蒙福的人，上帝的恩惠已經臨到我所做的一切事情上，感謝上帝我的金錢是蒙福的，我一切所需的，上帝都供給了。我要改變我的行為，活出蒙福的生命。外在不見得有很大的改變，重要的是內在的改變。開始將自己跟上帝説的相合，心裏相信上帝所説的，外麵就開始改變，相信上帝是豐盛的神，我要衕意我所相信的，上帝的話是真實的。

如果按照以前的想法，十一奉獻就蒙福，不十一奉獻就受咒詛，就是仍然活在律法之下。很多基督徒活在律法下。他們需要思想，蒙福的人就是慷慨的人，給予是因為蒙福，而不是害怕受咒詛。有些人想用禱告改變問題，卻不想繼續在蒙福的路上更認識主，因為這需要付出更多努力和責任，跟從主的道，成為主的門徒，沒有中間地帶可行，要麽就是回到過去的生活方式，要麽就是轉曏新的生活方式，我們常常需要堅持。

當我們感到有把我們往回拉的壓力時，該怎麽辦呢？我們需要強烈宣告，耶穌的寶血已經使我們脫離罪孽，我拒絕再回去，我是蒙福的人，新造的人。把想像真實的建立起來。

活出蒙福的生命是怎樣的生命呢？不是被動的，不是有問題請人禱告，而是在基督[裏裡]新造的人，蒙福的人，有神的靈，開始體貼聖靈而不像過去體貼肉體。蒙福的生命是白白賜給我的，我衹需要相信[並併]在生命中活出來。必須擯除舊有想法，上帝是真實的，我們要學會相信我真的改變了。

過去一個人活在罪孽，咒詛和捆綁裏，現在在基督裏成為了蒙福的人，把所有的咒詛砍斷了。我要改變我的思維方式，我需要宣告：罪孽已經被打破，我是蒙福的。説出來並默想上帝與我衕在，我的需要得滿足，我有豐盛的生命，主是我的牧者，我必不緻缺乏。心裏對上帝的肯定，靠基督成為蒙福的人，所思所行就要像一個蒙福的人。即使有時在財務上有些壓力，過去的想法又要回頭，這時就要很刻意地把它們壓下去，重新註目基督。不用懷疑上帝是否祝福我，而是要相信蒙福，得到安息。這是所有信徒內心的爭戰，每一次心靈得安息，就是勝利，這是一生需要經歷的。人們都喜歡接受服事，得自由，可是如何改變，活得像自由的人，不是單單憑頭腦，而是要憑心靈和信心。

聽衆提問一：請分享你如何長期保持對聖靈的敏鋭？

回答：秘訣就是禱告。也需要在小事情上回應聖靈。聖靈給你的一點點感動，就要行出來。對任何小小的指引，就會變得越來越敏鋭，越多領受。馬可福音四章24節，耶穌説“你若有耳可聽，回應的話，就越多的給你。”聆聽聖靈，回應聖靈，使你更敏鋭。

我每天的禱告中，會有一段完全敬拜，愛神的時間。我不斷使其延長，默想上帝的衕在，用方言禱告，單單愛神。我學會説方言，用意念唱歌，想見耶穌，在敬拜中將自己全人獻上。我的禱告大約持續二十分鐘。我刻意將生命中的不衕領域降伏於他，對我生命[說説]話，我相信上帝所做的。

我的禱告是這樣的：

“主啊，今天我將我的聽力，我的耳朵降伏於你，感謝主我今天能清楚聽到你的聲音。我的心對你的聲音敏鋭，主啊，我聽到你對我説話，我立刻回應，感謝主給我傾聽的心，聽人的聲音，能問問題，找出問題的根源。感謝主給我看見問題的能力，有眼可見，有耳可聽，能分辨真情。”

我在宣告我將來想過的生活，根基就是聖經約翰一書“他如何，我們在世上也如何。”他現在如何，我們在世上也如何。耶穌聽父的聲音，他看見人的心，懂得人心。主如何，我們也如何。我清楚聽見父的聲音，我立刻回應，我聽見人心中的聲音，看見他們 的生命。即使你現在可能沒有這樣活，但這是你想要的生活。當我開始宣告我生命的運行，默想在基督裏我是誰，相信我能做什麽，就會在我生命裏顯現出來。

這是蒙福的生命，那些很努力要上帝幫助他們的人，如果完全在基督裏，他一切所需的都有了。我們已經有恩膏，凡事都能明白，如果你認為你不知道所有的事，你需要更敏鋭的察覺。

反省式的禱告，常常省察自己，認清真理。不是到了要服事時才開始做，而是要每天培養，在生命中慢慢建立彰顯。我花了很多年的時間，看到上帝的真實運行，才了解到如何服事人。以前做的人都沒有告訴我如何做，他們衹是在做，我們覺得很震驚。我想做一位就像電視上錶演的解密魔術師，把所有的秘訣都告訴你。你明白後，就覺得簡單了。當你明白靈界的活力，明白你是新造的人，在基督裏完全，他如何我也如何。聖經説效法耶穌的樣式，不是在鏡子中看到自己，而是在屬靈上每天越來越像他。這不是努力得到的，而是要教導我們的心，相信真理，憑著默想和宣告，上帝與我衕在。最[后後]一點，“要習練的通達。” (希伯來書五章14節) 。要借著練習，才能通達你的敏鋭。

聽[眾衆]提問二：公司的經理經常對她發怒，她能感覺到背後的勢力。這個經理對別人都很好，衹是針對她，除了禱告，還能如何應對這種情況。

回答：這可能是 靈裏的反應。可能是對你，也可能是對你做事的方式。我們需要敞開，上帝可能希望我們更成熟。請求上帝幫助我們以善勝惡。羅馬書告訴我們以善勝惡，不要爲惡所勝。每次禱告，把這個人帶到主前，看見這個人的臉，奪去他背後邪靈的勢力。對邪靈説話，命令他放開這個人。操練你屬靈的權柄，能夠勝過他背後的邪靈。宣告奉耶穌的名你已有的權柄，以權柄的地位來説話。可以踩在蝎子，蛇的頭上，沒有什麽可以傷害到我，攻擊我，捆綁被憤怒控製的靈，巫術的靈。在禱告中保持靈裏的能力。最後，求神的恩典，有能力愛這個人，可以與他好好相處。聖經説溫柔的回答使怒氣消散。用輕柔的聲音曏他澄清一些事情，他會平靜下來回答你。

另一個策略就是直接敞開的跟對方講明。

“我註意到你對我特別的生氣，能告訴我原因嗎？是我做錯了什[幺麼麽]嗎？我希望能幫助你，不希望讓你生氣。”

找到最好的方式與難相處的人溝通，需要我們與上帝衕工，處理好自己的靈命，學習與人溝通的技巧，講輕柔的言語，用恩慈的心。

最後，經歷過這種情況，你可能受到打擊，如果想離開，你要説，主啊，我饒恕這個人，釋放他，求你讓愛回到我心中。阿門！

聽衆提問三：父母雙方有非常強的拜偶像的靈，家人中有在廟宇中工作的，地位非常高。即使通過禱告，潔凈房屋，仍深受睏擾。要如何處理家中的這些邪靈的勢力？

答：第一，首先要明白，耶穌打敗了邪靈。在臺灣，我發現大家覺得魔鬼，偶像，邪靈都很厲害。但耶穌已經勝過了他們！我並沒有輕視邪靈壓製的現狀。耶穌基督獻上的祭，比任何邪靈的勢力更強大。

[臺中有一個很大的媽祖廟，我去之前，大家都很擔心。我想“耶穌戰勝了魔鬼！”在我們的信念中，總在描述邪靈的能力，實際上他們沒有。我説趕快帶我去臺中，到廟裏去看看怎麽回事。我不受他們的恐嚇。我與教會的衕工開會，覺得他們是世界上最壓抑的一群人。很多人得抑鬱癥，甚至死了。所以，在那裡的第一個晚上，我的題目就是拜偶像。我直接對峙。當時，媽祖在街上游行，幾千人跟在後麵，我就特別講到媽祖。整個氣氛很緊張，我一直講下去，不是對人説，而是對人背後的靈，宣告耶穌的權柄，寶血的能力。當晚有很多人得釋放。第二天看新聞得知，前晚的廟中委員們投票打了起來，警察來到，趕走了所有人。所以，千萬不要被他們威脅，要在基督裏興起，邪靈怕你。

有一個女孩從小就獻給了一個印度的神，賽巴巴。她們家有一個很大的賽巴巴的壇。她經歷了很大的釋放後，我對她説，不用擔心賽巴巴，你的卧室是你的地方，在你的房間抹油，宣告邪靈不準進入，這裏是聖靈的地方，是我的聖所。播放敬拜音樂。其它房間屬於你爸爸，你不要批評，不要反對他們。要孝敬父母。每天經過賽巴巴時，就方言禱告，宣告賽巴巴衰微，耶穌興旺。一年後，她告訴我做了小組長，而賽巴巴就不太好。他們家因為財務的危機，從原來的公寓搬到了一個較小的公寓，沒有壇了，衹有一張照片。賽巴巴真的衰微了。 再後來，她帶了三個小組，而賽巴巴呢？照片從墻上掉下來，摔壞了，現在換成了一個小小的照片。

重點是，你不要被邪靈嚇倒。在靈裏，你與基督一衕坐在寶座上，他勝過一切執政掌權的，魔鬼在下麵。這就是信念。

我鼓勵你默想經文，建立信心。你跟基督聯合，勝過魔鬼，你有權柄勝過這一切。當你對邪靈説話，他們就降伏離開。你要禱告，你的靈要興起敬拜神，穿上上帝的軍裝，奉耶穌的名宣告，成為全家的代錶，棄絕一切邪惡的偶像，捆綁所有邪靈的勢力，不準他敵對你和你的家人。拿撒勒的耶穌已經勝過了魔鬼。不要敵對邪靈，要宣告耶穌的得勝。這兩者是不一樣的。真實的情況是：邪靈看起來很有勢力，但耶穌擁有所有的權力，你也有這樣的權力，你對自己的信心還不夠，所有邪靈才會影響到你。

爭戰不在你以外，是在你裏麵。你要完全肯定自信，這是你強壯的時候。在羅馬凱撒君王的殿中有很多的偶像，家中有拜偶像的聚會。千萬不要被他嚇倒，恐嚇是他最大的武器。要抵擋，憑信心站立。這時可能有各式各樣的事發生，這是與耶穌衕行的路。

在新加坡城市豐收教會，年青人信主時，他們拜偶像的父母會打他們。陳義平牧師當時18歲，他們都是讀中學的年青人，都受過父母的打。但是，最後他們的父母都得救了。康牧師也是，他父母是由我帶領信主得救的。

把你們的痛苦和憂傷，恐懼和憤怒帶給主，饒恕你的父母，求主給你更大的愛，成為最好的家族代錶。雖然不容易，這就是我們在基督裏要走的路，我們的挑戰。阿門！

從邪術/秘術中得自由

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今天的主題是邪教的問題。什麼是邪教？邪教對今天的年青人有什麼影響？還有什麼是巫術？如何幫助人, 釋放他們得自由。我們曾經處理過很多這方面的問題，有一些經驗，今天與大家一起分享，使大家能夠更明白。

首先，上帝創造我們是要我們互相關聯，這是神的設計。 讓我們互相聯接，互相依附。我們是靈，有魂住在我們身體裡面。上帝創造我們讓我們有能力與別人依附在一起，我們心裡的渴慕，隻有上帝才能滿足。上帝設計我們跟他依附在一起，因為跟他的依附，他的性情，他的生命就在我們身上流露。哥林多前書六章17節說“但與主聯合的，便是與主成為一靈。”

上帝設計我們跟他連結，是靈跟靈的結合，這樣他的生命通過我們進入這個世界。上帝的設計包含了，第一，關系，跟他有親密的連結。第二，擴展他的國。他造我們成為他的代表，使用他的權柄。

對亞當夏娃最開始的指令，神交給他們的任務的一部分就是管理看守花園。給他們一個治理的領域，在這個領域中他們有權柄。亞當得著屬靈的權柄來代表神，上帝給他關於伊甸園的兩條命令，第一，培育，發展，結果子。上帝栽培我們，就是要我們在我們的領域結果子。第二，看守這個領域，保護它不讓人入侵或摧毀。

上帝一開始就設計我們跟他有關系連結，也賜給人權柄在地上代表他並擴展他的國。亞當接受的指令是栽培園子，保護它不受入侵，后來他打破了與神的這個關系，失去了他的權柄。當他打破了跟神的關系后，他就完全不設防，不在神的保護下了。在人類歷史的第一個世紀時，邪靈就開始入侵人的世界，敗壞人的文化。耶穌來，就是要恢復我們跟上帝的親密，將權柄再次賜給我們。再就是給我們指令要生養眾多，遍滿這地。

做基督徒，就是要跟基督連結，跟隨他。把他國度的影響帶進世界，做他的大使，有權柄勝過任何的邪靈和受造物。我們看到耶穌的服事，他訓練門徒，給他們權柄勝過邪靈。相關的經文有，馬可福音三章14，15節，“他就設立十二個人，要他們常和自己同在，也要差他們去傳道，並給他們權柄趕鬼。”大使命包括傳福音，醫治病人和有權柄勝過邪靈。路加福音十章17節中又講“那七十個人歡歡喜喜的回來說，主阿，因你的名，就是鬼也服了我們。”19節又說，“我已經給你們權柄，可以踐踏蛇和蠍子，又勝過仇敵一切的能力，斷沒有甚麼能害你們。”

權柄這個詞的意思是有合法授予的權力代表神說話，作為。耶穌說，“我給你權柄”，權柄在他手上，我們隻是做他的代表。權柄不是我們的，是他授予我們的。我們有權柄代表基督，這權柄來自於我們跟基督的連結。這個權柄是有踐踏蛇和蠍子，就是一切的仇敵的能力。

他用兩個圖畫來描述邪靈，蛇和蠍子。蛇在曠野中咬人，把毒放入人的身體裡面。蠍子有針。這兩個都是折磨人的東西。雖然不是很清楚，但可以揣測，他指出這是兩個不同的邪靈實體。蛇代表邪靈，蠍子代表惡魔般的靈，靈體等。神說給你權柄，有勝過一切的能力。這個能力也是使徒前傳裡面講的能力，是一種超自然的能力。你有合法的權力，勝過所有邪靈的超自然能力，沒有什麼能傷害你。這是一句很好的需要記住的經文。當你幫人釋放，如有一點膽怯，記住，沒有什麼能傷害你的。

我們現在來看邪教。申命記十八章中有提到邪教。聖經中沒有很清楚的提到這些邪靈從哪裡來，有很多不同的看法。有些人認為他們是墮落的天使，我對此也不是很確定。他們被稱為邪靈，一定是靈體，他們的意圖也一定是邪惡的。在創世紀第六章中，有一些天使放棄上帝給他們的地位，開始以人的形態與女子發生關系，他們生下的后裔就稱為偉人，他們都是非常狂野，凶殘的一群，他們來敗壞這地。他們的敗壞如此嚴重，最后上帝就用洪水來毀滅全地。他們一半是天使，一半是人，可能成為邪靈后，繼續留在地上騷擾人類。

各個文化背景的人都知道靈的世界。聖經以外其它的一些書中對此也有涉及，如以諾書，描述一群天使叫做守望天使，他們被指定專門指令人，可是有一群放棄自己的地位，敗壞了上帝給他們的角色，與女人發生關系，並教導人邪教的東西。上帝抓住他們直到最后審批的日子。從那時起，邪教的內容就進入了人類的文化中。迦南就有一個充滿了邪教的文化。迦南地的國家參與邪教很深，有各式各樣變態的作為。申命記十八章9節，“你到了耶和華你神所賜之地，那些國民所行可憎惡的事，你不可學著行。”上帝警告這些人，他們要進入的迦南地，那裡的人行各樣上帝憎惡的行為，指的都是邪教的作為。

邪教的意思是隱密的，遮蓋的，隱藏的。因此邪教的活動是在靈界尋求知識和資訊，或從靈界尋求能力，尋求保護。邪教的兩個主流，一個是佔卜，就是從靈界尋求資訊的。另一個是巫術，從靈界尋求能力。他們一定與拜偶像相連。

上帝的百姓所要面對的是，要進入的國家裡的人都被這些邪惡的行為敗壞了，那裡沒有釋放，因此他們要摧毀這些國家，因為那裡的人都被邪靈充滿了。邪教的能力是隱秘的，能力的源頭是隱藏的。參與邪教的人可能感到自己跟邪靈有連接，他們被欺騙了，他們以為自己得著靈的能力，實際上是邪靈在他們身上才有能力。當人參與邪教，他以為靈在幫他，實際上邪靈是靠他們得著能力的。最終，邪靈會向你討價錢，所有的魔法都是要付代價的。在神的國裡，所有的代價先跟你講明了，在黑暗的世界則是反過來的，先享受再付代價，而代價遠遠超過你想像的。

上帝列出很多他們的做法，都跟拜偶像和邪教有關。邪教的問題是它會漸進式的讓你上癮。一旦進去，就很難脫身了。當上帝的百姓進入迦南地，發現當地的人拜偶像，還有各樣交鬼的行為。申命記十八章10至14節說“你們中間不可有人使兒女經火，也不可有佔卜的，觀兆的，用法術的，行邪術的； 用迷術的，交鬼的，行巫術的，過陰的。凡行這些事的，都為耶和華所憎惡。因那些國民行這可憎惡的事，所以耶和華你的神將他們從你面前趕出。你要在耶和華你的神面前作完全人。因你所要趕出的那些國民，都聽信觀兆的，和佔卜的；至於你，耶和華你的神從來不許你這樣行。”

這裡列出的行為不容易理解。各個文化有不同的變化方式。每一個行為都有屬靈的能力在后面。第一個講到的就是把兒女獻給偶像，有一個特定的偶像叫摩洛，他是一個很大的銅偶像，手臂伸出來可以在上面點火，燒到很燙后，人在旁邊打鼓叫喊，然后把孩子扔到偶像身上燒掉。對上帝來講這太可怕了。可以看出那后面邪靈的性情，就是偷你的孩子。而今天最像這種行為的就是墮胎，有同樣的靈在后面運行。

還有佔星，觀看天上的星宿。我簡短的為大家解釋一下。聖經告訴我們“諸天訴說他的榮耀”（詩篇十九篇）。講到天，講到神的話。在神的道寫下來之前，上帝可能是對以諾說話，借著看天上的星宿，看到記載的上帝的榮耀。他就把星星分成十二個星座，用不同的圖畫連起來便於記憶。每一個星座都有一個名字，他們代表上帝救贖計劃的一部分，有女人，蛇，人的墮落，然后一直到基督的降臨，勝過蛇，建立了他的國度。每一個星座的名字都是鼓勵的信息，幫助人們理解更大的圖畫，從創世到基督再來。問題是你從哪裡開始，如人面獅身，從處女座的女人開始，到獅子座。

在描述這些星星時，上帝記載了人類的歷史，人子來，救贖計劃等等，全部記錄在這個故事中。星星是沒有能力的，隻是上帝給人一個代代相傳的信息，讓他們有對將來得救贖的盼望。可是經過時間，被扭曲了，人們開始相信星星對我們的命運有影響，完全扭曲了真相。有關星座的這本書的作者叫做Bullinger。大家可以查看一下。

整個佔星術打開了門，讓人進入邪教裡面，使人上癮。人尋找屬靈的源頭，來指引他們生命的方向。他們依附在錯誤的事情上，是上帝指引我們的生命，是上帝對我們的生命有計劃，不是星星。我鼓勵大家讀這本書，會非常驚訝上帝借由天上的星空傳遞救恩的信息。詩篇十九章說諸天傳講神的道，然后借著神的道給我們救恩的信息。

整個系列有佔卜的，魔術的，行秘術的等。邪教可以分成兩組，第一組，佔卜。使徒行傳第十六章16至18節中講到的一個佔卜的女子。“后來、我們往那禱告的地方去．有一個使女迎著面來、他被巫鬼所附、用法術、叫他主人們大得財利。他跟隨保羅和我們、喊著說、這些人是至高　神的仆人、對你們傳說救人的道。他一連多日這樣喊叫、保羅就心中厭煩、轉身對那鬼說、我奉耶穌基督的名、吩咐你從他身上出來．那鬼當時就出來了。”這個女子身上就有佔卜的靈，今天就稱她為靈媒。靈媒現今很受歡迎，他們可以講到你生命中的一些事情，還有未來，他們就是在模仿我們的知識和言行。這裡的這個女子算命后可以得到財力，即別人付錢給她算命，這樣他們就是與邪靈交易，等於行淫。

利未記二十章2至6節中上帝警告百姓不要跟邪靈打交道，行淫。5，6節中寫道“我就要向這人和他的家變臉、把他和一切隨他與摩洛行邪淫的人、都從民中剪除。人偏向交鬼的、和行巫術的、隨他們行邪淫、我要向那人變臉、把他從民中剪除。”上帝說任何交鬼或與家族熟悉的靈打交道的人，就是跟他們行邪淫。意思就是有付錢，有與邪靈連結依附，就像妓女的行為。保羅在哥林多前書講“你出賣了自己。”你以為在買資訊，而實際上是出賣了自己，把自己賣給邪靈，與他連結在一起了。所有參與邪教的東西都跟邪靈有關，人與邪靈結合在一起，邪靈就有權力進入你的生命。

靈媒就是邪靈的管道，他們失了魂，邪靈附在他們身上，給他們一些資訊。在聖經中很明確的說參與邪靈是要判死刑的。我們回到使徒行傳十六章，這個女子是有佔卜的靈，那裡整個地區都因佔卜出名，有人從各地專門來這裡算命，這裡現在是希臘的一個地方。人們專門在那裡等候傳達神諭的人。傳達神諭的人是靈媒。大家付錢給他得到一些資訊。這個使女被污鬼所附，英文中說“擁有”不是說“所附”，原文講好像穿上了一件衣服，邪靈像衣服一樣穿在了身上，她披上的不是聖靈，而是邪靈。佔卜，巫術的原文意思是蟒蛇，就是當時他們工作的那個地區。這個蟒蛇的靈繞著她，對她說話，這種靈叫做家族熟悉的靈，就是說那些佔卜算命的靈媒都是借著熟悉的靈運作，這個靈跟她溝通，對她的耳朵說話。

這個靈知道什麼呢？他們知道你的未來嗎？聖經沒有明說，我的結論是他們不知道你的未來，你的未來隱藏在上帝的手中。可是他們能看見上帝能帶給你什麼。例如但以理書十章中，但以理禱告時，上帝派天使把信息帶給他，但邪靈抵擋他。邪靈知道你是誰，一直在觀察你，好像有邪惡的網絡到處可以連結。這種熟悉的靈，可以跟你溝通與你有關的訊息，因為他一直在觀察你和你的家庭，這個很難理解，我們一直是受到監視的。那些靈一直監視著你的行為，注意到你是多麼可預測的。邪靈就把這些資訊傳給靈媒，很可能很真實，模仿上帝知識的言語，很多靈媒有很強很真確的知識的言語，可是資訊的源頭卻是邪靈。因為邪靈給你這些資料，讓你開始相信他，而當他跟你講到你的未來時，你就完全同意他的話，他就有能力操縱你的未來了。有靈界的參與，一定會打開門，讓邪靈進來。是自己給邪靈合法的權力讓他進入你的生命中。

這個女孩有佔卜的靈，使徒行傳十六章17節這裡講，“他跟隨保羅和我們、喊著說、這些人是至高神的仆人、對你們傳說救人的道。” 他說的是正確的。但是帶來的影響是，保羅心裡面感覺厭惡，厭煩，攪擾，甚至攔阻他服事，這個靈制造了保羅服事的困難。一連多日，直到保羅直接面對她。一旦與邪靈對峙，就造成很大的騷動，最后被丟到牢裡了。

佔卜是尋求邪靈以得著隱藏的知識，有各式各樣的做法；華人特別對佔卜上癮，都想知道未來。不是跟上帝同行，信靠上帝，而是去找邪靈了解這些資料。這些活動包括：找靈媒算命；找巫術板，上面有些字母的板子，大家就問它問題；找熟悉的靈；找交鬼的，那人被鬼附，靈通過他說話；或者佔星的；或者塔羅牌；算數字的；看星象的等等。每一個文化有他們自己的模式，最關鍵的是能力的源泉來自哪裡？既有屬靈的力量就有屬靈的源頭。如果源頭是邪惡的，他的影響也是邪惡的，上帝禁止我們參與其中。有些人隻是好奇進入了佔卜的領域，卻打開了整個區域。很不幸，最近很多電影都是各式各樣佔卜的東西，就像哈利波特，都是佔卜的。他們很多的靈感來自真實在做的行為，是很引誘人的。“得到一些秘密”，“知道未來”，“我會發財”，“我會幸福”，大家都想知道這些事，如果找邪靈，他就有合法的權力進入我們的生命。聖經說參與佔卜，就是跟邪靈行淫，玷污了自己。任何參與算命的人都被污穢了，他們需要棄絕靈媒跟他講的話以及后面的邪靈。不可以既與上帝同行，又帶著魔鬼跟你講的話。從佔卜中得釋放的根基是悔改離開，承認你的罪，神憎惡的就是罪，也需要棄絕與邪靈的依附，也要棄絕所有邪靈給的話。不能服事兩個主，不能一腳踏兩船。我們的生命是放在主的手上，回應他的帶領，讓他的應許指引我們。如果我們去邪靈的領域尋找，就會慢慢的被吸進黑暗中。有些人非常上癮，如果沒有看一下佔星或算一下命，一整天都不用做事了。

最后，你看到這個鬼從女孩身上出來后，她就沒有這個能力了，資訊的源頭是邪靈。有一次教會結束后，有一個人來找我，請我為他的朋友禱告，他的朋友現在的生活非常糟糕，想去找一個算命的人，我就讓他來找我。我對他說，“聽說你想找一個算命的？”他說，“是的。”我對他說，“上帝知道你的未來，你應該學習仰望他，讓我為你禱告吧。”我求主給我一個清楚，明確，正確的話語，跟他講。他謝過我之后就走了。我知道他還會去找算命的，就做了一個簡短的禱告，“主啊，我知道他要去算命，求你讓算命的話困惑。”一個星期之后，他又來找我，決志信主了。他說，“我去找了算命的，根本就是浪費錢，我付了五十塊。她跟我講的亂七八糟，根本聽不懂。”他就這樣信了耶穌。

我們需要學會依靠上帝的啟示，不能把這些屬靈的領域拋棄給靈媒，我們要努力在生命中得著上帝的啟示。這些先知性的話語，都是上帝給教會的恩賜，靈媒隻是替代品，真正的寶貝是聖靈的恩賜。這對教會是一種羞辱。讓人覺得這些靈媒這麼行，很有影響力，而教會很難接受這些靈裡簡單的東西。

現在我們來看巫術。在整個邪教中，巫術是非常重要的部分。巫術是從邪靈得著能力，這個能力勝過人，或者勝過環境。巫術就是追求能力，是參與到邪靈中，從靈界將超自然的能力帶進世界來。舊約出埃及記第七章10節說，“摩西亞倫進去見法老，就照耶和華所吩咐的行，亞倫把杖丟在法老和臣仆面前，杖就變作蛇。” ，這很壯觀的。想像我拿一個木杖一丟，變成了蛇，大家一定尖叫逃出去了。這是很嚇人的。可是術士做了什麼呢？11節說“ 於是法老召了博士和術士來，他們是埃及行法術的，也用邪術照樣而行。 ”英文經文的意思是他們按他們念的咒或秘密的邪術而行，注意這是秘密的法術。現在有兩條蛇了，可是摩西的蛇把另一條蛇吞了，他拿起來又變成了杖，這就展現超自然的能力了。

上帝的能力被行巫術的術士模仿抄襲。之所以能做到是因為他們參與連結了邪教的領域。當我們講到巫術，講到的是真實的能力，邪靈的能力，那些跟邪靈接觸的人真的是有能力。任何文化都有經歷，看到這些事，特別是在土著的地方，那些巫師有能力控制人和整個地區。埃及的這個巫師有三次模仿上帝的能力，22節“埃及行法術的、也用邪術照樣而行．”就是把水變成了血。八章7節中“行法術的也用他們的邪術照樣而行，叫青蛙上了埃及地。”上帝打的仗是針對埃及的這些神，真正的沖突是誰是真神，誰是假神。所有十災都是要面對埃及人拜的神，前面三個神跡，這些巫師都可以模仿，把木杖變為蛇，很嚇人；把水變成血，也很嚇人；把青蛙叫到地上來；他們在物件和動物上有能力，改變這些東西。

你觀察世界各地的邪教，會發現有些文化中非常害怕巫師，因為他們身上帶著能力，不是他們自己的能力，而是邪靈的能力。有些文化，會讓自己隱形，他們可以改變形狀樣貌，可以變成動物。我們最近的一些電影，好萊塢拍的電影很多就是巫術做的事，很多電影來源於巫術。人可以從一個地方變到另一個地方；突然消失又從另一個地方冒出來；或變成一種動物；這些人能做的事情非常了不起。這些電影其實是有真實來源的，通過好萊塢的包裝來吸引人，這些能力都是很真實的。人們受到他們的引誘，被他們控制，最后被他們毀滅。

行巫術的喜歡跟有能力的人在一起，使徒行傳十三章6節中講，“經過全島，直到帕弗，在那裡遇見一個有法術假充先知的猶太人，名叫巴耶穌，或耶穌的兒子。”他就是進入地獄之門。7節8節中說“這人常和方伯士求保羅同在，士求保羅是個通達人。他請了巴拿巴和掃羅來，要聽神的道。 隻是那行法術的以呂馬，（這名翻出來就是行法術的意思)敵擋使徒，要叫方伯不信真道。”這個法師就像一個地獄之門，他運用邪靈的能力，想要影響羅馬的這個官，他使用魔術和巫術，抵擋真道的傳播。保羅處理的方式是，讓上帝的能力降臨在他們當中，讓這人馬上瞎了眼。11節“現在主的手加在你身上．你要瞎眼、暫且不見日光。他的眼睛立刻昏蒙黑暗、”這就顯明了上帝的能力，擺脫巫師的控制，讓這些人都相信上帝的能力。保羅就跟當時摩西一樣，他顯明神的能力勝過一切行法術的。

使徒行傳第八章9至11節，“有一個人名叫西門，向來在那城裡行邪術，妄自尊大，使撒瑪利亞的百姓驚奇．。無論大小都聽從他，說這人就是那稱為神的大能者。 他們聽從他，因他久用邪術，使他們驚奇。”這個人在行邪術，對人有很大的影響力，人們都在他的咒底下，在他的影響之下，他的影響是邪惡的。 聖經裡形容他自己妄自尊大。巫術中的人，非常自我為中心，不斷展現自己的重要性。當腓利來了之后，他受洗信主了。他看到了使徒身上的能力，他就給他錢想得到這樣的能力。19節“把這權柄也給我，叫我手按著誰，誰就可以受聖靈。”他渴望有能力，可能是他裡面的苦毒在驅動他。“彼得說，你的銀子和你一同滅亡吧。因你想神的恩賜是可以用錢買的。 你在這道上無分無關，因為在神面前，你的心不正。 你當懊悔你這罪惡，祈求主，或者你心裡的意念可得赦免。 我看出你正在苦膽之中，被罪惡捆綁。”（使徒行傳第八章20至23節）

西門還是用舊有的方式思想，他明白靈裡的交易，付代價得能力。他想我付了代價就應該有能力了。彼得不肯被錢收買，直接找到了問題的根源，“苦毒”。他是被人拒絕和苦毒的一個人，所以他才要能力；他還被罪惡捆綁，裡面有自我為中心的自私，生命被扭曲了。

巫術是非常真實的，它后面的能力是邪惡的，人參與其中就是與邪靈行邪淫了。這是漸進的，上癮的。當今人們參與的巫術法術有哪些呢？其中一種是魔術師咒語。任何人為得到能力跟邪靈達成的任何協議，就是將生命向邪靈打開了。不可避免的是，在邪教裡一定有靈裡的交易，即一定要犧牲一些東西。當人參與其中時，一定先跟邪靈達成協議，邀請邪靈進入他的生命，他們要進行交換，有時會流血。當我們幫助人時要留意，他們既然流了血，跟邪靈的連結就到了另一個層面了。

另一個常見的就是幻想的電腦線上游戲。很多線上游戲都有巫師作為娛樂消遣；有些游戲是角色扮演，你選一個角色扮演，你在線上就有了另一個完全不一樣的身份。有些人就扮演巫師的角色在裡面玩，對人施咒，跟不同的人打仗，讓自己能力越來越強。這很容易讓人上癮。

馬太福音第五章28節，“凡看見婦女就動淫念的、這人心裡已經與他犯奸淫了。” 耶穌說你若帶著淫念的眼光看一個女人，你就是跟她行淫了。行淫這個罪是從心裡開始的，一個人可以犯了淫亂罪卻沒有身體上的接觸。主在這裡讓我看見一個人長期沉浸在電腦游戲中，想像在其中得著能力，就打開門讓邪術進來。剛開始可能隻是為了娛樂消遣，一打開門，就讓巫術進來了，這就造成問題了。可不可能打開電腦被鬼附呢？隨便看一看就不可能，但花很長時間的話，就有可能了。最容易分辨的就是看上不上癮。

在城市豐收教會，我有一次講到一個年青人，他對游戲上癮，無法拋開，不斷被吸引回到游戲中。這個人出來了，后來我們發現他玩的是叫魔獸的游戲，他講出他玩的角色，我叫他棄絕這個游戲和他在裡面的身份時，當他禱告時，巫術的靈在他臉上發作，他整個人就倒在了地上。他在玩這種游戲的時候，打開生命接觸到這些巫術。我們呼召時，有兩百人走出來接受輔導，有很大的釋放。這個很神奇。這些人白天在神學院讀神學，晚上回家在電腦前玩巫術。讓我們警覺的是，他們用偽裝的方式，讓人們以為它是無害的。它是舊問題有了新包裝。

另外一個巫術的入口就是吸毒。新約中講到“邪術”跟“藥師”是同一個詞。有些藥會讓人失去自我，有人因為生命中的一些痛苦，就對藥物上了癮。不是解決問題的根源，而是用藥物壓抑它。對藥物上癮就攔阻了你跟上帝建立關系，同時也沒有很好的解決問題。人因藥物上癮而產生的幻覺都很類似。我曾為一個人禱告，他因醫生開的處方藥上癮，他過去一直有醉酒和吸毒的歷史，放棄這些后，醫生給他開的止痛藥又讓他產生了幻覺，看到很多蜘蛛從牆上往他身上跳。當我們針對這個巫術把它趕出去后，他的幻覺和身上的疼痛都不見了。因此這種讓人上癮的藥也會打開門讓邪術的靈進來。

與這個相關的另一種模式是使用迷奸藥，讓女孩昏迷后與其發生性行為。任何人受到這種藥物的影響，都沒法反應，也沒法掙扎逃脫，這種藥物的背后是有巫術的能力的。有一個人來找我說，“我好像碰到這種情況。”我為這個女孩禱告，命令巫術的靈離開她。換句話說，另一個人用藥物把這個能力加在她身上。她有很大的釋放。

另一個我在馬來西亞碰到的例子。這個女子子宮一直出血，整個腹部都腫了起來，后來我才知道，她被下了咒。什麼是下咒？她說，有一個人養了小鬼，與小鬼交換能力，他拿了一種藥粉去敲這位女生的門，當她一打開門，就將藥粉吹在她的臉上，她立刻就進入靈的影響，他性侵這位女子后就離開了。當這位女孩清醒后，就開始了內部出血，腹部腫脹的情況出現了，無法停止。我們就為這個人禱告，砍斷她跟那個人的所有連結，趕走邪靈，她就得醫治了。

有各式各樣的巫術，如武術有時也會打開門讓邪靈進來。馬可福音五章4節，那人有超級的能力，能把鐵鏈弄斷，這背后是有邪靈的力量。我有個兒子那時想去學武術，我跟他講了這些進入邪靈的入口，一開始隻是為了鍛煉身體，慢慢的進行打坐，讓生命進入靈界獲取更大的能力，這樣就被鬼附上了，你得著的能力是邪靈的能力。你的教練到時就會要求你這樣做了。他接受武術課程一段時間后，這個就真的發生了，那時他就不學了。所以武術慢慢引你進入打坐的境界，然后進入靈裡了。

對於這些能讓邪靈進來的入口我們一定要很小心。有些音樂也可能打開門讓邪靈進來。從美國的一個校園槍擊案中，發現有兩個關鍵因素。第一，槍手在服用抗憂郁的藥。第二，他很喜歡重金屬的音樂。裡面很強烈的節奏和很惡心的歌詞讓人進入一種瘋狂的境界。這不是唯一的理由。有一些音樂背后是有邪靈在，可能打開門，當然拜偶像一定會讓邪靈進來。哥林多前書十章12至21節，那些人向偶像獻祭而不是獻給神，拜偶像為邪靈開門，在廟裡向偶像獻上自己做干兒子，干女兒的也一樣。

我們有時看到參與邪教的人，在過程中一定會有血的因素，我們一定要非常警覺。利未記十七章14節中，聖經說生命在血中。邪靈要讓人跟他達成協議，要跟你做交易，其中的一種方式叫歃血為盟。歃血為盟本是由上帝開始的，后來魔鬼了解了它的能力，就是祭壇獻祭的能力，他就鼓勵人筑壇獻祭。列王記下三章27節，以色列正取得極大的勝利，乘勝追趕他們的仇敵，突然戰爭急轉直下，他們敵對的王把自己的兒子獻上為祭了，那個國家就極力地抵抗以色列。換句話說，那個王用自己兒子的血，祈求邪靈的能力。當你面對參與邪教的人，一定要問他有沒有歃血為盟的行為，邀請邪靈或砍傷自己。這一定要打破才行。

歌羅西書一章14節說是耶穌的寶血贖回我們，耶穌的血比任何獻祭更有能力。彼得前書一章18節，我們是耶穌的寶血贖回的。我們要用耶穌的寶血和寶血所成就的。簡單的說，生命在血中，流了血，就形成了盟約。上帝的計劃是借著耶穌的寶血讓我們跟他立約，而邪靈讓我們用我們的血跟邪靈立約。我們最近為一個人禱告，他的父母取了他的血帶到廟裡獻給偶像，他自己沒去但他的血被拿去了，我們需要留意到這樣的事情。借著血可以釋放很大的能力，耶穌的寶血釋放很大的能力。世界各地行巫術時，會有流血獻祭，動物的血或人的血，他們身上才得著超自然的能力。

面對邪教時一定要留意，先詢問他們怎麼結合在一起的，有沒有流血的事情，或者獻祭的事。我很驚訝，有很多年青人跟邪靈歃血為盟。他們需要棄絕這樣的協議和跟他流血的事。

一個人在邪教的壓抑下，會有哪些症狀？我們應看什麼？有哪些跡象可以幫助我們認清問題？例如，晚上會有不尋常的聲音，通常會是邪教的行動；幻聽，這個人聽到不同的聲音，有聲音對他說話，通常是邪靈在活動的証據；或是物件自己在移動，門會自動開關，燈會一暗一明，很嚇人；或是有靈顯現出來，這是很嚴重的問題；或是身體上感覺受到性侵害，卻沒有人在現場，這個比你想象的更常發生，有一種靈，特別喜歡性侵男人或女人，性侵男人和女人的靈分別有不同的名字，叫succubus 和incubus，他們都是性方面的邪靈，他們會在半夜騷擾人，甚至把人釘在床上，這個人的感覺就是被人強暴或性騷擾一樣，但是卻看不到任何人，這都是邪靈的作為。很多人不敢講，覺得很丟臉，而且別人也不相信他。所以你聽到有人這樣說或自己感覺到這樣，要先問清楚情況。如果他說出來，要願意相信。

如果一個人常有性念頭的折磨，也可能是邪靈的侵擾，很沉重壓抑的感覺。當有恩膏的聚會時，非常焦躁不安，沒有辦法專注在屬靈的事上，非常困惑。這些的症狀可能都顯示有巫術參與其中。我們要看清楚還要問他你生命中經歷了什麼，人可能有各式各樣的入口。

我們接下來來看如何服事人，哪些步驟可以釋放人自由。

第一，求聖靈幫助我們。我們需要他揭露根源，我們需要來自於聖靈的能力。

第二，診斷，找到問題到底在哪裡。你需要問問題，“你有什麼樣的情況”，“它如何影響你？”“什麼時候開始的？”這告訴你是否是歷代的問題。“開始時有發生什麼事情嗎？”“是你做了什麼還是你家中發生了什麼事情？”“還是有人對你做了什麼？”這個人必須要敞開，誠實。我們一定要找到問題的源頭，“你有沒有向邪靈打開門？還是你們家其他人打開這個門的？”

給大家講一個例子。有一個女生家裡鬧鬼，她打電話來給我，讓我幫她清理鬼屋。我去到那裡，這個女人和她的男朋友，她的女兒和女兒的男朋友都在那裡，非常害怕，他們聽到奇怪的聲響，根本不敢睡覺，嚇死了。我跟他們講話也都聽到那種聲音，我知道有這種聲音了，可是我要知道它們是怎麼來的，我就開始問問題。要找到問題的根源，需要發問也需要聆聽，然后再發問。要有聆聽的態度，聽這個人，也要聽聖靈，他會告訴你要問 什麼。我就問他們，“這樣有多久了？”他們說“兩個星期。”“兩個星期前發生什麼事？”“不知道，啊，我女兒和她的男朋友搬進來了。”我弄清楚了，他們來之前沒有問題，他們搬進來后問題就出現了，所以是這男女兩人把問題帶進這個房子。我就問這兩個男女“你們搬進來這個房子以前，在你們原來的房子有沒有這樣的問題？”他們回答“有。”“所以是你們把他帶進來的。”“應該是吧。”所以就是跟著你們其中之一來的了，要知道是男的還是女的把他帶進來的。“你原來住的房子就有這個問題嗎？”“沒有。”我又問“你們兩個人有沒有參與過邪教的事？”“沒有。”“你們兩個人之前，有沒有哪一個跟參與過邪教的人上過床的？”那個女孩說“我前一個男朋友。”“你們的關系是不歡而散嗎？”“是的。”“他有沒有詛咒你？”“有的。”“因為你跟那個男的發生性關系，你們成為一體，邪靈就有權力進入你的生命。因為性關系和他的詛咒，邪靈就臨到你和你家裡，你又把它帶進這個房子，你離開它就會走了，它是跟在你身上的。”她說“我很震驚，我想著隻是房子鬧鬼，從來沒有問過這鬼是怎麼來的。”我說“你的罪讓邪靈有門進來。我帶領這些人信主，棄絕他們跟邪靈的關系和協議，吩咐邪靈離開，這房子就安靜下來了，他們也安靜了，一對男女又搬回去了。

你比較容易怪罪這個鬧鬼的房子，而不肯為問題負責。房子會不會鬧鬼？會的。但通常是有人邀請邪靈進來，可能是交鬼或邪術的事情，或家中發生災難，不然邪靈不會進來的。所以要注意診斷問題的根源。如果你發現這個人在邪教邪術上有參與，會有很多問題，你需要發問找到問題的根在哪裡。你問“問題什麼時候開始的？”“當時發生什麼事情？”就可以幫助你找到這些線索。認清這是歷代的問題還是個人的問題。他們自己做的嗎？一定要診斷，到底是什麼原因讓邪靈進來。

第三，需要跟他們解釋基督的作為，簡短的解釋。他們需要明白耶穌寶血的大能，神的能力，他的權柄勝過所有邪靈。不用很長，但一定要跟他們介紹耶穌。耶穌才釋放我們，耶穌才勝過邪靈。就像我跟你講的一樣，簡單分享聖經，之后跟他們解釋，得釋放他們該做些什麼，該怎麼做。解釋他們的部分，他們應該做的包括：認罪悔改。這是根基的部分，你邀請邪靈進來了，就要承認，請耶穌饒恕你；其次，領受饒恕並饒恕別人。參與邪教的人，常常是心裡有很深的苦毒的，家庭關系的破碎，痛苦的感情，心裡的苦毒，憤怒和懷恨。這些根源造成他們參與邪教，全都要挖出來。第三，他們需要棄絕所有跟邪靈的協議。棄絕就是撤銷，說出話來撤銷跟邪靈的協議。因為你邀請了他進來，現在你就要命令他離開。你跟他達成的協議，現在就要打破它了。話語很重要，不是嘴巴隨便說說，而是要真心說出來。

我們告訴他們這就是你要做的部分，你抓住這個罪是無法得自由的，你仍然不饒恕就在捆綁裡了，如果你不抵擋魔鬼，他就緊緊抓住你。你可以跟他們一起看雅各書四章7節，“故此你們要順服神，務要抵擋魔鬼，魔鬼就必離開你們逃跑了。”順服神就是悔改饒恕，選擇上帝做你能力的源頭，不要找魔鬼。當我們為他們禱告，他們要主動抵擋邪靈。這就是預備好這個人。

然后，跟他解釋你要做什麼，讓他明白服事是怎麼樣的。我會帶你做一個禱告，你跟著我說，禱告最后的時候，我會打破捆綁，吩咐邪靈出來，我不是對你說話，而是對邪靈說話。我不要你再禱告了，單單抵擋，命令這個邪靈出來的時候，你可能會咳嗽或吐氣出來。

現在所有的步驟都講完了，很簡單很有邏輯。現在就帶他們做這個禱告。禱告很簡單，通常是有這樣的部分：

第一，承認對基督的信。宣告對基督的信心。

第二，棄絕一切跟邪靈的協議。

第三，求上帝饒恕他。認罪，求上帝饒恕，領受上帝的饒恕。或者他們需要饒恕別人。他們進入邪教，常常是因為他們自己的苦毒。他們要觸摸耶穌，主動的抵擋魔鬼。

當你做這個棄絕和禱告時，要記得是否有盟約需要打破，這時候他們會告訴你了。另外一個要注意他的身上有沒有佩戴一些與邪教有關的東西，手腕上或脖子上，這可能成為一個釋放的攔阻，有時那些物件一解除，馬上就得釋放了。每一個字句和順序並不重要，禱告時要一直聆聽聖靈的聲音。我帶大家一起做這個禱告，讓你們看到禱告是怎樣做的，就是我們剛剛講到的部分組合的，當我禱告，我會在靈裡面跟著聖靈的水流來做，因此這個字眼和順序你可以改變。

我會這樣帶他們，

第一宣告信心，這個很重要，就是宣告我站在主這邊。我堅持相信他所做的一切。這些話很重要。

“親愛的天父，我奉耶穌的名到你面前，承認耶穌是我的救主，耶穌寶血贖回了我，離開一切咒詛，一切邪靈，所有邪教的勢力。我得贖回，我屬於耶穌。”

這就是認同耶穌。

第二，我們可能會說

“主啊，我承認有參與這樣的活動，我承認我的家人有參與這樣的活動，求你饒恕我，我領受你的饒恕。從我心中饒恕那些傷害我的人，特別饒恕我的父母，現在我棄絕所有與邪靈達成的協議，我棄絕所有的邀請，完全棄絕撤銷它們﹔我棄絕所有用血達成的協議，我棄絕撤銷它們﹔我棄絕所有靈媒對我說的話，棄絕它們﹔我棄絕所有歷代的咒詛，所有我的家人跟邪靈的協議。”

整個禱告中，任何可能的協議，全部撤銷。當你診斷時，就知道該怎麼禱告了。

“主啊，我現在觸摸你，求你釋放我自由，撒旦離開我的生命，奉耶穌的名。”

這個禱告做完了，你才帶他禱告，他可能就發作了，你仍然要掌控，不要受到驚嚇，命令這個靈安靜下來。

第三，你就要操練你的權柄了，開始釋放了。記得上帝賜我們權柄可以踐踏蛇和蠍子。你需要這樣做，首先，打破這些協議。好像他們之前講過的話，現在你要撤銷這些話。或者想像邪靈的繩索，現在你要把它砍斷。

“奉耶穌的名，我打破與歷代邪靈達成的協議，我打破它們，我打破捆綁家庭的協議，我打破你跟邪靈達成的血約，打破跟你所說的話語和虛假的命定，打破所有跟邪靈的依附。”

不是每次講的字都一樣，可是你可以看到這個水流是按照發生的情況，你禱告時，聖靈就會給你該打破的部分，你隻要試試看就可以了。不要依靠方法，你要了解怎樣做，了解原則和過程，依靠聖靈告訴你該講的話。如果有幫助，就把禱告列出來。

首先，奉基督的名，打破這個捆綁。之后，命令邪靈，直接對這個人裡面說話，命令邪靈出來，不斷的 施壓，從你靈裡面開始說話，開始興起，吩咐他離開。所以，你要培養靈裡的人，讓你的話語帶著靈裡的力量。不是看說話有多大聲，而是要帶著信心禱告。想像你好像站在洞穴的門口，對著裡面的動物說，“我命令你出來。”你的焦點就是要命令邪靈出來。注意改變的發生，有時一點反應都沒有，你就要繼續施壓，慢慢的就要孵出來了。我發現講出邪靈的名字會有幫助。當我禱告沒有反應發生時，我就講出邪靈的名字，他就反應出來了。

你要為什麼禱告呢？可能有佔卜的靈，污鬼的靈，魔法的靈，苦毒的靈，死亡的靈，仇恨的靈，這些都可能包含在裡面。你要對這些東西說話，命令它們離開，從靈裡不斷的對它們施壓，要一直依靠聖靈的幫助。

有時它們會發作，有各式各樣的發作方法，很多人會尖叫。如果一直尖叫，說明他沒有得釋放。就像在表演一樣，所以不要讓他一直這樣做。讓這人停下來不要尖叫，開始抵擋。還是要對聖靈敏銳，如果這人一直尖叫，我會跟他說停下來，停下來，你要跟我合作，抵擋這個靈。他們可能會尖叫，會抖動，也可能會很暴力，不要害怕，他們的眼睛好像冒著火光一樣看著你，你就從裡面看回他們去，把他們瞪回去，讓他看到你的眼光更銳利。你要知道你代表耶穌，他會怎樣瞪著仇敵，他會怎麼看這些邪靈的，發光的眼，裡面要興起，帶著電光看著這個人。很有意思，他們有些很害怕就開始躲避，我注意他的眼神開始漂移或往下看時，就很強的逼迫他，他很快就出去了。一旦他開始不抗拒，很快他就消失了。

有時有些人會想吐，所以准備一些紙巾和袋子等，這些都是協助你的，不是拿袋子往上一套就得釋放。對發生的事情敏銳，繼續命令。如果他們持續的爭斗，踢斗，就要約束他們，以免傷到他們或傷到別人。有時我會退后一步，繼續命令。你需要一直聽聖靈教你怎麼做，聆聽他的指引。要分辨到底是邪靈還是他的情緒，有時會從邪靈很快的轉變為情緒，有時面對邪靈，他裡面的憂傷痛苦全都冒出來了。如果是邪靈，他裡面的感覺是很丑陋，很惡心的；如果是情緒，看起來很像，但是裡面是沒有反應的，隻是在叫，實際上是這人的情緒；有時會有很多眼淚。靈是要趕的，情緒就需要停下來，他可能需要饒恕，放開什麼。問他到底發生了什麼，跟他互動，教他跟你一起配合服事。不是那麼容易分辨什麼是邪靈什麼是情緒的，經驗會幫助你，如果根本沒有釋放，你就停下來算了。跟這人互動，得到他的協助，聖靈會告訴你，要先處理什麼，才能更進一步的釋放。

如果邪靈跟你爭吵，威脅你，你怎麼辦？邪靈說“這人屬於我，我不要離開，你是誰，你什麼都不是，你沒有能力。”沒錯，我們沒有能力，但耶穌有，我們是奉他的名來的。你要對他說話，“奉拿撒勒人基督耶穌的名來敵對你，他在各各他打敗你，撤銷了你所有的能力，他在各各他羞辱了你，有一天會把你丟到火湖裡。”用經文把它壓下去。有時他會說，“謊言”“不要跟我這樣講”，你就繼續壓迫他。魔鬼不喜歡聽上帝的話，有時我會說這樣話，“耶穌的寶血打破了你的勢力”。

如果這個魔鬼抵擋我，我會看著他說，“魔鬼，你看到十字架，你看見寶血，你的能力被打破了，你的掌控被打破了。”我感覺是從靈界，不是從自然界。自然界是按照時間來看的，我們今天的人，是看不見十字架的，因為是兩千多年前的事，我隻能在想像裡看見。可是在靈界裡，好像就在現場，真實發生的，是現在靈裡的真實。每次我叫他們看十字架，看耶穌寶血，馬上就出現整個釋放。

如果他持續抵擋，你可能需要回應一步，看看有什麼需要先解決的。你需要先拆下邪靈所住的房子，很快就可以把邪靈趕出去了。服事時，一直依靠聖靈的幫助；服事完了以后，安慰這個人，禱告神的愛和平安進入他的心中。不要在這人得釋放前就開始安慰。昨天晚上我就看到了，我常常看到。有人抱著他，安慰他，我手一放在他頭上，他就開始尖叫，因為邪靈沒有出來。你要留在那裡警覺，免得魔鬼騙你。你怎麼知道他出來了？你會感覺那個魔鬼出去了，或者那個人會告訴你，或者聖靈會告訴你。你要用不同的方式觀察。

如果這人參與邪教的話，還有額外的東西，所有跟邪教有關的物件都要從他們家清除。使徒行傳十九章19節，“平素行邪術的，也有許多人把書拿來，堆積在眾人面前焚燒。他們算計書價，便知道共合五萬塊錢。”這裡人們對他們的罪知罪了，公開承認自己的罪，確定再也不回到這裡面去了。五萬塊，很多錢了，他們的意思是這些錢不再吸引我了，我完全擺脫這些東西了。

同樣，舊約申命記七章25，26節中也說，這個人需要清除家中所有與邪教有關的物件，你要要求這人把這個東西拿來給你燒掉，在這方面絕不能妥協，參與邪教的人，需要完全得釋放。

你要為什麼樣的靈禱告？我們已經講了很多的靈，讓聖靈引導你，當有任何的名字冒出來，你就命令他。阿門？阿門！

聽眾提問之一：這一位女士去看中醫，在中華文化中，我們相信體內有一種氣，而她體內的氣很弱，於是她的中醫就建議她打坐以增強她的氣，但她擔心走火入魔，拒絕這麼做，改用鍛煉身體的方式。她想知道練太極，瑜伽等，是否會落入邪靈的圈套？

答： 氣就是你生命的力量，對基督徒來講，這就是你靈裡面的生命。我們講憂傷的靈使骨枯干，你靈裡的狀況會直接影響你身體的狀態。靈，魂，體，都是彼此攸關的，我們靈和心裡的情況都會影響身體的能量。

你怕打坐讓自己打開接觸到邪靈的問題，聖經中講的默想是非常積極的，是去想神的話語，是理解神的話語，看見神話語的真實，他的焦點專注在一個事情上。而東方的這種靜坐冥想，是要倒空自己，這就打開門讓別的東西進來了。我不覺得這是好事。其實瑜伽的每一種動作都是他們對某一種神的膜拜方式，它的根源就顯明了它是從哪裡來的了。有些人做運動，好像打太極，做瑜伽等，好像是有獲得利益，可是他們的根源卻來自於對假神的崇拜。

問題是，你要離那個懸崖多近才不會掉進去呢？這就是你要問聖靈的了。我的建議是，鍛煉的最好方式是走路，游泳，鼓勵你方言禱告，培養你靈裡的活力和能量。聖經說叫耶穌死裡復活的靈住在我們裡面，需要釋放他出來，釋放的方式就是讓我們靈裡面的能力接觸神，讓神進來。

我每天做的事情非常有幫助，就是每天走路，方言禱告，很刻意的禱告，讓我的靈興起。我方言禱告時，默想上帝親近我，我跟他結合，花時間禱告敬拜他，容許他的生命在我的生命中流露出來。我住在台北時，就在酒店的那一層走路，很早就開始走路，這樣就不會碰到人，不然大家想這個外國人瘋了。如果我唱歌，可能會想這個外國瘋子還很開心的。我發現自己的體力和能量借著運動，方言禱告敬拜，還有默想上帝的話語，真的得到提升。

讓這成為習慣，我在這方面就得到很大的幫助。有一些借著你流出來的能量，感覺是魂的部分，或者是心的部分，如果我們刻意把這些降伏在主的面前，讓他在我們生命中流露，你就會期待你的能量有很大的增加。我就很有活力，想到我的年紀，這是很讓人驚訝的，我可以花幾個小時為很多人禱告，可是我需要有跟上帝獨處的時間。

我需要默想他的同在，在我裡面充滿我。我要常常回到根源，建立屬神生命的最基本的生活。以賽亞書四十章說，等候耶和華的，必重新得力。我覺得我們活的生命是交換來的生命。不是我要讓事情發生，而是要放掉這一切，我開始明白察覺，基督在我裡面。能力已經在我裡面了，默想訓練你的心相信這個，這才讓你越來越有活力。

剛強的方言禱告，運動和默想，對我的活力非常有幫助。同時也需要好的飲食和休息。有時活力低，可能是身體不平衡，或者魂有問題。例如，焦慮會濾光你的能量，恐懼會吸走你的能量。我們身體系統的運作就是要我們的心跟上帝和諧為一，我們的心跟上帝和諧為一了，其它的東西就自然的調對了。希望這能幫助到你。

聽眾提問之二：這個人遇到一位馬來西亞來的女留學生，這個女孩半夜跟他們在一起時，突然邪靈發作，整個行為完全改變了，甚至聲音，眼神都變成了男孩。后來，她說她有很嚴重的抑郁症，沒有咨詢過醫生就擅自停止服藥了。這個人想知道，如何分辨藥物的情況還是靈裡的情況，該如何處理。

答：這是一個非常好的問題。你必須要敞開，有些人的問題是生理不是屬靈的，或者兩者都有的，因為它們是有連結的。我們提供的建議都是屬靈的，我們不是醫生，也沒有受過醫藥的訓練，這些事情就不要擅自做主，這不是我們的專長。

如果在這種情況下需要用藥的話，或者你應該鼓勵這人去做一個檢查，做了檢查就可以發現這是否是生理的問題，就可以調整飲食或用藥幫助他身體恢復平衡。有些人用藥，不告訴醫生就自己停下來了，很讓人擔心。沒過多久，問題就變得更嚴重了。因為當他沒有用藥，身體就有反應，整個發作出來了。如果跟健康醫藥有關，需要有醫生的幫助和建議，我們不是專家，不能知道全部東西。

我們曾經碰過一個女生，我們越為她禱告，她瘋狂的越嚴重。我說不禱告了，有幾件事你需要做的。首先，我們不再為你禱告了，你要先找一個人談話，他會跟你禱告。第二，馬上去找醫生，做檢查，一定有東西不對了。第三，做些實際的東西。不要太屬靈，要實際一點。有時候，運用恩慈這個恩賜。一開始，她反應很強烈，我們真的限制她隻能跟這個人聯絡；很難叫她去看醫生，一旦去看了，叫她的家人也一起去幫忙，讓她自己對自己的行為負責。我上次看到她時，她是很穩定，很安靜的一個人。這不再是釋放的問題，而是她身體內的荷爾蒙或生理上的不平衡。這一切都是相關的，所以她的情緒，生理都會造成這些反應。

人們常喜歡把所有的錯都怪罪在魔鬼身上，自己就不用負責了。所以做一些正常的事情，找醫生檢查一下，驗一下血等等。如果你認為可能是心理上的問題，不要超過自己的能力，把他轉介給醫生就好了。這不會有什麼損失，會有很大的幫助。

聽眾提問之三：這位女士經常聽到房屋的結構或鋼筋在嘎嘎作響，非常吵，無法入睡，應該怎麼辦？第二個問題是，你剛才提到的邪靈性騷擾的問題，如果在床上被壓制，被侵犯，當時應該怎麼做？

答：這兩者可能是相關的。如果一個人晚上有邪靈性侵犯她，通常有很強的邪教的連結，就打開門讓邪靈進來，它宣稱在這人生命中有權力了，而實際上它沒有。通常這種靈都是從邪界來的。可能是家族中有變態的事情發生過。第二，如果有這樣的靈，家中發生各樣的聲響或攪擾人的事情也是常見的。

第一步就是要把它帶到光中。你需要聖靈幫助你看到根源是什麼，什麼時候開始的，造成的原因是什麼，是否有歷代的原因還是這人做了什麼。之后就是釋放了。大部分事情你可以自己照著這幾個步驟釋放了，靈裡面方言禱告，命令他出去。有的時候，你需要別人來服事你。這可以幫助你做的更深，或碰觸到你自己碰不到的東西。

我猜測這兩者是有關聯的。你聽見房子裡面的聲音，一般來講就是邪靈在裡面

壓制造成的情況。禱告讓聖靈讓你看見有哪些入口。要棄絕，完全關上門，抵擋魔鬼，或找人幫你，服事你。

聽眾提問之四：一位女士提出關於小朋友的問題。一個七，八歲的孩子，晚上半夜經常狂哭尖叫，白天為他禱告時，又反應的很激烈。對於靈裡有問題的小孩，應如何醫治釋放，如何幫助他。

答：兒童有服事他們的方法。通常有兩種接觸的方式。

第一，孩子睡覺的時候幫他們禱告。讓父母也在場，所以服事當中如果孩子醒過來的時候，不至於被嚇倒。我有為比這更小的孩子禱告的情況。做之前，要先了解孩子的家庭背景，找到這個靈是由哪個源頭來的，是歷代開的門嗎？可能借由家族的邪靈進來的。所以跟父母談話，會幫你找到源頭。先服事他們，要挪去邪靈進入他們家中合法的權力。

不要碰這個孩子，輕柔的禱告，安靜的在靈裡禱告，邀請聖靈來，聆聽聖靈說什麼。基於你之前知道的資料，打破家族中邪靈的咒詛，和跟邪靈的協議，吩咐邪靈出去。這不需要孩子參與。

另一種方式是，坐下來跟孩子聊，問他晚上做什麼夢，讓孩子自己說他感受到什麼。用他們懂的語言來表達。要用孩子的方式跟他們講真理。當孩子跟你講完之后，你可以這樣跟他說，“你知道是什麼讓你有這種夢嗎？”“我覺得是一個不好的靈。”“你知道有不好的靈，它會來煩我們的。”“不是你的錯，你沒有做錯事情，是那些壞靈做的。”“耶穌可以搞定他們的，耶穌身上有好靈的。”我用他們的語言，讓孩子能夠明白。

“有時候這些壞靈會進到人裡面，讓他們很難過，讓他們很害怕。但耶穌來把這些壞靈趕走。聖經中，耶穌就把那些壞靈趕走了。壞靈很怕耶穌的，他們怕到等不及逃走。我們邀請耶穌來，他比壞靈更厲害，他可以幫助你不要這個壞靈.”

“等一下我會幫你禱告，我會對壞靈說話，我不是對你說話，當我一換，你就知道我在跟壞靈說話。我們就命令他離開，你裡面可能會有些感覺，因為壞靈會害怕。不是你害怕，是壞靈在害怕。你隻需要呼氣，吐氣讓他離開，把他推出去。”

這些孩子都懂的，呼氣或咳嗽，“我們一起咳嗽，一起工作，把壞靈趕出去。耶穌就會很開心。”

我們用的語言是孩子都能聽懂的。你可以坐在孩子身邊，或讓孩子坐在你膝上。如果7，8歲，發作起來會有些困難，他力氣已經很大了。現在你已經有他合作，我們期待這個邪靈可以很容易離開。做的時候最好父母都在場，可以是很透明的做法。不要說什麼做什麼嚇到孩子。

你會讓孩子很有信心，感覺很棒，很好。“如果你裡面有什麼感覺，你就把它咳出來，我們要拋開這個東西。”你就幫他走過這個過程。

如果孩子發作，你就緊緊抱住他，限制他，可是有時候很難。最好讓孩子跟你合作，這樣他跟你一起同工抵擋邪靈。

聽眾提問之五：這位女士幫助的一個人，他有家族病史，家族中有很多人因這個病自殺。這個病就是身體虛弱，睡不著覺，吃不下，身體機能喪失。這個人會有幻聽，讓他有自殺和自殘的想法。曾經積極參與醫治和釋放的聚會，可都沒有很大的釋放和改變。好像歷代的問題和幻聽都有。我們應該如何開始服事，如果沒有太大的經歷，要怎樣幫助他。以前從不知道他有否參與過邪教的行為，但家族中一直有拜偶像的現象。

答：像這種失眠，無法睡覺，有很多理由。有些是生理上的，有些是焦慮症，有些是靈裡的問題。有時同時給他醫療和屬靈方面的治療。我的處理方式就是系統性的問問題，試著找出根源。不處理根，不能得自由的。

這個人要為這件事負起責任來。有些人總希望別人幫他修好，自己不想負起責任來。他自己要面對耶穌，跟耶穌建立起關系。在家族中有很多人自殺，家族中就有問題了。有自殺的靈，壓抑的靈，拜偶像的靈，還有邪術的靈，你要找到有哪些源頭。這個人要站穩自己的立場，抵擋邪靈，來到十字架前。

有些人沒有信心他們可以得自由。釋放不是消極的東西，我們要主動進去得著耶穌給我們的。有時服事之前你要先教導他。舉例來說，呼召時，你會發現出來的人有不同的反應。都出來了，代表他們都希望看到一些結果，可是后面卻完全不一樣了。有的很戲劇化，有的什麼反應都沒有，我們之前都看不出來的。這個人心裡的預備和態度，會影響到他從上帝那裡能領受多少。有些人來是覺得，我真的有這個問題，我需要上帝釋放，我預備好，禁食，到領受的時候，就有很大的釋放。有些人隻是抱著試試看的態度，人家叫他去了，什麼反應都沒有。他裡面的消極被動心，根本沒有預備跟神相遇。

預備好跟神相遇很重要。我會說，第一，看他的根源，先問他，找到問題的根源在哪裡。之后，按照這些步驟一步步，看有沒有反應。鼓勵這個人可以禁食，讓他先默想一些經文，上帝的應許。不要讓他被動的等你做就好了。他就把所有責任放在你身上，要你幫他修好。而不是我自己要追求全人的健全。

責任在誰身上很關鍵。常常我們看到人沒有迫切想要得到自由。 “這個想法不錯，可是要跟耶穌調整對，我又不太想了。”我們講到失眠這個問題，自殺的問題，你必須要給他一些指示。

給你一段相關的經文，提摩太后書二章24至26節，“主的仆人不可爭競、隻要溫溫和和的待眾人、善於教導、存心忍耐、用溫柔勸戒那抵擋的人．或者　神給他們悔改的心、可以明白真道．叫他們這已經被魔鬼任意擄去的、可以醒悟、脫離他的網羅。”

前面要有教導，讓這個人明白，他才能抓的到真道。我沒有失眠的所有答案，有些是邪靈造成的，有些是身體的化學反應問題。我有一個牧師朋友，他自己根本沒辦法睡，他就用那些時間看書，讀經，讓自己有生產力。可是聖經應許，“讓他親愛的安然入睡。”有些解答可能是屬靈的，有些可能是生理上的。可能吃一些東西，幫助他身體睡覺。千萬不要喝咖啡，讓自己清醒。學習入睡前放鬆。

這個解答不是那麼明顯，可能要從不同的層面看。起碼，你知道了方向了。

________________________________________________________________________

親愛的天父，我們感謝你有這樣相聚的時間。主啊，教我們怎麼應用我們所學到的，能夠釋放恩膏，在人的生命中結果子。奉基督的名，阿門！

從性犯罪中得自由

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性犯罪是一個當前我們所面對的一個越來越嚴重的問題。當服事人時，應從什麼角度開始幫助人從性犯罪中得自由？我們應保持願意學習的心，了解別人的情況。

我們從聖經中一個人被污鬼攪擾的故事開始。了解上帝是如何創造人的，再看性犯罪的影響，最后是服事人的方法。

路加福音第四章33節講，“在會堂裡有一個人，被污鬼的精氣附著，大聲喊叫說， 唉，拿撒勒的耶穌，我們與你有甚麼相干，你來滅我們麼，我知道你是誰，乃是　神的聖者。 耶穌責備他說，不要作聲，從這人身上出來吧。鬼把那人摔倒在眾人中間，就出來了，卻也沒有害他。”這個人被不潔的污鬼所捆綁，所有的污鬼都是不潔的，很可能這個人就是在性方面犯罪而被捆綁。這裡是信徒聚集的會堂，所以應該是一個信徒在性方面犯罪的問題，不知他是如何打開自己的生命，讓邪靈進來折磨他的。他被情欲，變態的靈折磨。那麼，這是怎樣的一種折磨呢？

第一，他的頭腦中常常出現過去性行為的畫面，邪靈確保這些圖畫一直出現在他眼前。

第二，幻想將來性行為的情形，意念中常常幻想將來可能的情況，他裡面就會有被催逼，情欲的欲望。

第三，生命中會有不斷失敗的循環。求神赦免，好一點后，不久又回到了從前。

這種不斷催逼的勢力是從邪靈來的。邪靈會在人裡面產生能量。以弗所書二章2節講到，“那時、你們在其中行事為人隨從今世的風俗、順服空中掌權者的首領、就是現今在悖逆之子心中運行的邪靈．”邪靈在心中運行，運行就是得活力的意思。邪靈在人裡面產生能量和壓力，罪也會在人裡面產生能量。罪會讓人得著能量。羅馬書五章27節說，是罪在你們心中發動。當人有這樣的問題時，他裡面會有強烈的能力和壓力在逼促他，裡面的邪靈和罪會不斷增加壓力。

性沖動是我們要學會管理的胃口，它是上帝賜給我們的。就像每天都要吃東西，也是一種自然的胃口。性欲望也是上帝放在人裡面的一種自然渴望的胃口。是人需要好好管理的。可是邪靈的存在和罪，會在裡面產生極大的能量，不斷的壓迫你，造成更大的胃口。我們要學習管理好自己。

帖撒羅尼迦前書第四章3至8節，“神的旨意就是要你們成為聖潔，遠避淫行。要你們各人曉得怎樣聖潔尊貴，守著自己的身體。 不放縱私欲的邪情，像那不認識神的外邦人。不要一個人在這事上越分，欺負他的弟兄。因為這一類的事，主必報應，正如我預先對你們說過，又切切囑咐你們的。 神召我們，本不是要我們沾染污穢，乃是要我們成為聖潔。 所以那棄絕的，不是棄絕人，乃是棄絕那賜聖靈給你們的神。”

關於處理性犯罪的問題不是用禱告，上帝的要求就是要我們保持清潔，遠避淫行，就是遠避性犯罪。

第一，神的旨意是要我們遠避，要有節制，要懂得保護自己。

第二，學習如何管理自己生命中的這種胃口。我們看到沒有得救的人，總是找機會滿足自己在這方面的欲望，這種行為正與我們相反。

第三，不要在性方面操縱弟兄姐妹，如果你這樣做，就是欺負他了。這是一個很重大的教導。如何建立美好的關系，又不在性方面操縱人。

最后，聖潔是神所召，不是人所確定的。如果我們抵擋聖潔，清潔的教導，就是抵擋上帝。

人為什麼要走這條路？我們剛剛在路加福音第四章看到的這個人，他在淫行，性犯罪的捆綁中，需要得釋放。釋放是他得自由的關鍵。釋放之后，他仍需行在聖潔裡。還要管理自己的胃口，也要用全新的方式建立他的關系感情。

要了解上帝的計劃安排，先要了解上帝是如何創造我們的。創世紀第二章18節，“耶和華神說，那人獨居不好，我要為他造一個配偶幫助他。”24節中“因此，人要離開父母，與妻子連合，二人成為一體。”所以在上帝的創造中，他說不好的隻有人的孤單。上帝造人，是要有關系的。我們受造就是有能力跟人親密，也需要這樣的親密。跟上帝親密，也跟其他人親密。上帝賜給我們這樣的能力，用很實際的方式來表達這樣的親密，有連結的能力。兩個人在性方面發生關系，就結合在一起。性的親密會使頭腦中產生化學反應，讓兩個人產生連結，他們同時會有依附的感覺產生。

孤單需要親密來解決，跟上帝的親密，跟另一個人的親密，上帝造我們是有能力跟別人結合的，性交是產生這種結合的關鍵。二人要合為一起，兩人發生性親密，就使兩人結合在一起，就連結了。上帝賜我們很多不同的能力，有能力跟別人親密，表達這樣的親密，跟別人結合，有能力創造，可以用意念，也可以用身體創造東西。

在我們性能力方面有兩個很重要的東西。第一，有能力跟別人親密結合。第二，有能力創造新生命。這當然是要負責任的，可世界卻一直在扭曲這些。馬太福音十九章4至6節中“耶穌回答，那起初造人的，是造男造女。”上帝的設計是一男一女，不是男跟男，也不是女跟女。“並且說、『因此，人要離開父母，與妻子連合，二人成為一體。』這經你們沒有念過麼。 既然如此，夫妻不再是兩個人，乃是一體的了。所以神配合的，人不可分開。”所以，神最初的設計是兩人彼此親密。親密代表不設防，向對方打開平常不給人看到的地方，人不可能跟每個人都親密，這是不恰當，會造成傷害的。

親密需要慢慢培養建立關系和信任，親密對上帝很重要。他造我們，就是希望我們能夠親密， 他設計我們有緊密的關系。有親密的能力也讓我們不設防。如果你向一個人打開心，把自己的一部分讓他知道，這樣不設防你就很容易受到傷害。他可以拒絕你，背叛你，這是兩難的情況。你傷害我，就會影響我的生命，讓我很難跟別人親密了。所有親密都讓你不設防，所以上帝的設計是，在親密中一定要有保護。兩人在性方面的親密，是他們的靈，魂，體都參與的。上帝的設計是我們從靈裡開始活，我們靈的生命借著魂和體表達出來，觸摸別人。

世界把性經歷貶低為純粹隻有肉體。在上帝的眼中，認為這是從裡面出來的，心跟心的連結，分享生命，之后才是身體。但世界反過來了。世界隻強調是肉體的，完全不在乎可能對靈和魂造成的傷害。當兩人有身體上性的關系，而沒有親密關系，沒有打開心愛另一個人，就把這行為貶低為隻有肉體的反應了。親密而沒有委身信任，就打開門讓傷害進來。上帝設計我們，是讓兩人因性親密。發生性行為，身體上會有變化發生，在性交過程中，頭腦會發生化學反應，因人的喜樂造成結合。

當兩人親密結合時，他們聽見，看見，經歷都像魂結合在一起，人彼此結合時，兩人的靈彼此觸摸接觸。上帝的設計就是從一個人的靈的流露， 與另一個人的靈，魂，體接觸。如果你忽略這些，就是把親密貶低為僅有肉體的反應，就完全扭曲了上帝的原意了。

聖經中講到亞當和夏娃的親密時說，亞當“認識”夏娃，之后才跟她同房。夫妻之間由認識，再到親密。如果不是夫妻，就隻稱為同房。例如他瑪被強暴時，她的兄弟與她同房。聖經中用完全不同的詞匯來表達。

性交除了身體的接觸，還有彼此心跟靈的結合，所以要保護這樣的親密。上帝用立約跟我們接觸。約是結合的協議，在協議中，不會有傷害。上帝建立的關系，是盟約的關系。上帝設計的婚姻，也是立約的關系。兩人彼此委身，不要傷害對方，而要忠心到底。上帝設計的婚姻是男與女結為夫妻。在盟約的關系裡，也反應了耶穌與教會的關系。盟約是一生的承諾和委身，彼此衷心和保護。

聖經中有盟約時，先是說話，然后流血，這樣就是彼此承諾了。上帝設計女子第一次性行為時，會有流血的情況，上帝就是向我們顯明這是立約，盟約的關系。在婚禮上，夫妻雙方先交換言辭，就是立約﹔然后交換戒指，成為立約的保証。大家一起見証這個約，一起慶祝這個約。可是婚姻隻有在圓房之后才算完成，因為當中會有流血。父母會把沾了血漬的床單留著，代表女子貞潔的証明。這是希伯來文化中非常重要的一件事。女子要為男子保存自己，與男人建立盟約。而當男人與女人親密，卻沒有跟她立約，就是佔她的便宜了，利用她滿足自己的需要，沒有給她盟約的保証和安全感，對她造成傷害。

上帝設計建造男人去追求和征服，女人是尋求保障和委身。耶穌追求我們，給我們這個約，我們跟他的關系就有了保障。婚姻中，男子追求女子，給她一個約，對她衷心到底。性行為是整個婚姻中的一部分，所有婚禮的程序，以及兩人的性親密都是上帝設計的盟約的關系。這就是帖撒羅尼迦書中講的“你不要欺負對方”的原因。操縱人使自己得好處，男人欺負女人，操縱她，引誘她，有了性行為之后又拋棄她。女人需要的是安全感和親密，被拋棄后，就覺得被欺負了。

可以看出來，我們離上帝的設計有多麼的遠，我們需要回到上帝的心意裡。你創造了一個東西，就了解他如何運用。造出微波爐的人，就會寫出應用手冊。如果你不理會應用手冊，隨意將金屬放進去，肯定會有問題。同樣，我們要回到上帝的設計裡，按照上帝希望的性親密的行為守則行事。但是人就是敵對神，總想按照自己的想法做。罪就是虧缺上帝原來給我們安排的美意。性犯罪就是虧缺了上帝的原意。他們享受嗎？當然享受，這原本就是上帝的設計，但是裡面隱藏了毀滅，因為罪的代價就是死。

聖經中也警告我們避免性犯罪，避免性犯罪造成的損害。神的目的是要我們有親密，在親密中不設防，婚姻之外發生的性親密很明顯就會造成傷害。在這方面神有些什麼警告？

首先，神不反對性。人是他創造的，他給我們能力創造新生命，他也教我們如何做，我們就是被這樣設計的，神覺得這樣很好，他把這個欲望放在我們裡面，我們也很喜歡。所以，不要禱告讓神把它拿走，神是有目的的。

哥林多前書第六章13 節，“身子不是為淫亂，乃是為主。主也是為身子。”表明神不希望有性犯罪，保持自己的貞潔就是尊榮神。神設計我們來顯明他，他不希望我們沒有委身就與人發生性行為，他與人是立約的關系，是永恆的。夫妻之間是流血立約的。上帝借耶穌的血跟我們立約，我們領聖餐的主要目的之一，就是慶祝這樣的關系，是約的保証。我們吃餅，喝杯，就是提醒我們耶穌的血贖淨了我們。我對上帝是很尊貴的，他愛我，我屬於他，不屬於其它任何人。我得赦免，被愛。我們與神的關系就像婚約，神是守約的，我們如果違約，不忠實，就是很嚴重的罪。在上帝的眼中，關系代表生命，違背關系就是死亡。盟約代表上帝與我們相交，違背盟約就是很可怕的罪，違背了上帝最核心的精神。

接著看哥林多前書第六章15 ，16節，“豈不知你們的身子是基督的肢體麼。我可以將基督的肢體作為娼妓的肢體麼。斷乎不可。 豈不知與娼妓聯合的，便是與他成為一體麼。因為主說，『二人要成為一體。』 ”身為信徒，上帝的靈住在我裡面，我們是耶穌在世上的代表之一，是基督身體的一部分。參與性犯罪，身上帶著的聖靈不想參與。與娼妓結合，就讓上帝的靈擔憂。

18 節，“你們要逃避淫行。人所犯的，無論甚麼罪，都在身子以外。惟有行淫的，是得罪自己的身子。”說謊，偷竊，違背律法等等的犯罪都是在你外面。隻有性犯罪不同，上帝警告我們，行淫是得罪自己的身體。當兩人結合，一人的部分生命會進入另一人裡面，改變發生在裡面。大腦的化學反應，開始回應，還有記憶留在裡面。這種淫行會建立神經的管道讓人上癮，頭腦好像被卡住。當服事人時，這不是外面的罪，表示道歉就行了，而是裡面要開始改變，因為罪一直帶在身上，沒法走開。

性犯罪的影響非常獨特，有東西會進入身體裡面。羅馬書第一章27節，“男人也是如此，棄了女人順性的用處，欲火攻心，彼此貪戀，男和男行可羞恥的事，就在自己身上受這妄為當得的報應。”這裡講到性犯罪對人的影響遠大於其它的罪。人裡面發生改變，越走入性犯罪這條路，這影響和改變就越深。

性犯罪造成的傷害有很多，雖然很多人不肯承認。一個人越對自己的靈敏銳，就會越察覺性犯罪造成的影響有多大。

首先，是靈裡的損傷。影響你跟上帝的關系，讓聖靈擔憂。以弗所書四章30節就講到讓聖靈擔憂，造成他的痛苦和難過。因為上帝是守約的，你如果行淫，就讓聖靈擔憂，破壞了這個關系。以弗所書四章，五章是有聯系的，列出了讓聖靈擔憂的事。淫行就讓上帝擔憂，對上帝造成傷害。繼續犯罪，就會使我們的良知越來越麻木。參與淫行，會產生罪咎，羞愧的心理。

這世界一直強調性犯罪不是大問題。可是任何高官在犯了淫行后，都會感到羞愧和罪咎。上帝希望我們坦然面對他，可是在性犯罪中掙扎的人，就會覺得自己被定罪了，不配來到上帝面前。性犯罪中，魔鬼會不斷的逼促你，做了之后，就馬上定你的罪，讓你羞愧。上帝供應我們，洗淨我們，隻要我們按照他的方法做。

同時，邪靈的污穢可能跟著發生了。邪靈會經由性行為由一個人身上傳到另一個人身上。兩人發生性交，就是二人成為一體。邪靈就有機會進入了。就像性病互相傳遞一樣，邪靈也有了合法的權力從一人身上進入另一人身上。舊約中，能夠讓上帝的子民犯罪的方法之一就是性犯罪，人讓邪靈進入就會被擄走。

民數記二十五章巴蘭想要咒詛以色列，上帝說不行，他們是蒙福的。於是他就差那些拜偶像的女人到他們中間，引誘他們，與他們同房，他們就因此跌倒了。士師記十六章的參孫，那些人就是在等他掉進淫行裡，奪走他的力量，把他擄走了。是淫行讓他先在靈裡被捆綁了。大衛王也是因為性犯罪，引起了后面的欺騙和謀殺。舊約中發生的性犯罪，是會被律法治死的，死亡的靈就合法進入了。性犯罪讓邪靈的污穢很容易發生。我以前分享過的一個女孩，有過被污鬼壓制的情況，因她曾跟一位參與邪教的人發生性行為。

另一個靈裡的損傷是，不敬虔的魂結產生了，讓邪靈有權力進來。魂結是一種結合，二人成為一體時，他們結合在一起了。如果他們結婚了，是合法的結合﹔如果沒有結婚，就是不敬虔的魂結。這樣的結合，就讓邪靈進入生命。如果性伴侶之間的魂結被打破，邪靈通常會馬上發作。

靈裡的影響是我們跟上帝的關系受損。邪靈進來，良心受損，人被定罪，邪靈的魂結就產生了。

上帝讓我們留意性犯罪，因為我們裡面會有改變，要轉回來是很不容易的。保持自己的清潔，就會有改變，修復損傷需要很大的努力。

我們再看魂的部分。箴言五，六，七章都有講到性犯罪。第五章3至6節，“因為淫婦的嘴滴下蜂蜜，他的口比油更滑。 至終卻苦似茵蔯，快如兩刃的刀。他的腳，下入死地。他腳步，踏住陰間。以致他找不著生命平坦的道。他的路變遷不定，自己還不知道。”這裡講的就是淫行。當人開始行淫，就變得苦毒。苦毒的男女，感覺在性關系中被人利用。原來期待親密和愛，卻被拒絕，被拋棄，最終變得苦毒。當你服事人時，要留意這裡面的苦毒。另外，死地和陰間都是屬靈的勢力，死亡讓人孤立麻木，陰間折磨人。這兩種靈在性犯罪中很常見。

箴言五章22節，“惡人必被自己的罪孽捉住。他必被自己的罪惡如繩索纏繞。” 第六章32，33節，“與婦人行淫的，便是無知，行這事的，必喪掉生命。他必受傷損，必被凌辱。他的羞恥不得涂抹。” 我們看到媒體上曝光的任何淫行的事件，都會給當事人帶來極大的羞恥和痛苦。第七章24至27節，“眾子阿，現在要聽從我，留心聽我口中的話。你的心，不可偏向淫婦的道。不要入他的迷途。因為被他傷害仆倒的不少。被他殺戮的而且甚多。他的家是在陰間之路，下到死亡之宮。”這裡再次提到傷害，死亡，陰間。如要了解整個引誘和試探，可以參考箴言第六章。

魂裡會受到傷害。魂到底發生了什麼？魂包括了意念，情緒，想像，意志力等方面。

在魂的方面，首先就是污穢的畫面和記憶。記憶是這樣運作的，把你所經歷， 看見的圖像，保留在頭腦中。如果連結歡樂的感覺，或激烈的痛苦，銘記就深。如果重復發生，銘記就會更深。性犯罪的本性，每一次參與性行為，會有化學成分產生，頭腦中的圖像無法抹掉。禱告時會出現，與配偶親密時也會出現。因為它在你裡面，在你的頭腦中。邪靈就是用它來操縱你，定你的罪。

頭腦中敬拜，親密上帝的領域，與性親密是同一地方。當敬拜神時，頭腦使用的部分，與性親密時使用的部分相同，所以那些圖畫都出現了。如果在健康的婚姻關系中，就不會有這種情況，但如果是不健康，不敬虔的性關系，畫面就出來了。要攔阻你跟上帝親密。

第二層是情緒的痛苦。是什麼樣的情緒呢？當你想起這段感情，這段關系破裂了，通常會有憂傷，因為你對這段關系期待很高。感覺被拒絕﹔常常苦毒﹔常常會恨，恨男人，恨女人，恨自己﹔常常憤怒，羞愧。

為了尋找愛而被傷害，魂受到了傷害，產生了憂傷和憤怒﹔感覺被拒絕，這人就開始變得苦毒。如果女人被男人引誘，又被拋棄，就會恨自己，怎麼讓這種事發生，這都是秘密，不讓家人知道，就造成了很大的羞恥感。

當你跟人講話，他很少會跟你說他做了什麼，他的生命有多糟，你隻需了解有這樣的折磨就夠了。人的裡面還有困惑，因為他不單隻有一段關系，多個部分的魂都有受傷，魂都四散了﹔等到結婚時，已經很難把自己給人了，太多破碎，太多痛苦。人已經被分散了，很難把自己完整的獻給對方。有時會覺得還依附在別的人身上。有時，配偶會在靈裡感覺到，你沒有跟我在一起。

性交是親密，是從裡面連結。當我教導你在靈裡流露時，我要你專注，如果你心不在焉，就沒有辦法接觸，靈裡就不能接觸。跟配偶性親密，兩人的魂不可能不連結，不要去幻想別的關系，這樣頭腦就沒法專注，傷害和羞愧因此就進來了。

如果男人從事色情的東西，他整個大腦中的化學反應都改變了，每經歷一次色情的東西，包括幻想，欲望，或手淫的行為，他的頭腦就被捆綁了。當人觀看色情的東西時，他們面對的不是真正的人，而隻是一個形象。在這形象中，把女人物件化，把女人當成一件物品供他享樂。當男人看色情時，他的大腦被訓練成為，看見女人時，無法看見上帝的 形象，因為他看不見人，隻看見身體。這種污穢的想像，無法讓他進入婚姻的親密，變得自我為中心，不能去愛，因此變態的娼妓的靈就進入他裡面。他的配偶也感覺不到他的愛了，因為他沒法跟她在靈裡流露，他的意念被不同的思想污穢了，整個意念都需要潔淨。

創世紀五章6節講到有一群天使從天上墮落下來，就是因為他們想跟女人行淫。他們看到上帝給人的能力，他們也想要做男人，就離開了上帝給他們的崗位，與女人行淫。可以看出，問題比你想像的更多。

最后要講的是，人的魂中有摧毀的反應。當人受傷時，通常會防衛保護自己，因此人發生淫行時，很常見的反應，就是在心裡筑起牆以免繼續受傷。需要留意的典型問題是：

第一，內在誓言。內心裡面自己立誓，這是出於憤怒和傷害。如“我再也不要相信男人”或“再也不要相信女人”。如果你內心做了這樣的誓言，你的內心就會相信它，你自己可能已經忘記了這個誓言。多年后你結婚了，遇見了一位很棒的男人，可是你的心會說“不要相信他”，不管他有多好，你還是不相信他。關系開始失敗， 是因為你內在不信任的引領，你內在的誓言。我有碰見過有人內在誓言不要懷男孩，她每次懷男孩都會流產。當人為保護自己做了內在誓言，就在心裡筑起了堅固營壘， 沒有了生育能力。

第二，毒根的論斷。由於過往的經歷，覺得男人一定讓人失望，或女人就想掌控你，他們是不可信的。這類的苦毒論斷會污穢你將來所有的關系。很常見的是死亡之怨。“我死了算了。”因為做過的事情產生極大的羞愧和怨恨，這樣的想法就出現了。服事人時，我們需要看到他魂裡的反應。所有的罪都在人身體之外，隻有性犯罪是在人裡面，這裡有罪的問題，邪靈的問題，不敬虔的魂結，圖像就印記在頭腦裡，造成內心的傷害和反應，所以上帝警告我們，不是性不好，而是我們需要按照上帝的指示做，他才成為美好。

性犯罪另一個問題是制造了很多的黑暗和秘密。因為被它帶來的羞愧遮蓋，埋在裡面讓黑暗蔓延。當今，這個問題越來越嚴重，特別在網絡上，讓人有很多機會接觸到性變態，即使簡單的接觸，都會對生命造成很大傷害。我們曾為一位年青牧師的兒子禱告，他接觸網絡色情約有兩年的時間。牧師很難過，家裡已經做了所有的保護措施，但他的兒子又去到他的朋友家，那家的父親不管孩子，所以兩個男孩一起在電腦上看色情的東西。青少年隻要看過一次，馬上就上癮了。

色情的英文來自兩個詞，“妓女”和“書寫”。對於娼妓的描述就是色情的源頭。色情的背后就是召妓的行為，變態的靈，拜偶像的靈。娼妓是為了賺錢才做這樣的事。 變態的靈，就扭曲了上帝的形象。女人也是按上帝的形象造的，色情就毀掉了這樣的形象，把人當成了物件。男人對色情是最沒有抵抗力的，因為他們容易受到視覺的影響，他們也害怕在感情上受拒絕。他們裡面想得安慰，控制這樣的欲望驅動。色情會改變我們大腦的化學成分，在腦內釋放胺多酚和腦內酚等。色情是上癮的，就像濫用藥物一樣，越看就想越多，最后就會產生魂結，將人鎖在了色情的圖像和網絡上，依附在上面了。

耶穌在馬太福音五章28節說，“看見婦女動了淫念就是犯了奸淫了。”色情打開門讓情欲的靈，變態的靈，娼妓的靈，拜偶像的靈進來。舊約中，當以色列人進入拜偶像的文化中時，常有廟妓出現。他們拜偶像的過程中，跟男妓和女妓發生性行為很常見。上帝原來想祝福我們的心意，變成了邪靈的入口。最近，我讀到一份有關色情的調查報告，他們研究的項目是，當人接觸色情時，腦部會發生什麼反應。他們的發現是：完全沒有接觸過色情的人，腦部的反應不會很大。而看過很多色情東西的人，大腦中很大的區域都被啟動了，與吸毒的人的大腦被驅動的區域一樣。結論是，腦部對色情的化學反應，與其它讓人上癮的東西發生的反應是一樣的。這樣的研究有很多人抗拒，色情與毒品一樣讓人上癮，會改變大腦的結構，形成虛幻，而且有耐受性，要越用越重。

聖經中提到很多淫行，大家可以自己查考。例如：苟合，奸淫，同性戀，強奸，與邪靈的性親密，虐童，獸交，娼妓，亂倫，強暴，虐待等等，任何扭曲上帝造人的模式都會造成問題。

我們需要有策略釋放人自由，得自由的道路包括，箴言二十八章13節“遮掩自己罪過的，必不亨通。承認離棄罪過的，必蒙憐恤。”

如何服事人得自由？第一，求聖靈的幫助，顯明問題的根源。處理任何問題都需要依靠聖靈的幫助，學習用心聆聽，他給你的感動，可能是一個小小的需要問的問題，觀察對方的反應。第二，診斷問題。一直發問，直到找到問題的根源。有可能是歷代遺傳下來的；也可能是這人經歷過的創傷，如小時候的性虐待，接觸過性虐待的畫面或直接被性虐待；是否有犯罪的情形。性犯罪有很大的欺騙性，人們想隱藏所發生的一切，但隻有面對真相，不留黑暗，才能完全洗清。

例如一位年青人經歷了家庭的破裂，在痛苦中尋找安慰，性犯罪是他的安慰，但根源是他家庭的破碎。要找到根源，不要隻看到表面的罪。跟他分享你看到的問題，與他互動。如果不明白問題的廣度，隻能治標不治本。這人要對你誠實，他跟你說的事情，如果有犯罪的因素，你不可以掩蓋，不可以掩蓋虐待的事情。嚴重的事情，我保留尋求協助的自由，否則可能被吸到可怕的境地。如有人說我性侵犯我的妹妹，或與教會的領袖發生性關系等。

在服事中，不能先簽訂保密條款。當然，隱私需要被尊重，不向任何人揭露隱私，可是不能擔保保守秘密，要向上面的人報告，需要專家的建議。如果有人告訴你一個重大的秘密，你不與人談，反而會對你造成很大的定罪感，他就把你拉進了他自己多年的黑暗和秘密中，千萬不要被拐進這樣的委身中。

有一個人來找我，他與一位女子結婚，生了兩個男孩，他性虐待這兩個男孩。他來認罪，因為他陷入極大的折磨中。我對他說，你的誠實是好的， 讓事情曝光。這件事情是錯的，有很多后果。第一，你跟上帝的關系。你背叛了妻子的信任，違背了你的婚約，因為你虐待孩子。第二，你這是犯罪違法的行為。這種行為是不能隱藏的，我不能隱藏，我也不想隱藏。你的選擇是：告訴這位女子你做了什麼，不可避免她應該向警察報案；或者，你可以自首。我不會幫你遮掩，我會給你一點時間讓你決定如何回應，這是犯罪，你需要面對后果。聖經講得很清楚，如果認罪悔改，你會得憐恤。直接面對，代表以后會有比較正面的結果。我給他一個星期，之后整個事情被揭露了。注意這裡，我沒有陷入幫他保守秘密的陷阱裡，我不希望成為掩蓋他犯罪的幫凶。如果你幫他保密，你整個的事工都會被瓦解，別人看你是協助侵犯孩童的一份子。教會的人也會被迷惑，他們憐憫罪犯，所以我們必須按正常的管道處理，不然就成為了共犯。

求主赦免，神保証會赦免，他們要轉離罪行，悔改不是隻道歉，而是要轉離這一切。你需要跟他解釋需要饒恕的部分，這些人要饒恕傷害過他們的人。這部分會有憤怒和憂傷，可能需要花一點時間，幫助這個人承認自己的憤怒和憂傷，然后從心裡饒恕。我們可以練習寫一封信給你生氣的人，但不要寄出去。將你心中的憤怒寫下來，讓自己看見，然后在主的面前解決他。饒恕是兩重的，首先饒恕傷害你的人，然后領受饒恕，原諒自己。有些人，特別是女士，很難饒恕自己，覺得很羞愧。你需要跟她談，不要再要求自己，上帝已經饒恕你了。

另外一個需要做的是，幫助他棄絕，砍斷這些捆綁。需要撤銷的捆綁包括：不敬虔的性的魂結，如砍斷色情的魂結，砍斷網路的魂結；或者防衛式的反應，如內在誓言，論斷，死亡之願等等，都要棄絕。最后，到主面前，求主釋放他們自由。先悔改認罪，轉離罪惡，說出認罪的話。“主啊，赦免我，因我犯了色情的罪，求你洗淨釋放我自由，遠離生命裡的污穢。”宣告饒恕他人，也要領受饒恕，原諒自己。

那麼如何服事人呢？首先，還是要跟從聖靈的引導。奉基督的名，打破所有的捆綁。打破歷代的罪孽和咒詛，魂結，內在誓言等；然后命令邪靈離開。會有各種各樣的邪靈，如情欲的靈，變態的靈，拜偶像的靈，歷代家族中的靈，色情的靈，奸淫的靈，仇恨的靈，苦毒的靈，憂傷的靈，羞愧的靈，自我仇恨的靈，死亡的靈，折磨的靈，陰間的靈等等。

大家要從三方面來看，因行為本身而進來的靈；也有因這個人對加害他的人的反應而進來的靈；還有因他對自己的反應而進來的靈。對自己的反應有：自我仇恨，羞愧，苦毒。對加害人的反應有：恨男人或女人，苦毒，憤怒，暴怒。 這些都是有邏輯聯系的。有時，隻要一講到這個靈的名字，他就會發作跑出來了，要一一把他們打破。

例如，呼召的時候，有時為人按手，就能釋放神的能力；但有些人沒有反應，就要叫出這些靈的名字，上帝會把靈的名字給你，讓你往哪裡找。是罪？還是對加害人的？還是對自己的？

我求聖靈幫助我從這個人的靈，魂，體中挪走一切因過去關系帶來的傷害。他進入你裡面了，就求聖靈把他趕出去。也求聖靈恢復他以前四散的部分。為人這樣禱告時，他們會流淚，他們裡面的羞愧無法擺脫，特別是女士。

我的禱告是這樣的，“主啊，求你將他因過去的關系對他的身，心，靈造成的傷害挪走，他所有在感情上的付出，求你為他恢復，讓他能振作起來。求主釋放潔淨，聖潔的靈進入他的生命。主啊，求你的愛和潔淨的能力進入他的身體。” 他的身體已經沒法再清潔，但上帝會給他靈裡的清潔，就如同這件事沒有發生一樣。呼召時，沒辦法做完全部這些事，可以在單獨禱告時這樣做。服事中所做的就是要彌補過去性犯罪所造成的傷害。

如何做服事之后的跟進？性犯罪在人生命中造成的影響是非常嚴重的，第一次的性行為對人有極大的影響。跟進的方面有：

1. 家中的潔淨，有沒有任何的物件需要清除？可能有雜志，電腦檔案，以前的書，照片，禮物等等。記得與罪隔絕，與上帝同行。過去任何有可能控制你，讓你犯罪的東西，統統扔掉，這是他們要負的責任。求聖靈告訴他們需要清理的東西。你也可以給他們一些建議。

2. 有沒有任何關系需要保持距離的？保持距離就留下了空間，能夠回轉過來。如果跟人有性關系，現在還保持這樣的關系嗎？如果有，他就很容易又回到這個關系中。一旦這個關系變成性的，就成為了單純的身體關系，他們需要分開一段時間，正確的與上帝同行。

3. 有沒有需要道歉的地方？不要嚴厲命令他如何做，要求聖靈讓他看見。有時道歉會讓事情變得更糟，有時不理他更好。有時上帝不要求道歉和恢復，有時要求做一個象征性的例子。你必須要聽聖靈的。

如果需要道歉，首先，必須正確的道歉，絕對不能怪罪別人。道歉自己的部分，即使別人有合作。其次，必須清楚講明為什麼道歉。第三，先處理自己的憂傷和憤怒。如果跟人道歉，心裡卻很埋怨，怨恨就沒用了。自己要沒有怒氣，沒有怪罪，清楚知道需要道歉的地方。當面道歉比寫信更好，寫信像犯行的罪証，當然有時簡單便條也可以接受。在對方方便的時候，當面道歉，道歉必須要簡短，“謝謝你讓我有機會與你談話，上帝跟我說話，我明白我的行為對你造成很深的傷害，請你原諒我。”這樣做是需要勇氣的，可是它在你的心裡，良知上會有很大的改變。別人可能不原諒你，但這不重要，那是他們的問題。別人可能不想見你，你也許可以通過電話簡短的說，或寫一封短信，一定要簡短。

最后，也是最難的一點，就是重建生命。要保持清潔，就要做不一樣的事情。想潔淨，知道潔淨是好的，知道你的生命要服事上帝。我需要的意象是服事上帝的生命，生命借我流露，建立自己的生命，每天方言禱告，讓屬靈的生命得到能量，默想上帝的話，默想上帝的愛，讓上帝的愛進入我的生命，在生命中宣告神的話語，每一天將你的生命帶到他的話語中。每天對我的心說，吩咐我的心轉離一切幻想和性犯罪。我在靈裡興起，協助我的心轉向神，因為一生的果效是由心發出的。同時，對意念說話，你的身體會回應你的話語。

記得耶穌曾對一棵樹說，不再結果子。對意念說，我咒詛跟性犯罪相關的記憶，完全不結果子，枯干。Caroline Leaf寫過一部書，她的研究表明，你的思想意念會佔大腦的部分空間，這些神經像樹一樣。你想到一個念頭，這棵樹就會亮起來，如果是正面的想法，這棵樹就會很健康。一旦你有性犯罪的念頭，它們就被激活開始改變了，你就要想這棵樹，奉耶穌的名，咒詛它不再結果子，拒絕它。重建自己在神裡面的生命，設定生命的方向，在沒有受到引誘之前，每天設定自己的方向。

接下來，就是有意念進來時就把它擄住。當試探來，就擄掠它，擄掠你的思想。例如，一位男士在路上看到一位穿著非常暴露的女士走過來，立刻這種形象開始出現，他思想的路徑開始看她是一個物件，這時就需要立刻奪走這樣的想法。開始攔阻，拒絕把女人當物件的想法。“要奪去你的想法。”（哥林多后書十章5節。）就好像有活的東西沖向你的腦部，馬上抓住他，把他扔出去。轉移焦點，注意別的東西，你的頭腦就開始了新的念頭。隻是認為這樣想不對，不可以這樣想，一點用都沒有，因為那是律法。

如果我在前面放一個盒子，上面有一個紅色的大大的按鈕，旁邊寫上“不准按”，隻有你和盒子在房間中，你最想要做的事就是按按鈕。好像著迷了一樣。換句話說，律法讓你不要按，反而自己越想犯罪。律法沒有能力救我們。你告訴一個人不可以這樣做，他反而更想做。就像有牌子寫著“油漆未干”，很多人最想做的就是摸一摸。因為心裡面有東西被挑起來，所以律法沒法幫到你。最好的做法是，不要去想這樣想是不對的，我不是好的基督徒，這樣的策略隻會讓你感覺失敗。而是要想“主啊，這是毀滅的想法，我不想這樣想，我要轉向其它的方向，耶穌，感謝你的聖潔在我裡面起來。”你要用屬靈但實際的方式來處理。定自己的罪是沒有幫助的。

還有一個幫助就是負責任，對別人坦誠。坦白承認是自己負責任的改變。如果請別人監督我的生命，不代表問題變成他的了，還是自己的問題。平常我們可以這樣跟人講，“我在這方面有掙扎，不斷想釋放自己，我想要得自由，我不知在小組中怎樣做，我跟你見面時，希望你能幫助我，問我做的怎麼樣，問我是不是說真話，希望你幫助我繼續保持承諾。”坦白負責，承認這是我要走的路，請別人幫助。敞開是走向自由的道路，當然要確保幫助你的人不會定你的罪。

要有簡單的策略面對失敗。在這條路上一定會有失敗，聖經說，“義人的腳步為上帝所立定，即使跌倒，上帝都會攙扶他，不致他全身扑倒。”如果你跌倒，不管是色情，手淫自慰，立刻承認，很快的悔改，裡面重新站起來，讓耶穌的寶血在你身上。你越留在定罪裡面，罪就越掌控你的生命。一個人如果失敗，趕快轉向主，“主啊，對不起，我向你認罪，我真的很抱歉。主啊，我接受你的饒恕，接受你的洗淨，我再次站在你面前。”因為你跟上帝斷絕了關系，就讓問題延續，要相信上帝會饒恕，要說出話，悔改認罪，信實的上帝一定會赦免你，洗淨你。

最后，要留意罪的循環。畫一個大圈，最上面是引發事件，我們犯的罪有很多是預期可以循環的，好像照劇本演出一樣。如果你了解罪的循環，通常有引發的事件；跟著有負面的感覺出現，如受傷；接下來就是憂傷沉重，沉重是性犯罪的一個征兆，有特別的壓力和沉重。這時就馬上要轉移焦點，不然，罪的循環的第二步，罪的圖像記憶就會回來了，這人就開始犯罪了。他們感到難過，罪咎，跟著就要道歉了，借著禱告讀經，回到上面來了。一直循環。

很多男人性犯罪，就像一出排演好的劇本。他們感覺受傷，有負面的感覺；想要感覺好一點，就掉進罪裡；覺得抱歉，罪咎，又走出來了。這就是一個罪的循環。解決的方法是，認清罪是如何影響你的，改變你的行為，當你感覺失落時，不要又回到原來的路上，要打破頭腦中的既定模式。這些都是如何服事人的方法。

觀眾提問之一，怎樣打破罪的循環？

答：第一，留意並認出這個循環。每個人犯罪的模式是可預期的，他們開始幻想預期這個東西，跟著上電腦尋找，我們要幫助他們認出這個模式，和行出來的過程。

第二，求聖靈幫助他們了解自己的感受。在吸引他性犯罪之前，當他們失落，沉重時就感覺到了，就可以很快的解決問題。要認清如果我不轉移焦點，就會重新掉進循環裡。不要等到犯罪了，再爬起來。有時隻要十五分鐘，轉移焦點，做不一樣的事，你的感覺就改變了，就可以出來不用掉進舊的循環裡了。你要形成新的路徑，簡單的起來，到其他地方，做別的事情，將焦點轉移，引誘試探就消退了。

不要刻意抵擋，因為這樣你就專注在這上面了，他就越來越大，你向他敞開生命。例如，在我們禱告服事中，如果太專注別人的需要，會讓我受不了，專注於自己，我也會關閉。當我專注於主，就打開門讓上帝運行。簡單的禱告，改變自己的方向，發展新的模式，最后就變成常態了。

如果在性犯罪方面有很長的時間，就需要有人陪他，幫助他做到。所有的罪的代價，上帝都付清了。最糟的是活在定罪裡，相信自己不對，很糟糕。上帝說“我愛你，你是我的兒女。”

宗教的定罪是性犯罪的溫床，你的頭腦被設計好要走上這條路，重新設計路程需要花時間。性犯罪在你裡面發生改變，但上帝勝過這一切。

觀眾問題之二：如何幫助釋放同性戀者？

答： 首先就是要愛他，接受他，他們是有價值的人。最難的是克服對這種行為的罪惡感和論斷。同性戀也是人，他們有自己的痛苦和過程。上帝愛他們，為他們而死。同性戀周圍有很多問題造成他們更大的困難，你要讓他感到你接納他，看重他這個人。

可是對很多同性戀者，他們的認同太依附在他們的行為上。當你指出他的行為，他就會覺得你在人身攻擊。耶穌接觸的人中也有同性戀，可是耶穌與他們一同吃飯，從來沒有認同他們的行為。別人首先接觸到的就是你的態度，你最先要調整的也是你的態度，上帝幫助我們愛每一個人。

有些人我知道是同性戀者，我會擁抱他，跟擁抱其他人一樣。他就是一個人，常常他們還很有創造力，他們通常在感情和家庭中受到很大的傷害。因為他們的創意，就很難讓他們融入男性或女性的文化中。他們生命中有很深的拒絕的根。他們很多人可能是被人佔過便宜或虐待，這就打開了門；有些隻是孤單，需要感情。他們尋找的跟其他人一樣，就是愛。當你了解他們，就知道他們在錯誤的地方找愛，錯誤的人身上找愛。他們的生命產生這樣的問題，性犯罪在裡面造成問題，同性戀的身上產生更大的問題。

吸引他們來到基督面前，而不是要先解決他們的問題。有時身為基督徒，我們希望他們先把生命調整對了，才接近神；可是上帝說我愛你的原樣，接納你，一旦我進入你的生命，陪你走這條路，讓上帝的能力進入他生命。

基督徒面對這些人時，常常喜歡當面對峙，認為罪就是罪，而沒有想到這人對上帝是很珍貴的，隻有聖靈才有能力改變他們。我的工作不是改變他們，而是愛他們，將他們帶向耶穌。你不逼他們改變，而是讓上帝改變他們；你隻需要照耶穌說的去做，愛他們，為他們禱告，把基督帶給他們，幫助他們走與基督同行的路，主會處理好這些事情。

有些來到教會的人是同居的關系，我們不會當面與他們對峙，指責他們，而是帶他們跟上帝同行，相信當他接觸到上帝的愛，神國度的原則，開始與上帝同行，聖靈和他們的良知會讓他們知道這是錯誤的，不應該做的。他有了這個很大的恩典，不用擔心將來的事情，相信我帶他們繼續與上帝同行，上帝會對他們的心說話，讓他們知道這樣做不對。

可是，我們對教會會友，會直接問這個問題。大部分的人在我們還沒有開始問他們時，就已經談過了。不過我們還是需要澄清他們是否住在一起。讓我們談談好嗎？你現在進入上帝的家中，需要面對這樣的情況。有時情況會很復雜，幫助每一個個人走上這條路程。有些人的情況確實很糟糕，出來才是重點；有些人需要結婚；沒有統一的答案。就像基督愛他們一樣，我們也愛他們，告訴他們真理，讓他們自己決定如何往前走。

醫治同性戀，幫助他們得釋放，我沒有所有的答案，但我知道耶穌愛他們。焦點是做上帝召我們該做的事，而不做不該做的，就是愛他們，把基督帶給他們，鼓勵他們與耶穌同行。他們一定會走到需要談論這個的時候。就像今天這樣教導，幫助大家明白上帝如何造人，預備好答案，交談時應如何講。

現在它變成了一個很政治化，情緒化的問題了，教會也是一路掙扎過來。現在紐西蘭的法律已經改了，同性的人可以結婚了，接下來他們就要開始改我們的教育系統了。這是我們的一個挑戰，擴展神的國，讓他們看見上帝設計生命的方式如何，而神國的益處隻有悔改才能得著，不按照神的方式，罪的后果一定會臨到你的。

觀眾提問之三：合法結婚的夫妻，如果一方帶有邪靈，是否代表另一方在性親密過程中隻能長期接受邪靈的進入？

答：這是個很好的問題。不敬虔的關系，就讓邪靈有能力進到這人裡面。因為你們是用不敬虔的方式結合為一，讓他有機會進來折磨你。我覺得善的能力勝過惡，當兩人結了婚，是不會想到對方是被鬼附的，婚姻因他們的信仰成聖。我不認為一方會被邪靈附著，他們現在的關系是在上帝的秩序下。我從來沒有碰到過因為婚姻從配偶身上得到邪靈的經驗。這個關系是按神的方式，邪靈是沒有地方進來的。我會多思考一下。

哥林多前書第七章講到如果信徒跟非信徒結婚，不信之人會因信的人的信心成聖得益，不然他的兒女就不敬虔了。一個有信仰的人的影響力遠遠大於我們能想像的。

________________________________________________________________________

天父，感謝你我們有這樣相聚的時間，感謝你與我們同在，幫助我們，面對困難的情況，找到人生命的解答。主啊，求你的恩典降臨到每個人身上，在聖靈裡，溫柔待人，愛他們，在真理上堅定。禱告在今天的問題上有掙扎的人，能經歷極大的得勝。也禱告接下來的聚會，求你的大能釋放人得自由，奉耶穌基督的名，阿門！

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Table of Contents

Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 1 (3 of 12)

Overview of Eternal Rewards - Part 2 (4 of 12)

The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 1 (8 of 12)

The Judgment Seat of Christ - Part 2 (9 of 12)

1. Activating the Gifts of the Spirit

2. Deliverance and Healing

3. Exercising Spiritual Authority

4. Basic Deliverance Training

5. First Principles

6. Healing from Abortion, Miscarriage & Adoption

7. Freedom Evangelistic Messages

8. Slumber of Jezebel

9. The Signs of the End Times

10. Rest of Faith

11. Finance Seminar (Shane Willard 2011)

12. Comfort in Times of Trouble

13. Forces that Work in You

14. Ten Commandments (Shane Willard 2009)

15. Leadership Seminar (Shane Willard 2008)

16. The Spirit of Mammon

17. Eternal Rewards

18. Sonship Series

19. Who is Jesus

20. Taming the Tongue

21. Deliverance Training (Special Topics)

22. The Blood of Jesus

23. Five Seconds After You Die

24. Hearing the Voice of God

25. Fig Leaves and Other Coverings

26. Wilderness Wisdom

27. Purpose & Destiny (2011)

28. Breaking Free from Victim Mentality

29. Freedom Conference

30. Authority in the Family

31. Burnt Stones

32. The Prayer of Kings

33. Unashamed

34. Extravagant Love

35. Hosting Shane Willard (2013)

36. Hosting Shane Willard (2011)

37. Hosting Shane Willard (2010)

38. Hosting Shane Willard 2008 - Hell/Ghena

39. Hosting Shane Willard (2008)

40. Hosting Shane Willard (2007)

41. Legacy

42. Blame Game

43. Let the Kings Arise

44. Standing in the Storms of Life

45. Imagination

46. Identity

47. The Making of a King

48. Priority of the Kingdom

49. Destiny Decisions

1. Gods Mandate to Parents